The Day Will Pass Away

by Ivan Chistyakov

  Ducks maybe? A couple of teal rise. I shoot. Miss. We settle down by a haystack. ‘Our lodging for the night,’ I announce. ‘We’ll burrow in and sleep under the hay. It’ll be warm.’

  ‘How about making some porridge?’

  ‘Good thinking, Alexander. A man sleeps more soundly on a full stomach.’ I go for firewood and the dog comes too. Thirty metres from the haystack, I’m breaking up a dead birch but freeze in a way that has Doc shouting, ‘What’s wrong?’ I indicate the dog, which he can’t see in the grass. ‘What?’ he asks, as if wanting an answer repeated.

  I beckon. He jumps up and comes running with only socks on his feet. I shout in great agitation, ‘Bring the gun! He’s pointing!’ The dog takes a couple of steps forward, lies down and stretches its muzzle forwards. Doc runs up, gets ready, a grouse rises. ‘Missed! Ouch!’

  I look at Doc. Doc looks at me. ‘Some Voroshilov sharpshooter you are!’

  ‘Yep, we missed!’ (from five paces, point-blank)

  The birch tree has been reduced to firewood, the millet rinsed, the porridge is cooking, darkness is falling. Dusk. A campfire, a lake splashing gently fifteen paces away. Somewhere cranes are calling. The shadow of a bat flickers by and gets us talking about Fenimore Cooper, Mayne Reid and their like. ‘You’re a real pioneer on the prairies of America,’ Doc declares.

  ‘And you seem to be the last of the Mohicans, only instead of moccasins you’re wearing Moscow socks, darned by the USSR State Stocking Repair Workshops.’

  ‘I admit it.’

  ‘If we were real Indians we would be looking away from the fire.’

  ‘Well, yes, but we can sit like this while we’re waiting for the porridge to cook.’

  ‘Come on, it’s nothing to do with Red Indians or watching the porridge – you’re not that intellectual – you just need to dry your socks before you go to bed.’

  ‘All right, all right! Now tell me about the porridge you made last year!’

  So I do. The first time we took the cooking pot, but forgot the millet; the second time we remembered the millet but forgot the cooking pot; and the third time we remembered both but couldn’t find drinkable water.

  ‘And did you burn it that time too?’

  ‘No! We had to finish cooking it when we got back to Moscow.’

  ‘Well, let’s make tea with it now and then sleep.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  The burnt porridge serves as tea leaves, and the peat-infused waters of Lake Karasovo produce a brew that could pass for Ceylon tea, or perhaps mocha coffee.

  ‘I’ve never seen game in such abundance, and today has been no exception.’

  ‘And if we carry on missing like this, we’ll never have bagged such a round number before either!’

  The day’s exertions have taken their toll. Doc, twisting and grunting, works his way under the haystack and, securely installed, is soon snoring. I fall asleep too and don’t know how many hours have passed or what the time is when I wake, but it’s as dark as ever. Doc’s boots, kicking me repeatedly in the head, have woken me.

  ‘Why do you keep tossing and turning? If you can’t sleep, at least let me try!’

  ‘I’m not comfortable in this haystack! Perhaps we should get the campfire going again.’

  ‘That’s not such a bad idea. My legs are sweaty and shivery.’

  We resuscitate the fire and it’s much warmer beside it than under the haystack. We can just make out the first glimmer of dawn, or perhaps we’re still half asleep and imagining it. ‘Thanks for thinking of the haystack to keep us warm,’ Doc says drily. ‘Sleep tight!’

  The water boils in the pot, we eat tinned food, and it’s time to be on our way. ‘What’ll the kill be today?’ Doc wonders.

  ‘Even if we don’t kill anything, our feet will kill us.’

  It’s a good forty-five minutes’ walk from Lake Karasovo to Lake Glubokoye, but after hiking for an hour and a half there’s still no sign of the lake. Or, come to think of it, any game. We spot the lake and make a beeline for it. There are said to be ducks there, but so far that seems no more than a hunter’s tale. There probably were sometime in the past. How touching that their memory lives on.

  ‘What times those were in America!’

  ‘Yes, real hunting they had there! You’d see a herd of stampeding buffalo, no need to aim. Blam! You fire your Colt, get all the meat you can eat and a buffalo skin to boot!’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you keep missing. You’re a Red Indian in disguise and your shotgun is only for shooting big game, so how can it be expected to hit something as small as a grouse or a partridge? If an elephant turned up now, I bet you’d really show us!’

  ‘You don’t shoot elephants. In Africa they hunt them without a gun.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They track the elephants to where they sleep. As I’m sure you know, elephants sleep leaning against a tree. They quietly saw the tree down and the elephant falls over. Once it’s fallen over it can’t get up again, so the hunter comes in the morning, and . . . ’

  ‘I see. They find a whole herd of elephants with their legs in the air trumpeting piteously.’

  ‘Yes, then the Africans arrive, tie them up, put them in carts and get a donkey to pull them to an elephant pen.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling you should stuff your donkey up a priest’s beard.’

  ‘I’m telling you, explorers have seen it with their own eyes and written about it. What’s so odd about using donkeys?’

  ‘I suppose they also feed them semolina to make them as manageable as babies.’

  We have come at the end of the pine scrub to some higher ground, a kind of triangulation point. It’s dry, with lots of berry-laden bushes growing between clumps of birch scrub. ‘A good place for game, this,’ Doc reflects and, before I can answer, the dog is pointing. A grouse rises up. We both shoot, two barrels. Two hunters firing twice at one bird proves effective and the grouse falls to earth. Hunting tradition dictates that when it’s debatable who brought a bird down it goes to whoever shot first. ‘Alexander, I congratulate you. It’s not an elephant but you hit it.’

  A finger extended in front of his nose silences me. The finger is redirected towards the dog, which is pointing again. We advance, barely able to see each other through the bushes. It’s the kind of situation which could result in one of us shooting the other, but partridges cut out the risk of that, some flying my way, others towards Doc. Two shots ring out, two souls are dispatched to avian heaven or hell, and their mortal remains consigned to our soup pot. ‘Hurray!’ Doc exclaims proudly. ‘Another kill.’ Further conversation is again interrupted by the dog pointing. This time we both miss, unforgivably. We should have shot at the partridges rather than open sky.

  ‘Think we’ve done enough for one day?’ I ask Doc.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ he retorts. Fifty paces on and the dog is pointing again. The partridges are becoming downright insolent, almost sitting on our gun barrels. Doc finds this so insulting that when a very young one lands on his gun and cheeps at him, he murders it. His trophy is a mishmash of flesh and feathers.

  ‘We’ll have to sew a chicken’s head on it,’ I say, ‘or no one will believe that’s edible.’

  ‘Other people may think it’s inedible, but I don’t, and intend to eat it.’

  Our feet and the dog are beginning to weary.

  ‘Do you think it’s time we called it a day, after all . . . ’

  He doesn’t need to go on. ‘. . . you can’t shoot every game bird in the world!’ I finish his sentence. ‘As simple souls say.’

  ‘Simple souls? Are you calling me an idiot?’

  ‘No, at times you really seem quite intelligent, but don’t let it worry you. I expect it will soon pass.’

  And while you were busy being witty, did you see what’s just flown by?’ Engrossed in our tit-for-tat, we failed to notice the dog pointing again. ‘A grouse! And a black one at that!’

  ‘You’re a grouse yourself,
a big one!’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I am too.’

  ‘Okay, nil–nil.’

  We head back. The trail snakes this way and that so that at times you think you are back where you started, at others that you are going in completely the wrong direction. ‘Carry that gun like a hunter, will you?’ Doc protests. ‘I’m not a grouse planning to land on its barrel!’

  ‘All right! All right!’

  ‘What’s “all right”? You hold it like it’s a stick, and you’re even squinting at me with half an eye. Don’t kill me or you’ll come off worse!’

  ‘What if I don’t kill you but just wing you and you die all by yourself? Who’ll come off worse then?’

  We’re back at the birch scrub, so in another hundred metres we’ll be on firm ground again. ‘When we get out, shall we sit down for bit?’

  ‘Good idea!’

  The trail from the marsh leads us to a hill called Trushkin Wood. After all that wading through the marsh, walking on dry land feels like relaxation, but we sit down anyway.

  It’s so good to stretch out on soft moss after the marsh. My legs are tingling pleasantly. I look up through the treetops, and when they sway the sky looks like water rippling in a great lake. I decide to make a suggestion: ‘What do you think, Alexander, about walking on now to Karasovo?’

  I shiver. It will be six versts, kilometres near enough, from the marsh to the village. We take the shortest route, through the woods. ‘It’s true what they say! Hunting is worse than captivity!’ Doc says after a long silence. ‘It feels as if we’ve struggled a hundred kilometres through the marsh, worn ourselves out, worn the dog out, given the game a nasty fright, and now here we are stumbling along like the undead, and all in pursuit of our pastime!’

  ‘Non-hunters would never understand,’ I reflect. Another silence. I just want to walk without talking or thinking about anything. It is very, very quiet in the woods. A stick snapping underfoot jolts us out of our torpor.

  ‘Hunting was better before the revolution,’ I propose. ‘You would be packing and getting ready for two or three months before you set off. You would go to Yar or some other restaurant out in the countryside. Shoot game, drink Condor brandy . . . ’ ‘Pick rowan berries [illegible],’ Doc interjects.

  ‘. . . and drink Smirnoff vodka, and then either drive to Hunter’s Row or send a footman to buy partridges. You would come home with a hangover. There would be enquiries, perplexed sighs and, of course, hunters’ tales. A hangover, memories of drunken revelry, your second-hand knowledge of the marshes and how to hunt game courtesy of Turgenev, all combining to create stories your audience would be too embarrassed to question. “Senya! Your grouse are beginning to go off!” a faithful wife observes. “What grouse? Mine were partridges!” “No, they’re grouse!” “Hell, it’s probably that wretch Ignashka mixed them up. We agreed I would have partridges and he would take grouse.” “What Ignashka? You don’t have any friends of that name.” “Oh, just someone I met while I was hunting.”’

  ‘Well,’ Doc observes, ‘I couldn’t fool my wife like that! If I brought back a dozen grouse . . . ’

  ‘She wouldn’t say they were partridges?’

  ‘She just wouldn’t believe I had bagged them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she knows I’m a terrible shot. She would know I must have bought them.’

  We are welcomed at a collective farm by a vigorous, slightly tipsy old lady in her mid-seventies. ‘What have we killed? Our feet!’

  ‘Look, Granny, here’s what we’ve killed.’

  ‘You’ll be tired, I dare say.’

  ‘We are, Granny, we are,’ I agree.

  ‘He’s the only one who’s tired!’ Doc butts in, pointing at me rather petulantly.

  ‘You poor dears. Well, take off your boots and your coats. I’ll have some dinner for you in the twinkling of an eye.’

  We clean the guns, eat our dinner and quickly head for bed. We climb up to the loft and lie down on the hay, under a quilt. ‘The hay seems a bit warmer here, don’t you think? Not like under your haystack,’ Doc remarks. I hardly hear the end of the sentence as I fall asleep.

  Day 2

  The chill of morning makes me shiver. Through a crack in the roof I see a luminous pink sky. In the village nearby a shepherd is playing a horn with only three notes. Then we hear the thud of a heavy whip and the cow lying under the hayloft snorts noisily. The sheep bleat. ‘Wakey, wakey, Doc!’ We get up at once. How wonderful it would be to wrap myself in that warm blanket and turn back over on to my side. The dog at my feet whines, and when he hears us say ‘hunting’ loses patience. He starts jumping up and trying to lick my face. Fifteen minutes later we are ready to go. ‘Have we got everything?’ Yes.

  The gate in the fence round the village rasps, and we are back in the wild. We walk across a meadow and leave two trails behind us in the dewy, trampled grass. ‘We need to turn right through the fields, and in half an hour we’ll be at the marsh,’ I tell Doc. The sun [illegible] the tops of the fir trees.

  The shaded lower half of the forest is still asleep, but up above life is chattering away. A squirrel circles the trunk of a pine tree, making that clattering sound with its claws.

  ‘See those tall fir trees?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s where the marsh begins. We’ll walk about a hundred and fifty paces along the shoreline and . . . ’

  ‘. . . start missing the game again,’ Doc finishes.

  ‘The birds haven’t taken fright here, yet. We’ll show them!’

  ‘If you’re in too much of a hurry to show them, they’ll show you their tails.’

  ‘You’re probably right there. How many birds did we shoot yesterday? And how many tails did we see? I’m older and wiser today. I won’t just loose off like I did yesterday.’

  ‘How are you going to shoot instead?’

  ‘I’ll fire at one bird and move the barrel sideways so the shot sprays them and I get six or seven in one go.’

  ‘Don’t give me all the sense in your head or you’ll only have the nonsense left.’

  The marsh is divided from dry land by a forty-metre strip of meadow, which is always flooded, including today. Doc leaps from tuft to tuft, trying not to fall in. ‘How are you doing, Alexander? Not wet yet?’

  ‘No, I’ve only got my galoshes wet!’ Some galoshes they are too, when his shoes are held together with string and the only soles they have are those of his feet.

  We keep to the edge of the marsh. At times the pine scrub gives way to birch scrub, then to thickets of willow. We battle through it as if it were a jungle. Somewhere the dog may be pointing, but we can’t see him. When we do, he’s not pointing so there is no game anyway. We come out of the marsh to rest on a horn of dry land. ‘Doc, I have a test cartridge I fancy firing.’

  ‘Right, let’s look for a place to hang up a sheet of newspaper.’

  We search for a spot. ‘Why are you lugging that gun around with you? Do yourself a favour, hang it up on a tree,’ I say challengingly. Doc falls into the trap, hangs it on a pine tree and walks away without a care in the world.

  We fix the newspaper to a tree and walk back seventy metres. I aim. Bang! We go to take a look. Fifty-one out of seventy-two pellets have hit half a sheet of Izvestiya.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Doc exclaims.

  ‘Yes, really brilliant!’ I say with a grin.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Really, really brilliant!’

  ‘What are you on about?’ he asks, puzzled.

  ‘Hunter, where is thy gun? Oh, dear. The last of the Mohicans!’ Silence.

  We start looking again, only this time not for somewhere to fix a sheet of newspaper but for a shotgun. ‘All we need now is for the dog to start pointing! Is that a grouse I see rising?’ I muse aloud, just to exasperate Doc.

  ‘That’s enough gloating,’ he interrupts.

  ‘We could have been sitting here having a rest,’
I muse, ‘instead of being on our feet all the time.’

  ‘Just treat it as good training for your next trip to Peski,’ Doc remarks with heavy irony, leaning against the pine tree where we have found his gun.

  ‘Well, now let’s hang it on another tree, have a rest, and then we can go looking for it again,’ I suggest.

  ‘The bit about taking a rest is good,’ he responds. ‘I’ll have a smoke while you tell me all about how you got lost at Peski.’ ‘Oh, you’re the expert at getting lost in a three-pine forest, and that was in the marshes. In 1930 I was camping at Lake Karasovo with someone I know called Gulidov. We stayed there for a while and then set off back to Moscow. We had a cooking pot the size of half a bucket and had cooked a potful of porridge to take with us. I put the pot with the porridge in my knapsack. Nikolai thought I was daft. “We’re not going on a hundred-kilometre expedition. Dump it, feed it to the fishes. It’s heavy. What do you want to cart that around for?”

  ‘We got to the bay and met a fisherman. “Tell us, friend, what’s the quickest way out of the marsh?” “Ah, you’ll be needing to go to the boundary marker, and then it’s straight up the firebreak.” We followed his instructions. There was only one boundary marker, so that wasn’t a problem, but there were five firebreaks leading away from it, all of them straight as a die. Without hesitation, we headed up the first one. It was noon. I went first, Gulidov followed, still going on about the porridge.

  ‘“Your back’s hot. Mind it doesn’t burn the porridge. I’d better give it a stir.” We walked for an hour and a half and should have been able to see Lake Glubokoye. It had started drizzling. “Gulidov, old chap, I’m beginning to wonder if we might have chosen the wrong road.” “What do you mean, it’s as straight as can be.” “It is indeed, but where is it taking us?” “Let’s just keep going. We’ll come out somewhere in the end.” “Indubitably.”