A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  I nodded in token of assent. We were silent again.

  ‘Panteley Eremyitch was pleased to hunt two hares yesterday,’ Nedopyuskin began again with an effort, obviously wishing to enliven the conversation; ‘yes, indeed, very big hares they were, sir.’

  ‘Has Mr. Tchertop - hanov good hounds?’

  ‘The most wonderful hounds, sir!’ Nedopyuskin replied, delighted; ‘one may say, the best in the province, indeed.’ (He drew nearer to me.) ‘But, then, Panteley Eremyitch is such a wonderful man! He has only to wish for anything — he has only to take an idea into his head — and before you can look round, it’s done; everything, you may say, goes like clockwork. Panteley Eremyitch, I assure you....’

  Tchertop - hanov came into the room. Nedopyuskin smiled, ceased speaking, and indicated him to me with a glance which seemed to say, ‘There, you will see for yourself.’ We fell to talking about hunting.

  ‘Would you like me to show you my leash?’ Tchertop - hanov asked me; and, not waiting for a reply, he called Karp.

  A sturdy lad came in, in a green nankin long coat, with a blue collar and livery buttons.

  ‘Tell Fomka,’ said Tchertop - hanov abruptly, ‘to bring in Ammalat and Saiga, and in good order, do you understand?’

  Karp gave a broad grin, uttered an indefinite sound, and went away. Fomka made his appearance, well combed and tightly buttoned up, in boots, and with the hounds. From politeness, I admired the stupid beasts (harriers are all exceedingly stupid). Tchertop - hanov spat right into Ammalat’s nostrils, which did not, however, apparently afford that dog the slightest satisfaction. Nedopyuskin, too, stroked Ammalat from behind. We began chatting again. By degrees Tchertop - hanov unbent completely, and no longer stood on his dignity nor snorted defiantly; the expression of his face changed. He glanced at me and at Nedopyuskin....

  ‘Hey!’ he cried suddenly; ‘why should she sit in there alone? Masha! hi, Masha! come in here!’

  Some one stirred in the next room, but there was no answer.

  ‘Ma - a - sha!’ Tchertop - hanov repeated caressingly; ‘come in here. It’s all right, don’t be afraid.’

  The door was softly opened, and I caught sight of a tall and slender girl of twenty, with a dark gypsy face, golden - brown eyes, and hair black as pitch; her large white teeth gleamed between full red lips. She had on a white dress; a blue shawl, pinned close round her throat with a gold brooch, half hid her slender, beautiful arms, in which one could see the fineness of her race. She took two steps with the bashful awkwardness of some wild creature, stood still, and looked down.

  ‘Come, let me introduce,’ said Panteley Eremyitch; ‘wife she is not, but she’s to be respected as a wife.’

  Masha flushed slightly, and smiled in confusion. I made her a low bow. I thought her very charming. The delicate falcon nose, with distended, half - transparent nostrils; the bold sweep of her high eyebrows, the pale, almost sunken cheeks — every feature of her face denoted wilful passion and reckless devilry. From under the coil of her hair two rows of little shining hairs ran down her broad neck — a sign of race and vigour.

  She went to the window and sat down. I did not want to increase her embarrassment, and began talking with Tchertop - hanov. Masha turned her head slyly, and began peeping from under her eyelids at me stealthily, shyly, and swiftly. Her glance seemed to flash out like a snake’s sting. Nedopyuskin sat beside her, and whispered something in her ear. She smiled again. When she smiled, her nose slightly puckered up, and her upper lip was raised, which gave her face something of the expression of a cat or a lion....

  ‘Oh, but you’re one of the “hands off!” sort,’ I thought, in my turn stealing a look at her supple frame, her hollow breast, and her quick, angular movements.

  ‘Masha,’ Tchertop - hanov asked, ‘don’t you think we ought to give our visitor some entertainment, eh?’

  ‘We’ve got some jam,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, bring the jam here, and some vodka, too, while you’re about it. And, I say, Masha,’ he shouted after her, ‘bring the guitar in too.’

  ‘What’s the guitar for? I’m not going to sing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense; you’ll want to when....’

  ‘What?’ asked Masha, rapidly knitting her brows.

  ‘When you’re asked,’ Tchertop - hanov went on, with some embarrassment.

  ‘Oh!’

  She went out, soon came back with jam and vodka, and again sat by the window. There was still a line to be seen on her forehead; the two eyebrows rose and drooped like a wasp’s antennae.... Have you ever noticed, reader, what a wicked face the wasp has? ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’m in for a storm.’ The conversation flagged. Nedopyuskin shut up completely, and wore a forced smile; Tchertop - hanov panted, turned red, and opened his eyes wide; I was on the point of taking leave.... Suddenly Masha got up, flung open the window, thrust out her head, and shouted lustily to a passing peasant woman, ‘Aksinya!’ The woman started, and tried to turn round, but slipped down and flopped heavily on to a dung - heap. Masha threw herself back and laughed merrily; Tchertop - hanov laughed too; Nedopyuskin shrieked with delight. We all revived. The storm had passed off in one flash of lightning... the air was clear again.

  Half - an - hour later, no one would have recognised us; we were chatting and frolicking like children. Masha was the merriest of all; Tchertop - hanov simply could not take his eyes off her. Her face grew paler, her nostrils dilated, her eyes glowed and darkened at the same time. It was a wild creature at play. Nedopyuskin limped after her on his short, fat little legs, like a drake after a duck. Even Venzor crawled out of his hiding - place in the hall, stood a moment in the doorway, glanced at us, and suddenly fell to jumping up into the air and barking. Masha flitted into the other room, fetched the guitar, flung off the shawl from her shoulders, seated herself quickly, and, raising her head, began singing a gypsy song. Her voice rang out, vibrating like a glass bell when it is struck; it flamed up and died away.... It filled the heart with sweetness and pain.... Tchertop - hanov fell to dancing. Nedopyuskin stamped and swung his legs in tune. Masha was all a - quiver, like birch - bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark - skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber. All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop - hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into song like a mad thing, drawing herself up and holding up her head, and Tchertop - hanov again curtsied down to the ground, leaped up to the ceiling, spun round like a top, crying ‘Quicker!...’

  ‘Quicker, quicker, quicker!’ Nedopyuskin chimed in, speaking very fast.

  It was late in the evening when I left Bezsonovo....

  XXII

  THE END OF TCHERTOP - HANOV

  I

  It was two years after my visit that Panteley Eremyitch’s troubles began — his real troubles. Disappointments, disasters, even misfortunes he had had before that time, but he had paid no attention to them, and had risen superior to them in former days. The first blow that fell upon him was the most heartrending for him. Masha left him.

  What induced her to forsake his roof, where she seemed to be so thoroughly at home, it is hard to say. Tchertop - hanov to the end of his days clung to the conviction that a certain young neighbour, a retired captain of Uhlans, named Yaff, was at the root of Masha’s desertion. He had taken her fancy, according to Panteley Eremyitch, simply by constantly curling his moustaches, pomading himself to excess, and sniggering significantly; but one must suppose that the vagrant gypsy blood in Masha’s veins had more to do with it. However that may have been, one fine summer evening Masha tied up a few odds and ends in a small bundle, and walked out of Tchertop - hanov’s house.

  For three days before this she had sat crouched up in a corner, huddled
against the wall, like a wounded fox, and had not spoken a word to any one; she had only turned her eyes about, and twitched her eyebrows, and faintly gnashed her teeth, and moved her arms as though she were wrapping herself up. This mood had come upon her before, but had never lasted long: Tchertop - hanov knew that, and so he neither worried himself nor worried her. But when, on coming in from the kennels, where, in his huntsman’s words, the last two hounds ‘had departed,’ he met a servant girl who, in a trembling voice, informed him that Marya Akinfyevna sent him her greetings, and left word that she wished him every happiness, but she was not coming back to him any more; Tchertop - hanov, after reeling round where he stood and uttering a hoarse yell, rushed at once after the runaway, snatching up his pistol as he went.

  He overtook her a mile and a half from his house, near a birch wood, on the high - road to the district town. The sun was sinking on the horizon, and everything was suddenly suffused with purple glow — trees, plants, and earth alike.

  ‘To Yaff! to Yaff!’ groaned Tchertop - hanov directly he caught sight of Masha. ‘Going to Yaff!’ he repeated, running up to her, and almost stumbling at every step.

  Masha stood still, and turned round facing him.

  She stood with her back to the light, and looked all black, as though she had been carved out of dark wood; only the whites of her eyes stood out like silvery almonds, but the eyes themselves — the pupils — were darker than ever.

  She flung her bundle aside, and folded her arms. ‘You are going to Yaff, wretched girl!’ repeated Tchertop - hanov, and he was on the point of seizing her by the shoulder, but, meeting her eyes, he was abashed, and stood uneasily where he was.

  ‘I am not going to Mr. Yaff, Panteley Eremyitch,’ replied Masha in soft, even tones; ‘it’s only I can’t live with you any longer.’

  ‘Can’t live with me? Why not? Have I offended you in some way?’

  Masha shook her head. ‘You’ve not offended me in any way, Panteley Eremyitch, only my heart is heavy in your house.... Thanks for the past, but I can’t stay — no!’

  Tchertop - hanov was amazed; he positively slapped his thighs, and bounced up and down in his astonishment.

  ‘How is that? Here she’s gone on living with me, and known nothing but peace and happiness, and all of a sudden — her heart’s heavy! and she flings me over! She goes and puts a kerchief on her head, and is gone. She received every respect, like any lady.’

  ‘I don’t care for that in the least,’ Masha interrupted.

  ‘Don’t care for it? From a wandering gypsy to turn into a lady, and she doesn’t care for it! How don’t you care for it, you low - born slave? Do you expect me to believe that? There’s treachery hidden in it — treachery!’

  He began frowning again.

  ‘There’s no treachery in my thoughts, and never has been,’ said Masha in her distinct, resonant voice; ‘I’ve told you already, my heart was heavy.’

  ‘Masha!’ cried Tchertop - hanov, striking himself a blow on the chest with his fist; ‘there, stop it; hush, you have tortured me... now, it’s enough! O my God! think only what Tisha will say; you might have pity on him, at least!’

  ‘Remember me to Tihon Ivanitch, and tell him...’

  Tchertop - hanov wrung his hands. ‘No, you are talking nonsense — you are not going! Your Yaff may wait for you in vain!’

  ‘Mr. Yaff,’ Masha was beginning....

  ‘A fine Mister Yaff!’ Tchertop - hanov mimicked her. ‘He’s an underhand rascal, a low cur — that’s what he is — and a phiz like an ape’s!’

  For fully half - an - hour Tchertop - hanov was struggling with Masha. He came close to her, he fell back, he shook his fists at her, he bowed down before her, he wept, he scolded.

  ...’I can’t,’ repeated Masha; ‘I am so sad at heart... devoured by weariness.’

  Little by little her face assumed such an indifferent, almost drowsy expression, that Tchertop - hanov asked her if they had not drugged her with laudanum.

  ‘It’s weariness,’ she said for the tenth time.

  ‘Then what if I kill you?’ he cried suddenly, and he pulled the pistol out of his pocket.

  Masha smiled; her face brightened.

  ‘Well, kill me, Panteley Eremyitch; as you will; but go back, I won’t.’

  ‘You won’t come back?’ Tchertop - hanov cocked the pistol.

  ‘I won’t go back, my dearie. Never in my life will I go back. My word is steadfast.’

  Tchertop - hanov suddenly thrust the pistol into her hand, and sat down on the ground.

  ‘Then, you kill me! Without you I don’t care to live. I have grown loathsome to you — and everything’s loathsome for me!’

  Masha bent down, took up her bundle, laid the pistol on the grass, its mouth away from Tchertop - hanov, and went up to him.

  ‘Ah, my dearie, why torture yourself? Don’t you know what we gypsy girls are? It’s our nature; you must make up your mind to it. When there comes weariness the divider, and calls the soul away to strange, distant parts, how is one to stay here? Don’t forget your Masha; you won’t find such another sweetheart, and I won’t forget you, my dearie; but our life together’s over!’

  ‘I loved you, Masha,’ Tchertop - hanov muttered into the fingers in which he had buried his face....

  ‘And I loved you, little friend Panteley Eremyitch.’

  ‘I love you, I love you madly, senselessly — and when I think now that you, in your right senses, without rhyme or reason, are leaving me like this, and going to wander over the face of the earth — well, it strikes me that if I weren’t a poor penniless devil, you wouldn’t be throwing me over!’

  At these words Masha only laughed.

  ‘And he used to say I didn’t care for money,’ she commented, and she gave Tchertop - hanov a vigorous thump on the shoulder.

  He jumped up on to his feet.

  ‘Come, at least you must let me give you some money — how can you go like this without a halfpenny? But best of all: kill me! I tell you plainly: kill me once for all!’

  Masha shook her head again. ‘Kill you? Why get sent to Siberia, my dearie?’

  Tchertop - hanov shuddered. ‘Then it’s only from that — from fear of penal servitude.’

  He rolled on the grass again.

  Masha stood over him in silence. ‘I’m sorry for you, dear,’ she said with a sigh: ‘you’re a good fellow... but there’s no help for it: good - bye!’

  She turned away and took two steps. The night had come on by now, and dim shadows were closing in on all sides. Tchertop - hanov jumped up swiftly and seized Masha from behind by her two elbows.

  ‘You are going away like this, serpent, to Yaff!’

  ‘Good - bye!’ Masha repeated sharply and significantly; she tore herself away and walked off.

  Tchertop - hanov looked after her, ran to the place where the pistol was lying, snatched it up, took aim, fired.... But before he touched the trigger, his arm twitched upwards; the ball whistled over Masha’s head. She looked at him over her shoulder without stopping, and went on, swinging as she walked, as though in defiance of him.

  He hid his face — and fell to running.

  But before he had run fifty paces he suddenly stood still as though turned to stone. A well - known, too well - known voice came floating to him. Masha was singing. ‘It was in the sweet days of youth,’ she sang: every note seemed to linger plaintive and ardent in the evening air. Tchertop - hanov listened intently. The voice retreated and retreated; at one moment it died away, at the next it floated across, hardly audible, but still with the same passionate glow.

  ‘She does it to spite me,’ thought Tchertop - hanov; but at once he moaned, ‘oh, no! it’s her last farewell to me for ever,’ — and he burst into floods of tears.

  * * *

  The next day he appeared at the lodgings of Mr. Yaff, who, as a true man of the world, not liking the solitude of the country, resided in the district town, ‘to be nearer the young ladies,’ as he express
ed it. Tchertop - hanov did not find Yaff; he had, in the words of his valet, set off for Moscow the evening before.

  ‘Then it is so!’ cried Tchertop - hanov furiously; ‘there was an arrangement between them; she has run away with him... but wait a bit!’

  He broke into the young cavalry captain’s room in spite of the resistance of the valet. In the room there was hanging over the sofa a portrait in oils of the master, in the Uhlan uniform. ‘Ah, here you are, you tailless ape!’ thundered Tchertop - hanov; he jumped on to the sofa, and with a blow of his fist burst a big hole in the taut canvas.

  ‘Tell your worthless master,’ he turned to the valet, ‘that, in the absence of his own filthy phiz, the nobleman Tchertop - hanov put a hole through the painted one; and if he cares for satisfaction from me, he knows where to find the nobleman Tchertop - hanov! or else I’ll find him out myself! I’ll fetch the rascally ape from the bottom of the sea!’

  Saying these words, Tchertop - hanov jumped off the sofa and majestically withdrew.

  But the cavalry captain Yaff did not demand satisfaction from him — indeed, he never met him anywhere — and Tchertop - hanov did not think of seeking his enemy out, and no scandal followed. Masha herself soon after this disappeared beyond all trace. Tchertop - hanov took to drink; however, he ‘reformed’ later. But then a second blow fell upon him.

  II

  This was the death of his bosom friend Tihon Ivanovitch Nedopyuskin. His health had begun to fail two years before his death: he began to suffer from asthma, and was constantly dropping asleep, and on waking up could not at once come to himself; the district doctor maintained that this was the result of ‘something rather like fits.’ During the three days which preceded Masha’s departure, those three days when ‘her heart was heavy,’ Nedopyuskin had been away at his own place at Bezselendyevka: he had been laid up with a severe cold. Masha’s conduct was consequently even more unexpected for him; it made almost a deeper impression on him than on Tchertop - hanov himself. With his natural sweetness and diffidence, he gave utterance to nothing but the tenderest sympathy with his friend, and the most painful perplexity... but it crushed and made havoc of everything in him. ‘She has torn the heart out of me,’ he would murmur to himself, as he sat on his favourite checked sofa and twisted his fingers. Even when Tchertop - hanov had got over it, he, Nedopyuskin, did not recover, and still felt that ‘there was a void within him.’ ‘Here,’ he would say, pointing to the middle of his breast above his stomach. In that way he lingered on till the winter. When the frosts came, his asthma got better, but he was visited by, not ‘something rather like a fit’ this time, but a real unmistakable fit. He did not lose his memory at once; he still knew Tchertop - hanov and his friend’s cry of despair, ‘How can you desert me, Tisha, without my consent, just as Masha did?’ He even responded with faltering, uncertain tongue, ‘O — P — a — ey — E — e — yitch, I will o — bey you.’