A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  And a clear, rather cold autumn day, with a frost in the morning, when the birch, all golden like some tree in a fairy tale, stands out picturesquely against the pale blue sky; when the sun, standing low in the sky, does not warm, but shines more brightly than in summer; the small aspen copse is all a - sparkle through and through, as though it were glad and at ease in its nakedness; the hoar - frost is still white at the bottom of the hollows; while a fresh wind softly stirs up and drives before it the falling, crumpled leaves; when blue ripples whisk gladly along the river, lifting rhythmically the heedless geese and ducks; in the distance the mill creaks, half - hidden by the willows; and with changing colours in the clear air the pigeons wheel in swift circles above it....

  Sweet, too, are dull days in summer, though the sportsmen do not like them. On such days one can’t shoot the bird that flutters up from under your very feet, and vanishes at once in the whitish dark of the hanging fog. But how peaceful, how unutterably peaceful it is everywhere! Everything is awake, and everything is hushed. You pass by a tree: it does not stir a leaf; it is musing in repose. Through the thin steamy mist, evenly diffused in the air, there is a long streak of black before you. You take it for a neighbouring copse close at hand; you go up — the copse is transformed into a high row of wormwood in the boundary - ditch. Above you, around you, on all sides — mist.... But now a breeze is faintly astir; a patch of pale - blue sky peeps dimly out; through the thinning, as it were, smoky mist, a ray of golden yellow sunshine breaks out suddenly, flows in a long stream, strikes on the fields and in the copse — and now everything is overcast again. For long this struggle is drawn out, but how unutterably brilliant and magnificent the day becomes when at last light triumphs and the last waves of the warmed mist here unroll and are drawn out over the plains, there wind away and vanish into the deep, tenderly shining heights....

  Again you set off into outlying country, to the steppe. For some ten miles you make your way over cross - roads, and here at last is the high - road. Past endless trains of waggons, past wayside taverns, with the hissing samovar under a shed, wide - open gates and a well, from one hamlet to another; across endless fields, alongside green hempfields, a long, long time you drive. The magpies flutter from willow to willow; peasant women with long rakes in their hands wander in the fields; a man in a threadbare nankin overcoat, with a wicker pannier over his shoulder, trudges along with weary step; a heavy country coach, harnessed with six tall, broken - winded horses, rolls to meet you. The corner of a cushion is sticking out of a window, and on a sack up behind, hanging on to a string, perches a groom in a fur - cloak, splashed with mud to his very eyebrows. And here is the little district town with its crooked little wooden houses, its endless fences, its empty stone shops, its old - fashioned bridge over a deep ravine.... On, on!... The steppe country is reached at last. You look from a hill - top: what a view! Round low hills, tilled and sown to their very tops, are seen in broad undulations; ravines, overgrown with bushes, wind coiling among them; small copses are scattered like oblong islands; from village to village run narrow paths; churches stand out white; between willow - bushes glimmers a little river, in four places dammed up by dykes; far off, in a field, in a line, an old manor - house, with its outhouses, fruit - garden, and threshing - floor, huddles close up to a small lake. But on, on you go. The hills are smaller and ever smaller; there is scarcely a tree to be seen. Here it is at last — the boundless, untrodden steppe!

  And on a winter day to walk over the high snowdrifts after hares; to breathe the keen frosty air, while half - closing the eyes involuntarily at the fine blinding sparkle of the soft snow; to admire the emerald sky above the reddish forest!... And the first spring day when everything is shining, and breaking up, when across the heavy streams, from the melting snow, there is already the scent of the thawing earth; when on the bare thawed places, under the slanting sunshine, the larks are singing confidingly, and, with glad splash and roar, the torrents roll from ravine to ravine....

  But it is time to end. By the way, I have spoken of spring: in spring it is easy to part; in spring even the happy are drawn away to the distance.... Farewell, reader! I wish you unbroken prosperity.

  A TOUR IN THE FOREST

  FIRST DAY

  The sight of the vast pinewood, embracing the whole horizon, the sight of the ‘Forest,’ recalls the sight of the ocean. And the sensations it arouses are the same; the same primaeval untouched force lies outstretched in its breadth and majesty before the eyes of the spectator. From the heart of the eternal forest, from the undying bosom of the waters, comes the same voice: ‘I have nothing to do with thee,’ — nature says to man, ‘I reign supreme, while do thou bestir thyself to thy utmost to escape dying.’ But the forest is gloomier and more monotonous than the sea, especially the pine forest, which is always alike and almost soundless. The ocean menaces and caresses, it frolics with every colour, speaks with every voice; it reflects the sky, from which too comes the breath of eternity, but an eternity as it were not so remote from us…. The dark, unchanging pine - forest keeps sullen silence or is filled with a dull roar — and at the sight of it sinks into man’s heart more deeply, more irresistibly, the sense of his own nothingness. It is hard for man, the creature of a day, born yesterday, and doomed to death on the morrow, it is hard for him to bear the cold gaze of the eternal Isis, fixed without sympathy upon him: not only the daring hopes and dreams of youth are humbled and quenched within him, enfolded by the icy breath of the elements; no — his whole soul sinks down and swoons within him; he feels that the last of his kind may vanish off the face of the earth — and not one needle will quiver on those twigs; he feels his isolation, his feebleness, his fortuitousness; — and in hurried, secret panic, he turns to the petty cares and labours of life; he is more at ease in that world he has himself created; there he is at home, there he dares yet believe in his own importance and in his own power.

  Such were the ideas that came into my mind, some years ago, when, standing on the steps of a little inn on the bank of the marshy little river Ressetta, I first gazed upon the forest. The bluish masses of fir - forest lay in long, continuous ridges before me; here and there was the green patch of a small birch - copse; the whole sky - line was hugged by the pine - wood; nowhere was there the white gleam of a church, nor bright stretches of meadow — it was all trees and trees, everywhere the ragged edge of the tree - tops, and a delicate dim mist, the eternal mist of the forest, hung over them in the distance. It was not indolent repose this immobility of life suggested; no — the absence of life, something dead, even in its grandeur, was what came to me from every side of the horizon. I remember big white clouds were swimming by, slowly and very high up, and the hot summer day lay motionless upon the silent earth. The reddish water of the stream glided without a splash among the thick reeds: at its bottom could be dimly discerned round cushions of pointed moss, and its banks sank away in the swampy mud, and sharply reappeared again in white hillocks of fine crumbling sand. Close by the little inn ran the trodden highroad.

  On this road, just opposite the steps, stood a cart, loaded with boxes and hampers. Its owner, a thin pedlar with a hawk nose and mouse - like eyes, bent and lame, was putting in it his little nag, lame like himself. He was a gingerbread - seller, who was making his way to the fair at Karatchev. Suddenly several people appeared on the road, others straggled after them … at last, quite a crowd came trudging into sight; all of them had sticks in their hands and satchels on their shoulders. From their fatigued yet swinging gait, and from their sun - burnt faces, one could see they had come from a long distance. They were leatherworkers and diggers coming back from working for hire.

  An old man of seventy, white all over, seemed to be their leader. From time to time he turned round and with a quiet voice urged on those who lagged behind. ‘Now, now, now, lads,’ he said, ‘no — ow.’ They all walked in silence, in a sort of solemn hush. Only one of them, a little man with a wrathful air, in a sheepskin coat wide open, and a lambswool c
ap pulled right over his eyes, on coming up to the gingerbread man, suddenly inquired: ‘How much is the gingerbread, you tomfool?’

  ‘What sort of gingerbread will it be, worthy sir?’ the disconcerted gingerbread — man responded in a thin, little voice. ‘Some are a farthing — and others cost a halfpenny. Have you a halfpenny in your purse?’

  ‘But I guess it will sweeten the belly too much,’ retorted the sheepskin, and he retreated from the cart.

  ‘Hurry up, lads, hurry up,’ I heard the old man’s voice: ‘it’s far yet to our night’s rest.’

  ‘An uneducated folk,’ said the gingerbread - man, with a squint at me, directly all the crowd had trudged past: ‘is such a dainty for the likes of them?’

  And quickly harnessing his horse, he went down to the river, where a little wooden ferry could be seen. A peasant in a white felt ‘schlik’ (the usual headgear in the forest) came out of a low mud hut to meet him, and ferried him over to the opposite bank. The little cart, with one wheel creaking from time to time, crawled along the trodden and deeply rutted road.

  I fed my horses, and I too was ferried over. After struggling for a couple of miles through the boggy prairie, I got at last on to a narrow raised wooden causeway to a clearing in the forest. The cart jolted unevenly over the round beams of the causeway: I got out and went along on foot. The horses moved in step snorting and shaking their heads from the gnats and flies. The forest took us into its bosom. On the outskirts, nearer to the prairie, grew birches, aspens, limes, maples, and oaks. Then they met us more rarely, the dense firwood moved down on us in an unbroken wall. Further on were the red, bare trunks of pines, and then again a stretch of mixed copse, overgrown with underwood of hazelnut, mountain ash, and bramble, and stout, vigorous weeds. The sun’s rays threw a brilliant light on the tree - tops, and, filtering through the branches, here and there reached the ground in pale streaks and patches. Birds I scarcely heard — they do not like great forests. Only from time to time there came the doleful, thrice - repeated call of a hoopoe, and the angry screech of a nuthatch or a jay; a silent, always solitary bird kept fluttering across the clearing, with a flash of golden azure from its lovely feathers. At times the trees grew further apart, ahead of us the light broke in, the cart came out on a cleared, sandy, open space. Thin rye was growing over it in rows, noiselessly nodding its pale ears. On one side there was a dark, dilapidated little chapel, with a slanting cross over a well. An unseen brook was babbling peaceably with changing, ringing sounds, as though it were flowing into an empty bottle. And then suddenly the road was cut in half by a birch - tree recently fallen, and the forest stood around, so old, lofty, and slumbering, that the air seemed pent in. In places the clearing lay under water. On both sides stretched a forest bog, all green and dark, all covered with reeds and tiny alders. Ducks flew up in pairs — and it was strange to see those water - birds darting rapidly about among the pines. ‘Ga, ga, ga, ga,’ their drawn - out call kept rising unexpectedly. Then a shepherd drove a flock through the underwood: a brown cow with short, pointed horns broke noisily through the bushes and stood stockstill at the edge of the clearing, her big, dark eyes fixed on the dog running before me. A slight breeze brought the delicate, pungent smell of burnt wood. A white smoke in the distance crept in eddying rings over the pale, blue forest air, showing that a peasant was charcoal - burning for a glass - factory or for a foundry. The further we went on, the darker and stiller it became all round us. In the pine - forest it is always still; there is only, high overhead, a sort of prolonged murmur and subdued roar in the tree - tops. One goes on and on, and this eternal murmur of the forest never ceases, and the heart gradually begins to sink, and a man longs to come out quickly into the open, into the daylight; he longs to draw a full breath again, and is oppressed by the fragrant damp and decay….

  For about twelve miles we drove on at a walking pace, rarely at a trot. I wanted to get by daylight to Svyatoe, a hamlet lying in the very heart of the forest. Twice we met peasants with stripped bark or long logs on carts.

  ‘Is it far to Svyatoe?’ I asked one of them.

  ‘No, not far.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘It’ll be a little over two miles.’

  Another hour and a half went by. We were still driving on and on. Again we heard the creak of a laden cart. A peasant was walking beside it.

  ‘How far, brother, is it still to Svyatoe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How far to Svyatoe?’

  ‘Six miles.’

  The sun was already setting when at last I got out of the forest and saw facing me a little village. About twenty homesteads were grouped close about an old wooden church, with a single green cupola, and tiny windows, brilliantly red in the evening glow. This was Svyatoe. I drove into its outskirts. A herd returning homewards overtook my cart, and with lowing, grunting and bleating moved by us. Young girls and bustling peasant women came to meet their beasts. Whiteheaded boys with merry shrieks went in chase of refractory pigs. The dust swirled along the street in light clouds, flushed crimson as they rose higher in the air.

  I stopped at the house of the village elder, a crafty and clever ‘forester,’ one of those foresters of whom they say he can see two yards into the ground. Early next morning, accompanied by the village elder’s son, and another peasant called Yegor, I set off in a little cart with a pair of peasant’s horses, to shoot woodcocks and moorhens. The forest formed a continuous bluish ring all round the sky - line; there was reckoned to be two hundred acres, no more, of ploughed land round Svyatoe; but one had to go some five miles to find good places for game. The elder’s son was called Kondrat. He was a flaxen - haired, rosy - cheeked young fellow, with a good - natured, peaceable expression of face, obliging and talkative. He drove the horses. Yegor sat by my side. I want to say a few words about him.

  He was considered the cleverest sportsman in the whole district. Every step of the ground for fifty miles round he had been over again and again. He seldom fired at a bird, for lack of powder and shot; but it was enough for him to decoy a moorhen or to detect the track of a grouse. Yegor had the character of being a straightforward fellow and ‘no talker.’ He did not care for talking and never exaggerated the number of birds he had taken — a trait rare in a sportsman. He was of medium height, thin, and had a pale, long face, and big, honest eyes. All his features, especially his straight and never - moving lips, were expressive of untroubled serenity. He gave a slight, as it were inward smile, whenever he uttered a word — very sweet was that quiet smile. He never drank spirits, and worked industriously; but nothing prospered with him. His wife was always ailing, his children didn’t live; he got poorer and poorer and could never pick up again. And there is no denying that a passion for the chase is no good for a peasant, and any one who ‘plays with a gun’ is sure to be a poor manager of his land. Either from constantly being in the forest, face to face with the stern and melancholy scenery of that inhuman country, or from the peculiar cast and formation of his character, there was noticeable in every action of Yegor’s a sort of modest dignity and stateliness — stateliness it was, and not melancholy — the stateliness of a majestic stag. He had in his time killed seven bears, lying in wait for them in the oats. The last he had only succeeded in killing on the fourth night of his ambush; the bear persisted in not turning sideways to him, and he had only one bullet. Yegor had killed him the day before my arrival. When Kondrat brought me to him, I found him in his back yard; squatting on his heels before the huge beast, he was cutting the fat out with a short, blunt knife.

  ‘What a fine fellow you’ve knocked over there!’ I observed.

  Yegor raised his head and looked first at me, then at the dog, who had come with me.

  ‘If it’s shooting you’ve come after, sir, there are woodcocks at Moshnoy — three coveys, and five of moorhens,’ he observed, and set to work again.

  With Yegor and with Kondrat I went out the next day in search of sport. We drove rapidly over the open ground sur
rounding Svyatoe, but when we got into the forest we crawled along at a walking pace once more.

  ‘Look, there’s a wood - pigeon,’ said Kondrat suddenly, turning to me: ‘better knock it over!’

  Yegor looked in the direction Kondrat pointed, but said nothing. The wood - pigeon was over a hundred paces from us, and one can’t kill it at forty paces; there is such strength in its feathers. A few more remarks were made by the conversational Kondrat; but the forest hush had its influence even on him; he became silent. Only rarely exchanging a word or two, looking straight ahead, and listening to the puffing and snorting of the horses, we got at last to ‘Moshnoy.’ That is the name given to the older pine - forest, overgrown in places by fir saplings. We got out; Kondrat led the cart into the bushes, so that the gnats should not bite the horses. Yegor examined the cock of his gun and crossed himself: he never began anything without the sign of the cross.

  The forest into which we had come was exceedingly old. I don’t know whether the Tartars had wandered over it, but Russian thieves or Lithuanians, in disturbed times, might certainly have hidden in its recesses. At a respectful distance from one another stood the mighty pines with their slightly curved, massive, pale - yellow trunks. Between them stood in single file others, rather younger. The ground was covered with greenish moss, sprinkled all over with dead pine - needles; blueberries grew in dense bushes; the strong perfume of the berries, like the smell of musk, oppressed the breathing. The sun could not pierce through the high network of the pine - branches; but it was stiflingly hot in the forest all the same, and not dark; like big drops of sweat the heavy, transparent resin stood out and slowly trickled down the coarse bark of the trees. The still air, with no light or shade in it, stung the face. Everything was silent; even our footsteps were not audible; we walked on the moss as on a carpet. Yegor in particular moved as silently as a shadow; even the brushwood did not crackle under his feet. He walked without haste, from time to time blowing a shrill note on a whistle; a woodcock soon answered back, and before my eyes darted into a thick fir - tree. But in vain Yegor pointed him out to me; however much I strained my eyes, I could not make him out. Yegor had to take a shot at him. We came upon two coveys of moorhens also. The cautious birds rose at a distance with an abrupt, heavy sound. We succeeded, however, in killing three young ones.