A flood of freshness coursed over my face. I opened my eyes—the day was breaking. There was still no flush of dawn, but a growing pallor in the East. I could vaguely make out my surroundings. The pale-gray sky was growing light, and cold, and blue; the stars twinkled feebly or went out; the earth had grown damp, the leaves dripped, from somewhere came sounds of life, and voices, and the damp breath of dawn was already abroad, hovering above the earth. My body answered it with a faint thrill of exhilaration. I rose quickly and went across to the boys. They were all sleeping like the dead around the dying fire; only Pavel half-raised himself and stared fixedly at me. I nodded to him and went my way along the steaming river. I had not gone two versts when, around me in the broad water-meadow and ahead on the deepening green of the hills, from wood to wood, and behind me over the long dusty track, over the flushed sparkling bushes, and along the river, which was of a timid blue below the thinning mist—flowed scarlet, then red, then golden torrents of youthful, blazing light. . . . The world began to rustle, awoke, began to sing, to murmur, to speak. On all sides the heavy dewdrops flashed into blazing diamonds; to meet me, pure and clear, as if they too had been washed in the coolness of morning, came the sounds of a church bell, and suddenly, driven by my friends the boys, the herd of horses, fresh from sleep, galloped past me. . . .
With sorrow I must add that Pavel died before the year was out. He was not drowned, but killed by a fall from a horse. A pity, he was a splendid lad!
Kasyan from Fair Springs
I WAS DRIVING BACK FROM SHOOTING IN A JOLTING CART AND, overcome by the stifling heat of an overcast day in summer (in such weather the heat can of course be more unbearable even than on fine days, and especially so when there is no wind), I was dozing and swaying, submitting my whole person with a sullen patience to the nagging attentions of the fine white dust which rose constantly off the broken track from beneath our cracked and lurching wheels, when suddenly my notice was attracted by an unwonted restlessness, a certain fidgety uneasiness on the part of my coachman, who up to that moment had been dozing away even more soundly than myself. He tightened his reins, began fussing about on his seat and shouting at the horses, meanwhile gazing somewhere away to one side. I looked round. We were driving across a wide, cultivated plain; low hills, also cultivated, merged into it in gentle rolling undulations; the eye could embrace at least some five versts of open country: in the distance, small birch-copses were all that broke the almost straight line of the horizon, with the rounded tracery of their treetops. Narrow paths stretched across the fields, disappeared into folds in the ground, wound over hillocks, and on one of them, which was due to intersect our track about five hundred yards ahead of us, I could make out some sort of procession. It was at this that my coachman was gazing.
It was a funeral. In front, in a cart drawn at walking pace by a single nag, rode the priest; a deacon sat beside him and drove: behind the cart, four peasants, with heads bared, carried a coffin covered in a white cloth; two peasant women walked behind the coffin. The thin, plaintive voice of one of them suddenly came to my ears. I listened intently: she was wailing for the dead. Her song came cheerlessly over the empty fields, warbling, monotonous, mournful, without hope. My coachman urged on his horses so as to pass ahead of the procession. To meet a dead man on the road is an evil omen. He was indeed successful in hurrying past before the dead man could reach the track; but we had not gone a hundred yards farther, when suddenly our cart gave a violent jolt, listed to one side and almost overturned. The coachman halted the horses, which had made as if to bolt, threw up his hand and spat.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
My coachman got down in silence and without haste.
“But what is it?”
“The axle’s broken—burnt through,” he answered morosely, and suddenly straightened the harness on the side-horse with such indignation that the horse almost toppled right over, managed to stand its ground, snorted, trembled, and began tranquilly nibbling its foreleg below the knee. I got down and stood for a while on the track, oppressed by a vague and disagreeable feeling of bewilderment. The right wheel had almost completely collapsed under the cart and now seemed to be lifting its hub aloft in dumb despair.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked at length.
“That’s whose fault it is!” said my coachman, pointing with his whip at the procession, which had now turned on to the track and was approaching us. “I’ve always noticed that,” he continued; “it’s a sure sign, when you meet a dead man.”
He began again to worry the side-horse, which, sensing his ill-humored and grim mood, decided to stand motionless, with only an occasional modest flick of its tail. I walked a few paces up and down and halted again in front of the wheel.
Meanwhile the dead man had come up with us. Quietly turning off the track on to the grass, the sad procession made its way past our cart. My coachman and I took off our caps, bowed to the priest and exchanged glances with the coffin-bearers. They were stepping out ponderously, their broad chests bulging. Of the two women following the coffin, one was very old and pale; her motionless features, cruelly disfigured by grief, preserved an expression of dour and solemn dignity. She walked in silence, occasionally raising a bony hand to her thin, sunken lips. The other, a young woman of about twenty-five, had red, tearful eyes and her whole face was swollen with weeping; as she came level with us, she interrupted her wailing and covered her face with her sleeve. . . . By now the dead man had passed us and had got back on the track and the woman’s plaintive, heartbreaking song burst out again. After silently following with his eyes the measured swaying of the coffin, my driver turned to me:
“That’s Martin the carpenter they’re burying,” he said: “the one from Ryaba.”
“How do you know?”
“I recognized the women. The old one’s his mother, the young one’s his wife.”
“Was he ill, or what?”
“Yes . . . the fever. . . . The day before yesterday the bailiff sent for the doctor, but the doctor was out. . . . He was a good carpenter; he took a drop now and then, but he was a good carpenter. You can see how badly his wife has taken it. . . . Well, yes, of course it’s true that women’s tears don’t cost a thing. Women’s tears are the same as water . . . yes.”
And he bent down, ducked under the side-horse’s traces and took hold of the shaft-bow in both hands.
“Anyway,” I remarked, “what are we going to do?”
My coachman first pressed his knee against the shoulder of the shaft-horse, shook the shaft-bow twice, straightened the strap, then ducked again under the side-horse’s trace, and, knocking the horse’s face as he passed, went up to the wheel; then, without taking his eyes off it, slowly brought out a snuff-box from beneath the skirts of his coat, slowly pulled the top off by its strap, slowly inserted his two thick fingers into the snuff-box (and there was hardly room for both of them, at that), rubbed and rubbed away at the snuff, gave his nose an anticipatory twist, sniffed with deliberation, accompanying every intake with a prolonged grunt; then, screwing up and blinking his tear-filled eyes, as if in pain, he plunged into a profound reverie.
“Well, what about it?” I said at length.
My coachman carefully put the snuff-box away in his pocket, jerked his hat forward on to his forehead, without the help of his hands, just with a flick of his head, and reflectively climbed on to his seat.
“Where are you off to?” I asked him, not without astonishment.
“Please to take your place,” he answered calmly, and picked up the reins.
“But how are we going to go on?”
“We’ll go on all right.”
“But the axle . . .”
“Please to take your place.”
“But the axle is broken.”
“It’s broken, yes, but we can get as far as the hamlet . . . at a walk, that is. It’s over there behind the wood to the right: it’s called Yudiny.”
“D’you think we’ll get
there?”
My coachman did not vouchsafe me a reply.
“I’d better walk,” I said.
“As you please, sir . . .”
He waved his whip and the horses started off.
We did indeed reach the hamlet, although the right fore-wheel hardly stayed on, and turned in the strangest way. On one hill it practically came off, but my coachman shouted in a furious voice and we got safely down to the bottom.
The hamlet of Yudiny consisted of six little low cabins, which had already managed to take a list to one side, although they had probably not been standing long; some of the back-yards were not even fenced-in. As we drove into the hamlet, we met not a single living soul. There was not even a fowl to be seen, not even a dog—or rather only one, a black dog, with a docked tail, which jumped up hurriedly in front of us out of a completely dry trough where it had no doubt been driven by thirst, and at once, without a bark, dashed headlong under a gate. I went up to the first cabin, opened the door, and called for the master and mistress. No one answered me. I called again; the hungry mewing of a cat sounded from behind the inner door. I pushed it with my foot; a thin cat darted past me, with a flash of green eyes in the darkness. I put my head into the room and looked around it. It was dark, smoky, and empty. I made my way to the yard and found nobody there either. . . . Behind a fence a calf lowed; a lame gray goose limped away to one side. I crossed to the second cabin and there too found not a soul. I went to the yard . . .
Right in the middle of the yard, in broad daylight, in the full blaze of the sun, lay, with his face to the ground and his head covered with a coat, what I took for a boy. A few paces away from him stood a wretched little cart in a thatched lean-to shed, with a bony nag in ragged harness beside it. The sunlight streaming through the narrow interstices of the decrepit roof fell in small pools of light on its shaggy sorrel-brown coat. Up aloft was a boxful of starlings, chattering and looking down with tranquil curiosity from their airy abode. I went up to the sleeper and set about waking him . . .
He raised his head, saw me, and at once jumped to his feet. “Why, what is it? What’s the matter?” he mumbled sleepily.
I didn’t answer him at once: such was the impression made on me by his appearance. Imagine a dwarf of about fifty, with a swarthy, wrinkled little face, sharp little nose, brown, hardly perceptible little eyes, and thick curly black hair sticking out on all sides of a tiny head like the hat on top of a mushroom. His whole body was extremely thin and puny and I find it quite impossible to convey in words the utter strangeness of his expression.
“What is it?” he asked me again.
I explained to him what the matter was and he listened to me without taking his slowly blinking eyes off me.
“You couldn’t let us have a new axle?” I asked at length. “I’d be glad to pay for it.”
“But who are you? A sportsman, eh?” he asked, sizing me up from head to foot.
“Yes.”
“You shoot the birds of the heaven, I’ll be bound? . . . and the creatures of the forest? . . . But isn’t it a sin to kill God’s birds and to shed the blood of the innocent?”
The strange little man spoke with a pronounced drawl. His tone also astonished me. Not only had it no hint of infirmity, but it was surprisingly sweet and young and had an almost feminine tenderness in it.
“I have no axle,” he added, after a slight pause. “That thing there is no use.” He pointed to his cart. “I suppose you’ve got a big cart?”
“Can’t I find an axle in the village?”
“Village, indeed! . . . No one here has got one. No one is at home either, they’re all at work. Be off with you!” he said suddenly, and lay down again on the ground.
I had in no wise expected this conclusion.
“Listen, old fellow,” I said, touching his shoulder, “be kind, and help me.”
“Be off, and good luck to you! I’m tired; I’ve been into town,” he told me, and drew his coat over his head.
“But, please help me,” I continued. “I . . . I’ll pay you.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“Now look here, old fellow . . .”
He half got up, and sat with his thin little legs crossed.
“I could take you, if you like, to the clearing. Some merchants have bought our wood—may God be their judge. They’re cutting down the wood, and they’ve built an office. May God be their judge. You could order an axle there, from them, or buy one ready-made.”
“Splendid!” I exclaimed joyfully. “Splendid! . . . Let’s go.”
“An oaken axle, a good one,” he continued, not rising from where he sat.
“Is it far to the clearing?”
“Three versts.”
“Oh, well, we could drive there in your cart.”
“Oh, no. . . .”
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “Let’s go, old fellow! My coachman’s waiting in the road.”
The old man got up reluctantly and followed me out into the road. My coachman was in a mood of irritation. He had tried to water the horses, but there turned out to be extremely little water in the well, and what there was had a bad taste, which is what matters most, so coachman say. . . . At the sight of the old man, however, he grinned, nodded several times, and exclaimed: “Ah, Kasyan! Good day!”
“Good day, Erofei, you man of righteousness!” answered Kasyan in a cheerless voice.
I lost no time in conveying his proposal to my coachman; Erofei expressed agreement and drove into the yard. While he was unharnessing the horses, with an air of busy deliberation, the old man stood with his shoulder propped against the gate and looked gloomily first at him, then at me. He seemed perplexed, and, as far as I could make out, not overjoyed by our sudden visitation.
“So they’ve transferred you, too?” Erofei asked him suddenly, while taking off the shaft-bow.
“Yes.”
“Ugh!” said my coachman through his teeth. “Martin, you know, the carpenter . . . of course you know Martin from Ryaba?”
“I do.”
“Well, he’s dead. We’ve just passed his coffin.”
Kasyan started.
“Dead?” he said, and looked down.
“Yes, dead. Why didn’t you cure him, eh? They say that you can cure people, that you’re a healer.”
My coachman was evidently amusing himself at the old man’s expense.
“Is that your cart, eh?” he added, indicating it with his finger.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s certainly a cart . . . a cart!” he repeated, and taking it by the shafts he practically overturned it. . . . “A cart, indeed! . . . But what horse are you going to take to the clearing? . . . You’ll never manage to harness one of our horses between these shafts: our horses are too big for this sort of a contraption.”
“I don’t know,” answered Kasyan. “No, you’ll get there on this beasty here, perhaps,” he added, with a sigh.
“This one?” interjected Erofei, and, going over to Kasyan’s nag, he prodded it contemptuously in the neck with the third finger of his right hand. “Oho,” he added reproachfully, “the old crow’s asleep!”
I asked Erofei to hurry up and harness the horse. I was keen to go myself with Kasyan to the clearing: it ought to be a good place for blackcock. When the cart was ready, and I had somehow installed myself with my dog inside the back of its body, and Kasyan, curled up into a ball, with the same cheerless expression still on his face, had sat down on the raised part in front, Erofei came up to me and whispered, with a mysterious air: “You’re quite right, sir, to go with him. He’s one of these cranky fellows; they call him the Flea. I don’t know how you got any sense out of him . . .”
I wanted to remark to Erofei that, so far, Kasyan had struck me as a most judicious fellow, but my coachman at once went on in the same tone: “But just keep an eye on where he takes you. And please choose the axle yourself, sir; choose the soundest one that you can see. Well, Flea,” he added loudly, “can I
get a crust of bread here?”
“Have a look; maybe you’ll find some,” answered Kasyan; he gave a twitch of the reins and off we went.
To my unfeigned surprise, his nag went very tolerably. All the way Kasyan maintained a stubborn silence and answered my questions disjointedly and with reluctance. We soon reached the clearing, and there found the office, a lofty cabin standing by itself at the top of a small ravine, which not far off was blocked by a dam and spread out into a pond. In the office I found two young merchant-clerks, with snow-white teeth, and suavity in their glance, in their ready speech and their shrewd smiles. I compounded with them for my axle, and set off for the clearing. I thought that Kasyan would stay with his horse and await me there, but he suddenly approached me.
“Well, are you going shooting birdies?” he said. “Eh?”
“Yes, if I find any.”
“I’ll go with you . . . may I?”
“Certainly you may.”
So off we went. The clearing stretched for about a verst. I confess that I paid more attention to Kasyan than to my dog. He was not called the Flea for nothing. His black capless noddle (for that matter his hair was the equal of any cap) fairly bobbed up and down among the bushes. He walked extremely fast, hopped as he went, and kept stooping down to pick herbs, stuffing them in his bosom, mumbling something to himself and looking at me and my dog with a strange questioning glance. In the brushwood, in the small scrub, and in clearings, you will often find little gray fowl constantly flitting from one tree to another and whistling and suddenly swooping as they fly. Kasyan imitated them and conversed with them; a young quail flew up chirruping from under his feet, and he chirruped back at it. A lark dropped towards him, singing loudly, with wings a-quiver—Kasyan took up its song. He still avoided conversation with myself. . . .
The weather was magnificent, even better than earlier on; there was no break in the sweltering heat. In a clear sky, there floated a few high, almost motionless, clouds, yellowish-white, like remnants of snow in spring-time, with a long, flattened shape, like lowered sails. The pattern-work of their edges, which were soft and downy as cotton-wool, altered slowly but perceptibly as the moments went by: they were dissolving, these clouds, and they cast no shadow. For a long while Kasyan and I tramped around the clearing. Young saplings, not more than two feet high, surrounded the low and blackened tree-trunks with their slender, smooth stems; round, jagged, gray-bordered growths, the sort from which touchwood is made, clung to these trunks, and the wild strawberry stretched its pink tendrils over them. Close at hand mushrooms sat tightly in families. Our feet kept getting caught and tangled in the long grass, which was wilting under the blazing sun; on all sides our eyes were dazzled by the sharp, metallic flickering of young, reddish leaves on the trees; on every hand were the gleaming blue berries of enchanter’s nightshade, the celandine’s bright golden bells, and the purple and yellow flowers of the wild pansy; here and there, beside overgrown tracks, on which wheel marks showed up as stripes of fine red grass, stood piles of timber, blackened by wind and rain, and stacked in lengths; slanting rectangles of faint shadow fell from them, otherwise there was not a shadow to be found. The light breeze rose and fell: a sudden burst of it blows straight into your face, and all around there is a cheerful rustling and nodding and movement, a gracious swaying of the supple fern-tops, and your heart rejoices . . . then suddenly it dies away again and all grows still. Only the grasshoppers chatter away together like mad—and how oppressive is their interminable, harsh, dry sound. It goes well with the nagging heat of noon; it seems born of the heat, evoked by it from the incandescent earth.
A Sportsman's Notebook Page 15