A Sportsman's Notebook

by Ivan Turgenev

  Arkady Pavlich looked at me, laughed, and asked: “N’est-ce pas que c’est touchant?”

  “But, sir, Arkady Pavlich,” continued the irrepressible bailiff, “how comes it? You have quite distressed me, sir; you never warned me of your visit. Where will you spend the night? Look at all the dirt and dust here. . . .”

  “Never mind, Sofron, never mind,” answered Arkady Pavlich with a smile. “It’s all right here.”

  “But, father—all right for who? All right for peasants like me; but for you, you. . . . Oh, father, benefactor, oh, father mine! . . . Forgive me, I’m a fool, I’ve gone off my head; goodness me, I have gone all silly.”

  Meanwhile supper was served and Arkady Pavlich fell to. The old man dismissed his son. “You’re spoiling the air,” he said.

  “Well, have you got the boundaries settled, gaffer?” asked Mr. Penochkin, in an evident attempt at a peasant’s way of talking, and with a wink at me.

  “Yes, sir—all thanks to your goodness. The day before yesterday they signed the whole story. To begin with, the Khlynovo folk made difficulties . . . they did, father, they did indeed. They asked . . . and asked . . . God knows what they didn’t ask; they’re such fools, sir, such a stupid lot. But we, sir, thanks to your goodness, we offered a little something to Nikolai Nikolaich, who was the arbitrator, and satisfied him; we followed your instructions closely, sir; we did exactly what you were good enough to tell us, and Egor Dmitrich knows just what we did.”

  “Egor reported to me fully,” observed Arkady Pavlich pompously.

  “Of course, sir, of course he did.”

  “Well, I suppose you’re satisfied now?”

  Sofron was waiting just for this. “Oh, father, oh, benefactor!” he began to intone again. “Forgive me . . . you see, we pray to the Lord God day and night for you, father. . . . Of course we’ve so little land . . .”

  Penochkin interrupted him. “Well, all right, all right, Sofron, I know what a faithful servant you are. But tell me, how is the yield?”

  Sofron sighed.

  “Well, the yield is not too good, sir. Let me tell you, Arkady Pavlich, sir, about something that has happened.” Here he spread out his arms, came closer to Mr. Penochkin, bent down, and narrowed one eye. “A dead body was found on our land.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t make head or tail of it, sir, father: an enemy must have had a hand in it. Yes, luckily it was found near the boundary; but on our land, all the same—it’s no good denying it. I at once gave orders for it to be dragged off to the neighbor’s bit of land while that was still possible, and posted a sentry on it and told my people to hold their tongues. But, to take no risks, I reported it to the district police officer. ‘This is the way things are,’ I told him; and I gave him a cup of tea and a little something besides. . . . Well, sir, what do you think? It’s ended up round somebody else’s neck: a dead body is just a matter of two hundred rubles—and that’s all there is to it.”

  Mr. Penochkin laughed heartily at his bailiff’s ruse, and said to me several times, pointing at him with his head: “Quel gaillard, ah?”

  Meanwhile it had grown quite dark out-of-doors; Arkady Pavlich ordered the table to be cleared and straw to be brought. The valet made our beds and arranged the pillows; we lay down. Sofron retired, after receiving his orders for the following day. Arkady Pavlich, while dropping off to sleep, still had quite a lot to say about the excellent qualities of the Russian peasant, and at the same time observed to me that, since Sofron had been in charge, the peasants of Shipilovo had not been a farthing in arrears. . . . The watchman hammered on his board; a child, who had evidently not yet succeeded in acquiring a fitting sense of self-abnegation, cried somewhere in the cabin. . . . We fell asleep.

  Next day we rose fairly early. I was preparing to leave for Ryabovo, but Arkady Pavlich wanted to show me his estate and induced me to stay. I was in fact not reluctant to verify in practice the excellent qualities of that born administrator, Sofron. The bailiff appeared. He wore a blue overcoat girt with a red belt. He had much less to say than the day before, he met his master’s gaze with a sharply attentive stare and answered him coherently and to the point. We set off with him for the threshing-floor. Sofron’s son, the seven-foot headman, who showed every sign of extreme stupidity, followed us as well, and we were also joined by the village constable Fedoseich, an ex-soldier with huge moustaches and the peculiar expression of a man who very long ago had been extremely surprised at something and had never recovered since. We inspected the threshing-floor, the threshing-barn, the drying-barns, the cart-shed, the windmill, the cow-byre, the winter-fields, the hemp-yards; everything was in fact extremely well-kept: only the sad faces of the peasants caused me a certain perplexity. Sofron’s care was not purely utilitarian but covered the amenities as well: he had planted willows round all the ditches, he had made paths between the ricks leading to the threshing-floor and sprinkled sand on them; on the windmill he had fixed a weather-vane in the shape of a bear with open jaws and a red tongue; he had adorned the brick cow-byre with something in the nature of a Grecian pediment and under the pediment he had written in white letters: BILT IN THE VILLEGE OF SHIPILOVO IN THE YEAR ONE THOWSEND AIT HUNDRID FORTY. THIS COW-BIRE. Arkady Pavlich grew quite sentimental and let himself go in an explanation to me in French of the advantages of the rent-system, observing that labor-duty was the more advantageous system for the landowner—but that that wasn’t everything . . . He began to give his bailiff advice on how to plant potatoes, how to prepare fodder for cattle, and so on. Sofron listened to his master’s dissertation attentively, gave him an occasional rejoinder, but no longer dignified Arkady Pavlich with the title of father or benefactor, and kept on stressing that they had so little land and that there was no reason against some more.

  “Why, buy away,” said Arkady Pavlich. “Buy in my name. I don’t mind.”

  Sofron gave no answer to this but simply stroked his beard.

  “But now it wouldn’t do us any harm to ride to the forest,” observed Mr. Penochkin. Horses were immediately brought for us to ride, and we proceeded to the forest. Here we found dense undergrowth and lots of game, for which Arkady Pavlich praised Sofron and patted him on the shoulder. Mr. Penochkin adhered to the Russian school of forestry, and took the opportunity of telling me what he called a very amusing instance of how a practical joker of a landowner had made his forester see the light by pulling out about half his beard to prove that cutting timber down doesn’t make it grow any thicker. In other respects, however, neither Sofron nor Arkady Pavlich was afraid of innovation. When we returned to the village, the bailiff led us to inspect the winnowing-machine which he had recently ordered from Moscow. The machine certainly functioned well, but, if Sofron had known what an unpleasant incident awaited him and his master on this last bit of their tour, he would probably have stopped with us at his home.

  This is what happened. As we came out of the shed, we saw the following spectacle. A few paces away from the door, beside a muddy pond, in which three ducks were splashing about without a care in the world, two peasants were kneeling. One was an old man of about sixty, the other a youth of about twenty. Both wore patched and crumpled shirts, with bare legs and belts of cord. The constable Fedoseich was fussing busily around them and would probably have induced them to go away if we had stayed longer in the shed, but, seeing us, he went all taut and remained rooted to the spot. Near him stood the headman with open mouth and fists hanging down undecidedly. Arkady Pavlich frowned, bit his lip, and went up to the petitioners. They both bowed at his feet in silence.

  “What do you want? What is your request?” he asked, in a strict, slightly nasal voice. The peasants exchanged glances and said not a word, but only narrowed their eyes as if against the sun, and began to breathe more quickly.

  “Well, what is it?” continued Arkady Pavlich, and immediately turned to Sofron. “From what family?”

  “From the Toboleyev family,” answered the bailiff slowly.
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  “Well, what is it?” began Mr. Penochkin again. “Have you no tongues, or what? Tell me, you, what d’you want?” he added, motioning his head towards the old man. “Don’t be afraid, you fool.”

  The old man stuck out his dark brown, wrinkled neck, opened his bluish lips crookedly, and pronounced hoarsely: “Defend us, my lord!” And he again struck his forehead on the earth. The young peasant bowed too. Arkady Pavlich gazed with dignity at the backs of their necks, threw his head back, and planted his legs farther apart.

  “What is it all about? Of whom are you complaining?”

  “Have mercy on us, my lord! Give us a chance to breathe . . . We’re being plagued to death.” The old man spoke with difficulty.

  “Who has been plaguing you?”

  “Why, Sofron Yakovlich, sir.”

  Arkady Pavlich was silent.

  “What is your name?”

  “Antip, sir.”

  “And who is this?”

  “My son, sir.”

  Arkady Pavlich was silent again and worked his moustaches.

  “Well, in what way has he been plaguing you?” he began, looking at the old man through his moustaches.

  “Sir, he’s utterly ruined us. He’s sent two of my sons out of their turn to join the army, and now he is taking the third one away too. Yesterday, sir, he took my last cow out of my yard and he beat my old woman—that was his kind work.” He pointed at the headman.

  “H’m,” said Arkady Pavlich.

  “Don’t let him finish us right off, kind sir.”

  Mr. Penochkin frowned.

  “What is the meaning of all this?” he asked the bailiff, in a low voice and with an expression of displeasure.

  “He’s a drunkard, sir,” answered the bailiff, using the respectful form for the first time. “He won’t work. He’s not been out of arrears for the last five years, sir.”

  “Sofron Yakovlich paid the arrears for me, sir,” continued the old man. “It’s five years now since he paid them—and ever since then he’s made a slave of me, sir, that’s what he’s done. . . .”

  “But how comes it that you have been in arrears?” asked Mr. Penochkin threateningly. The old man hung his head. “I suppose you like getting drunk, hanging around the pot-houses?”

  The old man began to open his mouth.

  “I know you,” continued Arkady Pavlich, his temper flaring up. “All you think of is drinking and lying over the stove, and then the good peasant has to answer for you.”

  “He’s a rude fellow, too,” the bailiff interjected while his master was still speaking.

  “Well, that goes without saying. It’s always the same way; I’ve noticed it more than once. He spends the whole year in debauchery and impertinence and now he throws himself at my feet!”

  “Arkady Pavlich, sir,” began the old man desperately. “Have mercy on me, protect me—how have I been rude? The Lord be my witness, it’s more than I can bear. Sofron Yakovlich doesn’t like me, for some reason or other—the Lord be his judge! he’s ruining me for good, sir . . . this is the last of my sons . . . and him too . . .” In the old man’s yellow, puckered eyes a teardrop twinkled. “Have mercy, my lord, protect me . . .”

  “And we aren’t the only ones,” the young peasant was beginning.

  Arkady Pavlich suddenly burst out: “And who is asking you, eh? No one, so you keep quiet. . . . What sort of behavior is this? Keep quiet, I tell you, keep quiet! . . . My goodness! this is sheer sedition. No, my friend, I don’t advise sedition on my land, on my land . . .” Arkady Pavlich stepped forward, then probably remembered my presence, turned away, and put his hands in his pockets. . . . “Je vous demande bien pardon, mon cher,” he said with a forced smile and a significant lowering of his voice. “C’est le mauvais côté de la médaille. . . . Well, all right, all right,” he continued, without looking at the peasants. “I shall give suitable orders. All right, you may go.” The peasants remained kneeling. “All right, I tell you. . . . You can go. I shall give suitable orders, I tell you.”

  Arkady Pavlich turned his back on them. “Perpetual discontent,” he said through his teeth, and returned home with long strides. Sofron followed behind him. The constable opened his eyes wide, as if he was preparing for a very long jump. The headman chased the ducks away from the puddle. The petitioners stayed where they were, looked at each other and then trudged away without looking round.

  Two hours later I was at Ryabovo and prepared to go out shooting with Ampadist, a peasant of my acquaintance. Right up to the moment of my departure, Penochkin had kept Sofron in disgrace. I started a conversation with Ampadist about the peasants of Shipilovo and about Mr. Penochkin and asked whether he knew the bailiff there.

  “Sofron Yakovlich? . . . I should think I do!”

  “What sort of a man is he?”

  “A dog, not a man: a dog such as you won’t find between here and Kursk.”

  “But how so?”

  “Why, Shipilovo is supposed to belong to, what’s his name, Penkin; but he’s not the master: Sofron’s the master.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s the master, and treats it like his own property. The peasants all round are in his debt, they work for him as if they were his own laborers; some he sends off with the waggons, some he sends off somewhere else. He chases them about properly.”

  “They haven’t got much land, I think?”

  “Not much? Why, in Khlynovo alone he farms two hundred acres, and three hundred in our village—five hundred acres in all. And land is not his only interest: he trades in horses, cattle, tar, pitch, oil, hemp, and all the rest of it. . . . He’s clever, damned clever, and rich, too, the beast! The worst thing is the way he knocks them about. He’s an animal, not a man. It’s well known: a dog; a dirty dog, if ever there was one.”

  “But why don’t they complain about him?”

  “Ho! What does it matter to the master? There are no arrears, so what does he care? If you go and complain,” he added, after a short pause, “he’ll, he’ll . . . treat you like he did that other fellow. . . .”

  I remembered about Antip and told him what I had seen.

  “Well,” said Ampadist, “he’ll be eating him up now, eating the fellow alive. The headman will be giving him such a beating now. Poor, unlucky wretch, just fancy! And what’s he suffering for? Because he quarrelled with him at a meeting, with this bailiff-fellow, probably he couldn’t put up with it any longer. . . . A fine thing! That’s how he got his knife into Antip. Now he’ll finish the job off. He’s such a dog, such a dirty dog—may God forgive my sins—he knows who to fasten on. He doesn’t touch any of the older people who have got a bit of family or money, he doesn’t touch them, the crafty devil, but with that Antip he’s really let himself go. You see, he’s sent Antip’s sons to the army out of their turn, the wicked rogue, the dog—may God forgive me my sins.”

  We set off to shoot.

  The Estate Office

  IT WAS AUTUMN. I HAD SPENT SEVERAL HOURS ROAMING THE fields with my gun, and would probably not have returned before evening to the inn on the Kursk highway where my troika was awaiting me, if the remarkably fine, cold rain which had been chasing me around since early morning, like a tireless and determined spinster, had not finally forced me to seek at any rate a temporary shelter somewhere close at hand. While I was still considering which way to go, my gaze lighted unexpectedly on a low hut beside a field of peas. I went up to the hut, peered under the thatched eaves, and saw an old man in an advanced state of decrepitude which at once reminded me of the dying goat found by Robinson Crusoe in a cave on his island. The old man was squatting down, with his dim little eyes screwed up, and, busily but carefully, like a hare (the poor fellow had not a tooth in his head), was chewing a hard, dry pea and constantly shifting it from one side of the mouth to the other. He was so absorbed in this occupation that he didn’t notice my arrival.

  “Grandfather, I say, grandfather!” I exclaimed.

  He stopped chewing, arched
his brows and with an effort opened his eyes.

  “What?” he mumbled in a husky voice.

  “Where is the nearest village?” I asked.

  The old man resumed his chewing. He hadn’t heard what I said. I repeated my question louder than before.

  “Village? . . . Why, what do you want?”

  “I want to shelter from the rain.”

  “What?”

  “To shelter from the rain.”

  “Oh!” He scratched the nape of his sunburned neck. “Well, there, that’s the way to go,” he said suddenly, with a confused wave of his hands. “Then, when you’ve passed the wood—that’s how you go—you’ll see a track; you leave it, the track, and all the time keep to the right, keep to the right, keep to the right . . . well, there you’ll find Ananyevo. Or else you’d be at Sitovka.”

  I had difficulty in following the old man. His moustache got in the way, and his tongue did its duty badly.

  “Where are you from?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “From Ananyevo.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “What?”

  “What do you do here?”

  “I sit and keep watch.”

  “What do you watch?”

  “The peas.”

  I could not help laughing.

  “But for goodness’ sake, how old are you?”

  “God knows.”

  “I suppose you don’t see so well?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t see so well, I suppose?”

  “No. And sometimes I don’t hear anything either.”

  “Then how can you keep watch, for goodness’ sake?”

  “Ask my elders and betters.”

  Elders and betters! I thought, and looked with pity at the poor old man. Fumbling, he took from inside his coat a piece of dry bread and began to suck it like a child, laboriously drawing in his cheeks, which were anyway sunken enough.