I went off in the direction of the wood, turned to the right, kept on bearing to the right as the old man had directed me, and finally reached a big village with a stone church in the new taste, that’s to say with columns, and a big manor house, also with columns. From some way off, through the fine net of the rain, I noticed a cabin with a wooden roof and two chimneys, larger than the others, probably the home of the headman of the village. I went towards it, in the hope of finding there a samovar with tea, sugar, and some not completely sour cream. Accompanied by my shivering dog, I went up to the porch and into the passage, opened a door, but saw, instead of the usual appointments of a cabin, tables piled with papers, two red cupboards, bespattered ink-wells, heavyweight pewter sandboxes, the longest possible quills, and so on. At one of the tables sat a youth of about twenty, with a puffy, unhealthy face, tiny little eyes, a greasy forehead, and side-locks of unconscionable length. He was decently dressed in a gray nankeen coat which had worn shiny round the collar and over the stomach.
“What can I do for you?” he asked me, with a jerk of the head, like a horse which never expected to be taken hold of by the mouth.
“Does the factor live here . . . or? . . .”
“This is the head office of the estate,” he interrupted me. “I am the clerk on duty. . . . Did you not see the notice outside? That’s what it’s put there for.”
“Where can one dry oneself here? Has anyone in the village got a samovar?”
“Of course there are samovars,” replied the youth in the gray coat, with dignity. “You can go to Father Timofei or failing that to the servants’ cabin, or failing that to Nazar Tarasich, or failing that to Agrafena the hen-woman.”
“Who are you talking to, you blockhead? You’re spoiling my sleep!” came a voice from the next room.
“Here’s a gentleman has come and is asking where he can dry himself.”
“What gentleman?”
“I don’t know. He’s got a dog and a gun.”
A bed creaked in the next room. The door opened and in came a man of about fifty, stout, short, bull-necked, pop-eyed, very round-cheeked, and with a face that shone all over.
“What do you require?” he asked me.
“I want to dry myself.”
“This isn’t the place for it.”
“I didn’t know that this was an office; but, by the way, I’m ready to pay. . . .”
“I suppose it could be done here,” rejoined the stout one. “Won’t you come this way?”
He led me into another room, which was not the one from which he had come himself.
“Will you be all right here?”
“Yes. . . . You couldn’t get me some tea with cream?”
“Certainly, at once. If you’ll take your things off and rest yourself, tea will be ready in a moment.”
“Whose estate is this?”
“It belongs to Elena Nikolaevna Losnyakova.”
He went out. I looked round: along the partition dividing my room from the office stood a huge leather sofa, and two chairs, also of leather and with extremely high backs, were planted on both sides of the only window, which looked out on the village street. On the walls, which were papered in green with a pink design, hung three huge pictures painted in oils. One of them depicted a spaniel with a blue collar, on which was written: “This is my Joy.” At the dog’s feet was a river, and on the opposite bank, underneath a pine tree, sat a hare of disproportionate size with one ear pricked. The second picture showed two old men eating a water-melon: behind the water-melon could be seen in the distance a Grecian portico with the inscription: The Temple of Content. The third picture represented a half-nude woman in a recumbent attitude, foreshortened, with red knees and enormous heels. My dog, without an instant’s delay, got himself under the sofa, by supernatural exertions, and there apparently found a lot of dust, because he began to sneeze his head off. I went to the window. Boards had been laid obliquely across the street from the manor house to the office: a very useful precaution, since all round, thanks to our black soil and the prolonged rain, the mud was terrible. Outside the manor house, which stood with its back to the street, was a scene typical enough in such a setting: maids in faded print dresses were darting backwards and forwards; house-servants were strolling about in the mud, halting and reflectively scratching their backs; the constable’s tethered horse was slowly swishing its tail and tossing its head and gnawing at the fence; hens were clucking, consumptive-looking turkeys gobbling away at each other. On the porch of a dark, decrepit building, probably a bath-house, sat a sturdy lad with a guitar singing, not without gusto, the well-known ditty:
Away to the desert I’m bound to go,
From this enchanted spot.
The fat fellow came into the room.
“Your tea’s just coming,” he told me with an agreeable smile.
The young man in the gray coat, the duty-clerk, set out, on an old card-table, a samovar, a tea-pot, a glass with a broken saucer, a bowl of cream, and a string of Bolkhovo biscuits, which were hard as flint. The fat fellow went out.
“Who is that?” I asked the duty-clerk. “The factor?”
“No, sir: he used to be the head cashier, but now he has been promoted head clerk.”
“Haven’t you got a factor?”
“No, sir, we have a bailiff, Mikhailo Bikulov, but no factor.”
“D’you have an agent?”
“Certainly, a German, Lindamandol, Karlo Karlich; only it’s not he who gives the orders.”
“Who does, then?”
“The lady herself.”
“So that’s how it is? . . . Well, have you got many people working in the office?”
The young man reflected.
“Six altogether.”
“Who are they all?” I asked.
“Well, first there is Vasily Nikolaich, the head cashier; then, Pyotr the clerk; Pyotr’s brother Ivan, also a clerk; another Ivan who is a clerk, too; Koskenkin Narkizov, also a clerk; and me—there’s no end of us.”
“I suppose your lady has a lot of house-servants?”
“Not so many as all that.”
“Well, how many?”
“I dare say there are a hundred and fifty or so.”
We were both silent.
“Well, are you a good handwriter?” I began again.
The lad smiled proudly, nodded, went into the office, and brought back a sheet of paper covered with writing.
“This is my hand,” he said, still smiling.
I looked; on the quarto sheet of grayish paper, in a fine large hand, was written the following:
ORDER
From the Head Office of the Ananyevo Estate to the Bailiff Mikhailo Bikulov. No. 209.
Immediately on receipt of this present, you are hereby instructed to ascertain who it was that last night went past the English garden in a state of intoxication, singing indecent songs, awakening and alarming the French governess Madame Enzhenie, what the nightwatchmen were up to, and which of them was on duty in the garden and permitted such dastardly behaviour. You are instructed to inquire into all particulars of the foregoing and to report to the office forthwith.
Nikolai Khvostov,
Head Clerk.
Affixed to the order was an enormous armorial seal with the legend, “Seal of the Head Office of the Ananyevo Estate,” and below it was added a minute: “To be carried out to the letter. Elena Losnyakova.”
“The lady wrote that herself, did she?” I asked.
“Certainly she did, sir: she always does it herself. Otherwise the order can’t take effect.”
“Well, so you’ll send the bailiff this order?”
“No, sir, he’ll come himself and read it—that’s to say, it will be read to him; you see, he can’t read.”
The duty-clerk paused again. “Well, sir,” he added, smiling, “d’you like my writing?”
“I do.”
“I admit it wasn’t I who drafted it. Koskenkin is the masterhand at that.”
>
“What? . . . Do you actually have your orders drafted first?”
“Of course, sir. It would never do to go straight to the fair copy.”
“What salary d’you get?” I asked.
“Thirty-five rubles, and five rubles shoe-money.”
“And you’re satisfied?”
“Yes, certainly. It’s not everyone who can get into the office. In my case, of course, it was the hand of God; my uncle’s the butler.”
“And you’re all right?”
“Yes, sir. To tell the truth,” he continued with a sigh, “working for merchants, for instance, we clerks are better off. Working for merchants, we clerks do very very well. Why, last night we had a visit from a merchant from Venyovo—so his man told me. . . . Well-off, there are no two ways about it.”
“You mean that a merchant pays a higher salary?”
“Good Lord, no! He’d chuck you out if you asked him for a salary. No, if you work for a merchant, you live on faith and fear. He gives you food and drink and clothes and so on. If you serve him well, he’ll give you even more. . . . Salary! you don’t need one at all . . . and a merchant will live simply, in the good old Russian way: you take the road with him—he drinks tea and so do you; what he eats, you eat too. The merchant . . . is a happy-go-lucky fellow; it’s not like working for a gentleman. There are no fads about your merchant; if he’s angry with you, he beats you and the thing’s done with. None of your nagging, none of your sly digs. . . . But working for a gentleman is dreadful! Nothing’s ever right: this is badly done, that’s all wrong. You give him a glass of water or some food—‘Ah, the water stinks! Ah, the food stinks!’ You take it away; you wait behind the door, bring it back again, ‘Well, now it’s all right, now it doesn’t stink any more.’ And as for ladies, well, as for ladies! . . . And as for young ladies, what’s more! . . .”
“Fedyushka!” came the voice of the fat man from the office. The duty-clerk hurried out. I drank my glass of tea, lay down on the sofa, and went to sleep. I slept for two hours. Wakening, I meant to get up, but laziness won the day; I shut my eyes, but didn’t fall asleep again. Behind the partition, in the office, a discreet conversation was in progress. Involuntarily I began to listen.
“Just so, just so, Nikolai Eremeich,” said one voice. “Just so. We have got to take that into account; certainly we have got to. . . . H’mm!”
The speaker coughed.
“You can take my word for it, Gavrila Antonich,” rejoined the voice of the fat man. “You can judge for yourself whether or not I know the way things are here.”
“Of course you do, Nikolai Eremeich. One might say that you are the top man here. Well, how shall it be?” continued the voice that was unknown to me. “What shall we decide on, Nikolai Eremeich, if you don’t mind my being curious?”
“Yes, what shall we decide on, Gavrila Antonich? It depends on you, so to speak; you don’t seem very keen.”
“Good heavens, Nikolai Eremeich, whatever d’you mean? It’s our job to trade and do business; it’s our job to buy. That’s the very ground we stand on, Nikolai Eremeich, as you might say.”
“Eight rubles,” said the fat one with deliberation.
I could hear a sigh.
“Nikolai Eremeich, it’s an awful lot that you’re asking.”
“Gavrila Antonich, I swear before God that it’s the only course I can take.”
Silence reigned.
I raised myself softly and looked through a crack in the partition. The fat fellow was sitting with his back to me. Opposite him sat a merchant, a man of about forty, thin and pale, looking as if he had been anointed with Lenten oil. He kept wagging his beard and blinking away busily and twitching his lips.
“The winter fields this year are tip-top, as you might say,” he began again. “I have been admiring them as I drove along. Tip-top, they were, all the way from Voronezh—first-class, one might say.”
“They’re certainly not bad,” answered the head clerk. “But as you know, Gavrila Antonich, autumn proposes and spring disposes.”
“Just so, Nikolai Eremeich: everything is as God wills it; it’s absolutely true, what you’ve just said. . . . Your guest won’t have woken up?”
The fat one turned around . . . listened . . .
“No, he’s asleep. All the same, maybe that . . .”
He went to the door.
“No, he’s asleep,” he repeated, and returned to his place.
“Well, how shall it be, Nikolai Eremeich?” began the merchant again: “We must conclude our business. Let’s have it like this, Nikolai Eremeich. Let’s have it like this,” he continued, blinking away the whole time. “Two gray notes and a white one for your good self and six and a half rubles for over there.” He nodded towards the manor house. “Shall we shake hands on it?”
“Four gray ones,” answered the clerk.
“Three, then.”
“Four gray ones and no white ones.”
“Three, Nikolai Eremeich.”
“Three and a half and not a farthing less.”
“Three, Nikolai Eremeich.”
“Don’t waste your breath, Gavrila Antonich.”
“What a stubborn fellow,” muttered the merchant. “Why, I could get a better deal direct with the lady.”
“As you like,” answered the fat one. “You could have done that long ago. I really don’t know what all the fuss is about. . . . You’d get a much better deal.”
“Oh, all right, Nikolai Eremeich, all right. How you flew into a rage! Why, I was just talking, like that.”
“No, I really don’t know . . .”
“It’s all right, I tell you . . . I tell you, I was joking. . . . Well, take your three and a half, there’s nothing else to be done with you.”
“I ought to have taken four, but, like a fool, I was in too much of a hurry,” grumbled the fat one.
“So it’s six and a half over there, at the house, Nikolai Eremeich—the price of the corn is six and a half.”
“Six and a half was what we said.”
“Well, then, let’s shake hands on it, Nikolai Eremeich.” The merchant spread out his fingers and struck them against the clerk’s palm. “And now with God’s speed!” The merchant rose. “Now, sir, Nikolai Eremeich, I will go to the lady, and send my name in, and say to her: ‘Nikolai Eremeich has agreed to sell for six and a half, madam.’”
“That’s right.”
“And now please take this.”
The merchant handed the clerk a small wad of notes, bowed, shook his head, took his hat in two fingers, twitched his shoulders, and, with a rippling movement of his person, went out, his shoes squeaking decorously. Nikolai Eremeich crossed to the wall, and, as far as I could observe, began to sort the notes which the merchant had handed to him. Around the door appeared a red head with thick side-whiskers.
“Well?” asked the head, “everything in order?”
“Everything in order.”
“How much?”
The fat fellow waved a hand irritably and pointed towards my room.
“Oh, all right,” rejoined the head, and disappeared.
The fat fellow went to the table, sat down, opened a book, took up an abacus, and began to sling the beads backwards and forwards, using not the fore-finger but the third finger of his right hand: it looks more decorous.
The duty-clerk came in.
“What do you want?”
“Sidor has come, from Golopleky.”
“Oh! well, bring him in. No, wait . . . first go and look whether the strange gentleman there is still asleep or whether he’s woken up.”
The duty-clerk came cautiously into my room. I had put my head on the game-bag which served me as a pillow and closed my eyes.
“He’s asleep,” whispered the duty-clerk, returning to the office.
The fat fellow mumbled something through his teeth.
“Well, call Sidor,” he said finally.
I sat up again. A peasant came in, an enormous fellow of
about thirty, hale, red-cheeked, fair-haired, with a smooth, curling beard. He prayed before the icon, bowed to the head clerk, took his hat in both hands, and straightened himself out again.
“Good day to you, Sidor,” said the fat one, rattling the abacus.
“Good day, Nikolai Eremeich.”
“Well, how’s the road?”
“All right, Nikolai Eremeich. A bit muddy.” The peasant spoke slowly and softly.
“Is your wife well?”
“Well enough.”
The peasant sighed and put one foot forward. Nikolai Eremeich set his pen behind his ear and blew his nose.
“Well, what have you come for?” he continued, putting his check handkerchief away in his pocket.
“It’s like this, Nikolai Eremeich, they want carpenters from us.”
“Well, haven’t you got any, or what?”
“Of course we have, Nikolai Eremeich: we are right in the forest, no question of that. But it’s the working-time, Nikolai Eremeich.”
“The working-time! Tck, tck, you’re dead keen to work for anyone else, but when it comes to working for your own master, you don’t like it. . . . It’s all the same work.”
“The same work, certainly, Nikolai Eremeich . . . but . . .”
“Well?”
“The pay is very . . . that is . . .”
“I never did! You’re thoroughly spoiled. Get along with you!”
“Well, there’s more to it, Nikolai Eremeich. The work is supposed to be for a week, all told, but it takes a month to get through. Either the materials aren’t there, or else they send us into the garden to sweep the paths.”
“I never did! It’s orders from the lady herself, so there’s nothing for you and me to say about it.”
Sidor said nothing and began shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Nikolai Eremeich twisted his head to one side and rattled away busily at his beads.
“Our . . . peasants . . . Nikolai Eremeich,” began Sidor finally, hesitating over every word, “have sent me to present . . . here . . . there’s . . .” and he thrust his enormous hand inside his overcoat and began to pull out a rolled-up towel with a red pattern on it.
“What’s the matter, you fool, have you gone off your head, or what?” the fat one interrupted him suddenly. “Get along to my cabin,” he continued, practically pushing out the astonished peasant. “Ask the wife . . . she will give you tea, and I’ll be over straight away, so be off with you. Get along with you, I say.”
A Sportsman's Notebook Page 19