“Are you alone here?” I asked the girl.
“Yes, alone,” she pronounced, in a hardly audible voice.
“Are you the forester’s daughter?”
“Yes, the forester’s,” she murmured.
The door squeaked, and the forester, stooping his head, strode across the threshold. He lifted the lantern from the floor, went to the table, and lighted the wick. “I dare say you’re not used to a splinter-light?” he said with a shake of his curly head.
I looked at him. Rarely have I seen such a sturdy fellow. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and admirably built. Through his wet shirt his powerful muscles stood out in relief. A black, curly beard half-covered his stern, masculine face; from under his wide brows, which met in the middle, small, brown eyes looked boldly out. He rested his hands lightly on his sides and came to a halt in front of me. I thanked him and asked him his name.
“My name is Foma,” he answered. “But they call me the Bear.”
“Oh! you’re the Bear!”
I looked at him with redoubled curiosity. From my friend Ermolai, and from others, I had often heard stories about the Bear, whom all the peasants of the neighborhood feared like death. According to them, there had never been in the world such a master of his craft. “He won’t let you take away so much as a faggot; whatever the time may be, even if it’s midnight, he’ll swoop down on you, like snow on your head. And there’s no hope of resisting—he’s as strong and neat-handed as the devil himself. . . . And there’s no way of getting at him: neither drink, nor money; there’s no bait at all to catch him. There’s good folk have tried to do him in, more than once, but no—there’s no catching him.” Such were the terms in which the peasants of the neighborhood spoke of the Bear.
“So you’re the Bear,” I repeated. “I’ve heard of you, my friend, they say you let no one get past you.”
“I do my duty,” he answered solemnly. “It isn’t right to eat the master’s bread without earning it.”
He took a hatchet from his belt, sat down on the floor, and began to cleave a splinter.
“You have no wife?” I asked him.
“No,” he answered, with a mighty blow of the hatchet.
“Is she dead, then?”
“No . . . yes . . . she’s dead,” he added, and turned away.
I was silent. He raised his eyes and looked at me.
“She ran off with a fellow from the town who happened to be passing,” he pronounced with a savage smile. The girl lowered her head; the baby woke up and began to cry; the girl went to the cradle. “Well, feed him,” said the Bear, pushing into her hand a dirty feeding-bottle. “She chucked him, too,” he continued in a low voice, pointing at the baby. He went to the door, halted, and turned around. “I suppose that you, sir,” he began, “wouldn’t want to eat our bread, but bread is all that I . . .”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Well, as you like. I would have got the samovar going for you, but I have no tea. I’ll go and see how your mare is.”
He went out and slammed the door. I looked around again. The cabin seemed to me even sorrier than before. The sharp smell of stale smoke oppressed my lungs. The girl never stirred from where she sat or lifted her eyes; from time to time she gave the cradle a push, or shyly pulled the shift on to her shoulder when it had slipped. Her bare legs hung motionless.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Ulita,” she said, holding her sad little face even lower than before.
The forester came in and sat on the bench.
“The storm is passing,” he observed, after a short silence: “If you wish, I’ll see you out of the forest.”
I got up. The Bear took his gun and examined the trigger.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“They’re up to their tricks in the forest. They’re cutting down a tree in Mare’s Valley,” he added, in answer to my inquiring glance.
“Can you hear it from here?”
“You can hear it from the yard.”
We went out together. The rain had stopped. In the distance, heavy cloud masses were still banking up, and long lightning flashes burst out from time to time. But, over our heads, here and there we could already see the dark-blue heaven, and stars twinkled through thin, scurrying clouds. The outlines of trees, raindrenched and wind-stirred, were beginning to loom up out of the darkness. We listened. The forester took off his cap and lowered his head. “Th—there,” he said suddenly, and stretched out a hand. “You see what a night he’s chosen.” I heard nothing except the rustling of leaves. The Bear led the horse out of the shed. “Like this, maybe,” he added aloud, “I won’t catch him.”
“I could come with you . . . if you like?”
“All right,” he answered, and backed the horse in. “We’ll catch him in no time, and then I’ll see you on your way. Let’s go.”
We set off, the Bear in front and I behind him. God knows how he found the road, but he only halted occasionally, and then just to listen for the sound of the axe.
“There,” he murmured through his teeth. “D’you hear? D’you hear?”
“But where?”
The Bear shrugged his shoulders. We went down into a ravine, the wind dropped for a moment—and the sound of measured blows fell clearly on my ears. The Bear looked at me and motioned with his head. We went on through wet bracken and nettles. There was a dull, prolonged crashing . . .
“He’s felled it . . .” murmured the Bear.
Meanwhile the sky continued to clear. In the forest it was just light. We made our way at last out of the ravine. “Wait here,” the forester whispered to me; he bent down, and, holding up his gun, vanished among the bushes. I listened intently. Through the continuous noise of the wind I thought I could catch faint sounds from not far off; cautious blows of an axe on branches, the squeaking of wheels, the snorting of a horse. . . . “Where are you going? Stop!” roared the Bear’s iron voice all of a sudden. Another voice called plaintively, like a hare’s . . . A fight began. “Oh, no, you don’t,” insisted the Bear breathlessly. “You’re not going to get away. . . .” I dashed in the direction of the noise and arrived, stumbling with every step, at the scene of battle. On the ground, beside a felled tree, the forester was busily engaged. He held the thief under him and was twisting his arms behind his back with a belt. I went up to them. The Bear rose and set him on his feet. I saw a peasant, dripping wet, in rags, with a long dishevelled beard. A wretched nag, half-covered under a sheet of matting, stood close by, together with a rudimentary sort of cart. The forester uttered not a word; the peasant also kept silence, and simply shook his head.
“Let him go,” I whispered in the Bear’s ear. “I’ll pay for the tree.”
The Bear silently took the horse by the forelock in his left hand: with his right he held the thief by the belt. “Well, look sharp, you scoundrel,” he said sternly.
“Take the axe, over there,” murmured the peasant.
“Yes, why leave it behind?” said the forester, and picked up the axe. We set off. I walked behind . . . Rain began spitting again and was soon falling in torrents. With difficulty we got back to the cabin. The Bear left the captured nag in the middle of the yard, led the peasant into the room, loosened the knot in the belt, and made him sit down in a corner. The girl, who had gone to sleep beside the stove, jumped up and looked at us in silent terror. I sat down on the bench.
“Look at it, how it’s pouring,” remarked the forester. “We’ll have to wait till it’s over. Wouldn’t you like to lie down for a while?”
“No, thank you.”
“I’d have shut him up in the closet for your honor,” he continued, indicating the peasant, “but, you see, the bolt . . .”
“Leave him where he is, don’t touch him,” I interrupted the Bear.
The peasant gave me a sidelong look. I promised myself that, whatever happened, I would set the poor wretch free. He sat motionless on the bench. In the light of the lantern I could make out hi
s lean, wrinkled face, his overhanging, yellow eyebrows, his restless eyes, his thin limbs. . . . The girl lay down on the floor right at his feet and went to sleep again. The Bear sat at the table, his head propped on his hand. A cricket chirruped in the corner . . . the rain rattled on the roof and slid down the windows; we were all silent.
“Foma Kuzmich,” began the peasant suddenly, in a dull broken voice. “Foma Kuzmich.”
“What d’you want?”
“Let me off.”
The Bear didn’t answer.
“Let me off . . . It’s hunger that . . . let me off.”
“I know you,” rejoined the forester morosely. “Your village are all the same—one thief on top of another.”
“Let me off,” repeated the peasant. “The agent . . . ruined . . . that’s what we are . . . let me off!”
“Ruined! . . . No one has the right to steal.”
“Let me off, Foma Kuzmich . . . That chap of yours will gobble me up, you know he will, and that’s the truth.”
The Bear turned away. The peasant was twitching as if at the onset of fever. He kept shaking his head, he breathed irregularly.
“Let me off,” he repeated with mournful desperation. “Let me off, for God’s sake do! I’ll pay, really I will, by God. By God, it was hunger that . . . with children to feed, you know what it is. It’s hard, and that’s the truth.”
“All the same, you shouldn’t go out stealing.”
“My horse,” continued the peasant; “let the horse go, if only that . . . that’s the only animal I’ve got . . .”
“I tell you, I can’t. I’m not my own master, either; they’ll make me pay. It’s not for me to spoil you, anyway.”
“Let me off! It’s want, Foma Kuzmich. It’s want that does it . . . let me off!”
“I know you.”
“But let me off.”
“Oh, what’s the use of arguing with you; sit quiet, d’you hear, or else . . . Can’t you see the gentleman, eh?”
The poor wretch sank his head. The Bear yawned and put his head down on the table. The rain still went on. I waited to see what would happen next.
The peasant suddenly sat up. His eyes began to blaze and a flush spread over his face.
“Well, then, eat away, and choke yourself,” he began, screwing up his eyes and dropping the corners of his mouth. “You damned murderer, drink the blood of Christian folk, drink away.”
The forester turned around.
“I’m talking to you . . . you bloodsucking Tartar, you!”
“Are you drunk, to start swearing like this?” said the forester in astonishment. “Have you gone off your head, eh?”
“Drunk! On your money, I suppose, you damned murderer, you brute, you!”
“You . . . I’ll give it you!”
“What do I care? I’m done for anyway; where can I go without my horse? Kill me—it’s one way of finishing; whether it’s hunger, or that—it’s all the same. Do them all in: wife, children—let the whole lot die like animals . . . but we’ll get you, just you wait!”
The Bear half-rose.
“Beat away,” repeated the peasant savagely. “Beat away.”
The girl hurriedly got up from the floor and stared at him.
“Beat away.”
“Be quiet!” roared the forester, and took two steps forward.
“That’ll do, Foma,” I exclaimed. “Leave him alone . . . the poor devil.”
“I won’t be quiet,” continued the unfortunate. “It’s always the same—dying like animals. You murderer, you brute, there’s no end to the harm you do . . . but wait, your reign won’t be for long! They’ll get you by the throat, just you wait!”
The Bear seized him by the shoulder . . . I dashed to the peasant’s rescue.
“You keep out, sir,” the forester shouted at me.
I would not have feared his threats and had already put out my hand, when, to my astonishment, he jerked the belt from the peasant’s elbows in a single turn, seized him by the scruff of the neck, rammed his cap down over his eyes, opened the door, and threw him out.
“Go to the devil, and your horse, too!” he shouted after him. “But look, the next time I catch you . . .”
He came back into the cabin and started rummaging in a corner.
“Well, Bear,” I said at last, “you surprise me; I see you’re a good sort.”
“Oh, no more of that, sir,” he interrupted me crossly; “not a word about it, please. And now I’d better see you on your way,” he added. “I don’t suppose you’ll be waiting till the rain is over.”
In the yard the wheels of the peasant’s cart rattled. “There he goes, sneaking off,” he muttered. “I’ll give it him! . . .”
Within half an hour he parted from me at the forest’s edge.
Two Landowners
I HAVE ALREADY HAD THE HONOR TO PRESENT TO YOU, INDULGENT readers, some of the gentlemen of my neighborhood; allow me now, in passing (for us writers, everything is “in passing”), to acquaint you with two more landowners on whose land I have often shot; highly-respected, well-intentioned gentlemen, enjoying the universal esteem of several districts.
First I shall describe for you Major-General (retired) Vyacheslav Ilarionovich Khvalinsky. Imagine a tall man, once well-built, now a bit run to fat, but far from decrepit, indeed not even touched by age, a man of mature years, right in his prime. True, his once regular and still agreeable features have somewhat changed, his cheeks hang, crowded wrinkles have taken up a position radiating out from his eyes, some of his teeth are no longer with him (such was Sadi’s phrase, if Pushkin is to be believed); his fair hair, or at least that part of it that remains intact, has turned to a lilac color, thanks to a compound bought at Romyon horse-fair from a Jew professing to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Ilarionovich steps out briskly, laughs resonantly, jingles his spurs, twirls his moustaches, and sooner or later refers to himself as an old cavalryman, whereas it is well known that really old men never refer to themselves as old at all. He is usually dressed in a coat buttoned right up, a high cravat with a starched collar, and pepper-and-salt trousers of military cut; he wears his hat down over his eyes, leaving the whole of the back of his head uncovered. He is a capital fellow, but has somewhat strange principles and habits. For example, he can never treat gentlemen who are poor, or have no official position, as his own equals. In conversation with them, he generally looks at them sideways, leaning his cheek heavily on his stiff white collar, or suddenly goes and flashes at them a bright, unblinking stare, but says nothing, and moves the whole skin of his head underneath the hair; he even pronounces words differently and, for instance, instead of saying, “Thanks, Pavel Vasilich,” or “Come along, Mikhail Ivanich,” addresses them as, “ks, Pall’Asilich,” or “C’long, Mikhall’Vanich.” With people lower down the social scale he behaves even more strangely: he never looks at them at all, and, before explaining to them his wishes or giving them orders, he repeats several times over, with a preoccupied, dreamy look: “What’s your name? . . . What’s your name?” emphasizing heavily the first word “what,” but pronouncing the rest very fast, so that the whole phrase acquires a resemblance to the call of the cock-quail. He is fussy, terribly mean, does badly out of his land: he employs as steward a retired sergeant-major, a Little-Russian, a man of unusual stupidity. Incidentally, in agricultural matters none of us has yet outdone an important official from Petersburg who, seeing from his agent’s reports that the barns for drying crops on his land were subject to frequent fires, which caused the loss of a great deal of grain, gave the strictest instructions that in future no sheaves were to be put into the drying-barn until the fire had been completely extinguished. The same dignitary had the idea of sowing all his fields with poppies, in view of what appeared a very simple calculation: poppies are dearer than rye, therefore it’s better business to sow poppies. He it was, too, who told his women-serfs to wear kokoshniks on a pattern sent from Petersburg; and indeed, to this day, the peasant women on his land
s wear this head-dress . . . only on top of their own. . . . But let us return to Vyacheslav Ilarionovich. He is a great fancier of the ladies, and has only to see a pretty face in the main street of the local market-town, to dash off after her at once, at the same time—and that is the remarkable circumstance—starting to limp. He likes playing cards, but only with people of lower station; they call him “Your Excellency,” and he blows them up and ticks them off to his heart’s content. When he happens to be playing with the Governor or with some official personage, an extraordinary transformation takes place in him: he smiles, he nods, he looks them in the eye—honey fairly flows from him . . . He even loses without complaining. He reads little and, while doing so, keeps up a constant working of his moustaches and eyebrows, as if from the upward passage of a wave across his face. This wavelike movement on the face of Vyacheslav Ilarionovich is especially noticeable when he happens (in the presence of guests, of course) to be running through the columns of the Journal des Débats. At election-time he plays a fairly important rôle but refuses, from meanness, the honorable estate of Marshal of the Nobility. “Gentlemen,” he will say to noblemen who may approach him on the subject, speaking in a voice of patronage and heavy self-sufficiency, “I am greatly obliged for the honor; but I am resolved to devote my leisure to retirement,” and, having said these words, he moves his head several times to right and left, and then with a dignified movement presses his chin and his cheeks against his cravat. In his youth he served as adjutant to some important Personage, whom he never refers to except by his Christian name and patronymic; the story goes that he discharged not only the functions of adjutant, but that, for example, having donned full parade-dress, having even done up the hooks, he had been wont to give his chief a good steam-bath—but one can’t believe all the rumors that one hears. General Khvalinsky himself doesn’t like to speak of his military career, which on the whole is somewhat strange; it seems moreover that he never saw active service. General Khvalinsky lives alone in a small house. He has had no experience of married bliss, and therefore still considers himself marriageable, and highly eligible too. As to his housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh, and moustached, she goes about on weekdays in starched dresses, and on Sundays adds a pair of muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Ilarionovich is a good man at the big dinner-parties given by landowners in honor of Governors and other potentates; there he is, you might say, absolutely in his element. On such occasions he usually sits, if not on the Governor’s right, at any rate not far from him; at the beginning of dinner he is very conscious of his own importance and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, sweeps a sidelong glance down the round pates and stand-up collars of the guests; however, towards the end of the meal, he becomes gayer, begins to smile in all directions (in the Governor’s direction he has been smiling since dinner started), and sometimes even proposes a toast to the honour of the fair sex—the adornment of our planet, to use his own words. General Khvalinsky is not bad, either, on solemn and public occasions, examinations and church functions; he is also a master-hand at receiving ceremonial benedictions. At cross-roads, ferries, and other such places, the servants of Vyacheslav Ilarionovich never shout or bawl; on the contrary, in making people give way for him or in calling forward his carriage, they say in a pleasant, throaty baritone: “Make way, please, make way, please and let General Khvalinsky pass”; or, “General Khvalinsky’s carriage” . . . True, Khvalinsky’s carriage is of fairly antiquated type; the lackeys and footmen wear fairly shabby livery (it’s of course hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red facings); the horses, too, are getting on and have seen service in their time, but Vyacheslav Ilarionovich has no pretensions to foppishness and, indeed, doesn’t think it suitable to his station to throw dust in people’s eyes. Khvalinsky has no special command of language, or, perhaps, has no occasion to show his eloquence, because he tolerates no argument, no objection even, and studiously avoids all long conversations, especially with the young. That’s certainly the safer course; indeed the pity is that people nowadays are losing the habit of obedience and forgetting all respect. In the presence of his superiors, Khvalinsky is silent most of the time, but with his inferiors, whom he seems to despise but who are nevertheless his only familiars, he holds forth abruptly and to the point, caustically using expressions like the following: “What you say is absolutely non-sens-ical!” or, “I find myself at last obliged, m’dear sir, to make it clear to you,” or, “All the same, you ought to know to whom you are speaking,” and so on. He is the special terror of postmasters, permanent delegates, and station-inspectors. At home he never entertains, and lives, so one hears, the life of a miser. With it all, he is a splendid type of landowner. “An old campaigner, an irreproachable character, a man of principles, a vieux grognard,” so his neighbours describe him. Only the Public Prosecutor of the province allows himself to smile, when mention is made in his presence of Khvalinsky’s capital, solid qualities—but there are no lengths to which envy will not go! . . .
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