It was an unbearably sultry July day, when I trudged slowly, accompanied by my dog, up the Kolotovka ravine in the direction of the “Snug Nook” pot-house. The sun was blazing away in the sky with a kind of fury; it was mercilessly, bakingly hot; the air was absolutely saturated with choking dust. Glossy rooks and crows, with gaping beaks, looked piteously at the passer-by, as if to beg his sympathy; only the sparrows were undistressed and, fluffing out their feathers, twittered and scuffled about the fences even more actively than usual, or flew up from the dusty road in a flock, or hovered in gray clouds over the green hemp-yards. I was tortured by thirst. There was no water at hand: at Kolotovka, as in many other steppe-villages, in the absence of springs and wells, the peasants drink a sort of liquid filth from a pond . . . But who would give the name of water to this repulsive draught? I had it in mind to ask Nikolai Ivanich for a glass of beer or kvass.
It has to be admitted that at no season of the year does Kolotovka present a cheering spectacle; but it arouses a particularly mournful emotion when the blazing sun of July rains its pitiless rays on the tumbledown brown roofs, the deep ravine, the parched, dusty common-land, on which some thin, long-legged chickens are roaming despondently, and the shack of gray aspenwood with holes for windows, a remnant of the former manor house, grown over with nettles, weeds, and wormwood, and the pond, covered with goose-feathers, black, molten-looking, fringed with half-dried mud, and the side-ways listing dam, near which, on the fine-ground, cinder-like earth, sheep, breathless and sneezing from the heat, crowd lugubriously together and with a dismal patience hang their heads as low as can be, as if waiting for the moment when the unbearable sultriness will finally pass. With exhausted steps I was at last nearing Nikolai Ivanich’s place, exciting in children the usual amazement, expressed in intense and inane stares, and in dogs the usual indignation, voiced in such hoarse and savage barking that all their insides seemed to be torn loose, afterwards subsiding into a fit of coughing and choking, when suddenly, on the threshold of the pot-house, there appeared a tall man, capless, in a frieze overcoat held below the waist with a blue belt. He had the look of a house-serf; thick gray hair burst out untidily above his dry wrinkled face. He was calling somebody and making vigorous gestures with his arms, which were clearly swinging out much farther than he intended. It was evident that he had already had a drop.
“Come on, come on!” he stuttered, raising his thick eyebrows with an effort. “Come on, Blinker, come on! Why, man, you’re simply crawling. It isn’t right, man. They’re waiting for you, and you’re just crawling . . . Come on!”
“All right, all right,” came a jarring voice, and, from behind the cabin to the right, a short, stout, lame fellow appeared. He wore quite a neat cloth coat, with only one sleeve on; a high, pointed hat, rammed straight down over his brows, gave his podgy, round face a sly, mocking look. His little yellow eyes fairly darted around; a contained, forced smile never left his thin lips, and his long sharp nose stuck jauntily out ahead like a rudder. “I’m coming, my friend,” he went on, limping in the direction of the drinking establishment. “What are you calling me for? . . . Who’s waiting for me?”
“What am I calling you for?” rejoined the man in the frieze coat, reproachfully. “You’re a strange one, Blinker: you’re called to the pot-house, and yet you ask: what for? There’s all kind of good folk waiting for you: Yasha the Turk, and Wild Master, and the huckster from Zhizdra. Yasha and the huckster have made a bet: they’ve wagered a quart of beer to see which wins, that is, sings best . . . d’you see?”
“Yasha’s going to sing?” said the man nicknamed Blinker, with animation. “You’re not lying, Muddlehead?”
“I’m not,” answered Muddlehead with dignity. “It’s you that’s the liar. Of course he’s going to sing, if he’s made a bet, you ladybird, you twister, you, Blinker!”
“Well, let’s go, you ninny,” rejoined Blinker.
“Well, kiss me at least, joy of my heart,” stammered Muddlehead, flinging his arms out wide.
“You great milk-sop,” replied Blinker, contemptuously elbowing him aside, and they both stooped and went in through the low doorway. The conversation I’d heard excited my keen curiosity. More than once rumors had reached me of Yasha the Turk, as being the best singer in the neighborhood, and now an opportunity had suddenly presented itself to hear him in competition with another master. I quickened my pace and entered the establishment.
Probably not many of my readers have had occasion to look inside a country pot-house—but we sportsmen, there’s nowhere we don’t go. The arrangement of these pot-houses is remarkably simple. They usually consist of a dark entrance-passage and a room divided in two by a partition, behind which none of the customers has the right to go. Cut in the partition, above a broad oak table, is a large longitudinal aperture. On this table or counter the drink is sold. Sealed flasks of different measures stand in a row on shelves immediately opposite the aperture. In the front part of the cabin, the part at the disposal of customers, are benches, two or three empty barrels, and a corner table. Country pot-houses are for the most part pretty dark and you hardly ever see on their log walls any of those brightly colored popular prints without which the ordinary peasant’s cabin is seldom complete.
When I went into the “Snug Nook” pot-house a fairly numerous company was already assembled there.
Behind the counter, suitably enough, and filling almost the whole width of the aperture, stood Nikolai Ivanich. In a gay cotton shirt, with an indolent smile on his chubby cheeks, he was pouring out two glasses of spirits with his podgy white hand for the two friends, Blinker and Muddlehead, who had just come in; behind him, in the corner near the window, could be seen his sharp-eyed wife. In the middle of the room stood Yasha the Turk, a lean, well-built man of twenty-three, dressed in a long-skirted blue nankeen coat. He had the appearance of a dashing young mechanic and looked as if his health was nothing to boast about. His sunken cheeks, great, restless gray eyes, straight nose with its fine, mobile nostrils, his wide-domed forehead with the pale blond curls thrust back from it, his bold but handsome and expressive lips—his whole face revealed an impressionable, passionate nature. He was in great excitement, blinking, breathing irregularly, his hands trembling as if with the fever—and indeed he had a fever, that sudden trembling fever which is so familiar to all who speak or sing in public. Beside him stood a man of about forty, broad-shouldered, with broad cheek-bones, and a low forehead, narrow Tartar eyes, a short flat nose, a square chin, and black, shiny, bristle-like hair. The expression of his face, which was swarthy with a leaden undertone, and especially of his full lips, might almost have been called ferocious if it had not been so calmly reflective. He hardly stirred, just looked slowly around like an ox from below the yoke. He wore a sort of shabby frock-coat with smooth copper buttons; an old black silk handkerchief swathed his massive neck. He was nicknamed “Wild Master.” Right in front of him, on the bench below the icons, sat Yasha’s competitor, the huckster from Zhizdra: a short, sturdy man of about thirty, pock-marked and curly-headed, with a blunt, upturned nose, lively brown eyes, and a sparse beard. He was looking briskly round, with his hands tucked up beneath him, carelessly swinging and stamping his feet, which were clad in dandified boots with trimmings. He wore a thin new overcoat of gray cloth with a velvet collar, against which a strip of scarlet shirt, buttoned up tightly round his throat, stood out sharply. At a table in the opposite corner, to the right of the door, sat a peasant in a threadbare, grayish coat with an enormous hole at the shoulder. The sunlight fell in a fine, yellowish stream through the dusty panes of the two small windows and seemed unable to dispel the normal darkness of the room: every object was sparsely and patchily illuminated. Nevertheless, it was almost cool in the room and the feeling of stuffiness and sultriness fell from my shoulders like a burden the moment I crossed the threshold.
My arrival, I could see, at first rather confused Nikolai Ivanich’s guests; but, observing that he bowed to me as to an acquainta
nce, they set their minds at rest and paid me no more attention. I ordered some beer and sat down in the corner next to the peasant in the torn coat.
“Well, then,” sang out Muddlehead all of a sudden, after drinking a glass at one gulp, and accompanying his exclamation with those strange gestures of the arms without which he evidently never uttered a word. “What are we waiting for? It’s time to begin, eh, Yasha?”
“Time to begin,” repeated Nikolai Ivanich with approbation.
“Let’s begin, if you like,” said the huckster coolly, with a self-confident smile. “I’m ready.”
“So am I,” pronounced Yasha excitedly.
“Well, begin, lads, begin,” squeaked Blinker.
But notwithstanding this unanimously expressed wish, neither of them did begin; the huckster did not even rise from his bench—it was as if everyone was waiting for something to happen.
“Begin,” said Wild Master sharply and with displeasure.
Yasha shivered. The huckster got up, tightened his belt, and cleared his throat.
“Who’s to begin?” he asked, with a slight change of voice, addressing himself to Wild Master, who was still standing motionless in the middle of the room, his thick legs widely planted, his powerful arms thrust almost to the elbow into the pockets of his trousers.
“You, huckster, you,” murmured Muddlehead; “you, lad.”
Wild Master gave him a sidelong look. Muddlehead squeaked faintly, faltered, looked away at the ceiling, wriggled his shoulders, and fell silent.
“Draw for it,” pronounced Wild Master with deliberation, “and set the quart out on the counter.”
Nikolai stooped, groaned, fetched up a quart jug from the floor, and set it on the table.
Wild Master looked at Yasha and said: “Well!”
Yasha rummaged in his pockets, found a two-copeck piece, and marked it with his teeth. The huckster brought a new leather purse out from the skirt of his coat, slowly undid the strings, poured out a lot of small change into his hand, and chose a new two-copeck piece. Muddlehead held out his battered hat with its loose and crumpled peak: Yasha and the huckster threw their coins into it.
“You choose,” said Wild Master to Blinker.
Blinker grinned with self-satisfaction, took the hat in both hands, and began to shake it up.
For a moment deep silence reigned; the coins chinked faintly against each other. I looked around attentively: every face expressed strained anticipation; even Wild Master had screwed up his eyes; even my neighbor, the peasant in the torn coat, had stuck out his head inquisitively. Blinker put his hand into the hat and drew out the huckster’s coin: there was a general sigh. Yasha flushed, and the huckster passed his hand through his hair.
“I said it was you,” exclaimed Muddlehead, “I said so.”
“Now, now, don’t get all of a flutter,” observed Wild Master contemptuously. “Begin,” he continued, nodding to the huckster.
“What shall I sing?” asked the huckster, with rising excitement.
“Whatever you like, of course,” rejoined Nikolai Ivanich, slowly folding his arms on his chest. “We can’t tell you what to choose. Sing what you like; only sing it well; and then we’ll judge as our conscience tells us.”
“That’s right—as our conscience tells us,” repeated Muddlehead, and he licked the rim of his empty glass.
“Just let me clear my throat,” said the huckster, fingering the collar of his coat.
“Now, don’t waste time—begin!” said Wild Master decisively, and he looked down.
The huckster thought for a moment, shook his head, and set off. Yasha stared at him with all his eyes. . . .
But before I proceed to describe the contest itself, it may be as well to say a few words about each of the personages in my story. The ways of some of them were already known to me when I met them in the “Snug Nook” pot-house; I found out about the rest subsequently.
To begin with Muddlehead. His real name was Evgraf Ivanov; but no one in the neighborhood ever called him anything but Muddlehead, and he used the nickname in speaking of himself, so well did it fit him. And indeed it could not have been better suited to his insignificant, perpetually-worried expression. He was an unmarried, drunken house-serf, whose master had long since despaired of him and who, having no duties and receiving not a farthing’s wages, nevertheless found means of making merry every day at someone else’s expense. He had many acquaintances who treated him to drinks and to tea, though they couldn’t have said why, because, so far from being amusing in company, he fairly disgusted everyone with his witless chatter, his unbearable importunity, his feverish movements and his ceaseless unnatural laughter. He could neither sing nor dance; from birth he had never made a clever remark nor even a sensible one; he just muddled along and told any fib that came into his head—a regular Muddlehead! And, with it all, there wasn’t a single drinking party for forty versts around at which his spindle-shanked figure failed to turn up among the guests, so used to him had people become, and so tolerant of his presence, as of an unavoidable mishap. True, they treated him contemptuously, but it was Wild Master alone who could put a curb on his crazy moods.
Blinker never left Muddlehead’s side. He too was well-served by his nickname, although he didn’t blink more than anyone else; but it is a plain truth that the Russians are past-masters at giving nicknames. In spite of my efforts to trace his past in every detail, I found—and so, probably, did many others—that there were dark passages in his career, places which, to use a bookish expression, were veiled in a thick mist of obscurity. I discovered only that he had once been coachman to an old, childless lady, had run away with the troika entrusted to his care, disappeared for a whole year, then, doubtless convinced by experience of the drawbacks and miseries of the vagrant’s life, returned, now lame, thrown himself at his mistress’s feet, and, having expiated his offence by several years of exemplary conduct, had gradually won his way back into her favor, had eventually earned her full confidence and been promoted to the post of clerk; that on the lady’s death he had somehow or other acquired his freedom, registered as a burgess, begun leasing melon-gardens from the neighbors, grown rich, and now lived in clover. He was a man of experience, with his head well screwed on, neither bad nor good, but calculating, rather; a sly dog who understood people and knew how to make use of them. He was cautious and enterprising at the same time, like a fox; chattered like an old crone, never gave himself away, made everybody else speak their mind. What is more, he never posed as a simpleton, as some of the sly ones of his kind do; indeed, pretence could not have come easily to him. I have never seen more penetrating, shrewder eyes than his tiny, cunning “peepers.”* They never simply looked, they were always searching and spying. Sometimes Blinker would spend whole weeks reflecting on some apparently simple enterprise, then suddenly resolve on a desperately daring course, and you would think he’d break his neck over it . . . you would look again—and it would have come off perfectly, smooth as a knife through butter. He was lucky, believed in his luck and in omens. In general, he was highly superstitious. He was not liked, because he was not in the least interested in others, but he was respected. His family consisted of one small son, whom he fairly adored, and who, brought up by such a father, would probably go far. “Little Blinker’s the spit of his father,” the old men were already saying of him in low voices, as they sat on the mounds of earth outside their cabins and gossiped on summer evenings; and they all understood what that meant, and didn’t need to say more.
Of Yasha the Turk and the huckster there is not much to be said. Yasha, nicknamed the Turk, because he was indeed the offspring of a captured Turkish woman, was at heart an artist in all senses of the word, but by vocation a dipper in a merchant’s paper-mill. As for the huckster, whose lot, I confess, remains unknown to me, he struck me as a smart, resourceful townsman. Of Wild Master, however, it is worth speaking in rather greater detail.
The first impression his appearance gave was one of rude, ponderous
, irresistible force. He was clumsily built, “piled-on,” as we say in our part of the country, but he fairly radiated irrepressible vitality, and, strangely enough, his bearish figure was not without a certain individual grace, which proceeded perhaps from a completely serene confidence in his own strength. It was difficult to determine at first glance to what condition of life this Hercules belonged. He resembled neither servant nor townsman, neither the impoverished scrivener living in retirement nor the ruined, horse-fancying, quarrel-picking member of the smaller landowning gentry. He was something absolutely special. No one knew whence he had descended on our district; it was said that he came of free-holding stock and had previously been in Government service somewhere or other, but nothing certain was known of this; and indeed there was no one to learn it from—certainly not from him himself: a more taciturn, surly fellow never existed. No one could say for sure, either, what he lived on; he plied no trade, visited no one, hardly knew anyone, and yet he had money; not much, it is true, but money, all the same. He conducted himself, not indeed with modesty—there was absolutely nothing modest about him—but quietly; he lived as if he noticed no one around him and definitely wanted nothing from anyone. Wild Master (such was his nickname; his real name was Perevlesov) enjoyed an enormous influence in the whole neighborhood; he was obeyed instantly and eagerly, although, so far from having any right to give anyone orders, he never made the slightest claim on the obedience of people with whom he came in contact. He spoke—and was obeyed: power always claims its due. He hardly drank, had no dealings with women, and was a passionate lover of singing. There was much that was puzzling about him; it was as if some immense forces were lying, sullenly inactive, within him, as if they knew that, once aroused, once let loose, they must destroy themselves and everything they touched; and I am sadly mistaken if some such explosion had not already occurred in the man’s life, so that, taught by experience, and having just escaped destruction, he was now holding himself under an inexorable, iron control. What especially struck me about him was the mixture of a certain inborn, natural ferocity with an equally inborn nobility—a mixture such as I have met in no one else.
A Sportsman's Notebook Page 27