A Sportsman's Notebook

by Ivan Turgenev

  So the huckster stepped forward, half-closed his eyes, and began to sing in a very high falsetto. His voice was quite sweet and agreeable, though somewhat husky; he played with it, twirled it about like a toy, with constant downward trills and modulations and constant returns to the top notes, which he held and prolonged with a special effort; he stopped, then suddenly took up his previous tune again with a certain rollicking, arrogant boldness. His transitions were sometimes daring, sometimes rather comical. They would have given a connoisseur great pleasure; they would have shocked a German deeply. He was a Russian tenore di grazia or ténor léger. He sang a gay dance-tune, whose words, so far as I could catch them among the endless embellishments, extra harmonies, and exclamations, were as follows:

  I’ll plough a little ground, my lass,

  And sow it with scarlet flowers.

  He sang, and we all listened to him with close attention. He clearly felt that he had to do with experts, and so he fairly climbed out of his skin, as the saying goes. Indeed in our country we are connoisseurs of song, and it is not for nothing that the village of Sergievsk, on the Orel highway, is renowned throughout all Russia for its specially sweet and harmonious singing. The huckster sang on for quite a while, without arousing any marked sympathy in his hearers: he missed the support of a choir. At length, after one particularly successful transition, which made even Wild Master smile, Muddlehead could not contain himself and shouted out his satisfaction. Everybody jumped. Muddlehead and Blinker began taking up the tune, joining in and calling: “Smartly does it! . . . Strike it, rascal! . . . Strike it, hold it, you snake! Hold it, go on! Hotter still, you dog, you Herod’s son!” and so on. Nikolai Ivanich, behind the counter, waved his head approvingly to right and left. At length Muddlehead began to stamp and scrape his feet and twitch his shoulder,—Yasha’s eyes blazed like coals, he trembled all over like a leaf and smiled confusedly. Only Wild Master kept the same countenance and remained motionless as before; but his gaze, fixed on the huckster, softened a little, though his lips kept their contemptuous expression. Encouraged by the signs of general satisfaction, the huckster fairly whirled along and went off into such flourishes, such tongue-clickings and drummings, such wild throat-play, that at length, exhausted, pale, bathed in hot sweat, he threw himself back, let out a last dying note—and his wild outburst was answered in unison by the company. Muddlehead threw himself on his neck and began smothering him with his long bony hands; a flush came over Nikolai’s greasy face, and he seemed to have grown younger; Yasha shouted like a madman, “Bravo, bravo!”—and even my neighbor, the peasant in the torn coat, could bear it no longer and, striking his fist on the table, exclaimed: “A-ha! good, devil take it—good!” and he spat to one side with determination.

  “Well, lad, you’ve given us a treat!” cried Muddlehead, not letting the fainting huckster out of his embrace. “A treat, and that’s the truth! You’ve won, lad, you’ve won! Congratulations—the quart is yours! Yasha can’t touch you . . . Not by a long chalk, I tell you . . . Believe me!” And he again pressed the huckster to his bosom.

  “Let him go: let him go, you leech . . .” said Blinker crossly. “Let him sit down on the bench here; he’s tired, see . . . You’re a fool, lad, a real fool! Why stick to him like a fly-paper?”

  “Why, then, let him sit, and I’ll drink his health,” rejoined Muddlehead, going to the counter; “you’re paying, lad,” he added, turning to the huckster.

  The huckster nodded, sat down on the bench, drew a towel out of his cap, and began to wipe his face. Muddlehead drank a glass in thirsty haste, groaned, and took on the sad, preoccupied look of the serious drinker.

  “You sing well, lad, so you do,” observed Nikolai Ivanich amiably. “Now it’s your turn, Yasha: don’t be nervous, mind. We’ll see who’s best, we will . . . But the huckster sings well, by God he does.”

  “Very well, so he does,” observed Nikolai’s wife, smiling at Yasha.

  “So he does, too!” said my neighbor in a low voice.

  “Eh, you Polesyan Thomas!”* sang out Muddlehead suddenly and, coming over to the peasant with the hole in the shoulder of his coat, pointed a finger at him, began to jump, and burst into a jarring laugh. “You Polesyan! What are you doing here? Come on! you doubting Thomas!” he shouted through his laughter.

  The poor peasant grew embarrassed and was just about to rise and depart hurriedly, when all of a sudden came the metallic voice of Wild Master:

  “What’s the unbearable animal up to now?” he said, grinding his teeth.

  “Nothing,” muttered Muddlehead, “nothing . . . I just . . .”

  “All right then, shut up!” rejoined Wild Master. “Yasha, begin!”

  Yasha took his throat in his hand.

  “Why, lad, there’s something . . . why . . . H’m . . . I don’t rightly know . . .”

  “Now, that’ll do, don’t be shy. Shame on you! . . . What’s the fuss? . . . Sing, as God tells you to.”

  And Wild Master looked down and waited.

  Yasha said nothing, but glanced round and covered his face with his hand. The whole company stared at him with all their eyes, especially the huckster, whose face showed, through its usual self-confidence and the triumph of his success, a faint, involuntary anxiety. He leant against the wall, again tucked his hands in beneath him, but no longer swung his legs. When at last Yasha uncovered his face, it was as pale as a corpse’s; his gleaming eyes hardly showed through their lowered lashes. He breathed deeply and began to sing . . . His first note was faint and uneven, and came, it seemed, not from his chest, but from somewhere far away, as if it had chanced to fly into the room. This trembling, ringing note had a strange effect on us all; we looked at one another, and Nikolai’s wife stood bolt upright. This first note was followed by another, firmer and more prolonged, but still perceptibly trembling, like a string, when, after the sudden pluck of a strong finger, it wavers with a last, quickly-dying thrill: after the second came a third, and, gradually taking on warmth and breadth, the mournful song flowed on its way. “The paths that lay across the field,” he sang, and we all had the feeling of something sweet and unearthly. Seldom, I confess, have I heard such a voice: it was somewhat worn and had a sort of cracked ring; at first it had even a certain suggestion of the morbid; but it also held a deep, unsimulated passion, and youth, and strength, and sweetness, and a deliciously detached note of melancholy. The truthful, fervent Russian soul rang and breathed in it and fairly caught at your heart, caught straight at your Russian heartstrings. The song developed, went flowing on. Yasha was clearly overcome by ecstasy: his shyness had left him, he had surrendered completely to his happiness; his voice trembled no longer—it quivered, but with the scarcely perceptible inner quivering of passion, which pierces like an arrow into the hearer’s soul. His voice grew steadily in strength, firmness, and breadth. One evening, I remember, at low tide, on the flat sandy shore of the sea, which was roaring away menacingly and dully in the distance, I saw a great white gull: it was sitting, motionless, its silky breast turned towards the scarlet radiance of sunset, now and then slowly stretching its long wings towards the familiar sea, towards the low, blood-red sun; I remembered it as I listened to Yasha. He sang, completely oblivious of his rival and of us all, but clearly sustained, as waves lift a strong swimmer, by our silent passionate attention. He sang, and with every note there floated out something noble and immeasurably large, like familiar steppe-country unfolding before you, stretching away into the boundless distance. I could feel tears swelling up in my heart and rising into my eyes; dull, muffled sobs suddenly fell on my ears . . . I looked round—the tapster’s wife was weeping as she leant her breast against the window. Yasha threw her a quick glance and his song flowed on still more sonorously and sweetly than before. Nikolai Ivanich looked down, Blinker turned away; Muddlehead, quite overcome by emotion, stood with his mouth stupidly gaping; the little gray peasant was quietly whimpering in his corner and shaking his head and muttering away bitterly to himself;
down the iron face of Wild Master, from under his deep overhanging brows, slowly rolled a heavy tear; the huckster had raised a clenched fist to his brow and never stirred. . . . I cannot imagine how this general state of heartfelt rapture would have been dispelled if Yasha had not suddenly ended on a high, extremely thin note—as if his voice had broken. No one shouted, no one even stirred; everyone seemed to be waiting in case he would sing on; but he opened his eyes, as if surprised at our silence, cast a questioning glance round at us all, and saw that victory was his. . . .

  “Yasha,” said Wild Master, putting a hand on his shoulder, and—said nothing more.

  We all sat as though benumbed. The huckster got up quietly and went across to Yasha. “You . . . it’s yours . . . you’ve won,” he brought out at last with difficulty and dashed from the room. . . .

  His swift decisive movement seemed to break the spell: everyone suddenly started talking loudly, joyfully. Muddlehead sprang up in the air and began to splutter and wave his arms like the sails of a windmill; Blinker stumbled over to Yasha and they began to kiss each other; Nikolai Ivanich stood up and solemnly announced that he would add another quart of beer on his own account; Wild Master laughed a good-natured laugh, such as I had certainly not expected to hear from him; the little gray peasant kept on repeating in his corner, wiping his eyes, cheeks, nose, and beard on both sleeves: “Good, by God, it’s good, why, take me for a son of a bitch, it’s good!” and Nikolai’s wife, deeply flushed, stood up quickly and went away. Yasha enjoyed his victory like a child; his whole face was transfigured; in particular his eyes simply radiated happiness. He was dragged across to the counter; he summoned over to it the little gray peasant, who had burst into tears, he sent the host’s boy after the huckster, whom, however, he failed to find, and the party began. “You’ll sing to us again, you’ll sing to us until evening,” repeated Muddlehead, raising his arms aloft.

  I looked once more at Yasha and went out. I did not want to stay—for fear of spoiling my impression. But the heat was still as unbearable as before. It was as if it hung right over the earth in a thick, heavy film; in the dark blue sky, little flashing lights seemed to be astir behind the fine, almost black dust. Everything was still; there was something hopeless, something oppressive about this deep stillness of enfeebled nature. I made my way to a hayloft and lay down on the newly-mown but already almost dried-up grass. For a while I could not drowse off; for a while Yasha’s irresistible voice rang in my ears . . . but, at length, heat and exhaustion claimed their due, and I fell into a death-like sleep. When I awoke, it was dark all around; the litter of grass smelt strongly and there was a touch of dampness about it; between the thin rafters of the half-open roof, pale stars flickered faintly. I went out. The sunset glow had died away long ago, and had left behind only the faintest pallor on the horizon; in the air, so glowing-hot not long before, there was still a sense of heat underneath the freshness of night, and the lungs still thirsted for a breath of cold. There was no wind, no cloud; the sky stood round, clear, darkly translucent, quietly shimmering with countless hardly-visible stars. In the village, lights twinkled; from the brightly-lit pot-house near by came a discordant and confused hubbub, in the midst of which I thought I recognized Yasha’s voice. At times there were bursts of wild laughter. I went across to the window and pressed my face against the pane. I saw a sad, though lively and animated scene: everyone was drunk—everyone, starting with Yasha. He was sitting, bare-chested, on a bench, singing in the huskiest voice some dance song of the streets, and lazily plucking and pinching the strings of a guitar. Clusters of wet hair hung above his livid face. In the middle of the pot-house, Muddlehead, coatless and completely “unscrewed,” was dancing and hopping away in front of the little peasant in the gray coat; the peasant, in turn, was laboriously stamping and scraping with his exhausted feet, smiling witlessly through his dishevelled beard, and occasionally waving a hand, as if to say: “Let it rip!” Nothing could have been more ludicrous than his face; however high he lifted his brows, his heavy lids refused to stay up and drooped right down over his hardly visible, bleary eyes, which were nevertheless brimming with sweetness. He was in the endearing condition of the completely tipsy, when every passer-by who looks him in the face is absolutely bound to say: “A fine state, a fine state!” Blinker, red as a lobster, nostrils blown out wide, was laughing sardonically from a corner; only Nikolai Ivanich, as befits a good tapster, had kept his imperturbable sang-froid. Many new faces had collected in the room, but there was no sign of Wild Master.

  I turned away and struck off quickly down the hill on which Kolotovka stands. A broad plain spreads out at the foot of this hill; swamped as it was with the misty waves of evening haze, it seemed vaster than ever, and as if merged with the darkened sky. I was walking with great strides along the track beside the ravine, when suddenly, from far away on the plain, came a boy’s ringing voice. “Antropka! Antropka-a-a! . . .” it called, in stubborn, tearful desperation, with a long dragging-out of the last syllable.

  For a few moments it was silent, then began to call again. The voice carried clearly in the unmoving, lightly-sleeping air. Thirty times at least it had called Antropka’s name, when suddenly, from the opposite end of the meadow, as if from a different world, came a scarcely audible reply:

  “What-a-a-a-at?”

  The boy’s voice called at once, glad but indignant:

  “Come here, you devil!”

  “What fo-o-o-r?” answered the other, after a pause.

  “Because father wants to be-ee-ee-eat you,” called the first voice promptly.

  The second voice made no further reply, and the boy again started calling “Antropka.” I could still hear his cries, growing rarer and fainter, when it had become completely dark and I was passing the bend in the wood that surrounds my village, four versts away from Kolotovka.

  “Antropka-a-a,” I still seemed to hear in the air, which was full of the shadows of night.

  Pyotr Petrovich Karataev

  FIVE YEARS AGO, IN THE AUTUMN, ON THE ROAD FROM MOSCOW to Tula, I happened to spend the best part of a day sitting at the post station, as there were no horses for me. I was on my way back from shooting and had been unwise enough to have sent my troika on ahead. The postmaster, an old surly fellow, with his hair hanging down over his nose and little sleepy eyes, answered all my complaints and requests with an abrupt growl, slammed the door in a fury, as if by way of cursing his own duty—and, going out into the porch, scolded the drivers, who were slowly wandering about in the mud with heavy shaft-bows in their hands, or sitting on a bench yawning and scratching and paying no special attention to the wrathful exclamations of their chief. I had already managed to drink tea three times, had several times tried vainly to sleep, had read all the inscriptions on the windows and the walls: a terrible boredom oppressed me. With numb, hopeless despair, I was looking at the uplifted shafts of my travelling carriage, when suddenly I heard the jingling of bells, and a small cart harnessed to three exhausted horses came to a halt in front of the porch. The new arrival jumped from the cart and with a cry of “Horses—and be quick about it!” came into the room. While he listened, with the usual bewildered surprise, to the postmaster explaining that there was not a horse to be had, I contrived to scrutinize my new companion from head to foot with all the greedy curiosity of the bored. He looked about thirty. Smallpox had left its indelible traces on his dry, sallow face, which had a disagreeable coppery gleam to it; long bluish-black hair hung in ringlets over the back of his collar and twisted itself up in front into rakish side-whiskers; his puffy little eyes stared and stared. A few hairs sprouted from his upper lip. He wore the clothes of a gentleman-rake and frequenter of horse-fairs, namely, a gaily-colored, rather greasy Caucasian overcoat, a cravat of faded mauve silk, a waistcoat with copper buttons, and gray trousers with enormous bell-bottoms, beneath which the tips of his uncleaned boots were scarcely visible. He smelt strongly of snuff and vodka; on his thick red fingers, practically hidden by his coat sl
eeves, could be seen rings of silver and of Tula work. Such creatures are to be met in Mother Russia, not by the dozen, but by the hundred; their acquaintance, it must be confessed, affords no sort of pleasure; yet in spite of the prejudice with which I looked at the new arrival, I could not help remarking the carefree good-nature, and the passion, expressed on his face.

  “Why, this gentleman here has been waiting more than an hour,” said the postmaster, indicating me.

  More than an hour! The scoundrel was laughing at me.

  “It may not matter so much to him,” answered the new arrival.

  “Well, that I couldn’t say,” said the postmaster sullenly.

  “So you really can’t do it? Positively no horses?”