Perfishka dashed to his master and, taking hold of the stirrup, made as if to help him to dismount; but his master jumped down unaided, and, throwing a triumphant glance around, loudly exclaimed: “I said that I would find Malek Adel—and find him I did, to the mortification of my enemies and of destiny itself.” Perfishka went and kissed his hand, but Chertopkhanov took no notice of his servant’s attentions. Leading Malek Adel after him by the bridle, he strode off to the stable. Perfishka looked closely at his master—and had a shock. He thought: Oh, how thin and old he has got within the year—and how grim and stern his face has grown! You would suppose that Pantelei ought to have been glad he had found his own; and so he was, certainly . . . but all the same Perfishka had a shock: in fact he felt quite creepy. Chertopkhanov put the horse in his old stall, patted him gently on the quarters, and said: “Well, there you are, home again. Just look! . . .” The same day he engaged a reliable watchman—a peasant who had no taxes to pay—installed himself again in his rooms, and resumed his former life . . .
Not quite his former life, however . . . But of this later.
The day after his return, Pantelei sent for Perfishka and, for want of anyone else to talk to, began to tell him, without of course losing the sense of his own dignity, and in a gruff bass voice, how he had managed to find Malek Adel. As he spoke, Chertopkhanov sat facing the window, smoking a long chibouk; Perfishka stood in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back and, looking respectfully at the back of his master’s head, heard how, after many vain attempts and excursions, Pantelei at length arrived at Romyon fair, by this time alone, since Leiba the Jew, from weakness of character, had not lasted out and had run away from him; how, on the fifth day, when getting ready to depart, he had taken a last turn along the rows of carts and suddenly, between three other horses tied to a post, he had seen—Malek Adel! How he recognized him at once—and how Malek Adel had recognized him too and started neighing and straining and tearing the ground with his hoof. “And he wasn’t with the Cossack,” continued Chertopkhanov, still without turning his head and in the same bass voice, “but with a gypsy horse-coper; naturally I at once took hold of my horse and tried to get him back by force; but the beastly gypsy started howling as if he’d been scalded, all over the square, began swearing that he had bought the horse from another gypsy and wanted to produce witnesses . . . I spat and paid him his money: may the devil fly with him! The great thing for me was that I had found my friend and set my soul at rest. Then, in the district of Karachevo, I ran into a Cossack who fitted the Jew’s description—I took him for the thief and bashed his face in; but the Cossack turned out to be the son of a priest instead, and he took the skin off my back by way of damages—one hundred and twenty rubles. Well, money can always be made—but the main thing is that I’ve got Malek Adel back. I’m happy now and I shall be able to enjoy peace and quiet. But for you, Porfiry, I have only one instruction: as soon as you see a Cossack about—which heaven forfend—that very second, without saying a word, run and bring me a gun, and I shall know all right what to do next!”
This was how Pantelei spoke to Perfishka; these were the words he spoke; but his heart was far from being as calm as he declared.
Alas! at the bottom of his heart he was not wholly convinced that the horse he had brought back was really Malek Adel at all!
X
This was the beginning of a difficult time for Pantelei Eremeich. Peace and quiet was precisely what he enjoyed least of all. True, he had his good days, when the doubt which had dawned on him seemed to be nonsensical; he chased the absurd idea away like an importunate fly, he even laughed at himself; but he also had his bad days, when the nagging idea began again to gnaw and scratch at his heart, like a mouse under the floor-boards, and he suffered bitterly from secret pangs. During the memorable day when he found Malek Adel, Chertopkhanov had been conscious only of a blissful happiness. But the following morning when, beneath the low lean-to roof outside the inn, he started saddling up his discovery, after having spent the whole night by its side—for the first time he felt a certain pricking . . . He merely shook his head—but the seed had been sown. During his journey home (which lasted a week) he had but few doubts; they grew stronger and clearer as soon as he returned to his own Bessonovo, as soon as he found himself on the spot where the earlier, indubitable Malek Adel had lived . . . On the journey he had walked his horse for most of the way, swaying, looking from side to side, smoking his chibouk and without a thought in the world except occasionally to say to himself with a grin: “The Chertopkhanovs always get their way! None of your nonsense for them!” But with his arrival home, another chapter began. He kept the whole thing to himself, of course; his pride alone would never have allowed him to speak of his inner anxiety. He would have “torn in half” anybody who had even remotely hinted that the new Malek Adel was perhaps not the old one. He received congratulations on his “happy find” from the few persons he happened to meet; but he didn’t solicit these congratulations: more than ever he avoided people—a bad sign! He put Malek Adel, if I may so express myself, through an almost continuous examination; he would ride off with him far away over the fields and set him a test; or else he would creep into the stable, lock the door behind him, and, standing right in front of the horse’s head, would look him in the eyes and ask him in a whisper: “Are you Malek Adel? Are you? Are you? . . .” Or else he would gaze at him in silence, with a fixed stare, for whole hours at a time, now joyfully murmuring, “Yes! Yes! of course he is!” now perplexed and, indeed, troubled in his heart.
What troubled Chertopkhanov was not so much the physical dissimilarities between this Malek Adel and the other . . . of which, incidentally, there were a few: the other’s tail and mane seemed to have been thinner, his ears sharper, his pasterns shorter and his eyes brighter—but this may have only seemed to be so; Chertopkhanov was troubled by what might be termed the moral dissimilarities. The other’s habits were different, his bearing was not the same. For instance: the other Malek Adel used to look round and whinny gently every time, the moment Chertopkhanov entered the stable; but this one went on munching hay unconcernedly—or else drowsing with lowered head. Neither of them moved when their master was dismounting, but the other came at once when called—while this one went on standing like a stump. The other galloped at the same speed as this one, but jumped higher and farther; this one had a freer motion in walking, but a jerkier trot—and was sometimes “loose” with his hooves—that’s to say, he knocked a back hoof on a fore one; the other had never shown such a fault—God forbid! This one, it seemed to Chertopkhanov, was always pricking his ears, in a stupid sort of way—quite the contrary to the other, who would cock one back and keep it there—watching his master! The other had only to see dirt around him and he would kick the walls of his box with his rear hoof; but this one never cared, you could have poured dung right up to his stomach. You had only to put the other one head to wind for him to be breathing at once with all his lungs and wide awake; but this one would simply whinny. The other was made uneasy by a rainy dampness in the air; this one didn’t mind it at all. This one was coarser, coarser by far! And he had none of the other’s charm and a mouth as hard as—but why go on! The other horse was a dear—but as for this one . . .
These were the thoughts that sometimes passed through Chertopkhanov’s mind, and they had a bitter taste. But at other times he would let his horse out at full gallop over a newly-ploughed field, or make him jump down into the bottom of a hollow ravine and out again the steepest way. His heart would faint within him from delight, a loud whoop would burst from his lips and he would know, know for sure, that the horse under him was the real, the indubitable Malek Adel, for what other horse could have done the same?
Even so, however, there were frequent moments of pain and grief. Chertopkhanov’s prolonged search for Malek Adel had cost him a lot of money; he no longer even thought of Kostroma hounds, and he rode about the neighborhood quite alone as before. Well, one morning, five versts away
from Bessonovo, Chertopkhanov ran into the same princely hunting party, before which he had cut such a brilliant dash a year and a half before. It was fated to happen that way; as then, so again to-day—a hare jumping up from beneath a boundary fence under the hounds’ noses and scuttling away across the slopes. After him, after him! The whole field went off at full tilt, and so did Chertopkhanov—only not with them, but two hundred yards to the side—exactly like the time before. An enormous ravine ran diagonally downhill and, getting deeper and narrower as it went, cut across Chertopkhanov’s path. At the point where he would have to jump it, and where he had in fact jumped it a year and a half before, it was still eight yards across and fourteen feet deep. In anticipation of a triumph, so miraculously repeated, Chertopkhanov gave a victorious chuckle, shook his whip—the huntsmen were galloping too, but without taking their eyes off the daring rider—his horse was flying like an arrow, here was the ravine right under his nose—over it, like the time before! . . .
But Malek Adel jibbed suddenly, wheeled to the left, and galloped off along the brink, try as Chertopkhanov might to pull his head sideways towards the ravine . . .
He had refused, or, in other words, he had not been sure of himself!
Then Chertopkhanov, blazing with shame and anger, practically in tears, let out the reins and drove his horse straight ahead and uphill, away, away from the huntsmen, anywhere so as not to hear them mocking him, anywhere so as to escape as soon as possible from their accursed gaze!
With lacerated flanks, and all bathed in soapy foam, Malek Adel galloped home, and Chertopkhanov at once locked himself up in his room.
“No, he’s not the same, he’s not my friend! The other one would have broken his neck, but he would never have betrayed me!”
XI
What finished Chertopkhanov off for good was the following incident.
One day, mounted on Malek Adel, he was picking his way through the priest’s back-yard, adjoining the church of the parish in which Bessonovo lay. With his fur hat rammed down over his eyes, slouching, with both hands dropped on the pommel of his saddle, he was moving slowly ahead; there was gloom and confusion in his heart. Suddenly someone called him.
He stopped his horse, raised his head, and saw his correspondent, the deacon. With a brown three-cornered hat on his brown, pigtailed head, dressed in a yellowish nankeen coat, girt well below the waist with a piece of blue stuff, this server at the altar had come out to inspect his plot of ground and, on catching sight of Pantelei Eremeich, thought it his duty to pay him his respects—and incidentally to get something out of him. As is well known, the clergy do not converse with secular people without some further purpose of this kind.
But Chertopkhanov had no time for the deacon; he hardly acknowledged his bow, and, muttering something between his teeth, was already waving his whip. . . .
“But what a wondrous horse you have!” the deacon hastened to add. “It can indeed be accounted to you for honor. Verily, you are a man of wondrous spirit; a very lion!” The father deacon prided himself on his eloquence—and thus very much irritated the father priest, in whom the gift of words was not inborn and whose tongue even vodka failed to unloose. “Having lost one beast, through the evil designs of the wicked,” continued the deacon, “and no whit cast down by this, but trusting all the more in Divine Providence, you have taken unto yourself another, no whit worse than the former one, and perchance even better. . . . Therefore . . .”
“What nonsense is this?” interrupted Chertopkhanov darkly. “What other horse? This is the same one, this is Malek Adel . . . I found him. Rambling talk like that . . .”
“Eh! eh! eh! eh!” said the deacon deliberately, as if wishing to draw the words out, his fingers playing in his beard and his bright, eager eyes watching Chertopkhanov. “How so, my good sir? Your horse, if God grants me to remember aright, was stolen last year, two weeks after the feast of the Intercession, and it is now the end of November.”
“Well, what of it?”
The deacon went on playing with his fingers in his beard. “It means that more than a year has passed since then, and yet your horse is now exactly as he was then, a gray roan; indeed he seems even darker in color. How could that be? Gray horses turn much whiter in the course of a year.”
Chertopkhanov started . . . it was as if a spear had been thrust into his heart. The deacon was right; of course a gray coat changes color! How was it that such a simple fact had not occurred to him until then?
“You bundle of blasphemy! Leave me alone!” he barked out, his eyes flashing with fury—and vanished in a twinkling out of the astonished deacon’s sight.
So it was all finished!
Really finished, broken right up, the last card trumped! Everything had collapsed at once with the single word “whiter”!
Gray horses turn whiter.
Gallop, gallop, curse you!—but you will never be able to gallop away from that word!
Chertopkhanov rushed home and again locked himself up.
XII
That this wretched nag was not Malek Adel, that between him and Malek Adel there was not the slightest resemblance, that everyone with the slightest sense was bound to see as much at first glance, that he, Pantelei Chertopkhanov, had been most grossly taken in, no!—that he had deliberately, and with premeditation, deceived himself, wrapped himself in this fog—of all that there could not be the slightest doubt! Chertopkhanov paced up and down his room, turning on his heels in the same way every time he came to the wall, like a beast in a cage. His pride suffered unbearably; but it was not only the pain of wounded pride that rent him: despair ruled him, hatred stifled him, the thirst for revenge blazed in him. But on whom? On whom was he to revenge himself? The Jew, Yaff, Masha, the deacon, the Cossack-thief, all the neighbors, the whole world, or, finally, himself? His mind grew confused. His last card had been trumped! (He liked this figure of speech.) And he was again the most insignificant and despised of men, the most generally ridiculous, a tomfool, a blithering idiot, an object for the deacon’s mirth! He imagined, he pictured clearly to himself, how that bundle of filth would tell the story of the gray horse and the stupid master. Oh, curse it all! . . . In vain Chertopkhanov strove to calm his raging bile, in vain he sought to assure himself that this . . . horse, even if not Malek Adel, was nevertheless . . . a good one, and could serve him for many years; simultaneously he would thrust this thought furiously from him, as if it contained a new cause of offense against the other Malek Adel, towards whom he already considered himself quite guilty enough . . . Yes, indeed! This jade, this nag, he had compared to Malek Adel, stone-blind oaf that he was! And as for the service which this nag could still give him . . . why, would he ever condescend to mount him? Not for anything in the world! Never. . . . Sell him to a Tartar, as food for dogs—that was all he deserved . . . Yes! That would be best of all!
For more than two hours Chertopkhanov wandered up and down his room.
“Perfishka!” he ordered suddenly. “Go at once to the pot-house, fetch a gallon of vodka! D’you hear? A gallon, and be quick about it! I want the vodka standing here on my table this very second.”
The vodka was standing on Pantelei’s table without delay, and he began to drink.
XIII
Anyone who had then observed Chertopkhanov, who could have witnessed the sullen fury with which he emptied glass after glass, would certainly have been horror-struck in spite of himself. Night had fallen; a greasy candle burned faintly on the table. Chertopkhanov had stopped pacing from corner to corner; he sat, all flushed, with glazed eyes which he would now lower to the floor, now turn fixedly towards the window; he would get up, pour out some vodka, drink it down, sit again, again fix his gaze on one spot, and remain stock-still—except that his breath came ever faster and his face grew ever more flushed. It seemed that within him some decision was ripening which troubled him, but to which he was gradually growing accustomed; the same thought came inexorably and incessantly nearer, the same image outlined itself m
ore clearly before him, and in his heart, under the burning pressure of strong liquor, the irritation of wrath had already given way to a mood of brutal cruelty, and a sinister smile had appeared on his lips.
“Well, anyway, it’s time to act!” he said, in a business-like, almost bored tone of voice. “Enough of this dallying!”
He drank down a final glass of vodka, brought out his pistol from under the bed—the same pistol with which he had fired at Masha—loaded it, put a few caps into his pocket “against emergencies”—and set off for the stable.
The watchman came running up to him as he began to open the door, but he shouted at him: “It’s me, can’t you see? Be off with you!” The watchman withdrew a little way. “Be off to bed!” Chertopkhanov shouted at him again. “There’s nothing for you to guard here! This wonder horse, this treasure!” He went into the stable . . . Malek Adel, the false Malek Adel, was lying among the litter. Chertopkhanov kicked him and said: “Get up, you crow!” Then he undid the halter from the manger, took off the blanket and threw it on the ground, and, roughly turning the obedient horse round in the stall, led him out into the yard and from the yard into the fields, to the utter amazement of the watchman, who was quite unable to understand where the master could be off to in the middle of the night leading an unbridled horse. He was naturally too much afraid to ask, but simply followed him with his eyes until he vanished round a turning of the track leading to the nearby forest.
XIV
Chertopkhanov walked with long strides, never halting and never looking back; Malek Adel—for so we will call him until the end—walked submissively after him. The night was fairly light; Chertopkhanov could distinguish the jagged outline of the forest, forming a solid black mass ahead of him. At the touch of the cool night air he would certainly have got drunk from the vodka, if . . . if it had not been for another, stronger intoxication which mastered his whole being. His head grew heavy, the blood drummed in his throat and ears; but he stepped out firmly and knew where he was going.
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