‘Rein the horses in, Filofey,’ I said. ‘It’s no good, we won’t be able to get away.’
Filofey, clearly scared, whoahed the horses, who came to a stop immediately, as if glad of a chance for a rest.
Good Lord! Those little bells were right behind us now, really screeching away. The cart was clanking and clattering, people were whistling, shouting and singing, while their horses were snorting and pounding the earth with their hooves.
They’d caught us up!
‘We’re up the cree-e-eek now!’ whispered Filofey, dragging the words out. Clicking his tongue, he hesitantly urged his horses to get moving again. But at that very moment something suddenly seemed to break loose and then there was a roar and a crash, and an enormous, very broad and low-hung cart, harnessed to three muscular horses, suddenly swept past us like a whirlwind, careered on a little way ahead and then slowed to a walking pace, blocking our way.
‘That’s what robbers always do,’ whispered Filofey.
I have to admit that I broke out into a cold sweat. I began to stare into the murky, vapour-ridden moonlight. In the cart just ahead of us were half a dozen men, sitting or lying with heavy peasants’ coats over their shoulders. Two of them were bareheaded; jackboots covering powerful legs were dangling over the side of the cart, arms were flailing up and down for no apparent reason, and their bodies were all swaying about. No doubt about it: they were drunk. Some of them were bawling out whatever came into their heads; one was letting out some very clear and deafening whistles; another was blaspheming. Ensconced in the coachman’s seat was a giant of a man in a sheepskin jacket. They were going at a walking pace and appearing to take no notice of us at all.
What were we to do? There was nothing for it but to trundle along after them, also at a walking pace.
In this manner we covered about two hundred yards. The wait was excruciating. There could be no question of trying to escape or of putting up any resistance. There were six of them, and I didn’t even have a stick. If we turned round and went back they would catch us up right away. I remembered a line from a poem by Zhukovsky,2 about the murder of Field Marshal Kamensky:
The filthy axe of a highway robber…
And if they haven’t got an axe they’ll strangle us with a dirty rope and throw us into the ditch where we’ll be wheezing and writhing like hares in a trap.
Yes, things were looking bad…
And there they were, still plodding on at a walking pace and not paying us the slightest attention.
‘Filofey,’ I whispered. ‘See if you can get past them, there’s enough room on the right.’
Filofey had a go. He veered over to the right, but the men ahead of us immediately did exactly the same. It was impossible to overtake them. Filofey made another attempt. He swung over to the left. Again, they didn’t let him move ahead of the cart. They even burst out laughing. They clearly weren’t going to let us pass.
‘Real ‘ighway robbers,’ Filofey whispered to me over his shoulder.
‘But what are they waiting for?’ I asked, also in a whisper.
‘A bit further on, where the road dips, there’s a stream… and a bridge. That’s where they’ll get us. They like bridges. We’re done for, Mister,’ he went on with a sigh. ‘They’re not going to let us off alive now. They’ve got to cover up their tracks. There’s just one thing makes me sad, Mister. It’s me ‘orses. Me brothers’ll never see them again.’
I would have been surprised that Filofey should be worrying about his horses at a moment like this, except that, I have to admit, it wasn’t really him I was thinking about. ‘Are they really going to kill me?’ I kept on thinking to myself. ‘Why? After all, I’ll give them everything they want anyway.’
But the bridge was getting closer and closer. You could see it more and more clearly.
Suddenly there was a shrill whooping, the troika ahead of us rushed forward, almost leaving the ground, and when it got to the bridge it stopped dead in its tracks, a bit to one side of the road. My heart sank into my boots.
‘Well, Filofey, my friend,’ I said, ‘you and I are going to meet our maker. Forgive me for cutting short your life.’
‘It’s not your fault, Mister! What will be, will be! Well, Shaggy, me dearie,’ said Filofey, turning to the shaft-horse, ‘forward march, brother! ‘Elp us out for the last time! Nothing for it… Oh Lord, have mercy on us!’
And he ordered the horses to trot.
Now, as we approached the bridge and the motionless, threatening cart, everything, as though by design, went completely quiet. Not a single sound! Just like a pike or a hawk or any predator when its prey is close. Now we were almost level with the cart, and the giant in the sheepskin jacket suddenly jumped down and was coming straight towards us.
Not a word did he say to Filofey, who nonetheless immediately pulled on the reins, and we came to a halt.
The giant placed his hands on the side of the wagon, inserted his hairy head, smirked and said, in a quiet, smooth voice, with a factory worker’s drawl: ‘Good Sir, we’re on our way home from a festive gathering, a wedding feast. We’ve sort of married off our hero and laid him out to rest. All the lads here are young daredevils, they drank the place dry and now they’ve nothing to help them sober up come the morning after. Might you not find it within yourself, sir, to be so compassionate and generous as to spare a mere trifle so that they can each purchase a little hair of the dog that bit them? We would offer a toast to the health of your worship, sir. But should you find it impossible to offer us any of your charity, well, then you’ll have only yourself to blame!’
‘What’s all this?’ I wondered. ‘Is he just taunting and mocking us?’
The giant stayed put, his head lowered. Just then the moon came out of the mist and lit up his face. It was grimacing, this face – both eyes and lips. But there was no sign of menace, he just looked very much on his guard. And the teeth were so large and white.
‘Glad to oblige. Here you are,’ I said hastily, getting my purse out of my pocket and extracting a couple of silver roubles (at that time silver coins still hadn’t gone out of circulation in Russia). ‘Here you are, if that will suffice.’
‘Deeply grateful!’ bawled out the giant, like a soldier on parade, and in a flash his thick fingers pounced – not on the purse, just on the two roubles. ‘Deeply grateful!’ He shook back his hair and ran back to the cart.
‘Listen, lads!’ he shouted. ‘This worthy gentleman who happened to be passing by has spared two whole roubles for us!’ They all suddenly started to roar with laughter, and the giant ensconced himself again on the driving seat.
‘And the very best of good luck to you!’
And without further ado, they were off. The horses raced ahead and the cart thundered on up the hill, reappeared for a moment against the dark line dividing earth and sky, then dropped out of sight and was gone.
And even the knocking and the shouting and the little bells could no longer be heard.
The silence of the grave.
It took some time for me and Filofey to regain our wits.
‘Phew, there’s a joker for you!’ said Filofey at last, taking off his hat and starting to cross himself. ‘A real joker,’ he added, and turned round to face me, glowing with joy. ‘And ‘e must be a good man too, I really think so. Gee-up, me dearies! Step lively! You’ll be all right! We’ll all be all right! ‘E’s the one ‘oo wouldn’t let us pass, yer know. ‘E’s the one ‘oo was driving the horses. What a joker that feller is! Gee-up, gee-up! God be with us – with all of us!’
I said nothing, but my soul too was exulting. ‘We’ll be all right!’ I repeated to myself and stretched out on the hay. ‘We got off cheaply!’ I even felt a bit ashamed that I had recalled that line by Zhukovsky. Suddenly a thought hit me.
‘Filofey!’
‘What?’
‘Are you a married man?’
‘Yep.’
‘Any children?’
‘Yep.’
‘
How come you didn’t say a word about them? You felt sorry for the horses, but what about your wife and children?’
‘Why’d I be sorry for my wife and children? They wouldn’t ‘ave fallen into the ‘ands of thieves. But I was thinking of ‘em all the time. And I’m thinking about ‘em right now. And that’s a fact.’ Filofey fell silent. ‘Maybe it’s all because of them that the Lord God just had mercy on you and me.’
‘But maybe they weren’t highway robbers at all?’
‘‘Ow can you tell? It’s a mystery. You can’t see into another man’s soul. You know what they say: another man’s soul is a riddle. It’s always safer to go along with God. And my family… I’ll always… Gee-up, me dearies, God be with you!’
It was almost dawn by the time we got to the outskirts of Tula. I was half-asleep and half-awake.
‘Eh, Mister,’ Filofey said suddenly. ‘Take a look at that! There they are – at the tavern. And there’s the cart.’
I looked up. Yes, there they were, along with their cart and their horses. And on the threshold of the public house suddenly appeared the unmistakable figure of the giant in his sheepskin jacket.
‘Good sir!’ he exclaimed, waving his cap. ‘We’re drinking our way through your kindly donation! And as for you, driver,’ he added, shaking his head at Filofey, ‘I dare say you just had the fright of your life, eh!’
‘A real card, isn’t he?’ remarked Filofey, when the tavern was about forty paces behind us.
We finally made it to the centre of Tula. I got plenty of shot, took the chance to stock up on tea and liquor, and even bought a horse from the dealer. We set off on our journey back at noon. As we went past the place where we’d first heard the knocking, Filofey, who turned out, after having had something to drink in Tula, to be a very talkative sort of person – he was even telling me all kinds of cock and bull stories – well, as we went past that place, Filofey suddenly began to laugh.
‘Do you remember, Mister, ‘ow I kept on saying, “something’s knocking… Knock, knock, knock!”?’
He struck the air several times with the back of his hand. He seemed to find this ‘knock’ word tremendously funny.
That same evening we got back to his village.
I told Yermolay about our adventure. As he was sober he didn’t utter a word of sympathy and only hummed and hawed – whether approvingly or reproachfully I dare say he himself didn’t know. But a couple of days later he told me with glee that on the very night when Filofey and I were going to Tula, and on that very same road, some merchant or other had been robbed and murdered. At first I couldn’t believe this, but later I had no choice. The district police superintendent, who was hurrying to be in on the investigation, confirmed to me that it was true. Was this not the ‘festive gathering’ from which those fine lads were returning, and was this merchant not the ‘hero’ who, in the words of the giant joker, had been ‘laid out to rest’? I stayed in Filofey’s village for another five days or so. I got into the habit of saying, every time I met him, ‘Well, anything knocking today?’
‘Quite a card!’ he replies each time, and starts to laugh himself.
First published in 1874
Translated by Martin Dewhirst
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOYEVSKY (1821–81)
Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow. His pious mother died when he was sixteen and his father – a dedicated doctor, but a tyrant in his home and on his estate – was murdered by his own serfs when Dostoyevsky was eighteen. His first published work, Poor Folk (1846), was an immediate success. In 1849, along with other members of the radical ‘Petrashevsky Circle’, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death; this was commuted to penal servitude only after a mock execution intended, grotesquely, to teach the conspirators a lesson. Four years in a Siberian penal settlement and five years as a soldier in Semipalatinsk changed Dostoyevsky’s view of human nature. Mankind’s capacity for evil is so deep, he came to believe, that no merely political change can alter our lives; true change arises only from the transformation of the soul – which can be achieved only through Christ.
Dostoyevsky married Mariya Isayeva in 1857, but she died in 1864, as did his brother Mikhail. In the following years he conducted an unhappy liaison with Apollinariya Suslova; burdened by debts, he turned to gambling. In 1867 he married Anna Snitkina, the stenographer to whom he had dictated The Gambler in 1866. Their marriage was an unusually happy one, and Anna’s importance to his work was enormous. According to the critic Donald Rayfield, ‘Not only is so much of [Anna] reflected in the novels, every sentence was filtered through her. Anna Dostoyevskaya may appear to have collaborated simply as her husband’s typist, but it was impossible for Dostoyevsky to write a word without wondering about her reaction to it.’1
Dostoyevsky’s journalism was anti-Semitic, anti-Western and reactionary. His greatness as a novelist, however, stems at least in part from his ability to give vivid and sympathetic expression to points of view opposed to his own; his socialists and atheists are as attractive, and come out with arguments as powerful, as the characters who express Dostoyevsky’s views. Rayfield, in fact, has gone so far as to remark on the ‘inexplicable phenomenon… that Dostoyevsky’s characters seem to think more deeply and coherently than he did himself.’2 It was clearly in his novels that Dostoyevsky did his truest thinking.
Four of Dostoyevsky’s greatest works – Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler and The Idiot – were published between 1864 and 1869. ‘Bobok’ was published in 1873, after The Demons and before Dostoyevsky’s last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. ‘Bobok’ encapsulates much that is central to Dostoyevsky: his bold humour, his capacity for self-parody, the way he delighted – in the words of the translator Richard Pevear – ‘in the richness of spoken language, its playfulness, its happy mistakes, its revealing quirks and peculiarities’.3 ‘Bobok’ was first published as one of Dostoyevsky’s regular contributions to The Citizen, a weekly newspaper for which he was a joint editor from 1873 to 1876. The word bobok (’little bean’) appears to be used simply as a nonsense word. It is possible, however, that Dostoyevsky may, in his characteristic way, be parodying an image of great importance to him and which he used as an epigraph to The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit’ (John 12:24 (Authorized Version)).
BOBOK
This time I am including ‘Notes of a Certain Person’. It’s not me; it’s someone quite different. There is no need, I think, for any preface.
Notes of a Certain Person
Just the day before yesterday, Semyon Ardalyonovich said to me, ‘Are you ever, Ivan Ivanych, going to be sober?’
A strange thing to ask. I don’t take offence, I’m a quiet man; but, you see, they’ve made me out to be quite mad. An artist happened to paint a portrait of me: ‘After all,’ he says, ‘you are a man of letters.’ So I let him, and he exhibited it. Then I read, ‘Go and look at this morbid, almost insane face.’
All right, maybe it’s true, but still, why must they go and say it in print? Everything in print should be noble; here, on the other hand…
They might at least put it obliquely – isn’t that what style’s for? But no, no one wants to be oblique any more. Nowadays humour and good style are disappearing, and abuse is taken for wit. I don’t take offence; I’m not such a man of letters as to lose my mind over all this. I wrote a story – it wasn’t published. I wrote an article – it was rejected. I took a lot of these articles to different editorial offices – they were all rejected. ‘No salt in them,’ I was told.
‘What kind of salt are you after?’ I ask. ‘Attic salt?’1
He doesn’t even understand me. Mostly I translate from French for booksellers. And I write advertisements for merchants: A rarity! Finest quality tea from our own plantations. For a panegyric to His Excellency the late Pyotr Matveyevich I got quite a sum. A bookseller commissioned me to put together The Art of Pleasing Ladies.
I’ve done six little books like that in my life. I’d like to do a collection of Voltaire’s bons mots, but I’m afraid they might seem insipid today. Who wants Voltaire now? These days we’d rather pick up a cudgel! We’ve knocked one another’s last teeth out! Well, that’s the entirety of my literary activity. Except I also send letters to editors free of charge, and with my full signature. I’m always giving admonitions and advice, criticizing and pointing out the correct course of action. Last week I sent one editor my fortieth letter in two years; I’ve paid four roubles in stamps alone. I’ve got a vile temper, that’s what.
I think the artist painted me not for the sake of literature, but for the sake of the two symmetrical warts on my forehead: quite a phenomenon, he said. They’ve got no ideas, so they trade on phenomena. And my warts certainly came out well in that portrait – they’re alive! This they call realism.
As for insanity, a lot of us were written off as madmen last year. And how stylishly: ‘With such an original talent… and in the end it turns out… but then this should have been foreseen long ago.’ It’s all rather clever; yes, from a purely artistic point of view it even deserves praise. Now, however, those very madmen have turned out wiser than ever. And that’s the way it goes – people here know how to pronounce a man mad all right, but they’ve yet to pronounce anyone wise.
The wisest person of all, the way I see it, is the one who calls himself a fool at least once a month – an unheard-of ability in this day and age. In the old days a fool understood at least once a year that he was a fool, but nowadays – not a hope! And nowadays everything’s got so tangled you can’t tell a fool and a wise man apart. This has been done on purpose.
I remember a Spanish witticism from two hundred and fifty years ago, when the French built their first madhouse: ‘They’ve locked all their fools into a special building to prove how wise they are themselves.’ Very to the point: you don’t prove your own wisdom by locking someone else up in a madhouse. ‘K.‘s gone mad, so we’ve grown wise.’ No, that doesn’t follow.
But then, what the hell? And why all this fuss about my own mind? Grumbling and grumbling. Even my maidservant’s sick of it. Yesterday a friend dropped by. ‘Your style’s changing,’ he said, ‘it’s getting very choppy. You chop and you chop, then a parenthesis, then a parenthesis inside the parenthesis, then you stick in some other phrase in brackets, then it’s back to your chopping…’
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 12