‘Yes,’ said Radilov, ‘I experienced this myself once. I was married, you know. Not for long… just three years. My wife died in childbirth. I thought I’d never get over it. I was appallingly grief-stricken, knocked flat by it, but I couldn’t shed a tear and went about the place crazy with it all. They dressed her in suitable clothes and laid her on the table – right here, in this room. The priest came. The deacons came, they started singing, praying, wafting incense. I made all the obeisances, bowed right down to the ground, and yet I couldn’t manage a single tear. My heart’d literally turned to stone, my head as well. I couldn’t feel a thing. That was how the first day passed. Can you credit it! I even slept that night. The next morning I went in to see her. It was summertime and the sun shone on her from head to toe, and so brightly. Suddenly I saw…’ (At this point Radilov shuddered.) ‘What d’you think? One of her eyes wasn’t completely shut and over this eye a fly was walking… I collapsed like scythed corn and when I came to I cried and cried and simply couldn’t stop myself…’
Radilov stopped. I looked at him and then at Olga and I’ll never forget the expression on her face. The old woman laid the sock on her knees, took a handkerchief from her handbag and stealthily wiped away a tear. Fyodor Mikheich suddenly stood up, seized his fiddle and in his untutored, quavering voice started singing. He very likely wanted to cheer us all up, but we all gave a shudder from the first sound he made and Radilov asked him to stop.
‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘it’s over and done with. You can’t bring back the past and, in the end, you know, all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds… As Voltaire once said, I think,’ he added hurriedly.2
‘Yes, of course,’ I agreed. ‘What’s more, one can put up with unhappiness, and there’s no situation so awful you can’t get out of it somehow.’
‘You really think so?’ Radilov asked. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. I remember once in Turkey I was lying in a hospital half-dead.3 I had marsh fever. We couldn’t exactly boast of our hospital buildings – after all, it was wartime and a case of God help us! Suddenly more sick ones were brought in, but where could they go? The doctor rushed about here and there, but there wasn’t any space. Then he came up to me and asked the orderly if I was still alive. The orderly answered: “He was alive this morning.” The doctor bent down and heard I was breathing. The friendly chap couldn’t resist saying: “Nature’s a bloody fool. Here’s a man dying, absolutely certain to die, but he’s just scraping by, just hanging on, and all he’s doing is occupying a space and stopping others from coming in.” “Well,” I thought, “you’re in a really bad way, Mikhaylo Mikhaylich…” But I got better, you know, and I’m alive to this day, as you can see. So it seems you’re right.’
‘Oh, I’m right whatever the situation,’ I answered. ‘Even if you’d died, you’d still have got out of your bad situation.’
‘OK, OK,’ he added, suddenly and powerfully striking the table with his hand, ‘you must just make up your mind! Why put up with a bad situation, eh? What’s the point of scraping by, hanging on…’
Olga stood up quickly and went out into the garden.
‘Well, Fedya, give us a tune!’ shouted Radilov.
Fedya jumped up and walked about the room with that show-off special walk of a boy mincing about in front of a tame bear, beginning to sing:
‘Once a-walking past our gates…’
The noise of a carriage resounded at the porch steps and in a moment or so a tall old man entered the room, broad-shouldered and solidly built, Farmer Ovsyanikov by name… But Ovsyanikov is such a remarkable and unusual person that, with the reader’s permission, we will talk about him in the next Sketch. As for the present story I’ll simply add that the next day Yermolay and I set off hunting as soon as it was light and after hunting we went home and a week later I went once again to see Radilov, but I found neither him nor Olga at home, and a couple of weeks later I learnt he’d suddenly vanished, abandoning his mother and going off somewhere with his sister-in-law. The entire province was stirred by the event and started talking about it, and it was only then that I finally fathomed the look that had been on Olga’s face during Radilov’s story. It hadn’t just been a look of compassion; it had been a look burning with envy.
Before leaving the country I visited Radilov’s old mother. I found her in the drawing-room playing a game of ‘donkey’ with Fyodor Mikheich.
‘Have you any news of your son?’ I asked her eventually.
The old woman burst into tears. I didn’t ask her any more about Radilov.
FARMER OVSYANIKOV
IMAGINE, dear readers, a full, tall man of about seventy, with a face a little reminiscent of Krylov’s,1 with clear and intelligent eyes looking at you from under overhanging brows, with dignified bearing, measured speech and a slow walk: that was Ovsyanikov for you. He wore a capacious blue frock-coat with long sleeves, buttoned right up to the top, a lilac silk neckerchief, brightly polished boots with tassels and looked in general like a well-to-do merchant. He had beautiful hands, soft and white, and often in the course of conversation he would finger the buttons of his frock-coat. Ovsyanikov, in his dignity and statuesqueness, with his shrewdness and indolence, his directness and obstinacy reminded me of the Russian boyars of pre-Petrine times…2 Their old-style Russian dress would have suited him. He was one of the last representatives of that former age. All his neighbours held him in the greatest esteem and considered it an honour to know him. His own people, homesteading farmers like him,3 practically worshipped him, doffed their hats to him even from a distance and were proud of him. Generally speaking, it’s been difficult so far among us to tell a homesteading farmer from a peasant. Their farms are scarcely better than a peasant’s, their calves feed on buckwheat, their horses are barely alive and their harnesses are made of rope. Ovsyanikov was an exception to the general rule, though he couldn’t pass for rich. He lived alone with his wife in a comfortable, neat little house and kept only a few servants, whom he dressed in traditional Russian dress and described as workers. They were the ones who worked his land for him. He didn’t make himself out to be one of the gentry, never pretended to be a landowner, never ‘forgot himself’ to the point of sitting down at the first invitation and at the appearance of a new guest always rose to his feet, but with such dignity, such a grand display of welcome, that the guest would invariably bow lower despite himself. Ovsyanikov observed the customs of old not out of superstition (he had a reasonably free-thinking character), but out of habit. For example, he didn’t like carriages with springs because he didn’t find them restful, so he travelled about either in a racing droshky or in a small red cart with a leather cushion and drove his good bay trotter himself. (He only kept bays.) The coachman, a young red-cheeked lad with a fringed haircut, dressed in a bluish, belted sheepskin jacket and a flat woollen cap, would sit respectfully beside him. Ovsyanikov always slept after dinner, visited the bath-house on Saturdays, read only religious books (for which purpose he importantly placed on his nose round silver spectacles), rose and went to bed early. However, he always shaved and wore his hair cropped in the German style. He would receive his guests very courteously and affably, but he never used to bow low to the waist, never made a fuss, never regaled them with fancy dried or salted things. ‘Wife!’ he would say slowly, without rising and slightly turning his head towards her. ‘Bring the gentlemen something nice to eat!’ He considered it sinful to sell wheat, since it was God’s gift to man, and in 1840, at a time of general famine and appalling inflation, he distributed all his reserves among the local landowners and peasants; the following year they gratefully repaid their debts in kind. Neighbours frequently ran to Ovsyanikov with pleas to arbitrate and settle their differences and they practically always submitted to his judgement and took his advice. Many reached ultimate redivisions of their land through his good offices… But after two or three brushes with female landowners he announced that he would refuse to arbitrate between members of the female sex. He couldn�
��t stand fuss and bother and panicky hastiness and a lot of female chatter and ‘vanity’. One day his house caught fire. One of his workers rushed in to him shouting: ‘Fire! Fire!’ ‘What’re you shouting for?’ asked Ovsyanikov calmly. ‘Fetch me my hat and stick…’He was personally very fond of training horses. On one occasion a frisky Bityuk horse* rushed him downhill and into a ravine. ‘Hey, hey, you underage colt, you, you’ll kill yourself,’ Ovsyanikov reproved him kindly and a moment later he flew into the ravine along with the racing drozhky, the boy sitting behind him and the horse. Fortunately, there were mounds of sand at the bottom of the ravine. No one was hurt and the horse simply dislocated its leg. ‘Well, you see,’ continued Ovsyanikov in a calm voice, getting up from the ground, ‘I told you so.’ And the wife he’d chosen suited him. Tatyana Ilyinichna Ovsyanikov was a tall woman, dignified and taciturn, with a brown silk kerchief always tied round her head. She conveyed a feeling of coldness, although it wasn’t that anyone complained of her severity but, on the contrary, many poor people called her their very own mother and benefactress. Her regular features, large dark eyes and fine lips remained evidence of her once famous beauty. The Ovsyanikovs had no children.
I met him at Radilov’s, as the reader already knows, and a couple of days later I called on him. I found him at home. He was sitting in a large leather armchair and he was reading from the monthly calendar of saints’ lives. A grey cat purred on his shoulder. He received me, as was his custom, courteously and somewhat grandly. We struck up a conversation.
‘Tell me the truth, Luka Petrovich,’ I said by the by. ‘Surely, in your time, things were better?’
‘Some things were truly better, I can tell you,’ Ovsyanikov replied. ‘We lived quieter lives, and it’s true there was more of everything… But it’s better now. And for your children it’ll be better still, God grant.’
‘Luka Petrovich, I’d expected you to start praising the old days.’
‘No, I’ve no reason to praise them old days especially. I’ll give you one example. Take yourself, you’re a landowner, just as much a landowner as your late grandad, but you’ll never have as much authority as he had! What’s more, you’re not the same kind of man. Nowadays there’s other gentlemen putting pressure on us, but it seems you’ll never get rid of that. The corn’s gotta be ground, you know, that’s the only way you’ll get flour. No, I won’t be seeing nowadays what I saw so much of in my youth.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘Take, for example, what I gotta say about your grandad. A man of authority, he was! He’d squash the likes of us. You very likely know – well, of course, you know your own land – the wedge of land stretching from Chaplygino to Malinin? You’ve got it under oats now. Well, that’s ours – our land as ever is. Your grandad took it off us. He rode up, pointed, said: “That’s my property,” and took it. My father – he’s dead now (God rest his soul!) – he was a just man, but hot-tempered, too, and didn’t stand for that – who wants to lose his property anyway? – and he went to court. He went to court, mind, but the others didn’t – they were too frightened. So your grandad was told that Pyotr Ovsyanikov’d lodged a complaint against him, to the effect that his land’d been taken away… Your grandad at once sent his master of hounds Baush to us, along with some men. They seized my father and took him to your estate. I was a small boy and I ran after him barefoot. So what d’you think, eh? They took him to your house and there they gave him a beating right under the windows. And your grandad stood on the balcony and watched, he did. And your grandma sat at the window watching too. My father called out: “Dear lady, Marya Vasilyevna, help me, have mercy on me!” But all she did was raise herself a little and glance down at him. So they got father to promise he’d give up the land and they ordered him to thank them for letting him go with his life. So it’s remained yours. Go and ask your peasants what that piece of land’s called. “Cudgel’s Piece” they call it, because it was taken away with a cudgel. That’s why there’s nothing much for us, us small folk, to regret about the old order of things.’
I didn’t know what to say to Ovsyanikov and didn’t dare look him in the face.
‘And there was another neighbour of ours in those times, Komov, Stepan Niktopolionych. He was a real pain to my father, if not with one thing, then another. He was a drunkard and he liked to play host, and as soon as he’d had a drop to drink he’d be saying in French “Se bon” and he’d lick his lips – then there’d be all hell let loose! He’d send round to all his neighbours asking them to visit. His troikas literally stood ready, and if you didn’t go he’d be down on you at once!… What a strange fellow he was! In a “soberous” state he’d never tell a he, but as soon as he’d had a drop he’d begin telling how in St Petersburg he’d got three houses on the Fontanka – one red with one chimney, another yellow with two chimneys and a third blue without chimneys – and three sons (he’d never been married, mind), one in the infantry, one in the cavalry and one just ordinary … And he’d say that a son lived in each of the houses, and the eldest entertained admirals, the second one generals and the third one nothing but Englishmen! Then he’d stand up and he’d say: “To the health of my eldest son, he’s the most respected!” – and then he’d burst into tears. And woe to anyone who tried to refuse the toast! “I’ll shoot you!” he’d shout. “And I won’t let you have a Christian burial!” Or he’d jump up and shout: “Dance, all God’s people, dance – to your heart’s content and my delight!” Well, you’d gotta dance, though you might die, dance you must. He was a right pain to his peasant girls. All night long, as ever was, till morning they’d be singing in chorus and whichever reached the highest note got a prize. And as soon as they’d get tired he’d rest his head on his hand and start wailing: “Oh, what a poor orphan girl I am! They’re leaving me all forlorn!” Then the stable-lads’d rightaway start encouraging them. My father became a favourite of his, but he couldn’t help that, could he? He nearly drove my father into the grave and would’ve done, if he’d not died himself, thank God, by falling off a dovecote when drunk… That’s the kind of neighbours we had in those days!’
‘How times have changed,’ I remarked.
‘Yes, yes,’ Ovsyanikov agreed. ‘Still, it’s gotta be said that in the old days the gentry lived more sumptuously. Which is to say nothing about the grandees, I had my fill of seeing them in Moscow. They say there aren’t any of them left there.’
‘You’ve been to Moscow?’
‘Yes – long, long ago. I’m going on seventy-three now an’ I went to Moscow in my sixteenth year.’
Ovsyanikov sighed.
‘Who did you see there?’
‘Many grand personages I saw and each one I saw lived openly, for everyone to admire and wonder at. Only not one of them matched Count Aleksey Grigoryevich Orlov-Chesmensky.4 I used to see Aleksey Grigoryevich often ‘cos my uncle was his butler. The Count used to live out by the Kaluga Gate, on Shabalovka. Now he was a real grandee! Such bearing, such gracious words of welcome – unimaginable, indescribable. His height alone was worth something and as for his strength, his look!… So long as you didn’t know him, hadn’t met him face to face, you’d be really frightened and shy, but as soon as you met him he’d bring the sun’s warmth into your life and you’d be full of joy. He’d let anyone into his presence and be interested in everything. In the races he drove himself and he’d race with each one, never overtaking right away, never humiliating, never breaking away, but only going ahead at the very end. And he was so nice about it, consoling his opponent and praising his horse. He used to keep the very best sort of tumbling pigeons. He’d go out into his courtyard, seat himself in an armchair and order the pigeons to be released. And all round about, on the roofs, his men’d be standing with guns to protect against hawks. A large silver bowl with water in it would be put at the Count’s feet and he’d watch the pigeons reflected in the water. Hundreds of paupers and beggars lived off his bread – and the amount of money he handed out! But when he was an
gry, it was like a roar of thunder! You’d be frightened, but there’d be nothing to cry about. A moment later you’d look at him and he’d be smiling. He’d give a feast and the whole of Moscow’d be drunk! And what a clever chap he was! After all, he beat the Turks. He loved wrestling, too. He’d have strong fellows brought to him from Tula and Kharkov and Tambov and all over. If he outwrestled someone, he’d give him a prize, but if he got beaten he’d give lavish rewards and kiss the winner on the lips… During my time in Moscow he organized such a hunt as had never before been seen in all Russia. He invited all the hunters as ever were from all parts of the kingdom to be his guests and named the day three months ahead. So they all gathered. They brought dogs and huntsmen – a whole army of them there were! First they all feasted as was right and proper and then they all set off for the town gate. Such a crowd of people there were, all pushing and shoving! And what d’you think? It was your grandad’s dog outran all of them.’
‘You mean Pretty Lady?’ I asked.
‘Pretty Lady, Pretty Lady, that’s right… The Count, he started saying: “Sell me your dog. Take whatever you like for her.” “No, Count,” your grandad said, “I’m not a merchant, I don’t go round selling worthless rubbish, but as a matter of honour I’d be prepared to give up my wife, only I’ll not give up Pretty Lady… I’d rather go to prison.” And Aleksey Grigoryevich praised him. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said. Your grandad brought her back in his carriage. And when Pretty Lady died, he buried her in the garden with musical accompaniment, buried the bitch and erected a stone with an inscription over her grave.’
‘So Aleksey Grigoryevich never did anyone down, then,’ I remarked.
‘That’s always the way it is: it’s the petty ones that see the pettiness in others.’
‘What sort of a chap was this Baush?’ I asked after some moments’ silence.
Sketches From a Hunter's Album Page 9