I returned home; but the image of the poor Akulina took a long time to fade from my mind, and her cornflowers, which have long since withered, remain with me to this day…
HAMLET OF THE SHCHIGROVSKY DISTRICT
ON one of my trips I received an invitation to dine with a wealthy landowner and hunter, Alexander Mikhailych G—. His village was situated about three miles from a small group of dwellings where I was staying at that time. I dressed up in my frock-coat, without which I advise no one to leave home, even though it be only for a hunting trip, and set off for Alexander Mikhailych’s place. Dinner was to begin at six; I arrived at five and found, already assembled, a large number of members of the nobility in uniforms, evening dress and other less specific types of costume. My host greeted me cordially, but at once hurried off into the servants’ hall. He was awaiting the arrival of an eminent dignitary and felt a degree of excitement over it that was hardly in keeping with his independent position in the world and his wealth. Alexander Mikhailych had never been married and disliked women; his parties were attended only by men. He lived on a big scale, had enlarged and done up his ancestral home in magnificent fashion, every year ordered from Moscow wines to the tune of fifteen thousand roubles and in general enjoyed the greatest respect. He had long ago retired from service and was not seeking honours of any kind… Why on earth, then, should he have fussed himself over the visit of an official guest and been so excited by it ever since the morning of his banquet? That remains obscured by the mists of uncertainty, as a notary of my acquaintance used to say when he was asked whether he took bribes from willing donors.
Parting with my host, I began to wander about the rooms. Almost all the guests were complete strangers to me; about twenty of them were already seated at the card tables. Among those playing preference were two military men with distinguished, if slightly down-at-heel, faces, and a few civilian gentlemen wearing high, tight collars and the kind of pendant, dyed whiskers affected only by resolute but well-disposed people (these well-disposed people were engaged in importantly sorting their cards and casting sideward glances at newcomers without moving their heads); also five or six district officials with round tummies, puffy, sticky little hands and modestly immobile little feet (these gentlemen spoke in soft voices, regaled everyone with timid smiles, held their cards close to their shirt-fronts and, when playing trumps, did not thump them down on the table but, on the contrary, let them drop with a floating motion on the green cloth and, as they gathered in their winnings, produced a slight, but very decorous and polite creaking sound). Other members of the nobility were sitting on divans or clustered in groups about the doorways and windows; a no longer young, though outwardly effeminate, landowner was standing in one corner, trembling and blushing and agitatedly twisting the watch signet on his stomach, though no one was paying any attention to him; other gentlemen, adorned in round frock-coats and chequered trousers of Moscow workmanship tailored by the foreigner, Fiers Klyukhin, master of his guild in perpetuity, were engaged in unusually free and lively discussion, liberally turning the fat, bare napes of their necks in one direction or another; a young man of about twenty, blond and myopic, dressed from head to foot in black, was visibly embarrassed, but continued to smile venomously.
I was, however, beginning to grow a little bored when suddenly I was joined by a certain Voinitsyn, a young man who had failed to complete his education and was now living in Alexander Mikhailych’s house in the capacity of… it would be difficult to say precisely in what capacity. He was an excellent shot and adept at training dogs. I had known him earlier in Moscow. He belonged to the run of young men who used to ‘play dumb as a post’ at every examination – that is to say, who never uttered a word in answer to the professor’s questions. These gentlemen were also known, in stylish parlance, as ‘sideburn-ites’.1 (These matters relate to the distant past, as you can readily appreciate.) It would be arranged as follows: they would call upon Voinitsyn, for instance. Voinitsyn, who until that moment had been sitting straight and motionless on his bench, perspiring hotly from head to toe and slowly, though fatuously, rolling his eyes around – he would rise, hastily button up his uniform right to the top and saunter crabwise to the examiners’ table.
‘Be good enough to take a ticket,’ a professor would say affably.
Voinitsyn would stretch out a hand and agitatedly finger the little pile of tickets.
‘You don’t have to choose one, if you don’t mind,’ would remark the querulous voice of some tetchy old man, a professor from another faculty, who had conceived a sudden dislike for the unfortunate ‘sideburn-ite’. Voinitsyn would submit to his fate, take a ticket, show its number and walk to the window to sit down while a previous examinee answered a question. At the window Voinitsyn would not take his eyes off the ticket, save perhaps once again to roll his eyes slowly around, and would remain stock-still in every limb. Eventually, however, the previous examinee would be finished. He would be told: ‘Good, you may go,’ or even ‘Good, sir, very good, sir,’ depending upon his abilities. Then they would call upon Voinitsyn. Voinitsyn would rise and approach the table with a firm step.
‘Read out the question,’ they would tell him.
Holding it in both hands, Voinitsyn would raise the ticket to the tip of his nose, read out the question slowly and slowly lower his arms.
‘Well, sir, be so good as to answer,’ the first professor would say casually, resting back in his chair and crossing his hands on his chest.
A silence deep as the grave would fall upon the proceedings.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
Voinitsyn would be silent. The old man from another faculty would begin to grow annoyed.
‘Come on, say something, man!’
This Voinitsyn of mine would remain silent, as if he had given up the ghost. The shaven nape of his neck would jut out still and sharp before the curious gaze of his comrades. The old man’s eyes were ready to jump out of his head: he had finally begun to loathe Voinitsyn.
‘Isn’t it rather strange, after all,’ another examiner would remark, ‘that you should stand there dumb as a post? So you don’t know the answer, is that it? If that’s so, say so.’
‘Permit me to take another ticket,’ the unfortunate chap would mumble. The professors exchanged looks.
‘Very well, then,’ says the chief examiner with a wave of his hand.
Voinitsyn again takes a ticket, again goes to the window, again returns to the table and again is as silent as a corpse. The old fellow from another faculty is just about to eat him alive. Finally they send him packing and award him a zero mark. By now you would think he’d at least make tracks. Not at all! He returns to his place and adopts the same motionless pose until the conclusion of the examination, when he leaves, exclaiming: ‘What a sweat that was! What a business!’ And all day he strolls around Moscow, occasionally clutching his head and bitterly cursing his wretched fate. Never once, of course, does he so much as glance at a book, and the next day the same thing happens all over again.
It was this Voinitsyn who took his place next to me. We talked together about our Moscow days, about our hunting experiences.
‘If you wish,’ he suddenly whispered to me, ‘I’ll introduce you to our leading local wit?’
‘Do me that honour.’
Voinitsyn led me up to a man of small stature, with a tall tuft of hair on the top of his head and whiskers, dressed in a brown frock-coat and a colourful necktie. His embittered, lively features conveyed a real air of wit and vindictiveness. A sour, fugitive smile endlessly contorted his lips; his small, dark, puckered eyes looked boldly out from beneath uneven eyelashes. Standing beside him was a landowner, broad of beam, soft, sugary – a real Lord Honeybun – and one-eyed. His laughter always anticipated the little man’s witticisms and he was literally melting with pleasure. Voinitsyn introduced me to the local wit, one Pyotr Petrovich Lupikhin by name. We made our introductions and exchanged the initial words of greeting.
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�And now allow me to introduce you to my best friend,’ said Lupikhin suddenly in a sharp tone of voice, seizing the sugary landowner by the arm. ‘Now don’t you be retiring, Kirila Selifanych,’ he added, ‘they won’t bite you. Here, my dear sirs,’ he continued, while the embarrassed Kirila Selifanych gave such awkward bows that it seemed his stomach was about to collapse, ‘here, sir, I recommend to you a most excellent member of the gentry. He enjoyed splendid health until he was fifty years of age, and then he suddenly took it into his head to cure his eyesight, as a result of which he lost the use of one eye. Since then he’s been dispensing cures to his peasants with the same degree of success… And they, it goes without saying, have shown a similar devotion…’
‘What a fellow,’ Kirila Selifanych muttered and burst into laughter.
‘Do complete what you were saying, my friend, do go on,’ Lupikhin inserted. ‘After all, they could well elect you to the judges’ bench, and they will elect you, you’ll see. Well, suppose, of course, that the court assessors do all the thinking for you, there’d still be a need in any event to express somebody else’s ideas, let’s say. What if the Governor should unexpectedly drop by and ask: “What’s the judge stammering for?” Well, suppose they say it’s an attack of paralysis, then he’ll say: “Bleed him, then, bleed him!” And that in your position, you’ll agree, wouldn’t be right and proper.’
The sugary landowner went off into a drum-roll of laughter.
‘Look at him laughing,’ Lupikhin continued, gazing wickedly at the quivering stomach of Kirila Selifanych. ‘And why shouldn’t he laugh?’ he added, turning to me. ‘He’s well fed, healthy, childless, his peasants aren’t mortgaged – after all, he’s curing them – and his wife’s a bit dotty.’ (Kirila Selifanych turned slightly to one side, feigning not to catch this, and continued to roar with laughter.) ‘I can laugh just the same, and my wife’s run off with a land surveyor.’ (He showed his teeth in a grin.) ‘Perhaps you didn’t know that? Yessir! She just upped and ran off and left me a letter which read: “Dear Pyotr Petrovich, forgive me, carried away by passion. I’m going off with the friend of my heart…” And the land surveyor only captured her heart by not cutting his nails and wearing his pants skin-tight. You’re surprised? “Such a frank fellow,” you’ll say… And, my God! we men of the steppes know how to open up the womb of truth. However, let’s go to one side. There’s no need for us to go on standing next to a future judge…’
He took me by the arm and we went to the window.
‘I pass here for a wit,’ he said to me in the course of conversation, ‘but you mustn’t believe that. I’m simply an embittered man and I speak my mind out loud. That’s why I’m so unrestrained. And why should I stand on ceremony, in fact? I don’t give a damn for any opinions and I’m not out for anything for myself. I have a wicked tongue – so what of it? A man with a wicked tongue at least doesn’t need to have a mind. But how refreshing it is, you wouldn’t believe it… Well, take a look, for example, at our host! Now I ask you, why on earth is he scurrying about like that, all the time glancing at the clock, smiling, perspiring, making himself look important and leaving us to die of hunger? A high-ranking dignitary’s not so unusual a sight, after all! There he is, there he is, again running – he’s even started hobbling about, look at him!’
And Lupikhin gave a screeching laugh.
‘One thing wrong is that there are no ladies,’ he continued with a deep sigh. ‘It’s a stag occasion – otherwise it would’ve been useful for the likes of us. Take a look, take a look,’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Prince Kozelsky’s coming – there he is, that tall man with a beard and yellow gloves. You can tell at once that he’s been abroad… And he makes a habit of arriving so late. That man alone, I tell you, is as stupid as a couple of merchant’s horses, but you just take the trouble to notice how condescendingly he addresses the likes of us, how magnanimously he permits himself to smile at the pleasantries of our famished mothers and daughters! Sometimes he even tries to be witty on his own account, although he doesn’t live here permanently; and the kind of witty remarks he makes! Just like trying to saw at a tow-rope with a blunt knife! He can’t stand the sight of me… I’ll go and pay my respects to him.’
And Lupikhin ran off in the prince’s direction.
‘And here comes my private enemy,’ he announced, suddenly turning back to me. ‘See that stout man with the tanned face and bristles on his head – there, the one who’s grasping his hat in his hand and stealing along by the wall, glancing all around him like a veritable wolf? For 400 roubles I sold him a horse that was worth a thousand, and this lowly creature now has every right to despise me; and yet he is so devoid of the capacity for understanding, especially in the morning, before he’s taken his tea, or immediately after dinner, that if you say “How d’you do?” to him he’ll answer: “How what, sir?” And here comes a general,’ Lupikhin went on, ‘a civilservice general in retirement, a general who’s lost all his money. He has a daughter of sugar-beet refinement and a factory of scrofula – I’m sorry, I didn’t get that right… Anyhow, you understand what I mean. Ah! and here’s an architect just dropped by! A German, replete with whiskers and no idea of his business – wonders’ll never cease! But as a matter of fact there’s no need for him to know his business: all he has to do is take bribes and put up more columns, more pillars, that is, for the pillars of our aristocracy!’
Lupikhin again gave vent to laughter. But suddenly an anxious excitement spread through the entire house. The dignitary had arrived. Our host literally plunged into the entrance hall. Several devoted members of his staff and some eager guests rushed after him. The noisy conversation changed into soft, pleasant talk, similar to the springtime humming of bees in their native hives. Only the indefatigably waspish Lupikhin and the superb drone Kozelsky did not lower their voices… And finally came the queen herself – the dignitary entered. Hearts were wafted to meet him, sitting torsos were raised a trifle; even the landowner who had bought the horse cheaply from Lupikhin, even he thrust his chin into his chest. The dignitary maintained his dignity with the utmost aplomb: nodding his head back as though bowing, he spoke a few appreciative words, each of which began with the letter ‘a’ uttered protractedly through the nose, and with a disapproval amounting to ravening hunger he glanced at Prince Kozelsky’s beard and offered the index finger of his left hand to the penniless civil-service general with the factory and daughter. After a few minutes, in the course of which the dignitary succeeded in remarking twice how glad he was that he had not arrived late for the dinner, the entire company proceeded into the dining-room, the bigwigs leading the way.
It is hardly necessary to tell the reader how the dignitary was given the seat of honour between the civil-service general and the provincial marshal of nobility, a man of unrestrained and dignified expression entirely in keeping with his starched shirt-front, infinitely broad waistcoat and round snuff-box full of French tobacco; how our host fussed, dashed about, busied himself importantly, urged his guests to partake of what was offered, smiled in passing at the dignitary’s back and, standing in one corner like a schoolboy, hastily spooned down a plate of soup or had a bite of beef; how the butler brought in a fish more than three feet long with a floral bouquet in its mouth; how the servants, all liveried and severe of face, morosely approached each member of the gentry either with Malaga or dry madeira and how almost all these gentlemen, especially the elderly, drank glass after glass as though submitting unwillingly to a sense of duty; how finally bottles of champagne began to pop and toasts began to be made: the reader is, no doubt, only too familiar with such matters. But particularly noteworthy, it seemed to me, was an anecdote told by the dignitary himself amid a universally joyous hush.
Someone – it may have been the penniless general, a man acquainted with the latest literary trends – remarked on the influence of women in general and particularly their influence on young men. ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the dignitary in amplification, ‘that is true. But young men s
hould be kept under the strictest control, otherwise they tend to go out of their minds over any and every kind of skirt.’ (Childishly happy smiles sped across the faces of all the guests; one landowner’s expression even lit up with gratitude.) ‘Bee-cause young men are stupid.’ (The dignitary, probably for the sake of grandness, sometimes altered the accepted accentuation of words.) ‘Take, for example, my son Ivan,’ he continued. ‘The fool’s only just twenty, but he comes to me suddenly and says: “Permit me, sir, to get married.” I tell him: “You’re a fool, do your service first…” Well, of course, despair, tears… But in my view that’s it…’ (The dignitary pronounced the words ‘that’s it’ more with his stomach than his lips; he paused and directed a majestic glance at his neighbour, the general, at the same time raising his brows quite unexpectedly high. The civil-service general inclined his head pleasantly a little on one side and with extraordinary rapidity blinked one eye, which was turned towards the dignitary.) ‘And now what d’you think,’ the dignitary started up again, ‘now he himself writes to me and says: “Thank you, sir, for teaching me not to be so foolish.” That’s how one ought to handle such matters.’ All the guests, needless to say, were in full agreement with the speaker and apparently grew quite enlivened at receiving such pleasure and such injunctions. After dinner the entire company rose and moved into the drawing-room with a great deal more noisiness, though it was still within the bounds of decency and on this occasion literally justified. They all sat down to cards.
Sketches From a Hunter's Album Page 33