About three days after the weather grew warmer. Very early one morning
Yarmola came into my room and said carelessly:
‘We shall have to clean the guns, sir.’
‘Why?’ I asked, stretching myself under the blankets.
‘The hares have been busy in the night. There are any amount of tracks.
Shall we go after them?’
I saw that Yarmola was waiting impatiently to go to the forest, but he
hid his hunter’s passion beneath an assumed indifference. In fact, his
single-barrelled gun was in the passage already. From that gun not a
single woodcock had ever escaped, for all that it was adorned with a
few tin patches, and spliced over the places where rust and powder gas
had corroded the iron.
No sooner had we entered the forest than we came on a hare’s track. The
hare broke out into the road, ran about fifty yards along it, and then
made a huge leap into the fir plantation.
‘Now, we’ll get him in a moment,’ Yarmola said. ‘Since he’s shown
himself, he’ll die here. You go, sir....’ He pondered, considering by
certain signs known only to himself where he should post me. ‘You go to
the old inn. And I’ll get round him from Zanilin. As soon as the dog
starts him I’ll give you a shout.’
He disappeared instantly, as it were, plunging into a thick jungle of
brushwood. I listened. Not a sound betrayed his poacher movements; not
a twig snapped under his feet, in their bast shoes. Without hurrying
myself I came to the inn, a ruined and deserted hut, and I stopped on
the edge of a young pine forest beneath a tall fir with a straight
bare trunk. It was quiet as it can be quiet only in a forest on a
windless winter day. The branches were bent with the splendid lumps of
snow which clung to them, and made them look wonderful, festive, and
cold. Now and then a thin little twig broke off from the top, and with
extreme clearness one could hear it as it fell with a tiny cracking
noise, touching other twigs in its fall. The snow glinted rose in the
sun and blue in the shadow. I fell under the quiet spell of the grave
cold silence, and I seemed to feel time passing by me, slowly and
noiselessly.
Suddenly far away in the thicket came the sound of Riabchik’s bark--the
peculiar bark of a dog following a scent, a thin, nervous, trilling
bark that passes almost into a squeak. I heard Yarmola’s voice
immediately, calling angrily after the dog: ‘Get him! Get him!’ the
first word in a long-drawn falsetto, the second in a short bass note.
Judging from the direction of the bark, I thought the dog must be
running on my left, and I ran quickly across the meadow to get level
with the hare. I hadn’t made twenty steps when a huge grey hare jumped
out from behind a stump, laid back his long ears and ran leisurely
across the road with high delicate leaps, and hid himself in a
plantation. After him came Riabchik at full tilt. When he saw me he
wagged his tail faintly, snapped at the snow several times with his
teeth, and chased the hare again.
Suddenly Yarmola plunged out from the thicket as noiselessly as the dog.
‘Why didn’t you get across him, sir?’ he exclaimed, clicking his tongue
reproachfully.
‘But it was a long way ... more than a couple of hundred yards.’ Seeing
my confusion, Yarmola softened.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.... He won’t get away from us. Go towards the
Irenov road. He’ll come out there presently.’
I went towards the Irenov road, and in a couple of minutes I heard
the dog on a scent again somewhere near me. I was seized with the
excitement of the hunt and began to run, keeping my gun down, through
a thick shrubbery, breaking the branches and giving no heed to the
smart blows they dealt me. I ran for a very long time, and was already
beginning to lose my wind, when the dog suddenly stopped barking. I
slowed my pace. I had the idea that if I went straight on I should be
sure to meet Yarmola on the Irenov road. But I soon realised that I
had lost my way as I ran, turning the bushes and the stumps without a
thought of where I was going. Then I began to shout to Yarmola. He
made no answer.
Meanwhile I was going further. Little by little the forest grew
thinner. The ground fell away and became full of little hillocks. The
prints of my feet on the snow darkened and filled with water. Several
times I sank in it to my knees. I had to jump from hillock to hillock;
my feet sank in the thick brown moss which covered them as it were with
a soft carpet.
Soon the shrubbery came to an end. In front of me there was a large
round swamp, thinly covered with snow; out of the white shroud a few
little mounds emerged. Among the trees on the other side of the swamp,
the white walls of a hut could be seen. ‘It’s the Irenov gamekeeper
lives there, probably,’ I thought. ‘I must go in and ask the way.’
But it was not so easy to reach the hut. Every minute I sank in the
bog. My high boots filled with water and made a loud sucking noise at
every step, so that I could hardly drag them along.
Finally I managed to get through the marsh, climbed on top of a hillock
from whence I could examine the hut thoroughly. It was not even a
hut, but one of the chicken-legged erections of the fairy tales.
The floor was not built on to the ground, but was raised on piles,
probably because of the flood-water which covers all the Irenov forest
in the spring. But one of the sides had subsided with age, and this
gave the hut a lame and dismal appearance. Some of the window panes
were missing; their place was filled by some dirty rags that bellied
outwards.
I pressed the latch and opened the door. The room was very dark and
violet circles swam before my eyes, which had so long been looking at
the snow. For a long time I could not see whether there was any one in
the hut.
‘Ah! good people, is any one at home?’ I asked aloud.
Something moved near the stove. I went closer and saw an old woman,
sitting on the floor. A big heap of hen feathers lay before her. The
old woman was taking each feather separately, tearing off the down into
a basket. The quills she threw on to the floor.
‘But it’s Manuilikha, the Irenov witch.’ The thought flashed into my
mind, as soon as I examined her a little more attentively. She had all
the features of a witch, according to the folk-tales; her lean hollow
cheeks descended to a long, sharp, hanging chin, which almost touched
her hook nose. Her sunken, toothless mouth moved incessantly as though
she were chewing something. Her faded eyes, once blue, cold, round,
protruding, looked exactly like the eyes of a strange, ill-boding bird.
‘How d’ you do, granny?’ I said as affably as I could. ‘Your name’s
Manuilikha, isn’t it?’
Something began to bubble and rattle in the old woman’s chest by way of
reply. Strange sounds came out of her toothless, mumbling mouth, now
like the raucous cawing of an ancient crow, then changing abruptly
into a hoarse, broken falsetto.
‘Once, perhaps, good people called me Manuilikha.... But now they call
me What’s-her-name, and duck’s the name they gave me. What do _you_
want?’ she asked in a hostile tone, without interrupting her monotonous
occupation.
‘You see, I’ve lost my way, granny. Do you happen to have any milk?’
‘There’s no milk,’ the old woman cut me short, angrily. ‘There’s a pack
of people come straggling about the forest here.... You can’t keep them
all in food and drink....’
‘You’re unkind to your guests, granny.’
‘Quite true, my dear sir. I’m quite unkind. We don’t keep a store
cupboard for you. If you’re tired, sit down a while. Nobody will turn
you out. You know what the proverb says: “You can come and sit by our
gate, and listen to the noise of a feasting; but we are clever enough
to come to you for a dinner.” That’s how it is.’
These turns of speech immediately convinced me that the old woman
really was a stranger in those parts. The people there have no love
for the expressive speech, adorned with curious words, which a Russian
of the north so readily displays. Meanwhile the old woman continued
her work mechanically, mumbling under her nose, quicker and more
indistinctly all the while. I could catch only separate disconnected
words. ‘There now, Granny Manuilikha.... And who he is nobody knows....
My years are not a few.... He fidgets his feet, chatters and
gossips--just like a magpie....’
I listened for some time, and the sudden thought that I was with a mad
woman aroused in me a feeling of revolting fear.
However, I had time to catch a glimpse of everything round me. A huge
blistered stove occupied the greater part of the hut. There was no icon
in the place of honour. On the walls, instead of the customary huntsmen
with green moustaches and violet-coloured dogs, and unknown generals,
hung bunches of dried herbs, bundles of withered stalks and kitchen
utensils. I saw neither owl nor black cat; instead, two speckled fat
starlings glanced at me from the stove with a surprised, suspicious air.
‘Can’t I even have something to drink, granny?’ I asked, raising my
voice.
‘It’s there, in the tub,’ the old woman nodded.
The water tasted brackish, of the marsh. Thanking the old woman, though
she paid me not the least attention, I asked her how I could get back
to the road.
She suddenly lifted up her head, stared at me with her cold birdlike
eyes, and murmured hurriedly:
‘Go, go ... young man, go away. You have nothing to do here. There’s a
time for guests and a time for none.... Go, my dear sir, go.’
So nothing was left to me but to go. But there flashed into my mind
a last resource to soften the sternness of the old woman, if only a
little. I took out of my pocket a new silver sixpence and held it
out to Manuilikha. I was not mistaken; at the sight of the money the
old woman began to stir, her eyes widened, and she stretched out her
crooked, knotted, trembling fingers for the coin.
‘Oh no, Granny Manuilikha, I shan’t give it to you for nothing,’ I
teased, hiding the coin. ‘Tell me my fortune.’
The brown wrinkled face of the witch changed to a discontented grimace.
She hesitated and looked irresolutely at my hand that closed over the
coin. Her greed prevailed.
‘Very well then, come on,’ she mumbled, getting up from the floor with
difficulty. ‘I don’t tell anybody’s fortune nowadays, my dear.... I
have forgotten.... I am old, my eyes don’t see. But I’ll do it for you.’
Holding on to the wall, her bent body shaking at every step, she got to
the table, took a pack of dirty cards, thick with age, and pushed them
over to me.
‘Take the cards, cut with your left hand.... Nearest the heart.’
Spitting on her fingers she began to spread the surround. As they fell
on the table the cards made a noise like lumps of dough and arranged
themselves in a correct eight-pointed star.... When the last card fell
on its back and covered the king, Manuilikha stretched out her hand to
me.
‘Cross it with gold, my dear, and you will be happy, you will be rich,’
she began to whine in a gipsy beggar’s voice.
I pushed the coin I had ready into her hand. Quick as a monkey, the old
woman stowed it away in her jaw.
‘Something very important is coming to you from afar off,’ she began in
the usual voluble way. ‘A meeting with the queen of diamonds, and some
pleasant conversation in an important house. Very soon you will receive
unexpected news from the king of clubs. Certain troubles are coming,
and then a small legacy. You will be with a number of people; you will
get drunk.... Not very drunk, but I can see a spree is there. Your life
will be a long one. If you don’t die when you are sixty-seven, then....’
Suddenly she stopped, and lifted up her head as though listening.
I listened too. A woman’s voice sounded fresh, clear, and strong,
approaching the hut singing. And I recognised the words of the charming
Little Russian song:
‘Ah, is it the blossom or not the bloom
That bends the little white hazel-tree?
Ah, is it a dream or not a dream
That bows my little head....’
‘Well, now, be off, my dear.’ The old woman began to bustle about
anxiously, pushing me away from the table. ‘You must not be knocking
about in other people’s huts. Go your way....’
She even seized me by the sleeve of my jacket and pulled me to the
door. Her face showed an animal anxiety.
The singing came to an end abruptly, quite close to the hut. The
iron latch rattled loudly, and in the open door a tall laughing girl
appeared. With both hands she carefully held up her striped apron, out
of which there peeped three tiny birds’ heads with red necks and black
shiny eyes.
‘Look, granny, the finches hopped after me again,’ she cried, laughing.
‘Look, how funny they are. And, just as if on purpose, I had no bread
with me.’
But seeing me she became silent and blushed crimson. Her thick black
eyebrows frowned, and her eyes turned questioningly to the old woman.
‘The gentleman came in here to ask the way,’ the old woman explained.
‘Now, dear sir,’ she turned to me, with a resolute look, ‘you have
rested long enough. You have drunk some water, had a chat, and it’s
time to go. We are not the folk for you....’
‘Look here, my dear,’ I said to the girl. ‘Please show me the way to
the Irenov road; otherwise I’ll stick in this marsh for ever.’
It must have been that the kindly pleading tone in which I spoke
impressed her. Carefully she put her little finches on the stove, side
by side with the starlings, flung the overcoat which she had already
taken off on to the bench, and silently left the hut.