I
By narrow mountain paths, from one villa to another, a small wandering
troupe made their way along the southern shore of the Crimea. Ahead
commonly ran the white poodle, Arto, with his long red tongue hanging
out from one side of his mouth. The poodle was shorn to look like
a lion. At crossways he would stop, wag his tail, and look back
questioningly. He seemed to obtain some sort of sign, known to him
alone, and without waiting for the troupe to catch up he would bound
forward on the right track, shaking his shaggy ears, never making a
mistake. Following the dog came the twelve-year-old Sergey, carrying
under his left arm a little mattress for his acrobatic exercises, and
holding in his right hand a narrow dirty cage, with a goldfinch, taught
to pull out from a case various coloured papers on which were printed
predictions of coming fortune. Last of all came the oldest member of
the troupe, grandfather Martin Lodishkin, with a barrel organ on his
bent back.
The organ was an old one, very hoarse, and suffering from a cough;
it had undergone, in the century of its existence, some scores of
mendings. It played two things: a melancholy German waltz of Launer
and a galop from "A Trip to China Town," both in fashion thirty to
forty years ago, but now forgotten by all. Beyond these drawbacks it
must be said that the organ had two false tubes; one of them, a treble,
was absolutely mute, did not play, and therefore when its turn came
the whole harmony would, as it were, stutter, go lame and stumble. The
other tube, giving forth a bass note, had something the matter with the
valve, which would not shut, and having once been played it would not
altogether stop, but rolled onward on the same bass note, deafening
and confusing the other sounds, till suddenly, at its own caprice, it
would stop. Grandfather himself acknowledged the deficiencies of his
instrument, and might sometimes be heard to remark jocosely, though
with a tinge of secret grief:
"What's to be done?... An ancient organ ... it has a cold.... When you
play it the gentry take offence. 'Tfu,' they say, 'what a wretched
thing!' And these pieces were very good in their time, and fashionable,
but people nowadays by no means adore good music. Give them 'The
Geisha,' 'Under the Double-headed Eagle,' please, or the waltz from
'The Seller of Birds.' Of course, these tubes.... I took the organ to
the shop, but they wouldn't undertake to mend it. 'It needs new tubes,'
said they. 'But, best of all, if you'll take our advice, sell the
rusty thing to a museum ... as a sort of curio....' Well, well, that's
enough! She's fed us till now, Sergey and me, and if God grant, she
will go on feeding us."
Grandfather Martin Lodishkin loved his organ as it is only possible
to love something living, near, something actually akin, if it may be
so expressed. Having lived with his organ for many years of a trying
vagabond life, he had at last come to see in it something inspired,
come to feel as if it were almost a conscious being. It would happen
sometimes at night, when they were lying on the floor of some dirty
inn, that the barrel organ, placed beside the old man's pillow, would
suddenly give vent to a faint note, a sad melancholy quavering note,
like an old man's sigh. And Lodishkin would put out his hand to its
carved wooden side and whisper caressingly:
"What is it, brother? Complaining, eh!... Have patience, friend...."
And as much as Lodishkin loved his organ, and perhaps even a little
more, he loved the other two companions of his wanderings, Arto, the
poodle, and little Sergey. He had hired the boy five years before from
a bad character, a widower cobbler, promising to pay him two roubles
a month. Shortly afterwards the cobbler had died, and Sergey remained
with grandfather, bound to him for ever by their common life and the
little daily interests of the troupe.