The small village of Kolotovka once belonged to a lady known in the
neighbourhood by the nickname of Skin-flint, in illusion to her keen
business habits (her real name is lost in oblivion), but has of late
years been the property of a German from Petersburg. The village lies on
the slope of a barren hill, which is cut in half from top to bottom by a
tremendous ravine. It is a yawning chasm, with shelving sides hollowed
out by the action of rain and snow, and it winds along the very centre
of the village street; it separates the two sides of the unlucky hamlet
far more than a river would do, for a river could, at least, be crossed
by a bridge. A few gaunt willows creep timorously down its sandy sides;
at the very bottom, which is dry and yellow as copper, lie huge slabs of
argillaceous rock. A cheerless position, there's no denying, yet all the
surrounding inhabitants know the road to Kolotovka well; they go there
often, and are always glad to go.
At the very summit of the ravine, a few paces from the point where it
starts as a narrow fissure in the earth, there stands a small square
hut. It stands alone, apart from all the others. It is thatched, and has
a chimney; one window keeps watch like a sharp eye over the ravine, and
on winter evenings when it is lighted from within, it is seen far away
in the dim frosty fog, and its twinkling light is the guiding star of
many a peasant on his road. A blue board is nailed up above the door;
this hut is a tavern, called the 'Welcome Resort.' Spirits are sold here
probably no cheaper than the usual price, but it is far more frequented
than any other establishment of the same sort in the neighbourhood. The
explanation of this is to be found in the tavern-keeper, Nikolai
Ivanitch.
Nikolai Ivanitch--once a slender, curly-headed and rosy-cheeked young
fellow, now an excessively stout, grizzled man with a fat face, sly and
good-natured little eyes, and a shiny forehead, with wrinkles like lines
drawn all over it--has lived for more than twenty years in Kolotovka.
Nikolai Ivanitch is a shrewd, acute fellow, like the majority of
tavern-keepers. Though he makes no conspicuous effort to please or to
talk to people, he has the art of attracting and keeping customers, who
find it particularly pleasant to sit at his bar under the placid and
genial, though alert eye, of the phlegmatic host. He has a great deal of
common sense; he thoroughly understands the landowner's conditions of
life, the peasant's, and the tradesman's. He could give sensible advice
on difficult points, but, like a cautious man and an egoist, prefers to
stand aloof, and at most--and that only in the case of his favourite
customers--by remote hints, dropped, as it were, unintentionally, to
lead them into the true way. He is an authority on everything that is of
interest or importance to a Russian; on horses and cattle, on timber,
bricks, and crockery, on woollen stuffs and on leather, on songs and
dances. When he has no customers he is usually sitting like a sack on
the ground before the door of his hut, his thin legs tucked under him,
exchanging a friendly greeting with every passer-by. He has seen a great
deal in his time; many a score of petty landowners, who used to come to
him for spirits, he has seen pass away before him; he knows everything
that is done for eighty miles round, and never gossips, never gives a
sign of knowing what is unsuspected by the most keen-sighted
police-officer. He keeps his own counsel, laughs, and makes his glasses
ring. His neighbours respect him; the civilian general Shtcherpetenko,
the landowner highest in rank in the district, gives him a condescending
nod whenever he drives past his little house. Nikolai Ivanitch is a man
of influence; he made a notorious horse-stealer return a horse he had
taken from the stable of one of his friends; he brought the peasants of
a neighbouring village to their senses when they refused to accept a new
overseer, and so on. It must not be imagined, though, that he does this
from love of justice, from devotion to his neighbour--no! he simply
tries to prevent anything that might, in any way, interfere with his
ease and comfort. Nikolai Ivanitch is married, and has children. His
wife, a smart, sharp-nosed and keen-eyed woman of the tradesman class,
has grown somewhat stout of late years, like her husband. He relies on
her in everything, and she keeps the key of the cash-box. Drunken
brawlers are afraid of her; she does not like them; they bring little
profit and make a great deal of noise: those who are taciturn and surly
in their cups are more to her taste. Nikolai Ivanitch's children are
still small; the first four all died, but those that are left take after
their parents: it is a pleasure to look at their intelligent, healthy
little faces.
It was an insufferably hot day in July when, slowly dragging my feet
along, I went up alongside the Kolotovka ravine with my dog towards the
Welcome Resort. The sun blazed, as it were, fiercely in the sky, baking
the parched earth relentlessly; the air was thick with stifling dust.
Glossy crows and ravens with gaping beaks looked plaintively at the
passers-by, as though asking for sympathy; only the sparrows did not
droop, but, pluming their feathers, twittered more vigorously than ever
as they quarrelled among the hedges, or flew up all together from the
dusty road, and hovered in grey clouds over the green hempfields. I was
tormented by thirst. There was no water near: in Kolotovka, as in many
other villages of the steppes, the peasants, having no spring or well,
drink a sort of thin mud out of the pond.... For no one could call that
repulsive beverage water. I wanted to ask for a glass of beer or kvas at
Nikolai Ivanitch's.
It must be confessed that at no time of the year does Kolotovka present
a very cheering spectacle; but it has a particularly depressing effect
when the relentless rays of a dazzling July sun pour down full upon the
brown, tumble-down roofs of the houses and the deep ravine, and the
parched, dusty common over which the thin, long-legged hens are straying
hopelessly, and the remains of the old manor-house, now a hollow, grey
framework of aspenwood, with holes instead of windows, overgrown with
nettles, wormwood, and rank grass, and the pond black, as though charred
and covered with goose feathers, with its edge of half-dried mud, and
its broken-down dyke, near which, on the finely trodden, ash-like earth,
sheep, breathless and gasping with the heat, huddle dejectedly together,
their heads drooping with weary patience, as though waiting for this
insufferable heat to pass at last. With weary steps I drew near Nikolai
Ivanitch's dwelling, arousing in the village children the usual wonder
manifested in a concentrated, meaningless stare, and in the dogs an
indignation expressed in such hoarse and furious barking that it seemed
as if it were tearing their very entrails, and left them breathless and
choking, when suddenly in the tavern doorway there appeared a tall
peasant without a cap, in a frieze cloak, girt about below his waist
with a blue handkerchief. He looked like a house-serf; thick grey hair
stood up in disorder above his withered and wrinkled face. He was
calling to some one hurriedly, waving his arms, which obviously were not
quite under his control. It could be seen that he had been drinking
already.
'Come, come along!' he stammered, raising his shaggy eyebrows with an
effort. 'Come, Blinkard, come along! Ah, brother, how you creep along,
'pon my word! It's too bad, brother. They're waiting for you within, and
here you crawl along.... Come.'
'Well, I'm coming, I'm coming!' called a jarring voice, and from behind
a hut a little, short, fat, lame man came into sight. He wore a rather
tidy cloth coat, pulled half on, and a high pointed cap right over his
brows, which gave his round plump face a sly and comic expression. His
little yellow eyes moved restlessly about, his thin lips wore a
continual forced smile, while his sharp, long nose peered forward
saucily in front like a rudder. 'I'm coming, my dear fellow.' He went
hobbling towards the tavern. 'What are you calling me for?... Who's
waiting for me?'
'What am I calling you for?' repeated the man in the frieze coat
reproachfully.' You're a queer fish, Blinkard: we call you to come to
the tavern, and you ask what for? Here are honest folks all waiting for
you: Yashka the Turk, and the Wild Master, and the booth-keeper from
Zhizdry. Yashka's got a bet on with the booth-keeper: the stake's a pot
of beer--for the one that does best, sings the best, I mean... do you
see?'
'Is Yashka going to sing?' said the man addressed as Blinkard, with
lively interest. 'But isn't it your humbug, Gabbler?'
'I'm not humbugging,' answered the Gabbler, with dignity; 'it's you are
crazy. I should think he would sing since he's got a bet on it, you
precious innocent, you noodle, Blinkard!'
'Well, come in, simpleton!' retorted the Blinkard.
'Then give us a kiss at least, lovey,' stammered the Gabbler, opening
wide his arms.
'Get out, you great softy!' responded the Blinkard contemptuously,
giving him a poke with his elbow, and both, stooping, entered the low
doorway.
The conversation I had overheard roused my curiosity exceedingly. More
than once rumours had reached me of Yashka the Turk as the best singer
in the vicinity, and here was an opportunity all at once of hearing him
in competition with another master of the art. I quickened my steps and
went into the house.
Few of my readers have probably had an opportunity of getting a good
view of any village taverns, but we sportsmen go everywhere. They are
constructed on an exceedingly simple plan. They usually consist of a
dark outer-shed, and an inner room with a chimney, divided in two by a
partition, behind which none of the customers have a right to go. In
this partition there is a wide opening cut above a broad oak table. At
this table or bar the spirits are served. Sealed up bottles of various
sizes stand on the shelves, right opposite the opening. In the front
part of the room, devoted to customers, there are benches, two or three
empty barrels, and a corner table. Village taverns are for the most part
rather dark, and you hardly ever see on their wainscotted walls any of
the glaring cheap prints which few huts are without.
When I went into the Welcome Resort, a fairly large party were already
assembled there.
In his usual place behind the bar, almost filling up the entire opening
in the partition, stood Nikolai Ivanitch in a striped print shirt; with
a lazy smile on his full face, he poured out with his plump white hand
two glasses of spirits for the Blinkard and the Gabbler as they came in;
behind him, in a corner near the window, could be seen his sharp-eyed
wife. In the middle of the room was standing Yashka the Turk, a thin,
graceful fellow of three-and-twenty, dressed in a long skirted coat of
blue nankin. He looked a smart factory hand, and could not, to judge by
his appearance, boast of very good health. His hollow cheeks, his large,
restless grey eyes, his straight nose, with its delicate mobile
nostrils, his pale brown curls brushed back over the sloping white brow,
his full but beautiful, expressive lips, and his whole face betrayed a
passionate and sensitive nature. He was in a state of great excitement;
he blinked, his breathing was hurried, his hands shook, as though in
fever, and he was really in a fever--that sudden fever of excitement
which is so well-known to all who have to speak and sing before an
audience. Near him stood a man of about forty, with broad shoulders and
broad jaws, with a low forehead, narrow Tartar eyes, a short flat nose,
a square chin, and shining black hair coarse as bristles. The expression
of his face--a swarthy face, with a sort of leaden hue in it--and
especially of his pale lips, might almost have been called savage, if it
had not been so still and dreamy. He hardly stirred a muscle; he only
looked slowly about him like a bull under the yoke. He was dressed in a
sort of surtout, not over new, with smooth brass buttons; an old black
silk handkerchief was twisted round his immense neck. He was called the
Wild Master. Right opposite him, on a bench under the holy pictures, was
sitting Yashka's rival, the booth-keeper from Zhizdry; he was a short,
stoutly-built man about thirty, pock-marked, and curly-headed, with a
blunt, turn-up nose, lively brown eyes, and a scanty beard. He looked
keenly about him, and, sitting with his hands under him, he kept
carelessly swinging his legs and tapping with his feet, which were
encased in stylish top-boots with a coloured edging. He wore a new thin
coat of grey cloth, with a plush collar, in sharp contrast with the
crimson shirt below, buttoned close across the chest. In the opposite
corner, to the right of the door, a peasant sat at the table in a
narrow, shabby smock-frock, with a huge rent on the shoulder. The
sunlight fell in a narrow, yellowish streak through the dusty panes of
the two small windows, but it seemed as if it struggled in vain with the
habitual darkness of the room; all the objects in it were dimly, as it
were, patchily lighted up. On the other hand, it was almost cool in the
room, and the sense of stifling heat dropped off me like a weary load
directly I crossed the threshold.
My entrance, I could see, was at first somewhat disconcerting to Nikolai
Ivanitch's customers; but observing that he greeted me as a friend, they
were reassured, and took no more notice of me. I asked for some beer and
sat down in the corner, near the peasant in the ragged smock.
'Well, well,' piped the Gabbler, suddenly draining a glass of spirits at
one gulp, and accompanying his exclamation with the strange
gesticulations, without which he seemed unable to utter a single word;
'what are we waiting for? If we're going to begin, then begin. Hey,
Yasha?'
'Begin, begin,' chimed in Nikolai Ivanitch approvingly.
'Let's begin, by all means,' observed the booth-keeper coolly, with a
self-confident smile; 'I'm ready.'
'And I'm ready,' Yakov pronounced in a voice thrilled with excitement.
'Well, begin, lads,' whined the Blinkard. But, in spite of the
unanimously expressed desire, neither began; the booth-keeper did not
even get up from the bench--they all seemed to be waiting for something.
'Begin!' said the Wild Master sharply and sullenly. Yashka started. The
booth-keeper pulled down his girdle and cleared his throat.
'But who's to begin?' he inquired in a slightly changed voice of the
Wild Master, who still stood motionless in the middle of the room, his
stalwart legs wide apart and his powerful arms thrust up to the elbow
into his breeches pockets.
'You, you, booth-keeper,' stammered the Gabbler; 'you, to be sure,
brother.'
The Wild Master looked at him from under his brows. The Gabbler gave a
faint squeak, in confusion looked away at the ceiling, twitched his
shoulder, and said no more.
'Cast lots,' the Wild Master pronounced emphatically; 'and the pot on
the table.'
Nikolai Ivanitch bent down, and with a gasp picked up the pot of beer
from the floor and set it on the table.