Yakov fumbled in his pockets, took out a halfpenny, and marked it with
his teeth. The booth-keeper pulled from under the skirts of his long
coat a new leather purse, deliberately untied the string, and shaking
out a quantity of small change into his hand, picked out a new
halfpenny. The Gabbler held out his dirty cap, with its broken peak
hanging loose; Yakov dropped his halfpenny in, and the booth-keeper his.
'You must pick out one,' said the Wild Master, turning to the Blinkard.
The Blinkard smiled complacently, took the cap in both hands, and began
shaking it.
For an instant a profound silence reigned; the halfpennies clinked
faintly, jingling against each other. I looked round attentively; every
face wore an expression of intense expectation; the Wild Master himself
showed signs of uneasiness; my neighbour, even, the peasant in the
tattered smock, craned his neck inquisitively. The Blinkard put his hand
into the cap and took out the booth-keeper's halfpenny; every one drew a
long breath. Yakov flushed, and the booth-keeper passed his hand over
his hair.
'There, I said you'd begin,' cried the Gabbler; 'didn't I say so?'
'There, there, don't cluck,' remarked the Wild Master contemptuously.
'Begin,' he went on, with a nod to the booth-keeper.
'What song am I to sing?' asked the booth-keeper, beginning to be
nervous.
'What you choose,' answered the Blinkard; 'sing what you think best.'
'What you choose, to be sure,' Nikolai Ivanitch chimed in, slowly
smoothing his hand on his breast, 'you're quite at liberty about that.
Sing what you like; only sing well; and we'll give a fair decision
afterwards.'
'A fair decision, of course,' put in the Gabbler, licking the edge of
his empty glass.
'Let me clear my throat a bit, mates,' said the booth-keeper, fingering
the collar of his coat.
'Come, come, no nonsense--begin!' protested the Wild Master, and he
looked down.
The booth-keeper thought a minute, shook his head, and stepped forward.
Yakov's eyes were riveted upon him.
But before I enter upon a description of the contest itself, I think it
will not be amiss to say a few words about each of the personages taking
part in my story. The lives of some of them were known to me already
when I met them in the Welcome Resort; I collected some facts about the
others later on.
Let us begin with the Gabbler. This man's real name was Evgraf
Ivanovitch; but no one in the whole neighbourhood knew him as anything
but the Gabbler, and he himself referred to himself by that nickname; so
well did it fit him. Indeed, nothing could have been more appropriate to
his insignificant, ever-restless features. He was a dissipated,
unmarried house-serf, whose own masters had long ago got rid of him, and
who, without any employment, without earning a halfpenny, found means to
get drunk every day at other people's expense. He had a great number of
acquaintances who treated him to drinks of spirits and tea, though they
could not have said why they did so themselves; for, far from being
entertaining in company, he bored every one with his meaningless
chatter, his insufferable familiarity, his spasmodic gestures and
incessant, unnatural laugh. He could neither sing nor dance; he had
never said a clever, or even a sensible thing in his life; he chattered
away, telling lies about everything--a regular Gabbler! And yet not a
single drinking party for thirty miles around took place without his
lank figure turning up among the guests; so that they were used to him
by now, and put up with his presence as a necessary evil. They all, it
is true, treated him with contempt; but the Wild Master was the only one
who knew how to keep his foolish sallies in check.
The Blinkard was not in the least like the Gabbler. His nickname, too,
suited him, though he was no more given to blinking than other people;
it is a well-known fact, that the Russian peasants have a talent for
finding good nicknames. In spite of my endeavours to get more detailed
information about this man's past, many passages in his life have
remained spots of darkness to me, and probably to many other people;
episodes, buried, as the bookmen say, in the darkness of oblivion. I
could only find out that he was once a coachman in the service of an old
childless lady; that he had run away with three horses he was in charge
of; had been lost for a whole year, and no doubt, convinced by
experience of the drawbacks and hardships of a wandering life, he had
gone back, a cripple, and flung himself at his mistress's feet. He
succeeded in a few years in smoothing over his offence by his exemplary
conduct, and, gradually getting higher in her favour, at last gained her
complete confidence, was made a bailiff, and on his mistress's death,
turned out--in what way was never known--to have received his freedom.
He got admitted into the class of tradesmen; rented patches of market
garden from the neighbours; grew rich, and now was living in ease and
comfort. He was a man of experience, who knew on which side his bread
was buttered; was more actuated by prudence than by either good or
ill-nature; had knocked about, understood men, and knew how to turn them
to his own advantage. He was cautious, and at the same time
enterprising, like a fox; though he was as fond of gossip as an old
woman, he never let out his own affairs, while he made everyone else
talk freely of theirs. He did not affect to be a simpleton, though, as
so many crafty men of his sort do; indeed it would have been difficult
for him to take any one in, in that way; I have never seen a sharper,
keener pair of eyes than his tiny cunning little 'peepers,' as they call
them in Orel. They were never simply looking about; they were always
looking one up and down and through and through. The Blinkard would
sometimes ponder for weeks together over some apparently simple
undertaking, and again he would suddenly decide on a desperately bold
line of action, which one would fancy would bring him to ruin.... But it
would be sure to turn out all right; everything would go smoothly. He
was lucky, and believed in his own luck, and believed in omens. He was
exceedingly superstitious in general. He was not liked, because he would
have nothing much to do with anyone, but he was respected. His whole
family consisted of one little son, whom he idolised, and who, brought
up by such a father, is likely to get on in the world. 'Little
Blinkard'll be his father over again,' is said of him already, in
undertones by the old men, as they sit on their mud walls gossiping on
summer evenings, and every one knows what that means; there is no need
to say more.
As to Yashka the Turk and the booth-keeper, there is no need to say much
about them. Yakov, called the Turk because he actually was descended
from a Turkish woman, a prisoner from the war, was by nature an artist
in every sense of the word, and by calling, a ladler in a paper factory
belonging to a merchant. As for the booth-keeper, his career, I must
own, I know nothing of; he struck me as being a smart townsman of the
tradesman class, ready to turn his hand to anything. But the Wild Master
calls for a more detailed account.
The first impression the sight of this man produced on you was a sense
of coarse, heavy, irresistible power. He was clumsily built, a
'shambler,' as they say about us, but there was an air of triumphant
vigour about him, and--strange to say--his bear-like figure was not
without a certain grace of its own, proceeding, perhaps, from his
absolutely placid confidence in his own strength. It was hard to decide
at first to what class this Hercules belonged: he did not look like a
house-serf, nor a tradesman, nor an impoverished clerk out of work, nor
a small ruined landowner, such as takes to being a huntsman or a
fighting man; he was, in fact, quite individual. No one knew where he
came from or what brought him into our district; it was said that he
came of free peasant-proprietor stock, and had once been in the
government service somewhere, but nothing positive was known about this;
and indeed there was no one from whom one could learn--certainly not
from him; he was the most silent and morose of men. So much so that no
one knew for certain what he lived on; he followed no trade, visited no
one, associated with scarcely anyone; yet he had money to spend; little
enough, it is true, still he had some. In his behaviour he was not
exactly retiring--retiring was not a word that could be applied to him:
he lived as though he noticed no one about him, and cared for no one.
The Wild Master (that was the nickname they had given him; his real name
was Perevlyesov) enjoyed an immense influence in the whole district; he
was obeyed with eager promptitude, though he had no kind of right to
give orders to anyone, and did not himself evince the slightest
pretension to authority over the people with whom he came into casual
contact He spoke--they obeyed: strength always has an influence of its
own. He scarcely drank at all, had nothing to do with women, and was
passionately fond of singing. There was much that was mysterious about
this man; it seemed as though vast forces sullenly reposed within him,
knowing, as it were, that once roused, once bursting free, they were
bound to crush him and everything they came in contact with; and I am
greatly mistaken if, in this man's life, there had not been some such
outbreak; if it was not owing to the lessons of experience, to a narrow
escape from ruin, that he now kept himself so tightly in hand. What
especially struck me in him was the combination of a sort of inborn
natural ferocity, with an equally inborn generosity--a combination I
have never met in any other man.
And so the booth-keeper stepped forward, and, half shutting his eyes,
began singing in high falsetto. He had a fairly sweet and pleasant
voice, though rather hoarse: he played with his voice like a woodlark,
twisting and turning it in incessant roulades and trills up and down the
scale, continually returning to the highest notes, which he held and
prolonged with special care. Then he would break off, and again suddenly
take up the first motive with a sort of go-ahead daring. His modulations
were at times rather bold, at times rather comical; they would have
given a connoisseur great satisfaction, and have made a German furiously
indignant. He was a Russian _tenore di grazia, ténor léger_. He
sang a song to a lively dance-tune, the words of which, all that I could
catch through the endless maze of variations, ejaculations and
repetitions, were as follows:
'A tiny patch of land, young lass,
I'll plough for thee,
And tiny crimson flowers, young lass,
I'll sow for thee.'
He sang; all listened to him with great attention. He seemed to feel
that he had to do with really musical people, and therefore was exerting
himself to do his best. And they really are musical in our part of the
country; the village of Sergievskoe on the Orel highroad is deservedly
noted throughout Russia for its harmonious chorus-singing. The
booth-keeper sang for a long while without evoking much enthusiasm in
his audience; he lacked the support of a chorus; but at last, after one
particularly bold flourish, which set even the Wild Master smiling, the
Gabbler could not refrain from a shout of delight. Everyone was roused.
The Gabbler and the Blinkard began joining in in an undertone, and
exclaiming: 'Bravely done!... Take it, you rogue!... Sing it out, you
serpent! Hold it! That shake again, you dog you!... May Herod confound
your soul!' and so on. Nikolai Ivanitch behind the bar was nodding his
head from side to side approvingly. The Gabbler at last was swinging his
legs, tapping with his feet and twitching his shoulder, while Yashka's
eyes fairly glowed like coal, and he trembled all over like a leaf, and
smiled nervously. The Wild Master alone did not change countenance, and
stood motionless as before; but his eyes, fastened on the booth-keeper,
looked somewhat softened, though the expression of his lips was still
scornful. Emboldened by the signs of general approbation, the
booth-keeper went off in a whirl of flourishes, and began to round off
such trills, to turn such shakes off his tongue, and to make such
furious play with his throat, that when at last, pale, exhausted, and
bathed in hot perspiration, he uttered the last dying note, his whole
body flung back, a general united shout greeted him in a violent
outburst. The Gabbler threw himself on his neck and began strangling him
in his long, bony arms; a flush came out on Nikolai Ivanitch's oily
face, and he seemed to have grown younger; Yashka shouted like mad:
'Capital, capital!'--even my neighbour, the peasant in the torn smock,
could not restrain himself, and with a blow of his fist on the table he
cried: 'Aha! well done, damn my soul, well done!' And he spat on one
side with an air of decision.
'Well, brother, you've given us a treat!' bawled the Gabbler, not
releasing the exhausted booth-keeper from his embraces; 'you've given us
a treat, there's no denying! You've won, brother, you've won! I
congratulate you--the quart's yours! Yashka's miles behind you... I
tell you: miles... take my word for it.' (And again he hugged the
booth-keeper to his breast.)
'There, let him alone, let him alone; there's no being rid of you'...
said the Blinkard with vexation; 'let him sit down on the bench; he's
tired, see... You're a ninny, brother, a perfect ninny! What are you
sticking to him like a wet leaf for...'
'Well, then, let him sit down, and I'll drink to his health,' said the
Gabbler, and he went up to the bar. 'At your expense, brother,' he
added, addressing the booth-keeper.
The latter nodded, sat down on the bench, pulled a piece of cloth out of
his cap, and began wiping his face, while the Gabbler, with greedy
haste, emptied his glass, and, with a grunt, assumed, after the manner
of confirmed drinkers, an expression of careworn melancholy.
'You sing beautifully, brother, beautifully,' Nikolai Ivanitch observed
caressingly. 'And now it's your turn, Yasha; mind, now, don't be afraid.
We shall see who's who; we shall see. The booth-keeper sings
beautifully, though; 'pon my soul, he does.'
'Very beautifully,' observed Nikolai Ivanitch's wife, and she looked
with a smile at Yakov.
'Beautifully, ha!' repeated my neighbour in an undertone.
'Ah, a wild man of the woods!' the Gabbler vociferated suddenly, and
going up to the peasant with the rent on his shoulder, he pointed at him
with his finger, while he pranced about and went off into an insulting
guffaw. 'Ha! ha! get along! wild man of the woods! Here's a ragamuffin
from Woodland village! What brought you here?' he bawled amidst
laughter.
The poor peasant was abashed, and was just about to get up and make off
as fast as he could, when suddenly the Wild Master's iron voice was
heard:
'What does the insufferable brute mean?' he articulated, grinding his
teeth.
'I wasn't doing nothing,' muttered the Gabbler. 'I didn't... I
only....'
'There, all right, shut up!' retorted the Wild Master. 'Yakov, begin!'
Yakov took himself by his throat:
'Well, really, brothers,... something.... Hm, I don't know, on my word,
what....'
'Come, that's enough; don't be timid. For shame!... why go back?... Sing
the best you can, by God's gift.'
And the Wild Master looked down expectant. Yakov was silent for a
minute; he glanced round, and covered his face with his hand. All had
their eyes simply fastened upon him, especially the booth-keeper, on
whose face a faint, involuntary uneasiness could be seen through his
habitual expression of self-confidence and the triumph of his success.
He leant back against the wall, and again put both hands under him, but
did not swing his legs as before. When at last Yakov uncovered his face
it was pale as a dead man's; his eyes gleamed faintly under their
drooping lashes. He gave a deep sigh, and began to sing.... The first
sound of his voice was faint and unequal, and seemed not to come from
his chest, but to be wafted from somewhere afar off, as though it had
floated by chance into the room. A strange effect was produced on all of
us by this trembling, resonant note; we glanced at one another, and
Nikolai Ivanitch's wife seemed to draw herself up. This first note was
followed by another, bolder and prolonged, but still obviously
quivering, like a harpstring when suddenly struck by a stray finger it
throbs in a last, swiftly-dying tremble; the second was followed by a
third, and, gradually gaining fire and breadth, the strains swelled into
a pathetic melody. 'Not one little path ran into the field,' he sang,
and sweet and mournful it was in our ears. I have seldom, I must
confess, heard a voice like it; it was slightly hoarse, and not
perfectly true; there was even something morbid about it at first; but
it had genuine depth of passion, and youth and sweetness and a sort of
fascinating, careless, pathetic melancholy. A spirit of truth and fire,
a Russian spirit, was sounding and breathing in that voice, and it
seemed to go straight to your heart, to go straight to all that was
Russian in it. The song swelled and flowed. Yakov was clearly carried
away by enthusiasm; he was not timid now; he surrendered himself wholly
to the rapture of his art; his voice no longer trembled; it quivered,
but with the scarce perceptible inward quiver of passion, which pierces
like an arrow to the very soul of the listeners; and he steadily gained
strength and firmness and breadth. I remember I once saw at sunset on a
flat sandy shore, when the tide was low and the sea's roar came weighty
and menacing from the distance, a great white sea-gull; it sat
motionless, its silky bosom facing the crimson glow of the setting sun,
and only now and then opening wide its great wings to greet the
well-known sea, to greet the sinking lurid sun: I recalled it, as I
heard Yakov. He sang, utterly forgetful of his rival and all of us; he
seemed supported, as a bold swimmer by the waves, by our silent,
passionate sympathy. He sang, and in every sound of his voice one seemed
to feel something dear and akin to us, something of breadth and space,
as though the familiar steppes were unfolding before our eyes and
stretching away into endless distance. I felt the tears gathering in my
bosom and rising to my eyes; suddenly I was struck by dull, smothered
sobs.... I looked round--the innkeeper's wife was weeping, her bosom
pressed close to the window. Yakov threw a quick glance at her, and he
sang more sweetly, more melodiously than ever; Nikolai Ivanitch looked
down; the Blinkard turned away; the Gabbler, quite touched, stood, his
gaping mouth stupidly open; the humble peasant was sobbing softly in the
corner, and shaking his head with a plaintive murmur; and on the iron
visage of the Wild Master, from under his overhanging brows there slowly
rolled a heavy tear; the booth-keeper raised his clenched fist to his
brow, and did not stir.... I don't know how the general emotion would
have ended, if Yakov had not suddenly come to a full stop on a high,
exceptionally shrill note--as though his voice had broken. No one called
out, or even stirred; every one seemed to be waiting to see whether he
was not going to sing more; but he opened his eyes as though wondering
at our silence, looked round at all of us with a face of inquiry, and
saw that the victory was his....
'Yasha,' said the Wild Master, laying his hand on his shoulder, and he
could say no more.
We all stood, as it were, petrified. The booth-keeper softly rose and
went up to Yakov.
'You... yours... you've won,' he articulated at last with an effort,
and rushed out of the room. His rapid, decided action, as it were, broke
the spell; we all suddenly fell into noisy, delighted talk. The Gabbler
bounded up and down, stammered and brandished his arms like mill-sails;
the Blinkard limped up to Yakov and began kissing him; Nikolai Ivanitch
got up and solemnly announced that he would add a second pot of beer
from himself. The Wild Master laughed a sort of kind, simple laugh,
which I should never have expected to see on his face; the humble
peasant as he wiped his eyes, cheeks, nose, and beard on his sleeves,
kept repeating in his corner: 'Ah, beautiful it was, by God! blast me
for the son of a dog, but it was fine!' while Nikolai Ivanitch's wife,
her face red with weeping, got up quickly and went away, Yakov was
enjoying his triumph like a child; his whole face was tranformed, his
eyes especially fairly glowed with happiness. They dragged him to the
bar; he beckoned the weeping peasant up to it, and sent the innkeeper's
little son to look after the booth-keeper, who was not found, however;
and the festivities began. 'You'll sing to us again; you're going to
sing to us till evening,' the Gabbler declared, flourishing his hands in
the air.
I took one more look at Yakov and went out. I did not want to stay--I
was afraid of spoiling the impression I had received. But the heat was
as insupportable as before. It seemed hanging in a thick, heavy layer
right over the earth; over the dark blue sky, tiny bright fires seemed
whisking through the finest, almost black dust. Everything was still;
and there was something hopeless and oppressive in this profound hush of
exhausted nature. I made my way to a hay-loft, and lay down on the
fresh-cut, but already almost dry grass. For a long while I could not go
to sleep; for a long while Yakov's irresistible voice was ringing in my
ears.... At last the heat and fatigue regained their sway, however, and
I fell into a dead sleep. When I waked up, everything was in darkness;
the hay scattered around smelt strong and was slightly damp; through the
slender rafters of the half-open roof pale stars were faintly twinkling.
I went out. The glow of sunset had long died away, and its last trace
showed in a faint light on the horizon; but above the freshness of the
night there was still a feeling of heat in the atmosphere, lately baked
through by the sun, and the breast still craved for a draught of cool
air. There was no wind, nor were there any clouds; the sky all round was
clear, and transparently dark, softly glimmering with innumerable, but
scarcely visible stars. There were lights twinkling about the village;
from the flaring tavern close by rose a confused, discordant din, amid
which I fancied I recognised the voice of Yakov. Violent laughter came
from there in an outburst at times. I went up to the little window and
pressed my face against the pane. I saw a cheerless, though varied and
animated scene; all were drunk--all from Yakov upwards. With breast
bared, he sat on a bench, and singing in a thick voice a street song to
a dance-tune, he lazily fingered and strummed on the strings of a
guitar. His moist hair hung in tufts over his fearfully pale face. In
the middle of the room, the Gabbler, completely 'screwed' and without
his coat, was hopping about in a dance before the peasant in the grey
smock; the peasant, on his side, was with difficulty stamping and
scraping with his feet, and grinning meaninglessly over his dishevelled
beard; he waved one hand from time to time, as much as to say, 'Here
goes!' Nothing could be more ludicrous than his face; however much he
twitched up his eyebrows, his heavy lids would hardly rise, but seemed
lying upon his scarcely visible, dim, and mawkish eyes. He was in that
amiable frame of mind of a perfectly intoxicated man, when every
passer-by, directly he looks him in the face, is sure to say, 'Bless
you, brother, bless you!' The Blinkard, as red as a lobster, and his
nostrils dilated wide, was laughing malignantly in a corner; only
Nikolai Ivanitch, as befits a good tavern-keeper, preserved his
composure unchanged. The room was thronged with many new faces; but the
Wild Master I did not see in it.
I turned away with rapid steps and began descending the hill on which
Kolotovka lies. At the foot of this hill stretches a wide plain; plunged
in the misty waves of the evening haze, it seemed more immense, and was,
as it were, merged in the darkening sky. I walked with long strides
along the road by the ravine, when all at once from somewhere far away
in the plain came a boy's clear voice: 'Antropka! Antropka-a-a!...' He
shouted in obstinate and tearful desperation, with long, long drawing
out of the last syllable.
He was silent for a few instants, and started shouting again. His voice
rang out clear in the still, lightly slumbering air. Thirty times at
least he had called the name, Antropka. When suddenly, from the farthest
end of the plain, as though from another world, there floated a scarcely
audible reply:
'Wha-a-t?'
The boy's voice shouted back at once with gleeful exasperation:
'Come here, devil! woo-od imp!'
'What fo-or?' replied the other, after a long interval.
'Because dad wants to thrash you!' the first voice shouted back
hurriedly.
The second voice did not call back again, and the boy fell to shouting
Antropka once more. His cries, fainter and less and less frequent, still
floated up to my ears, when it had grown completely dark, and I had
turned the corner of the wood which skirts my village and lies over
three miles from Kolotovka.... 'Antropka-a-a!' was still audible in the
air, filled with the shadows of night.