It was quite true that Olénin had been walking about the yard when
Maryánka entered the gate, and had heard her say, “That devil, our
lodger, is walking about.” He had spent that evening with Daddy Eróshka
in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine,
and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened
to the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet.
Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: now
lighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now the
cropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and,
shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in the
glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black space
beyond. Olénin and Eróshka had emptied five bottles of _chikhir_.
Eróshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olénin, drinking
his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old
days: of his father, “The Broad”, who alone had carried on his back a
boar’s carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails of
_chikhir_ at one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Gírchik,
with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt cloaks across the
Térek. He told how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his
“little soul” who used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told
all this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olénin did not notice how
time passed. “Ah yes, my dear fellow, you did not know me in my golden
days; then I’d have shown you things. Today it’s ‘Eróshka licks the
jug’, but then Eróshka was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the
finest horse? Who had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a
drink? With whom go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains
to kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eróshka! Whom did the girls love?
Always Eróshka had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a
drinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a
singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like that
nowadays. It’s disgusting to look at them. When they’re that high
(Eróshka held his hand three feet from the ground) they put on idiotic
boots and keep looking at them—that’s all the pleasure they know. Or
they’ll drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And who
was I? I was Eróshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this village
but up in the mountains. Tartar princes, my _kunaks_, used to come to
see me! I used to be everybody’s _kunak_. If he was a Tartar—with a
Tartar; an Armenian—with an Armenian; a soldier—with a soldier; an
officer—with an officer! I didn’t care as long as he was a drinker. He
says you should cleanse yourself from intercourse with the world, not
drink with soldiers, not eat with a Tartar.”
“Who says all that?” asked Olénin.
“Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He says,
‘You unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?’ That shows that everyone
has his own law. But I think it’s all one. God has made everything for
the joy of man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from an
animal. It lives in the Tartar’s reeds or in ours. Wherever it happens
to go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our
people say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that. And I think
it’s all a fraud,” he added after a pause.
“What is a fraud?” asked Olénin.
“Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlëna who
was my _kunak:_ a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in Chéchnya.
Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their
own heads. ‘When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that’s
all!’” The old man laughed. “He was a desperate fellow.”
“And how old are you?” asked Olénin.
“The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa reigned
in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I must
be seventy.”
“Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.”
“Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, a
witch, has harmed me....”
“How?”
“Oh, just harmed me.”
“And so when you die the grass will grow?” repeated Olénin.
Eróshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He was
silent for a while.
“And what did you think? Drink!” he shouted suddenly, smiling and
handing Olénin some wine.