“Well, what was I saying?” he continued, trying to remember. “Yes,
that’s the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to equal
me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal and any bird,
and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and two guns, and nets,
and a screen and a hawk. I have everything, thank the Lord! If you are
not bragging but are a real sportsman, I’ll show you everything. Do you
know what a man I am? When I have found a track—I know the animal. I
know where he will lie down and where he’ll drink or wallow. I make
myself a perch and sit there all night watching. What’s the good of
staying at home? One only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here
women come and chatter, and boys shout at me—enough to drive one mad
“It’s a different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself
a place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a
jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One looks
up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out from them
how the time goes. One looks round—the wood is rustling; one goes on
waiting, now there comes a crackling—a boar comes to rub himself; one
listens to hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice
in the village, or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is
not yet midnight. And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired
somewhere far away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that
firing? Is it another Cossack like myself who has been watching for
some animal? And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the
poor thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for
nothing? I don’t like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a beast?
You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, ‘Maybe an _abrek_ has killed some
silly little Cossack.’ All this passes through one’s mind. And once as
I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound
except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that
time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a
Tartar village and seized the Chéchen women, and one of the devils has
killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a
wall. Don’t they do such things? Sh! Men have no souls! And thoughts
came to me that filled me with pity. I thought: they’ve thrown away the
cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and
come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And when one
hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock
inside one. Dear one, come this way! ‘They’ll scent me,’ one thinks;
and one sits and does not stir while one’s heart goes dun! dun! dun!
and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter came near me, I
saw something black. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son,’ and I
was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: ‘Danger, children,’
she says, ‘there’s a man here,’ and off they all ran, breaking through
the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten her.”
“How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?” asked Olénin.
“What do you think? You think the beast’s a fool? No, he is wiser than
a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for
instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig
as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows
there is wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don’t. And
there is this to be said too: you wish to kill it and it wishes to go
about the woods alive. You have one law and it has another. It is a
pig, but it is no worse than you—it too is God’s creature. Ah, dear!
Man is foolish, foolish, foolish!” The old man repeated this several
times and then, letting his head drop, he sat thinking.
Olénin also became thoughtful, and descending from the porch with his
hands behind his back began pacing up and down the yard.
Eróshka, rousing himself, raised his head and began gazing intently at
the moths circling round the flickering flame of the candle and burning
themselves in it.
“Fool, fool!” he said. “Where are you flying to? Fool, fool!” He rose
and with his thick fingers began to drive away the moths.
“You’ll burn, little fool! Fly this way, there’s plenty of room.” He
spoke tenderly, trying to catch them delicately by their wings with his
thick fingers and then letting them fly again. “You are killing
yourself and I am sorry for you!”
He sat a long time chattering and sipping out of the bottle. Olénin
paced up and down the yard. Suddenly he was struck by the sound of
whispering outside the gate. Involuntarily holding his breath, he heard
a woman’s laughter, a man’s voice, and the sound of a kiss.
Intentionally rustling the grass under his feet he crossed to the
opposite side of the yard, but after a while the wattle fence creaked.
A Cossack in a dark Circassian coat and a white sheepskin cap passed
along the other side of the fence (it was Luke), and a tall woman with
a white kerchief on her head went past Olénin. “You and I have nothing
to do with one another” was what Maryánka’s firm step gave him to
understand. He followed her with his eyes to the porch of the hut, and
he even saw her through the window take off her kerchief and sit down.
And suddenly a feeling of lonely depression and some vague longings and
hopes, and envy of someone or other, overcame the young man’s soul.
The last lights had been put out in the huts. The last sounds had died
away in the village. The wattle fences and the cattle gleaming white in
the yards, the roofs of the houses and the stately poplars, all seemed
to be sleeping the labourers’ healthy peaceful sleep. Only the
incessant ringing voices of frogs from the damp distance reached the
young man. In the east the stars were growing fewer and fewer and
seemed to be melting in the increasing light, but overhead they were
denser and deeper than before. The old man was dozing with his head on
his hand. A cock crowed in the yard opposite, but Olénin still paced up
and down thinking of something. The sound of a song sung by several
voices reached him and he stepped up to the fence and listened. The
voices of several young Cossacks carolled a merry song, and one voice
was distinguishable among them all by its firm strength.
“Do you know who is singing there?” said the old man, rousing himself.
“It is the Brave, Lukáshka. He has killed a Chéchen and now he
rejoices. And what is there to rejoice at? ... The fool, the fool!”
“And have you ever killed people?” asked Olénin.
“You devil!” shouted the old man. “What are you asking? One must not
talk so. It is a serious thing to destroy a human being ... Ah, a very
serious thing! Good-bye, my dear fellow. I’ve eaten my fill and am
drunk,” he said rising. “Shall I come tomorrow to go shooting?”
“Yes, come!”
“Mind, get up early; if you oversleep you will be fined!”
“Never fear, I’ll be up before you,” answered Olénin.
The old man left. The song ceased, but one could hear footsteps and
merry talk. A little later the singing broke out again but farther
away, and Eróshka’s loud voice chimed in with the other. “What people,
what a life!” thought Olénin with a sigh as he returned alone to his
hut.