My mother, as I have already stated, made Martin Petrovitch very
welcome. She knew what a profound respect he entertained for her
person. ‘She is a real gentlewoman, one of our sort,’ was the way he
used to refer to her. He used to style her his benefactress, while she
saw in him a devoted giant, who would not have hesitated to face a
whole mob of peasants in defence of her; and although no one foresaw
the barest possibility of such a contingency, still, to my mother’s
notions, in the absence of a husband--she had early been left a
widow--such a champion as Martin Petrovitch was not to be despised.
And besides, he was a man of upright character, who curried favour
with no one, never borrowed money or drank spirits; and no fool
either, though he had received no sort of education. My mother trusted
Martin Petrovitch: when she took it into her head to make her will,
she asked him to witness it, and he drove home expressly to fetch his
round iron-rimmed spectacles, without which he could not write. And
with spectacles on nose, he succeeded, in a quarter of an hour, with
many gasps and groans and great effort, in inscribing his Christian
name, father’s name, and surname and his rank and designation, tracing
enormous quadrangular letters, with tails and flourishes. Having
completed this task, he declared he was tired out, and that writing for
him was as hard work as catching fleas. Yes, my mother had a respect
for him … he was not, however, admitted beyond the dining-room in our
house. He carried a very strong odour about with him; there was a
smell of the earth, of decaying forest, of marsh mud about him. ‘He’s
a forest-demon!’ my old nurse would declare. At dinner a special table
used to be laid apart in a corner for Martin Petrovitch, and he was not
offended at that, he knew other people were ill at ease sitting beside
him, and he too had greater freedom in eating. And he did eat too, as
no one, I imagine, has eaten since the days of Polyphemus. At the very
beginning of dinner, by way of a precautionary measure, they always
served him a pot of some four pounds of porridge, ‘else you’d eat me
out of house and home,’ my mother used to say. ‘That I should, ma’am,’
Martin Petrovitch would respond, grinning.
My mother liked to hear his reflections on any topic connected with
the land. But she could not support the sound of his voice for long
together. ‘What’s the meaning of it, my good sir!’ she would exclaim;
‘you might take something to cure yourself of it, really! You simply
deafen me. Such a trumpet-blast!’
‘Natalia Nikolaevna! benefactress!’ Martin Petrovitch would rejoin, as
a rule, ‘I’m not responsible for my throat. And what medicine could
have any effect on me--kindly tell me that? I’d better hold my tongue
for a bit.’
In reality, I imagine, no medicine could have affected Martin
Petrovitch. He was never ill.
He was not good at telling stories, and did not care for it. ‘Much
talking gives me asthma,’ he used to remark reproachfully. It was only
when one got him on to the year 1812--he had served in the militia, and
had received a bronze medal, which he used to wear on festive occasions
attached to a Vladimir ribbon--when one questioned him about the
French, that he would relate some few anecdotes. He used, however, to
maintain stoutly all the while that there never had been any Frenchmen,
real ones, in Russia, only some poor marauders, who had straggled over
from hunger, and that he had given many a good drubbing to such rabble
in the forests.