‘Can Martin Petrovitch have really taken to fishing?’ I asked myself,
as I turned towards the pond, which was on one side of the garden. I
got on to the dam, looked in all directions.… Martin Petrovitch was
nowhere to be seen. I bent my steps along one of the banks of the
pond, and at last, at the very top of it, in a little creek, in the
midst of flat broken-down stalks of reddish reed, I caught sight of
a huge greyish mass.… I looked intently: it was Harlov. Bareheaded,
unkempt, in a cotton smock torn at the seams, with his legs crossed
under him, he was sitting motionless on the bare earth. So motionless
was he that a sandpiper, at my approach, darted up from the dry mud a
couple of paces from him, and flew with a flash of its little wings
and a whistle over the surface of the water, showing that no one had
moved to frighten him for a long while. Harlov’s whole appearance was
so extraordinary that my dog stopped short directly it saw him, lifted
its tail, and growled. He turned his head a very little, and fixed
his wild-looking eyes on me and my dog. He was greatly changed by his
beard, though it was short, but thick and curly, in white tufts, like
Astrachan fur. In his right hand lay the end of a rod, while the other
end hovered feebly over the water. I felt an involuntary pang at my
heart. I plucked up my spirits, however, went up to him, and wished him
good morning. He slowly blinked as though just awake.
‘What are you doing, Martin Petrovitch,’ I began, ‘catching fish here?’
‘Yes … fish,’ he answered huskily, and pulled up the rod, on which
there fluttered a piece of line, a fathom length, with no hook on it.
‘Your tackle is broken off,’ I observed, and noticed the same moment
that there was no sign of bait-tin nor worms near Martin Petrovitch.…
And what sort of fishing could there be in September?
‘Broken off?’ he said, and he passed his hand over his face. ‘But it’s
all the same!’
He dropped the rod in again.
‘Natalia Nikolaevna’s son?’ he asked me, after the lapse of
two minutes, during which I had been gazing at him with secret
bewilderment. Though he had grown terribly thinner, still he seemed a
giant. But what rags he was dressed in, and how utterly he had gone to
pieces altogether!
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I’m the son of Natalia Nikolaevna B.’
‘Is she well?’
‘My mother is quite well. She was very much hurt at your refusal,’ I
added; ‘she did not at all expect you would not wish to come and see
her.’
Martin Petrovitch’s head sank on his breast. ‘Have you been there?’ he
asked, with a motion of his head.
‘Where?’
‘There, at the house. Haven’t you? Go! What is there for you to do
here? Go! It’s useless talking to me. I don’t like it.’
He was silent for a while.
‘You’d like to be always idling about with a gun! In my young days
I used to be inclined the same way too. Only my father was strict
and made me respect him too. Mind you, very different from fathers
nowadays. My father flogged me with a horsewhip, and that was the end
of it! I’d to give up idling about! And so I respected him.… Oo!… Yes!…’
Harlov paused again.
‘Don’t you stop here,’ he began again. ‘You go along to the house.
Things are managed there now--it’s first-rate. Volodka’.… Here he
faltered for a second. ‘Our Volodka’s a good hand at everything. He’s
a fine fellow! yes, indeed, and a fine scoundrel too!’