Anyone who has chanced to pass from the Bolhovsky district into the
Zhizdrinsky district, must have been impressed by the striking
difference between the race of people in the province of Orel and the
population of the province of Kaluga. The peasant of Orel is not tall,
is bent in figure, sullen and suspicious in his looks; he lives in
wretched little hovels of aspen-wood, labours as a serf in the fields,
and engages in no kind of trading, is miserably fed, and wears slippers
of bast: the rent-paying peasant of Kaluga lives in roomy cottages of
pine-wood; he is tall, bold, and cheerful in his looks, neat and clean
of countenance; he carries on a trade in butter and tar, and on
holidays he wears boots. The village of the Orel province (we are
speaking now of the eastern part of the province) is usually situated
in the midst of ploughed fields, near a water-course which has been
converted into a filthy pool. Except for a few of the
ever-accommodating willows, and two or three gaunt birch-trees, you do
not see a tree for a mile round; hut is huddled up against hut, their
roofs covered with rotting thatch.... The villages of Kaluga, on the
contrary, are generally surrounded by forest; the huts stand more
freely, are more upright, and have boarded roofs; the gates fasten
closely, the hedge is not broken down nor trailing about; there are no
gaps to invite the visits of the passing pig.... And things are much
better in the Kaluga province for the sportsman. In the Orel province
the last of the woods and copses will have disappeared five years
hence, and there is no trace of moorland left; in Kaluga, on the
contrary, the moors extend over tens, the forest over hundreds of
miles, and a splendid bird, the grouse, is still extant there; there
are abundance of the friendly larger snipe, and the loud-clapping
partridge cheers and startles the sportsman and his dog by its abrupt
upward flight.
On a visit to the Zhizdrinsky district in search of sport, I met in the
fields a petty proprietor of the Kaluga province called Polutikin, and
made his acquaintance. He was an enthusiastic sportsman; it follows,
therefore, that he was an excellent fellow. He was liable, indeed, to a
few weaknesses; he used, for instance, to pay his addresses to every
unmarried heiress in the province, and when he had been refused her
hand and house, broken-hearted he confided his sorrows to all his
friends and acquaintances, and continued to shower offerings of sour
peaches and other raw produce from his garden upon the young lady's
relatives; he was fond of repeating one and the same anecdote, which,
in spite of Mr. Polutikin's appreciation of its merits, had certainly
never amused anyone; he admired the works of Akim Nahimov and the novel
_Pinna_; he stammered; he called his dog Astronomer; instead of
'however' said 'howsomever'; and had established in his household a
French system of cookery, the secret of which consisted, according to
his cook's interpretation, in a complete transformation of the natural
taste of each dish; in this _artiste's_ hands meat assumed the flavour
of fish, fish of mushrooms, macaroni of gunpowder; to make up for this,
not a single carrot went into the soup without taking the shape of a
rhombus or a trapeze. But, with the exception of these few and
insignificant failings, Mr. Polutikin was, as has been said already, an
excellent fellow.
On the first day of my acquaintance with Mr. Polutikin, he invited me
to stay the night at his house.
'It will be five miles farther to my house,' he added; 'it's a long way
to walk; let us first go to Hor's.' (The reader must excuse my omitting
his stammer.)
'Who is Hor?'
'A peasant of mine. He is quite close by here.'
We went in that direction. In a well-cultivated clearing in the middle
of the forest rose Hor's solitary homestead. It consisted of several
pine-wood buildings, enclosed by plank fences; a porch ran along the
front of the principal building, supported on slender posts. We went
in. We were met by a young lad of twenty, tall and good-looking.
'Ah, Fedya! is Hor at home?' Mr. Polutikin asked him.
'No. Hor has gone into town,' answered the lad, smiling and showing a
row of snow-white teeth. 'You would like the little cart brought out?'
'Yes, my boy, the little cart. And bring us some kvas.'
We went into the cottage. Not a single cheap glaring print was pasted
up on the clean boards of the walls; in the corner, before the heavy,
holy picture in its silver setting, a lamp was burning; the table of
linden-wood had been lately planed and scrubbed; between the joists and
in the cracks of the window-frames there were no lively Prussian
beetles running about, nor gloomy cockroaches in hiding. The young lad
soon reappeared with a great white pitcher filled with excellent kvas,
a huge hunch of wheaten bread, and a dozen salted cucumbers in a wooden
bowl. He put all these provisions on the table, and then, leaning with
his back against the door, began to gaze with a smiling face at us. We
had not had time to finish eating our lunch when the cart was already
rattling before the doorstep. We went out. A curly-headed, rosy-cheeked
boy of fifteen was sitting in the cart as driver, and with difficulty
holding in the well-fed piebald horse. Round the cart stood six young
giants, very like one another, and Fedya.
'All of these Hor's sons!' said Polutikin.
'These are all Horkies' (_i.e._ wild cats), put in Fedya, who had come
after us on to the step; 'but that's not all of them: Potap is in the
wood, and Sidor has gone with old Hor to the town. Look out, Vasya,' he
went on, turning to the coachman; 'drive like the wind; you are driving
the master. Only mind what you're about over the ruts, and easy a
little; don't tip the cart over, and upset the master's stomach!'
The other Horkies smiled at Fedya's sally. 'Lift Astronomer in!' Mr.
Polutikin called majestically. Fedya, not without amusement, lifted the
dog, who wore a forced smile, into the air, and laid her at the bottom
of the cart. Vasya let the horse go. We rolled away. 'And here is my
counting-house,' said Mr. Polutikin suddenly to me, pointing to a
little low-pitched house. 'Shall we go in?' 'By all means.' 'It is no
longer used,' he observed, going in; 'still, it is worth looking at.'
The counting-house consisted of two empty rooms. The caretaker, a
one-eyed old man, ran out of the yard. 'Good day, Minyaitch,' said Mr.
Polutikin; 'bring us some water.' The one-eyed old man disappeared, and
at once returned with a bottle of water and two glasses. 'Taste it,'
Polutikin said to me; 'it is splendid spring water.' We drank off a
glass each, while the old man bowed low. 'Come, now, I think we can go
on,' said my new Friend. 'In that counting-house I sold the merchant
Alliluev four acres of forest-land for a good price.' We took our seats
in the cart, and in half-an-hour we had reached the court of the
manor-house.
'Tell me, please,' I asked Polutikin at supper; 'why does Hor live
apart from your other peasants?'
'Well, this is why; he is a clever peasant. Twenty-five years ago his
cottage was burnt down; so he came up to my late father and said:
"Allow me, Nikolai Kouzmitch," says he, "to settle in your forest, on
the bog. I will pay you a good rent." "But what do you want to settle
on the bog for?" "Oh, I want to; only, your honour, Nikolai Kouzmitch,
be so good as not to claim any labour from me, but fix a rent as you
think best." "Fifty roubles a year!" "Very well." "But I'll have no
arrears, mind!" "Of course, no arrears"; and so he settled on the bog.
Since then they have called him Hor' (_i.e._ wild cat).
'Well, and has he grown rich?' I inquired.
'Yes, he has grown rich. Now he pays me a round hundred for rent, and I
shall raise it again, I dare say. I have said to him more than once,
"Buy your freedom, Hor; come, buy your freedom." ... But he declares,
the rogue, that he can't; has no money, he says.... As though that were
likely....'
The next day, directly after our morning tea, we started out hunting
again. As we were driving through the village, Mr. Polutikin ordered
the coachman to stop at a low-pitched cottage and called loudly,
'Kalinitch!' 'Coming, your honour, coming' sounded a voice from the
yard; 'I am tying on my shoes.' We went on at a walk; outside the
village a man of about forty over-took us. He was tall and thin, with a
small and erect head. It was Kalinitch. His good-humoured; swarthy
face, somewhat pitted with small-pox, pleased me from the first glance.
Kalinitch (as I learnt afterwards) went hunting every day with his
master, carried his bag, and sometimes also his gun, noted where game
was to be found, fetched water, built shanties, and gathered
strawberries, and ran behind the droshky; Mr. Polutikin could not stir
a step without him. Kalinitch was a man of the merriest and gentlest
disposition; he was constantly singing to himself in a low voice, and
looking carelessly about him. He spoke a little through his nose, with
a laughing twinkle in his light blue eyes, and he had a habit of
plucking at his scanty, wedge-shaped beard with his hand. He walked not
rapidly, but with long strides, leaning lightly on a long thin staff.
He addressed me more than once during the day, and he waited on me
without, obsequiousness, but he looked after his master as if he were a
child. When the unbearable heat drove us at mid-day to seek shelter, he
took us to his beehouse in the very heart of the forest. There
Kalinitch opened the little hut for us, which was hung round with
bunches of dry scented herbs. He made us comfortable on some dry hay,
and then put a kind of bag of network over his head, took a knife, a
little pot, and a smouldering stick, and went to the hive to cut us out
some honey-comb. We had a draught of spring water after the warm
transparent honey, and then dropped asleep to the sound of the
monotonous humming of the bees and the rustling chatter of the leaves.
A slight gust of wind awakened me.... I opened my eyes and saw
Kalinitch: he was sitting on the threshold of the half-opened door,
carving a spoon with his knife. I gazed a long time admiring his face,
as sweet and clear as an evening sky. Mr. Polutikin too woke up. We did
not get up at once. After our long walk and our deep sleep it was
pleasant to lie without moving in the hay; we felt weary and languid in
body, our faces were in a slight glow of warmth, our eyes were closed
in delicious laziness. At last we got up, and set off on our wanderings
again till evening. At supper I began again to talk of Hor and
Kalinitch. 'Kalinitch is a good peasant,' Mr. Polutikin told me; 'he is
a willing and useful peasant; he can't farm his land properly; I am
always taking him away from it. He goes out hunting every day with
me.... You can judge for yourself how his farming must fare.'