One evening I went with the huntsman Yermolaï 'stand-shooting.' ... But
perhaps all my readers may not know what 'stand-shooting' is. I will
tell you.
A quarter of an hour before sunset in spring-time you go out into the
woods with your gun, but without your dog. You seek out a spot for
yourself on the outskirts of the forest, take a look round, examine
your caps, and glance at your companion. A quarter of an hour passes;
the sun has set, but it is still light in the forest; the sky is clear
and transparent; the birds are chattering and twittering; the young
grass shines with the brilliance of emerald.... You wait. Gradually the
recesses of the forest grow dark; the blood-red glow of the evening sky
creeps slowly on to the roots and the trunks of the trees, and keeps
rising higher and higher, passes from the lower, still almost leafless
branches, to the motionless, slumbering tree-tops.... And now even the
topmost branches are darkened; the purple sky fades to dark-blue. The
forest fragrance grows stronger; there is a scent of warmth and damp
earth; the fluttering breeze dies away at your side. The birds go to
sleep--not all at once--but after their kinds; first the finches are
hushed, a few minutes later the warblers, and after them the yellow
buntings. In the forest it grows darker and darker. The trees melt
together into great masses of blackness; in the dark-blue sky the first
stars come timidly out. All the birds are asleep. Only the redstarts
and the nuthatches are still chirping drowsily.... And now they too are
still. The last echoing call of the pee-wit rings over our heads; the
oriole's melancholy cry sounds somewhere in the distance; then the
nightingale's first note. Your heart is weary with suspense, when
suddenly--but only sportsmen can understand me--suddenly in the deep
hush there is a peculiar croaking and whirring sound, the measured
sweep of swift wings is heard, and the snipe, gracefully bending its
long beak, sails smoothly down behind a dark bush to meet your shot.
That is the meaning of 'stand-shooting.' And so I had gone out
stand-shooting with Yermolaï; but excuse me, reader: I must first
introduce you to Yermolaï.
Picture to yourself a tall gaunt man of forty-five, with a long thin
nose, a narrow forehead, little grey eyes, a bristling head of hair,
and thick sarcastic lips. This man wore, winter and summer alike, a
yellow nankin coat of German cut, but with a sash round the waist; he
wore blue pantaloons and a cap of astrakhan, presented to him in a
merry hour by a spendthrift landowner. Two bags were fastened on to his
sash, one in front, skilfully tied into two halves, for powder and for
shot; the other behind for game: wadding Yermolaï used to produce out
of his peculiar, seemingly inexhaustible cap. With the money he gained
by the game he sold, he might easily have bought himself a
cartridge-box and powder-flask; but he never once even contemplated
such a purchase, and continued to load his gun after his old fashion,
exciting the admiration of all beholders by the skill with which he
avoided the risks of spilling or mixing his powder and shot. His gun
was a single-barrelled flint-lock, endowed, moreover, with a villainous
habit of 'kicking.' It was due to this that Yermolaï's right cheek was
permanently swollen to a larger size than the left. How he ever
succeeded in hitting anything with this gun, it would take a shrewd man
to discover--but he did. He had too a setter-dog, by name Valetka, a
most extraordinary creature. Yermolaï never fed him. 'Me feed a dog!'
he reasoned; 'why, a dog's a clever beast; he finds a living for
himself.' And certainly, though Valetka's extreme thinness was a shock
even to an indifferent observer, he still lived and had a long life;
and in spite of his pitiable position he was not even once lost, and
never showed an inclination to desert his master. Once indeed, in his
youth, he had absented himself for two days, on courting bent, but this
folly was soon over with him. Valetka's most noticeable peculiarity was
his impenetrable indifference to everything in the world.... If it were
not a dog I was speaking of, I should have called him 'disillusioned.'
He usually sat with his cropped tail curled up under him, scowling and
twitching at times, and he never smiled. (It is well known that dogs
can smile, and smile very sweetly.) He was exceedingly ugly; and the
idle house-serfs never lost an opportunity of jeering cruelly at his
appearance; but all these jeers, and even blows, Valetka bore with
astonishing indifference. He was a source of special delight to the
cooks, who would all leave their work at once and give him chase with
shouts and abuse, whenever, through a weakness not confined to dogs, he
thrust his hungry nose through the half-open door of the kitchen,
tempting with its warmth and appetising smells. He distinguished
himself by untiring energy in the chase, and had a good scent; but if
he chanced to overtake a slightly wounded hare, he devoured it with
relish to the last bone, somewhere in the cool shade under the green
bushes, at a respectful distance from Yermolaï, who was abusing him in
every known and unknown dialect. Yermolaï belonged to one of my
neighbours, a landowner of the old style. Landowners of the old style
don't care for game, and prefer the domestic fowl. Only on
extraordinary occasions, such as birthdays, namedays, and elections,
the cooks of the old-fashioned landowners set to work to prepare some
long-beaked birds, and, falling into the state of frenzy peculiar to
Russians when they don't quite know what to do, they concoct such
marvellous sauces for them that the guests examine the proffered dishes
curiously and attentively, but rarely make up their minds to try them.
Yermolaï was under orders to provide his master's kitchen with two
brace of grouse and partridges once a month. But he might live where
and how he pleased. They had given him up as a man of no use for work
of any kind--'bone lazy,' as the expression is among us in Orel. Powder
and shot, of course, they did not provide him, following precisely the
same principle in virtue of which he did not feed his dog. Yermolaï was
a very strange kind of man; heedless as a bird, rather fond of talking,
awkward and vacant-looking; he was excessively fond of drink, and never
could sit still long; in walking he shambled along, and rolled from
side to side; and yet he got over fifty miles in the day with his
rolling, shambling gait. He exposed himself to the most varied
adventures: spent the night in the marshes, in trees, on roofs, or
under bridges; more than once he had got shut up in lofts, cellars, or
barns; he sometimes lost his gun, his dog, his most indispensable
garments; got long and severe thrashings; but he always returned home,
after a little while, in his clothes, and with his gun and his dog. One
could not call him a cheerful man, though one almost always found him
in an even frame of mind; he was looked on generally as an eccentric.
Yermolaï liked a little chat with a good companion, especially over a
glass, but he would not stop long; he would get up and go. 'But where
the devil are you going? It's dark out of doors.' 'To Tchaplino.' 'But
what's taking you to Tchaplino, ten miles away?' 'I am going to stay
the night at Sophron's there.' 'But stay the night here.' 'No, I
can't.' And Yermolaï, with his Valetka, would go off into the dark
night, through woods and water-courses, and the peasant Sophron very
likely did not let him into his place, and even, I am afraid, gave him
a blow to teach him 'not to disturb honest folks.' But none could
compare with Yermolaï in skill in deep-water fishing in spring-time, in
catching crayfish with his hands, in tracking game by scent, in snaring
quails, in training hawks, in capturing the nightingales who had the
greatest variety of notes. ... One thing he could not do, train a dog;
he had not patience enough. He had a wife too. He went to see her once
a week. She lived in a wretched, tumble-down little hut, and led a
hand-to-mouth existence, never knowing overnight whether she would have
food to eat on the morrow; and in every way her lot was a pitiful one.
Yermolaï, who seemed such a careless and easy-going fellow, treated his
wife with cruel harshness; in his own house he assumed a stern, and
menacing manner; and his poor wife did everything she could to please
him, trembled when he looked at her, and spent her last farthing to buy
him vodka; and when he stretched himself majestically on the stove and
fell into an heroic sleep, she obsequiously covered him with a
sheepskin. I happened myself more than once to catch an involuntary
look in him of a kind of savage ferocity; I did not like the expression
of his face when he finished off a wounded bird with his teeth. But
Yermolaï never remained more than a day at home, and away from home he
was once more the same 'Yermolka' (i.e. the shooting-cap), as he was
called for a hundred miles round, and as he sometimes called himself.
The lowest house-serf was conscious of being superior to this
vagabond--and perhaps this was precisely why they treated him with
friendliness; the peasants at first amused themselves by chasing him
and driving him like a hare over the open country, but afterwards they
left him in God's hands, and when once they recognised him as 'queer,'
they no longer tormented him, and even gave him bread and entered into
talk with him.... This was the man I took as my huntsman, and with him
I went stand-shooting to a great birch-wood on the banks of the Ista.
Many Russian rivers, like the Volga, have one bank rugged and
precipitous, the other bounded by level meadows; and so it is with the
Ista. This small river winds extremely capriciously, coils like a
snake, and does not keep a straight course for half-a-mile together; in
some places, from the top of a sharp declivity, one can see the river
for ten miles, with its dykes, its pools and mills, and the gardens on
its banks, shut in with willows and thick flower-gardens. There are
fish in the Ista in endless numbers, especially roaches (the peasants
take them in hot weather from under the bushes with their hands);
little sand-pipers flutter whistling along the stony banks, which are
streaked with cold clear streams; wild ducks dive in the middle of the
pools, and look round warily; in the coves under the overhanging cliffs
herons stand out in the shade.... We stood in ambush nearly an hour,
killed two brace of wood snipe, and, as we wanted to try our luck again
at sunrise (stand-shooting can be done as well in the early morning),
we resolved to spend the night at the nearest mill. We came out of the
wood, and went down the slope. The dark-blue waters of the river ran
below; the air was thick with the mists of night. We knocked at the
gate. The dogs began barking in the yard.
'Who is there?' asked a hoarse and sleepy voice.
'We are sportsmen; let us stay the night.' There was no reply. 'We will
pay.'
'I will go and tell the master--Sh! Curse the dogs! Go to the devil
with you!'
We listened as the workman went into the cottage; he soon came back to
the gate. 'No,' he said; 'the master tells me not to let you in.'
'Why not?'
'He is afraid; you are sportsmen; you might set the mill on fire;
you've firearms with you, to be sure.'
'But what nonsense!'
'We had our mill on fire like that last year; some fish-dealers stayed
the night, and they managed to set it on fire somehow.'
'But, my good friend, we can't sleep in the open air!'
'That's your business.' He went away, his boots clacking as he walked.
Yermolaï promised him various unpleasant things in the future. 'Let us
go to the village,' he brought out at last, with a sigh. But it was two
miles to the village.
'Let us stay the night here,' I said, 'in the open air--the night is
warm; the miller will let us have some straw if we pay for it.'
Yermolaï agreed without discussion. We began again to knock.
'Well, what do you want?' the workman's voice was heard again; 'I've
told you we can't.'
We explained to him what we wanted. He went to consult the master of
the house, and returned with him. The little side gate creaked. The
miller appeared, a tall, fat-faced man with a bull-neck, round-bellied
and corpulent. He agreed to my proposal. A hundred paces from the mill
there was a little outhouse open to the air on all sides. They carried
straw and hay there for us; the workman set a samovar down on the grass
near the river, and, squatting on his heels, began to blow vigorously
into the pipe of it. The embers glowed, and threw a bright light on his
young face. The miller ran to wake his wife, and suggested at last that
I myself should sleep in the cottage; but I preferred to remain in the
open air. The miller's wife brought us milk, eggs, potatoes and bread.
Soon the samovar boiled, and we began drinking tea. A mist had risen
from the river; there was no wind; from all round came the cry of the
corn-crake, and faint sounds from the mill-wheels of drops that dripped
from the paddles and of water gurgling through the bars of the lock. We
built a small fire on the ground. While Yermolaï was baking the
potatoes in the embers, I had time to fall into a doze. I was waked by
a discreetly-subdued whispering near me. I lifted my head; before the
fire, on a tub turned upside down, the miller's wife sat talking to my
huntsman. By her dress, her movements, and her manner of speaking, I
had already recognised that she had been in domestic service, and was
neither peasant nor city-bred; but now for the first time I got a clear
view of her features. She looked about thirty; her thin, pale face
still showed the traces of remarkable beauty; what particularly charmed
me was her eyes, large and mournful in expression. She was leaning her
elbows on her knees, and had her face in her hands. Yermolaï was
sitting with his back to me, and thrusting sticks into the fire.
'They've the cattle-plague again at Zheltonhiny,' the miller's wife was
saying; 'father Ivan's two cows are dead--Lord have mercy on them!'
'And how are your pigs doing?' asked Yermolaï, after a brief pause.
'They're alive.'
'You ought to make me a present of a sucking pig.'
The miller's wife was silent for a while, then she sighed.
'Who is it you're with?' she asked.
'A gentleman from Kostomarovo.'
Yermolaï threw a few pine twigs on the fire; they all caught fire at
once, and a thick white smoke came puffing into his face.
'Why didn't your husband let us into the cottage?'
'He's afraid.'
'Afraid! the fat old tub! Arina Timofyevna, my darling, bring me a
little glass of spirits.'
The miller's wife rose and vanished into the darkness. Yermolaï began
to sing in an undertone--
'When I went to see my sweetheart,
I wore out all my shoes.'
Arina returned with a small flask and a glass. Yermolaï got up, crossed
himself, and drank it off at a draught. 'Good!' was his comment.
The miller's wife sat down again on the tub.
'Well, Arina Timofyevna, are you still ill?'
'Yes.'
'What is it?'
'My cough troubles me at night.'
'The gentleman's asleep, it seems,' observed Yermolaï after a short
silence. 'Don't go to a doctor, Arina; it will be worse if you do.'
'Well, I am not going.'
'But come and pay me a visit.'
Arina hung down her head dejectedly.
'I will drive my wife out for the occasion,' continued Yermolaï 'Upon
my word, I will.'
'You had better wake the gentleman, Yermolaï Petrovitch; you see, the
potatoes are done.'
'Oh, let him snore,' observed my faithful servant indifferently; 'he's
tired with walking, so he sleeps sound.'
I turned over in the hay. Yermolaï got up and came to me. 'The potatoes
are ready; will you come and eat them?'
I came out of the outhouse; the miller's wife got up from the tub and
was going away. I addressed her.
'Have you kept this mill long?'
'It's two years since I came on Trinity day.'
'And where does your husband come from?'
Arina had not caught my question.
'Where's your husband from?' repeated Yermolaï, raising his voice.
'From Byelev. He's a Byelev townsman.'
'And are you too from Byelev?'
'No, I'm a serf; I was a serf.'
'Whose?'
'Zvyerkoff was my master. Now I am free.'
'What Zvyerkoff?'
'Alexandr Selitch.'
'Weren't you his wife's lady's maid?'
'How did you know? Yes.'