about with Tatars, so be it, God bless you, but . . . why shuffle about
it?"
"H'm! . . . you are a queer one!" cried the lady, revolted. "He is
jealous of Suleiman! as though one could ride up into the mountains
without a guide! I should like to see you do it! If you don't know the
ways there, if you don't understand, you had better hold your tongue!
Yes, hold your tongue. You can't take a step there without a guide."
"So it seems!"
"None of your silly grins, if you please! I am not a Yulia. . . . I
don't justify her but I . . . ! Though I don't pose as a saint, I don't
forget myself to that degree. My Suleiman never overstepped the limits.
. . . No-o! Mametkul used to be sitting at Yulia's all day long, but in
my room as soon as it struck eleven: 'Suleiman, march! Off you go!' And
my foolish Tatar boy would depart. I made him mind his p's and q's,
hubby! As soon as he began grumbling about money or anything, I would
say 'How? Wha-at? Wha-a-a-t?' And his heart would be in his mouth
directly. . . . Ha-ha-ha! His eyes, you know, Vassitchka, were as black,
as black, like coals, such an amusing little Tatar face, so funny and
silly! I kept him in order, didn't I just!"
"I can fancy . . ." mumbled her husband, rolling up pellets of bread.
"That's stupid, Vassitchka! I know what is in your mind! I know what you
are thinking . . . But I assure you even when we were on our expeditions
I never let him overstep the limits. For instance, if we rode to the
mountains or to the U-Chan-Su waterfall, I would always say to him,
'Suleiman, ride behind! Do you hear!' And he always rode behind, poor
boy. . . . Even when we . . . even at the most dramatic moments I would
say to him, 'Still, you must not forget that you are only a Tatar and I
am the wife of a civil councillor!' Ha-ha. . . ."
The little lady laughed, then, looking round her quickly and assuming an
alarmed expression, whispered:
"But Yulia! Oh, that Yulia! I quite see, Vassitchka, there is no reason
why one shouldn't have a little fun, a little rest from the emptiness of
conventional life! That's all right, have your fling by all means--no one
will blame you, but to take the thing seriously, to get up scenes . . .
no, say what you like, I cannot understand that! Just fancy, she was
jealous! Wasn't that silly? One day Mametkul, her grande passion, came
to see her . . . she was not at home. . . . Well, I asked him into my
room . . . there was conversation, one thing and another . . . they're
awfully amusing, you know! The evening passed without our noticing it. .
. . All at once Yulia rushed in. . . . She flew at me and at Mametkul
--made such a scene . . . fi! I can't understand that sort of thing,
Vassitchka."
Vassitchka cleared his throat, frowned, and walked up and down the room.
"You had a gay time there, I must say," he growled with a disdainful
smile.
"How stu-upid that is!" cried Natalya Mihalovna, offended. "I know what
you are thinking about! You always have such horrid ideas! I won't tell
you anything! No, I won't!"
The lady pouted and said no more.
OVERDOING IT
GLYEB GAVRILOVITCH SMIRNOV, a land surveyor, arrived at the station of
Gnilushki. He had another twenty or thirty miles to drive before he
would reach the estate which he had been summoned to survey. (If the
driver were not drunk and the horses were not bad, it would hardly be
twenty miles, but if the driver had had a drop and his steeds were worn
out it would mount up to a good forty.)
"Tell me, please, where can I get post-horses here?" the surveyor asked
of the station gendarme.
"What? Post-horses? There's no finding a decent dog for seventy miles
round, let alone post-horses. . . . But where do you want to go?"
"To Dyevkino, General Hohotov's estate."
"Well," yawned the gendarme, "go outside the station, there are
sometimes peasants in the yard there, they will take passengers."
The surveyor heaved a sigh and made his way out of the station.
There, after prolonged enquiries, conversations, and hesitations, he
found a very sturdy, sullen-looking pock-marked peasant, wearing a
tattered grey smock and bark-shoes.
"You have got a queer sort of cart!" said the surveyor, frowning as he
clambered into the cart. "There is no making out which is the back and
which is the front."
"What is there to make out? Where the horse's tail is, there's the
front, and where your honour's sitting, there's the back."
The little mare was young, but thin, with legs planted wide apart and
frayed ears. When the driver stood up and lashed her with a whip made of
cord, she merely shook her head; when he swore at her and lashed her
once more, the cart squeaked and shivered as though in a fever. After
the third lash the cart gave a lurch, after the fourth, it moved
forward.
"Are we going to drive like this all the way?" asked the surveyor,
violently jolted and marvelling at the capacity of Russian drivers for
combining a slow tortoise-like pace with a jolting that turns the soul
inside out.
"We shall ge-et there!" the peasant reassured him. "The mare is young
and frisky. . . . Only let her get running and then there is no stopping
her. . . . No-ow, cur-sed brute!"
It was dusk by the time the cart drove out of the station. On the
surveyor's right hand stretched a dark frozen plain, endless and
boundless. If you drove over it you would certainly get to the other
side of beyond. On the horizon, where it vanished and melted into the
sky, there was the languid glow of a cold autumn sunset. . . . On the
left of the road, mounds of some sort, that might be last year's stacks
or might be a village, rose up in the gathering darkness. The surveyor
could not see what was in front as his whole field of vision on that
side was covered by the broad clumsy back of the driver. The air was
still, but it was cold and frosty.
"What a wilderness it is here," thought the surveyor, trying to cover
his ears with the collar of his overcoat. "Neither post nor paddock. If,
by ill-luck, one were attacked and robbed no one would hear you,
whatever uproar you made. . . . And the driver is not one you could
depend on. . . . Ugh, what a huge back! A child of nature like that has
only to move a finger and it would be all up with one! And his ugly face
is suspicious and brutal-looking."
"Hey, my good man!" said the surveyor, "What is your name?"
"Mine? Klim."
"Well, Klim, what is it like in your parts here? Not dangerous? Any
robbers on the road?"
"It is all right, the Lord has spared us. . . . Who should go robbing on
the road?"
"It's a good thing there are no robbers. But to be ready for anything I
have got three revolvers with me," said the surveyor untruthfully. "And
it doesn't do to trifle with a revolver, you know. One can manage a
dozen robbers. . . ."
It had become quite dark. The cart suddenly began creaking, squeaking,
shaking, and, as though unwillingly, turned sharply to the left.
"Where is he taking me to?" the surveyor wondered. "He has been driving
straight and now all at once to the left. I shouldn't wonder if he'll
take me, the rascal, to some den of thieves . . . and. . . . Things like
that do happen."
"I say," he said, addressing the driver, "so you tell me it's not
dangerous here? That's a pity. . . I like a fight with robbers. . . . I
am thin and sickly-looking, but I have the strength of a bull . . . .
Once three robbers attacked me and what do you think? I gave one such a
dressing that. . . that he gave up his soul to God, you understand, and
the other two were sent to penal servitude in Siberia. And where I got
the strength I can't say. . . . One grips a strapping fellow of your
sort with one hand and . . . wipes him out."
Klim looked round at the surveyor, wrinkled up his whole face, and
lashed his horse.
"Yes . . ." the surveyor went on. "God forbid anyone should tackle me.
The robber would have his bones broken, and, what's more, he would have
to answer for it in the police court too. . . . I know all the judges
and the police captains, I am a man in the Government, a man of
importance. Here I am travelling and the authorities know . . . they
keep a regular watch over me to see no one does me a mischief. There are
policemen and village constables stuck behind bushes all along the road.
. . . Sto . . . sto . . . . stop!" the surveyor bawled suddenly. "Where
have you got to? Where are you taking me to?"
"Why, don't you see? It's a forest!"
"It certainly is a forest," thought the surveyor. "I was frightened! But
it won't do to betray my feelings. . . . He has noticed already that I
am in a funk. Why is it he has taken to looking round at me so often? He
is plotting something for certain. . . . At first he drove like a snail
and now how he is dashing along!"
"I say, Klim, why are you making the horse go like that?"
"I am not making her go. She is racing along of herself. . . . Once she
gets into a run there is no means of stopping her. It's no pleasure to
her that her legs are like that."
"You are lying, my man, I see that you are lying. Only I advise you not
to drive so fast. Hold your horse in a bit. . . . Do you hear? Hold her
in!"
"What for?"
"Why . . . why, because four comrades were to drive after me from the
station. We must let them catch us up. . . . They promised to overtake
us in this forest. It will be more cheerful in their company. . . . They
are a strong, sturdy set of fellows. . . . And each of them has got a
pistol. Why do you keep looking round and fidgeting as though you were
sitting on thorns? eh? I, my good fellow, er . . . my good fellow . . .
there is no need to look around at me . . . there is nothing interesting
about me. . . . Except perhaps the revolvers. Well, if you like I will
take them out and show you. . . ."
The surveyor made a pretence of feeling in his pockets and at that
moment something happened which he could not have expected with all his
cowardice. Klim suddenly rolled off the cart and ran as fast as he could
go into the forest.
"Help!" he roared. "Help! Take the horse and the cart, you devil, only
don't take my life. Help!"
There was the sound of footsteps hurriedly retreating, of twigs
snapping--and all was still. . . . The surveyor had not expected such a
dénouement. He first stopped the horse and then settled himself more
comfortably in the cart and fell to thinking.
"He has run off . . . he was scared, the fool. Well, what's to be done
now? I can't go on alone because I don't know the way; besides they may
think I have stolen his horse. . . . What's to be done?"
"Klim! Klim," he cried.
"Klim," answered the echo.
At the thought that he would have to sit through the whole night in the
cold and dark forest and hear nothing but the wolves, the echo, and the
snorting of the scraggy mare, the surveyor began to have twinges down
his spine as though it were being rasped with a cold file.
"Klimushka," he shouted. "Dear fellow! Where are you, Klimushka?"
For two hours the surveyor shouted, and it was only after he was quite
husky and had resigned himself to spending the night in the forest that
a faint breeze wafted the sound of a moan to him.
"Klim, is it you, dear fellow? Let us go on."
"You'll mu-ur-der me!"
"But I was joking, my dear man! I swear to God I was joking! As though I
had revolvers! I told a lie because I was frightened. For goodness sake
let us go on, I am freezing!"
Klim, probably reflecting that a real robber would have vanished long
ago with the horse and cart, came out of the forest and went
hesitatingly up to his passenger.
"Well, what were you frightened of, stupid? I . . . I was joking and you
were frightened. Get in!"
"God be with you, sir," Klim muttered as he clambered into the cart, "if
I had known I wouldn't have taken you for a hundred roubles. I almost
died of fright. . . ."
Klim lashed at the little mare. The cart swayed. Klim lashed once more
and the cart gave a lurch. After the fourth stroke of the whip when the
cart moved forward, the surveyor hid his ears in his collar and sank
into thought.
The road and Klim no longer seemed dangerous to him.
THE ORATOR
ONE fine morning the collegiate assessor, Kirill Ivanovitch Babilonov,
who had died of the two afflictions so widely spread in our country, a
bad wife and alcoholism, was being buried. As the funeral procession set
off from the church to the cemetery, one of the deceased's colleagues,
called Poplavsky, got into a cab and galloped off to find a friend, one
Grigory Petrovitch Zapoikin, a man who though still young had acquired
considerable popularity. Zapoikin, as many of my readers are aware,
possesses a rare talent for impromptu speechifying at weddings,
jubilees, and funerals. He can speak whenever he likes: in his sleep, on
an empty stomach, dead drunk or in a high fever. His words flow smoothly
and evenly, like water out of a pipe, and in abundance; there are far
more moving words in his oratorical dictionary than there are beetles in
any restaurant. He always speaks eloquently and at great length, so much
so that on some occasions, particularly at merchants' weddings, they
have to resort to assistance from the police to stop him.
"I have come for you, old man!" began Poplavsky, finding him at home.
"Put on your hat and coat this minute and come along. One of our fellows
is dead, we are just sending him off to the other world, so you must do
a bit of palavering by way of farewell to him. . . . You are our only
hope. If it had been one of the smaller fry it would not have been worth
troubling you, but you see it's the secretary . . . a pillar of the
office, in a sense. It's awkward for such a whopper to be buried without
a speech."
"Oh, the secretary!" yawned Zapoikin. "You mean the drunken one?"
"Yes. There will be pancakes, a lunch . . . you'll get your cab-fare.
Come along, dear chap. You spout out some rigmarole like a regular
Cicero at the grave and what gratitude you will earn!"
Zapoikin readily agreed. He ruffled up his hair, cast a shade of
melancholy over his face, and went out into the street with Poplavsky.
"I know your secretary," he said, as he got into the cab. "A cunning
rogue and a beast--the kingdom of heaven be his--such as you don't often
come across."
"Come, Grisha, it is not the thing to abuse the dead."
"Of course not, aut mortuis nihil bene, but still he was a rascal."
The friends overtook the funeral procession and joined it. The coffin
was borne along slowly so that before they reached the cemetery they
were able three times to drop into a tavern and imbibe a little to the
health of the departed.
In the cemetery came the service by the graveside. The mother-in-law,
the wife, and the sister-in-law in obedience to custom shed many tears.
When the coffin was being lowered into the grave the wife even shrieked
"Let me go with him!" but did not follow her husband into the grave
probably recollecting her pension. Waiting till everything was quiet
again Zapoikin stepped forward, turned his eyes on all present, and
began:
"Can I believe my eyes and ears? Is it not a terrible dream this grave,
these tear-stained faces, these moans and lamentations? Alas, it is not
a dream and our eyes do not deceive us! He whom we have only so lately
seen, so full of courage, so youthfully fresh and pure, who so lately
before our eyes like an unwearying bee bore his honey to the common hive
of the welfare of the state, he who . . . he is turned now to dust, to
inanimate mirage. Inexorable death has laid his bony hand upon him at
the time when, in spite of his bowed age, he was still full of the bloom
of strength and radiant hopes. An irremediable loss! Who will fill his
place for us? Good government servants we have many, but Prokofy
Osipitch was unique. To the depths of his soul he was devoted to his
honest duty; he did not spare his strength but worked late at night, and
was disinterested, impervious to bribes. . . . How he despised those who
to the detriment of the public interest sought to corrupt him, who by
the seductive goods of this life strove to draw him to betray his duty!
Yes, before our eyes Prokofy Osipitch would divide his small salary
between his poorer colleagues, and you have just heard yourselves the
lamentations of the widows and orphans who lived upon his alms. Devoted
to good works and his official duty, he gave up the joys of this life
and even renounced the happiness of domestic existence; as you are
aware, to the end of his days he was a bachelor. And who will replace
him as a comrade? I can see now the kindly, shaven face turned to us
with a gentle smile, I can hear now his soft friendly voice. Peace to
thine ashes, Prokofy Osipitch! Rest, honest, noble toiler!"
Zapoikin continued while his listeners began whispering together. His
speech pleased everyone and drew some tears, but a good many things in
it seemed strange. In the first place they could not make out why the
orator called the deceased Prokofy Osipitch when his name was Kirill
Ivanovitch. In the second, everyone knew that the deceased had spent his
whole life quarelling with his lawful wife, and so consequently could
not be called a bachelor; in the third, he had a thick red beard and had
never been known to shave, and so no one could understand why the orator
spoke of his shaven face. The listeners were perplexed; they glanced at
each other and shrugged their shoulders.
"Prokofy Osipitch," continued the orator, looking with an air of
inspiration into the grave, "your face was plain, even hideous, you were
morose and austere, but we all know that under that outer husk there
beat an honest, friendly heart!"
Soon the listeners began to observe something strange in the orator
himself. He gazed at one point, shifted about uneasily and began to
shrug his shoulders too. All at once he ceased speaking, and gaping with
astonishment, turned to Poplavsky.
"I say! he's alive," he said, staring with horror.
"Who's alive?"
"Why, Prokofy Osipitch, there he stands, by that tombstone!"
"He never died! It's Kirill Ivanovitch who's dead."
"But you told me yourself your secretary was dead."
"Kirill Ivanovitch was our secretary. You've muddled it, you queer fish.
Prokofy Osipitch was our secretary before, that's true, but two years
ago he was transferred to the second division as head clerk."
"How the devil is one to tell?"
"Why are you stopping? Go on, it's awkward."
Zapoikin turned to the grave, and with the same eloquence continued his
interrupted speech. Prokofy Osipitch, an old clerk with a clean-shaven
face, was in fact standing by a tombstone. He looked at the orator and
frowned angrily.
"Well, you have put your foot into it, haven't you!" laughed his fellow-
clerks as they returned from the funeral with Zapoikin. "Burying a man
alive!"
"It's unpleasant, young man," grumbled Prokofy Osipitch. "Your speech
may be all right for a dead man, but in reference to a living one it is
nothing but sarcasm! Upon my soul what have you been saying?
Disinterested, incorruptible, won't take bribes! Such things can only be
said of the living in sarcasm. And no one asked you, sir, to expatiate
on my face. Plain, hideous, so be it, but why exhibit my countenance in
that public way! It's insulting."
MALINGERERS
MARFA PETROVNA PETCHONKIN, the General's widow, who has been practising
for ten years as a homeopathic doctor, is seeing patients in her study
on one of the Tuesdays in May. On the table before her lie a chest of
homeopathic drugs, a book on homeopathy, and bills from a homeopathic
chemist. On the wall the letters from some Petersburg homeopath, in
Marfa Petrovna's opinion a very celebrated and great man, hang under
glass in a gilt frame, and there also is a portrait of Father Aristark,
to whom the lady owes her salvation --that is, the renunciation of
pernicious allopathy and the knowledge of the truth. In the vestibule
patients are sitting waiting, for the most part peasants. All but two or
three of them are barefoot, as the lady has given orders that their ill-
smelling boots are to be left in the yard.
Marfa Petrovna has already seen ten patients when she calls the
eleventh: "Gavrila Gruzd!"
The door opens and instead of Gavrila Gruzd, Zamuhrishen, a neighbouring
landowner who has sunk into poverty, a little old man with sour eyes,
and with a gentleman's cap under his arm, walks into the room. He puts
down his stick in the corner, goes up to the lady, and without a word
drops on one knee before her.
"What are you about, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" cries the lady in horror, flushing
crimson. "For goodness sake!"
"While I live I will not rise," says Zamuhrishen, bending over her hand.
"Let all the world see my homage on my knees, our guardian angel,
benefactress of the human race! Let them! Before the good fairy who has
given me life, guided me into the path of truth, and enlightened my
scepticism I am ready not merely to kneel but to pass through fire, our
miraculous healer, mother of the orphan and the widowed! I have
recovered. I am a new man, enchantress!"
"I . . . I am very glad . . ." mutters the lady, flushing with pleasure.
"It's so pleasant to hear that. . . Sit down please! Why, you were so
seriously ill that Tuesday."
"Yes indeed, how ill I was! It's awful to recall it," says Zamuhrishen,
taking a seat. "I had rheumatism in every part and every organ. I have
been in misery for eight years, I've had no rest from it . . . by day or
by night, my benefactress. I have consulted doctors, and I went to
professors at Kazan; I have tried all sorts of mud-baths, and drunk
waters, and goodness knows what I haven't tried! I have wasted all my
substance on doctors, my beautiful lady. The doctors did me nothing but
harm. They drove the disease inwards. Drive in, that they did, but to
drive out was beyond their science. All they care about is their fees,
the brigands; but as for the benefit of humanity--for that they don't
care a straw. They prescribe some quackery, and you have to drink it.
Assassins, that's the only word for them. If it hadn't been for you, our
angel, I should have been in the grave by now! I went home from you that
Tuesday, looked at the pilules that you gave me then, and wondered what
good there could be in them. Was it possible that those little grains,
scarcely visible, could cure my immense, long-standing disease? That's
what I thought--unbeliever that I was!--and I smiled; but when I took the
pilule--it was instantaneous! It was as though I had not been ill, or as
though it had been lifted off me. My wife looked at me with her eyes
starting out of her head and couldn't believe it. 'Why, is it you,
Kolya?' 'Yes, it is I,' I said. And we knelt down together before the
ikon, and fell to praying for our angel: 'Send her, O Lord, all that we
are feeling!'"
Zamuhrishen wipes his eyes with his sleeve gets up from his chair, and
shows a disposition to drop on one knee again; but the lady checks him
and makes him sit down.
"It's not me you must thank," she says, blushing with excitement and
looking enthusiastically at the portrait of Father Aristark. "It's not
my doing. . . . I am only the obedient instrument . . It's really a
miracle. Rheumatism of eight years' standing by one pilule of
scrofuloso!"
"Excuse me, you were so kind as to give me three pilules. One I took at
dinner and the effect was instantaneous! Another in the evening, and the
third next day; and since then not a touch! Not a twinge anywhere! And
you know I thought I was dying, I had written to Moscow for my son to
come! The Lord has given you wisdom, our lady of healing! Now I am
walking, and feel as though I were in Paradise. The Tuesday I came to
you I was hobbling, and now I am ready to run after a hare. . . . I
could live for a hundred years. There's only one trouble, our lack of
means. I'm well now, but what's the use of health if there's nothing to
live on? Poverty weighs on me worse than illness. . . . For example,
take this . . . It's the time to sow oats, and how is one to sow it if
one has no seed? I ought to buy it, but the money . . . everyone knows
how we are off for money. . . ."
"I will give you oats, Kuzma Kuzmitch. . . . Sit down, sit down. You
have so delighted me, you have given me so much pleasure that it's not
you but I that should say thank you!"
"You are our joy! That the Lord should create such goodness! Rejoice,
Madam, looking at your good deeds! . . . While we sinners have no cause
for rejoicing in ourselves. . . . We are paltry, poor-spirited, useless
people . . . a mean lot. . . . We are only gentry in name, but in a
material sense we are the same as peasants, only worse. . . . We live in
stone houses, but it's a mere make-believe . . . for the roof leaks. And
there is no money to buy wood to mend it with."
"I'll give you the wood, Kuzma Kuzmitch."