MELITON SHISHKIN, a bailiff from the Dementyev farm, exhausted by
the sultry heat of the fir-wood and covered with spiders’ webs and
pine-needles, made his way with his gun to the edge of the wood. His
Damka--a mongrel between a yard dog and a setter--an extremely thin
bitch heavy with young, trailed after her master with her wet tail
between her legs, doing all she could to avoid pricking her nose. It was
a dull, overcast morning. Big drops dripped from the bracken and from
the trees that were wrapped in a light mist; there was a pungent smell
of decay from the dampness of the wood.
There were birch-trees ahead of him where the wood ended, and between
their stems and branches he could see the misty distance. Beyond the
birch-trees someone was playing on a shepherd’s rustic pipe. The player
produced no more than five or six notes, dragged them out languidly
with no attempt at forming a tune, and yet there was something harsh and
extremely dreary in the sound of the piping.
As the copse became sparser, and the pines were interspersed with young
birch-trees, Meliton saw a herd. Hobbled horses, cows, and sheep were
wandering among the bushes and, snapping the dry branches, sniffed at
the herbage of the copse. A lean old shepherd, bareheaded, in a torn
grey smock, stood leaning against the wet trunk of a birch-tree. He
stared at the ground, pondering something, and played his pipe, it
seemed, mechanically.
“Good-day, grandfather! God help you!” Meliton greeted him in a thin,
husky voice which seemed incongruous with his huge stature and big,
fleshy face. “How cleverly you are playing your pipe! Whose herd are you
minding?”
“The Artamonovs’,” the shepherd answered reluctantly, and he thrust the
pipe into his bosom.
“So I suppose the wood is the Artamonovs’ too?” Meliton inquired,
looking about him. “Yes, it is the Artamonovs’; only fancy... I
had completely lost myself. I got my face scratched all over in the
thicket.”
He sat down on the wet earth and began rolling up a bit of newspaper
into a cigarette.
Like his voice, everything about the man was small and out of keeping
with his height, his breadth, and his fleshy face: his smiles, his
eyes, his buttons, his tiny cap, which would hardly keep on his big,
closely-cropped head. When he talked and smiled there was something
womanish, timid, and meek about his puffy, shaven face and his whole
figure.
“What weather! God help us!” he said, and he turned his head from side
to side. “Folk have not carried the oats yet, and the rain seems as
though it had been taken on for good, God bless it.”
The shepherd looked at the sky, from which a drizzling rain was falling,
at the wood, at the bailif’s wet clothes, pondered, and said nothing.
“The whole summer has been the same,” sighed Meliton. “A bad business
for the peasants and no pleasure for the gentry.”
The shepherd looked at the sky again, thought a moment, and said
deliberately, as though chewing each word:
“It’s all going the same way.... There is nothing good to be looked
for.”
“How are things with you here?” Meliton inquired, lighting his
cigarette. “Haven’t you seen any coveys of grouse in the Artamonovs’
clearing?”
The shepherd did not answer at once. He looked again at the sky and to
right and left, thought a little, blinked.... Apparently he attached no
little significance to his words, and to increase their value tried to
pronounce them with deliberation and a certain solemnity. The expression
of his face had the sharpness and staidness of old age, and the fact
that his nose had a saddle-shaped depression across the middle and his
nostrils turned upwards gave him a sly and sarcastic look.
“No, I believe I haven’t,” he said. “Our huntsman Eryomka was saying
that on Elijah’s Day he started one covey near Pustoshye, but I dare say
he was lying. There are very few birds.”
“Yes, brother, very few.... Very few everywhere! The shooting here,
if one is to look at it with common sense, is good for nothing and not
worth having. There is no game at all, and what there is is not worth
dirtying your hands over--it is not full-grown. It is such poor stuff
that one is ashamed to look at it.”
Meliton gave a laugh and waved his hands.
“Things happen so queerly in this world that it is simply laughable and
nothing else. Birds nowadays have become so unaccountable: they sit late
on their eggs, and there are some, I declare, that have not hatched them
by St. Peter’s Day!”
“It’s all going the same,” said the shepherd, turning his face upwards.
“There was little game last year, this year there are fewer birds still,
and in another five years, mark my words, there will be none at all. As
far as I can see there will soon be not only no game, but no birds at
all.”
“Yes,” Meliton assented, after a moment’s thought. “That’s true.”
The shepherd gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
“It’s a wonder,” he said, “what has become of them all! I remember
twenty years ago there used to be geese here, and cranes and ducks and
grouse--clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together
for shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf!
There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals,
and the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say
sparrows--lots and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We
don’t even see the birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls
have all gone.... There are fewer of every sort of wild beast, too.
Nowadays, brother, even the wolf and the fox have grown rare, let alone
the bear or the otter. And you know in old days there were even elks!
For forty years I have been observing the works of God from year to
year, and it is my opinion that everything is going the same way.”
“What way?”
“To the bad, young man. To ruin, we must suppose... The time has come
for God’s world to perish.”
The old man put on his cap and began gazing at the sky.
“It’s a pity,” he sighed, after a brief silence. “O God, what a pity! Of
course it is God’s will; the world was not created by us, but yet it is
a pity, brother. If a single tree withers away, or let us say a single
cow dies, it makes one sorry, but what will it be, good man, if the
whole world crumbles into dust? Such blessings, Lord Jesus! The sun, and
the sky, and the forest, and the rivers, and the creatures--all these
have been created, adapted, and adjusted to one another. Each has
been put to its appointed task and knows its place. And all that must
perish.”
A mournful smile gleamed on the shepherd’s face, and his eyelids
quivered.
“You say--the world is perishing,” said Meliton, pondering. “It may be
that the end of the world is near at hand, but you can’t judge by the
birds. I don’t think the birds can be taken as a sign.”
“Not the birds only,” said the shepherd. “It’s the wild beasts, too, and
the cattle, and the bees, and the fish.... If you don’t believe me ask
the old people; every old man will tell you that the fish are not at
all what they used to be. In the seas, in the lakes, and in the rivers,
there are fewer fish from year to year. In our Pestchanka, I remember,
pike used to be caught a yard long, and there were eel-pouts, and roach,
and bream, and every fish had a presentable appearance; while nowadays,
if you catch a wretched little pikelet or perch six inches long you
have to be thankful. There are not any gudgeon even worth talking about.
Every year it is worse and worse, and in a little while there will be
no fish at all. And take the rivers now... the rivers are drying up, for
sure.”
“It is true; they are drying up.”
“To be sure, that’s what I say. Every year they are shallower and
shallower, and there are not the deep holes there used to be. And do you
see the bushes yonder?” the old man asked, pointing to one side. “Beyond
them is an old river-bed; it’s called a backwater. In my father’s time
the Pestchanka flowed there, but now look; where have the evil spirits
taken it to? It changes its course, and, mind you, it will go on
changing till such time as it has dried up altogether. There used to be
marshes and ponds beyond Kurgasovo, and where are they now? And what has
become of the streams? Here in this very wood we used to have a stream
flowing, and such a stream that the peasants used to set creels in it
and caught pike; wild ducks used to spend the winter by it, and nowadays
there is no water in it worth speaking of, even at the spring
floods. Yes, brother, look where you will, things are bad everywhere.
Everywhere!”
A silence followed. Meliton sank into thought, with his eyes fixed on
one spot. He wanted to think of some one part of nature as yet untouched
by the all-embracing ruin. Spots of light glistened on the mist and the
slanting streaks of rain as though on opaque glass, and immediately died
away again--it was the rising sun trying to break through the clouds and
peep at the earth.
“Yes, the forests, too...” Meliton muttered.
“The forests, too,” the shepherd repeated. “They cut them down, and they
catch fire, and they wither away, and no new ones are growing. Whatever
does grow up is cut down at once; one day it shoots up and the next it
has been cut down--and so on without end till nothing’s left. I have
kept the herds of the commune ever since the time of Freedom, good man;
before the time of Freedom I was shepherd of the master’s herds. I have
watched them in this very spot, and I can’t remember a summer day in
all my life that I have not been here. And all the time I have been
observing the works of God. I have looked at them in my time till I know
them, and it is my opinion that all things growing are on the decline.
Whether you take the rye, or the vegetables, or flowers of any sort,
they are all going the same way.”
“But people have grown better,” observed the bailiff.
“In what way better?”
“Cleverer.”
“Cleverer, maybe, that’s true, young man; but what’s the use of that?
What earthly good is cleverness to people on the brink of ruin? One can
perish without cleverness. What’s the good of cleverness to a huntsman
if there is no game? What I think is that God has given men brains and
taken away their strength. People have grown weak, exceedingly weak.
Take me, for instance... I am not worth a halfpenny, I am the humblest
peasant in the whole village, and yet, young man, I have strength. Mind
you, I am in my seventies, and I tend my herd day in and day out, and
keep the night watch, too, for twenty kopecks, and I don’t sleep, and
I don’t feel the cold; my son is cleverer than I am, but put him in my
place and he would ask for a raise next day, or would be going to the
doctors. There it is. I eat nothing but bread, for ‘Give us this day our
daily bread,’ and my father ate nothing but bread, and my grandfather;
but the peasant nowadays must have tea and vodka and white loaves, and
must sleep from sunset to dawn, and he goes to the doctor and pampers
himself in all sorts of ways. And why is it? He has grown weak; he
has not the strength to endure. If he wants to stay awake, his eyes
close--there is no doing anything.”
“That’s true,” Meliton agreed; “the peasant is good for nothing
nowadays.”
“It’s no good hiding what is wrong; we get worse from year to year. And
if you take the gentry into consideration, they’ve grown feebler
even more than the peasants have. The gentleman nowadays has mastered
everything; he knows what he ought not to know, and what is the sense
of it? It makes you feel pitiful to look at him.... He is a thin, puny
little fellow, like some Hungarian or Frenchman; there is no dignity nor
air about him; it’s only in name he is a gentleman. There is no place
for him, poor dear, and nothing for him to do, and there is no making
out what he wants. Either he sits with a hook catching fish, or he lolls
on his back reading, or trots about among the peasants saying all sorts
of things to them, and those that are hungry go in for being clerks. So
he spends his life in vain. And he has no notion of doing something
real and useful. The gentry in old days were half of them generals, but
nowadays they are--a poor lot.”
“They are badly off nowadays,” said Meliton.
“They are poorer because God has taken away their strength. You can’t go
against God.”
Meliton stared at a fixed point again. After thinking a little he heaved
a sigh as staid, reasonable people do sigh, shook his head, and said:
“And all because of what? We have sinned greatly, we have forgotten
God.. and it seems that the time has come for all to end. And, after
all, the world can’t last for ever--it’s time to know when to take
leave.”
The shepherd sighed and, as though wishing to cut short an unpleasant
conversation, he walked away from the birch-tree and began silently
reckoning over the cows.
“Hey-hey-hey!” he shouted. “Hey-hey-hey! Bother you, the plague take
you! The devil has taken you into the thicket. Tu-lu-lu!”
With an angry face he went into the bushes to collect his herd. Meliton
got up and sauntered slowly along the edge of the wood. He looked at the
ground at his feet and pondered; he still wanted to think of something
which had not yet been touched by death. Patches of light crept upon the
slanting streaks of rain again; they danced on the tops of the trees and
died away among the wet leaves. Damka found a hedgehog under a bush, and
wanting to attract her master’s attention to it, barked and howled.
“Did you have an eclipse or not?” the shepherd called from the bushes.
“Yes, we had,” answered Meliton.
“Ah! Folks are complaining all about that there was one. It shows there
is disorder even in the heavens! It’s not for nothing.... Hey-hey-hey!
Hey!”
Driving his herd together to the edge of the wood, the shepherd leaned
against the birch-tree, looked up at the sky, without haste took his
pipe from his bosom and began playing. As before, he played mechanically
and took no more than five or six notes; as though the pipe had
come into his hands for the first time, the sounds floated from it
uncertainly, with no regularity, not blending into a tune, but to
Meliton, brooding on the destruction of the world, there was a sound in
it of something very depressing and revolting which he would much rather
not have heard. The highest, shrillest notes, which quivered and broke,
seemed to be weeping disconsolately, as though the pipe were sick and
frightened, while the lowest notes for some reason reminded him of the
mist, the dejected trees, the grey sky. Such music seemed in keeping
with the weather, the old man and his sayings.
Meliton wanted to complain. He went up to the old man and, looking at
his mournful, mocking face and at the pipe, muttered:
“And life has grown worse, grandfather. It is utterly impossible to
live. Bad crops, want.... Cattle plague continually, diseases of all
sorts.... We are crushed by poverty.”
The bailiff’s puffy face turned crimson and took a dejected, womanish
expression. He twirled his fingers as though seeking words to convey his
vague feeling and went on:
“Eight children, a wife... and my mother still living, and my whole
salary ten roubles a month and to board myself. My wife has become a
Satan from poverty.... I go off drinking myself. I am a sensible, steady
man; I have education. I ought to sit at home in peace, but I stray
about all day with my gun like a dog because it is more than I can
stand; my home is hateful to me!”
Feeling that his tongue was uttering something quite different from what
he wanted to say, the bailiff waved his hand and said bitterly:
“If the world’s going to end I wish it would make haste about it.
There’s no need to drag it out and make folks miserable for nothing....”
The old man took the pipe from his lips and, screwing up one eye, looked
into its little opening. His face was sad and covered with thick drops
like tears. He smiled and said:
“It’s a pity, my friend! My goodness, what a pity! The earth, the
forest, the sky, the beasts of all sorts--all this has been created,
you know, adapted; they all have their intelligence. It is all going to
ruin. And most of all I am sorry for people.”
There was the sound in the wood of heavy rain coming nearer. Meliton
looked in the direction of the sound, did up all his buttons, and said:
“I am going to the village. Good-bye, grandfather. What is your name?”
“Luka the Poor.”
“Well, good-bye, Luka! Thank you for your good words. Damka, ici!”
After parting from the shepherd Meliton made his way along the edge of
the wood, and then down hill to a meadow which by degrees turned into a
marsh. There was a squelch of water under his feet, and the rusty marsh
sedge, still green and juicy, drooped down to the earth as though
afraid of being trampled underfoot. Beyond the marsh, on the bank of the
Pestchanka, of which the old man had spoken, stood a row of willows, and
beyond the willows a barn looked dark blue in the mist. One could feel
the approach of that miserable, utterly inevitable season, when the
fields grow dark and the earth is muddy and cold, when the weeping
willow seems still more mournful and tears trickle down its stem, and
only the cranes fly away from the general misery, and even they, as
though afraid of insulting dispirited nature by the expression of their
happiness, fill the air with their mournful, dreary notes.
Meliton plodded along to the river, and heard the sounds of the pipe
gradually dying away behind him. He still wanted to complain. He looked
dejectedly about him, and he felt insufferably sorry for the sky and
the earth and the sun and the woods and his Damka, and when the highest
drawn-out note of the pipe floated quivering in the air, like a voice
weeping, he felt extremely bitter and resentful of the impropriety in
the conduct of nature.
The high note quivered, broke off, and the pipe was silent.