DURING my stay in the district of S. I often used to go to see the
watchman Savva Stukatch, or simply Savka, in the kitchen gardens of
Dubovo. These kitchen gardens were my favorite resort for so-called
“mixed” fishing, when one goes out without knowing what day or hour one
may return, taking with one every sort of fishing tackle as well as a
store of provisions. To tell the truth, it was not so much the fishing
that attracted me as the peaceful stroll, the meals at no set time, the
talk with Savka, and being for so long face to face with the calm
summer nights. Savka was a young man of five-and-twenty, well grown and
handsome, and as strong as a flint. He had the reputation of being a
sensible and reasonable fellow. He could read and write, and very rarely
drank, but as a workman this strong and healthy young man was not worth
a farthing. A sluggish, overpowering sloth was mingled with the strength
in his muscles, which were strong as cords. Like everyone else in his
village, he lived in his own hut, and had his share of land, but neither
tilled it nor sowed it, and did not work at any sort of trade. His old
mother begged alms at people’s windows and he himself lived like a bird
of the air; he did not know in the morning what he would eat at midday.
It was not that he was lacking in will, or energy, or feeling for his
mother; it was simply that he felt no inclination for work and did not
recognize the advantage of it. His whole figure suggested unruffled
serenity, an innate, almost artistic passion for living carelessly,
never with his sleeves tucked up. When Savka’s young, healthy body had
a physical craving for muscular work, the young man abandoned himself
completely for a brief interval to some free but nonsensical pursuit,
such as sharpening skates not wanted for any special purpose, or
racing about after the peasant women. His favorite attitude was one
of concentrated immobility. He was capable of standing for hours at a
stretch in the same place with his eyes fixed on the same spot without
stirring. He never moved except on impulse, and then only when an
occasion presented itself for some rapid and abrupt action: catching
a running dog by the tail, pulling off a woman’s kerchief, or jumping
over a big hole. It need hardly be said that with such parsimony of
movement Savka was as poor as a mouse and lived worse than any homeless
outcast. As time went on, I suppose he accumulated arrears of taxes
and, young and sturdy as he was, he was sent by the commune to do an old
man’s job--to be watchman and scarecrow in the kitchen gardens. However
much they laughed at him for his premature senility he did not object
to it. This position, quiet and convenient for motionless contemplation,
exactly fitted his temperament.
It happened I was with this Savka one fine May evening. I remember I was
lying on a torn and dirty sackcloth cover close to the shanty from which
came a heavy, fragrant scent of hay. Clasping my hands under my head I
looked before me. At my feet was lying a wooden fork. Behind it Savka’s
dog Kutka stood out like a black patch, and not a dozen feet from Kutka
the ground ended abruptly in the steep bank of the little river. Lying
down I could not see the river; I could only see the tops of the young
willows growing thickly on the nearer bank, and the twisting, as it were
gnawed away, edges of the opposite bank. At a distance beyond the bank
on the dark hillside the huts of the village in which Savka lived lay
huddling together like frightened young partridges. Beyond the hill the
afterglow of sunset still lingered in the sky. One pale crimson streak
was all that was left, and even that began to be covered by little
clouds as a fire with ash.
A copse with alder-trees, softly whispering, and from time to time
shuddering in the fitful breeze, lay, a dark blur, on the right of
the kitchen gardens; on the left stretched the immense plain. In the
distance, where the eye could not distinguish between the sky and the
plain, there was a bright gleam of light. A little way off from me sat
Savka. With his legs tucked under him like a Turk and his head hanging,
he looked pensively at Kutka. Our hooks with live bait on them had
long been in the river, and we had nothing left to do but to abandon
ourselves to repose, which Savka, who was never exhausted and always
rested, loved so much. The glow had not yet quite died away, but the
summer night was already enfolding nature in its caressing, soothing
embrace.
Everything was sinking into its first deep sleep except some night bird
unfamiliar to me, which indolently uttered a long, protracted cry in
several distinct notes like the phrase, “Have you seen Ni-ki-ta?” and
immediately answered itself, “Seen him, seen him, seen him!”
“Why is it the nightingales aren’t singing tonight?” I asked Savka.
He turned slowly towards me. His features were large, but his face was
open, soft, and expressive as a woman’s. Then he gazed with his mild,
dreamy eyes at the copse, at the willows, slowly pulled a whistle out
of his pocket, put it in his mouth and whistled the note of a
hen-nightingale. And at once, as though in answer to his call, a
landrail called on the opposite bank.
“There’s a nightingale for you...” laughed Savka. “Drag-drag! drag-drag!
just like pulling at a hook, and yet I bet he thinks he is singing,
too.”
“I like that bird,” I said. “Do you know, when the birds are migrating
the landrail does not fly, but runs along the ground? It only flies over
the rivers and the sea, but all the rest it does on foot.”
“Upon my word, the dog...” muttered Savka, looking with respect in the
direction of the calling landrail.
Knowing how fond Savka was of listening, I told him all I had learned
about the landrail from sportsman’s books. From the landrail I passed
imperceptibly to the migration of the birds. Savka listened attentively,
looking at me without blinking, and smiling all the while with pleasure.
“And which country is most the bird’s home? Ours or those foreign
parts?” he asked.
“Ours, of course. The bird itself is hatched here, and it hatches out
its little ones here in its native country, and they only fly off there
to escape being frozen.”
“It’s interesting,” said Savka. “Whatever one talks about it is always
interesting. Take a bird now, or a man... or take this little stone;
there’s something to learn about all of them.... Ah, sir, if I had
known you were coming I wouldn’t have told a woman to come here this
evening.... She asked to come to-day.”
“Oh, please don’t let me be in your way,” I said. “I can lie down in the
wood....”
“What next! She wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t come till to-morrow....
If only she would sit quiet and listen, but she always wants to be
slobbering.... You can’t have a good talk when she’s here.”
“Are you expecting Darya?” I asked, after a pause.
“No... a new one has asked to come this evening... Agafya, the
signalman’s wife.”
Savka said this in his usual passionless, somewhat hollow voice, as
though he were talking of tobacco or porridge, while I started with
surprise. I knew Agafya.... She was quite a young peasant woman of
nineteen or twenty, who had been married not more than a year before to
a railway signalman, a fine young fellow. She lived in the village, and
her husband came home there from the line every night.
“Your goings on with the women will lead to trouble, my boy,” said I.
“Well, may be....”
And after a moment’s thought Savka added:
“I’ve said so to the women; they won’t heed me....They don’t trouble
about it, the silly things!”
Silence followed.... Meanwhile the darkness was growing thicker and
thicker, and objects began to lose their contours. The streak behind the
hill had completely died away, and the stars were growing brighter
and more luminous.... The mournfully monotonous chirping of the
grasshoppers, the call of the landrail, and the cry of the quail did
not destroy the stillness of the night, but, on the contrary, gave it an
added monotony. It seemed as though the soft sounds that enchanted the
ear came, not from birds or insects, but from the stars looking down
upon us from the sky....
Savka was the first to break the silence. He slowly turned his eyes from
black Kutka and said:
“I see you are dull, sir. Let’s have supper.”
And without waiting for my consent he crept on his stomach into the
shanty, rummaged about there, making the whole edifice tremble like a
leaf; then he crawled back and set before me my vodka and an earthenware
bowl; in the bowl there were baked eggs, lard scones made of rye, pieces
of black bread, and something else.... We had a drink from a little
crooked glass that wouldn’t stand, and then we fell upon the food....
Coarse grey salt, dirty, greasy cakes, eggs tough as india-rubber, but
how nice it all was!
“You live all alone, but what lots of good things you have,” I said,
pointing to the bowl. “Where do you get them from?”
“The women bring them,” mumbled Savka.
“What do they bring them to you for?”
“Oh... from pity.”
Not only Savka’s menu, but his clothing, too, bore traces of feminine
“pity.” Thus I noticed that he had on, that evening, a new woven belt
and a crimson ribbon on which a copper cross hung round his dirty neck.
I knew of the weakness of the fair sex for Savka, and I knew that he
did not like talking about it, and so I did not carry my inquiries any
further. Besides there was not time to talk.... Kutka, who had been
fidgeting about near us and patiently waiting for scraps, suddenly
pricked up his ears and growled. We heard in the distance repeated
splashing of water.
“Someone is coming by the ford,” said Savka.
Three minutes later Kutka growled again and made a sound like a cough.
“Shsh!” his master shouted at him.
In the darkness there was a muffled thud of timid footsteps, and the
silhouette of a woman appeared out of the copse. I recognized her,
although it was dark--it was Agafya. She came up to us diffidently and
stopped, breathing hard. She was breathless, probably not so much from
walking as from fear and the unpleasant sensation everyone experiences
in wading across a river at night. Seeing near the shanty not one but
two persons, she uttered a faint cry and fell back a step.
“Ah... that is you!” said Savka, stuffing a scone into his mouth.
“Ye-es... I,” she muttered, dropping on the ground a bundle of some
sort and looking sideways at me. “Yakov sent his greetings to you and
told me to give you... something here....”
“Come, why tell stories? Yakov!” laughed Savka. “There is no need for
lying; the gentleman knows why you have come! Sit down; you shall have
supper with us.”
Agafya looked sideways at me and sat down irresolutely.
“I thought you weren’t coming this evening,” Savka said, after a
prolonged silence. “Why sit like that? Eat! Or shall I give you a drop
of vodka?”
“What an idea!” laughed Agafya; “do you think you have got hold of a
drunkard?...”
“Oh, drink it up.... Your heart will feel warmer.... There!”
Savka gave Agafya the crooked glass. She slowly drank the vodka, ate
nothing with it, but drew a deep breath when she had finished.
“You’ve brought something,” said Savka, untying the bundle and throwing
a condescending, jesting shade into his voice. “Women can never come
without bringing something. Ah, pie and potatoes.... They live well,”
he sighed, turning to me. “They are the only ones in the whole village
who have got potatoes left from the winter!”
In the darkness I did not see Agafya’s face, but from the movement of
her shoulders and head it seemed to me that she could not take her
eyes off Savka’s face. To avoid being the third person at this tryst, I
decided to go for a walk and got up. But at that moment a nightingale in
the wood suddenly uttered two low contralto notes. Half a minute later
it gave a tiny high trill and then, having thus tried its voice, began
singing. Savka jumped up and listened.
“It’s the same one as yesterday,” he said. “Wait a minute.”
And, getting up, he went noiselessly to the wood.
“Why, what do you want with it?” I shouted out after him, “Stop!”
Savka shook his hand as much as to say, “Don’t shout,” and vanished into
the darkness. Savka was an excellent sportsman and fisherman when he
liked, but his talents in this direction were as completely thrown away
as his strength. He was too slothful to do things in the routine way,
and vented his passion for sport in useless tricks. For instance, he
would catch nightingales only with his hands, would shoot pike with a
fowling piece, he would spend whole hours by the river trying to catch
little fish with a big hook.
Left alone with me, Agafya coughed and passed her hand several times
over her forehead.... She began to feel a little drunk from the vodka.
“How are you getting on, Agasha?” I asked her, after a long silence,
when it began to be awkward to remain mute any longer.
“Very well, thank God.... Don’t tell anyone, sir, will you?” she added
suddenly in a whisper.
“That’s all right,” I reassured her. “But how reckless you are,
Agasha!... What if Yakov finds out?”
“He won’t find out.”
“But what if he does?”
“No... I shall be at home before he is. He is on the line now, and he
will come back when the mail train brings him, and from here I can hear
when the train’s coming....”
Agafya once more passed her hand over her forehead and looked away in
the direction in which Savka had vanished. The nightingale was singing.
Some night bird flew low down close to the ground and, noticing us, was
startled, fluttered its wings and flew across to the other side of the
river.
Soon the nightingale was silent, but Savka did not come back. Agafya got
up, took a few steps uneasily, and sat down again.
“What is he doing?” she could not refrain from saying. “The train’s not
coming in to-morrow! I shall have to go away directly.”
“Savka,” I shouted. “Savka.”
I was not answered even by an echo. Agafya moved uneasily and sat down
again.
“It’s time I was going,” she said in an agitated voice. “The train will
be here directly! I know when the trains come in.”
The poor woman was not mistaken. Before a quarter of an hour had passed
a sound was heard in the distance.
Agafya kept her eyes fixed on the copse for a long time and moved her
hands impatiently.
“Why, where can he be?” she said, laughing nervously. “Where has the
devil carried him? I am going! I really must be going.”
Meanwhile the noise was growing more and more distinct. By now one could
distinguish the rumble of the wheels from the heavy gasps of the engine.
Then we heard the whistle, the train crossed the bridge with a hollow
rumble... another minute and all was still.
“I’ll wait one minute more,” said Agafya, sitting down resolutely. “So
be it, I’ll wait.”
At last Savka appeared in the darkness. He walked noiselessly on the
crumbling earth of the kitchen gardens and hummed something softly to
himself.
“Here’s a bit of luck; what do you say to that now?” he said gaily. “As
soon as I got up to the bush and began taking aim with my hand it left
off singing! Ah, the bald dog! I waited and waited to see when it would
begin again, but I had to give it up.”
Savka flopped clumsily down to the ground beside Agafya and, to keep his
balance, clutched at her waist with both hands.
“Why do you look cross, as though your aunt were your mother?” he asked.
With all his soft-heartedness and good-nature, Savka despised women.
He behaved carelessly, condescendingly with them, and even stooped to
scornful laughter of their feelings for himself. God knows, perhaps this
careless, contemptuous manner was one of the causes of his irresistible
attraction for the village Dulcineas. He was handsome and well-built; in
his eyes there was always a soft friendliness, even when he was looking
at the women he so despised, but the fascination was not to be explained
by merely external qualities. Apart from his happy exterior and original
manner, one must suppose that the touching position of Savka as an
acknowledged failure and an unhappy exile from his own hut to the
kitchen gardens also had an influence upon the women.
“Tell the gentleman what you have come here for!” Savka went on, still
holding Agafya by the waist. “Come, tell him, you good married woman!
Ho-ho! Shall we have another drop of vodka, friend Agasha?”
I got up and, threading my way between the plots, I walked the length of
the kitchen garden. The dark beds looked like flattened-out graves. They
smelt of dug earth and the tender dampness of plants beginning to be
covered with dew.... A red light was still gleaming on the left. It
winked genially and seemed to smile.