We walked along a scarcely trodden path, through a grassy glade between
two birch copses. The sun was blazing; the orioles called to each other
in the green thicket; corncrakes chattered close to the path; blue
butterflies fluttered in crowds about the white, and red flowers of the
low-growing clover; in the perfectly still grass bees hung, as though
asleep, languidly buzzing. Cucumber seemed to pull himself together, and
brightened up; he was afraid of Narkiz--he lived always under his eye; I
was a stranger--a new comer--with me he was soon quite at home.
‘Here’s our gentleman,’ he said in a rapid flow; ‘he’s a small eater
and no mistake! but only one perch, is that enough for him? Unless,
your honour, you would like to contribute something? Close here round
the corner, at the little inn, there are first-rate white wheaten
rolls. And if so, please your honour, this poor sinner, too, will
gladly drink on this occasion to your health, and may it be of long
years and long days.’ I gave him a little silver, and was only just in
time to pull away my hand, which he was falling upon to kiss. He
learned that I was a sportsman, and fell to talking of a very good
friend of his, an officer, who had a ‘Mindindenger’ Swedish gun, with a
copper stock, just like a cannon, so that when you fire it off you are
almost knocked senseless--it had been left behind by the French--and a
dog--simply one of Nature’s marvels! that he himself had always had a
great passion for the chase, and his priest would have made no trouble
about it--he used in fact to catch quails with him--but the
ecclesiastical superior had pursued him with endless persecution; ‘and
as for Narkiz Semyonitch,’ he observed in a sing-song tone, ‘if
according to his notions I’m not a trustworthy person--well, what I say
is: he’s let his eyebrows grow till he’s like a woodcock, and he
fancies all the sciences are known to him.’ By this time we had reached
the inn, a solitary tumble-down, one-roomed little hut without backyard
or outbuildings; an emaciated dog lay curled up under the window; a hen
was scratching in the dust under his very nose. Cucumber sat the
brigadier down on the bank, and darted instantly into the hut. While he
was buying the rolls and emptying a glass, I never took my eyes off the
brigadier, who, God knows why, struck me as something of an enigma. In
the life of this man--so I mused--there must certainly have been
something out of the ordinary. But he, it seemed, did not notice me at
all. He was sitting huddled up on the bank, and twisting in his fingers
some pinks which he had gathered in my friend’s garden. Cucumber made
his appearance, at last, with a bundle of rolls in his hand; he made
his appearance, all red and perspiring, with an expression of gleeful
surprise on his face, as though he had just seen something exceedingly
agreeable and unexpected. He at once offered the brigadier a roll to
eat, and the latter at once ate it. We proceeded on our way.
X
On the strength of the spirits he had drunk, Cucumber quite ‘unbent,’ as
it is called. He began trying to cheer up the brigadier, who was still
hurrying forward with a tottering motion as though he were on stilts.
‘Why are you so downcast, sir, and hanging your head? Let me sing you a
song. That’ll cheer you up in a minute.’ He turned to me: ‘Our gentleman
is very fond of a joke, mercy on us, yes! Yesterday, what did I see?--a
peasant-woman washing a pair of breeches on the platform, and a great
fat woman she was, and he stood behind her, simply all of a shake with
laughter--yes, indeed! ... In a minute, allow me: do you know the song of
the hare? You mustn’t judge me by my looks; there’s a gypsy woman living
here in the town, a perfect fright, but sings--‘pon my soul! one’s ready
to lie down and die.’ He opened wide his moist red lips and began
singing, his head on one side, his eyes shut, and his beard quivering:
‘The hare beneath the bush lies still,
The hunters vainly scour the hill;
The hare lies hid and holds his breath,
His ears pricked up, he lies there still
Waiting for death.
O hunters! what harm have I done,
To vex or injure you? Although
Among the cabbages I run,
One leaf I nibble--only one,
And that’s not yours!
Oh, no!’
Cucumber went on with ever-increasing energy:
‘Into the forest dark he fled,
His tail he let the hunters see;
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” says he,
“That so I turn my back on you--
I am not yours!”’
Cucumber was not singing now ... he was bellowing:
‘The hunters hunted day and night,
And still the hare was out of sight.
So, talking over his misdeeds,
They ended by disputing quite--
Alas, the hare is not for us!
The squint-eye is too sharp for us!’
The first two lines of each stanza Cucumber sang with each syllable
drawn out; the other three, on the contrary, very briskly, and
accompanied them with little hops and shuffles of his feet; at the
conclusion of each verse he cut a caper, in which he kicked himself with
his own heels. As he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘The squint-eye is
too sharp for us!’ he turned a somersault.... His expectations were
fulfilled. The brigadier suddenly went off into a thin, tearful little
chuckle, and laughed so heartily that he could not go on, and stayed
still in a half-sitting posture, helplessly slapping his knees with his
hands. I looked at his face, flushed crimson, and convulsively working,
and felt very sorry for him at that instant especially. Encouraged by
his success, Cucumber fell to capering about in a squatting position,
singing the refrain of: ‘Shildi-budildi!’ and ‘Natchiki-tchikaldi!’ He
stumbled at last with his nose in the dust.... The brigadier suddenly
ceased laughing and hobbled on.