Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (337 page)

VII

I tried to begin a conversation with the brigadier … but Narkiz had not misinformed me; the poor old man certainly had become weak in his intellect. He asked me my surname, and after repeating his inquiry twice, pondered and pondered, and at last brought out: ‘Yes, I fancy there was a judge of that name here. Cucumber, wasn’t there a judge about here of that name, hey?’ ‘To be sure there was, Vassily Fomitch, your honour,’ responded Cucumber, who treated him altogether as a child. ‘There was, certainly. But let me have your hook; your worm must have been eaten off…. Yes, so it is.’

‘Did you know the Lomov family?’ the brigadier suddenly asked me in a cracked voice.

‘What Lomov family is that?’

‘Why, Fiodor Ivanitch, Yevstigney Ivanitch, Alexey Ivanitch the Jew, and

Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer, … and then, too …’

The brigadier suddenly broke off and looked down confused.

They were the people he was most intimate with,’ Narkiz whispered, bending towards me; ‘it was through them, through that same Alexey Ivanitch, that he called a Jew, and through a sister of Alexey Ivanitch’s, Agrafena Ivanovna, as you may say, that he lost all his property.’

‘What are you saying there about Agrafena Ivanovna?’ the brigadier called out suddenly, and his head was raised, his white eyebrows were frowning…. ‘You’d better mind! And why Agrafena, pray? Agrippina Ivanovna — that’s what you should call her.’

‘There — there — there, sir,’ Cucumber was beginning to falter.

‘Don’t you know the verses the poet Milonov wrote about her?’ the old man went on, suddenly getting into a state of excitement, which was a complete surprise to me. ‘No hymeneal lights were kindled,’ he began chanting, pronouncing all the vowels through his nose, giving the syllables ‘an,’ ‘en,’ the nasal sound they have in French; and it was strange to hear this connected speech from his lips: ‘No torches … No, that’s not it:

  ”Not vain Corruption’s idols frail

  Not amaranth nor porphyry

  Rejoiced their hearts …

  One thing in them …”

‘That was about us. Do you hear?

  ”One thing in them unquenchable,

  Subduing, sweet, desirable,

  To nurse their mutual flame in love!”

And you talk about Agrafena!’

Narkiz chuckled half - contemptuously, half - indifferently. ‘What a queer fish it is!’ he said to himself. But the brigadier had again relapsed into dejection, the rod had dropped from his hands and slipped into the water.

VIII

‘Well, to my thinking, our fishing is a poor business,’ observed Cucumber; ‘the fish, see, don’t bite at all. It’s got fearfully hot, and there’s a fit of “mencholy” come over our gentleman. It’s clear we must be going home; that will be best.’ He cautiously drew out of his pocket a tin bottle with a wooden stopper, uncorked it, scattered snuff on his wrist, and sniffed it up in both nostrils at once…. ‘Ah, what good snuff!’ he moaned, as he recovered himself. ‘It almost made my tooth ache! Now, my dear Vassily Fomitch, get up — it’s time to be off!’

The brigadier got up from the bench.

‘Do you live far from here?’ I asked Cucumber.

‘No, our gentleman lives not far … it won’t be as much as a mile.’

‘Will you allow me to accompany you?’ I said, addressing the brigadier.

I felt disinclined to let him go.

Narkiz was surprised at my intention; but I paid no attention to the disapproving shake of his long - eared cap, and walked out of the garden with the brigadier, who was supported by Cucumber. The old man moved fairly quickly, with a motion as though he were on stilts.

IX

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.

XI

We went on another quarter of a mile. A little village came into sight on the edge of a not very deep ravine; on one side stood the ‘lodge,’ with a half - ruined roof and a solitary chimney; in one of the two rooms of this lodge lived the brigadier. The owner of the village, who always resided in Petersburg, the widow of the civil councillor Lomov, had — so I learned later — bestowed this little nook upon the brigadier. She had given orders that he should receive a monthly pension, and had also assigned for his service a half - witted serf - girl living in the same village, who, though she barely understood human speech, was yet capable, in the lady’s opinion, of sweeping a floor and cooking cabbage - soup. At the door of the lodge the brigadier again addressed me with the same eighteenth - century smile: would I be pleased to walk into his ‘apartement’? We went into this ‘apartement.’ Everything in it was exceedingly filthy and poor, so filthy and so poor that the brigadier, noticing, probably, by the expression of my face, the impression it made on me, observed, shrugging his shoulders, and half closing his eyelids: ‘Ce n’est pas … oeil de perdrix.’ … What precisely he meant by this remained a mystery to me…. When I addressed him in French, I got no reply from him in that language. Two objects struck me especially in the brigadier’s abode: a large officer’s cross of St. George in a black frame, under glass, with an inscription in an old - fashioned handwriting: ‘Received by the Colonel of the Tchernigov regiment, Vassily Guskov, for the storming of Prague in the year 1794’; and secondly, a half - length portrait in oils of a handsome, black - eyed woman with a long, dark face, hair turned up high and powdered, with postiches on the temple and chin, in a flowered, low - cut bodice, with blue frills, the style of 1780. The portrait was badly painted, but was probably a good likeness; there was a wonderful look of life and will, something extraordinarily living and resolute, about the face. It was not looking at the spectator; it was, as it were, turning away and not smiling; the curve of the thin nose, the regular but flat lips, the almost unbroken straight line of the thick eyebrows, all showed an imperious, haughty, fiery temper. No great effort was needed to picture that face glowing with passion or with rage. Just below the portrait on a little pedestal stood a half - withered bunch of simple wild flowers in a thick glass jar. The brigadier went up to the pedestal, stuck the pinks he was carrying into the jar, and turning to me, and lifting his hand in the direction of the portrait, he observed: ‘Agrippina Ivanovna Teliegin, by birth Lomov.’ The words of Narkiz came back to my mind; and I looked with redoubled interest at the expressive and evil face of the woman for whose sake the brigadier had lost all his fortune.