Sketches from a Hunter's Album (18 page)

‘Did you give anything to Martin?' I asked.

‘I learned about him too late,' answered the old man. ‘And what would've been the good! It is all ordained for man from his birth. He was not a dweller, was Martin the carpenter, not a dweller on this earth: and that's how it turned out. No, when a man's not ordained to live on this earth, the sweet sunlight doesn't warm him like it warms the others, and the produce of the earth profits him nothing, as if all the time he's being called away… Aye, God rest his soul!'

‘Have you been resettled here among us for long?' I asked after a short silence.

Kasyan stirred.

‘No, not long: ‘bout four years. Under the old master we lived all the time where we were, but it was the custodians of the estate who resettled us. The old master we had was a meek soul, a humble man he was – God grant he enter the Kingdom of Heaven! But the
custodians, of course, decided justly. It looks like this is how it was meant to be.'

‘But where did you live before this?'

‘We came from the Beautiful Lands.'
¹

‘Is that far from here?'

‘ 'Bout sixty miles.'

‘Was it better there?'

‘It was better… much better. The land's free and open there, with plenty of rivers, a real home for us; but here it's all enclosed and dried up. We've become orphans here. There where we were, on the Beautiful Lands, I mean, you'd go up a hill, you'd go up – and, Good Lord, what wouldn't you see from there? Eh? There'd be a river there, a meadow there and there a forest, and then there'd be a church, and again more meadows going far, far off, as far as anything. Just as far as far, that's how you'd go on looking and looking and wonderin' at it, that's for sure! As for here, true – the land's better: loamy soil it is, real good loam, so the peasants say. But so far as I'm concerned, there's sufficient food everywhere to keep me going.'

‘But if you were to tell the truth, old fellow, you'd want to be where you were born, wouldn't you?'

‘For sure I'd like to take a look at it. Still, it doesn't matter where I am. I'm not a family man, not tied to anywhere. And what would I be doing sittin' at home a lot? It's when I'm off on my way, off on my travels,' he began saying in a louder voice, ‘that everything's surely easier. Then the sweet sunlight shines on you, and you're clearer to God, and you sing in better tune. Then you look-see what herbs is growing there, and you take note of 'em. and collect the ones you want. Maybe there's water runnin' there, water from a spring, so you have a drink of it and take note of that as well. The birds of the air'll be singing… And then on t'other side of Kursk there'll be the steppes, O such steppelands, there's a wonder for you, a real joy to mankind they are, such wide expanses, a sign of God's bounty. And they go on and on, people do say, right to the warm seas where Gamayun
²
lives, the bird of the sweet voice, to the place where no leaves fall from the trees in winter, nor in the autumn neither, and golden apples do grow on silver branches and each man lives in contentment and justice with another… That's where I'd like to be going… Though I've been about a bit in my time! I've been in
Romyon and in Sinbirsk, that fine city, and in Moscow herself, dressed in her golden crowns. And to Oka, river of mother's milk, I've been, and to Tsna, fair as a dove, and to our mother, the Volga, and many's the people I've seen, good Chrestians all, and many's the honest towns I've been in… But I'd still like to be going to that place… and that's it… and soon-like… And it's not only I, sinner that I am, but many other Chrestians that go walking and wandering through the wide world with nothin' but bast on their feet and seekin' for the truth… Sure they are!… But as for what's at home, eh? There's no justice in the way men live – that's what…'

Kasyan uttered these last words with great speed and almost inaudibly: afterwards he said something else, which I was unable even to hear, and his face took on such a strange expression that I was spontaneously reminded of the title ‘holy man' which Yerofey had given him. He stared down at the ground, gave a phlegmy cough and appeared to collect his senses.

‘O the sweet sun!' he uttered almost under his breath. ‘O such a blessing, Good Lord! O such warmth here in the forest!'

He shrugged his shoulders, fell silent, glanced round distractedly and started singing in a quiet voice. I could not catch all the words of his protracted little song, but I heard the following words:

‘Ha!' I thought, ‘he's making it up…'

Suddenly he shuddered and stopped his singing, gazing intently into the forest thicket. I turned and saw a little peasant girl of about eight years of age, dressed in a little blue coat, with a chequered handkerchief tied over her head and a small wattle basket on her bare, sunburnt arm. She had obviously not expected to come across us here at all; she had stumbled on us, as they say, and now stood stock-still on a shady patch of grass in a green thicket of nut trees, glancing fearfully at me out of her jet-black eyes. I had scarcely had time to notice her when she at once plunged out of sight behind a tree.

‘Annushka! Annushka! Come here, don't be frightened,' the old man called to her in a gentle voice.

‘I'm frightened,' a thin little voice answered.

‘Don't be frightened, don't be frightened, come to me.'

Annushka silently left her hiding-place, quietly made her way round – her child's feet scarcely made any noise in the thick grass – and emerged from the thicket beside the old man. She was not a girl of about eight years of age, as it had seemed to me at first judging by her lack of inches, but of thirteen or fourteen. Her whole body was small and thin, but very well-made and supple, and her beautiful little face was strikingly similar to Kasyan's, although Kasyan was no beauty. The same sharp features, the same unusual look, which was both cunning and trustful, meditative and penetrating, and exactly the same gestures… Kasyan took her in at a glance as she stood sideways to him.

‘You've been out picking mushrooms, have you?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she answered with a shy smile.

‘Did you find many?'

‘Yes.' (She directed a quick glance at him and again smiled.)

‘Are there any white ones?'

‘There are white ones as well.'

‘Come on, show them…' (She lowered the basket from her arm and partly raised the broad dock leaf with which the mushrooms were covered.) ‘Ah!' said Kasyan, bending over the basket, ‘they're real beauties! That's really something, Annushka!'

‘Is she your daughter, Kasyan?' I asked. (Annushka's face crimsoned faintly.)

‘No, she's just a relative,' Kasyan said with pretended indifference. ‘Well, Annushka, you be off,' he added at once, ‘and God be with you! Watch where you go…'

‘But why should she go on foot?' I interrupted. ‘We could take her home in the cart.'

Annushka blushed red as a poppy, seized hold of the basket by its string handle and glanced at the old man in alarm.

‘No, she'll walk home,' he objected in the same indifferent tone of voice. ‘Why shouldn't she? She'll get home all right… Off with you now!'

Annushka walked off briskly into the forest. Kasyan followed her with his eyes, then looked down at the ground and grinned to himself. In this protracted grin, in the few words which he had spoken to Annushka and in the sound of his voice as he was talking
to her there had been ineffable, passionate love and tenderness. He again glanced in the direction that she had gone, again smiled and, wiping his face, gave several nods of the head.

‘Why did you send her away so soon?' I asked him. ‘I would have bought some mushrooms from her…'

‘You can buy them there at home whenever you like, it's no matter,' he answered, addressing me with the formal ‘You' for the first time.

‘She's very pretty, that girl of yours.'

‘No… how so?… she's just as they come,' he answered with apparent unwillingness, and from that very moment dropped back into his former taciturnity.

Seeing that all my efforts to make him start talking again were fruitless, I set off for the clearings. The heat had meanwhile dissipated a little; but my bad luck or, as they say in our parts, my ‘nothing doing' continued the same and I returned to the village with no more than a single landrail and a new axle. As we were driving up to the yard, Kasyan suddenly turned to me.

‘Master, sir,' he began, ‘sure I'm the one you should blame, sure it was I who drove all the game away from you.'

‘How so?'

‘It's just something I know. There's that dog of yours, a good dog and trained to hunt, but he couldn't do anything. When you think of it, people are people, aren't they? Then there's this animal here, but what've they been able to make out of him?'

It would have been useless for me to start persuading Kasyan that it was impossible to ‘cast a spell' over game and therefore I did not answer him. At that moment we turned in through the gates of the yard.

Annushka was not in the hut; she had already arrived and left behind her basket of mushrooms.

Yerofey fixed the new axle, having first subjected it to a severe and biased evaluation; and an hour later I drove away, leaving Kasyan a little money, which at first he did not wish to accept but which later, having thought about it and having held it in the palm of his hand, he placed inside the front of his shirt. During this whole hour he hardly uttered a single word; as previously, he stood leaning against the gates, made no response to my driver's reproachful remarks and was extremely cold to me in saying goodbye.

As soon as I had returned I had noticed that my Yerofey was once again sunk in gloom. And in fact he had found nothing edible in the village and the water for the horses had been of poor quality. So we drove out. With a dissatisfaction that expressed itself even in the nape of his neck, he sat on the box and dearly longed to strike up a conversation with me, but in anticipation of my initial question he limited himself to faint grumblings under his breath and edifying, occasionally caustic, speeches directed at the horses.

‘A village!' he muttered. ‘Call it a village! I asked for some
kvas
and they didn't even have any
kvas
… Good God! And as for water, it was simply muck!' (He spat loudly.) ‘No cucumbers, no
kvas
, not a bloody thing. As for you,' he added thunderously, turning to the right-hand horse, ‘I know you, you dissemblin' female, you! You're a right one for pretendin', you are…' (And he struck her with the whip.) ‘That horse has gone dead cunnin', she has, and before it was a nice, easy creature… Gee-up there, look-see about it.'

‘Tell me, please, Yerofey,' I began, ‘what sort of a person is that Kasyan?'

Yerofey did not reply immediately: in general he was thoughtful and slow in his ways, but I could guess at once that my question had cheered and calmed him.

‘The Flea, you mean?' he said eventually, jerking at the reins. ‘A strange and wonderful man he is, truly a holy man, and you'd not find another one like him all that quick. He's, so to speak, as like as like our grey horse there: he's got out of hand just the same… that's to say, he's got out of the way of workin'. Well, of course, he's no worker. Just keeps himself going, but still… For sure he's always been like that. To start with he used to be a carrier along with his uncles: there were three of 'em.; but after a time, well, you know, he got bored and gave it up. Started living at home, he did, but couldn't feel settled – he's restless as a flea. Thanks be to God, it happened he had a kind master who didn't force him to work. So from that time on he's been wanderin' here, there and everywhere, like a roaming sheep. And God knows, he's remarkable enough, with his being silent as a tree-stump one moment and then talking away all of a sudden the next – and as for what he says, God alone knows what that is. Maybe you think it's his manner? It's not his manner, because he's too ungainly. But he sings well – a bit pompous-like, but not too bad really.'

‘Is it true he has the power of healing?'

‘A power of healing! What would he be doing with that? Just ordinary he is. But he did cure me of scrofula… A lot of good it does him! He's just as stupid as they come, he is,' he added, after a pause.

‘Have you known him long?'

‘Long enough. We were neighbours of his in Sychovka, on the Beautiful Lands.'

‘And that girl we came across in the wood – Annushka – is she a blood relation of his?'

Yerofey glanced at me over his shoulder and bared his teeth in a wide grin.

‘Huh… Yes, they're relations. She's an orphan, got no mother and nobody knows who her mother was. But it's likely she's related to him: she's the spittin' image of him… And she lives with him. A smart girl, she is, no denying that; and a good girl, and the old man, he dotes on her: she's a good girl. And likely he'll – you may not believe it – but likely he'll take it into his head to teach his Annushka readin' and writin'. You never know, it's just the sort of thing he'd start: he's as extrardin'ry as that, changeable-like he is, even untellable… Hey, hey, hey!' My driver suddenly interrupted himself and, bringing the horses to a stop, leaned over the side and started sniffing. ‘Isn't there a smell of burning? There is an' all! These new axles'll be the end of me. It seemed I'd put enough grease on. I'll have to get some water. There's a little pond over there.'

And Yerofey got down slowly from the box, untied a bucket, walked to the pond and, when he returned, listened with considerable pleasure to the way the axle-hole hissed as it was suddenly doused with water. About six times in the course of seven or so miles he had to douse the overheated axle, and evening had long since fallen by the time we returned home.