Sketches from a Hunter's Album (4 page)

‘There you go again… I know what you're up to! You've got those silver rings on your fingers and you're all the time sniffing round the girls out in the yard. “Give over, you ought to be ashamed!”' the old man continued, mimicking the servant girls. ‘I know your sort, you'll never do a hand's turn you won't!'

‘What good is there in a woman, I ask you?'

‘A woman is a worker about the house,' Khor remarked importantly. ‘A woman looks after a man.'

‘And why do I need a worker about the house?'

‘You're one for having other people pull the chestnuts out of the fire, that's why. I know your sort.'

‘If that's so, then marry me off, eh? Come on now, say something!'

‘Enough now, enough! You're a joker, you are. Just look how we're upsetting our guest. I'll marry you off, never you worry… Now, sir, please don't be annoyed: as you can see, he's just a child and he hasn't had time to pick up a lot of sense yet.'

Fedya just shook his head.

‘Is Khor at home?' a familiar voice called from beyond the door, and Kalinych entered the hut carrying a bunch of wild strawberries which he had collected for his friend, Khor the polecat. The old man greeted him warmly. I looked at Kalinych in astonishment because I confess I had not expected such ‘niceties' from a peasant.

That day I went out hunting four hours later than usual, and I spent the next three days at Khor's place. I became preoccupied with my new acquaintances. I don't know how I had won their confidence, but they talked to me without any constraint. It was with pleasure that I listened to them and watched them. The two friends were not a bit like each other. Khor was an emphatic sort of man, practical, an administrator, hard-headed; Kalinych, on the other hand, belonged in the company of idealists, romantics, men of lofty enthusiasms and lofty dreams. Khor understood the realities of life – that is to say, he had built a home for himself, saved up some money, arranged things satisfactorily with his master and other responsible authorities; whereas Kalinych walked about in bast sandals and got by somehow or other. Khor had raised a large, obedient and united family; whereas Kalinych had at one time had a wife, of whom he was terrified, and no children. Khor could see through my friend Poluty-kin; whereas Kalinych simply worshipped his master. Khor loved Kalinych and would always give him protection; Kalinych loved and respected Khor. Khor spoke little, gave only occasional chuckles and kept his thoughts to himself; whereas Kalinych would express himself heatedly, although he never sang like a nightingale as the lively factory man is liable to… But he possessed certain innate talents which Khor himself was willing to recognize; he could charm away bleeding, terror and rages, and he could cure worms; bees obeyed him because of his light touch. While I was there Khor asked him to lead a newly purchased horse into the stables, and Kalinych fulfilled the old sceptic's request conscientiously and with pride. Kalinych was closer to nature, whereas Khor was closer to people and society; Kalinych never liked thinking things out for himself and believed everything blindly, whereas Khor had reached a high pitch of irony in his attitude to life. He had seen much, knew much, and I learned a lot from him.

For instance, from the stories he had to tell I learned that each summer, before the harvesting, a small cart of a particular kind appears in the villages. A man in a caftan sits in the cart and sells scythes. If the payment is in cash, he asks a rouble and twenty-five copecks in silver coinage or a rouble and fifty copecks in paper money; if it's to be on credit, he asks three paper roubles and one silver rouble. All the peasants, of course, buy on credit. Two or three
weeks later he reappears and demands his money. By this time the peasant has just harvested his oats and has the necessary with which to pay. He accompanies the trader to a tavern and there they complete their business. Some of the landowners took it into their heads to buy their own scythes for cash and distribute them on credit to their peasants for the same price. But the peasants seemed dissatisfied with this, and even succumbed to melancholy over it; they were deprived of the pleasure of giving each scythe a twanging flick, of putting their ear to it and turning it about in their hands and asking the rascally salesman twenty times over: ‘Well, now, that's a bit of a wrong'un, isn't it?'

Much the same sort of trickery occurs during the buying of sickles with the sole difference that in this case the women also become involved and sometimes force the trader to give them restraining slaps for their own good. But the womenfolk suffer most grievously of all in the following instance. Those responsible for supplying material to the paper factories entrust the buying of rags to a particular species of person, known in certain districts as ‘eagles'. Such an ‘eagle' is given two hundred paper roubles by a merchant and then sets out to find his prey. But, in contrast to the noble bird after which he is named, he does not fall boldly and openly upon his victim; on the contrary, this ‘eagle' uses cunning, underhand means. He leaves his cart somewhere in the bushes on the outskirts of the village and then, just as if he were some casual passer-by or bum on the loose, makes his way through the back alleys and backyards of the huts. The women can sense his approach and creep out to meet him. The business between them is quickly completed. For a few copper coins a woman will hand over to the ‘eagle' not only the meanest cast-off rag but frequently even her husband's shirt and her own day skirt. Recently the womenfolk have found it worth while to steal from each other and to unload their ill-gotten hemp or homemade sacking on the ‘eagles' – an important augmentation and consummation of their business! The peasants, for their part, have pricked up their ears and at the least sign, at the merest hint of the approach of an ‘eagle', they resort briskly and vigorously to remedial and preventive measures. In fact, it's downright insulting, isn't it? It's their business to sell the hemp, and they do indeed sell it, though not in the town – they would have to drag themselves to the town for
that – but to itinerant traders who, for want of a proper measure, consider that forty handfuls are equal to thirty-six pounds in weight – and you know the size a Russian can give to his handful or his palm when he's in real earnest!

I, inexperienced as I am and not a ‘countryman' (as we say in the Oryol district), had had my fill of such stories. But Khor did not do all the talking; he also asked me a great deal. He knew that I had been abroad, and his curiosity was aroused. Kalinych betrayed no less interest, but he was chiefly affected by descriptions of natural scenery, mountains, waterfalls, unusual buildings and large cities. Khor was concerned with questions of administration and government. He took things one at a time: ‘Are things there like they are here, or not the same? Well, sir, what's you got to say about that?' Whereas during the course of my recital Kalinych would exclaim – ‘Ah, dear Lord, Thy will be done!' Khor would be quiet, knitting his thick brows and only occasionally remarking: ‘That wouldn't likely be the thing for us, but t'other – that's the proper way, that's good.' I cannot convey all his queries, and, besides, there's no need. But from our talks I derived one conviction which my readers probably cannot have expected – the conviction that Peter the Great was predominantly Russian in his national characteristics and Russian specifically in his reforms. A Russian is so sure of his strength and robustness that he is not averse to overtaxing himself: he is little concerned with his past and looks boldly towards the future. If a thing's good, he'll like it; if a thing's sensible, he'll not reject it, but he couldn't care a jot where it came from. His sane common sense will gladly make fun of the thin-as-a-stick rationalism of the Germans; but the Germans, in Khor's words, were interesting enough folk and he was ready to learn from them. Owing to the peculiar nature of his social station, his virtual independence, Khor mentioned many things in talking with me that even a crowbar wouldn't have dislodged in someone else or, as the peasants say, you couldn't grind out with a millstone. He took a realistic view of his position. During my talks with Khor I heard for the first time the simple, intelligent speech of the Russian peasant. His knowledge was fairly broad, after his own fashion, but he could not read; whereas Kalinych could.

‘That rascal's been able to pick up readin' and writin',' Khor remarked, ‘an' 'e's never had a single bee die on 'im since he was born.'

‘And have your children learned to read and write?'

After a pause Khor said: ‘Fedya knows.'

‘And the others?'

‘The others don't.'

‘Why not?'

The old man did not answer and changed the subject. As a matter of fact, despite all his intelligence, he clung to many prejudices and preconceived notions. Women, for example, he despised from the depths of his soul, and when in a jovial mood derived amusement from them and made fun of them. His wife, an aged and shrewish woman, spent the whole day over the stove and was the source of persistent complaints and abuse; her sons paid no attention to her, but she put the fear of God into her daughters-in-law. It's not surprising that in the Russian song the mother-in-law sings:

Once I thought of standing up for the daughters-in-law and attempted to solicit Khor's sympathy; but he calmly retorted that ‘Maybe you like to bother yourself with such nonsense… Let the women quarrel… You'll only be worse off if you try to part them, and it isn't even worth dirtying your hands with it.' Sometimes the bad-tempered old woman crawled down from the stove and called in the dog from the yard, enticing it with: ‘Come on, come on, nice dog!' – only to belabour its scraggy spine with a poker, or she would stand under the awning out front and ‘bark insults' at whoever passed by, as Khor expressed it. Her husband, however, she feared and, at his command, would climb back on to her perch on the stove.

But it was particularly curious to hear how Kalinych and Khor disagreed when talking about Polutykin. ‘Now, look here, Khor, don't you say anything against him while I'm here,' Kalinych would say. ‘Then why doesn't he see that you've got a proper pair of boots to wear?' the other would object. ‘To hell with boots! Why do I need boots? I'm a peasant…' ‘And I'm also a peasant, but just look…' Saying this, Khor would raise his leg and show Kalinych a boot
that looked as if it had been cobbled from the skin of a mammoth. ‘Oh, you're not an ordinary peasant!' Kalinych would answer. ‘Well, surely he ought to give you something to buy them sandals with? After all, you go out hunting with him and everyday you'll need new ones.' ‘He gives me something to get bast sandals with.' ‘That's right, last year he grandly gave you ten copecks.' At this Kalinych would turn away in annoyance and Khor would burst out laughing, his tiny little eyes almost vanishing completely.

Kalinych had quite a pleasant singing voice and could strum a little on the balalaika. Khor would listen and listen, and then he would bend his head to one side and begin to accompany in a plaintive voice. He particularly liked the song: ‘O, mine's a hard lot, a hard life!'

Fedya never let pass an opportunity to poke fun at his father, saying, ‘Well, old man, what've you got to complain about?'

But Khor would rest his cheek on his hand, close his eyes and continue complaining about his hard lot. Yet at other times no one was more active than he: he would always be busying himself with something – repairing the cart, making new fence supports or taking a look at the harness. He did not, however, insist on exceptional cleanliness, and in answer to my comments once remarked that ‘a hut ought to have a lived-in smell'.

‘But,' I remarked in return, ‘look how clean it is out at Kalinych's where he keeps bees.'

‘Bees wouldn't live there, see, sir, unless it was clean,' he said with a sigh.

On another occasion he asked me:

‘Do you have your own estate, sir?'

‘I do.'

‘Is it far from here?'

‘Sixty or seventy miles.'

‘Well, sir, do you live on your estate?'

‘I do.'

‘But mostly, I reckon, you're out enjoying yourself with that gun?'

‘Yes, I must admit that.'

‘And that's a good thing you're doing, sir. Shoot them black grouse as much as you like, but be sure and see you change your bailiff often.'

On the evening of the fourth day Polutykin sent for me. I was sorry to have to say goodbye to the old man. Together with Kalinych I took my place in the cart.

‘Well, goodbye, Khor, and keep well,' I said. ‘Goodbye, Fedya.'

‘Goodbye, sir, goodbye, and don't forget us.'

We drove off. Dawn had just set fire to the sky.

‘It's going to be beautiful weather tomorrow,' I said, looking at the bright sky.

‘No, there'll be rain,' Kalinych contradicted. ‘Look how the ducks are splashing about, and the grass has got a strong smell.'

We drove through bushy undergrowth. Kalinych began to sing in a low voice, bouncing up and down on the driver's seat and gazing all the while at the dawn.

The next day I was gone from under Polutykin's hospitable roof.