A Lear of the Steppes, etc.

Sletkin made her a sign with his hand.

‘Martin Petrovitch is clothed and cared for, and eats what we do. What more does he want? He declared himself that he wanted nothing more in this world but to think of his soul. If only he would realise that everything now, however you look at it, is ours. He says too that we don’t pay him his allowance. But we’ve not always got money ourselves; and what does he want with it, when he has everything provided him? And we treat him as one of the family too. I’m telling you the truth. The rooms, for instance, which he occupies – how we need them! there’s simply not room to turn round without them; but we don’t say a word – we put up with it. We even think how to provide amusement for him. There, on St. Peter’s Day, I bought him some excellent hooks in the town – real English ones, expensive hooks, to catch fish. There are lots of carp in our pond. Let him sit and fish; in an hour or two, there’d be a nice little fish soup provided. The most suitable occupation for old men.’

‘Vladimir Vassilitch!’ Evlampia called for the third time in an incisive tone, and she flung far away from her the grass she had been twisting in her fingers, ‘I am going!’ Her eyes met mine. ‘I am going, Vladimir Vassilievitch!’ she repeated, and vanished behind a bush.

‘I’m coming, Evlampia Martinovna, directly!’ shouted Sletkin. ‘Martin Petrovitch himself agrees with us now,’ he went on, turning again to me. ‘At first he was offended, certainly, and even grumbled, until, you know, he realised; he was, you remember, a hot-tempered violent man – more’s the pity! but there, he’s grown quite meek now. Because he sees his own interest. Your mamma – mercy on us! how she pitched into me!.. To be sure: she’s a lady that sets as much store by her own authority as Martin Petrovitch used to do. But you come in and see for yourself. And you might put in a word when there’s an opportunity. I feel Natalia Nikolaevna’s bounty to me deeply. But we’ve got to live too.’

‘And how was it Zhitkov was refused?’ I asked.

‘Fedulitch? That dolt?’ Sletkin shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why, upon my word, what use could he have been? His whole life spent among soldiers – and now he has a fancy to take up farming. He can keep the peasants up to the mark, says he, because he’s been used to knocking men about. He can do nothing; even knocking men about wants some sense. Evlampia Martinovna refused him herself. He was a quite unsuitable person. All our farming would have gone to ruin with him!’

‘Coo – y!’ sounded Evlampia’s musical voice.

‘Coming! coming!’ Sletkin called back. He held out his hand to me. Though unwillingly, I took it.

‘I beg to take leave, Dmitri Semyonovitch,’ said Sletkin, showing all his white teeth. ‘Shoot wild snipe as much as you like. It’s wild game, belonging to no one. But if you come across a hare – you spare it; that game is ours. Oh, and something else! won’t you be having pups from your bitch? I should be obliged for one!’

‘Coo – y!’ Evlampia’s voice rang out again.

‘Coo – y!’ Sletkin responded, and rushed into the bushes.

XIX

I remember, when I was left alone, I was absorbed in wondering how it was Harlov had not pounded Sletkin ‘into a jelly,’ as he said, and how it was Sletkin had not been afraid of such a fate. It was clear Martin Petrovitch really had grown ‘meek,’ I thought, and I had a still stronger desire to make my way into Eskovo, and get at least a glance at that colossus, whom I could never picture to myself subdued and tractable. I had reached the edge of the copse, when suddenly a big snipe, with a great rush of wings, darted up at my very feet, and flew off into the depths of the wood. I took aim; my gun missed fire. I was greatly annoyed; it had been such a fine bird, and I made up my mind to try if I couldn’t make it rise a second time. I set off in the direction of its flight, and going some two hundred paces off into the wood I caught sight – in a little glade, under an overhanging birch-tree – not of the snipe, but of the same Sletkin once more. He was lying on his back, with both hands under his head, and with smile of contentment gazing upwards at the sky, swinging his left leg, which was crossed over his right knee. He did not notice my approach. A few paces from him, Evlampia was walking slowly up and down the little glade, with downcast eyes. It seemed as though she were looking for something in the grass – mushrooms or something; now and then, she stooped and stretched out her hand. She was singing in a low voice. I stopped at once, and fell to listening. At first I could not make out what it was she was singing, but afterwards I recognised clearly the following well-known lines of the old ballad:

‘Hither, hither, threatening storm-cloud,
Slay for me the father-in-law,
Strike for me the mother-in-law,
The young wife I will kill myself!’

Evlampia sang louder and louder; the last words she delivered with peculiar energy. Sletkin still lay on his back and laughed to himself, while she seemed all the time to be moving round and round him.

‘Oh, indeed!’ he commented at last. ‘The things that come into some people’s heads!’

‘What?’ queried Evlampia.

Sletkin raised his head a little. ‘What? Why, what words were those you were uttering?’

‘Why, you know, Volodya, one can’t leave the words out of a song,’ answered Evlampia, and she turned and saw me. We both cried out aloud at once, and both rushed away in opposite directions.

I made my way hurriedly out of the copse, and crossing a narrow clearing, found myself facing Harlov’s garden.

XX

I had no time, nor would it have been of any use, to deliberate over what I had seen. Only an expression kept recurring to my mind, ‘love spell,’ which I had lately heard, and over the signification of which I had pondered a good deal. I walked alongside the garden fence, and in a few moments, behind the silver poplars (they had not yet lost a single leaf, and the foliage was luxuriantly thick and brilliantly glistening), I saw the yard and two little lodges of Martin Petrovitch’s homestead. The whole place struck me as having been tidied up and pulled into shape. On every side one could perceive traces of unflagging and severe supervision. Anna Martinovna came out on to the steps, and screwing up her blue-grey eyes, gazed for a long while in the direction of the copse.

‘Have you seen the master?’ she asked a peasant, who was walking across the yard.

‘Vladimir Vassilitch?’ responded the latter, taking his cap off. ‘He went into the copse, surely.’

‘I know, he went to the copse. Hasn’t he come back? Haven’t you seen him?’

‘I’ve not seen him … nay.’

The peasant continued standing bareheaded before Anna Martinovna.

‘Well, you can go,’ she said. ‘Or no – wait a bit – where’s Martin Petrovitch? Do you know?’

‘Oh, Martin Petrovitch,’ answered the peasant, in a sing-song voice, alternately lifting his right and then his left hand, as though pointing away somewhere, ‘is sitting yonder, at the pond, with a fishing-rod. He’s sitting in the reeds, with a rod. Catching fish, maybe, God knows.’

‘Very well … you can go,’ repeated Anna Martinovna; ‘and put away that wheel, it’s lying about.’

The peasant ran to carry out her command, while she remained standing a few minutes longer on the steps, still gazing in the direction of the copse. Then she clenched one fist menacingly, and went slowly back into the house. ‘Axiutka!’ I heard her imperious voice calling within.

Anna Martinovna looked angry, and tightened her lips, thin enough at all times, with a sort of special energy. She was carelessly dressed, and a coil of loose hair had fallen down on to her shoulder. But in spite of the negligence of her attire, and her irritable humour, she struck me, just as before, as attractive, and I should have been delighted to kiss the narrow hand which looked malignant too, as she twice irritably pushed back the loose tress.

XXI

‘Can Martin Petrovitch have really taken to fishing?’ I asked myself, as I turned towards the pond, which was on one side of the garden. I got on to the dam, looked in all directions… Martin Petrovitch was nowhere to be seen. I bent my steps along one of the banks of the pond, and at last, at the very top of it, in a little creek, in the midst of flat broken-down stalks of reddish reed, I caught sight of a huge greyish mass… I looked intently: it was Harlov. Bareheaded, unkempt, in a cotton smock torn at the seams, with his legs crossed under him, he was sitting motionless on the bare earth. So motionless was he that a sandpiper, at my approach, darted up from the dry mud a couple of paces from him, and flew with a flash of its little wings and a whistle over the surface of the water, showing that no one had moved to frighten him for a long while. Harlov’s whole appearance was so extraordinary that my dog stopped short directly it saw him, lifted its tail, and growled. He turned his head a very little, and fixed his wild-looking eyes on me and my dog. He was greatly changed by his beard, though it was short, but thick and curly, in white tufts, like Astrachan fur. In his right hand lay the end of a rod, while the other end hovered feebly over the water. I felt an involuntary pang at my heart. I plucked up my spirits, however, went up to him, and wished him good morning. He slowly blinked as though just awake.

‘What are you doing, Martin Petrovitch,’ I began, ‘catching fish here?’

‘Yes … fish,’ he answered huskily, and pulled up the rod, on which there fluttered a piece of line, a fathom length, with no hook on it.

‘Your tackle is broken off,’ I observed, and noticed the same moment that there was no sign of bait-tin nor worms near Martin Petrovitch… And what sort of fishing could there be in September?

‘Broken off?’ he said, and he passed his hand over his face. ‘But it’s all the same!’

He dropped the rod in again.

‘Natalia Nikolaevna’s son?’ he asked me, after the lapse of two minutes, during which I had been gazing at him with secret bewilderment. Though he had grown terribly thinner, still he seemed a giant. But what rags he was dressed in, and how utterly he had gone to pieces altogether!

‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I’m the son of Natalia Nikolaevna B.’

‘Is she well?’

‘My mother is quite well. She was very much hurt at your refusal,’ I added; ‘she did not at all expect you would not wish to come and see her.’

Martin Petrovitch’s head sank on his breast. ‘Have you been there?’ he asked, with a motion of his head.

‘Where?’

‘There, at the house. Haven’t you? Go! What is there for you to do here? Go! It’s useless talking to me. I don’t like it.’

He was silent for a while.

‘You’d like to be always idling about with a gun! In my young days I used to be inclined the same way too. Only my father was strict and made me respect him too. Mind you, very different from fathers nowadays. My father flogged me with a horsewhip, and that was the end of it! I’d to give up idling about! And so I respected him… Oo!.. Yes!..’