Sketches from a Hunter's Album (30 page)

‘It's you, you, Barrowboy,' the Nit started babbling, ‘you're the one, mate.'

Gentleman Wildman looked at him from beneath his brows. The Nit gave a faint croak, got confused, glanced somewhere up towards the ceiling, shrugged his shoulders and became silent.

‘Throw for it,' Gentleman Wildman announced in measured tones. ‘Put the ale on the counter.'

Nikolay Ivanych bent down, lifted the pot of ale from the floor with a groan and set it on the table.

Gentleman Wildman glanced at Yakov and said: ‘Well!' Yakov dug around in his pockets and produced a copper which he tested between his teeth. Barrowboy extracted from beneath the hem of his
coat a new leather money-bag, slowly untied the string and, having poured a mass of small change into his hand, picked out a new copper coin. The Nit shoved his threadbare cap with its torn, battered peak down in front of them: Yakov threw his coin in it, as did Barrowboy.

‘You choose,' said Gentleman Wildman, turning to Winker.

Winker gave a self-satisfied grin, seized the cap in both hands and began shaking it. Momentarily a profound silence reigned while the coins chinked faintly against each other. I looked attentively around: all the faces expressed tense expectancy; Gentleman Wildman screwed up his eyes; my neighbour, the little peasant in the torn coat, even he stretched his neck forward in curiosity. Winker put his hand into the cap and drew out Barrowboy's coin; everyone sighed with relief. Yakov reddened, and Barrowboy drew his hand through his hair.

‘Didn't I say it was you!' the Nit exclaimed. ‘Sure I did!'

‘Now, now, none o' that squawking,' Gentleman Wildman remarked contemptuously. ‘Begin!' he went on, nodding his head to Barrowboy.

‘What song ought I to sing?' asked Barrowboy, becoming upset.

‘Sing what you like,' answered Winker. ‘Whatever comes into your head, sing that.'

‘Of course, sing what you like,' added Nikolay Ivanych, slowly folding his arms across his chest. ‘Nobody's giving you any orders. Sing what you like, only sing it well. Afterwards we'll decide as our conscience dictates.'

‘Nacherly, as conscience dictates,' the Nit inserted, and licked the edge of his empty glass.

‘Give me time, mates, to get my throat cleared a bit,' Barrowboy started saying, passing his fingers along the collar of his coat.

‘Now, now, don't start trying to get out of it – begin!' Gentleman Wildman said decisively, and lowered his eyes to the floor.

Barrowboy thought for a moment, gave a shake of the head and took a step forward. Yakov fixed his eyes on him, drinking him in…

But before I embark on a description of the contest itself, I consider it necessary to say a few words about each of the participants in my story. The lives of some of them were already known to me before I encountered them in The Welcome tavern; about the others I picked up information at a later date.

Let's begin with the Nit. This man's real name was Yevgraf Ivanov; but no one in the region knew him as anything save the Nit, and he prided himself on such a nickname because it suited him so well. And there is no doubt that nothing could have been more appropriate for describing his insignificant and eternally agitated countenance. He was a feckless, bachelor house-serf, long ago given up for good by his masters, who, though having no post and not receiving a penny in wages, nevertheless found means each day of making merry at other people's expense. He had a mass of acquaintances who plied him with drink and tea, they themselves not knowing why, because not only was he far from entertaining company but he even, to the contrary, bored everyone stiff with his senseless chatter, intolerable sponging, feverish body-movements and endless unnatural laughter. He did not know how to sing or dance; since birth he had never once spoken not only an intelligent, but even a sensible, word; he rattled on the whole time and talked whatever nonsense came into his head – he was a real nit, in fact! Even so, no drinking bout could occur within a twenty-five mile radius without his lanky figure milling round among the guests, to such an extent had people grown used to him and accustomed to his presence like an unavoidable evil. True, he was treated with contempt, but Gentleman Wildman was the only one who knew how to tame his witless outbursts.

Winker bore no sort of resemblance to the Nit. The title of Winker also suited him, although he did not wink his eyes more than other people; everyone knows, though, what past-masters Russians are at contriving nicknames. Despite my attempting to gain a fuller picture of this man's past, his life still contained for me – and probably for many others as well – dark spots, areas, as bookish people like to say, obscured by profound mists of uncertainty. I learnt simply that he had at one time been a coachman for an elderly childless lady, that he had run off with the troika of horses left in his charge, had disappeared for a whole year and, having no doubt discovered for himself the disadvantages and perils of a vagrant's life, returned of his own accord, but already lame, threw himself at the feet of his mistress and, having erased his crime during the course of several years of exemplary behaviour, gradually regained her favour, finally earned her complete trust, became one of
her bailiffs and, at her death, turned out in some mysterious way to have been given his freedom, enrolled himself among the petit-bourgeois stratum of the population, began renting areas of kitchen garden from his neighbours, grew rich and now lived in the pink. He was a man of experience, with a mind to his own affairs, neither malicious nor kindly, but chiefly prudent; he was a tough nut, who knew what people were like and had learned how to make use of them. He was cautious and at the same time as resourceful as a vixen; he was as garrulous as an old woman and yet he never used to say too much, but always made everyone else speak their minds; mind you, he never tried to pass himself off as a simpleton, as some rascals of that ilk do, and it would have been difficult for him to pretend because I had never seen more perspicacious and intelligent eyes than his crafty little ‘peepers'.
*
Their gaze was never simple and straightforward – they were always looking you up and down, always investigating you. Sometimes Winker would spend whole weeks thinking over some apparently simple operation, and then in a flash he would make up his mind to launch into a desperately audacious business; it would seem that he was about to come a cropper, and yet before you'd had time to give a second look everything was a howling success, everything was going along swimmingly. He was fortunate and he believed in his good fortune, just as he believed in omens. He was in general very superstitious. He was not liked, because he did not concern himself with other people's business, but he was respected. His entire family consisted of one small son, on whom he doted, and who, being educated by such a father, would no doubt go a long way. ‘Wee Willy Winker takes after his father' were the words already being spoken under their breaths by old men sitting on earthen seats and discussing this and that between themselves on summer evenings; and everybody understood what was meant by that and felt no need to add anything to it.

About Yakov the Turk and Barrowboy there is no reason to say a great deal. Yakov, nicknamed the Turk, because he was in fact the offspring of a captured Turkish girl, was by nature an artist in every sense of that word, whereas by calling he was a
dipper in the paper factory of a local merchant; as for Barrowboy, whose fate, I admit, has remained unknown to me, he seemed to be a slippery and lively product of the small-town bourgeoisie. But it is worth being a little more detailed about Gentleman Wildman.

The first impression produced by the sight of this man was a sense of crude, heavy but irresistible strength. He had an awkward build, as if he had been ‘knocked together', as they say, but he exuded an air of unbreakable good health and, strange though it may seem, his bear-like figure was not without its own kind of grace, which may have been due to a completely calm assurance of his own powers. At a first glance it was difficult to decide to what social stratum this Hercules belonged; he did not look like a house-serf, or one of the petit-bourgeois, or an impoverished retired clerk, or a bankrupt member of the minor nobility turned huntsman and strong-arm man: he was precisely himself and no more. Nobody knew where he had come from before dropping in on our county; gossip had it that he came from small-time landowning stock and was supposed to have been in the government service previously; but nothing positive was known about him and, besides, there was nobody from whom one could learn anything about him – certainly not from the man himself, because no one was more morose and taciturn. Also, no one could say for sure how he lived: he occupied himself with no special trade, never travelled off to work with anyone, had practically no acquaintances, yet he never seemed to be without money – not much, it was true, but some. It was not so much that he conducted himself modestly – there was in general nothing modest about him whatever – but he conducted himself quietly; he lived literally without taking notice of anyone around him and quite definitely without needing anyone. Gentleman Wildman (that was his nickname; his real name was Perevlesov) enjoyed enormous authority throughout the entire region; he was obeyed instantly and without question, although he not only had no right at all to order people about, but he did not even make the slightest pretence of expecting obedience from anyone he might chance to meet. He had only to speak and they obeyed; strength will always exact its due. He hardly drank at all, did not consort with women and was passionately fond of singing. There was much that was enigmatic about this man; it
seemed as if certain mighty powers sullenly lurked within him, knowing, as it were, that if they were once roused, if they once broke free, they would be sure to destroy both the man himself and everything they came in contact with; and if I am not terribly mistaken, precisely such an outburst had occurred in the life of this man, and he, schooled by the experience and barely saved from perishing, implacably held himself in check with a rod of iron. I was particularly struck by the mixture in him of a certain in-born, natural ferocity and a similarly in-born nobility of spirit – a mixture which I had not encountered before in anyone else.

Meanwhile, Barrowboy took a pace forward, half closed his eyes and began to sing in an exceptionally high falsetto. He had a fairly pleasant, sweet voice, although it was a little husky; he played with his voice, twisting it round and round like a top, ceaselessly running up and down the scale and all the time returning to the high notes, which he endeavoured particularly to hold and prolong, dropping into silence and then suddenly catching up the earlier refrain with a certain carefree, arrogant audacity. His shifts from one to the other were sometimes fairly bold, sometimes quite amusing: to an expert they would have given a good deal of pleasure; a German would have been annoyed by them. He was a Russian
tenore di grazia, ténor léger
. The song he sang was gay, for dancing, the words of which, so far as I could make them out through the endless embellishments, additional consonants and ejaculations, were as follows:

He sang, and everyone listened to him with great attention. He was obviously conscious of performing in front of people experienced in the art of singing and therefore, as they say, gave it all he'd got. Certainly, in our parts people know something about singing, and it is not for nothing that the village of Sergiyevsky, on the main Orlov highway, is famed throughout Russia for its especially pleasant and harmonious melodies. Barrowboy sang for a long time without arousing any exceptionally strong sympathy in his listeners; he lacked support, a chorus; finally, after one particularly successful shift which
made even Gentleman Wildman smile, the Nit could not contain himself and shouted with joy. Everyone became animated. The Nit and Winker began in low voices to catch up the refrain, joining in and occasionally shouting:

‘Great, man, great! Get it, boyo! Get it, hold it, keep at it, stretch it, you snake! Stretch it, go on, and again! Make it hot again, man, you old dog, you! Oh, the devil take your soul, man!' and so on.

Behind the counter Nikolay Ivanych approvingly shook his head to right and left. The Nit eventually started tapping his feet, mincing on tiptoe and jerking one shoulder, and Yakov's eyes simply burst into flame like coals and his whole body quivered like a leaf as he smiled all over his face. Only Gentleman Wildman did not alter the look on his face and remained in his former posture without moving; but his gaze, directed at Barrowboy, softened a little, although the expression on his lips remained contemptuous. Encouraged by these signs of general enjoyment, Barrowboy completely gave himself up to a veritable whirling frenzy of sounds and began to execute such convolutions, such clickings and drummings with his tongue, began such wild throaty trills that when, finally, exhausted, pale and covered in hot perspiration, he flung back his whole body and emitted a last dying cry, a general and unanimous shout of approval greeted him in a fierce outburst. The Nit threw himself at Barrowboy's neck and began to hug him to the point of suffocation with his long bony arms; a blush appeared on the fleshy face of Nikolay Ivanych which literally made him look younger; Yakov, like a madman, started shouting: ‘O boy, O boy, O boy!' Even my neighbour, the peasant in the ragged coat, could not restrain himself, and, striking the table with his fist, gave a cry of ‘Bah-gum that was good, the devil take it, that was good!' and resolutely spat to one side.

‘Well, mate, that was a delight!' cried the Nit without releasing the utterly exhausted Barrowboy from his embraces. ‘That was a delight, no denyin'! You've won, mate, you've won! Congratulations! That pot of ale's all yours! Yashka won't come near you, I'm tellin' you he won't come near… Just you remember what I've said!' (And he once more clasped Barrowboy to his chest.)

‘Let him go, let him go, like a ruddy clingin' vine you are!' Winker started saying in annoyance. ‘Let him sit down on the bench. You can see he's tired. A bloody idiot you are, mate, a right bloody
idiot! What's the good o' stickin' to 'im like a wet leaf in a steambath, eh?'

‘So all right, let him sit down, and I'll drink to his health,' said the Nit and approached the counter. ‘You'll do the payin', mate,' he added, turning to Barrowboy.

The latter gave a nod of the head, sat down on the bench, took a cloth out of his cap and began wiping his face; while the Nit drank down a glass with greedy swiftness and, after the manner of heavy drinkers, grunted and assumed a sadly preoccupied look.

‘You sing well, mate, real well,' Nikolay Ivanych remarked gently. ‘And now it's your turn, Yashka. Don't be bashful. We'll see who's better than whom, we'll just see… But Barrowboy sings awful well, my God he does!'

‘Ve-ery well,' commented his wife and looked with a smile towards Yakov.

‘Ah, that was good!' my companion repeated in a soft voice.

‘Hey, you twister-Woody!'
*
the Nit all of a sudden started yelling and, going up to the little peasant with the tear in the shoulder of his coat, stuck his finger out at him, began jumping about and pouring out a torrent of rumbustious laughter. ‘Woody! Woody! Ha, bah-gum harry-on, you twister!
†
Waddya come here for, twister?' he shouted through his laughter.

The wretched peasant was confused and was on the point of leaving as soon as possible when suddenly there boomed out the resonant voice of Gentleman Wildman:

‘What kind of bloody awful animal's making that noise?' he rasped through his teeth.

‘I wasn't doin' nothin',' the Nit mumbled, ‘it weren't nothin'… Just like I was…'

‘Well, then, shut up!' retorted Gentleman Wildman. ‘Yakov, begin!'

Yakov seized hold of his own throat.

‘Well, mate, it's… something's wrong… Hmm… Honest, I don't know what's wrong wi' it…'

‘Enough of that, don't start being bashful. You ought to be ashamed! What's all the squirming for? Sing just the way God makes you.'

And Gentleman Wildman lowered his eyes to the floor, expecting no more fuss.

Yakov said nothing, glanced around and covered his face with his hand. Everyone drank him in with their eyes, especially Barrowboy, on whose face there appeared, through his normal self-assured look and look of triumph at his success, an involuntary faint uneasiness. He leaned back against the wall and again placed both hands under him, but he no longer swung his feet about. When, at last, Yakov uncovered his face, it was pale as death; his eyes scarcely gleamed through his lowered eyelashes. He drew in a deep breath and began to sing.

The first sound his voice gave was weak and uneven, seeming to emerge not from his chest but to have been carried from somewhere far away, just as if it had flown by accident into the room. This quivering, ringing sound acted strangely upon all of us; we glanced at each other, and Nikolay Ivanych's wife literally stiffened. The first sound was followed by another, much firmer and long-drawn, but still clearly sobbing like a violin string when, after being suddenly plucked by a strong finger, it wavers in one final, quickly fading
tremolo
of sound, after which there followed a third and, little by little growing in intensity and volume, the plaintive song poured forth. ‘More than one path through the field wound its way' was the song he sang, and each one of us felt a wave of sweetness and shivery anticipation creeping over us. I confess that I had rarely heard such a voice: it was slightly broken and rang as if cracked; to start with it even had a suggestion of sickliness about it; but it also contained unfeigned depth of passion, and youthfulness, and strength, and sweetness, and a kind of attractively uncaring, mournful piteousness. The honest, fiery soul of Russia resounded and breathed through it and quite simply seized us by the heart, plucked directly at our Russian heart-strings. The song grew and overflowed. Yakov was obviously possessed by inspiration: all shyness gone, he was giving himself completely to his exaltation;
his voice no longer quivered – it sobbed, but with that scarcely noticeable, inner tremor of passion which plunges like an arrow into the soul of the listener, and ceaselessly it grew in strength, firmness and volume.

I remember how one evening, at the ebbing of the tide, on the smooth sandy shore of a sea thundering and roaring with the breaking of heavy waves in the far distance, I saw a large white seagull; it stood motionless, its silky breast turned to the crimson brilliance of the evening, and only now and then slowly spread out its long wings in a gesture of welcome to the familiar sea and low, blood-red sun; this I recalled as I listened to Yakov. He sang, quite oblivious of his rival and all of us, yet evidently uplifted, as a spirited swimmer is borne up by the waves, by our silent, devotional participation. He sang, and in every sound his voice made there breathed something familiar as our birthright and so vast no eye could encompass it, just as if the Russian steppe were being unrolled before us, stretching away into an endless distance. I felt emotions throb in my heart and tears rose to my eyes. I was suddenly surprised by the sound of mute, suppressed crying. I glanced round – it was mine host's wife weeping, her bosom pressed to the window. Yakov cast a quick glance in her direction and began to pour out the song still more resonantly, still more sweetly than before; Nikolay Ivanych fixed his eyes on the floor and Winker turned away; the Nit, quite sodden with emotion, stood there, his mouth stupidly gaping; the colourless little peasant was quietly sobbing in his corner and rocking his head to the accompaniment of a tearful whispering; and down the iron face of Gentleman Wildman, from beneath eyebrows that had been drawn completely together, a single heavy tear slowly trickled; Barrowboy had raised a clenched fist to his forehead and was absolutely still…

I do not know how the universal tension would have been dispersed had not Yakov suddenly finished on a high, unusually thin note, just as if his voice had broken. Nobody shouted, nobody even stirred; they all waited, as it were, to see whether he was going to continue; but he simply opened his eyes, literally astonished by our silence, looked round at us with an inquiring gaze and recognized that he had won.

‘Yasha,' said Gentleman Wildman, placed a hand on his shoulder – and stopped.

We were all motionless as if stunned. Barrowboy quietly stood up and approached Yakov. ‘You… it's yours… you've won,' he uttered at last with difficulty and flung himself out of the room.

His quick, decisive movement seemed to break the spell: everyone suddenly burst into loud and joyful talking. The Nit jumped in the air, began babbling and waving his arms about like the vanes of a windmill; Winker walked lamely up to Yakov and kissed him on both cheeks; Nikolay Ivanych straightened himself and solemnly announced that he would provide another pot of ale on his own account; Gentleman Wildman gave a series of jovial laughs, of a kind which I had never expected to see on his face; the colourless little peasant over and over again muttered in his corner as he drew both sleeves over his eyes, cheeks, nose and beard: ‘Ha, that was good, by God it was good; bah-gum I'll be a son of a bitch, but that was good!'; and Nikolay Ivanych's wife, quite red in the face, quickly stood up and withdrew. Yakov delighted in his victory like a child; his whole face was transformed; his eyes in particular glittered with happiness. They dragged him to the counter, and he summoned the tearful little peasant to join in and sent one of mine host's little sons after Barrowboy, who, however, was not to be found, and the celebrating began. ‘You're goin' to sing again, you'll sing to us till it's dark,' the Nit kept on repeating, raising his arms high in the air.

I took a final look at Yakov and went out. I did not want to remain – I was frightened of spoiling my impression. But the heat was as unbearable as before. It seemed to hang over the very surface of the earth in a thick, heavy layer; against the dark-blue sky certain tiny, bright fires appeared to lick up through the very fine, almost black, dust. Everything was silent; there was something hopeless, depressed about this profound silence of exhausted nature. I made my way to a hayloft and lay down on the recently mown grass which had already dried out almost completely. For a long while I was unable to doze off; the enthralling voice of Yakov still rang in my ears… Finally heat and weariness exacted their due and I fell into a dead sleep.

When I awoke, everything was already dark; the grass scattered round me had a strong scent and was ever so slightly damp; through the thin laths of the half-covered roof pale stars winked
feebly. I went out. The glow of sunset had long since died away and its final traces hardly showed at all on the horizon; but in the recently white-hot air the heat could still be felt even through the night's freshness, and one's lungs still yearned for a cooling breeze. There was no wind, nor were there any clouds; the sky stood all about me, clear and transparently dark, quietly flickering with numberless but scarcely visible stars. Lights flashed in the village; from the brightly lit tavern near by there came a dissonant, vague hubbub, through which I seemed to make out the voice of Yakov. Wild laughter broke out explosively from time to time. I went up to the little window and pressed my face to the glass.

I saw an unhappy, though a motley and lively enough scene: everyone was drunk – everyone, beginning with Yakov. With bared breast he was sitting on a bench and, singing in a husky voice some dancing song of the streets, idly fingered and plucked the strings of a guitar. His damp hair hung in clusters over his terribly pale face. In the middle of the tavern the Nit, completely ‘unwound' and without his coat, was dancing with skips and jumps in front of the peasant in the colourless overcoat; the little man, in his turn, was with difficulty tapping and scraping his dog-tired feet and, smiling senselessly through his dishevelled beard, gave occasional waves of the hand, as though wishing to say: ‘So what the hell!' Nothing could have been more comic than his face; no matter how much he jerked his brows up, his heavy eyelids refused to rise and remained fallen over his barely visible, bleary, though extremely syrupy little eyes. He was in the pleasant condition of someone who is rolling drunk, to whom every passer-by, upon glancing in his face, invariably remarks: ‘You're doing fine, mate, you're doing fine!' Winker, red-faced as a crab and with widely distended nostrils, was giving roars of venomous laughter from one corner; only Nikolay Ivanych maintained his unvarying composure, as befitted a true tavern-keeper. Many new faces had gathered in the room; but I did not see Gentleman Wildman there.

I turned away and began quickly to descend the hill on which Kolotovka is situated. At the foot of this hill there is a broad plain; flooded with murky waves of evening mist, it appeared to be even vaster than it was and seemed to flow into the darkened sky. I was taking large steps down the road alongside the ravine, when suddenly
somewhere far off in the plain a boy's shrill voice cried out. ‘Antropka! Antropka-a-a!' he shouted with insistent and tearful desperation, prolonging and prolonging the last syllable.