Sketches from a Hunter's Album (48 page)

… Little by little he felt his desire harden,
Drawing him back to the village and shady garden,
Where lindens stood in stately dark magnificence,
And lilies of the valley spread their virgin fragrance,
Where round-shouldered willows by the weir,
Bend in a row above the water clear,
Where a stout oak grows above the fat-eared wheat,
Where hemp and nettles make the air smell sweet…
He was drawn back to those broad fields so lush,
Where the earth like velvet is so black and plush,
So that, no matter where you may direct your eye,
Everywhere is a rustling of soft waves of rye,
And through transparent clouds, so round and white,
Fall heavy beams of sunshine's golden light;
There is it good…

(From a poem consigned to the flames)

THE reader, perhaps, has already had enough of my Sketches, but I hasten to allay his fears with the promise that they are to be limited to these printed extracts; and yet, in making my farewell, I must say a few words about the sport of hunting.

Hunting with a gun and a dog is a delight in itself,
für sich
, as they used to say in the past. But let us suppose that you are not a born hunter, though you still love nature; in that case, you can hardly fail to envy the lot of your brother hunters… Pray listen a while.

Do you know, for instance, how delightful it is to drive out before a spring dawn? You walk out on the porch and here and there on the dark grey sky stars wink at you, light waves of a moist breeze
occasionally stir the air about you, the muffled, indistinct murmurs of the night can be heard and the trees rustle softly, immersed in shadow. A cover is drawn over the cart and a box with a samovar is placed at your feet. The trace-horses fret, snort and affectedly stamp their hoofs; a pair of newly awakened white geese make their way slowly and silently across the road. In the garden, on the other side of the fencing, the night-watchman snores peacefully from time to time. Every sound hangs as if frozen upon the still air – hangs there frozen and motionless. Then you take your seat; the horses start away at once and the cart clatters off on its journey… You drive past a church, downhill and to the right across a dam; a mist is just beginning to rise from a pond. The air chills you slightly and you cover your face with your coat collar; you are pleasantly drowsy. The horses' hoofs squelch in the puddles and the driver whistles to himself. By the time you've travelled two miles or so the rim of the sky is beginning to crimson; in the birches jackdaws are awakening and clumsily fluttering from branch to branch; sparrows twitter about the dark hayricks. The air grows brighter, the road clearer, the sky lightens, suffusing the clouds with whiteness and the fields with green. Lights burn red in the cottages and sleepy voices can be heard beyond the gates. In the meantime dawn has burst into flame; stripes of gold have risen across the sky and wreaths of mist form in the ravines; to the loud singing of skylarks and the soughing of the wind before dawn the sun rises, silent and purple, above the horizon. Light floods over the world and your heart trembles within you like a bird. Everything is so fresh, gay and lovely! You can see for miles. Here a village glimmers beyond the woodland; there, farther away, is another village with a white church and then a hill with a birchwood; beyond it is the marsh to which you are driving… Step lively there, horses! Forward at a brisk trot!… No more than two miles to go now. The sun is rising quickly, the sky is clear… The weather will be perfect. You meet a herd of cattle coming in a long line from the village. Then you ascend the hill… What a view! The river winds away for seven miles or more, a faint blue glimmer through the mist; beyond it are the water-green meadows: beyond them, low-lying hills; in the distance lapwings veer and cry above the marsh; through the gleaming moisture which pervades the air the distance emerges clearly… there is no summer haze. How freely one breathes the air
into one's lungs, how buoyant are one's limbs, how strong one feels in the grip of this fresh springtime atmosphere!

And a summer morning in July! Has anyone save a hunter ever experienced the delight of wandering through bushes at dawn? Your feet leave green imprints in grass that is heavy and white with dew. You push aside wet bushes – the warm scent accumulated in the night almost smothers you; the air is impregnated with the fresh bitter-sweet fragrance of wormwood, the honeyed scent of buckwheat and clover; far off an oak forest rises like a wall, shining purple in the sunshine; the air is still fresh, but the coming heat can already be felt. Your head becomes slightly dizzy from such an excess of sweet scents. And there's no end to the bushes… Away in the distance ripening rye glows yellow and there are narrow strips of rust-red buckwheat. Then there's the sound of a cart; a peasant drives by at walking pace, leaving his horse in the shade before the sun gets hot. You greet him, pass on, and after a while the metallic rasping of a scythe can be heard behind you. The sun is rising higher and higher, and the grass quickly dries out. It's already hot. First one hour, then another passes. The sky darkens at the edges and the motionless air is aflame with the prickly heat.

‘Where can I get a drink, friend?' you ask the peasant.

‘There's a spring down there in the ravine.'

You make your way down to the floor of the ravine through thick bushes of nut which are entwined with bindweed. There it is; at the very bottom of the ravine hides the spring; a small oak has greedily spread its webbed branches over the water; large silver bubbles rise in clusters from the spring's bottom nestling in a thin, velvety moss. You fling yourself to the ground and drink your fill, but have no wish to rise again. You are in a shady place, breathing in the pungent dampness; you're glad to be here while beyond you the branches burn with heat and literally turn yellow in the sun. But what's that? A breeze has suddenly risen and scurried by you; the surrounding air shudders. You leave the ravine… What's that lead-grey strip running along the horizon? And the heat's thicker, isn't it? Is there a cloud forming?… Then comes a faint lightning flash – yes, it's a storm all right! Yet the sun is still shining brightly and hunting's still possible. But the cloud grows: its nearest edge is
stretched out like a sleeve and looms like an arch. Bushes, grass, everything suddenly darkens… Quick, quick! There's a hay barn over there. Quick… You reach it, go in and come rain, come lightning, it makes no difference… Here and there water drips through the straw roof into the fragrant hay; soon the sun's out again. The storm passes and you step outside. Oh, how gaily everything glitters around you, how fresh and liquid is the air, how sweet the scent of mushroom and wild strawberry!

But now evening is approaching. The sunset has burst into flame and covered half the sky with fire. The sun sinks. The air near by is somehow particularly lucid, exactly as if made of glass; in the distance a soft haze is settling, warm as heat-haze in appearance; along with the dew a crimson glow is descending on the open fields which were so recently inundated by torrents of liquid gold; from trees, from bushes, from tall hayricks have run long shadows… The sun has set; a star ignites and twinkles in the fiery sea of the sun's sinking… Now the sun pales: the sky grows blue; separate shadows vanish away and the air fills with dusk. It is time to go home, to the village, to the hut where you are spending the night. Slinging your gun over your shoulder, you walk at a brisk pace despite your tiredness. And in the meantime night descends; you can hardly see twenty paces ahead of you; your dogs are barely visible in the murk. Over there, above the blackness of the bushes, the rim of the sky shines dimly… What's that? Is it a fire? No, it's the rising of the moon and there below you, to your right, the lights of the village are already glimmering. Finally, you reach your hut. Through the little window you see a table covered with a white cloth, a lighted candle and supper…

Or you order the racing buggy to be harnessed and off you go into the forest after grouse. It is a happy feeling to be making your way along a narrow track between two high walls of rye. The heads of grain gently strike you across the face, while cornflowers catch at your feet, and quail cry in the vicinity and the horse goes at a lazy trot. Then comes the forest. Shade and silence. Stately aspens murmur high above you; the long hanging branches of the birches hardly stir; a powerful oak stands like a warrior beside a gracious linden. You
travel along a green track that is dappled with shadows; large yellow flies hang motionless in the gold-dust air and suddenly fly away. Gnats weave in spirals, glittering in the shade, darkening in the sunlight; birds sing peacefully. The small golden voice of the robin makes a sound of innocent prattling gaiety: it accords with the scent of lilies of the valley. You go farther and farther, deeper into the forest. The forest thickens. An inexplicable quietude begins to descend on your soul; and all around it is so dream-like and still. But now a breeze has sprung up and the tips of the trees have begun to rustle like tumbling waves. Through last year's rust-brown fallen leaves tall grass grows here and there; mushrooms stand individually under their little hats. A white hare jumps suddenly into view and the dog races after it with loud barks…

And how fine that very same forest looks in late autumn, when the snipe fly in! They do not frequent the forest depths, but must be sought along its outskirts. There is no wind, nor is there any sun, any brightness, any shade, any movement, any noise; the soft air is saturated with an autumnal fragrance, like the bouquet of wine; a thin mist hangs in the distance over the yellow fields. Through the naked, dark-brown branches of the trees the still sky peacefully shines; here and there on the lindens hang the last golden leaves. The damp earth is springy under your feet; the tall dry blades of grass are perfectly still; long threads gleam in the pale-hued grass. Your breathing is calm, though a strange anxiety invades your soul. You walk along the edge of the forest, keeping your eyes on the dog, but in the meantime there come to mind beloved images, beloved faces, the living and the dead, and long-since dormant impressions unexpectedly awaken; the imagination soars and dwells on the air like a bird, and everything springs into movement with such clarity and stands before the eyes. Your heart either suddenly quivers and starts beating fast, passionately racing forward, or drowns irretrievably in recollections. The whole of life unrolls easily and swiftly like a scroll; a man has possession of his whole past, all his feelings, all his powers, his entire soul. And nothing in his surroundings can disturb him – there is no sun, no wind, no noise…

And a clear, autumnal, slightly cold day with frost in the morning, when the birch, literally a tree out of a fairy-tale arrayed all in gold,
stands out in beautiful outline against a pale-blue sky, when the sun, low on the horizon, has no more power to heat, but shines more brightly than the sun of summer, when the small aspen wood glows through and through as if it were delighted and happy to stand there naked, when the hoar-frost still whitens the floors of the valleys, but a fresh breeze ever so quietly rustles and drives before it the fallen twisted leaves, when blue waves race gaily along the river, making geese and ducks scattered on its surface bob evenly up and down; when in the distance a watermill, half hidden by willows, makes a clattering sound and, colourfully flickering in the bright air, pigeons circle swiftly above it…

Wonderful also are hazy summer days, although hunters dislike them. It is impossible to do any shooting on such days: a bird, though it rises from beneath your very feet, immediately disappears into the whitish murk of the motionless haze. But how quiet, how unimaginably quiet is everything around you! Everything is awake and everything is silent. You walk past a tree – it does not even so much as stir: it simply swoons in the stillness. Through the fine mistiness with which the air is evenly suffused a long strip of something black emerges in front of you. You take it for a nearby forest; you approach – and the forest turns into a high bank of wormwood on the boundary of a field. Above you and all about you, everywhere there is haze. But then a breeze stirs faintly – and a patch of pale-blue sky vaguely emerges through the thinning mist, which has literally begun to rise like smoke; a golden-yellow ray breaks through suddenly, streams out in a long flood, strikes across the fields, runs up against a wood – and then once more everything clouds over. This struggle continues for a long while; but how indescribably magnificent and lucid is the day itself, when the sunlight finally triumphs and the last waves of sun-warmed haze either roll away and spread themselves out smooth as tablecloths, or spiral upwards and vanish in the deep, gently gleaming atmosphere…

But now you've set off into the distant fields and the steppeland. You've made your way for six or seven miles along country roads and now, at last, you've reached the main road. Past endless lines of carts, past little wayside inns with samovars hissing under the lean-to
out front, with their wide-open gates and well-holes for water, from one village to another, through endless expanses of fields, beside plantations of green hemp, you travel for hour after hour. Magpies flit from one clump of broom to another; women with long rakes wander in the fields; a traveller on foot wearing a worn nankeen coat, with a small bundle over his shoulder, plods on his way at a tired pace; a bulky landowner's carriage, harnessed with six full-grown and jaded horses, trundles towards you. The corner of a cushion is sticking out of a window, but on the rear step, on a mat, holding on by a rope, a lackey in an overcoat sits sideways, spattered with mud up to his eyebrows. Then there is a little county town with small lop-sided wooden houses, endless fences, vacant merchants' dwellings built of stone and an ancient bridge over a deep ravine… Farther, farther! The steppelands are approaching. You look down from a hill – what a view! Round, low hillocks, ploughed and sown right up to their tips, billow in all directions like broad waves; ravines overgrown with bushes weave among them; small woods are scattered here and there like elongated islands; from village to village run narrow tracks; churches gleam white; between thickets of willow glitters a small river, its flow staunched in four places by dams; far off in the field wild cranes stick out as they waddle in file; an antiquated landowner's mansion with its outbuildings, orchard and threshing floor is settled comfortably beside a small pond. But you go on travelling, farther and farther. The hillocks grow shallower and shallower and there is hardly a tree to be seen. Finally, there it is – the limitless, enormous steppe no eye can encompass!