A Desperate Character and Other Stories

I >> Ivan Turgenev >> A Desperate Character and Other Stories

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

'Here, near the dike, there's a seat, put up on the floating platform on
purpose,' Narkiz was beginning to explain to me, but he glanced ahead,
and suddenly exclaimed: 'Aha! but our poor folk are here already ...
they keep it up, it seems.'

I craned my head to look from behind him, and saw on the floating
platform, on the very seat of which he had been speaking, two persons
sitting with their backs to us; they were placidly fishing.

'Who are they?' I asked.

'Neighbours,' Narkiz responded, with displeasure. 'They've nothing to
eat at home, and so here they come to us.'

'Are they allowed to?'

'The old master allowed them.... Nikolai Petrovitch maybe won't give
them permission.... The long one is a superannuated deacon--quite a
silly creature; and as for the other, that's a little stouter--he's a
brigadier.'

'A brigadier?' I repeated, wondering. This 'brigadier's' attire was
almost worse than the deacon's.

'I assure you he's a brigadier. And he did have a fine property once.
But now he has only a corner given him out of charity, and he lives ...
on what God sends him. But, by the way, what are we to do? They've taken
the best place.... We shall have to disturb our precious visitors.'

'No, Narkiz, please don't disturb them. We'll sit here a little aside;
they won't interfere with us. I should like to make acquaintance with
the brigadier.'

'As you like. Only, as far as acquaintance goes ... you needn't expect
much satisfaction from it, sir; he's grown very weak in his head, and in
conversation he's silly as a little child. As well he may be; he's past
his eightieth year.'

'What's his name?'

'Vassily Fomitch. Guskov's his surname.'

'And the deacon?'

'The deacon? ... his nickname's Cucumber. Every one about here calls him
so; but what his real name is--God knows! A foolish creature! A regular
ne'er-do-well.'

'Do they live together?'

'No; but there--the devil has tied them together, it seems.'

V

We approached the platform. The brigadier cast one glance upon us ...
and promptly fixed his eyes on the float; Cucumber jumped up, pulled
back his rod, took off his worn-out clerical hat, passed a trembling
hand over his rough yellow hair, made a sweeping bow, and gave vent to a
feeble little laugh. His bloated face betrayed him an inveterate
drunkard; his staring little eyes blinked humbly. He gave his neighbour
a poke in the ribs, as though to let him know that they must clear
out.... The brigadier began to move on the seat.

'Sit still, I beg; don't disturb yourselves,' I hastened to say. 'You
won't interfere with us in the least. We'll take up our position here;
sit still.'

Cucumber wrapped his ragged smock round him, twitched his shoulders, his
lips, his beard.... Obviously he felt our presence oppressive and he
would have been glad to slink away, ... but the brigadier was again lost
in the contemplation of his float.... The 'ne'er-do-weel' coughed twice,
sat down on the very edge of the seat, put his hat on his knees, and,
tucking his bare legs up under him, he discreetly dropped in his line.

'Any bites?' Narkiz inquired haughtily, as in leisurely fashion he
unwound his reel.

'We've caught a matter of five loaches,' answered Cucumber in a cracked
and husky voice: 'and he took a good-sized perch.'

'Yes, a perch,' repeated the brigadier in a shrill pipe.

VI

I fell to watching closely--not him, but his reflection in the pond. It
was as clearly reflected as in a looking-glass--a little darker, a
little more silvery. The wide stretch of pond wafted a refreshing
coolness upon us; a cool breath of air seemed to rise, too, from the
steep, damp bank; and it was the sweeter, as in the dark blue, flooded
with gold, above the tree tops, the stagnant sultry heat hung, a burden
that could be felt, over our heads. There was no stir in the water near
the dike; in the shade cast by the drooping bushes on the bank, water
spiders gleamed, like tiny bright buttons, as they described their
everlasting circles; at long intervals there was a faint ripple just
perceptible round the floats, when a fish was 'playing' with the worm.
Very few fish were taken; during a whole hour we drew up only two
loaches and an eel. I could not say why the brigadier aroused my
curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen
were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance
presented nothing remarkable. Under the warm cap, which covered the
whole upper part of his head down to his ears and his eyebrows, could be
seen a smooth, red, clean-shaven, round face, with a little nose, little
lips, and small, clear grey eyes. Simplicity and weakness of character,
and a sort of long-standing, helpless sorrow, were visible in that meek,
almost childish face; the plump, white little hands with short fingers
had something helpless, incapable about them too.... I could not
conceive how this forlorn old man could once have been an officer, could
have maintained discipline, have given his commands--and that, too, in
the stern days of Catherine! I watched him; now and then he puffed out
his cheeks and uttered a feeble whistle, like a little child; sometimes
he screwed up his eyes painfully, with effort, as all decrepit people
will. Once he opened his eyes wide and lifted them.... They stared at me
from out of the depths of the water--and strangely touching and even
full of meaning their dejected glance seemed to me.

VII

I tried to begin a conversation with the brigadier ... but Narkiz had
not misinformed me; the poor old man certainly had become weak in his
intellect. He asked me my surname, and after repeating his inquiry
twice, pondered and pondered, and at last brought out: 'Yes, I fancy
there was a judge of that name here. Cucumber, wasn't there a judge
about here of that name, hey?' 'To be sure there was, Vassily Fomitch,
your honour,' responded Cucumber, who treated him altogether as a child.
'There was, certainly. But let me have your hook; your worm must have
been eaten off.... Yes, so it is.'

'Did you know the Lomov family?' the brigadier suddenly asked me in a
cracked voice.

'What Lomov family is that?'

'Why, Fiodor Ivanitch, Yevstigney Ivanitch, Alexey Ivanitch the Jew, and
Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer, ... and then, too ...'

The brigadier suddenly broke off and looked down confused.

They were the people he was most intimate with,' Narkiz whispered,
bending towards me; 'it was through them, through that same Alexey
Ivanitch, that he called a Jew, and through a sister of Alexey
Ivanitch's, Agrafena Ivanovna, as you may say, that he lost all his
property.'

'What are you saying there about Agrafena Ivanovna?' the brigadier
called out suddenly, and his head was raised, his white eyebrows were
frowning.... 'You'd better mind! And why Agrafena, pray? Agrippina
Ivanovna--that's what you should call her.'

'There--there--there, sir,' Cucumber was beginning to falter.

'Don't you know the verses the poet Milonov wrote about her?' the old
man went on, suddenly getting into a state of excitement, which was a
complete surprise to me. 'No hymeneal lights were kindled,' he began
chanting, pronouncing all the vowels through his nose, giving the
syllables 'an,' 'en,' the nasal sound they have in French; and it was
strange to hear this connected speech from his lips: 'No torches ... No,
that's not it:

"Not vain Corruption's idols frail
Not amaranth nor porphyry
Rejoiced their hearts ...
One thing in them ..."

'That was about us. Do you hear?

"One thing in them unquenchable,
Subduing, sweet, desirable,
To nurse their mutual flame in love!"

And you talk about Agrafena!'

Narkiz chuckled half-contemptuously, half-indifferently. 'What a queer
fish it is!' he said to himself. But the brigadier had again relapsed
into dejection, the rod had dropped from his hands and slipped into
the water.

VIII

'Well, to my thinking, our fishing is a poor business,' observed
Cucumber; 'the fish, see, don't bite at all. It's got fearfully hot, and
there's a fit of "mencholy" come over our gentleman. It's clear we must
be going home; that will be best.' He cautiously drew out of his pocket
a tin bottle with a wooden stopper, uncorked it, scattered snuff on his
wrist, and sniffed it up in both nostrils at once.... 'Ah, what good
snuff!' he moaned, as he recovered himself. 'It almost made my tooth
ache! Now, my dear Vassily Fomitch, get up--it's time to be off!'

The brigadier got up from the bench.

'Do you live far from here?' I asked Cucumber.

'No, our gentleman lives not far ... it won't be as much as a mile.'

'Will you allow me to accompany you?' I said, addressing the brigadier.
I felt disinclined to let him go.

Narkiz was surprised at my intention; but I paid no attention to the
disapproving shake of his long-eared cap, and walked out of the garden
with the brigadier, who was supported by Cucumber. The old man moved
fairly quickly, with a motion as though he were on stilts.

IX

We walked along a scarcely trodden path, through a grassy glade between
two birch copses. The sun was blazing; the orioles called to each other
in the green thicket; corncrakes chattered close to the path; blue
butterflies fluttered in crowds about the white, and red flowers of the
low-growing clover; in the perfectly still grass bees hung, as though
asleep, languidly buzzing. Cucumber seemed to pull himself together, and
brightened up; he was afraid of Narkiz--he lived always under his eye; I
was a stranger--a new comer--with me he was soon quite at home.

'Here's our gentleman,' he said in a rapid flow; 'he's a small eater
and no mistake! but only one perch, is that enough for him? Unless,
your honour, you would like to contribute something? Close here round
the corner, at the little inn, there are first-rate white wheaten
rolls. And if so, please your honour, this poor sinner, too, will
gladly drink on this occasion to your health, and may it be of long
years and long days.' I gave him a little silver, and was only just in
time to pull away my hand, which he was falling upon to kiss. He
learned that I was a sportsman, and fell to talking of a very good
friend of his, an officer, who had a 'Mindindenger' Swedish gun, with a
copper stock, just like a cannon, so that when you fire it off you are
almost knocked senseless--it had been left behind by the French--and a
dog--simply one of Nature's marvels! that he himself had always had a
great passion for the chase, and his priest would have made no trouble
about it--he used in fact to catch quails with him--but the
ecclesiastical superior had pursued him with endless persecution; 'and
as for Narkiz Semyonitch,' he observed in a sing-song tone, 'if
according to his notions I'm not a trustworthy person--well, what I say
is: he's let his eyebrows grow till he's like a woodcock, and he
fancies all the sciences are known to him.' By this time we had reached
the inn, a solitary tumble-down, one-roomed little hut without backyard
or outbuildings; an emaciated dog lay curled up under the window; a hen
was scratching in the dust under his very nose. Cucumber sat the
brigadier down on the bank, and darted instantly into the hut. While he
was buying the rolls and emptying a glass, I never took my eyes off the
brigadier, who, God knows why, struck me as something of an enigma. In
the life of this man--so I mused--there must certainly have been
something out of the ordinary. But he, it seemed, did not notice me at
all. He was sitting huddled up on the bank, and twisting in his fingers
some pinks which he had gathered in my friend's garden. Cucumber made
his appearance, at last, with a bundle of rolls in his hand; he made
his appearance, all red and perspiring, with an expression of gleeful
surprise on his face, as though he had just seen something exceedingly
agreeable and unexpected. He at once offered the brigadier a roll to
eat, and the latter at once ate it. We proceeded on our way.

X

On the strength of the spirits he had drunk, Cucumber quite 'unbent,' as
it is called. He began trying to cheer up the brigadier, who was still
hurrying forward with a tottering motion as though he were on stilts.
'Why are you so downcast, sir, and hanging your head? Let me sing you a
song. That'll cheer you up in a minute.' He turned to me: 'Our gentleman
is very fond of a joke, mercy on us, yes! Yesterday, what did I see?--a
peasant-woman washing a pair of breeches on the platform, and a great
fat woman she was, and he stood behind her, simply all of a shake with
laughter--yes, indeed! ... In a minute, allow me: do you know the song of
the hare? You mustn't judge me by my looks; there's a gypsy woman living
here in the town, a perfect fright, but sings--'pon my soul! one's ready
to lie down and die.' He opened wide his moist red lips and began
singing, his head on one side, his eyes shut, and his beard quivering:

'The hare beneath the bush lies still,
The hunters vainly scour the hill;
The hare lies hid and holds his breath,
His ears pricked up, he lies there still
Waiting for death.
O hunters! what harm have I done,
To vex or injure you? Although
Among the cabbages I run,
One leaf I nibble--only one,
And that's not yours!
Oh, no!'

Cucumber went on with ever-increasing energy:

'Into the forest dark he fled,
His tail he let the hunters see;
"Excuse me, gentlemen," says he,
"That so I turn my back on you--
I am not yours!"'

Cucumber was not singing now ... he was bellowing:

'The hunters hunted day and night,
And still the hare was out of sight.
So, talking over his misdeeds,
They ended by disputing quite--
Alas, the hare is not for us!
The squint-eye is too sharp for us!'

The first two lines of each stanza Cucumber sang with each syllable
drawn out; the other three, on the contrary, very briskly, and
accompanied them with little hops and shuffles of his feet; at the
conclusion of each verse he cut a caper, in which he kicked himself with
his own heels. As he shouted at the top of his voice: 'The squint-eye is
too sharp for us!' he turned a somersault.... His expectations were
fulfilled. The brigadier suddenly went off into a thin, tearful little
chuckle, and laughed so heartily that he could not go on, and stayed
still in a half-sitting posture, helplessly slapping his knees with his
hands. I looked at his face, flushed crimson, and convulsively working,
and felt very sorry for him at that instant especially. Encouraged by
his success, Cucumber fell to capering about in a squatting position,
singing the refrain of: 'Shildi-budildi!' and 'Natchiki-tchikaldi!' He
stumbled at last with his nose in the dust.... The brigadier suddenly
ceased laughing and hobbled on.

XI

We went on another quarter of a mile. A little village came into sight
on the edge of a not very deep ravine; on one side stood the 'lodge,'
with a half-ruined roof and a solitary chimney; in one of the two rooms
of this lodge lived the brigadier. The owner of the village, who always
resided in Petersburg, the widow of the civil councillor Lomov, had--so
I learned later--bestowed this little nook upon the brigadier. She had
given orders that he should receive a monthly pension, and had also
assigned for his service a half-witted serf-girl living in the same
village, who, though she barely understood human speech, was yet
capable, in the lady's opinion, of sweeping a floor and cooking
cabbage-soup. At the door of the lodge the brigadier again addressed me
with the same eighteenth-century smile: would I be pleased to walk into
his 'apartement'? We went into this 'apartement.' Everything in it was
exceedingly filthy and poor, so filthy and so poor that the brigadier,
noticing, probably, by the expression of my face, the impression it made
on me, observed, shrugging his shoulders, and half closing his eyelids:
'Ce n'est pas ... oeil de perdrix.' ... What precisely he meant by this
remained a mystery to me.... When I addressed him in French, I got no
reply from him in that language. Two objects struck me especially in the
brigadier's abode: a large officer's cross of St. George in a black
frame, under glass, with an inscription in an old-fashioned handwriting:
'Received by the Colonel of the Tchernigov regiment, Vassily Guskov, for
the storming of Prague in the year 1794'; and secondly, a half-length
portrait in oils of a handsome, black-eyed woman with a long, dark face,
hair turned up high and powdered, with postiches on the temple and chin,
in a flowered, low-cut bodice, with blue frills, the style of 1780. The
portrait was badly painted, but was probably a good likeness; there was
a wonderful look of life and will, something extraordinarily living and
resolute, about the face. It was not looking at the spectator; it was,
as it were, turning away and not smiling; the curve of the thin nose,
the regular but flat lips, the almost unbroken straight line of the
thick eyebrows, all showed an imperious, haughty, fiery temper. No great
effort was needed to picture that face glowing with passion or with
rage. Just below the portrait on a little pedestal stood a half-withered
bunch of simple wild flowers in a thick glass jar. The brigadier went up
to the pedestal, stuck the pinks he was carrying into the jar, and
turning to me, and lifting his hand in the direction of the portrait, he
observed: 'Agrippina Ivanovna Teliegin, by birth Lomov.' The words of
Narkiz came back to my mind; and I looked with redoubled interest at the
expressive and evil face of the woman for whose sake the brigadier had
lost all his fortune.

'You took part, I see, sir, in the storming of Prague,' I began,
pointing to the St. George cross, 'and won a sign of distinction, rare
at any time, but particularly so then; you must remember Suvorov?'

'Alexander Vassilitch?' the brigadier answered, after a brief silence,
in which he seemed to be pulling his thoughts together; 'to be sure, I
remember him; he was a little, brisk old man. Before one could stir a
finger, he'd be here and there and everywhere (the brigadier chuckled).
He rode into Warsaw on a Cossack horse; he was all in diamonds, and he
says to the Poles: "I've no watch, I forgot it in Petersburg--no watch!"
and they shouted and huzzaed for him. Queer chaps! Hey! Cucumber! lad!'
he added suddenly, changing and raising his voice (the deacon-buffoon
had remained standing at the door), 'where's the rolls, eh? And tell
Grunka ... to bring some kvas!'

'Directly, your honour,' I heard Cucumber's voice reply. He handed the
brigadier the bundle of rolls, and, going out of the lodge, approached a
dishevelled creature in rags--the half-witted girl, Grunka, I
suppose--and as far as I could make out through the dusty little window,
proceeded to demand kvas from her--at least, he several times raised one
hand like a funnel to his mouth, and waved the other in our direction.

XII

I made another attempt to get into conversation with the brigadier;
but he was evidently tired: he sank, sighing and groaning, on the
little couch, and moaning, 'Oy, oy, my poor bones, my poor bones,'
untied his garters. I remember I wondered at the time how a man came
to be wearing garters. I did not realise that in former days every one
wore them. The brigadier began yawning with prolonged, unconcealed
yawns, not taking his drowsy eyes off me all the time; so very little
children yawn. The poor old man did not even seem quite to understand
my question.... And he had taken Prague! He, sword in hand, in the
smoke and the dust--at the head of Suvorov's soldiers, the
bullet-pierced flag waving above him, the hideous corpses under his
feet.... He ... he! Wasn't it wonderful! But yet I could not help
fancying that there had been events more extraordinary in the
brigadier's life. Cucumber brought white kvas in an iron jug; the
brigadier drank greedily--his hands shook. Cucumber supported the
bottom of the jug. The old man carefully wiped his toothless mouth
with both hands--and again staring at me, fell to chewing and munching
his lips. I saw how it was, bowed, and went out of the room.

'Now he'll have a nap,' observed Cucumber, coming out behind me. 'He's
terribly knocked up to-day--he went to the grave early this morning.'

'To whose grave?'

'To Agrafena Ivanovna's, to pay his devotions.... She is buried in our
parish cemetery here; it'll be four miles from here. Vassily Fomitch
visits it every week without fail. Indeed, it was he who buried her and
put the fence up at his own expense.'

'Has she been dead long?'

'Well, let's think--twenty years about.'

'Was she a friend of his, or what?'

'Her whole life, you may say, she passed with him ... really. I
myself, I must own, never knew the lady, but they do say ... what
there was between them ... well, well, well! Sir,' the deacon added
hurriedly, seeing I had turned away, 'wouldn't you like to give me
something for another drop, for it's time I was home in my hut and
rolled up in my blanket?'

I thought it useless to question Cucumber further, so gave him a few
coppers, and set off homewards.

XIII

At home I betook myself for further information to Narkiz. He, as I
might have anticipated, was somewhat unapproachable, stood a little on
his dignity, expressed his surprise that such paltry matters could
'interest' me, and, finally, told me what he knew. I heard the
following details.

Vassily Fomitch Guskov had become acquainted with Agrafena Ivanovna
Teliegin at Moscow soon after the suppression of the Polish
insurrection; her husband had had a post under the governor-general, and
Vassily Fomitch was on furlough. He fell in love with her there and
then, but did not leave the army at once; he was a man of forty with no
family, with a fortune. Her husband soon after died. She was left
without children, poor, and in debt.... Vassily Fomitch heard of her
position, threw up the service (he received the rank of brigadier on his
retirement) and sought out his charming widow, who was not more than
five-and-twenty, paid all her debts, redeemed her estate.... From that
time he had never parted from her, and finished by living altogether in
her house. She, too, seems to have cared for him, but would not marry
him. 'She was froward, the deceased lady,' was Narkiz's comment on this:
'My liberty,' she would say, 'is dearer to me than anything.' But as for
making use of him--she made use of him 'in every possible way,' and
whatever money he had, he dragged to her like an ant. But the
frowardness of Agrafena Ivanovna at times assumed extreme proportions;
she was not of a mild temper, and somewhat too ready with her hands....
Once she pushed her page-boy down the stairs, and he went and broke two
of his ribs and one leg.... Agrafena Ivanovna was frightened ... she
promptly ordered the page to be shut up in the lumber-room, and she did
not leave the house nor give up the key of the room to any one, till the
moans within had ceased.... The page was secretly buried.... 'And had it
been in the Empress Catherine's time,' Narkiz added in a whisper,
bending down, 'maybe the affair would have ended there--many such deeds
were hidden under a bushel in those days, but as ...' here Narkiz drew
himself up and raised his voice:' as our righteous Tsar Alexander the
Blessed was reigning then ... well, a fuss was made.... A trial
followed, the body was dug up ... signs of violence were found on it ...
and a great to-do there was. And what do you think? Vassily Fomitch took
it all on himself. "I," said he, "am responsible for it all; it was I
pushed him down, and I too shut him up." Well, of course, all the judges
then, and the lawyers and the police ... fell on him directly ... fell
on him and never let him go ... I can assure you ... till the last
farthing was out of his purse. They'd leave him in peace for a while,
and then attack him again. Down to the very time when the French came
into Russia they were worrying at him, and only dropped him then. Well,
he managed to provide for Agrafena Ivanovna--to be sure, he saved
her--that one must say. Well, and afterwards, up to her death, indeed,
he lived with her, and they do say she led him a pretty dance--the
brigadier, that is; sent him on foot from Moscow into the country--by
God, she did--to get her rents in, I suppose. It was on her account, on
account of this same Agrafena Ivanovna--he fought a duel with the
English milord Hugh Hughes; and the English milord was forced to make a
formal apology too. But later on the brigadier went down hill more and
more.... Well, and now he can't be reckoned a man at all.'

'Who was that Alexey Ivanitch the Jew,' I asked, 'through whom he was
brought to ruin?'

'Oh, the brother of Agrafena Ivanovna. A grasping creature, Jewish
indeed. He lent his sister money at interest, and Vassily Fomitch was
her security. He had to pay for it too ... pretty heavily!'

'And Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer--who was she?'

'Her sister too ... and a sharp one too, as sharp as a lance. A
terrible woman!'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16