Sketches from a Hunter's Album (15 page)

‘What's this Trishka?' asked Kostya.

‘Don't you know about Trishka?' Ilyusha started up heatedly. ‘You're a dumb cluck, mate, if you don't know who Trishka is. It's just dunces you've got in your village, nothing but dunces! Trishka – he'll be a real astonishing person, who'll be coming, and he'll be coming when the last times are near. And he'll be the sort of astonishing person you won't be able to catch hold of, you won't be able to do nothing to him: that's the sort of astonishing person he'll be. The peasants, say, will want to try to catch him, and they'll go out after him with sticks and surround him, but what he'll do is lead their eyes astray – he'll lead their eyes astray so that they start beating each other. Say they put him in prison and he asks for some water in a ladle; they'll bring him the ladle and he'll jump right into it and vanish clean away, all trace of him. Say they put chains on him, he'll just clap his palms together and they'll fall right off him. So then this Trishka'll go walking through the villages and the towns; and this smart fellow, this Trishka, he'll tempt all Christian folk… but there won't be a thing you can do to him… That's the sort of astonishing, real cunning person he'll be.'

‘Yes, that's the one,' Pavlusha continued in his unhurried way. ‘He was the one that we were all waiting for. The old men said that soon as the heavenly foreboding begins, Trishka'll be coming. So the foreboding began, and everyone poured out into the street and into the field to see what'll happen. As you know, our place is high
up and open so you can see all around. Everyone's looking – and suddenly down from the settlement on the mountain there's a man coming, strange-looking, with an astonishing big head… Everyone starts shouting: “Oy, oy, it's Trishka coming! Oy, oy, it's Trishka!” and they all raced for hiding, this way and that! The elder of our village, he crawled into a ditch and his wife got stuck in a gate and let out such a howling noise that she fair terrified her own watch-dog, and it broke its chain, rushed through the fence and into the wood. And Kuzka's father, Dorofeyich, jumped in among the oats, squatted down there and began to make cries like a quail, all 'cos he thought to himself: “For sure that soul-destroying enemy of mankind'll spare a poor wee birdie!” Such a commotion they were all in!… But all the time that man who was coming was simply our barrel-maker Vavila, who'd bought himself a new can and was walking along with that empty can perched on his head.'

All the boys burst out laughing and then once again fell quiet for an instant, as people talking out in the open air frequently do. I looked around me: the night stood guard in solemn majesty; the raw freshness of late evening had been replaced by midnight's dry mildness, and it still had a long time to lie like a soft quilt over the dreaming fields; there was still a long time to wait until the first murmur, the first rustlings and stirrings of morning, the first dew-beads of dawn. There was no moon in the sky: at that season it rose late. Myriads of golden stars, it seemed, were all quietly flowing in glittering rivalry along the Milky Way, and in truth, while looking at them, one sensed vaguely the unwavering, unstoppable racing of the earth beneath…

A strange, sharp, sickening cry resounded twice in quick succession across the river, and, after a few moments, was repeated farther off…

Kostya shuddered: ‘What was that?'

‘That was a heron's cry,' Pavlusha answered calmly.

‘A heron,' Kostya repeated. ‘Then what was it, Pavlusha, I heard yesterday evening?' he added after a brief pause. ‘Perhaps you know.'

‘What did you hear?'

‘This is what I heard. I was walkin' from Stone Ridge to Shashkino,
and at first I went all the way along by our nut trees, but afterwards I went through that meadow – you know, by the place where it comes out like a narrow file,
*
where there's a tarn.
†
You know it, the one that's all overgrown with reeds. So, mates, I walked past this tarn an' suddenly someone starts makin' a groanin' sound from right inside it, so piteous, piteous, like: Oooh – oooh… oooh – oooh! I was terrified, mates. It was late an' that voice sounded like somebody really sick. It was like I was goin' to start cryin' myself… What would that have been, eh?'

‘In the summer before last, thieves drowned Akim the forester in that tarn,' Pavlusha remarked. ‘So it may have been his soul complaining.'

‘Well, it might be that, mates,' rejoined Kostya, widening his already enormous eyes. ‘I didn't know that Akim had been drowned in that tarn. If I'd known, I wouldn't have got so terrified.'

‘But they do say,' continued Pavlusha, ‘there's a kind of little frog makes a piteous noise like that.'

‘Frogs? No, that wasn't frogs… what sort of…' (The heron again gave its cry over the river.) ‘Listen to it!' Kostya could not refrain from saying. ‘It makes a noise like a wood-demon.'

‘Wood-demons don't make a cry, they're dumb,' Ilyusha inserted. ‘They just clap their hands and chatter…'

‘So you've seen one of them, a wood-demon, have you?' Fedya interrupted him scornfully.

‘No I haven't, and God preserve that I should see one. But other people have seen one. Just a few days ago one such overtook one of our peasants and was leading him all over the place through the wood and round and round some clearing or other… He only just managed to get home before it was light.'

‘Well, did he see him?'

‘He saw him. Big as big he was, he said, and dark, all wrapped up, just like he was behind a tree so you couldn't see him clearly, or like he was hiding from the moon, and looking all the time, peering with his wicked eyes, and winking them, winking…'

‘That's enough!' exclaimed Fedya, shuddering slightly and convulsively hunching his shoulders. ‘Phew!'

‘Why should this devilish thing be around in the world?' commented Pavlusha. ‘I don't understand it at all!'

‘Don't you scold it! It'll hear you, you'll see,' Ilyusha said.

Again a silence ensued.

‘Look up there, look up there, all of you!' the childish voice of Vanya suddenly cried. ‘Look at the little stars of God, all swarming like bees!'

He had stuck his small, fresh-complexioned face out from beneath the matting, was leaning on one little fist and slowly looking up with his large, placid eyes. The boys all raised their eyes to the sky, and did not lower them until quite a while had passed.

‘Tell me, Vanya,' Fedya began to say in a gentle voice, ‘is your sister Anyutka well?'

‘She's well,' Vanya answered, with a faint lisp.

‘You tell her she ought to come and see us. Why doesn't she?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Tell her that she ought to come.'

‘I'll tell her.'

‘Tell her that I'll give her a present.'

‘And you'll give one to me, too?'

‘I'll give one to you, too.'

Vanya sighed. ‘No, there's no need to give me one. Better you give it to her, she's so good to us.'

And once more Vanya laid his head on the ground. Pavlusha rose and picked up the little pot, now empty.

‘Where are you going?' Fedya asked him.

‘To the river, to get some water. I'd like a drink.'

The dogs got up and followed him.

‘See you don't fall in the river!' Ilyusha called after him.

‘Why should he fall?' asked Fedya. ‘He'll be careful.'

‘All right, so he'll be careful. Anything can happen, though. Say he bends down, starting to dip up the water, but then a water-sprite grabs him by the hand and pulls him down below. They'll start saying afterwards that, poor boy, he fell in the water… But what sort of a fall is that? Listen, listen, he's in the reeds,' he added, pricking up his ears.

The reeds were in fact moving, ‘hushing', as they say in our parts.

‘Is it true,' asked Kostya, ‘that that ugly woman, Akulina, has been wrong in the head ever since she went in the water?'

‘Ever since then… And look at her now! They say she used to be real good-looking before. The water-sprite did for her. Likely he didn't expect they'd drag her out so soon. He corrupted her down there, down in his own place at the bottom of the water.'

(I had come across this Akulina more than once. Covered with tatters, fearsomely thin, with a face as black as coal, a vacant gaze and permanently bared teeth, she used to stamp about on the same spot for hours at a time, at some point on the road, firmly hugging her bony hands to her breast and slowly shifting her weight from one foot to the other just like a wild animal in a cage. She would give no sign of understanding, no matter what was said to her, save that from time to time she would break into convulsions of laughter.)

‘They do say,' Kostya went on, ‘that Akulina threw herself in the river because her lover deceived her.'

‘Because of that very thing.'

‘But do you remember Vasya?' Kostya added sadly.

‘What Vasya?' asked Fedya.

‘The one who drowned,' Kostya answered, ‘in this very river. He was a grand lad, a really grand lad! That mother of his, Feklista, how she loved him, how she used to love Vasya! And she sort of sensed, Feklista did, that ruin would come to him on account of water. That Vasya used to come with us boys in the summer when we went down to the river to bathe – and she'd be all bothered, his mother would. The other women wouldn't care, going waddling by with their washtubs, but Feklista would put her tub down on the ground and start calling to him: “Come back, come back, light of my life! O come back, my little falcon!” And how he came to drown, God alone knows. He was playing on the bank, and his mother was there, raking hay, and suddenly she heard a sound like someone blowing bubbles in the water – she looks, and there's nothing there ‘cept Vasya's little cap floating on the water. From then on, you know, Feklista's been out of her mind: she goes and lies down at that place where he drowned, and she lies down, mates, and starts singing this song – you remember the song Vasya used to sing all the time – that's the one she sings, plaintive-like, and she cries and cries, and complains bitterly to God…'

‘Here's Pavlusha coming,' Fedya said.

Pavlusha came up to the fire with a full pot in his hand.

‘Well, boys,' he began after a pause, ‘things aren't good.'

‘What's happened?' Kostya quickly asked.

‘I heard Vasya's voice.'

They all shuddered.

‘What's that you're saying? What's it all about?' Kostya babbled.

‘It's God's truth. I was just bending down to the water and suddenly I hear someone calling me in Vasya's voice, and it was just like it was coming from under the water: “Pavlusha, hey, Pavlusha!” I listen, and again it calls: “Pavlusha, come down here!” I came away. But I managed to get some water.'

‘God preserve us! God preserve us!' the boys said, crossing themselves.

‘It was a water-sprite for sure calling you, Pavlusha,' Fedya added. ‘And we were only just talking about him, about that Vasya.'

‘Oh, it's a real, bad omen,' said Ilyusha, giving due weight to each word.

‘It's nothing, forget it!' Pavlusha declared resolutely and again sat down. ‘Your own fate you can't escape.'

The boys grew quiet. It was clear that Pavlusha's words had made a profound impression on them. They began to lie down before the fire, as if preparing to go to sleep.

‘What was that?' Kostya suddenly asked, raising his head.

Pavlusha listened.

‘It's some snipe in flight, whistling as they fly.'

‘Where would they be flying?'

‘To a place where there's never any winter, that's what they say.'

‘There isn't such a land, is there?'

‘There is.'

‘Is it far away?'

‘Far, far away, on the other side of the warm seas.'

Kostya sighed and closed his eyes.

More than three hours had already flowed by since I joined the boys. Eventually the moon rose. I failed to notice it immediately because it was so small and thin. This faintly moonlit night, it
seemed, was just as magnificent as it had been previously. But many stars which had only recently stood high in the sky were beginning to tilt towards its dark edge; all around absolute quiet descended, as usually happens only just before morning: everything slept the deep, still sleep of the pre-dawn hours. The air was not so strongly scented, and once again it seemed to be permeated with a raw dampness. O brief summer nights! The boys' talk died away along with the dying of the fires. Even the dogs dozed: and the horses, so far as I could make out by the vaguely glittering, feeble flux of the starlight, were also lying down with their heads bowed. A sweet oblivion descended on me and I fell into a doze.

A current of fresh air brushed my face. I opened my eyes to see that morning was beginning. As yet there was no sign of dawn's pinkness, but in the east it had begun to grow light. The surrounding scene became visible, if only dimly. The pale-grey sky shone bright and cold and tinged with blue; stars either winked their faint light or faded; the ground was damp and leaves were covered with the sweat of dew, here and there sounds of life, voices could be heard, and a faint, light wind of early morning began its wandering and fleet-footed journey across the earth. My body responded to it with a mild, joyful shivering. I got briskly to my feet and walked over to the boys. They slept the sleep of the dead about the embers of the fire; only Pavlusha raised himself half-way and glanced intently at me.

I nodded my head at him and set off to find my way home along the bank of the river, shrouded with smoky mist. I had hardly gone more than a mile when sunlight streamed all around me down the length of the wide damp lea, and ahead of me across the freshly green hills, from forest to woodland, and behind me along the far, dusty track, over the glistening blood-red bushes and across the river which now shone a modest blue under the thinning mist – flowed torrents of young, hot sunlight, crimson at first and later brilliantly red, brilliantly golden. Everything began quivering into life, awakening, singing, resounding, chattering. Everywhere, large drops of dew began to glow like radiant diamonds. There carried to me, pure and crystal-clear as if also washed clean by the freshness of the morning's atmosphere, the sound of a bell. And suddenly I was overtaken by the racing drove of horses, refreshed after the night, and chased along by my acquaintances, the boys.