Sketches from a Hunter's Album (38 page)

‘Ah va-av-va-va-va!' he'd stammer. ‘I may lose my head, but…' and he'd be off storming the walls!

Above all, though, he kept his hands clean, he didn't get involved in any dirty business. Of course, no one visited him. And yet, in spite of everything, he had a kindly soul, even a magnanimous one after his fashion. He couldn't abide any injustice or persecution and was a tower of strength in standing up for his peasants.

‘What?' he'd say, tapping his own head furiously. ‘Let someone get their hands on my own people, eh? Not so long as I'm a Chertopkhanov…'

Tikhon Ivanych Nedopyuskin couldn't, like Panteley Yeremeich, boast of his background. His father had come of modest farming stock and had only acquired nobility status after forty years in the civil service. Nedopyuskin
père
belonged to those species of person whom misfortune persecutes with untiring and unflinching bitterness, a bitterness bordering on personal animosity. In the course of sixty years, from the day of his birth to the day of his death, the poor man struggled with all the needs, handicaps and calamities common to small men. He struggled like a fish in ice, starved himself of food and sleep, fawned and fussed and groaned and despaired and trembled over every copeck earned and genuinely suffered ‘for nothing' in his service career and died eventually neither exactly in an attic, nor in a cellar, but without having won either for himself or his children a true crust of daily bread. Fate was ever on his heels like a hare being coursed. He was a kind and honest man, but he took bribes ‘according to rank' from ten copecks upwards to a couple of roubles inclusive. Nedopyuskin had a wife, thin and consumptive; and he had children. Luckily they all died young apart from Tikhon and a daughter Mitrodora, nicknamed the ‘merchants' pin-up', who got married to a retired attorney after many sad and funny adventures. While he was still alive Nedopyuskin
père
managed to find a place for Tikhon in an office as a temporary official, but as soon as his father died Tikhon left.

The constant upsets, the tormenting struggle with cold and hunger, the dreary melancholy of his mother, the fussy desperation of his father, the crude importunings of landlords and shopkeepers, all this daily, uninterrupted misery bred in Tikhon an inexplicable shyness, so that at one glimpse of his office boss he would tremble and grow faint as a captured bird. He threw up his work. Nature, in its indifference and perhaps in a spirit of mockery, endows people with
different abilities and aptitudes without taking any account of their position in society and their financial means. With its customary diligence and love it moulded out of Tikhon, the son of a poor civil servant, a person of sensitivity, lazy, soft and impressionable, a person given over exclusively to pleasure and gifted with an extraordinarily delicate sense of smell and taste, moulded him and meticulously finished him – only to leave its creation to grow up on sour cabbage and rotten fish. And so it grew up, this perfect creation, and began, as they say, ‘to live'. That's when the fun began. Fate, untiring in its harassment of Nedopyuskin
père
, turned to his son, evidently having acquired a taste for them. But with Tikhon it behaved differently. It did not torment him so much as make fun of him. It never once brought him to despair and never forced him to experience the humiliating pangs of hunger, but it sent him scampering all over Russia, from Veliky Ustyug to Tsarevo-Kokshaysk, from one demeaning and laughable post to another, at one time appointing him a ‘major-domo' to a shrewish and ill-tempered lady-benefactress, at another making him a hanger-on in the house of a wealthy skinflint of a merchant, yet again engaging him to be in charge of the domestic office of a pop-eyed landowner who liked to have his hair cut in the English manner, or turning him into part-butler, part-jester to a fellow who loved hounds… In short, fate forced poor Tikhon to drink drop by drop of the bitter and poisoned cup of a servile existence. In his time he served to assuage the ponderous whims and the drowsy and malicious boredom of an idle nobility. How frequently, on his own in his own room, having been finally allowed (‘And God be with you!') to go free from the host of guests who'd had their fill of fun at his expense, burning with shame, with cold tears of despair in his eyes, he'd vowed the very next day to run off and try his luck in the local town, either by finding himself a place as a copying-clerk or by dying for good and all of hunger on the street!

But in the first place God didn't give him the strength. Secondly, shyness got the better of him and, thirdly, how on earth could he find a place for himself, who could he ask? ‘They won't give me one,' the unfortunate fellow'd whisper, turning over despairingly in his bed, ‘they won't give me one.' And the next day he'd once more be back in harness. His position was all the more painful in that
nature, caring though it was, hadn't troubled to endow him with so much as a smidgeon of those attributes and gifts without which the role of jester is impossible. For example, he didn't know how to dance until he fell, dressed up in a bearskin turned inside out, nor to play the fool and charm everyone in the immediate neighbourhood of brandished whips; flung naked out of doors in a twenty-degree frost, he sometimes caught cold and his stomach couldn't digest wine mixed with ink and other muck, no more than it could digest crumbled fly-agaric and mushroom mixed with vinegar. God knows what might have become of Tikhon if the last of his benefactors, a tax-farmer who'd grown rich, hadn't had the idea at one happy moment of including him in his will: ‘I do hereby bequeath to Zozo (also known as Tikhon) Nedopyuskin, in perpetual and inherited possession, my property, the village of Besselendeevka, with all lands appertaining thereto.' A few days later, while eating fish soup, the benefactor was struck down by paralysis. A huge commotion ensued, with the law-court thunderously laying down the law and a restriction duly being placed on the property. The relatives gathered; the will was opened and read and Nedopyuskin was summoned.

Nedopyuskin put in an appearance. The majority of those present knew what role Tikhon Ivanych had played in the benefactor's lifetime and deafening exclamations and mocking congratulations greeted him.

‘The landowner, there he is! There's the new landowner!' cried the other heirs.

‘Here he is,' broke in one of them, a well-known joker and wit, ‘here he is, the very, one might say, the very… your actual… what's called… the very inheritor!'

And they all burst out laughing.

Nedopyuskin took a while to believe in his good fortune. He was shown the will and went red, squeezed up his eyes, started waving it away with his hands and then broke into torrents of tears. The laughter of those present turned into a loud and continuous roar. The village of Besselendeevka consisted of no more than twenty-two peasants, so none of the other heirs felt strongly about losing it. A spot of fun, though – well, why not? Only one of the heirs from St Petersburg, a self-important gentleman with a Grecian nose and the most dignified of expressions, Rostislav Adamych Stoppel, couldn't
resist the opportunity, sidled up to Nedopyuskin and glanced at him haughtily over his shoulder.

‘You, my good sir, so far as I can tell,' he started saying with casual malice, ‘occupied under our respected Fyodor Fyodorych the post of an entertainer-cum-lackey, so to speak, didn't you?'

The gentleman from St Petersburg expressed himself in intolerably pure, vivacious and correct Russian. Nedopyuskin, distressed and overwrought as he was, didn't catch the words of the unfamiliar gentleman, but the rest of them at once fell silent. The joker and wit smiled condescendingly. Mr Stoppel rubbed his hands together and repeated his question. Nedopyuskin raised his eyes in astonishment and opened his mouth. Rostislav Adamych screwed up his eyes wickedly.

‘I congratulate you, my dear sir, I congratulate you.' Then he went on: ‘True, not everyone, it might be said, would agree that it's the right way to ear-r-r-rn one's daily bread, but
de gustibus non est disputandum
, that is to say, to everyone his own taste. You agree, don't you?'

Someone at the back gave a rapid but decorous yelp of laughter in surprise and delight.

‘Tell me,' continued Mr Stoppel, greatly encouraged by the smiles of the whole gathering, ‘to what talent in particular are you obliged for your good fortune? No, don't be shy, tell us. We're all here, so to speak,
en famille
. It's true, gentlemen, we're all
en famille
here, aren't we?'

The heir to whom Rostislav Adamych casually turned with this question unfortunately did not know French and therefore confined himself to a slight, approving clearing of the throat. By contrast, another heir, a young man with yellow blotches on his forehead, hurriedly chimed in with ‘
Voui, Voui
, it goes without saying.'

‘Perhaps,' Mr Stoppel resumed, ‘you know how to walk on your hands with your legs raised in the air, so to speak?'

Nedopyuskin glanced miserably round him. All the faces grinned maliciously and all eyes were covered by a glaze of satisfaction.

‘Or perhaps you know how to crow like a cock?'

An explosion of laughter resounded round the assembled company and instantly died in anticipation of an answer.

‘Or perhaps you have on your nose…'

‘Stop it!' a sharp, loud voice suddenly interrupted Rostislav Adamych. ‘You should be ashamed of tormenting the poor man!'

All looked round. In the doorway stood Chertopkhanov. As an extremely distant relative of the deceased tax-farmer he'd also received a letter of invitation to the family gathering. In the course of the reading of the will he had, as always, kept himself at a haughty distance from the rest.

‘Stop it!' he repeated, proudly throwing back his head.

Mr Stoppel turned swiftly round and, seeing a poorly dressed, unprepossessing man, asked of his neighbour in a soft voice (it pays to be cautious):

‘Who's that?'

‘Chertopkhanov. Small fry,' the man whispered in his ear.

Rostislav Adamych raised a haughty look.

‘And who are you to issue commands?' he said through his nose and screwed up his eyes. ‘What sort of a bird are you, may I ask?'

Chertopkhanov exploded like gunpowder ignited by a spark. In a frenzy he could scarcely breathe.

‘Dz-dz-dz-dz,' he hissed, as if being strangled, and suddenly roared out: ‘Who am I? Who am I? I'm Panteley Chertopkhanov, a true-blue aristocrat, my great-great-great-grandfather served the Tsar, and who might you be?'

Rostislav Adamych went pale and stepped backwards. He'd not anticipated such a reaction.

‘Oh, I'm a bird all right, I'm a bird… Oh, yes, I am!'

Chertopkhanov thrust himself forward. Stoppel jumped back in great alarm and the guests rushed to restrain the angry landowner.

‘Shoot, shoot, let's shoot with pistols across a handkerchief this very instant!' screamed a frantic Panteley. ‘Or ask my forgiveness and his as well…'

‘Ask his forgiveness,' the apprehensive heirs surrounding Stoppel muttered. ‘You can see he's mad! He's ready to cut your throat!'

‘Forgive me, please, I didn't know,' babbled Stoppel, ‘I didn't know…'

‘And ask his forgiveness too!' bellowed the incensed Panteley.

‘Forgive me,' added Rostislav Adamych, turning to Nedopyuskin, who was shaking so much it was as if he had a fever.

Chertopkhanov calmed down, went up to Tikhon Ivanych, took
him by the hand, glanced boldly round him and, without encountering a single gaze directed at him, solemnly and in the midst of profound silence left the room together with the new owner of the legally acquired village of Besselendeevka.

From that day forward they were never more parted. (The village of Besselendeevka was scarcely half-a-dozen miles from Unsleepy Hollow.) The limitless gratitude of Nedopyuskin quickly grew into a fawning hero-worship. The weak, soft and not entirely spotless Tikhon prostrated himself in the dust before the fearless and unselfish Panteley.

‘How astonishing!' he'd sometimes think to himself. ‘He talks to the Governor and looks him straight in the eyes – just like Jesus Christ, just like that!'

He was amazed at him to the point of disbelief, to the very limits of his spiritual powers, and he regarded him as an exceptional man, clever and educated. And it has to be said that, no matter how poor Chertopkhanov's education may have been, by comparison with Tikhon's education it was brilliant. Chertopkhanov, true, read Russian little and understood French so badly that on one occasion in response to a question from a Swiss tutor: ‘
Vous parlez français, monsieur?
' answered: ‘
Je
don't…' and after a moment's thought added: ‘
pas
.' But still he knew enough to remember that there'd once been Voltaire, the wittiest writer, that the French and the English had frequently fought each other and that Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, had also been an outstanding military leader. Of Russian writers he had respect for Derzhavin, but he loved Marlinsky
²
and had called his best hound Ammalat-Bek after the hero of one of his stories.

A few days after my first encounter with the two friends I set off for the village of Unsleepy Hollow to see Panteley Yeremeich. His small house was visible from some distance. It stuck out on a bare patch of land, about a quarter of a mile from the village, ‘all on its own', as they say, like a hawk above ploughland. Chertopkhanov's entire estate consisted of four ancient timber-frame buildings of different sizes: his dwelling, a stables, a barn and a bath-house. Each building stood separately by itself. There was no surrounding fence and no gate. My driver stopped in bewilderment by a half-rotted well filled with rubbish. Beside the barn several thin and bedraggled
borzoi pups were tearing at a dead horse, probably Orbassan. One of them raised a blood-stained muzzle, gave a quick bark and then went back to gnawing the bare ribs. Beside the horse stood a boy of about seventeen with a puffy, yellow face, dressed as a page-boy and barefooted; he was self-importantly engaged in looking after the dogs entrusted to his care and from time to time gave the greediest of them a taste of his whip.