Sketches from a Hunter's Album (39 page)

‘Is the master home?' I asked.

‘Lord knows!' answered the boy. ‘Try knocking.'

I jumped down from the droshky and approached the front door.

Mr Chertopkhanov's dwelling had a very sorry appearance. The timbers had blackened and bellied out in front, one chimney had fallen down, the corners had rotted from below and were bent and the small, faded, greyish windows looked out with inexpressible sourness from beneath the shaggy rim of roof drawn down over them: they were like the eyes of elderly whores. I knocked but nobody answered. However, I could hear from the other side of the door the sound of words being sharply pronounced: ‘A, B, C – well, go on, you fool!' a hoarse voice was saying. ‘A, B, C, D – no, D! Then E! E! Go on, you fool!'

I knocked again.

The same voice answered: ‘Come in, whoever's there…'

I entered a small empty hallway and through an open door saw Chertopkhanov himself. Dressed in a greasy Bokhara dressing-gown, wide trousers and a red skull-cap, he was sitting in a chair, squeezing with one hand the muzzle of a young poodle and in the other holding a piece of bread just above its nose.

‘Ah!' he said with dignity and without rising. ‘Very glad you've come. Please have a seat. I'm busying myself with Venzor… Tikhon Ivanych,' he added, raising his voice, ‘come in here. We have a guest.'

‘At once, at once,' Tikhon Ivanych answered from the next room. ‘Masha, my cravat.'

Chertopkhanov again turned to Venzor and placed the piece of bread on his nose. I looked round. There was no furniture in the room apart from a warped expanding table on thirteen legs of uneven length and four sagging straw-bottomed chairs. The walls, whitewashed long ago, with blue spots on them in the shape of stars,
were peeling in many places. Between the windows hung a broken and faded little mirror in an enormous mahogany frame. In the corners stood long-stemmed clay pipes and guns. Thick, black threads of cobweb hung from the ceiling.

‘A, B, C, D,' said Chertopkhanov slowly and suddenly shrieked fiercely: ‘E for eat! Eat! Eat!… What a stupid animal!… Eat!'

But the wretched poodle did no more than shake and couldn't make up its mind to open its mouth. It went on sitting there, its tail tucked painfully under it, and, drawing back its lips, blinked miserably and screwed up its eyes just as if it were saying to itself: OK, so you're the boss!

‘Go on, eat! Take it!' repeated the impatient landowner.

‘You've frightened it,' I remarked.

‘Well, be off with it then!'

He gave the dog a shove with his foot. The wretched dog rose up calmly, let the bread drop off its nose and walked away, deeply offended, into the hallway literally on tip-toe. And with good reason: here was a stranger come to visit for the first time and look how they treated him!

The door from the next room creaked cautiously and Mr Nedopyuskin entered, bowing amiably and smiling.

I stood up and bowed.

‘Don't disturb yourself, don't disturb yourself,' he muttered.

We took our seats. Chertopkhanov went into a neighbouring room.

‘Have you been long here in our promised land?' Nedopyuskin began in a soft voice, cautiously coughed in his hand and, for decency's sake, kept his fingers pressed to his lips.

‘Over a month now.'

‘Well I never.'

We fell silent.

‘Nice weather we're having now,' continued Nedopyuskin and gave me a look of gratitude as if the weather depended on me. ‘The crops are looking astonishingly good, one might say.'

I bowed my head in a sign of agreement. We again fell silent.

‘Panteley Yeremeich yesterday hunted two hares,' Nedopyuskin began again not without some effort, evidently wanting to enliven our conversation. ‘Yes, really large hares, big ones.'

‘Has Mr Chertopkhanov got good hounds?'

‘Exceptionally good, sir!' exclaimed Nedopyuskin with pleasure. ‘One might say they are the best in the province.' (He moved closer to me.) ‘What a man, sir! Panteley Yeremeich is such a good fellow! Whatever he wants, whatever comes into his head – see, it's all ready and done, everything's literally on the boil! Panteley Yeremeich, I'll tell you…'

Chertopkhanov came into the room. Nedopyuskin grinned, stopped talking and directed my attention to him with his eyes as if wanting to say: see for yourself! We began talking about hunting.

‘Would you like me to show you my pack of hounds?' Chertopkhanov asked me and without waiting for an answer summoned Karp.

There entered a sturdy fellow in a green nankeen caftan with a blue collar and livery buttons.

‘Tell Fomka,' said Chertopkhanov sharply, ‘to bring out Ammalat and Saiga and do it properly, d'you understand?'

Karp smiled broadly, emitted an indefinable sound and went out. Fomka then put in an appearance, with his hair brushed, his buttons done up, wearing boots and accompanying the hounds. Out of politeness I expressed my admiration for the stupid animals (all borzoi hounds are extraordinarily stupid). Chertopkhanov spat into Ammalat's nostrils, which quite obviously didn't please the hound in the least. Nedopyuskin also patted Ammalat from behind. We once more started chatting. Little by little Chertopkhanov became completely mollified and stopped showing off and snorting. The expression of his face changed. He gave both me and Nedopyuskin a look.

‘Hey!' he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Why should she go on sitting there by herself? Masha! Masha! Come in here!‘

Someone made a movement in the next room, but there was no answer.

‘Ma-a-sha,' Chertopkhanov repeated softly, ‘come in here. Don't be frightened.'

The door opened quietly and I saw a woman of about twenty, tall and well-built, with a dark gypsy face, yellowish-brown eyes and plaited hair as black as tar. Large white teeth literally glittered between full red lips. She wore a white dress; a sky-blue shawl,
fastened at her neck with a gold pin, stretched down to cover half of her fine, well-bred arms. She took a couple of steps forward with the shy ungainliness of a wild girl, stopped still and lowered her head.

‘Let me introduce you,' said Panteley Yeremeich, ‘a wife who's not a wife but should be treated as one.'

Masha blushed slightly and smiled in confusion. I gave her an unusually low bow. She was very attractive. The delicate aquiline nose with open, semi-transparent nostrils, the bold line of her high eyebrows and the pale, very slightly sunken cheeks, all the features of her face expressed a uniquely passionate nature and an uncaring audacity. Below her plaited hair at the back of her neck ran two lines of small shiny hairs, signs of blood and strength.

She went to the window and sat down. I didn't want to increase her confusion and struck up a conversation with Chertopkhanov. Masha slightly turned her head and began glancing at me from under her brows in a covert, rapid and untutored way. Her glances just flashed at me like a snake's tongue. Nedopyuskin sat down beside her and whispered something in her ear. She smiled once again. In smiling she would slightly wrinkle up her nose and raise her upper lip, which gave her face not so much a cat-like as a leonine expression.

‘Ah, I see. You're one of the “hands-off” kind,' I thought, glancing covertly in my turn at her sinuous waist, flat bosom and angular, rapid movements.

‘What d'you say, Masha,' asked Chertopkhanov, ‘isn't it right to give our guest something to eat?'

‘We've got jam,' she answered.

‘Well, then, let's have some jam and some vodka as well. Listen, Masha,' he shouted after her, ‘bring the guitar, too.'

‘Why should I bring the guitar? I'm not going to sing.'

‘Why not?'

‘Don't want to.'

‘Hey, that's nonsense. You'll want to if…'

‘If what?' Masha asked, knitting her brows quickly.

‘If I ask you,' said Chertopkhanov not without some embarrassment.

‘Ah!'

She went out and returned soon with the jam and the vodka and
again sat by the window. Her brow still wore a frown and both her eyebrows rose and fell like the antennae of a wasp. Have you noticed, dear reader, what malicious faces wasps have? Well, I thought, a storm's brewing. The conversation faltered. Nedopyuskin fell completely silent and smiled tensely. Chertopkhanov huffed and puffed, his face grew red and his eyes bulged, and I was just on the point of going.

Masha suddenly jumped up, in a flash opened the window, stuck out her head and cried out the name ‘Aksinya!' sharply at a woman who was passing by. The woman gave a jump, tried to turn round, slipped and fell heavily on the ground. Masha sprang back and burst into loud laughter. Chertopkhanov also burst out laughing. Nedopyuskin squealed with laughter. We were all stirred out of our gloom. The storm had passed with only one flash of lightning and the air had cleared.

Half an hour later no one would have recognized us, because we were chatting and fooling about like children. Masha was in the highest of spirits and Chertopkhanov simply devoured her with his eyes. Her face had gone pale, her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed and darkened at one and the same time. The wild girl had really let her hair down. Nedopyuskin hobbled about after her on his fat, short legs like a drake after a duck. Even Venzor crept out from under his bench in the hall, stood in the doorway, looked at us and suddenly took to jumping about and barking. Masha dashed into another room, brought back a guitar, threw her shawl off her shoulders, swiftly sat down, raised her head and started singing a gypsy song. Her voice rang and quivered like a cracked glass bell, rising up and then dying away… One's heart was both moved and appalled by it. ‘Hey, light up my heart and speak,' she sang and Chertopkhanov set about dancing to it. Nedopyuskin stamped and minced. Masha was alight from head to toe like a birch log on a fire and her fine fingers ran briskly over the guitar and her dark neck gradually rose higher and higher above her double-stranded amber necklace. Sometimes she would suddenly grow quiet and sink into exhaustion, as if she were even unwilling to finger the strings, and Chertopkhanov would stop, merely shrugging a shoulder and shuffling his feet, while Nedopyuskin did no more than nod his head like a porcelain Chinaman; and then again she'd pour the words and start
singing crazily, straightening her waist and thrusting out her chest, and Chertopkhanov'd again squat down in a Cossack dance and leap almost to the ceiling, crying:

‘Eezee!'

‘Easy, easy, easy, easy!' chimed in Nedopyuskin in a rush.

It was late in the evening when I left Unsleepy Hollow.

It's hard to say what made her leave his place, to which, it seemed, she'd become so accustomed. To the end of his days Chertopkhanov was of the opinion that the cause of Masha's betrayal was a certain young neighbour, a retired cavalry captain known as Jaffe who, according to Panteley Yeremeich, had his way by ceaselessly twiddling his moustaches, plastering his hair with lotion and frequently going ‘Ahem!' But it has to be supposed that a more important role was played by the wild gypsy blood that flowed in Masha's veins. Whatever it was, one fine summer evening Masha tied up her few bits and pieces in a small bundle and walked out of Chertopkhanov's house.

She'd previously spent three days sitting in a corner, bent double and pressed to the wall, like a wounded vixen. It would've been all right if she'd said something, but she simply moved her eyes about and was consumed by her thoughts and twitched her eyebrows and slightly bared her teeth and moved her arms about as if trying to wrap herself up. She'd had such moods before but they'd never lasted long.

Chertopkhanov knew this and therefore hadn't been disturbed and hadn't disturbed her. But when, returning from the kennels, where, in the words of his whipper-in, his last two hounds ‘were stiff as boards', he'd been met by a maid who informed him in a trembling voice that Mariya Akinfievna'd said she'd wanted him to
have her regards and be told that she wished him all the best but wasn't coming back, Chertopkhanov had spun round once or twice on his heels, emitted a hoarse whine and at once set out after the runaway, taking a pistol with him.

He caught up with her a little over a mile from home, close to a small birch wood on the main road to the local town. The sun was low on the skyline and everything round suddenly became purple – trees, grass and earth.

‘You're off to Jaffe! You're going to Jaffe!' groaned Chertopkhanov the moment he saw Masha. ‘It's Jaffe!' he went on, rushing up to her and almost stumbling at every step.

Masha stood still and turned to face him. She had her back to the light and seemed all black, as if carved from dark wood. Only the whites of her eyes shone like silver almonds while the eyes themselves, the pupils, were darker than ever.

She threw her bundle to one side and crossed her arms.

‘You're off to Jaffe, you good-for-nothing!' Chertopkhanov went on and was about to seize her by the shoulder, but, encountering her look, was taken aback and stopped short.

‘I wasn't on my way to Mr Jaffe, Pantaley Yeremeich,' Masha answered evenly and calmly, ‘but I simply cannot live with you any more.'

‘Why can't you? Why not? Have I done something to offend you?'

Masha shook her head.

‘You haven't done anything to offend me, Pantaley Yeremeich. It's simply that I've got bored living with you… Thank you for past times, but I can't stay – No!'

Chertopkhanov was astonished. He even slapped his hands against his thighs and gave a little jump.

‘What d'you mean? You've lived with me, there's been nothing but happiness and peace of mind and now suddently it's – Oh, I'm bored! I've had enough of him! I'll get my things, put my kerchief on and be off! You received every respect, as much as any lady…'

‘That I'm not needing,' Masha interrupted.

‘How – not needing? To be turned from a wandering gypsy girl into a lady – you don't need that? What d'you mean, you lowdown bitch? D'you really expect me to believe that? It's disloyalty, that's what's behind it, disloyalty!'

He again hissed.

‘I'm not disloyal in my thoughts and I never have been,' said Masha in her clear and ringing voice, ‘but I've already told you – I've got bored.'

‘Masha!' cried Chertopkhanov and struck himself on his chest with his fist. ‘Look, stop, it's enough! You've made your point… That's enough! By God, just think what Tisha'll say! At least have pity on him!'

‘Give Tikhon Ivanych my regards and tell him…'

Chertopkhanov waved his arms.

‘No, you're lying! You mustn't go! Your Jaffe'll not have you!'

‘Mr Jaffe…' Masha started saying.

‘What sort of a
Mis-ter
Jaffe is he?' Chertopkhanov teased. ‘He's just a skinflint and a scoundrel, that's all he is – an' he's got a face like a monkey!'

For a whole half-hour Chertopkhanov tried to persuade Masha. He'd go up close to her, then jump back, or he'd shake his fist at her or bow low to her, and cry and swear.

‘I can't,' Masha kept on repeating, ‘sad though I am… I've got this longing.' Gradually her face acquired such an indifferent, almost sleepy expression that Chertopkhanov asked her if she'd been given something to drink.

‘It's the longing,' she said for the tenth time.

‘Well, what if I kill you then?' he shouted suddenly and whipped his pistol out of his pocket.

Masha smiled and her face grew lively.

‘So what? Kill me, Panteley Yeremeich! It's up to you! But I'm not going to come back.'

‘So you won't come back?' Chertopkhanov cocked the pistol.

‘I won't come back, my dear. Never in all my life. That's my final word.'

Chertopkhanov suddenly thrust the pistol into her hand and sat down on the ground.

‘Well, then, you kill
me
! Without you I don't want to go on living. If I've grown boring for you, then everything's grown boring for me.'

Masha bent down and picked up her bundle, laid the pistol down on the grass with the barrel pointing away from Chertopkhanov and then went up close to him.

‘Oh, my darling, why're you doing this to yourself? Is it ‘cos you don't understand what we gypsy girls are like? We're like this, it's our way. If the longing to be off comes on us, if something calls us to be off into far-distant lands, then what's the point of staying? You'll always remember your Masha – you'll never find another like me – and I'll never forget you, my bold falcon. But our life together's finished!'

‘I loved you, Masha,' Chertopkhanov muttered into the fingers which covered his face.

‘And I loved you, my darling Panteley Yeremeich!'

‘I've loved you, I've loved you past all thinking, past all forgetting – and when I think about you now, how you're just up and going without so much as a farewell and leavin' me and going wandering off round the world, well, then, it seems to me if I weren't such a miserable pauper you wouldn't have given me up!'

Masha simply laughed at these words.

‘And you used to call me “the girl without a silver bit”!' she cried and struck Chertopkhanov hard on the shoulder.

He jumped to his feet.

‘Well, at least take some money from me! You can't go off without a farthing, can you? But best of all – just kill me! I mean what I say: kill me and be done with it!'

Masha again shook her head.

‘I've got to kill you, eh? Don't they send people to Siberia for that, my darling?'

Chertopkhanov shuddered.

‘So you won't do it ‘cos of that, ‘cos of fear of forced labour…'

Once more he collapsed on the grass.

Masha stood for a while silently above him.

‘I'm sorry for you, Pantaley Yeremeich,' she said with a sigh. ‘You're a good man… But it's no use! Goodbye!'

She turned round that instant and took a couple of steps. It was already night and murky shadows rose around them on all sides. Chertopkhanov jumped up quickly and seized Masha from behind by her elbows.

‘So you're off, you snake! You're going to Jaffe!'

‘Goodbye!' Masha repeated expressively and sharply, tearing herself away from him and walking off.

Chertopkhanov watched her go, dashed to where the pistol was lying, picked it up, aimed and fired. But before pressing the trigger he jerked his hand upwards and the bullet went whistling over Masha's head. As she went she glanced at him over her shoulder and then continued on her way, giving a little sway of her hips as if to taunt him.

He covered his face and hurled himself forwards at a run…

But he'd scarcely run fifty paces when he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the ground. A familiar, all-too-familiar voice reached him. Masha was singing. She sang ‘Time of youth, time so lovely…
¹
and each sound receded into the evening air in plangent, torrid strains. Chertopkhanov listened intently. The voice went further and further away, continuously dying down and then returning again barely audibly but still in a molten stream of sound…

‘She's just doing this to me out of pique,' Chertopkhanov thought, but then he gave a great groan: ‘Oh, no, it's not that! It's because she's leaving me forever!' and he burst into tears.