Sketches from a Hunter's Album (44 page)

‘No, Pyotr Petrovich,' he exclaimed eventually, ‘we can't go on with this! We can't hunt today. All the scent's being washed out for the dogs and the guns are misfiring… Phew! What a life!'

‘What do we do, then?' I asked.

‘This is what. We'll drive to Alekseyevka. Perhaps you don't know it, but there's a small farm of that name belonging to your mother, about five miles away. We can spend the night there, and then tomorrow…'

‘We'll come back here?'

‘No, not here… I know some places on the other side of Alekseyevka. They're a lot better than this for grouse!'

I refrained from asking my trusty companion why he had not taken me straightaway to those places, and that very same day we reached the farm belonging to my mother, the very existence of which, I admit, I had not suspected until that moment. The farmhouse had an adjacent cottage of considerable antiquity, but not lived-in and therefore clean; here I spent a reasonably quiet night.

The next day I awoke pretty early. The sun had only just risen and the sky was cloudless. All around glistened with a strong, two-fold brilliance: the brilliance of the youthful rays of morning light and of yesterday's downpour. While a little cart was being got ready for me, I set off to wander a little way through the small, once fruit-bearing but now wild, orchard, which pressed up on all sides against the cottage with its richly scented, luxuriantly fresh undergrowth. Oh, how delightful it was to be in the open air, under a clear sky in which larks fluttered, whence poured the silver beads of their resonant song! On their wings they probably carried drops of dew, and their singing seemed to be dew-sprinkled in its sweetness. I even removed my cap from my head and breathed in joyfully, lungfuls at a time… On the side of a shallow ravine, close by the wattle fencing, a bee-garden could be seen; a small path led to it, winding like a snake between thick walls of weeds and nettles, above which projected – God knows where they had come from – sharp-tipped stalks of dark-green hemp.

I set off along this path and reached the bee-garden. Next to it there stood a little wattle shed, a so-called
amshanik
, where the hives are put in winter. I glanced in through the half-open door: it was dark, silent and dry inside, smelling of mint and melissa. In a corner boards had been fixed up and on them, covered by a quilt, a small figure was lying. I turned to go out at once.

‘Master, but master! Pyotr Petrovich!' I heard a voice say, as faintly, slowly and hoarsely as the rustling of marsh sedge.

I stopped.

‘Pyotr Petrovich! Please come here!' the voice repeated. It came to me from the corner, from those very boards which I had noticed.

I drew close and froze in astonishment. In front of me there lay a live human being, but what kind of human being was it?

The head was completely withered, of a uniform shade of bronze, exactly resembling the colour of an ancient icon painting; the nose was as thin as a knife-blade; the lips had almost disappeared – only the teeth and eyes gave any gleam of light, and from beneath the kerchief wispy clusters of yellow hair protruded on to the temples. At the chin, where the quilt was folded back, two tiny hands of the same bronze colour slowly moved their fingers up and down like little sticks. I looked more closely and I noticed that not only was the face far from ugly, it was even endowed with beauty, but it seemed awesome none the less and incredible. And the face seemed all the more awesome to me because I could see that a smile was striving to appear on it, to cross its metallic cheeks — was striving and yet could not spread.

‘Master, don't you recognize me?' the voice whispered again: it was just like condensation rising from the scarcely quivering lips. ‘But how would you recognize me here! I'm Lukeria… Remember how I used to lead the dancing at your mother's, at Spasskoye… and how I used to be the leader of the chorus, remember?'

‘Lukeria!' I cried. ‘Is it you? Is it possible?'

‘It's me, master — yes, it's me, Lukeria.'

I had no notion what to say, and in a state of shock I gazed at this dark, still face with its bright, seemingly lifeless eyes fixed upon me. Was it possible? This mummy was Lukeria, the greatest beauty among all the maid servants in our house, tall, buxom, white-skinned and rosy-cheeked, who used to laugh and sing and dance! Lukeria, talented Lukeria, who was sought after by all our young men, after whom I myself used to sigh in secret, I – a sixteen-year-old boy!

‘Forgive me, Lukeria,' I said at last, ‘but what's happened to you?'

‘Such a calamity overtook me! Don't feel squeamish, master, don't turn your back on my misfortune – sit down on that little barrel, bring it closer, so as you'll be able to hear me… See how talkative I've become!… Well, it's glad I am I've seen you! How ever did you come to be in Alekseyevka?'

Lukeria spoke very quietly and faintly, but without pausing.

‘Yermolay the hunter brought me here. But go on with what you were saying…'

‘About my misfortune, is it? If that's what you wish, master. It happened to me long, long ago, six or seven years ago. I'd just then been engaged to Vasily Polyakov – remember him, such a fine upstanding man he was, with curly hair, and in service as wine butler at your mother's house. But by that time you weren't here in the country any longer – you'd gone off to Moscow for your schooling. We were very much in love, Vasily and I. I couldn't get him out of my mind; it all happened in the springtime. One night – it wasn't long to go till dawn – I couldn't sleep, and there was a nightingale singing in the garden so wonderfully sweetly! I couldn't bear it, and I got up and went out on to the porch to listen to it. He was pouring out his song, pouring it out… and suddenly I imagined I could hear someone calling me in Vasya's voice, all quiet like: “Loosha!…” I glanced away to one side and, you know, not awake properly, I slipped right off the porch step and flew down – bang! – on to the ground. And, likely, I hadn't hurt myself so bad, because – soon I was up and back in my own room. Only it was just like something inside – in my stomach – had broken… Let me get my breath back… Just a moment, master.'

Lukeria fell silent, and I gazed at her with astonishment. What amazed me was the almost gay manner in which she was telling her story, without groans or sighs, never for a moment complaining or inviting sympathy.

‘Ever since that happened,' Lukeria continued, ‘I began to wither and sicken, and a blackness came over me, and it grew difficult for me to walk, and then I even began to lose control of my legs – I couldn't stand or sit, I only wanted to lie down all the time. And I didn't feel like eating or drinking: I just got worse and worse. Your mother, out of the goodness of her heart, had medical people to look at me and sent me to hospital. But no relief for me came of it all. And not a single one of the medicals could even say what kind of an illness it was I had. The things they didn't do to me, burning my spine with red-hot irons and sitting me in chopped-up ice – and all for nothing. In the end I got completely stiff… So the masters decided there was no good in trying to cure me any more, and
because there wasn't room for a cripple in their house… well, they sent me here – because I have relations here. So here I'm living, as you see.'

Lukeria again fell silent and again endeavoured to smile.

‘But this is horrible, this condition you're in!' I exclaimed, and not knowing what to add, I asked: ‘What about Vasily Polyakov?' It was a very stupid question.

Lukeria turned her eyes a little to one side.

‘About Polyakov? He grieved, he grieved – and then he married someone else, a girl from Glinnoye. Do you know Glinnoye? It's not far from us. She was called Agrafena. He loved me very much, but he was a young man – he couldn't be expected to remain a bachelor all his life. And what sort of a companion could I be to him? He's found himself a good wife, who's a kind woman, and they've got children now. He's steward on the estate of one of the neighbours: your mother released him with a passport, and things are going very well for him, praise be to God.'

‘And you can't do anything except lie here?' I again inquired.

‘This is the seventh year, master, that I've been lying like this. When it's summer I lie here, in this wattle hut, and when it begins to get cold – then they move me into a room next to the bath-house. So I lie there, too.'

‘Who comes to see you? Who looks after you?'

‘There are kind people here as well. They don't leave me by myself. But I don't need much looking after. So far as feeding goes, I don't eat anything, and I have water – there it is in that mug: it always stands by me full of pure spring water. I can stretch out to the mug myself, because I've still got the use of one arm. Then there's a little girl here, an orphan; now and then she drops by, and I'm grateful to her. She's just this minute gone… Did you meet her? She's so pretty, so fair-skinned. She brings me flowers – I'm a great one for them, flowers, I mean. We haven't any garden flowers. There used to be some here, but they've all disappeared. But field flowers are pretty too, and they have more scent than the garden flowers. Lilies-of-the-valley now – there's nothing lovelier!'

‘Aren't you bored, my poor Lukeria, don't you feel frightened?'

‘What's a person to do? I don't want to pretend – at first, yes, I felt very low, but afterwards I grew used to it, I learnt to be patient – now it's nothing. Others are much worse off.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Some haven't even got a home! And others are blind or dumb! I can see perfectly, praise be to God, and I can hear everything, every little thing. If there's a mole digging underground, I can hear it. And I can smell every scent, it doesn't matter how faint it is! If the buckwheat is just beginning to flower in the field or a lime tree is just blossoming in the garden, I don't have to be told: I'm the first to smell the scent, if the wind's coming from that direction. No, why should I make God angry with my complaints? Many are worse off than I am. Look at it this way: a healthy person can sin very easily, but my sin has gone out of me. Not long ago Father Aleksey, the priest, was beginning to give me communion and he said: “There can't be any need to hear your confession, for how can you sin in your condition?” But I answered him: “What about a sin of the mind, father?” “Well,” he said and laughed, “that kind of sin's not very serious.”

‘And, it's true, I'm not really sinful even with sins of the mind,' Lukeria went on, ‘because I've learned myself not to think and, what's more, not even to remember. Time passes quicker that way.'

This surprised me, I must admit.

‘You are so much by yourself, Lukeria, so how can you prevent thoughts from entering your head? Or do you sleep all the time?'

‘Oh, no, master! Sleep's not always easy for me. I may not have big pains, but something's always gnawing at me, right there inside me, and in my bones as well. It doesn't let me sleep as I should. No… I just he like this and go on lying here, not thinking. I sense that I'm alive, I breathe – and that's all there is of me. I look and I smell scents. Bees in the apiary hum and buzz, then a dove comes and sits on the roof and starts cooing, and a little brood-hen brings her chick in to peck crumbs; then a sparrow'll fly in or a butterfly – I enjoy it all very much. The year before last swallows made a nest over there in the corner and brought up their young. Oh, how interesting that was! One of them would fly in, alight on the little nest, feed the young ones – and then off again. I'd take another look and there'd be another swallow there in place of the first. Sometimes it wouldn't fly in but just go past the open door, and then the baby birds'd start chirping and opening their little beaks… The next year I waited for them, but they say a hunter in these parts shot them with his gun.
Now what good could he have got from doing that? After all, a swallow's no more harm than a beetle. What wicked men you are, you hunters!'

‘I don't shoot swallows,' I hastened to point out.

‘And one time,' Lukeria started to say again, ‘there was a real laugh! A hare ran in here! Yes, really! Whether dogs were chasing him or not, I don't know, only he came running straight in through the door! He sat down quite close and spent a long time sniffing the air and twitching his whiskers – a regular little officer he was! And he took a look at me and realized that I couldn't do him any harm. Eventually he upped and jumped to the door and looked all round him on the doorstep – he was a one, he was! Such a comic!'

Lukeria glanced up at me, as if to say: wasn't that amusing? To please her, I gave a laugh. She bit her dried-up lips.

‘In the winter, of course, things are worse for me. I'm left in the dark, you see – it's a pity to light a candle and anyhow what'd be the good of it? I know how to read and was always real keen on reading, but what's there to read here? There are no books here, and even if there were, how would I be able to hold it, the book, I mean? Father Aleksey brought me a church calendar so as to distract me, but he saw it wasn't any use and picked it up and took it away again. But even though it's dark, I've always got something to listen to – maybe a cricket'll start chirruping or a mouse'll begin scratching somewhere. That's when it's good not to be thinking at all!'

After a short rest, Lukeria continued: ‘Or else I say prayers. Only I don't know many of them, of those prayers. And why should I start boring the Lord God with my prayers? What can I ask him for? He knows better than I do what's good for me. He sent me a cross to carry, which means he loves me. That's how we're ordained to understand our suffering. I say Our Father, and the prayer to the Blessed Virgin, and I sing hymns for all who sorrow – and then I lie still without a single thought in my mind. Life's no bother to me!'