About Love and Other Stories Read online

  ‘But we were wed, Yegor Vlasych!’ says Pelageya, sobbing.

  ‘Not of our own free will… You surely haven’t forgotten? It’s Count Sergei Pavlych you can thank… and yourself too. The count plied me with drink for a whole month out of envy that I was a better shot than he was, and you can be lured even into changing religion when you’re drunk, not just into getting married. And so he went and married me to you when I was drunk to get his own back… A huntsman marrying a cowherd! You saw that I was drunk, so why did you marry me? You’re not a serf, after all, you could have put up some resistance! I can see it’s a dream come true for a cowherd to marry a huntsman, but you’ve got to use your head. Of course you’re suffering and crying now. The count’s laughing, and you’re crying… well, you’re banging your head against a wall…’

  Silence ensues. Three wild ducks fly over the clearing. Yegor looks up at them and follows them with his eyes until they turn into three barely visible dots and come down to land way beyond the forest.

  ‘What are you living on?’ he asks, transferring his gaze from the ducks to Pelageya.

  ‘I go out to work at the moment, but in the winter I take in a little baby from the orphanage to feed with a bottle. I get paid a rouble and a half a month.’

  ‘I see…’

  There is silence again. A quiet song carries across from the strip where peasants are working, but breaks off almost before it has begun. Too hot to sing…

  ‘I’ve heard you’ve built Akulina a new hut,’ says Pelageya.

  Yegor Vlasych does not say anything.

  ‘You must have a liking for her.’

  ‘Well, that’s fate for you!’ says the huntsman as he stretches. ‘You’re just going to have to put up with your lot. Anyway, I’ve got to be going, I’ve been talking too long. I have to be in Boltovo by evening…’

  Yegor stands up and stretches, then slings his rifle over his shoulder. Pelageya gets up.

  ‘So when are you coming to the village then?’ she asks quietly.

  ‘Don’t have any reason to come. I’ll never come sober, and I’m not much use to you when I’m drunk. I get angry when I’m drunk. So goodbye!’

  ‘Goodbye Yegor Vlasych…’

  Yegor pulls his cap on to the back of his head, calls to his dog, and carries on his way. Pelageya stays behind and watches him walking off… She watches his shoulder-blades moving, the raffish way his cap sits on the back of his head, his casual, indolent stride, and her eyes fill with sadness and tender affection… Her gaze runs along her husband’s tall, thin body, caressing it fondly… He is silent, but from his face and tensed shoulders Pelageya can see that he wants to say something to her. She goes up to him and looks at him entreatingly.

  ‘Here you are!’ he says, turning away.

  He gives her a worn rouble note and walks off quickly.

  ‘Goodbye, Yegor Vlasych!’ she says, taking the rouble mechanically.

  He walks down the road, which is as long and as straight as an outstretched belt… Pale and motionless as a statue, she stands there following every step he takes with her eyes. But now the red colour of his shirt is merging with the dark colour of his trousers, his strides cannot be seen, and you can no longer tell his dog from his boots. Only his cap is visible, but… Yegor suddenly takes a sharp right turn into the clearing and his cap disappears amongst the foliage.

  ‘Goodbye, Yegor Vlasych!’ whispers Pelageya, and she stands on tiptoe to see if she can catch one last glimpse of his white cap.

  ON THE ROAD

  A little golden cloud spent the night

  On the breast of a giant boulder…

  (Lermontov)*

  In the room which the Cossack innkeeper Semyon Chistoplyui himself called ‘the travellers’ room’, since it was intended exclusively for people passing through, there was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about forty sitting at the large, unpainted table. With his elbows resting on the table and his head propped up on his fist, he was sleeping. A sallow candle stuck in a pomade jar lit up his light brown beard, his thick, broad nose, his weather-beaten cheeks, and the thick black brows which hung over his closed eyes… Taken separately, his nose, his cheeks, and his eyebrows were crude and cumbersome, like the furniture and the stove in the travellers’ room, but together they combined to look harmonious and even handsome. That is the hallmark of the Russian face, so they say: the larger and sharper its features, the softer and more kind-hearted it seems. The man was wearing a gentleman’s jacket which was shabby but edged with new piping, a plush waistcoat, and baggy black trousers stuffed into tall boots.

  On one of the benches that stretched all the way along the wall, sleeping on a fox-fur coat, was a girl of about eight, dressed in a brown frock and long black stockings. She had a pale face, fair hair, narrow shoulders, and a body that was thin and frail, but her nose stuck out in a fat and unattractive lump, like the man’s. She was fast asleep and so did not notice the crescent-shaped comb which had fallen out of her hair and was pressing into her cheek.

  The travellers’ room had a festive appearance. There was a smell of freshly scrubbed floors in the air, for once there were no cloths hanging off the rope that stretched diagonally right across the room, and the icon lamp was flickering above the table, throwing a red patch onto the icon of St George the Victor.* A row of cheap prints stretched along the wall in both directions from the icon corner, observing a strict and careful progression from the holy to the secular. The pictures seemed like one long strip covered with black smudges in the dim light of the candle and the red icon lamp, but when the tiled stove decided to sing in unison with the weather, drawing air into itself with a wail, and when the logs sparked into bright flames, grumbling angrily as if they had just woken up, red patches started darting about the timbered walls, and then it became possible to see looming over the head of the sleeping man first the Elder Serafim, then the Persian Shah Nasreddin,* then a fat brown baby with goggle eyes, whispering something into the ear of a girl with an extraordinarily dim-witted and impassive face…

  There was a storm raging outside. Something furious and ill-tempered, but deeply unhappy, was tearing round the inn with the frenzy of a wild animal, trying to break in. Banging the doors, knocking on the windows and the roof, and scratching at the walls, it by turns threatened, cajoled, and subsided briefly, only to throw itself down the chimney the next moment with a joyful, treacherous whoop; but the logs in the stove were blazing, and the fire confronted its enemy with the ferocity of a chained dog—a fight began, then after it came sobbing, screaming, and an angry growl. You could also hear in all this a resentful sorrow, an unsated hatred, and the wounded powerlessness of one formerly used to victory…

  Bewitched by this wild, inhuman music, the travellers’ room seemed to be cut off forever. But then the door screeched, and the boy who worked in the inn entered, wearing a new calico shirt. Limping on one leg, his sleepy eyes blinking, he trimmed the candle with his fingers, put some logs on the fire, and went out. Just at that moment the bell started ringing to mark midnight at the church in Rogachi, three hundred feet away from the inn. The wind played with the sounds of the bell as if they were snowflakes; chasing after the chimes, it spun them out in the huge space, so that some were broken up or stretched out into a long wave of sound, while others just disappeared in the general din. One chime sounded so clearly in the room, it was as if the bell was being rung right underneath the windows. The girl sleeping on the fox-fur gave a shudder and lifted her head. She looked at the dark window for a minute in a daze, and at Nasreddin, across whose face a crimson light from the stove was flitting just then, before turning her gaze to the sleeping man.

  ‘Papa!’ she said.

  But the man did not move. The girl knitted her brows angrily, then lay down and drew her legs up close to her body. Someone let out a long, loud yawn behind the door in the inn. Soon it was followed by the screeching of the door as it was opened, and muffled voices. Someone came in and started stamping felt boots,
trying to get snow off them.

  ‘What d’you want?’ asked a lazy female voice.

  ‘Madam Ilovaiskaya is here…’* replied a bass voice.

  The door screeched again. The sound of the wailing wind could be heard. Someone, probably the lame boy, went up to the door which led into the travellers’ room, coughed respectfully, and raised the latch.

  ‘This way, milady,’ said the singing female voice. ‘We’ve got everything nice and clean in here, my lovely…’

  The door swung open and a bearded peasant, covered in snow from head to toe, appeared on the threshold in a coachman’s long kaftan and with a large suitcase on his shoulder. Following him in was a small female figure, scarcely half the size of the coachman, all wrapped up like a bundle, with no sign of a face or hands, and also covered with snow. The girl noticed that the coachman and the bundle gave off a damp smell like a cellar, which made the candle flicker.

  ‘How idiotic!’ said the bundle angrily. ‘The road was fine! We only had eight miles to go, mostly through the forest, and we would not have got lost…’

  ‘It wasn’t a question of getting lost or not, milady, the horses just won’t go on!’ answered the coachman. ‘Wasn’t as if I stopped deliberately!’

  ‘Heaven knows where you’ve brought us… But sshh… It seems there are people sleeping here. Off you go…’

  The coachman put the suitcase on the floor, sprinkling layers of snow from his shoulders, made a plaintive sound through his nose, and went out. The girl then saw two small hands emerging from the middle of the bundle, stretching upwards and angrily undoing the mass of shawls, scarves, and wraps. A large shawl fell onto the floor first, then a hood, and after that a white knitted headscarf. Having freed her head, the new arrival took off her mantle and immediately shrank by a half. Now she wore only a long grey coat with large buttons and sticking-out pockets. From one pocket she pulled out a paper parcel with something in it, and from the other a cluster of large, heavy keys, which she put down so carelessly that the sleeping man shuddered and opened his eyes. For a while he looked around from side to side as if not understanding where he was, then he shook his head, went over to the corner, and sat down… The new arrival took off her coat, which again made her shrink by a half, removed her velvet boots, then also sat down.

  Now she no longer looked like a bundle. She was a small, slim brunette, about twenty years old, as thin as a serpent, with a long, white face and curly hair. Her nose was long and pointed, her chin was long and pointed, her eyelashes were long, the corners of her mouth were pointed, and the expression on her face seemed spiky because everything else in it was so sharp. Buttoned up in a black dress, a mass of lace around her neck and sleeves, with pointed elbows and long, pink fingers, she was reminiscent of those portraits of medieval English ladies. Her serious, concentrated expression increased the similarity even more…

  The brunette looked around the room, cast a sidelong glance at the man and the girl, and then went and sat by the window, shrugging her shoulders. The darkened windows were shaking from the raw west wind. Large, shining white snowflakes were landing on the glass but immediately vanishing, carried away by the wind. The wild music became stronger still…

  After a long silence the girl suddenly changed position and said, angrily enunciating every word:

  ‘Oh goodness, I am so unhappy! More unhappy than anyone in the world!’

  The man got up and walked delicately over to the girl in a guilty manner, which did not go with his huge frame and large beard at all.

  ‘Can’t you sleep, sweetheart?’ he asked in an apologetic voice; ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I don’t want anything! My shoulder hurts! You’re a bad man, Papa, and God will punish you! Just you wait, you’ll be punished!’

  ‘I know your shoulder hurts, sweetheart, but what can I do, my love?’ said the man in the kind of tone adopted by drunk husbands apologizing to their strict wives. ‘It’s because of the journey that your shoulder hurts, Sasha. We’ll reach where we are going to tomorrow and get some rest and then it’ll be better…’

  ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow… You always say tomorrow. We’re going to be travelling for twenty more days!’

  ‘But we will get there tomorrow, sweetheart, I give you a father’s word. I never tell lies, and it’s not my fault if we’ve been held up by the snowstorm.’

  ‘I can’t bear it any more! I can’t bear it!’

  Sasha swung her legs abruptly and filled the room with an unpleasantly shrill bout of crying. Her father waved his hand and looked in dismay at the brunette. She shrugged her shoulders and went timidly over to Sasha.

  ‘Listen, dear,’ she said; ‘what’s the point of crying? I know it’s not nice if your shoulder is hurting, but what can be done?’

  ‘The thing is, madam,’ broke in the man quickly, as if to vindicate himself, ‘we haven’t slept for two nights, and we have been travelling in a really wretched carriage. So it’s not surprising that she is not well and feeling miserable… And then we had this drunk coachman too, you know, and our suitcase got stolen… and there’s been the blizzard all the time, but there is no point in crying is there, madam? Sleeping sitting up has really exhausted me, though, and I feel almost drunk now. Goodness me, Sasha, everything is bad enough already, but to have you crying too!’

  The man shook his head, waved his hand, and sat down.

  ‘Of course you shouldn’t cry,’ said the brunette. ‘Only babies cry. If you’re not feeling well, dear, you should get undressed and go to sleep… Come on, let’s get you undressed!’

  When the little girl was undressed and had calmed down, silence returned. The brunette sat by the window, looking in bewilderment at the room, the icon, and the stove… She obviously found everything very strange: the room, the girl in the short boy’s shirt, with her large nose, and also her father. This strange person was sitting in the corner, looking around him in confusion, as if he was drunk, kneading his face with the palm of his hand. He sat there silently, blinking, and it was hard to imagine, looking at his guilty face, that he would start talking soon. But he was indeed the first one to start talking. He smoothed his trousers, gave a cough, grinned, then said:

  ‘What a comedy this is, goodness me… I can’t believe my eyes: what wood demon sent me to this wretched inn? What was the idea? Life throws up such slings and arrows that all you can do is toss your hands up in amazement. May I ask, are you travelling far, madam?’

  ‘No, not far,’ the brunette replied. ‘I’m travelling from our estate, which is about twelve miles away, to our farmstead, where my brother and father live. My name is Ilovaiskaya, and that’s the name of our farmstead, eight miles from here. What unpleasant weather!’

  ‘Dreadful!’

  The lame boy came in and put a new candle in the pomade jar.

  ‘You could light the samovar for us, lad!’

  ‘Who is drinking tea now?’ said the lame boy contemptuously. ‘It’s a sin to drink before going to church.’

  ‘Never mind, young lad, we’re the ones who are going to burn in hell, not you…’

  The new acquaintances got into conversation while they were drinking their tea. Ilovaiskaya discovered that the person she was talking to was called Grigory Petrovich Likharyov, that he was a brother of the famous Likharyov who served as marshal in one of the neighbouring districts, and that he had been a landowner himself at one time, but had managed to ruin himself in princely fashion. Likharyov, meanwhile, found out that Madam Ilovaiskaya’s first name was Marya Mikhailovna, that her father’s estate was huge, but that she had to manage it on her own since her father and brother were irresponsible, had their heads in the sand, and were too fond of borzois.

  ‘My father and brother are all on their own at the farmstead,’ said Ilovaiskaya, fluttering her fingers (she had a habit of fluttering her fingers in front of her spiky face while she spoke, and she licked her lips with her pointed little tongue after every phrase). ‘Those men are a useless lot, and
they won’t lift a finger even to help themselves. I know who will have to provide the meal to break the fast* for them! My mother is no longer around, and our servants won’t even lay the table without me there to chivvy them. You can imagine their situation now! They won’t have a meal to break the fast with, and I have to sit here all night. It’s all very strange!’

  Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders, gulped from the teacup, and said:

  ‘There are some holidays which have a certain smell to them. At Easter, Trinity Sunday, and Christmas the air always smells special. Even people who don’t believe love these holidays. My brother, for example, says there is no God, but he is the first to run off to church at Easter.’

  Likharyov raised his eyes to Ilovaiskaya and laughed.

  ‘People say that God does not exist,’ Ilovaiskaya continued, also laughing, ‘but then tell me, why do all the famous writers, scholars, and generally all the most clever people start believing at the end of their lives?’

  ‘People who haven’t been able to believe in their youth won’t be able to believe in their old age either, madam, whatever their background.’

  To judge from his cough, Likharyov was a bass, but he was speaking in a tenor voice, probably because he was afraid to speak loudly, or because he felt excessively shy. After pausing for a while, he sighed and said:

  ‘I believe that faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it. As far as I can judge from my own experience, the people I have encountered during my lifetime, and from everything that has gone on around me, this capacity for faith is something that Russian people possess in the highest degree. Russian life consists of an endless row of beliefs and passions, and it has not gone anywhere near lack of faith or rejection of it yet, if you want to know. If a Russian person does not believe in God, it means he believes in something else.’

  Likharyov took a cup of tea from Ilovaiskaya, gulped down half of it straight away, and continued: