FullReads

‘Did you know the Lomov family?’ the brigadier suddenly asked me in a cracked voice.

‘What Lomov family is that?’

‘Why, Fiodor Ivanitch, Yevstigney Ivanitch, Alexey Ivanitch the Jew, and Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer, … and then, too …’

The brigadier suddenly broke off and looked down confused.

They were the people he was most intimate with,’ Narkiz whispered, bending towards me; ‘it was through them, through that same Alexey Ivanitch, that he called a Jew, and through a sister of Alexey Ivanitch’s, Agrafena Ivanovna, as you may say, that he lost all his property.’

‘What are you saying there about Agrafena Ivanovna?’ the brigadier called out suddenly, and his head was raised, his white eyebrows were frowning…. ‘You’d better mind! And why Agrafena, pray? Agrippina Ivanovna–that’s what you should call her.’

‘There–there–there, sir,’ Cucumber was beginning to falter.

‘Don’t you know the verses the poet Milonov wrote about her?’ the old man went on, suddenly getting into a state of excitement, which was a complete surprise to me. ‘No hymeneal lights were kindled,’ he began chanting, pronouncing all the vowels through his nose, giving the syllables ‘an,’ ‘en,’ the nasal sound they have in French; and it was strange to hear this connected speech from his lips: ‘No torches … No, that’s not it:

“Not vain Corruption’s idols frail
Not amaranth nor porphyry
Rejoiced their hearts …
One thing in them …”

‘That was about us. Do you hear?

“One thing in them unquenchable,
Subduing, sweet, desirable,
To nurse their mutual flame in love!”

And you talk about Agrafena!’

Narkiz chuckled half-contemptuously, half-indifferently. ‘What a queer fish it is!’ he said to himself. But the brigadier had again relapsed into dejection, the rod had dropped from his hands and slipped into the water.

VIII

‘Well, to my thinking, our fishing is a poor business,’ observed Cucumber; ‘the fish, see, don’t bite at all. It’s got fearfully hot, and there’s a fit of “mencholy” come over our gentleman. It’s clear we must be going home; that will be best.’ He cautiously drew out of his pocket a tin bottle with a wooden stopper, uncorked it, scattered snuff on his wrist, and sniffed it up in both nostrils at once…. ‘Ah, what good snuff!’ he moaned, as he recovered himself. ‘It almost made my tooth ache! Now, my dear Vassily Fomitch, get up–it’s time to be off!’

The brigadier got up from the bench.

‘Do you live far from here?’ I asked Cucumber.

‘No, our gentleman lives not far … it won’t be as much as a mile.’

‘Will you allow me to accompany you?’ I said, addressing the brigadier. I felt disinclined to let him go.

Narkiz was surprised at my intention; but I paid no attention to the disapproving shake of his long-eared cap, and walked out of the garden with the brigadier, who was supported by Cucumber. The old man moved fairly quickly, with a motion as though he were on stilts.

IX

We walked along a scarcely trodden path, through a grassy glade between two birch copses. The sun was blazing; the orioles called to each other in the green thicket; corncrakes chattered close to the path; blue butterflies fluttered in crowds about the white, and red flowers of the low-growing clover; in the perfectly still grass bees hung, as though asleep, languidly buzzing. Cucumber seemed to pull himself together, and brightened up; he was afraid of Narkiz–he lived always under his eye; I was a stranger–a new comer–with me he was soon quite at home.

‘Here’s our gentleman,’ he said in a rapid flow; ‘he’s a small eater and no mistake! but only one perch, is that enough for him? Unless, your honour, you would like to contribute something? Close here round the corner, at the little inn, there are first-rate white wheaten rolls. And if so, please your honour, this poor sinner, too, will gladly drink on this occasion to your health, and may it be of long years and long days.’ I gave him a little silver, and was only just in time to pull away my hand, which he was falling upon to kiss. He learned that I was a sportsman, and fell to talking of a very good friend of his, an officer, who had a ‘Mindindenger’ Swedish gun, with a copper stock, just like a cannon, so that when you fire it off you are almost knocked senseless–it had been left behind by the French–and a dog–simply one of Nature’s marvels! that he himself had always had a great passion for the chase, and his priest would have made no trouble about it–he used in fact to catch quails with him–but the ecclesiastical superior had pursued him with endless persecution; ‘and as for Narkiz Semyonitch,’ he observed in a sing-song tone, ‘if according to his notions I’m not a trustworthy person–well, what I say is: he’s let his eyebrows grow till he’s like a woodcock, and he fancies all the sciences are known to him.’ By this time we had reached the inn, a solitary tumble-down, one-roomed little hut without backyard or outbuildings; an emaciated dog lay curled up under the window; a hen was scratching in the dust under his very nose. Cucumber sat the brigadier down on the bank, and darted instantly into the hut. While he was buying the rolls and emptying a glass, I never took my eyes off the brigadier, who, God knows why, struck me as something of an enigma. In the life of this man–so I mused–there must certainly have been something out of the ordinary. But he, it seemed, did not notice me at all. He was sitting huddled up on the bank, and twisting in his fingers some pinks which he had gathered in my friend’s garden. Cucumber made his appearance, at last, with a bundle of rolls in his hand; he made his appearance, all red and perspiring, with an expression of gleeful surprise on his face, as though he had just seen something exceedingly agreeable and unexpected. He at once offered the brigadier a roll to eat, and the latter at once ate it. We proceeded on our way.