Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (183 page)

XIX

I REMEMBER, when I was left alone, I was absorbed in wondering how it was Harlov had not pounded Sletkin “into a jelly,” as he said, and how it was Sletkin had not been afraid of such a fate. It was clear Martin Petrovitch really had grown “meek,” I thought, and I had a still stronger desire to make my way into Eskovo, and get at least a glance at that colossus, whom I could never picture to myself subdued and tractable. I had reached the edge of the copse, when suddenly a big snipe, with a great rush of wings, darted up at my very feet, and flew off into the depths of the wood. I took aim; my gun missed fire. I was greatly annoyed; it had been such a fine bird, and I made up my mind to try if I couldn’t make it rise a second time. I set off in the direction of its flight, and going some two hundred paces off into the wood I caught sight -
 
- in a little glade, under an overhanging birch - tree -
 
- not of the snipe, but of the same Sletkin once more. He was lying on his back, with both hands under his head, and with a smile of contentment gazing upwards at the sky, swinging his left leg, which was crossed over his right knee. He did not notice my approach. A few paces from him, Evlampia was walking slowly up and down the little glade, with downcast eyes. It seemed as though she were looking for something in the grass -
 
- mushrooms or something; now and then, she stooped and stretched out her hand. She was singing in a low voice. I stopped at once, and fell to listening. At first I could not make out what it was she was singing, but afterwards I recognised clearly the following well - known lines of the old ballad:

“
Hither, hither, threatening storm - cloud,

Slay for me the father - in - law,

Strike for me the mother - in - law,

The young wife I will kill myself!
”

Evlampia sang louder and louder; the last words she delivered with peculiar energy. Sletkin still lay on his back and laughed to himself, while she seemed all the time to be moving round and round him.

“Oh, indeed!” he commented at last. “The things that come into some people’s heads!”

“What?” queried Evlampia.

Sletkin raised his head a little. “What? Why, what words were those you were uttering?”

“Why, you know, Volodya, one can’t leave the words out of a song,” answered Evlampia, and she turned and saw me. We both cried out aloud at once, and both rushed away in opposite directions.

I made my way hurriedly out of the copse, and crossing a narrow clearing, found myself facing Harlov’s garden.

XX

I HAD no time, nor would it have been of any use, to deliberate over what I had seen. Only an expression kept recurring to my mind, “love spell,” which I had lately heard, and over the signification of which I had pondered a good deal. I walked alongside the garden fence, and in a few moments, behind the silver poplars (they had not yet lost a single leaf, and the foliage was luxuriantly thick and brilliantly glistening), I saw the yard and two little lodges of Martin Petrovitch’s homestead. The whole place struck me as having been tidied up and pulled into shape. On every side one could perceive traces of unflagging and severe supervision. Anna Martinovna came out on to the steps, and screwing up her blue - grey eyes, gazed for a long while in the direction of the copse.

“Have you seen the master?” she asked a peasant, who was walking across the yard.

“Vladimir Vassilitch?” responded the latter, taking his cap off. “He went into the copse, surely.”

“I know, he went to the copse. Hasn’t he come back? Haven’t you seen him?”

“I’ve not seen him . . . nay.”

The peasant continued standing bareheaded before Anna Martinovna.

“Well, you can go,” she said. “Or no -
 
-
 
-
 
- wait a bit -
 
-
 
-
 
- where’s Martin Petrovitch? Do you know?”

“Oh, Martin Petrovitch,” answered the peasant, in a sing - song voice, alternately lifting his right and then his left hand, as though pointing away somewhere, “is sitting yonder, at the pond, with a fishing - rod. He’s sitting in the reeds, with a rod. Catching fish, maybe, God knows.”

“Very well . . . you can go,” repeated Anna Martinovna; “and put away that wheel, it’s lying about.”

The peasant ran to carry out her command, while she remained standing a few minutes longer on the steps, still gazing in the direction of the copse. Then she clenched one fist menacingly, and went slowly back into the house. “Axiutka!” I heard her imperious voice calling within.

Anna Martinovna looked angry, and tightened her lips, thin enough at all times, with a sort of special energy. She was carelessly dressed, and a coil of loose hair had fallen down on to her shoulder. But in spite of the negligence of her attire, and her irritable humour, she struck me, just as before, as attractive, and I should have been delighted to kiss the narrow hand which looked malignant too, as she twice irritably pushed back the loose tress.

XXI

“CAN Martin Petrovitch have really taken to fishing?” I asked myself, as I turned towards the pond, which was on one side of the garden. I got on to the dam, looked in all directions. . . . Martin Petrovitch was nowhere to be seen. I bent my steps along one of the banks of the pond, and at last, at the very top of it, in a little creek, in the midst of flat broken - down stalks of reddish reed, I caught sight of a huge greyish mass. . . . I looked intently: it was Harlov. Bareheaded, unkempt, in a cotton smock torn at the seams, with his legs crossed under him, he was sitting motionless on the bare earth. So motionless was he that a sandpiper, at my approach, darted up from the dry mud a couple of paces from him, and flew with a flash of its little wings and a whistle over the surface of the water, showing that no one had moved to frighten him for a long while. Harlov’s whole appearance was so extraordinary that my dog stopped short directly it saw him, lifted its tail, and growled. He turned his head a very little, and fixed his wild - looking eyes on me and my dog. He was greatly changed by his beard, though it was short, but thick and curly, in white tufts, like Astrachan fur. In his right hand lay the end of a rod, while the other end hovered feebly over the water. I felt an involuntary pang at my heart. I plucked up my spirits, however, went up to him, and wished him good morning. He slowly blinked as though just awake.

“What are you doing, Martin Petrovitch,” I began, “catching fish here?”

“Yes . . . fish,” he answered huskily, and pulled up the rod, on which there fluttered a piece of line, a fathom length, with no hook on it.

“Your tackle is broken off,” I observed, and noticed the same moment that there was no sign of bait - tin nor worms near Martin Petrovitch. . . . And what sort of fishing could there be in September?

“Broken off?” he said, and he passed his hand over his face. “But it’s all the same!”

He dropped the rod in again.

“Natalia Nikolaevna’s son?” he asked me, after the lapse of two minutes, during which I had been gazing at him with secret bewilderment. Though he had grown terribly thinner, still he seemed a giant. But what rags he was dressed in, and how utterly he had gone to pieces altogether!

“Yes,” I answered, “I’m the son of Natalia Nikolaevna B.”

“Is she well?”

“My mother is quite well. She was very much hurt at your refusal,” I added; “she did not at all expect you would not wish to come and see her.”

Martin Petrovitch’s head sank on his breast. “Have you been there?” he asked, with a motion of his head.

“Where?”

“There, at the house. Haven’t you? Go! What is there for you to do here? Go! It’s useless talking to me. I don’t like it.”

He was silent for a while.

“You’d like to be always idling about with a gun! In my young days I used to be inclined the same way too. Only my father was strict and made me respect him too. Mind you, very different from fathers now - a - days. My father flogged me with a horsewhip, and that was the end of it! I’d to give up idling about! And so I respected him. . . . Oo! . . . Yes! . . .”

Harlov paused again.

“Don’t you stop here,” he began again. “You go along to the house. Things are managed there now -
 
- it’s first - rate. Volodka”. . . Here he faltered for a second. “Our Volodka’s a good hand at everything. He’s a fine fellow! yes, indeed, and a fine scoundrel too!”

I did not know what to say; Martin Petrovitch spoke very tranquilly.

“And you go and see my daughters. You remember, I daresay, I had daughters. They’re managers too . . . clever ones. But I’m growing old, my lad; I’m on the shelf. Time to repose, you know. . . .”

“Nice sort of repose!” I thought, glancing round. “Martin Petrovitch!” I uttered aloud, “you really must come and see us.”

Harlov looked at me. “Go along, my lad, I tell you.”

“Don’t hurt mamma’s feelings; come and see us.”

“Go away, my lad, go away,” persisted Harlov. “What do you want to talk to me for?”

“If you have no carriage, mamma will send you hers.”

“Go along!”

“But, really and truly, Martin Petrovitch!”

Harlov looked down again, and I fancied that his cheeks, dingy as though covered with earth, faintly flushed.

“Really, do come,” I went on. “What’s the use of your sitting here? of your making yourself miserable?”

“Making myself miserable?” he commented hesitatingly.

“Yes, to be sure -
 
- making yourself miserable!” I repeated.

Harlov said nothing, and seemed lost in musing. Emboldened by his silence, I determined to be open, to act straightforwardly, bluntly. (Do not forget, I was only fifteen then.)

“Martin Petrovitch!” I began, seating myself beside him. “I know everything, you see, positively everything. I know how your son - in - law is treating you -
 
- doubtless with the consent of your daughters. And now you are in such a position . . . But why lose heart?”

Harlov still remained silent, and simply dropped in his line; while I -
 
- what a sensible fellow, what a sage I felt!

“Doubtless,” I began again, “you acted imprudently in giving up everything to your daughters. It was most generous on your part, and I am not going to blame you. In our days it is a quality only too rare! But since your daughters are so ungrateful, you ought to show a contempt -
 
- yes, a contempt -
 
- for them . . . and not fret -
 
-
 
-
 
- “

“Stop!” muttered Harlov suddenly, gnashing his teeth, and his eyes, staring at the pond, glittered wrathfully . . . “Go away!”

“But, Martin Petrovitch -
 
-
 
-
 
- “

“Go away, I tell you, . . . or I’ll kill you!”

I had come quite close to him; but at the last words I instinctively jumped up. “What did you say, Martin Petrovitch?”

“I’ll kill you, I tell you; go away!” With a wild moan, a roar, the words broke from Harlov’s breast, but he did not turn his head, and still stared wrathfully straight in front of him. “I’ll take you and fling you and your fool’s counsel into the water. You shall learn to pester the old, little milksop!”

“He’s gone mad!” flashed through my mind.

I looked at him more attentively, and was completely petrified; Martin Petrovitch was weeping!! Tear after tear rolled from his eyelashes down his cheeks . . . while his face had assumed an expression utterly savage. . . .

“Go away!” he roared once more, “or I’ll kill you, by God! for an example to others!”

He was shaking all over from side to side, and showing his teeth like a wild boar. I snatched up my gun and took to my heels. My dog flew after me, barking. He, too, was frightened.

When I got home, I naturally did not, by so much as a word, to my mother, hint at what I had seen; but coming across Souvenir, I told him -
 
- the devil knows why -
 
- all about it. That loathsome person was so delighted at my story, shrieking with laughter, and even dancing with pleasure, that I could hardly forbear striking him.

“Ah! I should like,” he kept repeating breathless with laughter, “to see that fiend, the Swede, Harlov, crawling into the mud and sitting in it. . . .”

“Go over to the pond if you’re so curious.”

“Yes; but how if he kills me?”

I felt horribly sick at Souvenir, and regretted my ill - timed confidence. . . . Zhitkov, to whom he repeated my tale, looked at the matter somewhat differently.

“We shall have to call in the police,” he concluded, “or, may be, we may have to send for a battalion of military.”

His forebodings with regard to the military battalion did not come true; but something extraordinary really did happen.