Chapter 13

I fell to watching closely--not him, but his reflection in the pond. It was as clearly reflected as in a looking-glass--a little darker, a little more silvery. The wide stretch of pond wafted a refreshing coolness upon us; a cool breath of air seemed to rise, too, from the steep, damp bank; and it was the sweeter, as in the dark blue, flooded with gold, above the tree tops, the stagnant sultry heat hung, a burden that could be felt, over our heads. There was no stir in the water near the dike; in the shade cast by the drooping bushes on the bank, water spiders gleamed, like tiny bright buttons, as they described their everlasting circles; at long intervals there was a faint ripple just perceptible round the floats, when a fish was ‘playing’ with the worm. Very few fish were taken; during a whole hour we drew up only two loaches and an eel. I could not say why the brigadier aroused my curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance presented nothing remarkable. Under the warm cap, which covered the whole upper part of his head down to his ears and his eyebrows, could be seen a smooth, red, clean-shaven, round face, with a little nose, little lips, and small, clear grey eyes. Simplicity and weakness of character, and a sort of long-standing, helpless sorrow, were visible in that meek, almost childish face; the plump, white little hands with short fingers had something helpless, incapable about them too.... I could not conceive how this forlorn old man could once have been an officer, could have maintained discipline, have given his commands--and that, too, in the stern days of Catherine! I watched him; now and then he puffed out his cheeks and uttered a feeble whistle, like a little child; sometimes he screwed up his eyes painfully, with effort, as all decrepit people will. Once he opened his eyes wide and lifted them.... They stared at me from out of the depths of the water--and strangely touching and even full of meaning their dejected glance seemed to me.

VII

I tried to begin a conversation with the brigadier ... but Narkiz had not misinformed me; the poor old man certainly had become weak in his intellect. He asked me my surname, and after repeating his inquiry twice, pondered and pondered, and at last brought out: ‘Yes, I fancy there was a judge of that name here. Cucumber, wasn’t there a judge about here of that name, hey?’ ‘To be sure there was, Vassily Fomitch, your honour,’ responded Cucumber, who treated him altogether as a child. ‘There was, certainly. But let me have your hook; your worm must have been eaten off.... Yes, so it is.’

‘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.

X

On the strength of the spirits he had drunk, Cucumber quite ‘unbent,’ as it is called. He began trying to cheer up the brigadier, who was still hurrying forward with a tottering motion as though he were on stilts. ‘Why are you so downcast, sir, and hanging your head? Let me sing you a song. That’ll cheer you up in a minute.’ He turned to me: ‘Our gentleman is very fond of a joke, mercy on us, yes! Yesterday, what did I see?--a peasant-woman washing a pair of breeches on the platform, and a great fat woman she was, and he stood behind her, simply all of a shake with laughter--yes, indeed! ... In a minute, allow me: do you know the song of the hare? You mustn’t judge me by my looks; there’s a gypsy woman living here in the town, a perfect fright, but sings--‘pon my soul! one’s ready to lie down and die.’ He opened wide his moist red lips and began singing, his head on one side, his eyes shut, and his beard quivering:

‘The hare beneath the bush lies still, The hunters vainly scour the hill; The hare lies hid and holds his breath, His ears pricked up, he lies there still Waiting for death. O hunters! what harm have I done, To vex or injure you? Although Among the cabbages I run, One leaf I nibble--only one, And that’s not yours! Oh, no!’

Cucumber went on with ever-increasing energy:

‘Into the forest dark he fled, His tail he let the hunters see; “Excuse me, gentlemen,” says he, “That so I turn my back on you-- I am not yours!”’

Cucumber was not singing now ... he was bellowing:

‘The hunters hunted day and night, And still the hare was out of sight. So, talking over his misdeeds, They ended by disputing quite-- Alas, the hare is not for us! The squint-eye is too sharp for us!’

The first two lines of each stanza Cucumber sang with each syllable drawn out; the other three, on the contrary, very briskly, and accompanied them with little hops and shuffles of his feet; at the conclusion of each verse he cut a caper, in which he kicked himself with his own heels. As he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘The squint-eye is too sharp for us!’ he turned a somersault.... His expectations were fulfilled. The brigadier suddenly went off into a thin, tearful little chuckle, and laughed so heartily that he could not go on, and stayed still in a half-sitting posture, helplessly slapping his knees with his hands. I looked at his face, flushed crimson, and convulsively working, and felt very sorry for him at that instant especially. Encouraged by his success, Cucumber fell to capering about in a squatting position, singing the refrain of: ‘Shildi-budildi!’ and ‘Natchiki-tchikaldi!’ He stumbled at last with his nose in the dust.... The brigadier suddenly ceased laughing and hobbled on.

XI

We went on another quarter of a mile. A little village came into sight on the edge of a not very deep ravine; on one side stood the ‘lodge,’ with a half-ruined roof and a solitary chimney; in one of the two rooms of this lodge lived the brigadier. The owner of the village, who always resided in Petersburg, the widow of the civil councillor Lomov, had--so I learned later--bestowed this little nook upon the brigadier. She had given orders that he should receive a monthly pension, and had also assigned for his service a half-witted serf-girl living in the same village, who, though she barely understood human speech, was yet capable, in the lady’s opinion, of sweeping a floor and cooking cabbage-soup. At the door of the lodge the brigadier again addressed me with the same eighteenth-century smile: would I be pleased to walk into his ‘apartement’? We went into this ‘apartement.’ Everything in it was exceedingly filthy and poor, so filthy and so poor that the brigadier, noticing, probably, by the expression of my face, the impression it made on me, observed, shrugging his shoulders, and half closing his eyelids: ‘Ce n’est pas ... oeil de perdrix.’ ... What precisely he meant by this remained a mystery to me.... When I addressed him in French, I got no reply from him in that language. Two objects struck me especially in the brigadier’s abode: a large officer’s cross of St. George in a black frame, under glass, with an inscription in an old-fashioned handwriting: ‘Received by the Colonel of the Tchernigov regiment, Vassily Guskov, for the storming of Prague in the year 1794’; and secondly, a half-length portrait in oils of a handsome, black-eyed woman with a long, dark face, hair turned up high and powdered, with postiches on the temple and chin, in a flowered, low-cut bodice, with blue frills, the style of 1780. The portrait was badly painted, but was probably a good likeness; there was a wonderful look of life and will, something extraordinarily living and resolute, about the face. It was not looking at the spectator; it was, as it were, turning away and not smiling; the curve of the thin nose, the regular but flat lips, the almost unbroken straight line of the thick eyebrows, all showed an imperious, haughty, fiery temper. No great effort was needed to picture that face glowing with passion or with rage. Just below the portrait on a little pedestal stood a half-withered bunch of simple wild flowers in a thick glass jar. The brigadier went up to the pedestal, stuck the pinks he was carrying into the jar, and turning to me, and lifting his hand in the direction of the portrait, he observed: ‘Agrippina Ivanovna Teliegin, by birth Lomov.’ The words of Narkiz came back to my mind; and I looked with redoubled interest at the expressive and evil face of the woman for whose sake the brigadier had lost all his fortune.

‘You took part, I see, sir, in the storming of Prague,’ I began, pointing to the St. George cross, ‘and won a sign of distinction, rare at any time, but particularly so then; you must remember Suvorov?’

‘Alexander Vassilitch?’ the brigadier answered, after a brief silence, in which he seemed to be pulling his thoughts together; ‘to be sure, I remember him; he was a little, brisk old man. Before one could stir a finger, he’d be here and there and everywhere (the brigadier chuckled). He rode into Warsaw on a Cossack horse; he was all in diamonds, and he says to the Poles: “I’ve no watch, I forgot it in Petersburg--no watch!” and they shouted and huzzaed for him. Queer chaps! Hey! Cucumber! lad!’ he added suddenly, changing and raising his voice (the deacon-buffoon had remained standing at the door), ‘where’s the rolls, eh? And tell Grunka ... to bring some kvas!’

‘Directly, your honour,’ I heard Cucumber’s voice reply. He handed the brigadier the bundle of rolls, and, going out of the lodge, approached a dishevelled creature in rags--the half-witted girl, Grunka, I suppose--and as far as I could make out through the dusty little window, proceeded to demand kvas from her--at least, he several times raised one hand like a funnel to his mouth, and waved the other in our direction.

XII

I made another attempt to get into conversation with the brigadier; but he was evidently tired: he sank, sighing and groaning, on the little couch, and moaning, ‘Oy, oy, my poor bones, my poor bones,’ untied his garters. I remember I wondered at the time how a man came to be wearing garters. I did not realise that in former days every one wore them. The brigadier began yawning with prolonged, unconcealed yawns, not taking his drowsy eyes off me all the time; so very little children yawn. The poor old man did not even seem quite to understand my question.... And he had taken Prague! He, sword in hand, in the smoke and the dust--at the head of Suvorov’s soldiers, the bullet-pierced flag waving above him, the hideous corpses under his feet.... He ... he! Wasn’t it wonderful! But yet I could not help fancying that there had been events more extraordinary in the brigadier’s life. Cucumber brought white kvas in an iron jug; the brigadier drank greedily--his hands shook. Cucumber supported the bottom of the jug. The old man carefully wiped his toothless mouth with both hands--and again staring at me, fell to chewing and munching his lips. I saw how it was, bowed, and went out of the room.

‘Now he’ll have a nap,’ observed Cucumber, coming out behind me. ‘He’s terribly knocked up to-day--he went to the grave early this morning.’

‘To whose grave?’

‘To Agrafena Ivanovna’s, to pay his devotions.... She is buried in our parish cemetery here; it’ll be four miles from here. Vassily Fomitch visits it every week without fail. Indeed, it was he who buried her and put the fence up at his own expense.’

‘Has she been dead long?’

‘Well, let’s think--twenty years about.’

‘Was she a friend of his, or what?’

‘Her whole life, you may say, she passed with him ... really. I myself, I must own, never knew the lady, but they do say ... what there was between them ... well, well, well! Sir,’ the deacon added hurriedly, seeing I had turned away, ‘wouldn’t you like to give me something for another drop, for it’s time I was home in my hut and rolled up in my blanket?’

I thought it useless to question Cucumber further, so gave him a few coppers, and set off homewards.

XIII

At home I betook myself for further information to Narkiz. He, as I might have anticipated, was somewhat unapproachable, stood a little on his dignity, expressed his surprise that such paltry matters could ‘interest’ me, and, finally, told me what he knew. I heard the following details.

Vassily Fomitch Guskov had become acquainted with Agrafena Ivanovna Teliegin at Moscow soon after the suppression of the Polish insurrection; her husband had had a post under the governor-general, and Vassily Fomitch was on furlough. He fell in love with her there and then, but did not leave the army at once; he was a man of forty with no family, with a fortune. Her husband soon after died. She was left without children, poor, and in debt.... Vassily Fomitch heard of her position, threw up the service (he received the rank of brigadier on his retirement) and sought out his charming widow, who was not more than five-and-twenty, paid all her debts, redeemed her estate.... From that time he had never parted from her, and finished by living altogether in her house. She, too, seems to have cared for him, but would not marry him. ‘She was froward, the deceased lady,’ was Narkiz’s comment on this: ‘My liberty,’ she would say, ‘is dearer to me than anything.’ But as for making use of him--she made use of him ‘in every possible way,’ and whatever money he had, he dragged to her like an ant. But the frowardness of Agrafena Ivanovna at times assumed extreme proportions; she was not of a mild temper, and somewhat too ready with her hands.... Once she pushed her page-boy down the stairs, and he went and broke two of his ribs and one leg.... Agrafena Ivanovna was frightened ... she promptly ordered the page to be shut up in the lumber-room, and she did not leave the house nor give up the key of the room to any one, till the moans within had ceased.... The page was secretly buried.... ‘And had it been in the Empress Catherine’s time,’ Narkiz added in a whisper, bending down, ‘maybe the affair would have ended there--many such deeds were hidden under a bushel in those days, but as ...’ here Narkiz drew himself up and raised his voice:’ as our righteous Tsar Alexander the Blessed was reigning then ... well, a fuss was made.... A trial followed, the body was dug up ... signs of violence were found on it ... and a great to-do there was. And what do you think? Vassily Fomitch took it all on himself. “I,” said he, “am responsible for it all; it was I pushed him down, and I too shut him up.” Well, of course, all the judges then, and the lawyers and the police ... fell on him directly ... fell on him and never let him go ... I can assure you ... till the last farthing was out of his purse. They’d leave him in peace for a while, and then attack him again. Down to the very time when the French came into Russia they were worrying at him, and only dropped him then. Well, he managed to provide for Agrafena Ivanovna--to be sure, he saved her--that one must say. Well, and afterwards, up to her death, indeed, he lived with her, and they do say she led him a pretty dance--the brigadier, that is; sent him on foot from Moscow into the country--by God, she did--to get her rents in, I suppose. It was on her account, on account of this same Agrafena Ivanovna--he fought a duel with the English milord Hugh Hughes; and the English milord was forced to make a formal apology too. But later on the brigadier went down hill more and more.... Well, and now he can’t be reckoned a man at all.’

‘Who was that Alexey Ivanitch the Jew,’ I asked, ‘through whom he was brought to ruin?’

‘Oh, the brother of Agrafena Ivanovna. A grasping creature, Jewish indeed. He lent his sister money at interest, and Vassily Fomitch was her security. He had to pay for it too ... pretty heavily!’

‘And Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer--who was she?’

‘Her sister too ... and a sharp one too, as sharp as a lance. A terrible woman!’

XIV

‘What a place to find a Werter!’ I thought next day, as I set off again towards the brigadier’s dwelling. I was at that time very young, and that was possibly why I thought it my duty not to believe in the lasting nature of love. Still, I was impressed and somewhat puzzled by the story I had heard, and felt an intense desire to stir up the old man, to make him talk freely. ‘I’ll first refer to Suvorov again,’ so I resolved within myself; ‘there must be some spark of his former fire hidden within him still ... and then, when he’s warmed up, I’ll turn the conversation on that ... what’s her name? ... Agrafena Ivanovna. A queer name for a “Charlotte”--Agrafena!’

I found my Werter-Guskov in the middle of a tiny kitchen-garden, a few steps from the lodge, near the old framework of a never-finished hut, overgrown with nettles. On the mildewed upper beams of this skeleton hut some miserable-looking turkey poults were scrambling, incessantly slipping and flapping their wings and cackling. There was some poor sort of green stuff growing in two or three borders. The brigadier had just pulled a young carrot out of the ground, and rubbing it under his arm ‘to clean it,’ proceeded to chew its thin tail.... I bowed to him, and inquired after his health.

He obviously did not recognise me, though he returned my greeting--that is to say, touched his cap with his hand, though without leaving off munching the carrot.

‘You didn’t go fishing to-day?’ I began, in the hope of recalling myself to his memory by this question.

‘To-day?’ he repeated and pondered ... while the carrot, stuck into his mouth, grew shorter and shorter. ‘Why, I suppose it’s Cucumber fishing! ... But I’m allowed to, too.’

‘Of course, of course, most honoured Vassily Fomitch.... I didn’t mean that.... But aren’t you hot ... like this in the sun.’

The brigadier was wearing a thick wadded dressing-gown.

‘Eh? Hot?’ he repeated again, as though puzzled over the question, and, having finally swallowed the carrot, he gazed absently upwards.

‘Would you care to step into my apartement?’ he said suddenly. The poor old man had, it seemed, only this phrase still left him always at his disposal.