The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (28 page)

The philosopher, scratching lightly behind his ear, walked out without saying a word, intending to trust to his legs at the first opportunity.
Deep in thought, he was going down the steep steps to the poplar-ringed courtyard when he stopped for a minute, hearing quite clearly the voice of the rector giving orders to his housekeeper and someone else, probably one of those the chief had sent to fetch him.

“Thank your master for the grain and eggs,” the rector was saying, “and tell him that as soon as the books he wrote about are ready, I’ll send them at once.
I’ve already given them to the scribe for copying.
And don’t forget, dear heart, to tell the master that I know there are good fish to be had on his farmstead, especially sturgeon, which he can send whenever there’s a chance: at the markets here it’s expensive and no good.
And you, Yavtukh, give the lads a glass of vodka.
And tie up the philosopher, otherwise he’ll take off.”

“Why, that devil’s son!” the philosopher thought to himself, “he’s got wind of it, the long-legged slicker!”

He went down the steps and saw a kibitka, which at first he took for a granary on wheels.
Indeed, it was as deep as a brick kiln.
This was an ordinary Krakow vehicle such as Jews hire, fifty of them squeezing in along with their goods, to carry them to every town where their noses smell a fair.
He was awaited by some six stalwart and sturdy Cossacks, no longer young men.
Jackets of fine flannel with fringe showed that they belonged to a considerable and wealthy owner.
Small scars bespoke their having once been to war, not without glory.

“No help for it!
What will be, will be!” the philosopher thought to himself and, addressing the Cossacks, said loudly:

“Greetings, friends and comrades!”

“Greetings to you, master philosopher!” some of the Cossacks replied.

“So I’m supposed to get in there with you?
A fine wagon!” he went on, climbing in.
“Just hire some musicians and you could dance in it!”

“Yes, a commensurate vehicle!” said one of the Cossacks, getting up on the box along with the coachman, who had a rag wrapped around his head instead of his hat, which he had already left in the tavern.
The other five, together with the philosopher, climbed deep inside and settled on sacks filled with various purchases made in town.

“I’d be curious to know,” said the philosopher, “if this wagon were to be loaded, for example, with certain goods—salt, say, or iron wedges—how many horses would it need?”

“Yes,” the Cossack on the box said after some silence, “it would need a sufficient number of horses.”

After which satisfactory answer, the Cossack considered he had the right to keep silent the rest of the way.

The philosopher had a great desire to find out in more detail who this chief was, what sort of character he had, what this rumor was about his daughter, who had come home in such an extraordinary fashion and was now dying, and whose story was now connected with his own, how it was with them and what went on in the house?
He addressed them with questions; but the Cossacks must also have been philosophers, because they said nothing in reply, lay on the sacks and smoked their pipes.
Only one of them addressed the coachman sitting on the box with a brief order: “Keep an eye out, Overko, you old gawk.
When you get near the tavern, the one on the Chukhrailovsky road, don’t forget to stop, and wake me and the other lads up if we happen to fall asleep.” After that he fell rather loudly asleep.
However, these admonitions were quite superfluous, because as soon as the gigantic wagon approached the tavern on the Chukhrailovsky road, everybody shouted with one voice: “Stop!” Besides, Overko’s horses were already so used to it that they themselves stopped in front of every tavern.
Despite the hot July day, everybody got out of the wagon and went into the low, dingy room where the Jew tavern keeper rushed with signs of joy to welcome his old acquaintances.
Under his coat skirts the Jew brought several pork sausages and, having placed them on the table, immediately turned away from this Talmud-forbidden fruit.
They all settled around the table.
A clay mug appeared in front of each guest.
The philosopher Khoma had
to take part in the general feasting.
And since people in Little Russia, once they get a bit merry, are sure to start kissing each other or weeping, the whole place was soon filled with kissing: “Well, now, Spirid, give us a smack!” “Come here, Dorosh, till I embrace you!”

One Cossack who was a bit older than the others, with a gray mustache, rested his cheek on his hand and began sobbing his heart out over his having no father or mother and being left all alone in the world.
Another was a great reasoner and kept comforting him, saying: “Don’t cry, by God, don’t cry!
What’s this now … God, He knows how and what it is.” The one named Dorosh became extremely inquisitive and, addressing himself to the philosopher Khoma, kept asking him:

“I’d like to know what they teach you at the seminary—the same as what the deacon reads in church, or something else?”

“Don’t ask!” drawled the reasoner.
“Let it all be as it has been.
God, He knows how it should be; God knows everything.”

“No,” Dorosh went on, “I want to know what’s written in those books.
Maybe something completely different from the deacon’s.”

“Oh, my God, my God!” the esteemed mentor said to that.
“What on earth are you talking about?
God’s will decided it so.
It’s all as God gave it, they can’t go changing it.”

“I want to know all what’s written there.
I’ll go to the seminary, by God, I will!
What do you think, that I can’t learn?
I’ll learn all of it, all of it!”

“Oh, my God, my goddy God!…” the comforter said and lowered his head to the table, because he was quite unable to hold it up on his shoulders any longer.

The other Cossacks talked about landowners and why the moon shines in the sky.

The philosopher Khoma, seeing such a disposition of minds, decided to take advantage of it and slip away.
First he addressed the gray-haired Cossack who was grieving over his father and mother:

“What’s there to cry about, uncle,” he said, “I’m an orphan myself!
Let me go free, lads!
What do you need me for?”

“Let’s set him free!” some replied.
“He’s an orphan.
Let him go where he likes.”

“Oh, my God, my goddy God!” the comforter said, raising his head.
“Free him!
Let him go!”

And the Cossacks were going to take him to the open fields themselves, but the one who showed his curiosity stopped them, saying:

“Hands off!
I want to talk to him about the seminary.
I’m going to the seminary myself …”

Anyhow, this escape could hardly have been accomplished, because when the philosopher decided to get up from the table, his legs turned as if to wood, and he began to see so many doors in the room that it was unlikely he could have found the real one.

Only in the evening did this company all remember that they had to be on their way.
Scrambling into the wagon, they drove off, urging their horses on and singing a song, the words and meaning of which could hardly be made out.
After spending the better half of the night rambling about, constantly losing the way, which they knew by heart, they finally descended a steep hill into a valley, and the philosopher noticed a palisade or wattle fence stretching along the sides, low trees and roofs peeking from behind them.
This was the big settlement belonging to the chief.
It was long past midnight; the sky was dark and small stars flashed here and there.
There was no light in any of the huts.
Accompanied by the barking of a dog, they drove into the yard.
On both sides thatch-roofed sheds and cottages could be seen.
One of them, in the middle, directly facing the gates, was bigger than the rest and seemed to be the owner’s dwelling.
The wagon stopped before something like a small shed, and our travelers went to sleep.
The philosopher, however, wanted to look the master’s mansion over a little; but however wide he opened his eyes, he could see nothing clearly: instead of the house, he saw a bear; the chimney turned into a rector.
The philosopher waved his hand and went to sleep.

When the philosopher woke up, the whole house was astir: during the night the master’s daughter had died.
Servants ran to and fro in a flurry.
Some old woman cried.
A crowd of the curious looked through the fence into the master’s yard, as if there was anything to be seen there.

The philosopher began leisurely to examine the places he had
been unable to make out at night.
The master’s house was a small, low building such as was commonly built in Little Russia in the old days.
It had a thatched roof.
The sharp and high little pediment, with a small window resembling an upturned eye, was painted all over with blue and yellow flowers and red crescents.
It was held up by oak posts, the upper half rounded and the lower hexagonal, with fancy turning at the tops.
Under this pediment was a small porch with benches on both sides.
At the ends of the house were shed roofs on the same sort of posts, some of them twisted.
A tall pear tree with a pyramidal top and trembling leaves greened in front of the house.
Several barns stood in two rows in the yard, forming a sort of wide street leading to the house.
Beyond the barns, toward the gates, the triangles of two cellars stood facing each other, also roofed with thatch.
The triangular wall of each was furnished with a door and painted over with various images.
On one of them a Cossack was portrayed sitting on a barrel, holding a mug over his head with the inscription: “I’ll Drink It All.” On the other, a flask, bottles, and around them, for the beauty of it, an upside-down horse, a pipe, tambourines, and the inscription: “Drink—the Cossack’s Delight.” From the loft of one of the barns, through an enormous dormer window, peeked a drum and some brass trumpets.
By the gates stood two cannon.
Everything showed that the master of the house liked to make merry and that the yard often resounded with the noise of feasting.
Outside the gates were two windmills.
Behind the house ran the gardens; and through the treetops one could see only the dark caps of chimneys hiding in the green mass of cottages.
The entire settlement was situated on a wide and level mountain ledge.
To the north everything was screened off by a steep mountain, the foot of which came right down to the yard.
Looked at from below, it seemed steeper still, and on its high top the irregular stems of skimpy weeds stuck out here and there, black against the bright sky.
Its bare and clayey appearance evoked a certain despondency.
It was all furrowed with gullies and grooves left by rain.
In two places, cottages were stuck to its steep slope; over one of them an apple tree, propped by small stakes and a mound of dirt at its roots, spread its branches broadly.
Windfallen apples rolled right down
into the master’s yard.
From the top a road wound down all over the mountain and in its descent went past the yard into the settlement.
When the philosopher measured its terrible steepness and remembered the previous day’s journey, he decided that either the master’s horses were very smart or the Cossacks’ heads were very strong to have managed, even in drunken fumes, not to tumble down head first along with the boundless wagon and the baggage.
The philosopher stood on the highest point of the yard, and when he turned and looked in the opposite direction, he was presented with a totally different sight.
The settlement, together with the slope, rolled down onto a plain.
Vast meadows opened out beyond the reach of sight; their bright greenery became darker in the distance, and whole rows of villages blued far off, though they were more than a dozen miles away.
To the right of these meadows, mountains stretched and the distant, barely noticeable strip of the Dnieper burned and darkled.

“Ah, a fine spot!” said the philosopher.
“To live here, to fish in the Dnieper and the ponds, to take a net or a gun and go hunting for snipe and curlew!
Though I suppose there’s also no lack of bustards in these meadows.
Quantities of fruit can be dried and sold in town or, even better, distilled into vodka—because no liquor can touch vodka made from fruit.
And it also wouldn’t hurt to consider how to slip away from here.”

He noticed a small path beyond the wattle fence, completely overgrown with weeds.
He mechanically stepped onto it, thinking at first only of taking a stroll, and then of quietly blowing out between the cottages into the meadows, when he felt a rather strong hand on his shoulder.

Behind him stood the same old Cossack who had grieved so bitterly yesterday over the death of his mother and father and his own loneliness.

“You oughtn’t to be thinking, master philosopher, about skipping from the farmstead!” he said.
“It’s not set up here so as you can run away; and the roads are bad for walking.
Better go to the master: he’s been waiting for you a long time in his room.”

“Let’s go!
Why not?… It’s my pleasure,” said the philosopher, and he followed after the Cossack.

The chief, an elderly man with a gray mustache and an expression of gloomy sorrow, was sitting at a table in his room, his head propped in both hands.
He was about fifty years old; but the deep despondency on his face and a sort of wasted pallor showed that his soul had been crushed and destroyed all of a sudden, in a single moment, and all the old gaiety and noisy life had disappeared forever.
When Khoma came in together with the old Cossack, he took away one of his hands and nodded slightly to their low bow.

Khoma and the Cossack stopped respectfully by the door.

“Who are you, and where from, and of what estate, good man?” the chief said, neither kindly nor sternly.

“I’m the philosopher Khoma Brut, a student.”

“And who was your father?”

“I don’t know, noble sir.”

“And your mother?”

“I don’t know my mother, either.
Reasonably considering, of course, there was a mother; but who she was, and where from, and when she lived—by God, your honor, I don’t know.”

The chief paused and seemed to sit pondering for a moment.

“And how did you become acquainted with my daughter?”