Works of Alexander Pushkin (72 page)

Savéliitch listened to them talking with a very discontented manner, and cast suspicious glances, sometimes on the host and sometimes on the guide.

The kind of inn where we had sought shelter stood in the very middle of the steppe, far from the road and from any dwelling, and certainly was by no means unlikely to be a robber resort. But what could we do? We could not dream of resuming our journey. Savéliitch’s uneasiness amused me very much. I stretched myself on a bench. My old retainer at last decided to get up on the top of the stove, while the host lay down on the floor. They all soon began to snore, and I myself soon fell dead asleep.

When I awoke, somewhat late, on the morrow I saw that the storm was over. The sun shone brightly; the snow stretched afar like a dazzling sheet. The horses were already harnessed. I paid the host, who named such a mere trifle as my reckoning that Savéliitch did not bargain as he usually did. His suspicions of the evening before were quite gone. I called the guide to thank him for what he had done for us, and I told Savéliitch to give him half a rouble as a reward.

Savéliitch frowned.

“Half a rouble!” cried he. “Why? Because you were good enough to bring him yourself to the inn? I will obey you, excellency, but we have no half roubles to spare. If we take to giving gratuities to everybody we shall end by dying of hunger.”

I could not dispute the point with Savéliitch; my money, according to my solemn promise, was entirely at his disposal. Nevertheless, I was annoyed that I was not able to reward a man who, if he had not brought me out of fatal danger, had, at least, extricated me from an awkward dilemma.

“Well,” I said, coolly, to Savéliitch, “if you do not wish to give him half a rouble give him one of my old coats; he is too thinly clad. Give him my hareskin
touloup
.”

“Have mercy on me, my father, Petr’ Andréjïtch!” exclaimed Savéliitch. “What need has he of your
touloup
? He will pawn it for drink, the dog, in the first tavern he comes across.”

“That, my dear old fellow, is no longer your affair,” said the vagabond, “whether I drink it or whether I do not. His excellency honours me with a coat off his own back. It is his excellency’s will, and it is your duty as a serf not to kick against it, but to obey.”

“You don’t fear heaven, robber that you are,” said Savéliitch, angrily. “You see the child is still young and foolish, and you are quite ready to plunder him, thanks to his kind heart. What do you want with a gentleman’s
touloup
? You could not even put it across your cursed broad shoulders.”

“I beg you will not play the wit,” I said to my follower. “Get the cloak quickly.”

“Oh! good heavens!” exclaimed Savéliitch, bemoaning himself. “A
touloup
of hareskin, and still quite new! And to whom is it given? — to a drunkard in rags.”

However, the
touloup
was brought. The vagabond began trying it on directly. The
touloup
, which had already become somewhat too small for me, was really too tight for him. Still, with some trouble, he succeeded in getting it on, though he cracked all the seams. Savéliitch gave, as it were, a subdued howl when he heard the threads snapping.

As to the vagabond, he was very pleased with my present. He ushered me to my
kibitka
, and saying, with a low bow, “Thanks, your excellency; may Heaven reward you for your goodness; I shall never forget, as long as I live, your kindnesses,” went his way, and I went mine, without paying any attention to Savéliitch’s sulkiness.

I soon forgot the snowstorm, the guide, and my hareskin
touloup
.

Upon arrival at Orenburg I immediately waited on the General. I found a tall man, already bent by age. His long hair was quite white; his old uniform reminded one of a soldier of Tzarina Anne’s time, and he spoke with a strongly-marked German accent. I gave him my father’s letter. Upon reading his name he cast a quick glance at me.

“Ah,” said he, “it was but a short time Andréj Petróvitch was your age, and now he has got a fine fellow of a son. Well, well — time, time.”

He opened the letter, and began reading it half aloud, with a running fire of remarks —

“‘Sir, I hope your excellency’ — What’s all this ceremony? For shame! I wonder he’s not ashamed of himself! Of course, discipline before everything; but is it thus one writes to an old comrade? ‘Your excellency will not have forgotten’ — Humph! ‘And when under the late Field Marshal Münich during the campaign, as well as little Caroline’ — Eh! eh!
bruder
! So he still remembers our old pranks? ‘Now for business. I send you my rogue’ — Hum! ‘Hold him with gloves of porcupine-skin’ — What does that mean — ’gloves of porcupine-skin?’ It must be a Russian proverb.

“What does it mean, ‘hold with gloves of porcupine-skin?’“ resumed he, turning to me.

“It means,” I answered him, with the most innocent face in the world, “to treat someone kindly, not too strictly, to leave him plenty of liberty; that is what holding with gloves of porcupine-skin means.”

“Humph! I understand.”

“‘And not give him any liberty’ — No; it seems that porcupine-skin gloves means something quite different.’ Enclosed is his commission’ — Where is it then? Ah! here it is! — ’in the roll of the Séménofsky Regiment’ — All right; everything necessary shall be done. ‘Allow me to salute you without ceremony, and like an old friend and comrade’ — Ah! he has at last remembered it all,” etc., etc.

“Well, my little father,” said he, after he had finished the letter and put my commission aside, “all shall be done; you shall be an officer in the —— th Regiment, and you shall go to-morrow to Fort Bélogorsk, where you will serve under the orders of Commandant Mironoff, a brave and worthy man. There you will really serve and learn discipline. There is nothing for you to do at Orenburg; amusement is bad for a young man. To-day I invite you to dine with me.”

“Worse and worse,” thought I to myself. “What good has it done me to have been a sergeant in the Guard from my cradle? Where has it brought me? To the —— th Regiment, and to a fort stranded on the frontier of the Kirghiz-Kaïsak Steppes!”

I dined at Andréj Karlovitch’s, in the company of his old aide de camp. Strict German economy was the rule at his table, and I think that the dread of a frequent guest at his bachelor’s table contributed not a little to my being so promptly sent away to a distant garrison.

The next day I took leave of the General, and started for my destination.

CHAPTER III.

THE LITTLE POET.

The little fort of Bélogorsk lay about forty versts from Orenburg. From this town the road followed along by the rugged banks of the R. Yaïk. The river was not yet frozen, and its lead-coloured waves looked almost black contrasted with its banks white with snow. Before me stretched the Kirghiz Steppes. I was lost in thought, and my reverie was tinged with melancholy. Garrison life did not offer me much attraction. I tried to imagine what my future chief, Commandant Mironoff, would be like. I saw in my mind’s eye a strict, morose old man, with no ideas beyond the service, and prepared to put me under arrest for the smallest trifle.

Twilight was coming on; we were driving rather quickly.

“Is it far from here to the fort?” I asked the driver.

“Why, you can see it from here,” replied he.

I began looking all round, expecting to see high bastions, a wall, and a ditch. I saw nothing but a little village, surrounded by a wooden palisade. On one side three or four haystacks, half covered with snow; on another a tumble-down windmill, whose sails, made of coarse limetree bark, hung idly down.

“But where is the fort?” I asked, in surprise.

“There it is yonder, to be sure,” rejoined the driver, pointing out to me the village which we had just reached.

I noticed near the gateway an old iron cannon. The streets were narrow and crooked, nearly all the
izbás
were thatched. I ordered him to take me to the Commandant, and almost directly my
kibitka
stopped before a wooden house, built on a knoll near the church, which was also in wood.

No one came to meet me. From the steps I entered the ante-room. An old pensioner, seated on a table, was busy sewing a blue patch on the elbow of a green uniform. I begged him to announce me.

“Come in, my little father,” he said to me; “we are all at home.”

I went into a room, very clean, but furnished in a very homely manner. In one corner there stood a dresser with crockery on it. Against the wall hung, framed and glazed, an officer’s commission. Around this were arranged some bark pictures, representing the “Taking of Kustrin” and of “Otchakóf,” “The Choice of the Betrothed,” and the “Burial of the Cat by the Mice.” Near the window sat an old woman wrapped in a shawl, her head tied up in a handkerchief. She was busy winding thread, which a little, old, one-eyed man in an officer’s uniform was holding on his outstretched hands.

“What do you want, my little father?” she said to me, continuing her employment.

I answered that I had been ordered to join the service here, and that, therefore, I had hastened to report myself to the Commandant. With these words I turned towards the little, old, one-eyed man, whom I had taken for the Commandant. But the good lady interrupted the speech with which I had prepared myself.

“Iván Kouzmitch is not at home,” said she. “He is gone to see Father Garassim. But it’s all the same, I am his wife. Be so good as to love us and take us into favour. Sit down, my little father.”

She called a servant, and bid her tell the “
ouriadnik
” to come.
The little, old man was looking curiously at me with his one eye.

“Might I presume to ask you,” said he to me, “in what regiment you have deigned to serve?”

I satisfied his curiosity.

“And might I ask you,” continued he, “why you have condescended to exchange from the Guard into our garrison?”

I replied that it was by order of the authorities.

“Probably for conduct unbecoming an officer of the Guard?” rejoined my indefatigable questioner.

“Will you be good enough to stop talking nonsense?” the wife of the Commandant now said to him. “You can see very well that this young man is tired with his journey. He has something else to do than to answer your questions. Hold your hands better. And you, my little father,” she continued, turning to me, “do not bemoan yourself too much because you have been shoved into our little hole of a place; you are not the first, and you will not be the last. One may suffer, but one gets accustomed to it. For instance, Chvabrine, Alexey Iványtch, was transferred to us four years ago on account of a murder. Heaven knows what ill-luck befel him. It happened one day he went out of the town with a lieutenant, and they had taken swords, and they set to pinking one another, and Alexey Iványtch killed the lieutenant, and before a couple of witnesses. Well, well, there’s no heading ill-luck!”

At this moment the “
ouriadnik
,” a young and handsome Cossack, came in.

“Maximitch,” the Commandant’s wife said to him, “find a quarter for this officer, and a clean one.”

“I obey, Vassilissa Igorofna,” replied the “
ouriadnik
.” “Ought not his excellency to go to Iwán Poléjaïeff?”

“You are doting, Maximitch,” retorted the Commandant’s wife; “Poléjaïeff has already little enough room; and, besides, he is my gossip; and then he does not forget that we are his superiors. Take the gentleman — What is your name, my little father?”

“Petr’ Andréjïtch.”

“Take Petr’ Andréjïtch to Séméon Kouzoff’s. The rascal let his horse get into my kitchen garden. Is everything in order, Maximitch?”

“Thank heaven! all is quiet,” replied the Cossack. “Only Corporal
Prokoroff has been fighting in the bathhouse with the woman Oustinia
Pegoulina for a pail of hot water.”

“Iwán Ignatiitch,” said the Commandant’s wife to the little one-eyed man, “you must decide between Prokoroff and Oustinia which is to blame, and punish both of them; and you, Maximitch, go, in heaven’s name! Petr’ Andréjïtch, Maximitch will take you to your lodging.”

I took leave. The “
ouriadnik”
led me to an
izbá
, which stood on the steep bank of the river, quite at the far end of the little fort. Half the
izbá
was occupied by the family of Séméon Kouzoff, the other half was given over to me. This half consisted of a tolerably clean room, divided into two by a partition.

Savéliitch began to unpack, and I looked out of the narrow window. I saw stretching out before me a bare and dull steppe; on one side there stood some huts. Some fowls were wandering down the street. An old woman, standing on a doorstep, holding in her hand a trough, was calling to some pigs, the pigs replying by amicable grunts.

And it was in such a country as this I was condemned to pass my youth!

Overcome by bitter grief, I left the window, and went to bed supperless, in spite of Savéliitch’s remonstrances, who continued to repeat, in a miserable tone —

“Oh, good heavens! he does not deign to eat anything. What would my mistress say if the child should fall ill?”

On the morrow, I had scarcely begun to dress before the door of my room opened, and a young officer came in. He was undersized, but, in spite of irregular features, his bronzed face had a remarkably gay and lively expression.

“I beg your pardon,” said he to me in French, “for coming thus unceremoniously to make your acquaintance. I heard of your arrival yesterday, and the wish to see at last a human being took such possession of me that I could not resist any longer. You will understand that when you have been here some time!”

I easily guessed that this was the officer sent away from the Guard in consequence of the duel.

We made acquaintance. Chvabrine was very witty. His conversation was lively and interesting. He described to me, with, much raciness and gaiety, the Commandant’s family, the society of the fort, and, in short, all the country where my fate had led me.

I was laughing heartily when the same pensioner whom I had seen patching his uniform in the Commandant’s ante-room, came in with an invitation to dinner for me from Vassilissa Igorofna.