VII

One day when as usual I came to the witch’s hut shortly before dusk, I was struck by the dejected spirits of its occupants. Manuilikha sat hunched on her bed with her feet tucked under her, rocking back and forth and muttering to herself, her head clasped in her hands. She ignored my greeting. Olesya responded with her habitual friendliness, but our conversation flagged. She must have been listening abstractedly, for her replies were completely off the point. Her beautiful face was shadowed by inner anxiety.

“I see you’re in some sort of trouble, Olesya,” I said, and gently touched her hand lying on the bench.

Quickly she turned away to stare out of the window. She tried to look calm, but her knitted eyebrows trembled, and her teeth dug into her lip.

“No, what could have happened to us?” she said tonelessly. “Everything’s just as it was.”

“Why won’t you tell me the truth, Olesya? That isn’t fair of you. I thought we were friends.”

“There’s nothing wrong, I assure you. Just our little troubles – all kinds of trifles.”

“No, Olesya, trifles wouldn’t make you look like that.”

“That’s your fancy.”

“Please be frank with me, Olesya. I don’t know if I can help you, but I may at least be able to give you some advice. And after all, you’ll feel better simply because you’ll have shared your sorrow with me.”

“Oh, it’s no use talking about it, really,” she replied impatiently. “There’s nothing you can do to help us.”

The old woman suddenly burst into our conversation with unusual heat.

“Stop being a fool, will you? You should listen when he speaks sense to you instead of sticking up your nose. Think there is nobody on earth cleverer than you? Let me tell you the whole story, sir,” she said, turning to me.

The trouble proved to be far more serious than I could have gathered from proud Olesya’s hints. The uryadnik had dropped into the witch’s hut the night before.

“At first he sat down nicely and asked for some vodka,” said Manuilikha, “and then he let go. ‘You clear out of this house,’ he says, ‘in twenty-four hours, with bag and baggage. If I find you in here when I come next,’ he says, ‘I’ll have you transported, and no mistake. I’ll pack you off to your home with two soldiers, damn you!’ he says. Now my home is far away, sir – the town of Amchensk. I don’t know a living soul there any more and, besides, our passports ran out a long, long time ago. Anyway they weren’t in order from the outset. Oh dear!”

“But he didn’t mind your living here before, did he?” I said. “Why must he bully you now?”

“That’s just what I’d like to know. He gabbled something, but I couldn’t make it out. You see, this hut we live in isn’t ours, it’s the landlord’s. We used to live in the village, and then – ”

“I know, Granny, I’ve heard about it. The peasants got angry with you.”

“So they did. Then I went to the old landlord, Mr. Abrosimov, and cried, and he let me have this hovel. But now it seems a new landlord’s bought the forest and wants to drain the marsh or something. Only why can’t I stay here?” “Perhaps the whole thing’s just a tale, Granny?” I remarked. “The uryadnik may simply be wanting you to grease his palm.”

“I tried that, my friend, I did. He wouldn’t take it! Would you believe that? I offered him twenty-five rubles, and he wouldn’t have it. Oh, no! He was so mad I was scared out of my wits. He just kept bawling, ‘Get out of here!’ What are we going to do now, poor orphans that we are! If only you could help us, good sir, and talk him out of it, the greedy dog! You’d oblige me no end.”

“Granny!” said Olesya, with reproachful emphasis.

“Granny what?” Manuilikha returned testily. “I’ve been your granny for twenty-four years. Do you think we’d better go begging? Don’t listen to her, sir. Please help us if you can.”

Vaguely I promised to plead for them, although, to tell the truth, there seemed little hope. For the uryadnik to refuse a bribe, the thing must be serious indeed. That evening Olesya bade me a cold goodbye and would not walk with me as she usually did. I saw that the proud girl resented my interference, and also that she was a little ashamed of her grandmother’s tearful behaviour.

VIII

It was a grey, warm morning. Already there had been several brief showers of large raindrops of the beneficial kind that makes young grass sprout under your eyes and fresh shoots come up. After each shower the sun would peep out for a moment to shine joyfully down on the rain-washed leaves of the lilacs – still a delicate green – that crowded my front garden; the perky sparrows would chirp more loudly on the loosened kitchen-garden beds; the sticky brown buds of the poplars would give off a stronger fragrance. I sat sketching a forest cottage when Yarmola stepped in.

“The uryadnik’s here,” he said glumly.

I had quite forgotten that two days ago I had told him to let me know if the uryadnik arrived, and so I could not understand what business that representative of the authorities might have with me just then.

“What’s that?” I asked in perplexity.

“I said the uryadnik was here,” Yarmola replied, in that hostile tone which he had been using towards me lately. “I saw him at the dam a minute ago. He’s coming this way.”

Wheels rattled outside. I rushed to the window and opened it. A skinny, chocolate-coloured gelding with a drooping lip and hurt mien was pulling at a staid trot a high, shaky wicker gig to which it was harnessed by a single shaft, the other being replaced by a stout rope – the local wags claimed that the uryadnik was using such a sorry turnout on purpose to prevent undesirable rumours. The uryadnik himself was driving, his monstrous form, clad in a greatcoat of expensive grey cloth and taking up both seats.

“My compliments, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich!” I shouted, leaning out of the window.

“Oh, good morning! How are you?” he responded in the amiable, rolling baritone of a superior.

He reined up the gelding, saluted me, and bent forward with a ponderous grace.

“Could you drop in for a second? I’ve some little business to discuss with you.”

He shook his head.

“I can’t. I’m carrying out my duties. Driving to Volosha to inspect a dead body – a drowned man.”

But by then I knew his foibles and therefore said with affected indifference, “That’s too bad. I’ve got two bottles of some nice stuff from Count Wortzel’s estate, and I thought – ”

“I can’t. Duty, you know.”

“A man I know sold it to me. He’d been hoarding it in his cellar like a family treasure. Perhaps you’ll drop in, after all. I’ll have some oats given to your horse.”

“You mustn’t insist, really,” he said. “Don’t you know duty comes first? What’s in those bottles, anyway? Plum brandy?”

“Plum brandy, indeed! It’s old vodka, sir, that’s what it is!”

“I’ve already had something, to be frank.” He scratched his cheek, grimacing regretfully.

“Of course it may not be true,” I went on as coolly as before, “but the man swore it was two hundred years old. It smells like real cognac, and it’s as yellow as amber.”

“See what you’re doing to me!” he exclaimed in comic dismay. “Now who’ll take over the horse?”

I actually had several bottles of old vodka, although it was not quite so ancient as I had boasted; but I counted on the force of suggestion to make it a few score years older. Anyway it was real home-made old vodka of a stunning strength, the pride of the cellars of a ruined magnate. The uryadnik, who came of a clergyman’s family, at once secured a bottle from me against the possibility of what he called illness from a cold. And the snack I offered – fresh radish with newly-churned butter – was highly palatable.

“And what may your business be?” he asked me after his fifth glass, and sat back in an old easy chair, which groaned under his weight.

I depicted to him the poor old woman’s plight, mentioned her helpless condition and despair, and made a passing allusion to unnecessary form. He listened to me with bowed head, methodically cutting off the roots of the red, sturdy radish and crunching it with gusto. Occasionally he looked up at me with his impassive, bleared eyes, blue and ridiculously small, but I could read neither sympathy nor protest in his huge red face.

“So what do you want me to do?” was all he asked me when I paused at last.

“What do you mean what?” I replied excitedly. “Can’t you see the plight they’re in? Two poor, defenceless women – ”

“And one of them as pretty as a rosebud!” he put in sarcastically.

“Perhaps so, but that’s beside the point. What I’d like to know is why you can’t show some sympathy for them. You don’t expect me to believe you must evict them so very urgently, do you? You might at least wait a little end give me a chance to plead for them with the landlord. What would be the risk of waiting a month or so?”

“What risk?” He sprang up from his easy chair. “Why, it might cost me a lot, and my job first of all. God knows what that new landlord, Mr. Ilyashevich, is like. He might be a busy-body, one of those who write off to Petersburg the moment they come across some trifle. We get people like that down here all right!”

I tried to calm the irate uryadnik.

“Come, now, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich, you’re laying it on a bit too thick. And then, even if there is a risk, there’ll be gratitude too.”

“Pah!” he exclaimed, and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his wide trousers. “Talk of gratitude! D’you think I’d stake my job for a measly twenty-five rubles? No, sir, you don’t know me if you imagine that.”

“Don’t take on, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich. It isn’t a question of money at all, it’s – It would be an act of humanity.”

“Hu-ma-ni-ty?” he repeated ironically, syllable by syllable. “Here’s where that humanity weighs on me!”

He vigorously slapped his hand across his powerful bronzed nape overhanging the collar in a hairless fold.

“You’re exaggerating, I think, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich.”

“Not a bit, sir. ‘It’s a scourge of these parts,’ to use an expression by Mr. Krylov, the famous fabulist. That’s what those two ladies are, sir! Have you read The Police-officer, that splendid book by His Highness Prince Urusov?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’ve missed a lot, sir. It’s an excellent and highly edifying work. I suggest that you read it at leisure.”

“Very good, I’ll read it gladly. But still I don’t see what that book’s got to do with the two poor women.”

“What it’s got to do with them? A great deal. Point one” – he bent his thick, hairy left forefinger – “The police officer shall watch unflaggingly that every person assiduously attends the House of God, which duty he should not, however, deem to be a burthen.’ May I ask you if that woman – what d’you call her – Manuilikha, is it? – if she ever goes to church?”

I made no comment, struck dumb by the unexpected turn the conversation had taken. He gave me a triumphant look, and bent his middle finger.

“Point two: ‘It is prohibited to engage anywhere in false prophecies or false auguries.’ See how it is, sir? And now comes point three: ‘It is prohibited to make oneself out to be a sorcerer or magician, or to resort to any similar fraudulent practices.’ What do you say to that? Suppose all that came out all of a sudden or reached the higher authorities somehow? Who’d be called to account? Me. Who would get the sack? Me again. So there you are.”

He sat down again. His eyes wandered vacantly over the walls, while his fingers drummed loudly on the table.

“But if I asked you as a special favour, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich?” I began again, in an ingratiating tone. “You are doubtless burdened by complex and troublesome duties, but then I know you have an exceedingly kind, a golden heart. You could quite easily promise me not to disturb those women.”

The uryadnik’s roaming eyes hovered somewhere above my head.

“A fine gun you’ve got there,” he said casually, still drumming. “An excellent gun. Last time when I was here and didn’t find you in I admired it so much. A wonderful gun!”

I turned my head to look at the gun.

“Yes, it’s all right,” I praised it. “It’s an old one, you know, made in Europe. I had it refashioned into a centre-fire gun last year. Take a look at the barrels.”

“Certainly, the barrels are just what I’ve been admiring most. A splendid thing. I should say quite a treasure.”

Our eyes met, and I saw a faint but meaning smile flutter in the corners of his mouth. I got up, took the gun down from the wall, and walked up to him.

“The Circassians have a charming custom of presenting their guests with anything they admire,” I said amiably. “You and I aren’t Circassians, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich, but I beg you to accept this from me as a souvenir.”

He pretended to be embarrassed.

“Oh, come, you can’t give away such a beauty! No, really, that’s too generous a custom!”

But I did not have to press him long. He accepted the gun, stood it gently between his knees, and carefully wiped the dust from the trigger with a clean handkerchief. I was somewhat reassured as I saw that my gun had passed into the possession of a connoisseur. The uryadnik rose almost immediately after the transfer, and made haste to leave.

“I’ve got urgent business to see to but I’ve been chatting instead,” he said, stamping on the floor to get his galoshes on. “You’re welcome to my place when you visit our parts.”

“And how about Manuilikha, sir?” I reminded him discreetly.

“We’ll see,” he grunted noncommittally. “There was something I wanted to ask you for. You’ve got wonderful radish.”

“I grew it myself.”

“It’s amazing radish. You know, my better half has a weakness for all kinds of vegetables. So I wondered if you couldn’t – just one bunch, you know.”

“I’d be delighted to, Yevpsikhy Afrikanovich. I’d consider it an honour. I’ll send you a basketful by messenger today. And some butter if you don’t mind. I’ve got butter of rare quality.”

“Oh, well, and some butter,” he condescended. “And you may let those women know that I’m not going to disturb them for a while. But let them bear in mind” – he suddenly raised his voice – ”they won’t get off with a thank you. And now, goodbye. Thanks again for the present and the treat.”

He clicked his heels in military fashion and walked with the heavy gait of a well-fed man of importance to his carriage, near which the sotsky the elder, and Yarmola were standing respectfully, cap in hand.