Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

it, damn your eyes, that don’t give any peace to the village with your goat!’ And suddenly I see a tall muzhik rushing toward me from the corn kiln⁠—without a cap, beltless, in boots. He ran on me at full speed. ‘Your goat?’ ‘Mine.⁠ ⁠…’ He unwraps himself, swings back, and lets fly one in my ear.”

“Good work!” exclaimed the old man and Pashka in the same breath; as for the schoolboy, he even let out a little squeal: this, then, was the most horrible part of all! But Theodot calmly pulled out the skirt of his short coat from under him, and calmly continued:

“Oh, yes, he warmed me up so that my head just begun to hum. I grab him by his hands, and ask him, what that was for? And by now people was running up.⁠ ⁠… Right in front of everybody, I ask them to be witnesses of this here matter; again I ask what it was my goat had gone and done? It turns out that she had knocked a child off its feet, had broken its head, making it bleed; had chewn up a shirt, and had trampled some rye. Very well⁠—complain to the court about it; there I’ll be called to account and you won’t be let off either. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘you ain’t a-goin’ to get a durn thing off me!’ I put on my cap and went as fast as I could to the owner’s yard. I grew a trifle cheerier: the goat, thinks I, won’t get away from me now; and you can’t sue me now⁠—you should have waited before you started in fighting with me. I draw near and I see, on a pony with a clipped tail, a lad in a satin cap, his legs and arms bare⁠—a jockey, they calls it. The horse is playful, and he flicks it with a little whip. ‘How do you do, now; allow me to ask⁠—has your grace got my she-goat?’ ‘And who may you be?’ ‘I’m the owner of that there goat.’ ‘Well, now, my daddy ordered it to be driven in.’ Things are going along fine; I go on farther and meet a beggar, from whom I lay in some bread⁠—for the hounds in the owner’s yard are pretty big. I enter the yard and see a four-horse carriage standing on the gravelled drive near the house⁠—the horses are well-fed, spirited. There’s a flunky at the grand entrance, his beard parted in two. A grownup young lady walks out in a hat trimmed with ribbons, her face all covered up with muslin. ‘Dasha!’ she yells to the maid in the house, ‘ask the master to come as soon as possible. He’s at the riding-ground.’ I start for the riding-ground. There I see the owner himself standing, in a uniform frock with a green collar; he wears a medal and carries his cap in his hand; his bald head simply blazes in the sun, his belly is all in creases, and he’s all red himself. And there’s a little lad perched up on the roof, his arm plunged in under the roofing, looking for something⁠—must be for starlings, thinks I to myself. But no⁠—he was taken up with sparrows. The owner looks on, yelling: ‘Catch them, catch, them, the sons of bitches!’ And the little boy catches the young sparrows, pulls them out, and knocks them against the ground. The owner catches sight of me: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Why, now,’ says I, ‘your gardener caught my she-goat at the strawberries. Allow me to take her away, so’s I may kill her.’ ‘This isn’t the first time, now,’ says he, ‘I shall fine you two roubles.’ ‘I agree with you,’ I says, ‘I’m at fault, and I admit it. What hard luck!’ I says, ‘I always have two wenches watching it; but yesterday, as though for spite⁠—the deuce knows whether they ate too many raw mushrooms, or what it was⁠—they was rolling around, spewing up; and as for my wife, she also didn’t watch out, to tell the truth⁠—she was lying in the barn, yelling with all her might⁠—her hand had all swollen up.⁠ ⁠…’ A man’s got to excuse himself somehow. I tell him all about what a baneful creature my she-goat is, how I was given one in the ear for her⁠—he laughs and grows good-natured. ‘No matter how I chase her,’ says I, ‘I can’t catch her nohow; and I so wanted to ask your grace for a little gunpowder and to borrow a gun from the truck gardener, so’s to shoot her with it. Well, of course, he softened a lot, allowed me to take her, and I done for her on the spot.”

“You done for her?” asked the old man.

“Absolutely,” said Theodot. “ ‘Well, take it,’ says he, ‘only watch out, don’t mix it up with mine.’ ‘That won’t happen, nohow,’ says I, ‘I’d know her amongst a thousand.’ We went out to the fold, taking Pakhomka the shepherd along with us. I give one look⁠—and at once notice her behind the sheep; she was standing, looking at me sharply for some reason, eyeing me askance. Me and Pakhomka got the sheep into a corner as tight as we could, and I began to walk up to her. I make two steps⁠—she gives one jump over a ram! And again she stands, looking. Again I start for her.⁠ ⁠… And then, she points her head with its horns toward the ground and makes one dash for the sheep, and they all just rush away from her⁠—they parted like water! Then I got mad. Says I to Pakhomka: ‘You just drive her up as easy as you can, the whilst I climb up on the shed, where it’s darker, and grab her by the horns.’ And it’s awful how much manure there was in that yard, right up to the very sheds in some places. I climbed up on the shed, laid down, grabbed a beam as hard as I could, whilst