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

who, as Ivlev had known ever since childhood, had all his life long been a maniac over his love for his chambermaid Lushka, who had died in early youth. “Ah, this legendary Lushka!” Ivlev had remarked jestingly, slightly confused over his confession. “Because this queer fellow had made a divinity of her, had dedicated all his life to insane dreams of her, I, in my youth, was almost in love with her: I fancied, in thinking of her, God knows what; although, they do say, she was not at all good-looking.” “Yes?” said the countess, without listening. “Why, he died this winter, you know. And Pisarev⁠—the only one whose visits he tolerated, because of their old friendship⁠—affirms that in everything else he was not in the least insane, and I believe it⁠—he was simply different from the run of the men of today.⁠ ⁠…” Finally the barefooted wench with unusual carefullness served him with a glass of strong gray tea out of a teapot, and with a small basket of flyspecked tea cookies.

When they started off again, the rain had set in in earnest. It was necessary to raise the top, to cover up with the calcined, shrunken apron, to sit all hunched up. The horses clattered their muffled bells; little streams ran over their dark and glistening haunches; the grasses swished succulently under their wheels as they passed some boundary or other, among the fields of grain, through which the young fellow had driven in the hope of shortening the way; the warm rye-scented air gathered underneath the top, blending with the odour of the old tarantass.⁠ ⁠… “So that’s how things are⁠—Khvoshchinsky has died,” Ivlev was thinking. “I absolutely must drive up, just to have a glance at this deserted sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka.⁠ ⁠… But what sort of a man was this Khvoshchinsky? A madman, or simply some sort of an overwhelmed soul, all centred in one thing? To judge by the stories of old landowners, who were of the same age as Khvoshchinsky, he had at one time passed for an extraordinarily clever fellow in this province. And suddenly there fell upon him this love, this Lushka; then her unexpected death came⁠—and everything went to rack and ruin. He locked himself up in the house, in that room where Lushka had lived and died, and had sat there through more than twenty years⁠—not only not going out anywhere, but not showing himself to anybody even on his own estate. He had sat a hole through and through the mattress on Lushka’s bed, and ascribed literally everything that took place in the world to Lushka’s influence: if there were a thunderstorm⁠—it was Lushka who sent it; if a war were declared⁠—it meant that Lushka had so decided; if the harvest happened to be bad⁠—the peasants had not succeeded in pleasing Lushka.⁠ ⁠…”

“You’re driving to Khvoshchinsky’s, aren’t you?” called out Ivlev, putting his head out in the rain.

“To Khvoshchinsky’s,” came from the lad, indistinctly through the noise of the rain; water was running down from his drooping cap by this time. “Going up Pisarev’s hill.⁠ ⁠…”

Ivlev did not know any such road. The settlements were constantly becoming poorer and farther away from the world. The boundary came to an end, the horses were going at a walk, and brought the careening tarantass through a washed-out hollow to the bottom of a little hill, into some still unmown meadows, the green declivities of which stood out mournfully against the low-lying clouds. Then the road, now disappearing, now finding itself anew, began to wind in and out, along the bottoms of gullies, through ravines filled with alder bushes and branching osiers. They came upon somebody’s little apiary⁠—several small logs standing upon a slope, among tall grass with wild strawberries glimmering red through it.⁠ ⁠… They made a detour of some old dam, sunk among nettles, and a pond long since dried up⁠—a deep hollow, grown over with burdocks taller than a man in height.⁠ ⁠… A pair of black snipe with a mournful cry darted out of them towards the rainy sky.⁠ ⁠… But upon the dam, amidst the nettles, an old, big bush was blossoming out with little pale pink flowers⁠—that charming little tree which is called God’s Own Tree,11⁠—and Ivlev suddenly recalled the localities, recalled that he had ridden through here more than once on horseback in his youth, with a gun slung over his shoulders.⁠ ⁠…

“They do say that she drowned herself right here,” said the young fellow unexpectedly.

“You’re talking about the mistress of Khvoshchinsky, aren’t you?” asked Ivlev. “That isn’t so; she didn’t even think of drowning.”

“No⁠—she did drown herself,” said the lad, “only, they think that he went mad from his poverty, most likely, and not on account of her.⁠ ⁠…”

And after a silence, he roughly added:

“Well, we ought to be driving on again.⁠ ⁠… For this same Khvoshchinskoë now.⁠ ⁠… Look at how petered out them horses be!”

“Suit yourself,” said Ivlev.

Upon the hillock whither the road (now lead-coloured from the rain) led, upon a clearing from which the trees had been carried away, among the wet, rotting chips and leaves, among the stumps and young aspen growths, with their bitter and fresh scent, a solitary hut was standing. There was never a soul around⁠—only the singing green-finches, sitting under the rain upon tall flowers, rang through the entire thin forest that stretched upward beyond the hut. But when the troika, splashing through the mud, had come abreast of its threshold, a whole pack of huge hounds dashed out from somewhere⁠—black, chocolate, and smoke-coloured⁠—and with ferocious baying swirled around the horses, jumping up to their very muzzles, turning head over heels as they ran, and even spinning up to the very top of the tarantass. At the same time, and just as unexpectedly, the sky over the tarantass was split by a deafening peal of thunder, which had not sounded once during the day, while the young fellow began in a rage to lash the dogs with his whip, and the horses dashed