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STORIES BY FOREIGN AUTHORS

RUSSIAN

MUMU.................BY IVAN TURGENEV

THE SHOT.............BY ALEXANDER POUSHKIN

ST. JOHN'S EVE.......BY NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE..BY LYOF N. TOLSTOI


NEW YORK
1898



CONTENTS

MUMU...................Ivan Turgenev
THE SHOT...............Alexander Poushkin
ST. JOHN'S EVE.........Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE... Lyof N. Tolstoi




MUMU

BY

IVAN TURGENEV

From "Torrents of Spring." Translated by Constance Garnett.


In one of the outlying streets of Moscow, in a gray house with white
columns and a balcony, warped all askew, there was once living a lady, a
widow, surrounded by a numerous household of serfs. Her sons were in the
government service at Petersburg; her daughters were married; she went
out very little, and in solitude lived through the last years of her
miserly and dreary old age. Her day, a joyless and gloomy day, had long
been over; but the evening of her life was blacker than night.

Of all her servants, the most remarkable personage was the porter,
Gerasim, a man full twelve inches over the normal height, of heroic
build, and deaf and dumb from his birth. The lady, his owner, had
brought him up from the village where he lived alone in a little hut,
apart from his brothers, and was reckoned about the most punctual of her
peasants in the payment of the seignorial dues. Endowed with
extraordinary strength, he did the work of four men; work flew apace
under his hands, and it was a pleasant sight to see him when he was
ploughing, while, with his huge palms pressing hard upon the plough, he
seemed alone, unaided by his poor horse, to cleave the yielding bosom of
the earth, or when, about St. Peter's Day, he plied his scythe with a
furious energy that might have mown a young birch copse up by the roots,
or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over two yards long; while the
hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like a lever. His
perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labor. He was
a splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have
been glad to marry him. . . But now they had taken Gerasim to Moscow,
bought him boots, had him made a full-skirted coat for summer, a
sheepskin for winter, put into his hand a broom and a spade, and
appointed him porter.

At first he intensely disliked his new mode of life. From his childhood
he had been used to field labor, to village life. Shut off by his
affliction from the society of men, he had grown up, dumb and mighty, as
a tree grows on a fruitful soil. When he was transported to the town, he
could not understand what was being done with him; he was miserable and
stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken
straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up to his belly,
taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there, while smoke
and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is
whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither--God
knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to
him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half an hour all his work was
done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the
courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying
to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he
would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the
broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for
hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used
to anything, and Gerasim got used at last to living in town. He had
little work to do; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard
clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging
in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and
watching at night. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his
courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust;
if sometimes, in the muddy season, the wretched nag, put under his
charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give
it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horse
itself moving. If he set to chopping wood, the axe fairly rang like
glass, and chips and chunks flew in all directions. And as for
strangers, after he had one night caught two thieves and knocked their
heads together--knocked them so that there was not the slightest need to
take them to the police-station afterwards--every one in the
neighborhood began to feel a great respect for him; even those who came
in the daytime, by no means robbers, but simply unknown persons, at the
sight of the terrible porter, waved and shouted to him as though he
could hear their shouts. With all the rest of the servants, Gerasim was
on terms hardly friendly--they were afraid of him--but familiar; he
regarded them as his fellows. They explained themselves to him by signs,
and he understood them, and exactly carried out all orders, but knew his
own rights too, and soon no one dared to take his seat at the table.
Gerasim was altogether of a strict and serious temper, he liked order in
everything; even the cocks did not dare to fight in his presence, or woe
betide them! Directly he caught sight of them, he would seize them by
the legs, swing them ten times round in the air like a wheel, and throw
them in different directions. There were geese, too, kept in the yard;
but the goose, as is well known, is a dignified and reasonable bird:
Gerasim felt a respect for them, looked after them, and fed them; he was
himself not unlike a gander of the steppes. He was assigned a little
garret over the kitchen; he arranged it himself to his own liking, made
a bedstead in it of oak boards on four stumps of wood for legs--a truly
Titanic bedstead; one might have put a ton or two on it--it would not
have bent under the load; under the bed was a solid chest; in a corner
stood a little table of the same strong kind, and near the table a
three-legged stool, so solid and squat that Gerasim himself would
sometimes pick it up and drop it again with a smile of delight. The
garret was locked up by means of a padlock that looked like a kalatch or
basket-shaped loaf, only black; the key of this padlock Gerasim always
carried about him in his girdle. He did not like people to come to his
garret.

So passed a year, at the end of which a little incident befell Gerasim.

The old lady, in whose service he lived as porter, adhered in everything
to the ancient ways, and kept a large number of servants. In her house
were not only laundresses, sempstresses, carpenters, tailors and
tailoresses, there was even a harness-maker--he was reckoned as a
veterinary surgeon, too,--and a doctor for the servants; there was a
household doctor for the mistress; there was, lastly, a shoemaker, by
name Kapiton Klimov, a sad drunkard. Klimov regarded himself as an
injured creature, whose merits were unappreciated, a cultivated man from
Petersburg, who ought not to be living in Moscow without occupation--in
the wilds, so to speak; and if he drank, as he himself expressed it
emphatically, with a blow on his chest, it was sorrow drove him to it.
So one day his mistress had a conversation about him with her head
steward, Gavrila, a man whom, judging solely from his little yellow eyes
and nose like a duck's beak, fate itself, it seemed, had marked out as a
person in authority. The lady expressed her regret at the corruption of
the morals of Kapiton, who had, only the evening before, been picked up
somewhere in the street.

"Now, Gavrila," she observed, all of a sudden, "now, if we were to marry
him, what do you think, perhaps he would be steadier?"

"Why not marry him, indeed, 'm? He could be married, 'm," answered
Gavrila, "and it would be a very good thing, to be sure, 'm."

"Yes; only who is to marry him?"

"Ay, 'm. But that's at your pleasure, 'm. He may, any way, so to say, be
wanted for something; he can't be turned adrift altogether."

"I fancy he likes Tatiana."

Gavrila was on the point of making some reply, but he shut his lips
tightly.

"Yes! . . . let him marry Tatiana," the lady decided, taking a pinch of
snuff complacently, "Do you hear?"

"Yes, 'm," Gavrila articulated, and he withdrew.

Returning to his own room (it was in a little lodge, and was almost
filled up with metal-bound trunks), Gavrila first sent his wife away,
and then sat down at the window and pondered. His mistress's unexpected
arrangement had clearly put him in a difficulty. At last he got up and
sent to call Kapiton. Kapiton made his appearance. . . But before
reporting their conversation to the reader, we consider it not out of
place to relate in few words who was this Tatiana, whom it was to be
Kapiton's lot to marry, and why the great lady's order had disturbed the
steward.

Tatiana, one of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained and
skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman
of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles
on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen in Russia--a token of
unhappy life. . . Tatiana could not boast of her good luck. From her
earliest youth she had been badly treated; she had done the work of two,
and had never known affection; she had been poorly clothed and had
received the smallest wages. Relations she had practically none; an
uncle she had once had, a butler, left behind in the country as useless,
and other uncles of hers were peasants--that was all. At one time she
had passed for a beauty, but her good looks were very soon over. In
disposition, she was very meek, or, rather, scared; towards herself, she
felt perfect indifference; of others, she stood in mortal dread; she
thought of nothing but how to get her work done in good time, never
talked to any one, and trembled at the very name of her mistress, though
the latter scarcely knew her by sight. When Gerasim was brought from the
country, she was ready to die with fear on seeing his huge figure, tried
all she could to avoid meeting him, even dropped her eyelids when
sometimes she chanced to run past him, hurrying from the house to the
laundry. Gerasim at first paid no special attention to her, then he used
to smile when she came his way, then he began even to stare admiringly
at her, and at last he never took his eyes off her. She took his fancy,
whether by the mild expression of her face or the timidity of her
movements, who can tell? So one day she was stealing across the yard,
with a starched dressing-jacket of her mistress's carefully poised on her
outspread fingers . . . some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the
elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim.
With a foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out
to her a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings. She
was about to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook
his head, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted something
very affectionately to her.

From that day forward he gave her no peace; wherever she went, he was on
the spot at once, coming to meet her, smiling, grunting, waving his
hands; all at once he would pull a ribbon out of the bosom of his smock
and put it in her hand, or would sweep the dust out of her way. The poor
girl simply did not know how to behave or what to do. Soon the whole
household knew of the dumb porter's wiles; jeers, jokes, sly hints, were
showered upon Tatiana. At Gerasim, however, it was not every one who
would dare to scoff; he did not like jokes; indeed, in his presence,
she, too, was left in peace. Whether she liked it or not, the girl found
herself to be under his protection. Like all deaf-mutes, he was very
suspicious, and very readily perceived when they were laughing at him or
at her. One day, at dinner, the wardrobe-keeper, Tatiana's superior,
fell to nagging, as it is called, at her, and brought the poor thing to
such a state that she did not know where to look, and was almost crying
with vexation. Gerasim got up all of a sudden, stretched out his
gigantic hand, laid it on the wardrobe-maid's head, and looked into her
face with such grim ferocity that her head positively flopped upon the
table. Every one was still. Gerasim took up his spoon again and went on
with his cabbage-soup. "Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon!"
they all muttered in undertones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went
out into the maid's room. Another time, noticing that Kapiton--the same
Kapiton who was the subject of the conversation reported above--was
gossiping somewhat too attentively with Tatiana, Gerasim beckoned him to
him, led him into the cartshed, and taking up a shaft that was standing
in a corner by one end, lightly, but most significantly, menaced him
with it. Since then no one addressed a word to Tatiana. And all this
cost him nothing. It is true the wardrobe-maid, as soon as she reached
the maids' room, promptly fell into a fainting fit, and behaved
altogether so skilfully that Gerasim's rough action reached his
mistress's knowledge the same day. But the capricious old lady only
laughed, and several times, to the great offence of the wardrobe-maid,
forced her to repeat "how he bent your head down with his heavy hand,"
and next day she sent Gerasim a rouble. She looked on him with favor as
a strong and faithful watchman. Gerasim stood in considerable awe of
her, but, all the same, he had hopes of her favor, and was preparing to
go to her with a petition for leave to marry Tatiana. He was only
waiting for a new coat, promised him by the steward, to present a proper
appearance before his mistress, when this same mistress suddenly took it
into her head to marry Tatiana to Kapiton.

The reader will now readily understand the perturbation of mind that
overtook the steward Gavrila after his conversation with his mistress.
"My lady," he thought, as he sat at the window, "favors Gerasim, to be
sure"--(Gavrila was well aware of this, and that was why he himself
looked on him with an indulgent eye)--"still he is a speechless
creature. I could not, indeed, put it before the mistress that Gerasim's
courting Tatiana. But, after all, it's true enough; he's a queer sort of
husband. But on the other hand, that devil, God forgive me, has only got
to find out they're marrying Tatiana to Kapiton, he'll smash up
everything in the house, 'pon my soul! There's no reasoning with him;
why, he's such a devil, God forgive my sins, there's no getting over him
nohow . . . 'pon my soul!"

Kapiton's entrance broke the thread of Gavrila's reflections. The
dissipated shoemaker came in, his hands behind him, and lounging
carelessly against a projecting angle of the wall, near the door,
crossed his right foot in front of his left, and tossed his head, as
much as to say, "What do you want?"

Gavrila looked at Kapiton, and drummed with his fingers on the window-
frame. Kapiton merely screwed up his leaden eyes a little, but he did
not look down; he even grinned slightly, and passed his hand over his
whitish locks which were sticking up in all directions. "Well, here I
am. What is it?"

"You're a pretty fellow," said Gavrila, and paused. "A pretty fellow you
are, there's no denying!"

Kapiton only twitched his little shoulders. "Are you any better, pray?"
he thought to himself.

"Just look at yourself, now, look at yourself," Gavrila went on
reproachfully; "now, whatever do you look like?"

Kapiton serenely surveyed his shabby, tattered coat and his patched
trousers, and with special attention stared at his burst boots,
especially the one on the tiptoe of which his right foot so gracefully
poised, and he fixed his eyes again on the steward.

"Well?"

"Well?" repeated Gavrila. "Well? And then you say well? You look like
Old Nick himself, God forgive my saying so, that's what you look like."

Kapiton blinked rapidly.

"Go on abusing me, go on, if you like, Gavrila Andreitch," he thought to
himself again.

"Here you've been drunk again," Gavrila began, "drunk again, haven't
you? Eh? Come, answer me!"

"Owing to the weakness of my health, I have exposed myself to spirituous
beverages, certainly," replied Kapiton.

"Owing to the weakness of your health! . . . They let you off too easy,
that's what it is; and you've been apprenticed in Petersburg. . . Much you
learned in your apprenticeship! You simply eat your bread in idleness."

"In that matter, Gavrila Andreitch, there is One to judge me, the Lord
God Himself, and no one else. He also knows what manner of man I be in
this world, and whether I eat my bread in idleness. And as concerning
your contention regarding drunkenness, in that matter, too, I am not to
blame, but rather a friend; he led me into temptation, but was
diplomatic and got away, while I . . ."

"While you were left like a goose, in the street. Ah, you're a dissolute
fellow! But that's not the point," the steward went on, "I've something
to tell you. Our lady . . ." here he paused a minute, "it's our lady's
pleasure that you should be married. Do you hear? She imagines you may
be steadier when you're married. Do you understand?"

"To be sure I do."

"Well, then. For my part I think it would be better to give you a good
hiding. But there--it's her business. Well? are you agreeable?"

Kapiton grinned.

"Matrimony is an excellent thing for any one, Gavrila Andreitch; and, as
far as I am concerned, I shall be quite agreeable."

"Very well, then," replied Gavrila, while he reflected to himself:
"There's no denying the man expresses himself very properly. Only
there's one thing," he pursued aloud: "the wife our lady's picked out
for you is an unlucky choice."

"Why, who is she, permit me to inquire?"

"Tatiana."

"Tatiana?"

And Kapiton opened his eyes, and moved a little away from the wall.

"Well, what are you in such a taking for? . . . Isn't she to your taste,
hey?"

"Not to my taste, do you say, Gavrila Andreitch? She's right enough, a
hard-working steady girl. . . But you know very well yourself, Gavrila
Andreitch, why that fellow, that wild man of the woods, that monster of
the steppes, he's after her, you know. . ."

"I know, mate, I know all about it," the butler cut him short in a tone
of annoyance: "but there, you see . . ."

"But upon my soul, Gavrila Andreitch! why, he'll kill me, by God, he
will, he'll crush me like some fly; why, he's got a fist--why, you
kindly look yourself what a fist he's got; why, he's simply got a fist
like Minin Pozharsky's. You see he's deaf, he beats and does not hear
how he's beating! He swings his great fists, as if he's asleep. And
there's no possibility of pacifying him; and for why? Why, because, as
you know yourself, Gavrila Andreitch, he's deaf, and what's more, has no
more wit than the heel of my foot. Why, he's a sort of beast, a heathen
idol, Gavrila Andreitch, and worse . . . a block of wood; what have I done
that I should have to suffer from him now? Sure it is, it's all over me
now; I've knocked about, I've had enough to put up with, I've been
battered like an earthenware pot, but still I'm a man, after all, and
not a worthless pot."

"I know, I know, don't go talking away. . ."

"Lord, my God!" the shoemaker continued warmly, "when is the end? when,
O Lord! A poor wretch I am, a poor wretch whose sufferings are endless!
What a life, what a life mine's been come to think of it! In my young
days, I was beaten by a German I was 'prentice to; in the prime of life
beaten by my own countrymen, and last of all, in ripe years, see what I
have been brought to. . ."

"Ugh, you flabby soul!" said Gavrila Andreitch. "Why do you make so many
words about it?"

"Why, do you say, Gavrila Andreitch? It's not a beating I'm afraid of,
Gavrila Andreitch. A gentleman may chastise me in private, but give me a
civil word before folks, and I'm a man still; but see now, whom I've to
do with . . ."

"Come, get along," Gavrila interposed impatiently. Kapiton turned away
and staggered off.

"But, if it were not for him," the steward shouted after him, "you would
consent for your part?"

"I signify my acquiescence," retorted Kapiton as he disappeared.

His fine language did not desert him, even in the most trying positions.

The steward walked several times up and down the room.

"Well, call Tatiana now," he said at last.

A few instants later, Tatiana had come up almost noiselessly, and was
standing in the doorway.

"What are your orders, Gavrila Andreitch?" she said in a soft voice.

The steward looked at her intently.

"Well, Taniusha," he said, "would you like to be married? Our lady has
chosen a husband for you?"

"Yes, Gavrila Andreitch. And whom has she deigned to name as a husband
for me?" she added falteringly.

"Kapiton, the shoemaker."

"Yes, sir."

"He's a feather-brained fellow, that's certain. But it's just for that
the mistress reckons upon you."

"Yes, sir."

"There's one difficulty . . . you know the deaf man, Gerasim, he's courting
you, you see. How did you come to bewitch such a bear? But you see,
he'll kill you, very like, he's such a bear . . ."

"He'll kill me, Gavrila Andreitch, he'll kill me, and no mistake."

"Kill you . . . Well we shall see about that. What do you mean by saying
he'll kill you? Has he any right to kill you? tell me yourself."

"I don't know, Gavrila Andreitch, about his having any right or not."

"What a woman! why, you've made him no promise, I suppose . . ."

"What are you pleased to ask of me?"

The steward was silent for a little, thinking, "You're a meek soul!
Well, that's right," he said aloud; "we'll have another talk with you
later, now you can go, Taniusha; I see you're not unruly, certainly."

Tatiana turned, steadied herself a little against the doorpost, and went
away.

"And, perhaps, our lady will forget all about this wedding by to-
morrow," thought the steward; "and here am I worrying myself for
nothing! As for that insolent fellow, we must tie him down if it comes
to that, we must let the police know . . . Ustinya Fyedorovna!" he shouted
in a loud voice to his wife, "heat the samovar, my good soul . . ." All
that day Tatiana hardly went out of the laundry. At first she had
started crying, then she wiped away her tears, and set to work as
before. Kapiton stayed till late at night at the gin-shop with a friend
of his, a man of gloomy appearance, to whom he related in detail how he
used to live in Petersburg with a gentleman, who would have been all
right, except he was a bit too strict, and he had a slight weakness
besides, he was too fond of drink; and, as to the fair sex, he didn't
stick at anything. His gloomy companion merely said yes; but when
Kapiton announced at last that, in a certain event, he would have to lay
hands on himself to-morrow, his gloomy companion remarked that it was
bedtime. And they parted in surly silence.

Meanwhile, the steward's anticipations were not fulfilled. The old lady
was so much taken up with the idea of Kapiton's wedding, that even in
the night she talked of nothing else to one of her companions, who was
kept in her house solely to entertain her in case of sleeplessness, and,
like a night cabman, slept in the day. When Gavrila came to her after
morning tea with his report, her first question was: "And how about our
wedding--is it getting on all right?" He replied, of course, that it was
getting on first-rate, and that Kapiton would appear before her to pay
his reverence to her that day. The old lady was not quite well; she did
not give much time to business. The steward went back to his own room,
and called a council. The matter certainly called for serious
consideration. Tatiana would make no difficulty, of course; but Kapiton
had declared in the hearing of all that he had but one head to lose, not
two or three. . . Gerasim turned rapid sullen looks on every one, would
not budge from the steps of the maids' quarters, and seemed to guess
that some mischief was being hatched against him. They met together.
Among them was an old sideboard waiter, nicknamed Uncle Tail, to whom
every one looked respectfully for counsel, though all they got out of
him was, "Here's a pretty pass! to be sure, to be sure, to be sure!" As
a preliminary measure of security, to provide against contingencies,
they locked Kapiton up in the lumber-room where the filter was kept;
then considered the question with the gravest deliberation. It would, to
be sure, be easy to have recourse to force. But Heaven save us! There
would be an uproar, the mistress would be put out--it would be awful!
What should they do? They thought and thought, and at last thought out a
solution. It had many a time been observed that Gerasim could not bear
drunkards. . . . As he sat at the gates, he would always turn away with
disgust when some one passed by intoxicated, with unsteady steps and his
cap on one side of his ear. They resolved that Tatiana should be
instructed to pretend to be tipsy, and should pass by Gerasim staggering
and reeling about. The poor girl refused for a long while to agree to
this, but they persuaded her at last; she saw, too, that it was the only
possible way of getting rid of her adorer. She went out. Kapiton was
released from the lumber-room; for, after all, he had an interest in the
affair. Gerasim was sitting on the curbstone at the gates, scraping the
ground with a spade. . . . From behind every corner, from behind every
window-blind, the others were watching him. . . . The trick succeeded
beyond all expectations. On seeing Tatiana, at first, he nodded as usual,
making caressing, inarticulate sounds; then he looked carefully at her,
dropped his spade, jumped up, went up to her, brought his face close to
her face. . . . In her fright she staggered more than ever, and shut her
eyes. . . . He took her by the arm, whirled her right across the yard, and
going into the room where the council had been sitting, pushed her
straight at Kapiton. Tatiana fairly swooned away. . . . Gerasim stood,
looked at her, waved his hand, laughed, and went off, stepping heavily,
to his garret. . . . For the next twenty-four hours he did not come out of
it. The postilion Antipka said afterwards that he saw Gerasim through a
crack in the wall, sitting on his bedstead, his face in his hand. From
time to time he uttered soft regular sounds; he was wailing a dirge,
that is, swaying backwards and forwards with his eyes shut, and shaking
his head as drivers or bargemen do when they chant their melancholy
songs. Antipka could not bear it, and he came away from the crack. When
Gerasim came out of the garret next day, no particular change could be
observed in him. He only seemed, as it were, more morose, and took not
the slightest notice of Tatiana or Kapiton. The same evening, they both
had to appear before their mistress with geese under their arms, and in
a week's time they were married. Even on the day of the wedding Gerasim
showed no change of any sort in his behavior. Only, he came back from
the river without water, he had somehow broken the barrel on the road;
and at night, in the stable, he washed and rubbed down his horse so
vigorously, it swayed like a blade of grass in the wind, and staggered
from one leg to the other under his fists of iron.

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