Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev Page A

say,’ he muttered and cast his line far out.
    We were sitting in the shade, but even in the shade it was stifling. The heavy, heat-laden wind had literally fallen to nothing and one’s burning face sought any kind of breeze, but there was no breeze at all. The sun literally beat down from a blue, darkened sky. Directly opposite us, on the other bank, a field of oats glowed yellow, with wormwood growing in it here and there, and yet not a single stalk so much as quivered. A little lower down a peasant’s horse stood in the river up to its knees and lazily waved about its wet tail. Occasionally a large fish swam to the surface beneath an overhanging bush, emitted bubbles and then slowly sank to the bottom, leaving behind it a slight ripple. Grasshoppers sawed away in the sun-browned grass. Quail cried out as if despite themselves. Hawks floated smoothly above the fields and frequently stopped in one spot, rapidly beating their wings and fanning out their tails. We sat motionless, oppressed by the heat. Suddenly, behind us, there came a noise from the creek as someone descended towards the spring. I looked round and saw a peasant of about fifty, covered in dust, in a peasant shirt and bast shoes, with a woven bag and coarse coat flung over his shoulder. He approached the spring, drank thirstily and then stood up.
    â€˜Eh, is it Vlas?’ cried out Foggy, peering at him. ‘Good to see you, brother. Where’s God brought you from?’
    â€˜Good to see you, too, Mikhaylo Savelyich,’ said the peasant, coming up to us. ‘A long way off.’
    â€˜Where’s that?’ Foggy asked him.
    â€˜I been off to Moscow to see the master.’
    â€˜Why’s that?’
    â€˜To ask ’im somethin’.’
    â€˜Ask ’im what?’
    â€˜Ask ’im so as I’d pay less rent or did unpaid labour, you know, or got resettled… My boy died, see. So it’s hard for me on my own to get by.’
    â€˜Your son’s dead?’
    â€˜Dead. My dead boy,’ the peasant added after a pause, ‘was a cabbie in Moscow. He used to pay my rent, see.’
    â€˜Are you really on quit-rent now?’
    â€˜I am.’
    â€˜What did your master say?’
    â€˜What did he say? He drove me away, he did. He said, how’d youdare come straight to me? I’ve got a bailiff, you gotta see ’im first, he says. And where’d I resettle you anyhow? You gotta pay off what you owes me first, he says. Blew up, he did.’
    â€˜Well, so you came back here?’
    â€˜Back here. I wanted to know, you know, whether my dead boy’d left any things behind ’im, but I couldn’t get no sense out of ’em. I said to ‘is boss: “I’m Philip’s father,” and he says to me: “How’m I to know that? Anyhow your son didn’t leave nothin’. He was owin’ me money.” So I came back here.’
    The peasant recounted all this with a slight tone of mockery, as if none of it applied to himself, but tears stood in his small, shrunken eyes and his lips quivered.
    â€˜So you’re off home now, are you?’
    â€˜Where else? ’Course I’m goin’ home. The wife’ll be blowing in ’er fist from hunger, she will.’
    â€˜You oughter…’ Stepushka suddenly started to say, got mixed up, fell silent and began poking around in the jug of worms.
    â€˜You’ll be seein’ the bailiff then?’ Foggy went on, glancing at Steve with some surprise.
    â€˜What’d I go to ’im for? I’m owin’, it’s true. Before he died my boy’d been sick for a year and didn’t pay no quit-rent for ’imself… I’m not worryin’ about that, ’cos I got nothin’ myself anyhow… It won’t matter how clever you are, brother, you’ll waste your time ’cos I got nothin’, not a hair on my head!’ The peasant roared with laughter.