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

‘No matter what he thinks up, that Kintilyan Semyonych…’ And Vlas burst out laughing again.
    â€˜What’s that? That’s real bad, brother Vlas,’ Foggy announced, pausing between the words.
    â€˜What’s real bad about it? It’s not…’ But Vlas’s voice broke at that point. ‘Oh, it’s bloody hot,’ he went on, wiping his face with his sleeve.
    â€˜Who’s your master?’ I asked.
    â€˜Count—, Valerian Petrovich.’
    â€˜Pyotr Ilyich’s son?’
    â€˜Pyotr Ilyich’s son,’ said Foggy. ‘Pyotr Ilyich, the late Count, gave ’im Vlas’s village while he was still alive.’
    â€˜Is he well?’
    â€˜He’s well, thank God,’ Vlas answered. ‘Gone all red, fat-faced, he has.’
    â€˜You see, sir,’ Foggy continued, turning to me, ‘it’d be all right like if it were outside Moscow, but it’s right here he’s on quit-rent.’
    â€˜How much?’
    â€˜Ninety-five roubles,’ mumbled Vlas.
    â€˜Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you – just a little bit o’ land and all the rest’s the master’s woodland.’
    â€˜And that’s been sold, they say,’ remarked the peasant.
    â€˜Well, you can see for yourself… Give us a worm, Steve… Hey, Steve, what’s up? Gone to sleep, ‘ave you?’
    Stepushka shook himself. The peasant sat down beside us. We fell silent again. On the opposite bank a voice struck up a song, but it was protracted and sad… My poor Vlas gave way to his grief…
    Half an hour later we all went our separate ways.

DISTRICT DOCTOR

    O NE time in the autumn, on coming back from a long trip, I caught a cold and had to go to bed. Luckily the fever struck me in a provincial town, in a hotel, and I sent for a doctor. In half an hour the district doctor appeared, a man of small stature, thinnish and black-haired. He wrote out the usual prescription for something to make me sweat, ordered the application of a mustard plaster and very skilfully slipped his five-rouble payment into his coat cuff, all the while drily coughing and glancing to one side, and was just on the point of leaving when a conversation was struck up and he remained. The fever tormented me. I foresaw a sleepless night and was glad to chatter with the good fellow. Tea was served. My good doctor started talking. He was no fool and expressed himself vivaciously and rather entertainingly. Strange things happen on this earth: you can live a long while with someone and be on the friendliest of terms, and yet you’ll never once talk openly with him, from the depths of your soul; while with someone else you may scarcely have met, at one glance, whether you to him or he to you, just as in a confessional, you’ll blurt out the story of your life. I don’t know what made me deserve the confidence of my new friend, save that, on the spur of the moment, he ‘took to me’, as they say, and recounted to me a fairly remarkable episode, and it is his story I now wish to relate to the well-disposed reader. I will try to express myself in the doctor’s own words.
    â€˜You don’t happen to know, do you,’ he began in a weak and quavering voice (the result of unadulterated birch snuff), ‘you don’t happen to know the local judge, Mylov, Pavel Lukich?… You don’t?… Well, it doesn’t matter.’ (He coughed and wiped his eyes.) ‘So you see it was like this, as you might say, so as not to tell a lie – during Lent, just when everything was thawing. I was sitting withhim, at our judge’s house, and I was playing whist. Our judge was a good chap and very fond of playing whist. Suddenly’ (my doctor friend frequently used the word ‘suddenly’) ‘they tell me someone’s asking for me. I ask what he wants. He’s brought a note – it must be from a patient. Let