sort of talk.'
But Afanasy Ivanovich, pleased at having poked fun at Pulkheria Ivanovna, would smile, sitting on his chair.
But for me the old folk seemed most interesting when they were having guests. Then everything in their house acquired a different air. These good people, one might say, lived for their guests. The very best they had was all brought out. They vied with each other in trying to treat you to everything their farm had produced. But the most pleasant thing for me was that they were obliging without being cloying. This ready cordiality was so meekly expressed on their faces, was so becoming in them, that willy-nilly you would agree to their requests. It proceeded from the clear, serene simplicity of their kind and artless souls. This cordiality was a far cry from what you're treated to by a clerk in a government office who owes his success to you, calls you his benefactor, and cowers at your feet. A guest was never allowed to leave the same day: he absolutely had to spend the night.
'You can't set out so late on such a long journey!' Pulkheria Ivanovna always said (the guest usually lived two or three miles away).
'Of course not,' Afanasy Ivanovich would say, 'who knows what may happen: robbers may fall upon you, or some other bad men.'
'God preserve us from robbers!' Pulkheria Ivanovna would say.
'Why talk of such things before going to bed at night? Robbers or no robbers, it's dark, it's not good at all to go. And your coachman, I know your coachman, he's so weak and small, any nag can beat him; and besides, he's surely tipsy by now and sleeping somewhere.'
And the guest absolutely had to stay. However, evening in a low, warm room, cordial, warming, and lulling conversation, steaming hot food served on the table, always nourishing and expertly cooked, would be his reward. I can see Afanasy Ivanovich as if it were right now, sitting hunched on a chair, smiling his usual smile and listening to the guest with attention and even pleasure! Often the talk ran to politics. The guest, who also very rarely left his estate, frequently offered his surmises with an important look and a mysterious expression on his face, saying that the French had secretly agreed with the English to turn Bonaparte loose on Russia again, or else simply talked of war being imminent, and then Afanasy Ivanovich often said, as if not looking at Pulkheria Ivanovna:
'I'm thinking of going to war myself. Why shouldn't I go to war?
'He's off again!' Pulkheria Ivanovna would interrupt. 'Don't believe him,' she would say, addressing the guest. 'How can he go to war, old as he is? The first soldier will shoot him down! By God, he will! He'll just take aim and shoot him down.'
'So what,' Afanasy Ivanovich would say, 'I'll shoot him down, too.
'Just hear him talk!' Pulkheria Ivanovna would pick up. 'How can he go to war? His pistols got rusty long ago sitting in the closet. You should see them: the way they are, the powder will blow them up before they do any shooting. He'll hurt his hands, and disfigure his face, and stay crippled forever.'
'So what,' Afanasy Ivanovich would say, 'I'll buy myself a new weapon. I'll take a saber or a Cossack lance.'
'He makes it all up. It just comes into his head and he starts talking,' Pulkheria Ivanovna would pick up vexedly 'I know he's joking, but even so, it's unpleasant to listen. He always says something like that, sometimes you listen and listen, and then you get scared.'
But Afanasy Ivanovich, pleased to have given Pulkheria Ivanovna a little fright, would be laughing as he sat hunched on his chair.
To me Pulkheria Ivanovna was most entertaining at the moments when she was treating a guest to hors d'ceuvres.
'This,' she would say, unstopping a decanter, 'is vodka infused with yarrow and sage. If someone has an ache in the shoulder blades or the lower back, it's a great help. This one is with centaury: if you have a ringing in the ears or blotches on your face, it's a great help. And this one's distilled with peach stones; here, take a glass, what a wonderful smell! If someone bumps the corner of a cupboard or a table as he's getting out of bed and gets a lump on his forehead, it's enough just to drink one little glass before dinner and it will go away as if by magic, that same minute, as if he'd never had it.'
This was followed by the same kind of report on other decanters, that almost all of them had some healing properties. Having loaded the guest with all this pharmacy, she would lead him to a multitude of plates.
'These are mushrooms with thyme! These are with cloves and walnuts! A Turkish woman taught me how to pickle them, back when we still had Turkish prisoners. 9 She was such a nice woman, it didn't even show that she confessed the Turkish faith. She went about just as we do, only she didn't eat pork, said it was somehow forbidden by their law. These are mushrooms with black currant leaves and nutmeg! And these are big gourds done in vinegar: it's the first time I've tried it, I don't know how they came out, it's Father Ivan's secret. First you spread some oak leaves in a small barrel, then put in some pepper and saltpeter, and some hawkweed flowers, too-you just take the flowers and spread them stems up. And these are pirozhki! cheese pirozhki! with poppyseed juice! And these are the ones Afanasy Ivanovich likes best, with cabbage and buckwheat.'
'Yes,' added Afanasy Ivanovich, 'I like them very much. They're tender and slightly tart.'
Generally, Pulkheria Ivanovna was in exceptionally good spirits whenever they had guests. A kindly old woman! She belonged entirely to her guests. I loved visiting them, and though I overate terribly, as all their visitors did, and though it was very bad for me, nevertheless I was always glad to go there. However, I think that the very air of Little Russia may possess some special quality that aids digestion, because if anyone here tried to eat like that, he would undoubtedly wind up lying not in his bed but on the table. 10
Kindly old folk! But my narrative is approaching a very sad event which changed the life of this peaceful corner forever. This event will seem the more striking because it proceeded from a quite unimportant incident. But, in the strange order of things, it is always insignificant causes that give birth to great events, and, vice versa, great undertakings have ended in insignificant consequences. Some conqueror gathers all the forces of his state, spends several years making war, his generals cover themselves with glory, and finally it all ends with the acquisition of a scrap of land on which there isn't even room enough to plant potatoes; while, on the other hand, two sausage makers from two towns start fighting over nothing, other towns get involved in the quarrel, then villages and hamlets, then the whole country. But let's drop this reasoning: it's out of place here. Besides, I don't like reasoning that remains mere reasoning.
Pulkheria Ivanovna had a little gray cat that almost always lay curled up at her feet. Pulkheria Ivanovna sometimes patted her and tickled her neck with her finger, which the pampered cat arched as high as she could. It cannot be said that Pulkheria Ivanovna loved her all that much, she was simply attached to her, being used to
