'With a spade it won't be easy; you won't touch the bottom perhaps in some places,' said Vladimir.
'It's true; it won't be easy.'
I sat down on a tomb-stone to wait for Yermolai. Vladimir moved a little to one side out of respect to me, and also sat down. Sutchok remained standing in the same place, his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back, according to the old habit of house-serfs.
'Tell me, please,' I began, 'have you been the fisherman here long?'
'It is seven years now,' he replied, rousing himself with a start.
'And what was your occupation before?'
'I was coachman before.'
'Who dismissed you from being coachman?'
'The new mistress.'
'What mistress?'
'Oh, that bought us. Your honour does not know her; Alyona Timofyevna; she is so fat … not young.'
'Why did she decide to make you a fisherman?'
'God knows. She came to us from her estate in Tamboff, gave orders for all the household to come together, and came out to us. We first kissed her hand, and she said nothing; she was not angry…. Then she began to question us in order; 'How are you employed? what duties have you?' She came to me in my turn; so she asked: 'What have you been?' I say, 'Coachman.' 'Coachman? Well, a fine coachman you are; only look at you! You're not fit for a coachman, but be my fisherman, and shave your beard. On the occasions of my visits provide fish for the table; do you hear?' … So since then I have been enrolled as a fisherman. 'And mind you keep my pond in order.' But how is one to keep it in order?'
'Whom did you belong to before?'
'To Sergai Sergiitch Pehterev. We came to him by inheritance. But he did not own us long; only six years altogether. I was his coachman … but not in town, he had others there—only in the country.'
'And were you always a coachman from your youth up?'
'Always a coachman? Oh, no! I became a coachman in Sergai Sergiitch's time, but before that I was a cook —but not town-cook; only a cook in the country.'
'Whose cook were you, then?'
'Oh, my former master's, Afanasy Nefeditch, Sergai Sergiitch's uncle.
Lgov was bought by him, by Afanasy Nefeditch, but it came to Sergai
Sergiitch by inheritance from him.'
'Whom did he buy it from?'
'From Tatyana Vassilyevna.'
'What Tatyana Vassilyevna was that?'
'Why, that died last year in Bolhov … that is, at Karatchev, an old maid…. She had never married. Don't you know her? We came to her from her father, Vassily Semenitch. She owned us a goodish while … twenty years.'
'Then were you cook to her?'
'At first, to be sure, I was cook, and then I was coffee-bearer.'
'What were you?'
'Coffee-bearer.'
'What sort of duty is that?'
'I don't know, your honour. I stood at the sideboard, and was called Anton instead of Kuzma. The mistress ordered that I should be called so.'
'Your real name, then, is Kuzma?'
'Yes.'
'And were you coffee-bearer all the time?'
'No, not all the time; I was an actor too.'
'Really?'
'Yes, I was…. I played in the theatre. Our mistress set up a theatre of her own.'
'What kind of parts did you take?'
'What did you please to say?'
'What did you do in the theatre?'
'Don't you know? Why, they take me and dress me up; and I walk about dressed up, or stand or sit down there as it happens, and they say, 'See, this is what you must say,' and I say it. Once I represented a blind man…. They laid little peas under each eyelid…. Yes, indeed.'
'And what were you afterwards?'
'Afterwards I became a cook again.'
'Why did they degrade you to being a cook again?'
'My brother ran away.'
'Well, and what were you under the father of your first mistress?'
'I had different duties; at first I found myself a page; I have been a postilion, a gardener, and a whipper- in.'
'A whipper-in?… And did you ride out with the hounds?'
'Yes, I rode with the hounds, and was nearly killed; I fell off my horse, and the horse was injured. Our old master was very severe; he ordered them to flog me, and to send me to learn a trade to Moscow, to a shoemaker.'
'To learn a trade? But you weren't a child, I suppose, when you were a whipper-in?'
'I was twenty and over then.'
'But could you learn a trade at twenty?'
'I suppose one could, some way, since the master ordered it. But he luckily died soon after, and they sent me back to the country.'
'And when were you taught to cook?'
Sutchok lifted his thin yellowish little old face and grinned.
'Is that a thing to be taught?… Old women can cook.'
'Well,' I commented, 'you have seen many things, Kuzma, in your time!
What do you do now as a fisherman, seeing there are no fish?'
'Oh, your honour, I don't complain. And, thank God, they made me a fisherman. Why another old man like me—Andrey Pupir—the mistress ordered to be put into the paper factory, as a ladler. 'It's a sin,' she said, 'to eat bread in idleness.' And Pupir had even hoped for favour; his cousin's son was clerk in the mistress's counting-house: he had promised to send his name up to the mistress, to remember him: a fine way he remembered him!… And Pupir fell at his cousin's knees before my eyes.'
'Have you a family? Have you married?'
'No, your honour, I have never been married. Tatyana Vassilyevna—God rest her soul!—did not allow anyone to marry. 'God forbid!' she said sometimes, 'here am I living single: what indulgence! What are they thinking of!''
'What do you live on now? Do you get wages?'
'Wages, your honour!… Victuals are given me, and thanks be to Thee,
Lord! I am very contented. May God give our lady long life!'
Yermolai returned.
'The boat is repaired,' he announced churlishly. 'Go after your pole— you there!'
Sutchok ran to get his pole. During the whole time of my conversation with the poor old man, the sportsman Vladimir had been staring at him with a contemptuous smile.
