happiness …
“Sit down? Why not …” Yegor says in an indifferent tone and picks a spot between two pine saplings. “Why are you standing? Sit down, too!”
Pelageya sits down a bit further away in a patch of sun and, ashamed of her joy, covers her smiling mouth with her hand. Two minutes pass in silence.
“If only you’d come one little time,” Pelageya says softly.
“What for?” sighs Yegor, taking off his cap and wiping his red forehead with his sleeve. “There’s no need. To stop by for an hour or two—dally around, get you stirred up—and my soul can’t stand living all the time in the village … You know I’m a spoiled man … I want there to be a bed, and good tea, and delicate conversation … I want to have all the degrees, and in the village there you’ve got poverty, soot … I couldn’t even live there a day. Suppose they issued a decree that I absolutely had to live with you, I’d either burn down the cottage or lay hands on myself. From early on I’ve been spoiled like this, there’s no help for it.”
“Where do you live now?”
“At the squire Dmitri Ivanych’s, as a hunter. I furnish game for his table, but it’s more like … he keeps me because he’s pleased to.”
“It’s not a dignified thing to do, Yegor Vlasych … For people it’s just toying, but for you it’s like a trade … a real occupation …”
“You don’t understand, stupid,” says Yegor, dreamily looking at the sky. “In all your born days you’ve never understood and never will understand what kind of a man I am … To you, I’m a crazy, lost man, but for somebody who understands, I’m the best shot in the whole district. The gentlemen feel it and even printed something about me in a magazine. Nobody can match me in the line of hunting … And if I scorn your village occupations, it’s not because I’m spoiled or proud. Right from infancy, you know, I’ve never known any occupation but guns and dogs. Take away my gun, I’ll get a fishing pole, take away the fishing pole, I’ll hunt bare-handed. Well, and I also did some horse-trading, roamed around the fairs whenever I had some money, and you know yourself, if any peasant gets in with hunters or horse traders, it’s good-bye to the plough. Once a free spirit settles in a man, there’s no getting it out of him. It’s like when a squire goes to the actors or into some other kind of artistry, then for him there’s no being an official or a landowner. You’re a woman, you don’t understand, and it takes understanding.”
“I understand, Yegor Vlasych.”
“Meaning you don’t understand, since you’re about to cry …”
“I … I’m not crying …” says Pelageya, turning away. “It’s a sin, Yegor Vlasych! You could spend at least one little day with me, poor woman. It’s twelve years since I married you, and … and never once was there any love between us! … I … I’m not crying.
“Love …” Yegor mutters, scratching his arm. “There can’t be any love. It’s just in name that we’re man and wife, but is it really so? For you I’m a wild man, and for me you’re a simple woman, with no understanding. Do we make a couple? I’m free, spoiled, loose, and you’re a barefoot farm worker, you live in dirt, you never straighten your back. I think like this about myself, that I’m first in the line of hunting, but you look at me with pity … What kind of couple are we?”
“But we were married in church, Yegor Vlasych!” Pelageya sobs.
“Not freely… Did you forget? You can thank Count Sergei Pavlych … and yourself. The count was envious that I was a better shot than he was, kept me drunk for a whole month, and a drunk man can not only be married off but can even be seduced into a different faith. In revenge he up and married me to you … A huntsman to a cow girl. You could see I was drunk, why did you marry me? You’re not a serf, you could have told him no! Of course, a cow girl’s lucky to marry a huntsman, but we need to be reasonable. Well, so now you can suffer and cry. It’s a joke for the count, but you cry … beat your head on the wall …”
Silence ensues. Three wild ducks fly over the clearing. Yegor looks at them and follows them with his eyes until they turn into three barely visible specks and go down far beyond the forest.
“How do you live?” he asks, shifting his eyes from the ducks to Pelageya.
“I go out to work now, and in winter I take a baby from the orphanage and nurse him with a bottle. They give me a rouble and a half a month.” So-o …
Again silence. From the harvested rows comes a soft song, which breaks off at the very beginning. It is too hot for singing …
“They say you put up a new cottage for Akulina,” says Pelageya.
Yegor is silent.
“It means she’s after your own heart …”
“That’s just your luck, your fate!” says the hunter, stretching. “Bear with it, orphan. But, anyhow, good-bye, we’ve talked too much … I’ve got to make it to Boltovo by evening …”
Yegor gets up, stretches, shoulders his gun. Pelageya stands up.
“And when will you come to the village?” she asks softly.
“No point. I’ll never come sober, and when I’m drunk there’s not much profit for you. I get angry when I’m drunk … Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, Yegor Vlasych …”
Yegor puts his cap on the back of his head and, clucking for his dog, continues on his way. Pelageya stays where she is and looks at his back … She sees his moving shoulder blades, his dashing head, his lazy, nonchalant stride, and her eyes fill with sadness and a tender caress … Her gaze moves over the tall, skinny figure of her husband and caresses and fondles it … He seems to feel this gaze, stops, and looks back … He is silent, but Pelageya can see from his face, from his raised shoulders, that he wants to say something to her. She timidly goes up to him and looks at him with imploring eyes.
“For you!” he says, turning away
He hands her a worn rouble and quickly walks off.
