Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev Read Free Book Online

himself: he is little concerned with his past and looks boldly towards the future. If a thing’s good, he’ll like it; if a thing’s sensible, he’ll not reject it, but he couldn’t care a jot where it came from. His sane common sense will gladly make fun of the thin-as-a-stick rationalism of the Germans; but the Germans, in Khor’s words, were interesting enough folk and he was ready to learn from them. Owing to the peculiar nature of his social station, his virtual independence, Khor mentioned many things in talking with me that even a crowbar wouldn’t have dislodged in someone else or, as the peasants say, you couldn’t grind out with a millstone. He took a realistic view of his position. During my talks with Khor I heard for the first time the simple, intelligent speech of the Russian peasant. His knowledge was fairly broad, after his own fashion, but he could not read; whereas Kalinych could.
    â€˜That rascal’s been able to pick up readin’ and writin’,’ Khor remarked, ‘an’ ’e’s never had a single bee die on ’im since he was born.’
    â€˜And have your children learned to read and write?’
    After a pause Khor said: ‘Fedya knows.’
    â€˜And the others?’
    â€˜The others don’t.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    The old man did not answer and changed the subject. As a matter of fact, despite all his intelligence, he clung to many prejudices and preconceived notions. Women, for example, he despised from the depths of his soul, and when in a jovial mood derived amusement from them and made fun of them. His wife, an aged and shrewish woman, spent the whole day over the stove and was the source of persistent complaints and abuse; her sons paid no attention to her, but she put the fear of God into her daughters-in-law. It’s not surprising that in the Russian song the mother-in-law sings:
    O, you’re no son o’ mine,
You’re not a family man!
’Cos you don’t beat your wife,
You don’t beat your young one…
    Once I thought of standing up for the daughters-in-law and attempted to solicit Khor’s sympathy; but he calmly retorted that ‘Maybe you like to bother yourself with such nonsense… Let the women quarrel… You’ll only be worse off if you try to part them, and it isn’t even worth dirtying your hands with it.’ Sometimes the bad-tempered old woman crawled down from the stove and called in the dog from the yard, enticing it with: ‘Come on, come on, nice dog!’ – only to belabour its scraggy spine with a poker, or she would stand under the awning out front and ‘bark insults’ at whoever passed by, as Khor expressed it. Her husband, however, she feared and, at his command, would climb back on to her perch on the stove.
    But it was particularly curious to hear how Kalinych and Khor disagreed when talking about Polutykin. ‘Now, look here, Khor, don’t you say anything against him while I’m here,’ Kalinych would say. ‘Then why doesn’t he see that you’ve got a proper pair of boots to wear?’ the other would object. ‘To hell with boots! Why do I need boots? I’m a peasant…’ ‘And I’m also a peasant, but just look…’ Saying this, Khor would raise his leg and show Kalinych a bootthat looked as if it had been cobbled from the skin of a mammoth. ‘Oh, you’re not an ordinary peasant!’ Kalinych would answer. ‘Well, surely he ought to give you something to buy them sandals with? After all, you go out hunting with him and everyday you’ll need new ones.’ ‘He gives me something to get bast sandals with.’ ‘That’s right, last year he grandly gave you ten copecks.’ At this Kalinych would turn away in annoyance and Khor would burst out laughing, his tiny little eyes almost vanishing completely.
    Kalinych had quite a pleasant singing