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

sleepy whistling… Then they are quiet as well. Once again the ringing voice of the chiff-chaff resounds overhead; somewhere or other an oriole gives a sad cry and a nightingale offers the first trills of its song. Your heart is heavy with anticipation, and suddenly – but only hunters will know what I mean – suddenly the deep quiet is broken by a special kind of croaking and hissing, thereis a measured beat of rapidly flapping wings – and a woodcock, beautifully inclining its long beak, flies out from behind a dark birch into your line of fire.
    That is what is meant by ‘standing in cover’.
    In such a fashion, Yermolay and I set off for ‘cover’; but forgive me, gentlemen: I must first of all acquaint you with Yermolay.
    Imagine to yourself a man of about forty-five, tall and lean, with a long delicate nose, a narrow forehead, little grey eyes, dishevelled hair and wide, scornful lips. This man used to go about winter and summer in a yellowish nankeen coat of German cut, but belted with a sash; he wore wide blue trousers and a cap edged with astrakhan which had been given him, on a jovial occasion, by a bankrupt landowner. Two bags were fixed to the sash, one in front, which had been artfully twisted into two halves for powder and bird-shot, and the other behind – for game; his cotton wadding Yermolay used to extract from his own, seemingly inexhaustible cap. With the money earned by him from selling his game he could easily have purchased a cartridge belt and pouch, but the thought of making such a purchase never even so much as entered his head, and he continued to load his gun in his customary fashion, arousing astonishment in onlookers by the skill with which he avoided the danger of overpouring or mixing the shot and the powder. His gun had a single barrel, with a flintlock, endowed, moreover, with the awful habit of ‘kicking’ brutally, as a result of which Yermolay’s right cheek was always more swollen than his left. How he managed to hit anything with this gun even a wiseacre might be at a loss to explain, but hit he did.
    He also had a setter, a most remarkable creature named Valetka. Yermolay never fed him. ‘Likely I’d start feeding a dog,’ he would argue, ‘since a dog’s a clever animal and’ll find his food on his own.’ And so it was, in fact: although Valetka astonished even indifferent passers-by with his unusual thinness, he lived and lived a long time; despite his miserable condition, he never even once got lost and displayed no desire to abandon his master. Once, when he was young, he disappeared for a day or two, carried away by love; but that foolishness soon took leave of him. Valetka’s most remarkable characteristic was an incomprehensible indifference to everything under the sun. If I had not been talking about a dog, I would have used the word ‘disillusionment’. He usually sat with his short tailtucked underneath him, frowning, shuddering from time to time and never smiling. (It is well known that dogs are capable of smiling, and even of smiling very charmingly.) He was extremely ugly, and there was not a single idle house-serf who let pass an opportunity of laughing venomously at his appearance; but Valetka endured all these taunts, and even blows, with astonishing composure. He provided particular satisfaction for cooks, who immediately dropped whatever they were doing and dashed after him with shouts and swearing whenever through a weakness common not only to dogs, he used to stick his famished muzzle through the half-open door of the enticingly warm and sweet-smelling kitchen. Out hunting, he distinguished himself by his tirelessness and possessed a good scent; but if he happened to catch up with a wounded hare, he at once gobbled the whole lot down with pleasure, right to the last little bone, in some cool, shady place under a leafy bush and at a respectful distance from Yermolay who swore at him