well he may be; he’s past his eightieth year.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Vassily Fomitch. Guskov’s his surname.’

‘And the deacon?’

‘The deacon? … his nickname’s Cucumber. Every one about here calls him so; but what his real name is—God knows! A foolish creature! A regular ne’er-do-well.’

‘Do they live together?’

‘No; but there—the devil has tied them together, it seems.’

V

We approached the platform. The brigadier cast one glance upon us … and promptly fixed his eyes on the float; Cucumber jumped up, pulled back his rod, took off his worn-out clerical hat, passed a trembling hand over his rough yellow hair, made a sweeping bow, and gave vent to a feeble little laugh. His bloated face betrayed him an inveterate drunkard; his staring little eyes blinked humbly. He gave his neighbour a poke in the ribs, as though to let him know that they must clear out…. The brigadier began to move on the seat.

‘Sit still, I beg; don’t disturb yourselves,’ I hastened to say. ‘You won’t interfere with us in the least. We’ll take up our position here; sit still.’

Cucumber wrapped his ragged smock round him, twitched his shoulders, his lips, his beard…. Obviously he felt our presence oppressive and he would have been glad to slink away, … but the brigadier was again lost in the contemplation of his float…. The ‘ne’er-do-weel’ coughed twice, sat down on the very edge of the seat, put his hat on his knees, and, tucking his bare legs up under him, he discreetly dropped in his line.

‘Any bites?’ Narkiz inquired haughtily, as in leisurely fashion he unwound his reel.

‘We’ve caught a matter of five loaches,’ answered Cucumber in a cracked and husky voice: ‘and he took a good-sized perch.’

‘Yes, a perch,’ repeated the brigadier in a shrill pipe.

VI

I fell to watching closely—not him, but his reflection in the pond. It was as clearly reflected as in a looking-glass—a little darker, a little more silvery. The wide stretch of pond wafted a refreshing coolness upon us; a cool breath of air seemed to rise, too, from the steep, damp bank; and it was the sweeter, as in the dark blue, flooded with gold, above the tree tops, the stagnant sultry heat hung, a burden that could be felt, over our heads. There was no stir in the water near the dike; in the shade cast by the drooping bushes on the bank, water spiders gleamed, like tiny bright buttons, as they described their everlasting circles; at long intervals there was a faint ripple just perceptible round the floats, when a fish was ‘playing’ with the worm. Very few fish were taken; during a whole hour we drew up only two loaches and an eel. I could not say why the brigadier aroused my curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance presented nothing remarkable. Under the warm cap, which covered the whole upper part of his head down to his ears and his eyebrows, could be seen a smooth, red, clean-shaven, round face, with a little nose, little lips, and small, clear grey eyes. Simplicity and weakness of character, and a sort of long-standing, helpless sorrow, were visible in that meek, almost childish face; the plump, white little hands with short fingers had something helpless, incapable about them too…. I could not conceive how this forlorn old man could once have been an officer, could have maintained discipline, have given his commands—and that, too, in the stern days of Catherine! I watched him; now and then he puffed out his cheeks and uttered a feeble whistle, like a little child; sometimes he screwed up his eyes painfully, with effort, as all decrepit people will. Once he opened his eyes wide and lifted them…. They stared at me from out of the depths of the water—and strangely touching and even full of meaning their dejected glance seemed to me.

VII

I tried to begin a conversation with the brigadier … but Narkiz had not misinformed me; the poor old man certainly had become weak in his intellect. He asked me my surname, and after repeating his inquiry twice, pondered and pondered, and at last brought out: ‘Yes, I fancy there was a judge of that name here. Cucumber, wasn’t there a judge about here of that name, hey?’ ‘To be sure there was, Vassily Fomitch, your honour,’ responded Cucumber, who treated him altogether as a child. ‘There was, certainly. But let me have your hook; your worm must have been eaten off…. Yes, so it is.’

‘Did you know the Lomov family?’ the brigadier suddenly asked me in a cracked voice.

‘What Lomov family is that?’

‘Why, Fiodor Ivanitch, Yevstigney Ivanitch, Alexey Ivanitch the Jew, and

Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer, … and then, too …’

The brigadier suddenly broke off and looked down confused.

They were the people he was most intimate with,’ Narkiz whispered, bending towards me; ‘it was through them, through that same Alexey Ivanitch, that he called a Jew, and through a sister of Alexey Ivanitch’s, Agrafena Ivanovna, as you may say, that he lost all his property.’

‘What are you saying there about Agrafena Ivanovna?’ the brigadier called out suddenly, and his head was raised, his white eyebrows were frowning…. ‘You’d better mind! And why Agrafena, pray? Agrippina Ivanovna—that’s what you should call her.’

‘There—there—there, sir,’ Cucumber was beginning to falter.

‘Don’t you know the verses the poet Milonov wrote about her?’ the old man went on, suddenly getting into a state of excitement, which was a complete surprise to me. ‘No hymeneal lights were kindled,’ he began chanting, pronouncing all the vowels through his nose, giving the syllables ‘an,’ ‘en,’ the nasal sound they have in French; and it was strange to hear this connected speech from his lips: ‘No torches … No, that’s not it:

  «Not vain Corruption’s idols frail

  Not amaranth nor porphyry

  Rejoiced their hearts …

  One thing in them …»

‘That was about us. Do you hear?

  «One thing in them unquenchable,

  Subduing, sweet, desirable,

  To nurse their mutual flame in love!»

And you talk about Agrafena!’

Narkiz chuckled half-contemptuously, half-indifferently. ‘What a queer fish it is!’ he said to himself. But the brigadier had again relapsed into dejection, the rod had dropped from his hands and slipped into the water.

VIII

‘Well, to my thinking, our fishing is a poor business,’ observed Cucumber; ‘the fish, see, don’t bite at all. It’s got fearfully hot, and there’s a fit of «mencholy» come over our gentleman. It’s clear we must be going home; that will be best.’ He cautiously drew out of his pocket a tin bottle with a wooden stopper, uncorked it, scattered snuff on his wrist, and sniffed it up in both nostrils at once…. ‘Ah, what good snuff!’ he moaned, as he recovered himself. ‘It almost made my tooth ache! Now, my dear Vassily Fomitch, get up—it’s time to be off!’

The brigadier got up from the bench.

‘Do you live far from here?’ I asked Cucumber.

‘No, our gentleman lives not far … it won’t be as much as a mile.’

‘Will you allow me to accompany you?’ I said, addressing the brigadier.

I felt disinclined to let him go.

Narkiz was surprised at my intention; but I paid no attention to the disapproving shake of his long-eared cap, and walked out of the garden with the brigadier, who was supported by Cucumber. The old man moved fairly quickly, with a motion as though he were on stilts.

IX

We walked along a scarcely trodden path, through a grassy glade between two birch copses. The sun was blazing; the orioles called to each other in the green thicket; corncrakes chattered close to the path; blue butterflies fluttered in crowds about the white, and red flowers of the low-growing clover; in the perfectly still grass bees hung, as though asleep, languidly buzzing. Cucumber seemed to pull himself together, and brightened up; he was afraid of Narkiz—he lived always under his eye; I was a stranger—a new comer—with me he was soon quite at home.

‘Here’s our gentleman,’ he said in a rapid flow; ‘he’s a small eater and no mistake! but only one perch, is that enough for him? Unless, your honour, you would like to contribute something? Close here round the corner, at the little inn, there are first-rate white wheaten rolls. And if so, please your honour, this poor sinner, too, will gladly drink on this occasion to your health, and may it be of long years and long days.’ I gave him a little silver, and was only just in time to pull away my hand, which he was falling upon to kiss. He learned that I was a sportsman, and fell to talking of a very good friend of his, an officer, who had a ‘Mindindenger’ Swedish gun, with a copper stock, just like a cannon, so that when you fire it off you are almost knocked senseless—it had been left behind by the French—and a dog—simply one of Nature’s marvels! that he himself had always had a great passion for the chase, and his priest would have made no trouble about it—he used in fact to catch quails with him—but the ecclesiastical superior had pursued him with endless persecution; ‘and as for Narkiz Semyonitch,’ he observed in a sing-song tone, ‘if according to his notions I’m not a trustworthy person—well, what I say is: he’s let his eyebrows grow till he’s like a woodcock, and he fancies all the sciences are known to him.’ By this time we had reached the inn, a solitary tumble-down, one-roomed little hut without backyard or outbuildings; an emaciated dog lay curled up under the window; a hen was scratching in the dust