A Desperate Character and Other Stories

I came out into the open space. The stranger smiled.

'Good morning,' said I.

'Good morning, little master!'

I did not like his calling me little master. Such familiarity!

'What are you doing here?' I asked sternly.

'Why, look here,' he responded, never leaving off smiling, 'I'm calling the little birds to sing.' He showed me his little cups. 'The chaffinches answer splendidly! You, at your tender years, take delight, no doubt, in the feathered songsters' notes! Listen, I beg; I will begin chirping, and they'll answer me directly—it's so delightful!'

He began rubbing his little cups. A chaffinch actually did chirp in response from a mountain ash near. The stranger laughed without a sound, and winked at me.

The laugh and the wink—every gesture of the stranger, his weak, lisping voice, his bent knees and thin hands, his very cap and long frieze coat—everything about him suggested good-nature, something innocent and droll.

'Have you been here long?' I asked.

'I came to-day.'

'Why, aren't you the person of whom …'

'Mr. Baburin spoke to the lady here. The same, the same.'

'Your friend's name's Baburin, and what's yours?'

'I'm Punin. Punin's my name; Punin. He's Baburin and I'm Punin.' He set the little cups humming again. 'Listen, listen to the chaffinch…. How it carols!'

This queer creature took my fancy 'awfully' all at once. Like almost all boys, I was either timid or consequential with strangers, but I felt with this man as if I had known him for ages.

'Come along with me,' I said to him; 'I know a place better than this; there's a seat there; we can sit down, and we can see the dam from there.'

'By all means let us go,' my new friend responded in his singing voice. I let him pass before me. As he walked he rolled from side to side, tripped over his own feet, and his head fell back.

I noticed on the back of his coat, under the collar, there hung a small tassel. 'What's that you've got hanging there?' I asked.

'Where?' he questioned, and he put his hand up to the collar to feel.

'Ah, the tassel? Let it be! I suppose it was sewn there for ornament!

It's not in the way.'

I led him to the seat, and sat down; he settled himself beside me. 'It's lovely here!' he commented, and he drew a deep, deep sigh. 'Oh, how lovely! You have a most splendid garden! Oh, o—oh!'

I looked at him from one side. 'What a queer cap you've got!' I couldn't help exclaiming. 'Show it me here!'

'By all means, little master, by all means.' He took off the cap; I was holding out my hand, but I raised my eyes, and—simply burst out laughing. Punin was completely bald; not a single hair was to be seen on the high conical skull, covered with smooth white skin. He passed his open hand over it, and he too laughed. When he laughed he seemed, as it were, to gulp, he opened his mouth wide, closed his eyes—and vertical wrinkles flitted across his forehead in three rows, like waves. 'Eh,' said he at last, 'isn't it quite like an egg?'

'Yes, yes, exactly like an egg!' I agreed with enthusiasm. 'And have you been like that long?'

'Yes, a long while; but what hair I used to have!—A golden fleece like that for which the Argonauts sailed over the watery deeps.'

Though I was only twelve, yet, thanks to my mythological studies, I knew who the Argonauts were; I was the more surprised at hearing the name on the lips of a man dressed almost in rags.

'You must have learned mythology, then?' I queried, as I twisted his cap over and over in my hands. It turned out to be wadded, with a mangy-looking fur trimming, and a broken cardboard peak.

'I have studied that subject, my dear little master; I've had time enough for everything in my life! But now restore to me my covering, it is a protection to the nakedness of my head.'

He put on the cap, and, with a downward slope of his whitish eyebrows, asked me who I was, and who were my parents.

'I'm the grandson of the lady who owns this place,' I answered. 'I live alone with her. Papa and mamma are dead.'

Punin crossed himself. 'May the kingdom of heaven be theirs! So then, you're an orphan; and the heir, too. The noble blood in you is visible at once; it fairly sparkles in your eyes, and plays like this … sh … sh … sh …' He represented with his fingers the play of the blood. 'Well, and do you know, your noble honour, whether my friend has come to terms with your grandmamma, whether he has obtained the situation he was promised?'

'I don't know.'

Punin cleared his throat. 'Ah! if one could be settled here, if only for a while! Or else one may wander and wander far, and find not a place to rest one's head; the disquieting alarms of life are unceasing, the soul is confounded….'

'Tell me,' I interrupted: 'are you of the clerical profession?'

Punin turned to me and half closed his eyelids. 'And what may be the cause of that question, gentle youth?'

'Why, you talk so—well, as they read in church.'

'Because I use the old scriptural forms of expression? But that ought not to surprise you. Admitting that in ordinary conversation such forms of expression are not always in place; but when one soars on the wings of inspiration, at once the language too grows more exalted. Surely your teacher—the professor of Russian literature—you do have lessons in that, I suppose?—surely he teaches you that, doesn't he?'

'No, he doesn't,' I responded. 'When we stay in the country I have no teacher. In Moscow I have a great many teachers.'

'And will you be staying long in the country?'

'Two months, not longer; grandmother says that I'm spoilt in the country, though I have a governess even here.'

'A French governess?'

'Yes.'

Punin scratched behind his ear. 'A mamselle, that's to say?'

'Yes; she's called Mademoiselle Friquet.' I suddenly felt it disgraceful for me, a boy of twelve, to have not a tutor, but a governess, like a little girl! 'But I don't mind her,' I added contemptuously. 'What do I care!'

Punin shook his head. 'Ah, you gentlefolk, you gentlefolk! you're too fond of foreigners! You have turned away from what is Russian,—towards all that's strange. You've turned your hearts to those that come from foreign parts….'

'Hullo! Are you talking in verse?' I asked.

'Well, and why not? I can do that always, as much as you please; for it comes natural to me….'

But at that very instant there sounded in the garden behind us a loud and shrill whistle. My new acquaintance hurriedly got up from the bench.

'Good-bye, little sir; that's my friend calling me, looking for me….

What has he to tell me? Good-bye—excuse me….'