The peasant who was sleeping near the stove suddenly turned and threw off his sheepskin. To his great surprise, Ergunov recognized that very stranger he had once met at Zmeinaya gully. The peasant’s hair, beard, and eyes were as black as soot; his face was swarthy; and, on top of it all, there was a black lentil-sized spot on his right cheek. He looked at the hospital assistant sarcastically and said: “I did take hold of the left rein, that’s true, but about the smallpox—here you’ve told lies, sir. We never discussed the smallpox.”
Ergunov was confused and scared. “I was not referring to you, sir.” He did not know who the swarthy peasant was or where he had come from. Now, looking at him, he decided the man must be a gypsy.
The peasant got up, stretching and yawning loudly, and came up to Lyubka and Kalashnikov, sitting down next to them. He, too, looked into the book. His sleepy face softened as a look of envy came over it.
“See, Merik,” Lyubka said to him; “get me such horses and I’ll ride them to heaven.”
“Sinners can’t go to heaven,” said Kalashnikov. “It’s reserved for saints.”
Then Lyubka laid the table for the meal with a big piece of lard, salted cucumbers, a wooden plate of cubed boiled meat, and finally a frying pan still sizzling with sausage and cabbage. A decanter of vodka also appeared on the table, filling the room with the aroma of orange peels as it was poured.
The medical assistant was annoyed that Kalashnikov and Merik were talking to each other, ignoring him completely, as if he were not in the room. He wanted to chat, to boast, to have a drink and a filling meal, and—if he could, flirt with Lyubka. She kept sitting beside him briefly throughout the meal, and as if by accident, kept bumping him with her beautiful shoulders or elbows as she swiveled in her place and stroked her broad hips with her hands. She was a healthy, restless girl, who laughed easily as she was constantly in motion.
Ergunov also found disconcerting the fact that the peasants stopped drinking after only one glass of vodka each, making him feel uncomfortable continuing to drink alone. Eventually he gave in and drank a second glass, then a third, as he ate all the remaining sausage. He now decided to flatter the men so that they would accept him instead of continuing to avoid him.
“You’re a bunch of good guys over there in Bogalyovka!” he commented, as he shook his head.
“Good at what?” asked Kalashnikov.
“Well, with horses, for example. Good at stealing!”
“Hah, good guys, you say. There’s only drunks and thieves left.”
“Yeah, those days are over,” said Merik, after a pause. “There’s just old Filya left, and he, too, is blind.”
“Right, just Filya left,” sighed Kalashnikov. “He must be about seventy now; the German colonists put out his one eye, and now he can barely see out of his remaining one. In the good old days the police officer would see him and shout: ‘Hey, you Shamil!’ until everyone called him that. Now that’s the only name he goes by, One-eyed Filya. He was a nice guy, indeed! One night he, along with Andrei Chirikov, Lyuba’s father, got into Rozhnovo—some cavalry regiments were stationed there at that time—and they stole nine of the soldiers’ horses, the very best ones. They weren’t afraid of the sentry or anything. That same morning they sold them all to the gypsy Afonka for twenty rubles. Yeah! Nowadays, people steal horses when the master is drunk or asleep, having no fear of God, but will take the boots off the man, too. He’ll then head a hundred and fifty miles away to sell that horse at the market, negotiating the price like a wretched Jew, until the police track him down, the idiot. It’s no longer fun, which is such a shame! Lousy people, I must say.”
“And what about Merik?” asked Lyubka.
“Merik is not from our area,” said Kalashnikov. “He is a Kharkov guy, from Mizhirich. And yes, he is a nice fellow. Nothing can be said to the contrary, he is a fine fellow.”
Lyubka turned a playful eye toward Merik, and said: “Yeah, there was a good reason why the folks bathed him in an ice hole.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ergunov.
“Well,” answered Merik, grinning, “Filya stole three horses from the Samoylovka tenants and they accused me. There were ten tenants in Samoylovka—with their hired hands, about thirty altogether, all of them Molokans. So one of them tells me at the market: ‘Come to our place, Merik, we’ve bought new horses from the fair, come take a look.’ Of course, I was interested. When I arrived, they—the thirty of them—tied my hands behind my back and dragged me to the river. ‘Now, we’ll show you the horses, man,’ they said. There was one ice hole already, and they cut another one about seven feet away. They then took a rope, put a loop under my armpits, and tied a crooked stick to the other end, long enough to reach both holes. Well, they thrust the stick in and dragged it through the holes. And I, dressed as I was in my fur coat and boots, went plop! into the ice hole. They stood on the ice, pushing me along with their feet or the stick as they dragged me under the ice and pulled me out through the other hole.”
Lyubka shuddered and grew tense.
“At first I got all hot from the cold,” Merik went on, “but when they pulled me out, I could only just lie down in the snow. The group of them was standing around me beating my knees and elbows with sticks. It hurt like hell. So they beat me up and left me there. I was entirely covered in ice, and freezing to death. Thank God, a woman drove by and gave me a lift.”
Meanwhile, Ergunov had drunk five or six glasses of vodka; everything seemed brighter. He, too, wanted to tell some extraordinary story to prove to them that he, too, was a very nice fellow, who wasn’t afraid of anything.
“Now, let me tell you about what happened once in our province of Penza,” he began. Because he was quite drunk, and maybe in part because they had already caught him lying, the peasants completely ignored him, even refusing to answer his questions. Their discussion turned so frank in his presence that he grew terrified and chilled, which meant that for now they took no notice of him.
Kalashnikov had the respectable manners of a mature and sensible man. He talked about everything in detail, and covered his mouth every time he yawned. Nobody would have thought he was a heartless thief who robbed the poor, who had already been in prison twice, and who had been sentenced by the community to exile in Siberia, had it not been for his father and uncle, rascals just like him, buying his freedom.
Merik behaved like a sharp guy. He understood that Lyubka and Kalashnikov admired him, and he himself believed he was beyond all praise. He would periodically put his arms askew, puff up his chest, and stretch himself so that the bench would creak …
After dinner Kalashnikov stayed in his seat as he prayed to the icon, then shook hands with Merik. The latter, too, prayed, and shook Kalashnikov’s hand. Lyubka cleared the table and then brought out some peppermint cakes, roasted nuts, pumpkin seeds, and two bottles of sweet wine.
“The kingdom of heaven and eternal peace to Andrei Chirikov,” toasted Kalashnikov, clinking glasses with Merik. “When he was alive we used to visit him here, or at brother Martyn’s. Oh, my God! What a company it was, and what conversations we used to have! Remarkable conversations with Martyn, Filya, and Fyodor Stukotey…. And all was done so fine, how it should be…. And what fun we had! We really enjoyed ourselves!”
Lyubka went out and returned after a while with a green kerchief, wearing a necklace. “Merik, have a look at what Kalashnikov brought me today,” she said. She looked in the mirror and shook her head several times to make the beads jingle. She then opened a chest and started to take items out. First, a cotton dress with red and blue spots on it, then a red one with frills that rustled and crackled like paper. She next pulled out a new blue kerchief with an iridescent shimmer. She showed off these items, laughing and tossing up her hands as if stunned at all her treasures.