Well, you know my name, gentlemen — my friends, I would rather say. For it is better to say “my friends” when one tells a story, in the good old-fashioned way. My name is, as you know, Golubchik.* I ask you whether that is fitting and just. I was always big and strong; even as a boy I far exceeded in size and bodily strength my companions, and yet I had to be called Golubchik. Well, there is something more to it than that; for that was not my name by right — that is, by natural right. Golubchik was only the name of my legitimate father. Actually, my real name, my natural one, the name of my natural father, was — Krapotkin. And I note that even now I cannot speak that name without a certain evil pride. So you see, I was an illegitimate child. As you probably know, Prince Krapotkin owned estates in every part of Russia. And one day the desire came to him to purchase an estate in Wolhynia. Such people had, indeed, their whims. On this occasion he learned to know my father and my mother. My father was head forester. The prince had actually decided to dismiss all those employed by the former owner of the estate. But when he saw my mother, he dismissed all — except my father. And so it came about. My father, the forester Golubchik, was a simple man. Imagine to yourselves an ordinary fair-haired forester in the ordinary forester’s dress, and you have a picture of my legitimate father. His father, my grandfather, had been a serf. And so you will understand that the forester Golubchik had nothing to say against Prince Krapotkin, his new master, paying frequent visits to my mother at an hour when most married women in our country are accustomed to be lying at the side of their own husbands. Well, I need say no more; nine months later I came into the world, and for the previous three months my real father had been living in St. Petersburg. He sent money. He was a prince, and he behaved himself exactly as a prince should. For the rest of her life my mother never forgot him. I infer that from the fact that, after me, she never brought another child into the world. Which implies that, after the affair with Krapotkin, she refused “to fulfill her marital duties,” as the law books put it. I myself can remember that they never slept together in the same bed, the forester Golubchik and my mother. My mother slept in the kitchen, on an improvised couch made up on a broad wooden bench just below the icon; while my father slept alone in the large double bed in the next room. For he earned enough to be able to afford both a front room and a kitchen. We lived on the edge of the so-called “black forest”—for there was also a lighter birch forest, while ours was a pine one. We lived alone, about two or three versts away from the nearest village which was called Woroniaki. Taken all in all, my legitimate father, the forester Golubchik, was a kindly man. I never heard a quarrel between him and my mother. They both of them knew what stood between them, and they never spoke of it. But one day — I must have been about eight years old at the time — a peasant from Woroniaki came to the house and asked for the forester, who at that hour was out in the woods. This man remained sitting in the kitchen, although my mother told him that her husband would not be home until late that evening. “Well, I’ve time enough,” he said. “I can wait till this evening, and till midnight, and even later. I can wait until I am locked up. And that won’t be for another day at least.” “Why should they lock you up?” asked my mother. “Because I have just strangled my daughter Arina with my own hands,” answered the peasant smiling. I was crouching beside the stove; neither my mother nor the peasant took the slightest notice of me, and I can remember the scene in the minutest detail. I shall never forget it! I shall never forget how the man smiled, and how at those terrible words, he looked at his outstretched hands. My mother, who was at that moment kneading dough, laid down the water and the flour on the table, crossed herself, then folded her hands over her blue apron, stepped up to our visitor and asked: “You strangled your daughter?” “Yes,” answered the man.” “But why, in God’s name?” “Because she gave herself to your husband, the forester Semjon Golubchik. That is his name?” The peasant said all this with a smile, with a concealed smile that peeped out from behind his words like the moon from behind dark clouds. “That is my fault,” said my mother. I can still hear that sentence, as though she had spoken it yesterday. I can remember her very words. (Although at the time I did not understand them.) She crossed herself again. Then she took me by the hand. She left the peasant sitting in our kitchen and went with me into the forest, continually calling the name of Golubchik. Nobody answered. We returned to the house and the man was still sitting there. “Would you like some broth?” asked my mother as we sat down to eat. “No,” answered our guest, smiling politely, “but if you, perhaps, have some samogonka in the house — I would not refuse it.” My mother poured him out a glass of our home-distilled spirits, which he drank; and I can remember clearly how he threw back his head and how I could see by the rippling of his bristly neck that the schnapps was running down his throat. He drank and drank and still remained sitting there. At last the sun went down — it may have been a day in early autumn — and my father came back. “Ah, Pantalejmon!” he said. The peasant stood up and said quietly: “Come outside with me.” “Why?” asked the forester. “A few hours ago” the man answered, still quite calmly, “I killed Arina.”
My father immediately went out with him. They remained away a long time. It might well have been an hour. My mother was on her knees before the icon in the kitchen. There was not a sound to be heard. It was already night. The little red lamp under the icon was the only light in the room, and never until that hour had I been afraid of it. My mother was kneeling the whole time and praying, and still my father did not come. I was crouching beside the stove. At last, it might have been three or more hours later, I heard steps and several voices outside the house. They were bringing my father home. Four men were carrying him. The forester Golubchik must have been a considerable weight. He was bleeding all over. Probably the father of his mistress had done that to him.
Well, I will be brief. The forester never recovered from those blows. He could no longer pursue his occupation. A few weeks later he died, and they buried him on an icy winter’s day. I can still remember vividly that the grave-diggers who came to fetch him wore thick woollen mittens and yet had to beat their bodies with both hands to keep warm. They loaded my father on to a sledge. My mother and I sat in another, and during the drive the glittering frost sprayed a hundred thousand beautiful crystal needles into my face. Actually, I was joyful. The burial of my father counts among the happier memories of my childhood.
Passons! — as the French say. It was not long before I went to school. And, alert as I was, I soon discovered that I was the son of Krapotkin. I noticed it in the attitude of the teachers; and once, in spring, on a memorable day, when Krapotkin himself came to visit his estate, I knew it for certain. The village of Woroniaki was decorated in honor of the occasion. They hung garlands at both ends of the village street. They even collected a band, composed entirely of wind instruments, and some singers as well. They practiced for a whole week before, under the guidance of the schoolmaster. But during that week my mother would not let me go to school, and I only learned about the preparations by roundabout means. And one day Krapotkin really came. Straight to us. He ignored the street with the garlands, he ignored the band, he ignored the singers, and he came straight to our house. He had a beautiful, dark, slightly silvery beard; he smelt of cigars, and his hands were very long, very thin, very dry, almost withered. He stroked my head, asked me questions, turned me around a few times, looked at my hands, my ears, my eyes, my hair. Then he said that my ears were dirty and so were my fingernails. He took out an ivory penknife and in two minutes carved out of an ordinary piece of wood a little man with a beard and long arms. (Later I heard that he was a renowned wood-carver.) Then he spoke for a while quietly with my mother, and then he left us.