The Goryukhino language is decidedly an offshoot of Slavic, but differs from it as much as Russian does. It is filled with abbreviations and contractions, some letters being quite abolished in it or replaced by others. However, a Russian can easily understand a Goryukhiner and vice versa.
The men were usually married at the age of thirteen to girls of twenty. The wives beat their husbands for the first four or five years. After that the husbands started beating their wives. In this way both sexes had their time of power, and balance was maintained.
The funeral rite took place in the following way. On the day of his death, the deceased was taken to the cemetery, so that the dead man would not uselessly take up space in the cottage. As a result it happened, to the indescribable joy of his family, that a dead man would sneeze or yawn at the very moment he was being carried out of the village in his coffin. Wives would weep over their husbands, wailing and saying: “My bright light, my brave heart! Why have you abandoned me? What will I remember you by?” With the return from the cemetery, a memorial banquet would begin in honor of the deceased, and relations and friends would be drunk for two or three days or even a whole week, depending on their zeal and their fondness for his memory. These ancient rites have survived to this day.
The Goryukhiners’ clothing consisted of a shirt worn over the trousers, which is a distinctive token of their Slavic origin. In winter they wore sheepskin coats, but more for the beauty of it than from real need, for they usually slung the coat over one shoulder and threw it off at the least effort calling for movement.
Learning, art, and poetry had been in a rather flourishing state in Goryukhino since ancient times. On top of the priests and lectors, there had always been literate men. The chronicles mention the local scribe Terenty, who lived around 1767, and who was able to write not only with his right hand but also with his left. This extraordinary man became famous in the neighborhood by composing all sorts of letters, petitions, civilian passports, and so on. Having suffered more than once for his art, for his obligingness, and for taking part in various remarkable adventures, he died in extreme old age, just as he was training himself to write with his right foot, for the writing of both of his hands had become too well known. As the reader will see below, he also plays an important role in the history of Goryukhino.
Music was always the favorite art of educated Goryukhiners: balalaikas and bagpipes, to the delight of their sensitive hearts, resound in their dwellings to this day, especially in the ancient public establishment adorned with a fir tree and the image of a double-headed eagle.10
Poetry once flourished in ancient Goryukhino. Verses by Arkhip the Bald have been preserved till now in the memory of posterity.
In delicacy they yield nothing to the eclogues of the well-known Virgil; in beauty of imagination they far exceed the idylls of Mr. Sumarokov.11 And though in dashing style they yield to the latest works of our Muses, they still equal them in whimsicality and wit.
Let us cite as an example this satirical poem:
Into the master’s yard
The headman Anton sallies,
Bearing a bunch of tallies.
The squire then inquires
Just what these sticks might be.
Ah, headman Anton, see—
You’ve robbed us all around
You’ve left us barren ground,
And the village goes without,
While your fine wife struts about.
Having thus acquainted my reader with the ethnographic and statistical situation of Goryukhino, and with the manners and customs of its inhabitants, let us now begin the narrative itself.
LEGENDARY TIMES THE HEADMAN TRIFON
The form of government in Goryukhino has changed several times. It has been by turns under the rule of elders chosen by the community, under stewards appointed by the landowner, and finally under the direct control of the landowners themselves. The advantages and disadvantages of these different forms of government will be expanded upon in the course of my narrative.
The founding of Goryukhino and its initial population are shrouded in the darkness of the unknown. Obscure legends tell us that Goryukhino was once a rich and extensive village, that its inhabitants were all well-to-do, that its quitrent was collected once a year and sent to no one knew whom on several carts. In that time everything was bought cheaply and sold dearly. Stewards did not exist, the headmen offended nobody, the inhabitants worked little and lived in clover, and the shepherds tended the flocks in boots. We should not be seduced by this charming picture. The notion of a golden age is inherent in all people and proves only that they are never pleased with the present and, experience giving them little hope for the future, adorn the irretrievable past with all the flowers of their imagination. Here is what is certain:
The village of Goryukhino from olden times has belonged to the illustrious Belkin family. But my ancestors, owners of many other country seats, gave no attention to this remote land. Goryukhino paid small tribute and was ruled by elders elected by the people of the veche, or community assembly.
But with the passage of time the Belkins’ ancestral holdings were broken up and went into decline. The impoverished grandchildren of a rich grandfather could not get out of their habit of luxury and demanded the former full income from an estate that by then had diminished tenfold. Threatening orders followed one after another. The headmen read them to the veche; the elder oratorized, the peasants became agitated, and the masters, instead of a double quitrent, received cunning excuses and humble complaints written on greasy paper and sealed with a copper coin.
A dark cloud hung over Goryukhino, but nobody even thought about it. In the last year of the rule of Trifon, the last headman elected by the people, on the very day of the church feast, when all the folk noisily surrounded the pleasure establishment (pot-house, in simple parlance) or wandered through the streets embracing each other and loudly singing the songs of Arkhip the Bald, a bast-covered britzka drove into the village, hitched to a pair of barely alive nags; on the box sat a ragged Jew, while a head in a visored cap stuck itself out of the britzka and seemed to gaze curiously at the merrymaking folk. The residents met the vehicle with laughter and crude mockery. (NB. “Rolling the hems of their clothes into tubes, the madmen jeered at the Jewish driver and exclaimed mockingly: ‘Jew, Jew, eat the sow’s ear!…’ ” Chronicle of the Goryukhino Sexton.) But how amazed they were when the britzka stopped in the middle of the village and the new arrival, leaping out of it, in an imperious voice summoned the headman Trifon. This dignitary was in the pleasure establishment, from which two elders respectfully led him under the arms. The stranger, giving him a terrible look, handed him a letter and ordered him to read it immediately. The Goryukhino headmen had the habit of never reading anything themselves. The headman was illiterate. They sent for the village clerk Avdei. He was found not far away, sleeping under a fence in a lane, and was brought to the stranger. But, once brought, either from sudden fright, or from rueful premonition, he seemed to find the clearly written characters of the letter blurred, and he was unable to make them out. The stranger, with terrible oaths, sent the headman Trifon and the clerk Avdei to bed, postponed the reading of the letter until the next day, and went to the office cottage, where the Jew carried his small trunk after him.
The Goryukhiners gazed upon this extraordinary incident in mute amazement, but the britzka, the Jew, and the stranger were soon forgotten. The day ended noisily and merrily, and Goryukhino fell asleep, not foreseeing what awaited it.