"What is there that I might eat, Pulkheria Ivanovna?"
"What is there?" Pulkheria Ivanovna would say, "unless I go and tell them to bring you some berry dumplings that I asked them to keep specially for you?"
"That's nice," Afanasy Ivanovich would answer.
"Or maybe you'd like some custard?"
"That's good," Afanasy Ivanovich would answer. After which it would all be brought at once and duly eaten up.
Before supper Afanasy Ivanovich would again snack on something or other. At nine-thirty supper was served. After supper they would all go to bed again, and a general silence would settle over this active yet quiet little corner. The room in which Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna slept was so hot that it was a rare person who could spend any length of time in it. But on top of that, for even greater warmth, Afanasy Ivanovich slept on the stove, 8 though the intense heat often made him get up several times during the night and pace the room. Sometimes Afanasy Ivanovich groaned as he walked. Then Pulkheria Ivanovna would ask:
"Why are you groaning, Afanasy Ivanovich?"
"God knows, Pulkheria Ivanovna, feels like I've got a bit of a stomachache," Afanasy Ivanovich would say.
"Hadn't you better eat something, Afanasy Ivanovich?"
"I don't know if that would be good, Pulkheria Ivanovna! Anyhow, what might I eat?"
"Some buttermilk, or stewed dried pears?"
"Why not, just so as to try it?" Afanasy Ivanovich would say.
A sleepy serf girl would go and rummage in the cupboards, and Afanasy Ivanovich would eat a little plateful, after which he usually said:
"There, that feels better."
Sometimes, when the weather was clear and the rooms were well heated, Afanasy Ivanovich got merry and liked to poke fun at Pulkheria Ivanovna and talk about something different.
"And if our house suddenly caught fire, Pulkheria Ivanovna," he would say, "what would we do then?"
"God preserve us from that!" Pulkheria Ivanovna would say, crossing herself.
"Well, but supposing our house caught fire, where would we go then?"
"God knows what you're saying, Afanasy Ivanovich! How could our house burn down? God won't let it."
"Well, but what if it did burn down?"
"Well, then we'd move into the kitchen wing. You could take the housekeeper's little room for a while."
"And if the kitchen wing burned down, too?"
"Now, really! God wouldn't permit such a thing as both house and kitchen burning down at once! Well, then we'd have the storehouse till the new house was built."
"And if the storehouse burns down as well?"
"God knows what you're saying! I don't even want to listen to you! It's a sin to say it, and God punishes that sort of talk."
But Afanasy Ivanovich, pleased at having poked fun at Pulkheria Ivanovna, would smile, sitting on his chair.
But for me the old folk seemed most interesting when they were having guests. Then everything in their house acquired a different air. These good people, one might say, lived for their guests. The very best they had was all brought out. They vied with each other in trying to treat you to everything their farm had produced. But the most pleasant thing for me was that they were obliging without being cloying. This ready cordiality was so meekly expressed on their faces, was so becoming in them, that willy-nilly you would agree to their requests. It proceeded from the clear, serene simplicity of their kind and artless souls. This cordiality was a far cry from what you're treated to by a clerk in a government office who owes his success to you, calls you his benefactor, and cowers at your feet. A guest was never allowed to leave the same day: he absolutely had to spend the night.
"You can't set out so late on such a long journey!" Pulkheria Ivanovna always said (the guest usually lived two or three miles away).
"Of course not," Afanasy Ivanovich would say, "who knows what may happen: robbers may fall upon you, or some other bad men."
"God preserve us from robbers!" Pulkheria Ivanovna would say.
"Why talk of such things before going to bed at night? Robbers or no robbers, it's dark, it's not good at all to go. And your coachman, I know your coachman, he's so weak and small, any nag can beat him; and besides, he's surely tipsy by now and sleeping somewhere."
And the guest absolutely had to stay. However, evening in a low, warm room, cordial, warming, and lulling conversation, steaming hot food served on the table, always nourishing and expertly cooked, would be his reward. I can see Afanasy Ivanovich as if it were right now, sitting hunched on a chair, smiling his usual smile and listening to the guest with attention and even pleasure! Often the talk ran to politics. The guest, who also very rarely left his estate, frequently offered his surmises with an important look and a mysterious expression on his face, saying that the French had secretly agreed with the English to turn Bonaparte loose on Russia again, or else simply talked of war being imminent, and then Afanasy Ivanovich often said, as if not looking at Pulkheria Ivanovna:
"I'm thinking of going to war myself. Why shouldn't I go to war?
"He's off again!" Pulkheria Ivanovna would interrupt. "Don't believe him," she would say, addressing the guest. "How can he go to war, old as he is? The first soldier will shoot him down! By God, he will! He'll just take aim and shoot him down."
"So what," Afanasy Ivanovich would say, "I'll shoot him down, too.
"Just hear him talk!" Pulkheria Ivanovna would pick up. "How can he go to war? His pistols got rusty long ago sitting in the closet. You should see them: the way they are, the powder will blow them up before they do any shooting. He'll hurt his hands, and disfigure his face, and stay crippled forever."
"So what," Afanasy Ivanovich would say, "I'll buy myself a new weapon. I'll take a saber or a Cossack lance."
"He makes it all up. It just comes into his head and he starts talking," Pulkheria Ivanovna would pick up vexedly "I know he's joking, but even so, it's unpleasant to listen. He always says something like that, sometimes you listen and listen, and then you get scared."
But Afanasy Ivanovich, pleased to have given Pulkheria Ivanovna a little fright, would be laughing as he sat hunched on his chair.
To me Pulkheria Ivanovna was most entertaining at the moments when she was treating a guest to hors d'ceuvres.
"This," she would say, unstopping a decanter, "is vodka infused with yarrow and sage. If someone has an ache in the shoulder blades or the lower back, it's a great help. This one is with centaury: if you have a ringing in the ears or blotches on your face, it's a great help. And this one's distilled with peach stones; here, take a glass, what a wonderful smell! If someone bumps the corner of a cupboard or a table as he's getting out of bed and gets a lump on his forehead, it's enough just to drink one little glass before dinner and it will go away as if by magic, that same minute, as if he'd never had it."
This was followed by the same kind of report on other decanters, that almost all of them had some healing properties. Having loaded the guest with all this pharmacy, she would lead him to a multitude of plates.
"These are mushrooms with thyme! These are with cloves and walnuts! A Turkish woman taught me how to pickle them, back when we still had Turkish prisoners. 9 She was such a nice woman, it didn't even show that she confessed the Turkish faith. She went about just as we do, only she didn't eat pork, said it was somehow forbidden by their law. These are mushrooms with black currant leaves and nutmeg! And these are big gourds done in vinegar: it's the first time I've tried it, I don't know how they came out, it's Father Ivan's secret. First you spread some oak leaves in a small barrel, then put in some pepper and saltpeter, and some hawkweed flowers, too-you just take the flowers and spread them stems up. And these are pirozhki! cheese pirozhki! with poppyseed juice! And these are the ones Afanasy Ivanovich likes best, with cabbage and buckwheat."