‘O God! How could such a thing happen! And none of the men are here!’
‘What is it? What is it?’ running out into the sunshine I ask a woman serf who hurries past me groaning. She only looks round, waves her arms, and runs on. But here comes seventy-year-old Matrëna hurrying to the lake, holding down with one hand the kerchief which is slipping off her head, and hopping and dragging one of her feet in its worsted stocking. Two little girls come running up hand in hand, and a ten-year-old boy, wearing his father’s coat and clutching the homespun skirt of one of the girls, keeps close behind them.
‘What has happened?’ I ask them.
‘A peasant is drowning.’
‘Where?’
‘In the lake.’
‘Who is he? One of ours?’
‘No, a stranger.’
Iván the coachman, dragging his heavy boots through the newly-mown grass, and the fat clerk Jacob, all out of breath, run to the pond and I after them.
I remember the feeling which said to me: ‘There you are, plunge in and pull out the peasant and save him, and everyone will admire you,’ which was exactly what I wanted.
‘Where is he? Where?’ I ask the throng of domestic serfs gathered on the bank.
‘Out there, in the very deepest part near the other bank, almost at the boathouse,’ says the washerwoman, hanging the wet linen on her wooden yoke. ‘I look, and see him dive; he just comes up and is gone, then comes up again and calls out: “I’m drowning, help!” and goes down again, and nothing but bubbles come up. Then I see that the man is drowning, so I give a yelclass="underline" “Folk! A peasant’s drowning!” ’
And lifting the yoke to her shoulder the laundress waddles sideways along the path away from the lake.
‘Oh gracious, what a business!’ says Jacob Ivánov, the office clerk, in a despairing tone. ‘What a bother there’ll be with the rural court. We’ll never get through with it!’
A peasant carrying a scythe pushes his way through the throng of women, children, and old men who have gathered on the farther shore, and hanging his scythe on the branch of a willow slowly begins to take off his boots.
‘Where? Where did he go down?’ I keep asking, wishing to rush there and do something extraordinary.
But they point to the smooth surface of the lake which is occasionally rippled by the passing breeze. I do not understand how he came to drown; the water is just as smooth, lovely, and calm above him, shining golden in the midday sun, and it seems that I can do nothing and can astonish no one, especially as I am a very poor swimmer and the peasant is already pulling his shirt over his head and ready to plunge in. Everybody looks at him hopefully and with bated breath, but after going in up to his shoulders he slowly turns back and puts his shirt on again – he cannot swim.
People still come running and the thing grows and grows; the women cling to one another, but nobody does anything to help. Those who have just come give advice, and sigh, and their faces express fear and despair; but of those who have been there awhile, some, tired with standing, sit down on the grass, while some go away. Old Matrëna asks her daughter whether she shut the oven door, and the boy who is wearing his father’s coat diligently throws small stones into the water.
But now Theodore Filípych’s dog Tresórka, barking and looking back in perplexity, comes running down the hill, and then Theodore himself, running downhill and shouting, appears from behind the briar-rose bushes:
‘What are you standing there for?’ he cries, taking off his coat as he runs, ‘A man drowning, and they stand there! … Get me a rope!’
Everybody looks at Theodore Filípych with hope and fear as, leaning his hand on the shoulder of an obliging domestic serf, he prises off his right boot with the toe of the left.
‘Over there, where the people are, a little to the right of the willow, Theodore Filípych, just there!’ someone says to him.
‘I know,’ he replies, and knitting his brows, in response, no doubt, to the signs of shame among the crowd of women, he pulls off his shirt, removes the cross from his neck and hands it to the gardener’s boy who stands obsequiously before him, and then, stepping energetically over the cut grass, approaches the lake.
Tresórka, perplexed by the quickness of his master’s movements, has stopped near the crowd and with a smack of his lips eats a few blades of grass near the bank, then looks at his master intently and with a joyful yelp suddenly plunges with him into the water. For a moment nothing can be seen but foam and spray, which even reaches to us; but now Theodore Filípych, gracefully swinging his arms and rhythmically raising and lowering his back, swims briskly with long strokes to the opposite shore. Tresórka, having swallowed some water, returns hurriedly, shakes himself near the throng, and rubs his back on the grass. Just as Theodore Filípych reaches the opposite shore two coachmen come running up to the willow with a fishing-net wrapped round a pole. Theodore Filípych for some unknown reason lifts his arms, dives down once and then a second and a third time, on each occasion squirting a jet of water from his mouth, and gracefully tosses back his hair without answering the questions that are hurled at him from all sides. At last he comes out onto the bank, and as far as I can see only gives instructions as to spreading out the net. The net is drawn in, but there is nothing in it except ooze with a few small carp entangled in it. While the net is being lowered again I go round to that side.