“Well,” I thought, “no, why should she do that?” and I threw my boot after her, only I missed, and she carried off my pigeon chick and no doubt ate it somewhere. My two pigeons were left childless, but they didn’t pine for long and began kissing again, and again they had a pair of children ready, but that cursed cat was there again … Deuce knows how she managed to spy it all out, only I look once, and in broad daylight she’s dragging off another pigeon chick, and just when I had nothing to fling after her. But for that I decided to pull a fast one on her and set a trap in the window, so that as soon as she showed her face at night, it slammed shut on her, and she sat there complaining and miaowing. I took her out of the trap at once, stuffed her head and front paws into a boot to keep her from scratching, held her back paws and tail in my left hand, with a mitten on it, took a whip from the wall with my right hand, and began teaching her a lesson on my bed. I think I gave her some hundred and fifty hot ones, with all my might, so that she even stopped struggling. Then I took her out of the boot, wondering: is she done in or not? How, I wonder, can I test whether she’s alive or not? And I put her on the threshold and chopped her tail off with a hatchet: she went “Mia-a-a-ow,” shuddered all over, spun around ten times or so, and then ran off.
“Good,” I thought, “now you’re sure not to come here after my pigeons again.” And to make it still scarier for her, the next morning I nailed the chopped-off tail outside over my window, and was very pleased with that. But an hour later, or two hours at the most, I look, and the countess’s maid comes running in, though she’s never set foot in our stable in all her born days, and she’s holding a parasol over herself, and she screams:
“Aha, aha! So that’s who, that’s who!”
I say:
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s you,” she says, “who mutilated Zozinka! Confess: it’s her tail you’ve got nailed over the window!”
I say:
“Well, what’s so important about a nailed-up tail?”
“How dared you?” she says.
“And how dared she eat my pigeons?”
“Well, what’s so important about your pigeons!”
“Your cat’s no great lady either.”
You see, I was already old enough for back talk.
“She’s just a crummy cat,” I say.
And the fidget says:
“How dare you speak that way: don’t you know that she’s my cat and the countess herself has petted her?” And with that she slaps me across the cheek with her hand, but I, since I had also been quick with my hands since childhood, not thinking twice, grabbed a dirty broom that was standing by the door and hit her across the waist with it …
My God, here everything blew up! I was taken to the German steward’s office to be judged, and he decided I should be given the severest possible thrashing and then be taken from the stables and sent to the English garden, to crush gravel for the paths with a hammer … They gave me a terribly severe hiding, I couldn’t even pick myself up, and they took me to my father on a bast mat, but that would have been nothing to me; but then there was this last punishment, of going on my knees and crushing stones … That tormented me so much that I kept thinking and thinking how to get out of it, and decided to put an end to my life. I provided myself with a stout cord, having begged it from a houseboy, and went for a swim in the evening, then to the aspen grove behind the threshing floor, got on my knees, prayed for all Christians, tied the cord to a branch, made a noose, and put my head in it. It only remained for me to jump, and the story would be all told … Given my character, I could have done it quite easily, but I had only just swung, jumped off the branch, and hung down, when I saw that I was lying on the ground, and in front of me stood a Gypsy with a knife, laughing—his bright white teeth flashing against his swarthy mug in the night.
“What’s this you’re up to, farmhand?” he says.
“And you, what do you want with me?”
“Or,” he persisted, “is your life so bad?”
“Seems it’s not all sweetness,” I say.
“Instead of hanging by your own hand,” he says, “come and live with us, maybe you’ll hang some other way.”
“But who are you and what do you live by? I’ll bet you’re thieves.”
“Thieves we are,” he says, “thieves and swindlers.”
“There, you see,” I say, “and, on occasion, I’ll bet you put a knife in people?”
“Occasionally,” he says, “we do that, too.”
I thought over what to do: at home it would be the same thing again tomorrow and the day after, going on your knees in the path, and tap, tap, crushing little stones with a hammer, and I already had lumps growing on my knees from the work, and all I had in my ears was people jeering at me, that the fiend of a German had condemned me to make rubble of a whole mountain of stones on account of a cat’s tail. Everybody laughed: “And yet they call you a savior: you saved the masters’ lives.” I simply couldn’t stand it, and figuring that, if I didn’t hang myself, I’d have to go back to the same thing, I waved my hand, wept, and went over to the robbers.
IV
That sly Gypsy gave me no time to collect my wits. He said:
“To convince me you won’t go back on it, you must bring me a pair of horses from the master’s stable right now, and take the best ones, so that we can gallop far away on them before morning.”
I grieved inwardly: Lord knows I didn’t want to steal; but then it was sink or swim; and, knowing all the ins and outs of the stables, I had no trouble leading two fiery steeds, the kind that knew no fatigue, out beyond the threshing floor, and the Gypsy had already taken wolves’ teeth on strings from his pocket, and he hung them on each horse’s neck, and the Gypsy and I mounted them and rode off. The horses, scenting wolves’ teeth on them, raced so fast I can’t tell you, and by morning we were seventy miles away, near the town of Karachev. There we sold the horses at once to some innkeeper, took the money, went to the river, and began settling our accounts. We had sold the horses for three hundred roubles—in banknotes, of course, as it was done then—but the Gypsy gave me one silver rouble and said:
“Here’s your share.”
I found that insulting.
“How come?” I say. “I stole the horses and could suffer more for it than you—why is my share so small?”
“Because,” he says, “that’s how big it grew.”
“That’s nonsense,” I say. “Why do you take so much for yourself?”
“And again,” he says, “it’s because I’m a master and you’re still a pupil.”
“Pupil, hah!” I say. “What drivel!” And one word led to another, and we got into a quarrel. Finally, I say:
“I don’t want to go any further with you, because you’re a scoundrel.”
And he replies:
“Do leave me, brother, for Christ’s sake, because you’ve got no passport,18 and I could get in trouble with you.”
So we parted ways, and I was about to go to the local justice and turn myself in as a runaway, but when I told my story to his clerk, the man says to me:
“You fool, you: why go turning yourself in? Have you got ten roubles?”
“No,” I say, “I’ve got one silver rouble, but not ten.”
“Well, then maybe you’ve got something else, maybe a silver cross on your neck, or what’s that in your ear—an earring?”
“Yes,” I say, “it’s an earring.”
“A silver one?”
“Yes, a silver one, and I’ve also got a silver cross from St. Mitrofan’s.”19
“Well,” he says, “take them off quickly and give them to me, and I’ll write you out a release, so you can go to Nikolaev—they need people there, and hordes of vagrants flee there from us.”