Free Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev Page A

who he was, where he came from, whose son he was, how he came to be a resident of Shumikhino, in what fashion he came by the frock coat of mixed material which he’d worn from times immemorial, where he lived and what he lived on – about all these things positively no one had the slightest idea and, truth to tell, such questions didn’t concern them. Grandpa Tro-fimych, who knew the family tree of all manorial servants in an ascending line to the fourth generation, even he had said only once that he thought, so it was said, Stepan’d been related to a Turkish woman whom the late master, Brigadier Aleksey Romanych, had brought back in a cart from the wars. Even on holidays and days of general celebration when there were abundant free handouts of buckwheat pies and green wine in the good old Russian tradition, even on such occasions Stepushka didn’t make his way to the laden tables and full barrels, didn’t bow down, didn’t kiss the master’s hand, didn’t drink back at one go a whole glass in his master’s presence and to his master’s health, a glass filled by the fat hand of an estate steward; but there was always some kind soul or other who, in passing, would hand the poor wretch a partly eaten piece of pie. On Easter Sunday he was greeted in Christ’s name but he never turned back his greasy sleeve and fetched from his back pocket his painted egg and handed it, sighing and winking, to the young master and mistress or even to the mistress herself. In summer he lived in a storeroom behind the henhouse and in winter in the entrance to the bathhouse; in severe frosts he spent the night in the hayloft. People were used to having him about, sometimes even hit him, but no one usedto talk to him and he, it seems, had grown used to keeping his mouth shut from birth onwards. After the fire this abandoned man found refuge in – or, as the Oryol peasants say, ‘got his foot into’ – Mitrofan the gardener’s place. The gardener didn’t lay a finger on him, nor did he invite him to stay, nor drive him away. Stepushka didn’t in fact live in the gardener’s hut. He lived in, or hung about, the kitchen garden. He’d move and walk about without a sound, and sneeze and cough into his hand, not without fear, and eternally fussed and bothered on the quiet, just like an ant, always looking for food, just for food. And if he hadn’t spent from morning to evening worrying about food, my Stepushka’d have died of hunger! It’s a bad business if you don’t know in the morning what you’ll have to fill yourself with by the evening! So Stepushka’d spend his time sitting under the fence eating a radish or sucking a carrot or crumbling in his lap a dirty head of cabbage; or he’d be groaning under the weight of carrying a bucket of water somewhere; or he’d get a little fire going under a pot and throw some black bits and bobs into it from out of his breast pouch; or in his own little hidey-hole he’d be wielding a piece of wood, knocking in a nail, making a little shelf for some crust or other. And he’d do it all without a word, just as if he were all the time on the lookout and about to hide. And then he’d be gone for a couple of days and no one’d notice his absence… You’d take a second look and he’d be there again, sitting under the fence and surreptitiously feeding kindling under a little three-legged pot. He had a small face, yellowish little eyes, hair down to his eyebrows, a sharp little nose, enormous, transparent ears, like a bat’s, and a beard shaved literally two weeks ago, never any longer or shorter. This was the Stepushka I met on the bank of the Ista in the company of the other old man.
    I approached them, exchanged greetings and sat down beside them. In Stepushka’s companion I recognized another acquaintance. It was one of Count Pyotr Ilyich—’s freed serfs,