The host found it tiresome to listen to Serpukhovskoy. He wanted to speak about himself-to brag. But Serpukhovskoy also wished to talk about himself, about his brilliant past. His host filled his glass for him and waited for him to stop, so that he might tell him about himself and how his stud was now arranged as no one had ever had a stud arranged before. And that his Marie loved him with her heart and not merely for his wealth.
“I wanted to tell you that in my stud . . . “ he began, but Serpukhovskoy interrupted him.
“I may say that there was a time,” Serpukhovskoy began, “when I liked to live well and knew how to do it. Now you talk about trotting-tell me which is your fastest horse.”
The host, glad of an opportunity to tell more about his stud, was beginning, when Serpukhovskoy again interrupted him.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “but you breeders do it just out of vanity and not for pleasure, not for the joy of life. It was different with me. You know I told you I had a driving-horse, a piebald with just the same kind of spots as the one your keeper was riding.
Oh, what a horse that was! You can’t possibly know: it was in 1842, when I had just come to Moscow; I went to a horse-dealer and there I saw a well-bred piebald gelding. I liked him. The price? One thousand rubles. I liked him, so I took him and began to drive with him. I never had, and you have not and never will have, such a horse. I never knew one like him for speed and for strength. You were a boy then and couldn’t have known, but you may have heard of him. All Moscow was talking about him.”
“Yes, I heard of him,” the host unwillingly replied. “But what I wished to say about mine . . . “
“Ah, then you did hear! I bought him just as he was, without pedigree and without a certificate; it was only afterwards that I got to know Voekov and found out. He was a colt by Affable I. Strider-because of his long strides. On account of his piebald spots he was removed from the Khrenov stud and given to the head keeper, who had him castrated and sold him to a horse-dealer. There are no such horses now, my dear chap.
Ah, those were the days! Ah, vanished youth!”-and he sang the words of the gipsy song. He was getting tipsy. “Ah, those were good times. I was twenty-five and had eighty thousand rubles a year, not a single grey hair, and all my teeth like pearls. . . . Whatever I touched succeeded, and now it is all ended. . . . “
“But there was not the same mettlesomeness then,” said the host, availing himself of the pause. “Let me tell you that my first horses began to trot without. . . “
“Your horses! But they used to be more mettlesome . . . “
“How-more mettlesome?”
“Yes, more mettlesome! I remember as if it were today how I drove him once to the trotting races in Moscow. No horse of mine was running. I did not care for trotters, mine were thoroughbreds: General Chaulet, Mahomet. I drove up with my piebald. My driver was a fine fellow, I was fond of him, but he also took to drink. . . . Well, so I got there.
“‘Serpukhovskoy,’ I was asked, ‘When are you going to keep trotters?’ ‘The devil take your lubbers!’ I replied. ‘I have a piebald hack that can outpace all your trotters!’ ‘Oh no, he won’t!’ ‘I’ll bet a thousand rubles!’ Agreed, and they started. He came in five seconds ahead and I won the thousand rubles. But what of it? I did a hundred versts Footnote: A little over sixty-six miles. in three hours with a troyka of thoroughbreds. All Moscow knows it.”
And Serpukhovskoy began to brag so glibly and continuously that his host could not get a single word in and sat opposite him with a dejected countenance, filling up his own and his guest’s glass every now and then by way of distraction.
The dawn was breaking and still they sat there. It became intolerably dull for the host. He got up.
“If we are to go to bed, let’s go!” said Serpukhovskoy rising, and reeling and puffing he went to the room prepared for him.
The host was lying beside his mistress.
“No, he is unendurable,” he said. “He gets drunk and swaggers incessantly.”
“And makes up to me.”
“I’m afraid he’ll be asking for money.”
Serpukhovskoy was lying on the bed in his clothes, breathing heavily.
“I must have been lying a lot,” he thought. Well, no matter! The wine was good, but he is an awful swine. There’s something cheap about him. And I’m an awful swine,” he said to himself and laughed aloud. “First I used to keep women, and now I’m kept. Yes, the Winkler girl will support me. I take money of her. Serves him right. Still, I must undress. Can’t get my boots off. Hullo! Hullo!” he called out, but the man who had been told off to wait on him had long since gone to bed.
He sat down, took off his coat and waistcoat and somehow managed to kick off his trousers, but for a long time could not get his boots off-his soft stomach being in the way. Hee got one off at last, and struggled for a long time with the other, panting and becoming exhausted. And so with his foot in the boot-top he rolled over and began to snore, filling the room with a smell of tobacco, wine, and disagreeable old age.
Chapter XII
If Strider recalled anything that night, he was distracted by Vaska, who threw a rug over him, galloped off on him, and kept him standing till morning at the door of a tavern, near a peasant horse. They licked one another. In the morning when Strider returned to the herd he kept rubbing himself.
Five days passed. They called in a veterinary, who said cheerfully: “It’s the itch; let me sell him to the gipsies.”
“What’s the use? Cut his throat, and get it done today.”
The morning was calm and clear. The herd went to pasture, but Strider was left behind. A strange man came-thin, dark, and dirty, in a coat splashed with something black. It was the knacker. Without looking at Strider he took him by the halter they had put on him and led him away. Strider went quietly without looking round, dragging along as usual and catching his hind feet in the straw.
When they were out of the gate he strained towards the well, but the knacker jerked his halter, saying: “Not worth while.”
The knacker and Vaska, who followed behind, went to a hollow behind the brick barn and stopped as if there were something peculiar about this very ordinary place. The knacker, handing the halter to Vaska, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and produced a knife and a whetstone from his boot-leg.
The gelding stretched towards the halter meaning to chew it a little from dullness, but he could not reach it. He sighed and closed his eyes. His nether lip hung down, disclosing his worn yellow teeth, and he began to drowse to the sound of the sharpening of the knife. Only his swollen, aching, outstretched leg kept jerking. Suddenly he felt himself being taken by the lower jaw and his head lifted. He opened his eyes. There were two dogs in front of him; one was sniffing at the knacker, the other was sitting and watching the gelding as if expecting something from him. The gelding looked at them and began to rub his jaw against the arm that was holding him.
“Want to doctor me probably-well, let them!” he thought.
And in fact he felt that something had been done to his throat. It hurt, and he shuddered and gave a kick with one foot, but restrained himself and waited for what would follow. . . . Then he felt something liquid streaming down his neck and chest. He heaved a profound sigh and felt much better.
The whole burden of his life was eased.
He closed his eyes and began to droop his head. No one was holding it. Then his legs quivered and his whole body swayed. He was not so much frightened as surprised.
Everything was so new to him. He was surprised and started forward and upward, but instead of this, in moving from the spot his legs got entangled, he began to fall sideways, and trying to take a step fell forward and down on his left side.
The knacker waited till the convulsions had ceased, drove away the dogs that had crept nearer, took the gelding by the legs, turned him on his back, told Vaska to hold a leg, and began to skin the horse.
“It was a horse, too,” remarked Vaska.
“If he had been better fed the skin would have been fine,” said the knacker.
The herd returned down hill in the evening, and those on the left saw down below something red, round which dogs were busy and above which hawks and crows were flying. One of the dogs, pressing its paws against the carcass and swinging his head, with a crackling sound tore off what it had seized hold of. The chestnut filly stopped, stretched out her head and neck, and sniffed the air for a long time. They could hardly drive her away.
At dawn, in a ravine of the old forest,
