The host returned and smilingly sat down opposite him. They were silent awhile.
Chapter XI
“Yes, you were saying you bought him of Voekov,” remarked Serpukhovskoy with assumed carelessness.
“Oh yes, that was of Atlasny, you know. I always meant to buy some mares of Dubovitzki, but he had nothing but rubbish left.”
“He has failed . . . “ said Serpukhovskoy, and suddenly stopped and glanced round. He remembered that he owed that bankrupt twenty thousand rubles, and if it came to talking of being bankrupt it was certainly said that he was one. He laughed.
Both again sat silent for a long time. The host considered what he could brag about to his guest. Serpukhovskoy was thinking what he could say to show that he did not consider himself bankrupt. But the minds of both worked with difficulty, in spite of efforts to brace themselves up with cigars. “When are we going to have a drink?” thought Serpukhovskoy. I must certainly have a drink or I shall die of ennui with this fellow,” thought the host.
“Will you be remaining here long?” Serpukhovskoy asked.
“Another month. Well, shall we have supper, eh? Fritz, is it ready?”
They went into the dining-room. There under a hanging lamp stood a table on which were candles and all sorts of extraordinary things: syphons, and little dolls fastened to corks, rare wine in decanters, unusual hors-d’oeuvres, and vodka. They had a drink, ate a little, drank again, ate again, and their conversation got into swing. Serpukhovskoy was flushed and began to speak without timidity.
They spoke of women and of who kept this one or that, a gipsy, a ballet-girl, or a Frenchwoman.
“And have you given up Mathieu?” asked the host. (That was the woman who had ruined Serpukhovskoy.)
“No, she left me. Ah, my dear fellow, when I recall what I have got through in my life! Now I am really glad when I have a thousand rubles, and am glad to get away from everybody. I can’t stand it in Moscow. But what’s the good of talking!”
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
