Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

Zemstvo elections, and with all their scandals they had never produced any special impression on the native of Bielsk. On these occasions, if meeting in the street, the citizens would merely exchange brief remarks with each other.

“Have you been?” one would ask, indicating by a glance the building in which the Zemstvo ofhces were housed.

“Yes,” would reply the other, with a gesture of his hand; and, accustomed to this mode of expression of thoughts, the interrogator would understand and simply add:

“Who?”

“Ivan Petrovich.”

“Whom?”

“Ivan Parfenovich.”

Then they would both smile and part.

But now it was quite different. The town was in an uproar just as at fair-time. Crowds of urchins kept running backwards and forwards in the direction of the town common grazing-ground. Respectable, sober individuals in loose summer suits of alpaca silk were also wending their way thither, and the damsels of the town, with parasols and various coloured hoop-petticoats (they wore them in those days), occupying so much of the wide street that young Rogacheff, the merchant, driving a dapple grey, was obliged to draw in almost against the walls of the houses. The ladies were accompanied by the local cavaliers in grey overcoats with black velvet collars, carrying walking-canes and wearing straw hats or caps with cockades. Among these beaux were, of course, the brothers Isotoff, the leaders of all public gaieties, who knew how during a quadrille to call out “Grand Rond!” and “Au rebours!”⁠—that is, when they were not running through the town imparting the latest news to their lady acquaintances.

“They have arrived from the Valuinsk District, and occupy half the ground of the Common right up to the river,” said Leonid, the elder brother.

“I regarded the view from the summit of the eminence,” added Constantine, the younger brother, who delighted in expressing himself in the most flowery language⁠—“an entrancing picture!”

“Eminence” was the name he gave to the hill from which a view of the town and its vicinity could be obtained.

“Ah, what a good idea! Listen! I have a splendid idea. Let us order the lineika, and drive out to the eminence. It will be like a picnic, and we will watch from there.”

This proposal by the first lady of Bielsk, the wife of the brother of the Treasurer (almost the whole town called her husband, Paul Ivanovich, the brother of the Treasurer), who had arrived eight years ago from Petersburg, and was therefore the authority on fashions and good tone, met with general approval. The fat old bay horse was harnessed into the lineika, which is only met with in provincial capitals, and consists of long boards with two long seats so placed that the occupants, usually twelve in all, sit in two rows of six or seven a side and back to back. The party, which consisted of some dozen persons, seated themselves in the lineika, and started off through the town, overtaking mobs of boys, strings of damsels, and crowds of every description of public, all making their way to the Common. The lineika, having negotiated the sandy streets of the town, crossed the bridge and made for the steep right bank of the river. The bay, with dogged pace, wrinkling the sleek folds of his glossy haunches, clambered up the long slope, and in half an hour the picnickers were seated on the edge of the three hundred feet high ridge, with its overgrowth of bushes, gazing at the view with which we are already acquainted. Below, under their feet, immediately under this wall, the river was quietly flowing along its course, and behind it opened out the common on which the general attention was concentrated.

In the variety of colouring it resembled a huge patchwork carpet. The dull white of tents, numberless vehicles, and a motley crowd were all visible. Dark figures of men in kaftans and dirty grey shirts intermingled with the bright yellow and scarlet dresses of the women. A dense crowd surrounded the gipsy encampment which had been formed. It was a magnificent day, not too hot, and absolutely still. Above the roar of a multitudinous crowd could be heard the ring of sledgehammers on iron, the neighing of horses, and the roar of scores of tame bears⁠—the mainstay of the gipsies who had brought them hither out of the neighbouring Districts.

Olga Pavlona gazed at this kaleidoscope through binoculars, and went into raptures.

“How interesting it all is! What a big one! Look, Leonid, what a huge bear there on the right! And the young gipsy alongside it⁠—a perfect Adonis!”

She handed the glasses to the young man, who through them saw the figure of a well-built and exceedingly dirty youth who was standing near and petting a beast which kept shuffling about and changing from one leg on to another.

“Allow me to look,” said a stout, clean-shaven man in a duck suit and straw hat. For some time he looked attentively through the glasses, and then, turning to Olga Pavlona, said with a deep sigh: “Ye-es, Olga Pavlona, an Adonis. But this Adonis will turn out a first-class horse-thief.”

Olga Pavlona uttered an exclamation of impatience.

“Why,” said she, “do you always try to turn everything poetical into prose? Why a horse-thief? I will not believe it! He looks so good!”

“That may be, but how is he going to support his beautiful body without that bear? Tomorrow they are slaughtering all these bears, and one-half of all the gipsies in this encampment will be without a living.”

“They can work as blacksmiths and shoeing-smiths, tell fortunes⁠ ⁠…”

“Tell fortunes! Ilia, the horse-doctor, came to me yesterday. You go and talk with him. ‘Thomas Thomasovich,’ he said, ‘those greys of yours are very good, only beware of our brother.’ ‘What!’ I said; ‘surely you will not steal them?’ He smiled, the blackguard! Tell fortunes! Those are the sort of fortunes he is telling!”

Out of the lineika they took a large basket, from which appeared eatables and drinks, and the company began to seat