Two Hussars

Front matter

Early in the nineteenth century, when there were as yet no railways or macadamized roads, no gaslight, no stearine candles, no low couches with sprung cushions, no unvarnished furniture, no disillusioned youths with eye glasses, no liberalizing women philosophers, nor any charming dames aux camelias of whom there are so many in our times, in those naive days, when leaving Moscow for Petersburg in a coach or carriage provided with a kitchenful of home-made provisions one traveled for eight days along a soft, dusty or muddy road and believed in chopped cutlets, sledge-bells, and plain rolls; when in the long autumn evenings the tallow candles, around which family groups of twenty or thirty people gathered, had to be snuffed; when ball-rooms were illuminated by candelabra with wax or spermaceti candles, when furniture was arranged symmetrically, when our fathers were still young and proved it not only by the absence of wrinkles and grey hair but by fighting duels for the sake of a woman and rushing from the opposite corner of a room to pick up a bit of handkerchief purposely or accidentally dropped; when our mothers wore short-waisted dresses and enormous sleeves and decided family affairs by drawing lots, when the charming dames aux camelias hid from the light of day - in those naïve days of Masonic lodges, Martinists, and Tugenbunds, the days of Miloradoviches and Davydovs and Pushkins - a meeting of landed proprietors was held in the Government town of K--, and the nobility elections were being concluded.

I

"Well, never mind, the saloon will do," said a young officer in a fur cloak and hussar's cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K--.

"The assembly, your Excellency, is enormous," said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the orderly that the hussar's name was Count Turbin, and therefore addressed him as "your Excellency."

"The proprietress of Afremovo with her daughters has said she is leaving this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go," continued the boots, stepping softly before the count along the passage and continually looking round.

In the general saloon at a little table under the dingy full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander the First, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, while at another side of the room sat some travelers - tradesmen in blue, fur- lined cloaks.

Entering the room and calling in Blucher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoar-frost, called for vodka, sat down at the table in his blue-satin Cossack jacket, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen there.

The handsome open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour and they offered him a glass of champagne. The count first drank a glass of vodka and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.

"Sashka!" shouted the count. "Give him something!"

The driver went out with Sashka but came back again with the money in his hand.

"Look here, y'r 'xcelence, haven't I done my very best for y'r honour? Didn't you promise me half a ruble, and he's only given me a quarter!"

"Give him a ruble, Sashka."

Sashka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver's feet.

"He's had enough!" he said, in a bass voice. "And besides, I have no more money."

The count drew from his pocket-book the two five-ruble notes which were all it contained and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.

"I've run it pretty close!" said the count. "These are my last five rubles."

"Real hussar fashion, Count," said one of the nobles who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about his legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. "Are you staying here some time, Count?"

"I must get some money. I shouldn't have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this accursed pub."

"Permit me, Count," said the cavalryman. "Will you not join me? My room in No. 7 . . . If you do not mind just for the night. And then you'll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the *Marechal de la Noblesse* is giving a ball tonight. You would make him very happy by going."

"Yes, Count, do stay," said another, a handsome young man. "You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years - the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!"

"Sashka, get my clean linen ready. I am going to the bath," said the count, rising, "and from there perhaps I may look in at the Marshal's."

Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him to which the latter replied with a smile, "That can all be arranged," he went out.

"So I'll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow," shouted the count from the passage.

"Please do, I shall be most happy," replied the cavalryman, running to the door. "No. 7 - don't forget."

When the count's footsteps could no longer be heard the cavalryman returned to his place and sitting close to one of the group - a government official - and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, said: "It is the very man, you know!"

"No!"

"I tell you it is! It is the very same duellist hussar - the famous Turbin. He knew me - I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyani for remounts. There was one thing he and I did together. . . . He's a fine fellow, eh?"

"A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner! Doesn't show a grain of - what d'you call it?" answered the handsome young man. "How quickly we became intimate. . . . He's not more than twenty-five, is he?"

"Oh no, that's what he looks but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who abducted Migunova? He. It was he who killed Sablin. It was he who dropped Matnev out of the window by his legs. It was he who won three hundred thousand rubles from Prince Nestorov. He is a regular dare-devil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar - a real jewel. The rumors that are afloat about us are nothing to the reality - if anyone knew what a true hussar is! Ah yes, those were times!"

And the cavalryman told his interlocutor of such a spree with the count in Lebedyani as not only never had, but never even could have, taken place.

It could not have done so, first because he had never seen the count till that day and had left the army two years before the count entered it; and secondly because the cavalryman had never really served in the cavalry at all but had for four years been the humblest of cadets in the Belevski regiment and retired as soon as ever he became ensign. But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyani where he squandered seven hundred rubles with some officers who were there buying remounts. He had even gone so far as to have an uhlan uniform made with orange facings, meaning to enter an uhlan regiment. This desire to enter the cavalry, and the three weeks spent with the remount officers at Lebedyani, remained the brightest and happiest memories of his life, so he transformed the desire first into a reality and then into a reminiscence and came to believe firmly in his past as a cavalry officer - all of which did not prevent his being, as to gentleness and honesty, a most worthy man.

"Yes, those who have never served in the cavalry will never understand us fellows."

He sat astride a chair and thrusting out his lower jaw began to speak in a bass voice. "You ride at the head of your squadron, not a horse but the devil incarnate prancing about under you, and you just sit in devil-may-care style. The squadron commander rides up to review: 'Lieutenant,' he says. 'We can't get on without you - please lead the squadron to parade.' 'All right,' you say, and there you are: you turn round, shout to your moustached fellows. . . . . Ah, devil take it, those were times!"

The count returned from the bath-house very red and with wet hair, and went straight to No. 7, where the cavalryman was already sitting in his dressing-gown smoking a pipe and considering with pleasure, and not without some apprehension, the happiness that had befallen him of sharing a room with the celebrated Turbin. "Now suppose," he thought, "that he suddenly takes me, strips me naked, drives me to the town gates, and sets me in the snow, or . . . tars me, or simply . . . . But no," he consoled himself, "He wouldn't do that to a comrade."

"Sashka, feed Blucher!" shouted the count.

Sashka, who had taken a tumbler of vodka to refresh himself after the journey and was decidedly tipsy, came in.

"What, already! You've been drinking, you rascal! . . . Feed Blucher!"

"He won't starve anyway: see how sleek he is!" answered Sashka, stroking the dog.

"Silence! Be off and feed him!"

"You want the dog to be fed, but when a man drinks a glass you reproach him."

""Hey! I'll thrash you!" shouted the count in a voice that made the window-panes rattle and even frightened the cavalryman a bit.

"You should ask if Sashka has had a bite today! Yes, beat me if you think more of a dog than of a man," muttered Sashka.

But here he received such a terrible blow in the face from the count's fist that he fell, knocked his head against the partition, and clutching his nose fled from the room and fell on a settee in the passage.

"He's knocked my teeth out," grunted Sashka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand while with the other he scratched the back of Blucher, who was licking himself. "He's knocked my teeth out, Bluchy, but still he's my count and I'd go through fire for him - I would! Because he - is my count. Do you understand, Bluchy? Want your dinner, eh?"

After lying still for a while he rose, fed the dog and then, almost sobered, went in to wait on his count and to offer him some tea.

"I shall really feel hurt," the cavalryman was saying meekly, as he stood before the count who was lying on the other's bed with his legs up against the partition. "You see I also am an old army man and, if I may say so, a comrade. Why should you borrow from anyone else when I shall be delighted to lend you a couple of hundred rubles? I haven't got them just now - only a hundred rubles - but I'll get the rest today. You would really hurt my feelings, Count."

"Thank you, old man," said the count, instantly discerning what kind of relations had to be established between them, and slapping the cavalryman on the shoulder. "Thanks! Well then, we'll go to the ball if it must be so. But what are we to do now? Tell me what you have in your town. What pretty girls? What men fit for a spree? What gaming?"

The cavalryman explained that there would be an abundance of pretty creatures at the ball, that Kolkov, who had been re-elected captain of police, was the best hand at a spree, only he lacked the true hussar go - otherwise he was a good sort of chap, that the Ilyushin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Streshka leading, and that everybody meant to go to hear them after leaving the marshal's that evening.

"And there's a devilish lot of card-playing too," he went on. Lukhnov plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyin, an uhlan cornet who has room No. 8, has lost a lot. They have already begun in his room. They play every evening. And what a fine fellow that Ilyin is! I tell you, Count, he's not mean - he'll let his last shirt go."

"Well then, let us go to his room. Let's see what sort of people they are," said the count.

"Yes do - pray do. They'll be devilish glad."

II

The uhlan cornet, Ilyin, had not long been awake. The evening before he had sat down to cards at eight o'clock and had lost pretty steadily for fifteen hours on end - till eleven in the morning. He had lost a considerable sum but did not know exactly how much, because he had about three thousand rubles of his own, and fifteen thousand of Crown money which had long since got mixed up with his own, and he feared to count lest his fears that some of the Crown money was already gone should be confirmed. It was nearly noon when he fell asleep and he had slept that heavy dreamless sleep which only very young men sleep after a heavy loss. Waking at six o'clock (just when Count Turbin arrived at the hotel), and seeing the floor all around strewn with cards and bits of chalk, and the chalk-marked tables in the middle of the room, he recalled with horror last night's play, and the last card - a knave on which he lost five hundred rubles; but not yet quite convinced of the reality of all this, he drew his money from under the pillow and began to count it. He recognized some notes which had passed from hand to hand several times with "corners" and "transports" and he recalled the whole course of the game. He had none of his own three thousand rubles left, and some two thousand five hundred of the government money was also gone.

Ilyin had been playing for four nights running.

He had come from Moscow where the crown money had been entrusted to him and at K-- had been detained by the superintendent of the post-house on the pretext that there were no horses, but really because the superintendent had an agreement with the hotel-keeper to detain all travellers for a day. The uhlan, a bright young lad who had just received three thousand rubles from his parents in Moscow for his equipment on entering his regiment, was glad to spend a few days in the town of K-- during the elections and hoped to enjoy himself thoroughly. He knew one of the landed gentry there who had a family, and he was thinking of looking them up and flirting with the daughters, when the cavalryman turned up to make his acquaintance. Without any evil intention the cavalryman introduced him that same evening, in the general saloon or common room of the hotel, to his acquaintances, Lukhnov and other gamblers. And ever since then the uhlan had been playing cards, not asking at the post-station for horses, much less going to visit his acquaintance the landed proprietor, and not even leaving his room for four days on end.

Having dressed and drunk tea he went to the window. He felt that he would like to go for a stroll to get rid of the recollections that haunted him, and he put on his cloak and went out into the street. The sun was already hidden behind the white houses with the red roofs and it was getting dusk. It was warm for winter. Large wet snowflakes were falling slowly into the muddy street. Suddenly at the thought that he had slept all through the day now ending, a feeling of intolerable sadness overcame him.

"This day, now past, can never be recovered," he thought.

"I have ruined my youth!" he suddenly said to himself, not because he really thought he had ruined his youth - he did not even think about it - but because the phrase happened to occcur to him.

"And what am I to do now?" thought he. "Borrow from someone and go away?" A lady passed him along the pavement. "There's a stupid woman," thought he for some reason. "There's no one to borrow from . . . I have ruined my youth!" He came to the bazaar. A tradesman in a fox-fur cloak stood at the door of his shop touting for customers. "If I had not withdrawn that eight I should have recovered my losses." An old beggar-woman followed him whimpering. "There's no one to borrow from." A man drove past in a bearskin cloak; a policeman was standing at his post. "What unusual thing could I do? Fire at them? No, it's dull . . . I have ruined my youth! . . . Ah, if only I could drive in a troyka: Gee-up, beauties! . . . I'll go back. Lukhnov will come soon, and we'll play."

He returned to the hotel and again counted his money. No, he had made no mistake the first time: there were still two thousand five hundred rubles of Crown money missing. I'll stake twenty-five rubles, than make a 'corner' . . . seven-fold it, fifteen-fold thirty, sixty . . . three thousand rubles. Then I'll buy the horse-collars and be off. He won't let me, the rascal! I have ruined my youth!"

That is what was going on in the uhlan's head when Lukhnov actually entered the room.

"Have you been up long, Michael Vasilich?" asked Lukhnov, slowly removing the gold spectacles from his skinny nose and carefully wiping them with a red silk handkerchief.

"No, I've only just got up - I slept uncommonly well."

"Some hussar or other has arrived. He has put up with Zavalshevski - had you heard?"

"No, I hadn't. But how is it no one else is here yet?"

"They must have gone to Pryakhin's. They'll be here directly."

And sure enough a little later there came into the room a garrison officer who always accompanied Lukhnov, a Greek merchant with an enormous brown hooked nose and sunken black eyes, and a fat puffy landowner, the proprietor of a distillery, who played whole nights, always staking "simples" of half a ruble each. Everybody wished to begin playing as soon as possible, but the principal gamesters, especially Lukhnov who was telling about a robbery in Moscow in an exceedingly calm manner, did not refer to the subject.

"Just fancy," he said, "a city like Moscow, the historic capital, a metropolis, and men dressed up as devils go about there with crooks, frighten stupid people, and rob the passers-by - and that's the end of it! What are the police about? That's the question."

The uhlan listened attentively to the story about the robbers, but when a pause came he rose and quietly ordered cards to be brought. The fat landowner was the first to speak out.

"Well, gentlemen, why lose precious time? If we mean business let's begin."

"Yes, you walked off with a pile of half-rubles last night soyou like it," said the Greek.

"I think we might start," said the garrison officer.

Ilyin looked at Lukhnov. Lukhnov looking him in the eye quietly continued his story about robbers dressed up like devils with claws.

"Will you keep the bank?" asked the uhlan.

"Isn't it too early?"

"Belov!" shouted the uhlan, blushing for some unknown reason, "bring me some dinner - I haven't had anything to eat yet, gentlemen - and a bottle of champagne and some cards."

At this moment the count and Zavalshevski entered the room. It turned out that Turbin and Ilyin belonged to the same division. They took to one another at once, clinked glasses, drank champagne together, and were on intimate terms in five minutes. The count seemed to like Ilyin very much; he looked smilingly at him and teased him about his youth.

"There's an uhlan of the right sort!" he said. "What moustaches! Dear me, what moustaches!"

Even what little down there was on Ilyin's lip was quite white.

"I suppose you are going to play?" said the count. "Well, I wish you luck, Ilyin! I should think you are a master at it," he added with a smile.

"Yes, they mean to start," said Lukhnov, tearing open a bundle of a dozen packs of cards, "and you'll joint in too, Count, won't you?"

"No, not today. I should clear you all out if I did. When I begin 'cornering' in earnest the bank begins to crack! But I have nothing to play with - I was cleaned out at a station near Volochok. I met some infantry fellow there with rings on his fingers - a sharper I should think - and he plucked me clean."

"Why, did you stay at that station long?" asked Ilyin.

"I sat there for twenty-two hours. I shan't forget that accursed station! And the superintendent won't forget me either . . . "

"How's that?"

"I drive up, you know; out rushes the superintendent looking a regular brigand. 'No horses!' says he. Now I must tell you that it's my rule, if there are no horses I don't take off my fur cloak but go into the superintendent's own room - not into the public room but into his private room - and I have all the doors and windows opened on the ground that it's smoky. Well, that's just what I did there. You remember what frosts we had last month? About twenty degrees! [Footnote: Reaumur = thirteen below zero Fahrenheit.] The superintendent began to argue; I punched his head. There was an old woman there, and girls and other women; they kicked up a row, snatched up their pots and pans, and were rushing off to the village. . . . I went to the door and said, 'Let me have horses and I'll be off. If not, no one shall go out: I'll freeze you all.'"

"That's an infernally good plan!" said the puffy squire, rolling with laughter. "It's the way they freeze out cockroaches . . . "

"But I didn't watch carefully enough and the superintendent got away with the women. Only one old woman remained in pawn on the top of the stove; she kept sneezing and saying prayers. Afterwards we began negotiating: the superintendent came and from a distance began persuading me to let the old woman go, but I set Blucher at him a bit. Blucher's splendid at tackling superintendents! But still the rascal didn't let me have horses until the next morning. Meanwhile that infantry fellow came along. I joined him in another room, and we began to play. You have seen Blucher? . . . Blucher! . . . " and he gave a whistle.

Blucher rushed in, and the players condescendingly paid some attention to him though it was evident that they wished to attend to quite other matters.

"But why don't you play, gentlemen? Please don't let me prevent you. I am a chatterbox, you see," said Turbin. "Play is play whether one likes it or not."

III

Lukhnov drew two candles nearer to him, took out a large brown pocket- book full of paper money, and slowly, as if performing some rite, opened it on the table, took out two one-hundred rubles notes and placed them under the cards.

"Two hundred for the bank, the same as yesterday," said he, adjusting his spectacles and opening a pack of cards.

"Very well," said Ilyin, continuing his conversation with Turbin without looking at Lukhnov.

The game started. Lukhnov dealt the cards with machine-like precision, stopping now and then and deliberately jotting something down, or looking sternly over his spectacles and saying in low tones, "Pass up!" The fat landowner spoke louder than anyone else, audibly deliberating with himself and wetting his plump fingers when he turned down the corner of a card. The garrison officer silently and neatly noted the amount of his stake on his card and bent down small corners under the table. The Greek sat beside the banker, watching the game attentively with his sunken black eyes, and seemed to be waiting for something. Zavalshevski, standing by the table, would suddenly begin to fidget all over, take a red or blue bank-note [Footnote: Five-ruble notes were blue and ten-ruble notes red.] out of his trouser pocket, lay a card on it, slap it with his palm, and say, "Little seven, pull me through!" Then he would bite his moustache, shift from foot to foot, and keep fidgeting till his card was dealt. Ilyin sat eating veal and pickled cucumbers, which were placed beside him on the horse hair sofa, and hastily wiping his hands on his coat laid down one card after another. Turbin, who at first was sitting on the sofa, quickly saw how matters stood. Lukhnov did not look at or speak to Ilyin, only now and then his spectacles would turn for a moment towards the latter's hand, but most of Ilyin's cards lost.

"There now, I'd like to beat that card," said Lukhnov of a card the fat landowner, who was staking half-rubles, had put down.

"You beat Ilyin's, never mind me!" remarked the squire.

And indeed Ilyin's cards lost more often than any of the others. He would tear up the losing card nervously under the table and choose another with trembling fingers. Turbin rose from the sofa and asked the Greek to let him sit by the banker. The Greek moved to another place; the count took his chair and began watching Lukhnov's hands attentively, not taking his eyes off them.

"Ilyin!" he suddenly said in his usual voice, which quiet unintentionally drowned all the others. "Why do you keep to a routine? You don't know how to play."

"It's all the same how one plays."

"But you're sure to lose that way. Let me play for you."

"No, please excuse me. I always do it myself. Play for yourself if you like."

"I said I should not play for myself, but I should like to play for you. I am vexed that you are losing."

"I suppose it's my fate."

The count was silent, but leaning on his elbows he again gazed intently at the banker's hands.

"Abominable!" he suddenly said in a loud, long-drawn tone.

Lukhnov glanced at him.

"Abominable, quite abominable!" he repeated still louder, looking straight into Lukhnov's eyes.

The game continued.

"It is not right!" Turbin remarked again, just as Lukhnov beat a heavily backed card of Ilyin's.

"What is it you don't like, Count?" inquired the banker with polite indifference.

"This! - that you let Ilyin win his simples and beat his corners. That's what's bad."

Lukhnov made a slight movement with his brows and shoulders, expressing the advisability of submitting to fate in everything, and continued to play.

"Blucher!" shouted the count, rising and whistling to the dog. "At him!" he added quickly.

Blucher, bumping his back against the sofa as he leapt from under it and nearly upsetting the garrison officer, ran to his master and growled, looking around at everyone and moving his tail as if asking, "Who is misbehaving here, eh?"

Lukhnov put down his cards and moved his chair to one side.

"One can't play like that," he said. "I hate dogs. What kind of a game is it when you bring a whole pack of hounds in here?"

"Especially a dog like that. I believe they are called 'leeches,'" chimed in the garrison officer.

"Well, are we going to play or not, Michael Vasilich?" said Lukhnov to their host.

"Please don't interfere with us, Count," said Ilyin, turning to Turbin.

"Come here a minute," said Turbin, taking Ilyin's arm and going behind the partition with him.

The count's words, spoken in his usual tone, were distinctly audible from there. His voice always carried across three rooms.

"Are you daft, eh? Don't you see that that gentleman in spectacles is a sharper of the first water?"

"Come now, enough! What are you saying?"

"No enough about it! Stop playing, I tell you. It's nothing to me. Another time I'd pluck you myself, but somehow I'm sorry to see you fleeced. And maybe you have Crown money too?"

"No . . . why do you imagine such things?"

"Ah, my lad, I've been that way myself so I know all those sharpers' tricks. I tell you the one in spectacles is a sharper. Stop playing! I ask you as a comrade."

"Well then, I'll only finish this one deal."

"I know what 'one deal' means. Well, we'll see."

They went back. In that one deal Ilyin put down so many cards and so many of them were beaten that he lost a large amount.

Turbin put his hands in the middle of the table "Now stop it! Come along."

"No, I can't. Leave me alone, do!" said Ilyin, irritably shuffling some bent cards without looking at Turbin.

"Well, go to the devil! Go on losing for certain, if that pleases you. It's time for me to be off. Let's go to the Marshal's, Savalshevski."

They went out. All remained silent and Lukhnov dealt no more cards until the sound of their steps and of Blucher's claws on the passage floor had died away.

"What a devil of a fellow!" said the landowner, laughing.

"Well, he won't interfere now," remarked the garrison officer hastily, and still in a whisper.