OLD NICOLAI.
By Paul Fort.
One fine summer morning, many years ago, there sat upon a log, in a garden in Russia, an old man, who was mending a rake. The rake was a wooden one, and he was cutting a tooth to take the place of one that was broken. He was a stout, healthy old fellow, dressed in a coarse blue blouse and trousers; and as he sat on the log, whittling away at the piece of wood which was to become a rake-tooth, he sang, in a voice that was somewhat the worse for wear, but still quite as good a voice as you could expect an old gardener to have, a little song. He sang it in Russian, of course, and this was the way it ran:
“Zvœri raboti ne znaiut
Ptitzi zhivut bes truda
Liudi ne zvœri ne ptitzi
Liudi rabotoi zhivut.”
Expressed in English, this ditty simply set forth the fact that the beasts and the birds do not labor, but Man, who is neither a beast nor a bird, is obliged to work.
The old fellow seemed to like the lines, for he sang them over several times, as he went on with his whittling. Just as he was about to make a new start on his “Zvœri raboti,” a boy, about fifteen years old, came out of the house which stood by the side of the garden, and walked toward him.
“Nicolai Petrovitch,” said the boy, sitting down on a wheelbarrow, which was turned over in front of the gardener, “why is it that you are so fond of singing that song? One might suppose you are lazy, but we know very well you are not. And then, too, there is no sense in it. Birds don’t work, to be sure, but what have you to say about horses and oxen? I’m sure they work hard enough—at least, some of them.”
“Martin Ivanovitch,” said the old man, as he took up the rake and tried the new tooth, to see if it would fit in the hole, “this stick will have to be cut down a good deal more; it is hard wood. What you say about the beasts is very true. But I like that song. It may not be altogether true, but it is poetry, and it pleases me.”
“You like poetry, don’t you?” said Martin.
“Yes, indeed, little Martin, I like poetry. If it had been possible, I should have been a poet myself. I often think very good poetry, but as I cannot read or write, there is no sense in my trying to make use of any of it.”
“But how did you learn to like poetry, as you cannot read?” asked Martin.
“Oh! I heard a great deal of very good poetry when I was a young man, and then I learned to like it. And I remembered almost all I heard. Now, my daughter Axinia reads poetry to me every Sunday, but I do not remember it so well.”
“What kind of poetry suits you best?” asked the boy, who seemed to be tired of studying, or working, or perhaps playing, and therefore glad to have a quiet talk with the old man.
“I like all kinds, Martin Ivanovitch. I used to sing a great deal, and then I liked songs best. I think you have heard me sing some of my good songs.”
“Oh yes!” said Martin, “I remember that song about the young shepherdess, who wanted to give her sweetheart something; and she could not give him her dog, because she needed him, nor her crook, because her father had given it to her, nor one of her lambs, because they all belonged to her mother, who counted them every day, and so she gave him her heart.”
“Yes, yes,” said old Nicolai, smiling; “I like that song best of all. I should be proud to have written such poetry as that. He must have been a great poet who wrote that. But I do not hear many songs now. My little Axinia is reading me a long poem. It is called the ‘Dushenka.’ Perhaps you have heard of it?”
“Oh yes!” said Martin.
“Well, she is reading that to me. She likes it herself, I do not understand it all; but what I do understand, I like very much. It is good poetry. It must have been a grand thing to write such poetry as that,” and the old man laid down his knife and his stick, and took off his cap, as if in involuntary homage to the author of “Dushenka,” which is one of the standard poems in Russian literature.
“You were not a gardener when you were a young man, were you, Nicolai Petrovitch?” asked Martin.
“O no! But long before you were born I became a gardener. When I was a young man I had a good many different employments. Being a serf, I paid a yearly sum to my master, and then I went where I pleased. Sometimes I was well off, and sometimes I was badly off. I have been out on the lonely steppes in winter, often only three or four of us together, with our horses and carts, when the snow came down so fast, and the wind blew so fiercely, that we could scarcely make our way through the storm; and even the colts that were following us could hardly keep their feet in the deep drifts. Sometimes, we would lose our way in these storms,—when we could see nothing a hundred feet from us,—and then we should have wandered about until we died, if we had not given up everything to the horses. They could always find their way home, even in the worst storms. And then,” said old Nicolai, knocking from the rake a tooth that was cracked (for the new one was finished and hammered in), “I used to drive a sledge on a post-road. That was harder, perhaps, than plunging through the snow-storms on the steppes, for I used to have to drive sometimes by day and sometimes by night, in the coldest weather; and a wind that is cold enough when you are standing still, or going along the same road that it is taking, is fifty times worse when you are driving, as fast as you can, right into the teeth of it. I used to be glad enough when we reached a post-house and I could crowd myself up against the great brick stove and try and get some little feeling into my stiffened fingers. The winter that I drove a sledge was the worst winter I have ever known. I did not care to try this hard life another season, so I went to Moscow, and there I became servant to a young fellow who was the greatest fool I ever knew.”
“What did he do?” asked Martin. “Why was he a fool?”
“Oh! he was a boy without sense—the only Russian boy I ever knew who had no sense at all. If he had belonged to some other nation, I should not have wondered so much. This fellow was about fifteen or sixteen, and ought to have known something of the world, but he knew nothing. He was going to the university when I was with him, but you might have thought he was a pupil at a mad-house. Whatever came into his cracked brain, came out of his mouth; and whatever he wanted to do, he did, without waiting to think whether it would be proper or not. The biggest fool could cheat him; and when anybody did cheat him, and his friends found it out and wanted to punish the rascal, this little fool of mine would come, with tears in his eyes, to beg for the poor wretch, who must feel already such remorse and such shame at being found out! Bah! I can hardly bear to think of him. Why, there was once a house afire, in a neighborhood where one of his friends lived, and what does this young fool do but jump out of his bed, in the middle of a stormy night, and run to this fire, with nothing but his night-clothes on!”
“This is very curious,” said Martin, laughing. “Nicolai Petrovitch, do you know——”
“Well, as I was going on to tell you,” said the old man, who seemed thoroughly wrapped up in his subject, “I couldn’t stand any such folly as that, and so I soon left him and went to live with Colonel Rasteryaieff. I stayed there a long, long time. There I became a gardener, and there I learned almost all the poetry that I know. The colonel had a daughter, who was a little child when I went there; but when she grew old enough, she became a girl of great sense, and she liked poetry, and used to come and read to me, out of the books she had. I always tried to get at some work which would let me listen to her, during the hour that she would come to me in the afternoon. She read better than my little Axinia. I used to wish I was a poet, so that I could hear her read some of my songs.”
“But, Nicolai Petrovitch,” cried Martin, his eyes fairly sparkling with a discovery he had made, “do you know that I believe that that fool of a boy you lived with was the poet who wrote the songs and the poetry that you like best—that he wrote the ‘Dushenka,’ which Axinia Nicolaievna is reading to you?”
“What!” said the old gardener, laying down his knife and the piece of wood he was cutting.
“I mean what I say,” said Martin. “Wasn’t his name Bogdanovitch?”
a storm on the steppes.
“Bog-dan-ovitch!” repeated Nicolai, his eyes wide open in surprise. “Yes—that was his name. How did you know him? It was nearly fifty years ago since I lived with him.”
“Oh yes!” said Martin, still laughing, “it must have been that long ago. I read his life only a short time since, in the edition of ‘Dushenka’ which we have. It was surely Bogdanovitch whom you lived with. Why, Nicolai Petrovitch, you ought to be proud of having had such a master! He was one of our great poets. He wrote the song of the shepherdess, and he wrote the ‘Dushenka.’ He might have acted very simply when he was young, but he certainly became a great poet.”
“So he wrote the shepherdess song, did he?” said Nicolai.
“Yes, he wrote that, and many other good things, and he became quite a famous man. Queen Catharine thought a great deal of him, and the people at court paid him many honors. They did not consider him a fool, as you did. If you would like to know all about what happened to this young boy who was such a simpleton, I will lend you the book with his life in it, and Axinia Nicolaievna can read it to you.”
“My little Martin Ivanovitch,” said the old man, picking up his knife and the yet unfinished rake, “I do not believe that I ever could have become a poet, even if I had known how to read and write. It would have been impossible for me to have gone to a fire in my night-clothes!”
