“Been hunting, Anton Markitch?”
The postmaster halted. Tikhon Ilitch approached and gave him a formal greeting. “Had any luck, or not, I say?” he inquired, mockingly.
“Hunting, indeed! Nothing to hunt!” gloomily replied the postmaster, a huge, round-shouldered man with thick grey hairs protruding from his ears and his nostrils, huge eye-sockets, and deeply sunken eyes—a regular gorilla. “I merely strolled out on account of my hæmorrhoids,” he said, pronouncing the last word with special care.
“But bear in mind,” retorted Tikhon Ilitch with unexpected heat, stretching forth his hand with the fingers outspread, “bear in mind that our countryside has been completely devastated! Not so much as the name of bird or beast is left, sir!”
“The forests have all been cut down,” remarked the postmaster.
“I should think they had been cut down, forsooth! Shaved off close to the earth!” Tikhon Ilitch corroborated him. And all of a sudden he added: “’Tis moulting, sir! Everything is moulting, sir!”
Why that word broke loose from his tongue, Tikhon Ilitch himself did not know, but he felt that, nevertheless, it had not been uttered without reason. “Everything’s moulting,” he said to himself, “exactly like the cattle after a long, hard winter.” And after he had parted from the postmaster he stood long on the highway, involuntarily gazing about him. The rain had again begun to patter down; a disagreeable, damp wind was blowing. Darkness was descending over the rolling fields—the fields sown with winter-grain, the ploughed fields, the stubble-fields, and the light brown groves of young trees.
The gloomy sky descended lower and lower over the earth. The roads, flooded by the rain, gleamed with a leaden sheen. The post-train from Moscow, which was an hour and a half late every day, was due at the station. Only from the signal-bells, the humming sounds, the rumbling, and the odour of coal and samovars in the yards, did Tikhon Ilitch know that it had arrived and departed, for buildings screened the station from view. The odour of samovars now remained, and that aroused a dim longing for comfort, a warm clean room, a family—or the desire to go away somewhere or other.
But this feeling was suddenly replaced by amazement. From the bare Ulianovka forest a man emerged and directed his steps towards the highway—a man in a round-topped hat and only a short roundabout coat. On looking more closely, Tikhon Ilitch recognized Zhikhareff, the son of a wealthy land-owner, who had long since become a thoroughgoing drunkard. His heart contracted with pain. “Well, it makes no difference,” thought Tikhon Ilitch sadly. “’Twill be best to chat a bit with him and, in case of need, give him half a ruble. ’Tis not worth while to anger the vagabond: he’s a spiteful fellow.”
But on this occasion Zhikhareff approached in a decidedly arrogant frame of mind, bristling, but with his head, in its beggar’s hat, thrown back, and chewing between his clenched jaws the mouth end of a cigarette, long since smoked out and extinct. His face was blue with the cold, puffy with drunkenness; his eyes were red, and his mustache disheveled. He had turned up the collar of his short coat, which was buttoned to the chin, and, with the tips of his fingers thrust into the pockets, he was splashing along in a spirited manner through the mud. His rusty, dilapidated high boots projected below his short trousers, which were tightly strained over his knees.