"From Riazan, she says. Another story of hers is that her name is Tatiana."
"Has she been with you long?"
"No. In fact, it was only this morning, some thirty versts from here, that I overtook her and her companion. However, I have seen her before, at Maikop-on-Laba, during the season of hay harvest, when she had with her an elderly, smoothfaced muzhik who might have been a soldier, and certainly was either her lover or an uncle, as well as a bully and a drunkard of the type which, before it has been two days in a place, starts about as many brawls. At present, however, she is tramping with none but this female companion, for, after that the 'uncle' had drunk away his very belly-band and reins, he was clapped in gaol. The Cossack, you know, is an awkward person to deal with."
Although Konev speaks without constraint, his eyes are fixed upon the ground in a manner suggestive of some disturbing thought. And as the breeze ruffles his dishevelled beard and ragged pea-jacket it ends by robbing his head of his cap—of the tattered, peakless clout which, with rents in its lining, so closely resembles a tchepchik [Woman's mob-cap], as to communicate to the picturesque features of its wearer an appearance comically feminine.
"Ye-es," expectorating, and drawling the words between his teeth, he continues: "She is a remarkable woman, a regular, so to speak, highstepper. Yet it must have been the Devil himself that blew this young oaf with the bloated jowl on to the scene. Otherwise I should soon have fixed up matters with her. The cur that he is!"
"But once you told me that you had a wife already?"
Darting at me an angry glance, he turns away with a mutter of:
"AM I to carry my wife about with me in my wallet?"
Here there comes limping across the square a moustachioed Cossack. In one hand he is holding a bunch of keys, and in the other hand a battered Cossack cap, peak in front. Behind him, sobbing and applying his knuckles to his eyes, there is creeping a curly-headed urchin of eight, while the rear is brought up by a shaggy dog whose dejected countenance and lowered tail would seem to show that he too is in disgrace. Each time that the boy whimpers more loudly than usual the Cossack halts, awaits the lad's coming in silence, cuffs him over the head with the peak of the cap, and, resuming his way with the gait of a drunken man, leaves the boy and the dog standing where they are—the boy lamenting, and the dog wagging its tail as its old black muzzle sniffs the air. Somehow I discern in the dog's mien of holding itself prepared for anything that may turn up, a certain resemblance to Konev's bearing, save that the dog is older in appearance than is the vagabond.
"You mentioned my wife, I think?" presently he resumes with a sigh. "Yes, I know, but not EVERY malady proves mortal, and I have been married nineteen years!"