Novels, Tales, Journeys полностью

…From Moscow I went to Kaluga, Belev, and Orel, and thus added an extra hundred and thirty miles; on the other hand I met Ermolov.7 He lives in Orel, his country estate being close by. I came to him at eight o’clock in the morning and did not find him at home. My driver told me that Ermolov did not visit anyone except his father, a simple, pious old man, that the only people he did not receive were town officials, and that anyone else had free access to him. An hour later I came to him again. Ermolov received me with his usual courtesy. At first glance I did not find in him the least resemblance to his portraits, painted usually in profile. A round face, fiery gray eyes, bushy gray hair. A tiger’s head on a herculean torso. His smile is unpleasant, because it is unnatural. But when he falls to thinking and frowns, he becomes superb and strikingly resembles the poetical portrait painted by Dawe.8 He was wearing a green Circassian jacket. On the walls of his study hung sabers and daggers, souvenirs of his rule over the Caucasus. He appears to bear his inaction with impatience. Several times he began talking about Paskevich, and always sarcastically; talking of the ease of his victories, he compared him to the son of Nun, before whom walls fell down at the sounding of trumpets, and called the count of Erevan the count of Jericho.9 “Let him run into a pasha who is not intelligent, not skillful, but merely stubborn—for instance, the pasha who ruled in Shumla,” said Ermolov, “and Paskevich is done for.” I passed on to Ermolov the words of Count Tolstoy,10 that Paskevich had acted so well during the Persian campaign that the only thing left for an intelligent man was to act worse, in order to be distinguished from him. Ermolov laughed, but did not agree. “Men and expenses could have been spared,” he said. I think he is writing or wants to write his memoirs. He is not pleased with Karamzin’s History;11 he wishes that an ardent pen would portray the transition of the Russian nation from insignificance to glory and power. He spoke of Prince Kurbsky’s writings con amore.12 The Germans took a beating. “Some fifty years hence,” he said, “people will think there was an auxiliary Prussian or Austrian army in our campaign, commanded by this or that German general.” I stayed with him for about two hours. He was vexed that he had not remembered my full name. He apologized by means of compliments. The conversation turned several times to literature. Of Griboedov’s verse he says that reading it makes his jaws ache.13 Of government and politics there was not a word.

My route lay through Kursk and Kharkov, but I turned off onto the direct road to Tiflis, sacrificing a good dinner in a Kursk inn (no trifling thing in our travels) and not curious to visit Kharkov University, which could not match a meal in Kursk.

The roads as far as Elets are terrible. My carriage sank several times into mud worthy of the mud of Odessa. Sometimes I managed to make no more than thirty miles in a day. Finally I saw the steppes of Voronezh and rolled on freely over the green plain. In Novocherkassk I found Count Pushkin, who was also going to Tiflis, and we agreed to travel together.14

The transition from Europe to Asia is felt more and more by the hour: forests disappear, hills smooth out, grass becomes thicker and shows more vegetative force; birds unknown in our forests appear; eagles sit like sentinels on the mounds that mark the high road and gaze proudly at the travelers; over the fertile pastures

Indomitable mares

Proudly stray in herds.15

Kalmyks settle around the station huts. Near their kibitkas graze their ugly, shaggy horses, known to you from the fine drawings of Orlovsky.16

The other day I visited a Kalmyk kibitka (crisscross wattle, covered with white felt). The whole family was preparing to have lunch. In the center a cauldron was boiling, and the smoke went out through an opening in the top of the kibitka. A young Kalmyk girl, not bad-looking at all, was sewing and smoking a pipe. I sat down beside her. “What’s your name?”—“* * *”—“How old are you?”—“Ten and eight.”—“What are you sewing?”—“Pant.”—“For whom?”—“For self.” She handed me her pipe and started on lunch. In the cauldron tea was boiling with mutton fat and salt. She offered me her dipper. I did not want to refuse and took a sip, trying to hold my breath. I do not think any other national cuisine could produce anything more vile. I asked for something to follow it up. They gave me a piece of dried mare’s meat; I was glad enough of that. Kalmyk coquetry scared me; I hastily got out of the kibitka and rode away from the Circe of the steppe.

—

In Stavropol I saw clouds on the edge of the sky that had struck my eyes exactly nine years earlier. They were still the same, still in the same place. These were the snowy peaks of the Caucasian mountain range.