Mishka

“ The man with the pole quickly got out of the way, while the other raised his gun. For an instant I was in dread lest he should not recognise my dear brother in time, and was on the point of rushing forth to strike him dead before he should have slaughtered poor confiding Vainka, when, luckily for us all (for I should not have been in time) , he dropped his arm, raised his hand to shade his eyes, stared, and broke into a roar of laughter: "Why!" he cried, "strike me blind if it isn't dear old Mishka himself!" (The humans, for reasons best known to themselves, call us all "Mishka.") ”

“ Why should we all perish?”
I was carried back in the rush, and found myself breathless, back against a wall. Three figures cleared themselves from the ruck, and I fought my way to them.
“Well done, Mishka,—for it was thou!” exclaimed Loris. “How was it done?”
“Pouf, it was but a toy,” grunted Mishka. “I brought it in my pocket,—on chance; such things are useful at times. If it had been a real bomb, we should all have entered Heaven—or hell—together.”
“Get to the steps; they are coming back,” cried Loris. ”

“ Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard and tested the road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernýshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at once ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side whiskers, Nikoláy, Míshka's brother, and the boy Pavlúshka; and after them came a girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and with just such a bared neck. ”

“ Mishka, tell the sergeants, Svistunov and Derzhimorda, to come here. They are near the gate. [After a pause of silence.] The world has turned into a queer place. If at least the people were visible so you could see them; but they are such a skinny, thin race. How in the world could you tell what he is? After all you can tell a military man; but when he wears a frock-coat, it's like a fly with clipped wings. He kept it up a long time in the inn, got off a lot of allegories and ambiguities so that you couldn't make out head or tail. ”

“ Masha entered the hut and stole softly towards the stove. Louise lay breathing peacefully, her bosom, half bared, rising and falling in the measured cadence of quiet slumber.
"Yes, it is a woman. You shall not strike, Mishka; there is certainly mystery here; probably it is some poor soul who strives to escape more safely by donning the uniform of a French soldier of which she has robbed a dead man by the way. She may be a Russian maiden who has sought her wounded lover upon the battlefield." ”

“ Don't you believe him, Matvei. He has inherited that from his mother."
"Wait, Uncle. The question of God for Matvei is the principal question."
"Don't you believe it, Mishka. Send him to the devil, Matvei. There are no Gods. It is a dark wood—religion, churches and all such things are a dark wood, where robber bandits live. It is a hoax."
But Mikhail insisted obstinately. "The God about whom I speak existed when men unanimously created Him from the stuff of their brains, to illumine the darkness of their existence. ”

“ He grew peevish, suspicious, and more violent than ever in his excesses.
When Mishka, the dissipated bear already described, bit off one of the ears of Basil, a hunter belonging to the castle, and Basil drew his knife and plunged it into Mishka's heart, Prince Alexis punished the hunter by cutting off his other ear, and sending him away to a distant estate. A serf, detected in eating a few of the pickled cherries intended for the Prince's botvinia, was placed in a cask, and pickled cherries packed around him up to the chin. ”

“ Mishka said aloud, and started down the cross-road at a quick trot.
[Pg 322]
CHAPTER XLIX THE END OF AN ACT How far we rode I can’t say; but it was still dark when we halted at a small isolated farmhouse, where Mishka roused the farmer, who came out grumbling at being disturbed before daybreak. After a muttered colloquy, he led us in and called his wife to prepare tea and food for us, while he took charge of the horses.
“You must eat and sleep,” Mishka announced in his gruff way. “You ought to be still in the hospital; but we are fools, in these days, every one of us! ”

“ I complimented her on it when she brought in the samovar; for here, in the wilds, it didn’t seem to matter about keeping up my pretended ignorance of the language. She was flattered, and assumed quite a motherly air towards me; she didn’t cringe like her husband. As I sat there, sipping my tea, and chatting with her, I little guessed what would befall the comfortable, homely, good-tempered old lady a very few days hence. Mishka listened in disapproving silence to our interchange of badinage, and, when our hostess retreated, he entered on a grumbling protest. ”

“ As Mishka entered, the Jew bowed low to him, and slipped through the doorway. Mishka glanced sharply at me, muttered something about returning soon, and followed Yossof, closing the door behind him and shooting the outer bolt.
[Pg 235]
CHAPTER XXXVI STILL ON THE ROAD “
Will you never learn wisdom?” demanded Mishka, when, after a few minutes, he returned. “Why could you not rest here in safety?” ”

“ I echoed sadly. “Is that likely, friend Mishka?”
“God knows! Stranger things have happened. If I die with, or before my master,—well, I die. If I do not, I, too, shall make for the frontier when he no longer has need of me. Where is the good of staying? What should I do here? I would like to see peace—yes, but there will be no peace within this generation—”
“But your father?” I asked, thinking of the stanch old man, who had gone back to his duty at Zostrov. ”

“ Perhaps he imagined I was forgetting her, though Mary knew better.
I sent a wire from Exeter to “M. Pavloff,” and when I arrived at Waterloo, about half-past ten at night, I drove straight to the Charing Cross Hotel, secured a room there, and asked for Herr Pavloff.
I was taken up to a private sitting-room, and there, right enough, was Mishka himself. In his way he was as remarkable a man as his master; as imperturbable, and as much at home in a London hotel, as in the café near the Ismailskaia Prospekt in Petersburg. ”

“ My brother Mishka, from whom I hear occasionally, in a manner utterly unsuspected by his "Keepers" in the Zoological Gardens at St. Petersburg, frequently does his best to persuade me to modify my opinion of and conduct towards mankind. He says the humans are not nearly so bad as one thinks, and that he has a very good time in his perpetual berloga (from which the poor fellow cannot escape) , and gets plenty of victuals of the best quality. He says he likes children the best—they are so very generous with their buns and cakes. ”

“ Mishka grunted and awoke with imprecations. "What is it?" he shouted; "are we never to be allowed to sleep again? Who's there?"
"It is I, the Starost; the Hetman of the Mojaisk Cossacks is in the village; we are to assemble at four in Toozof's field, bringing pitchforks and pickaxes. There is to be an oblava (battue) . It is said that the best general of all these accursed cut-throats is to pass at daybreak; he is sleeping at Biéloy; he is to be ambushed with all his guard; we shall not have lived in vain if we succeed in this ”

“ Mashka and Mishka, both barefooted, flew home down the little hill with such fleetness, and with such a noise, that a dog running from the village to the manor gazed after them, and, suddenly casting his tail between his legs, fled home with a yelp; so that the noise made by the Polikushka hopefuls was increased tenfold.
The weather was wretched, the wind was cutting; and something that was neither snow nor rain, nor yet sleet, began to lash Polikéï's face, and his bare hand with which he grasped the reins, protected as well as possible by the sleeve of his cloak ”

“ I have seen the poor old fellow now and again and communicated with him by signs, the nature of which my ursine readers will at once comprehend, but which—in case any artful human should happen to decipher these memoirs—I will not describe in detail. Both Vainka and Mishka are—much as I deplore the fact—now quite gone over to the enemy; they are, both of them, more man than bear, and this in spite of the tragic and bloody reasons which they, in common with myself, should cherish in their deepest hearts for loathing the very creatures whom they have learned to love—bah! ”

“ And you say-you don't know Mishka! But I say, why are you so cross, Semyonitch?"
"I tell you, Grishka, don't give me any of your jaw. Go—-o!"
The official began to get angry and, looking from side to side, tried to pull his hand away from Chelkash's firm grip. Chelkash looked calmly at him from under his thick eyebrows, smiled behind his mustache and not letting go of his hand, went on talking.
"Don't hurry me. I'll just have my chat out with you, and then I'll go. Come, tell us how you're getting on; wife and children quite well?" ”

“ It would not be easy perhaps, but it would be quite possible for you to get through, via Warsaw and Alexandrovo, if you go at once.”
“Why do you ask me that?” I demanded, looking at him very straight. His blue eyes were more troubled than I had ever seen them. “Do you doubt me?”
“No, before God I trust you as I trust none other in the world but Mishka and his father! But you are a stranger, a foreigner; why should you throw your life away for us?” ”

“ But he? I was tortured with him in the carriage—it was like riding with a corpse.”
“I don’t know, Musya. Perhaps there is such a thing as death for some people. Meanwhile, perhaps, but later there will be no death. For me death also existed before, but now it exists no longer.”
Musya’s somewhat paled cheeks flushed as she asked:
“It did exist, Werner? It did?”
“It did. But not now any longer. Just the same as with you.”
A noise was heard in the doorway of the car. Mishka Tsiganok entered, stamping noisily with his heels, breathing loudly and spitting. ”

“ In a Western camp the tales told at night are invariably of the ‘grizzly.’ He is the devil of the mountains. In the Caucasus and in Russia it is otherwise.
The Russian peasant makes Mishka (a pet name for the bear) the comic character of his stories. The ‘bogey’ of the woods on the Black Sea coast is the ‘barse,’ of whom all sorts of terrible yarns are spun. Most of them, I fear, are lies. In nine cases out of ten the barse is merely a lynx, of which there are very many all along the coast, and in the foot-hills [Pg 43] on the southern slope of the Caucasus. ”

“ Already I realized that I had learned absolutely nothing from the Jew save the new password, and the fact that he was, or soon would be, in direct communication with Anne.
Mishka gave an approving grunt.
“There are some who might learn discretion from Yossof,” he remarked sententiously.
“Just so. But who is he, anyhow? He might be ‘the wandering Jew’ himself, from the mysterious way he seems to get around the world.”
“Who and what he is? That I cannot tell you, for I do not know, or seek to know, since it is no business of mine. I go to bed; for we must start betimes in the morning.” ”

“ The mind is like the hands. It needs exercise. My hands are cleverer than my head."
I looked at him and thought, how is it that these people are not afraid to speak about everything?
"But for that matter," he continued, "Mishka has brains enough for two. He has read very much. You wait till he forgets himself. The factory priest called him 'an arch heretic.' Too bad his head is not clear about God. That comes from his mother. My sister was a very distinguished woman in religious matters. From Orthodox she went over to the Old Believers, but the Old Believers did not admit her." ”

“ Every one in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with Mishenka, the footman, and this genuine, passionate, hopeless love had already lasted three years.
“Come, don’t talk nonsense,” Anna Akimovna consoled her. “I am going on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man.”
While his mistress was dressing, Mishenka, in a new swallow-tail and polished boots, walked about the hall and drawing-room and waited for her to come out, to wish her a happy Christmas. He had a peculiar walk, stepping softly and delicately ”

“ Misha! On catching sight of me (I was standing at the drawing-room window, gazing in astonishment at the flying equipage) , he laughed his abrupt laugh, and jauntily flinging back his cloak, he jumped out of the carriage and ran into the house.
‘Misha! Mihail Andreevitch!’ I was beginning, ... ‘Is it you?’
‘Call me Misha,’—he interrupted me. ‘Yes, it’s I, ... I, in my own person.... I have come to Moscow ... to see the world ... and show myself. And here I am, come to see you. What do you say to my horses?... ”

“ Misha cried, "that one! That animal! He was sent away from the military for gambling in cards and from the seminary for his scandals with women. A learned one, yes! He fell into the seminary from the military, cheated all the monks in the monastery of Chudoff; then came here, bought himself in with seven and a half thousand rubles, donated land and so won great respect. Here, too; they play cards. The Abbot, the steward and the treasurer, they all play with him. There is a girl who visits him—oh, the pigs! He has a separate apartment, and there he lives just as he pleases. ”

“ Misha glanced menacingly at the money-lender. ‘That surprises you? Aren’t you the cause of it all? ... You? ... You? ... Wasn’t it you, Judas, who robbed me, taking advantage of my childishness? Aren’t you flaying the peasants’ skins off their backs? Haven’t you taken from this poor old man his crust of dry bread? Wasn’t it you? ... O God! everywhere nothing but injustice, and oppression, and evil-doing.... Everything must go to ruin then, and me too! I don’t care for life, I don’t care for life in Russia!’ And the spade moved faster than ever in Misha’s hands. ”