Lives and Deaths Page 9

  The yearling colts and fillies pretended they were grown up and sedate. They jumped only rarely and did not join up with the merry bands cavorting around them; they spent their time grazing decorously, arching their close-cropped, swan-like necks and waving about their little whisks as if they were full tails. Just like the grown-ups, some of them lay down on the ground, rolling about or scratching one another. The merriest of the bands was made up of two- and three-year-old maiden mares. Almost all of these merry virgins flocked close together, apart from the rest, and went about stamping and kicking, neighing and whinnying. They would lay their heads across each other’s backs, sniff at one another, jump about, and sometimes, throwing their tails straight up with a snort, would proudly and coquettishly parade in front of their companions at a half-trot, half-amble. The most beautiful among them—and the leader of the pack—was the feisty chestnut filly. Whatever pranks she came up with the others played along; wherever she went the others followed. The feisty young thing was in a particularly playful mood that morning. A spirit of joy seized her as it might seize a person. While still at the watering place, after playing a prank on the old gelding, she had taken off running through the water, pretending to be frightened of something, then gave a snort and raced into the meadow as fast as she could, so that Vaska had to gallop after her and all the others who had followed her. Then, having eaten a little, she began to roll about and then to tease the old mares by strutting in front of them. After that, she drove a little foal away from his mother and began to chase him around, as if she wanted to bite him; the mother took fright and stopped grazing, while the little foal kept squealing in a pitiful voice, but the feisty filly did not even touch him—she only meant to scare him and put on a show for her companions, who watched her exploits with approval. Her next goal was to turn the head of a little roan horse with which a peasant was ploughing the rye land far across the river. She halted, proudly lifted her head, cocking it a little on one side, shook herself and began to neigh in a sweet, gentle, drawn-out voice. There was mischief in that neighing, and feeling, and a certain sadness. It expressed both the desire and promise of love, as well as love’s sorrow.

  A corncrake darted back and forth through the thick reeds, passionately calling for its mate; the cuckoo and the quail both sang of love; and even the flowers exchanged their fragrant dust on the wind.

  “I too am young and beautiful and strong,” the feisty filly’s neighing said. “But I have yet to taste the sweetness of this feeling… Not only have I yet to taste it, but not a single lover—not a single one—has ever laid eyes on me.”

  And this neighing—freighted with meaning, youthful and sad—resounded over to the lowland and the meadow, finally reaching the little roan horse. He pricked up his ears and halted. The peasant kicked him with one of his bast shoes, but the little horse was enchanted by the silvery sound of the distant neighing and began to neigh in response. The peasant got angry, pulled at the reins and kicked him so hard in the belly that he couldn’t finish his neigh and walked on. But the little roan horse had tasted sweetness and sorrow, and for a long time the sounds of passionate neighing cut short by the peasant’s angry voice were wafted over to the herd from the distant rye land.

  If the sound of her voice alone had made the little roan horse lose his head and forget his duty, what would have happened had he seen the mischievous beauty in all her splendour—calling out to him with her ears cocked, her nostrils flaring and sucking in the air, her entire body, lovely and young, yearning to gallop, trembling?

  But the feisty one never gave much thought to the impression she made on others. When the little roan horse’s voice died away she uttered a few more mocking neighs, lowered her head and pawed at the ground, then went off to wake and tease the piebald gelding. The gelding was the constant martyr and laughing stock of the happy youngsters. They caused him more grief than people. He did no harm to either. People, of course, needed him, but what drove the young horses to torment him?

  IV

  He was old and they were young; he was lean and they were fit; he was dull and they were gay. And so he was a total stranger to them, an outsider, a different creature altogether; they could not pity him. Horses can only pity themselves and, occasionally, those in whose hides they can easily imagine themselves. Yet was it the gelding’s fault that he was old and lean and ugly? No, it would seem. But horse sense said otherwise: he was indeed to blame, and only those who were young, strong and happy were right—those whose whole lives lay before them, whose every muscle quivered with excess energy, whose tails stood erect. It may be that the gelding himself understood this and, in his quiet moments, agreed that he was guilty of having lived out his life and that he had to pay for it; yet he was still a horse, and often he could not suppress his feelings of resentment, sadness and indignation when he saw these youngsters punishing him so viciously for what would befall them all at life’s end. Another cause of the other horses’ cruelty was their aristocratic sentiment. Every last one of them could trace their paternal or maternal pedigree back to the famous Creamy, while the piebald gelding was of unknown origin; he was an interloper, bought at a fair three years ago for eighty paper roubles.

  The chestnut filly, as if simply taking a stroll, walked right up to the gelding’s nose and bumped it. He knew straightaway what was happening and, without opening his eyes, pinned back his ears and bared his teeth. The filly whirled around and made as if she were about to kick him. He opened his eyes and walked away. No longer sleepy, he began to graze. The troublemaker approached the gelding once more, this time accompanied by her girlfriends. A two-year-old, bald-faced little filly—quite stupid, and ever the chestnut’s follower and imitator—came up with her and, in the manner of all imitators, began to outdo the instigator. The chestnut filly would usually walk up to the gelding as if going about her business and would pass right by his nose, without so much as glancing at him, so that he did not know whether to be angry or not—and this really was funny. That is exactly what she did now, but her bald-faced follower, who was feeling especially frisky, slammed right into the gelding with her breast. He bared his teeth again, gave a sharp whinny, and, with an agility no one could have expected from him, lunged at her and bit her flank. The young filly kicked the old fellow hard in his skinny, protruding ribs with both her hind legs. He began to wheeze. Although he wanted to lunge at her again, he thought better of it and, with a heavy sigh, walked away. All the youngsters must have taken personal offence at how audaciously the piebald gelding had allowed himself to behave towards the bald-faced filly, and for the rest of the day they would not let him eat or enjoy a moment’s peace, so that the herdsman had to restrain the horses several times and could not understand what had got into their heads. This all upset the gelding to such a degree that when Nester was getting ready to drive the herd back, he went up to the old man himself and felt happier and more peaceful after he was saddled and mounted.

  God knows what the old gelding was thinking as he bore old Nester away on his back. Did he dwell bitterly on the persistent cruelty of the young, or did he forgive his offenders with the contemptuous, silent pride of the aged? In any case, he kept his thoughts to himself the whole way home. That evening, as Nester drove the herd past the huts on the estate, he noticed a horse and cart tethered to his porch. Some friends had come to see him. He was in such a hurry to get to them that he hustled the gelding into the yard without removing his saddle, shut the gate and shouted to Vaska that he should unsaddle him. Whether because of the offence the “mangy filth”, who had been bought at a fair and knew nothing of his parentage, had caused to the bald-faced filly, a great-granddaughter of Creamy, and the offence this had caused to the aristocratic sentiment of the entire herd, or because the gelding, in his high saddle with no rider, presented such a weirdly fantastic spectacle to the other horses, in any event something extraordinary happened that night. All the horses, young and old, chased the gelding round and round with bared teeth; the yard resounded wi
th the crashing of hooves against his skinny ribs and with heavy grunting. He could not take it any more, could no longer evade the blows. He stopped in the middle of the yard, his face at first expressing the repulsive weak rancour of helpless old age, then simply despair; he pinned back his ears and suddenly did something that made all the other horses fall silent. The very oldest mare, Vyazopurikha, approached the gelding, sniffed him and sighed. The gelding sighed too.

  V

  In the middle of the moonlit stable yard stood the tall, raw-boned figure of the gelding in his high saddle with its jutting pommel. The other horses stood around him, motionless and profoundly silent, as if he had revealed to them something new and extraordinary. They did indeed learn something new and unexpected.

  This is what they learnt.

  First Night

  —

  YES, I’M THE SON of Gracious I and Baba. The name on my pedigree is Mujik I. That’s the name on my pedigree, but the crowd gave me a different name, Pace-setter, on account of my long, swinging stride—a stride no horse in all of Russia could ever match. No horse in all the world is of purer blood. I wouldn’t have told you any of this. What good would it have done? You wouldn’t have recognized me. Even Vyazopurikha, who was with me in Khrenovoye,2 didn’t recognize me until now. And if Vyazopurikha hadn’t vouched for me, you still wouldn’t have believed me. I would never have told you. I don’t need your equine pity. But you asked for it. So yes, I am that Pace-setter: the Pace-setter whom the experts hunt for in vain—the Pace-setter whom the count himself knew and sold off from his stud farm because I outran Swan, his favourite.

  When I was born, I had no idea what “piebald” meant. All I knew was I was a horse. The first remark about my coat, I remember, struck me and Mother deeply. I was born at night, it seems, and by morning Mother had licked me clean and I was already on my feet. I remember wanting—wanting something all the time; everything seemed at once very surprising and very simple. Our stalls opened onto a long warm corridor and had lattice doors through which you could see. Mother was offering me her teats, but I was still so innocent that I kept poking my nose under her front legs or under the manger. Suddenly she turned her head to the door and, lifting her leg over my head, stepped aside. The groom on duty was watching us through the lattice.

  “Hey, look at that! Baba’s gone and foaled,” he said. Then he opened the latch, walked across the fresh bedding, and put his arms around me. “Look here, Taras!” he shouted. “Piebald little fella, ain’t he? A real magpie.”

  I tore away from him and stumbled onto my knees.

  “Little devil,” he said.

  Mother grew anxious, but she didn’t come to my defence. She only sighed, very heavily, and stepped further away. The other grooms gathered to look at me; one of them ran to tell the stable master. They all laughed at my spots and gave me all sorts of strange names; neither I nor Mother knew the meaning of any of those words. There had never been a single piebald in my line, not a single one among all my relatives. But we didn’t see anything bad in it. After all, even then, all the grooms praised my strength, my shape.

  “Plenty of fight in him,” said the one who had found me. “Can’t keep him still.”

  In a little while the stable master came. He showed surprise at my colour—it even seemed to upset him.

  “Who does this little freak take after?” he asked. “The count won’t keep him at the stud, that’s for sure. Hell, Baba, you’ve done me a bad turn,” he said to Mother. “Even a bald-faced foal would’ve been better than this spotted beast!”

  Mother didn’t answer. As always on such occasions, she simply sighed.

  “What ugly devil does he take after? A rotten peasant, a proper mujik,” he continued. “Can’t leave him in the stud. He’d bring shame on all of us. But he’s a fine little foal, very fine,” is what he said—is what everyone said when they looked at me. A few days later the count himself came to see me, and again everyone was horrified, scolding me and Mother for the colour of my coat. “But he’s a fine foal, very fine,” they all kept saying.

  Until spring we all lived in separate stalls in the brood mares’ stable, each with his mother. Sometimes, when the sun had already grown warm enough to melt the snow on the roofs, we’d be let out with our mothers into a big yard filled with fresh straw. This is where I first got to know my relations, near and distant. This is where I saw all the famous mares of the day emerging from different doors with their foals. There was old Dutch, and Fly (a daughter of Creamy’s), and Ruddy, and the riding horse Well-wisher—all the celebrities. They gathered there with their foals, walked about in the sunshine, rolled around in the fresh straw, sniffed at each other—just like ordinary horses. To this very day I cannot forget the sight of that yard, full of the era’s great beauties. It’s hard for you to imagine that I too was once young and frisky, but it’s true. Your Vyazopurikha was there—just a yearling back then—a lovely, cheerful and frisky filly. But—and I don’t say this to offend her—though you now look on her as a horse of the rarest breeding, she was a runt when compared to her peers. She herself will admit it.

  My spots, which people found so ugly, seemed to delight the other horses. They would surround me, admire me, flirt and frisk with me. I began to forget what people had said about my spots, began to feel happy. But soon I would have my first experience of grief, and its cause was Mother. When the thaw had set in, and sparrows were chirping away under the canopy, and spring was making itself felt in the air, a change came over her; she began to treat me differently. It seemed she was a different horse altogether. At times she would, for no reason at all, begin to frolic, running around the yard—behaviour terribly out of keeping with her venerable age. Or she might sink into thought and begin to neigh. At other times she would bite and kick at her sister mares, or sniff at me, snorting with displeasure, or walk out into the sun and lay her head across the shoulders of her cousin, Merchant’s Wife and, for a long while, scratch the horse’s back absentmindedly, pushing me away from her teats. One day the stable master came. He had her haltered and led out of the stall. She neighed and I responded, rushing after her—but she never looked back at me. The groom Taras grabbed hold of me as they were shutting the door behind her. I broke free, laying him out on his back in the straw—but the door had been locked, and all I could hear were Mother’s neighs receding into the distance. Yet what I heard in that neighing was no longer a call—it was something else. Then a powerful voice answered hers from afar—the voice, I learnt later, of Kindly I, being led by a groom on each side to meet her. I don’t remember Taras leaving my stall; I was too sad to notice. I felt I had lost my mother’s love forever. And all because I am piebald, I thought, recalling what people had said about my coat—and then I was seized with such anger that I began to beat my head and knees against the walls, and I went on doing it until I was dripping with sweat and completely exhausted.

  After some time, Mother came back to me. I heard her trotting up to our stall through the corridor. Her gait sounded strange to me. They opened the door and I did not recognize her—she looked so much younger, so much prettier. She sniffed at me, snorted and began to whinny. I could tell by her expression, her whole manner, that she no longer loved me. She spoke to me of Kindly I—of his beauty, of her love for him. The two of them continued to meet, while our own relationship grew cooler and cooler.

  Before long we were let out to pasture and I came to know new joys, which made up for the loss of Mother’s love. I had many friends. Together we learnt to graze, to neigh like the grown-ups, to race around our mothers with our tails in the air. It was a happy time. Everyone loved me, admired me, indulged and forgave me, no matter what I did. But it didn’t last long. Yes, a terrible thing happened to me…

  —

  The gelding heaved a deep, deep sigh and walked away from the others.

  Morning had broken long ago. The gate creaked open, the herdsman entered and the horses dispersed. Nester straightened the saddle on the gel
ding’s back and drove out the herd.

  VI

  Second Night

  As soon as the horses were driven back in they crowded around the piebald again and he continued his story.

  —

  IN AUGUST I WAS SEPARATED from Mother, but this did not cause me much sorrow. I saw that she was already big with my younger brother, the famed Whiskers, and that I myself was no longer what I had been. I wasn’t jealous but I felt myself growing cooler towards her. And besides, I knew that on leaving Mother I would join the general division of foals, where we were kept two or three to a stall—and where every day the whole lot of us were let out into the fresh air. I shared a stall with Dear Boy. He was a riding horse and he would later be ridden by the emperor himself—there are paintings of him, statues. But back then he was just an ordinary foal with delicate glossy hair, a swan-like neck and legs as straight and thin as the strings of a violin. Dear Boy was always cheerful, good-natured, amiable—always ready to frisk, swap licks or play little tricks on horses and humans. We couldn’t help becoming friends, living together as we did, and our friendship lasted the whole of our youth. He was cheerful and carefree, and already no stranger to love; he flirted with fillies and poked fun at me for my innocence. And to my misfortune, out of sheer vanity, I began to imitate him. And I got carried away—love got the better of me. This early inclination of mine led to the greatest change in my fate. Yes, I got carried away.