Novels, Tales, Journeys

“Yes,” a young maid replied. “What do you want with her?”

The stationmaster, without replying, went into the room.

“You mustn’t, you mustn’t!” the maid called after him. “Avdotya Samsonovna has visitors!”

But the stationmaster did not listen and went on. The first two rooms were dark, in the third there was light. He went up to the open door and stopped. In a beautifully decorated room, Minsky sat deep in thought. Dunya, dressed with all the luxury of fashion, was sitting on the arm of his chair like a horsewoman on an English saddle. She looked at Minsky with tenderness, winding his black locks around her sparkling fingers. Poor stationmaster! Never had his daughter seemed so beautiful to him; he admired her despite himself.

“Who’s there?” she asked, without raising her head. He kept silent. Receiving no answer, Dunya raised her head…and with a cry fell to the carpet. The frightened Minsky rushed to pick her up, but, suddenly seeing the old stationmaster in the doorway, he left Dunya and went over to him, trembling with wrath.

“What do you want?” he said, clenching his teeth. “Why are you slinking after me everywhere like a robber? Do you want to put a knife in me? Get out!” And seizing the old man by the collar with his strong hand, he pushed him out to the stairs.

The old man went back to his quarters. His friend advised him to lodge a complaint; but the stationmaster reflected, waved his hand, and decided to give up. Two days later he left Petersburg, went back to his station, and took up his duties again.

“For three years now,” he concluded, “I’ve lived without Dunya and without any news of her. God knows whether she’s still alive or not. All sorts of things happen. She’s neither the first nor the last to be seduced by a passing rake, who’ll keep a girl and then abandon her. There’s lots of those young fools in Petersburg, in satin and velvet today, and tomorrow, just look, they’re sweeping the streets along with some drunken riffraff. When you think sometimes that Dunya, too, may be perishing like that, you can’t help sinning by wishing her in her grave…”

Such was the story of my friend, the old stationmaster, a story interrupted more than once by tears, which he picturesquely wiped with the skirt of his coat, like the zealous Terentyich in Dmitriev’s wonderful ballad.7 Those tears were provoked in part by the punch, of which he drained five glasses in the course of his narrative; but, however it was, they touched my heart strongly. Having parted from him, for a long time I could not forget the old stationmaster, for a long time I thought about poor Dunya…

Just recently, passing through the little town of * * *, I remembered about my friend; I learned that the station he had been in charge of had since been abolished. To my question “Is the old stationmaster still alive?”—no one could give me a satisfactory answer. I decided to visit those familiar parts, hired some private horses, and set out for the village of N––.

This happened in the autumn. Grayish clouds covered the sky; a cold wind blew from the harvested fields, carrying off red and yellow leaves from the trees it met on its way. I reached the village at sunset and stopped by the little station house. A fat peasant woman came out to the front hall (where poor Dunya once gave me a kiss), and to my questions replied that the old stationmaster had died about a year before, that a brewer now lived there, and that she was the brewer’s wife. I began to regret my useless trip and the seven roubles I had spent for nothing.

“What did he die of?” I asked the brewer’s wife.

“Of drink, my good sir,” she replied.

“Where was he buried?”

“At the edge of the village, next to his late wife.”

“Couldn’t someone take me to his grave?”

“Why not? Hey, Vanka! Enough fooling with the cat. Take the mister to the cemetery and show him the stationmaster’s grave.”

At these words a raggedy boy, redheaded and one-eyed, ran out to me and immediately led me to edge of the village.

“Did you know the deceased?” I asked him on the way.

“How could I not! He taught me to whittle pipes. He used to come from the pot-house (God rest his soul!), and we’d follow after him: ‘Grandpa, grandpa! Give us some nuts!’ And he’d give us nuts. He used to play with us all the time.”

“Do travelers remember him?”

“There’s not many travelers nowadays; the assessor drops by sometimes, but he can’t be bothered with dead people. There was a lady passed by last summer, and she did ask about the old stationmaster and went to his grave.”

“What kind of lady?” I asked with curiosity.

“A beautiful lady,” the boy replied. “She rode in a coach-and-six, with three little sirs, and a wet nurse, and a black pug; and when they told her the old stationmaster had died, she wept and said to the children: ‘Sit quietly, while I go to the cemetery.’ I volunteered to take her there. But the lady said: ‘I know the way myself.’ And she gave me five silver kopecks—such a kind lady!…”