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I IVAN FIODOROVICH SHPONKA |
It is four years since Ivan Fiodorovich retired from the army and came to live on his farm Vytrebenki. |
When he was still Vanyusha, he was at the Gadyach district school, and I must say he was a very well-behaved and industrious boy. |
Nikifor Timofeevich Deeprichastie the teacher of Russian grammar, used to say that if all the boys had been as anxious to do their best as Shponka, he would not have brought into the classroom the maplewood ruler with which, as he confessed, he was tired of hitting the lazy and mischievous boys’ hands. |
Vanyusha’s exercise book was always neat, with a ruled margin, and not the tiniest blot anywhere. |
He always sat quietly with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the teacher, and he never used to stick scraps of paper on the back of the boy sitting in front of him, never cut the bench, and never played at shoving the other boys off the bench before the teacher came in. |
If anyone wanted a penknife to sharpen his quill, he immediately asked Ivan Fiodorovich, knowing that he always had a penknife, and Ivan Fiodorovich, then called simply Vanyusha, would take it out of a little leather case attached to a buttonhole of his gray coat, and would only request that the sharp edge should not be used for scraping the quill, pointing out that there was a blunt side for the purpose. |
Such good conduct soon attracted the attention of the Latin teacher, whose cough in the passage was enough to reduce the class to terror, even before his frieze coat and pockmarked face had appeared in the doorway. |
This terrifying teacher, who always had two birches lying on his desk and half of whose pupils were always on their knees, made Ivan Fiodorovich monitor, although there were many boys in the class of much greater ability. |
Here I cannot omit an incident which had an influence on the whole of his future life. |
One of the boys entrusted to his charge tried to induce his monitor to write scit on his report, though he had not learned his lesson, by bringing into class a pancake soaked in butter and wrapped in paper. |
Though Ivan Fiodorovich was usually conscientious, on this occasion he was hungry and could not resist the temptation; he took the pancake, held a book up before him, and began eating it, and he was so absorbed in this occupation that he did not observe that a deathly silence had fallen upon the class. |
He woke up with horror only when a terrible hand protruding from a frieze overcoat seized him by the ear and dragged him into the middle of the room. |
“Hand over that pancake! |
Hand it over, I tell you, you rascal!” |
said the terrifying teacher; he seized the buttery pancake in his fingers and flung it out of the window, sternly forbidding the boys running about in the yard to pick it up. |
Then he proceeded on the spot to whack Ivan Fiodorovich very painfully on the hands; and quite rightly—the hands were responsible for taking it and no other part of the body. |
Anyway, the timidity which had always been characteristic of him was more marked from that time forward. |
Possibly the same incident was the explanation of his feeling no desire to enter the civil service, having learned by experience that one is not always successful in hiding one’s misdeeds. |
He was very nearly fifteen when he advanced to the second class, where instead of the four rules of arithmetic and the abridged catechism, he went on to the unabridged one, the book describing the duties of man, and fractions. |
But seeing that the further you went into the forest the thicker the wood became, and receiving the news that his father had departed this life, he stayed only two years longer at school, and with his mother’s consent went into the P—infantry regiment. |
The P—infantry regiment was not at all of the class to which many infantry regiments belong, and, although it was for the most part stationed in villages, it was in no way inferior to many cavalry regiments. |
The majority of the officers drank hard and were really as good at dragging Jews around by their earlocks as any Hussars; some of them even danced the mazurka, and the colonel of the regiment never missed an opportunity of mentioning the fact when he was talking to anyone in company. |
“Among my officers,” he used to say, patting himself on the belly after every word, “a number dance the mazurka, quite a number of them, really a great number of them indeed.” |
To show our readers the degree of culture of the P—infantry regiment, we must add that two of the officers were passionately fond of the game of bank and used to gamble away their uniforms, caps, overcoats, sword knots, and even their underclothes, which is more than you could say about every cavalry regiment. |
Contact with such comrades did not, however, diminish Ivan Fiodorovich’s timidity; and as he did not drink hard liquor, preferring instead a wineglassful of ordinary vodka before dinner and supper, did not dance the mazurka or play bank, naturally he was bound to be always left alone. |
And so it came to pass that while the others were driving about with hired horses, visiting the less important landowners, he, sitting at home, spent his time in pursuits peculiar to a mild and gentle soul: |
he either polished his buttons, or read a fortunetelling book or set mousetraps in the corners of his room, or failing everything he would take off his uniform and lie on his bed. |
On the other hand, no one in the regiment was more punctual in his duties than Ivan Fiodorovich, and he drilled his platoon in such a way that the commander of the company always held him up as a model to the others. |
Consequently in a short time, only eleven years after becoming an ensign, he was promoted to be a second lieutenant. |
During that time he had received the news that his mother was dead, and his aunt, his mother’s sister, whom he only knew from her bringing him in his childhood—and even sending him when he was at Gadyach—dried pears and extremely nice honeycakes which she made herself (she was on bad terms with his mother and so Ivan Fiodorovich had not seen her in later years), this aunt, in the goodness of her heart, undertook to look after his little estate and in due time informed him of the fact by letter. |
Ivan Fiodorovich, having the fullest confidence in his aunt’s good sense, continued to perform his duties as before. |
Some men in his position would have grown conceited at such promotion, but pride was a feeling of which he knew nothing, and as lieutenant he was the same Ivan Fiodorovich as he had been when an ensign. |
He spent another four years in the regiment after his promotion, an event of great importance to him, and was about to leave the Mogiliov district for Great Russia with his regiment when he received a letter as follows: |
MY DEAR NEPHEW, IVAN FIODOROVICH, I am sending you some linen: |
five pairs of socks and four shirts of fine linen; and what is more I want to talk to you of something serious; since you have already a rank of some importance, as I suppose you are aware, and have reached a time of life when it is fitting to take up the management of your land, there is no reason for you to remain longer in military service. |
I am getting old and can no longer see to everything on your farm; and in fact there is a great deal that I want to talk to you about in person. |
Come, Vanyusha! Looking forward to the real pleasure of seeing you, I remain your very affectionate aunt VASILISA TSUPCHEVSKA |
P.S.—There is a wonderful turnip in our vegetable garden, more like a potato than a turnip. |
A week after receiving this letter Ivan Fiodorovich wrote an answer as follows: |
HONORED MADAM, AUNTIE, VASILISA KASHPOROVNA, |
Thank you very much for sending the linen. |
My socks especially are very old; my orderly has darned them four times and that has made them very tight. |
As to your views in regard to my service in the army, I completely agree with you, and the day before yesterday I sent in my papers. |
As soon as I get my discharge I will engage a chaise. |
As to your commission in regard to the wheat seed and Siberian grain, I cannot carry it out; there is none in all the Mogiliov province. |
Pigs here are mostly fed on brewers’ grains together with a little beer when it has grown flat. |
With the greatest respect, honored madam and auntie, I remain your nephew IVAN SHPONKA |
At last Ivan Fiodorovich received his discharge with the grade of lieutenant, hired for forty rubles a Jew to drive from Mogiliov to Gadyach, and set off in the chaise just at the time when the trees are clothed with young and still scanty leaves, the whole earth is bright with fresh green, and there is the fragrance of spring over all the fields. |
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