Chapter XI. A Village Fight

Liavlia, 2nd July, Old Style.

To-day it is cold and rainy. The windmills look like giant soldiers huddled in overcoats, unmoving, soaked. There is no hope in the muddled sky, and the wind blows and whistles. Obstinate dreary cows stand midway in the village street, and stare stupidly; and but for them there is no living being to be seen. Oh, it's rainy! I understand ennui and drunkenness in a place like this. Until the harvest season no one has more than two or three hours' work a day, and the vodka shop is open from ten till five. I should take to vodka myself if that door were open to me.

I had written so much when I was disturbed by a peasant singing in a high-pitched voice. It was Kalmeek the drunkard, in a scarlet shirt, but without a hat, and soaked through to the skin. He is one of the interesting "characters" of the village. Kalmeek is his nickname: he is supposed to resemble a Kalmouk in appearance. The reader may search the countenance in the illustration and judge for himself. Despite his continuous inebriety there is a certain intellectuality in his face. This is his little song —

How mournfully he screeches out the tune! But Kalmeek is happy, even this wet day. For him the country dances in more lively colours just because he's steeped in vodka — a questionable happiness.

Yesterday Kalmeek had a great fight. This was how it happened. A man came over the river from the "wicked" side, the Kekhtya side, and the police "provoked" him to quarrel with the peasants. First he attacked an aged bargeman who was down by the Liavlia stream away from the main village, and beat him almost to death with a pine cudgel. The police had had a grudge against the old fellow; he had perhaps been standing in the way of their getting bribes in some transaction. They fought like wild beasts, these two, the greybeard of seventy and the ruffian of twenty-five; but age could not stand against youth. When at last the poor old chap lay down on the road, and did not attempt to rise, the police hauled him off to prison — to the local "bug-hole" as the revolutionaries called it. The hooligan then went away to find some one else, and whom should he come up against but Kalmeek singing at the top of his voice —

Kalmeek, the hero of the fight

A peasant woman crossing herself before a wall ikon (Rostoff the Great)

"Twelve years other people's babies have I nursed;

The girl who is not married at thirty is accurs'd."

"What have you got to sing about?" asks the village provocateur.

No answer.

"What makes you sing? Have you got a bug biting you?"

Still no answer, and so the rough swore at him. "Cursed catsap!"

Now the word "catsap," though untranslateable and meaningless as far as the English language is concerned, is about as bad a thing as you can say to a man. In Little Russia catsup is an abusive term for a Great Russian or a Northerner, and in the North, it is, vice versa, the word in foul language for a Southerner.

The rough essayed to poke Kalmeek in the stomach, and the latter, having stopped singing, was staring at his interlocutor with an expression of mixed sorrow and rage. Suddenly he bent down and seized a quarter trunk of a birch tree that lay at his feet, and rushed to kill his antagonist at a blow. The latter dodged, and got it on his shoulder. A battle ensued, the rough fighting with his short cudgel and Kalmeek with his club. Other peasants came to see and laugh, and even the police watched the proceedings, holding, as it were, a waiting brief. Only the women called out to stop the fight, and tried to persuade their husbands to interfere.

Such a battle it was, all up and down the village street, each calling the other names, and striking blows which, if they had reached their mark, would have killed any ordinary people. Kalmeek was unlucky; his face was all blood, for the little villain opposed to him was a clever dodger, and jumped in and out, avoiding the heavy blows of the birch tree, and every now and then giving the peasant an ugly clout with his rough pine cudgel. He smiled, but Kalmeek did not smile; he was in grim earnest, and wielded his huge weapon like some stupid ogre in a fairy tale, his aim being to bring it down on top of the hooligan's head, and so do for him once and for all.

Suddenly, after an unpleasant wound, our peasant was so enraged that he altogether forgot himself, and began to whirl the club round and round and rush upon his antagonist. The Kekhtyite was taken by surprise and fell back in bewilderment, turned round, and began to run. Kalmeek was after him. In a minute he caught him up and struck him a fearful blow on the side of the head.

The hooligan lay gasping in the dust, looking like a wild beast that has just been brought down in the hunt. The peasants laughed, and one of them standing over the prostrate foe, asked — "How is it, brother? "Getting no answer, he gave the body a kick. "Dead!" said another.

Some one proposed to throw the body into the river. Then the policeman came up and said it was his affair. It was a Siberian business now. Kalmeek must follow him to gaol.

Kalmeek, however, showed no inclination to move, but stood like an executioner in his red shirt, holding his bloody club. And the policeman entered into a long harangue as to the advisability of Kalmeek proceeding peacefully to the prison. But the other peasants raised a counter plea — to throw the policeman in the Dwina. The upshot was the policeman went to fetch his mates, and they took the corpse-like ruffian to the river side, put him in the charge of a woman, and bade her row him over to the Kekhtya side and drop him on the sand. This the woman did even better than her instructions warranted, and took the young fellow home, where he soon revived. But for a little loss of memory, which would serve him well next time he went to church to confess, he was none the worse for his bout.

Kalmeek went off with some of his friends to have a drink. When he came home at night he found his wife had barred the door and the windows to prevent his coming in. She had never touched vodka in her life and hated drunkenness. Then she feared, perhaps, to be beaten, or perhaps feared that the police might come in the night and break up her home and frighten the children to death.

The husband bore it, however, with equanimity, and came singing down the village street again —

Vassily Vassilievitch stopped him, and asked for a description of the fight.

"Why did you fight him?" I asked. "What was the reason?"

The moujik stopped singing and stared at me, as if wondering whether he had ever seen me before, and then said very deliberately — "He said to me . . . an intolerable word."