Dracula’s Brethren. Richard Dalby

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СКАЧАТЬ Both the bursars and the seminarists wore long garments resembling frock coats, ‘prolonged to the utmost limit,’ a technical expression signifying below their heels.

      The most important event for the seminarists was the coming of the vacation: it began in June, when they usually dispersed to their homes. Then the whole high-road was dotted with philosophers, grammarians and theologians. Those who had nowhere to go went to stay with some comrade. The philosophers and theologians took a situation, that is, undertook the tuition of the children in some prosperous family, and received in payment a pair of new boots or sometimes even a coat. The whole crowd trailed along together like a gipsy encampment, boiled their porridge, and slept in the fields. Everyone hauled along a sack in which he had a shirt and a pair of leg-wrappers. The theologians were particularly careful and precise: to avoid wearing out their boots, they took them off, hung them on sticks and carried them on their shoulders, particularly if it was muddy; then, tucking their trousers up above their knees, they splashed fearlessly through the puddles. When they saw a village they turned off the high-road and, going up to any house which seemed a little better looking than the rest, stood in a row before the windows and began singing a chant at the top of their voices. The master of the house, some old Cossack villager, would listen to them for a long time, his head propped on his hands, then he would sob bitterly and say, turning to his wife: ‘Wife! What the scholars are singing must be very deep; bring them fat bacon and anything else that we have.’ And a whole bowl of dumplings was emptied into the sack, a good-sized piece of bacon, several flat loaves, and sometimes a trussed hen would go into it too. Fortified with such stores, the grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers and theologians went on their way again. Their numbers lessened, however, the further they went. Almost all wandered off towards their homes, and only those were left whose parental abodes were further away.

      Once, at the time of such a migration, three students turned off the high-road in order to replenish their store of provisions at the first homestead they could find, for their sacks had long been empty. They were the theologian, Halyava; the philosopher, Homa Brut; and the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets.

      The theologian was a well-grown broad-shouldered fellow; he had an extremely odd habit – anything that lay within his reach he invariably stole. In other circumstances, he was of an excessively gloomy temper, and when he was drunk he used to hide in the rank grass, and the seminarists had a lot of trouble to find him there.

      The philosopher, Homa Brut, was of a cheerful temper, he was very fond of lying on his back, smoking a pipe; when he was drinking he always engaged musicians and danced the trepak. He often had a taste of the ‘peck of peas,’ but took it with perfect philosophical indifference, saying that there is no escaping what has to be. The rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, had not yet the right to wear a moustache, to drink vodka, and to smoke a pipe. He only wore a curl round his ear, and so his character was as yet hardly formed; but, judging from the big bumps on the forehead, with which he often appeared in class, it might be presumed that he would make a good fighter. The theologian, Halyava, and the philosopher, Homa, often pulled him by the forelock as a sign of their favour, and employed him as their messenger.

      It was evening when they turned off the high-road; the sun had only just set and the warmth of the day still lingered in the air. The theologian and the philosopher walked along in silence smoking their pipes; the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, kept knocking off the heads of the wayside thistles with his stick. The road ran between scattered groups of oak and nut trees standing here and there in the meadows. Sloping uplands and little hills, green and round as cupolas, were interspersed here and there about the plain. The cornfields of ripening wheat, which came into view in two places, showed that some village must soon be seen. It was more than an hour, however, since they had passed the cornfields, yet they had come upon no dwelling. The sky was now completely wrapped in darkness, and only in the west there was a pale streak left of the glow of sunset.

      ‘What the devil does it mean?’ said the philosopher, Homa Brut. ‘It looked as though there must be a village in a minute.’

      The theologian did not speak, he gazed at the surrounding country, then put his pipe back in his mouth, and they continued on their way.

      ‘Upon my soul!’ the philosopher said, stopping again, ‘not a devil’s fist to be seen.’

      ‘Maybe some village will turn up further on,’ said the theologian, not removing his pipe.

      But meantime night had come on, and a rather dark night. Small storm clouds increased the gloom, and by every token they could expect neither stars nor moon. The students noticed that they had lost their way and for a long time had been walking off the road.

      The philosopher, after feeling about with his feet in all directions, said at last, abruptly: ‘I say, where’s the road?’

      The theologian did not speak for a while, then after pondering, he brought out: ‘Yes, it is a dark night.’

      The rhetorician walked off to one side and tried on his hands and knees to feel for the road, but his hands came upon nothing but foxes’ holes. On all sides of them there was the steppe, which, it seemed, no one had ever crossed.

      The travellers made another effort to press on a little, but there was the same wilderness in all directions. The philosopher tried shouting, but his voice seemed completely lost on the steppe, and met with no reply. All they heard was, a little afterwards, a faint moaning like the howl of a wolf.

      ‘I say, what’s to be done?’ said the philosopher.

      ‘Why, halt and sleep in the open!’ said the theologian, and he felt in his pocket for flint and tinder to light his pipe again. But the philosopher could not agree to this: it was always his habit at night to put away a quarter loaf of bread and four pounds of fat bacon, and he was conscious on this occasion of an insufferable sense of loneliness in his stomach. Besides, in spite of his cheerful temper, the philosopher was rather afraid of wolves.

      ‘No, Halyava, we can’t,’ he said. ‘What, stretch out and lie down like a dog, without a bite or a sup of anything? Let’s make another try for it; maybe we shall stumble on some dwelling-place and get at least a drink of vodka for supper.’

      At the word ‘vodka’ the theologian spat to one side and brought out: ‘Well, of course, it’s no use staying in the open.’

      The students walked on, and to their intense delight caught the sound of barking in the distance. Listening which way it came from, they walked on more boldly and a little later saw a light.

      ‘A village! It really is a village!’ said the philosopher.

      He was not mistaken in his supposition; in a little while they actually saw a little homestead consisting of only two cottages looking into the same farmyard. There was a light in the windows; a dozen plum trees stood up by the fence. Looking through the cracks in the paling-gate the students saw a yard filled with carriers’ waggons. Stars peeped out here and there in the sky at the moment.

      ‘Look, mates, don’t let’s be put off! We must get a night’s lodging somehow!’

      The three learned gentlemen banged on the gates with one accord and shouted, ‘Open!’

      The door of one of the cottages creaked, and a minute later they saw before them an old woman in sheepskin.

      ‘Who is there?’ she cried, with a hollow cough.

      ‘Give us a night’s lodging, granny; we have lost our way; a night in the open is as bad as a hungry belly.’

      ‘What manner of folks may you be?’

      ‘Oh, СКАЧАТЬ