couldnât recognize her. Iâve seen better looking corpses. In all honesty I swear to you I donât understand now, I really donât understand how I survived that torture. Three days and three nights my sick girl scraped by⦠and what nights! The things she said to me! And on the last night, just imagine, there I sat beside her and prayed to God that sheâd be taken quickly, and me as well. Suddenly the old lady, her mother, came rushing in. Iâd already told her, the mother, the day before that there was little hope, things were bad and it might be an idea to fetch the priest. The sick girl, on seeing her mother, said: âOh, what a good thing youâve come⦠Look at us, we love each other, weâve given each other our wordâ¦â âDoctor, whatâs wrong, whatâs she saying?â I was stunned. âSheâs delirious,â I said. âItâs the fever.â But she said: âEnoughâs enough, you were saying something quite different just now, and you accepted the ring from me⦠Why pretend now? My motherâs kind, sheâll forgive, sheâll understand, and Iâm dying, why should I tell a he? Give me your handâ¦â I jumped up and ran out. The old lady, of course, guessed whatâd happened.
âI wonât weary you any longer, and in any case I find it painful to remember. My sick patient died the following day. The Kingdom of Heaven be hers!â (The doctor added this rapidly and with a sigh.) âBefore she died she asked that the rest of the family should go and I should stay with her alone. âForgive me,â she said. âPerhaps Iâm to blame in your eyes⦠itâs the illness⦠but believe me, I never loved anyone more than you⦠donât forget me⦠take care of my ringâ¦ââ
The district doctor turned away. I took his hand.
âOh,â he cried, âletâs talk about something else! Or perhaps youâd like a little game of whist? Chaps like us, you know, shouldnât give way to such highfalutinâ feelings. Chaps like us should only bother with things like stopping the children crying or the wife scolding. Since then Iâve contracted a legal marriage, as they say⦠Well, you know⦠I found a merchantâs daughter. Dowry of seven thousand roubles. Sheâs called Akulina, which is about right for a Tripthong. Sheâs a woman with a fierce tongue, but thankfully sheâs asleep all day⦠What dâyou say to some whist?â
We sat down to whist for copeck stakes. Tripthong Ivanych won two and a half roubles off me and went home late, very content with his victory.
MY NEIGHBOUR RADILOV
I N the autumn woodcocks are frequently to be found in the ancient lime groves. There are a good many such lime groves in Oryol province. Our forebears, in choosing a place to live, always set aside half-a-dozen acres of good land for orchards along with avenues of limes. After fifty years, at most seventy, these estates, these ânests of the gentryâ, have vanished one by one from the face of the earth, the houses have decayed or been sold off for their timber, the stone-built service areas have been turned into mounds of rubble, the apple trees have dried and been used for firewood, the hedges and fences have all gone. Only the limes have grown up, as before, in their splendour and now, surrounded by ploughed fields, speak to our present flighty generation of âall fathers and brothers now dead and buriedâ. An old lime is a beautiful tree. It is spared even by the merciless axe of the Russian peasant. With its small leaf and mighty branches spread wide on all sides, it creates eternal shade beneath it.
One time, wandering with Yermolay through the fields in search of partridges, I noticed a neglected orchard and went off in that direction. Iâd hardly entered it when woodcock rose with beating wings from a
âI wonât weary you any longer, and in any case I find it painful to remember. My sick patient died the following day. The Kingdom of Heaven be hers!â (The doctor added this rapidly and with a sigh.) âBefore she died she asked that the rest of the family should go and I should stay with her alone. âForgive me,â she said. âPerhaps Iâm to blame in your eyes⦠itâs the illness⦠but believe me, I never loved anyone more than you⦠donât forget me⦠take care of my ringâ¦ââ
The district doctor turned away. I took his hand.
âOh,â he cried, âletâs talk about something else! Or perhaps youâd like a little game of whist? Chaps like us, you know, shouldnât give way to such highfalutinâ feelings. Chaps like us should only bother with things like stopping the children crying or the wife scolding. Since then Iâve contracted a legal marriage, as they say⦠Well, you know⦠I found a merchantâs daughter. Dowry of seven thousand roubles. Sheâs called Akulina, which is about right for a Tripthong. Sheâs a woman with a fierce tongue, but thankfully sheâs asleep all day⦠What dâyou say to some whist?â
We sat down to whist for copeck stakes. Tripthong Ivanych won two and a half roubles off me and went home late, very content with his victory.
MY NEIGHBOUR RADILOV
I N the autumn woodcocks are frequently to be found in the ancient lime groves. There are a good many such lime groves in Oryol province. Our forebears, in choosing a place to live, always set aside half-a-dozen acres of good land for orchards along with avenues of limes. After fifty years, at most seventy, these estates, these ânests of the gentryâ, have vanished one by one from the face of the earth, the houses have decayed or been sold off for their timber, the stone-built service areas have been turned into mounds of rubble, the apple trees have dried and been used for firewood, the hedges and fences have all gone. Only the limes have grown up, as before, in their splendour and now, surrounded by ploughed fields, speak to our present flighty generation of âall fathers and brothers now dead and buriedâ. An old lime is a beautiful tree. It is spared even by the merciless axe of the Russian peasant. With its small leaf and mighty branches spread wide on all sides, it creates eternal shade beneath it.
One time, wandering with Yermolay through the fields in search of partridges, I noticed a neglected orchard and went off in that direction. Iâd hardly entered it when woodcock rose with beating wings from a
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