The Luck of Ivan the Forgetful

VIII

Such fits of excitement grew ever rarer with Ivan. As the summer advanced, the convict became quieter. Whenever he watched Anjuta playing with her mischievous playfellow, or listened to the melancholy call of the birds, or sat by the blazing fire, the furrows on his brow became smoother and a comfortable drowsiness lulled his wild instincts to rest. He had become quite a different man from what he was when he first escaped. But his dreams at night often transported him back to the damp prison-cell, or he saw himself again walking in the file of the prisoners on the apparently endless high road, heard the familiar calls of the warders through the cold winter air, and felt the heavy butt end of the musket fall on his bowed back. On such occasions when he awoke, it was a long time before the quiet breathing of Anjuta and the bear’s peaceful snoring restored him to a sense of reality. He generally spent the remainder of such a night on his bear-skin outside the narrow hut, enjoying the consciousness of freedom that came with the balmy coolness of the forest and the distant murmur of the stream. The next day he was generally in a specially good humour, played with Anjuta, and listened to the thousand voices in which the primeval forest revealed to him its secrets.

He never thought of the morrow; his adventurous and uncertain gipsy life had taught him to prize to-day. So long as the sun shone, the pot boiled merrily on the fire, and his child laughed and clapped her hands—what more did he need? And what could the obscure future bring him, but at the best a succession of similar days, and at the worst the dungeon and the knout.

But in August there came a bad time. The clouds almost touched the tops of the forest-giants, from whose bark the rain trickled down in large cold drops; the birds were silent and the beasts crept into their lairs. The little bear rolled himself up in his skin and growled discontentedly. The old man and the child sat, huddling close together in the dry hut and whispered to the accompaniment of the howling of the wind and the pouring of the rain.

“When the black-berries are ripe, the thrushes will come from everywhere, and I will catch you a pair,” he promised the delighted child. “But what will you do with them?”

“I will have fine games with them—but then I will let them fly; thrushes do not like cages, do they, Grandfather?”

“Who would like a cage? Listen, Anjuta; you are a good child. Will you come to Grandfather, if he is ever put in a cage?”

The child laughed aloud and clapped her hands. “But, Grandfather, you are not a bird.”

“There is another kind of cage which is not for birds——Ah, what do you understand about it?”

Presently the sun shone again and it was cheerful in the forest. The days passed monotonously but happily. Gradually the nights began to grow cold. In the evenings the sun no longer sank in a golden mist, but glowed with an angry red, and descended constantly more often surrounded by thick clouds, through which it looked out like a blood-stained eye. Ivan enlarged the hut; in the evening he lit the fire in it, and closed the door carefully that the warmth should not be too quickly dissipated. But in spite of all, the three—the old man, the child and the bear—had, towards morning, to nestle close together in order not to be frozen.

Anjuta was much alone and became tired of solitude, when Ivan spent whole days hunting. “Mischka, do you hear Grandfather shooting?” she would ask the bear when the dull sound of a distant shot came to their ears.

A great change had taken place in Mischka. His fur had become thicker and shaggier, he had grown considerably and often disappeared in the forest in order to hunt on his own account. When he came home, gorged and unwieldy, he showed no inclination to play, but lay down to sleep. Once the little girl wished to rouse him from his slumber, and seized him somewhat roughly by the ears. The creature uttered a loud roar, reared on his hind-legs, showing his teeth, and when the unsuspecting child stretched out her hand, laughing to her refractory playfellow, she was suddenly struck down by a blow from one of its paws.

In the evening Ivan found his pet with a scratched and much-swollen cheek. He chastised the snapping bear severely in spite of Anjuta’s supplications and tears, and tied it up for the night. The next morning the rope was found broken and the bear had vanished. It was not till two days afterwards that Mischka appeared again between the pine-trunks and approached the hut hesitatingly; but when he saw his master standing on the threshold, he sat down and sucked his paw in an embarrassed manner.

“Come along, you tramp!” Ivan called to him. “Has hunger driven you home at last, you rascal!” Mischka, feeling deeply injured, turned round and trotted away without heeding the cajoling calls of his little companion.

“One who is born a tramp, remains a tramp,” said Ivan.

“Let him run! Don’t cry, Anjuta; you will get a better playfellow.”

The leaves of the birch turned yellow and the maples looked as if splashed with blood. Their leaves trembled as though with cold. Light as feathers and quite dry, they eddied long in the air before they sank to their funeral in the colourless grass.

“How cold it is, Grandfather! Will it never be warm again?”

“Wait a little; soon there will come St. Martin’s summer which will bring us warmth. Before it is really winter, I will dig for us both a hole deep in the ground, so that we can pass it there.”

“Just like moles! But it will be pitch-dark, Grandfather.”

“Well, we will light some pine-chips. Don’t worry about that. All you have to do is to grow and get strong, so as to look after me, if I am not first——”

“What, Grandfather? If you are not first——”

But instead of answering, Ivan shook his head, and went to one side.