Chapter 20 Mountain duck

Mountain duck Akutagawa Ryunosuke On a certain evening in May 1880, Turgenev, who came to Yesnaya Polyana as a guest again after two years of farewell, and his host Tolstoy, went to the village on the other side of the Vronga River. Woods to hunt mountain ducks. Those who went with him included, besides the two old men, Mrs. Tolstoy, who had not yet lost her youth, and children with a hound. Most of the way to the Fronga River passes through wheat fields. The evening breeze blows through the ears of wheat, quietly sending the fragrance of the soil.Tolstoy, with a gun on his shoulder, walked in front of everyone, turned his head from time to time, and spoke to Turgenev, who was walking side by side with Mrs. Tolstoy.Every time, the author always raised his eyes in surprise, answered his words happily and fluently, and sometimes shook his broad shoulders and let out a rustling laugh.This was a more refined and feminine answer than the brutish Tolstoy.

When they were going downhill, two brothers from the village came across. When they saw Zalstoy, they stopped and gave a salute, then lifted their bare feet and ran up the slope.One of Tolstoy's children shouted something behind them, but they pretended not to hear, and ran away into the wheat field. "Children in the countryside are so fun." With the afterglow of the setting sun reflected on Tolstoy's face, he turned his head and said to Turgenev. "Listening to them, often by accident, taught me a straightforward way of speaking." Turgenev smiled.He is not what he used to be today, and he felt moved by Tolstoy's words for the children, so he naturally found it funny...

"Once I gave them a lesson—" Tolstoy added: "Suddenly a child ran out of the classroom and asked him where he was going. He said that there was not enough slate pencil. He didn't say to get the slate pencil, nor did he say to fold a section, he simply said that there was not enough slate pencil. Eat it. Only Russian children who often bite their mouths with slate pencils can say such things, and we adults can't say that." "Yes, only Russian children say such things. When I hear such things, I feel that I have returned to Russia." Turgenev glanced again across the wheat field.

"That's right. In France, children smoke." "But you seem to have stopped smoking at all recently." Madame Tolstoy, save the guest from her husband's jeers. "Well, no smoking at all. There are two pretty ladies in Paris who won't kiss me because they say I smell of tobacco in my mouth!" Now Tolstoy smiled wryly. During this time, they had already crossed the Volonga River and reached the place where they hunted wild ducks.There is a piece of grass not far from the river, with sparse trees and a little damp. Tolstoy gave up the good hunting ground to Turgenev, walked to a place about 150 steps away, and found a place to shoot birds.Mrs. Tolstoy was next to Turgenev, and the children were behind them, and everyone took their places.

The sky still had the red light of the setting sun, and the trees swaying in the air, emitting a hazy mist, seemed to have sprouted fragrant buds.Turgenev raised his gun and watched the end of the tree, and the breeze was rippling through the dimly lit trees. "There are robins and goldfinches." Mrs. Tolstoy listened attentively and talked to herself. Everyone listened in silence, and half an hour passed. At that time, the sky was like water, only the trunks of birch trees near and far were white.The robin and the goldfinch were gone, replaced by the occasional call of the nuthatch—Turgenev looked out again through the sparse woods, now deep in the deep dusk bingo.

Suddenly, there was a gunshot from the forest, and the children waiting behind, before the echo of the gunshot dissipated, ran with the dog to pick up the prey. "My husband is ahead of the curve." Madame Tolstoy smiled back at Turgenev. After a while, the second child, Ilya, ran to his mother from the grass and reported that his father had hit a mountain duck. Turgenev asked from the side: "Who discovered it?" "Dora found it—and found it alive." With a red face, Ilya reported to her mother how she had found the prey. In Turgenev's mind, a scene from "The Hunter's Diary" appeared.

After Elijah left, the surroundings became silent again.From the dark woods came a scent of spring shoots and damp earth.The cry of homing birds can be heard in the distance. "What kind of bird is that?" "Blue-spotted bird." Turgenev answered immediately. The blue-spotted bird's cry suddenly stopped, and for a while, the birds in the forest suddenly disappeared.The sky—not even a breeze, fading to a dull blue over the lifeless forest tops. ——Suddenly, there was an owl flying gently overhead. Another gunshot broke the silence in the forest, and it was already an hour later.

"Lev Nikolaevich wants to overwhelm me even if he is hunting ducks." Turgenev shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The children's running, and Dora's barking, were quiet after a while.Bits of cold stars have been scattered in the sky. In the forest, all the places that could be seen just now have been closed by night, and the branches are still quietly motionless.Twenty minutes, thirty minutes passed dully, and the damp land that had been swallowed into the darkness of night began to rise slightly visible spring mist around the feet.But beside them, there was not a single bird singing.

"What's going on today?" Madame Tolstoy said to herself, as if regretfully. "There are very few days when there are as few birds as today..." "Ma'am, listen, the nightingale is calling." Turgenev deliberately diverted the subject from hunting birds. In the depths of the dark forest, the singing of the nightingale could be heard clearly.The two were silent, each thinking about their own thoughts, listening to the singing of the nightingale... Suddenly, according to Turgenev's own words: "Suddenly, I felt", it was a unique feeling only for hunters, in the grass in front of me, followed by a cry, a mountain duck flew up.In the forest with drooping branches, a mountain duck flashed its white wings and disappeared into the night. Turgenev immediately raised the shotgun on his shoulder and quickly fired a shot.

A puff of smoke and a short flash—the sound of the gun echoed long in the silent depths of the forest. "Did you hit it?" Tolstoy came up to him and asked in a low voice. "It hit and rolled down like a rock." By this time the children had returned to them with the dog. "Go find it!" Tolstoy ordered them. The children jumped ahead of the dog and went looking for prey everywhere.But after searching and searching for a long time, the body of the mountain duck could not be found.Dora also ran around, squatting down in the grass from time to time, hissing dissatisfiedly.

Finally, Tolstoy and Turgenev also dispatched to help the children find it together, but where did the mountain duck go, not even a feather was missing. "Missed?" Twenty minutes later, Tolstoy stood in the dark forest and said to Turgenev. "There must be, I clearly saw it rolling down like a stone..." Turgenev said, looking back and forth in the grass. "Maybe it hit, but it just hurt the feather, fell off and escaped." "No, not only the feather was hit, I obviously hit it." Tolstoy frowned in disbelief. "The dog will definitely find it. Our Dora, as long as we hit the bird, we will definitely find it." "However, it was indeed a hit." Turgenev held the shotgun and made an annoyed gesture, "Even children can tell the difference between a hit and a miss, I saw it clearly. " Tolstoy looked mockingly into his face and said: "So, how is the dog?" "I don't know what happened to the dog, but I just said that I clearly saw it rolling down like a stone..." Turgenev stared into Tolstoy's eyes like a challenge, and said sharply, "Il est tombe comme pierre, jet'assure!" ①French, meaning "I did see, rolling down like a stone". "But why can't Dora be found?" Fortunately, at this time, Mrs. Tolstoy smiled at the two old people and reconciled, saying that the children should look for it tomorrow and go home now.Turgenev immediately agreed. "That's it, I'll understand by tomorrow." "That's right, I'll understand by tomorrow." Tolstoy was still a little unwilling, so he repeated it on purpose, turned his back on Turgenev, and walked out of the forest... Turgenev went back to his bedroom; it was already about eleven o'clock in the evening.The rest was sitting quietly on the chair alone, looking around blankly. This bedroom is Tolstoy's daily study.Big bookshelves, busts in niches, three or four photo frames.The stag's head mounted on the wall--these things reflected in the candlelight, forming a dark, condensed air around him.But being left alone made Turgenev feel particularly relaxed tonight. ——Before returning to the dormitory, he sat at the tea table with his master's family, chatting at night, and he tried his best to pretend to be jovial.But at that time, Tolstoy still had a gloomy face and didn't speak much, which made Turgenev very embarrassed, so he had to deliberately ignore the master's silence, and had some funny words with the whole family. Whenever Turgenev said something funny, others laughed happily, especially the children, who laughed even more lively when they saw him imitating the calls of elephants in the Hamburg Zoo and the gestures of young men in Paris.But the more lively the family was, the more awkward Turgenev felt. "Did you know there's been a promising new writer recently?" When the topic turned to French literature, the awkward socialite finally couldn't bear it, and deliberately asked Tolstoy a question in a relaxed tone. "I don't know, what new writer?" "De Maupassant—Geil de Maupassant is at least a writer of uncommon observation. I happen to have a copy of his short story collection "La Maison Tellier" in my bag. You can read it when you have time. .” ① "Dai Liai's Family". "De Maupassant?" Tolstoy glanced suspiciously at the guest, but did not say whether he wanted to see it or not.Turgenev remembered being bullied by older bad boys when he was a child—that's what it felt like then. "New writer, there is also a special character here!" Mrs. Tolstoy noticed his embarrassment, and immediately talked about a strange visitor—a young man in rough clothes came one evening about a month ago and asked to see the owner of the house.I had to ask him to come in.As soon as he saw Mr., he said, "Please give me a glass of vodka and a plate of herring tail first." For new writers, that was even more shocking. "The man's name is Garzon." After hearing this name, Turgenev felt that he could bring Tolstoy into the circle of conversation.Because Tolstoy was so silent, in addition to becoming more and more unhappy, another reason was also because Turgenev had introduced Garsin's works to him. "Garchin?—his novels aren't bad. Have you read anything of him since?" "It's not bad." Tolstoy replied casually, still indifferently. Turgenev stood up with difficulty, shook his white-haired head, and started walking in the study.The candlelight on the table, when he was walking, made his shadow on the wall change from big to small.He silently knit his hands behind his back, his listless eyes kept looking at the empty bed. In Turgenev's mind, he vividly recalled his friendship with Tolstoy for more than twenty years.Tolstoy, an officer who had returned to his old home in Petersburg after a long wandering, looked at him proudly in one of Nekrasov's drawing-rooms, attacking George Sand to forget everything. Tolstoy—walking with him in the forest of Spasskaya, stopping suddenly to admire the strange peaks of Xiayun, Tolstoy in the time of writing "Three Hussars"—finally, at the house of Forte , two people quarreling and cursing, Tolstoy when he was fighting with his old fists - from these memories, we can see Tolstoy's stubborn temper, he can't see the truth of others at all, and thinks that people are fake.This is not only the case when other people's words and deeds contradict him, even for a dissolute person like him, he will not forgive others where he can forgive himself.He couldn't immediately believe that other people felt Xia Yun's beauty as much as he did. He didn't like George Sand because he doubted her truthfulness.There was a time when he almost broke up with Turgenev.This time Turgenev said he had hit a mountain duck, but he still felt he was lying... Turgenev yawned and stopped before the niche.The marble statue in the niche casts a vague shadow from the distant candlelight—this is the bust of Lov's eldest brother, Nikolai Tolstoy.Nicholas is also a good friend of Turgenev, and more than twenty years have passed since he became an old friend.If Luev had half as much enthusiasm for people as his elder brother—Turgenev would not feel that the long night of spring had gradually deepened as he cast his lonely gaze into the dark closet for a long time. The next morning Turgenev went early to the upstairs drawing-room which the family used as a dining room.On the wall of the living room are several portraits of the previous ancestors of the Tolstoy family - Tolstoy is sitting at the table under one of the portraits, reading the mail that he received that day, and there is no child except him . The two old men nodded and greeted each other. Turgenev took the opportunity to see his face, and if he showed a little kindness, he was ready to make peace with him immediately.But Tolstoy was still dull, and after two or three sentences, he continued to read his mail.Turgenev had no choice but to pull up a chair beside him and sit down to read the newspaper in silence. In the dull living room, there was no other sound except the brief boiling of the samovar. "Did you sleep well last night?" After reading the email, Tolstoy thought of something and asked Turgenev this question. "sleep good." Turgenev put down the newspaper and waited for Tolstoy to say something else, but the host lifted the silver-ringed teacup, poured tea into the samovar, and said nothing more. After a while, Turgenev gradually felt displeased seeing Tolstoy's gloomy face, especially since there was no one else around this morning, he felt that he didn't know what to do.If only Mrs. Tolstoy had been there—he had thought about it several times, and for some reason no one had come into the drawing room at that moment. Five minutes, ten minutes——Turgenev finally couldn't bear it anymore, threw the newspaper away, and stood up in a panic from his chair. At this time, outside the door of the living room, there were suddenly voices and footsteps of many people, and they rushed up from the stairs—someone pushed the door open immediately, and five or six children, yelling, ran into the room coming. "Dad, I found it!" The first one was Ilya, triumphantly raising the things in his hands and shaking them. "I was the first to find out." Teziana, whose face resembled her mother's, reported loudly before her younger brother. "When it fell, it hung on a branch of a poplar tree." The last one to explain was Sergei, the oldest. Tolstoy was taken aback, and scanned the faces of the children.Knowing that yesterday's mountain duck was indeed found, a smile suddenly appeared on his bearded face: "Really? Is it hanging on a branch? No wonder the dog didn't find it." He got up from his chair, squeezed together with the child in front of Turgenev, and stretched out his thick right hand: "Ivan Sergevich, I am relieved now. I am not a liar, If the bird falls to the ground, Dora will surely find it." Turgenev squeezed Tolstoy's hand tightly with some embarrassment.Is it the mountain duck that I found, or the author——in the author's mind, he was a little confused, and he almost shed tears of joy: "I'm not a liar either, look at my wrist, it's One hit. The shot rang out, and the bird rolled down like a stone..." The two old people looked at me and I looked at you, and they laughed loudly at the same time. Made in January 1921 Translated by Lou Shiyi June 1976