The Puppet Show of Memory by Baring Maurice

Author:Baring Maurice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

and listen in the thick dark night, while the peasants in the village stamped their rhythmical dances to the accompaniment of bleating accordions or three-stringed balalaikas; some watchman’s rattle beat time; the frogs croaked, and sometimes a voice – a rather hoarse, high, slightly sharp voice – began a long-drawn-out, high wail, and other voices chimed in, singing the same melody in a rough counterpoint. We sat at a little green garden-table drinking our coffee, and our nalivka, the delicious clean liqueur distilled from cherries. There seemed to be no time in Russia. People slept when they felt inclined, not necessarily because it was night. Once when I went to stay with a friend near Kirsanof he advised me to arrive at four o’clock in the morning, if possible, as the servants would enjoy the bustle of someone arriving when it was still dark.

One evening we went out riding through the woods, and over the plains, and no sooner had we left the front door than my pony, altogether out of control, galloped away into space. One morning we were called at one, and went out to the marshes to shoot wild duck before the dawn. It was quite dark when we started, and after the shooting was over, and I shot two wild duck dead, we drove home in the dawn across the dewy plains, when the whole country was awakening, the cocks crowing and the birds singing, and the plains were bathed in lemon-coloured light, and faint pink and grey clouds hung like shreds from Aurora’s scarf across the horizon.

One night we camped out in the woods. We took bottles of beer and water-melons, and playing-cards, and a camera, and many rugs. We slept little; the wood was full of flies and mosquitoes, but we enjoyed ourselves much all the same, and came back with that pleasant headache which is the result of sleeping on straw in the open air on a hot August night, and covered with bites. The morning after, we had a wolf-shoot, but it was too early in the year for wolves, and nobody saw one. But there was a great display, nevertheless; a man rode on a white horse and blew a trumpet, and there were a multitude of beaters. I remember a short dialogue bawled slowly, quietly, and sonorously in prolonged accents across a whole field between André, the night-watchman, and Wassili, the keeper. “Who is that man yonder?” asked Wassili. “He is a shepherd,” said André; “he feeds sheep.” “On pastukh, on past korov.” It was so dignified, so slow, like a fragment of dialogue from the Old Testament. In the morning we used to have breakfast out of doors, in the garden, under a tree, with a pleasant after-breakfast interlude of smoking and conversation; then Alexander and the gardener would stroll into the garden, and there would be endless discussion about the pulling down of some paling, or the repairing of some fence or chair, or the painting of some

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