Chapter 14

It was quite true that Olenin had been walking about the yard when
Maryanka entered the gate, and had heard her say, 'That devil, our
lodger, is walking about.' He had spent that evening with Daddy
Eroshka in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a
samovar, wine, and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and
a cigar he listened to the tales the old man told seated on the
threshold at his feet. Though the air was still, the candle
dripped and flickered: now lighting up the post of the porch, now
the table and crockery, now the cropped white head of the old man.
Moths circled round the flame and, shedding the dust of their
wings, fluttered on the table and in the glasses, flew into the
candle flame, and disappeared in the black space beyond. Olenin
and Eroshka had emptied five bottles of chikhir. Eroshka filled
the glasses every time, offering one to Olenin, drinking his
health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old
days: of his rather, 'The Broad', who alone had carried on his
back a boar's carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two
pails of chikhir at one sitting. He told of his own days and his
chum Girchik, with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt
cloaks across the Terek. He told how one morning he had killed two
deer, and about his 'little soul' who used to run to him at the
cordon at night. He told all this so eloquently and picturesquely
that Olenin did not notice how time passed. 'Ah yes, my dear
fellow, you did not know me in my golden days; then I'd have shown
you things. Today it's "Eroshka licks the jug", but then Eroshka
was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the finest horse? Who
had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a drink? With whom
go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains to kill Ahmet
Khan? Why, always Eroshka! Whom did the girls love? Always Eroshka
had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a drinker, a
thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a
singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like
that nowadays. It's disgusting to look at them. When they're that
high [Eroshka held his hand three feet from the ground] they put
on idiotic boots and keep looking at them--that's all the pleasure
they know. Or they'll drink themselves foolish, not like men but
all wrong. And who was I? I was Eroshka, the thief; they knew me
not only in this village but up in the mountains. Tartar princes,
my kunaks, used to come to see me! I used to be everybody's kunak.
If he was a Tartar--with a Tartar; an Armenian--with an Armenian;
a soldier--with a soldier; an officer--with an officer! I didn't
care as long as he was a drinker. He says you should cleanse
yourself from