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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Through Russia, by Maxim Gorky*
+#2 in our series by Maxim Gorky
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+Through Russia
+
+by Maxim Gorky
+
+August, 2000  [Etext #2288]
+
+
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Through Russia, by Maxim Gorky*
+******This file should be named truss10.txt or truss10.zip******
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+E-text prepared by Martin Adamson - martin@grassmarket.freeserve.co.uk
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+Translated by CJ Hogarth
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE BIRTH OF A MAN
+THE ICEBREAKER
+GUBIN
+NILUSHKA
+THE CEMETERY
+ON A RIVER STEAMER
+A WOMAN
+IN A MOUNTAIN DEFILE
+KALININ
+THE DEAD MAN
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTH OF A MAN
+
+The year was the year '92-- the year of leanness--the scene a
+spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot
+so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling
+rivulet the ocean's deep-voiced thunder was plainly
+distinguishable.
+
+Also, the season being autumn, leaves of wild laurel were
+glistening and gyrating on the white foam of the Kodor like a
+quantity of mercurial salmon fry. And as I sat on some rocks
+overlooking the river there occurred to me the thought that, as
+likely as not, the cause of the gulls' and cormorants' fretful
+cries where the surf lay moaning behind a belt of trees to the
+right was that, like myself, they kept mistaking the leaves for
+fish, and as often finding themselves disappointed.
+
+Over my head hung chestnut trees decked with gold; at my feet
+lay a mass of chestnut leaves which resembled the amputated
+palms of human hands; on the opposite bank, where there waved,
+tanglewise, the stripped branches of a hornbeam, an
+orange-tinted woodpecker was darting to and fro, as though
+caught in the mesh of foliage, and, in company with a troupe of
+nimble titmice and blue tree-creepers (visitors from the
+far-distant North), tapping the bark of the stem with a black
+beak, and hunting for insects.
+
+To the left, the tops of the mountains hung fringed with dense,
+fleecy clouds of the kind which presages rain; and these clouds
+were sending their shadows gliding over slopes green and
+overgrown with boxwood and that peculiar species of hollow
+beech-stump which once came near to effecting the downfall of
+Pompey's host, through depriving his iron-built legions of the
+use of their legs as they revelled in the intoxicating sweetness
+of the " mead " or honey which wild bees make from the blossoms
+of the laurel and the azalea, and travellers still
+gather from those hollow stems to knead into lavashi or thin
+cakes of millet flour.
+
+On the present occasion I too (after suffering sundry stings
+from infuriated bees) was thus engaged as I sat on the rocks
+beneath the chestnuts. Dipping morsels of bread into a potful of
+honey, I was munching them for breakfast, and enjoying, at the
+same time, the indolent beams of the moribund autumn sun.
+
+In the fall of the year the Caucasus resembles a gorgeous
+cathedral built by great craftsmen (always great craftsmen are
+great sinners) to conceal their past from the prying eyes of
+conscience. Which cathedral is a sort of intangible edifice of
+gold and turquoise and emerald, and has thrown over its hills
+rare carpets silk-embroidered by Turcoman weavers of Shemi and
+Samarkand, and contains, heaped everywhere, plunder brought from
+all the quarters of the world for the delectation of the sun.
+Yes, it is as though men sought to say to the Sun God: " All
+things here are thine. They have been brought hither for thee by
+thy people."
+
+Yes, mentally I see long-bearded, grey-headed supermen, beings
+possessed of the rounded eyes of happy children, descending from
+the hills, and decking the earth, and sowing it with sheerly
+kaleidoscopic treasures, and coating the tops of the mountains
+with massive layers of silver, and the lower edges with a living
+web of trees. Yes, I see those beings decorating and fashioning
+the scene until, thanks to their labours, this gracious morsel
+of the earth has become fair beyond all conception.
+
+And what a privilege it is to be human! How much that is
+wonderful leaps to the eye-how the presence of beauty causes.
+the heart to throb with a voluptuous rapture that is almost pain!
+
+And though there are occasions when life seems hard, and the
+breast feels filled with fiery rancour, and melancholy dries and
+renders athirst the heart's blood, this is not a mood sent us in
+perpetuity. For at times even the sun may feel sad as he
+contemplates men, and sees that, despite all that he has done
+for them, they have done so little in return. . . .
+
+No, it is not that good folk are lacking. It is that they need
+to be rounded off--better still, to be made anew.
+
+**********************
+
+Suddenly there came into view over the bushes to my left a file
+of dark heads, while through the surging of the waves and the
+babble of the stream I caught the sound of human voices, a sound
+emanating from a party of " famine people " or folk who were
+journeying from Sukhum to Otchenchiri to obtain work on a local
+road then in process of construction.
+
+The owners of the voices I knew to be immigrants from the
+province of Orlov. I knew them to be so for the reason that I
+myself had lately been working in company with the male members
+of the party, and had taken leave of them only yesterday in
+order that I might set out earlier than they, and, after walking
+through the night, greet the sun when he should arise above the
+sea.
+
+The members of the party comprised four men and a woman--the
+latter a young female with high cheek-bones, a figure swollen
+with manifest pregnancy, and a pair of greyish-blue eyes that
+had fixed in them a stare of apprehension. At the present moment
+her head and yellow scarf were just showing over the tops of the
+bushes; and while I noted that now it was swaying from side to
+side like a sunflower shaken by the wind, I recalled the fact
+that she was a woman whose husband had been carried off at
+Sukhum by a surfeit of fruit--this fact being known to me through
+the circumstance that in the workmen's barraque where we had
+shared quarters these folk had observed the good old Russian
+custom of confiding to a stranger the whole of their troubles,
+and had done so in tones of such amplitude and penetration that
+the querulous words must have been audible for five versts
+around.
+
+And as I had talked to these forlorn people, these human beings
+who lay crushed beneath the misfortune which had uprooted them
+from their barren and exhausted lands, and blown them, like
+autumn leaves, towards the Caucasus where nature's luxuriant,
+but unfamiliar, aspect had blinded and bewildered them, and with
+its onerous conditions of labour quenched their last spark of
+courage; as I had talked to these poor people I had seen them
+glancing about with dull, troubled, despondent eyes, and
+heard them say to one another softly, and with pitiful smiles:
+
+"What a country!"
+
+"Aye,-- that it is !--a country to make one sweat!"
+
+"As hard as a stone it is!"
+
+"Aye, an evil country! "
+
+After which they had gone on to speak of their native haunts,
+where every handful of soil had represented to them the dust of
+their ancestors, and every grain of that soil had been watered
+with the sweat of their brows, and become charged with dear and
+intimate recollections.
+
+Previously there had joined the party a woman who, tall and
+straight, had had breasts as flat as a board, and jawbones like
+the jawbones of a horse, and a glance in her dull, sidelong
+black eyes like a gleaming, smouldering fire.
+
+And every evening this woman had been wont to step outside the
+barraque with the woman in the yellow scarf and to seat herself
+on a rubbish heap, and, resting her cheeks on the palms of her
+hands, and inclining her head sideways, to sing in a high and
+shrewish voice:
+
+Behind the graveyard wall,
+Where fair green bushes stand.
+I'll spread me on the sand
+A shroud as white as snow.
+And not long will it be
+Before my heart's adored,
+My master and my lord,
+Shall answer my curtsey low.
+
+Usually her companion, the woman in the yellow scarf, had, with
+head bent forward and eyes fixed upon her stomach, remained
+silent; but on rare, unexpected occasions she had, in the
+hoarse, sluggish voice of a peasant, sung a song with the
+sobbing refrain:
+
+Ah, my beloved, sweetheart of mine,
+Never again will these eyes seek thine!
+
+Nor amid the stifling blackness of the southern night had these
+voices ever failed to bring back to my memory the snowy wastes
+of the North, and the icy, wailing storm-wind, and the distant
+howling of unseen wolves.
+
+In time, the squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and
+removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain
+quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to
+be singing her little ditty about the graveyard and the sand.
+
+The head with the yellow scarf rose, dipped, and disappeared.
+
+After I had finished my breakfast I thatched the honey-pot with
+some leaves, fastened down the lid, and indolently resumed my
+way in the wake of the party, my blackthorn staff tiptapping
+against the hard tread of the track as I proceeded.
+
+The track loomed-- a grey, narrow strip-- before me, while
+on my right the restless, dark blue sea had the air of being
+ceaselessly planed by thousands of invisible carpenters; so
+regularly did the stress of a wind as moist and sweet and warm
+as the breath of a healthy woman cause ever-rustling curls of
+foam to drift towards the beach. Also, careening on to its port
+quarter under a full set of bellying sails, a Turkish felucca was
+gliding towards Sukhum; and, as it held on its course, it put me
+in mind of a certain pompous engineer of the town who had
+been wont to inflate his fat cheeks and say: " Be quiet, you,
+or I will have you locked up! " This man had, for some reason
+or another, an extraordinary weakness for causing arrests to
+be made; and, exceedingly do I rejoice to think that by now the
+worms of the graveyard must have consumed him down to the
+very marrow of his bones. Would that certain other acquaintances
+of mine were similarly receiving beneficent attention!
+
+Walking proved an easy enough task, for I seemed to be borne on
+air, while a chorus of pleasant thoughts, of many-coloured
+recollections, kept singing gently in my breast--a chorus
+resembling, indeed, the white-maned billows in the regularity
+with which now it rose, and now it fell, to reveal in, as it
+were, soft, peaceful depths the bright, supple hopes of youth,
+like so many silver fish cradled in the bosom of the ocean.
+
+Suddenly, as it trended seawards, the road executed a half-turn,
+and skirted a strip of the sandy margin to which the waves kept
+rolling in such haste. And in that spot even the bushes seemed
+to have a mind to look the waves in the eyes--so strenuously did
+they lean across the riband-like path, and nod in the direction
+of the blue, watery waste, while from the hills a wind was
+blowing that presaged rain.
+
+***************************
+
+But hark! From some point among the bushes a low moan arose--the
+sound which never fails to thrill the soul and move it to
+responsive quivers!
+
+Thrusting aside the foliage, I beheld before me the woman in the
+yellow scarf. Seated with her back resting against the stem of a
+hazel-bush, she had her head sunken deeply between her
+shoulders, her mouth hideously agape, her eyes staring vaguely
+before her, her hands pressed to her swollen stomach, her breath
+issuing with unnatural vehemence, and her abdomen convulsively,
+spasmodically rising and falling. Meanwhile from her throat were
+issuing moans which at times caused her yellow teeth to show
+bare like those of a wolf.
+
+"What is the matter?" I said as I bent over her. "Has anyone
+assaulted you?"
+
+The only result was that, shuffling bare feet in the sand like a
+fly, she shook her nerveless hand, and gasped:
+
+"Away, villain! Away with you!"
+
+Then I understood what was the matter, for I had seen a similar
+case before. Yet for the moment a certain feeling of shyness
+made me edge away from her a little; and as I did so, she uttered
+a prolonged moan, and her almost bursting eyeballs vented hot,
+murky tears which trickled down her tense and livid features.
+
+Thereupon I turned to her again, and, throwing down cooking-pot,
+teapot, and wallet, laid her on her back, and strove to bend her
+knees upwards in the direction of her body. Meanwhile she sought
+to repel me with blows on face and breast, and at length rolled
+on to her stomach. Then, raising herself on all fours, she,
+sobbing, gasping, and cursing in a breath, crawled away like a
+bear into a remoter portion of the thicket.
+
+"Beast!" she panted. "Oh, you devil!"
+
+Yet, even as the words escaped her lips, her arms gave way beneath
+her, and she collapsed upon her face, with legs stretched out,
+and her lips emitting a fresh series of convulsive moans.
+
+Excited now to fever pitch, I hurriedly recalled my small store
+of knowledge of such cases and finally decided to turn her on
+her back, and, as before, to strive to bend her knees upwards in
+the direction of her body. Already signs of imminent parturition
+were not wanting.
+
+"Lie still," I said, "and if you do that it will not be long
+before you are delivered of the child."
+
+Whereafter, running down to the sea, I pulled up my sleeves,
+and, on returning, embarked upon my role, of accoucheur.
+
+Scoring the earth with her fingers, uprooting tufts of withered
+grass, and struggling to thrust them into her mouth, scattering
+soil over her terrible, inhuman face and bloodshot eyes, the
+woman writhed like a strip of birch bark in a wood fire. Indeed,
+by this time a little head was coming into view, and it needed
+all my efforts to quell the twitchings of her legs, to help the
+child to issue, and to prevent its mother from thrusting grass
+down her distorted, moaning throat. Meanwhile we cursed one
+another-- she through her teeth, and I in an undertone; she, I
+should surmise, out of pain and shame, and I, I feel certain,
+out of nervousness, mingled with a perfect agony of compassion.
+
+"O Lord!" she gasped with blue lips flecked with foam as her
+eyes (suddenly bereft of their colour in the sunlight) shed
+tears born of the intolerable anguish of the maternal function,
+and her body writhed and twisted as though her frame had been
+severed in the middle.
+
+"Away, you brute!" was her oft-repeated cry as with her weak
+hands, hands seemingly dislocated at the wrists, she strove to
+thrust me to a distance. Yet all the time I kept saying
+persuasively: "You fool! Bring forth as quickly as you can!"
+and, as a matter of fact, was feeling so sorry for her that
+tears continued to spurt from my eyes as much as from hers, and
+my very heart contracted with pity. Also, never did I cease to
+feel that I ought to keep saying something; wherefore, I
+repeated, and again repeated: "Now then! Bring forth as quickly
+as ever you can!"
+
+And at last my hands did indeed hold a human creature in all its
+pristine beauty. Nor could even the mist of tears prevent me
+from seeing that that human creature was red in the face, and
+that to judge from the manner in which it kept kicking and
+resisting and uttering hoarse wails (while still bound to its
+mother by the ligament), it was feeling dissatisfied in advance
+with the world. Yes, blue-eyed, and with a nose absurdly sunken
+between a pair of scarlet, rumpled cheeks and lips which
+ceaselessly quivered and contracted, it kept bawling: "A-aah!
+A-a-ah!"
+
+Moreover, so slippery was it that, as I knelt and looked at it
+and laughed with relief at the fact that it had arrived safely,
+I came near to letting it fall upon the ground: wherefore I
+entirely forgot what next I ought to have done.
+
+"Cut it!" at length whispered the mother with eyes closed, and
+features suddenly swollen and resembling those of a corpse.
+
+"A knife!" again she whispered with her livid lips. "Cut it!"
+
+My pocket-knife I had had stolen from me in the workmen's
+barraque; but with my teeth I severed the caul, and then the
+child gave renewed tongue in true Orlovian fashion, while the
+mother smiled.  Also, in some curious fashion, the mother's
+unfathomable eyes regained their colour, and became filled as
+with blue fire as, plunging a hand into her bodice and feeling
+for the pocket, she contrived to articulate with raw and
+blood-flecked lips:
+
+"I have not a single piece of string or riband to bind the caul
+with."
+
+Upon that I set to, and managed to produce a piece of riband,
+and to fasten it in the required position.
+
+Thereafter she smiled more brightly than ever. So radiantly did
+she smile that my eyes came near to being blinded with the
+spectacle.
+
+"And now rearrange yourself," I said, "and in the meanwhile I
+will go and wash the baby."
+
+"Yes, yes," she murmured uneasily. "But be very careful with
+him--be very gentle."
+
+Yet it was little enough care that the rosy little homunculus
+seemed to require, so strenuously did he clench his fists, and
+bawl as though he were minded to challenge the whole world to
+combat.
+
+"Come, now!" at length I said. "You must have done, or your
+very head will drop off."
+
+Yet no sooner did he feel the touch of the ocean spray, and
+begin to be sprinkled With its joyous caresses, than he lamented
+more loudly and vigorously than ever, and so continued
+throughout the process of being slapped on the back and breast
+as, frowning and struggling, he vented squall after squall while
+the waves laved his tiny limbs.
+
+"Shout, young Orlovian!" said I encouragingly. "Let fly with
+all the power of your lungs!"
+
+And with that, I took him back to his mother. I found her with
+eyes closed and lips drawn between her teeth as she writhed in
+the torment of expelling the after-birth. But presently I
+detected through the sighs and groans a whispered:
+
+"Give him to me! Give him to me!"
+
+"You had better wait a little," I urged.
+
+"Oh no! Give him to me now!"
+
+And with tremulous, unsteady hands she unhooked the bosom of her
+bodice, and, freeing (with my assistance) the breast which
+nature had prepared for at least a dozen children, applied the
+mutinous young Orlovian to the nipple. As for him, he at once
+understood the matter, and ceased to send forth further
+lamentation.
+
+"O pure and holy Mother of God!" she gasped in a long-drawn,
+quivering sigh as she bent a dishevelled head over the little
+one, and, between intervals of silence, fell to uttering soft,
+abrupt exclamations. Then, opening her ineffably beautiful blue
+eyes, the hallowed eyes of a mother, she raised them towards the
+azure heavens, while in their depths there was coming and going
+a flame of joy and gratitude. Lastly, lifting a languid hand,
+she with a slow movement made the sign of the cross over both
+herself and her babe.
+
+"Thanks to thee O purest Mother of God!" she murmured.
+"Thanks indeed to thee!"
+
+Then her eyes grew dim and vague again, and after a pause
+(during which she seemed to be scarcely breathing) she said in a
+hard and matter-of-fact tone:
+
+"Young fellow, unfasten my satchel."
+
+And whilst I was so engaged she continued to regard me with a
+steady gaze; but, when the task was completed she smiled
+shamefacedly, and on her sunken cheeks and sweat-flecked temples
+there dawned the ghost of a blush.
+
+"Now," said she, "do you, for the present, go away."
+
+"And if I do so, see that in the meanwhile you do not move
+about too much."
+
+"No, I will not. But please go away."
+
+So I withdrew a little. In my breast a sort of weariness was
+lurking, but also in my breast there was echoing a soft and
+glorious chorus of birds, a chorus so exquisitely in accord with
+the never-ceasing splash of the sea that for ever could I have
+listened to it, and to the neighbouring brook as it purled on
+its way like a maiden engaged in relating confidences about her
+lover.
+
+Presently, the woman's yellow-scarfed head (the scarf now tidily
+rearranged) reappeared over the bushes.
+
+"Come, come, good woman!" was my exclamation. "I tell you
+that you must not move about so soon."
+
+And certainly her attitude now was one of utter languor, and she
+had perforce to grasp the stem of a bush with one hand to
+support herself. Yet while the blood was gone from her face,
+there had formed in the hollows where her eyes had been two
+lakes of blue.
+
+"See how he is sleeping!" she murmured.
+
+And, true enough, the child was sound asleep, though to my eyes
+he looked much as any other baby might have done, save that the
+couch of autumn leaves on which he was ensconced consisted of
+leaves of a kind which could not have been discovered in the
+faraway forests of Orlov.
+
+"Now, do you yourself lie down awhile," was my advice.
+
+"Oh, no," she replied with a shake of her head on its sinuous
+neck; "for I must be collecting my things before I move on
+towards--"
+
+"Towards Otchenchiri"
+
+"Yes. By now my folk will have gone many a verst in that
+direction."
+
+"And can you walk so far? "
+
+"The Holy Mother will help me."
+
+Yes, she was to journey in the company of the Mother of God. So
+no more on the point required to be said.
+
+Glancing again at the tiny, inchoate face under the bushes, her
+eyes diffused rays of warm and kindly light as, licking her
+lips, she, with a slow movement, smoothed the breast of the
+little one.
+
+Then I arranged sticks for a fire, and also adjusted stones to
+support the kettle.
+
+"Soon I will have tea ready for you," I remarked.
+
+"And thankful indeed I shall be," she responded, "for my breasts
+are dried up."
+
+"Why have your companions deserted you?" I said next.
+
+"They have not deserted me. It was I that left them of my own
+accord. How could I have exposed myself in their presence?"
+
+And with a glance at me she raised a hand to her face as,
+spitting a gout of blood, she smiled a sort of bashful smile.
+
+"This is your first child, I take it?"
+
+"It is. . . . And who are you?"
+
+"A man."
+
+"Yes, a man, of course; but, are you a MARRIED man? "
+
+"No, I have never been able to marry."
+
+"That cannot be true."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+With lowered eyes she sat awhile in thought.
+
+"Because, if so, how do you come to know so much about women's
+affairs?"
+
+This time I DID lie, for I replied:
+
+"Because they have been my study. In fact, I am a medical
+student."
+
+"Ah! Our priest's son also was a student, but a student for the
+Church."
+
+"Very well. Then you know what I am. Now I will go and fetch
+some water."
+
+Upon this she inclined her head towards her little son and
+listened for a moment to his breathing. Then she said with a
+glance towards the sea:
+
+"I too should like to have a wash, but I do not know what the
+water is like. What is it? Brackish or salt?"
+
+"No; quite good water--fit for you to wash in."
+
+"Is it really?"
+
+"Yes, really. Moreover, it is warmer than the water of the
+streams hereabouts, which is as cold as ice."
+
+"Ah! Well, you know best."
+
+Here a shaggy-eared pony, all skin and bone, was seen
+approaching us at a foot's pace. Trembling, and drooping its
+head, it scanned us, as it drew level, with a round black eye,
+and snorted. Upon that, its rider pushed back a ragged fur cap,
+glanced warily in our direction, and again sank his head.
+
+"The folk of these parts are ugly to look at," softly commented
+the woman from Orlov.
+
+Then I departed in quest of water. After I had washed my face
+and hands I filled the kettle from a stream bright and lively as
+quicksilver (a stream presenting, as the autumn leaves tossed in
+the eddies which went leaping and singing over the stones, a
+truly enchanting spectacle), and, returning, and peeping through
+the bushes, perceived the woman to be crawling on hands and
+knees over the stones, and anxiously peering about, as though in
+search of something.
+
+"What is it? " I inquired, and thereupon, turning grey in the
+face with confusion she hastened to conceal some article under
+her person, although I had already guessed the nature of the
+article.
+
+"Give it to me," was my only remark. "I will go and bury it."
+
+"How so? For, as a matter of fact, it ought to be buried under
+the floor in front of some stove."
+
+"Are we to build a stove HERE?  Build it in five minutes?" I
+retorted.
+
+"Ah, I was jesting. But really, I would rather not have it
+buried here, lest some wild beast should come and devour it. . .
+Yet it ought to be committed only to the earth."
+
+That said, she, with averted eyes, handed me a moist and heavy
+bundle; and as she did so she said under her breath, with an air
+of confusion:
+
+"I beg of you for Christ's sake to bury it as well, as deeply,
+as you can. Out of pity for my son do as I bid you."
+
+I did as she had requested; and, just as the task had been
+completed, I perceived her returning from the margin of the sea
+with unsteady gait, and an arm stretched out before her, and a
+petticoat soaked to the middle with the sea water. Yet all her
+face was alight with inward fire, and as I helped her to regain
+the spot where I had prepared some sticks I could not help
+reflecting with some astonishment:
+
+"How strong indeed she is!"
+
+Next, as we drank a mixture of tea and honey, she inquired:
+
+"Have you now ceased to be a student?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And why so? Through too much drink? "
+
+"Even so, good mother."
+
+"Dear me! Well, your face is familiar to me. Yes, I remember
+that I noticed you in Sukhum when once you were arguing with the
+barraque superintendent over the question of rations. As I did
+so the thought occurred to me: 'Surely that bold young fellow
+must have gone and spent his means on drink? Yes, that is how it
+must be.'"
+
+Then, as from her swollen lips she licked a drop of honey, she
+again bent her blue eyes in the direction of the bush under
+which the slumbering, newly-arrived Orlovian was couched.
+
+"How will he live?" thoughtfully she said with a sigh--then
+added:
+
+"You have helped me, and I thank you. Yes, my thanks are yours,
+though I cannot tell whether or not your assistance will have
+helped HIM."
+
+And, drinking the rest of her tea, she ate a morsel of bread,
+then made the sign of the cross. And subsequently, as I was
+putting up my things, she continued to rock herself to and fro,
+to give little starts and cries, and to gaze thoughtfully at
+the ground with eyes which had now regained their original
+colour. At last she rose to her feet.
+
+"You are not going yet? " I queried protestingly.
+
+"Yes, I must."
+
+"But--"
+
+"The Blessed Virgin will go with me. So please hand me over the
+child."
+
+"No, I will carry him."
+
+And, after a contest for the honour, she yielded, and we walked
+away side by side.
+
+"I only wish I were a little steadier on my feet," she remarked
+with an apologetic smile as she laid a hand upon my shoulder,
+
+Meanwhile, the new citizen of Russia, the little human being of an
+unknown future, was snoring soundly in my arms as the sea
+plashed and murmured, and threw off its white shavings, and the
+bushes whispered together, and the sun (now arrived at the
+meridian) shone brightly upon us all.
+
+In calm content it was that we walked; save that now and then
+the mother would halt, draw a deep breath, raise her head, scan
+the sea and the forest and the hills, and peer into her son's
+face. And as she did so, even the mist begotten of tears of
+suffering could not dim the wonderful brilliancy and clearness
+of her eyes. For with the sombre fire of inexhaustible love were
+those eyes aflame.
+
+Once, as she halted, she exclaimed:
+
+"0 God, 0 Mother of God, how good it all is! Would that for
+ever I could walk thus, yes, walk and walk unto the very end of
+the world! All that I should need would be that thou, my son, my
+darling son, shouldst, borne upon thy mother's breast, grow and
+wax strong!"
+
+And the sea murmured and murmured.
+
+
+
+THE ICEBREAKER
+
+On a frozen river near a certain Russian town, a gang of seven
+carpenters were hastily repairing an icebreaker which the
+townsfolk had stripped for firewood.
+
+That year spring happened to be late in arriving, and youthful
+March looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not
+on every day, did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the
+overcast heavens, or, glimmering in blue spaces between clouds,
+contemplate the earth with a squinting, malevolent eye.
+
+The day in question was the Friday in Holy Week, and, as night
+drew on, drippings were becoming congealed into icicles half an
+arshin long, and in the snow-stripped ice of the river only the
+dun hue of the wintry clouds was reflected.
+
+As the carpenters worked there kept mournfully, insistently
+echoing from the town the coppery note of bells; and at
+intervals heads would raise themselves, and blue eyes would gleam
+thoughtfully through the same grey fog in which the town lay
+enveloped, and an axe uplifted would hover a moment in the air
+as though fearing with its descent to cleave the luscious flood
+of sound.
+
+Scattered over the spacious river-track were dark pine branches,
+projecting obliquely from the ice, to mark paths, open spaces,
+and cracks on the surface; and where they reared themselves
+aloft, these branches looked like the cramped, distorted arms of
+drowning men.
+
+From the river came a whiff of gloom and depression. Covered
+over with sodden slush, it stretched with irksome rigidity
+towards the misty quarter whence blew a languid, sluggish, damp,
+cold wind.
+
+Suddenly the foreman, one Ossip, a cleanly built, upright
+little peasant with a neatly curling, silvery beard, ruddy
+cheeks, and a flexible neck, a man everywhere and always in
+evidence, shouted:
+
+"Look alive there, my hearties!"
+
+Presently he turned his attention to myself, and smiled
+insinuatingly.
+
+"Inspector," he said, "what are you trying to poke out of
+the sky with that squat nose of yours? And why are you here at
+all? You come from the contractor, you say? -- from Vasili
+Sergeitch? Well, well! Then your job is to hurry us up, to keep
+barking out,' Mind what you are doing, such-and-such gang! ' Yet
+there you stand-blinking over your task like an object dried
+stiff! It's not to blink that you're here, but to play the
+watchdog upon us, and to keep an eye open, and your tongue on
+the wag. So issue your commands, young cockerel."
+
+Then he shouted to the workmen:
+
+"Now, then! No shirking!  Is the job going to be finished
+tonight, or is it not? "
+
+As a matter of fact, he himself was the worst shirker in the
+artel [Workman's union].  True, he was also a first-rate hand at
+his trade, and a man who could work quickly and well and with
+skill and concentration; but, unfortunately, he hated putting
+himself out, and preferred to spend his time spinning
+arresting yarns. For instance, on the present occasion he chose
+the moment when work was proceeding with a swing, when everyone
+was busily and silently and wholeheartedly labouring with the
+object of running the job through to the end, to begin in his
+musical voice:
+
+"Look here, lads. Once upon a time--"
+
+And though for the first two or three minutes the men appeared
+not to hear him, and continued their planing and chopping as
+before, the moment came when the soft tenor accents caught and
+held the men's attention, as they trickled and burbled forth.
+Then, screwing up his bright eyes with a humorous air, and
+twisting his curly beard between his fingers, Ossip gave a
+complacent click of his tongue, and continued measuredly, and
+with deliberation:
+
+"So he seized hold of the tench, and thrust it back into the
+cave. And as he turned to proceed through the forest he thought
+to himself: 'Now I must keep my eyes about me.' And suddenly,
+from somewhere (no one could have said where), a woman's voice
+shrieked: 'Elesi-a-ah! Elesia-ah!'"
+
+Here a tall, lanky Morduine named Leuka, with, as surname,
+Narodetz, a young fellow whose small eyes wore always an
+expression of astonishment, laid aside his axe, and stood gaping.
+
+"And from the cave a deep bass voice replied: 'Elesi-a-ah!'
+while at the same moment the tench sprang from the cave, and,
+champing its jaws, wriggled and wriggled back to the slough."
+
+Here an old soldier named Saniavin, a morose man, a tippler,
+and a sufferer from asthma and an inexplicable grudge against
+life in general, croaked out:
+
+"How could your tench have wriggled across dry land if it was a
+fish?"
+
+"Can, for that matter, a fish speak?" was Ossip's
+good-humoured retort.
+
+All of which inspired Mokei Budirin, a grey-headed muzhik of a
+cast of countenance canine in the prominence of his jaws and the
+recession of his forehead, and taciturn withal, though not
+otherwise remarkable, to give slow, nasal utterance to his
+favourite formula.
+
+"That is true enough," he said.
+
+For never could anything be spoken of that was grim or
+marvellous or lewd or malicious, but Budirin at once re-echoed
+softly, but in a tone of unshakable conviction: "That is true
+enough."
+
+Thereafter he would tap me on the breast with his hard and
+ponderous fist.
+
+Presently work again underwent an interruption through the fact
+that Yakov Boev, a man who possessed both a stammer and a
+squint, became similarly filled with a desire to tell us
+something about a fish. Yet from the moment that he began his
+narrative everyone declined to believe it, and laughed at his
+broken verbiage as, frequently invoking the Deity, and cursing,
+and brandishing his awl, and viciously swallowing spittle, he
+shouted amid general ridicule:
+
+"Once-once upon a time there lived a man. Yes, other folk
+before YOU have believed my tale. Indeed, it is no more than the
+truth that I'm going to tell you. Very well! Cackle away, and be
+damned!"
+
+Here everyone without exception dropped his work to shout with
+merriment and clap his hands: with the result that, doffing his
+cap, and thereby disclosing a silvered, symmetrically shaped
+head with one bald spot amid its one dark portion, Ossip was
+forced to shout severely:
+
+"Hi, you Budirin! You've had your say, and given us some fun,
+and there must be no more of it."
+
+"But I had only just begun what I want to say," the old soldier
+grumbled, spitting upon the palms of his hands.
+
+Next, Ossip turned to myself.
+
+"Inspector," he began . . .
+
+It is my opinion that in thus hindering the men from work
+through his tale-telling, Ossip had some definite end in view. I
+could not say precisely what that end was, but it must have been
+the object either of cloaking his own laziness or of giving the
+men a rest. On the other hand, whenever the contractor was
+present he, Ossip, bore himself with humble obsequiousness , and
+continued to assume a guise of simplicity which none the less
+did not prevent him, on the advent of each Saturday, from
+inducing his employer to bestow a pourboire upon the artel.
+
+And though this same Ossip was an artelui, and a director of the
+artel, his senior co-members bore him no affection, but, rather,
+looked upon him as a wag or trifler, and treated him as of no
+importance. And, similarly, the younger members of the artel
+liked well enough to listen to his tales, but declined to take
+him seriously, and, in some cases, regarded him with
+ill-concealed, or openly expressed, distrust.
+
+Once the Morduine, a man of education with whom, on occasions, I
+held discussions on intimate subjects, replied to a question of
+mine on the subject of Ossip:
+
+"I scarcely know. Goodness alone knows! No, I do not know
+anything about him."
+
+To which, after a pause, he added:
+
+"Once a fellow named Mikhailo, a clever fellow who is now dead,
+insulted Ossip by saying to him: 'Do you call yourself a man?
+Why, regarded as a workman, you're as lifeless as a doornail,
+while, seeing that you weren't born to be a master, you'll all
+your life continue chattering in corners, like a plummet
+swinging at the end of a string!' Yes, and that was true enough."
+
+Lastly. after another pause the Morduine concluded:
+
+"No matter. He is not such a bad sort."
+
+My own position among these men was a position of some
+awkwardness, for, a young fellow of only fifteen, I had been
+appointed by the contractor, a distant relative of mine, to the
+task of superintending the expenditure of material. That is to
+say, I had to see to it that the carpenters did not make away
+with nails, or dispose of planks in return for drink. Yet all
+the time my presence was practically useless, seeing that the
+men stole nails as though I were not even in existence and
+strove to show me that among them I was a person too many, a
+sheer incubus, and seized every opportunity of giving me covert
+jogs with a beam, and similarly affronting me.
+
+This, of course, made my relations with them highly difficult,
+embarrassing, and irksome; and though moments occurred when I
+longed to say something that might ingratiate me, and
+endeavoured to effect an advance in that direction, the words
+always failed me at the necessary juncture, and I found myself
+lying crushed as before under a burdensome sense of the
+superfluity of my existence.
+
+Again, if ever I tried to make an entry as to some material
+which had been used, Ossip would approach me, and, for instance,
+say:
+
+"Is it jotted down, eh? Then let me look at it."
+
+And, eyeing the notebook with a frown, he would add vaguely:
+
+"What a nice hand you write!" (He himself could write only in
+printing fashion, in the large scriptory characters of the
+Ecclesiastical Rubric, not in those of the ordinary kind.)
+
+"For example, that scoop there--what does IT say?"
+
+"It is the word 'Good.'"
+
+"'Good'? But what a slip-knot of a thing! And what are those
+words THERE, on THAT line?"
+
+"They say, 'Planks, 1 vershok by 9 arshini, 5.'"
+
+"No, six was the number used."
+
+"No, five."
+
+"Five? Why, the soldier broke one, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, but never mind--at least it wasn't a plank that was
+wanted."
+
+"Oh! Well, I may tell you that he took the two pieces to the
+tavern to get drink with."
+
+Then, glancing into my face with his cornflower-blue eyes and
+quiet, quizzical smile, he would say without the least confusion
+as he twisted the ringlets of his beard:
+
+"Put down '6.' And see here, young cockerel. The weather has
+turned wet and cold, and the work is hard, and sometimes folk
+need to have their spirits cheered and raised with a drop of
+liquor. So don't you be too hard upon us, for God won't think
+the more of you for being strict."
+
+And as he thus talked to me in his slow and kindly, but
+semi-affected, fashion--bespattering me, as it were, with wordy
+sawdust--I would suddenly grow blind of an eye and silently show
+him the corrected figure.
+
+"That's it--that's right. And how fine the figure looks now, as
+it squats there like a merchant's buxom, comely dame!"
+
+Then he would be seen triumphantly telling his mates of his
+success; then, I would find myself feeling acutely conscious of
+the fact that everyone was despising me for my complacence Yes,
+grown sick beyond endurance with a yearning for some thing which
+it could not descry, my fifteen-year-old heart would dissolve in
+a flood of mortified tears, and there would pass through my
+brain the despondent, aching thought:
+
+"Oh, what a sad, uncomfortable world is this! How should Ossip
+have known so well that I should not re-correct the 6 into a 5,
+or that I should not tell the contractor that the men have
+bartered a plank for liquor?"
+
+Again, there befell an occasion when the men stole two pounds'
+weight of five vershok mandrels and bolts.
+
+"Look here," I said to Ossip warningly. "I am going to report
+this."
+
+"All right," he agreed with a twitch of his grey eyebrows.
+"Though what such a trifle can matter I fail to see. Yes, go
+and report every mother's son of them."
+
+And to the men themselves he shouted:
+
+"Hi, boobies! Each of you now stands docked for some mandrels
+and bolts."
+
+"Why?" was the old soldier's grim inquiry.
+
+"Because you DO so stand," carelessly retorted the other.
+
+With snarls thereafter, the men eyed me covertly, until I began
+to feel that very likely I should not do as I had threatened,
+and even that so to do might not be expedient.
+
+"But look here," said I to Ossip. "I am going to give the
+contractor notice, and let all of you go to the devil. For if I
+were to remain with you much longer I too should become a thief."
+
+Ossip stroked his beard awhile, and pondered. Then he seated
+himself beside me, and said in an undertone:
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But things are always so. The truth is that it's time you
+departed. What sort of a watchman, of a checker, are you? In
+jobs of this kind what a man needs to know is the meaning of
+property. He needs to have in him the spirit of a dog, so that
+he shall look after his master's stuff as he would look after
+the skin which his mother has put on to his own body. But you,
+you young puppy, haven't the slightest notion of what property
+means. In fact, were anyone to go and tell Vasili Sergeitch
+about the way in which you keep letting us off, he'd give it you
+in the neck. Yes, you're no good to him at all, but just an
+expense: whereas when a man serves a master he ought, do you
+understand, to be PROFITABLE to that master."
+
+He rolled and handed me a cigarette.
+
+"Smoke this," said he, "and perhaps it'll make your brain work
+easier. If only you had been of a less awkward, uncomfortable
+nature, I should have said to you, 'Go and join the priests;
+but, as things are, you aren't the right sort for that--you're
+too stiff and unbending, and would never make headway even with
+an abbot. No, you're not the sort to play cards with. A monk is
+like a jackdaw--he chatters without knowing what he is chattering
+about, and pays no heed to the root of things, so busy is he
+with stuffing himself full with the grain. I say this to you
+with absolute earnestness, for I perceive you to be strange to
+our ways--a cuckoo that has blundered into the wrong nest."
+
+And, doffing his cap, a gesture which he never failed to execute
+when he had something particularly important to say, he added
+humbly and sonorously as he glanced at the grey firmament:
+
+"In the sight of the Lord our ways are the ways of thieves, and
+such as will never gain of Him salvation."
+
+"And that is true enough," responded Mokei Budirin after the
+fashion of a clarionet.
+
+From that time forth, Ossip of the curly, silvered head, bright
+eyes, and shadowy soul became an object of agreeable interest
+for me. Indeed, there grew up between us a species of
+friendship, even though I could see that a civil bearing towards
+me in public was a thing that it hurt him to maintain. At all
+events, in the presence of others he avoided my glance, and his
+eyes, clear, unsullied, and fight blue in tint, wavered
+unsteadily, and his lips twitched and assumed an artificially
+unpleasant expression, while he uttered some such speech as:
+
+"Hi, you Makarei, see that you keep your eyes open, and cam
+your pay, or that pig of a soldier will be making away with more
+nails!"
+
+But at other times, when we were alone together, he would speak
+to me kindly and instructively, while his eyes would dance and
+gleam with a faint, grave, knowing smile, and dart blue rays
+direct into mine, while for my part, as I listened to his words,
+I took every one of them to be absolutely true and balanced,
+despite their strange delivery.
+
+"A man's duty consists in being good," I remarked on one
+occasion.
+
+"Yes, of course," assented Ossip, though the next moment he
+veiled his eyes with a smile, and added in an undertone:
+"But what do you understand by the term 'good'? In my opinion,
+unless virtue be to their advantage, folk spit upon that
+'goodness,' that 'honourableness,' of yours. Hence, the better
+plan is to pay folk court, and be civil to them, and flatter and
+cajole every mother's son of them. Yes, do that, and your
+'goodness' will have a chance of bringing you in some return. Not
+that I do not say that to be 'good,' to be able to look your
+own ugly jowl in the face in a mirror, is pleasant enough; but,
+as I see the matter, it is all one to other people whether you
+be a cardsharper or a priest so long as you're polite, and let
+down your neighbours lightly. That's what they want."
+
+For my part I never, at that period, grew weary of watching my
+fellows, for it was my constant idea that some day one of them
+would be able to raise me to a higher level, and to bring me to
+an understanding of this unintelligible and complicated
+existence of ours. Hence I kept asking myself the restless, the
+importunate question:
+
+"What precisely is the human soul?
+
+Certain souls, I thought, existed which seemed like balls of
+copper, for, solid and immovable, they reflected things from
+their own point of view alone, in a dull and irregular and
+distorted fashion. And souls, I thought, existed which seemed as
+flat as mirrors, and, for all intents and purposes, had no
+existence at all.
+
+And in every case the human soul seemed formless, like a cloud,
+and as murkily mutable as an imitation opal, a thing which
+altered according to the colour of what adjoined it.
+
+Only as regarded the soul of the intelligent Ossip was I
+absolutely at a loss, absolutely unable to reach a conclusion.
+
+Pondering these and similar matters in my mind, I, on the day of
+which I speak, stood gazing at the river, and at the town under
+the hill, as I listened to the bells. Rearing themselves aloft
+like the organ pipes in my favourite Polish-Roman Catholic
+church, the steeples of the town had their crosses dimly
+sparkling as though the latter had been stars imprisoned in a
+murky sky. Yet it was as though those stars hoped eventually to
+ascend into the purer firmament above the wind-torn clouds that
+they sparkled; and as I stood watching the clouds glide onward,
+and momentarily efface with their shadows, the town's
+multifarious hues, I marked the fact that although, whenever
+dark-blue cavities in their substance permitted the beams of the
+sun to illuminate the buildings below, those buildings' roofs
+assumed tints of increased cheerfulness. The clouds seemed to
+glide the faster to veil the beams, while the humid shadows grew
+more opaque-- and the scene darkened as though only for a moment
+had it assumed a semblance of joy.
+
+The buildings of the town (looking like heaps of muddy snow),
+the black, naked earth around those buildings, the trees in the
+gardens, the hummocks of piled-up soil, the dull grey glimmer of
+the window panes of the houses--all these things reminded me of
+winter, even though the misty breath of the northern spring was
+beginning to steal over the whole.
+
+Presently a young fellow with flaxen hair, a pendent underlip,
+and a tall, ungainly figure, by name Mishuk Diatlov, essayed to
+troll the stanza:
+
+"That morn to him the maiden came,
+To find his soul had fled."
+
+Whereupon the old soldier shouted:
+
+"Hi, you! Have you forgotten the day?"
+
+And even Boev saw fit to take umbrage at the singing, and,
+threatening Diatlov with his fist, to rap out:
+
+"Ah, sobatchnia dusha!" ["Soul of a dog."]
+
+"What a rude, rough, primitive lot we Russians are!" commented
+Ossip, seating himself atop of the icebreaker, and screwing up
+his eyes to measure its fall. "To speak plainly, we Russians
+are sheer barbarians. Once upon a time, I may tell you, an
+anchorite happened to be on his travels; and as the people came
+pressing around him, and kneeling to him, and tearfully
+beseeching him with the words, '0h holy father, intercede for us
+with the wolves which are devouring our substance!' he replied:
+'Ha! Are you, or are you not, Orthodox Christians? See that I
+assign you not to condign perdition!' Yes, angry, in very truth
+he was. Nay, he even spat in the people's faces. Yet in reality
+he was a kindly old man, for his eyes kept shedding tears
+equally with theirs."
+
+Twenty sazheni below the icebreaker was a gang of barefooted
+sailors, engaged in hacking out the floes from under their
+barges; and as they shattered the brittle, greyish-blue crust on
+the river, the mattocks rang out, and the sharp blades of the
+icecutters gleamed as they thrust the broken fragments under the
+surface. Meanwhile, there could be heard a bubbling of water, and
+the sound of rivulets trickling down to the sandy margin of the
+river. And similarly among our own gang was there audible a
+scraping of planes, and a screeching of saws, and a clattering
+of iron braces as they were driven into the smooth yellow wood,
+while through all the web of these sounds there ran the
+ceaseless song of the bells, a song so softened by distance as
+to thrill the soul, much as though dingy, burdensome labour were
+holding revel in honour of spring, and calling upon the latter
+to spread itself over the starved, naked surface of the
+gradually thawing ground.
+
+At this point someone shouted hoarsely:
+
+"Go and fetch the German. We have not got hands enough."
+
+And from the bank someone bawled in reply:
+
+"Where IS he?"
+
+"In the tavern. That is where you must go and look for him."
+
+And as they made themselves heard, the voices floated up
+turgidly into the sodden air, spread themselves over the river's
+mournful void, and died away,
+
+Meanwhile our men worked with industry and speed, but not
+without a fault or two, for their thoughts were fixed upon the
+town and its washhouses and churches. And particularly restless
+was Sashok Diatlov, a man whose hair, as flaxen as that of his
+brother, seemed to have been boiled in lye. At intervals,
+glancing up-river, this well-built, sturdy young fellow would
+say softly to his brother:
+
+"It's cracking now, eh?"
+
+And, certainly, the ice had "moved" two nights ago, so that
+since yesterday morning the river watchmen had refused to permit
+horsed vehicles to cross, and only a few beadlike pedestrians
+now were making their way along the marked-out ice paths, while,
+as they proceeded, one could hear the water slapping against the
+planks as the latter bent under the travellers' weight.
+
+"Yes, it IS cracking," at length Mishuk replied with a hoist
+of his ginger eyebrows.
+
+Ossip too scanned the river from under his hand. Then he said to
+Mishuk:
+
+"Pah! It is the dry squeak of the planes in your own hand that
+you keep hearing, so go on with your work, you son of a beldame.
+And as for you, Inspector, do you help me to speed up the men
+instead of burying your nose in your notebook."
+
+By this time there remained only two more hours for work, and
+the arch of the icebreaker had been wholly sheathed in
+butter-tinted scantlings, and nothing required to be added to it
+save the great iron braces. Unfortunately, Boev and Saniavin,
+the men who had been engaged upon the task of cutting out the
+sockets for the braces, had worked so amiss, and run their lines
+so straight, that, when it came to the point, the arms of the
+braces refused to sink properly into the wood.
+
+"Oh, you cock-eyed fool of a Morduine!" shouted Ossip, smiting
+his fist against the side of his cap. "Do you call THAT sort of
+thing work?"
+
+At this juncture there came from somewhere on the bank a
+seemingly exultant shout of:
+
+"Ah! NOW it's giving way!"
+
+And almost at the same moment, there stole over the river a sort
+of rustle, a sort of quiet crunching which made the projecting
+pine branches quiver as though they were trying to catch at
+something, while, shouldering their mattocks, the barefooted
+sailors noisily hastened aboard their barges with the aid of
+rope ladders.
+
+And then curious indeed was it to see how many people suddenly
+came into view on the river--to see how they appeared to issue
+from below the very ice itself, and, hurrying to and fro like
+jackdaws startled by the shot of a gun, to dart hither and
+thither, and to seize up planks and boathooks, and to throw them
+down again, and once more to seize them up.
+
+"Put the tools together," Ossip shouted. "And look alive
+there, and make for the bank."
+
+"Aye, and a fine Easter Day it will be for us on THAT bank!"
+growled Sashok.
+
+Meanwhile, it was the river rather than the town that seemed to
+be motionless--the latter had begun, as it were, to quiver and
+reel, and, with the hill above it, to appear to be gliding
+slowly up stream, even as the grey, sandy bank some ten sazheni
+from us was beginning to grow tremulous, and to recede.
+
+"Run, all of you!" shouted Ossip, giving me a violent push as
+he did so. Then to myself in particular he added: "Why stand
+gaping there?"
+
+This caused a keen sense of danger to strike home in my heart,
+and to make my feet feel as though already the ice was escaping
+their tread. So, automatically picking themselves up, those feet
+started to bear my body in the direction of a spot on the sandy
+bank where the winter-stripped branches of a willow tree were
+writhing, and whither there were betaking themselves also Boev,
+the old soldier, Budirin, and the brothers Diatlov. Meanwhile
+the Morduine ran by my side, cursing vigorously as he did so,
+and Ossip followed us, walking backwards.
+
+"No, no, Narodetz," he said.
+
+"But, my good Ossip--"
+
+"Never mind. What has to be, has to be."
+
+"But, as likely as not, we may remain stuck here for two days!"
+
+"Never mind even if we DO remain stuck here."
+
+"But what of the festival?"
+
+"It will have, for this year at least, to be kept without you."
+
+Seating himself on the sand, the old soldier lit his pipe and
+growled:
+
+"What cowards you all are! The bank was only fifteen sazheni
+from us, yet you ran as though possessed!"
+
+"With you yourself as leader," put in Mokei.
+
+The old soldier took no notice, but added:
+
+"What were you all afraid of? Once upon a time Christ Himself,
+Our Little Father, died."
+
+"And rose again," muttered the Morduine with a tinge of
+resentment. Which led Boev to exclaim:
+
+"Puppy, hold your tongue! What right have you to air your
+opinions?"
+
+"Besides, this is Good Friday, not Easter Day," the old soldier
+concluded with severe, didactical mien.
+
+In a gap of blue between the clouds there was shining the March
+sun, and everywhere the ice was sparkling as though in derision
+of ourselves. Shading his eyes, Ossip gazed at the dissolving
+river, and said:
+
+"Yes, it IS rising--but that will not last for long."
+
+"No, but long enough to make us miss the festival," grumbled
+Sashok.
+
+Upon this the smooth, beardless face of the youthful Morduine, a
+face dark and angular like the skin of an unpeeled potato,
+assumed a resentful frown, and, blinking his eyes, he muttered:
+
+"Yes, here we may have to sit--here where there's neither food
+nor money! Other folk will be enjoying themselves, but we shall
+have to remain hugging our hungry stomachs like a pack of dogs! "
+
+Meanwhile Ossip's eyes had remained fixed upon the river, for
+evidently his thoughts were far away, and it was in absentminded
+fashion that he replied:
+
+"Hunger cannot be considered where necessity impels. By
+the way, what use are our damned icebreakers? For the protection
+of barges and such? Why, the ice hasn't the sense to care. It
+just goes sliding over a barge, and farewell is the word to THAT
+bit of property! "
+
+"Damn it, but none of us have a barge for property, have we?
+
+"You had better go and talk to a fool."
+
+"The truth is that the icebreaker ought to have been taken in
+hand sooner."
+
+Finally, the old soldier made a queer grimace, and ejaculated:
+
+"Blockhead!"
+
+From a barge a knot of sailors shouted something, and at the
+same moment the river sent forth a sort of whiff of cruel
+chilliness and brooding calm. The disposition of the pine boughs
+now had changed. Nay, everything in sight was beginning to
+assume a different air, as though everything were charged with
+tense expectancy.
+
+One of the younger men asked diffidently, beneath his breath:
+
+"Mate Ossip, what are we going to do?"
+
+"What do you say?" Ossip queried absent-mindedly.
+
+"I say, what are we going to do? Just to sit here?"
+
+To this Boev responded, with loud, nasal derision in his tone:
+
+"Yes, my lad, for the Lord has seen fit to prevent you from
+participating in His most holy festival."
+
+And the old soldier, in support of his mate, extended his pipe
+towards the river, and muttered with a grin:
+
+"You want to cross to the town, do you? Well, be off with
+you, and though the ice may give way beneath your feet
+and drown you, at least you'll be taken to the police station,
+and so get to your festival. For that's what you want, I
+suppose?"
+
+"True enough," Mokei re-echoed.
+
+Then the sun went in, and the river grew darker, while the
+town stood out more clearly. Ceaselessly, the younger men gazed
+towards the town with wistful, gloomy eyes, though silently they
+remained where they were.
+
+Similarly, I myself was beginning to find things irksome and
+uncomfortable, as always happens when a number of companions are
+thinking different thoughts, and contain in themselves none of
+that unity of will which alone can join men into a direct,
+uniform force. Rather, I felt as though I could gladly leave my
+companions and start out upon the ice alone.
+
+Suddenly Ossip recovered his faculties. Rising, then doffing his
+cap and making the sign of the cross in the direction of the
+town, he said with a quiet, simple, yet somehow authoritative,
+air:
+
+"Very well, my mates. Go in peace, and may the Lord go with
+you!"
+
+"But whither?" asked Sashok, leaping to his feet. "To the
+town? "
+
+"Whither else?"
+
+The old soldier was the only one not to rise, and with
+conviction he remarked:
+
+"It will result but in our getting drowned."
+
+"Then stay where you are."
+
+Ossip glanced around the party. Then he continued:
+
+"Bestir yourselves! Look alive!"
+
+Upon which all crowded together, and Boev, thrusting the tools
+into a hole in the bank, groaned:
+
+"The order 'go' has been given, so go we MUST, well though a
+man in receipt of such an order might ask himself, 'How is it
+going to be done?'"
+
+Ossip seemed, in some way, to have grown younger and more
+active, while the habitually shy, though good-humoured,
+expression of his countenance was gone from his ruddy features,
+and his darkened eyes had assumed an air of stern activity. Nay,
+even his indolent, rolling gait had disappeared, and in his step
+there was more firmness, more assurance, than had ever before
+been the case.
+
+"Let every man take a plank," he said, "and hold it in front
+of him. Then, should anyone fall in (which God forbid!), the
+plank-ends will catch upon the ice to either side of him, and
+hold him up. Also, every man must avoid cracks in the ice. Yes,
+and is there a rope handy? Here, Narodetz! Reach me that
+spirit-level. Is everyone ready? I will walk first, and next
+there must come--well, which is the heaviest?--you, soldier, and
+then Mokei, and then the Morduine, and then Boev, and then
+Mishuk, and then Sashok, and then Makarei, the lightest of all.
+And do you all take off your caps before starting, and say a
+prayer to the Mother of God. Ha! Here is Old Father Sun coming
+out to greet us."
+
+Readily did the men bare their tousled grey or flaxen heads as
+momentarily the sun glanced through a bank of thin white vapour
+before again concealing himself, as though averse to arousing
+any false hopes.
+
+"Now!" sharply commanded Ossip in his new-found voice. "And
+may God go with us! Watch my feet, and don't crowd too much upon
+one another, but keep each at a sazhen's distance or more--in
+fact, the more the better. Yes, come, mates!"
+
+With which, stuffing his cap into his bosom, and grasping the
+spirit-level in his hands, Ossip set foot upon the ice with a
+sliding, cautious, shuffling gait. At the same moment, there came
+from the bank behind us a startled cry of:
+
+"Where are you off to, you fools?"
+
+"Never mind," said Ossip to ourselves. "Come along with you,
+and don't stand staring."
+
+"You blockheads!" the voice repeated. "You had far better
+return."
+
+"No, no! come on!" was Ossip's counter-command. "And as you
+move think of God, or you'll never find yourselves among the
+invited guests at His holy festival of Eastertide."
+
+Next Ossip sounded a police whistle, which act led the old
+soldier to exclaim:
+
+"Oh, that's the way, mate! Good! Yes, you know what to do.  Now
+notice will have been given to the police on the further bank,
+and, if we're not drowned, we shall find ourselves clapped in
+gaol when we get there. However, I'm not responsible."
+
+In spite of this remonstrance, Ossip's sturdy voice drew his
+companions after him as though they had been tied to a rope.
+
+"Watch your feet carefully," once more he cried.
+
+Our line of march was directed obliquely, and in the opposite
+direction to the current. Also, I, as the rearmost of the party,
+found it pleasant to note how the wary little Ossip of the
+silvery head went looping over the ice with the deftness of a
+hare, and practically no raising of the feet, while behind him
+there trailed, in wild-goose fashion, and as though tied to a
+single invisible string, six dark and undulating figures the
+shadows of which kept making themselves visible on the ice, from
+those figures' feet to points indefinitely remote. And as we
+proceeded, all of us kept our heads lowered as though we had been
+descending from a mountain in momentary fear of a false step.
+
+Also, though the shouting in our rear kept growing in volume,
+and we could tell that by this time a crowd had gathered, not a
+word could we distinguish, but only a sort of ugly din.
+
+In time our cautious march became for me a mere, mechanical,
+wearisome task, for on ordinary occasions it was my custom to
+maintain a pace of greater rapidity. Thus, eventually I sank into
+the semiconscious condition amid which the soul turns to
+vacuity, and one no longer thinks of oneself, but, on the
+contrary issues from one's personality, and begins to see
+objects with unwonted clarity, and to hear sounds with unwonted
+precision. Under my feet the seams in the blue-grey, leaden ice
+lay full of water, while as for the ice itself, it was blinding
+in its expansive glitter, even though in places it had come to
+be either cracked or bulbous, or had ground itself into powder
+with its own movement, or had become heaped into slushy hummocks
+of pumice-like sponginess and the consistency of broken glass.
+And everywhere around me I could discern the chilly, gaping
+smile of blue crevices which caught at my feet, and rendered the
+tread of my boot-soles unstable. And ever, as we marched, could
+the voices of Boev and the old soldier be heard speaking in
+antiphony, like two pipes being fluted by one and the same pair
+of lips.
+
+"I won't be responsible," said the one voice.
+
+"Nor I," responded the other.
+
+"The only reason why I have come is that I was told to do so.
+That's all about it."
+
+"Yes, and the same with me."
+
+"One man gives an order, and another man, perhaps a man a
+thousand times more sensible than he, is forced to obey it."
+
+"Is any man, in these days, sensible, seeing what a racket we
+have to live among?"
+
+By this time Ossip had tucked the skirts of his greatcoat into
+his belt, while beneath those skirts his legs (clad in grey
+cloth gaiters of a military pattern) were shuffling along as
+lightly and easily as springs, and in a manner that suggested
+that there was turning and twisting in front of him some person
+whom, though desirous of barring to him the direct course, the
+shortest route, Ossip successfully opposed and evaded by dint of
+dodges and deviations to right and left, and occasional turns
+about, and the execution of dance steps and loops and
+semicircles. Meanwhile in the tones of Ossip's voice there was a
+soft, musical ring that struck agreeably upon the ear, and
+harmonised to admiration with the song of the bells just when we
+were approaching the middle of the river's breadth of four
+hundred sazheni. There resounded over the surface of the ice a
+vicious rustle ' while a piece of ice slid from under my feet.
+Stumbling, and powerless to retain my footing, I blundered down
+upon my knees in helpless astonishment; and then, as I glanced
+upstream, fear gripped at my throat, deprived me of speech, and
+darkened all my vision. For the whole substance of the grey
+ice-core had come to life and begun to heave itself upwards!
+Yes, the hitherto level surface was thrusting forth sharp
+angular ridges, and the air seemed full of a strange sound like
+the trampling of some heavy being over broken glass.
+
+With a quiet trickle there came a swirl of water around me,
+while an adjacent pine bough cracked and squeaked as though it
+too had come to life. My companions shouted, and collected into
+a knot; whereupon, at once dominating and quelling the tense,
+painful hubbub of sounds, there rang forth the voice of Ossip.
+
+"Mother of God!" he shouted. "Scatter, lads! Get away from
+one another, and keep each to himself! Now! Courage!"
+
+With that, springing towards us as though wasps had been after
+him, and grasping the spirit-level as though it had been a
+weapon, he jabbed it to every side, as though fighting invisible
+foes, while, just as the quivering town began, seemingly, to
+glide past us, and the ice at my feet gave a screech and
+crumbled to fragments beneath me, so that water bubbled to my
+knees. I leapt up from where I was, and rushed blindly in
+Ossip's direction.
+
+"Where are you coming to, fool?" was his shout as he
+brandished the spirit-level. "Stand still where you are!"
+
+Indeed, Ossip seemed no longer to be Ossip at all, but a person
+curiously younger, a person in whom all that had been familiar
+in Ossip had become effaced. Yes, the once blue eyes had turned
+to grey, and the figure added half an arshin to its stature as,
+standing as erect as a newly made nail, and pressing both feet
+together, the foreman stretched himself to his full height, and
+shouted with his mouth open to its widest extent:
+
+"Don't shuffle about, nor crowd upon one another, or I'll break
+your heads!"
+
+Whereafter, of myself in particular, he inquired as he raised the
+spirit-level:
+
+"What is the matter with YOU, pray?"
+
+"I am feeling frightened," I muttered in response.
+
+"Feeling frightened of WHAT, indeed?"
+
+"Of being drowned."
+
+"Pooh! Just you hold your tongue."
+
+Yet the next moment he glanced at me, and added in a gentler,
+quieter tone:
+
+"None but a fool gets drowned. Pick yourself up and come along."
+
+Then once more he shouted full-throated words of encouragement
+to his men; and as he did so, his chest swelled and his
+head rocked with the effort.
+
+Yet, crackling and cracking, the ice was breaking up; and soon
+it began slowly to bear us past the town. 'Twas as though some
+unknown force ashore had awakened, and was striving to tear the
+banks of the river in two, so much did the portion of the
+landscape downstream seem to be standing still while the portion
+level with us seemed to be receding in the opposite direction,
+and thus causing a break to take place in the middle of the
+picture.
+
+And soon this movement, a movement agonisingly slow, deprived me
+of my sense of being connected with the rest of the world,
+until, as the whole receded, despair again gripped my heart and
+unnerved my limbs. Roseate clouds were gliding across the sky
+and causing stray fragments of the ice, which, seemingly,
+yearned to engulf me, to assume reflected tints of a similar
+hue. Yes, it was as though the birth of spring had reawakened
+the universe, and was causing it to stretch itself, and to emit
+deep, hurried, broken pants that cracked its bones as the river,
+embedded in the earth's stout framework, revivified the whole
+with thick, turbulent, ebullient blood.
+
+And this sense of littleness, of impotence amid the calm,
+assured movement of the earth's vast bulk, weighed upon my soul,
+and evoked, and momentarily fanned to flame in me, the shameless
+human question: "What if I should stretch forth my hand and lay
+it upon the hill and the banks of the river, and say, 'Halt
+until I come to you!'? "
+
+Meanwhile the bells continued the mournful moaning of their
+resonant, coppery notes; and that moaning led me to reflect that
+within two days (on the night of the morrow) they would be
+pealing a joyous welcome to the Resurrection Feast.
+
+"Oh that all of us may live to hear that sound!" was my
+unspoken thought.
+
+Before my vision there kept quavering seven dark figures--figures
+shuffling over the ice, and brandishing planks like oars. And,
+wriggling like a lamprey in front of them was a little old
+fellow, an old fellow resembling Saint Nicholas the
+Wonder-Worker, an old fellow who kept crying softly, but
+authoritatively:
+
+"Do not stare about you!"
+
+And ever the river was growing rougher and ruder; ever its
+backbone was beginning to puiver and flounder like a whale
+underfoot, with its liquescent body of cold, grey, murky water
+bursting with increasing frequency from its shell of ice, and
+lapping hungrily at our feet.
+
+Yes, we were human beings traversing, as it were, a slender pole
+over a bottomless abyss; and as we walked, the water's soft,
+cantabile splash set me in mind of the depths below, of the
+infinite time during which a body would continue sinking through
+dense, chilly bulk until sight faded and the heart stopped
+beating. Yes, before my mind's eye there arose men drowned and
+devoured by crayfish, men with crumbling skulls and swollen
+features, and glassy, bulging eyes and puffy hands and
+outstretched fingers and palms of which the skin had rotted off
+with the damp.
+
+The first to fall in was Mokei Budirin. He had been walking next
+ahead of the Morduine, and, as a man habitually silent and
+absorbed, proceeding on his way more quietly than the rest.
+Suddenly something had seemed to catch at his legs, and he had
+disappeared until only his head and his hands, as the latter
+clutched at his plank, had been left above-level.
+
+"Run and help him, somebody!" was Ossip's instant cry. "Yes,
+but not all of you--just one or two. Help him I say!"
+
+The spluttering Mokei, however, said to the Morduine and myself:
+
+"No; do you move away, mates, for I shall best help myself.
+Never you mind."
+
+And, sure enough, he did succeed in drawing himself out on to
+the ice without assistance. Whereafter he remarked as he shook
+himself:
+
+"A nice pickle, this, to be in! I might as well have been
+drowned!"
+
+And, in fact, at the moment he looked, with his chattering teeth
+and great tongue licking a dripping moustache, precisely like a
+large, good-natured dog.
+
+Then I remembered how, a month earlier, he had accidentally
+driven the blade of his axe through the joint of his left thumb,
+and, merely picking up the white fragment of flesh with the nail
+turning blue, and scanning it with his unfathomable eyes, had
+remarked, as though it was he himself that had been at fault:
+
+"How often before I have injured that thumb, I could not say.
+And when once I dislocated it, I went on working with it longer
+than was right. . . . Now I will go and bury it."
+
+With which, carefully wrapping up the fragment in some shavings,
+he had thrust the whole into his pocket, and bandaged the
+wounded hand,
+
+Similarly, after that, did Boev, the man next in order behind
+Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice,
+though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall
+drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so
+cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great
+difficulty, while amid the general confusion the Morduine too
+nearly slipped into the water.
+
+"A narrow shave of saying Vespers tonight with the devils in
+Hell!" he remarked as he clambered back, and stood grinning
+with an even more angular and attenuated appearance than usual.
+
+The next moment Boev achieved a second plunge, and screamed, as
+before, for help.
+
+"Don't shout, you goat of a Yashka!" Ossip exclaimed as he
+threatened him with the spirit-level. "Why scare people? I'll
+give it you! Look here, lads. Let every man take off his belt
+and turn out his pockets. Then he'll walk lighter."
+
+Toothed jaws gaped and crunched at us at every step, and
+vomited thick spittle; at every tenth step their keen blue fangs
+reached for our lives. Meanwhile, the soaked condition of our
+boots and clothes had rendered us as slimy as though smeared
+with paste. Also, it so weighed us down as to hinder any active
+movement, and to cause each step to be taken cautiously, slowly,
+silently, and with ponderous diffidence.
+
+Yet, soaked though we were, Ossip might verily have known the
+number of cracks in advance, so smooth and harelike was his
+progress from floe to floe as at intervals he faced about,
+watched us, and cried sonorously:
+
+"That's the way to do it, eh?"
+
+Yes, he absolutely played with the river, and though it kept
+catching at his diminutive form, he always evaded it,
+circumvented its movements, and avoided its snares. Nay, capable
+even of directing its trend did he seem, and of thrusting under
+our feet only the largest and firmest floes.
+
+"Lads, there is no need to be downhearted," he would cry at
+intervals.
+
+"Ah, that brave Ossip!" the Morduine once ejaculated. "In very
+truth is he a man, and no mistake! Just look at him!"
+
+The closer we approached the further shore, the thinner and the
+more brittle did the ice become, and the more liable we to
+break through it. By this time the town had nearly passed us,
+and we were bidding fair to be carried out into the Volga, where
+the ice would still be sound, and, as likely as not, draw us
+under itself.
+
+"By your leave, we are going to be drowned," the Morduine
+murmured as he glanced at the blue shadow of eventide on our
+left.
+
+And simultaneously, as though compassionating our lot, a large
+floe grounded upon the bank, glided upwards with a cracking and
+a crashing, and there held fast!
+
+"Run, all of you!" came a furious shout from Ossip.
+"Hurry up, now! Put your very best legs foremost!"
+
+For myself, as I sprang upon the floe I lost my footing, and,
+falling headlong and remaining seated on the hither end of the
+floe amid a shower of spray, saw five of my seven comrades rush
+past, pushing and jostling, as they made for the shore. But
+presently the Morduine turned and halted beside me, with the
+intention of rendering Ossip assistance.
+
+"Run, you young fools!" the latter exclaimed. "Come! Be off
+with you!"
+
+Somehow in his face there was now a livid, uncertain air, while
+his eyes had lost their fire, and his mouth was curiously agape.
+
+"No, mate. Do YOU get up," was my counter-adjuration.
+
+"Unfortunately, I have hurt my leg," he replied with his head
+bent down. "In fact, I am not sure that I can get up."
+
+However, we contrived to raise him and carry him ashore with an
+arm of his resting on each of our necks. Meanwhile he growled
+with chattering teeth:
+
+"Aha, you river devils! Drown me if you can! But I've not given
+you a chance, the Lord be thanked! Hi, look out! The ice won't
+bear the three of us. Mind how you step, and choose places where
+the ice is bare of snow. There it's firmer. No, a better plan
+still would be to leave me where I am."
+
+Next, with a frowning scrutiny of my face, he inquired:
+
+"That notebook of our misdeeds--hasn't it had a wetting and got
+done for?"
+
+That very moment, as we stepped from the stranded floe (in
+grounding, it had crushed and shattered a small boat), such part
+of it as lay in the water gave a loud crack, and, swaying to and
+fro, and emitting a gurgling sound, floated clear of the rest.
+
+"Ah!" was the Morduine's quizzical comment. "YOU knew well
+enough what needed to be done."
+
+Wet, and chilled to the bone, though relieved in spirit, we
+stepped ashore to find a crowd of townspeople in conversation
+with Boev and the old soldier. And as we deposited our charge
+under the lea of a pile of logs he shouted cheerfully:
+
+"Mates, Makarei's notebook is done for, soaked through!"  And
+since the notebook in question was weighing upon my breast like
+a brick, I pulled it out unseen, and hurled it far into the
+river with a plop like that of a frog.
+
+As for the Diatlovs, they lost no time in setting out in search
+of vodka in the tavern on the hill, and slapped one another on
+the back as they ran, and could be heard shouting, "Hurrah,
+hurrah!"
+
+Upon this, a tall old man with the beard of an apostle and the
+eyes of a brigand muttered:
+
+"Infidels, why disturb peaceful folk like this? You ought to be
+thrashed!"
+
+Whereupon Boev, who was changing his clothes, retorted:
+
+"What do you mean by 'disturb'?"
+
+"Besides," put in the old soldier, " even though we are
+Christians like yourself, we might as well have been drowned for
+all that you did to help us."
+
+"What could we have done?"
+
+Meanwhile Ossip had remained lying on the ground with one leg
+stretched out at full length, and tremulous hands fumbling at
+his greatcoat as under his breath he muttered:
+
+"Holy Mother, how wet I am! My clothes, though I have only worn
+them a year, are ruined for ever!"
+
+Moreover, he seemed now to have shrunken again in stature--to
+have become crumpled up like a man run over. Indeed, as he lay
+he seemed actually to be melting, so continuously was his bulk
+decreasing in size.
+
+But suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture, groaned,
+and exclaimed in high-pitched, wrathful accents:
+
+"May the devil take you all! Be off with you to your washhouses
+and churches! Yes, be off, for it seems that, as God couldn't
+keep His holy festival without you, I've had to stand within an
+ace of death and to spoil my clothes-yes, all that you fellows
+should be got out of your fix!"
+
+Nevertheless, the men merely continued taking off their boots,
+and wringing out their clothes, and conversing with sundry
+gasps and grunts with the bystanders. So presently Ossip
+resumed:
+
+"What are you thinking of, you fools? The washhouse is the best
+place for you, for if the police get you, they'll soon find you
+a lodging, and no mistake!"
+
+One of the townspeople put in officiously:
+
+"Aye, aye. The police have been sent for."
+
+And this led Boev to exclaim to Ossip:
+
+"Why pretend like that?"
+
+"Pretend? I?"
+
+"Yes--you."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that it was you who egged us on to cross the river."
+
+"You say that it was I?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Aye," put in Budirin quietly, but incisively. And him the
+Morduine supported by saying in a sullen undertone:
+
+"It was you, mate. By God it was. It would seem that you have
+forgotten."
+
+"Yes, you started all this business," the old soldier
+corroborated, in dour, ponderous accents.
+
+"Forgotten, indeed? HE? " was Boev's heated exclamation.
+
+"How can you say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift
+the responsibility on to others--that's all! WE'LL see, right
+enough, that he goes through with it!"
+
+To this Ossip made no reply, but gazed frowningly at his
+dripping, half-clad men.
+
+All at once, with a curious outburst of mingled smiles and tears
+(it would be hard to say which), he shrugged his shoulders,
+threw up his hands, and muttered:
+
+"Yes, it IS true. If it please you, it was I that contrived the
+idea."
+
+"Of COURSE it was! " the old soldier cried triumphantly.
+
+Ossip turned his eyes again to where the river was seething like
+a bowl of porridge, and, letting his eyes fall with a frown,
+continued:
+
+"In a moment of forgetfulness I did it. Yet how is it that we
+were not all drowned? Well, you wouldn't understand even if I
+were to tell you. No, by God, you wouldn't! . . . Don't be angry
+with me, mates. Pardon me for the festival's sake, for I am
+feeling uneasy of mind. Yes, I it was that egged you on to cross
+the river, the old fool that I was!"
+
+"Aha!" exclaimed Boev. "But, had I been drowned, what should
+you have said THEN?"
+
+In fact, by this time Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the
+futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his
+state of sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the
+sand, looking at no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful
+words, he reminded me strongly of a new-born calf.
+
+And as I watched him I thought to myself:
+
+"Where now is the leader of men who could draw his fellows in
+his train with so much care and skill and authority?"
+
+And into my soul there trickled an uneasy sense of something
+lacking. Seating myself beside Ossip (for I desired still to
+retain a measure of my late impression of him), I said to him in
+an undertone:
+
+"Soon you will be all right again."
+
+With a sideways glance he muttered in reply, as he combed his
+beard:
+
+"Well, you saw what happened just now. Always do things so
+happen."
+
+While for the benefit of the men he added:
+
+"That was a good jest of mine, eh?"
+
+The summit of the hill which lay crouching, like a great beast,
+on the brink of the river was standing out clearly against the
+fast darkening sky; while a clump of trees thereon had grown
+black, and everywhere blue shadows of the spring eventide were
+coming into view, and looming between the housetops where the
+houses lay pressed like scabs against the hill's opaque surface,
+and peering from the moist, red jaws of the ravine which, gaping
+towards the river, seemed as though it were stretching forth for
+a draught of water.
+
+Also, by now the rustling and crunching of the ice on the
+similarly darkening river was beginning to assume a deeper note,
+and at times a floe would thrust one of its extremities into the
+bank as a pig thrusts its snout into the earth, and there remain
+motionless before once more beginning to sway, tearing itself
+free, and floating away down the river as another such floe
+glided into its place.
+
+And ever more and more swiftly was the water rising, and washing
+away soil from the bank, and spreading a thick sediment over the
+dark blue surface of the river. And as it did so, there resounded
+in the air a strange noise as of chewing and champing, a noise
+as though some huge wild animal were masticating, and licking
+itself with its great long tongue.
+
+And still there continued to come from the town the melancholy,
+distance-softened, sweet-toned song of the bells.
+
+Presently, the brothers Diatlov appeared descending from the hill
+with bottles in their hands, and sporting like a couple of
+joyous puppies, while to intercept them there could be seen
+advancing along the bank of the river a grey-coated police
+sergeant and two black-coated constables.
+
+"0h Lord!" groaned Ossip as he rubbed his knee.
+
+As for the townsfolk, they had no love for the police, so
+hastened to withdraw to a little distance, where they silently
+awaited the officers' approach. Before long the sergeant, a
+little, withered sort of a fellow with diminutive features and a
+sandy, stubby moustache, called out in gruff, stern, hoarse,
+laboured accents:
+
+"So here you are, you rascals!"
+
+Ossip prised himself up from the ground with his elbow, and said
+hurriedly:
+
+"It was I that contrived the idea of the thing, your
+Excellency; but, pray let me off in honour of the festival."
+
+"What do you say, you--?" the sergeant began, but his bluster
+was lost amid the swift flow of Ossip's further conciliatory
+words.
+
+"We are folk of this town," Ossip continued, "who tonight
+found ourselves stranded on the further bank, with nothing to
+buy bread with, even though the day after tomorrow will be
+Christ's day, the day when Christians like ourselves wish to
+clean themselves up a little, and to go to church. So I said to
+my mates, 'Be off with you, my good fellows, and may God send
+that no mishap befall you!' And for this presumptuousness of
+mine I have been punished already, for, as you can see, have as
+good as broken my leg."
+
+"Yes," ejaculated the sergeant grimly. "But if you had been
+drowned, what then?"
+
+Ossip sighed wearily.
+
+"What then, do you say, your Excellency? Why, then, nothing,
+with your permission."
+
+This led the officer to start railing at the culprit, while the
+crowd listened as silently and attentively as though he had been
+saying something worthy to be heard and heeded, rather than
+foully and cynically miscalling their mothers.
+
+Lastly, our names having been noted, the police withdrew, while
+each of us drank a dram of vodka (and thereby gained a measure
+of warmth and comfort), and then began to make for our several
+homes. Ossip followed the police with derisive eyes; whereafter,
+he leapt to his feet with a nimble, adroit movement, and crossed
+himself with punctilious piety.
+
+"That's all about it, thank God!" he exclaimed.
+
+"What?" sniggered Boev, now both disillusioned and astonished.
+"Do you really mean to say that that leg of yours is better
+already? Or do you mean that it never was injured at all? "
+
+"Ah! So you wish that it HAD been injured, eh?"
+
+"The rascal of a Petrushka!" the other exclaimed.
+
+"Now," commanded Ossip, "do all of you be off, mates." And
+with that he pulled his wet cap on to his head.
+
+I accompanied him--walking a little behind the rest. As he limped
+along, he said in an undertone-said kindly-- and as though he were
+communicating a secret known only to himself:
+
+"Whatsoever one may do, and whithersoever one may turn, one
+will find that life cannot be lived without a measure of fraud
+and deceit. For that is what life IS, Makarei, the devil fly
+away with it! . . . I suppose you're making for the hill? Well,
+I'll keep you company."
+
+Darkness had fallen, but at a certain spot some red and yellow
+lamps, lamps the beams of which seemed to be saying, "Come up
+hither!" were shining through the obscurity.
+
+Meanwhile, as we proceeded in the direction of the bells that
+were ringing on the hill, rivulets of water flowed with a murmur
+under our feet, and Ossip's kindly voice kept mingling with
+their sound.
+
+"See," he continued, "how easily I befooled that sergeant!
+That is how things have to be done, Makarei--one has to keep folk
+from knowing one's business, yet to make them think that they
+are the chief persons concerned, and the persons whose wit has
+put the cap on the whole."
+
+Yet as I listened to his speech, while supporting his steps, I
+could make little of it.
+
+Nor did I care to make very much of it, for I was of a simple
+and easygoing nature. And though at the moment I could not have
+told whether I really liked Ossip, I would still have followed
+his lead in any direction--yes, even across the river again,
+though the ice had been giving way beneath me.
+
+And as we proceeded, and the bells echoed and re-echoed, I
+thought to myself with a spasm of joy:
+
+"Ah, many times may I thus walk to greet the spring!"
+
+While Ossip said with a sigh:
+
+"The human soul is a winged thing. Even in sleep it flies."
+
+***********************
+
+A winged thing? Yes, and a thing of wonder.
+
+
+
+GUBIN
+
+The place where I first saw him was a tavern wherein, ensconced
+in the chimney-corner, and facing a table, he was exclaiming
+stutteringly, "Oh, I know the truth about you all! Yes, I know
+the truth about you!" while standing in a semicircle in front
+of him, and unconsciously rendering him more and more excited
+with their sarcastic interpolations, were some tradesmen of the
+superior sort--five in number. One of them remarked indifferently:
+
+"How should you NOT know the truth about us, seeing that you do
+nothing but slander us?"
+
+Shabby, in fact in rags, Gubin at that moment reminded me of a
+homeless dog which, having strayed into a strange street, has
+found itself held up by a band of dogs of superior strength,
+and, seized with nervousness, is sitting back on its haunches
+and sweeping the dust with its tail; and, with growls, and
+occasional barings of its fangs, and sundry barkings, attempting
+now to intimidate its adversaries, and now to conciliate them.
+Meanwhile, having perceived the stranger's helplessness and
+insignificance, the native pack is beginning to moderate its
+attitude, in the conviction that, though continued maintenance
+of dignity is imperative, it is not worthwhile to pick a
+quarrel so long as an occasional yelp be vented in the
+stranger's face.
+
+"To whom are you of any use?" one of the tradesmen at length
+inquired.
+
+"Not a man of us but may be of use."
+
+"To whom, then?" . . .
+
+I had long since grown familiar with tavern disputes concerning
+verities, and not infrequently seen those disputes develop into
+open brawls; but never had I permitted myself to be drawn into
+their toils, or to be set wandering amid their tangles like a
+blind man negotiating a number of hillocks. Moreover, just
+before this encounter with Gubin, I had arrived at a dim surmise
+that when such differences were carried to the point of madness
+and bloodshed. Really,they constituted an expression of the
+unmeaning, hopeless, melancholy life that is lived in the wilder
+and more remote districts of Russia--of the life that is lived on
+swampy banks of dingy rivers, and in our smaller and more
+God-forgotten towns. For it would seem that in such places men
+have nothing to look for, nor any knowledge of how to look for
+anything; wherefore, they brawl and shout in vain attempts to
+dissipate despondency. . . .
+
+I myself was sitting near Gubin, but on the other side of the
+table. Yet, this was not because his outbursts and the
+tradesmen's retorts thereto were a pleasure to listen to, since
+to me both the one and the other seemed about as futile as
+beating the air.
+
+"To whom are YOU of use?"
+
+"To himself every man can be useful."
+
+"But what good can one do oneself?" . . .
+
+The windows of the tavern were open, while in the pendent,
+undulating cloud of blue smoke that the flames of the lamps
+emitted, those lamps looked like so many yellow pitchers floating
+amid the waters of a stagnant pond. Out of doors there was
+brooding the quiet of an August night, and not a rustle, not a
+whisper was there to be heard. Hence, as numbed with melancholy,
+I gazed at the inky heavens and limpid stars I thought to myself:
+
+"Surely, never were the sky and the stars meant to look down
+upon a life like this, a life like this?"
+
+Suddenly someone said with the subdued assurance of a person
+reading aloud from a written document:
+
+"Unless the peasants of Kubarovo keep a watch upon their timber
+lands, the sun will fire them tomorrow, and then the Birkins'
+forest also will catch alight."
+
+For a moment the dispute died down. Then, as it were cleaving
+the silence, a voice said stutteringly:
+
+"Who cares about the significance of the word 'truth'?"
+
+And the words-- heavy, jumbled, and clumsy-- filled me with
+despondent reflections. Then again the voices rose--this time in
+louder and more venomous accents, and with their din recalled to
+me, by some accident, the foolish lines:
+
+The gods did give men water
+To wash in, and to drink;
+Yet man has made it but a pool
+In which his woes to sink.
+
+Presently I moved outside and, seating myself on the steps of
+the veranda, fell to contemplating the dull, blurred windows of
+the Archpriest's house on the other side of the square, and to
+watching how black shadows kept flitting to and fro behind their
+panes as the faint, lugubrious notes of a guitar made themselves
+heard. And a high-pitched, irritable voice kept repeating at
+intervals: "Allow me. Pray, permit me to speak," and being
+answered by a voice which intermittently shot into the silence,
+as into a bottomless sack, the words: "No, do you wait a
+moment, do you wait a moment."
+
+Surrounded by the darkness, the houses looked stunted like
+gravestones, with a line of black trees above their roofs that
+loomed shadowy and cloud-like. Only in the furthest corner of
+the expanse was the light of a solitary street lamp bearing a
+resemblance to the disk of a stationary, resplendent dandelion.
+
+Over everything was melancholy. Far from inviting was the
+general outlook. So much was this the case that, had, at that
+moment, anyone stolen upon me from behind the bushes and dealt
+me a sudden blow on the head, I should merely have sunk to earth
+without attempting to see who my assailant had been.
+
+Often, in those days, was I in this mood, for it clave to me as
+faithfully as a dog--never did it wholly leave me.
+
+"It was for men like THOSE that this fair earth of ours was
+bestowed upon us!" I thought to myself.
+
+Suddenly, with a clatter, someone ran out of the door of the
+tavern, slid down the steps, fell headlong at their foot,
+quickly regained his equilibrium, and disappeared in the
+darkness after exclaiming in a threatening voice:
+
+"Oh, I'LL pay you out! I'LL skin you, you damned... !"
+
+Whereafter two figures that also appeared in the doorway said as
+they stood talking to one another:
+
+"You heard him threaten to fire the place, did you not?"
+
+"Yes, I did. But why should he want to fire it? "
+
+"Because he is a dangerous rascal."
+
+Presently, slinging my wallet upon my back, I pursued my onward
+way along a street that was fenced on either side with a tall
+palisade. As I proceeded, long grasses kept catching at my feet
+and rustling drily. And so warm was the night as to render the
+payment of a lodging fee superfluous; and the more so since in
+the neighbourhood of the cemetery, where an advanced guard of
+young pines had pushed forward to the cemetery wall and littered
+the sandy ground, with a carpet of red, dry cones, there were
+sleeping-places prepared in advance.
+
+Suddenly from the darkness there emerged, to recoil again, a
+man's tall figure.
+
+"Who is that? Who is it?" asked the hoarse, nervous voice of
+Gubin in dissipation of the deathlike stillness.
+
+Which said, he and I fell into step with one another. As we
+proceeded he inquired whence I had come, and why I was still
+abroad. Whereafter he extended to me, as to an old acquaintance,
+the invitation:
+
+"Will you come and sleep at my place? My house is near here,
+and as for work, I will find you a job tomorrow. In fact, as it
+happens, I am needing a man to help me clean out a well at the
+Birkins' place. Will the job suit you? Very well, then. Always I
+like to settle things overnight, as it is at night that I can
+best see through people."
+
+The "house" turned out to be nothing more than an old
+one-eyed, hunchbacked washhouse or shanty which, bulging of
+wall, stood wedged against the clayey slope of a ravine as
+though it would fain bury itself amid the boughs of the
+neighbouring arbutus trees and elders.
+
+Without striking a light, Gubin flung himself upon some mouldy
+hay that littered a threshold as narrow as the threshold of a
+dog-kennel, and said to me with an air of authority as he did so:
+
+"I will sleep with my head towards the door, for the atmosphere
+here is a trifle confined."
+
+And, true enough, the place reeked of elderberries, soap, burnt
+stuff, and decayed leaves. I could not conceive why I had come
+to such a spot.
+
+The twisted branches of the neighbouring trees hung motionless
+athwart the sky, and concealed from view the golden dust of the
+Milky Way, while across the Oka an owl kept screeching, and the
+strange, arresting remarks of my companion pelted me like
+showers of peas.
+
+"Do not be surprised that I should live in a remote ravine," he
+said. "I, whose hand is against every man, can at least feel
+lord of what I survey here."
+
+Too dark was it for me to see my host's face, but my memory
+recalled his bald cranium, and the yellow light of the lamps
+falling upon a nose as long as a woodpecker's beak, a pair of
+grey and stubbly cheeks, a pair of thin lips covered by a
+bristling moustache, a mouth sharp-cut as with a knife, and full
+of black, evil-looking stumps, a pair of pointed, sensitive,
+mouse-like ears, and a clean-shaven chin. The last feature in no
+way consorted with his visage, or with his whole appearance; but
+at least it rendered him worthy of remark, and enabled one to
+realise that one had to deal with neither a peasant nor a
+soldier nor a tradesman, but with a man peculiar to himself.
+Also, his frame was lanky, with long arms and legs, and pointed
+knees and elbows. In fact, so like a piece of string was his
+body that to twist it round and round, or even to tie it into a
+knot, would, seemingly, have been easy enough.
+
+For awhile I found his speech difficult to follow; wherefore,
+silently I gazed at the sky, where the stars appeared to be
+playing at follow-my-leader.
+
+"Are you asleep?" at length he inquired.
+
+"No, I am not. Why do you shave your beard?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because, if you will pardon me, I think your face would look
+better bearded."
+
+With a short laugh he exclaimed:
+
+"Bearded? Ah, sloven! Bearded, indeed!"
+
+To which he added more gravely:
+
+"Both Peter the Great and Nicholas I were wiser than you, for
+they ordained that whosoever should be bearded should have his
+nose slit, and be fined a hundred roubles. Did you ever hear of
+that? "
+
+"No."
+
+"And from the same source, from the beard, arose also the Great
+Schism."
+
+His manner of speaking was too rapid to be articulate, and, in
+leaving his mouth, his words caused his lips to bare stumps and
+gums amid which they lost their way, became disintegrated, and
+issued, as it were, in an incomplete state.
+
+"Everyone," he continued, "knows that life is lived more
+easily with a beard than without one, since with a beard lies
+are more easily told--they can be told, and then hidden in the
+masses of hair. Hence we ought to go through life with our faces
+naked, since such faces render untruthfulness more difficult,
+and prevent their owners from prevaricating without the fact
+becoming plain to all."
+
+"But what about women?"
+
+"What about women? Well, women can always lie to their husbands
+successfully, but not to all the town, to all the world, to folk
+in general. Moreover, since a woman's real business in life is
+the same as that of the hen, to rear young, what can it matter
+if she DOES cackle a few falsehoods, provided that she be
+neither a priest nor a mayor nor a tchinovnik, and does not
+possess any authority, and cannot establish laws? For the really
+important point is that the law itself should not lie, but ever
+uphold truth pure and simple. Long has the prevalent illegality
+disgusted me."
+
+The door of the shanty was standing open, and amid the outer
+darkness, as in a church, the trees looked like pillars, and the
+white stems of the birches like silver candelabra tipped with a
+thousand lights, or dimly-seen choristers with faces showing
+pale above sacramental vestments of black. All my soul was full
+of a sort of painful restlessness. It was a feeling as though I
+should live to rise and go forth into the darkness, and offer
+battle to the terrors of the night; yet ever, as my companion's
+torrential speech caught and held my attention, it detained me
+where I was.
+
+"My father was a man of no little originality and character," he
+went on. "Wherefore, none of the townsfolk liked him. By the age
+of twenty he had risen to be an alderman, yet never to the end
+could get the better of folk's stubbornness and stupidity, even
+though he made it his custom to treat all and sundry to food and
+drink, and to reason with them. No, not even at the last did he
+attain his due. People feared him because he revolutionised
+everything, revolutionised it down to the very roots; the truth
+being that he had grasped the one essential fact that law and
+order must be driven, like nails, into the people's very vitals."
+
+Mice squeaked under the floor, and on the further side of the
+Oka an owl screeched, while amid the pitch-black heavens I could
+see a number of blotches intermittently lightening to an elusive
+red and blurring the faint glitter of the stars.
+
+"It was one o'clock in the morning when my father died," Gubin
+continued." And upon myself, who was seventeen and had just
+finished my course at the municipal school of Riazan, there
+devolved, naturally enough, all the enmity that my father had
+incurred during his lifetime. 'He is just like his sire,' folk
+said. Also, I was alone, absolutely alone, in the world, since
+my mother had lost her reason two years before my father's
+death, and passed away in a frenzy. However, I had an uncle, a
+retired unter-officier who was both a sluggard, a tippler, and a
+hero (a hero because he had had his eyes shot out at Plevna, and
+his left arm injured in a manner which had induced paralysis,
+and his breast adorned with the military cross and a set of
+medals). And sometimes, this uncle of mine would rally me on my
+learning. For instance, 'Scholar,' he would say, 'what does
+"tiversia " mean?' 'No such word exists,' would be my reply,
+and thereupon he would seize me by the hair, for he was rather
+an awkward person to deal with. Another factor as concerned
+making me ashamed of my scholarship was the ignorance of the
+townspeople in general, and in the end I became the common butt,
+a sort of 'holy idiot.'"
+
+So greatly did these recollections move Gubin that he rose and
+transferred his position to the door of the hut, where, a dark
+blur against the square of blue, he lit a gurgling pipe, and
+puffed thereat until his long, conical nose glowed. Presently
+the surging stream of words began again:
+
+"At twenty I married an orphan, and when she fell ill and died
+childless I found myself alone once more, and without an adviser
+or a friend. However, still I continued both to live and to look
+about me. And in time, I perceived that life is not lived wholly
+as it should be."
+
+"What in life is 'not lived wholly as it should be'?"
+
+"Everything in life. For life is mere folly, mere fatuous
+nonsense. The truth is that our dogs do not bark always at the
+right moment. For instance, when I said to folk, 'How would it
+be if we were to open a technical school for girls?' They
+merely laughed and replied, 'Trade workers are hopeless
+drunkards. Already have we enough of them. Besides, hitherto
+women have contrived to get on WITHOUT education.' And when next
+I conceived a scheme for instituting a match factory, it befell
+that the factory was burnt down during its first year of
+existence, and I found myself once more at a loose end. Next a
+certain woman got hold of me, and I flitted about her like a
+martin around a belfry, and so lost my head as to live life as
+though I were not on earth at all--for three years I did not know
+even what I was doing, and only when I recovered my senses did I
+perceive myself to be a pauper, and my all, every single thing
+that I had possessed, to have passed into HER white hands. Yes,
+at twenty-eight I found myself a beggar. Yet I have never wholly
+regretted the fact, for certainly for a time I lived life as few
+men ever live it. 'Take my all--take it!' I used to say to her.
+And, truly enough, I should never have done much good with my
+father's fortune, whereas she--well, so it befell. Somehow I
+think that in those days my opinions must have been different
+from now--now that I have lost everything. . . . Yet the woman
+used to say, 'You have NOT lost everything,' and she had wit
+enough to fit out a whole townful of people."
+
+"This woman--who was she? "
+
+"The wife of a merchant. Whenever she unrobed and said, 'Come!
+What is this body of mine worth?' I used to make reply, 'A price
+that is beyond compute.' . . . So within three years everything
+that I possessed vanished like smoke. Sometimes, of course, folk
+laughed at and jibed at me; nor did I ever refute them. But now
+that I have come to have a better understanding of life's
+affairs, I see that life is not wholly lived as it should be. For
+that matter, too, I do not hold my tongue on the subject, for
+that is not my way--still left to me I have a tongue and my soul.
+The same reason accounts for the fact that no one likes me, and
+that by everyone I am looked upon as a fool."
+
+"How, in your opinion, ought life to be lived?"
+
+Without answering me at once, Gubin sucked at his pipe until
+his nose made a glowing red blur in the darkness. Then he
+muttered slowly:
+
+"How life ought to be lived no one could say exactly. And this
+though I have given much thought to the subject, and still am
+doing so."
+
+I found it no difficult matter to form a mental picture of the
+desolate existence which this man must be leading--this man whom
+all his fellows both derided and shunned. For at that time I too
+was bidding fair to fail in life, and had my heart in the grip
+of ceaseless despondency.
+
+The truth is that of futile people Russia is over-full. Many
+such I myself have known, and always they have attracted me as
+strongly and mysteriously as a magnet. Always they have struck me
+more favourably than the provincial-minded majority who live for
+food and work alone, and put away from them all that could
+conceivably render their bread-winning difficult, or prevent
+them from snatching bread out of the hands of their weaker
+neighbours. For most such folk are gloomy and self-contained,
+with hearts that have turned to wood, and an outlook that ever
+reverts to the past; unless, indeed, they be folk of spurious
+good nature, an addition to talkativeness, and an apparent
+bonhomie which veils a frigid, grey interior, and conveys an
+impression of cruelty and greed of all that life contains.
+
+Always, in the end, I have detected in such folk something
+wintry, something that makes them seem, as it were, to be
+spending spring and summer in expectation solely of the winter
+season, with its long nights, and its cold of an austerity which
+forces one for ever to be consuming food.
+
+Yet seldom among this distasteful and wearisome crowd of wintry
+folk is there to be encountered a man who has altogether proved
+a failure. But if he has done so, he will be found to be a man
+whose nature is of a more thoughtful, a more truly existent, a
+more clear-sighted cast than that of his fellows--a man who at
+least can look beyond the boundaries of the trite and
+commonplace, and whose mentality has a greater capacity for
+attaining spiritual fulfilment, and is more desirous of doing
+so, than the mentality of his compeers. That is to say, in such
+a man one can always detect a striving for space, as a man who,
+loving light, carries light in himself.
+
+Unfortunately, all too often is that light only the fugitive
+phosphorescence of putrefaction; wherefore as one contemplates
+him one soon begins to realise with bitterness and vexation and
+disappointment that he is but a sluggard, but a braggart, but
+one who is petty and weak and blinded with conceit and distorted
+with envy, but one between whose word and whose deed there gapes
+a disparity even wider and deeper than the disparity which
+divides the word from the deed of the man of winter, of the man
+who, though he be as tardy as a snail, at least is making some
+way in the world, in contradistinction from the failure who
+revolves ever in a single spot, like some barren old maid before
+the reflection in her looking-glass.
+
+Hence, as I listened to Gubin, there recurred to me more than
+one instance of his type.
+
+"Yes, I have succeeded in observing life throughout," he
+muttered drowsily as his head sank slowly upon his breast.
+
+And sleep overtook myself with similar suddenness. Apparently
+that slumber was of a few minutes' duration only, yet what
+aroused me was Gubin pulling at my leg.
+
+"Get up now," he said. "It is time that we were off."
+
+And as his bluish-grey eyes peered into my face, somehow I
+derived from their mournful expression a sense of
+intellectuality. Beneath the hair on his hollow cheeks were
+reddish veins, while similar veins, bluish in tint, covered with
+a network his temples, and his bare arms had the appearance of
+being made of tanned leather.
+
+Dawn had not yet broken when we rose and proceeded through the
+slumbering streets beneath a sky that was of a dull yellow, and
+amid an atmosphere that was full of the smell of burning.
+
+"Five days now has the forest been on fire," observed Gubin.
+"Yet the fools cannot succeed in putting it out."
+
+Presently the establishment of the merchants Birkin lay before
+us, an establishment of curious aspect, since it constituted,
+rather, a conglomeration of appendages to a main building of
+ground floor and attics, with four windows facing on to the
+street, and a series of underpropping annexes. That series
+extended to the wing, and was solid and permanent, and bade fair
+to overflow into the courtyard, and through the entrance-gates,
+and across the street, and to the very kitchen-garden and
+flower-garden themselves. Also, it seemed to have been stolen
+piecemeal from somewhere, and at different periods, and from
+different localities, and tacked at haphazard on to the walls of
+the parent erection. Moreover, all the windows of the latter
+were small, and in their green panes, as they confronted the
+world, there was a timid and suspicious air, while, in
+particular, the three windows which faced upon the courtyard had
+iron bars to them. Lastly, there were posted, sentinel-like on
+the entrance-steps, two water-butts as a precaution against fire.
+
+"What think you of the place?" Gubin muttered as he peered into
+the well. "Isn't it a barbarous hole? The right thing would be
+to pull it down wholesale, and then rebuild it on larger and
+less restricted lines. Yet these fools merely go tacking new
+additions on to the old."
+
+For awhile his lips moved as in an incantation. Then he frowned,
+glanced shrewdly at the structures in question, and continued
+softly:
+
+"I may say in passing that the place is MINE."
+
+"YOURS? "
+
+"Yes, mine. At all events, so it used to be."
+
+And he pulled a grimace as though he had got the toothache
+before adding with an air of command:
+
+"Come! I will pump out the water, and YOU shall carry it to the
+entrance-steps and fill the water-butts. Here is a pail, and
+here a ladder."
+
+Whereafter, with a considerable display of strength, he set
+about his portion of the task, whilst I myself took pail in hand
+and advanced towards the steps to find that the water-butts
+were so rotten that, instead of retaining the water, they let it
+leak out into the courtyard. Gubin said with an oath:
+
+"Fine masters these--masters who grudge one a groat, and
+squander a rouble! What if a fire WERE to break out? Oh, the
+blockheads!"
+
+Presently, the proprietors in person issued into the courtyard
+--the stout, bald Peter Birkin, a man whose face was flushed even
+to the whites of his shifty eyes, and, close behind him, eke his
+shadow, Jonah Birkin-- a person of sandy, sullen mien, and
+overhanging brows, and dull, heavy eyes.
+
+"Good day, dear sir," said Peter Birkin thinly, as with a puffy
+hand he raised from his head a cloth cap, while Jonah nodded.
+And then, with a sidelong glance at myself, asked in a deep bass
+voice:
+
+"Who is this young man?"
+
+Large and important like peacocks, the pair then shuffled across
+the wet yard, and in so doing, went to much trouble to avoid
+soiling their polished shoes. Next Peter said to his brother:
+
+"Have you noticed that the water-butts are rotted? Oh, that
+fine Yakinika! He ought long ago to have been dismissed."
+
+"Who is that young man over there?" Jonah repeated with an air
+of asperity.
+
+"The son of his father and mother," Gubin replied quietly, and
+without so much as a glance at the brothers.
+
+"Well, come along," snuffled Peter with a drawling of his
+vowels. "It is high time that we were moving. It doesn't matter
+who the young man may be."
+
+And with that they slip-slopped across to the entrance gates,
+while Gubin gazed after them with knitted brows, and as the
+brothers were disappearing through the wicket said carelessly:
+
+" The old sheep! They live solely by the wits of their
+stepmother, and if it were not for her, they would long ago have
+come to grief. Yes, she is a woman beyond words clever. Once
+upon a time there were three brothers--Peter, Alexis, and Jonah;
+but, unfortunately, Alexis got killed in a brawl. A fine, tall
+fellow HE was, whereas these two are a pair of gluttons, like
+everyone else in this town. Not for nothing do three loaves
+figure on the municipal arms! Now, to work again! Or shall we
+take a rest?"
+
+Here there stepped on to the veranda a tall, well-grown young
+woman in an open pink bodice and a blue skirt who, shading blue
+eyes with her hand, scanned the courtyard and the steps, and
+said with some diffidence:
+
+"Good day, Yakov Vasilitch."
+
+With a good-humoured glance in response, and his mouth open,
+Gubin waved a hand in greeting:
+
+"Good day to YOU, Nadezhda Ivanovna," he replied. "How are you
+this morning? "
+
+Somehow this made her blush, and cross her arms upon her
+ample bosom, while her kindly, rounded, eminently Russian face
+evinced the ghost of a shy smile. At the same time, it was a
+face wherein not a single feature was of a kind to remain fixed
+in the memory, a face as vacant as though nature had forgotten
+to stamp thereon a single wish. Hence, even when the woman smiled
+there seemed to remain a doubt whether the smile had really
+materialised.
+
+"How is Natalia Vasilievna?" continued Gubin.
+
+"Much as usual," the woman answered softly.
+
+Whereafter hesitantly, and with downcast eyes, she essayed to
+cross the courtyard. As she passed me I caught a whiff of
+raspberries and currants.
+
+Disappearing into the grey mist through a small door with iron
+staples, she soon reissued thence with a hencoop, and, seating
+herself on the steps of the doorway, and setting the coop on her
+knees, took between her two large palms some fluttering,
+chirping, downy, golden chicks, and raised them to her ruddy
+lips and cheeks with a murmur of:
+
+"0h my little darlings! 0h my little darlings!"
+
+And in her voice, somehow, there was a note as of intoxication,
+of abandonment. Meanwhile dull, reddish sunbeams were beginning
+to peer through the fence, and to warm the long, pointed staples
+with which it was fastened together. While in a stream of water
+that was dripping from the eaves, and trickling over the floor
+of the court, and around the woman's feet, a single beam was
+bathing and quivering as though it would fain effect an advance
+to the woman's lap and the hencoop, and, with the soft, downy
+chicks, enjoy the caresses of the woman's bare white arms.
+
+"Ah, little things!" again she murmured. "Ah, little children
+of mine!"
+
+Upon that Gubin suddenly desisted from his task of hauling up
+the bucket, and, as he steadied the rope with his arms raised
+above his head, said quickly:
+
+"Nadezhda Ivanovna, you ought indeed to have had some
+children--six at the least! "
+
+Yet no reply came, nor did the woman even look at him.
+
+The rays of the sun were now spreading, smokelike and
+greyish-yellow, over the silver river. Above the river's calm
+bed a muslin texture of mist was coiling. Against the nebulous
+heavens the blue of the forest was rearing itself amid the
+fragrant, pungent fumes from the burning timber.
+
+Yet still asleep amid its sheltering half-circle of forest was
+the quiet little town of Miamlin, while behind it, and
+encompassing it as with a pair of dark wings, the forest in
+question looked as though it were ruffling its feathers in
+preparation for further flight beyond the point where, the
+peaceful Oka reached, the trees stood darkening, overshadowing
+the water's clear depths, and looking at themselves therein.
+
+Yet, though the hour was so early, everything seemed to have
+about it an air of sadness, a mien as though the day lacked
+promise, as though its face were veiled and mournful, as though,
+not yet come to birth, it nevertheless were feeling weary in
+advance.
+
+Seating myself by Gubin on some trampled straw in the hut
+ordinarily used by the watchman of the Birkins' extensive
+orchard, I found that, owing to the orchard being set on a
+hillside, I could see over the tops of the apple and pear and
+fig trees, where their tops hung bespangled with dew as with
+quicksilver, and view the whole town and its multicoloured
+churches, yellow, newly-painted prison, and yellow-painted bank.
+
+And while in the town's lurid, four-square buildings I could
+trace a certain resemblance to the aces of clubs stamped upon
+convicts' backs, in the grey strips of the streets I could trace
+a certain resemblance to a number of rents in an old, ragged,
+faded, dusty coat. Indeed, that morning all comparisons seemed
+to take on a tinge of melancholy; the reason being that
+throughout the previous evening there had been moaning in my
+soul a mournful dirge on the future life.
+
+With nothing, however, were the churches of the town of which I
+am speaking exactly comparable, for many of them had attained a
+degree of beauty the contemplation of which caused the town to
+assume throughout-- a different, a more pleasing and seductive,
+aspect. Thought I to myself: "Would that men had fashioned all
+other buildings in the town as the churches have been fashioned!"
+
+One of the latter, an old, squat edifice the blank windows of
+which were deeply sunken in the stuccoed walls, was known as the
+"Prince's Church," for the reason that it enshrined the remains
+of a local Prince and his wife, persons of whom it stood
+recorded that "they did pass all their lives in kindly,
+unchanging love." . . .
+
+The following night Gubin and I chanced to see Peter Birkin's
+tall, pale, timid young wife traverse the garden on her way to a
+tryst in the washhouse with her lover, the precentor of the
+Prince's Church. And as clad in a simple gown, and
+barefooted, and having her ample shoulders swathed in an
+old, gold jacket or shawl of some sort, she crossed the orchard
+by a path running between two lines of apple trees; she walked
+with the unhasting gait of a cat which is crossing a yard after
+a shower of rain, and from time to time, whenever a puddle is
+encountered, lifts and shakes fastidiously one of its soft paws.
+Probably, in the woman's case, this came of the fact that things
+kept pricking and tickling her soles as she proceeded. Also, her
+knees, I could see, were trembling, and her step had in it a
+certain hesitancy, a certain lack of assurance.
+
+Meanwhile, bending over the garden from the warm night sky, the
+moon's kindly visage, though on the wane, was shining brightly;
+and when the woman emerged from the shadow of the trees I could
+discern the dark patches of her eyes, her rounded, half-parted
+lips, and the thick plait of hair which lay across her bosom.
+Also, in the moonlight her bodice had assumed a bluish tinge, so
+that she looked almost phantasmal; and when soundlessly, moving
+as though on air, she stepped back into the shadow of the trees,
+that shadow seemed to lighten.
+
+All this happened at midnight, or thereabouts, but neither of us
+was yet asleep, owing to the fact that Gubin had been telling me
+some interesting stories concerning the town and its families
+and inhabitants. However, as soon as he descried the woman
+looming like a ghost, he leapt to his feet in comical terror,then
+subsided on to the straw again, contracted his body as though he
+were in convulsions, and hurriedly made the sign of the cross.
+
+"Oh Jesus our Lord!" he gasped. "Tell me what that is, tell me
+what that is!"
+
+"Keep quiet, you," I urged.
+
+Instead, lurching in my direction, he nudged me with his arm,
+
+"Is it Nadezhda, think you?" he whispered.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Phew! The scene seems like a dream. Just in the same way, and
+in the very same place, did her mother-in-law, Petrushka's
+stepmother, use to come and walk. Yes, it was just like this."
+
+Then, rolling over, face downwards, he broke into subdued,
+malicious chuckles; whereafter, seizing my hand and sawing it up
+and down, he whispered amid his exultant pants:
+
+"I expect Petrushka is asleep, for probably he has taken too
+much liquor at the Bassanov's smotrini. [A festival at which a
+fiance pays his first visit to the house of the parents of his
+betrothed.]  Aye, he will be asleep. And as for Jonah, HE will
+have gone to Vaska Klochi. So tonight, until morning, Nadezhda
+will be able to kick up her heels to her heart's content."
+
+I too had begun to surmise that the woman was come thither for
+purposes of her own. Yet the scene was almost dreamlike in its
+beauty. It thrilled me to the soul to watch how the woman's blue
+eyes gazed about her--gazed as though she were ardently,
+caressingly whispering to all living creatures, asleep or awake:
+
+"0h my darlings! 0h my darlings!"
+
+Beside me the uncouth, broken-down Gubin went on in hoarse
+accents:
+
+"You must know that she is Petrushka's THIRD wife, a woman whom
+he took to himself from the family of a merchant of Murom. Yet
+the town has it that not only Petrushka, but also Jonah, makes
+use of her--that she acts as wife to both brothers, and therefore
+lacks children. Also has it been said of her that one Trinity
+Sunday she was seen by a party of women to misconduct herself in
+this garden with a police sergeant, and then to sit on his lap
+and weep. Yet this last I do not wholly believe, for the
+sergeant in question is a veteran scarcely able to put one foot
+before the other. Also, Jonah, though a brute, lives in abject
+fear of his stepmother."
+
+Here a worm-eaten apple fell to the ground, and the woman
+paused; whereafter, with head a little raised, she resumed her
+way with greater speed.
+
+As for Gubin, he continued, unchecked, though with a trifle less
+animosity, rather as though he were reading aloud a manuscript
+which he found wearisome:
+
+"See how a man like Peter Birkin may pride himself upon his
+wealth, and receive honour during his lifetime, yet all the
+while have the devil grinning over his shoulder!"
+
+Then he, Gubin, kept silent awhile, and merely breathed
+heavily, and twisted his body about. But suddenly, he resumed in
+a strange whisper:
+
+"Fifteen years ago--no, surely it was longer ago than that?
+--Madame Nadkin, Nadezhda's mother-in-law, made it her practice
+to come to this spot to meet her lover. And a fine gallant HE
+was!"
+
+Somehow, as I watched the woman creeping along, and looking as
+though she were intending to commit a theft, or as though she
+fancied that at any moment she might see the plump brothers
+Birkin issue from the courtyard into the garden and come
+shuffling ponderously over the darkened ground, with ropes and
+cudgels grasped in coarse, red hands which knew no pity;
+somehow, as I watched her, I felt saddened, and paid little heed
+to Gubin's whispered remarks, so intently were my eyes fixed
+upon the granary wall as, after gliding along it awhile, the
+woman bent her head and disappeared through the dark blue of the
+washhouse door. As for Gubin, he went to sleep with a last
+drowsy remark of:
+
+"Life is all falsity. Husbands, wives, fathers, children--all of
+them practise deceit."
+
+In the east, portions of the sky were turning to light purple,
+and other portions to a darker hue, while from time to time I
+could see, looming black against those portions, coils of smoke
+the density of which kept being stabbed with fiery spikes of
+flame, so that the vague, towering forest looked like a hill on
+the top of which a fiery dragon was crawling about, and
+writhing, and intermittently raising tremulous, scarlet wings,
+and as often relapsing into, becoming submerged in, the bank
+of vapour. And, in contemplating the spectacle, I seemed
+actually to be able to hear the cruel, hissing din of combat
+between red and black, and to see pale, frightened rabbits
+scudding from underneath the roots of trees amid showers of
+sparks, and panting, half-suffocated birds fluttering wildly
+amid the branches as further and further afield, and more and
+more triumphantly, the scarlet dragon unfurled its wings, and
+consumed the darkness, and devoured the rain-soaked timber.
+
+Presently from the dark, blurred doorway in the wall of the
+washhouse there emerged a dark figure which went flitting away
+among the trees, while after it someone called in a sharp,
+incisive whisper:
+
+"Do not forget. You MUST come."
+
+"Oh, I shall be only too glad!"
+
+"Very well. In the morning the lame woman shall call upon you.
+Do you hear?"
+
+And as the woman disappeared from view the other person
+sauntered across the garden, and scaled the fence with a clatter.
+
+That night I could not sleep, but, until dawn, lay watching the
+burning forest as gradually the weary moon declined, and the
+lamp of Venus, cold and green as an emerald, came into view over
+the crosses on the Prince's Church. Indeed was the latter a
+fitting place for Venus to illumine if really it had been the
+case that the Prince and Princess had "passed their lives in
+kindly, unchanging love"!
+
+Gradually, the dew cleared the trees of the night darkness, and
+caused the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed
+and red raspberry, and to sparkle with the gold of their mildew.
+Also, there came hovering about us goldfinches with their little
+red-hooded crests, and fussy tomtits in their cravats of yellow,
+while a nimble,dark, blue woodpecker scaled the stem of an
+apple tree. And everywhere, yellow leaves fluttered to earth,
+and, in doing so, so closely resembled birds as to make it not
+always easy to distinguish whether a leaf or a tomtit had
+glimmered for a moment in the air.
+
+Gubin awoke, sighed, and with his gnarled knuckles gave his
+puffy eyes a rub. Then he raised himself upon all-fours, and,
+crawling, much dishevelled with sleep, out of the watchman's
+hut, snuffed the air (a process in which his movements
+approximated comically to those of a keen-nosed watch-dog).
+Finally he rose to his feet, and, in the act, shook one of the
+trees so violently as to cause a bough to shed its burden of
+ripe fruit, and disperse the apples hither and thither over the
+dry surface of the ground, or cause them to bury themselves
+among the long grass. Three of the juiciest apples he duly
+recovered, and, after examination of their exterior, probed with
+his teeth, while kicking away from him as many of the remainder
+as he could descry.
+
+"Why spoil those apples?" I queried
+
+"Oh, so you are NOT asleep?" he countered with a nod of his
+melon-shaped cranium. "As a matter of fact, a few apples won't
+be missed, for there are too many of them about. My own father
+it was that planted the trees which have grown them."
+
+Then, turning upon me a keen, good-humoured eye, and chuckling,
+he added:
+
+"What about that Nadezhda? Ah, she is a clever woman indeed!
+Yet I have a surprise in store for her and her lover."
+
+"Why should you have?"
+
+"Because I desire to benefit mankind at large" (this was said
+didactically, and with a frown). "For, no matter where I detect
+evil or underhandedness, it is my duty-- I feel it to be my duty--
+to expose that evil, and to lay it bare. There exist people who
+need to be taught a lesson, and to whom I long to cry: 'Sinners
+that you are, do you lead more righteous lives!'"
+
+From behind some clouds the sun was rising with a disk as murky
+and mournful as the face of an ailing child. It was as though he
+were feeling conscious that he had done amiss in so long
+delaying to shed light upon the world, in so long dallying on
+his bed of soft clouds amid the smoke of the forest fire. But
+gradually the cheering beams suffused the garden throughout, and
+evoked from the ripening fruit an intoxicating wave of scent in
+which there could be distinguished also the bracing breath of
+autumn.
+
+Simultaneously there rose into the sky, in the wake of the sun,
+a dense stratum of cloud which, blue and snow-white in colour,
+lay with its soft hummocks reflected in the calm Oka, and so
+wrought therein a secondary firmament as profound and impalpable
+as its original.
+
+"Now then, Makar!" was Gubin's command, and once more I posted
+myself at the bottom of the well. About three sazheni in depth,
+and lined with cold, damp mud to above the level of my middle,
+the orifice was charged with a stifling odour both of rotten
+wood and of something more intolerable still. Also, whenever I
+had filled the pail with mud, and then emptied it into the
+bucket and shouted "Right away!" the bucket would start
+swinging against my person and bumping it, as unwillingly it
+went aloft, and thereafter discharge upon my head and shoulders
+clots of filth and drippings of water--meanwhile screening, with
+its circular bottom, the glowing sun and now scarce visible
+stars. In passing, the spectacle of those stars' waning both
+pained and cheered me, for it meant that for a companion in the
+firmament they now had the sun. Hence it was until my neck felt
+almost fractured, and my spine and the nape of my neck were
+aching as though clamped in a cast of plaster of paris, that I
+kept my eyes turned aloft. Yes, anything to gain a sight of the
+stars! From them I could not remove my vision, for they seemed
+to exhibit the heavens in a new guise, and to convey to me the
+joyful tidings that in the sky there was present also the sun.
+
+Yet though, meanwhile, I tried to ponder on something great, I
+never failed to find myself cherishing the absurd, obstinate
+apprehension that soon the Birkins would leave their beds, enter
+the courtyard, and have Nadezhda betrayed to them by Gubin.
+
+And throughout there kept descending to me from above the
+latter's inarticulate, as it were damp-sodden, observations.
+
+"Another rat!" I heard him exclaim. "To think that those two
+fellows, men of money, should neglect for two whole years to
+clean out their well! Why, what can the brutes have been
+drinking meanwhile? Look out below, you!"
+
+And once more, with a creaking of the pulley, the bucket would
+descend--bumping and thudding against the lining of the well as
+it did so, and bespattering afresh my head and shoulders with
+its filth. Rightly speaking, the Birkins ought to have cleared
+out the well themselves!
+
+"Let us exchange places," I cried at length.
+
+"What is wrong?" inquired Gubin in response
+
+"Down here it is cold--I can't stand it any longer."
+
+"Gee up!" exclaimed Gubin to the old horse which supplied the
+leverage power for the bucket; whereupon I seated myself upon
+the edge of the receptacle and went aloft, where everything was
+looking so bright and warm as to bear a new and unwontedly
+pleasing appearance.
+
+So now it was Gubin's turn to stand at the bottom of the well.
+And soon, in addition to the odour of decay, and a subdued sound
+of splashing, and the rumblings and bumpings of the iron bucket
+against its chain, there began to come up from the damp, black
+cavity a perfect stream of curses.
+
+"The infernal skinflints!" I heard my companion exclaim.
+
+"Hullo, here is something! A dog or a baby, eh? The damned old
+barbarians!"
+
+And the bucket ascended with, among its contents, a sodden and
+most ancient hat. With the passage of time Gubin's temper grew
+worse and worse.
+
+"If I SHOULD find a baby here," next he exclaimed, "I shall
+report the matter to the police, and get those blessed old
+brothers into trouble."
+
+Each movement of the leathern-hided, wall-eyed steed which did
+our bidding was accompanied by a swishing of a sandy tail which
+had for its object the brushing away of autumn's harbingers, the
+bluebottles. Almost with the tranquil gait of a religious did
+the animal accomplish its periodical journeys from the wall to
+the entrance gates and back again; after which it always heaved
+a profound sigh, and stood with its bony crest lowered.
+
+Presently, from a corner of the yard that lay screened behind
+some rank, pale, withered, trampled herbage a door screeched.
+Into the yard there issued Nadezhda Birkin, carrying a bunch
+of keys, and followed by a lady who, elderly and rotund of
+figure, had a few dark hairs growing on her full and rather
+haughty upper lip. As the two walked towards the cellar
+(Nadezhda being clad only in an under-petticoat, with a chemise
+half-covering her shoulders, and slippers thrust on to bare
+feet), I perceived from the languor of the younger woman's gait
+that she was feeling weary indeed.
+
+"Why do you look at us like that?" her senior inquired of me
+as she drew level. And as she did so the eyes that peered at me
+from above the full and, somehow, displaced-looking cheeks bid
+in them a dim, misty, half-blind expression.
+
+"That must be Peter Birkin's mother-in-law," was my unspoken
+reflection.
+
+At the door of the cellar Nadezhda handed the keys to her
+companion, and with a slow step which set her ample bosom
+swaying, and increased the disarray of the bodice on her round,
+but broad, shoulders, approached myself, and said quietly:
+
+"Please open the gutter-sluice and let out the water into the
+street, or the yard will soon be flooded. Oh, the smell of it!
+What is that thing there? A rat? Oh batinshka, what a horrible
+mess!"
+
+Her face had about it a drawn look, and under her eyes there
+were a pair of dark patches, and in their depths the dry glitter
+of a person who has spent a night of waking. True, it was a face
+still fresh of hue; yet beads of sweat were standing on the
+forehead, and her shoulders looked grey and heavy--as grey and
+heavy as unleavened bread which the fire has coated with a thin
+crust, yet failed to bake throughout.
+
+"Please, also, open the wicket," she continued. "And, in case
+a lame old beggar-woman should call, come and tell me. I am the
+Nadezhda Ivanovna for whom she will inquire. Do you understand?"
+
+From the well, at this point, there issued the words:
+
+"Who is that speaking?"
+
+"It is the mistress," I replied.
+
+"What? Nadezhda? With her I have a bone to pick."
+
+"What did he say?" the woman asked tensely as she raised her
+dark, thinly pencilled brows, and made as though to go and lean
+over the well. Independently of my own volition I forestalled
+what Gubin might next have been going to say by remarking:
+
+"I must tell you that last night he saw you walking in the
+garden here."
+
+"Indeed? " she ejaculated, and drew herself to her full height.
+Yet in doing so she blushed to her shoulders, and, clapping
+plump hands to her bosom, and opening dark eyes to their
+fullest, said in a hasty and confused whisper as, again paling
+and shrinking in stature, she subsided like a piece of pastry
+that is turning heavy:
+
+"Good Lord! WHAT did he see? . . . If the lame woman should
+call, you must not admit her. No, tell her that she will not be
+wanted, that I cannot, that I must not--But see here. Here is a
+rouble for you. Oh, good Lord!"
+
+By this time even louder and more angry exclamations had begun
+to ascend from Gubin. Yet the only sound to reach my ears was
+the woman's muttered whispering, and as I glanced into her face
+I perceived that its hitherto high-coloured and rounded contours
+had fallen in, and turned grey, and that her flushed lips were
+trembling to such an extent as almost to prevent the
+articulation of her words. Lastly, her eyes were frozen into an
+expression of pitiful, doglike terror.
+
+Suddenly she shrugged her shoulders, straightened her form, put
+away from her the expression of terror, and said quietly, but
+incisively:
+
+"You will not need to say anything about this. Allow me."
+
+And with a swaying step she departed--a step so short as almost
+to convey the impression that her legs were bound together. Yet
+while the gait was the gait of a person full of suppressed fury,
+it was also the gait of a person who can scarcely see an inch in
+advance.
+
+"Haul away, you!" shouted Gubin.
+
+I hauled him up in a state of cold and wet; whereafter he fell
+to stamping around the coping of the well, cursing, and waving
+his arms.
+
+"What have you been thinking of all this time?" he
+vociferated. "Why, for ever so long I shouted and shouted to
+you!"
+
+"I have been telling Nadezhda that last night you saw her
+walking in the garden."
+
+He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl.
+
+"Who gave you leave to do so?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Wait a moment. I said that it was only in a dream, that you
+saw her crossing the garden to the washhouse."
+
+"Indeed? And why did you do that? "
+
+Somehow, as, barelegged and dripping with mud, he stood
+blinking his eyes at me with a most disagreeable expression, he
+looked extremely comical.
+
+"See here," I remarked, "you have only to go and tell her
+husband about her for me to go and tell him the same story about
+your having seen the whole thing in a dream."
+
+"Why?" cried Gubin, now almost beside himself. Presently, however, he
+recovered sufficient self-possession to grin and ask in an
+undertone:
+
+"HOW MUCH DID SHE GIVE YOU?"
+
+I explained to him that my sole reason for what I had done had
+been that I pitied the woman, and feared lest the brothers
+Birkin should do an injury to one who at least ought not to be
+betrayed. Gubin began by declining to believe me, but
+eventually, after the matter had been thought out, said:
+
+"Acceptance of money for doing what is right is certainly
+irregular; but at least is it better than acceptance of money
+for conniving at sin. Well, you have spoilt my scheme, young
+fellow. Hired only to clean out the well, I would nevertheless
+have cleaned out the establishment as a whole, and taken
+pleasure in doing so."
+
+Then once more he relapsed into fury, and muttered as he
+scurried round and round the well:
+
+"How DARED you poke your nose into other people's affairs? Who
+are YOU in this establishment?"
+
+The air was hot and arid, yet still the sky was as dull as
+though coated throughout with the dust of summer, and, as yet,
+one could gaze at the sun's purple, rayless orb without
+blinking, and as easily as one could have gazed at the glowing
+embers of a wood fire.
+
+Seated on the fence, a number of rooks were directing
+intelligent black eyes upon the heaps of mud which lay around
+the coping of the well. And from time to time they fluttered
+their wings impatiently, and cawed.
+
+"I got you some work," Gubin continued in a grumbling tone,
+"and put heart into you with the prospect of employment. And now
+you have gone and treated me like --"
+
+At this point I caught the sound of a horse trotting towards the
+entrance-gates, and heard someone shout, as the animal drew
+level with the house:
+
+"YOUR timber too has caught alight!"
+
+Instantly, frightened by the shout, the rooks took to their
+wings and flew away. Also, a window sash squeaked, and the
+courtyard resounded with sudden bustle--the culinary regions
+vomiting the elderly lady and the tousled, half-clad Jonah; and
+an open window the upper half of the red-headed Peter.
+
+"Men, harness up as quickly as possible!" the latter cried,
+his voice charged with a plaintive note.
+
+And, indeed, he had hardly spoken before Gubin led out a fat
+roan pony, and Jonah pulled from a shelter a light buggy or
+britchka. Meanwhile Nadezhda called from the veranda to Jonah:
+
+"Do you first go in and dress yourself! "
+
+The elderly lady then unfastened the gates; whereupon a stunted,
+oldish muzhik in a red shirt limped into the yard with a
+foam-flecked steed, and exclaimed:
+
+"It is caught in two places--at the Savelkin clearing and near
+the cemetery!"
+
+Immediately the company pressed around him with groans and
+ejaculations, and Gubin alone continued to harness the pony with
+swift and dexterous hands--saying to me through his teeth as he
+did so, and without looking at anyone:
+
+"That is how those wretched folk ALWAYS defer things until too
+late."
+
+The next person to present herself at the entrance gates was a
+beggar-woman. Screwing up her eyes in a furtive manner, she
+droned:
+
+"For the sake of Lord Je-e-esus!"
+
+"God will give you alms! God will give you alms!" was
+Nadezhda's reply as, turning pale, she flung out her arms in the
+old woman's direction. "You see, a terrible thing has happened
+--our timber lands have caught fire. You must come again later."
+
+Upon that Peter's bulky form (which had entirely filled the
+window from which it had been leaning), disappeared with a jerk,
+and in its stead there came into view the figure of a woman.
+Said she contemptuously:
+
+"See the visitation with which God has tried us, you men of
+faint hearts and indolent hands!"
+
+The woman's hair was grey at the temples, and had resting upon
+it a silken cap which so kept changing colour in the sunlight as
+to convey to one. the impression that her head was bonneted with
+steel, while in her face, picturesque but dark (seemingly
+blackened with smoke), there gleamed two pupil-less blue eyes of
+a kind which I had never before beheld.
+
+"Fools," she continued, "how often have I not pointed out to
+you the necessity of cutting a wider space between the timber
+and the cemetery?"
+
+From a furrow above the woman's small but prominent nose, a
+pair of heavy brows extended to temples that were silvered over.
+As she spoke there fell a strange silence amid which save for
+the pony's pawing of the mire no sound mingled with the
+sarcastic reproaches of the deep, almost masculine voice.
+
+"That again is the mother-in-law," was my inward reflection.
+
+Gubin finished the harnessing--then said to Jonah in the tone of
+a superior addressing a servant:
+
+"Go in and dress yourself, you object!"
+
+Nevertheless, the Birkins drove out of the yard precisely as they
+were, while the peasant mounted his belathered steed and
+followed them at a trot; and the elderly lady disappeared from
+the window, leaving its panes even darker and blacker than they
+had previously been. Gubin, slip-slopping through the puddles
+with bare feet, said to me with a sharp glance as he moved to
+shut the entrance gates:
+
+"I presume that I can now take in hand the little affair of
+which you know."
+
+"Yakov!" at this juncture someone shouted from the house.
+
+Gubin straightened himself a la militaire.
+
+"Yes, I am coming," he replied.
+
+Whereafter, padding on bare soles, he ascended the steps.
+Nadezhda, standing at their top, turned away with a frown of
+repulsion at his approach, and nodded and beckoned to myself,
+
+"What has Yakov said to you? " she inquired
+
+"He has been reproaching me."
+
+"Reproaching you for what?"
+
+"For having spoken to you."
+
+She heaved a sigh.
+
+"Ah, the mischief-maker!" she exclaimed. "And what is it that
+he wants?"
+
+As she pouted her displeasure her round and vacant face looked
+almost childlike.
+
+"Good Lord!" she added. "What DO such men as he want?"
+
+Meanwhile the heavens were becoming overspread with dark grey
+clouds, and presaging a flood of autumn rain, while from the
+window near the steps the voice of Peter's mother-in-law was
+issuing in a steady stream. At first, however, nothing was
+distinguishable save a sound like the humming of a spindle.
+
+"It is my mother that is speaking," Nadezhda explained softly.
+"She'll give it him! Yes, SHE will protect me!"
+
+Yet I scarcely heard Nadezhda's words, so greatly was I feeling
+struck with the quiet forcefulness, the absolute assurance, of
+what was being said within the window.
+
+"Enough, enough! " said the voice. "Only through lack of
+occupation have you joined the company of the righteous."
+
+Upon this I made a move to approach closer to the window;
+whereupon Nadezhda whispered:
+
+"Whither are you going? You must not listen."
+
+While she was yet speaking I heard come from the window:
+
+"Similarly your revolt against mankind has come of idleness, of
+lack of an interest in life. To you the world has been
+wearisome, so, while devising this revolt as a resource, you
+have excused it on the ground of service of God and love of
+equity, while in reality constituting yourself the devil's
+workman."
+
+Here Nadezhda plucked at my sleeve, and tried to pull me away,
+but I remarked:
+
+"I MUST learn what Gubin has got to say in answer."
+
+This made Nadezhda smile, and then whisper with a confiding
+glance at my face:
+
+"You see, I have made a full confession to her. I went and said
+to her: 'Mamenka, I have had a misfortune.' And her only reply
+as she stroked my hair was, 'Ah, little fool! ' Thus you see
+that she pities me. And what makes her care the less that I
+should stray in that direction is that she yearns for me to bear
+her a child, a grandchild, as an heir to her property."
+
+Next, Gubin was heard saying within the room:
+
+"Whensoever an offence is done against the law I..."
+
+At once a stream of impressive words from the other drowned his
+utterance:
+
+"An offence is not always an offence of moment, since sometimes
+a person outgrows the law, and finds it too restrictive. No one
+person ought to be rated against another. For whom alone ought
+we to fear? Only the God in whose sight all of us have erred!"
+
+And though in the elderly lady's voice there was weariness and
+distaste, the words were spoken slowly and incisively. Upon this
+Gubin tried to murmur something or another, but again his
+utterance failed to edge its way into his interlocutor's
+measured periods:
+
+"No great achievement is it," she said, "to condemn a fellow
+creature. For always it is easy to sit in judgment upon our
+fellows. And even if a fellow creature be allowed to pursue an
+evil course unchecked, his offence may yet prove productive of
+good. Remember how in every case the Saints reached God. Yet how
+truly sanctified, by the time that they did so reach Him, were
+they? Let this ever be borne in mind, for we are over-apt to
+condemn and punish!"
+
+"In former days, Natalia Vassilievna, you took away from me my
+substance, you took my all. Also, let me recount to you how we
+fell into disagreement."
+
+"No; there is no need for that."
+
+"Thereafter, I ceased to be able to bear the contemplation of
+myself; I ceased to consider myself as of any value."
+
+"Let the past remain the past. That which must be is not to be
+avoided."
+
+"Through you, I say, I lost my peace of mind."
+
+Nadezhda nudged me, and whispered with gay malice:
+
+"That is probably true, for they say that once he was one of
+her lovers."
+
+Then she recollected herself and, clapping her hands to her
+face, cried through her fingers:
+
+"Oh good Lord! What have I said? No, no, you must not believe
+these tales. They are only slanders, for she is the best of
+women."
+
+"When evil has been done," continued the quiet voice within the
+window, "it can never be set right by recounting it to others.
+He upon whom a burden has been laid should try to bear it. And,
+should he fail to bear it, the fact will mean that the burden
+has been beyond his strength."
+
+"It was through you that I lost everything. It was you that
+stripped me bare."
+
+"But to that which you lost I added movement. Nothing in life
+is ever lost; it merely passes from one hand to another--from
+the unskilled hand to the experienced-- so that even the bone
+picked of a dog may ultimately become of value."
+
+"Yes, a bone--that is what I am."
+
+"Why should you say that? You are still a man."
+
+"Yes, a man, but a man useful for what?"
+
+"Useful, even though the use may not yet be fully apparent."
+
+To this, after a pause, the speaker added:
+
+"Now, depart in peace, and make no further attempt against this
+woman. Nay, do not even speak ill of her if you can help it, but
+consider everything that you saw to have been seen in a dream."
+
+"Ah!" was Gubin's contrite cry. "It shall be as you say. Yet,
+though I should hate, I could not bear, to grieve you, I must
+confess that the height whereon you stand is--"
+
+"Is what, 0h friend of mine?"
+
+"Nothing; save that of all souls in this world you are, without
+exception, the best."
+
+"Yakov Petrovitch, in this world you and I might have ended our
+lives together in honourable partnership. And even now, if God
+be willing, we might do so."
+
+"No. Rather must farewell be said."
+
+All became quiet within the window, except that after a
+prolonged silence there came from the woman a deep sigh, and
+then a whisper of, "0h Lord!"
+
+Treading softly, like a cat, Nadezhda darted away towards the
+steps; whereas I, less fortunate, was caught by the departing
+Gubin in the very act of leaving the neighbourhood of the
+window. Upon that he inflated his cheeks, ruffled up his sandy
+hair, turned red in the face like a man who has been through a
+fight, and cried in strange, querulous, high-pitched accents:
+
+"Hi! What were you doing just now? Long-legged devil that you
+are, I have no further use for you--I do not intend to work with
+you any more. So you can go."
+
+At the same moment the dim face, with its great blue eyes,
+showed itself at the window, and the stem voice inquired:
+
+"What does the noise mean?"
+
+"What does it mean? It means that I do not intend--"
+
+"You must not, if you wish to create a disturbance, do it
+anywhere but in the street. It must not be created here."
+
+"What is all this? " Nadezhda put in with a stamp of her foot.
+"What--"
+
+At this point, the cook rushed out with a toasting-fork and
+militantly ranged herself by Nadezhda's side, exclaiming:
+
+"See what comes of not having a single muzhik in the house!"
+
+I now prepared to withdraw, but, in doing so, glanced once more
+at the features of the elderly lady, and saw that the blue
+pupils were dilated so as almost to fill the eyes in their
+entirety, and to leave only a bluish margin. And strange and
+painful were those eyes--eyes fixed blindly, eyes which seemed to
+have strayed from their orbits through yielding to emotion and a
+consequent overstrain-- while the apple of the throat had swelled
+like the crop of a bird, and the sheen of the silken head-dress
+become as the sheen of metal. Involuntarily, I thought to myself:
+
+"It is a head that must be made of iron."
+
+By this time Gubin had penitently subsided, and was exchanging
+harmless remarks with the cook, while carefully avoiding my
+glance.
+
+"Good day to you, madame," at length I said as I passed the
+window.
+
+Not at once did she reply, but when she did so she said kindly:
+
+"And good day to YOU, my friend. Yes, I wish you good day."
+
+To which she added an inclination of the head which resembled
+nothing so much as a hammer which much percussion upon an anvil
+has wrought to a fine polish.
+
+
+
+NILUSHKA
+
+The timber-built town of Buev, a town which has several times
+been burnt to the ground, lies huddled upon a hillock above the
+river Obericha. Its houses, with their many-coloured shutters,
+stand so crowded together as to form around the churches and
+gloomy law courts a perfect maze--the streets which intersect the
+dark masses of houses meandering aimlessly hither and thither,
+and throwing off alleyways as narrow as sleeves, and feeling
+their way along plot-fences and warehouse walls, until, viewed
+from the hillock above, the town looks as though someone has
+stirred it up with a stick and dispersed and confused everything
+that it contains. Only from the point where Great Zhitnaia
+Street takes its rise from the river do the stone mansions of
+the local merchants (for the most part German colonists) cut a
+grim, direct line through the packed clusters of buildings
+constructed of wood, and skirt the green islands of gardens, and
+thrust aside the churches; whereafter, continuing its way
+through Council Square (still running inexorably straight), the
+thoroughfare stretches to, and traverses, a barren plain of
+scrub, and so reaches the pine plantation belonging to the
+Monastery of St. Michael the Archangel where the latter is
+lurking behind a screen of old red spruces of which the
+denseness seems to prop the very heavens, and which on clear,
+sunny days can be seen rising to mark the spot whence the
+monastery's crosses, like the gilded birds of the forest of
+eternal silence, scintillate a constant welcome.
+
+At a distance of some ten houses before Zhitnaia Street
+debouches upon the plain which I have mentioned there begin to
+diverge from the street and to trend towards a ravine, and
+eventually to lose themselves in the latter's recesses, the
+small, squat shanties with one or two windows apiece which
+constitute the suburb of Tolmachikha. This suburb, it may be
+said, had as its original founders the menials of a landowner
+named Tolmachev--a landowner who, after emancipating his serfs
+some thirteen years before all serfs were legally emancipated,
+[In the year 1861] was, for his action, visited with such
+bitter revilement that, in dire offence at the same, he ended by
+becoming an inmate of the monastery, and there spending ten
+years under the vow of silence, until death overtook him amid a
+peaceful obscurity born of the fact that the authorities had
+forbidden his exhibition to pilgrims or strangers.
+
+It is in the very cots originally apportioned to Tolmachev's
+menials, at the time, fifty years ago, when those menials were
+converted into citizens, that the present inhabitants of the
+suburb dwell. And never have they been burnt out of those homes,
+although the same period has seen all Buev save Zhitnaia Street
+consumed, and everywhere that one may delve within the township
+one will be sure to come across undestroyed hearthstones.
+
+The suburb, as I have said, stands at the hither end and on the
+sloping side of one of the arms of a deep, wooded ravine, with
+its windows facing towards the ravine's yawning mouth, and
+affording a view direct to the Mokrie (certain marshes beyond
+the Obericha) and the swampy forest of firs into which the dim
+red sun declines. Further on, the ravine trends across the
+plain,then bends round towards the western side of the town,
+cats away the clayey soil with an appetite which each spring
+increases, and which, carrying the soil down to the river, is
+gradually clogging the river's flow, diverting the muddy
+water towards the marshes, and converting those marshes into a
+lagoon outright. The fissure in question is named " The Great
+Ravine," and has its steep flanks so overgrown with chestnuts
+and laburnums that even in summertime its recesses are cool and
+moist, and so serve as a convenient trysting place for the
+poorer lovers of the suburb and the town, and witness their
+tea drinkings and frequently fatal quarrels, as well as being
+used by the more well-to-do for a dumping ground for rubbish of
+the nature of deceased dogs, cats, and horses.
+
+Pleasantly singing, there scours the bottom of the ravine the
+brook known as the Zhandarmski Spring, a brook celebrated
+throughout Buev for its crystal-cold water, which is so icy of
+temperature that even on a burning day it will make the teeth
+ache. This water the denizens of Tolmachikha account to be their
+peculiar property; wherefore they are proud of it, and drink it
+to the exclusion of any other, and so live to a green old age
+which in some cases cannot even reckon its years. And by way of
+a livelihood, the men of the suburb indulge in hunting, fishing,
+fowling, and thieving (not a single artisan proper does the
+suburb contain, save the cobbler Gorkov--a thin, consumptive
+skeleton of surname Tchulan); while, as regards the women, they,
+in winter, sew and make sacks for Zimmel's mill, and pull tow,
+and in summer they scour the plantation of the monastery for
+truffles and other produce, and the forest on the other side of
+the river for huckleberries. Also, two of the suburb's women
+practise as fortune tellers, while two others conduct an easy
+and highly lucrative trade in prostitution.
+
+The result is that the town, as distinguished from the suburb,
+believes the men of the latter to be one and all thieves, and
+the women and girls of the suburb to be one and all disreputable
+characters. Hence the town strives always to restrict and
+extirpate the suburb, while the suburbans retaliate upon the
+townsfolk with robbery and arson and murder, while despising
+those townsfolk for their parsimony, decorum, and avarice, and
+detesting the settled, comfortable mode of life which they lead.
+
+So poor, for that matter, is the suburb that never do even
+beggars resort thither, save when drunk. No, the only creatures
+which resort thither are dogs which subsist no one knows how as
+predatorily they roam from court to court with tails tucked
+between their flanks, and bloodless tongues hanging down, and
+legs ever prepared, on sighting a human being, to bolt into the
+ravine, or to let down their owners upon subservient bellies in
+expectation of a probable kick or curse.
+
+In short, every cranny of every cot in the place, with the grimy
+panes of their windows, and their lathed roofs overgrown with
+velvety moss, breathes forth the universal, deadly hopelessness
+induced by Russia's crushing poverty.
+
+In the Tolmachikhans' backyards grow only alders, elders, and
+weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the
+fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while
+masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little
+children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the
+highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged
+lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of
+their number carried off by diphtheria, while scarlatina and
+measles are as epidemic among them as is typhoid among their
+elders.
+
+Thus the sounds of life most to be heard throughout the suburb
+are the sounds either of weeping or of mad cursing. In general,
+however, life in Tolmachikha is lived quietly and lethargically.
+So much is this the case that in spring even the cats forbear to
+squall save in crushed and subdued accents. The only local
+person to sing is Felitzata; and even she does so only when she
+is drunk. It may be said that Felitzata is a saucy, cunning
+procuress, and does her singing in a peculiarly thick and
+rasping voice which, with many croaks and hiatuses, necessitates
+much closing of the eyes, and a great protruding of the apple of
+the throat. Indeed, it is only the women of the place who,
+turbulently quarrelsome and hysterically noisy, spend most of
+the day in scouring the streets with skirts tucked up, and never
+cease begging for pinches of salt or flour or spoonfuls of oil
+as they rail and screech at and beat their children, and thrust
+withered breasts into their babies' mouths, and rush and fling
+themselves about, and bawl in a constant endeavour to right
+their woebegone condition. Yes, all are dishevelled and dirty,
+and have wizened, bony faces, and the restless eyes of thieves.
+Never, indeed, is a woman plump of figure, save at the period
+when she is ill, and her eyes are dim, and her gait is laboured.
+Yet until they are forty, the majority of the women become
+pregnant with every winter, and on the arrival of spring may be
+seen walking abroad with large stomachs and blue hollows under
+the eyes. And even this does not prevent them from working with
+the same desperate energy as when they are not with child. In
+short, the inhabitants of the place resemble needles and threads
+with which some rough, clumsy, and impatient hand is for ever
+trying to darn a ragged cloth which as constantly parts and
+rends.
+
+**********************
+
+The chief person of repute in the suburb is my landlord, one
+Antipa Vologonov--a little old man who keeps a shop of "odd
+wares," and also lends money on pledge.
+
+Unfortunately, Antipa is a sufferer from a long-standing tendency
+to rheumatism, which has left him bow-legged, and has twisted and
+swollen his fingers to the extent that they will not bend. Hence,
+he always keeps his hands tucked into his sleeves, though
+seemingly he has the less use for them in that, even when he
+withdraws them from their shelter, he does so as cautiously as
+though he were afraid of their becoming dislocated.
+
+On the other hand, he never loses his temper, and he never grows
+excited.
+
+"Neither of those things suits me," he will say, "for my heart
+is dilated, and might at any moment fail."
+
+As for his face, it has high cheekbones which in places blossom
+into dark red blotches; an expression as calm as that of the
+face of a Khirghiz; a chin whence dangle wisps of mingled grey,
+red, and flaxen hair of a perpetually moist appearance; oblique
+and ever-changing eyes which are permanently contracted; a pair
+of thick, parti-coloured eyebrows which cast deep shadows over
+the eyes; and temples whereon a number of blue veins struggle
+with an irregular, sparse coating of bristles. Finally, about
+his whole personality there is something ever variable and
+intangible.
+
+Also, his gait is irritatingly slow; and the more so owing to
+his coat, which, of a cut devised by himself, consists, as it
+were, of cassock, sarafan [jacket], and waistcoat in one. As
+often as not he finds the skirts of the garment cumbering his
+legs; whereupon he has to stop and give them a kick. And thus it
+comes about that permanently the skirts are ragged and torn.
+
+"No need for hurry," is his customary remark. "Always, in
+time, does one win to one's pitch in the marketplace."
+
+His speech is cast in rounded periods, and displays a great love
+for ecclesiastical terms. On the occurrence of one such term, he
+pauses thereafter as though mentally he were adding to the term
+a very thick, a very black, full stop. Yet always he will
+converse with anyone, and at great length--his probable motive
+being a desire to leave behind him the reputation of a wise old
+man.
+
+In his shanty are three windows facing on to the street, and a
+partition-wall which divides it into two rooms of unequal size.
+In the larger room, which contains a Russian stove, he himself
+lives; in the smaller room I have my abode. By a passage the two
+are separated from a storeroom where, closeted behind a door to
+which there are a heavy, old-fashioned bolt and many iron and
+brass screws, Antipa preserves pledges left by his neighbours,
+such as samovars, ikons, winter clothing and the like. Of this
+storeroom he always carries the great indentated key at the back
+of the strap which upholds his cloth breeches; and, whenever the
+police call to ascertain whether he is harbouring any stolen
+goods, a long time ensues whilst he is shifting the key round to
+his stomach, and again a long time whilst he is unfastening it
+from the belt. Meanwhile, he says pompously to the Superintendent
+or the Deputy Superintendent:
+
+"Never do I take in goods of that kind. Of the truth of what I
+say, your honour, you have more than once assured yourself in
+person."
+
+Also, whenever Antipa sits down the key rattles against the back
+or the seat of his chair; whereupon he bends his arm with
+difficulty, and feels to see whether or not the key has come
+unslung. This I know for the reason that the partition-wall is
+not so thick but that I can hear his every breath drawn, and
+divine his every movement.
+
+Of an evening, when the misty sun is slanting across the river
+towards the auburn belt of pines, and distilling pink vapours
+from the sombre vista to be seen through the shaggy mouth of the
+ravine, Antipa Vologonov sets out a squat samovar that is dinted
+of side, and plated with green oxide on handle, turncock, and
+spout. Then he seats himself at his table by the window.
+
+At intervals I hear the evening stillness broken by questions
+put in a tone which implies always an expectation of a precise
+answer.
+
+"Where is Darika?"
+
+"He has gone to the spring for water." The answer is given
+whiningly, and in a thin voice.
+
+"And how is your sister?
+
+"Still in pain."
+
+"Yes? Well, you can go now."
+
+Giving a slight cough to clear his throat, the old man begins to
+sing in a quavering falsetto:
+
+Once a bullet smote my breast,
+And scarce the pang I felt.
+But ne'er the pang could be express'd
+Which love's flame since hath dealt!
+
+As the samovar hisses and bubbles, heavy footsteps resound in the
+street, and an indistinct voice says:
+
+"He thinks that because he is a Town Councillor he is also
+clever."
+
+"Yes; such folk are apt to grow very proud."
+
+"Why, all his brains put together wouldn't grease one of my
+boots!"
+
+And as the voices die away the old man's falsetto trickles forth
+anew, humming:
+
+"The poor man's anger... Minika! Hi, you! Come in here, and I
+will give you a bit of sugar. How is your father getting on? Is
+he drunk at present?"
+
+"No, sober, for he is taking nothing but kvas and cabbage soup."
+
+"And what is he doing for a living?"
+
+"Sitting at the table, and thinking."
+
+"And has your mother been beating him again?"
+
+"No--not again."
+
+"And she--how is she?"
+
+"Obliged to keep indoors."
+
+"Well, run along with you."
+
+Softly there next presents herself before the window Felitzata,
+a woman of about forty with a hawk-like gleam in her coldly
+civil eyes, and a pair of handsome lips compressed into a covert
+smile. She is well known throughout the suburb, and once had a
+son, Nilushka, who was the local " God's fool." Also she has the
+reputation of knowing what is correct procedure on all and
+sundry occasions, as well as of being skilled in lamentations,
+funeral rites, and festivities in connection with the musterings
+of recruits. Lastly she has had a hip broken, so that she walks
+with an inclination towards the left.
+
+Her fellow women say of her that her veins contain "a drop of
+gentle blood";  but probably the statement is inspired by no
+more than the fact that she treats everyone with the same cold
+civility. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about her,
+for her hands are slender and have long fingers, and her head
+is haughtily poised, and her voice has a metallic ring, even
+though the metal has, as it were, grown dull and rusty. Also,
+she speaks of everyone, herself included, in the most rough and
+downright terms, yet terms which are so simple that, though her
+talk may be disconcerting to listen to, it could never be called
+obscene.
+
+For instance, once I overheard Vologonov reproach her for not
+leading a more becoming life:
+
+"You ought to have more self-restraint," said he, "seeing that
+you are a lady, and also your own mistress."
+
+"That is played out, my friend," she replied. "You see, I have
+had very much to bear, for there was a time when such hunger
+used to gnaw at my belly as you would never believe. It was then
+that my eyes became dazzled with the tokens of shame. So I took
+my fill of love, as does every woman. And once a woman has
+become a light-o'-love she may as well doff her shift
+altogether, and use the body which God has given her. And, after
+all, an independent life is the best life; so I hawk myself
+about like a pot of beer, and say, 'Drink of this, anyone who
+likes, while it still contains liquor.'"
+
+"It makes one feel ashamed to hear such talk," said Vologonov
+with a sigh. In response she burst out laughing.
+
+"What a virtuous man!" was her comment upon his remark.
+
+Until now Antipa had spoken cautiously, and in an undertone,
+whereas the woman had replied in loud accents of challenge.
+
+"Will you come in and have some tea? " he said next as he leant
+out of the window.
+
+"No, I thank you. In passing, what a thing I have heard about
+you!"
+
+"Do not shout so loud. Of what are you speaking?"
+
+"Oh, of SUCH a thing!"
+
+"Of NOTHING, I imagine."
+
+"Yes, of EVERYTHING."
+
+"God, who created all things, alone knows everything."
+
+Whereafter the pair whispered together awhile. Then Felitzata
+disappeared as suddenly as she had come, leaving the old man
+sitting motionless. At length he heaved a profound sigh, and
+muttered to himself.
+
+"Into that Eve's ears be there poured the poison of the asp! .
+. . Yet pardon me, 0h God! Yea, pardon me!"
+
+The words contained not a particle of genuine contrition.
+Rather, I believe, he uttered them because he had a weakness not
+for words which signified anything, but for words which, being
+out of the way, were not used by the common folk of the suburb.
+
+****************************
+
+Sometimes Vologonov knocks at the partition-wall with a
+superannuated arshin measure which has only fifteen vershoki of
+its length remaining. He knocks, and shouts:
+
+"Lodger, would you care to join me in a pot of tea? "
+
+During the early days of our acquaintanceship he regarded me
+with marked and constant suspicion. Clearly he deemed me to be a
+police detective. But subsequently he took to scanning my face
+with critical curiosity, until at length he said with an air of
+imparting instruction:
+
+"Have you ever read Paradise Lost and Destroyed?"
+
+"No," I replied. "Only Paradise Regained."
+
+This led him to wag his parti-coloured beard in token that 'be
+disagreed with my choice', and to observe:
+
+"The reason why Adam lost Paradise is that he allowed Eve to
+corrupt him. And never did the Lord permit him to regain it. For
+who is worthy to return to the gates of Paradise? Not a single
+human being."
+
+And, indeed, I found it a waste of time to dispute the matter, for
+he merely listened to what I had to say, and then, without
+an attempt at refutation, repeated in the same tone as before,
+and exactly in the same words, his statement that " Adam lost
+Paradise for the reason that he allowed Eve to corrupt him."
+
+Similarly did women constitute our most usual subject of
+conversation.
+
+"You are young," once he said, " and therefore a human being
+bound to find forbidden fruit blocking your way at every step.
+This because the human race is a slave to its love of sin, or,
+in other words, to love of the Serpent. Yes, woman constitutes
+the prime impediment to everything in life, as history has many
+times affirmed. And first and foremost is she the source of
+restlessness. 'Charged with poison, the Serpent shall plunge in
+thee her fangs.' Which Serpent is, of course, our desire of the
+flesh, the Serpent at whose instigation the Greeks razed towns
+to the ground, and ravaged Troy and Carthagena and Egypt, and
+the Serpent which caused an amorous passion for the sister of
+Alexander Pavlovitch [The Emperor Alexander I] to bring about
+Napoleon's invasion of Russia. On the other hand, both the
+Mohammedan nations and the Jews have from earliest times grasped
+the matter aright, and kept their women shut up in their back
+premises; whereas WE permit the foulest of profligacy to exist,
+and walk hand in hand with our women, and allow them to graduate
+as female doctors and to pull teeth, and all the rest of it.
+The truth is that they ought not to be allowed to advance beyond
+midwife, since it is woman's business either to serve as a
+breeding animal or opprobriously to be called neiskusobrachnaia
+neviesta [Maid who hast never tasted of marriage.] Yes, woman's
+business should end there."
+
+Near the stove there ticks and clicks on the grimy wall that is
+papered with "rules and regulations " and sheets of yellow
+manuscript the pendulum of a small clock, with, hanging to one
+of its weights, a hammer and a horseshoe, and, to the other, a
+copper pestle. Also, in a corner of the room a number of ikons
+make a glittering show with their silver applique and the gilded
+halos which surmount their figures' black visages, while a stove
+with a ponderous grate glowers out of the window at the greenery
+in Zhitnaia Street and beyond the ravine (beyond the ravine
+everything looks bright and beautiful), and the dusty, dimly
+lighted storeroom across the passage emits a perennial odour of
+dried mushroom, tobacco leaves, and hemp oil.
+
+Vologonov stirs his strong, stewed tea with a battered old
+teaspoon, and says with a sigh as he sips a little:
+
+"All my life I have been engaged in gaining experience so that
+now I know most things, and ought to be listened to with
+attention. Usually folk do so listen to me, but though here and
+there one may find a living soul, of the rest it may be said: 'In
+the House of David shall terrible things come to pass, and
+fire shall consume the spirit of lechery.'"
+
+The words resemble bricks in that they seem, if possible, to
+increase the height of the walls of strange and extraneous
+events, and even stranger dramas, which loom for ever around, me.
+
+"For example," continues the old man, "why is Mitri Ermolaev
+Polukonov, our ex-mayor, lying dead before his time? Because he
+conceived a number of arrogant projects. For example, he sent
+his eldest son to study at Kazan-- with the result that during
+the son's second year at the University he, the son, brought
+home with him a curly-headed Jewess, and said to his father:
+'Without this woman I cannot live--in her are bound up my whole
+soul and strength.' Yes, a pass indeed! And from that day forth
+nothing but misfortune befell in that Yashka took to drink, the
+Jewess gave way to repining, and Mitri had to go perambulating
+the town with piteous invitations to 'come and see, my brethren,
+to what depths I have sunk!' And though, eventually, the Jewess
+died of a bloody flux, of a miscarriage, the past was beyond
+mending, and, while the son went to the bad, and took to drink
+for good and all, the father 'fell a victim by night to untimely
+death.' Yes, the lives of two folk were thus undone by 'the
+thorn-bearing company of Judaea.' Like ourselves, the Hebrew has
+a destiny of his own. And destiny cannot be driven out with a
+stick. Of each of us the destiny is unhasting. It moves slowly
+and quietly, and can never be avoided. 'Wait,' it says. ' Seek
+not to press onward.'"
+
+As he discourses, Vologonov's eyes ceaselessly change colour--now
+turning to a dull grey, and wearing a tired expression, and now
+becoming blue, and assuming a mournful air, and now (and most
+frequently of all) beginning to emit green flashes of an
+impartial malevolence.
+
+"Similarly, the Kapustins, once a powerful family, came at
+length to dust-became as nothing. It was a family the members of
+which were ever in favour of change, and devoted to anything
+that was new. In fact, they went and set up a piano! Well, of
+them only Valentine is still on his legs, and he (he is a doctor
+of less than forty years of age) is a hopeless drunkard, and
+saturated with dropsy, and fallen a prey to asthma, so that his
+cancerous eyes protrude horribly. Yes, the Kapustins, like the
+Polukonovs, may be 'written down as dead.'"
+
+Throughout, Vologonov speaks in a tone of unassailable
+conviction, in a tone implying that never could things happen,
+never could things have happened, otherwise than as he has
+stated. In fact, in his hands even the most inexplicable, the
+most grievous, phenomena of life become such as a law has
+inevitably decreed.
+
+"And the same thing will befall the Osmukhins," he next
+remarks. "Let them be a warning to you never to make friends
+with Germans, and never to engage in business with them. In
+Russia any housewife may brew beer; yet our people will not
+drink it--they are more used to spirits. Also, Russian folk like
+to attain their object in drinking AT ONCE; and a shkalik of
+vodka will do more to sap wit than five kruzhki of beer. Once
+our people liked uniform simplicity; but now they are
+become like a man who was born blind, and has suddenly acquired
+sight. A change indeed! For thirty-three years did Ilya of Murom
+[Ilya Murometz, the legendary figure most frequently met with In
+Russian bilini (folk songs), and probably identical with Elijah
+the Prophet, though credited with many of the attributes proper,
+rather, to the pagan god Perun the Thunderer.] sit waiting for
+his end before it came; and all who cannot bide patiently in a
+state of humility..."
+
+Meanwhile clouds shaped like snow-white swans are traversing the
+roseate heavens and disappearing into space, while below them,
+on earth, the ravine can be seen spread out like the pelt of a
+bear which the broad shoulders of some fabulous giant have
+sloughed before taking refuge in the marshes and forest. In fact
+the landscape reminds me of sundry ancient tales of marvels, as
+also does Antipa Vologonov, the man who is so strangely
+conversant with the shortcomings of human life, and so
+passionately addicted to discussing them.
+
+For a moment or two he remains silent as sibilantly he purses
+his lips and drinks some saffron-coloured tea from the saucer
+which the splayed fingers of his right hand are balancing on
+their tips. Whereafter, when his wet moustache has been dried,
+his level voice resumes its speech in tones as measured as those
+of one reading aloud from the Psalter.
+
+"Have you noticed a shop in Zhitnaia Street kept by an old man
+named Asiev? Once that man had ten sons. Six of them, however,
+died in infancy. Of the remainder the eldest, a fine singer, was
+at once extravagant and a bookworm; wherefore, whilst an
+officer's servant at Tashkend, he cut the throats of his master
+and mistress, and for doing so was executed by shooting. As a
+matter of fact, the tale has it that he had been making love to
+his mistress, and then been thrown over in favour of his master
+once more. And another son, Grigori, after being given a high
+school education at St. Petersburg, became a lunatic. And
+another, Alexei, entered the army as a cavalryman, but is now
+acting as a circus rider, and probably has also become a
+drunkard. And the youngest son of all, Nikolai, ran away as a
+boy, and, eventually arriving in Norway with a precious scheme
+for catching fish in the Arctic Ocean, met with failure through
+the fact that he had overlooked the circumstance that we
+Russians have fish of our own and to spare, and had to have his
+interest assigned by his father to a local monastery. So much
+for fish of the Arctic Seas! Yet if Nikolai had only waited, if
+he had only been more patient, he--"
+
+Here Vologonov lowers his voice, and continues with something of
+the growl of an angry dog:
+
+"I too have had sons, one of whom was killed at Kushka (a
+document has certified to that effect), another was drowned
+whilst drunk, three more died in infancy, and only two are still
+alive. Of these last, I know that one is acting as a waiter in a
+hotel at Smolensk, while the other, Melenti, was educated for
+the Church, sent to study in a seminary, induced to abscond and
+get into trouble, and eventually dispatched to Siberia. There
+now! Yes, the Russian is what might be called a 'lightweighted'
+individual, an individual who, unless he holds himself down by
+the head, is soon carried off by the wind like a chicken's
+feather-- for we are too self-confident and restless. Before now,
+I myself have been a gull, a man lacking balance: for never does
+youth realise its own insignificance, or know how to wait."
+
+Dissertations of the kind drop from the old man like water from
+a leaky pipe on a cold, blustery day in autumn. Wagging his grey
+beard, he talks and talks, until I begin to think that he must
+be an evil wizard, and master of this remote, barren, swampy,
+ravine-pitted region--that he it is who originally planted the
+town in this uncomfortable, clayey hollow, and has thrown the
+houses into heaps, and entangled the streets, and wantonly
+created the town's unaccountably rude and rough and deadly
+existence, and addled men's brains with disconnected nonsense,
+and consumed their hearts with a fear of life. Yes, it comes to
+me that it must be he who, during the long six months of winter,
+causes cruel snowstorms from the plain to invade the town, and
+with frost compresses the buildings of the town until their
+rafters crack, and stinging cold brings birds to the ground.
+Lastly, I become seized with the idea that it must be he who,
+almost every summer, envelops the town in those terrible
+visitations of heat by night which seem almost to cause the
+houses to melt.
+
+However, as a rule he maintains complete silence, and merely
+makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits
+wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in
+his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his
+crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance
+becomes sheerly that of a magician of iniquity.
+
+Once I asked him:
+
+"What in particular ought men to wait for? "
+
+For a while he sat clasping his beard, and, with contracted
+eyes, gazing as at something behind me. Then he said quietly and
+didactically:
+
+"Someday there will arise a Strange Man who will proclaim to
+the world the Word to which there never was a beginning. But to
+which of us is the hour when that Man will arise known? To none
+of us.. And to which of us are known the miracles which that
+Word will perform? To none of us."
+
+**********************
+
+Once upon a time there used to glide past the window of my room
+the fair, curly, wavering, golden head of Nilushka the idiot, a
+lad looking like a thing which the earth has begotten of love.
+Yes, Nilushka was like an angel in some sacred picture adorning
+the southern or the northern gates of an ancient church, as,
+with his flushed face smeared with wax-smoke and oil, and his
+light blue eyes gleaming in a cold, unearthly smile, and a frame
+clad in a red smock reaching to below his knees, and the soles
+of his feet showing black (always he walked on tiptoe), and his
+thin calves, as straight and white as the calves of a woman,
+covered with golden down, he walked the streets.
+
+Sometimes hopping along on one leg, and smiling, and waving his
+arms, and causing the ample folds and sleeves of his smock to
+flutter until he seemed to be moving in the midst of a nimbus,
+Nilushka would sing in a halting whisper the childish ditty:
+
+0h Lo-ord, pardon me!
+Wo-olves run,
+And do-ogs run,
+And the hunters wait
+To kill the wolves.
+0h Lo-ord, pardon me!
+
+Meanwhile, he would diffuse a cheering atmosphere of happiness
+with which no one in the locality had anything in common. For he
+was ever a lighthearted, winning, essentially pure innocent of
+the type which never fails to evoke good-natured smiles and
+kindly emotions. Indeed, as he roamed the streets, the suburb
+seemed to live its life with less clamour, to appear more decent
+of outward guise, since the local folk looked upon the imbecile
+with far more indulgence than they did upon their own children;
+and he was intimate with, and beloved by, even the worst.
+Probably the reason for this was that the semblance of flight
+amid an atmosphere of golden dust which was his combined with
+his straight, slender little figure to put all who beheld him in
+mind of churches, angels, God, and Paradise. At all events, all
+viewed him in a manner contemplative, interested, and more than
+a little deferential.
+
+A curious fact was the circumstance that whenever Nilushka
+sighted a stray gleam from a piece of glass, or the glitter of a
+morsel of copper in sunlight, he would halt dead where he was ,
+turn grey with the ashiness of death, lose his smile, and remain
+dilating to an unnatural extent his clouded and troubled eyes.
+And so, with his whole form distorted with horror, and his thin
+hand crossing himself, and his knees trembling, and his smock
+fluttering around his frail wisp of a body, and his features
+growing stonelike, he would, for an hour or more, continue to
+stand, until at length someone laid a hand in his, and led him
+home.
+
+The tale had it that, in the first instance, born "soft-headed,"
+he finally lost his reason, five years before the
+period of which I am writing, when a great fire occurred, and
+that thenceforth anything, save sunlight, that in any way
+resembled fire plunged him into this torpor of dumb dread.
+Naturally the people of the suburb devoted to him a great deal
+of attention.
+
+"There goes God's fool," would be their remark. "It will not
+be long before he dies and becomes a Saint, and we fall down and
+worship him."
+
+Yet there were persons who would go so far as to crack rude
+jests at his expense. For instance, as he would be skipping
+along, with his childish voice raised in his little ditty, some
+idler or another would shout from a window, or through the
+cranny of a fence:
+
+"Hi, Nilushka! Fire! Fire!"
+
+Whereupon the angel-faced imbecile would sink to earth as though
+his legs had been cut away at the knee from under him, and he
+would huddle, frantically clutching his golden head in his
+permanently soiled hands, and exposing his youthful form to the
+dust, under the nearest house or fence.
+
+Only then would the person who had given him the fright repent,
+and say with a laugh:
+
+"God in heaven, what a stupid lad this is!"
+
+And, should that person have been asked why he had thus
+terrified the boy, he would probably have replied:
+
+"Because it is such sport to do so. As a lad who cannot feel
+things as other human beings do, he inclines folk to make fun of
+him."
+
+As for the omniscient Antipa Vologonov, the following was his
+frequent comment on Nilushka:
+
+"Christ also had to walk in terror. Christ also was persecuted.
+Why so? Because ever He endured in rectitude and strength. Men
+need to learn what is real and what is unreal. Many are the
+sins of earth come of the fact that the seeming is mistaken for
+the actual, and that men keep pressing forward when they ought
+to be waiting, to be proving themselves."
+
+Hence Vologonov, like the rest, bestowed much attention upon
+Nilushka, and frequently held conversations with him.
+
+"Do you now pray to God," he said once as he pointed to heaven
+with one of his crooked fingers, and with the disengaged hand
+clasped his dishevelled, variously coloured beard.
+
+Whereupon Nilushka glanced fearfully at the mysteriously
+pointing finger, and, plucking sharply at his forehead,
+shoulders, and stomach with two fingers and a thumb, intoned in
+thin, plaintive accents:
+
+"Our Father in Heaven--"
+
+"WHICH ART in Heaven."
+
+"Yes, in the Heaven of Heavens."
+
+"Ah, well! God will understand. He is the friend of all blessed
+ones." [Idiots; since persons mentally deficient are popularly
+deemed to stand in a peculiarly close relation to the Almighty.]
+
+
+Again, great was Nilushka's interest in anything spherical.
+Also, he had a love for handling the heads of children; when,
+softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his
+bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a
+close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children,
+not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and,
+bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out
+their tongues at him, and drawl in a nasal chorus:
+
+"Nilka, the bottle-neck, the neck without a nape to it"
+[Probably the attractiveness of this formula lay rather in the
+rhyming of the Russian words: "Nilka, butilka, bashka bez
+zatilka!" than in their actual meaning].
+
+Yet their fear of him was in no way reciprocated, nor, for that
+matter, did they ever assault him, despite the fact that
+occasionally they would throw an old boot or a chip of wood in
+his direction-throw it aimlessly, and without really desiring to
+hit the mark aimed at.
+
+Also, anything circular--for example, a plate or the wheel of a
+toy, engaged Nilushka's attention and led him to caress it as
+eagerly as he did globes and balls. Evidently the rotundity of
+the object was the point that excited his interest. And as he
+turned the object over and over, and felt the flat part of it,
+he would mutter:
+
+"But what about the other one?"
+
+What "the other one " meant I could never divine. Nor could
+Antipa. Once, drawing the idiot to him, he said:
+
+"Why do you always say 'What about the other one'?"
+
+Troubled and nervous, Nilushka merely muttered some
+unintelligible reply as his fingers turned and turned about the
+circular object which he was holding.
+
+"Nothing," at length he replied.
+
+"Nothing of what?
+
+"Nothing here."
+
+"Ah, he is too foolish to understand," said Vologonov with a
+sigh as his eyes darkened in meditative fashion.
+
+"Yes, though it may seem foolish to say so," he added, "some
+people would envy him."
+
+"Why should they?"
+
+"For more than one reason. To begin with, he lives a life free
+from care--he is kept comfortably, and even held in respect.
+Since no one can properly understand him, and everyone fears
+him, through a belief that folk without wit, the 'blessed ones
+of God,' are more especially the Almighty's favourites than
+persons possessed of understanding. Only a very wise man could
+deal with such a matter, and the less so in that it must be
+remembered that more than one 'blessed one' has become a Saint,
+while some of those possessed of understanding have gone--well,
+have gone whither? Yes, indeed!"
+
+And, thoughtfully contracting the bushy eyebrows which looked as
+though they had been taken from the face of another man,
+Vologonov thrust his hands up his sleeves, and stood eyeing
+Nilushka shrewdly with his intangible gaze.
+
+Never did Felitzata say for certain who the boy's father had
+been, but at least it was known to me that in vague terms she
+had designated two men as such--the one a young " survey
+student," and the other a merchant by name Viporotkov, a man
+notorious to the whole town as a most turbulent rake and bully.
+But once when she and Antipa and I were seated gossiping at the
+entrance-gates, and I inquired of her whether Nilushka's father
+were still surviving, she replied in a careless way:
+
+"He is so, damn him!"
+
+"Then who is he? "
+
+Felitzata, as usual, licked her faded, but still comely, lips
+with the tip of her tongue before she replied:
+
+"A monk."
+
+"Ah!" Vologonov exclaimed with unexpected animation. "That,
+then, explains things. At all events, we have in it an
+intelligible THEORY of things."
+
+Whereafter, he expounded to us at length, and with no sparing of
+details, the reason why a monk should have been Nilushka's
+father rather than either the merchant or the young "survey
+student." And as Vologonov proceeded he grew unwontedly
+enthusiastic, and went so far as to clench his fists until
+presently he heaved a sigh, as though mentally hurt, and said
+frowningly and reproachfully to the woman:
+
+"Why did you never tell us this before? It was exceedingly
+negligent of you."
+
+Felitzata looked at the old man with sarcasm and sauciness
+gleaming in her brown eyes. Suddenly, however, she contracted
+her brows, counterfeited a sigh, and whined:
+
+"Ah, I was good-looking then, and desired of all. In those days
+I had both a good heart and a happy nature."
+
+"But the monk may prove to have been an important factor in the
+question," was Antipa's thoughtful remark.
+
+"Yes, and many another man than he has run after me for his
+pleasure," continued Felitzata in a tone of reminiscence. This
+led Vologonov to cough, rise to his feet, lay his hand upon the
+woman's claret-coloured sleeve of satin, and say sternly:
+
+"Do you come into my room, for I have business to transact with
+you."
+
+As she complied she smiled and winked at me. And so the pair
+departed--he shuffling carefully with his bandy legs, and she
+watching her steps as though at any moment she might collapse on
+to her left side.
+
+Thenceforth, Felitzata visited Vologonov almost daily; and once
+during the time of two hours or so that the pair were occupied
+in drinking tea I heard, through the partition-wall, the old man
+say in vigorous, level, didactical tones:
+
+"These tales and rumours ought not to be dismissed save with
+caution. At least ought they to be given the benefit of the
+doubt. For, though all that he says may SEEM to us unintelligible,
+there may yet be enshrined therein a meaning, such as--"
+
+"You say a meaning?"
+
+"Yes, a meaning which, eventually, will be vouchsafed to you in
+a vision. For example, you may one day see issue from a dense
+forest a man of God, and hear him cry aloud: Felitzata, Oh
+servant of God, Oh sinner most dark of soul--"
+
+"What a croaking, to be sure!"
+
+"Be silent! No nonsense! Do you blame yourself rather than sing
+your own praises. And in that vision you may hear the man of God
+cry: 'Felitzata, go you forth and do that which one who shall
+meet you may request you to perform!' And, having gone forth,
+you may find the man of God to be the monk whom we have spoken
+of."
+
+"A-a-ah!" the woman drawled with an air of being about to say
+something more.
+
+"Come, fool!"
+
+"You see--"
+
+"Have I, this time, abused you?"
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"I have an idea that the man of God will be holding a crook."
+
+"Of course," assented Felitzata.
+
+Similarly, on another occasion, did I hear Antipa mutter
+confidentially to his companion:
+
+"The fact that all his sayings are so simple is not a
+favourable sign. For, you see, they do not harmonise with the
+affair in its entirety--in such a connection words should be
+mysterious, and so, able to be interpreted in more than one
+way, seeing that the more meanings words possess, the more are
+those words respected and heeded by mankind."
+
+"Why so?" queried Felitzata.
+
+"Why so?" re-echoed Vologonov irritably. "Are we not, then,
+to respect ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who
+does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their
+fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay
+attention--you must teach him words of variable import, words
+more abstract, as well as more sonorous."
+
+"But I know no such words."
+
+"I will repeat to you a few, and every night, when he goes to
+bed, you shall repeat them to HIM. For example: 'Adom ispolneni,
+pokaites'[Do ye people who are filled with venom repent].  And
+mark that the exact words of the Church be adhered to. For
+instance, 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayannie,' [Murderers
+of the soul, accursed ones, repent ye before God.] must be said
+rather than 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayanni,' since the
+latter, though the shorter form, is also not the correct one.
+But perhaps I had better instruct the lad myself."
+
+"Certainly that would be the better plan."
+
+So from that time onwards Vologonov fell to stopping Nilushka in
+the street, and repeating to him something or another in his
+kindly fashion. Once he even took him by the hand, and, leading
+him to his room, and giving him something to cat, said
+persuasively:
+
+"Say this after me. 'Do not hasten, Oh ye people.' Try if you
+can say that."
+
+"'A lantern,'" began Nilushka civilly.
+
+"'A lantern?' Yes. Well, go on, and say, 'I am a lantern unto
+thee--"
+
+"I want to sing, it."
+
+"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it.
+For the moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of
+things. So say after me--"
+
+"0 Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from
+the idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:
+
+"We shall all of us have to die."
+
+"Yes, but come, come! " expostulated Vologonov. " What are you
+blurting out NOW? That much I know without your telling
+me--always have I known, little friend, that each of us is
+hastening towards his death. Yet your want of understanding
+exceeds what should be."
+
+"Dogs run-"
+
+"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."
+
+"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine,"
+continued Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.
+
+"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of
+his may mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal.
+Now, say: 'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"
+
+"No, I want to SING something."
+
+With a splutter Vologonov said:
+
+"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"
+
+And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful
+strides as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:
+
+"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"
+
+****************************
+
+Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul,
+mean, unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and
+rounded off the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity.  He
+resembled an apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten
+tree, whence all the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only
+the branches wave in the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a
+sole-surviving picture in the pages of a ragged, soiled old book
+which has neither a beginning nor an ending, and therefore can
+no longer be read, is no longer worth the reading, since now its
+pages contain nothing intelligible.
+
+And as smiling his gracious smile, the lad's pathetic,
+legendary figure flitted past the mouldy buts and cracked fences
+and riotous beds of nettles, there would readily recur to the
+memory, and succeed one another, visions of some of the finer
+and more reputable personages of Russian lore--there would file
+before one's mental vision, in endless sequence, men whose
+biographies inform us how, in fear for their souls, they left
+the life of the world, and, hieing them to the forests and the
+caves, abandoned mankind for the wild things of nature. And at
+the same time would there recur to one's memory poems concerning
+the blind and the poor-in particular, the poem concerning Alexei
+the Man of God, and all the multitude of other fair, but
+unsubstantial, forms wherein Russia has embodied her sad and
+terrified soul, her humble and protesting grief. Yet it was a
+process to depress one almost to the point of distraction.
+
+Once, forgetting that Nilushka was imbecile, I conceived an
+irrepressible desire to talk with him, and to read him good
+poetry, and to tell him both of the world's youthful hopes and
+of my own personal thoughts.
+
+The occasion happened on a day when, as I was sitting on the
+edge of the ravine, and dangling my legs over the ravine's
+depths, the lad came floating towards me as though on air. In
+his hands, with their fingers as slender as a girl's, he was
+holding a large leaf; and as he gazed at it the smile of his
+clear blue eyes was, as it were, pervading him from head to foot.
+
+"Whither, Nilushka?" said I.
+
+With a start he raised his head and eyes heavenward. Then
+timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and
+extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was
+crawling a ladybird.
+
+"A bukan," he observed.
+
+"It is so. And whither are you going to take it?"
+
+"We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it."
+
+"But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are
+dead."
+
+Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.
+
+"I should like to sing something," he remarked.
+
+"Rather, do you SAY something."
+
+He glanced at the ravine again--his pink nostrils quivering and
+dilating-- then sighed as though he was weary, and in all
+unconsciousness muttered a foul expression. As he did so I
+noticed that on the portion of his neck below his right ear
+there was a large birthmark, and that, covered with golden down
+like velvet, and resembling in shape a bee, it seemed to be
+endowed with a similitude of life, through the faint beating of
+a vein in its vicinity.
+
+Presently the ladybird raised her upper wings as though she were
+preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to
+detain her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the
+insect to detach itself and fly away at a low level. Upon that,
+bending forward with arms outstretched, the idiot went softly in
+pursuit, much as though he himself were launching his body into
+leisurely flight, but, when ten paces away, stopped, raised his
+face to heaven, and, with arms pendent before him, and the palms
+of his hands turned outwards as though resting on something
+which I could not see, remained fixed and motionless.
+
+From the ravine there were tending upwards towards the sunlight
+some green sprigs of willow, with dull yellow flowers and a
+clump of grey wormwood, while the damp cracks which seamed the
+clay of the ravine were lined with round leaves of the
+"mother-stepmother plant," and round about us little birds were
+hovering, and from both the bushes and the bed of the ravine
+there was ascending the moist smell of decay. Yet over our heads
+the sky was clear, as the sun, now sole occupant of the heavens,
+declined slowly in the direction of the dark marshes across the
+river; only above the roofs of Zhitnaia Street could there be
+seen fluttering about in alarm a flock of snow-white pigeons,
+while waving below them was the black besom which had, as it
+were, swept them into the air, and from afar one could hear the
+sound of an angry murmur, the mournful, mysterious murmur of the
+town.
+
+Whiningly, like an old man, a child of the suburb was raising
+its voice in lamentation; and as I listened to the sound, it put
+me in mind of a clerk reading Vespers amid the desolation of an
+empty church. Presently a brown dog passed us with shaggy head
+despondently pendent, and eyes as beautiful as those of a
+drunken woman.
+
+And, to complete the picture, there was standing-- outlined
+against the nearest shanty of the suburb, a shanty which lay at
+the extreme edge of the ravine-there was standing, face to the
+sun, and back to the town, as though preparing for flight, the
+straight, slender form of the boy who, while alien to all,
+caressed all with the eternally incomprehensible smile of his
+angel-like eyes. Yes, that golden birthmark so like a bee I can
+see to this day!
+
+********************************
+
+Two weeks later, on a Sunday at mid-day, Nilushka passed into
+the other world. That day, after returning home from late Mass,
+and handing to his mother a couple of wafers which had been
+given him as a mark of charity, the lad said:
+
+"Mother, please lay out my bed on the chest, for I think that I
+am going to lie down for the last time."
+
+Yet the words in no way surprised Felitzata, for he had often
+before remarked, before retiring to rest:
+
+"Some day we shall all of us have to die."
+
+At the same time, whereas, on previous occasions, Nilushka had
+never gone to sleep without first of all singing to himself his
+little song, and then chanting the eternal, universal "Lord,
+have mercy upon us! " he, on this occasion, merely folded his
+hands upon his breast, closed his eyes, and relapsed into
+slumber.
+
+That day Felitzata had dinner, and then departed on business of
+her own; and when she returned in the evening, she was astonished
+to find that her son was still asleep. Next, on looking closer
+at him, she perceived that he was dead.
+
+"I looked," she related plaintively to some of the suburban
+residents who came running to her cot, "and perceived his
+little feet to be blue; and since it was only just before Mass
+that I had washed his hands with soap, I remarked the more
+readily that his feet were become less white than his hands. And
+when I felt one of those hands, I found that it had stiffened."
+
+On Felitzata's face, as she recounted this, there was manifest a
+nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle
+flushed. Yet gleaming also through the tears in her languorous
+eyes there was a sense of relief--one might almost have said a
+sense of joy.
+
+"Next," continued she, "I looked closer still, and then fell
+on my knees before the body, sobbing: '0h my darling, whither
+art thou fled? 0h God, wherefore hast Thou taken him from me?' "
+
+Here Felitzata inclined her head upon her left shoulder
+contracted her brows over her mischievous eyes, clasped her
+hands to her breast, and fell into the lament:
+
+Oh, gone is my dove, my radiant moon!
+0 star of mine eyes, thou hast set too soon!
+In darksome depths thy light lies drown'd,
+And time must yet complete its round,
+And the trump of the Second Advent sound,
+Ere ever my--
+
+"Here, you! Hold your tongue!" grunted Vologonov irritably.
+
+For myself, I had, that day, been walking in the forest, until,
+as I returned, I was brought up short before the windows of
+Felitzata's cot by the fact that some of the erstwhile turbulent
+denizens of the suburb were whispering softly together as, with
+an absence of all noise, they took turns to raise themselves on
+tiptoe, and, craning their necks, to peer into one of the black
+window-spaces. Yes, like bees on the step of a hive did they
+look, and on the great majority of faces, and in the great
+majority of eyes, there was quivering an air of tense, nervous
+expectancy.
+
+Only Vologonov was nudging Felitzata, and saying to her in a
+loud, authoritative tone:
+
+"Very ready are you to weep, but I should like first to hear
+the exact circumstances of the lad's death."
+
+Thus invited, the woman wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her
+bodice, licked her lips, heaved a prolonged sigh, and fell to
+regarding Antipa's red, hardbitten face with the cheerful,
+unabashed glance of a person who is under the influence of
+liquor. From under her white head-band there had fallen over her
+temples and her right cheek a few wisps of golden hair; and
+indeed, as she drew herself up, and tossed her head and bosom,
+and smoothed out and stretched the creases in her bodice, she
+looked less than her years. Everyone now fell to eyeing her in
+an attentive silence, though not, it would seem, without a touch
+of envy.
+
+Abruptly, sternly, the old man inquired:
+
+"Did the lad ever complain of ill-health?"
+
+"No, never," Felitzata replied. "Never once did he speak of
+it--never once."
+
+"And he had not been beaten?"
+
+"Oh, how can you ask me such a thing, and especially seeing
+that, that--?"
+
+"I did not say beaten by YOU."
+
+"Well, I cannot answer for anyone else, but at least had he no
+mark on his body, seeing that when I lifted the smock I could
+find nothing save for scratches on legs and back."
+
+Her tone now had in it a new ring, a ring of increased
+assurance, and when she had finished she closed her bright eyes
+languidly before heaving a soft, as it were, voluptuous, and,
+withal, very audible sigh.
+
+Someone here murmured:
+
+"She DID use to beat him."
+
+"What?"
+
+"At all events she used to lose her temper with him."
+
+This led to the putting of a further dozen or so of leading
+questions; whereafter Antipa, for a while, preserved a
+suggestive silence, and the crowd too remained silent, as though
+it had suddenly been lulled to slumber. Only at long last, and
+with a clearing of his throat, did Antipa say:
+
+"Friends, we must suppose that God, of His infinite Mercy, has
+vouchsafed to us here a special visitation, in that, as all of
+us have perceived, a lad bereft of wit, the same radiant lad
+whom all of us have known, has here abided in the closest of
+communion with the Blessed Dispenser of life on earth."
+
+Then I moved away, for upon my heart there was pressing a burden
+of unendurable sorrow, and I was yearning, oh, so terribly, to
+see Nilushka once more.
+
+The back portion of Felitzata's cot stood a little sunken into
+the ground, so that the front portion had its cold window panes
+and raised sash tilted a trifle towards the remote heavens. I
+bent my head, and entered by the open door. Near the threshold
+Nilushka was lying on a narrow chest against the wall. The folds
+of a dark-red pillow of fustian under the head set off to
+perfection the pale blue tint of his round, innocent face under
+its corona of golden curls; and though the eyes were closed, and
+the lips pressed tightly together, he still seemed to be smiling
+in his old quiet, but joyous, way. In general, the tall, thin
+figure on the mattress of dark felt, with its bare legs, and its
+slender hands and wrists folded across the breast, reminded me
+less of an angel than of a certain image of the Holy Child with
+which a blackened old ikon had rendered me familiar from my
+boyhood upwards.
+
+Everything amid the purple gloom was still. Even the flies were
+forbearing to buzz. Only from the street was there grating
+through the shaded window the strong, roguish voice of Felitzata
+as it traced the strange, lugubrious word-pattern:
+
+With my bosom pressed to the warm, grey earth,
+To thee, grey earth, to thee, 0h my mother of old,
+I beseech thee, I who am a mother like thee,
+And a mother in pain, to enfold in thy arms
+This my son, this my dead son, this my ruby,
+This my drop of my heart's blood, this my--
+
+Suddenly I caught sight of Antipa standing in the doorway. He
+was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Presently in a
+gruff and unsteady voice he said:
+
+"It is all very fine for you to weep, good woman, but the
+present is not the right moment to sing such verses as
+those--they were meant, rather, to be sung in a graveyard at the
+side of a tomb. Well, tell me everything without reserve.
+Important is it that I should know EVERYTHING."
+
+Whereafter, having crossed himself with a faltering hand, he
+carefully scrutinised the corpse, and at last let his eyes halt
+upon the lad's sweet features. Then he muttered sadly:
+
+"How extraordinarily he has grown! Yes, death has indeed
+enlarged him! Ah, well, so be it! Soon I too shall have to be
+stretching myself out. Oh that it were now!"
+
+Then with cautious movements of his deformed fingers he
+straightened the folds of the lad's smock, and drew it over the
+legs. Whereafter he pressed his flushed lips to the hem of the
+garment.
+
+Said I to him at that moment:
+
+"What is it that you have been wanting of him? Why is it that
+you have been trying to teach him strange words?"
+
+Straightening himself, and glancing at me with dim eyes, Antipa
+repeated:
+
+"What is it that I have been wanting of him?" To the repetition
+he added with manifest sincerity, though also with a
+self-depreciatory movement of the head:
+
+"To tell the truth, I scarcely know WHAT it is that I have been
+wanting of him. By God I do not. Yet, as one speaking the truth
+in the presence of death, I say that never during my long
+lifetime had I so desired aught else. . . . Yes, I have waited
+and waited for fortune to reveal it to me; and ever has fortune
+remained mute and tongueless. Foolish was it of me to have
+expected otherwise, to have expected, for instance, that some
+day there might occur something marvellous, something
+unlooked-for."
+
+With a short laugh, he indicated the corpse with his eyes, and
+continued more firmly:
+
+"Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a
+source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything
+possible of acquisition thence. . . This is usually the case.
+Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart),
+was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby
+gaining some provision against her old age."
+
+"But you yourself were the person who suggested that? You
+yourself wished it? "
+
+"I?"
+
+Presently. thrusting his hands up his sleeves, he added dully
+and brokenly:
+
+"Yes, I DID wish it. Why not, indeed, seeing that at least it
+would have brought comfort to the poor people of this place?
+Sometimes I feel very sorry for them with their bitter,
+troublous lives--lives which may be the lives of rogues and
+villains, yet are lives which have produced amongst us a
+pravednik," [A "just person," a human being without sin].
+
+All the evening sky was now aflame. Upon the ear there fell the
+mournful lament:
+
+When snow has veiled the earth in white,
+The snowy plain the wild wolves tread.
+They wail for the cheering warmth of spring
+As I bewail the bairn that's dead.
+
+Vologonov listened for a moment. Then he said firmly:
+
+"These are mere accesses of impulse which come upon her. And
+that is only what might be expected. Even as in song or in vice
+there is no holding her, so remorse, when it has fastened upon
+such a woman's heart, will know no bounds. I may tell you that
+on one occasion two young merchants took her, stripped her stark
+naked, and drove her in their carriage down Zhitnaia Street,
+with themselves sitting on the seats of the vehicle, and
+Felitzata standing upright between them--yes, in a state of
+nudity! Thereafter they beat her almost to death."
+
+As I stepped out into the dark, narrow vestibule, Antipa, who
+was following me, muttered:
+
+"Such a lament as hers could come only of genuine grief."
+
+We found Felitzata in front of the hut, with her back covering
+the window. There, with hands pressed to her bosom, and her
+skirt all awry, she was straining her dishevelled head towards
+the heavens, while the evening breeze, stirring her fine auburn
+hair, scattered it promiscuously over her flushed,
+sharply-defined features and wildly protruding eyes. A bizarre,
+pitiable, and extraordinary figure did she cut as she wailed in
+a throaty voice which constantly gathered strength:
+
+0h winds of ice, winds cruel and rude,
+Press on my heart till its throbbings fail!
+Arrest the current of my blood!
+Turn these hot melting tears to hail!
+
+Before her there was posted a knot of women, compassionate
+contemplators of the singer's distracted, grief-wrought
+features. Through the ravine's dark opening I could see the sun
+sinking below the suburb before plunging into the marshy forest
+and having his disk pierced by sharp, black tips of pine trees.
+Already everything around him was red. Already, seemingly, he
+had been wounded, and was bleeding to death.
+
+
+
+THE CEMETERY
+
+In a town of the steppes where I found life exceedingly dull, the
+best and the brightest spot was the cemetery. Often did I use to
+walk there, and once it happened that I fell asleep on some
+thick, rich, sweet-smelling grass in a cradle-like hollow
+between two tombs.
+
+From that sleep I was awakened with the sound of blows being
+struck against the ground near my head. The concussion of them
+jarred me not a little, as the earth quivered and tinkled like a
+bell. Raising myself to a sitting posture, I found sleep still
+so heavy upon me that at first my eyes remained blinded with
+unfathomable darkness, and could not discern what the matter
+was. The only thing that I could see amid the golden glare of
+the June sunlight was a wavering blur which at intervals seemed
+to adhere to a grey cross, and to make it give forth a
+succession of soft creaks.
+
+Presently, however--against my wish, indeed--that wavering blur
+resolved itself into a little, elderly man. Sharp-featured, with
+a thick, silvery tuft of hair beneath his under lip, and a bushy
+white moustache curled in military fashion, on his upper, he
+was using the cross as a means of support as, with his
+disengaged hand outstretched, and sawing the air, he dug his
+foot repeatedly into the ground, and, as he did so, bestowed
+upon me sundry dry, covert glances from the depths of a pair of
+dark eyes.
+
+"What have you got there?" I inquired.
+
+"A snake," he replied in an educated bass voice, and with a
+rugged forefinger he pointed downwards;  whereupon I perceived
+that wriggling on the path at his feet and convulsively
+whisking its tail, there was an echidna.
+
+"Oh, it is only a grassworm," I said vexedly.
+
+The old man pushed away the dull, iridescent, rope-like thing
+with the toe of his boot, raised a straw hat in salute, and
+strode firmly onwards.
+
+"I thank you," I called out; whereupon, he replied without
+looking behind him:
+
+"If the thing really WAS a grassworm, of course there was no
+danger."
+
+Then he disappeared among the tombstones.
+
+Looking at the sky, I perceived the time to be about five
+o'clock.
+
+The steppe wind was sighing over the tombs, and causing long
+stems of grass to rock to and fro, and freighting the heated air
+with the silken rustling of birches and limes and other trees,
+and leading one to detect amid the humming of summer a note of
+quiet grief eminently calculated to evoke lofty, direct thoughts
+concerning life and one's fellow-men.
+
+Veiling with greenery, grey and white tombstones worn with the
+snows of winter, crosses streaked with marks of rain, and the
+wall with which the graveyard was encircled, the rank vegetation
+served to also conceal the propinquity of a slovenly, clamorous
+town which lay coated with rich, sooty grime amid an atmosphere
+of dust and smells.
+
+As I set off for a ramble among the tombs and tangled grass, I
+could discern through openings in the curtain of verdure a
+belfry's gilded cross which reared itself solemnly over crosses
+and memorials. At the foot of those memorials the sacramental
+vestment of the cemetery was studded with a kaleidoscopic sheen
+of flowers over which bees and wasps were so hovering and
+humming that the grass's sad, prayerful murmur seemed charged
+with a song of life which yet did not hinder reflections on
+death. Fluttering above me on noiseless wing were birds the
+flight of which sometimes made me start, and stand wondering
+whether the object before my gaze was really a bird or not: and
+everywhere the shimmer of gilded sunlight was setting the
+close-packed graveyard in a quiver which made the mounds of its
+tombs reminiscent of a sea when, after a storm, the wind has
+fallen, and all the green level is an expanse of smooth,
+foamless billows.
+
+Beyond the wall of the cemetery the blue void of the firmament
+was pierced with smoky chimneys of oil-mills and soap factories,
+the roofs of which showed up like particoloured stains against
+the darker rags and tatters of other buildings; while blinking
+in the sunlight I could discern clatter-emitting, windows which
+looked to me like watchful eyes. Only on the nearer side of the
+wall was a sparse strip of turf dotted over with ragged,
+withered, tremulous stems, and beyond this, again, lay the site
+of a burnt building which constituted a black patch of
+earth-heaps, broken stoves, dull grey ashes, and coal dust. To
+heaven gaped the black, noisome mouths of burning-pits wherein
+the more economical citizens were accustomed nightly to get rid
+of the contents of their dustbins. Among the tall stems of
+steppe grass waved large, glossy leaves of ergot; in the
+sunlight splinters of broken glass sparkled as though they were
+laughing; and, from two spots in the dark brown plot which formed
+a semicircle around the cemetery, there projected, like teeth,
+two buildings the new yellow paint of which nevertheless made
+them look mean and petty amid the tangle of rubbish, pigweed,
+groundsel, and dock.
+
+Indolently roaming hither and thither, a few speckled hens
+resembled female pedlars, and some pompous red cockerels a
+troupe of firemen; in the orifices of the burning-pits a number
+of mournful-eyed, homeless dogs were lying sheltered; among the
+shoots of the steppe scrub some lean cats were stalking
+sparrows; and a band of children who were playing hide-and-seek
+among the orifices above-mentioned presented, a pitiful sight as
+they went skipping over the filthy earth, disappearing in
+the crevices among the piles of heaped-up dirt.
+
+Beyond the site of the burnt-out building there stretched a
+series of mean, close-packed huts which, crammed exclusively
+with needy folk, stood staring, with their dim, humble eyes of
+windows, at the crumbling bricks of the cemetery wall, and the
+dense mass of trees which that wall enclosed. Here, in one such
+hut, had I myself a lodging in a diminutive attic, which not
+only smelt of lamp-oil, but stood in a position to have wafted
+to it the least gasp or ejaculation on the part of my landlord,
+Iraklei Virubov, a clerk in the local treasury. In short, I
+could never glance out of the window at the cemetery on the
+other side of the strip of dead, burnt, polluted earth without
+reflecting that, by comparison, that cemetery was a place of
+sheer beauty, a place of ceaseless attraction.
+
+And ever, that day, as though he had been following me, could
+there be sighted among the tombs the dark figure of the old man
+who had so abruptly awakened me from slumber; and since his
+straw hat reflected the sunlight as brilliantly as the disk of a
+sunflower as it meandered hither and thither, I, in my turn,
+found myself following him, though thinking, all the while, of
+Iraklei Virubov. Only a week was it since Iraklei's wife, a
+thin, shrewish, long-nosed woman with green and catlike eyes,
+had set forth on a pilgrimage to Kiev, and Iraklei had hastened
+to import into the hut a stout, squint-eyed damsel whom he had
+introduced to me as his " niece by marriage."
+
+"She was baptised Evdokia," he had said on the occasion
+referred to. "Usually, however, I call her Dikanka. Pray be
+friendly with her, but remember, also, that she is not a person
+with whom to take liberties."
+
+Large, round-shouldered, and clean-shaven like a chef, Virubov
+was for ever hitching up breeches which had slipped from a
+stomach ruined with surfeits of watermelon. And always were his
+fat lips parted as though athirst, and perpetually had he in his
+colourless eyes an expression of insatiable hunger.
+
+One evening I overheard a dialogue to the following effect.
+
+"Dikanka, pray come and scratch my back. Yes, between the
+shoulder-blades. O-o-oh, that is it. My word, how strong you
+are!"
+
+Whereat Dikanka had laughed shrilly. And only when I had moved
+my chair, and thrown down my book, had the laughter and unctuous
+whispering died away, and given place to a whisper of:
+
+"Holy Father Nicholas, pray for us unto God! Is the supper kvas
+ready, Dikanka?"
+
+And softly the pair had departed to the kitchen--there to grunt
+and squeal once more like a couple of pigs....
+
+The old man with the grey moustache stepped over the turf with
+the elastic stride of youth, until at length he halted before a
+large monument in drab granite, and stood reading the
+inscription thereon. Featured not altogether in accordance with
+the Russian type, he had on a dark-blue jacket, a turned-down
+collar, and a black stock finished off with a large bow--the
+latter contrasting agreeably with the thick, silvery, as it were
+molten, chin-tuft. Also, from the centre of a fierce moustache
+there projected a long and gristly nose, while over the grey
+skin of his cheeks there ran a network of small red veins. In
+the act of raising his hand to his hat (presumably for the
+purpose of saluting the dead), he, after conning the dark
+letters of the inscription on the tomb, turned a sidelong eye
+upon myself; and since I found the fact embarrassing, I frowned,
+and passed onward, full, still, of thoughts of the street where
+I was residing and where I desired to fathom the mean existence
+eked out by Virubov and his "niece."
+
+As usual, the tombs were also being patrolled by Pimesha,
+otherwise Pimen Krozootov, a bibulous, broken-down ex-merchant
+who used to spend his time in stumbling and falling about the
+graves in search of the supposed resting-place of his wife. Bent
+of body, Pimesha had a small, bird-like face over-grown with
+grey down, the eyes of a sick rabbit, and, in general, the
+appearance of having undergone a chewing by a set of sharp
+teeth. For the past three years he had thus been roaming the
+cemetery, though his legs were too weak to support his
+undersized, shattered body; and whenever he caught his foot he
+fell, and for long could not rise, but lay gasping and fumbling
+among the grass, and rooting it up, and sniffing with a nose as
+sharp and red as though the skin had been flayed from it. True,
+his wife had been buried at Novotchevkassk, a thousand versts
+away, but Pimen refused to credit the fact, and always, on being
+told it, stuttered with much blinking of his wet, faded eyes:
+"Natasha? Natasha is here."
+
+Also, there used to visit the spot, well-nigh daily, a Madame
+Christoforov, a tall old lady who, wearing black spectacles and
+a plain grey, shroudlike dress that was trimmed with black
+velvet, never failed to have a stick between her abnormally long
+fingers. Wizened of face, with cheeks hanging down like bags,
+and a knot of grey, rather, grey-green, hair combed over her
+temples from under a lace scarf, and almost concealing her ears,
+this lady pursued her way with deliberation, and entire
+assurance, and yielded the path to no one whom she might
+encounter. I have an idea that there lay buried there a son who
+had been killed in a roisterers' brawl.
+
+Another habitual visitor was thin-legged, short-sighted Aulic
+Councillor Praotzev, ex-schoolmaster. With a book stuffed into
+the pocket of his canvas pea-jacket, a white umbrella grasped in
+his red hand, and a smile extending to ears as sharp and pointed
+as a rabbit's, he could, any Sunday after dinner, be seen
+skipping from tomb to tomb, with his umbrella brandished like a
+white flag soliciting terms of peace with death.
+
+And, on returning home before the bell rang for Vespers, he
+would find that a crowd of boys had collected outside his garden
+wall; whereupon, dancing about him like puppies around a stork,
+they would fall to shouting in various merry keys:
+
+"The Councillor, the Councillor! Who was it that fell in love
+with Madame Sukhinikh, and then fell into the pond? "
+
+Losing his temper, and opening a great mouth, until he looked
+like an old rook which is about to caw, the Councillor would
+stamp his foot several times, as though preparing to dance to
+the boys' shouting, and lower his head, grasp his umbrella like
+a bayonet, and charge at the lads with a panting shout of:
+
+"I'll tell your fathers! Oh, I'll tell your mothers!"
+
+As for the Madame Sukhinikh, referred to, she was an old
+beggar-woman who, the year round, and in all weathers, sat on a
+little bench beside the cemetery wicket, and stuck to it like a
+stone. Her large face, a face rendered bricklike by years of
+inebriety, was covered with dark blotches born of frostbite,
+alcoholic inflammation, sunburn, and exposure to wind, and her
+eyes were perpetually in a state of suppuration. Never did
+anyone pass her but she proffered a wooden cup in a suppliant
+hand, and cried hoarsely, rather as though she were cursing the
+person concerned:
+
+"Give something for Christ's sake! Give in memory of your
+kinsfolk there!"
+
+Once an unexpected storm blew in from the steppes, and brought a
+downpour which, overtaking the old woman on her way home, caused
+her, her sight being poor, to fall into a pond, whence Praotzev
+attempted to rescue her, and into which, in the end, he slipped
+himself. From that day onwards he was twitted on the subject by
+the boys of the town.
+
+Other frequenters of the cemetery I see before me--dark, silent
+figures, figures of persons whom still unsevered cords of memory
+seemed to have bound to the place for the rest of their lives,
+and compelled to wander, like unburied corpses, in quest of
+suitable tombs. Yes, they were persons whom life had rejected,
+and death, as yet, refused to accept.
+
+Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless
+dog with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their
+intelligence and in their absolute Ishmaelitism-- until one
+almost expected to hear issue from the animal's mouth reproaches
+couched in human language.
+
+And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery
+as, with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to
+and fro with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally
+venting a subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.
+
+Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying
+an unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would,
+meanwhile, maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently
+persuasive, chirruping chorus; until in autumn, when the wind
+had stripped bare the boughs, these birds' black nests would
+come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed heads of human beings
+which someone had torn from their bodies and flung into the
+trees, to hang for ever around the white, sugarloaf-shaped
+church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn season,
+indeed, everything in the cemetery's vicinity looked sad and
+tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh
+like a lover who has been driven mad through bereavement . . . .
+
+Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly
+extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read
+aloud:
+
+"'Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected
+citizen and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'" etc.,
+etc.
+
+Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into
+the pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in
+colour, but exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:
+
+"It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man
+beyond that he was a 'servant of God.' Now, how can a servant
+be worthy of honour at the hand of 'citizens'?"
+
+"Possibly he was an ascetic," was my hazarded conjecture;
+whereupon the old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:
+
+"Then in such case one ought to write--"
+
+"To write what?"
+
+"To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail."
+
+And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor
+passed onwards towards a more remote portion of the
+cemetery--myself walking, this time, beside him. His stature
+placed his head on a level with my shoulder only, and caused his
+straw hat to conceal his features. Hence, since I wished to look
+at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced to walk with head
+bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.
+
+"No, that is not the way to do it," presently he continued in
+the soft, civil voice of one who has a complaint to present.
+"Any such proceeding is merely a mark of barbarism--of a complete
+lack of observation of men and life."
+
+With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large
+circle in the air.
+
+"Do you know the meaning of that?" he inquired.
+
+"Its meaning is death," was my diffident reply, made with a
+shrug of the shoulders.
+
+A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely
+cut face as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:
+
+"'Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'" [Death hath
+been for ever overthrown by death."]
+
+"Do you know that passage?" he added presently.
+
+Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces--he
+threading his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable
+speed. Suddenly he halted, raised his hat from his head, and
+proffered me a hand.
+
+"Young man," he said, "let us make one another's better
+acquaintance. I am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly
+of the State Remount Establishment, subsequently of the
+Department of Imperial Lands. I am a man who, after never having
+been found officially remiss, am living in honourable
+retirement--a man at once a householder, a widower, and a person
+of hasty temper."
+
+Then, after a pause, he added:
+
+"Vice-Governor Khorvat of Tambov is my brother--a younger
+brother; he being fifty-five, and I sixty-one, si-i-ixty one."
+
+His speech was rapid, but as precise as though no mistake was
+permissible in its delivery.
+
+"Also," he continued, "as a man cognisant of every possible
+species of cemetery, I am much dissatisfied with this one. In
+fact, never satisfied with such places am I."
+
+Here he brandished his fist in the air, and described a large
+arc over the crosses.
+
+"Let us sit down," he said, "and I will explain things."
+
+So, after that we had seated ourselves on a bench beside a white
+oratory, and Lieutenant Khorvat had taken off his hat, and with
+a blue handkerchief wiped his forehead and the thick silvery
+hair which bristled from the knobs of his scalp, he continued:
+
+"Mark you well the word kladbistche." [The word, though
+customarily used for cemetery, means, primarily, a
+treasure-house.]  Here he nudged me with his elbow--continuing,
+thereafter, more softly: "In a kladbisiche one might reasonably
+look for kladi, for treasures of intellect and enlightenment.
+Yet what do we find? Only that which is offensive and insulting.
+All of us does it insult, for thereby is an insult paid to all
+who, in life, are bearing still their 'cross and burden.' You
+too will, one day, be insulted by the system, even as shall I.
+Do you understand? I repeat, 'their cross and burden'--the sense
+of the words being that, life being hard and difficult, we ought
+to honour none but those who STILL are bearing their trials, or
+bearing trials for you and me. Now, THESE folk here have ceased
+to possess consciousness."
+
+Each time that the old man waved his hat in his excitement, its
+small shadow, bird-like, flew along the narrow path, and over
+the cross, and, finally, disappeared in the direction of the
+town.
+
+Next, distending his ruddy cheeks, twitching his moustache, and
+regarding me covertly out of boylike eyes, the Lieutenant
+resumed:
+
+"Probably you are thinking, 'The man with whom I have to deal
+is old and half-witted.' But no, young fellow; that is not so,
+for long before YOUR time had I taken the measure of life.
+Regard these memorials. ARE they memorials? For what do they
+commemorate as concerns you and myself? They commemorate, in
+that respect, nothing. No, they are not memorials; they are
+merely passports or testimonials conferred upon itself by human
+stupidity. Under a given cross there may lie a Maria, and under
+another one a Daria, or an Alexei, or an Evsei, or someone
+else--all 'servants of God,' but not otherwise particularised. An
+outrage this, sir! For in this place folk who have lived their
+difficult portion of life on earth are seen robbed of that
+record of their existences, which ought to have been preserved
+for your and my instruction. Yes, A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIFE
+LIVED BY A MAN is what matters. A tomb might then become even
+more interesting than a novel. Do you follow me?"
+
+"Not altogether," I rejoined.
+
+He heaved a very audible sigh.
+
+"It should be easy enough," was his remark. "To begin with, I
+am NOT a 'servant of God.' Rather, I am a man intelligently, of
+set purpose, keeping God's holy commandments so far as lies
+within my power. And no one, not even God, has any right to
+demand of me more than I can give. That is so, is it not?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"There!" the Lieutenant cried briskly as, cocking his hat, he
+assumed a still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his
+hands, he growled in his flexible bass:
+
+"What is this cemetery? It is merely a place of show."
+
+At this moment, for some reason or another, there occurred to me
+an incident which involved the figure of Iraklei Virubov, the
+figure which had carpet slippers on its ponderous feet, thick
+lips, a greedy mouth, deceitful eyes, and a frame so huge and
+cavernous that the dapper little Lieutenant could have stepped
+into it complete.
+
+The day had been a Sunday, and the hour eventide. On the burnt
+plot of ground some broken glass had been emitting a reddish
+gleam, shoots of ergot had been diffusing their gloss, children
+shouting at play, dogs trotting backwards and forwards, and all
+things, seemingly, faring well, sunken in the stillness of the
+portion of the town adjoining the rolling, vacant steppe, with,
+above them, only the sky's level, dull-blue canopy, and around
+them, only the cemetery, like an island amidst a sea.
+
+With Virubov, I had been sitting on a bench near the wicket-gate
+of his hut, as intermittently he had screwed his lecherous eyes
+in the direction of the stout, ox-eyed lacemaker, Madame Ezhov,
+who, after disposing of her form on a bank hard-by, had fallen
+to picking lice out of the curls of her eight-year-old Petka
+Koshkodav. Presently, as swiftly she had rummaged the boy's hair
+with fingers grown used to such rapid movement, she had said to
+her husband (a dealer in second-hand articles), who had been
+seated within doors, and therefore rendered invisible--she had
+said with oily derision:
+
+"Oh, yes, you bald-headed old devil, you! Of course you got
+your price. Ye-es. Then, fool, you ought to have had a slipper
+smacked across that Kalmuck snout of yours. Talk of my price,
+indeed!"
+
+Upon this Virubov had remarked with a sigh, and in sluggish,
+sententious tones:
+
+"To grant the serfs emancipation was a sheer mistake. I am a
+humble enough servant of my country, yet I can see the truth of
+what I have stated, since it follows as a matter of course. What
+ought to have been done is that all the estates of the
+landowners should have been conveyed to the Tsar. Beyond a doubt
+that is so. Then both the peasantry and the townsfolk, the whole
+people, in short, would have had but a single landlord. For
+never can the people live properly so long as it is ignorant of
+the point where it stands; and since it loves authority, it
+loves to have over it an autocratic force, for its control.
+Always can it be seen seeking such a force."
+
+Then, bending forward, and infusing into each softly uttered
+word a perfect lusciousness of falsity, Virubov had added to his
+neighbour:
+
+"Take, for example, the working-woman who stands free of every
+tie."
+
+"How do I stand free of anything?" the neighbour had retorted,
+in complete readiness for a quarrel.
+
+"Oh, I am not speaking in your despite, Pavlushka, but to your
+credit," hastily Virubov had protested.
+
+"Then keep your blandishments for that heifer, your 'niece,'"
+had been Madame Ezhov's response.
+
+Upon this Virubov had risen heavily, and remarked as he moved
+away towards the courtyard:
+
+"All folk need to be supervised by an autocratic eye."
+
+Thereafter had followed a bout of choice abuse between his
+neighbour and his " niece,"while Virubov himself, framed in the
+wicket-gate, and listening to the contest, had smacked his lips
+as he gazed at the pair, and particularly at Madame Ezhov. At
+the beginning of the bout Dikanka had screeched:
+
+"It is my opinion, it is my opinion, that--"
+
+"Don't treat me to any of YOUR slop!" the long-fanged Pavla
+had interrupted for the benefit of the street in general. And
+thus had the affair continued....
+
+Lieutenant Khorvat blew the fag-end of his cigarette from his
+mouthpiece, glanced at me, and said with seemingly, a not
+over-civil, twitch of his bushy moustache:
+
+"Of what are you thinking, if I might inquire?"
+
+"I am trying to understand you."
+
+"You ought not to find that difficult," was his rejoinder as
+again he doffed his hat, and fanned his face with it. "The
+whole thing may be summed up in two words. It is that we lack
+respect both for ourselves and for our fellow men. Do you follow
+me NOW?"
+
+His eyes had grown once more young and clear, and, seizing my
+hand in his strong and agreeably warm fingers, he continued:
+
+"Why so? For the very simple reason that I cannot respect
+myself when I can learn nothing, simply nothing, about my
+fellows."
+
+Moving nearer to me, he added in a mysterious undertone:
+
+"In this Russia of ours none of us really knows why he has come
+into existence. True, each of us knows that he was born, and
+that he is alive, and that one day he will die; but which of us
+knows the reason why all that is so?"
+
+Through renewed excitement, its colour had come back to the
+Lieutenant's face, and his gestures became so rapid as to cause
+the ring on his finger to flash through the air like the link of
+a chain. Also, I was able to detect the fact that on the
+small, neat wrist under his left cuff, there was a bracelet
+finished with a medallion.
+
+"All this, my good sir, is because (partially through the fact
+that men forget the point, and partially through the fact that
+that point fails to be understood aright) the WORK done by a
+man is concealed from our knowledge. For my own part, I have an
+idea, a scheme--yes, a scheme--in two words, a, a--"
+
+"N-n-o-u, n-n-o-u!" the bell of the monastery tolled over the
+tombs in languid, chilly accents.
+
+"--a scheme that every town and every village, in fact, every
+unit of homogeneous population, should keep a record of the
+particular unit's affairs, a, so to speak, 'book of life.' This
+'book of life' should be more than a list of the results of the
+unit's labour; it should also be a living narrative of the
+workaday activities accomplished by each member of the unit. Eh?
+And, of course, the record to be compiled without official
+interference--solely by the town council or district
+administration, or by a special 'board, of life and works' or
+some such body, provided only that the task be not carried out
+by nominees of the GOVERNMENT. And in that record there should
+be entered everything--that is to say, everything of a nature
+which ought to be made public concerning every man who
+has lived among us, and has since gone from our midst."
+
+Here the Lieutenant stretched out his hand again in the
+direction of the tombs.
+
+"My right it is," he added, "to know how those folk there
+spent their lives. For it is by their labours and their
+thoughts, and even on the product of their bones, that I myself
+am now subsisting. You agree, do you not?"
+
+In silence I nodded; whereupon he cried triumphantly:
+
+"Ah! You see, do you? Yes, an indispensable point is it, that
+whatsoever a man may have done, whether good or evil, should be
+recorded. For example, suppose he has manufactured a stove
+specially good for heating purposes; record the fact. Or
+suppose he has killed a mad dog; record the fact. Or suppose he
+has built a school, or cleansed a dirty street, or been a
+pioneer in the teaching of sound farming, or striven, by word
+and deed, his life long, to combat official irregularities...
+record the fact.  Again, suppose a woman has borne ten, or
+fifteen, healthy children; record the fact. Yes, and this last
+with particular care, since the conferment of healthy children
+upon the country is a work of absolute importance."
+
+Further, pointing to a grey headstone with a worn inscription,
+he shouted (or almost did so):
+
+"Under that stone lies buried the body of a man who never in
+his life loved but one woman, but ONE woman. Now, THAT is a fact
+which ought to have been recorded about him for it is not
+merely a string of names that is wanted, but a narrative of
+deeds. Yes, I have not only a desire, but a RIGHT, to know the
+lives which men have lived, and the works which they have
+performed; and whenever a man leaves our midst we ought to
+inscribe over his tomb full particulars of the 'cross and
+burden' which he bore, as particulars ever to be held in
+remembrance, and inscribed there both for my benefit and for the
+benefit of life in general, as constituting a clear and
+circumstantial record of the given career. Why did that man
+live? To the question write down, always, the answer in large
+and conspicuous characters. Eh?"
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+This led the Lieutenant's enthusiasm to increase still more as,
+for the third time waving his hand in the direction of the
+tombs, and mouthing each word, he continued:
+
+"The folk of that town are liars pure and simple, for of set
+purpose they conceal the particulars of careers that they may
+depreciate those careers in our eyes, and, while showing us the
+insignificance of the dead, fill the living with a sense of
+similar insignificance, since insignificant folk are the easiest
+to manage. Yes, it is a scheme thought out with diabolical
+ingenuity. Yet, for myself--well, try and make me do what I don't
+intend to do!"
+
+To which, with his face wrinkled with disgust, he added in a
+tone like a shot from a pistol:
+
+"Machines are we! Yes, machines, and nothing else!"
+
+Curious was it to watch the old man's excitement as one listened
+to the strong bass voice amid the stillness of the cemetery.
+Once more over the tombs, there came floating the languid,
+metallic notes of " N-n-o-u! N-n-o-u!"
+
+The oily gloss on the withered grass had vanished, faded, and
+everything turned dull, though the air remained charged with the
+spring perfume of the geraniums, stocks, and narcissi which
+encircled some of the graves.
+
+"You see," continued the Lieutenant, "one could not deny that
+each of us has his value. By the time that one has lived
+threescore years, one perceives that fact very clearly. Never
+CONCEAL things, since every life lived ought to be set in the
+light. And is capable of being so, in that every man is a
+workman for the world at large, and constitutes an instructor in
+good or in evil, and that life, when looked into, constitutes,
+as a whole, the sum of all the labour done by the aggregate of
+us petty, insignificant individuals. That is why we ought not to
+hide away a man's work, but to publish it abroad, and to
+inscribe on the cross over his tomb his deeds, his services, in
+their entirety. Yes, however negligible may have been those
+deeds, those services, hold them up for the perusal of those who
+can discover good even in what is negligible. NOW do you
+understand me?"
+
+"I do," I replied. "Yes, I do."
+
+"Good!"
+
+The bell of the monastery struck two hasty beats--then became
+silent, so that only the sad echo of its voice remained
+reverberating over the cemetery. Once more my interlocutor drew
+out his cigarette-case, silently offered it to myself, and
+lighted and puffed industriously at another cigarette. As he did
+so his hands, as small and brown as the claws of a bird, shook a
+little, and his head, bent down, looked like an Easter egg in
+plush.
+
+Still smoking, he looked me in the eyes with a self-diffident
+frown, and muttered:
+
+"Only through the labour of man does the earth attain
+development. And only by familiarising himself with, and
+remembering, the past can man obtain support in his work on
+earth."
+
+In speaking, the Lieutenant lowered his arm; whereupon on to his
+wrist there slipped the broad golden bracelet adorned with a
+medallion, and there gazed at me thence the miniature of a
+fair-haired woman: and since the hand below it was freckled, and
+its flexible fingers were swollen out of shape, and had lost
+their symmetry, the woman's fine-drawn face looked the more full
+of life, and, clearly picked out, could be seen to be smiling a
+sweet and slightly imperious smile.
+
+"Your wife or your daughter?" I queried.
+
+"My God! My God!" was, with a subdued sigh, the only response
+vouchsafed. Then the Lieutenant raised his arm, and the bracelet
+slid back to its resting place under his cuff.
+
+Over the town the columns of curling smoke were growing redder,
+and the clattering windows blushing to a tint of pink that
+recalled to my memory the livid cheeks of Virubov's "niece," of
+the woman in whom, like her uncle, there was nothing that could
+provoke one to "take liberties."
+
+Next, there scaled the cemetery wall and stealthily stretched
+themselves on the ground, so that they looked not unlike the
+far-flung shadows of the cemetery's crosses, a file of dark,
+tattered figures of beggars, while on the further side of the
+slowly darkening greenery a cantor drawled in sluggish, careless
+accents:
+
+"E-e-ternal me-e--"
+
+"Eternal memory of what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an
+angry shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has
+been the best cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given
+town. Or suppose he has been the best cobbler there, or that
+once he said something which the street wherein he dwelt can
+still remember. Would not THAT man be a man whose record should
+be preserved, and made accessible to my recollection?"
+
+And again the Lieutenant's face wreathed itself in solid rings
+of pungent tobacco smoke.
+
+Blowing softly for a moment, the wind bent the long stems of
+grass in the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All
+that remained audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices
+of women saying:
+
+"To the left, I say."
+
+"Oh, what is to be done, Tanechka?"
+
+Expelling a fresh cloud of tobacco smoke in cylindrical form,
+the old man muttered:
+
+"It would seem that those women have forgotten the precise spot
+where their relative or friend happens to lie buried."
+
+As a hawk flew over the sun-reddened belfry-cross, the bird's
+shadow glided over a memorial stone near the spot where we were
+sitting, glanced off the corner of the stone, and appeared anew
+beyond it. And in the watching of this shadow, I somehow found a
+pleasant diversion.
+
+Went on the Lieutenant:
+
+"I say that a graveyard ought to evince the victory of life,
+the triumph of intellect and of labour, rather than the power of
+death. However, imagine how things would work out under my
+scheme. Under it the record of which I have spoken would
+constitute a history of a town's life which, if anything, would
+increase men's respect for their fellows. Yes, such a history as
+THAT is what a cemetery ought to be. Otherwise the place is
+useless. Similarly will the past prove useless if it can give us
+nothing. Yet is such a history ever compiled? If it is, how can
+one say that events are brought about by, forsooth, 'servants of
+God'?"
+
+Pointing to the tombs with a gesture as though he were swimming,
+he paused for a moment or two.
+
+"You are a good man," I said, "and a man who must have lived a
+good and interesting life."
+
+He did not look at me, but answered quietly and thoughtfully:
+
+"At least a man ought to be his fellows' friend, seeing that to
+them he is beholden for everything that he possesses and for
+everything that he contains. I myself have lived--"
+
+Here, with a contraction of his brows, he fell to gazing about
+him, as though he were seeking the necessary word; until,
+seeming to fail to find it, he continued gravely:
+
+"Men need to be brought closer together, until life shall have
+become better adjusted. Never forget those who are departed,
+for anything and everything in the life of a 'servant of God'
+may prove instructive and of profound significance."
+
+On the white sides of the memorial-stones, the setting sun was
+casting warm lurid reflections, until the stonework looked as
+though it had been splashed with hot blood. Moreover, every
+thing around us seemed curiously to have swelled and grown
+larger and softer and less cold of outline; the whole scene,
+though as motionless as ever, appeared to have taken on a sort
+of bright-red humidity, and deposited that humidity in purple,
+scintillating, quivering dew on the turf's various spikes and
+tufts. Gradually, also, the shadows were deepening and
+lengthening, while on the further side of the cemetery wall a
+cow lowed at intervals, in a gross and drunken fashion, and a
+party of fowls cackled what seemed to be curses in response, and
+a saw grated and screeched.
+
+Suddenly the Lieutenant burst into a peal of subdued laughter,
+and continued to do so until his shoulders shook. At length he
+said through the paroxysms, as, giving me a push, he cocked his
+hat boyishly:
+
+"I must confess that, that--that the view which I first took of
+you was rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying
+prone on the grass I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I
+saw a young fellow roaming about the cemetery with a frown
+settled on his face, and his breeches bulging; and again I said
+to myself--"
+
+"A book is lying in my breeches pocket," I interposed.
+
+"Ah! Then I understand. Yes, I made a mistake, but a very,
+welcome one. However, as I say, when I first saw you, I said to
+myself: 'There is a man lying near that tomb. Perhaps he has a
+bullet, a wound, in his temple?' And, as you know--"
+
+He stopped to wink at me with another outburst of soft,
+good-humoured laughter. Then he continued.
+
+"Nevertheless, the scheme of which I have told you cannot really
+be called a scheme, since it is merely a fancy of my own. Yet I
+SHOULD like to see life lived in better fashion."
+
+He sighed and paused, for evidently he was becoming lost in
+thought.
+
+"Unfortunately," he continued at last, "the latter is a desire
+which I have conceived too late. If only I had done so fifteen
+years ago, when I was filling the post of Inspector of the
+prison at Usman--"
+
+His left arm stretched itself out, and once more there slid on
+to his wrist the bracelet. For a moment he touched its gold with
+a rapid, but careful, delicate, movement--then he restored the
+trinket to its retreat, rose suddenly, looked about him for a
+second or two with a frown, and said in dry, brisk tones as he
+gave his iron-grey moustache an energetic twist:
+
+"Now I must be going."
+
+For a while I accompanied him on his way, for I had a keen
+desire to hear him say something more in that pleasant, powerful
+bass of his; but though he stepped past the gravestones with
+strides as careful and regular as those of a soldier on parade,
+he failed again to break silence.
+
+Just as we passed the chapel of the monastery there floated
+forth into the fair evening stillness, from the bars, of a
+window, while yet not really stirring that stillness, a hum of
+gruff, lazy, peevish ejaculations. Apparently they were uttered
+by two persons who were engaged in a dispute, since one of them
+muttered:
+
+"What have you done? What have you done?"
+
+And the other responded carelessly:
+
+"Hold your tongue, now! Pray hold your tongue!"
+
+
+
+ON A RIVER STEAMER
+
+The water of the river was smooth, and dull silver of tint.
+Also, so barely perceptible was the current that it seemed to be
+almost stagnant under the mist of the noontide heat, and only by
+the changes in the aspect of the banks could one realise how
+quietly and evenly the river was carrying on its surface the old
+yellow-hulled steamer with the white-rimmed funnel, and also the
+clumsy barge which was being towed in her wake.
+
+Dreamily did the floats of the paddle-wheels slap the water.
+Under the planks of the deck the engines toiled without ceasing.
+Steam hissed and panted. At intervals the engine-room bell
+jarred upon the car. At intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid
+to and fro with a dull, rattling sound. Yet, owing to the
+somnolent stillness settled upon the river, these sounds
+escaped, failed to catch one's attention.
+
+Through the dryness of the summer the water was low.
+Periodically, in the steamer's bow, a deck hand like a king, a
+man with a lean,, yellow, black-avised face and a pair of
+languishing eyes, threw overboard a polished log as in tones of
+melting melancholy he chanted:
+
+"Se-em, se-em, shest!"
+
+["Seven, seven, six!"(the depth of water, reckoned in sazheni
+or fathoms)]
+
+It was as though he were wailing:
+
+"Seyem, seyem, a yest-NISHEVO"
+
+[Let us eat, let us eat, but to eat there is--nothing]
+
+Meanwhile, the steamer kept turning her stearlet-like [The
+stearlet is a fish of the salmon species] prow deliberately and
+alternately towards either bank as the barge yawed behind her,
+and the grey hawser kept tautening and quivering, and sending
+out showers of gold and silver sparkles. Ever and anon, too, the
+captain on the bridge kept shouting, hoarsely through a
+speaking-trumpet:
+
+"About, there!"
+
+Under the stem of the barge a wave ran which, divided into a
+pair of white wings, serpentined away towards either bank.
+
+In the meadowed distance peat seemed to be being burnt, and over
+the black forest there had gathered an opalescent cloud of smoke
+which also suffused the neighbouring marshes.
+
+To the right, the bank of the river towered up into lofty,
+precipitous, clayey slopes intersected with ravines wherein
+aspens and birches found shelter.
+
+Everything ashore had about it a restful, sultry, deserted look.
+Even in the dull blue, torrid sky there was nought save a
+white-hot sun.
+
+In endless vista were meadows studded with trees--trees sleeping
+in lonely isolation, and, in places, surmounted with either the
+cross of a rural church which looked like a day star or the
+sails of a windmill; while further back from the banks lay the
+tissue cloths of ripening crops, with, here and there, a human
+habitation.
+
+Throughout, the scene was indistinct. Everything in it was calm,
+touchingly simple, intimate, intelligible, grateful to the soul.
+So much so that as one contemplated the slowly-varying vistas
+presented by the loftier bank, the immutable stretches of
+meadowland, and the green, timbered dance-rings where the forest
+approached the river, to gaze at itself in the watery mirror,
+and recede again into the peaceful distance; as one gazed at all
+this one could not but reflect that nowhere else could a spot
+more simply, more kindly, more beautiful be found, than these peaceful
+shores of the great river.
+
+Yet already a few shrubs by the river's margin were beginning to
+display yellow leaves, though the landscape as a whole was
+smiling the doubtful, meditative smile of a young bride who,
+about to bear her first child, is feeling at once nervous and
+delighted at the prospect.
+
+*************************
+
+The hour was past noon, and the third-class passengers, languid
+with fatigue induced by the heat, were engaged in drinking
+either tea or beer. Seated mostly on the bulwarks of the
+steamer, they silently scanned the banks, while the deck
+quivered, crockery clattered at the buffet, and the deck hand in
+the bows sighed soporifically:
+
+Six! Six! Six-and-a-half!
+
+From the engine-room a grimy stoker emerged. Rolling along, and
+scraping his bare feet audibly against the deck, he approached
+the boatswain's cabin, where the said boatswain, a fair-haired,
+fair-bearded man from Kostroma was standing in the doorway. The
+senior official contracted his rugged eyes quizzically, and
+inquired:
+
+"Whither in such a hurry?"
+
+"To pick a bone with Mitka."
+
+"Good!"
+
+With a wave of his black hand the stoker resumed his way, while
+the boatswain, yawning, fell to casting his eyes about him. On a
+locker near the companion of the engine-room a small man in a
+buff pea-jacket, a new cap, and a pair of boots on which there
+were clots of dried mud, was seated.
+
+Through lack of diversion the boatswain began to feel inclined
+to hector somebody, so cried sternly to the man in question:
+
+"Hi there, chawbacon!"
+
+The man on the locker turned about--turned nervously, and much as
+a bullock turns. That is to say, he turned with his whole body.
+
+"Why have you gone and put yourself THERE?" inquired the
+boatswain. "Though there is a notice to tell you NOT to sit
+there, it is there that you must go and sit! Can't you read?"
+
+Rising, the passenger inspected not the notice, but the locker.
+Then he replied:
+
+"Read? Yes, I CAN read."
+
+"Then why sit there where you oughtn't to?"
+
+"I cannot see any notice."
+
+"Well, it's hot there anyway, and the smell of oil comes up
+from the engines. . . . Whence have you come?"
+
+"From Kashira."
+
+"Long from home?"
+
+"Three weeks, about."
+
+"Any rain at your place?"
+
+"No. But why?"
+
+"How come your boots are so muddy?"
+
+The passenger lowered his head, extended cautiously first one
+foot, and then the other, scrutinised them both, and replied:
+
+"You see, they are not my boots."
+
+With a roar of laughter that caused his brilliant beard to
+project from his chin, the boatswain retorted:
+
+"I think you must drink a bit."
+
+The passenger said nothing more, but retreated quietly, and with
+short strides, to the stem. From the fact that the sleeves of
+his pea-jacket reached far below his wrists, it was clear that
+the garment had originated from the shoulders of another man.
+
+As for the boatswain, on noting the circumspection and
+diffidence with which the passenger walked, he frowned, sucked
+at his beard, approached a sailor who was engaged in vigorously
+scrubbing the brass on the door of the captain's cabin with a
+naked palm, and said in an undertone:
+
+"Did you happen to notice the gait of that little man there in
+the light pea-jacket and dirty boots? "
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then see here. Do keep an eye upon him."
+
+"But why? Is he a bad lot?"
+
+"Something like it, I think."
+
+"I will then."
+
+At a table near the hatchway of the first-class cabin, a fat man
+in grey was drinking beer. Already he had reached a state of
+moderate fuddlement, for his eyes were protruding sightlessly
+and staring unwinkingly at the opposite wall. Meanwhile, a number
+of flies were swarming in the sticky puddles on the table, or
+else crawling over his greyish beard and the brick-red skin of
+his motionless features.
+
+The boatswain winked in his direction, and remarked:
+
+"Half-seas over, HE is."
+
+"'Tis his way," a pockmarked, eyebrow-less sailor responded.
+
+Here the drunken man sneezed: with the result that a cloud of
+flies were blown over the table. Looking at them, and sighing as
+his companion had done, the boatswain thoughtfully observed:
+
+"Why, he regularly sneezes flies, eh?"
+
+******************************
+
+The resting-place which I myself had selected was a stack of
+firewood over the stokehole shoot; and as I lay upon it I could
+see the hills gradually darkening the water with a mourning veil
+as calmly they advanced to meet the steamer; while in the
+meadows, a last lingering glow of the sunset's radiance was
+reddening the stems of the birches, and making the newly mended
+roof of a hut look as though it were cased in red fustian--
+communicating to everything else in the vicinity a semblance of
+floating amid fire-- and effacing all outline, and causing the
+scene as a whole to dissolve into streaks of red and orange and
+blue, save where, on a hill above the hut, a black grove of firs
+stood thrown into tense, keen, and clear-cut relief.
+
+Under a hill a party of fishermen had lit a wood fire, the
+flames of which could be seen playing upon, and picking out, the
+white hull of a boat-- the dark figure of a man therein, a
+fishing net suspended from some stakes, and a woman in a yellow
+bodice who was sitting beside the fire. Also, amid the golden
+radiance there could be distinguished a quivering of the leaves
+on the lower branches of the tree whereunder the woman sat
+shaded.
+
+All the river was calm, and not a sound occurred to break the
+stillness ashore, while the air under the awning of the
+third-class portion of the vessel felt as stifling as during the
+earlier part of the day. By this time the conversation of the
+passengers, damped by the shadow of dusk, had merged into a
+single sound which resembled the humming of bees; and amid it
+one could not distinguish nor divine who was speaking, nor the
+subject of discussion, since every word therein seemed
+disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably,
+and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a
+suppressed laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the
+cabin, a party who had agreed to sing a song of general
+acceptation were failing to hit upon one, and disputing the
+point in low and dispassionate accents; and in each, such sound
+there was something vespertinal, gently sad, softly prayer-like.
+
+From behind the firewood near me a thick, rasping voice said in
+deliberate tones:
+
+"At first he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and
+spruce; but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going
+to the dogs."
+
+Another voice, loud and gruff, replied:
+
+"Aha! Avoid the ladies, or one is bound to go amiss."
+
+"The saying has it that always a fish makes for deeper water."
+
+"Besides, he is a fool, and that is worse still. By the way, he
+is a relative of yours, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes. He is my brother."
+
+"Indeed? Then pray forgive me."
+
+"Certainly; but, to speak plainly, he is a fool."
+
+At this moment I saw the passenger in the buff pea-jacket
+approach the sally-port, grasp with his left hand a stanchion,
+and step on to the grating under which one of the paddle-wheels
+was churning the water to foam. There he stood looking over the
+bulwarks with a swinging motion akin to that of a bat when,
+grappling some object or another with its wings, it hangs
+suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was drawn
+tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to
+the point of absurdity.
+
+Presently he turned and peered into the gloom under the awning,
+though, seemingly, he failed to distinguish myself reposing on
+the firewood. This enabled me to gain a clear view of a face
+with a sharp nose, some tufts of light-coloured hair on cheeks
+and chin, and a pair of small, muddy-looking eyes. He stood
+there as though he were listening to something.
+
+All of a sudden he stepped firmly to the sally-port, swiftly
+unlashed from the iron top-rail a mop, and threw it overboard.
+Then he set about unlashing a second article of the same species.
+
+"Hi!" I shouted to him. "What are you doing there?"
+
+With a start the man turned round, clapped a hand to his
+forehead to discover my whereabouts, and replied softly and
+rapidly, and with a stammer in his voice:
+
+"How is that your business? Get away with you!"
+
+Upon this I approached him, for I was astonished and amused at
+his impudence.
+
+"For what you have done the sailors will make you pay right
+enough," I remarked.
+
+He tucked up the sleeves of his pea-jacket as though he were
+preparing for a fight. Then, stamping his foot upon the slippery
+grating, he muttered:
+
+"I perceived the mop to have come untied, and to be in danger
+of falling into the water through the vibration. Upon that I
+tried to secure it, and failed, for it slipped from my hands as
+I was doing so."
+
+"But," I remarked in amazement, "my belief is that you
+WILLFULLY untied the mop, to throw it overboard!"
+
+"Come, come!" he retorted. "Why should I have done that? What
+an extraordinary thing it would have been to do! How could it
+have been possible?"
+
+Here he dodged me with a dexterous movement, and, rearranging
+his sleeves, walked away. The length of the pea-jacket made his
+legs look absurdly short, and caused me to notice that in his
+gait there was a tendency to shuffle and hesitate.
+
+Returning to my retreat, I stretched myself upon the firewood
+once more, inhaled its resinous odour, and fell to listening to
+the slow-moving dialogue of some of the passengers around me.
+
+"Ah, good sir," a gruff, sarcastic voice began at my side-- but
+instantly a yet gruffer voice intervened with:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, except that to ask a question is easy, and to
+answer it may be difficult."
+
+"True."
+
+From the ravines a mist was spreading over the river.
+
+****************************
+
+At length night fell, and as folk relapsed into slumber the
+babel of tongues became stilled. The car, as it grew used to the
+boisterous roar of the engines and the measured rhythm of the
+paddle-wheels, did not at first notice the new sound born of the
+fact that into the sounds previously made familiar there began
+to intrude the snores of slumberers, and the padding of soft
+footsteps, and an excited whisper of:
+
+"I said to him--yes, I said: 'Yasha, you must not, you shall
+not, do this.'"
+
+The banks had disappeared from view. Indeed, one continued to be
+reminded of their existence only by the slow passage of the
+scattered fires ashore, and the fact that the darkness lay
+blacker and denser around those fires than elsewhere. Dimly
+reflected in the river, the stars seemed to be absolutely
+motionless, whereas the trailing, golden reproductions of the
+steamer's lights never ceased to quiver, as though striving to
+break adrift, and float away into the obscurity. Meanwhile, foam
+like tissue paper was licking our dark hull, while at our stern,
+and sometimes overtaking it, there trailed a barge with a couple
+of lanterns in her prow, and a third on her mast, which at one
+moment marked the reflections of the stars, and at another
+became merged with the gleams of firelight on one or the other
+bank.
+
+On a bench under a lantern near the spot where I was lying a
+stout woman was asleep. With one hand resting upon a small
+bundle under her head, she had her bodice torn under the armpit,
+so that the white flesh and a tuft of hair could be seen
+protruding. Also, her face was large, dark of brow, and full of
+jowl to a point that caused the cheeks to roll to her very ears.
+Lastly, her thick lips were parted in an ungainly, corpselike
+smile.
+
+From my own position on a level higher than hers, I looked
+dreamily down upon her, and reflected: "She is a little over
+forty years of age, and (probably) a good woman. Also, she is
+travelling to visit either her daughter and son-in-law, or her
+son and daughter-in-law, and therefore is taking with her some
+presents. Also, there is in her large heart much of the
+excellent and maternal."
+
+Suddenly something near me flashed as though a match had been
+struck, and, opening my eyes, I perceived the passenger in the
+curious pea-jacket to be standing near the woman spoken of, and
+engaged in shielding a lighted match with his sleeve. Presently,
+he extended his hand and cautiously applied the particle of
+flame to the tuft of hair under the woman's armpit. There
+followed a faint hiss, and a noxious smell of burning hair was
+wafted to my nostrils.
+
+I leapt up, seized the man by the collar, and shook him soundly.
+
+"What are you at?" I exclaimed.
+
+Turning in my grasp he whispered with a scarcely audible, but
+exceedingly repulsive, giggle:
+
+"Haven't I given her a good fright, eh?"
+
+Then he added:
+
+"Now, let me go! Let go, I say!"
+
+"Have you lost your wits?" I retorted with a gasp.
+
+For a moment or two his blinking eyes continued to glance at
+something over my shoulder. Then they returned to me, while he
+whispered:
+
+"Pray let me go. The truth is that, unable to sleep, I
+conceived that I would play this woman a trick. Was there any
+harm in that? See, now. She is still asleep."
+
+As I thrust him away his short legs, legs which might almost
+have been amputated, staggered under him. Meanwhile I reflected:
+
+"No, I was NOT wrong. He DID of set purpose throw the mop
+overboard. What a fellow! "
+
+A bell sounded from the engine-room.
+
+"Slow!" someone shouted with a cheerful hail.
+
+Upon that, steam issued with such resounding shrillness that the
+woman awoke with a jerk of her head; and as she put up her left
+hand to feel her armpit, her crumpled features gathered
+themselves into wrinkles. Then she glanced at the lamp, raised
+herself to a sitting position, and, fingering the place where
+the hair had been destroyed, said softly to herself:
+
+"Oh, holy Mother of God!"
+
+Presently the steamer drew to a wharf, and, with a loud
+clattering, firewood was dragged forth and cast into the
+stokehole with uncouth, warning cries of " Tru-us-sha! " [The
+word means ship' s hold or stokehole, but here is, probably,
+equivalent to the English " Heads below!"]
+
+Over a little town which had its back pressed against a hill the
+waning moon was rising and brightening all the black river,
+causing it to gather life as the radiance laved, as it were, the
+landscape in warm water.
+
+Walking aft, I seated myself among some bales and contemplated
+the town's frontage. Over one end of it rose, tapering like a
+walking-stick, a factory chimney, while at the other end, as
+well as in the middle, rose belfries, one of which had a gilded
+steeple, and the other one a steeple either green or blue, but
+looking black in the moonlight, and shaped like a ragged
+paint-brush.
+
+Opposite the wharf there was stuck in the wide gable of a
+two-storied building a lantern which, flickering, diffused but a
+dull, anaemic light from its dirty panes, while over the long
+strip of the broken signboard of the building there could be
+seen straggling, and executed in large yellow letters, the
+words, "Tavern and -" No more of the legend than this was
+visible.
+
+Lanterns were hanging in two or three other spots in the drowsy
+little town; and wherever their murky stains of light hung
+suspended in the air there stood out in relief a medley of
+gables, drab-tinted trees, and false windows in white paint,
+on walls of a dull slate colour.
+
+Somehow I found contemplation of the scene depressing.
+
+Meanwhile the vessel continued to emit steam as she rocked to
+and fro with a creaking of wood, a slap-slapping of water,
+and a scrubbing of her sides against the wharf. At length
+someone ejaculated surlily:
+
+"Fool, you must be asleep! The winch, you say? Why, the winch
+is at the stern, damn you!"
+
+"Off again, thank the Lord!" added the rasping voice already
+heard from behind the bales, while to it an equally familiar
+voice rejoined with a yawn:
+
+"It's time we WERE off!"
+
+Said a hoarse voice:
+
+"Look here, young fellow. What was it he shouted?"
+
+Hastily and inarticulately, with a great deal of smacking of the
+lips and stuttering, someone replied:
+
+"He shouted: 'Kinsmen, do not kill me! Have some mercy, for
+Christ's sake, and I will make over to you everything--yes,
+everything into your good hands for ever! Only let me go away,
+and expiate my sins, and save my soul through prayer. Aye, I
+will go on a pilgrimage, and remain hidden my life long, to the
+very end. Never shall you hear of me again, nor see me.' Then
+Uncle Peter caught him a blow on the head, and his blood
+splashed out upon me. As he fell I--well, I ran away, and made
+for the tavern, where I knocked at the door and shouted:
+'Sister, they have killed our father!' Upon that, she put her
+head out of the window, but only said: 'That merely means that
+the rascal is making an excuse for vodka.' . . . Aye, a terrible
+time it was--was that night! And how frightened I felt! At first,
+I made for the garret, but presently thought to myself: 'No;
+they would soon find me there, and put me to an end as well, for
+I am the heir direct, and should be the first to succeed to the
+property.' So I crawled on to the roof, and there lay hidden
+behind the chimney-stack, holding on with arms and legs,
+while unable to speak for sheer terror."
+
+"What were you afraid of?" a brusque voice interrupted.
+
+"What was I afraid of?"
+
+"At all events, you joined your uncle in killing your father,
+didn't you?"
+
+"In such an hour one has not time to think--one just kills a man
+because one can't help oneself, or because it seems so easy to
+kill."
+
+"True," the hoarser voice commented in dull and ponderous
+accents. "When once blood has flowed the fact leads to more
+blood, and if a man has started out to kill, he cares nothing
+for any reason--he finds good enough the reason which comes first
+to his hand."
+
+"But if this young fellow is speaking the truth, he had a
+BUSINESS reason--though, properly speaking, even property ought
+not to provoke quarrels."
+
+"Similarly one ought not to kill just when one chooses. Folk
+who commit such crimes should have justice meted out to them."
+
+"Yes, but it is difficult always to obtain such justice. For
+instance, this young fellow seems to have spent over a year in
+prison for nothing."
+
+"'For nothing'? Why, did he not entice his father into the
+hut, and then shut the door upon him, and throw a coat over his
+head? He has said so himself. 'For nothing,' indeed!"
+
+Upon this the rapid stream of sobbed, disconnected words, which I
+had heard before from some speaker poured forth anew. Somehow, I
+guessed that it came from the man in the dirty boots, as once
+more he recounted the story of the murder.
+
+"I do not wish to justify myself," he said. "I say merely
+that, inasmuch as I was promised a reprieve at the trial, I told
+everything, and was therefore allowed to go free, while my uncle
+and my brother were sentenced to penal servitude."
+
+"But you KNEW that they had agreed to kill him?"
+
+"Well, it is my idea that at first they intended only to give
+him a good fright. Never did my father recognise me as his
+son--always he called me a Jesuit."
+
+The gruffer of the two voices pulled up the speaker.
+
+"To think," it said, "that you can actually talk about it all!"
+
+"Why shouldn't I? My father brought tears to the eyes of many
+an innocent person."
+
+"A fig for people's tears! If our causes of tears were one and
+all to be murdered, what would the state of things become? Shed
+tears, but never blood; for blood is not yours to shed. And even
+if you should believe your own blood to be your own, know that
+it is not so, that your blood does not belong to you, but to
+Someone Else."
+
+"The point in question was my father's property. It all shows
+how a man may live awhile, and earn his living, and then
+suddenly go amiss, and lose his wits, and even conceive a grudge
+against his own father. . . . Now I must get some sleep."
+
+Behind the bales all grew quiet. Presently I rose to peer in
+that direction. The passenger in the buff pea-jacket was sitting
+huddled up against a coil of rope, with his hands thrust into
+his sleeves, and his chin resting upon his arms. As the moon was
+shining straight into his face, I could see that the latter was
+as livid as that of a corpse, and had its brows drawn down over
+its narrow, insignificant eyes.
+
+Beside him, and close to my head, there was lying stretched on
+the top of the coil of rope a broad-shouldered peasant in a
+short smock and a pair of patched boots of white felt. The
+ringlets of the wearer's curly beard were thrust upwards, and
+his hands clasped behind his head, and with ox-like eyes he
+stared at the zenith where a few stars were shining, and the moon
+was beginning to sink.
+
+At length, in a trumpet-like voice (though he seemed to do his
+best to soften it) the peasant asked:
+
+"Your uncle is on that barge, I suppose?"
+
+"He is. And so is my brother."
+
+"Yet you are here! How strange!"
+
+The dark barge, towed against the steamer's blue-silver wash of
+foam, was cleaving it like a plough, while under the moon the
+lights of the barge showed white, and the hull and the
+prisoners' cage stood raised high out of the water as to our
+right the black, indentated bank glided past in sinuous
+convolutions.
+
+From the whole, soft, liquescent fluid scene, the impression which I derived was melancholy.
+It evoked in my spirit a sense of instability, a lack of restfulness.
+
+"Why are you travelling?"
+
+"Because I wish to have a word with him."
+
+"With your uncle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"About the property?"
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Then look here, my young fellow. Drop it all--both your uncle
+and the property, and betake yourself to a monastery, and there
+live and pray. For if you have shed blood, and especially if you
+have shed the blood of a kinsman, you will stand for ever
+estranged from all, while, moreover, bloodshed is a dangerous
+thing--it may at any time come back upon you."
+
+"But the property?" the young fellow asked with a lift of his
+head.
+
+"Let it go," the peasant vouchsafed as he closed his eyes.
+
+On the younger man's face the down twitched as though a wind had
+stirred it. He yawned, and looked about him for a moment. Then,
+descrying myself, he cried in a tone of resentment:
+
+"What are you looking at? And why do you keep following me
+about?"
+
+Here the big peasant opened his eyes, and, with a glance first
+at the man, and then at myself, growled:
+
+"Less noise there, you mitten-face!"
+
+**************************
+
+As I retired to my nook and lay down, I reflected that what the
+big peasant had said was apposite enough-that the young fellow's
+face did in very truth resemble an old and shabby woollen mitten.
+
+Presently I dreamt that I was painting a belfry, and that, as I
+did so, huge, goggle-eyed jackdaws kept flying around the
+belfry's gables, and flapping at me with their wings and
+hindering my work: until, as I sought to beat them off, I missed
+my footing, fell to earth, and awoke to find my breath choking
+amid a dull, sick, painful feeling of lassitude and weakness,
+and a kaleidoscopic mist quavering before my eyes till it
+rendered me dizzy. From my head, behind the car, a thin stream
+of blood was trickling.
+
+Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I stepped aft to a pump,
+washed my head under a jet of cold water, bound it with my
+handkerchief, and, returning, inspected my resting-place in a
+state of bewilderment as to what could have caused the accident
+to happen.
+
+On the deck near the spot where I had been asleep, there was
+standing stacked a pile of small logs prepared for the cook's
+galley; while, in the precise spot where my head had rested there
+was reposing a birch faggot of which the withy-tie had come
+unfastened. As I raised the fallen faggot I perceived it to be
+clean and composed of silky loppings of birch-bark which rustled
+as I fingered them; and, consequently, I reflected that the
+ceaseless vibration of the steamer must have caused the faggot
+to become jerked on to my head.
+
+Reassured by this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but
+absurd, occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to
+the stern, where there were no oppressive odours to be
+encountered, and whence a good view was obtainable.
+
+The hour was the turn of the night, the hour of maximum tension
+before dawn, the hour when all the world seems plunged in a
+profundity of slumber whence there can be no awakening, and when
+the completeness of the silence attunes the soul to special
+sensibility, and when the stars seem to be hanging strangely
+close to earth, and the morning star, in particular, to be
+shining as brightly as a miniature sun. Yet already had the
+heavens begun to grow coldly grey, to lose their nocturnal
+softness and warmth, while the rays of the stars were drooping
+like petals, and the moon, hitherto golden, had turned pale and
+become dusted over with silver, and moved further from the earth
+as intangibly the water of the river sloughed its thick, viscous
+gleam, and swiftly emitted and withdrew, stray, pearly
+reflections of the changes occurring in the heavenly tints.
+
+In the east there was rising, and hanging suspended over the
+black spears of the pine forest, a thin pink mist the sensuous
+hue of which was glowing ever brighter, and assuming a density
+ever greater, and standing forth more boldly and clearly, even
+as a whisper of timid prayer merges into a song of exultant
+thankfulness. Another moment, and the spiked tops of the pines
+blazed into points of red fire resembling festival candles in a
+sanctuary.
+
+Next, an unseen hand threw over the water, drew along its
+surface, a transparent and many-coloured net of silk. This was
+the morning breeze, herald of dawn, as with a coating of
+tissue-like, silvery scales it rippled the river until the eye
+grew weary of trying to follow the play of gold and
+mother-of-pearl and purple and bluish-green reflected from the
+sun-renovated heavens.
+
+Next, like a fan there unfolded themselves the first
+sword-shaped beams of day, with their tips blindingly white;
+while simultaneously one seemed to hear descending from an
+iilimitable height a dense sound-wave of silver bells, a
+sound-wave advancing triumphantly to greet the sun as his
+roseate rim became visible over the forest like the rim of a cup
+that, filled with the essence of life, was about to empty its
+contents upon the earth, and to pour a bounteous flood of
+creative puissance upon the marshes whence a reddish vapour as
+of incense was arising. Meanwhile on the more precipitous of the
+two banks some of the trees near the river's margin were
+throwing soft green shadows over the water, while gilt-like dew
+was sparkling. on the herbage, and birds were awakening, and as
+a white gull skimmed the water's surface on level wings, the pale
+shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted expanse,
+while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the
+Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the
+greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself
+looked like a bird.
+
+Here and there on the yellow strip of sand by the river's margin,
+long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were
+rocking in a boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their
+tackle. Floating from the shore there began to reach us such
+vocal sounds of morning as the crowing of cocks, the lowing of
+cattle, and the persistent murmur of human voices.
+
+Similarly the buff-coloured bales in the steamer's stem
+gradually reddened, as did the grey tints in the beard of the
+large peasant where, sprawling his ponderous form over the deck,
+he was lying asleep with mouth open, nostrils distended with
+stertorous snores, brows raised as though in astonishment, and
+thick moustache intermittently twitching.
+
+Someone amid the piles of bales was panting as he fidgeted, and
+as I glanced in that direction I encountered the gaze of a pair
+of small, narrow, inflamed eyes, and beheld before me the
+ragged, mitten-like face, though now it looked even thinner and
+greyer than it had done on the previous evening. Apparently its
+owner was feeling cold, for he had hunched his chin between his
+knees, and clasped his hirsute arms around his legs, as his eyes
+stared gloomily, with a hunted air, in my direction. Then
+wearily, lifelessly he said:
+
+"Yes,you have found me. And now you can thrash me if you wish
+to do so--you can give me a blow, for I gave you one, and,
+consequently, it's your turn to do the hitting."
+
+Stupefied with astonishment, I inquired in an undertone.
+
+"It was you, then, that hit me?"
+
+"It was so, but where are your witnesses?"
+
+The words came in hoarse, croaked, suppressed accents, with a
+separation of the hands, and an upthrow of the head and
+projecting cars which had such a comical look of being crushed
+beneath the weight of the battened-down cap. Next, thrusting his
+hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, the man repeated in a
+tone of challenge:
+
+"Where, I say, are your witnesses? You can go to the devil!"
+
+I could discern in him something at once helpless and froglike
+which evoked in me a strong feeling of repulsion; and since,
+with that, I had no real wish to converse with him, or even to
+revenge myself upon him for his cowardly blow, I turned away in
+silence.
+
+But a moment later I looked at him again, and saw that he was
+seated in his former posture, with his arms embracing his knees,
+his chin resting upon them, and his red, sleepless eyes gazing
+lifelessly at the barge which the steamer was towing between
+wide ribbons of foaming water--ribbons sparkling in the sunlight
+like mash in a brewer's vat.
+
+And those eyes, that dead, alienated expression, the gay
+cheerfulness of the morning, and the clear radiance of the
+heavens, and the kindly tints of the two banks, and the vocal
+sounds of the June day, and the bracing freshness of the air,
+and the whole scene around us served but to throw into the more
+tragic relief.
+
+*******************************
+
+Just as the steamer was leaving Sundir the man threw himself
+into the water;in the sight of everybody he sprang overboard.
+Upon that all shouted, jostled their neighbours as they rushed
+to the side, and fell to scanning the river where from bank to
+bank it lay wrapped in blinding glitter.
+
+The whistle sounded in fitful alarm, the sailors threw lifebelts
+overboard, the deck rumbled like a drum under the crowd's
+surging  rush, steam hissed afflightedly, a woman vented an
+hysterical cry, and the captain bawled from the bridge the
+imperious command:
+
+"Avast heaving lifebelts! By now the fool will have got one!
+Damn you, calm the passengers!"
+
+An unwashed, untidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back
+his long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat
+shoulder jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped people up.
+
+"A muzhik, is it, or a woman? A muzhik, eh?"
+
+By the time that I had made my way to the stern the man had
+fallen far behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as
+small as a fly on the glassy surface of the water. However,
+towards that fly a fishing-boat was already darting with the
+swiftness of a water beetle, and causing its two oars to show
+quiveringly red and grey, while from the marshier of the two
+banks there began hastily to put out a second boat which leapt
+in the steamer's wash with the gaiety of a young calf.
+
+Suddenly there broke into the painful hubbub on the steamer's
+deck a faint, heartrending cry of "A-a-ah!"
+
+In answer to it a sharp-nosed, black-bearded, well-dressed
+peasant muttered with a smack of his lips:
+
+"Ah! That is him shouting. What a madman he must have been! And
+an ugly customer too, wasn't he?"
+
+The peasant with the curly beard rejoined in a tone of
+conviction engulfing all other utterances:
+
+"It is his conscience that is catching him. Think what you
+like, but never can conscience be suppressed."
+
+Therewith, constantly interrupting one another, the pair betook
+themselves to a public recital of the tragic story of the
+fair-haired young fellow, whom the fishermen had now lifted from
+the water, and were conveying towards the steamer with oars that
+oscillated at top speed.
+
+The bearded peasant continued:
+
+"As soon as it was seen that he was but running after the
+soldier's wife."
+
+"Besides," the other peasant interrupted, "the property was
+not to be divided after the death of the father."
+
+With which the bearded muzhik eagerly recounted the history of
+the murder done by the brother, the nephew, and a son, while the
+spruce, spare, well-dressed peasant interlarded the general buzz
+of conversation with words and comments cheerfully and
+stridently delivered, much as though he were driving in stakes
+for the erection of a fence.
+
+"Every man is drawn most in the direction whither he finds it
+easiest to go."
+
+"Then it will be the Devil that will be drawing him, since the
+direction of Hell is always the easiest."
+
+"Well, YOU will not be going that way, I suppose? You don't
+altogether fancy it?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Because you have declared it to be the easiest way."
+
+"Well, I am not a saint."
+
+"No, ha-ha! you are not."
+
+"And you mean that--?"
+
+"I mean nothing. If a dog's chain be short, he is not to be
+blamed."
+
+Whereupon, setting nose to nose, the pair plunged into a quarrel
+still more heated as they expounded in simple, but often
+curiously apposite, language opinions intelligible to themselves
+alone. The one peasant, a lean fellow with lengthy limbs, cold,
+sarcastic eyes, and a dark, bony countenance, spoke loudly and
+sonorously, with frequent shrugs of the shoulders, while the
+other peasant, a man stout and broad of build who until now had
+seemed calm, self-assured of demeanour, and a man of settled
+views, breathed heavily, while his oxlike eyes glowed with an
+ardour causing his face to flush patchily, and his beard to
+stick out from his chin.
+
+"Look here, for instance," he growled as he gesticulated and
+rolled his dull eyes about. "How can that be? Does not even God
+know wherein a man ought to restrain himself?"
+
+"If the Devil be one's master, God doesn't come into the
+matter."
+
+"Liar! For who was the first who raised his hand against his
+fellow?"
+
+"Cain."
+
+"And the first man who repented of a sin? "
+
+"Adam."
+
+"Ah! You see!"
+
+Here there broke into the dispute a shout of: "They are just
+getting him aboard!" and the crowd, rushing away from the
+stern, carried with it the two disputants--the sparer peasant;
+lowering his shoulders, and buttoning up his jacket as he went;
+while the bearded peasant, following at his heels, thrust his
+head forward in a surly manner as he shifted his cap from the
+one ear to the other.
+
+With a ponderous beating of paddles against the current the
+steamer heaved to, and the captain shouted through a
+speaking-trumpet, with a view to preventing a collision between
+the barge and the stem of the vessel:
+
+"Put her over! Put her o-o-ove-r!"
+
+Soon the fishing-boat came alongside, and the half-drowned man,
+with a form as limp as a half-empty sack, and water exuding from
+every stitch, and his hitherto haggard face grown smooth and
+simple-looking, was hoisted on board.
+
+Next, on the sailors laying him upon the hatchway of the baggage
+hold, he sat up, leaned forward, smoothed his wet hair with the
+palms of his hands, and asked dully, without looking at anyone:
+
+"Have they also recovered my cap?"
+
+Someone among the throng around him exclaimed reprovingly:
+
+"It is not about your cap that you ought to be thinking, but
+about your soul."
+
+Upon this he hiccuped loudly and freely, like a camel, and
+emitted a stream of turgid water from his mouth. Then, looking
+at the crowd with lack-lustre eyes, he said in an apathetic tone:
+
+"Let me be taken elsewhere."
+
+In answer, the boatswain sternly bade him stretch himself out,
+and this the young fellow did, with his hands clasped under his
+head, and his eyes closed, while the boatswain added brusquely
+to the onlookers:
+
+"Move away, move away, good people. What is there to stare at?
+This is not a show. . . . Hi, you muzhik! Why did you play us
+such a trick, damn you?"
+
+The crowd however, was not to be suppressed, but indulged in
+comments.
+
+"He murdered his father, didn't he?"
+
+"What? THAT wretched creature?"
+
+As for the boatswain, he squatted upon his heels, and proceeded
+to subject the rescued man to a course of strict interrogation.
+
+"What is the destination marked on your ticket?"
+
+"Perm."
+
+"Then you ought to leave the boat at Kazan. And what is your
+name?"
+
+"Yakov."
+
+"And your surname?"
+
+"Bashkin--though we are known also as the Bukolov family."
+
+"Your family has a DOUBLE surname, then?"
+
+With the full power of his trumpet-like lungs the bearded
+peasant (evidently he had lost his temper) broke in:
+
+"Though his uncle and his brother have been sentenced to penal
+servitude and are travelling together on that barge, he--well,
+he has received his discharge! That is only a personal matter,
+however. In spite of what judges may say, one ought never to
+kill, since conscience cannot bear the thought of blood. Even
+nearly to become a murderer is wrong."
+
+By this time more and more passengers had collected as they awakened from sleep and emerged from the first- and
+second-class cabins. Among them was the mate, a man with
+a black moustache and rubicund features who inquired of
+someone amid the confusion: "You are not a doctor, I suppose?"
+and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: "No,
+sir, nor ever have been one."
+
+To this someone added with a drawl:
+
+"Why is a doctor needed? Surely the man is a fellow of no
+particular importance?"
+
+Over the river the radiance of the summer daylight had gathered
+increased strength, and, since the date was a Sunday, bells were
+sounding seductively from a hill, and a couple of women in gala
+apparel who were following the margin of the river waved
+handkerchiefs towards the steamer, and shouted some greeting.
+
+Meanwhile the young fellow lay motionless, with his eyes closed.
+Divested of his pea-jacket, and wrapped about with wet, clinging
+underclothing, he looked more symmetrical than previously--his
+chest seemed better developed, his body plumper, and his face
+more rotund and less ugly.
+
+Yet though the passengers gazed at him with compassion or
+distaste or severity or fear, as the case might be, all did so
+without ceremony, as though he had not been a
+living man at all.
+
+For instance, a gaunt gentleman in a grey frock-coat said to a
+lady in a yellow straw hat adorned with a pink ribbon:
+
+"At our place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went
+and hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped
+every watch and clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did
+he stop them?"
+
+"An abnormal case indeed!"
+
+On the other hand, a dark-browed woman who had her hands hidden
+beneath her shawl stood gazing at the rescued man in silence,
+and with her side turned towards him. As she did so tears were
+welling in her grey-blue eyes.
+
+Presently two sailors appeared. One of them bent over the young
+fellow, touched him on the shoulder, and said:
+
+"Hi! You are to get up."
+
+Whereupon the young fellow rose, and was removed elsewhither.
+
+**********************************
+
+When, after an interval, he reappeared on deck, he was clean and
+dry, and clad in a cook's white jumper and a sailor's blue serge
+trousers. Clasping his hands behind his back, hunching his
+shoulders, and bending his head forward, he walked swiftly to
+the stern, with a throng of idlers--at first one by one, and then
+in parties of from three to a dozen--following in his wake.
+
+The man seated himself upon a coil of rope, and, craning his
+neck in wolf-like fashion to eye the bystanders, frowned, let
+fall his temples upon hands thrust into his flaxen hair, and
+fixed his gaze upon the barge.
+
+Standing or sitting about in the hot sunshine, people stared at
+him without stint. Evidently they would have liked, but did not
+dare, to engage him in conversation. Presently the big peasant
+also arrived on the scene, and, after glancing at all present,
+took off his hat, and wiped his perspiring face. Next, a
+grey-headed old man with a red nose, a thin wisp of beard, and
+watery eyes cleared his throat, and in honeyed tones took the
+initiative.
+
+"Would you mind telling us how it all happened?" he began.
+
+"Why should I do so?" retorted the young fellow without moving.
+
+Taking a red handkerchief from his bosom, the old man shook it
+out and applied it cautiously to his eyes. Then he said through
+its folds in the quiet accents of a man who is determined to
+persevere:
+
+"Why, you say? For the reason that the occasion is one when all
+ought to know the tru--"
+
+Lurching forward, the bearded peasant interposed with a rasp:
+
+"Yes, do you tell us all about it, and things will become
+easier for you. For a sin always needs to be made known."
+
+While, like an echo, a voice said in bold and sarcastic accents:
+
+"It would be better to seize him and tie him up."
+
+Upon this the young fellow raised his brows a little, and
+retorted in an undertone:
+
+"Let me bide."
+
+"The rascal!" the crowd commented, while the old man, neatly
+folding and replacing his handkerchief, raised a hand as dry as
+a cock's leg, and remarked with a sharp, knowing smile:
+
+"Possibly it is not merely out of idle curiosity that folk are
+making this request."
+
+"Go and be damned to you!" the young fellow exclaimed with a
+grim snap. Whereupon the big peasant bellowed out in a blustering fashion:
+
+"What? Then you will not tell us at least your destination?"
+
+Whereafter the same speaker continued to hold forth on humanity,
+God, and the human conscience--staring wildly around him as he
+did so, waving his arms about, and growing ever more
+frantic, until really it was curious to watch him.
+
+At length the crowd grew similarly excited, and took to
+encouraging the speaker with cries of "True! That is so!"
+
+As for the young fellow, he listened awhile in silence, without
+moving. Then, straightening his back, he rose, thrust his hands
+into the pockets of his trousers, and, swaying his body to and
+fro, began to glare at the crowd with greenish eyes which were
+manifestly lightening to a vicious gleam. At length, thrusting
+forth his chest, he cried hoarsely:
+
+"So you ask me whither I am bound? I am bound for the
+brigands' lair, for the brigands' lair, where, unless you first
+take and put me in fetters, I intend to cut the throat of every
+man that I meet. Yes, a hundred murders will I commit, for all
+folk will be the same to me, and not a soul will I spare. Aye,
+the end of my tether is reached, so take and fetter me whilst
+you can."
+
+His breath was issuing with difficulty, and as he spoke his
+shoulders heaved, and his legs trembled beneath him. Also, his
+face had turned grey and become distorted with tremors.
+
+Upon this, the crowd broke into a gruff, ugly, resentful roar,
+and edged away from the man. Yet, in doing so, many of its
+members looked curiously like the man himself in the way that
+they lowered their heads, caught at their breath, and let their
+eyes flash. Clearly the man was in imminent danger of being
+assaulted.
+
+Suddenly he recovered his subdued demeanour--he, as it were,
+thawed in the sunlight: until, as suddenly, his legs gave way
+beneath him, and, narrowly escaping injury to his face from the
+corner of a bale, he fell forward upon his knees as though
+felled with an axe. Thereafter, clutching at his throat, he
+shouted in a strange voice, and crowding the words upon one
+another:
+
+"Tell me what I am to do. Is all of it my fault? Long I lay in
+prison before I was tried and told to go free... yet--"
+
+Tearing at his ears and cheeks, he rocked his head to and fro as
+though seeking to rend it from its socket. Then he continued:
+
+"Yet I am NOT free. Nor is it in my power to say what will
+become of me. For me there remains neither life nor death."
+
+"Aha!" exclaimed the big peasant; and at the sound the crowd
+drew back as in consternation, while some hastened to depart
+altogether. As for the remainder (numbering a dozen or so), they
+herded sullenly, nervously, involuntarily into a mass as the young
+fellow continued in distracted tones and with a trembling head:
+
+"Oh that I could sleep for the next ten years! For then could I
+prove myself, and decide whether I am guilty or not. Last night
+I struck a man with a faggot. As I was walking about I saw
+asleep a man who had angered me, and thereupon thought, 'Come! I
+should like to deal him a blow, but can I actually do it?' And
+strike him I did. Was it my fault? Always I keep asking myself,
+'Can I, or can I not, do a thing?' Aye, lost, lost am I!"
+
+Apparently this outburst caused the man to reach the end of his
+power, for presently he sank from knees to heels--then on to his
+side, with hands clasping his head, and his tongue finally
+uttering the words, "Better had you kill me!"
+
+A hush fell, for all now stood confounded and silent, with,
+about them, a greyer, a more subdued, look which made all more
+resemble their fellows. In fact, to all had the atmosphere
+become oppressive, as though everyone's breast had had clamped
+into it a large, soft clod of humid, viscid earth. Until at last
+someone said in a low, shamefaced, but friendly, tone:
+
+"Good brother, we are not your judges."
+
+To which someone else added with an equal measure of gentleness:
+
+"Indeed, we may be no better than you."
+
+"We pity you, but we must not judge you. Only pity is
+permitted."
+
+As for the well-dressed peasant, his loud, triumphant utterance
+was:
+
+"Let God judge him, but men suffer him. Of judging of one
+another there has been enough."
+
+And a fifth man remarked to a friend as he walked away:
+
+"What are we to make of this? To judge by the book, the young
+fellow is at once guilty and not guilty."
+
+"Bygones ought to be bygones. Of all courses that is the best."
+
+"Yes, for we are too quick. What good can that do?"
+
+"Aye, what?"
+
+At length the dark-browed woman stepped forward. Letting her
+shawl to her shoulders, straightening hair streaked with grey
+under a bright blue scarf, and deftly putting aside a skirt she
+so seated herself beside the young fellow as to screen from the
+crowd with the height of her figure. Then, raising kindly face,
+she said civilly, but authoritatively, to the bystanders:
+
+"Do all of you go away."
+
+Whereupon the crowd began to depart,the big peasant saying as he
+went:
+
+"There! Just as I foretold has the matter turned out.
+Conscience HAS asserted itself."
+
+Yet the words were spoken without self-complacency, rather,
+thoughtfully, and with a sense of awe.
+
+As for the red-nosed old man who was walking like a shadow
+behind the last speaker, he opened his snuff-box, peered therein
+with his moist eyes, and drawled to no one in particular:
+
+"How often does one see a man play with conscience, yes, even
+though he be a rogue! He erects that conscience as a screen to
+his knaveries and tricks and wiles, and masks the whole with a
+cloud of words. Yes, we know how it is done, even though folk
+may stare at him, and say to one another, 'How fervently his
+soul is glowing!' Aye, all the time that he is holding his hand
+to his heart he will be dipping the other hand into your pocket."
+
+The lover of proverbs, for his part, unbuttoned his jacket,
+thrust his hands under his coat-tails, and said in a loud voice:
+
+"There is a saying that you can trust any wild beast, such as a
+fox or a hedgehog or a toad, but not--"
+
+"Quite so, dear sir. The common folk are exceedingly
+degenerate."
+
+"Well, they are not developing as they ought to do."
+
+"No, they are over-cramped," was the big peasant's rasped-out
+comment. "They have no room for GROWTH."
+
+"Yes, they DO grow, but only as regards beard and moustache, as
+a tree grows to branch and sap."
+
+With a glance at the purveyor of proverbs the old man assented
+by remarking: "Yes, true it is that the common folk are
+cramped." Whereafter he thrust a pinch of snuff into his
+nostrils, and threw back his head in anticipation of the sneeze
+which failed to come. At length, drawing a deep breath through
+his parted lips, he said as he measured the peasant again with
+his eyes:
+
+"My friend, you are of a sort calculated to last."
+
+In answer the peasant nodded.
+
+"SOME day," he remarked, "we shall get what we want."
+
+In front of us now, was Kazan, with the pinnacles of its
+churches and mosques piercing the blue sky, and looking like
+garlands of exotic blooms. Around them lay the grey wall of the
+Kremlin, and above them soared the grim Tower of Sumbek.
+
+Here one and all were due to disembark.
+
+I glanced towards the stern once more. The dark-browed woman was
+breaking off morsels from a wheaten scone that was lying in her
+lap, and saying as she did so:
+
+"Presently we will have a cup of tea, and then keep together as
+far as Christopol."
+
+In response the young fellow edged nearer to her, and
+thoughtfully eyed the large hands which, though inured to hard
+work, could also be very gentle.
+
+"I have been trodden upon," he said.
+
+"Trodden upon by whom?"
+
+"By all. And I am afraid of them."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because I am."
+
+Breathing upon a morsel of the scone, the woman offered it him
+with the quiet words:
+
+"You have had much to bear. Now, shall I tell you my history,
+or shall we first have tea? "
+
+******************************
+
+On the bank there was now to be seen the frontage of the gay,
+wealthy suburb of Uslon, with its brightly-dressed,
+rainbow-tinted women and girls tripping through the streets, and
+the water of its foaming river sparkling hotly, yet dimly, in
+the sunlight.
+
+It was a scene like a scene beheld in a vision.
+
+
+
+A WOMAN
+
+The wind is scudding over the steppe, and beating upon the
+rampart of the Caucasian heights until their backbone seems to be
+bellying like a huge sail, and the earth to be whirling and
+whizzing through unfathomable depths of blue, and leaving behind
+it a rack of wind-torn clouds which, as their shadows glide over
+the surface of the land, seem ever to be striving to keep in
+touch with the onrush of the gale, and, failing to maintain the
+effort, dissolving in tears and despondency.
+
+The trees too are bending in the attitude of flight--their boughs
+are brandishing their foliage as a dog worries a fleece, and
+littering the black soil with leaves among which runs a constant
+querulous hissing and rustling. Also, storks are uttering their
+snapping cry, sleek rooks cawing, steppe grasshoppers maintaining
+their tireless chirp, sturdy, well-grown husbandmen uttering
+shouts like words of command, the threshing-floors of the
+rolling steppe diffusing a rain of golden chaff, and eddying
+whirlwinds catching up stray poultry feathers, dried-onion
+strips, and leaves yellowed with the heat, to send them dancing
+again over the trim square of the little Cossack hamlet.
+
+Similarly does the sun keep appearing and disappearing as though
+he were pursuing the fugitive earth, and ever and anon halting
+through weariness before his decline into the dark, shadowy vista
+where the snowclad peaks of the western mountains are rearing
+their heads, and fast-reddening clouds are reminding one of the
+surface of a ploughed field.
+
+At times those clouds part their bulk to reveal in blinding
+splendour the silvery saddle of Mount Elburz, and the crystal
+fangs of other peaks--all, apparently, striving to catch and
+detain the scudding vapours. And to such a point does one come to
+realise the earth's flight through space that one can scarcely
+draw one's breath for the tension, the rapture, of the thought
+that with the rush of that dear and beautiful earth oneself is
+keeping pace towards, and ever tending towards, the region where,
+behind the eternal, snow-clad peaks, there lies a boundless ocean
+of blue--an ocean beside which there may lie stretched yet other
+proud and marvellous lands, a void of azure amid which one may
+come to descry far-distant, many-tinted spheres of planets as yet
+unknown, but sisters, all, to this earth of ours.
+
+Meanwhile from the steppe slow, ponderous grey oxen with sharp
+horns are drawing an endless succession of wagon-loads of
+threshed grain through rich, black, sootlike dust. Patiently the
+beasts' round eyes regard the earth, while on the top of each
+load there lolls a Cossack who, with face sunburnt to the last
+pitch of swarthiness, and eyes reddened with exposure to the
+wind, and beard matted, seemingly solidified, with dust and
+sweat, is clad in a shirt drab with grime, and has a shaggy
+Persian cap thrust to the back of his head. Occasionally, also,
+he may he seen riding on the pole in front of his team, and being
+buffeted from behind by the wind which inflates his shirt. And as
+sleek and comfortable as the carcasses of the bullocks are these
+Cossacks' frames in proportion their eyes are sluggishly
+intelligent, and in their every movement is the deliberate air of
+men who know precisely what they have to do.
+
+"Tsob, tsobe!" such fellows shout to their teams. This year
+they are reaping a splendid harvest.
+
+Yet though these folk, one and all, look fat and prosperous,
+their mien is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their
+teeth. Possibly this is because they are over-weary with toil.
+However that may be, the full-fed country people of the region
+laugh but little, and seldom sing.
+
+In the centre of the hamlet soars the red brick church of the
+place--an edifice which, with its five pinnacles, its belfry over
+its porch, and its yellow plaster window-mouldings, looks like an
+edifice that has been fashioned of meat, and cemented with
+grease. Nay, its very shadow seems so richly heavy as to be the
+shadow of a fane erected by men endowed with a plethora of this
+world's goods to a god otiose in his grandeur. Ranged around the
+building in ring fashion, the hamlet's squat white huts stand
+girdled with belts of plaited wattle, shawled in the gorgeous
+silken scarves of gardens, and crowned with a flowered
+brocadework of reed-thatched roofs. In fact, they resemble a bevy
+of buxom babi, [Peasant women] as over and about them wave
+silver poplar trees, with quivering, lacelike leaves of acacias,
+and dark-leaved chestnuts (the leaves of the latter like the
+palms of human hands) which rock to and fro as though they would
+fain seize, and detain the driving clouds. Also, from court to
+court scurry Cossack women who, with skirt-tails tucked up to
+reveal muscular legs bare to the knee, are preparing to array
+themselves for the morrow's festival, and, meanwhile, chattering
+to one another, or shouting to plump infants which may be seen
+bathing in the dust like sparrows, or picking up handfuls of
+sand, and tossing them into the air.
+
+Sheltered from the wind by the churchyard wall, there may be seen
+also, as they sprawl on the dry, faded herbage, a score of "
+strollers for work "that is to say, of folk who, a community
+apart, consist of "nowhere people," of dreamers who live
+constantly in expectation of some stroke of luck, some kindly
+smile from fortune, and of wastrels who, intoxicated with the
+abundant bounty of the opulent region, have fallen passive
+victims to the Russian craze for vagrancy. These folk tramp from
+hamlet to hamlet in parties of two or three, and, while
+purporting to seek employment, merely contemplate that employment
+lethargically, express astonishment at the plenitude which it
+produces, and then decline to put their hands to toil save when
+dire necessity renders it no longer possible to satisfy hunger's
+pangs through the expedients of mendicancy and theft. Dull, or
+cowed, or timid, or furtive of eye, these folk have lost all
+sense of the difference between that which constitutes honesty
+and that which does not.
+
+The morrow being the Feast of the Assumption, these people have,
+in the present instance, gathered from every quarter of the
+country, for the reason that they hope to be provided with food
+and drink without first being made to earn their entertainment.
+
+For the most part they are Russians from the central provinces,
+vagabonds whose faces are blackened, and heads blanched with the
+unaccustomed sunshine of the South, but whose bodies are clad
+merely in rags tossed and tumbled by the wind. True, the wearers
+of those rags declare themselves to be peaceful, respectable
+citizens whom toil and life's buffetings have exhausted, and
+compelled to seek temporary rest and prayer; yet never does a
+creaking, groaning, ponderous grain wagon, with its Cossack
+driver, pass them by without their according the latter a humble,
+obsequious salute as, with straw in mouth, and omitting, always,
+to raise his cap, the man glances at them askance and with
+contempt, or, more frequently, does not even descry these
+tattered, grimy hulks between whom and himself there is
+absolutely nothing in common.
+
+Lower even, and more noticeably, more pretentiously, than the
+rest does a certain " needy " native of Tula named Konev salute
+each Cossack. A hardbitten muzhik as sunburnt as a stick of
+ergot, he has a black beard distributed irregularly over a lean
+face, a fawning smile, and eyes deep-sunken in their sockets.
+
+Most of these persons I have met for the first time today; but
+Konev is an old acquaintance of mine, for he and I have more than
+once encountered one another on the road between Kursk and the
+province of Ter. An "artelni," that is to say, a member of a
+workman's union, he cultivates his fellows' good graces for the
+reason that he is also an arrant coward, and accustomed,
+everywhere save in his own village (which lies buried among the
+sands of Alexin), to assert that:
+
+"Certainly, this countryside is rich, yet I cannot hit things
+off with its inhabitants. In my own part of the country folk are
+more spiritual, more truly Russian, by far than here--they are
+folk with whom the natives of this region are not to be compared,
+since in the one locality the population has a human soul,
+whereas in the other locality it is a flint-stone."
+
+And with a certain quiet reflectiveness, he loves also to recount
+a marvellous example of unlooked-for enrichment. He will say to
+you:
+
+"Maybe you do not believe in the virtue of horseshoes? Yet I
+tell YOU that once, when a certain peasant of Efremov found a
+horseshoe, the next three weeks saw it befall that that peasant's
+uncle, a tradesman of Efremov, was burnt to death with all his
+family, and the property devolved to the peasant. Did you ever
+hear of such a thing? What is going to happen CANNOT be foretold,
+for at any moment fortune may pity a man, and send him a
+windfall."
+
+As Konev says this his dark, pointed eyebrows will go shooting up
+his forehead, and his eyes come protruding out of their sockets,
+as though he himself cannot believe what he has just related.
+
+Again, should a Cossack pass him without returning his salute, he
+will mutter as he follows the man with his eyes:
+
+"An overfed fellow, that--a fellow who can't even look at a human
+being! The souls of these folk, I tell you, are withered."
+
+On the present occasion he has arrived on the scene in company
+with two women. One of them, aged about twenty, is gentle-
+looking, plump, and glassy of eye, with a mouth perpetually half-
+open, so that the face looks like that of an imbecile, and though
+the exposed teeth of its lower portion may seem to be set in a
+smile, you will perceive, should you peer into the motionless
+eyes under the overhanging brows, that she has recently been
+weeping in the terrified, hysterical fashion of a person of weak
+intellect.
+
+I have come here with that man and other strangers thus I heard
+her narrate in low, querulous tones as with a stumpy finger she
+rearranged the faded hair under her yellow and green scarf.
+
+A fat-faced youth with high cheek-bones and the small eyes of a
+Mongol here nudged her, and said carelessly:
+
+"You mean, rather, that your own man has cast you off. Probably
+he was the only man you ever saw."
+
+"Aye," Konev drawled thoughtfully as he felt in his wallet.
+Nowadays folk need think little of deserting a woman, since in
+this year of grace women are no good at all."
+
+Upon this the woman frowned--then blinked her eyes timidly, and
+would have opened her lips to reply, but that her companion
+interrupted her by saying in a brisk, incisive tone:
+
+"Do not listen to those rascals!"
+
+*****************************
+
+The woman's companion, some five or six years her senior, has a
+face exceptional in the constant change and movement of its great
+dark eyes as at one moment they withdraw themselves from the
+street of the Cossack hamlet, to gaze fixedly and gravely towards
+the steppe where it lies scoured with the scudding breeze, and at
+another moment fall to scanning the faces of the persons around
+her, and, at another, frown anxiously, or send a smile flitting
+across her comely lips as she bends her head, until her features
+are concealed. Next, the head is raised again, for the eyes have
+taken on another phase, and become dilated with interest, while a
+sharp furrow is forming between the slender eyebrows, and the
+finely moulded lips and trim mouth have compressed themselves
+together, and the thin nostrils of the straight nose are snuffing
+the air like those of a horse.
+
+In fact, in the woman there is something non-peasant in its
+origin. For instance, let one but watch her sharply clicking feet
+as, in walking, they peep from under her blue skirt, and one
+will perceive that they are not the splayed feet of a villager,
+but, rather, feet arched of instep, and at one time accustomed to
+the wearing of boots. Or, as the woman sits engaged in
+embroidering a blue bodice with a pattern of white peas, one will
+perceive that she has long been accustomed to plying the needle
+so dexterously; swiftly do the small, sunburnt hands fly in and
+out under the tumbled material, eagerly though the wind may
+strive to wrest it from her. Again, as she sits bending over her
+work, one will descry through a rent in her bodice a small, firm
+bosom which might almost have been that of a virgin, were it not
+for the fact that a projecting teat proclaims that she is a woman
+preparing to suckle an infant. In short, as she sits among her
+companions she looks like a fragment of copper flung into the
+midst of some rusty old scrap-iron.
+
+Most of the people in whose society I wander neither rise to
+great heights nor sink to great depths, but are as colourless as
+dust, and wearisomely insignificant. Hence is it that whenever I
+chance upon a person whose soul I can probe and explore for
+thoughts unfamiliar to me and words not hitherto heard I
+congratulate myself, seeing that though it is my desire to see
+life grow more fair and exalted, and I yearn to bring about that
+end, there constantly reveals itself to me merely a vista of
+sharp angles and dark spaces and poor crushed, defrauded people.
+Yes, never do I seek to project a spark of my own fire into the
+darkness of my neighbour's soul but I see that spark disappear,
+become lost, in a chaos of dumb vacuity.
+
+Hence the woman of whom I have just spoken particularly excites
+my fancy, and leads me to attempt divinations of her past, until
+I find myself evolving a story which is not only of vast
+complexity, but has got painted into it merely the colours of my
+own hopes and aspirations. It is a story necessarily illusory,
+necessarily bound to make life seem even worse than before. Yet
+it is a grievous thing NEVER to distort actuality, NEVER to
+envelop actuality in the wrappings of one's imagination . . . .
+
+Closing his eyes, and picking his words with difficulty, a tall,
+fair peasant drawls in thick, gluelike tones:
+
+"'Very well,' I said: and off we set. On the way I said again:
+'Gubin, though you may not like to be told so, you are no better
+than a thief.'"
+
+The o's uttered by this peasant are uniformly round and firm--they
+roll forward as a cartwheel trundles along a hot, dusty country
+road.
+
+The youth with the high cheek-bones fixes the whites of his
+porcine eyes (eyes the pupils of which are as indeterminate as
+the eyes of a blind man) upon the woman in the green scarf.
+Then, having, like a calf, plucked and chewed some stalks of the
+withered grass, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, bends one
+fist into the crook of the elbow, and says to Konev with a glance
+at the well-developed muscle:
+
+"Should you care to hit me?"
+
+"No, you can hit yourself. Hit yourself over the head. Then,
+perhaps, you'll grow wiser."
+
+Stolidly the young fellow looks at Konev, and inquires:
+
+"How do you know me to be a fool? "
+
+"Because your personality tells me so."
+
+"Eh?" cries the young fellow truculently as he raises himself
+to a kneeling posture. "How know you what I am?"
+
+"I have been told what you are by the Governor of your
+province."
+
+The young fellow opens his mouth, and stares at Konev. Then he
+asks:
+
+"To what province do I belong?"
+
+"If you yourself have forgotten to what province you belong, you
+had better try and loosen your wits."
+
+"Look here. If I were to hit you, I--"
+
+The woman who has been sewing drops her work to shrug one rounded
+shoulder as though she were cold, and ask conciliatorily:
+
+"Well, WHAT province do you belong to?"
+
+"I? " the young fellow re-echoes as he subsides on to his heels.
+"I belong to Penza. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh never mind why."
+
+Presently, with a strangely youthful laugh, the woman adds in a
+murmur:
+
+"I ask because I too belong to that province."
+
+"And to which canton?"
+
+"To that of Penza." In the woman's tone is a touch of pride.
+
+The young fellow squats down before her, as before a wood fire,
+stretches out his hands, and says in an ingratiating voice:
+
+"What a fine place is our cantonal town! What churches and shops
+and stone houses there are in it! In fact, one shop sells a
+machine on which you can play anything you like, any sort of a
+tune!"
+
+"As well as, probably, the fool," comments Konev in an
+undertone, though the young fellow is too enthralled with the
+memory of the amenities of his cantonal capital to notice the
+remark. Next, smacking his lips, and chewing his words, he
+continues in a murmur:
+
+"In those stone houses."
+
+Here the woman drops her sewing a second time to inquire: "Is
+there a convent there?"
+
+"A convent?"
+
+And the young fellow pauses uncouthly to scratch his neck. Only
+after a while does he answer:
+
+"A convent? Well, I do not know, for only once, to tell the
+truth, have I been in the town, and that was when some of us
+famine folk were set to a job of roadmaking."
+
+"Well, well!" gasps Konev, as he rises and takes his departure.
+
+The vagabonds, huddled against the churchyard wall, look like
+litter driven thither by the steppe wind, and as liable to be
+whirled away again whenever the wind shall choose. Three of the
+party are sleeping, and the remainder either mending their
+clothing, or killing fleas, or lethargically munching bread
+collected at the windows of the Cossacks' huts. I find the sight
+of them weary me as much as does the young fellows fatuous
+babble. Also, I find that whenever the elder of the two women
+lifts her eyes from her work, and half smiles, the faint half-
+smile in question vexes me intensely. Consequently, I end by
+departing in Konev's wake.
+
+Guarding the entrance of the churchyard, four poplar trees stand
+erect, save when, as the wind harries them, they bow alternately
+to the arid, dusty earth and towards the dim vista of tow-
+coloured steppe and snowcapped mountain peaks. Yet, oh how that
+steppe, bathed in golden sunshine, draws one to itself and its
+smooth desolation of sweet, dry grasses as the parched, fragrant
+expanse rustles under the soughing wind!
+
+"You ask about that woman, eh? " queries Konev, whom I find
+leaning against one of the poplar trunks, and embracing it with
+an arm.
+
+"Yes. From where does she hail?"
+
+"From Riazan, she says. Another story of hers is that her name
+is Tatiana."
+
+"Has she been with you long?"
+
+"No. In fact, it was only this morning, some thirty versts from
+here, that I overtook her and her companion. However, I have seen
+her before, at Maikop-on-Laba, during the season of hay harvest,
+when she had with her an elderly, smoothfaced muzhik who might
+have been a soldier, and certainly was either her lover or an
+uncle, as well as a bully and a drunkard of the type which,
+before it has been two days in a place, starts about as many
+brawls. At present, however, she is tramping with none but this
+female companion, for, after that the 'uncle' had drunk away his
+very belly-band and reins, he was clapped in gaol. The Cossack,
+you know, is an awkward person to deal with."
+
+Although Konev speaks without constraint, his eyes are fixed upon
+the ground in a manner suggestive of some disturbing thought. And
+as the breeze ruffles his dishevelled beard and ragged pea-jacket
+it ends by robbing his head of his cap-- of the tattered, peakless
+clout which, with rents in its lining, so closely resembles a
+tchepchik [Woman's mob-cap], as to communicate to the
+picturesque features of its wearer an appearance comically
+feminine.
+
+"Ye-es," expectorating, and drawling the words between his
+teeth, he continues: "She is a remarkable woman, a regular, so
+to speak, highstepper. Yet it must have been the Devil himself
+that blew this young oaf with the bloated jowl on to the scene.
+Otherwise I should soon have fixed up matters with her. The cur
+that he is!"
+
+"But once you told me that you had a wife already?"
+
+Darting at me an angry glance, he turns away with a mutter of:
+
+"AM I to carry my wife about with me in my wallet? "
+
+Here there comes limping across the square a moustachioed
+Cossack. In one hand he is holding a bunch of keys, and in the
+other hand a battered Cossack cap, peak in front. Behind him,
+sobbing and applying his knuckles to his eyes, there is creeping
+a curly-headed urchin of eight, while the rear is brought up by a
+shaggy dog whose dejected countenance and lowered tail would seem
+to show that he too is in disgrace. Each time that the boy
+whimpers more loudly than usual the Cossack halts, awaits the
+lad's coming in silence, cuffs him over the head with the peak of
+the cap, and, resuming his way with the gait of a drunken man,
+leaves the boy and the dog standing where they are--the boy
+lamenting, and the dog wagging its tail as its old black muzzle
+sniffs the air. Somehow I discern in the dog's mien of holding
+itself prepared for anything that may turn up, a certain
+resemblance to Konev's bearing, save that the dog is older in
+appearance than is the vagabond.
+
+"You mentioned my wife, I think?" presently he resumes with a
+sigh. "Yes, I know, but not EVERY malady proves mortal, and I
+have been married nineteen years! "
+
+The rest is well-known to me, for all too frequently have I heard
+it and similar tales. Unfortunately, I cannot now take the
+trouble to stop him; so once more I am forced to let his
+complaints come oozing tediously into my ears.
+
+"The wench was plump," says Konev, "and panting for love; so we
+just got married, and brats began to come tumbling from her like
+bugs from a bunk."
+
+Subsiding a little, the breeze takes, as it were, to whispering.
+
+"In fact, I could scarcely turn round for them. Even now seven
+of them are alive, though originally the stud numbered thirteen.
+And what was the use of such a gang? For, consider: my wife is
+forty-two, and I am forty-three. She is elderly, and I am what
+you behold. True, hitherto I have contrived to keep up my
+spirits; yet poverty is wearing me down, and when, last winter,
+my old woman went to pieces I set forth (for what else could I
+do?) to tour the towns. In fact, folk like you and myself have
+only one job available--the job of licking one's chops, and
+keeping one's eyes open. Yet, to tell you the truth, I no sooner
+perceive myself to be growing superfluous in a place than I spit
+upon that place, and clear out of it."
+
+Never to this sturdy, inveterate rascal does it seem to occur to
+insinuate that he has been doing work of any kind, or that he in
+the least cares to do any; while at the same time all self-pity
+is eschewed in his narrative, and he relates his experiences much
+as though they are the experiences of another man, and not of
+himself.
+
+Presently, as the Cossack and the boy draw level with us, the
+former, fingering his moustache, inquires thickly:
+
+"Whence are you come?"
+
+"From Russia."
+
+"All such folk come from there."
+
+Thereafter, with a gesture of disdain, this man of the abnormally
+broad nose, eyes floating in fat, and flaxen head shaped like a
+flounder's, resumes his way towards the porch of the church. As
+for the boy, he wipes his nose and follows him while the dog
+sniffs at our legs, yawns, and stretches itself by the churchyard
+wall.
+
+"Did you see?" mutters Konev. "Oh yes, I tell you that the
+folk here are far less amiable than our own folk in Russia. . .
+But hark! What is that?"
+
+To our ears there have come from behind the corner of the
+churchyard wall a woman's scream and the sound of dull blows.
+Rushing thither, we behold the fair-headed peasant seated on the
+prostrate form of the young fellow from Penza, and methodically,
+gruntingly delivering blow after blow upon the young fellow's
+ears with his ponderous fists, while counting the blows as he
+does so. Vainly, at the same time, the woman from Riazan is
+prodding the assailant in the back, whilst her female companion
+is shrieking, and the crowd at large has leapt to its feet, and,
+collected into a knot, is shouting gleefully, "THAT'S the way!
+THAT'S the way!"
+
+"Five!" the fair-headed peasant counts.
+
+"Why are you doing this?" the prostrate man protests.
+
+"Six!"
+
+"Oh dear!" ejaculates Konev, dancing with nervousness. "Oh
+dear, oh dear!"
+
+The smacking, smashing blows fall in regular cadence as, prone on
+his face, the young fellow kicks, struggles and puffs up the
+dust. Meanwhile a tall, dour man in a straw hat is rolling up a
+shirt-sleeve, and alternately bending and stretching a long arm,
+whilst a lithe, white-headed young stripling is hopping, sparrow-
+like, from one onlooker to another, and exclaiming in suppressed,
+cautious tones:
+
+"Stop it, pray stop it, or we shall be arrested for creating a
+disturbance!"
+
+Presently the tall man strides towards the fair-headed peasant,
+deals him a single blow which knocks him from the back of the
+young fellow, and, turning to the crowd, says with an informing
+air:
+
+"THAT'S how we do it in Tambov!"
+
+"Brutes! Villains!" screams the woman from Riazan, as she bends
+over the young fellow. Her cheeks are livid, and as she wipes the
+flushed face of the beaten youth with the hem of her gown, her
+dark eyes are flashing with dry wrath, and her lips quivering so
+painfully as to disclose a set of fine, level teeth.
+
+Konev, pecking up to her, says with an air of advice:
+
+"You had better take him away, and give him some water."
+
+Upon this the fair-headed muzhik, rising to his knees, stretches
+a fist towards the man from Tambov, and exclaims:
+
+"Why should he have gone and bragged of his strength, pray?"
+
+"Was that a good reason for thrashing him?"
+
+"And who are you?"
+
+"Who am I?"
+
+"Yes, who are YOU?"
+
+"Never mind. See that I don't give you another swipe!"
+
+Upon this the onlookers plunge into a heated debate as to who
+was actually the beginner of the disturbance, while the lithe
+young fellow continues to wring his hands, and cry imploringly:
+
+"DON'T make so much noise about it! Remember that we are in a
+strange land, and that the folk hereabouts are strict."
+
+So queerly do his ears project from his head that he would seem
+to be able, if he pleased, to fold them right over his eyes.
+
+Suddenly from the roseate heavens comes the vibrant note of a
+bell; whereupon, the hubbub ceases and at the same moment a young
+Cossack with a face studded with freckles, and, in his hands, a
+cudgel, makes his appearance among the crowd.
+
+"What does all this mean?" he inquires not uncivilly.
+
+"They have been beating a man," the woman from Riazan replies.
+As she does so she looks comely in spite of her wrath.
+
+The Cossack glances at her--then smiles.
+
+"And where is the party going to sleep?" he inquires of the
+crowd.
+
+"Here," someone ventures.
+
+"Then you must not--someone might break into the church. Go,
+rather, to the Ataman [Cossack headman or mayor], and you will
+be billeted among the huts."
+
+"It is a matter of no consequence," Konev remarks as he paces
+beside me. "Yet--"
+
+"They seem to be taking us for robbers," is my interruption.
+
+"As is everywhere the way," he comments. "It is but one thing
+more laid to our charge. Caution decides always that a stranger
+is a thief."
+
+In front of us walks the woman from Riazan, in company with the
+young fellow of the bloated features. He is downcast of mien, and
+at length mutters something which I cannot catch, but in answer
+to which she tosses her head, and says in a distinct, maternal
+tone:
+
+"You are too young to associate with such brutes."
+
+The bell of the church is slowly beating, and from the huts there
+keep coming neat old men and women who make the hitherto deserted
+street assume a brisk appearance, and the squat huts take on a
+welcoming air.
+
+In a resonant, girlish voice there meets our ears:
+
+"Ma-am! Ma-amka! Where is the key of the green box? I want my
+ribands!"
+
+While in answer to the bell's summons, the oxen low a deep echo.
+
+The wind has fallen, but reddish clouds still are gliding over
+the hamlet, and the mountain peaks blushing until they seem,
+thawing, to be sending streams of golden, liquid fire on to the
+steppes, where, as though cast in stone, a stork, standing on one
+leg, is listening, seemingly, to the rustling of the heat-
+exhausted herbage.
+
+**************************
+
+In the forecourt of the Ataman's hut we are deprived of our
+passports, while two of our number, found to be without such
+documents, are led away to a night's lodging in a dark storehouse
+in a corner of the premises. Everything is executed quietly
+enough, and without the least fuss, purely as a matter of
+routine; yet Konev mutters, as dejectedly he contemplates the
+darkening sky:
+
+"What a surprising thing, to be sure!"
+
+"What is?"
+
+"A passport. Surely a decent, peaceable man ought to be able to
+travel WITHOUT a passport? So long as he be harmless, let him--"
+
+"You are not harmless," with angry emphasis the woman from
+Riazan interposes.
+
+Konev closes his eyes with a smile, and says nothing more.
+
+Almost until the vigil service is over are we kept kicking our
+heels about that forecourt, like sheep in a slaughter-house. Then
+Konev, myself, the two women, and the fat-faced young fellow are
+led away towards the outskirts of the village, and allotted an
+empty hut with broken-down walls and a cracked window.
+
+"No going out will be permitted," says the Cossack who has
+conducted us thither. "Else you will be arrested."
+
+"Then give us a morsel of bread," Konev says with a stammer.
+"Have you done any work here?" the Cossack inquires.
+
+"Yes--a little."
+
+"For me?"
+
+"No. It did not so happen."
+
+"When it does so happen I will give you some bread."
+
+And like a water-butt the fat kindly-looking man goes rolling out
+of the yard.
+
+"What else was to be expected?" grumbles Konev with his
+eyebrows elevated to the middle of his forehead. "The folk
+hereabouts are knaves. Ah, well!"
+
+As for the women, they withdraw to the darkest corner of the hut,
+and lie down, while the young fellow disappears after probing the
+walls and floor, and returns with an armful of straw which he
+strews upon the hard, beaten clay. Then he stretches himself
+thereon with hands clasped behind his battered head.
+
+"See the resourcefulness of that fellow from Penza!" comments
+Konev enviously. "Hi, you women! There is, it would seem, some
+straw about."
+
+To this comes from the women's corner the acid reply:
+
+"Then go and fetch some."
+
+"For you?"
+
+"Yes, for us."
+
+"Then I must, I suppose."
+
+Nevertheless Konev merely remains sitting on the windowsill, and
+discoursing on the subject of certain needy folk who do but
+desire to go and say their prayers in church, yet are banded into
+barns.
+
+"Yes, and though you may say that folk, the world over, have a
+soul in common, I tell you that this is not so--that, on the
+contrary, we Russian strangers find it a hard matter here to get
+looked upon as respectable."
+
+With which he slips out quietly into the street, and disappears
+from view.
+
+The young fellow's sleep is restless--he keeps tossing about, with
+his fat arms and legs sprawling over the floor, and grunting, and
+snoring. Under him the straw makes a crackling sound, while the
+two women whisper together in the darkness, and the reeds of the
+dry thatch on the roof rustle (the wind is still drawing an
+occasional breath), and ever and anon a twig brushes against an
+outside wall. The scene is like a scene in a dream.
+
+Out of doors the myriad tongues of the pitch-black, starless
+night seem to be debating something in soft, sad, pitiful tones
+which ever keep growing fainter; until, when the hour of ten has
+been struck on the watchman's gong, and the metal ceases to
+vibrate, the world grows quieter still, much as though all living
+things, alarmed by the clang in the night, have concealed
+themselves in the invisible earth or the equally invisible
+heavens.
+
+I seat myself by the window, and watch how the earth keeps
+exhaling darkness, and the darkness enveloping, drowning the
+grey, blurred huts in black, tepid vapour, though the church
+remains invisible--evidently something stands interposed between
+it and my viewpoint. And it seems to me that the wind, the seraph
+of many pinions which has spent three days in harrying the land,
+must now have whirled the earth into a blackness, a denseness, in
+which, exhausted, and panting, and scarcely moving, it is
+helplessly striving to remain within the encompassing, all-
+pervading obscurity where, helpless and weary in like degree, the
+wind has sloughed its thousands of wing-feathers--feathers white
+and blue and golden of tint, but also broken, and smeared with
+dust and blood.
+
+And as I think of our petty, grievous human life, as of a
+drunkard's tune on a sorry musical instrument, or as of a
+beautiful song spoilt by a witless, voiceless singer, there
+begins to wail in my soul an insatiable longing to breathe forth
+words of sympathy with all mankind, words of burning love for all
+the world, words of appreciation of, for example, the sun's
+beauty as, enfolding the earth in his beams, and caressing and
+fertilising her, he bears her through the expanses of blue. Yes,
+I yearn to recite to my fellow-men words which shall raise their
+heads. And at length I find myself compounding the following
+jejune lines:
+
+To our land we all are born
+In happiness to dwell.
+The sun has bred us to this land
+Its fairness to excel.
+In the temple of the sun
+We high priests are, divine.
+Then each of us should claim his life,
+And cry, " This life is mine!"
+
+Meanwhile from the women's corner there comes a soft,
+intermittent whispering; and as it continues to filter through
+the darkness, I strain my ears until I succeed in catching a few
+of the words uttered, and can distinguish at least the voices of
+the whisperers.
+
+The woman from Riazan mutters firmly, and with assurance:
+
+"Never ought you to show that it hurts you."
+
+And with a sniff, in a tone of dubious acquiescence, her
+companion replies:
+
+"Ye-es-so long as one can bear it."
+
+"Ah, but never mind. PRETEND. That is to say, when he beats you,
+make light of it, and treat it as a joke."
+
+"But what if he beats me very much indeed?"
+
+"Continue still to make light of it, still to smile at him
+kindly."
+
+"Well, YOU can never have been beaten, for you do not seem to
+know what it is like."
+
+"Oh, but I have, my dear--I do know what it is like, for my
+experience of it has been large. Do not be afraid, however. HE
+won't beat you."
+
+A dog yelps, pauses a moment to listen, and then barks more
+angrily than ever. Upon that other dogs reply, and for a moment
+or two I am annoyed to find that I cannot overhear the women's
+conversation. In time, however, the dogs cease their uproar, for
+want of breath, and the suppressed dialogue filters once more to
+my ears.
+
+"Never forget, my dear, that a muzhik's life is a hard one. Yes,
+for us plain folk life is hard. Hence, one ought to make nothing
+of things, and let them come easy to one."
+
+"Mother of God!"
+
+"And particularly should a woman so face things; for upon her
+everything depends. For one thing, let her take to herself, in
+place of her mother, a husband or a sweetheart. Yes, try that,
+and see. And though, at first, your husband may find fault with
+you, he will afterwards take to boasting to other muzhiks that he
+has a wife who can do everything, and remain ever as bright and
+loving as the month of May. Never does she give in; never WOULD
+she give in--no, not if you were to cut off her head!"
+
+"Indeed? "
+
+"Yes. And see if that will not come to be your opinion as much
+as mine."
+
+Again, to my annoyance, the dialogue is interrupted--this time by
+the sound of uncertain footsteps in the street without. Thus the
+next words of the women's conversation escape me. Then I hear:
+
+"Have you ever read 'The Vision of the Mother of God'?"
+
+"N-no, I have not."
+
+"Then you had better ask some older woman than myself to tell
+you about it, for it is a good book to become acquainted with.
+Can you read?"
+
+"No, I cannot. But tell me, yourself, what the vision was?"
+
+"Listen, and I will do so."
+
+From outside the window Konev's voice softly inquires:
+
+"Is that our lot in there? Yes? Thank God, then, for I had
+nearly lost my way after stirring up a lot of dogs, and being
+forced to use my fists upon them. Here, you! Catch hold!"
+
+With which, handing me a large watermelon, he clambers through
+the window with a great clattering and disturbance.
+
+"I have managed also to gee a good supply of bread," he
+continues. "Perhaps you believe that I stole it? But no. Indeed,
+why should one steal when one can beg-a game at which I am
+particularly an old hand, seeing that always, on any  occasion, I
+can make up to people? It happened like this. When I went out I
+saw a fire glowing in a hut, and folk seated at supper. And
+since, wherever many people are present, one of them at least has
+a kind heart, I ate and drank my fill, and then managed to make
+off with provender for you as well. Hi, you women!"
+
+There follows no answer.
+
+"I believe those daughters of whores must be asleep," he
+comments. "Hi, women!"
+
+"What is it?" drily inquires the woman from Riazan.
+
+"Should you like a taste of water-melon?"
+
+"I should, thank you."
+
+Thereupon, Konev begins to make his way towards the voice.
+
+"Yes, bread, soft wheaten bread such as you--"
+
+Here the, other woman whines in beggar fashion:
+
+"And give ME a taste, too."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will. But where the devil are you?"
+
+"And a taste of melon as well?"
+
+"Yes, certainly. Hullo! Who is this?"
+
+From the woman from Riazan comes a cry of pain.
+
+"Mind how you step, wretch!" she exclaims.
+
+"All right, but you needn't make so much noise about it. You see
+how dark it is, and I--"
+
+"You ought to have struck a match, then."
+
+"I possess but a quarter of a match, for matches are not over-
+plentiful, and even if I did catch hold of you no great harm can
+have been done. For instance, when your husband used to beat you
+he must have hurt you far worse than I. By the way, DID he beat
+you?"
+
+"What business is that of yours?"
+
+"None; only, I am curious to know. Surely a woman like you--"
+
+"See here. Do not dare to touch me, or I--"
+
+"Or you what?"
+
+There ensues a prolonged altercation amid which I can hear
+epithets of increasing acerbity and opprobrium being applied;
+until the woman from Riazan exclaims hoarsely:
+
+"Oh, you coward of a man, take that!"
+
+Whereupon follows a scrimmage amid which I can distinguish
+slappings, gross chuckles from Konev, and a muffled cry from the
+younger woman of:
+
+"Oh, do not so behave, you wretch!"
+
+Striking a match, I approach the spot, and pull Konev away. He is
+in no way abashed, but merely cooled in his ardour as, seated on
+the floor at my feet, and panting and expectorating, he says
+reprovingly to the woman:
+
+"When folk wish merely to have a game with you, you ought not to
+let yourself lose your temper. Fie, fie!"
+
+"Are you hurt?" the woman inquires quietly.
+
+"What do you suppose? You have cut my lip, but that is the worst
+damage."
+
+"Then if you come here again I will lay the whole of your face
+open."
+
+"Vixen! What bumpkinish stupidity!"
+
+Konev turns to myself.
+
+"And as for you, you go catching at the first thing you find,
+and have torn my coat."
+
+"Then do not insult people."
+
+"INSULT people, fool? The idea of anyone insulting a woman like
+THAT!"
+
+Whereafter, with a mean chuckle, the fellow goes on to discourse
+upon the ease with which peasant women err, and upon their love
+of deceiving their husbands.
+
+"The impudent rascal!" comments the woman from Penza sleepily.
+
+After a while the young fellow springs to his feet, and grates
+his teeth. Then, reseating himself, and clutching at his head, he
+says gloomily:
+
+"I intend to leave here tomorrow, and go home. I do not care
+WHAT becomes of me."
+
+With which he subsides on to the floor as though exhausted.
+
+"The blockhead!" is Konev's remark.
+
+Amid the darkness a black shape rises. It does so as soundlessly
+as a fish in a pond, glides to the door, and disappears.
+
+"That was she," remarks Konev. "What a strong woman! However, if
+you had not pulled me away, I should have got the better of her.
+By God I should!"
+
+"Then follow her, and make another attempt."
+
+"No," after a moment's reflection he rejoins. "Out there she
+might get hold of a stick, or a brick, or some such thing.
+However, I'LL get even with her. As a matter of fact, you wasted
+your time in stopping me, for she detests me like the very
+devil."
+
+And he renews his wearisome boastings of his conquests; until
+suddenly, he stops as though he has swallowed his tongue.
+
+All becomes quiet; everything seems to have come to a halt, and
+to be pressing close in sleep to the motionless earth. I too grow
+drowsy, and have a vision amid which my mind returns to the
+donations which I have received that day, and sees them swell and
+multiply and increase in weight until I feel their bulk pressing
+upon me like a tumulus of the steppes. Next, the coppery notes of
+a bell jar in my ears, and, struck at random intervals, go
+floating away into the darkness.
+
+It is the hour of midnight.
+
+Soon, scattered drops of rain begin to patter down upon the dry
+thatch of the hut and the dust in the street outside, while a
+cricket continues chirping as though it were hurriedly relating
+a tale. Also, I hear filtering forth into the darkness a softly
+gulped, eager whispering.
+
+"Think," says one of the voices, " what it must mean to have to
+go tramping about without work, or only with work for another to
+do!"
+
+The young fellow who has been so soundly thrashed replies in a
+dull voice:
+
+"I know nothing of you."
+
+"More softly, more softly!" urges the woman.
+
+"What is it you want?"
+
+"I want NOTHING. It is merely that I am sorry for you as a man
+yet young and strong. You see--well, I have not lived with my eyes
+shut. That is why I say, come with me."
+
+"But come whither?"
+
+"To the coast, where I know there to be beautiful plots of land
+for the asking. You yourself can see how good the land hereabout
+is. Well, there land better still is to be obtained."
+
+"Liar!"
+
+"More softly, more softly!" again urges the woman. "Moreover,
+I am not bad-looking, and can manage things well, and do any sort
+of work. Hence you and I might live quite peacefully and happily,
+and come, eventually, to have a place of our own. Yes, and I
+could bear and rear you a child. Only see how fit I am. Only feel
+this breast of mine."
+
+The young fellow snorts, and I begin to find the situation
+oppressive, and to long to let the couple know that I am not
+asleep. Curiosity, however, prevents me, and I continue listening
+to the strange, arresting dialogue.
+
+"Wait a little," whispers the woman with a gasp. "Do not play
+with me, for I am not that sort of woman. Yes, I mean what I say.
+Let be!"
+
+Rudely, roughly the young fellow replies:
+
+"Then don't run after me. A woman who runs after a man, and
+plays the whore with him, is--"
+
+"Less noise, please--less noise, I beg of you, or we shall be
+heard, and I shall be put to shame!"
+
+"Doesn't it put you to shame to be offering yourself to me like
+this?"
+
+A silence ensues, save that the young fellow goes on snorting and
+fidgeting, and the raindrops continue to fall with the same
+reluctance, the same indolence, as ever. Then once more the
+woman's voice is heard through the pattering.
+
+"Perhaps," says the voice, "you have guessed that I am seeking
+a husband? Yes, I AM seeking one--a good, steady muzhik."
+
+"But I am NOT a good, steady muzhik."
+
+"Fie, fie!"
+
+"What?" he sniggers. "A husband for you? The impudence of you!
+A 'husband'! Go along!"
+
+"Listen to me. I am tired of tramping."
+
+"Then go home."
+
+This time there ensues a long pause. Then the woman says very
+softly:
+
+"I have neither home nor kindred."
+
+"A lie!" ejaculates the young fellow.
+
+"No, by God it is not a lie! The Mother of God forget me if it
+is."
+
+In these last words I can detect the note of tears. By this time
+the situation has become intolerable, for I am yearning to rise
+and kick the young fellow out of the hut, and then to have a long
+and earnest talk with his companion. "Oh that I could take her
+to my arms," I reflect, "and cherish her as I would a poor lost
+child!"
+
+After a while the sounds of a new struggle between the pair are
+heard.
+
+"Don't put me off like that!" growls the young fellow.
+
+"And don't you make any attempt upon me! I am not the sort of
+woman to be forced."
+
+The next moment there arises a cry of pain and astonishment.
+
+"What was that for? What was that for?" the woman wails.
+
+With an answering exclamation I spring to my feet, for my
+feelings have become those of a wild beast.
+
+At once everything grows quiet again, save that someone, crawls
+over the floor and, in leaving the hut, jars the latch of the
+crazy, single-hinged portal.
+
+"It was not my fault," grumbles the young fellow. "It all came
+of that stinking woman offering herself to me. Besides, the place
+is full of bugs, and I cannot sleep."
+
+"Beast!" pants someone in the vicinity.
+
+"Hold your tongue, bitch!" is the fellow's retort.
+
+By now the rain has ceased, and such air as filters through the
+window seems increasedly stifling. Momentarily the hush grows
+deeper, until the breast feels filled with a sense of oppression,
+and the face and eyes as though they were glued over with a web.
+Even when I step into the yard I find the place to be like a
+cellar on a summer's day, when the very ice has melted in the
+dark retreat, and the latter's black cavity is charged with hot,
+viscous humidity.
+
+Somewhere near me a woman is gulping out sobs. For a moment or
+two I listen; then I approach her, and come upon her seated in a
+corner with her head in her hands, and her body rocking to and
+fro as though she were doing me obeisance.
+
+Yet I feel angry, somehow, and remain standing before her without
+speaking-- until at length I ask:
+
+"Are you mad?"
+
+"Go away," is, after a pause, her only reply.
+
+"I heard all that you said to that young fellow."
+
+"Oh, did you? Then what business is it of yours? Are you my
+brother?"
+
+Yet she speaks the words absent-mindedly rather than angrily.
+Around us the dim, blurred walls are peering in our direction
+with sightless eyes, while in the vicinity a bullock is drawing
+deep breaths.
+
+I seat myself by her side.
+
+"Should you remain much longer in that position," I remark, "you
+will have a headache."
+
+There follows no reply.
+
+"Am I disturbing you? " I continue.
+
+"Oh no; not at all." And, lowering her hands, she looks at me.
+"Whence do you come?"
+
+"From Nizhni Novgorod."
+
+"Oh, from a long way off!"
+
+"Do you care for that young fellow?"
+
+Not for a moment or two does she answer; and when she does so she
+answers as though the words have been rehearsed.
+
+"Not particularly. It is that he is a strong young fellow who
+has lost his way, and is too much of a fool (as you too must have
+seen) to find it again. So I am very sorry for him. A good muzhik
+ought to be well placed."
+
+On the bell of the church there strikes the hour of two. Without
+interrupting herself, the woman crosses her breast at each
+stroke.
+
+"Always," she continues, "I feel sorry when I see a fine young
+fellow going to the dogs. If I were able, I would take all such
+young men, and restore them to the right road."
+
+"Then you are not sorry FOR YOURSELF? "
+
+"Not for myself? Oh yes, for myself as well."
+
+"Then why flaunt yourself before this booby, as you have been
+doing?"
+
+"Because I might reform him. Do you not think so? Ah, you do not
+know me."
+
+A sigh escapes her.
+
+"He hit you, I think?" I venture.
+
+"No, he did not. And in any case you are not to touch him."
+
+"Yet you cried out?"
+
+Suddenly she leans towards me, and says:
+
+"Yes, he did strike me--he struck me on the breast, and would
+have overpowered me had it not been that I cannot, I will not, do
+things heartlessly, like a cat. Oh, the brutes that men can be!"
+
+Here the conversation undergoes an interruption through the fact
+that someone has come out to the hut door, and is whistling
+softly, as for a dog.
+
+"There he is!" whispers the woman.
+
+"Then had I not best send him about his business?"
+
+"No, no!" she exclaims, catching at my knees. "No need is
+there for that, no need is there for that!"
+
+Then with a low moan she adds:
+
+"Oh Lord, how I pity our folk and their lives! Oh God our Father!"
+
+Her shoulders heave, and presently she bursts into tears, with a
+whisper, between the pitiful sobs, of:
+
+"How, on such a night as this, one remembers all that one has
+ever seen, and the folk that ever one has known! And oh, how
+wearisome, wearisome it all is! And how I should like to cry
+throughout the world--But to cry what? I know not--I have no
+message to deliver."
+
+That feeling I can understand as well as she, for all too often
+has it seemed to crush my soul with voiceless longing.
+
+Then, as I stroke her bowed head and quivering shoulder, I ask
+her who she is; and presently, on growing a little calmer, she
+tells me the history of her life.
+
+She is, it appears, the daughter of a carpenter and bee-keeper.
+On her mother's death, this man married a young woman, and
+allowed her, as stepmother, to persuade him to place the
+narrator, Tatiana, in a convent, where she (Tatiana) lived from
+the age of nine till adolescence, and, meanwhile, was taught her
+letters, and also a certain amount of manual labour; until,
+later, her father married her off to a friend of his, a well-to-
+do ex-soldier, who was acting as forester on the convent's estate.
+
+As the woman relates this, I feel vexed that I cannot see her
+face--only a dim, round blur amid which there looms what appears
+to be a pair of closed eyes. Also, so complete is the stillness,
+that she can narrate her story in a barely audible whisper; and I
+gain the impression that the pair of us are sitting plunged in a
+void of darkness where life does not exist, yet where we are
+destined to begin life.
+
+"However, the man was a libertine and a drunkard, and many a
+riotous night did he spend with his cronies in the porter's lodge
+of the convent. Also, he tried to arouse a similar taste in
+myself; and though for a time I resisted the tendency, I at
+length, on his taking to beating me, yielded. Only for one man,
+however, had I really a liking; and with him it was, and not with
+my husband, that I first learnt the meaning of spousehood. . . .
+Unfortunately, my lover himself was married; and in time his wife
+came to hear of me, and procured my husband's dismissal. The
+chief reason was that the lady, a person of great wealth, was
+herself handsome, albeit stout, and did not care to see her place
+assumed by a nobody. Next, my husband died of drink; and as my
+father had long been dead, and I found myself alone, I went to
+see and consult my stepmother. All that she said, however, was:
+'Why come to me? Go and think things out for yourself.' And I too
+then reflected: 'Yes, why should I have gone to her? ' and
+repaired to the convent. Yet even there there seemed to be no
+place left for me, and eventually old Mother Taisia, who had once
+been my governess, said: 'Tatiana, do you return to the world,
+for there, and only there, will you have a chance of happiness.
+So to the world I returned --and still am roaming it."
+
+"Your quest of happiness is not following an easy road!"
+
+"It is following the road that it best can."
+
+By now the darkness has ceased to keep spread over us, as it
+were, the stretched web of a heavy curtain, but has grown thinner
+and more transparent with the tension, save that, in places (for
+instance, in the window of the hut), it still lies in thick folds
+or clots as it peers at us with its sightless eyes.
+
+Over the hummock-like roofs of the huts rise the church's steeple
+and the poplar trees; while hither and thither on the wall of the
+hut, the cracks and holes in the crumbling plaster have caused the
+wall to resemble the map of an unknown country.
+
+Glancing at the woman's dark eyes, I perceive them to be shining
+as pensively, innocently as the eyes of a young maiden.
+
+"You are indeed a curious woman!" I remark.
+
+"Perhaps I am," she replies as she moistens her lips with a
+slender, almost feline tongue.
+
+"What are you really seeking?"
+
+"I have considered the matter, and know, at last, my mind. It is
+this: I hope some day to fall in with a good muzhik with whom to
+go in search of land. Probably land of the kind, I mean, is to be
+found in the neighbourhood of New Athos, [A monastery in the
+Caucasus, built on the reputed site of a cave tenanted by Simeon
+the Canaanite] for I have been there already, and know of a
+likely spot for the purpose. And there we shall set our place in
+order, and lay out a garden and an orchard, and prepare as much
+plough land as we may need for our working."
+
+Her words are now firmer, more assured.
+
+"And when we have put everything in order, other folk may join
+us; and then, as the oldest settlers in the place, we shall hold
+the position of honour. And thus things will continue until a new
+village, really a fine settlement, will have become formed--a
+settlement of which my husband will be selected the warden until
+such time as I shall have made of him a barin [Gentleman or
+squire] outright. Also, children may one day play in that
+garden, and a summer-house be built there. Ah, how delightful
+such a life appears!"
+
+In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that
+already she can describe the new establishment in as much detail
+as though she has long been a resident in it.
+
+"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that
+such a home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of
+course, is a muzhik."
+
+Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though
+they aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.
+
+And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to
+tears. To conceal the fact I murmur:
+
+"Should I myself suit you?"
+
+She gives a faint laugh.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."
+
+"How do you know what my ideas are?"
+
+She edges away from me a little,then says drily:
+
+"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never
+consent."
+
+With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on
+which we are sitting, she adds:
+
+"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do
+not like them."
+
+"What in them is it that displeases you?"
+
+"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet
+also they have ways which alienate me."
+
+Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:
+
+"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."
+
+She shakes her head protestingly.
+
+"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts.
+"Woman's proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it,
+and, when it has been weaned, to get herself ready to have
+another one. That is how woman should live.  She should live as
+pass spring and summer, autumn and winter."
+
+I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's
+intellectual features; and though, also, I long to take her in my
+arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the
+quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this
+woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the
+silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark
+ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment,
+however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily
+deprived me of my passport.
+
+"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she
+edges towards me.
+
+"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."
+
+"And are you travelling alone?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the
+world!"
+
+By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with
+their soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear
+played by a certain blind old man. Next, four times, with
+unsteady touch, the drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice
+softly, once with a vigour that clangs the metal again, and a
+fourth time with a mere tap of the iron hammer against the copper
+plate.
+
+"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"
+
+"Sorry lives."
+
+"Yes, that is what I too have found."
+
+A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:
+
+"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes
+closed. Often I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking
+until I seem to be the only human being in the world, and the
+only human being destined to re-order it."
+
+"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord,
+abasement, and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and
+stupidity."
+
+And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in
+recollections of all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes
+that I have beheld.
+
+"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good
+in your heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and
+your strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright.
+And how shall he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he
+have been shown what is good?"
+
+She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight into my eyes
+as she parts her comely lips.
+
+"True," she rejoins--"But, dear friend, it is also true that
+goodness never bargains."
+
+Together she and I seem to be drifting towards a vista which is
+coming to look, as it sloughs the shadow of night, ever clearer
+and clearer. It is a vista of white huts, silvery trees, a red
+church, and dew-bespangled earth. And as the sun rises he reveals
+to us clustered, transparent clouds which, like thousands of
+snow-white birds, go gliding over our heads.
+
+"Yes," she whispers again as gently she gives me a nudge. "As one
+pursues one's lonely way one thinks and thinks--but of
+what? Dear friend, you have said that no one really cares what is
+the matter. Ah, HOW true that is! "
+
+Here she springs to her feet, and, pulling me up with her, glues
+herself to my breast with a vehemence which causes me momentarily
+to push her away. Upon this, bursting into tears, she tends
+towards me again, and kisses me with lips so dry as almost to cut
+me--she kisses me in a way which penetrates to my very soul.
+
+"You have been oh, so good!" she whispers softly. As she speaks,
+the earth seems to be sinking under my feet.
+
+Then she tears herself away, glances around the courtyard, and
+darts to a corner where, under a fence, a clump of herbage is
+sprouting.
+
+"Go now," she adds in a whisper. "Yes, go."
+
+Then, with a confused smile, as, crouching among the herbage as
+though it had been a small cave, she rearranges her hair, she
+adds:
+
+"It has befallen so. Ah, me! May God grant unto me His pardon!"
+
+Astonished, feeling that I must be dreaming, I gaze at her with
+gratitude, for I sense an extraordinary lightness to be present
+in my breast, a radiant void through which joyous, intangible
+words and thoughts keep flying as swallows wheel across the
+firmament.
+
+"Amid a great sorrow," she adds, "even a small joy becomes a
+great felicity."
+
+Yet as I glance at the woman's bosom, whereon moist beads are
+standing like dewdrops on the outer earth; as I glance at that
+bosom, whereon the sun's rays are finding a roseate reflection,
+as though the blood were oozing through the skin, my rapture dies
+away, and turns to sorrow, heartache, and tears. For in me there
+is a presentiment that before the living juice within that bosom
+shall have borne fruit, it will have become dried up.
+
+Presently, in a tone almost of self-excuse, and one wherein the
+words sound a little sadly, she continues:
+
+"Times there are when something comes pouring into my soul which
+makes my breasts ache with the pain of it. What is there for me
+to do at such moments save reveal my thoughts to the moon, or, in
+the daytime, to a river? Oh God in Heaven! And afterwards I feel
+as ashamed of myself! . . . Do not look at me like that. Why
+stare at me with those eyes, eyes so like the eyes of a child?"
+
+"YOUR face, rather, is like a child's," I remark.
+
+"What? Is it so stupid?"
+
+"Something like that."
+
+As she fastens up her bodice she continues:
+
+"Soon the time will be five o'clock, when the bell will ring for
+Mass. To Mass I must go today, for I have a prayer to offer to
+the Mother of God. . . Shall you be leaving here soon?"
+
+"Yes--as soon, that is to say, as I have received back my
+passport."
+
+"And for what destination?"
+
+"For Alatyr. And you?"
+
+She straightens her attire, and rises. As she does so I perceive
+that her hips are narrower than her shoulders, and that
+throughout she is well-proportioned and symmetrical.
+
+"I? As yet I do not know. True, I had thought of proceeding to
+Naltchik, but now, perhaps, I shall not do so, for all my future
+is uncertain."
+
+Upon that she extends to me a pair of strong, capable arms, and
+proposes with a blush:
+
+"Shall we kiss once more before we part?"
+
+She clasps me with the one arm, and with the other makes the sign
+of the cross, adding:
+
+"Good-bye, dear friend, and may Christ requite you for all your
+words, for all your sympathy!"
+
+"Then shall we travel together?"
+
+At the words she frees herself, and says firmly, nay, sternly:
+
+"Not so. Never would I consent to such a plan. Of course, had
+you been a muzhik--but no. Even then what would have been the use
+of it, seeing that life is to be measured, not by a single hour,
+but by years?"
+
+And, quietly smiling me a farewell, she moves away towards the
+hut, whilst I, remaining seated, lose myself in thoughts of her.
+Will she ever overtake her quest in life? Shall I ever behold her
+again?
+
+The bell for early Mass begins, though for some time past the
+hamlet has been astir, and humming in a sedate and non-festive
+fashion.
+
+I enter the hut to fetch my wallet, and find the place empty.
+Evidently the whole party has left by the gap in the broken-down
+wall.
+
+I repair, next, to the Ataman's office, where I receive back my
+passport before setting out to look for my companions in the
+square.
+
+In similar fashion to yesterday those "folk from Russia " are
+lolling alongside the churchyard wall, and also have seated among
+them, leaning his back against a log, the fat-jowled youth from
+Penza, with his bruised face looking even larger and uglier than
+before, for the reason that his eyes are sunken amid purple
+protuberances.
+
+Presently there arrives a newcomer in the shape of an old man
+with a grey head adorned with a faded velvet skull-cap, a pointed
+beard, a lean, withered frame, prominent cheekbones, a red,
+porous-looking, cunningly hooked nose, and the eyes of a thief.
+
+Him a flaxen-haired youth from Orel joins with a similar youth in
+accosting.
+
+"Why are YOU tramping?" inquires the former.
+
+"And why are YOU? " the old man retorts in nasal tones as,
+looking at no one, he proceeds to mend the handle of a battered
+metal teapot with a piece of wire.
+
+"We are travelling in search of work, and therefore living as we
+have been commanded to live."
+
+"By WHOM commanded?"
+
+"By God. Have you forgotten?"
+
+Carelessly, but succinctly, the old man retorts:
+
+"Take heed lest upon you, some day, God vomit all the dust and
+litter which you are raising by tramping His earth!"
+
+"How?" cries one of the youths, a long-eared stripling.
+
+"Were not Christ and His Apostles also tramps?"
+
+"Yes, CHRIST," is the old man's meaning reply as he raises his
+sharp eyes to those of his opponent. "But what are you talking
+of, you fools? With whom are you daring to compare yourselves?
+Take care lest I report you to the Cossacks!"
+
+I have listened to many such arguments, and always found them
+distasteful, even as I have done discussions regarding the soul.
+Hence I feel inclined to depart.
+
+At this moment, however, Konev makes his appearance. His mien is
+dejected, and his body perspiring, while his eyes keep blinking
+rapidly.
+
+"Has any one seen Tanka--that woman from Riazan?" he inquires.
+"No? Then the bitch must have bolted during the night. The fact is
+that, overnight, someone gave me a drop or two to drink, a mere
+dram, but enough to lay me as fast asleep as a bear in winter-
+time. And in the meantime, she must have run away with that Penza
+fellow."
+
+"No, HE is here," I remark.
+
+"Oh, he is, is he? Well, as what has the company registered
+itself? As a set of ikon-painters, I should think!"
+
+Again he begins to look anxiously about him.
+
+"Where can she have got to? " he queries.
+
+"To Mass, maybe."
+
+"0F course! Well, I am greatly smitten with her. Yes, my word I
+am!"
+
+Nevertheless, when Mass comes to an end, and, to the sound of a
+merry peal of bells, the well-dressed local Cossacks file out of
+church, and distribute themselves in gaudy streams about the
+hamlet, no Tatiana makes her appearance.
+
+"Then she IS gone," says Konev ruefully. "But I'll find her
+yet! I'LL come up with her!"
+
+That this will happen I do not feel confident. Nor do I desire
+that it should.
+
+*********************************
+
+Five years later I am pacing the courtyard of the Metechski
+Prison in Tiflis, and, as I do so, trying to imagine for what
+particular offence I have been incarcerated in that place of
+confinement.
+
+Picturesquely grim without, the institution is, inwardly, peopled
+with a set of cheerful, but clumsy, humourists. That is to say,
+it would seem as though, " by order of the authorities," the
+inmates are presenting a stage spectacle in which they are
+playing, willingly and zealously, but with a complete lack of
+experience, imperfectly comprehended roles as prisoners, warders,
+and gendarmes.
+
+For instance, today, when a warder and a gendarme came to my
+cell to escort me to exercise, and I said to them, " May I be
+excused exercise today? I am not very well, and do not feel like,
+etcetera, etcetera," the gendarme, a tall, handsome man with a
+red beard, held up to me a warning finger.
+
+"NO ONE," he said, "has given you permission to feel, or not to
+feel, like doing things."
+
+To which the warder, a man as dark as a chimney-sweep, with large
+blue "whites" to his eyes, added stutteringly:
+
+"To no one here has permission been given to feel, or not to
+feel, like doing things. You hear that?"
+
+So to exercise I went.
+
+In this stone-paved yard the air is as hot as in an oven, for
+overhead there lours only a small, flat patch of dull, drab-
+tinted sky, and on three sides of the yard rise high grey walls,
+with, on the fourth, the entrance-gates, topped by a sort of
+look-out post.
+
+Over the roof of the building there comes floating the dull roar
+of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the
+hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and
+as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the
+wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being
+in a drum which a myriad drumsticks are beating.
+
+Through the bars of the double line of windows on the second and
+the third stories peer the murky faces and towsled heads of some
+of the inmates. One of the latter spits his furthest into the
+yard--evidently with the intention of hitting myself: but all his
+efforts prove vain. Another one shouts with a mordant expletive:
+
+"Hi, you! Why do you keep tramping up and down like an old hen?
+Hold up your head!"
+
+Meanwhile the inmates continue to intone in concert a strange
+chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a
+plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant
+meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it
+soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly
+into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies
+away to give place to a refrain which coils, trickles forth from
+between the bars of the windows until it has permeated the free,
+torrid air.
+
+As I listen to that refrain, long familiar to me, it seems to
+voice something intelligible, and agitates my soul almost to a
+sense of agony. . . .
+
+Presently, while pacing up and down in the shadow of the
+building, I happen to glance towards the line of windows. Glued
+to the framework of one of the iron window-squares, I can discern
+a blue-eyed face. Overgrown with an untidy sable beard it is, as
+well as stamped with a look of perpetually grieved surprise.
+
+"That must be Konev," I say to myself aloud.
+
+Konev it is--Konev of the well-remembered eyes. Even at this
+moment they are regarding me with puckered attention.
+
+I throw around me a hasty glance. My own warder is dozing on a
+shady bench near the entrance. Two more warders are engaged in
+throwing dice. A fourth is superintending the pumping of water by
+two convicts, and superciliously marking time for their lever
+with the formula, "Mashkam, dashkam! Dashkam, mashkam!"
+
+I move towards the wall.
+
+"Is that you, Konev?" is my inquiry.
+
+"It is," he mutters as he thrusts his head a little further
+through the grating. "Yes, Konev I am, but who you are I have
+not a notion."
+
+"What are you here for?"
+
+"For a matter of base coin, though, to be truthful, I am here
+accidentally, without genuine cause."
+
+The warder rouses himself, and, with his keys jingling like a set
+of fetters, utters drowsily the command:
+
+"Do not stand still. Also, move further from the wall. To
+approach it is forbidden."
+
+"But it is so hot in the middle of the yard, sir!"
+
+"Everywhere it is hot," retorts the man reprovingly, and his
+head subsides again. From above comes the whispered query:
+
+"Who ARE you?"
+
+"Well, do you remember Tatiana, the woman from Riazan?"
+
+"DO I remember her?" Konev's voice has in it a touch of subdued
+resentment. "DO I remember her? Why, I was tried in court
+together with her!"
+
+"Together with HER? Was she too sentenced for the passing of
+base coin?"
+
+"Yes. Why should she not have been? She was merely the victim of
+an accident, even as I was."
+
+As I resume my walk in the stifling shade I detect that, from the
+windows of the basement there is issuing a smell of, in equal
+parts, rotten leather, mouldy grain, and dampness. To my mind
+there recur Tatiana's words: "Amid a great sorrow even a small
+joy becomes a great felicity," and, "I should like to build a
+village on some land of my own, and create for myself a new and
+better life."
+
+And to my recollection there recur also Tatiana's face and
+yearning, hungry breast. As I stand thinking of these things,
+there come dropping on to my head from above the low-spoken,
+ashen-grey words:
+
+"The chief conspirator in the matter was her lover, the son of a
+priest. He it was who engineered the plot. He has been sentenced
+to ten years penal servitude."
+
+"And she? "
+
+"Tatiana Vasilievna? To the same, and I also. I leave for Siberia
+the day after tomorrow. The trial was held at Kutair. In Russia
+I should have got off with a lighter sentence than here, for the
+folk in these parts are, one and all, evil, barbaric scoundrels."
+
+"And Tatiana, has she any children?"
+
+"How could she have while living such a rough life as this? Of
+course not! Besides, the priest's son is a consumptive."
+
+"Indeed sorry for her am I!"
+
+"So I expect." And in Konev's tone there would seem to be a
+touch of meaning. "The woman was a fool--of that there can be no
+doubt; but also she was comely, as well as a person out of the
+common in her pity for folk."
+
+"Was it then that you found her again?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"On that Feast of the Assumption?"
+
+"Oh no. It was only during the following winter that I came up
+with her. At the time she was serving as governess to the
+children of an old officer in Batum whose wife had left him."
+
+Something snaps behind me--something sounding like the hammer of a
+revolver. However, it is only the warder closing the lid of his
+huge watch before restoring the watch to his pocket, giving
+himself a stretch, and yawning to the utmost extent of his jaws.
+
+"You see, she had money, and, but for her restlessness, might
+have lived a comfortable life enough. As it was, her
+restlessness--"
+
+"Time for exercise is up!" shouts the warder.
+
+"Who are you?" adds Konev hastily. "Somehow I seem to remember
+your face; but 1 cannot place it."
+
+Yet so stung am I with what I have heard that I move away in
+silence: save that just as I reach the top of the steps I turn to
+cry:
+
+"Goodbye, mate, and give her my greeting."
+
+"What are you bawling for? " blusters the warder. . . .
+
+The corridor is dim, and filled with an oppressive odour. The
+warder swings his keys with a dry, thin clash, and I, to dull the
+pain in my heart, strive to imitate him. But the attempt proves
+futile; and as the warder opens the door of my cell he says
+severely:
+
+"In with you, ten-years man!"
+
+Entering, I move towards the window. Between some grey spikes on
+a wall I can just discern the boisterous current of the Kura,
+with sakli [warehouses] and houses glued to the opposite bank,
+and the figures of some workmen on the roof of a tanning shed.
+Below, with his cap pushed to the back of his head,a sentry is pacing
+backwards and forwards.
+
+Wearily my mind recalls the many scores of Russian folk whom it
+has seen perish to no purpose. And as it does so it feels
+crushed, as in a vice, beneath the burden of great and inexorable
+sorrow with which all life is dowered.
+
+
+
+IN A MOUNTAIN DEFILE
+
+In a mountain defile near a little tributary of the Sunzha, there
+was being built a workman's barraque-- a low, long edifice which
+reminded one of a large coffin lid.
+
+The building was approaching completion, and, meanwhile, a score
+of carpenters were employed in fashioning thin planks into doors
+of equal thinness, knocking together benches and tables, and
+fitting window-frames into the small window-squares.
+
+Also, to assist these carpenters in the task of protecting the
+barraque from tribesmen's nocturnal raids, the shrill-voiced
+young student of civil engineering who had been set in charge of
+the work had sent to the place, as watchman, an ex-soldier named
+Paul Ivanovitch, a man of the Cossack type, and myself.
+
+Yet whereas we were out-at-elbows, the carpenters were sleek,
+respectable, monied, well-clad fellows. Also, there was something
+dour and irritating about them, since, for one thing, they had
+failed to respond to our greeting on our first appearance, and
+eyed us with nothing but dislike and suspicion. Hence, hurt by
+their chilly attitude, we had withdrawn from their immediate
+neighbourhood, constructed a causeway of stepping stones to the
+eastern bank of the rivulet, and taken up our abode beneath the
+chaotic grey mists which enveloped the mountain side in that
+direction.
+
+Also, over the carpenters there was a foreman--a man whose bony
+frame, clad in a white shirt and a pair of white trousers, looked
+always as though it were ready-attired for death. Moreover, he
+wore no cap to conceal the yellow patch of baldness which covered
+most of his head, and, in addition, his nose was squat and grey,
+his neck and face had over them skin of a porous, pumice-like
+consistency, his eyes were green and dim, and upon his features
+there was stamped a dead and disagreeable expression. To be
+candid, however, behind the dark lips lay a set of fine, close
+teeth, while the hairs of the grey beard (a beard trimmed after
+the Tartar fashion) were thick and, seemingly, soft.
+
+Never did this man put a hand actually to the work; always he
+kept roaming about with the large, rigid-looking fingers of his
+hands tucked into his belt, and his fixed and expressionless eyes
+scanning the barraque, the men, and the work as his lips vented
+some such lines as:
+
+Oh God our Father, bound hast Thou
+A crown of thorns upon my brow!
+Listen to my humble prayer!
+Lighten the burden which I bear!
+
+"What on earth can be in the man's mind?" once remarked the ex-
+soldier, with a frowning glance at the singer.
+
+As for our duties, my mates and I had nothing to do, and soon
+began to find the time tedious. For his part, the man with the
+Cossack physiognomy scaled the mountain side; whence he could be
+heard whistling and snapping twigs with his heavy feet, while the
+ex-soldier selected a space between two rocks for a shelter of
+ace-rose boughs, and, stretching himself on his stomach, fell to
+smoking strong mountain tobacco in his large meerschaum pipe as
+dimly, dreamily he contemplated the play of the mountain torrent.
+Lastly, I myself selected a seat on a rock which overhung the
+brook, dipped my feet in the coolness of the water, and proceeded
+to mend my shirt.
+
+At intervals, the defile would convey to our ears a dull echo of
+sounds so wholly at variance with the locality as muffled hammer-
+blows, a screeching of saws, a rasping of planes, and a confused
+murmur of human voices.
+
+Also, a moist breeze blew constantly from the dark-blue depths of
+the defile, and caused the stiff, upright larches on the knoll
+behind the barraque to rustle their boughs, and distilled from
+the rank soil the voluptuous scents of ace-rose and pitch-pine,
+and evoked in the trees' quiet gloom a soft, crooning, somnolent
+lullaby.
+
+About a sazhen [Fathom] below the level of the barraque there
+coursed noisily over its bed of stones a rivulet white with foam.
+Yet though of other sounds in the vicinity there were but few,
+the general effect was to suggest that everything in the
+neighbourhood was speaking or singing a tale of such sort as to
+shame the human species into silence.
+
+On our own side of the valley the ground lay bathed in sunshine--
+lay scorched to the point of seeming to have spread over it a
+tissue-cloth. Old gold in colour, while from every side arose the
+sweet perfume of dried grasses, and in dark clefts there could be
+seen sprouting the long, straight spears and fiery, reddish,
+cone-shaped blossoms of that bold, hardy plant which is known to
+us as saxifrage--the plant of which the contemplation makes one
+long to burst into music, and fills one's whole body with
+sensuous languor.
+
+Laced with palpitating, snow-white foam, the beautiful rivulet
+pursued its sportive way over tessellated stones which flashed
+through the eddies of the glassy, sunlit, amber-coloured water
+with the silken sheen of a patchwork carpet or costly shawl of
+Cashmir.
+
+Through the mouth of the defile one could reach the valley of the
+Sunzha, whence, since men were ther, building a railway to
+Petrovsk on the Caspian Sea, there kept issuing and breaking
+against the crags a dull rumble of explosions, of iron rasped
+against stone, of whistles of works locomotives, and of animated
+human voices.
+
+From the barraque the distance to the point where the defile
+debouched upon the valley was about a hundred paces, and as one
+issued thence one could see, away to the left, the level steppes
+of the Cis-Caucasus, with a boundary wall of blue hills, topped
+by the silver-hewn saddle of Mount Elburz behind it. True, for
+the most part the steppes had a dry, yellow, sandy look, with
+merely here and there dark patches of gardens or black poplar
+clumps which rendered the golden glare more glaring still; yet
+also there could be discerned on the expanse farm buildings
+shaped like lumps of sugar or butter, with, in their vicinity,
+toylike human beings and diminutive cattle -- the whole shimmering
+and melting in a mirage born of the heat. And at the mere sight
+of those steppes, with their embroidery of silk under the blue of
+the zenith, one's muscles tightened, and one felt inspired with a
+longing to spring to one's feet, close one's eyes, and walk for
+ever with the soft, mournful song of the waste crooning in one's
+ears.
+
+To the right also of the defile lay the winding valley of the
+Sunzha, with more hills; and above those hills hung the blue sky,
+and in their flanks were clefts which, full of grey mist, kept
+emitting a ceaseless din of labour, a sound of dull explosions, as
+a great puissant force attained release.
+
+Yet almost at the same moment would that hurly-burly so merge
+with the echo of our defile, so become buried in the defile's
+verdure and rock crevices, that once more the place would seem to
+be singing only its own gentle, gracious song.
+
+And, should one turn to glance up the defile, it could be seen to
+grow narrower and narrower as it ascended towards the mists, and
+the latter to grow thicker and thicker until the whole defile was
+swathed in a dark blue pall. Higher yet there could be discerned
+the brilliant gleam of blue sky. Higher yet one could distinguish
+the ice-capped peak of Kara Dagh, floating and dissolving amid
+the ( from here) invisible sunlight. Highest of all again brooded
+the serene, steadfast peace of heaven.
+
+Also, everything was bathed in a strange tint of bluish grey: to
+which circumstance must have been due the fact that always one's
+soul felt filled with restlessness, one's heart stirred to
+disquietude, and fired as with intoxication, charged with
+incomprehensible thoughts, and conscious as of a summons to set
+forth for some unknown destination.
+
+******************************
+
+The foreman of the carpenters shaded his eyes to gaze in our
+direction; and as he did so, he drawled and rasped out in tedious
+fashion:
+
+"Some shall to the left be sent,
+And in the pit of Hell lie pent.
+While others, holding palm in hand,
+Shall on God's right take up their stand."
+
+"DID you hear that?" the ex-soldier growled through clenched
+teeth. "'Palm in hand' indeed! Why, the fellow must be a
+Mennonite or a Molokan, though the two, really, are one, and
+absolutely indistinguishable, as well as equally foolish. Yes,
+'palm in hand' indeed!"
+
+Similarly could I understand the ex-soldier's indignation, for,
+like him, I felt that such dreary, monotonous singing was
+altogether out of place in a spot where everything could troll a
+song so delightful as to lead one to wish to hear nothing more,
+to hear only the whispering of the forest and the babbling of the
+stream. And especially out of place did the terms "palm" and
+"Mennonite" appear.
+
+Yet I had no great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred
+upon me. Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun,
+he had faded eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of
+restless moroseness. Never could I make out what he really
+wanted, what he was really seeking. For instance, once, after
+reviewing the Caucasus from Khassav-Urt to Novorossisk, and from
+Batum to Derbent, and, during the review, crossing the mountain
+range by three different routes at least, he remarked with a
+disparaging smile:
+
+"I suppose the Lord God made the country."
+
+"You do not like it, then? How should I? Good for nothing is
+what I call it."
+
+Then, with a further glance at me, and a twist of his sinewy
+neck, he added:
+
+"However, not bad altogether are its forests."
+
+A native of Kaluga, he had served in Tashkend, and, in fighting
+with the Chechintzes of that region,had been wounded in the head
+with a stone. Yet as he told me the story of this incident, he
+smiled shamefacedly, and, throughout, kept his glassy eyes fixed
+upon the ground.
+
+"Though I am ashamed to confess it," he said, "once a woman
+chipped a piece out of me. You see, the women of that region are
+shrieking devils--there is no other word for it; and when we
+captured a village called Akhal-Tiapa a number of them had to be
+cut up, so that they lay about in heaps, and their blood made
+walking slippery. Just as our company of the reserve entered the
+street, something caught me on the head. Afterwards, I learnt that
+a woman on a roof had thrown a stone, and, like the rest, had had
+to be put out of the way."
+
+Here, knitting his brows, the ex-soldier went on in more serious
+vein:
+
+"Yet all that folk used to say about those women, about their
+having beards to shave, turned out to be so much gossip, as I
+ascertained for myself. I did so by lifting the woman's skirt on
+the point of my bayonet, when I perceived that, though she was
+lean, and smelt like a goat, she was quite as regular as, as--"
+
+"Things must have been indeed terrible on that expedition!" I
+interposed.
+
+"I do not know for certain, since, though men who took an actual
+part in the expedition's engagements have said that they were so
+(the Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself
+know but little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the
+reserve, and never once did my company advance to the assault.
+No, it merely lay about on the sand, and fired at long range. In
+fact, nothing but sand was to be seen thereabouts; nor did we
+ever succeed in finding out what the fighting was for. True, if a
+piece of country be good, it is in our interest to take it; but
+in the present case the country was poor and bare, with never a
+river in sight, and a climate so hot that all one thought of was
+one's mortal need of a drink. In fact, some of our fellows died
+of thirst outright. Moreover, in those parts there grows a sort
+of millet called dzhugar -- millet which not only has a horrible
+taste, but proves absolutely delusive, since the more one eats of
+it, the less one feels filled."
+
+As the ex-soldier told me the tale colourlessly and reluctantly,
+with frequent pauses between the sentences (as though either he
+found it difficult to recall the experience or he were thinking
+of something else), he never once looked me straight in the face,
+but kept his eyes shamefacedly fixed upon the ground.
+
+Unwieldily and unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the
+impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of
+captious inertia.
+
+"Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country " he continued as
+he glanced around him. "It is fit only to do nothing in. For
+that matter, one doesn't WANT to do anything in it, save to live
+with one's eyes bulging like a drunkard's-- for the climate is too
+hot, and the place smells like a chemist's shop or a hospital."
+
+Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this
+"too hot" country, as though fascinated!
+
+"Why not return to Riazan?" I suggested.
+
+"Nothing would there be there for me to do," he replied through
+his teeth, and with an odd division of his words.
+
+My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at
+Armavir, where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been
+stamping like a horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or,
+rather, snarling, at a couple of Greeks:
+
+"I'll tear the flesh from your bones!"
+
+Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar
+denizens of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at
+intervals, and saying apologetically:
+
+"What has angered you, sir?"
+
+Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat
+his breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased
+venom:
+
+"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is
+supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good
+foster-mother. I expect you say the same."
+
+And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled
+gendarme, and complained to him:
+
+"Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live
+with us--Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get
+their livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they
+continue to curse us. A scandal, is it not?"
+
+*************************
+
+
+The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore
+a Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock,
+rounded features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse
+lip. When the volatile young engineering student first brought
+him to us and said, "Here is another man for you," the newcomer
+glanced at me through the lashes of his elusive eyes--then plunged
+his hands into the pockets of his Turkish overalls. Just as we
+were departing, however, he withdrew one hand from the left
+trouser pocket, passed it slowly over the dark bristles of his
+unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:
+
+"Do you come from Russia?"
+
+"Whence else, I should like to know?" snapped the ex-soldier
+gruffly.
+
+Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then
+replaced his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and
+well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is
+accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought
+neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his supercilious,
+retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and
+inclined me to be suspicious of, and even actively to dislike,
+the man.
+
+Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side
+of the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards
+the sportively coursing water:
+
+"Look at the matchmaker!"
+
+The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around
+him for a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:
+
+"The fool!"
+
+But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was
+apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed
+resemble some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange
+affaires du coeur both for her own private amusement and for the
+purpose of enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection
+amid which she was living, and of which she would never grow
+weary, and to which she desired to introduce the rest of the
+world as speedily as possible.
+
+Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the
+Cossack face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains
+and the sky, and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant,
+comprehensive exclamation of " Slavno! " [How splendid!]
+
+The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his
+knapsack, straightened himself, and asked with his arms set
+akimbo:
+
+"WHAT is it that is so splendid?"
+
+For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of
+his questioner--a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen
+hangs upon a stone. Then he said with a smile:
+
+"Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that
+cleft in the mountain-- are they not good to look at?"
+
+And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a
+repeated whisper of:
+
+"The fool!"
+
+To which presently he added in a louder, as well as a mysterious,
+tone:
+
+"I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients hither
+for their health."
+
+The same evening saw two sturdy women arrive with supper for the
+carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore
+the rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet
+became the more distinct.
+
+Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to
+work to collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting
+a fire. After which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he
+said to me suggestively:
+
+"You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the
+nights are dark and chilly."
+
+I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around
+the barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who
+was lying with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his
+hand, as he conned a manuscript spread out before him. As he
+raised his eyes to gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw
+that one of his eyes was larger than the other.
+
+Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so
+taken aback by this was I, that I passed on my way without
+speaking.
+
+Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the
+barraque (a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.
+
+Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile.
+Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the
+twilight caused the slopes of the mountains to soften in outline,
+and the rocks to seem to swell and merge with the bluish-
+blackness which overhung the bed of the defile, and the
+superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole, and the
+scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into, one
+compact bulk.
+
+Quietly then did tints hitherto red extinguish their tremulous
+glow--softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen,
+the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now
+blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence--flowed
+with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest
+hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while
+emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with
+the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of our wood fire.
+
+The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and
+rearranged some fuel under the kettle.
+
+"Where is the other man?" said he. "Go and fetch him."
+
+I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the
+carpenters in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick,
+unctuous, sing-song voice.
+
+"A great work is it indeed!"
+
+Whereafter I heard the two women fall to drawling in low, hungry
+accents:
+
+"With the flesh I'll conquer pain;
+The spirit shall my lust restrain;
+All-supreme the soul shall reign;
+And carnal vices lure in vain."
+
+True, the women pronounced their words distinctly enough; yet
+always they prolonged the final "u" sound of the stanza's first
+and third lines until, as the melody floated away into the
+darkness, and, as it were, sank to earth, it came to resemble the
+long-drawn howl of a wolf.
+
+In answer to my invitation to come to supper, the newcomer sprang
+to his feet, folded up his manuscript, stuffed it into one of the
+pockets of his ragged coat, and said with a smile:
+
+"I had just been going to resort to the carpenters, for they
+would have given us some bread, I suppose? Long is it since I
+tasted anything."
+
+The same words he repeated on our approaching the ex-soldier;
+much as though he took a pleasure in their phraseology.
+
+"You suppose that they would have given us bread?" echoed the ex-
+soldier as he unfastened his wallet. "Not they! No love is lost
+between them and ourselves."
+
+"Whom do you mean by 'ourselves'?"
+
+"Us here--you and myself--all Russian folk who may happen to be in
+these parts. From the way in which those fellows keep singing
+about palms, I should judge them to be sectarians of the sort
+called Mennonites."
+
+"Or Molokans, rather?" the other man suggested as he seated
+himself in front of the fire.
+
+"Yes, or Molokans. Molokans or Mennonites-- they're all one. It is
+a German faith and though such fellows love a Teuton, they do not
+exactly welcome US."
+
+Upon this the man with the Cossack forelock took a slice of bread
+which the ex-soldier cut from a loaf, with an onion and a pinch
+of salt. Then, as he regarded us with a pair of good-humoured
+eyes, he said, balancing his food on the palms of his hands:
+
+"There is a spot on the Sunzha, near here, where those fellows
+have a colony of their own. Yes, I myself have visited it. True,
+those fellows are hard enough, but at the same time to speak
+plainly, NO ONE in these parts has any regard for us since only
+too many of the sort of Russian folk who come here in search of
+work are not overly-desirable."
+
+"Where do you yourself come from?" The ex-soldier's tone was
+severe.
+
+"From Kursk, we might say."
+
+"From Russia, then?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. But I have no great opinion even of myself."
+
+The ex-soldier glanced distrustfully at the newcomer. Then he
+remarked:
+
+"What you say is cant, sheer Jesuitism. It is fellows like
+THOSE, rather, that ought to have a poor opinion of themselves."
+
+To this the other made no reply--merely he put a piece of bread
+into his mouth. For a moment or two the ex-soldier eyed him
+frowningly. Then he continued:
+
+"You seem to me to be a native of the Don country? "
+
+"Yes, I have lived on the Don as well."
+
+"And also served in the army?"
+
+"No. I was an only son."
+
+"Of a miestchanin? " [A member of the small commercial class.]
+
+"No, of a merchant."
+
+"And your name--?"
+
+"Is Vasili."
+
+The last reply came only after a pause, and reluctantly;
+wherefore, perceiving that the Kurskan had no particular desire
+to discuss his own affairs, the ex-soldier said no more on the
+subject, but lifted the kettle from the fire.
+
+The Molokans also had kindled a blaze behind the corner of the
+barraque, and now its glow was licking the yellow boards of the
+structure until they seemed almost to be liquescent, to be about
+to dissolve and flow over the ground in a golden stream.
+
+Presently, as their fervour increased, the carpenters, invisible
+amid the obscurity, fell to singing hymns--the basses intoning
+monotonously, " Sing, thou Holy Angel! " and voices of higher
+pitch responding, coldly and formally.
+
+"Sing ye!
+Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!
+Sing ye!
+Our singing will we add unto Thine,
+Thou Angel of Holiness!"
+
+And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of
+the rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones,
+it seemed out of place in this particular spot;it aroused
+resentment against men who could not think of a lay more atune
+with the particular living, breathing objects around us.
+
+Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth
+of the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the
+rivulet escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a
+deeper shade, was there not yet suspended the curtain of the
+Southern night.
+
+Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to
+assume the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head
+adorned with a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his
+hands. Similarly, the stems of the trees stirred in the firelight
+until they developed the semblance of a file of friars entering,
+for early Mass, the porch of their chapel-of-ease.
+
+To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just
+such a dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-
+telling under the boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the
+Don country. Suddenly I had heard a window above my head open,
+and someone exclaim in a kindly, youthful voice:
+
+"The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!"
+
+And though the window had closed again before I had had time to
+discern the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the
+monastery a friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a
+face as had Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been
+he who had breathed the benediction upon mankind
+at large, for the reason that moments there are when all humanity
+seems to be one's own body, and in oneself there seems to beat
+the heart of all humanity. . . .
+
+Vasili consumed his food deliberately as, breaking off morsels
+from his slice, and neatly parting his moustache, he placed the
+morsels in his mouth with a curious stirring of two globules
+which underlay the skin near the ears.
+
+The ex-soldier, however, merely nibbled at his food--he ate but
+little, and that lazily. Then he extracted a pipe from his breast
+pocket, filled it with tobacco, lit it with a faggot taken from
+the fire, and said as he set himself to listen to the singing of
+the Molokans:
+
+"They are filled full, and have started bleating. Always folk
+like them seek to be on the right side of the Almighty."
+
+"Does that hurt you in any way?" Vasili asked with a smile.
+
+"No, but I do not respect them--they are less saints than
+humbugs, than prevaricators whose first word is God, and second
+word rouble."
+
+"How do you know that?" cried Vasili amusedly. "And even if
+their first word IS God, and their second word rouble, we had
+best not be too hard upon them, since if they chose to be hard
+upon US, where should WE be? Yes, we have only to open our mouths
+to speak a word or two for ourselves, and we should find every
+fist at our teeth."
+
+" Quite so," the ex-soldier agreed as, taking up a square of
+scantling, he examined it attentively.
+
+"Whom DO you respect?" Vasili continued after a pause.
+
+"I respect," the ex-soldier said with some emphasis, "only the
+Russian people, the true Russian people, the folk who labour on
+land whereon labour is hard. Yet who are the folk whom you find
+HERE? In this part of the world the business of living is an easy
+one. Much of every sort of natural produce is to be had, and the
+soil is generous and light--you need but to scratch it for it to
+bear, and for yourself to reap. Yes, it is indulgent to a fault.
+Rather, it is like a maiden. Do but touch her, and a child will
+arrive."
+
+"Agreed," was Vasili's remark as he drank tea from a tin mug.
+"Yet to this very part of the world is it that I should like to
+transport every soul in Russia."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Because here they could earn a living."
+
+"Then is not that possible in Russia? "
+
+"Well, why are you yourself here?"
+
+"Because I am a man lacking ties."
+
+"And why are you lacking ties?"
+
+"Because it has been so ordered--it is, so to speak, my lot."
+
+"Then had you not better consider WHY it is your lot?"
+
+The ex-soldier took his pipe from his mouth, let fall the hand
+which held it, and smoothed his plain features in silent
+amazement. Then he exclaimed in uncouth, querulous tones:
+
+"Had I not better consider WHY it is my lot, and so forth? Why,
+damn it, the causes are many. For one thing, if one has
+neighbours who neither live nor see things as oneself does, but
+are uncongenial, what does one do? One just leaves them, and
+clears out--more especially if one be neither a priest nor a
+magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better consider why this is my
+lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man able to consider
+things, possessed of a brain? "
+
+And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat
+frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor's features as
+the firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an
+undertone:
+
+"Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours,
+yet lack a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us,
+just fall to wandering, troubling other folk, and earning
+dislike!"
+
+"The dislike of whom?" gruffly queried the ex-soldier.
+
+"The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!"
+
+In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which
+completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili's voice had in it an
+agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while
+enunciating its words roundly and distinctly.
+
+A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have
+the crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a
+mouse, made the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of
+this species I once encountered among the defile's crags, and as
+the creature sailed over my head it startled me with the glassy
+eyes which, as round as buttons, seemed to be lit from within
+with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment or two I stood half-
+stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive what the creature
+was.
+
+"Whence did you get that splendid pipe?" next asked Vasili as
+he rolled himself a cigarette. "Surely it is a pipe of old
+German make?"
+
+"You need not fear that I stole it," the ex-soldier responded as
+he removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. "It was
+given me by a woman."
+
+To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.
+
+"Tell me how it happened," said Vasili softly. Then he flung up
+his arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:
+
+"Ah, these nights here! Never again may God send me such bad
+ones! Try to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier,
+indeed, is it to sleep during the daytime, provided that one can
+find a shady spot. During such nights I go almost mad with
+thinking, and my heart swells and murmurs."
+
+The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows
+raised even higher than usual, responded to this:
+
+"It is the same with me. If one could only--What did you say?"
+
+This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark,
+"The same with me also," but on seeing the pair exchanging a
+strange glance (as though involuntarily they had surprised one
+another), had left the words unspoken. My companions then set
+themselves to a mutually eager questioning with respect to their
+respective identities, past experiences, places of origin, and
+destinations, even as though they had been two kinsmen who,
+meeting unexpectedly, had discovered for the first time their
+bond of relationship.
+
+Meanwhile the black, fringed boughs of the pine trees hung
+stretched over the flames of the Molokans' fire as though they
+would catch some of the fire's glow and warmth, or seize it
+altogether, and put it out. And when, at times, their red tongues
+projected beyond the corner of the barraque, they made the
+building look as though it had caught alight, and extended their
+glow even to the rivulet. Constantly the night was growing denser
+and more stifling; constantly it seemed to embrace the body more
+and more caressingly, until one bathed in it as in an ocean.
+Also, much as a wave removes dirt from the skin, so the softly
+vocal darkness seemed to refresh and cleanse the soul. For it is
+on such nights as that that the soul dons its finest raiment, and
+trembles like a bride at the expectation of something glorious.
+
+"You say that she had a squint?" presently I heard Vasili
+continue in an undertone, and the ex-soldier slowly reply:
+
+"Yes, she had one from childhood upwards--she had one from the
+day when a fall from a cart caused her to injure her eyes. Yet,
+if she had not always gone about with one of her eyes shaded, you
+would never have guessed the fact. Also, she was so neat and
+practical! And her kindness--well, it was kindness as
+inexhaustible as the water of that rivulet there; it was kindness
+of the sort that wished well to all the world, and to all
+animals, and to every beggar, and even to myself!  So at last
+there gripped my heart the thought, 'Why should I not try a
+soldier's luck? She is the master's favourite--true; yet none the
+less the attempt shall be made by me.' However, this way or that,
+always the reply was 'No'; always she put out at me an elbow, and
+cut me short."
+
+Vasili, lying prone upon his back, twitched his moustache, and
+chewed a stalk of grass. His eyes were fully open, and for the
+second time I perceived that one of them was larger than the
+other. The ex-soldier, seated near Vasili's shoulder, stirred the
+fire with a bit of charred stick, and sent sparks of gold flying
+to join the midges which were gliding to and fro over the blaze.
+Ever and anon night-moths subsided into the flames with a plop,
+crackled, and became changed into lumps of black. For my own
+part, I constructed a couch on a pile of pine boughs, and there
+lay down. And as I listened to the ex-soldier's familiar story, I
+recalled persons whom I had on one and another occasion
+remembered, and speeches which on one and another occasion had
+made an impression upon me.
+
+"But at last," the ex-soldier continued, "I took heart of
+grace, and caught her in a barn. Pressing her into a corner, I
+said: 'Now let it be yes or no. Of, course it shall be as you
+wish, but remember that I am a soldier with a small stock of
+patience.' Upon that she began to struggle and exclaim: 'What do
+you want? What do you want?' until, bursting into tears like a
+girl, she said through her sobs: 'Do not touch me. I am not the
+sort of woman for you. Besides, I love another--not our master,
+but another, a workman, a former lodger of ours. Before he
+departed he said to me: "Wait for me until I have found you a
+nice home, and returned to fetch you"; and though it is
+seventeen years since I heard speech or whisper of him, and maybe
+he has since forgotten me, or fallen in love with someone else,
+or come to grief, or been murdered, you, who are a map, will
+understand that I must bide a little while longer.' True, this
+offended me (for in what respect was I any worse than the other
+man?); yet also I felt sorry for her, and grieved that I should
+have wronged her by thinking her frivolous, when all the time
+there had been THIS at her heart. I drew back, therefore--I could
+not lay a finger upon her, though she was in my power. And at
+last I said: 'Good-bye! I am going away.' 'Go,' she replied.
+'Yes, go for the love of Christ!' . . . Wherefore, on the
+following evening I settled accounts with our master, and at dawn
+of a Sunday morning packed my wallet, took with me this pipe, and
+departed. 'Yes, take the pipe, Paul Ivanovitch,' she said before
+my departure. 'Perhaps it will serve to keep you in remembrance
+of me--you whom henceforth I shall regard as a brother, and whom I
+thank.' . . . As I walked away I was very nigh to tears, so keen
+was the pain in my heart. Aye, keen it was indeed! "
+
+"You did right," Vasili remarked softly after a pause.
+
+"Things must always so befall. Always must it be a case either
+of 'Yes?' 'Yes,' and of folk coming together, or of 'No' 'No,'
+and of folk parting. And invariably the one person in the case
+grieves the other. Why should that be?"
+
+Emitting a cloud of grey smoke, the ex-soldier replied
+thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes, I know I did right; but that right was done only at a
+great cost."
+
+"And always that too is the case," Vasili agreed. Then he added:
+
+"Generally such fortune falls to the lot of people who have
+tender consciences. He who values himself also values his
+fellows; but, unfortunately a man all too seldom values even
+himself."
+
+"To whom are you referring? To you and myself?"
+
+"To our Russian folk in general."
+
+"Then you cannot have very much respect for Russia." The ex-
+soldier's tone had taken on a curious note. He seemed to be
+feeling both astonished at and grieved for his companion.
+
+The other, however, did not reply; and after a few moments the
+ex-soldier softly concluded:
+
+"So now you have heard my story."
+
+By this time the carpenters had ceased singing around the
+barraque, and let their fire die down until quivering on the wall
+of the edifice there was only a fiery-red patch, a patch barely
+sufficient to render visible the shadows of the rocks; while
+beside the fire there was seated only a tall figure with a black
+beard which had, grasped in its hands, a heavy cudgel, and, lying
+near its right foot, an axe. The figure was that of a watchman
+set by the carpenters to keep an eye upon ourselves, the
+appointed watchmen; though the fact in no way offended us.
+
+Over the defile, in a ragged strip of sky, there were gleaming
+stars, while the rivulet was bubbling and purling, and from the
+obscurity of the forest there kept coming to our ears, now the
+cautious, rustling tread of some night animal, and now the
+mournful cry of an owl, until all nature seemed to be instinct
+with a secret vitality the sweet breath of which kept moving the
+heart to hunger insatiably for the beautiful.
+
+Also, as I lay listening to the voice of the ex-soldier, a voice
+reminiscent of a distant tambourine, and to Vasili's pensive
+questions, I conceived a liking for the men, and began to detect
+that in their relations there was dawning something good and
+human. At the same time, the effect of some of Vasili's dicta on
+Russia was to arouse in me mingled feelings which impelled me at
+once to argue with him and to induce him to speak at greater
+length, with more clarity, on the subject of our mutual
+fatherland. Hence always I have loved that night for the visions
+which it brought to me--visions which still come back to me like a
+dear, familiar tale.
+
+I thought of a student of Kazan whom I had known in the days of
+the past, of a young fellow from Viatka who, pale-browed, and
+sententious of diction, might almost have been brother to the ex-
+soldier himself. And once again I heard him declare that "before
+all things must I learn whether or not there exists a God; pre-
+eminently must I make a beginning there."
+
+And I thought, too, of a certain accoucheuse named Velikova who
+had been a comely, but reputedly gay, woman. And I remembered a
+certain occasion when, on a hill overlooking the river Kazan and
+the Arski Plain, she had stood contemplating the marshes below,
+and the far blue line of the Volga; until suddenly turning pale,
+she had, with tears of joy sparkling in her fine eyes, cried
+under her breath, but sufficiently loudly for all present to hear
+her:
+
+"Ah, friends, how gracious and how fair is this land of ours!
+Come, let us salute that land for having deemed us worthy of
+residence therein!"
+
+Whereupon all present, including a deacon-student from the
+Ecclesiastical School, a Morduine from the Foreign College, a
+student of veterinary science, and two of our tutors, had done
+obeisance. At the same time I recalled the fact that subsequently
+one of the party had gone mad, and committed suicide.
+
+Again, I recalled how once, on the Piani Bor [Liquor Wharf] by
+the river Kama, a tall, sandy young fellow with intelligent eyes
+and the face of a ne'er-do-well had caught my attention. The day
+had been a hot, languorous Sunday on which all things had seemed
+to be exhibiting their better side, and telling the sun that it
+was not in vain that he was pouring out his brilliant potency,
+and diffusing his living gold; while the man of whom I speak had,
+dressed in a new suit of blue serge, a new cap cocked awry, and a
+pair of brilliantly polished boots, been standing at the edge of
+the wharf, and gazing at the brown waters of the Kama, the
+emerald expanse beyond them and the silver-scaled pools left
+behind by the tide. Until, as the sun had begun to sink towards
+the marshes on the other side of the river, and to become
+dissolved into streaks, the man had smiled with increasing
+rapture, and his face had glowed with creasing eagerness and
+delight; until finally he had snatched the cap from his head,
+flung it, with a powerful throw far out into the russet waters,
+and shouted: "Kama, O my mother, I love you, and never will
+desert you!"
+
+And the last, and also the best, recollection of things seen
+before the night of which I speak was the recollection of an
+occasion when, one late autumn, I had been crossing the Caspian
+Sea on an old two-masted schooner laden with dried apricots,
+plums, and peaches. Sailing on her also she had had some hundred
+fishermen from the Bozhi Factory, men who, originally forest
+peasants of the Upper Volga, had been well-built, bearded,
+healthy, goodhumoured, animal-spirited young fellows, youngsters
+tanned with the wind, and salted with the sea water; youngsters
+who, after working hard at their trade, had been rejoicing at the
+prospect of returning home. And careering about the deck like
+youthful bears as ever and anon lofty, sharp-pointed waves had
+seized and tossed aloft the schooner, and the yards had cracked,
+and the taut-run rigging had whistled, and the sails had bellied
+into globes, and the howling wind had shaved off the white crests
+of billows, and partially submerged the vessel in clouds of foam.
+
+And seated on the deck with his broad back resting against the
+mainmast there had been one young giant in particular. Clad in a
+white linen shirt and a pair of blue serge trousers, and innocent
+alike of beard and moustache, this young fellow had had full, red
+lips, blue, boyish, and exceedingly translucent eyes, and a face
+intoxicated in excelsis with the happiness of youth; while
+leaning across his knees as they had rested sprawling over the
+deck there had been a young female trimmer of fish, a wench as
+massive and tall as the young man himself, and a wench whose face
+had become tanned to roughness with the sun and wind, eyebrows
+dark, full, and as large as the wings of a swallow, breasts as
+firm as stone, and teats around which, as they projected from the
+folds of a red bodice, there had lain a pattern of blue veins.
+
+The broad, iron-black palm of the young fellow's long, knotted
+hand had been resting on the woman's left breast, with the arm
+bare to the elbow; while in his right hand, as he had sat gazing
+pensively at the woman's robust figure, there had been grasped a
+tin mug from which some of the red liquor had scattered stains
+over the front of his linen shirt.
+
+Meanwhile, around the pair there had been hovering some of the
+youngster's comrades, who, with coats buttoned to the throat, and
+caps gripped to prevent their being blown away by the wind, had
+employed themselves with scanning the woman's figure with envious
+eyes, and viewing her from either side. Nay, the shaggy green
+waves themselves had been stealing occasional glimpses at the
+picture as clouds had swirled across the sky, gulls had uttered
+their insatiable scream, and the sun, dancing on the foam-flecked
+waters, had vested the billows, now in tints of blue, now in
+natural tints as of flaming jewels.
+
+In short, all the passengers on the schooner had been shouting
+and laughing and singing, while the great bearded peasants had
+also been paying assiduous court to a large leathern bottle which
+had lain ensconced on a heap of peach-sacks, with the result that
+the scene had come to have about it something of the antique,
+legendary air of the return of Stepan Razin from his Persian
+campaign.
+
+At length the buffeting of the wind had caused an old man with a
+crooked nose set on a hairy, faun-like face to stumble over one
+of the woman's feet; whereupon he had halted, thrown up his head
+with nonsenile vigour, and exclaimed:
+
+"May the devil fly away with you, you shameless hussy! Why lie
+sprawling about the deck like this? See, too, how exposed you
+are!"
+
+The woman had not stirred at the words--she had not even opened an
+eye; only over her lips there had passed a faint tremor. Whereas
+the young fellow had straightened himself, deposited his tin mug
+upon the deck, and cried loudly as he laid his disengaged hand
+upon the woman's breast.
+
+"Ah, you envy me, do you, Yakim Petrov? Never mind, though you
+have done no great harm. But run no risks; do not look for
+needless trouble, for your day for sucking sugarplums is past."
+
+Whereafter, raising both his hands, the young fellow had softly
+let them sink again upon the woman's bosom as he added
+triumphantly:
+
+"These breasts could feed all Russia! "
+
+Then, and only then, had the woman smiled a long, slow smile. And
+as she had done so everything in the vicinity had seemed to smile
+in unison, and to rise and fall in harmony with her bosom--yes,
+the whole vessel, and the vessel's freight. And at the moment
+when a particularly large wave had struck the bulwarks, and
+besprinkled all on board with spray, the woman had opened her
+dark eyes, looked kindly at the old man, and at the young fellow,
+and at the scene in general--then set herself to recover her
+bosom.
+
+"Nay," the young fellow had cried as he interposed to remove her
+hands. "There is no need for that, there is no need for that.
+Let them ALL look."
+
+**************************************************
+
+Such the memories that came back to my recollection that night.
+Gladly I would have recounted them to my companions, but,
+unfortunately, these had, by now, succumbed to slumber. The ex-
+soldier, resting in a sitting posture, and snoring loudly, had
+his back prised against his wallet, his head sloped sideways, and
+his hands clasped upon his knees, while Vasili was lying on his
+back with his face turned upwards, his hands clasped behind his
+head, his dark, finely moulded brows raised a little, and his
+moustache erect. Also, he was weeping in his sleep--tears were
+coursing down his brown, sunburnt cheeks; tears which, in the
+moonlight, had in them something of the greenish tint of a
+chrysolite or sea water, and which, on such a manly face, looked
+strange indeed!
+
+Still the rivulet was purling as it flowed, and the fire
+crackling; while bathed in the red glow of the flames there was
+sitting, bent forward, the dark, stonelike figure of the
+Molokans' watchman, with the axe at his feet reflecting the
+radiant gleam of the moon in the sky above us.
+
+All the earth seemed to be sleeping as ever the waning stars
+seemed to draw nearer and nearer. . . .
+
+The slow length of the next day was dragged along amid an inertia
+born of the moist heat, the song of the river, and the
+intoxicating scents of forest and flowers. In short, one felt
+inclined to do nothing, from morn till night, save roam the
+defile without the exchanging of a word, the conceiving of a
+desire, or the formulating of a thought.
+
+At sunset, when we were engaged in drinking tea by the fire, the
+ex-soldier remarked:
+
+"I hope that life in the next world will exactly resemble life
+in this spot, and be just as quiet and peaceful and immune from
+work. Here one needs but to sit and melt like butter and suffer
+neither from wrong nor anxiety."
+
+Then, as carefully he withdrew his pipe from his lips, and
+sighed, he added:
+
+"Aye! If I could but feel sure that life in the next world will
+be like life here, I would pray to God: 'For Christ's sake take
+my soul at the earliest conceivable moment.'"
+
+"What might suit YOU would not suit ME," Vasili thoughtfully
+observed. "I would not always live such a life as this. I might
+do so for a time, but not in perpetuity."
+
+"Ah, but never have you worked hard," grunted the ex-soldier.
+
+In every way the evening resembled the previous one; there were
+to be observed the same luscious flooding of the defile with
+dove-coloured mist, the same flashing of the silver crags in the
+roseate twilight, the same rocking of the dense, warm forest's
+soft, leafy tree-tops, the same softening of the rocks' outlines
+in the gloom, the same gradual uplift of shadows, the same
+chanting of the "matchmaking" river, the same routine on the
+part of the big, sleek carpenters around the barraque--a routine
+as slow and ponderous in its course as the movements of a drove
+of wild boars.
+
+More than once during the off hours of the day had we sought to
+make the carpenters' acquaintance, to start a conversation with
+them, but always their answers had been given reluctantly, in
+monosyllables, and never had a discussion seemed likely to get
+under way without the whiteheaded foreman shouting to the
+particular member of the gang concerned: " Hi, you, Pavlushka!
+Get back to work, there! " Indeed, he, the foreman, had outdone
+all in his manifestations of dislike for our friendship, and as
+monotonously as though he had been minded to rival the rivulet as
+a songster, he had hummed his pious ditties, or else raised his
+snuffling voice to sing them with an ever-importunate measure of
+insistence, so that all day long those ditties had been coursing
+their way in a murky, melancholy-compelling flood. Indeed, as the
+foreman had stepped cautiously on thin legs from stone to stone
+during his ceaseless inspection of the work of his men, he had
+come to seem to have for his object the describing of an
+invisible, circular path, as a means of segregating us more
+securely than ever from the society of the carpenters.
+
+Personally, however, I had no desire to converse with him, for
+his frozen eyes chilled and repelled me and from the moment when
+I had approached him, and seen him fold his hands behind him, and
+recoil a step as he inquired with suppressed sternness, "What do
+you want?" there had fallen away from me all further ambition to
+learn the nature of the songs which he sang.
+
+The ex-soldier gazed at him resentfully, then said with an oath:
+
+"The old wizard and pilferer! Take my word for it that a lump of
+piety like that has got a pretty store put away somewhere."
+
+Whereafter, as he lit his pipe and squinted in the direction of
+the carpenters, he added with stifled wrath:
+
+"The airs that the 'elect' give themselves--the sons of
+bitches! "
+
+"It is always so," commented Vasili with a resentment equal to
+the last speaker's. "Yes, no sooner, with us, does a man
+accumulate a little money than he sticks his nose in the air, and
+falls to thinking himself a real barin."
+
+"Why is it that you always say 'With us,' and 'Among us,' and so
+on?"
+
+"Among us Russians, then, if you like it better."
+
+"I do like it better. For you are not a German, are you, nor a
+Tartar?"
+
+"No. It is merely that I can see the faults in our Russian
+folk."
+
+Upon that (not for the first time) the pair plunged into a
+discussion which had come so to weary them that now they spoke
+only indifferently, without effort.
+
+"The word 'faults' is, I consider, an insult," began the ex-
+soldier as he puffed at his pipe. "Besides, you don't speak
+consistently. Only this moment I observed a change in your
+terms."
+
+"To what?"
+
+"To the term 'Russians.'"
+
+"What should you prefer?"
+
+A new sound floated into the defile as from some point on the
+steppe the sound of a bell summoning folk to the usual Saturday
+vigil service. Removing his pipe from his mouth, the ex-soldier
+listened for a moment or two. Then, at the third and last stroke
+of the bell, he doffed his cap, crossed himself with punctilious
+piety, and said:
+
+"There are not very many churches in these parts."
+
+Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added
+venomously:
+
+"Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!"
+
+Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it
+again, regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his
+head.
+
+"The trouble with me," he remarked in an undertone, "is that I
+can never remain very long in one place--always I keep fancying
+that I shall meet with better things elsewhere, always I keep
+hearing a bird singing in my heart, 'Do you go further, do you
+go further.'"
+
+"That bird sings in the heart of EVERY man," the ex-soldier
+growled sulkily.
+
+With a glance at us both, Vasili laughed a subdued laugh.
+
+"'In the heart of every man'? " he repeated. "Why, such a
+statement is absurd. For it means, does it not, that every one of
+us is an idler, every one of us is constantly waiting for
+something to turn up--that, in fact, no one of us is any better
+than, or able to do any better than, the folk whose sole
+utterance is 'Give unto us, pray give unto us'? Yes, if that be
+the case, it is an unfortunate case indeed!"
+
+And again he laughed. Yet his eyes were sorrowful, and as the
+fingers of his right hand lay upon his knee they twitched as
+though they were longing to grasp something unseen.
+
+The ex-soldier frowned and snorted. For my own part, however, I
+felt troubled for, and sorry for, Vasili. Presently he rose,
+broke into a soft whistle, and moved away by the side of the
+stream.
+
+"His head is not quite right," muttered the ex-soldier as he
+winked in the direction of the retreating figure. "Yes, I tell
+you that straight, for from the first it was clear to me.
+Otherwise, what could his words in depredation of Russia mean,
+when of Russia nothing the least hard or definite can be said?
+Who really knows her? What is she in reality, seeing that each of
+her provinces is a soul to itself, and no one could state which
+of the two Holy Mothers stands nearest to God--the Holy Mother of
+Smolensk, or the Holy Mother of Kazan? "
+
+For a while the speaker sat scraping greasy deposit from the
+bottom and sides of the kettle; and all that while he grumbled as
+though he had a grudge against someone. At length, however, he
+assumed an attitude of attention, with his neck stretched out as
+though to listen to some sound.
+
+"Hist!" was his exclamation.
+
+What then followed, followed as unexpectedly as when, like an
+evil bird, a summer whirlwind suddenly sweeps up from the
+horizon, and discharges a bluish-black cloud in torrents of rain
+and hail, until everything is overwhelmed and battered to mud.
+
+That is to say, with much din of whistling and other sounds there
+now came pouring into the defile, and began to ascend the trail
+beside the stream, a straggling procession of some thirty workmen
+with, gleaming dully in the hands of their leading files, flagons
+of vodka, and, suspended on the backs and shoulders of others,
+wallets and bags of bread and other comestibles, and, in two
+instances, poised on the heads of yet other processionists, large
+black cauldrons the effect of which was to make their bearers
+look like mushrooms.
+
+"A vedro [2 3/4 gallons] and a half to the cauldron!" whispered
+the ex-soldier with a computative grunt as he gained his feet.
+
+"Yes, a vedro and a half," he repeated. As he spoke the tip of
+his tongue protruded until it rested on the under-lip of his
+half-opened mouth. In his face there was a curiously thirsty,
+gross expression, and his attitude, as he stood there, was that
+of one who had just received a blow, and was about to cry out in
+consequence.
+
+Meanwhile the defile rumbled like a barrel into which heavy
+weights are being dropped, for one of the newcomers was beating
+an empty tin pail, and another one whistling in a manner the
+tossed echoes of which drowned even the rivulet's murmur as
+nearer and nearer came the mob of men, a mob clad variously in
+black, grey, or russet, with sleeves rolled up, and heads, in
+many cases, bare save for their own towsled, dishevelled locks,
+and bodies bent with fatigue, or carried stumblingly along on
+legs bowed outwards. Meanwhile, as the dull, polyphonous roar of
+voices swept through the neck of the defile, a man shouted in
+broken, but truculent, accents:
+
+"I say no! Fiddlesticks! Not a man is there who could drink more
+than a vedro of 'blood-and-sweat' in a day."
+
+"A man could drink a lake of it."
+
+"No, a vedro and a half. That is the proper reckoning."
+
+"Aye, a vedro and a half." And the ex-soldier, as he repeated
+the words, spoke both as though he were an expert in the matter
+and as though he felt for the matter a touch of respect. Then,
+lurching forward like a man pushed by the scruff of the neck, he
+crossed the rivulet, intercepted the crowd, and became swallowed
+up in its midst.
+
+Around the barraque the carpenters (the foreman ever glimmering
+among them) were hurriedly collecting tools. Presently Vasili
+returned--his right hand thrust into his pocket, and his left
+holding his cap.
+
+"Before long those fellows will be properly drunk! " he said
+with a frown. "Ah, that vodka of ours! It is a perfect curse!"
+Then to me: "Do YOU drink?"
+
+"No," I replied.
+
+"Thank God for that! If one does not drink one will never really
+get into trouble."
+
+For a moment he gazed gloomily in the direction of the newcomers.
+Then he said without moving, without even looking at me:
+
+"You have remarkable eyes, young fellow. Also, they seem
+familiar to me--I have seen them somewhere before. Possibly that
+happened in a dream, though I cannot be sure. Where do you come
+from?"
+
+I answered, but, after scanning me perplexedly, he shook his
+head.
+
+"No," he remarked. "I have never visited that part of the
+country, or indeed, been so far from home."
+
+"But this place is further still?"
+
+"Further still?"
+
+"Yes--from Kursk."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I must tell you the truth," he said. "I am not a Kurskan at
+all, but a Pskovian. The reason why I told the ex-soldier that I
+was from Kursk was that I neither liked him nor cared to tell him
+the whole truth-he was not worth the trouble. And as for my real
+name, it is Paul, not Vasili--Paul Nikolaev Silantiev-- and is so
+marked on my passport (for a passport, and a passport quite in
+order, I have got)."
+
+"And why are you on your travels? "
+
+"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from
+a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather
+floats before the wind."
+
+***************************
+
+"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I
+am the foreman here."
+
+The voice of the ex-soldier replied:
+
+"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians,
+fellows who are for ever singing hymns."
+
+To which someone else added:
+
+"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all
+building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"
+
+"Let us throw their tools into the stream."
+
+"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted
+before the embers of the fire.
+
+Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its
+framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as
+around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to
+pieces--at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood
+against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command:
+
+"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just
+hand over the saw!"
+
+Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the
+one a red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall
+man with hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept
+grasping the foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling,
+"Where are your lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also
+was a broad-shouldered young fellow in a ragged red shirt who
+kept thrusting pieces of scantling through the windows of the
+barraque, and shouting, "Catch hold of these! Lay them out in a
+row!"); and the third the ex-soldier himself. The last-named, as
+he jostled his way among the crowd, kept vociferating, viciously,
+virulently, and with a curious system of division of his
+syllables:
+
+"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say
+to me, you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for
+the re-est of us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"
+
+"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a
+cigarette. "Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka! . . . Yet are you
+not sorry for fellows of that stamp?"
+
+Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers;
+until at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers
+into a heap glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and
+as he did so, his handsome eyes gleamed with just such a reverent
+affection, such a prayerful kindliness, as must have lurked in
+the eyes of primeval, nomadic man in the presence of the dancing,
+beneficent source of light and heat.
+
+"At least I am sorry for such fellows," Vasili continued.
+"Aye, the very thought of the many, many folk who have come to
+nothing! The very thought of it! Terrible, terrible!"
+
+A touch of daylight was still lingering on the tops of the
+mountains, but in the defile itself night was beginning to loom,
+and to lull all things to sleep--to incline one neither to speak
+oneself nor to listen to the dull clamour of those others on the
+opposite bank, where even to the murmur of the rivulet the
+distasteful din seemed to communicate a note of anger.
+
+There the crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a
+second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of
+bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in
+lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red.
+As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an
+hilarious voice shouted to us the invitation:
+
+"Come over here, you! Don't be backward! Come over here, I say!"
+
+Upon which followed a clatter as of the smashing of a drinking-
+vessel, while from the red-bearded muzhik came a thick, raucous
+shout of:
+
+"These fellows needed to be taught a lesson!"
+
+Almost at the same moment the foreman of the carpenters broke his
+way clear of the crowd, and, carefully crossing the rivulet by
+the stepping-stones which we had constructed, squatted down upon
+his heels by the margin, and with much puffing and blowing fell
+to rinsing his face, a face which in the murky firelight looked
+flushed and red.
+
+"I think that someone has given him a blow," hazarded Silantiev
+sotto voce.
+
+And when the foreman rose to approach us this proved to be the
+case, for then we saw that dripping from his nose, and meandering
+over his moustache and soaked white beard, there was a stream of
+dark blood which had spotted and streaked his shirt-front.
+
+"Peace to this gathering!" he said gravely as, pressing his
+left hand to his stomach, he bowed.
+
+"And we pray your indulgence," was Silantiev's response, though
+he did not raise his eyes as he spoke. "Pray be seated."
+
+Small, withered, and, for all but his blood-stained shirt,
+scrupulously clean, the old man reminded me of certain pictures
+of old-time hermits, and the more so since either pain or shame
+or the gleam of the firelight had caused his hitherto dead eyes
+to gather life and grow brighter--aye, and sterner. Somehow, as I
+looked at him, I felt awkward and abashed.
+
+A cough twisted his broad nose. Then he wiped his beard on the
+palm of his hand, and his hand on his knee; whereafter, as he
+stretched forth the pair of senile, dark-coloured hands, and held
+them over the embers, he said:
+
+"How cold the water of the rivulet is! It is absolutely icy."
+
+With a glance from under his brows Silantiev inquired:
+
+"Are you very badly hurt?"
+
+"No. Merely a man caught me a blow on the bridge of the nose,
+where the blood flows readily. Yet, as God knows, he will gain
+nothing by his act, whereas the suffering which he has caused me
+will go to swell my account with the Holy Spirit."
+
+As the man spoke he glanced across the rivulet. On the opposite
+bank two men were staggering along, and drunkenly bawling the
+tipsy refrain:
+
+"In the du-u-uok let me die,
+In the au-autumn time!"
+
+"Aye, long is it since I received a blow," the old man
+continued, scanning the two revellers from under his hand.
+"Twenty years it must be since last I did so. And now the blow was
+struck for nothing, for no real fault.. You see, I have been
+allowed no nails for the doing of the work, and have been obliged
+to make use of wooden clamps for most of it, while battens also
+have not been forthcoming; and, this being so, it was through no
+remissness of mine that the work could not be finished by sunset
+tonight. I suspect, too, that, to eke out its wages, that rabble
+has been thieving, with the eldest leading the rest. And that,
+again, is not a thing for which I can be held responsible. True,
+this is a Government job, and some of those fellows are young,
+and young, hungry fellows such as they will (may they be
+forgiven!) steal, since everyone hankers to get something in
+return for a very little. But, once more, how is that my fault?
+Yes, that rabble must be a regular set of rascals! Just now they
+deprived my eldest son of a saw, of a brand-new saw; and
+thereafter they spilt my blood, the blood of a greybeard!"
+
+Here his small, grey face contracted into wrinkles, and, closing
+his eyes, he sobbed a dry, grating sob.
+
+Silantiev fidgeted--then sighed. Presently the old man looked at
+him, blew his nose, wiped his hand upon his trousers, and said
+quietly:
+
+"Somewhere, I think, I have seen you before."
+
+"That is so. You saw me one evening when I visited your
+settlement for the mending of a thresher."
+
+"Yes, yes. That is where I DID see you. It was you, was it not?
+Well, do you still disagree with me? "
+
+To which the old man added with a nod and a smile:
+
+"See how well I remember your words! You are, I imagine, still
+of the same opinion?"
+
+"How should I not be?" responded Silantiev dourly.
+
+"Ah, well! Ah, well!"
+
+And the old man stretched his hands over the fire once more,
+discoloured hands the thumbs of which were curiously bent
+outwards and splayed, and, seemingly, unable to move in harmony
+with the fingers.
+
+The ex-soldier shouted across the river:
+
+"The land here is easy to work, and makes the people lazy. Who
+would care to live in such a region? Who would care to come to
+it? Much rather would I go and earn a living on difficult land."
+
+The old man paid no heed, but said to Silantiev--said to him with
+an austere, derisive smile:
+
+"Do you STILL think it necessary to struggle against what has
+been ordained of God? Do you STILL think that long-suffering is
+bad, and resistance good? Young man, your soul is weak indeed:
+and remember that it is only the soul that can overcome Satan."
+
+In response Silantiev rose to his feet, shook his fist at the old
+man, and shouted in a rough, angry voice, a voice that was not
+his own:
+
+"All that I have heard before, and from others besides yourself.
+The truth is that I hold all you father-confessors in abhorrence.
+"Moreover," (this last was added with a violent oath) "it is not
+Satan that needs to be resisted, but such devil's ravens, such
+devil's vampires, as YOU."
+
+Which said, he kicked a stone away from the fire, thrust his
+hands into his pockets, and turned slowly on his heel, with his
+elbows pressed close to his sides. Nevertheless the old man,
+still smiling, said to me in an undertone:
+
+"He is proud, but that will not last for long."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I know in advance that--"
+
+Breaking off short, he turned his head upon his shoulder, and sat
+listening to some shouting that was going on across the river.
+Everyone in that quarter was drunk, and, in particular, someone
+could be heard bawling in a tone of challenge:
+
+"Oh? I, you say? A-a-ah! Then take that!"
+
+Silantiev, stepping lightly from stone to stone, crossed the
+river. Then he mingled--a conspicuous figure (owing to his
+apparent handlessness)--with the crowd. Somehow, on his departure,
+I felt ill at ease.
+
+Twitching his fingers as though performing a conjuring trick, the
+old man continued to sit with his hands stretched over the
+embers. By this time his nose had swollen over the bridge, and
+bruises risen under his eyes which tended to obscure his vision.
+Indeed, as he sat there, sat mouthing with dark, bestreaked lips
+under a covering of hoary beard and moustache, I found that his
+bloodstained, disfigured, wrinkled, as it were "antique" face
+reminded me more than ever of those of great sinners of ancient
+times who abandoned this world for the forest and the desert.
+
+"I have seen many proud folk," he continued with a shake of his
+hatless head and its sparse hairs. "A fire may burn up quickly,
+and continue to burn fiercely, yet, like these embers, become
+turned to ashes, and. so lie smouldering till dawn. Young man,
+there you have something to think of. Nor are they merely my
+words. They are the words of the Holy Gospel itself."
+
+Ever descending, ever weighing more heavily upon us, the night
+was as black and hot and stifling as the previous one had been,
+albeit as kindly as a mother. Still the two fires on the opposite
+bank of the rivulet were aflame, and sending hot blasts of vapour
+across a seeming brook of gold.
+
+Folding his arms upon his breast, the old man tucked the palms of
+his hands into his armpits, and settled himself more comfortably.
+Nevertheless, when I made as though to add more twigs and
+shavings to the embers he exclaimed imperiously:
+
+"There is no need for that."
+
+"Why is there not? "
+
+"Because that would cause the fire to be seen, and bring some of
+those men over here."
+
+Again, as he kicked away some boughs which I had just broken up,
+he repeated:
+
+"There is no need for that, I tell you."
+
+Presently, there approached us through the shimmering fire light
+on the opposite bank two carpenters with boxes on their backs,
+and axes in their hands.
+
+"Are all the rest of our men gone?" inquired the foreman of the
+newcomers.
+
+"Yes," replied one of them, a tall man with a drooping moustache
+and no beard.
+
+"Well, 'shun evil, and good will result.'"
+
+"Aye, and we likewise wish to depart."
+
+"But a task ought not to be left unfinished. At dinner-time I
+sent Olesha to say that none of those fellows had better be
+released from work; but released they have been, and now the
+result is apparent! Presently, when they have drunk a little more
+of their poison, they will fire the barraque."
+
+Every time that the first of the two carpenters inhaled the smoke
+of my cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a
+young fellow as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head
+upon his breast as soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.
+
+Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But
+suddenly I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong
+accents which came from the very centre of the tumult:
+
+"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for
+Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I
+should like to know? "
+
+"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning
+to me, he added more loudly:
+
+"I say this of such fellows-- that a tavern... But what a noise
+those roisterers are making, to be sure!"
+
+The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:
+
+"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize
+him!"
+
+While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:
+
+"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"
+
+"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from
+the ex-soldier-- whereupon the old man remarked to me in an
+undertone:
+
+"It would seem that a fight is brewing."
+
+Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I
+heard the old man say softly to his companions:
+
+"He too is gone, thank God!"
+
+Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd
+of men. Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be
+carrying or dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently
+a woman's voice screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised
+mingled shouts of "Throw him in! Give him a thrashing!" and
+"Drag him along!"
+
+The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd,
+straighten himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl
+himself at the crowd again. As he did so the young fellow in the
+red shirt raised a gigantic arm, and there followed the sound of
+a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering backwards, Silantiev slid
+silently into the water, and lay there at my feet.
+
+"That's right!" was the comment of someone.
+
+For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during
+that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the
+sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw
+into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull
+way.
+
+As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.
+Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot
+where, half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head
+and breast resting against the stepping-stones.
+
+"You have killed him!" next I shouted--not because I believed
+the statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten
+into sobriety the men who were impeding me.
+
+Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:
+
+"Surely not?"
+
+As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he passed me by with a
+braggart, resentful shout of:
+
+"Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said
+that I was a nuisance to the whole country?"
+
+And someone else shouted:
+
+"Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"
+
+"Bring a light," was the cry of a third.
+
+Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more
+restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik
+whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised
+Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again,
+and, dipping his hands into the water, said gravely:
+
+"You have killed him. He is dead."
+
+At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I
+stood watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs,
+and turned them this way and that, and made them stir as though
+they were striving to divest themselves of the shabby old boots,
+I realised with all my being that the hands which were resting in
+mine were the hands of a corpse. And, true enough, when I
+released them they slapped down upon the surface like wet dish-
+cloths.
+
+Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to
+observe what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words
+rang out these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent,
+in subdued, uneasy tones, cries of:
+
+"Who was it first struck him?"
+
+"This will lose us our jobs."
+
+"It was the soldier that first started the racket."
+
+"Yes, that is true."
+
+"Let us go and denounce him."
+
+As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:
+
+"I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a
+quarrel."
+
+"To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."
+
+"It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."
+
+"The soldier ought to--"
+
+A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:
+
+"Good Lord! Always something happens to us! "
+
+As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon
+the stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight,
+nothing was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a
+strange emptiness was present, save that the clamour of the
+bystanders aroused me to a certain longing to outshout them all,
+to send forth my voice into the night like the voice of a brazen
+trumpet.
+
+Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first
+was a torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being
+extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of
+golden sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin
+as a pike when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike
+countenance that was deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth
+perpetually half-agape, and round, owlish-looking eyes.
+
+As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon
+his knee to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head
+and body. That head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no
+longer could I recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so
+buried was the jaunty forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and
+concealed by a swelling which had made its appearance above the
+left ear. Also, since the mouth and moustache had been bashed
+aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted, truly horrible smile,
+while, as the most horrible point of all, the left eye was
+hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large, gazing,
+seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's pea-
+jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.
+
+Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air,
+and thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor
+mutilated face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he
+muttered with a smack of the lips:
+
+"You can see for yourselves who the man is."
+
+As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp
+and wet cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so
+played in the ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an
+added appearance of death.
+
+Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch
+into the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion
+as he smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked
+almost greenish:
+
+"Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been
+done to death."
+
+"No; I should be afraid to go alone."
+
+"Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."
+
+"But I would much rather not."
+
+"Don't be such a fool!"
+
+Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the
+foreman.
+
+"I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he
+scraped his foot against a stone:
+
+"How horrible the blood smells! It would seem that my very foot
+is smeared with it."
+
+With a frown the fair-headed muzhik eyed him, while the foreman
+returned the muzhik's gaze with a scrutiny that never wavered.
+Finally the elder man commented with cold severity:
+
+"All the mischief has come of vodka and tobacco, the devil's
+drugs."
+
+Not only were the pair strangely alike, but both of them
+strangely resembled wizards, in that both were short of stature,
+as sharp-finished as gimlets, and as green-tinted by the darkness
+as tufts of lichen.
+
+"Let us go, brother," the foreman said. "Go we with the Holy
+Spirit."
+
+And, omitting even to inquire who had been killed, or even to
+glance at the corpse, or even to pay it the last salute demanded
+of custom, the foreman departed down the stream, while in his
+wake followed the messenger, a man who kept stumbling as he
+picked his way from stone to stone. Amid the gloom the pair moved
+as silently as ghosts.
+
+The narrow-chested, fair-headed little muzhik then raked me with
+his eyes; whereafter he produced a cigarette from a tin box,
+snapped-to the lid of the box, struck a match (illuminating once
+more the face of the dead man), and applied the flame to the
+cigarette. Lastly he said:
+
+"This is the sixth murder which I have seen one thing and
+another commit."
+
+"One thing and another commit?" I queried.
+
+The reply came only after a pause; when the little muzhik asked:
+" What did you say? I did not quite catch it."
+
+I explained that human beings, not inanimate entities, murdered
+human beings.
+
+"Well, be they human beings or machinery or lightning or
+anything else, they are all one. One of my mates was caught in
+some machinery at Bakhmakh. Another one had his throat cut in a
+brawl. Another one was crushed against the bucket in a coal mine.
+Another one was--"
+
+Carefully though the man counted, he ended by erring in his
+reckoning to the extent of making his total "five." Accordingly
+he re-computed the list--and this time succeeded in making the
+total amount to "seven."
+
+"Never mind," he remarked with a sigh as he blew his cigarette
+into a red glow which illuminated the whole of his face. "The
+truth is that I cannot always repeat the list correctly, just as
+I should like. Were I older than I am, I too should contrive to
+get finished off; for old-age is a far from desirable thing. Yes,
+indeed! But, as things are, I am still alive, nor, thank the
+Lord, does anything matter very much."
+
+Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued:
+
+"Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of
+him, or a letter from him. Well, never again will he write, and
+as likely as not his kinsfolk will end by saying to themselves:
+'He has taken to bad ways, and forgotten his family.' Yes, good
+sir."
+
+By this time the clamour around the barraque had ceased, and the
+two fires had burnt themselves out, and most of the men
+dispersed. From the smooth yellow walls of the barraque dark,
+round, knot-holes were gazing at the rivulet like eyes. Only in a
+single window without a frame was there visible a faint light,
+while at intervals there issued thence fragmentary, angry
+exclamations such as:
+
+"Look sharp there, and deal! Clubs will be the winners."
+
+"Ah! Here is a trump!"
+
+"Indeed? What luck, damn it!"
+
+The fair-headed muzhik blew the ashes from his cigarette, and
+observed:
+
+"No such thing is there at cards as luck--only skill."
+
+At this juncture we saw approaching us softly from across the
+rivulet a young carpenter who wore a moustache. He halted beside
+us, and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Well, mate?" the fair-headed muzhik inquired.
+
+"Would you mind giving me something to smoke?" the carpenter
+asked. The obscurity caused him to look large and shapeless,
+though his manner of speaking was bashful and subdued.
+
+"Certainly. Here is a cigarette."
+
+"Christ reward you! Today my wife forgot to bring my tobacco,
+and my grandfather has strict ideas on the subject of smoking."
+
+"Was it he who departed just now? It was."
+
+As the carpenter inhaled a whiff he continued:
+
+"I suppose that man was beaten to death?"
+
+"He was--to death."
+
+For a while the pair smoked in silence. The hour was past
+midnight.
+
+Over the defile the jagged strip of sky which roofed it looked
+like a river of blue flowing at an immense height above the
+night-enveloped earth, and bearing the brilliant stars on its
+smooth current.
+
+Quieter and quieter was everything growing; more and more was
+everything becoming part of the night....
+
+One might have thought that nothing particular had happened.
+
+
+
+KALININ
+
+Whistling from off the sea, the wind was charged with moist, salt
+spray, and dashing foaming billows ashore with their white manes
+full of snakelike, gleaming black ribands of seaweed, and causing
+the rocks to rumble angrily in response, and the trees to rustle
+with a dry, agitated sound as their tops swayed to and fro, and
+their trunks bent earthwards as though they would fain reeve up
+their roots, and betake them whither the mountains stood veiled
+in a toga of heavy, dark mist.
+
+Over the sea the clouds were hurrying towards the land as ever
+and anon they rent themselves into strips, and revealed
+fathomless abysses of blue wherein the autumn sun burned
+uneasily, and sent cloud-shadows gliding over the puckered waste
+of waters, until, the shore reached, the wind further harried the
+masses of vapour towards the sharp flanks of the mountains, and,
+after drawing them up and down the slopes, relegated them to
+clefts, and left them steaming there.
+
+There was about the whole scene a louring appearance, an
+appearance as though everything were contending with everything,
+as now all things turned sullenly dark, and now all things
+emitted a dull sheen which almost blinded the eyes. Along the
+narrow road, a road protected from the sea by a line of wave-
+washed dykes, some withered leaves of oak and wild cherry were
+scudding in mutual chase of one another; with the general result
+that the combined sounds of splashing and rustling and howling
+came to merge themselves into a single din which issued as a song
+with a rhythm marked by the measured blows of the waves as they
+struck the rocks.
+
+"Zmiulan, the King of the Ocean, is abroad!" shouted my fellow
+traveller in my ear. He was a tall, round-shouldered man of
+childishly chubby features and boyishly bright, transparent eyes.
+
+"WHO do you say is abroad?" I queried.
+
+"King Zmiulan."
+
+Never having heard of the monarch, I made no reply.
+
+The extent to which the wind buffeted us might have led one to
+suppose that its primary objective was to deflect our steps, and
+turn them in the direction of the mountains. Indeed, at times its
+pressure was so strong that we had no choice but to halt, to turn
+our backs to the sea, and, with feet planted apart, to prise
+ourselves against our sticks, and so remain, poised on three
+legs, until we were past any risk of being overwhelmed with the
+soft incubus of the tempest, and having our coats torn from our
+shoulders.
+
+At intervals such gasps would come from my companion that he
+might well have been standing on the drying-board of a bath. Nor,
+as they did so, was his appearance aught but comical, seeing that
+his ears, appendages large and shaggy like a dog's, and
+indifferently shielded with a shabby old cap, kept being pushed
+forward by the wind until his small head bore an absurd
+resemblance to a china bowl. And that, to complete the
+resemblance, his long and massive nose, a feature grossly
+disproportionate to the rest of his diminutive face, might
+equally well have passed for the spout of the receptacle
+indicated.
+
+Yet a face out of the common it was, like the whole of his
+personality. And this was the fact which had captivated me from
+the moment when I had beheld him participating in a vigil service
+held in the neighbouring church of the monastery of New Athos.
+There, spare, but with his withered form erect, and his head
+slightly tilted, he had been gazing at the Crucifix with a
+radiant smile, and moving his thin lips in a sort of whispered,
+confidential, friendly conversation with the Saviour. Indeed, so
+much had the man's smooth, round features (features as beardless
+as those of a Skopetz [A member of the Skoptzi, a non-Orthodox
+sect the members of which "do make of themselves eunuchs for the
+Lord's sake."], save for two bright tufts at the corners of the
+mouth) been instinct with intimacy, with a consciousness of
+actually being in the presence of the Son of God, that the
+spectacle, transcending anything of the kind that my eyes had
+before beheld, had led me, with its total absence of the
+customary laboured, servile, pusillanimous attitude towards the
+Almighty which I had generally found to be the rule, to accord
+the man my whole interest, and, as long as the service had
+lasted, to keep an eye upon one who could thus converse with God
+without rendering Him constant obeisance, or again and again
+making the sign of the cross, or invariably making it to the
+accompaniment of groans and tears which had always hitherto
+obtruded itself upon my notice.
+
+Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the
+workmen's barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery's guest-
+chamber. Seated at a table under a circle of light falling from a
+lamp suspended from the ceiling, he had gathered around him a
+knot of pilgrims and their women, and was holding forth in low,
+cheerful tones that yet had in them the telling, incisive note of
+the preacher, of the man who frequently converses with his fellow
+men.
+
+"One thing it may be best always to disclose," he was saying,
+"and another thing to conceal. If aught in ourselves seems harmful
+or senseless, let us put to ourselves the question: 'Why is this
+so?' Contrariwise ought a prudent man never to thrust himself
+forward and say: 'How discreet am I!' while he who makes a parade
+of his hard lot, and says, 'Good folk, see ye and hear how bitter
+my life is,' also does wrong."
+
+Here a pilgrim with a black beard, a brigand's dark eyes, and the
+wasted features of an ascetic rose from the further side of the
+table, straightened his virile frame, and said in a dull voice:
+
+"My wife and one of my children were burnt to death through the
+falling of an oil lamp. On THAT ought I to keep silence?"
+
+No answer followed. Only someone muttered to himself:
+
+"What? Again?": until the first speaker, the speaker seated
+near the corner of the table, launched into the oppressive lull
+the unhesitating reply:
+
+"That of which you speak may be taken to have been a punishment
+by God for sin."
+
+"What? For a sin committed by one three years of age (for,
+indeed, my little son was no more)? The accident happened of his
+pulling down a lamp upon himself, and of my wife seizing him, and
+herself being burnt to death. She was weak, too, for but eleven
+days had passed since her confinement."
+
+"No. What I mean is that in that accident you see a punishment
+for sins committed by the child's father and mother."
+
+This reply from the corner came with perfect confidence. The
+black-bearded man, however, pretended not to hear it, but spread
+out his hands as though parting the air before him, and proceeded
+hurriedly, breathlessly to detail the manner in which his wife
+and little one had met their deaths. And all the time that he was
+doing so one had an inkling that often before had he recounted
+his narrative of horror, and that often again would he repeat it.
+His shaggy black eyebrows, as he delivered his speech, met in a
+single strip, while the whites of his eyes
+grew bloodshot, and their dull, black pupils never ceased their
+nervous twitching.
+
+Presently the gloomy recital was once more roughly,
+unceremoniously broken in upon by the cheerful voice of the
+Christ-loving pilgrim.
+
+"It is not right, brother," the voice said, "to blame God for
+untoward accidents, or for mistakes and follies committed by
+ourselves."
+
+"But if God be God, He is responsible for all things."
+
+"Not so. Concede to yourself the faculty of reason."
+
+"Pah! What avails reason if it cannot make me understand?"
+
+"Cannot make you understand WHAT?"
+
+"The main point, the point why MY wife had to be burnt rather
+than my neighbour's?"
+
+Somewhere an old woman commented in spitefully distinct tones:
+
+"Oh ho, ho! This man comes to a monastery, and starts railing as
+soon as he gets there!"
+
+Flashing his eyes angrily, the black-bearded man lowered his head
+like a bull. Then, thinking better of his position, and
+contenting himself with a gesture, he strode swiftly, heavily
+towards the door. Upon this the Christ-loving pilgrim rose with a
+swaying motion, bowed to everyone present, and set about
+following his late interlocutor.
+
+"It has all come of a broken heart," he said with a smile as he
+passed me. Yet somehow the smile seemed to lack sympathy.
+
+With a disapproving air someone else remarked:
+
+"That fellow's one thought is to enlarge and to enlarge upon his
+tale."
+
+"Yes, and to no purpose does he do so," added the Christ-loving
+pilgrim as he halted in the doorway. "All that he accomplishes by
+it is to weary himself and others alike. Such experiences are far
+better put behind one."
+
+Presently I followed the pair into the forecourt, and near the
+entrance-gates heard a voice say quietly:
+
+"Do not disturb yourself, good father."
+
+"Nevertheless" (the second voice was that of the porter of the
+monastery, Father Seraphim, a strapping Vetlugan) "a spectre
+walks here nightly."
+
+"Never mind if it does. As regards myself, no spectre would
+touch me."
+
+Here I moved in the direction of the gates.
+
+"Who comes there?" Seraphim inquired as he thrust a hairy and
+uncouth, but infinitely kindly, face close to mine. "Oh, it is
+the young fellow from Nizhni Novgorod! You are wasting your time,
+my good sir, for the women have all gone to bed."
+
+With which he laughed and chuckled like a bear.
+
+Beyond the wall of the forecourt the stillness of the autumn
+night was the languid inertia of a world exhausted by summer, and
+the withered grass and other objects of the season were exhaling
+a sweet and bracing odour, and the trees looking like fragments
+of cloud where motionless they hung in the moist, sultry air.
+Also, in the darkness the half-slumbering sea could be heard
+soughing as it crept towards the shore while over the sky lay a
+canopy of mist, save at the point where the moon's opal-like blur
+could be descried over the spot where that blur's counterfeit
+image glittered and rocked on the surface of the dark waters.
+
+Under the trees there was set a bench whereon I could discern
+there to be resting a human figure. Approaching the figure, I
+seated myself beside it.
+
+"Whence, comrade?" was my inquiry.
+
+"From Voronezh. And you?"
+
+A Russian is never adverse to talking about himself. It would seem
+as though he is never sure of his personality, as though he is
+ever yearning to have that personality confirmed from some source
+other than, extraneous to, his own ego. The reason for this must
+be that we Russians live diffused over a land of such vastness
+that, the more we grasp the immensity of the same, the smaller do
+we come to appear in our own eyes; wherefore, traversing, as we
+do, roads of a length of a thousand versts, and constantly losing
+our way, we come to let slip no opportunity of restating
+ourselves, and setting forth all that we have seen and thought
+and done.
+
+Hence, too, must it be that in conversations one seems to hear
+less of the note of "I am I" than of the note of "Am I really
+and truly myself?"
+
+"What may be your name?"  next I inquired of the figure on the
+bench.
+
+"A name of absolute simplicity--the name of Alexei Kalinin."
+
+"You are a namesake of mine, then."
+
+"Indeed? Is that so?"
+
+With which, tapping me on the knee, the figure added:
+
+"Come, then, namesake. 'I have mortar, and you have water, so
+together let us paint the town.'"
+
+Murmuring amid the silence could be heard small, light waves that
+were no more than ripples. Behind us the busy clamour of the
+monastery had died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed
+subdued by the influence of the night--it seemed to have in it
+less of the note of self-confidence.
+
+"My mother was a wet-nurse," he went on to volunteer, and I her
+only child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my
+height, converted into a footman. It happened thus. One day, on
+General Stepan (my mother's then employer) happening to catch
+sight of me, he exclaimed: 'Evgenia, go and tell Fedor' (the
+ex-soldier who was then serving the General as footman) 'that he
+is to teach your son to wait at table! The boy is at least tall
+enough for the work.' And for nine years I served the General in
+this capacity. And then, and then--oh, THEN I was seized with an
+illness. . . . Next, I obtained a post under a merchant who was
+then mayor of our town, and stayed with him twenty-one months.
+And next I obtained a situation in an hotel at Kharkov, and held
+it for a year. And after that I kept changing my places, for,
+steady and sober though I was, I was beginning to lack taste for
+my profession, and to develop a spirit of the kind which deemed
+all work to be beneath me, and considered that I had been created
+to serve only myself, not others."
+
+Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were
+proceeding some invisible travellers whose scraping of feet as
+they walked proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to
+journeying on foot. Just as the party drew level with us, a
+musical voice hummed out softly the line "Alone will I set forth
+upon the road," with the word "alone" plaintively stressed.
+Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of indolent
+incisiveness:
+
+"Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the
+extent of--oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?"
+
+"To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied
+a voice feminine and youthful of timbre.
+
+Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a
+paler figure between them, come gliding into view.
+
+"Strange indeed is it that, that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"That so many names proper to these parts should also be so
+suggestive. Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk
+hereabouts seem to have " amassed " things, and to have known how
+to do so." [The verb nakopit means to amass, to heap up.]
+
+"For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the
+Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'"
+
+"Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of
+chastened enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and
+inhale this restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it
+be if I were to let everything go to the devil, and take up my
+abode here for ever?'"
+
+At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of
+the monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance
+that came borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:
+
+Oh, if into a single word
+I could pour my inmost thoughts!
+
+To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head
+tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it
+in that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the
+distance, he sighed, straightened himself, and said:
+
+"Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as
+they talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old
+and ever-persistent point."
+
+"To what point are you referring?"
+
+My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:
+
+"Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of
+those people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?"
+
+Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man
+would do, Kalinin added in a half-whisper:
+
+"More and more are folk coming to think to themselves: 'Now must
+I forsake everything.' In the end I myself came to think it. For
+many a year did I increasingly reflect: 'Why should I be a
+servant? What will it ever profit me? Even if I should earn
+twelve, or twenty, or fifty roubles a month, to what will such
+earnings lead, and where will the man in me come in? Surely it
+would be better to do nothing at all, but just to gaze into space
+(as I am doing now), and let my eyes stare straight before me?'"
+
+"By the way, what were you talking to those people about?"
+
+"Which people do you mean?"
+
+"The bearded man and the rest, the company in the guest-chamber?"
+
+"Ah, THAT man I did not like--I have no fancy at all for fellows
+who strew their grief about the world, and leave it to be
+trampled upon by every chance-comer. For how can the tears of my
+neighbour benefit me? True, every man has his troubles; but also
+has every man such a predilection for his particular woe that he
+ends by deeming it the most bitter and remarkable grief in the
+universe--you may take my word for that."
+
+Suddenly the speaker rose to his feet, a tall, lean figure.
+
+"Now I must seek my bed," he remarked. "You see, I shall have
+to leave here very early tomorrow."
+
+"And for what point?"
+
+"For Novorossisk."
+
+Now, the day being a Saturday, I had drawn my week's earnings
+from the monastery's pay-office just before the vigil service.
+Also, Novorossisk did not really lie in my direction. Thirdly, I
+had no particular wish to exchange the monastery for any other
+lodging. Nevertheless, despite all this, the man interested me to
+such an extent (of persons who genuinely interest one there never
+exist but two, and, of them, oneself is always one) that
+straightway I observed:
+
+"I too shall be leaving here tomorrow."
+
+"Then let us travel together."
+
+*********************************
+
+At dawn, therefore, we set forth to foot the road in company. At
+times I mentally soared aloft, and viewed the scene from that
+vantage-point. Whenever I did so, I beheld two tall men traversing
+a narrow track by a seashore--the one clad in a grey military
+overcoat and a hat with a broken crown, and the other in a drab
+kaftan and a plush cap. At their feet the boundless sea was
+splashing white foam, salt-dried ribands of seaweed were strewing
+the path, golden leaves were dancing hither and thither, and the
+wind was howling at, and buffeting, the travellers as clouds
+sailed over their heads. Also, to their right there lay stretched
+a chain of mountains towards which the clouds kept wearily,
+nervelessly tending, while to their left there lay spread a
+white-laced expanse over the surface of which a roaring wind kept
+ceaselessly driving transparent columns of spray.
+
+On such stormy days in autumn everything near a seashore looks
+particularly cheerful and vigorous, seeing that, despite the
+soughing of wind and wave, and the swift onrush of cloud, and the
+fact that the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in
+abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that
+the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane,
+but imperishable, forces--so much so that in time even one's puny
+human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and,
+catching fire, to cry to all the universe: " I love you! "
+
+Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so
+to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white
+horses prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in
+such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall
+unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and
+more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one
+of its creatures, expressed by a human being who feels for the
+earth what he would feel for a woman, and yearns to fertilise the
+same to ever-increasing splendour.
+
+Nevertheless,words are as heavy as stones, and after felling
+fancy to the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and
+cause one, as one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in
+sheer self-derision. . . .
+
+Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through
+the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar
+words:
+
+"Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not
+bad."
+
+"How does Christ get on with them?" I asked.
+
+"Christ? He does not enter into the matter."
+
+"Is He hostile to them?"
+
+"Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are
+devils to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one
+is Christ hostile"  ..............................  . . . . . .
+[In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.]
+
+
+As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows,
+the path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and,
+in doing so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift
+correspondingly to our immediate front, where the masses of
+vapour were darkening as though rain were probable.
+
+Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from
+time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.
+
+"The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked.
+"For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago
+Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these
+parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances
+escape my memory."
+
+So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows
+that it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked
+in the funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay
+lashed with foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept
+gliding towards it.
+
+"Tell me more about those devils," I said at length.
+
+"Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about
+them?"
+
+"All that you may happen to know."
+
+"Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them."
+
+To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued:
+
+"I say that I know everything about those devils for the reason
+that for my mother I had a most remarkable woman, a woman
+cognisant of each and every species of proverb, anathema, and
+item of hagiology. You must know that, after spreading my bed
+beside the kitchen stove each night, and her own bed on the top
+of the stove (for, after her wet-nursing of three of the
+General's children, she lived a life of absolute ease, and did no
+work at all)--"
+
+Here Kalinin halted, and, driving his stick into the ground,
+glanced back along the path before resuming his way with firm,
+lengthy strides.
+
+"I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina
+Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."
+
+"Remarkable for what?"
+
+"Remarkable for EVERYTHING."
+
+At this moment there came floating over our heads through the
+damp-saturated air a cormorant--one of those voracious birds which
+so markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its
+powerful pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.
+
+"Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.
+
+And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never
+did I climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat
+of one), it was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the
+edge of the top, and tell me stories. And though the room would
+be too dark for me to see her face, I could yet see the things of
+which she would be speaking. And at times, as these tales came
+floating down to me, I would find them so horrible as to be
+forced to cry out, 'Oh, Mamka, Mamka, DON'T! . . .' To this hour
+I have no love for the bizarre, and am but a poor hand at
+remembering it. And as strange as her stories was my mother.
+Eventually she died of an attack of blood-poisoning and, though
+but forty, had become grey-headed. Yes, and so terribly did she
+smell after her death that everyone in the kitchen was
+constrained to exclaim at the odour."
+
+"Yes, but what of the devils?"
+
+"You must wait a minute or two."
+
+Ever as we proceeded, clinging, fantastic branches kept closing
+in upon the path, so that we appeared to be walking through a sea
+of murmuring verdure. And from time to time a bough would flick
+us as though to say: "Speed, speed, or the rain will be upon
+you!"
+
+If anything, however, my companion slackened his pace as in
+measured, sing-song accents he continued:
+
+"When Jesus Christ, God's Son, went forth into the wilderness to
+collect His thoughts, Satan sent devils to subject Him to
+temptation. Christ was then young; and as He sat on the burning
+sand in the middle of the desert, He pondered upon one thing and
+another, and played with a handful of pebbles which He had
+collected. Until presently from afar, there descried Him the
+devils Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan--devils of equal age with
+the Saviour.
+
+"Drawing near unto Him, they said, 'Pray suffer us to sport with
+Thee.' Whereupon Christ answered with a smile: 'Pray be seated.'
+Then all of them did sit down in a circle, and proceed to
+business, which business was to see whether or not any member of
+the party could so throw a stone into the air as to prevent it
+from falling back upon the burning sand.
+..............................  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+. . . . . . .
+
+[In the original Russian this hiatus occurs as given.]
+
+
+"Christ Himself was the first to throw a stone; whereupon His
+stone became changed into a six-winged dove, and fluttered away
+towards the Temple of Jerusalem. And, next, the impotent devils
+strove to do the same; until at length, when they saw that Christ
+could not in any wise be tempted, Zmiulan, the senior of the
+devils, cried:
+
+"'0h Lord, we will tempt Thee no more; for of a surety do we
+avail not, and, though we be devils, never shall do so!'
+
+"'Aye, never shall ye!' Christ did agree. 'And, therefore, I
+will now fulfil that which from the first I did conceive. That ye
+be devils I know right well. And that, while yet afar off, ye
+did, on beholding me, have compassion upon me I know right well.
+While also ye did not in any wise seek to conceal from me the
+truth as concerning yourselves. Hence shall ye, for the remainder
+of your lives, be GOOD devils; so that at the last shall matters
+be rendered easier for you. Do thou, Zmiulan, become King of the
+Ocean, and send the winds of the sea to cleanse the land of foul
+air. And do thou, Demon, see to it that the cattle shall eat of
+no poisonous herb, but that all herbs of the sort be covered with
+prickles. Do thou, Igamon, comfort, by night, all comfortless
+widows who shall be blaming God for the death of their husbands?
+And do thou, Hymen, as the youngest devil of the band, choose for
+thyself wherein shall lie thy charge.'
+
+ "'0h Lord,' replied Hymen, 'I do love but to laugh.'
+
+"And the Saviour replied:
+
+"'Then cause thou folk to laugh. Only, mark thou, see to it
+that they laugh not IN CHURCH.'
+
+"'Yet even in church would I laugh, 0h Lord,' the devil objected.
+
+" 'Jesus Christ Himself laughed.
+
+" 'God go with you!' at length He said. 'Then let folk laugh even
+in church--but QUIETLY.'
+
+"In such wise did Christ convert those four evil devils into
+devils of goodness."
+
+Soaring over the green, bushy sea were a number of old oaks. On
+them the yellow leaves were trembling as though chilled; here
+and there a sturdy hazel was doffing its withered garments, and
+elsewhere a wild cherry was quivering, and elsewhere an almost
+naked chestnut was politely rendering obeisance to the earth.
+
+"Did you find that story of mine a good one?" my companion
+inquired.
+
+"I did, for Christ was so good in it."
+
+"Always and everywhere He is so," Kalinin proudly rejoined. "But
+do you also know what an old woman of Smolensk used to sing
+concerning Him?"
+
+" I do not."
+
+Halting, my strange traveller chanted in a feignedly senile and
+tremulous voice, as he beat time with his foot:
+
+In the heavens a flow'r doth blow,
+It is the Son of God.
+From it all our joys do flow,
+It is the Son of God.
+In the sun's red rays He dwells
+He, the Son of God.
+His light our every ill dispels.
+Praised be the Son of God!
+
+Each successive line seemed to inspire Kalinin's voice with added
+youthfulness, until, indeed, the concluding words-- "The One and
+Only God"-- issued in a high, agreeable tenor.
+
+Suddenly a flash of lightning blazed before us, while dull
+thunder crashed among the mountains, and sent its hundred-voiced
+echoes rolling over land and sea. In his consternation, Kalinin
+opened his mouth until a set of fine, even teeth became bared to
+view. Then, with repeated crossings of himself, he muttered.
+
+"0h dread God, 0h beneficent God, 0h God who sittest on high, and
+on a golden throne, and under a gilded canopy, do Thou now punish
+Satan, lest he overwhelm me in the midst of my sins!"
+
+Whereafter, turning a small and terrified face in my direction,
+and blinking his bright eyes, he added with hurried diction:
+
+"Come, brother! Come! Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are
+my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE,
+for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full
+of lurking fever."
+
+Off, therefore, we started, with the wind smiting us behind, and
+our kettles and teapots jangling, and my wallet, in particular,
+thumping me about the middle of the body as though it had been
+wielding a large, soft fist. Yet a far cry would it be to the
+mountains, nor was any dwelling in sight, while ever and anon
+branches caught at our clothes, and stones leapt aloft under our
+tread, and the air grew steadily darker, and the mountains seemed
+to begin gliding towards us.
+
+Once more from the black cloud-masses, heaven belched a fiery dart
+which caused the sea to scintillate with blue sapphires in
+response, and, seemingly, to recoil from the shore as the earth
+shook, and the mountain defiles emitted a gigantic scrunching
+sound of their rock-hewn jaws.
+
+"0h Holy One! 0h Holy One! 0h Holy One!" screamed Kalinin as he
+dived into the bushes.
+
+In the rear, the waves lashed us as though they had a mind to
+arrest our progress; from the gloom to our front came a sort of
+scraping and rasping; long black hands seemed to wave over our
+heads; just at the point where the mountain crests lay swathed in
+their dense coverlet of cloud ,there rumbled once more the
+deafening iron chariot of the thunder-god; more and more
+frequently flashed the lightning as the earth rang, and rifts
+cleft by the blue glare disclosed, amid the obscurity, great
+trees that were rustling and rocking and, to all appearances,
+racing headlong before the scourge of a cold, slanting rain.
+
+The occasion was a harassing but bracing one, for as the fine
+bands of rain beat upon our faces, our bodies felt filled with a
+heady vigour of a kind to fit us to run indefinitely--at all
+events to run until this storm of rain and thunder should be
+outpaced, and clear weather be reached again.
+
+Suddenly Kalinin shouted: "Stop! Look!"
+
+This was because the fitful illumination of a flash had just
+shown up in front of us the trunk of an oak tree which had a
+large black hollow let into it like a doorway. So into that
+hollow we crawled as two mice might have done--laughing aloud in
+our glee as we did so.
+
+"Here there is room for THREE persons," my companion remarked.
+"Evidently it is a hollow that has been burnt out--though rascals
+indeed must the burners have been to kindle a fire in a living
+tree!"
+
+However, the space within the hollow was both confined and
+redolent of smoke and dead leaves. Also, heavy drops of rain
+still bespattered our heads and shoulders, and at every peal of
+thunder the tree quivered and creaked until the strident din
+around us gave one the illusion of being afloat in a narrow
+caique. Meanwhile at every flash of the lightning's glare, we
+could see slanting ribands of rain cutting the air with a network
+of blue, glistening, vitreous lines.
+
+Presently, the wind began to whistle less loudly, as though now it
+felt satisfied at having driven so much productive rain into the
+ground, and washed clean the mountain tops, and loosened the
+stony soil.
+
+"U-oh! U-oh!" hooted a grey mountain owl just over our heads.
+
+"Why, surely it believes the time to be night!" Kalinin
+commented in a whisper.
+
+"U-oh! U-u-u-oh!" hooted the bird again, and in response my
+companion shouted:
+
+"You have made a mistake, my brother!"
+
+By this time the air was feeling chilly, and a bright grey fog
+had streamed over us, and wrapped a semi-transparent veil about
+the gnarled, barrel-like trunks with their outgrowing shoots and
+the few remaining leaves still adhering.
+
+Far and wide the monotonous din continued to rage--it did so until
+conscious thought began almost to be impossible. Yet even as one
+strained one's attention, and listened to the rain lashing the
+fallen leaves, and pounding the stones, and bespattering the
+trunks of the trees, and to the murmuring and splashing of
+rivulets racing towards the sea, and to the roaring of torrents
+as they thundered over the rocks of the mountains, and to the
+creaking of trees before the wind, and to the measured thud-thud
+of the waves; as one listened to all this, the thousand sounds
+seemed to combine into a single heaviness of hurried clamour, and
+involuntarily one found oneself striving to disunite them, and to
+space them even as one spaces the words of a song.
+
+Kalinin fidgeted, nudged me, and muttered:
+
+"I find this place too close for me. Always I have hated
+confinement."
+
+Nevertheless he had taken far more care than I to make himself
+comfortable, for he had edged himself right into the hollow, and,
+by squatting on his haunches, reduced his frame to the form of a
+ball. Moreover, the rain-drippings scarcely or in no wise touched
+him, while, in general, he appeared to have developed to the full
+an aptitude for vagrancy as a permanent condition, and for the
+allowing of no unpleasant circumstance to debar him from
+invariably finding the most convenient vantage-ground at a given
+juncture. Presently, in fact, he continued:
+
+"Yes; despite the rain and cold and everything else, I consider
+life to be not quite intolerable."
+
+"Not quite intolerable in what?"
+
+"Not quite intolerable in the fact that at least I am bound to
+the service of no one save God. For if disagreeablenesses have to
+be endured, at all events they come better from Him than from
+one's own species."
+
+"Then you have no great love for your own species?"
+
+"One loves one's neighbour as the dog loves the stick." To
+which, after a pause, the speaker added:
+
+For WHY should I love him?"
+
+It puzzled me to cite a reason off-hand, but, fortunately,
+Kalinin did not wait for an answer--rather, he went on to ask:
+
+"Have you ever been a footman?"
+
+"No," I replied.
+
+"Then let me tell you that it is peculiarly difficult for a
+footman to love his neighbour."
+
+"Wherefore?"
+
+"Go and be a footman; THEN you will know. In fact, it is never
+the case that, if one serves a man, one can love that man. . . .
+How steadily the rain persists!"
+
+Indeed, on every hand there was in progress a trickling and a
+splashing sound as though the weeping earth were venting soft,
+sorrowful sobs over the departure of summer before winter and its
+storms should arrive.
+
+"How come you to be travelling the Caucasus?" I asked at
+length.
+
+"Merely through the fact that my walking and walking has brought
+me hither," was the reply. "For that matter, everyone ends by
+heading for the Caucasus."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Why NOT, seeing that from one's earliest years one hears of
+nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General
+used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his
+eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother,
+who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General
+was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone tends hither. And
+another reason is the fact that the country is an easy one to live
+in, a country which enjoys much sunshine, and produces much food,
+and has a winter less long and severe than our own winter, and
+therefore presents pleasanter conditions of life."
+
+"And what of the country's people?"
+
+"What of the country's people? Oh, so long as you keep yourself
+to yourself they will not interfere with you."
+
+"And why will they not?"
+
+Kalinin paused, stared at me, smiled condescendingly, and,
+finally, said:
+
+"What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were
+you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you
+ought to be able to understand something?"
+
+Then, with a change of subject, and subduing his tone to one of
+snuffling supplication, he added in the sing-song chant of a
+person reciting a prayer:
+
+"'0h Lord, suffer me not to become bound unto the clergy the
+priesthood, the diaconate, the tchinovstvo, [The official class]
+or the intelligentsia!' This was a petition which my mother used
+often to repeat."
+
+The raindrops now were falling more gently, and in finer lines
+and more transparent network, so that one could once more descry
+the great trunks of the blackened oaks, with the green and gold
+of their leaves. Also, our own hollow had grown less dark, and
+there could be discerned its smoky, satin-bright walls. From
+those walls Kalinin picked a bit of charcoal with finger and
+thumb, saying:
+
+"It was shepherds that fired the place. See where they dragged
+in hay and dead leaves! A shepherd's fife hereabouts must be a
+truly glorious one!"
+
+Lastly, clasping his head as though he were about to fall asleep,
+he sank his chin between his knees, and relapsed into silence.
+
+Presently a brilliant, sinuous little rivulet which had long been
+laving the bare roots of our tree brought floating past us a red
+and fawn leaf.
+
+"How pretty," I thought, "that leaf will look from a distance
+when reposing on the surface of the sea! For, like the sun when
+he is in solitary possession of the heavens, that leaf will stand
+out against the blue, silky expanse like a lonely red star."
+
+After awhile my companion began, catlike, to purr to himself a
+song. Its melody, the melody of "the moon withdrew behind a
+cloud," was familiar enough, but not so the words, which ran:
+
+0h Valentina, wondrous maid,
+More comely thou than e'er a flow'r!
+The nurse's son doth pine for thee,
+And yearn to serve thee every hour!
+
+"What does that ditty mean?" I inquired.
+
+Kalinin straightened himself, gave a wriggle to a form that was
+as lithe as a lizard's, and passed one hand over his face.
+
+"It is a certain composition," he replied presently. "It is a
+composition that was composed by a military clerk who afterwards
+died of consumption. He was my friend his life long, and my only
+friend, and a true one, besides being a man out of the common."
+
+"And who was Valentina?"
+
+"My one-time mistress," Kalinin spoke unwillingly.
+
+"And he, the clerk--was he in love with her?"
+
+"Oh dear no!"
+
+Evidently Kalinin had no particular wish to discuss the subject,
+for he hugged himself together, buried his face in his hands, and
+muttered:
+
+"I should like to kindle a fire, were it not that everything in
+the place is too damp for the purpose."
+
+The wind shook the trees, and whistled despondently, while the
+fine, persistent rain still whipped the earth.
+
+"I but humble am, and poor,
+Nor fated to be otherwise,"
+
+sang Kalinin softly as, flinging up his head with an unexpected
+movement, he added meaningly:
+
+"Yes, it is a mournful song, a song which could move to tears.
+Only to two persons has it ever been known; to my friend the
+clerk and to myself. Yes, and to HER, though I need hardly add
+that at once she forgot it."
+
+And Kalinin's eyes flashed into a smile as he added:
+
+"I think that, as a young man, you had better learn forthwith
+where the greatest danger lurks in life. Let me tell you a
+story."
+
+And upon that a very human tale filtered through the silken
+monotonous swish of the downpour, with, for listeners to it, only
+the rain and myself.
+
+"Lukianov was NEVER in love with her," he narrated. "Only I was
+that. All that Lukianov did in the matter was to write, at my
+request, some verses. When she first appeared on the scene (I
+mean Valentina Ignatievna) I was just turned nineteen years of
+age; and the instant that my eyes fell upon her form I realised
+that in her alone lay my fate, and my heart almost stopped
+beating, and my vitality stretched out towards her as a speck of
+dust flies towards a fire. Yet all this I had to conceal as best
+I might; with the result that in the company's presence I felt
+like a sentry doing guard duty in the presence of his commanding
+officer. But at last, though I strove to pull myself together, to
+steady myself against the ferment that was raging in my breast,
+something happened. Valentina Ignatievna was then aged about
+twenty-five, and very beautiful--marvellous, in fact! Also, she
+was an orphan, since her father had been killed by the
+Chechentzes, and her mother had died of smallpox at Samarkand. As
+regards her kinship with the General, she stood to him in the
+relation of niece by marriage. Golden-locked, and as skin-fair as
+enamelled porcelain, she had eyes like emeralds, and a figure
+wholly symmetrical, though as slim as a wafer. For bedroom she
+had a little corner apartment situated next to the kitchen (the
+General possessed his own house, of course), while, in addition,
+they allotted her a bright little boudoir in which she disposed
+her curios and knickknacks, from cut-glass bottles and goblets to
+a copper pipe and a glass ring mounted on copper. This ring, when
+turned, used to emit showers of glittering sparks, though she was
+in no way afraid of them, but would sing as she made them dance:
+
+"Not for me the spring will dawn!
+Not for me the Bug will spate!
+Not for me love's smile will wait!
+Not for me, ah, not for me!
+
+"Constantly would she warble this.
+
+"Also, once she flashed an appeal at me with her eyes, and said:
+
+"'Alexei, please never touch anything in my room, for my things
+are too fragile.'
+
+"Sure enough, in HER presence ANYTHING might have fallen from my
+hands!
+
+"Meanwhile her song about 'Not for me' used to make me feel
+sorry for her. 'Not for you? ' I used to say to myself. 'Ought
+not EVERYTHING to be for you? ' And this reflection would cause
+my heart to yearn and stretch towards her. Next, I bought a
+guitar, an instrument which I could not play, and took it for
+instruction to Lukianov, the clerk of the Divisional Staff, which
+had its headquarters in our street. In passing I may say that
+Lukianov was a little Jewish convert with dark hair, sallow
+features, and gimlet-sharp eyes, but beyond all things a fellow
+with brains, and one who could play the guitar unforgettably.
+
+"Once he said: 'In life all things are attainable--nothing need
+we lose for want of trying. For whence does everything come? From
+the plainest of mankind. A man may not be BORN in the rank of a
+general, but at least he may attain to that position. Also, the
+beginning and ending of all things is woman. All that she
+requires for her captivation is poetry. Hence, let me write you
+some verses, that you may tender them to her as an offering.'
+
+"These, mind you, were the words of a man in whom the heart was
+absolutely single, absolutely dispassionate."
+
+Until then Kalinin had told his story swiftly, with animation;
+but thereafter he seemed, as it were, to become extinguished.
+After a pause of a few seconds he continued--continued in slower,
+to all appearances more unwilling, accents--
+
+"At the time I believed what Lukianov said, but subsequently I
+came to see that things were not altogether as he had
+represented--that woman is merely a delusion, and poetry merely
+fiddle-faddle; and that a man cannot escape his fate, and that,
+though good in war, boldness is, in peace affairs, but naked
+effrontery. In this, brother, lies the chief, the fundamental law
+of life. For the world contains certain people of high station,
+and certain people of low; and so long as these two categories
+retain their respective positions, all goes well; but as soon as
+ever a man seeks to pass from the upper category to the inferior
+category, or from the inferior to the upper, the fat falls into
+the fire, and that man finds himself stuck midway, stuck neither
+here nor there, and bound to abide there for the remainder of his
+life, for the remainder of his life. . . . Always keep to your
+own position, to the position assigned you by fate.. . . . Will
+the rain NEVER cease, think you?"
+
+By this time, as a matter of fact, the raindrops. were falling
+less heavily and densely than hitherto, and the wet clouds were
+beginning to reveal bright patches in the moisture-soaked
+firmament, as evidence that the sun was still in existence.
+
+"Continue," I said.
+
+Kalinin laughed.
+
+"Then you find the story an interesting one," he remarked.
+
+Presently he resumed:
+
+"As I have said, I trusted Lukianov implicitly, and begged of
+him to write the verses. And write them he did--he wrote them the
+very next day. True, at this distance of time I have forgotten
+the words in their entirety, but at least I remember that there
+occurred in them a phrase to the effect that 'for days and weeks
+have your eyes been consuming my heart in the fire of love, so
+pity me, I pray.' I then proceeded to copy out the poem, and
+tremblingly to leave it on her table.
+
+"The next morning, when I was tidying her boudoir, she made an
+unexpected entry, and, clad in a loose, red dressing-gown, and
+holding a cigarette between her lips, said to me with a kindly
+smile as she produced my precious paper of verses:
+
+"'Alexei, did YOU write these?'
+
+"'Yes,' was my reply. 'And for Christ's sake pardon me for the
+same.'
+
+"'What a pity that such a fancy should have entered your head!
+For, you see, I am engaged already--my uncle is intending to marry
+me to Doctor Kliachka, and I am powerless in the matter.'
+
+"The very fact that she could address me with so much sympathy
+and kindness struck me dumb. As regards Doctor Kliachka, I may
+mention that he was a good-looking, blotchy-faced, heavy-jowled
+fellow with a moustache that reached to his shoulders, and lips
+that were for ever laughing and vociferating. 'Nothing has
+either a beginning or an end. The only thing really existent is
+pleasure.'
+
+"Nay, even the General could, at times, make sport of the
+fellow, and say as he shook with merriment:
+
+"'A doctor-comedian is the sort of man that you are.'
+
+"Now, at the period of which I am speaking I was as straight as
+a dart, and had a shock of luxuriant hair over a set of ruddy
+features. Also, I was living a life clean in every way, and
+maintaining a cautious attitude towards womenfolk, and holding
+prostitutes in a contempt born of the fact that I had higher
+views with regard to my life's destiny. Lastly, I never indulged
+in liquor, for I actually disliked it, and gave way to its
+influence only in days subsequent to the episode which I am
+narrating. Yes, and, last of all, I was in the habit of taking a
+bath every Saturday.
+
+"The same evening Kliachka and the rest of the party went out to
+the theatre (for, naturally, the General had horses and a
+carriage of his own), and I, for my part, went to inform Lukianov
+of what had happened.
+
+"He said: 'I must congratulate you, and am ready to wager you
+two bottles of beer that your affair is as good as settled. In a
+few seconds a fresh lot of verses shall be turned out, for poetry
+constitutes a species of talisman or charm.'
+
+"And, sure enough, he then and there composed the piece about
+'the wondrous Valentina.' What a tender thing it is, and how full
+of understanding! My God, my God!"
+
+And, with a thoughtful shake of his bead, Kalinin raised his
+boyish eyes towards the blue patches in the rain-washed sky.
+
+"Duly she found the verses," he continued after a while, and
+with a vehemence that seemed wholly independent of his will. "And
+thereupon she summoned me to her room.
+
+"'What are we to do about it all?' she inquired.
+
+"She was but half-dressed, and practically the whole of her
+bosom was visible to my sight. Also, her naked feet had on them
+only slippers, and as she sat in her chair she kept rocking one
+foot to and fro in a maddening way.
+
+"'What are we to do about it all?' she repeated.
+
+"'What am I to say about it, at length I replied, 'save that I
+feel as though I were not really existing on earth?'
+
+"'Are you one who can hold your tongue?' was her next question.
+
+"I nodded--nothing else could I compass, for further speech had
+become impossible. Whereupon, rising with brows puckered, she
+fetched a couple of small phials, and, with the aid of
+ingredients thence, mixed a powder which she wrapped in paper,
+and handed me with the words:
+
+"'Only one way of escape offers from the Plagues of Egypt. Here
+I have a certain powder. Tonight the doctor is to dine with us.
+Place the powder in his soup, and within a few days I shall be
+free!--yes, free for you!'
+
+"I crossed myself, and duly took from her the paper, whilst a
+mist rose, and swam before my eyes, as I did so, and my legs
+became perfectly numb. What I next did I hardly know, for
+inwardly I was swooning. Indeed, until Kliachka's arrival the
+same evening I remained practically in a state of coma."
+
+Here Kalinin shuddered--then glanced at me with drawn features and
+chattering teeth, and stirred uneasily.
+
+"Suppose we light a fire?" he ventured. "I am growing shivery
+all over. But first we must move outside."
+
+The torn clouds were casting their shadows wearily athwart the
+sodden earth and glittering stones and silver-dusted herbage.
+Only on a single mountain top had a blur of mist settled like an
+arrested avalanche, and was resting there with its edges
+steaming. The sea too had grown calmer under the rain, and was
+splashing with more gentle mournfulness, even as the blue patches
+in the firmament had taken on a softer, warmer look, and stray
+sunbeams were touching upon land and sea in turn, and, where they
+chanced to fall upon herbage, causing pearls and emeralds to
+sparkle on every leaf, and kaleidoscopic tints to glow where the
+dark-blue sea reflected their generous radiance. Indeed, so
+goodly, so full of promise, was the scene that one might have
+supposed autumn to have fled away for ever before the wind and
+the rain, and beneficent summer to have been restored.
+
+Presently through the moist, squelching sound of our footsteps,
+and the cheerful patter of the rain-drippings, Kalinin's
+narrative resumed its languid, querulous course:
+
+"When, that evening, I opened the door to the doctor I could not
+bring myself to look him in the face--I could merely hang my head;
+whereupon, taking me by the chin, and raising it, he inquired:
+
+"Why is your face so yellow? What is the matter with you?'
+
+"Yes, a kind-hearted man was he, and one who had never failed to
+tip me well, and to speak to me with as much consideration as
+though I had not been a footman at all.
+
+"'I am not in very good health,' I replied. 'I, I--'
+
+"'Come, come!' was his interjection. 'After dinner I must look
+you over, and in the meanwhile, do keep up your spirits.'
+
+"Then I realised that poison him I could not, but that the
+powder must be swallowed by myself--yes, by myself! Aye, over my
+heart a flash of lightning had gleamed, and shown me that now I
+was no longer following the road properly assigned me by fate.
+
+"Rushing away to my room, I poured out a glass of water, and
+emptied into it the powder; whereupon the water thickened,
+fizzed, and became topped with foam. Oh, a terrible moment it
+was! . . . Then I drank the mixture. Yet no burning sensation
+ensued, and though I listened to my vitals, nothing was to be
+heard in that quarter, but, on the contrary, my head began to
+lighten, and I found myself losing the sense of self-pity which
+had brought me almost to the point of tears. . . . Shall we
+settle ourselves here?"
+
+Before us a large stone, capped with green moss and climbing
+plants, was good-humouredly thrusting upwards a broad, flat face
+beneath which the body had, like that of the hero Sviatogov,
+sunken into the earth through its own weight until only the face,
+a visage worn with aeons of meditation, was now visible. On every
+side, also, had oak-trees overgrown and encompassed the bulk of
+the projection, as though they too had been made of stone, with
+their branches drooping sufficiently low to brush the wrinkles of
+the ancient monolith. Kalinin seated himself on his haunches
+under the overhanging rim of the stone, and said as he snapped
+some twigs in half:
+
+"This is where we ought to have been sitting whilst the rain was
+coming down."
+
+"And so say I," I rejoined. "But pray continue your story."
+
+"Yes, when you have put a match to the fire."
+
+Whereafter, further withdrawing his spare frame under the stone,
+so that he might stretch himself at full length, Kalinin
+continued:
+
+"I walked to the pantry quietly enough, though my legs were
+tottering beneath me, and I had a cold sensation in my breast.
+Suddenly I heard the dining-room echo to a merry peal of
+laughter from Valentina Ignatievna, and the General reply to that
+outburst:
+
+"'Ah, that man! Ah, these servants of ours! Why, the fellow would
+do ANYTHING for a piatak '[A silver five-kopeck piece, equal in
+value to 2 1/4 pence.]
+
+"To this my beloved one retorted:
+
+"'Oh, uncle, uncle! Is it only a piatak that I am worth?
+
+And then I heard the doctor put in:
+
+"'What was it you gave him?'
+
+"'Merely some soda and tartaric acid. To think of the fun that we
+shall have!'"
+
+Here, closing his eyes, Kalinin remained silent for a moment,
+whilst the moist breeze sighed as it drove dense, wet mist
+against the black branches of the trees.
+
+"At first my feeling was one of overwhelming joy at the thought
+that at least not DEATH was to be my fate. For I may tell you
+that, so far from being harmful, soda and tartaric acid are
+frequently taken as a remedy against drunken headache. Then the
+thought occurred to me: 'But, since I am not a tippler, why
+should such a joke have been played upon ME?' However, from that
+moment I began to feel easier, and when the company had sat down
+to dinner, and, amid a general silence, I was handing round the
+soup, the doctor tasted his portion, and, raising his head with a
+frown, inquired:
+
+"'Forgive me, but what soup is this? '
+
+"' Ah!' I inwardly reflected. 'Soon, good gentlefolk, you will
+see how your jest has miscarried.'
+
+"Aloud I replied--replied with complete boldness:
+
+"'Do not fear, sir. I have taken the powder myself.'
+
+Upon this the General and his wife, who were still in ignorance
+that the jest had gone amiss, began to titter, but the others
+said nothing, though Valentina Ignatievna's eyes grew rounder and
+rounder, until in an undertone she murmured:
+
+"'Did you KNOW that the stuff was harmless?'
+
+"'I did not,' I replied. 'At least, not at the moment of my
+drinking it.'
+
+"Whereafter falling headlong to the floor, I lost
+consciousness."
+
+Kalinin's small face had become painfully contracted, and grown
+old and haggard-looking. Rolling over on to his breast before the
+languishing fire, he waved a hand to dissipate the smoke which
+was lazily drifting slant-wise.
+
+"For seventeen days did I remain stretched on a sick-bed, and
+was attended by the doctor in person. One day, when sitting by my
+side, he inquired:
+
+"'I presume your intention was to poison yourself, you foolish
+fellow?'
+
+"Yes, merely THAT was what he called me--a 'foolish fellow.' Yet
+indeed, what was I to him? Only an entity which might become food
+for dogs, for all he cared. Nor did Valentina Ignatievna herself
+pay me a single visit, and my eyes never again beheld her. Before
+long she and Dr. Kliachka were duly married, and departed to
+Kharkov, where he was assigned a post in the Tchuguerski Camp.
+Thus only the General remained. Rough and ready, he was,
+nevertheless, old and sensible, and for that reason, did not
+matter; wherefore I retained my situation as before. On my
+recovery, he sent for me, and said in a tone of reproof:
+
+"'Look here. You are not wholly an idiot. What has happened is
+that those vile books of yours have corrupted your mind' (as a
+matter of fact, I had never read a book in my life, since for
+reading I have no love or inclination). 'Hence you must have seen
+for yourself that only in tales do clowns marry princesses. You
+know, life is like a game of chess. Every piece has its proper
+move on the board, or the game could not be played at all.'"
+
+Kalinin rubbed his hands over the fire (slender, non-workmanlike
+hands they were), and winked and smiled.
+
+"I took the General's words very seriously, and proceeded to ask
+myself: 'To what do those words amount? To this: that though I
+may not care actually to take part in the game, I need not waste
+my whole existence through a disinclination to learn the best use
+to which that existence can be put.'
+
+With a triumphant uplift of tone, Kalinin continued:
+
+"So, brother, I set myself to WATCH the game in question; with
+the result that soon I discovered that the majority of men live
+surrounded with a host of superfluous commodities which do but
+burden them, and have in themselves no real value. What I refer
+to is books, pictures, china, and rubbish of the same sort.
+Thought I to myself: 'Why should I devote my life to tending and
+dusting such commodities while risking, all the time, their
+breakage? No more of it for me! Was it for the tending of such
+articles that my mother bore me amid the agonies of childbirth?
+Is it an existence of THIS kind that must be passed until the
+tomb be reached? No, no--a thousand times no! Rather will I, with
+your good leave, reject altogether the game of life, and subsist
+as may be best for me, and as may happen to be my pleasure.'"
+
+Now, as Kalinin spoke, his eyes emitted green sparks, and as he
+waved his hands over the fire, as though to lop off the red
+tongues of flame, his fingers twisted convulsively.
+
+"Of course, not all at a stroke did I arrive at this conclusion;
+I did so but gradually. The person who finally confirmed me in my
+opinion was a friar of Baku, a sage of pre-eminent wisdom,
+through his saying to me: 'With nothing at all ought a man to
+fetter his soul. Neither with bond-service, nor with property,
+nor with womankind, nor with any other concession to the
+temptations of this world ought he to constrain its action.
+Rather ought he to live alone, and to love none but Christ. Only
+this is true. Only this will be for ever lasting.'
+
+"And," added Kalinin with animation and inflated cheeks and
+flushed, suppressed enthusiasm, "many lands and many peoples
+have I seen, and always have I found (particularly in Russia)
+that many folk already have reached an understanding of
+themselves, and, consequently, refused any longer to render
+obeisance to absurdities. 'Shun evil, and you will evolve good.'
+That is what the friar said to me as a parting word--though long
+before our encounter had I grasped the meaning of the axiom. And
+that axiom I myself have since passed on to other folk, as I hope
+to do yet many times in the future."
+
+At this point the speaker's tone reverted to one of querulous
+anxiety.
+
+"Look how low the sun has sunk!" he exclaimed.
+
+True enough, that luminary, large and round, was declining into--
+rather, towards--the sea, while suspended between him and the
+water were low, dark, white-topped cumuli.
+
+"Soon nightfall will be overtaking us," continued Kalinin as he
+fumbled in his kaftan. "And in these parts jackals howl when
+darkness is come."
+
+In particular did I notice three clouds that looked like Turks in
+white turbans and robes of a dusky red colour. And as these cloud
+Turks bent their heads together in private converse, suddenly
+there swelled up on the back of one of the figures a hump, while
+on the turban of a second there sprouted forth a pale pink
+feather which, becoming detached from its base, went floating
+upwards towards the zenith and the now rayless, despondent,
+moonlike sun. Lastly the third Turk stooped forward over the sea
+to screen his companions, and as he did so, developed a huge red
+nose which comically seemed to dip towards, and sniff at, the
+waters.
+
+"Sometimes," continued Kalinin's even voice through the
+crackling and hissing of the wood fire, "a man who is old and
+blind may cobble a shoe better than cleverer men than he, can
+order their whole lives."
+
+But no longer did I desire to listen to Kalinin, for the threads
+which had drawn me, bound me, to his personality had now parted.
+All that I desired to do was to contemplate in silence the sea,
+while thinking of some of those subjects which at eventide never
+fail to stir the soul to gentle, kindly emotion. Bombers,
+Kalinin's words continued dripping into my ear like belated
+raindrops.
+
+"Nowadays everybody is a busybody. Nowadays everyone inquires of
+his fellow-man, 'How is your life ordered?' To which always
+there is added didactically, 'But you ought not to live as you
+are doing. Let me show you the way.' As though anyone can tell me
+how best my life may attain full development, seeing that no one
+can possibly have such a matter within his knowledge! Nay, let
+every man live as best he pleases, without compulsion. For
+instance, I have no need of you. In return, it is not your
+business either to require or to expect aught of me. And this I
+say though Father Vitali says the contrary, and avers that
+throughout should man war with the evils of the world."
+
+In the vague, wide firmament a blood-red cluster of clouds was
+hanging, and as I contemplated it there occurred to me the
+thought, "May not those clouds be erstwhile righteous world-folk
+who are following an unseen path across that expanse, and dyeing
+it red with their good blood as they go, in order that the earth
+may be fertilised?"
+
+To right and left of that strip of living flame the sea was of a
+curious wine tint, while further off, rather, it was as soft and
+black as velvet, and in the remote east sheet-lightning was
+flashing even as though some giant hand were fruitlessly
+endeavouring to strike a match against the sodden firmament.
+
+Meanwhile Kalinin continued to discourse with enthusiasm on the
+subject of Father Vitali, the Labour Superintendent of the
+monastery of New Athos, while describing in detail the monk's
+jovial, clever features with their pearly teeth and contrasting
+black and silver beard. In particular he related how
+once Vitali had knitted his fine, almost womanlike eyes, and said
+in a bass which stressed its "o's":
+
+"On our first arrival here, we found in possession only
+prehistoric chaos and demoniacal influence. Everywhere had
+clinging weeds grown to rankness; everywhere one found one's feet
+entangled among bindweed and other vegetation of the sort. And
+now see what beauty and joy and comfort the hand of man has
+wrought!"
+
+And, having thus spoken, the monk had traced a great circle with
+his eye and doughty hand, a circle which had embraced as in a
+frame the mount, and the gardens fashioned and developed by
+ridgings of the rock, and the downy soil which had been beaten
+into those ridgings, and the silver streak of waterfall playing
+almost at Vitali's feet, and the stone-hewn staircase leading to
+the cave of Simeon the Canaanite, and the gilded cupolas of the
+new church where they had stood flashing in the noontide sun, and
+the snow-white, shimmering blocks of the guesthouse and the
+servants' quarters, and the glittering fishponds, and the trees
+of uniform trimness, yet a uniformly regal dignity.
+
+"Brethren," the monk had said in triumphant conclusion,
+"wheresoever man may be, he will, as he so desires, be given power
+to overcome the desolation of the wilds."
+
+"And then I pressed him further," Kalinin added. " Yes, I said
+to him: 'Nevertheless Christ, our Lord, was not like you, for He
+was homeless and a wanderer. He was one who utterly rejected your
+life of intensive cultivation of the soil'" (as he related the
+incident Kalinin gave his head sundry jerks from side to side
+which made his ears flap, to and fro). "'Also neither for the
+lowly alone nor for the exalted alone did Christ exist. Rather,
+He, like all great benefactors, was one who had no particular
+leaning. Nay, even when He was roaming the Russian Land in
+company with Saints Yuri and Nikolai, He always forbore to
+intrude Himself into the villages' affairs, just as, whenever His
+companions engaged in disputes concerning mankind, He never
+failed to maintain silence on the subject.' Yes, thus I plagued
+Vitali until he shouted at my head, 'Ah, impudence, you are a
+heretic!'"
+
+By this time, the air under the lee of the stone was growing smoky
+and oppressive, for the fire, with its flames looking like a
+bouquet compounded of red poppies or azaleas and blooms of an
+aureate tint, had begun fairly to live its beautiful existence,
+and was blazing, and diffusing warmth, and laughing its bright,
+cheerful, intelligent laugh. Yet from the mountains and the
+cloud-masses evening was descending, as the earth emitted
+profound gasps of humidity, and the sea intoned its vague,
+thoughtful, resonant song.
+
+"I presume we are going to pass the night here?" Kalinin at
+length queried.
+
+"No, for my intention is, rather, to continue my journey."
+
+"Then let us make an immediate start."
+
+"But my direction will not be the same as yours, I think?"
+
+Previously to this, Kalinin had squatted down upon his haunches,
+and taken some bread and a few pears from his wallet; but now, on
+hearing my decision, he replaced the viands in his receptacle,
+snapped--to the lid of it with an air of vexation-- and asked:
+
+"Why did you come with me at all?"
+
+"Because I wanted to have a talk with you--I had found you an
+interesting character."
+
+"Yes. At least I am THAT; many like me do not exist."
+
+"Pardon me; I have met several."
+
+"Perhaps you have." After which utterance, doubtfully drawled,
+the speaker added more sticks to the fire.
+
+Eventide was falling with tardy languor, but, as yet, the sun,
+though become a gigantic, dull, red lentil in appearance, was not
+hidden, and the waves were still powerless to besprinkle his
+downward road of fire. Presently, however, he subsided into a
+cloud bank; whereupon darkness flooded the earth like water
+poured from an empty basin, and the great kindly stars shone
+forth, and the nocturnal profundity, enveloping the world, seemed
+to soften it even as a human heart may be rendered gentle.
+
+"Good-bye!" I said as I pressed my companion's small, yielding
+hand: whereupon he looked me in the eyes in his open, boyish way,
+and replied:
+
+"I wish I were going with you!"
+
+"Well, come with me as far as Gudaout."
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+So we set forth once more to traverse the land which I, so alien
+to its inhabitants, yet so at one with all that it contained,
+loved so dearly, and of which I yearned to fertilise the life in
+return for the vitality with which it had filled my own
+existence.
+
+For daily, the threads with which my heart was bound to the world
+at large were growing more numerous; daily my heart was storing
+up something which had at its root a sense of love for life, of
+interest in my fellow-man.
+
+And that evening,as we proceeded on our way, the sea was
+singing its vespertinal hymn, the rocks were rumbling as the
+water caressed them, and on the furthermost edge of the dark void
+there were floating dim white patches where the sunset's glow had
+not yet faded-- though already stars were glowing in the zenith.
+Meanwhile every slumbering treetop was aquiver, and as I
+stepped across the scattered rain-pools, their water gurgled
+dreamily, timidly under my feet.
+
+Yes, that night I was a torch unto myself, for in my breast a red
+flame was smouldering like a living beacon, and leading me to
+long that some frightened, belated wayfarer should, as it were,
+sight my little speck of radiancy amid the darkness.
+
+
+
+THE DEAD MAN
+
+One evening I was sauntering along a soft, grey, dusty track
+between two breast-high walls of grain. So narrow was the track
+that here and there tar-besmeared cars were lying--tangled,
+broken, and crushed--in the ruts of the cartway.
+
+Field mice squeaked as a heavy car first swayed--then bent
+forwards towards the sun-baked earth. A number of martins and
+swallows were flitting in the sky, and constituting a sign of the
+immediate proximity of dwellings and a river; though for the
+moment, as my eyes roved over the sea of gold, they encountered
+naught beyond a belfry rising to heaven like a ship's mast, and
+some trees which from afar looked like the dark sails of a ship.
+Yes, there was nothing else to be seen save the brocaded,
+undulating steppe where gently it sloped away south-westwards.
+And as was the earth's outward appearance, so was that of the
+sky--equally peaceful.
+
+Invariably, the steppe makes one feel like a fly on a platter.
+Invariably, it inclines one to believe, when the centre of the
+expanse is reached, that the earth lies within the compass of the
+sky, with the sun embracing it, and the stars hemming it about
+as, half-blinded, they stare at the sun's beauty.
+
+********************************
+
+Presently the sun's huge, rosy-red disk impinged upon the blue
+shadows of the horizon before preparing to sink into a snow-white
+cloud-bank; and as it did so it bathed the ears of grain around
+me in radiance and caused the cornflowers to seem the darker by
+comparison; and the stillness, the herald of night, to accentuate
+more than ever the burden of the earth's song.
+
+Fanwise then spread the ruddy beams over the firmament; and, in
+so doing, they cast upon my breast a shaft of light like Moses'
+rod, and awoke therein a flood of calm, but ardent, sentiments
+which set me longing to embrace all the evening world, and to
+pour into its ear great, eloquent, and never previously voiced,
+utterances.
+
+Now, too, the firmament began to spangle itself with stars; and
+since the earth is equally a star, and is peopled with humankind,
+I found myself longing to traverse every road throughout the
+universe, and to behold, dispassionately, all the joys and
+sorrows of life, and to join my fellows in drinking honey mixed
+with gall.
+
+Yet also there was upon me a feeling of hunger, for not since the
+morning had my wallet contained a morsel of food. Which
+circumstance hindered the process of thought, and intermittently
+vexed me with the reflection that, rich though is the earth, and
+much thence though humanity has won by labour, a man may yet be
+forced to walk hungry. . . .
+
+Suddenly the track swerved to the right, and as the walls of
+grain opened out before me, there lay revealed a steppe valley,
+with, flowing at its bottom, a blue rivulet, and spanning the
+rivulet, a newly-constructed bridge which, with its reflection in
+the water, looked as yellow as though fashioned of rope. On the
+further side of the rivulet some seven white huts lay pressed
+against a small declivity that was crowned with a cattle-fold,
+and amid the silver-grey trunks of some tall black poplars whose
+shadows, where they fell upon the hamlet, seemed as soft as down
+a knee-haltered horse, was stumping with swishing tail. And though
+the air, redolent of smoke and tar and hemp ensilage, was filled
+with the sounds of poultry cackling and a baby crying during
+the process of being put to bed, the hubbub in no way served to
+dispel the illusion that everything in the valley was but part of
+a sketch executed by an artistic hand, and cast in soft tints
+which the sun had since caused, in some measure, to fade.
+
+In the centre of the semi-circle of huts there stood a brick-
+kiln, and next to it, a high, narrow red chapel which resembled a
+one-eyed watchman. And as I stood gazing at the scene in general,
+a crane stooped with a faint and raucous cry, and a woman who had
+come out to draw water looked as though, as she raised bare arms
+to stretch herself upwards-- cloud-like, and white-robed from
+head to foot-- she were about to float away altogether.
+
+Also, near the brick-kiln there lay a patch of black mud in the
+glistening, crumpled-velvet blue substance of which two urchins
+of five and three were, breechless, and naked from the waist
+upwards, kneading yellow feet amid a silence as absorbed as
+though their one desire in life had been to impregnate the mud
+with the red radiance of the sun. And so much did this laudable
+task interest me, and engage my sympathy and attention, that I
+stopped to watch the strapping youngsters, seeing that even in
+mire the sun has a rightful place, for the reason that the deeper
+the sunlight's penetration of the soil, the better does that soil
+become, and the greater the benefit to the people dwelling on its
+surface.
+
+Viewed from above, the scene lay, as it were, in the palm of
+one's hand. True, by no manner of means could such lowly farm
+cots provide me with a job, but at least should I, for that
+evening, be able to enjoy the luxury of a chat with the cots'
+kindly inhabitants. Hence, with, in my mind, a base and
+mischievous inclination to retail to those inhabitants tales of
+the marvellous kind of which I knew them to stand wellnigh as
+much in need as of bread, I resumed my way, and approached the
+bridge.
+
+As I did so, there arose from the ground-level an animated clod of
+earth in the shape of a sturdy individual. Unwashed and unshaven,
+he had hanging on his frame an open canvas shirt, grey with dust,
+and baggy blue breeches.
+
+"Good evening," I said to the fellow.
+
+"I wish you the same," he replied. "Whither are you bound?"
+
+"First of all, what is the name of this river?"
+
+"What is its name? Why, it is the Sagaidak, of course."
+
+On the man's large, round head there was a shock of bristling,
+grizzled curls, while pendent to the moustache below it were ends
+like those of the moustache of a Chinaman. Also, as his small
+eyes scanned me with an air of impudent distrust, I could detect
+that they were engaged in counting the holes and dams in my
+raiment. Only after a long interval did he draw a deep breath as
+from his pocket he produced a clay pipe with a cane mouthpiece,
+and, knitting his brows attentively, fell to peering into the
+pipe's black bowl. Then he said:
+
+"Have you matches?"
+
+I replied in the affirmative.
+
+"And some tobacco?"
+
+For awhile he continued to contemplate the sun where that
+luminary hung suspended above a cloud-bank before finally
+declining. Then he remarked:
+
+"Give me a pinch of the tobacco. As for matches, I have some."
+
+So both of us lit up; after which he rested his elbows upon the
+balustrade of the bridge, leant back against the central
+stanchions, and for some time continued merely to emit and inhale
+blue coils of smoke. Then his nose wrinkled, and he expectorated.
+
+"Muscovite tobacco is it?" he inquired.
+
+"No--Roman, Italian."
+
+"Oh!" And as the wrinkles of his nose straightened themselves
+again he added: "Then of course it is good tobacco."
+
+To enter a dwelling in advance of one's host is a breach of
+decorum; wherefore, I found myself forced to remain standing where
+I was until my interlocutor's tale of questions as to my precise
+identity, my exact place of origin, my true destination, and my
+real reasons for travelling should tardily win its way to a
+finish. Greatly the process vexed me, for I was eager, rather, to
+learn what the steppe settlement might have in store for my
+delectation.
+
+"Work?" the fellow drawled through his teeth. "Oh no, there is
+no work to be got here. How could there be at this season of the
+year?"
+
+Turning aside, he spat into the rivulet.
+
+On the further bank of the latter, a goose was strutting
+importantly at the head of a string of round, fluffy, yellow
+goslings, whilst driving the brood were two little girls--the one
+a child but little larger than the goose itself, dressed in a red
+frock, and armed with a switch; and the other one a youngster
+absolutely of a size with the bird, pale of feature, plump of
+body, bowed of leg, and grave of expression.
+
+"Ufim!" came at this moment in the strident voice of a woman
+unseen, but incensed; upon which my companion bestowed upon me a
+sidelong nod, and muttered with an air of appreciation:
+
+"THERE'S lungs for you!"
+
+Whereafter, he fell to twitching the toes of a chafed and
+blackened foot, and to gazing at their nails. His next question
+was:
+
+"Are you, maybe, a scholar?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because, if you are, you might like to read the Book over a
+corpse."
+
+And so proud, apparently, was he of the proposal that a faint
+smile crossed his flaccid countenance.
+
+"You see, it would be work," he added with his brown eyes
+veiled, "whilst, in addition, you would be paid ten kopecks for
+your trouble, and allowed to keep the shroud."
+
+"And should also be given some supper, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes--and should also be given some supper."
+
+"Where is the corpse lying?"
+
+"In my own hut. Shall we go there?"
+
+Off we set. En route we heard once more a strident shout of:
+
+"Ufi-i-im!"
+
+As we proceeded, shadows of trees glided along the soft road to
+meet us, while behind a clump of bushes on the further bank of
+the rivulet some children were shouting at their play. Thus, what
+with the children's voices, and the purling of the water, and the
+noise of someone planing a piece of wood, the air seemed full of
+tremulous, suspended sound. Meanwhile, my host said to me with a
+drawl:
+
+"Once we did have a reader here. An old woman she was, a regular
+old witch who at last had to be removed to the town for
+amputation of the feet. They might well have cut off her tongue
+too whilst they were about it, since, though useful enough, she
+could rail indeed!"
+
+Presently a black puppy, a creature of about the size of a toad,
+came ambling, three-legged fashion, under our feet. Upon that it
+stiffened its tail, growled, and snuffed the air with its tiny
+pink nose.
+
+Next there popped up from somewhere or another a barefooted young
+woman. Clapping her hands, she bawled:
+
+"Here, you Ufim, how I have been calling for you, and calling
+for you!"
+
+"Eh? Well, I never heard you."
+
+"Where were you, then?"
+
+By way of reply, my conductor silently pointed in my direction
+with the stem of his pipe. Then he led me into the forecourt of
+the hut next to the one whence the young woman had issued, whilst
+she proceeded to project fresh volleys of abuse, and fresh
+expressions of accentuated non-amiability.
+
+In the little doorway of the dwelling next to hers, we found
+seated two old women. One of them was as rotund and dishevelled
+as a battered, leathern ball, and the other one was a woman bony
+and crooked of back, swarthy of skin, and irritable of feature.
+At the women's feet lay, lolling out a rag-like tongue, a shaggy
+dog which, red and pathetic of eye, could boast of a frame nearly
+as large as a sheep's.
+
+First of all, Ufim related in detail how he had fallen in with
+myself. Then he stated the purpose for which he conceived it
+was possible that I might prove useful. And all the time that he
+was speaking, two pairs of eyes contemplated him in silence;
+until, on the completion of his recital, one of the old women
+gave a jerk to a thin, dark neck, and the other old dame invited
+me to take a seat whilst she prepared some supper.
+
+Amid the tangled herbage of the forecourt, a spot overgrown with
+mallow and bramble shoots, there was standing a cart which,
+lacking wheels, had its axle-points dark with mildew. Presently a
+herd of cattle was driven past the hut, and over the hamlet there
+seemed to arise, drift, and float, a perfect wave of sound.
+Also, as evening descended, I could see an ever-increasing number
+of grey shadows come creeping forth from the forecourt's
+recesses, and overlaying and darkening the turf.
+
+"One day all of us must die," remarked Ufim, with empressement
+as he tapped the bowl of his pipe against a wall.
+
+The next moment the barefooted, red-cheeked young woman showed
+herself at the gate, and asked in tones rather less vehement than
+recently:
+
+"Are you coming, or are you not?"
+
+"Presently," replied Ufim. "One thing at a time."
+
+For supper I was given a hunch of bread and a bowl of milk;
+whereupon the dog rose, laid its aged, slobbering muzzle upon my
+knee, and gazed into my face with its dim eyes as though it were
+saying, "May I too have a bite?"
+
+Next, like an eventide breeze among withered herbage, there
+floated across the forecourt the hoarse voice of the crook-backed
+old woman.
+
+"Let us pray," she said. "Oh God, take away from us all sorrow,
+and receive therefore requitement in twofold measure!"
+
+As she recited the prayer with a mien as dark as fate, the
+supplicant rolled her long neck from side to side, and nodded her
+ophidian-shaped head in accordance with a sort of regular,
+lethargic rhythm. Next I heard sink to earth, at my feet, some
+senile words uttered in a sort of singsong.
+
+"Some folk need work just as much as they wish, and others need
+do no work at all. Yet OUR folk have to work beyond their
+strength, and to work without any recompense for the toil which
+they undergo."
+
+Upon this the smaller of the old crones whispered:
+
+"But the Mother of God will recompense them. She recompenses
+everyone."
+
+Then a dead silence fell--a weighty silence, a silence seemingly
+fraught with matters of import, and inspiring in one an assurance
+that presently there would be brought forth impressive
+reflections-- there would reach the ear words of mark.
+
+"I may tell you," at length the crook-backed old woman remarked
+as she attempted to straighten herself, "that though my husband
+was not without enemies, he also had a particular friend named
+Andrei, and that when failing strength was beginning to make life
+difficult for us in our old home on the Don, and folk took to
+reviling and girding at my husband, Andrei came to us one day,
+and said: 'Yakov, let not your hands fail you, for the earth is
+large, and in all parts has been given to men for their use. If
+folk be cruel, they are so through stupidity and prejudice, and
+must not be judged for being so. Live your own life. Let theirs
+be theirs, and yours yours, so that, dwelling in peace, while
+yielding to none, you shall in time overcome them all.'"
+
+"That is what Vasil too used to say. He used to say: 'Let theirs
+be theirs, and ours ours.'"
+
+"Aye, never a good word dies, but, wheresoever it be uttered,
+flies thence through the world like a swallow."
+
+Ufim corroborated this with a nod.
+
+"True indeed!" he remarked. "Though also it has been said that
+a good word is Christ's, and a bad word the priest's."
+
+One of the old women shook her head vigorously at this, and
+croaked:
+
+"The badness lies not in any word of a priest, but in what you
+yourself have just said. You are greyheaded, Ufim, yet often you
+speak without thought."
+
+Presently Ufim's wife reappeared, and, waving her hands as though
+she were brandishing a sieve, began to vent renewed volleys of
+virulent abuse.
+
+"My God," she cried, "what sort of a man is that? Why, a man
+who neither speaks nor listens, but for ever keeps baying at the
+moon like a dog!"
+
+"NOW she's started!" Ufim drawled.
+
+Westward there were arising, and soaring skyward, clouds of such
+a similarity to blue smoke and blood-red flame that the steppe
+seemed almost to be in danger of catching fire thence. Meanwhile
+a soft evening breeze was caressing the expanse as a whole, and
+causing the grain to bend drowsily earthward as golden-red
+ripples skimmed its surface. Only in the eastern quarter whence
+night's black, sultry shadow was stealthily creeping in our
+direction had darkness yet descended.
+
+At intervals there came vented from the window above my head the
+hot odour of a dead body; and, whenever that happened, the dog's
+grey nostrils and muzzle would quiver, and its eyes would blink
+pitifully as it gazed aloft. Glancing at the heavens, Ufim
+remarked with conviction:
+
+"There will be no rain tonight."
+
+"Do you keep such a thing as a Psalter here?" I inquired.
+
+"Such a thing as a what?"
+
+"As a Psalter-- a book?"
+
+No answer followed.
+
+Faster and faster the southern night went on descending, and
+wiping the land clean of heat, as though that heat had been dust.
+Upon me there came a feeling that I should like to go and bury
+myself in some sweet-smelling hay, and sleep there until sunrise.
+
+"Maybe Panek has one of those things?" hazarded Ufim after a
+long pause. "At any rate he has dealings with the Molokans."
+
+After that, the company held further converse in whispers. Then
+all save the more rotund of the old women left the forecourt,
+while its remaining occupant said to me with a sigh:
+
+"You may come and look at him if you wish."
+
+Small and gentle looked the woman's meekly lowered head as,
+folding her hands across her breast, she added in a whisper:
+
+"Oh purest Mother of God! Oh Thou of spotless chastity!"
+
+In contrast to her expression, that on the face of the dead man
+was stem and, as it were, fraught with importance where thick
+grey eyebrows lay parted over a large nose, and the latter curved
+downwards towards a moustache which divided introspective,
+partially closed eyes from a mouth that was set half-open.
+Indeed, it was as though the man were pondering something of
+annoyance, so that presently he would make shift to deliver
+himself of a final and urgent injunction. The blue smoke of a
+meagre candle quivered meanwhile, over his head, though the wick
+diffused so feeble a light that the death blurs under the eyes
+and in the cheek furrows lay uneffaced, and the dark hands and
+wrists, disposed, lumplike, on the front of the greyish-blue
+shroud, seemed to have had their fingers twisted in a manner
+which even death had failed to rectify. And ever and anon,
+streaming from door to window, came a draught variously fraught
+with the odours of wormwood, mint, and corruption.
+
+Presently the old woman's whispering grew more animated and
+intelligible, while constantly, amid the wheezed mutterings,
+sheet lightning cut the black square of the window space with
+menacing flashes, and seemed, with their blue glare, as it shot
+through the tomblike hut, to cause the candle's flickering flame
+to undergo a temporary extinction, a temporary withdrawal, and
+the grey bristles on the dead man's face to gleam like the scales
+of a fish, and his features to gather themselves into a grim
+frown. Meanwhile, like a stream of cold, bitter water dripping
+upon my breast, the old woman's whispered soliloquy maintained
+its uninterrupted flow.
+
+At length there recurred, somehow, to my mind the words which,
+impressive though they be, never can assuage sorrow--the words:
+
+"Weep not for me, Martha, nor gaze into the tomb, for, lo, I am
+risen!"
+
+Nay, and never would THIS man rise again. . . .
+
+Presently the bony old woman returned with a report that nowhere
+among the huts could a Psalter be found, but only a book of
+another kind. Would it do?
+
+The other book turned out to be a grammar of the Church Slavonic
+dialect, with the first pages torn out, and beginning with the
+words, "Drug, drugi, druzhe." ["A friend, of a friend, O
+friend."]
+
+"What, then, are we to do? " vexedly asked the smaller of the
+dames when I had explained to her that a grammar could work no
+benefit to a corpse. As she put the query, her small, childlike
+face quivered with disappointment, and her eyes swelled and
+overflowed with tears.
+
+"My man has lived his life," she said with a sob, "and now he
+cannot even be given proper burial! "
+
+And, similarly, when next I offered to recite over her husband
+each and every prayer and psalm that I could contrive to recall
+to my recollection, on condition that all present should
+meanwhile leave the hut (for I felt that, since the task would be
+one novel to me, the attendance of auditors might hinder me from
+mustering my entire stock of petitions), she so disbelieved me,
+or failed to understand me, that for long enough she could only
+stand tottering in the doorway as, with twitching nose, she drew
+her sleeve across her worn, diminutive features.
+
+Nevertheless she did, at last, take her departure.
+
+*******************************
+
+Low over the steppe, stray flashes of summer lightning still
+gleamed against the jet black sky as they flooded the hut with
+their lurid shimmer; and each time that the darkness of the
+sultry night swept back into the room, the candle flickered, and
+the corpse's prone figure seemed to open its half-closed eyes
+and glance at the shadows which palpitated on its breast, and
+danced over the white walls and ceiling.
+
+Similarly did I glance from time to time at HIM, yet glance with
+a guarded eye, and with a feeling in me that when a corpse is
+present anything may happen; until finally I rallied conscience
+to my aid, and recited under my breath:
+
+"Pardon Thou all who have sinned, whether they be men, or
+whether they, being not men, do yet stand higher than the beasts
+of the field."
+
+However, the only result of the recitation was to bring to my
+mind a thought directly at variance with the import of the words,
+the thought that "it is not sin that is hard and bitter to
+ensue, but righteousness."
+
+"Sins wilful and of ignorance," I continued. "Sins known and
+unknown. Sins committed through imprudence and evil example. Sins
+committed through forwardness and sloth."
+
+"Though to YOU, brother," mentally I added to the corpse, "none
+of this, of course, applies."
+
+Again, glancing at the blue stars, where they hung glittering in
+the fathomless obscurity of the sky, I reflected:
+
+"Who in this house is looking at them save myself?"
+
+Presently, with a pattering of claws over the beaten clay of the
+floor, there entered the dog. Once or twice it paced the length
+of the room. Then, with a sniff at my legs, and a grumble to
+itself, it departed as it had come. Perhaps the creature felt too
+old to bay a dirge to its master after the manner of its kind. In
+any case, as it vanished through the doorway, the shadows- -so I
+fancied--sought to slip out after it, and, floating in that
+direction, fanned my face with a breath as of ice, while the
+flame of the candle flickered the more-- as though it too were
+seeking to wrest itself from the candlestick, and go floating
+upwards to join the band of stars-- a band of luminaries which it
+might well have deemed to be of a brilliance as small and as
+pitiful as its own. And I, for my part, since I had no wish to
+see what light there was disappear, followed the struggles of the
+tiny flame with a tense anxiety which made my eyes ache.
+Oppressed and uneasy all over as I stood by the dead man's
+shoulder, I strained my ears and listened, listened ever, to the
+silence encompassing the hut.
+
+Eventually, drowsiness began to steal over me, and proved a
+feeling hard to resist. Yet still with an effort did I contrive
+to recall the beautiful prayers of Saints Makari Veliki,
+Chrysostom, and Damarkin, while at the same time something
+resembling a swarm of mosquitos started to hum in my head, the
+words wherein the Sixth Precept issues its injunction to: " all
+persons about to withdraw to a couch of rest."
+
+And next, to escape falling asleep, I fell to reciting the kondak
+[Hymn for the end of the day] which begins:
+
+"Oh Lord, refresh my soul thus grievously made feeble with wrong
+doing."
+
+Still engaged in this manner, suddenly I heard something rustle
+outside the door. Then a dry whisper articulated:
+
+"Oh God of Mercy, receive unto Thyself also my soul!"
+
+Upon that, the fancy occurred to me that probably the old woman's
+soul was as grey and timid as a linnet, and that when it should
+fly up to the throne of the Mother of God, and the Mother should
+extend to that little soul her tender, white, and gracious hand,
+the newcomer would tremble all over, and flutter her gentle wings
+until well nigh death should supervene.
+
+And then the Mother of God would say to Her Son:
+
+"Son, pray see the fearfulness of Thy people on earth, and their
+estrangement from joy! Oh Son, is that well?"
+
+And He would make answer to Her--
+
+He would make answer to Her, and say I know not what.
+
+*********************************
+
+And suddenly, so I fancied, a voice answered mine out of the
+brooding hush, as though it too were reciting a prayer. Yet so
+complete, so profound, was the stillness, that the voice seemed
+far away, submerged, unreal--a mere phantom of an echo, of the
+echo of my own voice. Until, on my desisting from my recital, and
+straining my cars yet more, the sound seemed to approach and grow
+clearer as shuffling footsteps also advanced in my direction, and
+there came a mutter of:
+
+"Nay, it CANNOT be so!"
+
+"Why is it that the dogs have failed to bark?" I reflected,
+rubbing my eyes, and fancying as I did so that the dead man's
+eyebrows twitched, and his moustache stirred in a grim smile.
+
+Presently a deep, hoarse, rasping voice vociferated in the
+forecourt:
+
+"What do you say, old woman? Yes, that he must die-- I knew all
+along,--so you can cease your chattering? Men like him keep up to
+the last, then lay them down to rise to more... WHO is with him? A
+stranger? A-ah!"
+
+And, the next moment, a bulk so large and shapeless that it might
+well have been the darkness of the night embodied, stumbled
+against the outer side of the door, grunted, hiccuped, and
+lurching head foremost into the hut, grew wellnigh to the
+ceiling. Then it waved a gigantic hand, crossed itself in the
+direction of the candle, and, bending forward until its forehead
+almost touched the feet of the corpse, queried under its breath:
+
+"How now, Vasil?"
+
+Thereafter, the figure vented a sob whilst a strong smell of
+vodka arose in the room, and from the doorway the old woman said
+in an appealing voice:
+
+"Pray give HIM the book, Father Demid."
+
+"No indeed! Why should I? I intend to do the reading myself."
+
+And a heavy hand laid itself upon my shoulder, while a great
+hairy face bent over mine, and inquired:
+
+"A young man, are you not? A member of the clergy, too, I
+suppose?"
+
+So covered with tufts of auburn hair was the enormous head above
+me--tufts the sheen of which even the semi-obscurity of the pale
+candlelight failed to render inconspicuous--that the mass, as a
+whole, resembled a mop. And as its owner lurched to and fro, he
+made me lurch responsively by now drawing me towards himself, now
+thrusting me away. Meanwhile he continued to suffuse my face with
+the hot, thick odour of spirituous liquor.
+
+"Father Demid!" again essayed the old woman with an imploring
+wail, but he cut her short with the menacing admonition:
+
+"How often have I told you that you must not address a deacon as
+'Father'? Go to bed! Yes, be off with you, and let me mind my
+affairs myself! GO, I say! But first light me another candle, for
+I cannot see a single thing in front of me."
+
+With which, throwing himself upon a bench, the deacon slapped his
+knee with a book which he had in his hands, and put to me the
+query:
+
+"Should you care to have a dram of gorielka? [Another name for
+vodka.]
+
+"No," I replied. "At all events, not here."
+
+"Indeed?" the deacon cried, unabashed. "But come, a bottle of
+the stuff is here, in my very pocket."
+
+"This is no place in which to be drinking."
+
+For a moment the deacon said nothing. Then he muttered:
+
+"True, true. So let us adjourn to the forecourt. . . . Yes, what
+you say is no more than the truth."
+
+"Had you not better remain seated where you are, and begin the
+reading? "
+
+"No, I am going to do no such thing. YOU shall do the reading.
+Tonight I, I--well I am not very well, for I have been drinking a
+little."
+
+And, thrusting the book into my stomach, he sank his head upon
+his breast, and fell to swaying it ponderously up and down.
+
+"Folk die," was his next utterance, "and the world remains as
+full of grief as ever. Yes, folk die even before they have seen a
+little good accrue to themselves."
+
+"I see that your book is not a Psalter," here I interposed after
+an inspection of the volume.
+
+"You are wrong."
+
+"Then look for yourself."
+
+He grabbed the book by its cover, and, by dint of holding the
+candle close to its pages, discovered, eventually, that matters
+were as I had stated.
+
+This took him aback completely.
+
+"What can the fact mean?" he exclaimed. "Oh, I know what has
+happened. The mistake has come of my being in such a hurry. The
+other book, the true Psalter, is a fat, heavy volume, whereas
+this one is--"
+
+For a moment he seemed sobered by the shock. At all events, he
+rose and, approaching the corpse, said, as he bent over the bed
+with his beard held back:
+
+"Pardon me, Vasil, but what is to be done?"
+
+Then he straightened himself again, threw back his curls, and,
+drawing a bottle from his pocket, and thrusting the neck of the
+bottle into his mouth, took a long draught, with a whistling of
+his nostrils as he did so.
+
+"Well?" I said.
+
+"Well, I intend to go to bed--my idea is to drink and enjoy
+myself awhile."
+
+"Go, then."
+
+"And what of the reading?"
+
+"Who would wish you to mumble words which you would not be
+comprehending as you uttered them?"
+
+The deacon reseated himself upon the bench, leaned forward,
+buried his face in his hands and remained silent.
+
+Fast the July night was waning. Fast its shadows were dissolving
+into corners, and allowing a whiff of fresh dewy morningtide to
+enter at the window. Already was the combined light of the two
+candles growing paler, with their flames looking like the eyes of
+a frightened child.
+
+"You have lived your life, Vasi," at length the deacon
+muttered, "and though once I had a place to which to resort, now
+I shall have none. Yes, my last friend is dead. Oh Lord-- where is
+Thy justice?"
+
+For myself, I went and took a seat by the window, and, thrusting
+my head into the open air, lit a pipe, and continued to listen
+with a shiver to the deacon's wailings.
+
+"Folk used to gird at my wife," he went on, "and now they are
+gnawing at me as pigs might gnaw at a cabbage. That is so, Vasil.
+Yes that is so."
+
+Again the bottle made its appearance. Again the deacon took a
+draught. Again he wiped his beard. Then he bent over the dead man
+once more, and kissed the corpse's forehead.
+
+"Good-bye, friend of mine!" he said. Then to myself he added
+with unlooked-for clarity and vigour:
+
+"My friend here was but a plain man--a man as inconspicuous among
+his fellows as a rook among a flock of rooks. Yet no rook was he.
+Rather, he was a snow-white dove, though none but I realised the
+fact. And now he has been withdrawn from the 'grievous bondage of
+Pharaoh.' Only I am left. Verily, after my passing, shall my soul
+torment and vomit spittle upon his adversaries!"
+
+"Have you known much sorrow?"
+
+The deacon did not reply at once. When he did so he said dully:
+
+"All of us have known much sorrow. In some cases we have known
+more than was rightfully our due. I certainly, have known much.
+But go to sleep, for only in sleep do we recover what is ours."
+
+And he added as he tripped over his own feet, and lurched heavily
+against me:
+
+"I have a longing to sing something. Yet I feel that I had best
+not, for song at such an hour awakens folk, and starts them
+bawling . . . But beyond all things would I gladly sing."
+
+With which he buzzed into my ear:
+
+"To whom shall I sing of my grief?
+To whom resort for relief?
+To the One in whose ha-a-and--"
+
+At this point the sharp bristles of his beard so tickled my neck
+as to cause me to edge further away.
+
+"You do not like me?" he queried. "Then go to sleep, and to
+the devil too!"
+
+"It was your beard that was tickling me."
+
+"Indeed? Ought I to have shaved for your benefit before I came?"
+
+He reflected awhile--then subsided on to the floor with a sniff
+and an angry exclamation of:
+
+"Read, you, whilst I sleep. And see to it that you do not make
+off with the book, for it belongs to the church, and is very
+valuable. Yes. I know you hard-ups! Why do you go roaming about
+as you do--what is it you hope to gain by your tramping? . . .
+However, tramp as much as you like. Yes, be off, and tell people
+that a deacon has come by misfortune, and is in need of some good
+person to take pity upon his plight. . . . Diomid Kubasov my name
+is--that of a man lost beyond recall."
+
+With which he fell asleep. Opening the book at random, I read the
+words:
+
+"A land unapportioned that shall produce a nourisher of
+humanity, a being that shall put forth the bounty of his hand to
+feed every creature."
+
+"A nourisher of humanity." Before my eyes that "nourisher" lay
+outspread, a nourisher overlaid with dry and fragrant herbage.
+And as I gazed, in the haze of a vision, upon that nourisher's
+dark and enigmatical face, I saw also the thousands of men who
+have seamed this earth with furrows, to the end that dead things
+should become things of life. And in particular, there uprose
+before me a picture strange indeed. In that picture I saw
+marching over the steppe, where the expanse lay bare and void--yes,
+marching in circles that increasingly embraced a widening area--a
+gigantic, thousand-handed being in whose train the dead steppe
+gathered unto itself vitality, and became swathed in juicy,
+waving verdure, and studded with towns and villages. And ever, as
+the being receded further and further into the distance, could I
+see him sowing with tireless hands that which had in it life, and
+was part of himself, and human as, with thoughts intent upon the
+benefiting of humanity, he summoned all men to put forth the
+mysterious force that is in them, and thus to conquer death, and
+eternally and invincibly to convert, dead things into things of
+life, while traversing in company the road of death towards that
+which has no knowledge of death, and ensuring that, in swallowing
+up mankind, the jaws of death should not close upon death's
+victims.
+
+And this caused my heart to beat with emotions the pulsing wings
+of which at once gladdened me, and cooled my fervour... And how
+greatly, at that moment, did I feel the need of someone able to
+respond to my questions without passion, yet with truth, and in
+the language of simplicity! For beside me there lay but a man
+dead and a man drunken, while without the threshold there was
+stationed one who had far outlived her span of years. No matter,
+however. If not today, then tomorrow, should I find a fellow-
+creature with whom my soul might commune.
+
+Mentally I left the hut, and passed on to the steppe, that I
+might contemplate thence the little dwelling in which alone,
+though lost amid the earth's immensity, the windows were not
+blind and black as in its fellow huts, but showed, burning over
+the head of a dead human being, the fire which humanity had
+conquered for humanity's benefit.
+
+And that heart which had ceased to beat in the dead man--had
+everything conceived in life by that heart found due expression
+in a world poverty, stricken of heart-conceived ideas? I knew that
+the man just passed away had been but a plain and insignificant
+mortal, yet as I reflected upon even the little that he had done,
+his labour loomed before me as greater than prowess of larger
+magnitude. Yes, to my mind there recurred the immature, battered
+ears of corn lying in the ruts of the steppe track, the swallows
+traversing the blue sky above the golden, brocaded grain, the
+kite hovering in the void over the landscape's vast periphery.. .
+. .
+
+And along with these thoughts, there struck upon my ears a
+whistling of pinions as the shadow of a bird flitted across the
+brilliant, dew-bespangled green of the forecourt, and five cocks
+crowed in succession, and a flock of geese announced the fact of
+their awakening, and a cow lowed, and the gate of the cattle-pen
+creaked.
+
+And with that I fell to thinking how I should like really to go
+out on to the steppe, and there to fall asleep under a warm, dry
+bank.
+
+As for the deacon, he was still slumbering at my feet--slumbering
+with his breast, the breast of a prize-fighter, turned uppermost,
+and his fine, golden shock of hair falling like a nimbus around
+his head, and hot, fat, flushed red features and gaping mouth and
+ceaselessly twitching moustache. In passing, I had noticed that
+his hands were long, and that they were set upon shovel-shaped
+wrists.
+
+Next I found myself imagining the scene as the powerful figure of
+this man embraced a woman. Probably her face would become lost to
+sight in his beard, until nothing of her features remained
+visible. Then, when the beard began to tickle her, she would
+throw back her head, and laugh. And the children that such a man
+might have begotten!
+
+All this only made it the more painful and disagreeable to me to
+reflect that the breast of a human being of such a type should be
+bearing a burden of sorrow. Surely naught but joy should have
+been present therein!
+
+Meanwhile, the old woman's gentle face was still peering at me
+through the doorway, and presently the first beam of sunlight
+came glancing through the window-space. Above the rivulet's silky
+glimmer, a transparent mist lay steaming, while trees and herbage
+alike were passing through that curiously inert stage when at any
+moment (so one fancied) they might give themselves a shake, and
+burst into song, and in keys intelligible to the soul alone, set
+forth the wondrous mystery of their existence.
+
+"What a good man he is!" the old woman whispered plaintively as
+she gazed at the deacon's gigantic frame. Whereafter, as though
+reading aloud from a book invisible to my sight, she proceeded
+quietly and simply to relate the story of his wife.
+
+"You see," she went on "his lady committed a certain sin with a
+certain man; and folk remarked this, and, after setting the
+husband on to the couple, derided him--yes, him, our Demid!--for
+the reason that he persisted in forgiving the woman her fault. At
+length the jeers made her take to her room and him to liquor,
+and for two years past he has been drinking, and soon is going to
+be deprived of his office. One who scarcely drank at all, my poor
+husband, used to say: 'Ah, Demid, yield not to these folk, but
+live your own life, and let theirs be theirs, and yours, yours.'"
+
+With the words, tears welled from the old woman's dim, small eyes,
+and became merged with the folds and wrinkles on her grief-
+stained cheeks. And in the presence of that little head, a head
+shaking like a dead leaf in the autumn time, and of those kindly
+features so worn with age and sorrow, my eyes
+fell, and I felt smitten with shame to find that, on searching my
+soul for at least a word of consolation to offer to the poor
+fellow-mortal before me, I could discover none that seemed
+suitable.
+
+But at length there recurred to my mind some strange words which
+I had encountered in I know not what antique volume --words which
+ran:
+
+"Let not the servants of the Gods lament but, rather, rejoice,
+in that weeping and lamentation grieve both the Gods and
+mankind."
+
+Thereafter, I muttered confusedly:
+
+"It is time that I was going."
+
+"What?" was her hasty exclamation, an exclamation uttered as
+though the words had affrighted her. Whereafter, with quivering
+lips, she began hesitantly and uncertainly to fumble in her
+bodice.
+
+"No, I have no need of money," I interposed. "Only, if you
+should be so willing, give me a piece of bread."
+
+"You have no need of money? " she re-echoed dubiously.
+
+"No, none. For that matter, of what use could it be to me?"
+
+"Well, well!" she said after a thoughtful pause. "Then be it
+as you wish, and--and I thank you."
+
+*********************************
+
+The sun, as he rose and ascended towards the blue of the
+firmament, was spreading over the earth a braggart, peacock-like
+tail of beams. And as he did so, I winked at him, for by
+experience I knew that some two hours later his smiles would be
+scorching me with fire. Yet for the time being he and I had no
+fault to find with one another. Wherefore, I set myself to search
+for a bank whence I might sing to him, as to the Lord of Life:
+
+0h Thou of intangible substance,
+Reveal now that substance to me!
+Enwrap me within the great vestment
+Of light which encompasseth Thee!
+That with Thy uprising, my substance
+May Come all-prevailing to be!
+
+**
+
+"Let us live our lives unto ourselves. Let theirs be theirs, and
+ours, ours."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Through Russia, by Maxim Gorky
+
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