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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7501-8.txt b/7501-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b342f28 --- /dev/null +++ b/7501-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6633 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of the Wilderness, by Boris Pilniak + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Tales of the Wilderness + +Author: Boris Pilniak + +Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7501] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on May 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE WILDERNESS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +TALES OF THE WILDERNESS + +By + +BORIS ANDREYEVICH VOGAU (Boris Pilniak, pseud.) + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY + +PRINCE D. S. MIRSKY + + +TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY + +F. O'DEMPSEY + + + + +CONTENTS + + THE SNOW + A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES + A THOUSAND YEARS + OVER THE RAVINE + ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT + THE SNOW WIND + THE FOREST MANOR + THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE + DEATH + THE HEIRS + THE CROSSWAYS + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +I + +RUSSIAN FICTION SINCE CHEKHOV + + +The English reading public knows next to nothing of contemporary +Russian Literature. In the great age of the Russian Realistic Novel, +which begins with Turgeniev and finishes with Chekhov, the English +reader is tolerably at home. But what came after the death of Chekhov +is still unknown or, what is worse, misrepresented. Second and third- +rate writers, like Merezhkovsky, Andreyev, and Artsybashev, have +found their way into England and are still supposed to be the best +Russian twentieth century fiction can offer. The names of really +significant writers, like Remizov and Andrey Bely, have not even been +heard of. This state of affairs makes it necessary, in introducing a +contemporary Russian writer to the English public, to give at least a +few indications of his place in the general picture of modern Russian +Literature. + +The date of Chekhov's death (1904) may be taken to mark the end of a +long and glorious period of literary achievement. It is conveniently +near the dividing line of two centuries, and it coincides rather +exactly with the moment when Russian Literature definitely ceased to +be dominated by Realism and the Novel. In the two or three years that +followed the death of Chekhov Russian Literature underwent a complete +and drastic transformation. The principal feature of the new +literature became the decisive preponderance of Poetry over Prose and +of Manner over Matter--a state of things exactly opposite to that +which prevailed during what we may conveniently call the Victorian +age. Poetry in contemporary Russian Literature is not only of greater +intrinsic merit than prose, but almost all the prose there is has to +such an extent been permeated with the methods and standards of +poetry that in the more extreme cases it is almost impossible to tell +whether what is printed as prose is really prose or verse. + +Contemporary Russian Poetry is a vigorous organic growth. It is a +self-contained movement developing along logically consistent lines. +It has produced much that is of the very first order. The poetry of +Theodore Sologub, of Innocent Annensky, [Footnote: The reader will +notice the quotations from Annensky in the first story of this +volume.] of Vyacheslav Ivanov, and of Alexander Blok, is to our best +understanding of that perennial quality that will last. They have +been followed by younger poets, more debatable and more debated, many +of them intensely and daringly original, but all of them firmly +planted in the living tradition of yesterday. They learn from their +elders and teach their juniors--the true touchstone of an organic and +vigorous movement. What is perhaps still more significant--the level +of minor poetry is extraordinarily high, and every verse-producer is, +in varying degrees, a conscious and efficient craftsman. + +The case with prose is very different. The old nineteenth century +realistic tradition is dead. It died, practically, very soon after +Chekhov. It has produced a certain amount of good, even excellent, +work within these last twenty years, but this work is disconnected, +sterile of influence, and more or less belated; at the best it has +the doubtful privilege of at once becoming classical and above the +age. Such for instance was the case of Bunin's solitary masterpiece +_The Gentleman from San Francisco_, and of that wonderful series of +Gorky's autobiographical books, the fourth of which appeared but a +few months ago. These, however, can hardly be included in the domain +of Fiction, any more than his deservedly famous _Reminiscences of +Tolstoy_. But Gorky, and that excellent though minor writer, Kuprin, +are the only belated representatives of the fine nineteenth century +tradition. For even Bunin is a poet and a stylist rather than a story +teller: his most characteristic "stories" are works of pure +atmosphere, as diffuse and as skeletonless as a picture by Claude +Monet. + +The Symbolists of the early twentieth century (all the great poets of +the generation were Symbolists) tried also to create a prose of their +own. They tried many directions but they did not succeed in creating +a style or founding a tradition. The masterpiece of this Symbolist +prose is Theodore Sologub's great novel _The Little Demon_[Footnote: +English translation.] (by the way a very inadequate rendering of the +Russian title). It is a great novel, probably the most perfect +Russian _novel_ since the death of Dostoyevsky. It breaks away very +decidedly from Realism and all the traditions of the nineteenth +century. It is symbolic, synthetic, and poetical. But it is so +intensely personal and its achievements are so intimately conditioned +by the author's idiosyncrasies that it was quite plainly impossible +to imitate it, or even to learn from it. This is still more the case +with the later works of Sologub, like the charming but baffling and +disconcerting romance of _Queen Ortruda_. + +The other Symbolists produced nothing of the same calibre, and they +failed to attract the public. The bestsellers of the period after +1905 were, naturally enough, hybrid writers like Andreyev. The cheap +effect of his cadenced prose, his dreary and monotonous rhetoric, his +sensational way of treating "essential problems" were just what the +intelligentsia wanted at the time; it is also just what nobody is +likely to want again. Another writer of "problem stories" was +Artsybashev. His notorious _Sanin_ (1907) is very typical of a +certain phase of Russian life. It has acquired a somewhat +unaccountable popularity among the budding English intelligentsia. +From the literary point of view its value is nil. Artsybashev and +Andreyev were very second-rate writers; they had no knowledge of +their art and their taste was deplorably bad and crude, but at least +they were in a way, sincere, and gave expression to the genuine +vacuum and desolation of their hearts. But around them sprung up a +literature which sold as well and better than they did, but was +openly meretricious and, fortunately, ephemeral. If it has done +nothing else the great Revolution of 1917 has at least done one good +thing in making a clean sweep of all this interrevolutionary (1905- +1917) fiction. + +All this literature appealed to certain sides of the "intellectual" +heart, but it could not slake the thirst for fiction. It was rather +natural that the reading public turned to foreign novelists in +preference to the native ones. It may be confidently said that three- +quarters of what the ordinary Russian novel-reader read in the years +preceding the Revolution were translated novels. The book-market was +swamped with translations, Polish, German, Scandinavian, English, +French and Spanish. Knut Hamsun, H. G. Wells, and Jack London were +certainly more popular than any living Russian novelist, except +perhaps the Russian Miss Dell, Mme. Verbitsky. In writers like Jack +London and H. G. Wells the reader found what he missed in the Russian +novelists--a good story thrillingly told. For no reader, be he ever +so Russian, will indefinitely put up with a diet of "problems" and +imitation poetry. + +While all these things were going on on the surface of things and +sharing between themselves the whole of the book-market, a secret +undercurrent was burrowing out its bed, scarcely noticed at first but +which turned out to be the main prolongation of the Russian novel. +The principal characteristic of this undercurrent was the revival of +realism and of that untranslatable Russian thing "byt," [Footnote: +"Byt" is the life of a definite community at a definite time in its +individual, as opposed to universally human, features.] but a revival +under new forms and in a new spirit. The pioneers of this movement +were Andrey Bely and Remizov. There was little in common between the +two men, except that both were possessed with a startlingly original +genius, and both directed it towards the utilization of Russian "byt" +for new artistic ends. + +Andrey Bely was, and is, a poet rather than a novelist. His prose +from the very beginning exhibits in its extreme form the Symbolist +tendency towards wiping away the difference between poetry and prose: +in his later novels his prose becomes distinctly metrical, it is +prose after all only because it cannot be devided into _lines_; it +can be devided into _feet_ very easily. But, though such prose is +essentially a hybrid and illegitimate form, Bely has achieved with it +things that have probably never been achieved with the aid of +anything like his instruments. The first of the series of his big +novels appeared in 1909: it is the _Silver Dove_, a story of Russian +mystical sectarians and of an intellectual who gets entangled in +their meshes. At its appearance it sold only five hundred copies. His +next novel _Petersburg_ (1913) had not a much greater success. The +third of the series is _Kotik Letaev_ (1917). The three novels form a +series unique in its way. Those who can get over the initial +difficulties and accustom themselves to the very peculiar proceedings +of the author will not fail to be irresistibly fascinated by his +strange genius. The first novel, the _Silver Dove_, is in my opinion +the most powerful of the three. It combines a daring realism, which +is akin to Gogol both in its exaggerations and in its broad humour, +with a wonderful power of suggestion and of "atmosphere." One of its +most memorable passages is the vast and elemental picture of the Wind +driving over the Russian plain; a passage familiarised to satiety by +numerous more or less clever imitations. _Petersburg_ is a +"political" novel. It is intended to symbolise the Nihilism, the +geometrical irreality of Petersburg and Petersburg bureaucracy. The +cold spirit of system of the Revolutionary Terrorists is presented as +the natural and legitimate outcome of bureaucratic formalism. + +A cunningly produced atmosphere of weird irreality pervades the whole +book. It is in many ways a descendant of Dostoyevsky--and has in its +turn again produced a numerous family of imitations, including +Pilniak's most characteristic tales of the Revolution. _Kotik +Letaev_, the last and up to the present the least imitated of Bely's +novels, is the story of a child in his very first years. In it the +"poetical" methods of the author reach their full development; but at +the same time he achieves miracles of vividness and illusion in the +realism of his dialogue and the minute, but by no means dry, analysis +of the movements of his hero's subconscious Ego. In spite of the +enormous difference of style, methods, and aims Bely approaches in +many ways the effects and the achievements of Proust. + +Remizov is very different. He is steeped in Russian popular and +legendary lore. His roots are deep down in the Russian soil. He is +the greatest living master of racy and idiomatic Russian. He has also +written prose that elbows poetry, and that was looked upon with +surprise and bewilderment until people realised that it was poetry. +But his importance in the history of the Russian Novel is of another +kind. It is firstly in his deliberate effort to "deliteralize" +Russian prose, to give it the accent, the intonation, and the syntax +of the _spoken_ language. He has fully achieved his ends; he has +created a prose which is entirely devoid of all bookishness and even +on the printed page gives the illusion of being heard, not seen. + +Few have been able to follow him in this path; for in the present +state of linguistic chaos and decomposition few writers have the +necessary knowledge of Russian, the taste and the sense of measure, +to write anything like his pure and flexible Russian. In the hands of +others it degenerates into slang, or into some personal jargon +closely related to Double Dutch. + +Remizov, however, has been more influential in another way, by his +method of treating Russian _life_. The most notable of Remizov's +"provincial" stories [Footnote: In the second edition it is called +"The Story of Ivan Semenovich Stratilatov." ] _The Unhushable +Tambourine _was written at one time with Bely's _The Silver Dove_, in +1909. At the time it met with even greater indifference: it was +refused by the leading magazine of the literary "party" to which the +author belonged, and could appear only some years later in a +collection of short stories. But it at once became known and very +soon began to "make school." Remizov's manner was to a certain degree +a reversion to the nineteenth century, but to such aspects of that +century that had before him been unnoticed. One of his chief +inspirers was Leskov, a writer who is only now coming into his own. +Remizov's _Tambourine_ and his other stories of this class are +realistic, they are "representations of real life," of "byt", but +their Realism is very different from the traditional Russian realism. +The style is dominated not by any "social" pre-occupation, but by a +deliberate bringing forward of the grotesque. It verges on +caricature, but is curiously and inseparably blended with a sympathy +for even the lowest and vilest specimens of Mankind which is +reminiscent of Dostoyevsky. It would be out of place here to give any +detailed account of Remizov's many-sided genius, of his _Tales of the +Russian People_, of his _Dreams_ (real night-dreams), of his books +written during the War and the Revolution (_Mara_ and _The Noises of +the Town_). In his later work he tends towards a greater simplicity, +a certain "primitiveness" of outline, and a more concentrated style. +Remizov's disciples, as might be expected, have been more successful +in imitating the grotesqueness of his caricatures and the vivid and +intense concentration of his character painting than in adopting his +sympathetic and human attitude or in speaking his pure Russian. + +The first of the new realists to win general recognition was A. N. +Tolstoy, who speedily caught and vulgarised Remizov's knack of +creating grotesque "provincial" characters. He has an easy way of +writing, which is miles apart from Remizov's perfect craftsmanship, a +love for mere filth, characteristic of his time and audience, and +water enough to make his writings palatable to the average reader. So +he early became the most popular of the _literary_ novelists of the +years before the Revolution. + +A far more significant writer is Michael Prishvin. He belongs to an +older generation and attracted some attention by good work in the +line of descriptive journalism before he came in touch with Remizov. +A man of the soil, he was capable of following Remizov's lead in +making his Russian more colloquial and less bookish, without +slavishly imitating him. He was unfortunately too much absorbed by +his journalistic work to give much time to literature. But he wrote +at least one story which deserves a high rank in even the smallest +selection of Russian stories--_The Beast of Krutoyarsk_ (1913). It is +the story of a dog, and is far the best "animal" story in the whole +of Russian literature. The animal stories of Rudyard Kipling and Jack +London were very popular in Russia at that time, but Prishvin is +curiously free from every foreign, in fact from every bookish, +influence; his story smells of the damp and acid soil of his native +Smolensk province, and even Remizov was to him only a guide towards +the right use of words and the right way of concentrating on his +subject. + +Prishvin stands alone. But in the years 1913-1916 the Russian +literary press was flooded with short stories modelled on the +_Unhushable Tambourine_. The most promising of these provincialists +was E. Zamyatin, whose stories [Footnote: _Uyezdnoe_, which may be +rendered as "something provincial."] are as intense and packed with +suggestive ugliness as anything in Remizov, but lack the master's +unerring linguistic flair and his profound and inclusive humanness. +Zamyatin's stories are most emphatically _made_, manufactured, there +is not an ounce of spontaneity in them, and, especially in the later +work where he is more or less free from reminiscences of Remizov, +they produce the impression of mosaic laboriously set together. They +are overloaded with pointedly suggestive metaphor and symbolically +expressive detail, and in their laborious and disproportionate +elaborateness they remind you of the deliberate ugliness of a +painting by some German "Expressionist." [Footnote: Zamyatin was +during the war a shipbuilding Engineer in the Russian service at +Newcastle. He has written several stories of English life which are +entirely in his later "expressionist" manner (_The Islanders_, +Berlin, 1922)]. + +When the Revolution came and brought Russia that general +impoverishment and reversion to savagery and primitive manners which +is still the dominant feature of life in the U.S.S.R., literature was +at first faced with a severe crisis. The book market was ruined. In +the years 1918-1921 the publication of a book became a most difficult +and hazardous undertaking. During these years the novel entirely +disappeared from the market. For three years at least the Russian +novel was dead. When it emerged again in 1922 it emerged very +different from what it had been in 1917. As I have said, the surface +"literature" of pre-Revolutionary date was swept away altogether. The +new Realism of Remizov and Bely was triumphant all along the line. +The works of both these writers were among the first books to be +reprinted on the revival of the book-trade. And it soon became +apparent that practically all the young generation belonged to their +progeny. The first of these younger men to draw on himself the +attention of critics and readers was Pilniak, the author of the +present volume, on whom I shall dwell anon in greater detail. + +In Petersburg there appeared a whole group of young novelists who +formed a sort of professional and amicable confraternity and called +themselves the "Serapion Brothers." They were all influenced by +Remizov; they were taught (in the very precise sense of the word-- +they had regular classes) by Zamyatin; and explained the general +principles of Art by the gifted and light-minded young "formalist" +critic, Victor Shklovsky. Other writers emerged in all ends of +Russia, all of them more or less obssessed by the dazzling models of +Bely and Remizov. + +All the writers of this new school have many features in common. They +are all of them more interested in Manner than in Matter. They work +at their style assiduously and fastidiously. They use an indirect +method of narrating by aid of symbolic detail and suggestive +metaphor. This makes their stories obscure and not easy to grasp at +first reading. Their language is elaborate; it is as full as possible +of unusual provincial words, or permeated with slang. It is coarse +and crude and many a page of their writings would not have been +tolerated by the editor of a pre-Revolution Russian magazine, not to +speak of an English publisher. They choose their subjects from the +Revolution and the Civil War. They are all fascinated by the +"elemental" greatness of the events, and are in a way the bards of +the Revolution. But their "Revolutionism" is purely aesthetical and +is conspicuously empty of ideas. Most of their stories appear on the +pages of official Soviet publications, but they are regarded with +rather natural mistrust by the official Bolshevik critics, who draw +attention to the essentially uncivic character of their art. + +The exaggerated elaborateness and research of their works makes all +these writers practically untranslatable; not that many of them are +really worth translating. Their deliberate aestheticism--using as +they do revolutionary subjects only as material for artistic effect-- +prevents their writings from being acceptable as reliable pictures of +Russian post-Revolutionary life. And it is quite obvious that they +have very few of the qualities that make good fiction in the eyes of +the ordinary novel-reader. + +There are marked inequalities of talent between them, as well as +considerable differences of style. Pilniak is the most ambitious, he +aims highest--and at his worst falls lowest. Vyacheslav Shishkov, a +Siberian, is notable for his good Russian, a worthy pupil of Remizov +and Prishvin. Vsevolod Ivanov, another Siberian, is perhaps the most +interesting for the subjects he chooses (the Civil War in the +backwoods of Siberia), but his style is, though vigorous, diffuse and +hazy, and his narrative is lost in a nebula of poetically-produced +"atmosphere." + +Nicholas Nikitin, who is considered by some to be the most promising +of all, is certainly the most typical of the school of Zamyatin; his +style, overloaded with detail which swamps the outline of the story, +is disfigured by the deliberate research of unfamiliar provincial +idioms. Michael Zoshchenko is the only one who has, in a small way, +reached perfection in his rendering of the common slang of a private +soldier. But his art savours too much of a pastiche; he is really a +born parodist and may some day give us a Russian _Christmas Garland_. + +The most striking feature of all these story-tellers is their almost +complete inability to tell a story. And this in spite of their great +reverence for Leskov, the greatest of Russian story-tellers. But of +Leskov they have only imitated the style, not his art of narrative. +Miss Harrison, in her notable essay on the Aspects of the Russian +Verb, [Footnote: _Aspects and Aorists_, by Jane Harrison, Cambridge +University Press, 1919.] makes an interesting distinction between the +"perfective" and "imperfective" style in fiction. The perfective is +the ordinary style of an honest narrative. The "imperfective" is +where nothing definitely happens but only goes on indefinitely +"becoming." Russian Literature (as the Russian language, according to +Miss Harrison) has a tendency towards the "imperfective." But never +has this "imperfective" been so exclusively paramount as now. In all +these stories of thrilling events the writers have a most cunning way +of concealing the adventure under such a thick veil of detail, +description, poetical effusion, idiom, and metaphor, that it can only +with difficulty be discovered by the very experienced reader. To +choose such adventures for subjects and then deliberately to make no +use of them and concentrate all attention on style and atmosphere, is +really a _tour de force_, the crowning glory and the _reductio ad +absurdum_ of this imperfective tendency. + +These extremities, which are largely conditioned by the whole past of +Russian Literature, must naturally lead to a reaction. The reading +public cannot be satisfied with such a literature. Nor are the +critics. A reaction against all this style is setting in, but it +remains in the domain of theory and has not produced work of any +importance. And it is doubtful whether it will. If even Leskov with +his wonderful genius for pure narrative has failed to influence the +moderns in any way except by his mannerisms of speech, the case seems +indeed desperate. Those who are most thirsty for good stories +properly told turn their eyes westwards, towards "Stevenson and +Dumas" and E. A. T. Hoffmann. Better imitate Pierre Bénois than go on +in the way you are doing, says Lev Lunts, one of the Serapion +Brothers, in a violent and well-founded invective against modern +Russian fiction. [Footnote: In Gorky's miscellany, _Beseda_. N3, +1923.] But though he sees the right way out pretty clearly Lunts has +not seriously tried his hand at the novel. [Footnote: As I write I +hear of the death of Lev Lunts at the age of 22. His principal work +is a good tragedy of pure action without "atmosphere" or psychology +(in the same _Beseda_, N2).] A characteristic sign of the times is a +novel by Sergey Bobrov, [Footnote: _The Specification of Iditol_. +Iditol being the name of an imaginary chemical discovery.] a +"precious" poet and a good critic, where he adopts the methods of the +film-drama with its rapid development and complicated plot, and +carefully avoids everything picturesque or striking in his style. But +the common run of fiction in the Soviet magazines continues as it +was, and it is to be feared that there is something intrinsically +opposed to the "perfective" narrative in the constitution of the +contemporary Russian novelist. + + + + +II + +BORIS PILNIAK + + +Boris Pilniak (or in more correct transliteration, Pil'nyak) is the +pseudonym of Boris Andreyevich Wogau. He is not of pure Russian +blood, but a descendant of German colonists; a fact which incidently +proves the force of assimilation inherent in the Russian milieu and +the capacity to be assimilated, so typical of Germans. For it is +difficult to deny Pilniak the appellation of a typical Russian. + +Pilniak is about thirty-five years of age. His short stories began to +appear in periodicals before the War, and his first book appeared in +1918. It contained four stories, two of which are included in the +present volume (_Death_ and _Over the Ravine_). A second volume +appeared in 1920 (including the _Crossways, The Bielokonsky Estate, +The Snow Wind, A Year of Their Lives_, and _A Thousand Years_). These +volumes attracted comparatively little attention, though considering +the great scarcity of fiction in those years they were certainly +notable events. But _Ivan-da-Marya_ and _The Bare Year_, published in +1922, produced a regular boom, and Pilniak jumped into the limelight +of all-Russian celebrity. The cause of the success of these volumes, +or rather the attention attracted by them, lay in their subject- +matter: Pilniak was the first novelist to approach the subject of +"Soviet _Byt_," to attempt to utilise the everyday life and routine +of Soviet officialdom, and to paint the new forms Russian life had +taken since the Revolution. Since 1922 editions and reprints of +Pilniak's stories have been numerous, and as he follows the rather +regrettable usage of making up every new book of his unpublished +stories with reprints of earlier work the bibliography of his works +is rather complicated and entangled, besides being entirely +uninteresting to the English reader. + +The most interesting portion of Pilniak's works are no doubt his +longer stories of "Soviet life" written since 1921. Unfortunately +they are practically untranslatable. His proceedings, imitated from +Bely and Remizov, would seem incongruous to the English reader, and +the translation would be laid aside in despair or in disgust, in +spite of all its burning interest of actuality. None of the stories +included in this volume belong to this last manner of Pilniak's, but +in order to give a certain idea of what it is like I will attempt a +specimen-translation of the beginning of his story _The Third +Metropolis_ (dated May-June 1922), reproducing all his typographical +mannerisms, which are in their turn reproduced rather unintelligently, +from his great masters, Remizov and Bely. The story, by the way, is +dedicated "To A. M. Remizov, the Master in whose Workshop I +was an apprentice." + + + + +THE THIRD METROPOLIS + + +CHAPTER I + +NOW OPEN + + +By the District Department for Popinstruct [Footnote: That is +"District Department for popular instruction"--in "Russian," +_Uotnarobraz_.] provided with every commodity. + +--BATHS-- + +(former Church school in garden) for public use with capacity to +receive 500 persons in an 8-hour working-day. + +Hours of baths: + +Monday--municipal children's asylums (free) + +Tuesdays, Friday, Saturday--males + +Wednesday, Thursday--females + +Price for washing + adults--50kop.gold + children--25kop.gold + +DISDEPOPINSTRUCT [Footnote: That is "District Department for popular +instruction"--in "Russian," _Uotnarobraz_.] + +Times: Lent of the eighth year of the World War and of the downfall +of European Civilisation (see Spengler)--and sixth Lent since the +great Russian Revolution; in other words: March, Spring, breaking-up +of the ice--when the Russian Empire exploded in the great revolution +the way Rupert's drops explode, casting off--Estia, Latvia, +Lithuania, Poland, the Monarchy, Chernov, Martov, the Dardanelles--- +Russian Civilisation,--Russian blizzards--- + + --and when--- + --Europe-- + was: + --nothing but one Ersatz + from end to end-- + (Ersatz--a German word + --means the adverb + "instead.") + +_Place_: there is no place of action. Russia, Europe, the world, +fraternity. + +Dramatis personĉ: there are none. Russia, Europe, the world, belief, +disbelief,--civilisation, blizzards, thunderstorms, the image of the +Holy Virgin. People,--men in overcoats with collars turned up, go- +alones, of course;--women;--but women are my sadness,--to me who am a +romanticist-- + + --the only thing, the most + beautiful, the greatest + joy. + +All this does after all make itself into some sort of sense, but the +process by which this is at length attained is lengthy, tedious, and +full of pitfalls to the reader who is unfamiliar with some dozen +modern Russian writers and is innocent of "Soviet life." + +In the impossibility of giving an intelligible English version of the +_Bare Year_ and its companions, the stories contained in this volume +have been selected from the early and less sensational part of +Pilniak's writings and will be considerably less staggering to the +average English intelligence. + + * * * * * * * + +There are two things an English reader is in the habit of expecting +when approaching a new Russian writer: first he expects much--and +complains when he does not get it; to be appreciated by an English +reader the Russian writer must be a Turgenev or a Chekhov, short of +that he is no use. Secondly in every Russian book he expects to find +"ideas" and "a philosophy." If the eventual English reader approaches +Pilniak with these standards, he will be disappointed; Pilniak is not +a second Dostoyevsky, and he has singularly few "ideas." It is not +that he has no ambition in the way of ideas, but they are incoherent +and cheap. The sort of historical speculations he indulges in may be +appreciated at their right value on reading _A Thousand Years_. In +later books he is still more self-indulgent in this direction, and +many of his "stories" are a sort of muddle-headed historical +disquisitions rather than stories in any acceptable sense of the +word. Andrey Bely and his famous _Petersburg_ are responsible for +this habit of Pilniak's, as well as for many others of his +perversities. + +Pilniak is without a doubt a writer of considerable ability, but he +is essentially unoriginal and derivative. Even in his famous novels +of "Soviet life," it is only the subject matter he has found out for +himself--the methods of treating it are other peoples'. But this +imitativeness makes Pilniak a writer of peculiar interest: he is a +sort of epitome of modern Russian fiction, a living literary history, +and this representative quality of his is perhaps the chief claim on +our attention that can be advanced on behalf of the stories included +in this book. Almost every one of them can be traced back to some +Russian or foreign writer. Each of them belongs to and is eminently +typical of some accepted literary genre in vogue between 1910 and +1920. The _Snow_ and _The Forest Manor_ belong to the ordinary +psychological problem-story acted among "intellectuals"; they have +for their ancestors Chekhov, Zenaide Hippius, and the Polish +novelists. _Always on Detachment_, belongs to the progeny of A. N. +Tolstoy, with the inevitable blackguardly seduction of a more or less +pure girl or woman at the end. _The Snow Wind_ and _Over the Ravine_ +are animal stories, for which, I believe, Jack London is mainly +responsible. In _A Year of Their Lives_ the same "animal" method is +transfered to the treatment of primitive human life, and the shadow +of Knut Hamsun is plainly discernible in the background. _Death_, +_The Heirs_, and _The Belokonsky Estate_ are first class exercises in +the manner of Bunin, and only _A Thousand Years_ and _The Crossways_ +herald in, to a certain extent, Pilniak's own manner of invention. +From the point of view of "ideas" _The Crossways_ is the most +interesting in the book, for it gives expression to that which is +certainly the root of all Pilniak's conception of the Revolution. It +is--to use two terms which have been applied to Russia by two very +different schools of thought but equally opposed to Europe--a +"Scythian" or an "Eurasian" conception. To Pilniak the Revolution is +essentially the "Revolt" of peasant and rural Russia against the +alien network of European civilisation, the Revolt of the "crossways" +against the highroad and the railroad, of the village against the +town. A conception, you will perceive, which is opposed to that of +Lenin and the orthodox Communists, and which explains why official +Bolshevism is not over-enthusiastic about Pilniak. The _Crossways_ is +a good piece of work (it can hardly be called a story) and it just +gives a glimpse of that ambitious vastness of scale on which Pilniak +was soon to plan his bigger Soviet stories. + + * * * * * * * + +But taken in themselves and apart from his later work I think the +stories in the manner of Bunin will be found the most satisfactory +items in this volume. Of these _Death_ was written before the +Revolution and, but for an entirely irrelevant and very Pilniakish +allusion to Lermontov and other deceased worthies, it is entirely +unconnected with events and revolutions. Very "imperfective" and +hardly a "story," it is nevertheless done with sober and +conscientious craftsmanship, very much like Bunin and very unlike the +usual idea we have of Pilniak. The only thing Pilniak was incapable +of taking from his model was Bunin's wonderfully rich and full +Russian, a shortcoming which is least likely to be felt in +translation. + + * * * * * * * + +The other two Buninesque stories, _The Belokonsky Estate_ and _The +Heirs_, are stories (again, can the word "story" be applied to this +rampantly "imperfective" style?) of the Revolution. They display the +same qualities of sober measure and solid texture which are not +usually associated with the name of Pilniak. These two stories ought +to be read side by side, for they are correlative. In _The Belokonsky +Estate_ the representative of "the old order," Prince Constantine, is +drawn to an almost heroical scale and the "new man" cuts a poor and +contemptible figure by his side. In the other story the old order is +represented by a studied selection of all its worst types. I do not +think that the stories were meant as a deliberate contrast, they are +just the outcome of the natural lack of preconceived idea which is +typical of Pilniak and of his passive, receptive, plastical mind. As +long as he does not go out of his way to give expression to vague and +incoherent ideas, the outcome of his muddle-headed meditations on +Russian History, this very shortcoming (if shortcoming it be) becomes +something of a virtue, and Pilniak--an honest membrana vibrating with +unbiassed indifference to every sound from the outer world. + + * * * * * * * + +The reader may miss the more elaborate and sensational stories of +Soviet life. But I have a word of consolation for him--they are +eminently unreadable, and for myself I would never have read them had +it not been for the hard duties of a literary critic. In this case as +in others I prefer to go direct to the fountain-source and read +Bely's _Petersburg_ and the books of Remizov, which for all the +difficulties they put in the way of the reader and of the translator +will at least amply repay their efforts. But Pilniak has also +substantial virtues: the power to make things live; an openness to +life and an acute vision. If he throws away the borrowed methods that +suit him as little as a peacock's feathers may suit a crow, he will +no doubt develop rather along the lines of the better stories +included in this volume, than in the direction of his more ambitious +novels. And I imagine that his _opus magnum_, if, in some distant +future he ever comes to write one, will be more like the good old +realism of the nineteenth century than like the intense and troubled +art of his present masters; I venture to prophesy that he will +finally turn out something like a Soviet (or post-Soviet) Trollope, +rather than a vulgarised Andrey Bely. + +D. S. MIRSKY. + +_May_, 1924. + + + + + + +TALES OF THE WILDERNESS + + +THE SNOW + +I + + +The tinkling of postillion-bells broke the stillness of the crisp +winter night--a coachman driving from the station perhaps. They rang +out near the farm, were heard descending into a hollow; then, as the +horses commenced to trot, they jingled briskly into the country, +their echoes at last dying away beyond the common. + +Polunin and his guest, Arkhipov, were playing chess in his study. +Vera Lvovna was minding the infant; she talked with Alena for a +while; then went into the drawing-room, and rummaged among the books +there. + +Polunin's study was large, candles burnt on the desk, books were +scattered about here and there; an antique firearm dimly shone above +a wide, leather-covered sofa. The silent, moonlit night peered in +through the blindless windows, through one of which was passed a +wire. The telegraph-post stood close beside it, and its wires hummed +ceaselessly in the room somewhere in a corner of the ceiling--a +monotonous, barely audible sound, like a snow-storm. + +The two men sat in silence, Polunin broad-shouldered and bearded, +Arkhipov lean, wiry, and bald. + +Alena entered bringing in curdled milk and cheese-cakes. She was a +modest young woman with quiet eyes, and wore a white kerchief. + +"Won't you please partake of our simple fare?" she asked shyly, +inclining her head and folding her hands across her bosom. + +Silent and absent-minded, the chess-players sat down to table and +supped. Alena was about to join them, but just then her child began +to cry, and she hurriedly left the room. The tea-urn softly simmered +and seethed, emitting a low, hissing sound in unison with that of the +wires. The men took up their tea and returned to their chess. Vera +Lvovna returned from the drawing-room; and, taking a seat on the sofa +beside her husband, sat there without stirring, with the fixed, +motionless eyes of a nocturnal bird. + +"Have you examined the Goya, Vera Lvovna?" Polunin asked suddenly. + +"I just glanced through the _History of Art_; then I sat down with +Natasha." + +"He has the most wonderful devilry!" Polunin declared, "and, do you +know, there is another painter--Bosch. _He_ has something more than +devilry in _him_. You should see his Temptation of St. Anthony!" + +They began to discuss Goya, Bosch, and St. Anthony, and as Polunin +spoke he imperceptibly led the conversation to the subject of St. +Francis d'Assisi. He had just been reading the Saint's works, and was +much attracted by his ascetical attitude towards the world. Then the +conversation flagged. + +It was late when the Arkhipovs left, and Polunin accompanied them +home. The last breath of an expiring wind softly stirred the pine- +branches, which swayed to and fro in a mystic shadow-dance against +the constellations. Orion, slanting and impressive, listed across a +boundless sky, his starry belt gleaming as he approached his midnight +post. In the widespread stillness the murmur of the pines sounded +like rolling surf as it beats on the rocks, and the frozen snow +crunched like broken glass underfoot: the frost was cruelly sharp. + +On reaching home, Polunin looked up into the overarching sky, +searching the glittering expanse for his beloved Cassiopeian +Constellation, and gazed intently at the sturdy splendour of the +Polar Star; then he watered the horses, gave them their forage for +the night, and treated them to a special whistling performance. + +It struck warm in the stables, and there was a smell of horses' +sweat. A lantern burned dimly on the wall; from the horses' nostrils +issued grey, steamy cloudlets; Podubny, the stallion, rolled a great +wondering eye round on his master, as though inquiring what he was +doing. Polunin locked the stable; then stood outside in the snow for +a while, examining the bolts. + +In the study Alena had made herself up a bed on the sofa, sat down +next it in an armchair and began tending her baby, bending over it +humming a wordless lullaby. Polunin sat down by her when he came in +and discussed domestic affairs; then took the child from Alena and +rocked her. Pale green beams of moonlight flooded through the +windows. + +Polunin thought of St. Francis d'Assisi, of the Arkhipovs who had +lost faith and yet were seeking the law, of Alena and their +household. The house was wrapped in utter silence, and he soon fell +into that sound, healthy sleep to which he was now accustomed, in +contrast to his former nights of insomnia. + +The faint moon drifted over the silent fields, and the pines shone +tipped with silver. A new-born wind sighed, stirred, then rose gently +from the enchanted caverns of the night and soared up into the sky +with the swift flutter of many-plumed wings. Assuredly Kseniya +Ippolytovna Enisherlova was not asleep on such a night. + +II + +The day dawned cold, white, pellucid--breathing forth thin, misty +vapour, while a hoar-frost clothed the houses, trees, and hedges. The +smoke from the village chimneypots rose straight and blue. Outside +the windows was an overgrown garden, a snow-covered tree lay prone on +the earth; further off were snow-clad fields, the valley and the + forest. Sky and air were pale and transparent, + and the sun was hidden behind a drift of fleecy white clouds. + +Alena came in, made some remark about the house, then went out to +singe the pig for Christmas. + +The library-clock struck eleven; a clock in the hall answered. Then +there came a sudden ring on the telephone; it sounded strange and +piercing in the empty stillness. + +"Is that you, Dmitri Vladimirovich? Dmitri Vladimirovich, is that +you?" cried a woman's muffled voice: it sounded a great way off +through the instrument. + +"Yes, but who is speaking?" + +"Kseniya Ippolytovna Enisherlova is speaking", the voice answered +quietly; then added in a higher key: "Is it you, my ascetic and +seeker? This is me, me, Kseniya." + +"You, Kseniya Ippolytovna?" Polunin exclaimed joyfully. + +"Yes, yes ... Oh yes!... I am tired of roaming about and being always +on the brink of a precipice, so I have come to you ... across the +fields, where there is snow, snow, snow and sky ... to you, the +seeker.... Will you take me? Have you forgiven me that July?" + +Polunin's face was grave and attentive as he bent over the telephone: + +"Yes, I have forgiven," he replied. + + * * * * * * * + +One long past summer, Polunin and Kseniya Ippolytovna used to greet +the glowing dawn together. At sundown, when the birch-trees exhaled a +pungent odour and the crystal sickle of the moon was sinking in the +west, they bade adieu until the morrow on the cool, dew-sprinkled +terrace, and Polunin passionately kissed--as he believed--the pure, +innocent lips of Kseniya Ippolytovna. + +But she laughed at his ardour, and her avid lips callously drank in +his consuming, protesting passion, only to desert him afterwards, +abandoning him for Paris, and leaving behind her the shreds of his +pure and passionate love. + +That June and July had brought joy and sorrow, good and ill. Polunin +was already disillusioned when he met Alena, and was living alone +with his books. He met her in the spring, and quickly and simply +became intimate with her, begetting a child, for he found that the +instinct of fatherhood had replaced that of passion within him. + +Alena entered his house at evening, without any wedding-ceremony, +placed her trunk on a bench in the kitchen, and passing quickly +through into the study, said quietly: + +"Here I am, I have come." She looked very beautiful and modest as she +stood there, wiping the corner of her mouth with her handkerchief. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna arrived late when dusk was already falling and +blue shadows crept over the snow. The sky had darkened, becoming +shrouded in a murky blue; bullfinches chirruped in the snow under the +windows. Kseniya Ippolytovna mounted the steps and rang, although +Polunin had already opened the door for her. + +The hall was large, bright, and cold. As she entered, the sunrays +fell a moment on the windows and the light grew warm and waxy, +lending to her face--as Polunin thought--a greenish-yellow tint, like +the skin of a peach, and infinitely beautiful. But the rays died away +immediately, leaving a blue crepuscular gloom, in which Kseniya +Ippolytovna's figure grew dim, forlorn, and decrepit. + +Alena curtseyed: Kseniya Ippolytovna hesitated a moment, wondering if +she should give her hand; then she went up to Alena and kissed her. + +"Good evening", she cried gaily, "you know I am an old friend of your +husband's." + +But she did not offer her hand to Polunin. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna had greatly changed since that far-off summer. +Her eyes, her wilful lips, her Grecian nose, and smooth brows were as +beautiful as ever, but now there was something reminiscent of late +August in her. Formerly she had worn bright costumes--now she wore +dark; and her soft auburn hair was fastened in a simple plait. + +They entered the study and sat down on the sofa. Outside the windows +lay the snow, blue like the glow within. The walls and the furniture +grew dim in the twilight. Polunin--grave and attentive--hovered +solicitously round his guest. Alena withdrew, casting a long, +steadfast look at her husband. + +"I have come here straight from Paris", Kseniya explained. "It is +rather queer--I was preparing to leave for Nice in the spring, and +was getting my things together, when I found a nest of mice in my +wardrobe. The mother-mouse ran off, leaving three little babes behind +her; they were raw-skinned and could only just crawl. I spent my +whole time with them, but on the third day the first died, and then +the same night the other two.... I packed up for Russia the next +morning, to come here, to you, where there is snow, snow.... Of +course there is no snow in Paris--and it will soon be Christmas, the +Russian Christmas." + +She became silent, folded her hands and laid them against her cheek; +for a moment she had a sorrowful, forlorn expression. + +"Continue, Kseniya Ippolytovna", Polunin urged. + +"I was driving by our fields and thinking how life here is as simple +and monotonous as the fields themselves, and that it is possible to +live here a serious life without trivialities. You know what it is to +live for trivialities. I am called--and I go. I am loved--and I let +myself be loved! Something in a showcase catches my eye and I buy it. +I should always remain stationary were it not for those that have the +will to move me.... + +"I was driving by our fields and thinking of the impossibility of +such a life: I was thinking too that I would come to you and tell you +of the mice.... Paris, Nice, Monaco, costumes, English perfumes, +wine, Leonardo da Vinci, neo-classicism, lovers, what are they? With +you everything is just as of old." + +She rose and crossed to the window. + +"The snow is blue-white here, as it is in Norway--I jilted Valpyanov +there. The Norwegian people are like trolls. There is no better place +than Russia! With you nothing changes. Have you forgiven me that +July?" + +Polunin approached and stood beside her. + +"Yes, I have forgiven", he said earnestly. + +"But I have not forgiven you that June!" she flashed at him; then she +resumed: "The library, too, is the same as ever. Do you remember how +we used to read Maupassant together in there?" + +Kseniya Ippolytovna approached the library-door, opened it, and went +in. Inside were book-cases behind whose glass frames stood even rows +of gilded volumes; there was also a sofa, and close to it a large, +round, polished table. The last yellow rays of the sun came in +through the windows. Unlike that in the study, the light in here was +not cold, but warm and waxy, so that again Kseniya Ippolytovna's face +seemed strangely green to Polunin, her hair a yellow-red; her large, +dark, deep-sunken eyes bore a stubborn look. + +"God has endowed you with wonderful beauty, Kseniya, Ippolytovna," +Polunin said gravely. + +She gave him a keen glance; then smiled. "God has made me wonderfully +tempting! By the way, you used to dream of faith; have you found it?" + +"Yes, I have found it." + +"Faith in what?" + +"In life." + +"But if there is nothing to believe in?" + +"Impossible!" + +"I don't know. I don't know." Kseniya Ippolytovna raised her hands to +her head. "The Japanese, Naburu Kotokami, is still looking for me in +Paris and Nice... I wonder if he knows about Russia.... I have not +had a smoke for a whole week, not since the last little mouse died; I +smoked Egyptians before .... Yes, you are right, it is impossible not +to have faith." + +Polunin went to her quickly, took her hands, then dropped them; his +eyes were very observant, his voice quiet and serious. + +"Kseniya, you must not grieve, you must not." + +"Do you love me?" + +"As a woman--no, as a fellow-creature--I do," he answered firmly. + +She smiled, dropped her eyes, then moved to the sofa, sat down and +arranged her dress, then smiled again. + +"I want to be pure." + +"And so you are!" Polunin sat down beside her, leaning forward, his +elbows on his knees. + +They were silent. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna said at last: "You have grown old, Polunin!" + +"Yes, I have grown old. People do, but there is nothing terrible in +that when they have found what they sought for." + +"Yes, when they have found it.... But what about now? Why do you say +that? Is it Alena?" + +"Why ask? Although I am disillusioned, Kseniya, I go on chopping +firewood, heating the stove, living just to live. I read St. Francis +d'Assisi, think about him, and grieve that such a life as his may not +be lived again. I know he was absurd, but he had faith, And now +Alena--I love her, I shall love her for ever. I wish to feel God!" + +Kseniya Ippolytovna looked at him curiously: + +"Do you know what the baby-mice smelt like?" + +"No, why do you ask?" + +"They smelt like new-born babies--like human children! You have a +daughter, Natasha. That is everything." + +The sun sank in an ocean of wine-coloured light, and a great red +wound remained amidst the drift of cold clouds over the western +horizon. The snow grew violet, and the room was filled with shadowy, +purplish twilight. Alena entered and the loud humming of the +telegraph wires came through the study's open door. + +By nightfall battalions of fleeting clouds flecked the sky; the moon +danced and quivered in their midst--a silver-horned goddess, luminous +with the long-stored knowledge of the ages. The bitter snow-wind +crept, wound, and whirled along in spirals, loops, and ribbons, +lashing the fields, whining and wailing its age-old, dismal song over +the lone desolate spaces. The land was wretched, restless, and +forlorn; the sky was overcast with sombre, gaping caverns shot +through with lurid lines of fire. + + * * * * * * * + +At seven o'clock the Arkhipovs arrived. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna had known them a long time: they had been +acquaintances even before Arkhipov's marriage. As he greeted her now, +he kissed her hand and began speaking about foreign countries-- +principally Germany, which he knew and admired. They passed into the +study, where they argued and conversed: they had nothing much to talk +about really. Vera Lvovna was silent, as usual; and soon went to see +Natasha. Polunin also was quiet, walking about the room with his +hands behind his back. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna jested in a wilful, merry, and coquettish fashion +with Arkhipov, who answered her in a polite, serious, and punctilious +manner. He was unable to carry on a light, witty conversation, and +was acutely conscious of his own awkwardness. From a mere trifle, +something Kseniya Ippolytovna said about fortune-telling at +Christmas, there arose an old-standing dispute between the two men on +Belief and Unbelief. + +Arkhipov spoke with calmness and conviction, but Polunin grew angry, +confused, and agitated. Arkhipov declared that Faith was unnecessary +and injurious, like instinct and every other sentiment; that there +was only one thing immutable--Intellect. Only that was moral which +was intelligent. + +Polunin retorted that the intellectual and the non-intellectual were +no standard of life, for was life intelligent? he asked. He contended +that without Faith there was only death; that the one thing immutable +in life was the tragedy of Faith and the Spirit. + +"But do you know what Thought is, Polunin?" + +"Yes, indeed I do!" + +"Don't smile! Do you not know that Thought kills everything? Reflect, +think thrice over what you regard as sacred, and it will be as simple +as a glass of lemonade." + +"But death?" + +"Death is an exit into nothing. I have always that in reserve--when I +am heart-broken. For the present I am content to live and thrive." + +When the dispute was over, Vera Lvovna said in a low voice, as calm +as ever: + +"The only tragic thing in life is that there is nothing tragical, +while death is just death, when anyone dies physically. A little less +metaphysics!" + +Kseniya Ippolytovna had been listening, alert and restless. + +"But all the same," she answered Vera Lvovna animatedly, "Isn't the +absence of tragedy the true tragedy?" + +"Yes, that alone." + +"And love?" + +"No, not love." + +"But aren't you married?" + +"I want my baby." + +Kseniya Ippolytovna, who was lying on the sofa, rose up on her knees, +and stretching out her arms cried: + +"Ah, a baby! Is that not instinct?" + +"That is a law!" + +The women began to argue. Then the dispute died down. Arkhipov +proposed a game of chance. They uncovered a green table, set lighted +candles at its corners and commenced to play leisurely and silently +as in winter. Arkhipov sat erect, resting his elbows at right angles +on the table. + +The wind whistled outside, the blizzard increased in violence, and +from some far distance came the dismal, melancholy creaking and +grinding of iron. Alena came in, and sat quietly beside her husband, +her hands folded in her lap. They were killing time. + +"The last time, I sat down to play a game of chance amidst the fjords +in a little valley hotel; a dreadful storm raged the whole while," +Kseniya Ippolytovna remarked pensively. "Yes, there are big and +little tragedies in life!" + +The wind shrieked mournfully; snow lashed at the windows. Kseniya +stayed on until a late hour, and Alena invited her to remain +overnight; but she refused and left. + +Polunin accompanied her. The snow-wind blew violently, whistling and +cutting at them viciously. The moon seemed to be leaping among the +clouds; around them the green, snowy twilight hung like a thick +curtain. The horses jogged along slowly. Darkness lay over the land. + +Polunin returned alone over a tractless road-way; the gale blew in +his face; the snow blinded him. He stabled his horses; then found +Alena waiting up for him in the kitchen, her expression was composed +but sad. Polunin took her in his arms and kissed her. + +"Do not be anxious or afraid; I love only you, no one else. I know +why you are unhappy." + +Alena looked up at him in loving gratitude, and shyly smiled. + +"You do not understand that it is possible to love one only. Other +men are not able to do that," Polunin told her tenderly. + +The hurricane raged over the house, but within reigned peace. Polunin +went into his study and sat down at his desk; Natasha began to cry; +he rose, took a candle, and brought her to Alena, who nursed her. The +infant looked so small, fragile, and red that Polunin's heart +overflowed with tenderness towards her. One solitary, flickering +candle illumined the room. + +There was a call on the telephone at daybreak. Polunin was already +up. The day slowly broke in shades of blue; there was a murky, bluish +light inside the rooms and outside the windows, the panes of which +were coated with snow. The storm had subsided. + +"Have I aroused you? Were you still in bed?" called Kseniya. + +"No, I was already up." + +"On the watch?" + +"Yes." + +"I have only just arrived home. The storm whirled madly round us in +the fields, and the roads were invisible, frozen under snow ... I +drove on thinking, and thinking--of the snow, you, myself, Arkhipov, +Paris ... oh, Paris...! You are not angry with me for ringing you up, +are you, my ascetic?... I was thinking of our conversation." + +"What were you thinking?" + +"This.... We were speaking together, you see.... Forgive me, but you +could not speak like that to Alena. She would not understand ... how +could she?" + +"One need not speak a word, yet understand everything. There is +something that unites--without the aid of speech--not only Alena and +me, but the world and me. That is a law of God." + +"So it is," murmured Kseniya. "Forgive me ... poor old Alena." + +"I love her, and she has given me a daughter...." + +"Yes, that is true. And we ... we love, but are childless... We rise +in the morning feeling dull and depressed from our revels of +overnight, while you were wisely sleeping." Kseniya Ippolytovna's +voice rose higher. "'We are the heisha-girls of lantern-light,' you +remember Annensky? At night we sit in restaurants, drinking wine and +listening to garish music. We love--but are childless.... And you? +You live a sober, righteous and sensible life, seeking the truth.... +Isn't that so?' Truth!" Her cry was malignant and full of derision. + +"That is unjust, Kseniya," answered Polunin in a low voice, hanging +his head. + +"No, wait," continued the mocking voice at the other end of the line; +"here is something more from Annensky: 'We are the heisha-girls of +lantern-light!'... 'And what seemed to them music brought them +torment'; and again: 'But Cypris has nothing more sacred than the +words _I love_, unuttered by us' ..." + +"That is unjust, Kseniya." + +"Unjust!" She laughed stridently; then suddenly was silent. She began +to speak in a sad, scarcely audible whisper: "But Cypris has nothing +more sacred than the words _I love_, unuttered by us.... I love ... +love.... Oh, darling, at that time, in that June, I looked upon you +as a mere lad. But now I seem small and little myself, and you a big +man, who defends me. How miserable I was alone in the fields last +night! But that is expiation.... You are the only one who has loved +me devotedly. Thank you, but I have no faith now." + +The dawn was grey, lingering, cold; the East grew red. + +III + +Kseniya Ippolytovna's ancestral home had reared its columns for fully +a century. It was of classic architecture, with pediment, balconied +hall, echoing corridors, and furniture that seemed never to have been +moved from the place it had occupied in her forefathers' time. + +The old mansion greeted her--the last descendant of the ancient name-- +with gloomy indifference; with cold, sombre apartments that were +terrible by night, and thickly covered with the accumulated dust of +many years. An ancient butler remained who recalled the former times +and masters, the former baronial pomp and splendour. The housemaid, +who spoke no Russian, was brought by Kseniya. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna established herself in her mother's rooms. She +told the one ancient retainer that the household should be conducted +as in her parents' day, with all the old rules and regulations. He +thereupon informed her that it was customary in the times of the old +masters for relatives and friends to gather together on Christmas +Eve, while for the New Year all the gentry of the district considered +it their duty to come, even those who were uninvited. Therefore it +was necessary for her to order in the provisions at once. + +The old butler called Kseniya Ippolytovna at eight; then served her +with coffee. After she had taken it, he said austerely: + +"You will have to go round the house and arrange things, Barina; then +go into the study to read books and work out the expenses and write +out recipes for your house-party. The old gentry always did that." + +She carried out all her instructions, adhering rigorously to former +rules. She was wonderfully quiet, submissive, and sad. She read +thick, simply-written books--those in which the old script for _sh_ +is confused with that for _t_. Now and then, however, she rang up +Polunin behind the old man's back, talking to him long and fretfully, +with mingled love, grief, and hatred. + +In the holidays they drove about together in droskies, and told +fortunes: Kseniya Ippolytovna was presented with a waxen cradle. They +drove to town with some mummers, and attended an amateur performance +in a club. Polunin dressed up as a wood-spirit, Kseniya as a wood- +spirit's daughter--out of a birch-grove. Then they visited the +neighbouring landowners. + +The Christmas holidays were bright and frosty, with a red morning +glow from the east, the daylight waxy in the sun, and with long blue, +crepuscular evenings. + +IV + +The old butler made a great ado in the house at the approach of the +New Year. In preparation for a great ball, he cleared the inlaid +floors, spread carpets, filled the lamps; placed new candles here and +there; took the silver and the dinner-services out of their chests, +and procured all the requisites for fortune-telling. By New Year's +Eve the house was in order, the stately rooms glittering with lights, +and uniformed village-lads stood by the doors. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna awoke late on that day and did not get up, lying +without stirring in bed until dinner time, her hands behind her head. +It was a clear, bright day and the sun's golden rays streamed in +through the windows, and were reflected on the polished floor, +casting wavy shadows over the dark heavy tapestry on the walls. +Outside was the cold blue glare of the snow, which was marked with +the imprints of birds' feet, and a vast stretch of clear turquoise +sky. + +The bedroom was large and gloomy; the polished floor was covered with +rugs; a canopied double bedstead stood against the further wall; a +large wardrobe was placed in a corner. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna looked haggard and unhappy. She took a bath +before dinner; then had her meal--alone, in solitary state, drowsing +lingeringly over it with a book. + +Crows, the birds of destruction, were cawing and gossiping outside in +the park. At dusk the fragile new moon rose for a brief while. The +frosty night was crisp and sparkling. The stars shone diamond-bright +in the vast, all-embracing vault of blue; the snow was a soft, +velvety green. + +Polunin arrived early. Kseniya Ippolytovna greeted him in the +drawing-room. A bright fire burnt on the hearth; beside it were two +deep armchairs. No lamps were alight, but the fire-flames cast warm, +orange reflections; the round-topped windows seemed silvery in the +hoar-frost. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna wore a dark evening dress and had plaited her +hair; she shook hands with Polunin. + +"I am feeling sad to-day, Polunin," she said in a melancholy voice. +They sat down in the armchairs. + +"I expected you at five. It is now six. But you are always churlish +and inconsiderate towards women. You haven't once wanted to be alone +with me--or guessed that I desired it!" She spoke calmly, rather +coldly, gazing obstinately into the fire, her cheeks cupped between +her narrow palms. "You are so very silent, a perfect diplomat.... +What is it like in the fields to-day? Cold? Warm? Tea will be served +in a moment." + +There was a pause. + +At last Polunin broke the silence. + +"Yes, it was bitterly cold, but fine." After a further pause he +added: "When we last talked together you did not say all that was in +your mind. Say it now." + +Kseniya Ippolytovna laughed: + +"I have already said everything! Isn't it cold? I have not been out +to-day. I have been thinking about Paris and of that ... that +June.... Tea should be ready by this time!" + +She rose and rung the bell, and the old butler came in. + +"Will tea be long?" + +"I will bring it now, Barina." + +He went out and returned with a tray on which were two glasses of +tea, a decanter of rum, some pastries, figs, and honey, and laid them +on the little table beside the armchairs. + +"Will you have the lamps lighted, Barina?" he inquired, respectfully. + +"No. You may go. Close the door." + +The old butler looked at them knowingly; then withdrew. + Kseniya turned at once to Polunin. + +"I have told you everything. How is it you have not understood? Drink +up your tea." + +"Tell me again," he pleaded. + +"Take your tea first; pour out the rum. I repeat I have already told +you all. You remember about the mice? Did you not understand that?" +Kseniya Ippolytovna sat erect in her chair; she spoke coldly, in the +same distant tone in which she had addressed the butler. + +Polunin shook his head: "No, I haven't understood." + +"Dear me, dear me!" she mocked, "and you used to be so quick-witted, +my ascetic. Still, health and happiness do not always sharpen the +wits. You are healthy and happy, aren't you?" + +"You are being unjust again," Polunin protested. "You know very well +that I love you." + +Kseniya Ippolytovna gave a short laugh: "Oh, come, come! None of +that!" She drank her glass of tea feverishly, threw herself back in +the chair, and was silent. + +Polunin also took his, warming himself after his cold drive. + +She spoke again after a while in a quiet dreamy tone: "In this stove, +flames will suddenly flare up, then die away, and it will become +cold. You and I have always had broken conversations. Perhaps the +Arkhipovs are right--when it seems expedient, kill! When it seems +expedient, breed! That is wise, prudent, honest...." Suddenly she sat +erect, pouring out quick, passionate, uneven words: + +"Do you love me? Do you desire me ... as a woman?... to kiss, to +caress?... You understand? No, be silent! I am purged.... I come to +you as you came to me that June.... You didn't understand about the +mice?... Or perhaps you did. + +"Have you noticed, have you ever reflected on that which does not +change in man's life, but for ever remains the same? No, no, wait!... +There have been hundreds of religions, ethics, aesthetics, sciences, +philosophical systems: they have all changed and are still changing-- +only one law remains unaltered, that all living things--whether men, +mice, or rye--are born, breed, and die. + +"I was packing up for Nice, where a lover expected me, when suddenly +I felt an overwhelming desire for a babe, a dear, sweet, little babe +of my own, and I remembered you .... Then I travelled here, to Russia +so as to bear it in reverence.... I am able to do so now!..." + +Polunin rose and stood close to Kseniya Ippolytovna: his expression +was serious and alarmed. + +"Don't beat me," she murmured. + +"You are innocent, Kseniya," he replied. + +"Oh, there you go again!" she cried impatiently. "Always sin and +innocence! I am a stupid woman, full of beliefs and superstitions-- +nothing more--like all women. I want to conceive here, to breed and +bear a child here. Do you wish to be the father?" + +She stood up, looking intently into Polunin's eyes. + +"What are you saying, Kseniya?" he asked in a low, grave, pained +tone. + +"I have told you what I want. Give me a child and then go--anywhere-- +back to your Alena! I have not forgotten that June and July." + +"I cannot," Polunin replied firmly; "I love Alena." + +"I do not want love," she persisted; "I have no need of it. Indeed I +have not, for I do not even love you!" She spoke in a low, faint +voice, and passed her hand over her face. + +"I must go," the man said at last. + +She looked at him sharply. "Where to?" + +"How do you mean 'where to'? I must go away altogether!" + +"Ah, those tragedies, duties, and sins again!" she cried, her eyes +burning into his with hatred and contempt. "Isn't it all perfectly +simple? Didn't you make a contract with me?" + +"I have never made one without love. And I love only Alena. I must +go." + +"Oh, what cruel, ascetical egoism!" she cried violently. Then +suddenly all her rage died down, and she sat quietly in the chair, +covering her face with her hands. + +Polunin stood by, his shoulders bowed, his arms hanging limply. His +face betrayed grief and anxiety. + +Kseniya looked up at him with a wan smile: "It is all right--there is +no need to go... It was only my nonsense.... I was merely venting my +anger.... Don't mind me .... I am tired and harassed. Of course I +have not been purged. I know that is impossible... We are the +'heisha-girls of lantern-light'.... You remember Annensky? ... Give +me your hand." + +Polunin stretched out his large hand, took her yielding one in his +and pressed its delicate fingers. + +"You have forgiven me?" she murmured. + +He looked at her helplessly, then muttered: "I cannot either forgive +or not forgive. But ... I cannot!" + +"Never mind; we shall forget. We shall be cheerful and happy. You +remember: 'Where beauty shines amidst mire and baseness there is only +torment'.... You need not mind, it is all over!" + +She uttered the last few words with a cry, raised herself erect, and +laughed aloud with forced gaiety. + +"We shall tell fortunes, jest, drink, be merry--like our grandfathers ... +you remember! ...Had not our grandmothers their coachmen +friends?" + +She rang the bell and the butler came in. + +"Bring in more tea. Light the fire and the lamps." + +The fire burnt brightly and illuminated the leather-covered chairs. +The portrait frames on the walls shone golden through the darkness. +Polunin paced up and down the room, his hands behind his back; his +footsteps were muffled in the thick carpet. + +Sleigh bells began to ring outside. + +It was just ten o'clock as the guests assembled from the town and the +neighbouring estates. They were received in the drawing-room. + +Taper, the priest's son, commenced playing a polka, and the ladies +went into the ballroom; the old butler and two footmen brought wax +candles and basins of water, and the old ladies began to tell +fortunes. A troupe of mummers tumbled in, a bear performed tricks, a +Little Russian dulcimer-player sang songs. + +The mummers brought in with them the smell of frost, furs, and +napthaline. One of them emitted a cock's crow, and they danced a +Russian dance. It was all merry and bright, a tumultuous, boisterous +revel, as in the old Russian aristocracy days. There was a smell of +burning wax, candle-grease, and burning paper. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna was the soul of gaiety; she laughed and jested +cheerfully as she waltzed with a Lyceum student, a General's son. She +had re-dressed her hair gorgeously, and wore a pearl necklace round +her throat. The old men sat round card-tables in the lounge, talking +on local topics. + +At half past eleven a footman opened the door leading into the +dining-room and solemnly announced that supper was served. They +supped and toasted, ate and drank amid the clatter of knives, forks, +dishes, and spoons. Kseniya made Arkhipov, Polunin, a General and a +Magistrate sit beside her. + +At midnight, just as they were expecting the clock to chime, Kseniya +Ippolytovna rose to propose a toast; in her right hand was a glass; +her left was flung back behind her plaited hair; she held her head +high. All the guests at once rose to their feet. + +"I am a woman," she cried aloud. "I drink to ourselves, to women, to +the gentle, to the homely, to happiness and purity! To motherhood! I +drink to the sacred--" she broke off abruptly, sat down and hung her +head. + +Somebody cried: "Hurrah!" To someone else it seemed that Kseniya was +weeping. The clock began to chime, the guests shouted "Hurrah!" +clinked glasses, and drank. + +Then they sang, while some rose and carried round glasses to those of +the guests who were still sober and those who were only partially +intoxicated. They bowed. They sang _The Goblets_, and the basses +thundered: + + "Drink to the dregs! Drink to the dregs!" Kseniya Ippolytovna +offered her first glass to Polunin. She stood in front of him with a +tray, curtseyed without lifting her eyes and sang. Polunin rose, +colouring with embarrassment: + +"I never drink wine," he protested. + +But the basses thundered: "Drink to the dregs! Drink to the dregs!" + +His face darkened, he raised a silencing arm, and firmly repeated: + +"I never drink wine, and I do not intend to." + +Kseniya gazed into the depths of his eyes and said softly: + +"I want you to, I beg you.... Do you hear?" + +"I will not," Polunin whispered back. + +Then she cried out: + +"He doesn't want to! We mustn't make him against his will!" She +turned away, offered her glass to the Magistrate, and after him to +the Lyceum student; then excused herself and withdrew, quietly +returning later looking sad and as if she had suddenly aged. + +They lingered a long while over supper; then went into the ball-room +to dance, and sing, and play old fashioned games. The men went to the +buffets to drink, the older ones then sat in the drawing-room playing +whist, and talked. + +It was nearly five o'clock when the guests departed. Only the +Arkhipovs and Polunin remained. Kseniya Ippolytovna ordered coffee, +and all four sat down at a small table feeling worn out. The house +was now wrapt in silence. The dawn had just broken. + +Kseniya was tired to death, but endeavoured to appear fresh and +cheerful. She passed the coffee round, and then fetched a bottle of +liqueur. They sat almost in silence; what talk they exchanged was +desultory. + +"One more year dropped into Eternity," Arkhipov said, sombrely. + +"Yes, a year nearer to death, a year further from birth," rejoined +Polunin. + +Kseniya Ippolytovna was seated opposite him. Her eyes were veiled. +She rose now to her feet, leaned over the table and spoke to him in +slow, measured accents vibrating with malice: + +"Well, pious one! Everything here is mine. I asked you to-day to give +me a baby, because I am merely a woman and so desire motherhood.... I +asked you to take wine... You refused. The nearer to death the +further from birth, you say? Well then, begone!" + +She broke into tears, sobbing loudly and plaintively, covering her +face with her hands; then leant against the wall, still sobbing. The +Arkhipovs ran to her; Polunin stood at the table dumbfounded, then +left the room. + +"I didn't ask him for passion or caresses. ... I have no husband!" +Kseniya cried, sobbing and shrieking like a hysterical girl. They +calmed her after a time, and she spoke to them in snatches between +her sobs, which were less violent for a while. Then she broke out +weeping afresh, and sank into an armchair. + +The dawn had now brightened; the room was filled with a faint, +flickering light. Misty, vaporous, tormenting shadows danced and +twisted oddly in the shifting glimmer: in the tenebrous half-light +the occupants looked grey, weary, and haggard, their faces strangely +distorted by the alternate rise and fall of the shadows. Arkhipov's +bald head with its tightly stretched skin resembled a greatly +elongated skull. + +"Listen to me, you Arkhipovs," Kseniya cried brokenly. "Supposing a +distracted woman who desired to be pure were to come and ask you for +a baby--would you give her the same answer as Polunin? He said it was +impossible, that it was sin, that he loved someone else. Would you +answer like that, Arkhipov, knowing it was the woman's last--her +only--chance of salvation--her only love?" She looked eagerly from +one to the other. + +"No, certainly not--I should answer in a different way," Arkhipov +replied quietly. + +"And you, Vera Lvovna, a wife ... do you hear? I speak in front of +you?" + +Vera Lvovna nodded, laid her hand gently on Kseniya's forehead, and +answered softly and tenderly: + +"I understand you perfectly." + +Again Kseniya wept. + + * * * * * * * + +The dawn trod gently down the lanes of darkness. The light grew +clearer and the candles became dim and useless. The outlines of the +furniture crept out of the net of shadows. Through the blue mist +outside the snow, valley, forest, and fields were faintly visible. +From the right of the horizon dawn's red light flushed the heavens +with a cold purple. + +Polunin drove along by the fields, trotting smoothly behind his +stallion. The earth was blue and cold and ghostly, a land carved out +of dreams, seemingly unsubstantial and unreal. A harsh, bitter wind +blew from the north, stirring the telegraph-wires by the roadside to +a loud, humming refrain. A silence as of death reigned over the land, +yet life thrilled through it; and now and then piping goldfinches +appeared from their winter nests in the moist green ditches, and flew +ahead of Polunin; then suddenly turned aside and perched lightly on +the wayside brambles. + +Night still lingered amid the calm splendour of the vast, primeval +forest. As he drove through the shadowed glades the huge trees gently +swayed their giant boughs, softly brushing aside the shroud of +encompassing darkness. + +A golden eagle darted from its mist-wreathed eyrie and flew over the +fields; then soared upwards in ever-widening circles towards the +east--where, like a pale rose ribbon stretched across the sky, the +light from the rising sun shed a delicate opalescent glow on the +snow, which it transformed to an exquisite lilac, and the shadows, to +which it lent a wonderful, mysterious, quivering blue tint. + +Polunin sat in his seat, huddled together, brooding morosely, +deriving a grim satisfaction from the fact that--all the same--he had +not broken the law. Henceforth, he never could break it; the thought +of Kseniya Ippolytovna brought pain, but he would not condemn her. + +At home, Alena was already up and about; he embraced her fondly, +clasped her in his arms, kissed her forehead; then he took up the +infant and gazed lingeringly, with infinite tenderness, upon her +innocent little face. + +The day was glorious; the golden sunlight streamed in through the +windows in a shining cataract, betokening the advent of spring, and +made pools of molten gold upon the floor. But the snow still lay in +all its virgin whiteness over the earth. + + + + +A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES + +I + + +To the north, south, east, and west--in all directions for hundreds +of miles--stretched forests and bogs enveloped in a wide-spread veil +of lichen. Brown-trunked cedars and pines towered on high. Beneath +there was a thick, impenetrable jungle of firs, alders, wild-berries, +junipers, and low-hanging birches. Pungent, deep-sunken, lichen- +covered springs of reddish water were hidden amidst undergrowth in +little glades, couched in layers of turf bordered by red bilberries +and huckleberries. + +With September came the frosts--fifty degrees below zero. The snow +lay everywhere--crisp and dazzling. There was daylight for three or +four hours only; the remainder of the time it was night. The sky was +lowering, and brooded darkly over the earth. There was a tense hush +and stillness, only broken in September by the lowing of mating elks. +In December came the mournful, sinister howling of the wolves; for +the rest of the time--a deep, dreadful, overpowering silence! A +silence that can be found only in the wastelands of the world. + +A village stood on the hill by the river. + +The bare slope descended to the water's edge, a grey-brown granite, +and white slatey clay, steep, beaten by wind and rain. Clumsy +discoloured boats were anchored to the bank. The river was broad, +dark, and cold, its surface broken by sombre, choppy, bluish waves. +Here and there the grey silhouettes of huts were visible; their high, +projecting, boarded roofs were covered by greenish lichen. The +windows were shuttered. Nets dried close by. It was the abode of +hunters who went long excursions into the forests in winter, to fight +the wild beasts. + +II + +In the spring the rivers--now broad, free and mighty--overflowed +their banks. Heavy waves broke up the face of the waters, which sent +forth a deep, hoarse, subdued murmur, as restless and disquieting as +the season itself. The snow thawed. The pine-trees showed resinous +lights, and exhaled a strong, pungent odour. + +In the day-time the sky was a broad expanse of blue; at dusk it had a +soft murky hue and a melancholy attraction. In the heart of the +woods, now that winter was over, the first deed of the beasts was +being accomplished--birth. Eider-ducks, swans, and geese were crying +noisily on the river. + +At dusk the sky became greenish and murky, merging into a vast tent +of deepest blue studded with a myriad of shining golden stars. Then +the eider-ducks and swans grew silent and went to roost for the +night, and the soft warm air was thrilled by the whines of bear-cubs +and the cries of land-rails. It was then that the maidens assembled +on the slope to sing of Lada and to dance their ancient dances, while +strapping youths came forth from their winter dwellings in the woods +and listened. + +The slope down to the river was steep; below was the rustling sound +of water among the reeds. Everything was wrapt in stillness, yet +everywhere the throb and flow of life could be heard. The maidens sat +huddled together on the top of the slope, where the granite and slate +were covered with scanty moss and yellow grass. + +They were dressed in gaily-coloured dresses: all of them strong and +robust; they sang their love-songs--old and sad and free--and gazed +into the gathering opalescent mists. Their songs seemed to overflow +from their hearts, and were sung to the youths who stood around them +like sombre, restive shadows, ogling and lustful, like the beasts in +their forest-haunts. + +This festive coupling-time had its law. + +The youths came here to choose their wives; they quarrelled and +fought, while the maidens remained listless, yielding to them in all. +The young men ogled and fought and he who triumphed first chose his +wife. Then he and she together retired from the festival. + +III + +Marina was twenty when she proceeded to the river-bank. + +Her tall, somewhat heavy body was wonderfully moulded, with strong +muscles and snowy skin. Her chest, back, hips, and limbs were sharply +outlined; she was strong, supple, and well developed. Her round, +broad breast rose high; her hair, eye-brows and eye-lashes were thick +and dark. The pupils of her eyes were deep and liquid; her cheeks +showed a flush of red. Her lips were soft--like a beast's--large, +sensuous and rosy. She walked slowly, moving her long straight legs +evenly, and slightly swaying from her hips.... + +She joined the maidens on the river slope. + +They were singing their mysterious, alluring and illusive songs. + +Marina mingled among the crowd of maidens, lay down upon her back, +closed her dreamy eyes, and joined in the festive chorus. The +maidens' souls became absorbed in the singing, and their song spread +far and wide through all the shadowy recesses of the woods, like +shining rays of sunlight. Their eyes closed in langour, their full- +blooded bodies ached with a delicious sensation. Their hearts seemed +to grow benumbed, the numbness spreading through their blood to their +limbs; it deprived them of strength, and their thoughts became +chaotic. + +Marina stretched her limbs sensuously; then became absorbed in the +singing, and she also sang. She felt strangely inert; only quivering +at the sound of the lusty, excited voices of the youths. + +Afterwards she lay on a couch in her suffocatingly close room; her +hands were clasped behind her head; her bosom swelled. She stretched, +opened her dark pensive eyes wide, compressed her lips, then sank +again into the drowsy langour, lying thus for many hours. + +She was twenty, and had grown up free and solitary--with the hunters, +the woods, and the steep and the river--from her birth. + +IV + +Demid lived on his own plot of ground, which, like the village, stood +on a hill above the river. But here the hill was higher and steeper, +sweeping the edge of the horizon. The wood was nearer, and its grey- +trunked cedars and pines rose from their beds of golden moss to shake +their crests to the stars and stretch their dark-green forest hands +right up to the house. The view was wide and sweeping from here: the +dark, turbulent river, the marsh beyond, the deep-blue billowing +woods fringing the horizon, the heavy lowering sky--all were clearly +visible. + +The house, made of huge pines, with timbered walls, plain white- +washed ceilings and floors, was bestrewn with pelts of bears, elks, +wolves, foxes, and ermines. Gunpowder and grape-shot lay on the +tables. In the corners was a medley of lassoes, snares, and +wolftraps. Some rifles hung round the walls. There was a strong +pungent odour, as though all the perfumes of the woods were collected +here. The house contained two rooms and a kitchen. + +In the centre of one of the rooms stood a large, rough-hewn table; +round it were some low wooden stools covered with bear-skin. This was +Demid's own room; in the other was the young bear, Makar. + +Demid lay motionless for a long time on his bear-skin bed, listening +to the vibrations of his great body--how it lived and throbbed, how +the rich blood coursed through its veins. Makar, the bear, +approached, laid his heavy paws on his chest, and amicably sniffed at +his body. Demid stroked the beast on its ear, and it seemed as if the +man and animal understood each other. Outside the window loomed the +wood. + +Demid was rugged and broad-shouldered, a large, quiet, dark-eyed, +good man. He smelt of the woods, and was strong and healthy. Like all +the hunters, he dressed in furs and a rough, home-woven fabric +streaked with red. He wore high, heavy boots made of reindeer hide, +and his coarse, broad hands were covered with broken chilblains. + +Makar was young, and, like all young things, he was foolish. He liked +to roll about, and was often destructive--he would gnaw the nets and +skins, break the traps, and lick up the gunpowder. Then Demid +punished him, whereupon Makar would turn on his heel, make foolish +grimaces, and whine plaintively. + +V + +Demid went to the maidens on the slope and took Marina to his plot of +land. She became his wife. + +VI + +The dark-green, wind-swept grass grew sweet and succulent in summer. +The sun seemed to shine from out a deep blue ocean of light. The +nights were silvery, the sky seemed dissolved into a pale, pellucid +mist; sunset and dawn co-mingled, and a white wavering haze crept +over the earth. Here life was strong and swift, for it knew that its +days were brief. + +Marina was installed in Makar's room, and he was transferred to +Demid's. + +Makar greeted Marina with an inhospitable snarl when he saw her for +the first time; then, showing his teeth, he struck her with his paw. +Demid beat him for this behaviour, and he quieted down. Then Marina +made friends with him. + +Demid went into the woods in the daytime, and Marina was left alone. + +She decorated her room in her own fashion, with a crude, somewhat +exaggerated, yet graceful, taste. She hung round in symmetrical order +the skins and cloth hangings, brightly embroidered with red and blue +cocks and reindeers. She placed an image of the God-Mother in the +corner; she washed the floor; and her multi-coloured room--smelling +as before of the woods--began to resemble a forest-chapel, where the +forest folk pray to their gods. + +In the pale-greenish twilight of the illimitable night, when only +horn-owls cried in the woods and bear-cubs snarled by the river, +Demid went in to Marina. She could not think--her mind moved slowly +and awkwardly like a great lumbering animal--she could only feel, and +in those warm, voluptuous, star-drenched nights she yielded herself +to Demid, desiring to become one with him, his strength, and his +passion. + +The nights were pale, tremulous, and mysterious. There was a deep, +heavy, nocturnal stillness. White spirals of mist drifted along the +ground. Night-owls and wood spirits hooted. In the morning was a red +blaze of glory as the great orb of day rose from the east into the +azure vault of heaven. + +The days flew by and summer passed. + +VII + +It snowed in September. + +It had been noticeable, even in August, how the days drew in and +darkened, how the nights lengthened and deepened. The wood all at +once grew still and dumb; it seemed as though it were deserted. The +air grew cold, and the river became locked in ice. The twilight was +slow and lingering, its deepening shadows turning the snow and ice on +the river to a keen, frosty blue. + +Through the nights rang the loud, strange, fierce bellowing of the +elks as they mated; the walls shook, and the hills re-echoed with +their terrible roar. + +Marina was with child in the autumn. + +One night she woke before dawn. The room was stifling from the heat +of the stove, and she could smell the bear. There was a faint glimmer +of dawn, and the dark walls showed the window frames in a wan blue +outline. Somewhere close by an old elk was bellowing: you could tell +it was old by the hoarse, hissing notes of its hollow cries. + +Marina sat up in bed. Her head swam, and she felt nauseated. The bear +lay beside her; he was already awake and was watching her. His eyes +shone with quiet, greenish lights; from outside, the thin crepuscular +light crept into the room through little crevices. + +Again Marina felt the nausea, and her head swam; the lights in +Makar's eyes were re-enkindled in Marina's soul into a great, +overwhelming joy that made her body quiver with emotion . . . Her +heart beat like a snared bird--all was wavering and misty, like a +summer morn. + +She rose from her bed of bear-skin furs, and naked, with swift, +awkward, uncertain steps, went in to Demid. He was still asleep--she +put her burning arms about him and drew his head to her deep bosom, +whispering to him softly: + +"A child ... it is the child...." + +Little by little, the night lifted and in through the windows came +the daylight. The elk ceased his bellowing The room filled with +glancing morning shadows. Makar approached, sniffed, and laid his +paws on the bed. Demid seized his collar with his free hand and +patting him fondly said: + +"That is right, Makar Ivanych--you know, don't you?" Then turning to +Marina, he added: "What do you think, Marinka? Doesn't he know? +Doesn't the old bear know, Marinka?" + +Makar licked Demid's hand, and laid his head knowingly on his +forepaws. The night had gone; rays of lilac-coloured light illumined +the snow and entered the house. Round, red, and distant rose the sun. +Below the hill lay the blue, ice-bound river, and away beyond it +stretched the ribbed outline of the vast, marshy Siberian forest. +Demid did not enter it that day, nor on many of the following days. + +VIII + +The winter descended. + +The snow lay in deep layers, blue by day and night, lilac in the +brief intervals of sunrise and sunset. The pale, powerless sun seemed +far away and strange during the three short hours that it showed over +the horizon. The rest of the time it was night. The northern lights +flashed like quivering arrows across the sky, in their sublime and +awful majesty. The frost lay like a veil over the earth, enveloping +all in a dazzling whiteness in which was imprisoned every shade of +colour under the sun. Crimsons, purples, softest yellows, tenderest +greens, and exquisite blues and pinks flashed and quivered fiercely +under the morning rays, shimmering in the brilliance. Over all hung +the hush of the trackless desert, the stillness that betokened death! + +Marina's eyes had changed--they were no longer dark, limpid, full of +intoxication; they were wonderfully bright and clear. Her hips had +widened, her body had increased, adding a new grace to her stature. +She seldom went out, sitting for the most part in her room, which +resembled a forest-chapel where men prayed to the gods. In the +daytime she did her simple houskeeping--chopped wood, heated the +stove, cooked meat and fish, helped Demid to skin the beasts he had +slain, and to weed their plot of land. During the long evenings she +spun and wove clothes for the coming babe. As she sewed she thought +of the child, and sung and smiled softly. + +An overwhelming joy possessed Marina when she thought of her +approaching motherhood. Her heart beat faster and her happiness +increased. Her own possible sufferings held no place in her thoughts. + +In the lilac glow of dawn, when a round moon, solemn and immense, +glowed in the south-western sky, Demid took his rifle and Finnish +knife, and went on his sleigh into the forest. + +The pine-trees and cedars stood starkly under their raiment of snow-- +mighty forest giants--beneath them clustered prickly firs, junipers +and alders. The stillness was profound. Demid sped from trap to trap, +from snare to snare, over the silent soundless snow. He strangled the +beasts; he fired, and the crack of his gun resounded through the +empty space. He sought for the trail of the elks and wolf-packs. He +descended to the river and watched for otters, caught bewildered fish +amidst the broken ice, and set his nets afresh. The scenes all round +him were old and familiar. The majesty of day died down in the west +on a flaming pyre of vivid clouds, and the quivering, luminous +streamers of the north re-appeared. + +Standing in his plot of ground in the evening, he cut up the fish and +meat, hung it up to freeze, threw pieces to the bear, ate some +himself, washed his hands in ice-cold water, and sat down beside +Marina--big and rugged, his powerful legs wide apart, his hands +resting heavily on his knees. The room became stifling with his +presence. He smiled down quietly and good-naturedly at Marina. + +The lamp shone cheerfully. Outside was snow, frost, and peace. Makar +approached and lounged on the floor. There was an atmosphere of quiet +joy and comfort in the chapel-like room. The walls cracked in the +frost; some towels embroidered in red and blue with reindeer and +cocks hung over them. Outside the frozen windows was darkness, cold, +and night. + +Demid rose from his bench, took Marina tenderly and firmly in his +arms, and led her to the bed. The lamp flickered, and in the half- +light Makar's eyes glowed. He had grown up during the winter and he +was now an adult bear--with a sombre, solemn air and a kind of clumsy +skill. He had a large flat nose and grave, good-natured eyes. + +IX + +It was the last days of December. There had been a merry Christmas +festival and the snow had lain thick on house and slope. Wolves were +now on the trail. Then Marina felt the first stirring of her child; +soft, gentle movements, like the touch of eiderdown upon her body. +She was filled with a triumphant joy, and pressed her hands softly +and tenderly to her side; then sang a lullaby of how her son should +become a great hunter and slay a thousand and three hundred elks, a +thousand and three hundred bears, a thousand and three hundred +ermines, and take the chief village beauty as his wife! + +There was misty frost, the night, and stillness outside--the +stillness that whispers of death. Wolves crept up to the plot of +land, sat on their hind-legs and howled long and dismally at the sky. + +In the spring the shores of the river were strewn with wild flocks of +swans, geese, and eider-ducks. The forest resounded with the stir of +the beasts. Its woody depths echoed with the noise of bears, elks, +wolves, foxes, owls, and woodcocks. The herbage began to sprout and +flourish. The nights now drew in, and the days were longer. Dawn and +sunset were lilac and lingering. The twilight fell in pale green, +shimmering floods of light, and as it deepened and spread the village +maidens gathered again on the river slope and sang their songs of +Lada, the Spring God. + +In the morning the sun rose in a glory of golden splendour and swam +into the limpid blue heavens. There, enthroned, it spent the many +hours of spring. Then came the Easter Festival when, according to the +legend, the sun smiled and the people exchanged red eggs as its +symbol. + +X + +On this Festival, Marina became a mother. + +That night the bear left Demid. He must surely have scented the +spring and gone into the forest to find himself a mate. + +He left late at night, after breaking down the door. It was dark. A +scarcely noticeable streak of light lay over the eastern horizon. +Somewhere afar the village maidens were singing their songs of Lada. + + + + +_A THOUSAND YEARS_ + +"LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD."--_Matthew_, ch. vii. + + +It was night time when Prince Constantine arrived at his brother's +little cabin. Young Vilyashev himself opened the door, and throughout +the brief conversation that ensued they remained in darkness--not +even a candle was lighted. Tall, lean, cadaverous, dressed in a much- +worn day suit, his cap under his arm, Constantine stonily listened to +Vilyashev's terse account of their sister's last moments. + +"She died peacefully," the young man told his brother, "and she was +quite calm to the end, for she believed in God. But she could not rid +herself of memories of the past. How could she when the present shows +such an awful contrast? Famine, scurvy, typhus, sorrow brood over the +countryside. Our old home is the hands of strangers: we ourselves are +outcasts living in a peasant's cabin. Imagine what this meant to a +delicately nurtured woman! Men are wild beasts, brother." + +"There were three of us," Constantine said with quiet bitterness-- +"you, Natalia, and myself. It is ended! I travelled here in a cattle- +truck, walking from the station on foot--and was too late for the +funeral." + +"She was buried yesterday. She knew from the first she was dying, and +would not stir a step from here." + +"Poor girl," sighed Constantine. "She had lived here all her life." + +He left abruptly without a word of farewell, and they did not meet +again until the next evening: both had spent the day wandering about +the valleys. + +At dawn the following morning Vilyashev ascended a steep hill; on the +flat summit of a tumulus that crowned it he observed an eagle tearing +a pigeon to pieces. At his approach the bird flew up into the clear, +empty sky, towards the east, emitting a low, deep, unforgettable cry +that echoed dolefully over the fragrant fields. + +From the hill and tumulus could be seen a vast panorama of meadows, +thickets, villages, and white steeples of churches. A golden sun rose +and swung slowly above the hill, gilding the horizon, the clouds, +hill-ridges, and the tumulus; steeping them in wave upon wave of +shimmering yellow light. + +Below, in wisps and long slender ribbons, a rosy mist crept over the +fields; it covered everything with the softest of warmly tinted +light. There was a morning frost, and thin sheets of ice crackled in +the dykes. An invigorating breeze stirred gently, as if but half- +awakened, and tenderly ruffled fronds of bracken, sliding softly +upward from moss and roots, tremulously caressing the sweet-smelling +grass, to sweep grandly over the hill-crest in ripples and eddies, +increasing in volume as it sped. + +The earth was throbbing: it panted like a thirsty wood-spirit. Cranes +sent their weird, mournful cries echoing over the undulating plains +and valleys; birds of passage were a-wing. It was the advent of +teeming, tumultuous, perennial spring. + +Bells tolled mournfully over the fragrant earth. Typhus, famine, +death spread like a poisonous vapour through the villages, through +the peasants' tiny cabins. The windowless huts waved the rotting +straw of their thatch in the wind as they had done five hundred years +ago, when they had been taken down every spring to be carried further +into the forests--ever eastward--to the Chuvash tribe. + +In every hut there was hunger. In every hut there was death. In every +one the fever-stricken lay under holy ikons, surrendering their souls +to the Lord in the same calm, stoical and wise spirit in which they +had lived. + +Those who survived bore the dead to the churches, and went in +consternation and dread through the fields carrying crosses and +banners. They dug trenches round the villages and sprinkled the dykes +with Holy Water; they prayed for bread and for preservation from +death, while the air resounded with the tolling of bells. + +Nevertheless, at eventide the maidens came to the tumulus arrayed in +their home-woven dresses, and sang their old, old songs, for it was +spring and the mating season for all living things. Yet they sang +alone, for their youths had been given to the Moloch of war: they had +gone to Uralsk, to Ufa, and to Archangel. Only old men were left to +plough the fields in the spring. + +Vilyashev stood dejectedly on the crest of the hill, a solitary, +lonely figure outlined darkly against the clear blue background of +sky and distance. He gazed unseeingly into space; thought and +movement alike were suspended. He was only conscious of pain. He knew +all was ended. Thus his errant forbear from the north may have stood +five hundred years ago, leaning upon his lance, a sword in his chain +girdle. + +Vilyashev pictured him with a beard like Constantine's. He had had +glory and conquest awaiting him; he strode the world a victorious +warrior! But now--little Natalya who had died of famine-typhus had +realized that they were no longer needed, neither she, nor +Constantine, nor himself! She was calling to him across the great +gulf; it was as if her words were trembling on the air, telling him +the hour had struck. The Vilyashev's power had been great; it had +been achieved by force; by force it had been overthrown, the vulture- +nest was torn to pieces. Men had become ravenous. + +The Prince descended and made his way to the river Oka, ten miles +distant, wandering all day through the fields and dales--a giant full +seven feet high, with a beard to his waist. The heavy earth clung to +his boots. At last he flung himself on to the ground, burying his +face in his hands, and lay motionless, abandoning himself to an +anxious, sorrowful reverie. + +Snow still lay on the lowlands, but the sky was warm, pellucid, +expansive. The Oka broadened out rushing in a mighty, irresistible +torrent towards its outlet, and inundating its banks. Purling brooks +danced and sang their way through the valleys. The wind breathed a +feeling of expectancy--sweet, tender, evanescent, like the day-dream +of a Russian maiden who has not yet known the secrets of love. With +delicate gossamer fingers it gently caressed the barren hill that +frowned above the Oka, uttering its gentle poignantly-stirring song +at the same time. + +Larks warbled. From all around echoed the happy cries of birds; the +vernal air thrilled and vibrated in great running arpeggios to the +wonder-music of the winds. The river alone preserved a rigid silence. + +Vilyashev brooded a long while beside the swiftly running waters; but +at sunset's approach he rose hastily, and returned to the tumulus. +The sky was wrapped in its evening shroud of deep, mysterious +darkness. Set brightly against the sombre background of the tumulus- +crowned hill stood shining silver birch trees and dark shaggy firs: +they now looked wan and spectral in the fading light. For a fleeting +moment the world glowed like a huge golden ball; then the whole +countryside was one vast vista of green, finally merging into a deep +illimitable purple. Down the valley crept the mist, trailing its +filmy veils over point and peak and ridge. The air throbbed with the +cries of geese and bitterns. The hush of the spring-time night set in +and covered the world--that hush that is more vibrant than thunder, +that gathers the forest sounds and murmurs to itself, and weaves them +all into a tense, vernal harmony. + +Prince Constantine's gaunt form struck a sharp note of discord as he +walked straight up to the tumulus. His presence breathed conflict and +stress that accorded ill with the universal peace of nature. + +He greeted his brother, and began to smoke; the light from his +cigarette illumined his eagle nose and bony brow; his quiet grey eyes +gleamed with a wintry look. + +"One longs to fly away like a bird in the spring," he murmured; then +added with a sharp change of tone; "How did Natalya die?" + +"In her right mind, thank God! But, she had lived torn by a madness +of hatred and contempt, loathing all, despising all." + +"What wonder, look around you!" cried Constantine. He hesitated a +moment then said softly: "To-morrow is the Annunciation--the +recollection of that festival made me think. Look around!" + +The tumulus stood out sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. +There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air +arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing +upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying +foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with +mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley lay +beneath--empty, boundless, a region of illimitable space. + +"Do you hear?" Constantine asked. + +"Hear what?" + +"The earth's groans." + +"Yes, it is waking. Do you hear the soft stir and shudder among the +roots of the flowers and grass? The whisper of the trees, the tremor +of leaves and fronds? It is the earth's joyful welcome to the +Spring." + +Constantine shook his head: "Not joy ... sorrow. The air is permeated +with the scent of decay. To-morrow will see the Annunciation, a great +festival, little brother, and that recollection has set me thinking. +Look round you! Everywhere are savages--men gone mad with blood and +terror. Death, famine, barbarity ride the world! Idolatry is still +rampant: to this day men believe in wood-spirits, witches and the +devil--and God, oh yes, men still believe in God! They bury their +dead when the bodies should be burnt. They seek to drive away typhus +by religious processions!" + +He laughed mockingly. + +"I stood the whole time in the train to avoid infection. But the +people do not even think of that: their one thought is bread. I +wanted to sleep through the journey; but a wretched woman, starving +before my very eyes, prevented me. She said she was going to a sister +so as to get milk to drink. She made me feel sick; she could not say +bread, meat, milk, and butter, but called them 'brud,' 'mate,' +'mulk,' and 'buzzer'. 'Ah, for a bit of buzzer--how I will ate it and +enjoy it!' she kept muttering. + +"I tell you, Vilyashev, the people are bewildered. The world is +returning to savagery. Remember the history of all times and of all +peoples--an endless repetition of schisms, deceptions, stupidity, +superstition and cannibalism--not so long ago--as late as the Thirty +Years War--there was cannibalism in Europe; human flesh was cooked +and eaten.... Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! How fine they sound! But +better for Fraternity ever to remain a mere ideal than to be +introduced by the butt-end of a rifle." + +Constantine took off his cap, and his bony forehead seemed pale and +green in the ghostly darkness of the night. His eyes were deep +sunken, and for an instant his face resembled a skull. + +"I am bewildered, brother; I feel so utterly alone! I am wretched and +disillusioned. In what does man transcend the beast?..." He turned +towards the west, and a cruel, rapacious, predatory look flitted over +his face; he took a piece of bread from his overcoat pocket and +handed it to Vilyashev: + +"Eat, brother; you are hungry." + +From the valley uprose the muffled chime of a church bell, and a low +baying of dogs could be heard round the village settlements. Great +gusts of wind swept over the earth, which shook and trembled beneath +their rush. In thin, high, piercing notes it ascended--the song of +the winds to the setting sun. + +"Listen," continued Constantine; "I was thinking of the Annunciation ... +and I had a dream. + +"The red glow of sunset was slowly fading. Around stretched huge, +slumbering, primeval forests, shadow-filled bogs, and wide green +marshes. Wolves howled mournfully through the woods and the valleys. +Carts were creaking; horses were neighing; men were shouting--this +wild race of the Ancient Russians was marching to collect tribute. +Down a forest roadway they went, from the Oka to the rivers Sozh and +Desna. + + "A Prince pitched his camp on a hill: his son lay dying with the +slowly-sinking sunlight. They prayed to the gods to spare the +princeling. They burned youths and maidens at the stake. They cast +men into the river to appease the water-spirit. They invoked the +ancient Slavic god Perun. They called on Jesus and the Mother of God. +In vain! In the terrible, lurid light of that vernal evening the +princeling died. + +"Then they slew his horse and his wife, and raised the tumulus. + +"In the Prince's suite was an Arab scholar named Ibn-Sadif. He was as +thin as an arrow, pliant as a bow, as dark as pitch, with the eyes +and nose of an eagle under his white turban. He was a wanderer over +the earth, for, learned in all else, he still sought knowledge of men +and of countries. He had gone up by the Volga to the Kama and to the +Bulgarians. Now he was wending his way with the Russians to Kiev and +Tsargrad. + +"Ibn-Sadif ascended the hill, and beheld a blazing pile. On a log of +wood lay a maiden with her left breast ripped open; flames licked her +feet. Around were sombre, bearded men with swords in their hands. An +ancient Shaman priest was circling in front of the funeral pyre and +shouting furiously. + +"Ibn-Sadif turned aside from the fire, and descended the forest +pathway to the river. + +"The sky was thickly studded with stars that shone like points of +living gold in the warm deeps of the night; the water gave back a +glittering reflection. The Arab gazed up at that vast space where the +shining constellations swam towards the bosom of the Infinite, then +down at their fantastically mirrored image in the river's depths--and +cried aloud: + +"'Woe! Woe!'" + +"In the far distance beyond the water the wolves howled. + +"At nightfall Ibn-Sadif joined the Prince who was directing the +ancient funeral rites. The Arab raised his hands to the sky; his +white garments flew round him like the wings of a bird; in a shrill, +eerie voice like an eagle's he cried to the fierce bearded men +gathered around: + +"'This night just a thousand years ago, the Archangel told the Mother +of God in Nazareth of the coming of your God, Jesus. Woe! A thousand +years ago! Can it be?' + +"Thus spoke Ibn-Sadif. None in the camp knew of the Annunciation, of +that fair, sacred day when the birds will not even build their nests +lest their labour desecrate its holiness." + +Constantine paused; then lifted his head and listened. + +"Do you hear, brother? Bells are tolling! Do you hear how the dogs +are barking?... And, just as of yore, death, famine, barbarity, +cannibalism shadow the earth. I am heart stricken!" + +The night deepened to an intense blue; a faint chill stole through +the air. Prince Constantine sat down resting his head on his stick. +Suddenly he rose: + +"It is late and cold; let us go. I am miserable, for I have lost my +faith. This reversion to savagery is horrible and bewildering. What +are we? What can we do when barbarians surround us? The loneliness +and desolation of our plight! I feel utterly lost, Vilyashev. We are +no good to anyone. Not so long ago our ancestors used to flog +peasants in the stables and abduct maidens on their wedding-nights. +How I curse them! They were wild beasts! Ibn-Sadif spoke the truth ... +a thousand years--and still the Mark of the Beast!" + +The Prince's cry was low; but deep, and wild. Vilyashev answered +quietly: + +"I have the strength of a mailed knight, Constantine. I could smash, +rend, and trample the peasants underfoot as my forebears did, but +they have wound themselves round my heart; they are like little +children!" + +They went along by the hill; the tumulus was left behind. A light +sparkling frost powdered the rich loamy earth. Through the darkness, +swimming with purple shadows, came a great continuous murmur from the +ancient forests. A pair of cranes cried softly as they roosted for +the night, and a pearl grey mist rolled down to the meadows and +enveloped them in innumerable murkyscarves. The brothers entered a +village as still as the grave. Somewhere beyond, a dog barked. Not a +sound broke the utter, solemn silence as they walked along. + +"There is typhus and barbarity in every peasant's hut," Constantine +muttered. Then he, too, lapsed into silence, listening. + +Beyond some huts on a village by-path girls' voices could be heard +singing an Annunciation hymn. In the vasts depths of silence it +sounded solemn, simple, sane. The two princes felt it to be as +immutable as the Spring with its law of birth. They remained standing +there a long while, resting first on one foot, then on the other. +Each felt that mankind's blood and energy still flowed bright and +unsullied despite the world upheaval. + +"Good! That is infinitely touching. That will not die," declared +Vilyashev. "It has come down to us through the Ages." + +"Aye," replied Prince Constantine bitterly, "wonderfully good. +Pathetically good. Abominably good!" + +From the bend in the road the girls appeared in their coloured +aprons; they passed decorously in pairs, singing: + +"Rejoice, O Virgin Mother! Blessed art Thou amongst women".... + +The earth was moist and exhaled a sweet, delicate odour of rich, +fresh vegetation. Reluctantly, at last, the two brothers resumed +their way. They heard the weird midnight-crowing of the cock. A pale +silvery moon--the last before Easter Day--rose gently in the East, +letting down its luminous web from the sky, flinging back the dark +shadows of the night. + +On reaching home, the cabin seemed damp and cold and inexpressibly +dreary--as on the day Natalya died; when the door had slammed +incessantly. The brothers went hastily to their rooms without +speaking or lighting up. Constantine lay on Natalya's bed. + +At dawn he awoke Vilyashev. + +"I am going. Goodbye! It is ended! I am going out of Russia, out of +Europe. Here, where were we born, they have called us their masters, +their fathers--carrion crows, vultures! Like the fierce Russian +tribes of old, they have let loose the hounds of destruction on +wolves and hares and men alike! Woe!... Ibn-Sadif!" + +Constantine lighted a candle on a table, and crossed the room. In the +strange blue light of dawn his livid shadow fell on the whitewashed +wall. Vilyashev was amazed; the shadow was so extraordinarily blue +and ghastly--it seemed as if his brother were dead. + + + + +OVER THE RAVINE + +I + + +The ravine was deep and dark. + +Its yellow clay slopes, overgrown with red-trunked pines, presented +craggy ridges; at the bottom flowed a brook. Above, right and left, +grew a pine forest--dark, ancient, covered with lichen and shubbery. +Overhead was a grey, heavy, low-hanging sky. + +Man seldom came to this wild and savage spot. + +The trees had in the course of time been uprooted by storms of wind +and rain, and had fallen just where they stood, strewing the earth, +rotting, emitting thick pungent odours of decaying pinewood. +Thistles, chicory, milfoil, and wormwood had flourished there for +years undisturbed, and they now covered the ground with thorny +bristles. There was a den of bears at the bottom of the ravine; many +wolves prowled through the forest. + +Over the edge of the steep, yellow slope hung a fallen pine, and for +many years its roots were exposed, raised on high in the air. They +looked like some petrified octopus stretching up its hideous +tentacles to the elements, and were already covered with lichen and +juniper. + +In the midst of these roots two great grey birds--a male and a +female--had built themselves a nest. + +They were large and grey, thickly covered by yellowish-grey and +cinnamon-coloured feathers. Their wings were short, broad, and +strong; their feet, armed with great claws, were covered with black +down. Surmounting their short, thick necks were large quadratic heads +with yellow, rapaciously curved beaks and round, fierce, heavy +looking eyes. + +The female was the smaller. Her legs were more slender and handsome, +and there was a kind of rough, heavy gracefulness in the curves of +her neck. The male was fierce and stiff; his left wing did not fold +properly; he had injured it at the time he had fought other males for +his mate. + +There was steepness on three sides of their nest. Above it was the +wide expanse of the sky. Around, about, and beneath it lay bones +washed and whitened by the rain. The nest itself was made of stones +and mud, and overspread with down. + +The female always sat in the nest. + +The male hummed to himself on the end of a root that was suspended +over the steep, alone, peering far into the distance around and below +him with his heavy, pensive eyes; perched with his head sunk deep +into his shoulders and his wings hanging heavily down. + +II + +These two great birds had met here, not far from the ravine, one +evening at twilight. + +It was spring; the snow was thawing on the slopes, whilst in the +forest and valleys it became grey and mellow; the pine-trees exhaled +a pungent odour; and the brook at the bottom of the ravine had +awakened. + +The sun already gave warmth in the daytime. The twilight was +verdurous, lingering, and resonant with life. Wolf-packs were astir, +and the males fought each other for the females. + +This spring, with the sun and the soft breeze, an unwonted heaviness +pervaded the male-bird's body. Formerly he used to fly or roost, +croak or sit silent, fly swiftly or slowly, because there were causes +both around and within him: when hungry he would find a hare, kill, +and devour it; when the sun was too hot or the wind too keen, he +would shelter from them; when he saw a crouching wolf, he would +hastily fly away from it. + +Now it was no longer so. + +It was not a sense of hunger or self-preservation now that induced +him to fly, to roost, cry, or be silent: something outside of him and +his feelings now possessed him. + +When the twilight came, as though befogged, not knowing why, he rose +from the spot on which he had perched all day and flew from glade to +glade, from crag to crag, moving his great wings softly and peering +hard into the dense, verdurous darkness. In one of the glades he saw +birds similar to himself, a female among them. Without knowing why, +he threw himself amidst them, feeling an inordinate strength within +him and a great hatred for all the other males. + +He walked slowly round the female, treading hard on the ground, +spreading out his wings, tossing back his head to look askance at the +males. One, he who until now had been victor, tried to impede him-- +then flew at him with beak prepared to strike, and a long silent, +cruel fight began. They flew at each other, beating with their bills, +chests, wings, and claws, blindly rumpling and tearing each others' +feathers and body. + +His opponent proved the weaker and drew off; then again he threw +himself towards the female and walked round her, limping a little +now, and trailing his blood-stained left wing along the ground. + +Pine-trees surrounded the glade; the earth was bestrewn with dry, +withered leaves; the night sky was blue. + +The female was indifferent to him and to all; she strode calmly about +the glade, pecked at the ground, caught a mouse and quietly swallowed +it. She appeared to pay no attention to the males. + +It was thus all night long. + +But when the night began to pale and over the east lay the greenish- +blue outline of dawn, she moved close to him who had conquered the +rest, leaned her back against his breast, tipped his injured wing +tenderly with her bill--as though she would nurse and dress it; then +slowly rising from the ground, she flew towards the ravine. + +And he, moving his injured wing painfully but without heeding it, +emitting shrill cries of joy, flew after her. + +She came down just by the roots of that pine where afterwards they +built their nest. + +The male perched beside her. He was irresolute and apparently +abashed. + +The female strutted several times round him, scenting him again. +Then, pressing her breast to the ground, tail uplifted, her eyes +half-closed--she waited. The male threw himself towards her, seized +her comb with his bill, clapping the ground with his heavy wings; and +through his veins there coursed such a wonderful ecstasy, such +invigorating joy, that he was dazzled, feeling nothing else save this +delicious rapture, croaking hoarsely and making the ravine +reverberate with a dull echo that ruffled the stillness of the early +morn. + +The female was submissive. + +III + +In the winter the pines stood motionless and their trunks were a +greyish brown. The snow lay deep, swept into great drifts which +reared in a dark pile towards the ravine. The sky was a grey stretch; +the days short and almost dim. + +At night the tree-boles cracked in the frost and their branches +broke. The pale moon shone calmly in the stillness, and seemed to +make the frost still harder. + +The nights were weirdly horrible with the frost and the +phosphorescent light of the moon; the birds sat tucked in their nest, +pressing close together to keep themselves warm. Yet still the frost +penetrated their feathers, got into their skin and made their feet, +bills, and backs feel cold. The errant light of the moon was also +disquieting; it made the whole earth appear to be a great wolfish +eye--that was why it shone so terribly! + +The birds had no sleep. + +They turned painfully in their nest, changing their position; their +large green eyes emitted a greenish light. Had they possessed the +power of thought, they would certainly have longed for the advent of +morning. + +While it was still an hour before dawn, as the moon was fading and +the first faint glimmer of daylight approaching, they began to feel +hungry; in their mouths there was a disagreeable, bitterish taste, +and from time to time their craws painfully contracted. + +When the grey morning had at last come, the male bird flew off for +his prey; he flew slowly, spreading his wings wide and rarely +flapping them, vigilantly eying the ground beneath him. He usually +hunted for hares. It was sometimes a long while before he found one; +then he rose high over the ravine and set out on a distant flight +from his nest, far away from the ravine into the vast white expanse +of snow. + +When there were no hares about, he seized young foxes and magpies, +although their flesh was unsavoury. The foxes would defend themselves +long and stubbornly, biting viciously, and they had to be attacked +cautiously and skilfully. It was necessary to strike the bill at once +into the animal's neck near its head, and, immediately clutching its +back with the talons, to rise into the air--for there the fox ceased +all resistance. + +With his prey the bird flew back to his nest by the ravine, and here +he and his mate at once devoured it. They ate but once in the day, +and so satiated themselves that they could move only with difficulty +afterwards, and their crops hung low. They even ate up the snow which +had become soaked with blood. The female threw the bones that +remained down the side of the steep. + +The male perched himself on the end of a root, ruffling his feathers +in an effort to make himself more comfortable; and the blood coursed +warmly through his veins after his meal. + +The female was sitting in the nest. + +Towards evening the male, for some unknown reason, began to croak. + +"Oo-hoo-hoo-oo!" he cried in guttural tones, as though the sound in +his throat came from across the water. + +Sometimes as he sat solitary on his height, the wolves would observe +him, and one of the famished beasts would begin clambering up the +precipitous side of the ravine. + +The female would then take fright, and flap her wings; but the male +would look down calmly with his big, glistening eyes, watching the +wolf slowly clamber, slip and fall headlong downwards, bringing a +heap of snow with it, tumbling over and over and yelping in fright. + +The twilight crept on. + +IV + +In March, as the days lengthened, the sun grew warmer; the snow +darkened and thawed; the twilight grew balmy; and the wolf-packs +stirred, while prey became more abundant, for now all the forest +denizens felt the overwhelming, entrancing throb of Spring, and +wandered through the glades, down the ravines and into the woods, +powerless under the sway of the early Spring-time langour; and it was +easy to catch them. + +The male-bird brought all his kill to his mate--he ate little +himself: only what she left him, usually the entrails, the flesh of +the thoracic muscles, the skin and the head, although she usually +pecked out the eyes as the most savoury portion. + +The sun was bright. There was a soft, gentle breeze. At the bottom of +the ravine the dark, turbulent brook rushed gurgling between the +sharp outlines of its snow-laden banks. + +It was cool. The male-bird sat roosting with his eyes closed, his +head sunk deep into his shoulders. Outwardly he bore a look of great +humility, of languishing expectation, and a droll look of guiltiness +wholly unbecoming to his natural severity. + +At dusk he grew restless. He stood up on his feet, stretched his +neck, opened wide his round eyes, spread out his wings, beating the +air with them: then closed them again. Curling up into a ball, +drawing his head into his shoulders and blinking, he croaked: + +"Oo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" The rueful cry scared the forest denizens. + +And the echo in the ravine answered back: + +"Oo-oo..." + +The twilight was green, merging into blue. The sky was spangled with +great glowing stars. The pine-trees exhaled an oily odour. In the +night-frost, the brook at the bottom of the ravine grew still. +Somewhere, caught in its current, birds were crying. Yet all was in a +state of watchful calm. + +When at length the night set in, the male stealthily and guiltily +approached the female in the nest, cautiously spreading his big, +awkward feet, which were so clumsy on the ground . . . A great and +beautiful passion urged him to the side of his mate. + +He perched beside her, smoothing her feathers with his bill, still +with that droll absurd look of guilt. The female responded to his +caresses; she was very soft and tender; but behind this tenderness +could be detected her great strength and power over the male: perhaps +she realized it herself. + +In the language of instinct, she said to her mate: + +"Yes, you may." + +The male succumbed to his passion, and she yielded to him. + +V + +It was thus for a week or ten days. + +Then at last, when the male came to her one night-time, she said: + +"No! Enough!" + +She spoke instinctively, for another time had come--the time for the +birth of her children. + +The male-bird, abashed, as though conscience-stricken at not having +divined the bidding of his mate earlier, went away from her only to +return at the end of a year. + +VI + +From Spring-time, all through the Summer until September, the male +and female were absorbed in the great, beautiful, indispensable task +of breeding their young. In September the fledgelings took wing. + +The Spring and Summer developed in their multi-coloured glory: they +burned with fiery splendour; the pine-trees glowed with a resinous +phosphorescence. There was the fragrance of wormwood. Chicory, blue- +bells, buttercups, milfoil, and cowslip blossomed and faded; prickly +thistles abounded. + +In May the nights were deeply blue. + +In June they were pale green. + +The dawn broke in a blood-red flare like a great conflagration, and +at night pale silvery mists moved along the bottom of the ravine, +washing the tops of the pines. + +At first the nest contained five grey eggs with green speckles. Then +came the little birds, big-headed, with disproportionately large +yellow mouths, their bodies covered with down. They chirruped +plaintively, stretching their long necks out from the nest, and they +ate voraciously. + +They flew in June, though as yet clumsily, piping, and awkwardly +fluttering their immature wings. + +The female was with them all the time, ruffling her feathers, +solicitous and petulant. + +The male had no power of thought and hardly any of feeling, but +within him was a sense of pride in his own work, which he carried on +with joy. His whole life was dominated with an instinct which +subjugated his will and his desires to the care of his young. + +He hunted for prey. + +He had to obtain a great deal, because both his fledglings and his +mate were voracious. He had to fly sometimes as far as the river +Kama, in order to catch seagulls, which hovered over the huge, white, +unfamiliar, many-eyed monsters that floated over the water, puffing, +and smelling strangely like forest fires--the steamers! + +He fed his fledgelings himself, tearing the meat into pieces. And he +watched attentively how, with wide open beaks, they seized the little +lumps of meat and, rolling their eyes and almost choking in the +effort, swallowed them. + +Sometimes one of the fledgelings awkwardly fell out of the nest and +rolled down the steep. Then he hastily and anxiously flew after it, +bustling and croaking as though he were grumbling; he would take it +cautiously and clumsily in his talons and carry it, a frightened +flustered atom, back to the nest. There he would smooth its feathers +with his great beak for a long time, strutting round it, standing +high on his legs, and continuing his anxious croaks. + +He dared not sleep at nights. + +He perched on the end of a root, vigilantly peering into the +darkness, guarding his nestlings and their mother from danger. The +stars were above him. At times, as though scenting the fullness and +beauty of life, he fiercely and ruefully uttered his croak--scaring +the night. + +VII + +He lived through the Winter in order to live. Through the Spring and +Summer he lived to breed. He was unable to think. He acted +instinctively, because God had so ordained it. Instinct alone guided +him. + +He lived to eat in the Winter so that he should not die. The Winters +were cold and cruel. + +In the Spring he bred. Then the blood coursed warmly through his +veins. It was calm; the sun was bright; the stars glittered; and all +the time he longed to stretch himself, to close his eyes, to smite +the air with his wings, and to croak with an unreasoning joy. + +The birdlings flew away in the autumn. The old birds and the young +bade adieu for ever with indifference. Rain came, mists swept by, the +sky hung lowering over the earth. The nights were dreary, damp and +dark. The old couple sat together in their nest, trying to cover +themselves and sleep. They froze and tossed about in discomfort. +Their eyes gleamed with greenish-yellow lights. + +Thus passed the thirteen years of their life together. + + * * * * * * * +X + +Then the male-bird died. + +His wing had been injured in youth, at the time he fought for his +mate. As the years rolled on, he found it more and more difficult to +hunt his prey: he had to fly ever farther and farther for it, and in +the nights he could get no rest because of the overwhelming pain that +shot right through the whole of his wing, and tormented him terribly. +Formerly he had not heeded the injury; now he found it grew +exceedingly grave and painful. + +He did not sleep, but let his wing hang down as though he were +thrusting it from him. And in the morning he was hardly able to use +it when he flew off after his prey. + +His mate forsook him. + +She flew away from the nest at dusk one evening in early spring. + +He sought for her all through the night--at dawn he found her with +another male, young and strong, who croaked tenderly round her. Then +the old bird felt life was over: he had lost all that made it +beautiful. He flew to fight his younger rival, but his attack was +weak and wavering. The young one rushed at him violently and +passionately, tore his body, and croaked menacingly. The female +watched the fray with indifference, as she had done many years +before. + +The old bird was beaten. + +Fluttered, blood-stained, with one eye swollen, he flew back to his +nest and painfully perched himself on the end of a root. Something +within him told him his life was at an end. He had lived in order to +eat and to breed. Now he had only to die. Instinct told him that. For +two days he sat perched above the steep, quiet, immovable, his head +sunk deep into his shoulders. + +Then, calmly, unperceivingly, he died. He fell down from the steep +and lay with his legs crooked and turned upward. + +This was during the night. The stars were brilliant. Birds were +crying in the woods and over the river. Somewhere owls hooted. + +The male-bird lay at the bottom of the ravine for five days. His body +was already decaying, and emitted a bitter, offensive odour. + +A wolf came and devoured it. + + + + +ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT + +Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, engineer, spent all day in the +quarry, laying and exploding dynamite. In the village below was a +factory, its chimneys belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped +backwards and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood +huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke +from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite +exploded with a great detonation and expulsion of smoke. + +The autumn darkness, with its sharp, acid, sweet tang, was already +falling as Agrenev proceeded homeward with the head-miner, +Eduardovich Bitska, a Lithuanian, and the lights from the engine- +house shone brightly in the distance. + +The engineer's quarters lay in a forest-clearing on the further side +of the valley; the cement structures of its small buildings stood out +in monotonous uniformity; the blue light of its torches flared and +hissed, throwing back dark shadows from the trunks and branches of +the pine-trees, which laced, interlaced, and glided dusky and +intangible between the tall straight stems, finally melting amidst +the foliage. + +His skin jacket was sticking to Agrenev's back, as, no doubt, +Bitska's was also. + +"My missus will soon be home," Bitska said cheerfully--he had +recently been married. He spoke in broken Russian, with a foreign +accent. + +In Agrenev's house it was dark. The warm glow from the torches +outside fell on the window-ledges and illuminated them, but inside +the only light was that visible through the crevices of his wife's +tightly closed door: his beloved wife--so aloof--so strange. The rain +had started, and its drip on the roof was like the sound of water- +falls: he changed, washed, took up a newspaper. The maid entered and +announced that tea was ready. + +His wife--tall, slim, beautiful, and strange--was standing by the +window, her back to him, a book in her hand; a tumbler was on the +window-sill close beside her. She did not turn round as he entered, +merely murmuring: "Have some tea." + +The electric light gave a brilliant glow. The freshly varnished +woodwork smelt of polish. She did not say another word, but returned +to her book, her delicate fingers turning over the leaves as, +standing with bent head, she read. + +"Are you going out this evening, Anna?" he asked. + +"Eh? No, I am staying in." + +"Is there anyone coming?" + +"Eh? No, nobody. Are _you_ going out?" + +"I am not sure. I am going to-morrow on Detachment duty for a week." + +"Eh? Oh yes, on Detachment." + +Always the same! No interest in him; indifferent, absorbed in other +things. How he longed to stay and talk to her, on and on, of +everything; of the utter impossibility of life without love or +sympathy, of the intensity of his own love, and the melancholy of his +evenings. But he was silent. + +"Is Asya asleep?" he inquired at last. + +"Yes, she is asleep." + +A nickel tea-pot and a solitary tumbler stood on the table with its +white cloth falling in straight folds. The ticking of the clock +sounded monotonously. + +"She does not deceive, nor betray, nor leave me," he thought; "but +she is strange, strange--and a mother!" + +II + +At last the earth was cloaked in darkness, the torches hung like +gleaming balls of fire, the pattering of the rain echoed dismally, +and above it, drowning all other sounds, was the dreary roar of the +factory. + +He sauntered through the straight-cut avenues of the park towards his +club, but near the school turned aside and went in to see Nina. They +had known each other from childhood, attending the same school, Nina +his faithful comrade and devoted slave--and ever since he had +remained for her the one and only man, for she was of those who love +but once. Since then she had been flung about Russia, striven to +retain her honour, vainly tilting against the windmills of poverty +and temptation--had failed, been broken, and now had crept back that +she might live near him. + +He walked through the school's dark corridors and knocked. + +"Come in." + +Alone, in a grey dress, plain-featured, her cheek red where it had +rested against the palm of her hand, she sat beside a little table in +the bare, simple room, a book on her lap. With a pang, Agrenev noted +her sunken eyes. But at sight of him they brightened instantly, and +she rose from her seat, putting the book aside. + +"You darling? Welcome! Is it raining?" + +"Greeting! Nina. I have just come in for a moment." + +"Take off your coat," she urged. "You will have some tea?" Her eyes +and outstretched hands both said: "Thank you, thank you." "How are +you doing?" she asked him anxiously. + +"I am bored. I can do nothing. I am utterly bored." + +She placed the tea-urn on the table in her tiny kitchen, laid some +pots of jam by her copy-book, seated him in the solitary armchair, +and bustled round, all smiles, her cheeks flushing--the spot where +she had rested her hand all the long evening still showing red,--all- +loving, all-surrendering, yet undesired. + +"You musn't wait on me like this, Nina," Agrenev protested;"... Sit +down and let us talk." + +Their hands touched caressingly, and she sat down beside him. + +"What is it, my dear?" She stroked his hand and its touch warmed her! +"What is it?" + +At times indignation overcame her at the thought of life; she wrung +her hands, spoke with hatred, and her eyes darkened in anger. At +times she fell on her knees in tears and supplication; but with +Alexander Alexandrovitch she was always tender, with the tenderness +of unrequited love. + +"What is it, darling?" + +"I am bored, Nina. She ... Anna ... does not love me; she does not +leave me, nor deceive me, but neither does she love me. I know you +love ..." + +At home four walls ... Coldness ... The miner, Bitska, making jokes +all day in the rain ... the fuse to be lighted in the quarry, the +slow igniting to be watched. Thirty years had been lived ... five- +tenths of his life ... a half ... ten-twentieths. It was like a blank +cartridge ... no kindness ... a life without feeling ... all blank ... + +The lamp seemed to go out and something warm lay over his eyes. The +palm of a hand. Nina's words were calm at first; then they grew +frantic. + +"Leave her, leave her, darling! Come to me, to me who wants you! What +if she doesn't love you? I do, I love you ..." + +He was silent. + +"You say nothing? I will give you all; you shall have everything! +Come to me, to me who will give to you so gladly! She is as dead; she +needs nothing! Do you hear? You have me ... I will take all the +suffering on myself ..." + + * * * * * * * + +The lamp streamed forth clearly again. A little grey clod of humanity +fell on to the maiden's narrow bed. + +It was so intensely dark that the blackness seemed to close in on one +like a great wall, and it was difficult to see two paces ahead. Close +to the barracks some men were bawling to the music of a mouth-organ. +Under cover of the gloom someone whistled between his fingers, +babbling insolence and nonsense. The torches glowed through the +tangled network of branches and leaves like globes of fire. + +Agrenev walked along, carrying a lantern, by the light of which he +mechanically picked his steps; close to his heels, Nina hurried +through the darkness and puddles. On every side there was the +rustling of pines, hundreds of them, their immense stems towering +upwards into obscurity. Although invisible, their presence could be +felt. The place was wild and dreary, odours of earth, moss, and pine- +sap mingled together in an overpowering perfume; it was the heart of +a vast primeval forest. Agrenev murmured as if to himself: + +"No, Nina, I do not love you. I want nothing from you.... Anna ... +her father ordered her to marry me.... Ancient blood.... Anna told me +she would never love.... Asya is growing up under her influence.... I +love my little daughter ... yet she is strange too ... she looks at +me with vacant eyes ... my daughter! I stole her mother out of a +void! I go home and lie down alone ... or I go to Anna and she +receives me with compressed lips. I do not want a daughter from you, +Nina ... Why should I? To-morrow will ... be the same as yesterday." + +By the door of his house in the engineer's quarters, he remembered +Nina, and all at once became solicitous: + +"You will catch cold, my dear. It will be terrible for you getting +back ..." + +He stood before her a moment silently; then stretched out his hand: + +"Well, the best of luck, my dear!" + +A band of youths strolled by. One of them flashed a lantern-light on +the doorway. + +"Aha! Sky-larking with the engineers! Ha! Ha! Ha!" + +They began chattering among themselves and sang in chorus a ribald +doggerel: + + + "Once upon a time a wench + Appeared before a judge's bench.." + +III + +Before he went to bed Agrenev laid out cards to play Patience, ate a +cold supper, stood a long time staring at the light from under Anna's +door, then knocked. + +"Come in." + +He entered for a moment, and found her sitting at a table with a +book, which she laid down upon an open copybook diary. When, when is +he to know what is written there? + +He spoke curtly: + +"I go to Moscow the first thing to-morrow on Detachment. Here is some +money for the housekeeping." + +"Thanks. When do you return?" + +"In a week--that is, Friday next week. Is there anything you need?" + +"No thanks." She rose, came close and kissed him on the cheek near +his lips. "A safe journey. Goodbye. Do not waken Asya." + +And she turned away, sat down at the table, and took up her book +again. + +In the early hours of the morning a horse was yoked, and Agrenev +drove with Bitska over the main road to the station. It was wet. The +sombre figures of workmen were dimly seen through the rain and +darkness, hastening to the factory. The staff drove round in a motor +as the shrill sound of the factory horn split the silence. + +Bitska in a bowler-hat, red-faced, with thin whiskers such as are +worn by the Letts, looked gravely round: + +"You have not slept, Robert Edouardovitch?" asked Agrenev. + +"No, I have not, and I am not in a good humour either." The man was +silent a moment, then burst out; "Now I am forty years, and my vife +she is eighteen. I am in vants of an earnest housekeeper. But my +vife, she is always jesting and dragging me by the--how do you call +it--the beard! And laughing and larking...." His little narrow eyes +wrinkled up into a wry smile: "Ah, the larking vench!" + + + + +THE WOLF'S RAVINE + +In childhood, as a small lad, Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev had +heard from listening to his mother's conversation how--lo and behold! +one morning at 9 o'clock Nina Kallistratovna Zamotkina had proceeded +with her daughter to Doctor Chasovnikov's flat, in order to deliver a +slap in the face to his wife for having broken up the family hearth +by a liaison with Paul Alexander Zamotkin, Nina Kallistratovna's +husband. + +The child Agrenev had vividly pictured to himself how Nina +Kallistratovna had walked, holding her daughter with one hand, an +attaché-case in the other: of course her bearing must have been +singular, as she was going to the flat to administer a slap in the +face; no doubt she had walked either in a squatting or a bandy-legged +fashion. The family hearth must have been something extremely +valuable, as she was going to deliver a slap in the face on its +account--perhaps it was some kind of stove. + +It was highly interesting--in the child's imagination--to picture +Nina Kallistratovna entering the flat, swinging back her arm, and +delivering the slap: her gait, her arms, the flat--all had a sudden +hidden and exceedingly curious meaning for the child. + +This had remained out of his childhood memories of the little town +and province, where all had seemed unusual as childhood itself. + +Now in the Wolf's Ravine Agrenev recalled this incident, and he +brooded bitterly over the certainty that no one would ever deliver a +slap in the face on his account! What vulgarity--slaps in the +face!... and a slap in the face was no solution. + +It was now autumn, and as he stood in the ravine waiting for Olya, +the cranes flew low over his head, stretching themselves out like +arrows and crying discordantly. A wintry sulphurous light overspread +the eastern sky, and the blue crest of the Vega shone out above him +tremendous and triumphant, sweeping up into the very heart of the +flaming sunset. + +On a sudden, Olya arrived, her figure darkly silhouetted an instant-- +a tiny insignificant atom--against the vastness of the hill and sky +as she stood poised on the brink of the ravine; then she clambered +down its precipitous side to Agrenev. + +Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, mining engineer and married man, +and Olya Andreevna Golovkina! + + * * * * * * * + +She was a school teacher, who, after passing through the eight +classes of her college, now resided with her aunt. She was always +known as Olya Golovkina, although she bore the ancient Russian +surname made famous in the time of Peter the Great by Senator +Golovkin. But even in the time of Peter the Great this name had sunk +into the gutter and had left in this town a street Golovkinskaya, and +in that same Golovkinskaya Street a house, by the letting of which +Olya's aunt made her living. + +Agrenev knew that the aunt--whose name he had never heard--was an old +maid, and that she had one joy--Olya. He knew she sat at her window +without a lamp throughout the evenings, waiting for Olya; and that +for this reason her niece, on leaving him, went round by the back- +way, in order to obviate suspicion. + +Nothing was ever said of the aunt in a personal way; the name was +uttered only indirectly, as though applying to a substance and not to +a human being. + +Olya was a very charming girl, of whom it was difficult to say +anything definite: such a pretty provincial maid, like a slender +willow-reed. + +The town lay over hillocks and fields and the ancient quarries, all +its energies flowing out from the factory at the further end--and a +casual conversation which occured in the spring at the beginning of +Agrenev's acquaintance with Olya was characteristic alike of the town +and of her. Agrenev had said apropos of something: + +"Balmont, Blok, Brusov, Sologub..." + +She interrupted him hastily--a slender little reed: "As a whole I +know little of foreign writers ..." + +In the town--neither in the high-school, the library, nor the +newspapers--did they know of Balmont or Blok, but Olya loved to +declaim by rote from Kozlov, and she spoke French. + +The factory lived its dark, noisy, unwholesome life sunk in poverty +beneath the surface, steeped in luxury above; the little town lived +amid the fields, scared and pressed down by the factory, but still +carrying on its own individual life. + +Beyond it, on the side away from the factory, lay the pass called the +Wolf's Ravine. On the right, close to the river, was a grove where +couples walked. They never descended to the ravine, because it was so +unpoetic, a treeless, shallow, dull, unterrifying spot. Yet it +skirted the hills, dominated the surrounding country; and people +lying flat in the channel at its summit could survey the locality for +a mile round without being seen themselves. + +Alexander Alexandrovitch was a married man. The shepherd lads tending +their herds at pasture began to notice how every evening a man on a +bicycle turned off the main road into the ravine, and how--soon +after--a girl hurried past them following in his steps, like a reed +blown in the wind. As befitted their kind, the shepherds cried out +every abomination after her. + +All the summer Olya had begged Agrenev to bring her books to read; +she did not notice, however, that he had never once brought her any! + +Then one evening, early in September, after a spell of rain which had +prevented their meeting for some days, there happened that which was +bound to happen--which happens to a maiden only once in her life. +They used always to meet at eight, but eight in September was not +like eight in June. The rain was over, but a chill, desolating, +autumnal wind remained. The sky was laden with heavy, leaden clouds; +it was cold and wretched. That evening the cranes flew southward, +gabbling in the sky. The grass in the ravine was yellow and withered. +There was sunshine there in the daytime, and Olya wore a white dress. +It was there the two of them, Agrenev and Olya, usually bade each +other adieu. + +But on that evening, Agrenev accompanied Olya to her home, and both +were absorbed by the same thought--the aunt! Was she sitting by the +window without a lamp waiting for her niece, or had she already +lighted it in order to prepare the supper? Olya hoped desperately +that her aunt would be in her usual place and the lamp unlit, so that +she could slip by into her room unseen and secretly change her +clothes. + +Not only did Olya and Alexander Alexandrovitch walk arm-in-arm but +they pressed close together, their heads bent the one to the other-- +whispering ... only of the aunt. Olya could not think of the pain or +the joy or the suffering--she was only thinking how she could pass +her aunt unnoticed; Agrenev felt cold and sickened at the thought of +a possible scandal. + +They discovered there was a light at the aunt's window, and Olya +began to tremble like a reed, whispering hoarsely--almost crying: + +"I won't go in! I won't go in!" + +But all the same she did--a willow-reed blown in the wind. Agrenev +arranged to meet her the next day in the factory office, so that he +might hear whether the aunt had created a scene or not, although he +did not admit that reason, even to himself. + +In the ravine when Olya--after yielding all--wept and clung to his +knees, Agrenev's heart had been pierced with pangs of remorse. In the +pitchblack darkness overhead the wild-geese could be heard rustling +their wings as they flew southward, scared by his cigarette--the +tenth in succession. + +"Southward, geese, southward!... But you shall go nowhere, slave, +useless among the useless!" Then he remembered that slap in the face +Nina Kallistratovna had given for her husband--nobody would give Olya +Golovkina one for him! "Olya is a useless accidental burden," he +thought. + +Then Agrenev dismissed her from his mind; and, as he bicycled from +Golovkinskaya Street through the whole length of the town, past the +factory to the engineers' quarters--there was no need to hide now it +was dark--he thought only of Olya's aunt: of how she was an old maid +with nothing else in her life but her niece, and that Olya was hiding +her tragedy from her; of how she spent the entire evenings sitting +alone by the window in the dark--assuredly not on Olya's account, but +because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town +was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the +maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life! +What tragedy lay in those evenings by the window in the darkness! + +Every morning the housemaid used to bring Alexander Alexandrovitch in +his study a cup of lukewarm coffee on a tray. Then he went out to the +factory--the rest of the household was still asleep. There he came +into contact with the workmen, and saw their hopeless, wretched, +impoverished lives; listened to Bitska's jests, and to the rumbling +of the wagonettes--identified himself with the life of the factory, +which dominated all like some fabulous brooding monster. + +During the luncheon interval he went home, washed himself, and +listened to his wife rattling spoons on the other side of the wall. +And this made up the entire substance of his life! Yes, it was +certainly interesting how Nina Kallistratovna had entered that flat, +swung back her hand--which hand had it been?--was it the one in which +she held the attaché-case or was that transferred to the other hand +first?--and delivered the smack to Madame Chasovnikova. Then there +was Olya, darling Olya Golovkina, from whom--as from them all--he +desired nothing. + +That night, when he reached home at last, his daughter came in and +made him a curtsey, saying: + +"Goodnight, daddy." + +Alexander Alexandrovitch caught her in his arms, placed her on his +knees--his beloved, his only little daughter. + +"Well, little Asya, what have you been doing?" he asked. + +"When you went out to Olya Golovkina Mummy and I played tig." + +The next morning, when Olya came into the office for business as +usual, she exclaimed joyfully: + +"My aunt has not found out anything. She opened the door for me +without lighting the lamp, and as she groped through the passage I +ran quickly past her. Then I changed my clothes and appeared at +supper as though nothing had happened!" + +A willow-reed blown by the wind! + +In the office were many telephone calls and the rattling of counting- +boards. Agrenev and Olya sat together and arranged when to meet +again. She did not want to go to the Ravine because of the shepherd +boys' rude remarks. Alexander Alexandrovitch did not tell her all was +known at home. As she said goodby she clung to him like a reed in the +wind and whispered: + +"I have been awake all night. You have noticed surely that I have not +called you by any name; I have no name for you." + +And she begged him not to forget to bring her some books. + +All that was known of the town was that it lay at the intersection of +such and such a latitude and longitude. But articles on the factory +were printed each year in the industrial magazines, and also +occasionally in the newspapers, as when the workmen struck or were +buried under a fall of limestone. The factory was run by a limited +company. Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev made out the returns for +his department; these were duly printed--not to be read, but so that +beneath them might appear the signature: "A. A. Agrenev, Engineer." +Olya only kept a report-book and the name-rolls, placing in her +reports so many marks opposite the pupil's names. + + + + +THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING + +Mammy rose in the morning just as usual during those interminable +months. I was accustomed to calling Alexander Alexandrovitch's mother +"mammy." She always wore a dark dress and carried a large white +handkerchief which she continually raised to her lips. It was bright +and cheerful in the dining-room. The tea-service stood on the table +and the samovar was boiling. The room always made me feel that we +were going away--into the country, for all the pictures had been +taken down, and a mirror that had been casually hung on the walls was +now shrouded in a linen sheet. I generally rise very early, say my +prayers, and immediately look at the newspapers. Formerly I scarcely +even thought of them and was quite indifferent to their contents; now +I cannot even imagine life without them! By the time my morning cup +of tea is brought, I have already read all the news of the world, and +I tell it to Mammy, who cannot read the papers herself. + +She has the room Alexander Alexandrovitch formerly occupied; she is +tall, always dresses in black, and there is a certain severity about +her general demeanour. This is quite natural. She invariably makes +the sign of the Cross over me, kisses me on the forehead and lips, +and then--as ever--turns quickly away, bringing her handkerchief to +her lips. I know, though, what it is that distresses her--it is that +Georgie is killed, and Alexander Alexandrovitch is still "Out there" +. . . and that I, Anna, alone am left to her of her family. + +We are always silent at tea: we generally are at all times. She asks +only a single question: + +"What is in the newspapers?" + +She always utters it in a hoarse voice, and very excitedly and +clumsily I tell her all I know. After breakfast I walk about outside +the window looking at the old factory and awaiting the postman's +arrival. + +Thus I pass my days one by one, watching for the post, for the +newspapers, enduring the mother's grief--and my own. And whenever I +wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by +a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight +head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering +from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and +wearing a white bandage. I offered him tea, but he would not take it; +pushing aside the mug and gripping my hand he said: + +"Do you know what war is? Don't laugh! bayonets ... do you +understand?"--his voice rose in a shriek--"... into bayonets ... that +is, to cut, to kill, to slaughter one another--men! They turned the +machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and +I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and, +losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer, +he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way, +and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!' +But you cannot understand.... Do not laugh!" + +He told me this, now whispering, now shrieking. He told me that I +could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those +words express all the terror of war for me--Georgie's death, +Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has +brought: they express it with such force that my temples ache with an +almost physical sense of anguish, + +"Towny, bayonet me!" How simple, how superhuman! + +I remember those words every day, especially when in the hall waiting +for the post. Alexander writes seldom and his letters are very dry, +merely telling me that he is well, that either there are no dangers +or that they have passed; he writes to us all at the same time, to +mother, to Asya, and to me. + +It was like that to-day. I was waiting for the postman. He came and +brought several letters, one of them from Alexander. I did not open +it at once, but waited for Mother. + +This is what he wrote: + +"Darling Anna, + +Yesterday and to-day (a Censor's erasure) I feel depressed and think +of you, only of you. When things are quiet and there is little doing +many a fine thing passes unobserved; I allude to the flowers, of +which I am sending you specimens. They grow quite close to the +trench, but it is difficult and dangerous to get them, as one may +easily be killed. I have seen such flowers before, but am ignorant of +their name." + +"Goodbye. My love. Forgive the 'army style'; this letter is for you +alone." + +The letter contained two of those little blue violets which spring up +directly the snow has melted. + +I handed the letter, as always, to his mother that she might read it +too; her lips began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears as she +read, but in the midst of her tears she laughed. And we both of us, I +the young woman, and Mammy the old mother, laughed and cried +simultaneously, tightly clasped in each other's arms. I had pictured +the War hitherto in the words: "Towny, bayonet me!". And now +Alexander had sent me from it--violets! Two violets that are still +unfaded. + +I had noticed before the phenomenon of the four seasons suddenly +bursting, as it were, upon the human consciousness. I remember that +happening to me in my childhood when on holiday in the country. The +summer was still in full swing, everything seemed just as usual, when +suddenly one morning, in a most ordinary gust of wind, the red-vine +leaves, then some three weeks old, were blown into my eyes, and all +at once I realized that it was autumn. My mood changed on the +instant, and I prepared to go home, back to town. + +How many years is it since I have seen the autumn, winter, or spring-- +since I felt their magic? But to-day, after a long-past summer, I +have all at once felt the call of the spring. Only to-day I have +noticed that our windows are tightly closed, that I am wearing a dark +costume, that it is already May, and that bluebells are blossoming in +the fields. I had forgotten that I was young. I remembered it to-day. + +And I know further that I have faith, that I have love--love of +Georgie and Alexander. I know too, although there is so much terror, +so much that is foolish and ugly, there is still youth, love, and the +spring--and the blue violets that grow by the trenches. + +After Mammy and I had wept and laughed in each other's embrace, I +went out alone into the fields beyond the factory--to love, to think, +to dream . . . I love Alexander Alexandrovitch for ever and ever... + + + + +THE SEAS AND HILLS + +A rainy night, trenches--not in the forest lands of Lithuania, but at +the Vindavo-Rybinsky station in Moscow itself. The train is like a +trench; voices are heard from the adjoining carriage. + +"Where do you come from?" "Yes, yes, that is so, truly! You remember +the ravine there, all rocks, and the lake below; many met their doom +there." "Let me introduce you to the Commander of the Third +Division." "Give me a light, old fellow! We are back from furlough." + +The train is going at nightfall to Rzhov, Velikiya Luki, and Polotsk. +Outside on the platform the brethren are lying at ease under benches, +drinking tea, and full of contentment. The gas-jets shine dimly in +the rain, and behind the spattered panes of glass the women's eyes +gleam like lamp-lights. There is a smell of naphthaline. + +"Where is the Commandant's carriage?" "No women allowed here! Men +only! We're for the front!" And there is a smell of leather, tar, and +leggings--a smell of men. + +"Yes, yes, you're right! Ha-ha! He is a liar, an egregious liar! No, +I bet you a beauty like that isn't going headlong into an attack!" + +There is a sound of laughing and a deep base voice speaking with +great assurance. The third bell. + +"Where's the Commandant's carriage?" "Well, goodbye!" "Ha-ha-ha-ha! +He lies, Madam, I assure you, he lies." "Bah! those new boots they +have issued have given me corns; I'll have to send them back." + +This conversation proceeded from beneath a bench and from the steps +that led to a top-compartment; the men hung up their leggings which, +though marked with fresh Government labels, were none the less +reeking with perspiration. The lamps moved along the platform and +disappeared into the night; the figures of women and stretcher- +bearers silently crept along; a sentry began to flirt with one of the +former; the rain fell slantingly, arrow-like, in the darkness. + +They reached Rzhov at midnight in the train; the men climbed out of +the windows for tea; then clambered in again with their rifles; the +carriages resounded with the rattling of canteens. It was raining +heavily and there was a sound of splashing water. The brethren in the +corridors grumbled bitterly as they inspected papers. Under the +benches there was conversation, and also garbage. + +Then morning with its rose-coloured clouds: the sky had completely +cleared; rain-drops fell from the trees; it was bright and fragrant. +Velikiya Luki, Lovat; at the station were soldiers, not a single +woman. + +The train eludes the enemy's reconnaissance. Soldiers, soldiers, +soldiers!--rifles, rifles!--canteens:--the brethren! It is no +longer Great Russia; around are pine woods, hills, lakes, and the +land is everywhere strewn with cobble-stones and pebbles--- whilst at +every little station from under fir-trees creep silent, sombre +figures, barefooted and wearing sheep-skin coats and caps--in the +summer. It is Lithuania. + +The enemy's reconnaissance is a diversion: otherwise the day is long +and dreary--all routine like a festival; already one knows + the detachment, the number of wounded, the engagements with the +enemy. Many had alighted from the train at Velikiya Luki, and nobody +had got in. We are quiet and idle all day long. + +Then towards night we reach Polotsk--the white walls of the monastery +are left behind; we come to the Dvina, and the train rumbles over a +bridge. Now we journey by night only, without a time-table or lights, +and again under a drizzling rain. The train stops without whistling +and as silently starts again. Around us all is still, as in October; +the country-side is shrouded by night. Men alight at each stop after +Polotsk; no one sits down again; and at every stop thirty miles of +narrow gauge railway lead to the trenches. What monotony after +Moscow! after the hustle and clatter of an endless day! There is the +faintest glimmer of dawn, and the eastern sky looks like a huge green +bottle. + +"Get up--we have arrived!" + +Budslav station; the roof is demolished by aeroplane bombs. Soldiers +sleep side by side in a little garden on asphalt steps beneath +crocuses. A drowsy Jew opens his bookstall on the arrival of the +train: he sells books by Chirikov, Von Vizin, and Verbitskaya. And +from the distance, with strange distinctness, comes a sound like +muffled clapping. + +"What is that?" "Must be the heavy artillery." "Where is the +Commandant?" "The Commandant is asleep!..." + +A week has passed by in the trenches, and another week has commenced. +The bustle of the first few days is over; now all is in order. In a +corner of a meadow, a little way from the front, hangs a man's body; +the head by degrees has become severed from the trunk. But I do not +see very much. We sleep in the day. + +It is June, and there is scarcely any night. I know when it is +evening by the sound of the firing; it begins from beyond the marshes +at seven o'clock. Moment after moment a bullet comes--zip--into my +dug-out: scarcely a second passes before there is another zip. The +sound of the shot itself is lost amid the general crashing of guns; +there is only the zip of the bullet as it strikes the earth or is +embedded in the beams overhead. And so on all through the night, +moment after moment, until seven in the morning. + +There are three of us in the dug-out; two are playing chess, but I am +reading--the same thing over and over again, for I am tired to death +of lying idle, of sleeping and walking. Poor indeed are men's +resources, for in three days we had exhausted all we had to say. +Yesterday a soldier who had lost his hand when scouting, came running +in to us crying wildly: + +"Bayonet me, Towny, Bayonet me!" + +Sometimes we come out at night to enjoy the fireworks. They fire on +us hoping to unnerve us, and their bullets strike--zip-zip-zip--into +our earthworks. We stand and look on as though spell-bound. Guns +belch out in the distance, a green light begins to quiver over the +whole horizon. Rockets incessantly tear their way, screaming, through +the air, amongst them some similar to those we ourselves used to send +up over the river Oka. Balls of fire burst in twain, and huge discs +emitting a hundred different deadly lights flare above us. + +Soon the rockets disappear, and from behind the frost creep three +gigantic luminous figures; at first they stretch up into the sky, +then, quivering convulsively, they fall down upon us, upon the +trenches upon our right and left. In their lurid light our uniforms +show white. Over the graves in the Lithuanian forests stand enormous +crosses--as enormous as those in Gogol's "_Dreadful Vengance_" and +now, on the hill behind us, we discern two of them, one partly +shattered and overhanging the other--a bodeful grim reminder! + +Always soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Not a single old man, not a +single woman, not a single child. For three weeks now I have not seen +a glimpse of a woman. That is what I want to speak of--the meaning of +woman. + +We were dining at a spot behind the lines, and from the other side of +the screen a woman laughed: I never heard sweeter music. I can find +no other words "sweeter music." This sister had come up from the +hospital; her dress, her veil--what a joy! She had made some remark +to the Commanding Officer: I have never heard more beautiful poetry +than those words. All that is best, most noble, most virginal--all +that is within me, all that life has bestowed is woman, woman! That +is what I wish to explain. + +I visited the staff cinema in the evening. I took a seat in a box. +When the lights were switched off, I wrote in blue pencil on the +railing in front of me: + +"I am a blonde with blue eyes. Who are you? Come, I am waiting." + +I had done a cruel thing! + +Directly I had written those words, I felt ashamed. I could not stay +in the cinema. I wandered about between the benches, went out into +the little village, walked round its chapels--every window of which +was smashed; and gathered a bunch of forget-me-nots from a ditch +by the cemetery. On returning to the crowded cinema I noticed that +the box in which I had been sitting was empty; presently an officer +entered it; sat down leisurely to enjoy the pictures; read what I had +written; and all at once became a different man. I had injected a +deadly poison, he left the box. I walked out after him. He went +straight in the direction of the chapel. Ah, I had done a cruel thing! + +I had written of a blonde with blue eyes; and I went out, saw her, +and awaited her--I who had written the message. It seemed as though +hundreds of instruments were making music within me, yet my heart was +sad and weighed down with oppresion--it felt crushed. More than +anything, more than anything in the whole world, I loved and awaited +a blonde who did not exist, to whom I would have surrendered all that +was most beautiful within me. + +I could not stay in the cinema, but crawled through the trenches. On +the hill towered the two huge crosses; sitting down beneath their +shadow, I clenched my hands, and murmured: + +"Darling, darling, darling! Beloved and tender one! I am waiting." + +Far in the distance, the green rockets soared skyward, the same as +those we used to send up over the river Oka. Then the gargantuan +fingers of a searchlight began to sweep the area, my uniform appeared +white in its gleam, and all at once a shell fell by the crosses. I +had been observed, I had become a target. + +The bullets fell zip-zip-zip into the earthworks. I lay in my bunk +and buried my head in the pillow. I felt horribly alone as I lay +there, murmuring to myself, and breathing all the tenderness I was +capable of into my words: + +"Darling, darling, darling!..." + +III + +Love! + +Can one credit the romanticists that--across the seas and hills and +years--there is so strange a thing as a single-hearted love, an all- +conquering, all-subduing, all-renovating love? + +In the train at Budslav--where the staff-officers were billeted--it +was known that Lieutenant Agrenev had such a single, overmastering, +life-long love. + +A wife--the woman, the maiden who loves only once--to whom love is +the most beautiful and only thing in life, will do heroic deeds to +get past all the Army ordinances, the enemy's reconnaissance, and +reach her beloved. To her there is but one huge heart in the world +and nothing more. + +Lieutenant Agrenev's quarters were in a distant carriage, Number 30- +35. + +The Staff Officers' train stood under cover. No one was allowed to +strike a light there. In the evening, after curtaining the windows +with blankets, the officers gathered together in the carriage of the +General Commanding the XXth Corps, to play cards and drink cognac. +Someone cynically remarked that there was a close resemblance between +life at the front and life in a monastery, in as much as in both the +chief topic of conversation was women: there was no reason, +therefore, why monks should not be sent to the front for fasting and +prayer. + +While they were playing cards, the guard, Pan Ponyatsky, came in and +spoke to the cavalry-captain Kremnev. He told him of a woman, young +and very beautiful. The captain's knees began to tremble; he sat +helplessly on the step of the carriage, and fumbled in his pocket for +a cigarette. Pan Ponyatsky warned him that he must not strike a +light. In the distance could be heard the roar of cannon, like an +approaching midnight storm. Kremnev had never felt such a throbbing +joy as he felt now, sitting on the carriage step. Pan Ponyatsky +repeated that she was a beauty, and waiting--that the captain must +not delay; and led him through the dark corridor of the train. + +The carriage smelt of men and leather; behind the doors of the +compartments echoed a sound of laughter from those who were playing +cards. The two men walked half the length of the train. + +As they passed from one waggon to another they saw the flare of a +rocket in the distance, and in its baleful green light the number of +carriage--30-35--loomed in faint outline. + +Pan Ponyatsky unlocked the door and whispered: + +"Here. Only mind, be quiet." + +The Pan closed the door after Kremnev. It was an officer's +compartment; there was a smell of perfume, and on one of the lower +bunks was a woman--sleeping. Kremnev threw off his cloak and sat down +by the sleeping figure. + +The door opened; Pan Ponyatsky thrust in his head and whispered: + +"Don't worry about her, sir; she is all right, only a little quieter +now." Then the head disappeared. + +Love! Love over the seas and hills and years! + +It had become known that a woman was to visit Agrenev, and forthwith +he was ordered away for twenty-four hours on Detachment. Who then +would ever know what guard had opened the door, what officer had +wrought the deed? Would a woman dare scream, having come where she +had no right to be? Or would she dare tell ... to a husband or a +lover? No, not to a husband, nor a lover, nor to anyone! And Pan +Ponyatsky? Why should he not earn an odd fifty roubles? Who was he to +know of love across the seas and hills? + +Yesterday, the day before, and again to-day, continuous fighting and +retreating. The staff-train moved off, but the officers went on foot. +A wide array of men, wagons, horses, cannon, ordinance. All in a vast +confusion. None could hear the rattling fire of the machine-guns and +rifles. All was lost in a torrential downpour of rain. Towards +evening there was a halt. All were eager to rest. No one noticed the +approaching dawn. Then a Russian battery commenced to thunder. They +were ordered to counter-attack. They trudged back through the rain, +no one knew why--Agrenev, Kremnev, the brethren--three women. + + + + +THE SNOW WIND + +A cruel, biting blizzard swept across the snow; over the earth moved +misty, fantastic clouds, that drifted slowly across the face of a +pale troubled moon. Towards night-fall, the wolves could be heard in +the valley, howling a summons to their leader from the spot where the +pack always assembled. + +The valley descended sharply to a hollow thickly overgrown with red +pines. Thirteen years back an unusually violent storm had swept the +vicinity, and hurled an entire pine belt to the ground. Now, under +the wide, windy sky, spread a luxuriant growth of young firs, while +little oaks, hazels, and alders here and there dotted the depression. + +Here the leader of the wolf-pack had his lair. Here for thirteen +years his mate had borne his cubs. He was already old, but huge, +strong, greedy, ferocious, and fearless, with lean legs, powerful +snapping jaws, a short, thick neck on which the hair stood up +shaggily like a short mane and terrified his younger companions. + +This great, gaunt old wolf had been leader for seven years, and with +good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and +relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his +mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout +the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms +and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but +also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived--as +every wolf must live--to hunt, to eat, and to breed. + +In winter the snow lay over the land like a dead white pall, and food +was scarce. The wolves sat round in a circle, gnashed their teeth, +and wailed long and plaintively through the night, their noses +pointed at the moon. + +Five days back, on a steep slope of the valley not far from the wolf +track to a watering place, and close to a belt of young fir-trees +surrounded by a snow-topped coppice, some men from a neighbouring +farm had set a powerful wolf-trap, above which they had thrown a dead +calf. On their nocturnal prowls the wolves discovered the carcase. +For a long time they sat round it in the grey darkness, howling +plaintively, hungrily gnashing their fangs, afraid to move nearer, +and each one timidly jostling the other forward with cruel vicious +eyes. + +At last one young wolf's hunger overcame his fear; he threw himself +on the calf with a shrill squeal, and after him rushed the rest, +whining, growling, raising their tails, bending their bony backs, +bristling the hair on their short thick necks--and into the trap fell +the leader's mate. + +They paid no attention to her, but eagerly devoured the calf, and it +was only when they had finished and cleared away all traces of the +orgy that they realised the she-wolf was trapped there for good. + +All night she howled and threw herself about, saliva falling from her +dripping jaws, her eyes rolling wildly and emitting little sparks of +green fire as she circled round and round on a clanking chain. In the +morning two farm-hands arrived, threw her on their sleigh and drove +away. + +The leader remained alone the whole day. Then, when night again +returned, he called his band together, tore one young wolf to pieces, +rushed round with lowered head and bristling hair, finally leaving +the pack and returning to his lair. The wolves submitted to his +terrible punishment, for he was their chief, who had seized power by +force, and they patiently awaited his return, thinking he had gone on +a solitary food-hunt. + +But as the night advanced and he did not come, they began to howl +their urgent summons to him, and now there was an undercurrent of +menace in their cries, the lust to kill, for the code of the wild +beasts prescribed only one penalty for the leader who deserted his +pack--death! + +II + +All through that night, and the following days and nights, the old +wolf lay immovable in his lair. At last, with drooping head, he rose +from his resting-place, stretched himself mournfully, first on his +fore-paws, then on his hind-legs, arched his back, gnashed his fangs +and licked the snow with his clotted tongue. The sky was still +shrouded in a dense, velvety darkness: the snow was hard, and +glittered like a million points of white light. The moon--a dark red +orb--was blotted over with ragged masses of inky clouds and was fast +disappearing on the right of the horizon; on the left, a crimson dawn +full of menace was slowly breaking. The snow-wind blew and whistled +overhead. Around the wolf, under a bleak sky, were fallen pines and +little fir trees cloaked with snow. + +He moved up to a lone, naked waste above the valley, emerged from the +wood, and stood with lowered head by its border, listening and +sniffing. Here the wind blew more strongly, the trees cracked and +groaned, and from the wide dark expanse of open country came a sense +of dreary emptiness and bitter cold. + +The old wolf raised his head, pointed his nose, and uttered a +prolonged howl. There was no answer. Then he sped to the watering +place and to the river, to the place where his mate had perished. + +He loped along swiftly, noiselessly, crouching on the earth, +unnoticeable but for his glistening eyes, which made him terrible to +encounter suddenly. + +From a hill by the riverside a village could be descried, its mole- +like windows already alight, and not far distant loomed the dark +silhouette of a lonely farm. + +The wolf prowled aimlessly through the quiet, snow-covered fields. +Although it was a still, dark night, the blue lights of the +approaching dawn proclaimed that March had already come. The gale +blew fiercely and bitingly, driving the snow in swirls and spirals +before it. + +All was smooth at the place where the trap had been set; there was +not a trace of the recent death, even the snow round the trap had +been flattened out. The very scent of the she-wolf had been almost +entirely blown away. The wolf again raised his head and uttered a +deep, mournful howl; the moonlight was reflected in his +expressionless eyes, which were filled with little tears, then he +lowered his head to the earth and was silent. + +A light twinkled in the farm-house windows. The wolf went towards it, +his eyes gleaming with vicious green sparks. The dogs scented him and +began a loud, terrified barking. The wolf lay in the snow and howled +back loudly. The red moon was swimming towards the horizon, and swift +murky clouds glided over it. Here by the river-side, and down at the +watering-place, in the great primeval woods and in the valleys, this +wolf had lived for thirteen years. Now his mate lay in the yard of +yonder farm-house. He howled again. A man came out into the yard and +shouted savagely, thinking a pack of wolves were approaching. + +The night passed, but the wolf still wandered aimlessly, his broad +head drooping, his ferocious eyes glaring. The moon sank, slanting +and immense, behind the horizon, the dawn-light increased, a +universal murmuring filled the air, shadowy vistas of pine-trees, +firs and frowning ravines began to open up in all directions. The +morning glow deepened into rivers and floods of delicate, +interchanging colour. Under the protean play the snow changed its +dress to lilac. The wolf withdrew to its lair. + +By the fallen pine trees where grew delicate green firs, fat, clumsy +little cubs, born earlier in the spring, played among the cones and +the belt of young spruces that guarded the entrance to their lair. + +III + +The morning came, its clear blue bringing an assurance that it was +March to those desolate places lying in lonely grandeur beneath a +smiling sky. It whispered that the winter was passed and that spring +had come. Soon the snow would melt and the sodden earth would throb +and pulse with vernal activity, and it would be impossible not to +rejoice with Nature. + +The snow thickened into a grey shining crust under the warm rays of +the sun, to deepen into blue where the shadows fell. The fir-trees, +shaggy and formidable, seemed especially verdant and welcoming to the +tide of sunlight that flowed to their feet, and lay there collected +in the little hollows about their roots. The woodpecker could be +heard amidst the pines, and daws, tomtits and bullfinches carolled +merrily as they spread their wings and preened their plumage in the +sun. The pines exhaled their pungent, resinous, exhilarating odour. + +The wolf lay under cover all day. His bed was bestrewn with decaying +foliage and overgrown with moss. He rested his head on his paws, +gazing solemnly before him with small tear-stained eyes; he lay there +motionless, feeling a great weariness and melancholy. Around him was +a thick cluster of firs overspread with snow. + +Twice the old wolf raised his head, opened his jaws wide and gave a +bitter plaintive whine; then his eyes grew dim, their ferocity died +down, and he wagged his tail like a cub, striking a thick branch a +sharp blow with it. Then again he relapsed into melancholy +immobility. + +At last, as the day declined, as the naming splendour of the dying +sun sailed majestically towards the west and sank beneath the horizon +in a glory of spilled violets and purples, and as the moon uprose, a +huge, glowing lantern of light, the old wolf for the first time +showed himself angry and restless. He emerged from his cover and +commenced a loud howling, fiercely bristling his hair; then he sat on +his hind-legs and whined as though in great pain, again, as if driven +wild by this agony, he began to scatter and gnaw at the snow. Finally +at a swift pace, and crouching, he fled into the fields, to the +neighbourhood of the farm near which the wolf-traps were laid. + +Here it was dark and cold, the snow-wind rose afresh, harsh and +violent, and the crusted snow cut the animal's feet. The last scent +of the she-wolf, which he had sniffed only the previous day, had +completely disappeared. In some remote part of the valley the pack +were howling in rage and hunger for their leader. + +Tossing himself about and howling, the old wolf rushed madly over +hill and hollow. The night passed; he dashed about the fields and +valleys, went down to the river, ran into the deep fastness of the +forest and whined ferociously, for there was nothing left for him to +do. He had lived to eat and to breed. Man, by an iron trap, had +severed him from the law; now he knew only death awaited him. + + * * * * * * * + +IV + +While it was yet quite dark, a farm-hand rose from his warm bed to go +to the village on business. He put on a wadded jacket and fur-lined +cap, lighted a pipe--the glow illuminating his pock-marked hands--and +went out into the yard. The dogs leaped round him, uttering timid +cowardly whines. He grinned, kicked them aside, and opened the gate. + +Outside darkness had descended softly from the heavens, and lovingly +overspread a tired world; greenish clouds floated through the blue- +black sea of naked space and the snow gleamed greyish blue beneath a +turbid moon. The keen snow-wind swept the ground in a fury of white +swirls. + +The man glanced up at the sky, whistled, and strode off to the +village at a brisk swinging pace. He did not mark a wolf stealing +along close by the road and running on ahead of him. But when he was +near the village he came to a sudden halt. There, on the road in +front of him, a huge, lean, much-scarred wolf sat on its hind legs by +a crossway. With hideous, baleful green eyes it watched his approach. +The man whistled, and waved his arm. The wolf did not stir: its eyes +grew dim for a moment; then lighted up again with a cruel ferocious +glare. + +The man struck a match and took a few steps forward: still the wolf +did not stir. Then the man halted, the smile left his face, and he +looked anxiously about him. All around stretched fields, the village +was yet in the distance. He made a snow-ball and flung it +ingratiatingly at the wolf. The brute remained still, only champing +its jaws and bristling the hair on its neck. + +A moment the man remained there; then turned back. He walked slowly +at first; then he began to run. Faster and faster he flew; but, as he +neared his farm, he beheld the wolf again on the road before him. It +was once more sitting on its haunches, and it licked its dripping +jaws. Now terror seized the unfortunate peasant. He shouted; then +wheeled, and ran back blindly. He shrieked wildly as he ran--mad with +fear, unaware what he was doing. There was a death-like hush over the +snow-laden earth that lay supine beneath the cloud-ridden moon. The +frenzied man alone was screaming. + +Gasping, staggering, with froth on his lips, he reached the village +at last. There stood the wolf! He dashed from the road tossing his +arms, uttering hoarse terrified cries; his cap had fallen off long +before, his hair and red scarf were streaming in the wind. Behind him +came the relentless pad, pad of the wolf; it's hot, fetid breath +scorched the nape of his neck; he could hear it snapping its jaws. He +stumbled, lurched forward, fell: as he was about to lift himself from +the deep spongy snow, the wolf leaped upon him and struck him from +behind--a short, powerful blow on the neck. + +The man fell--to rise no more! A moment, and then his horrible +choking cries had ceased. Through the vastness rang the wolf's +savage, solitary howling. + +V + +At dusk when the snow-wind was rushing through the darkness of the +night--a wild turbulent cataract of icy air--the wolf-pack gathered +together in the valley and howled. They were calling for a leader. + +The sky spread above them, wan and pallid, the wind moaned and +whistled through the feathery tops of the pine-trees. Amid the snow +the wolves sat in a circle on their haunches and howled dismally. +They were hungry and had not eaten for six days; their leader had +deserted them. He who had led them on their hunts and prowls, who +seven years back had killed their former leader and established his +own chieftainship, had now left them forlorn. + +Sitting in a circle, howling with gleaming eyes and bristling hair, +they were mournful yet vicious; like helpless slaves they did not +know what to do. Only one young wolf, a brother of the one their +leader had recently killed, strutted about independently and gnashed +his teeth, conscious of his strength and agility. In the pride of his +youthful vigour he had conceived the ambition to make himself the +leader; he certainly had no thought that this was a fatal step +entailing in the end his doom. For it is the Law of the Pack that +death is meted out to the usurper of power. He commenced to howl +proudly, but the others paid no heed, they only drooped their heads +and howled in fear and trembling. + +Gradually the dawn broke. Faint and silvery, the moon was sinking +through pale, luminous veils in the west; in the east there glowed a +fierce red light like that of a camp fire. The sky was still shrouded +in darkness, the snow glimmered a cold pallid blue in the half-light. + +The old wolf, fresh from his kill, slowly descended the valley where +his pack had gathered. At sight of his grey, gaunt form they rushed +forward to meet him, and as they ran none seemed to know what was +about to happen; they advanced fawning and cringing until the young +wolf, with a savage squeal, dared to throw himself upon the leader in +a sudden fierce attack: then they all suddenly remembered his +desertion of them, their law which demands death for its +infringement, and with glistening bared teeth they too flung +themselves upon him. He made no resistance. He died and was torn to +pieces which, with his bones, were quickly devoured. + + * * * * * * * + + VI + +The leader died seven days after the death of his mate. + +A week later, beneath a golden sun and a smiling blue sky, the snow +was melting, cleansing the earth for the breath of spring. Streamlets +became abundant, twining like shining ribbons of molten light through +the fields and valleys, the river grew swollen and turbid, becoming a +fierce impassable flood, and the little fir trees grew still more +feathery and verdant. + +The young wolf, like the old one before him, now became leader and +took a mate; she was the daughter of the old leader, and she went +into the cover to breed. + + + + +THE FOREST MANOR + + +I + +Dark, yellow snow still lay in the ravines from under which flowed +icy streamlets; on the surface it was thawing, and last year's grass +pointed up like stiff golden arrows to the cold Heavens. Here and +there, in bright sunny patches, appeared the first yellow flowers. +The sky was dull and overcast, laden with massy, leaden-coloured +clouds. + +A carrion-crow flew low over the trees and the twittering birds fell +silent. When the menace had passed they broke forth anew in +triumphant song, once more absorbed by the joy of living, + +The swelling earth gurgled happily beneath the soft kiss of the warm +humid wind, and from somewhere afar came reverberating sounds of +spring; perchance from the people in the village across the water, or +perchance from the warbling birds over the streams. + +Ivanov the forester came out on to the door-step which had already +dried, and lighted a cigarette; it burned but slowly in the moist +atmosphere of the deepening twilight. + +"It will be hot, Mitrich, thank God!" remarked the watchman, Ignat, +as he passed by with some buckets.... "Snipe will be about to-morrow, +and we will have to hunt right into Easter." + +He went into the cow-house, then returned, sat down on a step, and +rolled a cigarette. + +The pungent odour of his bad tobacco mingled with the sweet aroma of +dying foliage and melting snow. Beyond the river a church bell was +ringing for the Lenten festival, and there was a melancholy thrill in +its notes as they crossed the water. + +"That must be the seventh Gospel," said Ignat. "They will be coming +out with the candles soon." Then he added abruptly: "The river won't +reach to a man's waist in the summer and now it is like a torrent; +they have been hardly able to cross it in the long boat ... Spring, +ah!... Well, I shall certainly have to clean out my double-barrelled +gun to-day." With a business-like air he spat into a puddle and +vigorously inhaled his cigarette smoke. + +"The cranes will come down by the garden for the night, at dusk, +judging by all portents, and to-morrow we will go after the grouse," +replied Ivanov, and listened intently to the myriad sounds of +evening. + +Ignat also listened, bending his shaggy head sideways to the earth +and the sky. He caught some desired note and agreed: + +"Yes, it must be so. I can hear the beat of their wings. I am truly +thankful. At dawn to-morrow we must get out the drosky. We will go to +the Ratchinsky wood and have a look. We can get through all right by +the upper road." + +From the right of the steps, his daughter Aganka skipped gaily on to +the terrace and began beating the dust out of a sheep-skin + coat with thin brown sticks. It was cold and she commenced to dance +for warmth, singing in a shrill voice: + + "The nightingale sings + In the branches above-- + The nightingale brings + No rest to his love!" + +Ignat gave her an indulgent look; nevertheless he said sternly: +"Come, come! That is sin ... it is Lent and you singing!" + +Aganka merely laughed. + +"There is no sin now!" she retorted, turning her back to the steps +and propping up her right leg as she vigorously beat the sheepskin +coat. + +Ignat playfully threatened her--then smiled and said to Ivanov: "A +fine girl, isn't she?... She is not yet sixteen and is already a +flirt! Its no use talking to her. She won't remain in the house at +night, but must go slipping off somewhere." + +Aganka turned round sharply, tossing her head. "Well, I am not a dead +creature!" + +"You are not, my girl; indeed you are not--only hold your tongue!" + +Ivanov glanced at her. She was like a little wild fawn with her fresh +young body and sparkling eyes, always so ready to bewitch. His own +weary eyes involuntarily saddened for a moment; then he said +cheerily, in a louder tone than necessary: + +"Well, isn't that the right attitude? Isn't it the best way? Love +while you can, Aganka, have a happy time." + +"Oh, yes, let her have a happy time by all means ... it is young +blood's privilege." replied Ignat. + +The bells again rang out for the Gospel. The sky grew darker and +darker. Ravens croaked hoarsely amidst the verdant foliage of the +trees. Ignat put his ear to the ground, listening. From the distance, +from the garden, the ravines, and the pasturage came the low cries of +cranes, barely audible amid the subdued rustling of the spring. Ignat +thrust forward his bearded face, it looked at first serious and +attentive, then it grew cunning and became animated with joy. + +"The cranes have come down!" he cried in an excited whisper, as +though afraid of frightening them. Then he began to bustle about, +muttering: + +"I must grease the double-barrel...." + +Ivanov also bestirred himself. Because while tracking the cranes he +would be seeing her, Arina's image now came vividly before him-- +broad, strong, ardent, with soft sensual lips, and wearing a red +handkerchief. + +"Get the drosky out at dawn to-morrow," he ordered Ignat. "We will go +to the Ratchinsky wood. I will go there now and have a look round." + +II + +The panelled walls and the stove with its cracked tiles were only +faintly visible in the soft twilight which filled Ivanov's study. By +the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily +bestrewn with the accumulated litter of years and copiously spotted +with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, dreary nights Ivanov had +spent--a prey to loneliness. + +A heap of horse trappings--collars, straps, saddles, bridles--lay by +the large, square, bare windows. During the winter nights wolves +watched the gleam of yellow candlelight within them. Now outside was +the tranquil, genial atmosphere of Spring with all its multi-coloured +splendour. Against a deep-blue sky with an orange streak like a +pencil line drawn across the horizon, showed the sharp, knotted twigs +of the crotegus and the lilac beneath the windows. + +Ivanov lighted a candle and commenced manufacturing cartridges to +pass away the time. Lydia Constantinovna entered the room. + +"Will you have tea here or in the dining-room?" she inquired. + +Ivanov declined tea with a wave of his hand. + +All through the years of the Revolution Lydia Constantinovna had +lived in the Crimea, coming to Marin-Brod for a fortnight the +previous summer, afterwards leaving for Moscow. Now she had returned +for the Easter holidays, but not alone--the artist Mintz accompanied +her. Ivanov had never heard of him before. + +Mintz was clean-shaven and had long fair hair; he wore steel-rimmed +pince-nez over his cold grey eyes which he often took off and put on +again; when he did so his eyes changed, looking helpless and +malicious without the glasses, like those of little owlets in +daylight; his thin, shaven lips were closely compressed, and there +was often an expression of mistrust and decrepitude in his face; his +conversation and movements were noisy. + +Lydia Constantinovna had arrived with Mintz the day before at dusk; +Ivanov was not at home. They had gone for a walk in the evening, +returning only at two o'clock when dawn was just about to break, and +a cold mist hung over the earth like a soft grey veil. They were met +by barking dogs which were quickly silenced by the lash of Ignat's +whip. + +Ivanov had come home earlier, at eleven o'clock, and sat by his study +window alone, listening to the gentle sounds of night and the +ceaseless hootings of the owls in the park. Lydia Constantinovna did +not come to him, nor did he go in to her. + +It was in the daytime that Ivanov first saw the artist. Mintz was +sitting in the park on a dried turf-bench, and gazing intently at the +river. Ivanov passed him. The artist's shrunken ruffled figure had an +air of desolation and abandonment. + +The drawing-room was next to Ivanov's study. There still remained out +of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty +windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on +the walls. + +Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia +walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the +smooth, elastic bearing and graceful swing of her beautiful body that +Ivanov remembered so well. + +She raised the piano-cover and began playing a dashing bravura that +was strikingly out of place in the dismantled room, then she closed +the piano-lid with a slam. + +Aganka entered with the tea on a tray. + +Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet +floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning +pain. + +"I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues-- +disintegrating, dying, disappearing--drive me melancholy mad. The ice +has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back +the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing +with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not illustrious +lords?" + +Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: "Why not indeed! That is +a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has +never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office +and nothing more ... nothing more.... I always feel an interloper +here. This is only my second day and I am already depressed." Her +tone was sad, yet it held just a perceptible note of anger. + +"Reality and Fancy? Certainly I am an artist, for I always see the +latter, the beautiful and spiritual side," Mintz declared; and added +in an undertone: "Do you remember yesterday ... the park?" + +"Oh, yes, the park," Lydia replied in a tired, subdued tone. "They +hold the Twelfth Gospel Service to-day; when I was a young girl, how +I used to love standing in church with a candle--I felt so good. And +now I love nothing!" + +It was already quite dark in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- +golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim +walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a +leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently +to the door. Lydia Constantinovna stopped him. + +"Are you going out again, Sergius? Is it to hunt?" + +"Yes." + +Ivanov stood still and Lydia went up to him. She had dark shadows +under her eyes, and the hand of time--already bearing away her youth +and beauty--lay upon her marvellously white skin, at her lips and on +her cheeks, in faint, scarcely visible wrinkles. Ivanov noticed it +distinctly. + +"Does one hunt at night--in the dark? I did not know that," Lydia +said, repeating "I did not know...." + +"I am going to the wood." + +"I have come back here after not having seen you for months, and we +have not yet spoken a word...." + +Ivanov did not reply, but went out. His footsteps echoed through the +great house, finally dying away in the distance. The front-door +slammed, shaking the whole mansion, which was old and falling to +pieces. + +Lydia Constantinovna remained in the middle of the room, her face +turned to the door. Mintz approached, took her hand, and raised it to +his lips. + +"You must not take it to heart, Lit," he said softly and kindly. + +She freed her hand and laid it on Mintz's shoulder. + +"No, one should not take it to heart," she assented in a low voice, +"One should not.... But listen, Mintz.... How strange it all is! Once +he loved me very much, though I never loved him.... But my youth was +spent here, and now I feel unhappy.... I remember all that happened +in this drawing-room, it was the first time. If only I could have all +over again! Perhaps I should act differently then. I feel sorry now +for my youth and inexperience, though formerly I cursed them, and I +am far from regretting all that followed afterwards. But I need a +refuge now.... If you only knew how much he loved me in those +days!..." + +Lydia Constantinovna was silent a moment, her head bent, then +flinging it back she gave a hollow sardonic laugh. + +"Oh, what nonsense I talk! Well, we will be cheerful yet. I am tired, +that is all. How stuffy it is in here!... Open the windows, Mintz ... +Now let down the blinds ... They live on milk and black bread here +and are happy--but I have a bottle of brandy in my trunk. Get it out! +Light the chandelier." + +Mintz opened the windows. From outside came a cool, refreshing breeze +laden with the moist and fragrant perfumes of spring. Dusk had crept +over the sky, which was flecked with warm vernal clouds. + +III + +The heavens were a glorious, triumphant, impenetrable blue; there was +a faint glimmer of greenish light on the Western horizon over which +brooded damp low clouds. The air was humid, soft, and redolent with +the aroma of earth and melting snow. From all around came a faint +medley of echoing sounds.... The wind fell completely, not a tree +stirred; the ferns stood motionless with all the magic of the +springtime among their roots. So calm and still was the night, the +earth herself, it seemed, stopped turning in that wonderful +stillness. + +Ivanov lighted a cigarette, and as the match flared between his +fingers, illuminating his black beard, his trembling hands were +distinctly visible. His pointer Gek came out of the darkness and +fawned round his legs. + +Through the darkness of the windless night rang the church bell +tolling for the last Gospel Service; it seemed to peal just outside +the manor. The yard was silent, but once or twice Aganka's voice +could be heard from the cattle-shed calling to the cows, and the +sound of milk falling into her pail was faintly audible. + +Ivanov listened to the church chimes and the subdued sounds of night +round the manor, then noiselessly, well accustomed to the obscurity, +he descended the steps; only Gek was at his side, the other dogs did +not hear him. + +Cold raindrops fell from the trees in tiny shining globules of +iridescent light, close by him an owl fluttered in a tangle of +branches, uttering its dreadful cry of joy as it flashed past. + +Ivanov walked through the fields, descended by a chalky ribbon of a +footpath to the ravine, crossed over it by a narrow shadow-dappled +pathway hidden among a maze of trees, and made his way along its +further ridge to a forest watch-house. It stood in a bare open space, +exposed to the swift rushing Dance of the Winds, and close to the +naked trunks of three ancient pines that still reared their grim, +shaggy heads to the sky and spilled their pungent balsam perfumes +into the air. Behind it loomed the faint grey shadow of an +embankment. + +A dog at the watch-house began to bark. Gek growled in return and +suddenly disappeared. The dogs became silent. A man appeared on the +step with a lantern. + +"Who is there?" he asked quietly. + +"It is I," said Ivanov. + +"You, Sergius Mitrich?... Aha! But Arina is still at church ... went +off there ... busy with her nonsense." The watchman paused. "Shall I +go in and turn off the light? The express will soon be passing. Will +you come in? Arina will be back before long. The wife's at home." + +"No, I'm going into the forest." + +"As you wish." The watchman passed along the embankment with his +lantern and approached the bridge. + +Ivanov left the watch-house, and went into the forest, walking along +the edge of the ravine towards the river slope. A train rushed out +from the forest on the further side of the river, its flaming eyes +reflected in the dark shiny water; it moved forward, rolling loudly +and harshly over the bridge. + +It was that hour of spring-time when, despite the many noises, there +was still an atmosphere of peace, and the burgeoning, luxuriantly- +clad earth could almost be heard breathing as it absorbed the vernal +moisture; the clash of the stream as it struck the rocks in the +ravine was hushed for the night. Nevertheless it seemed as though the +bold-browed, rugged wood-demon--awakened by spring--was shaking his +wings in the water. + +Beyond the ravine and wood, beyond the river to the right, left, +behind, and before, the birds still chirruped over the currents. +Below, not many steps away, the stream flowed almost noiselessly; +only, as though immeasurably remote the confused gurgle of its waters +broke the profound quiet. Far away rose a soft murmur. The air hummed +and shook with the roar of distant rapids. + +Ivanov leaned against a birch tree, laid his rifle beside him, struck +a match and began to smoke. The flickering light illuminated the +white trunks of the trees, the withered herbage of last year's growth +and a path leading down the embankment. Arina had descended it many +times. + +The church bells in the village were ringing for evensong. From the +church precincts twinkled the yellow lights of candles and lanterns, +then there was the hum of people's voices. Many of the lights +dispersed to the right and left, others moved down to the river side. +There was the sound of foot-falls on the bottom of a boat and the +splashing of oars. Someone called out: + +"Wai ... ait ... Mitri ... ich!" + +There was a clanking of iron--a boat-chain; then stillness. Only the +lights showed that the boat had been launched into the middle of the +river and was floating down stream. Soon the murmur of voices again, +and the plash of oars, and now these sounds were quite close to +Ivanov. One of the men was teasing the girls, the latter laughed at +first, then all at once they were silent. + +The boat was made fast to the bridge, the passengers bustling about +for a long time on landing. The ferryman collected his paper roubles, +the men continued merry-making with the girls. Their rugged forms-- +their chest, knees and chins were clearly discernible in the lights +they carried. They all strolled up a narrow pathway, but one light +withdrew from the rest and moved along a short cut that led to the +watch-house--it was Arina's. Ivanov held Gek in tightly, the dog was +straining to rush down the embankment. + +Arina slowly ascended the steep incline, planting her broad, short +heavily-shod feet firmly in the sticky mud; her breath came +pantingly. She wore a red jacket, unbuttoned in the front through +which her large bosom was visible in the lantern-light. The +reflection shone upon her bent face, illuminating her lips, her +bluish cheek-bones and dark arched brows; only her eyes were +invisible in the darkness, and their cavities seemed enormous. The +night's density gave way before the light of her lantern and the +silvery trunks of birch trees glimmered ahead. + +Ivanov crossed the road in front of her. Arina stopped with a sudden +gasp, and he felt the touch of her warm breath. + +"How you scared me!" she exclaimed quickly, stretching out her hand. +"How are you? I have been at the church service. How you scared me!" + +Ivanov was about to draw her hand towards him, but she withdrew it, +saying sternly: "No, you musn't, I'm in a hurry to get home, I have +no time. Let me go." + +Ivanov smiled faintly, and dropped her hands. + +"All right, it does not matter, I will come to-morrow at dusk." Then +in a low voice he added: "Will you come?" + +Arina moved closer to him, and she too spoke under her breath: "Yes, +come this way. And we will have a walk ... Bother my father! But go +now, I am in a hurry ... there is the house to put straight.... I +feel the baby under my heart. Go!" + +The first warm rain drops fell from the invisible sky as Ivanov +walked across the meadows; at first they were sparse, pattering +noisily on his leather jacket; then they began to fall more heavily +and he was soon enveloped in the sonorous downpour of a vernal +shower. Close to the manor Gek darted aside and disappeared down the +ravine, from whence arose the rustling of wings, and the perturbed +cries of cranes. Gek barked, some dogs on a neighbouring farm +answered him; to these, others responded from a distant village, and +then again, from far away there was borne over the earth the clear +springtime baying of other dogs. + +On entering the main avenue of the park, Ivanov noticed the glow of a +cigarette suddenly disappearing down a side-walk; afterwards he +encountered Aganka at a gate. + +"You!" he exclaimed. "On the run as usual? So you have made friends +with a smoker this time?" + +The girl giggled loudly and ran off, splashing through the mud +towards the cow-shed; then she called out innocently: + +"I have put the milk by the window in your study." + +Ivanov lingered a while on the doorstep scraping the mud off his +boots, then stretched himself vigorously, working the muscles of his +arms and reflecting that it was high time for him to be in bed, in a +sound healthy sleep, so as to be up at dawn on the morrow. + +IV + +In the drawing-room a chandelier hung above the sofa and round table +near the piano; it had not been lighted for many years, indeed not +since the last Christmas before the Revolution. Now once again it was +illumined, and the dull yellow flare of its candles--dimly shining +out of their dust-laden pendants--lit up the near side of the room +and its contents; at the further side, however, where doors led into +the hall and a sittingroom, there was a complete wreckage. The +chairs, armchairs, and couches had vanished through the agency of +unknown hands, leaving only fragments of broken furniture, and odds +and ends of utensils heaped together in casual profusion in a dark +corner, only penetrated by grey, ghostlike shadows. The curtains were +closely drawn; outside the rain pattered drearily on the windows. + +Lydia Constantinovna played a long while on the piano, at first a +bravura from the operas, then some classical pieces, Liszt's "Twelfth +Rhapsody," and finally ended with the artless music of Oppel's "A +Summer's Night in Berezovka"--a piece she used to play to Ivanov when +she was his fiancée. + +She played it through twice; then broke off abruptly, rising from her +seat and shaking with gusts of malicious laughter. Still laughing +loudly and evilly, she began to sip brandy out of a high narrow +glass. + +Her eyes were still beautiful, with the beauty of lakes in autumn +when the trees are shedding their leaves. She seated herself on the +sofa, and lay back among its cushions, her hands clasped behind her +head, in an attitude of utter abandonment. Her legs in their open- +work stockings were plainly visible under her black silk skirt, and +she crossed them, leisurely placing her feet, encased in their patent +leather shoes, upon a low footstool. + +She drank a great deal of brandy in slow sips, and as she pressed her +beautiful lips to the glass she vilified everybody and everything-- +Ivanov, the Revolution, Moscow, the Crimea, Marin-Brod, Mintz, and +herself. + +Then she became silent, her eyes grew dull, she began to speak +quietly and sadly, with a foolish helpless smile. + +Mintz was drinking and pacing up and down the room, speaking volubly +with noisy derision. The brandy flowed through his veins, warming his +sluggish blood; his thoughts grew vivid and spiteful, engendering +sarcastic, malicious remarks. Whenever he took a drink, he removed +his pince-nez for a moment, and his eyes became evil, vacant and +bemused. + +Lydia Constantinovna sat in the corner of the sofa, covered her +shoulders with a plaid shawl, and crossed her legs in the Turkish +fashion. + +"What a smell of chipre there is, Mintz," she murmured in a low +voice. "I think I must be tipsy. Yes, I must be. When I drink a great +deal I always begin to think there are too many perfumes about. They +suffocate me, I get their taste in my mouth, they sing in my ears and +I feel ill.... What a smell of chipre ... it is my favourite perfume: +do you smell it?" + +She looked at Mintz with a half dazed stare, then continued: + +"In an hour's time I shall be having hysterics. It is always the way +when I drink too much. I don't feel cheerful any longer, I feel +melancholy now, Mintz. I feel now as though ... as though I have wept +on this sofa all through the night ... Oh, how happy we used to be +once upon a time," she sighed tearfully, then added with a giggle. +"Why I hardly know what I am saying!" + +Mintz was walking up and down the room, measuring his steps extremely +carefully. He halted in front of Lydia Constantinovna, removed his +glasses and scowled: + +"But I, when I drink, I begin to see things with extraordinary +clearness: I see that we are melancholy because the devil only knows +why or for what we are living; I see that life is impossible without +faith; that our hearts and minds are exhausted with the endless +discussions in cafes, attics and promenades. I realise that no matter +what happens, villainy will always exist. I see, too, that we have +been drinking because we feel lonely and dull--yes, even though we +have been joking and laughing boisterously; I see that there is now +the great joy and beauty of spring outside--so different from the +distorted images visible to warped minds and clouded eyes; I see, +moreover, that the Revolution has passed us by after throwing us +aside, even though the New Economic Policy may put on us our feet +again for a while, and that ... that ..." Mintz did not finish, but +turned round abruptly and strode away with an air of self-assertion, +into the remote end of the room, where the debris was littered. + +"Yes, that is true ... you are right," answered Lydia Constantinovna. +"But then I do not love Sergius, I never have done." + +"Of course I am right," Mintz retorted severely from his dim corner. +"People never love others. They love themselves--through others." + +Ivanov came in from the hall in his cap and muddy boots, carrying his +rifle. Without a single word he passed through the room and went into +his study. Mintz watched him in severe silence, then followed him. +Inside he leaned against the door-post with a wry smile: + +"You are shunning me all this time. Why?" + +"You imagine it," returned Ivanov. + +He lighted a candle on his desk, took off his coat, changed his boots +and clothes, hung up his rifle. + +"That is ridiculous!" Mintz replied coldly. "I very seldom imagine +things. I want to say how very comfortable you seem here, because +this is the very essence of comfort.... Look at me! I have painted +pictures, sold them, painted more in order to sell those also--though +I ceased painting long ago--and I lived in garrets because I must +have light, and by myself because my wife will not come to such a +place.... True, she is no longer with me, she deserted me long ago! +Now I have only mistresses.... And I envy you because ... because it +is very cold in garrets.... You understand me?" + +Mintz took off his pince-nez and his eyes looked bewildered and +malignant: "In the name of all who had been tortured, all who have +exchanged the springtime beauty of the parks for the erotic +atmosphere of boudoirs; all who in the soft luxury of their homes +forgot, and have now lost their claim on Russia--I say you are +supremely comfortable, and we envy you! One may work here, one may +even ... marry ... You have never painted, have you?" + +"No." + +Mintz was silent, then suddenly said in a low tone: "Look here! We +have some brandy. Shall we have a drink?" + +"No, thank you. I want to sleep. Good night." + +"I want to talk!" + +Ivanov extinguished the candle, through custom finding his bread and +milk in the dark, and hastily consumed it without sitting down. Mintz +stood a moment by the door; then went out, slamming it behind him. + +Lydia Constantinovna now had her feet on the carpet and her head was +bowed. Her eyes under their long lashes were blank and limpid, like +lakes amid reeds. Her hands were clasped round her knees. + +"How was Sergius?" she enquired, without raising her head. + +"Boorish, he has gone to bed," answered Mintz. + +He was about to sit beside her, but she rose, arranged her hair +mechanically, and smiled faintly and tenderly--not at Mintz, but into +the empty space. + +"To bed? Well, it is time. Good rest!" she said softly. "Ah, how the +perfume torments me. I feel giddy." + +She went to the other end of the room, Mintz following her, and +halted on the threshold. In the stillness of the night the pattering +rain could be heard distinctly. Lydia Constantinovna leaned against +the white door, throwing back her head, and began to speak; avoiding +Mintz's eyes, she endeavoured to express herself simply and clearly, +but the words seemed dry as they fell from her lips: + +"I am very tired, Mintz, I am going to bed at once. You go too. +Goodbye until tomorrow. We shall not meet again to-night. Do you +understand, Mintz? It is my wish." + +Mintz stood still, his legs wide apart, his arms akimbo, his head +hanging. Then with a sad, submissive smile he answered in an +unexpectedly mild tone: "Very well, then, All right, I understand +you. It is quite all right." + +Lydia Constantinovna stretched out her hand, speaking in the +unaffected, friendly way she had desired earlier: "I know you are a +malicious, bored, lonely cynic, like ... like an old homeless dog ... +But you are kind and intelligent.... You know I will never leave you-- +we are so.... But now I am going in to him ... just for the last +time." + +Mintz kissed her hand without speaking, then his tall, bony, somewhat +stooping figure disappeared down the corridor. + +V + +Lydia Constantinovna's bedroom was cold and gloomy. As formerly, it +contained a huge four-poster, a chest of drawers, a dressing table +and a wardrobe. The rain beat fiercely against the window panes +running down in tiny glass globules. + +Lydia lighted two candles, and placed them beside the tarnished +mirror. Some toilette belongings, relics of her childhood, lay on the +chest-of-drawers, and the contents of the baggage she had brought +with her the previous day were scattered about the room. The candles +burnt dimly, their yellow tongues flickering unsteadily over the +tarnished mirror. + +She changed her garments and put on a loose green neglige, then re- +arranged her hair into plaits, forming them into a coronet which made +her head appear very small and graceful. + +From force of habit she opened a bottle of perfume, moistened the +palms of her hands and rubbed them over her neck and bosom. At once +she felt giddy, even the cold, dampish sheets on her bed seemed to +smell of chipre. + +Lydia sat down on the edge of her bed in her green negligé, listening +to the sounds around her. Outside, there was a continuous howling and +barking of dogs, now and then she could distinguish the croaking of +half-awakened crows in the park. + +The clock struck eleven, then half-past, someone passed along the +corridor, Aganka cleared up in the dining-room, Mintz walked to and +fro in the drawing-room, then all became quiet. + +Lydia Constantinovna went to the window and gazed out for a long +time. Then, quietly, she left her bedroom and crept down to Ivanov's +study. All around her it was dark, cold and silent as she passed +through the empty, spacious rooms. A forgotten candle still burnt +wanly in the drawing-room, and a rat ran out from under the table. + +She was again plunged in darkness when she entered Ivanov's study, +and she was greeted by a smell of horse trappings and joiners' glue. + +Ivanov was asleep on the sofa. He lay on his back, his arms extended; +the outlines of his body could just be discerned. Lydia sat down +quietly beside him and laid her hand on his breast. Ivanov sighed, +drew in his arms and raised his head quickly from the pillow: + +"Who is there?" + +"It is I, Sergius--me--Lida," answered Lydia Constantinovna in a +rapid whisper. "I know you do not wish to speak to me. I am bored ... +I returned here in a happy mood, not even thinking of you, and now +all at once I feel wretched.... Oh, those perfumes! How they torment +me...." She passed her hand over her face, then was silent. Ivanov +sat up. + +"What is the matter Lida? What do you want?" he asked drowsily, and +he lighted a cigarette. The light shone on them as they sat half- +dressed on the sofa. Ivanov had a rugged, lumbering look. + +"What do I want?" Lydia Constantinovna murmured. "Age creeps on me, +Sergius, and a lonely old age is terrible ... I feel so weary.... I +came here happy enough, now I am miserable. I can think of nothing +but the time you and I spent here together ... I am always playing" A +Summer's Night in Berezovka "--do you remember? I used to play it to +you in those days.... Well, so there you see.... Age creeps on and I +am longing for a home.... To-day they had the Twelfth Gospel +Service.... Surely we still have a word for each other?" Her face +clouded in sudden doubt. "You have been with Arina then?" she +questioned sharply. + +Ivanov did not answer immediately. + +"I have grieved and worried greatly, Lida," he said at last, "but +that does not matter. These four years I have lived alone, and have +placed the past behind me. It is gone for ever. These four years I +have struggled against death, and struggled for my daily bread. You +know nothing of all this, we are as strangers.... Yes, I have been +with Arina. Soon I shall have a son. I do not know if I am broken or +merely tired, but for the moment I feel all right. I am going to +bring Arina here, she will be my wife and keep house for me. And I +shall live.... I am keeping step with some elemental Force . . . I +shall have a son.... It will be a totally different life for me, +Lida." + +"And for me Moscow--as ever--wine, theatres, cafes, Mintz, an eternal +hurly-burly ... I am sick of it!" + +"I cannot help you, Lida. I too am sick of all that, but now I am at +peace. We must all work out our own salvation." + +Ivanov spoke very quietly and simply. Lydia Constantinovna sat bowed +and motionless, as if fearing to move, clasping her knees with both +hands. When Ivanov ceased speaking she rose noiselessly and went +towards the door. She stood on the threshold a brief moment then, +went out. The candle still burnt fitfully in the drawing-room. The +house was wrapt in silence. + + + + +THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE + +Ivan Koloturov, President of the Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor, +had ploughed his tiny holding for twenty years. He always rose before +dawn and worked--dug, harrowed, threshed, planed, repaired--with his +huge, strong, pock-marked hands; he could only use his muscular +strength. + +On rising in the morning, he prepared his hash of potatoes and bread, +and went out of the hut to work--on the land, with cattle, with wood, +stone and iron. He was honest, careful, and laborious. While still a +lad of five he had, while driving from the station, helped a stranger +in a mechanic's overalls to a seat; the man had told him all were +equal in the sight of God, that the land belonged to the peasants, +that the proprieters had stolen it from them, and that a time would +come when he would have to "do things." + +Ivan Koloturov did not understand what he would have to do, but when +the fierce wave of the Revolution broke over the country and swept +into the Steppe, he was the first to rise to "do things." Now he felt +disillusioned. He had wanted to do everything honestly, but he was +only able to work with his hands and muscles. + +They elected him to the County Committee. He was accustomed to rise +before dawn and set to work immediately. Now he was not permitted to +do anything before ten o'clock. At ten he went to the Committee +where, with the greatest difficulty, he put his name to papers--but +this was not work: papers came in and went out independently of him. +He did not understand their purport, he only signed them. + +He wanted to do something! In the spring he went home to the plough. +He had been elected in the Autumn, President of the Committee of the +Poor, and he established himself in Prince Prozorovsky's domain, +putting on his soldier brother's great coat and carrying a revolver +in his belt. + +He went home in the evening. His wife met him sullenly, jerking her +elbows as she prepared some mash. The children were sitting on the +stove, some little pigs grunted in a corner. There was a strong smell +of burning wood. + +"You won't care to eat with us now after the Barin's meal," nagged +the old woman. "You are a Barin yourself now. Ha, ha!" + +Ivan remained silent, sitting down on a bench beneath the Ikon. + +"So you mix with rascals now," she persisted, "yes, that is what they +are, Ivan Koloturov. Discontented rascals!" + +"Peace, fool! You don't understand. Be quiet, I say!" + +"You are ashamed of me, so you are hiding." + +"We will live there together--soon." + +"Not I! I will not go there." + +"Idiot!" + +"Ah, you have already learnt to snarl," the old woman jibed. "Ate +your mash then! But perhaps you don't relish it after your Barin's +pork." + +She was right, he had already eaten--pork, and she had guessed it. +Ivan began to puff. "You are an idiot, I tell you," he growled. + +He had come home to have a business talk about their affairs, but he +left without settling anything. The old woman's sharp tongue had +stung him in a tender spot. It was true that all the respectable +peasants had stood aside, and only those who had nothing to lose had +joined the Committee. + +Ivan passed through the village. As he walked across the park, he saw +a light burning in the stables and went over to discover the reason. +He found some lads had assembled there and were playing cards and +smoking. He watched them awhile, frowningly. + +"This is stupid! You will set the place alight," he grumbled. + +"What if we do?" the men answered sulkily. "It is for you to defend +other people's property?" + +"Not other peoples'--ours!" he retorted, then turned away. + +"Ivan!" they shouted after him; "have you the wine-cellar key? There +are spirits in there--if you don't give it to us, we shall break +in...." + +The house was dark and silent. The huge, spacious apartments seemed +strange, terrible. The Prince still occupied the drawing-room. Ivan +entered his office--formerly the dining-room--and lighted a lamp. He +went down on his knees and began to pick up the clods of earth that +lay on the floor; he threw them out of the window, then fetched a +brush and swept up. He could not understand why gentlemen's boots did +not leave a trail of dirt behind them. + +Then he went into the drawing-room and served the final notice on the +Prince while the men were accommodating themselves in the kitchen. +Then he joined them, lying down on a form without undressing. After a +long time he fell asleep. + +He awoke the next morning while all were still sleeping, rose and +walked round the manor. The lads were still playing cards in the +stable. + +"Why aren't you asleep?" one of them asked him. + +"I have had all I want," he replied. He called the cow-herd. The man +came out, stood still, scratched his head, and swore angrily-- +indignant at being aroused. + +"Don't meddle in other people's affairs," he grunted. "I know when to +wake." + +The dawn was fine, clear and chilly. A light appeared in the drawing- +room, and Ivan saw the Prince go out, cross the terrace and depart +into the Steppe. + +At ten o'clock, the President entered the office, and set about what +was, in his opinion, a torturous, useless business--the making out an +inventory of the wheat and rye in each peasant's possession. It was +useless because he knew, as did everyone in the village, how much +each man had; it was torturous because it entailed such a great deal +of writing. + +Prince Prozorovsky had risen at daybreak. The sun glared fiercely +over the bare autumn-swept park and into the drawing-room windows. +The wedding cry of the ravens echoed through the autumnal stillness +that hung broodingly over the Steppe. + +On such a dazzling golden day as this, the Prince's ancestors had set +off with their blood-hounds in by-gone days. In this house a whole +generation had lived--now the old family was forced to leave it--for +ever! + +A red notice--"The Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor"--had been +affixed to the front door the previous evening, and the intruders had +bustled all night arranging something in the hall. The drawing-room +had not so far been touched; the gilt backs of books still glittered +from behind glass cases in the study. Oh books! Will not your poison +and your delights still abide? + +Prince Prozorovsky went out into the fields; they were barren but for +dead rye-stalks that stuck up starkly from the earth. Wolves were +already on the trail. He wandered all day long, drank the last wine +of autumn and listened to the ravens' wedding cries. + +When he had beheld this bird's carnival as a child, he had clapped +his hands, crying: "Hurrah for my wedding! Hurrah for my wedding!" He +had never had a wedding. Now his days were numbered. He had lived for +love. He had known many affections, had felt bitter pangs. He had +tasted the poison of the Moscow streets, of books and of women; had +been touched by the autumnal sadness of Bielokonsky, where he always +stayed in the autumn. Now he knew grief! + +He walked aimlessly through the trackless fields and down into +hollows; the aspens glowed in a purple hue around him; on a hill +behind him the old white house stood amid the lilac shrubbery of a +decaying park. The crystal clear, vast, blue vista was immeasurably +distant. + +The hair on his temples was already growing thin and gray--there was +no stopping, no returning! + +He met a peasant, a rough, plain man in a sheep-skin jacket, driving +a cart laden with sacks. The man took off his cap and stopped his +horse, to make way for the ... _gentleman_. + +"Good morning, little Father," he wheezed, then addressed his beast, +pulled the reins, drove on, then stopped again and called out: + +"Listen, Barin, I want to tell you...." + +The Prince turned round and looked at the man. The peasant was old, +his face was covered with hair and wrinkles. + +"What will your Excellency do now?" + +"That is difficult to say," replied the Prince. + +"When will you go?" the old man asked. "Those Committees of the Poor +are taking away the corn. There are no matches, no manufacturers, and +I am burning splinters for light.... They say no corn is to be +sold.... Listen, Barin, I will take some secretly to the station. +People are coming from Moscow ... and ... and ... about thirty five +of them ... thirty five I tell you!... But then, what will there be +to buy with the proceeds?... Well, well! It is a great time all the +same ... a great time, Barin! Have a smoke, your Excellency." + +Prozorovsky refused the proffered pipe, and rolled himself a small +cigar of an inferior brand. Around was the Steppe. No one saw, no one +knew of the peasant's compassion. The prince shook hands with him, +turned sharply on his heel and went home. + +The cold, clear, glassy water in the park lake was blue and limpid, +for it was still too early for it to freeze all over. The sun was now +sinking towards the west in an ocean of ruddy gold and amethyst. + +Prince Prozorovsky entered his study, sat down at the desk and drew +out a drawer full of letters. No! he could not take all his life away +with him: He laid the drawer on the desk, then went into the drawing- +room. A jug of milk and some bread stood on an album-table. The +Prince lighted the fire, burnt some papers, and stood by the +mantelpiece drinking his milk and eating the bread, for he had grown +hungry during the day.... The milk was sour, the bread stale. + +Already the room was filling with the dim shadows of evening, a +purplish mist hung outside; the fire burnt with a bright yellow +flame. + +Heavy footsteps echoed through the silence of the corridor, and Ivan +Koloturov appeared in the doorway. Koloturov! As young lads they had +played together, Ivan had developed into a sober, sensible, thrifty, +and industrious peasant. Standing in the middle of the room, the +President silently handed the Prince his paper--it had taken him a +whole hour to type it out. + +On the sheet was typed "To the Barin Prozorovsky. The Bielokonsky +Committee of the Poor order you to withdraw from the Soviet Estate of +Bielokonsky and from the district precincts. President Koloturov." + +"Very well," said the Prince quietly; "I will go this evening." + +"You will take no horse." + +"I will go on foot." + +"As you like," Koloturov replied. "You will take nothing with you." +He turned round, stood a moment with his back to the Prince, then +went out of the room. + +At that instant, a clock struck three quarters of the hour. It was +the work of Kuvaldin, the eighteenth century master. It had been in +the Moscow Kremlin and had afterwards travelled through the Caucasus +with the Vadkovsky Princes. How many times had its ticking sounded +during the course of those centuries. + +Prozorovsky sat down by the window and looked out at the neglected +park. He remained there for about an hour, leaning his arms on the +marble sill, thinking, remembering. His reflections were interrupted +by Koloturov. The peasant came in silently with two of his men and +passed through into the office. They endeavoured silently to lift a +writing-table. Something cracked. + +The Prince rose and put on his big grey overcoat, a felt hat, and +went out. He walked through the rustling gold-green foliage of the +park, passed close by some stables and a distillery, descended into a +dell, came up on its opposite side. Then, feeling tired, he decided +to walk slowly--walk twenty miles on foot for the first time in his +life. After all, how simple the whole thing was ... it was only +terrible in its simplicity. + +The sun had already sunk beneath the horizon. The last ravens had +flown. An autumn hush over-hung the Steppe. He walked on briskly +through the wide, windy, open space, walking for the first time he +knew not whither, nor wherefore. He carried nothing, he possessed +nothing. The night was silent, dark, autumnal, and frosty. + +He walked on briskly for eight miles, heedless of everything around, +then he stopped a moment to tie his shoe lace. Suddenly he felt an +overwhelming weariness and his legs began to ache; he had covered +nearly forty miles during the day. + +In front of him lay the village of Makhmytka; he had often ridden +there in his youth on secret visits to a soldier's wife; but now he +would not go to her; no, not for anything in the world! The village +lay pressed to the earth and was ornamented with numerous stacks +which smelt of straw and dung. On its outskirts the Prince was met by +a pack of baying dogs, who flitted over the ground like dark, ghostly +shadows as they leapt round him. + +At the first cabin he tapped at the little window, dimly lighted +within by some smouldering splinters. + +"Who is there?" came the tardy response. + +"Let me in for the night, good people," called the Prince. + +"Who is it?" + +"A traveller." + +"Well, just a minute," came the grudging answer. + +A bare-footed peasant in red drawers came out holding a lighted +splinter over his head and looking round. + +"Ah!" he exclaimed, "it is you, Prince! So you were too wise to stay, +were you? Well, come in." + +An immense quantity of straw was spread over the floor. A cricket was +chirruping, and there was a smell of soot and dung. + +"Lay yourself down, Barin, and God bless you!" + +The peasant climbed on to the stove and sighed. His old wife began to +mutter something, the man grumbled, then said to the Prince: + +"Barin, you can have your sleep, only get up in the morning and leave +before daylight, so that none will see you. You know yourself these +are troubled times, there is no gainsaying it. You are a gentleman, +Barin, and gentlemen have got to be done away with. The old woman +will wake you.... Sleep now." + +Prozorovsky lay down without undressing, put his cape under his head-- +and at once caught a cockroach on his neck! Some young pigs grunted +in a corner. The hut was swarming with vermin, blackened by smoke and +filled with stenches. Here, where men, calves and pigs herded all +together, the Prince lay on his straw, tossing about and scratching. +He thought of how, some centuries hence, people would be writing of +this age with love, compassion, and tenderness. It would be thought +of as an epoch of the most sublime and beautiful manifestation of the +human spirit. + +A little pig came up, sniffed all round him, then trotted away again. +A low, bright star peeped in through the window. How infinite the +world seemed! + +He did not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at +daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and +cold, and the grass was covered with a light frost. He walked along +briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up. +The sky was marvellously deep and blue. + +At the station the Prince squeezed himself into a warm place on the +train, amongst other passengers carrying little sacks and bags of +flour. Thus, pressed against the sides of a truck, his clothes +bedaubed with white flour, he journeyed off to--Moscow. + +Prince Prozorovsky had left at evening. Immediately after, furniture +was pulled about and re-arranged, the veneer was chipped off the +desk. The clock was about to be transferred to the office, but some +one noticed that it had only one hand. None of the men realised that +Kuvaldin's old clocks were necessarily one-handed, and moved every +five minutes simply because the minutes were not counted singly in +those days. Somebody suggested that the clock could be removed from +its case. + +"Take the clock out of the box," Ivan Koloturov ordered. "Tell the +joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the +office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!" + +That night an old woman came running in. There was a great turmoil in +the village: a girl had been abused--no one knew by whom, whether by +the villagers themselves or the people who had come from Moscow for +flour; the old woman began to accuse the Committee men. She stood by +the window and reviled them at the top of her voice. Ivan Koloturov +drove her away with a blow on the neck, and she went off wailing +bitterly. + +It was pitch-dark. The house was quiet. Milkmaids outside were +singing boisterously. Ivan went into the study, sat down on the sofa, +felt its softness, found a forgotten electric lamp and played with +it, flashing its light on the walls as he passed through. He noticed +the clock on the floor of the drawing-room and began to think what he +would do with it, then he picked it up and threw it into the water- +closet. A band of his men had broken their way into the other end of +the house, and some one was thumping on the piano; Ivan Koloturov +would have liked to have driven them away, to prevent them from doing +damage, but he dared not. He suddenly felt sorry for himself and his +old wife and he wanted to go home to his stove. + +A bell clanged--supper! Ivan quietly stole to the wine-cellar, filled +up his jug, and drank, then hurriedly locked the cellar door. + +On the way home he fell down in the park; he lay there a long time, +trying to lift himself, wanting all the while to say something and to +explain--but he fell asleep. + +The dark, dismal autumn night enfolded the empty, frozen, desolate +Steppe. + + + + +DEATH + + +I + +It seemed as though the golden days of "St. Martin's" summer had come +to stay. + +The sun shone without warmth in the vast blue expanse of sky, across +which swept the gabbling cranes on their annual flight southward. A +hoar-frost lay in the shadow of the houses. The air was crisp and +sapphire, the cold invigorating, a brooding stillness wrapped the +world. + +The vine-wreathed columns on the terrace, the maple avenue and the +ground beneath, all glowed under a purple pall of fallen leaves. The +lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining +surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the +statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves +were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees +after summer seemed! + +In days such as these, the mind grows at once alert and calm. It +dwells peacefully on the past and the future. The individual feels +impelled by a kind of langour just to walk over the fallen leaves, to +look in the gardens for unnoticed, forgotten apples, and to listen to +the cries of the cranes flying south. + +II + +Ippolyte Ippolytovich was a hundred years old less three months and +some days. He had been a student in the Moscow University with +Lermontov, and they had been drawn together in friendship through +their mutual admiration of Byron. In the "sixties,"--he was then +close to his fiftieth birthday--he constantly conferred with the +Emperor Alexander on liberative reforms, and pored over Pisarev's +writings in his own home. + +It was only by the huge, skeleton frame over which stretched the +parchment skin, that it could be seen he had once been a tall, big, +broad-shouldered man; his large face was covered with yellowish-white +hair that crept from the nose, the cheek-bones, the forehead and the +ears, while the skull was completely bald; the eyes were white and +discoloured; the hands and legs shrunken, and seemed as though +emaciated by nature's own design. + +There was a smell of wax in his room, and that peculiar fusty odour +that pervades every old nobleman's home. It was a large, bare +apartment containing only a massive mahogany writing-table, covered +with a faded green cloth and bestrewn with a quantity of old- +fashioned ornaments; there was also an armchair and a sofa. + +The moulded ceiling, the greenish-white marbled walls, the dragon +fire-place, the inlaid flooring of speckled birch, the window panes, +rounded at the tops, curtainless and with frequent intersecting of +their framework, all, had become tarnished and lustreless, covered +over with all the colours of the rainbow. Through the windows +streamed the mellow golden rays of the autumn sun, resting on the +table, a part of the sofa, and on the floor. + +For many years the old man had ceased to sleep at night so as to sit +up by day. It might truly be said that he slept almost the entire +twenty-four hours, and also that he sat up during the whole of that +time! He was always slumbering, lying with half-open, discoloured +eyes on a large sofa tapestried in pig-skin of English make, and +covered with a bear-skin rug. He lay there day and night, his right +arm flung back behind his head. Whenever, by day or night, he was +called by his name--Ippolyte Ippolytovich, he would remain silent a +moment collecting his wits, then answer: + +"Eh?" + +He had no thoughts. All that took place round him, all that he had +gone through in life, was meaningless to him now. It was all +outlived, and he had nothing to think about. Neither had he any +feelings, for all his organs of receptivity had grown dulled. + +At night mice could be heard; while through the empty, columned hall +out of which his room opened, rats scurried, flopping about and +tumbling down from the armchairs and tables. But the old man did not +hear them. + +III + +Vasilisa Vasena came every morning at seven o'clock; she was a +country-woman of about thirty seven, strong, healthy, red-faced, +reminiscent of a July day in her floridness and vigorous health. + +She used to say quietly: "Good morning to you, Ippolyte +Ippolytovich." + +And he would give a base "Eh?" in a voice like a worn-out gramophone +record. + +Vasena promptly began washing him with a sponge, then fed him with +manna-gruel. The old man sat bent up on the sofa, his hands resting +on his knees. He ate slowly from a spoon. They were silent, his eyes +gazing inwardly, seeing nothing. Sunbeams stole in through the window +and glistened on his yellowish hair. + +"Your good son, Ilya Ippolytovich, has come," Vasena said. + +"Eh?" + +Ippolyte Ippolytovich had married at about the age of forty; of his +three sons only Ilya was living. The old man called his son to +memory, pictured him in his mind, but felt neither joy nor interest-- +felt nothing! + +Dimly, somewhere far away in the dark recesses of his memory, lurked +a glimmering, wavering image of his son; at first he saw him as an +infant, then as a boy, finally a youth. He recollected that now +already he too was almost an old man. It came to him that once, long +ago, this image was necessary and very dear to him, that afterwards +he had lost sight of it, and that now it had become meaningless to +him. + +Dully, through inertia, the old man inquired: "He has come, you say?" + +"Yes, came in the night, alone. He is resting now." + +"Eh? He has come to have a look at me before I die." + +Vasena promptly answered: "Lord! you are not so young as to...." + +They were silent. The old man lay back on the sofa and slept. + +"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, you must take your walk!" + +"Eh?" + +It was a "St. Martin's Summer." Over the scattered blood-red vine +leaves on the terrace, which was deluged in mellow autumnal sunshine, +the bent-up old man walked, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane, and +supported by the sturdy Vasena. He had a skull-cap pulled down low +over his forehead, and wore a long, black overcoat. + +IV + +Sometimes the old man relapsed into a state of coma, lasting several +hours. Then life seemed to have ebbed from him entirely. A clay-like +pallor over-spread his face, he had the lips and open, glassy eyes of +a corpse, and he scarcely breathed. Then they sent post-haste for the +doctor, who sprinkled him with camphor, gave him oxygen and produced +artificial respiration. The old man slowly came to, rolling his eyes. + +"Another minute and it would have been death," the doctor would say +in a deep, grave voice. + +When the old man had at length recovered, Vasena used to say to him: +"Lord! We were so frightened, we were so frightened! ... We thought +you were quite gone. Yes, we did. For you know, you are not so young +as to...." + +Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments, +half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his +lips, he laughed: + +"He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He- +he!" + +V + +Ilya Ippolytovich walked through the empty rooms of the dying house. +How dusty and mouldy it seemed! The sun came through the tarnished +window-panes and the specks of dust looked golden in its radiant +light. He entered the room where he had passed his childhood. Dust +lay everywhere, on the window-sills, on the floor, and on the +furniture. Here and there fresh boot-prints were visible. A thin +portmanteau--not belonging to the house and pasted over with many +labels--lay on a table. A hard, icy stillness pervaded the entire +place. + +Ilya Ippolytovich was stout like his father, but he still walked +erect. His hair was already thinning and growing grey over the +temples, but his face was clean-shaven, like a youth's. His lips were +wrinkled and he had large, grey, weary eyes. + +He felt gloomy and unhappy, because his father's days were numbered; +and he brooded miserably over the awkwardness of approaching death, +wondering how one should behave towards a man who was definitely +doomed. To and fro, from corner to corner, he walked, with restless, +springy steps. + +He met his father on the terrace. + +"Hallo, father!" he said briskly, with an intentional show of +carelessness. + +The old man looked at him blindly, not recognising his son at first. +But afterwards he smiled, went up the steps, and gave his cheek to be +kissed. It smelt of wax. + +"Eh?" said the old man. + +Ilya kissed him, laughed hilariously, and slapped him lightly on the +shoulder: "It is a long time since we met, father. How are you?" + +His father looked at him from beneath his cap, gave a feeble smile, +then said after a pause: "Eh?" + +Vasena answered for him: "You may well ask how he is doing, Ilya +Ippolytovich! Why, we are fearing the worst every day." + +Ilya threw her a reproachful glance and said loudly: "It is nonsense, +father! You have still a hundred years to live! You are tired, let us +sit down here and have a talk together." + +They sat down on the marble steps of the terrace. Silence. No words +came to Ilya. Try as he might, he could not think what to say. + +"Well, I am still painting pictures," he tried at last; "I am +preparing to go abroad." + +The old man did not hear him; he looked at his son without seeing or +understanding, plunged in his own reflections. + +"You have come to look at me? You think I shall die soon?" he asked +suddenly. + +Ilya Ippolytovich grew very pale and muttered confusedly: "What are +you saying, father? What do you mean?" + +But his father no longer heard. He had fallen back in his chair, his +eyes half-closed and glassy, his face utterly expressionless. He was +asleep. + +VI + +The sun was shining, the sky was blue; in the limpid spaces above the +earth there was a flood of crystal light. + +Ilya Ippolytovich strolled through the park and thought of his +father. The old man had lived a full, rich, and magnificent life. It +had possessed so much that was good, bright and necessary. Now-- +death! Nothing would remain. Nothing! And this nothing was terrible +to Ilya Ippolytovitch. + +Does not living man recognize life, the world, the sun, all that is +around and within him, through himself? he reflected. A man dies, and +the world dies for him. Thenceforward he feels and recognises +nothing. Nothing! Then what is the use of living, developing, +working, when in the end there will be--nothing?... Was there no +great wisdom in his father's hundred years? Nor in his fatherhood? + +A crane was crying somewhere overhead. The sound came from a scarcely +visible dark arrow in the cloudless sky, which flew south. Red, +frost-covered leaves were rustling underfoot. Ilya's face was pale, +the wrinkles round his lips made him seem tired and feeble. He had +spent his whole life alone, in the solitude of a cold studio, living +arduously among pictures, for the sake of pictures. To what end? + +VII + +Ippolyte Ippolytovich sat in the large, bare dining-room eating +chicken cutlets and broth. A napkin was tied round his neck as if he +were a child. Vasena fed him from a tea-spoon, and afterwards led him +into his study. The old man lay down on a sofa, put his hand behind +his head and fell asleep, his eyes half-open. + +Ilya went to him in the study. He again made a pretence of being +cheerful, but his tired eyes betrayed grief, and behind his clean- +shaven face, his grey English coat, and yellow boots, somehow one +felt there was a great shaken and puzzled soul suffering, yet seeking +to conceal its anguish. + +He sat down at his father's feet. + +For a long time the old man searched his face with his eyes, then in +a scraping, worn-out piping voice, said: "Eh?" + +"It is so long since we met, father, I am longing to have a chat with +you! Somehow I have no one dearer to me than you! Absolutely no one! +How are you, sir?" + +The old man gazed before him with bleary eyes. He did not seem to +have heard. But suddenly screwing up his eyes, straightening out his +lips and opening his empty jaws, he laughed: + +"He-he! he-he!" he laughed, and said jovially: "I am dying soon. He- +he! he-he!" + +However, Ilya no longer felt as embarrassed as on that first occasion +on the terrace. In a hasty undertone, almost under his breath, he +asked: + +"But aren't you afraid?" + +"No! He-he!" + +"Don't you believe in God?" + +"No! He-he!" + +They were silent for a long time after that. Then the old man raised +himself on his elbows with a sly grin. + +"You see," he said, "when a man is worn out ... sleep is the best +thing for him ... that is so with dying ... one wants to die.... +Understand? When a man is worn out...." + +He was silent for a moment, then grinned and repeated: + +"He-he! He-he! Understand?" + +Ilya gave his father a long look, standing there motionless, with +wide-open eyes, feeling a thrill of utter horror. + +But the old man was already slumbering. + +VIII + +Day faded. The blue autumnal twilight spread over the earth and +peeped in through the windows. A purple mist filled the room with +vague, spectral shadows. Outside was a white frost. A silvery moon +triumphantly rode the clear cold over-arching sky. + +Ippolyte Ippolytovich lay upon his sofa. He felt nothing. The space +occupied by his body resembled only a great, dark, hollow bin in +which there was--nothing! Close by, a rat flopped across the floor, +but the old man did not hear. A teasing autumnal fly settled on his +eyebrow, he did not wink. From the withered toes to the withered +legs, to the hips, stomach, chest, and heart, passed a faint, +agreeable, scarcely noticeable numbness. + +It was evening now and the room was dark; the mist gathered thick and +threatening through the windows. Outside in the crisp, frosty +moonlight, it was bright. The old man's face--all over-grown with +white hair--and his bald skull, had a death-like look. + +Vasena entered in her calm yet vigorous manner. Her broad hips and +deep bosom were only loosely covered by a red jacket. + +"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, it is time for your meal," she called in a +matter of fact tone. + +But he did not reply, nor utter his usual "Eh?" + +They sent at once for the doctor, who felt his pulse, pressed a glass +to his lips, then said in a low, solemn tone: + +"He is dead." + +Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal, +answered calmly: + +"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is +it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord, +they had everything!" + +IX + +Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the +morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell +in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes. + +St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of +another earthly joy--the first white covering of snow, when it is so +delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in +hand. + + + + +THE HEIRS + + +I + +Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain--called the Mountain of +Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence +came also Emelian Pugachev. + +The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains, +making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below. + +Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close +to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a +mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when +it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held +there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya +Davydovna--the mistress--old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end +of her days. + +She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was +occupied by--the heirs. + +They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their +lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had +stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive +fury of the masses burst forth--and the remnants of the Rastorov +family gathered in their old nest--to be hidden from the Revolution +and famine. + +Snow-storms--galloping snowy chargers--howled over the Steppe, the +Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of +Stenka Razin--thundered the Revolution. + +The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old +cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the +Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its +steamers moored to their wharves. + +The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was +nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room, +with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant, +worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived +utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow +of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their +thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return. + +General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded +closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and +dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through +the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his tasselled +Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing +hoarsely. + +"Anna," he snarled, "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place +in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn +to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked +about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering +on his fingers. + +"And it is your turn to go for the rations," retorted Anna Andreevna. + +"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house +and they cannot organise themselves so as to go in turn for the +rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink." + +The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice: + + "Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants; + We must see to things ourselves. We can't + all perch like eagles, therefore, + I beg you to be more careful. + Kirill L. Lezhner." + +Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of +the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the +ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the +lavatory door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling +brilliantly. + +"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we +only one?" he grumbled. "I shall leave this den. They don't behave +like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?" + +Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly: +"You know there are none. But I will look for some butt-ends in a +moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps." + +"What bourgeois they are--throwing away fag-ends and keeping +servants!" her husband complained. + +The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the +will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of +Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and +sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna, +the maid--a one-eyed Cyclop--had filled it with birch-wood, whereas +it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house +should be used as fuel first. + +After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out +to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from +the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his +tea, leisurely drinking glass after glass, while Anna Andreevna +heated her stove in the corridor. + +A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius--the +former head of a ministerial department--could be heard rousing +themselves behind the wall. + +"You have had sufficient albumen; take hydrates now," rose Lina's +voice, calling to her children. + +"Potatoes?" + +"Yes." + +"And fat?" + +"You have had enough fat." + +The general smiled craftily, then muttered grumpily: + +"That is not eating, that is scientific alimentation." He cut himself +a piece of bacon, ate it with some white bread, and drank more tea +with sweet root and candied melon. + +Gradually the occupants of the house roused themselves and half- +dressed, sleepy--carrying their towels, empty samovars, and tooth +brushes--they began to pass along the corridor in front of the +general's open door. + +Kirill Lvovich eyed them maliciously as he sat drinking his tea and +inwardly cursed them all. + +The Cyclop, Leontyevna, Sergius Andreevich's servant, tramped in +heavily with her man's boots from the Labour Exchange; her solitary +eye peered searchingly into Anna Andreevna's stove. + +"I'll see she's not deceiving us over the firewood," she shouted +aggressively: "Oh, what a store she's got!" + +"But you have used the birch-wood," the general hit back from his +room. + +The Cyclop flew into a rage and slapped her thighs. One of the +periodic scenes ensued. + +"What?" Leontyevna cried, "I am not trusted, I am being spied on! +Lina Fedorovna, I am going to complain to the Exchange." + +Lina Fedorovna joined in from behind her door. + +"She isn't trusted, she is being spied on," she echoed, "there must +be spies in this house! And they call themselves intellectual +people!" + +"But you took the birch-wood!" protested Lvovich. + +"And they call themselves intellectual!" screamed Lina. + +The general came out into the passage and said severely: + +"It is not for _us_ to judge, Lina Fedorovna. We are not the heirs +here. But it seems strange to me that Sergius should occupy three +rooms, and Anna only one--yes, very strange indeed." + +The quarrel became more violent. Satisfied, the general put on his +overcoat and went out to take his place in the ration queue. Lina ran +to her husband; he went to get an explanation of the scene, but +Lvovich was not to be found, however; he remonstrated with his +sister, Anna Andreevna. + +"This spying is impossible, it must stop," he insisted. + +"But, can't you understand, it all began with searching for the butt- +end of a cigarette?" Anna pleaded in deep distress. + +Lina had gone upstairs and was telling the whole story to Ekaterina. +Anna appealed to her younger brother, Constantine, a Lyceum student, +but he told her he was busy, immediately sitting down at his desk to +write. Soon after, however, he rose and went to Sergius. + +"Busy?" he asked. + +"What? Yes, I am busy." + +"Have a smoke." + +They began to smoke an inferior brand of tobacco known as "Kepsten." +They were silent. + +"Will you have a game of chess?" Constantine asked after a while. + +"Yes...But no, I think not," Sergius replied. + +"Just one game?" + +"Just one? Well, only one!" + +They sat down and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a rumpled +Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and +Sergius, and an antique gold chain hung round his neck. + +Being in constant dread of requisitioners and robbers they had +divided all the jewellery between them, and wore it for safety. + +The brothers played one game, then a second, a fourth, a sixth-- +smoking and quarrelling, disagreeing over the moves and trying to re- +arrange them. The general returned from the ration queue in the +market and came along the passage. He peeped in at the two players +through the open door, and after some hesitation decided to enter. + +"Greenhorns, you don't know how to play!" he said. + +"What do you mean? Don't know how to play?" + +"Now, now, don't fly into a rage. If I am wrong--excuse an old man ... +I sent Kirka for the newspaper, I gave him a twenty copeck piece +for a tip." + +"I am not in a rage!" + +"Very well, then that's all right. But throw over your chess. Let us +play a game of chance." + +They sat down and played it for the entire day, only interrupting the +game to go to their rooms for dinner. + +Whenever Sergius had to pay a fine he would say: + +"Anyhow, Kirill Lvovich, you have an objectionable manner." + +"Now, now, greenhorn!" the general would reply. + +They had not a penny between them. Katerina Andreevna had been +appointed guardian of their possessions. The men refused to recognise +her authority and called it merely a "femocracy." Only Sergius still +had some capital, the proceeds of an estate he had sold before the +Revolution. Therefore he could well afford to keep a servant. + +Upstairs with Katerina were two girls who had thrown up their careers +on principle--the one her college studies, the other her +Conservatoire courses. They kept up a desultory conversation while +helping to clean potatoes. Presently Anna and Lina joined them, and +they all went down to the storeroom and began rummaging through their +grandparents' old wardrobes. They turned over a variety of +crinolines, farthingales, bustles and wigs, laying on one side the +articles of silver, bronze and porcelain--for the Tartars were coming +after dinner. The storeroom smelt of rats. Packed along its walls +were boxes, coffers, trunks, and a huge pair of rusty scales. + +They all gathered together on the arrival of the Tartars, who greeted +them with handshakes. The general snorted. One of the Tartars, an old +man wearing new goloshes over felt boots, spoke to Katerina: + +"How d'ye do, Barina?" + +The general leisurely swung one leg over the other, and said stiffly: + +"Be good enough to state your price." + +The two Tartars looked over the old-fashioned articles, criticised +them, none too well, and fixed the most ridiculous prices. The +general burst out laughing and tried to be witty. Katerina grew +angrier and angrier, until at last she could no longer contain +herself: + +"Kirill Lvovich," she shouted, "you are impossible!" "Very well," +came the infuriated reply; "I am not one of the heirs, I can go!" + +They calmed him, however, and then began bargaining with the Tartars, +who slung the old-fashioned articles carelessly over their arms-- +laces worked by serfs, antique, hand made candle-sticks, a field- +glass and an acetylene lamp. + +The twilight spread gently over the town, and through its dusky, +star-spangled veil, loomed the old Cathedral--reminiscent of Stenka +Razin; now and then came the chime of its deep-toned bells. + +The Tartars at length succeeding in striking a bargain, rolled the +goods up into neat little packs with their customary promptitude, +paid out Kerensky notes from their bulging purses and left. + +Then the heirs divided the proceeds. They were sitting in the +drawing-room. Blinds covered the low windows; some portraits hung on +the walls, a chandelier was shrouded in a muslin wrapper that had not +been changed for years. A yellow oaken piano was covered with dust, +and the furniture's velvet covering was tarnished and threadbare. The +house struck cold. + +The heirs were dressed fantastically; the general in a dressing-gown +with gold embroideries and tassels; Sergius wore a black hooded coat; +Lina a warm hare-skin jacket, and Katerina, the eldest--the +moustached guardian--a man's thick overcoat, a petticoat and felt +shoes. On all were jewels--rings, ear-rings, bracelets and necklaces. + +Sergius remarked ungallantly: + +"This is a trying time for us all, and I propose that we divide the +proceeds among us according to the number of consumers." + +"I am not one of the heirs," the general hastily interposed. + +"I don't share your socialistic views." Constantine informed Sergius +with a cold smile; "I think they should be divided according to the +number of heirs." + +A heated argument followed, above which rang the Cathedral bells. At +last, with great difficulty, they came to an agreement. Then Katerina +brought in the samovar. All fetched their own bread and sweet roots +and drank the tea, thankful not to have to prepare it for themselves. + +Suddenly--with unexpected sadness and, therefore, unusually well--the +general began to speak: + +"When I--a lieutenant-bridegroom--met our Aunt Kseniya for the first +time, she was wearing that bustle that you sold just now. Ah, will +things ever be the same again? If I were told the Bolshevik tyranny +would endure for another year, I should shoot myself! For, good Lord, +what I suffer! How my heart is wrung! And I am an old man.... Life is +simply not worth living." + +All burst into tears; the general wept as old men weep, the +moustached Katerina cried in a sobbing bass. Neither could Anna +Andreevna, nor the two girls who stood clasping each other in the +corner, refrain from shedding tears, the girls for their youth and +the sparkling joys of their maidenhood of which they had been +deprived. + +"I would shoot them all if I could!" Katerina declared. + +Then Sergius' children, Kira and Lira, came in and Lina told them +they might take some albumen. Kira put butter on his. + +The moon rose.... The stars shone brilliantly. The snow was dead- +white. The river Volga was deserted. It was dark and still by the old +Cathedral. The frost was hard and crisp, crackling underfoot. The two +young girls, Kseniya and Lena, with Sergius and the general, were +returning to the mansion to fetch their handsleighs and toboggan down +the slope to the river. + +Constantine had gone into town, to a club of cocaine-eaters, to drug +himself, utter vulgar platitudes, and kiss the hands of loose women. +Leontyevna, the Cyclop maid from the Exchange, lay down on a bench in +the kitchen to rest from the day's work, said her prayers, and fell +into a sound sleep. + +The general stood on the door-steps. Sergius drew up the sleighs, and +they took their seats--three abreast--Kseniya, Elena and himself, and +whirled along over the crackling snow, down to the ice-covered Volga. +The sleighs flew wildly down the slope, and in this impetuous flight, +in the sprinkling and crackling snow, and bitter, numbing frost, +Kseniya dreamed of a wondrous bliss: she felt a desire to embrace the +world! Life suddenly seemed so joyous. + +The frost was harsh, cruel and penetrating. On regaining the house +the general bristled up like a sparrow--he was frozen--and called out +from the door-step: + +"Sergius! There is a frost to-day that will certainly burst the +water-pipes. We will have to place a guard for the night." + +Perhaps Sergius, and even the old man, had had a glimpse of wonderful +happiness in the sleigh's swift flight over the snow. The former +called back: + +"Never mind!"--and again whirled wildly down from the old Cathedral +to the Volga, where the boats and steamers plied amid the deep-blue, +massive ice-floes, so sparkling and luminous in their snowy raiment. + +But the general had now worked himself up to a state of great +excitement. He rushed indoors and roused everyone: + +"I tell you, it will freeze and the pipes will burst unless you let +the water run a little. There are 27 degrees of frost!" + +"But the tap is in the kitchen and Leontyevna is sleeping there," +objected Lina. + +"Well, waken her!" + +"Impossible!" + +"Damn rot!" snarled the general and went into the kitchen and shook +Leontyevna, explaining to her about the pipes. + +"I will go to the Exchange and complain! Not even letting one +rest!...Stealing in to an undressed woman!..." + +Lina jabbered her words after her like a parrot. Sergius ran in. + +"Leave off, please," he begged. "It is I who am responsible. Let +Leontyevna sleep." + +"Certainly, I am not one of the heirs," the general retorted +smoothly. + +The night and the frost swept over the Volga, the Steppe, and +Saratov. The general was unable to sleep. Kseniya and Lena were +crying in the attic. Constantine arrived home late, and noiselessly +crept in to Leontyevna. + +Bluish patches of moonlight fell in through the windows. + +The water pipes froze in the night and burst. + + + + +THE CROSSWAYS + +Forest, thickets, marshes, fields, a tranquil sky--and the crossways! +The sky is overcast at times with dove-coloured clouds; the forest +now gabbles, now groans in the glittering summer sunshine. + +The crossways creep and crawl like a winding thread, without +beginning and without end. Sometimes their stretch tires and vexes-- +one wants to go by a shorter route and turns aside, goes astray, +comes back to the former way. Two wheel-tracks, ripple grass, a foot- +path and around them, besides sky or rye or snow or trees, are the +crossways, without beginning or end or limit. And over them pass the +peasants singing their low toned songs. At times these are sorrowful, +as endless as the crossways themselves: Russia was borne in these +songs, born with them, from them. + +Our ways lie through the crossways as they ever have done, and ever +will. All Russia is in the crossways--amid the fields, thickets +marshes, and forests. + +But there were also those Others who wanted to march over the bog- +ways, who planned to throw Russia on to her haunches, to press on +through the marshlands, make main-roads straight as rules, and +barricade themselves behind granite and steel, forgetful of Russia's +peasant cottages. And on they marched! + +Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to +the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the +people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back +again into the crossways. + +Near the main-road lies the railway. By turning aside from it, +walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a +dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some +ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through +dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki +is reached, surrounded by forest. + +In the village were three cottages, their backs to the forest; their +rugged noses seemed to scowl from beneath the pine-trees, and their +dim, tear-dribbling window-eyes looked wolfish. Their grey timbers +lay on them like wrinkles, their reddish-yellow thatch, like bobbed +hair, hung to the ground. Behind them was the forest; in front, +pasture, thickets, forest again, and sky. The neighbouring crossways +coiled round them in a ring, then narrowed away into the forest. + +In all three cottages dwelt Kononovs: they were not kinsfolk, though +they bore that name, closer linked through their common life than +kinsmen ever were. Kononov-Yonov, the One-Eyed, was the village +elder: he no longer remembered his grandfather's name, but knew the +olden times well, and remembered how his great-grandfathers and his +great-great-grandfathers had lived and how it was good for men to +live. + +From the oldest to the youngest they toiled with all their strength +from spring to autumn, from autumn to spring, and from sunrise to +sundown, growing grey like their hen-coops from smoke, scorching in +the heat and steaming sweat like boiling tar. + +The kinsfolk of Yonov the One-eyed made tar besides tilling the land, +while Yonov himself kept bee-hives in the forest. The sisters Yonov +barked lime-trees and made bast shoes. It was a hard, stern life, +with its smoke, heat, frosts, and languour; but they loved it +profoundly. + +The Kononovs lived alone in friendship with the woods, the fields, +and the sky; yet ever engaged in stubborn struggle against them. They +had to remember the rise and set of the sun, the nights and the dung- +mounds. They had to look into putrid corners, watch for cold blasts +from the north, and give ear to the rumbling and gabbling of the +forest. + +They knew: + + With January, mid-winter time, + Starts the year its frosty prime, + Blows wild the wind e'er yet'tis still, + Crackles the ice in the frozen rill; + Epiphany betimes is past, + Approaches now the Lenten Fast. + + In February there's a breath of heat, + Summer and winter at Candlemas meet. + In April the year grows moist and warm the air, + The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair; + The woodcock then comes flying from the sea, + Brings back the Spring from its captivity. + + Under a showery sky, + Bloom wide the fields of rye, + Ever blue and chill + May will the granaries fill. + +It was necessary to work stubbornly, sternly, in harmony with the +earth, to fight hand-to-hand with the forest, the axe, the plough and +the scythe. They had learnt to keep their eyes wide open, for each +had to hold his own against the wood-spirit, the rumbling forest, +famine, and the marshes. They had learnt to know their Mother-Earth +by the birds, sky, wind, and stars, like those men of whom Yonov the +One-Eyed told them--those who of old wended their way to Chuvsh +tribes and the Murman Forest. + +All the Kononovs were built alike, strong, rugged, with short legs +and broad, heavy feet like juniper-roots, long backs, arms that hung +down to their knees, shoulder-blades protruding as though made for +harness, mossy green eyes that gazed with a slow stubborn look, and +noses like earthen whistles. + +They lived with the rye, horses, cows, the sheep, the woods, and the +grass. They knew that as the rye dropped seeds to the ground and +reproduced in abundance so also bred beast and bird, counteracting +death with birth. They knew too that to breed was also man's lot. + +Ulyanka reached her seventeenth year, Ivan his eighteenth: they bowed +to the winds and went to the altar. + +Ivan Kononov did not think of death when he went to the war, for what +was death when through it came birth? Were there not heat-waves and +drought in summer? Did not the winter sweep the earth by blizzards? +Yet in spring all began to pulsate again with life. + +The War came: Ivan Kononov went without understanding, without +reason--what concern was it of Pochinki? He was dragged through +towns, he pined in spittle-stained barracks; and then he was sent to +the Carpathians. He fired. He fought hand-to-hand: he fled; he +retreated forty versts a day, resting in the woods singing his +peasant-songs with the soldiers--and yearning for Pochinki. He found +all spoke like Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed; he learnt of the land +in the olden time order, of the people's Rising. At its approach he +went on furlough to Pochinki, met it there, and there remained. + +The Rising came like happy tidings, like the cool breath of dawn, +like a May-time shower: + + Under a showery sky + Bloom wide the fields of rye, + Ever blue and chill + May will the granaries fill. + +Formerly there were the village constable, the district clerk, +trumperies, requisitions, and taxations; for then it was the gentry +who were the guardians. But now, Yonov the One-Eyed croaked +exultantly: + +"Now it's ourselves! We ourselves! In our own way! In our own world! +The land is ours! We are the masters: it is the Rising! _Our_ Rising!" + +There were no storms that winter; it was cold and dark, and the wolf- +packs were astir. One after another the inhabitants were stricken +down with typhoid--it was with typhoid that they paid for the Rising! +Half the village succumbed and was borne on the peasants' sleighs to +the churchyard. + +By Candlemas, when winter and summer meet, all the provisions were +exhausted, and the villagers drove to the station. But even that had +changed. New people congregated there, some shouting, others hurrying +to and fro with sacks. The villagers returned with nothing and sat +down to their potatoes. + +In the spring prayers were offered up for the dead and a religious +procession paraded round the village, the outskirts of which were +bestrewn with ashes. Then the villagers started to take tar and bast +shoes to the station; they wanted to sell them, and with the proceeds +buy ploughshares, harrows, scythes, sickles, and leather straps. But +they never reached the station. + +Their way led them through fields all lilac-coloured in the glowing +sun: there they encountered an honest peasant dressed in a short fur +jacket and a cap beneath which his look was calm and grave. + +He told them there was nothing at the station, that the townsfolk +themselves were running like mice; and he urged them to go to +Poriechie, to give Silvester the blacksmith some tar for his +ploughshares, and, if he had none, to make them some of his own hand- +ploughshares; then to go and sow flax. The towns were dying out. The +towns were no more! It was the people's Rising, and they had to live +as in the olden days: there were no towns then, and there was no need +for them. + +They turned back. To Poriechie for tar.... Silvester made them a +hand-plough.... Grandfather Yonov the One Eyed stalked round the +fields exhorting to sow: "We have to live by ourselves! Now we +ourselves are the Masters! Ourselves alone! It is the Rising!" + +They worked from dawn till sunset with all their strength, fastening +their belts tight round their bodies to stifle the pangs of hunger. + +The summer passed in heat-waves, thunder and lightning. The forest +gabbled in the storms at night. Towards autumn it began to rustle, +leafless, beneath the showers of rain. The rye, oats, millet, and +buckwheat were carried into the corn-kilns and barns, and the fields +lay stripped and bare. + +The corn had been harvested; there was enough and to spare till the +fallow crop was reaped. The air in the peasants' cottages was +bedimmed by the smoke from the stoves; Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed +climbed on to his, to tell his grandchildren fairytales and to rest. + +The nights grew dark and damp, the forest began to rumble, and wolves +approached from the marshlands. A new couple had grown up, bowed to +the winds and wedded; half the village had perished the previous +winter, and it was necessary to breed. The people lived in their +cabins together with the calves, the sheep, and the swine. They used +splinters for lights, striking the light from flint. + +Often at night starving people from the towns brought money, clothes, +foot-ware, bundles of odds-and ends--in short anything they could +steal from the towns and exchange for flour. They rapped on the +windows like thieves. + +The Kononov women sat at their looms while the men went a-preying in +the forest. And so they toiled on stubbornly, sternly, alone, +fighting hand-to-hand with the night, with the forest and with the +frost. The crossways to the forests became choked, and they made new +ways to the marshlands, to the Seven Brothers, to the wastelands. +Life was hard and stern. The peasants looked out upon the world from +beneath their brows, as their cottages from beneath the pines; and +they lived gladsomely, as they should. + +They knew it was the Rising. And in the Rising there could be no +falling back. + +Forests, thickets, fields, a tranquil sky--and crossways!... +Sometimes the crossways joined the main-road that ran alongside the +railway. Both led to the towns where dwelt Those Others who had +yearned to march over the crossways, who had made the main-roads +straight as rules. And to the towns the elemental Rising of the +Crossways brought death. + +There, lamenting the past, in terror before the people's Rising, all +were employed in offices filling up papers. All for safety held +official positions, all to a man busying themselves over papers, +documents, cards, placards, and speeches until they were lost in a +whirlwind of words. + +The food of the towns was exhausted; the lights had gone out; there +was neither fuel nor water. Dogs, cats, mice, all had disappeared-- +even the nettles on the outskirts had been plucked by famished +urchins as vegetable for soup. Into the cookhouses, whence cutlery +had vanished, crowded old men in bowlers and bonneted old women, +whose bony fingers clutched convulsively at plates of leavings. + +Everywhere there were groups of miscreants selling mouldy bread at +exorbitant prices. The dead in their thousands, over whom there was +no time to carry out funeral rites, were borne away to the churches. + +Famine, disease, and death swept the towns. The inhabitants grew +savage in their craving for bread. They starved. They sat without +light. They froze. They pulled down the hedges and wooden buildings +to warm their dying hearths and their offices. The red-blood life +deserted the towns; indeed it had never really existed in them; and +there came a white-paper life that was death. When death means life +there is no death, but the towns were still-born. + +There were harrowing scenes in the spring, when, like incense at +funeral-rites, the smoky wood-piles smouldered on the pillaged, +ransacked, and bespattered streets with their broken windows, +boarded-up doors, and defaced walls, consuming carrion and enveloping +the town in a stinking and stifling vapour. + +Men with soft-skinned hands still frequented restaurants, still wooed +lascivious women, still sought to pillage the towns; they even +plundered the very corpses, hoping to carry loot into the country, to +barter it for the bread that had been gained by horny-handed labour. +Thus might they postpone their deaths another month, thus might they +still fill up papers, still go on wooing (legally) carnal women and +await their heart's desire, the return of the decadent past. They +were afraid to recognise that only one thing was left them, to rot in +death--to die--that even the past they longed for was a way to death +for them. + +... Forests, thickets, fields, a tranquil sky.... + +Many dwelt in the towns--amongst them a certain man, no different +from the rest. He had no bread, and he too went into the country to +bargain for flour in exchange for his gramophone. Producing all the +necessary papers, permits, and licences, he proceeded to the railway, +which was dying because it too was of the towns. + +At the station there were thousands of others with permits to travel +for bread, and because of those thousands only those without permits +succeeded in boarding the train. This particular man fastened himself +on the lower step of a carriage, under sacks that hung from the roof, +travelling thus for some forty miles. Then he and his gramophone were +thrown off, and for the first time in his life he tramped thirty +miles on foot under the weight of a gramophone. + +At the next station he climbed on to the roof of a carriage and +travelled a hundred miles further. Then he was thrown off again, But +there the main-road passed the railway; by turning aside from it, +walking through a field, fording a river, making a way through the +woods, skirting the ravines, trudging through river beds, and +traversing the marshes he reached the village of Pochinki. + +He arrived there with his gramophone at sundown. The red light of the +sun was reflected on the windows, the women-folk were milking the +cows: it was already autumn and the daylight faded rapidly. The man +with the gramophone tapped at the window and Kononov Ivan lifted the +shutter. + +"Look, comrade, I've a gramophone here, to exchange for flour ... a +gramophone, a musical instrument, and records...." + +Throwing back his shoulders, Kononov-Ivan stood by the window--then +stooped, looked askance at the sunset, at the fields, at the musical +instrument. He reflected a moment, then muttered absently: + +"Aint wanted.... Go to Poriechie...." and the shutter dropped. + +A sombre sky in autumnal lights--and the crossways.... Two wheel- +tracks, ripple-grass, a foot-path. Sometimes the wanderer tired, that +path seemed interminable, without beginning or ending. He turned +aside, went astray, returned on his tracks--evermore to the thickets, +forests, marshes.... + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of the Wilderness, by Boris Pilniak + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE WILDERNESS *** + +This file should be named 7501-8.txt or 7501-8.zip + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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