On we went, and around us in every direction, in heroic proportions,
stretched the steppe, covered by the blue sultry cupola of the
cloudless summer sky, and lying before us like a huge round black
platter. The grey dusty road intersected it like a broad ribbon and
burnt our feet Here and there we fell in with bristly patches of
trampled-down corn, having a strange resemblance to the long unshaven
cheeks of the soldier.
The soldier marched along, singing in a hoarse bass:
"And thus, oh Holy Eastertide,
Thy fame we sing and pr-r-raise."
While under arms he had held some sort of office resembling that
of clerk in the battalion church, and knew a countless number of
liturgical snatches and fragments, the knowledge of which he constantly
abused every time our conversation happened to flag.
In front of us on the horizon certain forms with soft outlines and
pleasant shades of colour, from faint lilac to fresh pink, began to
stand forth prominently.
"Evidently those are the Crimean mountains," said "the student" with a
dry voice.
"Mountains?" cried the soldier, "it's jolly early yet to see mountains.
They are clouds--simply clouds. Don't you see--just like cranberry
vinegar with milk."
I observed that it would be in the highest degree acceptable if they
were clouds and did indeed consist of cranberry vinegar. This suddenly
awakened our hunger--the evil of our days.
"Deuce take it!" growled the soldier, spitting a bit; "if only we could
fall in with a single living soul! There's nobody at all! We shall have
to do as the bears do in winter-time and suck our own paws."
"I said we ought to have gone towards inhabited places," observed "the
student" didactically.
"_You_ said, did you!" the soldier fired up at once. "Talk--that's
about all you students are up to! What sort of inhabited places are
there here? The Devil knows where they are."
"The student" was silent, he only pressed his lips tightly together.
The sun was setting, and the clouds on the horizon exhibited a play of
colour of every shade that language fails to grasp. There was a smell
of earth and of salt in the air, and this dry and tasty smell piqued
our appetites still more.
There was a sucking sensation in our stomachs, a strange and unpleasant
feeling. It seemed as if the juice was gradually trickling out of every
muscle in our bodies--trickling away somewhither, and evaporating,
and that our muscles were losing their vital elasticity. A feeling of
prickly dryness filled the hollow of the mouth and throat, there was a
dull sensation in our heads, and dark spots really arose and flashed
before our eyes. Sometimes they took the form of steaming pieces of
meat--nourishing beef. Memory provided these "visions of the past, dumb
visions," with their own peculiar fragrance, and then it was just as if
a knife were turning round in our stomachs.
We went along all the same, giving one another a description of our
feelings, casting angry sidelong glances about us in case we might
peradventure perceive a sheepfold, and listening for the sharp creak of
a Tatar _arba_[2] carrying fruit to the Armenian bazaar.
But the steppe was desolate and voiceless.
On the eve of this hard day we three had eaten four pounds of rye bread
and five melons, had walked about thirty-five miles--our income was
scarcely equal to our expenditure!--and after going to sleep in the
bazaar square at Perekop were awakened by hunger.
"The student" had very properly advised us not to lie down to sleep,
but in the course of the night to occupy ourselves with ... but in
orderly society it is not considered the right thing openly to speak
of any project for infringing the rights of property, and I will
therefore keep silence. I only want to be just and not rude to others
even in my own interests. I know that people in our highly cultured
days are becoming more and more soft hearted, and even when they take
their neighbours by the throat with the obvious intention of throttling
them--they try to do it with as much amiability as possible, and
with the observance of all the consideration which the circumstances
will admit of. The experience! of my own throat has caused me to
observe this progress in morals, and I maintain, with a pleasant
feeling of conviction, that everything in this world is developing
towards perfection. In particular this remarkable process is solidly
established every year by the growth of prisons, taverns, and tolerated
houses.
[2] A two-wheeled cart used in the Crimea.
Thus, swallowing the spittle of hunger, and endeavouring by friendly
conversation to blunt the pangs of our stomachs, we went along the
desolate and silent steppe--went along in the beautiful rays of the
setting sun, full of a dull hope of something or other turning up. In
front of us the setting sun was silently vanishing in the midst of soft
clouds liberally embellished by his rays, and behind us and on both
sides of us a dove-coloured mist, rising from the steppe into the sky,
fixed unalterably the disagreeable horizon surrounding us.
"My brothers, let us collect materials for a camp fire," said the
soldier, picking up from the road a chump of wood; "we shall have to
make a night of it in the steppe, and the dew is about to fall ...
cow-dung, twigs--take anything!"
We dispersed on the road in various directions, and began to collect
dry grass and everything that could possibly burn. Every time we
chanced to bend down towards the ground a passionate desire seized
upon our whole body to lie down upon the earth--lie there immovably
and eat the fat black stuff--eat a lot of it, eat till we could eat
no more, and then fall asleep. Only to eat!--if we slept for evermore
afterwards--to chew and chew and feel the thick warm mash flow
gradually from our mouths along our dried-up gullet and food passages
into our famished, extenuated stomachs, burning with the desire to suck
up some sort of nutriment.
"If only we could find some root or other!" sighed the soldier; "there
are roots you can eat, you know."
But in the black furrowed earth there were no roots. The southern night
came on quickly, and the last ray of the sun had scarce disappeared
when the stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky, and around us,
more and more solidly, were gathering the dark shadows, and a smooth
blankness engulfed the whole steppe.
"My brothers," said "the student," "yonder to the left a man is lying."
"A man?"--the soldier's tone was dubious--"what should he be lying
there for?"
"Go and ask. He must certainly have bread with him if he lies down in
the steppe," explained "the student."
The soldier looked in the direction where the man lay, and spitting
with decision, said:
"Let us go to him!"
Only the keen, green eyes of "the student" could have made out that
the dark patch rising up some fifty fathoms to the left of the road
was a man. We went towards him, quickly stepping over the ploughed-up
hummocks of earth, and we felt the hope of food new-born within us put
a fresh edge upon our hunger. We were already quite close--the man did
not move.
"Perhaps it is not a man at all!"--the soldier had put into words the
thought common to us all.
But our doubts were resolved that selfsame instant, for the heap on the
ground suddenly began to move, grew in size, and we saw that it was a
real living man, now on his knees and stretching towards us an arm.
And he said to us in a hollow, tremulous voice:
"Another step--and I fire!"
A short and dry click resounded through the murky air.
We stopped short, as if at the word of command, and were silent for
some seconds, dumfounded by such an unpleasant encounter.
"What a beast!" growled the soldier expressively.
"Well, I never!" said "the student," reflectively, "to go about with a
revolver. A well-plucked one evidently!"
"Aye!" cried the soldier, "pretty resolute too."
The man never changed his pose, but remained silent.
"Hie, you there! We won't touch you ... Only give us some bread--got
any, eh? Give us some, my brother, for Christ's sake--be anathema
accursed one!"
The last words of the soldier, naturally, were muttered between his
teeth.
The man was silent.
"Do you hear?" cried the soldier again, with a spasm of rage and
despair. "Give us bread, we pray you! We won't go near to you--throw it
to us!"
"All right!" said the man curtly.
He might have said "my dear brethren!" and if he had poured into these
three Christian words the holiest and purest feelings they would not
have excited us, they would not have humanized us so much, as did that
short and hollow: "All right!"
"Do not be afraid of us, good man!" began the soldier softly, and with
a sweet smile on his face, although the man could not have seen his
smile, for he was at least twenty paces distant from us.
"We are peaceful folks ... we are going from Russia into the Kuban. We
have lost our money on the road, we have eaten all our provisions, and
this is now the second four and twenty hours that we haven't tasted a
morsel...."
"Catch!" said the good man, flinging out his arm A black morsel
flashed towards us and fell on a hummock not very far from us. "The
student" fell upon it.
"Catch again!--again! There is no more!"
When "the student" had picked up this original gift it appeared that we
had four pounds of stale wheaten bread. It had been buried in the earth
and was very stale. The first piece barely arrested our attention, the
second piece pleased us very much. Stale bread is more satisfying than
fresh bread, there is less moisture in it.
"So--and so--and so!" said the soldier, concentrating all his attention
on the division of the morsels. "Stay! That's fair, I think! A little
corner ought to be nibbled off your piece, student, for his"--he meant
mine--"is too little."
"The student," without a murmur, submitted to the subtraction from his
portion of about an ounce in weight. I snatched it, and popped it into
my mouth.
I began to chew it, chew it gradually, scarce able to control the
convulsive movement of my jaws, ready to pulverize a stone. It
afforded me a keen delight to feel the jerky throbs of my gullet,
and to be able, by little and little, to gratify it with little
rivulets of nutriment. Mouthful after mouthful, warm and inexplicably,
indescribably tasty, penetrated at last to my burning stomach, and
seemed instantly to turn into blood and muscle. Delight, such a
strange, calm, and vivifying delight, warmed my heart proportionately
to the filling of my stomach, and my general condition was similar to
that of someone half asleep. I forgot all about those accursed days of
chronic hunger, and I forgot about my comrades engulfed in the rapture
of those very feelings which I myself had just experienced.
But when I had cast from my palm into my mouth the last crumb of bread,
I felt a mortal desire for more.
"He must have about him--anathemas smite him!--some tallow or a bit of
meat," cried the soldier, sitting down on the ground opposite to me and
rubbing his belly with his hands.
"Certainly, for the bread has a smell of meat.... Yes, and he has
more bread, I'll be bound," said "the student," and he added very
quietly, "if only he hadn't a revolver!"
"Who is he, I wonder?"
"A hound!" said the soldier decidedly.
We sat together in a close group and cast sidelong glances in the
direction where sat our benefactor with his revolver. Not a sound, not
a sign of life now proceeded from that quarter.
Night had assembled her dark forces all around us. Mortally still
it was in the steppe there--we could hear each other's breath. Now
and then from somewhither resounded the melancholy whistle of the
_suslik_[3].... The stars, the bright flowers of heaven, shone down
upon us ... We wanted more to eat.
[3] The earless marmot of the steppe.
With pride I say it--I was neither better nor worse than my casual
comrades on this somewhat strange night. I persuaded them to get up and
go towards this man. We need not touch him, but we would eat everything
we found upon him. He would fire--let him! Out of three of us only one
could fall, even if one fell at all, and even if one of us did fall, a
mere revolver bullet would scarcely be the death of him.
"Let us go," said the soldier, leaping to his feet.
"The student" rose to his feet more slowly than the soldier.
And we went, we almost ran. "The student" kept well behind us.
"Comrade!" cried the soldier reproachfully.
There met us a dull report and the sharp sound of a snapping trigger.
There was a flash and the dry report of a firearm.
"It is over!" yelled the soldier joyfully, and with a single bound he
was level with the man. "Now, you devil, I am going to have it out with
you."
"The student" flung himself on the knapsack.
"The devil" fell from his knees on to his back, and stretching out his
arms gave forth a choking sound.
"What the deuce!" cried the astonished soldier in the very act of
raising his foot to give the man a kick. "What is he groaning for like
that? Hie! Hie you! What's the matter? Have you shot yourself or what?"
"There's meat and some pancakes and bread--a whole lot, my
brothers!"--and the voice of "the student" crowed with delight.
"But what the deuce ails him?--he is at the last gasp! Come then, let
us eat, my friends!" cried the soldier. I had taken the revolver out of
the hand of the man who had ceased to groan, and now lay motionless.
There was only a single cartridge in the cartridge-box.
Again we ate--ate in silence. The man also lay there in silence, not
moving a limb. We paid no attention to him whatever.
"My brothers, I suppose you have done all this simply for the sake of
bread?" suddenly exclaimed a hoarse and tremulous voice.
We all started. "The student" even swallowed a crumb, and bending low
towards the ground fell a coughing.
The soldier in the midst of his chewing became abusive.
"You soul of a dog! Take care I don't hack you like a clod of wood!
Or would you prefer us to flay you alive, eh?--It was ours because
we wanted it Shut your foolish mouth, you unclean spirit! A pretty
thing!--To go about armed and fire at folks! May you be anathema!"
He cursed while he ate, and for that reason his cursing lost all its
expression and force.
"Wait till we have eaten our fill and then we'll settle accounts with
you," remarked "the student" viciously.
And then through the silence of the night resounded a wailing cry which
frightened us.
"My brothers ... how could I tell? I fired because I was frightened.
I am going from New Athos ... to the Government of Smolensk ... Oh,
Lord! The fever has caught me ... it burns me up like the sun ... woe
is me! Even when I left Athos the fever was upon me ... I was doing
some carpenter's work ... I am a carpenter by trade ... At home is my
wife and two little girls ... for three or four years I have not seen
them ... my brothers ... you know all!"
"We are eating, don't bother," said "the student."
"Lord God! if only I had known that you were quiet peaceable folks ...
do you think I would have fired? And here in the steppe too, at night,
my brothers, you cannot say I am guilty, surely?"
He spoke and he wept, or to speak more accurately, he uttered a sort of
tremulous terrified howl.
"He's a miser!" said the soldier contemptuously.
"He _must_ have money about him," observed "the student."
The soldier winked, looked at him, and smiled.
"How sharp you are ... I say, give us some of the firewood here, and
we'll light up and go to sleep."
"And how about him?" inquired "the student."
"The deuce take him! He may roast himself with us if he likes--what?"
"He might follow us!" and "the student" shook his sharp head.
We went to fetch the materials we had collected, threw them down where
the carpenter had brought us to a standstill with his threatening cry,
set light to them, and soon were sitting round a bonfire. It burnt
quietly in the windless night and lighted up the tiny space occupied by
us. We ached to go to sleep, though for all that we should have liked a
little more supper first.
"My brothers!" the carpenter called to us. He was lying three yards
off, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was whispering something.
"Well!" said the soldier.
"May I come to you--to the fire? I am about to die ... all my bones are
broken Oh, Lord! it is plain to me that I shall never live to get home."
"Crawl along then,"--it was "the student" who decided.
Very gradually, as if fearing to lose hand or foot, the carpenter moved
along the ground towards the fire. He was a tall and frightfully wasted
man, every part of him seemed to be quivering, and his large dim eyes
expressed the pain that was consuming him. His shrivelled face was very
bony, and had in the light of the fire a yellowish earthy cadaverous
colour. He was still tremulous, and excited our contemptuous pity.
Stretching his long thin hands towards the fire, he rubbed his bony
fingers, and kneaded their joints slowly and wearily. At last it went
against us to look at him.
"What do you cut such a figure for, and why do you go on foot?--to save
expense, eh?" asked the soldier surlily.
"I was so advised ... don't go, said they, by water, but go by way of
the Crimea, for the air, they said. And lo! I cannot go, I am dying, my
brothers. I shall die alone in the steppe ... the birds will pick my
bones and nobody will know about it ... My wife ... my little daughters
will be waiting for me ... I wrote to them ... and my bones will be
washed by the rains of the steppe ... Lord, Lord!"
He uttered the anguished howl of a wounded wolf.
"Oh, the devil!" cried the soldier, waxing wrath, and springing to his
feet. "How you whine! Can't you leave folks in peace! You're dying, eh?
Well, die then, and hold your tongue ... What use are you to anyone?
Shut up!"
"Give him one on the chump!" suggested "the student."
"Lie down and sleep!" said I, "and if you want to be by the fire, don't
howl, really, you know...."
"Now you have heard," said the soldier savagely, "pray understand. You
fancy we shall pity you and pay attention to you because you flung
bread to us and fired bullets at us, do you? You sour-faced devil you!
Others would have... Ugh!"
The soldier ceased and stretched himself on the ground.
"The student" was already lying down I lay down too. The frightened
carpenter huddled himself into a heap, and edging gradually towards
the fire began to look at it in silence. I lay on his right, and heard
how his teeth chattered. "The student" lay on his left, and appeared
to have gone to sleep straight off after rolling himself into a ball.
The soldier, placing his hands beneath his head, lay face upwards, and
looked at the sky.
"What a night, eh?--what a lot of stars!--and warm, too!" said he,
turning to me after a time. "What a sky--a bed-top, not a sky. Friend,
I love this vagabond life. It is cold and hungry, but then it is as
free as the air ... You have no superior over you ... you are the
master of your own life ... Though you bite your own head off, nobody
can say a word to you ... It is good ... I have been very hungry and
very angry these last few days ... and now I am lying here as if
nothing had happened and look at the sky ... The stars blink at me ...
It is just as if they were saying: What matters it, Lakutin; go and
know, and be subject to nobody on this earth ... There you are ... my
heart is happy. And how is it with you, eh, carpenter? Don't be angry
with me, and fear nothing. We ate up your food, I know, but it doesn't
matter; you had food and we had none, so we ate up yours. And you are
a savage fellow, you go about firing bullets. Are you not aware that
bullets may do a man harm? I was very angry with you a little while
ago, and if you had not fallen down I should have well trounced you, my
brother, for your cheek. But as to the food--to-morrow you can go back
to Perekop and buy some there ... you have money ... I know it ... How
long is it since you caught the fever?"
For a long time the deep bass of the soldier and the tremulous voice of
the sick carpenter hummed in my ears. The night was dark, almost black,
obliterating everything here below, and a fresh sappy breeze streamed
out of its bosom.
A uniform light and an enlivening warmth proceeded from the fire. One's
eyes closed insensibly, and before them, as if seen through a vision,
passed something soothing and purifying.
* * * * *
"Get up! awake! Let us go!"
I opened my eyes with a feeling of terror and quickly sprang to my
feet, the soldier helping by pulling me violently from the ground by
the arm.
"Come, look alive! March!"
His face was grim and anxious. I looked around me. The sun was rising,
and his rosy rays already lay upon the immovable and dark blue face
of the carpenter. His mouth was open, his eyes projected far out of
their sockets, and stared with a glassy look expressive of horror. The
clothes covering his bosom were all torn, and he lay in an unnatural,
broken-up sort of pose. There was no sign of "the student."
"Well, have you looked your fill!... Come on, I say!" said the soldier
excitedly, dragging at my sleeve.
"Is he dead?" I asked, shivering in the fresh morning air.
"Certainly. And he might have throttled _you_ ... and _you_ might
have died," explained the soldier.
"He! Who? 'The Student'?" I exclaimed.
"Well, who else? It wasn't you, eh? And I suppose you won't say it
was--me? Well, so much for your bookworms! He managed very cleverly
with the man ... and has left his comrades in the lurch. Had I
suspected it, I could have killed 'the student' yesterday evening. I
could have killed him at a blow ... Smash with my fist on his forehead,
and there would have been one blackguard the less in the world. See
what he has done, and remember it! Now we must move on so that not
a human eye may see us in the steppe. Do you understand? Recollect,
we came upon the carpenter to-day, throttled and plundered. And we'll
search for our brother ... find out in what direction he went, and
where he passed the night. Well, suppose they seize us ... although we
have nothing upon us ... except his revolver in my bosom!"
"Throw it away," I advised the soldier.
"Throw it away?" said he thoughtfully, "why it's a precious thing. And
then, too, they may not seize us yet ... No, I'll not chuck it ... Who
knows that the carpenter carried arms? I'll not chuck it ... It's worth
three roubles ... And there's a bullet in it. How I should like to fire
this selfsame bullet into the ear of our dear comrade! I wonder how
much money he filched, the hound! May he be anathema!"
"And there are the carpenter's little daughters!" said I.
"Daughters? What?... Well, they'll grow up, and it's not for us to find
them husbands; they don't concern us at all ... Let us go, my brother,
quickly. Whither shall we go?"
"I don't know ... it's all one to me."
"And I don't know, and I know it is all one. Let us go to the right ...
the sea must be there."
We went to the right.
I turned to look back. Far away from us in the steppe rose a dark
little mound, and on it the sun was shining.
"Are you looking to see whether he will rise again? Don't be afraid,
he won't rise up to pursue us. The scholar is evidently a chap up
to a dodge or two, and dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has
saddled us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my brother! Folks
are degenerating! From year to year they degenerate more and more,"
observed the soldier sadly.
The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the bright morning sun,
unfolded itself all around us, blending on the horizon with the sky, so
bright and friendly and lavish of light, that any black and iniquitous
deed seemed impossible in the midst of the grand spaciousness of that
free expanse, covered by the blue cupola of heaven.
"Feel hungry, brother?" said the soldier, twisting himself a cigarette
out of his _makharka._[4]
"Where are we going to-day, and how?"
"That's the question!"
* * * * *
Here the narrator--my next neighbour in the hospital hammock--broke off
his story and said to me:
"That's all. I became very friendly with this soldier, and accompanied
him all the way to the Kars District. He was a good and very
experienced little fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected
him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, and then we lost sight
of each other."
[4] Peasant's tobacco.
"Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?" I asked.
"As you see--or as you hear."
"And there was nothing more?"
He smiled.
"What ought my feelings to have been in such a case--do you mean that?
I was not to blame foe what happened to him, just as you are not to
blame for what has happened to me. And nobody is to blame for anything,
for all of us alike are--beasts of the same kidney."