O Liberty! With a thousand tongues she spoke to him, with a thousand
tones and colours she greeted the fugitive everywhere. For two weeks he
saw nothing overhead but the immense expanse of blue sky, against which
the branches with their reddish opening blossoms showed in delicate
relief. It seemed as if there were no such things in the world as gloomy
walls and rusty prison bars. Only in his dreams at times the fugitive
still heard the clanking of chains and the rattling of locks; then he
awoke in terror to see above him the starry sky of night and the waving
pine-tops. He would lie for hours without moving, listening to the
solemn sound of the wind roaring through the forest. O Liberty!
He did not know how many versts he was from the great high road, along
which he had been driven together with the whole herd of prisoners. At
first he had come across clearings and settlements in the forest, seen
the smoke of chimneys from a distance, and made a wide detour. It was
only at night that he ventured into the neighbourhood of human
dwellings, and looked about, like a wild animal, to see where he could
clamber in, and get some bread without awaking the dogs. On one occasion
hunger drove him into a cottage in the window of which he had seen a
candle burning. An old woman who was cowering down by the hearth was
paralysed by fear and began to tremble all over. What wonder? Who did
not know the yellow sign on the convict's back? He tried to speak
gently. "Don't fear, mother! Have you any bread?" But the old woman's
tongue could not move. So he looked for and found a crust of bread and
drank some water. He saw her desperate poverty and asked, "Have you got
no more bread?"
Then the old woman recovered herself a little. "Go!" she stammered;
"to-morrow I will get some more."
"Shall I take your last piece?" he said, left the crust lying on the
table and departed.
Another day he met a hunter in the forest and would probably have passed
him with an ordinary greeting, had not the latter pointed his gun at
him.
Then a cloud came before Ivan's eyes; he rushed at the stranger and tore
him down. His breath was soon choked out of him, and no one knew how
long his body lay in the forest before the wolves devoured it. He had
brought his death on himself. The fugitive was glad to get rid of his
convict's garb and now wore a coat of sheepskin. He also had a gun to
protect himself from wild beasts. If his hair had only been longer, he
had no need to go out of people's way.
O Liberty! His conscience was silent; no recollection of the blood which
he had shed stirred in him, or if it did occur to his mind, it troubled
him as little as it troubles a beast of prey. Men had always been the
old vagabond's worst enemies. He had grown up like a hungry, young dog,
a mark for missiles and kicks. He received little to eat and many blows,
and when hunger drove him to steal, he received more blows. In the house
of correction the priest spoke to him of the sufferings of Christ, of
repentance and reform. He listened gloomily and returned to his cell.
"Christ is gracious to sinners," he thought, "but who has ever been
gracious to me?"
After he had shed blood once, his soul seemed to become covered with a
hard crust. He became like an animal, escaped from prison when he could,
and no longer had a home. Since then his eyebrows were closely
contracted over his gloomy eyes, and he was filled with bitter hatred
against the whole world. He only longed for one thing, the solitude of
field and forest, for liberty and loneliness, where he felt no one near
him.
Still farther and farther he roamed between the grey scarred
tree-trunks. Through the carpet of pine-needles over which his foot
passed, there were springing here and there pointed little leaves and
the first grass-blades. The squirrels had already ventured out of their
warm nests into the sunshine and sprang briskly and blithely from
branch to branch, as though they would make fun of the old vagabond. The
sky sent down soft spring showers, or brief thunder-storms, or expanded
itself in blue serenity as though it would warm the earth on its bosom.
Ivan wandered through dark ravines, where noisy rivulets streamed down
on all sides, and in the perpetual shadow the snow still lay white and
untouched.
The farther he went, the louder and merrier foamed and bubbled the tides
of spring. O Liberty!
When the fugitive was tired, he could find a shelter anywhere. He would
fling himself down where he liked, cross his hands under his head, and
look up at the sky till his eyes closed of themselves. The wounds on his
legs caused by the iron fetters began to heal; no one who met him would
have guessed who he was. But the primeval forest seemed quite deserted;
no tree bore the mark of an axe, and none had been felled. Here a black
scorched pine-tree had been blasted by the lightning; there a
half-decayed one, whose top was entangled in its neighbour's branches,
had collapsed from sheer old age. This solitude had been profaned by no
one's foot; here was real freedom.
Only now and then he encountered wild animals. Once a bear came within
gun-shot, but the old man spared his life. "You have nothing to give me
now," he thought. "Your skin is no use in summer. Come again in winter."
And he shouted at the animal in such a terrible voice, that it trotted
off with its tail drawn in.
Sometimes he heard the howling of the wolves in the distance; in the
deep silence it sounded weird and terrifying. It filled the old man with
a strange feeling, not fear, but in his innermost being something seemed
to howl and moan in sympathy with the beasts of prey. Was he not indeed
like a wolf among men? Cowering by the fires he made, he would gaze for
hours into the red glowing embers. The flames roared and strained
towards the dark sky as though they would make themselves free; the
fresh brushwood crackled and emitted clouds of blue whirling smoke;
the birch-trunk over which the sparks danced, contracted itself as
though in a spasm, till it finally flared up in a sheet of fire, and the
solitary man felt ever more painfully conscious that he too was every
one's enemy, and was only tolerated in this wilderness like those
creatures whose howling so strangely thrilled his heart. The darkness
which seemed to press from all sides on the fire looked between the grey
pine-trunks on the gloomy face of the convict, and listened to his
moody murmuring.