Larion had a friend, Savelko Migun, a notorious thief, and a habitual
drunkard. He was beaten more than once for his thieving and even sat in
jail for it, but for all that he was a remarkable person. He sang songs
and told stories in such a way that it is impossible to remember them
without wonder.
I heard him many times, and now he stands before me as if alive; he was
dry, lively, had a sparse beard, was all in tatters; with a small phiz
and a wedge-shaped, large forehead underneath which often twinkled his
thievish, merry eyes like two dark stars.
Often he would bring a bottle of vodka, or Larion would insist on
buying one, and they would sit opposite each other at the table,
Savelko saying:
"Well, sexton, roll out the litany."
Then they drank ... Larion, a bit abashed, would nevertheless begin to
sing, and Savelko sat as if glued to the spot, trembling, his little
beard twitching, his eyes full of tears, smoothing his forehead with
his hand and smiling or wiping the tears from his cheek with his
fingers.
Then he would bounce up like a ball, crying:
"Most superb, Laria! Well, I envy the Lord God--beautiful songs are
made for Him! But for man, Laria? What's man anyway, no matter how good
he be or how rich his soul? It isn't hard for him to go before the
Lord. But He, what does He do? Thou givest me nothing, Lord, and I give
Thee my whole soul!"
"Don't blaspheme!" Larion would say.
"I blaspheme?" Savelko would cry; "I never even thought of such a
thing! How am I blaspheming? In no way at all! I am rejoicing for the
Lord, that's all. And now I am going to sing you something."
He would stand up, stretch out his arm, and begin to chant. He sang
quietly and mysteriously, opening his eyes wide and moving his dry
finger continually on his outstretched arm, as if it were hunting for
something in space. Larion would lean up against the wall, rest his
hands on the bench, and look on in open-mouthed wonder. I lay on the
stove with my heart melting within me with sweet sadness. Savelko would
grow black before me, only his little white teeth would glisten and his
dry tongue would move like a serpent's while the sweat would rise on
his forehead in thick drops. His voice seemed endless, and it flowed
out and shone like a stream in a meadow. He would finish, stagger a
bit, wipe his face with the back of his hand, then both would take a
drink and remain silent a long time. Later Savelko would ask--
"And now Laria, 'The Ocean Waves.'"
And in this way they cheered each other up all evening as long as they
were not yet drunk. When that happened, Migun began to tell obscene
stories about priests, landlords, and kings, and my sexton would laugh
and I with them. Savelko without tiring produced one story after
another, and each one so funny that he almost choked with laughter.
But best of all he sang on holidays in the wineshop. He stood up in
front of the people, frowning hard so that the wrinkles lay deep on his
temples. To look at him, one would think the songs came to his bosom
from the earth itself and that the earth showed him the words and gave
strength to his voice. Around him stood or sat the peasants, some with
heads bowed chewing a piece of straw, others staring into Savelko's
mouth, and all were radiant, while the women even wept as they listened.
When he finished they said:
"Give us another, brother."
And they brought him drinks.
The following story was told about Migun. He stole something in the
village, and the peasants caught him. When they caught him, they said:
"Well, that finishes you! Now we are going to hang you, we can't stand
you any longer."
And he, the story goes, answered:
"Drop it, peasants, that's a nasty job you've begun. You have already
taken from me the things I've stolen, so that you have lost nothing.
Anyway, you can always get new things, but where will you get such a
fellow as I? Who will cheer you up when I'm gone?"
"All right," they said, "talk on."
They took him to the wood to hang him and he began to sing on the way.
When they first started out, they walked fast, then they slowed up.
When they came to the wood, though the rope was ready, they waited,
until he should finish his last song. Then they said to one another:
"Let him sing another song. It will do for his Last Communion."
He sang another and then another, and then the sun rose. The men looked
about them; a clear day was rising from the east. Migun stood smiling
among them awaiting his death without fear. The peasants became abashed.
"Well, fellows, let him go to the devil," they said. "If we hang him,
we might have all kinds of sins and troubles on our heads for it."
And they decided not to touch Migun.
"We bow to the ground before you for your talent," they said, "but for
your thieving we ought to beat you up, all the same."
They gave him a light beating, and then they all went back in a body
with him.
All this might have been made up, but it speaks well for human beings,
and puts Savelko in a good light. And then think of this: if people can
make up such good stories, it follows they are not so bad, and in this
lies the whole point.
Not only did they sing songs together, but Savelko and Larion carried
on long conversations with each other--often about the devil. They did
not give him much honor.
Once I remember the sexton saying:
"The devil is the image of your own wickedness, the reflection of your
own dark soul."
"That means, he is my own foolishness?" Savelko asked.
"Just that and nothing else."
"It must be so," Migun said, laughing. "For were he alive, he would
have snatched me up long ago!"
Larion didn't believe in devils at all. I remember him discussing in
the barn with the Dissenters and he shouting:
"It is not devilish, but brutish! Good and evil are in man. When you
want goodness, goodness is there; _if_ you want evil, evil is there,
from you and for you. God does not force you by His Will either to good
or evil. He created you free-willed, and you are free to do both good
and evil. Your devil is misery and darkness! Good is really something
human, because it springs from God, while your evil doesn't come from
the devil, but from the brute in you."
They shouted at him:
"Red-haired heretic!"
But he kept on.
"That's why," he said, "the devil is painted with horns and feet like
a goat's, because he is the brute element in man."
Best of all Larion spoke about Christ. I always wept when I pictured
the bitter fate that befell the Holy Son of God. His whole life stood
before me, from the discussion in the Temple with the wise men, to
Golgotha, and He was like a pure and beautiful child in His ineffable
love for the people, with a kind smile for all and a tender word of
consolation--always like a child, dazzling in His beauty.
"Even with the wise men of the Temple," Larion said, "Christ conversed
like a child, that is why in his simple wisdom He appeared greater than
they. You, Motka, remember this, and try to conserve the child-like
throughout your whole life, for in it lies truth."
I would ask him:
"Will Christ come again soon?"
"Yes, soon," he would say, "soon, for it is said that people are again
looking for Him."
As Larion's words now come back to me, it seems to me that he saw
God as the great Creator of the most beautiful things, and man as an
incompetent being, who was lost on the by-ways of the world. And he
pitied this talentless heir to the great riches left to him on this
earth by God.
Both he and Savelko had one faith. I remember that an ikon appeared
miraculously in our village. Once, very early on an autumn morning a
woman came to the well for water, when suddenly she saw something
glow in the darkness at the bottom of the well. She called the people
together. The village elder appeared, the priest came, and Larion ran
up. They let a man down into the well and he brought up the ikon of the
"unburnt bush." They performed mass right on the spot and then they
decided to put up a shrine above the well, the priest crying:
"Orthodox, give your offerings."
The village elder lent his authority and gave three rubles himself. The
peasants untied their purses and the women earnestly brought pieces of
linen and grain of all sorts. There was rejoicing in the village and I,
too, was happy, as on the day of Christ's holy Resurrection.
But even during mass I noticed that Larion's face looked sad. He
glanced at no one, and Savelko ran about like a mouse through the
crowd and giggled. At night I went to look at the apparition. It stood
above the well, giving forth an azure glow like a vapor, as if some
one unseen was breathing on it tenderly, warming it with his light and
heat; it gave me anguish and pleasure.
When I came home I heard Larion say sadly,
"There is no such Holy Virgin."
And Savelko drawled out the following, laughing:
"I know, Moses lived long before Christ. Why! the scoundrels! A
miracle, what? Oh, but you peasants are queer!"
"For this the elder and the priest ought to go to jail," Larion said
in a very low voice. "Let them not kill the God in man just to slack
their own greed."
I felt uneasy at this conversation and I asked from the stove:
"What are you talking about, Uncle Larion?"
They were silent, then they whispered to each other; evidently they
were disturbed. Then Savelko cried:
"What is the matter with you? You yourself complained that the people
were fools, and now you are shamelessly making a fool of Matveika! Why?"
He jumped over to me and said:
"Look, Motka, here are matches. I rub them between my hands, see? Put
out the light, Larion."
They put out the lamp, and I saw Savelko's two hands glow in the
darkness with the same blue phosphorescence as the miraculous ikon. It
was terrible and offensive to see.
Savelko said something, but I crouched in a corner of the stove, closed
my ears with my fingers, and remained silent. Then they crawled in
by my side, took vodka along, and for a long time they took turns in
telling me about true miracles and of the faith of man sacrilegiously
betrayed. And so I fell asleep while they talked.
After two or three days, many priests and officials arrived, arrested
the ikon, dismissed the village elder from his post, and the priest,
too, was threatened with a law-suit. Then I believed the whole thing
had been a fraud, though it was hard for me to admit that it was done
for the purpose of getting linen from the women and some pennies from
the men.
When I was six years old, Larion began to teach me the abcs in the
Church-tongue and when two winters later a school was opened in our
village, he sent me there. At first I grew somewhat apart from Larion.
I liked to study, and I took to my books zealously, so that when he
asked me my lessons, as sometimes happened, he would say, after hearing
me,
"Fine, Motka."
Once he said:
"Good blood boils in you. It's plain your father was no fool." And I
asked,
"But where is he?"
"Who can know!"
"Is he a peasant?"
"All one can say for sure is that he was a man. His caste is unknown.
However, he could hardly have been a peasant. By your face and skin,
not to mention your character, he seems to have been from the gentry."
Those casual words of his sank deep into my mind and they didn't do
me much good. When they called me a foundling at school, I balked and
shouted to my comrades:
"You are peasant children, but my father is a gentleman!"
I became very firm about this. One must protect oneself somehow
against insults, and I had no other protection in my mind. They began
to dislike me, to call me bad names, and I fought back. I was a strong
youngster and could fight easily. Complaints grew about me, and people
said to the sexton:
"Quiet that bastard of yours!"
And others without bothering to complain, pulled my ears to their
hearts' content.
Then Larion said to me:
"You may be a son of a general, Matvei, but that isn't of such great
importance. We are all born in the same way and therefore the honor is
the same for all."
But it was too late. I was twelve years old at the time and felt
insults keenly. Something pulled me away from people and again I found
myself close to the sexton. All winter we wandered together in the
wood, catching birds, and I became worse in my studies.
I finished school at thirteen, and Larion began to think what he should
do with me. I would go rowing with him in a boat, I at the oars and he
steering, and he led me in his thoughts over all the paths of human
fate, telling me of the various vocations in life.
He saw me a priest, a soldier, an employee, and nowhere was it good for
me.
"What should it be then, Motka?" he would ask.
Then he would look at me and say, laughing,
"Never mind, don't get frightened. If you don't fall down, you will
crawl out. Only avoid the military. That's a man's finish."
In August, soon after the Day of Assumption, we went together to the
lake of Liubushin to catch sheat-fish. Larion was a bit drunk and he
had wine along with him. From time to time he sipped from the bottle,
cleared his throat and sang so that he could be heard over the whole
water.
His boat was bad, it was small and unsteady. He made a sharp turn, the
bow dipped, and we both found ourselves in the water. It was not the
first time that such a thing happened, and I was not frightened. I rose
and saw Larion swimming at my side, shaking his head and saying to me:
"Swim to the bank and I'll push the damned tub there."
It was not far from the bank and the current was weak. I swam
tranquilly, when suddenly I felt as if something pulled at my feet, or
as if I had struck a cold current, and looking back, I saw that our
boat was floating bottom up, and Larion was not there. He was nowhere.
Like a stone striking my head, terror hit my heart. A cramp seized me
and I sank to the bottom.
An employee from the estate, Yegor Titoff, who was crossing the field,
saw how we capsized. He saw Larion disappear and when I began to drown,
Titoff was already on the bank undressing. He pulled me out, but Larion
was not found until night.
His dear soul was extinguished, and immediately it became both dark and
cold for me. When they buried him, I was sick in bed, and I could not
escort the dear man to the cemetery. When I was up, the first thing
I did was to go to his grave. I sat there, and could not even weep,
so great was my sorrow. His voice rang in my memory, his words lived
again, but the man who used to lay his tender hand on my head was no
longer on this earth. Everything became strange and distant. I sat with
my eyes closed. Suddenly somebody picked me up. He took me by the hand
and picked me up. I looked and saw Titoff.
"You have nothing to do here," he said. "Come." And he led me away. I
went with him.
He said to me:
"It seems you have a good heart, youngster, it remembers the good."
But this did not make me feel any better. I was silent. Titoff
continued:
"Even at the time when you were abandoned, I thought to myself, I shall
take the child to me, but I came too late. However, it seems it is
God's wish. Here He again puts your life into my hands. That means you
will come to live with me."
It was all the same to me then, whether to live, not to live, how
to live or with whom.... Thus I passed from one point in my life to
another without realizing it myself.