It was good to look at him when he talked thus. He became dignified
and even stern. His voice grew calmer and deeper, and he spoke evenly
and in cadences, as if he were reading from the Apostles. His face was
turned upward, his eyes were round and big, and he was on his knees,
but he seemed taller to me than when he stood. At first I listened to
his words with an incredulous smile, but soon I remembered the Russian
history which Anthony gave me, and it again opened before my eyes. He
recited the marvelous fairy tale to me, and I compared this fairy tale
with the book. The words tallied, but the sense was different. He came
to the decline of the Kiev government.
"Have you heard it?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Well, then, know that those heroes never existed; that it was the
people themselves who incarnated their exploits into characters by
which to remember their great labor in the building up of the Russian
soil." Then he continued talking about the Sudzalsky land.
I remember that somewhere behind the mountains the sun rose and
the night hid itself in the woods and woke the birds. Rosy masses
of clouds hung over us and we lay on the dewy grass of the rock,
one resuscitating the past, the other astonished, counting up the
immeasurable labors of men and hardly believing the tale about the
conquest of the hostile woody soil.
The old man seemed to see everything. He heard the hammering of heavy
axes in strong hands; he saw the people drain the swamps and build up
cities and monasteries; he saw them go ever farther along the cold
rivers, into the depths of the thick forests; he saw them conquer
the savage earth; he saw them render it beautiful. The princes, the
lords of the people, cut and minced this earth into little pieces
and fought against each other with the fists of the people whom they
afterward robbed. Then from the steppes came the Tartars, but there was
no defender of the people's liberty to arise from among the princes.
There was no honor, no strength, no mind. They sold the people and made
merchandise of them with the Khans as if they were cattle, and they
bought princely power with the blood of the peasants, to have power
over these same peasants. Later, when they had taught the Tartars how
to govern, they sent each other to the Khans for slaughter.
The night around us was friendly and wise like an elder sister. The
voice of the old man gave out from weariness. The sun saw him, but he
went still farther into the past, and showed me the truth with flaming
words.
"Do you see," he asked me, "what the people have done and what they
have suffered up to the very day, when you abused them with your stupid
words? I have told you mostly of that which they did through another's
will, but after I am rested I will tell you on what their souls have
lived and how they have sought God."
He coiled up on the rock and fell asleep like a little child. I could
not sleep, but sat there as if surrounded by burning coals.
It was already morning. The sun was high and the birds were singing,
full-throated. The wood bathed in the dew and rustled, meeting the day
friendly and green. People walked along the road; ordinary, every-day
people. They walked with bowed heads and I could not see anything new
in them. They had not grown in any way in my eyes. My instructor slept
and snored and I sat next to him lost in thought. Men passed by one
after the other, looked askance at us and did not even bow their heads
to my salute.
"Is it possible," I asked myself, "that these are the offspring of
those righteous ones, those builders of the earth about whom I have
just heard?"
The dream and the reality became confused in my head, yet I understood
that this meeting meant very much for me. The old man's words about
God, the Son of the spirit of the people, disturbed me, and I could not
reconcile myself to them, not knowing any other spirit except that one
which was living in me. I racked my mind for all the peasants and the
people I had known and tried to remember their words. They had many
sayings, but their thoughts were poor. On the other hand I saw the dark
exile of life, the bitter toil for bread, the winters of famine, the
everlasting sadness of empty days, all the degradation which man has
suffered and every outrage against his soul. Where could God be in this
life? Where was there room for Him?
The old man slept. I wanted to wake him and shout "Speak!"
Soon he awoke, blinked his eyes and smiled.
"Ah," he said, "the sun is already near noon. It is time for me to go."
"Where will you go in such heat?" I asked. "We have bread, tea and
sugar. Besides, I can't let you go. You must give me what you have
promised."
Then he became thoughtful and said:
"Matvei, you should drop your wandering. It is too late, or perhaps too
early for you. You have to learn. It is time for you to learn."
"Is it not too late?"
"Look at me," he answered. "I am fifty-three years old, and up to this
day I learn from some little children."
"Whose children?" I asked.
"They are some children I know. You should live with them a year or
two. You ought to go to the factory. It is not very far from here,
about a hundred versts, where I have good friends."
"First tell me what you wanted to say, and then I shall think where I
am to go."
We walked together on the path alongside the road and again I heard his
clear voice and his strange words.
"Christ was the first true people's God, born from the soul of the
people like the phoenix from the flames."
He trembled all over and waved his hands before his face as if he
wanted to catch new words from the air, and continued shouting:
"For a long time the people carried various men on their shoulders.
Without question they gave them of their labor and their freedom,
placed them above themselves and waited humbly for them to see from
their height the paths of righteousness on earth. But these chosen
ones of the people, when they reached the height, became drunk and
degraded by their power and remained above, forgetting who placed
them there, and became a heavy burden on the earth instead of a joy.
When the people saw that the children who were fed by their blood
were their enemies, they lost their faith in them and abandoned these
powerful ones, who had to fall and the power and the strength of
their government decayed. The people understood that the law was not
that one from a family should be raised and after having fed him on
their liberty that they should live by his mind, but that the true law
was that all should be raised to one height and that each one should
look upon the paths of life with his own eyes; and the day when the
consciousness of the inevitable equality of man arose in the people,
that day was the birth of Christ.
"Many people have tried to realize their dreams of justice by creating
one live being, a common lord over all, and more than once various
people, urged on by this common thought, have tried to bind it with
strong words that it might live forever. And when all these thoughts
were mustered in one, a living God arose for them, the beloved child of
the people, Jesus Christ."
That which he said about Christ, the Son of God, was near to me; but
about the people giving birth to Christ I could not understand. I told
him that, and he answered:
"If you wish to know, you will understand. If you wish to believe, you
will know."
We tramped together for three days, going slowly; he, teaching me all
the time and explaining the past to me. He recited the whole history
of the people from the beginning up to the present day; he told me of
the troubled times when the churches persecuted the jesters and of the
merry men who awakened the people's memory with their jokes and sowed
truth by them.
"Do you understand," he asked me, "who this Savelko of yours was?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Remember that small things come from large and that the large is made
up from small pieces."
We came to Stephan Verkhatour. The old man said to me:
"We must part here. My road lies with you no longer."
I did not want to go away from him, but I understood that it was
necessary. My thoughts troubled me. I was agitated to the very depths
and my soul was furrowed as with a plow.
"Why have you become thoughtful?" he asked me. "Go to the factory. Work
there and mix with my friends. It will be no loss to you, I assure you.
The people are intelligent. I learned from them, and you see I am no
fool."
He wrote a little note and gave it to me.
"Go there. I wish you no harm, believe me. The people are new-born and
alive. Don't you believe me?"
"Our small eyes can see much," I answered, "but is that when they see
the truth?"
"Look with all your might," he cried, "with all your heart, with all
your soul! Did I tell you to believe? I told you to learn and know."
We kissed and he went away. He walked lightly, like a youth of twenty,
and as if some happiness awaited him. I became sad when I looked back
at this bird flying away from me, Heaven knows where, to sing his
song in new parts. My head was heavy; my thoughts raced like Little
Russians at market in the early morning, sleepy, awkward, slow, and in
no way able to make order. Everything became strangely confused. To my
thoughts there was another's conclusion and to this other's conclusion
my own beginning. It hurt me, yet it was funny, and I seemed all
changed within.
When I went away from Verkhatour, I asked where the road led to, and
they answered to the Isetsky factory. That was where the old man had
wanted me to go, but I took a side road; I did not wish to go there. I
wanted to go to the villages and look around me.
The people were gloomy and haughty and seemed to wish to speak with
no one. They looked about cautiously, as if they were afraid some one
would rob them.
"Here are the God-creators," I said to myself, looking at some
pock-marked peasants. "I will ask them where this road leads to."
"To the Isetsky factory."
"What is it? Do all roads lead to that factory?" I asked myself, and
wandered through villages and woods, crawling like a beetle through
the grass, and seeing the factory from a distance. It smoked, but it
did not lure me. I felt as if I had lost half of myself and I did not
understand what I wanted. I was unhappy. A gray, idle pain filled
my soul and evil laughter and a great desire to insult everybody and
myself arose in me. Suddenly, without noticing it myself, I made up my
mind: "I'll enter the factory, damn it!"