Like one sick, I wandered for many days, full of heavy heartache. A
fire raged in my soul, that quiet piece of land of mine, and lit it up
like a meadow in the wood, and my thoughts now crawled ahead of me,
together with my shadow; now dragged behind, like biting smoke. Was I
ashamed or not? I do not remember and I cannot say. A black thought was
born in my mind and fluttered about me like a bat. "They are Godless
ones, not God-creators."
But heavier and broader than all my thoughts, was a hollow stillness
in me, lazy and deep; a certain peace like a turbid pool, in the
depths of whose heart dumb thoughts swam about with difficulty, like
frightened fish who struggle but cannot rise to the light from out of
the oppressive depths.
Little reached me from the outside, and I remember my meetings with men
as through a dream. Somewhere near Omsk, at a village market, I woke
up. A blind man sat on the road in the dust and sang a song. His guide
knelt near him and accompanied him on his accordion. The old man looked
up at heaven with his empty eyes and sang the words with a faraway,
rusty voice, describing the past, under the reign of Ivan Vasilef, and
the accordion gave out its hollow accompaniment, "U-u-u."
I sat down on the ground next to the blind man. He took hold of my
hand, held it, let it go again, but did not stop singing: "Once there
lived Ermak, a son of Timotheof." "A-a-a," the accordion repeated.
And around the singers a crowd collected quietly, listening
thoughtfully and seriously to the story of the past, with heads bowed
to the ground. A dry warmth enfolded me and I saw curiosity light up
the eyes of the men, and some one asked:
"Won't he sing?"
"He will. Wait."
I had often heard these robber ballads, but I never knew whose were
the words nor whose the soul mirrored there. But now all at once I
understood. The ancient people spoke to me with a thousand tongues. "I
pardon your great sins against me, man, for your small service."
People still looked at me with, curiosity, and my spirit was aroused.
The old man finished his song, and I arose and said:
"Orthodox Christians, here you have heard about a robber who plundered
and robbed the people, but, afterwards, his conscience troubling him,
he went away to save his soul, wishing to serve the people with his
great strength. And he served them. But to-day you are living among
robbers who exploit you mercilessly, and in what way do they serve the
people? What good do you see in them?"
The crowd thickened around me, almost embracing me, and their
attention made my words grow strong and gave them tone and beauty, and
I lost myself in my words. I only felt a close alliance to the earth
and to the people. They lifted me up towards themselves, drawing me on
by their silence: "Speak; speak the whole truth as you see it!"
Of course a policeman arrived and cried: "Move on!" asking what was the
matter and demanding my passport.
The people melted quietly away, like a cloud in the sun, and the
policeman questioned and made inquiries as to what I said. Some
answered: "About God; about many things; mainly about God."
I saw a workingman standing apart. He leaned up against his wagon and
gazed steadily at me, smiling tenderly. The policeman had taken hold
of my collar, and I wanted to shake him off, but I saw that the people
looked sideways at me, with half-closed eyes, as if they were asking:
"Now, what are you going to say?"
I paled at their lack of faith. Conquering myself in time, I shook off
the hand of the policeman and said to him:
"Do you want to know what I said?"
And again I began to speak about injustice in life. Again the market
people gathered around me in great crowds, and the policeman was lost
in them and effaced.
I recalled Kostia and the factory children, and I felt proud and
happy. I became strong and as in a dream. The policeman whispered, many
faces passed before me, many eyes burned; a warm cloud of people were
around me, pushed me along, and I lay lightly among them. Some one took
me by the shoulder and whispered in my ear: "Enough. Go."
They pushed and pushed me, and soon I found myself in a kind of court,
and a black-bearded man was on one side of me and on the other a young
boy with no cap on his head. The dark man said:
"Climb over the wall."
I climbed it, then went over another. It seemed to me queer, yet
pleasant.
"Eh," I thought, "is that who you are?"
The black-bearded man hurried me along. "Lively, comrade, lively!"
I asked him on the way: "Who are you?"
"One of yours," he answered.
The boy without the cap followed us silently. We crossed gardens, came
to a ravine at the bottom of which a stream ran along, and found a
footpath in the brush. The dark man led me by the hand, looked into my
eyes and said, smiling:
"Well, good luck to you. Here, Fediok will conduct you to a good road.
Go."
"You had better hurry. They might get you." The dark man bent down,
began crawling up the mountain, and Fediok and I went along by the
stream.
"Who is that man?" I asked him.
"A blacksmith. An exile--for political reasons."
"I know such people," I answered.
I felt happy, but he was silent. I looked at the young man. His face
was round, his nose short. His head seemed cut out from stone, and
his gray eyes bulged far apart. He spoke low, walked noiselessly and
held his head forward, as if he was listening or was pulled from
above by some great force. He kept his hands behind his back, as my
father-in-law used to.
"Are you a native here?"
"Yes, I am a farm hand at the priest's."
"Where is you cap?"
He felt his head, looked at me and asked:
"Why do you care about the cap?"
"Just so. It is night, and you will be cold."
He remained silent. Then he muttered unwillingly:
"What does it matter about the cap as long as one's head is saved?"
The ravine became deeper, the stream sounded clearer, and night rose
from the underbrush.
My soul was unclear, yet I felt happy, and I wished to speak with the
young man.
"Have you only one exile here?" I asked.
Here the young man opened himself as one opens an overcoat. Slowly and
low, he said:
"Four. There is a nobleman from Moscow and three from the Don. Two of
them are quiet fellows. They even drink vodka. But the nobleman and
that Ratkof who was here before, speak, though in secret, with whomever
they can. They have not yet begun to speak openly before the people.
There are many of them here, many around us. I, from Birsky--Fedor
Mitkof, am here five years. During this time there were eleven men
here. In Olekhine there are eight; in Shishkof there are three."
He counted for a long time, and he reached about sixty. When he
finished he became thoughtful; then began to speak, gesticulating with
his finger.
"There are even some peasants among them. They all say the same thing;
this life is unbearable; it stifles them. I lived in peace until I
heard these words, and now I see I am not yet full grown and I must bow
my head. Then, in truth, it must be that this life is stifling."
The young fellow spoke with difficulty, tearing each word from under
his feet. He walked ahead of me and did not look at me. He was
broad-shouldered and strong.
"Can you read and write?" I asked him.
"I once knew how, but have forgotten. Now I am studying again. It
doesn't matter, I know how. When one has to, one can do everything. And
I have to. If it were the noblemen who spoke about the difficulty of
this life, I would not take any notice of it, for their beliefs were
always different from ours. But when it is your own brothers, the poor
working class, then it must be true. And moreover, some of the common
people go even farther than the noblemen. That means that something
social and human is beginning. That is what they always say--social,
human. I am human. Then it means my way lies with them, that is what I
think."
I listened to him and said to myself: "Learn, Matvei."
"What is the use of thinking about such a thing?" I said to him. "It is
God's affair."
He stopped, suddenly standing stiff upon the ground, so that I almost
fell upon Iris back. Then he turned his face towards me and asked
sternly:
"Is it really God's affair? Here is what I think about it. This is
why they say, 4 Honor your father.' And they say the authorities are
also from God. And this they confirm by miracles. But then if the old
laws are changed, new miracles should have come. But where are they?
There were no signs when new laws came, none whatever. Everything is
as it was. In Nijni they discovered relics which performed miracles.
But then a rumor arose that they were not true relics, for Seraphim's
beard was gray and this one was red. The question is not the beard,
but the miracle. Were there any miracles? There were, but they don't
want to admit it. They call all signs false, or they say faith creates
miracles. There are times when I want to beat them to stop their
confounding my soul."
Again he stopped, and around him the night rose from the earth. The
path fell more steeply, the stream flowed on more hastily, and the
brush rustled, moving quietly.
"Go on, brother," I said to him, low.
He went forward. He did not stumble in the darkness but I almost fell
on his back every step I took. He seemed to roll down like a stone, and
his strange voice resounded in the stillness.
"If I believed them, it would be an end of everything. I am not
especially kind-hearted. I had a brother in the military, and he hanged
himself. My sister worked as a servant in a farmer's house near Birsky,
and she gave birth to a child who is lame. It is four years old now and
cannot walk. It means that a girl's life was ruined on account of a
man's caprice. Where should she go now? My father is a drunkard and my
elder brother has taken all the land. I have nothing."
We turned into the underbrush in the gray darkness. Now the stream went
away from us into the depth, now again it flowed at our feet. Over our
heads the night birds flew noiselessly, and above them were the stars.
I wanted to walk fast, but the man in front of me did not hurry and
muttered to himself unceasingly, as if he were counting his words, and
taking their weight.
"That dark one, Ratkof, is a good man. He lives according to the new
law and takes the part of the oppressed. A policeman once beat me with
a club and he immediately felled the policeman to the ground. He had to
sit fourteen days for it. 'How can you fight the authorities?' I asked
him when he came out. He immediately explained his law to me. I went
to the priest, and the priest said, 'Ah, are these the thoughts you
are plaiting?' Ratkof was sent to the prison in the city. He sat three
months, and I nineteen days. 'What did he say?' they asked me there.
'Nothing.' 'What did he teach?' 'He taught nothing.' I am no fool
myself. Ratkof came out. 'Forgive me,' I said to him, 'I was a fool.'
But he laughed. 'It was nonsense,' he said."
My guide remained silent, and then, in a new voice, and lower, he
continued:
"Everything is nonsense to him. He spits blood, that is nonsense; he
starves, that too is nonsense."
Suddenly he began to swear grossly, turned about and faced me, and
hissed through his teeth:
"I can understand everything. My brother died--that happens in the
military. My sister's case is not a rare one. But why do they torture
that man to death? That I cannot understand. I go like a dog wherever
he sends me. He calls me Earth. 'Eh, you Earth,' he says and laughs.
But the fact that they are always torturing him, that is like a knife
in my heart!"
And again he began to swear like a drunken monk.
The ravine opened, broadened its walls down into the field, leveled
them and vanished into the darkness.
"Well," said my guide, "good-by."
He pointed out to me the road to Omsk, turned back and disappeared. He
was still without his cap.
When his heavy steps died in the stillness I sat down, not desiring to
go farther. The night lay heavily on the earth and slept, fresh, and
thick, like oil. There were no stars in the heavens, no moon, no light
about. But there was warmth and light within me.
The heavy words of my guide burned within my memory. He was like a bell
that had lain a long time on the earth, and had been covered by it and
eaten out by rust, and though his tone was dull yet there was a new
sound in it.
The village people stood before my eyes as they listened to my speech
seriously and wonderingly. Their troubled faces passed before me as
they dragged me away from the police.
"Is that the way it is?" I thought, marveling, and I could scarcely
believe what had happened to me.
Again I thought. "This young man seeks signs and omens. He himself is
a miracle. It is a miracle to preserve love for man in this horrible
life. And the crowd who heard me, that, too, was a miracle, that it
should not be deaf or blind, though many for a long time have tried to
deafen and blind it. And a still greater miracle were Mikhail and his
comrades."
My thoughts flowed calmly and easily. I was unaccustomed to it and did
not expect it. I examined myself carefully, searched my heart quietly,
wishing to find there anxiety and troubled doubt.
I smiled in the silent darkness and feared to move, lest I drive away
the unwonted joy which filled my heart to the very brim. I believed and
yet did not believe this marvelous fulness of my soul, this unexpected
Godsend which I found in me.
It was as if a white bird, who was born long before, had slept in
the shadow of my soul, and I had not known it or felt it. I stroked
it accidentally and it awoke and began to sing quietly within me and
flutter its light wings in my heart, and its hot song melted the ice of
doubt and turned it into grateful tears.
I wanted to say something, to arise, to sing, to meet human beings and
to embrace them. I saw before me the shining face of Juna, the kind
eyes of Mikhail, the stern wit of Ivostia. All the familiar, dear and
new people became alive to me, united in my breast and broadened it
with happiness till it ached.
So it had happened before while saying Mass at Easter, that I loved
people and myself. I sat down, and thought tremblingly:
"O Lord, is it not Thou, this beauty of beauties, this joy and this
happiness?"
Darkness reigned about me, and in it were the shining faces of the
Believers sitting quietly. But my heart sang unceasingly.
I stroked the earth with my hand, I patted it with my palm, as if it
were a horse, which understood my caress.
I could not sit still. I arose and walked on through the night. I
remembered Kostia's words. I saw before me the look of childish
sternness in his eyes, and I Went on, drunk with joy, walking over the
earth towards the very end of autumn, gathering up into my soul its
precious new gifts.
At the station in Omsk I saw emigrants, Little Russians. A great part
of the earth was covered with their bodies, those friends of labor. I
walked among them, heard their soft speech and asked them:
"Are you not afraid to lose yourselves, so far away?"
A man gray and bent by work, answered me:
"As long as we have a piece of land under our feet, we do not care how
far it is. It is suffocating on earth when a man has to live by his own
labor."
Formerly the words of pain and sorrow fell like ashes on my heart, but
now they were keen sparks which lit it up, for every sorrow was my
sorrow, and I too suffered from the want of liberty, as did the people.
There is no time nor place for general spiritual growth, and this
is bitter and dangerous to the one who outstrips the people, for he
remains alone in advance of them, and the people do not see him and
cannot strengthen him with their strength; and alone and uselessly he
burns himself up in the fire of his desires.
I spoke in Little Russian, for I knew this tender language.
"For ages the people have wandered over the earth, hither and thither,
seeking a place where they may in freedom build up a righteous life
with their own strength, and for ages you have wandered over the
earth, its lawful masters, and why? Who is it that gives no room to
the people, the real Czar of the earth? Who has dethroned them? Who
has torn the crown from their heads and driven them from country to
country, these creators of all labor, these exquisite gardeners who
planted all the beauty on the earth?"
The eyes of the people burned. The human soul which was just awakened
in them glowed, and my own glance also became wide and keen. I saw the
question on each face and immediately answered it; I saw doubt and I
fought with it. I drew strength from the hearts which were opened about
me, and I united this strength into one heart.
When you speak to people some word which touches them as a whole,
which lies buried secretly and deep in each human soul, then their eyes
shine with glowing strength and fill you and carry you above them. But
do not think that it is your strength which carries you. You are winged
with the crossing of all strength in your heart. It surrounds you from
without; you are strong by its strength just as long as the people fill
you up with it; but should they go away, should their spirit vanish,
you again fall back to the level of all.
So I began my teaching modestly, calling the people to a new service in
the name of a new life, though I did not know how to name my new God.
In Zlatout on a holiday I spoke in the square, and again the police
interfered, and again the people hid me.
I met many splendid men and women. One whose name was Yashka Vladikine,
a student in a theological seminary, is now a good friend of mine and
will remain so for all my life. He does not believe in God, but he
loves church music to tears. He plays psalms on the organ and weeps,
the dear wonder-child.
I asked him laughing: "What are you howling at, you heretic, atheist?"
He cried out, tremblingly: "From joy at the knowledge of the great
beauty which some day will be created. If already in this worldly and
wretched life beauty has been created with the insignificant strength
of individuals, what will be created on earth when the whole spiritual
world shall be free and shall begin to express the order of its great
spirit in psalms and music?"
He began to speak about the future, which stood out with blinding
clearness to him, and he was himself surprised at his visions.
I have much to be grateful for to this friend of mine, as much as to
Mikhail.
I have seen marvelous people by tens, for they send me to one another
from city to city. I go as with fiery signals, and each one is kept
burning by the same faith. It is impossible to enumerate the various
people and to describe the joy at seeing the spiritual unity which lies
in all. Great is the Russian people and indescribably beautiful is
life.