But it found them. The flame of the big lamp melted a circle in the

frosty armor, and the damp window pane glistened and it glued its grey

wan eye to the exposed spot. “Two of them—two—two—just two.” Rough,

bare walls with the shining drops of amber sap, the radiant emptiness

of air and the humans—two of them.

With the narrow little skull bending over his work the idiot sat at the

table pasting little boxes out of cardboard: he was spreading on the

paste, holding the tip of the brush in his long narrow hand, or else he

was cutting up the cardboard and the click of the scissors resounded

noisily through the barren house. The boxes came out all askew and

dirty, with overlapping bands that refused to stick, but the idiot was

unconscious of these defects and continued to work. Now and then he

raised his head and with a motionless glance from beneath his narrow

brutish eyelids he gazed into the radiant emptiness of the room,

wherein a riot of sounds was fighting, whirling and circling. Rustling,

rattling, crackling, booming, explosive sounds they were, mingling with

someone’s laughter and long drawn out, protracted sighing. They were

hovering over him, running over his face like invisible cobwebs, and

penetrating into his head—those rustling, crackling, sighing sounds.

And the man on the other side of the table was motionless and silent.

“Bang!” crackled the drying wood, and Father Vassily shivered and tore

his eyes from the white page before him. And then he saw the bare rough

walls, and the desolate windows and the grey eye of the night, and the

idiot frozen in a listening attitude with a pair of shears in his

hands. All this flitted past him like a vision, and once more before

his lowered eyes spread the unfathomable world of the marvelous, the

world of love, the world of gentle compassion and of beautiful

sacrifices.

“Pa-pa,” the idiot mumbled the word which he had recently learned, and

looked at his father askance, angrily, worriedly. But the man heard not

and was silent, and his luminous face seemed inspired. He was dreaming

the wondrous dreams of a madness that was brilliant as the sun. He

believed with the faith of those martyrs who enter upon the stake as

upon a couch of joy and die with a doxology on their lips. And he loved

with the mighty and unrestrained love of the master who rules life and

death and knows not the torture of the tragic impotence of human love.

“Glory—glory—glory!”

“Pa-pa, Pa-pa!” once more mumbled the idiot, and receiving no reply

took up his shears again. But he soon dropped them again, staring with

motionless eyes and pricking up his outstanding ears to catch the

sounds as they flitted past him. Hissing and rustling, laughter and

whistling. And laughter. The night was in a playful mood. It squatted

on the beams of the unfinished framework, rocking on the rafters and

tumbling into the snow; it quietly stole into nooks and crannies, and

there dug graves for those strangers, those strangers. And joyously it

whirled up aloft, spreading its grey, wide wings, peering; then it

tumbled again like a rock, or circling whizzed through the darkened

window openings of the frosty framework, hissing and screaming. It was

chasing the snowflakes—pallid with fear they silently sped onward in

headlong flight.

“Pa-pa,” the idiot shouted loudly. “Pa-pa!”

The man heard and raised his head with the long, black, greying locks

that encircled his face like the night and the snow. For a moment

before him rose again the bare, rough walls and the spiteful and

frightened face of the idiot and the screaming of the rioting

snowstorm, filling his heart with agonized elation. It is done—it is

done.

“What is it, Vassily? Paste your boxes.”

“Papa!”

“Be calm. The snowstorm? Yes, yes, the snowstorm!”

Father Vassily clung to the window—eye to eye with the greying night.

He peered. And he whispered in terrified wonderment:

“Why doesn’t he ring the bell?[9] What if some one is lost in the

fields?”

The night is sobbing. In the field—in the field—in the field.

“Wait, Vassily. I’ll walk over to Nicon’s. I’ll return at once.”

“Pa-pa!”

The door rattles, letting in a flood of new sounds. They first timidly

edge their way near the door—no one is there. It is bright and empty.

One by one they steal towards the idiot, groping along the ceiling,

along the floor, along the walls. They peer into his brutish eyes, they

whisper, they laugh, they commence to play with growing glee, with

growing abandon. They chase one another, leaping and stumbling. They

are doing something in the adjoining room, fighting and screaming. No

one there. Light and emptiness. No one there.

“Boom!” somewhere overhead falls the first heavy note of the church

bell scattering the myriad of frightened sounds into flight. “Boom!”

goes the bell once more, with a second, muffled, viscid, scattered

sound, as though an onrush of wind had caught the broad maw of the

bell, and it choked and groaned. And the tiny sounds flee

precipitously.

“And here am I again,” says Father Vassily. He is all white and

shivering. The stiff, red fingers cannot turn the page. He blows on

them, rubs them together, and once more the pages rustle and all

disappears, the bare rough walls, the repulsive mask of the idiot and

the measured knell of the church bell. Once more his face is ablaze

with joyous madness. “Glory, glory!”

“Boom!”

The night is playing with the bell. Catching its thickly reverberating

notes, weaving about them a network of whizzing and whistling sounds,

tearing them to pieces, scattering them abroad, rolling them

ponderously over the fields, burying them in the snow, and listening

with the head askew. And once more it rushes to meet the new clangor,

tireless, spiteful and cunning like Satan.

“Pa-pa!” cried the idiot throwing to the ground the shears with a bang.

“What is it? Be quiet!”

“Pa-pa!”

Silence in the room, the whizzing and wrathful hissing of the snowstorm

outside, and the dull, viscid sounds of the bell. The idiot is slowly

turning his head, and his thin, lifeless legs, with the curving toes

and the tender soles that have never known contact with firm ground

stir feebly and impotently strive to flee. And he calls again:

“Pa-pa!”

“All right. Stop. Listen, I will read you something.”

Father Vassily turned back the page and began with a grave and severe

voice, as though reading in church:

“And as He passed by He saw a man who was blind from birth. He raised

his hand and with blanched cheeks looked up at Vassya.

“Understand: BLIND FROM BIRTH. Had never seen the light of the sun, the

face of his near ones and dear ones. He had come into the world and

darkness had enveloped him. Poor man! Blind man!”

The voice of the priest resounds with the firmness of faith and with

the transport of sated compassion. He is silent, he is staring ahead

with a softly smiling gaze as though he cannot part with this poor man

who was blind from birth and had never seen the face of a friend and

had never thought that the grace of God was so nigh. Grace—and

mercy—and mercy.

“Boom!”

“But listen, son. ‘His disciples asked Him: Master who did sin, this

man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answered: neither hath

this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be

made manifest in him.’”

The voice of the priest gathers strength and fills the barren room with

its reverberations. And its sonorous sounds pierce the soft purring and

hissing and whistling and the lingering cracked tolling of the choking

church bell. The idiot is filled with glee over the flaming voice and

the brilliant eyes and the noise and the whistling and the booming. He

slaps his outstanding ears, he hums, and two streams of viscid saliva

flow in two dirty currents to his receding chin.

“Pa-pa! Pa-pa!”

“Listen, listen: ‘I must work the work of Him that sent me while it is

day; the night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the

world, I am the light of the world.’ Forever and ever for ever and

ever!” into the teeth of the night and of the snowstorm he flings a

passionately ringing challenge. “For ever and ever!” The church-bell is

calling to the wanderers, and impotently weeps its aged broken voice.

And the night is swinging on its black, blind notes: “Two of them, two

of them, two-two-two!”

Dimly Father Vassily hears it and with a stern reproof he turns to the

idiot:

“Stop that mumbling!”

But the idiot is silent, and once more eyeing him dubiously Father

Vassily continues:

“I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the

ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the

blind man with the clay. And said unto him, Go wash in the pool of

Siloam. He went his way therefore,—and washed, and came seeing.”

“SEEING! Vassya, SEEING!” menacingly cried the priest and leaping from

his seat he began to pace the floor swiftly. Then he stopped in the

center of the room and loudly cried:

“I believe, O Lord, I believe.”

And all was still. But a loud galloping peal of laughter broke the

silence, striking the priest’s back. And he turned about terrified.

“What sayest thou?” he asked in fear, stepping back. The idiot was

laughing. The senseless, ominous laughter had torn his immense immobile

mask from ear to ear and out of the wide chasm of his mouth rushed

unrestrained, galloping peals of oddly vacant laughter.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

XI.

On the eve of Whitsunday, the bright and happy festival of spring time,

the peasants were digging sand to strew over the village roadways. The

peasants of Snamenskoye had for several years past carted huge supplies

of rich red sand from pits located a distance of two versts from their

village, in a clearing which they had made in a dense wood of low

birch, pine and young oak trees. It was in the beginning of June, but

the grass was already waist high, hiding half-way the luxuriant and

mighty verdure of the riotous bushes and their humid, green, broad

foliage. And there were many flowers that year, with a multitude of

bees flitting from blossom to blossom. The bees poured their

rhythmical, ardent humming, the flowers shed their sweetly plain

fragrance down the crumbling, sliding slopes of the excavation. For

several days the air had been heavy with the threat of a storm. It was

felt in the heated, windless atmosphere, in the dewless, stifling

nights; the anguished cattle called for it, pleadingly lowed for it

with stretched-out heads. And the people were gasping for breath, but

abnormally elated. The motionless air crushed and depressed them, but

something restless was urging them on to movement, to loud, abrupt

conversation, to causeless laughter.

Two men were at work in the pits, Nicon, the verger, who was taking

sand for the church, and the village elder’s laborer, Semen Mossyagin.

Ivan Porfyritch loved an abundance of sand both in the street in front

of his house and all over his cobblestone yard, and Semen had taken

away one cartload in the morning and was now loading another wagon,

briskly throwing up shovelfuls of golden, ruddy sand. He rejoiced in

the heat and in the humming, in the fragrance and in the pleasure of

toil: he looked up with a challenge into the face of the morose verger

who was lazily scratching up the surface of the sand with a toothless

scraper, and he mocked him:

“Well, old friend, Nicon Ivanytch, we’re doomed to blush unseen.”

“Say that again,” replied the verger with a lazy and indefinite menace,

and as he spoke the pipe which he was smoking dropped from his mouth

into the grey undergrowth of his beard and threatened to fall.

“Look out, you’ll lose your pipe,” Semen warned him.

Nicon did not reply, and Semen, unabashed, continued to dig. During the

six months which he had spent in the service of Ivan Porfyritch he had

grown smooth and round like a cucumber, and his simple tasks came

nowhere near exhausting his overabundance of vigor and energy. He

alertly attacked the sand, digging in and throwing it up with the

agility and swiftness of a hen scratching for grain; he gathered the

golden gleaming sand, shaking up the spade like a wide and garrulous

tongue. But the pit from which many cartloads had been taken the day

before seemed exhausted and Semen resolutely spat out.

“Can’t dig much here. Shall I try yonder?” he glanced up at a low

little cave which had been dug in the crumbling sloping side of the pit

and in which he saw a motley series of red and greenish grey layers,

and he determinedly walked towards it.

The verger looked at the little cave and thought: “It might slide,” yet

he did not say a word. But Semen sensed the peril in the instinctive

onrush of a vague anxiety which overcame him like a sudden attack of

passing nausea and he stopped:

“Do you think it will slide on me?” he asked as he turned around.

“How should I know?” replied the verger.

In the deep recesses of the cave—which resembled a yawning mouth, there

was something treacherous, something traplike, and Semen wavered. But

from above, where the leaves of a young oak tree were sharply outlined

against the azure sky, he caught the stimulating whiff of fresh foliage

and blossoms, and this stimulating fragrance incited to gay and daring

deeds. Semen spat out into his palm, seized his shovel, but after the

second thrust a faint crunch was heard, and the whole slope of the

excavation slid down without a sound and buried him. And only the young

tree which barely hung on by its roots feebly moved its leaves, while a

round lump of dried sand looking so bland and innocent rolled over to

the feet of the verger from whose cheeks all color had fled. Two hours

later Semen was taken out dead. His broad open mouth, with the clean

and pearly teeth, was stuffed tight with the golden gleaming sand. And

all over his face, amid the white eyelashes of his hollow eyes, mingled

with his sunny hair and the flaming red beard glistened the gold of the

beautiful sand. And still the tangled mass of his auburn hair was

whirling and dancing, and the gay absurdity, the daredevil merriment of

that dance around the pallid face that had settled into the rigor of

death created the impression of a fiendish mockery.

With the curious throng attracted by the news of the accident, Senka,

the little son of the perished man, had come on the run. No one thought

of giving him a lift, and he had run the whole way in the rear of the

village wagons; while his father’s body was being released from the

slide, he was standing aside on a mound of clay, motionless, breathing

heavily, and as immobile were his eyes with which he devoured the

melting avalanche of sand.

The dead man was laid on a wagon, atop of the golden load of sand which

he himself had thrown upon it; they covered the body with a mat, and

drove away at a slow pace over the rutty forest road. In the rear of

the funeral wagon stolidly strode the villagers scattering in groups

among trees, and their blouses struck by the rays of the sun flashed

crimson through the wood. When the cortege passed the two-story house

of Ivan Porfyritch the verger suggested that the corpse be taken to his

house:

“He was his farmhand, let him bury him.”

But not a soul was to be seen either in the windows or about the house

and the shop was locked with a ponderous iron padlock. For a long time

they knocked against the massive gates decorated with black flatheaded

nails, then they rang the sonorous doorbell, and its reverberating

echoes resounded sharply and loudly somewhere around the corner, but

though the court dogs yelled themselves hoarse, for a long time no one

came. Finally an old scullery woman came out and announced that her

master ordered the body to be taken to the dead man’s home, and

promised to donate the sum of ten roubles towards funeral expenses,

without deducting the gift from the earnings of the deceased. While she

was arguing with the throng outside, Ivan Porfyritch himself,

frightened to death and wrathful, was standing behind the curtains,

gazing with a shudder upon the mat that covered the corpse and he

whispered to his wife:

“Remember, if that priest offers me a million roubles I shall not shake

hands with him, I’d sooner see it wither away. He is a terrible man.”

And no one knew why, whether because of the churchwarden’s mysterious

words or from some other source, confused and ominous rumors swiftly

appeared in the village and crept back and forth like hissing snakes.

The villagers talked of Semen, of his sudden and terrible death, and

they thought of the priest, not knowing what they were expecting of

him. When Father Vassily started on his way to the requiem mass, pale

and burdened by vague musings, but cheery and smiling, the people in

his path stepped aside giving him a wide berth, and for a long time

wavered before they dared to step upon a spot where his heavy footsteps

had burned an invisible trace. They remembered the fire in his house

and talked of it at great length. They recalled the Popadya who had

burned to death and her son, the crippled idiot, and back of plain,

clear words scurried the sharp thorns of fear. Some woman sobbed out

aloud with a vague, overwhelming compassion, and went away. Those who

stayed back for a long time watched her departing sobshaken back, then

in silence, avoiding to look at one another, they dispersed. The

youngsters, reflecting the agitation of their elders, gathered at dusk

on the threshing floor and were exchanging fanciful tales of the dead

man, while their bulging eyes sparkled darkly. Cozily familiar

irritated parental voices had been calling them to their homes for a

long time, but their bare feet were loth to make a homeward dash

through the gruesome diaphanous dusk of evening. And during the two

days which preceded the funeral there was a ceaseless stream of

villagers wending their way to view the corpse that was puffed-up and

rapidly turning blue.

The two nights before the funeral the earth had been exhaling a breath

of the most intense torridity, and the dry meadows consumed beneath the

merciless heat of the sun were bare of vegetation. The sky was clear

and dark, few stars were out and these shone dimly. And above all

reigned on all sides the ceaseless chatter of the crickets. When after

the memorial vesper service Father Vassily emerged from the hut, it was

dark already, and the sleepy street was unlighted. Stifled with the

close atmosphere, the priest had taken off his broad-rimmed hat and was

walking with a noiseless stride as though over a soft and downy carpet.

And it was rather from a vague sense of instinctive anxiety than from

the sense of hearing that he realized that someone was following him,

evidently suiting his stride to his own deliberate gait. The priest

stopped, the pursuer who had not expected this, advanced a few steps

and also stopped rather abruptly.

“Who is this?” asked Father Vassily.

The man was silent. Then he suddenly veered around, and swiftly retired

without decreasing his pace, and a moment later he was lost in the

trackless gloom of the night.

The same thing happened the following night; a tall, dark man followed

the priest to the very gate or his house, and something in the bearing

and in the stride of the heavily built stranger reminded the priest of

Ivan Porfyritch, the churchwarden.

“Ivan Porfyritch, is it you?” he called. But the stranger did not reply

and departed. And as Father Vassily was retiring for the night someone

tapped softly at his window. The priest looked out, but not a soul was

to be seen. “Why is he roaming about like an evil spirit?” thought the

priest in annoyance, making ready to kneel down for his protracted

devotions. And lost in prayer he forgot the churchwarden and the night

that was restlessly spreading over the earth, and himself; he was

praying for the deceased, for his wife and children, for the bestowal

of the great mercy of God upon the earth and its inhabitants. And in

fathomless sunny depths a new world was assuming vague outlines, and

this world was earth no more.

While he was praying the idiot had slipped from his bed, noisily

shuffling his reviving but still feeble legs. He had learned to crawl

in the beginning of the spring, and frequently on returning home Father

Vassily found him on the threshold, sitting motionless like a dog

before the locked door. Now he had started towards the open window,

moving slowly, with much effort, and shaking his head intently. He had

reached it, and hooking his powerful prehensile hands in the window

sill he raised himself up and peered sullenly, greedily into the

darkness. He was listening to something.

Mossyagin was to be buried on Whitmonday, and the day dawned ominous

and uncertain, as though the confusion of people had found its

counterpart in the formless confusion of nature. It had been

oppressively hot since morning, the very grass seemed to curl up and

wither before one’s eyes as though seared by a merciless fire. And the

dense opaque sky impended threateningly ever the earth, and its filmy

blue seemed to be zigzagged with thin veins of bloody red, so ruddy it

was, so sonorous with metallic nuances and shades. The enormous sun was

blazing with heat, and it was so strange to see it shine so brightly,

while nowhere the sharply defined and restful shadows of a sunny day

were to be found, as though between sun and earth hung some invisible

but none the less solid curtain intercepting its rays. And over all

reigned a stillness that was mute and ponderous, as though an invalid

had lost himself in a labyrinth of musing, and with drooping eyelids

had lapsed into silence. Grey rows of young birches with withered

leaves, cut down with the roots, stretched through the village in

serried ranks, and this aimless procession of young grey trees,

perishing from thirst and fire and spectrelike refusing to cast

shadows, filled the mind with sadness and vague forebodings. The golden

grains of sand that had been scattered over the roadways had long since

turned into yellow dust, and the refuse of festive sunflower pips of

the day before surprised the eye: it babbled of something peaceful,

simple and pleasant, while all that had remained in paralyzed nature

seemed so stern, so morbid, so pensive, so menacing.

While Father Vassily was donning his raiments Ivan Porfyritch entered

into the altar enclosure. Through the sweat and the purpling flush of

heat that covered his face timidly peered a grey earthy pallor. His

eyes were swollen, and burning feverishly. His hurriedly combed hair,

matted with cider, had dried in spots and stuck out in confused

thickets, as though the man had not slept for several nights, wallowing

in the throes of superhuman terror. He seemed somehow unkempt and

distracted; he had forgotten the niceties of human intercourse, failing

to ask the priest’s blessing or even to salute him.

“What is the matter with you, Ivan Porfyritch? Are you ill?” Father

Vassily inquired sympathetically, adjusting his flowing hair that had

caught in the stiff neckpiece of his chasuble; in spite of the heat his

face was pale and concentrated.

The churchwarden made an attempt at a smile.

“Just so. Nothing important. I wanted to have a talk with you, Father.”

“Was it you—last night?”

“Yes, and the night before, too. Pardon me, I had no intention....”

He heaved a deep sigh and once more oblivious of niceties, he openly

blurted out trembling with fear:

“I am scared. I have never been scared before in my life. And now I am

scared. I am scared.”

“Of what?” asked the priest in amazement.

Ivan Porfyritch looked over the priest’s shoulder as though someone,

silent and dreadful, were hiding behind him, and continued:

“Death.”

They were regarding one another in silence.

“Death. It’s got to my household. Without rime or reason it will carry

off all of us. All of us! Why in my home not a hen dare die without

cause: if I order chicken soup, a hen dies, not otherwise. And what is

this now? Is that proper order? Pardon me, but at first I had not even

guessed it. Pardon me.”

“You mean Semen?”

“Whom else? Sidor or Yevstigney?[10] Say, you listen to me, lad,”

coarsely continued the churchwarden, out of his mind with terror and

wrath. “Leave these tricks be. We’re no fools here. Get out of here

while the going is good. Away with you.”

He swung his head with an energetic nod in the direction of the door

and added:

“And be lively about it.”

“What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind?”

“We’ll see who’s lost his mind, you or I. What devil’s tricks is this

you carry on here every morning? ‘I’m praying! I’m praying!’”—he

nasally mimicked the liturgical intonation. “This is no way to pray.

Bide your time, bear up patiently, don’t come with your ‘I’m praying’.

You’re a pagan, a self-willed rebel, bending things to suit yourself.

And now you’re bent in return: what’s become of Semen? Where is Semen?

I ask. Why have you destroyed him? Where is Semen, tell me.”

He roughly rushed towards the priest and heard a curt, stern warning:

“Away form the altar, blasphemer!”

Purple with wrath Ivan Porfyritch looked down upon the priest from his

towering height and froze rigid with his mouth wide-open. Upon him

gazed abysmally a pair of deep eyes, black and dreadful like the ooze

of a sucking swamp, and some strange and abundant life was throbbing

behind them, some one’s menacing will issued forth from behind them

like a sharpened sword. Eyes alone. Neither face nor body saw Ivan

Porfyritch, but only eyes, immense like a house wall, high as the

altar; gaping, mysterious, commanding eyes were gazing upon him, and as

though seared by a consuming flame he unconsciously wrung his hands and

fled knocking his massive shoulder against the partition. And in his

fear-chilled spine, through the thick masonry of the church walls, he

still felt the piercing sting of those black and dreadful eyes.

XII.

They were entering the church with cautious steps and took up their

stations wherever they chanced to be, not where they usually stood at

service, where they liked or where they were accustomed to stand, as

though finding it improper or wicked on a day of such awe and anguish

to stick to trifling habits or to take thought of trivial comforts. And

they took up their stations, hesitating a long time ere daring to turn

their heads in order to look around. The church was crowded to

suffocation, yet ever fresh rows of silent newcomers pressed from the

rear. And all were silent, all were gloomily, anxiously expectant, and

the crowded nearness of fellow-creatures gave no sense of security.

Elbow was touching upon elbow and yet it seemed to each one that he was

standing alone in a boundless waste. Drawn by strange rumors men from

distant villages, from strange parishes had come to the little church;

these were bolder and spoke at first in loud tones, but they too soon

lapsed into silence, with resentful amazement, but impotent like the

rest to break through the invisible chains of leaden stillness. Every

one of the lofty stained windows was opened to admit air, and through

them gazed the threatening coppery sky. It seemed to be sulkily peering

from window to window, casting over all a dry, metallic reflection. And

in this scattered and depressing, but none the less glaring light the

old gilt of the image stand shone with a dull and irresolute lustre,

irritating the eye with the chaotic haziness of the saints’ features.

Back of one of the windows a young maple tree greened motionless and

dry, and many eyes were riveted upon its broad leaves that were

slightly curled with the heat. They seemed like friends, old, restful

friends in this oppressive silence, in this repressed hubbub of

feelings, amid these yellow mocking images.

And above all the familiar, restful odors of church, above the sweet

fragrance of incense and wax reigned the pronounced, repulsive and

terrible smell of corruption. The corpse had been rapidly decomposing,

and it was nauseatingly terrible to approach the black coffin which

contained the decaying mass of rotting and stinking flesh. It was

terrible merely to approach it, but around it four persons stood

motionless like the coffin itself: the widow and the three now

fatherless children. Perhaps they too smelt the stench, but they

refused to believe in it. Or perhaps they smelt nothing and fancied

that they were burying their dear one alive, even as most folks think

when death swiftly and unexpectedly snatches away one who is near and

dear and is so inseparable from their very life. But they were silent,

and all was still, and the threatening coppery sky peered from window

to window over the heads of the crowd scattering about its dry and

distracted glances.

When the requiem mass had begun, with its wonted solemn simplicity, and

the portly and kindhearted deacon had swung his censer into the

throng—all breathed freely with the relief of elation. Some exchanged

whispers; others more resolute heavily shuffled their benumbed feet;

still others, who were nearest to the doors slipped out to the church

steps for a rest and a smoke. But smoking and calmly exchanging small

talk about harvests, the threatening drouth and money matters, they

suddenly bethought themselves and fearing lest something momentous and

unexpected might occur within while they were away, they flung aside

the stubs of their cigarettes and rushed back into the church, using

their shoulders as a wedge to break through the crowd. And then they

stopped. The service was proceeding with a solemn simplicity; the aged

deacon was coughing and clearing his throat before each sentence and

warningly shaking a stubby fat forefinger whenever his gaze discovered

a whispering pair in the throng. Those who had stepped outside before

the close of the requiem mass had observed that over the forest,

towards the sun, a hazily blue cloud had risen up in the sky, gradually

growing dark under the rays of the sun, and they crossed themselves

joyfully. Among them was also Ivan Porfyritch; pale and ailing he

looked, but he also made the sign of the cross when he saw the cloud,

but immediately lowered his eyes with a sullen air.

In the brief interval between the mass and the allocution to the

corpse, while Father Vassily was donning his black velvet cassock, the

deacon smacked his lips and said:

“A little ice would come in handy, for he smells rather strong. But

where can you get ice? In my opinion it is well to keep a supply in the

church for such cases. You might tell the churchwarden.”

“He smells?” dully said the priest.

“Don’t you notice it? You must have a fine nose! I’m simply done for.

It will take a week in this hot spell to get the stench out of the

church. Just take notice. I’ve got the smell in my beard, I swear.”

He held the tip of his grey beard to his nose, smelt it and said

reproachfully:

“Such people!”

Then commenced the chanting. And once more the leaden silence oppressed

the crowd and chained each one to his place, cutting him off from among

his fellow-men, surrendering him a prey to agonizing expectancy. The

old verger was chanting. He had seen the coming of death to him who was

now reposing in the black coffin and frightening the attending throng.

He clearly recalled the innocent lump of dried earth and the young oak

tree that trembled with its finely carved leaves, and the old,

familiar, lugubrious words came to life in his mumbling mouth and hit

the mark surely and painfully. And he was thinking of the priest with

anxiety and sorrow, for in these impending hours of horror he alone of

all other people loved Father Vassily with a shy and tender affection

and he was close to his great rebellious soul.

“Verily all is vanity, and life is shadow and dreams; for whoso is born

of earth striveth for all things, but the Scripture sayeth that when we

gain the world we gain the grave, where together dwelleth the king and

the beggar. O Lord Christ, give peace to thy servant, for Thou art a

lover of mankind....”

Darkness was falling upon the church, the purpling blue ominous

darkness of an eclipse, and all had sensed it long before any eye had

discovered it. And only those whose eyes were riveted upon the friendly

foliage of the maple tree outside had noticed that something cast-iron

grey and shaggy had crept up behind it, peered into the church with

lifeless eyes and resumed it climb to the cross of the steeple.

“... where there are worldly passions, where there are the dreams of

timeservers, where there is gold and silver, where there is a multitude

of slaves and fame, all is dust and ashes and shadows,” quivered the

bitter words on senile trembling lips.

Everyone had now noticed the gathering gloom and turned to the window.

Back of the maple tree the sky was black and the broad leaves looked no

longer green. They had grown pale, and in their frightened rigid

appearance there was nothing left that was friendly and reassuring.

Seeking comfort the people looked into their neighbors’ faces, and all

faces were ashen-grey, all faces were pale and unfamiliar. And it

seemed that the whole of that darkness—pouring through the opened

windows in broad and silent streams, had concentrated itself in the

blackness of that coffin and in the black-garbed priest: so black was

the silent coffin, so black was that man—tall, frigid and stern. Surely

and calmly he moved about, and the blackness of his garb seemed like

the source of light amid the lack-lustre gilt, the ashen-grey faces and

the lofty windows that disseminated gloom. But moment by moment a

puzzling hesitancy and irresoluteness seemed to take hold of him; he

slowed down his steps and extending his neck regarded the throng in

surprise, as though he was startled to find this transfixed multitude

in the church where he was wont to worship in solitude; then forgetting

the multitude, forgetting that he was the celebrant he made his way

distractedly into the altar enclosure; he seemed to be inwardly torn in

two; he seemed to be waiting a word, a command or a mighty, all-solving

sensation—and neither would come.

“I weep and I sob as I contemplate death and see reclining in coffins

our beauty that was created in the image of God and is now become

formless, inglorious and unsightly. O marvel! What is this mystery that

surroundeth us? How are we surrendered unto corruption? How are we

subjugated unto death? Verily by the word of God....”

Brightly gleamed the tapers in the gathering gloom as though in the

dusk of eve, casting ruddy reflections upon the faces of the people,

and many had noticed this sudden transition from day to night while it

was high noon. Father Vassily too had sensed the darkness without

comprehending it; the queer notion had entered his head that it was the

dark of the early winter morning when he remained alone with God, and

one great and mighty feeling had given wings to his soul—like a bird,

like an arrow flying unerringly towards its goal. And he trembled,

unseeing like a blind man, but on the point of receiving sight. Myriads

of fugitive and tangled thoughts, myriads of undefined sensations

slowed up their frenzied flight—stopped—died away—a moment of terrible

nothingness, precipitous falling, death, and something rose up within

his breast, something immense, something undreamt of in its joyous

glory, in its wondrous beauty. The heart that had stood still was

thumping forth its first beats, painfully, laboriously, but he already

knew. It had come! It, the mighty, all-solving sensation, master over

life and death, able to command to the mountains: “Move from your

place!” and the hoary and cranky mountains must move. Glory, ineffable

glory! He is gazing upon the coffin, into the church, upon the faces of

people and he comprehends—he comprehends everything with that wonderful

penetration into the depth of things which is possible only in dreams

and which disappears without a trace at the approach of light. So that

was it! That was the great solution! Glory! Glory! Glory!

He laughs out loudly and hoarsely, he sees the frightened expression of

the deacon who had warningly raised his finger, he sees the crouching

backs of the people who having heard his laughter burrow gangways

through the crowd like worms, and he claps his hand over his mouth like

a guilty schoolboy.

“I won’t any more,” he whispers into the deacon’s ear, while insane

rejoicing is fairly splashing fire from every pore of his face. And he

weeps, covering his face with his hands.

“Take some drops, some drops, Father Vassily,” the distracted deacon

whispers into his ear and desperately exclaims: “Lord, Lord, how out of

place! Listen, Father Vassily!”

The priest moves his folded hands an inch or two from his face, and

looks from behind their shelter askance at the deacon. The deacon with

a shiver, edges away on tiptoe, feels his way to the gate with his

belly, and groping for the door emerges out of the altar enclosure.

“Come, let us give our last kiss, brethren, to the departed one, giving

thanks unto God....”

A commotion ensues in the church; some depart stealthily without

exchanging any words with those who remain, and the darkened church is

now only comfortably filled. Only about the black coffin is the surge

of a silent throng, people are making the sign of the cross, bending

their heads over something dreadful and repulsive and moving away with

wry countenances. The widow is parting from her husband. She now

believes in his death and she is conscious of the nauseating odor, but

her eyes are locked to tears and there is no voice in her throat. And

the children are watching her with three pairs of silent eyes.

And while the people watched the deacon plunging worriedly through the

congregation, Father Vassily had come out into the chancel and stood

eyeing the crowd. And those who saw him in that moment had indelibly

engraved in their memory his striking appearance. He was holding on

with his hands to the railing so convulsively that the tips of his

fingers turned livid; with I neck outstretched, the whole of his body

bent over the railing, and pouring himself into one immense glance he

riveted it upon the spot where the widow stood beside her children. And

it was queer to see him, for it seemed as though he delighted in her

boundless anguish, so cheerful, so radiant, so daringly happy was his

impetuous glance.

“What partings, O brethren, what weepings, what sobbing in this present

hour; come hither, imprint a kiss upon the brow of him who from his

early youth hath dwelt among you, for he is now to be consigned to his

grave, surmounted by a stone, to take up his dwelling in the darkness,

being buried with the dead, parting from his kin and his friends....”

“Stop, thou madman!” an agonized voice came from the chancel. “Canst

thou not see there is none dead among us?”

And here occurred that mad and great event for which all had been

waiting with such dread and such mystery. Father Vassily flung open the

clanging gate, and strode through the crowd cutting its motley array of

colors with the solemn black of his attire and made his way to the

black, silently waiting coffin. He stopped, raised his right hand

commandingly and hurriedly said to the decomposing corpse:

“I say unto thee: Arise.”

In the wake of these words came confusion, noise, screams, cries of

mortal terror. In a panic of fear the people rushed to the doors,

transformed into a herd of frightened beasts. They clutched at one

another, threatened one another with gnashing teeth, choking and

roaring. And they poured out of the door with the slowness of water

trickling out of an overturned bottle. There remained only the verger

who had dropped his book, the widow with her children, and Ivan

Porfyritch. The latter glanced a moment at the priest and leaping from

his place cut his way into the rear of the departing throng, bellowing

with wrath and fear.

With the radiant and benign smile of compassion towards their unbelief

and fear—all aglow with the might of limitless faith, Father Vassily

repeated for the second time with solemn and regal simplicity:

“I say unto thee, Arise!”

But still is the corpse and its tightly locked lips are dispassionately

guarding the secret of Eternity. And silence. Not a sound is heard in

the deserted church. But now the resonant clatter of scattered

frightened footsteps over the flagstones of the church: the widow and

the orphans are going. In their wake flees the verger, stopping for an

instant in the doorway he wrings his hands, and silence once more.

“It is better so. How can he rise in this state before his wife and

children?” swiftly flits through Father Vassily’s mind, and for the

third and last time he commands, softly and sternly:

“Simeon, I say unto thee: Arise!”

Slowly sinks his hand, he is waiting. Someone’s footsteps rustle in the

sand just outside of the window and the sound seems so near as though

it came from the coffin. He is waiting. The footsteps come nearer and

nearer, pass the window and die away. And stillness, and a protracted

agonized sigh. Who is sighing? He is bending over the coffin, seeking a

movement of life in the puffed up and formless face; he commands to the

eyes: “But open ye, I say,” bends still lower, closer and closer,

clutches the edges of the coffin with his hands, almost touching the

livid lips and trying to breathe the breath of life into them, and the

shaken corpse replies with the coldly ferocious fetid exhalation of

death.

He reels back in silence and for an instant sees and comprehends all.

He smells the terrible odor; he realizes that the people had fled in

terror, that in the church there are only he and the corpse; he sees

the darkness beyond the window, but does not comprehend its nature. A

memory of something horribly distant flashes through his mind, of some

vernal laughter that had been ringing in a dim past and then died away.

He remembers the snowstorm. The church bell and the snowstorm. And the

immobile mask of the idiot. Two of them.... Two of them.... Two of

them....

And once more all is gone. The lacklustre eyes are once again ablaze

with cold and leaping fires, the sinewy body is bursting once more with

a sense of power and of iron firmness. Hiding his eyes beneath the

stony arch of his brows, he says calmly, calmly, softly, softly as

though fearing to wake a sleeper:

“Wouldst thou cheat me?”

And he lapses into silence, with downcast eyes, as though waiting for

an answer. And once more he speaks softly, softly, with that ominous

distinctness of a storm when all nature has bowed to its power and it

is dillydallying, tenderly, regally rocking a tiny flake in the air.

“Then why did I believe?”

“Then why didst Thou give me love towards people and compassion? To

mock me?”

“Then why hast Thou kept me all my life in captivity, in servitude, in

fetters? Not a free thought! Not a feeling! Not a sigh! THOU alone, all

for THEE! THOU only. Come then, I am waiting for Thee!”

And in the posture of haughty humility he waits an answer—alone before

the black and malignantly triumphant coffin, alone before the menacing

face of fathomless and majestic stillness. Alone. The lights of the

tapers pierce the darkness like immobile spears, and somewhere in the

distance the fleeing storm mockingly chants: “Two of them.. Two of

them..” Stillness.

“Thou wilt not?” he asks still softly and humbly, but suddenly cries

out with a frenzied scream, rolling his eyes, imparting to his face

that candor of expression which is characteristic of insanity or of

profound slumber. He cries out, drowning with his cry the menacing

stillness and the ultimate horror of the dying human soul:

“Thou must! Give him back his life! Take it from others, but give it

back to him! I beg of Thee!” Then he turns to the silent corruption of

the corpse and commands it wrathfully, scornfully:

“THOU! THOU ask Him! Ask Him!”

And he cries out blasphemously, madly:

“He needs no paradise. His children are here below. They will call for

him: ‘Father!’ And he will say to Thee: ‘Take from my head my heavenly

crown, for there below the heads of my children are covered with dust

and dirt. Thus he will speak!”

Wrathfully he shakes the heavy black coffin and cries:

“But speak thou, speak, accursed flesh!”

He looks with amazement, intently. And in mute horror he reels backward

throwing up his swelling arms in self-defence. Semen is not in the

coffin. There is no corpse in the coffin. The idiot is lying there.

Clutching with his rapacious fingers at its edges, he has slightly

raised his monstrous head, looking askance at the priest with eyes

screwed up, and all about the distended nostrils, all about the

enormous tightly compressed mouth plays the silent dawn of coming

laughter. Not a sound he utters, but keeps gazing and slowly creeping

out of the coffin—inexpressibly terrible in the incomprehensible fusion

of eternal life with eternal death.

“Back!” cries Father Vassily and his head swells to enormous

proportions as he feels his hair stand on end. “Back!”

And once more the motionless corpse. And again the idiot. And the

rotting mass madly alternates this monstrous play and breathes out

horrors. And in maniacal anger he shrieks:

“Wouldst scare me? Then take....”

But his words are unheard. Suddenly, all aglow with blinding light, the

immobile mask is rent from ear to ear and peals of laughter mighty as

the peals of thunder fill the whole silent church. With a loud roar the

mad laughter splits the arching masonry, flinging the stones about like

chips and engulfing in its reverberations the lone man within.

Father Vassily opens his blinded eyes, raises his head and sees all

about him crumble. Slowly and ponderously reel the walls and close

together, the vaults slide, the lofty cupola noiselessly collapses, the

stone floor sways and bends, the whole world is being wrecked in its

foundations and disintegrates.

And then with a shrill scream he rushes to the doors, but failing to

find them he whirls and stumbles against walls and sharp corners and

shrieks and shrieks. The door suddenly opens, precipitating him on the

flags outside, but he leaps to his feet with the joy of relief, only to

be caught and held in someone’s trembling, prehensile embrace. He

struggles and whines, freeing his hand with maniacal strength; he rains

savage blows upon the head of the verger who is attempting to hold him,

and casting his body aside he rushes into the roadway.

The sky is ablaze with fire. Shaggy clouds are whirling and circling in

the firmament and their combined masses fall down upon the shaken

earth, the universe is crumbling in its foundations. And then from the

fiery whirlpool of chaos the thunderous peals of laughter, the cackle

and cries of savage merriment. In the west a tiny ribbon or azure is

still to be seen, and towards that rift of blue he is rushing in

headlong flight. His legs are caught in the long hairy cassock, he

falls and writhes on the ground, bleeding and terrible to look upon,

and rises and flees once more. The street is desolate as though at

night, not a man, not a creature, neither beast, nor fowl to be seen

near house or window.

“They’re all dead,” flashes through his mind—his last conscious

thought. He runs out of the village limits into the broad highway. Over

his head the black whirling cloud throws out three lengthy tentacles,

like rapaciously curved fingers; behind him something is roaring with a

dull and threatening bellow. The universe is collapsing in its

foundations.

Ahead in the distance, a peasant and two women who had been to the

village church are wending their homeward way on their wagon. They

notice the figure of a black-garbed man in precipitous flight; they

stop for a moment, but recognizing the priest they whip up their horse

and gallop away. The wagon leaps high on its springs, with two wheels

up in the air, but the three silently crouching terror-stricken people

desperately whip up the horse and gallop and gallop.

Father Vassily fell about three versts away from the village in the

center of the broad highway. He fell prone, his haggard face buried in

the grey dust which had been ground fine by the wheels of traffic,

trampled by the feet of men and beasts. And in his pose he had retained

the impetuousness of his flight: the white dead hands outstretched, one

leg curled up under the body, the other—clad in an old tattered boot

with the sole worn through—long, straight and sinewy, thrown back tense

and taut, as though even in death he still continued his flight.

[1] Popadya, the wife of a Russian village priest or “pope,” is a

distinct type in the social world of the Russian village.

[2] Pet name for Vassily.

[3] Diminutive of Anastasia.

[4] The day in the church calendar dedicated to the saint for whom a

Russian child is named. It is celebrated with more solemnity than the

birthday.

[5] Diminutive of Anastasia.

[6] 1 pood = 36 lbs.

[7] A Russian card game, similar to “Old Maid.”

[8] Contemptuous diminutive for Vassily.

[9] The village church bell is rung during a snowstorm to guide any

team or wanderer that may be seeking the road.

[10] Equivalent to “Tom, Dick and Harry.”

Ben-Tobith.

On that dread day, when the cosmic injustice was perpetrated, and Jesus

Christ was crucified in the midst of robbers on Golgotha, Ben-Tobith, a

tradesman of Jerusalem, had been suffering since the early hours of the

morning the agonies of an excruciating toothache.

It had started the day before, toward evening; at first his right jaw

had commenced to ache slightly, and one tooth, the extreme tooth next

to the wisdom tooth, seemed to rise a little, and felt painful when

coming in contact with the tongue. After the evening meal, however, the

pain had entirely subsided; Ben-Tobith had forgotten it altogether and

felt no worry about it; that day he had profitably traded his old ass

for a young and strong animal, at a profit, and he was in a merry mood

and did not attach any significance to an evil omen.

And he had slept well and soundly, but before the dawn of day something

commenced to disturb him, as if someone sought to rouse him to attend

to an important matter, and when Ben-Tobith woke up wrathfully, his

teeth were aching, aching defiantly and fiercely, with the excruciating

fury of sharp and throbbing pain. And now it was impossible to tell

whether it was still the tooth of the day before, or whether others had

joined it as well; his mouth and his head were wholly filled with the

dreadful agonizing pain, as though someone forced him to masticate a

thousand red-hot sharply pointed nails.

He took in his mouth a swallow of water from an earthern pitcher; for

an instant the fury of the pain subsided; the teeth twitched with

undulating throbs, and this new sensation seemed even agreeable in

comparison with the pain that had preceded it.

Ben-Tobith lay down again; he bethought himself of his newly purchased

ass; he mused how happy he would it be if it were not for his teeth,

and tried to sleep. But the water was warm; within five minutes the

pain returned, with greater fury than ever, and Ben-Tobith sat up in

his bed, rocking back and forth like a pendulum.

His face was all wrinkles, and something seemed to draw it toward his

huge nose—and from his nose, that had turned livid with agony, hung a

drop of cold perspiration. Thus, rocking back and forth, groaning with

agony, he faced the first rays of that sun which was fated to see

Golgotha with its three crosses and then to be dimmed with horror and

grief.

Ben-Tobith was a good and kindly man, who disliked injustice, but when

his wife woke up, he said to her many disagreeable things, barely able

to open his mouth, and complained that he had been left alone like a

jackal to howl and to writhe in pain. His wife bore the undeserved

reproaches with patience, for she knew that they came not from an angry

heart, and she brought him many good remedies: some purified rat dung

to be applied to his cheek, a sharp elixir of scorpion, and a genuine

fragment of the tablets of the law broken by Moses.

A little improvement followed the application of rat dung, though it

did not last long, and the same happened after the use of the elixir

and the stone, but each time the pain returned with added vigor. But in

the brief moments of respite Ben-Tobith comforted himself with the

thoughts of the ass, and mused about him; and when the pain grew worse,

he groaned, scolded his wife and swore that he would dash his brains

out against a stone if the pain did not subside. And all the time he

walked back and forth upon the flat roof of his house, from one corner

to another, ashamed to come close to the edge because his head was all

tied up in a kerchief like a woman’s.

Several times during the morning his children came to him on the run

telling him something with hurried voices about Jesus the Nazarene.

Ben-Tobith stopped and listened to them for a moment, with wrinkled

face, but then angrily stamped his foot and drove them away. He was a

kindly man, fond of children, but now it annoyed him to be pestered

with all sorts of trivial things.

It was also annoying to him that the streets and the neighboring roofs

were crowded with people who seemed to have nothing to do but gaze

curiously upon Ben-Tobith whose head was tied with a kerchief like a

woman’s. And he was already on the point of going downstairs, when his

wife said to him:

“Look, they are leading the robbers. Perhaps this might take your mind

away from your pain.”

“Leave me alone, please. Don’t you see how I suffer?” angrily retorted

Ben-Tobith. But the words of his wife held out a vague promise that his

toothache might pass, and he reluctantly walked over to the edge of the

roof. Inclining his head to one side, he shut one eye, held a hand to

his cheek, made a wry, sniveling grimace and looked down.

Up the steep ascent of the narrow street moved a confused and enormous

mob of people in a cloud of dust and with a ceaseless uproar. In the

midst of it, bowed under the burden of their crosses, marched the

evildoers, and over their heads swished the whips of the Roman soldiers

like sinuous dark-skinned serpents. One of them, he with the long,

light locks, in a torn and blood-stained cloak, stumbled over a stone

which someone had thrown before his feet and fell. The shouts increased

in loudness, and the crowd closed in about the fallen man like a sea of

motley waves.

Ben-Tobith suddenly shuddered with the pain; it seemed as though

someone had pierced his tooth with a red-hot needle and twisted it

around; he groaned “oo-oo-oo,” and walked away from the edge of the

roof, wryly indifferent and wrathful.

“How they yell!” he enviously muttered, picturing to himself their

wide-opened mouths with strong and pain-free teeth, and thinking how he

might yell himself if he were only well. This mental picture added fury

to his pain, and he shook his bandaged head vehemently and howled

“moo-moo-moo.”

“They say that he healed the blind,” observed his wife clinging to the

edge of the roof and casting a stone at the spot where Jesus was slowly

moving onward, having been raised to his feet by the soldiers’ whips.

“Or course! Of course! He might have cured my toothache,” replied

Ben-Tobith sarcastically and with irritation, adding bitterly: “Just

look at the dust they are raising Like a herd of cattle. They should be

scattered with rods. Lead me downstairs, Sarah!”

The wife was right; the spectacle had diverted him somewhat, or perhaps

the rat dung remedy finally proved its efficacy, and he managed to go

to sleep. And when he woke up, the pain was almost gone, only a

swelling had formed on his right cheek, so slight a swelling, in fact,

as to be hardly noticeable. His wife said that it could not be seen at

all, but Ben-Tobith smiled craftily, he knew what a good wife he had

and how ready she was to say agreeable things. His neighbor, Samuel,

the tanner, had come meanwhile, and Ben-Tobith took him to see the new

ass; he proudly listened to his neighbor’s words of praise for the

animal and for its master.

Then, at the suggestion of his curious wife Sarah, the three of them

walked over to Golgotha to see the crucified. On the way Ben-Tobith

related to Samuel about his toothache from its very beginning, how the

day before he had felt a twitch of pain in his right jaw, and how

during the night he had been awakened by an agonizing pain. By way of

illustration he made a wry face, shutting his eyes, shook his head and

groaned, and the grey-bearded Samuel sympathizingly nodded and said:

“Tss-tss-tss, what suffering!”

Ben-Tobith was gratified by this expression of sympathy and he repeated

his tale and reverted to that distant past when his first tooth had

commenced to turn bad, the left tooth in the lower jaw. In such

animated conversation they reached Golgotha. The sun which was fated to

shine upon the world on that dread day had meanwhile set behind the

distant hillocks, and in the west glowed like a bloody stain a narrow

band of ruddy crimson. Against this background dimly darkled the

crosses, and kneeling at the foot of the cross in the center some

white-garbed figures glistened vaguely in the gathering dusk.

The people had long since dispersed; it was growing cold; casting a

fleeting glance upon the crucified figures, Ben-Tobith took Samuel by

his arm and cautiously turned him in the direction of their homes. He

felt unusually eloquent and he was anxious to tell him more about the

toothache. Thus they walked homeward, and Ben-Tobith, to the

accompaniment of Samuel’s sympathizing nods and exclamations, made once

more a wry face, shook his head and moaned artfully, while from the

deep crevices and the distant arid plains rose the blackness of night.

As though it sought to cover from the sight of heaven the great misdeed

of the earth.

The Marseillaise.

He was a nonentity: the spirit of a rabbit and the shameless patience

of a beast of burden. When fate, with malicious mockery, had cast him

into our somber ranks, we laughed with insane merriment. What

ridiculous, absurd mistakes will happen! But he—he, of course, wept.

Never in my life have I seen a man who could shed so many tears, and

these tears seemed to flow so readily—from the eyes, from the nose,

from the mouth, every bit like a water-soaked sponge compressed by a

fist. And even in our ranks have I seen weeping men, but their tears

were like a consuming flame from which savage beasts flee in terror.

These manly tears aged the countenance and rejuvenated the eyes: like

lava disgorged from the inflamed bowels of the earth they burned

ineradicable traces and buried beneath their flow world upon world of

trivial cravings and of petty cares. But he, when he wept, showed only

a flushed nose, and a damp handkerchief. He doubtless later dried this

handkerchief on a line, for otherwise where could he have procured so

many?

And all through the days of his exile he made pilgrimages to the

officials, to all the officials that counted, and even to such as he

endowed with fancied authority. He bowed, he wept, he swore that he was

innocent, he implored them to pity his youth, he promised on his oath

never to open his mouth again excepting in prayer and praise. And they

laughed at him even as we, and they called him “poor luckless little

piggy” and yelled at him:

“Hey there, piggy!”

And he obediently responded to their call; he thought every time that

he would hear a summons to return to his home, but they were only

mocking him. They knew, even as we that he was innocent, but with his

sufferings they meant to intimidate other “piggies,” as though they

were not sufficiently cowardly.

He used to come among us impelled by the animal terror of solitude, but

stern and shut were our lips and in vain he sought the key. In

confusion he called us dear comrades and friends, but we shook our

heads and said:

“Look out! Someone might hear you!”

And he would permit himself to throw a glance at the door—the little

pig that he was. Was it possible to remain serious? And we laughed,

with voices that had long been strangers to laughter, while he,

encouraged and comforted, sat down near us and spoke, weeping about his

dear little books that were left on his table, about his mamma and his

brothers, of whom he could not tell whether they were still living or

had died with terror and anguish.

In the end we would drive him away.

When the hunger strike had started he was seized with terror, an

inexpressibly comical terror. He was very fond of food, poor little

piggy, and he was very much afraid of his dear comrades, and he was

very much afraid of the authorities. Distractedly he wandered in our

midst, and frequently wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and it was

hard to tell whether the moisture was perspiration or tears.

And irresolutely he asked me:

“Will you starve a long time?”

“Yes, a long time,” I answered sternly.

“And on the sly, will you not eat something?”

“Our mammas will send us cookies,” I assented seriously. He looked at

me suspiciously, shook his head and departed with a sigh.

The next day he declared, green with fear like a parrot:

“Dear comrades, I, too, will starve with you.”

And we replied in unison:

“Starve alone.”

And he starved. We did not believe it, even as you would not; we all

thought that he was eating something on the sly, and even so thought

the jailers. And when towards the end of the hunger strike he fell ill

with starvation typhus, we only shrugged our shoulders: “Poor little

piggy!” But one of us, he who never laughed, sullenly said:

“He is our comrade! Let us go to him.”

He was delirious. And pitiful even as all of his life was this

disconnected delirium. He spoke of his beloved books, of his mamma and

of his brothers; he asked for cookies, icy cold, tasty cookies, and he

swore that he was innocent and pleaded for pardon. And he called for

his country, he called for dear France. Cursed be the weak heart of

man, he tore our hearts into shreds by this call: dear France.

We were all in the ward as he was breathing his last. Consciousness

returned to him before the moment of death. He was lying still, frail

and feeble as he was; and still were we too, his comrades, standing by

his side. And we, every one of us, heard him say:

“When I die, sing over me the Marseillaise!”

“What are you saying?” we exclaimed shuddering with joy and with

gathering frenzy.

“When I die, sing over me the Marseillaise!”

And for the first time it happened that his eyes were dry and we wept;

we wept, every one of us, and our tears glowed like the consuming fire

before which savage beasts flee in terror.

He died, and we sang over him the Marseillaise. With voices young and

mighty we sang the great hymn of freedom, and the ocean chanted a stern

accompaniment, upon the crest of his mighty waves bearing back to dear

France the pallor of dread and the bloody crimson of hope. And forever

he became our guerdon—that nonentity with the body of a rabbit and of a

beast of burden and with the great spirit of Man. On your knees before

a hero, comrades and friends!

We were singing. Down upon us gazed the barrels of rifles; ominously

clicked their triggers; menacingly stretched the points of bayonets

towards our hearts—and ever more loudly, ever more joyously rang out

the stern hymn, while in the tender hands of fighters gently rocked the

black coffin.

We were singing the Marseillaise.

Dies Irae.

CHANT THE FIRST.

1.

. . . . This free song of the stern days of justice and retribution I

have composed myself, as well as I could, I, Geronimo Pascagna, a

Sicilian bandit, murderer, highwayman, criminal.

Having composed it to the best of my ability, I meant to sing it

loudly, as good songs should be sung, but my jailer would not allow it.

My jailer’s ear is overgrown with hair; it has a strait and a narrow

channel: fit for words that are untruthful, sly, words that can crawl

upon their bellies like reptiles. But my words walk erect, they have

deep chests, broad backs—ah, how painfully they tore at the tender ear

of the jailer which was overgrown with hair!

“If the ear is shut, seek another entrance, Geronimo,” I said to myself

amicably; and I pondered, and I sought, and finally I succeeded and

found it, for Geronimo is no fool, let me tell you. And this is what I

found: I found a stone. And this is what I did: I chiseled my song into

the stone, and with the blows of my wrath I set aflame its icy heart.

And when the stone came to life and glanced at me with the fiery eyes

of wrath, I cautiously took it away and placed it at the very edge of

the prison wall.

Can you not see what I have in mind? I am wise, I figure that a

friendly quake will soon again set the earth aquiver, and once again it

will destroy your city; and the walls will crumble, and my stone will

drop and shatter the jailer’s head. And having shattered it, it will

leave upon his soft waxy blood-grey brain the impress of my song of

freedom, like the seal of a king, like a new commandment of wrath—and

thus will the jailer go down to his grave.

I say, jailer, shut not your ear, for I shall enter through your skull!

2.

If I am then alive, I shall laugh with joy; and if I chance to be dead,

my bones shall dance in their insecure grave. That will be a merry

Tarantella!

Can you say upon your oath that such things can never be? The same

quake might cast me back upon the face of the earth: my rotting coffin,

my decayed flesh, my whole body, dead and buried for keeps, tightly

clamped down. For such things have happened upon great days: the earth

opening up about the cemeteries, the still coffins crawling out into

the light.

Those still coffins, uninvited guests at the banquet!

3.

These be the names of the comrades with whom I made friends in those

fleeting hours: Pascale, a professor; Giuseppe, Pincio, Alba. They were

shot by firing squads. There was also another one, young, obliging, and

so handsome. It was a pity to look at him. I esteemed him as a son, he

reverenced me as a father, but I did not know his name. I had not

chanced to ask him, or perhaps I have forgotten it. He, too, was shot

by the soldiers. There may have been one or two more, also friends, I

do not remember them. When the youngster was being put to death, I did

not run far away, I hid right here, back of the wall—now crumbled—near

the trampled cactus. I saw and heard everything. And when I started to

leave, the trampled cactus pierced me with its thorn. Was it not

planted near the wall to keep away the thieves? How faithful are the

servants of the rich!

4.

The firing squad put them to death. Remember the names which I have

mentioned; and with regard to those whom I have not mentioned by name,

remember merely that they were put to death. But don’t go and make a

sign of the cross upon your brow, or worse than that—don’t go and order

a requiem mass—they did not like such things. Honor the dead with the

silence of truth, and if you must lie, lie in some merrier fashion, but

never by saying mass: they did not like that.

5.

That first quake that destroyed the prison and the city had a voice of

rare power and of queer, superhuman dignity: it roared from below, from

beneath the ground, it was vast and hoarse and menacing; and everything

shook and crumbled. And ere I grasped what was going on, I knew that

all was over, that it was perhaps the end of the earth. But I was not

particularly frightened: why should I be especially frightened even if

it were the end of the world? Long did he roar, that deaf subterranean

trumpeter.

And all at once politely opened the door.

6.

I had sat a long time in prison, without hope. I had tried to flee and

failed. Nor could you have managed to escape, for that accursed prison

was very well built.

And I had become accustomed to the iron of the bars and to the stone of

the walls, and they seemed to me eternal, and he who had built them the

strongest in the world. And it was no use to think whether he was just

or not, so strong and eternal he was. Even in my dreams I saw no

freedom—I did not believe, expect or feel it. And I feared to call it.

It is perilous to call freedom; while you keep still, you may live; but

call freedom once, ever so softly, you must either gain it or die. This

is true, so said Pascale, the professor.

And thus without hope I sat in prison, and suddenly opened the door.

Politely and of its own accord. At any rate it was no human hand that

opened it.

7.

The streets were in ruins, in a terrible chaos. All the material of

which people build was resolved to its elements and lay as it had been

in the beginning. The houses were crumbling, bursting, reeling like

drunken, squatting down upon the ground, on their own crushed legs.

Others were sulkily casting themselves down upon the ground, with their

heads upon the pavement—crash! And opened were the little boxes in

which human beings live—pretty little boxes, all plastered with paper.

The pictures still hung on the walls, but the people were no more; they

had been thrown out, they were lying beneath masses of stone. And the

earth was twitching convulsively—for, you must know that the

subterranean trumpeter had started to roar again, that deaf devil who

can never have enough noise because he is so deaf. Sweet, painstaking,

gigantic devil!

But I was free and I did not understand it yet. I hesitated to walk

away from that accursed prison. I was standing there, blinking stupidly

at the ruins. And the comrades had also assembled, none attempting to

leave, crowding distractedly, like the children about the figure of a

dissipated, drunken mother that had fallen to the ground. A fine

mother, indeed!

Suddenly Pascale, the professor, said:

“Look!”

One of the walls which we had deemed eternal had burst in two; and the

window, with its iron bars, had split in two as well. The iron was

twisted and torn like a rotten rag—think of it, the iron! In my hands

it had not even rattled, it had pretended to be eternal, the most

powerful thing on earth, and now it was not worth to be spat upon,—the

iron, think of it!

Then I, and the rest of us, understood that we were free.

8.

Free!

9.

It is harder for you to bend a grass blade than for him to bend three

iron rails one atop the other. Three or a hundred, it is all the same

to him. It is more difficult for you to raise a cup of water to your

lips than for him to raise a sea of water, to shake it up, to lift the

dregs thereof and to cast them out upon the shore; to bring the cold to

boiling. It is harder for you to gnaw through a piece of sugar than for

him to gnaw through a mountain. It is more difficult for you to tear a

thin and rotting thread than for him to break three wire ropes twisted

into one braid. You will perspire and flush with exertion before you

manage to stir up an anthill with your stick—and he with one push

destroys your city. He has picked up an iron steamship as you with your

hand pick up a tiny pebble, and has cast it ashore—have you ever seen

the like of such strength?

10.

All that had been open he has shut; the door of your house has grown

into its walls, and together they have choked you: your door, your

walls, your ceiling. And he likewise has opened the doors of the prison

which you had shut so carefully.

You, rich man, whom I hate!

11.

If I gather from all over the world all the good words which people

use, all the tender sayings, all the ringing songs and fling them all

into the joyous air;

If I gather all the smiles of children, the laughter of women whom none

has yet wronged, the caresses of greyhaired mothers, the faithful

handshakes of a friend—and weave of them all an incorruptible wreath

for some one beautiful head;

If I pass over the face of the earth and garner all the flowers that

grow upon it: in the forests and in the fields, in the meadows and in

the gardens of the rich, in the depths of the waters, upon the azure

bottom of the ocean; if I gather all the precious sparkling stones,

bringing them forth out of hidden crevices, out of the gloomy depths of

mines, tearing them from the crowns of kings and from the ears of the

rich—and pile them all, the stones and the flowers, into one radiant

mountain;

If I gather all the fires that burn in the universe, all the lights,

all the rays, all the flashes, flares and silent glows, and in the

glare of one mighty conflagration illumine the quaking worlds;

Even then I shall be unable to name thee, to crown thee, to laud thee—O

Freedom!

12.

Freedom!

13.

Over my head was the sky, and the sky is always free, always open to

the winds and to the movement of the clouds; under my feet was the

road, and the road is always free; it was made to walk on, it was made

for the feet to move over its surface, going back and forth, leaving

one spot and finding another. The road is the sweetheart of him who is

free; you have to kiss it on meeting, to weep over it on parting.

And when my feet began to move upon the road, I thought that a miracle

had occurred. I looked, and Pascale’s feet were also moving, the

professor! I looked, and the youngster was also moving with youthful

feet, hurrying, stumbling, and suddenly he ran.

“Whither?”

But Pascale sternly reproved me.

“Don’t throw questions at him; you’ll break his limbs. For you and I

are old, Geronimo.”

And we wept. And suddenly the deaf trumpeter roared out anew.

CHANT THE SECOND.

1.

A long time we walked about the city and saw much that was striking,

strange and sinister.

2.

Neither can you shut in the fire—I was saying this, I, Geronimo

Pascagna. If you would be at peace, put it out altogether, but do not

lock it up in stone, in iron or in glass; it will escape, and your

strongly built house will come to a bad end. When your mighty house is

fallen, and your life is extinct, it alone will burn, retaining the

heat and the blazing ruddiness and all the force of the flame. It may

lie awhile on the ground, it may pretend even to be dead; then it will

lift its head upon a slender neck and look about—to the right and to

the left, forward and backward. And it will leap. And it will hide

again, and will look again, it will straighten up, throw back its head,

and suddenly it will grow terribly stout.

And it will no longer have one head upon one slender neck: it will have

thousands. And it will no longer crawl slowly, it will run, it will

make gigantic bounds. It had been silent, now it is singing, whistling,

yelling, giving orders to stone and to iron, driving all from its path.

And suddenly it will begin to circle.

3.

We saw more dead people than living; and the dead were calm; they did

not know what had happened to them, and they were calm. But what about

the living? Just think what a ridiculous thing was told us by a madman

for whom, too, in those days of stern equality the door had opened!

Do you think he was amazed? He looked on attentively and benignly, and

the grey stubble on his yellow face bristled with proud joy—as though

he had done it all himself. I do not like madmen, and was going to walk

past him, but Pascale, the professor, stopped me, and respectfully

asked the proud madman:

“What makes you so pleased, signor?”

Pascale was far from being short of stature, but the madman searched

for him a long time with his eyes, like for a grain of sand that has

suddenly spoken out aloud from amidst of a sand heap, and finally he

discovered him. And hardly parting his lips—so proud was he—he repeated

the question:

“What makes me so pleased?”

And he waved his hand majestically and said:

“This is perfect order. We have so long craved for order.”

He called that order! I laughed out aloud, but just at that moment a

corpulent and altogether insane monk came up, and proved even more

ridiculous.

4.

For a long time they played their comedy among the ruins, the lunatic

and the monk, while we sat on a heap of stones, laughing and

encouraging them, shouting “bravo.”

“Fraud! I have been deceived!” cried the fat monk.

He was so fat, I don’t think you’ve ever seen any one as fat. It was

repulsive to watch him, the yellow fat of his cheeks and of his belly

quivered and shook so with wrath and fear.

“There’s perfect order for you!” cried the lunatic approvingly, hardly

deigning to part his lips.

“Fraud!” yelled the monk.

And suddenly he commenced to curse God. The monk! Think of it!

5.

......................................................

......................................................

6.

He assured us all that God had deceived him and he wept. He swore like

a crooked gambler that this was poor recompense for his prayers and his

faith. He stamped his feet and he cursed like a mule driver who comes

out of a gin mill and suddenly discovers that his mules had scattered

to the four winds.

And suddenly Pascale, the professor, lost his temper. He demanded that

I give him my knife and said to the monk who had sat down for a rest

after his outburst of curses:

“Listen, in a minute I will slit your belly, and if I find there but

one drop of wine or one atom of a pullet....”

“And if you don’t?” angrily retorted the monk.

“Then we shall count you among the saints. Hold his legs, Geronimo!”

The monk was frightened and departed mumbling:

“And I thought you were Christians! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”

But the lunatic gazed after him benignly and spoke approvingly:

“This is what I call perfect order. We have been so long waiting for

perfect order.”

7.

And we walked a long time about the city and saw many odd things. But

the day was short, and the night fell upon earth earlier than ever

before; and when the firing squad was killing Pascale, the soldiers had

lighted their torches.

8.

When Pascale was put against the wall, against the portion of it which

had remained uninjured, and the soldiers raised their rifles, the

officer said to him:

“You will die in a moment. Tell me why are you not afraid? That which

has happened is terrible, and we are all pale with horror, but you are

not. Why is that?”

Pascale was silent; he waited for the officer to ask him more questions

so that he might reply to all of them in one.

“And whence comes your boldness: to stoop and to take that which

belongs to others at a time when people in terror forget even

themselves and their children? And are you not sorry for those women

and children who have perished? We have seen cats that have lost their

mind through terror, and you are a human being. I will have you shot

instantly.”

This was well spoken, but our Pascale could speak every bit as well. He

has been shot dead. He is dead, but some day when all the dead arise

you will hear his speech, and you will shed tears, if by that time all

the tears are not exhausted, O Man.

He said:

“I take that which is another’s because I have nothing that is my own.

I took the raiment off a dead man in order to clothe my living flesh,

but you have seen me do it, and so you have stripped me; and now I

stand naked in front of your rifles. Soldiers, fire!”

But the officer did not suffer them to fire and asked him to speak

further.

9.

“Naked I stand in front of your rifles and fear nothing, not even your

rifles. But you are pale with fear, and you fear everything, even your

own rifles, even my naked body. When the quake was heard, it destroyed

and killed your city, your fortunes, your children and wives—but it

opened a prison for me. What then shall I fear? I have nothing of my

own upon the face of the earth. I am, naked.

10.

“And if the whole earth crumbled into ruin, and the very beasts howled

with horror, and the fish found a voice to express their grief, and the

birds fell to the ground with dread, even then I would not fear. For

all others it means the ruin of the earth, for me it opens the doors of

a prison. What then shall I fear? I am naked.

11.

“And if the universe crumbled, with heaven and hell, and horror were

enthroned over the infinity of living creatures, even then I would know

no fear. For all it would be the end of the universe, for me the

opening of a prison. What then shall I fear? I am naked.

12.

“And now, when with one salvo of your rifles you will destroy for me

the earth and the universe, even now I know no fear. For all of you it

will be the destruction and the fall of a human body, but for me a

prison will open its gates. Soldiers, fire! I am naked.”

13.

The torches blazed. It was the shortest day which I had ever seen.

Night fell upon the earth more quickly than ever before.

“It is your turn now,” ordered the officer, when Pascale, the

professor, had fallen.

True, I had not been caught in any wrongdoing, and there was nothing to

kill me for. But can you argue with them? And so I stood up. And I

lamented the night. Do you understand me? the night! Here the torches

and the fires were ruining it, and there, behind the torches and the

fire, it stood out strong, and firm, and dark as the nights of my

youth. I love the night, for then I do not see myself and can think

what I will. The day reaches my garments, but can go no further. It

stops at the darkness of my body and turns blind. But the night reaches

my very heart. That is why it is so easy to love at night; anybody will

tell you that. Ah, to spend only one hour in the shade of the faithful,

of the black and beautiful night, only one hour. But can you argue with

them? So I stood up.

But it is well to love also in the day time, when the sun is shining.

Love itself is like the night, it reaches the heart, don’t you see. And

in love you fail to see your own self, even as in the midst of night.

And if you only look into its eyes—straight into its black eyes—and

look without tearing your gaze away....

Suddenly for some reason the officer shouted angrily at the soldier and

snapped at me:

“Get out of here!”

14.

Another day passed. And on that day the soldiers shot that youngster

who had called me father.

15.

Night sank upon the earth and I departed from that city of the dead.

16.

Dies irae—the day of wrath, the day of vengeance and of stern

retribution, the day of Horror and of Death.

17.

. . . . That procession which I had watched from behind the wall was a

strange and a terrible sight. They were bearing the statues of their

saints, but did not know whether to raise them still higher over their

heads or to cast them upon the ground, trampling the fragments

underfoot. Some were still cursing, while others were already saying

their prayers, but they walked on together, the children of the same

father and the same mother, or Horror and of Death. They leaped over

the crevices and disappeared in abysses. And the saints reeled like

drunkards.

Dies irae.... Some were singing, others were weeping, and still others

were laughing. Some howled like lunatics. And they were waving their

hands, and all were in a hurry. The fat-bellied monks were running.

From whom were they running away? Not a soul was seen behind them.

Meekly lolled the ruins in the warm glow of the sun, and the fire was

disappearing into the ground, smoking wearily.

18.

From whom were they fleeing? There was not a soul behind them.

19.

You barely touched a tree, and a ripe orange fell at your feet. First

one, then another, a third.... The crop bids fair to be fine. A good

orange is like a little sun, and when there is an abundance of them,

you feel like smiling, as though the sun shone brightly. And the leaves

are so dark, just like the night back of the sun. No, they are green,

dark green. Why are you telling untruths, Geronimo?

But how cautious is that deaf devil, that subterranean trumpeter, who

is never content because of his deafness: he has destroyed a city, but

has left an orange suspended on a branch, to wait for Geronimo. You

barely touch the tree, and a ripe orange drops at your feet. First one,

then another, then a third.... They will be taken overseas to strange

lands. And in those lands, where reign the cold and the fogs, people

will look at them and say: “Yes, there is a sun for you!”

20.

Pascale, the professor,—we called him “_il professore_” because he was

so wise, he could write verses, and he discoursed so nobly on all sorts

of subjects. He is dead.

21.

Why am I terrified? Why do I walk faster and faster? I had been afraid

there....

22.

I never knew that my feet so loved to walk. They love every step which

they make. They part so sadly with every step; they seem to want to

turn back. And so greedy are they that the longest road seems short to

them, that the widest road seems narrow. They regret—fancy!—that they

cannot at once walk backward and forward, to the right and to the left.

Let them have their will and they will cover the earth with their

traces, not leaving a patch: and still they would seek more.

And another thing I did not know: I did not know about my eyes that

they can breathe.

Afar off I see the ocean.

23.

What else can I tell you? I was seized by the gendarmes.

24.

Once more thou hast locked the doors of my prison, O Man! When didst

thou have time to build it? Still in ruins lies thy house, the bones of

thy children are not yet bare in the grave, but thou art already at

work, tapping with thy hammer, patching together with cement the

obedient stone, rearing before thy face the obedient iron. How fast

dost thou build thy prisons, O Man!

Still in ruins are thy churches, bu thy prison is all finished.

Still shaking with terror are thy hands, but already they grasp the

key, and rattle the lock, and slip the bolt. Thou art a musician: to

the jingle of gold thou requirest the accompanying rattle of

fetters—let that be the bass.

Grim death is still in thy blanched nostrils, and already thou art

sniffing at something, turning thy nose this way and that way. How fast

buildest thou thy prisons, O Man!

25.

The iron does not even rattle—so strong it is. And it is cold to the

touch like someone’s icy heart. Silent is also the stone of the

walls—so proud it is, so everlasting and mighty. At the appointed time

comes the jailer and flings at me my food like at a savage beast. And I

show my teeth—why should I not show my teeth? I am starved and naked.

And the clock is striking.

Art thou content, O Man, my master?

26.

But I do not believe in thy prison, O Man, my master! I do not believe

in thy iron; I do not believe in thy stone, in thy power, O Man, my

master! That which I have once seen destroyed, shall never be knit

together again.

Thus would have spoken even Pascale, the professor.

27.

Set thy clock a-going, it marks well the time until it stops. Rattle

thy keys, for even thy paradise thou hast shut with lock and key.

Rattle thy keys and shut the door, they shut well while there is a

door. And walk around cautiously.

And when all is still, thou wilt say: it is well now, it is quite still

now. And thou wilt lie down to sleep. It is quite still now, thou wilt

say, but I hear how he is gnawing at the iron with his teeth. But thou

wilt say that the iron is too strong for him, and thou wilt lie down to

sleep. And when thou hast fallen asleep, holding tight thy keys in thy

happy hands, suddenly the subterranean trumpeter will roar out loudly,

awaking thee with his thunder, raising thee to thy feet with the force

of terror, holding thee erect with a mighty arm: so that dying thou

shalt see death. Wide as the day will open thy eyes; terror will tear

them wide open. Ears will come to thy heart, so that dying thou shalt

hear death.

And thy clock will stop.

28.

Freedom!