sexton, and would walk away. But Cock-of-the-Boots and his friend rolled
with laughter, and they proclaimed all his secrets to the whole
Christian world:
“We ’ll teach you a thing or two! You just make a move against us!”
When they got tired standing under the window, they lay down opposite
the house, and proceeded with their scolding, and they would not go away
any sooner than they would be treated to brandy or money. When this was
sent out to them they only laughed:
“Look at these infidel devils! They think that they can wash down their
wrongs with this brandy. Don’t worry, you will not wash them down!”
Having had their fun, they walked away, and the sexton invariably
started a chant upon these occasions.
They were particularly successful in saving young men from conscription,
if these were unjustly worried by the commune, on account of their
poverty or orphaned state. All such an unfortunate man had to do was to
buy a keg of brandy, paper, and ink, and the sexton was ready to compose
a letter. He presented his case to the higher authorities in so
convincing a manner that many a recruit was returned from service and
the commune received severe reprimands. And if the higher authorities
stood in with the commune against these luckless fellows, our scribes
would add a postscript to their petition to the effect that: “If your
honour will not free Iván Lúchin who has been shaven a recruit against
the law, we will at once go to Peter to complain to our father the
Tsar.” And they both signed that letter.
“This petition,” they wrote, “has been signed in person by the village
sexton Kuzmá Lukích Zabubénny and the crown peasant and shoemaker
Grigóri Kuzmích, nicknamed Cock-of-the-Boots.”
Many a fellow was freed after such a letter. But they refused to
intervene in the case of a man whose evident fate it was to be a
soldier, and in no case did they receive any other remuneration than
brandy.
It was on account of his good soul, which we all saw, that we did not
interfere with his drinking. All of a sudden we heard the news of a
general conscription.
Our town officers scared us with such phrases: “There will be an
unusually large conscription. Three countries have risen against us. We
’ll have a job on hand.”
“Well,” we said, “if there is to be a big conscription, let there be.
Evidently it has to be.” In the meantime we began to fit out any of the
young fellows that might be called, that they might be ready at any time
and hour, for it was not for a day or two that our youngsters were to
leave us----
These rumours began to spread just before the battle of Sebastopol.
At last the time came to draw lots, and then to be examined as recruits.
Cock-of-the-Boots did not have to worry about his sons for something
like three years, because a nephew of his had become a soldier and,
consequently, his family was for the time being exempt.
“This Cock-of-the-Boots is a lucky chap,” we said. “He has raised six
fine eagles, and there they are to stay at home.”
One morning, we saw to our surprise that Cock-of-the-Boots was starting
out on the road with all his sons. He was walking at their head and
smoking his pipe, and he looked gloomy and his moustache hung down, but
he was not drunk. The mother was accompanying them and weeping torrents
of tears.
“Where are you starting out, Grigóri Kuzmích? Have you taken a liking to
another place, and do you want to leave us?”
“Good-bye, friends!” he said. “I am going to enter my sons, every one of
them, into the army, because a large host is up against us, and there
are as many of them as stars in heaven.”
Sexton Kuzmá was walking with them.
“Orthodox people,” he said, “don’t recall me with an evil thought! I
sha’n’t think of you at all, because I am sick of your foolishness. I
’ll try to find a place somewhere.”
“They are jesting!” we thought. “They are, no doubt, going out on the
chase or catching fish.”
But it was not a jest at all. He really inscribed all his sons and the
sexton in the army! And the provincial authorities were so much pleased
with his act, that he and his boys received a great deal of money, and
he was promised that all his sons and the sexton were to serve in one
and the same company.
They had wanted to put all his sons in the bodyguard, but
Cock-of-the-Boots begged them to let them go straightway to the war.
“I have brought them to go against the enemy,” he said.
The authorities gave him a written document in which they expressed
their thanks to him. When he returned home, he hung that letter up in
the hut of the Blue Rig, and started on a protracted spree.
His wife could not believe for a long time that he would give up all his
sons at once. She kept on hoping that to-day, or to-morrow, one of them
at least would return, say, the youngest. But when she saw that there
was no return from the army, she joined her husband in the spree.
She was all bent up and crushed, and she sailed along, vainly moving her
hands, and mumbling something; her red shawl fell down from one shoulder
and dragged along the ground.
She did not long continue to walk that way. She soon died. While on her
deathbed, she gave her husband a terrible tongue-lashing for having
separated her from her dear children.
Some people came to look at the dead person, and they found
Cock-of-the-Boots talking to her as if she were alive, for he was
dreadfully drunk just then.
“Foolish woman!” he muttered. “You do not know your own good luck. You
will be better off there! I myself have long wished to die, but death
does not come to me.”
He muttered that in an undertone, and not aloud as he used to. It was a
pity to see him left so alone. The hut looked dreadfully desolate, and
destitute of everything. The stove had all fallen in. The Blue Rig,
tattered and torn, and all wrinkled up, lay on the stove, and looked at
everybody like an insensate beast, and angrily gnashed her teeth at
them----
III
Cock-of-the-Boots became gentler than a lamb when his family had all
left him. He sat for days at a time in the hut with the Blue Rig, and
they looked at each other. Village urchins came in and made fun of the
old people, but they received no reply. Only at midnight, when the whole
village was asleep, the neighbours could hear Cock-of-the-Boots wailing:
“My children, my children, what have I done with you?”
Neighbors stole up to the window, and they saw him wallowing on the
ground and tearing his hair. In daytime he again sat down in his den,
not leaving his place, and he was so sad, grey, and bald. When the
villagers saw that the old people not only could not provide for
themselves, but were even too weak to go a-begging, they began to bring
them bread, water, and kvas.
“Why do you sit here, Grigóri Kuzmích?” old people would ask him, when
he came a little to his senses.
“I am waiting for death, dear people! Maybe it will carry away my great
grief, which I have tried all my life to drown in the taverns, but never
succeeded in drowning!” And he began to weep bitterly, tears flowing in
torrents.
We wondered much what grief he was talking about. He had feasted nearly
all his life in taverns at other people’s expense, and now he was
grieving. If he was weeping for his sons, he had himself taken them to
be inscribed in the army.
His grief must, indeed, have been very great, for he lamented dreadfully
at night, and often woke us up. He woke us with his awful cries, like
the sound of the house spirit when he calls for an evil omen; and we,
hearing them, were very much frightened and, rising in the morning,
fervently prayed to our Lord----
Nikoláy Nikoláevich Zlatovrátski. (1845-.)
Zlatovrátski, the son of a village priest, was born in Vladímir, where
he attended the Gymnasium. His father having established a library for
the people, Zlatovrátski had an opportunity to acquaint himself with
Russian literature. He then studied at the St. Petersburg
Technological Institute, but his extreme poverty compelled him to look
for work, and he became a proof-reader in one of the newspapers. This
gave him an impetus to try himself in authorship, and his first
sketch, _The Murrain_, appeared in 1866. Since then he has written a
large number of shorter and longer stories, dealing with the life of
the peasants in the period of the emancipation, and also with the
intelligent classes at the same time. To the latter he assumes a
negative attitude, regarding them as having departed from the simple,
fundamental life of the Russian peasant. Though he treats his peasants
with more consideration, there is a strong element of pessimism even
in the sketches of that kind, thus, differing from the similar stories
by Uspénski. They also differ from Uspénski’s novels by the
musicalness of their language and the greater wealth of detailed
descriptions. Among his best stories are _The History of a Village_,
_Village Work Days_, _The Karaváevs_, _The Wanderer_.
OLD SHADOWS
In moments of heavy anguish of soul my “little grandfather” would visit
me, and he brought with him from the darkness of oblivion a series of
just such little and insignificant existences as himself. My childhood
and youth are, it seems, inseparably connected with these little
existences. I particularly recall those strange, mysterious forms that
suddenly appeared, one knew not whence,--both in our “old house” in the
provincial city, and in the old, weather-stained cabin of my
grandfather,--and just so vanished, one knew not whither. They were
wandering shadows that frightened our childish imagination,--especially,
since my grandmother, whom I cannot picture to myself otherwise than in
an enormous kerchief, with overhanging eyebrows and a huge frying fork
in her hand, had no use for them and called them “tramps,” “loafing
people,” and “worthless lot.” Yet, in spite of the existence of my stern
old grandmother, who always appeared before me as an incarnation of that
stern period,--these “loafing people,” it seemed to me, were breeding
more and more in our Russian land, and with it my stern grandmother gave
ever more a piece of her mind to my visionary mother and to the “village
windbag,” my little grandfather, who were giving refuge to these people,
and to whom, it seemed, they clung as a moth flits about the light.
Dimly pass before me those strange, mysterious forms which that
irrevocable past produced in such large numbers. I have before my mind
the tall, smoke-stained old cabin of my grandfather that was roughly
made of big logs. It is warm within, but in the open the frost is
getting stronger towards evening. Half of the panes are already covered
with downy hoar-frost, and there is a thumping, crackling sound now in
one corner, now in another. Grandfather is sitting by a tallow dip,
hurrying to mend his leaky felt boot with a piece of leather. Mother is
solemnly and chantingly reading the versified paraphrase of the psalms,
distinctly pronouncing the words,--and I enjoy the harmonious sound of
the words, though I ill understand their meaning.
Sister and I are snuggled up under a warm sheepskin, and we silently
move in some frivolous fairy world, for which there is no time and no
space: from the fantastic countries of the Eastern Shaherezade we are
rapidly transferred to the warm, soft shores of the Jordan, to the stern
kingdom of the Pharaohs, or suddenly we are borne in the whirl of a
joyous, bright light, amidst a sea of festive sounds of music, to the
splendour of a new, frivolous world of European capitals, whither so
enticingly beckon and call us all those vigorous, fresh young people,
who had managed before us to escape from the harsh and murky habitations
of the manorial hamlets---- Though sister and I are not saying anything,
yet I am quite convinced that her thoughts are taking her to the same
regions. I need only ask her: “Do you remember the letter mother read us
yesterday from Uncle Sásha in St. Petersburg?” in order to be sure that
her youthful fancy will immediately carry her, as it has carried me,
far, far away from these dim and dusky, though warm, walls of
grandfather’s cabin.
Suddenly a heavy creaking is heard on the bridge; the gate ring rattles;
someone coughs behind the door. We all listen intently; the door is
opened timidly and with indecision, and on the threshold appears a tall,
lean, strange figure, merged in steaming frost: he has on a long
sheepskin coat that is covered with snow, and on his head is a tall,
thick, cotton-filled cap and in his hands a long staff; over his
shoulder hangs a long calfskin-covered wallet; he has a long, thin, wet
face, with sunken cheeks, thick tufts of a greyish beard, and timid,
black eyes under long brows.
“Peace and blessing be upon your house!” distinctly enounces the
stranger on the threshold, without moving from the spot.
“Thank you,” says grandfather. “Whither are you bound? Másha, get a
slice of bread from grandmother,--say it ’s for a pilgrim.”
“Don’t you recognise me, father?” in the meantime asks the pilgrim,
without leaving the threshold.
“No, no---- Or are we acquaintances?” says grandfather, as he is looking
for his glasses. “Who are you?”
The pilgrim timidly surveys the room with his penetrating black eyes,
and softly says:
“A despised servant of the Lord, a slave of men--the manorial servant
Aleksándr--the wandering Jew, the accursed Ahasuerus----”
“O Aleksándr! I do recognise you, I do,” says grandfather. “You want to
warm yourself and stay over night; you are tired, no doubt. We will find
a place!---- Sit down, Aleksándr, pilgrim of the Lord!”
“Will you let me, father?” the pilgrim asks again, still timidly
surveying all around him.
“Have no fear, no fear! The Lord be with you, come in, make yourself at
home!”
The pilgrim slowly and with indecision takes off his wallet, and seats
himself on the bench with a heavy sigh.
“Well, Aleksándr, have you not yet found rest for your soul?” asks
grandfather.
But the pilgrim sits in silence, and lowers his head.
Then a deep sigh is heard again issuing from his breast. Then he begins
to speak clearly, without hurrying, lowering his eyes all the time, as
if ashamed to look at us.
“I have crossed all the borders--have been everywhere--have visited all
the holy places---- I have been in the countries of the midday sun and
of midnight--on sultry Athon and in the cold Solovétsk cells----
Everywhere, father---- I have continually looked for the eternal city,
and there is no refuge for the despised slave!---- Father, I have
suffered hunger and cold---- In summer and in winter I, as a thief, hide
from the light, and wander at night-time---- I come into cities, and
they drive me out, I knock at the cells, and they do not receive the
outcast---- I see neither my kin, nor my relations, neither wife, nor
children, who abide in servitude---- Be accursed, despised slave, for
having thought of liberty, abandoning your roof, and departing from your
kin!---- If I should wish to return to the house of my master, my
children and my kin would deny me, for the fear of the Jews, and my
master would turn me over to mockery and to outrage---- I am afraid to
return to slavery, and I shall wander about, as a thief, and my refuge
shall be the lair of beasts----”
And suddenly the pilgrim falls upon his knees with a dull sound, and
begins to pray. For a long time are heard, amidst a complete silence,
the deep sighs of the pilgrim and now and then a moan of my grandfather.
My mother, and sister, and I look with fixed attention at that lean,
bony face, which is as swarthy as if cast of bronze, and on which lie
the clear traces of his endless wanderings and immeasurable sorrow.
The pilgrim rises, straightens himself up, and still keeps his eyes on
the holy image. Large tears course down his cheeks, while his black eyes
sparkle at the same time evil despair and stern faith.
“Father!” he suddenly speaks, raising his hand to the image.
“There--there let us seek the eternal city!---- Only there---- There
they will not cast you off----”
“But do not despair, Aleksándr! God will uplift you,” says grandfather.
“There is not a tear, Aleksándr, that floweth in vain, and is not heard
at the throne of the Almighty! Not a hair of your head shall perish----
Seek, and you shall always find! Knock, and the gates of truth shall be
opened unto you!---- Sit down, Aleksándr, and strengthen yourself with
what God hath sent.”
The pilgrim is, it seems, quieted down, and he seats himself on the
bench again; but now his head is raised, and his gleaming eyes look
somewhere into the distance, as if they pierced the walls of our cabin,
and a strange struggle shines in them, as if they did not yet know on
what to rest their choice: on heaven or on earth.
“Well, Aleksándr, tell us something about God’s world. Many things are
revealed to you pilgrims. Come, sit down here!”
The pilgrim seats himself at the table, and I see my mother, her eyes
burning with some mysterious curiosity, moving up towards him, placing
her arms on the table, leaning her head upon them, and fixing her dreamy
eyes upon the pilgrim’s face.
And the pilgrim begins to speak. But my childish imagination is only
impressed by his stern, misty form, and has preserved nothing else, and
I recall his speeches only as the din of a turbid torrent that runs
across the endless steppes. And over these steppes rapidly marches,
driven by the wind, the tall, stern figure that is in vain seeking a
place where the son of man may lay down his head.
And the pilgrim has not yet ended his stories, which, it seems, are so
long that they last a whole night, and a day, and again a night, when
there appears in the door of our cabin a new strange being that strikes
our childish imagination.
At first we see only an immense old rough sheepskin coat that is held
together by a belt, and large old felt boots, but it is quite impossible
to define the sex, the age, or the occupation of the person that is
hidden in the recesses of that huge coat, above which is barely seen the
head so tightly wrapped in a frosted shawl that even the eyes cannot be
discerned. The strange coat nervously and rapidly makes three deep
inclinations before the holy image, and then to the corners of the room,
and just as rapidly begins to unravel the shawl, and by degrees appears,
at first, a thin, grey beard, then a thin, long nose, small, mouse-like,
grey eyes, and finally an immense bald head is freed from a sheepskin
cap, here and there feathered with dishevelled tufts of greyish red
hair. And when the coat suddenly and unexpectedly falls off in the
corner,--there stands before us one of the commonest, the most
“insignificant” of the “worthless lot” who, in the opinion of my
grandmother, live in this world: it is an old serf, in a patched and
torn gabardine. No sooner does the peasant feel himself freed from the
weight of the huge sheepskin that has oppressed him, than he becomes
nervously alive, sweetly smiles upon us all, bows again and again into
both corners, and, rapidly twitching his feet before grandfather, cries
out in an entreating voice: “Most worshipful one! Father! Give me a
lodging! Refresh me! Give me hope!”
“Ah, Filimón, Filimón! Is it you again?” says my “little grandfather” in
evident agitation, trying to find his snuff-box.
“Yes, I, worshipful man. Do not misjudge me,” says the peasant so softly
that you would think he was afraid of his own voice.
“Ah, Filimón!” says grandfather, for some reason shaking his head in
anguish and trying to console himself with a pinch of snuff. “When will
you come to rest? Friend, is there a living spot in you?”
It appears to us, indeed, that there is not a living spot in the
peasant: neither muscles, nor flesh, nor blood,--nothing but strong,
indestructible bones enclosed in a dark-brown skin.
The peasant, after grandfather’s words, smiles even more entreatingly;
his grey, little eyes apparently become even smaller,--and he suddenly
grows once more enlivened and agitated; all his bony members are in
motion, and, as if seized by some unusual care, he begins to rummage in
the breast of his torn outer garment.
He finally brings to light something that is wrapped in a dark kerchief.
He cautiously opens it with his trembling fingers and, timidly turning
to both sides, with a careworn glance places before grandfather some
old, stained papers, and again makes a low bow before him.
“Worshipful one! I have a request to make.”
“Ah, Filimón! Ah, Filimón!” sighs grandfather, again shaking his head in
anguish: “Why do you tempt God our Lord? If you do not care for
yourself, think of your kin. Pacify your spirit! It is enough! Enough,
Filimón! You have chastised yourself enough, my friend! The Lord seeth,
the Lord hath weighed and measured. He demandeth not complete
exhaustion. Do not tempt fate!”
“Most worshipful man! I am going! I have to care for people! I must go!”
“Whither are you going, senseless man? Take a breath. At least heal your
old wounds. Take your ease!”
“Father, they are healed! Do not misjudge me! I am going--to the higher
realms!”
And the peasant once more looks entreatingly into grandfather’s face,
and it seems to us that grandfather is unable to withstand that
entreating glance.
And grandfather rises, his glance becomes stern and serious, and he says
with severity:
“Filimón! Have pity on me! God will punish me, your councillor and
abettor, for you!”
“Father, do not deny me! I will knock once more: knock, knock, knock!
Maybe the Lord will grant me---- Just this way, lightly, father: knock,
knock, knock! ‘Who is there?’ they will ask. ‘’T is I,’ says I, as
before. ‘’T is I.’”
“How many times have you gone to knock?”
“’T is the eighth time, father. ’T is the eighth for the higher realms.
I was driven off six times. Six times they flayed me----”
“Dear Filimón, how much will there be left of you? Take pity on
yourself. Pity me, I pray, pity my soul. Why should I aid in your
suffering and destruction?”
The peasant once more smiles entreatingly into grandfather’s face, and
suddenly falls down before his feet.
“Most worshipful one! Do not begrudge me!”
And rising to his feet just as swiftly, he nervously and excitedly
flourishes his dry, bony hands, lets his mouse-like eyes roam timidly in
the corners, and begins to speak, without cessation, as if everything is
to come down in a rain, everything he has been carrying hither with the
greatest care for days and miles---- It is one endless, intent murmur,
like the distant din of the mill water, interrupted by some sudden
exclamations that make our childish hearts tremble with fear.
I remember how that intent murmur of the bony peasant made my head feel
as though compressed in a vise, how terribly my blood beat in my
temples, so that I was ready to burst out into sobs and run away from
the cabin,--far, far away from that terrible murmur, in spite of the
frost, and the deep snowdrifts, and the night storm that howled around
our cabin. And if that dreadful murmur that racked my nerves had lasted
one minute longer, I should have come out from under my warm fur, and
should have, indeed, run away as in a delirium. But the “little
grandfather” stepped up to us, and thoughtfully stroked our heads. Why
did he do it? He, evidently, did not notice it himself. Or, maybe, he
unconsciously wanted to ask our consent for something. And, interrupting
the peasant, he said:
“Filimón! For the last time, absolutely. I feel it, it is for the last
time. There shall be an end! It can’t be otherwise! There must be an
end! The Lord is great in His long-suffering, that is true, but also
terrible in His anger!”
The peasant’s face beams with pleasure, and he at once breaks off his
murmur.
“What shall I write about?” asks grandfather.
“Father, write the whole truth. Tell straight about everything. Hide
nothing, and have no mercy upon us: crush the blood of Judas! The blood
of Judas has begun to oppress the people! The main thing, father, tell
the whole truth about everything.”
And the peasant solemnly raises his hands to heaven.
“Write! I have suffered, and I can suffer more. I am afraid of no new
prison, and of no new chains. Most worshipful one, have no mercy!
Write!”
And for a long, long time, through the speechless quiet of a winter
night and through our disturbed dreams, we see the bony little peasant,
with his entreating smile and a certain childishly naïve decision and
faith, that enlighten his whole little face, and our “little
grandfather,” who has suddenly become so serious and stern and who with
the consciousness of some great obligation is slowly and deliberately
drawing his legible semi-uncial letters on the paper.
“Write, write, father! There is truth! There will be truth!” we again
hear the voice of the bony peasant, and the longer he watches
grandfather’s pen, the brighter, it seems, his face is growing.
We are, for some reason, happy for the peasant and for grandfather, but
at the same time we are oppressed by a mysterious feeling of terror and
of fear, because it seems to us that our stern grandmother will soon
come out of the living rooms, and will angrily cast her suspicious
glance upon all of us “useless” and “loafing” people, and will cry:
“Where did that worthless lot come from? Whence does God carry them?
Evidently punishments and threats do not take off all the loafing
people---- What have you found in each other? And why do you stick to
each other, like flies to honey? Well, this one has been half-witted
from her birth,” grandmother shakes her head at my mother, “but you, old
man? O deacon! Some evil will befall you, some evil will! Make a note of
my words. You will get a terrible reward for all these people!”
But the “loafing people,” who at first are really grieved and
intimidated by the angry words of my stern grandmother, not only do not
disappear, but grow more and more.
Vladímir Galaktiónovich Korolénko. (1853.-)
Korolénko is descended on his father’s side from the Cossacks; his
mother was the daughter of a Polish landed proprietor. He graduated
from a Real-Gymnasium in the Government of Zhitomír, and then, under
untold hardships, studied in the Technological Institute of St.
Petersburg and Peter’s Academy in Moscow. Here he was arrested for
addressing a collective petition to the director of the school, and
was sent to the Government of Vológda, and thence back to Krónstadt,
where his family was residing. The next year he settled in St.
Petersburg where he read proof. In 1879 he was again arrested, and his
wanderings through all parts of European Russia and Siberia began. His
first stories were published in 1879, but the first to attract the
attention of the public was his _Makár’s Dream_, which deals with the
semi-savages of the Siberian Tayga. The artistic perfection of his
style, the harmoniousness of his diction, and the completeness of his
stories are rare qualities among modern Russian authors. The sadness
of his stories is not of the heartrending, cheerless kind, and rather
invites a rereading. Among his best known books and separate sketches
are _The Blind Musician_, _The Forest Rustles_, _The Old Bell-ringer_,
_In Bad Society_.
Many of Korolénko’s stories have been well translated into English:
_The Vagrant and Other Tales_ (containing _The Old Bell-ringer_, _The
Forest Roughs_, _Easter Night_, _A Saghalinian_, _Sketches of a
Siberian Tourist_), translated by Mrs. A. Delano, New York and Boston,
1887 (2d ed. 1896); _The Blind Musician_, translated by Mrs. A.
Delano, with an introduction by G. Kennan, Boston, 1890; the same,
translated by W. Westall and S. Stepniak (International Series, No.
100), New York, 1890 (2d ed. 1893); the same (Seaside Library, No.
1515), New York, 1890; _Makár’s Dream_, in Cosmopolitan, vol. vi.; _A
Queer Girl_, in Free Russia, vol. ii., Nos. 9 and 10, and _In the
Famine Year_, vol. x., No. 2; _A Saghalien Convict_ (in Pseudonym
Library); _In Two Moods_ (and _In Bad Society_), translated by S.
Stepniak and W. Westall (Lovell’s International Series, No. 178), New
York, 1891, and (Seaside Library, No. 1943) New York, 1892; _The Old
Bell-ringer_, translated by M. P. de Schatokhin, in The Anglo-Russian
Literary Society, No. 8; _An Involuntary Murderer_, translated by
Jessie Mackenzie, in Gentleman’s Magazine, 1898.
THE OLD BELL-RINGER
A SPRING IDYLL
It grows dark. Over the black, crenelated line of the dense forest
stands the full moon; it stands, but does not shine---- A small
settlement that nestles over the distant brook, in the pine forest, is
merged in that peculiar twilight, so common to spring nights, when the
moon stands pensively over the horizon, shrouded by a smoky veil. The
mist, rising from the earth, thickens the long shadows of the woods and
covers the open places with a silvery azure glamour---- All is quiet,
pensive, melancholy.
The village slumbers quietly.
The humble cabins barely stand out in their dark contours; here and
there glimmer fires; now and then a gate creaks, a watchful dog barks,
and all is silent again. At times there issue from the dark mass of the
softly rustling forest the figures of pedestrians, there passes by a
rider, creaks a vehicle. These are the inhabitants of lonely forest
hamlets who are going to their church to meet the spring holiday.
The church stands on a mound, in the centre of the village. Its windows
are bright with lights. The tall, murky, old belfry is lost with its
spire in the azure.
The steps of the staircase are creaking---- The old bell-ringer
Mikhyéich is ascending the bell tower, and soon his little lantern will
be suspended in mid-air, like a shooting star in space----
It is hard for the old man to climb the steep staircase. His old legs do
not serve him well, he is worn out, and his eyes see but dimly----’T is
time, it has long been time, that the old man should take his rest, but
God does not send him death. He has buried his sons, has buried his
grandchildren, has accompanied old men to their celestial dwelling, has
accompanied young men, but he is still alive. ’T is hard---- Many is the
time he has met the spring holiday, and he has lost the count of how
often he has waited for the appointed time on that very bell tower. And
there God has again decreed----
The old man walks to the opening in the tower and leans over the
banister. Below, around the church, the graves of the village cemetery
dot the darkness; the old crosses look as though they protected them
with their outstretched arms. Here and there leafless birches bend over
them---- From there, below, is wafted to Mikhyéich the aromatic odour of
young buds and reminds him of the melancholy silence of the eternal
sleep----
What will become of him in a year? Will he again climb to this top,
under the brass bell, in order to awaken light-sleeping night by its
metallic din, or will he lie--down there, in the dark corner of the
cemetery, under a cross? God knows---- He is prepared: in the meanwhile
may God grant him to meet the holiday once more. “Glory to Thee, Lord!”
his old lips mutter the customary formula and he looks upwards, at the
starred heaven that glows with a million lights, and he makes the sign
of the cross----
“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich!” calls out to him from below the tremulous
voice of an old man. The aged sexton looks up at the belfry, shades his
unsteady and tearful eyes with his open hand, but he does not see
Mikhyéich.
“What do you want? Here I am!” answers the bell-ringer, as he leans over
the banister. “Can’t you see me?”
“No, I can’t. Say, is it not time to ring? What do you think?”
Both look at the stars. Thousands of God’s fires twinkle down to them
from on high. The fiery “Wain” has risen way above them---- Mikhyéich is
making his calculation.
“No, not yet, wait a bit---- I know when----”
He does know. He needs no watch: God’s stars will tell him when the time
has come. Heaven and earth, and the white cloud that gently swims in the
azure, and the murky forest that indistinctly whispers below, and the
plash of the brook lost in the darkness,--all that is familiar to him,
all that is his own---- Not in vain has he passed his whole life
here----
The distant past arises before him---- He recollects how he for the
first time climbed this bell tower with his father. Lord, how long ago
that is--and yet how recent! He sees himself a blonde boy; his eyes are
aflame; the wind--not the wind that raises the dust in the streets, but
some special kind of wind that flaps its noiseless wings way above the
earth--dishevels his hair---- Below, way, way down, walk tiny people,
and the huts of the village are tiny too, and the forest has receded,
and the round clearing in which the village is situated looks so
enormous, so endless----
“Oh, there it is, all of it there!” the grey-haired old man smiles as he
looks down at the small clearing.
That is the way with life. In your youth you can’t see the end of it,
and there it is, all of it, as if in the palm of your hand, from the
beginning to that very little grave that he has taken a fancy to for
himself in the corner of the cemetery. Well, glory to Thee, Lord! ’t is
time for rest. The hard road has been passed honourably, and the damp
earth is his mother---- Soon, yes, very soon!----
But, it must be time! He looks once more at the stars, rises, takes off
his cap, makes the sign of the cross, grasps the bell ropes---- A minute
later the night air reverberates from the hollow stroke--another, a
third, a fourth--one after the other, filling the light-sleeping night
of the holiday’s eve, there flow the mighty, drawn-out sonorous singing
sounds----
The ringing stops. In the church begins the service. In former years
Mikhyéich used to go down the staircase and stand in the corner, at the
door, in order to pray and hear the singing. But this time he stays in
his belfry. It is hard for him to climb the stairs, and besides, he
feels rather tired. He seats himself on the bench and, hearing the dying
din of the rocking brass, falls into deep musing. About what? He is
hardly able to answer that himself. The tower is dimly illumined by the
lantern. The dull-sounding bells are merged in darkness; below, from the
church, the singing reaches him from time to time as a weak murmur, and
the night wind agitates the ropes that are attached to the iron hearts
of the bells.
The old man bends on his breast his grey head that is disturbed by
disconnected pictures. “They are singing the troparion!” he thinks to
himself, and sees himself in the church. In the chancel dozens of
children’s voices flow together; the aged priest, Father Naúm of blessed
memory, reads the litany with a quivering voice; hundreds of peasants’
heads bow down and rise again, like the ripe ears when the wind blows
through them. The peasants make the sign of the cross. They are all
familiar faces, and all of them now dead. There is the stern face of his
father; there his elder brother is with fervour making the sign of the
cross, and sighing, as he is standing by the side of his father. There
he is himself, abloom with health and strength, full of unconscious hope
of future happiness and joys of life---- Where is that happiness? The
old man’s memory flashes like a dying flame and a bright beam, gliding
through his consciousness, for a moment illumines all the nooks of his
past life. He sees work above endurance, sorrow, care. Where is that
happiness? A hard lot will make furrows on his young brow, will bend his
powerful spine, will teach him to sigh, like his elder brother.
There, at the left, among the village women, stands his young wife,
modestly bending her head. She has been a good woman, may she come to
the kingdom of heaven! She has suffered so much, the dear woman. Want
and work, and a woman’s inevitable sorrow will dry up her beauty; her
eyes will grow dim, and an expression of an eternal, dull fear of sudden
calamities will take the place of serenity in her face. Yes, where is
her happiness? One son is left to them, their hope and joy, and human
injustice has overpowered him.
There is also that rich fiend; he makes low obeisances, asking
forgiveness for the bloody tears of orphans. He fervently crosses
himself and falls upon his knees, and strikes his brow against the
floor. And Mikhyéich’s heart boils furiously, and the dusky faces of the
images look down from the walls upon human misery and human injustice.
All that is past, all that is behind him. Now his whole world is here in
the dark tower, where the wind moans in the night and swings the
bell-ropes. “God be your judge, God be your judge!” mutters the old man
and bends his grey head, and tears gently roll down the old cheeks of
the bell-ringer.
“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich! Oh there, have you fallen asleep?” they shout
below.
“What?” the old man cries out and jumps to his feet. “Lord! Have I
really fallen asleep? Never before have I so disgraced myself!”
Mikhyéich hastens to lay his hands on the ropes. Below him the peasant
crowd moves about like an ant-hill; banners wave in the air and glimmer
with their gilt brocade. The procession of the cross has made the round
of the church, and the joyous call reaches Mikhyéich’s ears:
“Christ is risen from the dead!”
And this call stirs a wave in the old man’s heart. It seems to him that
the flames of the wax tapers have burnt up more brightly in the
darkness, and the crowd is more agitated, and the banners flutter, and
the wakened wind seizes the waves of sound and with broad pinions
carries them up, to run together with the loud, solemn tones of the
bells.
Old Mikhyéich rings as he has never rung before.
It seems as though the old man’s full heart has passed into the dead
brass, and the tones sing and waver, laugh and weep, and interweaving in
a mighty stream are borne upwards, to the starry heaven. And the stars
flash more brightly and burn, and the tones tremble and pour down and
fall to the earth with loving grace.
A deep bass cries out loud in mighty tones that announces to heaven and
earth: “Christ is risen!”
And two tenors, trembling with the alternate beats of their iron hearts,
respond merrily and clangorously: “Christ is risen!”
And two soft sopranos, seemingly hastening not to be behindhand, push
themselves in between the larger ones, and joyfully, like little
children, sing out rapidly: “Christ is risen!”
And it seems as though the old tower were trembling and shaking, and as
though the wind that blows around the face of the bell-ringer flapped
its mighty pinions and repeated: “Christ is risen!”
The old heart forgets life that is full of cares and injury. The old
bell-ringer forgets that his life is confined to the grim narrow space
in the bell-tower, that he is alone in the world, like a lonely trunk
that the storms have broken. He hears those singing and weeping sounds
that rise to the heaven on high and fall down to poor earth, and it
seems to him that he is surrounded by his sons and grandchildren, that
he hears their joyful voices; the voices of the old and young are
combined into a chorus, and they sing to him of happiness and joy, which
he has not known in his life. The old bell-ringer jerks the ropes, tears
roll down his face, and his heart beats violently with the illusion of
happiness.
Down below people listen and say to each other that never before has old
Mikhyéich rung the bells so wonderfully.
Suddenly the great bell utters an uncertain tone, and grows dumb. The
disturbed smaller bells ring out with an unfinished trill, cutting it
short, as if to listen to the sad hollow note which trembles and flows
and weeps, gradually dying upon the air. The old bell-ringer drops down
upon the bench in utter exhaustion, and two last tears softly roll over
his pale cheeks----
“Ho there, send up a change; the old bell-ringer has done his
ringing----”
Vsévolod Mikháylovich Garshín. (1855-1888.)
Garshín was born in the Government of Ekaterinosláv, where his father
was a small landed proprietor. In his early childhood he travelled a
great deal over Russia, as his father was in the military service. He
was placed in the Gymnasium at St. Petersburg, and there he excelled
as a student, but in 1872 he had the first attacks of insanity which
afterwards returned periodically and finally caused him to commit
suicide by throwing himself headlong from an upper story. He took part
in the Turko-Russian War as a common soldier, and while in the field
composed his first story, _Four Days_, in which he described the
suffering of a wounded comrade of his. Upon his return he wrote, in
his lucid intervals, a series of wonderfully realistic stories, many
of which deal with painful situations. Among his best are _The
Coward_, _The Artists_, _The Red Flower_, _Attalea Princeps_, and
_That Which Was Not_.
In English translation are: _Four Days_, translated by N. H. Dole, in
Poet Lore, vol. iii.; _Mad Love, or, An Artist’s Dream_, London, 1890,
and _Stories_, translated by E. L. Voynich, London, 1893.
THAT WHICH WAS NOT
One beautiful June day--it was beautiful because it was twenty-eight
degrees Réaumur--one beautiful June day it was warm everywhere, but it
was even warmer in the clearing in the garden, where stood some ricks of
newly mown hay, because the place was protected from the wind by a
thick, impenetrable, cherry grove. Nearly everything was asleep: people
had had their fill and were devoting themselves to post-prandial lateral
occupations; the birds were silent; and even many insects had sought
shelter from the heat.
That was even more true of the domestic animals: the cattle took refuge
under some roof; the dog lay in a hole that he had dug out under the
barn and, with eyes half open, breathed intermittently, while sticking
out his tongue for almost more than a foot; at times he so yawned,
evidently from ennui superinduced by the deadly heat, that one could
hear a falsetto whine; the pigs, mother and her thirteen young ones,
went down to the river bank and there lay down in the black, thick mud
whence issued only their panting and snoring pig coins with two holes in
them, their oblong, mud-washed spines, and enormous pendent ears. Only
the hens were not afraid of the heat and managed to kill time by
scratching up the dry earth opposite the kitchen entry, though they knew
full well that there was not a kernel to be found there. The cock,
evidently, was not feeling very well, for now and then he assumed a
stupid attitude and cried amain: “What a scandal!”
There, we have walked away from the clearing where it was warmer than
elsewhere, and yet a whole wakeful company was sitting there. That is,
they were not all sitting. For example, the old bay, that was rummaging
a hayrick at the danger of feeling the whip of coachman Antón, could not
sit at all, being a horse; the caterpillar was not sitting either, but
rather lying on its belly; but we need not be so particular about words.
A small but very serious company was gathered under a cherry tree: a
snail, a dung beetle, a lizard, and the above-mentioned caterpillar;
then a grasshopper hopped up to them. Nearby stood the old bay,
listening to their conversation with one of his bay ears, on the inside
of which could be seen dark grey hairs. On the bay sat two flies.
The company discussed things politely, but with sufficient animation,
and, as is proper in such cases, nobody agreed with his neighbour, for
they all valued the independence of their opinions and characters.
“In my opinion,” said the Dung Beetle, “a decent animal must above all
care for his posterity. Life is a labour for the next generation. He who
conscientiously fulfils the obligations which Nature imposes upon him
stands on a firm foundation. He knows what he has to do, and no matter
what may happen, he is not responsible. Look at me: who works more than
I? Who for whole days at a time rolls such a heavy ball, a ball that I
have made with great art out of dung, with the great purpose in view of
giving the opportunity to new dung beetles like myself to grow up? But
then, I do not think there is anybody who has such a calm conscience, or
could with such a pure heart say: ‘Yes, I have done all I can and all I
ought to do,’ as I will say when these new dung beetles will see
daylight. That ’s what I call labour!”
“Don’t mention your labour, friend!” said an Ant that during the Dung
Beetle’s speech had dragged up an immense piece of a dry stalk. He
stopped for a moment, sat down on his four hind legs, and with his two
front legs wiped off the sweat from his tired-out face. “I work myself,
and much harder than you! But you work for yourself, or, what is the
same, for your baby beetles; not everybody is so fortunate as that. Just
try dragging logs for the commonwealth’s stores, as I do! I do not know
myself what it is that makes me work so hard, even in such hot weather.
Nobody will say ‘thanks!’ to me for it. We, unlucky working ants, all
work, and what good do we get out of it? It ’s just our fate!”
“You, Dung Beetle, look at life too dryly, and you, Ant, too gloomily,”
protested the Grasshopper. “No, Beetle, I do like to chirrup and leap
about a little, and, really, I have no scruples about it! Besides, you
have not touched the question that Madam Lizard has put. She asked:
‘What is the world?’ and you are talking about your dung ball. Why, that
is not even decent. The world is, in my opinion, a very good thing, if
for nothing else, because we find in it juicy grass, the sun, and the
breeze. And it is so big! Living under these trees, you can’t have the
slightest conception how big it is. When I am in the field, I sometimes
jump up as high as I can, and I assure you I reach an enormous height. I
see from way up there that there is no end to the world.”
“That ’s right,” thoughtfully assented the Bay. “But all the same none
of you will ever see one hundredth part of what I have seen in my
lifetime. What a pity, you can’t understand what a verst is! A verst
from here is the village Lupárevka: I go there every day with a barrel
for water. But they never feed me there. On the other side is Efímovka
and Kislyákovka; in the latter there is a church with a belfry. And then
comes Svyáto-Tróitskoe, and then Bogoyávlensk. In Bogoyávlensk they
always give me some hay, but the hay is not good there. And then there
is Nikoláevsk,--that ’s a town, twenty-eight versts from here,--there
the hay is better, and I get oats there; but I do not like to go to
Nikoláevsk: our master generally drives there, and he tells the coachman
to drive fast, and the coachman lays the whip on us dreadfully. And
there are also Aleksándrovka, Byelózerka, Khérson,--that ’s a town
too---- But how can you grasp that all! That is the world; I must say,
not the whole world, but yet a considerable part of it.”
The Bay grew silent, but his lower lip was quivering as if whispering
something. That was from old age: he was seventeen years old, and for a
horse that is as much as seventy-seven for a man.
“I do not understand your wise equine words, and, I confess, I am not
trying to catch their meaning,” said the Snail. “All I want is a
burdock: it is now four days I have been crawling over one, and it is
not yet all ended. Beyond this burdock there is another burdock, and in
that burdock there is, no doubt, another snail. There you have it all.
There is no need in leaping about,--that ’s all empty talk and bosh;
stay where you are, and eat the leaf on which you are sitting. If it
were not for my laziness, I should have long ago crawled away from you
and all your talk: it gives me only a headache, that ’s all.”
“Now, I beg your pardon, I don’t see why?” broke in the Grasshopper. “It
is quite enjoyable to chirrup, particularly about pleasant matters, like
infinity and so forth. Of course, there are practical natures who only
think of filling their bellies, like you, or that charming
Caterpillar----”
“Oh, no, leave me alone, I pray, leave me alone, don’t touch me!”
exclaimed the Caterpillar pitifully. “I am doing it all for the future
life, only for the future life.”
“What future life are you talking about?” asked the Bay.
“Don’t you know that after death I shall be turned into a butterfly with
colored wings?”
The Bay, the Lizard, and the Snail did not know it, but the insects had
some notion of it. And they all kept silent for a moment, for none of
them could say anything sensible about the future life.
“We ought to bow respectfully to solid convictions,” chirruped the
Grasshopper. “Is there nobody else who wants to say anything? Maybe
you?” he turned to the Flies.
And the older one answered:
“We can’t complain. We have just come out of the rooms; the lady had put
out some fresh jam in some dishes, and we crawled in under the covers,
and had lots to eat. We are satisfied. Dear mama stuck fast in the jam,
but what ’s to be done? She has lived long enough in this world. But we
are satisfied.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Lizard, “I think that you are all absolutely
right! But, on the other hand----”
The Lizard did not finish saying what there was on the other hand,
because she felt that something was jamming her tail to the ground.
It was coachman Antón who had just awakened and had come to fetch the
Bay. He accidentally stepped with his monstrous boot on the whole
company and smashed it. Only the flies flew away to lick off their dead,
sugared mama, and the Lizard got away with part of her tail. Antón took
the Bay by the forelock and led him out of the garden to hitch him to
the barrel, in order to fetch some water, and he kept saying: “Get up
there, shagtail!” to which the Bay answered only with a lisp.
The Lizard was left without a tail. ’T is true, after a time it grew out
again, but it always remained rather stumpy and blackish. When the
Lizard was asked how she came to injure her tail in that way, she
modestly answered:
“They tore it off, because I had made up my mind to express my
convictions.”
And she was absolutely right.
Ignáti Nikoláevich Potápenko. (1856-.)
Potápenko was born in the Government of Khérson, where his father was
a priest. He himself was educated for the priesthood in Khérson and
Odéssa, but he left the Seminary for the university, and the
university again for the Conservatory of Music, from which he finally
graduated in singing. Potápenko wrote his first sketch in 1881, and
became known as an author through his novel, _Holy Art_, in which he
depicted the literary Bohemia of St. Petersburg. His reputation was
still more confirmed by his later novels, _In Active Service_, _Common
Sense_, and _His Excellency’s Secretary_. His productions are
characterised by a healthy optimism and an exquisite humour, which
make them very pleasant reading.
Potápenko has been translated into English by W. Gaussen, _A Russian
Priest_ (Sunshine Series, No. 86, and Pseudonym Library, No. 7),
London, 1891; _The General’s Daughter_ (Sunshine Series, No. 126,
extra), London and New York, 1892; _Father of Six_, also _Occasional
Holiday_ (Unknown Library, No. 26), London, 1893; _The Curse of
Talent_, in _Memorials of a Short Life_, London, 1895.
A THOUSAND TALENTS
“Yes, my friend, I have a great mass of talents, only nothing sensible
comes of them. Yes, that ’s so. That is quite correct!----”
“Well, well, don’t say that!”
“Not say it? Why, but I tell you, it is the real truth!”----
“But how? And why?”
“Why? That is the question---- That is, really, the question!”
The man who was possessed of such an immense mass of talents was sitting
in a soft armchair, leaning with the whole weight of his body against
its broad, inclined back. He had a remarkably happy exterior. He was
neither handsome, nor stately, nor elegant, nor brilliant,--no, his
exterior cannot be defined by any other word than “happy.” There were
even half a dozen pits on his face,--traces of former smallpox; his
nose, which had at first been straight and even, unexpectedly began to
turn up at the point; there was not the slightest order in his russet
beard and moustaches; his brow looked too large; and he was all as white
as milk, while his face had a shade of copper. At last, his common, grey
eyes were not out of the ordinary, but everything taken together, his
whole face, breathed a serene, frank sincerity. There are such faces:
you look at them, and you want to be open with them, and to confide some
secret, to unburden your heart to them. He was awkwardly put together,
his movements were halting, and his voice was a little shrill, but even
thus he was sympathetic. In short, he had a happy exterior. His name was
Nikoláy Petróvich Bobróv.
His interlocutor was simply a respectable gentleman, an attorney in
important civil cases, the owner of large apartments, among which was a
study, in which they were seated, with soft, heavy furniture and with
bookshelves filled with a mass of learned and instructive books. That
was Kurázhev, Sergyéy Aleksyéevich, a well-known and esteemed person in
the city. He had but lately made Bobróv’s acquaintance, having met him
two or three times, but he was already in the power of his exterior.
Bobróv had this day called upon him for the first time, and a
conversation ensued. Kurázhev outside of his practice busied himself
with “social questions,” as he called them, and that meant that he was a
live, responsive man who was interested in life and people, and who
loved to “psychologise,” that is, to rummage in the human soul.
“I ’ll tell you why,--because I am a Russian! Yes, that ’s it,” said
Bobróv, this time not awaiting his host’s question.
“That is incomprehensible. You must make yourself clear!” remarked the
host, looking at him with the curiosity of a professional psychologist,
as if he were ready to take the knife, in order to cut open his breast,
and take a look inside his soul.
“Make myself clear? Well, I can make myself clear. I can and I am
prepared to make myself clear, only I shall have to go way back----”
“That is all right. I am ready to follow you into the depths of time.”
“Well, it is not exactly the depths of time, but I shall have to mention
my deceased progenitor, and maybe my grandmother too.”
“Or your great-grandfather, if you want to. You have interested me with
your strange statement----”
“My statement is not so strange, if you look at it closely. I affirm
that Russians suffer from their talented natures. Yes, that ’s it. It
ought not to be so. They always are possessed of a huge number of
talents, and that is why they never amount to anything. Yes, I beg your
pardon, you will contradict me later, but now let me---- I have struck a
good argument, so I can talk clearly and to the point. One does not
always succeed in that. Let us take the simplest kind of an example. I
had a cook,--by the way, she is still in evidence,--and she had a
husband,--he is at your service, too, and his name is Iván. By the way,
you might have guessed _a priori_ that all cooks have husbands by the
name of Iván. Now I must tell you how that Iván has surprised me, simply
stunned me, yes, sir! We hired his wife by herself, and he came to her a
week later. He stayed a while, ate some pumpkin seeds, and went away:
that was noble!
“Some three days later he made his appearance once more, but this time
it was in the morning. He ate his breakfast with her, washed the dishes,
remained for dinner,--all in proper shape. We took a liking to him; we
sent him on some errand, I think to the apothecary’s,--he started on a
run. Well, in short, to be done with it, two weeks later he settled in
the kitchen, and all that looked so simple and clear that it never
occurred to us to doubt his right to it, and to send him off. He is
there still, but that is another matter. We soon noticed that he never
went out to work, but that he was passing all the time in the kitchen,
washing dishes, blackening boots, running on errands, eating and
sleeping. I once asked him:
“‘Say, Iván! Do you know a trade?’
“‘I know all trades!’ he answered me with the greatest self-confidence.
“‘How so? You don’t mean all trades!’
“‘All, Nikoláy Petróvich!’ He never called me otherwise but Nikoláy
Petróvich.
“‘If so, why are you not doing anything?’
“‘Oh, well, no work has turned up---- I reckon, there is none for
me----’
“And you must know he was not lying, he really knew _all trades_. My
dining table became unglued; I told them to send for a joiner.
“‘What ’s the use in a joiner Nikoláy Petróvich? I will fix it for you
in first-class shape!’ he informed me, and, in reality, he fussed with
the table about three hours, and brought it back to life. It is true, it
was rather coarse work: the glue dried up in lumps, where it could be
seen, and the heads of the nails somehow stuck sideways in the
wood,--but it was solid. My wife was about to have the baby’s bathtub
fixed. He got hold of it, straightened out the indented sides, and
somehow soldered it, and in addition painted it inside and outside
white. Of course, I must say, it was not a particularly neat job, but
passable enough,--it could be used. We had to get one of the rooms
papered over,--he again proved himself a master, only in one corner he
hung a strip upside down. Finally, when spring came, he disappeared, and
did not return for three days. When he did show up, he was all smeared
with clay and lime.
“‘Where have you been?’
“‘I, sir? I have been doing some masonry.’
“‘What? You are a mason, too?’
“‘Why not? I am a mason, too---- I know all trades!’
“To make an end with Iván, I will tell you that he proved to be a
tailor, too, and with his own hand he made an overcoat for himself. Of
course, it was a wretched coat, but it held together over his back. He
finished up by getting drunk and beating his wife. This Iván is a
Russian, yes, sir. It is his misfortune to have too much ability, and a
bent for too many things. Thanks to that, he has learned many things,
but nothing properly, and he cannot stop, concentrate, and perfect
himself at anything. No sooner has he taken up calcimining, than the
mason is awakened in him; he takes up masonry, and he is at once drawn
to the tailor’s trade, and so on. No wonder that this man is all his
life suffering and tearing himself asunder, and that he, from time to
time, balances his accounts by getting drunk and dealing out blows to
his wife. And now it is clear to you that the misfortune of a Russian is
in the many-sidedness of his talents.
“It is quite different with the other nations. Take, for example, a
German. Of course, a German is not naturally stupid, but he has not the
slightest talent. He has but one talent,--patience, and just see what
wonders he performs by the aid of that modest companion of his. By the
aid of this patience alone, he accomplishes in all spheres of human
activities those results that make us with all our talents hold up our
hands in wonderment. And all that only because he has but that one
talent. He knows that himself, and he begins to develop it in his
swaddling clothes. I have heard it said that German babies rarely cry.
That is so because they early get used to patience. Now let us take the
English. No doubt, they are a clever nation, but they have only one
talent, and that is their egotism in the broadest sense of the word,
namely their self-respect, their worship of themselves, their contempt
for everything that is not English, and its exploitation in their
favour. That talent is carried out by them with the strictest
consistency in every thing,--from the most trifling to the most
stupendous,--and makes it possible for them to be the leaders in
everything in the world. Yes, sir.”
“But you have deviated a little. You had intended to speak of yourself!”
the attorney gently interrupted him.
“No, I did not deviate. I only began that way to come finally to my
case. Now I will pass over to that notable subject. You must know that
my father was not of high birth; he was of the gentry, but of those who
are greatly impoverished. He was the manager of some count’s estate. He
had received no education, but had seen and heard much, and was a man of
practical sense. At eight years of age I felt a hankering for the
violin. Yes, sir, for the violin. It was not the caprice of a spoilt
child, but a real hankering. I remember how my heart beat at the thought
of my father buying me a violin. Well, he bought me one. The leader of
the church choir showed me the first steps, taught me how to hold the
bow and the fingers, and I began scraping. I scraped horribly, but
something came of it. When I was ten years old I was taken to town to be
sent to the Gymnasium. Here I had a patented teacher whose violin was
worth three hundred roubles, if he was not fibbing. My father paid him
in kind: he would bring him cottage cheese, or a keg of herrings, or
pickling cucumbers. I learned from him my first correct steps, and what
do you suppose came of it all? Nothing. Many heard me and cried: ‘Oh,
what talent!’ And really, I did have talent. But you understand that I
ought to have played do-re-mi-fa-sol, and nothing else, when my aunt
visited me.
“‘Give me a tune, my darling, and I will give you a silver rouble for
it.’
“I began do-re-mi-fa-sol.
“‘Well, what is that? That is not even interesting. And yet they told me
that you had some talent. What kind of talent is that? I could
understand if you played something that would touch my soul. No, I don’t
think you have any talent!’--What, I have no talent? Aunty thinks so.
Wait, I ’ll prove you differently!--And I began secretly from the
teacher to learn _As I go alone into the street_, and I played it before
my aunt; it was so touching that she wiped her eyes, and said: ‘Now,
that ’s a different matter,--now I see that you have talent!’
“Then I learned _The hussar leaning on his sabre_, _In a gloomy autumn
evening_, and finally, to cap the climax, a quadrille from _Fair Helen_.
Then I went back to the village,--everybody was delighted. My repertoire
was popular. No sooner did anyone call at our house, than father began
to boast:
“‘You ought to hear him play the violin! Well, Kólenka, give us _The
hussar_!’
“I took up an attitude and played _The hussar_, and by degrees worked up
to _Fair Helen_. In this manner I gave concerts all summer, and I forgot
everything I had learned from my teacher, but above all I began to
despise do-re-mi-fa-sol, because that did not bring me any fame. And
thus, sir, I just stuck fast at the _Fair Helen_, yes, sir! Then,
suddenly, a passion for versifying came over me. Again a
hankering,--what will you do about that? I began writing verses
‘standing, lying, sitting, walking.’ I first did it secretly, for poetry
is a kind of love,--it seeks mystery and solitude. Here again my
accursed vanity ran away with me. My verses were not bad. I showed them
to a schoolmate or two; they took them up and carried them around, and I
became the attested school poet. The director found out about it, and he
asked for my note-book, and approved of it: ‘You have, sir, a divine
gift!’ They came to me for every solemn occasion: ‘Bobróv, write a
poem!’ And Bobróv wrote it and solemnly recited it. You understand what
it led to. Namely to this: Bobróv began to try acrobatic feats, and to
write in bombastic style, to imitate Derzhávin, and his youthful poetry
became flat. Consequently, nothing came of that. By that time I was in
the seventh form, and my breast was filled with ecstasies of a different
sort. I abandoned poetry, and was drawn to serious and clever books. At
first I drank deep from Byelínski, than Dobrolyúbov, and then Písarev
fell among us. I graduated from the Gymnasium, the university began----”
Bobróv stopped, rose from his seat, and began to walk across the room,
holding his hands behind his back.
“Yes, the university! I had brilliant ability, and what came of it all?
Do you know what? The devil knows what! I was attracted to science, and
I wanted to learn the history of the human race, and its creations,--so
I became a philologist, and began to swallow book after book. One of the
professors directed his attention to me, and had an eye on me,--but it
appeared to me that my country was not in need of such a science; so I
turned about, and began studying Smith, Mill, and Marx---- A year later,
behold, I was studying the law! Yes, sir! The law. And let me tell you I
showed ability in Smith-Mill-Marx too. I do not know where I got all my
eloquence, my indomitable logic, and so forth. I found mistakes in Mill,
so I would say: ‘Here and here Mill has made a mistake!’ Yes, sir! We
naturally recognised no authorities, except our own. Mill was to us not
a source of wisdom, but only an excuse for showing the depth of our
erudition before the ladies of our circle.
“There were some good-looking women among them, let me tell you. And it
is really a wonder I did not get married then! Upon my word, it is a
wonder. For they nearly all of them, one must say, paired off, and not
just one way or other, but in legal wedlock. Then half of them went off
with their wives, that is only natural. Though we had all come together
on Mill’s platform, yet, everybody knows, life is not Mill. Yes, sir!
And thus I came out hale. I must suppose that it was so because I was
too late. The respected fellow-members had picked out all the
good-looking ones, there was only left an indifferent lot, while I,
after all, had some esthetic taste. It did not take us long to crush
Mill--that ’s it, we crushed him. It suddenly became as evident as
daylight that he was not good for anything, because the salvation of our
country lay not at all in political economy, but in anatomy and
physiology. Well, the country had to be saved at all cost, and God
forbid another man but myself should save it,--that would have been a
personal insult.
“You can guess that the result of it was my going over to the department
of natural sciences. Just think of it! here I again found myself upon
the summit of my calling. I was glued to a chair, and the microscope was
glued to my nose. I sat there days and nights studying and analysing,
and don’t imagine that it was without results. Indeed not! I even made a
discovery: I brought to light, studied, and described some peculiar
property of the blood corpuscle, yes, sir! I do not remember what
property that was, but it produced an impression, and they even printed
my description of it in some periodical. But while I was dissecting the
blood corpuscle, a new tendency was ripening within me. The devil take
it, another talent! Nature had implanted as many of them within me as I
could hold, and each one of them was dying to show itself, and would not
yield to any other.
“I was drawn from time to time to the paper. I used to sit by a kerosene
lamp in the quiet of the night, and sketch some scene. At times it was
not half bad, and again it was quite passable. Yes, sir! Some friend of
mine read it: ‘Oh, but you have literary talent, you ought to write!’
Well, pictures of success, reputation, and even fame, the deuce take it,
began to swarm before my eyes. Fame! Whose head would it not turn? What
affair would one not throw to the dogs for it! And so, I was no longer
sitting over the microscope, but passed whole nights producing artistic
literary pictures. That took me from the province to St. Petersburg,
whither I hastened at once to find fame. My first experiment was a
success. They printed it, praised it, and entered it in the column of
the ‘promising.’ I was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry, I wanted to
pocket all fame at once, and, of course, I only made botch work of it,
and spoiled matters. My later works did not call forth any praise, but
were honoured with condescending silence. I was beside myself, began to
insist, to work still faster, and to spoil more and more. When an idea
flashed through my brain, I, instead of putting it away in a quiet
corner of my soul, and living and feeling it over, used to sit down at
once and work it out on paper. Something came out, but not what it ought
to have been. It turned out to be something pale, something born before
its time. Yes, sir! They would print it, but more as ballast. And yet,
there was talent, there really was,--everybody acknowledged it. But it
was something unfinished, like a phrase half spoken, a picture half
painted, furniture unpolished and unvarnished.
“At last, one more bent! My old talent for music awoke in me, and I
rushed at once to a musical school. I, the future composer, was studying
harmony and counterpoint, and again everybody found that I had talent.
The world of sounds swallowed me. I wanted to produce and create, and
before I had reached a fugue, I was writing little songs and publishing
them---- Ah, I did not finish here either. My two songs had success,
they were sung at concerts, yes, sir, and I decided I could write an
opera. What is the use learning when you have talent? That is a good
Russian reason----
“And do you know what I am now? I am a man without any definite
specialty. I am a Russian who has a thousand talents and who is unfit
for any definite business. I can play on the violin a quadrille from
_Fair Helen_, I can write a sonnet, I can discuss Russian literature and
history, I know a few things about Smith, Mill, and Marx, I have some
ideas about the blood corpuscle, I possess a literary style, can compose
a song,--and to sum all up, I am head-scribe in a bureau, of course,
through protection. Am I not the same Iván? We are both Russians. Both
he and I can do everything, and yet are good for nothing. Both of us
have a thousand talents apiece. Well? He is the husband of my cook, and
I--am head-scribe! The positions are different, but the sense of them is
the same---- Yes, sir!”
Here Bobróv rolled up a fat cigarette, gave a few puffs at it, took his
cap, and bid his host farewell.
Semén Yákovlevich Nádson. (1862-1887.)
Nádson’s grandfather was a Jew. His father, who had been a good
musician, died when he was but two years old, and he also lost his
mother and brothers early in youth. He was taken care of by relatives
of his, and was sent to the Gymnasium, where he devoted himself to
literature and music. His first printed poem appeared when he was but
fifteen years old. Soon after began to show themselves the symptoms of
consumption to which he finally succumbed. He went to the Caucasus,
and was later sent to the south of France. Yet, under the most adverse
conditions, he produced a series of poems of exquisite beauty, and
gave promise of rivalling the best Russian poets. Shortly before his
death he was awarded the Púshkin prize of five hundred roubles.
_Pity the stately cypress trees_ is given in John Pollen’s _Rhymes
from the Russian_, and a few shorter poems, by Mrs. M. S. Walker, in
Free Russia, vol. xiii., No. 5.
MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER!
My friend, my brother, weary, suffering brother, whoever you be, be not
discouraged: let untruth and evil have full sway upon earth that is
watered with tears, let the sacred ideal be crushed and defamed, let
them shed the innocent blood:--believe me, the time is coming when Baal
will perish, and Love will return upon earth!
Not with a crown of thorns, nor oppressed with chains, nor with a cross
upon his bent shoulders,--he will come into the world in his strength
and splendor, in his hands a bright torch of glory. There will be in the
world neither tears, nor warring, nor crossless graves, nor serfs, nor
cheerless, deadening want, nor the sword, nor pillory.
O my friend! That bright vision is not a dream, nor an empty hope: look
about you,--everywhere evil oppresses too much, everywhere night is too
dark! The world will grow tired of torments, will drown in the blood,
will get weary of senseless battles,--and it will raise to Love, to
unhampered Love its eyes, full of yearning prayer----
POETRY
Many years ago she descended from the quiet shades of Paradise into our
world, in a garland of fragrant roses, with a youthful smile, charming,
naked, and proud of her innocent beauty. She brought with her unknown
feelings, the harmony of heaven, and loyalty to dreams,--and her law was
art for art’s sake, and her command was to serve beauty.
But at her first steps they tore and trod into the dust her superb
flowers,--and her beautiful virgin features were shrouded in a dark
cloud of doubts and sorrow; and her former hymns are no more! The
storm’s breath carried tracklessly away her exultant sounds,--and her
song breathes fire of her soul’s anguish, and thorns wound her divine
brow.
───────
Pity the stately cypress trees;
How freshly green they spring!
Ah! why amidst their branches, child,
Have you put up your swing?
Break not a single fragrant bough.
Oh, take thy swing away
To heights where thick acacias bloom;
Mid dusty olives play!
Thence you can see the ocean,
And, as your swing ascends,
Through greening boughs a sunny glimpse
The sea in laughter sends
Of white sails in the distance dim,
Of white gulls far away,
Of white flakes foaming on the sands,
A fringe of snowy spray.
--From J. Pollen’s _Rhymes from the Russian_.
Antón Pávlovich Chékhov. (1860-.)
Chékhov is the son of a former serf. He was born in the city of
Taganróg, where he went through the Gymnasium. He then attended the
Moscow University, where he graduated from the Department of Medicine
in 1884. He began early to contribute short stories to various
periodicals, and established his reputation in 1887 upon the
appearance of his first collected volume. Of his longer stories some
of the most artistic are _The Steppe_, _Fires_, _The Memoirs of an
Unknown Man_, _A Wearisome Story_. A pessimistic vein runs through all
his productions, and all his characters seem to be fit subjects for
the psychiatrist; this is especially the case in two of his dramas,
_The Mew_ and _Three Sisters_, in which there is not one redeeming
person, and where the very language of the dramatis personæ is nothing
but a series of semi-articulated hysterical ejaculations. He is a
great favourite with the Russian reading public, but the foreigner
will lay aside his books with great admiration for his talent and with
a shudder at the hopeless condition of Russian society.
In English has appeared but _Philosophy at Home_, in Short Stories,
October, 1891.
IN THE COURT-ROOM
In the cinnamon-coloured governmental building of the county seat of N.,
in which the meetings of the Agronomic Council alternate with those of
the Justices of the Peace, of the Departments of Peasant Affairs, of the
Sale of Liquor, of Military Conscription, and of many more, a division
of the Circuit Court was one gloomy autumn day assembled to take up its
cases. A local administrator had made a pun in regard to this
cinnamon-coloured building:
“Here is Miss Justice, here is Police, here is Milice,--a regular
Institute for Noble Young Ladies.”
But, no doubt to justify the proverb that with seven nurses a child
generally loses an eye, this building produces a heavy, oppressive
sensation in a man who is neither officially connected nor familiar with
it, by its melancholy, barrack-like appearance, by its age, and by the
complete absence of any and all comforts, either within or without. Even
in bright spring days it looks as if it were covered by a dense shade,
and on clear, moonlit nights, when the trees and the houses of the
citizens are welded into one continuous shadow and are merged in a quiet
sleep, it alone rises awkwardly and out of place, like a crushing rock,
over the modest landscape, spoils the general harmony, and stays awake,
as though it could not rid itself of the grievous memory of past,
unforgiven sins. Within, everything is barn-like and exceedingly
unattractive. It is curious to see how easily all these elegant
prosecutors, members, leaders, who at home will raise a row at the
slightest sign of escaping coal gas or a mere speck on the floor, get
used to the buzzing ventilators, the nauseating smell of smoking
candles, and the dirty, eternally sweating walls.
The session of the Circuit Court began at ten o’clock. They at once took
up the docket, being evidently in a hurry. The cases were disposed of
one after the other, taking up no more time than a “mass without the
singing,” so that no sensible being could have formed a complete,
conceptual picture of that variegated crowd that moved about like a
freshet, of all the motions, speeches, misfortunes, truth, lies---- By
two o’clock much was accomplished: two people were sentenced to
perpetual imprisonment; one privileged person was deprived of all his
rights and sentenced to imprisonment in the jail; one man was found
innocent, and one case was postponed.
Precisely at two o’clock the presiding judge announced that now was to
be taken up the case of “the indictment found against the peasant
Nikoláy Kharlámov for the murder of his wife.” The composition of the
court remained the same as in the previous case, only the defence was
represented by a new individual,--a young, beardless candidate for
judicial honours, in a coat with bright buttons.
“Bring in the defendant!” ordered the presiding judge.
But the defendant was prepared even before, and he marched toward the
bench. He was a tall, muscular peasant, about fifty-five years of age,
completely bald, with a repulsive, hirsute face, and a long red beard.
He was followed by a small, wizened soldier with a gun.
When almost near the bench, there happened a slight accident to this
guard. He suddenly stumbled and dropped his gun, but he immediately
caught it in its fall, giving his knee a severe knock with the butt.
Either from pain or, perhaps, from embarrassment at his awkwardness the
soldier blushed crimson.
After the customary questions to the defendant, the rearrangement of the
jury, the roll-call, and the oath of the witnesses,--they began the
reading of the bill of the indictment. A narrow-chested, pale-faced
secretary, who had grown much too thin for his uniform and had a plaster
on his cheek,--he looked like a walking clinic,--read rapidly, like a
sexton, in a subdued, heavy bass, without raising or lowering his voice,
as if afraid to exert his lungs; he was seconded by the ventilator that
kept on buzzing behind the judge’s chair, and from this there resulted a
sound that gave to the stillness of the room a soporific, narcotic
character.
The presiding judge, who was not an old man, with an exceedingly tired
face, and near-sighted, was sitting in his chair without stirring, and
holding the palm of his hand near his brow, as if to keep the sun out of
his eyes. During the buzzing of the ventilator and of the secretary he
was thinking of something. When the secretary stopped for a second to
draw breath before beginning a new page, he suddenly started and looked
at the audience with his blinking eyes, then he leaned over the ear of
the fellow-judge by his side; and asked him with a sigh:
“You, Matvyéy Petróvich, are stopping at Demyánov’s?”
“Yes, at Demyánov’s,” answered the member, also startled.
“Next time I think I shall stop there myself. I declare, it is
impossible to stop at Tipyakóv’s. There is such a noise there all night
long! They make a racket, they cough, and the children cry. It ’s just
impossible to stand it!”
The associate prosecutor, a full-faced, well-fed, dark-complexioned man,
in gold spectacles, and with a beautiful, well-groomed beard, sat
immovably, like a statue, and, leaning his cheek on his closed hand,
read Byron’s _Cain_. His eyes were full of ardent attention, and his
brows rose admiringly higher and higher. Now and then he threw himself
against the back of his chair, looked for a moment indifferently ahead
of him, and then was once more lost in his reading.
The counsel for the defence moved the blunt end of his pencil over the
table and, bending his head aside, was meditating something. His
youthful face expressed nothing but unchangeable, cold ennui, such as is
to be seen in the faces of schoolboys and officials who are obliged to
sit day after day in one and the same place and to see all the time the
same faces and the same walls. The forthcoming speech did not worry him
in the least. What kind of a speech is it any way? By order of the
authorities he will deliver it without passion or fire before the jury,
according to an old stereotyped form, feeling all the time that it is
colourless and tiresome, and then he will gallop through mud and rain to
the station, then--to the capital, to get soon another order for some
other county seat, where he will make another speech---- It ’s tiresome!
The defendant at first coughed nervously into his sleeve and grew pale,
then the quiet, the universal monotony and the ennui were communicated
to him also. He looked with a dull respect at the uniforms of the
judges, at the tired faces of the jury, and calmly blinked with his
eyes. The judicial surroundings and procedure, waiting for which his
heart had been pining in the prison, now acted upon him most soothingly.
He did not meet here at all what he could have expected. Over him hung
the accusation of murder, and yet he did not meet here any threatening
faces, nor scorning glances, nor loud phrases of revenge, nor any
sympathy for his unusual fate; not one of those who were going to judge
him had turned their long, inquiring glances upon him. The murky
windows, the voice of the secretary, the pose of the prosecutor,--all
that was imbued with chancery indifference and exhaled a cold breath, as
though the murderer were a simple appurtenance of the chancery, or as
though not living men were judging him, but some unseen machine which
God knows who had introduced.
The composed peasant did not know that they were here as used to the
dramas and tragedies of life as one gets used to deaths in a hospital,
and that in this very machine-like indifference lay the whole terror and
the whole hopelessness of his position. I am sure that if he did not
remain silent, but rose and began to plead and implore for mercy with
tears in his eyes, to repent with fervour, if he died in despair,--all
that would break against their dull nerves and habit like a billow
against a rock.
When the secretary had finished, the presiding judge for some reason
rubbed the table, for a long time blinked at the defendant, and then
asked him, lazily moving his tongue:
“Defendant, do you plead guilty to having killed your wife on the night
of June 9th?”
“By no means,” answered the defendant, rising and holding the coat over
his breast.
After that the court hurriedly passed over to the examination of the
witnesses. There were examined two women, five peasants, and the coroner
who had held the inquest. All of them, mud-bespattered and tired from
their march and from the long waiting in the witness room, sad and
gloomy, deposed the same thing. They declared that Kharlámov had lived
“well” with his wife, just like anybody else: he used to strike her only
when he was intoxicated. On the 9th of June, about sundown, the woman
was found in the hall with her skull split open; an axe was lying near
her in a pool of blood. When they tried to find Nikoláy, in order to
tell him of the misfortune, he was neither in the house, nor in the
street. They began to run up and down the village to find him, they went
to all the taverns and cabins, but he could not be found. He had
disappeared, and two days later he came himself to the office, pale,
tattered, and trembling in his whole body. He was bound with ropes and
placed in the lockup.
“Defendant,” said the presiding judge to Kharlámov, “can’t you explain
to the court where you kept yourself during the two days after the
murder?”
“I wandered over the field, without eating or drinking.”
“Why did you hide yourself, if you did not kill her?”
“I was frightened. I was afraid I ’d be sentenced.”
“Ah! Very well, take your seat!”
The last witness was the county physician who had made the autopsy on
the old woman. He communicated to the court everything he could remember
from his notes of the autopsy and from what he had managed to work out
as he was walking to the court in the morning.
The presiding judge looked with half-closed eyes at his new shining,
black suit, at his dandyish necktie, at his moving lips, and in his
brain somehow stirred by itself the lazy thought: “Everybody wears now
short coats; then why did he have made such a long one? Really, why a
long one, and not a short one?”
Behind the presiding judge was heard the cautious creak of boots. It was
the associate prosecutor who had gone to the table to take up some
document.
“Mikhaíl Vladímirovich,” he leaned down to the ear of the presiding
judge, “that Koréyski has made a very careless inquest. The brother was
not examined, the elder was not examined, and you can’t make anything
out of the description of the room.”
“What is to be done, what is to be done?” sighed the presiding judge,
throwing himself back into the chair: “This is an endless sandglass!”
“By the way,” the associate prosecutor continued to whisper, “just look
down the audience, in the front bench, the third man from the left,--an
actor’s phiz. That is the local financial big-bug. He has a cash capital
of nearly five hundred thousand.”
“Yes? His face does n’t show it. How would it be, friend, if we took a
recess now?”
“Let us end this case, and then we shall----”
“Very well---- Well?” the presiding judge turned his eyes upon the
physician. “So you find that death was instantaneous?”
“Yes, on account of a considerable lesion of the brain matter.”
When the physician was through, the presiding judge looked into space,
between the prosecutor and the counsel, and he proposed:
“Have n’t you anything to ask?”
The associate prosecutor did not turn his eyes away from _Cain_, and
shook his head negatively, but the counsel moved unexpectedly and,
clearing his throat, asked:
“Tell me, doctor, is it possible to tell the mental condition of the
criminal by the dimension of the wound? That is, I want to know whether
the amount of the injury gives us a right to presuppose that the
defendant was mentally deranged.”
The presiding judge raised his sleepy, indifferent eyes upon the
counsel. The prosecutor tore himself away from his _Cain_, and looked at
the presiding judge. They only looked, but neither a smile, nor
wonderment, nor perplexity,--nothing was expressed upon their faces.
“Of course,” hesitated the physician, “if we take into consideration the
power with which--eh--eh--eh--the criminal strikes a blow---- However,
pardon me, I did not quite understand your question.”
The counsel did not get any answer to his question, nor did he feel any
need of it. It was quite clear to him that this question had strayed
into his head and had escaped from his tongue only under the influence
of the quiet, the ennui, and the buzzing ventilator. Having dismissed
the physician, the court passed to the examination of the material
instruments of evidence. First they examined the caftan, on the sleeve
of which there was a dark blood spot. Being asked of the origin of this
spot, Kharlámov declared:
“About three days before the death of my wife Penkóv bled his horse. I
was there, and as I helped him, I naturally got some on me.”
“But Penkóv has just now declared that he does not remember your being
present at the bleeding.”
“I don’t understand that!”
“Sit down!”
They passed to the examination of the axe with which the woman had been
killed.
“That is not my axe,” declared the defendant.
“Whose then?”
“I don’t know. I had no axe.”
“A peasant can’t get on a single day without an axe. Your neighbour Iván
Timoféich, with whom you fixed the sleigh, deposed that it is your axe.”
“I don’t know, only I swear before God,”--Kharlámov stretched his hand
with open fingers before him,--“I swear by the true Creator, I don’t
remember of ever having had an axe of my own. I once had one like it,
only a little smaller, but my son Prokhór lost it. Two years before his
military service he went out to cut some wood, but he was having a good
time with the boys, and he lost it.”
“All right, sit down!”
This systematic suspicion and unwillingness to listen to him no doubt
provoked and offended Kharlámov. He winked, and on his cheeks appeared
red spots.
“As before the Lord!” continued he, stretching out his neck. “If you do
not believe, ask my son Prokhór. Prokhór, where is my axe?” he suddenly
asked with a coarse voice, abruptly turning to the guard. “Where?”
That was a shocking moment! All seemed to have seated themselves and to
have become lower in stature---- Through all the heads, as many as there
were in the court-room, there flashed one and the same terrible,
impossible thought, the thought of the probable fatal accident, and not
a person risked or dared to look at the face of the soldier. All wished
not to believe their thought and hoped they had not heard correctly.
“Defendant, it is not permitted to speak to the guard,” the judge
hastened to say.
Nobody saw the face of the guard and terror invisibly passed through the
court-room. The bailiff softly rose from his seat and, balancing himself
with his arms, walked out of the room on tiptoes. Half a minute later
were heard hollow steps and sounds, such as are heard during the change
of sentinels.
Everybody raised his head and, trying to look as if nothing had
happened, they continued the case.
Aleksyéy Maksímovich Pyeshkóv (pseud. Maksím Górki). (1871-.)