The next day Olénin went alone to the spot where he and the old man
startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate he climbed
over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and before he had had
time to pull out the thorns that had caught in his coat, his dog, which
had run on in front, started two pheasants. He had hardly stepped among
the briers when the pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man
had not shown him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for
shooting from behind the screen). Olénin fired twelve times and killed
five pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so
fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his dog,
uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and brushing
away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his Circassian coat he went
slowly to the spot where they had been the day before. It was however
impossible to keep back the dog, who found trails on the very path, and
Olénin killed two more pheasants, so that after being detained by this
it was getting towards noon before he began to find the place he was
looking for.
The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture had
dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes literally
covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had turned from black
to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes, and so had Olénin’s
coat through which the insects thrust their stings. Olénin was ready to
run away from them and it seemed to him that it was impossible to live
in this country in the summer. He was about to go home, but remembering
that other people managed to endure such pain he resolved to bear it
and gave himself up to be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the
feeling became actually pleasant. He even felt that without this
mosquito-filled atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled
with perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that
unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for him
some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well
suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of
birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot
scented air, these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere
soaked through from the Térek and gurgled here and there under the
overhanging leaves, that the very thing which had at first seemed to
him dreadful and intolerable now seemed pleasant. After going round the
place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding
anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun stood right above the
forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his back and head
whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy
pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of
yesterday’s stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the
stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage
around him, the place marked by the stag’s perspiration and yesterday’s
dung, the imprint of the stag’s knees, the bit of black earth it had
kicked up, and his own footprints of the day before. He felt cool and
comfortable and did not think of or wish for anything. And suddenly he
was overcome by such a strange feeling of causeless joy and of love for
everything, that from an old habit of his childhood he began crossing
himself and thanking someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness,
he thought: “Here am I, Dmítri Olénin, a being quite distinct from
every other being, now lying all alone Heaven only knows where—where a
stag used to live—an old stag, a beautiful stag who perhaps had never
seen a man, and in a place where no human being has ever sat or thought
these thoughts. Here I sit, and around me stand old and young trees,
one of them festooned with wild grape vines, and pheasants are
fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps scenting their
murdered brothers.” He felt his pheasants, examined them, and wiped the
warm blood off his hand onto his coat. “Perhaps the jackals scent them
and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction: above me,
flying in among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands,
mosquitoes hang in the air and buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred,
a thousand, a million mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or
other and each one of them is separate from all else and is just such a
separate Dmítri Olénin as I am myself.” He vividly imagined what the
mosquitoes buzzed: “This way, this way, lads! Here’s some one we can
eat!” They buzzed and stuck to him. And it was clear to him that he was
not a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society, the friend and
relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just such a mosquito, or
pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living all around him. “Just
as they, just as Daddy Eróshka, I shall live awhile and die, and as he
says truly: ‘grass will grow and nothing more’.”
“But what though the grass does grow?” he continued thinking. “Still I
must live and be happy, because happiness is all I desire. Never mind
what I am—an animal like all the rest, above whom the grass will grow
and nothing more; or a frame in which a bit of the one God has been
set,—still I must live in the very best way. How then must I live to be
happy, and why was I not happy before?” And he began to recall his
former life and he felt disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself
to have been terribly exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all
the while he really needed nothing for himself. And he looked round at
the foliage with the light shining through it, at the setting sun and
the clear sky, and he felt just as happy as before. “Why am I happy,
and what used I to live for?” thought he. “How much I exacted for
myself; how I schemed and did not manage to gain anything but shame and
sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing to be happy;” and suddenly a
new light seemed to reveal itself to him. “Happiness is this!” he said
to himself. “Happiness lies in living for others. That is evident. The
desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it is
legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishly—that is, by seeking for
oneself riches, fame, comforts, or love—it may happen that
circumstances arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires.
It follows that it is these desires that are illegitimate, but not the
need for happiness. But what desires can always be satisfied despite
external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.” He was so
glad and excited when he had discovered this, as it seemed to him, new
truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking some one to
sacrifice himself for, to do good to and to love. “Since one wants
nothing for oneself,” he kept thinking, “why not live for others?” He
took up his gun with the intention of returning home quickly to think
this out and to find an opportunity of doing good. He made his way out
of the thicket. When he had come out into the glade he looked around
him; the sun was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had grown
cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the
country round the village. Everything seemed changed—the weather and
the character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind
was rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible but
reeds and dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who had run
away to follow some animal, and his voice came back as in a desert. And
suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of weirdness. He grew
frightened. He remembered the _abreks_ and the murders he had been told
about, and he expected every moment that an _abrek_ would spring from
behind every bush and he would have to defend his life and die, or be a
coward. He thought of God and of the future life as for long he had not
thought about them. And all around was that same gloomy stern wild
nature. “And is it worth while living for oneself,” thought he, “when
at any moment you may die, and die without having done any good, and so
that no one will know of it?” He went in the direction where he fancied
the village lay. Of his shooting he had no further thought; but he felt
tired to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular
attention and almost with terror, expecting every moment to be called
to account for his life. After having wandered about for a considerable
time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold sandy water from
the Térek, and, not to go astray any longer, he decided to follow it.
He went on without knowing where the ditch would lead him. Suddenly the
reeds behind him crackled. He shuddered and seized his gun, and then
felt ashamed of himself: the over-excited dog, panting hard, had thrown
itself into the cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!
He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it
wished to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But despite
the dog’s company everything around him seemed still more dreary. The
forest grew darker and the wind grew stronger and stronger in the tops
of the broken old trees. Some large birds circled screeching round
their nests in those trees. The vegetation grew poorer and he came
oftener and oftener upon rustling reeds and bare sandy spaces covered
with animal footprints. To the howling of the wind was added another
kind of cheerless monotonous roar. Altogether his spirits became
gloomy. Putting his hand behind him he felt his pheasants, and found
one missing. It had broken off and was lost, and only the bleeding head
and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more frightened than he
had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and feared above all
that he might die without having done anything good or kind; and he so
wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-sacrifice.