On a frozen river near a certain Russian town, a gang of seven
carpenters were hastily repairing an icebreaker which the townsfolk had
stripped for firewood.
That year spring happened to be late in arriving, and youthful March
looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not on every day,
did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the overcast heavens, or,
glimmering in blue spaces between clouds, contemplate the earth with a
squinting, malevolent eye.
The day in question was the Friday in Holy Week, and, as night drew on,
drippings were becoming congealed into icicles half an arshin long, and
in the snow-stripped ice of the river only the dun hue of the wintry
clouds was reflected.
As the carpenters worked there kept mournfully, insistently echoing
from the town the coppery note of bells; and at intervals heads would
raise themselves, and blue eyes would gleam thoughtfully through the
same grey fog in which the town lay enveloped, and an axe uplifted
would hover a moment in the air as though fearing with its descent to
cleave the luscious flood of sound.
Scattered over the spacious river-track were dark pine branches,
projecting obliquely from the ice, to mark paths, open spaces, and
cracks on the surface; and where they reared themselves aloft, these
branches looked like the cramped, distorted arms of drowning men.
From the river came a whiff of gloom and depression. Covered over with
sodden slush, it stretched with irksome rigidity towards the misty
quarter whence blew a languid, sluggish, damp, cold wind.
Suddenly the foreman, one Ossip, a cleanly built, upright little
peasant with a neatly curling, silvery beard, ruddy cheeks, and a
flexible neck, a man everywhere and always in evidence, shouted:
"Look alive there, my hearties!"
Presently he turned his attention to myself, and smiled insinuatingly.
"Inspector," he said, "what are you trying to poke out of the sky with
that squat nose of yours? And why are you here at all? You come from
the contractor, you say?--from Vasili Sergeitch? Well, well! Then your
job is to hurry us up, to keep barking out, 'Mind what you are doing,
such-and-such gang!' Yet there you stand-blinking over your task like
an object dried stiff! It's not to blink that you're here, but to play
the watchdog upon us, and to keep an eye open, and your tongue on the
wag. So issue your commands, young cockerel."
Then he shouted to the workmen:
"Now, then! No shirking! Is the job going to be finished tonight, or
is it not?"
As a matter of fact, he himself was the worst shirker in the artel
[Workman's union]. True, he was also a first-rate hand at his trade,
and a man who could work quickly and well and with skill and
concentration; but, unfortunately, he hated putting himself out, and
preferred to spend his time spinning arresting yarns. For instance, on
the present occasion he chose the moment when work was proceeding with
a swing, when everyone was busily and silently and wholeheartedly
labouring with the object of running the job through to the end, to
begin in his musical voice:
"Look here, lads. Once upon a time--"
And though for the first two or three minutes the men appeared not to
hear him, and continued their planing and chopping as before, the
moment came when the soft tenor accents caught and held the men's
attention, as they trickled and burbled forth. Then, screwing up his
bright eyes with a humorous air, and twisting his curly beard between
his fingers, Ossip gave a complacent click of his tongue, and continued
measuredly, and with deliberation:
"So he seized hold of the tench, and thrust it back into the cave. And
as he turned to proceed through the forest he thought to himself: 'Now
I must keep my eyes about me.' And suddenly, from somewhere (no one
could have said where), a woman's voice shrieked: 'Elesi-a-ah!
Elesia-ah!'"
Here a tall, lanky Morduine named Leuka, with, as surname, Narodetz, a
young fellow whose small eyes wore always an expression of
astonishment, laid aside his axe, and stood gaping.
"And from the cave a deep bass voice replied: 'Elesi-a-ah!' while at
the same moment the tench sprang from the cave, and, champing its jaws,
wriggled and wriggled back to the slough."
Here an old soldier named Saniavin, a morose man, a tippler, and a
sufferer from asthma and an inexplicable grudge against life in
general, croaked out:
"How could your tench have wriggled across dry land if it was a fish?"
"Can, for that matter, a fish speak?" was Ossip's good-humoured retort.
All of which inspired Mokei Budirin, a grey-headed muzhik of a cast of
countenance canine in the prominence of his jaws and the recession of
his forehead, and taciturn withal, though not otherwise remarkable, to
give slow, nasal utterance to his favourite formula.
"That is true enough," he said.
For never could anything be spoken of that was grim or marvellous or
lewd or malicious, but Budirin at once re-echoed softly, but in a tone
of unshakable conviction: "That is true enough."
Thereafter he would tap me on the breast with his hard and ponderous
fist.
Presently work again underwent an interruption through the fact that
Yakov Boev, a man who possessed both a stammer and a squint, became
similarly filled with a desire to tell us something about a fish. Yet
from the moment that he began his narrative everyone declined to
believe it, and laughed at his broken verbiage as, frequently invoking
the Deity, and cursing, and brandishing his awl, and viciously
swallowing spittle, he shouted amid general ridicule:
"Once-once upon a time there lived a man. Yes, other folk before YOU
have believed my tale. Indeed, it is no more than the truth that I'm
going to tell you. Very well! Cackle away, and be damned!"
Here everyone without exception dropped his work to shout with
merriment and clap his hands: with the result that, doffing his cap,
and thereby disclosing a silvered, symmetrically shaped head with one
bald spot amid its one dark portion, Ossip was forced to shout severely:
"Hi, you Budirin! You've had your say, and given us some fun, and there
must be no more of it."
"But I had only just begun what I want to say," the old soldier
grumbled, spitting upon the palms of his hands.
Next, Ossip turned to myself.
"Inspector," he began...
It is my opinion that in thus hindering the men from work through his
tale-telling, Ossip had some definite end in view. I could not say
precisely what that end was, but it must have been the object either of
cloaking his own laziness or of giving the men a rest. On the other
hand, whenever the contractor was present he, Ossip, bore himself with
humble obsequiousness, and continued to assume a guise of simplicity
which none the less did not prevent him, on the advent of each
Saturday, from inducing his employer to bestow a pourboire upon the
artel.
And though this same Ossip was an artelui, and a director of the artel,
his senior co-members bore him no affection, but, rather, looked upon
him as a wag or trifler, and treated him as of no importance. And,
similarly, the younger members of the artel liked well enough to listen
to his tales, but declined to take him seriously, and, in some cases,
regarded him with ill-concealed, or openly expressed, distrust.
Once the Morduine, a man of education with whom, on occasions, I held
discussions on intimate subjects, replied to a question of mine on the
subject of Ossip:
"I scarcely know. Goodness alone knows! No, I do not know anything
about him."
To which, after a pause, he added:
"Once a fellow named Mikhailo, a clever fellow who is now dead,
insulted Ossip by saying to him: 'Do you call yourself a man? Why,
regarded as a workman, you're as lifeless as a doornail, while, seeing
that you weren't born to be a master, you'll all your life continue
chattering in corners, like a plummet swinging at the end of a string!'
Yes, and that was true enough."
Lastly, after another pause the Morduine concluded:
"No matter. He is not such a bad sort."
My own position among these men was a position of some awkwardness,
for, a young fellow of only fifteen, I had been appointed by the
contractor, a distant relative of mine, to the task of superintending
the expenditure of material. That is to say, I had to see to it that
the carpenters did not make away with nails, or dispose of planks in
return for drink. Yet all the time my presence was practically useless,
seeing that the men stole nails as though I were not even in existence
and strove to show me that among them I was a person too many, a sheer
incubus, and seized every opportunity of giving me covert jogs with a
beam, and similarly affronting me.
This, of course, made my relations with them highly difficult,
embarrassing, and irksome; and though moments occurred when I longed to
say something that might ingratiate me, and endeavoured to effect an
advance in that direction, the words always failed me at the necessary
juncture, and I found myself lying crushed as before under a burdensome
sense of the superfluity of my existence.
Again, if ever I tried to make an entry as to some material which had
been used, Ossip would approach me, and, for instance, say:
"Is it jotted down, eh? Then let me look at it."
And, eyeing the notebook with a frown, he would add vaguely:
"What a nice hand you write!" (He himself could write only in printing
fashion, in the large scriptory characters of the Ecclesiastical
Rubric, not in those of the ordinary kind.)
"For example, that scoop there--what does IT say?"
"It is the word 'Good.'"
"'Good'? But what a slip-knot of a thing! And what are those words
THERE, on THAT line?"
"They say, 'Planks, 1 vershok by 9 arshini, 5.'"
"No, six was the number used."
"No, five."
"Five? Why, the soldier broke one, didn't he?"
"Yes, but never mind--at least it wasn't a plank that was wanted."
"Oh! Well, I may tell you that he took the two pieces to the tavern to
get drink with."
Then, glancing into my face with his cornflower-blue eyes and quiet,
quizzical smile, he would say without the least confusion as he twisted
the ringlets of his beard:
"Put down '6.' And see here, young cockerel. The weather has turned wet
and cold, and the work is hard, and sometimes folk need to have their
spirits cheered and raised with a drop of liquor. So don't you be too
hard upon us, for God won't think the more of you for being strict."
And as he thus talked to me in his slow and kindly, but semi-affected,
fashion--bespattering me, as it were, with wordy sawdust--I would
suddenly grow blind of an eye and silently show him the corrected
figure.
"That's it--that's right. And how fine the figure looks now, as it
squats there like a merchant's buxom, comely dame!"
Then he would be seen triumphantly telling his mates of his success;
then, I would find myself feeling acutely conscious of the fact that
everyone was despising me for my complacence Yes, grown sick beyond
endurance with a yearning for some thing which it could not descry, my
fifteen-year-old heart would dissolve in a flood of mortified tears,
and there would pass through my brain the despondent, aching thought:
"Oh, what a sad, uncomfortable world is this! How should Ossip have
known so well that I should not re-correct the 6 into a 5, or that I
should not tell the contractor that the men have bartered a plank for
liquor?"
Again, there befell an occasion when the men stole two pounds' weight
of five vershok mandrels and bolts.
"Look here," I said to Ossip warningly. "I am going to report this."
"All right," he agreed with a twitch of his grey eyebrows. "Though what
such a trifle can matter I fail to see. Yes, go and report every
mother's son of them."
And to the men themselves he shouted:
"Hi, boobies! Each of you now stands docked for some mandrels and
bolts."
"Why?" was the old soldier's grim inquiry.
"Because you DO so stand," carelessly retorted the other.
With snarls thereafter, the men eyed me covertly, until I began to feel
that very likely I should not do as I had threatened, and even that so
to do might not be expedient.
"But look here," said I to Ossip. "I am going to give the contractor
notice, and let all of you go to the devil. For if I were to remain
with you much longer I too should become a thief."
Ossip stroked his beard awhile, and pondered. Then he seated himself
beside me, and said in an undertone:
"That is true."
"Well?"
"But things are always so. The truth is that it's time you departed.
What sort of a watchman, of a checker, are you? In jobs of this kind
what a man needs to know is the meaning of property. He needs to have
in him the spirit of a dog, so that he shall look after his master's
stuff as he would look after the skin which his mother has put on to
his own body. But you, you young puppy, haven't the slightest notion of
what property means. In fact, were anyone to go and tell Vasili
Sergeitch about the way in which you keep letting us off, he'd give it
you in the neck. Yes, you're no good to him at all, but just an
expense: whereas when a man serves a master he ought, do you
understand, to be PROFITABLE to that master."
He rolled and handed me a cigarette.
"Smoke this," said he, "and perhaps it'll make your brain work easier.
If only you had been of a less awkward, uncomfortable nature, I should
have said to you, 'Go and join the priests; but, as things are, you
aren't the right sort for that--you're too stiff and unbending, and
would never make headway even with an abbot. No, you're not the sort to
play cards with. A monk is like a jackdaw--he chatters without knowing
what he is chattering about, and pays no heed to the root of things, so
busy is he with stuffing himself full with the grain. I say this to you
with absolute earnestness, for I perceive you to be strange to our
ways--a cuckoo that has blundered into the wrong nest."
And, doffing his cap, a gesture which he never failed to execute when
he had something particularly important to say, he added humbly and
sonorously as he glanced at the grey firmament:
"In the sight of the Lord our ways are the ways of thieves, and such as
will never gain of Him salvation."
"And that is true enough," responded Mokei Budirin after the fashion of
a clarionet.
From that time forth, Ossip of the curly, silvered head, bright eyes,
and shadowy soul became an object of agreeable interest for me. Indeed,
there grew up between us a species of friendship, even though I could
see that a civil bearing towards me in public was a thing that it hurt
him to maintain. At all events, in the presence of others he avoided my
glance, and his eyes, clear, unsullied, and fight blue in tint, wavered
unsteadily, and his lips twitched and assumed an artificially
unpleasant expression, while he uttered some such speech as:
"Hi, you Makarei, see that you keep your eyes open, and cam your pay,
or that pig of a soldier will be making away with more nails!"
But at other times, when we were alone together, he would speak to me
kindly and instructively, while his eyes would dance and gleam with a
faint, grave, knowing smile, and dart blue rays direct into mine, while
for my part, as I listened to his words, I took every one of them to be
absolutely true and balanced, despite their strange delivery.
"A man's duty consists in being good," I remarked on one occasion.
"Yes, of course," assented Ossip, though the next moment he veiled his
eyes with a smile, and added in an undertone: "But what do you
understand by the term 'good'? In my opinion, unless virtue be to their
advantage, folk spit upon that 'goodness,' that 'honourableness,' of
yours. Hence, the better plan is to pay folk court, and be civil to
them, and flatter and cajole every mother's son of them. Yes, do that,
and your 'goodness' will have a chance of bringing you in some return.
Not that I do not say that to be 'good,' to be able to look your own
ugly jowl in the face in a mirror, is pleasant enough; but, as I see
the matter, it is all one to other people whether you be a cardsharper
or a priest so long as you're polite, and let down your neighbours
lightly. That's what they want."
For my part I never, at that period, grew weary of watching my fellows,
for it was my constant idea that some day one of them would be able to
raise me to a higher level, and to bring me to an understanding of this
unintelligible and complicated existence of ours. Hence I kept asking
myself the restless, the importunate question:
"What precisely is the human soul?"
Certain souls, I thought, existed which seemed like balls of copper,
for, solid and immovable, they reflected things from their own point of
view alone, in a dull and irregular and distorted fashion. And souls, I
thought, existed which seemed as flat as mirrors, and, for all intents
and purposes, had no existence at all.
And in every case the human soul seemed formless, like a cloud, and as
murkily mutable as an imitation opal, a thing which altered according
to the colour of what adjoined it.
Only as regarded the soul of the intelligent Ossip was I absolutely at
a loss, absolutely unable to reach a conclusion.
Pondering these and similar matters in my mind, I, on the day of which
I speak, stood gazing at the river, and at the town under the hill, as
I listened to the bells. Rearing themselves aloft like the organ pipes
in my favourite Polish-Roman Catholic church, the steeples of the town
had their crosses dimly sparkling as though the latter had been stars
imprisoned in a murky sky. Yet it was as though those stars hoped
eventually to ascend into the purer firmament above the wind-torn
clouds that they sparkled; and as I stood watching the clouds glide
onward, and momentarily efface with their shadows, the town's
multifarious hues, I marked the fact that although, whenever dark-blue
cavities in their substance permitted the beams of the sun to
illuminate the buildings below, those buildings' roofs assumed tints of
increased cheerfulness. The clouds seemed to glide the faster to veil
the beams, while the humid shadows grew more opaque--and the scene
darkened as though only for a moment had it assumed a semblance of joy.
The buildings of the town (looking like heaps of muddy snow), the
black, naked earth around those buildings, the trees in the gardens,
the hummocks of piled-up soil, the dull grey glimmer of the window
panes of the houses--all these things reminded me of winter, even
though the misty breath of the northern spring was beginning to steal
over the whole.
Presently a young fellow with flaxen hair, a pendent underlip, and a
tall, ungainly figure, by name Mishuk Diatlov, essayed to troll the
stanza:
"That morn to him the maiden came,
To find his soul had fled."
Whereupon the old soldier shouted:
"Hi, you! Have you forgotten the day?"
And even Boev saw fit to take umbrage at the singing, and, threatening
Diatlov with his fist, to rap out:
"Ah, sobatchnia dusha!" ["Soul of a dog."]
"What a rude, rough, primitive lot we Russians are!" commented Ossip,
seating himself atop of the icebreaker, and screwing up his eyes to
measure its fall. "To speak plainly, we Russians are sheer barbarians.
Once upon a time, I may tell you, an anchorite happened to be on his
travels; and as the people came pressing around him, and kneeling to
him, and tearfully beseeching him with the words, 'Oh holy father,
intercede for us with the wolves which are devouring our substance!' he
replied: 'Ha! Are you, or are you not, Orthodox Christians? See that I
assign you not to condign perdition!' Yes, angry, in very truth he was.
Nay, he even spat in the people's faces. Yet in reality he was a kindly
old man, for his eyes kept shedding tears equally with theirs."
Twenty sazheni below the icebreaker was a gang of barefooted sailors,
engaged in hacking out the floes from under their barges; and as they
shattered the brittle, greyish-blue crust on the river, the mattocks
rang out, and the sharp blades of the icecutters gleamed as they thrust
the broken fragments under the surface. Meanwhile, there could be heard
a bubbling of water, and the sound of rivulets trickling down to the
sandy margin of the river. And similarly among our own gang was there
audible a scraping of planes, and a screeching of saws, and a
clattering of iron braces as they were driven into the smooth yellow
wood, while through all the web of these sounds there ran the ceaseless
song of the bells, a song so softened by distance as to thrill the
soul, much as though dingy, burdensome labour were holding revel in
honour of spring, and calling upon the latter to spread itself over the
starved, naked surface of the gradually thawing ground.
At this point someone shouted hoarsely:
"Go and fetch the German. We have not got hands enough."
And from the bank someone bawled in reply:
"Where IS he?"
"In the tavern. That is where you must go and look for him."
And as they made themselves heard, the voices floated up turgidly into
the sodden air, spread themselves over the river's mournful void, and
died away.
Meanwhile our men worked with industry and speed, but not without a
fault or two, for their thoughts were fixed upon the town and its
washhouses and churches. And particularly restless was Sashok Diatlov,
a man whose hair, as flaxen as that of his brother, seemed to have been
boiled in lye. At intervals, glancing up-river, this well-built, sturdy
young fellow would say softly to his brother:
"It's cracking now, eh?"
And, certainly, the ice had "moved" two nights ago, so that since
yesterday morning the river watchmen had refused to permit horsed
vehicles to cross, and only a few beadlike pedestrians now were making
their way along the marked-out ice paths, while, as they proceeded, one
could hear the water slapping against the planks as the latter bent
under the travellers' weight.
"Yes, it IS cracking," at length Mishuk replied with a hoist of his
ginger eyebrows.
Ossip too scanned the river from under his hand. Then he said to Mishuk:
"Pah! It is the dry squeak of the planes in your own hand that you keep
hearing, so go on with your work, you son of a beldame. And as for you,
Inspector, do you help me to speed up the men instead of burying your
nose in your notebook."
By this time there remained only two more hours for work, and the arch
of the icebreaker had been wholly sheathed in butter-tinted scantlings,
and nothing required to be added to it save the great iron braces.
Unfortunately, Boev and Saniavin, the men who had been engaged upon the
task of cutting out the sockets for the braces, had worked so amiss,
and run their lines so straight, that, when it came to the point, the
arms of the braces refused to sink properly into the wood.
"Oh, you cock-eyed fool of a Morduine!" shouted Ossip, smiting his fist
against the side of his cap. "Do you call THAT sort of thing work?"
At this juncture there came from somewhere on the bank a seemingly
exultant shout of:
"Ah! NOW it's giving way!"
And almost at the same moment, there stole over the river a sort of
rustle, a sort of quiet crunching which made the projecting pine
branches quiver as though they were trying to catch at something,
while, shouldering their mattocks, the barefooted sailors noisily
hastened aboard their barges with the aid of rope ladders.
And then curious indeed was it to see how many people suddenly came
into view on the river--to see how they appeared to issue from below
the very ice itself, and, hurrying to and fro like jackdaws startled by
the shot of a gun, to dart hither and thither, and to seize up planks
and boathooks, and to throw them down again, and once more to seize
them up.
"Put the tools together," Ossip shouted. "And look alive there, and
make for the bank."
"Aye, and a fine Easter Day it will be for us on THAT bank!" growled
Sashok.
Meanwhile, it was the river rather than the town that seemed to be
motionless--the latter had begun, as it were, to quiver and reel, and,
with the hill above it, to appear to be gliding slowly up stream, even
as the grey, sandy bank some ten sazheni from us was beginning to grow
tremulous, and to recede.
"Run, all of you!" shouted Ossip, giving me a violent push as he did
so. Then to myself in particular he added: "Why stand gaping there?"
This caused a keen sense of danger to strike home in my heart, and to
make my feet feel as though already the ice was escaping their tread.
So, automatically picking themselves up, those feet started to bear my
body in the direction of a spot on the sandy bank where the
winter-stripped branches of a willow tree were writhing, and whither
there were betaking themselves also Boev, the old soldier, Budirin, and
the brothers Diatlov. Meanwhile the Morduine ran by my side, cursing
vigorously as he did so, and Ossip followed us, walking backwards.
"No, no, Narodetz," he said.
"But, my good Ossip--"
"Never mind. What has to be, has to be."
"But, as likely as not, we may remain stuck here for two days!"
"Never mind even if we DO remain stuck here."
"But what of the festival?"
"It will have, for this year at least, to be kept without you."
Seating himself on the sand, the old soldier lit his pipe and growled:
"What cowards you all are! The bank was only fifteen sazheni from us,
yet you ran as though possessed!"
"With you yourself as leader," put in Mokei.
The old soldier took no notice, but added:
"What were you all afraid of? Once upon a time Christ Himself, Our
Little Father, died."
"And rose again," muttered the Morduine with a tinge of resentment.
Which led Boev to exclaim:
"Puppy, hold your tongue! What right have you to air your opinions?"
"Besides, this is Good Friday, not Easter Day," the old soldier
concluded with severe, didactical mien.
In a gap of blue between the clouds there was shining the March sun,
and everywhere the ice was sparkling as though in derision of
ourselves. Shading his eyes, Ossip gazed at the dissolving river, and
said:
"Yes, it IS rising--but that will not last for long."
"No, but long enough to make us miss the festival," grumbled Sashok.
Upon this the smooth, beardless face of the youthful Morduine, a face
dark and angular like the skin of an unpeeled potato, assumed a
resentful frown, and, blinking his eyes, he muttered:
"Yes, here we may have to sit--here where there's neither food nor
money! Other folk will be enjoying themselves, but we shall have to
remain hugging our hungry stomachs like a pack of dogs!"
Meanwhile Ossip's eyes had remained fixed upon the river, for evidently
his thoughts were far away, and it was in absentminded fashion that he
replied:
"Hunger cannot be considered where necessity impels. By the way, what
use are our damned icebreakers? For the protection of barges and such?
Why, the ice hasn't the sense to care. It just goes sliding over a
barge, and farewell is the word to THAT bit of property!"
"Damn it, but none of us have a barge for property, have we?
"You had better go and talk to a fool."
"The truth is that the icebreaker ought to have been taken in hand
sooner."
Finally, the old soldier made a queer grimace, and ejaculated:
"Blockhead!"
From a barge a knot of sailors shouted something, and at the same
moment the river sent forth a sort of whiff of cruel chilliness and
brooding calm. The disposition of the pine boughs now had changed. Nay,
everything in sight was beginning to assume a different air, as though
everything were charged with tense expectancy.
One of the younger men asked diffidently, beneath his breath:
"Mate Ossip, what are we going to do?"
"What do you say?" Ossip queried absent-mindedly.
"I say, what are we going to do? Just to sit here?"
To this Boev responded, with loud, nasal derision in his tone:
"Yes, my lad, for the Lord has seen fit to prevent you from
participating in His most holy festival."
And the old soldier, in support of his mate, extended his pipe towards
the river, and muttered with a grin:
"You want to cross to the town, do you? Well, be off with you, and
though the ice may give way beneath your feet and drown you, at least
you'll be taken to the police station, and so get to your festival. For
that's what you want, I suppose?"
"True enough," Mokei re-echoed.
Then the sun went in, and the river grew darker, while the town stood
out more clearly. Ceaselessly, the younger men gazed towards the town
with wistful, gloomy eyes, though silently they remained where they
were.
Similarly, I myself was beginning to find things irksome and
uncomfortable, as always happens when a number of companions are
thinking different thoughts, and contain in themselves none of that
unity of will which alone can join men into a direct, uniform force.
Rather, I felt as though I could gladly leave my companions and start
out upon the ice alone.
Suddenly Ossip recovered his faculties. Rising, then doffing his cap
and making the sign of the cross in the direction of the town, he said
with a quiet, simple, yet somehow authoritative, air:
"Very well, my mates. Go in peace, and may the Lord go with you!"
"But whither?" asked Sashok, leaping to his feet. "To the town?"
"Whither else?"
The old soldier was the only one not to rise, and with conviction he
remarked:
"It will result but in our getting drowned."
"Then stay where you are."
Ossip glanced around the party. Then he continued:
"Bestir yourselves! Look alive!"
Upon which all crowded together, and Boev, thrusting the tools into a
hole in the bank, groaned:
"The order 'go' has been given, so go we MUST, well though a man in
receipt of such an order might ask himself, 'How is it going to be
done?'"
Ossip seemed, in some way, to have grown younger and more active, while
the habitually shy, though good-humoured, expression of his countenance
was gone from his ruddy features, and his darkened eyes had assumed an
air of stern activity. Nay, even his indolent, rolling gait had
disappeared, and in his step there was more firmness, more assurance,
than had ever before been the case.
"Let every man take a plank," he said, "and hold it in front of him.
Then, should anyone fall in (which God forbid!), the plank-ends will
catch upon the ice to either side of him, and hold him up. Also, every
man must avoid cracks in the ice. Yes, and is there a rope handy? Here,
Narodetz! Reach me that spirit-level. Is everyone ready? I will walk
first, and next there must come--well, which is the heaviest?--you,
soldier, and then Mokei, and then the Morduine, and then Boev, and then
Mishuk, and then Sashok, and then Makarei, the lightest of all. And do
you all take off your caps before starting, and say a prayer to the
Mother of God. Ha! Here is Old Father Sun coming out to greet us."
Readily did the men bare their tousled grey or flaxen heads as
momentarily the sun glanced through a bank of thin white vapour before
again concealing himself, as though averse to arousing any false hopes.
"Now!" sharply commanded Ossip in his new-found voice. "And may God go
with us! Watch my feet, and don't crowd too much upon one another, but
keep each at a sazhen's distance or more--in fact, the more the better.
Yes, come, mates!"
With which, stuffing his cap into his bosom, and grasping the
spirit-level in his hands, Ossip set foot upon the ice with a sliding,
cautious, shuffling gait. At the same moment, there came from the bank
behind us a startled cry of:
"Where are you off to, you fools?"
"Never mind," said Ossip to ourselves. "Come along with you, and don't
stand staring."
"You blockheads!" the voice repeated. "You had far better return."
"No, no! come on!" was Ossip's counter-command. "And as you move think
of God, or you'll never find yourselves among the invited guests at His
holy festival of Eastertide."
Next Ossip sounded a police whistle, which act led the old soldier to
exclaim:
"Oh, that's the way, mate! Good! Yes, you know what to do. Now notice
will have been given to the police on the further bank, and, if we're
not drowned, we shall find ourselves clapped in gaol when we get there.
However, I'm not responsible."
In spite of this remonstrance, Ossip's sturdy voice drew his companions
after him as though they had been tied to a rope.
"Watch your feet carefully," once more he cried.
Our line of march was directed obliquely, and in the opposite direction
to the current. Also, I, as the rearmost of the party, found it
pleasant to note how the wary little Ossip of the silvery head went
looping over the ice with the deftness of a hare, and practically no
raising of the feet, while behind him there trailed, in wild-goose
fashion, and as though tied to a single invisible string, six dark and
undulating figures the shadows of which kept making themselves visible
on the ice, from those figures' feet to points indefinitely remote. And
as we proceeded, all of us kept our heads lowered as though we had been
descending from a mountain in momentary fear of a false step.
Also, though the shouting in our rear kept growing in volume, and we
could tell that by this time a crowd had gathered, not a word could we
distinguish, but only a sort of ugly din.
In time our cautious march became for me a mere, mechanical, wearisome
task, for on ordinary occasions it was my custom to maintain a pace of
greater rapidity. Thus, eventually I sank into the semiconscious
condition amid which the soul turns to vacuity, and one no longer
thinks of oneself, but, on the contrary issues from one's personality,
and begins to see objects with unwonted clarity, and to hear sounds
with unwonted precision. Under my feet the seams in the blue-grey,
leaden ice lay full of water, while as for the ice itself, it was
blinding in its expansive glitter, even though in places it had come to
be either cracked or bulbous, or had ground itself into powder with its
own movement, or had become heaped into slushy hummocks of pumice-like
sponginess and the consistency of broken glass. And everywhere around
me I could discern the chilly, gaping smile of blue crevices which
caught at my feet, and rendered the tread of my boot-soles unstable.
And ever, as we marched, could the voices of Boev and the old soldier
be heard speaking in antiphony, like two pipes being fluted by one and
the same pair of lips.
"I won't be responsible," said the one voice.
"Nor I," responded the other.
"The only reason why I have come is that I was told to do so. That's
all about it."
"Yes, and the same with me."
"One man gives an order, and another man, perhaps a man a thousand
times more sensible than he, is forced to obey it."
"Is any man, in these days, sensible, seeing what a racket we have to
live among?"
By this time Ossip had tucked the skirts of his greatcoat into his
belt, while beneath those skirts his legs (clad in grey cloth gaiters
of a military pattern) were shuffling along as lightly and easily as
springs, and in a manner that suggested that there was turning and
twisting in front of him some person whom, though desirous of barring
to him the direct course, the shortest route, Ossip successfully
opposed and evaded by dint of dodges and deviations to right and left,
and occasional turns about, and the execution of dance steps and loops
and semicircles. Meanwhile in the tones of Ossip's voice there was a
soft, musical ring that struck agreeably upon the ear, and harmonised
to admiration with the song of the bells just when we were approaching
the middle of the river's breadth of four hundred sazheni. There
resounded over the surface of the ice a vicious rustle while a piece of
ice slid from under my feet. Stumbling, and powerless to retain my
footing, I blundered down upon my knees in helpless astonishment; and
then, as I glanced upstream, fear gripped at my throat, deprived me of
speech, and darkened all my vision. For the whole substance of the grey
ice-core had come to life and begun to heave itself upwards! Yes, the
hitherto level surface was thrusting forth sharp angular ridges, and
the air seemed full of a strange sound like the trampling of some heavy
being over broken glass.
With a quiet trickle there came a swirl of water around me, while an
adjacent pine bough cracked and squeaked as though it too had come to
life. My companions shouted, and collected into a knot; whereupon, at
once dominating and quelling the tense, painful hubbub of sounds, there
rang forth the voice of Ossip.
"Mother of God!" he shouted. "Scatter, lads! Get away from one another,
and keep each to himself! Now! Courage!"
With that, springing towards us as though wasps had been after him, and
grasping the spirit-level as though it had been a weapon, he jabbed it
to every side, as though fighting invisible foes, while, just as the
quivering town began, seemingly, to glide past us, and the ice at my
feet gave a screech and crumbled to fragments beneath me, so that water
bubbled to my knees. I leapt up from where I was, and rushed blindly in
Ossip's direction.
"Where are you coming to, fool?" was his shout as he brandished the
spirit-level. "Stand still where you are!"
Indeed, Ossip seemed no longer to be Ossip at all, but a person
curiously younger, a person in whom all that had been familiar in Ossip
had become effaced. Yes, the once blue eyes had turned to grey, and the
figure added half an arshin to its stature as, standing as erect as a
newly made nail, and pressing both feet together, the foreman stretched
himself to his full height, and shouted with his mouth open to its
widest extent:
"Don't shuffle about, nor crowd upon one another, or I'll break your
heads!"
Whereafter, of myself in particular, he inquired as he raised the
spirit-level:
"What is the matter with YOU, pray?"
"I am feeling frightened," I muttered in response.
"Feeling frightened of WHAT, indeed?"
"Of being drowned."
"Pooh! Just you hold your tongue."
Yet the next moment he glanced at me, and added in a gentler, quieter
tone:
"None but a fool gets drowned. Pick yourself up and come along."
Then once more he shouted full-throated words of encouragement to his
men; and as he did so, his chest swelled and his head rocked with the
effort.
Yet, crackling and cracking, the ice was breaking up; and soon it began
slowly to bear us past the town. 'Twas as though some unknown force
ashore had awakened, and was striving to tear the banks of the river in
two, so much did the portion of the landscape downstream seem to be
standing still while the portion level with us seemed to be receding in
the opposite direction, and thus causing a break to take place in the
middle of the picture.
And soon this movement, a movement agonisingly slow, deprived me of my
sense of being connected with the rest of the world, until, as the
whole receded, despair again gripped my heart and unnerved my limbs.
Roseate clouds were gliding across the sky and causing stray fragments
of the ice, which, seemingly, yearned to engulf me, to assume reflected
tints of a similar hue. Yes, it was as though the birth of spring had
reawakened the universe, and was causing it to stretch itself, and to
emit deep, hurried, broken pants that cracked its bones as the river,
embedded in the earth's stout framework, revivified the whole with
thick, turbulent, ebullient blood.
And this sense of littleness, of impotence amid the calm, assured
movement of the earth's vast bulk, weighed upon my soul, and evoked,
and momentarily fanned to flame in me, the shameless human question:
"What if I should stretch forth my hand and lay it upon the hill and
the banks of the river, and say, 'Halt until I come to you!'?"
Meanwhile the bells continued the mournful moaning of their resonant,
coppery notes; and that moaning led me to reflect that within two days
(on the night of the morrow) they would be pealing a joyous welcome to
the Resurrection Feast.
"Oh that all of us may live to hear that sound!" was my unspoken
thought.
Before my vision there kept quavering seven dark figures--figures
shuffling over the ice, and brandishing planks like oars. And,
wriggling like a lamprey in front of them was a little old fellow, an
old fellow resembling Saint Nicholas the Wonder-Worker, an old fellow
who kept crying softly, but authoritatively:
"Do not stare about you!"
And ever the river was growing rougher and ruder; ever its backbone was
beginning to puiver and flounder like a whale underfoot, with its
liquescent body of cold, grey, murky water bursting with increasing
frequency from its shell of ice, and lapping hungrily at our feet.
Yes, we were human beings traversing, as it were, a slender pole over a
bottomless abyss; and as we walked, the water's soft, cantabile splash
set me in mind of the depths below, of the infinite time during which a
body would continue sinking through dense, chilly bulk until sight
faded and the heart stopped beating. Yes, before my mind's eye there
arose men drowned and devoured by crayfish, men with crumbling skulls
and swollen features, and glassy, bulging eyes and puffy hands and
outstretched fingers and palms of which the skin had rotted off with
the damp.
The first to fall in was Mokei Budirin. He had been walking next ahead
of the Morduine, and, as a man habitually silent and absorbed,
proceeding on his way more quietly than the rest. Suddenly something
had seemed to catch at his legs, and he had disappeared until only his
head and his hands, as the latter clutched at his plank, had been left
above-level.
"Run and help him, somebody!" was Ossip's instant cry. "Yes, but not
all of you--just one or two. Help him I say!"
The spluttering Mokei, however, said to the Morduine and myself:
"No; do you move away, mates, for I shall best help myself. Never you
mind."
And, sure enough, he did succeed in drawing himself out on to the ice
without assistance. Whereafter he remarked as he shook himself:
"A nice pickle, this, to be in! I might as well have been drowned!"
And, in fact, at the moment he looked, with his chattering teeth and
great tongue licking a dripping moustache, precisely like a large,
good-natured dog.
Then I remembered how, a month earlier, he had accidentally driven the
blade of his axe through the joint of his left thumb, and, merely
picking up the white fragment of flesh with the nail turning blue, and
scanning it with his unfathomable eyes, had remarked, as though it was
he himself that had been at fault:
"How often before I have injured that thumb, I could not say. And when
once I dislocated it, I went on working with it longer than was right....
Now I will go and bury it."
With which, carefully wrapping up the fragment in some shavings, he had
thrust the whole into his pocket, and bandaged the wounded hand.
Similarly, after that, did Boev, the man next in order behind Mokei,
contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on
immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead
already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be
extricated only with great difficulty, while amid the general confusion
the Morduine too nearly slipped into the water.
"A narrow shave of saying Vespers tonight with the devils in Hell!" he
remarked as he clambered back, and stood grinning with an even more
angular and attenuated appearance than usual.
The next moment Boev achieved a second plunge, and screamed, as before,
for help.
"Don't shout, you goat of a Yashka!" Ossip exclaimed as he threatened
him with the spirit-level. "Why scare people? I'll give it you! Look
here, lads. Let every man take off his belt and turn out his pockets.
Then he'll walk lighter."
Toothed jaws gaped and crunched at us at every step, and vomited thick
spittle; at every tenth step their keen blue fangs reached for our
lives. Meanwhile, the soaked condition of our boots and clothes had
rendered us as slimy as though smeared with paste. Also, it so weighed
us down as to hinder any active movement, and to cause each step to be
taken cautiously, slowly, silently, and with ponderous diffidence.
Yet, soaked though we were, Ossip might verily have known the number of
cracks in advance, so smooth and harelike was his progress from floe to
floe as at intervals he faced about, watched us, and cried sonorously:
"That's the way to do it, eh?"
Yes, he absolutely played with the river, and though it kept catching
at his diminutive form, he always evaded it, circumvented its
movements, and avoided its snares. Nay, capable even of directing its
trend did he seem, and of thrusting under our feet only the largest and
firmest floes.
"Lads, there is no need to be downhearted," he would cry at intervals.
"Ah, that brave Ossip!" the Morduine once ejaculated. "In very truth is
he a man, and no mistake! Just look at him!"
The closer we approached the further shore, the thinner and the more
brittle did the ice become, and the more liable we to break through it.
By this time the town had nearly passed us, and we were bidding fair to
be carried out into the Volga, where the ice would still be sound, and,
as likely as not, draw us under itself.
"By your leave, we are going to be drowned," the Morduine murmured as
he glanced at the blue shadow of eventide on our left.
And simultaneously, as though compassionating our lot, a large floe
grounded upon the bank, glided upwards with a cracking and a crashing,
and there held fast!
"Run, all of you!" came a furious shout from Ossip. "Hurry up, now! Put
your very best legs foremost!"
For myself, as I sprang upon the floe I lost my footing, and, falling
headlong and remaining seated on the hither end of the floe amid a
shower of spray, saw five of my seven comrades rush past, pushing and
jostling, as they made for the shore. But presently the Morduine turned
and halted beside me, with the intention of rendering Ossip assistance.
"Run, you young fools!" the latter exclaimed. "Come! Be off with you!"
Somehow in his face there was now a livid, uncertain air, while his
eyes had lost their fire, and his mouth was curiously agape.
"No, mate. Do YOU get up," was my counter-adjuration.
"Unfortunately, I have hurt my leg," he replied with his head bent
down. "In fact, I am not sure that I can get up."
However, we contrived to raise him and carry him ashore with an arm of
his resting on each of our necks. Meanwhile he growled with chattering
teeth:
"Aha, you river devils! Drown me if you can! But I've not given you a
chance, the Lord be thanked! Hi, look out! The ice won't bear the three
of us. Mind how you step, and choose places where the ice is bare of
snow. There it's firmer. No, a better plan still would be to leave me
where I am."
Next, with a frowning scrutiny of my face, he inquired:
"That notebook of our misdeeds--hasn't it had a wetting and got done
for?"
That very moment, as we stepped from the stranded floe (in grounding,
it had crushed and shattered a small boat), such part of it as lay in
the water gave a loud crack, and, swaying to and fro, and emitting a
gurgling sound, floated clear of the rest.
"Ah!" was the Morduine's quizzical comment. "YOU knew well enough what
needed to be done."
Wet, and chilled to the bone, though relieved in spirit, we stepped
ashore to find a crowd of townspeople in conversation with Boev and the
old soldier. And as we deposited our charge under the lea of a pile of
logs he shouted cheerfully:
"Mates, Makarei's notebook is done for, soaked through!" And since the
notebook in question was weighing upon my breast like a brick, I pulled
it out unseen, and hurled it far into the river with a plop like that
of a frog.
As for the Diatlovs, they lost no time in setting out in search of
vodka in the tavern on the hill, and slapped one another on the back as
they ran, and could be heard shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!"
Upon this, a tall old man with the beard of an apostle and the eyes of
a brigand muttered:
"Infidels, why disturb peaceful folk like this? You ought to be
thrashed!"
Whereupon Boev, who was changing his clothes, retorted:
"What do you mean by 'disturb'?"
"Besides," put in the old soldier, "even though we are Christians like
yourself, we might as well have been drowned for all that you did to
help us."
"What could we have done?"
Meanwhile Ossip had remained lying on the ground with one leg stretched
out at full length, and tremulous hands fumbling at his greatcoat as
under his breath he muttered:
"Holy Mother, how wet I am! My clothes, though I have only worn them a
year, are ruined for ever!"
Moreover, he seemed now to have shrunken again in stature--to have
become crumpled up like a man run over. Indeed, as he lay he seemed
actually to be melting, so continuously was his bulk decreasing in size.
But suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture, groaned, and
exclaimed in high-pitched, wrathful accents:
"May the devil take you all! Be off with you to your washhouses and
churches! Yes, be off, for it seems that, as God couldn't keep His holy
festival without you, I've had to stand within an ace of death and to
spoil my clothes-yes, all that you fellows should be got out of your
fix!"
Nevertheless, the men merely continued taking off their boots, and
wringing out their clothes, and conversing with sundry gasps and grunts
with the bystanders. So presently Ossip resumed:
"What are you thinking of, you fools? The washhouse is the best place
for you, for if the police get you, they'll soon find you a lodging,
and no mistake!"
One of the townspeople put in officiously:
"Aye, aye. The police have been sent for."
And this led Boev to exclaim to Ossip:
"Why pretend like that?"
"Pretend? I?"
"Yes--you."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was you who egged us on to cross the river."
"You say that it was I?"
"I do."
"Indeed?"
"Aye," put in Budirin quietly, but incisively. And him the Morduine
supported by saying in a sullen undertone:
"It was you, mate. By God it was. It would seem that you have
forgotten."
"Yes, you started all this business," the old soldier corroborated, in
dour, ponderous accents.
"Forgotten, indeed? HE?" was Boev's heated exclamation.
"How can you say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift the
responsibility on to others--that's all! WE'LL see, right enough, that
he goes through with it!"
To this Ossip made no reply, but gazed frowningly at his dripping,
half-clad men.
All at once, with a curious outburst of mingled smiles and tears (it
would be hard to say which), he shrugged his shoulders, threw up his
hands, and muttered:
"Yes, it IS true. If it please you, it was I that contrived the idea."
"Of COURSE it was!" the old soldier cried triumphantly.
Ossip turned his eyes again to where the river was seething like a bowl
of porridge, and, letting his eyes fall with a frown, continued:
"In a moment of forgetfulness I did it. Yet how is it that we were not
all drowned? Well, you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you.
No, by God, you wouldn't!... Don't be angry with me, mates. Pardon
me for the festival's sake, for I am feeling uneasy of mind. Yes, I it
was that egged you on to cross the river, the old fool that I was!"
"Aha!" exclaimed Boev. "But, had I been drowned, what should you have
said THEN?"
In fact, by this time Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the
futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his state of
sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the sand, looking at
no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful words, he reminded me
strongly of a new-born calf.
And as I watched him I thought to myself:
"Where now is the leader of men who could draw his fellows in his train
with so much care and skill and authority?"
And into my soul there trickled an uneasy sense of something lacking.
Seating myself beside Ossip (for I desired still to retain a measure of
my late impression of him), I said to him in an undertone:
"Soon you will be all right again."
With a sideways glance he muttered in reply, as he combed his beard:
"Well, you saw what happened just now. Always do things so happen."
While for the benefit of the men he added:
"That was a good jest of mine, eh?"
The summit of the hill which lay crouching, like a great beast, on the
brink of the river was standing out clearly against the fast darkening
sky; while a clump of trees thereon had grown black, and everywhere
blue shadows of the spring eventide were coming into view, and looming
between the housetops where the houses lay pressed like scabs against
the hill's opaque surface, and peering from the moist, red jaws of the
ravine which, gaping towards the river, seemed as though it were
stretching forth for a draught of water.
Also, by now the rustling and crunching of the ice on the similarly
darkening river was beginning to assume a deeper note, and at times a
floe would thrust one of its extremities into the bank as a pig thrusts
its snout into the earth, and there remain motionless before once more
beginning to sway, tearing itself free, and floating away down the
river as another such floe glided into its place.
And ever more and more swiftly was the water rising, and washing away
soil from the bank, and spreading a thick sediment over the dark blue
surface of the river. And as it did so, there resounded in the air a
strange noise as of chewing and champing, a noise as though some huge
wild animal were masticating, and licking itself with its great long
tongue.
And still there continued to come from the town the melancholy,
distance-softened, sweet-toned song of the bells.
Presently, the brothers Diatlov appeared descending from the hill with
bottles in their hands, and sporting like a couple of joyous puppies,
while to intercept them there could be seen advancing along the bank of
the river a grey-coated police sergeant and two black-coated constables.
"Oh Lord!" groaned Ossip as he rubbed his knee.
As for the townsfolk, they had no love for the police, so hastened to
withdraw to a little distance, where they silently awaited the
officers' approach. Before long the sergeant, a little, withered sort
of a fellow with diminutive features and a sandy, stubby moustache,
called out in gruff, stern, hoarse, laboured accents:
"So here you are, you rascals!"
Ossip prised himself up from the ground with his elbow, and said
hurriedly:
"It was I that contrived the idea of the thing, your Excellency; but,
pray let me off in honour of the festival."
"What do you say, you--?" the sergeant began, but his bluster was lost
amid the swift flow of Ossip's further conciliatory words.
"We are folk of this town," Ossip continued, "who tonight found
ourselves stranded on the further bank, with nothing to buy bread with,
even though the day after tomorrow will be Christ's day, the day when
Christians like ourselves wish to clean themselves up a little, and to
go to church. So I said to my mates, 'Be off with you, my good fellows,
and may God send that no mishap befall you!' And for this
presumptuousness of mine I have been punished already, for, as you can
see, have as good as broken my leg."
"Yes," ejaculated the sergeant grimly. "But if you had been drowned,
what then?"
Ossip sighed wearily.
"What then, do you say, your Excellency? Why, then, nothing, with your
permission."
This led the officer to start railing at the culprit, while the crowd
listened as silently and attentively as though he had been saying
something worthy to be heard and heeded, rather than foully and
cynically miscalling their mothers.
Lastly, our names having been noted, the police withdrew, while each of
us drank a dram of vodka (and thereby gained a measure of warmth and
comfort), and then began to make for our several homes. Ossip followed
the police with derisive eyes; whereafter, he leapt to his feet with a
nimble, adroit movement, and crossed himself with punctilious piety.
"That's all about it, thank God!" he exclaimed.
"What?" sniggered Boev, now both disillusioned and astonished. "Do you
really mean to say that that leg of yours is better already? Or do you
mean that it never was injured at all?"
"Ah! So you wish that it HAD been injured, eh?"
"The rascal of a Petrushka!" the other exclaimed.
"Now," commanded Ossip, "do all of you be off, mates." And with that he
pulled his wet cap on to his head.
I accompanied him--walking a little behind the rest. As he limped
along, he said in an undertone-said kindly--and as though he were
communicating a secret known only to himself:
"Whatsoever one may do, and whithersoever one may turn, one will find
that life cannot be lived without a measure of fraud and deceit. For
that is what life IS, Makarei, the devil fly away with it!... I
suppose you're making for the hill? Well, I'll keep you company."
Darkness had fallen, but at a certain spot some red and yellow lamps,
lamps the beams of which seemed to be saying, "Come up hither!" were
shining through the obscurity.
Meanwhile, as we proceeded in the direction of the bells that were
ringing on the hill, rivulets of water flowed with a murmur under our
feet, and Ossip's kindly voice kept mingling with their sound.
"See," he continued, "how easily I befooled that sergeant! That is how
things have to be done, Makarei--one has to keep folk from knowing
one's business, yet to make them think that they are the chief persons
concerned, and the persons whose wit has put the cap on the whole."
Yet as I listened to his speech, while supporting his steps, I could
make little of it.
Nor did I care to make very much of it, for I was of a simple and
easygoing nature. And though at the moment I could not have told
whether I really liked Ossip, I would still have followed his lead in
any direction--yes, even across the river again, though the ice had
been giving way beneath me.
And as we proceeded, and the bells echoed and re-echoed, I thought to
myself with a spasm of joy:
"Ah, many times may I thus walk to greet the spring!"
While Ossip said with a sigh:
"The human soul is a winged thing. Even in sleep it flies."
* * * * *
A winged thing? Yes, and a thing of wonder.