The wind is scudding over the steppe, and beating upon the rampart of
the Caucasian heights until their backbone seems to be bellying like a
huge sail, and the earth to be whirling and whizzing through
unfathomable depths of blue, and leaving behind it a rack of wind-torn
clouds which, as their shadows glide over the surface of the land, seem
ever to be striving to keep in touch with the onrush of the gale, and,
failing to maintain the effort, dissolving in tears and despondency.
The trees too are bending in the attitude of flight--their boughs are
brandishing their foliage as a dog worries a fleece, and littering the
black soil with leaves among which runs a constant querulous hissing
and rustling. Also, storks are uttering their snapping cry, sleek rooks
cawing, steppe grasshoppers maintaining their tireless chirp, sturdy,
well-grown husbandmen uttering shouts like words of command, the
threshing-floors of the rolling steppe diffusing a rain of golden
chaff, and eddying whirlwinds catching up stray poultry feathers,
dried-onion strips, and leaves yellowed with the heat, to send them
dancing again over the trim square of the little Cossack hamlet.
Similarly does the sun keep appearing and disappearing as though he
were pursuing the fugitive earth, and ever and anon halting through
weariness before his decline into the dark, shadowy vista where the
snowclad peaks of the western mountains are rearing their heads, and
fast-reddening clouds are reminding one of the surface of a ploughed
field.
At times those clouds part their bulk to reveal in blinding splendour
the silvery saddle of Mount Elburz, and the crystal fangs of other
peaks--all, apparently, striving to catch and detain the scudding
vapours. And to such a point does one come to realise the earth's
flight through space that one can scarcely draw one's breath for the
tension, the rapture, of the thought that with the rush of that dear
and beautiful earth oneself is keeping pace towards, and ever tending
towards, the region where, behind the eternal, snow-clad peaks, there
lies a boundless ocean of blue--an ocean beside which there may lie
stretched yet other proud and marvellous lands, a void of azure amid
which one may come to descry far-distant, many-tinted spheres of
planets as yet unknown, but sisters, all, to this earth of ours.
Meanwhile from the steppe slow, ponderous grey oxen with sharp horns
are drawing an endless succession of wagon-loads of threshed grain
through rich, black, sootlike dust. Patiently the beasts' round eyes
regard the earth, while on the top of each load there lolls a Cossack
who, with face sunburnt to the last pitch of swarthiness, and eyes
reddened with exposure to the wind, and beard matted, seemingly
solidified, with dust and sweat, is clad in a shirt drab with grime,
and has a shaggy Persian cap thrust to the back of his head.
Occasionally, also, he may be seen riding on the pole in front of his
team, and being buffeted from behind by the wind which inflates his
shirt. And as sleek and comfortable as the carcasses of the bullocks
are these Cossacks' frames in proportion their eyes are sluggishly
intelligent, and in their every movement is the deliberate air of men
who know precisely what they have to do.
"Tsob, tsobe!" such fellows shout to their teams. This year they are
reaping a splendid harvest.
Yet though these folk, one and all, look fat and prosperous, their mien
is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their teeth. Possibly
this is because they are over-weary with toil. However that may be, the
full-fed country people of the region laugh but little, and seldom sing.
In the centre of the hamlet soars the red brick church of the place--an
edifice which, with its five pinnacles, its belfry over its porch, and
its yellow plaster window-mouldings, looks like an edifice that has
been fashioned of meat, and cemented with grease. Nay, its very shadow
seems so richly heavy as to be the shadow of a fane erected by men
endowed with a plethora of this world's goods to a god otiose in his
grandeur. Ranged around the building in ring fashion, the hamlet's
squat white huts stand girdled with belts of plaited wattle, shawled in
the gorgeous silken scarves of gardens, and crowned with a flowered
brocadework of reed-thatched roofs. In fact, they resemble a bevy of
buxom babi, [Peasant women] as over and about them wave silver poplar
trees, with quivering, lacelike leaves of acacias, and dark-leaved
chestnuts (the leaves of the latter like the palms of human hands)
which rock to and fro as though they would fain seize, and detain the
driving clouds. Also, from court to court scurry Cossack women who,
with skirt-tails tucked up to reveal muscular legs bare to the knee,
are preparing to array themselves for the morrow's festival, and,
meanwhile, chattering to one another, or shouting to plump infants
which may be seen bathing in the dust like sparrows, or picking up
handfuls of sand, and tossing them into the air.
Sheltered from the wind by the churchyard wall, there may be seen also,
as they sprawl on the dry, faded herbage, a score of "strollers for
work" that is to say, of folk who, a community apart, consist of
"nowhere people," of dreamers who live constantly in expectation of
some stroke of luck, some kindly smile from fortune, and of wastrels
who, intoxicated with the abundant bounty of the opulent region, have
fallen passive victims to the Russian craze for vagrancy. These folk
tramp from hamlet to hamlet in parties of two or three, and, while
purporting to seek employment, merely contemplate that employment
lethargically, express astonishment at the plenitude which it produces,
and then decline to put their hands to toil save when dire necessity
renders it no longer possible to satisfy hunger's pangs through the
expedients of mendicancy and theft. Dull, or cowed, or timid, or
furtive of eye, these folk have lost all sense of the difference
between that which constitutes honesty and that which does not.
The morrow being the Feast of the Assumption, these people have, in the
present instance, gathered from every quarter of the country, for the
reason that they hope to be provided with food and drink without first
being made to earn their entertainment.
For the most part they are Russians from the central provinces,
vagabonds whose faces are blackened, and heads blanched with the
unaccustomed sunshine of the South, but whose bodies are clad merely in
rags tossed and tumbled by the wind. True, the wearers of those rags
declare themselves to be peaceful, respectable citizens whom toil and
life's buffetings have exhausted, and compelled to seek temporary rest
and prayer; yet never does a creaking, groaning, ponderous grain wagon,
with its Cossack driver, pass them by without their according the
latter a humble, obsequious salute as, with straw in mouth, and
omitting, always, to raise his cap, the man glances at them askance and
with contempt, or, more frequently, does not even descry these
tattered, grimy hulks between whom and himself there is absolutely
nothing in common.
Lower even, and more noticeably, more pretentiously, than the rest does
a certain "needy" native of Tula named Konev salute each Cossack. A
hardbitten muzhik as sunburnt as a stick of ergot, he has a black beard
distributed irregularly over a lean face, a fawning smile, and eyes
deep-sunken in their sockets.
Most of these persons I have met for the first time today; but Konev is
an old acquaintance of mine, for he and I have more than once
encountered one another on the road between Kursk and the province of
Ter. An "artelni," that is to say, a member of a workman's union, he
cultivates his fellows' good graces for the reason that he is also an
arrant coward, and accustomed, everywhere save in his own village
(which lies buried among the sands of Alexin), to assert that:
"Certainly, this countryside is rich, yet I cannot hit things off with
its inhabitants. In my own part of the country folk are more spiritual,
more truly Russian, by far than here--they are folk with whom the
natives of this region are not to be compared, since in the one
locality the population has a human soul, whereas in the other locality
it is a flint-stone."
And with a certain quiet reflectiveness, he loves also to recount a
marvellous example of unlooked-for enrichment. He will say to you:
"Maybe you do not believe in the virtue of horseshoes? Yet I tell YOU
that once, when a certain peasant of Efremov found a horseshoe, the
next three weeks saw it befall that that peasant's uncle, a tradesman
of Efremov, was burnt to death with all his family, and the property
devolved to the peasant. Did you ever hear of such a thing? What is
going to happen CANNOT be foretold, for at any moment fortune may pity
a man, and send him a windfall."
As Konev says this his dark, pointed eyebrows will go shooting up his
forehead, and his eyes come protruding out of their sockets, as though
he himself cannot believe what he has just related.
Again, should a Cossack pass him without returning his salute, he will
mutter as he follows the man with his eyes:
"An overfed fellow, that--a fellow who can't even look at a human
being! The souls of these folk, I tell you, are withered."
On the present occasion he has arrived on the scene in company with two
women. One of them, aged about twenty, is gentle-looking, plump, and
glassy of eye, with a mouth perpetually half-open, so that the face
looks like that of an imbecile, and though the exposed teeth of its
lower portion may seem to be set in a smile, you will perceive, should
you peer into the motionless eyes under the overhanging brows, that she
has recently been weeping in the terrified, hysterical fashion of a
person of weak intellect.
I have come here with that man and other strangers thus I heard her
narrate in low, querulous tones as with a stumpy finger she rearranged
the faded hair under her yellow and green scarf.
A fat-faced youth with high cheek-bones and the small eyes of a Mongol
here nudged her, and said carelessly:
"You mean, rather, that your own man has cast you off. Probably he was
the only man you ever saw."
"Aye," Konev drawled thoughtfully as he felt in his wallet. "Nowadays
folk need think little of deserting a woman, since in this year of
grace women are no good at all."
Upon this the woman frowned--then blinked her eyes timidly, and would
have opened her lips to reply, but that her companion interrupted her
by saying in a brisk, incisive tone:
"Do not listen to those rascals!"
* * * * *
The woman's companion, some five or six years her senior, has a face
exceptional in the constant change and movement of its great dark eyes
as at one moment they withdraw themselves from the street of the
Cossack hamlet, to gaze fixedly and gravely towards the steppe where it
lies scoured with the scudding breeze, and at another moment fall to
scanning the faces of the persons around her, and, at another, frown
anxiously, or send a smile flitting across her comely lips as she bends
her head, until her features are concealed. Next, the head is raised
again, for the eyes have taken on another phase, and become dilated
with interest, while a sharp furrow is forming between the slender
eyebrows, and the finely moulded lips and trim mouth have compressed
themselves together, and the thin nostrils of the straight nose are
snuffing the air like those of a horse.
In fact, in the woman there is something non-peasant in its origin. For
instance, let one but watch her sharply clicking feet as, in walking,
they peep from under her blue skirt, and one will perceive that they
are not the splayed feet of a villager, but, rather, feet arched of
instep, and at one time accustomed to the wearing of boots. Or, as the
woman sits engaged in embroidering a blue bodice with a pattern of
white peas, one will perceive that she has long been accustomed to
plying the needle so dexterously; swiftly do the small, sunburnt hands
fly in and out under the tumbled material, eagerly though the wind may
strive to wrest it from her. Again, as she sits bending over her work,
one will descry through a rent in her bodice a small, firm bosom which
might almost have been that of a virgin, were it not for the fact that
a projecting teat proclaims that she is a woman preparing to suckle an
infant. In short, as she sits among her companions she looks like a
fragment of copper flung into the midst of some rusty old scrap-iron.
Most of the people in whose society I wander neither rise to great
heights nor sink to great depths, but are as colourless as dust, and
wearisomely insignificant. Hence is it that whenever I chance upon a
person whose soul I can probe and explore for thoughts unfamiliar to me
and words not hitherto heard I congratulate myself, seeing that though
it is my desire to see life grow more fair and exalted, and I yearn to
bring about that end, there constantly reveals itself to me merely a
vista of sharp angles and dark spaces and poor crushed, defrauded
people. Yes, never do I seek to project a spark of my own fire into the
darkness of my neighbour's soul but I see that spark disappear, become
lost, in a chaos of dumb vacuity.
Hence the woman of whom I have just spoken particularly excites my
fancy, and leads me to attempt divinations of her past, until I find
myself evolving a story which is not only of vast complexity, but has
got painted into it merely the colours of my own hopes and aspirations.
It is a story necessarily illusory, necessarily bound to make life seem
even worse than before. Yet it is a grievous thing NEVER to distort
actuality, NEVER to envelop actuality in the wrappings of one's
imagination....
Closing his eyes, and picking his words with difficulty, a tall, fair
peasant drawls in thick, gluelike tones:
"'Very well,' I said: and off we set. On the way I said again: 'Gubin,
though you may not like to be told so, you are no better than a thief.'"
The o's uttered by this peasant are uniformly round and firm--they roll
forward as a cartwheel trundles along a hot, dusty country road.
The youth with the high cheek-bones fixes the whites of his porcine
eyes (eyes the pupils of which are as indeterminate as the eyes of a
blind man) upon the woman in the green scarf. Then, having, like a
calf, plucked and chewed some stalks of the withered grass, he rolls up
the sleeves of his shirt, bends one fist into the crook of the elbow,
and says to Konev with a glance at the well-developed muscle:
"Should you care to hit me?"
"No, you can hit yourself. Hit yourself over the head. Then, perhaps,
you'll grow wiser."
Stolidly the young fellow looks at Konev, and inquires:
"How do you know me to be a fool?"
"Because your personality tells me so."
"Eh?" cries the young fellow truculently as he raises himself to a
kneeling posture. "How know you what I am?"
"I have been told what you are by the Governor of your province."
The young fellow opens his mouth, and stares at Konev. Then he asks:
"To what province do I belong?"
"If you yourself have forgotten to what province you belong, you had
better try and loosen your wits."
"Look here. If I were to hit you, I--"
The woman who has been sewing drops her work to shrug one rounded
shoulder as though she were cold, and ask conciliatorily:
"Well, WHAT province do you belong to?"
"I?" the young fellow re-echoes as he subsides on to his heels. "I
belong to Penza. Why do you ask?"
"Oh never mind why."
Presently, with a strangely youthful laugh, the woman adds in a murmur:
"I ask because I too belong to that province."
"And to which canton?"
"To that of Penza." In the woman's tone is a touch of pride.
The young fellow squats down before her, as before a wood fire,
stretches out his hands, and says in an ingratiating voice:
"What a fine place is our cantonal town! What churches and shops and
stone houses there are in it! In fact, one shop sells a machine on
which you can play anything you like, any sort of a tune!"
"As well as, probably, the fool," comments Konev in an undertone,
though the young fellow is too enthralled with the memory of the
amenities of his cantonal capital to notice the remark. Next, smacking
his lips, and chewing his words, he continues in a murmur:
"In those stone houses."
Here the woman drops her sewing a second time to inquire: "Is there a
convent there?"
"A convent?"
And the young fellow pauses uncouthly to scratch his neck. Only after a
while does he answer:
"A convent? Well, I do not know, for only once, to tell the truth, have
I been in the town, and that was when some of us famine folk were set
to a job of roadmaking."
"Well, well!" gasps Konev, as he rises and takes his departure.
The vagabonds, huddled against the churchyard wall, look like litter
driven thither by the steppe wind, and as liable to be whirled away
again whenever the wind shall choose. Three of the party are sleeping,
and the remainder either mending their clothing, or killing fleas, or
lethargically munching bread collected at the windows of the Cossacks'
huts. I find the sight of them weary me as much as does the young
fellows fatuous babble. Also, I find that whenever the elder of the two
women lifts her eyes from her work, and half smiles, the faint
half-smile in question vexes me intensely. Consequently, I end by
departing in Konev's wake.
Guarding the entrance of the churchyard, four poplar trees stand erect,
save when, as the wind harries them, they bow alternately to the arid,
dusty earth and towards the dim vista of tow-coloured steppe and
snowcapped mountain peaks. Yet, oh how that steppe, bathed in golden
sunshine, draws one to itself and its smooth desolation of sweet, dry
grasses as the parched, fragrant expanse rustles under the soughing
wind!
"You ask about that woman, eh?" queries Konev, whom I find leaning
against one of the poplar trunks, and embracing it with an arm.
"Yes. From where does she hail?"
"From Riazan, she says. Another story of hers is that her name is
Tatiana."
"Has she been with you long?"
"No. In fact, it was only this morning, some thirty versts from here,
that I overtook her and her companion. However, I have seen her before,
at Maikop-on-Laba, during the season of hay harvest, when she had with
her an elderly, smoothfaced muzhik who might have been a soldier, and
certainly was either her lover or an uncle, as well as a bully and a
drunkard of the type which, before it has been two days in a place,
starts about as many brawls. At present, however, she is tramping with
none but this female companion, for, after that the 'uncle' had drunk
away his very belly-band and reins, he was clapped in gaol. The
Cossack, you know, is an awkward person to deal with."
Although Konev speaks without constraint, his eyes are fixed upon the
ground in a manner suggestive of some disturbing thought. And as the
breeze ruffles his dishevelled beard and ragged pea-jacket it ends by
robbing his head of his cap--of the tattered, peakless clout which,
with rents in its lining, so closely resembles a tchepchik [Woman's
mob-cap], as to communicate to the picturesque features of its wearer
an appearance comically feminine.
"Ye-es," expectorating, and drawling the words between his teeth, he
continues: "She is a remarkable woman, a regular, so to speak,
highstepper. Yet it must have been the Devil himself that blew this
young oaf with the bloated jowl on to the scene. Otherwise I should
soon have fixed up matters with her. The cur that he is!"
"But once you told me that you had a wife already?"
Darting at me an angry glance, he turns away with a mutter of:
"AM I to carry my wife about with me in my wallet?"
Here there comes limping across the square a moustachioed Cossack. In
one hand he is holding a bunch of keys, and in the other hand a
battered Cossack cap, peak in front. Behind him, sobbing and applying
his knuckles to his eyes, there is creeping a curly-headed urchin of
eight, while the rear is brought up by a shaggy dog whose dejected
countenance and lowered tail would seem to show that he too is in
disgrace. Each time that the boy whimpers more loudly than usual the
Cossack halts, awaits the lad's coming in silence, cuffs him over the
head with the peak of the cap, and, resuming his way with the gait of a
drunken man, leaves the boy and the dog standing where they are--the
boy lamenting, and the dog wagging its tail as its old black muzzle
sniffs the air. Somehow I discern in the dog's mien of holding itself
prepared for anything that may turn up, a certain resemblance to
Konev's bearing, save that the dog is older in appearance than is the
vagabond.
"You mentioned my wife, I think?" presently he resumes with a sigh.
"Yes, I know, but not EVERY malady proves mortal, and I have been
married nineteen years!"
The rest is well-known to me, for all too frequently have I heard it
and similar tales. Unfortunately, I cannot now take the trouble to stop
him; so once more I am forced to let his complaints come oozing
tediously into my ears.
"The wench was plump," says Konev, "and panting for love; so we just
got married, and brats began to come tumbling from her like bugs from a
bunk."
Subsiding a little, the breeze takes, as it were, to whispering.
"In fact, I could scarcely turn round for them. Even now seven of them
are alive, though originally the stud numbered thirteen. And what was
the use of such a gang? For, consider: my wife is forty-two, and I am
forty-three. She is elderly, and I am what you behold. True, hitherto I
have contrived to keep up my spirits; yet poverty is wearing me down,
and when, last winter, my old woman went to pieces I set forth (for
what else could I do?) to tour the towns. In fact, folk like you and
myself have only one job available--the job of licking one's chops, and
keeping one's eyes open. Yet, to tell you the truth, I no sooner
perceive myself to be growing superfluous in a place than I spit upon
that place, and clear out of it."
Never to this sturdy, inveterate rascal does it seem to occur to
insinuate that he has been doing work of any kind, or that he in the
least cares to do any; while at the same time all self-pity is eschewed
in his narrative, and he relates his experiences much as though they
are the experiences of another man, and not of himself.
Presently, as the Cossack and the boy draw level with us, the former,
fingering his moustache, inquires thickly:
"Whence are you come?"
"From Russia."
"All such folk come from there."
Thereafter, with a gesture of disdain, this man of the abnormally broad
nose, eyes floating in fat, and flaxen head shaped like a flounder's,
resumes his way towards the porch of the church. As for the boy, he
wipes his nose and follows him while the dog sniffs at our legs, yawns,
and stretches itself by the churchyard wall.
"Did you see?" mutters Konev. "Oh yes, I tell you that the folk here
are far less amiable than our own folk in Russia... But hark! What is
that?"
To our ears there have come from behind the corner of the churchyard
wall a woman's scream and the sound of dull blows. Rushing thither, we
behold the fair-headed peasant seated on the prostrate form of the
young fellow from Penza, and methodically, gruntingly delivering blow
after blow upon the young fellow's ears with his ponderous fists, while
counting the blows as he does so. Vainly, at the same time, the woman
from Riazan is prodding the assailant in the back, whilst her female
companion is shrieking, and the crowd at large has leapt to its feet,
and, collected into a knot, is shouting gleefully, "THAT'S the way!
THAT'S the way!"
"Five!" the fair-headed peasant counts.
"Why are you doing this?" the prostrate man protests.
"Six!"
"Oh dear!" ejaculates Konev, dancing with nervousness. "Oh dear, oh
dear!"
The smacking, smashing blows fall in regular cadence as, prone on his
face, the young fellow kicks, struggles and puffs up the dust.
Meanwhile a tall, dour man in a straw hat is rolling up a shirt-sleeve,
and alternately bending and stretching a long arm, whilst a lithe,
white-headed young stripling is hopping, sparrow-like, from one
onlooker to another, and exclaiming in suppressed, cautious tones:
"Stop it, pray stop it, or we shall be arrested for creating a
disturbance!"
Presently the tall man strides towards the fair-headed peasant, deals
him a single blow which knocks him from the back of the young fellow,
and, turning to the crowd, says with an informing air:
"THAT'S how we do it in Tambov!"
"Brutes! Villains!" screams the woman from Riazan, as she bends over
the young fellow. Her cheeks are livid, and as she wipes the flushed
face of the beaten youth with the hem of her gown, her dark eyes are
flashing with dry wrath, and her lips quivering so painfully as to
disclose a set of fine, level teeth.
Konev, pecking up to her, says with an air of advice:
"You had better take him away, and give him some water."
Upon this the fair-headed muzhik, rising to his knees, stretches a fist
towards the man from Tambov, and exclaims:
"Why should he have gone and bragged of his strength, pray?"
"Was that a good reason for thrashing him?"
"And who are you?"
"Who am I?"
"Yes, who are YOU?"
"Never mind. See that I don't give you another swipe!"
Upon this the onlookers plunge into a heated debate as to who was
actually the beginner of the disturbance, while the lithe young fellow
continues to wring his hands, and cry imploringly:
"DON'T make so much noise about it! Remember that we are in a strange
land, and that the folk hereabouts are strict."
So queerly do his ears project from his head that he would seem to be
able, if he pleased, to fold them right over his eyes.
Suddenly from the roseate heavens comes the vibrant note of a bell;
whereupon, the hubbub ceases and at the same moment a young Cossack
with a face studded with freckles, and, in his hands, a cudgel, makes
his appearance among the crowd.
"What does all this mean?" he inquires not uncivilly.
"They have been beating a man," the woman from Riazan replies. As she
does so she looks comely in spite of her wrath.
The Cossack glances at her--then smiles.
"And where is the party going to sleep?" he inquires of the crowd.
"Here," someone ventures.
"Then you must not--someone might break into the church. Go, rather, to
the Ataman [Cossack headman or mayor], and you will be billeted among
the huts."
"It is a matter of no consequence," Konev remarks as he paces beside
me. "Yet--"
"They seem to be taking us for robbers," is my interruption.
"As is everywhere the way," he comments. "It is but one thing more laid
to our charge. Caution decides always that a stranger is a thief."
In front of us walks the woman from Riazan, in company with the young
fellow of the bloated features. He is downcast of mien, and at length
mutters something which I cannot catch, but in answer to which she
tosses her head, and says in a distinct, maternal tone:
"You are too young to associate with such brutes."
The bell of the church is slowly beating, and from the huts there keep
coming neat old men and women who make the hitherto deserted street
assume a brisk appearance, and the squat huts take on a welcoming air.
In a resonant, girlish voice there meets our ears:
"Ma-am! Ma-amka! Where is the key of the green box? I want my ribands!"
While in answer to the bell's summons, the oxen low a deep echo.
The wind has fallen, but reddish clouds still are gliding over the
hamlet, and the mountain peaks blushing until they seem, thawing, to be
sending streams of golden, liquid fire on to the steppes, where, as
though cast in stone, a stork, standing on one leg, is listening,
seemingly, to the rustling of the heat-exhausted herbage.
* * * * *
In the forecourt of the Ataman's hut we are deprived of our passports,
while two of our number, found to be without such documents, are led
away to a night's lodging in a dark storehouse in a corner of the
premises. Everything is executed quietly enough, and without the least
fuss, purely as a matter of routine; yet Konev mutters, as dejectedly
he contemplates the darkening sky:
"What a surprising thing, to be sure!"
"What is?"
"A passport. Surely a decent, peaceable man ought to be able to travel
WITHOUT a passport? So long as he be harmless, let him--"
"You are not harmless," with angry emphasis the woman from Riazan
interposes.
Konev closes his eyes with a smile, and says nothing more.
Almost until the vigil service is over are we kept kicking our heels
about that forecourt, like sheep in a slaughter-house. Then Konev,
myself, the two women, and the fat-faced young fellow are led away
towards the outskirts of the village, and allotted an empty hut with
broken-down walls and a cracked window.
"No going out will be permitted," says the Cossack who has conducted us
thither. "Else you will be arrested."
"Then give us a morsel of bread," Konev says with a stammer. "Have you
done any work here?" the Cossack inquires.
"Yes--a little."
"For me?"
"No. It did not so happen."
"When it does so happen I will give you some bread."
And like a water-butt the fat kindly-looking man goes rolling out of
the yard.
"What else was to be expected?" grumbles Konev with his eyebrows
elevated to the middle of his forehead. "The folk hereabouts are
knaves. Ah, well!"
As for the women, they withdraw to the darkest corner of the hut, and
lie down, while the young fellow disappears after probing the walls and
floor, and returns with an armful of straw which he strews upon the
hard, beaten clay. Then he stretches himself thereon with hands clasped
behind his battered head.
"See the resourcefulness of that fellow from Penza!" comments Konev
enviously. "Hi, you women! There is, it would seem, some straw about."
To this comes from the women's corner the acid reply:
"Then go and fetch some."
"For you?"
"Yes, for us."
"Then I must, I suppose."
Nevertheless Konev merely remains sitting on the windowsill, and
discoursing on the subject of certain needy folk who do but desire to
go and say their prayers in church, yet are banded into barns.
"Yes, and though you may say that folk, the world over, have a soul in
common, I tell you that this is not so--that, on the contrary, we
Russian strangers find it a hard matter here to get looked upon as
respectable."
With which he slips out quietly into the street, and disappears from
view.
The young fellow's sleep is restless--he keeps tossing about, with his
fat arms and legs sprawling over the floor, and grunting, and snoring.
Under him the straw makes a crackling sound, while the two women
whisper together in the darkness, and the reeds of the dry thatch on
the roof rustle (the wind is still drawing an occasional breath), and
ever and anon a twig brushes against an outside wall. The scene is like
a scene in a dream.
Out of doors the myriad tongues of the pitch-black, starless night seem
to be debating something in soft, sad, pitiful tones which ever keep
growing fainter; until, when the hour of ten has been struck on the
watchman's gong, and the metal ceases to vibrate, the world grows
quieter still, much as though all living things, alarmed by the clang
in the night, have concealed themselves in the invisible earth or the
equally invisible heavens.
I seat myself by the window, and watch how the earth keeps exhaling
darkness, and the darkness enveloping, drowning the grey, blurred huts
in black, tepid vapour, though the church remains invisible--evidently
something stands interposed between it and my viewpoint. And it seems
to me that the wind, the seraph of many pinions which has spent three
days in harrying the land, must now have whirled the earth into a
blackness, a denseness, in which, exhausted, and panting, and scarcely
moving, it is helplessly striving to remain within the encompassing,
all-pervading obscurity where, helpless and weary in like degree, the
wind has sloughed its thousands of wing-feathers--feathers white and
blue and golden of tint, but also broken, and smeared with dust and
blood.
And as I think of our petty, grievous human life, as of a drunkard's
tune on a sorry musical instrument, or as of a beautiful song spoilt by
a witless, voiceless singer, there begins to wail in my soul an
insatiable longing to breathe forth words of sympathy with all mankind,
words of burning love for all the world, words of appreciation of, for
example, the sun's beauty as, enfolding the earth in his beams, and
caressing and fertilising her, he bears her through the expanses of
blue. Yes, I yearn to recite to my fellow-men words which shall raise
their heads. And at length I find myself compounding the following
jejune lines:
To our land we all are born
In happiness to dwell.
The sun has bred us to this land
Its fairness to excel.
In the temple of the sun
We high priests are, divine.
Then each of us should claim his life,
And cry, "This life is mine!"
Meanwhile from the women's corner there comes a soft, intermittent
whispering; and as it continues to filter through the darkness, I
strain my ears until I succeed in catching a few of the words uttered,
and can distinguish at least the voices of the whisperers.
The woman from Riazan mutters firmly, and with assurance:
"Never ought you to show that it hurts you."
And with a sniff, in a tone of dubious acquiescence, her companion
replies:
"Ye-es-so long as one can bear it."
"Ah, but never mind. PRETEND. That is to say, when he beats you, make
light of it, and treat it as a joke."
"But what if he beats me very much indeed?"
"Continue still to make light of it, still to smile at him kindly."
"Well, YOU can never have been beaten, for you do not seem to know what
it is like."
"Oh, but I have, my dear--I do know what it is like, for my experience
of it has been large. Do not be afraid, however. HE won't beat you."
A dog yelps, pauses a moment to listen, and then barks more angrily
than ever. Upon that other dogs reply, and for a moment or two I am
annoyed to find that I cannot overhear the women's conversation. In
time, however, the dogs cease their uproar, for want of breath, and the
suppressed dialogue filters once more to my ears.
"Never forget, my dear, that a muzhik's life is a hard one. Yes, for us
plain folk life is hard. Hence, one ought to make nothing of things,
and let them come easy to one."
"Mother of God!"
"And particularly should a woman so face things; for upon her
everything depends. For one thing, let her take to herself, in place of
her mother, a husband or a sweetheart. Yes, try that, and see. And
though, at first, your husband may find fault with you, he will
afterwards take to boasting to other muzhiks that he has a wife who can
do everything, and remain ever as bright and loving as the month of
May. Never does she give in; never WOULD she give in--no, not if you
were to cut off her head!"
"Indeed?"
"Yes. And see if that will not come to be your opinion as much as mine."
Again, to my annoyance, the dialogue is interrupted--this time by the
sound of uncertain footsteps in the street without. Thus the next words
of the women's conversation escape me. Then I hear:
"Have you ever read 'The Vision of the Mother of God'?"
"N-no, I have not."
"Then you had better ask some older woman than myself to tell you about
it, for it is a good book to become acquainted with. Can you read?"
"No, I cannot. But tell me, yourself, what the vision was?"
"Listen, and I will do so."
From outside the window Konev's voice softly inquires:
"Is that our lot in there? Yes? Thank God, then, for I had nearly lost
my way after stirring up a lot of dogs, and being forced to use my
fists upon them. Here, you! Catch hold!"
With which, handing me a large watermelon, he clambers through the
window with a great clattering and disturbance.
"I have managed also to gee a good supply of bread," he continues.
"Perhaps you believe that I stole it? But no. Indeed, why should one
steal when one can beg-a game at which I am particularly an old hand,
seeing that always, on any occasion, I can make up to people? It
happened like this. When I went out I saw a fire glowing in a hut, and
folk seated at supper. And since, wherever many people are present, one
of them at least has a kind heart, I ate and drank my fill, and then
managed to make off with provender for you as well. Hi, you women!"
There follows no answer.
"I believe those daughters of whores must be asleep," he comments. "Hi,
women!"
"What is it?" drily inquires the woman from Riazan.
"Should you like a taste of water-melon?"
"I should, thank you."
Thereupon, Konev begins to make his way towards the voice.
"Yes, bread, soft wheaten bread such as you--"
Here the other woman whines in beggar fashion:
"And give ME a taste, too."
"Oh, yes, I will. But where the devil are you?"
"And a taste of melon as well?"
"Yes, certainly. Hullo! Who is this?"
From the woman from Riazan comes a cry of pain.
"Mind how you step, wretch!" she exclaims.
"All right, but you needn't make so much noise about it. You see how
dark it is, and I--"
"You ought to have struck a match, then."
"I possess but a quarter of a match, for matches are not
over-plentiful, and even if I did catch hold of you no great harm can
have been done. For instance, when your husband used to beat you he
must have hurt you far worse than I. By the way, DID he beat you?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"None; only, I am curious to know. Surely a woman like you--"
"See here. Do not dare to touch me, or I--"
"Or you what?"
There ensues a prolonged altercation amid which I can hear epithets of
increasing acerbity and opprobrium being applied; until the woman from
Riazan exclaims hoarsely:
"Oh, you coward of a man, take that!"
Whereupon follows a scrimmage amid which I can distinguish slappings,
gross chuckles from Konev, and a muffled cry from the younger woman of:
"Oh, do not so behave, you wretch!"
Striking a match, I approach the spot, and pull Konev away. He is in no
way abashed, but merely cooled in his ardour as, seated on the floor at
my feet, and panting and expectorating, he says reprovingly to the
woman:
"When folk wish merely to have a game with you, you ought not to let
yourself lose your temper. Fie, fie!"
"Are you hurt?" the woman inquires quietly.
"What do you suppose? You have cut my lip, but that is the worst
damage."
"Then if you come here again I will lay the whole of your face open."
"Vixen! What bumpkinish stupidity!"
Konev turns to myself.
"And as for you, you go catching at the first thing you find, and have
torn my coat."
"Then do not insult people."
"INSULT people, fool? The idea of anyone insulting a woman like THAT!"
Whereafter, with a mean chuckle, the fellow goes on to discourse upon
the ease with which peasant women err, and upon their love of deceiving
their husbands.
"The impudent rascal!" comments the woman from Penza sleepily.
After a while the young fellow springs to his feet, and grates his
teeth. Then, reseating himself, and clutching at his head, he says
gloomily:
"I intend to leave here tomorrow, and go home. I do not care WHAT
becomes of me."
With which he subsides on to the floor as though exhausted.
"The blockhead!" is Konev's remark.
Amid the darkness a black shape rises. It does so as soundlessly as a
fish in a pond, glides to the door, and disappears.
"That was she," remarks Konev. "What a strong woman! However, if you
had not pulled me away, I should have got the better of her. By God I
should!"
"Then follow her, and make another attempt."
"No," after a moment's reflection he rejoins. "Out there she might get
hold of a stick, or a brick, or some such thing. However, I'LL get even
with her. As a matter of fact, you wasted your time in stopping me, for
she detests me like the very devil."
And he renews his wearisome boastings of his conquests; until suddenly,
he stops as though he has swallowed his tongue.
All becomes quiet; everything seems to have come to a halt, and to be
pressing close in sleep to the motionless earth. I too grow drowsy, and
have a vision amid which my mind returns to the donations which I have
received that day, and sees them swell and multiply and increase in
weight until I feel their bulk pressing upon me like a tumulus of the
steppes. Next, the coppery notes of a bell jar in my ears, and, struck
at random intervals, go floating away into the darkness.
It is the hour of midnight.
Soon, scattered drops of rain begin to patter down upon the dry thatch
of the hut and the dust in the street outside, while a cricket
continues chirping as though it were hurriedly relating a tale. Also, I
hear filtering forth into the darkness a softly gulped, eager
whispering.
"Think," says one of the voices, "what it must mean to have to go
tramping about without work, or only with work for another to do!"
The young fellow who has been so soundly thrashed replies in a dull
voice:
"I know nothing of you."
"More softly, more softly!" urges the woman.
"What is it you want?"
"I want NOTHING. It is merely that I am sorry for you as a man yet
young and strong. You see--well, I have not lived with my eyes shut.
That is why I say, come with me."
"But come whither?"
"To the coast, where I know there to be beautiful plots of land for the
asking. You yourself can see how good the land hereabout is. Well,
there land better still is to be obtained."
"Liar!"
"More softly, more softly!" again urges the woman. "Moreover, I am not
bad-looking, and can manage things well, and do any sort of work. Hence
you and I might live quite peacefully and happily, and come,
eventually, to have a place of our own. Yes, and I could bear and rear
you a child. Only see how fit I am. Only feel this breast of mine."
The young fellow snorts, and I begin to find the situation oppressive,
and to long to let the couple know that I am not asleep. Curiosity,
however, prevents me, and I continue listening to the strange,
arresting dialogue.
"Wait a little," whispers the woman with a gasp. "Do not play with me,
for I am not that sort of woman. Yes, I mean what I say. Let be!"
Rudely, roughly the young fellow replies:
"Then don't run after me. A woman who runs after a man, and plays the
whore with him, is--"
"Less noise, please--less noise, I beg of you, or we shall be heard,
and I shall be put to shame!"
"Doesn't it put you to shame to be offering yourself to me like this?"
A silence ensues, save that the young fellow goes on snorting and
fidgeting, and the raindrops continue to fall with the same reluctance,
the same indolence, as ever. Then once more the woman's voice is heard
through the pattering.
"Perhaps," says the voice, "you have guessed that I am seeking a
husband? Yes, I AM seeking one--a good, steady muzhik."
"But I am NOT a good, steady muzhik."
"Fie, fie!"
"What?" he sniggers. "A husband for you? The impudence of you! A
'husband'! Go along!"
"Listen to me. I am tired of tramping."
"Then go home."
This time there ensues a long pause. Then the woman says very softly:
"I have neither home nor kindred."
"A lie!" ejaculates the young fellow.
"No, by God it is not a lie! The Mother of God forget me if it is."
In these last words I can detect the note of tears. By this time the
situation has become intolerable, for I am yearning to rise and kick
the young fellow out of the hut, and then to have a long and earnest
talk with his companion. "Oh that I could take her to my arms," I
reflect, "and cherish her as I would a poor lost child!"
After a while the sounds of a new struggle between the pair are heard.
"Don't put me off like that!" growls the young fellow.
"And don't you make any attempt upon me! I am not the sort of woman to
be forced."
The next moment there arises a cry of pain and astonishment.
"What was that for? What was that for?" the woman wails.
With an answering exclamation I spring to my feet, for my feelings have
become those of a wild beast.
At once everything grows quiet again, save that someone, crawls over
the floor and, in leaving the hut, jars the latch of the crazy,
single-hinged portal.
"It was not my fault," grumbles the young fellow. "It all came of that
stinking woman offering herself to me. Besides, the place is full of
bugs, and I cannot sleep."
"Beast!" pants someone in the vicinity.
"Hold your tongue, bitch!" is the fellow's retort.
By now the rain has ceased, and such air as filters through the window
seems increasedly stifling. Momentarily the hush grows deeper, until
the breast feels filled with a sense of oppression, and the face and
eyes as though they were glued over with a web. Even when I step into
the yard I find the place to be like a cellar on a summer's day, when
the very ice has melted in the dark retreat, and the latter's black
cavity is charged with hot, viscous humidity.
Somewhere near me a woman is gulping out sobs. For a moment or two I
listen; then I approach her, and come upon her seated in a corner with
her head in her hands, and her body rocking to and fro as though she
were doing me obeisance.
Yet I feel angry, somehow, and remain standing before her without
speaking--until at length I ask:
"Are you mad?"
"Go away," is, after a pause, her only reply.
"I heard all that you said to that young fellow."
"Oh, did you? Then what business is it of yours? Are you my brother?"
Yet she speaks the words absent-mindedly rather than angrily. Around us
the dim, blurred walls are peering in our direction with sightless
eyes, while in the vicinity a bullock is drawing deep breaths.