"Should you remain much longer in that position," I remark, "you will
have a headache."
There follows no reply.
"Am I disturbing you?" I continue.
"Oh no; not at all." And, lowering her hands, she looks at me. "Whence
do you come?"
"From Nizhni Novgorod."
"Oh, from a long way off!"
"Do you care for that young fellow?"
Not for a moment or two does she answer; and when she does so she
answers as though the words have been rehearsed.
"Not particularly. It is that he is a strong young fellow who has lost
his way, and is too much of a fool (as you too must have seen) to find
it again. So I am very sorry for him. A good muzhik ought to be well
placed."
On the bell of the church there strikes the hour of two. Without
interrupting herself, the woman crosses her breast at each stroke.
"Always," she continues, "I feel sorry when I see a fine young fellow
going to the dogs. If I were able, I would take all such young men, and
restore them to the right road."
"Then you are not sorry FOR YOURSELF?"
"Not for myself? Oh yes, for myself as well."
"Then why flaunt yourself before this booby, as you have been doing?"
"Because I might reform him. Do you not think so? Ah, you do not know
me."
A sigh escapes her.
"He hit you, I think?" I venture.
"No, he did not. And in any case you are not to touch him."
"Yet you cried out?"
Suddenly she leans towards me, and says:
"Yes, he did strike me--he struck me on the breast, and would have
overpowered me had it not been that I cannot, I will not, do things
heartlessly, like a cat. Oh, the brutes that men can be!"
Here the conversation undergoes an interruption through the fact that
someone has come out to the hut door, and is whistling softly, as for a
dog.
"There he is!" whispers the woman.
"Then had I not best send him about his business?"
"No, no!" she exclaims, catching at my knees. "No need is there for
that, no need is there for that!"
Then with a low moan she adds:
"Oh Lord, how I pity our folk and their lives! Oh God our Father!"
Her shoulders heave, and presently she bursts into tears, with a
whisper, between the pitiful sobs, of:
"How, on such a night as this, one remembers all that one has ever
seen, and the folk that ever one has known! And oh, how wearisome,
wearisome it all is! And how I should like to cry throughout the
world--But to cry what? I know not--I have no message to deliver."
That feeling I can understand as well as she, for all too often has it
seemed to crush my soul with voiceless longing.
Then, as I stroke her bowed head and quivering shoulder, I ask her who
she is; and presently, on growing a little calmer, she tells me the
history of her life.
She is, it appears, the daughter of a carpenter and bee-keeper. On her
mother's death, this man married a young woman, and allowed her, as
stepmother, to persuade him to place the narrator, Tatiana, in a
convent, where she (Tatiana) lived from the age of nine till
adolescence, and, meanwhile, was taught her letters, and also a certain
amount of manual labour; until, later, her father married her off to a
friend of his, a well-to-do ex-soldier, who was acting as forester on
the convent's estate.
As the woman relates this, I feel vexed that I cannot see her
face--only a dim, round blur amid which there looms what appears to be
a pair of closed eyes. Also, so complete is the stillness, that she can
narrate her story in a barely audible whisper; and I gain the
impression that the pair of us are sitting plunged in a void of
darkness where life does not exist, yet where we are destined to begin
life.
"However, the man was a libertine and a drunkard, and many a riotous
night did he spend with his cronies in the porter's lodge of the
convent. Also, he tried to arouse a similar taste in myself; and though
for a time I resisted the tendency, I at length, on his taking to
beating me, yielded. Only for one man, however, had I really a liking;
and with him it was, and not with my husband, that I first learnt the
meaning of spousehood.... Unfortunately, my lover himself was
married; and in time his wife came to hear of me, and procured my
husband's dismissal. The chief reason was that the lady, a person of
great wealth, was herself handsome, albeit stout, and did not care to
see her place assumed by a nobody. Next, my husband died of drink; and
as my father had long been dead, and I found myself alone, I went to
see and consult my stepmother. All that she said, however, was: 'Why
come to me? Go and think things out for yourself.' And I too then
reflected: 'Yes, why should I have gone to her?' and repaired to the
convent. Yet even there there seemed to be no place left for me, and
eventually old Mother Taisia, who had once been my governess, said:
'Tatiana, do you return to the world, for there, and only there, will
you have a chance of happiness. So to the world I returned--and still
am roaming it."
"Your quest of happiness is not following an easy road!"
"It is following the road that it best can."
By now the darkness has ceased to keep spread over us, as it were, the
stretched web of a heavy curtain, but has grown thinner and more
transparent with the tension, save that, in places (for instance, in
the window of the hut), it still lies in thick folds or clots as it
peers at us with its sightless eyes.
Over the hummock-like roofs of the huts rise the church's steeple and
the poplar trees; while hither and thither on the wall of the hut, the
cracks and holes in the crumbling plaster have caused the wall to
resemble the map of an unknown country.
Glancing at the woman's dark eyes, I perceive them to be shining as
pensively, innocently as the eyes of a young maiden.
"You are indeed a curious woman!" I remark.
"Perhaps I am," she replies as she moistens her lips with a slender,
almost feline tongue.
"What are you really seeking?"
"I have considered the matter, and know, at last, my mind. It is this:
I hope some day to fall in with a good muzhik with whom to go in search
of land. Probably land of the kind, I mean, is to be found in the
neighbourhood of New Athos, [A monastery in the Caucasus, built on the
reputed site of a cave tenanted by Simeon the Canaanite] for I have
been there already, and know of a likely spot for the purpose. And
there we shall set our place in order, and lay out a garden and an
orchard, and prepare as much plough land as we may need for our
working."
Her words are now firmer, more assured.
"And when we have put everything in order, other folk may join us; and
then, as the oldest settlers in the place, we shall hold the position
of honour. And thus things will continue until a new village, really a
fine settlement, will have become formed--a settlement of which my
husband will be selected the warden until such time as I shall have
made of him a barin [Gentleman or squire] outright. Also, children may
one day play in that garden, and a summer-house be built there. Ah, how
delightful such a life appears!"
In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that already she
can describe the new establishment in as much detail as though she has
long been a resident in it.
"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that such a
home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of course, is a
muzhik."
Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though they
aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.
And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to tears. To
conceal the fact I murmur:
"Should I myself suit you?"
She gives a faint laugh.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."
"How do you know what my ideas are?"
She edges away from me a little, then says drily:
"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never
consent."
With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on which
we are sitting, she adds:
"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do not like
them."
"What in them is it that displeases you?"
"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet also
they have ways which alienate me."
Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:
"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."
She shakes her head protestingly.
"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts. "Woman's
proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it, and, when it has
been weaned, to get herself ready to have another one. That is how
woman should live. She should live as pass spring and summer, autumn
and winter."
I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's intellectual
features; and though, also, I long to take her in my arms, I feel that
my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and,
bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely
journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains
merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their
chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks
have temporarily deprived me of my passport.
"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she edges
towards me.
"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."
"And are you travelling alone?"
"I am."
"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the world!"
By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with their
soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear played by a
certain blind old man. Next, four times, with unsteady touch, the
drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice softly, once with a vigour that
clangs the metal again, and a fourth time with a mere tap of the iron
hammer against the copper plate.
"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"
"Sorry lives."
"Yes, that is what I too have found."
A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:
"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes closed. Often
I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking until I seem to be
the only human being in the world, and the only human being destined to
re-order it."
"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord, abasement,
and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and stupidity."
And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in recollections of
all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes that I have beheld.
"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good in your
heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and your
strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright. And how shall
he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he have been shown what is
good?"
She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight into my eyes as
she parts her comely lips.
"True," she rejoins--"But, dear friend, it is also true that goodness
never bargains."
Together she and I seem to be drifting towards a vista which is coming
to look, as it sloughs the shadow of night, ever clearer and clearer.
It is a vista of white huts, silvery trees, a red church, and
dew-bespangled earth. And as the sun rises he reveals to us clustered,
transparent clouds which, like thousands of snow-white birds, go
gliding over our heads.
"Yes," she whispers again as gently she gives me a nudge. "As one
pursues one's lonely way one thinks and thinks--but of what? Dear
friend, you have said that no one really cares what is the matter. Ah,
HOW true that is!"
Here she springs to her feet, and, pulling me up with her, glues
herself to my breast with a vehemence which causes me momentarily to
push her away. Upon this, bursting into tears, she tends towards me
again, and kisses me with lips so dry as almost to cut me--she kisses
me in a way which penetrates to my very soul.
"You have been oh, so good!" she whispers softly. As she speaks, the
earth seems to be sinking under my feet.
Then she tears herself away, glances around the courtyard, and darts to
a corner where, under a fence, a clump of herbage is sprouting.
"Go now," she adds in a whisper. "Yes, go."
Then, with a confused smile, as, crouching among the herbage as though
it had been a small cave, she rearranges her hair, she adds:
"It has befallen so. Ah, me! May God grant unto me His pardon!"
Astonished, feeling that I must be dreaming, I gaze at her with
gratitude, for I sense an extraordinary lightness to be present in my
breast, a radiant void through which joyous, intangible words and
thoughts keep flying as swallows wheel across the firmament.
"Amid a great sorrow," she adds, "even a small joy becomes a great
felicity."
Yet as I glance at the woman's bosom, whereon moist beads are standing
like dewdrops on the outer earth; as I glance at that bosom, whereon
the sun's rays are finding a roseate reflection, as though the blood
were oozing through the skin, my rapture dies away, and turns to
sorrow, heartache, and tears. For in me there is a presentiment that
before the living juice within that bosom shall have borne fruit, it
will have become dried up.
Presently, in a tone almost of self-excuse, and one wherein the words
sound a little sadly, she continues:
"Times there are when something comes pouring into my soul which makes
my breasts ache with the pain of it. What is there for me to do at such
moments save reveal my thoughts to the moon, or, in the daytime, to a
river? Oh God in Heaven! And afterwards I feel as ashamed of myself!...
Do not look at me like that. Why stare at me with those eyes, eyes
so like the eyes of a child?"
"YOUR face, rather, is like a child's," I remark.
"What? Is it so stupid?"
"Something like that."
As she fastens up her bodice she continues:
"Soon the time will be five o'clock, when the bell will ring for Mass.
To Mass I must go today, for I have a prayer to offer to the Mother of
God... Shall you be leaving here soon?"
"Yes--as soon, that is to say, as I have received back my passport."
"And for what destination?"
"For Alatyr. And you?"
She straightens her attire, and rises. As she does so I perceive that
her hips are narrower than her shoulders, and that throughout she is
well-proportioned and symmetrical.
"I? As yet I do not know. True, I had thought of proceeding to
Naltchik, but now, perhaps, I shall not do so, for all my future is
uncertain."
Upon that she extends to me a pair of strong, capable arms, and
proposes with a blush:
"Shall we kiss once more before we part?"
She clasps me with the one arm, and with the other makes the sign of
the cross, adding:
"Good-bye, dear friend, and may Christ requite you for all your words,
for all your sympathy!"
"Then shall we travel together?"
At the words she frees herself, and says firmly, nay, sternly:
"Not so. Never would I consent to such a plan. Of course, had you been
a muzhik--but no. Even then what would have been the use of it, seeing
that life is to be measured, not by a single hour, but by years?"
And, quietly smiling me a farewell, she moves away towards the hut,
whilst I, remaining seated, lose myself in thoughts of her. Will she
ever overtake her quest in life? Shall I ever behold her again?
The bell for early Mass begins, though for some time past the hamlet
has been astir, and humming in a sedate and non-festive fashion.
I enter the hut to fetch my wallet, and find the place empty. Evidently
the whole party has left by the gap in the broken-down wall.
I repair, next, to the Ataman's office, where I receive back my
passport before setting out to look for my companions in the square.
In similar fashion to yesterday those "folk from Russia" are lolling
alongside the churchyard wall, and also have seated among them, leaning
his back against a log, the fat-jowled youth from Penza, with his
bruised face looking even larger and uglier than before, for the reason
that his eyes are sunken amid purple protuberances.
Presently there arrives a newcomer in the shape of an old man with a
grey head adorned with a faded velvet skull-cap, a pointed beard, a
lean, withered frame, prominent cheekbones, a red, porous-looking,
cunningly hooked nose, and the eyes of a thief.
Him a flaxen-haired youth from Orel joins with a similar youth in
accosting.
"Why are YOU tramping?" inquires the former.
"And why are YOU?" the old man retorts in nasal tones as, looking at no
one, he proceeds to mend the handle of a battered metal teapot with a
piece of wire.
"We are travelling in search of work, and therefore living as we have
been commanded to live."
"By WHOM commanded?"
"By God. Have you forgotten?"
Carelessly, but succinctly, the old man retorts:
"Take heed lest upon you, some day, God vomit all the dust and litter
which you are raising by tramping His earth!"
"How?" cries one of the youths, a long-eared stripling.
"Were not Christ and His Apostles also tramps?"
"Yes, CHRIST," is the old man's meaning reply as he raises his sharp
eyes to those of his opponent. "But what are you talking of, you fools?
With whom are you daring to compare yourselves? Take care lest I report
you to the Cossacks!"
I have listened to many such arguments, and always found them
distasteful, even as I have done discussions regarding the soul. Hence
I feel inclined to depart.
At this moment, however, Konev makes his appearance. His mien is
dejected, and his body perspiring, while his eyes keep blinking rapidly.
"Has any one seen Tanka--that woman from Riazan?" he inquires. "No?
Then the bitch must have bolted during the night. The fact is that,
overnight, someone gave me a drop or two to drink, a mere dram, but
enough to lay me as fast asleep as a bear in winter-time. And in the
meantime, she must have run away with that Penza fellow."
"No, HE is here," I remark.
"Oh, he is, is he? Well, as what has the company registered itself? As
a set of ikon-painters, I should think!"
Again he begins to look anxiously about him.
"Where can she have got to?" he queries.
"To Mass, maybe."
"Of course! Well, I am greatly smitten with her. Yes, my word I am!"
Nevertheless, when Mass comes to an end, and, to the sound of a merry
peal of bells, the well-dressed local Cossacks file out of church, and
distribute themselves in gaudy streams about the hamlet, no Tatiana
makes her appearance.
"Then she IS gone," says Konev ruefully. "But I'll find her yet! I'LL
come up with her!"
That this will happen I do not feel confident. Nor do I desire that it
should.
* * * * *
Five years later I am pacing the courtyard of the Metechski Prison in
Tiflis, and, as I do so, trying to imagine for what particular offence
I have been incarcerated in that place of confinement.
Picturesquely grim without, the institution is, inwardly, peopled with
a set of cheerful, but clumsy, humourists. That is to say, it would
seem as though, "by order of the authorities," the inmates are
presenting a stage spectacle in which they are playing, willingly and
zealously, but with a complete lack of experience, imperfectly
comprehended roles as prisoners, warders, and gendarmes.
For instance, today, when a warder and a gendarme came to my cell to
escort me to exercise, and I said to them, "May I be excused exercise
today? I am not very well, and do not feel like, etcetera, etcetera,"
the gendarme, a tall, handsome man with a red beard, held up to me a
warning finger.
"NO ONE," he said, "has given you permission to feel, or not to feel,
like doing things."
To which the warder, a man as dark as a chimney-sweep, with large blue
"whites" to his eyes, added stutteringly:
"To no one here has permission been given to feel, or not to feel, like
doing things. You hear that?"
So to exercise I went.
In this stone-paved yard the air is as hot as in an oven, for overhead
there lours only a small, flat patch of dull, drab-tinted sky, and on
three sides of the yard rise high grey walls, with, on the fourth, the
entrance-gates, topped by a sort of look-out post.
Over the roof of the building there comes floating the dull roar of the
turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the hucksters of the
Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and as a cross motif thrown
into these sounds, the sighing of the wind and the cooing of doves. In
fact, to be here is like being in a drum which a myriad drumsticks are
beating.
Through the bars of the double line of windows on the second and the
third stories peer the murky faces and towsled heads of some of the
inmates. One of the latter spits his furthest into the yard--evidently
with the intention of hitting myself: but all his efforts prove vain.
Another one shouts with a mordant expletive:
"Hi, you! Why do you keep tramping up and down like an old hen? Hold up
your head!"
Meanwhile the inmates continue to intone in concert a strange chant
which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a plaything for
a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant meanders, wavers,
to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it soars yet higher towards
the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly into a snarl, and, growling like a
wild beast in terror, dies away to give place to a refrain which coils,
trickles forth from between the bars of the windows until it has
permeated the free, torrid air.
As I listen to that refrain, long familiar to me, it seems to voice
something intelligible, and agitates my soul almost to a sense of
agony....
Presently, while pacing up and down in the shadow of the building, I
happen to glance towards the line of windows. Glued to the framework of
one of the iron window-squares, I can discern a blue-eyed face.
Overgrown with an untidy sable beard it is, as well as stamped with a
look of perpetually grieved surprise.
"That must be Konev," I say to myself aloud.
Konev it is--Konev of the well-remembered eyes. Even at this moment
they are regarding me with puckered attention.
I throw around me a hasty glance. My own warder is dozing on a shady
bench near the entrance. Two more warders are engaged in throwing dice.
A fourth is superintending the pumping of water by two convicts, and
superciliously marking time for their lever with the formula, "Mashkam,
dashkam! Dashkam, mashkam!"