In a mountain defile near a little tributary of the Sunzha, there was
being built a workman's barraque--a low, long edifice which reminded
one of a large coffin lid.
The building was approaching completion, and, meanwhile, a score of
carpenters were employed in fashioning thin planks into doors of equal
thinness, knocking together benches and tables, and fitting
window-frames into the small window-squares.
Also, to assist these carpenters in the task of protecting the barraque
from tribesmen's nocturnal raids, the shrill-voiced young student of
civil engineering who had been set in charge of the work had sent to
the place, as watchman, an ex-soldier named Paul Ivanovitch, a man of
the Cossack type, and myself.
Yet whereas we were out-at-elbows, the carpenters were sleek,
respectable, monied, well-clad fellows. Also, there was something dour
and irritating about them, since, for one thing, they had failed to
respond to our greeting on our first appearance, and eyed us with
nothing but dislike and suspicion. Hence, hurt by their chilly
attitude, we had withdrawn from their immediate neighbourhood,
constructed a causeway of stepping stones to the eastern bank of the
rivulet, and taken up our abode beneath the chaotic grey mists which
enveloped the mountain side in that direction.
Also, over the carpenters there was a foreman--a man whose bony frame,
clad in a white shirt and a pair of white trousers, looked always as
though it were ready-attired for death. Moreover, he wore no cap to
conceal the yellow patch of baldness which covered most of his head,
and, in addition, his nose was squat and grey, his neck and face had
over them skin of a porous, pumice-like consistency, his eyes were
green and dim, and upon his features there was stamped a dead and
disagreeable expression. To be candid, however, behind the dark lips
lay a set of fine, close teeth, while the hairs of the grey beard (a
beard trimmed after the Tartar fashion) were thick and, seemingly, soft.
Never did this man put a hand actually to the work; always he kept
roaming about with the large, rigid-looking fingers of his hands tucked
into his belt, and his fixed and expressionless eyes scanning the
barraque, the men, and the work as his lips vented some such lines as:
Oh God our Father, bound hast Thou
A crown of thorns upon my brow!
Listen to my humble prayer!
Lighten the burden which I bear!
"What on earth can be in the man's mind?" once remarked the ex-soldier,
with a frowning glance at the singer.
As for our duties, my mates and I had nothing to do, and soon began to
find the time tedious. For his part, the man with the Cossack
physiognomy scaled the mountain side; whence he could be heard
whistling and snapping twigs with his heavy feet, while the ex-soldier
selected a space between two rocks for a shelter of ace-rose boughs,
and, stretching himself on his stomach, fell to smoking strong mountain
tobacco in his large meerschaum pipe as dimly, dreamily he contemplated
the play of the mountain torrent. Lastly, I myself selected a seat on a
rock which overhung the brook, dipped my feet in the coolness of the
water, and proceeded to mend my shirt.
At intervals, the defile would convey to our ears a dull echo of sounds
so wholly at variance with the locality as muffled hammer-blows, a
screeching of saws, a rasping of planes, and a confused murmur of human
voices.
Also, a moist breeze blew constantly from the dark-blue depths of the
defile, and caused the stiff, upright larches on the knoll behind the
barraque to rustle their boughs, and distilled from the rank soil the
voluptuous scents of ace-rose and pitch-pine, and evoked in the trees'
quiet gloom a soft, crooning, somnolent lullaby.
About a sazhen [Fathom] below the level of the barraque there coursed
noisily over its bed of stones a rivulet white with foam. Yet though of
other sounds in the vicinity there were but few, the general effect was
to suggest that everything in the neighbourhood was speaking or singing
a tale of such sort as to shame the human species into silence.
On our own side of the valley the ground lay bathed in sunshine--lay
scorched to the point of seeming to have spread over it a tissue-cloth.
Old gold in colour, while from every side arose the sweet perfume of
dried grasses, and in dark clefts there could be seen sprouting the
long, straight spears and fiery, reddish, cone-shaped blossoms of that
bold, hardy plant which is known to us as saxifrage--the plant of which
the contemplation makes one long to burst into music, and fills one's
whole body with sensuous languor.
Laced with palpitating, snow-white foam, the beautiful rivulet pursued
its sportive way over tessellated stones which flashed through the
eddies of the glassy, sunlit, amber-coloured water with the silken
sheen of a patchwork carpet or costly shawl of Cashmir.
Through the mouth of the defile one could reach the valley of the
Sunzha, whence, since men were ther, building a railway to Petrovsk on
the Caspian Sea, there kept issuing and breaking against the crags a
dull rumble of explosions, of iron rasped against stone, of whistles of
works locomotives, and of animated human voices.
From the barraque the distance to the point where the defile debouched
upon the valley was about a hundred paces, and as one issued thence one
could see, away to the left, the level steppes of the Cis-Caucasus,
with a boundary wall of blue hills, topped by the silver-hewn saddle of
Mount Elburz behind it. True, for the most part the steppes had a dry,
yellow, sandy look, with merely here and there dark patches of gardens
or black poplar clumps which rendered the golden glare more glaring
still; yet also there could be discerned on the expanse farm buildings
shaped like lumps of sugar or butter, with, in their vicinity, toylike
human beings and diminutive cattle--the whole shimmering and melting in
a mirage born of the heat. And at the mere sight of those steppes, with
their embroidery of silk under the blue of the zenith, one's muscles
tightened, and one felt inspired with a longing to spring to one's
feet, close one's eyes, and walk for ever with the soft, mournful song
of the waste crooning in one's ears.
To the right also of the defile lay the winding valley of the Sunzha,
with more hills; and above those hills hung the blue sky, and in their
flanks were clefts which, full of grey mist, kept emitting a ceaseless
din of labour, a sound of dull explosions, as a great puissant force
attained release.
Yet almost at the same moment would that hurly-burly so merge with the
echo of our defile, so become buried in the defile's verdure and rock
crevices, that once more the place would seem to be singing only its
own gentle, gracious song.
And, should one turn to glance up the defile, it could be seen to grow
narrower and narrower as it ascended towards the mists, and the latter
to grow thicker and thicker until the whole defile was swathed in a
dark blue pall. Higher yet there could be discerned the brilliant gleam
of blue sky. Higher yet one could distinguish the ice-capped peak of
Kara Dagh, floating and dissolving amid the ( from here) invisible
sunlight. Highest of all again brooded the serene, steadfast peace of
heaven.
Also, everything was bathed in a strange tint of bluish grey: to which
circumstance must have been due the fact that always one's soul felt
filled with restlessness, one's heart stirred to disquietude, and fired
as with intoxication, charged with incomprehensible thoughts, and
conscious as of a summons to set forth for some unknown destination.
* * * * *
The foreman of the carpenters shaded his eyes to gaze in our direction;
and as he did so, he drawled and rasped out in tedious fashion:
"Some shall to the left be sent,
And in the pit of Hell lie pent.
While others, holding palm in hand,
Shall on God's right take up their stand."
"DID you hear that?" the ex-soldier growled through clenched teeth.
"'Palm in hand' indeed! Why, the fellow must be a Mennonite or a
Molokan, though the two, really, are one, and absolutely
indistinguishable, as well as equally foolish. Yes, 'palm in hand'
indeed!"
Similarly could I understand the ex-soldier's indignation, for, like
him, I felt that such dreary, monotonous singing was altogether out of
place in a spot where everything could troll a song so delightful as to
lead one to wish to hear nothing more, to hear only the whispering of
the forest and the babbling of the stream. And especially out of place
did the terms "palm" and "Mennonite" appear.
Yet I had no great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred upon me.
Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun, he had faded
eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of restless moroseness.
Never could I make out what he really wanted, what he was really
seeking. For instance, once, after reviewing the Caucasus from
Khassav-Urt to Novorossisk, and from Batum to Derbent, and, during the
review, crossing the mountain range by three different routes at least,
he remarked with a disparaging smile:
"I suppose the Lord God made the country."
"You do not like it, then? How should I? Good for nothing is what I
call it."
Then, with a further glance at me, and a twist of his sinewy neck, he
added:
"However, not bad altogether are its forests."
A native of Kaluga, he had served in Tashkend, and, in fighting with
the Chechintzes of that region, had been wounded in the head with a
stone. Yet as he told me the story of this incident, he smiled
shamefacedly, and, throughout, kept his glassy eyes fixed upon the
ground.
"Though I am ashamed to confess it," he said, "once a woman chipped a
piece out of me. You see, the women of that region are shrieking
devils--there is no other word for it; and when we captured a village
called Akhal-Tiapa a number of them had to be cut up, so that they lay
about in heaps, and their blood made walking slippery. Just as our
company of the reserve entered the street, something caught me on the
head. Afterwards, I learnt that a woman on a roof had thrown a stone,
and, like the rest, had had to be put out of the way."
Here, knitting his brows, the ex-soldier went on in more serious vein:
"Yet all that folk used to say about those women, about their having
beards to shave, turned out to be so much gossip, as I ascertained for
myself. I did so by lifting the woman's skirt on the point of my
bayonet, when I perceived that, though she was lean, and smelt like a
goat, she was quite as regular as, as--"
"Things must have been indeed terrible on that expedition!" I
interposed.
"I do not know for certain, since, though men who took an actual part
in the expedition's engagements have said that they were so (the
Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself know but
little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the reserve, and
never once did my company advance to the assault. No, it merely lay
about on the sand, and fired at long range. In fact, nothing but sand
was to be seen thereabouts; nor did we ever succeed in finding out what
the fighting was for. True, if a piece of country be good, it is in our
interest to take it; but in the present case the country was poor and
bare, with never a river in sight, and a climate so hot that all one
thought of was one's mortal need of a drink. In fact, some of our
fellows died of thirst outright. Moreover, in those parts there grows a
sort of millet called dzhugar--millet which not only has a horrible
taste, but proves absolutely delusive, since the more one eats of it,
the less one feels filled."
As the ex-soldier told me the tale colourlessly and reluctantly, with
frequent pauses between the sentences (as though either he found it
difficult to recall the experience or he were thinking of something
else), he never once looked me straight in the face, but kept his eyes
shamefacedly fixed upon the ground.
Unwieldily and unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the
impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of captious
inertia.
"Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country" he continued as he
glanced around him. "It is fit only to do nothing in. For that matter,
one doesn't WANT to do anything in it, save to live with one's eyes
bulging like a drunkard's--for the climate is too hot, and the place
smells like a chemist's shop or a hospital."
Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this "too
hot" country, as though fascinated!
"Why not return to Riazan?" I suggested.
"Nothing would there be there for me to do," he replied through his
teeth, and with an odd division of his words.
My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at Armavir,
where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been stamping like a
horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or, rather, snarling, at a
couple of Greeks:
"I'll tear the flesh from your bones!"
Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar denizens
of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at intervals, and
saying apologetically:
"What has angered you, sir?"
Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat his
breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased venom:
"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is
supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good
foster-mother. I expect you say the same."
And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled gendarme,
and complained to him:
"Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live with
us--Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get their
livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they continue to curse
us. A scandal, is it not?"
* * * * *
The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore a
Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock, rounded
features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse lip. When the
volatile young engineering student first brought him to us and said,
"Here is another man for you," the newcomer glanced at me through the
lashes of his elusive eyes--then plunged his hands into the pockets of
his Turkish overalls. Just as we were departing, however, he withdrew
one hand from the left trouser pocket, passed it slowly over the dark
bristles of his unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:
"Do you come from Russia?"
"Whence else, I should like to know?" snapped the ex-soldier gruffly.
Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then replaced
his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and well-built
throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to
cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor
gripsack, and somehow his supercilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly
fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and
even actively to dislike, the man.
Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side of
the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards the
sportively coursing water:
"Look at the matchmaker!"
The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around him for
a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:
"The fool!"
But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was
apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed resemble
some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange affaires du
coeur both for her own private amusement and for the purpose of
enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection amid which she was
living, and of which she would never grow weary, and to which she
desired to introduce the rest of the world as speedily as possible.
Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the Cossack
face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains and the sky,
and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant, comprehensive
exclamation of "Slavno!" [How splendid!]
The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his knapsack,
straightened himself, and asked with his arms set akimbo:
"WHAT is it that is so splendid?"
For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of his
questioner--a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen hangs upon a
stone. Then he said with a smile:
"Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that cleft
in the mountain--are they not good to look at?"
And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a repeated
whisper of:
"The fool!"
To which presently he added in a louder, as well as a mysterious, tone:
"I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients hither for
their health."
The same evening saw two sturdy women arrive with supper for the
carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore the
rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet became the more
distinct.
Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to work to
collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting a fire. After
which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he said to me
suggestively:
"You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the nights
are dark and chilly."
I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around the
barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who was lying
with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his hand, as he
conned a manuscript spread out before him. As he raised his eyes to
gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw that one of his eyes was
larger than the other.
Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so taken
aback by this was I, that I passed on my way without speaking.
Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the barraque
(a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.
Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile. Warmer and
warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the twilight caused the
slopes of the mountains to soften in outline, and the rocks to seem to
swell and merge with the bluish-blackness which overhung the bed of the
defile, and the superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole,
and the scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into,
one compact bulk.
Quietly then did tints hitherto red extinguish their tremulous
glow--softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen, the
peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to
red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence--flowed with a deeper, a
more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and
appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful,
intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet
perfume of our wood fire.
The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and rearranged
some fuel under the kettle.
"Where is the other man?" said he. "Go and fetch him."
I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the carpenters
in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick, unctuous,
sing-song voice.
"A great work is it indeed!"
Whereafter I heard the two women fall to drawling in low, hungry
accents:
"With the flesh I'll conquer pain;
The spirit shall my lust restrain;
All-supreme the soul shall reign;
And carnal vices lure in vain."
True, the women pronounced their words distinctly enough; yet always
they prolonged the final "u" sound of the stanza's first and third
lines until, as the melody floated away into the darkness, and, as it
were, sank to earth, it came to resemble the long-drawn howl of a wolf.
In answer to my invitation to come to supper, the newcomer sprang to
his feet, folded up his manuscript, stuffed it into one of the pockets
of his ragged coat, and said with a smile:
"I had just been going to resort to the carpenters, for they would have
given us some bread, I suppose? Long is it since I tasted anything."
The same words he repeated on our approaching the ex-soldier; much as
though he took a pleasure in their phraseology.
"You suppose that they would have given us bread?" echoed the
ex-soldier as he unfastened his wallet. "Not they! No love is lost
between them and ourselves."
"Whom do you mean by 'ourselves'?"
"Us here--you and myself--all Russian folk who may happen to be in
these parts. From the way in which those fellows keep singing about
palms, I should judge them to be sectarians of the sort called
Mennonites."
"Or Molokans, rather?" the other man suggested as he seated himself in
front of the fire.
"Yes, or Molokans. Molokans or Mennonites--they're all one. It is a
German faith and though such fellows love a Teuton, they do not exactly
welcome US."
Upon this the man with the Cossack forelock took a slice of bread which
the ex-soldier cut from a loaf, with an onion and a pinch of salt.
Then, as he regarded us with a pair of good-humoured eyes, he said,
balancing his food on the palms of his hands:
"There is a spot on the Sunzha, near here, where those fellows have a
colony of their own. Yes, I myself have visited it. True, those fellows
are hard enough, but at the same time to speak plainly, NO ONE in these
parts has any regard for us since only too many of the sort of Russian
folk who come here in search of work are not overly-desirable."
"Where do you yourself come from?" The ex-soldier's tone was severe.
"From Kursk, we might say."
"From Russia, then?"
"Yes, I suppose so. But I have no great opinion even of myself."
The ex-soldier glanced distrustfully at the newcomer. Then he remarked:
"What you say is cant, sheer Jesuitism. It is fellows like THOSE,
rather, that ought to have a poor opinion of themselves."
To this the other made no reply--merely he put a piece of bread into
his mouth. For a moment or two the ex-soldier eyed him frowningly. Then
he continued:
"You seem to me to be a native of the Don country?"
"Yes, I have lived on the Don as well."
"And also served in the army?"
"No. I was an only son."
"Of a miestchanin?" [A member of the small commercial class.]
"No, of a merchant."
"And your name--?"
"Is Vasili."
The last reply came only after a pause, and reluctantly; wherefore,
perceiving that the Kurskan had no particular desire to discuss his own
affairs, the ex-soldier said no more on the subject, but lifted the
kettle from the fire.
The Molokans also had kindled a blaze behind the corner of the
barraque, and now its glow was licking the yellow boards of the
structure until they seemed almost to be liquescent, to be about to
dissolve and flow over the ground in a golden stream.
Presently, as their fervour increased, the carpenters, invisible amid
the obscurity, fell to singing hymns--the basses intoning monotonously,
"Sing, thou Holy Angel!" and voices of higher pitch responding, coldly
and formally.
"Sing ye!
Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!
Sing ye!
Our singing will we add unto Thine,
Thou Angel of Holiness!"
And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of the
rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones, it seemed
out of place in this particular spot; it aroused resentment against men
who could not think of a lay more atune with the particular living,
breathing objects around us.
Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth of
the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the rivulet
escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a deeper shade,
was there not yet suspended the curtain of the Southern night.
Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to assume
the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head adorned with
a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his hands. Similarly, the
stems of the trees stirred in the firelight until they developed the
semblance of a file of friars entering, for early Mass, the porch of
their chapel-of-ease.
To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just such a
dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-telling under the
boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the Don country. Suddenly I
had heard a window above my head open, and someone exclaim in a kindly,
youthful voice:
"The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!"
And though the window had closed again before I had had time to discern
the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the monastery a
friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a face as had
Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been he who had
breathed the benediction upon mankind at large, for the reason that
moments there are when all humanity seems to be one's own body, and in
oneself there seems to beat the heart of all humanity....
Vasili consumed his food deliberately as, breaking off morsels from his
slice, and neatly parting his moustache, he placed the morsels in his
mouth with a curious stirring of two globules which underlay the skin
near the ears.
The ex-soldier, however, merely nibbled at his food--he ate but little,
and that lazily. Then he extracted a pipe from his breast pocket,
filled it with tobacco, lit it with a faggot taken from the fire, and
said as he set himself to listen to the singing of the Molokans:
"They are filled full, and have started bleating. Always folk like them
seek to be on the right side of the Almighty."
"Does that hurt you in any way?" Vasili asked with a smile.
"No, but I do not respect them--they are less saints than humbugs, than
prevaricators whose first word is God, and second word rouble."
"How do you know that?" cried Vasili amusedly. "And even if their first
word IS God, and their second word rouble, we had best not be too hard
upon them, since if they chose to be hard upon US, where should WE be?
Yes, we have only to open our mouths to speak a word or two for
ourselves, and we should find every fist at our teeth."
"Quite so," the ex-soldier agreed as, taking up a square of scantling,
he examined it attentively.
"Whom DO you respect?" Vasili continued after a pause.
"I respect," the ex-soldier said with some emphasis, "only the Russian
people, the true Russian people, the folk who labour on land whereon
labour is hard. Yet who are the folk whom you find HERE? In this part
of the world the business of living is an easy one. Much of every sort
of natural produce is to be had, and the soil is generous and
light--you need but to scratch it for it to bear, and for yourself to
reap. Yes, it is indulgent to a fault. Rather, it is like a maiden. Do
but touch her, and a child will arrive."
"Agreed," was Vasili's remark as he drank tea from a tin mug. "Yet to
this very part of the world is it that I should like to transport every
soul in Russia."
"And why?"
"Because here they could earn a living."
"Then is not that possible in Russia?"
"Well, why are you yourself here?"
"Because I am a man lacking ties."
"And why are you lacking ties?"
"Because it has been so ordered--it is, so to speak, my lot."
"Then had you not better consider WHY it is your lot?"
The ex-soldier took his pipe from his mouth, let fall the hand which
held it, and smoothed his plain features in silent amazement. Then he
exclaimed in uncouth, querulous tones:
"Had I not better consider WHY it is my lot, and so forth? Why, damn
it, the causes are many. For one thing, if one has neighbours who
neither live nor see things as oneself does, but are uncongenial, what
does one do? One just leaves them, and clears out--more especially if
one be neither a priest nor a magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better
consider why this is my lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man
able to consider things, possessed of a brain?"
And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat
frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor's features as the
firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an undertone:
"Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours, yet lack
a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us, just fall to
wandering, troubling other folk, and earning dislike!"
"The dislike of whom?" gruffly queried the ex-soldier.
"The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!"
In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which
completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili's voice had in it an
agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while enunciating
its words roundly and distinctly.
A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have the
crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a mouse, made
the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of this species I once
encountered among the defile's crags, and as the creature sailed over
my head it startled me with the glassy eyes which, as round as buttons,
seemed to be lit from within with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment
or two I stood half-stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive
what the creature was.
"Whence did you get that splendid pipe?" next asked Vasili as he rolled
himself a cigarette. "Surely it is a pipe of old German make?"
"You need not fear that I stole it," the ex-soldier responded as he
removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. "It was given me by a
woman."
To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.
"Tell me how it happened," said Vasili softly. Then he flung up his
arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:
"Ah, these nights here! Never again may God send me such bad ones! Try
to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier, indeed, is it to
sleep during the daytime, provided that one can find a shady spot.
During such nights I go almost mad with thinking, and my heart swells
and murmurs."
The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows raised
even higher than usual, responded to this:
"It is the same with me. If one could only--What did you say?"
This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, "The
same with me also," but on seeing the pair exchanging a strange glance
(as though involuntarily they had surprised one another), had left the
words unspoken. My companions then set themselves to a mutually eager
questioning with respect to their respective identities, past
experiences, places of origin, and destinations, even as though they
had been two kinsmen who, meeting unexpectedly, had discovered for the
first time their bond of relationship.
Meanwhile the black, fringed boughs of the pine trees hung stretched
over the flames of the Molokans' fire as though they would catch some
of the fire's glow and warmth, or seize it altogether, and put it out.
And when, at times, their red tongues projected beyond the corner of
the barraque, they made the building look as though it had caught
alight, and extended their glow even to the rivulet. Constantly the
night was growing denser and more stifling; constantly it seemed to
embrace the body more and more caressingly, until one bathed in it as
in an ocean. Also, much as a wave removes dirt from the skin, so the
softly vocal darkness seemed to refresh and cleanse the soul. For it is
on such nights as that that the soul dons its finest raiment, and
trembles like a bride at the expectation of something glorious.
"You say that she had a squint?" presently I heard Vasili continue in
an undertone, and the ex-soldier slowly reply:
"Yes, she had one from childhood upwards--she had one from the day when
a fall from a cart caused her to injure her eyes. Yet, if she had not
always gone about with one of her eyes shaded, you would never have
guessed the fact. Also, she was so neat and practical! And her
kindness--well, it was kindness as inexhaustible as the water of that
rivulet there; it was kindness of the sort that wished well to all the
world, and to all animals, and to every beggar, and even to myself! So
at last there gripped my heart the thought, 'Why should I not try a
soldier's luck? She is the master's favourite--true; yet none the less
the attempt shall be made by me.' However, this way or that, always the
reply was 'No'; always she put out at me an elbow, and cut me short."
Vasili, lying prone upon his back, twitched his moustache, and chewed a
stalk of grass. His eyes were fully open, and for the second time I
perceived that one of them was larger than the other. The ex-soldier,
seated near Vasili's shoulder, stirred the fire with a bit of charred
stick, and sent sparks of gold flying to join the midges which were
gliding to and fro over the blaze. Ever and anon night-moths subsided
into the flames with a plop, crackled, and became changed into lumps of
black. For my own part, I constructed a couch on a pile of pine boughs,
and there lay down. And as I listened to the ex-soldier's familiar
story, I recalled persons whom I had on one and another occasion
remembered, and speeches which on one and another occasion had made an
impression upon me.
"But at last," the ex-soldier continued, "I took heart of grace, and
caught her in a barn. Pressing her into a corner, I said: 'Now let it
be yes or no. Of, course it shall be as you wish, but remember that I
am a soldier with a small stock of patience.' Upon that she began to
struggle and exclaim: 'What do you want? What do you want?' until,
bursting into tears like a girl, she said through her sobs: 'Do not
touch me. I am not the sort of woman for you. Besides, I love
another--not our master, but another, a workman, a former lodger of
ours. Before he departed he said to me: "Wait for me until I have found
you a nice home, and returned to fetch you"; and though it is seventeen
years since I heard speech or whisper of him, and maybe he has since
forgotten me, or fallen in love with someone else, or come to grief, or
been murdered, you, who are a map, will understand that I must bide a
little while longer.' True, this offended me (for in what respect was I
any worse than the other man?); yet also I felt sorry for her, and
grieved that I should have wronged her by thinking her frivolous, when
all the time there had been THIS at her heart. I drew back,
therefore--I could not lay a finger upon her, though she was in my
power. And at last I said: 'Good-bye! I am going away.' 'Go,' she
replied. 'Yes, go for the love of Christ!'... Wherefore, on the
following evening I settled accounts with our master, and at dawn of a
Sunday morning packed my wallet, took with me this pipe, and departed.
'Yes, take the pipe, Paul Ivanovitch,' she said before my departure.
'Perhaps it will serve to keep you in remembrance of me--you whom
henceforth I shall regard as a brother, and whom I thank.'... As I
walked away I was very nigh to tears, so keen was the pain in my heart.
Aye, keen it was indeed!"
"You did right," Vasili remarked softly after a pause.
"Things must always so befall. Always must it be a case either of
'Yes?' 'Yes,' and of folk coming together, or of 'No' 'No,' and of folk
parting. And invariably the one person in the case grieves the other.
Why should that be?"
Emitting a cloud of grey smoke, the ex-soldier replied thoughtfully:
"Yes, I know I did right; but that right was done only at a great cost."
"And always that too is the case," Vasili agreed. Then he added:
"Generally such fortune falls to the lot of people who have tender
consciences. He who values himself also values his fellows; but,
unfortunately a man all too seldom values even himself."
"To whom are you referring? To you and myself?"
"To our Russian folk in general."
"Then you cannot have very much respect for Russia." The ex-soldier's
tone had taken on a curious note. He seemed to be feeling both
astonished at and grieved for his companion.
The other, however, did not reply; and after a few moments the
ex-soldier softly concluded:
"So now you have heard my story."
By this time the carpenters had ceased singing around the barraque, and
let their fire die down until quivering on the wall of the edifice
there was only a fiery-red patch, a patch barely sufficient to render
visible the shadows of the rocks; while beside the fire there was
seated only a tall figure with a black beard which had, grasped in its
hands, a heavy cudgel, and, lying near its right foot, an axe. The
figure was that of a watchman set by the carpenters to keep an eye upon
ourselves, the appointed watchmen; though the fact in no way offended
us.
Over the defile, in a ragged strip of sky, there were gleaming stars,
while the rivulet was bubbling and purling, and from the obscurity of
the forest there kept coming to our ears, now the cautious, rustling
tread of some night animal, and now the mournful cry of an owl, until
all nature seemed to be instinct with a secret vitality the sweet
breath of which kept moving the heart to hunger insatiably for the
beautiful.
Also, as I lay listening to the voice of the ex-soldier, a voice
reminiscent of a distant tambourine, and to Vasili's pensive questions,
I conceived a liking for the men, and began to detect that in their
relations there was dawning something good and human. At the same time,
the effect of some of Vasili's dicta on Russia was to arouse in me
mingled feelings which impelled me at once to argue with him and to
induce him to speak at greater length, with more clarity, on the
subject of our mutual fatherland. Hence always I have loved that night
for the visions which it brought to me--visions which still come back
to me like a dear, familiar tale.
I thought of a student of Kazan whom I had known in the days of the
past, of a young fellow from Viatka who, pale-browed, and sententious
of diction, might almost have been brother to the ex-soldier himself.
And once again I heard him declare that "before all things must I learn
whether or not there exists a God; pre-eminently must I make a
beginning there."
And I thought, too, of a certain accoucheuse named Velikova who had
been a comely, but reputedly gay, woman. And I remembered a certain
occasion when, on a hill overlooking the river Kazan and the Arski
Plain, she had stood contemplating the marshes below, and the far blue
line of the Volga; until suddenly turning pale, she had, with tears of
joy sparkling in her fine eyes, cried under her breath, but
sufficiently loudly for all present to hear her:
"Ah, friends, how gracious and how fair is this land of ours! Come, let
us salute that land for having deemed us worthy of residence therein!"
Whereupon all present, including a deacon-student from the
Ecclesiastical School, a Morduine from the Foreign College, a student
of veterinary science, and two of our tutors, had done obeisance. At
the same time I recalled the fact that subsequently one of the party
had gone mad, and committed suicide.
Again, I recalled how once, on the Piani Bor [Liquor Wharf] by the
river Kama, a tall, sandy young fellow with intelligent eyes and the
face of a ne'er-do-well had caught my attention. The day had been a
hot, languorous Sunday on which all things had seemed to be exhibiting
their better side, and telling the sun that it was not in vain that he
was pouring out his brilliant potency, and diffusing his living gold;
while the man of whom I speak had, dressed in a new suit of blue serge,
a new cap cocked awry, and a pair of brilliantly polished boots, been
standing at the edge of the wharf, and gazing at the brown waters of
the Kama, the emerald expanse beyond them and the silver-scaled pools
left behind by the tide. Until, as the sun had begun to sink towards
the marshes on the other side of the river, and to become dissolved
into streaks, the man had smiled with increasing rapture, and his face
had glowed with creasing eagerness and delight; until finally he had
snatched the cap from his head, flung it, with a powerful throw far out
into the russet waters, and shouted: "Kama, O my mother, I love you,
and never will desert you!"
And the last, and also the best, recollection of things seen before the
night of which I speak was the recollection of an occasion when, one
late autumn, I had been crossing the Caspian Sea on an old two-masted
schooner laden with dried apricots, plums, and peaches. Sailing on her
also she had had some hundred fishermen from the Bozhi Factory, men
who, originally forest peasants of the Upper Volga, had been
well-built, bearded, healthy, goodhumoured, animal-spirited young
fellows, youngsters tanned with the wind, and salted with the sea
water; youngsters who, after working hard at their trade, had been
rejoicing at the prospect of returning home. And careering about the
deck like youthful bears as ever and anon lofty, sharp-pointed waves
had seized and tossed aloft the schooner, and the yards had cracked,
and the taut-run rigging had whistled, and the sails had bellied into
globes, and the howling wind had shaved off the white crests of
billows, and partially submerged the vessel in clouds of foam.
And seated on the deck with his broad back resting against the mainmast
there had been one young giant in particular. Clad in a white linen
shirt and a pair of blue serge trousers, and innocent alike of beard
and moustache, this young fellow had had full, red lips, blue, boyish,
and exceedingly translucent eyes, and a face intoxicated in excelsis
with the happiness of youth; while leaning across his knees as they had
rested sprawling over the deck there had been a young female trimmer of
fish, a wench as massive and tall as the young man himself, and a wench
whose face had become tanned to roughness with the sun and wind,
eyebrows dark, full, and as large as the wings of a swallow, breasts as
firm as stone, and teats around which, as they projected from the folds
of a red bodice, there had lain a pattern of blue veins.
The broad, iron-black palm of the young fellow's long, knotted hand had
been resting on the woman's left breast, with the arm bare to the
elbow; while in his right hand, as he had sat gazing pensively at the
woman's robust figure, there had been grasped a tin mug from which some
of the red liquor had scattered stains over the front of his linen
shirt.
Meanwhile, around the pair there had been hovering some of the
youngster's comrades, who, with coats buttoned to the throat, and caps
gripped to prevent their being blown away by the wind, had employed
themselves with scanning the woman's figure with envious eyes, and
viewing her from either side. Nay, the shaggy green waves themselves
had been stealing occasional glimpses at the picture as clouds had
swirled across the sky, gulls had uttered their insatiable scream, and
the sun, dancing on the foam-flecked waters, had vested the billows,
now in tints of blue, now in natural tints as of flaming jewels.
In short, all the passengers on the schooner had been shouting and
laughing and singing, while the great bearded peasants had also been
paying assiduous court to a large leathern bottle which had lain
ensconced on a heap of peach-sacks, with the result that the scene had
come to have about it something of the antique, legendary air of the
return of Stepan Razin from his Persian campaign.
At length the buffeting of the wind had caused an old man with a
crooked nose set on a hairy, faun-like face to stumble over one of the
woman's feet; whereupon he had halted, thrown up his head with
nonsenile vigour, and exclaimed:
"May the devil fly away with you, you shameless hussy! Why lie
sprawling about the deck like this? See, too, how exposed you are!"
The woman had not stirred at the words--she had not even opened an eye;
only over her lips there had passed a faint tremor. Whereas the young
fellow had straightened himself, deposited his tin mug upon the deck,
and cried loudly as he laid his disengaged hand upon the woman's breast.
"Ah, you envy me, do you, Yakim Petrov? Never mind, though you have
done no great harm. But run no risks; do not look for needless trouble,
for your day for sucking sugarplums is past."
Whereafter, raising both his hands, the young fellow had softly let
them sink again upon the woman's bosom as he added triumphantly:
"These breasts could feed all Russia!"
Then, and only then, had the woman smiled a long, slow smile. And as
she had done so everything in the vicinity had seemed to smile in
unison, and to rise and fall in harmony with her bosom--yes, the whole
vessel, and the vessel's freight. And at the moment when a particularly
large wave had struck the bulwarks, and besprinkled all on board with
spray, the woman had opened her dark eyes, looked kindly at the old
man, and at the young fellow, and at the scene in general--then set
herself to recover her bosom.
"Nay," the young fellow had cried as he interposed to remove her hands.
"There is no need for that, there is no need for that. Let them ALL
look."
* * * * *
Such the memories that came back to my recollection that night. Gladly
I would have recounted them to my companions, but, unfortunately, these
had, by now, succumbed to slumber. The ex-soldier, resting in a sitting
posture, and snoring loudly, had his back prised against his wallet,
his head sloped sideways, and his hands clasped upon his knees, while
Vasili was lying on his back with his face turned upwards, his hands
clasped behind his head, his dark, finely moulded brows raised a
little, and his moustache erect. Also, he was weeping in his
sleep--tears were coursing down his brown, sunburnt cheeks; tears
which, in the moonlight, had in them something of the greenish tint of
a chrysolite or sea water, and which, on such a manly face, looked
strange indeed!
Still the rivulet was purling as it flowed, and the fire crackling;
while bathed in the red glow of the flames there was sitting, bent
forward, the dark, stonelike figure of the Molokans' watchman, with the
axe at his feet reflecting the radiant gleam of the moon in the sky
above us.
All the earth seemed to be sleeping as ever the waning stars seemed to
draw nearer and nearer....
The slow length of the next day was dragged along amid an inertia born
of the moist heat, the song of the river, and the intoxicating scents
of forest and flowers. In short, one felt inclined to do nothing, from
morn till night, save roam the defile without the exchanging of a word,
the conceiving of a desire, or the formulating of a thought.
At sunset, when we were engaged in drinking tea by the fire, the
ex-soldier remarked:
"I hope that life in the next world will exactly resemble life in this
spot, and be just as quiet and peaceful and immune from work. Here one
needs but to sit and melt like butter and suffer neither from wrong nor
anxiety."
Then, as carefully he withdrew his pipe from his lips, and sighed, he
added:
"Aye! If I could but feel sure that life in the next world will be like
life here, I would pray to God: 'For Christ's sake take my soul at the
earliest conceivable moment.'"
"What might suit YOU would not suit ME," Vasili thoughtfully observed.
"I would not always live such a life as this. I might do so for a time,
but not in perpetuity."
"Ah, but never have you worked hard," grunted the ex-soldier.
In every way the evening resembled the previous one; there were to be
observed the same luscious flooding of the defile with dove-coloured
mist, the same flashing of the silver crags in the roseate twilight,
the same rocking of the dense, warm forest's soft, leafy tree-tops, the
same softening of the rocks' outlines in the gloom, the same gradual
uplift of shadows, the same chanting of the "matchmaking" river, the
same routine on the part of the big, sleek carpenters around the
barraque--a routine as slow and ponderous in its course as the
movements of a drove of wild boars.
More than once during the off hours of the day had we sought to make
the carpenters' acquaintance, to start a conversation with them, but
always their answers had been given reluctantly, in monosyllables, and
never had a discussion seemed likely to get under way without the
whiteheaded foreman shouting to the particular member of the gang
concerned: "Hi, you, Pavlushka! Get back to work, there!" Indeed, he,
the foreman, had outdone all in his manifestations of dislike for our
friendship, and as monotonously as though he had been minded to rival
the rivulet as a songster, he had hummed his pious ditties, or else
raised his snuffling voice to sing them with an ever-importunate
measure of insistence, so that all day long those ditties had been
coursing their way in a murky, melancholy-compelling flood. Indeed, as
the foreman had stepped cautiously on thin legs from stone to stone
during his ceaseless inspection of the work of his men, he had come to
seem to have for his object the describing of an invisible, circular
path, as a means of segregating us more securely than ever from the
society of the carpenters.
Personally, however, I had no desire to converse with him, for his
frozen eyes chilled and repelled me and from the moment when I had
approached him, and seen him fold his hands behind him, and recoil a
step as he inquired with suppressed sternness, "What do you want?"
there had fallen away from me all further ambition to learn the nature
of the songs which he sang.
The ex-soldier gazed at him resentfully, then said with an oath:
"The old wizard and pilferer! Take my word for it that a lump of piety
like that has got a pretty store put away somewhere."
Whereafter, as he lit his pipe and squinted in the direction of the
carpenters, he added with stifled wrath:
"The airs that the 'elect' give themselves--the sons of bitches!"
"It is always so," commented Vasili with a resentment equal to the last
speaker's. "Yes, no sooner, with us, does a man accumulate a little
money than he sticks his nose in the air, and falls to thinking himself
a real barin."
"Why is it that you always say 'With us,' and 'Among us,' and so on?"
"Among us Russians, then, if you like it better."
"I do like it better. For you are not a German, are you, nor a Tartar?"
"No. It is merely that I can see the faults in our Russian folk."
Upon that (not for the first time) the pair plunged into a discussion
which had come so to weary them that now they spoke only indifferently,
without effort.
"The word 'faults' is, I consider, an insult," began the ex-soldier as
he puffed at his pipe. "Besides, you don't speak consistently. Only
this moment I observed a change in your terms."
"To what?"
"To the term 'Russians.'"
"What should you prefer?"
A new sound floated into the defile as from some point on the steppe
the sound of a bell summoning folk to the usual Saturday vigil service.
Removing his pipe from his mouth, the ex-soldier listened for a moment
or two. Then, at the third and last stroke of the bell, he doffed his
cap, crossed himself with punctilious piety, and said:
"There are not very many churches in these parts."
Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added venomously:
"Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!"
Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it again,
regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his head.
"The trouble with me," he remarked in an undertone, "is that I can
never remain very long in one place--always I keep fancying that I
shall meet with better things elsewhere, always I keep hearing a bird
singing in my heart, 'Do you go further, do you go further.'"
"That bird sings in the heart of EVERY man," the ex-soldier growled
sulkily.
With a glance at us both, Vasili laughed a subdued laugh.
"'In the heart of every man'?" he repeated. "Why, such a statement is
absurd. For it means, does it not, that every one of us is an idler,
every one of us is constantly waiting for something to turn up--that,
in fact, no one of us is any better than, or able to do any better
than, the folk whose sole utterance is 'Give unto us, pray give unto
us'? Yes, if that be the case, it is an unfortunate case indeed!"
And again he laughed. Yet his eyes were sorrowful, and as the fingers
of his right hand lay upon his knee they twitched as though they were
longing to grasp something unseen.
The ex-soldier frowned and snorted. For my own part, however, I felt
troubled for, and sorry for, Vasili. Presently he rose, broke into a
soft whistle, and moved away by the side of the stream.
"His head is not quite right," muttered the ex-soldier as he winked in
the direction of the retreating figure. "Yes, I tell you that straight,
for from the first it was clear to me. Otherwise, what could his words
in depredation of Russia mean, when of Russia nothing the least hard or
definite can be said? Who really knows her? What is she in reality,
seeing that each of her provinces is a soul to itself, and no one could
state which of the two Holy Mothers stands nearest to God--the Holy
Mother of Smolensk, or the Holy Mother of Kazan?"
For a while the speaker sat scraping greasy deposit from the bottom and
sides of the kettle; and all that while he grumbled as though he had a
grudge against someone. At length, however, he assumed an attitude of
attention, with his neck stretched out as though to listen to some
sound.
"Hist!" was his exclamation.
What then followed, followed as unexpectedly as when, like an evil
bird, a summer whirlwind suddenly sweeps up from the horizon, and
discharges a bluish-black cloud in torrents of rain and hail, until
everything is overwhelmed and battered to mud.
That is to say, with much din of whistling and other sounds there now
came pouring into the defile, and began to ascend the trail beside the
stream, a straggling procession of some thirty workmen with, gleaming
dully in the hands of their leading files, flagons of vodka, and,
suspended on the backs and shoulders of others, wallets and bags of
bread and other comestibles, and, in two instances, poised on the heads
of yet other processionists, large black cauldrons the effect of which
was to make their bearers look like mushrooms.
"A vedro [2 3/4 gallons] and a half to the cauldron!" whispered the
ex-soldier with a computative grunt as he gained his feet.
"Yes, a vedro and a half," he repeated. As he spoke the tip of his
tongue protruded until it rested on the under-lip of his half-opened
mouth. In his face there was a curiously thirsty, gross expression, and
his attitude, as he stood there, was that of one who had just received
a blow, and was about to cry out in consequence.
Meanwhile the defile rumbled like a barrel into which heavy weights are
being dropped, for one of the newcomers was beating an empty tin pail,
and another one whistling in a manner the tossed echoes of which
drowned even the rivulet's murmur as nearer and nearer came the mob of
men, a mob clad variously in black, grey, or russet, with sleeves
rolled up, and heads, in many cases, bare save for their own towsled,
dishevelled locks, and bodies bent with fatigue, or carried stumblingly
along on legs bowed outwards. Meanwhile, as the dull, polyphonous roar
of voices swept through the neck of the defile, a man shouted in
broken, but truculent, accents:
"I say no! Fiddlesticks! Not a man is there who could drink more than a
vedro of 'blood-and-sweat' in a day."
"A man could drink a lake of it."
"No, a vedro and a half. That is the proper reckoning."
"Aye, a vedro and a half." And the ex-soldier, as he repeated the
words, spoke both as though he were an expert in the matter and as
though he felt for the matter a touch of respect. Then, lurching
forward like a man pushed by the scruff of the neck, he crossed the
rivulet, intercepted the crowd, and became swallowed up in its midst.
Around the barraque the carpenters (the foreman ever glimmering among
them) were hurriedly collecting tools. Presently Vasili returned--his
right hand thrust into his pocket, and his left holding his cap.
"Before long those fellows will be properly drunk!" he said with a
frown. "Ah, that vodka of ours! It is a perfect curse!" Then to me: "Do
YOU drink?"
"No," I replied.
"Thank God for that! If one does not drink one will never really get
into trouble."
For a moment he gazed gloomily in the direction of the newcomers. Then
he said without moving, without even looking at me:
"You have remarkable eyes, young fellow. Also, they seem familiar to
me--I have seen them somewhere before. Possibly that happened in a
dream, though I cannot be sure. Where do you come from?"