"No," he remarked. "I have never visited that part of the country, or
indeed, been so far from home."
"But this place is further still?"
"Further still?"
"Yes--from Kursk."
He laughed.
"I must tell you the truth," he said. "I am not a Kurskan at all, but a
Pskovian. The reason why I told the ex-soldier that I was from Kursk
was that I neither liked him nor cared to tell him the whole truth-he
was not worth the trouble. And as for my real name, it is Paul, not
Vasili--Paul Nikolaev Silantiev--and is so marked on my passport (for a
passport, and a passport quite in order, I have got)."
"And why are you on your travels?"
"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from a
given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats
before the wind."
* * * * *
"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the
foreman here."
The voice of the ex-soldier replied:
"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who
are for ever singing hymns."
To which someone else added:
"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all
building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"
"Let us throw their tools into the stream."
"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before
the embers of the fire.
Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a
number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a
conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces--at all
events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and
then the strident, hilarious command:
"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand
over the saw!"
Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the one a
red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall man with
hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept grasping the
foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling, "Where are your
lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also was a broad-shouldered
young fellow in a ragged red shirt who kept thrusting pieces of
scantling through the windows of the barraque, and shouting, "Catch
hold of these! Lay them out in a row!"); and the third the ex-soldier
himself. The last-named, as he jostled his way among the crowd, kept
vociferating, viciously, virulently, and with a curious system of
division of his syllables:
"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say to me,
you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for the re-est of
us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"
"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a cigarette.
"Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka!... Yet are you not sorry for
fellows of that stamp?"
Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers; until
at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers into a heap
glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and as he did so, his
handsome eyes gleamed with just such a reverent affection, such a
prayerful kindliness, as must have lurked in the eyes of primeval,
nomadic man in the presence of the dancing, beneficent source of light
and heat.
"At least I am sorry for such fellows," Vasili continued. "Aye, the
very thought of the many, many folk who have come to nothing! The very
thought of it! Terrible, terrible!"
A touch of daylight was still lingering on the tops of the mountains,
but in the defile itself night was beginning to loom, and to lull all
things to sleep--to incline one neither to speak oneself nor to listen
to the dull clamour of those others on the opposite bank, where even to
the murmur of the rivulet the distasteful din seemed to communicate a
note of anger.
There the crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a second
one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of bluish-tinted
smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in lacing the foam of the
rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red. As the mass of dark figures
surged between the two flares an hilarious voice shouted to us the
invitation:
"Come over here, you! Don't be backward! Come over here, I say!"
Upon which followed a clatter as of the smashing of a drinking-vessel,
while from the red-bearded muzhik came a thick, raucous shout of:
"These fellows needed to be taught a lesson!"
Almost at the same moment the foreman of the carpenters broke his way
clear of the crowd, and, carefully crossing the rivulet by the
stepping-stones which we had constructed, squatted down upon his heels
by the margin, and with much puffing and blowing fell to rinsing his
face, a face which in the murky firelight looked flushed and red.
"I think that someone has given him a blow," hazarded Silantiev sotto
voce.
And when the foreman rose to approach us this proved to be the case,
for then we saw that dripping from his nose, and meandering over his
moustache and soaked white beard, there was a stream of dark blood
which had spotted and streaked his shirt-front.
"Peace to this gathering!" he said gravely as, pressing his left hand
to his stomach, he bowed.
"And we pray your indulgence," was Silantiev's response, though he did
not raise his eyes as he spoke. "Pray be seated."
Small, withered, and, for all but his blood-stained shirt, scrupulously
clean, the old man reminded me of certain pictures of old-time hermits,
and the more so since either pain or shame or the gleam of the
firelight had caused his hitherto dead eyes to gather life and grow
brighter--aye, and sterner. Somehow, as I looked at him, I felt awkward
and abashed.
A cough twisted his broad nose. Then he wiped his beard on the palm of
his hand, and his hand on his knee; whereafter, as he stretched forth
the pair of senile, dark-coloured hands, and held them over the embers,
he said:
"How cold the water of the rivulet is! It is absolutely icy."
With a glance from under his brows Silantiev inquired:
"Are you very badly hurt?"
"No. Merely a man caught me a blow on the bridge of the nose, where the
blood flows readily. Yet, as God knows, he will gain nothing by his
act, whereas the suffering which he has caused me will go to swell my
account with the Holy Spirit."
As the man spoke he glanced across the rivulet. On the opposite bank
two men were staggering along, and drunkenly bawling the tipsy refrain:
"In the du-u-uok let me die, In the au-autumn time!"
"Aye, long is it since I received a blow," the old man continued,
scanning the two revellers from under his hand. "Twenty years it must
be since last I did so. And now the blow was struck for nothing, for no
real fault.. You see, I have been allowed no nails for the doing of the
work, and have been obliged to make use of wooden clamps for most of
it, while battens also have not been forthcoming; and, this being so,
it was through no remissness of mine that the work could not be
finished by sunset tonight. I suspect, too, that, to eke out its wages,
that rabble has been thieving, with the eldest leading the rest. And
that, again, is not a thing for which I can be held responsible. True,
this is a Government job, and some of those fellows are young, and
young, hungry fellows such as they will (may they be forgiven!) steal,
since everyone hankers to get something in return for a very little.
But, once more, how is that my fault? Yes, that rabble must be a
regular set of rascals! Just now they deprived my eldest son of a saw,
of a brand-new saw; and thereafter they spilt my blood, the blood of a
greybeard!"
Here his small, grey face contracted into wrinkles, and, closing his
eyes, he sobbed a dry, grating sob.
Silantiev fidgeted--then sighed. Presently the old man looked at him,
blew his nose, wiped his hand upon his trousers, and said quietly:
"Somewhere, I think, I have seen you before."
"That is so. You saw me one evening when I visited your settlement for
the mending of a thresher."
"Yes, yes. That is where I DID see you. It was you, was it not? Well,
do you still disagree with me?"
To which the old man added with a nod and a smile:
"See how well I remember your words! You are, I imagine, still of the
same opinion?"
"How should I not be?" responded Silantiev dourly.
"Ah, well! Ah, well!"
And the old man stretched his hands over the fire once more,
discoloured hands the thumbs of which were curiously bent outwards and
splayed, and, seemingly, unable to move in harmony with the fingers.
The ex-soldier shouted across the river:
"The land here is easy to work, and makes the people lazy. Who would
care to live in such a region? Who would care to come to it? Much
rather would I go and earn a living on difficult land."
The old man paid no heed, but said to Silantiev--said to him with an
austere, derisive smile:
"Do you STILL think it necessary to struggle against what has been
ordained of God? Do you STILL think that long-suffering is bad, and
resistance good? Young man, your soul is weak indeed: and remember that
it is only the soul that can overcome Satan."
In response Silantiev rose to his feet, shook his fist at the old man,
and shouted in a rough, angry voice, a voice that was not his own:
"All that I have heard before, and from others besides yourself. The
truth is that I hold all you father-confessors in abhorrence.
Moreover," (this last was added with a violent oath) "it is not Satan
that needs to be resisted, but such devil's ravens, such devil's
vampires, as YOU."
Which said, he kicked a stone away from the fire, thrust his hands into
his pockets, and turned slowly on his heel, with his elbows pressed
close to his sides. Nevertheless the old man, still smiling, said to me
in an undertone:
"He is proud, but that will not last for long."
"Why not?"
"Because I know in advance that--"
Breaking off short, he turned his head upon his shoulder, and sat
listening to some shouting that was going on across the river. Everyone
in that quarter was drunk, and, in particular, someone could be heard
bawling in a tone of challenge:
"Oh? I, you say? A-a-ah! Then take that!"
Silantiev, stepping lightly from stone to stone, crossed the river.
Then he mingled--a conspicuous figure (owing to his apparent
handlessness)--with the crowd. Somehow, on his departure, I felt ill at
ease.
Twitching his fingers as though performing a conjuring trick, the old
man continued to sit with his hands stretched over the embers. By this
time his nose had swollen over the bridge, and bruises risen under his
eyes which tended to obscure his vision. Indeed, as he sat there, sat
mouthing with dark, bestreaked lips under a covering of hoary beard and
moustache, I found that his bloodstained, disfigured, wrinkled, as it
were "antique" face reminded me more than ever of those of great
sinners of ancient times who abandoned this world for the forest and
the desert.
"I have seen many proud folk," he continued with a shake of his hatless
head and its sparse hairs. "A fire may burn up quickly, and continue to
burn fiercely, yet, like these embers, become turned to ashes, and so
lie smouldering till dawn. Young man, there you have something to think
of. Nor are they merely my words. They are the words of the Holy Gospel
itself."
Ever descending, ever weighing more heavily upon us, the night was as
black and hot and stifling as the previous one had been, albeit as
kindly as a mother. Still the two fires on the opposite bank of the
rivulet were aflame, and sending hot blasts of vapour across a seeming
brook of gold.
Folding his arms upon his breast, the old man tucked the palms of his
hands into his armpits, and settled himself more comfortably.
Nevertheless, when I made as though to add more twigs and shavings to
the embers he exclaimed imperiously:
"There is no need for that."
"Why is there not?"
"Because that would cause the fire to be seen, and bring some of those
men over here."
Again, as he kicked away some boughs which I had just broken up, he
repeated:
"There is no need for that, I tell you."
Presently, there approached us through the shimmering fire light on the
opposite bank two carpenters with boxes on their backs, and axes in
their hands.
"Are all the rest of our men gone?" inquired the foreman of the
newcomers.
"Yes," replied one of them, a tall man with a drooping moustache and no
beard.
"Well, 'shun evil, and good will result.'"
"Aye, and we likewise wish to depart."
"But a task ought not to be left unfinished. At dinner-time I sent
Olesha to say that none of those fellows had better be released from
work; but released they have been, and now the result is apparent!
Presently, when they have drunk a little more of their poison, they
will fire the barraque."
Every time that the first of the two carpenters inhaled the smoke of my
cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a young fellow
as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head upon his breast as
soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.
Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But suddenly
I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong accents which came
from the very centre of the tumult:
"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for
Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I should
like to know?"
"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning to me,
he added more loudly:
"I say this of such fellows--that a tavern... But what a noise those
roisterers are making, to be sure!"
The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:
"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize him!"
While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:
"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"
"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from the
ex-soldier--whereupon the old man remarked to me in an undertone:
"It would seem that a fight is brewing."
Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I heard
the old man say softly to his companions:
"He too is gone, thank God!"
Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd of men.
Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be carrying or
dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently a woman's voice
screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised mingled shouts of "Throw
him in! Give him a thrashing!" and "Drag him along!"
The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd, straighten
himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl himself at the crowd
again. As he did so the young fellow in the red shirt raised a gigantic
arm, and there followed the sound of a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering
backwards, Silantiev slid silently into the water, and lay there at my
feet.
"That's right!" was the comment of someone.
For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that
moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong
of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge
stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way.
As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.
Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot where,
half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head and breast
resting against the stepping-stones.
"You have killed him!" next I shouted--not because I believed the
statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten into
sobriety the men who were impeding me.
Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:
"Surely not?"
As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he passed me by with a
braggart, resentful shout of:
"Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said that I was
a nuisance to the whole country?"
And someone else shouted:
"Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"
"Bring a light," was the cry of a third.
Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more restrained
than they had been, and presently a little muzhik whose poll was
swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised Silantiev's head. But
almost as instantly he let it fall again, and, dipping his hands into
the water, said gravely:
"You have killed him. He is dead."
At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I stood
watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs, and turned
them this way and that, and made them stir as though they were striving
to divest themselves of the shabby old boots, I realised with all my
being that the hands which were resting in mine were the hands of a
corpse. And, true enough, when I released them they slapped down upon
the surface like wet dish-cloths.
Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to observe
what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words rang out
these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent, in subdued,
uneasy tones, cries of:
"Who was it first struck him?"
"This will lose us our jobs."
"It was the soldier that first started the racket."
"Yes, that is true."
"Let us go and denounce him."
As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:
"I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a quarrel."
"To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."
"It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."
"The soldier ought to--"
A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:
"Good Lord! Always something happens to us!"
As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon the
stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight, nothing
was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a strange emptiness
was present, save that the clamour of the bystanders aroused me to a
certain longing to outshout them all, to send forth my voice into the
night like the voice of a brazen trumpet.
Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first was a
torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being
extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of golden
sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin as a pike
when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike countenance that was
deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth perpetually half-agape,
and round, owlish-looking eyes.
As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon his knee
to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head and body. That
head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no longer could I
recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so buried was the jaunty
forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and concealed by a swelling
which had made its appearance above the left ear. Also, since the mouth
and moustache had been bashed aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted,
truly horrible smile, while, as the most horrible point of all, the
left eye was hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large,
gazing, seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's
pea-jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.
Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air, and
thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor mutilated
face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he muttered with a smack
of the lips:
"You can see for yourselves who the man is."
As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp and wet
cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so played in the
ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an added appearance of
death.
Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch into
the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion as he
smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked almost greenish:
"Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been done to
death."
"No; I should be afraid to go alone."
"Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."
"But I would much rather not."
"Don't be such a fool!"
Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the foreman.
"I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he
scraped his foot against a stone:
"How horrible the blood smells! It would seem that my very foot is
smeared with it."
With a frown the fair-headed muzhik eyed him, while the foreman
returned the muzhik's gaze with a scrutiny that never wavered. Finally
the elder man commented with cold severity:
"All the mischief has come of vodka and tobacco, the devil's drugs."
Not only were the pair strangely alike, but both of them strangely
resembled wizards, in that both were short of stature, as
sharp-finished as gimlets, and as green-tinted by the darkness as tufts
of lichen.
"Let us go, brother," the foreman said. "Go we with the Holy Spirit."
And, omitting even to inquire who had been killed, or even to glance at
the corpse, or even to pay it the last salute demanded of custom, the
foreman departed down the stream, while in his wake followed the
messenger, a man who kept stumbling as he picked his way from stone to
stone. Amid the gloom the pair moved as silently as ghosts.
The narrow-chested, fair-headed little muzhik then raked me with his
eyes; whereafter he produced a cigarette from a tin box, snapped-to the
lid of the box, struck a match (illuminating once more the face of the
dead man), and applied the flame to the cigarette. Lastly he said:
"This is the sixth murder which I have seen one thing and another
commit."
"One thing and another commit?" I queried.
The reply came only after a pause; when the little muzhik asked: "What
did you say? I did not quite catch it."
I explained that human beings, not inanimate entities, murdered human
beings.
"Well, be they human beings or machinery or lightning or anything else,
they are all one. One of my mates was caught in some machinery at
Bakhmakh. Another one had his throat cut in a brawl. Another one was
crushed against the bucket in a coal mine. Another one was--"
Carefully though the man counted, he ended by erring in his reckoning
to the extent of making his total "five." Accordingly he re-computed
the list--and this time succeeded in making the total amount to "seven."
"Never mind," he remarked with a sigh as he blew his cigarette into a
red glow which illuminated the whole of his face. "The truth is that I
cannot always repeat the list correctly, just as I should like. Were I
older than I am, I too should contrive to get finished off; for old-age
is a far from desirable thing. Yes, indeed! But, as things are, I am
still alive, nor, thank the Lord, does anything matter very much."
Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued:
"Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of him, or a
letter from him. Well, never again will he write, and as likely as not
his kinsfolk will end by saying to themselves: 'He has taken to bad
ways, and forgotten his family.' Yes, good sir."
By this time the clamour around the barraque had ceased, and the two
fires had burnt themselves out, and most of the men dispersed. From the
smooth yellow walls of the barraque dark, round, knot-holes were gazing
at the rivulet like eyes. Only in a single window without a frame was
there visible a faint light, while at intervals there issued thence
fragmentary, angry exclamations such as:
"Look sharp there, and deal! Clubs will be the winners."
"Ah! Here is a trump!"
"Indeed? What luck, damn it!"
The fair-headed muzhik blew the ashes from his cigarette, and observed:
"No such thing is there at cards as luck--only skill."
At this juncture we saw approaching us softly from across the rivulet a
young carpenter who wore a moustache. He halted beside us, and drew a
deep breath.
"Well, mate?" the fair-headed muzhik inquired.
"Would you mind giving me something to smoke?" the carpenter asked. The
obscurity caused him to look large and shapeless, though his manner of
speaking was bashful and subdued.
"Certainly. Here is a cigarette."
"Christ reward you! Today my wife forgot to bring my tobacco, and my
grandfather has strict ideas on the subject of smoking."
"Was it he who departed just now? It was."
As the carpenter inhaled a whiff he continued:
"I suppose that man was beaten to death?"
"He was--to death."
For a while the pair smoked in silence. The hour was past midnight.
Over the defile the jagged strip of sky which roofed it looked like a
river of blue flowing at an immense height above the night-enveloped
earth, and bearing the brilliant stars on its smooth current.
Quieter and quieter was everything growing; more and more was
everything becoming part of the night....
One might have thought that nothing particular had happened.