"And some tobacco?"
For awhile he continued to contemplate the sun where that luminary hung
suspended above a cloud-bank before finally declining. Then he remarked:
"Give me a pinch of the tobacco. As for matches, I have some."
So both of us lit up; after which he rested his elbows upon the
balustrade of the bridge, leant back against the central stanchions,
and for some time continued merely to emit and inhale blue coils of
smoke. Then his nose wrinkled, and he expectorated.
"Muscovite tobacco is it?" he inquired.
"No--Roman, Italian."
"Oh!" And as the wrinkles of his nose straightened themselves again he
added: "Then of course it is good tobacco."
To enter a dwelling in advance of one's host is a breach of decorum;
wherefore, I found myself forced to remain standing where I was until
my interlocutor's tale of questions as to my precise identity, my exact
place of origin, my true destination, and my real reasons for
travelling should tardily win its way to a finish. Greatly the process
vexed me, for I was eager, rather, to learn what the steppe settlement
might have in store for my delectation.
"Work?" the fellow drawled through his teeth. "Oh no, there is no work
to be got here. How could there be at this season of the year?"
Turning aside, he spat into the rivulet.
On the further bank of the latter, a goose was strutting importantly at
the head of a string of round, fluffy, yellow goslings, whilst driving
the brood were two little girls--the one a child but little larger than
the goose itself, dressed in a red frock, and armed with a switch; and
the other one a youngster absolutely of a size with the bird, pale of
feature, plump of body, bowed of leg, and grave of expression.
"Ufim!" came at this moment in the strident voice of a woman unseen,
but incensed; upon which my companion bestowed upon me a sidelong nod,
and muttered with an air of appreciation:
"THERE'S lungs for you!"
Whereafter, he fell to twitching the toes of a chafed and blackened
foot, and to gazing at their nails. His next question was:
"Are you, maybe, a scholar?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because, if you are, you might like to read the Book over a corpse."
And so proud, apparently, was he of the proposal that a faint smile
crossed his flaccid countenance.
"You see, it would be work," he added with his brown eyes veiled,
"whilst, in addition, you would be paid ten kopecks for your trouble,
and allowed to keep the shroud."
"And should also be given some supper, I suppose?"
"Yes--and should also be given some supper."
"Where is the corpse lying?"
"In my own hut. Shall we go there?"
Off we set. En route we heard once more a strident shout of:
"Ufi-i-im!"
As we proceeded, shadows of trees glided along the soft road to meet
us, while behind a clump of bushes on the further bank of the rivulet
some children were shouting at their play. Thus, what with the
children's voices, and the purling of the water, and the noise of
someone planing a piece of wood, the air seemed full of tremulous,
suspended sound. Meanwhile, my host said to me with a drawl:
"Once we did have a reader here. An old woman she was, a regular old
witch who at last had to be removed to the town for amputation of the
feet. They might well have cut off her tongue too whilst they were
about it, since, though useful enough, she could rail indeed!"
Presently a black puppy, a creature of about the size of a toad, came
ambling, three-legged fashion, under our feet. Upon that it stiffened
its tail, growled, and snuffed the air with its tiny pink nose.
Next there popped up from somewhere or another a barefooted young
woman. Clapping her hands, she bawled:
"Here, you Ufim, how I have been calling for you, and calling for you!"
"Eh? Well, I never heard you."
"Where were you, then?"
By way of reply, my conductor silently pointed in my direction with the
stem of his pipe. Then he led me into the forecourt of the hut next to
the one whence the young woman had issued, whilst she proceeded to
project fresh volleys of abuse, and fresh expressions of accentuated
non-amiability.
In the little doorway of the dwelling next to hers, we found seated two
old women. One of them was as rotund and dishevelled as a battered,
leathern ball, and the other one was a woman bony and crooked of back,
swarthy of skin, and irritable of feature. At the women's feet lay,
lolling out a rag-like tongue, a shaggy dog which, red and pathetic of
eye, could boast of a frame nearly as large as a sheep's.
First of all, Ufim related in detail how he had fallen in with myself.
Then he stated the purpose for which he conceived it was possible that
I might prove useful. And all the time that he was speaking, two pairs
of eyes contemplated him in silence; until, on the completion of his
recital, one of the old women gave a jerk to a thin, dark neck, and the
other old dame invited me to take a seat whilst she prepared some
supper.
Amid the tangled herbage of the forecourt, a spot overgrown with mallow
and bramble shoots, there was standing a cart which, lacking wheels,
had its axle-points dark with mildew. Presently a herd of cattle was
driven past the hut, and over the hamlet there seemed to arise, drift,
and float, a perfect wave of sound. Also, as evening descended, I could
see an ever-increasing number of grey shadows come creeping forth from
the forecourt's recesses, and overlaying and darkening the turf.
"One day all of us must die," remarked Ufim, with empressement as he
tapped the bowl of his pipe against a wall.
The next moment the barefooted, red-cheeked young woman showed herself
at the gate, and asked in tones rather less vehement than recently:
"Are you coming, or are you not?"
"Presently," replied Ufim. "One thing at a time."
For supper I was given a hunch of bread and a bowl of milk; whereupon
the dog rose, laid its aged, slobbering muzzle upon my knee, and gazed
into my face with its dim eyes as though it were saying, "May I too
have a bite?"
Next, like an eventide breeze among withered herbage, there floated
across the forecourt the hoarse voice of the crook-backed old woman.
"Let us pray," she said. "Oh God, take away from us all sorrow, and
receive therefore requitement in twofold measure!"
As she recited the prayer with a mien as dark as fate, the supplicant
rolled her long neck from side to side, and nodded her ophidian-shaped
head in accordance with a sort of regular, lethargic rhythm. Next I
heard sink to earth, at my feet, some senile words uttered in a sort of
singsong.
"Some folk need work just as much as they wish, and others need do no
work at all. Yet OUR folk have to work beyond their strength, and to
work without any recompense for the toil which they undergo."
Upon this the smaller of the old crones whispered:
"But the Mother of God will recompense them. She recompenses everyone."
Then a dead silence fell--a weighty silence, a silence seemingly
fraught with matters of import, and inspiring in one an assurance that
presently there would be brought forth impressive reflections--there
would reach the ear words of mark.
"I may tell you," at length the crook-backed old woman remarked as she
attempted to straighten herself, "that though my husband was not
without enemies, he also had a particular friend named Andrei, and that
when failing strength was beginning to make life difficult for us in
our old home on the Don, and folk took to reviling and girding at my
husband, Andrei came to us one day, and said: 'Yakov, let not your
hands fail you, for the earth is large, and in all parts has been given
to men for their use. If folk be cruel, they are so through stupidity
and prejudice, and must not be judged for being so. Live your own life.
Let theirs be theirs, and yours yours, so that, dwelling in peace,
while yielding to none, you shall in time overcome them all.'"
"That is what Vasil too used to say. He used to say: 'Let theirs be
theirs, and ours ours.'"
"Aye, never a good word dies, but, wheresoever it be uttered, flies
thence through the world like a swallow."
Ufim corroborated this with a nod.
"True indeed!" he remarked. "Though also it has been said that a good
word is Christ's, and a bad word the priest's."
One of the old women shook her head vigorously at this, and croaked:
"The badness lies not in any word of a priest, but in what you yourself
have just said. You are greyheaded, Ufim, yet often you speak without
thought."
Presently Ufim's wife reappeared, and, waving her hands as though she
were brandishing a sieve, began to vent renewed volleys of virulent
abuse.
"My God," she cried, "what sort of a man is that? Why, a man who
neither speaks nor listens, but for ever keeps baying at the moon like
a dog!"
"NOW she's started!" Ufim drawled.
Westward there were arising, and soaring skyward, clouds of such a
similarity to blue smoke and blood-red flame that the steppe seemed
almost to be in danger of catching fire thence. Meanwhile a soft
evening breeze was caressing the expanse as a whole, and causing the
grain to bend drowsily earthward as golden-red ripples skimmed its
surface. Only in the eastern quarter whence night's black, sultry
shadow was stealthily creeping in our direction had darkness yet
descended.
At intervals there came vented from the window above my head the hot
odour of a dead body; and, whenever that happened, the dog's grey
nostrils and muzzle would quiver, and its eyes would blink pitifully as
it gazed aloft. Glancing at the heavens, Ufim remarked with conviction:
"There will be no rain tonight."
"Do you keep such a thing as a Psalter here?" I inquired.
"Such a thing as a what?"
"As a Psalter--a book?"
No answer followed.
Faster and faster the southern night went on descending, and wiping the
land clean of heat, as though that heat had been dust. Upon me there
came a feeling that I should like to go and bury myself in some
sweet-smelling hay, and sleep there until sunrise.
"Maybe Panek has one of those things?" hazarded Ufim after a long
pause. "At any rate he has dealings with the Molokans."
After that, the company held further converse in whispers. Then all
save the more rotund of the old women left the forecourt, while its
remaining occupant said to me with a sigh:
"You may come and look at him if you wish."
Small and gentle looked the woman's meekly lowered head as, folding her
hands across her breast, she added in a whisper:
"Oh purest Mother of God! Oh Thou of spotless chastity!"
In contrast to her expression, that on the face of the dead man was
stem and, as it were, fraught with importance where thick grey eyebrows
lay parted over a large nose, and the latter curved downwards towards a
moustache which divided introspective, partially closed eyes from a
mouth that was set half-open. Indeed, it was as though the man were
pondering something of annoyance, so that presently he would make shift
to deliver himself of a final and urgent injunction. The blue smoke of
a meagre candle quivered meanwhile, over his head, though the wick
diffused so feeble a light that the death blurs under the eyes and in
the cheek furrows lay uneffaced, and the dark hands and wrists,
disposed, lumplike, on the front of the greyish-blue shroud, seemed to
have had their fingers twisted in a manner which even death had failed
to rectify. And ever and anon, streaming from door to window, came a
draught variously fraught with the odours of wormwood, mint, and
corruption.
Presently the old woman's whispering grew more animated and
intelligible, while constantly, amid the wheezed mutterings, sheet
lightning cut the black square of the window space with menacing
flashes, and seemed, with their blue glare, as it shot through the
tomblike hut, to cause the candle's flickering flame to undergo a
temporary extinction, a temporary withdrawal, and the grey bristles on
the dead man's face to gleam like the scales of a fish, and his
features to gather themselves into a grim frown. Meanwhile, like a
stream of cold, bitter water dripping upon my breast, the old woman's
whispered soliloquy maintained its uninterrupted flow.
At length there recurred, somehow, to my mind the words which,
impressive though they be, never can assuage sorrow--the words:
"Weep not for me, Martha, nor gaze into the tomb, for, lo, I am risen!"
Nay, and never would THIS man rise again....
Presently the bony old woman returned with a report that nowhere among
the huts could a Psalter be found, but only a book of another kind.
Would it do?
The other book turned out to be a grammar of the Church Slavonic
dialect, with the first pages torn out, and beginning with the words,
"Drug, drugi, druzhe." ["A friend, of a friend, O friend."]
"What, then, are we to do?" vexedly asked the smaller of the dames when
I had explained to her that a grammar could work no benefit to a
corpse. As she put the query, her small, childlike face quivered with
disappointment, and her eyes swelled and overflowed with tears.
"My man has lived his life," she said with a sob, "and now he cannot
even be given proper burial!"
And, similarly, when next I offered to recite over her husband each and
every prayer and psalm that I could contrive to recall to my
recollection, on condition that all present should meanwhile leave the
hut (for I felt that, since the task would be one novel to me, the
attendance of auditors might hinder me from mustering my entire stock
of petitions), she so disbelieved me, or failed to understand me, that
for long enough she could only stand tottering in the doorway as, with
twitching nose, she drew her sleeve across her worn, diminutive
features.
Nevertheless she did, at last, take her departure.
* * * * *
Low over the steppe, stray flashes of summer lightning still gleamed
against the jet black sky as they flooded the hut with their lurid
shimmer; and each time that the darkness of the sultry night swept back
into the room, the candle flickered, and the corpse's prone figure
seemed to open its half-closed eyes and glance at the shadows which
palpitated on its breast, and danced over the white walls and ceiling.
Similarly did I glance from time to time at HIM, yet glance with a
guarded eye, and with a feeling in me that when a corpse is present
anything may happen; until finally I rallied conscience to my aid, and
recited under my breath:
"Pardon Thou all who have sinned, whether they be men, or whether they,
being not men, do yet stand higher than the beasts of the field."
However, the only result of the recitation was to bring to my mind a
thought directly at variance with the import of the words, the thought
that "it is not sin that is hard and bitter to ensue, but
righteousness."
"Sins wilful and of ignorance," I continued. "Sins known and unknown.
Sins committed through imprudence and evil example. Sins committed
through forwardness and sloth."
"Though to YOU, brother," mentally I added to the corpse, "none of
this, of course, applies."
Again, glancing at the blue stars, where they hung glittering in the
fathomless obscurity of the sky, I reflected:
"Who in this house is looking at them save myself?"
Presently, with a pattering of claws over the beaten clay of the floor,
there entered the dog. Once or twice it paced the length of the room.
Then, with a sniff at my legs, and a grumble to itself, it departed as
it had come. Perhaps the creature felt too old to bay a dirge to its
master after the manner of its kind. In any case, as it vanished
through the doorway, the shadows--so I fancied--sought to slip out
after it, and, floating in that direction, fanned my face with a breath
as of ice, while the flame of the candle flickered the more--as though
it too were seeking to wrest itself from the candlestick, and go
floating upwards to join the band of stars--a band of luminaries which
it might well have deemed to be of a brilliance as small and as pitiful
as its own. And I, for my part, since I had no wish to see what light
there was disappear, followed the struggles of the tiny flame with a
tense anxiety which made my eyes ache. Oppressed and uneasy all over as
I stood by the dead man's shoulder, I strained my ears and listened,
listened ever, to the silence encompassing the hut.
Eventually, drowsiness began to steal over me, and proved a feeling
hard to resist. Yet still with an effort did I contrive to recall the
beautiful prayers of Saints Makari Veliki, Chrysostom, and Damarkin,
while at the same time something resembling a swarm of mosquitos
started to hum in my head, the words wherein the Sixth Precept issues
its injunction to: "all persons about to withdraw to a couch of rest."
And next, to escape falling asleep, I fell to reciting the kondak [Hymn
for the end of the day] which begins:
"Oh Lord, refresh my soul thus grievously made feeble with wrong doing."
Still engaged in this manner, suddenly I heard something rustle outside
the door. Then a dry whisper articulated:
"Oh God of Mercy, receive unto Thyself also my soul!"
Upon that, the fancy occurred to me that probably the old woman's soul
was as grey and timid as a linnet, and that when it should fly up to
the throne of the Mother of God, and the Mother should extend to that
little soul her tender, white, and gracious hand, the newcomer would
tremble all over, and flutter her gentle wings until well nigh death
should supervene.
And then the Mother of God would say to Her Son:
"Son, pray see the fearfulness of Thy people on earth, and their
estrangement from joy! Oh Son, is that well?"