He would make answer to Her, and say I know not what.
* * * * *
And suddenly, so I fancied, a voice answered mine out of the brooding
hush, as though it too were reciting a prayer. Yet so complete, so
profound, was the stillness, that the voice seemed far away, submerged,
unreal--a mere phantom of an echo, of the echo of my own voice. Until,
on my desisting from my recital, and straining my cars yet more, the
sound seemed to approach and grow clearer as shuffling footsteps also
advanced in my direction, and there came a mutter of:
"Nay, it CANNOT be so!"
"Why is it that the dogs have failed to bark?" I reflected, rubbing my
eyes, and fancying as I did so that the dead man's eyebrows twitched,
and his moustache stirred in a grim smile.
Presently a deep, hoarse, rasping voice vociferated in the forecourt:
"What do you say, old woman? Yes, that he must die--I knew all
along,--so you can cease your chattering? Men like him keep up to the
last, then lay them down to rise to more... WHO is with him? A
stranger? A-ah!"
And, the next moment, a bulk so large and shapeless that it might well
have been the darkness of the night embodied, stumbled against the
outer side of the door, grunted, hiccuped, and lurching head foremost
into the hut, grew wellnigh to the ceiling. Then it waved a gigantic
hand, crossed itself in the direction of the candle, and, bending
forward until its forehead almost touched the feet of the corpse,
queried under its breath:
"How now, Vasil?"
Thereafter, the figure vented a sob whilst a strong smell of vodka
arose in the room, and from the doorway the old woman said in an
appealing voice:
"Pray give HIM the book, Father Demid."
"No indeed! Why should I? I intend to do the reading myself."
And a heavy hand laid itself upon my shoulder, while a great hairy face
bent over mine, and inquired:
"A young man, are you not? A member of the clergy, too, I suppose?"
So covered with tufts of auburn hair was the enormous head above
me--tufts the sheen of which even the semi-obscurity of the pale
candlelight failed to render inconspicuous--that the mass, as a whole,
resembled a mop. And as its owner lurched to and fro, he made me lurch
responsively by now drawing me towards himself, now thrusting me away.
Meanwhile he continued to suffuse my face with the hot, thick odour of
spirituous liquor.
"Father Demid!" again essayed the old woman with an imploring wail, but
he cut her short with the menacing admonition:
"How often have I told you that you must not address a deacon as
'Father'? Go to bed! Yes, be off with you, and let me mind my affairs
myself! GO, I say! But first light me another candle, for I cannot see
a single thing in front of me."
With which, throwing himself upon a bench, the deacon slapped his knee
with a book which he had in his hands, and put to me the query:
"Should you care to have a dram of gorielka? [Another name for vodka.]
"No," I replied. "At all events, not here."
"Indeed?" the deacon cried, unabashed. "But come, a bottle of the stuff
is here, in my very pocket."
"This is no place in which to be drinking."
For a moment the deacon said nothing. Then he muttered:
"True, true. So let us adjourn to the forecourt.... Yes, what you
say is no more than the truth."
"Had you not better remain seated where you are, and begin the reading?"
"No, I am going to do no such thing. YOU shall do the reading. Tonight
I, I--well I am not very well, for I have been drinking a little."
And, thrusting the book into my stomach, he sank his head upon his
breast, and fell to swaying it ponderously up and down.
"Folk die," was his next utterance, "and the world remains as full of
grief as ever. Yes, folk die even before they have seen a little good
accrue to themselves."
"I see that your book is not a Psalter," here I interposed after an
inspection of the volume.
"You are wrong."
"Then look for yourself."
He grabbed the book by its cover, and, by dint of holding the candle
close to its pages, discovered, eventually, that matters were as I had
stated.
This took him aback completely.
"What can the fact mean?" he exclaimed. "Oh, I know what has happened.
The mistake has come of my being in such a hurry. The other book, the
true Psalter, is a fat, heavy volume, whereas this one is--"
For a moment he seemed sobered by the shock. At all events, he rose
and, approaching the corpse, said, as he bent over the bed with his
beard held back:
"Pardon me, Vasil, but what is to be done?"
Then he straightened himself again, threw back his curls, and, drawing
a bottle from his pocket, and thrusting the neck of the bottle into his
mouth, took a long draught, with a whistling of his nostrils as he did
so.
"Well?" I said.
"Well, I intend to go to bed--my idea is to drink and enjoy myself
awhile."
"Go, then."
"And what of the reading?"
"Who would wish you to mumble words which you would not be
comprehending as you uttered them?"
The deacon reseated himself upon the bench, leaned forward, buried his
face in his hands and remained silent.
Fast the July night was waning. Fast its shadows were dissolving into
corners, and allowing a whiff of fresh dewy morningtide to enter at the
window. Already was the combined light of the two candles growing
paler, with their flames looking like the eyes of a frightened child.
"You have lived your life, Vasi," at length the deacon muttered, "and
though once I had a place to which to resort, now I shall have none.
Yes, my last friend is dead. Oh Lord--where is Thy justice?"
For myself, I went and took a seat by the window, and, thrusting my
head into the open air, lit a pipe, and continued to listen with a
shiver to the deacon's wailings.
"Folk used to gird at my wife," he went on, "and now they are gnawing
at me as pigs might gnaw at a cabbage. That is so, Vasil. Yes that is
so."
Again the bottle made its appearance. Again the deacon took a draught.
Again he wiped his beard. Then he bent over the dead man once more, and
kissed the corpse's forehead.
"Good-bye, friend of mine!" he said. Then to myself he added with
unlooked-for clarity and vigour:
"My friend here was but a plain man--a man as inconspicuous among his
fellows as a rook among a flock of rooks. Yet no rook was he. Rather,
he was a snow-white dove, though none but I realised the fact. And now
he has been withdrawn from the 'grievous bondage of Pharaoh.' Only I am
left. Verily, after my passing, shall my soul torment and vomit spittle
upon his adversaries!"
"Have you known much sorrow?"
The deacon did not reply at once. When he did so he said dully:
"All of us have known much sorrow. In some cases we have known more
than was rightfully our due. I certainly, have known much. But go to
sleep, for only in sleep do we recover what is ours."
And he added as he tripped over his own feet, and lurched heavily
against me:
"I have a longing to sing something. Yet I feel that I had best not,
for song at such an hour awakens folk, and starts them bawling...
But beyond all things would I gladly sing."
With which he buzzed into my ear:
"To whom shall I sing of my grief?
To whom resort for relief?
To the One in whose ha-a-and--"
At this point the sharp bristles of his beard so tickled my neck as to
cause me to edge further away.
"You do not like me?" he queried. "Then go to sleep, and to the devil
too!"
"It was your beard that was tickling me."
"Indeed? Ought I to have shaved for your benefit before I came?"
He reflected awhile--then subsided on to the floor with a sniff and an
angry exclamation of:
"Read, you, whilst I sleep. And see to it that you do not make off with
the book, for it belongs to the church, and is very valuable. Yes. I
know you hard-ups! Why do you go roaming about as you do--what is it
you hope to gain by your tramping?... However, tramp as much as you
like. Yes, be off, and tell people that a deacon has come by
misfortune, and is in need of some good person to take pity upon his
plight.... Diomid Kubasov my name is--that of a man lost beyond
recall."
With which he fell asleep. Opening the book at random, I read the words:
"A land unapportioned that shall produce a nourisher of humanity, a
being that shall put forth the bounty of his hand to feed every
creature."
"A nourisher of humanity." Before my eyes that "nourisher" lay
outspread, a nourisher overlaid with dry and fragrant herbage. And as I
gazed, in the haze of a vision, upon that nourisher's dark and
enigmatical face, I saw also the thousands of men who have seamed this
earth with furrows, to the end that dead things should become things of
life. And in particular, there uprose before me a picture strange
indeed. In that picture I saw marching over the steppe, where the
expanse lay bare and void--yes, marching in circles that increasingly
embraced a widening area--a gigantic, thousand-handed being in whose
train the dead steppe gathered unto itself vitality, and became swathed
in juicy, waving verdure, and studded with towns and villages. And
ever, as the being receded further and further into the distance, could
I see him sowing with tireless hands that which had in it life, and was
part of himself, and human as, with thoughts intent upon the benefiting
of humanity, he summoned all men to put forth the mysterious force that
is in them, and thus to conquer death, and eternally and invincibly to
convert, dead things into things of life, while traversing in company
the road of death towards that which has no knowledge of death, and
ensuring that, in swallowing up mankind, the jaws of death should not
close upon death's victims.
And this caused my heart to beat with emotions the pulsing wings of
which at once gladdened me, and cooled my fervour... And how greatly,
at that moment, did I feel the need of someone able to respond to my
questions without passion, yet with truth, and in the language of
simplicity! For beside me there lay but a man dead and a man drunken,
while without the threshold there was stationed one who had far
outlived her span of years. No matter, however. If not today, then
tomorrow, should I find a fellow-creature with whom my soul might
commune.
Mentally I left the hut, and passed on to the steppe, that I might
contemplate thence the little dwelling in which alone, though lost amid
the earth's immensity, the windows were not blind and black as in its
fellow huts, but showed, burning over the head of a dead human being,
the fire which humanity had conquered for humanity's benefit.
And that heart which had ceased to beat in the dead man--had everything
conceived in life by that heart found due expression in a world
poverty, stricken of heart-conceived ideas? I knew that the man just
passed away had been but a plain and insignificant mortal, yet as I
reflected upon even the little that he had done, his labour loomed
before me as greater than prowess of larger magnitude. Yes, to my mind
there recurred the immature, battered ears of corn lying in the ruts of
the steppe track, the swallows traversing the blue sky above the
golden, brocaded grain, the kite hovering in the void over the
landscape's vast periphery.....
And along with these thoughts, there struck upon my ears a whistling of
pinions as the shadow of a bird flitted across the brilliant,
dew-bespangled green of the forecourt, and five cocks crowed in
succession, and a flock of geese announced the fact of their awakening,
and a cow lowed, and the gate of the cattle-pen creaked.
And with that I fell to thinking how I should like really to go out on
to the steppe, and there to fall asleep under a warm, dry bank.
As for the deacon, he was still slumbering at my feet--slumbering with
his breast, the breast of a prize-fighter, turned uppermost, and his
fine, golden shock of hair falling like a nimbus around his head, and
hot, fat, flushed red features and gaping mouth and ceaselessly
twitching moustache. In passing, I had noticed that his hands were
long, and that they were set upon shovel-shaped wrists.
Next I found myself imagining the scene as the powerful figure of this
man embraced a woman. Probably her face would become lost to sight in
his beard, until nothing of her features remained visible. Then, when
the beard began to tickle her, she would throw back her head, and
laugh. And the children that such a man might have begotten!
All this only made it the more painful and disagreeable to me to
reflect that the breast of a human being of such a type should be
bearing a burden of sorrow. Surely naught but joy should have been
present therein!
Meanwhile, the old woman's gentle face was still peering at me through
the doorway, and presently the first beam of sunlight came glancing
through the window-space. Above the rivulet's silky glimmer, a
transparent mist lay steaming, while trees and herbage alike were
passing through that curiously inert stage when at any moment (so one
fancied) they might give themselves a shake, and burst into song, and
in keys intelligible to the soul alone, set forth the wondrous mystery
of their existence.
"What a good man he is!" the old woman whispered plaintively as she
gazed at the deacon's gigantic frame. Whereafter, as though reading
aloud from a book invisible to my sight, she proceeded quietly and
simply to relate the story of his wife.
"You see," she went on "his lady committed a certain sin with a certain
man; and folk remarked this, and, after setting the husband on to the
couple, derided him--yes, him, our Demid!--for the reason that he
persisted in forgiving the woman her fault. At length the jeers made
her take to her room and him to liquor, and for two years past he has
been drinking, and soon is going to be deprived of his office. One who
scarcely drank at all, my poor husband, used to say: 'Ah, Demid, yield
not to these folk, but live your own life, and let theirs be theirs,
and yours, yours.'"
With the words, tears welled from the old woman's dim, small eyes, and
became merged with the folds and wrinkles on her grief-stained cheeks.
And in the presence of that little head, a head shaking like a dead
leaf in the autumn time, and of those kindly features so worn with age
and sorrow, my eyes fell, and I felt smitten with shame to find that,
on searching my soul for at least a word of consolation to offer to the
poor fellow-mortal before me, I could discover none that seemed
suitable.
But at length there recurred to my mind some strange words which I had
encountered in I know not what antique volume--words which ran:
"Let not the servants of the Gods lament but, rather, rejoice, in that
weeping and lamentation grieve both the Gods and mankind."
Thereafter, I muttered confusedly:
"It is time that I was going."
"What?" was her hasty exclamation, an exclamation uttered as though the
words had affrighted her. Whereafter, with quivering lips, she began
hesitantly and uncertainly to fumble in her bodice.
"No, I have no need of money," I interposed. "Only, if you should be so
willing, give me a piece of bread."
"You have no need of money?" she re-echoed dubiously.
"No, none. For that matter, of what use could it be to me?"
"Well, well!" she said after a thoughtful pause. "Then be it as you
wish, and--and I thank you."
* * * * *
The sun, as he rose and ascended towards the blue of the firmament, was
spreading over the earth a braggart, peacock-like tail of beams. And as
he did so, I winked at him, for by experience I knew that some two
hours later his smiles would be scorching me with fire. Yet for the
time being he and I had no fault to find with one another. Wherefore, I
set myself to search for a bank whence I might sing to him, as to the
Lord of Life:
Oh Thou of intangible substance,
Reveal now that substance to me!
Enwrap me within the great vestment
Of light which encompasseth Thee!
That with Thy uprising, my substance
May Come all-prevailing to be!
* * * * *
"Let us live our lives unto ourselves. Let theirs be theirs, and ours,
ours."