I
When I was a schoolboy in the fifth or sixth grade, I remember driving
with my grandfather from the little village where we lived to
Rostoff-on-Don. It was a sultry, long, weary August day. Our eyes were
dazzled, and our throats were parched by the heat, and the dry, burning
wind kept whirling clouds of dust in our faces. We desired only not to
open our eyes or to speak, and when the sleepy Little Russian driver
Karpo flicked my cap, as he brandished his whip over his horse, I
neither protested nor uttered a sound, but, waking from a half-doze, I
looked meekly and listlessly into the distance, hoping to descry a
village through the dust. We stopped to feed the horse at the house of a
rich Armenian whom my grandfather knew in the large Armenian village of
Baktchi-Salak. Never in my life have I seen anything more of a
caricature, than our Armenian host. Picture to yourself a tiny,
clean-shaven head, thick, overhanging eyebrows, a beak-like nose, a
long, grey moustache, and a large mouth, out of which a long chibouk of
cherry-wood is hanging. This head was clumsily stuck on a stooping
little body clothed in a fantastic costume consisting of a bob tailed
red jacket and wide, bright blue breeches. The little man walked
shuffling his slippers, with his feet far apart. He did not remove his
pipe from his mouth when he spoke, and carried himself with true
Armenian dignity, staring-eyed and unsmiling, doing his best to ignore
his guests as much as possible.
Although there was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian’s house, it was
as uncomfortable and stifling and dreary in there as it had been on the
road across the steppe. Dusty and heavy with the heat, I sat down on a
green trunk in a corner. The wooden walls, the furniture, and the floor
painted with yellow ochre smelled of dry wood blistering in the sun.
Wherever the eye fell, were flies, flies, flies—My grandfather and the
Armenian talked together in low voices of pasturage and fertilising and
sheep. I knew that it would be an hour before the samovar would be
brought, and that grandfather would then drink tea for at least an hour
longer, after which he would lie down for a two or three hours’ nap. A
quarter of the day would thus be spent by me in waiting, after which we
would resume the dust, the swelter, and the jolting of the road. I heard
the two voices murmuring together, and began to feel as if I had been
looking for ever at the Armenian, the china closet, the flies, and the
windows through which the hot sun was pouring, and that I should only
cease to look at them in the distant future. I was seized with hatred of
the steppe, the sun, and the flies.
A Little Russian woman, with a kerchief on her head, brought in first a
tray of dishes, and then the samovar. The Armenian went without haste to
the hall door, and called:
“Mashia! Come and pour the tea! Where are you, Mashia?”
We heard hurried footfalls, and a girl of sixteen in a plain cotton
dress, with a white kerchief on her head, entered the room. Her back was
turned toward me as she stood arranging the tea-things and pouring the
tea, and all I could see was that she was slender and barefooted, and
that her little toes were almost hidden by her long, full trousers.
Our host invited me to sit down at the table, and when I was seated, I
looked into the girl’s face as she handed me my glass. As I looked, I
suddenly felt as if a wind had swept over my soul, blowing away all the
impressions of the day with its tedium and dust. I beheld there the
enchanting features of the most lovely face I had ever seen, waking or
in my dreams. Before me stood a very beautiful girl; I recognised that
at a glance, as one recognises a flash of lightning.
I am ready to swear that Masha—or, as her father called her, Mashia—was
really beautiful, but I cannot prove it. Sometimes, in the evening, the
clouds lie piled high on the horizon, and the sun, hidden behind them,
stains them and the sky with a hundred colours, crimson, orange, gold,
violet, and rosy pink. One cloud resembles a monk; another, a fish; a
third, a turbaned Turk. The glow embraces one-third of the sky, flashing
from the cross on the church, and the windows of the manor-house,
lighting up the river and the meadows, and trembling upon the tree tops.
Far, far away against the sunset a flock of wild ducks is winging its
way to its night’s resting-place. And the little cowherd with his cows,
and the surveyor driving along the river dyke in his cart, and the
inmates of the manor-house strolling in the evening air, all gaze at the
sunset, and to each one it is supremely beautiful, but no one can say
just where its beauty lies.
Not I alone found the young Armenian beautiful. My grandfather, an
octogenarian, stern and indifferent to women and to the beauties of
Nature, looked gently at Masha for a whole minute, and then asked:
“Is that your daughter, Avet Nazaritch?”
“Yes, that is my daughter,” answered our host.
“She is a fine girl,” the old man said heartily.
An artist would have called the Armenian’s beauty classic and severe. It
was the type of beauty in whose presence you feel that here are features
of perfect regularity; that the hair, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the
chin, the neck, the breast, and every movement of the young body are
merged into a perfect and harmonious chord, in which Nature has not
sounded one false note. You somehow feel that a woman of ideal beauty
should have just such a nose as Masha’s, slender, with the slightest
aquiline curve; just such large, dark eyes and long lashes; just such a
languorous glance; that her dusky, curly hair and her black eyebrows
match the delicate, tender white tint of her forehead and cheeks as
green reeds match the waters of a quiet river. Masha’s white throat and
young breast were scarcely developed, and yet it seemed as if to chisel
them one would have had to possess the highest creative genius. You
looked at her, and little by little the longing seized you to say
something wonderfully kind to her; something beautiful and true;
something as beautiful as the girl herself.
I was hurt and humiliated at first that Masha should keep her eyes fixed
on the ground as she did and fail to notice me. I felt as if a strange
atmosphere of happiness and pride were blowing between us, sighing
jealously at every glance of mine.
“It is because I am all sunburned and dusty,” I thought. “And because I
am still a boy.”
But later I gradually forgot my feelings, and abandoned myself to her
beauty heart and soul. I no longer remembered the dust and tedium of the
steppe, nor heard the buzzing of the flies; I did not taste the tea, and
only felt that there, across the table, stood that lovely girl.
Her beauty had a strange effect upon me. I experienced neither desire,
nor rapture, nor pleasure, but a sweet, oppressive sadness, as vague and
undefinable as a dream. I was sorry for myself, and for my grandfather,
and for the Armenian, and for the girl herself, and felt as if each one
of us had lost something significant and essential to our lives, which
we could never find again. Grandfather, too, grew sad and no longer
talked of sheep and pasturage, but sat in silence, his eyes resting
pensively on Masha.
When tea was over, grandfather lay down to take his nap, and I went out
and sat on the little porch at the front door. Like all the other houses
in Baktchi-Salak, this one stood in the blazing sun; neither trees nor
eaves threw any shade about it. The great courtyard, all overgrown with
dock and nettles, was full of life and gaiety in spite of the intense
heat. Wheat was being threshed behind one of the low wattle fences that
intersected it in various places, and twelve horses were trotting round
and round a post that had been driven into the middle of the
threshing-floor. A Little Russian in a long, sleeveless coat, and wide
breeches, was walking beside the horses cracking his whip over them, and
shouting as if to excite them, and at the same time to vaunt his mastery
over them.
“Ah—ah—ah—you little devils! Ah—ah, the cholera take you! Are you not
afraid of me?”
Not knowing why they were being forced to trot round in a circle,
trampling wheat straw under their feet, the horses—bay, white and
piebald—moved unwillingly and wearily, angrily switching their tails.
The wind raised clouds of golden chaff under their hoofs, and blew it
away across the fence. Women with rakes were swarming among the tall
stacks of fresh straw, tip-carts were hurrying to and fro, and behind
the stacks in an adjoining courtyard another dozen horses were trotting
around a post, and another Little Russian was cracking his whip and
making merry over them.
The steps on which I was sitting were fiery hot, the heat had drawn
drops of resin from the slender porch railing and the window-sills, and
swarms of ruddy little beetles were crowded together in the strips of
shade under the blinds and steps. The sun’s rays were beating on my
head, and breast, and back, but I was unconscious of them, and only felt
that there, behind me, those bare feet were pattering about on the deal
floor. Having cleared away the tea-things, Masha ran down the steps, a
little gust sweeping me as she passed, and flew like a bird into a
small, smoky building that was no doubt the kitchen, from which issued a
smell of roasting mutton and the angry tones of an Armenian voice. She
vanished into the dark doorway, and in her stead there appeared on the
threshold an old, humpbacked Armenian crone, in green trousers. The old
woman was in a rage, and was scolding some one. Masha soon came out on
the threshold again, flushed with the heat of the kitchen, bearing a
huge loaf of black bread on her shoulder. Bending gracefully under its
weight, she ran across the court in the direction of the
threshing-floor, leaped over the fence, and plunged into the clouds of
golden chaff. The Little Russian driver lowered his whip, stopped his
cries, and gazed after her for a moment; then, when the girl appeared
again beside the horses, and jumped back over the fence, he followed her
once more with his eyes, and cried to his horses in a tone of
affliction:
“Ah—ah—the Evil One fly away with you!”
From then on I sat and listened to the unceasing fall of her bare feet,
and watched her whisking about the courtyard, with her face so serious
and intent. Now she would run up the steps, fanning me with a whirl of
wind; now dart into the kitchen; now across the threshing-floor; now out
through the front gate, and all so fast that I could barely turn my head
quickly enough to follow her with my eyes.
And the oftener she flashed across my vision with her beauty, the more
profound my sadness grew. I pitied myself, and her, and the Little
Russian sadly following her with his eyes each time that she ran through
the cloud of chaff and past the straw-stacks. Was I envious of her
beauty? Did I regret that this girl was not and never could be mine, and
that I must for ever remain a stranger to her? Did I dimly realise that
her rare loveliness was a freak of nature, vain, perishable like
everything else on earth? Or did my sadness spring from a feeling
peculiar to every heart at the sight of perfect beauty? Who shall say?
The three hours of waiting passed before I was aware. It seemed to me
that I had scarcely had a chance to look at Masha, before Karpo rode
down to the river to wash off his horse, and began to harness up. The
wet animal whinnied with delight, and struck the shafts with his hoofs.
Karpo shouted “Ba—ack!” Grandfather woke up. Masha threw open the
creaking gates; we climbed into our carriage and drove out of the
courtyard. We travelled in silence, as if there had been a quarrel
between us.
Three hours later, when we could already see Rostoff in the distance,
Karpo, who had not spoken since we left the Armenian village, looked
round swiftly and said:
“That Armenian has a pretty daughter!”
And as he said this he lashed his horse.