*
A man must have been born in cultured society, in order to find within
himself the patience necessary to live out the whole of his life in
the midst of it, and never once desire to escape somewhere, away from
the sphere of all those oppressive conventions, legalized by custom,
of petty, malicious lies, from the sphere of sickly self-conceit, of
sectarianism of ideas, of all sorts of insincerity,--in a word, from
all that vanity of vanities which chills the emotions, and perverts the
mind. I was born and reared outside that circle of society, and for
that reason--a very agreeable one to me--I cannot take in its culture
in large doses, without a downright necessity of getting out of its
framework cropping up in me, and of refreshing myself, in some measure,
after the extreme intricacy and unhealthy refinement of that existence.
In the country it is almost as intolerably tedious and dull as it is
among educated people. The best thing one can do is to betake himself
to the dives of the towns, where, although everything is filthy, it is
still simple and sincere, or to set out for a walk over the fields and
roads of his native land, which is extremely curious, affords great
refreshment, and requires no outfit except good legs with plenty of
endurance.
Five years ago I undertook precisely that sort of a trip, and as I
tramped across holy Russia, without any definite plan of march, I
chanced to reach Feodósia. At that time they were beginning to build
the jetty there, and, in the expectation of earning a little money for
my journey, I betook myself to the spot where construction was under
way.
Being desirous of taking a look at the work first, as a picture, I
climbed a hill and seated myself there, gazing down upon the boundless,
mighty sea, and the tiny men who were forging fetters for it.
An extensive picture of man's labor was spread out before me:--the
whole rocky shore along the bay was dug up, there were holes and
piles of stone and lumber everywhere, wheelbarrows, strips of iron,
pile-drivers, and some other constructions of beams, and among all
these things men were hastening to and fro in every direction. After
having ripped up the mountain with dynamite, they were breaking it into
small pieces with pickaxes, clearing a space for a line of railway,
they were mixing cement in vast mortar-pits, and making out of it
stones almost a fathom in cubic measurement, lowering them into the
sea, erecting upon them a rampart against the titanic strength of its
turbulent waves. They seemed as tiny as worms against the background
of the dark-brown hill, disfigured by their hands, and like worms
they swarmed busily about among the heaps of rubbish, and bits of
wood in fragment of stone dust, and in the sultry heat, reaching to
thirty degrees[14] of the southern day. The chaos around them, and
the red-hot sky above them, imparted to them the appearance of being
engaged in burrowing into the hill, trying to escape into its bosom
from the fervor of the sun and the melancholy picture of destruction
which surrounded them.
In the suffocating air hung a mighty moaning murmur and uproar, the
blows of masons' hammers on stone, the wheels of the barrows screeched
dolefully, iron pile-drivers descended upon the wood of the piles, the
ballad of "The Little Oaken Cudgel" wailed out, the axes tapped away
as they rough-hewed the beams, and the dark, and gray, bustling little
figures of men shouted in all tones.
In one spot, a cluster of them, loudly chanting "heave-ho!", were
handling a huge fragment of rock, endeavoring to move it from its
resting-place; in another spot, a heavy beam was being raised, and the
men were shouting as they strained:
"Ca-a-atch ho-old!"--And the mountain, furrowed with cracks, repeated
dully: "Hold-old-old!"
[14] Réaumur. Feodósia is on the shore of the Black Sea, in the Crimea.
30° Réau. = 84° Fahrenheit.--Translator.
Along a broken line of boards, flung down here and there, moved a
long file of men, bending low over their barrows loaded with stone,
and coming slowly to meet them, with empty barrows, was another file,
who were dragging out one minute of rest into two.... By one of the
pile-drivers stood a dense, motley-hued throng of men, and one of them
was singing in a long-drawn, plaintive voice:
"Ee-ekhma, comrades,'tis awfully hot
Ee-ekh! On us no one has pity!
O-oi there, little oaken cu-ud ge-el,
He-eave-ho-o!"
The throng hummed mightily, as they hauled away on the cables, and the
piece of cast-iron, flying up through the pipe of the pile-driver, fell
thence, giving out a dull, groaning sound, and the whole pile-driver
quivered.
On every spot of the open space between the mountain and the sea tiny
gray people hurried to and fro, filling the air with their shouts,
with dust, and the sour odor of man. Among them overseers were walking
about, clad in white duck coats with metal buttons, which shone in
the sun like someone's cold eyes. Over them were the cloudless,
mercilessly-hot heaven, volumes of dust and waves of sounds--the
symphony of toil, the only music which does not afford delight.
The sea stretched out to the misty horizon, and softly plashed its
transparent billows against the strand, so full of sound and movement.
All gleaming in the sunlight, it seemed to be smiling, with the
good-natured smile of a Gulliver, conscious that, if he so wished,
with one movement he could cause all the work of the Lilliputians to
disappear.
There it lay, dazzling the eyes with its radiance--great, powerful,
kind, and its mighty breath blew upon the beach, refreshing the weary
men who were toiling to put a restraint upon the freedom of its waves,
which now were so gently and musically caressing the disfigured shore.
It seemed to feel sorry for them:--its centuries of existence had
taught it to understand, that those who build are not the ones who
cherish evil designs against it; it long ago found out that they are
only slaves,-that their part is to wrestle with the elements face to
face. And in this struggle, the vengeance of the elements awaits them.
All they do is to build, they toil on forever, their sweat and blood
are the cement of all the constructions on the earth; but they receive
nothing for this, though they yield up all their forces to the eternal
propensity to construct--a propensity which creates marvels on the
earth, but, nevertheless, gives men no blood, and too little bread.
They also are elementary forces, and that is why the sea gazes, not
angrily but graciously, upon their labors from which they derive no
profit. These gray little worms, who have thus excavated the mountain,
are just the same thing as its drops, which are the first to fall upon
the cold and inaccessible cliffs of the shore, in the eternal effort of
the sea to extend its boundaries, and the first to perish as they are
dashed in fragments against these crags. In the mass, too, these drops
are nearly related to it, since they are exactly like the sea, as
mighty as it, as inclined to destruction, so soon as the breath of the
storm is wafted over them. In days of yore the sea also was acquainted
with the slaves, who erected pyramids in the desert, and the slaves of
Xerxes, that ridiculous man, who undertook to chastise the sea with
three hundred lashes, because it had destroyed his toy bridges. Slaves
have always been exactly alike, they have always been submissive, they
have always been ill-fed, and they have always accomplished the great
and the marvellous, sometimes enriching those who have set them to
work, most frequently cursing them, rarely rising up in revolt against
their masters ...
And, smiling with the calm smile of a Titan who is conscious of his
strength, the sea fanned with its vivifying breath the earth, that
Titan which is still spiritually blind, and enslaved and wofully
riddled, instead of aspiring to affinity with heaven. The waves ran
softly up the beach, sprinkled with a throng of men, engaged in
constructing a stone barrier to their eternal motion, and as they ran
they sang their ringing, gracious song about the past, about everything
which, in the course of the ages, they have beheld on the shores of
earth....
Among the laborers there were certain strange, spare, bronze figures,
in scarlet turbans, in fezzes, in short blue jackets, and in trousers
which were tight about the lower leg, but with full seats. These, as
I afterward learned, were Turks from Anatolia. Their guttural speech
mingled with the slow, drawling utterance of the men from Vyátka, with
the strong, quick phrases of the Bulgarians, with the soft dialect of
the Little Russians.
In Russia people were dying of starvation, and the famine had driven
hither representatives of nearly all the provinces which had been
overtaken by this disaster. They had separated into little groups,
in the endeavor of the natives of each place to cling together, and
only the cosmopolitan tramps were immediately discernible by their
independent aspect, and costumes, and their peculiar turn of speech,
which was that of men who still remained under the dominion of the
soil, having only temporarily severed their connection with it, who had
been torn from it by hunger, and had not yet forgotten it. They were in
all the groups: both among the Vyátkans and among the Little Russians
they felt themselves at home, but the majority of them were assembled
round the pile-driver, because the work there was light, in comparison
with the work of the barrow-men and of the diggers.
When I approached them, they were standing with their hands released
from a hawser, waiting for the contractor to repair something connected
with the pulley of the pile-driver, which, probably, was "eating into"
the rope. He was poking about up aloft on the wooden tower, and every
now and then he would shout down:
"Give way!"
Then they would tug lazily at the rope.
"Stop!... Give way once more! Stop! Go ahead!"
The leader of the singing,--a young fellow, long unshaved, with a
pock-marked face and a soldierly air,--shrugged his shoulders, squinted
his eyes to one side, cleared his throat, and started up:
"Into the earth the pile-driver rams the stake...."
The verse which followed would not pass muster with even the most
lenient censor, and evoked an unanimous burst of laughter, which,
evidently, proved that it was an impromptu, composed on the spot by
the singer, who, as his comrades laughed, twirled his mustache with the
air of an artist who is accustomed to that sort of success with his
audience.
"Go a-he-ead!" roared the contractor fiercely from the summit of the
pile-driver.--"Stop your neighing!...
"Don't gape, Mitritch,--you'll burst!"--one of the workmen warned him.
The voice was familiar to me, and somewhere or other I had seen before
that tall, broad-shouldered figure, with the oval face, and large,
blue eyes. Was it Konováloff? But Konováloff had not the scar running
from the right temple to the bridge of the nose, which intersected the
lofty brow of this young fellow; Konováloff's hair was of a lighter
hue, and did not crisp in such small curls as this fellow's; Konováloff
had a handsome, broad beard, but this man was clean-shaven as to his
chin, and wore a thick mustache, whose ends drooped downward, in Little
Russian fashion. Yet, nevertheless, there was something about him which
I knew well. I made up my mind to enter into conversation with him, in
particular, as the person to whom I should apply, in order to "get a
job," and assumed a waiting attitude, until they should have finished
driving the pile.
"O-o-okh! O-o-okh!"--the crowd heaved a mighty sigh as they squatted
down, hauled away on the ropes, and again swiftly straightened
themselves up, as though on the point of tearing themselves from the
ground, and taking flight through the air. The pile-driver steamed and
quivered, above the heads of the crowd rose their bare, sun-burned,
hairy arms, hauling in unison on the rope; their muscles swelled out
like wens, but the piece of cast-iron, twenty puds in weight,[15]
flew upwards to a constantly lessening height, and its blow upon the
wood sounded more and more faintly. Anyone watching this work might
have thought that this was a throng of idolaters, engaged in prayer,
uplifting their arms, in despair and ecstasy, to their silent God, and
bowing down before him. Their faces, bathed in sweat, dirty, strained
in expression, with dishevelled hair, which clung to their damp brows,
their light-brown necks, their shoulders quivering with intensity of
effort,--all those bodies, barely covered with tattered shirts and
trousers of motley hues, filled the air roundabout them with their
hot exhalations, and melting together in one heavy mass of muscles,
moved restlessly about in the humid atmosphere, impregnated with the
sultriness of the southland, and the dense odor of sweat.
[15] Seven hundred and twenty pounds.--Translator.
"Enough!"--shouted someone, in an angry, cracked voice.
The hands of the workmen dropped the ropes, and they hung limply down
the sides of the pile-driver, while the laborers sank down heavily,
where they stood, upon the ground, wiping away the sweat, breathing
hard, feeling of their shoulders, and filling the air with a dull
murmur, which resembled the roaring of a huge, irritated wild beast.
"Fellow-countryman!"--I addressed myself to the young fellow whom I had
picked out.
He turned indolently toward me, ran his eyes over my face, and
puckering them up, stared intently at me.
"Konováloff!"
"Hold on...." he thrust my head backward with his hand, exactly as
though he were about to seize me by the throat, and suddenly lighted up
all over with a joyful, kindly smile.
"Maxím! Akh--curse you! My friend ... hey? And so you have broken loose
from your career? You have enlisted in the barefoot brigade? Well,
that's good! Now, it's truly fine! A vagabond--and that's all there is
to it! Have you been so long? Where do you come from? Now you and I
will tramp all over the earth! What a life ... that there behind us,
isn't it? Downright misery, long drawn out; you don't live, you rot!
But I've been roaming the fair world ever since then, my boy. What
places I've been in! What air I have breathed.... No, you've improved
cleverly ... one wouldn't know you again: from your clothing, one would
think you a soldier, from your phiz, a student! Well, what do you think
of it, isn't it fine to live so ... moving from place to place? For,
you see, I remember Sténka ... and Tarás, and Pilá ... everything."
He punched me in the ribs with his fist, slapped me on the shoulder
with his broad palm, exactly as though he were preparing a beefsteak
out of me. I could not interpose a single word into the volley of his
questions, and only smiled,--very foolishly, in all probability,--as
I gazed at his kind face, which was radiant with satisfaction over
our meeting. I, also, was very glad to see him; this meeting with him
recalled to me the beginning of my life, which, undoubtedly, was better
than its continuation.
At last, I managed, somehow, to ask my old friend, whence came that
scar on his brow and those curls on his head.
"Why that, you see ... was a scrape. I undertook, with a couple of my
chums, to make my way across the Roumanian frontier; we wanted to take
a look at things in Roumania. Well, so we set out from Kalúga,--which
is a small place in Bessarábia, close to the frontier. We went
quietly on our way--by night, of course. All of a sudden: 'Halt!' The
custom-house cordon had crawled straight down on it. Well, of course,
we took to our heels! Then one insignificant little soldier hit me a
whack over the pate. He didn't strike very hard, but, nevertheless, I
lay in hospital about a month. And what an affair it was! It turned
out that the soldier was from the same part of the country as myself!
We were both Muróm men.... He was brought to the hospital, too, not
long after--a smuggler had spoiled him by sticking a knife into his
belly. We made it up between us, and got things straightened out. The
soldier asks me: 'Did I slash you?'-'It must have been you, since
you confess it.'--'I had to,' says he; 'don't you cherish a grudge,'
says he, 'that's part of our service. We thought you were travelling
with smuggled goods. Here,' says he, 'this is the way they treated
me--they ripped my belly open. It can't be helped; life is a serious
game.'--Well, and so he and I struck up a friendship. He was a good
little soldier--was Yáshka Mázin.... And my curls? Curls? The curls, my
boy, came after the typhoid fever. I've had the typhoid fever. They put
me in jail in Kishinéff, with the intention of trying me for crossing
the frontier illegally, and there I developed typhoid fever.... I
lay there and lay there with it, and came near never getting up from
it. And, in all probability, I shouldn't have recovered, only the
nurse took a great deal of pains with me. I was simply astonished, my
boy--she fussed over me as though I were a baby, and what did she care
about me? 'Márya Petróvna,' I used to say to her, 'just drop that; I'm
downright ashamed.' But she only kept laughing. She was a nice girl....
She sometimes read me soul-saving books. 'Well, now,' says I, 'aren't
there any books;' says I, 'like ...' you know the sort. She brought a
book about an English sailor, who was saved from a shipwreck on an
uninhabited island, and created a new life for himself there. It was
interesting, awfully interesting! That book pleased me greatly; I'd
have liked to go there, to him. You understand, what sort of a life it
was? An island, the sea, the sky,--you live there alone by yourself,
and you have everything and you are entirely free! There was a savage
there, too. Well, I'd have drowned the savage--what the devil should I
want him for, hey? I don't get bored all alone. Have you read any such
book?"
"Wait. Well, and how did you get out of prison?"
"They let me out. They tried me, acquitted me, and released me. It was
very simple.... See here, I won't work any more to-day, devil take it!
It's all right, I've rattled my arms round hard enough, and it's time
to stop. I have three rubles on hand, and for this half day's work I
shall get forty kopéks.[16] See what a big capital! That means that
you're to come home to where we live. We're not in the barracks, but
yonder, in the vicinity of the town ... there's a hole there, so very
convenient for human habitation.... Two of us have our quarters in it,
but my chum is ailing ... he's bothered with fever.... Well, now, you
sit here while I go to the contractor ... I'll be back soon!"
[16] About half these amounts in dollars and cents.--Translator.
He rose swiftly, and walked off just at the moment when the men who
were driving piles took hold of the ropes, and began their work. I
remained sitting on a stone, looking at the noisy bustle which reigned
around me, and at the blue-green sea. Konováloff's tall form, slipping
swiftly among the laborers, the heaps of stone, lumber, and barrows,
vanished in the distance. He walked, flourishing his hands, clad in a
blue creton blouse, which was too short and too tight for him, crash
drawers, and heavy boot-slippers. His cap of chestnut curls waved over
his huge head. From time to time he turned round, and made some sort
of signals to me with his hands. He was so entirely new, somehow, so
animated, calmly confident, amiable, and powerful. Everywhere around
him men were at work, wood was cracking, stone was being laid, barrows
were screeching dolefully, clouds of dust were rising, something fell
with a roar, and men were shouting and swearing, sighing and singing
as though they were groaning. Amid all this confusion of sounds and
movements, the handsome figure of my friend, as it retreated from it
with firm strides, constantly tacking from side to side, stood out very
sharply, and seemed to present a hint of something which explained
Konováloff.
Three hours after we met, he and I were lying in the "hole, very
convenient for human habitation." As a matter of fact, the "hole" was
extremely convenient--stone had been taken out of the mountain at some
distant period, and a large, rectangular niche had been hewn out, in
which four persons could have lodged with perfect comfort. But it was
low-studded, and over its entrance hung a block of stone, which formed
a sort of pent-house, so that, in order to get into the hole, one was
forced to lie flat on the ground in front of it, and then shove himself
in. It was seven feet in depth, but it was not necessary to crawl into
it head foremost, and, indeed, this was risky, for the block of stone
over the entrance might slide down, and completely bury us there. We
did not wish this to happen, and managed in this way: we thrust our
legs and bodies into the hole, where it was very cool, but left our
heads out in the sun, in the opening of the hole, so that if the block
of stone should take a notion to fall, it would crush only our skulls.
The sick tramp had got the whole of himself out into the sun, and lay
a couple of paces from us, so that we could hear his teeth chattering
in a paroxysm of fever. He was a long, gaunt Little Russian: "from
Piltáva, and, prehaps, from Kieff...." he told me pensively.[17]
[17] "Piltáva," for Poltáva; and "prehaps" are respectively, actual and
approximated specimens of the Little Russian pronunciation; though this
brief sentence contains a third not easily reproduced.--Translator.
"A man lives so much in the world, that it's of no consequence if he
does forget where he was born ... and what difference does it make,
anyway? It's bad enough to be born, and knowing where.... doesn't make
it any the better!"
He rolled about on the ground, in the endeavor to wrap himself as
snugly as possible in a gray overcoat, patched together out of nothing
but holes, and swore very picturesquely, when he perceived that all his
efforts were futile--he swore, but continued to wrap himself up. He had
small, black eyes, which were constantly puckered up, as though he were
inspecting something very intently.
The sun baked the backs of our necks intolerably, and Konováloff
constructed from my military cloak something in the nature of a screen,
driving sticks into the ground, and stretching my costume over them.
Still, it was stifling. From afar there was wafted to us the dull
roar of toil on the bay, but we did not see it; to the right of us,
on the shore, lay the town in heavy masses of white houses, to our
left--was the sea,--in front of us, the sea again, extending off into
immeasurable distance, where marvellous, tender colors, never before
beheld, which soothed the eye and the soul by the indescribable beauty
of their tints, were intermingled, through soft half-tones, into a
fantastic mirage.
Konováloff gazed in that direction, smiled blissfully, and said to me:
"When the sun has set, we will light up a bonfire, and boil some water
for tea: we have bread, and meat. But, in the meanwhile, would you like
a cantaloupe or a watermelon?"
With his foot he rolled a watermelon out from a corner of the hole,
pulled a knife out of his pocket, and as he operated upon the
watermelon with it, he remarked: "Every time that I am by the sea, I
keep wondering why so few people settle down near it. They would be the
better for it, because it is soothing and sort of ... good thoughts
come from it into a man's soul. But come, tell how you have been living
yourself all these years."
I began to tell him. He listened; the ailing little Russian paid no
attention whatever to us, as he roasted himself in the sun, which was
already sinking into the sea. And in the far distance, the sea was
already covered with crimson and gold, and out of it, to meet the sun,
rose clouds of a pinkish-smoke color, with soft outlines. It seemed
as though mountains with white peaks, sumptuously adorned with snow
and rosy in the rays of the sunset, were rising from the depths of the
sea. From the bay floated the mournful melody of "The Little Oaken
Cudgel," and the roar of blasts of dynamite, which were destroying the
mountain.... The rocks and inequalities of the soil in front of us cast
shadows on the ground, and these, as they imperceptibly lengthened,
crept over us.
"It's downright no good for you to haunt the towns, Maxím,"--said
Konováloff persuasively, after he had listened to my epic
narrative.--"And what is it that draws you to them? The life there is
tainted and close. There's neither air, nor space, nor anything else
that a man needs. People? What the devil do you want with them? You're
an intelligent man, you can read and write, what are people to you?
What do you need from them? And then, there are people everywhere...."
"Ehe!" interposed the Little Russian, as he writhed on the ground like
an adder.--"There are people everywhere ... lots of them; a man can't
pass to his own place without treading on their feet. Why, they are
born in countless numbers! They're like mushrooms after a shower ...
and even the gentry eat them!" He spat philosophically, and again began
to chatter his teeth.
"Well, so far as you are concerned, I say it again,"--continued
Konováloff,--"don't you live in the towns. What is there there? Nothing
but ill-health and disorder. Books? Well, I think you must have read
books enough by this time! You certainly weren't born for that....
Yes, and books are--trash! Well, buy one, and put it in your wallet,
and start out. Do you want to go to Tashként with me? Or to Samarkánd,
or where? And then we'll have a try at the Amúr--is it a bargain?
I, my boy, have made up my mind to walk over the earth in various
directions--that's the very best thing to do.... You walk along,
and you're always seeing something new.... And you don't think of
anything.... The breeze blows in your face, and it seems to drive all
sorts of dust out of the soul. You feel light-hearted and free....
Nobody interferes with you: if you feel hungry, you come to a halt, and
earn half a ruble by some sort of work; if there isn't any work, you
ask for bread, and you'll get it. In that way, you'll see a great deal
of the world, at any rate.... All sorts of beauty.... Come on!"
The sun set. The clouds over the sea darkened, the sea also grew dim,
and wafted forth a refreshing coolness. Here and there stars shone
out, the hum of toil on the bay ceased, and only now and then were
exclamations of the men, soft as sighs, borne thence to us. And when
the light breeze breathed upon us, it brought with it the melancholy
sound of the breaking of the waves against the shore.
The nocturnal gloom speedily grew more dense, and the figure of the
Little Russian, which five minutes previously had perfectly definite
outlines, now looked like nothing but an uncouth clod ...
"We ought to have a fire...." he said, coughing.
"We will...."
Konováloff pulled out a pile of chips from somewhere or other, set fire
to them with a match, and thin tongues of flame began caressingly to
lick the yellow, resinous wood. Slender streams of smoke curled through
the night air, filled with the moisture and freshness of the sea. And
everything grew quieter round about: ... life seemed to have withdrawn
from us somewhither, and its sounds melted and were extinguished in
mist. The clouds dispersed, stars began to glitter in the dark-blue
sky, and upon the velvety surface of the sea, also, faintly flickered
the tiny lights of fishing-boats, and the reflections of the stars.
The fire in front of us blossomed out, like a huge, reddish-yellow
flower.... Konováloff thrust the teapot into it, and clasping his
knees, began to stare thoughtfully into the blaze. And the Little
Russian, like a big lizard, crawled up, and lay down near it.
"People have built towns, houses, have assembled together there in
heaps, and defile the earth, sigh, crowd one another.... A nice life
that! No, this is life, this, such as we...."
"Oho!"--the Little Russian shook his head,--"if we could only manage
to get a fur coat, or a warm hut in it for the winter, we'd live like
lords...." He screwed up one eye, and looked at Konováloff, with a
laugh.
"We-ell," said the latter abashed,--"winter--is ... a thrice-accursed
time. Towns really are needed for the winter ... you can't get along
without them.... But the big towns are no good, all the same....
Why cram people into such heaps, when two or three can't get along
together?--That's what I was talking about. Of course, when you come to
think of it, there's no room for a man either in the town, or in the
steppe, or anywhere else. But it's better not to think of such things
... you can't think out anything, and you only harrow your soul...."
Up to this point I had thought that Konováloff had been changed by his
vagrant life, that the excrescences of sadness which were on his heart
during the first period of our acquaintance had fallen away from him,
like a husk, from the action of the free air which he had breathed
during those years; but the tone of his last phrase rehabilitated
before me my friend as still the same man, seeking a point of support
for himself, whom I had known before. The same rust of ignorance in the
face of life, and venom of thoughts about it, were still corroding that
powerful form, which had been born, to its misfortune, with a sensitive
heart. There are many such "meditative" people in Russian life, and
they are all more unhappy than anyone else, because the heaviness of
their meditations is augmented by the blindness of their minds. I gazed
with compassion on my friend, but he, as though confirming my thought,
exclaimed, sadly:
"I have recalled that life of ours, Maxím, and all that--took place
there. How much ground I have covered since then in my roamings,
how much, of all sorts, I have seen ... No, for me there is nothing
suitable on earth! I have not found my place!"
"Then why were you born with a neck that no yoke will fit?" inquired
the Little Russian indifferently, taking the boiling teapot out of the
fire.
"No, do you tell me,..." inquired Konováloff,--"why I can't be easy? Hey?
Why do people live on, and feel all right, busy themselves with their
affairs, have wives, children, and all the rest of it ... they complain
of life, but they are easy. And they always want to do this, that, or
the other. But I--can't. Why do things disgust me?"
"There's that man jawing,"--remarked the Little Russian in
surprise.--"Well, will you feel any the easier for your jawing?"
"That's so,..." assented Konováloff sadly.
"I always say little, but I know what I'm talking about," uttered the
stoic, with a consciousness of his own dignity, yet without ceasing to
contend with his fever.
"Let's drop that subject.... I was born, well, that means, live on, and
don't argue...." said Konováloff, this time viciously.
The Little Russian considered it necessary to add:
"And don't force yourself anywhere; the time will come when, without
your will, you must be dragged in and ground to dust ... Lie still, and
hold your tongue.... Neither our tongues nor our hands are of any help
to us...."
He articulated this, began to cough, wriggled about, and took to
spitting into the fire with exasperation. Around us everything was
obscure, curtained with a thick veil of gloom. The sky above us was
dark, also, the moon had not yet risen. We felt rather than saw the
sea--so dense was the mist in front of us. It seemed as though a black
fog had been lowered over the earth. The fire went out ...
"Let's lie down to sleep?" suggested the Little Russian.
We made our way into the "hole," and lay down, with our heads
thrust out into the open air. We were silent. Konováloff remained
motionless, as though turned to stone, in the attitude in which he lay
down. The Little Russian thrashed about incessantly, and his teeth kept
chattering. I stared, for a long while, at the smouldering coals of the
fire: at first brilliant and large, the coals gradually grew smaller,
became covered with ashes, and disappeared beneath them. And soon
nothing was left of the fire, except the warm odor. I gazed and thought:
"We are all of us like that.... The point is, to blaze up as brightly
as possible!"
Three days later I took leave of Konováloff. I was going to the Kubán,
he did not wish to go. But we both parted with the conviction that we
should meet again on earth.
It has not come to pass....