Egorka was buried. His mother wept long over his grave in
long-drawn-out wails, then went home. She was convinced that her boy
would be far better off there than upon the earth, and was consoled.
But such truly Russian people as Kerbakh, Ostrov, and others would not
be consoled. They let loose evil rumours. The report spread:
“The Jews have tortured a Christian boy. They’ve cut him up with
knives and used his blood in their matzoth.”[26]
The slanderers were not deterred by the consideration that the Jewish
Passover had taken place very much earlier than the running away of
Egorka from his mother.
The townsmen were agitated--those who believed as well as those who
did not believe the tale. Demands were made for an investigation and
the opening of the grave.
Elisaveta came to Trirodov’s house early in the day and remained there
long. Trirodov showed her his colony. The quiet boy Grisha accompanied
them, and looked with the blue reposefulness of his impassionate eyes
into the blue flames of her rapturous ones, soothing the sultriness
and passion of her agitation.
Her light, ample dress seemed transparent--the perfect outlines of her
body showed clearly; the red and white roses of her breast and
shoulders were visible. Her sunburnt feet were bare--she loved the
affectionate contact of the earth and the grass.
It was all like a paradise--the twittering of the birds, the hubbub of
the children, the rustle of the wind in the grass and in the trees,
the murmur of the brook in the wood. Everything was innocent, as in
Paradise--girls, scantily dressed, came up, spoke to them, and were
not ashamed. Everything was chaste, as in Paradise. And cloudless, the
sky shone above the forest glades.
Towards evening Elisaveta sat at Trirodov’s. They read poems.
Elisaveta loved poems even before she met Trirodov. Who else should
love them if not girls? Now she read poems avidly. Whole hours passed
by quickly in reading, and the poems gave birth in her to sweet and
bitter emotions and passionate dreams.
Perhaps this was so because she was in love; in love she had found a
new sun for herself, and she led a new dance round it of dreams,
hopes, sorrows, joys, enchantments, and raptures. And, flaunting a
rainbow of radiance, this round dance, this naming circle of impetuous
emotions, was full of a rich music and vivid colour.
Trirodov caused her to fall in love with the verses of the new poets.
She found such enchantments and such disillusions in the fragile music
of new poetry, written so happily and so elusively, with a lightness
and transparency like those of the dresses that she now loved to wear.
With the harmony of their souls thus achieved, why should they not
love one another?
Once, after they had read together some beautiful love-poems, Trirodov
remarked:
“Love says ‘No’ to the world, the lyrical ‘No’--marriage says ‘Yes’ to
it, the ironic ‘Yes.’ To be in love, to strive, yet not to
possess--that is the poetry of love, sweet but illusive. Externally
love contradicts the world and conceals its fatal discord. To be
together, to say ‘Yes’ to some one, to yield oneself--that is the way
in which life reveals its irreconcilable contradictions. And how to be
together when we are such solitary souls? And how to yield oneself?
Mask after mask falls off, and it is terrible to see Janus-faced
actuality. A weariness comes on--what has become of love, that love
which had prided itself on being stronger than death?”
“You have had a wife,” said Elisaveta. “You loved her. Everything here
is reminiscent of her. She was beautiful.”
Her voice became dark, and the blue flashes under the moist eyelids
lit up with a jealous flame. Trirodov smiled and said sadly:
“She left life before the time had come for weariness to make its
appearance. My Dulcinea did not want to become Aldonza.”
“Dulcinea is loved,” said Elisaveta, “but the fullness of life belongs
to Aldonza becoming Dulcinea.”
“But does Aldonza want that?” asked Trirodov.
“She wants it, but cannot realize it,” said Elisaveta. “But we will
help her, we will teach her.”
Trirodov smiled affectionately--if sadly--and said:
“But he, like the eternal Don Juan, always seeks Dulcinea. And what is
to him the poor earthly Aldonza, poisoned by the dream of beauty?”
“It is for that that he will love her,” replied Elisaveta; “because
she is poor and has been poisoned by the exultant dream of beauty. The
basis for their union will be creative beauty.”
The night came: a darkness settled outside the windows, full of the
whisperings of sad, pellucid voices. Trirodov walked up to the window.
Elisaveta soon stood beside him--and almost at the same instant their
eyes fixed themselves upon the distant, dimly visible cemetery.
Trirodov said quietly:
“He has been buried there. But he will rise from his grave.”
Elisaveta looked at him in astonishment and asked:
“Who?”
Trirodov glanced at her like one suddenly awakened and said slowly:
“It is a boy who has not yet lived, and who is still chaste. His body
contains all possibilities and not a single achievement. He is like
one created to receive every energy directed at him. Now he is asleep
in his tight coffin, in a grave. He will awake for a life free from
passions and desires, for clear seeing and hearing, for the
establishment of one will.”
“When will he awake?” asked Elisaveta.
“When I wish it,” said Trirodov, “I will wake him.”
The sound of his voice was sad and insistent--like the sound of an
invocation.
“To-night?” asked Elisaveta.
“If you wish it,” answered Trirodov quietly.
“Must I leave?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he answered, just as simply and as quietly as before.
She bid him good-bye and left. Trirodov again walked up to the window.
He called some one in a voice of invocation and whispered:
“You will awake, dear one. Wake, rise, come to me. I will open your
eyes, and you will see what you have not yet seen. I will open your
ears, and you will hear what you have not yet heard. You are of the
earth--I will not part you from the earth. You are from me, you are
mine, you are I; come to me. Wake!”
He waited confidently. He knew that when the sleeper had awakened in
his grave they would come to him--the wise, innocent ones--and would
tell him.
Kirsha walked into the room quietly. He walked up to his father and
asked:
“Are you looking at the cemetery?”
Trirodov laid his hand silently on the boy’s head. Kirsha said:
“There is a boy in one of the graves who is not dead.”
“How do you know?” asked Trirodov.
But he knew what Kirsha’s answer would be. Kirsha said:
“Grisha told me that Egorka was not quite dead. He is asleep; but he
will awake!”
“Yes,” said Trirodov.
“And will he come to you?” asked Kirsha.
“Yes,” was the answer.
“When will he come?” asked Kirsha again.
Trirodov said with a smile:
“Rouse Grisha and ask him whether the sleeper has yet begun to wake in
his grave.”
Kirsha walked away. Trirodov looked in silence at the distant
cemetery, where the dark, bereaved night stooped sadly over the
crosses.
“And where are you, my happy beloved?”
A quiet rustle made itself audible behind the doors: the little
house-sprites moved quietly near the walls, and whispered and waited.
Awakened by a low sigh, Grisha arose. He walked out into the garden
and stood listening with downcast eyes near the railing. He was
smiling, but without joy. Who knew whether the other would rejoice?
Kirsha walked up to him and, indicating the cemetery with a movement
of his head, asked:
“Is he alive? Has he awakened?”
“Yes,” said Grisha. “Egorushka is sighing in his grave; he’s just
awakened.”
Kirsha ran home to his father and repeated to him Grisha’s words.
“We must make haste,” said Trirodov.
He again experienced an agitation with which he had been long
familiar. He felt in himself an ebb and flow as of some strange power.
A kind of marvellous energy, gathered by some means known to himself
alone, issued slowly from him. A mysterious current passed between
himself and the grave where the boy who had departed from life lay in
the throes of death-sleep; it cast a spell upon the sleeper and caused
him to stir.
Trirodov quickly descended the stairway into the room where the quiet
children slept. His light footsteps were barely audible, and his feet
felt the cold that came from the planked floor. The quiet children lay
upon their beds motionlessly, as if they did not breathe. It seemed as
if there were many of them, and that they slept eternally in the
endless darkness of that quiet bedchamber.
Trirodov paused seven times, and each time one of the sleepers awoke
at his one glance. Three boys and four girls answered his call. They
stood there tranquilly, looked at Trirodov and waited.
“Follow me!” said Trirodov.
They walked after him, the white quiet ones, and the rustle of their
light footsteps was barely heard.
Kirsha waited in the garden--and he seemed earthly and dark among the
white, quiet children.
They walked quickly upon the Navii path like gliding, nocturnal
shadows, one after another, the whole ten of them, with Grisha
leading. The dew fell upon their naked feet, and the ground under
their feet was soft, warm, and sad.
Egorka awoke in his grave. It was dark and somewhat stuffy. His head
felt oppressed as under a weight. There sounded in his ears the
persistent call:
“Rise, come to me.”
Fear assailed him. His eyes looked but did not see. It was hard to
breathe. He recalled something, and all that he recalled was like a
horrible delirium. Then came the sudden awful realization:
“I am in a grave, in a coffin.”
He groaned, and his heart began to thump. His throat, as if clutched
by some one’s fingers, shivered convulsively. His eyes dilated widely,
and the flaming darkness of the nailed-up coffin swept before them. As
he tossed about in the tight coffin, tormented by his dread, Egorka
moaned, and whispered in a dull voice:
“Three house-sprites, three wood-sprites, three fallen sprites!”
The gate to the burial-ground was open. Trirodov and the children
entered. They were among the poor graves--simple little mounds and
wooden crosses. It was gloomy, damp, and quiet. There was a smell of
grass--a graveyard reverie. The crosses gleamed white in the mist. A
poignant silence hovered there, and the whole cemetery seemed filled
with the dark reverie of the dead. Poignant feelings were
re-experienced deliciously and painfully.
Nowhere does the soil feel so near to one as in a graveyard--it is the
sacred soil of repose. They walked quietly, the whole ten of them, one
after another, and felt the coolness and the softness of the ground
under their bare feet. They passed near a grave. The little mound was
quiet and poor, and it seemed as if the earth were crying, wailing,
and suffering.
The boys, dimly discernible in the darkness against the lumps of black
earth, began to dig the grave. The little girls stood very quietly,
one at each of the four sides, and seemed engrossed in the nocturnal
silence. The watchmen slept like the dead, and the dead slept, keeping
a powerless watch over their graves.
Slowly the little coffin began to show. The low moan became audible.
The boys already jumped into the grave. They bent over the poor little
coffin. Though it was half-covered with earth, the boys already felt
the tremors of its cover under their feet.
The cover, hammered down with nails, yielded easily to the exertions
of the small, childish hands, and fell to the side against the grave’s
earthen wall. The coffin opened as simply as the door of a room opens.
Egorka was already losing his consciousness. When the boys first
looked at him he was lying on his side. He stirred faintly.
He breathed in the air as if with short, broken sighs. He shivered. He
turned over on his back.
The fresh air blew into his face like a young rapture of deliverance.
There was a sudden instant of joy--and it went out like a flame. Why
indeed, should he rejoice? The tranquil, unjoyous ones bent over him.
Again to live? His soul felt strange, quiet, indifferent. Some one
said affectionately over him:
“Rise, dear one, come to us; we will show you that which you have not
seen and will teach you that which is secret.”
The stars of the far sky looked into his eyes, and some one’s near,
affectionate eyes bent over him. Many, many gentle, cool hands
stretched out to him; they took him, helped him up and lifted him out.
He stood in a circle. They looked at him. His arms again folded
themselves across his breast, as in the grave--as, if the habit had
been assimilated for ages. One of the little girls rearranged them and
straightened them out.
Suddenly Egorka asked:
“What is this? A little grave?”
Grisha replied:
“This is your grave, but you will be with us and with our master.”
“And the grave?” asked Egorka.
“We will fill it up again,” replied Grisha.
The boys began to fill up the grave. Egorka looked on in quiet
astonishment as lumps of earth fell into the grave and the little
mound kept on growing. The ground was smoothed down and the cross
placed as before. Egorka walked up to it and read the inscription:
“Boy Giorgiy Antipov.”
Then the year, month, and date of his death.
He was faintly astonished, but an ominous indifference already made
captive his soul.
Some one touched his shoulder and asked something. Egorka was silent.
He looked as if he did not understand.
“Come to me,” said Trirodov quietly to him.
The little girl who always said “No” took Egorka by the hand and led
him away. They went back by the same road as they came. The darkness
closed after them.
Egorka remained with the quiet children. He had no passport, and his
life was different.