"WHO goes there?"
No answer. The watchman sees nothing, but through the roar of the
wind and the trees distinctly hears someone walking along the avenue
ahead of him. A March night, cloudy and foggy, envelopes the earth,
and it seems to the watchman that the earth, the sky, and he himself
with his thoughts are all merged together into something vast and
impenetrably black. He can only grope his way.
"Who goes there?" the watchman repeats, and he begins to fancy that
he hears whispering and smothered laughter. "Who's there?"
"It's I, friend . . ." answers an old man's voice.
"But who are you?"
"I . . . a traveller."
"What sort of traveller?" the watchman cries angrily, trying to
disguise his terror by shouting. "What the devil do you want here?
You go prowling about the graveyard at night, you ruffian!"
"You don't say it's a graveyard here?"
"Why, what else? Of course it's the graveyard! Don't you see it
is?"
"O-o-oh . . . Queen of Heaven!" there is a sound of an old man
sighing. "I see nothing, my good soul, nothing. Oh the darkness,
the darkness! You can't see your hand before your face, it is dark,
friend. O-o-oh. . ."
"But who are you?"
"I am a pilgrim, friend, a wandering man."
"The devils, the nightbirds. . . . Nice sort of pilgrims! They are
drunkards . . ." mutters the watchman, reassured by the tone and
sighs of the stranger. "One's tempted to sin by you. They drink the
day away and prowl about at night. But I fancy I heard you were not
alone; it sounded like two or three of you."
"I am alone, friend, alone. Quite alone. O-o-oh our sins. . . ."
The watchman stumbles up against the man and stops.
"How did you get here?" he asks.
"I have lost my way, good man. I was walking to the Mitrievsky Mill
and I lost my way."
"Whew! Is this the road to Mitrievsky Mill? You sheepshead! For the
Mitrievsky Mill you must keep much more to the left, straight out
of the town along the high road. You have been drinking and have
gone a couple of miles out of your way. You must have had a drop
in the town."
"I did, friend . . . Truly I did; I won't hide my sins. But how am
I to go now?"
"Go straight on and on along this avenue till you can go no farther,
and then turn at once to the left and go till you have crossed the
whole graveyard right to the gate. There will be a gate there. . . .
Open it and go with God's blessing. Mind you don't fall into the
ditch. And when you are out of the graveyard you go all the way by
the fields till you come out on the main road."
"God give you health, friend. May the Queen of Heaven save you and
have mercy on you. You might take me along, good man! Be merciful!
Lead me to the gate."
"As though I had the time to waste! Go by yourself!"
"Be merciful! I'll pray for you. I can't see anything; one can't
see one's hand before one's face, friend. . . . It's so dark, so
dark! Show me the way, sir!"
"As though I had the time to take you about; if I were to play the
nurse to everyone I should never have done."
"For Christ's sake, take me! I can't see, and I am afraid to go
alone through the graveyard. It's terrifying, friend, it's terrifying;
I am afraid, good man."
"There's no getting rid of you," sighs the watchman. "All right
then, come along."
The watchman and the traveller go on together. They walk shoulder
to shoulder in silence. A damp, cutting wind blows straight into
their faces and the unseen trees murmuring and rustling scatter big
drops upon them. . . . The path is almost entirely covered with
puddles.
"There is one thing passes my understanding," says the watchman
after a prolonged silence--"how you got here. The gate's locked.
Did you climb over the wall? If you did climb over the wall, that's
the last thing you would expect of an old man."
"I don't know, friend, I don't know. I can't say myself how I got
here. It's a visitation. A chastisement of the Lord. Truly a
visitation, the evil one confounded me. So you are a watchman here,
friend?"
"Yes."
"The only one for the whole graveyard?"
There is such a violent gust of wind that both stop for a minute.
Waiting till the violence of the wind abates, the watchman answers:
"There are three of us, but one is lying ill in a fever and the
other's asleep. He and I take turns about."
"Ah, to be sure, friend. What a wind! The dead must hear it! It
howls like a wild beast! O-o-oh."
"And where do you come from?"
"From a distance, friend. I am from Vologda, a long way off. I go
from one holy place to another and pray for people. Save me and
have mercy upon me, O Lord."
The watchman stops for a minute to light his pipe. He stoops down
behind the traveller's back and lights several matches. The gleam
of the first match lights up for one instant a bit of the avenue
on the right, a white tombstone with an angel, and a dark cross;
the light of the second match, flaring up brightly and extinguished
by the wind, flashes like lightning on the left side, and from the
darkness nothing stands out but the angle of some sort of trellis;
the third match throws light to right and to left, revealing the
white tombstone, the dark cross, and the trellis round a child's
grave.
"The departed sleep; the dear ones sleep!" the stranger mutters,
sighing loudly. "They all sleep alike, rich and poor, wise and
foolish, good and wicked. They are of the same value now. And they
will sleep till the last trump. The Kingdom of Heaven and peace
eternal be theirs."
"Here we are walking along now, but the time will come when we shall
be lying here ourselves," says the watchman.
"To be sure, to be sure, we shall all. There is no man who will not
die. O-o-oh. Our doings are wicked, our thoughts are deceitful!
Sins, sins! My soul accursed, ever covetous, my belly greedy and
lustful! I have angered the Lord and there is no salvation for me
in this world and the next. I am deep in sins like a worm in the
earth."
"Yes, and you have to die."
"You are right there."
"Death is easier for a pilgrim than for fellows like us," says the
watchman.
"There are pilgrims of different sorts. There are the real ones who
are God-fearing men and watch over their own souls, and there are
such as stray about the graveyard at night and are a delight to the
devils. . . Ye-es! There's one who is a pilgrim could give you a
crack on the pate with an axe if he liked and knock the breath out
of you."
"What are you talking like that for?"
"Oh, nothing . . . Why, I fancy here's the gate. Yes, it is. Open
it, good man."
The watchman, feeling his way, opens the gate, leads the pilgrim
out by the sleeve, and says:
"Here's the end of the graveyard. Now you must keep on through the
open fields till you get to the main road. Only close here there
will be the boundary ditch--don't fall in. . . . And when you
come out on to the road, turn to the right, and keep on till you
reach the mill. . . ."
"O-o-oh!" sighs the pilgrim after a pause, "and now I am thinking
that I have no cause to go to Mitrievsky Mill. . . . Why the devil
should I go there? I had better stay a bit with you here, sir. . . ."
"What do you want to stay with me for?"
"Oh . . . it's merrier with you! . . . ."
"So you've found a merry companion, have you? You, pilgrim, are
fond of a joke I see. . . ."
"To be sure I am," says the stranger, with a hoarse chuckle. "Ah,
my dear good man, I bet you will remember the pilgrim many a long
year!"
"Why should I remember you?"
"Why I've got round you so smartly. . . . Am I a pilgrim? I am not
a pilgrim at all."
"What are you then?"
"A dead man. . . . I've only just got out of my coffin. . . . Do
you remember Gubaryev, the locksmith, who hanged himself in carnival
week? Well, I am Gubaryev himself! . . ."
"Tell us something else!"
The watchman does not believe him, but he feels all over such a
cold, oppressive terror that he starts off and begins hurriedly
feeling for the gate.
"Stop, where are you off to?" says the stranger, clutching him by
the arm. "Aie, aie, aie . . . what a fellow you are! How can you
leave me all alone?"
"Let go!" cries the watchman, trying to pull his arm away.
"Sto-op! I bid you stop and you stop. Don't struggle, you dirty
dog! If you want to stay among the living, stop and hold your tongue
till I tell you. It's only that I don't care to spill blood or you
would have been a dead man long ago, you scurvy rascal. . . . Stop!"
The watchman's knees give way under him. In his terror he shuts his
eyes, and trembling all over huddles close to the wall. He would
like to call out, but he knows his cries would not reach any living
thing. The stranger stands beside him and holds him by the arm. . . .
Three minutes pass in silence.
"One's in a fever, another's asleep, and the third is seeing pilgrims
on their way," mutters the stranger. "Capital watchmen, they are
worth their salary! Ye-es, brother, thieves have always been cleverer
than watchmen! Stand still, don't stir. . . ."
Five minutes, ten minutes pass in silence. All at once the wind
brings the sound of a whistle.
"Well, now you can go," says the stranger, releasing the watchman's
arm. "Go and thank God you are alive!"
The stranger gives a whistle too, runs away from the gate, and the
watchman hears him leap over the ditch.
With a foreboding of something very dreadful in his heart, the
watchman, still trembling with terror, opens the gate irresolutely
and runs back with his eyes shut.
At the turning into the main avenue he hears hurried footsteps, and
someone asks him, in a hissing voice: "Is that you, Timofey? Where
is Mitka?"
And after running the whole length of the main avenue he notices a
little dim light in the darkness. The nearer he gets to the light
the more frightened he is and the stronger his foreboding of evil.
"It looks as though the light were in the church," he thinks. "And
how can it have come there? Save me and have mercy on me, Queen of
Heaven! And that it is."
The watchman stands for a minute before the broken window and looks
with horror towards the altar. . . . A little wax candle which the
thieves had forgotten to put out flickers in the wind that bursts
in at the window and throws dim red patches of light on the vestments
flung about and a cupboard overturned on the floor, on numerous
footprints near the high altar and the altar of offerings.
A little time passes and the howling wind sends floating over the
churchyard the hurried uneven clangs of the alarm-bell. . . .