feeling an intense irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed to
temptation and run away; he had soon been caught, had been sentenced to
penal servitude for life and given forty lashes. Then he was punished by
flogging twice again for losing his prison clothes, though on each
occasion they were stolen from him. The longing for home had begun from
the very time he had been brought to Odessa, and the convict train had
stopped in the night at Progonnaya; and Yakov, pressing to the window,
had tried to see his own home, and could see nothing in the darkness. He
had no one with whom to talk of home. His sister Aglaia had been sent
right across Siberia, and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka
was in Sahalin, but she had been sent to live with some ex-convict in a
far away settlement; there was no news of her except that once a settler
who had come to the Voevodsky Prison told Yakov that Dashutka had three
children. Sergey Nikanoritch was serving as a footman at a government
official's at Dué, but he could not reckon on ever seeing him, as he
was ashamed of being acquainted with convicts of the peasant class.
The gang reached the mine, and the men took their places on the quay. It
was said there would not be any loading, as the weather kept getting
worse and the steamer was meaning to set off. They could see three
lights. One of them was moving: that was the steam-cutter going to the
steamer, and it seemed to be coming back to tell them whether the work
was to be done or not. Shivering with the autumn cold and the damp sea
mist, wrapping himself in his short torn coat, Yakov Ivanitch looked
intently without blinking in the direction in which lay his home. Ever
since he had lived in prison together with men banished here from all
ends of the earth--with Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese,
Gypsies, Jews-- and ever since he had listened to their talk and watched
their sufferings, he had begun to turn again to God, and it seemed to
him at last that he had learned the true faith for which all his family,
from his grandmother Avdotya down, had so thirsted, which they had
sought so long and which they had never found. He knew it all now and
understood where God was, and how He was to be served, and the only
thing he could not understand was why men's destinies were so diverse,
why this simple faith which other men receive from God for nothing and
together with their lives, had cost him such a price that his arms and
legs trembled like a drunken man's from all the horrors and agonies
which as far as he could see would go on without a break to the day of
his death. He looked with strained eyes into the darkness, and it seemed
to him that through the thousand miles of that mist he could see home,
could see his native province, his district, Progonnaya, could see the
darkness, the savagery, the heartlessness, and the dull, sullen, animal
indifference of the men he had left there. His eyes were dimmed with
tears; but still he gazed into the distance where the pale lights of the
steamer faintly gleamed, and his heart ached with yearning for home, and
he longed to live, to go back home to tell them there of his new faith
and to save from ruin if only one man, and to live without suffering if
only for one day.
The cutter arrived, and the overseer announced in a loud voice that
there would be no loading.
"Back!" he commanded. "Steady!"
They could hear the hoisting of the anchor chain on the steamer. A
strong piercing wind was blowing by now; somewhere on the steep cliff
overhead the trees were creaking. Most likely a storm was coming.
UPROOTED An Incident of My Travels
I WAS on my way back from evening service. The clock in the belfry of
the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes by way
of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of the monastery
stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on the banks of the
Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings as by a wall, seemed
now in the night, when it was lighted up only by dim lanterns, lights in
the windows, and the stars, a living hotch-potch full of movement,
sound, and the most original confusion. From end to end, so far as the
eye could see, it was all choked up with carts, old-fashioned coaches
and chaises, vans, tilt-carts, about which stood crowds of horses, dark
and white, and horned oxen, while people bustled about, and black long-
skirted lay brothers threaded their way in and out in all directions.
Shadows and streaks of light cast from the windows moved over the carts
and the heads of men and horses, and in the dense twilight this all
assumed the most monstrous capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts
stretched upwards to the sky, here eyes of fire appeared in the face of
a horse, there a lay brother grew a pair of black wings. . . . There was
the noise of talk, the snorting and munching of horses, the creaking of
carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds kept walking in at the
gate and belated carts drove up.
The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the
courtyard as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark
thicket the cuckoos and nightingales never ceased calling. . . . Looking
at the confusion, listening to the uproar, one fancied that in this
living hotch-potch no one understood anyone, that everyone was looking
for something and would not find it, and that this multitude of carts,
chaises and human beings could not ever succeed in getting off.
More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker. Not
only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring room,
the carpenter's shop, the carriage house, were filled to overflowing. .
. . Those who had arrived towards night clustered like flies in autumn,
by the walls, round the wells in the yard, or in the narrow passages of
the hostel, waiting to be shown a resting-place for the night. The lay
brothers, young and old, were in an incessant movement, with no rest or
hope of being relieved. By day or late at night they produced the same
impression of men hastening somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in
spite of their extreme exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage
and kindly welcome, their voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . .
For everyone who came they had to find a place to sleep, and to provide
food and drink; to those who were deaf, slow to understand, or profuse
in questions, they had to give long and wearisome explanations, to tell
them why there were no empty rooms, at what o'clock the service was to
be where holy bread was sold, and so on. They had to run, to carry, to
talk incessantly, but more than that, they had to be polite, too, to be
tactful, to try to arrange that the Greeks from Mariupol, accustomed to
live more comfortably than the Little Russians, should be put with other
Greeks, that some shopkeeper from Bahmut or Lisitchansk, dressed like a
lady, should not be offended by being put with peasants. There were
continual cries of: "Father, kindly give us some kvass! Kindly give us
some hay!" or "Father, may I drink water after confession?" And the lay
brother would have to give out kvass or hay or to answer: "Address
yourself to the priest, my good woman, we have not the authority to give
permission." Another question would follow, "Where is the priest then?"
and the lay brother would have to explain where was the priest's cell.
With all this bustling activity, he yet had to make time to go to
service in the church, to serve in the part devoted to the gentry, and
to give full answers to the mass of necessary and unnecessary questions
which pilgrims of the educated class are fond of showering about them.
Watching them during the course of twenty-four hours, I found it hard to
imagine when these black moving figures sat down and when they slept.
When, coming back from the evening service, I went to the hostel in
which a place had been assigned me, the monk in charge of the sleeping
quarters was standing in the doorway, and beside him, on the steps, was
a group of several men and women dressed like townsfolk.
"Sir," said the monk, stopping me, "will you be so good as to allow this
young man to pass the night in your room? If you would do us the favour!
There are so many people and no place left--it is really dreadful!"
And he indicated a short figure in a light overcoat and a straw hat. I
consented, and my chance companion followed me. Unlocking the little
padlock on my door, I was always, whether I wanted to or not, obliged to
look at the picture that hung on the doorpost on a level with my face.
This picture with the title, "A Meditation on Death," depicted a monk on
his knees, gazing at a coffin and at a skeleton laying in it. Behind the
man's back stood another skeleton, somewhat more solid and carrying a
scythe.
"There are no bones like that," said my companion, pointing to the place
in the skeleton where there ought to have been a pelvis. "Speaking
generally, you know, the spiritual fare provided for the people is not
of the first quality," he added, and heaved through his nose a long and
very melancholy sigh, meant to show me that I had to do with a man who
really knew something about spiritual fare.
While I was looking for the matches to light a candle he sighed once
more and said:
"When I was in Harkov I went several times to the anatomy theatre and
saw the bones there; I have even been in the mortuary. Am I not in your
way?"
My room was small and poky, with neither table nor chairs in it, but
quite filled up with a chest of drawers by the window, the stove and two
little wooden sofas which stood against the walls, facing one another,
leaving a narrow space to walk between them. Thin rusty-looking little
mattresses lay on the little sofas, as well as my belongings. There were
two sofas, so this room was evidently intended for two, and I pointed
out the fact to my companion.
"They will soon be ringing for mass, though," he said, "and I shan't
have to be in your way very long."
Still under the impression that he was in my way and feeling awkward, he
moved with a guilty step to his little sofa, sighed guiltily and sat
down. When the tallow candle with its dim, dilatory flame had left off
flickering and burned up sufficiently to make us both visible, I could
make out what he was like. He was a young man of two-and-twenty, with a
round and pleasing face, dark childlike eyes, dressed like a townsman in
grey cheap clothes, and as one could judge from his complexion and
narrow shoulders, not used to manual labour. He was of a very indefinite
type; one could take him neither for a student nor for a man in trade,
still less for a workman. But looking at his attractive face and
childlike friendly eyes, I was unwilling to believe he was one of those
vagabond impostors with whom every conventual establishment where they
give food and lodging is flooded, and who give themselves out as
divinity students, expelled for standing up for justice, or for church
singers who have lost their voice. . . . There was something
characteristic, typical, very familiar in his face, but what exactly, I
could not remember nor make out.
For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had not
shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary, he
thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence. Pulling
a sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his eyes and said
irresolutely:
"Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?"
I gave him a knife.
"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself off a
little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece you
horribly. . . . I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely care
to consume it. Will you have some?"
In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very great
deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but what it was
exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence and to show that
I was not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered sausage. It
certainly was horrible; one needed the teeth of a good house-dog to deal
with it. As we worked our jaws we got into conversation; we began
complaining to each other of the lengthiness of the service.
"The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos," I said; "but at Athos
the night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days --fourteen!
You should go there for prayers!"
"Yes," answered my companion, and he wagged his head, "I have been here
for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day services.
On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at five o'clock for
early mass, at nine o'clock for late mass. Sleep is utterly out of the
question. In the daytime there are hymns of praise, special prayers,
vespers. . . . And when I was preparing for the sacrament I was simply
dropping from exhaustion." He sighed and went on: "And it's awkward not
to go to church. . . . The monks give one a room, feed one, and, you
know, one is ashamed not to go. One wouldn't mind standing it for a day
or two, perhaps, but three weeks is too much--much too much! Are you here
for long?"
"I am going to-morrow evening."
"But I am staying another fortnight."
"But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?" I said.
"Yes, that's true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he
is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to
stay on here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant,
and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's true. But the monks
make an exception for me, and I hope they won't turn me out for some
time. You know I am a convert."
"You mean?"
"I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy."
Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right
corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and that
peculiar oily brilliance of his eyes which is only found in Jews. I
understood, too, his phraseology. . . . From further conversation I
learned that his name was Alexandr Ivanitch, and had in the past been
Isaac, that he was a native of the Mogilev province, and that he had
come to the Holy Mountains from Novotcherkassk, where he had adopted the
orthodox faith.
Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising his
right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow remained up
when he sat down again on the little sofa and began giving me a brief
account of his long biography.
"From early childhood I cherished a love for learning," he began in a
tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of some great
man of the past. "My parents were poor Hebrews; they exist by buying and
selling in a small way; they live like beggars, you know, in filth. In
fact, all the people there are poor and superstitious; they don't like
education, because education, very naturally, turns a man away from
religion. . . . They are fearful fanatics. . . . Nothing would induce my
parents to let me be educated, and they wanted me to take to trade, too,
and to know nothing but the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not
everyone who can spend his whole life struggling for a crust of bread,
wallowing in filth, and mumbling the Talmud. At times officers and
country gentlemen would put up at papa's inn, and they used to talk a
great deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of
course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I used to cry and entreat
them to send me to school, but they taught me to read Hebrew and nothing
more. Once I found a Russian newspaper, and took it home with me to make
a kite of it. I was beaten for it, though I couldn't read Russian. Of
course, fanaticism is inevitable, for every people instinctively strives
to preserve its nationality, but I did not know that then and was very
indignant. . . ."
Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been,
raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and looked
at me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn, with an air
as though he would say: "Now at last you see for certain that I am an
intellectual man, don't you?" After saying something more about
fanaticism and his irresistible yearning for enlightenment, he went on:
"What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin who
relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work under
him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in rags. . . . I
thought I could work by day and study at night and on Saturdays. And so
I did, but the police found out I had no passport and sent me back by
stages to my father. . . ."
Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.
"What was one to do?" he went on, and the more vividly the past rose up
before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became. "My parents
punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a fanatical old Jew,
to be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov. And when my uncle
tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev; there I stayed two
days and then I went off to Starodub with a comrade."
Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov, Uman,
Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.
"In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry,
till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying second-
hand clothes. I knew how to read and write by then, and had done
arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study somewhere, but I
had not the means. What was I to do? For six months I went about Odessa
buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no wages, the rascals. I
resented it and left them. Then I went by steamer to Perekop."
"What for?"
"Oh, nothing. A Greek promised me a job there. In short, till I was
sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no roots
till I got to Poltava. There a student, a Jew, found out that I wanted
to study, and gave me a letter to the Harkov students. Of course, I went
to Harkov. The students consulted together and began to prepare me for
the technical school. And, you know, I must say the students that I met
there were such that I shall never forget them to the day of my death.
To say nothing of their giving me food and lodging, they set me on the
right path, they made me think, showed me the object of life. Among them
were intellectual remarkable people who by now are celebrated. For
instance, you have heard of Grumaher, haven't you?"
"No, I haven't."
"You haven't! He wrote very clever articles in the Harkov Gazette, and
was preparing to be a professor. Well, I read a great deal and attended
the student's societies, where you hear nothing that is commonplace. I
was working up for six months, but as one has to have been through the
whole high-school course of mathematics to enter the technical school,
Grumaher advised me to try for the veterinary institute, where they
admit high-school boys from the sixth form. Of course, I began working
for it. I did not want to be a veterinary surgeon but they told me that
after finishing the course at the veterinary institute I should be
admitted to the faculty of medicine without examination. I learnt all
Kühner; I could read Cornelius Nepos, ? livre ouvert; and in Greek I
read through almost all Curtius. But, you know, one thing and another, .
. . the students leaving and the uncertainty of my position, and then I
heard that my mamma had come and was looking for me all over Harkov.
Then I went away. What was I to do? But luckily I learned that there was
a school of mines here on the Donets line. Why should I not enter that?
You know the school of mines qualifies one as a mining foreman--a
splendid berth. I know of mines where the foremen get a salary of
fifteen hundred a year. Capital. . . . I entered it. . . ."
With an expression of reverent awe on his face Alexandr Ivanitch
enumerated some two dozen abstruse sciences in which instruction was
given at the school of mines; he described the school itself, the
construction of the shafts, and the condition of the miners. . . . Then
he told me a terrible story which sounded like an invention, though I
could not help believing it, for his tone in telling it was too genuine
and the expression of horror on his Semitic face was too evidently
sincere.
"While I was doing the practical work, I had such an accident one day!"
he said, raising both eyebrows. "I was at a mine here in the Donets
district. You have seen, I dare say, how people are let down into the
mine. You remember when they start the horse and set the gates moving
one bucket on the pulley goes down into the mine, while the other comes
up; when the first begins to come up, then the second goes down--exactly
like a well with two pails. Well, one day I got into the bucket, began
going down, and can you fancy, all at once I heard, Trrr! The chain had
broken and I flew to the devil together with the bucket and the broken
bit of chain. . . . I fell from a height of twenty feet, flat on my
chest and stomach, while the bucket, being heavier, reached the bottom
before me, and I hit this shoulder here against its edge. I lay, you
know, stunned. I thought I was killed, and all at once I saw a fresh
calamity: the other bucket, which was going up, having lost the counter-
balancing weight, was coming down with a crash straight upon me. . . .
What was I to do? Seeing the position, I squeezed closer to the wall,
crouching and waiting for the bucket to come full crush next minute on
my head. I thought of papa and mamma and Mogilev and Grumaher. . . . I
prayed. . . . But happily . . . it frightens me even to think of it. . .
."
Alexandr Ivanitch gave a constrained smile and rubbed his forehead with
his hand.
"But happily it fell beside me and only caught this side a little. . . .
It tore off coat, shirt and skin, you know, from this side. . . . The
force of it was terrific. I was unconscious after it. They got me out
and sent me to the hospital. I was there four months, and the doctors
there said I should go into consumption. I always have a cough now and a
pain in my chest. And my psychic condition is terrible. . . . When I am
alone in a room I feel overcome with terror. Of course, with my health
in that state, to be a mining foreman is out of the question. I had to
give up the school of mines. . . ."
"And what are you doing now?" I asked.
"I have passed my examination as a village schoolmaster. Now I belong to
the orthodox church, and I have a right to be a teacher. In
Novotcherkassk, where I was baptized, they took a great interest in me
and promised me a place in a church parish school. I am going there in a
fortnight, and shall ask again."
Alexandr Ivanitch took off his overcoat and remained in a shirt with an
embroidered Russian collar and a worsted belt.
"It is time for bed," he said, folding his overcoat for a pillow, and
yawning. "Till lately, you know, I had no knowledge of God at all. I was
an atheist. When I was lying in the hospital I thought of religion, and
began reflecting on that subject. In my opinion, there is only one
religion possible for a thinking man, and that is the Christian
religion. If you don't believe in Christ, then there is nothing else to
believe in, . . . is there? Judaism has outlived its day, and is
preserved only owing to the peculiarities of the Jewish race. When
civilization reaches the Jews there will not be a trace of Judaism left.
All young Jews are atheists now, observe. The New Testament is the
natural continuation of the Old, isn't it?"
I began trying to find out the reasons which had led him to take so
grave and bold a step as the change of religion, but he kept repeating
the same, "The New Testament is the natural continuation of the Old"--a
formula obviously not his own, but acquired-- which did not explain the
question in the least. In spite of my efforts and artifices, the reasons
remained obscure. If one could believe that he had embraced Orthodoxy
from conviction, as he said he had done, what was the nature and
foundation of this conviction it was impossible to grasp from his words.
It was equally impossible to assume that he had changed his religion
from interested motives: his cheap shabby clothes, his going on living
at the expense of the convent, and the uncertainty of his future, did
not look like interested motives. There was nothing for it but to accept
the idea that my companion had been impelled to change his religion by
the same restless spirit which had flung him like a chip of wood from
town to town, and which he, using the generally accepted formula, called
the craving for enlightenment.
Before going to bed I went into the corridor to get a drink of water.
When I came back my companion was standing in the middle of the room,
and he looked at me with a scared expression. His face looked a greyish
white, and there were drops of perspiration on his forehead.
"My nerves are in an awful state," he muttered with a sickly smile,"
awful! It's acute psychological disturbance. But that's of no
consequence."