They were gazing at him in silence. The water was boiling by now and
Styopka was skimming off the froth.
"Is the fat ready?" Kiruha asked him in a whisper.
"Wait a little. . . . Directly."
Styopka, his eyes fixed on Panteley as though he were afraid that the
latter might begin some story before he was back, ran to the waggons;
soon he came back with a little wooden bowl and began pounding some lard
in it.
"I went another journey with a merchant, too, . . ." Panteley went on
again, speaking as before in a low voice and with fixed unblinking
eyes. "His name, as I remember now, was Pyotr Grigoritch. He was a nice
man, . . . the merchant was. We stopped in the same way at an inn. . . .
He indoors and me with the horses. . . . The people of the house, the
innkeeper and his wife, seemed friendly good sort of people; the
labourers, too, seemed all right; but yet, lads, I couldn't sleep. I had
a queer feeling in my heart, . . . a queer feeling, that was just it.
The gates were open and there were plenty of people about, and yet I
felt afraid and not myself. Everyone had been asleep long ago. It was
the middle of the night; it would soon be time to get up, and I was
lying alone in my chaise and could not close my eyes, as though I were
some owl. And then, lads, I heard this sound, 'Toop! toop! toop!'
Someone was creeping up to the chaise. I poke my head out, and there was
a peasant woman in nothing but her shift and with her feet bare. . . .
'What do you want, good woman?' I asked. And she was all of a tremble;
her face was terror-stricken. . . 'Get up, good man,' said she; 'the
people are plotting evil. . . . They mean to kill your merchant. With my
own ears I heard the master whispering with his wife. . . .' So it was
not for nothing, the foreboding of my heart! 'And who are you?' I asked.
'I am their cook,' she said. . . . Right! . . . So I got out of the
chaise and went to the merchant. I waked him up and said: 'Things aren't
quite right, Pyotr Grigoritch. . . . Make haste and rouse yourself from
sleep, your worship, and dress now while there is still time,' I said;
'and to save our skins, let us get away from trouble.' He had no sooner
begun dressing when the door opened and, mercy on us! I saw, Holy
Mother! the innkeeper and his wife come into the room with three
labourers. . . . So they had persuaded the labourers to join them. 'The
merchant has a lot of money, and we'll go shares,' they told them. Every
one of the five had a long knife in their hand each a knife. The
innkeeper locked the door and said: 'Say your prayers, travellers, . . .
and if you begin screaming,' they said, 'we won't let you say your
prayers before you die. . . .' As though we could scream! I had such a
lump in my throat I could not cry out. . . . The merchant wept and said:
'Good Christian people! you have resolved to kill me because my money
tempts you. Well, so be it; I shall not be the first nor shall I be the
last. Many of us merchants have been murdered at inns. But why, good
Christian brothers,' says he, 'murder my driver? Why should he have to
suffer for my money?' And he said that so pitifully! And the innkeeper
answered him: 'If we leave him alive,' said he, 'he will be the first to
bear witness against us. One may just as well kill two as one. You can
but answer once for seven misdeeds. . . Say your prayers, that's all you
can do, and it is no good talking!' The merchant and I knelt down side
by side and wept and said our prayers. He thought of his children. I was
young in those days; I wanted to live. . . . We looked at the images and
prayed, and so pitifully that it brings a tear even now. . . . And the
innkeeper's wife looks at us and says: 'Good people,' said she, 'don't
bear a grudge against us in the other world and pray to God for our
punishment, for it is want that drives us to it.' We prayed and wept and
prayed and wept, and God heard us. He had pity on us, I suppose. . . .
At the very minute when the innkeeper had taken the merchant by the
beard to rip open his throat with his knife suddenly someone seemed to
tap at the window from the yard! We all started, and the innkeeper's
hands dropped. . . . Someone was tapping at the window and shouting:
'Pyotr Grigoritch,' he shouted, 'are you here? Get ready and let's go!'
The people saw that someone had come for the merchant; they were
terrified and took to their heels. . . . And we made haste into the
yard, harnessed the horses, and were out of sight in a minute. . ."
"Who was it knocked at the window?" asked Dymov.
"At the window? It must have been a holy saint or angel, for there was
no one else. . . . When we drove out of the yard there wasn't a soul in
the street. . . . It was the Lord's doing."
Panteley told other stories, and in all of them "long knives" figured
and all alike sounded made up. Had he heard these stories from someone
else, or had he made them up himself in the remote past, and afterwards,
as his memory grew weaker, mixed up his experiences with his
imaginations and become unable to distinguish one from the other?
Anything is possible, but it is strange that on this occasion and for
the rest of the journey, whenever he happened to tell a story, he gave
unmistakable preference to fiction, and never told of what he really had
experienced. At the time Yegorushka took it all for the genuine thing,
and believed every word; later on it seemed to him strange that a man
who in his day had travelled all over Russia and seen and known so much,
whose wife and children had been burnt to death, so failed to appreciate
the wealth of his life that whenever he was sitting by the camp fire he
was either silent or talked of what had never been.
Over their porridge they were all silent, thinking of what they had just
heard. Life is terrible and marvellous, and so, however terrible a story
you tell in Russia, however you embroider it with nests of robbers, long
knives and such marvels, it always finds an echo of reality in the soul
of the listener, and only a man who has been a good deal affected by
education looks askance distrustfully, and even he will be silent. The
cross by the roadside, the dark bales of wool, the wide expanse of the
plain, and the lot of the men gathered together by the camp fire--all
this was of itself so marvellous and terrible that the fantastic colours
of legend and fairy-tale were pale and blended with life.
All the others ate out of the cauldron, but Panteley sat apart and ate
his porridge out of a wooden bowl. His spoon was not like those the
others had, but was made of cypress wood, with a little cross on it.
Yegorushka, looking at him, thought of the little ikon glass and asked
Styopka softly:
"Why does Grandfather sit apart?"
"He is an Old Believer," Styopka and Vassya answered in a whisper. And
as they said it they looked as though they were speaking of some secret
vice or weakness.
All sat silent, thinking. After the terrible stories there was no
inclination to speak of ordinary things. All at once in the midst of the
silence Vassya drew himself up and, fixing his lustreless eyes on one
point, pricked up his ears.
"What is it?" Dymov asked him.
"Someone is coming," answered Vassya.
"Where do you see him?"
"Yo-on-der! There's something white. . ."
There was nothing to be seen but darkness in the direction in which
Vassya was looking; everyone listened, but they could hear no sound of
steps.
"Is he coming by the highroad?" asked Dymov.
"No, over the open country. . . . He is coming this way."
A minute passed in silence.
"And maybe it's the merchant who was buried here walking over the
steppe," said Dymov.
All looked askance at the cross, exchanged glances and suddenly broke
into a laugh. They felt ashamed of their terror.
"Why should he walk?" asked Panteley. "It's only those walk at night
whom the earth will not take to herself. And the merchants were all
right. . . . The merchants have received the crown of martyrs."
But all at once they heard the sound of steps; someone was coming in
haste.
"He's carrying something," said Vassya.
They could hear the grass rustling and the dry twigs crackling under the
feet of the approaching wayfarer. But from the glare of the camp fire
nothing could be seen. At last the steps sounded close by, and someone
coughed. The flickering light seemed to part; a veil dropped from the
waggoners' eyes, and they saw a man facing them.
Whether it was due to the flickering light or because everyone wanted to
make out the man's face first of all, it happened, strangely enough,
that at the first glance at him they all saw, first of all, not his face
nor his clothes, but his smile. It was an extraordinarily good-natured,
broad, soft smile, like that of a baby on waking, one of those
infectious smiles to which it is difficult not to respond by smiling
too. The stranger, when they did get a good look at him, turned out to
be a man of thirty, ugly and in no way remarkable. He was a tall Little
Russian, with a long nose, long arms and long legs; everything about him
seemed long except his neck, which was so short that it made him seem
stooping. He was wearing a clean white shirt with an embroidered collar,
white trousers, and new high boots, and in comparison with the waggoners
he looked quite a dandy. In his arms he was carrying something big,
white, and at the first glance strange-looking, and the stock of a gun
also peeped out from behind his shoulder.
Coming from the darkness into the circle of light, he stopped short as
though petrified, and for half a minute looked at the waggoners as
though he would have said: "Just look what a smile I have!"
Then he took a step towards the fire, smiled still more radiantly and
said:
"Bread and salt, friends!"
"You are very welcome!" Panteley answered for them all.
The stranger put down by the fire what he was carrying in his arms --it
was a dead bustard--and greeted them once more.
They all went up to the bustard and began examining it.
"A fine big bird; what did you kill it with?" asked Dymov.
"Grape-shot. You can't get him with small shot, he won't let you get
near enough. Buy it, friends! I will let you have it for twenty
kopecks."
"What use would it be to us? It's good roast, but I bet it would be
tough boiled; you could not get your teeth into it. . . ."
"Oh, what a pity! I would take it to the gentry at the farm; they would
give me half a rouble for it. But it's a long way to go-- twelve miles!"
The stranger sat down, took off his gun and laid it beside him.
He seemed sleepy and languid; he sat smiling, and, screwing up his eyes
at the firelight, apparently thinking of something very agreeable. They
gave him a spoon; he began eating.
"Who are you?" Dymov asked him.
The stranger did not hear the question; he made no answer, and did not
even glance at Dymov. Most likely this smiling man did not taste the
flavour of the porridge either, for he seemed to eat it mechanically,
lifting the spoon to his lips sometimes very full and sometimes quite
empty. He was not drunk, but he seemed to have something nonsensical in
his head.
"I ask you who you are?" repeated Dymov.
"I?" said the unknown, starting. "Konstantin Zvonik from Rovno. It's
three miles from here."
And anxious to show straight off that he was not quite an ordinary
peasant, but something better, Konstantin hastened to add:
"We keep bees and fatten pigs."
"Do you live with your father or in a house of your own?"
"No; now I am living in a house of my own. I have parted. This month,
just after St. Peter's Day, I got married. I am a married man now! . . .
It's eighteen days since the wedding."
"That's a good thing," said Panteley. "Marriage is a good thing . . . .
God's blessing is on it."
"His young wife sits at home while he rambles about the steppe," laughed
Kiruha. "Queer chap!"
As though he had been pinched on the tenderest spot, Konstantin started,
laughed and flushed crimson.
"But, Lord, she is not at home!" he said quickly, taking the spoon out
of his mouth and looking round at everyone with an expression of delight
and wonder. "She is not; she has gone to her mother's for three days!
Yes, indeed, she has gone away, and I feel as though I were not married.
. . ."
Konstantin waved his hand and turned his head; he wanted to go on
thinking, but the joy which beamed in his face prevented him. As though
he were not comfortable, he changed his attitude, laughed, and again
waved his hand. He was ashamed to share his happy thoughts with
strangers, but at the same time he had an irresistible longing to
communicate his joy.
"She has gone to Demidovo to see her mother," he said, blushing and
moving his gun. "She'll be back to-morrow. . . . She said she would be
back to dinner."
"And do you miss her?" said Dymov.
"Oh, Lord, yes; I should think so. We have only been married such a
little while, and she has gone away. . . . Eh! Oh, but she is a tricky
one, God strike me dead! She is such a fine, splendid girl, such a one
for laughing and singing, full of life and fire! When she is there your
brain is in a whirl, and now she is away I wander about the steppe like
a fool, as though I had lost something. I have been walking since
dinner."
Konstantin rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire and laughed.
"You love her, then, . . ." said Panteley.
"She is so fine and splendid," Konstantin repeated, not hearing him;
"such a housewife, clever and sensible. You wouldn't find another like
her among simple folk in the whole province. She has gone away. . . .
But she is missing me, I kno-ow! I know the little magpie. She said she
would be back to-morrow by dinner-time. . . . And just think how queer!"
Konstantin almost shouted, speaking a note higher and shifting his
position. "Now she loves me and is sad without me, and yet she would not
marry me."
"But eat," said Kiruha.
"She would not marry me," Konstantin went on, not heeding him. "I have
been struggling with her for three years! I saw her at the Kalatchik
fair; I fell madly in love with her, was ready to hang myself. . . . I
live at Rovno, she at Demidovo, more than twenty miles apart, and there
was nothing I could do. I sent match-makers to her, and all she said
was: 'I won't!' Ah, the magpie! I sent her one thing and another,
earrings and cakes, and twenty pounds of honey--but still she said: 'I
won't!' And there it was. If you come to think of it, I was not a match
for her! She was young and lovely, full of fire, while I am old: I shall
soon be thirty, and a regular beauty, too; a fine beard like a goat's, a
clear complexion all covered with pimples--how could I be compared with
her! The only thing to be said is that we are well off, but then the
Vahramenkys are well off, too. They've six oxen, and they keep a couple
of labourers. I was in love, friends, as though I were plague-stricken.
I couldn't sleep or eat; my brain was full of thoughts, and in such a
maze, Lord preserve us! I longed to see her, and she was in Demidovo.
What do you think? God be my witness, I am not lying, three times a week
I walked over there on foot just to have a look at her. I gave up my
work! I was so frantic that I even wanted to get taken on as a labourer
in Demidovo, so as to be near her. I was in misery! My mother called in
a witch a dozen times; my father tried thrashing me. For three years I
was in this torment, and then I made up my mind. 'Damn my soul!' I said.
'I will go to the town and be a cabman. . . . It seems it is fated not
to be.' At Easter I went to Demidovo to have a last look at her. . . ."
Konstantin threw back his head and went off into a mirthful tinkling
laugh, as though he had just taken someone in very cleverly.
"I saw her by the river with the lads," he went on. "I was overcome with
anger. . . . I called her aside and maybe for a full hour I said all
manner of things to her. She fell in love with me! For three years she
did not like me! she fell in love with me for what I said to her. . . ."
"What did you say to her?" asked Dymov.
"What did I say? I don't remember. . . How could one remember? My words
flowed at the time like water from a tap, without stopping to take
breath. Ta-ta-ta! And now I can't utter a word. . . . Well, so she
married me. . . . She's gone now to her mother's, the magpie, and while
she is away here I wander over the steppe. I can't stay at home. It's
more than I can do!"
Konstantin awkwardly released his feet, on which he was sitting,
stretched himself on the earth, and propped his head in his fists, then
got up and sat down again. Everyone by now thoroughly understood that he
was in love and happy, poignantly happy; his smile, his eyes, and every
movement, expressed fervent happiness. He could not find a place for
himself, and did not know what attitude to take to keep himself from
being overwhelmed by the multitude of his delightful thoughts. Having
poured out his soul before these strangers, he settled down quietly at
last, and, looking at the fire, sank into thought.
At the sight of this happy man everyone felt depressed and longed to be
happy, too. Everyone was dreamy. Dymov got up, walked about softly by
the fire, and from his walk, from the movement of his shoulder-blades,
it could be seen that he was weighed down by depression and yearning. He
stood still for a moment, looked at Konstantin and sat down.
The camp fire had died down by now; there was no flicker, and the patch
of red had grown small and dim. . . . And as the fire went out the
moonlight grew clearer and clearer. Now they could see the full width of
the road, the bales of wool, the shafts of the waggons, the munching
horses; on the further side of the road there was the dim outline of the
second cross. . . .
Dymov leaned his cheek on his hand and softly hummed some plaintive
song. Konstantin smiled drowsily and chimed in with a thin voice. They
sang for half a minute, then sank into silence. Emelyan started, jerked
his elbows and wriggled his fingers.
"Lads," he said in an imploring voice, "let's sing something sacred!"
Tears came into his eyes. "Lads," he repeated, pressing his hands on his
heart, "let's sing something sacred!"
"I don't know anything," said Konstantin.
Everyone refused, then Emelyan sang alone. He waved both arms, nodded
his head, opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat but a
discordant gasp. He sang with his arms, with his head, with his eyes,
even with the swelling on his face; he sang passionately with anguish,
and the more he strained his chest to extract at least one note from it,
the more discordant were his gasps.
Yegorushka, like the rest, was overcome with depression. He went to his
waggon, clambered up on the bales and lay down. He looked at the sky,
and thought of happy Konstantin and his wife. Why did people get
married? What were women in the world for? Yegorushka put the vague
questions to himself, and thought that a man would certainly be happy if
he had an affectionate, merry and beautiful woman continually living at
his side. For some reason he remembered the Countess Dranitsky, and
thought it would probably be very pleasant to live with a woman like
that; he would perhaps have married her with pleasure if that idea had
not been so shameful. He recalled her eyebrows, the pupils of her eyes,
her carriage, the clock with the horseman. . . . The soft warm night
moved softly down upon him and whispered something in his ear, and it
seemed to him that it was that lovely woman bending over him, looking at
him with a smile and meaning to kiss him. . . .
Nothing was left of the fire but two little red eyes, which kept on
growing smaller and smaller. Konstantin and the waggoners were sitting
by it, dark motionless figures, and it seemed as though there were many
more of them than before. The twin crosses were equally visible, and
far, far away, somewhere by the highroad there gleamed a red light--other
people cooking their porridge, most likely.
"Our Mother Russia is the he-ad of all the world!" Kiruha sang out
suddenly in a harsh voice, choked and subsided. The steppe echo caught
up his voice, carried it on, and it seemed as though stupidity itself
were rolling on heavy wheels over the steppe.
"It's time to go," said Panteley. "Get up, lads."
While they were putting the horses in, Konstantin walked by the waggons
and talked rapturously of his wife.
"Good-bye, mates!" he cried when the waggons started. "Thank you for
your hospitality. I shall go on again towards that light. It's more than
I can stand."
And he quickly vanished in the mist, and for a long time they could hear
him striding in the direction of the light to tell those other strangers
of his happiness.
When Yegorushka woke up next day it was early morning; the sun had not
yet risen. The waggons were at a standstill. A man in a white cap and a
suit of cheap grey material, mounted on a little Cossack stallion, was
talking to Dymov and Kiruha beside the foremost waggon. A mile and a
half ahead there were long low white barns and little houses with tiled
roofs; there were neither yards nor trees to be seen beside the little
houses.
"What village is that, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.
"That's the Armenian Settlement, youngster," answered Panteley. "The
Armenians live there. They are a good sort of people, . . . the
Arnienians are."
The man in grey had finished talking to Dymov and Kiruha; he pulled up
his little stallion and looked across towards the settlement.
"What a business, only think!" sighed Panteley, looking towards the
settlement, too, and shuddering at the morning freshness. "He has sent a
man to the settlement for some papers, and he doesn't come . . . . He
should have sent Styopka."
"Who is that, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.
"Varlamov."
My goodness! Yegorushka jumped up quickly, getting upon his knees, and
looked at the white cap. It was hard to recognize the mysterious elusive
Varlamov, who was sought by everyone, who was always "on his rounds,"
and who had far more money than Countess Dranitsky, in the short, grey
little man in big boots, who was sitting on an ugly little nag and
talking to peasants at an hour when all decent people were asleep.
"He is all right, a good man," said Panteley, looking towards the
settlement. "God give him health--a splendid gentleman, Semyon
Alexandritch. . . . It's people like that the earth rests upon. That's
true. . . . The cocks are not crowing yet, and he is already up and
about. . . . Another man would be asleep, or gallivanting with visitors
at home, but he is on the steppe all day, . . . on his rounds. . . . He
does not let things slip. . . . No-o! He's a fine fellow. . ."
Varlamov was talking about something, while he kept his eyes fixed. The
little stallion shifted from one leg to another impatiently.
"Semyon Alexandritch!" cried Panteley, taking off his hat. "Allow us to
send Styopka! Emelyan, call out that Styopka should be sent."
But now at last a man on horseback could be seen coming from the
settlement. Bending very much to one side and brandishing his whip above
his head like a gallant young Caucasian, and wanting to astonish
everyone by his horsemanship, he flew towards the waggons with the
swiftness of a bird.
"That must be one of his circuit men," said Panteley. "He must have a
hundred such horsemen or maybe more."
Reaching the first waggon, he pulled up his horse, and taking off his
hat, handed Varlamov a little book. Varlamov took several papers out of
the book, read them and cried:
"And where is Ivantchuk's letter?"
The horseman took the book back, looked at the papers and shrugged his
shoulders. He began saying something, probably justifying himself and
asking to be allowed to ride back to the settlement again. The little
stallion suddenly stirred as though Varlamov had grown heavier. Varlamov
stirred too.
"Go along!" he cried angrily, and he waved his whip at the man.