It would be unjust to say that Nature had injured Ivan Akindinich
Bargamotov, who in his official capacity was called “Constable No. 20,”
and unofficially simply Bargamotov. The inhabitants of one of the
outskirts of the provincial towns of Orel, who in their turn were
nicknamed “gunners,” from the name of their abode (Gunner Street) and,
from the moral side were characterized as “broken-headed gunners,” when
they dubbed Ivan Akindinovich “Bargamot,” were without doubt not
thinking of the qualities which belong to such a delicate and delicious
fruit as the _bergamot._ By his exterior Bargamot reminded one rather
of the mastodon, or of any of those engaging, but extinct creatures,
which for want of room have long ago deserted a world already filling
up with flaccid little humans. Tall, stout, strong, loud-voiced
Bargamot loomed big on the police horizon, and certainly would long ago
have attained notable rank, if only his soul, compressed within those
stout walls, had not been sunk in an heroic sleep.
Outward impressions in passing to Bargamot’s soul by means of his
little fat-encased eyes, lost all their sharpness and force, and
arrived at their destination only in the form of feeble echoes and
reflexions. A person of sublime requirements would have called him a
lump of flesh; his superior officers called him a “stock,” but a useful
one—while to the “gunners,” the persons most interested in this
question, he was a staid, serious matter-of-fact man, one worthy of
every respect and consideration. What Bargamot knew he knew well, were
it only a policeman’s instructions, which he had assimilated some time
or other with all the energy of his mighty frame, and which had sunk so
deep into his sluggish brain, that it would have been impossible to
rout them out again, even with vitriol. Nevertheless certain truths
occupied a permanent position in his soul, truths acquired by way of
life’s experience, and unconditionally dominating the situation.
Of that which Bargamot did not know he kept such an imperturbably
stolid silence, that people who did know it became somehow or other
somewhat ashamed of their knowledge. But the chief point was this that
Bargamot was enormously powerful; and might was right in Gunner Street,
a slum inhabited by shoemakers, tailors who worked at home, and the
representatives of other “liberal” professions. Owning two public
houses, uproarious on Sundays and Mondays, Gunner Street devoted all
its leisure hours to Homeric fights, in which the women, bare-headed
and dishevelled, took immediate part (as they separated their
husbands), and also the little children, who gazed with delight on the
daring of their papas.
All this rough wave of drunken “gunners” beat against the immovable
Bargamot as against a stone breakwater, while he would deliberately
seize with his mighty hands a pair of the most desperate rowdies and
personally conduct them to the “lock-up,” and the rowdies would
obediently submit their fate to the hands of Bargamot, protesting
merely for the sake of appearances.
Such was Bargamot in the domain of international relations. In the
sphere of home politics he held himself with no less dignity. The small
tumble-down cottage, in which Bargamot lived with his wife and two
young children, and which with difficulty afforded room for his mighty
body, and trembled with craziness and with fear for its own existence
whenever Bargamot turned round, might be at ease, if not with regard to
its own wooden structure, at all events in respect of the family unity.
Domestic, careful, and fond of digging in his garden on free days,
Bargamot was severe. He instructed his wife and children through the
same medium of physical influence, not conforming so much to the actual
requirement of science as to certain indefinite prescriptions on that
score which existed in the ramifications of his big head. This did not
prevent his wife Marya, who was still a young and handsome woman, on
the one hand from respecting her husband as a steady, sober man, and on
the other, in spite of all his massiveness, from twisting him round her
finger with that ease and force of which only weak women are capable.
At about ten o’clock on a warm spring evening Bargamot stood at his
usual post at the corner of Gunner Street and the 3rd Garden Street. He
was in a bad humour. To-morrow was Easter Day, and soon people would be
going to church, while he would have to stand on duty till 3 o’clock in
the morning, and would only get home in time for the conclusion of the
fast. Bargamot did not feel any need of prayer, but the bright holiday
air which permeated the unusually peaceful and quiet street affected
even him.
He did not like the spot on which he had stood still every day for a
matter of ten years. He felt a desire to do something of a holiday
character such as others were doing. And in view of these uneasy
feelings there arose within him a certain discontent and impatience.
Moreover he was hungry. His wife had given him no dinner at all that
day, and so he had had to put up with a few sups of _kvass_ and bread.
His great stomach was insistently demanding food; and how long it was
still to the conclusion of the fast!
Ptu!—spat Bargamot, as he made a cigarette and began reluctantly to
suck at it. At home he had some good cigarettes, presented to him by a
local shop-keeper, but he was reserving them till the conclusion of the
fast.
Soon the “gunners” drew along towards the church, clean and respectable
in jackets and waistcoats over red and blue flannel shirts, and in long
boots with innumerable creases, and high pointed heels. To-morrow all
this splendour was destined to disappear behind the counter of the
“pub,” or to be torn in pieces in a friendly struggle for harmony.
But for to-day the “gunners” were resplendent. Each one carefully
carried a parcel of paschal cakes. None took any notice of Bargamot,
neither did he look with especial love on his “god-children,” and
uneasily prognosticated how many times he would have to make a journey
to-morrow to the police station.
In fact, he was jealous that they were free and could go where it was
bright, noisy and cheerful, while he was stuck there like a penitent.
“Here I have to stand because of you, drunkards,” muttered he, summing
up his thoughts, and spat once more—he felt a hollow in the pit of his
stomach.
The street was becoming empty. The Eucharistic bell had ceased. Then
the joyful changes of the treble peal, so cheerful after the melancholy
tolling of the Lenten bells, spread over the world the joyful news of
Christ’s resurrection. Bargamot took off his hat and crossed himself.
Soon he would be going home. He became more cheerful as he imagined to
himself the table laid with a clean cloth, the paschal cakes and the
eggs. He would without hurry give to all the Easter salutation. They
would wake up Jack and bring him in, and he would at once demand the
coloured egg, about which he had held circumstantial conversations the
whole week through with his more experienced little sister. Oh, how
he’ll open wide his mouth when his father brings him, not the bright
dyed egg, but the real marble one, which the same obliging shop-keeper
had presented to Bargamot!
“Dear little chap!” said Bargamot with a smile, feeling a sort of
paternal tenderness welling up from the depths of his soul.
But Bargamot’s placidity was broken in on in the most abject manner.
Round the corner were heard uneven footsteps and low mutterings.
“Who the devil is coming here?” thought Bargamot, looking round the
corner and feeling injured in his very soul.
“Garaska! Yes, drunk as usual! Well, that’s a finisher!”
It was a mystery to Bargamot how Garaska could have managed to get
drunk before daylight, but of the fact of his drunkenness there was no
doubt. His behaviour, mysterious as it would have been to an outsider,
was perfectly clear to Bargamot, who was well acquainted with the
“Gunner” soul in general, and with the low nature of Garaska in
particular. Attracted by an irresistible force from the middle of the
street, in which he had the habit of walking, he was pressed close to
the hoarding. Supporting himself with both hands, and contemplating the
wall with a concentrated air of inquiry, Garaska staggered, while he
gathered up his strength for a fresh struggle with any unexpected
impediments he might meet with.
After a short but intense meditation he pushed himself energetically
from the wall, and staggered backwards into the middle of the street,
made a deliberate turn, and set out with long strides into space, which
turned out to be not quite so endless as it has been said to be, but
was in fact bounded by a mass of lamps.
With the first of these, Garaska came into the closest relations, and
clasped it in the firm embrace of friendship.
“A lamp! Stop!” said he curtly, as he established the accomplished
fact. Quite unusually, of course, Garaska was in an excessively good
humour. Instead of heaping well-deserved objurgations upon the
lamp-post he turned to it with mild reproaches, which contained some
touches of familiarity.
“Stand still, you silly ass, where are you going to?” he muttered as he
staggered away from the lamp-post, and again fell with his whole chest
upon it, almost flattening his nose against its cold damp surface.
“That’s right! eh?” and by clinging with half his length along the post
he managed to hold on, and sank into a reverie.
Bargamot contemptuously compressed his lips, as he looked down on
Garaska from his superior height. Nobody annoyed him so much in the
whole of Gunner Street as this wretched toper. To look at him—one would
not have thought there was any strength in him, and yet he was the
greatest scandal in the whole neighbourhood.
He’s not a man, but an ulcer! A “gunner” gets drunk, makes a
disturbance, spends the night in the lock-up, and he gets over all this
like a gentleman—but Garaska always does it stealthily, and of malice
prepense. He may be beaten half to death or nearly starved at the
police station, still they can never break him of bad language, of his
most offensively foul tongue.
He will stand under the windows of any of the most respectable people
in Gunner Street, and begin to swear without rhyme or reason. The
shopmen seize Garaska and beat him—the crowd laughs and advises them to
give it him hot. Garaska would revile even Bargamot himself in such
fantastically realistic language, that without understanding all the
subtleties of his wit, he felt himself more insulted, than if he had
been whipped.
How Garaska got his living, remained to the “gunners” one of those
mysteries which enveloped his whole existence. Certainly no one had
ever seen him sober. He lived, or rather camped about in the orchards,
or the river-bank, or under shrubs. In winter he disappeared to
somewhere or other, and with the first breath of spring he reappeared.
What attracted him to Gunner Street, where it was every one’s business
to beat him, was again a profound mystery of Garaska’s soul, but get
rid of him they could not. They strongly suspected, and that not
without reason, that he was a thief, but they could not take him in the
act, so he was beaten on merely circumstantial evidence.
On this occasion Garaska had evidently a difficult path to negotiate.
The rags, which made a pretence of seriously covering his emaciated
body, were all over still undried mud.
His face, with its big, bulbous red nose, which was incontestably one
of the causes of his unstable equilibrium, was covered with an
irregularly distributed watery growth, and gave substantial evidence of
its close relations with alcohol and a neighbour’s fist. On his cheek
near the eye was a scratch of evidently recent origin.
He succeeded at last in parting company with the lamp-post, and when he
observed the dignified silent figure of Bargamot he was overjoyed.
“Our best respects to you, Bargamot Bargamotich—we hope we see you
well!” said he with a polite wave of his hand, but he staggered, and
was fain to prop himself up with his back against the lamp-post.
“Where are you going to?” growled Bargamot saturninely.
“We’re orl righ’!”
“On the old lay, eh? Or do you want a doss in the cells. You wretch,
I’ll run you in at once.”
“No, you don’t!”
Garaska was just going to make a gesture of defiance, when he wisely
restrained himself, spat and rubbed his foot about on the ground, as
though to rub out the spittle.
“You can talk when you get to the police station! March!”
Bargamot’s mighty hand stretched out to Garaska’s collar, so greasy in
fact that it was evident that Bargamot was not his first guide on the
thorny path of well-doing. Giving the drunken man a slight shake, and
propelling his body in the required direction, and at the same time
giving it a certain stability, Bargamot dragged him towards the
above-mentioned gaol, just as a strong hawser might tow after it a very
light schooner, which had met with an accident outside the harbour. He
considered himself deeply injured, instead of enjoying his well-earned
rest, to have to drag himself with this drunkard to the station.
Ugh! Bargamot’s hands itched—but the consciousness that on such a high
festival it would be unseemly to let them have their way, restrained
him. Garaska strode on bravely, mingling in a remarkable manner
self-confidence, and even insolence, with meekness. He evidently
harboured some thought of his own, which he began to approach by the
Socratic method.
“Tell me, Mr. Policeman, what is to-day?”
“Won’t you shut up!” Bargamot replied in contempt. “Drunk before
daylight!”
“Has the bell at Michael the Archangel’s rung yet?”
“Yes, what’s that to you?”
“Then Christ is risen!”
“Well, He is risen.”
“Then allow me——” Garaska was carrying on this conversation half
twisted towards Bargamot, and with his face resolutely turned to him.
Bargamot, interested by the strange questions, mechanically let go the
greasy collar. Garaska, losing his support, staggered and fell before
he could show to Bargamot an object which he had just taken out of his
pocket. Raising his great shoulders, as he supported himself on his
hands, Garaska looked on the ground, then fell face downwards, and
began to wail, as a peasant woman wails for the dead.
Garaska howling! Bargamot was surprised, but deciding that it must be
some new joke of his, he still felt interested as to developments. The
development was that Garaska continued howling without words, just like
a dog.
“What’s up now? Off your nut, eh?” said Bargamot as he gave him a shove
with his foot. He went on howling. Bargamot was in a dilemma.
“What’s got yer, eh?”
“The eg—g.”
“Well?”
Garaska went on howling, but less noisily, he sat down and lifted up
his hand. The hand was covered with something sticky, to which adhered
pieces of coloured egg-shell. Bargamot, still in doubt, began to have
an inkling that something untoward had taken place.
“I——like a gentleman——to present——Easter egg——but you——” blubbered
Garaska disconnectedly; but Bargamot understood.
It was evident what had been Garaska’s intention. He wished to present
him with an Easter egg according to Christian usage, and Bargamot was
for taking him to gaol. Perhaps he had brought the egg a long way, and
now it was broken—and he was crying. Bargamot imagined to himself that
the marble egg he was keeping for Jack was broken, and how sorry it
made him.
“”Ere’s a go!” said Bargamot shaking his head, as he looked at the
wallowing drunkard, and pitied him as intensely as he would have pitied
a man cruelly wronged by his own brother.
“He was going to present——” “He is also a living soul,” muttered the
policeman, striving albeit clumsily to render the state of affairs
clear to himself, and feeling a mixture of shame and pity, which became
more and more oppressive.
“And you would have run him in! Shame on you!”
Sighing heavily as he bent down he knocked his short sword against a
stone, and sat down on his heels near to Garaska.
“Well,” he muttered in confusion, “perhaps it is not broken.”
“Not broken! Why yer was ready to break my snout for me. Brute!”
“But what did you shove for!”
“What for——” mimicked Garaska. “I was going——like a gentleman to——and
him to——the lock up. Think that’s my last egg? Yer lump!”
Bargamot sniffed. He did not feel in the least hurt by Garaska’s abuse;
through his whole ill-organized interior he felt a sort of half pity,
half shame, while in the remotest depths of his stout body something
kept tiresomely wimbling and torturing.
“Can one help giving you a thrashing?” said Bargamot, more to himself
than to Garaska.
“Not you, you garden scarecrow! Now look ”ere.”
Garaska was evidently falling into his usual groove. In his somewhat
clearing brain he was picturing to himself a whole perspective of the
most compromising terms of abuse, and most insulting epithets, when
Bargamot cleared his throat with a sound which left not the slightest
doubt as to the firmness of his determination and declared:
“We’ll go to my house, and break the fast.”
“What! go to your house, you tubby devil!”
“Let’s go, I say.”
Garaska’s surprise was boundless. Quite passively he allowed himself to
be lifted up and led by the hand, and he went—but whither? Not to the
lock-up, but to the house of Bargamot himself—actually to eat his
Easter breakfast there! A seductive thought came into his head—to give
Bargamot the slip, but though his head had become cleared by the very
unusualness of the situation his feet still remained in such evil case,
that they seemed sworn to perpetually cling to one another, and to
prevent each other from walking.
Then, too, Bargamot was such a wonder that Garaska, truth to tell, did
not want to get away.
Bargamot, twisting his tongue, and searching for words and stuttering,
now propounded to him the instructions for a policeman, and now
reverting to the special question of thrashing, and the lock-up,
deciding in his own mind in the positive, and at the same time in the
negative.
“You say truly, Ivan Akindinich, we must be beaten,” acknowledged
Garaska, feeling even a sort of awkwardness. Bargamot was a sore
wonder!
“No, I don’t mean to do that,” mumbled Bargamot, evidently
understanding, even less than Garaska, what his woolly tongue was
babbling.
They arrived at last at Bargamot’s house—and Garaska had already ceased
to wonder.
Marya at first opened her eyes wide at the sight of the unwonted
couple, but she guessed from her husband’s perturbed look, that there
was no room for objections, and in her womanly kindheartedness quickly
understood what she was expected to do.
Quieted and confused, Garaska sat down at the decorated table. He felt
ashamed enough to sink into the ground. Ashamed of his rags, of his
dirty hands, ashamed of his whole self, torn, drunken, disgusting as he
was. Scalding himself with the deuced hot soup, swimming with fat, he
spilt it on the table-cloth, and although the hostess with delicacy
pretended not to have noticed it, he grew confused and spilt still
more; so unbearably did those shrivelled fingers tremble with those
great dirty nails, which Garaska now noticed for the first time.
“Ivan Akindinich, what surprise have you for Jacky?” asked Marya.
“Never mind——later on,” hurriedly replied Bargamot. He was scalding
himself with the soup, blew on his spoon, and stolidly wiped his
moustache—but through all this solidity the same amazement was
apparent, as in the case of Garaska.
Marya hospitably pressed her guest to eat.
“Garasim,” she said, “how are you called after your father’s name?”
“Andreich.”
“Welcome, Garasim Andreich.”
Garaska, in endeavouring to swallow, choked, and throwing down his
spoon, dropped his head on the table, right on the greasy spot which he
had just made. From his breast there escaped again that rough, piteous
howl, which had before so disturbed Bargamot.
The children, who had almost left off taking any notice of the guest,
dropped their spoons and joined their treble to his tenor. Bargamot
looked at his wife with a troubled and woeful expression.
“Now, what’s the matter with you, Garasim Andreich. Leave off,” said
she, trying to quiet the perturbed guest.
“By my father’s name! Since I was born no one ever called me so!”
“MEN MAY RISE ON STEPPING-STONES OF THEIR DEAD SELVES TO HIGHER THINGS”
Have you ever happened to walk in a burial-ground?
Those little walled-in, quiet corners, overgrown with luscious grass,
so small, and yet so ravenous, possess a peculiar dolorous poetry all
their own.
Day after day thither are borne new corpses, a whole, immense, living,
noisy city has been already borne thither one by one, and lo! the new
city which has grown in its place is awaiting its turn—and the little
corners remain ever the same, small, still, ravenous.
The peculiar air in them, the peculiar silence, and the lisping of the
trees different there to anywhere else, are all mournful, pensive,
tender. It is as though those white birches could not forget all those
weeping eyes, which have sought the sky betwixt their green branches,
and as though it were no wind, but deep sighs which keep swaying the
air and the fresh leaves.
You, too, wander about the graveyard silent and pensive. Your ear is
conscious of the gentle echoes of deep groans and tears, while your
eyes rest on rich monuments, and modest wooden crosses; and the
unmarked tombs of strangers, covering their dead, who were strangers
when living, unmarked, unobserved. And you read the inscriptions on the
monuments, and all these people who have disappeared from the world
rise up in your imagination. You see them young, laughing, loving; you
see them hale, loquacious, insolently confident in the endlessness of
life.
And they are dead.
* * * * * * * * *
But is it necessary to go out of one’s house to visit a burial ground?
Is it not sufficient for this purpose, that the darkness of night
should envelop you, and have swallowed up all the sounds of day?
How many rich and sumptuous monuments! How many unmarked graves of
strangers!
But is night needful in order to visit a graveyard? Is not daytime
enough—restless, noisy day, sufficient unto which is the evil thereof?
Look into your own soul, and then, be it day or night, you will find
there a burial ground. Small greedy, having devoured so much! And a
gentle, sorrowful, whisper will ye hear, an echo of bygone heavy groans
when the dead was dear, whom ye left in the tomb, and could not forget
nor cease to love. And monuments ye will see, and inscriptions half
blotted out with tears; and still, obscure, little tombs; small and
ominous mounds, under which is hidden something which once was living,
although ye knew not its life, nor remarked its death. But, maybe, it
was the very best in your soul——
But why talk about it? Look for yourselves. And have you not indeed
thus looked into your burial-ground every day, every single day of the
long, weary year? Maybe as late as yesterday you recalled the dear
departed, and wept over them. Maybe only yesterday you buried some one
who had long been seriously ill, and had been forgotten even in life.
Lo! under the heavy marble surrounded by iron rails rests Love of
mankind, and her sister Faith in them. How beautiful were they, and
wondrous kind—these sisters. What bright light burned in their eyes,
what strange power was wielded by their tender, white hands!
With what a caress did those white hands bring the cold drink to lips
burning with thirst, and did feed the hungry. With what gentle care did
they touch the sores of the sick, and healed them!
And they are dead, these sisters. They died of cold, as is said on the
monument. They could not bear the icy wind in which life enveloped
them.
And there, further on, a slanting cross marks the place where a Talent
is buried in the earth. How bold it was, how noisy, how happy! It
undertook anything, wished to do everything, and was confident that it
could conquer the world.
And it is dead—died but lately, quietly, and unnoticed. One day it went
among men, for long it was lost there, and it came back defeated, sad.
Long it wept, long it strove to say something, and then without having
said it—died.
And here is a long row of little sunken mounds. Who lies here?
Ah! yes. These are children. Little, keen, sportive Hopes. There were
so many of them, they were so merry, and the soul was peopled with
them. But one by one they died. They were so many, and they made such
merriment in the soul.
It is quiet in the resting-place, and the leaves of the white birches
rustle sadly.
* * * * * * * * *
But let the dead arise! Ye grim tombs ope wide, crumble to dust ye
heavy monuments, ye iron bars give place!
Be it but for one day, for one moment, give freedom to those whom ye
are smothering with your weight, and darkness!
Ye think they are dead! Oh, no! they live! They are silent, but they
live.
They live!
Let them see the shining of the blue, cloudless sky, let them breathe
the pure air of spring, let them be intoxicated with warmth and love.
Come to me my Talent that fell asleep. Why dost so drolly rub thine
eyes. Does the sun blind thee? Does it not shine bright indeed? Thou
laughest? Oh laugh, laugh on—there is so little of laughter among
mankind. I too will laugh with thee. Look! there flies a swallow—let us
fly after it! Has the tomb made thee too heavy? And what is that
strange horror I see in thine eyes—like a reflection of the darkness of
the tomb? No, no, don’t! Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I say!
So glorious, indeed, is life for the risen!
And ye my dear little Hopes! What charming laughing faces are yours!
Who art thou, stout, funny little cherub? I know thee not. And
wherefore laughest thou? Has the tomb itself been unable to affright
thee? Gently, my children, gently! Why dost insult it—see’st not how
little, pale and weak it is become? Live ye in the world—and do not
worry me. Do ye not see that I, too, have been in the tomb, and now my
head is giddy with the sun, and the air, and gladness.
Ah! how glorious is life for the risen!
Come to me, ye lovely, majestic Sisters. Let me kiss your gentle white
hands. What do I see? Is it bread ye are carrying? Did not the darkness
of the tomb terrify you—so tender, womanly and weak; under the whelming
mass did ye still think of bread for the hungry? Let me kiss your feet.
I know where they will soon be going, your light, swift little feet.
And I know that wherever they pass by flowers will spring up—wondrous,
sweet-smelling flowers. Ye call. We will come, then.
Hither! my risen Talent—why stand gazing at the fleeting clouds.
Hither! my little sportive Hopes.
Stop!
I hear music. Don’t shout so, cherub. Whence these wondrous sounds?
Gentle, melodious, madly joyful, and sad, they speak of life eternal——
Nay, be ye not afraid. This will soon pass away. I weep, indeed, for
joy!
Ah! how glorious is life for the risen!