A FLOCK of sheep was spending the night on the broad steppe road that
is called the great highway. Two shepherds were guarding it. One, a
toothless old man of eighty, with a tremulous face, was lying on his
stomach at the very edge of the road, leaning his elbows on the dusty
leaves of a plantain; the other, a young fellow with thick black
eyebrows and no moustache, dressed in the coarse canvas of which cheap
sacks are made, was lying on his back, with his arms under his head,
looking upwards at the sky, where the stars were slumbering and the
Milky Way lay stretched exactly above his face.
The shepherds were not alone. A couple of yards from them in the dusk
that shrouded the road a horse made a patch of darkness, and, beside
it, leaning against the saddle, stood a man in high boots and a short
full-skirted jacket who looked like an overseer on some big estate.
Judging from his upright and motionless figure, from his manners, and
his behaviour to the shepherds and to his horse, he was a serious,
reasonable man who knew his own value; even in the darkness signs
could be detected in him of military carriage and of the majestically
condescending expression gained by frequent intercourse with the gentry
and their stewards.
The sheep were asleep. Against the grey background of the dawn, already
beginning to cover the eastern part of the sky, the silhouettes of
sheep that were not asleep could be seen here and there; they stood with
drooping heads, thinking. Their thoughts, tedious and oppressive, called
forth by images of nothing but the broad steppe and the sky, the days
and the nights, probably weighed upon them themselves, crushing them
into apathy; and, standing there as though rooted to the earth, they
noticed neither the presence of a stranger nor the uneasiness of the
dogs.
The drowsy, stagnant air was full of the monotonous noise inseparable
from a summer night on the steppes; the grasshoppers chirruped
incessantly; the quails called, and the young nightingales trilled
languidly half a mile away in a ravine where a stream flowed and willows
grew.
The overseer had halted to ask the shepherds for a light for his pipe.
He lighted it in silence and smoked the whole pipe; then, still without
uttering a word, stood with his elbow on the saddle, plunged in thought.
The young shepherd took no notice of him, he still lay gazing at the sky
while the old man slowly looked the overseer up and down and then asked:
“Why, aren’t you Panteley from Makarov’s estate?”
“That’s myself,” answered the overseer.
“To be sure, I see it is. I didn’t know you--that is a sign you will be
rich. Where has God brought you from?”
“From the Kovylyevsky fields.”
“That’s a good way. Are you letting the land on the part-crop system?”
“Part of it. Some like that, and some we are letting on lease, and some
for raising melons and cucumbers. I have just come from the mill.”
A big shaggy old sheep-dog of a dirty white colour with woolly tufts
about its nose and eyes walked three times quietly round the horse,
trying to seem unconcerned in the presence of strangers, then all at
once dashed suddenly from behind at the overseer with an angry aged
growl; the other dogs could not refrain from leaping up too.
“Lie down, you damned brute,” cried the old man, raising himself on his
elbow; “blast you, you devil’s creature.”
When the dogs were quiet again, the old man resumed his former attitude
and said quietly:
“It was at Kovyli on Ascension Day that Yefim Zhmenya died. Don’t speak
of it in the dark, it is a sin to mention such people. He was a wicked
old man. I dare say you have heard.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yefim Zhmenya, the uncle of Styopka, the blacksmith. The whole district
round knew him. Aye, he was a cursed old man, he was! I knew him for
sixty years, ever since Tsar Alexander who beat the French was brought
from Taganrog to Moscow. We went together to meet the dead Tsar, and in
those days the great highway did not run to Bahmut, but from Esaulovka
to Gorodishtche, and where Kovyli is now, there were bustards’
nests--there was a bustard’s nest at every step. Even then I had noticed
that Yefim had given his soul to damnation, and that the Evil One was in
him. I have observed that if any man of the peasant class is apt to be
silent, takes up with old women’s jobs, and tries to live in solitude,
there is no good in it, and Yefim from his youth up was always one to
hold his tongue and look at you sideways, he always seemed to be sulky
and bristling like a cock before a hen. To go to church or to the tavern
or to lark in the street with the lads was not his fashion, he would
rather sit alone or be whispering with old women. When he was still
young he took jobs to look after the bees and the market gardens. Good
folks would come to his market garden sometimes and his melons were
whistling. One day he caught a pike, when folks were looking on, and it
laughed aloud, ‘Ho-ho-ho-ho!’”
“It does happen,” said Panteley.
The young shepherd turned on his side and, lifting his black eyebrows,
stared intently at the old man.
“Did you hear the melons whistling?” he asked.
“Hear them I didn’t, the Lord spared me,” sighed the old man, “but folks
told me so. It is no great wonder... the Evil One will begin whistling
in a stone if he wants to. Before the Day of Freedom a rock was humming
for three days and three nights in our parts. I heard it myself. The
pike laughed because Yefim caught a devil instead of a pike.”
The old man remembered something. He got up quickly on to his knees and,
shrinking as though from the cold, nervously thrusting his hands into
his sleeves, he muttered in a rapid womanish gabble:
“Lord save us and have mercy upon us! I was walking along the river bank
one day to Novopavlovka. A storm was gathering, such a tempest it was,
preserve us Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven.... I was hurrying on as best I
could, I looked, and beside the path between the thorn bushes--the thorn
was in flower at the time--there was a white bullock coming along. I
wondered whose bullock it was, and what the devil had sent it there for.
It was coming along and swinging its tail and moo-oo-oo! but would you
believe it, friends, I overtake it, I come up close--and it’s not a
bullock, but Yefim--holy, holy, holy! I make the sign of the cross while
he stares at me and mutters, showing the whites of his eyes; wasn’t I
frightened! We came alongside, I was afraid to say a word to him--the
thunder was crashing, the sky was streaked with lightning, the willows
were bent right down to the water--all at once, my friends, God strike
me dead that I die impenitent, a hare ran across the path... it ran and
stopped, and said like a man: ‘Good-evening, peasants.’ Lie down, you
brute!” the old man cried to the shaggy dog, who was moving round the
horse again. “Plague take you!”
“It does happen,” said the overseer, still leaning on the saddle and not
stirring; he said this in the hollow, toneless voice in which men speak
when they are plunged in thought.
“It does happen,” he repeated, in a tone of profundity and conviction.
“Ugh, he was a nasty old fellow,” the old shepherd went on with somewhat
less fervour. “Five years after the Freedom he was flogged by the
commune at the office, so to show his spite he took and sent the throat
illness upon all Kovyli. Folks died out of number, lots and lots of
them, just as in cholera....”
“How did he send the illness?” asked the young shepherd after a brief
silence.
“We all know how, there is no great cleverness needed where there is
a will to it. Yefim murdered people with viper’s fat. That is such a
poison that folks will die from the mere smell of it, let alone the
fat.”
“That’s true,” Panteley agreed.
“The lads wanted to kill him at the time, but the old people would not
let them. It would never have done to kill him; he knew the place where
the treasure is hidden, and not another soul did know. The treasures
about here are charmed so that you may find them and not see them, but
he did see them. At times he would walk along the river bank or in the
forest, and under the bushes and under the rocks there would be little
flames, little flames... little flames as though from brimstone. I have
seen them myself. Everyone expected that Yefim would show people the
places or dig the treasure up himself, but he--as the saying is, like a
dog in the manger--so he died without digging it up himself or showing
other people.”
The overseer lit a pipe, and for an instant lighted up his big
moustaches and his sharp, stern-looking, and dignified nose. Little
circles of light danced from his hands to his cap, raced over the saddle
along the horse’s back, and vanished in its mane near its ears.
“There are lots of hidden treasures in these parts,” he said.
And slowly stretching, he looked round him, resting his eyes on the
whitening east and added:
“There must be treasures.”
“To be sure,” sighed the old man, “one can see from every sign there are
treasures, only there is no one to dig them, brother. No one knows the
real places; besides, nowadays, you must remember, all the treasures are
under a charm. To find them and see them you must have a talisman, and
without a talisman you can do nothing, lad. Yefim had talismans, but
there was no getting anything out of him, the bald devil. He kept them,
so that no one could get them.”
The young shepherd crept two paces nearer to the old man and, propping
his head on his fists, fastened his fixed stare upon him. A childish
expression of terror and curiosity gleamed in his dark eyes, and seemed
in the twilight to stretch and flatten out the large features of his
coarse young face. He was listening intently.
“It is even written in the Scriptures that there are lots of treasures
hidden here,” the old man went on; “it is so for sure... and no
mistake about it. An old soldier of Novopavlovka was shown at Ivanovka
a writing, and in this writing it was printed about the place of the
treasure and even how many pounds of gold was in it and the sort of
vessel it was in; they would have found the treasures long ago by that
writing, only the treasure is under a spell, you can’t get at it.”
“Why can’t you get at it, grandfather?” asked the young man.
“I suppose there is some reason, the soldier didn’t say. It is under a
spell... you need a talisman.”
The old man spoke with warmth, as though he were pouring out his soul
before the overseer. He talked through his nose and, being unaccustomed
to talk much and rapidly, stuttered; and, conscious of his defects, he
tried to adorn his speech with gesticulations of the hands and head and
thin shoulders, and at every movement his hempen shirt crumpled into
folds, slipped upwards and displayed his back, black with age and
sunburn. He kept pulling it down, but it slipped up again at once. At
last, as though driven out of all patience by the rebellious shirt, the
old man leaped up and said bitterly:
“There is fortune, but what is the good of it if it is buried in the
earth? It is just riches wasted with no profit to anyone, like chaff or
sheep’s dung, and yet there are riches there, lad, fortune enough for
all the country round, but not a soul sees it! It will come to this,
that the gentry will dig it up or the government will take it away. The
gentry have begun digging the barrows.... They scented something! They
are envious of the peasants’ luck! The government, too, is looking after
itself. It is written in the law that if any peasant finds the treasure
he is to take it to the authorities! I dare say, wait till you get it!
There is a brew but not for you!”
The old man laughed contemptuously and sat down on the ground. The
overseer listened with attention and agreed, but from his silence and
the expression of his figure it was evident that what the old man told
him was not new to him, that he had thought it all over long ago, and
knew much more than was known to the old shepherd.
“In my day, I must own, I did seek for fortune a dozen times,” said the
old man, scratching himself nervously. “I looked in the right places,
but I must have come on treasures under a charm. My father looked for
it, too, and my brother, too--but not a thing did they find, so they
died without luck. A monk revealed to my brother Ilya--the Kingdom of
Heaven be his--that in one place in the fortress of Taganrog there was
a treasure under three stones, and that that treasure was under a charm,
and in those days--it was, I remember, in the year ‘38--an Armenian used
to live at Matvyeev Barrow who sold talismans. Ilya bought a talisman,
took two other fellows with him, and went to Taganrog. Only when he got
to the place in the fortress, brother, there was a soldier with a gun,
standing at the very spot....”
A sound suddenly broke on the still air, and floated in all directions
over the steppe. Something in the distance gave a menacing bang, crashed
against stone, and raced over the steppe, uttering, “Tah! tah! tah!
tah!” When the sound had died away the old man looked inquiringly at
Panteley, who stood motionless and unconcerned.
“It’s a bucket broken away at the pits,” said the young shepherd after a
moment’s thought.
It was by now getting light. The Milky Way had turned pale and gradually
melted like snow, losing its outlines; the sky was becoming dull and
dingy so that you could not make out whether it was clear or covered
thickly with clouds, and only from the bright leaden streak in the east
and from the stars that lingered here and there could one tell what was
coming.
The first noiseless breeze of morning, cautiously stirring the spurges
and the brown stalks of last year’s grass, fluttered along the road.
The overseer roused himself from his thoughts and tossed his head. With
both hands he shook the saddle, touched the girth and, as though he
could not make up his mind to mount the horse, stood still again,
hesitating.
“Yes,” he said, “your elbow is near, but you can’t bite it. There is
fortune, but there is not the wit to find it.”
And he turned facing the shepherds. His stern face looked sad and
mocking, as though he were a disappointed man.
“Yes, so one dies without knowing what happiness is like...” he said
emphatically, lifting his left leg into the stirrup. “A younger man may
live to see it, but it is time for us to lay aside all thought of it.”
Stroking his long moustaches covered with dew, he seated himself heavily
on the horse and screwed up his eyes, looking into the distance, as
though he had forgotten something or left something unsaid. In the
bluish distance where the furthest visible hillock melted into the mist
nothing was stirring; the ancient barrows, once watch-mounds and tombs,
which rose here and there above the horizon and the boundless steppe had
a sullen and death-like look; there was a feeling of endless time and
utter indifference to man in their immobility and silence; another
thousand years would pass, myriads of men would die, while they would
still stand as they had stood, with no regret for the dead nor interest
in the living, and no soul would ever know why they stood there, and
what secret of the steppes was hidden under them.
The rooks awakening, flew one after another in silence over the earth.
No meaning was to be seen in the languid flight of those long-lived
birds, nor in the morning which is repeated punctually every twenty-four
hours, nor in the boundless expanse of the steppe.
The overseer smiled and said:
“What space, Lord have mercy upon us! You would have a hunt to find
treasure in it! Here,” he went on, dropping his voice and making a
serious face, “here there are two treasures buried for a certainty.
The gentry don’t know of them, but the old peasants, particularly
the soldiers, know all about them. Here, somewhere on that ridge [the
overseer pointed with his whip] robbers one time attacked a caravan of
gold; the gold was being taken from Petersburg to the Emperor Peter who
was building a fleet at the time at Voronezh. The robbers killed the
men with the caravan and buried the gold, but did not find it again
afterwards. Another treasure was buried by our Cossacks of the Don.
In the year ‘12 they carried off lots of plunder of all sorts from the
French, goods and gold and silver. When they were going homewards they
heard on the way that the government wanted to take away all the gold
and silver from them. Rather than give up their plunder like that to the
government for nothing, the brave fellows took and buried it, so that
their children, anyway, might get it; but where they buried it no one
knows.”
“I have heard of those treasures,” the old man muttered grimly.
“Yes...” Panteley pondered again. “So it is....”
A silence followed. The overseer looked dreamily into the distance, gave
a laugh and pulled the rein, still with the same expression as though he
had forgotten something or left something unsaid. The horse reluctantly
started at a walking pace. After riding a hundred paces Panteley shook
his head resolutely, roused himself from his thoughts and, lashing his
horse, set off at a trot.
The shepherds were left alone.
“That was Panteley from Makarov’s estate,” said the old man. “He gets
a hundred and fifty a year and provisions found, too. He is a man of
education....”
The sheep, waking up--there were about three thousand of them--began
without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled
grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be
seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur’s Grave with its peaked
top. If one clambered up on that tomb one could see the plain from it,
level and boundless as the sky, one could see villages, manor-houses,
the settlements of the Germans and of the Molokani, and a long-sighted
Kalmuck could even see the town and the railway-station. Only from there
could one see that there was something else in the world besides the
silent steppe and the ancient barrows, that there was another life that
had nothing to do with buried treasure and the thoughts of sheep.
The old man felt beside him for his crook--a long stick with a hook
at the upper end--and got up. He was silent and thoughtful. The young
shepherd’s face had not lost the look of childish terror and curiosity.
He was still under the influence of what he had heard in the night, and
impatiently awaiting fresh stories.
“Grandfather,” he asked, getting up and taking his crook, “what did your
brother Ilya do with the soldier?”
The old man did not hear the question. He looked absent-mindedly at the
young man, and answered, mumbling with his lips:
“I keep thinking, Sanka, about that writing that was shown to that
soldier at Ivanovka. I didn’t tell Panteley--God be with him--but you
know in that writing the place was marked out so that even a woman could
find it. Do you know where it is? At Bogata Bylotchka at the spot,
you know, where the ravine parts like a goose’s foot into three little
ravines; it is the middle one.”
“Well, will you dig?”
“I will try my luck...”
“And, grandfather, what will you do with the treasure when you find it?”
“Do with it?” laughed the old man. “H’m!... If only I could find it
then.... I would show them all.... H’m!... I should know what to do....”
And the old man could not answer what he would do with the treasure
if he found it. That question had presented itself to him that morning
probably for the first time in his life, and judging from the expression
of his face, indifferent and uncritical, it did not seem to him
important and deserving of consideration. In Sanka’s brain another
puzzled question was stirring: why was it only old men searched for
hidden treasure, and what was the use of earthly happiness to people who
might die any day of old age? But Sanka could not put this perplexity
into words, and the old man could scarcely have found an answer to it.
An immense crimson sun came into view surrounded by a faint haze. Broad
streaks of light, still cold, bathing in the dewy grass, lengthening out
with a joyous air as though to prove they were not weary of their task,
began spreading over the earth. The silvery wormwood, the blue flowers
of the pig’s onion, the yellow mustard, the corn-flowers--all burst into
gay colours, taking the sunlight for their own smile.
The old shepherd and Sanka parted and stood at the further sides of the
flock. Both stood like posts, without moving, staring at the ground and
thinking. The former was haunted by thoughts of fortune, the latter was
pondering on what had been said in the night; what interested him was
not the fortune itself, which he did not want and could not imagine, but
the fantastic, fairy-tale character of human happiness.
A hundred sheep started and, in some inexplicable panic as at a
signal, dashed away from the flock; and as though the thoughts of the
sheep--tedious and oppressive--had for a moment infected Sanka also, he,
too, dashed aside in the same inexplicable animal panic, but at once he
recovered himself and shouted:
“You crazy creatures! You’ve gone mad, plague take you!”
When the sun, promising long hours of overwhelming heat, began to bake
the earth, all living things that in the night had moved and uttered
sounds were sunk in drowsiness. The old shepherd and Sanka stood with
their crooks on opposite sides of the flock, stood without stirring,
like fakirs at their prayers, absorbed in thought. They did not heed
each other; each of them was living in his own life. The sheep were
pondering, too.