The next day I started back with Andrey Ivanovich, who had accompanied
me on many of my wanderings. We had been walking not without having
interesting experiences, lodged in the village, and started off again
rather late. The pilgrims had already left and it was hard to imagine
the crowds which had passed by such a little while before. The villages
seemed busy; the workmen could be seen as white spots on the fields. The
air was muggy and hot.
My companion, a tall, thin, nervous man, was this day especially gloomy
and irritable. This was a not at all uncommon state towards the end of
our joint trips. But this day he was unusually out of humor and expressed
his personal disapproval of me.
Towards afternoon, in the heat, we became completely disgusted with each
other. Andrey Ivanovich either thought it necessary to rest without any
reason in the most inappropriate places, or wished to push on, when I
proposed stopping.
We finally reached a little bridge. A small stream was flowing quietly
between the damp green banks with their nodding heads of grass. The
stream wound along and disappeared behind a bend amid the waving grain of
the meadows.
“Let’s rest,” I said.
“We’ve got to be getting on,” answered Andrey Ivanovich.
I sat down on the railing and began to smoke. The tall figure of Andrey
Ivanovich went on, ascended a hill and disappeared.
I bent over the water and began to meditate. I thought I was absolutely
alone, but I suddenly felt that some one was looking at me and then on a
hill under some birch trees, I saw two men. One had a small and almost
childish face. He at once hid from shame in the grass behind the crest of
the hill. The other was the preacher of the preceding evening. As he lay
on the grass, he quietly turned his bold, gray eyes upon me.
“Come, join us, we’ll have more fun together,” he said simply.
I got up and to my surprise I saw the feet of Andrey Ivanovich sticking
out of the grass by the road; he was sitting nearby in the boundary
strip, and his cigar smoke was rising above the tops of the grass. I
pretended not to see him and walked up to the strangers.
The one whom I had taken for a child proved to be a young, sickly
creature in a striped cassock, with thin hair around his narrow, sallow
face and a nose like a bird’s beak. He kept straightening his cassock,
was uneasy, kept moving around and was clearly ashamed of his condition.
“Sit down and be our guest,” the preacher suggested with a slight
gesture. Just then the tall figure of Andrey Ivanovich rose like the
shade of Banquo above the grain.
“Let’s be going!” he said in a not very kind tone of voice, as he threw
away the butt of his cigar.
“I’ll stay here,” I answered.
“I see you like those parasites better....” And Andrey Ivanovich glanced
at me sorrowfully, as if he wished to impress upon me the impropriety of
my choice.
“Yes, there’s more fun here,” I answered.
“I’m through with you. I hope you remain in good company.”
He pulled his cap down over his face and started off with long strides,
but he soon stopped, came back, and said angrily:
“Don’t ask me again! You rascal, I’ll never go with you again. Don’t you
dare to ask me! I refuse.”
“It’s my business whether I ask you or not.... Yours is to go or not.”
“A serious-minded gentleman!” The wanderer nodded after him as he started
off.
“He doesn’t approve of us,” the little man said in a voice that was
between a sigh and a squeak.
“What do we care whether he does or not?” remarked the preacher
indifferently. Then he turned to me:
“Haven’t you a cigarette, sir?... Please.”
I held out my case to him. He took out two cigarettes, lighted one and
placed the other beside him. His small companion interpreted this in a
favorable way and rather irresolutely reached for the free cigarette. But
the preacher, with perfect composure, took the cigarette out of his hands
and placed it on the other side. The little fellow was embarrassed, again
squeaked from shame and straightened his robes.
I gave him a cigarette. This embarrassed him still more,—his thin,
transparent fingers trembled; he smiled sadly and bashfully.
“I don’t know how to beg,” he said in shame. “Avtonomov orders and
orders.... But I can’t.”
“Who’s this Avtonomov?” I asked.
“That’s me,—Gennady Avtonomov,” said the preacher with a stern glance at
his small companion, who quailed under the glance and dropped his sallow
face. His thin hair fell and rose.
“Are you walking for your health, or why?” Avtonomov asked me.
“Because I want to.... Where are you going?”
He looked into the distance and answered:
“To Paris or nearer, to Italy or further....” And, noticing that I did
not understand, he added:
“I was joking.... I am wandering aimlessly wherever it suits me. For
eleven years——”
He spoke with a faint touch of sadness. Then he quietly exhaled some
tobacco smoke and watched the blue clouds melt away in the air. His face
had a new expression, a quality I had never noticed before.
“A wasted life, signor! A ruined existence, which deserved a better lot.”
The sadness disappeared and he concluded grandiloquently, with a flourish
of his cigarette:
“Yet, good sir, the wanderer will never be willing to exchange his
liberty for luxurious palaces.”
Just then a bold little bird flew over our heads like a clod of earth
thrown up into the air, perched on the lowest branch of the birch, and
began to twitter without paying any attention to our presence. The face
of the little wanderer brightened and was suffused with a ludicrous
kindness. He kept time with his thin lips and, at the successful
completion of any tune, he looked at us with triumphant, smiling, and
weeping eyes.
“O God!” he said finally, when the bird flew away at the end of its song.
“A creature of God. It sang as much as it needed to, it praised Him, and
flew off on its own business. O darling!... Yes, by heaven, that’s right.”
He looked at us joyfully, and then became embarrassed, stopped talking,
and straightened his cassock, but Avtonomov waved his hand and added like
a teacher:
“Behold the birds of heaven. We, signor, are the same kind of birds. We
sow not, neither do we reap, nor gather into barns....”
“You studied in the seminary?” I asked.
“Yes. I could tell a lot about that; only there’s little worth hearing.
But, as you see, the horizon is being covered with clouds. Up, Ivan
Ivanovich; rise, comrade, rise. The portion of the wanderer is
journeying, not resting. Let us wish you every sort of blessing.”
He nodded and started rapidly along the road. He took free, even strides,
leaning on a long staff and thrusting it back with every step. The
wind blew out the skirts of his cassock, he bent forward under his
wallet, and his wedge-shaped beard projected in front. It seemed as if
this sun-burned, dried, and faded figure had been created for the poor
Russian plain with the dark villages in the distance and the clouds which
thoughtfully gathered in the sky.
“A scholar!” Ivan Ivanovich shook his head sadly as he tied up his wallet
with trembling hands. “A most learned man! But he falls to nothing just
as I. On the same plane ... we wander together. God forgive us, the
last....”
“Why?”
“Why? How? The modern wanderer has a good wallet, a cassock or kaftan,
boots, for example,—in a word, equipment for every circumstance, so
to speak. And we! You see yourself. I’m coming, I’m coming, Gennady
Sergeich, I’m coming. Right away!”
The little fellow soon overtook his companion. Thinking that they had
reasons for not inviting me to accompany them, I kept sitting on the
hill, and watching a heavy, dark cloud rise from behind the woods and
spread quietly, sadly, imperceptibly, almost stealthily over the sky, and
then I went on alone, regretting the controversy with Andrey Ivanovich.
It was quiet and sad. The grain waved and rustled drily. In the
distance, behind the woods, growled the thunder and at times a large drop
of rain fell.
It was an empty threat. Towards evening I came to the village of K. and
it had not rained yet, but the cloud was advancing quietly and spreading
out; it grew dark and the thunder sounded nearer and nearer.