The silent group of Tatars suddenly rose from their places in the stern
and with even step moved to the paddle box at the edge of the upper deck.
They took off their coats and spread them on the deck. Then they took off
their slippers and reverently stepped upon their coats. The glow of the
sunset fell upon the rough faces of the Tatars. Their thickset figures
were sharply outlined against the light and cooling heavens.
“They’re praying,” one man whispered and several left the quarreling
group and walked to the railing.
Others followed. The argument quieted down.
The Tatars stood with their eyes closed, their brows were raised and
their thoughts were apparently lifted up to that place where the last
rays of daylight were fading on the heights. At times they unlocked
their arms which were crossed on their breasts and placed them on their
knees, and then they bowed their heads with their sheepskin caps, low, so
low. They arose again and stretched their hands with the fingers extended
toward the light.
The lips of the Moslems were whispering the words of an unknown and
unintelligible prayer....
“Look there,” said one peasant, and he stopped hesitatingly, without
expressing his thought.
“They are fulfilling the rites of their religion,” asserted another.
“Yes, they’re praying too....”
The Tatars suddenly knelt, touched their foreheads to the deck, and
at once rose again. The three young men took their coats and slippers
and went back to their former seats on the stern. The old man was left
alone. He sat with his feet crossed under him. His lips moved and over
his beautiful face with its gray beard passed a strange and touching
expression of deep sorrow softened by reverence before the will of the
Most High. His hands quickly fingered his beads.
“See.... He has beads too.”
“A zealous man....”
“Yes, it’s for his son.... He died in Astrakhan,” explained the merchant
who had gone down the river with the Tatars.
“Oh, oh, oh!” sighed one of them philosophically. “Every man wishes to be
saved. No one wishes to perish, whoever he is, even if he’s a Tatar....”
It was too dark to tell who was speaking. The group melted together but
the isolated figure of the old man still at his devotions could be seen
at the edge of the paddle box above the water. He was silently swaying
backwards and forwards.
“Papa!” suddenly came a soft voice.
It was Grunya calling her father.
“What is it, daughter?”
The girl was silent for a moment; she kept looking at that praying figure
of the adherent of an alien faith, and then her young and eager voice
clearly sounded through the quiet:
“Please, ... what do you think: will God hear that prayer?”
Grunya spoke softly, but all heard her. It seemed as if a light breeze
had passed along the deck and in more than one soul the question of the
pale girl found response: will God hear that prayer?
All were silent.... Their eyes involuntarily turned upward, as if they
wished to follow in the blue of the evening sky the invisible flight of
that strange and unintelligible but beautiful prayer....
“Why won’t He?...” came the irresolutely soft words of a good-natured
peasant. “You see, he’s not praying to any one else. There’s only one
God.”
“Yes, the Father. You see, he’s looking to heaven.”
“Who knows, who knows?...”
“It’s a hard question—the ways of the Lord....”
A block creaked at the bow, the light of a golden star flew to the top
of the mast; the waves splashed somewhere in the darkness; the distant
whistle of an almost invisible steamboat reëchoed above the sleeping
river. In the sky the bright stars appeared one after the other, and the
blue night hung noiselessly above the meadows, the mountains and the
ravines of the Volga.
The earth seemed to be sadly asking some question but the heavens
remained silent with its quiet and its mystery....