1
No one knew what sin Nikolai Kupreloff had committed to bring on his
head so terrible a penalty. Year after year his wife and he had prayed
for a child, to their ikons in the tiny basilica in the wood, and when
his wife gave birth at last, it was neither a child nor children. She
had given birth to two little boys, perfectly made, exquisitely
proportioned, but there was a deadly thing had befallen them ... the
tiny right hand of the one was inexorably seized by the left hand of the
other.
The little woodcutter’s cottage of Nikolai lay deeply hidden in the
great pine woods of Lower Serbia, miles from his nearest neighbour. Yet
even in that wild country the fame of the intertwined children travelled
far, and the wise old women from those parts came to see if herbs or
chanting or any of their dark gifts might be of the least avail. They
were no more useful than a real doctor who had studied at Belgrade, was
practising at Monastir, and was stimulated to great interest by the
account of these strange children. The case defied all the arts of black
or white magic, and the interest of the episode flickered and died down.
So it was that Nikolai reconciled himself to the inevitable, and as the
boys grew older he would cross himself devoutly and say: “Thank God, it
might have been a thousand times worse!” They were lads of extraordinary
beauty. Peter and Ivan he called them, Ivan being the lad who held so
irrevocably the wrist of his brother within his fingers. In appearance
they were identical—the light, tough hair and the laughing blue eyes of
the Serbian Slav, sturdy, well-knit limbs, and a sterling robustness of
physique. It was only their parents and themselves who knew that between
them there was one slight but unmistakable mark of distinction—below the
knuckle of Ivan’s thumb was marked dully a little red arrow. In fact, a
stranger might not have known that this abnormal bond existed between
the two brothers as he saw them swinging along under the pines. “What a
loving little pair!” he would exclaim, as he heard them laugh and
chatter in complete harmony, and look into each other’s eyes with the
understanding born of flawless love.
When they were about fifteen years old their mother died, and the father
Nikolai began more and more to remain behind in his cottage attending to
the frugal needs of the little family, while Peter and Ivan, as the
years went on, grew even more skilful in the art of woodcutting; for
Peter wielding the axe in his left hand, Ivan in his right, achieved
such a fine reciprocity of movement, that Nikolai would laugh in his
great yellow beard and mutter: “Truly the ways of God are inscrutable,
for even out of their calamity has He made a great blessing!” The
passing of time only knit closer their perfect intimacy, so that they
almost did not notice when their father Nikolai sickened and died. Now
they were left to their cottage and their woodcutting and their complete
love, the whole being crowned by the splendid physique of young
foresters at twenty-one; so that life, it seemed, had nothing in store
for them but long years of undivided love and content.
Yet even into their seclusion rumours came of the great world beyond.
Now and again they would catch glimpses of the marvels of Salonika in
the eyes of travelled men. They would hear of a city where lovely women,
infinitely more beautiful than the queen of the tousled gypsies who
flickered from time to time along the forest paths, sang upon stages of
golden wood, in gardens full of hanging lights. They would hear of the
sea and glowing ships, and men who spoke low musical languages uttered
in countries beyond the sea.
So it was the brothers determined to leave their woodcutting behind them
for a season and adventure forth into the world of ships and songs and
lovely women.
2
To Peter and Ivan Salonika was a revelation of wonders they barely
thought actual. From a little room in the street of Johann Tschimiski
they saw the multicoloured tides of cosmopolitan humanity sweeping down
from Egnatia Street, down Venizelos Street to the Place de la Concorde.
They would walk along the quay-side past the great hotels to the Jardins
de la Tour Blanche, and were sent into an ecstasy of delight by the
_chic_ little women who smiled archly at these two fair-headed lads from
the up-country, who walked along hand clasped in wrist in so naïve and
rustic a manner. Yet when they entered the Théatre des Variétés at the
White Tower it seemed to them that the very portals of heaven had opened
wide. They would return in a daze of delight to their room and recount
with an almost religious fervour the beauties and enchantments of the
show. Each little Spanish or French girl who came to do her song or
minuet had seemed to them more enchanting than the last. Never a cloud
of disagreement came between them. There was a perfect coincidence in
their tastes, and never, they felt, had their love for each other been
so sympathetic and complete as it was now.
The brothers had no large sum of money at their disposal. The time of
their holiday was drawing to a close. One evening they turned up at the
theatre for the last time, their nerves keyed up to a pitch of delighted
impatience, the more tense as the brothers knew that the next day would
see them on the arduous road back to their Serbian forest. Turn followed
turn with alluring consequence. Then at one stage the music ceased for
some moments and there was an atmosphere of expectance in the air. It
was then that a simple and delightful English girl came half-shyly from
the wings. There was nothing flamboyant in her appearance or her manner.
Yet at once she seemed to seize the house with the graceful and reticent
winsomeness of her song. So she sang her song through, a dainty little
ballad of old-world gardens and fragrant flowers and love unto death.
Peter felt the fingers of Ivan tighten round his wrist. He himself had
been so stirred to his depths by the gentle grace of the girl that it
was with a slight feeling of resentment he realised that Ivan had been
experiencing once again an identical emotion. As he involuntarily moved
away his arm Ivan uttered a slight cry of impatience. He turned round
and looked into Peter’s eyes and found them aflame with a light deeper
than mere appreciation. Peter was aware of his brother’s glance and
looked at Ivan in return to find his face flushed almost as if he were
half-drunk.
That night for the first time in their history there occurred a slight
bickering between the two. No mention of the little English actress
passed between them, but each of them determined that some day, when his
brother’s interest had died away, he should broach the subject and the
possibility of a rediscovery of the English actress at Salonika.
Next day they entrained for Monastir, and a few days later saw them
installed once again in their father’s cottage in the wood.
3
In proportion as the fortunes of the Kupreloff brothers increased,
something that had once existed between them receded further away. The
perfection of their old intimacy became a memory of the past. No longer
did the most minute physical or spiritual experience of the one become
automatically part of his brother’s consciousness. So that now for the
first time their indissoluble partnership became more and more galling.
There was no doubt of it. Everything dated from that last night at
Salonika, when the English girl appeared on the stage. They would still
occasionally revive something of the old fervour as they discussed from
time to time their impressions of the unforgettable holiday. Yet never a
word passed between them concerning the unconscious girl who had
captured both their hearts. At night they would lie awake, each thinking
that the other was asleep. Bitterly, definitely, they would confess to
their own deep hearts: “She is mine, she is mine; I am hers for ever.”
And yet to each their love seemed hopeless beyond recall. There was the
double sting that each of them loved the girl with an intensity reserved
hitherto for his brother; but, if possible, more fatal was the
despairing conviction that no girl could ever love the one of two
brothers to whom the other would remain physically attached till death
carried them both away. As the months passed by the friction between
them increased. They were now in a position to buy land and a little
livestock. But if Peter insisted upon keeping pigs, in the fashion of
the majority of Serbians, Ivan would insist upon cattle. If Peter felt
that he had done enough woodcutting for the day, Ivan felt that the day
was only just beginning.
One night in late autumn Peter lay tossing very heavily in his sleep.
Ivan lay awake, thinking, thinking for ever of the girl, his whole heart
full of rancour against the brother who must for ever prevent the
consummation of his love. Heavily, wearily, Peter heaved on the bed.
Outside the wind was howling. The dreariness of the wind seemed to enter
Peter’s heart. “My little girl,” he murmured, “my little girl! When
shall we meet, my little girl? Never, never, never!” Ivan’s forehead
contracted with hate. He was filled suddenly with a tremendous loathing
of his brother. “Never, never, never!” moaned Peter. Suddenly, obeying a
frantic impulse, Ivan pulled with all his strength away from his
brother’s wrist to which Fate had so viciously fastened him. With a
great scream of pain Peter half leapt from the bed.
“What’s this? What do you mean?” he shouted, his voice thick with pain
and sleep. “Nothing! Nothing! I couldn’t help it! I was dreaming!”
replied Ivan savagely, and the brothers settled down again for the
night.
Night after night the same thing happened. Peter would murmur for ever
in his sleep, “My little girl, when shall we meet? Never, never, never!”
Ivan would lie awake, hatred surging violently through his whole body,
till his eyes would see nothing but flames in the darkness of their
log-built room; and the sound of the branches in the forest would begin
to mutter and moan: “Have done with it, Ivan, have done with it! She is
waiting for you, waiting, always waiting. Have done with it! Have done
with him—with him—with _him_!”
One desolate night towards mid-winter the room was full of the miserable
sleep-cries of Peter. Outside thunder ripped among the clouds. A finger
of lightning came suddenly through the windows and pointed with a
gesture of flame towards the open breast of Peter. A sudden and terrible
thought flooded into Ivan’s soul! Whatever there was of human kindness
and brother-love seemed in one sinister moment to be washed away from
before the onset of the flood. All the branches upon all the trees
shrieked across the night. “We shall be quiet, you shall have rest. She
shall be yours. Have done with him, have done with him!”
A great calm settled down upon Ivan’s soul—the issue was decided, the
issue which had been hovering for so long in his subconsciousness was
decided at last. There was nothing left to do. The mere deed was the
mere snapping of a thread. With his eyes wide open, a terrible silence
laying upon his soul, he stared into the night, waiting, waiting for the
dawn.
Dawn came at last. The brothers washed and took food. There was a long
way to go, far off into the woods. There was almost a tenderness in
Ivan’s attitude towards Peter. What mattered now? The issue was decided;
the gods had taken the thing out of his hands. With their axes swinging
they made their way into the woods, through a day sharp with frost. At
last they arrived at the clearing where they were to continue their
tree-felling. A brazier stood waiting there, and before work started
they lit a fire in preparation for the midday meal. Then they picked up
their axes and set to. Lustily their strokes rang through the wood.
Chime rang upon chime. It was strenuous work, the work of men with
strong muscles and keen eyes.
The morning went by steadily. There was no hate in Ivan’s soul—only a
deadly patience. He knew the moment would come. He knew when the moment
came that he would act. For a few minutes they stopped and wiped their
foreheads. Peter opened his shirt wide and exposed his breast to Ivan.
The quick vision presented itself of Peter heaving darkly in their bed,
the sudden finger of lightning, the naked breast.
“Come!” said Ivan thickly, “let us begin!”
They both took up their positions against a tree. Peter with the axe in
his left hand struck against the tree. Ivan, quick as the lightning
which last night had shown him his way, whirled his axe round, away from
the tree, and the sharp edge went cracking through Peter’s ribs, deep
beyond the heart. A great fountain of blood spurted into the air. A
long, feeble moan left Peter’s lips. Deeper than the axe had cut, his
eyes looked sorrowfully into the soul of Ivan. His weight tottered and
Ivan felt himself following to the ground. There was not a moment to
lose. Again the axe whirled through the air. With the whole of a strong
man’s strength the axe came down upon his own wrist, and down fell the
body of Peter with the hand of his brother indissoluble in death round
his wrist, as it had been indissoluble in life.
The thing he had brought about was too monstrous for Ivan at that moment
to understand. It was only the little things that his ear and eye
seized—the frightened screech of a bird in a tree, the sullen shining of
the little red arrow in the thumb of his own severed hand.
Ivan felt the blood streaming from the stump of his forearm. He knew
that if he did not reassert complete mastery over himself he would bleed
to death. All would be vain—the call of the far girl, the murder, the
last look in Peter’s eyes. He staggered over to the brazier and plunged
his forearm for one swift instant into the embers. Then darkness
overwhelmed him and he fell backward into unutterable night.
4
It was easy enough to explain. Not the least suspicion attached itself
to Ivan. People came from remote cabins and farms to sympathise with the
bereaved brother. What was more likely in the world than that Ivan’s axe
should slide from a knot in the tree and come crashing against Peter,
who, even if he could see the axe coming, could not by any human means
have disengaged himself from his brother. “I always thought something
like this would happen,” people muttered wisely to each other, and shook
their heads and crossed their breasts.
Of course they all understood how Ivan could no longer remain in the
cottage consecrated by memories of his brother. So Ivan sold his
accumulation of timber and his land and what little stock the brothers
had bought, and it was not many weeks after his forearm was healed that
the jangling train from Monastir was bearing him through the Macedonian
hills upon his quest for the English girl at Salonika.
In Salonika she was nowhere to be found. Forlornly he went from
music-hall to music-hall, but she was gone. He haunted even the _cafés
chantants_ along Egnatia Street, even the degenerate _brasseries_ on the
Monastir Road, where the red-costumed women stood upon improvised
platforms and sang to tipsy crowds with the accompaniment of feeble
violins. But there was no trace of her in the whole city. From the
director at the White Tower he learned that perhaps she had proceeded to
Constantinople, perhaps she had returned to Athens, whence the European
artistes generally came to Salonika on their round of the greater
Levantine towns.
With all the fervour and idealism of a mediæval knight Ivan stepped upon
the deck of a Messageries Maritimes boat returning to Marseilles by way
of the Piræus. When the electric train from the harbour landed him at
the station in Athens a mystic conviction filled him that here in this
city, some day, the English girl would be revealed to him. Ambitiously
he first tried the great _Opéra_, but she was not there. The weeks
lengthened into months and failure followed failure, but the mysterious
foreknowledge of his race held up his weary spirits and bade him put
aside despair.
When at last she appeared upon the stage of one of the lesser
music-halls, it was with no great start of surprise or welcome that he
recognised her arrival. It was as if a mother or a sister had slipped
back into the place from which for some reason she had been absent. Her
features had become engraved upon every curve of his brain. She came
upon the stage and filled his life again as naturally as day fills the
place of night. Life became for him a thing of meaning and splendour. He
realised that at last Life was to begin.
He knew little of the half-measures and half-advances of Western
civilisation. He lost no time in appearing before the girl. After only a
few words of difficult apology, with a voice of low and subdued passion
he told her a fragment or two of his tale. It was a broken French that
he talked—the French of which his mother long ago had taught her boys
the few phrases she knew, and which his experiences in Salonika and
Athens during the last few months had greatly improved.
The large grey eyes of the English girl opened wide in wonder as she
listened, fascinated, to the stammering avowals of this tall stranger
from a shadowy land. Half in fright she drew back against the wall of
her wretched little dressing-room, but, even so soon she realised that
the destiny was overwhelming her which was to bring an end to her
wanderings. She consented shyly to his suggestion that she should see
him for a little while next night, and it was with a thrill of delight
and fear she saw his great figure waiting for her at the gate of the
Museum, as the purple Athenian dusk came wandering down from the
Acropolis and cast velvet glooms among the pillars of Pentelican marble.
For years since her mother had died and her father had become a
confirmed drunkard, it was a very lonely life that Mary Weston had led.
She had no great talent, and she had drifted from theatre to theatre
upon the Continent, for to her England was a place of no kindly
memories. Ivan Kupreloff began to mean for her what her mother had meant
before she died and her father before he had taken to drink.
A few months had passed only. There was no escape from Ivan. There was
nothing importunate about him, but he was irresistible. He was Life.
Proudly he realised that he had conquered her. To world’s end and Time’s
end she was his own.
They were married at length. Athens and all the cities she had known,
the Serbian wood and the murdered brother—these passed utterly from
their souls in the strong kiss which united them for all days.
5
Yet not for ever was the memory of his dead life to vanish from the
heart of Ivan. Even during the times of his most passionate love for
Mary there began to invade him moments of bitter memory and regret.
There was something which prevented the entire fusion with Mary towards
which he yearned and ached. It was something deep in his soul. It was
something which gnawed at his forearm, bit with teeth of contrition at
the place where the axe had fallen and severed the hand from the wrist.
He tried to put all this futility from him. He would seize Mary more
closely, look desperately into her eyes, and in the perfume of her lips
and hair seek anodyne. Between them there was a sufficient store of
money, small though it was, to allow them a few months of liberty,
undisturbed by any thought of the future. They wandered lazily about
Greece for a little time, finding in the Greek day and the immemorial
hills a perfect setting for their love.
And yet ever more insistently came to him the call of the hand—the hand
which had been his own and not his own, the hand which had united in so
unique an embrace his brother with himself.
Again at night voices tormented him. Again, when winds were about, they
called with living words: “The hand! The hand! It is calling you,
calling! Answer! He wants you! Peter!” wailed the wind. “Peter! Peter!”
Lines began to draw across his forehead. With anxiety Mary saw shadows
growing under his eyes, and in his eyes a hunger which grew more and
more forlorn. “What is it, love?” she would murmur. “You’ve not slept
well!”
“Nothing at all, love, nothing! All’s well!” he would reply, trying with
a kiss to forget the wind and the hand and the call.
“There’s something you’re longing for. Tell me, Ivan. Let me help you.
You must.”
“Nothing, Mary. I’ve got you. There’s nothing else in the world.” But
the call of the hand did not abate. “Peter!” the winds wailed, “Peter!
He wants you! Answer!”
The urgency of the call grew more imperious. He was sickening and
growing weak. There was a hot torpidity in the dry Greek noon which
shrivelled his veins. He would drag his coat down from his neck and lift
his head and try to breathe the deep breath he had known in his Serbian
wood. But there was no spaciousness, no great draughts of cool air in
the wind, only voices: “Peter! Peter! Peter!”
“We must go somewhere. We must go away,” said Mary. “We must go to
Athens and see a doctor, Ivan. I’m afraid!”
“Not Athens! No!” he replied with a shudder, his temples contracting as
before the hot blast from an oven. Those dry marble spaces! The dusty
pepper-trees! The sweating crowds in the shops, swallowing sweet cakes
like swine swallowing husks in a sty! Athens became a nightmare.
He was lying awake one night, the body of Mary curled beside him, her
hair floating vaguely on the pillow in the half-light of the moon. She
stirred in her sleep, and her little white hand unconsciously sought his
wrist and fastened tightly round it. That moment bridged the buried
time. Unescapably Mary had brought back to him the sensation of Peter
lying in the grasp of his own hand. Never before was the call of the
hand so imperious. Never so clearly did the wind exclaim, “Peter! He
wants you! Answer!”
An irresistible love for his murdered brother overwhelmed him. He raised
himself from his bed and lifted helplessly his lopped arm into the
whispering room. “Coming, my brother, I am coming! Wait! Peter!” he
moaned, and the wind replied: “Peter! Peter!”
He lay back in bed. He realised that the strongest claim in the world
upon him was the call of the hand. As for Mary—she was nothing different
from himself. For her as for him the call of the hand came
dictatorially. In each other they were one, but without the hand their
unity was uncompleted. The call of the hand must be obeyed. To-morrow
they must leave Greece behind. To-morrow to Serbia, to-morrow the
response to the hand.
Mary was not surprised when Ivan without warning explained that all
their plans were altered. She was used to his unaccountable whims, the
sudden mystic impulses of his Slavonic soul.
They packed up the few things which were all the impediment they
possessed, and next day saw them well started on their way to Monastir,
carefully skirting Athens. Arrived at Monastir, a few days elapsed
before they appeared at the remote wood where Ivan was born. The cottage
built by Ivan Kupreloff was not yet occupied. The strange character of
its former inhabitants combined with the terrible nature of Peter’s
death had succeeded in keeping it empty! They obtained permission from
its owner to occupy the cottage, and with a great sigh of content Ivan
flung open the door where he and his brother had passed so frequently in
former days.
In a little time Mary had made of the house such a palace of delight as
it had not been since Ivan’s mother was dead. Happily, Ivan took in
large draughts of the Serbian pineland air, filling his lungs. Happily,
with Mary beside him on the bed where he and Peter had lain entwined,
the dark drowsy nights melted into dawn. He made his reply to the call
of the hand. Only faintly, if at all, the wind or the branches whispered
“Peter! Peter!” Peter seemed to be happy at last. The severed hand
seemed at last to be tranquil round the wrist of the murdered brother.
Then the winds died away, and there was no sound of “Peter!”; only
fitfully a swaying of twigs and a rustle of pine-needles.
So it seemed. Till summer drooped her drowsing hair. Summer became
wrinkled and old. Summer went and the swift autumn came. The days
shortened into the rigours of winter, the days ever contracted towards
the anniversary of that red day when the axe was lifted and Peter fell.
Never a moment did it occur to Ivan that now when the fatal day was
approaching he might leave behind him his Serbian wood. He knew that,
more tightly than ever during his living days, the wrist of Peter lay
within his own hand, tight, unescapable. Mary and he lay under the thumb
of that severed hand wherefrom the red arrow glowed when the night was
dark and the woodfire threw leaping shadows over the log-walls. There
was no gainsaying the call of the hand till the end of days. Ivan knew
that never again would he leave behind his Serbian wood.
Came the night which was the anniversary of that dead, unburyable night
when Peter’s doom had been sealed. Again there was the rumbling of
thunder, there were evil flashes of lightning that ran among the clouds.
Never with so firm an embrace had Mary been clasped within his arms.
Nothing in the world was so strong as his love for Mary. They had
responded to the call of the hand. There was no further claim upon them.
Ivan kissed her sleeping eyes and was lulled in the music of her
breathing. A drowsiness came over him, and for a time he slid into
sleep.
In his sleep something tightened round him, something growing so tight
that it forced through the barriers of his sleep. Vaguely, faintly a
half-consciousness came back to him. He was not awake. He was not
asleep. He was in a borderland where the other world is not dead and
this world is half-alive. Tighter grew the thing which pressed against
his sleep. It was round his wrist, it was round the wrist where
something had once come crashing down. What was it? What was it had come
crashing down? An axe it was that had come crashing down. It was the
hand of Mary growing tighter round his wrist. No, it could not be the
hand of Mary. Mary had fallen from his arms. Mary was turned away from
him. He could see her hands pale where she had lifted them in sleep
above her head. It was not the hand of Mary growing tighter round his
wrist. But it was a hand. No doubt of that. It was a hand. With a dull
glow of flame a little red arrow gleamed like embers below the thumb of
the hand. Where had he seen that arrow? Where and when? When his hand
had fallen away from him, lopped at the wrist. It was the dead hand
which was not dead. It was his own hand. It was the hand with the red
arrow which had held Peter so tightly. It was the dead hand which was
alive, the living hand which had arisen from the dead. Tighter round his
wrist grew the pressure of the severed hand. The hand was tired of
calling. The hand had come. There was no gainsaying the hand. So tight
grew the clutch of the hand that his whole arm slowly lifted from his
side. Irresistibly the shoulder followed the rising arm. There was no
gainsaying the hand. Neither awake nor asleep, neither living nor dead,
he followed the hand, he rose from the bed where Mary lay, sleeping
sundered from him, his no more. Mary was alive. He was neither living
nor dead. The door of the room was opened wide. Closed doors were no
barrier against the hand which had arisen from the grave. Slowly, with
steady feet, with wide, filmy eyes, Ivan passed through the door. Slowly
through the outer door, slowly into the sound of thunder, into the gleam
of lightning and the voices of winds moaning unceasingly, “Peter! Peter!
He is calling you! Ivan! Peter is calling you! Follow!” and ever again
unceasingly, “Peter! Peter!”
Tighter than the bonds of ice or granite hills, tight only as the bond
of death, the arisen hand held the lopped wrist, drew the slow body of
Ivan through the haunted night far into the wood, far through the
talking trees, far to the place of that tree which had not been cut
down, to the place where an axe had fallen through bones and flesh,
where Peter had fallen, where Peter lay buried, not deep down; where
Peter lay buried under twigs and loose earth.
Tightly round the wrist of the man neither alive nor dead clutched the
resurrected hand. Nearer and nearer to the shallow grave the hand pulled
down the body of Ivan. Methodically, steadily, working with no pause,
the free hand of Ivan moved the twigs and the loose earth—methodically,
with no pause, until at last the body of Peter lay revealed; not
recognisable, dissolute beneath the change through which all men shall
pass, recognisable only to those filmy eyes of Ivan, to that questing
hungry soul of Ivan which had come to claim its own. Closer and closer
to the dead brother the severed hand drew the body of Ivan down; so
close, so close, until at last the hand clutched again and for ever that
wrist to which Fate had fastened it long years ago. Alongside of his
dead brother, quietly, with those eyes which neither saw nor did not
see, Ivan lay down full length. Gradually the severed hand, the hand
which had arisen from the dead to claim him, because the dead brother
called and the severed hand called for its own, gradually the hand
slipped from the lopped wrist; the wrist and the arm became one. The
hand of Ivan had brought Ivan to his own. Indissolubly, Peter and Ivan
lay joined together. But the death which lay cold in the heart and body
of Peter passed from the clutched wrist, passed into the hand which
clutched it, passed along the arm which had been severed once, and along
Ivan’s shoulder, until it made his eyes unseeing discs and of his heart
cold stone which could beat no more.
As the grey light of dawn came emptily down the Serbian woods, the two
brothers lay immortally one again, like the two babies the gods had
given Nikolai Kupreloff upon a long-vanished night.