Through Russia Read online

  Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless dog with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their intelligence and in their absolute Ishmaelitism—until one almost expected to hear issue from the animal's mouth reproaches couched in human language.

  And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery as, with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to and fro with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally venting a subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.

  Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying an unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would, meanwhile, maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently persuasive, chirruping chorus; until in autumn, when the wind had stripped bare the boughs, these birds' black nests would come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed heads of human beings which someone had torn from their bodies and flung into the trees, to hang for ever around the white, sugarloaf-shaped church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn season, indeed, everything in the cemetery's vicinity looked sad and tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh like a lover who has been driven mad through bereavement....

  Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read aloud:

  "'Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected citizen and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'" etc., etc.

  Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in colour, but exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:

  "It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man beyond that he was a 'servant of God.' Now, how can a servant be worthy of honour at the hand of 'citizens'?"

  "Possibly he was an ascetic," was my hazarded conjecture; whereupon the old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:

  "Then in such case one ought to write—"

  "To write what?"

  "To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail."

  And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor passed onwards towards a more remote portion of the cemetery—myself walking, this time, beside him. His stature placed his head on a level with my shoulder only, and caused his straw hat to conceal his features. Hence, since I wished to look at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced to walk with head bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.

  "No, that is not the way to do it," presently he continued in the soft, civil voice of one who has a complaint to present. "Any such proceeding is merely a mark of barbarism—of a complete lack of observation of men and life."

  With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large circle in the air.

  "Do you know the meaning of that?" he inquired.

  "Its meaning is death," was my diffident reply, made with a shrug of the shoulders.

  A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely cut face as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:

  "'Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'" [Death hath been for ever overthrown by death."]

  "Do you know that passage?" he added presently.

  Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces—he threading his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable speed. Suddenly he halted, raised his hat from his head, and proffered me a hand.

  "Young man," he said, "let us make one another's better acquaintance. I am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly of the State Remount Establishment, subsequently of the Department of Imperial Lands. I am a man who, after never having been found officially remiss, am living in honourable retirement—a man at once a householder, a widower, and a person of hasty temper."

  Then, after a pause, he added:

  "Vice-Governor Khorvat of Tambov is my brother—a younger brother; he being fifty-five, and I sixty-one, si-i-ixty one."

  His speech was rapid, but as precise as though no mistake was permissible in its delivery.

  "Also," he continued, "as a man cognisant of every possible species of cemetery, I am much dissatisfied with this one. In fact, never satisfied with such places am I."

  Here he brandished his fist in the air, and described a large arc over the crosses.

  "Let us sit down," he said, "and I will explain things."

  So, after that we had seated ourselves on a bench beside a white oratory, and Lieutenant Khorvat had taken off his hat, and with a blue handkerchief wiped his forehead and the thick silvery hair which bristled from the knobs of his scalp, he continued:

  "Mark you well the word kladbistche." [The word, though customarily used for cemetery, means, primarily, a treasure-house.] Here he nudged me with his elbow—continuing, thereafter, more softly: "In a kladbisiche one might reasonably look for kladi, for treasures of intellect and enlightenment. Yet what do we find? Only that which is offensive and insulting. All of us does it insult, for thereby is an insult paid to all who, in life, are bearing still their 'cross and burden.' You too will, one day, be insulted by the system, even as shall I. Do you understand? I repeat, 'their cross and burden'—the sense of the words being that, life being hard and difficult, we ought to honour none but those who STILL are bearing their trials, or bearing trials for you and me. Now, THESE folk here have ceased to possess consciousness."

  Each time that the old man waved his hat in his excitement, its small shadow, bird-like, flew along the narrow path, and over the cross, and, finally, disappeared in the direction of the town.

  Next, distending his ruddy cheeks, twitching his moustache, and regarding me covertly out of boylike eyes, the Lieutenant resumed:

  "Probably you are thinking, 'The man with whom I have to deal is old and half-witted.' But no, young fellow; that is not so, for long before YOUR time had I taken the measure of life. Regard these memorials. ARE they memorials? For what do they commemorate as concerns you and myself? They commemorate, in that respect, nothing. No, they are not memorials; they are merely passports or testimonials conferred upon itself by human stupidity. Under a given cross there may lie a Maria, and under another one a Daria, or an Alexei, or an Evsei, or someone else—all 'servants of God,' but not otherwise particularised. An outrage this, sir! For in this place folk who have lived their difficult portion of life on earth are seen robbed of that record of their existences, which ought to have been preserved for your and my instruction. Yes, A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIFE LIVED BY A MAN is what matters. A tomb might then become even more interesting than a novel. Do you follow me?"

  "Not altogether," I rejoined.

  He heaved a very audible sigh.

  "It should be easy enough," was his remark. "To begin with, I am NOT a 'servant of God.' Rather, I am a man intelligently, of set purpose, keeping God's holy commandments so far as lies within my power. And no one, not even God, has any right to demand of me more than I can give. That is so, is it not?"

  I nodded.

  "There!" the Lieutenant cried briskly as, cocking his hat, he assumed a still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his hands, he growled in his flexible bass:

  "What is this cemetery? It is merely a place of show."

  At this moment, for some reason or another, there occurred to me an incident which involved the figure of Iraklei Virubov, the figure which had carpet slippers on its ponderous feet, thick lips, a greedy mouth, deceitful eyes, and a frame so huge and cavernous that the dapper little Lieutenant could have stepped into it complete.

  The day had been a Sunday, and the hour eventide. On the burnt plot of ground some broken glass had been emitting a reddish gleam, shoots of ergot had been diffusing their gloss, children shouting at play, dogs trotting backwards and forwards, and all things, seemingly, faring well, sunken in the stillness of the portion of the town adjoining the rolling, vacant steppe, with, above them, only the sky's level, dull-blue canopy, and around them, only the cemetery, like an island amidst a sea.

  With Virubov, I had been sitting on a bench near the wicket-ga
te of his hut, as intermittently he had screwed his lecherous eyes in the direction of the stout, ox-eyed lacemaker, Madame Ezhov, who, after disposing of her form on a bank hard-by, had fallen to picking lice out of the curls of her eight-year-old Petka Koshkodav. Presently, as swiftly she had rummaged the boy's hair with fingers grown used to such rapid movement, she had said to her husband (a dealer in second-hand articles), who had been seated within doors, and therefore rendered invisible—she had said with oily derision:

  "Oh, yes, you bald-headed old devil, you! Of course you got your price. Ye-es. Then, fool, you ought to have had a slipper smacked across that Kalmuck snout of yours. Talk of my price, indeed!"

  Upon this Virubov had remarked with a sigh, and in sluggish, sententious tones:

  "To grant the serfs emancipation was a sheer mistake. I am a humble enough servant of my country, yet I can see the truth of what I have stated, since it follows as a matter of course. What ought to have been done is that all the estates of the landowners should have been conveyed to the Tsar. Beyond a doubt that is so. Then both the peasantry and the townsfolk, the whole people, in short, would have had but a single landlord. For never can the people live properly so long as it is ignorant of the point where it stands; and since it loves authority, it loves to have over it an autocratic force, for its control. Always can it be seen seeking such a force."

  Then, bending forward, and infusing into each softly uttered word a perfect lusciousness of falsity, Virubov had added to his neighbour:

  "Take, for example, the working-woman who stands free of every tie."

  "How do I stand free of anything?" the neighbour had retorted, in complete readiness for a quarrel.

  "Oh, I am not speaking in your despite, Pavlushka, but to your credit," hastily Virubov had protested.

  "Then keep your blandishments for that heifer, your 'niece,'" had been Madame Ezhov's response.

  Upon this Virubov had risen heavily, and remarked as he moved away towards the courtyard:

  "All folk need to be supervised by an autocratic eye."

  Thereafter had followed a bout of choice abuse between his neighbour and his "niece," while Virubov himself, framed in the wicket-gate, and listening to the contest, had smacked his lips as he gazed at the pair, and particularly at Madame Ezhov. At the beginning of the bout Dikanka had screeched:

  "It is my opinion, it is my opinion, that—"

  "Don't treat me to any of YOUR slop!" the long-fanged Pavla had interrupted for the benefit of the street in general. And thus had the affair continued....

  Lieutenant Khorvat blew the fag-end of his cigarette from his mouthpiece, glanced at me, and said with seemingly, a not over-civil, twitch of his bushy moustache:

  "Of what are you thinking, if I might inquire?"

  "I am trying to understand you."

  "You ought not to find that difficult," was his rejoinder as again he doffed his hat, and fanned his face with it. "The whole thing may be summed up in two words. It is that we lack respect both for ourselves and for our fellow men. Do you follow me NOW?"

  His eyes had grown once more young and clear, and, seizing my hand in his strong and agreeably warm fingers, he continued:

  "Why so? For the very simple reason that I cannot respect myself when I can learn nothing, simply nothing, about my fellows."

  Moving nearer to me, he added in a mysterious undertone:

  "In this Russia of ours none of us really knows why he has come into existence. True, each of us knows that he was born, and that he is alive, and that one day he will die; but which of us knows the reason why all that is so?"

  Through renewed excitement, its colour had come back to the Lieutenant's face, and his gestures became so rapid as to cause the ring on his finger to flash through the air like the link of a chain. Also, I was able to detect the fact that on the small, neat wrist under his left cuff, there was a bracelet finished with a medallion.

  "All this, my good sir, is because (partially through the fact that men forget the point, and partially through the fact that that point fails to be understood aright) the WORK done by a man is concealed from our knowledge. For my own part, I have an idea, a scheme—yes, a scheme—in two words, a, a—"

  "N-n-o-u, n-n-o-u!" the bell of the monastery tolled over the tombs in languid, chilly accents.

  "—a scheme that every town and every village, in fact, every unit of homogeneous population, should keep a record of the particular unit's affairs, a, so to speak, 'book of life.' This 'book of life' should be more than a list of the results of the unit's labour; it should also be a living narrative of the workaday activities accomplished by each member of the unit. Eh? And, of course, the record to be compiled without official interference—solely by the town council or district administration, or by a special 'board, of life and works' or some such body, provided only that the task be not carried out by nominees of the GOVERNMENT. And in that record there should be entered everything—that is to say, everything of a nature which ought to be made public concerning every man who has lived among us, and has since gone from our midst."

  Here the Lieutenant stretched out his hand again in the direction of the tombs.

  "My right it is," he added, "to know how those folk there spent their lives. For it is by their labours and their thoughts, and even on the product of their bones, that I myself am now subsisting. You agree, do you not?"

  In silence I nodded; whereupon he cried triumphantly:

  "Ah! You see, do you? Yes, an indispensable point is it, that whatsoever a man may have done, whether good or evil, should be recorded. For example, suppose he has manufactured a stove specially good for heating purposes; record the fact. Or suppose he has killed a mad dog; record the fact. Or suppose he has built a school, or cleansed a dirty street, or been a pioneer in the teaching of sound farming, or striven, by word and deed, his life long, to combat official irregularities... record the fact. Again, suppose a woman has borne ten, or fifteen, healthy children; record the fact. Yes, and this last with particular care, since the conferment of healthy children upon the country is a work of absolute importance."

  Further, pointing to a grey headstone with a worn inscription, he shouted (or almost did so):

  "Under that stone lies buried the body of a man who never in his life loved but one woman, but ONE woman. Now, THAT is a fact which ought to have been recorded about him for it is not merely a string of names that is wanted, but a narrative of deeds. Yes, I have not only a desire, but a RIGHT, to know the lives which men have lived, and the works which they have performed; and whenever a man leaves our midst we ought to inscribe over his tomb full particulars of the 'cross and burden' which he bore, as particulars ever to be held in remembrance, and inscribed there both for my benefit and for the benefit of life in general, as constituting a clear and circumstantial record of the given career. Why did that man live? To the question write down, always, the answer in large and conspicuous characters. Eh?"

  "Most certainly."

  This led the Lieutenant's enthusiasm to increase still more as, for the third time waving his hand in the direction of the tombs, and mouthing each word, he continued:

  "The folk of that town are liars pure and simple, for of set purpose they conceal the particulars of careers that they may depreciate those careers in our eyes, and, while showing us the insignificance of the dead, fill the living with a sense of similar insignificance, since insignificant folk are the easiest to manage. Yes, it is a scheme thought out with diabolical ingenuity. Yet, for myself—well, try and make me do what I don't intend to do!"

  To which, with his face wrinkled with disgust, he added in a tone like a shot from a pistol:

  "Machines are we! Yes, machines, and nothing else!"

  Curious was it to watch the old man's excitement as one listened to the strong bass voice amid the stillness of the cemetery. Once more over the tombs, there came floating the languid, metallic notes of "N-n-o-u! N-n-o-u!"

  The oily gloss on the withered grass had v
anished, faded, and everything turned dull, though the air remained charged with the spring perfume of the geraniums, stocks, and narcissi which encircled some of the graves.

  "You see," continued the Lieutenant, "one could not deny that each of us has his value. By the time that one has lived threescore years, one perceives that fact very clearly. Never CONCEAL things, since every life lived ought to be set in the light. And is capable of being so, in that every man is a workman for the world at large, and constitutes an instructor in good or in evil, and that life, when looked into, constitutes, as a whole, the sum of all the labour done by the aggregate of us petty, insignificant individuals. That is why we ought not to hide away a man's work, but to publish it abroad, and to inscribe on the cross over his tomb his deeds, his services, in their entirety. Yes, however negligible may have been those deeds, those services, hold them up for the perusal of those who can discover good even in what is negligible. NOW do you understand me?"

  "I do," I replied. "Yes, I do."

  "Good!"

  The bell of the monastery struck two hasty beats—then became silent, so that only the sad echo of its voice remained reverberating over the cemetery. Once more my interlocutor drew out his cigarette-case, silently offered it to myself, and lighted and puffed industriously at another cigarette. As he did so his hands, as small and brown as the claws of a bird, shook a little, and his head, bent down, looked like an Easter egg in plush.

  Still smoking, he looked me in the eyes with a self-diffident frown, and muttered:

  "Only through the labour of man does the earth attain development. And only by familiarising himself with, and remembering, the past can man obtain support in his work on earth."

  In speaking, the Lieutenant lowered his arm; whereupon on to his wrist there slipped the broad golden bracelet adorned with a medallion, and there gazed at me thence the miniature of a fair-haired woman: and since the hand below it was freckled, and its flexible fingers were swollen out of shape, and had lost their symmetry, the woman's fine-drawn face looked the more full of life, and, clearly picked out, could be seen to be smiling a sweet and slightly imperious smile.