Through Russia Page 14

  "Your wife or your daughter?" I queried.

  "My God! My God!" was, with a subdued sigh, the only response vouchsafed. Then the Lieutenant raised his arm, and the bracelet slid back to its resting place under his cuff.

  Over the town the columns of curling smoke were growing redder, and the clattering windows blushing to a tint of pink that recalled to my memory the livid cheeks of Virubov's "niece," of the woman in whom, like her uncle, there was nothing that could provoke one to "take liberties."

  Next, there scaled the cemetery wall and stealthily stretched themselves on the ground, so that they looked not unlike the far-flung shadows of the cemetery's crosses, a file of dark, tattered figures of beggars, while on the further side of the slowly darkening greenery a cantor drawled in sluggish, careless accents:

  "E-e-ternal me-e—"

  "Eternal memory of what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an angry shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has been the best cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given town. Or suppose he has been the best cobbler there, or that once he said something which the street wherein he dwelt can still remember. Would not THAT man be a man whose record should be preserved, and made accessible to my recollection?"

  And again the Lieutenant's face wreathed itself in solid rings of pungent tobacco smoke.

  Blowing softly for a moment, the wind bent the long stems of grass in the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All that remained audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices of women saying:

  "To the left, I say."

  "Oh, what is to be done, Tanechka?"

  Expelling a fresh cloud of tobacco smoke in cylindrical form, the old man muttered:

  "It would seem that those women have forgotten the precise spot where their relative or friend happens to lie buried."

  As a hawk flew over the sun-reddened belfry-cross, the bird's shadow glided over a memorial stone near the spot where we were sitting, glanced off the corner of the stone, and appeared anew beyond it. And in the watching of this shadow, I somehow found a pleasant diversion.

  Went on the Lieutenant:

  "I say that a graveyard ought to evince the victory of life, the triumph of intellect and of labour, rather than the power of death. However, imagine how things would work out under my scheme. Under it the record of which I have spoken would constitute a history of a town's life which, if anything, would increase men's respect for their fellows. Yes, such a history as THAT is what a cemetery ought to be. Otherwise the place is useless. Similarly will the past prove useless if it can give us nothing. Yet is such a history ever compiled? If it is, how can one say that events are brought about by, forsooth, 'servants of God'?"

  Pointing to the tombs with a gesture as though he were swimming, he paused for a moment or two.

  "You are a good man," I said, "and a man who must have lived a good and interesting life."

  He did not look at me, but answered quietly and thoughtfully:

  "At least a man ought to be his fellows' friend, seeing that to them he is beholden for everything that he possesses and for everything that he contains. I myself have lived—"

  Here, with a contraction of his brows, he fell to gazing about him, as though he were seeking the necessary word; until, seeming to fail to find it, he continued gravely:

  "Men need to be brought closer together, until life shall have become better adjusted. Never forget those who are departed, for anything and everything in the life of a 'servant of God' may prove instructive and of profound significance."

  On the white sides of the memorial-stones, the setting sun was casting warm lurid reflections, until the stonework looked as though it had been splashed with hot blood. Moreover, every thing around us seemed curiously to have swelled and grown larger and softer and less cold of outline; the whole scene, though as motionless as ever, appeared to have taken on a sort of bright-red humidity, and deposited that humidity in purple, scintillating, quivering dew on the turf's various spikes and tufts. Gradually, also, the shadows were deepening and lengthening, while on the further side of the cemetery wall a cow lowed at intervals, in a gross and drunken fashion, and a party of fowls cackled what seemed to be curses in response, and a saw grated and screeched.

  Suddenly the Lieutenant burst into a peal of subdued laughter, and continued to do so until his shoulders shook. At length he said through the paroxysms, as, giving me a push, he cocked his hat boyishly:

  "I must confess that, that—that the view which I first took of you was rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying prone on the grass I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I saw a young fellow roaming about the cemetery with a frown settled on his face, and his breeches bulging; and again I said to myself—"

  "A book is lying in my breeches pocket," I interposed.

  "Ah! Then I understand. Yes, I made a mistake, but a very, welcome one. However, as I say, when I first saw you, I said to myself: 'There is a man lying near that tomb. Perhaps he has a bullet, a wound, in his temple?' And, as you know—"

  He stopped to wink at me with another outburst of soft, good-humoured laughter. Then he continued.

  "Nevertheless, the scheme of which I have told you cannot really be called a scheme, since it is merely a fancy of my own. Yet I SHOULD like to see life lived in better fashion."

  He sighed and paused, for evidently he was becoming lost in thought.

  "Unfortunately," he continued at last, "the latter is a desire which I have conceived too late. If only I had done so fifteen years ago, when I was filling the post of Inspector of the prison at Usman—"

  His left arm stretched itself out, and once more there slid on to his wrist the bracelet. For a moment he touched its gold with a rapid, but careful, delicate, movement—then he restored the trinket to its retreat, rose suddenly, looked about him for a second or two with a frown, and said in dry, brisk tones as he gave his iron-grey moustache an energetic twist:

  "Now I must be going."

  For a while I accompanied him on his way, for I had a keen desire to hear him say something more in that pleasant, powerful bass of his; but though he stepped past the gravestones with strides as careful and regular as those of a soldier on parade, he failed again to break silence.

  Just as we passed the chapel of the monastery there floated forth into the fair evening stillness, from the bars, of a window, while yet not really stirring that stillness, a hum of gruff, lazy, peevish ejaculations. Apparently they were uttered by two persons who were engaged in a dispute, since one of them muttered:

  "What have you done? What have you done?"

  And the other responded carelessly:

  "Hold your tongue, now! Pray hold your tongue!"

  ON A RIVER STEAMER

  The water of the river was smooth, and dull silver of tint. Also, so barely perceptible was the current that it seemed to be almost stagnant under the mist of the noontide heat, and only by the changes in the aspect of the banks could one realise how quietly and evenly the river was carrying on its surface the old yellow-hulled steamer with the white-rimmed funnel, and also the clumsy barge which was being towed in her wake.

  Dreamily did the floats of the paddle-wheels slap the water. Under the planks of the deck the engines toiled without ceasing. Steam hissed and panted. At intervals the engine-room bell jarred upon the car. At intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid to and fro with a dull, rattling sound. Yet, owing to the somnolent stillness settled upon the river, these sounds escaped, failed to catch one's attention.

  Through the dryness of the summer the water was low. Periodically, in the steamer's bow, a deck hand like a king, a man with a lean, yellow, black-avised face and a pair of languishing eyes, threw overboard a polished log as in tones of melting melancholy he chanted:

  "Se-em, se-em, shest!"

  ["Seven, seven, six!" (the depth of water, reckoned in sazheni or fathoms)]

  It was as though he were wailing:

  "Seyem, seyem, a yest-NISHEVO"


  [Let us eat, let us eat, but to eat there is—nothing]

  Meanwhile, the steamer kept turning her stearlet-like [The stearlet is a fish of the salmon species] prow deliberately and alternately towards either bank as the barge yawed behind her, and the grey hawser kept tautening and quivering, and sending out showers of gold and silver sparkles. Ever and anon, too, the captain on the bridge kept shouting, hoarsely through a speaking-trumpet:

  "About, there!"

  Under the stem of the barge a wave ran which, divided into a pair of white wings, serpentined away towards either bank.

  In the meadowed distance peat seemed to be being burnt, and over the black forest there had gathered an opalescent cloud of smoke which also suffused the neighbouring marshes.

  To the right, the bank of the river towered up into lofty, precipitous, clayey slopes intersected with ravines wherein aspens and birches found shelter.

  Everything ashore had about it a restful, sultry, deserted look. Even in the dull blue, torrid sky there was nought save a white-hot sun.

  In endless vista were meadows studded with trees—trees sleeping in lonely isolation, and, in places, surmounted with either the cross of a rural church which looked like a day star or the sails of a windmill; while further back from the banks lay the tissue cloths of ripening crops, with, here and there, a human habitation.

  Throughout, the scene was indistinct. Everything in it was calm, touchingly simple, intimate, intelligible, grateful to the soul. So much so that as one contemplated the slowly-varying vistas presented by the loftier bank, the immutable stretches of meadowland, and the green, timbered dance-rings where the forest approached the river, to gaze at itself in the watery mirror, and recede again into the peaceful distance; as one gazed at all this one could not but reflect that nowhere else could a spot more simply, more kindly, more beautiful be found, than these peaceful shores of the great river.

  Yet already a few shrubs by the river's margin were beginning to display yellow leaves, though the landscape as a whole was smiling the doubtful, meditative smile of a young bride who, about to bear her first child, is feeling at once nervous and delighted at the prospect.

  * * *

  The hour was past noon, and the third-class passengers, languid with fatigue induced by the heat, were engaged in drinking either tea or beer. Seated mostly on the bulwarks of the steamer, they silently scanned the banks, while the deck quivered, crockery clattered at the buffet, and the deck hand in the bows sighed soporifically:

  Six! Six! Six-and-a-half!

  From the engine-room a grimy stoker emerged. Rolling along, and scraping his bare feet audibly against the deck, he approached the boatswain's cabin, where the said boatswain, a fair-haired, fair-bearded man from Kostroma was standing in the doorway. The senior official contracted his rugged eyes quizzically, and inquired:

  "Whither in such a hurry?"

  "To pick a bone with Mitka."

  "Good!"

  With a wave of his black hand the stoker resumed his way, while the boatswain, yawning, fell to casting his eyes about him. On a locker near the companion of the engine-room a small man in a buff pea-jacket, a new cap, and a pair of boots on which there were clots of dried mud, was seated.

  Through lack of diversion the boatswain began to feel inclined to hector somebody, so cried sternly to the man in question:

  "Hi there, chawbacon!"

  The man on the locker turned about—turned nervously, and much as a bullock turns. That is to say, he turned with his whole body.

  "Why have you gone and put yourself THERE?" inquired the boatswain. "Though there is a notice to tell you NOT to sit there, it is there that you must go and sit! Can't you read?"

  Rising, the passenger inspected not the notice, but the locker. Then he replied:

  "Read? Yes, I CAN read."

  "Then why sit there where you oughtn't to?"

  "I cannot see any notice."

  "Well, it's hot there anyway, and the smell of oil comes up from the engines.... Whence have you come?"

  "From Kashira."

  "Long from home?"

  "Three weeks, about."

  "Any rain at your place?"

  "No. But why?"

  "How come your boots are so muddy?"

  The passenger lowered his head, extended cautiously first one foot, and then the other, scrutinised them both, and replied:

  "You see, they are not my boots."

  With a roar of laughter that caused his brilliant beard to project from his chin, the boatswain retorted:

  "I think you must drink a bit."

  The passenger said nothing more, but retreated quietly, and with short strides, to the stem. From the fact that the sleeves of his pea-jacket reached far below his wrists, it was clear that the garment had originated from the shoulders of another man.

  As for the boatswain, on noting the circumspection and diffidence with which the passenger walked, he frowned, sucked at his beard, approached a sailor who was engaged in vigorously scrubbing the brass on the door of the captain's cabin with a naked palm, and said in an undertone:

  "Did you happen to notice the gait of that little man there in the light pea-jacket and dirty boots?"

  "I did."

  "Then see here. Do keep an eye upon him."

  "But why? Is he a bad lot?"

  "Something like it, I think."

  "I will then."

  At a table near the hatchway of the first-class cabin, a fat man in grey was drinking beer. Already he had reached a state of moderate fuddlement, for his eyes were protruding sightlessly and staring unwinkingly at the opposite wall. Meanwhile, a number of flies were swarming in the sticky puddles on the table, or else crawling over his greyish beard and the brick-red skin of his motionless features.

  The boatswain winked in his direction, and remarked:

  "Half-seas over, HE is."

  "'Tis his way," a pockmarked, eyebrow-less sailor responded.

  Here the drunken man sneezed: with the result that a cloud of flies were blown over the table. Looking at them, and sighing as his companion had done, the boatswain thoughtfully observed:

  "Why, he regularly sneezes flies, eh?"

  * * *

  The resting-place which I myself had selected was a stack of firewood over the stokehole shoot; and as I lay upon it I could see the hills gradually darkening the water with a mourning veil as calmly they advanced to meet the steamer; while in the meadows, a last lingering glow of the sunset's radiance was reddening the stems of the birches, and making the newly mended roof of a hut look as though it were cased in red fustian—communicating to everything else in the vicinity a semblance of floating amid fire—and effacing all outline, and causing the scene as a whole to dissolve into streaks of red and orange and blue, save where, on a hill above the hut, a black grove of firs stood thrown into tense, keen, and clear-cut relief.

  Under a hill a party of fishermen had lit a wood fire, the flames of which could be seen playing upon, and picking out, the white hull of a boat—the dark figure of a man therein, a fishing net suspended from some stakes, and a woman in a yellow bodice who was sitting beside the fire. Also, amid the golden radiance there could be distinguished a quivering of the leaves on the lower branches of the tree whereunder the woman sat shaded.

  All the river was calm, and not a sound occurred to break the stillness ashore, while the air under the awning of the third-class portion of the vessel felt as stifling as during the earlier part of the day. By this time the conversation of the passengers, damped by the shadow of dusk, had merged into a single sound which resembled the humming of bees; and amid it one could not distinguish nor divine who was speaking, nor the subject of discussion, since every word therein seemed disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably, and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a suppressed laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the cabin, a party who had agreed to sing a song of general acceptation were failing to hit upon one, and disputing
the point in low and dispassionate accents; and in each, such sound there was something vespertinal, gently sad, softly prayer-like.

  From behind the firewood near me a thick, rasping voice said in deliberate tones:

  "At first he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and spruce; but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going to the dogs."

  Another voice, loud and gruff, replied:

  "Aha! Avoid the ladies, or one is bound to go amiss."

  "The saying has it that always a fish makes for deeper water."

  "Besides, he is a fool, and that is worse still. By the way, he is a relative of yours, isn't he?"

  "Yes. He is my brother."

  "Indeed? Then pray forgive me."

  "Certainly; but, to speak plainly, he is a fool."

  At this moment I saw the passenger in the buff pea-jacket approach the sally-port, grasp with his left hand a stanchion, and step on to the grating under which one of the paddle-wheels was churning the water to foam. There he stood looking over the bulwarks with a swinging motion akin to that of a bat when, grappling some object or another with its wings, it hangs suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was drawn tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to the point of absurdity.

  Presently he turned and peered into the gloom under the awning, though, seemingly, he failed to distinguish myself reposing on the firewood. This enabled me to gain a clear view of a face with a sharp nose, some tufts of light-coloured hair on cheeks and chin, and a pair of small, muddy-looking eyes. He stood there as though he were listening to something.

  All of a sudden he stepped firmly to the sally-port, swiftly unlashed from the iron top-rail a mop, and threw it overboard. Then he set about unlashing a second article of the same species.

  "Hi!" I shouted to him. "What are you doing there?"

  With a start the man turned round, clapped a hand to his forehead to discover my whereabouts, and replied softly and rapidly, and with a stammer in his voice: