Through Russia Page 16

  Similarly the buff-coloured bales in the steamer's stem gradually reddened, as did the grey tints in the beard of the large peasant where, sprawling his ponderous form over the deck, he was lying asleep with mouth open, nostrils distended with stertorous snores, brows raised as though in astonishment, and thick moustache intermittently twitching.

  Someone amid the piles of bales was panting as he fidgeted, and as I glanced in that direction I encountered the gaze of a pair of small, narrow, inflamed eyes, and beheld before me the ragged, mitten-like face, though now it looked even thinner and greyer than it had done on the previous evening. Apparently its owner was feeling cold, for he had hunched his chin between his knees, and clasped his hirsute arms around his legs, as his eyes stared gloomily, with a hunted air, in my direction. Then wearily, lifelessly he said:

  "Yes, you have found me. And now you can thrash me if you wish to do so—you can give me a blow, for I gave you one, and, consequently, it's your turn to do the hitting."

  Stupefied with astonishment, I inquired in an undertone.

  "It was you, then, that hit me?"

  "It was so, but where are your witnesses?"

  The words came in hoarse, croaked, suppressed accents, with a separation of the hands, and an upthrow of the head and projecting cars which had such a comical look of being crushed beneath the weight of the battened-down cap. Next, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, the man repeated in a tone of challenge:

  "Where, I say, are your witnesses? You can go to the devil!"

  I could discern in him something at once helpless and froglike which evoked in me a strong feeling of repulsion; and since, with that, I had no real wish to converse with him, or even to revenge myself upon him for his cowardly blow, I turned away in silence.

  But a moment later I looked at him again, and saw that he was seated in his former posture, with his arms embracing his knees, his chin resting upon them, and his red, sleepless eyes gazing lifelessly at the barge which the steamer was towing between wide ribbons of foaming water—ribbons sparkling in the sunlight like mash in a brewer's vat.

  And those eyes, that dead, alienated expression, the gay cheerfulness of the morning, and the clear radiance of the heavens, and the kindly tints of the two banks, and the vocal sounds of the June day, and the bracing freshness of the air, and the whole scene around us served but to throw into the more tragic relief.

  * * *

  Just as the steamer was leaving Sundir the man threw himself into the water; in the sight of everybody he sprang overboard. Upon that all shouted, jostled their neighbours as they rushed to the side, and fell to scanning the river where from bank to bank it lay wrapped in blinding glitter.

  The whistle sounded in fitful alarm, the sailors threw lifebelts overboard, the deck rumbled like a drum under the crowd's surging rush, steam hissed afflightedly, a woman vented an hysterical cry, and the captain bawled from the bridge the imperious command:

  "Avast heaving lifebelts! By now the fool will have got one! Damn you, calm the passengers!"

  An unwashed, untidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back his long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat shoulder jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped people up.

  "A muzhik, is it, or a woman? A muzhik, eh?"

  By the time that I had made my way to the stern the man had fallen far behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as small as a fly on the glassy surface of the water. However, towards that fly a fishing-boat was already darting with the swiftness of a water beetle, and causing its two oars to show quiveringly red and grey, while from the marshier of the two banks there began hastily to put out a second boat which leapt in the steamer's wash with the gaiety of a young calf.

  Suddenly there broke into the painful hubbub on the steamer's deck a faint, heartrending cry of "A-a-ah!"

  In answer to it a sharp-nosed, black-bearded, well-dressed peasant muttered with a smack of his lips:

  "Ah! That is him shouting. What a madman he must have been! And an ugly customer too, wasn't he?"

  The peasant with the curly beard rejoined in a tone of conviction engulfing all other utterances:

  "It is his conscience that is catching him. Think what you like, but never can conscience be suppressed."

  Therewith, constantly interrupting one another, the pair betook themselves to a public recital of the tragic story of the fair-haired young fellow, whom the fishermen had now lifted from the water, and were conveying towards the steamer with oars that oscillated at top speed.

  The bearded peasant continued:

  "As soon as it was seen that he was but running after the soldier's wife."

  "Besides," the other peasant interrupted, "the property was not to be divided after the death of the father."

  With which the bearded muzhik eagerly recounted the history of the murder done by the brother, the nephew, and a son, while the spruce, spare, well-dressed peasant interlarded the general buzz of conversation with words and comments cheerfully and stridently delivered, much as though he were driving in stakes for the erection of a fence.

  "Every man is drawn most in the direction whither he finds it easiest to go."

  "Then it will be the Devil that will be drawing him, since the direction of Hell is always the easiest."

  "Well, YOU will not be going that way, I suppose? You don't altogether fancy it?"

  "Why should I?"

  "Because you have declared it to be the easiest way."

  "Well, I am not a saint."

  "No, ha-ha! you are not."

  "And you mean that—?"

  "I mean nothing. If a dog's chain be short, he is not to be blamed."

  Whereupon, setting nose to nose, the pair plunged into a quarrel still more heated as they expounded in simple, but often curiously apposite, language opinions intelligible to themselves alone. The one peasant, a lean fellow with lengthy limbs, cold, sarcastic eyes, and a dark, bony countenance, spoke loudly and sonorously, with frequent shrugs of the shoulders, while the other peasant, a man stout and broad of build who until now had seemed calm, self-assured of demeanour, and a man of settled views, breathed heavily, while his oxlike eyes glowed with an ardour causing his face to flush patchily, and his beard to stick out from his chin.

  "Look here, for instance," he growled as he gesticulated and rolled his dull eyes about. "How can that be? Does not even God know wherein a man ought to restrain himself?"

  "If the Devil be one's master, God doesn't come into the matter."

  "Liar! For who was the first who raised his hand against his fellow?"

  "Cain."

  "And the first man who repented of a sin?"

  "Adam."

  "Ah! You see!"

  Here there broke into the dispute a shout of: "They are just getting him aboard!" and the crowd, rushing away from the stern, carried with it the two disputants—the sparer peasant; lowering his shoulders, and buttoning up his jacket as he went; while the bearded peasant, following at his heels, thrust his head forward in a surly manner as he shifted his cap from the one ear to the other.

  With a ponderous beating of paddles against the current the steamer heaved to, and the captain shouted through a speaking-trumpet, with a view to preventing a collision between the barge and the stem of the vessel:

  "Put her over! Put her o-o-ove-r!"

  Soon the fishing-boat came alongside, and the half-drowned man, with a form as limp as a half-empty sack, and water exuding from every stitch, and his hitherto haggard face grown smooth and simple-looking, was hoisted on board.

  Next, on the sailors laying him upon the hatchway of the baggage hold, he sat up, leaned forward, smoothed his wet hair with the palms of his hands, and asked dully, without looking at anyone:

  "Have they also recovered my cap?"

  Someone among the throng around him exclaimed reprovingly:

  "It is not about your cap that you ought to be thinking, but about your soul."

  Upon this he
hiccuped loudly and freely, like a camel, and emitted a stream of turgid water from his mouth. Then, looking at the crowd with lack-lustre eyes, he said in an apathetic tone:

  "Let me be taken elsewhere."

  In answer, the boatswain sternly bade him stretch himself out, and this the young fellow did, with his hands clasped under his head, and his eyes closed, while the boatswain added brusquely to the onlookers:

  "Move away, move away, good people. What is there to stare at? This is not a show.... Hi, you muzhik! Why did you play us such a trick, damn you?"

  The crowd however, was not to be suppressed, but indulged in comments.

  "He murdered his father, didn't he?"

  "What? THAT wretched creature?"

  As for the boatswain, he squatted upon his heels, and proceeded to subject the rescued man to a course of strict interrogation.

  "What is the destination marked on your ticket?"

  "Perm."

  "Then you ought to leave the boat at Kazan. And what is your name?"

  "Yakov."

  "And your surname?"

  "Bashkin—though we are known also as the Bukolov family."

  "Your family has a DOUBLE surname, then?"

  With the full power of his trumpet-like lungs the bearded peasant (evidently he had lost his temper) broke in:

  "Though his uncle and his brother have been sentenced to penal servitude and are travelling together on that barge, he—well, he has received his discharge! That is only a personal matter, however. In spite of what judges may say, one ought never to kill, since conscience cannot bear the thought of blood. Even nearly to become a murderer is wrong."

  By this time more and more passengers had collected as they awakened from sleep and emerged from the first- and second-class cabins. Among them was the mate, a man with a black moustache and rubicund features who inquired of someone amid the confusion: "You are not a doctor, I suppose?" and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: "No, sir, nor ever have been one."

  To this someone added with a drawl:

  "Why is a doctor needed? Surely the man is a fellow of no particular importance?"

  Over the river the radiance of the summer daylight had gathered increased strength, and, since the date was a Sunday, bells were sounding seductively from a hill, and a couple of women in gala apparel who were following the margin of the river waved handkerchiefs towards the steamer, and shouted some greeting.

  Meanwhile the young fellow lay motionless, with his eyes closed. Divested of his pea-jacket, and wrapped about with wet, clinging underclothing, he looked more symmetrical than previously—his chest seemed better developed, his body plumper, and his face more rotund and less ugly.

  Yet though the passengers gazed at him with compassion or distaste or severity or fear, as the case might be, all did so without ceremony, as though he had not been a living man at all.

  For instance, a gaunt gentleman in a grey frock-coat said to a lady in a yellow straw hat adorned with a pink ribbon:

  "At our place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went and hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped every watch and clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did he stop them?"

  "An abnormal case indeed!"

  On the other hand, a dark-browed woman who had her hands hidden beneath her shawl stood gazing at the rescued man in silence, and with her side turned towards him. As she did so tears were welling in her grey-blue eyes.

  Presently two sailors appeared. One of them bent over the young fellow, touched him on the shoulder, and said:

  "Hi! You are to get up."

  Whereupon the young fellow rose, and was removed elsewhither.

  * * *

  When, after an interval, he reappeared on deck, he was clean and dry, and clad in a cook's white jumper and a sailor's blue serge trousers. Clasping his hands behind his back, hunching his shoulders, and bending his head forward, he walked swiftly to the stern, with a throng of idlers—at first one by one, and then in parties of from three to a dozen—following in his wake.

  The man seated himself upon a coil of rope, and, craning his neck in wolf-like fashion to eye the bystanders, frowned, let fall his temples upon hands thrust into his flaxen hair, and fixed his gaze upon the barge.

  Standing or sitting about in the hot sunshine, people stared at him without stint. Evidently they would have liked, but did not dare, to engage him in conversation. Presently the big peasant also arrived on the scene, and, after glancing at all present, took off his hat, and wiped his perspiring face. Next, a grey-headed old man with a red nose, a thin wisp of beard, and watery eyes cleared his throat, and in honeyed tones took the initiative.

  "Would you mind telling us how it all happened?" he began.

  "Why should I do so?" retorted the young fellow without moving.

  Taking a red handkerchief from his bosom, the old man shook it out and applied it cautiously to his eyes. Then he said through its folds in the quiet accents of a man who is determined to persevere:

  "Why, you say? For the reason that the occasion is one when all ought to know the tru—"

  Lurching forward, the bearded peasant interposed with a rasp:

  "Yes, do you tell us all about it, and things will become easier for you. For a sin always needs to be made known."

  While, like an echo, a voice said in bold and sarcastic accents:

  "It would be better to seize him and tie him up."

  Upon this the young fellow raised his brows a little, and retorted in an undertone:

  "Let me bide."

  "The rascal!" the crowd commented, while the old man, neatly folding and replacing his handkerchief, raised a hand as dry as a cock's leg, and remarked with a sharp, knowing smile:

  "Possibly it is not merely out of idle curiosity that folk are making this request."

  "Go and be damned to you!" the young fellow exclaimed with a grim snap. Whereupon the big peasant bellowed out in a blustering fashion:

  "What? Then you will not tell us at least your destination?"

  Whereafter the same speaker continued to hold forth on humanity, God, and the human conscience—staring wildly around him as he did so, waving his arms about, and growing ever more frantic, until really it was curious to watch him.

  At length the crowd grew similarly excited, and took to encouraging the speaker with cries of "True! That is so!"

  As for the young fellow, he listened awhile in silence, without moving. Then, straightening his back, he rose, thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and, swaying his body to and fro, began to glare at the crowd with greenish eyes which were manifestly lightening to a vicious gleam. At length, thrusting forth his chest, he cried hoarsely:

  "So you ask me whither I am bound? I am bound for the brigands' lair, for the brigands' lair, where, unless you first take and put me in fetters, I intend to cut the throat of every man that I meet. Yes, a hundred murders will I commit, for all folk will be the same to me, and not a soul will I spare. Aye, the end of my tether is reached, so take and fetter me whilst you can."

  His breath was issuing with difficulty, and as he spoke his shoulders heaved, and his legs trembled beneath him. Also, his face had turned grey and become distorted with tremors.

  Upon this, the crowd broke into a gruff, ugly, resentful roar, and edged away from the man. Yet, in doing so, many of its members looked curiously like the man himself in the way that they lowered their heads, caught at their breath, and let their eyes flash. Clearly the man was in imminent danger of being assaulted.

  Suddenly he recovered his subdued demeanour—he, as it were, thawed in the sunlight: until, as suddenly, his legs gave way beneath him, and, narrowly escaping injury to his face from the corner of a bale, he fell forward upon his knees as though felled with an axe. Thereafter, clutching at his throat, he shouted in a strange voice, and crowding the words upon one another:

  "Tell me what I am to do. Is all of it my fault? Long I lay in prison before I was tried and told to
go free... yet—"

  Tearing at his ears and cheeks, he rocked his head to and fro as though seeking to rend it from its socket. Then he continued:

  "Yet I am NOT free. Nor is it in my power to say what will become of me. For me there remains neither life nor death."

  "Aha!" exclaimed the big peasant; and at the sound the crowd drew back as in consternation, while some hastened to depart altogether. As for the remainder (numbering a dozen or so), they herded sullenly, nervously, involuntarily into a mass as the young fellow continued in distracted tones and with a trembling head:

  "Oh that I could sleep for the next ten years! For then could I prove myself, and decide whether I am guilty or not. Last night I struck a man with a faggot. As I was walking about I saw asleep a man who had angered me, and thereupon thought, 'Come! I should like to deal him a blow, but can I actually do it?' And strike him I did. Was it my fault? Always I keep asking myself, 'Can I, or can I not, do a thing?' Aye, lost, lost am I!"

  Apparently this outburst caused the man to reach the end of his power, for presently he sank from knees to heels—then on to his side, with hands clasping his head, and his tongue finally uttering the words, "Better had you kill me!"

  A hush fell, for all now stood confounded and silent, with, about them, a greyer, a more subdued, look which made all more resemble their fellows. In fact, to all had the atmosphere become oppressive, as though everyone's breast had had clamped into it a large, soft clod of humid, viscid earth. Until at last someone said in a low, shamefaced, but friendly, tone:

  "Good brother, we are not your judges."

  To which someone else added with an equal measure of gentleness:

  "Indeed, we may be no better than you."

  "We pity you, but we must not judge you. Only pity is permitted."

  As for the well-dressed peasant, his loud, triumphant utterance was: