Through Russia Read online

  "Look at the matchmaker!"

  The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around him for a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:

  "The fool!"

  But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed resemble some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange affaires du coeur both for her own private amusement and for the purpose of enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection amid which she was living, and of which she would never grow weary, and to which she desired to introduce the rest of the world as speedily as possible.

  Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the Cossack face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains and the sky, and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant, comprehensive exclamation of "Slavno!" [How splendid!]

  The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his knapsack, straightened himself, and asked with his arms set akimbo:

  "WHAT is it that is so splendid?"

  For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of his questioner—a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen hangs upon a stone. Then he said with a smile:

  "Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that cleft in the mountain—are they not good to look at?"

  And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a repeated whisper of:

  "The fool!"

  To which presently he added in a louder, as well as a mysterious, tone:

  "I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients hither for their health."

  The same evening saw two sturdy women arrive with supper for the carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore the rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet became the more distinct.

  Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to work to collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting a fire. After which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he said to me suggestively:

  "You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the nights are dark and chilly."

  I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around the barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who was lying with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his hand, as he conned a manuscript spread out before him. As he raised his eyes to gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw that one of his eyes was larger than the other.

  Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so taken aback by this was I, that I passed on my way without speaking.

  Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the barraque (a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.

  Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile. Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the twilight caused the slopes of the mountains to soften in outline, and the rocks to seem to swell and merge with the bluish-blackness which overhung the bed of the defile, and the superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole, and the scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into, one compact bulk.

  Quietly then did tints hitherto red extinguish their tremulous glow—softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen, the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence—flowed with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of our wood fire.

  The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and rearranged some fuel under the kettle.

  "Where is the other man?" said he. "Go and fetch him."

  I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the carpenters in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick, unctuous, sing-song voice.

  "A great work is it indeed!"

  Whereafter I heard the two women fall to drawling in low, hungry accents:

  "With the flesh I'll conquer pain;

  The spirit shall my lust restrain;

  All-supreme the soul shall reign;

  And carnal vices lure in vain."

  True, the women pronounced their words distinctly enough; yet always they prolonged the final "u" sound of the stanza's first and third lines until, as the melody floated away into the darkness, and, as it were, sank to earth, it came to resemble the long-drawn howl of a wolf.

  In answer to my invitation to come to supper, the newcomer sprang to his feet, folded up his manuscript, stuffed it into one of the pockets of his ragged coat, and said with a smile:

  "I had just been going to resort to the carpenters, for they would have given us some bread, I suppose? Long is it since I tasted anything."

  The same words he repeated on our approaching the ex-soldier; much as though he took a pleasure in their phraseology.

  "You suppose that they would have given us bread?" echoed the ex-soldier as he unfastened his wallet. "Not they! No love is lost between them and ourselves."

  "Whom do you mean by 'ourselves'?"

  "Us here—you and myself—all Russian folk who may happen to be in these parts. From the way in which those fellows keep singing about palms, I should judge them to be sectarians of the sort called Mennonites."

  "Or Molokans, rather?" the other man suggested as he seated himself in front of the fire.

  "Yes, or Molokans. Molokans or Mennonites—they're all one. It is a German faith and though such fellows love a Teuton, they do not exactly welcome US."

  Upon this the man with the Cossack forelock took a slice of bread which the ex-soldier cut from a loaf, with an onion and a pinch of salt. Then, as he regarded us with a pair of good-humoured eyes, he said, balancing his food on the palms of his hands:

  "There is a spot on the Sunzha, near here, where those fellows have a colony of their own. Yes, I myself have visited it. True, those fellows are hard enough, but at the same time to speak plainly, NO ONE in these parts has any regard for us since only too many of the sort of Russian folk who come here in search of work are not overly-desirable."

  "Where do you yourself come from?" The ex-soldier's tone was severe.

  "From Kursk, we might say."

  "From Russia, then?"

  "Yes, I suppose so. But I have no great opinion even of myself."

  The ex-soldier glanced distrustfully at the newcomer. Then he remarked:

  "What you say is cant, sheer Jesuitism. It is fellows like THOSE, rather, that ought to have a poor opinion of themselves."

  To this the other made no reply—merely he put a piece of bread into his mouth. For a moment or two the ex-soldier eyed him frowningly. Then he continued:

  "You seem to me to be a native of the Don country?"

  "Yes, I have lived on the Don as well."

  "And also served in the army?"

  "No. I was an only son."

  "Of a miestchanin?" [A member of the small commercial class.]

  "No, of a merchant."

  "And your name—?"

  "Is Vasili."

  The last reply came only after a pause, and reluctantly; wherefore, perceiving that the Kurskan had no particular desire to discuss his own affairs, the ex-soldier said no more on the subject, but lifted the kettle from the fire.

  The Molokans also had kindled a blaze behind the corner of the barraque, and now its glow was licking the yellow boards of the structure until they seemed almost to be liquescent, to be about to dissolve and flow over the ground in a golden stream.

  Presently, as their fervour increased, the carpenters, invisible amid the obscurity, fell to singing hymns—the basses intoning monotonously, "Sing, thou Holy Angel!" and voices of higher pitch responding, coldly and formally.

  "Sing ye!

  Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!

  Sing ye!

  Our singing will we add unto Thin
e,

  Thou Angel of Holiness!"

  And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of the rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones, it seemed out of place in this particular spot; it aroused resentment against men who could not think of a lay more atune with the particular living, breathing objects around us.

  Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth of the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the rivulet escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a deeper shade, was there not yet suspended the curtain of the Southern night.

  Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to assume the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head adorned with a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his hands. Similarly, the stems of the trees stirred in the firelight until they developed the semblance of a file of friars entering, for early Mass, the porch of their chapel-of-ease.

  To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just such a dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-telling under the boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the Don country. Suddenly I had heard a window above my head open, and someone exclaim in a kindly, youthful voice:

  "The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!"

  And though the window had closed again before I had had time to discern the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the monastery a friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a face as had Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been he who had breathed the benediction upon mankind at large, for the reason that moments there are when all humanity seems to be one's own body, and in oneself there seems to beat the heart of all humanity....

  Vasili consumed his food deliberately as, breaking off morsels from his slice, and neatly parting his moustache, he placed the morsels in his mouth with a curious stirring of two globules which underlay the skin near the ears.

  The ex-soldier, however, merely nibbled at his food—he ate but little, and that lazily. Then he extracted a pipe from his breast pocket, filled it with tobacco, lit it with a faggot taken from the fire, and said as he set himself to listen to the singing of the Molokans:

  "They are filled full, and have started bleating. Always folk like them seek to be on the right side of the Almighty."

  "Does that hurt you in any way?" Vasili asked with a smile.

  "No, but I do not respect them—they are less saints than humbugs, than prevaricators whose first word is God, and second word rouble."

  "How do you know that?" cried Vasili amusedly. "And even if their first word IS God, and their second word rouble, we had best not be too hard upon them, since if they chose to be hard upon US, where should WE be? Yes, we have only to open our mouths to speak a word or two for ourselves, and we should find every fist at our teeth."

  "Quite so," the ex-soldier agreed as, taking up a square of scantling, he examined it attentively.

  "Whom DO you respect?" Vasili continued after a pause.

  "I respect," the ex-soldier said with some emphasis, "only the Russian people, the true Russian people, the folk who labour on land whereon labour is hard. Yet who are the folk whom you find HERE? In this part of the world the business of living is an easy one. Much of every sort of natural produce is to be had, and the soil is generous and light—you need but to scratch it for it to bear, and for yourself to reap. Yes, it is indulgent to a fault. Rather, it is like a maiden. Do but touch her, and a child will arrive."

  "Agreed," was Vasili's remark as he drank tea from a tin mug. "Yet to this very part of the world is it that I should like to transport every soul in Russia."

  "And why?"

  "Because here they could earn a living."

  "Then is not that possible in Russia?"

  "Well, why are you yourself here?"

  "Because I am a man lacking ties."

  "And why are you lacking ties?"

  "Because it has been so ordered—it is, so to speak, my lot."

  "Then had you not better consider WHY it is your lot?"

  The ex-soldier took his pipe from his mouth, let fall the hand which held it, and smoothed his plain features in silent amazement. Then he exclaimed in uncouth, querulous tones:

  "Had I not better consider WHY it is my lot, and so forth? Why, damn it, the causes are many. For one thing, if one has neighbours who neither live nor see things as oneself does, but are uncongenial, what does one do? One just leaves them, and clears out—more especially if one be neither a priest nor a magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better consider why this is my lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man able to consider things, possessed of a brain?"

  And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor's features as the firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an undertone:

  "Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours, yet lack a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us, just fall to wandering, troubling other folk, and earning dislike!"

  "The dislike of whom?" gruffly queried the ex-soldier.

  "The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!"

  In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili's voice had in it an agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while enunciating its words roundly and distinctly.

  A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have the crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a mouse, made the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of this species I once encountered among the defile's crags, and as the creature sailed over my head it startled me with the glassy eyes which, as round as buttons, seemed to be lit from within with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment or two I stood half-stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive what the creature was.

  "Whence did you get that splendid pipe?" next asked Vasili as he rolled himself a cigarette. "Surely it is a pipe of old German make?"

  "You need not fear that I stole it," the ex-soldier responded as he removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. "It was given me by a woman."

  To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.

  "Tell me how it happened," said Vasili softly. Then he flung up his arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:

  "Ah, these nights here! Never again may God send me such bad ones! Try to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier, indeed, is it to sleep during the daytime, provided that one can find a shady spot. During such nights I go almost mad with thinking, and my heart swells and murmurs."

  The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows raised even higher than usual, responded to this:

  "It is the same with me. If one could only—What did you say?"

  This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, "The same with me also," but on seeing the pair exchanging a strange glance (as though involuntarily they had surprised one another), had left the words unspoken. My companions then set themselves to a mutually eager questioning with respect to their respective identities, past experiences, places of origin, and destinations, even as though they had been two kinsmen who, meeting unexpectedly, had discovered for the first time their bond of relationship.

  Meanwhile the black, fringed boughs of the pine trees hung stretched over the flames of the Molokans' fire as though they would catch some of the fire's glow and warmth, or seize it altogether, and put it out. And when, at times, their red tongues projected beyond the corner of the barraque, they made the building look as though it had caught alight, and extended their glow even to the rivulet. Constantly the night was growing denser and more stifling; constantly it seemed to embrace the body more and more caressingly, until one bathed in it as in an ocean. Also, much as a wave removes dirt from the skin, so the softly vocal darkness seemed to refresh and cleanse the soul. For it is on such nights as that that the soul dons its finest raim
ent, and trembles like a bride at the expectation of something glorious.

  "You say that she had a squint?" presently I heard Vasili continue in an undertone, and the ex-soldier slowly reply:

  "Yes, she had one from childhood upwards—she had one from the day when a fall from a cart caused her to injure her eyes. Yet, if she had not always gone about with one of her eyes shaded, you would never have guessed the fact. Also, she was so neat and practical! And her kindness—well, it was kindness as inexhaustible as the water of that rivulet there; it was kindness of the sort that wished well to all the world, and to all animals, and to every beggar, and even to myself! So at last there gripped my heart the thought, 'Why should I not try a soldier's luck? She is the master's favourite—true; yet none the less the attempt shall be made by me.' However, this way or that, always the reply was 'No'; always she put out at me an elbow, and cut me short."

  Vasili, lying prone upon his back, twitched his moustache, and chewed a stalk of grass. His eyes were fully open, and for the second time I perceived that one of them was larger than the other. The ex-soldier, seated near Vasili's shoulder, stirred the fire with a bit of charred stick, and sent sparks of gold flying to join the midges which were gliding to and fro over the blaze. Ever and anon night-moths subsided into the flames with a plop, crackled, and became changed into lumps of black. For my own part, I constructed a couch on a pile of pine boughs, and there lay down. And as I listened to the ex-soldier's familiar story, I recalled persons whom I had on one and another occasion remembered, and speeches which on one and another occasion had made an impression upon me.

  "But at last," the ex-soldier continued, "I took heart of grace, and caught her in a barn. Pressing her into a corner, I said: 'Now let it be yes or no. Of, course it shall be as you wish, but remember that I am a soldier with a small stock of patience.' Upon that she began to struggle and exclaim: 'What do you want? What do you want?' until, bursting into tears like a girl, she said through her sobs: 'Do not touch me. I am not the sort of woman for you. Besides, I love another—not our master, but another, a workman, a former lodger of ours. Before he departed he said to me: "Wait for me until I have found you a nice home, and returned to fetch you"; and though it is seventeen years since I heard speech or whisper of him, and maybe he has since forgotten me, or fallen in love with someone else, or come to grief, or been murdered, you, who are a map, will understand that I must bide a little while longer.' True, this offended me (for in what respect was I any worse than the other man?); yet also I felt sorry for her, and grieved that I should have wronged her by thinking her frivolous, when all the time there had been THIS at her heart. I drew back, therefore—I could not lay a finger upon her, though she was in my power. And at last I said: 'Good-bye! I am going away.' 'Go,' she replied. 'Yes, go for the love of Christ!'... Wherefore, on the following evening I settled accounts with our master, and at dawn of a Sunday morning packed my wallet, took with me this pipe, and departed. 'Yes, take the pipe, Paul Ivanovitch,' she said before my departure. 'Perhaps it will serve to keep you in remembrance of me—you whom henceforth I shall regard as a brother, and whom I thank.'... As I walked away I was very nigh to tears, so keen was the pain in my heart. Aye, keen it was indeed!"