Through Russia Read online

  "That's right!" was the comment of someone.

  For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way.

  As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me. Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot where, half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head and breast resting against the stepping-stones.

  "You have killed him!" next I shouted—not because I believed the statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten into sobriety the men who were impeding me.

  Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:

  "Surely not?"

  As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he passed me by with a braggart, resentful shout of:

  "Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said that I was a nuisance to the whole country?"

  And someone else shouted:

  "Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"

  "Bring a light," was the cry of a third.

  Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again, and, dipping his hands into the water, said gravely:

  "You have killed him. He is dead."

  At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I stood watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs, and turned them this way and that, and made them stir as though they were striving to divest themselves of the shabby old boots, I realised with all my being that the hands which were resting in mine were the hands of a corpse. And, true enough, when I released them they slapped down upon the surface like wet dish-cloths.

  Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to observe what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words rang out these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent, in subdued, uneasy tones, cries of:

  "Who was it first struck him?"

  "This will lose us our jobs."

  "It was the soldier that first started the racket."

  "Yes, that is true."

  "Let us go and denounce him."

  As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:

  "I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a quarrel."

  "To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."

  "It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."

  "The soldier ought to—"

  A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:

  "Good Lord! Always something happens to us!"

  As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon the stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight, nothing was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a strange emptiness was present, save that the clamour of the bystanders aroused me to a certain longing to outshout them all, to send forth my voice into the night like the voice of a brazen trumpet.

  Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first was a torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of golden sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin as a pike when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike countenance that was deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth perpetually half-agape, and round, owlish-looking eyes.

  As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon his knee to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head and body. That head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no longer could I recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so buried was the jaunty forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and concealed by a swelling which had made its appearance above the left ear. Also, since the mouth and moustache had been bashed aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted, truly horrible smile, while, as the most horrible point of all, the left eye was hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large, gazing, seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's pea-jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.

  Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air, and thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor mutilated face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he muttered with a smack of the lips:

  "You can see for yourselves who the man is."

  As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp and wet cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so played in the ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an added appearance of death.

  Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch into the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion as he smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked almost greenish:

  "Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been done to death."

  "No; I should be afraid to go alone."

  "Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."

  "But I would much rather not."

  "Don't be such a fool!"

  Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the foreman.

  "I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he scraped his foot against a stone:

  "How horrible the blood smells! It would seem that my very foot is smeared with it."

  With a frown the fair-headed muzhik eyed him, while the foreman returned the muzhik's gaze with a scrutiny that never wavered. Finally the elder man commented with cold severity:

  "All the mischief has come of vodka and tobacco, the devil's drugs."

  Not only were the pair strangely alike, but both of them strangely resembled wizards, in that both were short of stature, as sharp-finished as gimlets, and as green-tinted by the darkness as tufts of lichen.

  "Let us go, brother," the foreman said. "Go we with the Holy Spirit."

  And, omitting even to inquire who had been killed, or even to glance at the corpse, or even to pay it the last salute demanded of custom, the foreman departed down the stream, while in his wake followed the messenger, a man who kept stumbling as he picked his way from stone to stone. Amid the gloom the pair moved as silently as ghosts.

  The narrow-chested, fair-headed little muzhik then raked me with his eyes; whereafter he produced a cigarette from a tin box, snapped-to the lid of the box, struck a match (illuminating once more the face of the dead man), and applied the flame to the cigarette. Lastly he said:

  "This is the sixth murder which I have seen one thing and another commit."

  "One thing and another commit?" I queried.

  The reply came only after a pause; when the little muzhik asked: "What did you say? I did not quite catch it."

  I explained that human beings, not inanimate entities, murdered human beings.

  "Well, be they human beings or machinery or lightning or anything else, they are all one. One of my mates was caught in some machinery at Bakhmakh. Another one had his throat cut in a brawl. Another one was crushed against the bucket in a coal mine. Another one was—"

  Carefully though the man counted, he ended by erring in his reckoning to the extent of making his total "five." Accordingly he re-computed the list—and this time succeeded in making the total amount to "seven."

  "Never mind," he remarked with a sigh as he blew his cigarette into a red glow which illuminated the whole of his face. "The truth is that I cannot always repeat the list correctly, just as I should like. Were I older than I am, I too should contrive to get finished off; for old-age is a far from desirable thing. Yes, indeed! But, as things are, I am still alive, nor, thank the Lord, does anything matter very much."

  Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued:

  "Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of him, or a letter from him. Well, never again will he write,
and as likely as not his kinsfolk will end by saying to themselves: 'He has taken to bad ways, and forgotten his family.' Yes, good sir."

  By this time the clamour around the barraque had ceased, and the two fires had burnt themselves out, and most of the men dispersed. From the smooth yellow walls of the barraque dark, round, knot-holes were gazing at the rivulet like eyes. Only in a single window without a frame was there visible a faint light, while at intervals there issued thence fragmentary, angry exclamations such as:

  "Look sharp there, and deal! Clubs will be the winners."

  "Ah! Here is a trump!"

  "Indeed? What luck, damn it!"

  The fair-headed muzhik blew the ashes from his cigarette, and observed:

  "No such thing is there at cards as luck—only skill."

  At this juncture we saw approaching us softly from across the rivulet a young carpenter who wore a moustache. He halted beside us, and drew a deep breath.

  "Well, mate?" the fair-headed muzhik inquired.

  "Would you mind giving me something to smoke?" the carpenter asked. The obscurity caused him to look large and shapeless, though his manner of speaking was bashful and subdued.

  "Certainly. Here is a cigarette."

  "Christ reward you! Today my wife forgot to bring my tobacco, and my grandfather has strict ideas on the subject of smoking."

  "Was it he who departed just now? It was."

  As the carpenter inhaled a whiff he continued:

  "I suppose that man was beaten to death?"

  "He was—to death."

  For a while the pair smoked in silence. The hour was past midnight.

  Over the defile the jagged strip of sky which roofed it looked like a river of blue flowing at an immense height above the night-enveloped earth, and bearing the brilliant stars on its smooth current.

  Quieter and quieter was everything growing; more and more was everything becoming part of the night....

  One might have thought that nothing particular had happened.

  KALININ

  Whistling from off the sea, the wind was charged with moist, salt spray, and dashing foaming billows ashore with their white manes full of snakelike, gleaming black ribands of seaweed, and causing the rocks to rumble angrily in response, and the trees to rustle with a dry, agitated sound as their tops swayed to and fro, and their trunks bent earthwards as though they would fain reeve up their roots, and betake them whither the mountains stood veiled in a toga of heavy, dark mist.

  Over the sea the clouds were hurrying towards the land as ever and anon they rent themselves into strips, and revealed fathomless abysses of blue wherein the autumn sun burned uneasily, and sent cloud-shadows gliding over the puckered waste of waters, until, the shore reached, the wind further harried the masses of vapour towards the sharp flanks of the mountains, and, after drawing them up and down the slopes, relegated them to clefts, and left them steaming there.

  There was about the whole scene a louring appearance, an appearance as though everything were contending with everything, as now all things turned sullenly dark, and now all things emitted a dull sheen which almost blinded the eyes. Along the narrow road, a road protected from the sea by a line of wave-washed dykes, some withered leaves of oak and wild cherry were scudding in mutual chase of one another; with the general result that the combined sounds of splashing and rustling and howling came to merge themselves into a single din which issued as a song with a rhythm marked by the measured blows of the waves as they struck the rocks.

  "Zmiulan, the King of the Ocean, is abroad!" shouted my fellow traveller in my ear. He was a tall, round-shouldered man of childishly chubby features and boyishly bright, transparent eyes.

  "WHO do you say is abroad?" I queried.

  "King Zmiulan."

  Never having heard of the monarch, I made no reply.

  The extent to which the wind buffeted us might have led one to suppose that its primary objective was to deflect our steps, and turn them in the direction of the mountains. Indeed, at times its pressure was so strong that we had no choice but to halt, to turn our backs to the sea, and, with feet planted apart, to prise ourselves against our sticks, and so remain, poised on three legs, until we were past any risk of being overwhelmed with the soft incubus of the tempest, and having our coats torn from our shoulders.

  At intervals such gasps would come from my companion that he might well have been standing on the drying-board of a bath. Nor, as they did so, was his appearance aught but comical, seeing that his ears, appendages large and shaggy like a dog's, and indifferently shielded with a shabby old cap, kept being pushed forward by the wind until his small head bore an absurd resemblance to a china bowl. And that, to complete the resemblance, his long and massive nose, a feature grossly disproportionate to the rest of his diminutive face, might equally well have passed for the spout of the receptacle indicated.

  Yet a face out of the common it was, like the whole of his personality. And this was the fact which had captivated me from the moment when I had beheld him participating in a vigil service held in the neighbouring church of the monastery of New Athos. There, spare, but with his withered form erect, and his head slightly tilted, he had been gazing at the Crucifix with a radiant smile, and moving his thin lips in a sort of whispered, confidential, friendly conversation with the Saviour. Indeed, so much had the man's smooth, round features (features as beardless as those of a Skopetz [A member of the Skoptzi, a non-Orthodox sect the members of which "do make of themselves eunuchs for the Lord's sake."], save for two bright tufts at the corners of the mouth) been instinct with intimacy, with a consciousness of actually being in the presence of the Son of God, that the spectacle, transcending anything of the kind that my eyes had before beheld, had led me, with its total absence of the customary laboured, servile, pusillanimous attitude towards the Almighty which I had generally found to be the rule, to accord the man my whole interest, and, as long as the service had lasted, to keep an eye upon one who could thus converse with God without rendering Him constant obeisance, or again and again making the sign of the cross, or invariably making it to the accompaniment of groans and tears which had always hitherto obtruded itself upon my notice.

  Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the workmen's barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery's guest-chamber. Seated at a table under a circle of light falling from a lamp suspended from the ceiling, he had gathered around him a knot of pilgrims and their women, and was holding forth in low, cheerful tones that yet had in them the telling, incisive note of the preacher, of the man who frequently converses with his fellow men.

  "One thing it may be best always to disclose," he was saying, "and another thing to conceal. If aught in ourselves seems harmful or senseless, let us put to ourselves the question: 'Why is this so?' Contrariwise ought a prudent man never to thrust himself forward and say: 'How discreet am I!' while he who makes a parade of his hard lot, and says, 'Good folk, see ye and hear how bitter my life is,' also does wrong."

  Here a pilgrim with a black beard, a brigand's dark eyes, and the wasted features of an ascetic rose from the further side of the table, straightened his virile frame, and said in a dull voice:

  "My wife and one of my children were burnt to death through the falling of an oil lamp. On THAT ought I to keep silence?"

  No answer followed. Only someone muttered to himself:

  "What? Again?": until the first speaker, the speaker seated near the corner of the table, launched into the oppressive lull the unhesitating reply:

  "That of which you speak may be taken to have been a punishment by God for sin."

  "What? For a sin committed by one three years of age (for, indeed, my little son was no more)? The accident happened of his pulling down a lamp upon himself, and of my wife seizing him, and herself being burnt to death. She was weak, too, for but eleven days had passed since her confinement."

  "No. What I mean is that in that accident you see a punishment for sins committed by the child's father a
nd mother."

  This reply from the corner came with perfect confidence. The black-bearded man, however, pretended not to hear it, but spread out his hands as though parting the air before him, and proceeded hurriedly, breathlessly to detail the manner in which his wife and little one had met their deaths. And all the time that he was doing so one had an inkling that often before had he recounted his narrative of horror, and that often again would he repeat it. His shaggy black eyebrows, as he delivered his speech, met in a single strip, while the whites of his eyes grew bloodshot, and their dull, black pupils never ceased their nervous twitching.

  Presently the gloomy recital was once more roughly, unceremoniously broken in upon by the cheerful voice of the Christ-loving pilgrim.

  "It is not right, brother," the voice said, "to blame God for untoward accidents, or for mistakes and follies committed by ourselves."

  "But if God be God, He is responsible for all things."

  "Not so. Concede to yourself the faculty of reason."

  "Pah! What avails reason if it cannot make me understand?"

  "Cannot make you understand WHAT?"

  "The main point, the point why MY wife had to be burnt rather than my neighbour's?"

  Somewhere an old woman commented in spitefully distinct tones:

  "Oh ho, ho! This man comes to a monastery, and starts railing as soon as he gets there!"

  Flashing his eyes angrily, the black-bearded man lowered his head like a bull. Then, thinking better of his position, and contenting himself with a gesture, he strode swiftly, heavily towards the door. Upon this the Christ-loving pilgrim rose with a swaying motion, bowed to everyone present, and set about following his late interlocutor.

  "It has all come of a broken heart," he said with a smile as he passed me. Yet somehow the smile seemed to lack sympathy.

  With a disapproving air someone else remarked: