Through Russia Read online

  "That fellow's one thought is to enlarge and to enlarge upon his tale."

  "Yes, and to no purpose does he do so," added the Christ-loving pilgrim as he halted in the doorway. "All that he accomplishes by it is to weary himself and others alike. Such experiences are far better put behind one."

  Presently I followed the pair into the forecourt, and near the entrance-gates heard a voice say quietly:

  "Do not disturb yourself, good father."

  "Nevertheless" (the second voice was that of the porter of the monastery, Father Seraphim, a strapping Vetlugan) "a spectre walks here nightly."

  "Never mind if it does. As regards myself, no spectre would touch me."

  Here I moved in the direction of the gates.

  "Who comes there?" Seraphim inquired as he thrust a hairy and uncouth, but infinitely kindly, face close to mine. "Oh, it is the young fellow from Nizhni Novgorod! You are wasting your time, my good sir, for the women have all gone to bed."

  With which he laughed and chuckled like a bear.

  Beyond the wall of the forecourt the stillness of the autumn night was the languid inertia of a world exhausted by summer, and the withered grass and other objects of the season were exhaling a sweet and bracing odour, and the trees looking like fragments of cloud where motionless they hung in the moist, sultry air. Also, in the darkness the half-slumbering sea could be heard soughing as it crept towards the shore while over the sky lay a canopy of mist, save at the point where the moon's opal-like blur could be descried over the spot where that blur's counterfeit image glittered and rocked on the surface of the dark waters.

  Under the trees there was set a bench whereon I could discern there to be resting a human figure. Approaching the figure, I seated myself beside it.

  "Whence, comrade?" was my inquiry.

  "From Voronezh. And you?"

  A Russian is never adverse to talking about himself. It would seem as though he is never sure of his personality, as though he is ever yearning to have that personality confirmed from some source other than, extraneous to, his own ego. The reason for this must be that we Russians live diffused over a land of such vastness that, the more we grasp the immensity of the same, the smaller do we come to appear in our own eyes; wherefore, traversing, as we do, roads of a length of a thousand versts, and constantly losing our way, we come to let slip no opportunity of restating ourselves, and setting forth all that we have seen and thought and done.

  Hence, too, must it be that in conversations one seems to hear less of the note of "I am I" than of the note of "Am I really and truly myself?"

  "What may be your name?" next I inquired of the figure on the bench.

  "A name of absolute simplicity—the name of Alexei Kalinin."

  "You are a namesake of mine, then."

  "Indeed? Is that so?"

  With which, tapping me on the knee, the figure added:

  "Come, then, namesake. 'I have mortar, and you have water, so together let us paint the town.'"

  Murmuring amid the silence could be heard small, light waves that were no more than ripples. Behind us the busy clamour of the monastery had died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed subdued by the influence of the night—it seemed to have in it less of the note of self-confidence.

  "My mother was a wet-nurse," he went on to volunteer, "and I her only child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my height, converted into a footman. It happened thus. One day, on General Stepan (my mother's then employer) happening to catch sight of me, he exclaimed: 'Evgenia, go and tell Fedor' (the ex-soldier who was then serving the General as footman) 'that he is to teach your son to wait at table! The boy is at least tall enough for the work.' And for nine years I served the General in this capacity. And then, and then—oh, THEN I was seized with an illness.... Next, I obtained a post under a merchant who was then mayor of our town, and stayed with him twenty-one months. And next I obtained a situation in an hotel at Kharkov, and held it for a year. And after that I kept changing my places, for, steady and sober though I was, I was beginning to lack taste for my profession, and to develop a spirit of the kind which deemed all work to be beneath me, and considered that I had been created to serve only myself, not others."

  Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were proceeding some invisible travellers whose scraping of feet as they walked proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to journeying on foot. Just as the party drew level with us, a musical voice hummed out softly the line "Alone will I set forth upon the road," with the word "alone" plaintively stressed. Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of indolent incisiveness:

  "Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the extent of—oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?"

  "To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied a voice feminine and youthful of timbre.

  Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a paler figure between them, come gliding into view.

  "Strange indeed is it that, that—"

  "That what?"

  "That so many names proper to these parts should also be so suggestive. Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk hereabouts seem to have "amassed" things, and to have known how to do so." [The verb nakopit means to amass, to heap up.]

  "For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'"

  "Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of chastened enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and inhale this restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it be if I were to let everything go to the devil, and take up my abode here for ever?'"

  At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of the monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance that came borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:

  Oh, if into a single word

  I could pour my inmost thoughts!

  To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it in that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the distance, he sighed, straightened himself, and said:

  "Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as they talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old and ever-persistent point."

  "To what point are you referring?"

  My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:

  "Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of those people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?"

  Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man would do, Kalinin added in a half-whisper:

  "More and more are folk coming to think to themselves: 'Now must I forsake everything.' In the end I myself came to think it. For many a year did I increasingly reflect: 'Why should I be a servant? What will it ever profit me? Even if I should earn twelve, or twenty, or fifty roubles a month, to what will such earnings lead, and where will the man in me come in? Surely it would be better to do nothing at all, but just to gaze into space (as I am doing now), and let my eyes stare straight before me?'"

  "By the way, what were you talking to those people about?"

  "Which people do you mean?"

  "The bearded man and the rest, the company in the guest-chamber?"

  "Ah, THAT man I did not like—I have no fancy at all for fellows who strew their grief about the world, and leave it to be trampled upon by every chance-comer. For how can the tears of my neighbour benefit me? True, every man has his troubles; but also has every man such a predilection for his particular woe that he ends by deeming it the most bitter and remarkable grief in the universe—you may take my word for that."

  Suddenly the speaker rose to his feet, a tall, lean figure.

  "Now I must seek my bed," he remarked. "You see, I shall have to leave here very early tomorrow."

  "And for what point?"

  "For Novorossisk."

&n
bsp; Now, the day being a Saturday, I had drawn my week's earnings from the monastery's pay-office just before the vigil service. Also, Novorossisk did not really lie in my direction. Thirdly, I had no particular wish to exchange the monastery for any other lodging. Nevertheless, despite all this, the man interested me to such an extent (of persons who genuinely interest one there never exist but two, and, of them, oneself is always one) that straightway I observed:

  "I too shall be leaving here tomorrow."

  "Then let us travel together."

  * * *

  At dawn, therefore, we set forth to foot the road in company. At times I mentally soared aloft, and viewed the scene from that vantage-point. Whenever I did so, I beheld two tall men traversing a narrow track by a seashore—the one clad in a grey military overcoat and a hat with a broken crown, and the other in a drab kaftan and a plush cap. At their feet the boundless sea was splashing white foam, salt-dried ribands of seaweed were strewing the path, golden leaves were dancing hither and thither, and the wind was howling at, and buffeting, the travellers as clouds sailed over their heads. Also, to their right there lay stretched a chain of mountains towards which the clouds kept wearily, nervelessly tending, while to their left there lay spread a white-laced expanse over the surface of which a roaring wind kept ceaselessly driving transparent columns of spray.

  On such stormy days in autumn everything near a seashore looks particularly cheerful and vigorous, seeing that, despite the soughing of wind and wave, and the swift onrush of cloud, and the fact that the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane, but imperishable, forces—so much so that in time even one's puny human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and, catching fire, to cry to all the universe: "I love you!"

  Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white horses prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one of its creatures, expressed by a human being who feels for the earth what he would feel for a woman, and yearns to fertilise the same to ever-increasing splendour.

  Nevertheless, words are as heavy as stones, and after felling fancy to the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and cause one, as one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in sheer self-derision... .

  Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar words:

  "Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not bad."

  "How does Christ get on with them?" I asked.

  "Christ? He does not enter into the matter."

  "Is He hostile to them?"

  "Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are devils to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one is Christ hostile" .............................. . . . . .

  [In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.]

  As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows, the path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and, in doing so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift correspondingly to our immediate front, where the masses of vapour were darkening as though rain were probable.

  Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.

  "The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked. "For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory."

  So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows that it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked in the funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay lashed with foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept gliding towards it.

  "Tell me more about those devils," I said at length.

  "Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about them?"

  "All that you may happen to know."

  "Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them."

  To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued:

  "I say that I know everything about those devils for the reason that for my mother I had a most remarkable woman, a woman cognisant of each and every species of proverb, anathema, and item of hagiology. You must know that, after spreading my bed beside the kitchen stove each night, and her own bed on the top of the stove (for, after her wet-nursing of three of the General's children, she lived a life of absolute ease, and did no work at all)—"

  Here Kalinin halted, and, driving his stick into the ground, glanced back along the path before resuming his way with firm, lengthy strides.

  "I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."

  "Remarkable for what?"

  "Remarkable for EVERYTHING."

  At this moment there came floating over our heads through the damp-saturated air a cormorant—one of those voracious birds which so markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its powerful pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.

  "Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.

  "And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never did I climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat of one), it was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the top, and tell me stories. And though the room would be too dark for me to see her face, I could yet see the things of which she would be speaking. And at times, as these tales came floating down to me, I would find them so horrible as to be forced to cry out, 'Oh, Mamka, Mamka, DON'T!...' To this hour I have no love for the bizarre, and am but a poor hand at remembering it. And as strange as her stories was my mother. Eventually she died of an attack of blood-poisoning and, though but forty, had become grey-headed. Yes, and so terribly did she smell after her death that everyone in the kitchen was constrained to exclaim at the odour."

  "Yes, but what of the devils?"

  "You must wait a minute or two."

  Ever as we proceeded, clinging, fantastic branches kept closing in upon the path, so that we appeared to be walking through a sea of murmuring verdure. And from time to time a bough would flick us as though to say: "Speed, speed, or the rain will be upon you!"

  If anything, however, my companion slackened his pace as in measured, sing-song accents he continued:

  "When Jesus Christ, God's Son, went forth into the wilderness to collect His thoughts, Satan sent devils to subject Him to temptation. Christ was then young; and as He sat on the burning sand in the middle of the desert, He pondered upon one thing and another, and played with a handful of pebbles which He had collected. Until presently from afar, there descried Him the devils Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan—devils of equal age with the Saviour.

  "Drawing near unto Him, they said, 'Pray suffer us to sport with Thee.' Whereupon Christ answered with a smile: 'Pray be seated.' Then all of them did sit down in a circle, and proceed to business, which business was to see whether or not any member of the party could so throw a stone into the air as to prevent it from falling back upon the burning sand.

  .............................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  . . . . . . .

  [In the original Russian this hiatus occurs as given.]

  "Christ Himself was the first to throw a stone; whereupon His stone became changed into a six-winged dove, and fluttered away towards the Temple of Jerusalem. And, next, the impotent devils strove to do the same; until at length, when they saw that Christ could not in any wise be tempted, Zmiulan, the senior of the devils, cried:

  "'Oh Lord, we will tempt Thee no more; for of a surety do
we avail not, and, though we be devils, never shall do so!'

  "'Aye, never shall ye!' Christ did agree. 'And, therefore, I will now fulfil that which from the first I did conceive. That ye be devils I know right well. And that, while yet afar off, ye did, on beholding me, have compassion upon me I know right well. While also ye did not in any wise seek to conceal from me the truth as concerning yourselves. Hence shall ye, for the remainder of your lives, be GOOD devils; so that at the last shall matters be rendered easier for you. Do thou, Zmiulan, become King of the Ocean, and send the winds of the sea to cleanse the land of foul air. And do thou, Demon, see to it that the cattle shall eat of no poisonous herb, but that all herbs of the sort be covered with prickles. Do thou, Igamon, comfort, by night, all comfortless widows who shall be blaming God for the death of their husbands? And do thou, Hymen, as the youngest devil of the band, choose for thyself wherein shall lie thy charge.'

  "'Oh Lord,' replied Hymen, 'I do love but to laugh.'

  "And the Saviour replied:

  "'Then cause thou folk to laugh. Only, mark thou, see to it that they laugh not IN CHURCH.'

  "'Yet even in church would I laugh, Oh Lord,' the devil objected.

  "'Jesus Christ Himself laughed.

  "'God go with you!' at length He said. 'Then let folk laugh even in church—but QUIETLY.'

  "In such wise did Christ convert those four evil devils into devils of goodness."

  Soaring over the green, bushy sea were a number of old oaks. On them the yellow leaves were trembling as though chilled; here and there a sturdy hazel was doffing its withered garments, and elsewhere a wild cherry was quivering, and elsewhere an almost naked chestnut was politely rendering obeisance to the earth.

  "Did you find that story of mine a good one?" my companion inquired.

  "I did, for Christ was so good in it."

  "Always and everywhere He is so," Kalinin proudly rejoined. "But do you also know what an old woman of Smolensk used to sing concerning Him?"

  "I do not."