Through Russia Read online

Halting, my strange traveller chanted in a feignedly senile and tremulous voice, as he beat time with his foot:

  In the heavens a flow'r doth blow,

  It is the Son of God.

  From it all our joys do flow,

  It is the Son of God.

  In the sun's red rays He dwells

  He, the Son of God.

  His light our every ill dispels.

  Praised be the Son of God!

  Each successive line seemed to inspire Kalinin's voice with added youthfulness, until, indeed, the concluding words—"The One and Only God"—issued in a high, agreeable tenor.

  Suddenly a flash of lightning blazed before us, while dull thunder crashed among the mountains, and sent its hundred-voiced echoes rolling over land and sea. In his consternation, Kalinin opened his mouth until a set of fine, even teeth became bared to view. Then, with repeated crossings of himself, he muttered.

  "Oh dread God, Oh beneficent God, Oh God who sittest on high, and on a golden throne, and under a gilded canopy, do Thou now punish Satan, lest he overwhelm me in the midst of my sins!"

  Whereafter, turning a small and terrified face in my direction, and blinking his bright eyes, he added with hurried diction:

  "Come, brother! Come! Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of lurking fever."

  Off, therefore, we started, with the wind smiting us behind, and our kettles and teapots jangling, and my wallet, in particular, thumping me about the middle of the body as though it had been wielding a large, soft fist. Yet a far cry would it be to the mountains, nor was any dwelling in sight, while ever and anon branches caught at our clothes, and stones leapt aloft under our tread, and the air grew steadily darker, and the mountains seemed to begin gliding towards us.

  Once more from the black cloud-masses, heaven belched a fiery dart which caused the sea to scintillate with blue sapphires in response, and, seemingly, to recoil from the shore as the earth shook, and the mountain defiles emitted a gigantic scrunching sound of their rock-hewn jaws.

  "Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One!" screamed Kalinin as he dived into the bushes.

  In the rear, the waves lashed us as though they had a mind to arrest our progress; from the gloom to our front came a sort of scraping and rasping; long black hands seemed to wave over our heads; just at the point where the mountain crests lay swathed in their dense coverlet of cloud, there rumbled once more the deafening iron chariot of the thunder-god; more and more frequently flashed the lightning as the earth rang, and rifts cleft by the blue glare disclosed, amid the obscurity, great trees that were rustling and rocking and, to all appearances, racing headlong before the scourge of a cold, slanting rain.

  The occasion was a harassing but bracing one, for as the fine bands of rain beat upon our faces, our bodies felt filled with a heady vigour of a kind to fit us to run indefinitely—at all events to run until this storm of rain and thunder should be outpaced, and clear weather be reached again.

  Suddenly Kalinin shouted: "Stop! Look!"

  This was because the fitful illumination of a flash had just shown up in front of us the trunk of an oak tree which had a large black hollow let into it like a doorway. So into that hollow we crawled as two mice might have done—laughing aloud in our glee as we did so.

  "Here there is room for THREE persons," my companion remarked. "Evidently it is a hollow that has been burnt out—though rascals indeed must the burners have been to kindle a fire in a living tree!"

  However, the space within the hollow was both confined and redolent of smoke and dead leaves. Also, heavy drops of rain still bespattered our heads and shoulders, and at every peal of thunder the tree quivered and creaked until the strident din around us gave one the illusion of being afloat in a narrow caique. Meanwhile at every flash of the lightning's glare, we could see slanting ribands of rain cutting the air with a network of blue, glistening, vitreous lines.

  Presently, the wind began to whistle less loudly, as though now it felt satisfied at having driven so much productive rain into the ground, and washed clean the mountain tops, and loosened the stony soil.

  "U-oh! U-oh!" hooted a grey mountain owl just over our heads.

  "Why, surely it believes the time to be night!" Kalinin commented in a whisper.

  "U-oh! U-u-u-oh!" hooted the bird again, and in response my companion shouted:

  "You have made a mistake, my brother!"

  By this time the air was feeling chilly, and a bright grey fog had streamed over us, and wrapped a semi-transparent veil about the gnarled, barrel-like trunks with their outgrowing shoots and the few remaining leaves still adhering.

  Far and wide the monotonous din continued to rage—it did so until conscious thought began almost to be impossible. Yet even as one strained one's attention, and listened to the rain lashing the fallen leaves, and pounding the stones, and bespattering the trunks of the trees, and to the murmuring and splashing of rivulets racing towards the sea, and to the roaring of torrents as they thundered over the rocks of the mountains, and to the creaking of trees before the wind, and to the measured thud-thud of the waves; as one listened to all this, the thousand sounds seemed to combine into a single heaviness of hurried clamour, and involuntarily one found oneself striving to disunite them, and to space them even as one spaces the words of a song.

  Kalinin fidgeted, nudged me, and muttered:

  "I find this place too close for me. Always I have hated confinement."

  Nevertheless he had taken far more care than I to make himself comfortable, for he had edged himself right into the hollow, and, by squatting on his haunches, reduced his frame to the form of a ball. Moreover, the rain-drippings scarcely or in no wise touched him, while, in general, he appeared to have developed to the full an aptitude for vagrancy as a permanent condition, and for the allowing of no unpleasant circumstance to debar him from invariably finding the most convenient vantage-ground at a given juncture. Presently, in fact, he continued:

  "Yes; despite the rain and cold and everything else, I consider life to be not quite intolerable."

  "Not quite intolerable in what?"

  "Not quite intolerable in the fact that at least I am bound to the service of no one save God. For if disagreeablenesses have to be endured, at all events they come better from Him than from one's own species."

  "Then you have no great love for your own species?"

  "One loves one's neighbour as the dog loves the stick." To which, after a pause, the speaker added:

  "For WHY should I love him?"

  It puzzled me to cite a reason off-hand, but, fortunately, Kalinin did not wait for an answer—rather, he went on to ask:

  "Have you ever been a footman?"

  "No," I replied.

  "Then let me tell you that it is peculiarly difficult for a footman to love his neighbour."

  "Wherefore?"

  "Go and be a footman; THEN you will know. In fact, it is never the case that, if one serves a man, one can love that man.... How steadily the rain persists!"

  Indeed, on every hand there was in progress a trickling and a splashing sound as though the weeping earth were venting soft, sorrowful sobs over the departure of summer before winter and its storms should arrive.

  "How come you to be travelling the Caucasus?" I asked at length.

  "Merely through the fact that my walking and walking has brought me hither," was the reply. "For that matter, everyone ends by heading for the Caucasus."

  "Why so?"

  "Why NOT, seeing that from one's earliest years one hears of nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother, who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone tends hither. And another reason is the fact that the country is an easy one to live in
, a country which enjoys much sunshine, and produces much food, and has a winter less long and severe than our own winter, and therefore presents pleasanter conditions of life."

  "And what of the country's people?"

  "What of the country's people? Oh, so long as you keep yourself to yourself they will not interfere with you."

  "And why will they not?"

  Kalinin paused, stared at me, smiled condescendingly, and, finally, said:

  "What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you ought to be able to understand something?"

  Then, with a change of subject, and subduing his tone to one of snuffling supplication, he added in the sing-song chant of a person reciting a prayer:

  "'Oh Lord, suffer me not to become bound unto the clergy the priesthood, the diaconate, the tchinovstvo, [The official class] or the intelligentsia!' This was a petition which my mother used often to repeat."

  The raindrops now were falling more gently, and in finer lines and more transparent network, so that one could once more descry the great trunks of the blackened oaks, with the green and gold of their leaves. Also, our own hollow had grown less dark, and there could be discerned its smoky, satin-bright walls. From those walls Kalinin picked a bit of charcoal with finger and thumb, saying:

  "It was shepherds that fired the place. See where they dragged in hay and dead leaves! A shepherd's fife hereabouts must be a truly glorious one!"

  Lastly, clasping his head as though he were about to fall asleep, he sank his chin between his knees, and relapsed into silence.

  Presently a brilliant, sinuous little rivulet which had long been laving the bare roots of our tree brought floating past us a red and fawn leaf.

  "How pretty," I thought, "that leaf will look from a distance when reposing on the surface of the sea! For, like the sun when he is in solitary possession of the heavens, that leaf will stand out against the blue, silky expanse like a lonely red star."

  After awhile my companion began, catlike, to purr to himself a song. Its melody, the melody of "the moon withdrew behind a cloud," was familiar enough, but not so the words, which ran:

  Oh Valentina, wondrous maid,

  More comely thou than e'er a flow'r!

  The nurse's son doth pine for thee,

  And yearn to serve thee every hour!

  "What does that ditty mean?" I inquired.

  Kalinin straightened himself, gave a wriggle to a form that was as lithe as a lizard's, and passed one hand over his face.

  "It is a certain composition," he replied presently. "It is a composition that was composed by a military clerk who afterwards died of consumption. He was my friend his life long, and my only friend, and a true one, besides being a man out of the common."

  "And who was Valentina?"

  "My one-time mistress," Kalinin spoke unwillingly.

  "And he, the clerk—was he in love with her?"

  "Oh dear no!"

  Evidently Kalinin had no particular wish to discuss the subject, for he hugged himself together, buried his face in his hands, and muttered:

  "I should like to kindle a fire, were it not that everything in the place is too damp for the purpose."

  The wind shook the trees, and whistled despondently, while the fine, persistent rain still whipped the earth.

  "I but humble am, and poor, Nor fated to be otherwise,"

  sang Kalinin softly as, flinging up his head with an unexpected movement, he added meaningly:

  "Yes, it is a mournful song, a song which could move to tears. Only to two persons has it ever been known; to my friend the clerk and to myself. Yes, and to HER, though I need hardly add that at once she forgot it."

  And Kalinin's eyes flashed into a smile as he added:

  "I think that, as a young man, you had better learn forthwith where the greatest danger lurks in life. Let me tell you a story."

  And upon that a very human tale filtered through the silken monotonous swish of the downpour, with, for listeners to it, only the rain and myself.

  "Lukianov was NEVER in love with her," he narrated. "Only I was that. All that Lukianov did in the matter was to write, at my request, some verses. When she first appeared on the scene (I mean Valentina Ignatievna) I was just turned nineteen years of age; and the instant that my eyes fell upon her form I realised that in her alone lay my fate, and my heart almost stopped beating, and my vitality stretched out towards her as a speck of dust flies towards a fire. Yet all this I had to conceal as best I might; with the result that in the company's presence I felt like a sentry doing guard duty in the presence of his commanding officer. But at last, though I strove to pull myself together, to steady myself against the ferment that was raging in my breast, something happened. Valentina Ignatievna was then aged about twenty-five, and very beautiful—marvellous, in fact! Also, she was an orphan, since her father had been killed by the Chechentzes, and her mother had died of smallpox at Samarkand. As regards her kinship with the General, she stood to him in the relation of niece by marriage. Golden-locked, and as skin-fair as enamelled porcelain, she had eyes like emeralds, and a figure wholly symmetrical, though as slim as a wafer. For bedroom she had a little corner apartment situated next to the kitchen (the General possessed his own house, of course), while, in addition, they allotted her a bright little boudoir in which she disposed her curios and knickknacks, from cut-glass bottles and goblets to a copper pipe and a glass ring mounted on copper. This ring, when turned, used to emit showers of glittering sparks, though she was in no way afraid of them, but would sing as she made them dance:

  "Not for me the spring will dawn!

  Not for me the Bug will spate!

  Not for me love's smile will wait!

  Not for me, ah, not for me!

  "Constantly would she warble this.

  "Also, once she flashed an appeal at me with her eyes, and said:

  "'Alexei, please never touch anything in my room, for my things are too fragile.'

  "Sure enough, in HER presence ANYTHING might have fallen from my hands!

  "Meanwhile her song about 'Not for me' used to make me feel sorry for her. 'Not for you?' I used to say to myself. 'Ought not EVERYTHING to be for you?' And this reflection would cause my heart to yearn and stretch towards her. Next, I bought a guitar, an instrument which I could not play, and took it for instruction to Lukianov, the clerk of the Divisional Staff, which had its headquarters in our street. In passing I may say that Lukianov was a little Jewish convert with dark hair, sallow features, and gimlet-sharp eyes, but beyond all things a fellow with brains, and one who could play the guitar unforgettably.

  "Once he said: 'In life all things are attainable—nothing need we lose for want of trying. For whence does everything come? From the plainest of mankind. A man may not be BORN in the rank of a general, but at least he may attain to that position. Also, the beginning and ending of all things is woman. All that she requires for her captivation is poetry. Hence, let me write you some verses, that you may tender them to her as an offering.'

  "These, mind you, were the words of a man in whom the heart was absolutely single, absolutely dispassionate."

  Until then Kalinin had told his story swiftly, with animation; but thereafter he seemed, as it were, to become extinguished. After a pause of a few seconds he continued—continued in slower, to all appearances more unwilling, accents—

  "At the time I believed what Lukianov said, but subsequently I came to see that things were not altogether as he had represented—that woman is merely a delusion, and poetry merely fiddle-faddle; and that a man cannot escape his fate, and that, though good in war, boldness is, in peace affairs, but naked effrontery. In this, brother, lies the chief, the fundamental law of life. For the world contains certain people of high station, and certain people of low; and so long as these two categories retain their respective positions, all goes well; but as soon as ever a man seeks to pass from the upper category to the inferior category, or
from the inferior to the upper, the fat falls into the fire, and that man finds himself stuck midway, stuck neither here nor there, and bound to abide there for the remainder of his life, for the remainder of his life.... Always keep to your own position, to the position assigned you by fate..... Will the rain NEVER cease, think you?"

  By this time, as a matter of fact, the raindrops were falling less heavily and densely than hitherto, and the wet clouds were beginning to reveal bright patches in the moisture-soaked firmament, as evidence that the sun was still in existence.

  "Continue," I said.

  Kalinin laughed.

  "Then you find the story an interesting one," he remarked.

  Presently he resumed:

  "As I have said, I trusted Lukianov implicitly, and begged of him to write the verses. And write them he did—he wrote them the very next day. True, at this distance of time I have forgotten the words in their entirety, but at least I remember that there occurred in them a phrase to the effect that 'for days and weeks have your eyes been consuming my heart in the fire of love, so pity me, I pray.' I then proceeded to copy out the poem, and tremblingly to leave it on her table.

  "The next morning, when I was tidying her boudoir, she made an unexpected entry, and, clad in a loose, red dressing-gown, and holding a cigarette between her lips, said to me with a kindly smile as she produced my precious paper of verses:

  "'Alexei, did YOU write these?'

  "'Yes,' was my reply. 'And for Christ's sake pardon me for the same.'

  "'What a pity that such a fancy should have entered your head! For, you see, I am engaged already—my uncle is intending to marry me to Doctor Kliachka, and I am powerless in the matter.'

  "The very fact that she could address me with so much sympathy and kindness struck me dumb. As regards Doctor Kliachka, I may mention that he was a good-looking, blotchy-faced, heavy-jowled fellow with a moustache that reached to his shoulders, and lips that were for ever laughing and vociferating. 'Nothing has either a beginning or an end. The only thing really existent is pleasure.'

  "Nay, even the General could, at times, make sport of the fellow, and say as he shook with merriment: