Through Russia Read online

  Presently, from a corner of the yard that lay screened behind some rank, pale, withered, trampled herbage a door screeched. Into the yard there issued Nadezhda Birkin, carrying a bunch of keys, and followed by a lady who, elderly and rotund of figure, had a few dark hairs growing on her full and rather haughty upper lip. As the two walked towards the cellar (Nadezhda being clad only in an under-petticoat, with a chemise half-covering her shoulders, and slippers thrust on to bare feet), I perceived from the languor of the younger woman's gait that she was feeling weary indeed.

  "Why do you look at us like that?" her senior inquired of me as she drew level. And as she did so the eyes that peered at me from above the full and, somehow, displaced-looking cheeks bid in them a dim, misty, half-blind expression.

  "That must be Peter Birkin's mother-in-law," was my unspoken reflection.

  At the door of the cellar Nadezhda handed the keys to her companion, and with a slow step which set her ample bosom swaying, and increased the disarray of the bodice on her round, but broad, shoulders, approached myself, and said quietly:

  "Please open the gutter-sluice and let out the water into the street, or the yard will soon be flooded. Oh, the smell of it! What is that thing there? A rat? Oh batinshka, what a horrible mess!"

  Her face had about it a drawn look, and under her eyes there were a pair of dark patches, and in their depths the dry glitter of a person who has spent a night of waking. True, it was a face still fresh of hue; yet beads of sweat were standing on the forehead, and her shoulders looked grey and heavy—as grey and heavy as unleavened bread which the fire has coated with a thin crust, yet failed to bake throughout.

  "Please, also, open the wicket," she continued. "And, in case a lame old beggar-woman should call, come and tell me. I am the Nadezhda Ivanovna for whom she will inquire. Do you understand?"

  From the well, at this point, there issued the words:

  "Who is that speaking?"

  "It is the mistress," I replied.

  "What? Nadezhda? With her I have a bone to pick."

  "What did he say?" the woman asked tensely as she raised her dark, thinly pencilled brows, and made as though to go and lean over the well. Independently of my own volition I forestalled what Gubin might next have been going to say by remarking:

  "I must tell you that last night he saw you walking in the garden here."

  "Indeed?" she ejaculated, and drew herself to her full height. Yet in doing so she blushed to her shoulders, and, clapping plump hands to her bosom, and opening dark eyes to their fullest, said in a hasty and confused whisper as, again paling and shrinking in stature, she subsided like a piece of pastry that is turning heavy:

  "Good Lord! WHAT did he see?... If the lame woman should call, you must not admit her. No, tell her that she will not be wanted, that I cannot, that I must not—But see here. Here is a rouble for you. Oh, good Lord!"

  By this time even louder and more angry exclamations had begun to ascend from Gubin. Yet the only sound to reach my ears was the woman's muttered whispering, and as I glanced into her face I perceived that its hitherto high-coloured and rounded contours had fallen in, and turned grey, and that her flushed lips were trembling to such an extent as almost to prevent the articulation of her words. Lastly, her eyes were frozen into an expression of pitiful, doglike terror.

  Suddenly she shrugged her shoulders, straightened her form, put away from her the expression of terror, and said quietly, but incisively:

  "You will not need to say anything about this. Allow me."

  And with a swaying step she departed—a step so short as almost to convey the impression that her legs were bound together. Yet while the gait was the gait of a person full of suppressed fury, it was also the gait of a person who can scarcely see an inch in advance.

  "Haul away, you!" shouted Gubin.

  I hauled him up in a state of cold and wet; whereafter he fell to stamping around the coping of the well, cursing, and waving his arms.

  "What have you been thinking of all this time?" he vociferated. "Why, for ever so long I shouted and shouted to you!"

  "I have been telling Nadezhda that last night you saw her walking in the garden."

  He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl.

  "Who gave you leave to do so?" he exclaimed.

  "Wait a moment. I said that it was only in a dream, that you saw her crossing the garden to the washhouse."

  "Indeed? And why did you do that?"

  Somehow, as, barelegged and dripping with mud, he stood blinking his eyes at me with a most disagreeable expression, he looked extremely comical.

  "See here," I remarked, "you have only to go and tell her husband about her for me to go and tell him the same story about your having seen the whole thing in a dream."

  "Why?" cried Gubin, now almost beside himself. Presently, however, he recovered sufficient self-possession to grin and ask in an undertone:

  "HOW MUCH DID SHE GIVE YOU?"

  I explained to him that my sole reason for what I had done had been that I pitied the woman, and feared lest the brothers Birkin should do an injury to one who at least ought not to be betrayed. Gubin began by declining to believe me, but eventually, after the matter had been thought out, said:

  "Acceptance of money for doing what is right is certainly irregular; but at least is it better than acceptance of money for conniving at sin. Well, you have spoilt my scheme, young fellow. Hired only to clean out the well, I would nevertheless have cleaned out the establishment as a whole, and taken pleasure in doing so."

  Then once more he relapsed into fury, and muttered as he scurried round and round the well:

  "How DARED you poke your nose into other people's affairs? Who are YOU in this establishment?"

  The air was hot and arid, yet still the sky was as dull as though coated throughout with the dust of summer, and, as yet, one could gaze at the sun's purple, rayless orb without blinking, and as easily as one could have gazed at the glowing embers of a wood fire.

  Seated on the fence, a number of rooks were directing intelligent black eyes upon the heaps of mud which lay around the coping of the well. And from time to time they fluttered their wings impatiently, and cawed.

  "I got you some work," Gubin continued in a grumbling tone, "and put heart into you with the prospect of employment. And now you have gone and treated me like—"

  At this point I caught the sound of a horse trotting towards the entrance-gates, and heard someone shout, as the animal drew level with the house:

  "YOUR timber too has caught alight!"

  Instantly, frightened by the shout, the rooks took to their wings and flew away. Also, a window sash squeaked, and the courtyard resounded with sudden bustle—the culinary regions vomiting the elderly lady and the tousled, half-clad Jonah; and an open window the upper half of the red-headed Peter.

  "Men, harness up as quickly as possible!" the latter cried, his voice charged with a plaintive note.

  And, indeed, he had hardly spoken before Gubin led out a fat roan pony, and Jonah pulled from a shelter a light buggy or britchka. Meanwhile Nadezhda called from the veranda to Jonah:

  "Do you first go in and dress yourself!"

  The elderly lady then unfastened the gates; whereupon a stunted, oldish muzhik in a red shirt limped into the yard with a foam-flecked steed, and exclaimed:

  "It is caught in two places—at the Savelkin clearing and near the cemetery!"

  Immediately the company pressed around him with groans and ejaculations, and Gubin alone continued to harness the pony with swift and dexterous hands—saying to me through his teeth as he did so, and without looking at anyone:

  "That is how those wretched folk ALWAYS defer things until too late."

  The next person to present herself at the entrance gates was a beggar-woman. Screwing up her eyes in a furtive manner, she droned:

  "For the sake of Lord Je-e-esus!"

  "God will give you alms! God will give you alms!" was Nadezhda's reply as, turning pale, she flu
ng out her arms in the old woman's direction. "You see, a terrible thing has happened—our timber lands have caught fire. You must come again later."

  Upon that Peter's bulky form (which had entirely filled the window from which it had been leaning), disappeared with a jerk, and in its stead there came into view the figure of a woman. Said she contemptuously:

  "See the visitation with which God has tried us, you men of faint hearts and indolent hands!"

  The woman's hair was grey at the temples, and had resting upon it a silken cap which so kept changing colour in the sunlight as to convey to one the impression that her head was bonneted with steel, while in her face, picturesque but dark (seemingly blackened with smoke), there gleamed two pupil-less blue eyes of a kind which I had never before beheld.

  "Fools," she continued, "how often have I not pointed out to you the necessity of cutting a wider space between the timber and the cemetery?"

  From a furrow above the woman's small but prominent nose, a pair of heavy brows extended to temples that were silvered over. As she spoke there fell a strange silence amid which save for the pony's pawing of the mire no sound mingled with the sarcastic reproaches of the deep, almost masculine voice.

  "That again is the mother-in-law," was my inward reflection.

  Gubin finished the harnessing—then said to Jonah in the tone of a superior addressing a servant:

  "Go in and dress yourself, you object!"

  Nevertheless, the Birkins drove out of the yard precisely as they were, while the peasant mounted his belathered steed and followed them at a trot; and the elderly lady disappeared from the window, leaving its panes even darker and blacker than they had previously been. Gubin, slip-slopping through the puddles with bare feet, said to me with a sharp glance as he moved to shut the entrance gates:

  "I presume that I can now take in hand the little affair of which you know."

  "Yakov!" at this juncture someone shouted from the house.

  Gubin straightened himself a la militaire.

  "Yes, I am coming," he replied.

  Whereafter, padding on bare soles, he ascended the steps. Nadezhda, standing at their top, turned away with a frown of repulsion at his approach, and nodded and beckoned to myself.

  "What has Yakov said to you?" she inquired

  "He has been reproaching me."

  "Reproaching you for what?"

  "For having spoken to you."

  She heaved a sigh.

  "Ah, the mischief-maker!" she exclaimed. "And what is it that he wants?"

  As she pouted her displeasure her round and vacant face looked almost childlike.

  "Good Lord!" she added. "What DO such men as he want?"

  Meanwhile the heavens were becoming overspread with dark grey clouds, and presaging a flood of autumn rain, while from the window near the steps the voice of Peter's mother-in-law was issuing in a steady stream. At first, however, nothing was distinguishable save a sound like the humming of a spindle.

  "It is my mother that is speaking," Nadezhda explained softly. "She'll give it him! Yes, SHE will protect me!"

  Yet I scarcely heard Nadezhda's words, so greatly was I feeling struck with the quiet forcefulness, the absolute assurance, of what was being said within the window.

  "Enough, enough!" said the voice. "Only through lack of occupation have you joined the company of the righteous."

  Upon this I made a move to approach closer to the window; whereupon Nadezhda whispered:

  "Whither are you going? You must not listen."

  While she was yet speaking I heard come from the window:

  "Similarly your revolt against mankind has come of idleness, of lack of an interest in life. To you the world has been wearisome, so, while devising this revolt as a resource, you have excused it on the ground of service of God and love of equity, while in reality constituting yourself the devil's workman."

  Here Nadezhda plucked at my sleeve, and tried to pull me away, but I remarked:

  "I MUST learn what Gubin has got to say in answer."

  This made Nadezhda smile, and then whisper with a confiding glance at my face:

  "You see, I have made a full confession to her. I went and said to her: 'Mamenka, I have had a misfortune.' And her only reply as she stroked my hair was, 'Ah, little fool!' Thus you see that she pities me. And what makes her care the less that I should stray in that direction is that she yearns for me to bear her a child, a grandchild, as an heir to her property."

  Next, Gubin was heard saying within the room:

  "Whensoever an offence is done against the law I..."

  At once a stream of impressive words from the other drowned his utterance:

  "An offence is not always an offence of moment, since sometimes a person outgrows the law, and finds it too restrictive. No one person ought to be rated against another. For whom alone ought we to fear? Only the God in whose sight all of us have erred!"

  And though in the elderly lady's voice there was weariness and distaste, the words were spoken slowly and incisively. Upon this Gubin tried to murmur something or another, but again his utterance failed to edge its way into his interlocutor's measured periods:

  "No great achievement is it," she said, "to condemn a fellow creature. For always it is easy to sit in judgment upon our fellows. And even if a fellow creature be allowed to pursue an evil course unchecked, his offence may yet prove productive of good. Remember how in every case the Saints reached God. Yet how truly sanctified, by the time that they did so reach Him, were they? Let this ever be borne in mind, for we are over-apt to condemn and punish!"

  "In former days, Natalia Vassilievna, you took away from me my substance, you took my all. Also, let me recount to you how we fell into disagreement."

  "No; there is no need for that."

  "Thereafter, I ceased to be able to bear the contemplation of myself; I ceased to consider myself as of any value."

  "Let the past remain the past. That which must be is not to be avoided."

  "Through you, I say, I lost my peace of mind."

  Nadezhda nudged me, and whispered with gay malice:

  "That is probably true, for they say that once he was one of her lovers."

  Then she recollected herself and, clapping her hands to her face, cried through her fingers:

  "Oh good Lord! What have I said? No, no, you must not believe these tales. They are only slanders, for she is the best of women."

  "When evil has been done," continued the quiet voice within the window, "it can never be set right by recounting it to others. He upon whom a burden has been laid should try to bear it. And, should he fail to bear it, the fact will mean that the burden has been beyond his strength."

  "It was through you that I lost everything. It was you that stripped me bare."

  "But to that which you lost I added movement. Nothing in life is ever lost; it merely passes from one hand to another—from the unskilled hand to the experienced—so that even the bone picked of a dog may ultimately become of value."

  "Yes, a bone—that is what I am."

  "Why should you say that? You are still a man."

  "Yes, a man, but a man useful for what?"

  "Useful, even though the use may not yet be fully apparent."

  To this, after a pause, the speaker added:

  "Now, depart in peace, and make no further attempt against this woman. Nay, do not even speak ill of her if you can help it, but consider everything that you saw to have been seen in a dream."

  "Ah!" was Gubin's contrite cry. "It shall be as you say. Yet, though I should hate, I could not bear, to grieve you, I must confess that the height whereon you stand is—"

  "Is what, Oh friend of mine?"

  "Nothing; save that of all souls in this world you are, without exception, the best."

  "Yakov Petrovitch, in this world you and I might have ended our lives together in honourable partnership. And even now, if God be willing, we might do so."

  "No. Rather must farewell be said."

&nb
sp; All became quiet within the window, except that after a prolonged silence there came from the woman a deep sigh, and then a whisper of, "Oh Lord!"

  Treading softly, like a cat, Nadezhda darted away towards the steps; whereas I, less fortunate, was caught by the departing Gubin in the very act of leaving the neighbourhood of the window. Upon that he inflated his cheeks, ruffled up his sandy hair, turned red in the face like a man who has been through a fight, and cried in strange, querulous, high-pitched accents:

  "Hi! What were you doing just now? Long-legged devil that you are, I have no further use for you—I do not intend to work with you any more. So you can go."

  At the same moment the dim face, with its great blue eyes, showed itself at the window, and the stem voice inquired:

  "What does the noise mean?"

  "What does it mean? It means that I do not intend—"

  "You must not, if you wish to create a disturbance, do it anywhere but in the street. It must not be created here."

  "What is all this?" Nadezhda put in with a stamp of her foot. "What—"

  At this point, the cook rushed out with a toasting-fork and militantly ranged herself by Nadezhda's side, exclaiming:

  "See what comes of not having a single muzhik in the house!"

  I now prepared to withdraw, but, in doing so, glanced once more at the features of the elderly lady, and saw that the blue pupils were dilated so as almost to fill the eyes in their entirety, and to leave only a bluish margin. And strange and painful were those eyes—eyes fixed blindly, eyes which seemed to have strayed from their orbits through yielding to emotion and a consequent overstrain—while the apple of the throat had swelled like the crop of a bird, and the sheen of the silken head-dress become as the sheen of metal. Involuntarily, I thought to myself:

  "It is a head that must be made of iron."

  By this time Gubin had penitently subsided, and was exchanging harmless remarks with the cook, while carefully avoiding my glance.