Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

The late autumn of that year in Constantine was cold and rainy. Then, as is always the case in Algeria, a ravishing spring came on. And an animation,--that beatific, exquisite headiness which is experienced at the time of the blossoming of spring by people who have already left their youth behind them,--again began to return to Mme. Marot. She again began to go out; rode out a great deal with her children, went with them to the garden of the deserted Villa Hassim; she contemplated an excursion to Algiers,--to show her children Blidah, near which, in the mountains, there is a wooded ravine, a spot beloved of monkeys.... And so things went right up to the seventeenth of January in the year of 1890. On the seventeenth of January, she awoke from some unusually joyous and tender emotion, which, so it had seemed to her, had stirred her all night long. In the large room where she slept alone during the absence of her husband, who had gone away for a long time on matters connected with his post, it was almost dark because of the Venetian blinds and the window curtains. Still, by that blueish pallor which penetrated from behind them, one could gather that it was still early. And, in confirmation, the little clock on the night-table pointed to six. With an enjoyable sense of the morning freshness entering from the garden, she rolled up in a light blanket and turned to the wall.... “Why do I feel so fine?” she thought, dozing off. And, like dim, beautiful visions, pictures of Italy, of Sicily, began to appear before her, pictures of that distant spring when she was sailing in a cabin whose windows looked out on deck, upon the chill silvery shimmer of the sea; a cabin with portieres of red silk, shrivelled and faded by time, and with a high threshold glittering with brass that had been worn down by many years of cleaning.... Then she saw the limitless bays of the sea; lagoons; lowlands; a great Arabian town, all white, with flat roofs, and with undulating mistily blue knolls and foot-hills beyond it. This was Tunis, in which she had been but once, on that very same spring when she had been in Naples, and in Palermo.... But here a wave of cold seemed to go through her,--and, with a shiver, she opened her eyes. It was already going on nine o’clock; one could hear the voices of the children, the voice of their _bonne_. She arose, threw on a _peignoir_, and, stepping out on the balcony, descended into the garden and sat down on a rocker, standing in the sand near a round table underneath a mimosa in blossom, spreading its golden canopy overhead, its fragrance heavy in the sun. The maid brought her coffee. She again began to think of Tunis, and recalled that strange experience she had gone through, that sweet fear and that beatific abnegation of her will which was like that of pre-mortal moments,--an experience she had undergone in that pale blue city in the warm, rosy dusk, half-reclining in a rocker on the roof of a house, vaguely seeing the dark face of the Arab hypnotist and magician who was squatting on his heels before her, lulling her to sleep with his barely audible, monotonous sing-song, and the slow movements of his thin hands. And suddenly, even as she was thinking thus and mechanically gazing with eyes wide-open upon a bright silvery spark with which a teaspoon in a glass of water was aflame, she suddenly lost conscience. And when she came to with a start, Emile was standing over her. All that took place subsequent to this unexpected meeting is known from the words of Emile himself,--from his story, from his answers to interrogations. “Yes, I dropped into Constantine as though from heaven!” he had said. “I had come because I had comprehended that the powers of heaven itself could not stop me. On the morning of the seventeenth of January, straight from the station, without any word of warning, I appeared at the house of Monsieur Marot and ran into the garden. I was dumbfounded by that which met my eyes; but I had scarce made a step when she came to. She, it seemed, was also amazed, both by the unexpectedness of my appearance, and that which she had just been through; but she did not even emit an exclamation. Having looked at me, like a person just awakened from a deep sleep, she got up from her seat, putting her hair in order.

“‘That’s the very presentiment I had,’ she said, somehow without any expression. ‘You did not obey me!’

“And with an accustomed gesture, having buttoned the _peignoir_ at her breast, she took my head in both her hands and kissed me twice on the forehead.

“I lost my head from rapture and passion, but she gently put me aside and said:

“‘Let us go; I am not dressed,--I shall return at once, go to the children....’

“‘But, for God’s sake, what was the matter with you?’ I asked, ascending after her to the balcony.

“‘Oh, a mere nothing--a slight trance. I had gazed too long at a glittering tea-spoon,’ she was answering, getting control of herself, and beginning to speak with more animation. ‘But what have you done, what have you done!’

“I did not find the children anywhere; the house was empty and quiet; I sat down in the parlour. Suddenly I heard her begin singing in a distant room in a strong, sonorous voice, but I did not then comprehend all the horror of that sound, because I was all atremble with a nervous ague. I had not slept all night; I had counted the minutes as the train had sped me toward Constantine; I jumped into the first _fiacre_ I had met upon running out of the depot; I did not expect to reach the height of the city.... I knew, I, too, had a premonition, that my arrival would be fatal for us; but still I could not expect that which I had seen in the garden, this mystical meeting, and such a sharp change in her attitude toward me! After ten minutes, she came out with her hair dressed, in a light-gray dress of an iris tint.

“‘Ah,’ said she, as I was kissing her hand, ‘but I had forgotten that to-day is Sunday, and that the children are in church; but then, I have over-slept.... The children will go to the pine grove after church,--were you ever there?’

“And, without waiting for my answer, she rang, ordered some coffee to be served to me, and, sitting down, began to look at me intently, and, without listening, began to question me as to how I had lived, what I had been doing. She started to speak about herself, of the fact that after two or three months, which had been very bad for her, during which she had aged dreadfully,--these words were uttered with sort of incomprehensible smile,--she was feeling well, as young as never before.... I replied, I listened, but did not understand a great deal; both of us said anything but that which we wanted to say; my hands grew chill from the nearness of that other fearful, inevitable hour. I do not deny that I was struck as if by lightning when she had said ‘I have aged....’ I suddenly saw that she was right: in the thinness of her hands, and of the faded, even though really rejuvenated face, in the slenderness of certain outlines of the body, I caught certain signs of that which compels our hearts to contract so painfully, and even somehow awkwardly,--yet all the more passionately,--at the sight of an aging woman. ‘Ah, yes, how rapidly and sharply she had changed!’ I reflected. But she was beautiful, never the less. I was growing intoxicated as I gazed upon her. I had grown accustomed to dreaming of her without end; I had not forgotten that moment, when on the evening of the eleventh of July, I had first embraced her knees. Her hands, too, were slightly trembling, when she was putting her _coiffure_ in order, smiling, and gazing at me; and suddenly--you will understand all the catastrophic force of this moment!--suddenly, this smile was distorted, somehow; and, with difficulty, but firmly, she uttered:

“‘Still, you ought to go home, to rest up from the journey; your appearance is dreadful; you have such suffering, fearful eyes and such burning lips, that I no longer have the strength to see them.... Do you wish me to?--I shall go there in your company....’

“And, without letting me answer, she got up and went away to get her hat and cloak....

“We arrived quickly at the Villa Hassim. I lingered near the entrance, in order to pluck some flowers. She did not wait for me, opening the door herself. I had no servants; there was only the caretaker,--he did not see us. When I stepped into the ante-room, hot and half dark because of the closed Venetian blinds, and offered her the flowers, she kissed them, then embracing me with one hand, she kissed me. From emotion her lips were hot, but her voice was clear.

“‘But listen ... how shall we ... have you anything with you?’ she asked.

“I did not at first understand her,--so had this first kiss, this first familiar ‘you’ overwhelmed me,--and I mumbled:

“‘What do you want to say?’

“She took a step back.

“‘What!’ she said in astonishment, almost sternly. ‘Can you possibly have thought that I ... that we can live after this? Have you anything with you that we may die?’

“I recovered my wits and hastened to show her a revolver loaded with five bullets, with which I never parted.

“She rapidly went on, from room to room. The semi-darkness was everywhere. Hearing only the rustle of her silken skirts, I followed after her, with that confusion of all the senses with which a naked man goes on a sultry day into the sea. Finally we arrived at the end of our journey; she threw off her cloak and began to untie the ribbons of her hat. Her hands were still trembling, and once more I remarked through the dusk something pitiful and tired in her face....

“But she died without wavering. During the last moments she became transformed. Kissing me, and leaning back in order to see my face, she told me, in a whisper, a few words so tender and touching that I have not the strength to repeat them.

“I wanted to go to pluck some more flowers, in order to strew our funeral couch with them. She did not let me, she was hurried, she was saying: ‘No, no, it is not necessary ... there are plenty of flowers ... here are your flowers’--and she kept on repeating:

“‘And so, I charge you, by all that you hold sacred, that you kill me!’

“‘Yes, and then myself,’ said I, not for a second doubting my resolution.

“‘Oh, I believe you, I believe you!’ she answered, by now as if in a trance....

“A minute before her death she said, very quietly, but simply: ‘My God, this is a deed without a name!’

“And again:

“‘Where are the flowers you gave me? Kiss me--for the last time.’

“She herself put the muzzle of the revolver up to her temple. I wanted to shoot, but she stopped me:

“‘No, that isn’t right,--let me show you the right way. Here, so, my child.... And _afterward_ make the sign of the cross over me, and lay the flowers upon my breast....’

“When I fired, she moved her lips slightly. I fired once more....

“She lay there, calm; in her extinguished gaze there was some bitter beatitude. Her hair was spread out; a tortoise shell comb was thrown upon the floor. Swaying, I got up, to put an end to myself. But, despite the Venetian blinds, it was light in the room; and in this light, and amid this quiet which had suddenly arisen all about me, I distinctly saw her face, already grown pallid.... And here a sudden madness possessed me,--I dashed to the window, throwing apart, flinging open the shutters, and began to shout, and to shoot into the air.... The rest you know....”

* * * * *

In the spring, five years ago, travelling over Algeria, the writer of these lines visited Constantine. He often recalls now those evenings, rainy and chill, but spring evenings never the less, which he passed by the fireplace in the reading room of a certain old and homelike French hotel. Upon the heavy, elaborate _étagères_ there lay tattered illustrated journals--in them one could find some faded portraits of Mme. Marot, at different ages,--among them, one taken in Lausanne, when she was a girl.... Her story is told here again, through a strong desire of telling it in my own way.

_1916._

LIGHT BREATHING

In the graveyard, over the fresh clayey mound, stands a new cross of oak,--strong, heavy, smooth,--of the sort that is pleasant to contemplate.

It is April, but the days are raw; the monuments of the graveyard--a spacious, truly provincial one,--can be seen through the bare trees even from afar, and the chill wind makes the porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross tinkle again and again.

As for the cross itself,--a rather large bronze medallion has been set into it; while in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a well dressed and alluring high-school girl, with eyes joyous, strikingly alive.

This is Olliya Meshcherskaya.

As a girl she did not in any way stand out among that noisy crowd of short brown dresses which so discordantly and youthfully hums in the corridors and class-rooms; what could be said of her save that she was one of a number of rather pretty, wealthy, and happy girls, that she was bright, but mischievous and very much unconcerned about whatever admonitions were made to her by an instructress? Then she began to blossom out, to develop, not by the day but by the hour. At fourteen, while her waist was slender and her little feet graceful, she already had well-defined breasts and all those contours, the enchantment of which human speech has never yet expressed; at fifteen she was famed as a beauty. How painstakingly did certain of her mates dress their hair, how meticulous about their persons they were, how carefully watchful of their restrained motions! But she feared nothing,--neither ink spots on her fingers, nor a flushed face, nor disheveled hair, nor a knee bared in a running fall. Without any cares or efforts on her part, and somehow imperceptibly, to her came all that which distinguished her from all the rest of the high-school during her last two years there,--elegance, good taste in dress, cleverness, a radiant, yet an understanding sparkle in her eyes. No one danced like Olliya Meshcherskaya; no one raced on skates as well as she did; no one was sought after at balls as much as she; and, for some reason, no one was so liked by the lower grades as she was. Imperceptibly, she became a young lady, and imperceptibly her fame in school became secure; and there were already rumours that she was inconstant, that she could not live without admirers; that Shenshin, a student in the boys’ high-school, was madly in love with her; that apparently she was also in love with him, but so changeable in her treatment of him that he had made attempts at suicide....

During her last winter, Olliya Meshcherskaya lost her head entirely from her pursuit of pleasure,--so they said in the high-school. The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty; the sun sank early behind the tall fir grove of the snow-covered school garden, but it was invariably serene, many-rayed, holding forth a promise of both frost and sunlight for the morrow as well; to say nothing of strolling through Cathedral Street, of skating at the rink in the city park on a rose-tinged evening, to music, and amid this throng gliding in all directions, among which Olliya Meshcherskaya seemed the best dressed, the freest from care, the happiest. And then one day, during the main interval, as she was careering like a whirlwind through the assembly hall escaping from the little girls of the first grade who were pursuing her and squealing for joy, she was unexpectedly summoned to the directress. She stopped in full career; giving a single deep sigh, with a rapid and by now accustomed movement she put her hair in order, hitched up the little corners of her apron at the shoulders, and, her eyes radiant, ran upstairs. The directress, a small woman, young looking but gray haired, was calmly sitting with some knitting in her hands, at a writing table underneath a portrait of the Tsar.

“How do you do, Mlle. Meshcherskaya,” she said in French, without raising her eyes from the knitting. “It is to be regretted that this is not the first time I am compelled to summon you here, in order to speak to you about your conduct.”

“I am listening, Madame,” answered Meshcherskaya, approaching the table, looking at her radiantly and in animation, but without any expression on her face, and she sat down with that lightness and grace of which only she was mistress.

“You will listen but badly to me,--I have, it is to be regretted, become convinced of that,” said the directress, and drawing a thread and making the ball of wool roll over the polished floor, upon which Meshcherskaya had cast a glance of curiosity, she raised her eyes: “I shall not repeat myself; I shall not speak at length,” she said.

Meshcherskaya liked very much this unusually tidy and large study; on frosty days its atmosphere was so cozy from the warmth of the glistening Dutch stove, and the freshness of the lilies-of-the-valley upon the writing table. She glanced at the young Tsar, drawn at full length in the midst of some resplendently glittering hall; at the straight parting of the milky, neatly waved hair of the directress, and kept an expectant silence.

“You are no longer a little girl,” said the directress with much significance, secretly beginning to grow irritated.

“Yes, Madame,” answered Meshcherskaya simply, almost gaily.

“But not yet a woman,” said the directress with still greater significance, and her dull-coloured face began to glow slightly. “First of all,--what sort of a coiffure is that? That is a woman’s coiffure!”

“Madame, I am not to blame if I have nice hair,” answered Meshcherskaya, giving the slightest of pats with both hands to her attractively dressed head.

“Ah, so that is it,--you are not to blame!” said the directress. “You are not to blame for your coiffure, nor to blame for these expensive combs, nor to blame for ruining your parents with buying little slippers at twenty roubles![1] But, I repeat to you, you lose sight of the fact that as yet you are only a high-school girl....”

[1] A rouble, before the revolution, was equal to about half an American dollar. _Trans._

And at this point, Meshcherskaya, without losing her simplicity and calmness, suddenly interrupted her with politeness:

“Pardon me, Madame, you are making a mistake: I am a woman. And--do you know who is responsible for this? Papa’s friend and neighbour, and also your brother, Alexei Mikhailovich Maliutin. This happened last summer in the country....”

* * * * *

And a month after this conversation an officer of the Cossacks, homely and of plebeian appearance, having absolutely nothing in common with that circle to which Meshcherskaya belonged, shot her on the platform of a railroad station, among a large crowd which had just arrived with the train. And the incredible confession of Olliya Meshcherskaya, which had dumbfounded the directress, was fully confirmed; the officer had declared to the examining magistrate that Meshcherskaya had enticed him, had had a _liaison_ with him, had sworn to be his wife; but at the depot, on the day of the murder, when she was seeing him off to Novocherkassk, she had suddenly told him that she had never even as much as thought of loving him, that their talks about marriage were all merely a mockery of him, and she let him read that page in her diary which dealt with Maliutin.

“I ran over these lines, went out on the platform where she was promenading, waiting till I should finish reading, and shot her,” said the officer. “The diary remained in the pocket of my uniform coat; just glance at what was written on it on the tenth of July of last year.”

And the examining magistrate read something approximately as follows:

“It is now two o’clock at night. I had fallen fast asleep, but had immediately awakened.... This day I have become a woman! Papa, mamma, and Tolliya had all gone to the city, and I was left alone. I cannot express how happy I was over being alone! In the morning I strolled by myself in the garden, in the fields; I was in the forest,--it seemed to me that I was all alone in the entire universe, and my thoughts were more pleasant than they have ever before been in my life. I even dined alone, then I played for a whole hour; to the sounds of the music I felt as if I would live without end and would be as happy as never before! Then I fell asleep in papa’s study. And at four Katiya woke me up, saying that Alexei Mikhailovich had arrived. I was very glad he had come; it was so pleasant for me to receive and entertain him. He had driven up on his pair of very handsome horses, of a special small breed, and they stood all the time near the steps; but he remained, because it had been raining, and he wanted the ground to be dry toward evening. He was very sorry that he had not caught father in, was very animated, and bore himself like a gallant toward me; he joked a lot about having been in love with me for a long time. When we were strolling before tea in the garden, the weather was splendid again, the sun glistened through the entire wet garden, although it had become really downright chilly, and he walked about with my arm through his, and said that he was Faust with Marguerite. He is fifty-six, but he is still very handsome, and always very well dressed,--the only thing I did not like was that he had come in a kind of cape; he is all scented with English eau-de-cologne, and his eyes are altogether young,--and black; and his beard is attractively divided in two long parts and is perfectly silvery. At tea we sat in the glass enclosed veranda; I felt somehow unwell and laid down upon a low couch, while he smoked; then he changed his seat to where I was, and again began telling me some nice things; then to examine and kiss my hand. I covered my face with a silk handkerchief, and he kissed me several times on the lips through the handkerchief.... I cannot understand how it could have, happened; I lost my mind, I never thought that I was that kind! Now there is only one way out for me.... I feel such loathing for him, that I cannot live through this!...”

The town during these April days has become clean, dry, its stones have grown white, and it is easy and pleasant to walk over them. Every Sunday, after mass, a little woman in mourning, in black kid gloves, with an ebony umbrella, starts out walking through Cathedral Street, which leads to the city gates. She passes by the engine house, crosses, by means of a paved road, the dirty square where there are many sooty smithies, and the air from the fields is blowing fresher; farther on, between the monastery and the jail, the cloudy horizon shows white, and the spring fields gray; and then, when one has treaded his way among the puddles under the wall of the monastery and turns to the left, one sees something like a large, low garden, surrounded by a white enclosure, above the gates of which enclosure is painted the Assumption of the Mother of God. The little woman rapidly makes a sign of the cross several times, and like one who knows the way walks through the main path. Having reached the bench opposite the cross of oak, she sits in the wind and the spring chillness, for an hour, for two hours, until her feet in their light shoes and her hands in their tight kid gloves grow entirely benumbed. Listening to the birds of spring, sweetly singing even in the cold, listening to the tinkling of the wind through the porcelain wreath, she thinks at times that she would give half her life, if only that dead wreath might not be before her eyes. The thought that it was Olliya Meshcherskaya whom they had buried here, in this very clay, throws her into astonishment verging on stupefaction: how can one associate that sixteen year old school girl, who only some two or three months ago was so full of life, enchantment, gaiety, with this clayey hummock, and this oaken cross? Can it be possible that underneath it is the same girl whose eyes shine so deathlessly out of this bronze medallion, and how reconcile with this pure gaze that dreadful thing which is connected now with the name of Olliya Meshcherskaya? But deep in her soul the little woman is happy, as all people in love, or devoted to some passionate idea in general, always are.

This woman is a teacher of Olliya Meshcherskaya, a girl of over thirty, who has long lived upon some fiction or other that supplants her actual life. At first her brother, a poor ensign and in no way remarkable, was such a fiction,--all her soul was bound up with him, with his future, which for some reason appeared to her brilliant, and she lived in a strange expectancy, that her fate would somehow change magically, thanks to him. Later, when he was killed at Mukden, she assured herself, that she, to her great good fortune, it would seem, was not like others; that the lack of beauty and femininity were in her case compensated for by brains and higher interests; that she was a toiler in the world of ideas. The death of Olliya Meshcherskaya captivated her with a new dream. Now Olliya Meshcherskaya is an object of her ceaseless thoughts, of rapture, of joy. She goes to Olliya’s grave on every holiday,--she had formed the habit of going to the graveyard and of wearing mourning since the death of her brother. For hours she does not take her eyes off the oaken cross; she recalls the pale little face of Olliya Meshcherskaya in her coffin, among the flowers--and also that which she had once happened to overhear: once, during the main recess, strolling through the school garden, Olliya Meshcherskaya was saying, all in one breath, to her favourite mate,--the stout, tall Subottina:

“In one of papa’s books,--he has a lot of old-fashioned funny books,--I read what sort of beauty a woman ought to have ... you understand, there is so much said there that one can’t remember everything: well, of course, black eyes, like boiling pitch,--honest to God, it is written just so!--like boiling pitch,--eye-lashes as black as night; a softly mantling blush, a slender waist, a hand longer than the ordinary,--you understand, longer than the ordinary!--a little foot, a moderately large bosom, a regularly rounded calf, a knee the colour of a sea-shell, sloping--but high--shoulders.... I learned most of this by heart, that’s how true all this is! But do you know what the chief thing is?--Light breathing!... But then, I have it,--you just listen how I sigh,--really, haven’t I got it?”

Now this light breathing has been scattered anew upon the universe, upon this cloud-covered sky, upon this chill spring wind....

_1916._

AN EVENING IN SPRING

On St. Thomas’ week, on a clear evening barely tinged with rose, at that enchanting time when the earth has just been freed from the snow, when, in the little hollows upon the steppes, underneath the young bare oaks, some gray, hardened snow still lingers, an old beggar was going from house to house in a certain village in the Eletz province,--of course, he had no hat, and there was a long linen wallet slung over his shoulder.

This village was a large one, but quiet, lying far out among the fields. And besides, it happened to be a quiet evening. There was nobody near the flooded, clayey pond, that one could not see the limits of; nor upon the level common where, in the shade of the huts and hayricks, this old man was walking. His head was bald, yet still black-haired; he held a long walnut staff in his hand, and looked like a primitive bishop. The common was of a clear, vivid green; the air was freshening; the pond, concavely-full, its tone that of a flashing flesh colour, was slightly crimson, and there was a certain beauty about it, despite a bottle-green block of ice, covered with rusty manure, that still floated about in it. Somewheres on the other side, warmly and caressingly lit up against the low-lying sun,--somewhere far-off, it seemed,--a child, strayed behind some corn-kiln or storehouse, was crying, and its plaintive, monotonous wailing was not unpleasant to the ear in the evening glow.... But the folk thereabouts were none too generous of alms.

There, at the entrance to the village, near an old, well-to-do farm, where age-old oaks covered with the nests of rooks stood beyond the three-roomed _izba_ of dark-red brick, a young gray-eyed married woman had given something, but even that had been a trifle. She had been standing near the stone threshold amid the drying spring mire upon a hard-beaten path, holding a pretty little girl, whose little eyes did not show any glimmer of intelligence, perched in her arms; the child had on a little patchwork cap, and, pressing her close against her, the woman was dancing, stamping her bare feet, and, as she turned, her cotton skirt would swell out.

“There’s an old man; I’ll give you to him to put in his little wallet,” she was saying through her teeth, her lips feasting on the little girl’s cheeks:

“I’m a-goin’ to dance
So’s the floor will creak....”

And, turning, completely around, she changed her voice to a ringing, coquettish tone, evidently imitative of some one:

“Old man, old man,--don’t you need a little girl?”

The girl was not a bit frightened; she was calmly sucking a round cracknel, and the mother began coaxing the little girl, in all sorts of ways, to give it to the smiling beggar who had come up:

“Give it to him, my little babe, give it to him; for you and I are all, all alone on this whole farm; so we have nothing to give alms with....”

And the little girl stolidly stretched out her short little arm, with the saliva-moistened cookie clenched in her little fist. And the beggar, smilingly shaking his head at other folks’ happiness, took it and munched it as he went on his way.

He held his stick lightly, in readiness, as he went; now it would be a wicked, snarling watch-dog that would roll up in a ball underneath your feet,--and having rolled right up to you, would suddenly become quiet; or else a yellow, downy hound would ferociously tear the ground and throw it up with his hind feet, standing near a hay rick and growling, growling and gasping, with fiery eyes.... Upon approaching the little window of a hut, the beggar would make a humble bow and would tap lightly against the frame with his staff. But often no one would respond to this tap; many were still finishing up their sowing, finishing up their plowing, many were out in the fields. And his soul, the soul of a peasant from of old, even rejoiced in secret: the folks are out in the field ... this is the time that feeds the whole year ... no time for beggars.... And at times, on the other side of the panes upon which the beggar tapped, a fair-faced peasant woman carrying a child at breast in her arms, would lean over as she sat on a bench. Through the sorry little window, she appeared very big. Not at all abashed because the beggar could see her soft breast, as white as wheat-flour, she would wave him away with her large hand, covered with silver rings, while the infant, without letting the sweet nipple out of its mouth, lay back and looked up at her with its dark, clear eyes, scratching hard its bare little outspread legs, all dotted with pink from flea-bites. “God will give you alms,--don’t be angry with us,” the peasant woman would say calmly. As for the old women, each one of them would wrinkle up her face painfully, inevitably leaning out and complaining for a long time, constantly re-iterating that she’d be glad as glad could be to give alms, but there wasn’t anything ... everybody was out in the fields ... and to give without asking she was afraid,--she, being an old woman, had had her head bitten off long ago, as it was.... The beggar would agree with her, would say, “Well, forgive me, for the love of God,” and would go on farther.

He had done thirty versts[2] that day, and was not a bit fatigued; only his legs had grown benumbed, dulled, and had begun to wobble. His long bag was half-filled with crusts and some odds and ends; while under the patched long coat, narrow belted and long skirted, under the sheepskin jacket and the much worn blouse, under the shirt next his skin, there had long been hanging upon his crucifix an amulet wherein were sewn ninety-two roubles in bills. And his soul was at rest. Of course, he was old, thin, all weather-beaten,--his mouth contracted, parched, until it was all black; his nose was like a bone; his neck all in wrinkles resembling cracks, criss-crossing one another, as though his neck were made of cork. But he was still spry. His eyes, which once upon a time had been black, were now rheumy and dimmed by thin cataracts; but still they could see not only the full-flooded pond, but, as well, the roseate tint upon its farther side, and even the clear, pale sky. The air was getting fresher; more loudly, but seemingly from a still greater distance, came the receding cry of the child; there was a scent of the chilling grass in the air.... Two pigeons soared together over the roofs, fell to the clayey little bank of the pond, and, raising their little heads, began to drink.... Just a little before, in a lonely farm near the great road, some women had grown generous and had given him a big piece of calico and a pair of good trousers,--oh, good as new, you might say; a young fellow that belonged to their farm had made them for himself, but he had been crushed in a pit, in the quarry where the _moujiks_ had been digging for clay. Now the beggar was walking along and deliberating: should he dispose of them, or put them on himself, and throw away those he had on--which, by now, were really none too presentable,--near the edge of some field?

[2] A verst is about two-thirds of a mile. _Trans._

Having come to the end of the village, he entered a short little lane that led out into the steppe. And into his eyes glanced the many-rayed, fair-weather sun of April, sinking far beyond the plain, beyond the gray fallow-lands and the newly tilled fields of spring-corn. At the very end of the village, at a turn of the well-beaten, glistening road, leading to that distant, humble hamlet where the beggar was thinking of passing the night, stood a new hut, not large, well-roofed with new thatch, which was lemon-coloured and resembled a well-combed head. Keeping aloof from everybody, a man and his wife had settled here a year ago,--there were shavings and chips still knocking about here and there. They were a thrifty, hard-working, agreeable couple, and sold vodka on the sly. And so the beggar went straight toward this hut,--there was a possibility of selling the new trousers to its owner,--and besides, he liked just to enter it; he liked it because it seemed to be living some especial life, all its own, quiet and steadfast, standing at the end leading out of the village and gazing with its clear little windows upon the setting of the sun, while the sky-larks were finishing their song in the chilling air. Near the blind wall that gave out upon the by-lane lay a shadow, but its front wall was gay. Last fall its owner had planted three acacia bushes beneath the little windows. Now they had taken root and were already downy with a yellowish verdure tender as that of a willow. Having skirted them, the beggar walked in through the entry into the main room.

At first, after the sunlight, he could not see anything, although the sun was looking in here as well, lighting up the blue transparent smoke floating over the table, that stood underneath a hanging tin lamp. To gain time while his eyes grew accustomed, he bowed and crossed himself for a long time in the direction of the new tinselled icon hanging in a corner. Then he laid down his bag and his staff on the floor near the door, and made out a large-bodied _moujik_ in bast shoes and a tattered short sheepskin coat, sitting with his back to the door, on a stool near the table; the well-dressed mistress he saw sitting on a bench.

“The Lord’s blessing be with you,” said he, in a low voice, bowing once more. “Greetings of the holiday just past.”

He wanted to sing the paschal _Christ Is Risen_, but felt that it would be out of place, and reflected:

“Well, I guess the master is not at home.... What a pity.”

The mistress was not at all bad-looking, with a very shapely waist, with white hands,--just as though she were no mere peasant woman. She was in a gala-dress, as always; in a pearl necklace, in a blouse of coarse calico, with thin puffed-out sleeves, with an apron broidered in red and blue, in a skirt of indigo wool with terra-cotta checks, and in half-boots, rough but well-sown and made to fit the foot, their heels shod with steel. With her neat head and clear face bent down, she was embroidering a blouse for her husband. When the beggar had greeted her, she raised her steady but unglittering eyes, threw an intent glance upon him, and nodded amiably. Then, with a light sigh, she laid her work aside, deftly stuck her needle in it, went toward the oven, her half-boots clacking over the wooden floor and her flanks swaying, and took a small bottle of vodka and a thick cup with blue stripes out of a little cupboard.

“I have gotten tired, though ...” said the beggar, as if he were talking to himself,--both in apology for the vodka and because he was confused by the silence of the _moujik_, who had not turned around toward him.

Stepping softly in his bast-shoes, humbly walking around him, the beggar sat down upon another stool, at an opposite corner of the table. As for the mistress, she put the cup and the small bottle before him, and went back to her work. Then this stalwart, tattered son of the steppes raised his head heavily,--there was a whole greenish demijohn standing before him,--and, narrowing his eyes, he fixed his gaze upon his humble bottle-companion. He may have been pretending just a trifle; but still, his face was inflamed; his eyes were drunken, filled with the dull glitter of tipsiness; the lips, grown soft and flabby, were half-open, as in a fever,--evidently, this was not the first day of his spree. And the beggar grew a little more wary, and carefully began filling his cup. “After all, now, he’ll drink his and I’ll drink mine.... This is a tavern, and we don’t bother one another,” he was thinking. He raised his head, and his mistily-black eyes, the colour of ripe sloe-thorn, as well as his whole visage, made rough and weather-beaten by the steppe, were void of all expression.

“Where was you tramping?” asked the _moujik_, roughly and crazily. “Have you come to steal, seeing as how all the folks are out in the fields?”

“Why should I be stealing?” the beggar replied, evenly and meekly. “I’ve had six children of my own, and my own house and goods....”

“You’re blind and you’re blind, but, never fear, many’s the feather and the twig you’ve carried to your nest!”

“Why should you be saying that? I’ve worked hard as could be for ten years in the quartz mines....”

“That ain’t work. That’s....”

“Don’t you be saying anything out of the way,” said the mistress, without elevating her voice, without raising her lashes, and bit off the thread. “I don’t listen to anything unseemly. I ain’t heard it from my husband yet.”

“Well, that will do; I won’t do it any more ... lady!” said the _moujik_. “’Scuse me ... I’m after asking you,” said he to the beggar, frowningly, “what can you get out of the ground, now, when it ain’t been ploughed nor sown?”

“Well, now, of course.... Whoever has the land, for example....”

“Wait,--I’m smarter than you be!” said the _moujik_ slapping the table with his palm. “Answer what you’re asked; did you serve for a soldier?”

“I was a non-commissioned officer of the Tenth Grenadiers Regiment of Little Russia, under Count Rumiyant-zev-Zadunaisky.... What else should I be doing but serving for a soldier?”

“Keep still, don’t gabble more’n you’re asked! What year was you took?”

“In ’seventy six, in the month of November.”

“Wasn’t you ever at fault?”

“Never.”

“Did you obey the officers?”

“There was no way of my doing otherwise. I had taken an oath.”

“But what’s that scar doing on your neck? Do you understand what I’m driving at now? I am testing him,” said the _moujik_, with his eye-brows working surlily, but changing his commanding voice for a more simple one, and turning toward the mistress his crazed face, aureately illumined through the tobacco smoke by the sunset; “I may be poor, all right, but I’ve caught more than one fellow like that! I know enough to come in out of the rain!”

And again he put on a frown, looking at the beggar:

“Did you bow down before the Holy Cross and the Gospel?”

“That I have,” answered the beggar, who had managed to take a drink, to wipe his mouth with his sleeve, to sit up straight again, and to impart to his face and his misty eyes a dispassionate expression.

The _moujik_ surveyed him with glazed eyes.

“Stand up before me!”

“Don’t raise any fuss. Am I talking to you, or am I not?” the mistress quietly intervened.

“Wait, for the love of God,” the _moujik_ waved her away in vexation. “Stand up before me!”

“Honest to God, what are you up to....” the beggar began to mumble.

“Stand up, I’m telling you!” yelled the _moujik_. “I’m a-going to examine you.”

The beggar stood up and shifted from foot to foot.

“Hands at the sides! So. Got a passport?”

“But are you an inspector, or something?”

“Keep still,--don’t you dare to jaw back at me like that! I’m smarter than you be! I went all through this myself. Show it to me this minute!”

Hastily unhooking his long overcoat, then his sheepskin jacket, the beggar submissively rummaged within the bosom of his shirt for a long time. Finally he pulled out a paper wrapped up in a red handkerchief.

“Give it here,” said the _moujik_ abruptly.

And, unwrapping the little handkerchief, the beggar handed him a small frayed gray book, with a large wax seal. The _moujik_ awkwardly opened it with his gnarled fingers and pretended to read it, putting it at a distance from him, leaning back, and looking at it for a long time through the tobacco smoke and the red light of the evening glow.

“So. I see now. Everything ship-shape. Take it back,” he said, his parched lips moving with difficulty. “I am poor as poor can be; it’s the second spring, you might say, that I’m neither ploughing nor sowing; folks have done for me.... I fell down at his feet, the dog that he is.... And yet I’m beyond a price, you might say.... But you just tell me all that you’ve stolen, or else I’ll kill you right off!” he yelled ferociously. “I know everything; I’ve gone through all sorts of things.... I’ve been boiled in pitch, you might say,--that’s how I’ve suffered.... It is the Lord that gives us life, but any vermin can take it away.... Give the bag here, and that’s all there is to it!”

The mistress merely shook her head, and leaned back from her embroidery, contemplating it. The beggar went toward the door and gave the _moujik_ the bag, just as he had given him the passport. The _moujik_ took it, and, as he laid it near him on the stool, he said:

“That’s right. Now sit down,--let’s chat a bit. I’ll get to the bottom of all this here. I’ll make an inspection of my own, don’t you fret!”

And he became silent, staring at the table.

“Spring...” he muttered. “Ah, but what a sorrowful sabbath-day it is, that a man may not work in the fields.... Go on!” he cried out to some imagined person, trying to snap his fingers:

“Oh, the lady starts to dance,
And her fingers is all blue....”

And he relapsed into silence. The mistress was smoothing down the embroidery with her thimble.

“I’m going out to milk the cow,” said she, getting up from her seat. “Don’t blow up the fire whilst I am out, or else you’ll burn us out in your drunkenness.”

The _moujik_ came to with a start.

“Lordy!” he exclaimed, in hurt tones. “Little mistress! How can youse say that.... You’ve grown aweary for your husband, never fear?”

“That’s none of your worry,” said the mistress. “He’s in town, on business.... He don’t go traipsing around no inns.”

“You’d go traipsing, too!” said the _moujik_. “Well, what would you have me do, now,--go out on the wayside, or what? You rich devils are all right....”

The mistress, picking up a milk-pail, went out. It was growing dark in the hut; everything was quiet, and the roseate light was suffused in the soft, spring obscurity. The _moujik_, with his elbows on the table, was dozing, as he pulled at an extinguished, crudely made cigarette. The beggar was sitting peacefully, with never a sound, leaning against the dark partition, and his face was almost invisible.

“Do you drink beer?” asked the _moujik_.

“I do,” came the low answer out of the dusk.

The _moujik_ was silent for a while.

“We are vagabones, you and me” said he, morosely and meditatively. “Poor wayside rubbish.... Beggarmen.... I feel weary in your company!”

“That’s right....”

“But as for beer,--I like it,” said the _moujik_ loudly, after another silence. “She don’t keep it, the carrion! Otherwise I would have drunk some beer ... and would have had a snack of something.... My tongue’s all soaked,--I want to eat.... I would have had a snack and drunk something.... Yes.... But she, the mistress, ain’t got such a bad face! If I was harnessed up with one like her, I would.... All right, never mind, sit down, sit down ... I got respect for the blind. Whenever a grand holiday used to come around, I would take twenty of these here blind men, now, and seat them at table,--you would have had to look and look to find another household like ours! And they would sing a stave for me, and make me a bow to boot.... Do you know how to sing staves? About Alexei, the Man of God? I do take to that stave. Pick up your cup,--I’ll treat you to some of mine.”

Having taken the cup from the beggar’s hands, he held it up to the faint light of the evening glow and half-filled it. The beggar got up, made a low bow, drained the cup to the bottom, and again sat down. The _moujik_ dragged the beggar’s bag upon his knees, and, untying it, began to mutter:

“I sized you up at once ... I’ve got enough money of my own, brother; you’re no mate for me.... I go through my money in cold blood ... I drink it away ... I drink away a horse a year, and send a good ram up in smoke.... Aha! So you’ve run up against a bit of a _moujik_,--do you understand who I am? But still, I feel sorry for you. I understand! There’s thousands of the likes of you roaming about in springtime.... There’s mire, and sloughs, and never a path or a road,--but you’ve got to keep on going, bowing before everybody.... And you can’t never tell whether they’ll give you anything or no.... Eh, brother! Don’t I understand you?” asked the _moujik_ with bitter sorrow, and his eyes filled with tears.

“No, this time of the year is not so bad, it’s all right,” said the beggar quietly. “You walk along a field, over a big, abandoned tract that had once been planned for a road.... All alone, with never another soul nigh.... Then, too, there’s the dear sun, and the warm weather.... True, there’s many a thousand of the likes of me roaming about. Half of Russia is roaming so.”

“I’ve drunk away two horses,” said the _moujik_, raking the crusts out of the bag, pulling out a waist-coat, the calico, the trousers, and a bast shoe. “I’m goin’ to go all through all your miserable pickings, and old rags.... Hold on! Pants! I must buy them from you, soon as I come into a little money.... How much?”

The beggar thought for a while.

“Why, I’d let it go for two....”

“I’ll give you three!” said the _moujik_, getting up, placing the trousers under him, and sitting down upon them. “They’re mine! But where’s the other shoe? It will pass for new,--that means you must have stolen it, for sure. But then, it’s better to be thieving, than to be grieving your heart out in the springtime, the way I am a-doing now; to be perishing from hunger, to be coming to the end of your rope,--when you take the very least of the shepherds, and you’ll find him at work.... I have drunk a horse away,--but a beastie like that is worth more nor any man.... But am I no ploughman, no reaper? ... And now you sing a stave, or I’ll kill you right off!” he cried out. “I feel weary in your company!”

In a quavering, modest, but a practiced voice the beggar began to sing out of the obscurity:

“Once upon a time there lived and were two brethren--
Two blood-brethren, two brethren in God and Christ....”

“Eh, two brethren in God and Christ!” the _moujik_ chimed in, in a high-pitched and piteous tone, straining his voice.

The beggar, with even churchly chanting, continued:

“One dwelt in cold and poverty,
Rotting in his leprosy....”

“And the o-other was rich!” out of tune, drowning out the beggar, with tears in his voice, the _moujik_ caught up the song. “Put more heart in it!” he cried out, as his voice broke. “Grief has swallowed me up; all men are having a holiday, all men are sowing,--but here I be, biting the earth; it’s the second spring that my mother earth has been barren.... Let me have your cup, or I’ll kill you right off! Open the window for me!”

And again the beggar submissively gave him his cup. Then he started to open the window. Being new, it had swollen and would not yield for a long while. Finally it did yield, and flew open. A fresh, pleasant odour of the fields floated in. It was completely dark out there now, the roseate night glow had become extinguished, barely shimmering over the soft darkness of the quiet, joyous, fecundated field. One could hear the half-drowsy sky-larks finishing their very last songs.

“Sing, Lazarus,--sing, my own brother!” said the _moujik_, extending a full cup to the beggar. “We’re two of a kind, you and me.... Only what are you alongside of me? A vagabone! Whereas I am a working man, that gives food and drink to all those that suffer....”

He sat down suddenly, losing his balance, and again dug into the bag.

“And what might you have here?” he asked, examining the calico, which had turned the faintest pink in the barely perceptible light of the evening glow.

“Oh, that’s just so.... Some women gave it to me,” said the beggar quietly, feeling everything floating before him from tipsiness, and that it was time to be going, and that it was necessary to extricate the trousers from underneath the _moujik_ somehow.