Tales of the Wilderness Part 14

"Balmont, Blok, Brusov, Sologub..."

She interrupted him hastily--a slender little reed: "As a whole I know little of foreign writers ..."

In the town--neither in the high-school, the library, nor the newspapers--did they know of Balmont or Blok, but Olya loved to declaim by rote from Kozlov, and she spoke French.

The factory lived its dark, noisy, unwholesome life sunk in poverty beneath the surface, steeped in luxury above; the little town lived amid the fields, scared and pressed down by the factory, but still carrying on its own individual life.

Beyond it, on the side away from the factory, lay the pa.s.s called the Wolf's Ravine. On the right, close to the river, was a grove where couples walked. They never descended to the ravine, because it was so unpoetic, a treeless, shallow, dull, unterrifying spot. Yet it skirted the hills, dominated the surrounding country; and people lying flat in the channel at its summit could survey the locality for a mile round without being seen themselves.

Alexander Alexandrovitch was a married man. The shepherd lads tending their herds at pasture began to notice how every evening a man on a bicycle turned off the main road into the ravine, and how--soon after--a girl hurried past them following in his steps, like a reed blown in the wind. As befitted their kind, the shepherds cried out every abomination after her.

All the summer Olya had begged Agrenev to bring her books to read; she did not notice, however, that he had never once brought her any!

Then one evening, early in September, after a spell of rain which had prevented their meeting for some days, there happened that which was bound to happen--which happens to a maiden only once in her life.

They used always to meet at eight, but eight in September was not like eight in June. The rain was over, but a chill, desolating, autumnal wind remained. The sky was laden with heavy, leaden clouds; it was cold and wretched. That evening the cranes flew southward, gabbling in the sky. The gra.s.s in the ravine was yellow and withered.

There was sunshine there in the daytime, and Olya wore a white dress.

It was there the two of them, Agrenev and Olya, usually bade each other adieu.

But on that evening, Agrenev accompanied Olya to her home, and both were absorbed by the same thought--the aunt! Was she sitting by the window without a lamp waiting for her niece, or had she already lighted it in order to prepare the supper? Olya hoped desperately that her aunt would be in her usual place and the lamp unlit, so that she could slip by into her room unseen and secretly change her clothes.

Not only did Olya and Alexander Alexandrovitch walk arm-in-arm but they pressed close together, their heads bent the one to the other-- whispering ... only of the aunt. Olya could not think of the pain or the joy or the suffering--she was only thinking how she could pa.s.s her aunt unnoticed; Agrenev felt cold and sickened at the thought of a possible scandal.

They discovered there was a light at the aunt's window, and Olya began to tremble like a reed, whispering hoa.r.s.ely--almost crying:

"I won't go in! I won't go in!"

But all the same she did--a willow-reed blown in the wind. Agrenev arranged to meet her the next day in the factory office, so that he might hear whether the aunt had created a scene or not, although he did not admit that reason, even to himself.

In the ravine when Olya--after yielding all--wept and clung to his knees, Agrenev's heart had been pierced with pangs of remorse. In the pitchblack darkness overhead the wild-geese could be heard rustling their wings as they flew southward, scared by his cigarette--the tenth in succession.

"Southward, geese, southward!... But you shall go nowhere, slave, useless among the useless!" Then he remembered that slap in the face Nina Kallistratovna had given for her husband--n.o.body would give Olya Golovkina one for him! "Olya is a useless accidental burden," he thought.

Then Agrenev dismissed her from his mind; and, as he bicycled from Golovkinskaya Street through the whole length of the town, past the factory to the engineers' quarters--there was no need to hide now it was dark--he thought only of Olya's aunt: of how she was an old maid with nothing else in her life but her niece, and that Olya was hiding her tragedy from her; of how she spent the entire evenings sitting alone by the window in the dark--a.s.suredly not on Olya's account, but because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life!

What tragedy lay in those evenings by the window in the darkness!

Every morning the housemaid used to bring Alexander Alexandrovitch in his study a cup of lukewarm coffee on a tray. Then he went out to the factory--the rest of the household was still asleep. There he came into contact with the workmen, and saw their hopeless, wretched, impoverished lives; listened to Bitska's jests, and to the rumbling of the wagonettes--identified himself with the life of the factory, which dominated all like some fabulous brooding monster.

During the luncheon interval he went home, washed himself, and listened to his wife rattling spoons on the other side of the wall.

And this made up the entire substance of his life! Yes, it was certainly interesting how Nina Kallistratovna had entered that flat, swung back her hand--which hand had it been?--was it the one in which she held the attache-case or was that transferred to the other hand first?--and delivered the smack to Madame Chasovnikova. Then there was Olya, darling Olya Golovkina, from whom--as from them all--he desired nothing.

That night, when he reached home at last, his daughter came in and made him a curtsey, saying:

"Goodnight, daddy."

Alexander Alexandrovitch caught her in his arms, placed her on his knees--his beloved, his only little daughter.

"Well, little Asya, what have you been doing?" he asked.

"When you went out to Olya Golovkina Mummy and I played tig."

The next morning, when Olya came into the office for business as usual, she exclaimed joyfully:

"My aunt has not found out anything. She opened the door for me without lighting the lamp, and as she groped through the pa.s.sage I ran quickly past her. Then I changed my clothes and appeared at supper as though nothing had happened!"

A willow-reed blown by the wind!

In the office were many telephone calls and the rattling of counting- boards. Agrenev and Olya sat together and arranged when to meet again. She did not want to go to the Ravine because of the shepherd boys' rude remarks. Alexander Alexandrovitch did not tell her all was known at home. As she said goodby she clung to him like a reed in the wind and whispered:

"I have been awake all night. You have noticed surely that I have not called you by any name; I have no name for you."

And she begged him not to forget to bring her some books.

All that was known of the town was that it lay at the intersection of such and such a lat.i.tude and longitude. But articles on the factory were printed each year in the industrial magazines, and also occasionally in the newspapers, as when the workmen struck or were buried under a fall of limestone. The factory was run by a limited company. Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev made out the returns for his department; these were duly printed--not to be read, but so that beneath them might appear the signature: "A. A. Agrenev, Engineer."

Olya only kept a report-book and the name-rolls, placing in her reports so many marks opposite the pupil's names.

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Mammy rose in the morning just as usual during those interminable months. I was accustomed to calling Alexander Alexandrovitch's mother "mammy." She always wore a dark dress and carried a large white handkerchief which she continually raised to her lips. It was bright and cheerful in the dining-room. The tea-service stood on the table and the samovar was boiling. The room always made me feel that we were going away--into the country, for all the pictures had been taken down, and a mirror that had been casually hung on the walls was now shrouded in a linen sheet. I generally rise very early, say my prayers, and immediately look at the newspapers. Formerly I scarcely even thought of them and was quite indifferent to their contents; now I cannot even imagine life without them! By the time my morning cup of tea is brought, I have already read all the news of the world, and I tell it to Mammy, who cannot read the papers herself.

She has the room Alexander Alexandrovitch formerly occupied; she is tall, always dresses in black, and there is a certain severity about her general demeanour. This is quite natural. She invariably makes the sign of the Cross over me, kisses me on the forehead and lips, and then--as ever--turns quickly away, bringing her handkerchief to her lips. I know, though, what it is that distresses her--it is that Georgie is killed, and Alexander Alexandrovitch is still "Out there"

. . . and that I, Anna, alone am left to her of her family.

We are always silent at tea: we generally are at all times. She asks only a single question:

"What is in the newspapers?"

She always utters it in a hoa.r.s.e voice, and very excitedly and clumsily I tell her all I know. After breakfast I walk about outside the window looking at the old factory and awaiting the postman's arrival.

Thus I pa.s.s my days one by one, watching for the post, for the newspapers, enduring the mother's grief--and my own. And whenever I wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering from sh.e.l.l-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and wearing a white bandage. I offered him tea, but he would not take it; pushing aside the mug and gripping my hand he said:

"Do you know what war is? Don't laugh! bayonets ... do you understand?"--his voice rose in a shriek--"... into bayonets ... that is, to cut, to kill, to slaughter one another--men! They turned the machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and, losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer, he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way, and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!'

But you cannot understand.... Do not laugh!"

He told me this, now whispering, now shrieking. He told me that I could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those words express all the terror of war for me--Georgie's death, Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has brought: they express it with such force that my temples ache with an almost physical sense of anguish,

"Towny, bayonet me!" How simple, how superhuman!

I remember those words every day, especially when in the hall waiting for the post. Alexander writes seldom and his letters are very dry, merely telling me that he is well, that either there are no dangers or that they have pa.s.sed; he writes to us all at the same time, to mother, to Asya, and to me.

It was like that to-day. I was waiting for the postman. He came and brought several letters, one of them from Alexander. I did not open it at once, but waited for Mother.

This is what he wrote:

"Darling Anna,