Through Russia Part 35

While in answer to the bell's summons, the oxen low a deep echo.

The wind has fallen, but reddish clouds still are gliding over the hamlet, and the mountain peaks blushing until they seem, thawing, to be sending streams of golden, liquid fire on to the steppes, where, as though cast in stone, a stork, standing on one leg, is listening, seemingly, to the rustling of the heat-exhausted herbage.

In the forecourt of the Ataman's hut we are deprived of our pa.s.sports, while two of our number, found to be without such doc.u.ments, are led away to a night's lodging in a dark storehouse in a corner of the premises. Everything is executed quietly enough, and without the least fuss, purely as a matter of routine; yet Konev mutters, as dejectedly he contemplates the darkening sky:

"What a surprising thing, to be sure!"

"What is?"

"A pa.s.sport. Surely a decent, peaceable man ought to be able to travel WITHOUT a pa.s.sport? So long as he be harmless, let him--"

"You are not harmless," with angry emphasis the woman from Riazan interposes.

Konev closes his eyes with a smile, and says nothing more.

Almost until the vigil service is over are we kept kicking our heels about that forecourt, like sheep in a slaughter-house. Then Konev, myself, the two women, and the fat-faced young fellow are led away towards the outskirts of the village, and allotted an empty hut with broken-down walls and a cracked window.

"No going out will be permitted," says the Cossack who has conducted us thither. "Else you will be arrested."

"Then give us a morsel of bread," Konev says with a stammer. "Have you done any work here?" the Cossack inquires.

"Yes--a little."

"For me?"

"No. It did not so happen."

"When it does so happen I will give you some bread."

And like a water-b.u.t.t the fat kindly-looking man goes rolling out of the yard.

"What else was to be expected?" grumbles Konev with his eyebrows elevated to the middle of his forehead. "The folk hereabouts are knaves. Ah, well!"

As for the women, they withdraw to the darkest corner of the hut, and lie down, while the young fellow disappears after probing the walls and floor, and returns with an armful of straw which he strews upon the hard, beaten clay. Then he stretches himself thereon with hands clasped behind his battered head.

"See the resourcefulness of that fellow from Penza!" comments Konev enviously. "Hi, you women! There is, it would seem, some straw about."

To this comes from the women's corner the acid reply:

"Then go and fetch some."

"For you?"

"Yes, for us."

"Then I must, I suppose."

Nevertheless Konev merely remains sitting on the windowsill, and discoursing on the subject of certain needy folk who do but desire to go and say their prayers in church, yet are banded into barns.

"Yes, and though you may say that folk, the world over, have a soul in common, I tell you that this is not so--that, on the contrary, we Russian strangers find it a hard matter here to get looked upon as respectable."

With which he slips out quietly into the street, and disappears from view.

The young fellow's sleep is restless--he keeps tossing about, with his fat arms and legs sprawling over the floor, and grunting, and snoring.

Under him the straw makes a crackling sound, while the two women whisper together in the darkness, and the reeds of the dry thatch on the roof rustle (the wind is still drawing an occasional breath), and ever and anon a twig brushes against an outside wall. The scene is like a scene in a dream.

Out of doors the myriad tongues of the pitch-black, starless night seem to be debating something in soft, sad, pitiful tones which ever keep growing fainter; until, when the hour of ten has been struck on the watchman's gong, and the metal ceases to vibrate, the world grows quieter still, much as though all living things, alarmed by the clang in the night, have concealed themselves in the invisible earth or the equally invisible heavens.

I seat myself by the window, and watch how the earth keeps exhaling darkness, and the darkness enveloping, drowning the grey, blurred huts in black, tepid vapour, though the church remains invisible--evidently something stands interposed between it and my viewpoint. And it seems to me that the wind, the seraph of many pinions which has spent three days in harrying the land, must now have whirled the earth into a blackness, a denseness, in which, exhausted, and panting, and scarcely moving, it is helplessly striving to remain within the encompa.s.sing, all-pervading obscurity where, helpless and weary in like degree, the wind has sloughed its thousands of wing-feathers--feathers white and blue and golden of tint, but also broken, and smeared with dust and blood.

And as I think of our petty, grievous human life, as of a drunkard's tune on a sorry musical instrument, or as of a beautiful song spoilt by a witless, voiceless singer, there begins to wail in my soul an insatiable longing to breathe forth words of sympathy with all mankind, words of burning love for all the world, words of appreciation of, for example, the sun's beauty as, enfolding the earth in his beams, and caressing and fertilising her, he bears her through the expanses of blue. Yes, I yearn to recite to my fellow-men words which shall raise their heads. And at length I find myself compounding the following jejune lines:

To our land we all are born In happiness to dwell.

The sun has bred us to this land Its fairness to excel.

In the temple of the sun We high priests are, divine.

Then each of us should claim his life, And cry, "This life is mine!"

Meanwhile from the women's corner there comes a soft, intermittent whispering; and as it continues to filter through the darkness, I strain my ears until I succeed in catching a few of the words uttered, and can distinguish at least the voices of the whisperers.

The woman from Riazan mutters firmly, and with a.s.surance:

"Never ought you to show that it hurts you."

And with a sniff, in a tone of dubious acquiescence, her companion replies:

"Ye-es-so long as one can bear it."

"Ah, but never mind. PRETEND. That is to say, when he beats you, make light of it, and treat it as a joke."

"But what if he beats me very much indeed?"

"Continue still to make light of it, still to smile at him kindly."

"Well, YOU can never have been beaten, for you do not seem to know what it is like."

"Oh, but I have, my dear--I do know what it is like, for my experience of it has been large. Do not be afraid, however. HE won't beat you."

A dog yelps, pauses a moment to listen, and then barks more angrily than ever. Upon that other dogs reply, and for a moment or two I am annoyed to find that I cannot overhear the women's conversation. In time, however, the dogs cease their uproar, for want of breath, and the suppressed dialogue filters once more to my ears.

"Never forget, my dear, that a muzhik's life is a hard one. Yes, for us plain folk life is hard. Hence, one ought to make nothing of things, and let them come easy to one."

"Mother of G.o.d!"

"And particularly should a woman so face things; for upon her everything depends. For one thing, let her take to herself, in place of her mother, a husband or a sweetheart. Yes, try that, and see. And though, at first, your husband may find fault with you, he will afterwards take to boasting to other muzhiks that he has a wife who can do everything, and remain ever as bright and loving as the month of May. Never does she give in; never WOULD she give in--no, not if you were to cut off her head!"

"Indeed?"