Through Russia Part 43

"Things must have been indeed terrible on that expedition!" I interposed.

"I do not know for certain, since, though men who took an actual part in the expedition's engagements have said that they were so (the Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself know but little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the reserve, and never once did my company advance to the a.s.sault. No, it merely lay about on the sand, and fired at long range. In fact, nothing but sand was to be seen thereabouts; nor did we ever succeed in finding out what the fighting was for. True, if a piece of country be good, it is in our interest to take it; but in the present case the country was poor and bare, with never a river in sight, and a climate so hot that all one thought of was one's mortal need of a drink. In fact, some of our fellows died of thirst outright. Moreover, in those parts there grows a sort of millet called dzhugar--millet which not only has a horrible taste, but proves absolutely delusive, since the more one eats of it, the less one feels filled."

As the ex-soldier told me the tale colourlessly and reluctantly, with frequent pauses between the sentences (as though either he found it difficult to recall the experience or he were thinking of something else), he never once looked me straight in the face, but kept his eyes shamefacedly fixed upon the ground.

Unwieldily and unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of captious inertia.

"Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country" he continued as he glanced around him. "It is fit only to do nothing in. For that matter, one doesn't WANT to do anything in it, save to live with one's eyes bulging like a drunkard's--for the climate is too hot, and the place smells like a chemist's shop or a hospital."

Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this "too hot" country, as though fascinated!

"Why not return to Riazan?" I suggested.

"Nothing would there be there for me to do," he replied through his teeth, and with an odd division of his words.

My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at Armavir, where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been stamping like a horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or, rather, snarling, at a couple of Greeks:

"I'll tear the flesh from your bones!"

Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar denizens of h.e.l.las had been baring their sharp white teeth at intervals, and saying apologetically:

"What has angered you, sir?"

Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat his breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased venom:

"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good foster-mother. I expect you say the same."

And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled gendarme, and complained to him:

"Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live with us--Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get their livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they continue to curse us. A scandal, is it not?"

The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore a Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock, rounded features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse lip. When the volatile young engineering student first brought him to us and said, "Here is another man for you," the newcomer glanced at me through the lashes of his elusive eyes--then plunged his hands into the pockets of his Turkish overalls. Just as we were departing, however, he withdrew one hand from the left trouser pocket, pa.s.sed it slowly over the dark bristles of his unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:

"Do you come from Russia?"

"Whence else, I should like to know?" snapped the ex-soldier gruffly.

Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then replaced his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, st.u.r.dy, and well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his supercilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and even actively to dislike, the man.

Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side of the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards the sportively coursing water:

"Look at the matchmaker!"

The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around him for a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:

"The fool!"

But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed resemble some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange affaires du coeur both for her own private amus.e.m.e.nt and for the purpose of enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection amid which she was living, and of which she would never grow weary, and to which she desired to introduce the rest of the world as speedily as possible.

Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the Cossack face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains and the sky, and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant, comprehensive exclamation of "Slavno!" [How splendid!]

The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his knapsack, straightened himself, and asked with his arms set akimbo:

"WHAT is it that is so splendid?"

For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of his questioner--a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen hangs upon a stone. Then he said with a smile:

"Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that cleft in the mountain--are they not good to look at?"

And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a repeated whisper of:

"The fool!"

To which presently he added in a louder, as well as a mysterious, tone:

"I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients. .h.i.ther for their health."

The same evening saw two st.u.r.dy women arrive with supper for the carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore the rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet became the more distinct.

Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to work to collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting a fire. After which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he said to me suggestively:

"You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the nights are dark and chilly."

I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around the barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who was lying with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his hand, as he conned a ma.n.u.script spread out before him. As he raised his eyes to gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw that one of his eyes was larger than the other.

Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so taken aback by this was I, that I pa.s.sed on my way without speaking.

Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the barraque (a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.

Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile. Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the twilight caused the slopes of the mountains to soften in outline, and the rocks to seem to swell and merge with the bluish-blackness which overhung the bed of the defile, and the superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole, and the scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into, one compact bulk.

Quietly then did tints. .h.i.therto red extinguish their tremulous glow--softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen, the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to red, and, seemingly, a.s.suaged its vehemence--flowed with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of our wood fire.

The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and rearranged some fuel under the kettle.

"Where is the other man?" said he. "Go and fetch him."

I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the carpenters in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick, unctuous, sing-song voice.

"A great work is it indeed!"

Whereafter I heard the two women fall to drawling in low, hungry accents:

"With the flesh I'll conquer pain; The spirit shall my l.u.s.t restrain; All-supreme the soul shall reign; And carnal vices lure in vain."