Through Russia Part 45

"Then is not that possible in Russia?"

"Well, why are you yourself here?"

"Because I am a man lacking ties."

"And why are you lacking ties?"

"Because it has been so ordered--it is, so to speak, my lot."

"Then had you not better consider WHY it is your lot?"

The ex-soldier took his pipe from his mouth, let fall the hand which held it, and smoothed his plain features in silent amazement. Then he exclaimed in uncouth, querulous tones:

"Had I not better consider WHY it is my lot, and so forth? Why, d.a.m.n it, the causes are many. For one thing, if one has neighbours who neither live nor see things as oneself does, but are uncongenial, what does one do? One just leaves them, and clears out--more especially if one be neither a priest nor a magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better consider why this is my lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man able to consider things, possessed of a brain?"

And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor's features as the firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an undertone:

"Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours, yet lack a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us, just fall to wandering, troubling other folk, and earning dislike!"

"The dislike of whom?" gruffly queried the ex-soldier.

"The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!"

In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili's voice had in it an agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while enunciating its words roundly and distinctly.

A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have the crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a mouse, made the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of this species I once encountered among the defile's crags, and as the creature sailed over my head it startled me with the gla.s.sy eyes which, as round as b.u.t.tons, seemed to be lit from within with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment or two I stood half-stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive what the creature was.

"Whence did you get that splendid pipe?" next asked Vasili as he rolled himself a cigarette. "Surely it is a pipe of old German make?"

"You need not fear that I stole it," the ex-soldier responded as he removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. "It was given me by a woman."

To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.

"Tell me how it happened," said Vasili softly. Then he flung up his arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:

"Ah, these nights here! Never again may G.o.d send me such bad ones! Try to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier, indeed, is it to sleep during the daytime, provided that one can find a shady spot.

During such nights I go almost mad with thinking, and my heart swells and murmurs."

The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows raised even higher than usual, responded to this:

"It is the same with me. If one could only--What did you say?"

This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, "The same with me also," but on seeing the pair exchanging a strange glance (as though involuntarily they had surprised one another), had left the words unspoken. My companions then set themselves to a mutually eager questioning with respect to their respective ident.i.ties, past experiences, places of origin, and destinations, even as though they had been two kinsmen who, meeting unexpectedly, had discovered for the first time their bond of relationship.

Meanwhile the black, fringed boughs of the pine trees hung stretched over the flames of the Molokans' fire as though they would catch some of the fire's glow and warmth, or seize it altogether, and put it out.

And when, at times, their red tongues projected beyond the corner of the barraque, they made the building look as though it had caught alight, and extended their glow even to the rivulet. Constantly the night was growing denser and more stifling; constantly it seemed to embrace the body more and more caressingly, until one bathed in it as in an ocean. Also, much as a wave removes dirt from the skin, so the softly vocal darkness seemed to refresh and cleanse the soul. For it is on such nights as that that the soul dons its finest raiment, and trembles like a bride at the expectation of something glorious.

"You say that she had a squint?" presently I heard Vasili continue in an undertone, and the ex-soldier slowly reply:

"Yes, she had one from childhood upwards--she had one from the day when a fall from a cart caused her to injure her eyes. Yet, if she had not always gone about with one of her eyes shaded, you would never have guessed the fact. Also, she was so neat and practical! And her kindness--well, it was kindness as inexhaustible as the water of that rivulet there; it was kindness of the sort that wished well to all the world, and to all animals, and to every beggar, and even to myself! So at last there gripped my heart the thought, 'Why should I not try a soldier's luck? She is the master's favourite--true; yet none the less the attempt shall be made by me.' However, this way or that, always the reply was 'No'; always she put out at me an elbow, and cut me short."

Vasili, lying p.r.o.ne upon his back, twitched his moustache, and chewed a stalk of gra.s.s. His eyes were fully open, and for the second time I perceived that one of them was larger than the other. The ex-soldier, seated near Vasili's shoulder, stirred the fire with a bit of charred stick, and sent sparks of gold flying to join the midges which were gliding to and fro over the blaze. Ever and anon night-moths subsided into the flames with a plop, crackled, and became changed into lumps of black. For my own part, I constructed a couch on a pile of pine boughs, and there lay down. And as I listened to the ex-soldier's familiar story, I recalled persons whom I had on one and another occasion remembered, and speeches which on one and another occasion had made an impression upon me.

"But at last," the ex-soldier continued, "I took heart of grace, and caught her in a barn. Pressing her into a corner, I said: 'Now let it be yes or no. Of, course it shall be as you wish, but remember that I am a soldier with a small stock of patience.' Upon that she began to struggle and exclaim: 'What do you want? What do you want?' until, bursting into tears like a girl, she said through her sobs: 'Do not touch me. I am not the sort of woman for you. Besides, I love another--not our master, but another, a workman, a former lodger of ours. Before he departed he said to me: "Wait for me until I have found you a nice home, and returned to fetch you"; and though it is seventeen years since I heard speech or whisper of him, and maybe he has since forgotten me, or fallen in love with someone else, or come to grief, or been murdered, you, who are a map, will understand that I must bide a little while longer.' True, this offended me (for in what respect was I any worse than the other man?); yet also I felt sorry for her, and grieved that I should have wronged her by thinking her frivolous, when all the time there had been THIS at her heart. I drew back, therefore--I could not lay a finger upon her, though she was in my power. And at last I said: 'Good-bye! I am going away.' 'Go,' she replied. 'Yes, go for the love of Christ!'... Wherefore, on the following evening I settled accounts with our master, and at dawn of a Sunday morning packed my wallet, took with me this pipe, and departed.

'Yes, take the pipe, Paul Ivanovitch,' she said before my departure.

'Perhaps it will serve to keep you in remembrance of me--you whom henceforth I shall regard as a brother, and whom I thank.'... As I walked away I was very nigh to tears, so keen was the pain in my heart.

Aye, keen it was indeed!"

"You did right," Vasili remarked softly after a pause.

"Things must always so befall. Always must it be a case either of 'Yes?' 'Yes,' and of folk coming together, or of 'No' 'No,' and of folk parting. And invariably the one person in the case grieves the other.

Why should that be?"

Emitting a cloud of grey smoke, the ex-soldier replied thoughtfully:

"Yes, I know I did right; but that right was done only at a great cost."

"And always that too is the case," Vasili agreed. Then he added:

"Generally such fortune falls to the lot of people who have tender consciences. He who values himself also values his fellows; but, unfortunately a man all too seldom values even himself."

"To whom are you referring? To you and myself?"

"To our Russian folk in general."

"Then you cannot have very much respect for Russia." The ex-soldier's tone had taken on a curious note. He seemed to be feeling both astonished at and grieved for his companion.

The other, however, did not reply; and after a few moments the ex-soldier softly concluded:

"So now you have heard my story."

By this time the carpenters had ceased singing around the barraque, and let their fire die down until quivering on the wall of the edifice there was only a fiery-red patch, a patch barely sufficient to render visible the shadows of the rocks; while beside the fire there was seated only a tall figure with a black beard which had, grasped in its hands, a heavy cudgel, and, lying near its right foot, an axe. The figure was that of a watchman set by the carpenters to keep an eye upon ourselves, the appointed watchmen; though the fact in no way offended us.

Over the defile, in a ragged strip of sky, there were gleaming stars, while the rivulet was bubbling and purling, and from the obscurity of the forest there kept coming to our ears, now the cautious, rustling tread of some night animal, and now the mournful cry of an owl, until all nature seemed to be instinct with a secret vitality the sweet breath of which kept moving the heart to hunger insatiably for the beautiful.

Also, as I lay listening to the voice of the ex-soldier, a voice reminiscent of a distant tambourine, and to Vasili's pensive questions, I conceived a liking for the men, and began to detect that in their relations there was dawning something good and human. At the same time, the effect of some of Vasili's dicta on Russia was to arouse in me mingled feelings which impelled me at once to argue with him and to induce him to speak at greater length, with more clarity, on the subject of our mutual fatherland. Hence always I have loved that night for the visions which it brought to me--visions which still come back to me like a dear, familiar tale.

I thought of a student of Kazan whom I had known in the days of the past, of a young fellow from Viatka who, pale-browed, and sententious of diction, might almost have been brother to the ex-soldier himself.

And once again I heard him declare that "before all things must I learn whether or not there exists a G.o.d; pre-eminently must I make a beginning there."

And I thought, too, of a certain accoucheuse named Velikova who had been a comely, but reputedly gay, woman. And I remembered a certain occasion when, on a hill overlooking the river Kazan and the Arski Plain, she had stood contemplating the marshes below, and the far blue line of the Volga; until suddenly turning pale, she had, with tears of joy sparkling in her fine eyes, cried under her breath, but sufficiently loudly for all present to hear her:

"Ah, friends, how gracious and how fair is this land of ours! Come, let us salute that land for having deemed us worthy of residence therein!"

Whereupon all present, including a deacon-student from the Ecclesiastical School, a Morduine from the Foreign College, a student of veterinary science, and two of our tutors, had done obeisance. At the same time I recalled the fact that subsequently one of the party had gone mad, and committed suicide.

Again, I recalled how once, on the Piani Bor [Liquor Wharf] by the river Kama, a tall, sandy young fellow with intelligent eyes and the face of a ne'er-do-well had caught my attention. The day had been a hot, languorous Sunday on which all things had seemed to be exhibiting their better side, and telling the sun that it was not in vain that he was pouring out his brilliant potency, and diffusing his living gold; while the man of whom I speak had, dressed in a new suit of blue serge, a new cap c.o.c.ked awry, and a pair of brilliantly polished boots, been standing at the edge of the wharf, and gazing at the brown waters of the Kama, the emerald expanse beyond them and the silver-scaled pools left behind by the tide. Until, as the sun had begun to sink towards the marshes on the other side of the river, and to become dissolved into streaks, the man had smiled with increasing rapture, and his face had glowed with creasing eagerness and delight; until finally he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap from his head, flung it, with a powerful throw far out into the russet waters, and shouted: "Kama, O my mother, I love you, and never will desert you!"