Through Russia Part 46

And the last, and also the best, recollection of things seen before the night of which I speak was the recollection of an occasion when, one late autumn, I had been crossing the Caspian Sea on an old two-masted schooner laden with dried apricots, plums, and peaches. Sailing on her also she had had some hundred fishermen from the Bozhi Factory, men who, originally forest peasants of the Upper Volga, had been well-built, bearded, healthy, goodhumoured, animal-spirited young fellows, youngsters tanned with the wind, and salted with the sea water; youngsters who, after working hard at their trade, had been rejoicing at the prospect of returning home. And careering about the deck like youthful bears as ever and anon lofty, sharp-pointed waves had seized and tossed aloft the schooner, and the yards had cracked, and the taut-run rigging had whistled, and the sails had bellied into globes, and the howling wind had shaved off the white crests of billows, and partially submerged the vessel in clouds of foam.

And seated on the deck with his broad back resting against the mainmast there had been one young giant in particular. Clad in a white linen shirt and a pair of blue serge trousers, and innocent alike of beard and moustache, this young fellow had had full, red lips, blue, boyish, and exceedingly translucent eyes, and a face intoxicated in excelsis with the happiness of youth; while leaning across his knees as they had rested sprawling over the deck there had been a young female trimmer of fish, a wench as ma.s.sive and tall as the young man himself, and a wench whose face had become tanned to roughness with the sun and wind, eyebrows dark, full, and as large as the wings of a swallow, b.r.e.a.s.t.s as firm as stone, and teats around which, as they projected from the folds of a red bodice, there had lain a pattern of blue veins.

The broad, iron-black palm of the young fellow's long, knotted hand had been resting on the woman's left breast, with the arm bare to the elbow; while in his right hand, as he had sat gazing pensively at the woman's robust figure, there had been grasped a tin mug from which some of the red liquor had scattered stains over the front of his linen shirt.

Meanwhile, around the pair there had been hovering some of the youngster's comrades, who, with coats b.u.t.toned to the throat, and caps gripped to prevent their being blown away by the wind, had employed themselves with scanning the woman's figure with envious eyes, and viewing her from either side. Nay, the s.h.a.ggy green waves themselves had been stealing occasional glimpses at the picture as clouds had swirled across the sky, gulls had uttered their insatiable scream, and the sun, dancing on the foam-flecked waters, had vested the billows, now in tints of blue, now in natural tints as of flaming jewels.

In short, all the pa.s.sengers on the schooner had been shouting and laughing and singing, while the great bearded peasants had also been paying a.s.siduous court to a large leathern bottle which had lain ensconced on a heap of peach-sacks, with the result that the scene had come to have about it something of the antique, legendary air of the return of Stepan Razin from his Persian campaign.

At length the buffeting of the wind had caused an old man with a crooked nose set on a hairy, faun-like face to stumble over one of the woman's feet; whereupon he had halted, thrown up his head with nonsenile vigour, and exclaimed:

"May the devil fly away with you, you shameless hussy! Why lie sprawling about the deck like this? See, too, how exposed you are!"

The woman had not stirred at the words--she had not even opened an eye; only over her lips there had pa.s.sed a faint tremor. Whereas the young fellow had straightened himself, deposited his tin mug upon the deck, and cried loudly as he laid his disengaged hand upon the woman's breast.

"Ah, you envy me, do you, Yakim Petrov? Never mind, though you have done no great harm. But run no risks; do not look for needless trouble, for your day for sucking sugarplums is past."

Whereafter, raising both his hands, the young fellow had softly let them sink again upon the woman's bosom as he added triumphantly:

"These b.r.e.a.s.t.s could feed all Russia!"

Then, and only then, had the woman smiled a long, slow smile. And as she had done so everything in the vicinity had seemed to smile in unison, and to rise and fall in harmony with her bosom--yes, the whole vessel, and the vessel's freight. And at the moment when a particularly large wave had struck the bulwarks, and besprinkled all on board with spray, the woman had opened her dark eyes, looked kindly at the old man, and at the young fellow, and at the scene in general--then set herself to recover her bosom.

"Nay," the young fellow had cried as he interposed to remove her hands.

"There is no need for that, there is no need for that. Let them ALL look."

Such the memories that came back to my recollection that night. Gladly I would have recounted them to my companions, but, unfortunately, these had, by now, succ.u.mbed to slumber. The ex-soldier, resting in a sitting posture, and snoring loudly, had his back prised against his wallet, his head sloped sideways, and his hands clasped upon his knees, while Vasili was lying on his back with his face turned upwards, his hands clasped behind his head, his dark, finely moulded brows raised a little, and his moustache erect. Also, he was weeping in his sleep--tears were coursing down his brown, sunburnt cheeks; tears which, in the moonlight, had in them something of the greenish tint of a chrysolite or sea water, and which, on such a manly face, looked strange indeed!

Still the rivulet was purling as it flowed, and the fire crackling; while bathed in the red glow of the flames there was sitting, bent forward, the dark, stonelike figure of the Molokans' watchman, with the axe at his feet reflecting the radiant gleam of the moon in the sky above us.

All the earth seemed to be sleeping as ever the waning stars seemed to draw nearer and nearer....

The slow length of the next day was dragged along amid an inertia born of the moist heat, the song of the river, and the intoxicating scents of forest and flowers. In short, one felt inclined to do nothing, from morn till night, save roam the defile without the exchanging of a word, the conceiving of a desire, or the formulating of a thought.

At sunset, when we were engaged in drinking tea by the fire, the ex-soldier remarked:

"I hope that life in the next world will exactly resemble life in this spot, and be just as quiet and peaceful and immune from work. Here one needs but to sit and melt like b.u.t.ter and suffer neither from wrong nor anxiety."

Then, as carefully he withdrew his pipe from his lips, and sighed, he added:

"Aye! If I could but feel sure that life in the next world will be like life here, I would pray to G.o.d: 'For Christ's sake take my soul at the earliest conceivable moment.'"

"What might suit YOU would not suit ME," Vasili thoughtfully observed.

"I would not always live such a life as this. I might do so for a time, but not in perpetuity."

"Ah, but never have you worked hard," grunted the ex-soldier.

In every way the evening resembled the previous one; there were to be observed the same luscious flooding of the defile with dove-coloured mist, the same flashing of the silver crags in the roseate twilight, the same rocking of the dense, warm forest's soft, leafy tree-tops, the same softening of the rocks' outlines in the gloom, the same gradual uplift of shadows, the same chanting of the "matchmaking" river, the same routine on the part of the big, sleek carpenters around the barraque--a routine as slow and ponderous in its course as the movements of a drove of wild boars.

More than once during the off hours of the day had we sought to make the carpenters' acquaintance, to start a conversation with them, but always their answers had been given reluctantly, in monosyllables, and never had a discussion seemed likely to get under way without the whiteheaded foreman shouting to the particular member of the gang concerned: "Hi, you, Pavlushka! Get back to work, there!" Indeed, he, the foreman, had outdone all in his manifestations of dislike for our friendship, and as monotonously as though he had been minded to rival the rivulet as a songster, he had hummed his pious ditties, or else raised his snuffling voice to sing them with an ever-importunate measure of insistence, so that all day long those ditties had been coursing their way in a murky, melancholy-compelling flood. Indeed, as the foreman had stepped cautiously on thin legs from stone to stone during his ceaseless inspection of the work of his men, he had come to seem to have for his object the describing of an invisible, circular path, as a means of segregating us more securely than ever from the society of the carpenters.

Personally, however, I had no desire to converse with him, for his frozen eyes chilled and repelled me and from the moment when I had approached him, and seen him fold his hands behind him, and recoil a step as he inquired with suppressed sternness, "What do you want?"

there had fallen away from me all further ambition to learn the nature of the songs which he sang.

The ex-soldier gazed at him resentfully, then said with an oath:

"The old wizard and pilferer! Take my word for it that a lump of piety like that has got a pretty store put away somewhere."

Whereafter, as he lit his pipe and squinted in the direction of the carpenters, he added with stifled wrath:

"The airs that the 'elect' give themselves--the sons of b.i.t.c.hes!"

"It is always so," commented Vasili with a resentment equal to the last speaker's. "Yes, no sooner, with us, does a man acc.u.mulate a little money than he sticks his nose in the air, and falls to thinking himself a real barin."

"Why is it that you always say 'With us,' and 'Among us,' and so on?"

"Among us Russians, then, if you like it better."

"I do like it better. For you are not a German, are you, nor a Tartar?"

"No. It is merely that I can see the faults in our Russian folk."

Upon that (not for the first time) the pair plunged into a discussion which had come so to weary them that now they spoke only indifferently, without effort.

"The word 'faults' is, I consider, an insult," began the ex-soldier as he puffed at his pipe. "Besides, you don't speak consistently. Only this moment I observed a change in your terms."

"To what?"

"To the term 'Russians.'"

"What should you prefer?"

A new sound floated into the defile as from some point on the steppe the sound of a bell summoning folk to the usual Sat.u.r.day vigil service.

Removing his pipe from his mouth, the ex-soldier listened for a moment or two. Then, at the third and last stroke of the bell, he doffed his cap, crossed himself with punctilious piety, and said:

"There are not very many churches in these parts."

Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added venomously:

"Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!"

Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it again, regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his head.

"The trouble with me," he remarked in an undertone, "is that I can never remain very long in one place--always I keep fancying that I shall meet with better things elsewhere, always I keep hearing a bird singing in my heart, 'Do you go further, do you go further.'"

"That bird sings in the heart of EVERY man," the ex-soldier growled sulkily.