A Woman / Maxim Gorky

The wind is scudding over the steppe, and beating upon the

rampart of the Caucasian heights until their backbone seems to be

bellying like a huge sail, and the earth to be whirling and

whizzing through unfathomable depths of blue, and leaving behind

it a rack of wind-torn clouds which, as their shadows glide over

the surface of the land, seem ever to be striving to keep in

touch with the onrush of the gale, and, failing to maintain the

effort, dissolving in tears and despondency.

The trees too are bending in the attitude of flight--their boughs

are brandishing their foliage as a dog worries a fleece, and

littering the black soil with leaves among which runs a constant

querulous hissing and rustling. Also, storks are uttering their

snapping cry, sleek rooks cawing, steppe grasshoppers maintaining

their tireless chirp, sturdy, well-grown husbandmen uttering

shouts like words of command, the threshing-floors of the

rolling steppe diffusing a rain of golden chaff, and eddying

whirlwinds catching up stray poultry feathers, dried-onion

strips, and leaves yellowed with the heat, to send them dancing

again over the trim square of the little Cossack hamlet.

Similarly does the sun keep appearing and disappearing as though

he were pursuing the fugitive earth, and ever and anon halting

through weariness before his decline into the dark, shadowy vista

where the snowclad peaks of the western mountains are rearing

their heads, and fast-reddening clouds are reminding one of the

surface of a ploughed field.

At times those clouds part their bulk to reveal in blinding

splendour the silvery saddle of Mount Elburz, and the crystal

fangs of other peaks--all, apparently, striving to catch and

detain the scudding vapours. And to such a point does one come to

realise the earth's flight through space that one can scarcely

draw one's breath for the tension, the rapture, of the thought

that with the rush of that dear and beautiful earth oneself is

keeping pace towards, and ever tending towards, the region where,

behind the eternal, snow-clad peaks, there lies a boundless ocean

of blue--an ocean beside which there may lie stretched yet other

proud and marvellous lands, a void of azure amid which one may

come to descry far-distant, many-tinted spheres of planets as yet

unknown, but sisters, all, to this earth of ours.

Meanwhile from the steppe slow, ponderous grey oxen with sharp

horns are drawing an endless succession of wagon-loads of

threshed grain through rich, black, sootlike dust. Patiently the

beasts' round eyes regard the earth, while on the top of each

load there lolls a Cossack who, with face sunburnt to the last

pitch of swarthiness, and eyes reddened with exposure to the

wind, and beard matted, seemingly solidified, with dust and

sweat, is clad in a shirt drab with grime, and has a shaggy

Persian cap thrust to the back of his head. Occasionally, also,

he may he seen riding on the pole in front of his team, and being

buffeted from behind by the wind which inflates his shirt. And as

sleek and comfortable as the carcasses of the bullocks are these

Cossacks' frames in proportion their eyes are sluggishly

intelligent, and in their every movement is the deliberate air of

men who know precisely what they have to do.

"Tsob, tsobe!" such fellows shout to their teams. This year

they are reaping a splendid harvest.

Yet though these folk, one and all, look fat and prosperous,

their mien is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their

teeth. Possibly this is because they are over-weary with toil.

However that may be, the full-fed country people of the region

laugh but little, and seldom sing.

In the centre of the hamlet soars the red brick church of the

place--an edifice which, with its five pinnacles, its belfry over

its porch, and its yellow plaster window-mouldings, looks like an

edifice that has been fashioned of meat, and cemented with

grease. Nay, its very shadow seems so richly heavy as to be the

shadow of a fane erected by men endowed with a plethora of this

world's goods to a god otiose in his grandeur. Ranged around the

building in ring fashion, the hamlet's squat white huts stand

girdled with belts of plaited wattle, shawled in the gorgeous

silken scarves of gardens, and crowned with a flowered

brocadework of reed-thatched roofs. In fact, they resemble a bevy

of buxom babi, [Peasant women] as over and about them wave

silver poplar trees, with quivering, lacelike leaves of acacias,

and dark-leaved chestnuts (the leaves of the latter like the

palms of human hands) which rock to and fro as though they would

fain seize, and detain the driving clouds. Also, from court to

court scurry Cossack women who, with skirt-tails tucked up to

reveal muscular legs bare to the knee, are preparing to array

themselves for the morrow's festival, and, meanwhile, chattering

to one another, or shouting to plump infants which may be seen

bathing in the dust like sparrows, or picking up handfuls of

sand, and tossing them into the air.

Sheltered from the wind by the churchyard wall, there may be seen

also, as they sprawl on the dry, faded herbage, a score of "

strollers for work "that is to say, of folk who, a community

apart, consist of "nowhere people," of dreamers who live

constantly in expectation of some stroke of luck, some kindly

smile from fortune, and of wastrels who, intoxicated with the

abundant bounty of the opulent region, have fallen passive

victims to the Russian craze for vagrancy. These folk tramp from

hamlet to hamlet in parties of two or three, and, while

purporting to seek employment, merely contemplate that employment

lethargically, express astonishment at the plenitude which it

produces, and then decline to put their hands to toil save when

dire necessity renders it no longer possible to satisfy hunger's

pangs through the expedients of mendicancy and theft. Dull, or

cowed, or timid, or furtive of eye, these folk have lost all

sense of the difference between that which constitutes honesty

and that which does not.

The morrow being the Feast of the Assumption, these people have,

in the present instance, gathered from every quarter of the

country, for the reason that they hope to be provided with food

and drink without first being made to earn their entertainment.

For the most part they are Russians from the central provinces,

vagabonds whose faces are blackened, and heads blanched with the

unaccustomed sunshine of the South, but whose bodies are clad

merely in rags tossed and tumbled by the wind. True, the wearers

of those rags declare themselves to be peaceful, respectable

citizens whom toil and life's buffetings have exhausted, and

compelled to seek temporary rest and prayer; yet never does a

creaking, groaning, ponderous grain wagon, with its Cossack

driver, pass them by without their according the latter a humble,

obsequious salute as, with straw in mouth, and omitting, always,

to raise his cap, the man glances at them askance and with

contempt, or, more frequently, does not even descry these

tattered, grimy hulks between whom and himself there is

absolutely nothing in common.

Lower even, and more noticeably, more pretentiously, than the

rest does a certain " needy " native of Tula named Konev salute

each Cossack. A hardbitten muzhik as sunburnt as a stick of

ergot, he has a black beard distributed irregularly over a lean

face, a fawning smile, and eyes deep-sunken in their sockets.

Most of these persons I have met for the first time today; but

Konev is an old acquaintance of mine, for he and I have more than

once encountered one another on the road between Kursk and the

province of Ter. An "artelni," that is to say, a member of a

workman's union, he cultivates his fellows' good graces for the

reason that he is also an arrant coward, and accustomed,

everywhere save in his own village (which lies buried among the

sands of Alexin), to assert that:

"Certainly, this countryside is rich, yet I cannot hit things

off with its inhabitants. In my own part of the country folk are

more spiritual, more truly Russian, by far than here--they are

folk with whom the natives of this region are not to be compared,

since in the one locality the population has a human soul,

whereas in the other locality it is a flint-stone."

And with a certain quiet reflectiveness, he loves also to recount

a marvellous example of unlooked-for enrichment. He will say to

you:

"Maybe you do not believe in the virtue of horseshoes? Yet I

tell YOU that once, when a certain peasant of Efremov found a

horseshoe, the next three weeks saw it befall that that peasant's

uncle, a tradesman of Efremov, was burnt to death with all his

family, and the property devolved to the peasant. Did you ever

hear of such a thing? What is going to happen CANNOT be foretold,

for at any moment fortune may pity a man, and send him a

windfall."

As Konev says this his dark, pointed eyebrows will go shooting up

his forehead, and his eyes come protruding out of their sockets,

as though he himself cannot believe what he has just related.

Again, should a Cossack pass him without returning his salute, he

will mutter as he follows the man with his eyes:

"An overfed fellow, that--a fellow who can't even look at a human

being! The souls of these folk, I tell you, are withered."

On the present occasion he has arrived on the scene in company

with two women. One of them, aged about twenty, is gentle-

looking, plump, and glassy of eye, with a mouth perpetually half-

open, so that the face looks like that of an imbecile, and though

the exposed teeth of its lower portion may seem to be set in a

smile, you will perceive, should you peer into the motionless

eyes under the overhanging brows, that she has recently been

weeping in the terrified, hysterical fashion of a person of weak

intellect.

I have come here with that man and other strangers thus I heard

her narrate in low, querulous tones as with a stumpy finger she

rearranged the faded hair under her yellow and green scarf.

A fat-faced youth with high cheek-bones and the small eyes of a

Mongol here nudged her, and said carelessly:

"You mean, rather, that your own man has cast you off. Probably

he was the only man you ever saw."

"Aye," Konev drawled thoughtfully as he felt in his wallet.

Nowadays folk need think little of deserting a woman, since in

this year of grace women are no good at all."

Upon this the woman frowned--then blinked her eyes timidly, and

would have opened her lips to reply, but that her companion

interrupted her by saying in a brisk, incisive tone:

"Do not listen to those rascals!"

*****************************

The woman's companion, some five or six years her senior, has a

face exceptional in the constant change and movement of its great

dark eyes as at one moment they withdraw themselves from the

street of the Cossack hamlet, to gaze fixedly and gravely towards

the steppe where it lies scoured with the scudding breeze, and at

another moment fall to scanning the faces of the persons around

her, and, at another, frown anxiously, or send a smile flitting

across her comely lips as she bends her head, until her features

are concealed. Next, the head is raised again, for the eyes have

taken on another phase, and become dilated with interest, while a

sharp furrow is forming between the slender eyebrows, and the

finely moulded lips and trim mouth have compressed themselves

together, and the thin nostrils of the straight nose are snuffing

the air like those of a horse.

In fact, in the woman there is something non-peasant in its

origin. For instance, let one but watch her sharply clicking feet

as, in walking, they peep from under her blue skirt, and one

will perceive that they are not the splayed feet of a villager,

but, rather, feet arched of instep, and at one time accustomed to

the wearing of boots. Or, as the woman sits engaged in

embroidering a blue bodice with a pattern of white peas, one will

perceive that she has long been accustomed to plying the needle

so dexterously; swiftly do the small, sunburnt hands fly in and

out under the tumbled material, eagerly though the wind may

strive to wrest it from her. Again, as she sits bending over her

work, one will descry through a rent in her bodice a small, firm

bosom which might almost have been that of a virgin, were it not

for the fact that a projecting teat proclaims that she is a woman

preparing to suckle an infant. In short, as she sits among her

companions she looks like a fragment of copper flung into the

midst of some rusty old scrap-iron.

Most of the people in whose society I wander neither rise to

great heights nor sink to great depths, but are as colourless as

dust, and wearisomely insignificant. Hence is it that whenever I

chance upon a person whose soul I can probe and explore for

thoughts unfamiliar to me and words not hitherto heard I

congratulate myself, seeing that though it is my desire to see

life grow more fair and exalted, and I yearn to bring about that

end, there constantly reveals itself to me merely a vista of

sharp angles and dark spaces and poor crushed, defrauded people.

Yes, never do I seek to project a spark of my own fire into the

darkness of my neighbour's soul but I see that spark disappear,

become lost, in a chaos of dumb vacuity.

Hence the woman of whom I have just spoken particularly excites

my fancy, and leads me to attempt divinations of her past, until

I find myself evolving a story which is not only of vast

complexity, but has got painted into it merely the colours of my

own hopes and aspirations. It is a story necessarily illusory,

necessarily bound to make life seem even worse than before. Yet

it is a grievous thing NEVER to distort actuality, NEVER to

envelop actuality in the wrappings of one's imagination . . . .

Closing his eyes, and picking his words with difficulty, a tall,

fair peasant drawls in thick, gluelike tones:

"'Very well,' I said: and off we set. On the way I said again:

'Gubin, though you may not like to be told so, you are no better

than a thief.'"

The o's uttered by this peasant are uniformly round and firm--they

roll forward as a cartwheel trundles along a hot, dusty country

road.

The youth with the high cheek-bones fixes the whites of his

porcine eyes (eyes the pupils of which are as indeterminate as

the eyes of a blind man) upon the woman in the green scarf.

Then, having, like a calf, plucked and chewed some stalks of the

withered grass, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, bends one

fist into the crook of the elbow, and says to Konev with a glance

at the well-developed muscle:

"Should you care to hit me?"

"No, you can hit yourself. Hit yourself over the head. Then,

perhaps, you'll grow wiser."

Stolidly the young fellow looks at Konev, and inquires:

"How do you know me to be a fool? "

"Because your personality tells me so."

"Eh?" cries the young fellow truculently as he raises himself

to a kneeling posture. "How know you what I am?"

"I have been told what you are by the Governor of your

province."

The young fellow opens his mouth, and stares at Konev. Then he

asks:

"To what province do I belong?"

"If you yourself have forgotten to what province you belong, you

had better try and loosen your wits."

"Look here. If I were to hit you, I--"

The woman who has been sewing drops her work to shrug one rounded

shoulder as though she were cold, and ask conciliatorily:

"Well, WHAT province do you belong to?"

"I? " the young fellow re-echoes as he subsides on to his heels.

"I belong to Penza. Why do you ask?"

"Oh never mind why."

Presently, with a strangely youthful laugh, the woman adds in a

murmur:

"I ask because I too belong to that province."

"And to which canton?"

"To that of Penza." In the woman's tone is a touch of pride.

The young fellow squats down before her, as before a wood fire,

stretches out his hands, and says in an ingratiating voice:

"What a fine place is our cantonal town! What churches and shops

and stone houses there are in it! In fact, one shop sells a

machine on which you can play anything you like, any sort of a

tune!"

"As well as, probably, the fool," comments Konev in an

undertone, though the young fellow is too enthralled with the

memory of the amenities of his cantonal capital to notice the

remark. Next, smacking his lips, and chewing his words, he

continues in a murmur:

"In those stone houses."

Here the woman drops her sewing a second time to inquire: "Is

there a convent there?"

"A convent?"

And the young fellow pauses uncouthly to scratch his neck. Only

after a while does he answer:

"A convent? Well, I do not know, for only once, to tell the

truth, have I been in the town, and that was when some of us

famine folk were set to a job of roadmaking."

"Well, well!" gasps Konev, as he rises and takes his departure.

The vagabonds, huddled against the churchyard wall, look like

litter driven thither by the steppe wind, and as liable to be

whirled away again whenever the wind shall choose. Three of the

party are sleeping, and the remainder either mending their

clothing, or killing fleas, or lethargically munching bread

collected at the windows of the Cossacks' huts. I find the sight

of them weary me as much as does the young fellows fatuous

babble. Also, I find that whenever the elder of the two women

lifts her eyes from her work, and half smiles, the faint half-

smile in question vexes me intensely. Consequently, I end by

departing in Konev's wake.

Guarding the entrance of the churchyard, four poplar trees stand

erect, save when, as the wind harries them, they bow alternately

to the arid, dusty earth and towards the dim vista of tow-

coloured steppe and snowcapped mountain peaks. Yet, oh how that

steppe, bathed in golden sunshine, draws one to itself and its

smooth desolation of sweet, dry grasses as the parched, fragrant

expanse rustles under the soughing wind!

"You ask about that woman, eh? " queries Konev, whom I find

leaning against one of the poplar trunks, and embracing it with

an arm.

"Yes. From where does she hail?"

"From Riazan, she says. Another story of hers is that her name

is Tatiana."

"Has she been with you long?"

"No. In fact, it was only this morning, some thirty versts from

here, that I overtook her and her companion. However, I have seen

her before, at Maikop-on-Laba, during the season of hay harvest,

when she had with her an elderly, smoothfaced muzhik who might

have been a soldier, and certainly was either her lover or an

uncle, as well as a bully and a drunkard of the type which,

before it has been two days in a place, starts about as many

brawls. At present, however, she is tramping with none but this

female companion, for, after that the 'uncle' had drunk away his

very belly-band and reins, he was clapped in gaol. The Cossack,

you know, is an awkward person to deal with."

Although Konev speaks without constraint, his eyes are fixed upon

the ground in a manner suggestive of some disturbing thought. And

as the breeze ruffles his dishevelled beard and ragged pea-jacket

it ends by robbing his head of his cap-- of the tattered, peakless

clout which, with rents in its lining, so closely resembles a

tchepchik [Woman's mob-cap], as to communicate to the

picturesque features of its wearer an appearance comically

feminine.

"Ye-es," expectorating, and drawling the words between his

teeth, he continues: "She is a remarkable woman, a regular, so

to speak, highstepper. Yet it must have been the Devil himself

that blew this young oaf with the bloated jowl on to the scene.

Otherwise I should soon have fixed up matters with her. The cur

that he is!"

"But once you told me that you had a wife already?"

Darting at me an angry glance, he turns away with a mutter of:

"AM I to carry my wife about with me in my wallet? "

Here there comes limping across the square a moustachioed

Cossack. In one hand he is holding a bunch of keys, and in the

other hand a battered Cossack cap, peak in front. Behind him,

sobbing and applying his knuckles to his eyes, there is creeping

a curly-headed urchin of eight, while the rear is brought up by a

shaggy dog whose dejected countenance and lowered tail would seem

to show that he too is in disgrace. Each time that the boy

whimpers more loudly than usual the Cossack halts, awaits the

lad's coming in silence, cuffs him over the head with the peak of

the cap, and, resuming his way with the gait of a drunken man,

leaves the boy and the dog standing where they are--the boy

lamenting, and the dog wagging its tail as its old black muzzle

sniffs the air. Somehow I discern in the dog's mien of holding

itself prepared for anything that may turn up, a certain

resemblance to Konev's bearing, save that the dog is older in

appearance than is the vagabond.

"You mentioned my wife, I think?" presently he resumes with a

sigh. "Yes, I know, but not EVERY malady proves mortal, and I

have been married nineteen years! "

The rest is well-known to me, for all too frequently have I heard

it and similar tales. Unfortunately, I cannot now take the

trouble to stop him; so once more I am forced to let his

complaints come oozing tediously into my ears.

"The wench was plump," says Konev, "and panting for love; so we

just got married, and brats began to come tumbling from her like

bugs from a bunk."

Subsiding a little, the breeze takes, as it were, to whispering.

"In fact, I could scarcely turn round for them. Even now seven

of them are alive, though originally the stud numbered thirteen.

And what was the use of such a gang? For, consider: my wife is

forty-two, and I am forty-three. She is elderly, and I am what

you behold. True, hitherto I have contrived to keep up my

spirits; yet poverty is wearing me down, and when, last winter,

my old woman went to pieces I set forth (for what else could I

do?) to tour the towns. In fact, folk like you and myself have

only one job available--the job of licking one's chops, and

keeping one's eyes open. Yet, to tell you the truth, I no sooner

perceive myself to be growing superfluous in a place than I spit

upon that place, and clear out of it."

Never to this sturdy, inveterate rascal does it seem to occur to

insinuate that he has been doing work of any kind, or that he in

the least cares to do any; while at the same time all self-pity

is eschewed in his narrative, and he relates his experiences much

as though they are the experiences of another man, and not of

himself.

Presently, as the Cossack and the boy draw level with us, the

former, fingering his moustache, inquires thickly:

"Whence are you come?"

"From Russia."

"All such folk come from there."

Thereafter, with a gesture of disdain, this man of the abnormally

broad nose, eyes floating in fat, and flaxen head shaped like a

flounder's, resumes his way towards the porch of the church. As

for the boy, he wipes his nose and follows him while the dog

sniffs at our legs, yawns, and stretches itself by the churchyard

wall.

"Did you see?" mutters Konev. "Oh yes, I tell you that the

folk here are far less amiable than our own folk in Russia. . .

But hark! What is that?"

To our ears there have come from behind the corner of the

churchyard wall a woman's scream and the sound of dull blows.

Rushing thither, we behold the fair-headed peasant seated on the

prostrate form of the young fellow from Penza, and methodically,

gruntingly delivering blow after blow upon the young fellow's

ears with his ponderous fists, while counting the blows as he

does so. Vainly, at the same time, the woman from Riazan is

prodding the assailant in the back, whilst her female companion

is shrieking, and the crowd at large has leapt to its feet, and,

collected into a knot, is shouting gleefully, "THAT'S the way!

THAT'S the way!"

"Five!" the fair-headed peasant counts.

"Why are you doing this?" the prostrate man protests.

"Six!"

"Oh dear!" ejaculates Konev, dancing with nervousness. "Oh

dear, oh dear!"

The smacking, smashing blows fall in regular cadence as, prone on

his face, the young fellow kicks, struggles and puffs up the

dust. Meanwhile a tall, dour man in a straw hat is rolling up a

shirt-sleeve, and alternately bending and stretching a long arm,

whilst a lithe, white-headed young stripling is hopping, sparrow-

like, from one onlooker to another, and exclaiming in suppressed,

cautious tones:

"Stop it, pray stop it, or we shall be arrested for creating a

disturbance!"

Presently the tall man strides towards the fair-headed peasant,

deals him a single blow which knocks him from the back of the

young fellow, and, turning to the crowd, says with an informing

air:

"THAT'S how we do it in Tambov!"

"Brutes! Villains!" screams the woman from Riazan, as she bends

over the young fellow. Her cheeks are livid, and as she wipes the

flushed face of the beaten youth with the hem of her gown, her

dark eyes are flashing with dry wrath, and her lips quivering so

painfully as to disclose a set of fine, level teeth.

Konev, pecking up to her, says with an air of advice:

"You had better take him away, and give him some water."

Upon this the fair-headed muzhik, rising to his knees, stretches

a fist towards the man from Tambov, and exclaims:

"Why should he have gone and bragged of his strength, pray?"

"Was that a good reason for thrashing him?"

"And who are you?"

"Who am I?"

"Yes, who are YOU?"

"Never mind. See that I don't give you another swipe!"

Upon this the onlookers plunge into a heated debate as to who

was actually the beginner of the disturbance, while the lithe

young fellow continues to wring his hands, and cry imploringly:

"DON'T make so much noise about it! Remember that we are in a

strange land, and that the folk hereabouts are strict."

So queerly do his ears project from his head that he would seem

to be able, if he pleased, to fold them right over his eyes.

Suddenly from the roseate heavens comes the vibrant note of a

bell; whereupon, the hubbub ceases and at the same moment a young

Cossack with a face studded with freckles, and, in his hands, a

cudgel, makes his appearance among the crowd.

"What does all this mean?" he inquires not uncivilly.

"They have been beating a man," the woman from Riazan replies.

As she does so she looks comely in spite of her wrath.

The Cossack glances at her--then smiles.

"And where is the party going to sleep?" he inquires of the

crowd.

"Here," someone ventures.

"Then you must not--someone might break into the church. Go,

rather, to the Ataman [Cossack headman or mayor], and you will

be billeted among the huts."

"It is a matter of no consequence," Konev remarks as he paces

beside me. "Yet--"

"They seem to be taking us for robbers," is my interruption.

"As is everywhere the way," he comments. "It is but one thing

more laid to our charge. Caution decides always that a stranger

is a thief."

In front of us walks the woman from Riazan, in company with the

young fellow of the bloated features. He is downcast of mien, and

at length mutters something which I cannot catch, but in answer

to which she tosses her head, and says in a distinct, maternal

tone:

"You are too young to associate with such brutes."

The bell of the church is slowly beating, and from the huts there

keep coming neat old men and women who make the hitherto deserted

street assume a brisk appearance, and the squat huts take on a

welcoming air.

In a resonant, girlish voice there meets our ears:

"Ma-am! Ma-amka! Where is the key of the green box? I want my

ribands!"

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

passports, while two of our number, found to be without such

documents, 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 passport. Surely a decent, peaceable man ought to be able to

travel WITHOUT a passport? 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-butt 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 encompassing, 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 assurance:

"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 God!"

"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? "

"Yes. And see if that will not come to be your opinion as much

as mine."

Again, to my annoyance, the dialogue is interrupted--this time by

the sound of uncertain footsteps in the street without. Thus the

next words of the women's conversation escape me. Then I hear:

"Have you ever read 'The Vision of the Mother of God'?"

"N-no, I have not."

"Then you had better ask some older woman than myself to tell

you about it, for it is a good book to become acquainted with.

Can you read?"

"No, I cannot. But tell me, yourself, what the vision was?"

"Listen, and I will do so."

From outside the window Konev's voice softly inquires:

"Is that our lot in there? Yes? Thank God, then, for I had

nearly lost my way after stirring up a lot of dogs, and being

forced to use my fists upon them. Here, you! Catch hold!"

With which, handing me a large watermelon, he clambers through

the window with a great clattering and disturbance.

"I have managed also to gee a good supply of bread," he

continues. "Perhaps you believe that I stole it? But no. Indeed,

why should one steal when one can beg-a game at which I am

particularly an old hand, seeing that always, on any occasion, I

can make up to people? It happened like this. When I went out I

saw a fire glowing in a hut, and folk seated at supper. And

since, wherever many people are present, one of them at least has

a kind heart, I ate and drank my fill, and then managed to make

off with provender for you as well. Hi, you women!"

There follows no answer.

"I believe those daughters of whores must be asleep," he

comments. "Hi, women!"

"What is it?" drily inquires the woman from Riazan.

"Should you like a taste of water-melon?"

"I should, thank you."

Thereupon, Konev begins to make his way towards the voice.

"Yes, bread, soft wheaten bread such as you--"

Here the, other woman whines in beggar fashion:

"And give ME a taste, too."

"Oh, yes, I will. But where the devil are you?"

"And a taste of melon as well?"

"Yes, certainly. Hullo! Who is this?"

From the woman from Riazan comes a cry of pain.

"Mind how you step, wretch!" she exclaims.

"All right, but you needn't make so much noise about it. You see

how dark it is, and I--"

"You ought to have struck a match, then."

"I possess but a quarter of a match, for matches are not over-

plentiful, and even if I did catch hold of you no great harm can

have been done. For instance, when your husband used to beat you

he must have hurt you far worse than I. By the way, DID he beat

you?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"None; only, I am curious to know. Surely a woman like you--"

"See here. Do not dare to touch me, or I--"

"Or you what?"

There ensues a prolonged altercation amid which I can hear

epithets of increasing acerbity and opprobrium being applied;

until the woman from Riazan exclaims hoarsely:

"Oh, you coward of a man, take that!"

Whereupon follows a scrimmage amid which I can distinguish

slappings, gross chuckles from Konev, and a muffled cry from the

younger woman of:

"Oh, do not so behave, you wretch!"

Striking a match, I approach the spot, and pull Konev away. He is

in no way abashed, but merely cooled in his ardour as, seated on

the floor at my feet, and panting and expectorating, he says

reprovingly to the woman:

"When folk wish merely to have a game with you, you ought not to

let yourself lose your temper. Fie, fie!"

"Are you hurt?" the woman inquires quietly.

"What do you suppose? You have cut my lip, but that is the worst

damage."

"Then if you come here again I will lay the whole of your face

open."

"Vixen! What bumpkinish stupidity!"

Konev turns to myself.

"And as for you, you go catching at the first thing you find,

and have torn my coat."

"Then do not insult people."

"INSULT people, fool? The idea of anyone insulting a woman like

THAT!"

Whereafter, with a mean chuckle, the fellow goes on to discourse

upon the ease with which peasant women err, and upon their love

of deceiving their husbands.

"The impudent rascal!" comments the woman from Penza sleepily.

After a while the young fellow springs to his feet, and grates

his teeth. Then, reseating himself, and clutching at his head, he

says gloomily:

"I intend to leave here tomorrow, and go home. I do not care

WHAT becomes of me."

With which he subsides on to the floor as though exhausted.

"The blockhead!" is Konev's remark.

Amid the darkness a black shape rises. It does so as soundlessly

as a fish in a pond, glides to the door, and disappears.

"That was she," remarks Konev. "What a strong woman! However, if

you had not pulled me away, I should have got the better of her.

By God I should!"

"Then follow her, and make another attempt."

"No," after a moment's reflection he rejoins. "Out there she

might get hold of a stick, or a brick, or some such thing.

However, I'LL get even with her. As a matter of fact, you wasted

your time in stopping me, for she detests me like the very

devil."

And he renews his wearisome boastings of his conquests; until

suddenly, he stops as though he has swallowed his tongue.

All becomes quiet; everything seems to have come to a halt, and

to be pressing close in sleep to the motionless earth. I too grow

drowsy, and have a vision amid which my mind returns to the

donations which I have received that day, and sees them swell and

multiply and increase in weight until I feel their bulk pressing

upon me like a tumulus of the steppes. Next, the coppery notes of

a bell jar in my ears, and, struck at random intervals, go

floating away into the darkness.

It is the hour of midnight.

Soon, scattered drops of rain begin to patter down upon the dry

thatch of the hut and the dust in the street outside, while a

cricket continues chirping as though it were hurriedly relating

a tale. Also, I hear filtering forth into the darkness a softly

gulped, eager whispering.

"Think," says one of the voices, " what it must mean to have to

go tramping about without work, or only with work for another to

do!"

The young fellow who has been so soundly thrashed replies in a

dull voice:

"I know nothing of you."

"More softly, more softly!" urges the woman.

"What is it you want?"

"I want NOTHING. It is merely that I am sorry for you as a man

yet young and strong. You see--well, I have not lived with my eyes

shut. That is why I say, come with me."

"But come whither?"

"To the coast, where I know there to be beautiful plots of land

for the asking. You yourself can see how good the land hereabout

is. Well, there land better still is to be obtained."

"Liar!"

"More softly, more softly!" again urges the woman. "Moreover,

I am not bad-looking, and can manage things well, and do any sort

of work. Hence you and I might live quite peacefully and happily,

and come, eventually, to have a place of our own. Yes, and I

could bear and rear you a child. Only see how fit I am. Only feel

this breast of mine."

The young fellow snorts, and I begin to find the situation

oppressive, and to long to let the couple know that I am not

asleep. Curiosity, however, prevents me, and I continue listening

to the strange, arresting dialogue.

"Wait a little," whispers the woman with a gasp. "Do not play

with me, for I am not that sort of woman. Yes, I mean what I say.

Let be!"

Rudely, roughly the young fellow replies:

"Then don't run after me. A woman who runs after a man, and

plays the whore with him, is--"

"Less noise, please--less noise, I beg of you, or we shall be

heard, and I shall be put to shame!"

"Doesn't it put you to shame to be offering yourself to me like

this?"

A silence ensues, save that the young fellow goes on snorting and

fidgeting, and the raindrops continue to fall with the same

reluctance, the same indolence, as ever. Then once more the

woman's voice is heard through the pattering.

"Perhaps," says the voice, "you have guessed that I am seeking

a husband? Yes, I AM seeking one--a good, steady muzhik."

"But I am NOT a good, steady muzhik."

"Fie, fie!"

"What?" he sniggers. "A husband for you? The impudence of you!

A 'husband'! Go along!"

"Listen to me. I am tired of tramping."

"Then go home."

This time there ensues a long pause. Then the woman says very

softly:

"I have neither home nor kindred."

"A lie!" ejaculates the young fellow.

"No, by God it is not a lie! The Mother of God forget me if it

is."

In these last words I can detect the note of tears. By this time

the situation has become intolerable, for I am yearning to rise

and kick the young fellow out of the hut, and then to have a long

and earnest talk with his companion. "Oh that I could take her

to my arms," I reflect, "and cherish her as I would a poor lost

child!"

After a while the sounds of a new struggle between the pair are

heard.

"Don't put me off like that!" growls the young fellow.

"And don't you make any attempt upon me! I am not the sort of

woman to be forced."

The next moment there arises a cry of pain and astonishment.

"What was that for? What was that for?" the woman wails.

With an answering exclamation I spring to my feet, for my

feelings have become those of a wild beast.

At once everything grows quiet again, save that someone, crawls

over the floor and, in leaving the hut, jars the latch of the

crazy, single-hinged portal.

"It was not my fault," grumbles the young fellow. "It all came

of that stinking woman offering herself to me. Besides, the place

is full of bugs, and I cannot sleep."

"Beast!" pants someone in the vicinity.

"Hold your tongue, bitch!" is the fellow's retort.

By now the rain has ceased, and such air as filters through the

window seems increasedly stifling. Momentarily the hush grows

deeper, until the breast feels filled with a sense of oppression,

and the face and eyes as though they were glued over with a web.

Even when I step into the yard I find the place to be like a

cellar on a summer's day, when the very ice has melted in the

dark retreat, and the latter's black cavity is charged with hot,

viscous humidity.

Somewhere near me a woman is gulping out sobs. For a moment or

two I listen; then I approach her, and come upon her seated in a

corner with her head in her hands, and her body rocking to and

fro as though she were doing me obeisance.

Yet I feel angry, somehow, and remain standing before her without

speaking-- until at length I ask:

"Are you mad?"

"Go away," is, after a pause, her only reply.

"I heard all that you said to that young fellow."

"Oh, did you? Then what business is it of yours? Are you my

brother?"

Yet she speaks the words absent-mindedly rather than angrily.

Around us the dim, blurred walls are peering in our direction

with sightless eyes, while in the vicinity a bullock is drawing

deep breaths.

I seat myself by her side.

"Should you remain much longer in that position," I remark, "you

will have a headache."

There follows no reply.

"Am I disturbing you? " I continue.

"Oh no; not at all." And, lowering her hands, she looks at me.

"Whence do you come?"

"From Nizhni Novgorod."

"Oh, from a long way off!"

"Do you care for that young fellow?"

Not for a moment or two does she answer; and when she does so she

answers as though the words have been rehearsed.

"Not particularly. It is that he is a strong young fellow who

has lost his way, and is too much of a fool (as you too must have

seen) to find it again. So I am very sorry for him. A good muzhik

ought to be well placed."

On the bell of the church there strikes the hour of two. Without

interrupting herself, the woman crosses her breast at each

stroke.

"Always," she continues, "I feel sorry when I see a fine young

fellow going to the dogs. If I were able, I would take all such

young men, and restore them to the right road."

"Then you are not sorry FOR YOURSELF? "

"Not for myself? Oh yes, for myself as well."

"Then why flaunt yourself before this booby, as you have been

doing?"

"Because I might reform him. Do you not think so? Ah, you do not

know me."

A sigh escapes her.

"He hit you, I think?" I venture.

"No, he did not. And in any case you are not to touch him."

"Yet you cried out?"

Suddenly she leans towards me, and says:

"Yes, he did strike me--he struck me on the breast, and would

have overpowered me had it not been that I cannot, I will not, do

things heartlessly, like a cat. Oh, the brutes that men can be!"

Here the conversation undergoes an interruption through the fact

that someone has come out to the hut door, and is whistling

softly, as for a dog.

"There he is!" whispers the woman.

"Then had I not best send him about his business?"

"No, no!" she exclaims, catching at my knees. "No need is

there for that, no need is there for that!"

Then with a low moan she adds:

"Oh Lord, how I pity our folk and their lives! Oh God our Father!"

Her shoulders heave, and presently she bursts into tears, with a

whisper, between the pitiful sobs, of:

"How, on such a night as this, one remembers all that one has

ever seen, and the folk that ever one has known! And oh, how

wearisome, wearisome it all is! And how I should like to cry

throughout the world--But to cry what? I know not--I have no

message to deliver."

That feeling I can understand as well as she, for all too often

has it seemed to crush my soul with voiceless longing.

Then, as I stroke her bowed head and quivering shoulder, I ask

her who she is; and presently, on growing a little calmer, she

tells me the history of her life.

She is, it appears, the daughter of a carpenter and bee-keeper.

On her mother's death, this man married a young woman, and

allowed her, as stepmother, to persuade him to place the

narrator, Tatiana, in a convent, where she (Tatiana) lived from

the age of nine till adolescence, and, meanwhile, was taught her

letters, and also a certain amount of manual labour; until,

later, her father married her off to a friend of his, a well-to-

do ex-soldier, who was acting as forester on the convent's estate.

As the woman relates this, I feel vexed that I cannot see her

face--only a dim, round blur amid which there looms what appears

to be a pair of closed eyes. Also, so complete is the stillness,

that she can narrate her story in a barely audible whisper; and I

gain the impression that the pair of us are sitting plunged in a

void of darkness where life does not exist, yet where we are

destined to begin life.

"However, the man was a libertine and a drunkard, and many a

riotous night did he spend with his cronies in the porter's lodge

of the convent. Also, he tried to arouse a similar taste in

myself; and though for a time I resisted the tendency, I at

length, on his taking to beating me, yielded. Only for one man,

however, had I really a liking; and with him it was, and not with

my husband, that I first learnt the meaning of spousehood. . . .

Unfortunately, my lover himself was married; and in time his wife

came to hear of me, and procured my husband's dismissal. The

chief reason was that the lady, a person of great wealth, was

herself handsome, albeit stout, and did not care to see her place

assumed by a nobody. Next, my husband died of drink; and as my

father had long been dead, and I found myself alone, I went to

see and consult my stepmother. All that she said, however, was:

'Why come to me? Go and think things out for yourself.' And I too

then reflected: 'Yes, why should I have gone to her? ' and

repaired to the convent. Yet even there there seemed to be no

place left for me, and eventually old Mother Taisia, who had once

been my governess, said: 'Tatiana, do you return to the world,

for there, and only there, will you have a chance of happiness.

So to the world I returned --and still am roaming it."

"Your quest of happiness is not following an easy road!"

"It is following the road that it best can."

By now the darkness has ceased to keep spread over us, as it

were, the stretched web of a heavy curtain, but has grown thinner

and more transparent with the tension, save that, in places (for

instance, in the window of the hut), it still lies in thick folds

or clots as it peers at us with its sightless eyes.

Over the hummock-like roofs of the huts rise the church's steeple

and the poplar trees; while hither and thither on the wall of the

hut, the cracks and holes in the crumbling plaster have caused the

wall to resemble the map of an unknown country.

Glancing at the woman's dark eyes, I perceive them to be shining

as pensively, innocently as the eyes of a young maiden.

"You are indeed a curious woman!" I remark.

"Perhaps I am," she replies as she moistens her lips with a

slender, almost feline tongue.

"What are you really seeking?"

"I have considered the matter, and know, at last, my mind. It is

this: I hope some day to fall in with a good muzhik with whom to

go in search of land. Probably land of the kind, I mean, is to be

found in the neighbourhood of New Athos, [A monastery in the

Caucasus, built on the reputed site of a cave tenanted by Simeon

the Canaanite] for I have been there already, and know of a

likely spot for the purpose. And there we shall set our place in

order, and lay out a garden and an orchard, and prepare as much

plough land as we may need for our working."

Her words are now firmer, more assured.

"And when we have put everything in order, other folk may join

us; and then, as the oldest settlers in the place, we shall hold

the position of honour. And thus things will continue until a new

village, really a fine settlement, will have become formed--a

settlement of which my husband will be selected the warden until

such time as I shall have made of him a barin [Gentleman or

squire] outright. Also, children may one day play in that

garden, and a summer-house be built there. Ah, how delightful

such a life appears!"

In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that

already she can describe the new establishment in as much detail

as though she has long been a resident in it.

"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that

such a home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of

course, is a muzhik."

Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though

they aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.

And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to

tears. To conceal the fact I murmur:

"Should I myself suit you?"

She gives a faint laugh.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."

"How do you know what my ideas are?"

She edges away from me a little,then says drily:

"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never

consent."

With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on

which we are sitting, she adds:

"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do

not like them."

"What in them is it that displeases you?"

"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet

also they have ways which alienate me."

Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:

"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."

She shakes her head protestingly.

"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts.

"Woman's proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it,

and, when it has been weaned, to get herself ready to have

another one. That is how woman should live. She should live as

pass spring and summer, autumn and winter."

I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's

intellectual features; and though, also, I long to take her in my

arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the

quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this

woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the

silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark

ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment,

however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily

deprived me of my passport.

"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she

edges towards me.

"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."

"And are you travelling alone?"

"I am."

"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the

world!"

By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with

their soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear

played by a certain blind old man. Next, four times, with

unsteady touch, the drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice

softly, once with a vigour that clangs the metal again, and a

fourth time with a mere tap of the iron hammer against the copper

plate.

"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"

"Sorry lives."

"Yes, that is what I too have found."

A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:

"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes

closed. Often I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking

until I seem to be the only human being in the world, and the

only human being destined to re-order it."

"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord,

abasement, and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and

stupidity."

And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in

recollections of all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes

that I have beheld.

"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good

in your heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and

your strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright.

And how shall he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he

have been shown what is good?"

She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight into my eyes

as she parts her comely lips.

"True," she rejoins--"But, dear friend, it is also true that

goodness never bargains."

Together she and I seem to be drifting towards a vista which is

coming to look, as it sloughs the shadow of night, ever clearer

and clearer. It is a vista of white huts, silvery trees, a red

church, and dew-bespangled earth. And as the sun rises he reveals

to us clustered, transparent clouds which, like thousands of

snow-white birds, go gliding over our heads.

"Yes," she whispers again as gently she gives me a nudge. "As one

pursues one's lonely way one thinks and thinks--but of

what? Dear friend, you have said that no one really cares what is

the matter. Ah, HOW true that is! "

Here she springs to her feet, and, pulling me up with her, glues

herself to my breast with a vehemence which causes me momentarily

to push her away. Upon this, bursting into tears, she tends

towards me again, and kisses me with lips so dry as almost to cut

me--she kisses me in a way which penetrates to my very soul.

"You have been oh, so good!" she whispers softly. As she speaks,

the earth seems to be sinking under my feet.

Then she tears herself away, glances around the courtyard, and

darts to a corner where, under a fence, a clump of herbage is

sprouting.

"Go now," she adds in a whisper. "Yes, go."

Then, with a confused smile, as, crouching among the herbage as

though it had been a small cave, she rearranges her hair, she

adds:

"It has befallen so. Ah, me! May God grant unto me His pardon!"

Astonished, feeling that I must be dreaming, I gaze at her with

gratitude, for I sense an extraordinary lightness to be present

in my breast, a radiant void through which joyous, intangible

words and thoughts keep flying as swallows wheel across the

firmament.

"Amid a great sorrow," she adds, "even a small joy becomes a

great felicity."

Yet as I glance at the woman's bosom, whereon moist beads are

standing like dewdrops on the outer earth; as I glance at that

bosom, whereon the sun's rays are finding a roseate reflection,

as though the blood were oozing through the skin, my rapture dies

away, and turns to sorrow, heartache, and tears. For in me there

is a presentiment that before the living juice within that bosom

shall have borne fruit, it will have become dried up.

Presently, in a tone almost of self-excuse, and one wherein the

words sound a little sadly, she continues:

"Times there are when something comes pouring into my soul which

makes my breasts ache with the pain of it. What is there for me

to do at such moments save reveal my thoughts to the moon, or, in

the daytime, to a river? Oh God in Heaven! And afterwards I feel

as ashamed of myself! . . . Do not look at me like that. Why

stare at me with those eyes, eyes so like the eyes of a child?"

"YOUR face, rather, is like a child's," I remark.

"What? Is it so stupid?"

"Something like that."

As she fastens up her bodice she continues:

"Soon the time will be five o'clock, when the bell will ring for

Mass. To Mass I must go today, for I have a prayer to offer to

the Mother of God. . . Shall you be leaving here soon?"

"Yes--as soon, that is to say, as I have received back my

passport."

"And for what destination?"

"For Alatyr. And you?"

She straightens her attire, and rises. As she does so I perceive

that her hips are narrower than her shoulders, and that

throughout she is well-proportioned and symmetrical.

"I? As yet I do not know. True, I had thought of proceeding to

Naltchik, but now, perhaps, I shall not do so, for all my future

is uncertain."

Upon that she extends to me a pair of strong, capable arms, and

proposes with a blush:

"Shall we kiss once more before we part?"

She clasps me with the one arm, and with the other makes the sign

of the cross, adding:

"Good-bye, dear friend, and may Christ requite you for all your

words, for all your sympathy!"

"Then shall we travel together?"

At the words she frees herself, and says firmly, nay, sternly:

"Not so. Never would I consent to such a plan. Of course, had

you been a muzhik--but no. Even then what would have been the use

of it, seeing that life is to be measured, not by a single hour,

but by years?"

And, quietly smiling me a farewell, she moves away towards the

hut, whilst I, remaining seated, lose myself in thoughts of her.

Will she ever overtake her quest in life? Shall I ever behold her

again?

The bell for early Mass begins, though for some time past the

hamlet has been astir, and humming in a sedate and non-festive

fashion.

I enter the hut to fetch my wallet, and find the place empty.

Evidently the whole party has left by the gap in the broken-down

wall.

I repair, next, to the Ataman's office, where I receive back my

passport before setting out to look for my companions in the

square.

In similar fashion to yesterday those "folk from Russia " are

lolling alongside the churchyard wall, and also have seated among

them, leaning his back against a log, the fat-jowled youth from

Penza, with his bruised face looking even larger and uglier than

before, for the reason that his eyes are sunken amid purple

protuberances.

Presently there arrives a newcomer in the shape of an old man

with a grey head adorned with a faded velvet skull-cap, a pointed

beard, a lean, withered frame, prominent cheekbones, a red,

porous-looking, cunningly hooked nose, and the eyes of a thief.

Him a flaxen-haired youth from Orel joins with a similar youth in

accosting.

"Why are YOU tramping?" inquires the former.

"And why are YOU? " the old man retorts in nasal tones as,

looking at no one, he proceeds to mend the handle of a battered

metal teapot with a piece of wire.

"We are travelling in search of work, and therefore living as we

have been commanded to live."

"By WHOM commanded?"

"By God. Have you forgotten?"

Carelessly, but succinctly, the old man retorts:

"Take heed lest upon you, some day, God vomit all the dust and

litter which you are raising by tramping His earth!"

"How?" cries one of the youths, a long-eared stripling.

"Were not Christ and His Apostles also tramps?"

"Yes, CHRIST," is the old man's meaning reply as he raises his

sharp eyes to those of his opponent. "But what are you talking

of, you fools? With whom are you daring to compare yourselves?

Take care lest I report you to the Cossacks!"

I have listened to many such arguments, and always found them

distasteful, even as I have done discussions regarding the soul.

Hence I feel inclined to depart.

At this moment, however, Konev makes his appearance. His mien is

dejected, and his body perspiring, while his eyes keep blinking

rapidly.

"Has any one seen Tanka--that woman from Riazan?" he inquires.

"No? Then the bitch must have bolted during the night. The fact is

that, overnight, someone gave me a drop or two to drink, a mere

dram, but enough to lay me as fast asleep as a bear in winter-

time. And in the meantime, she must have run away with that Penza

fellow."

"No, HE is here," I remark.

"Oh, he is, is he? Well, as what has the company registered

itself? As a set of ikon-painters, I should think!"

Again he begins to look anxiously about him.

"Where can she have got to? " he queries.

"To Mass, maybe."

"0F course! Well, I am greatly smitten with her. Yes, my word I

am!"

Nevertheless, when Mass comes to an end, and, to the sound of a

merry peal of bells, the well-dressed local Cossacks file out of

church, and distribute themselves in gaudy streams about the

hamlet, no Tatiana makes her appearance.

"Then she IS gone," says Konev ruefully. "But I'll find her

yet! I'LL come up with her!"

That this will happen I do not feel confident. Nor do I desire

that it should.

*********************************

Five years later I am pacing the courtyard of the Metechski

Prison in Tiflis, and, as I do so, trying to imagine for what

particular offence I have been incarcerated in that place of

confinement.

Picturesquely grim without, the institution is, inwardly, peopled

with a set of cheerful, but clumsy, humourists. That is to say,

it would seem as though, " by order of the authorities," the

inmates are presenting a stage spectacle in which they are

playing, willingly and zealously, but with a complete lack of

experience, imperfectly comprehended roles as prisoners, warders,

and gendarmes.

For instance, today, when a warder and a gendarme came to my

cell to escort me to exercise, and I said to them, " May I be

excused exercise today? I am not very well, and do not feel like,

etcetera, etcetera," the gendarme, a tall, handsome man with a

red beard, held up to me a warning finger.

"NO ONE," he said, "has given you permission to feel, or not to

feel, like doing things."

To which the warder, a man as dark as a chimney-sweep, with large

blue "whites" to his eyes, added stutteringly:

"To no one here has permission been given to feel, or not to

feel, like doing things. You hear that?"

So to exercise I went.

In this stone-paved yard the air is as hot as in an oven, for

overhead there lours only a small, flat patch of dull, drab-

tinted sky, and on three sides of the yard rise high grey walls,

with, on the fourth, the entrance-gates, topped by a sort of

look-out post.

Over the roof of the building there comes floating the dull roar

of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the

hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and

as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the

wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being

in a drum which a myriad drumsticks are beating.

Through the bars of the double line of windows on the second and

the third stories peer the murky faces and towsled heads of some

of the inmates. One of the latter spits his furthest into the

yard--evidently with the intention of hitting myself: but all his

efforts prove vain. Another one shouts with a mordant expletive:

"Hi, you! Why do you keep tramping up and down like an old hen?

Hold up your head!"

Meanwhile the inmates continue to intone in concert a strange

chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a

plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant

meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it

soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly

into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies

away to give place to a refrain which coils, trickles forth from

between the bars of the windows until it has permeated the free,

torrid air.

As I listen to that refrain, long familiar to me, it seems to

voice something intelligible, and agitates my soul almost to a

sense of agony. . . .

Presently, while pacing up and down in the shadow of the

building, I happen to glance towards the line of windows. Glued

to the framework of one of the iron window-squares, I can discern

a blue-eyed face. Overgrown with an untidy sable beard it is, as

well as stamped with a look of perpetually grieved surprise.

"That must be Konev," I say to myself aloud.

Konev it is--Konev of the well-remembered eyes. Even at this

moment they are regarding me with puckered attention.

I throw around me a hasty glance. My own warder is dozing on a

shady bench near the entrance. Two more warders are engaged in

throwing dice. A fourth is superintending the pumping of water by

two convicts, and superciliously marking time for their lever

with the formula, "Mashkam, dashkam! Dashkam, mashkam!"

I move towards the wall.

"Is that you, Konev?" is my inquiry.

"It is," he mutters as he thrusts his head a little further

through the grating. "Yes, Konev I am, but who you are I have

not a notion."

"What are you here for?"

"For a matter of base coin, though, to be truthful, I am here

accidentally, without genuine cause."

The warder rouses himself, and, with his keys jingling like a set

of fetters, utters drowsily the command:

"Do not stand still. Also, move further from the wall. To

approach it is forbidden."

"But it is so hot in the middle of the yard, sir!"

"Everywhere it is hot," retorts the man reprovingly, and his

head subsides again. From above comes the whispered query:

"Who ARE you?"

"Well, do you remember Tatiana, the woman from Riazan?"

"DO I remember her?" Konev's voice has in it a touch of subdued

resentment. "DO I remember her? Why, I was tried in court

together with her!"

"Together with HER? Was she too sentenced for the passing of

base coin?"

"Yes. Why should she not have been? She was merely the victim of

an accident, even as I was."

As I resume my walk in the stifling shade I detect that, from the

windows of the basement there is issuing a smell of, in equal

parts, rotten leather, mouldy grain, and dampness. To my mind

there recur Tatiana's words: "Amid a great sorrow even a small

joy becomes a great felicity," and, "I should like to build a

village on some land of my own, and create for myself a new and

better life."

And to my recollection there recur also Tatiana's face and

yearning, hungry breast. As I stand thinking of these things,

there come dropping on to my head from above the low-spoken,

ashen-grey words:

"The chief conspirator in the matter was her lover, the son of a

priest. He it was who engineered the plot. He has been sentenced

to ten years penal servitude."

"And she? "

"Tatiana Vasilievna? To the same, and I also. I leave for Siberia

the day after tomorrow. The trial was held at Kutair. In Russia

I should have got off with a lighter sentence than here, for the

folk in these parts are, one and all, evil, barbaric scoundrels."

"And Tatiana, has she any children?"

"How could she have while living such a rough life as this? Of

course not! Besides, the priest's son is a consumptive."

"Indeed sorry for her am I!"

"So I expect." And in Konev's tone there would seem to be a

touch of meaning. "The woman was a fool--of that there can be no

doubt; but also she was comely, as well as a person out of the

common in her pity for folk."

"Was it then that you found her again?"

"When?"

"On that Feast of the Assumption?"

"Oh no. It was only during the following winter that I came up

with her. At the time she was serving as governess to the

children of an old officer in Batum whose wife had left him."

Something snaps behind me--something sounding like the hammer of a

revolver. However, it is only the warder closing the lid of his

huge watch before restoring the watch to his pocket, giving

himself a stretch, and yawning to the utmost extent of his jaws.

"You see, she had money, and, but for her restlessness, might

have lived a comfortable life enough. As it was, her

restlessness--"

"Time for exercise is up!" shouts the warder.

"Who are you?" adds Konev hastily. "Somehow I seem to remember

your face; but 1 cannot place it."

Yet so stung am I with what I have heard that I move away in

silence: save that just as I reach the top of the steps I turn to

cry:

"Goodbye, mate, and give her my greeting."

"What are you bawling for? " blusters the warder. . . .

The corridor is dim, and filled with an oppressive odour. The

warder swings his keys with a dry, thin clash, and I, to dull the

pain in my heart, strive to imitate him. But the attempt proves

futile; and as the warder opens the door of my cell he says

severely:

"In with you, ten-years man!"

Entering, I move towards the window. Between some grey spikes on

a wall I can just discern the boisterous current of the Kura,

with sakli [warehouses] and houses glued to the opposite bank,

and the figures of some workmen on the roof of a tanning shed.

Below, with his cap pushed to the back of his head,a sentry is pacing

backwards and forwards.

Wearily my mind recalls the many scores of Russian folk whom it

has seen perish to no purpose. And as it does so it feels

crushed, as in a vice, beneath the burden of great and inexorable

sorrow with which all life is dowered.