In A Mountain Defile / Maxim Gorky

In a mountain defile near a little tributary of the Sunzha, there

was being built a workman's barraque-- a low, long edifice which

reminded one of a large coffin lid.

The building was approaching completion, and, meanwhile, a score

of carpenters were employed in fashioning thin planks into doors

of equal thinness, knocking together benches and tables, and

fitting window-frames into the small window-squares.

Also, to assist these carpenters in the task of protecting the

barraque from tribesmen's nocturnal raids, the shrill-voiced

young student of civil engineering who had been set in charge of

the work had sent to the place, as watchman, an ex-soldier named

Paul Ivanovitch, a man of the Cossack type, and myself.

Yet whereas we were out-at-elbows, the carpenters were sleek,

respectable, monied, well-clad fellows. Also, there was something

dour and irritating about them, since, for one thing, they had

failed to respond to our greeting on our first appearance, and

eyed us with nothing but dislike and suspicion. Hence, hurt by

their chilly attitude, we had withdrawn from their immediate

neighbourhood, constructed a causeway of stepping stones to the

eastern bank of the rivulet, and taken up our abode beneath the

chaotic grey mists which enveloped the mountain side in that

direction.

Also, over the carpenters there was a foreman--a man whose bony

frame, clad in a white shirt and a pair of white trousers, looked

always as though it were ready-attired for death. Moreover, he

wore no cap to conceal the yellow patch of baldness which covered

most of his head, and, in addition, his nose was squat and grey,

his neck and face had over them skin of a porous, pumice-like

consistency, his eyes were green and dim, and upon his features

there was stamped a dead and disagreeable expression. To be

candid, however, behind the dark lips lay a set of fine, close

teeth, while the hairs of the grey beard (a beard trimmed after

the Tartar fashion) were thick and, seemingly, soft.

Never did this man put a hand actually to the work; always he

kept roaming about with the large, rigid-looking fingers of his

hands tucked into his belt, and his fixed and expressionless eyes

scanning the barraque, the men, and the work as his lips vented

some such lines as:

Oh God our Father, bound hast Thou

A crown of thorns upon my brow!

Listen to my humble prayer!

Lighten the burden which I bear!

"What on earth can be in the man's mind?" once remarked the ex-

soldier, with a frowning glance at the singer.

As for our duties, my mates and I had nothing to do, and soon

began to find the time tedious. For his part, the man with the

Cossack physiognomy scaled the mountain side; whence he could be

heard whistling and snapping twigs with his heavy feet, while the

ex-soldier selected a space between two rocks for a shelter of

ace-rose boughs, and, stretching himself on his stomach, fell to

smoking strong mountain tobacco in his large meerschaum pipe as

dimly, dreamily he contemplated the play of the mountain torrent.

Lastly, I myself selected a seat on a rock which overhung the

brook, dipped my feet in the coolness of the water, and proceeded

to mend my shirt.

At intervals, the defile would convey to our ears a dull echo of

sounds so wholly at variance with the locality as muffled hammer-

blows, a screeching of saws, a rasping of planes, and a confused

murmur of human voices.

Also, a moist breeze blew constantly from the dark-blue depths of

the defile, and caused the stiff, upright larches on the knoll

behind the barraque to rustle their boughs, and distilled from

the rank soil the voluptuous scents of ace-rose and pitch-pine,

and evoked in the trees' quiet gloom a soft, crooning, somnolent

lullaby.

About a sazhen [Fathom] below the level of the barraque there

coursed noisily over its bed of stones a rivulet white with foam.

Yet though of other sounds in the vicinity there were but few,

the general effect was to suggest that everything in the

neighbourhood was speaking or singing a tale of such sort as to

shame the human species into silence.

On our own side of the valley the ground lay bathed in sunshine--

lay scorched to the point of seeming to have spread over it a

tissue-cloth. Old gold in colour, while from every side arose the

sweet perfume of dried grasses, and in dark clefts there could be

seen sprouting the long, straight spears and fiery, reddish,

cone-shaped blossoms of that bold, hardy plant which is known to

us as saxifrage--the plant of which the contemplation makes one

long to burst into music, and fills one's whole body with

sensuous languor.

Laced with palpitating, snow-white foam, the beautiful rivulet

pursued its sportive way over tessellated stones which flashed

through the eddies of the glassy, sunlit, amber-coloured water

with the silken sheen of a patchwork carpet or costly shawl of

Cashmir.

Through the mouth of the defile one could reach the valley of the

Sunzha, whence, since men were ther, building a railway to

Petrovsk on the Caspian Sea, there kept issuing and breaking

against the crags a dull rumble of explosions, of iron rasped

against stone, of whistles of works locomotives, and of animated

human voices.

From the barraque the distance to the point where the defile

debouched upon the valley was about a hundred paces, and as one

issued thence one could see, away to the left, the level steppes

of the Cis-Caucasus, with a boundary wall of blue hills, topped

by the silver-hewn saddle of Mount Elburz behind it. True, for

the most part the steppes had a dry, yellow, sandy look, with

merely here and there dark patches of gardens or black poplar

clumps which rendered the golden glare more glaring still; yet

also there could be discerned on the expanse farm buildings

shaped like lumps of sugar or butter, with, in their vicinity,

toylike human beings and diminutive cattle -- the whole shimmering

and melting in a mirage born of the heat. And at the mere sight

of those steppes, with their embroidery of silk under the blue of

the zenith, one's muscles tightened, and one felt inspired with a

longing to spring to one's feet, close one's eyes, and walk for

ever with the soft, mournful song of the waste crooning in one's

ears.

To the right also of the defile lay the winding valley of the

Sunzha, with more hills; and above those hills hung the blue sky,

and in their flanks were clefts which, full of grey mist, kept

emitting a ceaseless din of labour, a sound of dull explosions, as

a great puissant force attained release.

Yet almost at the same moment would that hurly-burly so merge

with the echo of our defile, so become buried in the defile's

verdure and rock crevices, that once more the place would seem to

be singing only its own gentle, gracious song.

And, should one turn to glance up the defile, it could be seen to

grow narrower and narrower as it ascended towards the mists, and

the latter to grow thicker and thicker until the whole defile was

swathed in a dark blue pall. Higher yet there could be discerned

the brilliant gleam of blue sky. Higher yet one could distinguish

the ice-capped peak of Kara Dagh, floating and dissolving amid

the ( from here) invisible sunlight. Highest of all again brooded

the serene, steadfast peace of heaven.

Also, everything was bathed in a strange tint of bluish grey: to

which circumstance must have been due the fact that always one's

soul felt filled with restlessness, one's heart stirred to

disquietude, and fired as with intoxication, charged with

incomprehensible thoughts, and conscious as of a summons to set

forth for some unknown destination.

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

The foreman of the carpenters shaded his eyes to gaze in our

direction; and as he did so, he drawled and rasped out in tedious

fashion:

"Some shall to the left be sent,

And in the pit of Hell lie pent.

While others, holding palm in hand,

Shall on God's right take up their stand."

"DID you hear that?" the ex-soldier growled through clenched

teeth. "'Palm in hand' indeed! Why, the fellow must be a

Mennonite or a Molokan, though the two, really, are one, and

absolutely indistinguishable, as well as equally foolish. Yes,

'palm in hand' indeed!"

Similarly could I understand the ex-soldier's indignation, for,

like him, I felt that such dreary, monotonous singing was

altogether out of place in a spot where everything could troll a

song so delightful as to lead one to wish to hear nothing more,

to hear only the whispering of the forest and the babbling of the

stream. And especially out of place did the terms "palm" and

"Mennonite" appear.

Yet I had no great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred

upon me. Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun,

he had faded eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of

restless moroseness. Never could I make out what he really

wanted, what he was really seeking. For instance, once, after

reviewing the Caucasus from Khassav-Urt to Novorossisk, and from

Batum to Derbent, and, during the review, crossing the mountain

range by three different routes at least, he remarked with a

disparaging smile:

"I suppose the Lord God made the country."

"You do not like it, then? How should I? Good for nothing is

what I call it."

Then, with a further glance at me, and a twist of his sinewy

neck, he added:

"However, not bad altogether are its forests."

A native of Kaluga, he had served in Tashkend, and, in fighting

with the Chechintzes of that region,had been wounded in the head

with a stone. Yet as he told me the story of this incident, he

smiled shamefacedly, and, throughout, kept his glassy eyes fixed

upon the ground.

"Though I am ashamed to confess it," he said, "once a woman

chipped a piece out of me. You see, the women of that region are

shrieking devils--there is no other word for it; and when we

captured a village called Akhal-Tiapa a number of them had to be

cut up, so that they lay about in heaps, and their blood made

walking slippery. Just as our company of the reserve entered the

street, something caught me on the head. Afterwards, I learnt that

a woman on a roof had thrown a stone, and, like the rest, had had

to be put out of the way."

Here, knitting his brows, the ex-soldier went on in more serious

vein:

"Yet all that folk used to say about those women, about their

having beards to shave, turned out to be so much gossip, as I

ascertained for myself. I did so by lifting the woman's skirt on

the point of my bayonet, when I perceived that, though she was

lean, and smelt like a goat, she was quite as regular as, as--"

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

interposed.

"I do not know for certain, since, though men who took an actual

part in the expedition's engagements have said that they were so

(the Chechintze is a vicious brute, and never gives in), I myself

know but little of the affair, since I spent my whole time in the

reserve, and never once did my company advance to the assault.

No, it merely lay about on the sand, and fired at long range. In

fact, nothing but sand was to be seen thereabouts; nor did we

ever succeed in finding out what the fighting was for. True, if a

piece of country be good, it is in our interest to take it; but

in the present case the country was poor and bare, with never a

river in sight, and a climate so hot that all one thought of was

one's mortal need of a drink. In fact, some of our fellows died

of thirst outright. Moreover, in those parts there grows a sort

of millet called dzhugar -- millet which not only has a horrible

taste, but proves absolutely delusive, since the more one eats of

it, the less one feels filled."

As the ex-soldier told me the tale colourlessly and reluctantly,

with frequent pauses between the sentences (as though either he

found it difficult to recall the experience or he were thinking

of something else), he never once looked me straight in the face,

but kept his eyes shamefacedly fixed upon the ground.

Unwieldily and unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the

impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of

captious inertia.

"Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country " he continued as

he glanced around him. "It is fit only to do nothing in. For

that matter, one doesn't WANT to do anything in it, save to live

with one's eyes bulging like a drunkard's-- for the climate is too

hot, and the place smells like a chemist's shop or a hospital."

Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this

"too hot" country, as though fascinated!

"Why not return to Riazan?" I suggested.

"Nothing would there be there for me to do," he replied through

his teeth, and with an odd division of his words.

My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at

Armavir, where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been

stamping like a horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or,

rather, snarling, at a couple of Greeks:

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

Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar

denizens of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at

intervals, and saying apologetically:

"What has angered you, sir?"

Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat

his breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased

venom:

"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is

supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good

foster-mother. I expect you say the same."

And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled

gendarme, and complained to him:

"Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live

with us--Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get

their livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they

continue to curse us. A scandal, is it not?"

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

The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore

a Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock,

rounded features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse

lip. When the volatile young engineering student first brought

him to us and said, "Here is another man for you," the newcomer

glanced at me through the lashes of his elusive eyes--then plunged

his hands into the pockets of his Turkish overalls. Just as we

were departing, however, he withdrew one hand from the left

trouser pocket, passed it slowly over the dark bristles of his

unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:

"Do you come from Russia?"

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

gruffly.

Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then

replaced his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and

well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is

accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought

neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his supercilious,

retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and

inclined me to be suspicious of, and even actively to dislike,

the man.

Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side

of the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards

the sportively coursing water:

"Look at the matchmaker!"

The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around

him for a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:

"The fool!"

But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was

apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little river did indeed

resemble some fussy, light-hearted old lady who loved to arrange

affaires du coeur both for her own private amusement and for the

purpose of enabling other folk to realise the joys of affection

amid which she was living, and of which she would never grow

weary, and to which she desired to introduce the rest of the

world as speedily as possible.

Similarly, when we arrived at the barraque this man with the

Cossack face glanced at the rivulet, and then at the mountains

and the sky, and, finally, appraised the scene in one pregnant,

comprehensive exclamation of " Slavno! " [How splendid!]

The ex-soldier, who was engaged in ridding himself of his

knapsack, straightened himself, and asked with his arms set

akimbo:

"WHAT is it that is so splendid?"

For a moment or two the newcomer merely eyed the squat figure of

his questioner--a figure upon which hung drab shreds as lichen

hangs upon a stone. Then he said with a smile:

"Cannot you see for yourself? Take that mountain there, and that

cleft in the mountain-- are they not good to look at?"

And as he moved away, the ex-soldier gaped after him with a

repeated whisper of:

"The fool!"

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

tone:

"I have heard that occasionally they send fever patients hither

for their health."

The same evening saw two sturdy women arrive with supper for the

carpenters; whereupon the clatter of labour ceased, and therefore

the rustling of the forest and the murmuring of the rivulet

became the more distinct.

Next, deliberately, and with many coughs, the ex-soldier set to

work to collect some twigs and chips for the purpose of lighting

a fire. After which, having arranged a kettle over the flames, he

said to me suggestively:

"You too should collect some firewood, for in these parts the

nights are dark and chilly."

I set forth in search of chips among the stones which lay around

the barraque, and, in so doing, stumbled across the newcomer, who

was lying with his body resting on an elbow, and his head on his

hand, as he conned a manuscript spread out before him. As he

raised his eyes to gaze vaguely, inquiringly into my face, I saw

that one of his eyes was larger than the other.

Evidently he divined that he interested me, for he smiled. Yet so

taken aback by this was I, that I passed on my way without

speaking.

Meanwhile the carpenters, disposed in two circles around the

barraque (a circle to each woman), partook of a silent supper.

Deeper and deeper grew the shadow of night over the defile.

Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, grew the air, until the

twilight caused the slopes of the mountains to soften in outline,

and the rocks to seem to swell and merge with the bluish-

blackness which overhung the bed of the defile, and the

superimposed heights to form a single apparent whole, and the

scene in general to resolve itself into, become united into, one

compact bulk.

Quietly then did tints hitherto red extinguish their tremulous

glow--softly there flared up, dusted purple in the sunset's sheen,

the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now

blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence--flowed

with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest

hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while

emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with

the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of our wood fire.

The ex-soldier squatted down before the little blaze, and

rearranged some fuel under the kettle.

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

I departed for the purpose, and, on my way, heard one of the

carpenters in the neighbourhood of the barraque say in a thick,

unctuous, sing-song voice.

"A great work is it indeed!"

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

accents:

"With the flesh I'll conquer pain;

The spirit shall my lust restrain;

All-supreme the soul shall reign;

And carnal vices lure in vain."

True, the women pronounced their words distinctly enough; yet

always they prolonged the final "u" sound of the stanza's first

and third lines until, as the melody floated away into the

darkness, and, as it were, sank to earth, it came to resemble the

long-drawn howl of a wolf.

In answer to my invitation to come to supper, the newcomer sprang

to his feet, folded up his manuscript, stuffed it into one of the

pockets of his ragged coat, and said with a smile:

"I had just been going to resort to the carpenters, for they

would have given us some bread, I suppose? Long is it since I

tasted anything."

The same words he repeated on our approaching the ex-soldier;

much as though he took a pleasure in their phraseology.

"You suppose that they would have given us bread?" echoed the ex-

soldier as he unfastened his wallet. "Not they! No love is lost

between them and ourselves."

"Whom do you mean by 'ourselves'?"

"Us here--you and myself--all Russian folk who may happen to be in

these parts. From the way in which those fellows keep singing

about palms, I should judge them to be sectarians of the sort

called Mennonites."

"Or Molokans, rather?" the other man suggested as he seated

himself in front of the fire.

"Yes, or Molokans. Molokans or Mennonites-- they're all one. It is

a German faith and though such fellows love a Teuton, they do not

exactly welcome US."

Upon this the man with the Cossack forelock took a slice of bread

which the ex-soldier cut from a loaf, with an onion and a pinch

of salt. Then, as he regarded us with a pair of good-humoured

eyes, he said, balancing his food on the palms of his hands:

"There is a spot on the Sunzha, near here, where those fellows

have a colony of their own. Yes, I myself have visited it. True,

those fellows are hard enough, but at the same time to speak

plainly, NO ONE in these parts has any regard for us since only

too many of the sort of Russian folk who come here in search of

work are not overly-desirable."

"Where do you yourself come from?" The ex-soldier's tone was

severe.

"From Kursk, we might say."

"From Russia, then?"

"Yes, I suppose so. But I have no great opinion even of myself."

The ex-soldier glanced distrustfully at the newcomer. Then he

remarked:

"What you say is cant, sheer Jesuitism. It is fellows like

THOSE, rather, that ought to have a poor opinion of themselves."

To this the other made no reply--merely he put a piece of bread

into his mouth. For a moment or two the ex-soldier eyed him

frowningly. Then he continued:

"You seem to me to be a native of the Don country? "

"Yes, I have lived on the Don as well."

"And also served in the army?"

"No. I was an only son."

"Of a miestchanin? " [A member of the small commercial class.]

"No, of a merchant."

"And your name--?"

"Is Vasili."

The last reply came only after a pause, and reluctantly;

wherefore, perceiving that the Kurskan had no particular desire

to discuss his own affairs, the ex-soldier said no more on the

subject, but lifted the kettle from the fire.

The Molokans also had kindled a blaze behind the corner of the

barraque, and now its glow was licking the yellow boards of the

structure until they seemed almost to be liquescent, to be about

to dissolve and flow over the ground in a golden stream.

Presently, as their fervour increased, the carpenters, invisible

amid the obscurity, fell to singing hymns--the basses intoning

monotonously, " Sing, thou Holy Angel! " and voices of higher

pitch responding, coldly and formally.

"Sing ye!

Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!

Sing ye!

Our singing will we add unto Thine,

Thou Angel of Holiness!"

And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of

the rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones,

it seemed out of place in this particular spot;it aroused

resentment against men who could not think of a lay more atune

with the particular living, breathing objects around us.

Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth

of the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the

rivulet escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a

deeper shade, was there not yet suspended the curtain of the

Southern night.

Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to

assume the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head

adorned with a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his

hands. Similarly, the stems of the trees stirred in the firelight

until they developed the semblance of a file of friars entering,

for early Mass, the porch of their chapel-of-ease.

To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just

such a dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-

telling under the boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the

Don country. Suddenly I had heard a window above my head open,

and someone exclaim in a kindly, youthful voice:

"The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!"

And though the window had closed again before I had had time to

discern the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the

monastery a friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a

face as had Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been

he who had breathed the benediction upon mankind

at large, for the reason that moments there are when all humanity

seems to be one's own body, and in oneself there seems to beat

the heart of all humanity. . . .

Vasili consumed his food deliberately as, breaking off morsels

from his slice, and neatly parting his moustache, he placed the

morsels in his mouth with a curious stirring of two globules

which underlay the skin near the ears.

The ex-soldier, however, merely nibbled at his food--he ate but

little, and that lazily. Then he extracted a pipe from his breast

pocket, filled it with tobacco, lit it with a faggot taken from

the fire, and said as he set himself to listen to the singing of

the Molokans:

"They are filled full, and have started bleating. Always folk

like them seek to be on the right side of the Almighty."

"Does that hurt you in any way?" Vasili asked with a smile.

"No, but I do not respect them--they are less saints than

humbugs, than prevaricators whose first word is God, and second

word rouble."

"How do you know that?" cried Vasili amusedly. "And even if

their first word IS God, and their second word rouble, we had

best not be too hard upon them, since if they chose to be hard

upon US, where should WE be? Yes, we have only to open our mouths

to speak a word or two for ourselves, and we should find every

fist at our teeth."

" Quite so," the ex-soldier agreed as, taking up a square of

scantling, he examined it attentively.

"Whom DO you respect?" Vasili continued after a pause.

"I respect," the ex-soldier said with some emphasis, "only the

Russian people, the true Russian people, the folk who labour on

land whereon labour is hard. Yet who are the folk whom you find

HERE? In this part of the world the business of living is an easy

one. Much of every sort of natural produce is to be had, and the

soil is generous and light--you need but to scratch it for it to

bear, and for yourself to reap. Yes, it is indulgent to a fault.

Rather, it is like a maiden. Do but touch her, and a child will

arrive."

"Agreed," was Vasili's remark as he drank tea from a tin mug.

"Yet to this very part of the world is it that I should like to

transport every soul in Russia."

"And why?"

"Because here they could earn a living."

"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,

damn 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 glassy

eyes which, as round as buttons, 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 God 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 identities, 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 prone upon his back, twitched his moustache, and

chewed a stalk of grass. 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 God; 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 cocked 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 snatched 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!"

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

massive 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, breasts 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 buttoned 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 shaggy 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 passengers on the schooner had been shouting

and laughing and singing, while the great bearded peasants had

also been paying assiduous 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 passed 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 breasts 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, succumbed 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 butter 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 God: '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

bitches! "

"It is always so," commented Vasili with a resentment equal to

the last speaker's. "Yes, no sooner, with us, does a man

accumulate 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 Saturday

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.

With a glance at us both, Vasili laughed a subdued laugh.

"'In the heart of every man'? " he repeated. "Why, such a

statement is absurd. For it means, does it not, that every one of

us is an idler, every one of us is constantly waiting for

something to turn up--that, in fact, no one of us is any better

than, or able to do any better than, the folk whose sole

utterance is 'Give unto us, pray give unto us'? Yes, if that be

the case, it is an unfortunate case indeed!"

And again he laughed. Yet his eyes were sorrowful, and as the

fingers of his right hand lay upon his knee they twitched as

though they were longing to grasp something unseen.

The ex-soldier frowned and snorted. For my own part, however, I

felt troubled for, and sorry for, Vasili. Presently he rose,

broke into a soft whistle, and moved away by the side of the

stream.

"His head is not quite right," muttered the ex-soldier as he

winked in the direction of the retreating figure. "Yes, I tell

you that straight, for from the first it was clear to me.

Otherwise, what could his words in depredation of Russia mean,

when of Russia nothing the least hard or definite can be said?

Who really knows her? What is she in reality, seeing that each of

her provinces is a soul to itself, and no one could state which

of the two Holy Mothers stands nearest to God--the Holy Mother of

Smolensk, or the Holy Mother of Kazan? "

For a while the speaker sat scraping greasy deposit from the

bottom and sides of the kettle; and all that while he grumbled as

though he had a grudge against someone. At length, however, he

assumed an attitude of attention, with his neck stretched out as

though to listen to some sound.

"Hist!" was his exclamation.

What then followed, followed as unexpectedly as when, like an

evil bird, a summer whirlwind suddenly sweeps up from the

horizon, and discharges a bluish-black cloud in torrents of rain

and hail, until everything is overwhelmed and battered to mud.

That is to say, with much din of whistling and other sounds there

now came pouring into the defile, and began to ascend the trail

beside the stream, a straggling procession of some thirty workmen

with, gleaming dully in the hands of their leading files, flagons

of vodka, and, suspended on the backs and shoulders of others,

wallets and bags of bread and other comestibles, and, in two

instances, poised on the heads of yet other processionists, large

black cauldrons the effect of which was to make their bearers

look like mushrooms.

"A vedro [2 3/4 gallons] and a half to the cauldron!" whispered

the ex-soldier with a computative grunt as he gained his feet.

"Yes, a vedro and a half," he repeated. As he spoke the tip of

his tongue protruded until it rested on the under-lip of his

half-opened mouth. In his face there was a curiously thirsty,

gross expression, and his attitude, as he stood there, was that

of one who had just received a blow, and was about to cry out in

consequence.

Meanwhile the defile rumbled like a barrel into which heavy

weights are being dropped, for one of the newcomers was beating

an empty tin pail, and another one whistling in a manner the

tossed echoes of which drowned even the rivulet's murmur as

nearer and nearer came the mob of men, a mob clad variously in

black, grey, or russet, with sleeves rolled up, and heads, in

many cases, bare save for their own towsled, dishevelled locks,

and bodies bent with fatigue, or carried stumblingly along on

legs bowed outwards. Meanwhile, as the dull, polyphonous roar of

voices swept through the neck of the defile, a man shouted in

broken, but truculent, accents:

"I say no! Fiddlesticks! Not a man is there who could drink more

than a vedro of 'blood-and-sweat' in a day."

"A man could drink a lake of it."

"No, a vedro and a half. That is the proper reckoning."

"Aye, a vedro and a half." And the ex-soldier, as he repeated

the words, spoke both as though he were an expert in the matter

and as though he felt for the matter a touch of respect. Then,

lurching forward like a man pushed by the scruff of the neck, he

crossed the rivulet, intercepted the crowd, and became swallowed

up in its midst.

Around the barraque the carpenters (the foreman ever glimmering

among them) were hurriedly collecting tools. Presently Vasili

returned--his right hand thrust into his pocket, and his left

holding his cap.

"Before long those fellows will be properly drunk! " he said

with a frown. "Ah, that vodka of ours! It is a perfect curse!"

Then to me: "Do YOU drink?"

"No," I replied.

"Thank God for that! If one does not drink one will never really

get into trouble."

For a moment he gazed gloomily in the direction of the newcomers.

Then he said without moving, without even looking at me:

"You have remarkable eyes, young fellow. Also, they seem

familiar to me--I have seen them somewhere before. Possibly that

happened in a dream, though I cannot be sure. Where do you come

from?"

I answered, but, after scanning me perplexedly, he shook his

head.

"No," he remarked. "I have never visited that part of the

country, or indeed, been so far from home."

"But this place is further still?"

"Further still?"

"Yes--from Kursk."

He laughed.

"I must tell you the truth," he said. "I am not a Kurskan at

all, but a Pskovian. The reason why I told the ex-soldier that I

was from Kursk was that I neither liked him nor cared to tell him

the whole truth-he was not worth the trouble. And as for my real

name, it is Paul, not Vasili--Paul Nikolaev Silantiev-- and is so

marked on my passport (for a passport, and a passport quite in

order, I have got)."

"And why are you on your travels? "

"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from

a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather

floats before the wind."

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

"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I

am the foreman here."

The voice of the ex-soldier replied:

"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians,

fellows who are for ever singing hymns."

To which someone else added:

"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all

building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"

"Let us throw their tools into the stream."

"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted

before the embers of the fire.

Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its

framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as

around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to

pieces--at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood

against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command:

"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just

hand over the saw!"

Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the

one a red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall

man with hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept

grasping the foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling,

"Where are your lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also

was a broad-shouldered young fellow in a ragged red shirt who

kept thrusting pieces of scantling through the windows of the

barraque, and shouting, "Catch hold of these! Lay them out in a

row!"); and the third the ex-soldier himself. The last-named, as

he jostled his way among the crowd, kept vociferating, viciously,

virulently, and with a curious system of division of his

syllables:

"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say

to me, you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for

the re-est of us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"

"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a

cigarette. "Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka! . . . Yet are you

not sorry for fellows of that stamp?"

Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers;

until at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers

into a heap glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and

as he did so, his handsome eyes gleamed with just such a reverent

affection, such a prayerful kindliness, as must have lurked in

the eyes of primeval, nomadic man in the presence of the dancing,

beneficent source of light and heat.

"At least I am sorry for such fellows," Vasili continued.

"Aye, the very thought of the many, many folk who have come to

nothing! The very thought of it! Terrible, terrible!"

A touch of daylight was still lingering on the tops of the

mountains, but in the defile itself night was beginning to loom,

and to lull all things to sleep--to incline one neither to speak

oneself nor to listen to the dull clamour of those others on the

opposite bank, where even to the murmur of the rivulet the

distasteful din seemed to communicate a note of anger.

There the crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a

second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of

bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in

lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red.

As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an

hilarious voice shouted to us the invitation:

"Come over here, you! Don't be backward! Come over here, I say!"

Upon which followed a clatter as of the smashing of a drinking-

vessel, while from the red-bearded muzhik came a thick, raucous

shout of:

"These fellows needed to be taught a lesson!"

Almost at the same moment the foreman of the carpenters broke his

way clear of the crowd, and, carefully crossing the rivulet by

the stepping-stones which we had constructed, squatted down upon

his heels by the margin, and with much puffing and blowing fell

to rinsing his face, a face which in the murky firelight looked

flushed and red.

"I think that someone has given him a blow," hazarded Silantiev

sotto voce.

And when the foreman rose to approach us this proved to be the

case, for then we saw that dripping from his nose, and meandering

over his moustache and soaked white beard, there was a stream of

dark blood which had spotted and streaked his shirt-front.

"Peace to this gathering!" he said gravely as, pressing his

left hand to his stomach, he bowed.

"And we pray your indulgence," was Silantiev's response, though

he did not raise his eyes as he spoke. "Pray be seated."

Small, withered, and, for all but his blood-stained shirt,

scrupulously clean, the old man reminded me of certain pictures

of old-time hermits, and the more so since either pain or shame

or the gleam of the firelight had caused his hitherto dead eyes

to gather life and grow brighter--aye, and sterner. Somehow, as I

looked at him, I felt awkward and abashed.

A cough twisted his broad nose. Then he wiped his beard on the

palm of his hand, and his hand on his knee; whereafter, as he

stretched forth the pair of senile, dark-coloured hands, and held

them over the embers, he said:

"How cold the water of the rivulet is! It is absolutely icy."

With a glance from under his brows Silantiev inquired:

"Are you very badly hurt?"

"No. Merely a man caught me a blow on the bridge of the nose,

where the blood flows readily. Yet, as God knows, he will gain

nothing by his act, whereas the suffering which he has caused me

will go to swell my account with the Holy Spirit."

As the man spoke he glanced across the rivulet. On the opposite

bank two men were staggering along, and drunkenly bawling the

tipsy refrain:

"In the du-u-uok let me die,

In the au-autumn time!"

"Aye, long is it since I received a blow," the old man

continued, scanning the two revellers from under his hand.

"Twenty years it must be since last I did so. And now the blow was

struck for nothing, for no real fault.. You see, I have been

allowed no nails for the doing of the work, and have been obliged

to make use of wooden clamps for most of it, while battens also

have not been forthcoming; and, this being so, it was through no

remissness of mine that the work could not be finished by sunset

tonight. I suspect, too, that, to eke out its wages, that rabble

has been thieving, with the eldest leading the rest. And that,

again, is not a thing for which I can be held responsible. True,

this is a Government job, and some of those fellows are young,

and young, hungry fellows such as they will (may they be

forgiven!) steal, since everyone hankers to get something in

return for a very little. But, once more, how is that my fault?

Yes, that rabble must be a regular set of rascals! Just now they

deprived my eldest son of a saw, of a brand-new saw; and

thereafter they spilt my blood, the blood of a greybeard!"

Here his small, grey face contracted into wrinkles, and, closing

his eyes, he sobbed a dry, grating sob.

Silantiev fidgeted--then sighed. Presently the old man looked at

him, blew his nose, wiped his hand upon his trousers, and said

quietly:

"Somewhere, I think, I have seen you before."

"That is so. You saw me one evening when I visited your

settlement for the mending of a thresher."

"Yes, yes. That is where I DID see you. It was you, was it not?

Well, do you still disagree with me? "

To which the old man added with a nod and a smile:

"See how well I remember your words! You are, I imagine, still

of the same opinion?"

"How should I not be?" responded Silantiev dourly.

"Ah, well! Ah, well!"

And the old man stretched his hands over the fire once more,

discoloured hands the thumbs of which were curiously bent

outwards and splayed, and, seemingly, unable to move in harmony

with the fingers.

The ex-soldier shouted across the river:

"The land here is easy to work, and makes the people lazy. Who

would care to live in such a region? Who would care to come to

it? Much rather would I go and earn a living on difficult land."

The old man paid no heed, but said to Silantiev--said to him with

an austere, derisive smile:

"Do you STILL think it necessary to struggle against what has

been ordained of God? Do you STILL think that long-suffering is

bad, and resistance good? Young man, your soul is weak indeed:

and remember that it is only the soul that can overcome Satan."

In response Silantiev rose to his feet, shook his fist at the old

man, and shouted in a rough, angry voice, a voice that was not

his own:

"All that I have heard before, and from others besides yourself.

The truth is that I hold all you father-confessors in abhorrence.

"Moreover," (this last was added with a violent oath) "it is not

Satan that needs to be resisted, but such devil's ravens, such

devil's vampires, as YOU."

Which said, he kicked a stone away from the fire, thrust his

hands into his pockets, and turned slowly on his heel, with his

elbows pressed close to his sides. Nevertheless the old man,

still smiling, said to me in an undertone:

"He is proud, but that will not last for long."

"Why not?"

"Because I know in advance that--"

Breaking off short, he turned his head upon his shoulder, and sat

listening to some shouting that was going on across the river.

Everyone in that quarter was drunk, and, in particular, someone

could be heard bawling in a tone of challenge:

"Oh? I, you say? A-a-ah! Then take that!"

Silantiev, stepping lightly from stone to stone, crossed the

river. Then he mingled--a conspicuous figure (owing to his

apparent handlessness)--with the crowd. Somehow, on his departure,

I felt ill at ease.

Twitching his fingers as though performing a conjuring trick, the

old man continued to sit with his hands stretched over the

embers. By this time his nose had swollen over the bridge, and

bruises risen under his eyes which tended to obscure his vision.

Indeed, as he sat there, sat mouthing with dark, bestreaked lips

under a covering of hoary beard and moustache, I found that his

bloodstained, disfigured, wrinkled, as it were "antique" face

reminded me more than ever of those of great sinners of ancient

times who abandoned this world for the forest and the desert.

"I have seen many proud folk," he continued with a shake of his

hatless head and its sparse hairs. "A fire may burn up quickly,

and continue to burn fiercely, yet, like these embers, become

turned to ashes, and. so lie smouldering till dawn. Young man,

there you have something to think of. Nor are they merely my

words. They are the words of the Holy Gospel itself."

Ever descending, ever weighing more heavily upon us, the night

was as black and hot and stifling as the previous one had been,

albeit as kindly as a mother. Still the two fires on the opposite

bank of the rivulet were aflame, and sending hot blasts of vapour

across a seeming brook of gold.

Folding his arms upon his breast, the old man tucked the palms of

his hands into his armpits, and settled himself more comfortably.

Nevertheless, when I made as though to add more twigs and

shavings to the embers he exclaimed imperiously:

"There is no need for that."

"Why is there not? "

"Because that would cause the fire to be seen, and bring some of

those men over here."

Again, as he kicked away some boughs which I had just broken up,

he repeated:

"There is no need for that, I tell you."

Presently, there approached us through the shimmering fire light

on the opposite bank two carpenters with boxes on their backs,

and axes in their hands.

"Are all the rest of our men gone?" inquired the foreman of the

newcomers.

"Yes," replied one of them, a tall man with a drooping moustache

and no beard.

"Well, 'shun evil, and good will result.'"

"Aye, and we likewise wish to depart."

"But a task ought not to be left unfinished. At dinner-time I

sent Olesha to say that none of those fellows had better be

released from work; but released they have been, and now the

result is apparent! Presently, when they have drunk a little more

of their poison, they will fire the barraque."

Every time that the first of the two carpenters inhaled the smoke

of my cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a

young fellow as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head

upon his breast as soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.

Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But

suddenly I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong

accents which came from the very centre of the tumult:

"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for

Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I

should like to know? "

"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning

to me, he added more loudly:

"I say this of such fellows-- that a tavern... But what a noise

those roisterers are making, to be sure!"

The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:

"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize

him!"

While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:

"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"

"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from

the ex-soldier-- whereupon the old man remarked to me in an

undertone:

"It would seem that a fight is brewing."

Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I

heard the old man say softly to his companions:

"He too is gone, thank God!"

Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd

of men. Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be

carrying or dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently

a woman's voice screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised

mingled shouts of "Throw him in! Give him a thrashing!" and

"Drag him along!"

The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd,

straighten himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl

himself at the crowd again. As he did so the young fellow in the

red shirt raised a gigantic arm, and there followed the sound of

a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering backwards, Silantiev slid

silently into the water, and lay there at my feet.

"That's right!" was the comment of someone.

For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during

that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the

sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw

into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull

way.

As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.

Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot

where, half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head

and breast resting against the stepping-stones.

"You have killed him!" next I shouted--not because I believed

the statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten

into sobriety the men who were impeding me.

Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:

"Surely not?"

As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he passed me by with a

braggart, resentful shout of:

"Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said

that I was a nuisance to the whole country?"

And someone else shouted:

"Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"

"Bring a light," was the cry of a third.

Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more

restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik

whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised

Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again,

and, dipping his hands into the water, said gravely:

"You have killed him. He is dead."

At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I

stood watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs,

and turned them this way and that, and made them stir as though

they were striving to divest themselves of the shabby old boots,

I realised with all my being that the hands which were resting in

mine were the hands of a corpse. And, true enough, when I

released them they slapped down upon the surface like wet dish-

cloths.

Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to

observe what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words

rang out these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent,

in subdued, uneasy tones, cries of:

"Who was it first struck him?"

"This will lose us our jobs."

"It was the soldier that first started the racket."

"Yes, that is true."

"Let us go and denounce him."

As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:

"I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a

quarrel."

"To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."

"It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."

"The soldier ought to--"

A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:

"Good Lord! Always something happens to us! "

As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon

the stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight,

nothing was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a

strange emptiness was present, save that the clamour of the

bystanders aroused me to a certain longing to outshout them all,

to send forth my voice into the night like the voice of a brazen

trumpet.

Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first

was a torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being

extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of

golden sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin

as a pike when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike

countenance that was deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth

perpetually half-agape, and round, owlish-looking eyes.

As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon

his knee to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head

and body. That head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no

longer could I recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so

buried was the jaunty forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and

concealed by a swelling which had made its appearance above the

left ear. Also, since the mouth and moustache had been bashed

aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted, truly horrible smile,

while, as the most horrible point of all, the left eye was

hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large, gazing,

seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's pea-

jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.

Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air,

and thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor

mutilated face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he

muttered with a smack of the lips:

"You can see for yourselves who the man is."

As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp

and wet cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so

played in the ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an

added appearance of death.

Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch

into the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion

as he smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked

almost greenish:

"Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been

done to death."

"No; I should be afraid to go alone."

"Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."

"But I would much rather not."

"Don't be such a fool!"

Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the

foreman.

"I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he

scraped his foot against a stone:

"How horrible the blood smells! It would seem that my very foot

is smeared with it."

With a frown the fair-headed muzhik eyed him, while the foreman

returned the muzhik's gaze with a scrutiny that never wavered.

Finally the elder man commented with cold severity:

"All the mischief has come of vodka and tobacco, the devil's

drugs."

Not only were the pair strangely alike, but both of them

strangely resembled wizards, in that both were short of stature,

as sharp-finished as gimlets, and as green-tinted by the darkness

as tufts of lichen.

"Let us go, brother," the foreman said. "Go we with the Holy

Spirit."

And, omitting even to inquire who had been killed, or even to

glance at the corpse, or even to pay it the last salute demanded

of custom, the foreman departed down the stream, while in his

wake followed the messenger, a man who kept stumbling as he

picked his way from stone to stone. Amid the gloom the pair moved

as silently as ghosts.

The narrow-chested, fair-headed little muzhik then raked me with

his eyes; whereafter he produced a cigarette from a tin box,

snapped-to the lid of the box, struck a match (illuminating once

more the face of the dead man), and applied the flame to the

cigarette. Lastly he said:

"This is the sixth murder which I have seen one thing and

another commit."

"One thing and another commit?" I queried.

The reply came only after a pause; when the little muzhik asked:

" What did you say? I did not quite catch it."

I explained that human beings, not inanimate entities, murdered

human beings.

"Well, be they human beings or machinery or lightning or

anything else, they are all one. One of my mates was caught in

some machinery at Bakhmakh. Another one had his throat cut in a

brawl. Another one was crushed against the bucket in a coal mine.

Another one was--"

Carefully though the man counted, he ended by erring in his

reckoning to the extent of making his total "five." Accordingly

he re-computed the list--and this time succeeded in making the

total amount to "seven."

"Never mind," he remarked with a sigh as he blew his cigarette

into a red glow which illuminated the whole of his face. "The

truth is that I cannot always repeat the list correctly, just as

I should like. Were I older than I am, I too should contrive to

get finished off; for old-age is a far from desirable thing. Yes,

indeed! But, as things are, I am still alive, nor, thank the

Lord, does anything matter very much."

Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued:

"Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of

him, or a letter from him. Well, never again will he write, and

as likely as not his kinsfolk will end by saying to themselves:

'He has taken to bad ways, and forgotten his family.' Yes, good

sir."

By this time the clamour around the barraque had ceased, and the

two fires had burnt themselves out, and most of the men

dispersed. From the smooth yellow walls of the barraque dark,

round, knot-holes were gazing at the rivulet like eyes. Only in a

single window without a frame was there visible a faint light,

while at intervals there issued thence fragmentary, angry

exclamations such as:

"Look sharp there, and deal! Clubs will be the winners."

"Ah! Here is a trump!"

"Indeed? What luck, damn it!"

The fair-headed muzhik blew the ashes from his cigarette, and

observed:

"No such thing is there at cards as luck--only skill."

At this juncture we saw approaching us softly from across the

rivulet a young carpenter who wore a moustache. He halted beside

us, and drew a deep breath.

"Well, mate?" the fair-headed muzhik inquired.

"Would you mind giving me something to smoke?" the carpenter

asked. The obscurity caused him to look large and shapeless,

though his manner of speaking was bashful and subdued.

"Certainly. Here is a cigarette."

"Christ reward you! Today my wife forgot to bring my tobacco,

and my grandfather has strict ideas on the subject of smoking."

"Was it he who departed just now? It was."

As the carpenter inhaled a whiff he continued:

"I suppose that man was beaten to death?"

"He was--to death."

For a while the pair smoked in silence. The hour was past

midnight.

Over the defile the jagged strip of sky which roofed it looked

like a river of blue flowing at an immense height above the

night-enveloped earth, and bearing the brilliant stars on its

smooth current.

Quieter and quieter was everything growing; more and more was

everything becoming part of the night....

One might have thought that nothing particular had happened.