Nilushka / Maxim Gorky

The timber-built town of Buev, a town which has several times

been burnt to the ground, lies huddled upon a hillock above the

river Obericha. Its houses, with their many-coloured shutters,

stand so crowded together as to form around the churches and

gloomy law courts a perfect maze--the streets which intersect the

dark masses of houses meandering aimlessly hither and thither,

and throwing off alleyways as narrow as sleeves, and feeling

their way along plot-fences and warehouse walls, until, viewed

from the hillock above, the town looks as though someone has

stirred it up with a stick and dispersed and confused everything

that it contains. Only from the point where Great Zhitnaia

Street takes its rise from the river do the stone mansions of

the local merchants (for the most part German colonists) cut a

grim, direct line through the packed clusters of buildings

constructed of wood, and skirt the green islands of gardens, and

thrust aside the churches; whereafter, continuing its way

through Council Square (still running inexorably straight), the

thoroughfare stretches to, and traverses, a barren plain of

scrub, and so reaches the pine plantation belonging to the

Monastery of St. Michael the Archangel where the latter is

lurking behind a screen of old red spruces of which the

denseness seems to prop the very heavens, and which on clear,

sunny days can be seen rising to mark the spot whence the

monastery's crosses, like the gilded birds of the forest of

eternal silence, scintillate a constant welcome.

At a distance of some ten houses before Zhitnaia Street

debouches upon the plain which I have mentioned there begin to

diverge from the street and to trend towards a ravine, and

eventually to lose themselves in the latter's recesses, the

small, squat shanties with one or two windows apiece which

constitute the suburb of Tolmachikha. This suburb, it may be

said, had as its original founders the menials of a landowner

named Tolmachev--a landowner who, after emancipating his serfs

some thirteen years before all serfs were legally emancipated,

[In the year 1861] was, for his action, visited with such

bitter revilement that, in dire offence at the same, he ended by

becoming an inmate of the monastery, and there spending ten

years under the vow of silence, until death overtook him amid a

peaceful obscurity born of the fact that the authorities had

forbidden his exhibition to pilgrims or strangers.

It is in the very cots originally apportioned to Tolmachev's

menials, at the time, fifty years ago, when those menials were

converted into citizens, that the present inhabitants of the

suburb dwell. And never have they been burnt out of those homes,

although the same period has seen all Buev save Zhitnaia Street

consumed, and everywhere that one may delve within the township

one will be sure to come across undestroyed hearthstones.

The suburb, as I have said, stands at the hither end and on the

sloping side of one of the arms of a deep, wooded ravine, with

its windows facing towards the ravine's yawning mouth, and

affording a view direct to the Mokrie (certain marshes beyond

the Obericha) and the swampy forest of firs into which the dim

red sun declines. Further on, the ravine trends across the

plain,then bends round towards the western side of the town,

cats away the clayey soil with an appetite which each spring

increases, and which, carrying the soil down to the river, is

gradually clogging the river's flow, diverting the muddy

water towards the marshes, and converting those marshes into a

lagoon outright. The fissure in question is named " The Great

Ravine," and has its steep flanks so overgrown with chestnuts

and laburnums that even in summertime its recesses are cool and

moist, and so serve as a convenient trysting place for the

poorer lovers of the suburb and the town, and witness their

tea drinkings and frequently fatal quarrels, as well as being

used by the more well-to-do for a dumping ground for rubbish of

the nature of deceased dogs, cats, and horses.

Pleasantly singing, there scours the bottom of the ravine the

brook known as the Zhandarmski Spring, a brook celebrated

throughout Buev for its crystal-cold water, which is so icy of

temperature that even on a burning day it will make the teeth

ache. This water the denizens of Tolmachikha account to be their

peculiar property; wherefore they are proud of it, and drink it

to the exclusion of any other, and so live to a green old age

which in some cases cannot even reckon its years. And by way of

a livelihood, the men of the suburb indulge in hunting, fishing,

fowling, and thieving (not a single artisan proper does the

suburb contain, save the cobbler Gorkov--a thin, consumptive

skeleton of surname Tchulan); while, as regards the women, they,

in winter, sew and make sacks for Zimmel's mill, and pull tow,

and in summer they scour the plantation of the monastery for

truffles and other produce, and the forest on the other side of

the river for huckleberries. Also, two of the suburb's women

practise as fortune tellers, while two others conduct an easy

and highly lucrative trade in prostitution.

The result is that the town, as distinguished from the suburb,

believes the men of the latter to be one and all thieves, and

the women and girls of the suburb to be one and all disreputable

characters. Hence the town strives always to restrict and

extirpate the suburb, while the suburbans retaliate upon the

townsfolk with robbery and arson and murder, while despising

those townsfolk for their parsimony, decorum, and avarice, and

detesting the settled, comfortable mode of life which they lead.

So poor, for that matter, is the suburb that never do even

beggars resort thither, save when drunk. No, the only creatures

which resort thither are dogs which subsist no one knows how as

predatorily they roam from court to court with tails tucked

between their flanks, and bloodless tongues hanging down, and

legs ever prepared, on sighting a human being, to bolt into the

ravine, or to let down their owners upon subservient bellies in

expectation of a probable kick or curse.

In short, every cranny of every cot in the place, with the grimy

panes of their windows, and their lathed roofs overgrown with

velvety moss, breathes forth the universal, deadly hopelessness

induced by Russia's crushing poverty.

In the Tolmachikhans' backyards grow only alders, elders, and

weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the

fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while

masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little

children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the

highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged

lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of

their number carried off by diphtheria, while scarlatina and

measles are as epidemic among them as is typhoid among their

elders.

Thus the sounds of life most to be heard throughout the suburb

are the sounds either of weeping or of mad cursing. In general,

however, life in Tolmachikha is lived quietly and lethargically.

So much is this the case that in spring even the cats forbear to

squall save in crushed and subdued accents. The only local

person to sing is Felitzata; and even she does so only when she

is drunk. It may be said that Felitzata is a saucy, cunning

procuress, and does her singing in a peculiarly thick and

rasping voice which, with many croaks and hiatuses, necessitates

much closing of the eyes, and a great protruding of the apple of

the throat. Indeed, it is only the women of the place who,

turbulently quarrelsome and hysterically noisy, spend most of

the day in scouring the streets with skirts tucked up, and never

cease begging for pinches of salt or flour or spoonfuls of oil

as they rail and screech at and beat their children, and thrust

withered breasts into their babies' mouths, and rush and fling

themselves about, and bawl in a constant endeavour to right

their woebegone condition. Yes, all are dishevelled and dirty,

and have wizened, bony faces, and the restless eyes of thieves.

Never, indeed, is a woman plump of figure, save at the period

when she is ill, and her eyes are dim, and her gait is laboured.

Yet until they are forty, the majority of the women become

pregnant with every winter, and on the arrival of spring may be

seen walking abroad with large stomachs and blue hollows under

the eyes. And even this does not prevent them from working with

the same desperate energy as when they are not with child. In

short, the inhabitants of the place resemble needles and threads

with which some rough, clumsy, and impatient hand is for ever

trying to darn a ragged cloth which as constantly parts and

rends.

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

The chief person of repute in the suburb is my landlord, one

Antipa Vologonov--a little old man who keeps a shop of "odd

wares," and also lends money on pledge.

Unfortunately, Antipa is a sufferer from a long-standing tendency

to rheumatism, which has left him bow-legged, and has twisted and

swollen his fingers to the extent that they will not bend. Hence,

he always keeps his hands tucked into his sleeves, though

seemingly he has the less use for them in that, even when he

withdraws them from their shelter, he does so as cautiously as

though he were afraid of their becoming dislocated.

On the other hand, he never loses his temper, and he never grows

excited.

"Neither of those things suits me," he will say, "for my heart

is dilated, and might at any moment fail."

As for his face, it has high cheekbones which in places blossom

into dark red blotches; an expression as calm as that of the

face of a Khirghiz; a chin whence dangle wisps of mingled grey,

red, and flaxen hair of a perpetually moist appearance; oblique

and ever-changing eyes which are permanently contracted; a pair

of thick, parti-coloured eyebrows which cast deep shadows over

the eyes; and temples whereon a number of blue veins struggle

with an irregular, sparse coating of bristles. Finally, about

his whole personality there is something ever variable and

intangible.

Also, his gait is irritatingly slow; and the more so owing to

his coat, which, of a cut devised by himself, consists, as it

were, of cassock, sarafan [jacket], and waistcoat in one. As

often as not he finds the skirts of the garment cumbering his

legs; whereupon he has to stop and give them a kick. And thus it

comes about that permanently the skirts are ragged and torn.

"No need for hurry," is his customary remark. "Always, in

time, does one win to one's pitch in the marketplace."

His speech is cast in rounded periods, and displays a great love

for ecclesiastical terms. On the occurrence of one such term, he

pauses thereafter as though mentally he were adding to the term

a very thick, a very black, full stop. Yet always he will

converse with anyone, and at great length--his probable motive

being a desire to leave behind him the reputation of a wise old

man.

In his shanty are three windows facing on to the street, and a

partition-wall which divides it into two rooms of unequal size.

In the larger room, which contains a Russian stove, he himself

lives; in the smaller room I have my abode. By a passage the two

are separated from a storeroom where, closeted behind a door to

which there are a heavy, old-fashioned bolt and many iron and

brass screws, Antipa preserves pledges left by his neighbours,

such as samovars, ikons, winter clothing and the like. Of this

storeroom he always carries the great indentated key at the back

of the strap which upholds his cloth breeches; and, whenever the

police call to ascertain whether he is harbouring any stolen

goods, a long time ensues whilst he is shifting the key round to

his stomach, and again a long time whilst he is unfastening it

from the belt. Meanwhile, he says pompously to the Superintendent

or the Deputy Superintendent:

"Never do I take in goods of that kind. Of the truth of what I

say, your honour, you have more than once assured yourself in

person."

Also, whenever Antipa sits down the key rattles against the back

or the seat of his chair; whereupon he bends his arm with

difficulty, and feels to see whether or not the key has come

unslung. This I know for the reason that the partition-wall is

not so thick but that I can hear his every breath drawn, and

divine his every movement.

Of an evening, when the misty sun is slanting across the river

towards the auburn belt of pines, and distilling pink vapours

from the sombre vista to be seen through the shaggy mouth of the

ravine, Antipa Vologonov sets out a squat samovar that is dinted

of side, and plated with green oxide on handle, turncock, and

spout. Then he seats himself at his table by the window.

At intervals I hear the evening stillness broken by questions

put in a tone which implies always an expectation of a precise

answer.

"Where is Darika?"

"He has gone to the spring for water." The answer is given

whiningly, and in a thin voice.

"And how is your sister?

"Still in pain."

"Yes? Well, you can go now."

Giving a slight cough to clear his throat, the old man begins to

sing in a quavering falsetto:

Once a bullet smote my breast,

And scarce the pang I felt.

But ne'er the pang could be express'd

Which love's flame since hath dealt!

As the samovar hisses and bubbles, heavy footsteps resound in the

street, and an indistinct voice says:

"He thinks that because he is a Town Councillor he is also

clever."

"Yes; such folk are apt to grow very proud."

"Why, all his brains put together wouldn't grease one of my

boots!"

And as the voices die away the old man's falsetto trickles forth

anew, humming:

"The poor man's anger... Minika! Hi, you! Come in here, and I

will give you a bit of sugar. How is your father getting on? Is

he drunk at present?"

"No, sober, for he is taking nothing but kvas and cabbage soup."

"And what is he doing for a living?"

"Sitting at the table, and thinking."

"And has your mother been beating him again?"

"No--not again."

"And she--how is she?"

"Obliged to keep indoors."

"Well, run along with you."

Softly there next presents herself before the window Felitzata,

a woman of about forty with a hawk-like gleam in her coldly

civil eyes, and a pair of handsome lips compressed into a covert

smile. She is well known throughout the suburb, and once had a

son, Nilushka, who was the local " God's fool." Also she has the

reputation of knowing what is correct procedure on all and

sundry occasions, as well as of being skilled in lamentations,

funeral rites, and festivities in connection with the musterings

of recruits. Lastly she has had a hip broken, so that she walks

with an inclination towards the left.

Her fellow women say of her that her veins contain "a drop of

gentle blood"; but probably the statement is inspired by no

more than the fact that she treats everyone with the same cold

civility. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about her,

for her hands are slender and have long fingers, and her head

is haughtily poised, and her voice has a metallic ring, even

though the metal has, as it were, grown dull and rusty. Also,

she speaks of everyone, herself included, in the most rough and

downright terms, yet terms which are so simple that, though her

talk may be disconcerting to listen to, it could never be called

obscene.

For instance, once I overheard Vologonov reproach her for not

leading a more becoming life:

"You ought to have more self-restraint," said he, "seeing that

you are a lady, and also your own mistress."

"That is played out, my friend," she replied. "You see, I have

had very much to bear, for there was a time when such hunger

used to gnaw at my belly as you would never believe. It was then

that my eyes became dazzled with the tokens of shame. So I took

my fill of love, as does every woman. And once a woman has

become a light-o'-love she may as well doff her shift

altogether, and use the body which God has given her. And, after

all, an independent life is the best life; so I hawk myself

about like a pot of beer, and say, 'Drink of this, anyone who

likes, while it still contains liquor.'"

"It makes one feel ashamed to hear such talk," said Vologonov

with a sigh. In response she burst out laughing.

"What a virtuous man!" was her comment upon his remark.

Until now Antipa had spoken cautiously, and in an undertone,

whereas the woman had replied in loud accents of challenge.

"Will you come in and have some tea? " he said next as he leant

out of the window.

"No, I thank you. In passing, what a thing I have heard about

you!"

"Do not shout so loud. Of what are you speaking?"

"Oh, of SUCH a thing!"

"Of NOTHING, I imagine."

"Yes, of EVERYTHING."

"God, who created all things, alone knows everything."

Whereafter the pair whispered together awhile. Then Felitzata

disappeared as suddenly as she had come, leaving the old man

sitting motionless. At length he heaved a profound sigh, and

muttered to himself.

"Into that Eve's ears be there poured the poison of the asp! .

. . Yet pardon me, 0h God! Yea, pardon me!"

The words contained not a particle of genuine contrition.

Rather, I believe, he uttered them because he had a weakness not

for words which signified anything, but for words which, being

out of the way, were not used by the common folk of the suburb.

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

Sometimes Vologonov knocks at the partition-wall with a

superannuated arshin measure which has only fifteen vershoki of

its length remaining. He knocks, and shouts:

"Lodger, would you care to join me in a pot of tea? "

During the early days of our acquaintanceship he regarded me

with marked and constant suspicion. Clearly he deemed me to be a

police detective. But subsequently he took to scanning my face

with critical curiosity, until at length he said with an air of

imparting instruction:

"Have you ever read Paradise Lost and Destroyed?"

"No," I replied. "Only Paradise Regained."

This led him to wag his parti-coloured beard in token that 'be

disagreed with my choice', and to observe:

"The reason why Adam lost Paradise is that he allowed Eve to

corrupt him. And never did the Lord permit him to regain it. For

who is worthy to return to the gates of Paradise? Not a single

human being."

And, indeed, I found it a waste of time to dispute the matter, for

he merely listened to what I had to say, and then, without

an attempt at refutation, repeated in the same tone as before,

and exactly in the same words, his statement that " Adam lost

Paradise for the reason that he allowed Eve to corrupt him."

Similarly did women constitute our most usual subject of

conversation.

"You are young," once he said, " and therefore a human being

bound to find forbidden fruit blocking your way at every step.

This because the human race is a slave to its love of sin, or,

in other words, to love of the Serpent. Yes, woman constitutes

the prime impediment to everything in life, as history has many

times affirmed. And first and foremost is she the source of

restlessness. 'Charged with poison, the Serpent shall plunge in

thee her fangs.' Which Serpent is, of course, our desire of the

flesh, the Serpent at whose instigation the Greeks razed towns

to the ground, and ravaged Troy and Carthagena and Egypt, and

the Serpent which caused an amorous passion for the sister of

Alexander Pavlovitch [The Emperor Alexander I] to bring about

Napoleon's invasion of Russia. On the other hand, both the

Mohammedan nations and the Jews have from earliest times grasped

the matter aright, and kept their women shut up in their back

premises; whereas WE permit the foulest of profligacy to exist,

and walk hand in hand with our women, and allow them to graduate

as female doctors and to pull teeth, and all the rest of it.

The truth is that they ought not to be allowed to advance beyond

midwife, since it is woman's business either to serve as a

breeding animal or opprobriously to be called neiskusobrachnaia

neviesta [Maid who hast never tasted of marriage.] Yes, woman's

business should end there."

Near the stove there ticks and clicks on the grimy wall that is

papered with "rules and regulations " and sheets of yellow

manuscript the pendulum of a small clock, with, hanging to one

of its weights, a hammer and a horseshoe, and, to the other, a

copper pestle. Also, in a corner of the room a number of ikons

make a glittering show with their silver applique and the gilded

halos which surmount their figures' black visages, while a stove

with a ponderous grate glowers out of the window at the greenery

in Zhitnaia Street and beyond the ravine (beyond the ravine

everything looks bright and beautiful), and the dusty, dimly

lighted storeroom across the passage emits a perennial odour of

dried mushroom, tobacco leaves, and hemp oil.

Vologonov stirs his strong, stewed tea with a battered old

teaspoon, and says with a sigh as he sips a little:

"All my life I have been engaged in gaining experience so that

now I know most things, and ought to be listened to with

attention. Usually folk do so listen to me, but though here and

there one may find a living soul, of the rest it may be said: 'In

the House of David shall terrible things come to pass, and

fire shall consume the spirit of lechery.'"

The words resemble bricks in that they seem, if possible, to

increase the height of the walls of strange and extraneous

events, and even stranger dramas, which loom for ever around, me.

"For example," continues the old man, "why is Mitri Ermolaev

Polukonov, our ex-mayor, lying dead before his time? Because he

conceived a number of arrogant projects. For example, he sent

his eldest son to study at Kazan-- with the result that during

the son's second year at the University he, the son, brought

home with him a curly-headed Jewess, and said to his father:

'Without this woman I cannot live--in her are bound up my whole

soul and strength.' Yes, a pass indeed! And from that day forth

nothing but misfortune befell in that Yashka took to drink, the

Jewess gave way to repining, and Mitri had to go perambulating

the town with piteous invitations to 'come and see, my brethren,

to what depths I have sunk!' And though, eventually, the Jewess

died of a bloody flux, of a miscarriage, the past was beyond

mending, and, while the son went to the bad, and took to drink

for good and all, the father 'fell a victim by night to untimely

death.' Yes, the lives of two folk were thus undone by 'the

thorn-bearing company of Judaea.' Like ourselves, the Hebrew has

a destiny of his own. And destiny cannot be driven out with a

stick. Of each of us the destiny is unhasting. It moves slowly

and quietly, and can never be avoided. 'Wait,' it says. ' Seek

not to press onward.'"

As he discourses, Vologonov's eyes ceaselessly change colour--now

turning to a dull grey, and wearing a tired expression, and now

becoming blue, and assuming a mournful air, and now (and most

frequently of all) beginning to emit green flashes of an

impartial malevolence.

"Similarly, the Kapustins, once a powerful family, came at

length to dust-became as nothing. It was a family the members of

which were ever in favour of change, and devoted to anything

that was new. In fact, they went and set up a piano! Well, of

them only Valentine is still on his legs, and he (he is a doctor

of less than forty years of age) is a hopeless drunkard, and

saturated with dropsy, and fallen a prey to asthma, so that his

cancerous eyes protrude horribly. Yes, the Kapustins, like the

Polukonovs, may be 'written down as dead.'"

Throughout, Vologonov speaks in a tone of unassailable

conviction, in a tone implying that never could things happen,

never could things have happened, otherwise than as he has

stated. In fact, in his hands even the most inexplicable, the

most grievous, phenomena of life become such as a law has

inevitably decreed.

"And the same thing will befall the Osmukhins," he next

remarks. "Let them be a warning to you never to make friends

with Germans, and never to engage in business with them. In

Russia any housewife may brew beer; yet our people will not

drink it--they are more used to spirits. Also, Russian folk like

to attain their object in drinking AT ONCE; and a shkalik of

vodka will do more to sap wit than five kruzhki of beer. Once

our people liked uniform simplicity; but now they are

become like a man who was born blind, and has suddenly acquired

sight. A change indeed! For thirty-three years did Ilya of Murom

[Ilya Murometz, the legendary figure most frequently met with In

Russian bilini (folk songs), and probably identical with Elijah

the Prophet, though credited with many of the attributes proper,

rather, to the pagan god Perun the Thunderer.] sit waiting for

his end before it came; and all who cannot bide patiently in a

state of humility..."

Meanwhile clouds shaped like snow-white swans are traversing the

roseate heavens and disappearing into space, while below them,

on earth, the ravine can be seen spread out like the pelt of a

bear which the broad shoulders of some fabulous giant have

sloughed before taking refuge in the marshes and forest. In fact

the landscape reminds me of sundry ancient tales of marvels, as

also does Antipa Vologonov, the man who is so strangely

conversant with the shortcomings of human life, and so

passionately addicted to discussing them.

For a moment or two he remains silent as sibilantly he purses

his lips and drinks some saffron-coloured tea from the saucer

which the splayed fingers of his right hand are balancing on

their tips. Whereafter, when his wet moustache has been dried,

his level voice resumes its speech in tones as measured as those

of one reading aloud from the Psalter.

"Have you noticed a shop in Zhitnaia Street kept by an old man

named Asiev? Once that man had ten sons. Six of them, however,

died in infancy. Of the remainder the eldest, a fine singer, was

at once extravagant and a bookworm; wherefore, whilst an

officer's servant at Tashkend, he cut the throats of his master

and mistress, and for doing so was executed by shooting. As a

matter of fact, the tale has it that he had been making love to

his mistress, and then been thrown over in favour of his master

once more. And another son, Grigori, after being given a high

school education at St. Petersburg, became a lunatic. And

another, Alexei, entered the army as a cavalryman, but is now

acting as a circus rider, and probably has also become a

drunkard. And the youngest son of all, Nikolai, ran away as a

boy, and, eventually arriving in Norway with a precious scheme

for catching fish in the Arctic Ocean, met with failure through

the fact that he had overlooked the circumstance that we

Russians have fish of our own and to spare, and had to have his

interest assigned by his father to a local monastery. So much

for fish of the Arctic Seas! Yet if Nikolai had only waited, if

he had only been more patient, he--"

Here Vologonov lowers his voice, and continues with something of

the growl of an angry dog:

"I too have had sons, one of whom was killed at Kushka (a

document has certified to that effect), another was drowned

whilst drunk, three more died in infancy, and only two are still

alive. Of these last, I know that one is acting as a waiter in a

hotel at Smolensk, while the other, Melenti, was educated for

the Church, sent to study in a seminary, induced to abscond and

get into trouble, and eventually dispatched to Siberia. There

now! Yes, the Russian is what might be called a 'lightweighted'

individual, an individual who, unless he holds himself down by

the head, is soon carried off by the wind like a chicken's

feather-- for we are too self-confident and restless. Before now,

I myself have been a gull, a man lacking balance: for never does

youth realise its own insignificance, or know how to wait."

Dissertations of the kind drop from the old man like water from

a leaky pipe on a cold, blustery day in autumn. Wagging his grey

beard, he talks and talks, until I begin to think that he must

be an evil wizard, and master of this remote, barren, swampy,

ravine-pitted region--that he it is who originally planted the

town in this uncomfortable, clayey hollow, and has thrown the

houses into heaps, and entangled the streets, and wantonly

created the town's unaccountably rude and rough and deadly

existence, and addled men's brains with disconnected nonsense,

and consumed their hearts with a fear of life. Yes, it comes to

me that it must be he who, during the long six months of winter,

causes cruel snowstorms from the plain to invade the town, and

with frost compresses the buildings of the town until their

rafters crack, and stinging cold brings birds to the ground.

Lastly, I become seized with the idea that it must be he who,

almost every summer, envelops the town in those terrible

visitations of heat by night which seem almost to cause the

houses to melt.

However, as a rule he maintains complete silence, and merely

makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits

wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in

his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his

crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance

becomes sheerly that of a magician of iniquity.

Once I asked him:

"What in particular ought men to wait for? "

For a while he sat clasping his beard, and, with contracted

eyes, gazing as at something behind me. Then he said quietly and

didactically:

"Someday there will arise a Strange Man who will proclaim to

the world the Word to which there never was a beginning. But to

which of us is the hour when that Man will arise known? To none

of us.. And to which of us are known the miracles which that

Word will perform? To none of us."

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

Once upon a time there used to glide past the window of my room

the fair, curly, wavering, golden head of Nilushka the idiot, a

lad looking like a thing which the earth has begotten of love.

Yes, Nilushka was like an angel in some sacred picture adorning

the southern or the northern gates of an ancient church, as,

with his flushed face smeared with wax-smoke and oil, and his

light blue eyes gleaming in a cold, unearthly smile, and a frame

clad in a red smock reaching to below his knees, and the soles

of his feet showing black (always he walked on tiptoe), and his

thin calves, as straight and white as the calves of a woman,

covered with golden down, he walked the streets.

Sometimes hopping along on one leg, and smiling, and waving his

arms, and causing the ample folds and sleeves of his smock to

flutter until he seemed to be moving in the midst of a nimbus,

Nilushka would sing in a halting whisper the childish ditty:

0h Lo-ord, pardon me!

Wo-olves run,

And do-ogs run,

And the hunters wait

To kill the wolves.

0h Lo-ord, pardon me!

Meanwhile, he would diffuse a cheering atmosphere of happiness

with which no one in the locality had anything in common. For he

was ever a lighthearted, winning, essentially pure innocent of

the type which never fails to evoke good-natured smiles and

kindly emotions. Indeed, as he roamed the streets, the suburb

seemed to live its life with less clamour, to appear more decent

of outward guise, since the local folk looked upon the imbecile

with far more indulgence than they did upon their own children;

and he was intimate with, and beloved by, even the worst.

Probably the reason for this was that the semblance of flight

amid an atmosphere of golden dust which was his combined with

his straight, slender little figure to put all who beheld him in

mind of churches, angels, God, and Paradise. At all events, all

viewed him in a manner contemplative, interested, and more than

a little deferential.

A curious fact was the circumstance that whenever Nilushka

sighted a stray gleam from a piece of glass, or the glitter of a

morsel of copper in sunlight, he would halt dead where he was ,

turn grey with the ashiness of death, lose his smile, and remain

dilating to an unnatural extent his clouded and troubled eyes.

And so, with his whole form distorted with horror, and his thin

hand crossing himself, and his knees trembling, and his smock

fluttering around his frail wisp of a body, and his features

growing stonelike, he would, for an hour or more, continue to

stand, until at length someone laid a hand in his, and led him

home.

The tale had it that, in the first instance, born "soft-headed,"

he finally lost his reason, five years before the

period of which I am writing, when a great fire occurred, and

that thenceforth anything, save sunlight, that in any way

resembled fire plunged him into this torpor of dumb dread.

Naturally the people of the suburb devoted to him a great deal

of attention.

"There goes God's fool," would be their remark. "It will not

be long before he dies and becomes a Saint, and we fall down and

worship him."

Yet there were persons who would go so far as to crack rude

jests at his expense. For instance, as he would be skipping

along, with his childish voice raised in his little ditty, some

idler or another would shout from a window, or through the

cranny of a fence:

"Hi, Nilushka! Fire! Fire!"

Whereupon the angel-faced imbecile would sink to earth as though

his legs had been cut away at the knee from under him, and he

would huddle, frantically clutching his golden head in his

permanently soiled hands, and exposing his youthful form to the

dust, under the nearest house or fence.

Only then would the person who had given him the fright repent,

and say with a laugh:

"God in heaven, what a stupid lad this is!"

And, should that person have been asked why he had thus

terrified the boy, he would probably have replied:

"Because it is such sport to do so. As a lad who cannot feel

things as other human beings do, he inclines folk to make fun of

him."

As for the omniscient Antipa Vologonov, the following was his

frequent comment on Nilushka:

"Christ also had to walk in terror. Christ also was persecuted.

Why so? Because ever He endured in rectitude and strength. Men

need to learn what is real and what is unreal. Many are the

sins of earth come of the fact that the seeming is mistaken for

the actual, and that men keep pressing forward when they ought

to be waiting, to be proving themselves."

Hence Vologonov, like the rest, bestowed much attention upon

Nilushka, and frequently held conversations with him.

"Do you now pray to God," he said once as he pointed to heaven

with one of his crooked fingers, and with the disengaged hand

clasped his dishevelled, variously coloured beard.

Whereupon Nilushka glanced fearfully at the mysteriously

pointing finger, and, plucking sharply at his forehead,

shoulders, and stomach with two fingers and a thumb, intoned in

thin, plaintive accents:

"Our Father in Heaven--"

"WHICH ART in Heaven."

"Yes, in the Heaven of Heavens."

"Ah, well! God will understand. He is the friend of all blessed

ones." [Idiots; since persons mentally deficient are popularly

deemed to stand in a peculiarly close relation to the Almighty.]

Again, great was Nilushka's interest in anything spherical.

Also, he had a love for handling the heads of children; when,

softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his

bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a

close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children,

not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and,

bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out

their tongues at him, and drawl in a nasal chorus:

"Nilka, the bottle-neck, the neck without a nape to it"

[Probably the attractiveness of this formula lay rather in the

rhyming of the Russian words: "Nilka, butilka, bashka bez

zatilka!" than in their actual meaning].

Yet their fear of him was in no way reciprocated, nor, for that

matter, did they ever assault him, despite the fact that

occasionally they would throw an old boot or a chip of wood in

his direction-throw it aimlessly, and without really desiring to

hit the mark aimed at.

Also, anything circular--for example, a plate or the wheel of a

toy, engaged Nilushka's attention and led him to caress it as

eagerly as he did globes and balls. Evidently the rotundity of

the object was the point that excited his interest. And as he

turned the object over and over, and felt the flat part of it,

he would mutter:

"But what about the other one?"

What "the other one " meant I could never divine. Nor could

Antipa. Once, drawing the idiot to him, he said:

"Why do you always say 'What about the other one'?"

Troubled and nervous, Nilushka merely muttered some

unintelligible reply as his fingers turned and turned about the

circular object which he was holding.

"Nothing," at length he replied.

"Nothing of what?

"Nothing here."

"Ah, he is too foolish to understand," said Vologonov with a

sigh as his eyes darkened in meditative fashion.

"Yes, though it may seem foolish to say so," he added, "some

people would envy him."

"Why should they?"

"For more than one reason. To begin with, he lives a life free

from care--he is kept comfortably, and even held in respect.

Since no one can properly understand him, and everyone fears

him, through a belief that folk without wit, the 'blessed ones

of God,' are more especially the Almighty's favourites than

persons possessed of understanding. Only a very wise man could

deal with such a matter, and the less so in that it must be

remembered that more than one 'blessed one' has become a Saint,

while some of those possessed of understanding have gone--well,

have gone whither? Yes, indeed!"

And, thoughtfully contracting the bushy eyebrows which looked as

though they had been taken from the face of another man,

Vologonov thrust his hands up his sleeves, and stood eyeing

Nilushka shrewdly with his intangible gaze.

Never did Felitzata say for certain who the boy's father had

been, but at least it was known to me that in vague terms she

had designated two men as such--the one a young " survey

student," and the other a merchant by name Viporotkov, a man

notorious to the whole town as a most turbulent rake and bully.

But once when she and Antipa and I were seated gossiping at the

entrance-gates, and I inquired of her whether Nilushka's father

were still surviving, she replied in a careless way:

"He is so, damn him!"

"Then who is he? "

Felitzata, as usual, licked her faded, but still comely, lips

with the tip of her tongue before she replied:

"A monk."

"Ah!" Vologonov exclaimed with unexpected animation. "That,

then, explains things. At all events, we have in it an

intelligible THEORY of things."

Whereafter, he expounded to us at length, and with no sparing of

details, the reason why a monk should have been Nilushka's

father rather than either the merchant or the young "survey

student." And as Vologonov proceeded he grew unwontedly

enthusiastic, and went so far as to clench his fists until

presently he heaved a sigh, as though mentally hurt, and said

frowningly and reproachfully to the woman:

"Why did you never tell us this before? It was exceedingly

negligent of you."

Felitzata looked at the old man with sarcasm and sauciness

gleaming in her brown eyes. Suddenly, however, she contracted

her brows, counterfeited a sigh, and whined:

"Ah, I was good-looking then, and desired of all. In those days

I had both a good heart and a happy nature."

"But the monk may prove to have been an important factor in the

question," was Antipa's thoughtful remark.

"Yes, and many another man than he has run after me for his

pleasure," continued Felitzata in a tone of reminiscence. This

led Vologonov to cough, rise to his feet, lay his hand upon the

woman's claret-coloured sleeve of satin, and say sternly:

"Do you come into my room, for I have business to transact with

you."

As she complied she smiled and winked at me. And so the pair

departed--he shuffling carefully with his bandy legs, and she

watching her steps as though at any moment she might collapse on

to her left side.

Thenceforth, Felitzata visited Vologonov almost daily; and once

during the time of two hours or so that the pair were occupied

in drinking tea I heard, through the partition-wall, the old man

say in vigorous, level, didactical tones:

"These tales and rumours ought not to be dismissed save with

caution. At least ought they to be given the benefit of the

doubt. For, though all that he says may SEEM to us unintelligible,

there may yet be enshrined therein a meaning, such as--"

"You say a meaning?"

"Yes, a meaning which, eventually, will be vouchsafed to you in

a vision. For example, you may one day see issue from a dense

forest a man of God, and hear him cry aloud: Felitzata, Oh

servant of God, Oh sinner most dark of soul--"

"What a croaking, to be sure!"

"Be silent! No nonsense! Do you blame yourself rather than sing

your own praises. And in that vision you may hear the man of God

cry: 'Felitzata, go you forth and do that which one who shall

meet you may request you to perform!' And, having gone forth,

you may find the man of God to be the monk whom we have spoken

of."

"A-a-ah!" the woman drawled with an air of being about to say

something more.

"Come, fool!"

"You see--"

"Have I, this time, abused you?"

"No, but--"

"I have an idea that the man of God will be holding a crook."

"Of course," assented Felitzata.

Similarly, on another occasion, did I hear Antipa mutter

confidentially to his companion:

"The fact that all his sayings are so simple is not a

favourable sign. For, you see, they do not harmonise with the

affair in its entirety--in such a connection words should be

mysterious, and so, able to be interpreted in more than one

way, seeing that the more meanings words possess, the more are

those words respected and heeded by mankind."

"Why so?" queried Felitzata.

"Why so?" re-echoed Vologonov irritably. "Are we not, then,

to respect ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who

does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their

fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay

attention--you must teach him words of variable import, words

more abstract, as well as more sonorous."

"But I know no such words."

"I will repeat to you a few, and every night, when he goes to

bed, you shall repeat them to HIM. For example: 'Adom ispolneni,

pokaites'[Do ye people who are filled with venom repent]. And

mark that the exact words of the Church be adhered to. For

instance, 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayannie,' [Murderers

of the soul, accursed ones, repent ye before God.] must be said

rather than 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayanni,' since the

latter, though the shorter form, is also not the correct one.

But perhaps I had better instruct the lad myself."

"Certainly that would be the better plan."

So from that time onwards Vologonov fell to stopping Nilushka in

the street, and repeating to him something or another in his

kindly fashion. Once he even took him by the hand, and, leading

him to his room, and giving him something to cat, said

persuasively:

"Say this after me. 'Do not hasten, Oh ye people.' Try if you

can say that."

"'A lantern,'" began Nilushka civilly.

"'A lantern?' Yes. Well, go on, and say, 'I am a lantern unto

thee--"

"I want to sing, it."

"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it.

For the moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of

things. So say after me--"

"0 Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from

the idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:

"We shall all of us have to die."

"Yes, but come, come! " expostulated Vologonov. " What are you

blurting out NOW? That much I know without your telling

me--always have I known, little friend, that each of us is

hastening towards his death. Yet your want of understanding

exceeds what should be."

"Dogs run-"

"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."

"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine,"

continued Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.

"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of

his may mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal.

Now, say: 'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"

"No, I want to SING something."

With a splutter Vologonov said:

"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"

And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful

strides as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:

"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"

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

Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul,

mean, unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and

rounded off the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity. He

resembled an apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten

tree, whence all the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only

the branches wave in the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a

sole-surviving picture in the pages of a ragged, soiled old book

which has neither a beginning nor an ending, and therefore can

no longer be read, is no longer worth the reading, since now its

pages contain nothing intelligible.

And as smiling his gracious smile, the lad's pathetic,

legendary figure flitted past the mouldy buts and cracked fences

and riotous beds of nettles, there would readily recur to the

memory, and succeed one another, visions of some of the finer

and more reputable personages of Russian lore--there would file

before one's mental vision, in endless sequence, men whose

biographies inform us how, in fear for their souls, they left

the life of the world, and, hieing them to the forests and the

caves, abandoned mankind for the wild things of nature. And at

the same time would there recur to one's memory poems concerning

the blind and the poor-in particular, the poem concerning Alexei

the Man of God, and all the multitude of other fair, but

unsubstantial, forms wherein Russia has embodied her sad and

terrified soul, her humble and protesting grief. Yet it was a

process to depress one almost to the point of distraction.

Once, forgetting that Nilushka was imbecile, I conceived an

irrepressible desire to talk with him, and to read him good

poetry, and to tell him both of the world's youthful hopes and

of my own personal thoughts.

The occasion happened on a day when, as I was sitting on the

edge of the ravine, and dangling my legs over the ravine's

depths, the lad came floating towards me as though on air. In

his hands, with their fingers as slender as a girl's, he was

holding a large leaf; and as he gazed at it the smile of his

clear blue eyes was, as it were, pervading him from head to foot.

"Whither, Nilushka?" said I.

With a start he raised his head and eyes heavenward. Then

timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and

extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was

crawling a ladybird.

"A bukan," he observed.

"It is so. And whither are you going to take it?"

"We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it."

"But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are

dead."

Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.

"I should like to sing something," he remarked.

"Rather, do you SAY something."

He glanced at the ravine again--his pink nostrils quivering and

dilating-- then sighed as though he was weary, and in all

unconsciousness muttered a foul expression. As he did so I

noticed that on the portion of his neck below his right ear

there was a large birthmark, and that, covered with golden down

like velvet, and resembling in shape a bee, it seemed to be

endowed with a similitude of life, through the faint beating of

a vein in its vicinity.

Presently the ladybird raised her upper wings as though she were

preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to

detain her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the

insect to detach itself and fly away at a low level. Upon that,

bending forward with arms outstretched, the idiot went softly in

pursuit, much as though he himself were launching his body into

leisurely flight, but, when ten paces away, stopped, raised his

face to heaven, and, with arms pendent before him, and the palms

of his hands turned outwards as though resting on something

which I could not see, remained fixed and motionless.

From the ravine there were tending upwards towards the sunlight

some green sprigs of willow, with dull yellow flowers and a

clump of grey wormwood, while the damp cracks which seamed the

clay of the ravine were lined with round leaves of the

"mother-stepmother plant," and round about us little birds were

hovering, and from both the bushes and the bed of the ravine

there was ascending the moist smell of decay. Yet over our heads

the sky was clear, as the sun, now sole occupant of the heavens,

declined slowly in the direction of the dark marshes across the

river; only above the roofs of Zhitnaia Street could there be

seen fluttering about in alarm a flock of snow-white pigeons,

while waving below them was the black besom which had, as it

were, swept them into the air, and from afar one could hear the

sound of an angry murmur, the mournful, mysterious murmur of the

town.

Whiningly, like an old man, a child of the suburb was raising

its voice in lamentation; and as I listened to the sound, it put

me in mind of a clerk reading Vespers amid the desolation of an

empty church. Presently a brown dog passed us with shaggy head

despondently pendent, and eyes as beautiful as those of a

drunken woman.

And, to complete the picture, there was standing-- outlined

against the nearest shanty of the suburb, a shanty which lay at

the extreme edge of the ravine-there was standing, face to the

sun, and back to the town, as though preparing for flight, the

straight, slender form of the boy who, while alien to all,

caressed all with the eternally incomprehensible smile of his

angel-like eyes. Yes, that golden birthmark so like a bee I can

see to this day!

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

Two weeks later, on a Sunday at mid-day, Nilushka passed into

the other world. That day, after returning home from late Mass,

and handing to his mother a couple of wafers which had been

given him as a mark of charity, the lad said:

"Mother, please lay out my bed on the chest, for I think that I

am going to lie down for the last time."

Yet the words in no way surprised Felitzata, for he had often

before remarked, before retiring to rest:

"Some day we shall all of us have to die."

At the same time, whereas, on previous occasions, Nilushka had

never gone to sleep without first of all singing to himself his

little song, and then chanting the eternal, universal "Lord,

have mercy upon us! " he, on this occasion, merely folded his

hands upon his breast, closed his eyes, and relapsed into

slumber.

That day Felitzata had dinner, and then departed on business of

her own; and when she returned in the evening, she was astonished

to find that her son was still asleep. Next, on looking closer

at him, she perceived that he was dead.

"I looked," she related plaintively to some of the suburban

residents who came running to her cot, "and perceived his

little feet to be blue; and since it was only just before Mass

that I had washed his hands with soap, I remarked the more

readily that his feet were become less white than his hands. And

when I felt one of those hands, I found that it had stiffened."

On Felitzata's face, as she recounted this, there was manifest a

nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle

flushed. Yet gleaming also through the tears in her languorous

eyes there was a sense of relief--one might almost have said a

sense of joy.

"Next," continued she, "I looked closer still, and then fell

on my knees before the body, sobbing: '0h my darling, whither

art thou fled? 0h God, wherefore hast Thou taken him from me?' "

Here Felitzata inclined her head upon her left shoulder

contracted her brows over her mischievous eyes, clasped her

hands to her breast, and fell into the lament:

Oh, gone is my dove, my radiant moon!

0 star of mine eyes, thou hast set too soon!

In darksome depths thy light lies drown'd,

And time must yet complete its round,

And the trump of the Second Advent sound,

Ere ever my--

"Here, you! Hold your tongue!" grunted Vologonov irritably.

For myself, I had, that day, been walking in the forest, until,

as I returned, I was brought up short before the windows of

Felitzata's cot by the fact that some of the erstwhile turbulent

denizens of the suburb were whispering softly together as, with

an absence of all noise, they took turns to raise themselves on

tiptoe, and, craning their necks, to peer into one of the black

window-spaces. Yes, like bees on the step of a hive did they

look, and on the great majority of faces, and in the great

majority of eyes, there was quivering an air of tense, nervous

expectancy.

Only Vologonov was nudging Felitzata, and saying to her in a

loud, authoritative tone:

"Very ready are you to weep, but I should like first to hear

the exact circumstances of the lad's death."

Thus invited, the woman wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her

bodice, licked her lips, heaved a prolonged sigh, and fell to

regarding Antipa's red, hardbitten face with the cheerful,

unabashed glance of a person who is under the influence of

liquor. From under her white head-band there had fallen over her

temples and her right cheek a few wisps of golden hair; and

indeed, as she drew herself up, and tossed her head and bosom,

and smoothed out and stretched the creases in her bodice, she

looked less than her years. Everyone now fell to eyeing her in

an attentive silence, though not, it would seem, without a touch

of envy.

Abruptly, sternly, the old man inquired:

"Did the lad ever complain of ill-health?"

"No, never," Felitzata replied. "Never once did he speak of

it--never once."

"And he had not been beaten?"

"Oh, how can you ask me such a thing, and especially seeing

that, that--?"

"I did not say beaten by YOU."

"Well, I cannot answer for anyone else, but at least had he no

mark on his body, seeing that when I lifted the smock I could

find nothing save for scratches on legs and back."

Her tone now had in it a new ring, a ring of increased

assurance, and when she had finished she closed her bright eyes

languidly before heaving a soft, as it were, voluptuous, and,

withal, very audible sigh.

Someone here murmured:

"She DID use to beat him."

"What?"

"At all events she used to lose her temper with him."

This led to the putting of a further dozen or so of leading

questions; whereafter Antipa, for a while, preserved a

suggestive silence, and the crowd too remained silent, as though

it had suddenly been lulled to slumber. Only at long last, and

with a clearing of his throat, did Antipa say:

"Friends, we must suppose that God, of His infinite Mercy, has

vouchsafed to us here a special visitation, in that, as all of

us have perceived, a lad bereft of wit, the same radiant lad

whom all of us have known, has here abided in the closest of

communion with the Blessed Dispenser of life on earth."

Then I moved away, for upon my heart there was pressing a burden

of unendurable sorrow, and I was yearning, oh, so terribly, to

see Nilushka once more.

The back portion of Felitzata's cot stood a little sunken into

the ground, so that the front portion had its cold window panes

and raised sash tilted a trifle towards the remote heavens. I

bent my head, and entered by the open door. Near the threshold

Nilushka was lying on a narrow chest against the wall. The folds

of a dark-red pillow of fustian under the head set off to

perfection the pale blue tint of his round, innocent face under

its corona of golden curls; and though the eyes were closed, and

the lips pressed tightly together, he still seemed to be smiling

in his old quiet, but joyous, way. In general, the tall, thin

figure on the mattress of dark felt, with its bare legs, and its

slender hands and wrists folded across the breast, reminded me

less of an angel than of a certain image of the Holy Child with

which a blackened old ikon had rendered me familiar from my

boyhood upwards.

Everything amid the purple gloom was still. Even the flies were

forbearing to buzz. Only from the street was there grating

through the shaded window the strong, roguish voice of Felitzata

as it traced the strange, lugubrious word-pattern:

With my bosom pressed to the warm, grey earth,

To thee, grey earth, to thee, 0h my mother of old,

I beseech thee, I who am a mother like thee,

And a mother in pain, to enfold in thy arms

This my son, this my dead son, this my ruby,

This my drop of my heart's blood, this my--

Suddenly I caught sight of Antipa standing in the doorway. He

was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Presently in a

gruff and unsteady voice he said:

"It is all very fine for you to weep, good woman, but the

present is not the right moment to sing such verses as

those--they were meant, rather, to be sung in a graveyard at the

side of a tomb. Well, tell me everything without reserve.

Important is it that I should know EVERYTHING."

Whereafter, having crossed himself with a faltering hand, he

carefully scrutinised the corpse, and at last let his eyes halt

upon the lad's sweet features. Then he muttered sadly:

"How extraordinarily he has grown! Yes, death has indeed

enlarged him! Ah, well, so be it! Soon I too shall have to be

stretching myself out. Oh that it were now!"

Then with cautious movements of his deformed fingers he

straightened the folds of the lad's smock, and drew it over the

legs. Whereafter he pressed his flushed lips to the hem of the

garment.

Said I to him at that moment:

"What is it that you have been wanting of him? Why is it that

you have been trying to teach him strange words?"

Straightening himself, and glancing at me with dim eyes, Antipa

repeated:

"What is it that I have been wanting of him?" To the repetition

he added with manifest sincerity, though also with a

self-depreciatory movement of the head:

"To tell the truth, I scarcely know WHAT it is that I have been

wanting of him. By God I do not. Yet, as one speaking the truth

in the presence of death, I say that never during my long

lifetime had I so desired aught else. . . . Yes, I have waited

and waited for fortune to reveal it to me; and ever has fortune

remained mute and tongueless. Foolish was it of me to have

expected otherwise, to have expected, for instance, that some

day there might occur something marvellous, something

unlooked-for."

With a short laugh, he indicated the corpse with his eyes, and

continued more firmly:

"Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a

source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything

possible of acquisition thence. . . This is usually the case.

Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart),

was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby

gaining some provision against her old age."

"But you yourself were the person who suggested that? You

yourself wished it? "

"I?"

Presently. thrusting his hands up his sleeves, he added dully

and brokenly:

"Yes, I DID wish it. Why not, indeed, seeing that at least it

would have brought comfort to the poor people of this place?

Sometimes I feel very sorry for them with their bitter,

troublous lives--lives which may be the lives of rogues and

villains, yet are lives which have produced amongst us a

pravednik," [A "just person," a human being without sin].

All the evening sky was now aflame. Upon the ear there fell the

mournful lament:

When snow has veiled the earth in white,

The snowy plain the wild wolves tread.

They wail for the cheering warmth of spring

As I bewail the bairn that's dead.

Vologonov listened for a moment. Then he said firmly:

"These are mere accesses of impulse which come upon her. And

that is only what might be expected. Even as in song or in vice

there is no holding her, so remorse, when it has fastened upon

such a woman's heart, will know no bounds. I may tell you that

on one occasion two young merchants took her, stripped her stark

naked, and drove her in their carriage down Zhitnaia Street,

with themselves sitting on the seats of the vehicle, and

Felitzata standing upright between them--yes, in a state of

nudity! Thereafter they beat her almost to death."

As I stepped out into the dark, narrow vestibule, Antipa, who

was following me, muttered:

"Such a lament as hers could come only of genuine grief."

We found Felitzata in front of the hut, with her back covering

the window. There, with hands pressed to her bosom, and her

skirt all awry, she was straining her dishevelled head towards

the heavens, while the evening breeze, stirring her fine auburn

hair, scattered it promiscuously over her flushed,

sharply-defined features and wildly protruding eyes. A bizarre,

pitiable, and extraordinary figure did she cut as she wailed in

a throaty voice which constantly gathered strength:

0h winds of ice, winds cruel and rude,

Press on my heart till its throbbings fail!

Arrest the current of my blood!

Turn these hot melting tears to hail!

Before her there was posted a knot of women, compassionate

contemplators of the singer's distracted, grief-wrought

features. Through the ravine's dark opening I could see the sun

sinking below the suburb before plunging into the marshy forest

and having his disk pierced by sharp, black tips of pine trees.

Already everything around him was red. Already, seemingly, he

had been wounded, and was bleeding to death.