Short Fiction

I

The landlady’s room in the “Serbia.” Yellow wallpaper; two windows with dirty muslin curtains; between them an oval squinting mirror, stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees, reflects a painted floor and chair legs; on the windowsills dusty, pimply cactuses; a cage with a canary hangs from the ceiling. The room is partitioned off by red screens of printed calico: the smaller part on the left is the bedroom of the landlady and her children; that on the right is blocked up with varied odds and ends of furniture⁠—bedridden, rickety, and lame. In the corners all kinds of rubbish are in chaotic cobwebbed heaps: a sextant in a ginger leather case, and with it a tripod and a chain, some old trunks and boxes, a guitar without strings, hunting boots, a sewing machine, a “Monopan” musical box, a camera, about five lamps, piles of books, dresses, bundles of linen, and a great many things besides. All these things had been detained at various times by the landlady for rent unpaid, or left behind by runaway lodgers. You cannot move in the room because of them.

The “Serbia” is a third-rate hotel. Permanent lodgers are a rarity, and those are prostitutes. Mostly they are casual passengers who float up to town on the Dnieper: small farmers, Jewish commission agents, distant provincials, pilgrims, and village priests who come to town to inform, or are returning home when the information has been lodged. Rooms in the “Serbia” are also occupied by couples from the town for the night or a few days.

Spring. About three in the afternoon. The curtains of the open windows stir gently, and the room smells of kerosene and baked cabbage. It is the landlady warming up on her stove a bigoss à la Polonaise of cabbage, pork fat, and sausage, with a great deal of pepper and bay leaves. She is a widow between thirty-six and forty, a strong, quick, good-looking woman. The hair that she wears in curls over her forehead has a strong tinge of grey; but her face is fresh, her big sensual mouth red, and her young dark eyes moist and playfully sly. Her name is Anna Friedrichovna. She is half German, half Pole, and comes from the Baltic Provinces; but her close friends call her Friedrich simply, which suits her determined character better. She is quick-tempered, scolds and talks bawdy. Sometimes she fights with her porters and the lodgers who have been on the spree; she drinks as well as any man, and has a mad passion for dancing. She changes from abuse to laughing in a second. She has but small respect for the law, receives lodgers without passports, and with her own hands, as she says, “chucks into the street” those who don’t pay up⁠—that is, she unlocks his door while he is out, and puts all his things in the passage or on the stairs, and sometimes in her own room. The police are friendly with her for her hospitality, her cheerful character, and particularly for the gay, easy, unceremonious, disinterested complaisance with which she responds to man’s passing emotions.

She has four children. The two eldest, Romka and Alychka, have not yet come back from school, and the younger, Adka, seven, and Edka, five, strong brats with cheeks mottled with mud, blotches, tear-stains, and the sunburn of early spring, are always to be found near their mother. Both of them hold on to the table leg and beg. They are perpetually hungry, because their mother does not pay much attention to food; they eat anyhow, at different times, sending into a little general shop for anything they want. Sticking out his lips in a circle, frowning, and looking out under his forehead, Adka roars in a loud bass: “That’s what you’re like. You won’t give me a taste.” “Let me try,” Edka speaks through his nose, scratching his calf with his bare foot.

At the table by the window sits Lieutenant Valerian Ivanovich Tchijhevich of the Army Reserve. Before him is the register, in which he enters the lodgers’ passports. But after yesterday’s affair the work goes badly; the letters wave about and crawl away. His trembling fingers quarrel with the pen. There is a roaring in his ears like the telegraph poles in autumn. At times it seems to him that his head is beginning to swell, to swell⁠ ⁠… and the table, the book, the inkstand, and the lieutenant’s hand go terribly far away and become quite tiny. Then again the book comes up to his very eyes, the inkstand grows and repeats itself, and his head grows small, turns to queer strange sizes.

Lieutenant Tchijhevich’s appearance speaks of former beauty and lost position; his black hair bristles, and a bald patch shows on the nape of his neck. His beard is fashionably trimmed to a sharp point. His face is lean, dirty, pale, dissipated. On it is, as it were written, the full history of the lieutenant’s obvious weaknesses and secret diseases.

His situation in the “Serbia” is complicated. He goes to the magistrates on Anna Friedrichovna’s behalf. He hears the children’s lessons and teaches them deportment, keeps the house register, makes out the lodgers’ accounts, reads the newspaper aloud in the morning and talks of politics. He usually sleeps in one of the vacant rooms and, in case of an influx of guests, in the passage on an ancient sofa, whose springs and stuffing stick out together. When this happens the lieutenant carefully hangs all his property on nails above the sofa: his overcoat, cap, his morning coat, shiny with age and white in the seams but tolerably clean, a “Monopole” paper collar, an officer’s cap with a blue band; but he puts his notebook and his handkerchief with someone else’s initials under his pillow.

The widow keeps her lieutenant under her thumb. “Marry me and I’ll do anything for you,” she promises. “Full equipment, all the linen you want, a fine pair of boots and goloshes as well. You’ll have everything, and on holidays I’ll let you wear my late husband’s watch with the chain.” But the lieutenant is still thinking about it. He values his freedom, and sets high store by his former dignity as an officer. However, he is wearing out some of the older portions of the deceased’s linen.

II

From time to time storms break out in the landlady’s room. Sometimes it happens that the lieutenant, with the assistance of his pupil Romka, sells a heap of somebody else’s books to a secondhand dealer. Sometimes he takes advantage of the landlady’s absence to intercept the payment for a room by day. Or he secretly begins to have playful relations with the servant-maid. Just the other day the lieutenant abused Anna Friedrichovna’s credit in the public-house over the way. This came to light, and a quarrel raged, with abuse and a fight in the corridor. The doors of all the rooms opened, and men and women poked their heads out in curiosity. Anna Friedrichovna shouted so loud that she was heard in the street:

“You get out of here, you blackguard, get out, you tramp! I’ve spent on you every penny of the money I’ve earned by sweating blood. You fill your belly with the farthings I sweat for my children!”

“You fill your belly with our farthings,” squalled the schoolboy Romka, making faces at him from behind his mother’s skirt.

“You fill your belly!” Adka and Edka accompanied from a distance.

Arseny the porter, in stony silence, pressed his chest against the lieutenant. From room No. 9, the valiant possessor of a magnificently parted black beard leaned out to his waist in his underclothes, with a round hat for some reason perched on his head, and resolutely gave his advice:

“Arseny, give him one between the eyes.”

Thus the lieutenant was driven to the stairs; but there was a broad window opening on to these very stairs from the corridor. Anna Friedrichovna hung out of it and still went on shouting after the lieutenant:

“You dirty beast⁠ ⁠… you murderer⁠ ⁠… scoundrel⁠ ⁠… Kiev gutter-sweeping!”

“Gutter-sweeping!” “Gutter-sweeping!” the brats in the corridor strained their voices, shouting.

“Don’t come eating here any more! Take your filthy things away with you. Take them. Take them!”

The things the lieutenant had left upstairs in his haste descended on him: a stick, his paper collar, and his notebook. The lieutenant halted on the bottom stair, raised his head, and brandished his fist. His face was pale, a bruise showed red beneath his left eye.

“You just wait, you scum. I tell everything in the proper quarter. Ah! ah.⁠ ⁠… They’re a lot of pimps, robbing the lodgers!”

“You just sling your hook while you’ve got a whole skin,” said Arseny sternly, pressing on the lieutenant from behind and pushing him with his shoulder.

“Get away, you swine! You’ve not the right to lay a finger on an officer,” the lieutenant proudly exclaimed. “I know about everything! You let people in here without passports! You receive⁠—you receive stolen goods.⁠ ⁠… You keep a broth⁠—”

At this point Arseny seized the lieutenant adroitly from behind. The door slammed with a shattering noise. The two men rolled out into the street together like a ball, and thence came an angry: “Brothel!”

This morning, as it had always happened before, Lieutenant Tchijhevich came back penitent, with a bouquet of lilac torn out of somebody’s garden. His face was weary. A dim blue surrounded his hollow eyes. His forehead was yellow, his clothes unbrushed, and there were feathers in his hair. The reconciliation goes slowly. Anna Friedrichovna hasn’t yet had her fill of her lover’s submissive look and repentant words. Besides, she is a little jealous of the three nights her Valerian has passed, she knows not where.

“Anna, darling,⁠ ⁠… where⁠ ⁠…” the lieutenant began in an extraordinarily meek and tender falsetto, slightly tremulous even.

“Wha-at! Who’s Anna darling, I’d like to know,” the landlady contemptuously cut him short. “I’m not Anna darling to any scum of a road sweeper!”

“But I only wanted to ask what address I was to write for ‘Praskovia Uvertiesheva, 34 years old,’ there’s nothing written down here.”

“Put her down at the Rag-market, and put yourself there, too. You’re a pretty pair. Or put yourself in a dosshouse.”

“Dirty beast,” thinks the lieutenant, but he only gives a deep, submissive sigh. “You’re very nervous today, Anna, darling!”

“Nervous! Whatever I am, I know I’m an honest, hardworking woman.⁠ ⁠… Get out of the way, you bastards,” she shouts at the children, and suddenly, “Shlop, shlop”⁠—two well-aimed smacks with the spoon come down on Adka’s and Edka’s foreheads. The boys begin to snivel.

“There’s a curse on my business, and on me,” the landlady growls angrily. “When I lived with my husband I never had any sorrows. Now, all the porters are drunkards, and all the maids are thieves. Sh! you cursed brats!⁠ ⁠… That Proska⁠ ⁠… she hasn’t been here two days when she steals the stockings from the girl in No. 12. Other people go off to pubs with other people’s money, and never do a stroke.⁠ ⁠…”

The lieutenant knew perfectly who Anna Friedrichovna was speaking about, but he maintained a concentrated silence. The smell of the bigoss inspired him with some faint hopes. Then the door opened and Arseny the porter entered without taking off his hat with the three gold braids. He looks like an Albino eunuch, and his dirty face is pitted. This is at least the fortieth time he has had this place with Anna Friedrichovna. He keeps it until the first fit of drinking, when the landlady herself beats him and puts him into the streets, first having taken away the symbol of his authority, his three-braided cap.

Then Arseny puts a white Caucasian fur hat on his head and a dark blue pince-nez on his nose, and swaggers in the public-house opposite until he’s drunk everything on him away, and at the end of his spree he will cry on the bosom of the indifferent waiter about his hopeless love for Friedrich and threaten to murder Lieutenant Tchijhevich. When he sobers down he comes to the “Serbia” and falls at his landlady’s feet. And she takes him back again, because the porter who succeeded Arseny had already managed in this short time to steal from her, to get drunk, to make a row and be taken off to the police station.

“You⁠ ⁠… have you come from the steamer?” Anna Friedrichovna asked.

“Yes. I’ve brought half a dozen pilgrims. It was a job to get ’em away from Jacob⁠—the ‘Commercial.’ He was just leading them off, when I comes up to him and says, ‘It’s all the same to me, I says, go wherever you like. But as there are people who don’t know these places, and I’m very sorry for you, I tell you straight you’d better not go with that man. In their hotel last week they put some powder in a pilgrim’s food and robbed him.’ So I got them away. Afterwards Jacob shook his fist at me in the distance, and called out: ‘You just wait, Arseny. I’ll get you. You won’t get away from me!’ But when that happens, I’ll do it myself.⁠ ⁠…”

“All right,” the landlady interrupted. “I don’t care twopence about your Jacob. What price did you fix?”

“Thirty kopeks. I did my best, but I couldn’t make them give more.”

“You fool. You can’t do anything.⁠ ⁠… Give them No. 2.”

“All in the one room?”

“You fool. Two rooms, each.⁠ ⁠… Of course, all in one room. Bring three mattresses from the old ones, and tell them that they’re not to lie on the sofa. These pilgrims have always got bugs. Get along!”

When he had gone the lieutenant said in a tender and solicitous undertone: “Anna, darling, I wonder why you allow him to enter the room in his hat. It is disrespectful to you, both as a lady and proprietress. And then⁠—consider my position. I’m an officer in Reserve, and he is a private. It’s rather awkward.”

But Anna Friedrichovna leapt upon him in fresh exasperation: “Don’t you poke your nose in where it’s not wanted. Officer indeed! There are plenty of officers like you spending the night in a shelter. Arseny’s a working man. He earns his bread⁠ ⁠… not like.⁠ ⁠… Get away, you lazy brats, take your hands away!”

“Ye-es, but give us something to eat,” roars Adka.

“Give us something to eat.⁠ ⁠…”

Meanwhile the bigoss is ready. Anna Friedrichovna clatters the dishes on the table. The lieutenant keeps his head busily down over the register. He is completely absorbed in his business.

“Well, sit down,” the landlady abruptly invited him.

“No thanks, Anna, darling. Eat, yourself. I’m not very keen,” Tchijhevich said, without turning round, in a stifled voice, loudly swallowing.

“You do what you are told.⁠ ⁠… He’s giving himself airs, too.⁠ ⁠… Come on!”

“Immediately, this very minute. I’ll just finish the last page. ‘The certificate issued by the Bilden Rural District Council⁠ ⁠… of the province⁠ ⁠… number 2039.⁠ ⁠…’ Ready.” The lieutenant rose and rubbed his hands. “I love working.”

“H’m. You call that work,” the landlady snorted in disdain. “Sit down.”

“Anna, darling, just one⁠ ⁠… little.⁠ ⁠…”

“You can manage without.”

But since peace is already almost restored, Anna Friedrichovna takes a small, fat-bodied cut-glass decanter from the cupboard, out of which the deceased’s father used to drink. Adka spreads his cabbage all over his plate and teases his brother because he has more. Edka is upset and screams:

“Adka’s got more. You gave him⁠—”

Shlop! Edka gets a sounding smack with the spoon upon his forehead. Immediately Anna Friedrichovna continues the conversation as if nothing had happened:

“Tell us another of your lies. I bet you were with some woman.”

“Anna, darling!” the lieutenant exclaimed reproachfully. Then he stopped eating and pressed his hands⁠—in one of which was a fork with a piece of sausage⁠—to his chest. “I⁠ ⁠… oh, how little you know me. I’d rather have my head cut off than let such a thing happen. When I went away that time, I felt so bitter, so hard! I just walked in the street, and you can imagine, I was drowned in tears. My God,” I thought, “and I’ve let myself insult that woman⁠—the one woman whom I love sacredly, madly.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s a pretty story,” put in the landlady, gratified, but still somewhat suspicious.

“You don’t believe me,” the lieutenant replied in a quiet, deep, tragic voice. “Well, I’ve deserved it. Every night I came to your window and prayed for you in my soul.” The lieutenant instantly tipped the glass into his mouth, took a bite, and went on with his mouth full and his eyes watering:

“I was thinking that if a fire were to break out suddenly or murderers attack, I would prove to you then.⁠ ⁠… I’d have given my life joyfully. Alas! my life is short without that. My days are numbered.⁠ ⁠…”

Meanwhile the landlady fumbled in her purse.

“Go on!” she replied, coquettishly. “Adka, here’s the money. Run to Vasily Vasilich’s and get a bottle of beer. But tell him it’s got to be fresh. Quick!”

Breakfast is finished, the bigoss eaten, and the beer all drunk, when Romka, the depraved member of the preparatory class of the gymnasium, appears covered in chalk and ink. Still standing at the door he pouts and looks angrily. Then he flings his satchel down on the floor and begins to howl:

“There!⁠ ⁠… you’ve been and eaten everything without me. I’m as hungry as a do-og.”

“I’ve got some more. But I shan’t give you any,” Adka teases him, showing him his plate across the room.

“There!⁠ ⁠… it’s a dirty trick,” Romka drags out the words. “Mother, tell Adka⁠—”

“Be quiet!” Anna Friedrichovna cries in a piercing voice. “Dawdle till it’s dark, why don’t you? Take twopence. Buy yourself some sausage. That’ll do for you.”

“Ye-es, twopence! You and Valerian Ivanich eat bigoss, and you make me go to school. I’m just like a do-o-o-g.”

“Get out!” Anna Friedrichovna shouts in a terrible voice, and Romka precipitately disappears. Still he managed to pick his satchel up from the floor. A thought had suddenly come into his head. He would go and sell his books in the Rag-market. In the doorway he ran into his elder sister Alychka, and seized the opportunity to pinch her arm very hard. Alychka entered grumbling aloud:

“Mamma! tell Romka not to pinch.”

She is a handsome girl of thirteen, beginning to develop early, a swarthy, olive brunette, with beautiful dark eyes, which are not at all childish. Her lips are red, full and shining, and on her upper lip, which is lightly covered with a fine black down, there are two delightful moles. She is a general favourite in the house. The men give her chocolates, often invite her into their rooms, kiss her and say impudent things to her. She knows as much as any grownup, but in these cases she never blushes, but just casts down her long black eyelashes which throw a blue shade on her amber cheeks, and smiles with a strange, modest, tender yet voluptuous, and somehow expectant smile. Her best friend is the woman Eugenia who lives in No. 12⁠—a quiet girl, punctual in paying for her room, a stout blonde, who is kept by a timber merchant, but on her free days invites her cavaliers from the street. Anna Friedrichovna holds her in high esteem, and says of her: “Well, what does it matter if Eugenia is not quite respectable, she’s an independent woman anyhow.”

Seeing that breakfast is over Alychka gives one of her constrained smiles and says aloud in her thin voice, rather theatrically: “Ah! you’ve finished already. I’m too late. Mamma! may I go to Eugenia Nicolaievna?”

“Go wherever you like!”

“Merci!”

She goes away. After breakfast complete peace reigns. The lieutenant whispers the most ardent words into the widow’s ear, and presses her generous knee under the table. Flushing with the food and beer, she presses her shoulder close to him, then pushes him away and sighs with nervous laughter.

“Yes, Valerian. You’re shameless. The children!”

Adka and Edka look at them, with their fingers in their mouths and their eyes wide open. Their mother suddenly springs upon them.

“Go for a run, you ruffians. Sitting there like dummies in a museum. Quick march!”

“But I don’t want to,” roars Adka.

“I don’ wan’⁠—”

“I’ll teach you ‘Don’t want to.’ A halfpenny for candy, and out you go.”

She locks the door after them, sits on the lieutenant’s knee, and they begin to kiss.

“You’re not cross, my treasure?” the lieutenant whispers in her ear.

But there is a knock at the door. They have to open. The new chambermaid enters, a tall, gloomy woman with one eye, and says hoarsely, with a ferocious look:

“No. 12 wants a samovar, some tea, and some sugar.”

Anna Friedrichovna impatiently gives out what is wanted. The lieutenant says languidly, stretched on the sofa:

“I would like to rest a bit, Anna, dear. Isn’t there a room empty? People are always knocking about here.”

There is only one room empty, No. 5, and there they go. Their room is long, narrow, and dark, like a skittle-alley, with one window. A bed, a chest of drawers, a blistered brown washstand, and a commode are all its furniture. The landlady and the lieutenant once more begin to kiss; and they moan like doves on the roof in springtime.

“Anna, darling, if you love me, send for a packet of ten Cigarettes Plaisir, six kopeks,” says the lieutenant coaxingly, while he undresses.

“Later⁠—”

The spring evening darkens quickly, and it is already night. Through the window comes the whistling of the steamers on the Dnieper, and with it creeps a faint smell of hay, dust, lilac and warm stone. The water falls into the washstand, dripping regularly. There is another knock.

“Who’s there? What the devil are you prowling about for?” cries Anna Friedrichovna awakened. She jumps barefoot from the bed and angrily opens the door. “Well, what do you want?”

Lieutenant Tchijhevich modestly pulls the blanket over his head.

“A student wants a room,” Arseny says behind the door in a stage whisper.

“What student? Tell him there’s only one room, and that’s two roubles. Is he alone, or with a woman?”

“Alone.”

“Tell him then: passport and money in advance. I know these students.”

The lieutenant dressed hurriedly. From habit he takes ten seconds over his toilette. Anna Friedrichovna tidies the bed quickly and cleverly. Arseny returns.

“He’s paid in advance,” he said gloomily. “And here’s the passport.”

The landlady went out into the corridor. Her hair was dishevelled and a fringe was sticking to her forehead. The folds of the pillow were imprinted on her crimson cheeks. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant. The lieutenant, under cover of her back, slipped into the landlady’s room as noiseless as a shadow.

The student was waiting by the window on the stairs. He was already no longer a young man. He was thin and fair-haired, and his face was long and pale, tender and sickly. His good-natured, shortsighted blue eyes, with the faintest shade of a squint, look out as through a mist. He bowed politely to the landlady, at which she smiled in confusion and fastened the top hook of her blouse.

“I should like a room,” he said softly, as if his courage was ebbing. “I have to go on from here. But I should be obliged for a candle and pen and ink.”

He was shown the skittle-alley.

“Excellent,” he said. “I couldn’t want anything better. It’s wonderful here. Just let me have a pen and ink, please.” He did not require tea or bed-linen.

III

The lamp was burning in the landlady’s room. Alychka sat Turkish fashion in the open window, watching the dark heavy mass of water, lit by electric lamps, wavering below, and the gentle motion of the scant dead green of the poplars along the quay. Two round spots of bright red were burning in her cheeks, and there was a moist and weary light in her eyes. In the cooling air the petulant sound of a valse graciously floated from far away on the other side of the river, where the lights of the café chantant were shining.

They were drinking tea with shop bought raspberry jam. Adka and Edka crumbled pieces of black bread into their saucers, and made a kind of porridge. They smeared their faces, foreheads, and noses with it. They blew bubbles in their saucers. Romka, returned with a black eye, was hastily taking noisy sups of tea from a saucer. Lieutenant Tchijhevich had unbuttoned his waistcoat, extruding his paper dickey, and half lay on the sofa, perfectly happy in this domestic idyll.

“Thank God, all the rooms are taken,” Anna Friedrichovna sighed dreamily.

“You see, it’s all due to my lucky touch,” said the lieutenant. “When I came back, everything began to look up.”

“There, tell us another.”

“No, really, my touch is amazingly lucky. By God, it is! In the regiment, when Captain Gorojhevsky took the bank, he always used to make me sit beside him. My God! how those men used to play! That same Gorojhevsky, when he was still a subaltern, at the time of the Turkish War, won twelve thousand. Our regiment came to Bukarest. Of course, the officers had pots of money⁠—nothing to do with it⁠—no women. They began cards. Suddenly, Gorojhevsky pounced on a sharp. You could see he was a crook by the cut of his lug. But he faked the cards so cleverly that you couldn’t possibly get hold of him.⁠ ⁠…”

“Wait a second. I’ll be back in a moment,” interrupted the landlady. “I only want to give out a towel.”

She went out. The lieutenant stealthily came near to Alychka and bent close to her. Her beautiful profile, dark against the background of night, took on a subtle, tender outline of silver in the radiance of the electric lamps.

“What are you thinking about, Alychka⁠—perhaps I should say, whom?” he asked in a sweet tremolo.

She turned away from him. But he quickly lifted the thick plait of her hair and kissed her beneath her hair on her warm thin neck, greedily smelling the perfume of her skin.

“I’ll tell mother,” whispered Alychka, without drawing away.

The door opened. It was Anna Friedrichovna returned. Immediately the lieutenant began to talk, unnaturally loud and free.

“Really, it would be wonderful to be on a boat with your beloved or your dearest friend on a spring night like this.⁠ ⁠… Well, to continue, Anna, darling. So Gorojhevsky dropped a cool six thousand, if you’ll believe me! At last someone gave him a word of advice. He said: ‘Basta⁠—I’m not having any more of this. You won’t mind if we put a nail through the pack to the table and tear off our cards?’ The fellow wanted to get out of it. Gorojhevsky took out his revolver: ‘You’ll play, you dog, or I’ll blow a hole in your head!’ There was nothing for it. The crook sat down, so flustered that he clean forgot there was a mirror behind him. Gorojhevsky could see every one of his cards. So Gorojhevsky not only got his own back, but raked in a clear eleven thousand into the bargain. He even had the nail mounted in gold, and he wears it as a charm on his watch chain.”

IV

At the moment the student was sitting on the bed in No. 5. On the commode before him stood a candle and a sheet of writing paper. The student was writing quickly; then he stopped for a moment, whispered to himself, shook his head, smiled a constrained smile and wrote again. He had just dipped his pen deep in the ink. He spooned up the liquid wax round the wick with it and poked the mixture into the flame. It crackled and splashed about everywhere with little blue darting flames. The firework reminded the student of something funny, dimly remembered from his distant childhood. He looked at the flame of the candle, his eyes narrowed, and a sad, distracted smile formed upon his lips. Then suddenly as though awakened he shook his head, sighed, wiped his pen on the sleeve of his blue blouse, and continued to write:

“Tell them everything in my letter, which you will believe, I know. They will not understand me all the same; but you will have simple words that will be intelligible to them. One thing is very strange. Here am I writing to you, yet I know that in ten or fifteen minutes I shall shoot myself⁠—and the thought does not frighten me at all. But when that huge grey colonel of the gendarmes went red all over and stamped his feet and swore, I was quite lost. When he cried that my obstinacy was useless, and only ruined my comrades and myself, that Bieloussov as well as Knigge and Soloveitchik had confessed, I confessed too. I, who am not afraid of death, was afraid of the shouting of this dull, narrow-minded clod, petrified with professional conceit. What is more disgusting still, he dared not shout at the others. He was courteous, obliging, and sugary to them, like a suburban dentist. He was even a Liberal. But in me he saw at once a weak, yielding will. You can feel it in people at a mere glance⁠—there’s no need of words.

“Yes, I confess that it was all mad and contemptible and ridiculous and loathsome. But it could not be otherwise. And if it were to be again, it would happen as before. Desperately brave generals are often frightened of mice. Sometimes they even boast of their little weakness. But I say with sorrow that I fear these wooden people, whose view of the world is rigid and unchangeable, who are stupidly self-confident, and have no hesitations, worse than death. If you knew how timid and uncomfortable I am before huge policemen, ugly Petersburg porters, typists in the editorial offices of magazines, magistrates’ clerks, and snarling stationmasters! Once I had to have my signature witnessed at the police station, and the mere look of the fat inspector, with his ginger moustache as big as a palm tree, his important chest and his fish eyes, who interrupted me continually, would not hear me out, forgot me altogether for minutes on end, or suddenly pretended that he could not understand the simplest Russian words⁠—his mere look made me so disgustingly frightened that I could catch an insinuating, servile inflection in my voice.

“Who’s to blame for it? I’ll tell you. My mother. She was the original cause of the fouling and corruption of my soul with a vile cowardice. She became a widow when she was still young, and my first impressions as a child are indissolubly mixed up with wandering in other people’s houses, servile smiles, petty intolerable insults, complaisance, lying, whining pitiful grimaces, the vile phrases: ‘a little drop, a little bit, a little cup of tea.’⁠ ⁠… I was made to kiss my benefactors’ hands⁠—men and women. My mother protested that I did not like this dainty or that; she lied that I had a weak stomach, because she knew that the children of the house would have more, and the host would like it. The servants sneered at us on the sly. They called me hunchback, because I had a stoop from childhood. They called my mother a hanger-on and a beggar in my presence. And to make the kind people laugh my mother herself would put her shabby old leather cigarette case to her nose and bend it double: ‘That’s my darling Levoushka’s nose.’ They laughed, and I blushed and suffered endlessly for her and for myself; but I kept silent, because I must not speak in the presence of my benefactors. I hated them, for looking at me as though I were a stone, idly and lazily thrusting their hand to my mouth for me to kiss. I hated and feared them, as I still hate and fear all decided, self-satisfied, rigid, sober people, who know everything beforehand⁠—club orators; old red-faced hairy professors, who flirt with their harmless Liberalism; imposing, anointed canons of cathedrals; colonels of the gendarmerie; radical lady-doctors, who everlastingly repeat bits out of manifestoes, whose soul is as cold, as cruel, and as flat as a marble tabletop. When I speak to them I feel that there is on my face a loathsome mark, a servile officious smile that is not mine, and I despise myself for my thin wheedling voice, in which I can catch the echo of my mother’s note. These people’s souls are dead: their thoughts are fixed in straight inflexible lines; and they are merciless as only a convinced and stupid man can be.

“I spent the years between seven and ten in a state charity school on the Froebel system. The mistresses were all soured old maids, all suffering from inflammations, and they instilled into us respect for the generous authorities, taught us how to spy on each other and tell tales, how to envy the favourites, and, most important of all, how to behave as quietly as possible. But we boys educated ourselves in thieving and abuses. Later on⁠—still charity⁠—I was taken as a state boarder into a gymnasium. The inspectors visited and spied on us. We learnt like parrots: smoking in the third form; drinking in the fourth; in the fifth, the first prostitute and the first vile disease.

“Then suddenly there arose new, young words like a wind, impetuous dreams, free, fiery, thoughts. My mind opened eagerly to meet them, but my soul was already ruined forever, soiled and dead. It had been bitten by a mean, weak-nerved timidity, like a tick in a dog’s ear: you tear it off, but the small head remains to grow again into a complete, loathsome insect.

“I was not the only one to die of the moral contagion, though perhaps I was the weakest of all. But all the past generation has grown up in an atmosphere of sanctimonious tranquillity, of forced respect to its elders, of lack of all individuality and dumbness. A curse on this vile age, of silence and poverty, this peaceful prosperous life under the dumb shadow of pious reaction: for the quiet degradation of the human soul is more horrible than all the barricades and slaughter in the world.

“Strange that when I am alone with my own will, I am not only no coward, but there are few people I know who are more ready to risk their lives. I have walked from one windowsill to another five stories above ground and looked down below; I’ve swum so far out into the sea that my hands and feet would move no more, and I had to lie on my back and rest to avoid cramp. And many things besides. Finally, in ten minutes I shall kill myself⁠—and that is something. But I am afraid of people. I fear people! When from my room I hear drunken men swearing and fighting in the street I go pale with terror. When I imagine at night as I lie in bed, an empty square with a squadron of Cossacks galloping in with a roar, my heart stops beating, my body grows cold all over, and my fingers contract convulsively. I am always frightened of something which exists in the majority of people, but which I cannot explain. The young generation of the period of transition were like me. In our mind we despised our slavery, but we ourselves became cowardly slaves. Our hatred was deep and passionate, but barren, like the mad love of a eunuch.

“But you will understand everything, and explain it all to the comrades to whom I say before I die, that in spite of all, I love and respect them. Perhaps they will believe you when you tell them that I did not die wholly because I had betrayed them vilely and against my will. I know that there is in the world nothing more horrible than the horrible word ‘Traitor.’ It moves from lips to ears, from lips to ears, and kills a man alive. Oh, I could set right my mistake were I not born and bred a slave of human impudence, cowardice, and stupidity. But because I am this slave, I die. In these great fiery days it is disgraceful, difficult, no, quite impossible for men like me to live.

“Yes, my darling, I have heard, seen, and read much in the last year. I tell you there came a moment of awful volcanic eruption. The flame of long pent-up anger broke out and overwhelmed everything: fear of the morrow, respect for parents, love of life, peaceful joys of family happiness. I know of boys, hardly more than children, who refused to have a bandage on their eyes when they were executed. I myself saw people who underwent tortures, yet uttered not a word. It was all born suddenly, in a tempestuous wind. Eagles awoke out of turkey eggs. Let who will arrest their flight!

“I am quite certain that a sixth-form boy of today would proclaim the demands of his party, firmly, intelligently, perhaps with a touch of arrogance, in the presence of all the crowned heads and all the chiefs of police in Europe, in any throne room. It is true the precious schoolboy is very nearly ridiculous, but a sacred respect for his proud free self is already growing up within him, a respect for everything that has been corroded in us by spiritual poverty and anxious paternal morality. We must go to the devil.

“It is just eight minutes to nine. At nine exactly it will be all over with me. A dog barks outside⁠—one, two⁠—then is silent for a little and⁠—one, two, three. Perhaps, when my consciousness has been put out, and with it everything has disappeared from me forever: towns, public squares, hooting steamers, mornings and nights, apartment rooms, ticking clocks, people, animals, the air the light and dark, time and space, and there is nothing⁠—then there will be no thought of this ‘nothing’! Perhaps the dog will go on barking for a long while tonight, first twice, then three times.⁠ ⁠…

“Five minutes to nine. A funny idea is occupying me. I think that a human thought is like a current from some electric centre, an intense, radiating vibration of the imponderable ether, poured out in the spaces of the world, and passing with equal ease through the atoms of stone, iron, and air. A thought springs from my brain and all the sphere of the universe begins to tremble, to ripple round me like water into which a stone is flung, like a sound about a vibrating string. And I think that when a man passes away his consciousness is put out, but his thought still remains, trembling in its former place. Perhaps the thoughts and dreams of all the people who were before me in this long, gloomy room are still hovering round me, directing my will in secret; and perhaps tomorrow a casual tenant of this room will suddenly begin to think of life, of death, and suicide, because I leave my thoughts behind me here. And who can say whether my thoughts, independent of weight and time and the obstacles of matter, are not at the same moment being caught by mysterious, delicate, but unconscious receivers in the brain of an inhabitant of Mars as well as in the brain of the dog who barks outside? Ah, I think that nothing in the world vanishes utterly⁠—nothing⁠—not only what is said, but what is thought. All our deeds and words and thoughts are little streams, trickling springs underground. I believe, I see, they meet, flow together into river-heads, ooze to the surface, run into rivulets, and now they rush in the wild, broad stream of the harmonious River of Life. The River of Life⁠—how great it is! Sooner or later it will bear everything away, and wash down all the strongholds which imprisoned the freedom of the spirit. Where a shoal of triviality was before, there will be the profoundest depth of heroism. In a moment it will bear me away to a cold, remote, and inconceivable land, and perhaps within a year it will pour in torrents over all this mighty town and flood it and carry away in its waters not merely its ruins, but its very name.

“Perhaps what I am writing is all ridiculous. I have two minutes left. The candle is burning and the clock ticking hurriedly in front of me. The dog is still barking. What if there remain nothing of me⁠—nothing of me, or in me, but one thing only, the last sensation, perhaps pain, perhaps the sound of the pistol, perhaps wild naked terror; but it will remain forever, for thousands of millions of centuries, in the millionth degree.

“The hand has reached the hour. We’ll know it all now. No, wait. Some ridiculous modesty made me get up and lock the door. Goodbye. One word more. Surely the obscure soul of the dog must be far more susceptible to the vibrations of thought than the human.⁠ ⁠… Do they not bark because they feel the presence of a dead man? This dog that barks downstairs too. But in a second, new monstrous currents will rush out of the central battery of my brain and touch the poor brain of the dog. It will begin to howl with a queer, intolerable terror.⁠ ⁠… Goodbye, I’m going!”

The student sealed the letter⁠—for some reason he carefully closed the inkpot with a cork⁠—and took a Browning out of his jacket pocket. He turned the safety catch from sur to feu. He put his legs apart so that he could stand firm, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, with both hands he swiftly raised the revolver to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

“What’s that?” Anna Friedrichovna asked in alarm.

“That’s your student shooting himself,” the lieutenant said carelessly. “They’re such canaille⁠—these students.⁠ ⁠…”

But Anna Friedrichovna jumped up and ran into the corridor, the lieutenant following at his leisure. From room No. 5 came a sour smell of gas and smokeless powder. They looked through the keyhole. The student lay on the floor.

Within five minutes there was a thick, black, eager crowd standing in the street outside the hotel. In exasperation Arseny drove the outsiders away from the stairs. Commotion was everywhere in the hotel. A locksmith broke open the door of the room. The caretaker ran for the police; the chambermaid for the doctor. After some time appeared the police inspector, a tall thin young man with white hair, white eyelashes, and a white moustache. He was in uniform. His wide trousers were so full that they fell halfway down over his polished jackboots. Immediately he pressed his way through the public, and roared with the voice of authority, sticking out his bright eyes:

“Get back! Clear off! I can’t understand what it is you find so curious here. Nothing at all. You, sir!⁠ ⁠… I ask you once more. And he looks like an intellectual, in a bowler hat.⁠ ⁠… What’s that? I’ll show you ‘police tyranny.’ Mikhailtchuk, just take note of that man! Hi, where are you crawling to, boy? I’ll⁠—”

The door was broken open. Into the room burst Anna Friedrichovna, the police inspector, the lieutenant, the four children; for witnesses, one policeman and two caretakers; and after them, the doctor. The student lay on the floor, with his face buried in the strip of grey carpet by the bed. His left arm was bent beneath his chest, his right flung out. The pistol lay on one side. Under his head was a pool of dark blood, and a little round hole in his left temple. The candle was still burning, and the clock on the commode ticked hurriedly.

A short procès-verbal was composed in wooden official terms, and the suicide’s letter attached to it.⁠ ⁠… The two caretakers and the policeman carried the corpse downstairs. Arseny lighted the way, lifting the lamp above his head. Anna Friedrichovna, the police inspector and the lieutenant looked on through the window in the corridor upstairs. The bearers’ movements got out of step at the turning; they jammed between the wall and the banisters, and the one who was supporting the head from behind let go his hands. The head knocked sharply against the stairs⁠—one, two, three.⁠ ⁠…

“Serves him right, serves him right,” angrily cried the landlady from the window. “Serves him right, the scoundrel! I’ll give you a good tip for that!”

“You’re very bloodthirsty, Madame Siegmayer,” the police inspector remarked playfully, twisting his moustache, and looking sideways at the end of it.

“Why, he’ll get me into the papers, now. I’m a poor working woman; and now, all along of him, people will keep away from my hotel.”

“Naturally,” the inspector kindly agreed. “I can’t understand these student fellows. They don’t want to study. They brandish a red flag, and then shoot themselves. They don’t want to understand what their parents must feel. They’re bought by Jewish money, damn them! But there are decent men at the same game, sons of noblemen, priests, merchants.⁠ ⁠… A nice lot! However, I give you my compliments.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no, no, no! Not for anything in the world!” The landlady pulled herself together. “We’ll have supper in a moment. A nice little bit of herring. Otherwise, I won’t let you go, for anything.”

“To tell the truth⁠—” The inspector spoke in perplexity. “Very well. As a matter of fact, I was going to drop in to Nagourno’s opposite for something. Our work,” he said, politely making way for the landlady through the door, “is hard. Sometimes we don’t get a bite all day long.”

All three had a good deal of vodka at supper. Anna Friedrichovna, red all over, with shining eyes and lips like blood, slipped off one of her shoes beneath the table and pressed the inspector’s foot. The lieutenant frowned, became jealous, and all the while tried to begin a story of “In the regiment⁠—” The inspector did not listen, but interrupted with terrific tales of “In the police⁠—” Each tried to be as contemptuous of and inattentive to the other as he could. They were both like a couple of young dogs that have just met in the yard.

“You’re everlastingly talking of ‘In the regiment,’ ” said the inspector, looking not at the lieutenant, but the landlady. “Would you mind my asking what was the reason why you left the service?”

“Well,⁠ ⁠…” the lieutenant replied, offended. “Would you like me to ask you how you came to be in the police; how you came to such a life?”

Here Anna Friedrichovna brought the “Monopan” musical box out of the corner and made Tchijhevich turn the handle. After some invitation the inspector danced a polka with her⁠—she jumped about like a little girl, and the curls on her forehead jumped with her. Then the inspector turned the handle while the lieutenant danced, pressing the landlady’s arm to his left side, with his head flung back. Alychka also danced with downcast eyes, and her tender dissipated smile on her lips. The inspector was saying his last goodbye, when Romka appeared.

“There, I’ve been seeing the student off, and while I was away you’ve been⁠—I’m treated like a do-o-og.”

And what was once a student now lay in the cold cellar of an anatomical theatre, in a zinc box, standing on ice⁠—lit by a yellow gas flame, yellow and repulsive. On his bare right leg above the knee in gross ink figures was written “14.” That was his number in the anatomical theatre.

I

On the very day when the awful disaster to the Russian fleet at Tsushima was nearing its end, and the first vague and alarming reports of that bloody triumph of the Japanese were being circulated over Europe, Staff-Captain Ribnikov, who lived in an obscure alley in the Pieski quarter, received the following telegram from Irkutsk:

Send lists immediately watch patient pay debts.

Staff-Captain Ribnikov immediately informed his landlady that he was called away from Petersburg on business for a day or two, and told her not to worry about his absence. Then he dressed himself, left the house, and never returned to it again.

Only five days had passed when the landlady was summoned to the police station to give evidence about her missing lodger. She was a tall woman of forty-five, the honest widow of an ecclesiastical official, and in a simple and straightforward manner she told all that she knew of him. Her lodger was a quiet, poor, simple man, a moderate eater, and polite. He neither drank nor smoked, rarely went out of the house, and had no visitors. She could say nothing more, in spite of all her respectful terror of the inspector of gendarmerie, who moved his luxurious moustaches in a terrifying way and had a fine stock of abuse on hand.

During this five days’ interval Staff-Captain Ribnikov ran or drove over the whole of Petersburg. Everywhere, in the streets, restaurants, theatres, tramcars, the railway stations, this dark lame little officer appeared. He was strangely talkative, untidy, not particularly sober, dressed in an infantry uniform, with an allover red collar⁠—a perfect type of the rat attached to military hospitals, or the commissariat, or the War Office. He also appeared more than once at the Staff Office, the Committee for the Care of the Wounded, at police stations, at the office of the Military Governor, at the Cossack headquarters, and at dozens of other offices, irritating the officials by his senseless grumbling and complaints, by his abject begging, his typical infantry rudeness, and his noisy patriotism. Already everyone knew by heart that he had served in the Army Transport, had been wounded in the head at Liao-Yang, and touched in the leg in the retreat from Mukden. “Why the devil hasn’t he received a gratuity before now! Why haven’t they given him his daily money and his travelling expenses! And his last two months pay! He is absolutely ready to give his last drop of blood⁠—damn it all⁠—for the Czar, the throne, and the country, and he will return to the Far East the moment his leg has healed. But the cursed leg won’t heal⁠—a hundred devils take it. Imagine only⁠—gangrene! Look yourself⁠—” and he put his wounded leg on a chair, and was already eagerly pulling up his trouser; but he was stopped every time by a squeamish and compassionate shyness. His bustling and nervous familiarity, his startled, frightened look, which bordered strangely on impertinence, his stupidity, his persistent and frivolous curiosity taxed to the utmost the patience of men occupied in important and terribly responsible scribbling.

In vain it was explained to him in the kindest possible way that he had come to the wrong place; that he ought to apply at such and such a place; that he must produce certain papers; that they will let him know the result. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing. But it was impossible to be very angry with him; he was so helpless, so easily scared and simple, and if anyone lost patience and interrupted him, he only smiled and showed his gums with a foolish look, bowed hastily again and again, and rubbed his hands in confusion. Or he would suddenly say in a hoarse, ingratiating tone:

“Couldn’t you give me one small smoke? I’m dying to smoke. And I haven’t a cent to buy them. ‘Blessed are the poor.⁠ ⁠… Poverty’s no crime,’ as they say⁠—but sheer indecency.”

With that he disarmed the most disagreeable and dour officials. He was given a cigarette, and allowed to sit by the extreme corner of the table. Unwillingly, and of course in an offhand way, they would answer his importunate questions about what was happening at the war. But there was something very affecting and childishly sincere in the sickly curiosity with which this unfortunate, grubby, impoverished wounded officer of the line followed the war. Quite simply, out of mere humanity, they wanted to reassure, to inform, and encourage him; and therefore they spoke to him more frankly than to the rest.

His interest in everything which concerned Russo-Japanese events was so deep that while they were making some complicated inquiry for him he would wander from room to room, and table to table, and the moment he caught a couple of words about the war he would approach and listen with his habitual strained and silly smile.

When he finally went away, as well as a sense of relief he would leave a vague, heavy and disquieting regret behind him. Often well-groomed, dandified staff-officers referred to him with dignified acerbity:

“And that’s a Russian officer! Look at that type. Well, it’s pretty plain why we’re losing battle after battle. Stupid, dull, without the least sense of his own dignity⁠—poor old Russia!”

During these busy days Captain Ribnikov took a room in a dirty little hotel near the railway station.

Though he had with him a Reserve officer’s proper passport, for some reason he found it necessary to declare that his papers were at present in the Military Governor’s office. Into the hotel he took his things, a holdall containing a rug and pillow, a travelling bag, and a cheap, new box, with some underclothing and a complete outfit of mufti.

Subsequently, the servants gave evidence that he used to come to the hotel late and as if a little the worse for drink, but always regularly gave the door porter twopence for a tip. He never used to sleep more than three or four hours, sometimes without undressing. He used to get up early and pace the room for hours. In the afternoon he would go off.

From time to time he sent telegrams to Irkutsk from various post offices, and all the telegrams expressed a deep concern for someone wounded and seriously ill, probably a person very dear to the captain’s heart.

It was with this same curious busy, uncouth man that Vladimir Ivanovich Schavinsky, a journalist on a large Petersburg paper, once met.

II

Just before he went off to the races, Schavinsky dropped into the dingy little restaurant called “The Glory of Petrograd,” where the reporters used to gather at two in the afternoon to exchange thoughts and information. The company was rough and ready, gay, cynical, omniscient, and hungry enough; and Schavinsky, who was to some degree an aristocrat of the newspaper world, naturally did not belong to it. His bright and amusing Sunday articles, which were not too deep, had a considerable success with the public. He made a great deal of money, dressed well, and had plenty of friends. But he was welcome at “The Glory of Petrograd” as well, on account of his free sharp tongue and the affable generosity with which he lent his fellow-writers half sovereigns. On this day the reporters had promised to procure a race-card for him, with mysterious annotations from the stable.

Vassily, the porter, took off Schavinsky’s overcoat, with a friendly and respectful smile.

“If you please, Vladimir Ivanovitch, company’s all there. In the big saloon, where Prokhov waits.”

And Prokhov, stout, close-cropped, and red-moustached, also gave him a kindly and familiar smile, as usual not looking straight into the eyes of a respectable customer, but over his head.

“A long time since you’ve honoured us, Vladimir Ivanovich! This way, please. Everybody’s here.”

As usual his fellow-writers sat round the long table hurriedly dipping their pens in the single inkpot and scribbling quickly on long slips of paper. At the same time, without interrupting their labours, they managed to swallow pies, fried sausages and mashed potatoes, vodka and beer, to smoke and exchange the latest news of the town and newspaper gossip that cannot be printed. Someone was sleeping like a log on the sofa with his face in a handkerchief. The air in the saloon was blue, thick and streaked with tobacco smoke.

As he greeted the reporters, Schavinsky noticed the captain, in his ordinary army uniform, among them. He was sitting with his legs apart, resting his hands and chin upon the hilt of a large sword. Schavinsky was not surprised at seeing him, as he had learned not to be surprised at anything in the reporting world. He had often seen lost for weeks in that reckless noisy company⁠—landowners from the provinces, jewellers, musicians, dancing-masters, actors, circus proprietors, fishmongers, café-chantant managers, gamblers from the clubs, and other members of the most unexpected professions.

When the officer’s turn came, he rose, straightened his shoulders, stuck out his elbows, and introduced himself in the proper hoarse, drink-sodden voice of an officer of the line:

“H’m!⁠ ⁠… Captain Ribnikov.⁠ ⁠… Pleased to meet you.⁠ ⁠… You’re a writer too?⁠ ⁠… Delighted.⁠ ⁠… I respect the writing fraternity. The press is the sixth great power. Eh, what?”

With that he grinned, clicked his heels together, shook Schavinsky’s hand violently, bowing all the while in a particularly funny way, bending and straightening his body quickly.

“Where have I seen him before?” the uneasy thought flashed across Schavinsky’s mind. “He’s wonderfully like someone. Who can it be?”

Here in the saloon were all the celebrities of the Petersburg reporting world. The Three Musketeers⁠—Kodlubtzov, Riazhkin, and Popov⁠—were never seen except in company. Even their names were so easily pronounced together that they made an iambic tetrameter. This did not prevent them from eternally quarrelling, and from inventing stories of incredible extortion, criminal forgery, slander, and blackmail about each other. There was present also Sergey Kondrashov, whose unrestrained voluptuousness had gained him the name of “A Pathological Case, not a man.” There was also a man whose name had been effaced by time, like one side of a worn coin, to whom remained only the general nickname “Matanya,” by which all Petersburg knew him. Concerning the dour-looking Svischov, who wrote paragraphs “In the police courts,” they said jokingly: “Svischov is an awful blackmailer⁠—never takes less than three roubles.” The man asleep on the sofa was the long-haired poet Piestrukhin, who supported his fragile, drunken existence by writing lyrics in honour of the imperial birthdays and the twelve Church holidays. There were others besides of no less celebrity, experts in municipal affairs, fires, inquests, in the opening and closing of public gardens.

Said lanky, shock-headed, pimply Matanya: “They’ll bring you the card immediately, Vladimir Ivanovich. Meanwhile, I commend our brave captain to your attention. He has just returned from the Far East, where, I may say, he made mincemeat of the yellow-faced, squinting, wily enemy.⁠ ⁠… Now, General, fire away!”

The officer cleared his throat and spat sideways on the floor.

“Swine!” thought Schavinsky, frowning.

“My dear chap, the Russian soldier’s not to be sneezed at!” Ribnikov bawled hoarsely, rattling his sword. “ ‘Epic heroes!’ as the immortal Suvorov said. Eh, what? In a word,⁠ ⁠… but I tell you frankly, our commanders in the East are absolutely worthless! You know the proverb: ‘Like master, like man.’ Eh, what? They thieve, play cards, have mistresses⁠ ⁠… and everyone knows, where the devil can’t manage himself he sends a woman.”

“You were talking about plans, General,” Matanya reminded him.

“Ah! Plans! Merci!⁠ ⁠… My head.⁠ ⁠… I’ve been on the booze all day.” Ribnikov threw a quick, sharp glance at Schavinsky. “Yes, I was just saying.⁠ ⁠… They ordered a certain colonel of the general staff to make a reconnaissance, and he takes with him a squadron of Cossacks⁠—daredevils. Hell take ’em!⁠ ⁠… Eh, what? He sets off with an interpreter. Arrives at a village, ‘What’s the name?’ The interpreter says nothing. ‘At him, boys!’ The Cossacks instantly use their whips. The interpreter says: ‘Butundu!’ And ‘Butundu’ is Chinese for ‘I don’t understand.’ Ha-ha! He’s opened his mouth⁠—the son of a bitch! The colonel writes down ‘village, Butundu.’ They go further to another village. ‘What’s the name?’ ‘Butundu.’ ‘What! Butundu again?’ ‘Butundu.’ Again the colonel enters it ‘village, Butundu.’ So he entered ten villages under the name of ‘Butundu,’ and turned into one of Chekhov’s types⁠—‘Though you are Ivanov the seventh,’ says he, ‘you’re a fool all the same.’ ”

“Oh, you know Chekhov?” asked Schavinsky.

“Who? Chekhov? old Anton? You bet⁠—damn him.⁠ ⁠… We’re friends⁠—we’re often drunk together.⁠ ⁠… ‘Though you are the seventh,’ says he, ‘you’re a fool all the same.’ ”

“Did you meet him in the East?” asked Schavinsky quickly.

“Yes, exactly, in the East, Chekhov and I, old man.⁠ ⁠… ‘Though you are the seventh⁠—’ ”

While he spoke Schavinsky observed him closely. Everything in him agreed with the conventional army type: his voice, manner, shabby uniform, his coarse and threadbare speech. Schavinsky had had the chance of observing hundreds of such debauched captains. They had the same grin, the same “Hell take ’em,” twisted their moustaches to the left and right with the same bravado; they hunched their shoulders, stuck out their elbows, rested picturesquely on their sword and clanked imaginary spurs. But there was something individual about him as well, something different, as it were, locked away, which Schavinsky had never seen, neither could he define it⁠—some intense, inner, nervous force. The impression he had was this: Schavinsky would not have been at all surprised if this croaking and drunken soldier of fortune had suddenly begun to talk of subtle and intellectual matters, with ease and illumination, elegantly; neither would he have been surprised at some mad, sudden, frenzied, even bloody prank on the captain’s part.

What struck Schavinsky chiefly in the captain’s looks was the different impression he made full face and in profile. Side face, he was a common Russian, faintly Kalmuck, with a small, protruding forehead under a pointed skull, a formless Russian nose, shaped like a plum, thin stiff black moustache and sparse beard, the grizzled hair cropped close, with a complexion burnt to a dark yellow by the sun.⁠ ⁠… But when he turned full face Schavinsky was immediately reminded of someone. There was something extraordinarily familiar about him, but this “something” was impossible to grasp. He felt it in those narrow coffee-coloured bright eagle eyes, slit sideways; in the alarming curve of the black eyebrows, which sprang upwards from the bridge of the nose; in the healthy dryness of the skin strained over the huge cheekbones; and, above all, in the general expression of the face⁠—malicious, sneering, intelligent, perhaps even haughty, but not human, like a wild beast rather, or, more truly, a face belonging to a creature of another planet.

“It’s as if I’d seen him in a dream!” the thought flashed through Schavinsky’s brain. While he looked at the face attentively he unconsciously screwed up his eyes, and bent his head sideways.

Ribnikov immediately turned round to him and began to giggle loudly and nervously.

“Why are you admiring me, Mr. Author. Interested? I!” He raised his voice and thumped his chest with a curious pride. “I am Captain Ribnikov. Rib-ni-kov! An orthodox Russian warrior who slaughters the enemy, without number. That’s a Russian soldier’s song. Eh, what?”

Kodlubtzov, running his pen over the paper, said carelessly, without looking at Ribnikov, “and without number, surrenders.”

Ribnikov threw a quick glance at Kodlubtzov, and Schavinsky noticed that strange yellow green fires flashed in his little brown eyes. But this lasted only an instant. The captain giggled, shrugged, and noisily smacked his thighs.

“You can’t do anything; it’s the will of the Lord. As the fable says, Set a thief to catch a thief. Eh, what?”

He suddenly turned to Schavinsky, tapped him lightly on the knee, and with his lips uttered a hopeless sound: “Phwit! We do everything on the off-chance⁠—higgledy-piggledy⁠—anyhow! We can’t adapt ourselves to the terrain; the shells never fit the guns; men in the firing line get nothing to eat for four days. And the Japanese⁠—damn them⁠—work like machines. Yellow monkeys⁠—and civilisation is on their side. Damn them! Eh, what?”

“So you think they may win?” Schavinsky asked.

Again Ribnikov’s lips twitched. Schavinsky had already managed to notice this habit of his. All through the conversation, especially when the captain asked a question and guardedly waited the answer, or nervously turned to face a fixed glance from someone, his lips would twitch suddenly, first on one side then on the other, and he would make strange grimaces, like convulsive, malignant smiles. At the same time he would hastily lick his dry, cracked lips with the tip of his tongue⁠—thin bluish lips like a monkey’s or a goat’s.

“Who knows?” said the captain. “God only.⁠ ⁠… You can’t set foot on your own doorstep without God’s help, as the proverb goes. Eh, what? The campaign isn’t over yet. Everything’s still to come. The Russian’s used to victory. Remember Poltava and the unforgettable Suvorov⁠ ⁠… and Sebastopol!⁠ ⁠… and how we cleared out Napoleon, the greatest captain in the world, in 1812. Great is the God of Russia. What?”

As he began to talk the corners of his lips twitched into strange smiles, malignant, sneering, inhuman, and an ominous yellow gleam played in his eyes, beneath the black frowning eyebrows.

At that moment they brought Schavinsky coffee.

“Wouldn’t you like a glass of cognac?” he asked the captain.

Ribnikov again tapped him lightly on the knee. “No thanks, old man. I’ve drunk a frightful lot today, damn it. My noddle’s fairly splitting. Damn it all, I’ve been pegging since the early morning. ‘Russia’s joy’s in the bottle!’ Eh, what?” he cried suddenly, with an air of bravado and an unexpectedly drunken note in his voice.

“He’s shamming,” Schavinsky instantly thought. But for some reason he did not want to leave off, and he went on treating the captain.

“What do you say to beer⁠ ⁠… red wine?”

“No thanks. I’m drunk already without that. Gran’ merci.”

“Have some soda?”

The captain cheered up.

“Yes, yes, please. Soda, certainly. I could do with a glass.”

They brought a siphon. Ribnikov drank a glass in large greedy gulps. Even his hands began to tremble with eagerness. He poured himself out another immediately. At once it could be seen that he had been suffering a long torment of thirst.

“He’s shamming,” Schavinsky thought again. “What an amazing man! Excited and tired, but not the least bit drunk.”

“It’s hot⁠—damn it,” Ribnikov said hoarsely. “But I think, gentlemen, I’m interfering with your business.”

“No, it’s all right. We’re used to it,” said Riazhkin shortly.

“Haven’t you any fresh news of the war?” Ribnikov asked. “A-ah, gentlemen,” he suddenly cried and banged his sword. “What a lot of interesting copy I could give you about the war! If you like, I’ll dictate, you need only write. You need only write. Just call it: Reminiscences of Captain Ribnikov, returned from the Front. No, don’t imagine⁠—I’ll do it for nothing, free, gratis. What do you say to that, my dear authors?”

“Well, it might be done,” came Matanya’s lazy voice from somewhere. “We’ll manage a little interview for you somehow. Tell me, Vladimir Ivanovich, do you know anything of the Fleet?”

“No, nothing.⁠ ⁠… Is there any news?”

“There’s an incredible story, Kondrashov heard from a friend on the Naval Staff. Hi! Pathological Case! Tell Schavinsky.”

The Pathological Case, a man with a black tragedy beard and a chewed-up face, spoke through his nose:

“I can’t guarantee it, Vladimir Ivanovich. But the source seems reliable. There’s a nasty rumour going about the Staff that the great part of our Fleet has surrendered without fighting⁠—that the sailors tied up the officers and ran up the white flag⁠—something like twenty ships.”

“That’s really terrible,” said Schavinsky in a quiet voice. “Perhaps it’s not true, yet? Still⁠—nowadays, the most impossible things are possible. By the way, do you know what’s happening in the naval ports⁠—in all the ships’ crews there’s a terrible underground ferment going on. The naval officers ashore are frightened to meet the men in their command.”

The conversation became general. This inquisitive, ubiquitous, cynical company was a sensitive receiver, unique of its kind, for every conceivable rumour and gossip of the town, which often reached the private saloon of “The Glory of Petrograd” quicker than the minister’s sanctum. Each one had his news. It was so interesting that even the Three Musketeers, who seemed to count nothing in the world sacred or important, began to talk with unusual fervour.

“There’s a rumour going about that the reserves in the rear of the army refuse to obey orders. The soldiers are shooting the officers with their own revolvers.”

“I heard that the general in command hanged fifty sisters of mercy. Well, of course, they were only dressed as sisters of mercy.”

Schavinsky glanced round at Ribnikov. Now the talkative captain was silent. With his eyes screwed and his chest pressed upon the hilt of his sword, he was intently watching each of the speakers in turn. Under the tight-stretched skin of his cheekbones the sinews strongly played, and his lips moved as if he were repeating every word to himself.

“My God, whom does he remind me of?” the journalist thought impatiently for the tenth time. This so tormented him that he tried to make use of an old familiar trick⁠ ⁠… to pretend to himself that he had completely forgotten the captain, and then suddenly to give him a quick glance. Usually that trick soon helped him to recall a name or a meeting-place, but now it was quite ineffective.

Under his stubborn look, Ribnikov turned round again, gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly.

“Awful news! Do you believe it? What? Even if it is true we need not despair. You know what we Russians say: ‘Whom God defends the pigs can’t eat,’⁠—that’s to say, I mean that the pigs are the Japanese, of course.”

He held out stubbornly against Schavinsky’s steady look, and in his yellow animal eyes the journalist noticed a flame of implacable, inhuman hatred.

Piestrukhin, the poet asleep on the sofa, suddenly got up, smacked his lips, and stared at the officer with dazed eyes.

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… you’re still here, Jap mug,” he said drunkenly, hardly moving his mouth. “You just get out of it!”

And he collapsed on the sofa again, turning on to his other side.

“Japanese!” Schavinsky thought with anxious curiosity, “That’s what he’s like,” and drawled meaningly: “You are a jewel, Captain!”

“I?” the latter cried out. His eyes lost their fire, but his lips still twitched nervously. “I am Captain Ribnikov!” He banged himself on the chest again with curious pride. “My Russian heart bleeds. Allow me to shake your hand. My head was grazed at Liao-Yang, and I was wounded in the leg at Mukden. You don’t believe it? I’ll show you now.”

He put his foot on a chair and began to pull up his trousers.

“Don’t!⁠ ⁠… stop! we believe you,” Schavinsky said with a frown. Nevertheless, his habitual curiosity enabled him to steal a glance at Ribnikov’s leg and to notice that this infantry captain’s underclothing was of expensive spun silk.

A messenger came into the saloon with a letter for Matanya.

“That’s for you, Vladimir Ivanovich,” said Matanya, when he had torn the envelope. “The race-card from the stable. Put one on Zenith both ways for me. I’ll pay you on Tuesday.”

“Come to the races with me, Captain?” said Schavinsky.

“Where? To the races? With pleasure.” Ribnikov got up noisily, upsetting his chair. “Where the horses jump? Captain Ribnikov at your service. Into battle, on the march, to the devil’s dam! Ha, ha, ha! That’s me! Eh, what?”

When they were sitting in the cab, driving through Cabinetsky Street, Schavinsky slipped his arm through the officer’s, bent right down to his ear, and said, in a voice hardly audible:

“Don’t be afraid. I shan’t betray you. You’re as much Ribnikov as I am Vanderbilt. You’re an officer on the Japanese Staff. I think you’re a colonel at least, and now you’re a military agent in Russia.⁠ ⁠…”

Either Ribnikov did not hear the words for the noise of the wheels or he did not understand. Swaying gently from side to side, he spoke hoarsely with a fresh drunken enthusiasm:

“We’re fairly on the spree now! Damn it all, I adore it. I’m not Captain Ribnikov, a Russian soldier, if I don’t love Russian writers! A magnificent lot of fellows! They drink like fishes, and know all about life. ‘Russia’s joy is in the bottle.’ And I’ve been at it from the morning, old man!”

III

By business and disposition Schavinsky was a collector of human documents, of rare and strange manifestations of the human spirit. Often for weeks, sometimes for months together, he watched an interesting type, tracking him down with the persistence of a passionate sportsman or an eager detective. It would happen that the prize was found to be, as he called it, “a knight of the black star”⁠—a sharper, a notorious plagiarist, a pimp, a souteneur, a literary maniac, the terror of every editor, a plunging cashier or bank messenger, who spends public money in restaurants and gambling hells with the madness of a man rushing down the steep; but no less the objects of his sporting passion were the lions of the season⁠—pianists, singers, littérateurs, gamblers with amazing luck, jockeys, athletes, and cocottes coming into vogue. By hook or crook Schavinsky made their acquaintance and then, enveloping them in his spider’s toils, tenderly and gently secured his victim’s attention. Then he was ready for anything. He would sit for whole sleepless nights with vulgar, stupid people, whose mental equipment, like the Hottentots’, consisted of a dozen or two animal conceptions and clichés; he stood drinks and dinners to damnable fools and scoundrels, waiting patiently for the moment when in their drunkenness they would reveal the full flower of their villainy. He flattered them to the top of their bent, with his eyes open; gave them monstrous doses of flattery, firmly convinced that flattery is the key to open every lock; he lent them money generously, knowing well that he would never receive it back again. In justification of this precarious sport he could say that the inner psychological interest for him considerably surpassed the benefits he subsequently acquired as a realistic writer. It gave him a subtle and obscure delight to penetrate into the mysterious inaccessible chambers of the human soul, to observe the hidden springs of external acts, springs sometimes petty, sometimes shameful, more often ridiculous than affecting⁠—as it were, to hold in his hand for a while, a live, warm human heart and touch its very pulse. Often in this inquisitive pursuit it seemed to him that he was completely losing his own “ego,” so much did he begin to think and feel with another’s soul, even speaking in his language with his peculiar words until at last he even caught himself using another’s gesture and tone. But when he had saturated himself in a man he threw him aside. It is true that sometimes he had to pay long and heavily for a moment’s infatuation.

But no one for a long time had so deeply interested him, even to agitation, as this hoarse, tippling infantry captain. For a whole day Schavinsky did not let him go. As he sat by his side in the cab and watched him surreptitiously, Schavinsky resolved:

“No, I can’t be mistaken;⁠—this yellow, squinting face with the cheekbones, these eternal bobs and bows, and the incessant hand washing; above all this strained, nervous, uneasy familiarity.⁠ ⁠… But if it’s all true, and Captain Ribnikov is really a Japanese spy, then what extraordinary presence of mind the man must have to play with this magnificent audacity, this diabolically true caricature of a broken-down officer in broad daylight in a hostile capital. What awful sensations he must have, balanced every second of the day on the very edge of certain death!”

Here was something completely inexplicable to Schavinsky⁠—a fascinating, mad, cool audacity⁠—perhaps the very noblest kind of patriotic devotion. An acute curiosity, together with a reverent fear, drew the journalist’s mind more and more strongly towards the soul of this amazing captain.

But sometimes he pulled himself up mentally: “Suppose I’ve forced myself to believe in a ridiculous preconceived idea? Suppose I’ve just let myself be fooled by a disreputable captain in my inquisitive eagerness to read men’s souls? Surely there are any number of yellow Mongol faces in the Ural or among the Oremburg Cossacks.” Still more intently he looked into every motion and expression of the captain’s face, listened intently to every sound of his voice.

Ribnikov did not miss a single soldier who gave him a salute as he passed. He put his hand to the peak of his cap with a peculiarly prolonged and exaggerated care. Whenever they drove past a church he invariably raised his hat and crossed himself punctiliously with a broad sweep of his arm, and as he did it he gave an almost imperceptible side-glance to his companion⁠—is he noticing or not?

Once Schavinsky could hold out no longer, and said: “But you’re pious, though, Captain.”

Ribnikov threw out his hands, hunched his shoulders up funnily, and said in his hoarse voice: “Can’t be helped, old man. I’ve got the habit of it at the Front. The man who fights learns to pray, you know. It’s a splendid Russian proverb. You learn to say your prayers out there, whether you like it or not. You go into the firing line. The bullets are whirring, terribly⁠—shrapnel, bombs⁠ ⁠… those cursed Japanese shells.⁠ ⁠… But it can’t be helped⁠—duty, your oath, and off you go! And you say to yourself: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

And he said the whole prayer to the end, carefully shaping out each sound.

“Spy!” Schavinsky decided.

But he would not leave his suspicion halfway. For hours on end he went on watching and goading the captain. In a private room of a restaurant at dinner he bent right over the table and looked into Ribnikov’s very pupils.

“Listen, Captain. No one can hear us now.⁠ ⁠… What’s the strongest oath I can give you that no one will ever hear of our conversation?⁠ ⁠… I’m convinced, absolutely and beyond all doubt, that you’re a Japanese.”

Ribnikov banged himself on the chest again.

“I am Capt⁠—”

“No, no. Let’s have done with these tricks. You can’t hide your face, however clever you are. The line of your cheekbones, the cut of your eyes, your peculiar head, the colour of your skin, the stiff, straggling growth on your face⁠—everything points beyond all shadow of doubt to you belonging to the yellow race. But you’re safe. I shan’t tell on you, whatever offers they make me, however they threaten me for silence. I shan’t do you any harm, if it’s only because I’m full of admiration for your amazing courage. I say more⁠—I’m full of reverence, terror if you like. I’m a writer⁠—that’s a man of fancy and imagination. I can’t even imagine how it’s possible for a man to make up his mind to it: to come thousands of miles from your country to a city full of enemies that hate you, risking your life every second⁠—you’ll be hanged without a trial if you’re caught, I suppose you know? And then to go walking about in an officer’s uniform, to enter every possible kind of company, and hold the most dangerous conversations. The least mistake, one slip will ruin you in a second. Half an hour ago you used the word ‘holograph’ instead of ‘manuscript.’ A trifle, but very characteristic. An army captain would never use this word of a modern manuscript, but only of an archive or a very solemn document. He wouldn’t even say ‘manuscript,’ but just a ‘book’⁠—but these are trifles. But the one thing I don’t understand is the incessant strain of the mind and will, the diabolical waste of spiritual strength. To forget to think in Japanese, to forget your name utterly, to identify yourself completely with another’s personality⁠—no, this is surely greater than any heroism they told us of in school. My dear man, don’t try to play with me. I swear I’m not your enemy.”

He said all this quite sincerely, for his whole being was stirred to flame by the heroic picture of his imagination. But the captain would not let himself be flattered. He listened to him, and stared with eyes slightly closed at his glass, which he quietly moved over the tablecloth, and the corners of his blue lips twisted nervously. And in his face Schavinsky recognised the same hidden mockery, the same deep, stubborn, implacable hatred, the peculiar hatred that a European can perhaps never understand, felt by a wise, cultured, civilised beast, made man, for a being of another species.

“Keep your kindness in your pocket,” replied Ribnikov carelessly. “Let it go to hell. They teased me in the regiment too with being a Jap. Chuck it! I’m Captain Ribnikov. You know there’s a Russian proverb, ‘The face of a beast with the soul of a man.’ I’ll just tell you there was once a case in our regiment⁠—”

“What was your regiment?” Schavinsky asked suddenly.

But the captain seemed not to have heard. He began to tell the old, threadbare dirty stories that are told in camp, on manoeuvres, and in barracks, and in spite of himself Schavinsky began to feel insulted. Once during the evening as they sat in the cab Schavinsky put his arm round his waist, and drew him close and said in a low voice:

“Captain⁠ ⁠… no, Colonel, at least, or you would never have been given such a serious mission. Let’s say Colonel, then. I do homage to your daring, that is to the boundless courage of the Japanese nation. Sometimes when I read or think of individual cases of your diabolical bravery and contempt of death, I tremble with ecstasy. What immortal beauty, what divine courage there is, for instance, in the action of the captain of the shattered warship who answered the call to surrender by quietly lighting a cigarette, and went to the bottom with a cigarette in his lips! What titanic strength, what thrilling contempt for the enemy! And the naval cadets on the fireships who went to certain death, delighted as though they were going to a ball! And do you remember how a lieutenant, all by himself, towed a torpedo in a boat at night to make an end of the mole at Port Arthur? The searchlights were turned on and all there remained of the lieutenant and his boat was a bloody stain on the concrete wall. But the next day all the midshipmen and lieutenants of the Japanese Fleet overwhelmed Admiral Togo with applications, offering to repeat the exploit. What amazing heroes! But still more magnificent is Togo’s order that the officers under him should not so madly risk their lives, which belong to their country and not to them. It’s damnably beautiful, though!”

“What’s this street we’re in?” interrupted Ribnikov, yawning. “After the dugouts in Manchuria I’ve completely lost my sense of direction in the street. When we were in Kharbin.⁠ ⁠…”

But the ecstatic Schavinsky went on, without listening to him.

“Do you remember the case of an officer who was taken prisoner and battered his head to pieces on a stone? But the most wonderful thing is the signatures of the Samurai. Of course, you’ve never heard of it, Captain Ribnikov?” Schavinsky asked with sarcastic emphasis. “It’s understood, you haven’t heard of it.⁠ ⁠… You see General Nogi asked for volunteers to march in the leading column in a night attack on the Port Arthur forts. Nearly the whole brigade offered themselves for this honourable death. Since there were too many and they pressed in front of each other for the opportunity of death, they had to make application in writing, and some of them, according to an old custom, cut off the first finger of their left hand and fixed it to their signature for a seal of blood. That’s what the Samurai did!”

“Samurai,” Ribnikov dully repeated. There was a noise in his throat as if something had snapped and spread. Schavinsky gave a quick glance to his profile. An expression such as he had never seen in the captain’s face before suddenly played about his mouth and on his chin, which trembled once; and his eyes began to shine with the warm, tremulous light which gleams through sudden, brimming tears. But he pulled himself together instantly, shut his eyes for a second, and turned a naive and stupid face to Schavinsky, and suddenly uttered a long, filthy, Russian oath.

“Captain, Captain, what’s the matter with you?” Schavinsky cried, almost in fright.

“That’s all newspaper lies,” Ribnikov said unconcernedly. “Our Russian Tommy is not a bit behind. There’s a difference, of course. They fight for their life, however, independence⁠—and what have we mixed ourselves up in it for? Nobody knows! The devil alone knows why. ‘There was no sorrow till the devil pumped it up,’ as we say in Russian. What! Ha, ha, ha!”

On the racecourse the sport distracted Schavinsky’s attention a little, and he could not observe the captain all the while. But in the intervals between the events, he saw him every now and then in one or another of the stands, upstairs or downstairs, in the buffet or by the parimutuel. That day the word Tsushima was on everybody’s lips⁠—backers, jockeys, bookmakers, even the mysterious, ragged beings that are inevitable on every racecourse. The word was used to jeer at a beaten horse, by men who were annoyed at losing, with indifferent laughter and with bitterness. Here and there it was uttered with passion. Schavinsky saw from a distance how the captain in his easy, confident way picked a quarrel with one man, shook hands with others, and tapped others on the shoulder. His small, limping figure appeared and disappeared everywhere.

From the races they drove to a restaurant, and from there to Schavinsky’s house. The journalist was rather ashamed of his role of voluntary detective; but he felt it was out of his power to throw it up, though he had already begun to feel tired, and his head ached with the strain of this stealthy struggle with another man’s soul. Convinced that flattery had been of no avail, he now tried to draw the captain to frankness, by teasing and rousing his feelings of patriotism.

“Still, I’m sorry for these poor Japs,” he said with ironical pity. “When all is said, Japan has exhausted all her national genius in this war. In my opinion she’s like a feeble little man who lifts a half dozen hundredweight on his shoulders, either in ecstasy or intoxication, or out of mere bravado, and strains his insides, and is already beginning to die a lingering death. You see Russia’s an entirely different country. She’s a Colossus. To her the Manchurian defeats are just the same as cupping a full-blooded man. You’ll see how she will recover and begin to blossom when the war is over. But Japan will wither and die. She’s strained herself. Don’t tell me they have civilisation, universal education, European technique: at the end of it all, a Japanese is an Asiatic, half-man, half-monkey. Even in type he approaches a Bushman, a Touareg, or a Blackfellow. You have only to look at his facial angle. It all comes to this, they’re just Japs! It wasn’t your civilisation or your political youth that conquered us at all, but simply a fit of madness. Do you know what a seizure is, a fit of frenzy? A feeble woman tears chains to pieces and tosses strong men about like straws. The next day she hasn’t even the power to lift her hand. It’s the same with Japan. Believe me, after the heroic fit will follow impotence and decay; but certainly before that she will pass through a stage of national swagger, outrageous militarism and insane Chauvinism.”

“Really?” cried Ribnikov in stupid rapture. “You can’t get away from the truth. Shake hands, Mr. Author. You can always tell a clever man at once.”

He laughed hoarsely, spat about, tapped Schavinsky’s knee, and shook his hand, and Schavinsky suddenly felt ashamed of himself and the tricks of his stealthy searching into human souls.

“What if I’m mistaken and this Ribnikov is only the truest type of the drunken infantryman. No, it’s impossible. But if it is possible, then what a fool I’m making of myself, my God!”

At his house he showed the captain his library, his rare engravings, a collection of old china, and a couple of small Siberian dogs. His wife, who played small parts in musical comedy, was out of town. Ribnikov examined everything with a polite, uninterested curiosity, in which his host caught something like boredom, and even cold contempt. Ribnikov casually opened a magazine and read some lines aloud.

“He’s made a blunder now,” Schavinsky thought, when he heard his extraordinary correct and wooden reading, each separate letter pronounced with exaggerated precision like the head boy in a French class showing off. Evidently Ribnikov noticed it himself, for he soon shut the book and asked:

“But you’re a writer yourself?”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… I do a bit.”

“What newspapers do you write for?”

Schavinsky named them. It was the sixth time he had been asked the question that day.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes. I forgot, I’ve asked you before. D’you know what, Mr. Author?”

“What is it?”

“Let us do this. You write and I’ll dictate. That is, I won’t dictate⁠ ⁠… oh, no, I shall never dare.” Ribnikov rubbed his hands and bowed hurriedly. “You’ll compose it yourself, of course. I’ll only give you some thoughts and⁠—what shall I call them⁠—reminiscences of the war? Oh, what a lot of interesting copy I have!⁠ ⁠…”

Schavinsky sat sideways on the table and glanced at the captain, cunningly screwing up one eye.

“Of course, I shall give your name?”

“Why, you may. I’ve no objection. Put it like this: ‘This information was supplied to me by Captain Ribnikov who has just returned from the Front.’ ”

“Very well. Why do you want this?”

“What?”

“Having your name in it. Do you want it for future evidence that you inspired the Russian newspapers? What a clever fellow, I am, eh?”

But the captain avoided a direct answer, as usual.

“But perhaps you haven’t time? You are engaged in other work. Well, let the reminiscences go to hell! You won’t be able to tell the whole story. As they say: ‘There’s a difference between living a life and crossing a field.’ Eh, what? Ha, ha, ha!”

An interesting fancy came into Schavinsky’s head. In his study stood a big, white table of unpainted ash. On the clean virgin surface of this table all Schavinsky’s friends used to leave their autographs in the shape of aphorisms, verses, drawings, and even notes of music. He said to Ribnikov: “See, here is my autograph-book, Captain. Won’t you write me something in memory of our pleasant meeting, and our acquaintance which”⁠—Schavinsky bowed politely⁠—“I venture to hope will not be short-lived?”

“With pleasure,” Ribnikov readily agreed. “Something from Pushkin or Gogol?”

“No⁠ ⁠… far better something of your own.”

“Of my own? Splendid.”

He took the pen and dipped it, thought and prepared to write, but Schavinsky suddenly stopped him.

“We’d better do this. Here’s a piece of a paper. There are drawing-pins in the box at the corner. Please write something particularly interesting and then cover it with the paper and fasten the corners with the drawing-pins. I give you my word of honour as an author, that for two months I won’t put a finger on the paper and won’t look at what you’ve written. Is that all right? Well, write then. I’ll go out of the room so as not to hinder you.”

After five minutes Ribnikov shouted to him: “Please come in.”

“Ready?” Schavinsky asked, entering.

Ribnikov drew himself up, put his hand to his forehead in salute and shouted like a soldier: “Very good, sir.”

“Thanks. Now we’ll go to the ‘Buff,’ or somewhere else,” Schavinsky said. “There we’ll think what we’ll do next. I shan’t let you out of my sight today, Captain.”

“With the greatest pleasure,” Ribnikov said in a hoarse bass, clicking his heels. He lifted up his shoulders and gave a military twist to his moustaches on either side.

But Schavinsky, against his own will, did not keep his word. At the last moment before leaving his house the journalist remembered that he had left his cigarette-case in the study and went back for it, leaving Ribnikov in the hall. The piece of white paper, carefully fastened with drawing-pins, aroused his curiosity. He could not resist the temptation; he turned back stealthily and after lifting a corner of the paper quickly read the words written in a thin, distinct and extraordinary elegant hand:

“Though you are Ivanov the seventh, you’re a fool all the same.”

IV

Long after midnight they were coming out of a suburban café chantant accompanied by the well-known musical comedy actor Zhenin-Lirsky, the young assistant Crown-Prosecutor Sashka Strahlmann, who was famous all over Petersburg for his incomparable skill in telling amusing stories about the topic of the day, and Karyukov, the merchant’s son, a patron of the arts.

It was neither bright nor dark. It was a warm, white, transparent night, with soft chatoyant colours and water like mother-of-pearl in the calm canals, which plainly reflected the grey stone of the quay and the motionless foliage of the trees. The sky was pale as though tired and sleepless, and there were sleepy clouds in the sky, long, thin and woolly like clews of ravelled cotton-wool.

“Where shall we go, now?” said Schavinsky, stopping at the gate of the gardens. “Field-Marshal Oyama! Give us your enlightened opinion.”

All five lingered on the pavement for a while, caught by a moment of the usual early morning indecision, when the physical fatigue of the reveller struggles with the irresistible and irritating yearning after new and piquant sensations. From the garden continually came patrons, laughing, whistling, noisily shuffling their feet over the dry, white cobblestones. Walking hurriedly, boldly rustling the silk of their petticoats emerged the artistes wearing huge hats, with diamonds trembling in their ears, escorted by dashing gentlemen, smartly dressed, with flowers in their buttonholes. With the porters’ respectful assistance these ladies fluttered into carriages and panting automobiles, freely arranging their dresses round their legs, and flew away holding the brims of their hats in their hands. The chorus-girls and the filles du jardin of the higher class drove off alone or two together in ordinary cabs with a man beside them. The ordinary women of the street appeared everywhere at once, going round the wooden fence, following close on the men who left on foot, giving special attention to the drunken. They ran beside the men for a long while, offering themselves in a whisper with impudent submissiveness, naming that which was their profession with blunt, coarse, terrible words. In the bright, white twilight of May, their faces seemed like coarse masks, blue from the white of their complexions, red with crimson colour, and one’s eyes were struck with the blackness, the thickness and the extraordinary curve of their eyebrows. These naively bright colours made the yellow of their wrinkled temples appear all the more pitiable, their thin, scraggy necks, and flabby, feeble chins. A couple of mounted policemen, obscenely swearing, rode them down now and then with their horses’ mouths afoam. The girls screamed, ran away, and clutched at the sleeves of the passersby. Near the railing of the canal was gathered a group of about twenty men⁠—it was the usual early morning scandal. A short, beardless boy of an officer was dead-drunk and making a fuss, looking as though he wanted to draw his sword; a policeman was assuring him of something in a convincing falsetto with his hand on his heart.

A sharp, suspicious-looking type, drunk, in a cap with a ragged peak, spoke in a sugary, obsequious voice: “Spit on ’em, yer honour. They ain’t worth looking at. Give me one in the jaw, if you like. Allow me to kiss yer ’and.”

A thin, stern gentleman at the back, whose thick, black whiskers could alone be seen, because his bowler was tilted over his face, drawled in a low, indistinct voice: “What do you stand about talking for? Pitch him into the water and have done with it!”

“But really, Major Fukushima,” said the actor, “we must put a decent finish to the day of our pleasant acquaintance. Let’s go off with the little ladies. Where shall it be, Sashka?”

“Bertha?” Strahlmann asked in reply.

Ribnikov giggled and rubbed his hands in joyful agitation.

“Women? ‘Even a Jew hanged himself for company’s sake,’ as the Russian proverb says. Where the world goes there go we. Eh, what? ‘If we’re going, let’s go,’ as the parrot said. What? Ha, ha, ha!”

Schavinsky had introduced him to the young men, and they had all had supper in the café chantant, listened to the Romanian singers, drinking champagne and liqueurs. At one time they found it amusing to call Ribnikov by the names of different Japanese generals, particularly because the captain’s good nature was evidently unlimited. Schavinsky it was who began this rude, familiar game. True he felt at times that he was behaving in an ugly, perhaps even treacherous, way to Ribnikov, but he calmed his conscience by the fact that he had not breathed a word of his suspicions, which never entered his friends’ heads at all.

At the beginning of the evening he was watching Ribnikov. The captain was noisier and more talkative than anybody: he was incessantly drinking healths, jumping up, sitting down, pouring the wine over the tablecloth, lighting his cigarette the wrong end. Nevertheless, Schavinsky noticed that he was drinking very little.

Ribnikov had to sit next the journalist again in the cab. Schavinsky was almost sober. He was generally distinguished for a hard head in a spree, but it was light and noisy now, as though the foam of the champagne was bubbling in it. He gave the captain a side-glance. In the uncertain, drowsy light of the white night Ribnikov’s face wore a dark, earthy complexion. All the hollows were sharp and black, the little wrinkles on his forehead and the lines round his nose and mouth were deepened. The captain himself sat with a weary stoop, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his uniform, breathing heavily through his open mouth. Altogether it gave him a worn, suffering look. Schavinsky could even smell his breath, and thought that gamblers after several nights at cards have just the same stale, sour breath as men tired out with insomnia or the strain of long brain work. A wave of kindly emotion and pity welled up in Schavinsky’s heart. The captain suddenly appeared to him very small, utterly worn out, affecting and pitiable. He embraced Ribnikov, drew him close, and said affably: “Very well, Captain, I surrender. I can’t do anything with you, and I apologise if I’ve given you some uncomfortable minutes. Give me your hand.”

He unfastened the rose he wore in his coat which a girl in the garden had made him buy, and fixed it in the buttonhole of the captain’s greatcoat.

“This is my peace-offering, Captain. We won’t tease each other any more.”

The cab drew up at a two-storied stone house standing apart in a pleasant approach. All the windows were shuttered. The others had gone in advance and were waiting for them. A square grille, a handsbreadth wide, set in the heavy door, was opened from inside, and a pair of cold, searching grey eyes appeared in it for a few seconds. Then the door was opened.

This establishment was something between an expensive brothel and a luxurious club. There was an elegant entrance, a stuffed bear in the hall, carpets, silk curtains and lustre-chandeliers, and lackeys in evening dress and white gloves. Men came here to finish the night after the restaurants were shut. Cards were played, expensive wines kept, and there was always a generous supply of fresh, pretty women who were often changed.

They had to go up to the first floor, where was a wide landing adorned by palms in tubs and separated from the stairs by a balustrade. Schavinsky went upstairs arm-in-arm with Ribnikov. Though he had promised himself that he would not tease him any more, he could not restrain himself: “Let’s mount the scaffold, Captain!”

“I’m not afraid,” said he lazily. “I walk up to death every day of my life.”

Ribnikov waved his hand feebly and smiled with constraint. The smile made his face suddenly weary, grey and old.

Schavinsky gave him a look of silent surprise. He was ashamed of his importunity. But Ribnikov passed it off immediately.

“Yes, to death.⁠ ⁠… A soldier’s always ready for it. There’s nothing to be done. Death is the trifling inconvenience attached to our profession.”

Schavinsky and Karyukov the art-patron were assiduous guests and honoured habitués of the house. They were greeted with pleasant smiles and low bows.

A big, warm cabinet was given them, in red and gold with a thick, bright green carpet on the floor, with sconces in the corners and on the table. They were brought champagne, fruit and bonbons. Women came⁠—three at first, then two more⁠—then they were passing in and out continually. Without exception they were pretty, well provided with bare, white arms, neck, bosom, in bright, expensive, glittering dresses. Some wore ballet skirts; one was in a schoolgirl’s brown uniform, another in tight riding-breeches and a jockey’s cap. A stout elderly lady in black also came, rather like a landlady or a housekeeper. Her appearance was decent; her face flabby and yellow. She laughed continually the pleasant laugh of an elderly woman, coughed continually and smoked incessantly. She behaved to Schavinsky, the actor, and the art-patron with the unconstrained coquetterie of a lady old enough to be their mother, flicking their hands with her handkerchief, and she called Strahlmann, who was evidently her favourite, Sashka.

“General Kuroki, let’s drink to the success of the grand Manchurian army. You’ll be getting mildewy, sitting in your corner,” said Karyukov.

Schavinsky interrupted him with a yawn: “Steady, gentlemen. I think you ought to be bored with it by now. You’re just abusing the captain’s good nature.”

“I’m not offended,” replied Ribnikov. “Gentlemen! Let us drink the health of our charming ladies.”

“Sing us something, Lirsky!” Schavinsky asked.

The actor cheerfully sat down to the piano and began a gipsy song. It was more recitation than singing. He never moved the cigar from his lips, stared at the ceiling, with a parade of swinging to and fro on his chair. The women joined in, loud and out of tune. Each one tried to race the others with the words. Then Sashka Strahlmann gave an admirable imitation of a gramophone, impersonated an Italian opera, and mimicked animals. Karyukov danced a fandango and called for bottle after bottle.

He was the first to disappear from the room, with a red-haired Polish girl. After him followed Strahlmann and the actor. Only Schavinsky remained, with a swarthy, white-toothed Hungarian girl on his knees, and Ribnikov, by the side of a tall blonde in a blue satin blouse, cut square and open halfway down her breast.

“Well, Captain, let’s say goodbye for a little while,” said Schavinsky, getting up and stretching himself. “It’s late⁠—we’d better say early. Come and have breakfast with me at one o’clock, Captain. Put the wine down to Karyukov, Madame. If he loves sacred art, then he can pay for the honour of having supper with its priests. Mes compliments!”

The blonde put her bare arm round the captain’s neck and kissed him, and said simply: “Let us go too, darling. It really is late.”

V

She had a little gay room with a bright blue paper, a pale blue hanging lamp. On the toilet-table stood a round mirror in a frame of light blue satin. There were two oleographs on one wall, Girls Bathing and The Royal Bridegroom, on the other a hanging, with a wide brass bed alongside.

The woman undressed, and with a sense of pleasant relief passed her hands over her body, where her chemise had been folded under her corset. Then she turned the lamp down and sat on the bed, and began calmly to unlace her boots.

Ribnikov sat by the table with his elbows apart and his head resting in his hands. He could not tear his eyes from her big, handsome legs and plump calves, which her black, transparent stockings so closely fitted.

“Why don’t you undress, officer?” the woman asked. “Tell me, darling, why do they call you Japanese General?”

Ribnikov gave a laugh, with his eyes still fixed upon her legs.

“Oh, it’s just nonsense. Only a joke. Do you know the verses:

‘It hardly can be called a sin,
If something’s funny and you grin!⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“Will you stand me some champagne, darling.⁠ ⁠… Since you’re so stingy, oranges will do. Are you going soon or staying the night?”

“Staying the night. Come to me.”

She lay down with him, hastily threw her cigarette over on to the floor and wriggled beneath the blanket.

“Do you like to be next to the wall?” she asked. “Do if you want to. O-oh, how cold your legs are! You know I love army men. What’s your name?”

“Mine?” He coughed and answered in an uncertain tone: “I am Captain Ribnikov. Vassily Alexandrovich Ribnikov!”

“Ah, Vasya! I have a friend called Vasya, a little chap from the Lycée. Oh, what a darling he is!”

She began to sing, pretending to shiver under the bedclothes, laughing and half-closing her eyes:

“ ‘Vasya, Vasya, Vasinke,
It’s a tale you’re telling me.’

“You are like a Japanese, you know, by Jove. Do you know who? The Mikado. We take in the Niva and there’s a picture of him there. It’s late now⁠—else I’d get it to show you. You’re as like as two peas.”

“I’m very glad,” said Ribnikov, quietly kissing her smooth, round shoulder.

“Perhaps you’re really a Japanese? They say you’ve been at the war. Is it true? O-oh, darling, I’m afraid of being tickled⁠—Is it dreadful at the war?”

“Dreadful⁠ ⁠… no, not particularly.⁠ ⁠… Don’t let’s talk about it,” he said wearily. “What’s your name?”

“Clotilde.⁠ ⁠… No, I’ll tell you a secret. My name’s Nastya. They only called me Clotilde here because my name’s so ugly. Nastya, Nastasya⁠—sounds like a cook.”

“Nastya,” he repeated musingly, and cautiously kissed her breast. “No, it’s a nice name. Na⁠—stya,” he repeated slowly.

“What is there nice about it? Malvina, Wanda, Zhenia, they’re nice names⁠—especially Irma.⁠ ⁠… Oh, darling,” and she pressed close to him. “You are a dear⁠ ⁠… so dark. I love dark men. You’re married, surely?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, tell us another. Everyone here says he’s a bachelor. You’ve got six children for sure!”

It was dark in the room, for the windows were shuttered and the lamp hardly burned. Her face was quite close to his head, and showed fantastic and changing on the dim whiteness of the pillow. Already it was different from the simple, handsome, round grey-eyed, Russian face of before. It seemed to have grown thinner, and, strangely changing its expression every minute, seemed now tender, kind, mysterious. It reminded Ribnikov of someone infinitely familiar, long beloved, beautiful and fascinating.

“How beautiful you are!” he murmured. “I love you.⁠ ⁠… I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

He suddenly uttered an unintelligible word, completely foreign to the woman’s ear.

“What did you say?” she asked in surprise.

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Nothing at all.⁠ ⁠… My dear! Dear woman⁠ ⁠… you are a woman⁠ ⁠… I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

He kissed her arms, her neck, trembling with impatience, which it gave him wonderful delight to suppress. He was possessed by a tender and tempestuous passion for the well-fed, childless woman, for her big young body, so cared for and beautiful. His longing for woman had been till now suppressed by his austere, ascetic life, his constant weariness, by the intense exertion of his mind and will: now it devoured him suddenly with an intolerable, intoxicating flame.

“Your hands are cold,” she said, awkward and shy. In this man was something strange and alarming which she could in no way understand. “Cold hands and a warm heart.”

“Yes, yes, yes.⁠ ⁠… My heart,” he repeated it like a madman, “My heart is warm, my heart.⁠ ⁠…”

Long ago she had grown used to the outward rites and the shameful details of love; she performed them several times every day⁠—mechanically, indifferently, and often with silent disgust. Hundreds of men, from the aged and old, who put their teeth in a glass of water for the night, to youngsters whose voice was only beginning to break and was bass and soprano at once, civilians, army men, priests in mufti, baldheads and men overgrown with hair from head to foot like monkeys, excited and impotent, morphomaniacs who did not conceal their vice from her, beaux, cripples, rakes, who sometimes nauseated her, boys who cried for the bitterness of their first fall⁠—they all embraced her with shameful words, with long kisses, breathed into her face, moaned in the paroxysm of animal passion, which, she knew beforehand, would then and there be changed to unconcealed and insuperable disgust. Long ago all men’s faces had in her eyes lost every individual trait⁠—as though they had united into one lascivious, inevitable face, eternally bent over her, the face of a he-goat with stubbly, slobbering lips, clouded eyes, dimmed like frosted glass, distorted and disfigured by a voluptuous grimace, which sickened her because she never shared it.

Besides, they were all rude, exacting and devoid of the elements of shame. They were ludicrously ugly, as only the modern man can be in his underclothes. But this elderly little officer made a new, peculiar, attractive impression on her. His every movement was distinguished by a gentle, insinuating discretion. His kiss, his caress, and his touch were strangely gentle. At the same time he surrounded her imperceptibly with the nervous atmosphere of real and intense passion which even from a distance and against her will arouses a woman’s sensuality, makes her docile, and subject to the male’s desire. But her poor little mind had never passed beyond the round of everyday life in the house, and could not perceive this strange and agitating spell. She could only whisper shyly, happy and surprised, the usual trivial words: “What a nice man you are! You’re my sweet, aren’t you?”

She got up, put the lamp out, and lay beside him again. Through the chinks between the shutters and the wall showed thin threads of the whitening dawn, which filled the room with a misty blue half-light. Behind the partition, somewhere an alarm-clock hurriedly rang. Far away someone was singing sadly in the distance.

“When will you come again?” the woman asked.

“What?” Ribnikov asked sleepily, opening his eyes. “When am I coming? Soon⁠—tomorrow.⁠ ⁠…”

“I know all about that. Tell me the truth. When are you coming? I’ll be lonely without you.”

“M’m.⁠ ⁠… We will come and be alone.⁠ ⁠… We will write to them. They will stay in the mountains⁠ ⁠…” he murmured incoherently.

A heavy slumber enlocked his body; but, as always with men who have long deprived themselves of sleep, he could not sleep at once. No sooner was his consciousness overcast with the soft, dark, delightful cloud of oblivion than his body was shaken by a terrible inward shock. He moaned and shuddered, opened his eyes wide in wild terror, and straightway plunged into an irritating, transitory state between sleep and wakefulness, like a delirium crowded with threatening and confused visions.

The woman had no desire to sleep. She sat up in bed in her chemise, clasping her bended knees with her bare arms, and looked at Ribnikov with timid curiosity. In the bluish half-light his face grew sharper still and yellower, like the face of a dead man. His mouth stood open, but she could not hear his breathing. All over his face, especially about the eyes and mouth, was an expression of such utter weariness and profound human suffering as she had never seen in her life before. She gently passed her hand back over his stiff hair and forehead. The skin was cold and covered all over with clammy sweat. Ribnikov trembled at the touch, cried out in terror, and with a quick movement raised himself from the pillow.

“Ah! Who’s that, who?” he cried abruptly, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve.

“What’s the matter, darling?” the woman asked with sympathy. “You’re not well? Shall I get you some water?”

But Ribnikov had mastered himself, and lay down once more.

“Thanks. It’s all right now. I was dreaming.⁠ ⁠… Go to sleep, dear, do.”

“When do you want me to wake you, darling?” she asked.

“Wake.⁠ ⁠… In the morning.⁠ ⁠… The sun will rise early.⁠ ⁠… And the horsemen will come.⁠ ⁠… We will go in a boat.⁠ ⁠… And sail over the river.⁠ ⁠…” He was silent and lay quiet for some minutes. Suddenly his still, dead face was distorted with terrible pain. He turned on his back with a moan, and there came in a stream from his lips mysterious, wild-sounding words of a strange language.

The woman held her breath and listened, possessed by the superstitious terror which always comes from a sleeper’s delirium. His face was only a couple of inches from hers, and she could not tear her eyes away. He was silent for a while and then began to speak again, many words and unintelligible. Then he was silent again, as though listening attentively to someone’s speech. Suddenly the woman heard the only Japanese word she knew, from the newspapers, pronounced aloud with a firm, clear voice:

“Banzai!”

Her heart beat so violently that the velvet coverlet lifted again and again with the throbbing. She remembered how they had called Ribnikov by the names of Japanese generals in the red cabinet that day, and a far faint suspicion began to stir in the obscurity of her mind.

Someone lightly tapped on the door. She got up and opened.

“Clotilde dear, is that you?” a woman’s gentle whisper was heard. “Aren’t you asleep? Come in to me for a moment. Leonka’s with me, and he’s standing some apricot wine. Come on, dear!”

It was Sonya, the Karaim,1 Clotilde’s neighbour, bound to her by the cloying, hysterical affection which always pairs off the women in these establishments.

“All right. I’ll come now. Oh, I’ve something very interesting to tell you. Wait a second. I’ll dress.”

“Nonsense. Don’t. Who are you nervous about? Leonka? Come, just as you are!”

She began to put on her petticoat.

Ribnikov roused out of sleep.

“Where are you going to?” he asked drowsily.

“Only a minute.⁠ ⁠… Back immediately⁠ ⁠… I must⁠ ⁠…” she answered, hurriedly tying the tape round her waist. “You go to sleep. I’ll be back in a second.”

He had not heard her last words. A dark heavy sleep had instantly engulfed him.

VI

Leonka was the idol of the whole establishment, beginning with Madame, and descending to the tiniest servant. In these places where boredom, indolence, and cheap literature produce feverishly romantic tastes, the extreme of adoration is lavished on thieves and detectives, because of their heroic lives, which are full of fascinating risks, dangers and adventures. Leonka used to appear in the most varied costumes, at times almost made up. Sometimes he kept a meaning and mysterious silence. Above all everyone remembered very well that he often proclaimed that the local police had an unbounded respect for him and fulfilled his orders blindly. In one case he had said three or four words in a mysterious jargon, and that was enough to send a few thieves who were behaving rowdily in the house crawling into the street. Besides there were times when he had a great deal of money. It is easy to understand that Henrietta, whom he called Genka and with whom he had an assiduous affair, was treated with a jealous respect.

He was a young man with a swarthy, freckled face, with black moustaches that pointed up to his very eyes. His chin was short, firm and broad; his eyes were dark, handsome and impudent. He was sitting on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his necktie loose. He was small but well proportioned. His broad chest and his muscles, so big that his shirt seemed ready to tear at the shoulder, were eloquent of his strength. Genka sat close to him with her feet on the sofa; Clotilde was opposite. Sipping his liqueur slowly with his red lips, in an artificially elegant voice he told his tale unconcernedly:

“They brought him to the station. His passport⁠—Korney Sapietov, resident in Kolpin or something of the kind. Of course the devil was drunk, absolutely. ‘Put him into a cold cell and sober him down.’ General rule. That very moment I happened to drop into the inspector’s office. I had a look. By Jove, an old friend: Sanka the Butcher⁠—triple murder and sacrilege. Instantly I gave the constable on duty a wink, and went out into the corridor as though nothing had happened. The constable came out to me. ‘What’s the matter, Leonti Spiridonovich?’ ‘Just send that gentleman round to the Detective Bureau for a minute.’ They brought him. Not a muscle in his face moved. I just looked him in the eyes and said”⁠—Leonka rapped his knuckles meaningly on the table⁠—“ ‘Is it a long time, Sanka, since you left Odessa and decided to honour us here?’ Of course he’s quite indifferent⁠—playing the fool. Not a word. Oh, he’s a bright one, too. ‘I haven’t any idea who Sanka the Butcher is. I am⁠ ⁠… so-and-so.’ So I come up to him, catch hold of him by the beard⁠—hey, presto⁠—the beard’s left in my hand. False!⁠ ⁠… ‘Will you own up now, you son of a bitch?’ ‘I haven’t any idea.’ Then I let fly straight at his nose⁠—once, twice⁠—a bloody mess. ‘Will you own up?’ ‘I haven’t any idea.’ ‘Ah, that’s your game, is it? I gave you a decent chance before. Now, you’ve got yourself to thank. Bring Arsenti the Flea here.’ We had a prisoner of that name. He hated Sanka to death. Of course, my dear, I knew how they stood. They brought the Flea. ‘Well, Flea, who’s this gentleman?’ The Flea laughs. ‘Why Sanka the Butcher, of course? How do you do, Sanichka? Have you been honouring us a long while? How did you get on in Odessa?’ Then the Butcher gave in. ‘All right, Leonti Spiridonovich. I give in. Nothing can get away from you. Give us a cigarette.’ Of course I gave him one. I never refuse them, out of charity. The servant of God was taken away. He just looked at the Flea, no more. I thought, well, the Flea will have to pay for that. The Butcher will do him in for sure.”

“Do him in?” Genka asked with servile confidence, in a terrified whisper.

“Absolutely. Do him in. That’s the kind of man he is!”

He sipped his glass complacently. Genka looked at him with fixed, frightened eyes, so intently that her mouth even opened and watered. She smacked her hands on her lips.

“My God, how awful! Just think, Clotilduchka! And you weren’t afraid, Leonya?”

“Well, am I to be frightened of every vagabond?”

The rapt attention of the woman excited him, and he began to invent a story that students had been making bombs somewhere on Vassiliev Island, and that the Government had instructed him to arrest the conspirators. Bombs there were⁠—it was proved afterwards⁠—twelve thousand of them. If they’d all exploded then not only the house they were in, but half Petersburg, perhaps, would have been blown to atoms.⁠ ⁠… Next came a thrilling story of Leonka’s extraordinary heroism, when he disguised himself as a student, entered the “devil’s workshop,” gave a sign to someone outside the window, and disarmed the villains in a second. He caught one of them by the sleeve at the very moment when he was going to explode a lot of bombs.

Genka groaned, was terror-stricken, slapped her legs, and continually turned to Clotilde with exclamations:

“Ah! what do you think of all that? Just think what scoundrels these students are, Clotilduchka! I never liked them.”

At last, stirred to her very depths by her lover, she hung on his neck and began to kiss him loudly.

“Leonichka, my darling! It’s terrible to listen to, even! And you aren’t frightened of anything!”

He complacently twisted his left moustache upwards, and let drop carelessly: “Why be afraid? You can only die once. That’s what I’m paid for.”

Clotilde was tormented all the while by jealous envy of her friend’s magnificent lover. She vaguely suspected that there was a great deal of lying in Leonka’s stories; while she now had something utterly extraordinary in her hands, such as no one had ever had before, something that would immediately take all the shine out of Leonka’s exploits. For some minutes she hesitated. A faint echo of the tender pity for Ribnikov still restrained her. But a hysterical yearning to shine took hold of her, and she said in a dull, quiet voice: “Do you know what I wanted to tell you, Leonya? I’ve got such a queer visitor today.”

“H’m. You think he’s a sharper?” he asked condescendingly. Genka was offended.

“A sharper, you say! That’s your story. Some drunken officer.”

“No, you mustn’t say that,” Leonka pompously interrupted. “It happens that sharpers get themselves up as officers. What was it you were going to say, Clotilde?”

Then she told the story of Ribnikov with every detail, displaying a petty and utterly feminine talent for observation: she told how they called him General Kuroki, his Japanese face, his strange tenderness and passion, his delirium, and finally now he said “Banzai!”

“You’re not lying?” Leonka said quickly. Keen points of fire lit in his eyes.

“I swear it’s true! May I be rooted to the ground if it’s a lie! You look through the keyhole, I’ll go in and open the shutter. He’s as like a Japanese as two peas.”

Leonka rose. Without haste, with a serious look, he put on his overcoat, carefully feeling his left inside pocket.

“Come on,” he said resolutely. “Who did he arrive with?”

Only Karyukov and Strahlmann remained of the all-night party. Karyukov could not be awakened, and Strahlmann muttered something indistinctly. He was still half drunk and his eyes were heavy and red.

“What officer? Blast him to hell! He came up to us when we were in the ‘Buff,’ but where he came from nobody knows.”

He began to dress immediately, snorting angrily. Leonka apologised and went out. He had already managed to get a glimpse of Ribnikov’s face through the keyhole, and though he had some doubts remaining, he was a good patriot, distinguished for impertinence and not devoid of imagination. He decided to act on his own responsibility. In a moment he was on the balcony whistling for help.

VII

Ribnikov woke suddenly as though an imperative voice within him had said “Wake up.” An hour and a half of sleep had completely refreshed him. First of all he stared suspiciously at the door: it seemed to him that someone was watching him from there with a fixed stare. Then he looked round. The shutter was half open so that every little thing in the room could be seen. The woman was sitting by the table opposite the bed, silent and pale, regarding him with big, bright eyes.

“What’s happened?” Ribnikov asked in alarm. “Tell me, what’s been happening here?”

She did not answer, but her chin began to tremble and her teeth chattered.

A suspicious, cruel light came into the officer’s eyes. He bent his whole body from the bed with his ear to the door. The noise of many feet, of men evidently unused to moving cautiously, approached along the corridor, and suddenly was quiet before the door.

Ribnikov with a quick, soft movement leapt from the bed and twice turned the key. There was an instant knock at the door. With a cry the woman turned her face to the table and buried her head in her hands.

In a few seconds the captain was dressed. Again they knocked at the door. He had only his cap with him; he had left his sword and overcoat below. He was pale but perfectly calm. Even his hands did not tremble while he dressed himself, and all his movements were quite unhurried and adroit. Doing up the last button of his tunic, he went over to the woman, and suddenly squeezed her arm above the wrist with such terrible strength that her face purpled with the blood that rushed to her head.

“You!” he said quietly, in an angry whisper, without moving his jaws. “If you move or make a sound, I’ll kill you.⁠ ⁠…”

Again they knocked at the door, and a dull voice came: “Open the door, if you please.”

The captain now no longer limped. Quickly and silently he ran to the window, jumped on to the window-ledge with the soft spring of a cat, opened the shutters and with one sweep flung wide the window frames. Below him the paved yard showed white with scanty grass between the stones, and the branches of a few thin trees pointed upwards. He did not hesitate for a second; but at the very moment that he sat sideways on the iron frame of the windowsill, resting on it with his left hand, with one foot already hanging down, and prepared to leap with his whole body, the woman threw herself upon him with a piercing cry and caught him by the left arm. Tearing himself away, he made a false movement and suddenly, with a faint cry as though of surprise, fell in an awkward heap straight down on the stones.

Almost at the very second the old door fell flat into the room. First Leonka ran in, out of breath, showing his teeth; his eyes were aflame. After him came huge policemen, stamping and holding their swords in their left hands. When he saw the open window and the woman holding on the frame and screaming without pause, Leonka quickly understood what had happened. He was really a brave man, and without a thought or a word, as though he had already planned it, he took a running leap through the window.

He landed two steps away from Ribnikov, who lay motionless on his side. In spite of the drumming in his head, and the intense pain in his belly and his heels from the fall, he kept his head, and instantly threw himself heavily with the full weight of his body on the captain.

“A-ah. I’ve got you now,” he uttered hoarsely, crushing his victim in mad exasperation.

The captain did not resist. His eyes burned with an implacable hatred. But he was pale as death, and a pink froth stood in bubbles on his lips.

“Don’t crush me,” he whispered. “My leg’s broken.”

I

Yarmola the gamekeeper, my servant, cook, and fellow-hunter, entered the room with a load of wood on his shoulder, threw it heavily on the floor, and blew on his frozen fingers.

“What a wind there is outside, sir,” he said, squatting on his heels in front of the oven door. “We must make a good fire in the stove. Will you give me a match, please?”

“It means we shan’t have a chance at the hares tomorrow, eh? What do you think, Yarmola?”

“No.⁠ ⁠… Out of the question.⁠ ⁠… Do you hear the snowstorm? The hares lie still⁠—no sound.⁠ ⁠… You won’t see a single track tomorrow.”

Fate had thrown me for a whole six months into a dull little village in Volhymnia, on the border of Polyessie, and hunting was my sole occupation and delight. I confess that at the time when the business in the village was offered me, I had no idea that I should feel so intolerably dull. I went even with joy. “Polyessie⁠ ⁠… a remote place⁠ ⁠… the bosom of Nature⁠ ⁠… simple ways⁠ ⁠… primitive natures,” I thought as I sat in the railway carriage, “completely unfamiliar people, with strange customs and a curious language⁠ ⁠… and there are sure to be thousands of romantic legends, traditions, and songs!” At that time⁠—since I have to confess, I may as well confess everything⁠—I had already published a story with two murders and one suicide in an unknown newspaper, and I knew theoretically that it was useful for writers to observe customs.

But⁠—either the peasants of Perebrod were distinguished by a particularly obstinate uncommunicativeness, or I myself did not know how to approach them⁠—my relations with them went no further than that when they saw me a mile off they took off their caps, and when they came alongside said sternly, “God with you,” which should mean “God help you.” And when I attempted to enter into conversation with them they looked at me in bewilderment, refused to understand the simplest questions, and tried all the while to kiss my hands⁠—a habit that has survived from their Polish serfdom.

I read all the books I had with me very soon. Out of boredom⁠—though at first it seemed to me very unpleasant⁠—I made an attempt to get to know the local “intellectuals,” a Catholic priest who lived fifteen versts away, the gentleman organist who lived with him, the local police-sergeant, and the bailiff of the neighbouring estate, a retired noncommissioned officer. But nothing came of it.

Then I tried to occupy myself with doctoring the inhabitants of Perebrod. I had at my disposal castor-oil, carbolic acid, boracic, and iodine. But here, besides the scantiness of my knowledge, I came up against the complete impossibility of making a diagnosis, because the symptoms of all patients were exactly the same: “I’ve got a pain inside,” and “I can’t take bite nor sup.”

For instance an old woman comes to me. With a disturbed look she wipes her nose with the forefinger of her right hand. I catch a glimpse of her brown skin as she takes a couple of eggs from her bosom, and puts them on the table. Then she begins to seize my hands in order to plant a kiss on them. I hide them and persuade the old woman: “Come, granny⁠ ⁠… don’t.⁠ ⁠… I’m not a priest.⁠ ⁠… I have no right.⁠ ⁠… What’s the matter with you?”

“I’ve got a pain in the inside, sir; just right inside, so that I can’t take nor bite nor sup.”

“Have you had it long?”

“How do I know?” she answers with a question. “It just burns, burns all the while. Not a bite, nor a sup.”

However much I try, I can get no more definite symptoms.

“Don’t you worry,” the non.-com. bailiff once said to me. “They’ll cure themselves. It’ll dry on them like a dog. I beg you to note I use only one medicine⁠—sal-volatile. A peasant comes to me. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I’m ill,’ says he. I just run off for the bottle of sal-volatile. ‘Sniff!’⁠ ⁠… he sniffs.⁠ ⁠… ‘Sniff again⁠ ⁠… go on!’ He sniffs again. ‘Feel better?’ ‘I do seem to feel better.’ ‘Well, then, be off, and God be with you.’ ”

Besides I did not at all like the kissing of my hands. (Some just fell at my feet and did all they could to kiss my boots.) For it wasn’t by any means the emotion of a grateful heart, but simply a loathsome habit, rooted in them by centuries of slavery and brutality. And I could only wonder at the non.-com. bailiff and the police-sergeant when I saw the imperturbable gravity with which they shoved their enormous red hands to the peasants’ lips.⁠ ⁠…

Only hunting was left. But with the end of January came such terrible weather that even hunting was impossible. Every day there was an awful wind, and during the night a hard icy crust formed on the snow, on which the hares could run without leaving a trace. As I sat shut up in the house listening to the howling wind, I felt terribly sad, and I eagerly seized such an innocent distraction as teaching Yarmola the gamekeeper to read and write.

It came about quite curiously. Once I was writing a letter, when suddenly I felt that someone was behind me. Turning round I saw Yarmola, who had approached noiselessly, as his habit was, in his soft bast shoes.

“What d’you want, Yarmola?” I asked.

“I was only looking how you write. I wish I could.⁠ ⁠… No, no⁠ ⁠… not like you,” he began hastily, seeing me smile. “I only wish I could write my name.”

“Why do you want to do that?” I was surprised. (It must be remembered that Yarmola is supposed to be the poorest and laziest peasant in the whole of Perebrod. His wages and earnings go in drink. There isn’t such another scarecrow even among the local oxen. I thought that he would have been the last person to find reading and writing necessary.) I asked him again, doubtfully:

“What do you want to know how to write your name for?”

“You see how it stands, sir.” Yarmola answered with extraordinary softness. “There isn’t a single man who can read and write in the village. When there’s a paper to be signed or some business to be done on the council or anything⁠ ⁠… nobody can.⁠ ⁠… The mayor only puts the seal; but he doesn’t know what’s in the paper. It would be a good thing for everybody if one of us could write his name.”

Yarmola’s solicitude⁠—Yarmola, a known poacher, an idle vagabond, whose opinion the village council would never dream of considering⁠—this solicitude of his for the public interest of his native village somehow moved me. I offered to give him lessons myself. What a job it was⁠—my attempt to teach him to read and write! Yarmola, who knew to perfection every path in the forest, almost every tree; who could find his whereabouts day and night, no matter where he was; who could distinguish all the wolves, hares, and foxes of the neighbourhood by their spoor⁠—this same Yarmola could not for the life of him see why, for instance, the letters m and a together make ma. In front of that problem he usually thought painfully for ten minutes and more, and his lean swarthy face with its sunken black eyes, which had been completely absorbed into a stiff black beard and a generous moustache, betrayed an extremity of mental strain.

“Come, Yarmola, say ma. Just say ma simply,” I urged him. “Don’t look at the paper. Look at me, so. Now say ma.”

Yarmola would then heave a deep sigh, put the hornbook on the table, and announce with sad determination:

“No, I can’t.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why can’t you? It’s so easy. Just say ma simply, just as I say it.”

“No, sir, I cannot⁠ ⁠… I’ve forgotten.”

All my methods, my devices and comparisons were being shattered by this monstrous lack of understanding. But Yarmola’s longing for knowledge did not weaken at all.

“If I could only write my name!” Yarmola begged me bashfully. “I don’t want anything else. Only my name: Yarmola Popruzhuk⁠—that’s all.”

When I finally abandoned the idea of teaching him to read and write properly, I began to show him how to sign his name mechanically. To my amazement this method seemed to be the easiest for Yarmola, and at the end of two months he had very nearly mastered his name. As for his Christian name we had decided to make the task easier by leaving it out altogether.

Every evening, after he had finished filling the stoves, Yarmola waited on patiently until I called him.

“Well, Yarmola, let’s have a go at it,” I would say. He would sidle up to the table, lean on it with his elbows, thrust his pen through his black, shrivelled, stiff fingers, and ask me, raising his eyebrows:

“Shall I write?”

“Yes, write.”

Yarmola drew the first letter quite confidently⁠—P.2 (This letter was called “a couple of posts and a crossbeam on top.”) Then he looked at me questioningly.

“Why don’t you go on writing? Have you forgotten?”

“I’ve forgotten.” Yarmola shook his head angrily.

“Heavens, what a fellow you are! Well, make a wheel.”

“Ah, a wheel, a wheel!⁠ ⁠… I know.⁠ ⁠…” Yarmola cheered up, and diligently drew an elongated figure on the paper, in outline very like the Caspian Sea. After this labour he admired the result in silence for some time, bending his head now to the left, then to the right, and screwing up his eyes.

“Why have you stopped there? Go on.”

“Wait a little, sir⁠ ⁠… presently.”

He thought for a couple of minutes and then asked timidly:

“Same as the first?”

“Right. Just the same.”

So little by little we came to the last letter k, which we knew as “a stick with a crooked twig tilted sideways in the middle of it.”

“What do you think, sir?” Yarmola would say sometimes after finishing his work and looking at it with great pride; “if I go on learning like this for another five or six months I shall be quite a learned chap. What’s your idea?”

II

Yarmola was squatting on his heels in front of the stove door, poking the coals in the stove, while I walked from corner to corner of the room. Of all the twelve rooms of the huge country house I occupied only one⁠—the lounge that used to be. The other rooms were locked up, and there, grave and motionless, mouldered the old brocaded furniture, the rare bronzes, and the eighteenth-century portraits.

The wind was raging round the walls of the house like an old naked, frozen devil. Towards evening the snowstorm became more violent. Someone outside was furiously throwing handfuls of fine dry snow at the windowpanes. The forest near by moaned and roared with a dull, hidden, incessant menace.⁠ ⁠…

The wind stole into the empty rooms and the howling chimneys. The old house, weak throughout, full of holes and half decayed, suddenly became alive with strange sounds to which I listened with involuntary anxiety. Into the white drawing-room there broke a deep-drawn sigh, in a sad worn-out voice. In the distance somewhere the dry and rotten floorboards began to creak under someone’s heavy, silent tread. I think that someone in the corridor beside my room is pressing with cautious persistence on the door-handle, and then, suddenly grown furious, rushes all over the house madly shaking all the shutters and doors. Or he gets into the chimney and whines so mournfully, wearily, incessantly⁠—now raising his voice higher and higher, thinner and thinner, all the while, till it becomes a wailing shriek, then lowering it again to a wild beast’s growling. Sometimes this terrible guest would rush into my room too, run with a sudden coldness over my back and flicker the lamp flame, which gave a dim light from under a green paper shade, scorched at the top.

There came upon me a strange, vague uneasiness. I thought: Here am I sitting, this bad, stormy night, in a rickety house, in a village lost in woods and snowdrifts, hundreds of miles from town life, from society, from woman’s laughter and human conversation.⁠ ⁠… And I began to feel that this stormy evening would drag on for years and tens of years. The wind will whine outside the windows, as it is whining now; the lamp will burn dimly under the paltry green shade, as it burns now; I will walk just as breathlessly up and down my room, and the silent, intent Yarmola will sit so by the stove, a strange creature, alien to me, indifferent to everything in the world, indifferent that his family has nothing to eat, to the raging wind, and my own vague consuming anxiety.

Suddenly I felt an intolerable desire to break this anxious silence with some semblance of a human voice, and I asked:

“Why is there such a wind today? What do you think, Yarmola?”

“The wind?” Yarmola muttered, lazily lifting his head. “Don’t you really know?”

“Of course I don’t. How could I?”

“Truly, you don’t know?” Yarmola livened suddenly. “I’ll tell you,” he continued with a mysterious note in his voice. “I’ll tell you this. Either a witch is being born, or a wizard is having a wedding-party.”

“A witch?⁠ ⁠… Does that mean a sorceress in your place?”

“Exactly⁠ ⁠… a sorceress.”

I caught up Yarmola eagerly. “Who knows,” I thought, “perhaps I’ll manage to get an interesting story out of him presently, all about magic, and buried treasure, and devils.”

“Have you got witches here, in Polyessie?” I asked.

“I don’t know⁠ ⁠… may be,” Yarmola answered with his usual indifference, bending down to the stove again. “Old folks say there were once.⁠ ⁠… May be it’s not true.⁠ ⁠…”

I was disappointed. Yarmola’s characteristic trait was a stubborn silence, and I had already given up hope of getting anything more out of him on this interesting subject. But to my surprise he suddenly began to talk with a lazy indifference as though he was addressing the roaring stove instead of me.

“There was a witch here, five years back.⁠ ⁠… But the boys drove her out of the village.”

“Where did they drive her to?”

“Where to? Into the forest, of course⁠ ⁠… where else? And they pulled her cottage down as well, so that there shouldn’t be a splinter of the cursed den left.⁠ ⁠… And they took her to the cross roads.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why did they treat her like that?”

“She did a great deal of harm. She quarrelled with everybody, poured poison beneath the cottages, tied knots in the corn.⁠ ⁠… Once she asked a village woman for fifteen kopeks. ‘I haven’t got a sixpence,’ says she. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘I’ll teach you not to give me a sixpence.’ And what do you think, sir? That very day the woman’s child began to be ill. It grew worse and worse and then died. Then it was that the boys drove her out⁠—curse her for a witch.”

“Well⁠ ⁠… where’s the witch now?” I was still curious.

“The witch?” Yarmola slowly repeated the question, as his habit was. “How should I know?”

“Didn’t she leave any relatives in the village?”

“No, not one. She didn’t come from our village; she came from the Big Russians, or the gipsies. I was still a tiny boy when she came to our village. She had a little girl with her, a daughter or grandchild.⁠ ⁠… They were both driven out.”

“Doesn’t anyone go to her now⁠—to get their fortunes told or to get medicine?”

“The womenfolk do,” Yarmola said scornfully.

“Ah, so it’s known where she lives?”

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… Folks say she lives somewhere near the Devil’s Corner.⁠ ⁠… You know the place⁠—the marsh behind the Trine road. She lives in that same marsh. May her mother burn in hell!”

“A witch living ten versts from my house⁠ ⁠… a real live Polyessie witch!” The idea instantly intrigued and excited me.

“Look here, Yarmola,” I said to the forester. “How could I get to know the witch?”

“Foo!” Yarmola spat in indignation. “That’s a nice thing!”

“Nice or nasty, I’m going to her all the same. As soon as it gets a little warmer, I’ll go off at once. You’ll come with me, of course?”

Yarmola was so struck by my last words that he jumped right off the floor.

“Me?” he cried indignantly. “Not for a million! Come what may, I’m not going with you.”

“Nonsense; of course, you’ll come.”

“No, sir, I will not⁠ ⁠… not for anything.⁠ ⁠… Me?” he cried again, seized with a new exasperation, “go to a witch’s den? God forbid! And I advise you not to either, sir.”

“As you please.⁠ ⁠… I’ll go all the same.⁠ ⁠… I’m very curious to see her.”

“There’s nothing curious there,” grunted Yarmola, angrily slamming the door of the stove.

An hour later, when he had taken the samovar off the table and drunk his tea in the dark passage and was preparing to go home, I asked him:

“What’s the witch’s name?”

“Manuilikha,” replied Yarmola with sullen rudeness.

Though he had never expressed his feelings, he seemed to have grown greatly attached to me. His affection came from our mutual passion for hunting, from my simple behaviour, the help I occasionally gave his perpetually hungry family, and above all, because I was the only person in the world who did not scold him for his drunkenness⁠—a thing intolerable to Yarmola. That was why my determination to make the acquaintance of the witch put him into such an ugly temper, which he relieved only by sniffing more vigorously, and finally by going off to the back-staircase and kicking his dog Riabchik with all his might. Riabchik jumped aside and began to howl desperately, but immediately ran after Yarmola, still whining.

III

About three days after the weather grew warmer. Very early one morning Yarmola came into my room and said carelessly:

“We shall have to clean the guns, sir.”

“Why?” I asked, stretching myself under the blankets.

“The hares have been busy in the night. There are any amount of tracks. Shall we go after them?”

I saw that Yarmola was waiting impatiently to go to the forest, but he hid his hunter’s passion beneath an assumed indifference. In fact, his single-barrelled gun was in the passage already. From that gun not a single woodcock had ever escaped, for all that it was adorned with a few tin patches, and spliced over the places where rust and powder gas had corroded the iron.

No sooner had we entered the forest than we came on a hare’s track. The hare broke out into the road, ran about fifty yards along it, and then made a huge leap into the fir plantation.

“Now, we’ll get him in a moment,” Yarmola said. “Since he’s shown himself, he’ll die here. You go, sir.⁠ ⁠…” He pondered, considering by certain signs known only to himself where he should post me. “You go to the old inn. And I’ll get round him from Zanilin. As soon as the dog starts him I’ll give you a shout.”

He disappeared instantly, as it were, plunging into a thick jungle of brushwood. I listened. Not a sound betrayed his poacher movements; not a twig snapped under his feet, in their bast shoes. Without hurrying myself I came to the inn, a ruined and deserted hut, and I stopped on the edge of a young pine forest beneath a tall fir with a straight bare trunk. It was quiet as it can be quiet only in a forest on a windless winter day. The branches were bent with the splendid lumps of snow which clung to them, and made them look wonderful, festive, and cold. Now and then a thin little twig broke off from the top, and with extreme clearness one could hear it as it fell with a tiny cracking noise, touching other twigs in its fall. The snow glinted rose in the sun and blue in the shadow. I fell under the quiet spell of the grave cold silence, and I seemed to feel time passing by me, slowly and noiselessly.

Suddenly far away in the thicket came the sound of Riabchik’s bark⁠—the peculiar bark of a dog following a scent, a thin, nervous, trilling bark that passes almost into a squeak. I heard Yarmola’s voice immediately, calling angrily after the dog: “Get him! Get him!” the first word in a long-drawn falsetto, the second in a short bass note.

Judging from the direction of the bark, I thought the dog must be running on my left, and I ran quickly across the meadow to get level with the hare. I hadn’t made twenty steps when a huge grey hare jumped out from behind a stump, laid back his long ears and ran leisurely across the road with high delicate leaps, and hid himself in a plantation. After him came Riabchik at full tilt. When he saw me he wagged his tail faintly, snapped at the snow several times with his teeth, and chased the hare again.

Suddenly Yarmola plunged out from the thicket as noiselessly as the dog.

“Why didn’t you get across him, sir?” he exclaimed, clicking his tongue reproachfully.

“But it was a long way⁠ ⁠… more than a couple of hundred yards.” Seeing my confusion, Yarmola softened.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.⁠ ⁠… He won’t get away from us. Go towards the Irenov road. He’ll come out there presently.”

I went towards the Irenov road, and in a couple of minutes I heard the dog on a scent again somewhere near me. I was seized with the excitement of the hunt and began to run, keeping my gun down, through a thick shrubbery, breaking the branches and giving no heed to the smart blows they dealt me. I ran for a very long time, and was already beginning to lose my wind, when the dog suddenly stopped barking. I slowed my pace. I had the idea that if I went straight on I should be sure to meet Yarmola on the Irenov road. But I soon realised that I had lost my way as I ran, turning the bushes and the stumps without a thought of where I was going. Then I began to shout to Yarmola. He made no answer.

Meanwhile I was going further. Little by little the forest grew thinner. The ground fell away and became full of little hillocks. The prints of my feet on the snow darkened and filled with water. Several times I sank in it to my knees. I had to jump from hillock to hillock; my feet sank in the thick brown moss which covered them as it were with a soft carpet.

Soon the shrubbery came to an end. In front of me there was a large round swamp, thinly covered with snow; out of the white shroud a few little mounds emerged. Among the trees on the other side of the swamp, the white walls of a hut could be seen. “It’s the Irenov gamekeeper lives there, probably,” I thought. “I must go in and ask the way.”

But it was not so easy to reach the hut. Every minute I sank in the bog. My high boots filled with water and made a loud sucking noise at every step, so that I could hardly drag them along.

Finally I managed to get through the marsh, climbed on top of a hillock from whence I could examine the hut thoroughly. It was not even a hut, but one of the chicken-legged erections of the fairy tales. The floor was not built on to the ground, but was raised on piles, probably because of the flood-water which covers all the Irenov forest in the spring. But one of the sides had subsided with age, and this gave the hut a lame and dismal appearance. Some of the window panes were missing; their place was filled by some dirty rags that bellied outwards.

I pressed the latch and opened the door. The room was very dark and violet circles swam before my eyes, which had so long been looking at the snow. For a long time I could not see whether there was anyone in the hut.

“Ah! good people, is anyone at home?” I asked aloud.

Something moved near the stove. I went closer and saw an old woman, sitting on the floor. A big heap of hen feathers lay before her. The old woman was taking each feather separately, tearing off the down into a basket. The quills she threw on to the floor.

“But it’s Manuilikha, the Irenov witch.” The thought flashed into my mind, as soon as I examined her a little more attentively. She had all the features of a witch, according to the folktales; her lean hollow cheeks descended to a long, sharp, hanging chin, which almost touched her hook nose. Her sunken, toothless mouth moved incessantly as though she were chewing something. Her faded eyes, once blue, cold, round, protruding, looked exactly like the eyes of a strange, ill-boding bird.

“How d’you do, granny?” I said as affably as I could. “Your name’s Manuilikha, isn’t it?”

Something began to bubble and rattle in the old woman’s chest by way of reply. Strange sounds came out of her toothless, mumbling mouth, now like the raucous cawing of an ancient crow, then changing abruptly into a hoarse, broken falsetto.

“Once, perhaps, good people called me Manuilikha.⁠ ⁠… But now they call me What’s-her-name, and duck’s the name they gave me. What do you want?” she asked in a hostile tone, without interrupting her monotonous occupation.

“You see, I’ve lost my way, granny. Do you happen to have any milk?”

“There’s no milk,” the old woman cut me short, angrily. “There’s a pack of people come straggling about the forest here.⁠ ⁠… You can’t keep them all in food and drink.⁠ ⁠…”

“You’re unkind to your guests, granny.”

“Quite true, my dear sir. I’m quite unkind. We don’t keep a store cupboard for you. If you’re tired, sit down a while. Nobody will turn you out. You know what the proverb says: ‘You can come and sit by our gate, and listen to the noise of a feasting; but we are clever enough to come to you for a dinner.’ That’s how it is.”

These turns of speech immediately convinced me that the old woman really was a stranger in those parts. The people there have no love for the expressive speech, adorned with curious words, which a Russian of the north so readily displays. Meanwhile the old woman continued her work mechanically, mumbling under her nose, quicker and more indistinctly all the while. I could catch only separate disconnected words. “There now, Granny Manuilikha.⁠ ⁠… And who he is nobody knows.⁠ ⁠… My years are not a few.⁠ ⁠… He fidgets his feet, chatters and gossips⁠—just like a magpie.⁠ ⁠…”

I listened for some time, and the sudden thought that I was with a mad woman aroused in me a feeling of revolting fear.

However, I had time to catch a glimpse of everything round me. A huge blistered stove occupied the greater part of the hut. There was no icon in the place of honour. On the walls, instead of the customary huntsmen with green moustaches and violet-coloured dogs, and unknown generals, hung bunches of dried herbs, bundles of withered stalks and kitchen utensils. I saw neither owl nor black cat; instead, two speckled fat starlings glanced at me from the stove with a surprised, suspicious air.

“Can’t I even have something to drink, granny?” I asked, raising my voice.

“It’s there, in the tub,” the old woman nodded.

The water tasted brackish, of the marsh. Thanking the old woman, though she paid me not the least attention, I asked her how I could get back to the road.

She suddenly lifted up her head, stared at me with her cold birdlike eyes, and murmured hurriedly:

“Go, go⁠ ⁠… young man, go away. You have nothing to do here. There’s a time for guests and a time for none.⁠ ⁠… Go, my dear sir, go.”

So nothing was left to me but to go. But there flashed into my mind a last resource to soften the sternness of the old woman, if only a little. I took out of my pocket a new silver sixpence and held it out to Manuilikha. I was not mistaken; at the sight of the money the old woman began to stir, her eyes widened, and she stretched out her crooked, knotted, trembling fingers for the coin.

“Oh no, Granny Manuilikha, I shan’t give it to you for nothing,” I teased, hiding the coin. “Tell me my fortune.”

The brown wrinkled face of the witch changed to a discontented grimace. She hesitated and looked irresolutely at my hand that closed over the coin. Her greed prevailed.

“Very well then, come on,” she mumbled, getting up from the floor with difficulty. “I don’t tell anybody’s fortune nowadays, my dear.⁠ ⁠… I have forgotten.⁠ ⁠… I am old, my eyes don’t see. But I’ll do it for you.”

Holding on to the wall, her bent body shaking at every step, she got to the table, took a pack of dirty cards, thick with age, and pushed them over to me.

“Take the cards, cut with your left hand.⁠ ⁠… Nearest the heart.”

Spitting on her fingers she began to spread the surround. As they fell on the table the cards made a noise like lumps of dough and arranged themselves in a correct eight-pointed star.⁠ ⁠… When the last card fell on its back and covered the king, Manuilikha stretched out her hand to me.

“Cross it with gold, my dear, and you will be happy, you will be rich,” she began to whine in a gipsy beggar’s voice.

I pushed the coin I had ready into her hand. Quick as a monkey, the old woman stowed it away in her jaw.

“Something very important is coming to you from afar off,” she began in the usual voluble way. “A meeting with the queen of diamonds, and some pleasant conversation in an important house. Very soon you will receive unexpected news from the king of clubs. Certain troubles are coming, and then a small legacy. You will be with a number of people; you will get drunk.⁠ ⁠… Not very drunk, but I can see a spree is there. Your life will be a long one. If you don’t die when you are sixty-seven, then.⁠ ⁠…”

Suddenly she stopped, and lifted up her head as though listening. I listened too. A woman’s voice sounded fresh, clear, and strong, approaching the hut singing. And I recognised the words of the charming Little Russian song:

“Ah, is it the blossom or not the bloom
That bends the little white hazel-tree?
Ah, is it a dream or not a dream
That bows my little head.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, now, be off, my dear.” The old woman began to bustle about anxiously, pushing me away from the table. “You must not be knocking about in other people’s huts. Go your way.⁠ ⁠…”

She even seized me by the sleeve of my jacket and pulled me to the door. Her face showed an animal anxiety.

The singing came to an end abruptly, quite close to the hut. The iron latch rattled loudly, and in the open door a tall laughing girl appeared. With both hands she carefully held up her striped apron, out of which there peeped three tiny birds’ heads with red necks and black shiny eyes.

“Look, granny, the finches hopped after me again,” she cried, laughing. “Look, how funny they are. And, just as if on purpose, I had no bread with me.”

But seeing me she became silent and blushed crimson. Her thick black eyebrows frowned, and her eyes turned questioningly to the old woman.

“The gentleman came in here to ask the way,” the old woman explained. “Now, dear sir,” she turned to me, with a resolute look, “you have rested long enough. You have drunk some water, had a chat, and it’s time to go. We are not the folk for you.⁠ ⁠…”

“Look here, my dear,” I said to the girl. “Please show me the way to the Irenov road; otherwise I’ll stick in this marsh forever.”

It must have been that the kindly pleading tone in which I spoke impressed her. Carefully she put her little finches on the stove, side by side with the starlings, flung the overcoat which she had already taken off on to the bench, and silently left the hut.

I followed her.

“Are all your birds tame?” I asked, overtaking the girl.

“All tame,” she answered abruptly, not even glancing at me. “Now look,” she said, stopping by the wattle hedge. “Do you see the little footpath there, between the fir-trees? Can you see it?”

“Yes, I see.”

“Go straight along it. When you come to the oak stump, turn to your left. You must go straight on through the forest. Then you will come out on the Irenov road.”

All the while she directed me, pointing with her right hand, involuntarily I admired her. There was nothing in her like the local girls, whose faces have such a scared, monotonous look under the ugly headbands which cover their forehead, mouth, and chin. My unknown was a tall brunette from twenty to twenty-five years old, free and graceful. Her white shirt covered her strong young bosom loosely and charmingly. Once seen, the peculiar beauty of her face could not be forgotten; it was even difficult to get accustomed to it, to describe it. The charm lay in her large, shining, dark eyes, to which the thin arched eyebrows gave an indescribable air, shy, queenly, and innocent, and in the dusky pink of her skin, in the self-willed curl of her lips. Her underlip was fuller, and it was pushed forward a little, giving her a determined and capricious look.

“Are you really not afraid to live by yourselves in such a lonely spot?” I asked, stopping by the hedge.

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

“Why should we be afraid? The wolves do not come near us.”

“Wolves are not everything. Your hut might be smothered under the snow. The hut might catch on fire. Anything might happen. You two are there alone, no one could come to your assistance.”

“Thank God for that!” she waved her hand scornfully. “If granny and I were left alone entirely, it would be much better, but⁠—”

“What?”

“You will get old, if you want to know so much,” she cut me short. “And who are you?” she asked anxiously.

I realised that probably the old woman and the girl were afraid of persecution from the authorities, and I hastened to reassure her.

“Oh, don’t be alarmed. I’m not the village policeman, or the clerk, or the exciseman.⁠ ⁠… I’m not an official at all.”

“Is that really true?”

“On my word of honour. Believe me, I am the most private person. I’ve simply come to stay here a few months, and then I’m going away. If you like, I won’t tell a soul that I’ve been here and seen you. Do you believe me?”

The girl’s face brightened a little.

“Well, then, if you’re not lying, you’re telling the truth. But tell me: had you heard about us, or did you come across us by accident?”

“I don’t quite know how to explain it myself.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I had heard, and I even wanted to call on you some time. But it was an accident that I came today, I lost my way. Now tell me: why are you afraid of people? What harm do they do you?”

She glanced at me with suspicion. But my conscience was clear, and I endured her scrutiny without a tremor. Then she began to speak, with increasing agitation.

“They do bad things.⁠ ⁠… Ordinary people don’t matter, but the officials.⁠ ⁠… The village policeman comes⁠—he must be bribed. The inspector⁠—pay again. And before he takes the bribe he insults my grandmother; says she’s a witch, a hag, a convict.⁠ ⁠… But what’s the good of talking?⁠ ⁠…”

“But don’t they touch you?” The imprudent question escaped my lips.

She drew up her head with proud self-confidence, and angry triumph flashed in her half-closed eyes.

“They don’t touch me.⁠ ⁠… Once a surveyor came near to me.⁠ ⁠… He wanted a kiss.⁠ ⁠… I don’t think he will have forgotten yet how I kissed him.”

So much harsh independence sounded in these proud, derisive words, that I involuntarily thought:

“You haven’t been bred in the Polyessie forest for nothing. You’re really a dangerous person to joke with.⁠ ⁠…”

“Do we touch anybody?” she continued as her confidence in me grew. “We do not want people. Once a year I go to the little town to buy soap and salt⁠ ⁠… and some tea for granny. She loves tea. Otherwise, I could do without them forever.”

“Well, I see you and your granny are not fond of people.⁠ ⁠… But may I come to see you sometimes for a little while?”

She laughed. How strange and unexpected was the change in her pretty face! There was no trace of her former sternness in it. It had in an instant become bright, shy, and childish.

“Whatever will you do with us? Granny and I are dull.⁠ ⁠… Why, come, if you like, and if you are really a good man. But⁠ ⁠… if you do happen to come, it would be better if you came without a gun.⁠ ⁠…”

“You’re afraid?”

“Why should I be afraid? I’m afraid of nothing.” Again I could catch in her voice her confidence in her strength. “But I don’t like it. Why do you kill birds, or hares even? They do nobody any harm, and they want to live as much as you or I. I love them; they are so tiny, and such little stupids.⁠ ⁠… Well, goodbye.” She began to hurry. “I don’t know your name.⁠ ⁠… I’m afraid granny will be cross with me.”

With easy swiftness she ran to the hut. She bent her head, and with her hands caught up her hair, blown loose in the wind.

“Wait, wait a moment,” I called. “What is your name? Let us be properly introduced.”

“My name’s Alyona.⁠ ⁠… Hereabouts they call me Olyessia.”

I shouldered my gun and went the way I had been shown. I climbed a small mound from whence a narrow, hardly visible, forest path began, and looked back. Olyessia’s red skirt, fluttering in the wind, could still be seen on the steps of the hut, a spot of bright colour on the smooth and blinding background of the snow.

An hour later Yarmola returned. As usual he avoided idle conversation, and asked me not a word of how and where I lost my way. He just said, casually:

“There.⁠ ⁠… I’ve left a hare in the kitchen.⁠ ⁠… Shall we roast it, or do you want to send it to anyone?”

“But you don’t know where I’ve been today, Yarmola?” I said, anticipating his surprise.

“How do you mean, I don’t know?” he muttered gruffly. “You went to the witch’s for sure.⁠ ⁠…”

“How did you find that out?”

“How could I help it? I heard no answer from you, so I went back on your tracks.⁠ ⁠… Sir!” he added in reproachful vexation, “you shouldn’t do such things.⁠ ⁠… It’s a sin!⁠ ⁠…”

IV

That year spring came early. It was violent and, as always in Polyessie, unexpected. Brown, shining, turbulent streams began to run down the village streets, foaming angrily round the stones, whirling splinters and feathers along with it. In the huge pools of water was reflected the azure sky, with the round, spinning white clouds that swam in it. Heavy drops pattered noisily from the eaves. Flights of sparrows covered the roadside willows, and chattered with such noisy excitement that nothing could be heard above the clamour. Everywhere was felt the joyous, quick alarm of life.

The snow disappeared. Dirty yellow patches remained here and there in the hollows and the shady thickets. From beneath it peeped the warm wet soil, full of new sap after its winter sleep, full of thirst for a new maternity. Over the black fields swung a light vapour, filling the air with the scent of the thawed earth, with the fresh, penetrating, mighty smell of the spring, which one can distinguish even in the town from a hundred other smells. Together with this scent I felt that the sweet and tender sadness of spring poured into my soul, exuberant with restless expectations and vague presentiments, that romantic sadness which makes all women beautiful in one’s eyes, and is always tinged with indefinite regrets for the springs of the past. The nights grew warmer. In their thick moist darkness pulsed the unseen and urgent creation of Nature.

In those spring days the image of Olyessia never left me. Alone, I loved to lie down and close my eyes that I might better concentrate upon her. Continually in my imagination I summoned her up, now stern, now cunning, now with a tender smile resplendent in her face, her young body nurtured on the richness of the old forest to be as harmonious and mighty as a young fir-tree, her fresh voice with its sudden low velvety notes.⁠ ⁠… “In all her movements, and her words,” I thought, “there is a nobility, some native grace of modulation.” I was drawn to Olyessia also by the halo of mystery which surrounded her, her superstitious reputation as a witch, her life in the forest thicket amid the marsh, and above all her proud confidence in her own powers, that had shown through the few words she said to me.

Surely there is nothing strange in it that, so soon as the forest paths were dry, I set out for the hut with the chicken legs. In case it should be necessary to placate the querulous old woman I bore with me a half-pound of tea and a few handfuls of sugar.

I found them both at home. The old woman was moving about by the bright burning stove, and Olyessia was sitting on a very tall bench spinning flax. I banged the door as I entered, and she turned round. The thread snapped and the spindle rolled on to the floor.

For some time the old woman stared at me with angry intentness, frowning, and screening her face from the heat of the stove with her hand.

“How do you do, granny?” I said in a loud, hearty voice. “It must be you don’t recognise me. You remember I came in here last month to ask my way? You told me my fortune too.”

“I don’t remember anything, sir,” the old woman began to mumble, shaking her head with annoyance. “I remember nothing. I can’t make out at all what you’ve forgotten here. We are no company for you. We’re simple, plain folk.⁠ ⁠… There’s nothing for you here. The forest is wide, there’s room enough to wander.⁠ ⁠…”

Taken aback by the hostile reception, and utterly nonplussed, I found myself in the foolish situation of not knowing what to do: whether to turn the rudeness to a joke, or to take offence, or finally to turn and go back without a word. Involuntarily I turned to Olyessia with a look of helplessness. She gave me the faintest trace of a smile of derision, that was not wholly malicious, rose from the spinning-wheel and went to the old woman.

“Don’t be afraid, granny,” she said reassuringly. “He’s not a bad man. He won’t do us any harm. Please sit down,” she added, pointing me to a bench in the corner of honour, and paying no more attention to the old woman’s grumbling.

Encouraged by her attention, I suddenly decided to adopt the most decisive measures.

“But you do get angry, granny.⁠ ⁠… No sooner does a guest appear in your doorway than you begin to abuse him. And I had brought you a present,” I said, taking the parcels out of my bag.

The old woman threw a swift glance at the parcels; but instantly turned her back upon me.

Immediately, I handed her the tea and sugar. This soothed the old woman somewhat, for though she continued to grumble, it was no longer in the old implacable tone. Olyessia sat down to her yarn again, and I placed myself near to her, on a small, low, rickety stool. With her left hand Olyessia was swiftly twisting a white thread of flax, silky soft, and in her right the spindle whirled with an easy humming. Now she would let it fall almost to the floor; then she would catch it neatly, and with a quick movement of her fingers send it spinning round again. In her hands this work (which at the first glance appears so simple, but in truth demands the habit and dexterity of centuries), went like lightning. I could not help turning my eyes to those hands. They were coarsened and blackened by the work, but they were small and of shape so beautiful that many a princess would have envied them.

“You never told me that granny had told your fortune,” said Olyessia, and, seeing that I gave a cautious glance behind me, she added: “It’s quite all right, she’s rather deaf. She won’t hear. It’s only my voice she understands well.”

“Yes, she did. Why?”

“I just asked⁠ ⁠… nothing more.⁠ ⁠… And do you believe in it?” She gave a quick, stealthy glance.

“Believe what? The fortune your granny told me, or generally?”

“I mean generally.”

“I don’t quite know. It would be truer to say, I don’t believe in it, but still who knows? They say there are cases.⁠ ⁠… They write about it in clever books even. But I don’t believe what your granny told me at all. Any village woman could tell me as much.”

Olyessia smiled.

“Yes, nowadays she tells fortunes badly, it’s true. She’s old, and besides she’s very much afraid. But what did the cards say?”

“Nothing interesting. I can’t even remember it now. The usual kind of thing: a distant journey, something with clubs.⁠ ⁠… I’ve quite forgotten.”

“Yes, she’s a bad fortune-teller now. She’s grown so old that she has forgotten a great many words.⁠ ⁠… How could she? And she’s scared as well. It’s only the sight of money makes her consent to tell.”

“What’s she scared of?”

“The authorities, of course.⁠ ⁠… The village policeman comes, and threatens her every time. ‘I can have you put away at any minute,’ he says. ‘You know what people like you get for witchcraft? Penal servitude for life on Hawk Island.’ Tell me what you think. Is it true?”

“It’s not altogether a lie. There is some punishment for doing it, but not so bad as all that.⁠ ⁠… And you, Olyessia, can you tell fortunes?”

It was as though she were perplexed, but only for a second.

“I can.⁠ ⁠… But not for money,” she added hastily.

“You might put out the cards for me?”

“No,” she answered with quiet resolution, shaking her head.

“Why won’t you? Very well, some other time.⁠ ⁠… Somehow I believe you will tell me the truth.”

“No. I will not. I won’t do it for anything.”

“Oh, that’s not right, Olyessia. For first acquaintance’ sake you can’t refuse.⁠ ⁠… Why don’t you want to?”

“Because I’ve put out the cards for you already. It’s wrong to do it twice.”

“Wrong? But why? I don’t understand it.”

“No, no, it’s wrong, wrong,” she began to whisper with superstitious dread. “It’s forbidden to ask twice of Fate. It’s not right. Fate will discover, overhear.⁠ ⁠… She does not like to be asked. That’s why all fortune-tellers are unhappy.”

I wanted to make a jesting reply to Olyessia; but I could not. There was too much sincere conviction in her words; and when she turned her head to the door in a strange fear as she uttered the word Fate, in spite of myself I turned with her.

“Well, if you won’t want to tell me my fortune now, tell me what the cards have told you already,” I begged.

Olyessia suddenly gave a turn to the spinning-wheel, and with her hand touched mine.

“No!⁠ ⁠… better not,” she said. A childlike, imploring look came into her eyes. “Please, don’t ask me.⁠ ⁠… There was nothing good in it.⁠ ⁠… Better not ask.”

But I insisted. I could not understand whether her refusal and her dark allusions to Fate were the deliberate trick of a fortune-teller, or whether she herself really believed what she said. But I became rather uneasy; what was almost a dread took hold of me.

“Well, I’ll tell you, perhaps,” Olyessia finally consented. “But listen; a bargain’s better than money; don’t be angry if you don’t like what I say. The cards said that though you are a good man, you are only a weak one.⁠ ⁠… Your goodness is not sound, nor quite sincere. You are not master of your word. You love to have the whip-hand of people, and yet, though you yourself do not want to, you submit to them. You are fond of wine and⁠—Well, if I’ve got to say, I’ll say everything right to the last.⁠ ⁠… You are very fond of women, and because of that you will have much evil in your life.⁠ ⁠… You do not value money and you cannot save. You will never be rich.⁠ ⁠… Shall I go on?”

“Go on, go on, say everything you know!”

“The cards said too that your life will not be a happy one. You will never love with your heart, because your heart is cold and dull, and you will cause great sorrow to those who love you. You will never marry; you will die a bachelor. There will be no great joys in your life, but much weariness and depression.⁠ ⁠… There will come a time when you will want to put an end to your life.⁠ ⁠… That will come to you, but you will not dare, you will go on enduring. You will suffer great poverty, but towards the end your fate will be changed through the death of someone near you, quite unexpected. But all this will be in years to come; but this year⁠ ⁠… I don’t know exactly when⁠ ⁠… the cards say very soon⁠ ⁠… maybe this very month⁠—”

“What will happen this year?” I asked when she stopped again.

“I’m afraid to tell you any more.⁠ ⁠… A great love will come to you through the queen of clubs. Only I can’t see whether she is married or a girl, but I know that she has dark hair.⁠ ⁠…”

Involuntarily I gave a swift glance to Olyessia’s head.

“Why are you looking at me?” she blushed suddenly, feeling my glance, with the sensitiveness peculiar to some women. “Well, yes, something like mine,” she continued, mechanically arranging her hair, and blushing still more.

“So you say, a great love from clubs?” I laughed.

“Don’t laugh. It’s no use laughing,” Olyessia said seriously, almost sternly. “I’m only telling you the truth.”

“Well, I won’t laugh any more, I promise. What is there more?”

“More.⁠ ⁠… Oh! Evil will come upon the queen of clubs, worse than death. She will suffer a great disgrace through you, one that she will never be able to forget; she will have an everlasting sorrow.⁠ ⁠… In her planet no harm comes to you.”

“Tell me, Olyessia. Couldn’t the cards deceive you? Why should I do so many unpleasant things to the queen of clubs? I am a quiet unassuming fellow, yet you’ve said so many awful things about me.”

“I don’t know that.⁠ ⁠… The cards showed that it’s not you will do it⁠—I mean, not on purpose⁠—but all this misfortune will come through you.⁠ ⁠… You’ll remember my words, when they come true.”

“The cards told you all this, Olyessia?”

She did not answer at once, and then as though evasive and reluctant:

“The cards as well.⁠ ⁠… But even without them I learn a great deal, just by the face alone. If, for instance, someone is going to die soon by an ugly death, I can read it immediately in his face. I need not speak to him, even.”

“What do you see in his face?”

“I don’t know myself. I suddenly feel afraid, as though he were a dead man standing before me. Just ask granny, she will tell you that it’s the truth I’m saying. The year before last, Trophim the miller hung himself in his mill. Only two days before I saw him and said to granny: ‘Just look, granny, Trophim will die an ugly death soon.’ And so it was. Again, last Christmas Yashka the horse thief came to us and asked granny to tell his fortune. Granny put out the cards for him and began. He asked, joking: ‘Tell me what sort of death will I have?’ and he laughed. The moment I glanced at him, I could not move. I saw Yashka sitting there, but his face was dead, green.⁠ ⁠… His eyes were shut, his lips black.⁠ ⁠… A week afterwards we heard that the peasants had caught Yashka just as he was trying to take some horses off.⁠ ⁠… They beat him all night long.⁠ ⁠… They are bad people here, merciless.⁠ ⁠… They drove nails into his heels, smashed his ribs with stakes, and he gave up the ghost about dawn.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that misfortune was waiting for him?”

“Why should I tell?” Olyessia replied. “Can a man escape what Fate has doomed? It is useless for a man to be anxious the last days of his life.⁠ ⁠… And I loathe myself for seeing these things. I am disgusted with my own self.⁠ ⁠… But what can I do? It is mine by Fate. When granny was younger she could see Death, too; so could my mother and granny’s mother⁠—we are not responsible. It is in our blood.⁠ ⁠…”

She left off her spinning, bent her head and quietly placed her hands upon her knees. In her arrested, immobile eyes and her wide pupils was reflected some dark terror, an involuntary submission to mysterious powers and supernatural knowledge which cast a shadow upon her soul.

V

Then the old woman spread a clean cloth with embroidered ends on the table, and placed a steaming pot upon it.

“Come to supper, Olyessia,” she called to her granddaughter, and after a moment’s hesitation added, turning to me: “Perhaps you will eat with us too, sir? Our food is very plain; we have no soup, only plain groats.⁠ ⁠…”

I cannot say there was any particular insistence in her invitation, and I was already minded to refuse had not Olyessia in her turn invited me with such simplicity and a smile so kind, that in spite of myself I agreed. She herself poured me out a plateful of groats, a porridge of buckwheat and fat, onion, potato and chicken, an amazingly tasty and nourishing dish. Neither grandmother nor granddaughter crossed themselves as they sat down to table. During supper I continually watched both women, because up till now I have retained a deep conviction that a person is nowhere revealed so clearly as when he eats. The old woman swallowed the porridge with hasty greed, chewing aloud and pushing large pieces of bread into her mouth, so that big lumps rose and moved beneath her flabby cheeks. In Olyessia’s manner of eating even there was a native grace.

An hour later, after supper, I took my leave of my hostesses of the chicken-legged hut.

“I will walk with you a little way, if you like,” Olyessia offered.

“What’s this walking out you’re after?” the old woman mumbled angrily. “You can’t stay in your place, you gadfly.⁠ ⁠…”

But Olyessia had already put a red cashmere shawl on. Suddenly she ran up to her grandmother, embraced her and gave her a loud kiss.

“Dear little precious granny.⁠ ⁠… It’s only a moment. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Very well, then, madcap.” The old woman feebly wrenched herself away. “Don’t misunderstand her, sir; she’s very stupid.”

Passing a narrow path we came out into the forest road, black with mud, all churned with hoof marks and rutted with wheel tracks, full of water, in which the fire of the evening star was reflected. We walked at the side of the road, covered everywhere with the brown leaves of last year, not yet dry after the snow. Here and there through the dead yellow big wakening bluebells⁠—the earliest flowers in Polyessie⁠—lifted their lilac heads.

“Listen, Olyessia,” I began; “I very much want to ask you something, but I am afraid you will be cross.⁠ ⁠… Tell me, is it true what they say about your grandmother?⁠ ⁠… How shall I express it?”

“She’s a witch?” Olyessia quietly helped me out.

“No.⁠ ⁠… Not a witch,” I caught her up. “Well, yes, a witch if you like.⁠ ⁠… Certainly, people say such things. Why shouldn’t one know certain herbs, remedies, and charms?⁠ ⁠… But if you find it unpleasant, you need not answer.”

“But why not?” she answered simply. “Where’s the unpleasantness? Yes, it’s true, she’s a witch. But now she’s grown old and can no longer do what she did before.”

“And what did she do before?” I was curious.

“All kinds of things. She could cure illness, heal toothache, put a spell on a mine, pray over anyone who was bitten by a mad dog or a snake, she could find out treasure trove.⁠ ⁠… It is impossible to tell one everything.”

“You know, Olyessia, you must forgive me, but I don’t believe it all. Be frank with me. I shan’t tell anybody; but surely this is all a pretence in order to mystify people?”

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

“Think what you like. Of course, it’s easy to mystify a woman from the village, but I wouldn’t deceive you.”

“You really believe in witchcraft, then?”

“How could I disbelieve? Charms are in our destiny. I can do a great deal myself.”

“Olyessia, darling,⁠ ⁠… if you only knew how interested I was.⁠ ⁠… Won’t you really show me anything?”

“I’ll show you, if you like.” Olyessia readily consented. “Would you like me to do it now?”

“Yes, at once, if possible.”

“You won’t be afraid?”

“What next? I might be afraid at night perhaps, but it is still daylight.”

“Very well. Give me your hand.”

I obeyed. Olyessia quickly turned up the sleeve of my overcoat and unfastened the button of my cuff. Then she took a small Finnish knife about three inches long out of her pocket, and removed it from its leather case.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, for a mean fear had awakened in me.

“You will see immediately.⁠ ⁠… But you said you wouldn’t be afraid.”

Suddenly her hand made a slight movement, hardly perceptible. I felt the prick of the sharp blade in the soft part of my arm a little higher than the pulse. Instantly blood showed along the whole width of the cut, flowed over my hand, and began to drop quickly on to the earth. I could hardly restrain a cry, and I believe I grew pale.

“Don’t be afraid. You won’t die,” Olyessia smiled.

She seized my arm above the cut, bent her face down upon it, and began to whisper something quickly, covering my skin with her steady breathing. When she stood up again unclasping her fingers, on the wounded place only a red graze remained.

“Well, have you had enough?” she asked with a sly smile, putting her little knife away. “Would you like some more?”

“Certainly, I would. Only if possible not quite so terrible and without bloodshed, please.”

“What shall I show you?” she mused. “Well, this will do. Walk along the road in front of me. But don’t look back.”

“This won’t be terrible?” I asked, trying to conceal my timid apprehensions of an unpleasant surprise with a careless smile.

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… Quite trifling.⁠ ⁠… Go on.”

I went ahead, very much intrigued by the experiment, feeling Olyessia’s steady glance behind my back. But after about a dozen steps I suddenly stumbled on a perfectly even piece of ground and fell flat.

“Go on, go on!” cried Olyessia. “Don’t look back! It’s nothing at all. It will be all right before your wedding day.⁠ ⁠… Keep a better grip on the ground next time, when you’re going to fall.”

I went on. Another ten steps, and a second time I fell my full length.

Olyessia began to laugh aloud and to clap her hands.

“Well, are you satisfied now?” she cried, her white teeth gleaming. “Do you believe it now? It’s nothing, nothing.⁠ ⁠… You flew down instead of up.”

“How did you manage that?” I asked in surprise, shaking the little clinging twigs and blades of grass from my clothes. “Is it a secret?”

“Not at all. I’ll tell you with pleasure. Only I’m afraid that perhaps you won’t understand.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t be able to explain.⁠ ⁠…”

Indeed, I did not understand her altogether. But, as far as I can make out, this odd trick consists in her following my footsteps, step by step, in time with me. She looks at me steadily, trying to imitate my every movement down to the least; as it were, she identifies herself with me. After a few steps she begins to imagine a rope drawn across the road a certain distance in front of me⁠—a yard from the ground. The moment my foot is touching this imaginary rope, Olyessia suddenly pretends to fall, and then, as she says, the strongest man must infallibly fall.⁠ ⁠… I remembered Olyessia’s confused explanation long afterwards when I read Charcot’s report on the experiments which he made on two women patients in the Salpêtrière, who were professional witches suffering from hysteria. I was greatly surprised to discover that French witches who came from the common people employed exactly the same science in the same cases as the beautiful witch of Polyessie.

“Oh, I can do a great many things besides,” Olyessia boldly declared. “For instance, I can put a fear into you.⁠ ⁠…”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll act so that you feel a great dread. Suppose you are sitting in your room in the evening. Suddenly for no reason at all such a fear will take hold of you that you will begin to tremble and won’t dare to turn round. But for this I must know where you live and see your room beforehand.”

“Well, that’s quite a simple affair.” I was sceptical. “You only have to come close to the window, tap on it, call out something or other.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh no!⁠ ⁠… I shall be in the forest at the time. I won’t go out of the hut.⁠ ⁠… But I will sit down and think all the while: I’ll think that I am walking along the road, entering your house, opening the door, coming into your room.⁠ ⁠… You’re sitting somewhere; at the table, say.⁠ ⁠… I walk up to you from behind quietly and stealthily.⁠ ⁠… You don’t hear me.⁠ ⁠… I seize your shoulder with my hands and begin to squeeze⁠ ⁠… stronger, stronger, stronger.⁠ ⁠… I stare at you, just like this. Look!⁠ ⁠…”

Her thin eyebrows suddenly closed together. Her eyes were fixed upon me in a stare, fascinating, threatening. Her pupils dilated and became blue. Instantly I remembered a Medusa’s head, the work of a painter I have forgotten, in the Trietyakov Gallery in Moscow. Beneath this strange look I was seized by a cold terror of the supernatural.

“Well, that’ll do, Olyessia.⁠ ⁠… That’s enough,” I said with a forced laugh. “I much prefer you when you smile. Your face is so kind and childlike.”

We went on. I suddenly recollected the expressiveness of Olyessia’s conversation⁠—elegance even for a simple girl⁠—and I said:

“Do you know what surprises me in you, Olyessia? You’ve grown up in the forest without seeing a soul.⁠ ⁠… Of course, you can’t read very much.⁠ ⁠…”

“I can’t read at all.”

“Well, that makes it all the more.⁠ ⁠… Yet you speak as well as a real lady. Tell me, where did you learn it? You understand what I mean?”

“Yes, I understand. It’s from granny. You mustn’t judge her by her appearance. She is so clever! Some day she may speak when you are there, when she has become used to you. She knows everything, everything on earth that you can ask her. It’s true she’s old now.”

“Then she has seen a great deal in her lifetime. Where does she come from? Where did she live before?”

It seemed that these questions did not please Olyessia. She hesitated to answer, evasive and reluctant.

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… She doesn’t like to talk of that herself. If ever she says anything about it, she asks you to forget it, to put it quite out of mind.⁠ ⁠… But it’s time for me.⁠ ⁠…” Olyessia hastened, “Granny will be cross. Goodbye.⁠ ⁠… Forgive me, but I don’t know your name.”

I gave her my name.

“Ivan Timofeyevich? Well, that’s all right. Goodbye, Ivan Timofeyevich! Don’t disdain our hut. Come sometimes.”

I held out my hand at parting, and her small strong hand responded with a vigorous friendly grip.

VI

From that day I began to be a frequent visitor to the chicken-legged house. Every time I came Olyessia met me with her usual dignified reserve. But I always could tell, by the first involuntary she made on seeing me, that she was glad that I had come. The old woman still went on grumbling as she used, muttering under her nose, but she expressed no open malevolence, owing to her granddaughter’s intercession, of which I was certain though I had not witnessed it. Also, the presents I would bring her from time to time made a considerable impression in my favour⁠—a warm shawl, a pot of jam, a bottle of cherry brandy. As though by tacit consent, Olyessia began to make a habit of accompanying me as far as the Irenov road as I went home. And there always began such a lively interesting conversation, that involuntarily we both made an effort to prolong the journey, walking as slowly as possible in the silent fringes of the forest. When we came to the Irenov road, I went back half a mile with her, and even then before we parted we would stand talking for a long while beneath the fragrant shade of the pine branches.

It was not only Olyessia’s beauty that fascinated me, but her whole free independent nature, her mind at once clear and enwrapped in unshakable ancestral superstitions, childlike and innocent, yet not wholly devoid of the sly coquetry of the handsome woman. She never tired of asking me every detail concerning things which stirred her bright unspoiled imagination⁠—countries and peoples, natural phenomena, the order of the earth and the universe, learned men, large towns.⁠ ⁠… Many things seemed to her wonderful, fairy, incredible. But from the very beginning of our acquaintance I took such a serious, sincere, and simple tone with her that she readily put a complete trust in all my stories. Sometimes when I was at a loss for an explanation of something which I thought was too difficult for her half-savage mind⁠—it was often by no means clear to my own⁠—I answered her eager questions with, “You see.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t be able to explain this to you.⁠ ⁠… You won’t understand me.”

Then she would begin to entreat me.

“Please tell me, please, I’ll try.⁠ ⁠… Tell me somehow, though⁠ ⁠… even if it’s not clear.”

She forced me to have recourse to preposterous comparisons and incredibly bold analogies, and when I was at a loss for a suitable expression she would help me out with a torrent of impatient conclusions, like those which we offer to a stammerer. And, indeed, in the end her pliant mobile mind and her fresh imagination triumphed over my pedagogic impotence. I became convinced that, considering her environment and her education (rather, lack of education) her abilities were amazing.

Once I happened in passing to mention Petersburg. Olyessia was instantly intrigued.

“What is Petersburg? A small town?”

“No, it’s not a small one. It’s the biggest Russian city.”

“The biggest? The very largest of all? There isn’t one bigger?” she insisted naively.

“The largest of all. The chief authorities live there⁠ ⁠… the big folks. The houses there are all made of stone; there aren’t any wooden ones.”

“Of course, it’s much bigger than our Stiepany?” Olyessia asked confidently.

“Oh, yes. A good bit bigger. Say five hundred times as big. There are houses there so big that twice as many people live in a single one of them as in the whole of Stiepany.”

“My God! What kind of houses can they be?” Olyessia asked almost in fright.

“Terrible houses. Five, six, even seven stories. You see that fir tree there?”

“The tall one. I see.”

“Houses as tall as that, and they’re crammed with people from top to bottom. The people live in wretched little holes, like birds in cages, ten people in each, so that there isn’t enough air to breathe. Some of them live downstairs, right under the earth, in the damp and cold. They don’t see the sun from one end of the year to the other, some of them.”

“Nothing would make me change my forest for your city,” Olyessia said, shaking her head. “Even when I go to the market at Stiepany, I’m disgusted. They push, shout, swear⁠ ⁠… and I have such a longing for the forest, that I want to throw everything away and run and never look back. God may have your city: I don’t want to live there.”

“But what if your husband comes from a town?” I asked with the trace of a smile.

Her eyebrows frowned and her nostrils trembled.

“What next!” she said with scorn. “I don’t want a husband.”

“You say that now, Olyessia. Nearly every girl says the same, but still they marry. You wait a bit: you’ll meet somebody and you’ll fall in love⁠—and you’ll follow him, not only to town, but to the end of the earth.”

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… We won’t talk of that, please,” she cut me short in vexation. “Why should we talk like this? I ask you not to.”

“How funny you are, Olyessia. Do you really believe you’ll never love a man in your life? You’re so young, handsome, strong. If your blood once catches fire, no oaths of yours will help you.”

“Well,⁠ ⁠… then, I’ll love,” Olyessia answered with a challenge in her flashing eyes. “I shan’t ask anybody’s leave.”

“So you’ll have to marry too,” I teased her.

“I suppose you’re meaning the church?” she guessed.

“Exactly⁠—the church. The priest will lead you round the altar; the deacon will sing, ‘Isaiah, rejoice!’ they’ll put a crown on your head.⁠ ⁠…”

Olyessia cast down her eyes and shook her head, faintly smiling.

“No, dear.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps you won’t like what I say, but in our family no one was ever married in church. My mother and my grandmother before her managed to live without that.⁠ ⁠… Besides, we must not enter a church.⁠ ⁠…”

“All because of your witchery?”

“Yes, because of our witchery,” Olyessia replied with a calm seriousness. “How could I dare to appear in a church? From my very birth my soul was sold to Him.”

“Olyessia, dear.⁠ ⁠… Believe me, you’re deceiving yourself. It’s wild and ridiculous what you say.”

Once more there appeared on Olyessia’s face the strange expression of convinced and gloomy submissiveness to her mysterious destiny, which I had noticed before.

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… You can’t understand it.⁠ ⁠… But I feel it.⁠ ⁠… Just here.⁠ ⁠…” She pressed her hand strongly to her heart. “I feel it in my soul. All our family is cursed for ever and ever. But think yourself, who is it that helps us if it is not He? Can an ordinary person do the things I can do? All our power comes from Him.”

Every time our conversation touched upon this strange theme it ended in the same way. In vain I exhausted every argument to which Olyessia was sensible; in vain I spoke in simple terms of hypnotism, suggestion, mental doctors, and Indian fakirs; in vain I endeavoured to explain certain of her experiments by physiology, such, for instance, as blood charming, which is easily produced by skilful pressure on a vein. Still Olyessia, who believed me so implicitly in all else, refuted all my arguments and explanations with obstinate insistence.

“Very well, I’ll make you a present of blood charming,” she said, raising her voice in the heat of the discussion. “But where do the other things come from? Is blood charming the only thing I know? Would you like me to take away all the mice and beetles from a hut in a single day? If you like, I’ll cure the most violent fever in two days with plain cold water, even though all your doctors give the patient up. I can make you forget any word you like, completely? And how is it I interpret dreams? How is it I can see the future?”

The discussion always ended by our mutual silence, from which a certain inward irritation against each other was not wholly absent. Indeed, for much of her black art I could find no explanation in my small science. I do not know and cannot say whether Olyessia possessed one half the secrets of which she spoke with such naive belief. But the things which I frequently witnessed planted an unshakable conviction in me that Olyessia had access to that strange knowledge, unconscious, instinctive, dim, acquired only by accidental experience, which has outrun exact science for centuries, and lives intertwined with wild and ridiculous superstitions, in the obscure impenetrable heart of the masses, where it is transmitted from one generation to another as the greatest of all secrets.

For all our disagreement on this single point, we became more and more strongly attached to one another. Not a word had been spoken between us of love as yet, but it had become a necessity for us to be together; and often in moments of silence I saw Olyessia’s eyes moisten, and a thin blue vein on her temple begin to pulse.

But my relations with Yarmola were quite ruined. Evidently my visits to the chicken-legged hut were no secret to him, nor were my evening walks with Olyessia. With amazing exactness, he always knew everything that went on in the forest. For some time I noticed that he had begun to avoid me. His black eyes watched me from a distance, with reproach and discontent every time I went out to walk in the forest, though he did not express his reproof by so much as a single word. Our comically serious studies in reading and writing came to an end; and if I occasionally called Yarmola in to learn during the evening he would only wave his hand.

“What’s the good? It’s a peggling business, sir!” he would say with lazy contempt.

Our hunting also ceased. Every time I began to talk of it, Yarmola found some excuse or other for refusing. Either his gun was out of order, or his dog was ill, or he was too busy. “I have no time, sir.⁠ ⁠… I have to be ploughing today,” was Yarmola’s usual answer to my invitation; but I knew quite well that he would do no ploughing at all, but spend a good hour outside the inn in the doubtful hope of somebody standing him a drink. This silent, concealed animosity began to weary me, and I began to think of dispensing with Yarmola’s services, on the first suitable occasion.⁠ ⁠… I was restrained only by a sense of pity for his enormous poverty-stricken family, whom Yarmola’s four weekly roubles just saved from starvation.

VII

Once when I came to the chicken-legged hut, as my habit was, just before dark, I was immediately struck by the anxiety of its occupants. The old woman sat with her feet on the bed, hunched up, and swayed to and fro with her head in her hands, murmuring something I could not catch. She paid no attention to my greeting. Olyessia welcomed me kindly as always, but our conversation made no headway. She listened to me absently and answered me inconsequently. On her beautiful face lay the shadow of some unceasing secret trouble.

“Something bad has happened to you, Olyessia, I can see,” I said cautiously, touching her hand which lay on the bench.

Olyessia quickly turned her face to the window, as though she were examining something. She tried to look calm, but her eyebrows drew together and trembled, and her teeth violently bit her under lip.

“No,⁠ ⁠… what could have happened to us?” she said with a dull voice. “Everything is just as it was.”

“Olyessia, why don’t you tell me the truth? It’s wrong of you.⁠ ⁠… I thought that we had become real friends.”

“It’s nothing, really.⁠ ⁠… Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Our troubles⁠ ⁠… trifles.”

“No, Olyessia, they don’t seem to be trifles. You’re not like yourself.”

“That’s only your fancy.”

“Be frank with me, Olyessia. I don’t know whether I can help, but I can give you some advice perhaps.⁠ ⁠… And, anyhow, you’ll feel better when you’ve shared your trouble.”

“But it’s really not worth talking about,” Olyessia replied impatiently. “You can’t possibly help us at all, now.”

Suddenly, with unexpected passion, the old woman broke into the conversation.

“Why are you so stubborn, you little fool? Someone talks business to you, and you hold up your nose. As if nobody in the world was cleverer than you! If you please, sir, I’ll tell you the whole story,” she said, turning towards me, “beginning with the beginning.”

The trouble appeared much more considerable than I could have supposed from Olyessia’s proud words. The evening before, the local policeman had come to the chicken-legged hut.

“First he sat down, nice and politely, and asked for vodka,” Manuilikha said, “and then he began and went on and on. ‘Clear out of the hut in twenty-four hours with all your belongings. If I come next time,’ he says, ‘and find you here, then I tell you, you’ll go to jail. I’ll send you away with a couple of soldiers to your native place, curse you.’ But you know, sir, my native place is hundreds of miles away, the town of Amchensk.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t a soul there now who knows me. Our passports have been out of date for years, and besides they aren’t in order. Ah, my God, what misfortune!”

“Then why did he let you live here before, and only just now made up his mind?”

“How can I tell?⁠ ⁠… He shouted out something or other, but I confess I couldn’t understand it. You see how it is: this hole we live in isn’t ours. It belongs to the landlord. Olyessia and I used to live in the village before, but the⁠—”

“Yes, yes, I know, granny. I’ve heard about that. The peasants got angry with you⁠—”

“That’s it, exactly. So I begged this hut from the old landlord, Mr. Abrossimov. Now, they say a new landlord has bought the forest, and it seems he wants to drain some marshes. But what can I do?”

“Perhaps it’s all a lie, granny,” I said. “And the sergeant only wants to get a pound out of you.”

“But I offered it to him, I offered it, sir. He wouldn’t take it. It’s a strange business.⁠ ⁠… I offered him three pounds, but he wouldn’t take it.⁠ ⁠… It was awful. He swore at me so badly that I didn’t know where I was. All the while he went on saying: ‘Be off with you, be off!’ What can we do now? We’re alone in the world. Good sir, you might manage to help us in some way. You could speak to him; his belly’s never satisfied. I’m sure I’d be grateful to you eternally.”

“Granny!” said Olyessia, in a slow reproachful voice.

“What do you mean, ‘Granny!’ ” The old woman was annoyed. “Twenty-five years I’ve been a granny to you. And what’s your opinion; it’s better to carry a beggar’s pack? No, don’t listen to her, sir! Of your charity, do something for us if you can.”

I gave her vague promises to take some steps, though, to tell the truth I could see but little hope. If our sergeant wouldn’t take money, then the affair must be very serious. That evening Olyessia parted from me coldly, and, quite against her usual habit, did not walk with me. I could see that the proud girl was angry with me for interfering, and rather ashamed of her grandmother’s whimpering.

VIII

It was a warm, greyish morning. Several times already there had been brief showers of heavy fruitful rain, which makes the young grass grow before your eyes and the new shoots stretch out. After the rain the sun peeped out for a moment, pouring its joyous glitter over the tender green of the lilac bushes, sodden with the rain, which made all my hedge. The sparrows’ impetuous chirrup grew louder among the lush gardenbeds, and the scent of the sticky brown poplar buds came sweeter. I was sitting at the table, drawing a plan of timber to be felled, when Yarmola entered the room.

“The sergeant’s here,” he said gloomily.

At the moment I had completely forgotten that I had ordered him a couple of days ago to let me know in case the sergeant were to pass. It was impossible for me to understand immediately what was the connection between me and the delegate of authority.

“What?” I said in confusion.

“I say the sergeant’s here,” Yarmola repeated in the same hostile tone that he normally assumed towards me during the last days. “I saw him on the dam just now. He’s coming here.”

There was a rumble of wheels on the road outside. A long thin chocolate-coloured gelding with a hanging under lip, and an insulted look on its face, gravely trotted up with a tall, jolting, basket gig. There was only a single trace. The place of the other was supplied by a piece of stout rope. (Malicious tongues asserted that the sergeant had put this miserable contraption together on purpose to avoid any undesirable comments.) The sergeant himself held the reins, filling both seats with his enormous body, which was wrapped in a grey uniform made of smart military cloth.

“Good day to you, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich!” I called, leaning out of the window.

“Ah, good day! How do you do?” he answered in a loud, courteous, official baritone.

He drew up his horse, saluted with straightened palm, and bent his body forward with elephantine grace.

“Come in for a moment. I’ve got a little business with you.”

The sergeant spread his hands wide and shook his head.

“Can’t possibly. I’m on duty. I’ve got to go to Volocha for an inquest⁠—man drowned.”

But I knew Evpsychyi’s weak points; so I said with assumed indifference:

“It’s a pity⁠ ⁠… a great pity⁠ ⁠… and I’ve got a couple of bottles of the best from Count Vortzel’s cellar.⁠ ⁠…”

“Can’t manage it.⁠ ⁠… Duty.”

“The butler sold them to me, because he’s an acquaintance of mine. He’d brought them up in the cellar, like his own children.⁠ ⁠… You ought to come in.⁠ ⁠… I’ll tell them to give the horse a feed.”

“You’re a nice one, you are,” the sergeant said in reproof. “Don’t you know that duty comes first of all?⁠ ⁠… What’s in the bottles, though? Plum wine?”

“Plum wine!” I waved my hand. “It’s the real old stuff, that’s what it is, my dear sir!”

“I must confess I’ve just had a bite and a drop.” The sergeant scratched his cheek regretfully, wrinkling his face incredibly.

I continued with the same calm.

“I don’t know whether it’s true; but the butler swore it was two hundred years old. It smells just like an old cognac, and it’s as yellow as amber.”

“Ah, what are you doing with me?” said the sergeant. “Who’ll hold my horse?”

I really had some bottles of the old liqueur, though it was not quite so old as I made out; but I thought that suggestion might easily add a hundred years to its age.⁠ ⁠… At any rate it was the real home-distilled, omnipotent stuff, the pride of a ruined magnate’s cellar. (Evpsychyi Afrikanovich, who was the son of a parson, immediately begged a bottle from me, in case, as he put it, he were to catch a bad cold.) Besides, I had some very conducive hors d’oeuvre: young radishes, with fresh churned butter.

“Now, what’s the little business?” the sergeant asked after his fifth glass, throwing himself back in the old chair which groaned under him.

I began to explain the position of the poor old woman; I dwelt on her hopeless despair; spoke lightly of useless formalities. The sergeant listened to me with his head bent down, methodically clearing the small roots from the succulent red radishes, and chewing and crunching them with relish. Now and then he gave me a quick glance with his cloudy, indifferent, preposterously little blue eyes; but I could read nothing on his great red face, neither sympathy nor opposition. When I finally became silent, he only asked.

“Well, what is it you want from me?”

“What do you mean?” I became agitated. “Look at their position, please⁠—two poor defenceless women living there⁠—”

“And one of them’s a perfect little bud!” the sergeant put in maliciously.

“Bud or no bud⁠—that doesn’t come into it. But why shouldn’t you take some interest in them? As though you really need to turn them out in such a hurry? Just wait a day or two until I’ve been to the landlord. What do you stand to lose, even if you waited for a month?”

“What do I stand to lose?” The sergeant rose in his chair. “Good God! I stand to lose everything⁠—my job, first of all. Who knows what sort of a man this new landlord, Ilyashevich is? Perhaps he’s an underhand devil, one of the sort who get hold of a bit of paper and a pen on the slightest provocation, and send a little report to Petersburg? There are men of the kind!”

I tried to reassure the agitated sergeant.

“That’s enough, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich! You’re exaggerating the whole affair. After all, a risk’s a risk, and gratitude’s gratitude.”

“Ph‑e‑w!” The sergeant gave a long-drawn whistle and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets. “It’s gratitude, is it? Do you think I’m going to stake my official position for three pounds? No, you’ve got a wrong idea of me.”

“But what are you getting warm about, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich? The amount isn’t the point, just simply⁠—well, let’s say, for humanity’s sake⁠—”

“For hu‑man‑i‑ty’s sake?” He hammered out each syllable. “I’m full up to here with your humanity!” He tapped vigorously on the bronzed nape of his mighty neck which hung down over his collar in a fat, hairless fold.

“That’s a bit too strong, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich.”

“Not a bit too strong! ‘They’re the plague of the place,’ as Mr. Krylov, the famous fable-writer, said. That’s what these two ladies are. You don’t happen to have read that splendid work, by His Excellency Count Urussov, called The Police Sergeant?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, you ought to have. A brilliant work, highly moral. I would advise you to make its acquaintance when you have the time⁠—”

“Right, I’ll do so with pleasure. But still I don’t see what this book’s got to do with these two poor women.”

“What’s it got to do with them? A great deal. Firstly” (Evpsychyi Afrikanovich ticked off the fat hairy forefinger of his left hand): “ ‘It is the duty of a police sergeant to take the greatest care that all the people go to the Church of God, without, however, compelling them by force to remain there.⁠ ⁠…’ I ask you, does she go⁠—what’s her name; Manuilikha, isn’t it?⁠ ⁠… Does she ever go to church?”

I was silent, surprised by the unexpected turn of his speech. He gave me a look of triumph, and ticked off his second finger. “Secondly: ‘False prophecies and prognostications are everywhere forbidden.⁠ ⁠…’ Do you notice that? Then, thirdly: ‘It is illegal to profess to be a sorcerer or a magician, or to employ similar deceptions.’ What do you say to that? And suppose all this becomes known, or gets round to the authorities by some back way, who has to pay for it? I do. Who gets sacked from the service? I do. Now you see what a business it is.”

He sat down in his chair again. His raised eyes wandered absently over the walls of the room and his fingers drummed loudly on the table.

“Well, what if I ask you, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich,” I began once more in a gentle voice. “Of course I know your duties are complicated and troublesome, but you’ve got a heart, I know, a heart of gold. What will it cost you to promise me not to touch these women?”

The sergeant’s eyes suddenly stopped, over my head.

“That’s a nice little gun you’ve got,” he said carelessly, still drumming his fingers. “A splendid little gun. Last time I came to see you and you were out, I admired it all the while. A splendid gun!”

“Yes, it’s not a bad gun,” I agreed. “It’s an old pattern, made by Gastin-Rennet; but last year I had it converted into a hammerless. You just look at the barrels.”

“Yes, yes⁠ ⁠… it was the barrels I admired most.⁠ ⁠… A magnificent piece of work. I’d call it a perfect treasure.”

Our eyes met, and I saw the trace of a meaning smile flickering in the corner of the sergeant’s lips. I rose from my seat, took the gun off the wall and approached Evpsychyi Afrikanovich with it.

“The Circassians have an admirable custom,” I said courteously, “of presenting a guest with anything that he praises. Though we are not Circassians, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich, I entreat you to accept this from me as a memento.”

For appearance’ sake the sergeant blushed.

“My goodness, what a beauty! No, no.⁠ ⁠… That custom is far too generous.”

However, I did not have to entreat him long. The sergeant accepted the gun, carefully put it between his knees and with a clean handkerchief lovingly wiped away the dust that had settled on the lock; and I was rather mollified when I saw that the gun had at least passed into the hands of an expert and an amateur. Almost immediately Evpsychyi Afrikanovich got up and began to hurry away.

“Business won’t wait, and here I’ve been gossiping with you,” he said, noisily banging on the floor with his reluctant goloshes. “When you happen to come our way, you’ll be most welcome.”

“Well, what about Manuilikha, my dear Authority?” I reminded him delicately.

“We’ll see, we’ll see,⁠ ⁠…” Evpsychyi Afrikanovich vaguely muttered. “There was something else I wanted to ask you.⁠ ⁠… Your radishes are magnificent.⁠ ⁠…”

“I grew them myself.”

“Mag‑nificent radishes! You know, my wife is terribly partial to garden-stuff. So, you know, one little bundle.⁠ ⁠…”

“With the greatest pleasure, Evpsychyi Afrikanovich. I consider it an obligation.⁠ ⁠… This very day I’ll send a basket by messenger. Let me send some butter as well.⁠ ⁠… My butter’s quite a special thing.”

“Well, butter too,⁠ ⁠…” the sergeant graciously permitted. “And you can tip those women the wink that I shan’t touch them for the time being. But you’d better let them know”⁠—he raised his voice suddenly⁠—“that they can’t settle me with a ‘Thank you.’⁠ ⁠… Now, I wish you goodbye. Once more, merci for the present and the entertainment.”

He clicked his heels together like a soldier, and walked to his carriage with the ponderous gait of a full-fed, important person. By his carriage were already gathered the village policeman, the mayor and Yarmola, in respectful attitudes, with their heads bare.

IX

Evpsychyi Afrikanovich kept his word and left the people of the forest hut in peace indefinitely. But my relations with Olyessia suffered an acute and curious change. Not a trace of her old naive and confident kindness remained in her attitude to me, nor any of the old animation wherein the coquetry of a beautiful girl so beautifully blended with the playful wantonness of a child. An awkward constraint beyond which we could not pass began to appear in our conversation.⁠ ⁠… With an instant timidity Olyessia avoided the lively themes which used to give such boundless scope to our curiosity.

In my presence she gave herself up to her work in a strained, stern, businesslike way; but I often noticed that in the middle of her work her hands would suddenly drop weakly on her knees, and her eyes be fixed, vague and immovable, downwards upon the floor. And when at such a moment I called her by name, “Olyessia,” or put some question to her, she shivered and turned her face slowly towards me: in it was reflected fright and the effort to understand the meaning of my words. Sometimes it seemed to me that she was burdened and embarrassed by my company, but I could not reconcile that with the deep interest that every remark and phrase of mine used to arouse in her only a few days ago. I could only think that Olyessia was unwilling to forgive my patronage in the affair with the sergeant, which so revolted her independent nature. But this solution did not satisfy me either, and I still asked myself from whence did this simple girl, who had grown up in the midst of the forest, derive her inordinately sensitive pride?

All this demanded explanations; but Olyessia avoided every favourable occasion for frank conversation. Our evening walks came to an end. In vain I cast eloquent imploring glances at Olyessia each day, when I was on the point of leaving; she made as though she did not understand their meaning, and in spite of the old woman’s deafness, her presence disturbed me.

At times I revolted against my own weakness and the habit which now drew me every day to Olyessia. I myself did not suspect with what subtle, strong, invisible threads my heart was bound to this fascinating, incomprehensible girl. As yet I had no thought of love; but I was already living through a disturbing period of unconscious anticipation, full of vague and oppressive sadnesses. Wherever I was, with whatever I tried to amuse myself, my every thought was occupied with the image of Olyessia, my whole being craved for her, and each separate memory of her most insignificant words, her gestures and her smiles, contracted my heart with a sweet and gentle pain. But evening came and I sat long beside her on a low rickety little bench, to my grief finding myself every time more timid, more awkward and foolish.

Once I passed a whole day thus at Olyessia’s side. I had begun to feel unwell from the morning onward, though I could not clearly define wherein my sickness consisted. It grew worse towards evening. My head grew heavy; I felt a dull incessant pain in the crown of my head, exactly as though someone were pressing down upon it with a soft, strong hand. My mouth was parched, and an idle, languid weakness poured over my whole body. My eyes pained me just as though I had been staring fixedly, close to a glimmering point.

As I was returning late in the evening, midway I was suddenly seized and shaken by a tempestuous chill. I could hardly see the way as I went on; I was almost unconscious of where I was going; I reeled like a drunken man, and my jaws beat out a quick loud tattoo, each against the other.

Till this day I do not know who brought me into the house. For exactly six days I was stricken by a terrible racking Polyessian fever. During the day the sickness seemed to abate, and consciousness returned to me. Then, utterly exhausted by the disease, I could hardly walk across the room, such was the pain and weakness of my knees; at each stronger movement the blood rushed in a hot wave to my head, and covered everything before my eyes with darkness.

In the evening, and usually at about seven o’clock, the approach of the disease overwhelmed me like a storm, and on my bed I passed a terrible, century-long night, now shaking with cold beneath the blankets, now blazing with intolerable heat. Hardly had I been touched by a drowsy slumber, when strange, grotesque, painfully motley dreams began to play with my inflamed brain. Every dream was filled with tiny microscopic details, which piled up and clutched each at the other in ugly chaos. Now I seemed to be unpacking some boxes, coloured with stripes and of fantastic form, taking small ones out of the big, and from the small still smaller. I could not by any means interrupt the unending labour, although it had long been disgusting to me. Then there flashed before my eyes with stupefying speed long bright stripes from the wallpaper, and with amazing distinctness I saw on them, instead of patterns, whole garlands of human faces⁠—beautiful, kind, and smiling, then horribly grimacing, thrusting out their tongues, showing their teeth, and rolling their eyes. Then I entered into a confused and extraordinarily complicated abstract dispute with Yarmola. Every minute the arguments which we brought up against each other became subtler and more profound: separate words and even individual letters of words suddenly took on a mysterious and unfathomable meaning, and at the same time I was seized by a revolting terror of the unknown, unnatural force that wound out one monstrous sophism after another out of my brain, and would not let me break off the dispute which had long been loathsome to me.⁠ ⁠…

It was like a seething whirlwind of human and animal figures, landscapes, things of the most wonderful forms and colours, words and phrases whose meaning was apprehended by every sense.⁠ ⁠… But the strange thing was that I never lost sight of a bright regular circle reflected on to the ceiling by the lamp with the scorched green shade. And somehow I knew that within the indistinct line of that quiet circle was concealed a silent, monotonous, mysterious, terrible life, yet more awful and oppressive than the mad chaos of my dreams.

Then I awoke, or more truly did not awake, but suddenly forced myself to sit up. Consciousness almost returned to me. I understood that I was lying in bed, that I was ill, that I had just been in delirium, but the bright circle on the ceiling still terrified me by its hidden, ominous menace. With weak hands I slowly reached for the watch, looked at it, and saw with melancholy perplexity that all the endless sequence of my ghastly dreams had taken no longer than two or three minutes. “My God, will the dawn ever come?” I thought in despair, tossing my head over the hot pillows and feeling my short heavy breathing burn my lips.⁠ ⁠… But again a slight drowsiness possessed me, and again my brain became the sport of a motley nightmare, and again within two minutes I woke, racked by a mortal anguish.

In six days my vigorous constitution, aided by quinine and an infusion of buckthorn, overcame my disease. I rose from my bed completely crushed, with difficulty standing upright on my legs. But my convalescence passed with eager quickness. In my head, weary with six days’ feverish delirium, I felt now an idle, pleasant absence of any thought at all. My appetite returned with double force, and hourly my body gathered strength, in each moment imbibing its particle of health and of the joy of life. And with that a new and stronger craving came upon me for the forest and the lonely, tumbledown hut. But my nerves had not yet recovered, and every time that I called up Olyessia’s face and voice in my memory, I wanted to cry.

X

Only five more days had passed, when I was so much recovered that I reached the chicken-legged hut on foot without the least fatigue. As I stepped on the threshold my heart palpitated with breathless fear. I had not seen Olyessia for almost two weeks, and I now perceived how near and dear she was to me. Holding the latch of the door, I waited some seconds, breathing with difficulty. In my irresolution I even shut my eyes for some time before I could push the door open.⁠ ⁠…

It is always impossible to analyse impressions like those which followed my entrance.⁠ ⁠… Can one remember the words uttered in the first moment of meeting between a mother and son, husband and wife, or lover and lover? The simplest, most ordinary, even ridiculous words are said, if they were put down exactly upon paper. But each word is opportune and infinitely dear because it is uttered by the dearest voice in all the world.

I remember⁠—very clearly I remember⁠—only one thing: Olyessia’s beautiful pale face turned quickly towards me, and on that beautiful face, so new to me, were in one second reflected, in changing succession, perplexity, fear, anxiety, and a tender radiant smile of love.⁠ ⁠… The old woman was mumbling something, clattering round me, but I did not hear her greetings. Olyessia’s voice reached me like a sweet music:

“What has been the matter with you? You’ve been ill? Ah, how thin you’ve grown, my poor darling!”

For a long while I could make no answer, and we stood silent face to face, clasping hands and looking straight into the depths of each other’s eyes, happily. Those few silent seconds I have always considered the happiest in my life: never, never before or since, have I tasted such pure, complete, all-absorbing ecstasy. And how much I read in Olyessia’s big dark eyes!⁠—the excitement of the meeting, reproach for my long absence, and a passionate declaration of love. In that look I felt that Olyessia gave me her whole being joyfully without doubt or reservation.

She was the first to break the spell, pointing to Manuilikha with a slow movement of her eyelids. We sat down side by side, and Olyessia began to ask me anxiously for the details of my illness, the medicines I had taken, what the doctor had said and thought⁠—he came twice to see me from the little town; she made me tell about the doctor time after time, and I could catch a fleeting, sarcastic smile on her lips.

“Oh, why didn’t I know that you were ill!” she exclaimed with impatient regret. “I would have set you on your feet again in a single day.⁠ ⁠… How can they be trusted, when they don’t understand anything at all, nothing at all? Why didn’t you send for me?”

I was at a loss for an answer.

“You see, Olyessia⁠ ⁠… it happened so suddenly⁠ ⁠… besides, I was afraid to trouble you. Towards the end you had become strange towards me, as though you were angry with me, or bored.⁠ ⁠… Olyessia,” I added, lowering my voice, “we’ve got ever so much to say to each other, ever so much⁠ ⁠… just we two⁠ ⁠… you understand?”

She quietly cast down her eyes in token of consent, and then whispered quickly, looking round timidly at her grandmother:

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… I want to, as well⁠ ⁠… later⁠ ⁠… wait⁠—”

As soon as the sun began to set, Olyessia began to urge me to go home.

“Make haste, be quick and get ready,” she said, pulling my hand from the bench. “If the damp catches you now, the fever will be on you again, immediately.”

“Where are you going, Olyessia?” Manuilikha asked suddenly, seeing that her granddaughter had thrown a large grey shawl hurriedly over her head.

“I’m going part of the way with him,” answered Olyessia.

She said the words with indifference, looking not at her grandmother but at the window; but in her voice I could detect on almost imperceptible note of irritation.

“You’re really going?” the old woman once more asked, meaningly.

Olyessia’s eyes flashed, and she stared steadily into Manuilikha’s face.

“Yes, I am going,” she replied proudly. “We talked it out and talked it out long ago.⁠ ⁠… It’s my affair, and my own responsibility.”

“Ah, you⁠—” the old woman exclaimed in reproach and annoyance. She wanted to add more, but only waved her hand and dragged her trembling legs away into the corner, and began to busy herself with a basket, groaning.

I understood that the brief unpleasant conversation which I had just witnessed was a continuation of a long series of mutual quarrels and bursts of anger. As I walked to the forest at Olyessia’s side, I asked her:

“Granny doesn’t want you to go for a walk with me, does she?”

Olyessia shrugged her shoulders in vexation.

“Please, don’t take any notice of it.⁠ ⁠… No, she doesn’t like it.⁠ ⁠… Surely I’m free to do as I like?”

Suddenly I conceived an irresistible desire to reproach Olyessia with her former sternness.

“But you could have done it before my illness as well.⁠ ⁠… Only then you didn’t want to be alone with me.⁠ ⁠… I thought, every evening I thought, perhaps you would come with me again. But you used to pay no attention; you were so unresponsive, and cross.⁠ ⁠… How you tormented me, Olyessia!⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t, darling.⁠ ⁠… Forget it,⁠ ⁠…” Olyessia entreated with a tender apology in her voice.

“No, I’m not saying it to blame you. It just slipped out. Now, I understand why it was.⁠ ⁠… But before⁠—it’s funny to talk about it even now⁠—I thought you were offended because of the sergeant. The thought made me terribly sad. I couldn’t help thinking that you considered me so remote and foreign to you, that you found it hard to accept a simple kindness from me.⁠ ⁠… It was very bitter to me.⁠ ⁠… I never even suspected that granny was the cause of it all, Olyessia.”

Olyessia’s face suddenly flamed bright red.

“But it wasn’t granny at all.⁠ ⁠… It was me. I didn’t want it, myself,” she exclaimed with a passionate challenge.

“But why didn’t you want it, Olyessia, why?” I asked. My voice broke for agitation, and I caught her by the hand and made her stop. We were just in the middle of a long narrow path, straight as an arrow through the forest. On either side we were surrounded by tall slender pines, that formed a gigantic corridor, receding into the distance, vaulted with fragrant interwoven branches. The bare peeled trunks were tinged with the purple glow of the burnt-out red of the evening sky.

“Tell me why, Olyessia, why?” I whispered again, pressing her hand closer and closer.

“I could not⁠ ⁠… I was afraid,” Olyessia said so low that I could hardly hear. “I thought it was possible to escape one’s destiny.⁠ ⁠… But, now⁠ ⁠… now.”

Her breath failed her, as though there were no air; and suddenly her hands twined quick and vehement about my neck, and my lips were sweetly burnt by Olyessia’s quick trembling whisper:

“But it’s all the same, now⁠ ⁠… all the same!⁠ ⁠… Because I love you, my dear, my joy, my beloved!”

She pressed closer and closer to me, and I could feel how her strong, vigorous, fervent body pulsed beneath my hands, how quickly her heart beat against my chest. Her passionate kisses poured like intoxicating wine into my head, still weak with disease, and I began to lose my hold upon myself.

“Olyessia, for God’s sake, don’t⁠ ⁠… leave me,” I said, trying to unclasp her hands. “Now I am afraid.⁠ ⁠… I’m afraid of myself.⁠ ⁠… Let me go, Olyessia.”

She raised her head. Her face was all lighted with a slow, languid smile.

“Don’t be afraid, my darling,” she said with an indescribable expression of tender passion and touching fearlessness. “I shall never reproach you, never be jealous of anyone.⁠ ⁠… Tell me only, do you love me?”

“I love you, Olyessia. I loved you long ago, and I love you passionately. But⁠ ⁠… don’t kiss me any more.⁠ ⁠… I grow weak, my head swims, I can’t answer for myself.⁠ ⁠…”

Her lips were once more pressed to mine in a long, painful sweetness. I did not hear, rather I divined her words.

“Then don’t be afraid. Don’t think of anything besides.⁠ ⁠… Today is ours; no one can take it from us.”

And the whole night melted into a magical fairy tale. The moon rose, and its radiance poured fantastically in motley and mysterious colours over the forest. It lay amid the darkness in pale blue stains upon the gnarled tree-trunks, on the bent branches and the soft carpet of moss. The high birch-trunks showed clear and keenly white, and it seemed that a silvery transparent veil of gauze had been thrown over the thin leaves. In places the light could by no means penetrate the thick canopy of pine branches. There was complete, impenetrable darkness, save only that in the middle a ray slipped in unknown from somewhere and suddenly shone brightly on a long row of trees, casting a straight narrow path on the earth, as bright and trim and beautiful as a path fashioned by fairies for the triumphant procession of Oberon and Titania. And we walked with our arms enlocked through this vivid, smiling fairy tale, without a single word, under the weight of our happiness and the dreadful silence of the night.

“Darling, I’ve forgotten quite that you must hurry home,” Olyessia suddenly remembered. “What a wicked girl I am! You’re only just recovering from your illness and I’ve kept you all this while in the forest.”

I kissed her, and threw back the shawl from her thick dark hair, and asked her in the softest whisper, bending to her ear:

“You don’t regret it, Olyessia? You don’t repent?”

She shook her head slowly.

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… Come what may, I shan’t regret.⁠ ⁠… I am so happy!”

“Is something bound to happen, then?”

There appeared in her eyes a flash of the mystical terror I had grown to recognise.

“Yes, it is certain. You remember I told you about the queen of clubs. That queen of clubs is me, myself; the misfortune that the cards told of will happen to me.⁠ ⁠… You know I thought of asking you not to come and see us any more. But then you fell ill, and I never saw you for nearly a fortnight.⁠ ⁠… I was so anxious and sad for you that I felt I could have given the whole world to be with you, just one little minute. Then I thought that I would not give up my happiness, whatever should come of it.⁠ ⁠…”

“It’s true, Olyessia. That’s how it was with me, too,” I said, touching her forehead with my lips. “I never knew that I loved you until I parted from you. It seems that man was right who said that parting to love is like wind to a fire: it blows out a small one, and makes a large one blaze.”

“What did you say? Say it again, again, please.” Olyessia was interested.

I repeated the words again. I do not know whose they are. Olyessia mused over them, and I could see by the movement of her lips that she was saying the words over to herself.

I looked closely into her pale face, thrown back, her large black eyes with glimmering bright lights within them from the moon; and with a sudden chill a vague foreboding of imminent calamity crept into my soul.

XI

The naive enchanting tale of our love lasted for nearly a month. To this day there live with undiminished potency in my soul Olyessia’s beautiful face and those blazing twilights, those dewy mornings fragrant with lilies and honey, full of vigorous freshness and the sonorous noise of birds, those hot, languid, idle days of June. In that time neither weariness, nor fatigue, nor my eternal passion for a wandering life ever touched my soul. I was a pagan god or a strong, young animal, delighting in the light and warmth and conscious joy of life, and in calm, pure, sensuous love.

After my recovery old Manuilikha became so intolerably snappish, met me with such undisguised malice, and, while I was sitting in the hut, moved the pots on the stove with such noisy exasperation, that Olyessia and I preferred to meet in the forest every evening.⁠ ⁠… And the stately green beauty of the pine-forest was the precious setting which adorned our tranquil love.

Every day with deeper and deeper wonder I discovered that Olyessia, the child of the forest who could not even read, showed in many things of life a delicate sensitiveness and a peculiar native refinement. There are always horrible sides to love, in its direct and coarser meaning, which are a torment and a shame to nervous artistic natures. But Olyessia could avoid them with such naive chastity that our love was never once spoiled by a single ugly thought, or one moment of cynicism.

Meanwhile the time of my departure was approaching. To tell the truth, all my official business at Perebrod was already at an end; but I had deliberately delayed my return to town. I had not yet breathed a word of this to Olyessia, for I was afraid even to imagine to myself how she would receive the news that I must go away. Habit had taken roots too deep in me. To see Olyessia every day, to hear her dear voice and musical laughter, to feel the tender beauty of her caresses, had come to be more than a necessity for me. On the rare days when stress of weather prevented us from meeting I felt exactly as though I had been lost, and deprived of what was chief and all-important in my life. Every occupation was tedious and useless to me, and my whole being craved for the forest, the warmth and the light, and Olyessia’s dear familiar face.

The idea of marrying Olyessia entered my head more and more insistently. At first it had only presented itself to me but rarely as a possible, and in extremities an honest, issue to our relationship. Only one thing alarmed and checked me. I dared not even imagine to myself what Olyessia would be like, fashionably dressed, chatting to the wives of my colleagues in the drawing-room, snatched away from the fascinating setting of the old forest, full of legends and mysterious powers.

But the nearer came the time for me to depart, the greater was the anguish and horror of loneliness which possessed me. My resolution to marry grew daily stronger in my soul, and finally I could no longer see it as a bold defiance of society. “Decent, well-educated men marry dressmakers and servant-maids,” I consoled myself, “and they live happily together, and to the day of their death they thank the fate which urged them to this resolution. Shall I be unhappier than the others?”

Once in mid-June, towards evening, I was waiting for Olyessia, according to my habit, at the turn of a narrow forest path among the flowering whitethorn bushes. When she was far in the distance I made out the easy, quick sound of her steps.

“How are you, my darling?” Olyessia said, embracing me and breathing heavily. “Have I kept you waiting too long?⁠ ⁠… It was so hard to get away at the last.⁠ ⁠… Fighting with granny all the while.”

“Isn’t she reconciled yet?”

“Never! She says to me: ‘He’ll ruin you.⁠ ⁠… He’ll play with you at his pleasure and then desert you.⁠ ⁠… He doesn’t love you at all⁠—’ ”

“So that’s what she says about me?”

“Yes, darling, about you.⁠ ⁠… But I don’t believe a single word of it all the same.⁠ ⁠…”

“Does she know everything?”

“I couldn’t say for sure.⁠ ⁠… But I believe she knows.⁠ ⁠… I’ve never spoken to her about it⁠—she guesses. But what’s the good of thinking about that.⁠ ⁠… Come.”

She plucked a twig of whitethorn with a superb spray of blossom and thrust it into her hair. We walked slowly along the path which showed faintly rosy beneath the evening sun.

The night before I had decided that I would speak out at all costs this evening. But a strange timidity lay like a weight upon my tongue. “If I tell Olyessia that I am going away and going to marry her,” I thought, “will she not think that my proposal is only made to soothe the pain of the first wound?⁠ ⁠… But I’ll begin the moment we reach that maple with the peeled trunk,” I fixed in my mind. We were already on a level with the maple. Pale with agitation I had begun to draw a deep breath to begin to speak, when my courage suddenly failed, and ended in a nervous painful beating of my heart and a chill on my lips. “Twenty-seven is my number,” I thought a few moments later. “I’ll count up to twenty-seven, and then!⁠ ⁠…” I began to count to myself, but when I reached twenty-seven I felt that the resolution had not yet matured in me. “No,” I said to myself, “I’d better go on counting to sixty⁠ ⁠… that will make just a minute, and then without fail, without fail⁠—”

“What’s the matter with you today?” Olyessia suddenly asked. “You’re thinking of something unpleasant. What has happened to you?”

Then I began to speak, but with a tone repugnant to myself, with an assumed unnatural carelessness, just as though it were a trifling affair.

“Yes, it really is rather unpleasant.⁠ ⁠… You have guessed it, Olyessia.⁠ ⁠… You see, my service here is finished, and the authorities have summoned me back to town.”

I took a quick side-glance at Olyessia. The colour died away from her face and her lips quivered. She said not a word in reply. Some minutes I walked in silence by her side. The grasshoppers chattered noisily in the grass, and the strained monotonous note of a corncrake sounded somewhere afar.

“Of course you understand, yourself, Olyessia,” I again began, “that it’s no good my staying here, besides there’s nowhere to stay.⁠ ⁠… And I can’t neglect my duty⁠—”

“No⁠ ⁠… why⁠ ⁠… what’s the good of talking?” Olyessia said, in a voice outwardly calm, but so deep and lifeless that terror seized me. “If it’s your duty, of course⁠ ⁠… you must go⁠—”

She stopped by the tree and leaned against the trunk, her face utterly pale, her hands hanging limply by her body, a poignant pitiful smile on her lips. Her pallor frightened me. I rushed to her and pressed her hands vehemently.

“What’s the matter, Olyessia⁠ ⁠… darling!”

“Nothing⁠ ⁠… forgive me.⁠ ⁠… It will pass⁠—now.⁠ ⁠… My head is dizzy.” She controlled herself with an effort and went on, leaving her hand in mine.

“You’re thinking ill of me, Olyessia,” I said reproachfully. “You should be ashamed. Do you think, as well, that I could cast you off and leave you? No, my darling. That’s why I began this conversation⁠—so that you should go this very day to your grandmother and tell her you will be my wife.”

Quite contrary to my expectation, Olyessia showed hardly a trace of surprise at my words.

“Your wife?” She shook her head slowly and sadly. “No, it’s impossible, Vanichka dear.”

“Why, Olyessia? Why?”

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… You can see yourself, it’s funny to think of it even. What kind of wife could I be for you? You are a gentleman, clever, educate⁠—and I? I can’t even read. I don’t know how to behave. You will be ashamed to be my husband.⁠ ⁠…”

“What nonsense, Olyessia,” I replied fervently. “In six months you won’t know yourself. You don’t even suspect the natural wit and genius for observation you have in you. We’ll read all sorts of good books together; we’ll make friends with decent, clever people; we’ll see the whole wide world together, Olyessia. We’ll go together arm in arm just like we are now until old age, to the grave itself; and I shan’t be ashamed of you, but proud and grateful.⁠ ⁠…”

Olyessia answered my passionate speech with a grateful clasp of the hand, but she persisted:

“That’s not everything.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps you don’t know, yet.⁠ ⁠… I never told you.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t a father.⁠ ⁠… I’m illegitimate.⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t, Olyessia.⁠ ⁠… That’s the last thing I care about. What have I got to do with your family, when you yourself are more precious to me than my father and mother, than the whole world even? No, this is all trifling⁠—just excuses!⁠ ⁠…”

Olyessia pressed her shoulder against mine with a gentle submissive caress.

“Darling!⁠ ⁠… You’d better not have begun to talk at all.⁠ ⁠… You are young, free.⁠ ⁠… Would I ever dare to tie you hand and foot for all your life?⁠ ⁠… What if you fall in love with another woman afterwards? Then you will despise me, and curse the day and hour when I agreed to marry you. Don’t be angry, darling!” she cried out in entreaty, seeing by my face that the words had offended me, “I don’t want to hurt you.⁠ ⁠… I’m only thinking of your happiness. And you’ve forgotten granny. Well, ask yourself, could I leave her alone?”

“Why⁠ ⁠… she’ll come with us, too.” (I confess the idea of granny made me uneasy.) “And even if she didn’t want to live with us⁠ ⁠… there are houses in every town⁠ ⁠… called alms-houses, where such old women are given rest, and carefully looked after.”

“No, what are you saying? She will never go away from the forest. She is afraid of people.”

“Well, think of something better yourself, Olyessia. You must choose between me and granny. But I tell you this one thing⁠—that life will be hideous to me without you.”

“You darling!” Olyessia said with profound tenderness. “Just for those words I am grateful.⁠ ⁠… You have warmed my heart.⁠ ⁠… But still I shan’t marry you.⁠ ⁠… I rather go with you without being married, if you don’t send me away.⁠ ⁠… But don’t be in a hurry, please don’t hurry me. Give me a day or two. I’ll think it over well.⁠ ⁠… Besides, I must speak to granny, as well.”

“Tell me, Olyessia,” I asked, for the shadow of a new thought was upon my mind. “Perhaps you are still⁠ ⁠… afraid of the church?”

Perhaps I should have begun with this question. Almost every day I used to quarrel with Olyessia over it, trying to shake her belief in the imaginary curse that hung over her family for the possession of magic powers. There is something of the preacher essential in every Russian intellectual. It is in our blood; it has been instilled by the whole of Russian literature in the last generations. Who could say but, if Olyessia had had a profound belief, and strictly observed the fasts, and never missed a single service, it is quite possible I would have begun to speak ironically (but only a little, for I was always a believer myself) of her piety and to develop a critical curiosity of mind in her. But with a firm, naive conviction she professed her communion with the powers of darkness, and her estrangement from God, of whom she was afraid to speak.

In vain I tried to shake Olyessia’s superstition. All my logical arguments, all my mockery, sometimes rude and wicked, were broken against her submissive confidence in her mysterious, fatal vocation.

“You’re afraid of the church, Olyessia?” I repeated.

She bent her head in silence.

“You think God will not accept you?” I continued with growing passion. “That He will not have mercy on you; He who, though He commands millions of angels, yet came down to earth and suffered a horrible infamous death for the salvation of all men? He who did not disdain the repentance of the worst woman, and promised a highway murderer that on that very day he would sit together with Him in Paradise?”

This interpretation of mine was already familiar to Olyessia; but this time she did not even listen to me. With a quick movement she took off her shawl, rolled it up and flung it in my face. A struggle began. I tried to snatch her nosegay of whitethorn away. She resisted, fell on the ground and dragged me down with her, laughing joyfully and holding out to me her darling lips, moist and opened by her quick breathing.⁠ ⁠…

Late at night, when we had said goodbye and were already a good distance away from each other, I suddenly heard Olyessia’s voice behind me: “Vanichka! Wait a moment.⁠ ⁠… I want to tell you something.”

I turned and went to meet her. Olyessia quickly ran up to me. Already the thin notched silver sickle of the young moon stood in the sky, and by its light I saw that Olyessia’s eyes were full of big brimming tears.

“What is it, Olyessia?” I asked anxiously.

She seized my hands and began to kiss them in turn.

“Darling⁠ ⁠… how sweet you are! How good you are!” she said with a trembling voice. “I was just walking and thinking how much you love me.⁠ ⁠… You see I want awfully to do something that you would like very, very much.”

“Olyessia⁠ ⁠… my precious girl, be calm⁠—”

“Tell me,” she continued, “would you be very glad if I went to church some time? Tell me the truth, the real truth.”

I was thinking. A superstitious thought suddenly crossed my mind that some misfortune would come of it.

“Why don’t you answer? Tell me quickly; would you be glad, or is it all the same to you?”

“How can I say, Olyessia?” I began doubtfully. “Well, yes.⁠ ⁠… I would be glad. I’ve said many times that a man may disbelieve, doubt, even laugh finally. But a woman⁠ ⁠… a woman must be religious without any sophistication. I always feel something touching, feminine, beautiful in the simple tender confidence with which a woman surrenders herself to the protection of God.”

I was silent; neither did Olyessia make any answer, but nestled her head in my bosom.

“Why did you ask me this?” I was curious.

She started suddenly.

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… I just asked.⁠ ⁠… Don’t take any notice. Now, goodbye, darling. Come tomorrow.”

She disappeared. I stood still for a long while, looking into the darkness, listening eagerly to the quick steps going away from me. A sudden dread foreboding seized me. I had an irresistible desire to run after Olyessia, to take hold of her and ask, implore, demand, if need be, that she should not go to church. But I checked the sudden impulse, and I remember that as I went my way I even said aloud:

“It seems to me, my dear Vanichka, that the superstition’s touched you as well.”

My God, why did I not listen then to the dim voice of the heart, which⁠—I now believe it implicitly⁠—never errs in its momentary mysterious presentiments?

XII

The day after this meeting was Whitsuntide, which that year fell on the day of the great martyr Timothy, when, according to the folk legends, the omens of a bad harvest befall. Ecclesiastically the village of Perebrod was considered auxiliary; that is to say, that though there was a church there it had no priest of its own. On rare occasions, in fast time and on the great festivals, it was served by the priest of the village of Volchye.

That day my official duties took me to the neighbouring town, and I set off thither on horseback about eight o’clock, in the chill of the morning. A good time before I had bought a small cob for doing my rounds, a beast six or seven years old, which came from the rough local breed, but had been carefully looked after and made a pet of by the former owner, the district surveyor. The horse’s name was Taranchik. I became greatly attached to the dear beast, with its strong, thin, chiselled legs, with its shaggy mane, from beneath which peeped fiery eyes, with firm, close-pressed lips. Its colour was rare and curious, a grey mouse-colour all over the body save for a piebald rump.

I had to pass right through the village. The big green that ran from the church to the inn was completely covered by long rows of carts in which the peasants of the neighbouring villages had come with their wives and children for the holiday⁠—from Volocha, Zoulnya, and Pechalovka. People were roaming about among the carts. Notwithstanding the early hour and the strict regulations one could already see drunken people among them. (On holidays and at night Shroul, the former innkeeper, sold vodka on the quiet.) The morning was windless and close. The air was sultry and the day promised to be insufferably hot. There was not a single cloud to be seen in the glowing sky, which looked exactly as though it were covered with a silver dust.

When I had done all my business in the little town I had a light hasty meal of pike, stuffed and cooked in the Jewish fashion, washed down with some very inferior muddy beer, and set out for home. As I passed by the smithy I recollected that Taranchik’s off fore-shoe had been loose for some time, and I stopped to have him shod. That took me another hour and a half, so that by the time I was nearing Perebrod it was already between four and five o’clock in the afternoon.

The whole square was packed with drunken, shouting people. The yard and porch of the inn were literally choked by jostling, pushing customers; the Perebrod men were mixed up with strangers, sitting on the grass and in the shade of the carts. Everywhere were heads thrown back and lifted bottles. There was not a single man sober; and the general intoxication had reached the point at which the peasant begins noisily boasting and exaggerating his own drunkenness, and all his movements acquire a feeble, ponderous freedom, when, for instance, in order to nod “yes” he bows his whole body down, bends his knees, and, suddenly losing his balance completely, draws back helplessly. The children were pushing and screaming in the same place beneath the horses’ legs, while the horses munched their hay unconcerned. Elsewhere, a woman who could hardly stand on her feet herself dragged her reluctant husband, foully drunk, home by the sleeve.⁠ ⁠… In the shade of a fence about twenty men and women peasants were pressed close round a blind harpist, whose tremulous, snuffling tenor, accompanied by the monotonous, jingling drone of his instrument, rose sharp above the dull murmur of the crowd. At a distance I could hear the familiar words of the Little Russian song:

“Oh, there rose the star, the evening star,
And stood over Pochah monastery.
Oh, there came out the Turkish troops
Like unto a black cloud.”

This song goes on to tell how the Turks, failing in their attack upon the Pochayev monastery, resolved to take it by cunning. With this end they sent, as it were a gift to the monastery, a huge candle filled with gunpowder. The candle was dragged by twelve yoke of oxen, and the delighted monks were eager to light it before the icon of the Virgin; but God did not allow the wicked design to be accomplished.

“And the elder dreamt a dream
That he should not take the candle,
But bear it away to the open field,
And hew it down with an axe.”

And the monks:

“Took it into the open field,
And began to chop it,
Oh, then bullets and balls began
To scatter on every side.”

It seemed that the insufferably hot air was wholly saturated with a disgusting smell, compounded of vodka dregs, onions, sheepskins, strong shag, and the vapours of dirty human bodies. As I made my way through the people, hardly holding in Taranchik who tossed his head continually, I could not help noticing that unceremonious, curious, and hostile looks were bent on me from every side. Not a single man doffed his cap, which was quite unusual, but the noise grew still at my approach. Suddenly from the very middle of the crowd came a hoarse, drunken shout which I could not clearly distinguish; but it was answered by a restrained giggle. A frightened woman’s voice began to rebuke the brawler.

“Hush, you fool.⁠ ⁠… What are you shouting for? He’ll hear you⁠—”

“What if he does hear?” the peasant replied tauntingly. “What the hell’s he got to do with me? Is he an official? He’s only in the forest with his⁠—”

A long, filthy, horrible phrase hung in the air, with a burst of frantic, roaring laughter. I quickly turned my horse round, and seized the handle of my whip convulsively, overwhelmed by the mad fury which sees nothing, thinks of nothing, and is afraid of nothing. In a flash, a strange, anxious, painful thought went through my mind: “All this has happened once before in my life, many years ago.⁠ ⁠… The sun blazed just as it does now.⁠ ⁠… The whole of the big square was overflowing with a noisy, excited crowd just as it is now.⁠ ⁠… I turned back in a paroxysm of wild anger just in the same way.⁠ ⁠… But where was it? When? When?” I lowered my whip and madly galloped home.

Yarmola came out of the kitchen at his leisure, and said rudely, as he took my horse: “The bailiff of the Marenov farm is sitting in your room.”

I had the fancy that he wanted to add something more that was important to me and painful too; I even imagined that a fleeting expression of evil derision sped over his face. Intentionally I stopped dead in the doorway and gave Yarmola a look of challenge, but without looking at me he was already dragging the horse away by the rein. The horse’s head was stretched forward, and it stepped delicately.

In my room I found the agent of the neighbouring estate, Nikita Nazarich Mishtchenko. He was dressed in a grey jacket with large ginger checks, in narrow cornflower blue trousers, and a fiery red necktie. There was a deep parting down the middle of his hair, which shone with pomade, and from the whole of him exuded the scent of Persian lilac. When he saw me he jumped up from his chair and began to curtsy, not bowing, but somehow breaking at the waist, and at the same time unsheathing the pale gums of both his jaws.

“Extremely delighted to have the honour,” Nikita Nazarich jabbered courteously. “Very glad indeed to see you. I’ve been waiting for you here ever since the service. I hadn’t seen you for so long that I was bored, and missed you very much. Why is it you never look us up? The girls in Stiepany laugh at you nowadays.”

Suddenly he was seized by an instantaneous recollection, and broke out into an irresistible giggle.

“What fun it was today!” he cried out, choking and chuckling. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.⁠ ⁠… I fairly split my sides with laughing.”

“What do you mean? What fun?” I asked without troubling to conceal my annoyance.

“There was a row after service,” Nikita Nazarich continued, punctuating his words with volleys of laughter. “The Perebrod girls.⁠ ⁠… No, by God, I really can’t.⁠ ⁠… The Perebrod girls caught a witch in the marketplace here. Of course, it’s only their peasant ignorance that makes them think she’s a witch.⁠ ⁠… But they did give her a thrashing! They were going to tar her all over, but somehow she slipped from them and got away⁠—”

A ghastly surmise entered my head. I rushed towards the bailiff, and forgetting myself completely in my agitation, gripped him violently by the shoulders.

“What’s that you say?” I cried in a furious voice. “Stop your giggling, damn you? Who’s this witch you’re talking about?”

Instantly his laughing ceased, and he stared with his round, frightened eyes.⁠ ⁠…

“I⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… really don’t know,” he began to stammer in confusion. “I believe it was someone called Samoilikha⁠ ⁠… Manuilikha, was it?⁠ ⁠… Yes, that’s it, the daughter of someone called Manuilikha.⁠ ⁠… The peasants were shouting something or other, but honestly I don’t remember what it was.”

I made him tell me everything he had seen and heard in order. He told his tale absurdly, incoherently, confusing details, and every moment I interrupted him with impatient questions and exclamations, almost with abuse. I could understand very little from his story, and it was only two months later that I could piece together the real order of the vile happening from the words of an eyewitness, the wife of the forester of the Crown Lands, who was also present at Mass that day.

I had not been deceived by my foreboding. Olyessia had broken down her fears and come to church. Though she did not reach the church until the service was half done, and stopped in the entry, her arrival was instantly noticed by every peasant in church. All through the service the women were whispering to each other and glancing behind them.

However Olyessia had strength enough in herself to stand out the Mass right to the end. Perhaps she did not understand the real meaning of those hostile looks; perhaps she despised them out of pride. But when she came out of the church she could get no farther than the church fence before she was surrounded by a crowd of women, which grew larger and larger every minute, and pressed closer and closer upon Olyessia. At first they only examined the helpless girl in silence and without ceremony, while she looked everywhere about her in fright. Then there came a shower of rude insults, hard words, abuse, accompanied by roars of laughter; then all separate words disappeared into one general piercing women’s shriek, wherein everything was confused and the nerves of the agitated crowd became more and more tightly strung. Several times Olyessia attempted to pass through this horrible living ring, but every time she was pushed back into the middle again. Suddenly the squeaking voice of some old hag shrieked from somewhere at the back of the crowd: “Smear the slut with tar⁠—tar the slut!” (Everybody knows that in Little Russia to smear with tar even the gates of the house where a girl lives is considered as a mark of the greatest, the most indelible, disgrace to her.) Almost the same second a pot of tar and a brush appeared over the heads of the raging furies, passed from hand to hand.

Then Olyessia, seized by a paroxysm of anger, horror and despair, rushed on the nearest of her tormentors with such impetuous force that she was thrown to the ground. Immediately a fight burst forth, and innumerable bodies were confused in one general shouting mass. But by some miracle Olyessia succeeded in slipping out from among the tangle, and rushed headlong down the road, without her shawl, her clothes torn to ribbons, through which in many places her naked body could be seen. Stones, vile abuse, laughter and shouts sped after her.⁠ ⁠… When she had run fifty paces Olyessia stopped, turned her pale, scratched, bleeding face to the crowd, and said so loud that each word could be heard all through the square: “Very well.⁠ ⁠… You will remember this. You will weep your fill for this, all of you!”

The eyewitness of the happening told me afterwards that this threat was pronounced with such passionate hatred, in such a determined tone of prophecy, that for a moment the whole crowd was as it were benumbed; but only for a moment, because a fresh explosion of curses was heard immediately.

I say again that it was not till long after that I came to know many details of this story. I had neither strength nor patience to hear Mishtchenko’s tale to the end. I suddenly remember that Yarmola had probably not had time yet to unsaddle my horse, and without a word to the astounded bailiff, I rushed out into the yard. Yarmola was still leading Taranchik along by the fence. I quickly slipped the bridle on, tightened the girths, and raced away into the forest by circuitous paths in order to avoid having to pass through the drunken crowd again.

XIII

I cannot possibly describe my state during that wild gallop. There were moments when I utterly forgot where and why I was riding; only a dim consciousness remained that something irreparable had happened, something grotesque and horrible; a consciousness like the heavy, causeless anxiety which will possess a person in a feverish nightmare. And all the while strangely rang in my head, in time with the horse’s hoof-beat, the snuffling, broken voice of the harpist:

“Oh, there came out the Turkish troops
Like unto a black cloud.”

When I reached the narrow footpath that led straight to Manuilikha’s hut, I jumped off Taranchik and led him by the rein. By the edge of the saddle pads, and wherever the girths and bridle touched him, stood out white lumps of thick froth. From the violent heat of the day and the speed of my gallop, the blood roared in my head as though forced by some immense, unceasing pump.

I tied my horse to the wattle hedge and entered the hut. At first I thought that Olyessia was not there, and my heart and lips were chilled with fear; but a minute later I saw her lying on the bed with her face to the wall and her head hidden in the pillows. She did not even turn at the noise of the opening door.

Manuilikha was squatting on the floor by her side. When she saw me she rose with effort to her feet and shook her hand at me.

“Sh! Don’t make a noise, curse you!” she said in a menacing whisper, coming close to me. She glanced with her cold, faded eyes straight into mine and hissed malignantly: “Yes! You’ve done that beautifully, my darling!”

“Look here, granny!” I answered sternly. “This isn’t the time to settle our account and abuse each other. What’s the matter with Olyessia?”

“Sh.⁠ ⁠… Sh! Olyessia’s lying there unconscious; that’s what’s the matter with Olyessia! If you hadn’t poked your nose in where you had no business, and talked a pack of nonsense to the girl, nothing wrong would have happened. And I just looked on and indulged it, blind fool that I am.⁠ ⁠… But my heart scented misfortune.⁠ ⁠… It scented misfortune from the very first day when you broke into our house, almost by force. Do you mean to say that it wasn’t you who persuaded her to go trailing off to church?” Suddenly the old woman looked at me with her face distorted with hatred. “Wasn’t it you, you cursed gentleman! Don’t lie⁠—don’t put me off with your cunning tricks, you shameless hound! What did you go enticing her to church for?”

“I didn’t entice her, granny.⁠ ⁠… I give you my word. She wanted to, herself.”

“Ah, my grief, my misfortune!” Manuilikha clasped her hands. “She came running back from there⁠—with no face left at all, and all her skirt in rags⁠ ⁠… without a shawl to her head.⁠ ⁠… She tells me how it happened⁠ ⁠… then she laughs, or cries.⁠ ⁠… Just possessed simply.⁠ ⁠… She lay on the bed⁠ ⁠… weeping all the while, and then I saw that she’d fallen into a sleep, I thought.⁠ ⁠… And I was happy like an old fool. ‘She’ll sleep it all away now, for good,’ I thought. I saw her hand hanging down, and I thought I’d better put it right, or it would swell.⁠ ⁠… I felt for the darling’s hand and it was burning, blazing.⁠ ⁠… That meant the fever had begun.⁠ ⁠… For an hour she never stopped speaking, fast, and so pitifully.⁠ ⁠… She only stopped this very minute, a moment ago.⁠ ⁠… What have you done? What have you done to her?”

Suddenly her brown face writhed into a monstrous, disgusting grimace of weeping. Her lips tightened and drooped at the corners: all the muscles of her face stiffened and trembled, her eyelids lifted and wrinkled her forehead into deep folds, and from her eyes came a quick rain of big tears, big as peas. She held her head in her hands, and with her elbows on the table began to rock her whole body to and fro and to whine in a low, drawn-out voice.

“My little daught‑er! My darling grand-daught‑er! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit‑te‑r!”

“Don’t roar, you old fool!” I coarsely broke in on Manuilikha. “You’ll wake her!”

The old woman kept silence, but with the same terrible contortion of her face she went on swinging to and fro, while the big tears splashed on to the table.⁠ ⁠… About ten minutes passed in this way. I sat by Manuilikha’s side and anxiously listened to a fly knocking against the windowpane with a broken yet monotonous buzzing.⁠ ⁠…

“Granny!” suddenly a faint, barely audible voice came from Olyessia: “Granny, who’s here?”

Manuilikha hastily hobbled to the bed, and straightway began to whine once more.

“Oh, my granddaughter, my own! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit‑t‑e‑r!”

“Ah, stop, granny, stop!” Olyessia said with complaining entreaty and suffering in her voice. “Who’s sitting here?”

Cautiously, I approached the bed on tiptoe, with the awkward, guilty conscience of my own gross health which one always feels by a sick bed.

“It’s me, Olyessia,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ve just come from the village on horseback.⁠ ⁠… I was in the town all the morning.⁠ ⁠… You’re ill, Olyessia?”

Without moving her face from the pillow, she stretched out her bare hand, as though she were feeling for something in the air. I understood the movement and took her hot hand into mine. Two huge blue marks, one on the wrist, the other above the elbow, stood out sharp on her tender white skin.

“My darling,” Olyessia began to speak slowly, with difficulty separating one word from another. “I want⁠ ⁠… to look at you⁠ ⁠… but I cannot.⁠ ⁠… They’ve maimed me.⁠ ⁠… All over, my whole body.⁠ ⁠… You remember.⁠ ⁠… You loved my face, so much.⁠ ⁠… You loved it, darling, didn’t you?⁠ ⁠… It made me so glad, always.⁠ ⁠… And now it will disgust you⁠ ⁠… even to look at me.⁠ ⁠… That is why⁠ ⁠… I do not want⁠—”

“Forgive me, Olyessia!” I whispered, bending down to her ear.

Her burning hand pressed mine hard and held it long.

“But what are you saying? Why should I forgive you, my darling? Aren’t you ashamed to think of it even? How could it be your fault? It’s all my own⁠—stupid me.⁠ ⁠… Why did I go?⁠ ⁠… No, my precious, don’t blame yourself.⁠ ⁠…”

“Olyessia, will you let me.⁠ ⁠… Promise me first, that you will⁠—”

“I’ll promise, darling⁠ ⁠… anything you want⁠—”

“Let me send for a doctor.⁠ ⁠… I implore you.⁠ ⁠… Well, you needn’t do anything he tells you, if you like.⁠ ⁠… But say ‘yes’⁠—only for my sake, Olyessia.”

“Oh⁠ ⁠… you’ve caught me in a terrible trap! No, you’d better let me free of my promise. Even if I were really ill, dying⁠—I wouldn’t let the doctor come near me. And am I ill now? It’s only fright that brought it on; it will go off when the evening comes. If it doesn’t, granny will give an infusion of lilies or make some raspberry-tea. What’s the good of the doctor? You⁠—you’re my best doctor. You’ve only just come⁠—and I feel better already.⁠ ⁠… Ah, there’s only one thing wrong, I want to look at you, even if it were only with one eye, but I’m afraid.⁠ ⁠…”

With a gentle effort I lifted Olyessia’s head from the pillow. Her face blazed with feverish redness; her dark eyes shone unnaturally bright; her dry lips trembled nervously. Long, red scratches ploughed her forehead, cheeks, and neck. There were dark bruises on her forehead and under her eyes.

“Don’t look at me.⁠ ⁠… I implore you.⁠ ⁠… I’m ugly now,” Olyessia besought me in a whisper, trying to cover my eyes with her hand.

My heart overflowed with pity. I nestled my lips on Olyessia’s hand, which lay motionless on the blanket, and began to cover it with long, quiet kisses. In the time before I used to kiss her hands too, but she always would draw them away from me in hasty, bashful fright. But now she made no resistance to my caress and with her other hand she gently smoothed my hair.

“You know it all?” she asked in a whisper.

I bent my head in silence. It is true I had not understood everything from Nikita Nazarich’s story. Only I did not want Olyessia to be agitated by having to recall the events of the morning. Suddenly a wave of irrepressible fury overwhelmed me at the idea of the outrage to which she had been subjected.

“Oh, why wasn’t I there!” I cried, holding myself straight and clenching my fists. “I would⁠ ⁠… I would have⁠—”

“Well, don’t worry⁠ ⁠… don’t worry.⁠ ⁠… Don’t be angry, darling.⁠ ⁠…” Olyessia interrupted me meekly.

I could not keep back the tears any more which had been choking my throat and burning my eyes. I pressed my face close to Olyessia’s shoulder, and I began to cry bitterly, silently, trembling all over my body.

“You are crying? You are crying?” There was surprise, tenderness, and compassion in her voice. “My darling⁠ ⁠… don’t⁠ ⁠… please don’t.⁠ ⁠… Don’t torment yourself, my darling.⁠ ⁠… I feel so happy near you.⁠ ⁠… Don’t let us cry while we are together. Let us be happy for the last days, then it won’t be so hard for us to part.”

I raised my head in amazement. A vague presentiment began slowly to press upon my heart.

“The last days, Olyessia? What do you mean⁠—the last? Why should we part?”

Olyessia shut her eyes and kept silence for some seconds. “We must part, Vanichka,” she said resolutely. “When I’m a little bit better, we’ll go away from here, granny and I. We must not stay here any longer.”

“Are you afraid of anything?”

“No, my darling, I’m not afraid of anything, if it comes to that. But why should I tempt people into mischief? Perhaps you don’t know.⁠ ⁠… Over there⁠—in Perebrod.⁠ ⁠… I was so angry and ashamed that I threatened them.⁠ ⁠… And now if anything happens, they will inform on us. If the cattle begin to die or a hut is set on fire⁠—we shall be the guilty ones. Granny”⁠—she turned to Manuilikha, raising her voice⁠—“isn’t it true what I say?”

“What did you say, little granddaughter? I confess I didn’t hear,” the old woman mumbled, coming closer and putting her hand to her ear.

“I said that whatever misfortune happens in Perebrod now they’ll put all the blame on us.”

“That’s true, that’s true, Olyessia⁠—they’ll throw everything on us, the miserable wretches.⁠ ⁠… We are no dwellers in this world. They will destroy us both, destroy us utterly, the cursed.⁠ ⁠… Besides, how did they drive me out of the village?⁠ ⁠… Why?⁠ ⁠… Wasn’t it just the same? I threatened them⁠ ⁠… just out of vexation, too.⁠ ⁠… One stupid fool of a woman⁠—and lo and behold her child died. It was no fault of mine at all⁠—not a dream of my dreaming or a spirit of my calling; but they nearly killed me all the same, the devils.⁠ ⁠… They began to stone me.⁠ ⁠… I ran away and only just managed to protect you⁠—you were a little tiny child then.⁠ ⁠… Well, I thought, it doesn’t matter if they give it to me, but why should an innocent child be injured.⁠ ⁠… No, it all comes to the same thing⁠—they’re savages, a dirty lot of gallows’-birds.”

“But where will you go? You haven’t any relations or friends anywhere.⁠ ⁠… Finally, you’ll have to have money to settle in a new place.”

“We’ll make shift somehow,” Olyessia said negligently. “There’ll be money as well. Granny has saved something.”

“Money as well!” the old woman echoed angrily, going away from the bed. “Widows’ mites, washed in tears⁠—”

“Olyessia.⁠ ⁠… What’s to become of me? You don’t want even to think of me!” I exclaimed, feeling a bitter, sick, ugly reproach against Olyessia rising within me.

She raised herself a little, and, careless of her grandmother’s presence, took my head into her hands, and kissed me on the cheeks and forehead several times in succession.

“I think of you most of all, my own! Only⁠ ⁠… you see⁠ ⁠… it’s not our fate to be together⁠ ⁠… that is it.⁠ ⁠… You remember, I spread out the cards for you? Everything happened as they foretold. It means that Fate does not will our happiness.⁠ ⁠… If it were not for this, do you think I would be frightened of anything?”

“Olyessia, you’re talking of fate again!” I cried impatiently. “I don’t want to believe in it⁠ ⁠… and I never will believe.”

“Oh no, no, no!⁠ ⁠… Don’t say that.” Olyessia began in a frightened whisper. “It’s not for me I’m afraid, but you. No you’d better not start us talking about it.”

In vain I tried to dissuade Olyessia; in vain I painted glowing pictures of unbroken happiness for her, which neither curious fate nor ugly, wicked people could disturb. Olyessia only kissed my hands and shook her head.

“No⁠ ⁠… no⁠ ⁠… no.⁠ ⁠… I know. I see,” she repeated persistently. “There’s nothing but sorrow awaits us⁠ ⁠… nothing⁠ ⁠… nothing.”

Disconcerted and baffled by this superstitious obstinacy, I asked at length, “At least you will let me know the day you are going away?”

Olyessia pondered. Suddenly the shadow of a smile flickered over her lips. “I’ll tell you a little story for that. Once upon a time a wolf was running through the forest when he saw a little hare and said to him: ‘Hi, you hare! I’ll eat you!’ The hare began to implore him: ‘Have mercy on me. I want to live. I have little children at home.’ The wolf did not agree, so the hare said: ‘Well, let me live another three days in the world; then you can eat me, but still I shall feel it easier to die.’ The wolf gave him his three days. He didn’t eat him, but only kept a watch on him. One day passed, then the second, and at last the third was coming to an end. ‘Well, get ready now,’ said the wolf, ‘I’m going to eat you at once.’ Then my hare began to weep with bitter tears. ‘Oh, why did you give me those three days, wolf? It would have been far better if you had eaten the first moment that you saw me. The whole of these three days it hasn’t been life for me, but torment.’

“Darling, that little hare spoke the truth. Don’t you think so?”

I was silent, distraught by an anxious foreboding of the loneliness that threatened me. Olyessia suddenly raised herself and sat up in bed. Her face grew serious at once. “Listen, Vanya.⁠ ⁠…” she said slowly. “Tell me, were you happy while you were with me? Did you feel that it was good?”

“Olyessia! Can you still ask?”

“Wait.⁠ ⁠… Did you regret having met me? Were you thinking of another woman while you were with me?”

“Never for one single second! Not only when I was with you, but when I was alone, I never had a thought for anyone but you.”

“Were you jealous of me? Were you ever angry with me? Were you ever wretched when you were with me?”

“Never, Olyessia, never!”

She put both her hands upon my shoulders, and looked into my eyes with love indescribable.

“Then I tell you, my darling, that you will never think evilly or sadly of me when you remember me,” she said with conviction, as though she were reading the future in my eyes. “When we part you will be miserable, terribly miserable.⁠ ⁠… You will cry, you will not find a place to rest anywhere. And then everything will pass and fade away, and you will think of me without sorrow, easily and happily.”

She let her head fall back on the pillows again and whispered in a feeble voice:

“Now go, my darling.⁠ ⁠… Go home, my precious.⁠ ⁠… I am a little bit tired. No, wait⁠ ⁠… kiss me.⁠ ⁠… Don’t be frightened of granny⁠ ⁠… she won’t mind. You don’t mind, do you, granny?”

“Say goodbye. Part, as you should,” the old woman muttered in discontent.⁠ ⁠… “Why should you want to hide from me? I’ve known it a long while.”

“Kiss me here and here⁠ ⁠… and here,” Olyessia said, touching her eyes, cheeks and mouth with her fingers.

“Olyessia, you’re saying goodbye to me as though we shall never see each other again!” I cried in terror.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, my darling. I don’t know anything. Now, go and God be with you. No, wait⁠ ⁠… just one little moment more.⁠ ⁠… Bend down to me.⁠ ⁠… You know what I regret?” she began to whisper, touching my cheeks with her lips. “That you haven’t given me a child.⁠ ⁠… Oh, how happy I should be!”

I went out into the passage, escorted by Manuilikha. Half the heaven was covered by a black cloud with sharp, curly edges, but the sun was still shining, bending to the east. There was something ominous in this mixing of light and oncoming darkness. The old woman looked up, shading her eyes with her hand as it were an umbrella, and shook her head meaningly.

“There’ll be a thunderstorm over Perebrod, today,” she said with conviction. “And hail as well, most likely.”

XIV

I had almost reached Perebrod when a sudden whirlwind rose, driving columns of dust before it on the road. The first heavy, scattered drops of rain began to fall.

Manuilikha was not mistaken. The storm which had been gathering all through the insufferable heat of the day burst with extraordinary force over Perebrod. The lightning flashed almost without intermission, and the window panes of my room trembled and rang with the roll of the thunder. At about eight o’clock in the evening the storm abated for some minutes, but only to begin again with new exasperation. Suddenly something poured down on to the roof with a deafening crash, and on to the walls of the old house. I rushed to the window. Huge hailstones, as big as a walnut, were falling furiously on to the earth and bouncing high in the air again. I glanced at the mulberry bush which grew against the house. It stood quite bare; every leaf had been beaten off by the blows of the awful hail. Beneath the window appeared Yarmola’s figure, hardly visible in the darkness. He had covered his head in his sheepskin and run out of the kitchen to close the shutters. But he was too late. A huge piece of ice suddenly struck one of the windows with such force that it was smashed, and the tinkling splinters of glass were scattered over the floor of the room.

A fatigue came over me, and I lay down on the bed in my clothes. I thought I would never be able to sleep at all that night, but would toss from side to side in impotent anguish until the morning. So I decided it would be better not to undress; later I might be able to tire myself if only a little by walking up and down the room, over and over again. But a strange thing happened to me. It seemed to me that I had shut my eyes only a second; but when I opened them, long, bright sunbeams were already stretching through the chinks of the shutters, and innumerable motes of golden dust were turning round and round within them.

Yarmola was standing over my bed. On his face was written stern anxiety and impatient expectation. Probably he had been waiting long for me to wake.

“Sir,” he said in a dull voice, in which one could distinguish his uneasiness. “You’d better go away from here, sir.”

I put my feet out of bed and looked at Yarmola with amazement. “Better go away? Where to? Why? You’re mad, surely.”

“No, I’m not mad,” Yarmola snarled. “You didn’t hear what happened through yesterday’s hail? Half the corn of the village is like as though it had been trodden underfoot⁠—cripple Maxim’s, the Goat’s, old Addlepate’s, the brothers Prokopchuk’s, Gordi Olefir’s.⁠ ⁠… She put the mischief on us, the devilish witch.⁠ ⁠… May she rot in hell!”

In an instant I remember what had happened yesterday, the threat Olyessia had made by the church, and her apprehensions.

“And all the village is in a riot now,” Yarmola continued. “They got drunk first thing in the morning, and now they’re fighting.⁠ ⁠… They’ve got something bad to say of you, too, sir.⁠ ⁠… You know what our people are like?⁠ ⁠… If they do something to the witches, that won’t matter, it’ll serve ’em to rights; but you, sir⁠—I’ll just say this one word of warning, you get out of here as quick as you can.”

So Olyessia’s fears had come true. I must let her know at once of the danger that threatened her and Manuilikha. I got up hurriedly, rinsed my face without ever standing still, and in half an hour I was riding full gallop towards the Devil’s Corner.

The nearer I came to the chicken-legged hut the stronger grew the vague melancholy anxiety within me. I said to myself that in a moment a new, unexpected misfortune would certainly befall me.

I almost galloped over the narrow footpath that wound up the sandy hill. The windows of the hut were open, the door wide.

“My God, what has happened?” I whispered, and my heart sank as I entered the passage.

The hut was empty. Over it all reigned the sad, dirty disorder that always remains after a hurried departure. Heaps of dust and rags lay about the floor, and the wooden frame of a bed stood in the corner.

My heart was utterly sad, overflowing with tears; I wanted to get out of the hut already, when my eye was caught by something bright, hung, as if on purpose, in a corner of the window-frame. It was a string of the cheap red beads which they call “corals” in Polyessie⁠—the only thing that remained to me in memory of Olyessia and her tender, greathearted love.

I

One evening, at the house of a well-known literary man, after supper, there arose among the company an unusually heated discussion as to whether there could exist in this time of ours, so barren of exalted feelings, a lasting and unalterable friendship. Everyone said that such friendship did not exist; that there were many trials which the friendship of our days was quite unable to support. It was in the statement of the causes through which friendship was broken, that the company disagreed. One said that money stood in the way of friendship; another that woman stood in the way; a third, similarity of character; a fourth, the cares of family life, and so on.

When the talking and shouting had died down, and the people were tired, though nothing had been explained and no conclusion arrived at, one respected guest, who till that moment had not taken part in the discussion, suddenly broke silence and took up the conversation.

“Yes, gentlemen, all that you have said is both weighty and remarkable. Still I could give you an example from life where friendship triumphed over all the obstacles which you have mentioned, and remained inviolate.”

“And do you mean,” asked the host, “that this friendship endured to the grave?”

“No, not to the grave. But it was broken off for a special reason.”

“What sort of a reason?” asked the host.

“A very simple reason, and at the same time an astonishing one. The friendship was broken by St. Barbara.”

None of the company could understand how, in our commercial days, St. Barbara could sever a friendship, and they all begged Afanasy Silitch⁠—for such was the respected man’s name⁠—to explain his enigmatical words.

Afanasy Silitch smiled as he answered:

“There’s nothing enigmatical about the matter. It’s a simple and sad story, the story of the suffering of a sick heart. And if you would really like to hear, I’ll tell you about it at once with pleasure.”

Everyone prepared to listen, and Afanasy Silitch began his tale.

II

In the beginning of the present century there was a family of princes, Belokon Belonogof, famous on account of their illustrious birth, their riches and their pride. But fate destined this family to die out, so that now there is hardly any remembrance of them. The last of these princes, and he was not of the direct line, finished his worldly career quite lately in the Arzhansky, a well-known night house and gambling den in Moscow, among a set of drunkards, wastrels and thieves. But my story is not about him, but about Prince Andrey Lvovitch, with whom the direct line ended.

During his father’s lifetime⁠—this was before the emancipation of the serfs⁠—Prince Andrey had a commission in the Guards, and was looked upon as one of the most brilliant officers. He had plenty of money, was handsome, and a favourite with the ladies, a good dancer, a duellist⁠—and what not besides? But when his father died, Prince Andrey threw up his commission in spite of all entreaties from his comrades to remain. “No,” said he, “I shall be lost among you, and I’m curious to know all that fate has in store for me.”

He was a strange man, of peculiar and, one might say, fantastic habits. He flattered himself that his every dream could at once be realised. As soon as he had buried his father he took himself off abroad. Astonishing to think of the places he went to! Money was sent to him through every agency and banking house, now in Paris, now in Calcutta, then in New York, then Algiers. I know all this on unimpeachable authority, I must tell you, because my father was the chief steward of his estate of two hundred thousand desiatines.4

After four years the prince returned, thin, his face overgrown with a beard and brown from sunburn⁠—it was difficult to recognise him. As soon as he arrived he established himself on his estate at Pneestcheva. He went about in his dressing-gown. He found it very dull on the whole.

I was always welcome in his house at that time, for the prince liked my cheerful disposition, and as I had received some sort of education I could be somewhat of a companion to him. And then again, I was a free person, for my father had been ransomed in the old prince’s time.

The prince always greeted me affectionately, and made me sit down with him. He even treated me to cigars. I soon got used to sitting down in his presence, but I could never accustom myself to smoking the cigars⁠—they always gave me a kind of seasickness.

I was very curious to see all the things which the prince had brought back with him from his travels. Skins of lions and tigers, curved swords, idols, stuffed animals of all kinds, precious stones and rich stuffs. The prince used to lie on his enormous divan and smoke, and though he laughed at my curiosity he would explain everything I asked about. Then, if he could get himself into the mood, he would begin to talk of his adventures until, as you may well believe, cold shivers ran down my back. He would talk and talk, and then all at once would frown and become silent. I would be silent also. And then he would say, all of a sudden:

“It’s dull for me, Afanasy. See, I’ve been all round the world and seen everything; I’ve caught wild horses in Mexico and hunted tigers in India; I’ve journeyed on the sea and been in danger of drowning; I’ve crossed deserts and been buried in sand⁠—what more is there for me? Nothing, I say; there’s nothing new under the sun.”

I said to him once, quite simply, “You might get married, prince.”

But he only laughed.

“I might marry if I could find the woman whom I could love and honour. I’ve seen all nations and all classes of women, and since I’m not ugly, not stupid, and I’m a rich man, they have all shown me special attention, but I’ve never seen the sort of woman that I need. All of them were either mercenary or depraved, or stupid or just a little too much given to good works. But the fact remains, that I feel bored with life. It would be another matter if I had any sort of talent or gift.”

And to this I generally used to answer: “But what more talent do you want, prince? Thank God for your good looks, for your land⁠—which, as you say yourself, is more than belongs to any German prince⁠—and for the powers with which God has blessed you. I shouldn’t ask for any other talent.”

The prince laughed at this, and said: “You’re a stupid, Afanasy, and much too young as yet. Live a little longer, and if you don’t become an utter scoundrel, you’ll remember these words of mine.”

III

Prince Andrey had, however, a gift of his own, in my opinion, a very great gift, for painting, which had been evident even in his childhood. During his stay abroad he had lived for nearly a year in Rome, and had there learnt to paint pictures. He had even thought at one time, he told me, that he might become a real artist, but for some reason he had given up the idea, or he had become idle. Now he was living on his estate at Pneestcheva, he called to mind his former occupation and took to painting pictures again. He painted the river, the mill, an icon of St. Nicholas for the church⁠—and painted them very well.

Besides this occupation the prince had one other diversion⁠—bear hunting. In our neighbourhood there were a fearful number of these animals. He always went as a mouzhik, with hunting pole and knife, and only took with him the village hunter Nikita Dranny. They called him Dranny because on one occasion a bear had torn a portion of his scalp from his skull, and his head had remained ragged ever since.5

With the peasants the prince was quite simple and friendly. He was so easy to approach that if a man wanted wood for his cottage, or if his horse had had an accident, all he had to do was to go straight to the prince and ask for what he wanted. He knew that he would not be refused. The only things the prince could not stand were servility and lying. He never forgave a lie.

And, moreover, the serfs loved him because he made no scandals with their women folk. The maids of our countryside had a name for their good looks, and there were landowners in those days who lived worse than Turks, with a harem for themselves and for their friends. But with us, no⁠—no, nothing of that sort. That is, of course, nothing scandalous. There were occasions, as there always must be, man being so weak, but these were quiet and gentle affairs of the heart, and no one was offended.

But though Prince Andrey was simple and friendly towards his inferiors, he was proud and insolent in his bearing towards his equals and to those in authority, even needlessly so. He especially disliked officials. Sometimes an official would come to our estate to see about the farming arrangements, or in connection with the police or with the excise department⁠—at that time the nobility reckoned any kind of service, except military service, as a degradation⁠—and he would act as a person new to office sometimes does: he would strut about with an air of importance, and ask “Why aren’t things so and so?” The steward would inform him politely that everything was in accordance with the prince’s orders and mustn’t be altered. That meant, of course⁠—You take your regulation bribe and be off with you. But the official would not be daunted. “And what’s your prince to me?” he would say. “I’m the representative of the law here.” And he would order the steward to take him at once to the prince. My father would warn him out of pity. “Our prince,” he would say, “has rather a heavy hand.” But the official would not listen. “Where is the prince?” he would cry. And he would rush into the prince’s presence exclaiming, “Mercy on us, what’s all this disorder on your estate! Where else can one see such a state of things? I⁠ ⁠… we⁠ ⁠…” The prince would let him go on, and say nothing, then suddenly his face would become purple and his eyes would flash⁠—he was terrible to look at when he was angry. “Take the scoundrel to the stables!” he would cry. And then the official would naturally receive a flogging. At that time many landowners approved of this, and for some reason or other the floggings always took place in the stables, according to the custom of their ancestors. But after two or three days the prince would secretly send my father into the town with a packet of banknotes for the official who had been chastised. I used to dare to say to him sometimes, “You know, prince, the official will complain about you, and you’ll have to answer for your doings.” And he would say: “Well, how can that be? Let me be brought to account before God and my Emperor, but I’m bound to punish impudence.”

But better than this, if you please, was his behaviour towards the Governor at one time. One day a workman from the ferry came running up to him to tell him that the Governor was on the other side of the river.

“Well, what of it?” said the prince.

“He wants the ferryboat, your Excellency,” said the peasant. He was a sensible man, and knew the prince’s character.

“How did he ask for it?” said the prince.

“The captain of the police sent to say that the ferryboat was wanted immediately.”

The prince at once gave the order:

“Don’t let him have it.”

And he didn’t. Then the Governor guessed what had happened, and he wrote a little note and sent it, asking dear Andrey Lvovitch⁠—they were really distant cousins⁠—to be so kind as to let him use the ferry, and signing the note simply with his Christian and surname. On this the prince himself kindly went down to the river to meet the Governor, and gave him such a feast in welcome that he couldn’t get away from Pneestcheva for a whole week.

To people of his own class, even to the most impoverished of them, the prince never refused to “give satisfaction” in cases where a misunderstanding had arisen. But people were generally on their guard, knowing his indomitable character and that he had fought in his time eighteen duels. Duels among the aristocracy were very common at that time.

IV

The prince lived in this way on his estate at Pneestcheva for more than two years. Then the Tsar sent out his manifesto granting freedom to the serfs, and there commenced a time of alarm and disturbance among the landowners. Many of them were not at all pleased about it, and sat at home on their faraway estates and took to writing reports on the matter. Others, more avaricious and farsighted, were on the watch with the freed peasants, trying to turn everything to their own advantage. And some were very much afraid of a rising of the peasants, and applied to the authorities for any kind of troops to defend their estates.

When the manifesto arrived, Prince Andrey called his peasants together and explained the matter to them in very simple words, without any insinuations. “You,” he said, “are now free, as free as I am. And this is a good thing to have happened. But don’t use your freedom to do wrong, because the authorities will always keep an eye on you. And, remember, that as I have helped you in the past I shall continue to do so. And take as much land as you can cultivate for your ransom.”

Then he suddenly left the place and went off to Petersburg.

I think you know very well what happened at that time, gentlemen, both in Moscow and in Petersburg. The aristocracy turned up immediately, with piles of money, and went on the spree. The farmers and the holders of concessions and the bankers had amazed all Russia, but they were only as children or puppies in comparison with the landowners. It’s terrible to think what took place. Many a time a man’s whole fortune was thrown to the winds for one supper.

Prince Andrey fell into this very whirlpool, and began to whirl about. Added to that, he fell in again with his old regimental friends, and then he let himself go altogether. However, he didn’t stay long in Petersburg, for he was quickly forced to leave the city against his will. It was all because of some horses.

V

He was having supper one evening with his officer friends in one of the most fashionable restaurants. They had had very much to drink, champagne above all. Suddenly the talk turned on horses⁠—it’s well known to be an eternal subject of conversation with officers⁠—as to who owned the most spirited team in Petersburg. One Cossack⁠—I don’t remember his name, I only know that he was one of the reigning princes in the Caucasus⁠—said that at that time the most spirited horses were a pair of black stallions belonging to ⸻, and he named a lady in an extremely high position.

“They are not horses,” said he, “but wild things. It’s only Ilya who can manage them, and they won’t allow themselves to be outdistanced.”

But Prince Andrey laughed at this.

“I’d pass them with my bays.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” said the Cossack.

“Yes, I would.”

“You wouldn’t race them.”

“Yes, I would.”

“Well, in that case,” said the Cossack, “we’ll lay a wager about it at once.”

And the wager was laid. It was agreed that if Prince Andrey were put to shame he should give the Cossack his pair of bay horses, and with them a sledge and a carriage with silver harness, and if the prince got in front of Ilya’s team, then the Cossack would buy up all the tickets in the theatre for an opera when Madame Barba was to sing, so that they could walk about in the gallery and not allow anyone else in the theatre. At that time Madame Barba had captivated all the beau-monde.

Very well, then. On the next day, when the prince woke up, he ordered the bay horses to be put into the carriage. The horses were not very much to look at, hairy country horses, but they were sufficiently fast goers; the most important thing about them was that they liked to get in front of other horses, and they were exceptionally long-winded.

As soon as his companions saw that the prince was really in earnest about the matter, they tried to dissuade him. “Give up this wager,” urged they, “you can’t escape getting into some trouble over it.” But the prince would not listen, and ordered his coachman, Bartholomew, to be called.

The coachman, Bartholomew, was a gloomy and, so to speak, absentminded man. God had endowed him with such extraordinary strength that he could even stop a troika when the horses were going at full gallop. The horses would fall back on their hind legs. He drank terribly, had no liking for conversation with anyone, and, though he adored the prince with all his soul, he was rude and supercilious towards him, so that he sometimes had to receive a flogging. The prince called Bartholomew to him and said: “Do you think, Bartholomew, you could race another pair of horses with our bays?”

“Which pair?” asked Bartholomew.

The prince told him which horses they were. Bartholomew scratched the back of his head.

“I know that pair,” he said, “and I know Ilya, their driver, pretty well. He’s a dangerous man. However, if your Excellency wishes it, we can race them. Only, if the bay horses are ruined, don’t be angry.”

“Very well,” said the prince. “And now, how much vodka shall we pour down your throat?”

But Bartholomew wouldn’t have any vodka.

“I can’t manage the horses if I’m drunk,” said he.

The prince got in the carriage, and they started. They took up their position at the end of the Nevsky Prospect, and waited. It was known beforehand that the important personage would drive out at midday. And so it happened. At twelve o’clock the pair of black horses were seen. Ilya was driving, and the lady was in the sledge.

The prince let them just get in front, and then he said to the coachman:

“Drive away!”

Bartholomew let the horses go. As soon as Ilya heard the tramping of the horses behind, he turned round; the lady looked round also. Ilya gave his horses the reins, and Bartholomew also whipped up his. But the owner of the blacks was a woman of an ardent and fearless temperament, and she had a passion for horses. She said to Ilya, “Don’t dare to let that scoundrel pass us!”

What began to happen then I can’t describe. Both the coachmen and the horses were as if mad; the snow rose up above them in clouds as they raced along. At first the blacks seemed to be gaining, but they couldn’t last out for a long time, they got tired. The prince’s horses went ahead. Near the railway station, Prince Andrey jumped out of his carriage, and the personage threatened him angrily with her finger.

Next day the governor of Petersburg⁠—His Serene Highness Prince Suvorof⁠—sent for the prince, and said to him:

“You must leave Petersburg at once, prince. If you’re not punished and made an example of, it’s only because the lady whom you treated in such a daring fashion yesterday has a great partiality for bold and desperate characters. And she knows also about your wager. But don’t put your foot in Petersburg again, and thank the Lord that you’ve got off so cheaply.”

But, gentlemen, I’ve been gossiping about Prince Andrey and I haven’t yet touched on what I promised to tell you. However, I’m soon coming to the end of my story. And, though it has been in rather a disjointed fashion, I have described the personality of the prince as best I can.

VI

After his famous race the prince went off to Moscow, and there continued to behave as he had done in Petersburg, only on a larger scale. At one time the whole town talked of nothing but his caprices. And it was there that something happened to him which caused all the folks at Pneestcheva to mock. A woman came into his life.

But I must tell you what sort of a woman she was. A queen of women! There are none like her in these days. Of a most marvellous beauty.⁠ ⁠… She had formerly been an actress, then she had married a merchant millionaire, and when he died⁠—she didn’t want to marry anyone else⁠—she said that she preferred to be free.

What specially attracted the prince to her was her carelessness. She didn’t wish to know anyone, neither rich nor illustrious people, and she seemed to think nothing of her own great wealth. As soon as Prince Andrey saw her he fell in love with her. He was used to having women run after him, and so he had very little respect for them. But in this case the lady paid him no special attention at all. She was gay and affable, she accepted his bouquets and his presents, but directly he spoke of his feelings she laughed at him. The prince was stung by this treatment. He nearly went out of his mind.

Once the prince went with Marya Gavrilovna⁠—that was the lady’s name⁠—to the “Yar,” to hear some gipsy singers. The party numbered fifteen. At that time the prince was surrounded and fawned upon by a whole crowd of hangers-on⁠—his Belonogof company, as he called them⁠—his own name was Belonogof. They were all seated at a table drinking wine, and the gipsies were singing and dancing. Suddenly, Marya Gavrilovna wanted to smoke. She took a packetoska⁠—the sort of twisted straw cigarette they used to smoke in those days⁠—and looked round for a light. The prince noticed this, and in a moment he pulled out a banknote for a thousand roubles, lighted it at a candle and handed it to her. Everybody in the company exclaimed; the gipsies even stopped singing, and their eyes gleamed with greed. And then someone at a neighbouring table said, not very loudly, but with sufficient distinctness, “Fool!”

The prince jumped up as if he had been shot. At the other table sat a small sickly-looking man, who looked straight at the prince in the calmest manner possible. The prince went over to him at once.

“How dare you call me a fool? Who are you?”

The little man regarded him very coolly.

“I,” said he, “am the artist Rozanof. And I called you a fool because, with that money you burnt just to show off, you might have paid for the support of four sick people in the hospital for a whole year.”

Everybody sat and waited for what would happen. The unrestrained character of the prince was well known. Would he at once chastise the little man, or call him out to a duel, or simply order him to be whipped?

But, after a little silence, the prince suddenly turned to the artist with these unexpected words:

“You’re quite right, Mr. Rozanof. I did indeed act as a fool before this crowd. But now if you don’t at once give me your hand, and accept five thousand roubles for the Marinskaya Hospital, I shall be deeply offended.”

And Rozanof answered: “I’ll take the money, and I’ll give you my hand with equal pleasure.”

Then Marya Gavrilovna whispered to the prince, “Ask the artist to come and talk to us, and send away these friends of yours.”

The prince turned politely to Rozanof and begged him to join them, and then he turned to the officers and said, “Be off with you!”

VII

From that time the prince and Rozanof were bound together in a close friendship. They couldn’t spend a day without seeing one another. Either the artist came to visit the prince or Prince Andrey went to see the artist. Rozanof was living then in two rooms on the fourth floor of a house in Mestchanskaya Street⁠—one he used as a studio, the other was his bedroom. The prince invited the artist to come and live with him, but Rozanof refused. “You are very dear to me,” said he, “but in wealthy surroundings I might be idle and forget my art.” So he wouldn’t make any change.

They were interested in everything that concerned one another. Rozanof would begin to talk of painting, of various pictures, of the lives of great artists⁠—and the prince would listen and not utter a word. Then afterwards he would tell about his adventures in wild countries, and the artist’s eyes would glisten.

“Wait a little,” he would say. “I think I shall soon paint a great picture. Then I shall have plenty of money, and we’ll go abroad together.”

“But why do you want money?” asked the prince. “If you like, we can go tomorrow. Everything I have I will share with you.”

But the artist remained firm.

“No, wait a little,” said he. “I’ll paint the picture and then we can talk about it.”

There was a real friendship between them. It was even marvellous⁠—for Rozanof had such an influence over the prince that he restrained him from many of the impetuous and thoughtless actions to which, with his fiery temperament, he was specially prone.

VIII

The prince’s love for Marya Gavrilovna did not become less, it even increased in fervency, but he had no success with the lady. He pressed his hands to his heart, and went down on his knees to her many times, but she had only one answer for him: “But what can I do if I don’t love you?” “Well, don’t love me,” said the prince; “perhaps you will love me by and by, but I can’t be happy without you.” Then she would say, “I’m very sorry for you, but I can’t help your unhappiness.” “You love someone else, perhaps,” said the prince. “Perhaps I love someone else,” said she, and she laughed.

The prince grew very sad about it. He would lie at home on the sofa, gloomy and silent, turn his face to the wall, and even refuse to take any food. Everybody in the house went about on tiptoe.⁠ ⁠… One day Rozanof called when the prince was in this state, and he too looked out of sorts. He came into the prince’s room, said “Good morning,” and nothing more. They were both silent. At length the artist pulled himself together and said to the prince, “Listen, Andrey Lvovitch. I’m very sorry that with my friendly hand I have got to deal you a blow.”

The prince, who was lying with his face to the wall, said, “Please come straight to the point without any introduction.”

Then the artist explained what he meant.

“Marya Gavrilovna is going to live with me as my wife,” said he.

“You’re going out of your mind,” said the prince.

“No,” said the artist, “I’m not going out of my mind. I have loved Marya Gavrilovna for a long time, but I never dared tell her so. But today she said to me: ‘Why do we hide things from one another? I’ve seen for a long time that you love me, and I also love you. I won’t marry you, but we can live together.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

The artist told the whole story, and the prince lay on the sofa neither moving nor saying a word. Rozanof sat there and looked at him, and presently he went quietly away.

IX

However, after a week, the prince overcame his feelings, though it cost him a good deal, for his hair had begun to turn grey. He went to Rozanof and said:

“I see love can’t be forced, but I don’t want to lose my only friend for the sake of a woman.”

Rozanof put his arms about his friend and wept. And Marya Gavrilovna gave him her hand⁠—she was there at the time⁠—and said:

“I admire you very much, Andrey Lvovitch, and I also want to be your friend.”

Then the prince was quite cheered up, and his face brightened. “Confess now,” said he, “if Rozanof hadn’t called me a fool that time in the Yar, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with him?”

She only smiled.

“That’s very probable,” said she.

Then, in another week, something else happened. Prince Andrey came in one day, dull and absentminded. He spoke of one thing and another, but always as if he had some persistent idea in the background. The artist, who knew his character, asked what was the matter.

“Oh, nothing,” said the prince.

“Well, but all the same, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, I tell you. The stupid bank in which my money is.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well?”

“It’s failed. And now I’ve nothing of all my property except what I have here with me.”

“Oh, that’s really nothing,” said Rozanof, and he at once called Marya Gavrilovna, and they had the upper part of their house put in order so that the prince might come and live with them.

X

So the prince settled down to live with Rozanof. He used to lie on the sofa all day, read French novels and polish his nails. But he soon got tired of this, and one day he said to his friend:

“Do you know, I once learnt to paint!”

Rozanof was surprised. “No, did you?”

“Yes, I did. I can even show you some of my pictures.”

Rozanof looked at them, and then he said:

“You have very good capabilities, but you have been taught in a stupid school.”

The prince was delighted.

“Well,” he asked, “if I began to study now, do you think I should ever paint anything good?”

“I think it’s very probable indeed.”

“Even if I’ve been an idler up till now?”

“Oh, that’s nothing. You can overcome it by work.”

“When my hair is grey?”

“That doesn’t matter either. Other people have begun later than you. If you like, I’ll give you lessons myself.”

So they began to work together. Rozanof could only marvel at the great gift for painting which the prince displayed. And the prince was so taken up by his work that he never wanted to leave it, and had to be dragged away by force.

Five months passed. Then, one day, Rozanof came to the prince and said:

“Well, my colleague, you are ripening in your art, and you already understand what a drawing is and the school. Formerly you were a savage, but now you have developed a refined taste. Come with me and I will show you the picture I once gave you a hint about. Until now I’ve kept it a secret from everybody, but now I’ll show you, and you can tell me your opinion of it.”

He led the prince into his studio, placed him in a corner from whence he could get a good view, and drew a curtain which hung in front of the picture. It represented St. Barbara washing the sores on the feet of lepers.

The prince stood for a long time and looked at the picture, and his face became gloomy as if it had been darkened.

“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Rozanof.

“This⁠—” answered the prince, with rancour, “that I shall never touch a paintbrush again.”

XI

Rozanof’s picture was the outcome of the highest inspiration and art. It showed St. Barbara kneeling before the lepers and bathing their terrible feet, her face radiant and joyful, and of an unearthly beauty. The lepers looked at her in prayerful ecstasy and inexpressible gratitude. The picture was a marvel. Rozanof had designed it for an exhibition, but the newspapers proclaimed its fame beforehand. The public flocked to the artist’s studio. People came, looked at St. Barbara and the lepers, and stood there for an hour or more. And even those who knew nothing about art were moved to tears. An Englishman, who was in Moscow at the time, a Mr. Bradley, offered fifteen thousand roubles for the picture as soon as he looked at it. Rozanof, however, would not agree to sell it.

But something strange was happening to the prince at that time. He went about with a sullen look, seemed to get thinner, and talked to no one. He took to drink. Rozanof tried to get him to talk, but he only got rude answers, and when the public had left the studio, the prince would seat himself before the easel and remain there for hours, immovable, gazing at the holy Barbara, gazing.⁠ ⁠…

So it went on for more than a fortnight, and then something unexpected happened⁠—to tell the truth, something dreadful.

Rozanof came home one day and asked if Prince Andrey were in. The servant said that the prince had gone out very early that morning, and had left a note.

The artist took the note and read it. And this was what was written. “Forgive my terrible action. I was mad, and in a moment I have repented of my deed. I am going away, never to return, because I haven’t strength to kill myself.” The note was signed with his name.

Then the artist understood it all. He rushed into his studio and found his divine work lying on the floor, torn to pieces, trampled upon, cut into shreds with a knife.⁠ ⁠…

Then he began to weep, and said:

“I’m not sorry for the picture, but for him. Why couldn’t he tell me what was in his mind? I would have sold the picture at once, or given it away to someone.”

But nothing more was ever heard of Prince Andrey, and no one knew how he lived after his mad deed.

I

Hamlet was being played.

All tickets had been sold out before the morning of the performance. The play was more than usually attractive to the public because the principal part was to be taken by the famous Kostromsky, who, ten years before, had begun his artistic career with a simple walking-on part in this very theatre, and since then had played in all parts of Russia, and gained a resounding fame such as no other actor visiting the provinces had ever obtained. It was true that, during the last year, people had gossiped about him, and there had even appeared in the Press certain vague and only half-believed rumours about him. It was said that continual drunkenness and debauch had unsettled and ruined Kostromsky’s gigantic talent, that only by being “on tour” had he continued to enjoy the fruit of his past successes, that impresarios of the great metropolitan theatres had begun to show less of their former slavish eagerness to agree to his terms. Who knows, there may have been a certain amount of truth in these rumours? But the name of Kostromsky was still great enough to draw the public. For three days in succession, in spite of the increased prices of seats, there had been a long line of people waiting at the box office. Speculative buyers had resold tickets at three, four, and even five times their original value.

The first scene was omitted, and the stage was being prepared for the second. The footlights had not yet been turned up. The scenery of the queen’s palace was hanging in strange, rough, variegated cardboard. The stage carpenters were hastily driving in the last nails.

The theatre had gradually filled with people. From behind the curtain could be heard a dull and monotonous murmur.

Kostromsky was seated in front of the mirror in his dressing-room. He had only just arrived, but was already dressed in the traditional costume of the Danish prince; black-cloth buckled shoes, short black velvet jacket with wide lace collar. The theatrical barber stood beside him in a servile attitude, holding a wig of long fair hair.

“He is fat and pants for breath,” declaimed Kostromsky, rubbing some cold cream on his palm and beginning to smear his face with it.

The barber suddenly began to laugh.

“What’s the matter with you, fool?” asked the actor, not taking his eyes from the mirror.

“Oh, I⁠ ⁠… er⁠ ⁠… nothing⁠ ⁠… er.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, it’s evident you’re a fool. They say that I’m too fat and flabby. And Shakespeare himself said that Hamlet was fat and panted for breath. They’re all good-for-nothings, these newspaper fellows. They just bark at the wind.”

Having finished with the cold cream, Kostromsky put the flesh tints on to his face in the same manner, but looking more attentively into the mirror.

“Yes, makeup is a great thing; but all the same, my face is not what it used to be. Look at the bags under my eyes, and the deep folds round my mouth⁠ ⁠… cheeks all puffed out⁠ ⁠… nose lost its fine shape. Ah, well, we’ll struggle on a bit longer.⁠ ⁠… Kean drank, Mochalof drank⁠ ⁠… hang it all. Let them talk about Kostromsky and say that he’s a bloated drunkard. Kostromsky will show them in a moment⁠ ⁠… these youngsters⁠ ⁠… these water-people⁠ ⁠… he’ll show them what real talent can do.”

“You, Ethiop, have you ever seen me act?” he asked, turning suddenly on the barber.

The man trembled all over with pleasure.

“Mercy on us, Alexander Yevgrafitch.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I⁠ ⁠… O Lord!⁠ ⁠… is it possible for me not to have seen the greatest, one may say, of Russian artists? Why, in Kazan I made a wig for you with my own hands.”

“The devil may know you. I don’t remember,” said Kostromsky, continuing to make long and narrow lines of white down the length of his nose, “there are so many of you.⁠ ⁠… Pour out something to drink!”

The barber poured out half a tumblerful of vodka from the decanter on the marble dressing-table, and handed it to Kostromsky.

The actor drank it off, screwed up his face, and spat on the floor.

“You’d better have a little something to eat, Alexander Yevgrafitch,” urged the barber persuasively. “If you take it neat⁠ ⁠… it goes to your head.⁠ ⁠…”

Kostromsky had almost finished his makeup; he had only to put on a few streaks of brown colouring, and the “clouds of grief” overshadowed his changed and ennobled countenance.

“Give me my cloak!” said he imperiously to the barber, getting up from his chair.

From the theatre there could already be heard, in the dressing-room, the sounds of the tuning of the instruments in the orchestra.

The crowds of people had all arrived. The living stream could be heard pouring into the theatre and flowing into the boxes stalls and galleries with the noise and the same kind of peculiar rumble as of a far-off sea.

“It’s a long time since the place has been so full,” remarked the barber in servile ecstasy; “there’s n‑not an empty seat!”

Kostromsky sighed.

He was still confident in his great talent, still full of a frank self-adoration and the illimitable pride of an artist, but, although he hardly dared to allow himself to be conscious of it, he had an uneasy feeling that his laurels had begun to fade. Formerly he had never consented to come to the theatre until the director had brought to his hotel the stipulated five hundred roubles, his night’s pay, and he had sometimes taken offence in the middle of a play and gone home, swearing with all his might at the director, the manager, and the whole company.

The barber’s remark was a vivid and painful reminder of these years of his extraordinary and colossal successes. Nowadays no director would bring him payment in advance, and he could not bring himself to contrive to demand it.

“Pour out some more vodka,” said he to the barber.

There was no more vodka left in the decanter. But the actor had received sufficient stimulus. His eyes, encircled by fine sharp lines of black drawn along both eyelids, were larger and more full of life, his bent body straightened itself, his swollen legs, in their tight-fitting black, looked lithe and strong.

He finished his toilet by dusting powder over his face, with an accustomed hand, then slightly screwing up his eyes he regarded himself in the mirror for the last time, and went out of the dressing-room.

When he descended the staircase, with his slow self-reliant step, his head held high, every movement of his was marked by that easy gracious simplicity which had so impressed the actors of the French company, who had seen him when he, a former draper’s assistant, had first appeared in Moscow.

II

The stage manager had already rushed forward to greet Kostromsky.

The lights in the theatre blazed high. The chaotic disharmony of the orchestra tuning their instruments suddenly died down. The noise of the crowd grew louder, and then, as it were, suddenly subsided a little.

Out broke the sounds of a loud triumphal march. Kostromsky went up to the curtain and looked through a little round hole made in it at about a man’s height. The theatre was crowded with people. He could only see distinctly the faces of those in the first three rows, but beyond, wherever his eye turned, to left, to right, above, below, there moved, in a sort of bluish haze, an immense number of many-coloured human blobs. Only the side boxes, with their white and gold arabesques and their crimson barriers, stood out against all this agitated obscurity. But as he looked through the little hole in the curtain, Kostromsky did not experience in his soul that feeling⁠—once so familiar and always singularly fresh and powerful⁠—of a joyous, instantaneous uplifting of his whole moral being. It was just a year since he had ceased to feel so, and he explained his indifference by thinking he had grown accustomed to the stage, and did not suspect that this was the beginning of paralysis of his tired and worn-out soul.

The manager rushed on to the stage behind him, all red and perspiring, with dishevelled hair.

“Devil! Idiocy! All’s gone to the devil! One might as well cut one’s throat,” he burst out in a voice of fury, running up to Kostromsky. “Here you, devils, let me come to the curtain! I must go out and tell the people at once that there will be no performance. There’s no Ophelia. Understand! There’s no Ophelia.”

“How do you mean there’s no Ophelia?” said the astonished Kostromsky, knitting his brows. “You’re joking, aren’t you, my friend?”

“There’s no joking in me,” snarled the manager. “Only just this moment, five minutes before she’s wanted, I receive this little billet-doux from Milevskaya. Just look, look, what this idiot writes! ‘I’m in bed with a feverish cold and can’t play my part.’ Well? Don’t you understand what it means? This is not a pound of raisins, old man, pardon the expression, it means we can’t produce the play.”

“Someone else must take her place,” Kostromsky flashed out. “What have her tricks to do with me?”

“Who can take her place, do you think? Bobrova is Gertrude, Markovitch and Smolenskaya have a holiday and they’ve gone off to the town with some officers. It would be ridiculous to make an old woman take the part of Ophelia. Don’t you think so? Or there’s someone else if you like, a young girl student. Shall we ask her?”

He pointed straight in front of him to a young girl who was just walking on to the stage; a girl in a modest coat and fur cap, with gentle pale face and large dark eyes.

The young girl, astonished at such unexpected attention, stood still.

“Who is she?” asked Kostromsky in a low voice, looking with curiosity at the girl’s face.

“Her name’s Yureva. She’s here as a student. She’s smitten with a passion for dramatic art, you see,” answered the manager, speaking loudly and without any embarrassment.

“Listen to me, Yureva. Have you ever read Hamlet?” asked Kostromsky, going nearer to the girl.

“Of course I have,” answered she in a low confused voice.

“Could you play Ophelia here this evening?”

“I know the part by heart, but I don’t know if I could play it.”

Kostromsky went close up to her and took her by the hand.

“You see⁠ ⁠… Milevskaya has refused to play, and the theatre’s full. Make up your mind, my dear! You can be the saving of us all!”

Yureva hesitated and was silent, though she would have liked to say much, very much, to the famous actor. It was he who, three years ago, by his marvellous acting, had unconsciously drawn her young heart, with an irresistible attraction, to the stage. She had never missed a performance in which he had taken part, and she had often wept at nights after seeing him act in Cain, in The Criminal’s Home, or in Uriel da Costa. She would have accounted it her greatest happiness, and one apparently never to be attained⁠ ⁠… not to speak to Kostromsky; no, of that she had never dared to dream, but only to see him nearer in ordinary surroundings.

She had never lost her admiration of him, and only an actor like Kostromsky, spoilt by fame and satiated by the attentions of women, could have failed to notice at rehearsals the two large dark eyes which followed him constantly with a frank and persistent adoration.

“Well, what is it? Can we take your silence for consent?” insisted Kostromsky, looking into her face with a searching, kindly glance, and putting into the somewhat nasal tones of his voice that irresistible tone of friendliness which he well knew no woman could withstand.

Yureva’s hand trembled in his, her eyelids drooped, and she answered submissively:

“Very well. I’ll go and dress at once.”

III

The curtain rose, and no sooner did the public see their favourite than the theatre shook with sounds of applause and cries of ecstasy.

Kostromsky standing near the king’s throne, bowed many times, pressed his hand to his heart, and sent his gaze over the whole assembly.

At length, after several unsuccessful attempts, the king, taking advantage of a moment when the noise had subsided a little, raised his voice and began his speech:

“Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe;
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him.⁠ ⁠…”

The enthusiasm of the crowd had affected Kostromsky, and when the king turned to him, and addressed him as “brother and beloved son,” the words of Hamlet’s answer:

“A little more than kin and less than kind,”

sounded so gloomily ironical and sad that an involuntary thrill ran through the audience.

And when the queen, with hypocritical words of consolation, said:

“Thou knowst ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity,”

he slowly raised his long eyelashes, which he had kept lowered until that moment, looked reproachfully at her, and then answered with a slight shake of the head:

“Ay, madam, it is common.”

After these words, expressing so fully his grief for his dead father, his own aversion from life and submission to fate, and his bitter scorn of his mother’s light-mindedness, Kostromsky, with the special, delicate, inexplicable sensitiveness of an experienced actor, felt that now he had entirely gripped his audience and bound them to him with an inviolable chain.

It seemed as if no one had ever before spoken with such marvellous force that despairing speech of Hamlet at the exit of the king and queen:

“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!”

The nasal tones of Kostromsky’s voice were clear and flexible. Now it rang out with a mighty clang, then sank to a gentle velvety whisper or burst into hardly restrained sobs.

And when, with a simple yet elegant gesture, Kostromsky pronounced the last words:

“But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!”

the audience roared out its applause.

“Yes, the public and I understand one another,” said the actor as he went off the stage into the wings after the first act. “Here, you crocodile, give me some vodka!” he shouted at once to the barber who was coming to meet him.

IV

“Well, little father, don’t you think he’s fine?” said a young actor-student to Yakovlef, the patriarch of provincial actors, who was taking the part of the king.

The two were standing together on the staircase which led from the dressing-rooms to the stage.

Yakovlef pursed and bit his full thick lips.

“Fine! Fine! But all the same, he acts as a boy. Those who saw Mochalof play Hamlet wouldn’t marvel at this. I, brother, was just such a little chap as you are when I had the happiness of seeing him first. And when I come to die, I shall look back on that as the most blessed moment of my life. When he got up from the floor of the stage and said:

“ ‘Let the stricken deer go weep’

the audience rose as one man, hardly daring to breathe. And now watch carefully how Kostromsky takes that very scene.”

“You’re very hard to please, Valerie Nikolaitch.”

“Not at all. But you watch him; to tell you the truth, I can’t. Do you think I am watching him?”

“Well, who then?”

“Ah, brother, look at Ophelia. There’s an actress for you!”

“But Valerie Nikolaitch, she’s only a student.”

“Idiot! Don’t mind that. You didn’t notice how she said the words:

“ ‘He spoke to me of love, but was so tender,
So timid, and so reverent.’6

Of course you didn’t. And I’ve been nearly thirty years on the stage, and I tell you I’ve never heard anything like it. She’s got talent. You mark my words, in the fourth act she’ll have such a success that your Kostromsky will be in a fury. You see!”

V

The play went on. The old man’s prophecy was abundantly fulfilled. The enthusiasm of Kostromsky only lasted out the first act. It could not be roused again by repeated calls before the curtain, by applause, or by the gaze of his enormous crowd of admirers, who thronged into the wings to look at him with gentle reverence. There now remained in him only the very smallest store of that energy and feeling which he had expended with such royal generosity three years ago on every act.

He had wasted his now insignificant store in the first act, when he had been intoxicated by the loud cries of welcome and applause from the public. His will was weakened, his nerves unbraced, and not even increased doses of alcohol could revive him. The imperceptible ties which had connected him with his audience at first were gradually weakening, and, though the applause at the end of the second act was as sincere as at the end of the first, yet it was clear that the people were applauding, not him, but the charm of his name and fame.

Meanwhile, each time she appeared on the stage, Ophelia⁠—Yureva⁠—progressed in favour. This hitherto unnoticed girl, who had previously played only very minor parts, was now, as it were, working a miracle. She seemed a living impersonation of the real daughter of Polonius, a gentle, tender, obedient daughter, with deep hidden feeling and great love in her soul, empoisoned by the venom of grief.

The audience did not yet applaud Yureva, but they watched her, and whenever she came on the stage the whole theatre calmed down to attention. She herself had no suspicion that she was in competition with the great actor, and taking from him attention and success, and even the spectators themselves were unconscious of the struggle.

The third act was fatal for Kostromsky. His appearance in it was preceded by the short scene in which the king and Polonius agree to hide themselves and listen to the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia, in order to judge of the real reason of the prince’s madness. Kostromsky came out from the wings with slow steps, his hands crossed upon his breast, his head bent low, his stockings unfastened and the right one coming down.

“To be or not to be⁠—that is the question.”

He spoke almost inaudibly, all overborne by serious thought, and did not notice Ophelia, who sat at the back of the stage with an open book on her knee.

This famous soliloquy had always been one of Kostromsky’s show places. Some years ago, in this very town and this very theatre, after he had finished this speech by his invocation to Ophelia, there had been for a moment that strange and marvellous silence which speaks more eloquently than the noisiest applause. And then everyone in the theatre had gone into an ecstasy of applause, from the humblest person in the back row of the gallery to the exquisites in the private boxes.

Alas, now both Kostromsky himself and his audience remained cold and unmoved, though he was not yet conscious of it.

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution,
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action,”

he went on, gesticulating and changing his intonation from old memory. And he thought to himself that when he saw Ophelia he would go down on his knees in front of her and say the final words of his speech, and that the audience would weep and cry out with a sweet foolishness.

And there was Ophelia. He turned to the audience with a cautious warning “Soft you, now!” and then walking swiftly across the stage he knelt down and exclaimed:

“⁠—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d,”

and then got up immediately, expecting a burst of applause.

But there was no applause. The public were puzzled, quite unmoved, and all their attention was turned on Ophelia.

For some seconds he could think of nothing; it was only when he heard at his side a gentle girl’s voice asking, “Prince, are you well?”⁠—a voice which trembled with the tears of sorrow for a love destroyed⁠—that, in a momentary flash, he understood all.

It was a moment of awful enlightenment. Kostromsky recognised it clearly and mercilessly⁠—the indifference of the public; his own irrevocable past; the certainty of the near approach of the end to his noisy but short-lived fame.

Oh, with what hatred did he look upon this girl, so graceful, beautiful, innocent, and⁠—tormenting thought⁠—so full of talent. He would have liked to throw himself upon her, beat her, throw her on the ground and stamp with his feet upon that delicate face, with its large dark eyes looking up at him with love and pity. But he restrained himself, and answered in lowered tones:

“I humbly thank you; well, well, well.”

After this scene Kostromsky was recalled, but he heard, much louder than his own name, the shouts from the gallery, full with students, for Yureva, who, however, refused to appear.

VI

The strolling players were playing The Murder of Gonzago. Kostromsky was half sitting, half lying on the floor opposite to the court, his head on Ophelia’s knees. Suddenly he turned his face upward to her, and giving forth an overwhelming odour of spirit, whispered in drunken tones:

“Listen, madam. What’s your name? Listen!”

She bent down a little towards him, and said in an answering whisper:

“What is it?”

“What pretty feet you have!” said he. “Listen! You must be pretty⁠ ⁠… everywhere.”

Yureva turned away her face in silence.

“I mean it, by heaven!” Kostromsky went on, nothing daunted. “No doubt you have a lover here, haven’t you?”

She made no reply.

Kostromsky wanted to insult her still more, to hurt her, and her silence was a new irritation to him.

“You have? Oh, that’s very very foolish of you. Such a face as yours is⁠ ⁠… is your whole capital.⁠ ⁠… You will pardon my frankness, but you’re no actress. What are you doing on the stage?”

Fortunately, it was necessary for him to take part in the acting. Yureva was left in peace, and she moved a little away from him. Her eyes filled with tears. In Kostromsky’s face she had seen a spiteful and merciless enemy.

But Kostromsky became less powerful in each scene, and when the act was finished there was very slight applause to gratify him. But no one else was clapped.

VII

The fourth act commenced. As soon as Ophelia came on to the stage in her white dress, adorned with flowers and straw, her eyes wide open and staring, a confused murmur ran through the audience, and was followed by an almost painful silence.

And when Ophelia sang her little songs about her dear love, in gentle, naive tones, there was a strange breathing among the audience as if a deep and general sigh had burst from a thousand breasts:

“How should I your true love know,
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.”

“Oh, poor Ophelia! What are you singing?” asked the queen sympathetically.

The witless eyes of Ophelia were turned on the queen in wonder, as if she had not noticed her before.

“What am I singing?” she asked in astonishment. “Listen to my song:

“ ‘He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.’ ”

No one in the theatre could look on with indifference, all were in the grip of a common feeling, all sat as if enchanted, never moving their eyes from the stage.

But more persistently, and more eagerly than anyone else, Kostromsky stood in the wings and watched her every movement. In his soul, his sick and proud soul, which had never known restraint or limit to its own desires and passions, there now blazed a terrible and intolerable hatred. He felt that this poor and modest girl-student had definitely snatched from his hands the evening’s success. His drunkenness had, as it were, quite gone out of his head. He did not yet know how this envious spite which boiled in him could expend itself, but he awaited impatiently the time when Ophelia would come off the stage.

“I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot choose but weep to think they should lay him in the cold ground,”

he heard Ophelia say, in a voice choked with the madness of grief.

“My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.”

Yureva came out in the wings, agitated, breathing deeply, pale even under her makeup. She was followed by deafening cries from the audience. In the doorway she stumbled up against Kostromsky. He purposely made no way for her, but she, even when her shoulder brushed against his, did not notice him, so excited was she by her acting and the rapturous applause of the public.

“Yureva! Yureva! Brav‑o‑o!”

She went back and bowed.

As she returned again to the wings she again stumbled against Kostromsky, who would not allow her to pass. Yureva looked at him with a terrified glance, and said timidly:

“Please allow me to pass!”

“Be more careful please, young person!” answered he, with malicious haughtiness. “If you are applauded by a crowd of such idiots, it doesn’t mean you can push into people with impunity.” And seeing her silent and frightened, he became still more infuriated, and taking her roughly by the arm he pushed her on one side and cried out:

“Yes, you can pass, devil take you, blockhead that you are!”

VIII

When Kostromsky had quieted down a little after this rude outburst of temper, he at once became weaker, slacker and more drunken than before; he even forgot that the play had not yet finished. He went into his dressing-room, slowly undressed, and began lazily to rub the paint from his face with vaseline.

The manager, puzzled by his long absence, ran into his room at last and stared in amazement.

“Alexander Yevgrafitch! Please! What are you doing? It’s time for you to go on!”

“Go away, go away!” muttered Kostromsky tearfully, speaking through his nose, and wiping his face with the towel. “I’ve finished everything⁠ ⁠… go away and leave me in peace!”

“What d’you mean, go away? Have you gone out of your mind? The audience is waiting!”

“Leave me alone!” cried Kostromsky.

The manager shrugged his shoulders and went out. In a few moments the curtain was raised, and the public, having been informed of Kostromsky’s sudden illness, began to disperse slowly and silently as if they were going away from a funeral.

They had indeed been present at the funeral of a great and original talent, and Kostromsky was right when he said that he had “finished.” He had locked the door, and sat by himself in front of the mirror in his dressing-room between two gas burners, the flames of which flared with a slight noise. From old habit he was carefully wiping his face, all smeared over with drunken but bitter tears. His mind recalled, as through a mist, the long line of splendid triumphs which had accompanied the first years of his career. Wreaths⁠ ⁠… bouquets⁠ ⁠… thousands of presents⁠ ⁠… the eternal raptures of the crowd⁠ ⁠… the flattery of newspapers⁠ ⁠… the envy of his companions⁠ ⁠… the fabulous benefits⁠ ⁠… the adoration of the most beautiful of women.⁠ ⁠… Was it possible that all this was past? Could his talent really have gone⁠—vanished? Perhaps it had left him long ago, two or three years back! And he, Kostromsky, what was he now? A theme for dirty theatrical gossip; an object of general mockery and ill-will; a man who had alienated all his friends by his unfeeling narrow-mindedness, his selfishness, his impatience, his unbridled arrogance.⁠ ⁠… Yes, it was all past!

“And if the Almighty”⁠—the well-known lines flashed into his memory⁠—“had not fixed his canon ’gainst self-slaughter.⁠ ⁠… Oh, my God, my God!” The burning, helpless tears trickled down his erstwhile beautiful face and mingled with the colours of the paint.

All the other actors had left the theatre when Kostromsky came out of his dressing-room. It was almost dark on the stage. Some workmen were wandering about, removing the last decorations. He walked along gropingly, with quiet footfalls, avoiding the heaps of property rubbish which were scattered everywhere about, and making his way towards the street.

Suddenly he was arrested by the sound of the restrained sobbing of a woman.

“Who is there?” he cried, going into a corner, with an undefined impulse of pity.

The dark figure made no answer; the sobs increased.

“Who’s crying there?” he asked again, in fear, and at once recognised that it was Yureva who was sobbing there.

The girl was weeping, her thin shoulders heaving with convulsive shudders.

It was strange. For the first time in his life Kostromsky’s hard heart suddenly overflowed with a deep pity for this unprotected girl, whom he had so unjustifiably insulted. He placed his hand on her head and began to speak to her in an impressive and affectionate voice, quite naturally and unaffectedly.

“My child! I was dreadfully rude to you today. I won’t ask your forgiveness; I know I could never atone for your tears. But if you could have known what was happening in my soul, perhaps you would forgive me and be sorry for me.⁠ ⁠… Today, only today, I have understood that I have outlived my fame. What grief is there to compare with that? What, in comparison with that, would mean the loss of a mother, of a beloved child, of a lover? We artists live by terrible enjoyments; we live and feel for those hundreds and thousands of people who come to look at us. Do you know⁠ ⁠… oh, you must understand that I’m not showing off, I’m speaking quite simply to you.⁠ ⁠… Yes. Do you know that for the last five years there’s not been an actor in the world whose name was greater than mine? Crowds have lain at my feet, at the feet of an illiterate draper’s assistant. And suddenly, in one moment, I’ve fallen headlong from those marvellous heights.⁠ ⁠…” He covered his face with his hands. “It’s terrible!”

Yureva had stopped weeping, and was looking at Kostromsky with deep compassion.

“You see, my dear,” he went on, taking her cold hands in his. “You have a great and undoubted talent. Keep on the stage. I won’t talk to you about such trivialities as the envy and intrigues of those who cannot act, or about the equivocal protection afforded by patrons of dramatic art, or about the gossip of that marsh which we call Society. All these are trifles, and not to be compared with those stupendous joys which a contemptible but adoring crowd can give to us. But”⁠—Kostromsky’s voice trembled nervously⁠—“but do not outlive your fame. Leave the stage directly you feel that the sacred flame in you is burning low. Do not wait, my child, for the public to drive you away.”

And turning quickly away from Yureva, who was trying to say something and even holding out her hands to him, he hurriedly walked off the stage.

“Wait a moment, Alexander Yevgrafitch,” the manager called after him as he went out into the street, “come into the office for your money.”

“Get away!” said Kostromsky, waving his hand, in vexation, irritably. “I have finished. I have finished with it all.”

I

By narrow mountain paths, from one villa to another, a small wandering troupe made their way along the southern shore of the Crimea. Ahead commonly ran the white poodle, Arto, with his long red tongue hanging out from one side of his mouth. The poodle was shorn to look like a lion. At crossways he would stop, wag his tail, and look back questioningly. He seemed to obtain some sort of sign, known to him alone, and without waiting for the troupe to catch up he would bound forward on the right track, shaking his shaggy ears, never making a mistake. Following the dog came the twelve-year-old Sergey, carrying under his left arm a little mattress for his acrobatic exercises, and holding in his right hand a narrow dirty cage, with a goldfinch, taught to pull out from a case various coloured papers on which were printed predictions of coming fortune. Last of all came the oldest member of the troupe, grandfather Martin Lodishkin, with a barrel organ on his bent back.

The organ was an old one, very hoarse, and suffering from a cough; it had undergone, in the century of its existence, some scores of mendings. It played two things: a melancholy German waltz of Launer and a galop from A Trip to China Town, both in fashion thirty to forty years ago, but now forgotten by all. Beyond these drawbacks it must be said that the organ had two false tubes; one of them, a treble, was absolutely mute, did not play, and therefore when its turn came the whole harmony would, as it were, stutter, go lame and stumble. The other tube, giving forth a bass note, had something the matter with the valve, which would not shut, and having once been played it would not altogether stop, but rolled onward on the same bass note, deafening and confusing the other sounds, till suddenly, at its own caprice, it would stop. Grandfather himself acknowledged the deficiencies of his instrument, and might sometimes be heard to remark jocosely, though with a tinge of secret grief:

“What’s to be done?⁠ ⁠… An ancient organ⁠ ⁠… it has a cold.⁠ ⁠… When you play it the gentry take offence. ‘Tfu,’ they say, ‘what a wretched thing!’ And these pieces were very good in their time, and fashionable, but people nowadays by no means adore good music. Give them ‘The Geisha,’ ‘Under the Double-headed Eagle,’ please, or the waltz from The Seller of Birds. Of course, these tubes.⁠ ⁠… I took the organ to the shop, but they wouldn’t undertake to mend it. ‘It needs new tubes,’ said they. ‘But, best of all, if you’ll take our advice, sell the rusty thing to a museum⁠ ⁠… as a sort of curio.⁠ ⁠…’ Well, well, that’s enough! She’s fed us till now, Sergey and me, and if God grant, she will go on feeding us.”

Grandfather Martin Lodishkin loved his organ as it is only possible to love something living, near, something actually akin, if it may be so expressed. Having lived with his organ for many years of a trying vagabond life, he had at last come to see in it something inspired, come to feel as if it were almost a conscious being. It would happen sometimes at night, when they were lying on the floor of some dirty inn, that the barrel organ, placed beside the old man’s pillow, would suddenly give vent to a faint note, a sad melancholy quavering note, like an old man’s sigh. And Lodishkin would put out his hand to its carved wooden side and whisper caressingly:

“What is it, brother? Complaining, eh!⁠ ⁠… Have patience, friend.⁠ ⁠…”

And as much as Lodishkin loved his organ, and perhaps even a little more, he loved the other two companions of his wanderings, Arto, the poodle, and little Sergey. He had hired the boy five years before from a bad character, a widower cobbler, promising to pay him two roubles a month. Shortly afterwards the cobbler had died, and Sergey remained with grandfather, bound to him forever by their common life and the little daily interests of the troupe.

II

The path went along a high cliff over the sea, and wandered through the shade of ancient olive trees, The sea gleamed between the trunks now and then, and seemed at times to stand like a calm and mighty wall on the horizon; its colour was the more blue, the more intense, because of the contrast seen through the trellis-work of silver verdant leaves. In the grass, amongst the kizil shrubs, wild roses and vines, and even on the branches of the trees, swarmed the grasshoppers, and the air itself trembled from the monotonously sounding and unceasing murmur of their legs and wing-cases. The day turned out to be a sultry one; there was no wind, and the hot earth burnt the soles of the feet.

Sergey, going as usual ahead of grandfather, stopped, and waited for the old man to catch up to him.

“What is it, Serozha?” asked the organ-grinder.

“The heat, grandfather Lodishkin⁠ ⁠… there’s no bearing it! To bathe would be good.⁠ ⁠…”

The old man wiped his perspiring face with his sleeve, and hitched the organ to a more comfortable position on his back.

“What would be better?” he sighed, looking eagerly downward to the cool blueness of the sea. “Only, after bathing, one gets more hungry, you know. A village doctor once said to me: ‘Salt has more effect on man than anything else⁠ ⁠… that means, it weakens him⁠ ⁠… sea-salt.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“He lied, perhaps,” remarked Sergey, doubtfully.

“Lied! What next? Why should he lie? A solid man, nondrinker⁠ ⁠… having a little house in Sevastopol. What’s more, there’s no getting down to the sea here. Wait a bit, we’ll get to Miskhor, and there rinse our sinful bodies. It’s fine to bathe before dinner⁠ ⁠… and afterwards to sleep, we three⁠ ⁠… and a splendid bit of work.⁠ ⁠…”

Arto, hearing conversation behind him, turned and ran back, his soft blue eyes, half shut from the heat, looked up appealingly, and his hanging tongue trembled from quick breathing.

“What is it, brother doggie? Warm, eh?” asked grandfather.

The dog yawned, straining his jaws and curling his tongue into a little tube, shook all his body, and whimpered.

“Yes, yes, little brother, but it can’t be helped,” continued Lodishkin. “It is written, ‘In the sweat of thy face,’ though, as a matter of fact, it can hardly be said that you have a face, or anything more than a muzzle.⁠ ⁠… Be off! Go off with you.⁠ ⁠… As for me, Serozha, I must confess I just like this heat. Only the organ’s a bit of a nuisance, and if there were no work to do I’d just lie down somewhere in the grass in the shade, and have a good morning of it. For old bones this sunshine is the finest thing in the world.”

The footpath turned downward to a great highway, broad and hard and blindingly white. At the point where the troupe stepped on to it commenced an ancient baronial estate, in the abundant verdure of which were beautiful villas, flowerbeds, orangeries and fountains. Lodishkin knew the district well, and called at each of the villas every year, one after another, during the vine-harvesting season, when the whole Crimea is filled with rich, fashionable, and pleasure-loving visitors. The bright magnificence of southern Nature did not touch the old man, but it enraptured Sergey, who was there for the first time. The magnolias, with their hard and shiny leaves, shiny as if lacquered or varnished, with their large white blossoms, each almost as big as a dinner-plate; the summerhouses of interwoven vines hanging with heavy clusters of fruit; the enormous century-old plane trees, with their bright trunks and mighty crowns; tobacco plantations, rivulets, waterfalls, and everywhere, in flowerbeds, gardens, on the walls of the villas, bright sweet-scented roses⁠—all these things impressed unceasingly the naive soul of the boy. He expressed his admiration of the scene, pulling the old man’s sleeve and crying out every minute:

“Grandfather Lodishkin, but, grandfather, just look, goldfish in the fountain!⁠ ⁠… I swear, grandfather, goldfish, if I die for it!” cried the boy, pressing his face to a railing and staring at a large tank in the middle of a garden. “I say, grandfather, look at the peaches! Good gracious, what a lot there are. Look, how many! And all on one tree.”

“Leave go, leave go, little stupid. What are you stretching your mouth about?” joked the old man. “Just wait till we get to the town of Novorossisk, and give ourselves to the South. Now, that’s a place indeed; there you’ll see something. Sotchi, Adler, Tuapse, and then, little brother, Sukhum, Batum.⁠ ⁠… Your eyes’ll drop out of your head.⁠ ⁠… Palms, for instance. Absolutely astonishing; the trunks all shaggy like felt, and each leaf so large that we could hide ourselves in one.”

“You don’t mean it!” cried Sergey, joyfully.

“Wait a bit and you’ll see for yourself. Is there little of anything there? Now, oranges for instance, or, let us say, lemons.⁠ ⁠… You’ve seen them, no doubt, in the shops?”

“Well?”

“Well, you see them simply as if they were growing in the air. Without anything, just on the tree, as up here you see an apple or a pear.⁠ ⁠… And the people down there, little brother, are altogether out of the way: Turks, Persians, different sorts of Cherkesses, and all in gowns and with daggers, a desperate sort of people! And, little brother, there are even Ethiopians. I’ve seen them many times in Batum!”

“Ethiopians, I know. Those with horns,” cried Sergey, confidently.

“Well, horns I suppose they have not,” said grandfather; “that’s nonsense. But they’re black as a pair of boots, and shine even. Thick, red, ugly lips, great white eyes, and hair as curly as the back of a black sheep.”

“Oi, oi, how terrible!⁠ ⁠… Are Ethiopians like that?”

“Well, well, don’t be frightened. Of course, at first, before you’re accustomed, it’s alarming. But when you see that other people aren’t afraid, you pick up courage.⁠ ⁠… There’s all sorts there, little brother. When we get there you’ll see. Only one thing is bad⁠—the fever. All around lie marshes, rottenness; then there is such terrible heat. The people who live there find it all right, but it’s bad for newcomers. However, we’ve done enough tongue-wagging, you and I, Sergey, so just climb over that stile and go up to the house. There are some really fine people living there.⁠ ⁠… If ever there’s anything you want to know, just ask me; I know all.”

But the day turned out to be a very unsuccessful one for them. At one place the servants drove them away almost before they were seen even from a distance by the mistress; at another the organ had hardly made its melancholy beginning in front of the balcony when they were waved away in disgust; at a third they were told that the master and mistress had not yet arrived. At two villas they were indeed paid for their show, but very little. Still, grandfather never turned his nose up even at the smallest amounts. Coming out at the gate on to the road he would smile good-naturedly and say:

“Two plus five, total seven⁠ ⁠… hey hey, brother Serozhenka, that’s money. Seven times seven, and you’ve pretty well got a shilling, and that would be a good meal and a night’s lodging in our pockets, and p’raps, old man Lodishkin might be allowed a little glass on account of his weakness.⁠ ⁠… Ai, ai, there’s a sort of people I can’t make out; too stingy to give sixpence, yet ashamed to put in a penny⁠ ⁠… and so they surlily order you off. Better to give, were it only three farthings.⁠ ⁠… I wouldn’t take offence, I’m nobody⁠ ⁠… why take offence?”

Generally speaking, Lodishkin was of a modest order, and even when he was hounded out of a place he would not complain. However, on this day of which we are writing, he was, as it happened, disturbed out of his usual equanimity by one of the people of these Crimean villas, a lady of a very kind appearance, the owner of a beautiful country house surrounded by a wonderful flower-garden. She listened attentively to the music; watched Sergey’s somersaults and Arto’s tricks even more attentively; asked the little boy’s age, what was his name, where he’d learned gymnastics, how grandfather had come by him, what his father had done for a living, and so on, and had then bidden them wait, and had gone indoors apparently to fetch them something.

Ten minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, and she did not appear, but the longer she stayed the greater became the vague hopes of the troupe. Grandfather even whispered to Sergey, shielding his mouth with his palm the while:

“Eh, Sergey, this is good, isn’t it? Ask me if you want to know anything. Now we’re going to get some old clothes or perhaps a pair of boots. A sure thing!⁠ ⁠…”

At last the lady came out on her balcony again, and flung into Sergey’s held-out hat a small silver coin. And then she went in again. The coin turned out to be an old worn-out threepenny bit with a hole in it. No use to buy anything with. Grandfather held it in his hand and considered it a long while distrustfully. He left the house and went back to the road, and all the while he still held the bit of money in his open and extended palm, as if weighing it as he went.

“Well, well.⁠ ⁠… That’s smart!” said he at last, stopping suddenly. “I must say.⁠ ⁠… And didn’t we three blockheads do our best. It’d a-been better if she’d given us a button. That, at least, we could have sewn on somewhere. What’s the use of this bit of rubbish? The lady, no doubt, thought that it would be all the same as a good coin to me. I’d pass it off on someone at night. No, no, you’re deeply mistaken, my lady. Old man Lodishkin is not going to descend so low. Yes, m’lady, there goes your precious threepenny bit! There!”

And with indignation and pride he flung the coin on to the road, and it gently jingled and was lost in the dust.

So the morning passed, and the old man and the boy, having passed all the villas on the cliff, prepared to go down to the sea. There remained but one last estate on the way. This was on the left-hand side.

The house itself was not visible, the wall being high, and over the wall loomed a fine array of dusty cypresses. Only through the wide cast-iron gate, whose fantastical design gave it the appearance of lace, was it possible to get a glimpse of the lovely lawn. Thence one peered upon fresh green grass, flowerbeds, and in the background a winding pergola of vines. In the middle of the lawn stood a gardener watering the roses. He put a finger to the pipe in his hand, and caused the water in the fountain to leap in the sun, glittering in myriads of little sparkles and flashes.

Grandfather was going past, but looking through the gate he stopped in doubt.

“Wait a bit, Sergey,” said he. “Surely there are no folk here! There’s a strange thing! Often as I’ve come along this road, I’ve never seen a soul here before. Oh, well, brother Sergey, get ready!”

A notice was fixed on the wall:

“Friendship Villa: Trespassers will be prosecuted,” and Sergey read this out aloud.

“Friendship?” questioned grandfather, who himself could not read. “Vo-vo! That’s one of the finest of words⁠—friendship. All day we’ve failed, but this house will make up for it. I smell it with my nose, as if I were a hunting dog. Now, Arto, come here, old fellow. Walk up bravely, Serozha. Keep your eye on me, and if you want to know anything just ask me. I know all.”

III

The paths were made of a well-rolled yellow gravel, crunching under the feet; and at the sides were borders of large rose-coloured shells. In the flowerbeds, above a carpet of various coloured grasses, grew rare plants with brilliant blossoms and sweet perfume. Crystal water rose and splashed continually from the fountains, and garlands of beautiful creeping plants hung downward from beautiful vases, suspended in midair from wires stretched between the trees. On marble pillars just outside the house stood two splendid spheres of mirror glass, and the wandering troupe, coming up to them, saw themselves reflected feet upwards in an amusing twisted and elongated picture.

In front of the balcony was a wide, much-trampled platform. On this Sergey spread his little mattress, and grandfather, having fixed the organ on its stick, prepared to turn the handle. But just as he was in the act of doing this, a most unexpected and strange sight suddenly attracted his attention.

A boy of nine or ten rushed suddenly out of the house on to the terrace like a bomb, giving forth piercing shrieks. He was in a sailor suit, with bare arms and legs. His fair curls hung in a tangle on his shoulders. Away he rushed, and after him came six people; two women in aprons, a stout old lackey, without moustache or beard but with grey side-whiskers, wearing a frock coat, a lean, carrotty-haired, red-nosed girl in a blue-checked dress, a young sickly-looking but very beautiful lady in a blue dressing-jacket trimmed with lace, and, last of all, a stout, bald gentleman in a suit of Tussore silk, and with gold spectacles. They were all very much excited, waved their arms, spoke loudly, and even jostled one another. You could see at one that the cause of all their anxiety was the boy in the sailor suit, who had so suddenly rushed on to the terrace.

And the boy, the cause of all this hurly-burly, did not cease screaming for one second, but threw himself down on his stomach, turned quickly over on to his back, and began to kick out with his legs on all sides. The little crowd of grownups fussed around him. The old lackey in the frock coat pressed his hands to his starched shirtfront and begged and implored the boy to be quiet, his long side-whiskers trembling as he spoke:

“Little father, master!⁠ ⁠… Nikolai Apollonovitch!⁠ ⁠… Do not vex your little mamma. Do get up, sir; be so good, so kind⁠—take a little, sir. The mixture’s sweet as sweet, just syrup, sir. Now let me help you up.⁠ ⁠…”

The women in the aprons clapped their hands and chirped quickly-quickly, in seemingly passionate and frightened voices. The red-nosed girl made tragic gestures, and cried out something evidently very touching, but completely incomprehensible, as it was in a foreign language. The gentleman in the gold spectacles made speeches to the boy in a reasoning bass voice, wagged his head to and fro as he spoke, and slowly waved his hands up and down. And the beautiful, delicate⁠—looking lady moaned wearily, pressing a lace handkerchief to her eyes.

“Ah, Trilly, ah, God in Heaven!⁠ ⁠… Angel mine, I beseech you, listen, your own mother begs you. Now do, do take the medicine, take it and you’ll see, you’ll feel better at once, and the stomachache will go away and the headache. Now do it for me, my joy! Oh, Trilly, if you want it, your mamma will go down on her knees. See, darling, I’m on my knees before you. If you wish it, I’ll give you gold⁠—a sovereign, two sovereigns, five sovereigns. Trilly, would you like a live ass? Would you like a live horse? Oh, for goodness’ sake, say something to him, doctor.”

“Pay attention, Trilly. Be a man!” droned the stout gentleman in the spectacles.

“Ai‑yai‑yai‑ya‑a‑a‑a!” yelled the boy, squirming on the ground, and kicking about desperately with his feet.

Despite his extreme agitation he managed to give several kicks to the people around him, and they, for their part, got out of his way sufficiently cleverly.

Sergey looked upon the scene with curiosity and astonishment, and at last nudged the old man in the side and said:

“Grandfather Lodishkin, what’s the matter with him? Can’t they give him a beating?”

“A beating⁠—I like that.⁠ ⁠… That sort isn’t beaten, but beats everybody else. A crazy boy; ill, I expect.”

“Insane?” enquired Sergey.

“How should I know? Hst, be quiet!⁠ ⁠…”

“Ai‑yai‑ya‑a! Scum, fatheads!” shouted the boy, louder and louder.

“Well, begin, Sergey. Now’s the time, for I know!” ordered Lodishkin suddenly, taking hold of the handle of his organ and turning it with resolution. The snuffling and false notes of the ancient galop rose in the garden. All the people stopped suddenly and looked round; even the boy became silent for a few seconds.

“Ah, God in heaven, they will upset my poor Trilly still more!” cried the lady in the blue dressing-jacket, with tears in her eyes. “Chase them off, quickly, quickly. Drive them away, and the dirty dog with them. Dogs have always such dreadful diseases. Why do you stand there helplessly, Ivan, as if you were turned to stone?” She shook her handkerchief wearily in the direction of grandfather and the little boy; the lean, red-nosed girl made dreadful eyes; someone gave a threatening whisper; the lackey in the dress coat ran swiftly from the balcony on his tiptoes, and, with an expression of horror on his face, cried to the organ grinder, spreading out his arms like wings as he spoke:

“Whatever does it mean⁠—who permitted them⁠—who let them through? March! Clear out!⁠ ⁠…”

The organ became silent in a melancholy whimper.

“Fine gentleman, allow us to explain,” began the old man delicately.

“No explanations whatever! March!” roared the lackey in a hoarse, angry whisper.

His whole fat face turned purple, and his eyes protruded to such a degree that they looked as if they would suddenly roll out and run away like wheels. The sight was so dreadful that grandfather involuntarily took two steps backward.

“Put the things up, Sergey,” said he, hurriedly jolting the organ on to his back. “Come on!”

But they had not succeeded in taking more than ten steps when the child began to shriek even worse than ever:

“Ai‑yai‑yai! Give it me! I wa‑ant it! A‑a‑a! Give it! Call them back! Me!”

“But, Trilly!⁠ ⁠… Ah, God in heaven, Trilly; ah, call them back!” moaned the nervous lady. “Tfu, how stupid you all are!⁠ ⁠… Ivan, don’t you hear when you’re told? Go at once and call those beggars back!⁠ ⁠…”

“Certainly! You! Hey, what d’you call yourselves? Organ grinders! Come back!” cried several voices at once.

The stout lackey jumped across the lawn, his side-whiskers waving in the wind, and, overtaking the artistes, cried out:

“Pst! Musicians! Back! Don’t you hear, friends, you’re called back?” cried he, panting and waving both arms. “Venerable old man!” said he at last, catching hold of grandfather’s coat by the sleeve. “Turn the shafts round. The master and mistress will be pleased to see your pantomime.”

“Well, well, business at last!” sighed grandfather, turning his head round. And the little party went back to the balcony where the people were collected, and the old man fixed up his organ on the stick and played the hideous galop from the very point at which it had been interrupted.

The rumpus had died down. The lady with her little boy, and the gentleman in the gold spectacles, came forward. The others remained respectfully behind. Out of the depths of the shrubbery came the gardener in his apron, and stood at a little distance. From somewhere or other the yard-porter made his appearance, and stood behind the gardener. He was an immense bearded peasant with a gloomy face, narrow brows, and pockmarked cheeks. He was clad in a new rose-coloured blouse, on which was a pattern of large black spots.

Under cover of the hoarse music of the galop, Sergey spread his little mattress, pulled off his canvas breeches⁠—they had been cut out of an old sack, and behind, at the broadest part, were ornamented by a quadrilateral trade mark of a factory⁠—threw from his body his torn shirt, and stood erect in his cotton underclothes. In spite of the many mends on these garments he was a pretty figure of a boy, lithe and strong. He had a little programme of acrobatic tricks which he had learnt by watching his elders in the arena of the circus. Running to the mattress he would put both hands to his lips, and, with a passionate gesture, wave two theatrical kisses to the audience. So his performance began.

Grandfather turned the handle of the organ without ceasing, and whilst the boy juggled various objects in the air the old music-machine gave forth its trembling, coughing tunes. Sergey’s repertoire was not a large one, but he did it well and with enthusiasm. He threw up into the air an empty beer-bottle, so that it revolved several times in its flight, and suddenly catching it neck downward on the edge of a tray he balanced it there for several seconds; he juggled four balls and two candles, catching the latter simultaneously in two candlesticks; he played with a fan, a wooden cigar and an umbrella, throwing them to and fro in the air, and at last having the open umbrella in his hand shielding his head, the cigar in his mouth, and the fan coquettishly waving in his other hand. Then he turned several somersaults on the mattress; did “the frog”; tied himself into an American knot; walked on his hands, and having exhausted his little programme sent once more two kisses to the public, and, panting from the exercise, ran to grandfather to take his place at the organ.

Now was Arto’s turn. This the dog perfectly well knew, and he had for some time been prancing round in excitement, and barking nervously. Perhaps the clever poodle wished to say that, in his opinion, it was unreasonable to go through acrobatic performances when Réaumur showed thirty-two degrees in the shade. But grandfather Lodishkin, with a cunning grin, pulled out of his coattail pocket a slender kizil switch. Arto’s eyes took a melancholy expression. “Didn’t I know it!” they seemed to say, and he lazily and insubmissively raised himself on his hind paws, never once ceasing to look at his master and blink.

“Serve, Arto! So, so, so⁠ ⁠… ,” ordered the old man, holding the switch over the poodle’s head. “Over. So. Turn⁠ ⁠… again⁠ ⁠… again.⁠ ⁠… Dance, doggie, dance! Sit! Wha‑at? Don’t want to? Sit when you’re told! A‑a.⁠ ⁠… That’s right! Now look! Salute the respected public. Now, Arto!” cried Lodishkin threateningly.

“Gaff!” barked the poodle in disgust. Then he followed his master mournfully with his eyes, and added twice more, “Gaff, gaff.”

“No, my old man doesn’t understand me,” this discontented barking seemed to say.

“That’s it, that’s better. Politeness before everything. Now we’ll have a little jump,” continued the old man, holding out the twig at a short distance above the ground. “Allez! There’s nothing to hang out your tongue about, brother. Allez! Gop! Splendid! And now, please, noch ein mal⁠ ⁠… Allez!⁠ ⁠… Gop! Allez! Gop! Wonderful doggie. When you get home you shall have carrots. You don’t like carrots, eh? Ah, I’d completely forgotten. Then take my silk topper and ask the folk. P’raps they’ll give you something a little more tasty.”

Grandfather raised the dog on his hind legs and put in his mouth the old greasy cap which, with such delicate irony, he had named a silk topper. Arto, standing affectedly on his grey hind legs, and holding the cap in his teeth, came up to the terrace. In the hands of the delicate lady there appeared a small mother-of-pearl purse. All those around her smiled sympathetically.

“What? Didn’t I tell you?” asked the old man of Sergey, teasingly. “Ask me if you ever want to know anything, brother, for I know. Nothing less than a rouble.”

At that moment there broke out such an inhuman yowl that Arto involuntarily dropped the cap and leapt off with his tail between his legs, looked over his shoulders fearfully, and came and lay down at his master’s feet.

“I wa‑a‑a‑nt him,” cried the curly-headed boy, stamping his feet. “Give him to me! I want him. The dog, I tell you! Trilly wa‑ants the do‑og!”

“Ah, God in heaven! Ah, Nikolai Apollonovitch!⁠ ⁠… Little father, master!⁠ ⁠… Be calm, Trilly, I beseech you,” cried the voices of the people.

“The dog! Give me the dog; I want him! Scum, demons, fatheads!” cried the boy, fairly out of his mind.

“But, angel mine, don’t upset your nerves,” lisped the lady in the blue dressing-jacket. “You’d like to stroke the doggie? Very well, very well, my joy, in a minute you shall. Doctor, what do you think, might Trilly stroke this dog?”

“Generally speaking, I should not advise it,” said the doctor, waving his hands. “But if we had some reliable disinfectant as, for instance, boracic acid or a weak solution of carbolic, then⁠ ⁠… generally⁠ ⁠…”

“The do‑og!”

“In a minute, my charmer, in a minute. So, doctor, you order that we wash the dog with boracic acid, and then.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Trilly, don’t get into such a state! Old man, bring up your dog, will you, if you please. Don’t be afraid, you will be paid for it. And, listen a moment⁠—is the dog ill? I wish to ask, is the dog suffering from hydrophobia or skin disease?”

“Don’t want to stroke him, don’t want to,” roared Trilly, blowing out his mouth like a bladder. “Fatheads! Demons! Give it to me altogether! I want to play with it.⁠ ⁠… For always.”

“Listen, old man, come up here,” cried the lady, trying to outshout the child. “Ah, Trilly, you’ll kill your own mother if you make such a noise. Why ever did they let these music people in? Come nearer⁠—nearer still; come when you’re told!⁠ ⁠… That’s better.⁠ ⁠… Oh, don’t take offence! Trilly, your mother will do all that you ask. I beseech you, miss, do try and calm the child.⁠ ⁠… Doctor, I pray you.⁠ ⁠… How much d’you want, old man?”

Grandfather removed his cap, and his face took on a respectfully piteous expression.

“As much as your kindness will think fit, my lady, your Excellency.⁠ ⁠… We are people in a small way, and anything is a blessing for us.⁠ ⁠… Probably you will not do anything to offend an old man.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, how senseless! Trilly, you’ll make your little throat ache.⁠ ⁠… Don’t you grasp the fact that the dog is yours and not mine.⁠ ⁠… Now, how much do you say? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty?”

“A‑a‑a; I wa‑ant it, give me the dog, give me the dog,” squealed the boy, kicking the round stomach of the lackey who happened to be near.

“That is⁠ ⁠… forgive me, your Serenity,” stuttered Lodishkin. “You see, I’m an old man, stupid.⁠ ⁠… It’s difficult to understand at once.⁠ ⁠… What’s more, I’m a bit deaf⁠ ⁠… so I ought to ask, in short, what were you wishing to say?⁠ ⁠… For the dog?⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, God in heaven! It seems to me you’re playing the idiot on purpose,” said the lady, boiling over. “Nurse, give Trilly some water at once! I ask you, in the Russian language, for how much do you wish to sell your dog? Do you understand⁠—your dog, dog?⁠ ⁠…”

“The dog! The do‑og!” cried the boy, louder than ever.

Lodishkin took offence, and put his hat on again.

“Dogs, my lady, I do not sell,” said he coldly and with dignity. “And, what is more, madam, that dog, it ought to be understood, has been for us two”⁠—he pointed with his middle finger over his shoulder at Sergey⁠—“has been for us two, feeder and clother. It has fed us, given us drink, and clothed us. I could not think of anything more impossible than, for example, that we should sell it.”

Trilly all the while was giving forth piercing shrieks like the whistle of a steam-engine. They gave him a glass of water, but he splashed it furiously all over the face of his governess.

“Listen, you crazy old man!⁠ ⁠… There are no things which are not for sale, if only a large enough price be offered,” insisted the lady, pressing her palms to her temples. “Miss, wipe your face quickly and give me my headache mixture. Now, perhaps your dog costs a hundred roubles! What then, two hundred? Three hundred? Now answer, image. Doctor, for the love of the Lord, do say something to him!”

“Pack up, Sergey,” growled Lodishkin morosely. “Image, im‑a‑age.⁠ ⁠… Here, Arto!⁠ ⁠…”

“Hey, wait a minute, if you please,” drawled the stout gentleman in the gold spectacles in an authoritative bass. “You’d better not be obstinate, dear man, now I’m telling you. For your dog, ten roubles would be a beautiful price, and even for you into the bargain.⁠ ⁠… Just consider, ass, how much the lady is offering you.”

“I most humbly thank you, sir,” mumbled Lodishkin, hitching his organ on to his shoulders. “Only I can’t see how such a piece of business could ever be done, as, for instance, to sell. Now, I should think you’d better seek some other dog somewhere else.⁠ ⁠… So good day to you.⁠ ⁠… Now, Sergey, go ahead!”

“And have you got a passport?” roared the doctor in a rage. “I know you⁠—canaille.”

“Porter! Semyon! Drive them out!” cried the lady, her face distorted with rage.

The gloomy-looking porter in the rose-coloured blouse rushed threateningly towards the artistes. A great hubbub arose on the terrace, Trilly roaring for all he was worth, his mother sobbing, the nurse chattering volubly to her assistant, the doctor booming like an angry cockchafer. But grandfather and Sergey had no time to look back or to see how all would end. The poodle running in front of them, they got quickly to the gates, and after them came the yard porter, punching the old man in the back, beating on his organ, and crying out:

“Out you get, you rascals! Thank God that you’re not hanging by your neck, you old scoundrel. Remember, next time you come here, we shan’t stand on ceremony with you, but lug you at once to the police station. Charlatans!”

For a long time the boy and the old man walked along silently together, but suddenly, as if they had arranged the time beforehand, they both looked at one another and laughed. Sergey, simply burst into laughter, and then Lodishkin smiled, seemingly in some confusion.

“Eh, grandfather Lodishkin, you know everything?” teased Sergey.

“Ye‑s brother, we’ve been nicely fooled, haven’t we,” said the old organ grinder, nodding his head. “A nasty bit of a boy, however.⁠ ⁠… How they’ll bring up such a creature, the Lord only knows. Yes, if you please, twenty-five men and women standing around him, dancing dances for his sake. Well, if he’d been in my power, I’d have taught him a lesson. ‘Give me the dog,’ says he. What then? If he asks for the moon out of the sky, give him that also, I suppose. Come here, Arto, come here, my little doggie doggie. Well, and what money we’ve taken today⁠—astonishing!”

“Better than money,” continued Sergey, “one lady gave us clothes, another a whole rouble. And doesn’t grandfather Lodishkin know everything in advance?”

“You be quiet,” growled the old man good-naturedly. “Don’t you remember how you ran from the porter? I thought I should never catch you up. A serious man, that porter!”

Leaving the villas, the wandering troupe stepped downward by a steep and winding path to the sea. At this point the mountains, retiring from the shore, left a beautiful level beach covered with tiny pebbles, which lisped and chattered as the waves turned them over. Two hundred yards out to sea dolphins turned somersaults, showing for moments their curved and glimmering backs. Away on the horizon of the wide blue sea, standing as it were on a lovely velvet ribbon of dark purple, were the sails of fishing boats, tinted to a rose colour by the sunlight.

“Here we shall bathe, grandfather Lodishkin,” said Sergey decisively. And he took off his trousers as he walked, jumping from one leg to the other to do so. “Let me help you to take off the organ.”

He swiftly undressed, smacking his sunburnt body with the palms of his hands, ran down to the waves, took a handful of foam to throw over his shoulders, and jumped into the sea.

Grandfather undressed without hurry. Shielding his eyes from the sun with his hands, and wrinkling his brows, he looked at Sergey and grinned knowingly.

“He’s not bad; the boy is growing,” thought Lodishkin to himself. “Plenty of bones⁠—all his ribs showing; but all the same, he’ll be a strong fellow.”

“Hey, Serozhska, don’t you get going too far. A sea pig’ll drag you off!”

“If so, I’ll catch it by the tail,” cried Sergey from a distance.

Grandfather stood a long time in the sunshine, feeling himself under his armpits. He went down to the water very cautiously, and before going right in, carefully wetted his bald red crown and the sunken sides of his body. He was yellow, wizened and feeble, his feet were astonishingly thin, and his back, with sharp protruding shoulder-blades, was humped by the long carrying of the organ.

“Look, grandfather Lodishkin!” cried Sergey, and he turned a somersault in the water.

Grandfather, who had now gone into the water up to his middle, sat down with a murmur of pleasure, and cried out to Sergey:

“Now, don’t you play about, piggy. Mind what I tell you or I’ll give it you.”

Arto barked unceasingly, and jumped about the shore. He was very much upset to see the boy swimming out so far. “What’s the use of showing off one’s bravery?” worried the poodle. “Isn’t there the earth, and isn’t that good enough to go on, and much calmer?”

He went into the water two or three times himself, and lapped the waves with his tongue. But he didn’t like the salt water, and was afraid of the little waves rolling over the pebbles towards him. He jumped back to dry sand, and at once set himself to bark at Sergey. “Why these silly, silly tricks? Why not come and sit down on the beach by the side of the old man? Dear, dear, what a lot of anxiety that boy does give us!”

“Hey, Serozha, time to come out, anyway. You’ve had enough,” cried the old man.

“In a minute, grandfather Lodishkin,” the boy cried back. “Just look how I do the steamboat. U‑u‑u‑ukh!”

At last he swam in to the shore, but, before dressing, he caught Arto in his arms, and returning with him to the water’s edge, flung him as far as he could. The dog at once swam back, leaving above the surface of the water his nostrils and floating ears alone, and snorting loudly and offendedly. Reaching dry sand, he shook his whole body violently, and clouds of water flew on the old man and on Sergey.

“Serozha, boy, look, surely that’s for us!” said Lodishkin suddenly, staring upwards towards the cliff.

Along the downward path they saw that same gloomy-looking yard porter in the rose-coloured blouse with the speckled pattern, waving his arms and crying out to them, though they could not make out what he was saying, the same fellow who, a quarter of an hour ago, had driven the vagabond troupe from the villa.

“What does he want?” asked grandfather mistrustfully.

IV

The porter continued to cry, and at the same time to leap awkwardly down the steep path, the sleeves of his blouse trembling in the wind and the body of it blown out like a sail.

“O-ho-ho! Wait, you three!”

“There’s no finishing with these people,” growled Lodishkin angrily. “It’s Artoshka they’re after again.”

“Grandfather, what d’you say? Let’s pitch into him!” proposed Sergey bravely.

“You be quiet! Don’t be rash! But what sort of people can they be? God forgive us.⁠ ⁠…”

“I say, this is what you’ve got to do⁠ ⁠… ,” began the panting porter from afar. “You’ll sell that dog. Eh, what? There’s no peace with the little master. Roars like a calf: ‘Give me, give me the dog.⁠ ⁠…’ The mistress has sent. ‘Buy it,’ says she, ‘however much you have to pay.’ ”

“Now that’s pretty stupid on your mistress’s part,” cried Lodishkin angrily, for he felt considerably more sure of himself here on the shore than he did in somebody else’s garden. “And I should like to ask how can she be my mistress? She’s your mistress, perhaps, but to me further off than a third cousin, and I can spit at her if I want to. And now, please, for the love of God⁠ ⁠… I pray you⁠ ⁠… be so good as to go away⁠ ⁠… and leave us alone.”

But the porter paid no attention. He sat down on the pebbles beside the old man, and, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck with his fingers, addressed him thus:

“Now, don’t you grasp, fool?⁠ ⁠…”

“I hear it from a fool,” interrupted the old man.

“Now, come⁠ ⁠… that’s not the point.⁠ ⁠… Just put it to yourself. What’s the dog to you? Choose another puppy; all your expense is a stick, and there you have your dog again. Isn’t that sense? Don’t I speak the truth? Eh?”

Grandfather meditatively fastened the strap which served him as a belt. To the obstinate questions of the porter he replied with studied indifference.

“Talk on, say all you’ve got to say, and then I’ll answer you at once.”

“Then, brother, think of the number,” cried the porter hotly. “Two hundred, perhaps three hundred roubles in a lump! Well, they generally give me something for my work⁠ ⁠… but just you think of it. Three whole hundred! Why, you know, you could open a grocer’s shop with that.⁠ ⁠…”

Whilst saying this the porter plucked from his pocket a piece of sausage, and threw it to the poodle. Arto caught it in the air, swallowed it at a gulp, and ingratiatingly wagged his tail.

“Finished?” asked Lodishkin sweetly.

“Doesn’t take long to say what I had to say. Give the dog, and the money will be in your hands.”

“So‑o,” drawled grandfather mockingly. “That means the sale of the dog, I suppose?”

“What else? Just an ordinary sale. You see, our little master is so crazy. That’s what’s the matter. Whatever he wants, he turns the whole house upside down. ‘Give,’ says he, and it has to be given. That’s how it is without his father. When his father’s here⁠ ⁠… holy Saints!⁠ ⁠… we all walk on our heads. The father is an engineer; perhaps you’ve heard of Mr. Obolyaninof? He builds railway lines all over Russia. A millionaire! They’ve only one boy, and they spoil him. ‘I want a live pony,’ says he⁠—here’s a pony for you. ‘I want a boat,’ says he⁠—here’s a real boat. There is nothing that they refuse him.⁠ ⁠…”

“And the moon?”

“That is, in what sense?” asked the porter.

“I say, has he never asked for the moon from the sky?”

“The moon. What nonsense is that?” said the porter, turning red. “But come now, we’re agreed, aren’t we, dear man?”

By this time grandfather had succeeded in putting on his old green-seamed jacket, and he drew himself up as straight as his bent back would permit.

“I’ll ask you one thing, young man,” said he, not without dignity. “If you had a brother, or, let us say, a friend, that had grown up with you from childhood⁠—Now stop, friend, don’t throw sausage to the dog⁠ ⁠… better eat it yourself.⁠ ⁠… You can’t bribe the dog with that, brother⁠—I say, if you had a friend, the best and truest friend that it’s possible to have⁠ ⁠… one who from childhood⁠ ⁠… well, then, for example, for how much would you sell him?”

“I’d find a price even for him!⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, you’d find a price. Then go and tell your master who builds the railroads,” cried grandfather in a loud voice⁠—“Go and tell him that not everything that ordinarily is for sale is also to be bought. Yes! And you’d better not stroke the dog. That’s to no purpose. Here, Arto, dog, I’ll give it you. Come on, Sergey.”

“Oh, you old fool!” cried the porter at last.

“Fool; yes, I was one from birth, but you, bit of rabble, Judas, soul-seller!” shouted Lodishkin. “When you see your lady-general, give her our kind respects, our deepest respects. Sergey, roll up the mattress. Ai, ai, my back, how it aches! Come on.”

“So‑o, that’s what it means,” drawled the porter significantly.

“Yes. That’s what it is. Take it!” answered the old man exasperatingly. The troupe then wandered off along the shore, following on the same road. Once, looking back accidentally, Sergey noticed that the porter was following them; his face seemed cogitative and gloomy, his cap was over his eyes, and he scratched with five fingers his shaggy carrotty-haired neck.

V

A certain spot between Miskhor and Aloopka had long since been put down by Lodishkin as a splendid place for having lunch, and it was to this that they journeyed now. Not far from a bridge over a rushing mountain torrent there wandered from the cliff side a cold chattering stream of limpid water. This was in the shade of crooked oak trees and thick hazel bushes. The stream had made itself a shallow basin in the earth, and from this overflowed, in tiny snakelike streamlets, glittering in the grass like living silver. Every morning and evening one might see here pious Turks making their ablutions and saying their prayers.

“Our sins are heavy and our provisions are meagre,” said grandfather, sitting in the shade of a hazel bush. “Now, Serozha, come along. Lord, give Thy blessing!”

He pulled out from a sack some bread, some tomatoes, a lump of Bessarabian cheese, and a bottle of olive oil. He brought out a little bag of salt, an old rag tied round with string. Before eating, the old man crossed himself many times and whispered something. Then he broke the crust of bread into three unequal parts: the largest he gave to Sergey (he is growing⁠—he must eat), the next largest he gave to the poodle, and the smallest he took for himself.

“In the name of the Father and the Son. The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord,” whispered he, making a salad of the tomatoes. “Eat, Serozha!”

They ate slowly, not hurrying, in silence, as people eat who work. All that was audible was the working of three pairs of jaws. Arto, stretched on his stomach, ate his little bit at one side, gnawing the crust of bread, which he held between his front paws. Grandfather and Sergey alternately dipped their tomatoes in the salt, and made their lips and hands red with the juice. When they had finished they drank water from the stream, filling a little tin can and putting it to their mouths. It was fine water, and so cold that the mug went cloudy on the outside from the moisture condensing on it. The midday heat and the long road had tired the performers, for they had been up with the sun. Grandfather’s eyes closed involuntarily. Sergey yawned and stretched himself.

“Well now, little brother, what if we were to lie down and sleep for a minute or so?” asked grandfather. “One last drink of water. Ukh! Fine!” cried he, taking his lips from the can and breathing heavily, the bright drops of water running from his beard and whiskers. “If I were Tsar I’d drink that water every day⁠ ⁠… from morning to night. Here, Arto! Well, God has fed us and nobody has seen us, or if anybody has seen us he hasn’t taken offence.⁠ ⁠… Okh⁠—okh⁠—okhonush⁠—kee⁠—ee!”

The old man and the boy lay down side by side in the grass, making pillows for their heads of their jackets. The dark leaves of the rugged many-branching oaks murmured above them; occasionally through the shade gleamed patches of bright blue sky; the little streams running from stone to stone chattered monotonously and stealthily as if they were putting someone to sleep by sorcery. Grandfather turned from side to side, muttered something to Sergey, but to Sergey his voice seemed far away in a soft and sleepy distance, and the words were strange, as those spoken in a fairy tale.

“First of all⁠—I buy you a costume, rose and gold⁠ ⁠… slippers also of rose-coloured satin⁠ ⁠… in Kiev or Kharkof, or, perhaps, let us say in the town of Odessa⁠—there, brother, there are circuses, if you like!⁠ ⁠… Endless lanterns⁠ ⁠… all electricity.⁠ ⁠… People, perhaps five thousand, perhaps more⁠ ⁠… how should I know. We should have to make up a name for you⁠—an Italian name, of course. What can one do with a name like Esteepheyef, or let us say, Lodishkin? Quite absurd! No imagination in them whatever. So we’d let you go on the placards as Antonio, or perhaps, also quite good, Enrico or Alphonse.⁠ ⁠…”

The boy heard no more. A sweet and gentle slumber settled down upon him and took possession of his body. And grandfather fell asleep, losing suddenly the thread of his favourite after-dinner thoughts, his dream of Sergey’s magnificent acrobatic future. Once, however, in his dream it appeared to him that Arto was growling at somebody. For a moment through his dreamy brain there passed the half-conscious and alarming remembrance of the porter in the rose-coloured blouse, but overcome with sleep, tiredness and heat, he could not get up, but only idly, with closed eyes, cried out to the dog:

“Arto⁠ ⁠… where’re you going? I’ll g‑give it you, gipsy!”

But at once he forgot what he was talking about, and his mind fell back into the heaviness of sleep and vague dreams.

At last the voice of Sergey woke him up, for the boy was running to and fro just beyond the stream, shouting loudly and whistling, calling anxiously for the dog.

“Here, Arto! Come back! Pheu, pheu! Come back, Arto!”

“What are you howling about, Sergey?” cried Lodishkin in a tone of displeasure, trying to bring the circulation back to a sleeping arm.

“We’ve lost the dog whilst we slept. That’s what we’ve done,” answered the boy in a harsh, scolding note. “The dog’s lost.”

He whistled again sharply, and cried:

“Arto‑o‑o!”

“Ah, you’re just making up nonsense! He’ll return,” said grandfather. But all the same, he also got up and began to call the dog in an angry, sleepy, old man’s falsetto:

“Arto! Here, dog!”

The old man hurriedly and tremblingly ran across the bridge and began to go upward along the highway, calling the dog as he went. In front of him lay the bright, white stripe of the road, level and clear for half a mile, but on it not a figure, not a shadow.

“Arto! Ar‑tosh‑enka!” wailed the old man in a piteous voice, but suddenly he stopped calling him, bent down on the roadside and sat on his heels.

“Yes, that’s what it is,” said the old man in a failing voice. “Sergey! Serozha! Come here, my boy!”

“Now what do you want?” cried the boy rudely. “What have you found now? Found yesterday lying by the roadside, eh?”

“Serozha⁠ ⁠… what is it?⁠ ⁠… What do you make of it? Do you see what it is?” asked the old man, scarcely above a whisper. He looked at the boy in a piteous and distracted way, and his arms hung helplessly at his sides.

In the dust of the road lay a comparatively large half-eaten lump of sausage, and about it in all directions were printed a dog’s paw-marks.

“He’s drawn it off, the scoundrel, lured it away,” whispered grandfather in a frightened shiver, still sitting on his heels. “It’s he; no one else, it’s quite clear. Don’t you remember how he threw the sausage to Arto down by the sea?”

“Yes, it’s quite clear,” repeated Sergey sulkily.

Grandfather’s wide-open eyes filled with tears, quickly overflowing down his cheeks. He hid them with his hands.

“Now, what can we do Serozhenka? Eh, boy? What can we do now?” asked the old man, rocking to and fro and weeping helplessly.

“Wha‑at to do, wha‑at to do!” teased Sergey. “Get up, grandfather Lodishkin; let’s be going!”

“Yes, let us go!” repeated the old man sadly and humbly, raising himself from the ground. “We’d better be going, I suppose, Serozhenka.”

Losing patience, Sergey began to scold the old man as if he were a little boy.

“That’s enough drivelling, old man, stupid! Who ever heard of people taking away other folks’ dogs in this way? It’s not the law. What-ye blinking your eyes at me for? Is what I say untrue? Let us go simply and say, ‘Give us back the dog!’ and if they won’t give it, then to the courts with it, and there’s an end of it.”

“To the courts⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… of course.⁠ ⁠… That’s correct, to the courts, of course⁠ ⁠… ,” repeated Lodishkin, with a senseless bitter smile. But his eyes looked hither and thither in confusion. “To the courts⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… only you know, Serozhenka⁠ ⁠… it wouldn’t work⁠ ⁠… we’d never get to the courts.⁠ ⁠…”

“How not work? The law is the same for everybody. What have they got to say for themselves?” interrupted the boy impatiently.

“Now, Serozha, don’t do that⁠ ⁠… don’t be angry with me. They won’t give us back the dog.” At this point grandfather lowered his voice in a mysterious way. “I fear, on account of the passport. Didn’t you hear what the gentleman said up there? ‘Have you a passport?’ he says. Well, and there, you see, I,”⁠—here grandfather made a wry and seemingly frightened face, and whispered barely audibly⁠—“I’m living with somebody else’s passport, Serozha.”

“How somebody else’s?”

“Somebody else’s. There’s no more about it. I lost my own at Taganrog. Perhaps somebody stole it. For two years after that I wandered about, hid myself, gave bribes, wrote petitions⁠ ⁠… at last I saw there was no getting out of it. I had to live like a hare⁠—afraid of everything. But once in Odessa, in a night house, a Greek remarked to me the following:⁠—‘What you say,’ says he, ‘is nonsense. Put twenty-five roubles on the table, and I’ll give you a passport that’ll last you till doomsday.’ I worried my brain about that. ‘I’ll lose my head for this,’ I thought. However, ‘Give it me,’ said I. And from that time, my dear boy, I’ve been going about the world with another man’s passport.”

“Ah, grandfather, grandfather!” sighed Sergey, with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry about the dog. It’s a very fine dog, you know.⁠ ⁠…”

“Serozhenka, my darling,” cried the old man trembling. “If only I had a real passport. Do you think it would matter to me even if they were generals? I’d take them by the throat!⁠ ⁠… How’s this? One minute, if you please! What right have you to steal other people’s dogs? What law is there for that? But now there’s a stopper on us, Serozha. If I go to the police station the first thing will be, ‘Show us your passport! Are you a citizen of Samara, by name Martin Lodishkin?’ I, your Excellency, dear me⁠—I, little brother, am not Lodishkin at all, and not a citizen, but a peasant. Ivan Dudkin is my name. And who that Lodishkin might be, God alone knows! How can I tell? Perhaps a thief or an escaped convict. Perhaps even a murderer. No, Serozha, we shouldn’t effect anything that way. Nothing at all.⁠ ⁠…”

Grandfather choked, and tears trickled once more over his sunburnt wrinkles. Sergey, who had listened to the old man in silence, his brows tightly knit, his face pale with agitation, suddenly stood up and cried: “Come on, grandfather. To the devil with the passport! I suppose we don’t intend to spend the night here on the high road?”

“Ah, my dear, my darling,” said the old man, trembling. “ ’Twas a clever dog⁠ ⁠… that Artoshenka of ours. We shan’t find such another.⁠ ⁠…”

“All right, all right. Get up!” cried Sergey imperiously. “Now let me knock the dust off you. I feel quite worn out, grandfather.”

They worked no more that day. Despite his youthful years, Sergey well understood the fateful meaning of the dreadful word “passport.” So he sought no longer to get Arto back, either through the courts or in any other decisive way. And as he walked along the road with grandfather towards the inn, where they should sleep, his face took on a new, obstinate, concentrated expression, as if he had just thought out something extraordinarily serious and great.

Without actually expressing their intention, the two wanderers made a considerable detour in order to pass once more by Friendship Villa, and they stopped for a little while outside the gates, in the vague hope of catching a glimpse of Arto, or of hearing his bark from afar. But the iron gates of the magnificent villa were bolted and locked, and an important, undisturbed and solemn stillness reigned over the shady garden under the sad and mighty cypresses.

“Peo‑ple!” cried the old man in a quavering voice, putting into that one word all the burning grief that filled his heart.

“Ah, that’s enough. Come on!” cried the boy roughly, pulling his companion by the sleeve.

“Serozhenka! Don’t you think there’s a chance that Artoshenka might run away from them?” sighed the old man. “Eh! What do you think, dear?”

But the boy did not answer the old man. He went ahead in firm large strides, his eyes obstinately fixed on the road, his brows obstinately frowning.

VI

They reached Aloopka in silence. Grandfather muttered to himself and sighed the whole way. Sergey preserved in his face an angry and resolute expression. They stopped for the night at a dirty Turkish coffeehouse, bearing the splendid name of Eeldeez, which means in Turkish, a star. In the same room with them slept Greek stone-breakers, Turkish ditch-diggers, a gang of Russian workmen, and several dark-faced, mysterious tramps, the sort of which there are so many wandering about Southern Russia. Directly the coffeehouse closed they stretched themselves out on the benches along the length of the walls, or simply upon the floor, and the more experienced placed their possessions and their clothes in a bundle under their heads.

It was long after midnight when Sergey, who had been lying side by side with grandfather on the floor, got up stealthily and began to dress himself without noise. Through the wide windowpanes poured the full light of the moon, falling on the floor to make a trembling carpet of silver, and giving to the faces of the sleepers an expression of suffering and death.

“Where’s you going to, zis time o’ night?” cried the owner of the coffeehouse, Ibrahim, a young Turk lying at the door of the shop.

“Let me pass; it’s necessary. I’ve got to go out,” answered Sergey in a harsh, businesslike tone. “Get up, Turco!”

Yawning and stretching himself, Ibrahim got up and opened the door, clicking his tongue reproachfully. The narrow streets of the Tartar bazar were enveloped in a dense dark-blue mist, which covered with a tooth-shaped design the whole cobbled roadway; one side of the street lay in shade, the other, with all its white-called houses, was illumined by the moonlight. Dogs were barking at distant points of the village. Somewhere on the upper high road horses were trotting, and the metallic clink of their hoofs sounded in the night stillness.

Passing the white mosque with its green cupola, surrounded by its grove of silent cypresses, Sergey tripped along a narrow, crooked lane to the great highway. In order that he might run quickly the boy was practically in his undergarments only. The moon shone on him from behind, and his shadow ran ahead in a strange foreshortened silhouette. There were mysterious shaggy shrubs on each side of the road, a bird was crying monotonously from the bushes in a gentle, tender tone “Splew! Splew!”10 and it seemed as if it thought itself to be a sentry in the night silence, guarding some melancholy secret, and powerlessly struggling with sleep and tiredness, complaining hopelessly, quietly, to someone, “Splew, splew, I sleep, I sleep.”

And over the dark bushes, over the blue headdress of the distant forests, rose with its two peaks to the sky, Ai-Petri⁠—so light, so clear-cut, so ethereal, as if it were something cut from a gigantic piece of silver cardboard in the sky. Sergey felt a little depressed by the majestic silence in which his footsteps sounded so distinctly and daringly, but at the same time there rose in his heart a sort of ticklish, head-whirling, spirit of adventure. At a turn of the road the sea suddenly opened before him, immense and calm, quietly and solemnly breaking on the shore. From the horizon to the beach stretched a narrow, a quivering, silver roadway; in the midst of the sea this roadway was lost, and only here and there the traces of it glittered, but suddenly nearer the shore it became a wide flood of living, glimmering metal, ornamenting the coast like a belt of deep lace.

Sergey slipped noiselessly through the wooden gateway leading to the park. There, under the dense foliage of the trees, it was quite dark. From afar sounded the ceaseless murmur of mountain streams, and one could feel their damp cold breath. The wooden planks of the bridge clacked soundingly as he ran across; the water beneath looked dark and dreadful. In a moment he saw in front of him the high gates with their lace pattern of iron, and the creeping gloxinia hanging over them. The moonlight, pouring from a gap in the trees, outlined the lacework of the iron gates with, as it were, a gentle phosphorescence. On the other side of the gates it was dark, and there was a terrifying stillness.

Sergey hesitated for some moments, feeling in his soul some doubt, even a little fear. But he conquered his feelings and whispered obstinately to himself:

“All the same; I’m going to climb in, all the same!”

The elegant cast-iron design furnished solid stepping places and holding places for the muscular arms and feet of the climber. But over the gateway, at a considerable height, and fitting to the gates, was a broad archway of stone. Sergey felt all over this with his hands, and climbed up on to it, lay on his stomach, and tried to let himself down on the other side. He hung by his hands, but could find no catching place for his feet. The stone archway stood out too far from the gate for his legs to reach, so he dangled there, and as he couldn’t get back, his body grew limp and heavy, and terror possessed his soul.

At last he could hold on no longer; his fingers gave, and he slipped and fell violently to the ground.

He heard the gravel crunch under him, and felt a sharp pain in his knees. He lay crouching on all fours for some moments, stunned by the fall. He felt that in a minute out would come the gloomy-looking porter, raise a cry and make a fearful to do.⁠ ⁠… But the same brooding and self-important silence reigned in the garden as before. Only a sort of strange monotonous buzzing sounded everywhere about the villa and the estate.

“Zhu⁠ ⁠… zhzhu⁠ ⁠… zhzhu.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, that’s the noise in my ears,” guessed Sergey. When he got on his feet again and looked round, all the garden had become dreadful and mysterious, and beautiful as in a fairy tale, a scented dream. On the flowerbeds the flowers, barely visible in the darkness, leaned toward one another as if communicating a vague alarm. The magnificent dark-scented cypresses nodded pensively, and seemed to reflect reproachfully over all. And beyond a little stream the tired little bird struggled with its desire to slumber, and cried submissively and plaintively, “Splew, splew, I sleep, I sleep.”

Sergey could not recognise the place in the darkness for the confusion of the paths and the shadows. He wandered for some time on the crunching gravel before he found the house.

He had never in his whole life felt such complete helplessness and torturesome loneliness and desolation as he did now. The immense house felt as if it must be full of concealed enemies watching him with wicked glee, peering at him from the dark windows. Every moment he expected to hear some sort of signal or wrathful fierce command.

“… Only not in the house⁠ ⁠… he couldn’t possibly be in the house,” whispered the boy to himself as in a dream; “if they put him in the house he would begin to howl, and they’d soon get tired of it.⁠ ⁠…”

He walked right round the house. At the back, in the wide yard, were several outhouses more or less simple and capacious, evidently designed for the accommodation of servants. There was not a light in any of them, and none in the great house itself; only the moon saw itself darkly in the dull dead windows. “I shan’t ever get away from here; no, never!” thought Sergey to himself despairingly, and just for a moment his thoughts went back to the sleeping tavern and grandfather and the old organ, and to the place where they had slept in the afternoon, to their life of the road, and he whispered softly to himself, “Never, never any more of that again,” and so thinking, his fear changed to a sort of calm and despairing conviction.

But then suddenly he became aware of a faint, far-off whimpering. The boy stood still as if spellbound, not daring to move. The whimpering sound was repeated. It seemed to come from the stone cellar near which Sergey was standing, and which was ventilated by a window with no glass, just four rough square openings. Stepping across a flowerbed, the boy went up to the wall, pressed his face to one of the openings, and whistled. He heard a slight cautious movement somewhere in the depths, and then all was silent.

“Arto, Artoshka!” cried Sergey, in a trembling whisper.

At this there burst out at once a frantic burst of barking, filling the whole garden and echoing from all sides. In this barking there was expressed, not only joyful welcome, but piteous complaint and rage, and physical pain. One could hear how the dog was tugging and pulling at something in the dark cellar, trying to get free.

“Arto! Doggikin!⁠ ⁠… Artoshenka!⁠ ⁠…” repeated the boy in a sobbing voice.

“Peace, cursed one! Ah, you convict!” cried a brutal bass voice from below.

There was a sound of beating from the cellar. The dog gave vent to a long howl.

“Don’t dare to kill him! Kill the dog if you dare, you villain!” cried Sergey, quite beside himself, scratching the stone wall with his nails.

What happened after that Sergey only remembered confusedly, like something he had experienced in a dreadful nightmare. The door of the cellar opened wide with a noise, and out rushed the porter. He was only in his pantaloons, barefooted, bearded, pale from the bright light of the moon, which was shining straight in his face. To Sergey he seemed like a giant or an enraged monster, escaped from a fairy tale.

“Who goes there? I shall shoot. Thieves! Robbers!” thundered the voice of the porter.

At that moment, however, there rushed from the door of the cellar out into the darkness Arto, with a broken cord hanging from his neck.

There was no question of the boy following the dog. The sight of the porter filled him with supernatural terror, tied his feet, and seemed to paralyse his whole body. Fortunately, this state of nerves didn’t last long. Almost involuntarily Sergey gave vent to a piercing and despairing shriek, and he took to his heels at random, not looking where he was going, and absolutely forgetting himself from fear.

He went off like a bird, his feet striking the ground as if they had suddenly become two steel springs, and by his side ran Arto, joyfully and effusively barking. After them came the porter, heavily, shouting and swearing at them as he went.

Sergey was making for the gate, but suddenly he had an intuition that there was no road for him that way. Along the white stone wall of the garden was a narrow track in the shelter of the cypress trees, and Sergey flung himself along this path, obedient to the one feeling of fright. The sharp needles of the cypress trees, pregnant with the smell of pitch, struck him in the face. He fell over some roots and hurt his arm so that the blood came, but jumped up at once, not even noticing the pain, and went on as fast as ever, bent double, and still followed by Arto.

So he ran along this narrow corridor, with the wall on one side and the closely ranged file of cypresses on the other, ran as might a crazy little forest animal feeling itself in an endless trap. His mouth grew dry, his breathing was like needles in his breast, yet all the time the noise of the following porter was audible, and the boy, losing his head, ran back to the gate again and then once more up the narrow pathway, and back again.

At last Sergey ran himself tired. Instead of the wild terror, he began to feel a cold, deadly melancholy, a tired indifference to danger. He sat down under a tree, and pressed his tired-out body to the trunk and closed his eyes. Nearer and nearer came the heavy steps of the enemy. Arto whimpered softly, putting his nose between the boy’s knees.

Two steps from where Sergey sat a big branch of a tree bent downward. The boy, raising his eyes accidentally, was suddenly seized with joy and jumped to his feet at a bound, for he noticed that at the place where he was sitting the wall was very low, not more than a yard and a half in height. The top was plastered with lime and broken bottle-glass, but Sergey did not give that a thought. In the twinkling of an eye he grabbed Arto by the body, and lifting him up put him with his forelegs on the top of the wall. The clever poodle understood perfectly, clambered on to the top, wagged his tail and barked triumphantly.

Sergey followed him, making use of the branches of the cypress, and he had hardly got on to the top of the wall before he caught sight of a large, shadowy face. Two supple, agile bodies⁠—the dog’s and the boy’s⁠—went quickly and softly to the bottom, on to the road, and following them, like a dirty stream, came the vile, malicious abuse of the porter.

But whether it was that the porter was less sure on his feet than our two friends, or was tired with running round the garden, or had simply given up hope of overtaking them, he followed them no further. Nevertheless, they ran on as fast as they could without resting, strong, light-footed, as if the joy of deliverance had given them wings. The poodle soon began to exhibit his accustomed frivolity. Sergey often looked back fearfully over his shoulders, but Arto leapt on him, wagging his ears ecstatically, and waving the bit of cord that was hanging from his neck, actually licking Sergey’s face with his long tongue. The boy became calm only by the time they got to the spring where the afternoon before grandfather and he had made their lunch. There both the boy and the dog put their lips to the cold stream, and drank long and eagerly of the fresh and pleasant water. They got in one another’s way with their heads, and thinking they had quenched their thirst, yet returned to the basin to drink more, and would not stop. When at last they got away from the spot the water rolled about in their overfull insides as they ran. The danger past, all the terrors of the night explored, they felt gay now, and lighthearted, going along the white road brightly lit up by the moon, going through the dark shrubs, now wet with morning dew, and exhaling the sweet scent of freshened leaves.

At the door of the coffeehouse Eeldeez, Ibrahim met the boy and whispered reproachfully:

“Where’s you been a-roving, boy? Where’s you been? No, no, no, zat’s not good.⁠ ⁠…”

Sergey did not wish to wake grandfather, but Arto did it for him. He at once found the old man in the midst of the other people sleeping on the floor, and quite forgetting himself, licked him all over his cheeks and eyes and nose and mouth, yelping joyfully. Grandfather awoke, saw the broken cord hanging from the poodle’s neck, saw the boy lying beside him covered with dust, and understood all. He asked Sergey to explain, but got no answer. The little boy was asleep, his arms spread out on the floor, his mouth wide open.

I

The little girl was unwell. Every day the doctor came to see her, Dr. Michael Petrovitch, whom she had known long, long ago. And sometimes he brought with him two other doctors whom she didn’t know. They turned the little girl over on to her back and then on to her stomach, listened to something, putting an ear against her body, pulled down her under eyelids and looked at them. They seemed very important people, they had stern faces, and they spoke to one another in a language the little girl did not understand.

Afterwards they went out from the nursery into the drawing-room, where mother sat waiting for them. The most important doctor⁠—the tall one with grey hair and gold eyeglasses⁠—talked earnestly to her for a long time. The door was not shut, and the little girl lying on her bed could see and hear all. There was much that she didn’t understand, but she knew the talk was about her. Mother looked up at the doctor with large, tired, tear-filled eyes. When the doctors went away the chief one said loudly:

“The most important thing is⁠—don’t let her be dull. Give in to all her whims.”

“Ah, doctor, but she doesn’t want anything!”

“Well, I don’t know⁠ ⁠… think what she used to like before she was ill. Toys⁠ ⁠… something nice to eat.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no, doctor; she doesn’t want anything.”

“Well, try and tempt her with something.⁠ ⁠… No matter what it is.⁠ ⁠… I give you my word that if you can only make her laugh and enjoy herself, it would be better than any medicine. You must understand that your daughter’s illness is indifference to life, and nothing more.⁠ ⁠… Good morning, madam!”

II

“Dear Nadya, my dear little girl,” said mother; “isn’t there anything you would like to have?”

“No, mother, I don’t want anything.”

“Wouldn’t you like me to put out all your dolls on the bed? We’ll arrange the easy chair, the sofa, the little table, and put the tea-service out. The dolls shall have tea and talk to one another about the weather and their children’s health.”

“Thank you, mother.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want it.⁠ ⁠… It’s so dull.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, very well, little girlie, we won’t have the dolls. Suppose we ask Katya or Zhenochka to come and see you. You’re very fond of them.”

“I don’t want them, mother. Indeed, I don’t. I don’t want anything, don’t want anything. I’m so dull!”

“Shall I get you some chocolate?”

But the little girl didn’t answer, she lay and stared at the ceiling with steadfast, mournful eyes. She had no pain at all, she wasn’t even feverish. But she was getting thinner and weaker every day. She didn’t mind what was done to her; it made no difference, she didn’t care for anything. She lay like this all day and all night, quiet, mournful. Sometimes she would doze for half an hour, and then in her dreams she would see something long and grey and dull, as if she were looking at rain in autumn.

When the door leading from the nursery into the drawing-room was open, and the other door into the study was open too, the little girl could see her father. Father would walk swiftly from one corner of the room to the other, and all the time he would smoke, smoke. Sometimes he would come into the nursery and sit on the edge of Nadya’s bed and stroke her feet gently. Then he would get up suddenly and go to the window, whistle a little, and look out into the street, but his shoulders would tremble. He would hurriedly press his handkerchief first to one eye and then to the other, and then go back into his study as if he were angry. Then he would begin again to pace up and down and smoke⁠ ⁠… and smoke⁠ ⁠… and smoke. And his study would look all blue from the clouds of tobacco smoke.

III

One morning the little girl woke to feel a little stronger than usual. She had dreamed something, but she couldn’t remember exactly what she had dreamed, and she looked attentively into her mother’s eyes for a long time.

“What would you like?” asked mother.

But the little girl had suddenly remembered her dream, and she said in a whisper, as if it were a secret:

“Mother⁠ ⁠… could I have⁠ ⁠… an elephant? Only not one that’s painted in a picture.⁠ ⁠… Eh?”

“Of course you can, my child, of course.”

She went into the study and told papa that the little girl wanted an elephant. Papa put on his coat and hat directly, and went off somewhere. In half an hour he came back, bringing with him an expensive beautiful toy. It was a large grey elephant that could move its head and wave its tail; on its back was a red saddle, and on the saddle there was a golden vent with three little men sitting inside. But the little girl paid no attention to the toy; she only looked up at the walls and ceiling, and said languidly:

“No. That’s not at all what I meant. I wanted a real live elephant, and this one’s dead.”

“But only look at it, Nadya,” said mamma. “We’ll wind him up, and he’ll be exactly, exactly like a live one.”

The elephant was wound up with a key, and it then began to move its legs and walk slowly along the table, nodding its head and waving its tail. But the little girl wasn’t interested at all; she was even bored by it, though in order that her father shouldn’t feel hurt she whispered kindly:

“Thank you very very much, dear papa. I don’t think anyone has such an interesting toy as this.⁠ ⁠… Only⁠ ⁠… you remember⁠ ⁠… long ago, you promised to take me to a menagerie to see a real elephant⁠ ⁠… and you didn’t bring it here.⁠ ⁠…”

“But listen, my dear child. Don’t you understand that that’s impossible. An elephant is very big; he’s as high as the ceiling, and we couldn’t get him into our rooms. And what’s more, where could I obtain one?”

“Papa, I don’t want such a big one.⁠ ⁠… You could bring me as little a one as you like, so long as it’s alive. As big as this⁠ ⁠… a baby elephant.”

“My dear child, I should be glad to do anything for you, but this is impossible. It’s just as if you suddenly said to me, ‘Papa, get me the sun out of the sky.’ ”

The little girl smiled sadly.

“How stupid you are, papa! As if I didn’t know it’s impossible to get the sun, it’s all on fire. And the moon, too, you can’t get. No, if only I had a little elephant⁠ ⁠… a real one.”

And she quietly closed her eyes and whispered:

“I’m tired.⁠ ⁠… Forgive me, papa.⁠ ⁠…”

Papa clutched at his hair and ran away to his study, where for some time he marched up and down. Then he resolutely threw his unfinished cigarette on the floor⁠—mamma was always grumbling at him about this⁠—and called out to the maid:

“Olga! Bring me my hat and coat!”

His wife came out into the hall.

“Where are you going, Sasha?” asked she.

He breathed heavily as he buttoned up his coat.

“I don’t know myself, Mashenka, where I’m going.⁠ ⁠… Only I think that this evening I shall actually bring a live elephant here.”

His wife looked anxiously at him.

“My dear, are you quite well?” said she. “Haven’t you got a headache? Perhaps you slept badly last night?”

“I didn’t sleep at all,” he answered angrily. “I see, you want to ask if I’m going out of my mind. Not just yet. Goodbye. You’ll see this evening.”

And he went off, loudly slamming the front door after him.

IV

In two hours’ time he was seated in the front row at the menagerie, and watching trained animals perform their different parts under the direction of the manager. Clever dogs jumped, turned somersaults, danced, sang to music, made words with large cardboard letters. Monkeys⁠—one in a red skirt, the other in blue knickers⁠—walked the tight rope and rode upon a large poodle. An immense tawny lion jumped through burning hoops. A clumsy seal fired a pistol. And at last they brought out the elephants. There were three of them: one large and two quite small ones, dwarfs; but all the same, much larger than a horse. It was strange to see how these enormous animals, apparently so heavy and awkward, could perform the most difficult tricks which would be out of the power of a very skilful man. The largest elephant distinguished himself particularly. He stood up at first on his hind legs, then sat down, then stood on his head with his feet in the air, walked along wooden bottles, then on a rolling cask, turned over the pages of a large picture-book with his tail, and, finally, sat down at a table and, tying a serviette round his neck, had his dinner just like a well-brought-up little boy.

The show came to an end. The spectators went out. Nadya’s father went up to the stout German, the manager of the menagerie. He was standing behind a partition smoking a long black cigar.

“Pardon me, please,” said Nadya’s father. “Would it be possible for you to send your elephant to my house for a short time?”

The German’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, and his mouth also, so that the cigar fell to the ground. He made an exclamation, bent down, picked up the cigar, put it in his mouth again, and then said:

“Send? The elephant? To your house? I don’t understand you.”

It was evident from his look that he also wanted to ask Nadya’s father if he were a little wrong in the head.⁠ ⁠… But the father quickly began to explain the matter: his only daughter, Nadya, was ill with a strange malady which no doctor could understand nor cure. She had lain for a month in her bed, had grown thinner and weaker every day, wasn’t interested in anything, was only dull⁠—she seemed to be slowly dying. The doctors had said she must be roused, but she didn’t care for anything; they had said that all her desires were to be gratified, but she didn’t wish for anything at all. Today she had said she wanted to see a live elephant. Wasn’t it possible to manage that she should?

And he took the German by the button of his coat, and added in a trembling voice:

“Well⁠ ⁠… of course I hope that my little girl will get well again. But suppose⁠ ⁠… God forbid it!⁠ ⁠… her illness should take a sudden turn for the worse⁠ ⁠… and she should die! Just think⁠—shouldn’t I be tortured for all the rest of my life to think that I hadn’t fulfilled her last, her very last wish!”

The German wrinkled up his forehead and thoughtfully scratched his left eyebrow with his little finger. At length he asked:

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… And how old is your little girl?”

“Six.”

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… My Lisa’s six, too. H’m. But you know, it’ll cost you a lot. We’ll have to take the elephant one night, and we can’t bring it back till the next night. It’ll be impossible to do it in the daytime. There’d be such crowds of people, and such a fuss.⁠ ⁠… It means that I should lose a whole day, and you ought to pay me for it.”

“Of course, of course⁠ ⁠… don’t be anxious about that.”

“And then: will the police allow an elephant to be taken into a private house?”

“I’ll arrange it. They’ll allow it.”

“And there’s another question: will the landlord of your house allow the elephant to come in?”

“Yes. I’m my own landlord.”

“Aha! That’s all the better. And still another question: what floor do you live on?”

“The second.”

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… That’s not so good.⁠ ⁠… Have you a broad staircase, a high ceiling, a large room, wide doorways, and a very stout flooring. Because my ‘Tommy’ is three and a quarter arshins in height and five and a half long. And he weighs a hundred and twelve poods.”11

Nadya’s father thought for a moment.

“Do you know what?” said he. “You come with me and look at the place. If it’s necessary, I’ll have a wider entrance made.”

“Very good!” agreed the manager of the menagerie.

V

That night they brought the elephant to visit the sick girl.

He marched importantly down the very middle of the street, nodding his head and curling up and uncurling his trunk. A great crowd of people came with him, in spite of the late hour. But the elephant paid no attention to the people; he saw hundreds of them every day in the menagerie. Only once did he get a little angry. A street urchin ran up to him under his very legs, and began to make grimaces for the diversion of the sightseers.

Then the elephant quietly took off the boy’s cap with his trunk and threw it over a wall near by, which was protected at the top by projecting nails.

A policeman came up to the people and tried to persuade them:

“Gentlemen, I beg you to go away. What’s there here unusual? I’m astonished at you! As if you never saw an elephant in the street before.”

They came up to the house. On the staircase, and all the way up to the dining-room where the elephant was to go, every door was opened wide; the latches had all been pushed down with a hammer. It was just the same as had been done once when they brought a large wonder-working icon into the house.

But when he came to the staircase the elephant stopped in alarm, and refused to go on.

“You must get him some dainty to eat,” said the German.⁠ ⁠… “A sweet cake or something.⁠ ⁠… But⁠ ⁠… Tommy!⁠ ⁠… Oho-ho⁠ ⁠… Tommy!”

Nadya’s father ran off to a neighbouring confectioner’s and bought a large round pistachio tart. The elephant looked as if he would like to eat it at one gulp, and the cardboard box it was in as well, but the German gave him only a quarter of the tart.⁠ ⁠… Tommy evidently liked it, and stretched out his trunk for a second morsel. But the German was cunning. Holding the tart in his hand he went up the staircase, step by step, and the elephant unwillingly followed him with outstretched trunk and bristling ears. On the landing Tommy was given a second piece.

In this way they brought him into the dining-room, from whence all the furniture had been taken out beforehand, and the floor had been strewn with a thick layer of straw.⁠ ⁠… Tommy was fastened by the leg to a ring which had been screwed into the floor. They put some fresh carrots, cabbages and turnips in front of him. The German stretched himself out on a sofa by Tommy’s side. The lights were put out, and everybody went to bed.

VI

Next morning the little girl woke very early, and asked, first thing:

“The elephant? Has he come?”

“Yes, he’s come,” said mamma; “but he says that Nadya must first of all be washed, and then eat a soft-boiled egg and drink some hot milk.”

“Is he good?”

“Yes, he’s good. Eat it up, dear. We’ll go and see him in a minute.”

“Is he funny?”

“Yes, a little. Put on your warm bodice.”

The egg was quickly eaten, and the milk drunk. Nadya was put in the perambulator in which she used to be taken out when she was too small to walk by herself, and wheeled into the dining-room.

The elephant looked much larger than Nadya had thought when she saw it in a picture. He was only just a little lower than the top of the door, and half as long as the dining-room. He had thick skin, in heavy folds. His legs were thick as pillars. His long tail looked something like a broom at the end. His head had great lumps on it. His ears were as large as shovels, and were hanging down. His eyes were quite tiny, but they looked wise and kind. His tusks had been cut off. His trunk was like a long snake and had two nostrils at the end, with a moving flexible finger between them. If the elephant had stretched out his trunk to its full length, it would probably have reached to the window.

The little girl was not at all frightened. She was only just a little astounded by the enormous size of the animal. But Polya, the sixteen-year-old nursemaid, began to whimper in terror.

The elephant’s master, the German, came up to the perambulator and said:

“Good morning, young lady. Don’t be afraid, please. Tommy’s very good, and he likes children.”

The little girl held out her little white hand to the German.

“Good morning,” she said in answer. “How are you? I’m not in the least afraid. What’s his name?”

“Tommy.”

“Good morning, Tommy,” said the child, with a bow. “How did you sleep last night?”

She held out her hand to him. The elephant took it cautiously and pressed her thin fingers with his movable strong one, and he did this much more gently than Dr. Michael Petrovitch. Then he nodded his head, and screwed up his little eyes as if he were laughing.

“Does he understand everything?” asked the little girl of the German.

“Oh, absolutely everything, miss.”

“Only he can’t speak.”

“No, he can’t speak. Do you know, I’ve got a little girl just as small as you. Her name’s Lisa. Tommy’s a great, a very great, friend of hers.”

“And you, Tommy, have you had any tea yet?” asked Nadya.

The elephant stretched out his trunk and blew out a warm breath into the little girl’s face, making her hair puff out at each side.

Nadya laughed and clapped her hands. The German laughed out loud too. He was also large and fat, and good-natured like the elephant, and Nadya thought they looked like one another. Perhaps they were relations.

“No, he hasn’t had tea, miss. But he likes to drink sugar-water. And he’s very fond of rolls.”

Some rolls were brought in on a tray. The little girl handed some to her guest. He caught a roll cleverly with his finger, and turning up his trunk into a ring hid the roll somewhere underneath his head, where one could see his funny three-cornered, hairy, lower lip moving, and hear the roll rustling against the dry skin. Tommy did the same with a second roll, and a third, and a fourth and a fifth, nodding his head and wrinkling up his little eyes still more with satisfaction. And the little girl laughed delightedly.

When the rolls were all eaten, Nadya presented her dolls to the elephant.

“Look, Tommy, this nicely-dressed doll is Sonya. She’s a very good child, but a little naughty sometimes, and doesn’t want to eat her soup. This one is Natasha, Sonya’s daughter. She’s begun to learn already, and she knows almost all her letters. And this one is Matreshka. She was my very first doll. Look, she hasn’t got any nose and her head’s been stuck on, and she’s lost all her hair. But I can’t turn an old woman out of the house. Can I, Tommy? She used to be Sonya’s mother, but now she’s the cook. Let’s have a game, Tommy; you be the father and I’ll be the mother, and these shall be our children.”

Tommy agreed. He laughed, took Matreshka by the neck and put her in his mouth. But this was only a joke. After biting the doll a little he put her back again on the little girl’s lap, just a little wet and crumpled.

Then Nadya showed him a large picture-book, and explained:

“This is a horse, this is a canary, this is a gun.⁠ ⁠… Look, there’s a cage with a bird inside; here’s a pail, a looking-glass, a stove, a spade, a raven.⁠ ⁠… And here, just look, here’s an elephant. It’s not at all like you, is it? Is it possible an elephant could be so small, Tommy?”

Tommy thought that there were no elephants in the world as small as that. He didn’t seem to like that picture. He took hold of the edge of the page with his finger and turned it over.

It was dinnertime now, but the little girl couldn’t tear herself away from the elephant. The German came to the rescue.

“If you allow me, I will arrange it all. They can dine together.”

He ordered the elephant to sit down, and the obedient animal did so, shaking all the floor of the whole flat, making all the china on the sideboard jingle, and the people downstairs were sprinkled over with bits of plaster falling from the ceiling. The little girl sat opposite the elephant. The table was put between them. A tablecloth was tied round the elephant’s neck, and the new friends began their dinner. The little girl had chicken broth and cutlets, the elephant had various vegetables and salad. The little girl had a liqueur glass full of sherry, and the elephant had some warm water with a glassful of rum in it, and he sucked up this liquid through his trunk with great pleasure from a soup tureen. Then they had the sweet course⁠—the little girl a cup of cocoa, and the elephant a tart, a walnut one this time. The German, meanwhile, sat with papa in the drawing-room, and, with as much pleasure as the elephant, drank beer, only in greater quantities.

After dinner some visitors came to see papa, and they were warned in the hall about the elephant so that they should not be frightened. At first they couldn’t believe it, but when they saw Tommy they pressed themselves close up against the door.

“Don’t be afraid, he’s good,” said the little girl soothingly.

But the visitors quickly hurried into the drawing-room, and after having sat there for five minutes took their departure.

The evening came. It grew late, and time for the little girl to go to bed. But they couldn’t get her away from the elephant. She dropped asleep by his side presently, and then they carried her off to the nursery. She didn’t wake up, even when she was being undressed.

That night Nadya dreamed that she was married to Tommy and that they had many children, tiny, jolly, little baby elephants. The elephant, whom they took back at night to the menagerie, also dreamed of the sweet and affectionate little girl. He dreamt, too, that he had a large tart with walnuts and pistachios as big as a gate.⁠ ⁠…

Next morning the little girl woke, fresh and healthy, and as she used to do before her illness, cried out, in a voice to be heard all over the house, loudly and impatiently:

“I want some milk.”

Hearing this cry, in her bedroom mamma crossed herself devoutly.

But the little girl remembered what had happened yesterday, and she asked:

“Where’s the elephant?”

They explained to her that the elephant had been obliged to go home, that he had children who couldn’t be left by themselves, but that he had left a message for Nadya to say that he hoped she would come and see him as soon as she was well.

The little girl smiled slyly and said:

“Tell Tommy that I’m quite well now.”

I

In the middle of August, just before the birth of the new moon, the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse and assumed that disagreeable character which is sometimes characteristic of the northern coast of the Black Sea. Sometimes a heavy fog would hang drearily over land and sea, and then the immense siren of the lighthouse would howl day and night like a mad bull. Sometimes it would rain from morning to morning, and the thickly falling raindrops, as fine as dust, would transform the clayey roads and paths into one continuous sheet of mud, in which the passing wagons and carriages stuck for a long time. Sometimes a hurricane-like wind would begin to blow from the steppes lying toward the northwest, and then the tops of the trees would bend down to the ground, and again sweep up, like waves during a storm; the iron roofs of the country houses would rattle at night, as though someone were walking over them in iron-shod boots, the windowpanes would jingle, the doors snap, and the flues howl dismally. Several fishing barks lost their way in the sea, and two of them never returned to shore; it was only a week later that the bodies of the fishermen were washed ashore in different places.

The inhabitants of the shore resort⁠—which lay on the outskirts of a large city⁠—mostly Greeks and Jews, who, like all people of the south, are fond of comforts, hastened to move to the city. And endless lines of wagons, loaded with mattresses, furniture, trunks, washstands, samovars, and all kinds of household goods, stretched down the muddy road. Sad and pitiable, and even disgusting, was the sight of this procession, as one caught glimpses of it through the thick net of rain, for everything seemed so old and worn out and sordid. Maids and cooks were sitting on top of the tarpaulins that covered the vans, holding flatirons, tin boxes, or baskets in their hands; the sweating, almost exhausted horses stopped every little while, their knees shaking, and a cloud of steam rising from their heaving flanks, while the drivers, all covered with rags for protection against the rain, cursed them hoarsely. But even sadder was the sight of the deserted houses, with their suddenly acquired bareness and emptiness, with their mutilated flowerbeds, broken windowpanes, straying dogs, and piles of refuse consisting of cigarette stumps, pieces of paper, boxes, and medicine-bottles.

But toward the middle of September the weather again changed unexpectedly. The days suddenly became calm and cloudless, bright, warm, and sunny, as they had not been even in July. The fields became dry, and on their yellow bristle glistened the autumn spiderweb, like netted mica. The trees were now dropping their yellow leaves, obediently and silently.

Princess Vera Nikolayevna Sheyin, the wife of the president of the local Assembly of the Nobles, could not leave her country house, because the alterations in their city home had not as yet been completed. And now she was happy over the splendid weather that had set in, over the quiet, the fresh air, the chirping of the swallows that were gathering on the telegraph-wires and forming into flocks for their far journey⁠—happy over the gentle, salty breeze slowly coming from the sea.

II

Moreover, that day, September 17, happened to be her birthday. She was always fond of that day, as it was connected with happy childhood recollections, and she always expected something miraculous and fortunate to happen on her birthday. This time, before leaving for the city, where he had an urgent engagement, her husband had put on her night table a little case, containing beautiful earrings with shapely pearl pendants, and this present made her still happier.

She was all alone in the house. Her bachelor brother Nikolay, who was living with them, had also gone to the city, as he had to appear in court that morning in his capacity of assistant district attorney. Her husband had promised to bring a few intimate friends for dinner. She thought it was well that her birthday came at the time when they were still in their country home. If it had happened in the city, it would have been necessary to provide a formal banquet, while here, on the seashore, a simple dinner would do just as well. Prince Sheyin, despite his prominence in society, or perhaps because of it, had always found it rather difficult to make his financial ends meet. His immense hereditary estate had been reduced almost to the point of bankruptcy by his predecessors, and he was compelled to live beyond his means: to provide entertainments, give to charity, dress well, keep up a good stable. Princess Vera, whose formerly passionate love for her husband had already become transformed into a feeling of lasting, true, sincere friendship, did everything in her power to help her husband ward off financial disaster. Without letting him know, she refused herself many luxuries and economized in her household management as much as she could.

Just now she was in the garden carefully cutting flowers for the dinner-table. The flowerbeds were almost empty and presented a disordered appearance. The many-colored double carnations were in their last bloom; the gillyflowers already had half of their blossoms transformed into thin, green pods, that smelled like cabbage; the rosebushes were blooming for the third time that summer, and their blossoms and buds were small and far between, as though they were degenerating. Only dahlias, peonies, and asters were coldly and haughtily beautiful in their luxuriant bloom, spreading a sad, grassy, autumnal odor in the air. The other flowers, after their sumptuous love and abundant summer motherhood, were now quietly shedding on the ground the numberless seeds of future life.

The sound of an automobile-horn came from the road. It was Princess Vera’s sister, Anna Nikolayevna Friesse, coming to help her with her preparations, as she had promised over the telephone that morning.

Vera’s accurate ear did not deceive her. A few moments later, a beautiful car stopped at the gates, and the chauffeur, jumping down from his seat, quickly opened the door.

The sisters greeted each other joyfully. From early childhood they had been warmly and closely attached to each other. They were strangely unlike in appearance. Vera was the older of the two, and she was like her mother, a beautiful Englishwoman; she was tall and slender, with a cold and proud face, beautiful, somewhat large hands, and that charming slope of the shoulders which one sometimes meets in old miniatures. Anna, on the other hand, inherited the Mongolian blood of her father, a Tartar prince, whose forebears had embraced Christianity only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and whose ancestry could be traced back to Tamerlane himself, or Lang-Temir, as the father was fond of calling in the Tartar dialect that great bloody tyrant. She was considerably shorter than her sister, rather broad-shouldered, with a lively and light-minded disposition. Her face was of a pronounced Mongolian type, with rather prominent cheekbones, narrow eyes, which she always screwed up a little because of nearsightedness, with a haughty expression of her small, sensuous mouth, that had a slightly protruding, full lower lip. And yet her face was fascinating with some incomprehensible and elusive charm, which lay perhaps in her smile, perhaps in the deep feminacy of all her features, perhaps in her piquant and coquettish mimicry. Her graceful lack of beauty excited and attracted the attention of men much oftener than her sister’s aristocratic beauty.

She had married a very wealthy and very stupid man, who had absolutely nothing to do, but was nominally connected with some charitable institution and had the title of a gentleman of the Emperor’s bedchamber. She did not like her husband, and had only two children; after the birth of her second child, she decided to have no more. Vera, on the other hand, was very anxious to have children, and the more the better, as it seemed to her, but she had none, and was extremely fond of her sister’s pretty and anaemic children, always polite and obedient, with pale faces and curly, light hair, like that of a doll.

Anna was perfectly happy in her haphazard way of doing things, and she was full of contradictions. She was perfectly willing to engage in most risky flirtations in all the capitals and fashionable resorts of Europe, but she was never unfaithful to her husband, whom she, nevertheless, jeered contemptuously both in his presence and absence; she was extravagant, inordinately fond of gambling and dancing, of exciting experiences, of visits to suspicious cafés, and yet she was remarkable for her generosity and kindness, and for her deep, sincere piety, which had even led her to embrace secretly the Catholic faith. She had a wonderfully beautiful bosom, neck, and shoulders. When dressing for balls, she bared her neck and shoulders beyond the limits set by both propriety and fashion, but it was whispered that despite her low décolleté, she always wore a hair shirt.

Vera was characterized by stern simplicity, cold and somewhat condescending politeness, independence, and majestic calmness.

III

“Goodness, how beautiful it is here! How beautiful!” Anna was saying this, as she walked rapidly with her sister down the path. “Let us sit on this bench by the precipice for a while, if we may. I haven’t seen the sea for such a long time. The air is so exhilarating it makes my heart glad to breathe it. You know, last summer in Crimea, when we were in Miskhora, I made a marvellous discovery. Do you know what is the odor of the water at high tide? Just imagine, it smells like mignonettes!”

Vera smiled affectionately.

“You are a regular dreamer.”

“Why, no, no, not at all. I remember once, when I said that there is a pinkish tint in moonlight, everybody laughed at me. And only a few days ago, Boritsky, the artist who is painting my portrait, told me that I was right and that artists have known about it for a long time.”

“An artist? Is that your new fad?”

“You always imagine things!” said Anna laughingly, as she rapidly walked up to the brink of the precipice, which was sloping down almost perpendicularly into the sea, glanced over it, and suddenly cried out in horror, jumping away, her face turning pale.

“Goodness, how high it is!” she said in a weak and shaking voice. “When I look down from such a stupendous height, I have such a sweetish and disgusting sensation in my chest.⁠ ⁠… And my toes feel as though they were being pinched.⁠ ⁠… And yet I am drawn, drawn toward it.⁠ ⁠…”

She made a motion as though she were again going to look over the brink of the precipice, but her sister stopped her.

“Anna, dear, please don’t do it. I become dizzy myself, when I see you doing it. Won’t you, please, sit down?”

“All right, all right, here I am.⁠ ⁠… But just look how beautiful it all is; I can’t feast my eyes enough on it. If you only knew how thankful I am to God for having created all these marvels for us!”

The sisters remained thoughtful for a moment. Far, far below, under their feet, spread the calm sea. The shore was not visible from the spot where they were sitting, and this merely emphasized the feeling of illimitable grandeur, produced by the vast sheet of water before them. And the water was gently quiet, joyfully blue, shining with occasional, oblique bands of smoothness, that marked the currents, and changing its color into a deeper blue near the horizon line.

Fishermen’s boats, appearing so small that they were scarcely discernible to the naked eye, seemed plunged in slumber upon the motionless surface of the sea, not far from the shore. And a little farther off, a large, three-mast schooner, covered from top to bottom with white sails monotonously expanded by the wind, seemed to be standing in the air, also motionless.

“I think I understand you,” said Vera thoughtfully. “But I feel differently about it. When I see the sea for the first time, after being away for a considerable period, it agitates me and gladdens me and amazes me. It seems to me as though I were beholding for the first time an enormous, majestic miracle.⁠ ⁠… But after a while, when I become used to it, it begins to oppress me with its flat emptiness.⁠ ⁠… I have no more interest in gazing at it, and even try not to look. I simply become tired of it.”

Anna smiled.

“Why do you smile?”

“You know, last summer,” Anna said mischievously, “a large group of us went on horseback from Yalta to the top of Uch-Kosh, over to the spot above the waterfalls. At first we struck a cloud; it was awfully damp and we could hardly see ahead, but we were still going up and up a steep path, winding among pine-trees. And then suddenly, the pine forest came to an end and we came out of the fog. Just imagine: a narrow platform on the rock, and under our feet a deep abyss. The villages down there seemed like matchboxes, and woods and gardens like thin blades of grass. Everything before us sloped down to the sea, like a geographic map. And beyond it was the sea, stretching out fifty or a hundred miles before us. It seemed to me as though I were hanging in the air, ready to fly. You get a feeling of such beauty, such lightness! I turned back to our guide and said to him in rapture, ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Seid-Ogly?’ and he just smacked his tongue and said: ‘If you only knew, lady, how tired I am of all this. I see it every day.’ ”

“Thanks for the comparison,” said Vera, laughing. “No, but I guess that we northerners can never appreciate the beauties of the sea. I like the woods. Remember the woods in our Yegorovsk? You can never get tired of them. The pines! And the mosses! And the fly-agarics! They look as though they were made of crimson satin and embroidered with tiny white beads. And it is so quiet and cool.”

“I don’t care; I like everything,” answered Anna. “But most of all, I like my dear little sister, my sensible little Vera. We two are alone in the world, aren’t we?”

She embraced her sister and pressed her cheek against Vera’s. Suddenly she jumped up.

“My, how stupid I am! Here we are, sitting together, as they do in stories, talking about nature, while I’ve forgotten all about the present I brought you. Here it is⁠—look! I wonder if you’ll like it?”

She took out of her bag a little notebook with a wonderful cover. On old blue velvet, already worn off and grown gray with age, was embroidered in dull gold a filigreed design of rare complexity, delicacy, and beauty⁠—evidently a work of love, executed by the skilful hands of a patient artist. The notebook was attached to a gold chain, as thin as a thread, and thin ivory tablets were substituted for the leaves inside.

“Isn’t it charming!” exclaimed Vera, kissing her sister. “Thank you ever so much. Where did you get such a treasure?”

“Oh, in an antique shop. You know my weakness for rummaging among all kinds of antiques. And once I came across this prayerbook. See, here is where the design is made in the shape of a cross. Of course, I found only the cover, all the rest, the leaves, the clasps, the pencil, I had to think out myself. But Molliner simply refused to understand what I was trying to tell him. The clasps had to be made the same way as the whole design, of dull, old gold, delicately engraved, and he made this thing of it. But the chain is very ancient, really Venetian.”

Vera stroked the beautiful cover affectionately.

“What deep antiquity! How old do you think this book is?” asked she.

“It would be pretty hard to say. Perhaps the end of the seventeenth century, or the middle of the eighteenth.”

“How strange it is,” said Vera with a thoughtful smile, “that I am holding in my hands an object which may have been touched by the hands of the Marquise de Pompadour, or even Queen Antoinette herself.⁠ ⁠… Do you know, Anna, you must be the only person in the world who could conceive of the mad idea of making a lady’s notebook out of a prayerbook. However, let’s go in and see how things are getting on.”

They went into the house through the large brick piazza, covered on all sides by thickly interlaced vines of grapes. The abundant bunches of black grapes, that had a faint odor of strawberries, hung down heavily amidst dark-green leaves, goldened in spots by the sun. The whole piazza was filled with greenish twilight, which made the faces of the two women appear pale.

“Will you have the dinner served here?” asked Anna.

“I thought of doing that at first. But it is rather cool in the evening now. I guess we shall use the dining-room, and the men can come out here to smoke.”

“Will there be any interesting people?”

“I don’t know yet. But I do know that grandpa is coming.”

“Grandpa! Isn’t that fine!” exclaimed Anna. “It seems to me that I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Vasily’s sister is coming, and I think Professor Speshnikov. Why, I simply lost my head yesterday, Anna. You know that they both like a good dinner, grandpa and the professor, and you cannot get anything, either here or in the city. Luka has gotten some quails and is trying to do something with them now. The roast beef we got isn’t bad. Alas! the inevitable roast beef. The lobsters, too, are pretty good.”

“Well, that isn’t bad at all. Don’t trouble yourself about that. Still, between us two, you must admit that you like a good dinner yourself.”

“And then we’ll have something rare. The fisherman brought us a sea-cock this morning. It’s a monster.”

Anna, interested in everything that concerned her and did not concern her, immediately expressed a desire to see the sea-cock.

The tall, yellow-faced cook, Luka, brought in a large, oval basin of water, holding it carefully so as not to spill the water on the parquet floor.

“Twelve and a half pounds, your Highness,” said he with that pride which is so characteristic of cooks. “We weighed him a few minutes ago.”

The fish was too large for the basin, and was lying on the bottom, with its tail curled up. Its scales had a golden tint, the fins were of bright-scarlet color, while on either side of the ravenous head was a long, fan-shaped wing of light-blue color. The fish was still alive and was breathing heavily.

Anna touched the head of the fish with her little finger. The animal swept up its tail, and Anna drew her hand away in fright.

“Don’t trouble yourself, your Highness,” said Luka, evidently understanding Vera’s worry. “Everything will be first class. The Bulgarian has just brought two fine cantaloupes. And then, may I ask of your Highness, what kind of sauce to serve with the fish, Tartar or Polish, or just toast in butter?”

“Do as you like,” said the princess.

IV

The guests began to arrive after five o’clock. Prince Vasily Lvovich brought his sister, Ludmila Lvovna Durasova, a stout, kindly, and unusually taciturn woman; a very rich young man, familiarly known in society as Vasuchok, who was famous for his ability to sing, recite poetry, organize charity balls and entertainments; the famous pianist, Jennie Reiter, Princess Vera’s school friend; and Vera’s brother, Nikolay Nikolayevich. Then came Anna’s husband in his automobile, bringing with him the clean-shaven, fat Professor Speshnikov, and the Vice-Governor Von Zeck. The last one to arrive was General Anosov, in a fine hired landau, accompanied by two army officers, Ponomarev, a colonel of the staff, and Lieutenant Bakhtinsky, who was famous in Petersburg as a splendid dancer and cotillon leader.

General Anosov was a stout, tall old man with silver hair. He alighted heavily from his carriage, holding on to it with both hands. Usually he had an ear-tube in his left hand and a walking-stick with a rubber head in the right. He had a large, coarse, red face, with a prominent nose and that kindly, majestic, just a little contemptuous expression in his slightly screwed-up eyes, which is characteristic of brave and simple men, who had often seen mortal danger immediately before their eyes. The two sisters, recognizing him at a distance, ran to the carriage just in time to support him by both arms half in jest and half seriously.

“Just like an⁠ ⁠… archbishop,” said the general in a kindly, hoarse bass.

“Grandpa, grandpa,” said Vera in a tone of light reproach, “we wait for you every day almost, and you never show yourself.”

“Grandpa must have lost all conscience down here in the south,” continued Anna. “Might at least have remembered his goddaughter. Shame on you! You behave like a regular Don Juan, and have forgotten entirely about our existence.”

The general, baring his majestic head, kissed their hands, then kissed their cheeks, and then their hands again.

“Wait, wait⁠ ⁠… girls⁠ ⁠… don’t scold me,” he said, alternating his words with deep sighs, resulting from habitual short breathing. “My word of honor⁠ ⁠… those good-for-nothing doctors⁠ ⁠… bathed my rheumatisms⁠ ⁠… all summer⁠ ⁠… in some kind of⁠ ⁠… jelly.⁠ ⁠… Smells awfully.⁠ ⁠… And wouldn’t let me go.⁠ ⁠… You are the first.⁠ ⁠… Ever so glad⁠ ⁠… to see you.⁠ ⁠… How are you?⁠ ⁠… You’ve become⁠ ⁠… an English lady⁠ ⁠… Vera⁠ ⁠… you look so much⁠ ⁠… like your mother.⁠ ⁠… When are we going to have⁠ ⁠… the christening?”

“Never, I am afraid, grandpa.”

“Don’t despair.⁠ ⁠… Pray to God.⁠ ⁠… And you haven’t changed a bit, Anna.⁠ ⁠… I guess when you are sixty⁠ ⁠… you’ll still be the same prattler. Wait a moment. Let me introduce the officers to you.”

“I had the honor long ago,” said Colonel Ponomarev, bowing.

“I was introduced to the princess in Petersburg,” said the hussar.

“Well, then let me introduce to you, Anna, Lieutenant Bakhtinsky, a fine dancer, a good scrapper, and a first-class cavalryman. Will you get that parcel out of the carriage, Bakhtinsky, please? Well, let’s go now.⁠ ⁠… What’ll you give us tonight, Vera? I tell you, after that treatment⁠ ⁠… I have an appetite⁠ ⁠… like a graduating ensign.”

General Anosov was a war comrade and loyal friend of the late Prince Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky. After the prince’s death he transferred all his friendship and affection to the two daughters. He had known them since their early childhood, and was Anna’s godfather. At that time, just as at the time of the story, he was the commandant of the large though almost useless Fortress K., and visited the Tuganovsky house almost every day. The children simply adored him for his presents, for the theatre and circus tickets that he used to get for them, and for the fact that nobody could play with them as the old general did. But his greatest fascination lay in the stories that he told them. For hours at a time, he would tell them of marches and battles, victories and defeats, and death and wounds, and bitter cold; they were slow, simple stories, epic-like in their calm, told between the evening tea and the dreary time when the children would be taken to bed.

According to modern ideas, this fragment of the old days was really a gigantic and picturesque figure. In him were brought together those touching and deep characteristics which are more commonly met with among plain soldiers, and not officers⁠—those unadulterated characteristics of a Russian peasant, which, in proper combination, produce that lofty type which often makes our soldier not only unconquerable, but a martyr, almost a saint⁠—those characteristics of unsophisticated, naive faith, a clear, joyful view of life, cool courage, meekness before the face of death, pity for the conquered, boundless patience, and remarkable physical and moral endurance.

Starting with the Polish campaign, Anosov took part in every war except the one against the Japanese. He would have gone to that war, too, but he was not summoned, and he had a rule, really great in its modesty, which was as follows: “Do not tempt death until you are called upon to do so.” During his whole military career, he not only never had a soldier flogged, but never even struck one. During the Polish uprising he refused to shoot some prisoners, although he was ordered to do so by the commander of the regiment. “When it comes to a spy,” he said, “I would not only have him shot, but, if you will order me, I shall kill him myself. But these are prisoners of war; I can’t do it.” And he said this with such simplicity, so respectfully, without a trace of a challenge, looking his superior straight in the face with his clear eyes, that he was let alone, instead of being himself ordered shot for insubordination.

During the war of 1877⁠–⁠9, he quickly reached the colonel’s rank, although he had received no education, having been graduated, in his own words, from the “bears’ academy.” He took part in the crossing of the Danube, went through the Balkans, took part in the defense of Shipka, and the last attack on Plevna. During this campaign he received one serious wound and four slighter ones, besides receiving serious head lacerations through being struck by the fragment of a grenade. Generals Radetzky and Skobelev knew him personally and treated him with singular respect. It was about him that Skobelev said: “I know an officer who is much braver than I am; it is Major Anosov.”

He returned from the war almost deaf, thanks to the head lacerations, with an injured foot⁠—three of the toes were frozen during the crossing of the Balkans and had to be amputated⁠—with severe rheumatism⁠—the results of his service at Shipka. After two years had passed, it was decided that he should leave active service, but Anosov did not wish to leave. The commander of the district, who still remembered his remarkable bravery displayed during the crossing of the Danube, helped him, and the authorities in Petersburg changed their minds, fearing to hurt the old colonel’s feelings. He was given for life the position of commandant of the Fortress K., which was, as a matter of fact, merely an honorary post.

Everybody in the city knew him and made fun, in a kindly way, of his weaknesses, his habits, and his manner of dressing. He always went about unarmed, in an old-fashioned coat, a cap with large rims and huge straight visor, a walking-stick in his right hand, and an ear-horn in the left; he was always accompanied by two fat, lazy dogs, the tips of whose tongues were forever between their teeth. If, during his morning walks he happened to meet his acquaintances, the passersby would hear blocks away the general’s loud voice and the barking of his dogs.

Like many deaf people, he was very fond of the opera, and sometimes, in the course of a love duet, the whole theatre would hear his loud bass, saying: “Didn’t he take that do clear, the devil take him? Just like cracking a nut.” And the whole theatre would restrain its laughter, while the general himself would be entirely unconscious of the whole thing; he would be sure that he had whispered his opinion to his neighbor.

As the commandant of the fortress, he often visited the guardhouse, accompanied by his loudly breathing dogs. There, spending their time rather pleasantly in playing cards, sipping tea, and telling anecdotes, the imprisoned officers rested from the strenuous duties of army life. He would ask each one attentively for his name, the cause of his arrest, by whom ordered, and the period of time to be spent in confinement. Sometimes he would suddenly praise an officer for a brave, though illegal, act; at other times he would suddenly fall to scolding an officer and his voice would be heard far into the street. But the scolding over, he would always make it a point to inquire where the officer gets his meals and how much he pays for them. And if some poor sublieutenant, sent over from some out-of-the-way place for a long period of imprisonment, would admit to him that because of lack of means he was compelled to eat the soldiers’ fare, Anosov would immediately order meals brought to him from the commandant’s house, which was not more than two hundred steps away from the guardhouse.

It was at K. that he had met the family of Prince Tuganovsky and become so attached to the children that it became a matter of necessity with him to visit them every evening. If it happened sometimes that the young ladies would go somewhere in the evening, or that official duties would keep him in the fortress, he would feel actual distress and find no place for himself in the spacious rooms of his large house. Every summer, he would take a leave of absence and spend a whole month in Yegorovsk, the Tuganovsky estate, which was a distance of fifty versts from K.

All the hidden kindness of his soul and his necessity for heartfelt affection he transferred to these children, especially the girls. He himself had married once, but it was so very long ago that he had forgotten about it. Even before the war, his wife had eloped with a travelling actor, charmed by his velvet cloak and his lace cuffs. The general supported her until her death, but never permitted her to enter his house, despite her numerous attempts at reconciliation and her tearful letters to him. They never had any children.

V

The evening turned out to be quite warm and calm, so that the candles both in the dining-room and on the piazza were giving steady light. At dinner, it was Prince Vasily Lvovich that provided the entertainment. He had a remarkable way of relating stories, really a method all peculiar to himself. The basis of his story would be an actual occurrence, the hero of which would be someone present or well known to those present, but he would change things around in such a way and tell about them with such a serious face and in such a businesslike tone, that the listeners would be kept in constant laughter. That night he was telling the story of Nikolay Nikolayevich’s unsuccessful courtship for a very beautiful and very rich lady. The truth of the story was that the husband of the lady had refused to divorce her. But in the prince’s narrative, the truth was marvellously blended with the fantastic. In the story, the serious and somewhat haughty Nikolay was made to run through the streets at night in his stockinged feet and his shoes under his arm. A policeman stopped the young man somewhere on the corner and it was only after a long and stormy explanation that Nikolay finally succeeded in proving to the officer of the law that he was the assistant district attorney and not a burglar. The marriage, according to the story, came very near being successfully consummated, but in the very critical moment, a band of perjurers, who were taking part in the case, went on strike, demanding an increase in wages. Both because he was miserly (Nikolay was in reality a little closefisted) and because, as a matter of principle, he was opposed to all kinds of strikes, he refused to grant the increase, citing a definite statute confirmed by the verdict of the appellate division. Then the infuriated perjurers, in reply to the customary question, as to whether anyone knows any reasons why the marriage should not take place, answered in chorus: “We know. Everything that we have deposed under oath is false, and we were forced by the district attorney to tell these lies. As for the husband of this lady, we, as persons well informed about these matters, can say that he is the most respectable man in the world, as chaste as Joseph, and of most angelic kindness.”

Continuing on the road of bridal stories, Prince Vasily did not spare Gustav Ivanovich Friesse, either. He told the story of how Anna’s husband, on the day following the marriage ceremony, demanded police aid in forcing his bride to leave her parents’ home, as she did not have a passport of her own, and compelling her to move to the domicile of her legal husband. The only thing that was true in this anecdote was that, during the first few days of her married life, Anna was compelled to stay with her mother, who was suddenly taken ill, while Vera had to leave for her own home in the south, and during this whole time, Gustav Ivanovich was full of distress and despair.

Everybody laughed. Anna, too, smiled. Gustav Ivanovich laughed louder than anybody else, and his thin face, tightly covered with glistening skin, with his carefully brushed, thin, light hair, and deeply sunk eye-sockets, reminded one of a bare skull, displaying two rows of decayed teeth. He was still enchanted by Anna, just as on the first day of their married life, always tried to sit next to her, to touch her, and looked after her with such an amorous and self-satisfied expression, that one often felt sorry and ill at ease to look at him.

Just before rising from the table, Vera Nikolayevna counted the guests, without really meaning to do it. There were thirteen. She was superstitious, and thought to herself: “Now, that’s bad. How is it that I never thought of it before? And it’s all Vasya’s fault; he didn’t tell me anything over the telephone.”

Whenever friends met either at the Sheyins’ or at the Friesses’, it was customary to play poker, as both sisters were very fond of games of chance. Special rules were even worked out in both homes. Each player was given a certain number of bone counters, and the game continued until all the counters fell into one person’s hands. After that the game automatically came to a close, despite all the protestations of the players. It was forbidden to take additional counters. These stern rules were the result of actual practice, as neither of the sisters knew any bounds in games of chance. In this way, the total loss never aggregated to more than one or two hundred roubles.

A game of poker was organized for that evening, too. Vera, who took no part in it, started to go out to the piazza, where the tea-table was being set, when she was stopped by her maid, who asked her with a somewhat mysterious expression to go with her to the little room adjoining the parlor.

“What is it, Dasha?” asked Princess Vera with displeasure. “Why do you look so stupid? And what is it that you have in your hands?”

Dasha placed a small square parcel on the table. It was carefully wrapped up in white paper and bound with pink ribbon.

“It isn’t my fault, your Highness,” said she, blushing at the scolding. “He came and said⁠ ⁠…”

“Who came?”

“The fellow in the red cap, your Highness. The messenger.”

“Well?”

“He came to the kitchen and put this on the table. ‘Give this to your lady,’ says he, ‘and to nobody but herself.’ And when I asked him whom it is from, he says, ‘Everything is marked there.’ And with that he ran away.”

“Send somebody after him.”

“We can’t do it now, your Highness; he was here a half-hour ago, during the dinner, only I didn’t dare to trouble your Highness.”

“All right. You may go.”

She cut the ribbon with a pair of scissors and threw it into the basket together with the wrapper, upon which her address was written. The parcel proved to be a small case of red velvet, coming evidently from a jewelry store. Vera raised the top lined with light-blue silk and found inside an oval gold bracelet, under which was lying a note prettily folded into an eight-cornered figure. She quickly unfolded the paper. The handwriting seemed familiar to her, but, like a real woman, she pushed the note aside and began to examine the bracelet.

It was made of rather base gold and, while very thick, was evidently empty inside. The whole outer rim was studded with small, old garnets, rather poorly polished. But in the centre of the rim there was a small, peculiar-looking, green stone, surrounded by five beautiful, large garnets, each as large as a pea. When Vera accidentally turned the bracelet so that the five large garnets came under the light of the electric lamp, five crimson lights suddenly flared up before her eyes.

“Like blood!” thought she involuntarily, with a sudden, unexpected alarm.

Then she thought of the letter and opened it again. She read the following lines, written in a beautiful, small hand:

“Your Highness, Princess Vera Nikolayevna:

“I take the courage to send you my modest gift, together with my most respectful congratulations upon this joyous and bright occasion of your birthday.”

“Oh, it’s the same man again,” thought the princess with displeasure. Still, she finished the letter:

“I should never had dared to send you as a gift anything chosen by myself, as I have neither the right nor the taste, nor⁠—I admit⁠—the money for this. Moreover, I am sure that there is not a treasure in the world which would be worthy of adorning you.

“But this bracelet was the property of my great-grandmother and was worn last by my late mother. In the middle, among the large stones, you will see a green one. This is a very rare kind of garnet, a green garnet. According to an old tradition, still believed in by our family, it has the property of rendering prophetic the women who carry it and driving away all their painful thoughts, while with men it is a talisman that protects them from violent death.

“All the stones have been carefully transferred from the old silver bracelet, and you may be certain that no one before you had ever worn this bracelet.

“You may immediately throw away this ludicrous toy, or give it to somebody, but I will still be happy when thinking of the fact that your hands touched it.

“I beg you not to be angry with me. I blush at the recollection of the insolence which led me, seven years ago, to write you foolish and wild letters and even to expect you to reply to them. Now nothing remains in me but reverence, eternal devotion, and slavish loyalty. Now I can only wish for your happiness every minute of my life, and to be joyful in the knowledge of your happiness. In my thoughts I bow to the ground before the chairs on which you sit, the floor on which you walk, the trees which you touch, the maid with whom you speak. I do not even envy either human beings or inanimate things.

“Once more I beg your forgiveness for having troubled you with this long and unnecessary letter.

“I wonder if I ought to show this to Vasya? And if I ought to, would it be better to do it now, or after everybody is gone? No, I guess I’ll wait until everybody is gone; if I do it now, not only this unfortunate fellow will appear ridiculous, but I also.”

So thought Princess Vera as she gazed upon the five crimson lights trembling beneath the surface of the five garnets, unable to turn her gaze away.

VI

It took some time to convince Colonel Ponomarev that he ought to play poker. He said that he did not know the game, that he did not believe in playing games of chance even for fun, that the only games he played with any degree of success were of the milder varieties. Still, he gave in in the end and agreed to learn.

At first he had to be shown every little thing, but it did not take him long to master the rules of poker, and at the end of less than half an hour, all the counters were already in his hands.

“You can’t do that!” said Anna with comical displeasure. “Why didn’t you give us a chance to have a little fun at least?”

Three of the guests, Speshnikov, the colonel, and the vice-governor, a rather stupid and uninteresting German, really couldn’t find anything to do, and Vera was at a loss to provide some kind of entertainment for them. At last she succeeded in getting them to play cards, inviting Gustav Ivanovich to be the fourth partner. Anna looked at her sister and, as if in sign of her gratitude, she lowered her long lashes, and the sister immediately understood her. Everybody knew that if Gustav Ivanovich were not made to play cards, he would keep close to his wife’s side all the time, really spoiling the evening for her.

Now everything ran smoothly and interestingly. Vasuchok was singing popular Italian songs and Rubinstein’s “Eastern Melodies,” accompanied by Jennie Reiter. His voice was not very strong, but it was pleasant and well trained. Jennie Reiter, who was a fine musician herself, was always glad to accompany him. Moreover, it was whispered that Vasuchok was in love with her.

In the corner Anna was flirting with the hussar. Vera walked over to them and began to listen to their conversation with a smile.

“Now, now, please don’t make fun of me,” Anna was saying, smiling with her pretty, Tartar eyes. “Of course, you consider it hard work to gallop in front of your squadron as though you were mad, or to take part in horse-races. But just look at what we have to do. It was only a few days ago that we finally got through with the lottery. You think that was easy, don’t you? My goodness, there was such a crowd there and everybody was smoking and annoying me with all sorts of complaints.⁠ ⁠… And I had to be on my feet the whole day long. And then there is going to be a charity concert for the relief of poor working women, and then a ball.⁠ ⁠…”

“At which, I hope, you will not refuse to dance the mazurka with me?” said Bakhtinsky, jingling his spurs under the chair.

“Thanks.⁠ ⁠… But my main trouble is our asylum, the asylum for depraved children, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I know. It must be awfully funny?”

“Stop it, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to make fun of such things? But do you know what our main trouble is? We want to take care of these unfortunate children, whose souls are full of hereditary vices and evil examples, we want to take care of them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Hm!”

“… to raise their morality, to awaken in their souls the realization of their duties. Do you understand that? Well, every day hundreds and thousands of children are brought to us, and there is not a single depraved child among them! And if we ask the parents whether their child is depraved or not, why, they even get insulted. And there you are, the asylum is all equipped, everything is ready, and not a single inmate. Why, it looks as though we would have to offer a premium for every depraved child brought to us.”

“Anna Nikolayevna,” said the hussar in a serious, though almost insinuating, tone, “why offer the prize? Take me. Upon my word you won’t be able to find a more depraved child than myself.”

“Oh, stop that! You can’t speak seriously about anything,” laughed she, throwing herself back in the chair.

Prince Vasily Lvovich, sitting at a large, round table, was showing his sister, Anosov, and his brother-in-law an album of comical pictures drawn by himself. The four were laughing heartily over the album and this gradually attracted the other guests who were not busy with card-playing.

The album served as a sort of supplement to the satirical stories told by Prince Vasily. With his usual calmness, he was showing for example, “The History of the Love Affairs of the Great General Anosov, Perpetrated in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Other Countries”; or else, “The Adventures of Prince Nikolay-Bulat-Tuganovsky in Monte Carlo,” etc.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see the brief life story of our beloved sister, Ludmila Lvovna,” said he, glancing quickly at his sister. “Part One. Childhood. ‘The child grew, and it was called Lima.’ ”

On the sheet of the album was drawn the figure of a small girl with her face in profile, yet showing two eyes, with broken lines for her legs and long, extended fingers on her hands.

“Nobody ever called me Lima,” laughed Ludmila Lvovna.

“Part Two. Her First Love. A cadet presents the maiden with poetry of his own creation. He is seen kneeling before her. The poetry contains real gems. Here is an example:

“ ‘Your foot, so beautiful and dainty⁠—
A sign of passion sent from Heaven!’

“And here is an actual representation of the foot.

“And in this picture the cadet induces the innocent Lima to elope with him. This is the elopement. And this is the critical situation; the enraged father catches up with the elopers. The cadet, through cowardice, blames everything on poor Lima, in the following lines:

“ ‘You spent an extra hour with rouge and powder,
And now the pursuers are upon us.
Do anything you like, get yourself out of the scrape,
I run away into the nearest bushes.’ ”

The life story of Lima was followed by a new story, entitled, “Princess Vera and the Enamoured Telegraphist.”

“This touching poem has only been illustrated with pen and ink, and in colors,” explained Vasily Lvovich seriously. “The text has not been prepared as yet.”

“That’s something new,” remarked Anosov. “I’ve never seen this before.”

“The latest news. Just out on the market.”

Vera touched his arm.

“Do not show it,” said she.

But Vasily Lvovich either did not hear her, or did not pay attention to her words.

“The beginning of this story runs back into times prehistoric. One beautiful day in May, a maiden by the name of Vera received a letter with two kissing pigeons at the top of the sheet. This is the letter and these are the pigeons.

“The letter contained a declaration of love, written with absolute defiance of all rules of spelling. It begins like this, ‘Oh, beautiful blonde lady, you, who⁠ ⁠… raging sea of flame seething within my bosom.⁠ ⁠… Your glance, like a poisonous snake, has pierced my suffering soul.⁠ ⁠…’ At the end of the letter, there was the following modest signature: ‘According to my branch of service, I am only a poor telegraphist, but my feelings are worthy of the great Lord George. I dare not disclose my full name, as it is not fit to be pronounced. Therefore I sign this with my initials only, viz. P. P. Z. Please address your reply to General Delivery.’ And here, ladies and gentlemen, you can behold the picture of the telegraphist himself, very skilfully done in colors.

“Vera’s heart is pierced. Here is the heart and here, the arrow. But, being a well-behaved and well-brought-up girl, she showed the letter to her parents and also to her friend to whom she was already engaged, a very handsome young man by the name of Vasya Sheyin. This is the illustration. At some future time it will be accompanied by explanation in verse.

“Vasya Sheyin weeps with grief and returns Vera her ring. ‘I dare not stand in the way of your happiness,’ says he, ‘but I implore you not to do anything hastily. Think well before you act. My child, you know not life, and like a butterfly you are flying into the flames. While I, alas! I know well the cold and hypocritical world! Let me warn you that telegraphists are fascinating but crafty. They find inexpressible joy in deceiving their inexperienced victim with their proud beauty and false feelings, and then mocking her most cruelly.’

“Six months go by. In the midst of life’s tempestuous dance, Vera forgets her admirer and is married to handsome young Vasya, but the telegraphist does not forget her. He disguises himself as a flue cleaner and makes his way to Princess Vera’s room. You can still see the traces of his five fingers and two lips on the carpets, the cushions, the wallpaper, and even the parquet floor.

“Then he disguises himself as a peasant woman and is hired as a dishwasher. But the excessive attentions of our cook make him flee.

“Now he is in the lunatic asylum. And now he enters the monastery. But every day, without fail, he sends passionate letters to Vera. And you can still see the blots on the parts of the sheets where his tears fell.

“Finally he dies and before his death wills to Vera two brass buttons torn off his coat and a perfume bottle filled with his tears.⁠ ⁠…”

“Who wants tea?” asked Vera Nikolayevna.

VII

The autumn sun had already set. The last red, thin band of light that was still burning on the horizon line between the dark cloud and the earth disappeared at last. Neither the earth, nor the trees, nor the sky were visible any more. Only the large stars overhead twinkled, and a bluish beam of light rose upward from the lighthouse and spread out into a circle of dull light, as though breaking against the dome of the sky. The night butterflies were flying around the glass covers of the candles. The star-shaped white flowers in the garden had a stronger odor in the midst of the darkness and coolness.

Speshnikov, the vice-governor, and Colonel Ponamarev had left some time ago and promised to send the carriage back from the station to take the commandant over. The remaining guests sat on the piazza. Despite his protests, the general was compelled to put on an overcoat and to agree to have his feet covered with a rug. A bottle of his favorite red Pommard wine was standing before him, while the two sisters were sitting by his side, filling his glass with the old wine, slicing the cheese for him, and striking matches to light his cigar. The old commandant was completely happy.

“Y‑yes.⁠ ⁠… Autumn is here, all right,” he was saying, gazing at the candle flame and thoughtfully shaking his head. “It’s time for me to get back. And I must say, I don’t feel like going. Now is the best time to live at the seashore, in quiet and calm.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why don’t you stay with us, grandpa?” said Vera.

“Can’t do it, my dear, can’t do it. Service won’t let me. My furlough is over.⁠ ⁠… How I should like to stay here, though! The roses have such a fine odor now. In summer only the acacia has any odor, and it smells more like candy.”

Vera took two small roses out of a vase and inserted them into the buttonhole of the general’s coat.

“Thank you, Vera.” Anosov bent his head, smelled the flowers, and then smiled with that fine smile of his.

“This reminds me of how we came to Bukharest. Once I was walking in the street, when a very strong odor of roses stopped me. In front of me were two soldiers holding a beautiful cut-glass bottle of rose oil. They had already rubbed their boots with it and oiled their rifle locks. ‘What have you got there?’ I asked them. ‘Some kind of oil, your Honor. We tried to use it in cooking, but it doesn’t work. And it smells fine!’ I gave them a rouble, and they were very glad to part with the bottle. Although the bottle was no more than half full, the way prices stood then, the oil was worth at least sixty roubles. The soldiers, greatly pleased with the bargain, added: ‘And here is some kind of Turkish peas, your Honor. We tried to cook them but they are as hard as before.’ It was coffee. I said to them: ‘This is good only for the Turks, it will never do for our soldiers!’ It was luck that they didn’t eat any opium. I saw opium tablets in several places.”

“Grandpa, tell me frankly,” said Anna, “were you ever afraid during battles?”

“That’s a funny question to ask, Anna. Of course I was afraid. Don’t you believe the people who tell you that they are not afraid and that the whistle of bullets is the sweetest music in the world to them. A man like that is either crazy or else he is boasting. Everybody is afraid. Only one fellow will lose all self-control, and another holds himself well in hand. You see, the fear always remains the same, but the ability to hold yourself in hand develops with practice; that’s why we have heroes and great men. And yet, there was one occasion when I was almost frightened to death.”

“Won’t you tell us about it, grandpa?” asked both sisters together. They were still fond of listening to Anosov’s stories, just as they had been in early childhood. Anna even placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the palms of her hands, just as she had done when she was a child. There was a peculiar charm in his slow and artless manner of narrating. Even the phraseology with which he narrated his reminiscences often assumed a peculiarly awkward, somewhat bookish character. Sometimes it seemed that he had learned a story in some dear old volume.

“It isn’t a long story,” said Anosov. “It was in winter, at Shipka, after I was wounded in the head. There were four of us living in a dugout, and it was there that a peculiar thing happened to me. One morning, as I was getting up, it suddenly appeared to me that my name was not Yakov but Nikolay, and I could not possibly convince myself of the fact that it was Yakov. I realized that I was losing my senses and cried for some water, with which I moistened my head, and that brought me back to myself.”

“I can just imagine how many conquests you made among the women there, Yakov Mikhailovich,” said Jennie Reiter. “You must have been very handsome in your youth.”

“Oh, our grandpa is still handsome!” exclaimed Anna.

“No, I guess I never was very handsome,” said Anosov, with a quiet smile. “But I was never disliked, overmuch, either. A rather touching incident occurred in Bukharest. When we entered the city, the inhabitants met us with salutes of cannon from the public square, which damaged many windowpanes. But the windows, on whose sills stood glasses of water, were not damaged. And this is how I found it out. When I came to the house to which I was billeted, I saw a small cage over which stood a large cut-glass bottle, filled with water. There were fishes swimming in the water, and among them sat a canary. That astonished me. But when I looked closely, I saw that the bottom of the bottle was so blown that it formed an arched space over the open top of the cage, and the canary could fly in and sit on a perch. Afterward I admitted to myself that I was rather slow in grasping things.

“I went into the house and saw a beautiful little Bulgarian girl. I showed her my card, and asked her, by the way, why their windowpanes were not broken. She said that it was on account of the water, and explained to me about the canary, too. That’s how slow I was! Well, during our conversation, our eyes met, and a spark passed between us, just like electricity, and I felt I had fallen in love with her, ardently and irrecoverably.”

The old man became silent for a moment, and slowly sipped the dark wine.

“But you told her of your love, didn’t you?” asked the pianist.

“Hm.⁠ ⁠… Of course.⁠ ⁠… But without⁠ ⁠… words.⁠ ⁠… This is how it happened.⁠ ⁠…”

“Grandpa, I hope you won’t make us blush?” said Anna with a mischievous smile.

“No, no. It is a very decent story. You see, wherever we came the inhabitants of the cities were not equally cordial and responsive. But in Bukharest, they treated us so well that when I started playing the violin once, the girls began to dance, and we repeated this every day.

“One evening, when we were dancing in the moonlight, I went into the hall, and my Bulgarian girl was there. When she saw me, she pretended that she was sorting dry rose-leaves, whole sacks of which were gathered there. But I embraced her and kissed her several times.

“Well, every time the moon and stars appeared in the sky, I hastened to my beloved and with her forgot all my troubles. And when I had to leave, we swore eternal love, and parted forever.”

“Is that all?” asked Ludmila Lvovna, plainly disappointed.

“What more would you want?” replied the commandant.

“You will excuse me, Yakov Mikhailovich, but that was not love; only an ordinary military adventure.”

“Don’t know, my dear, don’t know whether that was love, or some other feeling.⁠ ⁠…”

“But now, tell me, didn’t you ever love with real, true love? You know, love which is⁠ ⁠… well, holy, pure, eternal, heavenly.⁠ ⁠… Didn’t you ever love that way?”

“I really don’t know what to say,” answered the old man hesitatingly, rising from his chair. “I guess I never did love that way. At first, I had no time: youth, cards, wine, the war.⁠ ⁠… It seemed that there would never be an end to life, youth, and health. But before I had time to turn around, I was already a wreck.⁠ ⁠… And now, Vera, don’t keep me any longer. Hussar,” said he, turning to Bakhtinsky, “the night is warm. Let’s walk a little way; we’ll meet the carriage.”

“I’ll go with you, grandpa,” said Vera.

“And I, too,” added Anna.

Before they went away, Vera said to her husband, in a low voice:

“Go up to my room. There is a red case in the drawer of the table, and a note inside. Read it.”

VIII

Anna and Bakhtinsky walked ahead, while the commandant and Vera followed, arm in arm, about twenty paces behind. The night was so black that during the first few minutes, before the eyes became accustomed to the darkness after the light of the rooms, it was necessary to feel for the road with the foot. Anosov, who, despite his age, still had very sharp eyes, had to help his companion every little while. From time to time, with his large, cold hand, he stroked affectionately Vera’s hand, that lay lightly on the bend of his overcoat sleeve.

“Isn’t Ludmila Lvovna queer?” suddenly said the general, as if continuing his thought aloud. “I have often noticed that when a woman is fifty, and especially if she is a widow or an old maid, she always likes to make fun of other people’s love. Either she is spying, or gossiping, or rejoicing at other people’s misfortunes, or trying to make others happy, or spreading verbal glue about the higher love. And I say that in our times people don’t know how to love. I don’t see any real love. Didn’t see any in my time, either.”

“Now, now, grandpa,” Vera retorted softly, pressing his hand a little, “why slander yourself? You were married, too. That means that you were in love, doesn’t it?”

“Doesn’t mean anything of the sort, Vera. Do you know how I got married? I saw her, such a fresh, naive girl, you know. And when she breathed, her bosom rose and fell under her waist. She would lower her long, long eyelashes, and suddenly blush. And her skin was so delicate and white, and her hands so warm and soft. Oh, the devil! And papa and mamma walk around, looking at you with such doglike eyes. And when you’d go away, she’d kiss you just once or twice behind the door. And at tea, her foot would touch yours, as though by accident.⁠ ⁠… Well, the thing was done.⁠ ⁠… ‘My dear Nikita Antonych, I came to ask you for your daughter’s hand. Believe me, she is a saint and⁠ ⁠…’ And papa’s eyes are already wet, and he is ready to kiss me. ‘My dear boy, we have been expecting it for a long time.⁠ ⁠… God bless you.⁠ ⁠… Take good care of your treasure.⁠ ⁠…’ Well, three months after the wedding, the ‘sainted treasure’ was already running about the house in a dirty kimono, with slippers on her bare feet, with her thin, uncombed hair all in curl-paper, flirting with servants like a cook, making faces at young officers, talking to them in a strange way, rolling her eyes. In the presence of others, she would insist on calling me ‘Jacque,’ and pronouncing the word with a funny nasal sound. And she was so extravagant, and greedy, and dirty, and false. And I knew that she was always lying with her eyes.⁠ ⁠… Now it is all over, and I can talk about it calmly. In my heart, I am even thankful to that actor.⁠ ⁠… Thank God, there were no children.⁠ ⁠…”

“But you forgave them, grandpa, didn’t you?”

“Forgave? No, that’s not the word, Vera. At first I was like mad. If I had met them then, I would have killed them both, of course. And then, by and by, I calmed down, and nothing remained but contempt. And it was well. God spared me unnecessary bloodshed. And besides, I escaped the usual lot of husbands. What would I have been if it were not for this disgusting business? A beast of burden, a shameful conniver, a cow to be milked, a screen, a convenient piece of household goods.⁠ ⁠… No! It was better that way, Vera.”

“No, no, grandpa. You will forgive me, but I think that it is your outraged feelings that still speak in you.⁠ ⁠… You transfer your unfortunate experience to the rest of mankind. Take Vasya and me, for instance. You would not call our married life unfortunate, would you?”

Anosov was silent for a long time. Then he said slowly, almost unwillingly:

“Well⁠ ⁠… let us say⁠ ⁠… that you are an exception.⁠ ⁠… But look, why do most people marry? Take a woman. She is ashamed of remaining an old maid when all her friends are married. She does not want to remain a burden on her family, wants to be independent, to live for herself.⁠ ⁠… And then, of course, there is the purely physiological necessity of motherhood. Men have other motives. In the first place, he is tired of single life, of lack of order in his room, of restaurants, dirt, cigarette-stumps, torn clothes, debts, unceremonious friends, and so on. In the second place, it is better, healthier, and more economical to live a family life. In the third place, he thinks of the possible children, and says to himself: ‘I shall die, but a part of me will still remain behind.⁠ ⁠…’ Something like the illusion of immortality. Then, again, there is the temptation of innocence, as with me, for instance. Sometimes men think of the dowry. But where is love, disinterested, self-sacrificing, expecting no reward⁠—the love about which it has been said that it is ‘more powerful than death’? Where is the love, for which it is joy, and not labor, to make a sacrifice, give up life, suffer pains? Wait, wait, Vera, I know that you are going to tell me about your Vasya. Yes, I like him. He is a good fellow. And, perhaps, in the future, his love will appear in the light of great beauty. But, think of the kind of love I mean. Love must be a tragedy, the greatest mystery in the world! No life comforts, calculations, or compromises must ever affect it.”

“Did you ever see such love, grandpa?” asked Vera quietly.

“No,” said the old man decisively. “I do know of two cases somewhat like it, though. Still, one of them was the result of foolishness, and the other⁠ ⁠… of weakness. I’ll tell you about them, if you like. It won’t take long.”

“Please, grandpa.”

“Well, the colonel of one of the regiments of our division (not of mine, though) had a wife. The ugliest-looking thing imaginable. Red-haired, and bony, and long, and with a big, big mouth.⁠ ⁠… Plastering used to come from her face, as though it were the wall of an old Moscow residence. You know the kind: temperamental, imperious, full of contempt for everybody, and a passion for variety. A morphine fiend into the bargain.

“Well, once, in the fall, a newly baked ensign was sent to the regiment, a regular yellow-mouthed sparrow just out of a military school. In a month’s time, the old mare had him under her thumb. He was her page, and her servant, and her slave; always danced with her, carried her fan and handkerchief, rushed out into the cold to call her carriage. It is an awful thing when a clean-minded and innocent boy lays his first love at the feet of an old, experienced, and imperious libertine. Even if he comes out unhurt, you can still count him as lost. It’s a stamp for life.

“Toward Christmas, she was already tired of him. She went back to one of her former passions. But he couldn’t give her up. He would trail her, like a ghost. He grew thin and dark. Using exalted language, ‘death already lay upon his lofty brow.’ He was terribly jealous of everybody. It was said that he used to stand for whole nights under her window.

“Once, in the spring, their regiment had an outing or a picnic. I knew both her and him personally, although I was not present when it happened. As usual everybody drank a good deal. They were coming back on foot, along the railroad-tracks. Suddenly a freight-train appeared, coming toward them. It was going up a steep slope, very slowly, signalling all the time. And when the headlights were already very near, she whispered in the ensign’s ears: ‘You always say that you love me. And if I were to order you to throw yourself under the train, I am sure you wouldn’t do it.’ He never said a word, but rushed right under the train. They say that he had calculated correctly to land between the front and the rear wheels of a car, so as to be cut in half, but some idiot started holding him back. Only he wasn’t strong enough to pull the ensign off the rail, which he clutched with his hands. So both of his hands were lopped off.”

“How horrible!” exclaimed Vera.

“The ensign had to leave service. His friends got a little money together and helped him go away. He couldn’t stay in the city and be a constant living reproach to her and the whole regiment. And the man was lost in the most scoundrelly manner; he became a beggar and froze to death somewhere near the Petersburg piers.⁠ ⁠…

“The other case was really pitiful. The woman was of the same sort as the other, only young and pretty. And she behaved very, very badly. It disgusted even us, although we were used to regarding these home romances rather lightly. The husband knew everything and saw everything, but never said a word. His friends hinted about it, but he just said: ‘Oh, let it alone. It is none of my business. As long as Lenochka is happy.⁠ ⁠…’ Such a jackass!

“Finally she tied up with Lieutenant Vishniakov, a subaltern in their company. And so they lived, two husbands and one wife⁠—as though that were the accepted form of wedlock. Then our regiment was sent to war. Our ladies came to see us off, and it was really a shame to look at her. Out of plain decency, she might have looked at her husband at least once. But no, she hung around her lieutenant’s neck, like the devil on a dead willow. When we were in the train, she had the insolence to say to her husband: ‘Remember that you must take care of Volodya. If anything should happen to him, I’ll go away from home and never come back. And I’ll take the children with me.’

“And you might think that this captain was some weakling? A rag? A coward? Not at all. As brave a soldier as ever there was. At Green Mountain he led his men six times to attack the Turkish redoubt. Out of his two hundred men only fourteen remained. He himself was wounded twice, and still refused to go to the hospital. That’s the kind of a fellow he was. His men simply adored him.

“But she told him.⁠ ⁠… His Lenochka told him!

“And he looked after this coward and drone, Vishniakov, like a nurse, like a mother. At night, when they had to sleep in the mud, he covered him with his own coat. He used to take his place when it came to sapper work, while the lieutenant stayed in bed or played cards. At night he took his place at inspecting the outposts. And at that time, Vera, the bashi-bazouks cut down our pickets, as a peasant woman cuts cabbage-heads. I tell you, we all heaved a sigh of relief when we learned that Vishniakov died of typhoid fever.⁠ ⁠…”

“Grandpa, and have you met any women who really loved?”

“Oh, yes, surely, Vera. And I’ll say even more. I am sure that every woman is capable of the loftiest heroism in her love. When she kisses a man, embraces him, becomes his wife, she is already a mother. If she loves, love for her is the whole purpose of life, the whole universe. It is not her fault that love has assumed such disgusting forms and has become degraded simply to a small amusement, a sort of convenience. It is men’s fault, for they become satiated at twenty, and live on, with bodies like those of chickens, and souls like those of hares, incapable of powerful desires, of heroic deeds, of adoration before love. People say that it was different before. And if it wasn’t, did not the best human minds and souls dream of it⁠—the poets, the novelists, the artists, the musicians? A few days ago, I read the story of Manon Lescaut and Cavalier de Grieux.⁠ ⁠… Would you believe me that I wept over it? Now tell me truly, doesn’t every woman, in her inmost soul, dream of such a love, which is all-forgiving, modest, self-sacrificing, self-denying?”

“Oh, surely, surely, grandpa.⁠ ⁠…”

“And if they do not have love like that, women take vengeance. Another thirty years will go by.⁠ ⁠… I shall not see it, but you, Vera, may. In some thirty years from now, women will have an unheard-of power. They will be dressed like Hindu idols. They will trample us men under foot, like contemptible, cringing slaves. Their mad fancies and whims will become painful laws for us. And all this will come about because, in the course of whole generations, we had not learned to adore love. That will be the revenge. You know the law of action and reaction, don’t you?”

After a moment’s silence, he suddenly asked:

“Tell me, Vera, if it isn’t too hard, what kind of a story is that one about the telegraphist, the one that Prince Vasily told tonight? How much of it is truth, and how much is just imagination, as in all his stories?”

“Does it interest you, grandpa?”

“Just as you like, Vera. If you wouldn’t like.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why, no, not at all. I should be very glad to tell you.”

And she told the commandant how some madman began to annoy her with his love two years before her marriage. She had never seen him and did not know his name. He only wrote to her, and signed his letters “G. S. Z.” In one of the letters he mentioned the fact that he was a petty official in some government institution⁠—he had never said anything about being a telegraphist. He was evidently watching all her movements, as in his letters he mentioned accurately the places that she had visited, as well as the dresses she had worn. At first the letters were rather vulgar and curiously passionate. But once Vera sent him a note (this fact should not be mentioned at home, as no one there knows about it), asking him to stop annoying her with his declarations of love. From that time on he never mentioned his love, and wrote but seldom, on New Year’s Day, Easter, and her birthday. Princess Vera told Anosov also about that morning’s present and repeated, almost word for word, the strange letter of her mysterious admirer.⁠ ⁠…

“Ye‑es,” said the general slowly, when she had finished. “Perhaps this fellow is mad, a plain maniac. But then, who knows? Perhaps your life path has been crossed by the kind of love of which all women dream, and of which men are incapable nowadays? Don’t you see any lights over there? That must be my carriage.”

At the same time, the loud snorting of an automobile was heard from behind, and the rough road shone with white acetylene light. It was Gustav Ivanovich’s car.

“I took your things along, Anna. Get in,” said he. “Won’t you allow me to take you over, your Excellency?”

“No, thanks,” said the general. “I don’t like that machine. It only shakes you up and has all sorts of smells, but you can’t enjoy it. Well, good night, Vera. I am going to come often now,” added he, kissing Vera’s hand and forehead.

They parted. Mr. Friesse brought Vera Nikolayevna to the gates of her home, then swung his car around and disappeared in the darkness, together with his snorting and howling automobile.

IX

It was with an unpleasant feeling that Princess Vera came up the steps of the piazza and entered the house. Even at a distance she heard the loud voice of her brother Nikolay, and when she came nearer to the house she saw him walking rapidly from one end of the room to the other. Vasily Lvovich was sitting at the card-table and, his large, light-haired head bent over the table, was drawing figures on the green cloth.

“Haven’t I been insisting on it for a long time?” Nikolay was saying angrily, making a gesture with his right hand as though he was trying to throw a heavy object on the floor. “Haven’t I been insisting for a long time that this whole history of foolish letters must come to an end? Even before you and Vera were married, when I was assuring you that you were both merely amusing yourselves like children, and saw nothing but fun and amusement in them.⁠ ⁠… Oh, here is Vera herself.⁠ ⁠… Why, we were just talking with Vasily Lvovich, about that crazy fellow of yours, that P. P. Z. I consider this correspondence both insolent and disgusting.”

“There was no correspondence at all,” interrupted Prince Sheyin coldly. “He was the only one that wrote.”

Vera blushed at this and sat down on the couch in the shadow of the large house plant.

“I apologize for using that expression,” said Nikolay Nikolayevich and again threw to the ground some invisible, heavy object which he seemed to have torn away from his chest.

“And I do not understand at all why you insist on calling him mine,” added Vera, glad of her husband’s support. “He is just as much yours as mine.”

“All right, I apologize again. But at any rate what I want to say is that it is time to put an end to all this nonsense. It seems to me that things have gone beyond the limit within which one can laugh and draw funny pictures. And believe me, if there is anything that I am worrying about just now, it is the good name of Vera, and yours, too, Vasily Lvovich.”

“Oh, I am afraid that is putting the thing a little bit too strong, Kolya,” replied Sheyin.

“That’s possible, but both of you run a risk of finding yourselves in a very funny situation.”

“I do not see how,” said the prince.

“Just imagine that this idiotic bracelet,” Nikolay picked up the red case from the table and immediately replaced it with a gesture of aversion, “that this monstrous trinket will remain in your hands, or we shall throw it away, or give it to the maid. Then, in the first place, P. P. Z. can boast to his friends of the fact that Princess Vera Nikolayevna Sheyin accepts his presents, and in the second place, he might be encouraged to repeat the same feat. Tomorrow he might send you a diamond ring, the day after tomorrow, a pearl necklace, and then, all of a sudden, he will find himself on trial for embezzlement or forgery, and Prince Sheyin together with his wife will have to appear as witnesses at the trial. That would be a fine situation, indeed.”

“Oh, no, the bracelet must be sent back at once!” exclaimed Vasily Lvovich.

“I think so, too,” said Vera, “and the sooner the better. But how are you going to do it? We know neither his name nor his address.”

“That’s a very small matter,” replied Nikolay Nikolayevich contemptuously. “We know his initials, P. P. Z. Is not that right, Vera?”

“G. S. Z.”

“That’s fine. Moreover, we know that he’s some kind of an official. That’s quite sufficient. Tomorrow I will get a copy of the city directory and will find there an official with these initials. And if for some reason or other, I do not find him that way, I shall simply call in a detective and order him to find the man for me. In case of difficulty, I shall make use of this note which gives us an idea of his handwriting. At any rate, by two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, I shall know exactly the name and address of this young fellow and even the time when he can be found at home. And once I know this, we can see him tomorrow, return him his treasure, and take proper measures to make sure that he will never again remind us of his existence.”

“What do you propose to do?” asked Prince Vasily Lvovich.

“I will go to the governor and ask him.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, no, not to the governor. You know the relations that exist between us two.⁠ ⁠… If you do that, then we shall be sure to find ourselves in a funny situation.”

“All right, then, I will go to the colonel of the gendarmes. We belong to the same club. I will ask him to get this Romeo down to his office and tell him a few things. You know how he does it? He just brings a finger right close to the man’s nose and shakes it there, as though to say: ‘I won’t stand for anything like that, sir.’ ”

“No, no, not through the gendarmes,” said Vera.

“That’s right, Vera,” added the prince. “It would be better not to mix in any outsiders. There would be all sorts of rumors and gossip if we do. We know our town well enough; everybody lives here as though in a glass jar.⁠ ⁠… I guess I myself will go to see this young fellow.⁠ ⁠… Though, the Lord knows, he may be sixty.⁠ ⁠… I will return him the bracelet, and have it out with him.”

“Then I will go with you,” interrupted Nikolay Nikolayevich. “You are not stern enough. Let me do the talking.⁠ ⁠… And now, my friends,” he took out his watch and consulted it, “you will have to excuse me. I shall go up to my room now. I have two cases to look over before tomorrow morning.”

“I begin to feel sorry for this unfortunate fellow, somehow or other,” said Vera indecisively.

“There is nothing to feel sorry for,” said Nikolay sharply turning around, already in the doorway. “If a man of our circle had permitted himself to send this bracelet and the letter, Prince Vasily would have had to challenge him to a duel. And if he would not have done it, I certainly would. And if this had happened a good many years ago, the chances are I would have ordered him taken to my stable and flogged there. Wait for me tomorrow at your office, Vasily⁠—I shall let you know by telephone.”

X

The filthy staircase smelled of mice, cats, kerosene, and washings. On the sixth floor, Prince Vasily Lvovich stopped for a moment.

“Wait a few seconds,” said he to his brother-in-law. “Let me rest awhile. I am afraid we should not have done this, Kolya.”

They went up another two flights. It was so dark in the hall that Nikolay Nikolayevich had to light two matches before he finally found the number of the apartment he was looking for.

When he rang the bell the door was opened by a stout, gray-haired woman, with her body bent forward a little, as though by some disease.

“Is Mr. Zheltkov in?” asked Nikolay Nikolayevich.

The woman looked hastily and in confusion from one to the other, and back again. The respectable appearance of both of them evidently reassured her.

“Yes, he is in. Step in, please,” said she, opening the door. “First door to the left.”

Bulat-Tuganovsky knocked three times. A rustle was heard inside the room. He knocked again.

“Come in,” was heard weakly from the room.

The room was very low but very large, and almost square in shape. Two round windows, that reminded one of steamer windows, lighted it dimly. The whole room looked more like the cabin of a freight-steamer. A narrow bed stood against one of its walls, a very large and broad divan covered with a worn, though still beautiful carpet, rested against another, and a table with a colored Little-Russian cloth stood in the middle.

The face of the occupant of this room was not visible at first, as he was standing with his back to the light, rubbing his hands in confusion. He was tall and thin, with long, soft hair.

“Mr. Zheltkov, if I am not mistaken?” asked Nikolay Nikolayevich haughtily.

“Yes. I am very glad to see you.” He made two steps in the direction toward Tuganovsky with his hand outstretched, but at that moment, as though not noting his greeting, Nikolay Nikolayevich turned around to where Sheyin was standing.

“I told you that we did not make any mistake.”

Zheltkov’s thin, nervous ringers moved rapidly up and down the front of his brown coat, unbuttoning it and buttoning it again. Finally he said, bowing awkwardly and pointing to the divan:

“Won’t you be seated, please?”

Now his face was visible. It was very pale, almost effeminate, with blue eyes and a dimpled chin that indicated stubbornness. He looked about thirty or thirty-five.

“Thank you,” said Prince Sheyin, looking at him attentively.

“Merci,” replied Nikolay Nikolayevich. Both remained standing. “We came here only for a few minutes. This is Prince Vasily Lvovich Sheyin, president of the local Assembly of Nobles. My name is Mirza-Bulat-Tuganovsky. I am assistant district attorney. The matter about which I shall have the honor of speaking to you concerns equally both the prince and myself, or, rather, the prince’s wife, and my sister.”

Zheltkov became even more confused, sat down silently on the divan and whispered, “Won’t you be seated?” but, evidently recalling that he had already invited them to be seated, he jumped up to his feet, ran over to the window, and then returned to his old place. And again his trembling fingers moved up and down the front of his coat, tugging at the buttons, then moving up to his face and touching his light mustache.

“I am at your service, your Highness,” said he in a dull voice, looking at Vasily Lvovich with entreaty in his eyes.

But Sheyin remained silent, while Nikolay Nikolayevich began to talk.

“In the first place, allow us to return you this thing,” said he taking the red case out of his pocket and placing it on the table. “No doubt it does honor to your taste, but we would ask you to see that such surprises are not repeated any more.”

“I beg your pardon.⁠ ⁠… I realize myself that I was a fool,” whispered Zheltkov, blushing and looking down on the floor. “May I offer you some tea?”

“Now you see, Mr. Zheltkov,” continued Nikolay Nikolayevich, as though he did not hear Zheltkov’s last words, “I am very glad to find you a gentleman, and one who understands things perfectly. It seems to me that we will be able to come to an understanding very soon. Unless I am mistaken, you have been writing letters to Vera Nikolayevna for seven or eight years?”

“Yes,” answered Zheltkov quietly, lowering his eyelashes reverently.

“Until the present time we did not undertake anything against you, although, as you will yourself agree, we not only could have, but should have done it.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. But your last action in sending this bracelet of garnets carried you beyond the limit of our patience. Do you understand? Our patience is at an end. I shall be frank with you. Our first thought was to seek the aid of the authorities. But we did not do that, and I am very glad that we didn’t, because, I repeat, I realized immediately that you are a man of nobleness of mind.”

“I beg your pardon. What did you say just then?” suddenly asked Zheltkov and laughed. “You wanted to seek the aid of the authorities? Isn’t that what you said?” He put his hands in his pockets, sat down comfortably on the divan, then took out a cigarette-case and matches, and lighted a cigarette.

“And so you said that you were going to seek the aid of the authorities? You will excuse me for sitting down, won’t you?” said he, turning to Sheyin. “Yes, I am listening.”

The prince moved the chair over to the table and sat down. He could not take his gaze from the face of this peculiar man and was gazing at him with perplexity and curiosity.

“But you see, my dear fellow, that we can always fall back on this measure,” continued Nikolay Nikolayevich, a little insolently. “To break into another man’s family.⁠ ⁠…”

“I beg your pardon, but I shall have to interrupt you.⁠ ⁠…”

“I beg your pardon, but I shall have to interrupt you, now⁠ ⁠…” almost shouted Tuganovsky.

“Just as you like. Proceed. I am listening to you. But I have a few words to say to Prince Vasily Lvovich.⁠ ⁠…”

And without paying any more attention to Tuganovsky, he said:

“This is the most difficult moment of my life. And I must speak to you, prince, outside of all conventionalities. Will you listen to me?”

“I am listening,” said Sheyin. “Now, won’t you keep quiet for a few minutes, Kolya,” said he impatiently, noting Tuganovsky’s angry gesture. “I am listening.”

For a few seconds it seemed as though Zheltkov was suffocating. Then he suddenly began to talk, though his white lips seemed to be perfectly motionless.

“It is hard to say⁠ ⁠… to say that I love your wife. But seven years of hopeless and perfectly polite love give me a right to say this. I agree with you that I was at fault when I wrote foolish letters to Vera Nikolayevna before she was married, and even expected to receive a reply. I agree also that my last act, in sending this bracelet, was even more foolish. But⁠ ⁠… I am looking you straight in the eyes now, and I feel that you will understand me. I know it is outside of my power to stop loving her.⁠ ⁠… Tell me, prince⁠ ⁠… suppose that this is unpleasant to you⁠ ⁠… tell me, what you would have done in order to make me stop it? Would you have sent me to another city, as Nikolay Nikolayevich has just said? What difference would that make? I would still continue to love Vera Nikolayevna just as before. Would you send me to prison? But even there I will find some way of letting her know of my existence. There is only one thing that remains, and that is death.⁠ ⁠… If you wish it, I shall take death in any form you prescribe.”

“Now, look here, this sounds more like reciting dramatic poetry than doing business,” said Nikolay Nikolayevich, putting on his hat. “The matter is quite simple. You will choose one of the two: either you will stop pestering Vera Nikolayevna with your letters, or else, if you do not stop, we shall have to take measures which our position enables us to take.”

But Zheltkov did not even look at him, although he heard his words. He turned to Prince Vasily Lvovich and said:

“Will you allow me to leave you for ten minutes? I will not conceal from you that I am going to speak to Princess Vera Nikolayevna on the telephone. I assure you that I shall repeat to you everything that I will find it possible to repeat.”

“Go,” said Sheyin.

When Vasily Lvovich and Tuganovsky remained alone, Nikolay Nikolayevich immediately began to scold his brother-in-law.

“Now, this is impossible,” he was shouting and making gestures as though he were throwing an object to the ground. “Did I not warn you that I was going to do all of the talking? And there you went, and weakened down, and let him tell all about his feelings. I would have done the thing in two words.”

“Wait a few minutes,” said Prince Vasily Lvovich. “Things will become clear in a few minutes. The main thing is that when I see his face I feel that this man is unable to deceive and to lie. And just think, Kolya, it is not his fault that he cannot control his love. Nobody can do it. You know perfectly well it is a feeling that has not even now been explained.” After a moment’s reflection, the prince continued: “I am sorry for this man. And not only sorry for him, but I feel that we stand in the presence of a great tragedy, and I cannot play the part of the clown.”

“This is decadence and nothing else,” said Nikolay Nikolayevich.

Ten minutes later Zheltkov returned. His eyes were glistening and had an expression of profundity as though filled with unshed tears. It was evident that he had forgotten who was expected to sit and where. And again Sheyin understood.

“I am ready,” said Zheltkov. “Tomorrow you will see nothing more of me. You may consider me dead. But there is one condition⁠—I am saying this to you, Prince Vasily Lvovich⁠—you see, I have spent money that did not belong to me, and I have to leave the city immediately. Will you allow me to write my last letter to Princess Vera Nikolayevna?”

“No. Everything is over now. No more letters,” shouted Nikolay Nikolayevich.

“All right, write it,” said Sheyin.

“That’s all,” said Zheltkov, with a haughty smile. “You will never again hear from me, nor, of course, see me. Princess Vera Nikolayevna did not wish to speak with me. But when I asked her whether I may remain in the city, in order to see her from time to time, without, of course, her seeing me, she replied: ‘Oh, if you only knew how tired I am of all this! Won’t you please put an end to it?’ And now I am putting an end to it. I think I have done all that I can.”

When he returned home that night Vasily Lvovich repeated to his wife all the details of his interview with Zheltkov. He felt himself obliged to do this.

Although she was troubled, Vera did not seem astonished and did not become confused. Only, that night, when her husband came over to her, she suddenly turned her face to the wall and said: “Let me alone. I know that this man is going to kill himself.”

XI

Princess Vera Nikolayevna never read the newspapers; in the first place because they soiled her hands and, in the second, because she could not make anything out of the way the news is reported nowadays.

But fate made her open the newspaper sheet almost at the spot where she read the following:

“A mysterious death. Last night at about seven o’clock, an official of the Department of Control, G. S. Zheltkov, committed suicide. According to the information obtained by the coroner, the suicide came as a result of the late Zheltkov’s embezzlement. This fact was mentioned in a letter left by the suicide. In view of the fact that the testimony of the witnesses made it apparent that the act was committed of his own free will, it was decided not to perform an autopsy.”

Reading this, Vera thought to herself:

“Why is it that I felt this was coming, this very, tragic end? And what was it, love or insanity?”

She walked up and down the garden and the orchard paths all day long. Her restlessness would not let her sit down for a moment. All her thoughts were concentrated on this unknown man, whom she had never seen, and whom, perhaps, she would never see.

“Who knows? Perhaps your life path was crossed by a real, self-sacrificing, true love,” she recalled Anosov’s words.

At six o’clock the mail came. Vera readily recognized Zheltkov’s handwriting, and with a tenderness, which she did not herself expect, she opened the letter. It ran as follows:

“It is not my fault, Vera Nikolayevna, that God has willed to send me such great happiness as my love for you. It so happened that nothing in life interests me, neither politics, nor science, nor care for the future happiness of mankind⁠—my whole life was concentrated in my feeling toward you. And now I feel that I cut into your life like an unwelcome wedge. If you can, forgive me for this. I am leaving today never to return, and there will be nothing that will remind you of me.

“I am only infinitely thankful to you because you are in existence. I have subjected myself to all sorts of tests; this is not a disease, a maniacal delusion, but love which God has granted me to reward me for something or other.

“Even if I should appear ludicrous in your eyes and in those of your brother, Nikolay Nikolayevich⁠—going away forever I still repeat in adoration: ‘May your name be holy forevermore.’ ”

“I saw you for the first time eight years ago in the box of a theatre, and I said to myself in the very first second: ‘I love her because there is nothing in the world that is like her, there is nothing better, there is not an animal, not a plant, not a star, not a human being more beautiful and more delicate than she is.’ The whole beauty of the earth seemed to me to have become embodied in you.

“Just think of what I should have done under the circumstances. To run away to another city? My heart would have still been near you and every moment of my life would have been filled with you, with thoughts of you, with dreams about you⁠—with a sweet delirium. I am very much ashamed because of that foolish bracelet, but that was just a mistake of mine. I can imagine what an impression the whole thing made on your guests!

“In ten minutes I shall be gone. I shall only have time to put a stamp on this letter and drop it in the mailbox, for I would not have anyone else do it. Will you please burn this letter? I have just lit a fire in my stove and am burning up everything that was dearest to me in life: your handkerchief which I stole⁠—you left it on your chair at a ball; your note⁠—oh, how I kissed it!⁠—in which you forbade me to write to you; the programme of an art exhibition which you once held in your hands and left on your chair on going out.⁠ ⁠… Everything is finished. I have put an end to everything, but I still think, and I am even sure of it, that you will remember me sometimes. And if you should happen to remember, then.⁠ ⁠… I know that you are musical, for oftenest of all I saw you at the Beethoven concerts⁠—if you should remember, will you please play or have somebody else play for you the Sonata in D-dur, No. 2, Op. 2.

“I do not know how to finish this letter. From the bottom of my heart I thank you because you were the only joy of my life, my only solace, my only thought. May God grant you happiness, may nothing transient and vain trouble your beautiful soul. I kiss your hand. G. S. Z.”

She came to her husband with her eyes red from tears and, showing him the letter, said:

“I do not want to conceal anything from you, but I feel that something terrible has forced itself into our life. You and Nikolay must have done something that should not have been done.”

Prince Sheyin read the letter attentively, folded it carefully, and said, after a long silence:

“I have no doubt that this man was sincere, and what is more, I do not dare to analyze his feelings toward you.”

“Is he dead?” asked Vera.

“Yes, he is dead. I will only say that he did love you and was not mad. I did not take my eyes away from him, and I saw every movement of his face. Life was impossible for him without you. And it seemed to me that I was in the presence of a suffering so colossal, that men die when once stricken by it, and I almost realized that there was a dead man before me. I hardly knew what to do in his presence, how to conduct myself.⁠ ⁠…”

“Would it pain you, Vasya,” interrupted Vera Nikolayevna, “if I should go to the city and see his corpse?”

“No, no, Vera, on the contrary. I would have gone myself, but Nikolay spoiled everything for me. I am afraid I would feel constrained.”

XII

Vera Nikolayevna stepped from her carriage when it came within two blocks of Luther Street. She did not encounter any difficulty in finding the house where Zheltkov lived. She was met by the same gray-eyed old woman, who, again, as on the preceding day, asked:

“Whom did you wish to see?”

“Mr. Zheltkov,” said the princess. Her costume, her hat, her gloves, and her somewhat commanding tone must have produced an effect on the lady. She became talkative.

“Step in, step in, please, the first door to the left.⁠ ⁠… He left us in such an awful hurry. Suppose it was an embezzlement⁠—why not tell me about it? Of course you know how rich we are when we have to rent out rooms. But I could have gotten six or seven hundred roubles together and paid for him. If you only knew what a fine man he was, madam! He lived here for over eight years, and always seemed more like a son than a roomer.”

There was a chair in the hall and Vera sat down upon it.

“I was a friend of your late roomer,” said she, choosing each word carefully. “Tell me something about the last minutes of his life, of what he did and said.”

“Two gentlemen came to see him and spoke to him for a long time. Then he told me that they had offered him the position of a superintendent on their estate. Then he ran over to the telephone and came back looking very happy. Then the two gentlemen went away, and he sat down to write a letter. Then he went out and mailed the letter, and when he came back we heard a shot as though somebody was shooting out of a toy pistol. We paid no attention to it. At seven o’clock he always had his tea. Lukerya, our servant, went and knocked at the door, but nobody answered, and so she knocked again and again. Then we had to break down the door, and we found him already dead.”

“Tell me something about the bracelet,” ordered Vera Nikolayevna.

“Oh, yes, about the bracelet, I had forgotten. How do you know about it? Just before he wrote the letter, he came to me and said, ‘Are you a Catholic?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am a Catholic.’ Then he said, ‘You have a beautiful custom,’ that’s just what he said, ‘a beautiful custom to hang rings, necklaces, and other gifts before the image of the Holy Virgin. Will you please take this bracelet and hang it before the image?’ I promised him that I would do it.”

“Will you show me his body?” asked Vera.

“Certainly, certainly, lady. They wanted to take him to the anatomical theatre. But he has a brother who begged them to let him be buried like a Christian. Step in, please.”

Vera opened the door. There were three wax candles burning in the room, which was filled with the odor of some incense. Zheltkov’s body was lying on the table. His head was bent far back, as though somebody had put but a very small pillow under it. There was a profound dignity in his closed eyes, and his lips were smiling with such happiness and calm as though just before leaving life he had learned a deep and sweet secret which solved the whole problem of his life. She recalled that she had seen the same pacified expression on the masks of the great sufferers, Pushkin and Napoleon.

“If you wish it, lady, I can go out of the room,” said the old woman, and there was something extremely intimate in her tone.

“Yes, I will call you later,” said Vera, and immediately took out of the side pocket of her coat a large, red rose. Then, with her left hand, she raised Zheltkov’s head a little and placed the flower under it. At that moment she realized that the love of the kind that is the dream of every woman had gone by her. She recalled the words of General Anosov about love that is exceptional and eternal⁠—words that proved to be almost prophetic. She pushed away the hair on the forehead of the dead man, pressed his temples with her hand, and kissed the cold, moist forehead with a long, friendly kiss.

When she was leaving, the proprietress said to her in that characteristically soft, Polish tone: “Lady, I see that you are not like all the others who come out of curiosity. Mr. Zheltkov told me before his death that if he should happen to die and a lady came to see his corpse, I should tell her that Beethoven’s best work is⁠ ⁠… he wrote it down on a piece of paper. Here it is.⁠ ⁠…”

“Let me see it,” said Vera Nikolayevna, and suddenly burst into tears.

“Excuse me, but his death affected me so much that I cannot help this.”

Then she read the following words, written in the well-known handwriting:

L. Van Beethoven, Sonata No. 2, Op. 2, Largo Appassionato.

XIII

It was late in the evening when Vera Nikolayevna returned home, and she was very glad to find that neither her husband nor her brother had arrived.

But she was met by Jennie Reiter, the pianist, and, still under the impression of what she had seen and heard, Vera ran to her and exclaimed, kissing her beautiful hands:

“Jennie, dear, won’t you play something for me now?” And she immediately left the room, went out into the garden and sat on a bench.

She did not doubt for a moment that Jennie would play the very part of the second sonata about which that dead man with such a funny name had told her in his last note.

So it was. She recognized the very first chords as belonging to that remarkable creation of musical genius, unique for its profoundness. And her soul seemed to have split in twain. She was thinking of the great love, which is repeated but once in a thousand years, and which had gone past her. She recalled the words of General Anosov, and asked herself why it was that this man had compelled her to listen to this particular work of Beethoven, even against her wishes? In her mind she began to improvise words. Her thoughts seemed to have so blended with the music, that they really fell into cantos, each of which ended with the words: May your name be holy forevermore.

“Now I will show you in gentle sounds, a love that joyfully and obediently gave itself to pains, sufferings, and death. Not a complaint, not a reproach, not a pain of self-love, did I ever know. Before you, I am this one prayer: May your name be holy forevermore.

“I foresee suffering, blood, and death. I think that it is hard for the body to part with the soul, but my praise for you, my passionate praise, and my silent love are eternal: May your name be holy forevermore.

“I recall your every step, smile, look, the sound of your footsteps. My last recollections are intertwined with a sweet sadness, a beautiful, quiet sadness. But I will cause you no grief. I am parting alone and in silence, for God and Fate have willed this. May your name be holy forevermore.

“In the sad hour of death, I pray but to you. Life might have been beautiful for me, too. Do not complain, my poor heart, do not complain. In my soul I call for death, but my heart is full of prayers for you: May your name be holy forevermore.

“Neither you yourself nor those around you know how beautiful you are. The hour strikes. The time has come. And on the brink of death, in this sorrowful hour of parting from life, I still sing, Glory be to you.

“Here it comes, the all-pacifying death, and I still say, Glory be to you!”

Princess Vera stood under an acacia tree, leaning against it, weeping softly. And the tree was swaying gently under the light wind, which made the leaves rustle, as though to sympathize with her. The star-shaped flowers in the garden exhaled their fragrance. And the wonderful music, as if obeying her grief, rang on:

“Be calm, my dear, be calm. Do you remember me? Do you remember? You were my only and my last love. Be calm, for I am with you. Think about me, and I shall be with you, because we loved each other but for a short instant, yet forever. Do you remember me? Do you remember? Do you remember? Now I feel your tears. Be calm. My sleep is so sweet, sweet, sweet.”

When she had finished playing, Jennie Reiter came out into the garden and saw Princess Vera sitting on the bench in tears.

“What is it?” asked the pianist.

And with her eyes still glistening with tears, Vera began to kiss her face, her lips, her eyes, saying:

“No, no, he has forgiven me now. Everything is well.”

I

One evening, in the middle of July, two men were lying in the rushes on the shore of the small Polyesse river Zulnia. One of them was a beggar from the village of Kazimirovka, named Onisim Kozel, while the other one was his grandson, Vasil, a boy of thirteen. The old man was half asleep, his face covered by his torn, sheep-fur cap for protection against the flies, while Vasil lay with his chin resting on the palms of his hands and his screwed-up eyes gazing vacantly at the river, at the warm, cloudless, sky, and at the faraway pine-trees that stood black against the fiery light of the sunset.

The wide river, as still as a swamp, was hidden almost entirely by the firm leaves of pond-lilies, with their beautiful, gentle, white flowers standing out languidly. Only on the other side, near the opposite shore, there was a clear, smooth band of water uncovered by the leaves, and the boy saw reflected in it, with remarkable distinctness, the rushes, the black, broken line of the forest, and the light behind it. On this shore of the river, very close to the water, stood old, hollow, white willows, placed at almost equal distances from one another. Their short, straight branches were rising upward, and the trees themselves, short, large, and crooked, looked like so many old men raising their thin arms toward the sky.

The river birds were whistling sadly. At times a large fish would splash in the water. The thrips flew above the water in a transparent, thin, trembling column. Suddenly Kozel raised his head from the ground and looked at Vasil with a vacant, meaningless glance.

“What did you say?” asked he in a scarcely audible voice.

The boy did not answer. He did not even turn around to look at the old man, only slowly, and with a stubborn, tired expression, lowered and raised again his long eyelashes.

“I guess they will come soon,” continued the old man, as though addressing himself. “Guess I’ll take a smoke.”

Drowsily rolling from side to side, he finally landed in a squatting position. The fingers of both his hands were cut off, with the exception of the thumb of the left hand. And with the use of this finger, he quickly filled his pipe, holding it against his knee with the stump of his right hand, took a box of matches from his cap, and lit the pipe. A sweetish smoke of cheap tobacco, with a faint odor of mignonettes, floated in the air in bluish curls.

“Did you see Buzyga yourself?” asked Vasil, apparently with reluctance, without taking his eyes away from the opposite bank of the river.

Kozel took the pipe out of his mouth, and, bending over to one side, spat on the ground.

“Sure, I did. My, but he is a desperate man. Just the way I was, when I was younger. He gets drunk as the night and then goes out into the village⁠ ⁠… and hires a band of Jewish musicians to walk in front of him and play. Carries a handkerchief in his right hand and has new rubbers on his boots, and wears a nice silver chain. And then he comes to Gripa Kovaleva and demands some whiskey. He throws a silver rouble into the glass, drinks the whiskey, and then gives the money to his musicians. The boys all run after him. Of course, everybody looks at him as though they were dogs and he was a wolf, but they can’t do anything. Just snap their teeth.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the boy with adoration, though almost incredulously.

“Why, sure.⁠ ⁠… What does he care? He just spits on them all. Just tells them to let him alone, because he never stole their horses. Of course, if he had stolen their horses and they had caught him, then they would have the upper hand, then they’d have the right to beat him.⁠ ⁠… But that way, it won’t go.⁠ ⁠…”

The boy gazed at the river in silence. The resounding cries of the frogs were now heard from the nearby bank, at first coming slowly and infrequently. The evening fog was like smoke in the rushes and hung over the water like light steam. The sky grew darker and greenish, and on it was now distinctly visible the hitherto concealed disk of the young moon.

“Kozel, and is it true that Buzyga has double ribs?” asked Vasil meditatively. “Is it true that you can’t kill him?”

“Of course, it’s true. What do you expect? All his ribs are grown together. You can beat a man like Buzyga as much as you want, but you will never hurt his liver. Oh, no! Because his liver is attached to his ribs. And the liver is the first thing in a man’s body. A man can’t live, once you hurt his liver. He’ll get weak, start spitting blood, won’t be able to eat or drink, and then it’s all over.⁠ ⁠…”

The boy touched his narrow chest, his sides, and heaved a long sigh.

“And then they say that people have double backs like horses,” said he sadly. “Is it true, too, Kozel?”

“Yes, that’s true. Happens sometimes.”

“And Buzyga, too?”

“What about Buzyga?”

“Is it true that he’s got a double back?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, can’t say.”

“I think that it must be double.”

“Everything is possible,” and the old man shook his head. “Everything is possible.⁠ ⁠… But the main thing is that Buzyga’s got a clever head. He’s a wonderful man! Once he got caught in Shepelevka.⁠ ⁠… Well, even that time he was not really caught; he was betrayed by another man. It was about some woman or something like that. At any rate, they got him in the open field, and the horses were with him. It was toward evening. So, of course, they brought him to a house, lit the light, and started beating him. And they were at it the whole night long. When the peasants start beating somebody, they have a rule that everybody must take part in it. They even bring their children and wives and make them beat the man, so that everybody would be responsible. So they beat him and beat him, and when they’d get tired, they’d drink a little whiskey, and then start at it again. And Mitro Gundosy saw that Buzyga was already half-dead, and so he says: ‘Wait awhile, boys, the rascal might die here in our house. Wait awhile, I’ll give him a little water.’ But Buzyga is so clever, he knows that if a man is given a little water after being beaten like that, that’s a sure end. So he gets all his strength together and says to them: ‘Won’t you please give me just a little whiskey, and then start beating me again if you like? I feel that my end is coming and I wish I could taste whiskey again before I die.’ Well they all laughed at that and gave him a bottle. After that they did not touch him any more. They thought he was near death anyway. They took him over to Basov Kut and threw him in there, as though he were already dead. They thought that was the end of him, but Levonty got over it. Two months after that Mitro Gundosy missed two fine horses. First-class horses they were.⁠ ⁠…”

“That must have been Buzyga, all right,” exclaimed the boy joyfully.

“Whoever it was, it’s none of our business,” retorted Kozel angrily and significantly. “After that Gundosy went to Buzyga several times and got down on his knees before him and kissed his feet. ‘Take all the money you want, only tell me where the horses are. You know!’ And he would answer him: ‘Why don’t you go and get a drink of water, Mitro?’ That’s the kind of a fellow Buzyga is!”

The old beggar became silent and puffed fiercely at his pipe. But the pipe gave no more smoke. Then Kozel sighed, emptied the pipe over his bare foot, and thrust it into his shirt.

The frogs were now croaking on all sides. It seemed that the whole air trembled with their passionate, ringing cries, accompanied by the dull, prolonged, slow groans of large toads. The sky had changed from green into dark blue and the moon was shining like the curved blade of a silver halberd. It was already dark all around. Only near the very bank of the other side of the river were burning two long, bloody bands.

“Kozel, when I grow up, I’ll be a horse-thief too!” said the boy suddenly, in a low, passionate whisper. “I don’t want to be a beggar, I’ll be like Buzyga.”

“Sh.⁠ ⁠… Wait a minute⁠ ⁠…” said the old man suddenly. He raised upward his terrible thumb, bent his head to one side and listened attentively. “They are coming!”

Vasil jumped to his feet. From the thick rushes that stood near the very waterline came scarcely audible splashes of somebody’s footsteps. Dull, monotonous voices were heard.

“Shout to them, Vasil,” ordered the old man. “Only not very loud.”

“Hop-hop!” shouted the boy, but his voice was not very strong because of excitement.

“Hop!” came a restrained, calm bass from a distance.

II

The curly tops of the rushes trembled as they were carefully pushed aside by someone’s hand. A short, stocky, apparently awkward peasant in a torn brown coat appeared from the rushes, and, with body bent forward, stepped upon the trampled down, dry spot where the beggar and the boy were sitting. His straight, hard hair fell down his face, almost covering his black, slanting eyes, which had a gloomy and suspicious look. He held his head bent downward and a little to one side, somewhat like a bear, and when he had to look to one side, he slowly and awkwardly turned with his whole body, as is usually done by men with short necks or diseased throats. This was Akim Shpak, the well-known dealer in stolen goods. He often informed the horse-thieves of likely opportunities and sometimes even helped them.

Shpak looked at the old man and the boy closely, and with an expression of enmity, then turned back with his whole ridiculous body and his immovable neck, and said hoarsely:

“Over here, Buzyga!”

“Here!” came back in a merry, low, self-confident voice, the word being pronounced in a military fashion.

“Good evening to you, gentlemen rascals.”

A tall, red-haired man, dressed in city clothes, with high, elegant boots, stepped into the clearing. He extended his hand to Kozel but drew it back immediately, noting his blunder.

“Oh, the devil⁠ ⁠… I’ve forgotten that you have nothing to shake hands with,” said he carelessly. “Well, good evening anyway. Is this the lad you were talking about?” and he pointed to Vasil.

“Yes, yes,” the old beggar nodded his head hastily. “He is quick, just like a bullet. Well, sit down, Levonty.”

“I will sit down all right, and be a guest, and if I treat you to some whiskey, I will be the host,” jested Buzyga indifferently, sitting down on the ground. “Let’s see what you’ve got there, Akim.”

Akim took from the bag a bottle of whiskey, a few hard-boiled eggs, and half a loaf of bread, and placed them all on the grass in front of Buzyga. Kozel followed every one of his movements greedily, and nervously tugged with his only finger at his grayish mustache.

“And I thought you would never come,” said the old beggar, turning his face toward Buzyga, but without taking his eyes from Akim’s hands. “I saw you in Berezna a few hours ago and you were more drunk than whiskey itself. And I thought that you would not come this evening. But you don’t show it now.”

“Whiskey doesn’t affect me,” said Buzyga slowly. “I was bluffing more than anything else. And besides, I slept until evening.”

“At Gripa’s?”

“Any of your business? And suppose it was there?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Only, women like you.”

“Oh, the devil take them. Let them like me.” Buzyga shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Are you jealous?”

“Who, I? My time is past. I have forgotten how to think about it.⁠ ⁠… I guess she did not want to let you go?”

“Oh, yes, as if she could hold me back!” Buzyga threw up his chin with a self-confident expression on his face. “You had better take a drink of this whiskey, old fellow. I see that you are trying to get somewhere. Why don’t you ask straight out?”

“Oh, I have nothing to ask, nothing at all. I was just wondering.⁠ ⁠… Well, to your health, Buzyga; may God send you health and success in all your enterprises.”

The old man clasped the neck of the bottle with his thumb as though it were a movable hook, and raised the bottle to his mouth with a shaking hand. For a long time he strained the whiskey through his teeth, then returned the bottle to Buzyga, dried his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, and asked:

“Did she ask you where you were going?”

“Who?”

“Gripa.”

Buzyga looked at the old man seriously and attentively.

“Suppose she did ask. What of that?” he said slowly, knitting his eyebrows.

“Why, I.⁠ ⁠… Nothing at all.⁠ ⁠… I know, anyway, that you would not tell.⁠ ⁠…”

“You had better shut your mouth, Uncle Kozel,” the taciturn Akim advised him weightily, looking off at a distance to one side.

“You are trying to be too smart, you old dog,” said Buzyga, and in his strong voice were suddenly heard tones that reminded one of wild animals. “Look out. It is not for you to teach Buzyga. When Buzyga says that he is going to be in Kresher, that means that they are going to look for him in Filippovichi, and in the meantime Buzyga will be selling his horses at the Stepan fair. Shpak is right. You had better keep still.”

While Buzyga was speaking, Vasil did not take his eyes from him. There was nothing extraordinary in the horse-thief’s appearance. His large face, marked by smallpox, with red mustaches curled in a military fashion, was motionless and seemed weary. His little, blue eyes, surrounded by white lashes, appeared drowsy, and it was only for a moment that a peculiarly keen and cruel expression shone in them. All his motions were slow, lazy, as though his purpose was to expend the least possible effort, but his powerful neck, visible from under his shirt, his long arms with their large hands covered with red hair, and his broad back spoke of gigantic strength.

Under the boy’s persistent gaze, Buzyga involuntarily turned his head toward him. The light in his eyes immediately became extinguished, and his face became indifferent once more.

“Why are you looking at me, boy?” he asked calmly. “What is your name?”

“Vasil,” answered the boy, and coughed. His own voice seemed to him to be so weak and whistling.

Kozel tittered servilely.

“He-he-he! Ask him, Buzyga, what he is going to do when he grows up. We were talking about it just before you came. ‘I don’t want to be a beggar like you,’ says he, ‘I am going to be like Buzyga.⁠ ⁠…’ I thought I’d die laughing!” lied Kozel, for some reason or other.

The boy quickly turned to his grandfather. His large gray eyes were dark and glaring with anger.

“All right, all right, you shut up,” said he rudely, in a broken, childish bass.

“You’re a good lad!” exclaimed Buzyga, with astonishment and sudden tenderness in his voice. “Come over here. Do you drink whiskey?”

He put Vasil between his knees and placed his strong, large arms around his thin body.

“Yes,” answered the boy bravely.

“My, but you are going to be a fine thief, by and by. Here, swallow some of this.”

“Maybe it will hurt him?” said Kozel with hypocritical solicitude, gazing at the bottle greedily.

“Shut up, you old fox. There will be enough for you, too,” said Buzyga.

Vasil swallowed some whiskey and began to cough. Something that had the most unpleasant taste and was as hot as fire burned his throat and took away his breath for a moment. He groaned for a few minutes, catching the air with his open mouth like a fish taken out of the water. Tears began to stream from his eyes.

“That’s right. Now sit down, and be a Cossack among other Cossacks,” said Buzyga and pushed Vasil lightly away from him. And, as though he had immediately forgotten all about the boy, he turned again to Kozel.

“I have been wanting for some time to ask you where you lost your fingers.” Buzyga spoke this slowly, in a low, lazy voice.

“Oh, it happened once,” said the old beggar with affected reluctance. “It was about horses.”

“Yes, I know it was.⁠ ⁠… Well?”

“Well.⁠ ⁠… It isn’t very interesting,” replied Kozel slowly. He was anxious to tell in detail of the terrible accident that cut his life into two halves. And he was purposely tuning up the attention of his hearers. “It was some thirty years ago. Maybe the man who did this to me is not alive any more. He was a German colonist.”

Vasil was lying on his back. He felt a pleasant warmth all over his body which appeared very light, while before his eyes countless tiny spots of light were moving to and fro. Around him were heard human voices; human hands and heads were moving over him. The low, black branches of bushes swayed above him while over his head was the dark sky. But he saw and heard all this without understanding it, as though not he, but someone else were lying there on the ground among the rushes. Then, suddenly, he heard with remarkable distinctness the voice of the old beggar and consciousness returned to him with renewed force and aroused in him an unexpectedly profound attention toward everything around him. And the story which he had heard from Kozel at least thirty times again filled his soul with curiosity, excitement, and horror.

III

“… Over at the roadhouse I saw a pair of horses tied to a post,” Kozel was saying in a doleful singsong. “The moment I looked at the wagon I knew that they were German horses. The colonists always use wagons like that. And they were a fine pair of horses! My heart almost stopped beating when I saw them.⁠ ⁠… And I know something about horses. There they were standing as if their feet were grown into the ground, and their little ears all standing up, and they were looking at me like two beasts.⁠ ⁠… You can’t say that they were very large, would not call them very good just by looking at them either, but I knew immediately what kind of horses they were. You could drive a pair like that for a hundred versts and nothing would happen to them. Just brush their mouths with hay, give them a little water, and go on with your journey. Well, what’s the use of talking! I’ll say one thing. If God himself, or some saint, would come to me now and say: ‘Look here, Onisim, I will give you back your fingers, if you will promise never to steal horses again,⁠ ⁠…’ I’ll tell you, Buzyga, if I saw those horses, I would take them. May God punish me if I wouldn’t.⁠ ⁠…”

“So, what happened?” interrupted Buzyga.

“We’re coming to that. Akim, roll me a cigarette, will you? Yes.⁠ ⁠… So I walked and walked around that wagon, maybe for a whole half-hour. I tell you, the main thing is that a man never knows his own time. If I had untied them right then and there, everything would have been all right. The road was through the woods and it was a dark night; everything was muddy and a good strong wind was blowing. What else could you wish? But I got scared. I just walked around the horses like a fool, thinking to myself: ‘Now I’ve lost my chance. Guess the German will come out of the roadhouse and that will be the end of it.’ Then I would come over again and walk around and think again: ‘Lost my chance again! Can’t do it now at all.’ And I don’t know what it was that made me so scared then.⁠ ⁠…”

“You have got to do it quickly,” said Buzyga resolutely.

“Why weren’t you with me then, Levonty?” exclaimed Kozel in a tone of passionate reproach. “But then!⁠ ⁠… I guess you hadn’t been born yet.⁠ ⁠… Yes. So I walked and walked around those horses and that wagon and could not make up my mind to do anything. Maybe it was because I was sober and hungry at the time. Who knows? At first I just waited and moped there, and then suddenly, as though somebody had hit me on the back of the neck, I ran over to the horses, untied the reins, and began to tie up the bells.⁠ ⁠… And just then out comes the German, all ready for the road. As soon as he saw me, he shouted from the steps: ‘Hey, you there! What are you doing with my horses? Trying to steal them?’ And I answered him: ‘Why should I steal this junk of yours? Haven’t I got enough of my own? You had better thank me for tying your horses to the post, otherwise they would have run away on you.’ ‘All right! All right! I know how you tie horses to posts. Get out of here, you pig!’ Well, of course, I walked over to one side and hid back of the house and started watching him. And I was so angry, I trembled all over. ‘Oh, no,’ thinks I to myself, ‘I won’t let this go.’ ”

“Of course not. How could you let it go?” nodded Buzyga. “I would have stolen those horses on him even if it would have taken me a year.”

“No, Buzyga, you wouldn’t!” replied Kozel with deep conviction. “Not from that German. You wait, don’t get angry.⁠ ⁠… Just listen to what happened after that. So I hid back of the house and watched. The German looked around and then shouted to the tavern-keeper: ‘Hey, Leyba, bring me some oats.’ Leyba brought him some and then asked him: ‘But why don’t you stay here overnight? We would take good care of your horses.’ And he said to him: ‘No, thank you, I have no time and I have far to go. I’ll feed my horses in the woods by the Volchy Razlog. Goodbye.’ ‘Goodbye.’ So the colonist got into his wagon and started out.

“Well, I ran after him. Down as far as Myslovo he kept pretty fast, but I knew the road well, and so I ran across the government woods. As soon as I got out on the road again and hid in a ditch, along came the German, driving slowly. I let him get ahead of me and then started to follow him. As soon as he’d start driving fast, I’d break into a run. And when he would ride slowly, I’d follow him walking. I was only twenty-five then and a pretty strong fellow. No worse than you, Buzyga. And I followed him for thirty versts, down as far as Volchy Razlog. To tell you the truth, I did not hope that he would stop in the woods overnight as he had said. I thought he was saying that just to get me off the track. But he really turned into the woods and stopped at a little clearing. There he unharnessed his horses and fixed up his wagon with the shafts raised up. I crawled along on my belly like a snake, lay down back of some bushes, and watched him. You know, at night, when you look down the hill you can’t see anything, but up the hill everything is plain.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I know,” said Buzyga impatiently. “Well?”

“Then I saw that he tied the horses’ legs. And what he used was iron chains, because I heard them jingle even at a distance. Well, that looked as though he were really going to stay there all night. It was terribly cold and windy. I was shaking all over. But I did not give in. I saw that German get into the wagon, move around a bit, and then he still. I waited for a long time after that; maybe for an hour or two. I started to get up from the ground a little and thought to myself, ‘Is the Dutchman really asleep or is he just pretending?’ I picked up a handful of earth and threw it ahead. The Dutchman did not make a noise. And I was angry with him, simply boiling with rage. Every time I recalled how he cursed me over there by the roadhouse, I would get angrier than ever. Well, I got up from the ground, started looking around, and there were the two horses coming along right toward me. They’d stop a moment, pick up a little grass or a dry leaf, and then move toward me again. I tell you, Buzyga, there is not a horse that is afraid of me at night. Because there is a certain word.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I know. It’s all nonsense,” replied the horse-thief angrily. “Well, go ahead.”

“All right, just as you like. Pretty soon the horses got so close to me that I could almost touch them. So I moved forward a little and sort of fondled one of them and he stood still. Then I began to cut the irons. I always have a file with me.⁠ ⁠… I worked and worked and kept an eye on the wagon all the time. I decided not to take the other horse because it was very hard to cut the iron. It was thick and new. And I was sure that he would not catch me with one horse, anyway.

“I cut one of the irons to the middle and began to try if I could not break it. And then suddenly somebody touched me on the shoulder. I turned around, and there was the German right behind me. The devil only knows how he ever got there. He stood there looking at me as though he were laughing at me. Then he said: ‘Come along with me. I’ll teach you how to steal horses.’ I was so frightened I could not use my feet, and my tongue seemed to be glued to the roof of my mouth. But he lifted me up from the ground.”

“What then?” exclaimed Buzyga wrathfully.

The old man made a sad gesture with his mutilated hand.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “May God strike me dead on this very spot if I know even now how he did it. He was just a little fellow; not much to look at; only up to my shoulders, head and all. And he dragged me along like a little child. And I let him do it⁠—had a sort of feeling that I could not get away from him. I could not even stir. And he got me as though with a pair of pincers and dragged me toward the wagon. How do I know? Maybe he wasn’t human at all?

“So we got to the wagon. He held me with one hand and started feeling for something with the other. And I think to myself: ‘What is he going to do now?’ He looked for something and then said: ‘Oh, I guess it isn’t here.’ Then he led me over to the other side of the wagon, felt there for a while, and finally got a hatchet. ‘Here it is,’ says he. ‘I’ve found it. Well now, put your hand on the log.’ And he said it quietly, without any anger at all. Then I understood that he was going to cut my hands off. And I began to cry like a child.⁠ ⁠… And he says to me: ‘Don’t cry. It won’t take long.⁠ ⁠…’ So I stood there like an ox that was being slaughtered, could not say anything, only shook all over. And he took my hand, put it on a piece of wood and brought the hatchet down. ‘Don’t steal horses, if you don’t know how.’ Three fingers flew right off. One of them hit me in the face. Then he hit again and again, saying all the time: ‘Don’t steal horses, if you don’t know how.⁠ ⁠…’ Then he told me to give him the other hand; I obeyed him like a little child, and put my left hand there. And he says again, ‘Don’t steal horses,’ and down came the hatchet again. This time he cut off four fingers at one blow; left only this one,” and Kozel stretched before him his mutilated hand with its single finger. “He looked at the thumb, looked at it, and then said: ‘Well, I guess you won’t be able to steal any horses with this one finger. Only you might help another thief with it. Still, I will give it to you so that you can eat and drink with it, light your pipe, and remember me all your life.’ The blood was just spurting out of the nine fingers. I could not stand it any more and almost fainted away. Then he grabbed me again like a kitten and carried me over to a big pool of water. The night was dreadfully cold and the water had frozen over. The German brought me there, broke the ice with his foot and told me to stick my hands into the water. I obeyed him and felt much easier right away. And he said to me: ‘You’d better stay there until morning. It’ll be worse for you if you take your hands out.’ And with that he walked away toward his horses and went off. Then I thought to myself that I ought to go to the doctor. But the moment I took my hands out of the water, I started hollering so that I could be heard all over the woods. The fingers hurt as though somebody were burning them with hot irons. Then I stuck them into the water again and felt better. And I stayed there until morning. As soon as I would take my hands out, it would hurt terribly, but as long as I kept them in the water it did not hurt at all. Toward morning I was almost frozen, and the water became red as blood. Somebody came along, took me into his carriage and brought me to the hospital. Well, they kept me there a month until my hands healed up a little and then let me out. But what was the use?” exclaimed he bitterly. “It would have been a hundred times better if I had died there in the Volchy Razlog!”

He became silent and sat there bent over, with his head bowed low. For a few minutes the horse-thieves sat motionless without saying a word. Suddenly a quiver went through Buzyga’s body as though he had just awakened from terrible dreams. He sighed loudly.

“And what did you do with the German after that?” asked he in a restrained voice, which quivered with fury.

“And what could I have done with him?” asked Kozel sadly. “What would you have done if you were in my place?”

“I? I? Oh!” roared Buzyga, fiercely scratching the ground with his fingernails. He was almost suffocated with anger and his eyes shone in the darkness like those of a wild beast. “I would have cut his throat when he was asleep; I would have torn his throat with my own teeth! I would.⁠ ⁠…”

“You would!” interrupted Kozel with a bitter sneer. “And how would you have found him? Who was he? Where did he live? What was his name? Maybe he was not human at all.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s a lie,” said Akim Shpak slowly. He had been silent until now. “There is neither God nor devil in the world.⁠ ⁠…”

“It doesn’t make any difference!” shouted Buzyga, striking the ground with his fists. “It doesn’t make any difference. I would have burned all the colonies that I could have laid my hands on; killed their cattle and maimed their children. And I would do that until death.”

Kozel laughed quietly and bent his head still lower.

“Oh, yes!” said he with a biting reproach. “It’s all right to set fire to buildings when you have your ten fingers.⁠ ⁠… But when you have just one left”⁠—the man raised up again his terrible stumps⁠—“there is only one road left open for you, over to the church steps with the beggars.⁠ ⁠…” And he suddenly began to sing in his old, shaky voice the gloomy words of the ancient beggar-song:

“Woe, woe is me, the cripple.⁠ ⁠…
Have pity on me, for the sake of Christ.⁠ ⁠…
You are our benefactors.⁠ ⁠…
Here we sit, armless, legless,
We, poor cripples, here by the road.⁠ ⁠…”

The song ended in a cry of writhing pain, his head dropped on his knees, and the old beggar began to sob.

Not a word was said after that. In the river, in the grass and bushes, the frogs were croaking incessantly as if trying to outdo one another. The half-moon stood in the middle of the sky, lonely and sad. The old willows, outlined ominously against the darkened sky, raised their knotty, dried-up arms toward heaven with an expression of silent grief.

IV

Suddenly, heavy, rapid footsteps were heard in the rushes in the direction from which Buzyga and Akim had come a short while before. Somebody was evidently running in haste without picking his way, splashing the water and breaking dry branches. The horse-thieves pricked up their ears. Akim Shpak stood on his knees. Buzyga, his hands on the ground, crouched down, ready to jump up and rush off in an instant.

“Who is that?” asked Vasil in a whisper.

No one answered him. The heavy steps were nearer and nearer. Someone’s powerful, hoarse, and whistling breathing could already be heard amidst the splashing of the water and the crackling of the branches. Buzyga quickly shoved his hand into his boot, and before Vasil’s eyes glittered a shining knife.

But the noise suddenly stopped. For a moment a remarkably deep silence reigned around. Even the disturbed frogs were silent. Something gigantic and heavy tramped about in the bushes, snorting fiercely, and began to sniff.

“Oh, that must be a boar,” said Buzyga, and the other three shivered at the sound of his loud voice. “Must have come to get a drink.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Shpak, again lying down.

The boar snorted again angrily and then began to run away. For a long time the branches cracked in the direction in which he took flight. Then everything became quiet. The frogs, as though angered by the momentary interruption, began to croak with redoubled force.

“When are you going, Buzyga?” asked the old man.

Buzyga raised his head and looked at the sky attentively.

“It’s too early yet,” said he, yawning. “I will go before morning. Right before dawn the peasants sleep like chickens.⁠ ⁠…”

Sleep was gradually overcoming Vasil. The earth began to quake under him, rising up and falling down, and then slowly floated away to one side. For an instant, when, with some difficulty, he opened his eyes, the boy saw the dark figures of three men, sitting silently side by side, but he no longer knew who they were and why they were sitting so close to him. Out of the bushes, where wild boars were crowding together, snorting and sniffing angrily, suddenly stepped into the clearing the son of the church elder, Zinka, and said, laughing: “Here are the horses, Vasil. Let’s go out for a ride.” Then they sat down together in a little sleigh and rushed off into the darkness at a very pleasant, rapid pace, following a narrow, white, silent road that wound among tall pine-trees. His grandfather ran after them waving his mutilated hands in the air, but could not catch up with them, and all this was extraordinarily joyful and funny. Little bells were tied to the horses’ manes and tails, and also to the branches of the dark pine-trees, and a monotonous, hasty, and merry ringing sounded on all sides.⁠ ⁠… Then Vasil suddenly struck a dark, soft wall⁠—and everything disappeared.⁠ ⁠…

The cold dampness which made his whole body shiver, woke him. It had become darker and the wind was blowing. Everything seemed to have changed suddenly. Large, black, fluffy clouds with dishevelled and chipped white edges were rushing past overhead, very low to the ground. The tops of the rushes, intertwined by the wind, were hastily bending down and trembling all over.⁠ ⁠… And the old willows, with their thin arms raised upward, were shaking in agitation from one side to the other as if they were trying to tell each other some terrible tidings, but could not do it.

The horse-thieves lay motionless and their bodies appeared black in the darkness. One of them was smoking, and his pipe flashed every little while. The red, momentary flashes ran over the bronzed faces, alternating with long, slanting shadows. The cold and the interrupted sleep gave the boy the sensation of being tired, indifferent, and upset. He listened without any interest to the low conversation of the horse-thieves and, with a dull feeling of outrage, felt that they were not in the least concerned with him, just as they were not concerned with the gigantic, rapidly fleeing clouds and the agitated willows. And that for which he had been preparing that night, and which had formerly filled his soul with excitement and pride, suddenly began to seem to him unnecessary, and small, and tiresome.

“You’re still at it, like a big jackass,” Buzyga was saying in a vexed tone. “What the deuce do I want your bay colt for? Why, they know him in every village around here. A year ago I stole a riding-horse from the bookkeeper of the sugar-refinery. It was all one color, only the left front leg happened to be white; the devil take it! I tried to sell it everywhere, and they all made fun of me, as though I were a fool. ‘We’re not crazy yet,’ they’d say to me. ‘You can’t sell this horse anywhere. Everybody in the province knows him.’ And do you know, Kozel, what I sold it for? For a mug of sour milk. What are you whistling about? I’m telling you the truth. Volka Fishkin got it. He saw that my tongue was almost sticking out on account of the heat, and so he said to me: ‘Look here, Buzyga, come inside and have a glass of milk.’ I went in, and later on he says to me: ‘Now listen, Buzyga, I always liked to deal with you, but it will take a fool to buy this horse from you. You’ll have to leave it somewhere, in the evening, anyhow. Better give it to me. I’ll take it over to the refinery and maybe I’ll get a few pennies for it.’ Well, I gave him the horse and he sold it later in the Podol Province, over at the Yarinolinetzk fair, for one hundred and thirty roubles. That’s what you get out of stealing horses like that, Kozel.”

“Ye‑es.⁠ ⁠… That’s so,” said the old man slowly and thoughtfully, and chewed a little with his toothless gums. “Vikenty Sirota has fine dark horses.⁠ ⁠… And it’s easy to get them, too.⁠ ⁠…”

“Vikenty.⁠ ⁠… Yes, that’s so, of course.⁠ ⁠…” Buzyga agreed with him hesitatingly. “Vikenty, that’s right.⁠ ⁠… Only, do you know, Kozel, that I hate to harm Vikenty? He is not very rich and always treats you so well. How many times did it happen that my head would be aching like blazes, and when I’d say to him, ‘Get us a drink, Vikenty,’ he’d get it right off. No, I am sorry for Vikenty.⁠ ⁠…”

“Nonsense! Don’t be sorry for anybody,” said Akim Shpak angrily.

“No, you let Vikenty alone,” ordered Buzyga firmly. “Any others?”

“Well.⁠ ⁠… Maybe Mikolo Grach?”

“Mikolo Grach? That’s a different brand, only he is as crafty as the devil. Well, at any rate, we’ll keep Grach in mind.”

“You might get Andreyev’s mare, that white one. It’s a pretty good horse.”

“Go to the devil with your white mare!” exclaimed Buzyga angrily. “It’s old and the hair is falling out all over. That’s the first sign.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember how Zhgun got caught with a white horse? Sh.⁠ ⁠… Keep quiet, Kozel.” He waved his hand at the old man. “What’s the matter with the boy over there?”

Vasil was wriggling on the ground, trying to curl up in such a way that as little as possible of the cold and dampness would reach him. His teeth were clattering.

“What is it, boy? What’s the trouble?” he suddenly heard above his head. This was said in a deep voice that expressed an unaccustomed softness. The boy opened his eyes and saw Buzyga’s large face bending over him.

“Wait a minute, I’ll cover you,” the horse-thief said, as he took off his coat. “Why didn’t you say before that you were cold, you fool? Turn around a little⁠ ⁠… like that.⁠ ⁠…”

Buzyga tucked the coat around the boy solicitously, then sat down by his side and put his large, heavy hand on his shoulder. A feeling of inexpressible pleasure and gratitude trembled in Vasil’s bosom, rose like a wave in his throat, and brought tears to his eyes. The coat was very large and very heavy. It was warm and smelled of healthy perspiration and tobacco. The boy soon felt the warmth spreading through his whole body. Curled up in a ball, his eyes tightly closed, he felt for Buzyga’s large and pleasantly heavy hand, and touched it tenderly with his fingers. And again in his clouded consciousness the dark woods and the long white road began to rush by.

He fell fast asleep, so fast that when he opened his eyes it seemed to him that he had closed them only for an instant. But when he did open them, a thin, uncertain twilight was all around and the bushes and trees stood out against it as gray, cold spots. The wind had become stronger. As before, the tops of the rushes bent up and down, and the old willows swayed, but there was no longer anything terrifying or disquieting in this. A fog was rising over the river. Torn into slanting bands, bent over to one side, it was rushing rapidly over the woods, exhaling dampness.

Buzyga’s face was almost blue with cold, but still merry. He touched lightly Vasil’s shoulder and said in a singing voice, imitating the ringing of the bells:

“Priest, oh, priest!
Do you hear?
All the bells are ringing.⁠ ⁠…”

“Get up, boy,” he said when his glance met Vasil’s smiling eyes. “It’s time to go.⁠ ⁠…”

Kozel emitted low, hollow coughs, covering his mouth with his sleeve and choking, as though he were vomiting. The color of his face was grayish-green, like that of a dead body. He waved his mutilated hands helplessly in Vasil’s direction, but the cough prevented him from speaking. Finally, overcoming the paroxysm and still breathing heavily, he said: “So you’ll take Buzyga through the Marinkino swamp over to Perebrod, Vasil.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted the boy impatiently.

“You stop your blab for a minute,” exclaimed the old man angrily, as a new fit of coughing again prevented him from speaking. “Look out when you get into the government woods. There is a deep bog there. See that you don’t fall into a ‘skylight.’⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I know.⁠ ⁠… You’ve told me that already.⁠ ⁠…”

“Let me finish.⁠ ⁠… Remember, don’t go past the shack. Better go around the hill, because the working men get up earlier in the shack. And right near there a man will be holding four horses for you. So Buzyga will take three and you will ride the other one and go with him as far as Kreshevo. You do everything as Buzyga tells you. Don’t be afraid. And when you come back and somebody asks you where you were, say that you went with your grandfather to the government woods to get some bast. Only, don’t be afraid, Vasil.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, go to.⁠ ⁠… I am not afraid of anything,” replied Vasil contemptuously, turning away from the old man. “Come on, Buzyga.”

“Well, but you’re a fiery one!” said Buzyga, laughing. “That’s the way; give it to him, the old dog.⁠ ⁠… Now come, walk ahead.”

Akim Shpak suddenly sniffed and began to strike the ground with his feet. His gloomy face was all wrinkled up after the sleepless night, and seemed turned to one side even more than ever. The whites of his black eyes were yellow and bloodshot, as though filled with dirty slime.

“We share half and half, Buzyga,” said he gloomily; “we’re not going to take advantage of you. You get half, and I, Kozel, and Cubik get the other half.⁠ ⁠… So don’t try to bluff us. We’ll find out anyway.”

“All right, all right,” said Buzyga carelessly. “Goodbye.”

“God be with you!” said Kozel.

Akim Shpak turned to the old man with his whole body, looked at him with hatred and contempt, and spat on the ground.

“You beggar!” he hissed through his clinched teeth.

V

Onisim Kozel lived with his grandson on the outskirts of the village, in a dilapidated little hut that seemed to have grown into the ground, with a broken flue and chipped whitewashing, behind which one could see the inner layer of yellow clay. The windowpanes, for which rags were substituted in many places, had become dull green with time and now shone with all the colors of the rainbow. Besides the two, the hut was inhabited by Prokhorovna, a deaf, hundred-year-old, insane woman. The three used the hut free of charge through the charity of their neighbors, especially since it was used for the performing of autopsies on suicides, the drowned, and murdered peasants. The very table at which the three village outlaws usually ate was used for the purposes of autopsy.

Vasil returned home tired and excited. Kozel was already there, lying on the stove, his head covered with a torn sheep-fur coat. The boy had succeeded in taking Buzyga safely as far as Perebrod. They had not been seen from the mill, although people were already stirring there and some wagons stood around. They had found the horses in the place indicated. There were four horses, but Cubik was not there. That circumstance disturbed Buzyga a great deal, so that he took with him only the two better horses, leaving the others tied to the post and ordered the boy to run home immediately and not along the road, but straight across the Marinkino swamp and through the government woods.

“Did Buzyga get scared?” asked Kozel hastily.

“No, he didn’t get scared,” answered Vasil, breathing with difficulty. “Only he was very angry, threatened to cut Cubik’s throat.⁠ ⁠… And he got angry with me, too.⁠ ⁠… I said to him: ‘It doesn’t make any difference, Buzyga. I am not afraid. Let’s take all the horses and go.’ And he started shouting at me; I thought he’d beat me, so I ran away from him.⁠ ⁠…”

“And what about me? Did he ask you to tell me anything?”

“Yes. He said: ‘You tell the old man to stay home all day long and not to stir out. And if anybody asks you about Buzyga or the horses, tell them you don’t know anything about it⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“What is it, O Lord?” exclaimed Kozel in a helpless, troubled voice.

Vasil was drinking water greedily out of a wooden dish.

“I guess they went after Buzyga,” said he, raising his face from the dish for a moment. “When I was running across the swamp I heard a lot of people riding down the road, on horseback and in wagons.”

The old man kept winking his red, wet eyes in confusion. His face was almost disfigured with fear, and one end of his mouth was twitching.

“Lie down, Vasil, lie down on the bed quickly!” he said in a broken voice. “Lie down quickly. O Lord, O Lord! Whose horses did he take? Did you see? Lie down, lie down!”

“One of them I did not know, but the other one was that roan mare of Kuzma Sotnik’s.⁠ ⁠…”

“Kuzma’s? O Lord! What are we going to do now? Didn’t I ask Buzyga not to touch any horses from our village? There you are!”

Kozel breathed heavily, moving on top of the stove. “Don’t forget, Vasil, that, if anybody asks you where we went, say that we went to the government woods for bast. And tell them that the guard took it away from us. Do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear,” said the boy roughly.

“O Lord, O Lord!” Kozel kept repeating. “It’s impossible that Cubik betrayed me. He isn’t that kind of a fellow. It’s all Buzyga’s fault, that iron head of his! What the deuce did he want to take the two horses for? You say there were a lot of people going down the road? Lord, O Lord! That’s the way he always is. Doesn’t care for his own head and still less for another man’s. Didn’t he see, the rascal, that the thing was off? Why not run away? No, he was ashamed of the boy and had to show what a brave fellow he was.⁠ ⁠… O Lord, O Lord!⁠ ⁠… Are you asleep, Vasil?”

The boy kept an angry silence. The old man moved about for a long time, groaning and sighing, and talking to himself in a rapid, frightened whisper. He tried to assure himself that there was no danger at all, that Cubik’s absence would be explained by and by as a mere accident, that the galloping riders of the road were simply an illusion of the frightened boy, and although he succeeded in deceiving his mind for a few short moments, he saw clearly and unmistakably in the depth of his soul that a terrible and inevitable death was moving toward him. At times he would break off his senseless whispering and listen with painful attention. And every rustle, every knock, or sound of a voice made him shiver and lie motionless. Once, when under the window a rooster crowed loudly and flapped his wings, the old beggar felt all the blood rushing from his head to his quivering heart, and his body became limp, and was covered with hot perspiration.

An hour went by. The sun rose from behind the yellow fields that stretched to the other side of the bridge. Two columns of merry, golden light in which numberless specks of dust were dancing joyfully, rushed in through the two windows of the dark, smoky hut, filled with an odor of sheep-fur and stale food. Suddenly Kozel threw the coat away and stood up on the stove. His old, colorless eyes were wide open and had an expression of mad fright. His blue lips were trembling, unable to pronounce the word.

“They are coming!” said he finally, through hiccups, shaking his head. “Vasil, they are coming.⁠ ⁠… Our death.⁠ ⁠… Vasil.⁠ ⁠…”

The boy already heard an indistinct, dull, low rumbling which rose and fell like wind-ridden waves, becoming more terrible and more distinct every moment. But it seemed that a faraway barrier held it back. But now this invisible wall suddenly gave way and the sounds rushed from behind it with terrible force.

“They are coming here. They will kill us, Vasil!” cried Kozel wildly.

Now one could hear the sound of a vast crowd of people, frenzied and blinded by the cruel, unbounded, merciless peasant wrath, running down the street, shouting fiercely, and stamping with their heavy, iron-shod boots.

“Drag them over here! Break the door!” howled under the very window of the hut someone’s voice, and it had not a single human tone in it.

The unlocked door, torn off its hinges, opened and struck against the wall, while a black, shouting crowd rushed into the bright oblong formed by its opening. Their faces disfigured with anger, pushing and shoving each other without noticing it, dozens of frenzied men rushed into the hut, forced in from behind. Dishevelled, frenzied faces were looking in through the window, darkening the room and preventing the golden columns of dust from entering.

Vasil sat motionless with his back pressed against the wall, pale and trembling but not frightened. He saw the sheep-fur coat fly down from the stove, and directly after it came Kozel helplessly flying over the heads of the crowd. The old beggar was shouting something, opening wide his toothless mouth, twitching his face into shameless contortions of cringing terror, which made his whole wrinkled face horribly disgusting. He waved his mutilated hands, pointing them at the image, hastily making the sign of the cross, and striking his bosom with them. And from all sides men rushed upon him, their bloodshot eyes almost glassy with anger, their lips twisted out of shape by their mad shouting. The old man was twirling in the midst of their hot, sweating bodies like a splinter of wood in a whirlpool.

“Kill him! Kill him! The scoundrel! No, you won’t get away! Tsypenuk, give it to him! Drag him out into the street, boys, drag him out! You’ve pestered us long enough. We’ll bury you alive!⁠ ⁠… Kill him!” was heard as separate exclamations in the midst of the general uproar.

Suddenly, covering all this tempest of curses and vituperations, was heard the mighty voice of Kuzma Sotnik, who shouted, towering above the crowd, his face red with the effort.

“Wait a moment, brethren, we have to investigate this. Take him over to where Buzyga is!”

“Drag him! Take him! Let’s put an end to them all!⁠ ⁠…”

With the same elemental impetuosity with which it rushed into the hut, the crowd now surged back into the street. Somebody picked up Vasil and threw him into this crowd of wriggling bodies. Crushed in on all sides, deafened by the noise, he was thrown outside by this rushing current.

The village presented an unusual, peculiar sight on that beautiful summer morning. Despite the fact that it was a working day, in the middle of the week, the streets were crowded with people. And wagons and ploughs with horses already harnessed, stood abandoned in front of almost every gate. Children and women were running in one direction, toward the church. Dogs barked all around; hens cackled, flapping their wings and flying to all sides. The crowd was growing fast and occupied the whole width of the street. Crowded in a dense mass, half suffocated, constantly pushing and shoving each other, these men were running along, shouting hoarsely, their mouths foaming as though they were a pack of wild beasts.

On a little meadow in front of the wine-shop, there was a dense, black ring of people. The two crowds joined together, mingled, and pressed against each other. Some monstrously elastic force threw Kozel and Vasil forward.

In the middle of a narrow spot instinctively set apart by the crowd, Buzyga was lying on the grass, which was wet and dark with blood. His face had the appearance of a large piece of bloody meat, torn to shreds. One of his eyes was torn out and was hanging on something that looked like a red rag. The other eye was closed. What had been his nose was now a large bloody, round cake. His mustaches were covered with blood. But what was most terrible, inexpressibly terrible, was the fact that this mutilated and disfigured man was lying on the ground in silence, while around him the wild crowd was shouting and howling, intoxicated with cruelty.

Kuzma Sotnik caught Kozel by the collar of his coat and bent him down with such force that the old man fell on his knees.

“Hey, there! Quiet!” shouted Kuzma, turning around. “Keep quiet there!”

He was the leader on that day and his word was obeyed. The crowd’s roar gradually died away, as though running back from rank to rank.

“Buzyga!” shouted Kuzma when silence set in, bending low over the horse-thief. “Do you hear me? We won’t beat you any more. Will you tell me truly whether Kozel was with you or not?”

Buzyga remained silent and did not open his one eye. His chest rose often and so high that it seemed impossible for a man to breathe in that way, and each breath made something whistle in his throat, as though a fluid were flowing with difficulty through a narrow tube.

“Don’t try to bluff us, you devil!” shouted Kuzma threateningly, and raising his foot, he struck Buzyga on the lower part of the chest with all the force of his iron-shod boot.

“Ukh!” the whole crowd sighed in unison, heavily and greedily.

Buzyga groaned and opened his eye slowly. It fell on Vasil’s face.

Buzyga looked at the boy slowly for a long time, closely and indifferently, and then it suddenly seemed to Vasil that the bloody mouth of the horse-thief twisted into a suffering, tender smile, and this seemed so unnatural, so pitiful, and so dreadful that Vasil cried involuntarily, and covered his face with his hands.

“Now, tell us, you Satan!” Sotnik shouted this in Buzyga’s ear. “Listen. If you will tell us who helped you, we’ll let you go immediately. Otherwise, we’ll kill you like a dog. Am I telling the truth or not, boys? Tell him.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s right.⁠ ⁠… Tell us, Buzyga, and we won’t do anything else to you,” rumbled through the crowd like a dull wave of sound.

Buzyga looked at Vasil with that same long and peculiar gaze and, opening with difficulty his mutilated lips, said in a scarcely audible voice:

“No one⁠ ⁠… was there.⁠ ⁠… I was alone.⁠ ⁠…”

He closed his eye and his chest began to rise and fall.

“Kill him!” came a tremulous, nervous, half-childish voice, shrieking somewhere in the back ranks. The crowd moved forward, howled dully, and closed in on the spot where the horse-thief was lying.

Without rising, Kozel dragged himself over to where Kuzma was standing and threw his arms about his feet.

“My benefactor!” he was saying senselessly and entreatingly. “See, I kiss your feet.⁠ ⁠… God knows that I was home all the time. I went for some bast.⁠ ⁠… God knows and the Holy Virgin. My benefactors! Here I kiss your feet!⁠ ⁠… I am only a poor cripple.⁠ ⁠…”

And he was really dragging himself around on his knees, holding on to Kuzma’s boot and kissing it in such frenzy as though his whole safety lay in this. Kuzma slowly turned around and looked at the crowd.

“Let him go to the devil!” said an old man standing there.

“To the devil with him!” caught up several voices. “Maybe it wasn’t he. It was a Kreshevo horse anyway! What’s the use? Let Kozel go.⁠ ⁠… We’ll ask the elder afterward.”

Kozel was still dragging himself on his knees from one peasant to another. The terror of the imminent and cruel death had now changed to delirious joy. He pretended that he did not understand what was going on. Tears were running down his horribly twisted face. He caught the hands and the boots of the peasants and kissed them greedily. Vasil stood to one side, pale and motionless, with his eyes burning. He could not turn his face away from Buzyga’s terrible face, seeking yet fearing his glance.

“Go away!” Kuzma Sotnik suddenly said and kicked the old man in the back with his boot. “You go away too, Vasil! Buzyga!” he shouted almost immediately, turning to the dying horse-thief, “do you hear? I am asking you for the last time: ‘Who was with you?’ ”

The crowd moved in again. The same force that threw Kozel and the boy forward was now bearing them back, and the people whom they met turned away, made room for them impatiently, as if they were disturbing their strained attention. Through the soft and dense barrier of human bodies, Vasil heard the loud bass of Kuzma who was still questioning Buzyga. Suddenly the same thin, hysterical voice shouted almost above Vasil’s head: “Kill Buzyga!⁠ ⁠…”

All those who were standing behind pushed forward, shoving in those before them. Kozel and Vasil found themselves outside of the crowd.

“Lord be praised!” the old man muttered joyously, drying his tears with one of his stumps and making the sign of the cross with the other. “Vasil, Vasil! O Lord! We have escaped!⁠ ⁠… Vasil! O Lord!⁠ ⁠… We have escaped! Why do you stand there? Let’s run home!”

“You go; I won’t,” said Vasil gloomily.

It seemed that it was outside of his power to draw his burning eyes away from the black, motionless, and dreadfully silent crowd. His blue lips trembled and became distorted, as they whispered unintelligible words.

“Let’s go, Vasil!” Kozel entreated him, dragging his grandson by the hand.

At that moment the black mass suddenly quivered and swayed like a forest that was suddenly struck by the wind. A dull and short groan of fury rolled over it. In an instant it pressed together, then tore apart again, then pressed together once more. And deafening each other with their frenzied cries, the men mingled together in the horrible fray.

“Vasil, for God’s sake!” the old man muttered, “let’s go away.⁠ ⁠… They will kill us!”

It was with great difficulty that he succeeded in dragging the boy away from the mob, but on the corner, struck by the dead silence that suddenly set in, Vasil drew away and glanced back.

“O Lord have mercy on thy sinful slave, Levonty, and take him to Paradise,” Kozel suddenly began to whisper. “They have killed Buzyga,” he said with pretended sadness.

He knew that the people’s wrath was allayed with blood and that death had gone past him. He could not conceal his deep, animal joy. He alternately cried and laughed with noiseless, long laughter. He spoke feverishly, without pauses, without sense, and made idiotic faces at himself. Vasil looked at him from time to time in aversion, knitting his brows with an expression of deep hatred.

At the end of October, or the beginning of November, the city of Balaklava, that most original corner of the variegated Russian Empire, begins to live a life all its own. The days are still warm and pleasant, as they sometimes are in the fall, but at night it grows cold and the ground resounds under your step. The last summer visitors have gone to Sebastopol with their bundles, suitcases, trunks, sickly children, and decadente young ladies. As mementos of the recent guests, there still remain grape-skins which the invalid summer visitors had scattered in abundant quantities on every pier and in every narrow street, all for the purpose of aiding their precious health, and piles of paper, refuse, cigarette stumps, scraps of letters and newspapers, which always remain behind when the summer visitors go away.

And immediately Balaklava becomes roomy, fresh, comfortable, and cozy, as though it were an apartment which had just been left by a crowd of noisy, smoking, arguing, uninvited guests. The old, native Greek population, which had until then concealed itself in back rooms and shacks, now creeps forth and takes possession of the streets.

On the street running along the shore fishing-nets are spread out, stretched across the whole width of the street. Against the rough cobbles of the street they seem thin and delicate as a cobweb, and the fishermen, creeping over them on all fours, appear like black spiders mending their broken, airy traps. Other fishermen are twisting the cord that they will use for catching the sturgeon and the flounder; with a serious and preoccupied air, they run back and forth with the cord thrown over their shoulders, twisting the thread without stopping.

The captains of the fishing-boats are sharpening the sturgeon-hooks, the old, dull copper hooks which, according to an old tradition of fishermen, are always preferred by the fish to the modern steel hooks of the English style. On the other side of the bay the boats, drawn on the shore and turned with the keel up, are being calked, tarred, and painted.

Around the stone fountains, where a thin stream of water runs and murmurs without stopping, the thin, dark-faced Greek women, with large eyes and long noses⁠—so strangely and touchingly like the representations of the Holy Virgin on the old Byzantine images⁠—chatter for hours at a time about their petty household affairs.

And all this is done without any undue haste, in a pleasant, neighborly way, with skill and deftness acquired by age-long habits, beneath the bright and pleasant autumn sun, on the shore of the merry blue bay, under the clear autumn sky, which rests so calmly upon the indented line of the low, bald mountains that surround the bay.

It seems that the summer guests have already been forgotten, as though they had never been there. Two or three rainy days, and the last vestige of their recent presence will be washed away from the streets. The whole senseless summer, passed in absurd haste, with its evening concerts, its dust raised by the women’s skirts, its pitiful flirtations and discussions of political subjects, now seems like a faraway, long-forgotten dream. The whole interest of the fishing town is concentrated upon the fish and their coming.

In the coffeehouses of Ivan Yuryich and Ivan Adamovich, the fishermen form into companies for their future work, while others play dominos. Captains are chosen here, too. The conversation in every corner of the room is concerned with the one subject of shares, fishing-nets, hooks, the possible catch, the mackerel, the flounder, the sturgeon, and other fish caught here. And at nine o’clock the whole town is plunged into profound slumber.

Nowhere in the whole of Russia, and I have travelled much through its width and length⁠—nowhere have I experienced the sensation of such deep, complete, and perfect silence as in Balaklava.

Sometimes I would go out on the balcony and feel immediately swallowed up by the darkness and the silence. The sky is black, the water in the bay is black, the mountains are black. The water is so thick, so heavy, and so calm that the stars reflected in it do not twinkle or break. Not a single human sound interrupts this silence. Now and then, perhaps once a minute, you can hear a tiny wavelet splash upon a rock. But this lonely, melodious sound only deepens, only accentuates the silence. You can hear the blood coursing through the veins in your ears. A rope holding a boat squeaks somewhere. And again everything is silent. You feel that the night and the silence are plunged in one black embrace.

I gaze to the left, where the narrow neck of the bay hemmed in by two mountains, disappears. A long, low mountain lies there, crowned by some ancient ruins. If you look at it attentively it will appear to you like a gigantic monster of the fairytale who lies with his breast on the shore of the bay and, thrusting his dark head with its upstanding ears deep into the water, greedily drinks it, unable to satiate his thirst.

At the very spot where the monster ought to have an eye burns a little red speck that represents the light of the customhouse. I know this light well, for I have passed it a hundred times, touching the lantern with my hand. But in the strange silence and the deep blackness of this autumn night I seem to see more and more distinctly the back and the head of the ancient monster, and I feel that its sly and wicked eye is watching me intently with a feeling of concealed hatred.

Suddenly I recall that verse from Homer in which Odysseus sees bloodthirsty Laestrygonians in a small, narrow-necked Black Sea bay. I also think of the enterprising, supple, handsome Genoese who erected their colossal fortifications upon the brow of this mountain. And in my mind rises the picture of a stormy winter night when a whole English squadron, headed by the haughty flagship, the Black Prince, was dashed to bits against the bosom of the old monster. The Black Prince is now lying on the bottom of the sea, not far away from the spot where I am standing, with its bars of gold still within its hold, that had carried down with it hundreds of human lives.

The old monster in its half-slumber gazes at me with its sharp little red eye. It appears to me like an old, old, forgotten divinity, which dreams its thousand-year-old dreams amidst this black silence. And I feel a strange disquiet.

The slow, lazy footsteps of the night-watchman are heard at a distance, and I distinguish clearly not only every sound of his heavy, iron-shod fisherman’s boots beating against the stones of the sidewalk, but also the shuffling of his heels at every second step. The sounds are so distinct amidst this silence that it seems to me as though I were walking together with him, although I am certain that he is more than a verst away from me. But now he has turned aside into some dark alley, or, perhaps, has sat down on a bench somewhere: his footsteps are heard no more. Everything is silent. Everything is dark.

The autumn is coming fast. The water becomes colder and colder. Just now one can catch only small fish with dragnets, those large vases of netting which are thrown to the bottom from the boat. But suddenly a rumor is set afloat that Yura Paratino had rigged his boat and had sent it to the spot where his mackerel-nets were placed, between the Capes of Aya and Laspi.

Of course, Yura Paratino is not the Emperor of Germany, or a famous bass, or a fashionable writer, or a singer of gypsy songs, but when I think of the importance and respect that attach to his name along the whole shore of the Black Sea, I always recall his friendship with pleasure and pride.

Yura Paratino is a tall, strong Greek of about forty, with an appearance of having been steeped in brine and tar. He has a bull-neck, a dark complexion, black, curly hair, mustaches, a clean-shaven, square chin, with an indentation in the middle that reminds one of animals⁠—a chin that bespeaks enormous willpower and great cruelty⁠—and thin lips that indicate great energy, all the more so because the corners of his mouth are turned downward. There isn’t a single fisherman on the whole shore more skilful, clever, powerful, and courageous than Yura Paratino. No one could outdo Yura when it came to drinking, and yet he had never been seen drunk. No one had ever been as successful as Yura, not even the famous Theodore of Oleiza himself.

In him, more than in anyone else, was developed that special fisherman’s indifference to the unjust strokes of fate, an indifference which is so highly prized by these seafaring people.

When Yura would be told that the storm had torn to pieces the rigging of his boat, or that one of his boats filled to the top with precious fish had sunk in the storm, Yura would only say lightly, “Oh, let it go to the devil!” And immediately he would seem to have forgotten all about it.

The other fishermen say about Yura: “The mackerel have only begun coming here from Kerch, but Yura already knows where to put his nets.”

These nets are about seventy feet long and thirty-five feet wide. The details of their weaving and placing are hardly interesting. But when large schools of fish swimming along the shore at night are caught in what becomes a trap, because of the nets’ special inclination, the fish cannot get away without being thrown out of the net. The fishermen lift the net out of the water and empty the fish into their boats. It is highly important to note in time the moment when the water about the net begins to seethe as though it were boiling. If this moment is not anticipated, the fish are likely to break through the net and escape.

And now, when some mysterious premonition had informed Yura of the fish’s intentions, the whole of Balaklava was passing through disquieting, annoyingly tense days. Boys were stationed on the tops of the mountains to watch day and night, and the boats were kept in constant readiness. Numbers of fish-dealers had come from Sebastopol. The local canning factory was busily preparing its barns for enormous quantities of fish.

At last, early in the morning, the rumor flashed like lightning through the houses, the restaurants, and the streets.

“The fish have come! The fish have come! Mackerel are being caught in the nets of Ivan Yegorovich, Kota, Khristo, Spiro, Capitanaki, and, of course, of Yura Paratino.”

All the boats are now manned and go out of the harbor.

And the rest of the inhabitants of the town are on the shore. They are all there, the old men, the women, the children, the two fat saloon-keepers, the gray-haired coffeehouse keeper, Ivan Adamovich; the proprietor of the drugstore, who is a very busy man and has come out but for a moment, the good-natured assistant surgeon, Yevsey Markovich, and the two local physicians.

The most important circumstance is the fact that the first boat to enter the bay sells its fish at a higher price than the others, and so the feelings that agitate the crowd gathered on the shore spring from interest and sport and ambition and calculation.

Finally, at the spot where the neck of the bay narrows down between the two mountains, appears the first boat, making a sharp curve around the shore.

“It’s Yura.”

“No, it’s Kolya.”

“No; of course, it is Genali.”

The fishermen have an ambition peculiar to themselves. When the catch is particularly large they consider it a mark of special elegance fairly to fly into the bay instead of entering it slowly. And the three men at the oars, straining their back and arm muscles to the utmost, their necks bent forward, their bodies almost falling back at each of their frequent and measured strokes, send the boat flying across the smooth surface of the bay with short, rapid strokes. The captain, his face turned toward them, is standing up, guiding the direction of the boat.

Of course, it is Yura Paratino! The boat is brimful of white, silvery fish, and the feet of the oarsmen are above them, tramping them down. Carelessly, while the boat is still in motion and the oarsmen have scarcely begun to slow down the motion of the boat, Yura jumps upon the wooden pier.

The bargaining with the fish-dealers immediately begins.

“Thirty!” says Yura and slaps, with the palm of his hand, the long, bony hand of one of the fish-dealers.

This means that he wants to sell his fish at thirty roubles a thousand.

“Fifteen!” shouts the Greek and, in his turn, having liberated his hand, slaps Yura’s palm.

“Twenty-eight!”

“Eighteen!”

Slap, slap.⁠ ⁠…

“Twenty-six!”

“Twenty!”

“Twenty-five!” says Yura hoarsely. “There’s another of my boats coming along.”

And at that moment another boat appears through the neck of the bay, followed by a second, a third, then two together. They make every effort to overtake one another, as the price of fish is falling and falling. In another half-hour the fish will be worth no more than fifteen roubles a thousand; in an hour, ten roubles, and finally five, and even three.

Toward evening the whole of Balaklava is permeated with the odor of fish. Mackerel is fried or canned in every house. The wide mouths of bread-ovens are full of tile boards on which the fish are being fried in their own juice. This is considered the most delicious food by the local lovers of fish. And all the coffeehouses and saloons are filled with smoke and the odor of fried fish.

Yura Paratino, the most openhanded man in all Balaklava, goes into the coffeehouse where the Balaklava fishermen are gathered surrounded by its heavy clouds of tobacco and fish smoke; he shouts to the proprietor in a tone of command, his voice rising above the uproar:

“A cup of coffee for everybody!”

A moment of universal silence, amazement, and joy sets in.

“With sugar or without?” asks the proprietor of the coffeehouse, the immense and dark Ivan Yuryich.

Yura hesitates for a second: a cup of unsweetened coffee costs three copecks; with sugar it costs five. But Yura is far from being mean-spirited. The most unskilled laborer of his boat had earned no less than ten roubles that day.

He says contemptuously:

“With sugar. And let’s have some music, too!”

The musicians appear immediately: a man with a clarinet and one with a tambourine. Late into the night they play their monotonous, mournful Tartar melodies. Young wine appears on the table⁠—the pinkish wine that smells of fresh grapes and causes intoxication in a very short while, leaving you with a dreadful headache on the following morning.

And on the pier, also until late at night, the last boats are being unloaded. Bending down in the boat, two or three Greeks quickly and with easy skill take two fish in the right hand and three in the left and throw them in the basket, keeping an exact, rapid, and ceaseless count. And on the following day more boats come in from the sea.

It seems that the whole of Balaklava is full of fish.

The lazy cats, with their bellies swollen through overeating, are lying there on the sidewalks, and when you hit them with your foot, they open one eye lazily and then doze off again. The geese, also seeming half asleep, can be seen on the placid surface of the bay, and from their beaks stick the tails of some of the fish they had eaten.

For many days the air is full of the strong odor of fresh fish and the burning smell of fried fish. And the light, sticky fish-scales cover the wooden piers, the stones of the street, the hands and the clothes of the happy housewives, and the blue waters of the bay, lazily rippling under the autumn sun.

It is evening. We are sitting in Ivan Yuryich’s coffeehouse, that is lighted by two hanging lamps. Thick clouds of tobacco smoke hang in the air. All the tables are occupied. Some of us play cards or dominos, others sip their coffee, others again simply lounge about, revelling in the light and warmth and exchanging remarks. A long, lazy, cozy, pleasant evening ennui has taken hold of the entire coffeehouse.

By and by we begin a rather odd game which is a great favorite with the fishermen here. I must confess, in spite of the protests of my modesty, that the honor of having invented the game belongs to none but myself. In this game each of the participants in turn is blindfolded with a handkerchief tied with a sailor’s knot, and then a jacket is thrown over his head; two other participants take him by each arm, lead him all over the room, make him spin about several times, then take him outside, bring him in again and steer him in and out among the tables trying their best to confuse him as to his position. When, by general acclaim, enough has been done to confuse the victim, he is permitted to stop and is asked to point to the north.

Everyone is given three chances, and the one who shows the poorest sense of orientation has to treat the company to coffee or to young wine, each person present receiving a cup or a half-bottle. I must admit that I am the most frequent loser. As for Yura Paratino, he invariably points north with the accuracy of a magnetic needle. What a beast!

Suddenly I turn back involuntarily and note that Khristo Ambarzaki winks at me to approach him.

He is not alone; by his side sits Yani, my teacher and the head of our fishing crew.

I go over to them. Khristo, for appearance sake, asks for a set of dominos, and while we pretend to be playing he whispers to me, purposely rattling the dominos:

“Take your difans and come quietly to the landing-place together with Yani. The bay is chock-full of mullets, like a jar of olives. The swine drove them in.”

Difans are very thin fishing-nets, some one hundred and fifty yards long and about three yards wide. They consist of three walls, of which the two outer ones have larger meshes and the middle has narrow ones. The small mackerel will pass through the large-meshed walls, but will get entangled in the meshes of the inner net; on the other hand, large mullets which knock their heads against the middle net and turn back become entangled in the large outer meshes. I am the only man in Balaklava who owns such nets.

Quickly, and trying to keep in the shadows, Yani and I take the nets to the beach. The night is so dark that we are hardly able to descry Khristo, who is already waiting for us in a boat. Muffled sniffing, grunting, and heavy groans are heard from the bay. It is the dolphins, or sea-swine, as the fishermen call them. They have driven enormous shoals of fish into the narrow bay and are now darting across it, devouring the fish as they pass.

What we are getting ready to do is undoubtedly a crime. According to a peculiar ancient custom it is permitted to catch fish in the bay only with fishing-rods and trammels. Only once a year, and for no more than three days, are fish caught in municipal nets. This unwritten law is a sort of fisherman’s taboo.

But the night is so black, the groans and the grunting of the dolphins goad so violently the hunter’s curiosity in us, that, repressing an involuntary sigh of repentance, I cautiously leap into the boat, and, while Khristo rows noiselessly, I help Yani to get the nets in shape. He pays out the lower edge of the net laden with large leaden plummets, while I hand him quickly the upper edge, along which cork-floats are strung.

But suddenly a wonderful spectacle, which I had never seen before, fascinates me. Near by, to the left of the boat, sounds the snorting of the dolphin, and all of a sudden I notice a great number of sinuous silvery streamlets, resembling the rays of bursting fireworks, dashing around the boat with incredible speed. It is the frightened fish fleeing before the rapacious dolphin. And here I notice that the entire sea is ablaze with fire. Pale-blue jewels shimmer on the tops of small, scarcely rippling wavelets. Where the oars touch the water, deep, gleaming bands flame up in magic splendor. I dip my hand into the sea, and when I draw it out a handful of shimmering diamonds drips into the water, and for a long time delicate, bluish phosphoric lights glow on my fingers. This is one of those magic nights when, as the fishermen say, “the sea is ablaze.”

Another shoal of fish darts under the boat, furrowing the deep with short, silvery arrows. I hear the snorting of the dolphin near at hand. Here he is, at last! He appears alongside the boat, disappears for a second under the keel and immediately forges ahead. He swims deep under the water, but with extraordinary clearness I distinguish his powerful body, strained in the race. Wrapped in the shimmer of infusoria, his contours set off by myriads of spangles, he looks like a shining glass skeleton, darting at a terrific speed.

Khristo rows with absolute noiselessness, and Yani only once hits the side of the boat with the lead plummets. We have unwound the entire net, and now we can start.

We cross to the opposite shore. Yani plants himself firmly on the prow, his feet wide apart. A large, flat stone, tied to a rope, quietly slides from his hands and sinks to the bottom, hardly splashing the water. A big cork buoy rises to the surface, a scarcely visible black dot on the surface of the bay. Now we make our boat trace a half-circle, as far as the length of our net allows, then we come again to the shore and lower another buoy. We are inside a closed half-circle.

If, instead of poaching, we had been working openly and freely, the next thing to do would have been to make as much noise as possible with our oars and otherwise, so as to drive the fish within our half-circle, into the nets, where they would become entangled in the meshes. But our business needs secrecy, so that all we can do is to go twice from buoy to buoy, noiselessly churning the water with our oars and making it boil in beautiful pale-blue knolls. Then we return to the first buoy. Yani cautiously lifts up the stone which served us as an anchor and drops it without the slightest noise to the bottom of the boat. Standing on the prow and leaning on his left foot, which is put forward, he draws out the net, rhythmically raising and lowering his hands in turn. Slightly leaning overboard, I see the net emerging from the water, and I distinguish clearly every mesh of it, every thread, like an enchanting fiery web. Little, flickering lights slide down Yani’s fingers, and fall back into the water.

And I hear the fish, large and alive, fall to the bottom of the boat with a heavy, wet thud, writhe vigorously, and strike the boards with their tails. Gradually we come to the second buoy and cautiously raise it out of the water.

It is now my turn to row. Khristo and Yani again examine the nets and pick out the mullets from the meshes. Khristo cannot refrain from throwing a big, fat, silvery mullet to my feet over Yani’s head.

“Some fish!” he whispers in my ear, chuckling with bliss.

Yani quietly stops him.

When their work is done and the wet net again lies on the prow platform of the long boat, I see that the entire bottom is carpeted with fish, which are still alive and writhing. But we must make haste. We describe a few more circles, although prudence bids us return to town. Finally, we land in a spot which is but little frequented. Yani brings a basket, and armfuls of big, plump fish, which spread a fresh, delightful odor, fall into it with a savory smack.

Ten minutes later we come back to the coffeehouse, one after another. Everyone invents some pretext for his absence. But our trousers and jackets are wet, Yani has fish-scales in his mustache and beard, and we all smell of the sea and wet fish. Khristo, who cannot control the excitement he has just been through, now and then throws in an allusion to our adventure.

“I was just on the beach.⁠ ⁠… Lots of swine in the bay⁠—it’s simply terrible!” And he would dart a sly, mischievous glance at us.

Yani, who, with Khristo, had carried and hid the basket, sits near me and mumbles into his cup of coffee in a scarcely audible whisper:

“About two thousand, all big. I brought some thirty over to your place.”

This is my share of the booty. I nod. But now I am somewhat ashamed of my crime. Still there is comfort in catching quick, knowing glances around us. It seems that we were not the only ones poaching that night.

Winter is setting in. One evening it began to snow, and during the night everything had become white, the embankment, the boats on the beach, the roofs, the trees. Only the water of the bay remains black and sombre, and splashes restlessly in this calm white frame.

All along the shores of Crimea⁠—at Anapa, Sudak, Kerch, Theodosia, Yalta, Balaklava, and Sebastopol⁠—the fishermen prepare for the white-sturgeon season. They clean the fishing-boots, enormous horse-leather boots reaching to the thigh, each weighing some twenty pounds; they repair their waterproof coats painted with yellow oil-paint, and their leather trousers; they mend sails and knit seines.

Long before the beginning of the white-sturgeon season the devout fisherman Fyodor, from Oleiz, burns wax tapers and lamps filled with the finest olive-oil before the image of St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker of Myra in Lycia and the patron saint of seamen. When he will put out to sea with his crew of Tartars, the image of the sea saint will be taken from his shanty and nailed to the prow, as a guide and loadstar of luck. This is known to all the seamen of Crimea, because Fyodor does it every year and because he has the reputation of a brave and lucky fisherman.

At last, with a fair wand blowing, in the early dawn that is still a part of the dark night, hundreds of fishing-craft leave the Crimean peninsula and set sail for the open sea.

How glorious is the moment of departure! All five men sit on the prow of the long boat. “God speed! God’s help with you! God speed!”

The loosened sail falls, and, after flapping hesitatingly in the air for some moments, suddenly swells like a sharp, convex, upturned white wing. The boat, careening all the way to one side, gracefully moves out of the mouth of the bay into the open sea. The water sizzles and foams around the prow and the spray dashes into the boat, while one of the fishermen carelessly sits on the very gunwale, the lower hem of his jacket now and then skimming the surface of the water, and with a swaggering air lights a rolled cigarette. Beneath the grate of the prow is kept a small stock of provisions, consisting of strong whiskey, bread, smoked fish, and a barrel of water.

They sail away a distance of some thirty miles from shore. During this long journey, the leader of the crew and his assistant prepare the fishing implements. These consist of a strong rope about a mile long with bits of cord, about two yards long, tied to it at intervals of two or three yards. The pieces of cord are provided with hooks baited with small fish, and the whole thing is sunk to the bottom of the sea by means of two stones which are placed on the ends of the rope and which serve as anchors. Their position is indicated by two cork buoys floating above the anchors on the surface of the sea, and surmounted by small red flags.

The assistant baits the hooks with extraordinary dexterity and rapidity, while the leader carefully coils the rope into a round basket, arranging it in a neat spiral close to the side of the basket. The bait is put inside the circle. The work, done almost in absolute darkness, is not so easy as would appear at first glance. When the time comes for lowering the rope into the water, one carelessly adjusted hook may catch the main cable and hopelessly entangle the entire outfit.

At dawn the place is reached. Each ataman (head of a fishing-gang) has his favorite, “lucky” spots, and he finds them in the open, tens of miles off the coast, as easily as we find a box of steel pens on our desk. The only thing to do is to sail east until the Foros lighthouse is sighted, taking care that the polar star should be visible above the belfry of the monastery of St. George. Every ataman has his secret signs in the form of lighthouses, large rocks, houses, solitary pines on the mountains, or stars.

When the place is selected, the first stone is lowered, soundings are made, and a buoy tied to the anchor. Then the fishermen row the entire length of the rope while the leader pays it out from the basket with a fabulous speed. When the entire rope is in the sea, the second stone is lowered, the buoy adjusted, and the work is done. The fishermen row or sail back to shore, as the wind permits. A day or two later they return to their places and drag out the rope. If Providence wills or chance permits, the hooks with the bait will be swallowed by the sturgeon, and the fishermen will have a rich catch of this big, sharp-nosed fish, which normally weigh from 300 to 700 pounds, and in rare instances even as much as half a ton.

It was thus that, one night, Vanya Andrutzaki put out to sea in his long boat. To tell the truth, no one expected any good to come of his enterprise. Old Andrutzaki had died the preceding spring, and Vanya was much too young as yet. According to the opinion of experienced fishermen he should have served for two years more as a mere oarsman, and then worked another year as an assistant. But instead, he gathered a gang of green youngsters of the devil-may-care sort, rudely scolded his old mother who had begun to weep, abused the grumbling old fishermen with the profanest oaths, and had sailed off, he and his whole crew dead-drunk. His sheep-fur cap was rowdily tilted to the back of his head, and his curly hair, as black as a poodle’s, fell in disorder over his sunburnt forehead as he stood on the prow of his boat.

A stormy gale was blowing on the sea that night, and a thick snow fell. Several fishing-craft came back soon after leaving the bay, for Greek fishermen, in spite of their long experience, are exceedingly prudent, not to say cowardly. “Bad weather,” they said in explanation.

But Vanya Andrutzaki returned about noon, his long boat chock-full of the largest white sturgeon. In addition, he towed in a monstrous fish, a sturgeon weighing about 750 pounds, which the crew had to thump with mallets and oars for a long time before they could put it to death.

This monster had given the crew no little trouble. Fishermen say that, as a rule, it is enough to bring the sturgeon’s head to the level of the stern-board, and it will leap into the boat of its own accord. It is true that sometimes, while leaping into the boat, the sturgeon, with a powerful stroke of its tail, sends the careless fishermen flying into the sea. Besides, in catching sturgeon there are even more serious moments which threaten fishermen with real danger. That is exactly what had happened to Vanya Andrutzaki.

Standing on the very prow, which now rose to the foamy crest of broad waves and now sank into smooth, green water-pits, Vanya hauled in the rope with a rhythmical motion of his arms and back. Five small sturgeons, which had been taken off at the very beginning, lay motionless on the bottom of the boat. Then the catch became poorer: some hundred and fifty hooks were empty, with their bait untouched.

The men rowed in silence, with their eyes fixed on the two points of the beach indicated by their ataman. His assistant sat at his feet, taking the bait off the hooks and putting the rope into the basket in a neat bale. Suddenly one of the fish on the bottom of the boat began to writhe and shake.

“When a fish kicks, another is coming,” said the young fisher Pavel, repeating an old fishermen’s saying.

That very moment Vanya Andrutzaki felt, deep in the sea, an enormous living weight shaking and resisting and straining on the rope, which became taut like a string. Leaning over the side, he noticed under the water the long, silvery, floating, shimmering body of a monstrous white sturgeon, and, unable to restrain his feelings, he turned to the crew and whispered, his eyes shining with excitement:

“A large one! Like a bull! More than a thousand pounds, I guess.⁠ ⁠…”

That was just what he should not have done! God forbid that you anticipate events or express joy over your success while at sea! And the ancient, mysterious belief immediately proved true in the case of Vanya Andrutzaki. He saw clearly the fish’s long, sharp, bony head half a yard below the surface of the sea, and, stilling his wildly beating heart, he was getting ready to bring it to the board, when suddenly⁠ ⁠… the monster tossed up its tail above the wave and dashed into the depth of the sea, dragging along the rope with the bait-hooks.

Vanya did not lose his head. “Back astern!” he cried to the fishermen, swore savagely and elaborately, and started to pay out the rope after the disappearing fish. The hooks seemed to flash in the air from under his hands and whipped the water. The assistant helped him by throwing the rope out of the basket, and the oarsmen worked furiously, trying to overtake the monster. The work required extraordinary speed and perfect accuracy. A few hooks became entangled in the assistant’s hands. He shouted to Vanya to stop feeding the rope and started to set free the hooks with that speed and care which seamen alone manifest in moments of danger. In those few seconds the rope in Vanya’s hands became as taut as a string, and the boat leaped on the waves in fury, towed by the frantic fish and driven by the efforts of the oarsmen.

“Pay away!” finally cried out the assistant. The rope started again sliding at an incredible speed from the ataman’s dexterous hands, when suddenly the boat jerked and Vanya swore with a repressed groan: a copper hook pierced his palm, just below the little finger and stuck there its full length.⁠ ⁠… It is here that Vanya showed himself a real saltwater fisherman. Having wound the rope around the fingers of the wounded hand, he stopped feeding it for a second, and, producing a knife with his other hand, he cut the cord to which the hook was attached. The hook stuck fast in the palm, but Vanya tore it out with the flesh and threw it into the sea. And although both his hands and the rope were stained with his blood, although the boards of the boat and the water inside grew red, he did his work to the end and was the first to deal the obstinate monster a heavy blow with a mallet.

His was the first sturgeon catch of the season. The crew sold the fish at a very high price so that each member’s share amounted to no less than forty roubles. On this occasion a good bit of wine was drunk, and toward evening the entire crew of St. George the Conqueror⁠—as Vanya’s long boat was called⁠—set out with music for Sebastopol in a two-horse curricle. There the gallant Balaklava fishermen, together with some navy sailors, smashed the piano, the bedsteads, the chairs, and the windows in a house of ill fame; then they thrashed one another thoroughly and came back only at dawn, drunk, bruised, but singing. And as soon as they left the cab, they got into the boat, set sail, and put out to sea again.

From that day Vanya’s reputation as a real saltwater ataman was firmly established.

This charming ancient legend was related to me at Balaklava by the ataman, Kolya Konstandi, a real saltwater Greek, an excellent seaman, and a heavy drinker.

At that time he was instructing me in all those wise and strange things which make up the fishermen’s lore. He showed me how to make sea knots and mend torn nets, how to bait hooks for white sturgeon, how to launch and clean seines, how to take out the mullet from the three-walled net, how to fry it, how to separate with a knife the petalide which grow on rocks, how to eat shrimps raw, how to forecast the night’s weather by the day’s surf, how to set sail, weigh anchor, and sound the depths of the sea.

He patiently explained to me the different directions and peculiarities of the winds: the levanter, the sirocco, the tramontane, the terrible bora, the propitious sea-wind, and the capricious land breeze.

To him I also owe my knowledge of fishermen’s customs and superstitions. It is not permissible, during the catch, to whistle aboard the craft or to spit except overboard; one should never mention the devil, though one is permitted to curse by faith, the grave, the coffin, the soul, one’s forefathers, their eyes, livers, spleen, and so on; it is well to leave in the net, as if by chance, a little fish: this brings luck, and God forbid that any article of food be thrown overboard while the boat is at sea. But the most terrible, unpardonable and objectionable breach of fishermen’s etiquette, is to ask a fisherman: “Where are you bound for?” For a question like this one is likely to be roundly thrashed.

It is from him that I learned about the poisonous fish drakus, that resembles a small mackerel, and about the manner in which it ought to be taken off the hook; also about the sea-gremille which causes sores by stinging with its fin, and the terrible double tail of the electric ray. He also told me how skilfully a sea-crab eats an oyster by first putting a pebble into its valve.

And many a strange and mysterious sea-tale did I hear from Kolya in those sweet, quiet hours of the night in early autumn, when our yawl rocked gently on the sea, far away from the unseen shores, and when the two or three of us, sitting by the yellow light of a hand-lantern, leisurely sipped the local pink wine, that smelled of freshly crushed grapes.

“There lives in the ocean a sea-serpent a verst long. Very seldom, not more than once in ten years, he comes up to the surface and breathes. He lives all alone. In former times there were many of them, males and females, but they did so much evil to the small fish, that God condemned them to sterility, and now only this thousand-year-old male serpent lives his last in loneliness. Seamen meet him occasionally, here and there, all over the world, in all the oceans.”

“There lives, somewheres in the sea, on a deserted island, in a deep, submerged cave, the king of sea-lobsters. When he strikes claw against claw, there arises a great turmoil on the surface of the water.”

“Fish converse among themselves⁠—this is known to every fisherman. They warn each other about various dangers and traps, and an inexperienced, awkward fisherman can spoil a lucky spot if he lets some fish out of the net.”

From Kolya I heard also about the Flying Dutchman, that eternal sea-wanderer, with black sails and a lifeless crew. This tale is known and believed all over the seashores of Europe.

But one old legend, told by him, especially touched me with its fresh and naive simplicity.

Once at dawn, when the sun had not yet risen but the sky was already orange-colored and a pink mist hovered over the sea, Kolya and I were hauling out a net which had been placed along the shore in the evening for mackerel. The catch was very poor. It consisted of about a hundred mackerels, five or six gremilles, a few dozen fat, golden crucians, and a lot of jellylike mother-of-pearl-colored medusas, that resembled huge, colorless, many-legged mushroom pileuses.

But we also caught a very queer fish which I had never seen before. It had a flat, oval shape and would scarcely cover a woman’s palm. Its edges were fringed with frequent, small, transparent hairs. Its head was small, and in it were set eyes that were not like those of a fish; they were black, rimmed with gold, and unusually lively. Its body was of an even, golden color. But most striking in this fish were two spots, one in the middle of each side. They were as large as a dime, but of an irregular shape and of a bright azure hue so remarkable that it is not found on any painter’s palette.

“Look,” said Kolya. “This is the Lord’s fish. It seldom gets into our nets.”

We placed it first into the boat pail, and later on, when we returned home, I poured some sea water into a big, enamelled basin, and put the Lord’s fish in it. The fish immediately began to swim round and round, along the sides of the basin, almost touching them, and all the time in one direction. When touched, it emitted a short, scarcely audible, rattling sound, and increased its speed. Its black eyes rolled around, and the wavering of the countless hairs set the water in swift, wavelike motion. I wanted to keep the Lord’s fish in order to take it later to the Aquarium of the Biological Station at Sebastopol, but Kolya said, waving his hand:

“It does not pay to bother. Anyway, it won’t live long enough. That’s the kind of fish it is. If you take it out of the sea even for a second, it won’t live. It is the Lord’s fish.”

Toward evening it died. And at night, while sitting in the yawl, I thought of it, and said:

“Kolya, why is this fish the Lord’s?”

“Well,” answered Kolya with devout earnestness, “our old men here tell the story this way: When our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day after his burial, no one believed him. Many miracles wrought by him were witnessed while he was alive, but people could not believe this one and they were afraid.

“His disciples renounced him, his apostles denied him, the faithful women abandoned him. Then he comes to his mother. At that moment, she was standing at the fireplace, frying some fish, preparing dinner for herself and hers. Said the Lord to her: ‘Greetings! Here I am, thy Son, risen from the dead, as it is written in the Scriptures. Peace be with thee.’ But she shuddered and cried out in affright: ‘If thou art truly my Son, work thou a miracle, so I may be convinced.’

“The Lord smiled at her lack of faith and said: ‘I shall take this fish lying on the fire, and it will spring to life. Wouldst thou believe me then?’

“And barely did he touch the fish with his two fingers and lifted it up in the air, when it began to tremble and sprang to life.

“Then our Lord’s mother had faith in the miracle and joyfully worshipped her resurrected Son. And ever since then there remained on the fish the two spots of heavenly azure. These are the traces of our Lord’s fingers.”

That was how a plain, simple-minded fisherman related this naive, ancient tale. A few days later I learned that the Lord’s fish has also another name, that of the fish of Zeus. Who knows how far back into the womb of ages this apocryphal tale extends?

O dear, simple men, stout hearts, naive, primitive souls, strong bodies, swept by the salt-sea breezes, sinewy hands, sharp eyes, that have so often looked into the face of death, into its very pupils!

Bora has been blowing for three days. Bora⁠—also called the northeaster⁠—is a mysterious, fierce wind, born somewhere in the bald, peeled-off mountains near Novorossiysk, which swoops down upon the round bay and sets the entire Black Sea rolling heavily. Its violence is so great that it upsets loaded freightcars on the railways, uproots telegraph-posts, shatters freshly laid brick walls, and throws down solitary pedestrians. In the middle of the past century several warships, caught by the northeaster, found refuge against it in the Novorossiysk Bay: under full steam they strove against the wind, but could not advance an inch; then they cast double anchors, yet the gale tore them from the anchors, dragged them into the bay, and dashed them to splinters on the rocks near the shore.

This wind is terrible because of its unexpectedness: it is impossible to foresee it⁠—it is the most capricious of winds on the most capricious of seas.

Old fishermen say that the safest way of getting away from it is to “slip away into the open sea.” And there have been times when bora carried away some small bark or pale-blue Turkish felucca ornamented with silver stars, across the entire Black Sea, to the Anatolian coast, three hundred and fifty versts away.

Bora has been blowing for three days. It is the time of the new moon. The birth-throes of the moon are, as usual, painful. Experienced fishermen have given up all hope of setting out to sea, and have dragged their boats as far away from the shore as they could.

The desperate Fyodor from Oleiz alone, who for many days had been burning candles before the image of St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker, decided to put to sea in order to gather in his sturgeon line. With his gang, consisting entirely of Tartars, he set out three times, and each time, cursing and blaspheming, making no more than one-tenth of a sea knot an hour, he was forced to row back. Each time, in a fury which only a seaman can understand, he tore off the image of his saint nailed to the prow, hurled it to the bottom of the boat, trampled it under foot, and cursed fiercely, while the crew with their hats and hands baled out the water which dashed madly over the sides of the boats.

Meanwhile, the old, sly Balaklava Laestrygonians sat in the coffeehouses, rolled cigarettes, sipped strong thick coffee, played dominos, complained of the weather, and, revelling in the cozy warmth and in the light thrown by the hanging lamps, they recalled ancient, legendary tales inherited from fathers and grandfathers, of how, in such and such a year, the surf was so many hundred yards high and the spray reached to the very base of the half-ruined Genoese fortress.

In the meantime, a bark from Foros was lost at sea. It belonged to a band of eight flaxen-haired Ivans, who had come all the way from the interior of Russia to try their luck on the Black Sea. In the coffeehouse no one worried about them or pitied them. People smacked their lips over their liquor, laughed, and contented themselves with saying contemptuously: “The fools! In such weather! Oh, well, they’re only Russians.” On a dark, roaring night, in the hour preceding the dawn, all those poor Ivans from Ilmen Lake or from the Volga went to the bottom, like stones, with their horse-leather boots reaching to the waist, with their leather jackets and yellow-painted waterproof cloaks.

It was altogether different when Vanya Andrutzaki, in spite of all the warnings and persuasions of the old men, put to sea just before the bora set in. The Lord alone knows why he did it, most probably out of boyish bravado, goaded by his youthful impetuosity and ambition and also by wine. Perhaps some red-lipped, black-eyed Greek girl was gazing at him that moment.

He set sail⁠—the gale even then was quite strong⁠—and vanished from sight. The boat dashed out of the bay with the swiftness of a fine prize-horse; for five minutes the white sail flashed on the blue of the deep, and then it became impossible to distinguish it from the white froth that leaped from wave to wave.

Only three days later he returned home.⁠ ⁠…

Three days and three nights without food or sleep, in a tiny cockleshell amidst a furious sea⁠—with no coast in sight, no sail, no beckoning lighthouse, no steamer’s smoke on the horizon! But once back from his journey, Vanya forgot all about it, as though nothing had happened to him, as though he had taken a ride in a mail-coach to Sebastopol and bought a box of cigarettes there.

There were, however, several details which I squeezed with great difficulty out of Vanya’s memory. For instance, at the end of the second night Yura Lipiadi was overcome by some sort of hysteric fit: all of a sudden he broke out weeping and laughing, and would surely have jumped overboard had not Vanya hit him on the head with an oar. There was also a moment when the crew, frightened by the furious speed of the boat, wanted to lower the sails, and it must have cost Vanya tremendous effort to curb the will of these five men and subjugate them to his own in the very face of death. I also learned that the oarsmen worked so furiously that blood gushed from under their fingernails. But all this was related to me in fragments, reluctantly, incidentally. Yes, in those days of feverish, tense struggle with death, many things were said and done which the crew of the bark will never relate to anyone, not for the whole world!

During those three days and three nights no one at Balaklava closed his eyes except fat Petalidi, the owner of the hotel “Paris.” Young and old, women and children, roamed along the coast in anxiety, scaled the cliffs and climbed up the Genoese fortress which overshadows the city with its two ancient battlements. Telegrams were sent all over the world: to the commander of the Black Sea ports, the bishop of our diocese, the lighthouses, the lifesaving stations, the minister of the navy, the minister of ways of communication, to Yalta, Sebastopol, Constantinople, and Odessa, to the Patriarch of Greece, the governor, and also, for no earthly reason at all, to the Russian consul at Damascus, who happened to be an acquaintance of a Greek aristocrat of Balaklava, a dealer in flour and cement.

The ancient, immemorial ties which weld man with man came again to life, the deep feeling of comradeship, so little noticeable amidst the petty calculations and the bustle of everyday life, and the voice of the forebears rang again in every heart, of the forebears who, thousands of years ago, long before the time of Ulysses, stood out together against bora, on days and nights like these.

No one slept. At night the fishermen built a huge fire on the mountain, and people roamed about the coast with lanterns, as they do at Easter. But no one laughed or sang, and the coffeehouses were empty.

What a delightful, unforgetable moment it was, when, in the morning, at about eight o’clock, Yura Paratino, who stood on the summit of a cliff above the White Stones, screwed up his eyes, bent forward, bored the distance with his sharp gaze, and suddenly shouted:

“They’re coming!”

No one but Yura Paratino could have descried the boat on the blue-black sea, which was still rolling heavily and viciously, but was slowly calming down. But five, ten minutes later any boy could see clearly that St. George the Conqueror was making for the bay, tacking about and running under sail. A great joy welded together hundreds of human beings into one body and one soul!

Before entering the bay they lowered their sails and took to oars; their entry was at top speed, as triumphant as though they returned after an excellent catch of sturgeon. All around people wept with joy: mothers, wives, brides, sisters, little brothers. Do you think that even one of the crew softened, burst into tears, or wept on someone’s bosom? Not at all! Soaked, hoarse, and windswept, the six of them made straight for Yura’s coffeehouse, ordered wine and music, and for hours shouted songs and danced like madmen, leaving pools of salt water on the floor. Late at night their comrades carried them, drunk and exhausted, to their homes; there every one of them slept twenty hours at a stretch. And when they awoke, their journey appeared to them like a trip to Sebastopol, where they had had a good time, and then returned home.

I

Gambrinous’ is the name of a popular beershop in a vast port of South Russia. Although rather well situated in one of the most crowded streets, it was hard to find, owing to the fact that it was underground. Often old customers who knew it well would miss this remarkable establishment and would retrace their steps after passing two or three neighbouring shops.

There was no signboard of any kind. One entered a narrow door, always open, straight from the pavement. Then came a narrow staircase with twenty stones steps that were bent and crooked from the tramp of millions of heavy boots. At the end of the staircase, on a partition, there was displayed, in alto-relief, the painted figure, double life-size, of the grandiose beer patron, King Gambrinous himself. This attempt in sculpture was probably the first work of an amateur and seemed to be clumsily hacked out of an enormous petrified sponge. But the red jacket, the ermine mantle, the gold crown, and the mug, raised on high with its trickling white froth, left no doubt in the visitor’s mind that he stood in the very presence of the great Beer King.

The place consisted of two long, but extremely low, vaulted rooms, from whose stone walls damp streams were always pouring, lit up by gas jets that burned day and night, for the beershop was not provided with a single window. On the vaults, however, traces of amusing paintings were still more or less distinguishable. In one of these, a band of German lads in green hunting jackets, with woodcock feathers in their hats and rifles on their shoulders, were feasting. One and all, as they faced the beer hall, greeted the customers with outstretched mugs, while two of them continued to embrace the waists of a pair of plump girls, servants of the village inn, or perhaps daughters of some worthy farmer. On the other wall was displayed a fashionable picnic, early eighteenth century, with countesses and viscounts frolicking in powdered wigs on a green lawn with lambs. Next to this was a picture of drooping willows, a pond with swans, which ladies and gentlemen, reclining on a kind of gilt shell, were gracefully feeding. Then came a picture of the interior of a Ukrainian hut with a family of happy Ukrainians dancing the gopak with large bottles in their hands. Still further down the room a large barrel sported itself upon which two grotesquely fat cupids, wreathed with hop-leaves and grapes, with red faces, fat lips, and shamelessly oily eyes, clicked glasses. In the second hall, separated from the other by a small archway, were illustrations from frog life: frogs were drinking beer in a green marsh, hunting grasshoppers among the thick reeds, playing upon stringed instruments, fighting with swords, and so on. Apparently the walls had been painted by some foreign master.

Instead of tables, heavy oak barrels were arranged on the sawdust-strewn floor and small barrels took the place of chairs. To the right of the entrance was a small platform, with a piano on it. Here, night after night through a long stretch of years, Sasha⁠—a Jew, a gentle, merry fellow, drunk and bald, who had the appearance of a peeled monkey, and who might be any age⁠—used to play the violin for the pleasure and distraction of the guests. As the years passed, the waiters, with their leather-topped sleeves, changed, the bartenders also changed, even the proprietors of the beershop changed, but Sasha invariably, every night at six o’clock, sat on his platform with his fiddle in his hands and a little white dog on his knee. And by one o’clock in the morning, always with the same little dog, Bielotchka, he would leave Gambrinous’, scarcely able to stand after his beer.

There was, too, at Gambrinous’, another unchanging face⁠—that of the presider at the buffet, a fat, bloodless old woman, who, from being always in that damp beer basement, resembled one of those pale, lazy fish which swarm in the depths of sea caverns. Like the captain of a ship from his bridge, she, from the height of her bar, would give curt orders to the waiters, smoking all the time and holding her cigarette in the right corner of her mouth, while her right eye constantly blinked from the smoke. Her voice was rarely audible and she responded to the bows of her guests always with the same colourless smile.

II

The enormous port, one of the largest commercial ports in the world, was always crowded with ships. In it appeared the dark, rusty, gigantic armour-clad vessels. In it were loaded, on their way to the Far East, the yellow, thick-funnelled steamers of the Volunteer fleet that absorbed every day long trains of goods or thousands of prisoners. In spring and autumn, hundreds of flags from all points of the globe waved, and from morning until night orders and insults, in every conceivable language, rang out lustily. From the ships to the docks and warehouses and back along the quivering gangways the loaders ran to and fro, Russian tramps in rags, almost naked, with drunken, swollen faces, swarthy Turks, in dirty turbans, with large trousers, loose to the knees but tightened from there to the ankles, squat, muscular Persians, their hair and nails painted a red-carrot colour with quinquina.

Often graceful Italian schooners, with two or three masts, their regular layers of sail clean, white and elastic as young women’s breasts, would put it to this port at respectful distances from each other. Just showing over the lighthouse, these stately ships seemed⁠—particularly on a clear spring morning⁠—like wonderful white phantoms, swimming not on the water, but on the air above the horizon. Here, too, for months in the dirty green port water, among the rubbish of eggshells and watermelon peels, among the flight of white seagulls, the high boats from Anatolia, the felligi from Trebizond, with their strange painted carvings and fantastic ornaments, swayed at anchor. Here extraordinary narrow ships, with black tarred sails, with a dirty rag in place of a flag, swam in from time to time. Doubling the mole, almost rattling against it with its side, one of these ships, lying close to the water, and without moderating its speed, would dash into any harbour, and there, amid the international insults, curses and threats, would put in at the first dock to hand, where its sailors⁠—quite naked, bronzed little people, with guttural gurgling voices⁠—would furl the torn sails with amazing rapidity and the dirty mysterious ship would immediately become lifeless. And just as enigmatically some dark night, without lighting its fires, it would soundlessly disappear from the port. At night, indeed, the whole bay swarmed with light little smuggling craft. The fishermen from the outskirts, and from further off, used to cart their fish into town, in the spring small kamsas filling their long boats by the million; in the summer the monstrous dab; in the autumn mackerel, fat kefals and oysters; in the winter white sturgeon from ten to twenty poods in weight, often caught at considerable risk, miles out to sea.

All these people⁠—sailors of varied nationalities, fishermen, stokers, merry cabin-boys, port thieves, mechanics, workmen, boatmen, loaders, divers, smugglers⁠—all young, healthy, and impregnated with the strong smell of the sea and fish, knew well what it was to endure, enjoyed the delight and the terror of everyday danger, valued, above anything else, courage, daring, the ring of strong slashing words, and, when on shore, would give themselves up with savage delight to debauchery, drunkenness, and fighting. At night, the lights of the large town, towering above the port, lured them like magical shining eyes that always promised something fresh, glad, and not yet experienced, but always with the same deceit.

The town was linked to the port by steep, narrow, crooked streets, which decent folk avoided at night. At every step one encountered night shelters with dirty windows, protected by railings and lit up by the gloomy light of the solitary lamp inside. Still oftener one passed little shops in which one could sell anything one happened to have, from the sailor’s kit down to his net, and rig oneself out again in whatever sailor’s kit one chose. Here, too, were many beershops, taverns, eating-houses and inns, with flamboyant signboards in every known language, and not a few disorderly houses, at once obvious and secret, from the steps of which hideously painted women would call to the sailors in hoarse voices. There were Greek coffee-shops, where one used to play dominoes and cards; and Turkish coffee-shops where one could smoke narghiles and get a night’s shelter for five kopeks. There were small Oriental inns in which they sold snails, petalidis, shrimps, mussels, large inky scuttle-fishes, and all sorts of sea monstrosities. Somewhere in the attics and basements, behind heavy shutters, were hidden gambling dens, where faro and baccarat often ended in one’s stomach being slit or one’s skull broken. And right at the next corner, sometimes in the next house, there was sure to be someone with whom one could dispose of anything stolen, from a diamond bracelet to a silver cross, and from a bale of Lyons velvet to a sailor’s Government greatcoat.

These steep narrow streets, blackened with coal dust, towards night became greasy and reeked as though they were sweating in a nightmare. They resembled drains or dirty pipes, through which the cosmopolitan town vomited into the sea all its rubbish, all its rottenness, all its abomination and its vice, infecting with these things the strong muscular bodies and simple souls of the men of the sea.

The rowdy inhabitants of these streets rarely visited the dressed-up, always holiday-like, town, with its plate-glass windows, its imposing monuments, its gleam of electric light, its asphalt pavements, its avenues of white acacias, its imposing policemen and all its surface of cleanliness and order. But every one of them, before he had flung to the winds those torn, greasy, swollen paper roubles of his toil, would invariably visit Gambrinous’. This was sanctified by ancient tradition, even if it were necessary to steal under cover of darkness into the very centre of the town.

Many of them, truly enough, did not know the complicated name of the famous Beer King. Someone would simply say: “Let’s go to Sasha’s.” And the others would answer: “Right-o. That’s agreed.” And they would shout in a chorus together: “Hurrah!”

It is not in the least surprising that among the dock and sea folk Sasha enjoyed more respect and popularity than, for example, the local archbishop or governor, and, without doubt, if it were not his name then it was his vivid monkey face and his fiddle that were remembered in Sydney or Plymouth, as well as in New York, Vladivostok, Constantinople and Ceylon, to say nothing of the gulfs and bays of the Black Sea, where there were many admirers of his talent among the daring fishermen.

Sasha would usually arrive at Gambrinous’ at a time when there was nobody there except perhaps a chance visitor or two. At this time, a thick, sour smell of yesterday’s beer hung over the rooms and it was rather dark, as they were economical in those days with gas. In hot July days, when the stone town languished from the heat and was deafened by the crackling din of the streets, one found the quiet and coolness of the place quite agreeable.

Sasha would approach the buffet, greet Madame Ivanova, and drink his first mug of beer. Sometimes she would say: “Won’t you play something, Sasha?”

“What do you want me to play, Madame Ivanova?” Sasha, who was on the most polite terms with her, used to ask amiably.

“Something of your own.”

Then he would sit down in his usual place to the left of the piano and play long, strange, melancholy pieces. Somehow it became sleepy and quiet in the basement, with only a hint of the muffled roar of the town. From time to time the waiters would jingle carefully the crockery on the other side of the kitchen wall. Then from the chords of Sasha’s fiddle came, interwoven and blended with the sad flowers of national melodies, Jewish sorrow as ancient as the earth. Sasha’s face, his chin strained, his forehead bent low, his eyes looking gravely up from under the heavy brows, had no resemblance, in this twilight hour, to the grinning, twinkling, dancing face of Sasha that was so familiar to all Gambrinous’ guests. The little dog, Bielotchka, was sitting on his knees. She had been taught long ago not to howl to the music, but the passionately sad, sobbing and cursing sounds got on her nerves in spite of herself, and in convulsive little yawns she opened her mouth, curling up her fine pink tongue, and, with all her fragile body and pretty small muzzle, vibrated to her master’s music. But little by little the public began to appear, and with it the accompanist, who had left his daily occupation at some tailor’s or watchmaker’s shop. On the buffet there were sausages in hot water and cheese sandwiches, and at last the other gas-jets were lit up. Sasha drank his second mug of beer, gave his order to his accompanist: “ ‘The May Parade,’ eins, zwei, drei,” and a stormy March began. From this moment he had scarcely time to exchange greetings with the newcomers, each of whom considered himself Sasha’s particularly intimate friend and looked round proudly at the other guests after receiving his bow. Winking first with one eye and then with the other, gathering all his wrinkles into his bald receding skull, Sasha moved his lips grotesquely and smiled in all directions.

At about ten or eleven, Gambrinous’, which could accommodate two hundred or more people, was absolutely choked. Many, almost half, came in accompanied by women with fichus on their heads. No one took offence at the lack of room, at a trampled toe, a crumpled hat, or someone else’s beer being poured over one’s trousers; and if they did take offence it was merely a case of a drunken row.

The dampness of the dimly lit cellar showed itself on the walls, smeared with oil paint, and from the ceiling the vapour from the crowd steamed like a warm heavy rain. At Gambrinous’ they drank seriously. It was considered the right thing in this establishment to sit together in groups of two or three, covering so much of the improvised table with empty bottles that one saw one’s vis-à-vis as through a glass-green forest.

In the turmoil of the evening the guests became hoarse and overheated. Your eyes smarted from tobacco smoke. You had to shout and lean over the table in order to hear and be heard in the general din. And only the indefatigable fiddle of Sasha, sitting on his platform, triumphed over the stuffiness, the heat and the reek of tobacco, the gas jets, the beer, and the shouting of the unceremonious public.

But the guests rapidly became drunk from beer, the proximity of women, and the stifling air. Everyone wanted his own favourite songs. Close to Sasha, two or three people, with dull eyes and uncertain movements, were constantly bobbing up to pull him by the sleeve and interfere with his playing.

“Sash⁠ ⁠… the sad one⁠ ⁠… do pl⁠ ⁠…” the speaker stammered on, “do, please.”

“At once, at once,” Sasha would repeat with a quick nod as, with the adroitness of a doctor, he slipped the piece of silver noiselessly into his pocket. “At once, at once.”

“Sasha, that’s a swindle! I’ve given the money and this is the twentieth time that I’m asking for: ‘I was swimming down the sea to Odessa.’ ”

“At once, at once.”

“Sasha, ‘The Nightingale.’ ”

“Sasha, ‘Marussia.’ ”

“ ‘Zetz,’ ‘Zetz,’ Sasha, Sasha, ‘Zetz,’ ‘Zetz.’ ”

“At once⁠ ⁠… at once.”

“ ‘The Tchaban,’ ” howled from the other end of the room a scarcely human, but rather a kind of colt’s voice.

And Sasha, to the general amusement, shouted back to him like a cock:

“At once.”

And then without stopping, he would play all the songs they had called for.

Apparently he knew every single one of them by heart. Silver coins fell into his pockets from all sides and mugs of beer came to him from every table. When he descended from his platform to get to the bar he would be nearly pulled in pieces:

“Sashenka, one little mug, like a good chap.”

“Here’s to your health, Sasha! you devil, come along when you’re asked.”

“Sasha come and d‑r‑i‑i‑i‑nk some beer,” bellowed the colt’s voice.

The women, inclined, like all women, to admire professionals, would begin to coquet, make themselves conspicuous, and show off their adoration, calling to him in cooing voices and capricious, playful little laughs:

“Sashetchka, you simply must have a drink with me. No, no, no, I’m asking you. And then play the ‘Cake Walk.’ ”

Sasha smiled, grimaced, bowed right and left, pressed his hand to his heart, blew airy kisses, drank beer at all the tables and, on returning to the piano, where a fresh mug was waiting for him, would begin something like “Separation.”

Sometimes, to amuse his audience, he would make his fiddle whine like a puppy, grunt like a pig, or rattle in heartrending bass sounds, all in perfect time. The audience greeted these antics with benevolent approval: “Ho, ho-ho-ho‑o‑o.”

It was becoming still hotter. Heat steamed from the ceiling. Some of the guests were already in tears, beating their breasts, others, with bloodshot eyes, were quarrelling over women and were clambering towards each other to pay off old scores, only to be held back by their more sober neighbours, generally parasites. The waiters miraculously found room for their legs and bodies to slide between the barrels, large and small, their hands strung with beer mugs raised high above the heads of the carousers. Madame Ivanova, more bloodless, imperturbable, and silent than ever, directed from her counter the performances of the waiters, like a ship captain in a storm.

Everyone was overpowered by the desire to sing. Softened by beer, by his own kindness, and even by the coarse delight that his music was giving to others, Sasha was ready to play anything. And at the sounds of his fiddle, hoarse people, with awkward, wooden voices, all bawled out the same tune, looking into one another’s eyes with a senseless seriousness:

“Why should we separate?
Why should we live in separation?
Isn’t it better to marry
And cherish love?”

Then another gang, apparently hostile, tried to howl down its rival by starting another tune.

Gambrinous’ was often visited by Greeks from Asia Minor, “Dongolaki” who put into the Russian ports with fish. They, too, gave orders to Sasha for their Oriental songs, consisting of dismal, monotonous howling on two or three notes, and they were ready to sing them for hours with gloomy faces and burning eyes. Sasha also played popular Italian couplets, Ukrainian popular songs, Jewish wedding-marches, and many others. Once a little party of negro sailors found their way into Gambrinous’, and they also, in imitation of the others, wanted very much to sing a bit. Sasha quickly picked up a galloping negro melody, chose the accompaniment on the piano, and, then and there, to the great delight and amusement of the habitués, the beershop rang with the strange, capricious, guttural sounds of an African song.

An acquaintance of Sasha’s, a reporter on a local paper, once persuaded a professor of the musical school to pay a visit to Gambrinous’ and listen to the famous violinist, but Sasha got wind of it and purposely made his fiddle mew, bleat, and bellow more than usual that evening. The guests of Gambrinous’ were simply splitting their sides and the professor observed with profound contempt: “Clownery.”

And out he went without even finishing his mug of beer.

III

Every now and then the exquisite marquises, the festive German sportsmen, the plump cupids, and the frogs looked down from their walls on the kind of debauch that one could seldom see anywhere, except at Gambrinous’.

For example, a gang of thieves on a spree after a good haul would come in, each with his sweetheart, each with his cap on one side and a defiant, insolent expression, displaying his patent leather boots negligently with all the distinction of the cabaret at its best. To them Sasha would play special thieves’ songs, such as “I’m done for, poor little boy,” “Don’t cry, Marussia,” “The spring has passed,” and others.

It was beneath their dignity to dance, but their sweethearts, for the most part not bad-looking and usually young, some almost little girls, would dance the “Tchaban,” squealing and clicking their heels. Both men and women drank heavily; one thing only was wrong with them, they always finished their sprees with old disputes about money, and went off, when they could, without paying.

Fishermen, after a good catch, would come in a large party of about thirty. Late in the autumn there were such lucky weeks that each net would bring in every day up to forty thousand mackerel or kefal. At a time like this the smallest shareholder would make over two hundred roubles. But what was still better for the fishermen was a lucky haul of sturgeon in the winter; this was a matter of great difficulty.

One had to work hard some thirty versts from shore, in the still of the night, sometimes in stormy weather. When the boats leaked, the water froze on one’s clothes and on the oars. The weather would keep like this for two or three days if the wind did not throw you two hundred versts away at Anap or Trebizond. Every winter a dozen or so of skiffs would simply disappear, and only in the summer did the waves bring back to this or that point of the coast the corpse of the gallant fishermen.

But when they came back from the sea safe, after a good catch, they came on shore with a frenzied thirst for life. Thousands of roubles went in two or three days in the coarsest, most deafening, drunken orgies. The fishermen used to get into some cabaret or other, throw all the other guests out, lock the doors, close the shutters, and for days at a stretch, without stopping, would devote themselves to women and drink, howl songs, smash the glasses and the crockery, beat the women and frequently one another, until sleep came over them anywhere⁠—on the tables, on the floor, across the beds, among spittoons, cigar ends, broken glasses, the splash of wine and even the splash of blood. That is how the fishermen went on the spree for several consecutive days, sometimes changing the place, sometimes remaining in the same den. Having gone through everything to the last farthing, they would return to the docks, their heads bursting, their faces marked by brawls, their limbs shaking from drink, and, silent, cowed, and repentant, would enter the boats to resume that hard and captivating trade which they loved and cursed in the same breath.

Never did they forget to visit Gambrinous’. In they would throng with their hoarse voices and their faces burnt by the ferocious northwest winter, with their waterproof jackets, their leather trousers, and their top-boots up to the thighs, those selfsame boots in which their comrades, in the middle of some stormy night, had gone to the bottom like stones.

Out of respect for Sasha, they did not kick strangers out, though they felt themselves masters of the beershop, and would break the heavy mugs on the floor. Sasha played for them their own fishermen’s songs, drawling, simple, and terrible, as the beat of the sea, and they sang altogether, straining to the uttermost their powerful chests and hardened throats. Sasha acted upon them like Orpheus on the waves and sometimes an old hetman of a boat, forty years old, bearded, weather-beaten, an enormous wild-animal-like fellow, would melt into tears as he gave out in a small voice the sorrowful words of:

“Ah, poor me, little lad
That I was born a fisherman.⁠ ⁠…”

And sometimes they danced, trampling always on the same spot, with set stone-like faces, rattling with their heavy boots, and impregnating the whole cabaret with the sharp salt smell of the fish, with which their clothes and bodies had been soaked through and through. To Sasha they were very generous and never left him long away from their tables. He knew well the outline of their desperate, reckless lives, and often, when playing for them, he felt in his soul a kind of respectful grief.

But he was particularly fond of playing for the English sailors from the merchant ships. They would come in a herd, hand in hand, looking like picked men, big-chested, large-shouldered, with white teeth, healthy colours, and merry bold blue eyes. Their strong muscles stood out under their jackets and from their deep-cut collars rose, straight and strong, their stately necks. Some of them knew Sasha from former visits to this port. They recognised him, grinning with their white teeth, and greeted him in Russian.

“Zdraist, Zdraist.”

Sasha of his own accord, without invitation, used to play for them “Rule, Britannia.” Probably the consciousness that they were now in a country bowed down by centuries of slavery gave a certain proud solemnity to this hymn of English liberty. And when they sang, standing with uncovered heads, the last magnificent words: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,” then, involuntarily, the most boisterous visitor to Gambrinous’ took off his hat.

The square-built boatswain, with one earring and a beard that fringed his neck, came up to Sasha with two mugs of beer and a broad smile, clapped him on the back in a friendly way, and asked him to play a jig. At the very first sound of this bold and daring dance of the sea, the English jumped up and cleared out the place, pushing the little barrels to the walls. The stranger’s permission was asked, by gestures, with merry smiles, but if someone was in no hurry, there was no ceremony with him, and his seat was simply knocked from under him with a good kick. This was seldom necessary, however, because at Gambrinous’ everybody appreciated dances and was particularly fond of the English jig.

Even Sasha himself, playing all the time, would mount on a chair so as to see better.

The sailors formed a circle, clapping their hands in time with the quick dance music, and then two of them came out into the middle. The dance figured the life of a sailor on sea. The ship is ready to start, the weather is superb, everything is in order. The dancers have their hands crossed on their chests, their heads thrown back, their bodies quiet, though the feet mark a frenzied beat. Then a slight wind arises and with it a faint rocking. For a sailor, that is only pleasant, but the steps of the dance become more and more complicated and varied. A fresh wind starts⁠—it is already not so easy to walk on deck⁠—and the dancers are slightly rocked from side to side. At last there comes a real storm and the sailor is hurled from taffrail to taffrail; the business is getting serious. “All hands on deck! Reef the sails!” By the dancers’ movements one detects with amusement how they scramble up the shrouds with hands and feet, haul the sails and strengthen the topsail while the storm tosses the ship more and more fiercely. “Man overboard, stop.” A boat is lowered. The dancers, bending their heads low and straining their powerful naked throats, row with quick strokes as they bend and straighten their backs. But the storm passes, the rocking settles down, and the ship runs lightly with a following wind, while the dancers become motionless again with crossed hands as they beat with their feet a swift merry jig.

Sometimes Sasha had to play a Lezguinka for the Georgians, who were employed at wine-making in the neighbourhood. No dance was ever unknown to him. When a dancer, in a fur cap and a tcherkesska, fluttered airily between the barrels, throwing first one hand and then the other behind his head, while his friends clapped in time and shrieked, Sasha, too, could not refrain and shouted joyously in time with them: “Hass, hass, hass.” Sometimes, too, he would play Moldavian dances and the Italian Tarantella and waltzes for German sailors.

Occasionally they fought, and sometimes rather brutally, at Gambrinous’. Old visitors liked to yarn about the legendary slaughter between Russian sailors on active service, discharged from some cruiser to the reserve, and a party of English sailors. They fought with fists, casse-têtes, beer-mugs, and even hurled at each other the little barrels that were used for seats. It must be admitted, and not to the honour of the Russian warriors, that it was they who first started the row, and first took to the knife, and though they were three to one in numbers, they only squeezed the English out of the beershop after a fight of half an hour.

Quite often Sasha’s interference stopped a quarrel that was within a hair’s breadth of bloodshed. He would come up to the disputants, joke, smile, grimace, and at once from all sides mugs would be stretched out to him.

“Sasha, a little mug; Sasha have one with me⁠ ⁠…”

Perhaps the kind and comic goodness, merrily beaming from those eyes that were almost hidden under the sloping skull, acted like a charm on these simple savages. Perhaps it was an innate respect for talent, something almost like gratitude. Perhaps it was due to the fact that most of the habitués of Gambrinous’ were never out of Sasha’s debt. In the tedious interludes of dekocht, which, in seaport jargon, means “stony broke,” one could approach Sasha for small sums and for small credit at the buffet without fear of refusal.

Of course the debts were never repaid⁠—not from evil intention, but merely from forgetfulness. All the same, these debtors, during their orgies, returned tenfold their debts in their “tips” to Sasha for his songs. The woman at the buffet sometimes reproached him. “I am surprised, Sasha, that you’re not more careful with your money.”

He would answer with conviction: “But Madame Ivanova, I can’t take it with me in my grave. There’ll be enough for us both, that is for me and Bielotchka. Come here, Bielotchka, good doggie.”

IV

The songs of the day could also be heard at Gambrinous’.

At the time of the Boer War, the “Boer March” was a great favourite. (It seems that the famous fight between the Russian and English sailors took place at this very time.) Twenty times an evening at least they forced Sasha to play this heroic march, and invariably waved their caps and shouted “Hurrah!” They would look askance, too, at indifferent onlookers, which was not always a good omen at Gambrinous’.

Then came the Franco-Russian celebrations. The mayor gave a grudged permission for the “Marseillaise” to be played. It was called for every day, but not so often as the “Boer March,” and they shouted “Hurrah” in a smaller chorus, and did not wave their caps at all. This state of things arose from the fact that no deep sentiment underlay their call for the “Marseillaise.” Again, the audience at Gambrinous’ did not grasp sufficiently the political importance of the alliance; finally, one noticed that it was always the same people every evening who asked for the “Marseillaise” and shouted “Hurrah.”

For a short time the “Cake Walk” was popular, and once an excited little merchant danced it, in and out between the barrels, without removing his raccoon coat, his high goloshes, and his fox fur hat. However, the negro dance was soon forgotten.

Then came the great Japanese War. The visitors to Gambrinous’ began to live at high pressure. Newspapers appeared on the barrels; war was discussed every evening. The most peaceful, simple people were transformed into politicians and strategists. But at the bottom of his heart, each one of them was anxious if not for himself, then for a brother or, still more often, for a close comrade. In those days the conspicuously strong tie which welds together those who have shared long toil, danger, and the near presence of death, showed itself clearly.

At the beginning no one doubted our victory. Sasha had procured from somewhere the “Kuropatkine March,” and for about twenty-nine evenings, one after the other, he played it with a certain success. But, somehow or other, one evening the “Kuropatkine March” was squeezed out for good by a song brought by the Balaklava fisherman, the salt Greeks, or the Pindoss, as they were called.

“And why were we turned into soldiers,
And sent to the Far East?
Are we really at fault because
Our height is an extra inch?”

From that moment they would listen to no other song at Gambrinous’. For whole evenings one could hear nothing but people clamouring:

“Sasha, the sorrowful one, the Balaklava one.”

They sang, cried, and drank twice as much as before, but, so far as drinking went, all Russia was doing much the same. Every evening someone would come to say goodbye, would brag for a bit, puff himself out like a cock, throw his hat on the floor, threaten to smash all the little Japs by himself, and end up with the sorrowful song and tears.

Once Sasha came earlier than usual to the beershop. The woman at the buffet said from habit, as she poured out his first mug: “Sasha, play something of your own.” All of a sudden his lips became contorted and his mug shook in his hand.

“Do you know, Madame Ivanova,” he said in a bewildered way, “they’re taking me as a soldier, to the war!”

Madame Ivanova threw up her hands in astonishment.

“But it’s impossible, Sasha, you’re joking.”

Sasha shook his head dejectedly and submissively. “I’m not joking.”

“But you’re over age, Sasha; how old are you?”

No one had ever been interested in that question. Everyone considered Sasha as old as the walls of the beershop, the marquises, the Ukrainians, the frogs, and even the painted king who guarded the entrance, Gambrinous himself.

“Forty-six.” Sasha thought for a second or two. “Perhaps forty-nine. I’m an orphan,” he added sadly.

“But you must go and explain to the authorities!”

“I’ve been to them already, Madame Ivanova. I have explained.”

“Well?”

“Well, they answered: ‘Scabby Jew, sheeny snout! Just you say a little more and you’ll be jugged, there!’ And then they struck me.”

Everyone heard the news that evening at Gambrinous’, and they got Sasha dead drunk with their sympathy. He tried to play the buffoon, grimaced, winked, but from his kind funny eyes there peeped out grief and awe. A strongish workman, a tinker by trade, suddenly offered to go to the war in Sasha’s place. The stupidity of the suggestion was quite clear to all, but Sasha was touched, shed a few tears, embraced the tinker, and then and there gave him his fiddle. He left Bielotchka with the woman at the buffet.

“Madame Ivanova, take care of the little dog! Perhaps I won’t come back, so you will have a souvenir of Sasha. Bielinka, good doggie! Look, it’s licking itself. Ah you, my poor little one. And I want to ask you something else, Madame Ivanova; the boss owes me some money, so please get it and send it on. I’ll write the addresses. In Gomel I have a first cousin who has a family and in Jmerinka there’s my nephew’s widow. I send it them every month. Well, we Jews are people like that, we are fond of our relations, and I’m an orphan. I’m alone. Goodbye, then, Madame Ivanova.”

“Goodbye, Sasha, we must at least have a goodbye kiss. It’s been so many years⁠ ⁠… and, don’t be angry, I’m going to cross you for the journey.”

Sasha’s eyes were profoundly sad, but he couldn’t help clowning to the end.

“But, Madame Ivanova, what if I die from the Russian cross?”

V

Gambrinous’ became empty as though orphaned without Sasha and his fiddle. The manager invited as a substitute a quartette of strolling mandolinists, one of whom, dressed like a comic-opera Englishman, with red whiskers and a false nose, check trousers, and a stiff collar higher than his ears, sang comic couplets and danced shamelessly on the platform. But the quartette was an utter failure; it was hissed and pelted with bits of sausage, and the leading comic was once beaten by the Tendrove fishermen for a disrespectful allusion to Sasha.

All the same, Gambrinous’, from old memory, was visited by the lads of sea and port whom the war had not drawn to death and suffering. Every evening the first subject of conversation would be Sasha.

“Eh, it would be fine to have Sasha back now. One’s soul feels heavy without him.”

“Ye‑e‑es, where are you hovering, Sashenka, dear, kind friend?”

“In the fields of Manchuria far away⁠ ⁠…” someone would pipe up in the words of the latest song. Then he would break off in confusion, and another would put in unexpectedly: “Wounds may be split open and hacked. And there are also torn ones.”

“I congratulate you on victory,
You with the torn-out arm.”

“Stop, don’t whine. Madame Ivanova, isn’t there any news from Sasha? A letter or a little postcard?”

Madame Ivanova used to read the paper now the whole evening, holding it at arm’s length, her head thrown back, her lips constantly moving. Bielotchka lay on her knees, giving from time to time little peaceful snores. The presider at the buffet was already far from being like a vigilant captain on his bridge and her crew wandered about the shop half asleep.

At questions about Sasha’s fate she would shake her head slowly. “I know nothing. There are no letters, and one gets nothing from the newspapers.”

Then she would take off her spectacles slowly, place them, with the newspaper, close to the warm body of Bielotchka, and turn round to have a quiet cry to herself.

Sometimes she would bend over the dog and ask in a plaintive, touching little voice: “Bielinka, doggie, where is our Sasha, eh? Where is our master?”

Bielotchka raised her delicate little muzzle, blinked with her moist black eyes, and, in the tone of the buffet woman, began quietly to whine out: “Ah, ou-ou-ou. Aou⁠—A-ou-ou-ou.”

But time smooths and washes up everything. The mandolinists were replaced by balalaika players, and they, in their turn, by a choir of Ukrainians with girls. Then the well-known Leshka, the harmonicist, a professional thief who had decided, in view of his marriage, to seek regular employment, established himself at Gambrinous’ more solidly than the others. He was a familiar figure in different cabarets, which explains why he was tolerated here, or, rather, had to be tolerated, for things were going badly at the beershop.

Months passed, a year passed; no one remembered anything more about Sasha, except Madame Ivanova, who no longer cried when she mentioned his name. Another year went by. Probably even the little white dog had forgotten Sasha.

But in spite of Sasha’s misgivings, he had not died from the Russian cross; he had not even been once wounded, though he had taken part in three great battles, and, on one occasion, went to the attack in front of his battalion as a member of the band, in which he played the fife. At Vafangoa he was taken prisoner, and at the end of the war he was brought back on board a German ship to the very port where his friends continued to work and create uproars.

The news of his arrival ran like an electric current round the bays, moles, wharves, and workshops. In the evening there was scarcely standing-room at Gambrinous’. Mugs of beer were passed from hand to hand over people’s heads, and although many escaped without paying on that day, Gambrinous’ never did such business before. The tinker brought Sasha’s fiddle, carefully wrapped up in his wife’s fichu, which he then and there sold for drink. Sasha’s old accompanist was fished out from somewhere or other. Leshka, the harmonicist, a jealous, conceited fellow, tried to compete with Sasha, repeating obstinately: “I am paid by the day and I have a contract.” But he was merely thrown out and would certainly have been thrashed but for Sasha’s intercession.

Probably not one of the hero-patriots of the Japanese War had ever seen such a hearty and stormy welcome as was given to Sasha. Strong rough hands seized him, lifted him into the air, and threw him with such force that he was almost broken to bits against the ceiling. And they shouted so deafeningly that the gas-jets went out and several times a policeman came down into the beershop, imploring: “A little lower, it really sounds very loud in the street.”

That evening Sasha played all the favourite songs and dances of the place. He also played some little Japanese songs that he had learned as a prisoner, but his audience did not take to them. Madame Ivanova, like one revived, was once more courageously on her bridge while Bielinka, sitting on Sasha’s knees, yelped with joy. When he stopped playing, simple-minded fishermen, realising for the first time the miracle of Sasha’s return, would suddenly exclaim in naive and delighted stupefaction:

“Brothers, but this is Sasha!”

The rooms of Gambrinous’ then resounded once more with joyous bad words, and Sasha would be again seized and thrown up to the ceiling while they shouted, drank healths, and spilt beer over one another.

Sasha, it seemed, had scarcely altered and had not grown older during his absence. His sufferings had produced no more external change on him than on the modelled Gambrinous, the guardian and protector of the beershop. Only Madame Ivanova, with the sensitiveness of a kindhearted woman, noticed that the expression of awe and distress, which she had seen in Sasha’s eyes when he said goodbye, had not disappeared, but had become yet deeper and more significant. As in old days, he played the buffoon, winked, and puckered up his forehead, but Madame Ivanova felt that he was pretending all the time.

VI

Everything was as usual, just as if there had been no war at all and Sasha had never been imprisoned in Nagasaki. Just as usual the fishermen, with their giant boots, were celebrating a lucky catch of sturgeon, while bands of thieves danced in the old way, Sasha playing, just as he used to do, sailor songs brought to him from every inlet of the globe.

But already dangerous, stormy times were at hand. One evening the whole town became stirred and agitated, as though roused by a tocsin, and, at an unusual hour, the streets grew black with people. Small white sheets were going from hand to hand, bearing the miraculous word “Liberty,” which the whole immeasurable confident country repeated to itself that evening.

There followed clear, holiday-like, exulting days, and their radiance lit up even the vaults of Gambrinous’. Students and workmen came in and beautiful young girls came too. People with blazing eyes mounted on those barrels, which had seen so much in their time, and spoke. Everything was not comprehensible in the words they uttered, but the hearts of all throbbed and expanded to meet the flaming hope and the great love that vibrated through them.

“Sasha, the ‘Marseillaise’! Go ahead with the ‘Marseillaise’!”

No, this was not at all like that other “Marseillaise” that the mayor had grudgingly allowed to be played during the week of the Franco-Russian celebrations. Endless processions, with songs and red flags, were going along the streets. The women wore red ribbons and red flowers. People who were utter strangers met and shook hands with each other with happy smiles. But suddenly all this jubilation disappeared, as if washed out like children’s footsteps on the sands. The sub-inspector of police, fat, small, choking, with bloodshot protruding eyes, his face red as an overripe tomato, stormed into Gambrinous’.

“What? Who’s the proprietor of this place?” he rattled out. “Bring him to me.” Suddenly his eyes fell on Sasha, who was standing, fiddle in hand.

“So you’re the proprietor, are you! Shut up! What, playing anthems? No anthems permitted.”

“There will be no more anthems at all, your Highness,” Sasha replied calmly.

The police dog turned purple, brought his raised index finger to Sasha’s very nose, and shook it menacingly from left to right.

“None⁠—what⁠—ever.”

“I understand your Highness⁠—none whatever.”

“I’ll teach you revolutions! I’ll teach you!”

The sub-inspector bounded out of the beershop like a bomb, and with his departure everyone became flattened and dejected. And gloom descended on the whole town. For dark, anxious, repugnant rumours were floating about. One talked cautiously. People feared to betray themselves by a glance, were afraid of their own shadows, afraid of their own thoughts. The town thought for the first time with dread of the sewer that was rumbling under its feet, down there by the sea into which it had been throwing out, for so many years, its poisoned refuse. The town shielded the plate-glass windows of its magnificent shops, protected with patrols its proud monuments, and posted artillery in the yards of its fine houses in case of emergency. But in the outskirts, in the fetid dens, in the rotting garrets, throbbed, prayed, and cried with awe the people chosen by God, abandoned long ago by the wrathful Bible God, but still believing that the measure of its heavy trials was not yet spent.

Down there by the sea, in those streets that resembled black, sticky drainpipes, a mysterious work was progressing. The doors of the cabarets, teashops, and night-shelters were open all night.

In the morning the pogrom began. These people who, so recently uplifted by the pure, general joy, so recently softened by the light of the coming brotherhood of man, who had gone through the streets singing beneath the symbols of the liberty they had won⁠—these very people were now going to kill, not because they had been ordered to kill, not because they had any hatred against the Jews, with whom they had often close friendships, not even for the sake of loot, which was doubtful, but because the sly dirty devil that lives deep down in each human being was whispering in their ears: “Go. Nothing will be punished: the forbidden curiosity of the murderer, the sensuality of rape, the power over other people’s lives.”

In these days of the pogroms, Sasha, with his funny, monkey-like, purely Jewish physionomy, went freely about the town. They did not touch him. There was about him that immovable courage of the soul, that absence even of fear of fear which guards the weakest better than any revolver. But on one occasion, when, jammed against the wall, he was trying to avoid the crowd that flowed like a hurricane down the full width of the street, a mason in a red shirt and a white apron threatened him with his pointed crowbar and grunted out, “Sheeny! Smash the sheeny! Smash him to the gutter.”

Someone seized his hands from behind.

“Stop, devil! It’s Sasha, you lout!”

The mason stopped. In this drunken, delirious, insane moment he was ready to kill anyone⁠—his father, his sister, the priest, the Orthodox God himself⁠—but he was also ready, as an infant, to obey the orders of any strong will. He grinned like an idiot, spat, and wiped his nose with his hand. Suddenly his eyes fell on the white, nervous little dog, which was trembling all over as it rubbed itself against Sasha. The man bent down quickly, caught it by the hind legs, lifted it up, struck it against the paving-stone, and then took to his heels. Sasha looked at him in silence. He was running all bent forward, his hands stretched out, without his cap, his mouth open, his eyes white and round with madness.

On Sasha’s boots were sprinkled the brains of little Bielotchka. Sasha wiped off the stains with his handkerchief.

VII

Then began a strange period that resembled the sleep of a man in paralysis. There was no light in a single window throughout the whole town in the evening, but for all that the flaming signboards of the cafés chantants and the little cabarets shone brightly. The conquerors were proving their force, not yet satiated with their impunity. Savage people, in Manchurian fur caps with St. George’s ribbons in their buttonholes, visited the restaurants and insistently demanded the playing of the national anthem, making sure that everybody rose to his feet. They also broke into private flats, fumbled about in the beds and chests of drawers, asking for vodka, money, and the national anthem, their drunken breath polluting the atmosphere.

Once, some ten of them visited Gambrinous’ and occupied two tables. They behaved with the greatest insolence, talked dictatorially to the waiters, spat over the shoulders of perfect strangers, put their feet on other people’s seats, and threw their beer on the floor, under the pretext that it was flat. Everyone let them alone. Everyone knew that they were police-agents and looked at them with that secret awe and disgusted curiosity with which the people regard executioners. One of them was apparently the leader. He was a certain Motka Gundoss, a red-haired, snuffling fellow with a broken nose, a man who was said to be enormously strong, formerly a professional thief, then a bully in a disorderly house, and after that a souteneur and a police-agent. He was a converted Jew.

Sasha was playing the “Metelitza,” when all of a sudden Gundoss came up to him and seized his right hand firmly, shouting, as he turned to the audience, “The national anthem⁠—the anthem, the anthem, the national anthem, brothers, in honour of our adored monarch!”

“The anthem, the anthem,” groaned the other scoundrels in the fur caps.

“The anthem,” shouted a solitary uncertain, voice.

But Sasha freed his hand and said calmly: “No anthems whatever.”

“What?” bellowed Gundoss, “you refuse? Ah, you stinking sheeny!”

Sasha bent forward quite close to Gundoss, holding his lowered fiddle by the fingerboard, his face all wrinkled up, as he said:

“And you?”

“What, me?”

“I am a stinking sheeny; all right; and you?”

“I am orthodox.”

“Orthodox? And for how much?”

The whole of Gambrinous’ burst out laughing, and Gundoss turned to his comrades, white with rage.

“Brothers,” he said, in a plaintive, shaking voice, and using words that were not his own but which he had learned by heart. “Brothers, how long are we to tolerate the insults of these sheenies against the throne and the Holy Church?”

But Sasha, who had drawn himself up compelled him with a single sound to face him again, and no one at Gambrinous’ would ever have believed that this funny, grimacing Sasha could talk with such weight and power.

“You?” shouted Sasha. “You, you son of a dog. Show me your face, you murderer. Look right at me. Well? Well⁠—”

It all happened in the flash of a second. Sasha’s fiddle rose swiftly, swiftly flashed in the air, and crack⁠—the big fellow in the fur cap reeled from a sound blow on the temple. The fiddle broke into fragments and in Sasha’s hands remained only the fingerboard, which he brandished victoriously over the heads of the crowd.

“Br‑o‑th‑ers, help! Save me‑e,” howled Gundoss.

But already it was too late to save him. A powerful wall surrounded Sasha and covered him. And this same wall swept the people in the fur caps out of the place.

An hour later, when Sasha, after finishing his night’s work in the beerhouse, was coming out into the street, several people threw themselves on him. Someone struck him in the eye, whistled, and said to the policeman who ran up:

“To the police-station. Secret service. Here’s my badge.”

VIII

Now for the second time Sasha was considered to be definitely buried. Someone had witnessed the whole scene outside the beershop and had handed it on to the others. And at Gambrinous’ there were sittings of experienced people who understood the meaning of such an establishment as the police-court, the meaning of a police-agent’s vengeance.

But now they were much less anxious about Sasha’s fate than they had been before; they forgot about him much more quickly. Two months later there appeared in his place a new violinist (incidentally, one of Sasha’s pupils), who had been fished up by the accompanist.

Then, one quiet spring evening, some three months later, just when the musicians were playing the waltz, “Expectation,” someone’s thin voice called out in fright:

“Boys, it’s Sasha!”

Everyone turned round and rose from the barrels. Yes, it was he, the twice resurrected Sasha, but now with a full-grown beard, thin, pale. They threw themselves at him, surrounded him, thronged to him, rumpled him, plied him with mugs of beer, but all at once the same thin voice exclaimed:

“Brothers, his hand⁠—”

Suddenly they all became silent. Sasha’s left hand, hooked and all shrivelled up, was turned with the elbow towards his side. Apparently it could not bend or unbend, the fingers were permanently sticking up under the chin.

“What’s the matter with you, comrade?” the hairy boatswain from the Russian Navigation Company asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing much⁠—a kind of sinew or something of that sort,” Sasha replied carelessly.

“So that’s it.”

They all became silent again. “That means it’s the end of the ‘Tchaban?’ the boatswain asked compassionately.

“The ‘Tchaban,’ ” Sasha exclaimed, with dancing eyes. “You there,” he ordered the accompanist with all his old assurance. “The ‘Tchaban’⁠—eins, zwei, drei.”

The pianist struck up the merry dance, glancing doubtfully over his shoulder.

But Sasha took out of his pocket with his healthy hand some kind of small instrument, about the size of his palm, elongated and black, with a stem which he put into his mouth, and bending himself to the left, as much as his mutilated, motionless hand allowed, he began suddenly to whistle an uproariously merry “Tchaban.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” the audience rocked with laughter.

“The devil,” exclaimed the boatswain and without in the least intending it he made a clever step and began to beat quick time. Fired by his enthusiasm the women and men began to dance. Even the waiters, trying not to lose their dignity, smilingly capered at their posts. Even Madame Ivanova, unmindful of the duties of the captain on his watch, shook her head in time with the flame dance and lightly snapped her fingers to its rhythm. And perhaps even the old, spongy, timeworn Gambrinous slightly moved his eyebrows and glanced merrily into the street. For it seemed that from the hands of the crippled, hooked Sasha the pitiable pipe-shell sang in a language, unfortunately not yet comprehensible to Gambrinous’ friends, or to Sasha himself.

Well, there it is! You may maim a man, but art will endure all and conquer all.

Prologue

Last summer one of my nearest friends inherited from an aunt of his a small farm in the Z⁠⸺ district of the Government of Podol. After looking through the things that had fallen to his lot, he found, in an attic, a huge iron-bound trunk stuffed with old-fashioned books, with the letter “T” printed like a “CH,” from the yellowish leaves of which came a scent of mouldiness, of dried-up flowers, of mice, and of camphor, all blended together. The books were chiefly odd volumes of faded Russian authors of the early nineteenth century, including an epistolary manual and the Book of Solomon. Among this assortment were letters and papers, mostly of a business nature and wholly uninteresting. But one rather thick bundle wrapped up in grey packing paper and tied carefully with a piece of string, roused in my friend a certain curiosity. It proved to contain the diary of an infantry officer, named Lapshine, and several leaves of a beautiful, rough Bristol paper, decorated with irises and covered with a small feminine handwriting. At the end of these pages was the signature “Kate,” but many of them bore the single letter “K.” There could be no doubt that Lapshine’s diary and Kate’s letters were written at about the same time and concerned the same events, which took place some twenty-five years or so ago. Not knowing what to do with his find, my friend posted the package to me. In offering it now to my readers, I must confess that my own pen has dealt only very slightly with it, merely correcting the grammar here and there and obliterating numerous affectations in quotation marks and brackets.

I

September 5th.

Boredom, boredom, and again boredom! Is my whole life going to pass in this grey, colourless, lazy, crawling way? In the morning, squad drill and this sort of thing:

“Efimenko, what is a sentry?”

“A sentry is an inviolable person, your Honour.”

“Why is he an inviolable person?”

“Because no one dares to touch him, your Honour.”

“Sit down. Tkatchouk, what is a sentry?”

“A sentry is an inviolable person, your Honour.”

And so on endlessly.

Then dinner at the mess. Vodka, stale stories, dull conversations about the difficulty nowadays of passing from the rank of captain to that of colonel, long discussions about examinations, and more vodka. Someone finds a marrowbone in his soup and this is called an event to be celebrated by extra drinks. Then two hours of leaden sleep, and in the evening, once more, the same inviolable person and the same endless “fi‑i‑r‑ing in file.”

How often have I begun this very diary! It always seemed to me, I don’t know why, that destiny must at last throw into my everyday life some big, unusual event which will leave indelible traces on my soul for the rest of my life. Perhaps it will be love? I often dream of some beautiful, unknown, mysterious woman, whom I shall meet some day⁠—a woman who is weary and distressed as I am now.

Haven’t I a right to my own bit of happiness? I am not stupid; I can hold my own in society. I am even rather witty, if I am not feeling shy and happen to have no rival close at hand. As to my appearance, naturally it is difficult for me to judge it, but I think I am not too bad, though on rainy autumn mornings I confess that my own face in the looking-glass strikes me as loathsome. The ladies of our regiment find something of Lermontov’s Petchorin about me. However, this merely proves, in the first place, the poorness of the regimental libraries and, secondly, the immortality of the Petchorin type in infantry regiments.

With a dim presentiment of this strip of life in front of me, I’ve begun my diary several times, intending to note down every small detail so as to live it over again afterwards, if only in memory, as fully and clearly as possible. But day after day passed with the old monotonous sameness. The extraordinary made no start, and, losing all taste for the dry routine of regimental annals, I would throw my diary aside on a shelf for long intervals and then burn it with other rubbish when changing my quarters.

September 7th.

A whole week has gone by already since I got back from manoeuvres. The season for open-air work has begun and squad after squad is told off to dig beetroots on the estates of the neighbouring landowners. Only our squad and the eleventh are left. The town is more dead-and-alive than ever. This dusty, stuffy heat, this daytime silence of a provincial town, broken only by the frantic bawling of cocks, gets on my nerves and depresses me.

Really, I am beginning to miss the nomad life of manoeuvres which struck me as so unendurable at the time. How vividly the not very complicated pictures of Army movements come back to my memory, and what a softening charm memory gives to them! I can see it all clearly now: Early morning⁠ ⁠… the sun not yet risen. A cold sky looks down at the rough, old bell tent, full of holes; the morning stars scarcely twinkle with their silvery gleam⁠ ⁠… the bivouac has livened up and is bustling with life. One hears the sounds of running about, the undertone of angry voices, the crack of rifles, the neighing of wagon horses. You make a desperate effort and crawl out from under the hairy blanket which has become white from the night dew. You crawl straight out into the open air because you cannot stand in the low tent, but only lie or sit down. The orderly, who has just been beating a devil’s tattoo with his boot on the samovar (which of course is strictly forbidden), hurries off to get water, bringing it straight from the stream in a little brass camp kettle. Stripped to the waist, you wash in the open air, and a slight, fine, rosy steam curls up from your hands, face, and body. Here and there, between the tents, officers have improvised fires from the very straw on which they have spent the night, and are now sitting round them, shrivelled up from cold and gulping down hot tea. A few minutes later, the tents are struck, and there, where just now “the white linen town” had sported itself, are merely untidy heaps of straw and scraps of paper. The din of the roused bivouac deepens. The whole field is swarming with soldiers’ figures in white Russian blouses, their grey overcoats rolled over their shoulders. At first glance there seems absolutely no order in this grey, ant-like agitation, but the trained eye will note how gradually thick heaps are formed out of it and how gradually each of these heaps extends into a long regular line. The last of the late comers rush up to their squads, munching a piece of bread on the way or fastening the strap of a cartridge case. In another minute the squads, their rifles clinking against each other, form into a regular enormous square in the middle of the field.

And then the tiring march of from thirty to forty versts. The sun rises higher and higher. About eight o’clock the heat makes itself felt; the soldiers begin to be bored, their marching becomes slack, and they sing listlessly the regular marching songs. Every minute the dust gets thicker, enfolding in a long yellow cloud the whole column which extends for a full verst along the road. The dust falls in brown layers on the soldiers’ shirts and faces and, through this background, their teeth and the whites of their eyes flash as if they were negroes. In the thick dusty column it is difficult to distinguish a private from an officer. Also, for the time being, the difference of rank is modified, and one cannot help getting acquainted with the Russian soldier, with his shrewd outlook on all sorts of things⁠—even on complicated things like manoeuvres⁠—with his practical good sense and his adaptability under all sorts of conditions, with his biting word-pictures and expressions seasoned, as they are, with a rough spiciness to which one turns a deaf ear. What do we meet on the road? A Ukrainian in large white trousers is walking lazily beside a pair of grey shorthorns and, on the roadside, a pedlar, a velvety field, ploughed for the winter crop. Everything invites investigating questions and remarks, impregnated either with a deep, almost philosophical, understanding of simple everyday life, or with pointed sarcasm, or with an irrepressible stream of gaiety.

It is getting dark when the regiment nears the place for its night camp. One sees the cooks already round the large smoky squad cauldrons placed in a field aside from the road. “Halt! Pile arms!” In a twinkling the field is covered with stately files of little wigwams. And then, an hour or two later, you are once more lying under the canvas, full of holes, through which you see the twinkling stars and the dark sky, while your ears note the gradual quieting down of the sleeping camp. But still, for a long time, you catch from the distance separate sounds, softened by the sad quietude of evening: at times the monotonous scraping of a harmonica reaches your ear, sometimes an angry voice, undoubtedly the sergeant-major’s, sometimes the sudden neigh of a colt⁠ ⁠… and the hay, under one’s head, blends its delicate aroma with the almost bitter smell of the dewy grass.

September 8th.

Today, my squad’s commandant, Vassili Akinfievitch, asked me whether I should like to go with him to the autumn work. He has arranged for the squad very advantageous terms with Mr. Obolianinov’s manager⁠—almost two and a half kopecks a pood. The work will consist of digging the beetroot for the local sugar factory. This does not tire the soldiers, who do it very willingly. All these circumstances had probably put the captain in such a rainbow mood, that he not only invited me to go with him to the work, but even, in the event of my accepting, offered me a rouble and a half a day out of the money payable to himself. No other squad commandant had ever shown such generosity towards his subalterns.

I have rather curious, I should say rather mixed, feelings towards Vassili Akinfievitch. In the service I find him insupportable. There he parades all his angry rudeness almost conscientiously. At squad drill he thinks nothing of shouting out before the men at a young officer:

“Lieutenant, please take hold of your men. You walk hke a deacon in a procession.”

Even if it’s funny, that sort of thing is cruel and tactless.

To the men, Vassili Akinfievitch metes out justice with his own fists, a measure which not one of the platoon commanders would ever dare to take. The men like him, and, what is more important than anything else, believe his word. They all know very well that he will not draw a kopeck out of the ration money, but will be more likely to add something like twenty-five roubles a month out of his own pocket, and that he will permit no one under him to be wronged, but on the contrary will take up the cudgels for him even with the colonel. The men know all this and I am sure that in the event of war they would all follow to the last Vassili Akinfievitch, without hesitation, even to obvious death.

I dislike particularly his exaggerated horror of everything “noble.” In his mind the word “nobility” suggests the impression of stupid dandyism, unnaturalness, utter incapacity in the service, cowardice, dances and the guards. He can’t even pronounce the word “nobility” without a shade of the most bitter sarcasm, drawling it out to its last letter. However, one must add that Vassili Akinfievitch has been toiling up from the ranks step by step. And at the period when he received his commission, the unfortunate rankers had a rough time of it with the little aristocrats of the mess.

He finds it hard to make friends, as every inveterate bachelor does, but when he takes a fancy to someone he opens, with his purse, his naive, kindly, and clean soul. But even when opening his soul, Vassili Akinfievitch puts no check on his language⁠—this is one of his worst traits.

I think he rather likes me, in his way. As a matter of fact, I am not such a bad officer of the line. When I am hard up, I borrow from him freely and he never duns me. When we are off duty he calls me “Army Ensign.” This odd rank died out of the service long ago, but old officers like to use it playfully in memory of their youth.

Sometimes I feel sorry for him, sorry for a good man whose life has been absorbed in the study of a thin Army Regulation book and in minute attention to regimental routine. I am sorry for the poorness of his mental outlook, which allows him no interest in anything beyond his narrow horizon. In a word, I feel the same sort of sorrowful pity for him that comes to one involuntarily when one looks long and attentively into the eyes of a very intelligent dog.

Here I pull myself up! Am I aiming at anything myself? Does my captive thought really struggle so impatiently? At any rate, Vassili Akinfievitch has done something in his life; he has two St. George’s on his breast and the scar of a Circassian sabre on his forehead. As for the men under him, they have such fat merry mugs that it makes one cheerful to look at them. Can I say as much for myself?

I said that I would go to the digging with pleasure. Perhaps it will be a distraction? The manager has a wife and two daughters, two or three landowners live near. Who knows? there may be a little romance!

Tomorrow we start.

September 11th.

We arrived this morning at the railway station of Konski Brod. The manager of the estate, advised of our coming by telegram, had sent a carriage to meet Vassili Akinfievitch and myself. My word! I never drove in anything so smart in my life before. It was a four-in-hand coach, magnificent horses, cushiony tyres, studded harness, driven by a healthy-looking lad, who wore an oilcloth cap and a scarf round his waist. It is about eight versts to Olkhovatka. The road is perfect and smooth, level, straight as an arrow, lined on both sides with thick pyramid-like poplars. On the way, we constantly met long files of carts loaded, to the very top, with cloth bags full of sugar. Apropos of this, Vassili Akinfievitch tells me that the output of the Olkhovatka factory is about 100,000 poods of sugar every year. That is a respectable figure, particularly in view of the fact that Obolianinov is the sole proprietor of the business.

The manager met us at the farm buildings. He has a German surname, Berger, but there’s nothing German about his appearance or his accent. In my opinion, he’s more like Falstaff, whom I saw somewhere at an exhibition. I think it was in Petersburg, when I went there to pass my unlucky examination at the Academy of the General Staff. He is extraordinarily fat, the fat almost transparent; it shines on his flabby cheeks, which are covered with a network of small red veins. His hair is short, straight, and grizzly; his moustache sticks out on each side in warrior-like brushes; he wears a short imperial under his lower lip. Beneath the thick, dishevelled eyebrows his quick, sly eyes are oddly narrowed by the tautness of the checks and cheekbones. The lips, particularly the smile, reveal a merry, sensual, jolly, very observant man. I think he is deaf, because he has a habit of shouting when he talks to one.

Berger seemed pleased at our arrival. To people like him a listener and a boon companion are more necessary than air. He kept running up to one or the other of us, and seizing us round the waist, would repeat: “Welcome, gentlemen, you are welcome.”

To my amazement, Vassili Akinfievitch liked him. I did, too.

Berger showed us into a pavilion where four rooms had been prepared for us, provided with everything necessary and unnecessary on such a large scale that we might have been coming to spend three years there instead of a month. The captain was apparently pleased with these attentions from the owner of the place. But once, when Berger opened a drawer of his writing-table and showed a whole box of long, excellent cigars, placed there for us, Vassili Akinfievitch grumbled in an undertone:

“This is a bit too much.⁠ ⁠… This is ‘nobility’ and all that sort of thing.”

Incidentally, I have forgotten to mention his habit of adding “and all that sort of thing” to almost every word he says. And, taking him all round, he is not exactly an eloquent captain.

While placing us, so to speak, in possession, Berger was very fussy and shouted a great deal. We did our best to thank him. Finally, he seemed to get tired, and, wiping his face with an enormous red handkerchief, he asked us if there was anything else we wanted. We, of course, hastened to assure him that we had more than enough. On leaving us, Berger said:

“I’ll put a boy at your disposal at once. You will be kind enough to order for yourself breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper according to your wishes. The butler will come to you every evening for this purpose. Our wine-cellar, too, is at your disposal.”

We spent the whole day in installing the soldiers, with their rifles and ammunition, in empty sheds. In the evening the groom brought us cold veal, a brace of roast snipe, a sort of tart with pistachio nuts, and several bottles of red wine. We had scarcely seated ourselves at the table when Berger appeared.

“You’re at dinner. That’s first rate,” he said. “I’ve brought you a little bottle of old Hungarian. My dead father had it in his cellar for twenty years.⁠ ⁠… We had our own estate near Gaissina.⁠ ⁠… Make no mistake about us, we Bergers are the lineal descendants of the Teutonic Knights. As a matter of fact, I have the right to the title of Baron, but what good would it be to me? The arms of the nobility require gilt, and that has vanished long ago from ours. You’re welcome here, defenders of the throne and the Fatherland.”

However, judging by the measures of precaution with which he extracted the musty bottle from a side pocket of his nankin jacket, I am inclined to think that the old Hungarian was preserved in the master’s cellar and not at all “on our own estate near Gaissina.” The wine was really magnificent. It is true that it completely paralyses one’s feet, deprives one’s gestures of their ordinary expressiveness, and makes the tongue sticky, but one’s head remains clear all the time and one’s spirits gay.

Berger tells stories funnily and with animation. He chattered the whole evening about the landlord’s income, the luxury of his life in Petersburg, his orangery, his stables, the salaries he paid to his employees. At first Berger represented himself as the head manager of the business. But half an hour later he let the cat out of the bag. It seems that among the managers of the estate and the employees at the factory, Falstaff occupies one of the humblest positions. He is merely the overseer of the farm of Olkhovatka, just an accountant with a salary of nine hundred roubles a year and everything found except his clothes.

“Why should one man have such a lot?” the captain asked naively, apparently struck by the colossal figures of income and expenditure that Falstaff was pouring out so generously.

Falstaff made a cunning face.

“Everything will go to the only daughter. Well, there you are, young man”⁠—he gave me a playful dig in the ribs with his thumb. “Make up your mind to marry, and then don’t forget the old man.”

I asked with the careless air of one who has seen too much:

“And is she pretty?”

Falstaff grew purple with laughter.

“Ha, ha! He’s biting. Excellent, my warrior. Excellent. Prepare to rush⁠—rush! Tra-ta-ta-ta. I like the military way.” Then suddenly, as if a spring had been pressed, he stopped laughing. “How can I answer you? It depends on one’s taste. She is⁠ ⁠… too subtle⁠ ⁠… too thinnish⁠ ⁠…”

“Nobility,” put in the captain with a grimace.

“As much as you like of that. And she’s proud. She doesn’t want to know any of the neighbours. Oh, and she’s unmanageable. The servants dread her more than fire. Not that she’s one to shout at you or rebuke you. There’s none of that about her. With her it’s just: ‘Bring me this⁠ ⁠… Do this⁠ ⁠… Go!’ and all so coldly, without moving her lips.”

“Nobility,” said the captain, putting his nose in the air spitefully.

We sat like this till eleven o’clock.

Towards the end, Falstaff was quite knocked out and went to sleep on his chair, snoring lightly and with a peaceful smile round his eyes. We woke him up with difficulty and he went home, respectfully supported under the elbow by our boy. I have forgotten to mention that he is a bachelor, a fact which, to tell the truth, upsets my own plans.

It’s an odd fact how terribly a day at a new place drags and, at the same time, how few impressions remain from it. Here I am writing these lines and I seem to have been living in Olkhovatka for a long, long time, two months at least, and my tired memory cannot recall any definite event.

September 12th.

Today I have been looking over the whole place. The owner’s house, or, as the peasants about here call it, the Palace, is a long stone building of one storey, with plate-glass windows, balconies, and two lions at the entrance. Yesterday it did not strike me as so big as it did today. Flowerbeds lie in front of the house; the paths separating them are spread with reddish sand. In the middle there is a fountain with shiny globes on pedestals, and a light prickly hedge runs round the front. Behind the house are the pavilion, the offices, the cattle and fowl-yards, the stud boxes, the barns, the orangery, and, last of all, a thick shady garden of some eleven acres, with streams, grottos, pretty little hanging bridges, and a lake with swans.

It is the first time in my life that I have lived side by side with people who spend on themselves tens, perhaps even hundreds, of thousands, people who scarcely know the meaning of “not able to do something.”

Wandering aimlessly through the garden, I could not take my thoughts off this, to me, incomprehensible, strange, and at the same time attractive existence. Do they think and feel just as we do? Are they conscious of the superiority of their position? Do the trifles which burden our lives ever come into their heads? Do they know what we go through when we come in contact with their higher sphere? I am inclined to think that all that means nothing to them, that they ask themselves no inquisitive questions, that the grey monotony of our lives seems just as uninteresting to them, just as natural and ordinary for us, as for example the sight of my orderly, Parkhomenko, is to me. All this, of course, is in the nature of things, but for some reason or other it hurts my pride. I am revolted by the consciousness that in the society of these people, polished up and well-glossed by a hundred years of luxurious habits and refined etiquette, I, yes I, no one else, will appear funny, odd, unpleasant even by my way of eating, and making gestures, by my expressions and appearance, perhaps even by my tastes and acquaintances⁠—in a word, in me rings the protest of a human being who, created in the image and resemblance of God, has either lost one and the other in the Flight of Time, or has been robbed of them by someone.

I can imagine how Vassili Akinfievitch would snort if I read these reflections to him.

September 13th.

Although today is the fatal number⁠—the devil’s dozen⁠—it has turned out very interesting.

I have been wandering about the garden again. I don’t remember where I read a comparison of Nature in autumn with the astonishing, unexpected charm which sometimes permeates the faces of young women who are condemned to a swift and certain death from consumption. Today I cannot get this strange comparison out of my head.

There is in the air a strong and delicate aroma of fading maple trees, which is like the bouquet of good wine. One’s feet bruise the dead yellow leaves which lie in thick layers over the path. The trees have a bright and fantastic covering as though decked out for a banquet of death. Green branches, surviving here and there, are curiously blended with autumn tints of lemon, or straw, or orange, or pink and blood-crimson, sometimes passing into mauve and purple. The sky is dense and cold, but its cloudless blue caresses the eye. And in all this bright death-feast one catches an indefinable, languid sadness which contracts one’s heart in a pain that is lingering and sweet.

I was walking along a pathway beneath acacias, interlaced so as to form a thick, almost dark arch. Suddenly my ear caught a woman’s voice saying something with great animation and laughter. On a seat, just where the thick wall of acacias curved into something like an alcove, sat two young girls (I took them for girls at once and later on I found that I was right). I could not see their faces very well, but I noticed that the eldest, a brune, had the provoking, luxuriant appearance of a Ukrainian, and that the younger, who looked like a “flapper,” was wearing a white silk handkerchief negligently thrown on her head with one corner pulled down on her forehead, thus concealing the upper part of the face. All the same, I succeeded in catching a glimpse of laughing pink lips and the gay shining of her white teeth as, without noticing my presence, she went on telling something, probably very amusing, in English to her companion.

For some time I hesitated. Shall I go on, or shall I go back? If I go on, shall I salute them or not? Once more I was overwhelmed by yesterday’s doubts of my plebeian soul. On the one hand I was thinking, if they are not the hosts of this place, these girls are probably guests, and in a way, I, too, am a guest, and therefore on an equal footing. But on the other hand, does Hermann Hoppe permit bowing to unknown ladies in his rules of etiquette? Won’t my bowing seem odd to these girls, or, what will be still worse, won’t they regard it as the respectfulness of an employee, of “a hired man.” Each point of view seemed to me equally dreadful.

However, after thinking it over like this, I walked on. The dark one was the first to catch the rustle of leaves under my feet and she quickly whispered something to the girl in the silk dress, indicating me with her eyes. As I came up to them, I raised my hand to the peak of my cap without looking at them, I felt, rather than saw, that they both slowly and almost imperceptibly bent their heads. They watched me as I moved away. I knew this by the sense of awkwardness and discomfort which attentive eyes fixed on my back always give me. At the very end of the alley I turned round. At the same second, as it often happens, the girl with the white handkerchief glanced in my direction. I heard some kind of exclamation in English and then a burst of sonorous laughter. I blushed. Both the exclamation and the laughter were certainly intended for me.

In the evening Falstaff came to us again, this time with some wonderful cognac, and once more he told us something incredible about his ancestors who had taken part in the Crusades. I asked him quite carelessly:

“Do you know who those two young girls are, whom I met in the garden today? One is a fresh-looking brune, and the other is almost a little girl in a light grey dress.”

He gave a broad grin, wrinkling up the whole of his face and causing his eyes to completely disappear. Then he shook his finger at me slyly:

“Ah, my son of Mars, so you’re on the fishhook! Well, well, well!⁠ ⁠… Don’t get angry. I’ll stop, I will really. But all the same, it’s interesting.⁠ ⁠… Well, I suppose I must satisfy your curiosity. The younger one is our young lady, Katerina Andreevna, the one I told you about, the heiress. You can’t call her a little girl. It’s only to look at she’s so thin, but she’s a good twenty years old.”

“Really?”

“Yes, if not more. Oh, she’s such an imp. But the little brunette, that’s the one to my taste, all eggs and cream and butter.” Falstaff smacked his lips carnivorously. “That’s the kind of little pie I love. Her name is Lydia Ivanovna⁠—such a kind, simple girl and dying to get married. She’s a distant relation of the Obolianinovs, but she’s poor, so she’s just staying here as a friend.⁠ ⁠… Oh, well, damn them all!” he wound up suddenly, waving his hand, “let’s get on with the cognac.”

Inwardly I had to agree with this last opinion. What do I care about those girls, whom I saw today, when tomorrow we may be off in different directions and may never hear of each other again?

Late in the night, after Falstaff had left us (the boy again balancing him respectfully, this time by the waist), when I was already in bed, Vassili Akinfievitch came to me, half undressed, with slippers on his bare feet and a candle in his hand.

“Well, young man,” he said, yawning and rubbing his hairy chest, “will you explain one thing to me? Here we are, fed on all sorts of delicatessen and given their best old wine to drink and a boy at our disposal, and cigars and all that sort of thing, but they won’t invite us to their own table, will they? Now why is this? Kindly solve that problem.”

Without waiting for my answer, he went on in a sarcastic tone:

“Because, my dear old chap, all these ‘Nobility’ people and all that sort of thing are most refined diplomats. Ye‑e‑es. What is their way of doing it? I made a good study of their sort on different voluntary work. I know the type. He will be amiable to you and will serve you up dinners” (justice compels me to add that the captain mispronounced the word “serve”) “and cigars, and all that sort of thing, but all the same you feel that he looks on you as on a low worm; and notice, Lieutenant, it’s only the real great ‘alistocrats’ ” (here, as if out of irony, he purposely mutilated the word) “who have this attitude towards our fellow men. The simpler sort, the more doubtful ones, swagger and put on more airs. Immediately that type will sport an eyeglass, round his lips, and imagine that he’s a bird. But as for the real sort, the first thing with them is simplicity⁠—because there’s no reason for them to put on airs when right in their own blood they feel scorn for our fellow men⁠ ⁠… and it all comes out very naturally and charmingly, and all that sort of thing.”

Having finished this accusing speech, Vassili Akinfievitch turned round and went off to his room.

Well, perhaps he’s right in his own way, but all the same it seems to me rather bad taste to laugh at strangers behind their backs.

September 14th.

Today I met them both again in the garden. They walked with their arms round each other’s waists. The little one, her head on her companion’s shoulder, was humming something with half-closed eyes. Seeing them it suddenly occurred to me that these chance rambles of mine might be misinterpreted. I turned quickly into a side-path. I don’t know that they saw me, but apparently I must choose another time for my walks or risk seeming an army intruder.

September 15th.

Lydia Ivanovna started this evening for the station. She will probably not return to Olkhovatka. First of all, because she has been followed by a respectable quantity of luggage, secondly, because she and the daughter of the house said goodbye to each other rather long and affectionately. Apropos of this, I saw for the first time from my window André Alexandrovitch himself with his wife. He’s quite a fine-looking type, stately, broad-shouldered, with the cut of an old Hussar; his grey hair is worn à la russe, his chin is clean-shaven, his moustache long, downy and silvery, and his eyes are like a hawk’s, only blue, but just the same as the hawk’s⁠—round, sunken, motionless and cold. His wife gives one the impression of a frightened and modest person. She holds her head a little on one side, and a smile, half guilty and half pitiful, is always on her lips. The face is yellow but kind. In her youth she was probably very beautiful, but now she looks much older than her age. There was also a bent old woman on the balcony. She wore a black headdress and greenish curls, and she came out leaning on a stick, and hardly able to drag her feet after her. She wanted, I think, to say something, but she began coughing, shook her stick in a despairing sort of way and disappeared.

September 16th.

Vassili Akinfievitch has asked me to look after the work until he can get rid of his fit of Balkan rheumatism,

“Pay particular attention,” he said, “to the delivery of the beetroot; the soldiers are already complaining because the foreman here gives them overweight. To tell the truth, I am rather afraid that in the end there’ll be trouble over this.”

The soldiers have been working in threes. They have already practically finished their contract. One digs out the beetroot from the ground with a shovel, while two cut it with knives and clean it. These sets of three are usually formed from soldiers of the same strength and skill. There’s no point in choosing a bad one, as he would only be in the way of the others.

I’ve read somewhere or other, I think in the Indicator, the reflections of a leisurely thinker, who says that there is no advantage at all in this sort of work: that clothes get torn, and soldiers undisciplined. This is absolutely false. Never is there such a confident, almost relation-like feeling between officers and privates as at this sort of free work. And if one admits that the soldier needs holidays during his hard military training, there is no better rest for him than the toil in the fields which he loves. But all the money earned in this way must go to the soldiers without any middleman⁠ ⁠… each knows where the shoe pinches. And our people are admirable workers; hired peasants wouldn’t do half the work. There’s only one exception, Zamochnikov, who, as usual, does nothing. Zamochnikov is the spoilt favourite of the whole squad, from the captain down to the last private, Nikifor Spassob (this same Spassob, with his lame leg and the white spot on his right eye, has been for the last four years a walking and a crying reproach to the military service). It is true that during his whole period of service Zamochnikov has been unable to master the vowels in the alphabet and has shown a really exceptional stupidity in regard to book-learning, but you could not find in the whole regiment such a spirited singing-leader, such a good teller of stories, such a jack-of-all-trades and a Merry Andrew to boot. He apparently knows what his role is very well and looks upon it in the light of a military duty. On march he sings almost without stopping, and his lashing, spirited talk often wrings a laugh of appreciation from the tired soldiers and gives them a moral shakeup. Vassili Akinfievitch, though he keeps Zamochnikov under arms more often than the rest, for which Zamochnikov bears him no grudge, confessed to me once that a stirrer-up like him is a perfect treasure in wartime and difficult circumstances.

Zamochnikov, however, is no mere clown and sham, and for this I like him particularly. Life in him simply boils up unrestrainedly and never allows him to sit quiet for a minute.

Here he was today, passing from work-party to work-party and finally arriving at a women’s department. He started a long dialogue with the Ukrainians, which made the soldiers near him leave their work and roll on the ground with laughter. I can hear from a distance his imitations of the brisk, shrill quarrels of women, and then again the lazy talk of an old Ukrainian. On catching sight of me, he puts on a preoccupied look and fumbles on the ground. “Well, my fellow-country-women,” he asks, “which of you has sent my shovel to perdition?” I shout at him and endeavour to make my face severe. He stands to attention, carrying himself, as he always does before an officer, with a graceful vigour, but in his kind blue eyes there still trembles the little fire of his interrupted merriment.

September 17th.

Our acquaintance has taken place, but under exceptionally comic conditions. Why should I hide it from myself? I secretly longed for this acquaintance, but if I could have foreseen that it would happen as it happened today, I should have refused it.

The stage was again the garden. I have already written that there is a lake; it has a little round island in the middle, overgrown with thick bushes. On the shore, facing the house, is a rather small wharf and near it a flat-bottomed boat is moored.

In this boat Katerina Andreevna was sitting as I passed. Holding the sides of the boat with both hands and bending forward first on one side and then on the other, she was trying to balance and shove off the heavy boat which had stuck fast on the slimy bottom of the lake. She wore a sailor costume, open at the throat, allowing one to see her thin white neck and even her thin little collarbones, which stood out under the muscular tension. A small gold chain hid itself in her dress. But I gave her only a passing glance, and, having once more given her a half-salute, I turned away with my usual modest dignity. At that moment a girl’s voice, fresh and merry, called out suddenly:

“Will you please be so kind⁠—”

At first I thought this exclamation was meant for someone else who was walking behind me, and involuntarily I glanced back. She was looking at me, smiling and nodding emphatically.

“Yes, yes, yes⁠—you. Will you be so kind as to help me to shove off this wretched boat? I’m not strong enough by myself.”

I made her a most gallant bow, bending my body forward and lifting my left leg back, after which I ran eagerly down to the water and made another bow just as ceremonious as the first. I must have looked fine, I imagine. The lady was now standing up in the boat, still laughing and saying:

“Push it away just a little⁠ ⁠… then I’ll manage it myself.”

I seize the bow of the boat with both hands, with my legs spread wide apart so as to preserve my balance, then I warn her with refined politeness:

“Will you be kind enough to sit down, Mademoiselle⁠ ⁠… the push may be a very vigorous one.”

She sits down, stares at me with laughing eyes, and says:

“Really, I’m ashamed to trespass like this on your kindness.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Mademoiselle.”

The fact that she is watching me gives my movements a certain gracefulness. I’m a good gymnast and nature has given me a fair amount of physical strength. But, in spite of my efforts, the boat does not stir.

“Please don’t take so much trouble,” I hear a tender little voice saying. “It’s probably too heavy and it may hurt you. Really, I⁠—”

The sentence hangs unfinished in the air. Her doubt of my strength gives it a tenfold force. A mighty effort, a push, a crash, the boat flies off like an arrow, while I, in accordance with all the laws of equilibrium, splash full length into the mud.

When I get up I find my face and hands and my snow-white tunic, worn for the first time that morning, everything covered in one long layer of brown, sticky, reeking mud. At the same time I see that the boat is gliding swiftly to the very middle of the lake and that the girl, who had fallen backwards when I shoved off, is getting up. The first object that jumps to her eye is myself. A frantic laugh rings through the whole garden and echoes through the trees. I get out my handkerchief and pass it, confusedly, first over my tunic and then over my face. But in time I realise that this only smudges the mud into me worse than before and gives me a still more pitiable appearance. Then I make an heroic attempt to burst out laughing myself over the comedy of my miseries, and produce some sort of idiotic neighing. Katerina Andreevna rocks with laughter more than ever, and is hardly able to pronounce her words:

“Go⁠ ⁠… go⁠ ⁠… quickly.⁠ ⁠… You⁠ ⁠… will catch cold.⁠ ⁠…”

I run off at full speed from this accursed place, run the whole way back to the house, while in my ears there still rings that merciless, ceaseless laugh.

The captain, as he caught sight of me, merely threw his arms out in astonishment.

“Ni‑ce! Well, you are a pretty sight! How the deuce did you manage it?”

I made no answer, banged the door of my room and furiously turned the lock twice. Alas! now everything is all over forever.

Kate to Lydia.

Olkhovatka,
September 18th.

My Dearest Lydia,

Congratulate me quickly. The ice is broken. The mysterious stranger, it seems, is the most amiable in the world, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. The honour of this discovery belongs to me, since you, you little villain, deserted me. There is no one now to keep me out of mischief, which I have had time to get into over and over again.

To begin with, I must confess that yesterday I arranged the capture of my mysterious stranger. I waited in the boat, and, when he passed by, I asked him to shove it off from the shore. Oh, I know perfectly well that you would have stopped short of a trick like that. You ought to have seen the eagerness with which the mysterious stranger rushed up to fulfil my request. But the poor man didn’t measure his strength, fell into the water and was covered with filthy mud. He presented the most pitiful and at the same time the most amusing appearance you could imagine. His cap had fallen on the ground, his hair had slipped down over his forehead, and the mud was pouring from him in streams, while his hands, with the fingers parted, seemed to be petrified. I thought at once: I must not laugh; he will be offended.

It would have been much better not to think at all. I began to laugh, laugh, laugh.⁠ ⁠… I laughed myself into hysterics. In vain I bit my lips until they bled, and pinched my hand until it hurt. Nothing was of any use. The confused officer took to flight. This wasn’t very wise on his part, for I had left the oars behind. I had to float over the roughish water until the wind brought my fragile bark into the reeds. There, by grabbing one after the other with both hands, I succeeded somehow or other in pulling the boat in. But in jumping out I managed to wet my feet and skirt almost up to the knees.

Do you know, I like him very much. A strange presentiment told me that an interesting flirtation would start between us, “l’amour inachevé,” as Prévost puts it. There is something about him manly, strong, and at the same time tender. It’s nice to have power over a man like that. Apart from this, he’s probably very reserved⁠—I mean to say, not gossipy; I don’t think he’s stupid, but chiefly one divines in his figure and movements robust health and great physical strength. While I was muddling about in the boat, I was seized by a weird, but very attractive thought: I wanted him terribly to take me up in his arms and carry me swiftly, swiftly over the gardens. It would have been no great effort for him, would it, my little Lida?

What a difference there is between him and the people one meets in Petersburg, those dancers and sportsmen in whom one always detects something worn and jaded and disagreeably shameless. My officer is fresh, like a healthy apple, built like a gladiator, at the same time bashful, and, I think, passionate.

Tomorrow, or the day after, I will make advances to him (that’s the way, I think, to express it in Russian?) Lidotchka, you must correct all my gallicisms without mercy, as you promised! Really I am ashamed of making mistakes in my own language. That he tumbled so magnificently into the lake doesn’t matter a bit. I alone was a witness of the tragedy. It would have been quite another matter if he had been so clumsy in public. Oh, then I should certainly be ashamed of him. This must be our special women’s psychology.

Goodbye, my dear little Lida. I kiss you.

September 19th.

Everything passes in this world⁠—pain, sorrow, love, shame, and in fact it is an extremely wise law. The other day I was sure that if, before my departure, I should happen to meet Katerina Andreevna by any chance I should almost die from shame. But not only have I not left Olkhovatka, but I have even found time to seal a friendship with this bewitching creature. Yes, yes, friendship is exactly the word. Today, at the end of our long, earnest conversation, she herself said this, word for word: “So M. Lapshine, let us be friends, and neither of us will remember this unlucky little story.” Of course “this unlucky little story” meant my adventure with the boat.

Now I know her appearance down to the most delicate details, but I cannot describe her. As a matter of fact I believe this to be generally impossible. Often one reads in novels a description of the heroine: “She had a beautifully regular, classical face, eyes full of fire, a straight, charming little nose and exquisite red lips, behind which gleamed two rows of magnificent pearly teeth.” This is crude to a degree! Does this insipid description give even the slightest hint of that untranslatable combination and reciprocal harmony of features which differentiates one face from all the millions of others?

Here I can see her face in front of me in actual, minute, extraordinarily vivid detail: a full oval of an olive pallor, eyebrows almost straight, very dark and thick, meeting over the ridge of the nose in a sort of dark down, so that it gives them a certain expression of severity; the eyes are large, green, with enormous shortsighted pupils; the mouth is small, slightly irregular, sensual, mocking and proud, with full, sharply chiselled, lips; the dull hair is gathered up at the back of the head in a heavy negligent knot.

I could not go away yesterday. The captain is seriously ill and rubs himself from morning till night with formic acid and drinks a concoction made out of some sort of herbs. It would not be sportsmanlike to desert him while in this state. All the more because the captain’s concoction is nothing but a masked drinking bout.

Last night I went into the garden, without even daring to confess to myself that I secretly hoped to find Katerina Andreevna there. I don’t know whether she saw me pass the gate, or if everything can be put down to chance, but we met face to face on the main path, just as I had emerged on to it from the alley.

The sun was setting, half the sky was reddening, promising a windy morning. Katerina Andreevna wore a white dress, relieved at the waist by a green velvet belt. Against the fiery background of the sunset her fine hair flamed round her head.

She smiled when she saw me, not angrily, rather kindly, and stretched out her hand to me.

“I am partly to blame for what happened yesterday. Tell me, you didn’t catch cold, did you?”

The tone of her question is sincere and sympathetic. All my fears vanish. I find myself even daring to risk a joke at my own expense:

“Rubbish, a little mud bath! On the contrary it’s very healthy. You’re too kind, Mademoiselle.”

And we both start laughing in the most simple, sincere way. Honestly, what was there so terrible and shameful in my involuntary fall? Decidedly I don’t understand it.⁠ ⁠…

“No, we can’t leave it like this,” she says still laughing. “You must have your revenge. Can you row?”

“I can. Mademoiselle.”

“Well, come along. Don’t keep calling me ‘mademoiselle.’ But you don’t know my name?”

“I know it⁠—Katerina Andreevna.”

“Ah, that’s too fearfully long: ‘Ka‑te‑ri‑na’⁠—and on the top of it Andreevna. At home, everyone calls me ‘Kate.’ Call me simply ‘Kate.’ ”

I click my heels together in silent assent.

I pull the boat to the shore. Kate, leaning heavily on my outstretched arm, moves easily over the little seats to the stern. We glide slowly over the lake. The surface is so polished and motionless that it has the appearance of density. Stirred by the faint motion of the boat, little wrinkles behind the stern swim lazily away to left and right, pink under the last rays of the sun; the shore is reflected in the water upside down, but it looks prettier than in reality, with its shaggy white willows, the green of which has not yet been touched by autumn. At a little distance behind us swim a couple of swans, light as fluffs of snow, their whiteness intensified by the dark water.

“You always spend the summer in the country, Mademoiselle Kate?” I ask.

“No, last year we went to Nice, and before that to Baden-Baden. I don’t like Nice; it’s the town of the dying, a sort of cemetery. But I gambled at Monte Carlo, gambled like anything. And you? Have you been abroad?”

“Rather! I have even had adventures.”

“Really? That must be very interesting. Please tell me about them.”

“It was about two years ago in the spring. Our battalion was quartered at a tiny frontier place⁠—Goussiatine. It is generally called the Russian Goussiatine, because at the other side of a narrow little river, not more than fifty yards in breadth, there is an Austrian Goussiatine, and when I’m talking, by no means without pride, about my trip abroad, it is this very Austrian Goussiatine that I mean.

“Once, having secured the favour of the Inspector of rural police, we made up a rather large party to go over there, a party exclusively composed of officers and regimental ladies. Our guide was a local civilian doctor and he acted as our interpreter. Scarcely had we entered⁠—to express myself in the grand style⁠—alien territory, than we were surrounded by a crowd of Ruthenian ragamuffins. Apropos of this, it was a chance of testing the deep sympathy which our brother Slavs are supposed to feel for us Russians. The urchins followed us to the very doors of the restaurant without ceasing for a second to spatter us with the most choice Russian insults. Austrian Jews were standing in the street in little groups with tasselled fur caps, curls falling over their shoulders, and gaberdines beneath which one could see white stockings and slippers. As soon as we approached them they began to point at us, and in their quick guttural language, with a typical snarl at the end of each sentence, there was something menacing.

“However, we reached the restaurant at last and ordered guliash and massliash; the first is some national meat dish deluged with red pepper and the second a luscious Hungarian wine. While we were eating, a dense crowd of the inhabitants of Goussiatine trooped into the small room and stared, with genuine curiosity, at the foreign visitors. Then three people emerged from the crowd and greeted the doctor, who immediately introduced them to our ladies. After these, four more came and then about six others. Who these citizens were I have never found out but they probably occupied administrative posts. Among them there was a certain Pan Komissarj and Pan Sub-Komissarj and other Pans as well. They were all good enough to eat guliash and drink massliash with us, and they kept repeating to the ladies: ‘At your service, Pane,’ and ‘We fall at the Pane’s feet.’

“At the end Pan Komissarj invited us to stay until the evening, as a subscription ball was to take place that day. We accepted the invitation.

“All went swingingly, and our ladies were enthusiastically whirling in waltzes with their new acquaintances. It is true we were a little surprised at foreign usage: each dancer called a dance for himself and paid the musicians twenty kopecks. We got used to this custom, but we were soon bewildered by a quite unexpected incident.

“One of our party wanted some beer and he mentioned this to one of our new acquaintances⁠—a portly gentleman with a black moustache and magnificent manners; our ladies had decided about him that he must be one of the local magnates. The magnate happened to be an extremely affable man. He shouted: ‘At once, gentlemen,’ disappeared for a minute, and returned with two bottles of beer, a corkscrew, and a serviette under his arm. The two bottles were opened with such extraordinary skill that our colonel’s wife expressed her admiration. To her compliment the magnate replied with modest dignity: ‘Oh, that’s nothing for me, Madame⁠ ⁠… I have a post as waiter at this establishment.’ Naturally, after this unexpected confession, our party left the Austrian ball hurriedly, a little informally even.”

While I am telling this anecdote Kate laughs sonorously. Our boat doubles round the little island and comes out into a narrow canal over which trees, bending low on each side, form a cool, shadowy arch. Here one catches the sharp smell of marsh; the water looks black as ink and seems to boil under the oars.

“Oh, how nice!” Kate exclaims with a little shiver.

As our conversation is threatening to dry up, I enquire:

“You find it rather dull in the country, don’t you?”

“Very dull,” Kate answers, and after a short silence, she adds negligently, with a quick, coquettish glance: “Up to now, at all events. In the summer my friend was staying here⁠—I think you saw her, didn’t you? and then there was someone to chatter with.⁠ ⁠…”

“Have you no acquaintances among the landowners about here?”

“No. Papa won’t call on anyone. It’s fearfully dull. In the morning I have to read the Moscow News aloud to my grandmother. You can’t imagine what a bore it is. It’s so nice in the garden and I have to read there about conflicts between civilised Powers and about the agricultural crisis⁠ ⁠… and sometimes, in despair, I decide to skip some twenty or thirty lines, so that there is no sense at all left. Grandmother, however, never suspects anything and often expresses surprise: ‘Do you notice, Kate, that they write quite incomprehensibly nowadays?’

“Of course I agree: ‘Indeed they do, Grandmother, utterly incomprehensibly.’ But when the reading is over I feel like a schoolgirl let out for the holidays.”

Talking like this we roll along over the lake until it begins to get dark. As we say goodbye, Kate, in a little parenthesis, gives me to understand that she is accustomed to stroll about the garden every morning and every evening.

All this happened yesterday, but I have had no time to write anything in my diary, because I spent the rest of the evening up to midnight in lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, and giving myself up to unrealisable, impossible reveries which, in spite of their innocence, I am ashamed to put down on paper.

We met again today, already without the least embarrassment, just like old acquaintances. Kate is extraordinarily good and kind. When, in the course of conversation, I expressed, among other things, my regret that the unlucky incident of the boat made me seem comic in her eyes, she stretched out her hand to me with a sincere gesture and pronounced these unforgettable words:

“Let us be friends, M. Lapshine, and let us forget that story.”

And I know the kind tone of those words will never be effaced from my memory by words of any other sort for all eternity.

September 20th.

Oh, I was not mistaken! Kate indeed hinted yesterday that we can meet in the garden every morning and every evening. It is a pity though that she was not in a good humour today; the reason was a bad headache.

She looked very tired and she had black marks under her eyes and her cheeks were paler than usual.

“Don’t take any notice of my health,” she said in reply to my expressions of sympathy. “This will pass. I have got into the bad habit of reading in bed. One gets entranced, without noticing it, and then there comes insomnia. You can’t hypnotise, can you?” she added half jokingly.

I answered that I had never tried, but that I probably could.

“Take my hand,” Kate said, “and look intently into my eyes.”

Gazing into Kate’s large black pupils, I endeavoured to concentrate and gather all my force of will, but my eyes fell confusedly from her eyes to her lips. There was one moment when my fingers involuntarily trembled and gave a faint pressure to Kate’s hand. As if in answer to my unconscious movement, I also felt a faint pressure in return. But naturally this was only by chance, because she immediately withdrew her hand.

“No, you can’t help me. You’re thinking of something quite different.”

“On the contrary, I was thinking of you, Mademoiselle Kate,” I retorted.

“Quite possibly. But doctors never look at one with eyes like that. You are a bad one.”

“I a bad one! God is my witness that no evil thought, even the shadow of an evil thought, has ever come into my head. But possibly my unlucky face has expressed something utterly different from what I feel.”

The strange part of it is that Kate’s observation suddenly made me feel the woman in her for the first time, and I felt awkward.

So my experiment in hypnotism was a failure. Kate’s migraine not only did not vanish but grew worse every minute. When she went away she was probably sorry for the disappointment in my face. She allowed me to hold her hand for a second longer than was necessary.

“I’m not coming in the evening,” she said. “Wait until tomorrow.”

But how well this was said! What an abyss of meaning a woman can sometimes put into the most ordinary, the most commonplace, sentence! This “wait” I translated like this: “I know that it is a great pleasure for you to see me; it is not unpleasant to me either, but then we can meet each other every day, and there is ever so much time ahead of us⁠—isn’t there?” Kate gives me the right to wait for her. At the very thought of it my head swims in transport.

What if mere curiosity, an acquaintance made out of boredom, chance meetings⁠—what if all this were to pass into something deeper and more tender? As I wandered along the garden paths, after Kate’s departure, I began to dream about it involuntarily. Anyone may dream about anything, may he not? And I was imagining the springing up between us of a love, at once passionate, timid, and confident, her first love, and though not my first, still my strongest and my last. I was picturing a stolen meeting at night, a bench bathed in the gentle moonlight, a head confidently leaning upon my shoulder, the sweet, scarcely audible, “I love you,” pronounced timidly in answer to my passionate confession. “Yes, I love you, Kate,” I say with a suppressed sigh, “but we must part. You are rich; I am just a poor officer who has nothing except an immeasurable love for you. An unequal marriage will bring you only unhappiness. Afterwards you would reproach me.” “I love you and cannot live without you,” she answers; “I will go with you to the ends of the earth.” “No, my dear one, we must part. Another life is waiting for you. Remember one thing only, that I will never, never in my life stop loving you.”

The night, the bench, the moon, the drooping trees, the sweet love words, how exalted, old-fashioned, and silly it all sounds! And here, while I am in the act of writing these words, the captain, who has just finished his stirrup-cup, bawls out to me from his bed: “What is it that you are scribbling by the hour. Lieutenant⁠—verses, perhaps? You might honour us with such nobility!”

The captain, I think, hates verses and Nature more than anything in the world. Twisting his mouth sideways, he says sometimes: “Little verses? What earthly use are they?” And he declaims sarcastically:

“In front of me there is a portrait,
Inanimate but in a frame,
In front of it a candle burns⁠ ⁠…

“Rubbish, fiddlesticks, and all that sort of thing.”

All the same, he is not quite a stranger to art and poetry. After an extra drink or two, he sometimes plays the guitar and sings curious old love songs that one has not heard for the last thirty years.

I shall go to bed at once, though I know I shall have difficulty in getting to sleep. But are not reveries, even the most unrealisable ones, the undeniable and consoling privilege of every mortal?

September 21st.

If anyone had told me that the captain and I would dine with André Alexandrovitch himself, I should have laughed in his face. But, incidentally, I have just come back from the Palace and even now I have between my teeth the same cigar that I started smoking in that magnificent study. The captain is in his room, rubbing himself with the formic acid and grumbling something or other about “nobility and all that sort of thing.” However, he is quite bewildered and apparently admits himself a comic figure in the laurels of a toreador and fearless rescuer of one of the fair sex. Probably fate itself has chosen to present us in this place in comic roles: me in my adventure on the lake shore, him in today’s exploit.

But I must tell about everything in order. It was about eleven in the morning. I was sitting at the writing-table, busy with a letter to my people, while waiting for the captain, who was to be in for lunch. He came all right, but in a most unexpected state: covered with dust, red, overwhelmed with confusion, and furious.

I looked at him questioningly. He began to pull off his tunic, railing all the time. “This is⁠ ⁠… this kind of⁠ ⁠… of stupid thing, and⁠ ⁠… all that sort of thing! Imagine, I was coming from the digging. Passing through the yard, I see that old woman⁠—well, the mother or grandmother, whoever she is⁠—crawling out from the hedge in front of the Palace. Yes, crawling. She toddles along, quite quietly, when⁠—goodness knows where it came from⁠—a little calf jumps out, an ordinary little calf, not a year old⁠ ⁠… gallops, you know the way they do, tail up and all that sort of thing⁠ ⁠… simply a calf’s ecstasy! Yes, that’s what had got hold of him. He sees the old woman and starts for her. She begins shouting and shakes her stick at him, which makes him still worse. There he was, dancing round her, just thinking that she was playing with him. My poor old woman rolls on the ground, half dead with fright and unable even to shriek any longer. I see that one must help, and rush up to her at top speed, chase away the stupid calf and find the old woman lying on the ground, almost breathless and voiceless. I thought that she had perhaps caved in from sheer funk. Well, somehow or other, I lifted her up, shook the dust from her and asked her if she were hurt. All she did was to roll her eyes and groan. Finally she gasped out: ‘Take me home.’ I put an arm round her and managed to drag her up on to the verandah, where we found the chatelaine herself, the wife of our host. She was terrified and burst out: ‘What is the matter with you, Maman? What in the world has happened?’ Between us we got the old woman into an armchair and rubbed her over with some sort of scent. She was right enough and gradually found her breath. Then she started embroidering. I simply didn’t know where to turn. ‘I was going,’ she says, ‘along the yard, when suddenly a bull flies straight out at me⁠—an enormous mad bull with bloodshot eyes, his mouth all foaming. He came right at me, banged me in the chest with his horns and dashed me on the ground.⁠ ⁠… Beyond that I remember nothing.’

“Well then, it appeared that I had performed a sort of miracle, that I had sprung at this would-be bull and, on my honour, had practically tossed him over my shoulder. I listened and listened and at last I said: ‘You are mistaken, Madame, it wasn’t a bull, it was just a little calf.’ But I might have talked till I was hoarse. She wouldn’t even listen. ‘It’s all his modesty,’ she said, and that very moment in came their young lady, and she, too, was in a great state. The old woman started telling her the whole comedy over again. The deuce knows what an idiotic business it is. They called me a hero and a saviour, pressed my hands, and all that sort of thing. I listened to them, feeling amused and ashamed, really. Well, I think to myself, I am in for a pretty story and there is nothing to say! I had all the difficulty in the world to get rid of them. What an idiotic affair! I don’t believe one could invent anything sillier.”

We sat down to lunch and, after a few glasses of his mixture, the captain grew calmer. He was just starting for the digging when, suddenly, our boy rushed headlong into the room, his face distorted with awe, his eyes almost jumping out of their sockets.

“The master⁠ ⁠… the master himself is coming here.”

We too, God knows why, got flurried, rushed about, and began hurriedly to put on the tunics that we had just taken off. And then, at that very moment, Obolianinov showed himself at the door and stopped with a slight half-bow.

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid that my visit is inconveniencing you,” he said with the most natural and, at the same time, cold amiability. “Please remain just as you were, at home.”

He was wearing loose, light trousers which suited astonishingly well his great height and his curiously youthful appearance. His face is that of a real aristocrat. I have never seen such a regular profile, such a fine eagle nose, such a determined chin and such arrogant lips.

He turned to the captain.

“Will you kindly allow me to express to you my deep gratitude? If it had not been for your daring⁠—”

“Please, no! What do you mean?” the captain answered, quite confused, and waving his hands in incoherent gestures. “I’ve done nothing particular; why thank me? A mere calf. To tell the truth, it was simply awkward and all that sort of thing.”

Obolianinov repeated his ironical, or polite, bow.

“Your modesty does honour to your manliness, Captain. In any case, I consider it my duty to express my gratitude on behalf of my mother and myself.”

At this the captain grew thoroughly ashamed; his face reddened and then seemed to become brown, and he waved his hands more incoherently than ever.

“For goodness’ sake⁠ ⁠… There is nothing particular in it. Simply a calf. But I⁠—don’t worry about it⁠—I see a calf running⁠—well, then, I at once⁠ ⁠… Please don’t.”

I saw that the captain had become utterly mixed, and hastened to the rescue.

“Kindly take a seat,” I said, offering our visitor a chair.

He gave me a fugitive, indifferent glance and a negligent “Merci,” but did not sit down and merely placed his hands on the back of the chair.

“I’m very sorry, gentlemen, that we did not meet before,” he said as he held out his hand to the captain. “In any case, it’s better late than never, isn’t it?”

The captain, quite disconcerted, found no reply and merely bowed extremely low as he pressed the white, well-kept hand.

As far as I was concerned, I introduced myself rather curtly: “Lieutenant Lapshine.” And then I added, though rather indistinctly: “Delighted⁠ ⁠… I’m sure. Such an honour.”

Finally, I’m not certain which of us came off the better, the captain or I.

“I hope, gentlemen, that you won’t refuse to dine with me,” said Obolianinov, picking up his hat from the chair. “We dine at seven punctually.”

We bowed again and our boss retired with the same magnificent ease of manner with which he had entered.

At seven o’clock we presented ourselves at the Palace. All the way, the captain was grumbling about “nobility” and constantly arranging the order which, for some reason or other, he was wearing on his chest. To all appearances, he was in a most depressed frame of mind. However, I must admit that I was not feeling very easy myself.

As soon as we reached the house, we were shown into the dining-room, a large, rather dark room, with massive carved oak panels. The master of the house was not there, but only his wife and the old woman, the mother who had been saved from death by the captain. A slight embarrassment arose, naturally chiefly on our side. We had to introduce ourselves. We were asked to sit down. Inevitably, the conversation fastened upon the event of the morning, but, having lasted for about five minutes, it dried up of its own accord, without any hope of revival, and all four of us sat silent, looking at each other, oppressed by our silence.

Luckily Kate, accompanied by her father, came into the room. On seeing me she bit her lip with an expression of surprise and raised her eyebrows. We were introduced. I understood from Kate’s glance that no one was to know about our chance meeting in the garden. Dear girl! Of course I will fulfil your silent order.

After dinner, during which Obolianinov had tried in vain to make the captain talk⁠—for some reason or other he paid little attention to me⁠—the old lady expressed a wish to play whist. As the captain never touched cards, I had to make the fourth, and for two hours I had to endure the most dreary boredom. During the first two rubbers, the old lady played more or less correctly. But afterwards her attention wandered. She began to play out of turn and to pick up other people’s tricks. When spades were called, she played diamonds.

“But, Maman, you still have a spade,” our host would observe with ironical deference.

“Well, are you going to teach me now?” the old lady would answer in an offended tone. “I am too old to be taught, my dear. If I don’t play a spade, it means that I haven’t got one.”

All the same, a minute later, she would herself lead spades,

“You see, Maman, you have found a spade,” her son would remark with the same shade of benevolent sarcasm, while she was unaffectedly bewildered.

“I can’t make out, my dear, where it came from. I simply can’t make out⁠ ⁠…”

But I myself played absentmindedly. All the time I was listening for the light footsteps of Kate behind my chair. She, poor girl, struggled for about half an hour in the hope of entertaining the captain, but all her attempts were broken by his stony silence. He only blushed, wiped his perspiring forehead with a check handkerchief, and answered to each question: “Yes, Madame. No, Madame,” At last Kate brought him a whole heap of albums, and pictures in which he became entirely absorbed.

Several times Kate came purposely near the card-table.

Our eyes met each time, and each time I caught in hers a sly and tender little glint. Our acquaintance, suspected by no one, made of us a pair of conspirators, initiated in a common mystery which bound us one to the other with deep, strong ties.

It was already dark when, after finishing the whist and having a smoke in the study, we were on our way home. The captain was walking ahead of me. Then on the balcony I suddenly felt, yes, exactly felt, the presence of someone. I pulled hard at my cigar and, in the reddish light that rose and lowered, I detected a frock and a dear smiling face.

“What a wise, good little boy! How well he behaved himself!” I heard in a low murmur.

In the darkness my hand seized hers. The darkness gave me suddenly an extraordinary courage. Pressing those cold, dainty little fingers, I raised them to my lips and began to kiss them quickly and avidly. At the same moment, I kept repeating in a happy whisper:

“Kate, my darling⁠ ⁠… Kate.”

She did not get angry. She only began to pull her hand feebly away and said with feigned impatience:

“You mustn’t. You mustn’t. Go away.⁠ ⁠… Oh, how disobedient you are! Go, I tell you.”

But when, afraid of making her really angry, I loosened my fingers, she suddenly clung to them and asked:

“What is your name? You haven’t told me yet.”

“Alexei;” I answered.

“Alexei; how nice⁠ ⁠… Alexei⁠ ⁠… Alexei⁠ ⁠… Alesha.⁠ ⁠…”

Overwhelmed by this unexpected caress, I stretched out my hands impulsively, only to meet emptiness. Kate had already disappeared from the balcony.

Oh, how passionately I love her!

Kate to Lydia.

September 21st.

You will remember, of course, my dear Lidotchka, how Papa was always against “rankers” and how he used to call them sarcastically “army folk.” So you will be doubtless astonished when I tell you that they dined with us today. Papa himself went to the pavilion and invited them. The reason for this sudden change is that the elder of the officers saved the life of my grand’mère this morning. From what Grandmother tells us, there was something extraordinary about it. She was passing through the yard, when a mad bull suddenly flew in, the gallant officer dashed between her and the bull⁠—in a word, a regular story in the manner of Spielhagen.

Honestly, I will confess to you that I don’t particularly like Papa’s having invited them. In the first place, they both get utterly lost in society, so that it is a martyrdom to look at them, particularly the elder. He ate his fish with his knife, was dreadfully confused all the time, and presented the oddest appearance. Secondly, I am sorry that our meetings in the garden have lost almost all their charm and originality. Before, when no one even suspected our chance acquaintance, there was in these rendezvous something forbidden, out of the common. Now, already, alas! it will strike no one as even surprising to have seen us together.

That Lapshine is head over ears in love with me, I have now not the slightest doubt⁠—he has very, almost too eloquent eyes. But he is so modest, so undecided, that, whether I like it or not, I have to meet him halfway. Yesterday, when he was leaving us, I purposely waited for him on the balcony. It was dark and he began kissing my hands. Ah, dear Lidotchka, in those kisses there was something enchanting. I felt them not only on my hands, but all over my body, along which each kiss ran in a sweet, nervous shiver. At that moment I was very sorry not to be married. I wanted so much to prolong and intensify these new and, to me, unknown sensations.

You, of course, will preach me a sermon for flirting with Lapshine. But this does not tie me to anything and, doubtless, it gives pleasure to him. Besides, in a week at the latest, we are leaving here. For him and for me there will be left memories⁠—and nothing else.

Goodbye, dear Lidotchka, it’s a pity that you won’t be in Petersburg this season. Give a kiss from me to your little mite of a sister.

September 22nd.

“Is it happiness or only the phantom of happiness?⁠ ⁠…
What matters it?⁠ ⁠…”

I don’t know which of the poets wrote that, but today I can’t get it out of my head.

And it’s true; what does it matter? If I have been happy, even for an hour, even for one brief moment, why should I poison it with doubts, distrust, the eternal questions of suspicious self-esteem?

Just before the evening, Kate came out into the garden. I was waiting for her and we went along the thick alley, that very same alley where I saw for the first time my incomparable Kate, the queen of my heart. She was moody and answered my questions often at random. I asked them indeed without much meaning, but only to avoid burdening both of us with silent pauses. But her eyes did not avoid mine; they looked at me with such tenderness.

When we had reached the bench, I said: “How dear and unforgettable this place is to me, Melle Kate.”

“Why?” she asked.

“It was here that I met you for the first time. You remember? You were sitting here with your friend and you even burst out laughing when I passed by.”

“Oh, yes, naturally I remember,” Kate exclaimed, and her face lit up with a smile. “It was stupid of us to laugh aloud like that. Perhaps you thought that it was meant for you?”

“To tell the truth, I did.”

“You see how suspicious you are! That’s not nice of you. It happened simply like this: when you passed I whispered something to Lydia. It really was about you, but I don’t want to repeat it, as an extra compliment might make you unbearable. Lydia stopped me for fear of your catching the words. She is very prude and always stops my little outbursts. Then, to tease her, I imitated the voice of my former governess⁠—a very old, stuck-up Miss⁠—‘for shame, shocking, for shame.’ There, that’s all, and this little bit of buffoonery made us laugh out loud. Well, are you pleased now?”

“Perfectly. But what did you say about me?”

Kate shook her head with an air of sly reproach.

“You are much too curious and I won’t tell you anything. As it is, I am much too good to you. Don’t forget, please, that you must be punished for your behaviour yesterday.”

I understood that she had no idea of getting angry, but, so as to be prepared for anything, I lowered my head with a guilty air and said with affected distress:

“Forgive me, Melle Kate, I was carried away; my feelings were too much for me.”

And as she did not interrupt me I went on in a still lower but at the same time passionate tone:

“You are so beautiful, Melle Kate.”

The moment was favourable. Kate appeared to be waiting for me to go on, but a sudden timidity seized me and I only asked pleadingly, as I looked into her eyes: “You’re not really angry with me, are you? Tell me.⁠ ⁠… This tortures me so much.”

“No, I’m not angry.” Kate whispered, turning her head away with a bashful and unconsciously pretty movement.

Well now, the moment has come, I said to myself encouragingly. Forward, forward! One can’t stop halfway in love. Be more daring.

But daring had decidedly left me, and this silence of hers, after words that had been almost a confession, became heavier and heavier. Probably, just because of this, Kate said goodbye to me, as we reached the end of the alley for the second time.

When she gave me her small, delicate, but firm hand, I kept it in my own and looked enquiringly into her eyes. I thought that I saw a silent consent in them. I began once more to kiss that dear little hand, as passionately as I had done on the terrace. At first, Kate resisted and called me disobedient, but the next moment I felt a deep warm breath on my hair, and my cheek was swiftly brushed by those fresh, charming little lips. In the same second⁠—I hadn’t even time to draw myself up⁠—she slipped out of my hands, ran a few steps away and stopped only when she was at a safe distance.

“Kate, wait, Kate, for heaven’s sake! I have such a lot to say to you,” I exclaimed as I approached her.

“Stay where you are and be silent,” Kate ordered, frowning with her eyebrows and tapping her foot impatiently on the rustling leaves.

I stopped. Kate put her hand to her mouth and made of it a kind of speaking trumpet as, bending slightly forward, she whispered softly but clearly: “Tomorrow, as soon as the moon is up; wait for me on the wharf. I will slip out quietly. We’ll go out on the lake and you shall tell me all you want to tell me. You understand? You understand me?”

After these words, she turned away quickly in the direction of the garden door without once glancing back. As for me, I stood there gazing after her, lost, deeply stirred, and happy.

Kate, dear Kate, if only your position and mine in the world were the same! However, they say that love is higher than class distinctions or any prejudices. But no, no, I will remain strong and self-sacrificing.

Oh, my God, how swiftly they fly away, my poor, naive, comic dreams! As I write these lines, the captain is lying in his bed, playing on his guitar and singing hoarsely an old, old song.

Miserable little man, I say to myself; in order not to stuff your head with idle and unrealisable rubbish, sit down and, for your own punishment, write these lines:

A young army lieutenant
Began to make love to me.
And my heart throbbed for him
In strange and fatal passion.

My darling mother heard
That I was not against wedding.
And, smiling, said to me:
“Listen, my dearest daughter;

The young army lieutenant
Wants to deceive you.
From his evil hand
It will be hard to escape.”

The young army lieutenant
Shed torrents of tears.
Somehow, at early dawn,
He drove to the neighbouring town.

There, in the wooden chapel,
Under the icon of God,
Some pope or other, half drunk,
Wedded and yoked our hearts.

And then on a peasant’s cart
He carried me home.
Ah, how the glamour has fled;
I moan through my tears.

There is no sugar, no tea,
There is neither wine nor beer;
That is how I understand
That I am a lieutenant’s wife.
That is how I understand
That I am a lieutenant’s wife.

Yes, yes, shame on you, poor army lieutenant! Tear your hair. Weep, weep through the stillness of the night. Thank you, Captain, for that wise lesson of yours.

September 24th.

Night, and love, and the moon, as Mme. Riabkova, the wife of the commander of the 2nd platoon, sings on our regimental guest nights. Never in my most daring dreams did I venture to imagine such intoxicating happiness. I even doubt if the whole evening was not a dream⁠—a dear, magical, but deceptive dream. I don’t even know myself how this almost imperceptible, but bitter, sediment of disillusion came into my soul.

I got down to the wharf late. Kate was waiting for me, seated on the high stone balustrade which borders the wharf.

“Well, shall we start?” I asked. Kate pulled her wrap closely over her and shuddered nervously.

“Oh no, it’s too cold; look what a fog there is on the water.”

The dark surface of the lake, indeed, could be seen only for a distance of about five feet. Further off, uneven, fantastical tufts of grey fog swept over the water.

“Let us walk about the garden,” Kate said.

We started. In this mysterious hour of a misty autumn night the deserted garden looked sad and strange, like a neglected cemetery. The moon shone pale. The shadows of the naked trees lay across the paths in black, deceptive silhouettes. The swish of the leaves beneath our feet startled us.

When we emerged from the dark, and seemingly damp, archway of acacias, I put my arm round Kate’s waist and gently, but insistently, drew her to me. She made no resistance. Her light, supple, warm body only started slightly under the touch of my hand, that was burning, as if in fever. In another minute, her head was on my shoulder and I caught the sweet aroma of her loosened hair.

“Kate⁠ ⁠… I’m so happy⁠ ⁠… I love you so, Kate, I adore you.”

We stopped. Kate’s arms went round my neck. My lips were moistened and burned by a kiss, so long, so passionate that the blood mounted to my head and I staggered. The moon was shining tenderly right into Kate’s face, into that pale, almost blanched face. Her eyes had grown larger, had become enormous, and, at the same time, so dark, so deep under their long eyelashes, like mysterious abysses. And her moist lips were clamouring for still more of those insatiable torturing kisses.

“Kate, darling.⁠ ⁠… You are mine?⁠ ⁠… quite mine?”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… quite⁠ ⁠… quite.”

“Forever?”

“Yes, yes, my dear one.”

“We will never part, Kate?”

Her expression changed. “Why do you ask that? Are you not happy with me just now?”

“Oh, Kate!”

“Well then, why ask about what will come later? Live in the present, dear.”

Time ceased. I could not realise how many minutes or hours had passed, Kate was the first to come back to reality and, as she slipped out of my arms, she said:

“It’s late. They’ll discover my absence. See me home, Alesha.”

While we walked once more through the dark alley of acacias, she nestled against me, like a graceful kitten that dreads the cold.

“I should be frightened to be alone here, Alesha. How strong you are! Put your arms round me. Again⁠ ⁠… tighter, tighter.⁠ ⁠… Take me up in your arms, Alesha⁠ ⁠… Carry me.”

She was as light as a little feather. As I held her, I almost ran with her along the alley, and Kate’s arms wound round my neck still more clingingly, still more nervously. Kissing my neck and temples, and enveloping my face with her quick, burning breath, she kept whispering:

“Faster, faster still.⁠ ⁠… Ah, how nice, how exquisite! Alesha, faster!”

At the garden door we said goodbye.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, while I, after bowing, began to kiss her hands one after the other.

“I’m going to write my diary,” I answered.

“A diary?” Her face expressed surprise, and⁠—as it seemed to me⁠—annoyed surprise. “Do you write a diary?”

“Yes. Perhaps you don’t like that?”

She gave a forced laugh.

“It depends on how you do it.⁠ ⁠… Of course you’ll show me this diary of yours, some time or other?”

I tried to refuse, but Kate insisted so strongly that at last I had to promise.

“Now, understand,” she said, as we parted and she held up her finger threateningly, “if I see even a single correction, look out!”

When I got home, I banged the door and the captain woke up, grumbling.

“Where are you always gallivanting about like this, Lieutenant? It’s a rendezvous, I suppose? Nobility and all that sort of thing.⁠ ⁠…”

I’ve just read over all the nonsense that I’ve been scribbling in this book from the very beginning of September. No, no, Kate shall not see my diary, or I should have to blush for myself every time that I remembered it. Tomorrow I shall destroy it.

September 25th.

Once more night, once more moon, and again the strange and, for me, inexplicable mingling of the intoxication of love and the torture of wounded pride. It is no dream. Someone’s footsteps are sounding under the window.⁠ ⁠…

Kate to Lydia.

September 28th.

My Angel, Lidotchka,

My little romance is coming to a peaceful end. Tomorrow we leave Olkhovatka. I purposely did not tell Lapshine because⁠—one never knows⁠—he might turn up at the station. He is a very sensitive young man and, on the top of it all, he hasn’t the faintest notion of controlling his feelings. I think he would be quite capable of bursting into tears at the station. Our romance turned out a very simple and, at the same time, a very original one. It was original because the man and woman had exchanged their conventional roles, I was attacking; he was defending himself. He was asking from me oaths of fidelity, almost beyond the tomb. At the end, he bored me a good deal. He is a man who does not belong to our circle. His manners and habits are not ours. His very language is different. At the same time, he is too exacting. To spare his feelings, I never even hinted to him how impossible it would have been for Papa to receive him, if he had presented himself in the light of a prospective son-in-law.

The foolish fellow! He himself did not want to prolong these oppressive delights of unsatisfied love. There is something charming in them. To lose one’s breath in tight embraces and burn slowly with passion⁠—what can be better than this? But then how do I know? Perhaps there are caresses more daring, more languishing, of which I have no idea. Ah, if he had only had in him a touch of that daring, that inventiveness, and⁠ ⁠… that depravity which I have divined in many of my Petersburg acquaintances!

But he, instead of becoming every day more and more enterprising, whined, sighed, talked bitterly about the difference in our positions (as if I would ever consent to marry him!), hinted almost at suicide. As I said before, it was becoming almost intolerable. Only one, one solitary meeting has remained vividly in my memory⁠—that was when he carried me in his arms along the garden, and he, at all events, was silent. Lidotchka, among other things, he blurted out to me that he keeps a diary. This frightened me. Heaven knows into whose hands this diary might fall later on. I insisted that he should give it to me. He promised, but he did not keep his word. Then (a few days ago), after a long night walk and after having said goodbye to him, I crept up to his window. I caught him in the very act. He was writing, and when I called out he was startled. His first movement was to conceal the paper, but, you understand, I ordered him to hand over all that was written. Well, my dear, it’s so funny and touching, and there are so many pitiful words.⁠ ⁠… I’ll keep this diary for you.

Don’t reproach me. I’m not afraid on his account⁠—he won’t shoot himself; and I’m not afraid on my own account either: he will be solemnly silent all his life. Still, I confess, for some reason or other, I feel vaguely sad.⁠ ⁠… But all this will pass in Petersburg, like the impression of a bad dream.

I kiss you, my beloved one. Write to me in Petersburg.

I

Emerald, the four-year-old, a full-grown racehorse of American breed, of a uniform grey, steel-like colour, woke up as usual at about midnight in his loose box. The other horses, his neighbours on the left and right and opposite on the other side of the passage, were chewing hay with quick regularity, as though they were keeping time, crunching it with relish between their teeth and, every now and then, sniffing on account of the dust. On a heap of hay in a corner, slept the stable-boy on duty. Emerald knew by the sequence of days and by the particular snore that it was Vassili, a lad whom the horses disliked, because he smoked a reeking tobacco in the stables, frequently came in drunk, pounded their bellies with his knees, shook his fists in their eyes, tugged their halters roughly, and always addressed them in an unnatural, hoarse, threatening voice.

Emerald went up to the railed entrance opposite which, facing him in her stable, stood a young black, not yet full-grown, mare, named Chegolikha. Emerald could not see her body in the dark, but every time that she left off munching the hay and turned her head her large eyes would gleam for a few seconds with a pretty purple fire. Emerald drew a long breath with delicate dilated nostrils as he took in the scarcely noticeable, but insistent, agitating, odour of her skin and gave a short neigh.

The mare turned round quickly and answered with a light, trembling, and playful neighing.

From the box, immediately on his right, Emerald heard a jealous, angry breathing. It came from old Onieguine, a vicious chestnut, who still appeared from time to time in the town races.

The two horses were separated by a light board partition and could not see each other, but, by placing his nose on the rail, Emerald could catch easily the warm odour of the chewed hay as it came from the panting nostrils of the chestnut. In this way, for some little time, the two horses sniffed at each other in the darkness, their ears flat on their heads, their necks arched as they grew more and more angry. Then, all of a sudden, each of them gave tongue to his rage, stamping fiercely at the same moment.

“Stop that nonsense, you devils,” the stable-boy shouted at them sleepily, but with the familiar threat in his voice.

The horses sprang back from the rails and pricked up their ears. Their hostility towards each other was of long standing, but only three days before this there had been brought into this very stable that graceful black mare, a quite unusual occurrence, due to lack of space just before the races. And now not a day passed without a quarrel between them. In the stables, on the racetrack, and when they were taken to water, they would provoke each other to light. But in his soul Emerald felt a certain fear of this long, self-assertive chestnut, a fear of that pungent smell of an angry horse, his rough, camel-like Adam’s apple, his gloomy, sunken eyes, and particularly of his strong, stone-like frame, hardened by years of training and previous combats.

Pretending to himself that he was not in the least afraid, and that nothing at all had happened, Emerald turned, bent his head into the manger, and rummaged the hay with his soft, mobile, elastic lips. At first he just nibbled capriciously at separate morsels, but soon the gusto of chewing came over him and he really plunged into feeding. And at the same time slow indifferent thoughts were leaking into his head, linking together memories of shapes and perfumes and sounds, and then losing themselves finally in that dark abyss which lay before and behind everything except the passing moment.

Hay was the floating thought just now and he recalled the old stableman, Nazar, who distributed the hay in the evening. That good old Nazar! he always has such a cosy smell of black bread and just a slight sniff of wine; his movements are gentle and unhurried; on his days the oats and hay taste better, and it is nice to listen to him, for, when grooming you, he talks to you in whispers, with just a tender reproach, and all the time he is wheezing to himself. But for all that, he lacks the main thing, the horse touch, and when he has you between the shafts you can feel, through the reins, that his hands are fumbling and inexact.

Vassili has not got that horseman feel either, and, though he shouts and strikes, all the horses know that he is a coward and they are not afraid of him. And he, too, is unable to drive⁠—he pulls at you and gets nervous. The third stableman, the squint-eyed one, is better than these two, but he has no love for horses and is cruel and impatient; besides, his hands are heavy as if they were made of wood. And the fourth, Andriashka, is still quite a boy and plays with the horses just like a sucking colt, stealthily kissing them on the upper lip, between the nostrils, which isn’t particularly agreeable, but rather funny.

But that other one, the tall, thin, clean-shaven one with the stoop and the gold-rimmed glasses⁠—oh, he’s quite another affair. He’s like some extraordinary horse, wise and strong and fearless. He never gets angry, never uses the whip, never even threatens, but, all the same, when he’s up in the American buggy, it is so nice, so terrifyingly pleasant, to obey every hint of his strong, clever, all-comprehending fingers. He alone can produce in Emerald that state of joyous harmony in which the whole force of the body lends itself to the rush of the race and makes one feel so light and merry.

And at once, Emerald saw in imagination the short track to the hippodrome, saw almost every house, every kerbstone, saw the sand of the hippodrome itself, the Tribune, the other horses, the green of the grass and the yellow of the track. Then suddenly he recalled the dark bay three-year-old who had recently twisted his foot on the track and had begun to limp. And thinking of him Emerald tried, mentally, to go lame himself just a little.

One bit of hay which Emerald had in his mouth had a peculiarly delicate taste. The colt chewed it for some time, and long after he had swallowed it, he retained in his mouth the fine perfume of faded flowers and dry, odorous grass. Then a dim quite formless, far-off memory slid into the horse’s brain. This is just what happens sometimes with smokers when the chance inhaling of a cigarette brings back suddenly for an irresistible second the memory of a dark corridor with old wallpaper and a solitary candle on the buffet; or else a long journey through the night with the regular tinkling of sledge bells and the sensation of languid sleepiness; or else the dark blue wood, not too far off, the snow dazzling one’s eyes, the noise of an approaching battue, the passionate impatience that makes one’s knees tremble⁠—all in a moment such bygone, forgotten, touching, but no longer translatable, feelings slide into one’s soul with a sombre and dim caress.

Meanwhile the little black window above the manger, invisible until now, began to get grey and to become faintly outlined in the darkness. The horses chewed more lazily and sighed one after the other deeply and softly. In the yard the cock sounded his familiar call, sonorous, bold, and sharp like a trumpet. And far away in the distance, other cocks, each in turn, spread the summons of the morning.

With his head bent in the manger. Emerald was still trying to keep in his mouth and get back with renewed force that strange taste that had aroused in him the echo of an exquisite, almost physical, but incomprehensible memory. But he could not revive it and, before he knew where he was, he began to doze.

II

His feet and body were perfectly built; that is why he always slept standing, scarcely swinging either backwards or forwards. Sometimes, though, he would give a start and then his deep sleep would pass for a few seconds into a light slumber. But the short intervals of sleep were so profound that the muscles, nerves, and skin of the horse were rested and refreshed.

It was just at dawn that he was dreaming of an early spring morning, a reddish streak suffusing the earth, and a low-lying sweet-scented meadow. The grass was thick and luscious, green as in some charming fairytale, but tinged by the dawn with a delicate pink just as human beings and animals see it in early childhood, the dew gleaming all over it like trembling fires. In the pure, rarefied air every sort of perfume comes to one with peculiar intensity. One catches, through the freshness of the morning, the smell of the blue and transparent smoke that curls over the village chimneys; every flower in the meadow has a distinct scent; on the moist broken road that leads into the town, innumerable scents are mingled with the smell of human beings, of tar, of horse-dung, of dust, and of cow’s milk, fresh from a passing herd, of aromatic gum that drips from the pine trees over the hedge.

Emerald, a seven-months’ stallion (his mane and tail cut short) is running aimlessly through the meadow, bending his neck and kicking out his hind legs. He seems to be made of air, and is not in the least conscious of the weight of his body. The white, perfumed camomile flowers keep running backwards under his feet. He whisks away straight on to the sun. The wet grass swishes against his feet, his knees, making them feel cold and dull just for the moment. The blue sky, the green grass, the golden sun, the exquisite air, the drunken ecstasy of youth, of strength and speed!

But just then he hears a short, restless, tender, and appealing neighing, so familiar to him that he can recognise it at a distance among thousands of neighs. He stops short in his full gallop, listens for an instant, his head raised, his delicate ears moving and his broom-shaped, short downy tail shaking as he answers with a long-drawn call, with which the whole of his fine, thinnish, long-legged body vibrates. And then he speeds to his mother.

She⁠—a quiet, bony old mare⁠—raises her wet muzzle from the grass, smells over the colt quickly and attentively and then resumes her chewing as though she were in a hurry to finish a pressing business. Bending his flexible neck under her with upturned muzzle, the colt from habit thrusts his lips between her hind legs, to find a warm elastic nipple full of sweet, scarcely sourish, milk that flows, in hot little ripples, into his mouth. On and on he drinks and cannot tear himself from it. The brood mare shakes herself free at last and pretends to bite his groin.

It is quite light now in the stable. An old smelling, bearded goat who lives with the horses has approached the stable doors (that had been strengthened inside with beams) and commenced to bleat, looking backwards at the stable-boy. Vassili, barefooted, scratching his woolly head, got up to open them for him. The day was a regular autumn one, bluish and cold. The square, in front of the open doors, was covered at once by the warm vapour that steamed out from the stables, while the aroma of the white frost and the fallen leaves penetrated delicately into the horses’ stalls.

They knew well that oats were going to be served out to them and they were giving impatient grunts near their railings. The greedy and capricious Onieguine was stamping with his hoofs and was exhibiting his old bad habit of champing with his upper teeth against the chewed iron-bound brim of the manger, swallowing and belching out the morning air. Emerald, for his part, contented himself with rubbing his muzzle against the railing.

The other stablemen⁠—there were four altogether⁠—came in and began to distribute the oats in iron bins. While Nazar was heaping up the heavy rustling oats in Emerald’s manger, the colt, his warm nostrils trembling, did his best to get at it, first over the old man’s shoulder and then under his arm. The stableman, who liked this impatience of a quiet horse, loitered purposely, barricaded the manger with his elbows and grumbled out in his rough, kindly way, “Now, you glutton⁠ ⁠… there’s lots of time.⁠ ⁠… Punch me again with your nose, and I’ll be punching you tonight.”

From the little window, above the manger, rose a square joyous sunbeam in which millions of golden fragments of dust, divided by long shadows from the windowpanes, were whirling downwards.

III

Emerald had just finished his oats when they came to take him out into the yard. It was warmer now and the ground had become softer, but the stable walls were still white with frost. From the manure heaps, just taken out of the stables, rose a thick vapour, and the sparrows were swarming on them, chirruping excitedly as though they were quarrelling. Emerald bent his neck under the doorway and crossed the threshold carefully. Then he drank in joyfully deep draughts of the delicious air, shook the full length of his body and gave a sonorous sneeze. “Good health to you,” observed Nazar quite gravely. Emerald would not keep still. He wanted vigorous movements, the tickling feeling of the air rushing into one’s eyes and nostrils, the burning heartbeats and the long, deep breathing. Tied with a halter, he was neighing, dancing on his hind legs and curving his neck sideways to get a backward glimpse of the black mare, with one of his large rolling eyes, the whites of which were ribbed with little red veins.

Breathless from exertion, Nazar lifted high up above his head a pail of water, and dashed it upon the colt’s back from crest to tail. This was a familiar sensation to Emerald, vigorous, pleasant, and always a little startling. Nazar brought more water and sprinkled his flanks, chest, feet, and tail with it. And each time that he soused him, his horny palm would pass over the horse’s coat to mop off the water. Glancing backwards, Emerald could see his own sloping haunches suddenly darkened and then shining again, as with a varnish in the sun.

It was race day. Emerald knew that by the way the stablemen hurried and bustled about the horses, some of whom had usually to wear horseshoes; others had to wear leather pads on their knees; others had their hind legs bandaged with linen belts up to the knees, or their chests protected with fur-bordered coats that reached to the forelegs. From the coach-house they pulled out the two-wheeled American buggies with high seats; their metal spokes shone merrily and their red rims and large red curved shafts glowed under a new coat of varnish.

Emerald was already quite dry, brushed, rubbed and groomed, when the head stableman, an Englishman, came in. Every man and horse in the stable had an equal respect for, and dread of, this tall, thin, long-handed man with the slight stoop. His clean-shaven face was sunburnt and his strong, thin lips were set in a mocking curve. He wore gold-rimmed glasses through which his light blue eyes looked straight out on the world with stubborn calmness. He watched the preparations, standing with his long legs wide apart in his high boots, his hands buried in his trouser pockets as he munched his cigar first at one corner of his mouth and then at the other. He wore a grey jacket with a fur collar and a narrow black cap with a long square peak. From time to time he made curt remarks in a jerky, careless tone and immediately all the stablemen and workmen turned their heads in his direction, while the horses pricked up their ears.

He paid particular attention to the harnessing of Emerald and examined the horse minutely from crest to hoof. And as Emerald felt the sure attentive glance he lifted his head proudly, slightly arched his supple neck, and raised his delicate, almost transparent, ears. The Englishman tested the girth, slipping his finger between it and the horse’s belly. Then they threw over the horses grey linen horsecloths with red borders, red circles round the eyes, and red monograms low down on their hind legs. Two stable-boys, Nazar and the squint-eyed one, took a rein on each side of Emerald and led him to the hippodrome along the well-known road between two rows of scattered, large stone buildings. It was scarcely four versts to the racecourse.

There were already several horses in the enclosure; they were taken round the circle all in the same direction as in the actual race, that is to say, in the opposite direction of the hands of a watch. In the enclosure they were leading medium-sized strong-legged horses, with docked tails, among whom Emerald quickly recognised the little white colt who always raced near him. Both horses greeted each other with a quiet and kindly neigh.

IV

A bell was rung. The stablemen removed Emerald’s horsecloth. The Englishman, his eyes blinking under his spectacles owing to the sun, was showing his long yellow horse-like teeth as he came up with a whip under his arm, buttoning his gloves on his way. One of the stablemen picked up Emerald’s fluffy tail that reached almost to the back of his knees and placed it carefully on the seat of the racing buggy so that its light-coloured tip stuck out at the back. The shafts gave like elastic under the driver’s weight. Emerald took a peep round and saw him sitting almost over his haunches, his feet stretched wide apart on the shafts. Without any hurry, the driver took up the reins, then he shouted a brief order to the stablemen, who at once let go of the reins. Rejoicing at the coming race, Emerald at first plunged forward, but, reined in by those strong hands, he merely reared on his hind legs, shook his neck, and ran through the enclosure gate to the hippodrome at a strong restrained trot.

Along the wooden fence that formed an ellipse of a verst, ran a large racing track, covered with yellow sand that was compact and slightly moist, thus at once yielding to and responding to the pressure of hoofs. The sharp hoof-marks and the straight stripes from the gutta-percha tyres furrowed it.

They ran past the Tribune, a high wooden building with a frontage of two hundred horse-lengths at least, where, like a mountain extending to the very roof, which was itself supported by thin pillars, a black human crowd buzzed and swayed. Through a slight, scarcely perceptible, motion of the reins Emerald understood that he might increase his pace, and snorted gratefully in response.

He was trotting deliberately, hardly moving his back and keeping his neck stretched forward, but a little to the left, his muzzle lifted firm and high. Thanks to a restrained, though unusually long, pace his running produced from a distance no impression of speed. It seemed that the racer measured the road without hurrying, his forelegs, straight as a compass, scarcely touching the ground with the tips of the hoofs. It was the result of real American training in which everything combined to sustain the horse’s wind and diminish to the utmost extent the resistance of the air. Under this regime all movements unnecessary to running are held to waste unproductively the horse’s strength, and beauty of form is sacrificed to that lightness, dryness, long wind, and energy which transform the horse into a faultless living machine.

Now in this interlude between races the walking of the horses, so necessary to a trotter’s lungs, was taking place. Many were running in the outer circle in the same direction as Emerald and in the inner in the opposite direction. A big dapple-grey, with a white muzzle, of the pure Orloff breed with a high short neck, and a tail like piping, the whole resembling a gingerbread horse at a fair, ran past Emerald; his heaving flanks and large fat chest were steaming and darkened by sweat as he ran, throwing his forelegs sideways from the knees, while, at every pace, there rang from his spleen a sharp sound.

Then came behind him a stately, long-bodied, brown half-bred mare with a thin dark mane. She was beautifully trained on the same American system as Emerald; her short, well-cared-for coat was so glossy that it revealed the play of the muscles under the skin. While the drivers were talking over something or other, the two horses ran for a little side by side. Emerald sniffed at the mare, quite prepared to make friends on the way, but the Englishman did not permit this and Emerald submitted.

Then there met them at full trot an enormous black colt swathed in bandages, kneecaps, and pads. His left shaft stretched out a yard and a half longer than the right and a bearing rein clasped on the top and on both sides through a ring the nervous muzzle of the horse in its steel grip. As the mare glanced at him simultaneously each of them instantly recognised a racer of wonderful strength, speed, and endurance, but curiously stubborn and bad-tempered, conceited and very touchy. Just behind the black horse ran a pale grey colt, very spruce but ludicrously small. Looking at him sideways one would have thought he was whisking away at a terrific rate, so often did he throw out his feet, so high did he raise his knees and arch his short neck, while his small pretty head had such an earnest, businesslike expression. Emerald merely squinted at him contemptuously and moved one ear in his direction.

The other driver stopped talking, with a short, loud laugh, like a neigh, and gave the mare her head. Quietly, without any effort, as if her speed had nothing to do with her, the mare shot ahead of Emerald, her shining back smooth and regular, with a scarcely noticeable little strap outlining her spine.

But a red fire-like racer with a large white spot on his muzzle caught up Emerald and her and soon left both behind. He galloped with long bounds, now stretching himself and almost stooping to the ground, and now almost joining his fore and hind legs in the air. His driver was lying, rather than sitting, on the box, his body thrown backwards as he hung on to the taut reins. Emerald got excited and lurched sideways, but the invisible Englishman pulled on the reins and, all of a sudden, those hands, so supple and so sensitive to every movement of a horse, became like iron. Near the tribune the red colt, after another gallop round the ring, caught up to Emerald once more. Till then he had been galloping and he was already in a lather, with bloodshot eyes and panting breath. His driver, leaning forward, was lashing him along the back with all his might. At last the stableman managed to bar his course and seized the reins close to his muzzle, after which he was led away from the ring wet, wheezing, trembling, grown thin in a minute. Emerald did another half lap at a full trot, then turned on to the path which cut across the racecourse, and made his way back through the gate into the yard.

V

A bell rang several times on the hippodrome. Beyond the open gate the racehorses were running like lightning from time to time, while the people on the Grand Stand shouted and applauded. Emerald, lined up with the other horses, was stepping out beside Nazar, shaking his bent head and moving his ears in their linen cases. After his exercise his blood ran merry and hot in his veins; his breathing grew deeper and freer as his body became more rested and cooler, while in every muscle he could feel the renewed longing for the race.

Half an hour went by. Another bell sounded on the hippodrome. Now the driver sat on the racing buggy without his gloves. His hands were large, white, magical, and inspired Emerald with both devotion and fear.

The Englishman drove out unhurriedly to the race track, from which horses were filing out on their way to the yard after finishing their walk. In the enclosure only Emerald and the enormous black colt whom he had met on that preliminary drive were left. The stands, from top to bottom, were black with a dense human crowd, and from this black mass emerged, gaily and untidily, countless white faces and hands, variegated umbrellas, women’s hats, and airily swung programmes. Gradually quickening his pace, as he passed the stands, Emerald felt thousands of eyes following him fixedly. And he realised clearly that these eyes expected from him swiftness, the full tension of his strength, the full beating of his heart⁠—and this understanding communicated to his muscles a joyous lightness and a coquettish precision of movement, A white horse of his acquaintance, ridden by a boy, was going at a hand gallop to his right.

With a regular measured trot, bending his body slightly to the left, Emerald traced an angular turn and moved up to the post with the red disc. A bell rang out curtly on the hippodrome. The Englishman imperceptibly straightened himself on the box seat and his hands became suddenly firmer. “Now go, but nurse your strength. It’s too soon now.” Emerald understood and, to show his comprehension, he lowered for a second and then straightened his fine sensitive ears. The white colt was galloping regularly at his side and a little behind. Emerald could feel close to his crest the horse’s fresh, even breath.

The red post flew behind him; another sharp turn, the path straightens itself and the second stand comes nearer, blackens, becomes variegated with its buzzing crowd and grows larger with every step. “Faster,” the driver permits⁠—“faster, faster.” Emerald grows a little excited and wants to throw into the race all his strength. “May I?” he thinks to himself, “No, it’s still too soon, don’t be excited,” answer the soothing, magic hands; “afterwards.”

The two colts pass the winning-posts at the same second but from opposite sides of the diameter linking the two stands. The slight resistance of the thread and the sense of its being broken made Emerald prick his ears, but he instantly forgot about it, so absorbed was he by those marvellous hands. “A little faster, but don’t get excited. Go evenly,” his driver orders. The black rocking tribune swims past him; another hundred yards or so, and all four of them⁠—Emerald, the young white colt, the Englishman and the boy who, standing on his short stirrups, was almost over the horse’s mane⁠—merge themselves in one close, rushing mass of speed, animated by one will, one beauty of powerful movement, one rhythm resonant as music. “Rat-tat-tat,” exactly and regularly, Emerald beats out with his hoofs. “Tra-ta-tra-ta,” curtly and sharply the hoofs of the white horse reply. Another turn and the second stand rushes towards them. “Shall I force the pace?” Emerald asks. “Yes,” reply the hands, “but coolly.”

The second stand flies swiftly by. The people are shouting out something. It distracts Emerald. He gets excited, loses the feeling of the reins, loses his step for a second, and gives four capricious beats with his right hoof. But the reins immediately become hard, tear his mouth, wring his neck downwards and force his head to the right. Now he can’t gallop with the right feet. Emerald grows angry and refuses to change his feet, but the driver, seizing his moment, coolly and authoritatively pulls him into a trot. The stand is now far behind him. Emerald gets back into his pace and the hands become friendly and soft once more. Emerald feels that he has done wrong and wants to double his pace. “But oh no, it’s too soon yet,” the hands observe kindly. “We’ll have time to make up for this. Don’t worry.”

And so they pass in perfect harmony without any change of pace a full round and a half. But the black colt is in perfect form today; while Emerald had been out of step, he had had time to outdistance him by six lengths. Emerald, however, makes up for the lost time and, at the last post but one, he is three seconds and a quarter ahead. “Now you can do it. Go,” the driver orders. Emerald draws back his ears and gives one quick glance behind him. The Englishman’s face burns with a sharp, decisive expression; his clean-shaven lips have wrinkled into an impatient grimace, exposing his long yellow clenched teeth. “Now for the last ounce!” the reins in the high uplifted hands order; “faster, faster.” Suddenly the Englishman shouts in a loud vibrating voice that rises like a siren: “Oh⁠—eh, eh⁠—eh!”

“There, there, there, there,” the boy behind them shouts shrilly in tune.

The rhythm has now reached its highest pitch and the tension hangs on a single hair, almost ready to snap. “Ta-ta-ta,” regularly stamp out on the ground Emerald’s feet. “Trra, trra, trra,” one hears ahead the gallop of the white colt spurring Emerald on. The elastic shafts swing in time with the race, and the boy, almost lying on his horse’s neck, rises in his saddle to the rhythm of the gallop.

The air, rushing to meet one, whistles in one’s ears and tickles the nostrils, from which great streams of steam emerge. It becomes more difficult to breathe and one’s skin burns. Emerald takes the last turn, all his body swerving in the middle of it. The stand becomes alive with the roar from a thousand throats, frightening, troubling, and gladdening Emerald all at once. He can trot no longer but wants to gallop, only those astonishing hands behind him implore and order and soothe: “Don’t gallop, my dear. Whatever you do, don’t gallop; that’s it, that’s it, just like that; that’s it.” And Emerald, rushing past the post, breaks the control thread, without even noticing it. Shouts, laughter, a torrent of applause is hurled down from the stand. The white leaves of the race-programme, umbrellas, sticks, hats turn and flash amid a sea of hands and faces. The Englishman throws the reins aside gently. “It’s all over, my dear, thanks,” this movement says to Emerald, as he, with difficulty, recovers from the impetus of the race and slows down to a walk. At this moment the black colt is just arriving at his post, seven seconds later, on the opposite side.

The Englishman raises his stiff legs with difficulty, jumps heavily from the buggy, takes off the padded seat, and goes with it to the weighing. Stablemen run up to fling a horsecloth over Emerald’s hot back and take him to the yard. He is followed by the rumbling of the crowd and the loud bell of the members’ pavilion. A slight yellowish froth falls from the horse’s mouth on the ground and on the stableman’s hands.

A few minutes later Emerald, already unharnessed, is brought back to the judge’s box. A tall man, with a long coat and a new shining hat, whom Emerald has often seen in his stable, pats him on the neck and thrusts a lump of sugar straight into his mouth. The Englishman is standing there in the crowd, smiling, wrinkling his face, as he grins with his long teeth. The horsecloth is removed from Emerald and he is put in front of a box, standing on three feet and covered with a black cloth, under which a man in grey is hiding himself, busy with something or other.

But already people are swarming down from the grand stand in a black, serried mass. They come close to the horse on all sides, shouting, waving their hands, stretching out close to one another their red, sweating faces, with gleaming eyes. They are dissatisfied about something. They thrust their fingers in the feet, the head, the flanks of Emerald, rumple his hair on the left flank where there is a brand, and roar out altogether, “A false trotter! A fake! A swindle! Money back!” Emerald listens to this without understanding the words and moves his ears anxiously. “What’s it all about?” he thinks with surprise, “when I’ve been running so well!” Then for a second the Englishman’s face leaps before his eyes. Usually so calm, slightly mocking and firm, it is now burning with anger. And all of a sudden the Englishman shouts something in a high guttural voice, swings his arm quickly, and the sound of a blow cuts drily through the general turmoil.

VI

Emerald was taken home and three hours later he was given oats. In the evening, when he was watered at the well, he could see the large yellow moon rising behind the edge of a cloud and this inspired him with a dark dread.

Then began the dull days.

He was not taken out any more either for exercise or walks or to races. But every day strangers, crowds of people, came, and for their benefit Emerald was dragged out into the yard, where they examined him and felt him all over, their hands crawling into his mouth, scrubbing his coat with pumice-stone, all shouting at each other together.

Afterwards, he remembered, he was once taken out of the stable, late in the evening, and led for a long time through stony, empty streets, past houses and lit-up windows. Then came the station, a dark shaky horsebox, his feet trembling from fatigue after a long journey, the whistles of the engines, the rattle of the rails, the stifling smell of smoke, the dull light of the swinging lantern. At one station he was dumped out of the horsebox and led along an endless unknown road that ran between huge bare autumn fields, past villages until he reached an unfamiliar stable, where he was shut up alone away from the other horses.

At the beginning he would still recall the races and think about his Englishman and Vassili and Nazar and Onieguine, often dreaming about them, but gradually he began to forget them all. He was hidden away for some reason or other, and his beautiful young body was pining and grieving and growing weak from inaction. And new strangers were constantly arriving, crowding round Emerald, prodding him, pulling him about and angrily abusing each other.

Sometimes Emerald could catch glimpses, through the open door, of other horses walking and running about in freedom. Then he would shout to them in protest and complaint. But the door was instantly closed again, and time would crawl once more, dull and lonely, for Emerald.

The head of this stable was a large-headed, sleepy man with small black eyes and a thin black moustache on his fat face. He seemed to be quite indifferent to Emerald, but the horse felt an incomprehensible fear of him. And then once, early in the morning, while all the stablemen were still asleep, this man came noiselessly up to Emerald on tiptoe, poured oats into his manger, and left the stable. Emerald was a little surprised, but began obediently to eat. The oats were nice, just a little bitter, but pleasant to the taste for all that. “It’s odd,” thought Emerald, “I never tasted such oats before.”

Then, all of a sudden, he became conscious of a slight colic. Pain came, it stopped, then came back stronger than ever, and grew sharper every minute. At last it became intolerable. Emerald began to moan dully. Wheels of fire were dancing before his eyes; all his body was wet and flabby from this sudden weakness. His feet shivered, bent under him, and the colt fell heavily on the floor. He tried to get up again, but could only raise himself on his forelegs, and once more slipped on his side. A buzzing turmoil whirled through his head; the Englishman swam by with his horse-like grin from the long teeth; Onieguine ran by, neighing loudly, with his camel-like Adam’s apple projecting beneath his jaw. Some force or other was dragging Emerald mercilessly and ruthlessly deep down into a dark, cold hole. Already he was unable to move.

Suddenly convulsions passed over his feet and neck and arched his back. The horse’s skin began to tremble in small swift ripples and became covered with a froth that had a pungent smell.

The moving yellow light of the lantern played straight into his eyes for a second and then died away with his failing eyesight. His ear caught once more a coarse human shout, but already he was unable to feel himself pushed in the side by someone’s heel. Then everything disappeared⁠—forever.

I

Well, it’s like this. Can you picture for yourself a wretched little southern country town? In the middle of it there is a sort of monstrous shallow pit where the Ukrainians of the neighbourhood, up to their waists in mud, sell cucumbers and potatoes from their carts. This is the bazaar. On one side is the cathedral, and naturally the cathedral street, on the other the town square, on the third the market stone stalls, the yellow plaster of which has peeled off; pigeons are perching on the roof and cornices; finally, on the fourth side, stretches the main street, with a branch of some bank or other, a post office, a solicitor, and the barber Theodore from Moscow. In the outskirts of the town an infantry regiment was then billeted, and in the town itself a regiment of dragoons. In the town square stood the summer theatre. And that’s all.

Still one must add that the town itself, with its Duma and secondary school, to say nothing of the square, the theatre, the paving of the main street⁠—all this exists thanks to the liberality of a local millionaire and sugar manufacturer, Kharitonenko.

II

How I stumbled into the place is a long story, but I’ll tell it briefly. In this little town I was to meet a friend, a real, true friend (God rest his soul), but he had a wife who, as is usual with the wives of our true friends, could not bear me. He and I each had several thousands put by through hard work: he, you see, had worked for many years as a pedagogue and as an assurance inspector at the same time, while I had been lucky at cards for a whole year. Suddenly we stumbled on a very advantageous enterprise in southern skins and decided to try our luck at it. I started at once and he was to rejoin me two or three days later. As my carelessness was an old story, our little capital was kept by him, but in a separate bundle, for my friend was a man of German carefulness.

And then began the hail of misfortunes. At the station of Kharkoff, while I was eating some cold sturgeon, sauce Provençale, I was robbed of my pocketbook. I arrive at C. (this very little town of my story) with the small change left in my purse and a lanky, but good reddish-yellow English portmanteau. I put up at a hotel⁠—naturally the Petersburg Hotel⁠—and begin to send telegram after telegram. Silence of the grave. Yes, yes, literally of the grave, because at the very moment when the thief was stealing my pocketbook⁠—what tricks fate plays!⁠—at that very moment my friend and companion died in a cab from paralysis of the heart. All his things, including his money, were sealed and for some idiotic reason or other the wrestling with officials lasted a month and a half. Did the widow, deeply lamenting, know about my money or did she not? I can’t answer that question, myself. However, she received all my telegrams, every one of them, but remained stubbornly silent⁠—silent from petty, jealous, silly, feminine revenge. All the same, these telegrams were of great use to me later on. After removing the seals, an advocate, a complete stranger to me, who was looking after the widow’s inheritance, came across them quite by accident, made the widow ashamed of herself, and, at his own risk, transferred five hundred roubles to me at the theatre. But I must add the fact that they were not mere telegrams but tragic lamentations of twenty or thirty words each.

III

I had been at the Petersburg Hotel for ten days already. My tragic lamentations had quite exhausted my purse. The hotel proprietor⁠—a gloomy, sleepy, hairy Ukrainian, with the face of an assassin⁠—had long ago ceased to believe in my word. I showed him certain letters and papers by which he could have, etc., etc., but all he did was to turn his face scornfully away and snort. Finally, they served me with dinner as though I were Gogol’s Khlestakov: “The proprietor has said that this is for the last time.”

And then came the day when there was left in my pocket a single, orphan, greenish silver twenty kopek-piece. That morning the proprietor said insolently that he was not going to feed me or keep me any longer, but was going to report me to the police inspector. By his tone I could see that he would stop at nothing.

I left the hotel and wandered about the town. I remember entering a transport office and another place to look for work. Naturally it was refused me at the very first words. Sometimes I would, sit down on one of the green benches that lay all along the main street between the high pyramid-like poplars. My head swam; I felt sick from hunger. But not for a moment did the idea of suicide enter my mind. How many, many times in my tangled life have I been on the border of these thoughts, but then a year would pass, sometimes a month, or even simply ten minutes, and suddenly everything would be changed, everything would be going luckily again, gaily, nicely. And all through that day, as I wandered about the hot, dull town, all I kept saying to myself was: “Ye‑es, my dear Pavel Andreevitch, you’ve got into a nice mess.”

I wanted to eat. But through some sort of mysterious presentiment I clung to my twenty kopeks. Dusk was already falling when I saw on the hoardings a red poster. In any case I had nothing to do. So I mechanically approached it and read that they were giving that day in the town gardens Goutzkov’s tragedy, Uriel Akosta, in which so-and-so and so-and-so were to appear. Two names were printed in large black letters: An artist from the Petersburg theatres, Madame Androssova, and the well-known artist from Kharkoff, M. Lara-Larsky; the others names were in small print. Last of all, in the smallest letters, came: Petrov, Serguiev, Ivanov, Sidorov, Grigoriev, Nikolaev, and others. Stage-manager, M. Samoilenko. Managing director, M. Valerianov.

A sudden desperate inspiration seized me. I rushed across to the barber, Theodore from Moscow, and, with my last twenty kopeks, had my moustache and short pointed beard shaved off. Good Lord! What a morose, naked face glanced at me from the looking-glass! I could scarcely believe my own eyes. Instead of a man of thirty, not too good-looking, but at all events of decent appearance, there in the looking-glass in front of me, swathed up to his throat in a barber’s sheet, sat an old, burned-out, inveterate, provincial comic with traces of all sorts of vice in his face and apparently not quite sober.

“You are going to work in our theatre?” asked the barber’s assistant as he shook off the sheet.

“Yes,” I answered proudly. “Here you are.”

IV

On my way to the town gardens, I thought to myself: There’s no misfortune without some good in it. I shall be taken at once for an old and experienced sparrow. In these little summer theatres, every useless man is useful. I shall be modest at the beginning⁠ ⁠… about fifty roubles⁠ ⁠… say forty a month. The future will show.⁠ ⁠… I’ll ask for an advance of about twenty roubles⁠ ⁠… no, that’s too much⁠ ⁠… say, ten roubles. The first thing I’ll do with it will be to send a hair-raising telegram⁠ ⁠… five times five⁠—twenty-five and a nought⁠—two roubles fifty kopeks, and fifteen extra charge⁠—that’s two roubles and sixty-five kopeks. On the remainder I’ll get through somehow or other until Ilia arrives. If they want to test me⁠ ⁠… well, what about it? I shall recite something⁠—why not the monologue of Pimen in Boris Goudounov?

And I began aloud, in a deep, pompous, strangled tone:

“And yet ano⁠—other fa⁠—arewell word.”

A passerby jumped away from me quite frightened. I felt ashamed and cleared my throat. But I was already getting near the town gardens. A military band was playing; slim young ladies of the district, dressed in pink and sky blue, were walking about without their hats and behind them stalked, laughing aloud, their hands thrust in their jackets, their white caps rakishly on one side, the local scribes, the telegraph and excise clerks.

The doors were wide open. I went in. Someone asked me to take a ticket from the cash desk, but I said carelessly: “Where is the manager, M. Valerianov?” Two clean-shaven young men, sitting on a bench not far from the entrance, were at once pointed out to me. I approached them and halted two steps away.

They were engrossed in their conversation and took no notice of me, so I had time to examine them. One of them, in a light Panama hat and a light flannel suit with little blue stripes, had an air of sham nobility and the haughty profile of a principal lover. He was playing negligently with his walking-stick. The other, in a greyish suit, was extraordinarily long-legged and long-armed; his legs seemed to begin at the middle of his chest and his arms probably extended below his knees. Owing to this, when sitting he had the appearance of an odd, broken line, which, however, one had better describe as a folding measure. His head was very small, his face was freckled, and he had animated dark eyes.

I coughed modestly. They both turned towards me.

“Can I see M. Valerianov?” I asked amiably.

“I am he,” the freckled one answered. “What do you want?”

“You see, I wanted⁠ ⁠…”⁠—something tickled my throat⁠—“I wanted to offer you my services, as⁠ ⁠… as⁠ ⁠… well, as a second comic, or⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… third clown. Also character parts.”

The principal lover rose and went off whistling and brandishing his stick.

“What previous experience have you had?” Valerianov asked.

I had only been once on the stage, when I took the part of Makarka at some amateur theatricals, but I drew convulsively on my imagination and replied:

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t taken part in any important enterprise, like yours, for example, up till now. But I have occasionally acted in small troupes in the Southwest. They came to grief as quickly as they were organised⁠ ⁠… for instance Marinitch⁠ ⁠… Sokolovsky⁠ ⁠… and there were others too.”

“Look here, you don’t drink, do you?” Valerianov asked disconcertingly.

“No,” I replied without hesitation. “Sometimes at dinner, or with my friends, but quite moderately.”

M. Valerianov looked down at the sand, blinking with his dark eyes, thought for a few seconds, and then said:

“Well, all right, I’ll take you on. Twenty-five roubles a month to begin with and then we’ll see. You might be wanted even today. Go to the stage and ask for the manager’s assistant, Doukhovskoi. He will introduce you to the stage-manager.”

On my way I thought to myself: Why didn’t he ask for my stage name? Probably he forgot. Perhaps he guessed that I had none. And in case of an emergency I then and there invented a name⁠—not particularly sonorous, a nice simple name⁠—Ossinine.

V

Behind the scenes I found Doukhovskoi, a nimble fellow with a thievish, tipsy face. He at once introduced me to the stage-manager, Samoilenko, who that day was acting in some kind of heroic part and for this reason sported golden armour, hessian boots, and the makeup of a young lover. However, through this disguise I could distinguish that Samoilenko was fat, that his face was quite round, with two small cunning eyes and a mouth folded in a perpetual sheep’s smile. He received me haughtily, without even offering his hand. I was inclined to move away from him, when he said:

“Wait a minute; what’s your name? I didn’t make it out.”

“Vassiliev.” Doukhovshoi rushed up with the information.

“Here you are, Vassiliev. Don’t leave the place today. Doukhovski, tell the tailor to give Vassiliev his getup.”

Thus from Ossinine I became Vassiliev, and I remained Vassiliev together with Petrov, Ivanov, Nikolaev, Grigoriev, and Sidorov and others to the very end of my stage career. Inexperienced actor as I was, it was only after a week that I realised that, among all those sonorous names, mine alone covered a human being. The accursed series of names ruined me!

The tailor came, a thin, lame man, wrapped me up in a long, black calico shroud with sleeves, and tacked it on to me from head to foot. Then came the coiffeur, in whom I recognised Theodore’s assistant who had just shaved me, and we exchanged a friendly smile. He put a black wig with love-locks on my head. Doukhovskoi rushed into the dressing-room and shouted:

“I say, Vassiliev, make yourself up.”

I stuck my finger in some kind of paint, but my left-hand neighbour, a severe man with the forehead of a deep thinker, stopped me:

“Can’t you see that you’re using a private box? Here’s the box for general use.”

I saw a large case with divisions full of dirty paint all mixed together; I felt dazed. It was easy enough for Doukhovskoi to shout out: “Make yourself up,” but how was it to be done? I manfully put a white dash along my nose and looked immediately like a clown. I traced cruel eyebrows. I made blue marks under my eyes. Then I reflected: What else could I do? I blinked and managed to insert between my eyebrows two vertical wrinkles. Now I resembled a Red Indian chief.

“Vassiliev, get ready,” someone shouted from the top of the stairs.

I went up and came to the threadbare cloth doors of the back wall. Doukhovskoi was waiting for me.

“You are to go on at once. Devil take it, what on earth do you look like? As soon as they say: ‘No, he will come back,’ go on. Go on and say⁠—he gave some kind of proper name which I’ve forgotten⁠—‘So-and-so is asking for an interview,’ and then exit. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“No, he will come back,” I hear, and pushing past Doukhovskoi I rush on to the stage. What the deuce was the name of that man? A second, another second of silence. The house is like a black, moving abyss. Straight in front of me, on the stage, are strange, roughly-painted faces, brightly lit up by the lamps. Everyone looks at me expectantly. Doukhovskoi whispers something at the back, but I can’t make it out. Then suddenly I fire off in a voice of solemn reproach:

“Yes, he has come back.”

Past me like a hurricane rushed Samoilenko in his golden coat of mail. Thank God! I disappear behind the curtain.

I appeared twice more in that show. In the scene when Akosta gives the familiar thundering against the Jews and then falls. I was supposed to catch him in my arms and drag him behind the curtain. In this business I was helped by a fireman, got up in a black shroud like my own. (How is one to know? Perhaps the public thought he was Sidorov.) Uriel Akosta appeared to be the actor who had been sitting with Valerianov on the bench; he was, too, the well-known artist from Kharkoff, Lara-Larsky. We took him a little awkwardly⁠—he was a heavy muscular man⁠—but luckily we didn’t drop him. He said to us in a whisper: “Devil take you, you louts.” We dragged him with equal luck through the narrow doors, though afterwards the black wall of the ancient temple shook and swayed for a long time.

My third appearance was without words at the judgment of Akosta. A little incident, hardly worth mentioning, occurred. It was simply that when Ben-Akib came in everyone rose, but, thanks to my habit of gaping about, I continued sitting. Someone, however, pinched me painfully above the elbow and hissed out:

“Are you crazy? It’s Ben-Akib. Get up!”

I rose hurriedly. On my honour I didn’t know that it was Ben-Akib. I thought it was just a little old man.

At the end of the performance Samoilenko said to me:

“Vassiliev, rehearsal tomorrow at eleven.”

I went back to the hotel, but on recognising my voice the proprietor banged the door in my face. I spent the night on one of the little green benches between the poplars. It was warm sleeping there and I dreamed of glory. But the cold morning dew and the feeling of hunger woke me up rather early.

VI

Exactly at half-past ten I arrived at the theatre. There was no one there as yet. Here and there in the gardens sleepy waiters from the summer restaurant were wandering about in their white aprons. In a summerhouse of green trellis-work interwoven with wild vines they were preparing someone’s breakfast or morning coffee.

I learned later on that the manager, M. Valerianov, and the elderly ex-actress Mme. Boulatova-Tchernogorskaya, a lady of about sixty-five who financed the theatre, and the manager himself, breakfasted there every morning in the fresh air.

The table was laid for two with a white glistening cloth and two little piles of sliced white and brown bread rose on a plate.⁠ ⁠…

Here comes the ticklish part of my story. For the first and last time in my life, I became a thief. Glancing round quickly, I dived into the arbour and seized several slices of bread in my open hand; it was so soft, so exquisite. But as soon as I was outside again I ran up against the waiter. I don’t know where he came from; probably I hadn’t noticed him behind the arbour. He was carrying a cruet-stand with mustard, pepper, and vinegar. He looked hard at me, then at the bread in my hand, and said quietly:

“What does this mean?”

A sort of burning, scornful pride welled up in me. Looking right into the pupils of his eyes, I answered as quietly:

“It means⁠ ⁠… that since four o’clock the day before yesterday I have had positively nothing to eat.”

He spun suddenly round, without uttering a word, and ran off somewhere. I hid the bread in my pocket and waited. I had a feeling at once of dread and joy. That’s excellent, I was thinking. Now the proprietor will rush up, the waiters will gather round, they will whistle for the police⁠ ⁠… there will be a row, insults, a fight. Oh how magnificently I shall smash these very plates and cruets over their heads. I’ll bite them till I draw blood.

But then, what do I see? My waiter is running back to me by himself. He was a little out of breath. He came up to me sideways, without looking at me. I, too, averted my eyes. And then suddenly, from under his apron, he pushed into my hand a piece of yesterday’s cold meat, carefully salted, and whispered entreatingly:

“Please, do eat, I beg of you.”

I took the meat roughly from him, went with it behind the scenes, chose a corner⁠—a rather dark one⁠—and then, sitting among the old stage properties, I tore the meat greedily with my teeth and shed happy tears.

Later on I saw that man often, almost every day. His name was Serguei. When there were no customers, he used to look at me from a distance kindly with faithful, hospitable eyes. But I had no wish to spoil, either for myself or for him, that first sympathetic impression, though I confess I was sometimes as hungry as a wolf in the winter.

He was a small, rather fat, rather bald man, with black cockroach-like moustaches and kind eyes, shaped like narrow radiant semicircles. He was always in a hurry and gave the impression of hopping along. When I received my money at last and my theatrical slavery remained only a dream, and all these rotten people were lapping up my champagne and flattering me, how I did miss you, you dear, funny, pathetic Serguei! Of course I should never have dared to offer him money⁠—can one possibly estimate in money such kindness and human affection? I merely wanted to give him some little present before going away⁠ ⁠… a little trifle⁠ ⁠… or else something for his wife or his kids⁠—he had a whole swarm of them, and in the morning sometimes they used to run up to him, agitated and clamorous like young sparrows.

But a week before my marvellous transformation Serguei was dismissed, and I know the reason. Captain von Bradke had been served a beefsteak not to his taste. He bawled out:

“What’s this you’re giving me, you rascal? Don’t you know that I like it red?”

Serguei ventured to remark that it was not his fault, but the cook’s, and that he would go and change it at once. He even added timidly:

“Excuse me, Mister.”

This apology maddened the officer. He struck Serguei with his beefsteak on the cheek, and turning purple, he yelled out:

“Wha‑at! I am a mister to you, am I? I am not a mister to you, I am staff captain of cavalry to my emperor! Where’s the proprietor? Call the proprietor. Ivan Lukianytch, I want this idiot cleaned out of here today. I don’t want a trace of him here. If there is, I’ll never set foot in your pothouse again.”

The staff captain of cavalry, von Bradke, was a man of big sprees and for this reason Serguei was dismissed that very day. The proprietor spent the whole evening in calming the officer. I myself, when I came out between the acts for a breath of fresh air in the gardens, heard for a long time the enraged, bellowing voice issuing from the arbour.

“What a scoundrel the fellow is! Mister! If it hadn’t been for the ladies I would have shown him the meaning of mister!”

VII

In the meantime the actors had gradually drifted in and at half-past twelve the rehearsal, due at eleven, began. They were giving a play entitled The New World, a kind of insipid sideshow transformation of Senkevicz’s novel Quo Vadis. Doukhovskoi gave me a typewritten sheet of paper containing my lines. I had the part of the Centurion in the division of Mark the Magnificent. They were pompous, loud lines, as, for example: “Thy orders, O Mark the Magnificent, have been punctually obeyed,” or “She will wait for thee at the pedestal of the statue of Pompeii, Mark the Magnificent.” I liked the part, and I was already preparing a manly voice of a sort of old swashbuckler, stern and faithful.

But as the rehearsal proceeded, an odd thing happened to me; to my surprise I began to get divided and multiplied. For instance, at the end of the Matron Veronica’s speech, Samoilenko, who followed the play with the full text in front of him, claps his hands and shouts:

“A slave comes in.”

No one comes in.

“But who is the slave? Doukhovskoi, see who is the slave.”

Doukhovskoi rummages hastily through some sheets of paper. “There is no slave!”

“Cut him out, what about it!” lazily advises Boev, the argumentative person with a forehead of a thinker, into whose paintbox I had stuck my fingers the day before.

But Mark the Magnificent (Lara-Larsky) suddenly takes offence at this:

“No, that won’t do, please. I have an effective entrance here⁠ ⁠… I don’t play this scene without a slave.”

Samoilenko’s eyes gallop round the stage and halt at me.

“There you are, I mean⁠ ⁠… I mean⁠ ⁠… Vassiliev, are you on in this act?”

I consult my copybook.

“Yes, at the very end.”

“Then here’s another part for you⁠—Veronica’s slave. Read it from the book.” He claps his hands. “A little less noise, gentlemen, please. Enter the slave.⁠ ⁠… ‘Noble dame,’⁠ ⁠… Speak up, speak up, one couldn’t hear you from the first row.”

A few minutes later they couldn’t find a slave for the divine Marcia (in Senkevicz’s text she is Ligia), and this part is dumped on to me. Then some kind of house steward is missing. Me again! In this way, by the end of the rehearsal, I had, without counting the Centurion, five additional parts.

It wouldn’t go all at the beginning. I come out and pronounce my first words:

“Mark the Magnificent⁠ ⁠…”

Then Samoilenko stretches his legs wide apart, bends forward, and puts his hands to his ears:

“Wha‑at! What’s that you’re mumbling? I understand nothing.”

“O Mark the Magnificent⁠ ⁠…”

“What’s that? I can hear nothing⁠ ⁠… Louder!” He comes quite close to me. “This is the way to do it,” and in a guttural goat’s voice he shouts out loud enough to be heard all over the gardens:

“ ‘O Mark the Magnificent, thy order’⁠ ⁠… That’s how it’s got to be done. Remember, young man, the immortal apothegm of one of the greatest of our Russian artists: ‘On the stage one doesn’t speak, one declaims; one doesn’t walk, one struts.’ ” He looked round with a self-satisfied air. “Repeat.”

I repeated, but it was still worse. Then, one after the other, they began to coach me, and positively the whole lot of them instructed me to the very end of the rehearsal: Lara-Larsky with a careless and disgusted manner; the old, swollen, noble father Gontcharov, whose flabby red-veined cheeks were hanging down below his chin; the argumentative Boev; the idiot Akimenko, who was made up as a sort of Ivan the Simpleton. I was getting like a worried, steaming horse, around whom a street crowd of advisers had gathered, or a new boy who had fallen from his safe family nest into a circle of cunning, experienced, and merciless schoolboys.

At this rehearsal I made a petty, but persistent, enemy who afterwards poisoned every day of my existence. It happened like this:

I was repeating endlessly: “O Mark the Magnificent,” when suddenly Samoilenko rushed up to me.

“Allow me, allow me, my friend; allow me, allow me. Not like that, not like that. Think whom you’re addressing⁠—Mark the Magnificent himself. Well, you haven’t got the faintest notion how subordinates in ancient Rome addressed their supreme chief. Watch me; here’s the gesture.”

He shot his right leg forward half a pace, bent his trunk at a right angle, and hung down his right arm, after manipulating his palm into the shape of a little boat.

“Do you see what the gesture is? Do you understand? Repeat.”

I repeated, but with me the gesture proved so stupid and ugly that I decided on a timid objection:

“I beg your pardon, but it seems to me that military training⁠ ⁠… it generally avoids somehow the bent position⁠ ⁠… and, apart from that, there’s a stage direction⁠ ⁠… he comes out in his armour⁠ ⁠… and you will admit that in armour⁠ ⁠…”

“Kindly be quiet!” Samoilenko shouted angrily; he had become purple. “If the manager orders you to stand on one foot with your tongue out, you must obey in absolute silence. Kindly repeat.”

I repeated and the effect was still more grotesque. But at this point Lara-Larsky came to my rescue.

“Leave it alone, Boris,” he said weariedly to Samoilenko. “Can’t you see that he isn’t up to it? And apart from this, as you know yourself, history gives us no direct indications. The question⁠ ⁠… hum⁠ ⁠… is debatable.”

Samoilenko left me in peace about his classical gesture. But after that he never missed a chance of knifing me, stinging me, and generally insulting me. He followed all my blunders jealously. He hated me so much that I’m sure he dreamed of me every night. For my part, even now, after ten years, this very day, as soon as I remember this man, rage surges up in me and chokes my throat. It is true that before my departure⁠ ⁠… however, I’ll tell about that later on, otherwise it will spoil the harmony of the story.

Towards the very end of the rehearsal, there suddenly appeared on the stage a tall, thin, long-nosed man, with a bowler hat and a moustache. He staggered slightly, knocking against the wings, and his eyes were exactly like a pair of pewter buttons. Everyone looked at him with disgust, but no one passed any remark.

“Who is he?” I asked Doukhovskoi in a whisper.

“Eh! A drunkard,” he answered casually. “Nelioubov-Olguine, our scene-painter. He’s a clever fellow, acts sometimes when he’s sober, but he’s a perfectly hopeless drunkard. Still, there’s no one to take his place; he’s cheap and paints scenes very quickly.”

VIII

The rehearsal ended. People were going away. The actors were joking, playing on words: Mercia-Commercia. Lara-Larsky was telling Boev meaningly to come “there.” I caught up with Valerianov in one of the alleys and, scarcely able to keep pace with his long strides, I said:

“Victor Victorovitch⁠ ⁠… I want very much to ask you for some money⁠ ⁠… if only a little.”

He stopped and seemed quite stupefied.

“What? What money? Why money? For whom?”

I began to explain my position to him, but, without hearing me to the end, he turned his back on me and went on. Then suddenly he stopped and called out:

“I say, you there⁠ ⁠… what’s your name?⁠ ⁠… Vassiliev. You’d better go to that man, your proprietor, and tell him to come and enquire for me here. I shall remain at the box-office for another half-hour. I’ll have a word with him.”

I didn’t go to the hotel, I flew to it. The Ukrainian listened with gloomy distrust; however, he put on his brown jacket and crawled slowly to the theatre. I waited for him. A quarter of an hour later he returned. His face was like a stormy cloud, and a bundle of theatre passes was sticking out of his right hand. He shoved them right under my nose and said in a muffled bass:

“There you are! I thought he’d give me coins and he gives me bits of paper. What good are they to me?”

I stood confused. However, the bits of paper had a certain utility. After long exhortations, the proprietor consented to share my belongings: he kept as a deposit my beautiful new English leather portmanteau and I took my underclothes, my passport and, what was more precious to me than anything else, my travelling notebooks. By way of goodbye, the Ukrainian asked me:

“What⁠—are you, too, going to play the fool over there?”

“Yes, I, too,” I said with dignity.

“Ho, ho, you be careful. As soon as I set eyes on you on the stage, I’ll shout out: ‘What about my twenty roubles?’ ”

For the next three days, I didn’t venture to trouble Valerianov, and slept on the little green bench with my small parcel of underclothes under my head as a pillow. Two nights, thank God, were warm; I even felt, as I lay on the bench, a dry heat mounting up from the pavement that had been well warmed during the day. But on the third night there was a fine, continuous rain and I took shelter on a doorstep and was unable to sleep till the morning. The town gardens were open at eight. I stole in behind the scenes, lay down on an old curtain, and slept soundly for two hours. Of course I came under Samoilenko’s eyes and he, at great length and stingingly, informed me that a theatre was the temple of art and not at all a dormitory or a boudoir or a dosshouse. Then I decided to overtake the manager again in the alley and ask him for some money, however little, as I had nowhere to sleep.

“I beg your pardon,” he said waving his arms apart, “what has it got to do with me? You’re not a child, are you? And in any case I’m not your nurse.”

I kept silent. His half-closed eyes wandered over the bright, sunny sand of the footpath and then he said thoughtfully:

“Suppose⁠ ⁠… look here⁠ ⁠… suppose you spend the nights in the theatre. I suggested that to the night watch, but the fool was afraid.”

I thanked him.

“But only on one condition. No smoking in the theatre. If you want to smoke, go out into the gardens.”

After that I was guaranteed a sleeping place under a roof. Sometimes, in the daytime, I would go some three miles along the river and wash my clothes in a modest little corner and dry them on the branches of the willows. My linen was of great help to me. From time to time I would go to the bazaar and sell there a shirt or something. On the twenty or thirty kopecks acquired in this way I would feed myself for two whole days. Things were taking visibly a favourable turn for me. Once I even managed, in a happy moment, to get a rouble out of Valerianov and immediately I dispatched a telegram to Ilia:

“Dying from hunger. Wire money C. Theatre.⁠—Leontovitch.”

IX

The second rehearsal was the full-dress one. In this, by the way, I was stuck for two new roles: that of an ancient Christian and that of Tigellius. I accepted them without a murmur.

Our tragedian, Timofeev-Soumskoi, took part in this. He was a broad-shouldered man, about five feet high, no longer young, with red curly hair, the whites of his eyes sticking out, and with a pockmarked face⁠—a regular butcher, or rather an executioner. He had an enormous voice and he acted in an old-fashioned, hectoring manner.

He didn’t know his lines at all (he was taking the part of Nero), and he had difficulty even in reading it from his copybook with the aid of his powerful spectacles. When people said to him: “You ought to study your part just a little, Fedot Pamfylytch,” he would reply in a low octavo:

“Oh, let it go. It’ll do. I’ll stand near the prompter. It isn’t the first time. In any case the public understands nothing. The public’s a fool.”

He was constantly having trouble with my name. He simply couldn’t pronounce “Tigellius,” but called me either Tigelini or Tinegil. Every time that he was corrected, he would bark out:

“Let it go. Rot. I’m not going to fill my brain with rubbish.”

If he had a difficult phrase or several foreign words coming together, he would simply cross it out in pencil in his book and declare:

“I’m cutting that.”

However, everyone used to cut. From the soup of our play there remained only the thickness. Out of the long role of Tigellius there survived in the end only one reply.

Nero asks:

“Tigellius, in what state are the lions?”

And I answer on my knees:

“Divine Caesar, Rome has never seen such wild beasts. They are ravenous and ferocious.”

That was all.

The opening night arrived. The theatre was crammed. Outside, round the barriers, the crowd of the non-paying public was thick and black. I was nervous.

My God, how horribly they all acted! Just as if they had all acquiesced in Timofeev’s verdict, “The public’s a fool.” Every word, every gesture, recalled something old-fashioned, which has become stale through the repetition of generations. These servants of art seemed to me to have at their disposal altogether about two dozen intonations, learned by heart, and about three dozen gestures, also learned by heart, as, for example, the one that Samoilenko fruitlessly tried to teach me. And I was wondering how it was, through what moral fall had these people become so lost to all shame of their faces, of their bodies, of their movements!

Timofeev-Soumskoi was magnificent. Leaning over the right side of the throne, during which process his extended left leg protruded right into the middle of the stage, his fool’s crown all awry, he was fixing the mobile whites of his eyes on the prompter’s box and yelling in such a way that the little urchins behind the barriers shrieked with delight. Naturally he didn’t remember my name. He simply bawled at me like a Russian merchant at the Russian baths:

“Teliantin! Bring along my lions and tigers. Qui‑ick!”

I submissively swallowed my reply and went. Of course, the worst of the lot was Mark the Magnificent, Lara-Larsky, because he was more shameless, careless, trivial, and self-confident than the others. Instead of pathos he gave shrieks, instead of tenderness, sickliness. Through the authoritative speeches of a Roman patrician there peeped out the chief of a Russian fire-brigade. But then Adrossova was really beautiful. Everything about her was charming: her inspired face, delightful arms, her elastic, musical voice, even her long wavy hair which, in the last scene, she let loose over her shoulders. She acted just as simply, naturally, and beautifully as a bird sings.

With real artistic delight, sometimes even with tears, I followed her through the small holes in the cloth background of the stage. But I did not foresee that a few minutes later she would touch me, not artistically but in a quite different manner.

In this play I was so multi-figured that really the management might have added, in their advertisement list, to the names of Petrov, Sidorov, Grigoriev, Ivanov and Vassiliev, the names of Dmitriev and Alexandrov. In the first act, I appeared first of all as an old man with a white robe and with a hood on my head; then I ran behind the scenes, threw off my things and came on again as a centurion with armour and a helmet, my feet naked; then I disappeared again and crawled out as the ancient Christian. In the second act, I was a centurion and a slave. In the third act, two new slaves. In the fourth, a centurion and someone else’s two new slaves. I was also a steward and a new slave. Then I was Tigellius and, finally, a voiceless knight who with an imperative gesture indicates to Marcia and Mark the way to the arena where they are going to be eaten by lions.

Even the simpleton, Akimenko, tapped me on the shoulder and said amiably:

“Devil take it, you are a quick-change artist and no mistake!”

But I earned this praise at too great cost. I could scarcely stand on my feet.

The performance was over. The caretaker was putting out the lights. I was walking about the stage waiting for the last actors to remove their makeup so that I might be able to lie down on my old threadbare sofa. I was also thinking of that morsel of fried liver which was hanging in my little corner between the property room and the general dressing-room. (For since the rats robbed me of a piece of bacon I used to hang all eatables on a string.) Suddenly I heard a voice behind me:

“Good night, Vassiliev.”

I turned round. Androssova was standing with her hand stretched out; her delightful face looked tired.

I must say that in the whole troupe she alone, not counting the insignificant ones, Doukhovskoi and Nelioubov-Olguine, used to shake hands with me (the others despised me). And even to this day I can recall the open, kindly, genuine way in which she shook hands like a woman and a comrade at the same time.

I took her hand. She looked at me attentively and said:

“Listen. Aren’t you ill? You look bad.” And she added in a lower tone: “Perhaps you’re in need of money?⁠ ⁠… eh?⁠ ⁠… may I lend it?⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh no, no, thank you,” I interrupted her with feeling. And suddenly, yielding to the rush of emotion with which her acting had thrilled me, I exclaimed with fire:

“How beautiful you were tonight!”

Probably the compliment, by its sincerity, was a little unusual. She blushed with pleasure, lowered her eves and said laughingly:

“I’m so glad that I gave you pleasure.”

I kissed her hand respectfully. But at that instant a woman’s voice shouted:

“Androssova! Where are you? Come along, we’re waiting for you for supper.”

“Good night, Vassiliev,” she said simply and kindly. Then she shook her head, and just as she was leaving, murmured scarcely audibly: “Ah, you poor one, you poor one⁠ ⁠…”

No, I didn’t feel at all poor at that moment. But it seemed to me that if, in saying goodbye, she had brushed my forehead with her lips, I should have died from happiness.

X

I wasn’t long in taking the measure of the whole troupe. I confess that even before my involuntary actor’s career I never had a high opinion of the provincial stage. But, thanks to Ostrovsky, my idea of acting folk was that, though rough in externals, they were kindly and large in their hearts, happy-go-lucky people, but devoted to art in their way and full of esprit de corps. But now I perceived that the stage was held quite simply by a band of shameless men and women.

They were all heartless, treacherous, and envious of each other, without the slightest respect for beauty and creative power⁠—in a word, base, insensitive souls. And, on the top of it all, they were people of dumbfounding ignorance and deep indifference, hysterical hypocrites, cold liars, with crocodile tears and theatrical sobs, stubbornly stunted slaves⁠—always ready to crawl before their superiors and patrons. It was not without point that Chekhov said once: “There is only one person more hysterical than the actor⁠—it is the constable. See how they both stand in front of a buffet on a bank holiday, make speeches and weep.”

But theatrical traditions were kept up immovably among us. Someone or other, before going on the stage, had the habit of making the sign of the cross. The story of this spread. And each of our principals, before his entrance, would not fail to go through the same performance, looking round sideways while he was doing it to see if anyone was watching him or not. And if they are watching he imagines them to be saying to themselves: “How superstitious he is! What an original creature!”

One of these prostitutes of art, with a goat’s voice and fat thighs, once beat the tailor and, on another occasion, the barber. This also became an established tradition. I have often watched Lara-Larsky throwing himself about the stage with bloodshot eyes, foaming at the mouth, and shouting hoarsely:

“Give me this tailor. I will kill him, this tailor.”

And then, after having struck the tailor and, deep down in his soul, expecting and fearing a return blow, he would stretch his hands out backwards and roar:

“Hold me, hold me, or I shall become in reality a murderer!”

But then how profoundly they would discuss “the holy art” and the theatre! I remember one clear, green July day. Our rehearsal had not commenced. It was rather dark and cool on the stage. Of the principals, Lara-Larsky and his theatrical wife, Medvedieva, had arrived before the others. A few girls and schoolboys were sitting in the pit. Lara-Larsky walked backwards and forwards across the stage. He seemed preoccupied. Apparently he was thinking out some profound new type. Suddenly his wife addressed him:

“Sasha, please whistle that motive that we heard in Paillasse yesterday.”

He stopped short, looked her up and down from head to foot, and said in the actor’s velvety baritone, glancing sideways at the pit:

“Whistle? On the stage? Ha-ha-ha!” (He laughed the actor’s bitter laugh.) “And it’s you who tell me to do this? But don’t you know that the stage is a temple, an altar on which we lay all our best thoughts and hopes? And then suddenly to whistle! Ha-ha-ha.”

All the same, to this very altar, in the ladies’ dressing-rooms, the local cavalry officers and the rich, idle, landed proprietors used to come exactly as they would come to rooms in a maison de tolérance. Of course we weren’t touchy about this sort of thing. How often have I seen something like this: Inside the vineyard arbour a light would be burning, a woman’s laugh could be heard, the click of spurs, the tinkling of champagne glasses, while the theatrical husband, like a sentry on patrol, would be walking backwards and forwards on the path near the entrance, waiting in the darkness and wondering if he would or would not be invited. And the waiter, bringing in the fish au gratin on a highly-lifted tray, would jog against him with his elbow and say dryly:

“Step aside, sir.”

And when he is invited, he will fuss and drink vodka and beer and vinegar while he tells dirty anecdotes about Jewish life.

But all the same they used to talk hotly and proudly about art. Timofeev-Soumskoi, more than once, lectured us on the lost “classic gesture of exit.”

“The classic gesture is lost,” he would say gloomily. “This is how an actor would leave the stage in the past. Like this.” Timofeev would stretch himself out at full length and raise his right hand with his fist clenched except for the index finger, which would stick out like a hook. “Do you see?” And with slow, enormous strides he would move to the door. “That is what was called ‘the classical gesture of exit.’ And now? One just puts one’s hands in one’s trouser-pockets and off one goes home. That’s about it now, my friends.”

Sometimes they took a fancy for innovations on their own account. Lara-Larsky would interpret his role of Gogol’s Khlestakov like this:

“No, allow me. I interpret this scene with the town bailiff in this way. The town bailiff says that the room is rather dark. And I answer, ‘Yes, if you want to read something, for example, Maxim Gorky, it’s impossible. It is da‑ark, da‑arkish.’ And that always gets a round.”

It was good to listen sometimes to the old ones, when they were a little drunk; for instance, Timofeev-Soumskoi talking with Gontcharov.

“Yes, old pal, we don’t get the same kind of actor nowadays. No, no, it isn’t the same.”

“It’s a fact, my boy, it isn’t the same. Do you remember Tcharsky and Lioubovsky?⁠ ⁠… Eh?”

“The old traditions are lost.”

“It’s the fault of Petersburg, It isn’t the same. They don’t respect any longer the sacredness of art. All the same, you and I, we were priests in the temple, but these others⁠ ⁠… Eh?⁠ ⁠… let’s drink, old man.”

“And do you remember Ivan Kozlovsky?”

“Ah, let it alone, don’t revive an old sore. Let’s drink. What can they do, the people of today?”

“Yes, what can they do?”

“Wha‑at can they do?”

And there, in the midst of this mixture of triviality, stupidity, swindling, mannerisms, bragging, ignorance, and depravity, Androssova alone truthfully served art. Androssova⁠—clean, charming, beautiful, and talented. Now that I am older, I understand that she was no more conscious of this filth than the white, beautiful corolla of a flower is conscious that its roots are being fed by the slime of a marsh.

XI

The plays were produced at express speed. Short dramas and comedies would be given one rehearsal. The Death of Ivan the Terrible and The New World would be given two. Ismael, the composition of M. Boukharine, required three rehearsals, thanks only to the fact that about forty supers from the local commands, the garrison, the army transport, and the fire brigade took part in it.

I remember particularly well the performance of The Death of Ivan the Terrible, because of a stupid and amusing incident. Timofeev-Soumskoi was taking the part of Ivan. In his long brocade robe and his pointed dogskin hat he looked like a moving obelisk. In order to give the terrible tzar a little more ferocity, he kept protruding his lower jaw and dropping his thick underlip, rolling his eyes about, and bellowing as he had never bellowed before. Of course he knew nothing about his part and read it in such verse that even the actors, who were long inured to the fact that the public is a fool and understands nothing, were startled. But he particularly distinguished himself in the scene where Ivan, in an attack of repentance, kneels and confesses before the boyards: “My mind has clouded,” etc.

And when he came to the words, “like a reeking cur⁠ ⁠…” it goes without saying that his eyes were all the time on the prompter’s box. In the hearing of the whole house he said, “like⁠—” and then stopped.

“Like a reeking cur,” whispered the prompter.

“Like,” roared Timofeev.

“Like a cur⁠ ⁠…”

“Like⁠ ⁠…”

“Like a reeking cur⁠ ⁠…”

In the end he succeeded in getting through the text, but he showed not the slightest confusion or shame. But as for me⁠—I was standing near the throne at the time⁠—I was seized with an irresistible attack of laughter.

It always happens like this; when you know that you must not laugh, it will be exactly then that you will be mastered by this convulsive, wretched laughing. I realised quickly that the best thing to do was to hide at the back of the throne and there laugh it out to my heart’s content. I turned round and walked in a solemn, boyard-like manner, hardly able to keep my face straight. I got round the throne and there⁠ ⁠… I saw two of the actresses pressing against the back of it, shaken and choking with suppressed laughter. This was more than I could endure. I ran behind the scenes, fell on the stage sofa⁠—my sofa⁠—and began to roll on it.⁠ ⁠… Samoilenko, who always jealously followed me, docked me five roubles for that.

On the whole, this performance was rich in incidents. I forgot to say that we had an actor named Romanov, a tall, very handsome, representative young fellow, for the loud and majestic secondary parts. But, unfortunately, he was so extremely shortsighted that he had to wear glasses of a quite special kind. Without his pince-nez he would be everlastingly knocking against something on the stage, upsetting the columns, the vases, and the armchairs, getting entangled in the carpets and falling down. He was already famous for the fact that, in another town and in another strolling company, when acting the knight in La Princesse Lointaine, he fell down and rolled in his tin armour, rattling like an enormous samovar, into the footlights. In The Death of Ivan the Terrible Romanov surpassed himself. He broke into the house of Shuisky, where the plotters had gathered, with such impetuosity that he upset a long bench on which the boyards were all sitting.

These boyards were delightful. They were all recruited from the young Karaim Jews who were employed at the local tobacco factory. I ushered them on to the stage. I am not tall, but the tallest of them was only up to my shoulder. One half of these illustrious boyards was dressed in Caucasian costumes with kaftans, and the other half in long jackets which had been hired from a local choir. On their youthful faces were fastened black beards, their black eyes shone, their mouths were enthusiastically open, their movements awkward and shy. The audience neighed heartily at our solemn entrance.

Owing to the fact that we produced a fresh play every day, our theatre was rather well patronised. The officers and the landed proprietors came for the actresses. Apart from them, a box ticket was sent every day to Kharitonenko. He himself came seldom, not more than twice during the whole season, but on each occasion he sent a hundred roubles. On the whole, the theatre wasn’t doing so badly. And if the young actors received no salary, it was thanks to the delicate calculations of Valerianov. The manager was like the coachman who used to dangle a wisp of hay in front of his hungry jade’s muzzle to make him run faster.

XII

On one occasion⁠—I don’t remember why⁠—there was no performance. The weather was bad. At ten o’clock that night I was already on my sofa, listening in the dark to the drumming of the rain on the wooden roof.

Suddenly I heard a rustling somewhere behind the scenes, then steps, then the crash of falling chairs. I lit a candle-end and went out to investigate the sounds, only to see the drunken Nelioubov-Olguine who was helplessly groping between the scenery and the wall of the theatre. On catching sight of me, he was not alarmed, but expressed a tranquil surprise.

“Wh⁠—at the d⁠—d⁠—evil are you doing here?”

I explained to him in a few words. He thrust his hands into his pockets, nodded with his long nose, and swayed from his heels to the tips of his toes for some time. Then he suddenly lost his balance, but recovered it, moved a few steps forward and said:

“And why not come with me?”

“We scarcely know each other.⁠ ⁠…”

“Rubbish! Come along.”

He took my arm and we went off together. From that hour to the very end of my career as an actor I shared with him his dark, tiny room which he rented from the ex-police inspector of C⁠⸺. This notorious drunkard, the object of the whole troupe’s hypocritical scorn, showed himself to be a kind, quiet man, a true comrade, possessed of much inner delicacy of feeling. But he had in his heart a kind of sickly, incurable wound⁠—the work of a woman. I could never get at the reality of his romance. When drunk, he would often drag out from his travelling basket the portrait of a woman, not very beautiful, but not ugly either, slightly squint-eyed, with a turned-up, provoking little nose. She looked to me a provincial. He would either kiss this photograph or fling it on the floor, press it to his heart or spit on it, place it against the icons in the corner or pour candle-grease over it. I could never make out which of them had thrown the other over, or who the children were of whom he spoke, his, hers, or someone else’s.

Neither he nor I had any money. Long ago he had obtained from Valerianov a rather large sum to send her, and now he was in a condition of bond-service which simple honour prevented him from evading. Occasionally he would earn a few kopecks from the local signboard artist. But his source of increment was a great secret from the rest of the troupe; how would Lara-Larsky have tolerated such an insult to art?

Our landlord, the retired police inspector, a fat, red-cheeked man, with a moustache and a double chin, was a very benevolent person. Every morning and evening, after they had finished tea in his house, a newly-filled samovar, a teapot with the tea previously used, and as much black bread as we wished, was sent to us. We used to be quite satisfied.

The retired police inspector would take a nap after dinner and then come out in his dressing-gown with his pipe and sit on the steps. Before going to the theatre, we would sit near him. The conversation was invariably the same: his misfortunes in the service, the injustice of his superiors, and the base intrigues of his enemies. He always asked us for advice as to how he was to write a letter to the principal newspapers, so that his innocence might triumph and the governor, and the vice-governor, with the present district inspector, and that scoundrel the inspector of the second section, who was the main cause of all his misfortunes, might be hounded from their posts. We would make different suggestions, but he would only sigh, frown, shake his head, and repeat:

“Eh, not that⁠ ⁠… not that, not that. There, if I could find a man with a pen; it’s a pen that I must find. I wouldn’t spare any money.”

And he, the rascal, had money. Once on entering his room I found him sorting his securities. He was slightly contused, rose from his chair, and hid the papers behind him with the help of his open dressing-gown. I am quite convinced that during his period of service there were many things to his credit: acceptance of bribes, extortions, the misuse of power, and other deeds of the sort.

At night, after the performance, Nelioubov and I would often wander about the gardens. In the quiet, lit-up gardens there were everywhere little white tables on which the candles burned unwaveringly in their glass shades. Men and women, somehow or other in a festive atmosphere, smiled and leaned towards each other significantly and coquettishly. The sand rustled under the light steps of women.

“What about landing a little fish,” Nelioubov would sometimes say in his hoarse bass voice, looking sideways at me slyly.

That sort of thing annoyed me at first. I always hated this eager, noble readiness of garden actors to paste themselves on to the dinners and lunches of strangers, these kind, moist, hungry dog’s eyes, these baritones at table with their unnaturally detached manners, their universal knowledge of gastronomy, their forced attentiveness, their habitual authoritative familiarity with the waiters. But afterwards, when I got to know Nelioubov better, I understood that he was only joking. This odd fellow was proud and extremely touchy in his way.

But a funny and slightly discreditable incident happened which caught my friend and me in a culinary net. It happened like this:

We were the last to leave the dressing-room after the performance when suddenly, from somewhere behind the scenes, there jumped out on to the stage a certain Altshiller, a local Rothschild, a Jew, still young but already fat, with very airy manners⁠—a rosy-cheeked man, of the sensual type, covered with rings and chains and trinkets. He threw himself at us.

“Good gracious! I’ve been running about for the last half hour. I’m dead beat. Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, if you’ve seen Volkova and Bogoutcharskaia?”

As a matter of fact, immediately after the performance, we had seen these actresses drive off with some dragoon officers, and we amiably imparted the news to Altshiller, He caught his head between his hands and threw himself about the stage:

“But this is shameful! I’ve ordered the supper. No, this is really the limit! To give one’s word, to promise and⁠ ⁠… What do you call that, gentlemen, I ask you?”

We were silent.

He made a few more contortions on the stage, then stopped, hesitated, scratched his head nervously, smacked his lips thoughtfully, and said suddenly, in a decided manner:

“Gentlemen, may I ask you to have supper with me?”

We refused.

But he would take no refusal. He stuck to us like glue. He threw himself first at Nelioubov and then at me, shook our hands, looked appealingly into our eyes, and assured us with warmth that he was devoted to art. Nelioubov was the first to give way.

“Oh, the devil! Let’s go, what about it!”

Maecenas led us to the main platform and began bustling about. He chose the most conspicuous place, got us seated, and kept jumping up, running after the waiters, waving his arms and, after drinking a glass of kümmel, pretended to be a desperate debauchee. His bowler hat was all on one side, to give him an air of wickedness.

“Try a little cucumber! How does one put it in Russian? Isn’t it that without a little cucumber no festivity is possible? Try a little vodka. Do eat. Go ahead, I beg of you. And perhaps you’d like some Bœuf à la Stroganof? It’s excellent at this place. Here, waiter!”

From a large piece of hot roast beef I became drunk, as though from wine. My eyes were closing. The verandah with its lights, the blue tobacco smoke, and the fantastic gallop of talk, kept flowing past me, and I could hear as in a dream:

“Please eat a little more, gentlemen.⁠ ⁠… Don’t be on ceremony. Really I don’t know what to do with myself, I am so devoted to art.”

XIII

But the dénouement was near at hand. My fare of black bread and tea was undermining my health. I became irritable, and often, in order to keep myself in hand, I would run away from the rehearsal to some remote corner in the gardens. Besides, I had long ago exhausted my stock of underclothes.

Samoilenko continued to torment me. You know how it is sometimes at a boarding-school, when a master, for no reason at all, suddenly gets his knife into some poor little wretch of a pupil. He will hate him for the pallor of his face, because his ears stick out, because he shrugs his shoulders unpleasantly, and this hate will last for years. This is exactly how Samoilenko behaved towards me. He had already managed to fine me fifteen roubles altogether, and during rehearsals he would speak to me as though he were the head of a prison addressing a convict. Sometimes, as I listened to his insolent remarks, I would lower my eyelids and would then see fiery circles in front of my eyes. As for Valerianov, he had stopped speaking to me at all, and when we met he would bolt like an ostrich. I had been with him a month and a half already and had received exactly one rouble.

One morning I woke up with a headache, with a metallic taste in my mouth, and in my soul a black, heavy, unreasoned anger. In this frame of mind I went to the rehearsal.

I don’t remember what we were acting, but I remember well that there was a thick rolled up copybook in my hand. I knew my part, as usual, perfectly. It contained the words: “I have deserved this.”

And when the play got to this passage I said:

“I have deserved this.”

But Samoilenko ran up to me and bawled out:

“Who speaks Russian like this? Whoever speaks like this? ‘I have deserved this!’ One says: ‘I have deserved for this.’ Mediocrity!”

Growing white I stretched the copybook out to him with these words:

“Kindly look at the text.”

But he shouted out in a guttural voice:

“To hell with your text! I myself am your text. If you don’t want to keep your job here, you may go to the devil.”

I quickly raised my eyes to his. Suddenly he understood everything, became as pale as I was, and moved back quickly two steps. But it was already too late. With the heavy rolled copybook I struck him heavily and loudly on the left cheek and on the right, then again on the left, and then on the right again, and again, and again. He made no resistance, did not even duck, did not even try to run away, but, at each blow, only switched his head to left and right, like a clown who plays at being surprised. Finally I flung the copybook in his face and left the stage for the gardens. Nobody stopped me.

And then the miracle happened. The first person that I saw in the gardens was a little messenger-boy from the local branch of the Volga-Kama bank. He was asking for Leontovitch and handed me a notification of five hundred roubles, that were waiting for me at the bank.

An hour later Nelioubov and I were already in the gardens ordering a gigantic lunch, and two hours later the whole troop was drinking my health in champagne and congratulating me. On my honour, it wasn’t I but Nelioubov who had spread the news that I had come in for sixty thousand roubles. I didn’t contradict it. A little later Valerianov swore to me that business was going to the dogs and I made him a present of a hundred roubles.

At five o’clock that evening I was at the station. In my pocket, apart from my ticket to Moscow, I had only seventy roubles, but I felt like an emperor. When, after the second bell, I was getting into my compartment, Samoilenko, who, up to now, had kept his distance, came up to me.

“Forgive; I was hotheaded,” he said theatrically.

I pressed his outstretched hand and answered amiably: “Forgive, I too was hotheaded.”

They gave me a farewell cheer. I exchanged the last kindly glance with Nelioubov, The train started and everything receded never to return. And when the last of the little blue huts of the outskirts began to disappear and the mournful, yellow, burnt-out steppe stretched itself endlessly⁠—a strange sadness tugged at my heart, as if there, in that scene of my misfortunes, sufferings, hunger, and humiliations, had remained forever a particle of my soul.

I

It was before dinner and Dr. Iliashenko had just finished bathing with a student named Voskresenski. The warm, southeast wind had whipped the sea into eddies. Close to the shore, the water was murky and had a sharp smell of fish and sea-plants. The hot, swinging waves did not cool and refresh one’s body, but on the contrary, fatigued and unnerved it still more.

“Come on out, my colleague,” the doctor exclaimed as he splashed a handful of water over his own large white stomach. “We shall get faint if we go on bathing like this.”

From the bathing-machine, they had to climb up the mountain along a narrow path which was laid in friable black slate, zigzag fashion, covered with small rough oak and pale green sea-cole heads. Voskresceski climbed up easily, his long muscular legs moving in spacious strides. But the fat doctor, who wore a wet towel instead of a hat, succumbed to the heat and to his asthma. He came to a dead stop at last with his hand on his heart, shaking his head and breathing laboriously.

“Phew! I can’t stick it any longer. I’d almost rather be back in the water. Let’s stop for a minute.”

They halted in a flat circle between two joints of the path, and both of them turned round to face the sea.

Flogged by the wind, now dazzlingly lit up by the sun, now shadowed by clouds⁠—it was a medley of patches of colour. By the shore, the white foam melted into a large fringe of tulle lace on the sand; further out ran a dirty ribbon of light chocolate colour, still further lay a miserable green band, all wrinkled up and furrowed by the crests of the waves, and last of all⁠—the powerful, tranquil bluishness of the deep sea with those fantastically bright spots⁠—sometimes of deep purple, sometimes of a tender malachite colour, with unexpected shining pieces like ice covered with snow. The whole of this living mosaic seemed to be belted at the horizon by the black, quiet, motionless ribbon of the shoreless distance.

“All the same, it’s good, isn’t it?” said the doctor. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it? Eh?”

He stretched out his short arm, fat like an infant’s, and with widespread fingers theatrically stroked, as it were, the course of the sea.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Voskresenski answered with a half-affected yawn, “but one soon gets sick of it. It’s just decoration.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve eaten it. There’s a yarn about that sort of thing,” Iliashenko explained. “A soldier came home to his village after the war. Well, of course, he lies like an elephant and the village folk were naturally wonder-struck: ‘We went,’ says he, ‘to the Balkans, that is to say, into the very clouds, right into the middle of them.’ ‘Oh, dear, have you really been in the clouds?’ The soldier answered indifferently: ‘Well, what are the clouds to us? We ate them the same as jelly.’ ”

Dr. Iliashenko loved telling stories, particularly those from the life of the people and from Jewish life. Deep down in his heart, he thought that it was only through a caprice of destiny that he had not become an actor. At home he would madden his wife and children with Ostrovski, and, when paying his patients a visit, he liked to recite Nikitine’s “The Driver,” for which he would unfailingly rise to his feet, turn a chair round, and lean on its back with his hands turned outwards. He read in the most unnatural, internal voice, as though he were a ventriloquist, under the impression that this was how a Russian muzhik would speak.

After telling the story about the soldier he immediately burst out into a free, boisterous laugh. Voskresenski forced himself to smile.

“You see, doctor, the south⁠ ⁠…” he began in his jaded way, as though he had difficulty in choosing his words. “I’m not fond of the south. Here everything⁠ ⁠… somehow or other⁠ ⁠… is oily⁠ ⁠… somehow⁠ ⁠… I don’t know⁠ ⁠… excessive. Look at that magnolia⁠ ⁠… but forgive me for asking, is it a plant? It seems as if it had been made up out of cardboard, painted green, and varnished at the top. Then look at Nature here. The sun goes up from the sea, we have the heat, in the evening it goes over the mountains and it is night at once. No birds! Nothing of our northern dawn with the smell of young grass in it, nothing of the poetry, of twilight with the beetles, the nightingales, the stamp of cattle trotting in the dust. It’s all opera scenery, but it isn’t Nature.”

“In your hou⁠ ⁠… se,” the doctor sang in a hoarse little tenor. “Of course you are a Moscow town bird.”

“And these moonlit nights, deuce take them!” Voskresenski continued, as old thoughts which, up till now, he had kept to himself, stirred in him with new force. “It’s a perfect torment. The sea is glossy, the stones are glossy, the trees are glossy. It’s a regular oleography; the stupid cicadas squall; you can’t hide from the moon. It’s sickening, and somehow or other you get agitated as if someone were tickling you in the nose with a straw.”

“What a barbarian you are! Why, in that Moscow of yours they’re having twenty-five degrees of frost, and even the policemen are almost frozen, while here the roses are in full bloom and one can bathe.”

“And I don’t like the southern people either,” the student went on, following stubbornly his own thoughts. “Rotten little people, lazy, sensual, with narrow foreheads, sly, dirty; they gobble up any sort of filth. Even their poetry is somehow or other oily and mawkish; in a word, I can’t bear them.”

The doctor pulled up again, swung his arms and made round, stupefied eyes.

“Tu-tu-tu,” he went in a long whistle. “Et tu, Brute? I catch in your words the spirit of our honoured patron. The Russian song, the Russian shirt, eh? The Russian God, and the Russian largeness? The Jews, the Sheenies, the Poles, and the other poor devils, eh?”

“That’s enough, Ivan Nikolaevitch. Stop that,” Voskresenski said curtly. His face had grown suddenly pale and wrinkled as though from toothache. “There is nothing to laugh at in this. You know my point of view very well. If I haven’t run away from this parrot, this fool, up till now, it is only because one must eat, but it’s all much more saddening than funny. It’s enough that for twenty-five roubles a month I deny myself every day the delight of expressing what suffocates me⁠—strangles my very throat, what lowers all my thoughts.”

“First rate; but why get so hot about it?”

“Oh, I’d like to tell him many things,” the student exclaimed, furiously shaking his strong fist, which was whitened by the tension of the muscles. “I’d like to⁠—Oh, this buffoon⁠ ⁠… Well, never mind⁠—we’re not strapped to each other for a century.”

Suddenly the doctor’s eyes narrowed and glittered. He took hold of Voskresenski’s arm and, leaning his head playfully against his shoulder, whispered: “Listen, my boy; why boil up like this? What sense is there in insulting Zavalishine? It will only mean a row in a noble house, as one says, just that. You had much better combine the sweetness of vengeance with the delights of love. What about Anna Georgievna⁠—eh? Or has that come off already?”

The student remained silent and tried to free his arm from the doctor’s hand. But the other pressed it still more tightly and continued to whisper, his laughing eyes playing all the time:

“You queer fellow, you’ve no notion of taste. The woman is thirty-five years old, in full bloom, all fire⁠—and her figure! Haven’t you had enough of playing Joseph? She looks at you the way a cat looks at cream. Why be too scrupulous in your own country? Remember the aphorism: A woman with experience is like a cherry picked by a sparrow⁠—it’s all the sweeter. Ah, where is my youth?” he began theatrically in a high-pitched, bleating, throaty voice. “Where is my youth? Where is my thick crop of hair, my thirty-two teeth in my mouth, my⁠—”

Voskresenski managed at last to free himself from the doctor’s clutch, but he did this so roughly that they both felt awkward.

“Forgive me, Ivan Nikolaevitch, but I simply can’t listen to such meanness. It isn’t bashfulness, it isn’t chastity, but it merely feels dirty, and⁠—speaking generally⁠—I don’t like it. I can’t⁠—”

The doctor threw up his arms mockingly and slapped his thighs: “My dear fellow, you mean that you can’t take a joke? Personally, I have the greatest respect for other people’s convictions and, honestly, I rejoice to see among the youth of today so many who look on these matters cleanly and honestly. But why can’t one joke a little without your spreading your tail like a peacock immediately? Why?”

“Forgive me,” the student said, in a muffled voice.

“Ah, my dear fellow, that’s not why I am saying all this. The fact is, you’ve got into a twitching state, the whole lot of you young fellows. Look at you, a strong man with a big chest and shoulders⁠—why, your nerves are like a schoolgirl’s. By the by, look here,” the doctor went on in a businesslike tone, “you oughtn’t to bathe quite so often, particularly in such a hot spell. Not being used to it, you know, you might bathe yourself into a serious illness. One of my patients contracted a nervous eczema through overdoses of sea-bathing.”

They were now walking along the last open stretch of the path, which had become practically smooth. To their right, the mountain rose almost to a perpendicular, while behind them, in the distance, the boiling sea seethed endlessly. To their left, bushes of dog-roses, covered with tender pink blossoms, clung to the slope, projecting above the reddish-yellow earth and the grey corked stones that resembled the backs of recumbent animals. The student was glancing at the ground between his feet with a look of angry confusion.

“It has turned out so badly,” he thought with a frown. “Yes, somehow it has turned out stupidly. As a matter of fact, the doctor’s a good sort, always attentive, patient, even-tempered. It’s true that he’s sometimes a bit of a clown, a chatterbox, reads nothing, uses bad language and has got slack, thanks to his easygoing practice at a healthresort.⁠ ⁠… But all the same, he’s a good fellow and I’ve been brusque and rude to him⁠—”

In the meanwhile, Iliashenko was carelessly knocking off with his walking-stick the little thin white flowers that smelt like bitter almonds, while he sang to himself in an undertone:

“In your hou⁠ ⁠… se I knew fi⁠ ⁠… rst
The sweetness of a pure and tender love.”

II

They turned out on to the road. Over a high white wall, as massive as that of a fortress, rose a villa, ingeniously and stridently built after the pattern of a stylish Russian gynaeceum, with seahorses and dragons on the roof, the shutters ornamented with variegated flowers and herbs, and carved doorways, with twisted little bottle-shaped colonnades on the balconies. This pretentious, gingerbread-like construction produced a ponderous and incoherent impression in the full blaze of the Crimean sky, against the background of the aerial grey-bluish mountains, amid the dark, pensive, elegant cypresses and powerful plane-trees, covered from top to bottom with plush-like moss, in proximity to the beautiful joyous sea. But the owner of the villa, Pavel Arkadievitch Zavalishine⁠—an ex-cornet of cavalry, afterwards an estate-agent, later on an attorney in a big port town in the south, and now a well-known dealer in naphtha, a shipowner, and the president of the stock exchange committee⁠—was conscious of no incongruity.

“I am a Russian, and I have the right to despise all those renaissances, rococos, and gothics,” he would shout sometimes, striking his chest. “We’re not bound by what they think abroad. We’ve had enough of that in the past. We’ve bowed down to them enough. We have our own strong, original, creative power, and for a Russian gentleman like me there is only one thing to do, and that is to spit on all this foreignness.”

The table was already laid on the enormous lower balcony. They were waiting for Zavalishine, who had just arrived from town and was changing his clothes in his bedroom. Anna Georgievna was leaning languidly back in a rocking-chair, overcome with the heat. She wore a light peignoir of Moldavian stuff, gold-embroidered with large sleeves slit up underneath almost to the shoulders. She was still very handsome, with a heavy, assured, superb beauty⁠—the beauty of a plump, well-preserved brunette of the southern type.

“Good morning, Doctor,” she said in a deep voice, and with a slight burr. “Why didn’t you guess that we wanted you yesterday? I had such a migraine.”

Without raising herself from the armchair, she lazily stretched out her hand to Ivan Nikolaevitch, while her drooping sleeve revealed her round, full shoulder with its white vaccination mark, the small blue veins in the inner curve of the elbow, and a dark, pretty little mole slightly higher up the arm. Anna Georgievna (she insisted for some reason or other on being called “Nina” instead of Anna) knew the value of her hands and liked to show them.

The doctor leaned over the outstretched hand so respectfully that she had to pull it away by force.

“You see what a gallant doctor we have,” she said as she glanced at Voskresenski with laughing, caressing eyes. “You never kiss ladies’ hands. What a bear you are! Come here, and I’ll make your tie for you. You dress goodness knows how.”

The student came up awkwardly and, as he leaned over her, he caught through the strong aroma of her perfume the smell of her hair as the light agile fingers ran round his neck.

Voskresenski was chaste in the straightforward, healthy meaning of the word. Naturally, from the time that he entered his Lycée, he could not help learning everything about the most intimate relations of the sexes, but he never dreamed of doing what his comrades boasted of openly. The tranquil, healthy blood of an old Church family showed itself in him. For all that, he had no sanctimonious, hypocritical anathemas for the “shameless men.” He would listen indifferently to what was said on the subject and he would make no protest against those little anecdotes without which no conversation is possible in Russian intellectual society.

He knew well what Anna Georgievna’s constant playfulness really meant. When saying “good morning” or “goodbye,” she would keep his hand lingeringly in her soft, feminine and, at the same time, strong, fingers. Under the mask of playfulness, she liked to ruffle his hair, sometimes called him patronisingly by the diminutive of his name, and would say in front of him risky things with a double meaning. If by any chance they were looking over an album together or happened to be leaning side by side over the balcony watching a steamer out at sea, she would always press against him with her large bust and he would feel her hot breath on his neck, while the curls of her hard hair tickled his cheek.

And she roused in the student a medley of strange, mixed feelings⁠—fear, shame, passionate desire and disgust. When he thought about her she seemed to him just as exaggerated and unnatural as southern Nature. Her eyes seemed much too expressive and liquid, her hair much too dark, her lips unnaturally bright. The lazy, backward, unprincipled, sensual southern woman could be detected in every one of her movements, in every smile. If she came too close to him he could even detect, through her clothes, the warmth oozing up from her large, over-developed body.

Two schoolboys, Voskresenski’s pupils, and three little girls were seated at the table dangling their feet. Voskresenski glanced at them sideways as he stooped, and suddenly he felt ashamed of himself, ashamed for them and particularly for their mother’s warm bare hands which were moving so close to his lips. Unexpectedly he drew himself up and said with a red face and a hoarse voice:

“Excuse me, I’ll tie it myself.”

Zavalishine was now on the balcony dressed in a fantastic national costume, a silk kaftan with a blue silk Russian shirt and high patent leather boots. This costume, which he always wore at home, made him resemble one of those provincial contractors who are so willing to exploit to the merchant-class their large Russian nature and their clothes in the Russian style. The likeness was completed by a heavy gold chain across his stomach which tinkled with dozens of trinkets.

Zavalishine came towards the group with a quick, heavy step, carrying his head high and smoothing picturesquely each side of his fluffy beard, which was turning slightly grey. As he came, the children jumped up from the table. Anna Georgievna rose slowly from her rocking-chair.

“Good morning, Ivan Nikolaevitch. Good morning, Cicero,” said Zavalishine, as he stretched out his hand carelessly to the doctor and the student. “I have kept you waiting, perhaps? Boris, grace.”

Boris, with a frightened expression, jabbered out: “Our Father, which art in Heaven.”

“Now, gentlemen,” said Zavalishine, waving towards the table. “Doctor, some vodka?”

The hors d’oeuvre were laid on a small side table. The doctor approached it, walking like a buffoon, stooping a little, bowing, clicking his heels together and rubbing his hands.

“A man was once offered some vodka,” he began, as usual trying to be funny, “and he answered ‘No, thank you; firstly, I don’t drink, secondly, it’s too early, and thirdly, I’ve had a drink already.’ ”

“Twentieth edition,” observed Zavalishine. “Have some caviar.”

He pushed over to the doctor a large wooden bucket in which a silver fish-basin of caviar was standing in ice.

“How can you drink vodka in such heat?” Anna Georgievna exclaimed, with a grimace.

Her husband looked at her solemnly, as he held to his lips a silver embossed goblet.

“There’s no harm in vodka for a Russian man,” he replied imposingly.

And the doctor, having finished his glass, quacked loudly and added in the bass voice of a deacon:

“This was in time, anyhow. Well, Pavel Arkadievitch? Does Father Meleti order a third one?”

A man in a dress suit was serving at table. Formerly he used to wear something like a coachman’s sleeveless coat, but one fine day Anna Georgievna discovered that it was improper for masters and servants to deck themselves out almost in the same costumes, and she insisted on a European dress for the footmen. On the other hand, all the dining-room furniture and ornaments displayed that restless, racking style which is called Russian decadence. Instead of a table, there was a long chest, closed on every side, and as one sat in front of it it was impossible to move one’s feet forward. One had to keep them cramped all the time, while one’s knees would be painfully knocking against the protuberances of the carved ornaments and one had to stretch to reach one’s plate. The heavy, low chairs, with high backs and widespread arms, were hard and uncomfortable, like wooden stage thrones. The wooden cans for kvass, the water-jugs and the wine ewers were of such monstrous dimensions and of such absurd shapes that one had to stand up to pour out from them. And all these things were carved, burnished, and adorned with multicoloured peacocks, fish, flowers, and the inevitable cock.

“One eats nowhere as one does in Russia,” Zavalishine began in a juicy voice, arranging his napkin in his collar with his white hairy hands. “Yes, Mr. Student, I know you don’t like to hear that, but unfortunately, that’s how it is. Take fish, to begin with. Where in the whole world will you find another Astrakan caviar? And the sterlets from Kama, the sturgeons, the salmon from the Dvina, the fish from Belozer? Be kind enough to tell me if you can find in France anything to match the Ladoga fish or the Gatchina trout. I’d just like you to find them! I beg you to do it with all my heart. Now take game: we have everything you can wish for and everything in abundance: wood-hens, heath-hens, duck, snipe, pheasants from the Caucasus, woodcocks. Then just think of our Tcherkass meat, Rostov sucking-pig, the Nijni cucumber, the Moscow milk-calf. In a word, we’ve got everything⁠ ⁠… Serguei, give me some more botvinia soup.”

Pavel Arkadievitch ate a great deal in an unpleasant and gluttonly way. He must have had hungry days in his youth, thought the student, looking at him sideways. Sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, Zavalishine would put too large a morsel into his mouth and then there would be a long torturing pause, during which he would chew with objectionable haste while he looked at his interlocutor with his eyes starting out of his head, grunting, moving his eyebrows and impatiently shaking his head and even his whole body. During such pauses, Voskresenski would lower his eyes so as to conceal his antipathy.

“Wine, Doctor?” Zavalishine offered it with careless politeness. “Let me recommend this little white label. It’s Orianda ’93. Your glass, Demosthenes.”

“I don’t drink, Pavel Arkadievitch. You’ll excuse me.”

“This is as‑ton‑ishing. A young man who doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke. It’s a bad sign.” Zavalishine suddenly raised his voice severely. “A bad sign. I’m always suspicious of a young fellow who neither drinks nor smokes. He’s either a miser or a gambler or a loose-liver. Pardon, I’m not referring to you, Mr. Empedocles. Another glass, Doctor? This is Orianda⁠—really not half a bad sort of little wine. One asks oneself why one should get from the sausage-merchants different Moselle wines and other kinds of sourness, when they make such delicious wine right at home in our own Mother Russia. Eh, what do you think, Professor?” He addressed the student in his provoking way.

Voskresenski gave a forced smile.

“Everyone to his own taste.”

“ ‘De gustibus?’ I know. I’ve had a little learning, too, in my time. Besides, somewhere or other⁠—it doesn’t matter where or how⁠—the great Dostoevsky has expressed the same idea. Wine, of course, is nothing in itself, mere Kinderspiel, but the principle is important. The principle is important, I tell you,” he suddenly shouted. “If I am a true Russian, then everything round me must be Russian. And I want to spit on the Germans and the French. And on the Jews too. Isn’t it so, Doctor? Am I not speaking the truth?”

“Ye‑es; in fact⁠—the principle⁠—that is, of course, yes,” Iliashenko said vaguely in his bass voice and with a gesture of doubt.

“I’m proud of being a Russian,” Zavalishine went on with heat. “Oh, I see perfectly that my convictions seem merely funny to you, Mr. Student, and, so to speak, barbarous. But what about it? Take me as I am. I speak my thoughts and opinions straight out, because I’m a straight man, a real Russian, who is accustomed to speaking his mind. Yes, I say, straight out to everyone: we’ve had enough of standing on our hind legs before Europe. Let her be afraid of us, not we of her. Let them feel that the last decisive powerful word is for the great, glorious, healthy Russian people and not for those cockroaches’ remains! Glory be to God⁠ ⁠…” Zavalishine suddenly crossed himself expansively, looked up at the ceiling, and gave a sob. “Thank God that you can find now more and more of those people who are beginning to understand that the short-tailed German jacket is already cracking on the mighty Russian shoulders. These people are not ashamed of their language, of their faith, of their country, and confidently they stretch out their hands to the wise Government and say: ‘Lead us.’ ”

“Paul, you’re getting excited,” Anna Georgievna remarked lazily.

“I’m not getting in the least excited,” her husband snarled angrily. “I’m only expressing what every honest Russian subject ought to think and feel. Perhaps someone is not of my opinion? Well then, let him answer me. I am ready to listen with pleasure to a different opinion. There, for instance, it seems funny to Mr. Vozdvijenski⁠ ⁠…”

The student did not raise his downcast eyes, but became pale and his nostrils quivered and dilated.

“My name is Voskresenski,” he said in a low voice.

“I beg your pardon, that’s exactly what I meant to say: Voznesenski. I beg your pardon. Well, I just ask you this: instead of making wry faces, hadn’t you better break down my arguments, show me my error, prove that I’m not right? I say this one thing: we’re spitting into our own soup. They’re selling our holy, mighty, adored country to any sort of foreign riffraff. Who manage our naphtha? The Sheenies, the Armenians, the Americans. In whose hands are the coal, the mines, the steamers, the electricity? In the hands of Sheenies, Belgians, Germans. Who have got the sugar factories? The Sheenies, the Germans, the Poles. And above all, everywhere, the Sheeny, the Sheeny, the Sheeny.⁠ ⁠… Who are our doctors? Sheenies. Who are our chemists, bankers, barristers? To Hell with the whole lot of you! The whole of our Russian literature dances to the Sheenies’ tune and never gets out of it. Why are you making such terrible eyes at me, Anitchka? You don’t know what that means? I’ll explain later. Yes, there’s point in the joke that every Sheeny is a born Russian littérateur. Oh, my goodness, the Sheenies, the Israelites, the Zionists, the Innocents oppressed, the Holy Tribe. I’ll say just this.”⁠—Zavalishine struck the edge of the table loudly and fiercely with his outstretched finger⁠—“I’ll say just this: Here, wherever you turn, you’re confronted with the mug of some noble affronted nation. Liberty, Language, National Rights. And we go into ecstasies under their noses. Oh, poor cultured Finland! Oh, unhappy enslaved Poland! Ah, the great tormented Jewish race.⁠ ⁠… Beat us, my pigeons, despise us, trample us under your feet, sit on our backs and drive! B‑ut no⁠—” Zavalishine roared in a threatening voice, growing suddenly scarlet and rolling his eyes. “No,” he repeated, striking himself on the chest with all his force. “This scandal is going to end. Up till now, the Russian people has been only scratching himself, half asleep; but tomorrow, with God’s blessing, he will awake. And then he will shake off from himself the mischievous Radical in‑tel‑lec‑tuals as a dog would a flea, and will squeeze so tightly in his mighty palm all these innocents oppressed, all these dirty little Sheenies, Ukrainians, and Poles, that the sap will spurt out from them on all sides. And to Europe he will merely say: ‘Stand up, you dog.’ ”

“Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” the doctor broke in with a voice like a gramophone.

The schoolboys, who had been frightened at first by the shouting, burst into a loud laugh at this, but Anna Georgievna said with a look of suffering:

“Paul, why do you go on like this in front of the children?”

Zavalishine drained a glass of wine at a gulp and poured out another hastily.

“Pardon, it slipped out. But I will say this, I was expressing my convictions just now, honestly and sincerely at least. Now let them⁠—that is, I meant to say, let Mr. Student here, let him refute what I say, let him convince me. I’m ready for him. It would be very much more honest than to evade it by wry little smiles.”

Voskresenski shrugged his shoulders slowly.

“I’m not smiling at all.”

“Ah! You don’t even give yourself the trouble of answering? Of course. That is the be‑s‑t of all. You stand so high above any discussion or proofs?”

“No, not in the least above. But it’s like this⁠—we’ll never understand each other. What’s the use of getting angry and spoiling one’s temper?”

“Quite so. I understand. You’re too high and mighty then?” Zavalishine was getting drunk and beginning to roar. “Ah, it’s a pity, a great pity, my precious youth. It would have been such a treat to enjoy the milk of your wisdom.”

At this instant Voskresenski raised his eyes towards Zavalishine for the first time. Suddenly he felt a wave of keen hatred for his round, light, protruding eyes, for his red nose, that seemed to be torn at the nostrils, for his white, bald, retreating forehead and his preposterous beard. And instinctively, as if against his will, he began to speak in a faint, stifled voice that was almost a stranger’s.

“You insist on dragging me into a discussion. But I assure you that it’s useless. Everything that you were good enough to express just now with such fire, I have heard and read hundreds of times. Hostility to everything European, a rancorous spite against kindred races, ecstasy before the might of the Russian fist, and so on, and soon⁠ ⁠… All this has been said, written, and preached on every doorstep. But what has the people here to do with it all, Pavel Arkadievitch?⁠—that’s what I don’t understand. That’s what I cannot understand. The people⁠—that is to say, not your valet or your porter or your workmen, but the people who composes the whole of Russia⁠—the obscure muzhik, the troglodyte, the cave man, why have you buttoned him up in your national dreams? He is silent because he is thriving. You had better not touch him. Leave him in peace. It is not for you or for me to guess at his silence⁠—”

“Allow me! My knowledge of the people is no worse than yours⁠—”

“No,” the student interrupted impertinently. “Allow me now, please. You were good enough, a few minutes ago, to reproach me for laughing at your verbiage. Well, I will tell you now that there is nothing funny in it, just as there is nothing terrible. Your ideal, the a‑all-Rus‑sian f‑ist squeezing the sap out of all the little peoples, is dangerous to no one, but is merely repulsive, like every symbol of violence. You’re not a malady, not an ulcer, you are simply an inevitable, annoying rash, a kind of measles. But your comedy of the large Russian nature, all these symbols of yours⁠—your Russian kaftan, your patriotic tears⁠—yes, all this is really funny.”

“Ah, excellent. Go on, young man, in the same spirit,” Zavalishine said caustically with a grimace on his lips. “It’s a delicious system of polemics, isn’t it. Doctor?”

For his part Voskresenski felt in his heart that he was speaking loosely, clumsily, and confusedly, but he could not stop now. In his brain there was the sensation of a strange, cold void. His feet had become slack and heavy and his heart seemed to have fallen somewhere deep down and to be quivering there and breaking from too frequent strokes.

“What does the system matter? To the devil with it!” he exclaimed, and this exclamation flew out unexpectedly in such a full, strong sound that he suddenly experienced a fierce and joyous pleasure. “I have been too silent during these two months to pick and choose a system. Yes. One is ashamed and pitiful and amused in turn at your comedy, Pavel Arkadievitch. You know the strolling minstrels who sing in the recreation gardens in summer? You know the sort of thing⁠—the hackneyed Russian song. It is something torturingly false, impudent, disgraceful. The same with you: ‘The Russian soup, the Russian kacha⁠—our mother Russia.’ Have you ever had a look at the people’s soups? Have you ever had a real taste of it? One day with something to eat, and the next day with nothing at all. Have you tasted the peasants’ bread? Have you seen their children with swollen stomachs and legs like wheels? And in your house your cook gets sixty roubles a month, and the valet wears dress clothes, and the sterliadka is steamed. That’s how you are in everything. Russian patience. Russian iron endurance. But with what horrors of slavery, on what a bloodstained road was this patience bought! It is even ludicrous! Russian invincible health⁠—give way to the shoulder there!⁠—the Russian giant strength⁠—have we got it in this huge, overworked, overstrained, famished, drunken man? And then, to cap everything, the frantic yell: ‘Down with European coats and dress clothes! Let us go back to our good, glorious, vast and picturesque Russian national clothes.’ And then, to the amusement of your servants, you masquerade in a Russian kaftan at seven roubles a yard with a moire lining. All your nationalism is silklined. My God! and when you start talking about the Russian songs, what rubbish! In it you hear the sea, and see the steppe, you catch the voice of the forest and some kind of boundless daring. But there is no truth in all this: you hear nothing, you feel nothing beyond the sick groaning or the drunken hiccup. And you do not see any kind of large steppe, because it has no existence, and there is only a sweating face distorted by torture, swollen veins, bloodshot eyes, an open, sanguinary mouth⁠ ⁠…”

“For you clergy it is easier to see from the belfry,” Zavalishine sneered scornfully.

But the student only waved him aside and went on:

“Then Russian architecture came into fashion, if you please. Carved cocks, some sort of wooden dressers, mugs, ewers, sunflowers, armchairs and benches on which it is impossible to sit, with idiotic covers. Good Lord! but don’t you feel how all this accentuates the frightful poverty of our national life, the narrowness and the lack of fantasy? A grey crepuscular creation, a Papuan architecture. A game, that’s what it is precisely. A vile game, if all this is done purposely to lead the fools and gapers by the nose; a miserable one if it is merely a fashionable fad, a sort of stupid disguise, as if the doctors in charge of a hospital were suddenly to put on hospital dressing-gowns and dance a cancan in them. That’s what it is, your Russian fashion with the moire lining.”

Something caught Voskresenski at the throat and he became silent. Now for the first time he realised that, in the course of his rambling speech, he had unconsciously risen to his feet and was banging his fists on the table.

“Perhaps you’d like to add something more, young man?” Zavalishine asked with forced politeness and in a voice of exaggerated softness. He was white, his lips were grimacing and twitching and the ends of his full beard shook visibly.

“That’s all,” the student answered in a dull tone. “There’s nothing else.⁠ ⁠…”

“Then kindly let me have the last word.” Zavalishine rose from his place and threw down his napkin.

“Convictions are convictions, and fidelity to them is a respectable virtue. But all the same, I have to answer for my children, to my country, and my Church. Yes, I am obliged to defend them from evil, from deteriorating influences. And so⁠—I ask you to forgive me⁠—but one of us, either I or you, will have to retire from their education.”

Voskresenski made a sign with his head without speaking. Pavel Arkadievitch wheeled round sharply and left the table with long strides. But he stopped at the door. He was stifling with rage. He felt that the student had shown a moral superiority in this absurd discussion, a superiority obtained, not by conviction of thought, not by arguments, but by a youthful, untrammelled and, though nonsensical, a beautiful passion. And he wanted, before leaving the room, to give the tutor the last insult, a heavier one, with more sting in it.⁠ ⁠…

“My man will bring you the money due to you upstairs,” he said through his nose in a jerky, self-satisfied way. “And also, as arranged, your journey money.”

And he went out, banging the door so noisily that the cut glass rang and vibrated on the table.

For a long time everyone was awkwardly silent on the balcony.

Voskresenski, with cold trembling fingers, was making bread pills as he bent low over the table. It seemed to him that even little six-year-old Vavotchka was looking at him with curiosity and contemptuous pity.

Shall I go after him and slap his face? Challenge him to a duel? How badly and miserably it has all turned out! Shall I give him back his money? Throw it in his face? Faugh! what a miserable business.

All these reflections flashed at random through his brain.

“Dear Sachenka,” Anna Georgievna spoke in a caressing voice as if to a child, “don’t attach any importance to this. It really isn’t worth it. In an hour he will admit that he was wrong, and he’ll apologise. To tell you the truth, you, too, said a good deal to him.”

He made no answer. He wanted, more than anything in the world, to get up at once and go somewhere far away, to hide in some dark, cool corner; but a complex, torturing indecision chained him to his place. The doctor began to speak about something or other too loudly and in an unnatural, detached tone. “That’s because he’s ashamed on my account,” Voskresenski thought to himself, and he listened, scarcely understanding the words:

“One of my acquaintances who knows Arabic very well used to compare Arabian sayings with our Russian ones. There are some most curious parallels. For instance, the Arabs say: ‘Honesty is a diamond, which makes a pauper the Sultan’s equal.’ And in Russian it comes out: ‘What about honesty if there’s nothing to eat?’ The same about hospitality. The Arabian proverb says⁠ ⁠…”

Voskresenski rose suddenly. Without looking at anyone, his eyes downcast, he went awkwardly round the table and rushed across the balcony to the flower garden, where there was a sweet and heavy scent of roses. Behind him, he could hear Anna Georgievna’s troubled voice:

“Sachenka, Alexander Petrovitch, where are you going? We’re having dessert at once⁠ ⁠…”

III

In his room upstairs, Voskresenski changed his clothes, pulled out from under the bed his old reddish box plastered all over with labels, and began to pack. Into it he flung furiously books and lectures, squeezed in his linen, crumpled anyhow in his precipitation, and furiously tightened the ropes and straps. As his physical force, whipped up by the recent explosion of still unsatisfied anger, was spending itself, he became slightly cooler and calmer.

His packing finished, he drew himself up and looked round. All of a sudden he regretted leaving his room, as if in it he were leaving a part of himself. As soon as he woke up in the morning, he had only to raise his head from the pillow to see right in front of him the dark blue stripe of the sea just level with the windows. The light, pink, transparent blind would be gently trembling from the breeze and the whole room would be so full of morning light, so impregnated by a strong and invigorating sea air, that in the early days, on waking up, the student used often to laugh aloud from some inner unconscious joy of life.

Voskresenski went on to the balcony. Far out in front, a long narrow cape, rounded at the end, jutted out into the sea. This rounded part was called the Battery, and behind it, circling it sharply, a small steamer was heading out to sea. Its panting snorts, like the heavy breathing of a dog, could be heard distinctly. Under the white awning, dark human figures were distinguishable. The steam-launch rocked a little, but boldly clambered up each wave and rolled over it, tucking its nose gallantly into the next, while the severed water washed over its deck. And still further out, as if midway between the shore and the horizon, the black, powerful mass of a huge steamer, with funnels bent behind, was moving with perfect balance noiselessly and evenly. And there came to Voskresenski in that moment, as through a tiny little cloud of invading sorrow, that delightful, audacious longing which he always experienced when thinking of long journeys, new impressions, new faces, all the limitless stretch of the young untasted life that lay before him.

“Tomorrow, I, too, shall find myself on board ship with others. I’ll make fresh acquaintances, look at new shores, at the sea,” he thought to himself. “It’s good.”

“Sachenka, where are you? Come here.” It was Anna Georgievna’s voice.

He returned quickly to his room, buttoning on the way the collar of his Russian shirt, and arranging his hair. A formless, vague fright, a sort of dark, enervating presentiment stirred for an instant in his soul.

“I’m tired,” Anna Georgievna was saying, slightly out of breath. “How nice it is in here, so cool.”

She sat down on the ledge of the window. Against the background of the dazzling whitish-blue sky and the deep blue of the sea beneath, the short, full figure, in its white peignoir, outlined itself with a soft and elegant precision. Her rough, reddish curls lit up her head in that light with a deep golden gleam.

“Well, what is it, my angry sparrow?” she asked, with tender familiarity. “Haven’t you cooled down yet?”

“Yes, I’ve cooled down. I’m going away at once,” he answered in a surly tone.

“Sacha.”

She pronounced his name in a low, strange, agitated tone that Voskresenski had never heard before in his life. He started and looked at her attentively. But she was sitting with her back to the bright light and it was impossible to distinguish her expression. For all that, it seemed to the student that her eyes were shining in an unusual way.

“Sacha, my own one,” she said suddenly in a hurried, stifled voice. “No, no, dear, you won’t go away. Do you hear? Come here to me⁠ ⁠… to me, I tell you. Oh, what a big stupid you are! Do you hear? You mustn’t think of going! I don’t wish it. My darling, you will stay⁠ ⁠…”

She seized his hands, pressed them tightly, and, without letting them out of her own, placed them on her knees so that, for an instant, he felt her firm and, as it were, sliding figure under the light rough material of her peignoir.

“You will stay? Yes?” she asked in a quick whisper, looking up into his face.

He raised his eyes and met her clouded, fixed, avid glance. A burning joy leaped from his heart, transfusing his breast, striking into his head and throbbing in his temples. All confusion and awkwardness had disappeared. On the contrary, it was a dreadful oppressive delight to gaze, so close and shamelessly, so endlessly, without pronouncing a single word, into those beautiful eyes, still shining with tears and senseless with passion. Half consciously he divined that her glance had fallen below his eyes, and he lowered his own to her full, bright, parted lips, behind which gleamed the moist whiteness of her teeth. Suddenly it seemed to him that the air in the room had become suffocating; his mouth was dry and he could scarcely breathe.

“You will stay? Yes? True?”

He put his arms round her and immediately felt the large beautiful body light and alive, obedient to every movement, every hint of his hands. A sort of burning, arid whirl caught him suddenly, crippling his will, his judgment, all his proud, chaste thoughts, everything in him that was clean and human. For some reason or other, he recalled the bathing before dinner and those warm, swinging insatiable waves.

“Darling, is it true, true?” she was repeating ceaselessly.

Roughly, like a savage animal, he caught her up and lifted her in his arms. Then, as if in delirium, he heard her frightened whisper: “The door⁠—for God’s sake the⁠—door⁠—”

Mechanically he turned round, saw the wide-open door and beyond it the darkness of the corridor, but he did not understand the sense of these words, the significance of this door, and he immediately forgot it all. The dark, half-closed eyes were suddenly so close to his face that their contour seemed indefinite, blurred, and they themselves became enormous, fixed, monstrously shiny, and quite strange to him. Hot rocking waves broke on him, drowning his reason, burning him as with fiery circling coils.⁠ ⁠…

Later on he woke up and heard with surprise her voice, which seemed to be imploring him about something:

“I adore you⁠ ⁠… my young, strong, beautiful⁠ ⁠…”

She was sitting on his bed beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder with a submissive, fawning air and trying to catch his eye. But he was looking away, frowning and pulling nervously with a shaking hand at the fringe of his rug which was hanging on the foot of the bed. An invincible disgust was growing in him every second towards this woman, who had just given herself to him. He himself understood the injustice and selfishness of this feeling, but he could not overcome it, even out of gratitude, even out of compassion. Her proximity was physically repulsive to him, her touch, the noise of her rapid, jerky breathing; and though he blamed only himself for everything that had happened, a blind, senseless hatred and spite towards her was filling his soul.

“Oh, what a scoundrel I am! What a scoundrel!” he was thinking, and at the same time he was afraid of her reading his thoughts and feelings on his face.

“My darling adored one,” she was saying tenderly, “why have you turned away from me? Are you angry? Is anything the matter with you? Oh, my dear one, didn’t you really notice that I loved you? From the very beginning, from the very first day.⁠ ⁠… Ah, but no. When you came to us in Moscow I didn’t like you. What an angry one, I thought. But then afterwards⁠ ⁠… But, dearie, won’t you look at me?”

The student mastered himself and managed to give her awkwardly from under his eyebrows aside glance. His very throat contracted, so disgusting seemed the reddened face, splashed with powder at the nostrils and chin, the small wrinkles round the eyes and the upper lip, never noticed until this moment, and, above all, her suppliant, anxious, culpable devotion⁠—a sort of dog’s look. A shudder of repulsion came over him as he turned his head away.

“But why am I not repulsive to her?” he was thinking in despair. “Why? Ah, what a scoundrel I am!”

“Anna Georgievna⁠—Nina,” he stammered out in an unnatural, wooden voice, “you’ll forgive me.⁠ ⁠… You’ll excuse me. I’m agitated. I don’t know what I’m saying.⁠ ⁠… Understand me. Don’t be angry.⁠ ⁠… I must be by myself. My head is going round and round.”

He made an involuntary movement, as if to turn away from her, and she understood it. Her arms, that had been clinging round his neck, fell helplessly along her knees and her head bent down. She sat like this for a few more minutes and then rose silently with a resigned expression.

She understood better than the student what was happening to him now. She knew that for men the first steps in sensual passion produced the same terrible sickly sensation on beginners as the first draughts of opium, the first cigarette, the first drunken bout. She knew, too, that until this he had been intimate with no other woman, that for him she was the first; knew this from his own words before, felt it by his savage, severe shyness, his awkwardness and roughness with her.

She wanted to console, to calm him, to explain in tender motherly words the cause of his suffering, for she knew that he suffered. But she⁠—ordinarily so bold, so self-assured⁠—could find no words. She felt confused and shy like a young girl and she felt at fault for his fall, for his silent anxiety, for her thirty-five years, and because she did not know, and was unable to discover, how she could help him.

“Sacha, this will pass,” she said at last, almost under her breath. “This will pass, believe me. Calm yourself. But don’t go away. You hear me? You’ll tell me if you want to go away, won’t you?”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… All right, yes⁠—yes,” he repeated impatiently, looking at the door all the time.

She sighed and left the room noiselessly. Then Voskresenski clutched his hair with both hands and fell with a groan face downwards on the pillow.

IV

The next day Voskresenski was on his way to Odessa on the large steamship Xenia. Disgracefully and weakly he had run away from the Zavalishines, unable to bear his cruel remorse, unable to force himself to meet Anna Georgievna again face to face. After lying on his bed until dusk, he had put his things together as soon as it was dark and then noiselessly, stealthily, like a thief, he had stolen through the back entrance into the vineyard, and from there had clambered out into the road. And all the time, on his way to the post station, when driving in the diligence that was packed with silent Turks and Tartars, all through the night at the Yalta Hotel, his shame, his merciless disgust for himself, for Anna Georgievna, for everything that had happened the day before, and for his own boyish flight, never left him for a single second.

“It has all turned out as if it were a quarrel, as if it were out of revenge. I have stolen something from the Zavalishines and have run away from them,” he thought, angrily grinding his teeth.

It was a hot windless day. The sea lay quiet, caressing, of a pale emerald round the shore, light blue further out and touched only here and there by lazy little wrinkles of purple. Beneath the steamer, it was bright green, bottomless, light and transparent as air. Side by side with the steamer raced a flight of dolphins. From above, one could see perfectly how in the depths the powerful winding movements of their bodies cut through the thin water, and how, at intervals, one after the other, in quick dark semicircles, they leaped to the surface.

The shore receded slowly. Gradually the steep hills showed themselves and then became lost to view, palaces, vineyards, squat Tartar villages, white-walled villas, drowned in wavy green, and, in the background, the pale blue mountains, covered with black patches of forest, and over them the fine airy contours of the peaks.

The passengers were trooping to the taffrail that faced the shore, calling out the names of the places and the names of the owners. In the middle of the deck, near the hatchway, two musicians⁠—a violinist and a harpist⁠—were playing a waltz, and the stale, insipid melody sounded unusually beautiful and stimulating in the sea air.

Voskresenski searched impatiently for the villa that looked like a gynaeceum. And when it appeared again behind the dense woods of the Prince’s Park and became quite visible above its huge white fortress-like wall, he breathed faster and pressed his hands against his heart which had grown cold.

He thought that he could distinguish on the lower terrace a white spot, and he wished to think that she was sitting there now, this strange woman, who had suddenly become so mysterious, so incomprehensible, so attractive to him, and that she was looking out at the boat, sorrowful as he was, and with her own eyes full of tears. He imagined himself standing there on the balcony close beside her, not his self of today, but that of yesterday, of a week ago⁠—that former self which would never return to him. And he was sorry, unbearably, achingly sorry for that phase of life which had gone from him forever and would never return, would never repeat itself. With an unusual distinctness, his eyes veiled in a rainbow-like mist of tears, Anna Georgievna’s face rose in front of him, no longer victorious, or self-assured, but with a gentle, suppliant expression, self-accusing; and she seemed to him now small, hurt, weak, and close to him, as though grafted on to his heart forever.

And with these delicate, sad, compassionate sensations there was blended imperceptibly, like the aroma of a fine wine, the memory of her warm naked, arms, her voice trembling with sensual passion, her beautiful eyes glancing down to his lips.

Hiding itself behind the trees and villas, then showing itself again for a moment, the gynaeceum receded further and further and then suddenly disappeared. Pressing his cheek against the taffrail, Voskresenski looked for a long time in that direction. All this, indeed, had passed like a shadow. He recalled the bitter verse of Solomon, and he cried. But these tears, the tears of youth, clear and light, and this sorrow, were blessed.

Below deck, in the saloon, the lunch bell sounded. A chattering, noisy student, whose acquaintance Voskresenski had made in the port, came up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and shouted out gaily:

“I’ve been looking for you, my friend; you have provisions, haven’t you? Let’s have a glass of vodka.”

I

King Solomon had not yet attained middle age⁠—forty-five; yet the fame of his wisdom and comeliness, of the grandeur of his life and the pomp of his court, had spread far beyond the limits of Palestine. In Assyria and Phoenicia; in Lower and Upper Aegypt; from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar unto Persepolis; on the coast of the Black Sea and upon the islands of the Mediterranean⁠—all uttered his name in wonder, for there was none among the kings like unto him in all his days.

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of Aegypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Zif,15 did the king undertake the erection of the great temple of the Lord in Mount Moriah, and the building of his palace in Jerusalem. Fourscore thousand stonesquarers and threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens wrought without cease in the mountains, and in the outskirts of the city; while ten thousand hewers that cut timber, out of a number of eight and thirty thousand, were sent each month, by courses, to Lebanon, where they spent a month in labour so arduous that they rested for two months thereafter. Thousands of men tied the cut trees into flotes, and hundreds of seamen brought them by sea to Jaffa, where they were fashioned by Tyrians, skilled to work at turning and carpentry. Only at the rearing of the pyramids of Khephren, Khufu, and Mencheres, at Ghizeh, had such an infinite multitude of labourers been used.

Three thousand and six hundred officers oversaw the works; while Azariah, the son of Nathan, was over the officers⁠—a cruel man and an active, concerning whom had sprung up a rumour that he never slept, devoured by the fire of an internal, incurable disease. As for the plans of the palace and the temple; the drawings of the columns, the forecourt, and the brasen sea; the designs for the windows; the ornaments of the walls and the thrones⁠—they had all been created by the master builder Hiram-Abiah of Sidon, the son of a worker in brass of the tribe of Naphtali.

After seven years, in the month of Bul,16 the temple of the Lord was completed; and after thirteen years, the palace of the king also. For cedar logs out of Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for almug, shittim, and tarshish woods, for great stones, costly stones, and hewed and polished stones; for purple, scarlet, and for byssin broidered in gold; for stuffs of blue wool; for ivory and red-dyed rams’ skins; for iron, onyx, and the vast quantity of marble; for precious stones; for the chains, the wreaths, the cords, the tongs, the nets, the lavers, and the flowers and the lamps and the candlesticks⁠—all, all of gold; for the hinges of gold for the doors, and the nails of gold, weighing sixty shekels each; for the basons and platters of beaten gold; for ornaments⁠—graven and in mosaic; for the images of lions, cherubim, oxen, palms and pineapples, both hewn in stone and molten⁠—for all these did Solomon give Hiram, King of Tyre, who bore the same name as the master builder, twenty cities and hamlets in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found the gift insignificant, with such splendour had been built the temple of the Lord, and the palace of Solomon, and the little palace at Millo for the king’s wife, the beautiful Queen Astis, daughter to Shishak, Pharaoh of Aegypt; while the redwood which later went for the balustrades and stairs of the galleries, for the musical instruments and for the bindings of the sacred books, had been brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, together with such a quantity of aromatic incense, sweet smelling oils, and precious perfumes, as had never been seen before in the land of Israel.

With each year did the riches of the king increase. Thrice a year did his ships return to harbour: the Tarshish, that sailed the Mediterranean, and the Hiram, that sailed the Black Sea. They brought out of Africa ivory and apes and peacocks and antelopes; richly adorned chariots out of Aegypt; live tigers and lions, as well as animal pelts and furs, out of Mesopotamia; snow-white steeds out of Cuth; gold dust out of Parvaam that came to six hundred and threescore talents in one year; redwood, ebony and sandalwood out of the land of Ophir; gay rugs of Asshur and Calah, of marvelous designs⁠—the friendly gifts of King Tiglath-Pileser; artistic mosaic out of Nineveh, Nimroud, and Sargon; wondrous figured stuffs out of Khatuar; goblets of beaten gold out of Tyre; stained glass out of Sidon; and out of Punt, which is near Bab-el-Medebu, those rare perfumes⁠—nard, aloes, calamus, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacte, galbanum, Smyrna myrrh, and frankincense⁠—for the possession of which the Aegyptian pharaohs had more than once embarked upon bloody wars.

As for silver, it was accounted of as common stone in the days of Solomon, and redwood was of no more value than the common sycamores that grow in the low plains in abundance.

Pools of stone, lined with porphyry, and marble cisterns and cool fountains did the king build, commanding the water to be conveyed from mountain springs that plunged down into the Kidron’s torrent; while around the palace he planted gardens and groves, and cultivated a vineyard in Baal-hamon.

And Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and for the horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand for his cavalry; barley also and straw for the horses were brought daily from the provinces. Thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of other meal; an hundred baths of different wines; ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and three hundred sheep, not counting harts and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl⁠—all this, passing through the hands of twelve officers, went daily for the table of Solomon, as well as for his court, his retinue, and his guard. Threescore warriors, out of a number of five hundred of the most stalwart and most valiant in all his army, held watch by turns in the inner chambers of the palace. Five hundred bucklers, covered with plates of gold, did the king command to be made for his bodyguards.

II

Whatsoever the eyes of the king might desire, he kept not from them; and withheld not his heart from any joy. Seven hundred wives had the king, and three hundred concubines, without counting slaves and dancers. And all of them did Solomon charm with his love, for God had endowed him with such an inexhaustible strength of passion as was not given to ordinary men. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittites for their vivid but momentary beauty, that bursts into blossom just as early and enchantingly, and fades just as rapidly as the flower of the narcissus; the swarthy, tall, vehement Philistines, with wiry, curly locks, who wore golden, tinkling armlets upon their wrists, golden hoops upon their shoulders, and broad anklets, joined by a thin little chain, upon both ankles; gentle, diminutive, lithe Ammorites formed without a blemish, whose faithfulness and submissiveness in love had passed into a proverb; women out of Assyria, who put their eyes in painting to make them seem more elongated, and who ate out with acid blue stars upon their foreheads and cheeks; well-schooled, gay and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew well how to sing and dance, as well as to play upon harps, lutes and flutes, to the accompaniment of tabours; xanthochroöus women of Aegypt, indefatigable in love and insane in jealousy; voluputous Babylonians, whose entire body underneath their raiment was as smooth as marble, because they eradicated the hair upon it with a special paste; virgins of Baktria, who stained their nails and hair a fiery-red colour, and wore wide, loose trousers; silent, bashful Moabites, whose magnificent breasts were cool on the sultriest nights of summer; carefree and profligate Ammonites, with fiery hair, and flesh of such whiteness that it glowed in the dark; frail, blue-eyed women with flaxen hair, and skin of a delicate fragrance, who were brought from the north, through Baalbec, and whose tongue was incomprehensible to all the dwellers in Palestine. The king loved many daughters of Judaea and Israel besides.

Also shared he his couch with Balkis-Mâkkedah, the Queen of Sheba, who had surpassed all women on earth in beauty, wisdom, riches, and her diversified art in passion; and with Abishag the Shunamite, who had warmed the old age of David⁠—a kindly, quiet beauty, for whose sake Solomon had put to death his elder brother Adonijah, at the hands of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada.

And also with the poor maiden of the vineyard, by the name of Sulamith, whom alone among all women the king had loved with all his heart.

Solomon made himself a litter of the best cedar wood, with pillars of silver, with armrests of gold in the form of recumbent lions, with a covering of purple Tyrian stuff, while the entire inner side of the covering was ornamented with gold embroidery and with precious stones⁠—the love-gifts of the women and virgins of Jerusalem. And when well-built black slaves bore Solomon among his people on grand festal days, truly was the king glorious, like the lilies that are in the Valley of Sharon!

Pale was his face; his lips like unto a vivid thread of scarlet; his wavy locks a bluish black, and in them⁠—the adornment of wisdom⁠—gleamed gray hairs, like to the silver threads of mountain streams, falling down from the dark crags of Hermon; gray hairs glistened in his dark beard also, curled, after the custom of the kings of Assyria, in regular, small rows.

As for the eyes of the king, they were dark, like the darkest agate, like the heavens on a moonless night in summer; while his eyelashes, that spread upward and downward like arrows, resembled dark rays around dark stars. And there was no man in all the universe who could bear the gaze of Solomon without casting down his eyes. And the lightnings of wrath in the eyes of the king would prostrate people to the earth.

But there were moments of heartfelt merriment, when the king would grow intoxicated with love, or wine, or the delight of power, or when he rejoiced over words of wisdom or beauty, fitly spoken. Then his lashes would be softly half-lowered, casting blue shadows upon his radiant face, and in the king’s eyes would kindle the warm flames of a kindly, tender laughter, just like the play of black diamonds; and whosoever might behold this smile was ready to yield up body and soul for it⁠—so indescribably beautiful was it. The mere name of King Solomon, uttered aloud, stirred the hearts of women, like the fragrance of spilt myrrh that recalls nights of love.

The king’s hands were soft, white, warm and beautiful, like a woman’s; but they held such an excess of life energy that, by the laying on of his palms upon the temples of the sick, the king cured headaches, convulsions, black melancholy, and demoniacal possession. Upon the index finger of his left hand the king wore a gem of bloodred asteria that emitted six pearl-coloured rays. Many centuries did this ring number, and upon the reverse side of its stone was graven an inscription, in the tongue of an ancient, vanished people: “All things pass away.”

And so great was the sway of Solomon’s soul that even beasts submitted to it; lions and tigers crawled at the feet of the king, rubbing their muzzles against his knees, and licking his hands with their rough tongues, whenever he entered their quarters. And he, whose heart found joy in the dazzling play of precious stones, in the fragrance of sweet-smelling Aegyptian resins, in the soft touch of light stuffs, in sweet music, in the exquisite taste of red, sparkling wine playing in a chased Ninuanian chalice⁠—he also loved to stroke the coarse manes of lions, the velvety backs of black panthers, and the tender paws of young, speckled leopards; loved to hear the roar of wild beasts, to see their powerful and superb movements, and to feel the hot feral odour of their breath.

Thus did Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, the historian of his days, depict King Solomon.

III

“Because thou hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; behold, I have done according to thy words; lo, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart: so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.”

Thus spake God unto Solomon, and through His word did the king come to know the structure of the universe and the working of the elements; to fathom the beginning, end, and midst of all ages; to penetrate the mystery of the eternal, wavelike and rotating recurrence of events; from the astronomers of Byblos, Acre, Sargon, Borsippa and Nineveh did he learn to watch the yearly orbits of the stars and the changes in their positions. He knew also the nature of all animals and divined the feelings of beasts; he understood the source and direction of winds, the different properties of plants, and the potency of healing herbs.

The designs in the heart of man are deep waters, but even them could the king fathom. In the words and voice, in the eyes, in the motions of the hands, he read the innermost mysteries of souls as plainly as the characters of an open book. And because of that, from all ends of Palestine, there came to him a vast multitude of people, imploring judgment, advice, help, the settlement of some dispute, as well as the solving of incomprehensible portents and dreams. And men would marvel at the profundity and finesse of Solomon’s answers.

Three thousand proverbs did Solomon compose, and his songs were a thousand and five. He dictated them to two skilled and rapid scribes: Elihoreph and Ahiah, the sons of Shisha, and afterwards collated what both had written. Always did he clothe his thoughts in choice expressions, for a word fitly spoken is like an apple of gold in a bowl of translucent sardonyx;17 and also for that the words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one Shepherd. “A word is a spark in the motion of the heart,”⁠—thus saith the king. And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of the Aegyptians. For he was above all men in wisdom; wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Dardra, the sons of Mahol. But he was already beginning to weary of the beauty of ordinary human wisdom, and no longer did it have its former value in his eyes. With a restless and searching mind did he thirst after that higher wisdom, which the Lord possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old, set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was; that wisdom which was His great artificer when He set a compass upon the face of the deep. And Solomon found it not.

The king mastered the teachings of the magi of Chaldaea and Nineveh; the science of the astrologers of Abydos, Sais, and Memphis; the secrets of the Assyrian sorcerers, mystagogues, and epopts, and of the fatidicae of Baktria and Persepolis; and he had become convinced that their knowledge was but the knowledge of mortals.

Also did he seek for wisdom in the occult rites of ancient pagan faiths, and for that reason visited idol-temples and offered up oblations to the mighty Baal-Lebanon, who was honoured under the name of Melkart⁠—the god of creation and destruction, the patron of navigation in Tyre and Sidon⁠—called Ammon in the Oasis of Sibakh, where his idol would nod his head to indicate the routes to festal processions; called Bel by the Chaldaeans, and Moloch by the Canaanites. He also bowed down before his spouse⁠—the dread and passionate Astarte, who bore in other temples the names of Ishtar, Isaar, Baaltis, Ashera, Istar-Belet, and Atargatis. He libated holy oil and burnt incense before Isis and Osiris of Aegypt⁠—sister and brother, joined in wedlock while still in the womb of their mother and there conceiving the god Horus; and before Derketo, the pisciform Tyrian goddess; and before Anubis of the dog’s head, the god of embalming; and before the Babylonian Cannes; and Dagon of the Philistines; and the Assyrian Abdenago; and Utsabu, the Ninevehian idol; and the sombre Kybele; and Bel Marduk, the patron of Babylon⁠—the god of the planet Jupiter; and the Chaldaean Or⁠—the god of eternal fire; and the mystic Omorca, the first mother of the gods, whom Bel had cloven in two parts, creating heaven and earth out of them, and out of her head, men; and the king bowed down also before the goddess Anaïtis, in whose honour the virgins of Phoenicia, Lydia, Armenia and Persia gave up their bodies to passersby, as a sacred offering, at the threshold of temples.

But the king found in the pagan rites nought save drunkenness, night orgies, lechery, incest, and lusts contrary to nature; and in their dogmas he perceived vain discourse and deception. But he forbade none of his subjects to offer up sacrifices to a favourite god, and he even built upon the Mount of Olives an idol-temple for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, at the supplication of the beautiful, pensive Ellaan, the Moabite, the then favorite wife of the king. One thing only could not Solomon abide and pursued with death⁠—the bringing of children in sacrifice.

And he saw in his seekings that that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them: as one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast. And the king understood, that in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. He also learned that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of mirth is heaviness. And so one morning he dictated to Elihoreph and Ahiah:

“ ‘All is vanity of vanities and vexation of spirits’⁠—thus saith Ecclesiastes.”

But at that time the king did not yet know that God would soon send him a love so tender and ardent, so devoted and beautiful⁠—more precious in itself than riches, fame, and wisdom; more precious than life itself, for it values not even life, nor hath fear of death.

IV

The king had a vineyard at Baal-hamon, upon the southern slope of Bath-El-Khav, to the south of the idol-temple of Moloch; thither did the king love to withdraw in the hours of his great meditations. Pomegranate-, olive-, and wild apple-trees, interspersed with cedars and cypresses, bordered it on three sides upon the mountain, while on the fourth it was fenced off from the road by a high stone wall. And other vineyards, lying about, also belonged to Solomon; he let them out unto keepers, each one for a thousand pieces of silver.

Only with the dawn came to an end in the palace the magnificent feast which the King of Israel was giving in honour of the emissaries of the King of Assyria, the good Tiglath-Pileser. Despite his fatigue, Solomon could not fall asleep this morn. Neither wine nor hippocras had befogged the stout heads of the Assyrians, nor loosened their canny tongues. But the penetrating mind of the wise king had already forestalled their plans, and was, in its turn, already weaving a fine political net, wherein he would enmesh these proud men with supercilious eyes and of flattering speech. Solomon would be able to preserve the necessary amity with the potentate of Assyria, yet at the same time, for the sake of his eternal friendship with Hiram of Tyre, would save from pillage the latter’s kingdom, which, with its countless riches, hid in subterranean vaults underneath narrow streets, had for a long time drawn the covetous gazes of oriental sovereigns.

And so at dawn Solomon had commanded himself to be borne to Mount Bath-El-Khav; had left the litter far down the road, and is now seated alone upon a simple wooden bench, above the vineyard, under the shade of the trees, still hiding in their branches the dewy chill of night. The king has on a simple white mantle, fastened at the right shoulder and at the left side by two Aegyptian clasps of green gold, in the shape of curled crocodiles⁠—the symbol of the god Sebekh. The hands of the king lie motionless upon his knees, while his eyes, overshadowed by deep thought, unwinking, are directed toward the east, in the direction of the Dead Sea⁠—there, where from the rounded summit of Anaze the sun is rising in the flame of dawn.

The morning wind is blowing from the east and spreads the fragrance of the grape in blossom⁠—a delicate fragrance, like that of mignonette and mulled wine. The dark cypresses sway their slender tops pompously and pour out their resinous breath. The silvery-green leaves of the olives hurriedly converse among themselves.

But now Solomon arises and hearkens carefully. An endearing feminine voice, clear and pure as this dewy morn, is singing somewhere not far off, beyond the trees. The simple and tender motive runs on and on, of its own accord, like a ringing rill in the mountains, repeating the five or six notes, always the same. And its unpretentious, exquisite charm calls forth a smile in the eyes of the touched king.

Nearer and nearer sounds the voice. Now it is already here, alongside, behind the spreading cedars, behind the dark verdure of the junipers. Then the king cautiously parts the branches with his hands, quietly makes his way between the prickly branches, and comes out upon an open place.

Before him, beyond the low wall, rudely built of great yellow stones, the vineyard spreads upward. A girl, in a light garment of blue, walks between the rows of vines, bending down over something below, and again straightening up, and she is singing. Her ruddy hair flames in the sun:

The breath of the day is coolness,
And the shadows flee away.
Turn, my beloved,
And be thou like a roe or a young hart,
Within the clefts of the rocks.⁠ ⁠…

Thus sings she, tying up the grapevines, and slowly descends, nearer and nearer the stone wall behind which the king is standing. She is alone, none sees nor hears her; the scent of the grapes in blossom, the joyous freshness of the morning, and the warm blood in her heart are like wine unto her, and now the words of the naive little song are born spontaneously upon her lips and are carried away by the wind, to be forgotten forever:

Take us the foxes,
The little foxes
That spoil the vines:
For our vines have tender grapes.

In this manner does she reach the very wall, and, without noticing the king, turns about and walks on, climbing the hill lightly, along the neighbouring row of vines. Now her song sounds less distinctly:

Make haste, my beloved,
And be thou like to a roe or a young hart
Upon the mountains of spices.

But suddenly she grows silent and bends so low to the ground that she can not be seen behind the vines.

Then Solomon utters in a voice that caresses the ear:

“Maiden, show me thy face; let me hear thy voice anew.”

She straightens up quickly and turns her face to the king. A strong wind arises at this second and flutters the light garment upon her, suddenly making it cling tightly around her body and between her legs. And the king, for an instant, until she turns her back to the wind, sees all of her beneath the raiment, as though naked⁠—tall and graceful, in the vigorous bloom of thirteen years; sees her little, round, firm breasts and the elevations of her nipples, from which the cloth spreads out in rays; and the virginal abdomen, round as a bason; and the deep line that divides her legs from the bottom to the top, and there parts in two, toward the rounded hips.

“For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance comely,” says Solomon.

She draws nearer and gazes upon the king with trembling and with rapture. Her swarthy and vivid face is inexpressibly beautiful. Her heavy, thick, dark-red hair, into which she has stuck two flowers of the scarlet poppy, covers her shoulders in countless resilient ringlets and spreads over her back, and, transpierced by the rays of the sun, glows in flame, like aureate purple. A necklace which she had made herself out of some red, dried berries, naively winds twice about her long, dark, slender neck.

“I did not notice thee!” she says gently, and her voice sounds like the song of a flute. “Whence didst thou come?”

“Thou sangst so well, maiden!”

She bashfully casts down her eyes and turns red, but beneath her long lashes and in the corners of her lips trembles a secret smile.

“Thou sangst of thy dear. He is as light as a roe, as a young hart upon the mountains. For he is very fair, thy dear⁠—is not that the truth, maiden?”

Her laughter is ringing and musical, as though silver were falling upon a golden platter.

“I have no dear. It is but a song. I have yet had no dear.⁠ ⁠…”

For a minute they are silent, and intently, without smiling, gaze at each other.⁠ ⁠… Birds loudly call one another among the trees. The maiden’s bosom quickly rises and falls under the worn linen.

“I do believe thee, beautiful one. Thou art so fair.⁠ ⁠…”

“Thou dost mock me. Behold, how black I am.⁠ ⁠…”

She lifts up her small, dark arms, and the broad sleeves lightly slide down towards her shoulders, baring her elbows, that have such a slender and rounded outline.

And she says plaintively:

“My brethren were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyard⁠—and now behold how the sun hath scorched me.”

“O, nay, the sun hath made thee still more fair, thou fairest among women. Lo, thou hast smiled⁠—and thy teeth are like white twin-lambs, which come up from the washing, and none among them hath a blemish. Thy cheeks are like the halves of a pomegranate within thy locks. Thy lips are scarlet⁠—yea, pleasant to gaze upon. As for thy hair⁠ ⁠… Dost know what thy hair is like? Hast thou ever beheld a flock of sheep come down from Mount Gilead at eve? It covers all the mountain, from summit to foot, and from the light of the evening glow and from the dust it seems even as ruddy and as wavy as thy locks. Thine eyes are as deep as the two fishponds in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. O, how fair art thou! Thy neck is straight and graceful, like the tower of David!⁠ ⁠…”

“Like the tower of David!” she repeats in rapture.

“Yea, yea, thou fairest among women. A thousand bucklers hang upon the tower of David, all shields of vanquished chieftains. Lo, I hang my shield also upon thy tower.⁠ ⁠…”

“O, speak on, speak on.⁠ ⁠…”

“And when thou didst turn around in answer to my call, and the wind arose, I did see beneath thy raiment thy two nipples and methought: Here be two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. This thy stature was like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.”

The girl cries out faintly, hides her face with her palms, and her bosom with her elbows, and blushes so that even her ears and neck turn crimson.

“And I saw thy hips. They are shapely, like a precious vase, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Take away thy hands, therefore, maiden. Show me thy face.”

She submissively let her hands drop. A deep, golden radiance glows from the eyes of Solomon and casts a spell over her, makes her head dizzy, and in a sweet, warm tremour streams over the skin of her body.

“Tell me, who art thou?” she says slowly, in perplexity. “Never have I seen any like to thee.”

“I am a shepherd, my beauty. I graze my splendid flocks of white lambs upon the mountains, where the green grass is pied with narcissi. Wilt thou not come with me, unto my pasture?”

But she quietly shakes her head:

“Canst thou think that I will believe this? Thy face has not grown rough from the wind, nor is it scorched by the sun, and thy hands are white. Thou hast on a costly chiton, and the buckle upon it is worth the yearly rental that my brothers bring for our vineyard to Adoniram, the king’s tax-gatherer. Thou hast come from yonder, from beyond the wall. Thou art, surely, one of the men near to the king? Meseems I saw thee once upon the day of a great festival; I even remember running after thy chariot.”

“Thou hast guessed it, maiden. It is hard to be hid from thee. And verily, why shouldst thou be a wanderer nigh the flocks of the shepherds? Yea, I am one of the king’s retinue. I am the chief cook of the king. And thou didst see me when I rode in the chariot of Ammi-nadib on the gala-day of Passover. But why dost thou stand distant from me? Draw nearer, my sister! Sit down here upon the stones of the wall and tell me something of thyself. Tell me thy name.”

“Sulamith,” she says.

“Then, Sulamith, why have thy brothers grown wroth with thee?”

“I am ashamed to speak of it. They received moneys from the sale of their wine, and sent me to the city to buy bread and goat-cheese. But I⁠ ⁠…”

“And thou didst lose the money?”

“Nay, still worse.⁠ ⁠…”

She bends her head low and whispers:

“Besides bread and cheese I bought a little of attar of roses⁠—oh, so little!⁠—from the Aegyptians in the old city.”

“And thou didst keep this from thy brethren?”

“Yea.⁠ ⁠…”

And she utters in a barely audible voice:

“Attar of roses hath so goodly a smell!”

The king caressingly strokes her little rough hand.

“Surely, thou must be lonesome, all alone in thy vineyard?”

“Nay, I work, I sing.⁠ ⁠… At noon food is brought me, and at evening one of my brothers relieves me. At times I dig for the roots of the mandragora, that look like little mannikins.⁠ ⁠… The Chaldaean merchants buy them from us. It is said they make a sleeping potion out of them.⁠ ⁠… Tell me, is it true that the berries of the mandragora help in love?”

“Nay, Sulamith, only love can help in love. Tell me, hast thou a father or a mother?”

“Only a mother. My father died two years ago. My brethren are all older than I⁠—they are from the first marriage; only my sister and I have sprung from the second.”

“Is thy sister as comely as thou?”

“She is little. She is but nine.”

The king laughs quietly, embraces Sulamith, draws her to him, and whispers into her ear:

“Therefore, she hath no such breast as thine? A breast as proud, as warm?⁠ ⁠…”

She is silent, burning with shame and happiness. Her eyes glow and grow dim, with the mist of a happy smile over them. The king feels the riotous beating of her heart within his hand.

“The warmth of thy garments hath a goodlier smell than myrrh, than nard,” he is saying, avidly touching her ear with his lips. “And when thou breathest, the smell of thy nostrils is like that of apples unto me. My sister, my beloved, thou hast ravished my heart with one glance of thy eyes, with one chain of thy neck.”

“O, gaze not upon me!” implores Sulamith. “Thine eyes stir me.”

But of her own accord she bends backward and lays her head upon Solomon’s breast. Her lips glow over the gleaming teeth, her eyelids tremble with intense desire. Solomon’s lips cling greedily to her enticing mouth. He feels the flame of her lips and the slipperiness of her teeth, and the sweet moistness of her tongue; and he is all consumed of an unbearable desire, such as he has never yet known in his life.

Thus passes one minute; then two.

“What dost thou with me!” says Sulamith faintly, closing her eyes.

But Solomon passionately whispers near her very mouth:

“Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue.⁠ ⁠… O, come away with me, speedily. Here, behind the wall, it is dark and cool. None shall see us. The green is soft here underneath the cedars.”

“Nay, nay, leave me. I desire it not, I can not.”

“Sulamith⁠ ⁠… thou dost desire it, thou dost desire it.⁠ ⁠… Come to me, my sister, my beloved!”

Someone’s steps resound below, upon the highway, below the wall of the vineyard, but Solomon detains the frightened girl by her hand.

“Tell me, quickly⁠—where dwellest thou? This night shall I come to thee,” he is hurriedly saying.

“Nay, nay, nay⁠ ⁠… I shall not tell thee this. Let me go. I shall not tell thee.”

“I shall not let thee go, Sulamith, till thou dost tell.⁠ ⁠… My desire is unto thee!”

“It is well, I shall tell thee.⁠ ⁠… But first promise not to come this night.⁠ ⁠… Also, come thou not the following night⁠ ⁠… nor the night after that⁠ ⁠… My king! I charge thee by the roes and the hinds of the field, that thou stir not up thy beloved till she please!”

“Yea, I pledge thee this.⁠ ⁠… Where is thy dwelling, Sulamith?”

“If on the way to the city thou dost pass over the Kidron, upon the bridge above Siloam, thou shalt see our dwelling nigh the spring. There are no other dwellings there.”

“And which is thy window there, Sulamith?”

“Why shouldst thou know this, beloved? O, gaze not thus upon me. Thy gaze casts a spell over me.⁠ ⁠… Do not kiss me.⁠ ⁠… Beloved! Kiss me again.⁠ ⁠…”

“But which is thy window, my only one?”

“The window on the south side. Ah, I must not tell thee this.⁠ ⁠… A small, high window with a lattice.”

“And doth the lattice open from within?”

“Nay, it is a fixed window. But around the corner is a door. It leads directly into the room where I sleep with my sister. But thou hast promised me!⁠ ⁠… My sister sleeps lightly. O, how fair art thou, my beloved! Truly, hast thou not promised?”

Solomon quietly smoothes her hair and cheeks.

“I shall come to thee this night,” he says insistently. “At midnight I shall come. Thus, thus shall it be. I desire it.”

“Beloved!”

“Nay. Thou shalt await me. But have no fear, and put thy trust in me. I shall cause thee no grief. I shall give thee such joy compared with which all things upon earth are without significance. Now farewell. I hear them coming after me.”

“Farewell, my beloved⁠ ⁠… O, nay, go not yet! Tell me thy name⁠—I know it not.”

For a moment, as though undecided, he lowers his lashes, but immediately raises them again.

“The King and I have the same name. I am called Solomon. Farewell. I love thee.”

V

Radiant and joyous was Solomon upon this day, as he sat upon his throne in the hall of the House at Lebanon and meted out justice to the people who came before him.

Forty columns, four in a row, supported the ceiling of the Hall of Judgment, and they were all faced with cedar and terminated in capitals in the form of lilies; the floor consisted of cypress boards, all of a piece; nor was the stone upon the walls to be seen anywhere for the cedar finish, ornamented with gold carving, showing palms, pineapples, and cherubim. In the depth of the hall, with its triple-tiered windows, six steps led up to the elevation of the throne, and upon each step stood two bronze lions, one on each side. The throne itself was of ivory with gold incrustation and with elbow-rests of gold, in the form of recumbent lions. The high back of the throne was surmounted by a golden disc. Curtains of violet and purple stuffs hung from the ceiling down to the floor at the entrance to the hall, dividing off the entry, where between the columns thronged the plaintiffs, supplicants, and witnesses, as well as the accused and the criminals under a strong guard.

The king had on a red chiton, while upon his head was a simple, narrow crown of sixty beryls, set in gold. At his right hand stood the throne for his mother, Bathsheba; but of late, owing to her declining years, she rarely showed herself in the city.

The Assyrian guests, with austere, black-bearded faces, were seated along the walls upon benches of jasper; they had on garments of a light olive colour, broidered at the edges with designs of red and white. While still at home, in their native Assyria, they had heard so much of the justice of Solomon that they tried to let no single word of his slip by, in order to tell later of the judgment of the King of the Israelites. Among them sat the commanders of Solomon’s armies, his ministers, the governors of his provinces, and his courtiers. Here was Benaiah, at one time executioner to the king; the slayer of Joab, Adonijah, and Shimei⁠—a short, corpulent old man, with a sparse, long, gray beard; his faded, bluish eyes, rimmed by red lids that seemed turned inside out, had a look of senile dullness; his mouth was open and moist, while his fleshy, red lower lip drooped down impotently, and was slightly trembling. Here also were Azariah, the son of Nathan⁠—a jaundiced, tall man, with a lean, sickly face and dark rings under his eyes; and the good-natured, absentminded Jehoshaphat, historiographer; and Ahishar, who was over the court of Solomon; and Zabud, who bore the high title of the King’s Friend; and Ben-Abinadab, which had Taphath, the eldest daughter of Solomon, to wife; and Ben-Geber, the officer over the region of Argob, which is in Bashan: to him pertained threescore cities, surrounded by walls, with gates of brasen bars; and Baanah, the son of Hushai, at one time famed for his skill in casting a spear to the distance of thirty parasangs; and many others. Sixty warriors, their helmets and shields gleaming, stood in a rank to the left of the throne and the right; their head officer this day was the handsome Eliab, of the black locks, son of Ahilud.

The first to come before Solomon with his complaint was one Achior, a lapidary by trade. Working in Bel of Phoenicia he had found a precious stone, had cut and polished it, and had asked his friend Zachariah, who was setting out for Jerusalem, to give the stone to his⁠—Achior’s⁠—wife. After some time Achior also returned home. The first thing that he asked about upon beholding his wife was the stone. But she was very much amazed at her husband’s question, and repeated under oath that she had received no stone of any sort. Whereupon Achior set out for an explanation to his friend Zachariah, but he asseverated, and also to an oath, that he had, immediately upon arrival, given the stone over as instructed. He even brought witnesses, who affirmed having seen Zachariah give the stone in their presence to the wife of Achior.

And now all four⁠—Achior, Zachariah, and the two witnesses⁠—were standing before the throne of the King of Israel.

Solomon gazed into the eyes of each one in turn and said to the guard:

“Lead each one to a separate chamber, and lock up each one apart.”

And when this was done, he ordered four pieces of unbaked clay to be brought.

“Let each one of them,” willed the king, “fashion out of clay that form which the stone had.”

After some time the moulds were ready. But one of the witnesses had made his mould in the shape of a horse’s head, as precious stones were usually fashioned; the other, in the shape of a sheep’s head; only two of them⁠—Achior and Zachariah⁠—had their moulds alike, resembling in form a woman’s breast.

And the king spake:

“Now it is evident even to one blind that the witnesses are bribed by Zachariah. And so, let Zachariah return the stone to Achior, and together with it pay him thirty shekels, of this city, of law costs, and give ten shekels to the priests for the temple. As for the self-revealed witnesses, let them pay into the treasury five shekels each for bearing false witness.”

Three brothers then drew nigh to Solomon’s throne; they were at court about an inheritance. Their father had told them before his death: “That ye may not quarrel at division, I myself shall apportion ye in justice. When I die, go beyond the knoll that is in the midst of the grove behind the house, and dig therein. There shall ye find a box with three divisions: know, that the topmost is for the eldest brother; the middle one for the second; the lowest for the youngest.” And when, after his death, they had gone, and had done as he had willed, they had found that the topmost division was filled to the top with golden coins, whereas in the middle one were lying only common bones, and in the lowest naught but pieces of wood. And so among the younger brothers arose envy for the eldest, and enmity; and in the end their life had become so unbearable that they decided to turn to the king for counsel and judgment. And even here, standing before the throne, they could not refrain from mutual recriminations and affronts.

The king shook his head, heard them out, and spake:

“Cease quarreling; a stone is heavy, and the sand weighty, but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both. Your father was, it is plain to see, a wise man and a just, and he has expressed his wishes in his testament just as clearly as though it had been consummated before an hundred witnesses. Is it possible that ye have not surmised at once, ye sorry brawlers, that to the eldest brother he left all his moneys; to the second, all his cattle and all his slaves; while to the youngest⁠—his house and plow-land? Depart, therefore, in peace; and be no longer enemies among yourselves.”

And the three brothers⁠—but recently enemies⁠—with beaming faces bowed to the king’s feet and walked out of the Hall of Judgment arm in arm.

And the king decided also another suit at inheritance, begun three days ago. A certain man, dying, had said that he was leaving all his goods to the worthier of his two sons. But since neither one of them would consent to call himself the worse one, they had therefore turned to the king.

Solomon questioned them as to their pursuits, and, having heard them answer that they were both hunters with the bow, he spake:

“Return home. I shall order the corpse of your father to be stood up against a tree. We shall first see which one of you shall hit his breast more truly with an arrow, and then decide your suit.”

Now both brothers had returned in the custody of a man sent by the king for their surveillance. He it was whom the king questioned about the contest.

“I have fulfilled all that thou hast commanded,” said his man. “I stood the corpse of the old man against a tree, and gave each brother his bow and arrows. The elder was the first to shoot. At a distance of an hundred and twenty ells he hit just the place where, in a living man, the heart beats.”

“A splendid shot,” said Solomon. “And the younger?”

“The younger⁠ ⁠… Forgive me, O King⁠—I could not insist upon thy command being fulfilled exactly.⁠ ⁠… The younger did make his string taut, but suddenly lowered the bow to his feet, turned around, and said, weeping: ‘Nay, this I can not do.⁠ ⁠… I will not shoot at the corpse of my father.’ ”

“Therefore, let the estate of his father belong to him,” decided the king. “He has proven the worthier son. As for the elder, if he desire, he may join the number of my bodyguards. I have need of such strong and rapacious men, sure of hand and true of eye, and with a heart grown over with wool.”

Next three men came before the king. Carrying on a mutual traffic in merchandise, they had amassed much money. And so, when the time had come for them to journey to Jerusalem, they had sewn up the gold in a leathern belt and had set out on their way. On the road they had spent a night in a forest, and, for safekeeping, had buried the belt in the ground. But when they awoke in the morning, they found no belt in the place where they had put it.

They all accused one another of the secret theft, and since all three seemed to be men of exceeding cunning, and subtle of speech, the king therefore said unto them:

“Ere I decide your suit, hearken unto that which I shall relate to you. A certain fair maiden promised her beloved, who was setting out upon a journey, to await his return, and to yield her virginity to none save him. But, having gone away, he within a short while married another maiden, in another city, and she came to know of this. In the absence of her beloved, a wealthy and kindhearted youth in her city, a friend of her childhood, paid court to her. Constrained by her parents she durst not, for shame and fear, tell him of her pact, and took him to spouse. But when, at the conclusion of the marriage feast, he led her to the bedchamber, and would lay down with her, she began to implore him: ‘Allow me to go to the city where my former beloved dwelleth. Let him relieve me of my vow; then shall I return to thee, and do all thy desire!’ And since the youth loved her exceedingly, he did agree to her request, allowed her to go, and she went. On the way a robber fell upon her, disheveled her, and was about to ravish her. But the maiden fell down on her knees before him, and, in tears, implored him to spare her virtue, telling the robber all that had befallen her, and her reason for travelling to a strange city. And the robber, having heard her out, was so astounded by her faithfulness to her word, and so touched by the goodness of her bridegroom, that not only did he let the girl depart in peace, but also returned to her the valuables he had taken. Now I ask you, who of all these three did best before the countenance of God⁠—the maiden, the bridegroom, or the robber?”

And one of the plaintiffs said that the maiden was the most worthy of praise, for her steadfastness to her oath. Another marvelled at the great love of her bridegroom; the third, however, found the action of the robber the most magnanimous one.

And the king said to the last:

“Therefore, it is even thou who hast stolen the belt with the common gold, for thou art by nature covetous, and dost desire that which is not thine.”

But this man, having given his travelling staff to one of his companions, spake, raising his hands aloft as though for an oath:

“I witness before Jehovah that the gold is not with me, but him!”

The king smiled and commanded one of his warriors:

“Take this man’s rod and break it in half.”

And when the warrior had carried out Solomon’s order, gold coins poured out upon the floor, for they had been concealed within the hollowed-out stick; as for the thief, he, struck by the wisdom of the king, fell down before his throne and confessed his misdeed.

There also came into the House of Lebanon a woman, the poor widow of a stonecutter, and she spake:

“I cry for justice, O King! For the last two dinarii left me I bought flour, put it into this large earthen bowl, and started to carry it home. But a strong wind suddenly arose and did scatter my flour. O wise king, who shall bring back this my loss? I now have naught wherewith to feed my children.”

“When was this?” asked the king.

“It happened this morning, at dawn.”

And so Solomon commanded that there be summoned to him several merchants, whose ships were to set out this day with merchandise for Phoenicia, by way of Jaffa. And when, in alarm, they appeared in the Hall of Judgment, the king asked them:

“Did ye pray God, or the gods, for a favourable wind for your ships?”

And they answered:

“Yea, O King. We did so. And our offerings were pleasing to God, for He did send us a propitious wind.”

“I rejoice on your account,” said Solomon. “But the same wind has scattered a poor woman’s flour that she was carrying in a bowl. Do ye not deem it just, if ye have to recompense her?”

And they, made glad that the king had summoned them only for this, at once filled the bowl by casting into it small and large silver coin. And when, with tears, she began to thank the king, he smiled radiantly and said:

“Wait, this is not yet all. This morning’s wind has bestowed joy upon me as well, which I did not expect. And therefore, to the gifts of these merchants, I shall add my kingly gift also.”

And he commanded Adoniram, the treasurer, to put on top of the money of the merchants enough gold coin to cover the silver entirely out of sight.

Solomon desired to see none unhappy on this day. He distributed more rewards, pensions, and gifts than he sometimes did within a whole year, and he pardoned Ahimaaz, the governor of the land of Naphtali, against whom his wrath had flamed before, because of his lawless levies; and he commuted the faults of many who had transgressed the law, nor did he overlook any of the petitions of his subjects⁠—save one.

When the king was passing out from the House at Lebanon through the small southern door, one in a garment of yellow leather stood up in his path⁠—a squat, broad-shouldered man, darkly-ruddy and morose of face, with a black, bushy beard, with a neck like a bull’s, and an austere gaze from underneath shaggy, black eyebrows. This was the high priest of Moloch’s temple. He uttered but one word in a supplicating voice:

“King!⁠ ⁠…”

In the bronze belly of his god were seven divisions: one for meal, another for doves, the third for sheep, the fourth for rams, the fifth for calves, the sixth for beeves; but the seventh, meant for living infants brought by their mothers, had long stood empty at the interdict of the king.

Solomon walked in silence past the priest, but the latter stretched out his hands after him and exclaimed with supplication:

“King! I adjure thee by thy joy!⁠ ⁠… Show me this kindness, O king, and I shall reveal to thee what danger threatens thy life.”

Solomon made no reply; and the eyes of the priest, who had clenched his powerful hands into fists, followed him to the exit with a ferocious glare.

VI

At nightfall Sulamith went to that spot in the old city where, in long rows, stretched the shops of the moneychangers, usurers, and dealers in sweet-smelling condiments. There she sold to a jeweller for three drachmas and one dinar her only valuable⁠—her earrings for festal days; of silver, in the form of rings, each with a little golden star.

Then she paid a visit to a seller of perfumes. In the deep, dark, stone niche, in the midst of jars with gray Arabian amber, packets of frankincense from Lebanon, bunches of aromatic herbs, and phials with oils, was sitting an Aegyptian, a castrate⁠—old, obese, wrinkled, immobile, all fragrant himself; his legs tucked under him, and blinking his lazy eyes. He carefully counted out of a Phoenician flask into a little clay flagon just as many drops of myrrh as there were dinarii among all the moneys of Sulamith; and when he had finished this task he said, gathering up with the stopper the remnant of the oil around the neck of the bottle, and laughing slyly:

“Swarthy maiden, beautiful maiden! When this day thy beloved shall kiss thee between thy breasts and say: ‘How fragrant is thy body, O my beloved!’⁠—recall me at that moment. I have poured over three extra drops for thee.”

And so, when night had come, and the moon had risen over Siloam, blending the blue whiteness of its houses with the black blueness of the shadows and the dull green of the trees, Sulamith did arise from her humble couch of goats’-wool and hearkened. All was quiet in the house. Her sister was breathing evenly upon the floor, nigh the wall. Only outside, in the wayside bushes, the cicadas chirped stridently and passionately; and the blood throbbed noisily in her ears. The shadow of the window-lattice, etched by the light of the moon, lay, sharp and oblique, upon the floor.

Trembling with timidity, expectation, and happiness, Sulamith loosened her garments, let them down to her feet, and, stepping over them, was left naked in the middle of the room, facing the window, in the light of the moon falling through the bars of the lattice. She poured the thick, sweet-smelling myrrh upon her shoulders, upon her bosom, upon her abdomen; and, fearing to lose even one precious drop, began to rub the oil over her legs, under her armpits, and about her neck. And the smooth, slippery touch of her palms and elbows against her body compelled her to shiver with sweet anticipation. And, smiling and trembling, she gazed out of the window, where, beyond the lattice, two poplars showed⁠—dark on one side, silvered on the other⁠—and whispered to herself:

“This is for thee, my love; this is for thee, my beloved. My beloved is the chiefest among ten thousand, his head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His lips are most sweet; yea, he is all desire. This is my beloved, and this is my brother, O daughters of Jerusalem!⁠ ⁠…”

And now, fragrant with myrrh, she lay down upon her couch. Her face is turned toward the window; her hands, like a child, she has squeezed between her knees; her heart fills the room with its loud beating. Much time passes. Scarce closing her eyes, she is plunged into dozing, but her heart keeps vigil. As in a dream, it seems to her that her dear is lying beside her. In a joyous fright she casts off her drowsiness; she seeks her beloved near her on the couch, but finds no one. The moon’s design upon the floor has crept nearer the wall, is dwindled and more oblique. The cicadas are calling; the Brook of Kidron babbles on monotonously; the doleful chant of a night watchman is heard in the city.

“What if he comes not today?” thinks Sulamith; “I did implore him⁠—and what if he hath suddenly obeyed me?⁠ ⁠… I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roses and lilies of the field: awake not love till it come.⁠ ⁠… But now my love hath come to me. Make haste, my beloved! Thy bride awaits thee. Make haste like to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.”

The sand crunches in the yard under light steps. And the soul of the maiden deserts her. A cautious hand knocks at the window. A dark face shows on the other side of the lattice. The low voice of her beloved is heard:

“Open to me, my sister, my dove, my undefiled! For my head is filled with dew.”

But a charmed numbness has suddenly taken possession of Sulamith’s body. She wants to rise, and can not; wants to move her hand, and can not. And, without understanding what is taking place with her, she whispers, gazing through the window:

“Ah, his locks are filled with the drops of the night! But I have put off my chiton. How shall I put it on?”

“Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. The morn is nigh, flowers appear on the earth, and the vines with the tender grape give a goodly smell; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard from the mountains.”

“I have washed my feet,” whispers Sulamith; “how shall I defile them?”

The dark head disappears from the window-lattice; the resounding steps pass around the house and cease at the door. The beloved cautiously puts in his hand by the hole of the door. His fingers can be heard groping for the inner bolt.

Then does Sulamith rise up, pressing her palms hard against her breasts, and whispers in affright:

“My sister sleeps⁠—I fear to awaken her.”

She irresolutely dons her sandals, puts a light chiton upon her naked body, throws a vail over it, and opens the door, leaving marks of myrrh upon the handles of the lock. But there is no longer anyone upon the road that glimmers whitely in its solitude between the dark bushes in the gray murk of morning. The beloved had not waited, and was gone; not even his steps were to be heard. The moon has dwindled and paled, and floats on high. In the east, above the waves of the mountains, the sky is putting on a chilly pink before the dawn. In the distance the walls and towers of Jerusalem glimmer whitely.

“My beloved! King of my life!” Sulamith calls into the humid darkness. “I am here. I await thee.⁠ ⁠… Return!”

But none responds.

“I will run upon the highway; I shall, I shall overtake my beloved,” Sulamith says to herself. “I will go about the city in the streets and in the broad ways; I will seek him whom my soul loveth. O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breast of my mother! When I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised. I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house. Thou wouldst instruct me; I would cause thee to drink of the juice of my pomegranates. I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him I am smitten by love.”

Thus does she commune with herself, and with light, docile steps runs upon the road toward the city. At the Dung Gates near the wall, two watchmen that had gone about the city at night are sitting and dozing in the chill of the morning. They awaken and stare with astonishment at the running girl. The younger arises and blocks her way with outstretched arms.

“Stay, stay, thou fair!” exclaims he with laughter. “Whither so fast? Thou hast passed the night on the sly in the bed of thy dear and art yet warm from his embraces; whereas we have been chilled through by the dampness of the night. It would be but fair if thou wert to sit a while with us.”

The elder also arises and wants to embrace Sulamith. He does not laugh; he breathes heavily, fast, and with wheezing; he is licking his blue lips with his tongue. His face, made hideous by great scars of healed leprosy, seems frightful in the pallid murk. He speaks in a voice hoarse and snuffling:

“Yea, of a truth. What is thy beloved more than other men, sweet maiden! Shut thy eyes, and thou canst not tell me apart from him. I am even better, for, of a certainty, I am more experienced than he.”

They clutch at her bosom, her shoulders, her arms and raiment. But Sulamith is lithe and strong, and her body, anointed with oil, is slippery. She tears herself away, leaving in the hands of the watchmen her outer vail, and runs back still faster along the same road. She has experienced neither offense nor fear⁠—she is all swallowed up in thoughts of Solomon. Passing by her house, she sees the door out of which she had just gone still left open, a gaping black quadrangle in the white wall. But she merely catches her breath, shrinks within herself, like a young cat, and runs by on her tiptoes with never a sound.

She crosses the bridge of Kidron, avoids the outskirt of the village of Siloam, and by a stony road gradually climbs the southern slope of Bath-El-Khav, into her vineyard. Her brother is still sleeping among the vines, wrapped up in a woolen blanket all wet from the dew. Sulamith rouses him, but he can not awaken, enchained by the morning sleep of youth.

As yesterday, the dawn is flaming over Anaze. A wind springs up. The fragrance of the grape in blossom streams through the air.

“I shall come away and look upon that place of the wall where my beloved hath stood,” Sulamith is saying. “I shall feel with my hands the stones that he hath touched; I shall kiss the ground beneath his feet.”

She glides lightly between the vines. The dew falls from them, chilling her feet and spattering her elbows. And now a joyous cry from Sulamith fills the vineyard! The king is standing beyond the wall. With a radiant face he stretches out his arms to meet her.

More lightly than a bird Sulamith surmounts the enclosure, and, without words, with a moan of happiness, entwines the king.

Several minutes pass thus. Finally, tearing his lips away from her mouth, Solomon speaks, enraptured, and his voice trembles:

“Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair!”

“O, how fair art thou, my beloved!”

Tears of delight and gratefulness⁠—blessed tears⁠—sparkle upon Sulamith’s pale and beautiful face. Languishing with love, she sinks to the ground and whispers words of madness in a barely audible voice.

“Our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedars.⁠ ⁠… Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth⁠—for thy love is better than wine.⁠ ⁠…”

After a brief space Sulamith is lying with her head upon Solomon’s breast. His left arm is embracing her.

Bending to her very ear, the king is whispering something to her; the king is tenderly apologizing, and Sulamith reddens from his words and closes her eyes. Then, with an inexpressibly lovely smile of confusion, she says:

“My mother’s children made me the keeper of the vineyard.⁠ ⁠… But mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

But Solomon takes her little swarthy hand and presses it fervently to his lips.

“Thou dost not regret this, Sulamith?”

“O nay, my king, my beloved. I regret it not. Wert thou to arise this minute and go from me, and were I condemned never to see thee after, I would to the end of my life utter thy name with gratitude, Solomon!”

“Tell me one thing else, Sulamith.⁠ ⁠… Only, I beseech thee, speak the truth, my undefiled.⁠ ⁠… Didst thou know who I am?”

“Nay⁠—even now I know it not. Methought.⁠ ⁠… But I am shamed to confess it.⁠ ⁠… I fear thou wilt laugh at me.⁠ ⁠… They tell, that here, upon Mount Bath-El-Khav, pagan gods do oft wander.⁠ ⁠… Many of them, it is said, are beautiful.⁠ ⁠… And methought: art thou not Hor, the son of Osiris; or else some other god?”

“Nay, I am but a king, beloved. But here, upon this spot, I kiss thy dear hand, scorched of the sun, and swear to thee that never yet⁠—neither in the time of first love longings, nor in the days of my glory⁠—has my heart flamed with such an insatiable desire as that which is awakened within me by thy mere smile, by the mere touch of thy flaming locks⁠—the mere curve of thy purple lips! Thou art comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains in the temple of Solomon! Thy caresses intoxicate me. Behold thy breasts⁠—they are fragrant. Thy nipples are as wine!”

“O, yea⁠—gaze, gaze upon me, beloved. Thy eyes arouse me! O, what joy!⁠—for thy desire is unto me⁠—me! Thy locks are scented. As a bundle of myrrh thou dost lie betwixt my breasts!”

Time ceases its current and closes over them in a solar cycle. Their bed is the green; their roof is of cedars; and their walls are of cypresses. And the banner over their tent is love.

VII

The king had a pool in his palace⁠—an octagonal, fresh pool of white marble. Steps of dark-green malachite ran down to its bottom. A facing of Aegyptian jasper, snowy-white, with pink, barely perceptible little veins, served as a frame for the pool. The best of ebony had gone for the ornamentation of the walls. Four lions’ heads of pink sardonyx cast forth the water in thin jets into the pool. Eight mirrors of polished silver, the height of a man and of excellent Sydonian workmanship, were set into the walls, between the slender columns of white.

Before Sulamith was to enter the pool, young maidservants poured aromatic compounds into it, that made the water to turn white and blue and to play with all the colours of a milky opal. The female slaves disrobing Sulamith gazed with delight upon her body; and, when they had disrobed her, they led her up to a mirror. Not a single blemish was there upon her beautiful body, made aureate like a tawny, ripe fruit by the golden down of soft hair. And she, gazing upon her naked self in the mirror, turned red and thought:

“All this is for thee, my king!”

She came out of the pool fresh, cool, and fragrant, covered with quivering drops of water. The female slaves put upon her a short white tunic of the finest Aegyptian linen, and a chiton of precious Sargonian byssin, of such a refulgent golden colour that the garment seemed woven out of the rays of the sun. They shod her feet in red sandals made from the skin of a young kid; they dried her dark, flaming locks and bound them with strings of large black pearls; and they adorned her arms with tinkling bracelets.

In such array did she come before Solomon, and the king exclaimed joyously:

“Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun? O, Sulamith, thy beauty is more terrible than an army with flaunted banners! Seven hundred wives have I known and three hundred concubines, and virgins without number⁠—thou art but one, my fair! The queens shall behold thee and extoll thee, and all women upon earth shall praise thee. O, Sulamith, that day when thou wilt become my spouse and queen shall be the happiest my heart has known.”

Whereupon she walked up to the door of carved olive, and, pressing her cheek against it, said:

“I desire to be but thy slave, Solomon. Behold, I have put my ear to the post of the door. I beseech thee⁠—in accordance with the law of Moses, nail down my ear in witness of my voluntary bondage before thee.”

Then Solomon did command to be brought out of his treasure house precious pendants of deep-red carbuncles, fashioned to resemble elongated pears. He himself put them upon the ears of Sulamith, and said:

“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

And, taking Sulamith by the hand, the king brought her to the banqueting house, where his companions and familiars were already awaiting him.

VIII

Seven days had sped since Sulamith had stepped into the palace of the king. Seven days had she and the king taken joyance in love, yet could not be sated therewith.

Solomon loved to adorn his beloved with precious things. “How beautiful are thy little feet in sandals!” he would exclaim in rapture, and, getting down on his knees before her, he would kiss each toe in turn, and put upon them rings with stones so splendid and rare that their like was not to be found even upon the ephod of a high-priest. Sulamith would listen, entranced, whenever he discoursed upon the inner nature of stones, their magic properties and secret significations.

“Here is anthrax, the sacred stone from the land of Ophir,” the king would say. “It is hot and moist. Behold, it is red, like blood, like the evening glow, like the blown flower of the pomegranate, like thick wine from the vineyards of En-gedi, like thy lips, my Sulamith, in the morning after a night of love. This is the stone of love, wrath, and blood. Upon the hand of a man languishing in a fever or made drunk by desire, it waxes warmer and glows with a red flame. Put it upon thy hand, my beloved, and thou shalt see it enkindle. If it be brayed to a powder and taken in water, it imparts a glow to the face, allays the stomach, and maketh the soul to rejoice. He that weareth it attaineth power over men. It is a curative for the heart, brain, and memory. But it ought not be worn nigh children, for it doth arouse the passions of love around it.

“Here is a transparent stone, the colour of copper verdigris. In the land of the Aethiopians, where it is gotten, it is called Mgnadis-Phza. It was given me by the father of my wife, Queen Astis⁠—by Shishak, the Pharaoh of Aegypt, into whose hands it came through a captive king. Thou seest⁠—it is not beautiful; yet is its value beyond computation, for but four men on earth possess the stone Mgnadis-Phza. It possesses the unusual property of attracting silver to it, just like a covetous man that loveth the metal. I give it thee, my beloved, for that thou are not covetous.

“Gaze upon these sapphires, Sulamith. Some of them resemble in colour cornflowers among wheat; others, an autumn sky; others still, the sea in fine weather. This is the stone of virginity⁠—chill and pure. During far and difficult voyages it is placed in the mouth to allay thirst. It also cureth leprosy and all malignant growths. It bestoweth clarity to thoughts. The priests of Jupiter in Rome wear it upon the index finger.

“The king of all stones is the stone Shamir. The Greeks name it Adamas⁠—which signifieth, the invincible. It is the hardest of all substances on earth and remains uninjured in the fiercest of fires. It is the light of the sun, concentrated in the ground and cooled by time. Admire it, Sulamith⁠—it playeth with all colours, but in itself remaineth translucent, like a drop of water. It shineth in the darkness of night; but loseth its radiance, even in the daytime, upon the hand of a murderer. The Shamir is tied to the hand of a woman tortured in heavy travail with child; and it is also put upon the left hand by warriors setting out for battle. He that weareth the Shamir findeth favour with kings and hath no dread of evil spirits. The Shamir driveth the mottled colour off the face, purifieth the breath, giveth quiet slumber to lunaticks, and induceth a sweat curative of near proximity to poison. The Shamir stones are male and female; buried deep in the ground they are capable of multiplying.

“The moonstone, pale and mild, like the shining of the moon⁠—it is the stone of the Chaldaean and Babylonian magi. Before divination it is placed under the tongue, and it imparts to them the gift of seeing the future. It hath a strange tie with the moon, for during a new moon it groweth chill and shineth more brightly. It is beneficial to woman during that year when from a child she is becoming a woman.

“Wear thou this ring with a smaragd constantly, my beloved, for the smaragd is the favourite stone of Solomon, King of Israel. It is green, pure, gay, tender, like grass in the spring of the year, and when one gazeth at it for long the heart waxeth radiant; if thou wilt look upon it in the morning, all the day shall hold no hardship of thee. I shall hang a smaragd over thy night couch, my comely one; let it drive evil dreams away from thee; let it lull the beating of thy heart, and divert black thoughts. Serpents and scorpions come not nigh him that weareth a smaragd; but if a smaragd be held before the eyes of a serpent, water shall flow from them, and continue flowing, till it go blind. Pounded smaragd, together with camel’s milk, is given an empoisoned man, that the poison may go off in transpiration; mixed with attar of roses, smaragd cureth the bites of venomous reptiles; while ground with saffron and applied to ailing eyes it eradicates night blindness. It also helps in dysentery and the black cough that is incurable by any human means.”

The king also bestowed upon his beloved Lybian amethysts, whose colour resembled early violets, that put forth in forests at the foot of the Lybian mountains⁠—amethysts, possessed of the wondrous property of curbing wind, mollifying wrath, preserving from intoxication, and helping at the trapping of wild beasts; turquoise of Persepolis, that bringeth happiness in love, endeth connubial quarrels, turneth away the wrath of kings, and is propitious in the breaking and selling of horses; and cat’s-eye⁠—that guardeth the property, reason, and health of its possessor; and the pale beryllion, blue-green, like seawater near shore⁠—a good travelling companion for pilgrims and a remedy against cataract and leprosy; and the varicoloured agate: he that weareth it hath no dread of the evil machinations of enemies, and avoideth the danger of being crushed in an earthquake; and the apple-green, turbidly-pellucid onychion⁠—its master’s guardian from fire and madness; and iaspis, that maketh beasts to tremble; and the black swallow-stone, that endoweth with eloquence; and the eagle-stone, esteemed of pregnant women⁠—eagles put it in their nests when the time comes for their young to break out of their shells; and zaberzate out of Ophir, shining like little suns; and yellow-aureate chrysolite⁠—the friend of merchants and thieves; and sardonyx, beloved of kings and queens; and the crimson ligurion: it is found, as all know, in the stomach of the lynx, whose sight is so keen that it can see through walls⁠—and for that reason he that weareth a ligurion is also noted for keen sight, and besides this it stoppeth bleeding of the nose, and healeth all wounds, save wounds inflicted by stone or iron.

The king also put upon Sulamith’s neck carcanets of great price, of pearls that had been dived for in the Persian Sea by his subjects; and the pearls put on a living lustre and a soft colour from the warmth of her body. And corals became redder upon her swarthy breast; and turquoise came to life upon her fingers; and those baubles of yellow amber which were brought from far northern seas, in gift to the king, by the doughty ship-masters of Hiram, King of Tyre, emitted crackling sparks in her hands.

With marigolds and lilies did Sulamith deck her couch, preparing it for the night; and, reposing upon her breast, the king would say in the joyousness of his heart:

“Thou are like to the king’s decked, masted boat in the Land of Ophir, O my beloved; a light, golden boat that floats, swaying, upon the sacred river, among white fragrant blossoms.”

Thus did his first⁠—and last⁠—love come to Solomon, the greatest of kings and wisest of sages.

Many ages have passed since then. There have been kingdoms and kings, and of them no trace has been left, as of a wind that has sped over a desert. There have been prolonged, merciless wars, after which the names of the commanders shone through the ages, like ensanguined stars; but time has effaced even the very memory of them.

But the love of the lowly maiden of the vineyard and the great king shall never pass away nor be forgotten⁠—for love is strong as death; for every woman who loves is a queen; for love is beautiful.

IX

Seven days had sped since Solomon⁠—poet, sage, and king⁠—had brought into his palace the lowly maiden he had met in the vineyard at dawn. For seven days did the king take joyance in her love, nor could be sated therewith. And a great joy irradiated his countenance, like to the golden light of the sun.

It was the time of light, warm, moonlit nights⁠—sweet nights of love.⁠ ⁠… Upon a couch of tiger fells lay the naked Sulamith; and the king, sitting upon the floor at her feet, filled his emerald goblet with the aureate wine of Mauretus, and drank to the health of his beloved, rejoicing with all his heart, and narrated to her the sage, strange legends of eld. And Sulamith’s hand rested upon his head, stroking his wavy black hair.

“Tell me, my king,” Sulamith had once asked, “is it not wonderful that I fell in love with thee so instantly? I now call all things to mind, and meseems I began belonging to thee from the very first moment, when I had not yet had time to behold thee, but had merely heard thy voice. My heart began to flutter and did open to meet thee, as a flower opens to the south wind on a night in summer. How hast thou taken me so, my beloved?”

And the king, quietly bending his head toward the soft knees of Sulamith, smiled tenderly and answered:

“Thousands of women before thee, O my comely one, have put this question to their beloveds, and hundreds of ages after thee will they be asking their beloveds about this. There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid. This is not my wisdom, Sulamith⁠—these are the words of Agur, son of Jakeh, heard from him by his disciples. But let us honour the wisdom of others also.”

“Yea,” said Sulamith pensively, “mayhap it is even true that man shall never comprehend this. Today, during the banquet, I wore a sweet-smelling cluster of stacte upon my breast. But thou didst leave the table, and my flowers ceased to give out their smell. Meseems, thou must be beloved, O king, of women, and men, and beasts, and even of flowers. I oft ponder, yet comprehend not: how can one love any other save thee?”

“And any save thee, save thee, Sulamith! Every hour do I render thanks to God for that He has set thee in my path.”

“I remember, I was sitting upon a stone of the wall, and thou didst put thy hand on mine. Fire ran through my veins; my head was dizzied. I said within me: Behold, there is my lord, my king, my beloved!”

“I remember, Sulamith, how thou didst turn around to my call. Under the thin raiment I saw thy body, thy beautiful body, that I love as I love God. I love it⁠—covered with its golden down, as though the sun had left its kiss upon it. Thou art graceful, like to a filly in the Pharaoh’s chariot; thou art fair like the chariot of Ammi-nadib. Thy eyes are as two doves, sitting by the rivers of waters.”

“O, beloved, thy words stir me. Thy hand sears me sweetly. O, my king, thy legs are as pillars of marble. Thy belly is like an heap of wheat, set about with lilies.”

Surrounded, irradiated, by the silent light of the moon, they forgot time and place; and thus hours would pass, and they with wonder beheld the rosy dawn peeping through the latticed windows of the chamber.

Sulamith also said once:

“Thou hast known, my beloved, wives and virgins without number, and they were all the fairest women on earth. I become ashamed whenever I consider myself⁠—a simple, unschooled girl⁠—and my poor body, scorched of the sun.”

But, touching her lips with his, the king would say, with infinite love and gratefulness:

“Thou art a queen, Sulamith! Thou wast born a true queen. Thou art brave and generous in love. Seven hundred wives have I, and three hundred concubines, and virgins without number have I known; but thou, my timid one, art my only one⁠—thou fairest among women. I have found thee like as a diver in the Gulf of Persia, that filleth a great number of baskets with barren shells and pearls of little price, ere he get from the bed of the sea a pearl worthy a king’s crown. My child, a man may love thousands of times, yet he loveth but once. People without number think they love, yet only to two of them doth God send love. And when thou didst yield thyself up to me among the cypresses, under the rafters of cedars, upon the bed of green, I did with all my soul render thanks to God, so gracious to me.”

Sulamith also asked once:

“I know that they all loved thee, for not to love thee is impossible. The Queen of Sheba did come to thee from her domain. They say, that she was the wisest and fairest of all women that had ever been on earth. As in a dream, I recall her caravans. I know not why, but since my earliest childhood I have been drawn to the chariots of the great. I was then perhaps seven, perhaps eight. I remember the camels in golden harness, covered with caparisons of purple, laden with heavy burdens; I remember the mules with the little bells of gold between their ears; I remember the droll monkeys in silvern cages; and the wondrous peacocks. There was a multitude of servants in garments of white and blue, marching; they led tame tigers and panthers upon ribbands of red. I was but eight then.”

“O child, thou wert but eight then,” said Solomon with sadness.

“Didst thou love her more than me, Solomon? Wilt tell me something of her?”

And the king told her all pertaining to this amazing woman. Having heard much of the wisdom and beauty of the King of Israel, she had come to him from her domain with rich gifts, desiring to prove his wisdom and subdue his heart. This was a magnificent woman of forty, who was already beginning to fade. But through secret, magic means she contrived to make her body, that was growing flabby, seem graceful and supple, like a girl’s, while her face bore an impress of an awesome, inhuman beauty. But her wisdom was ordinary wisdom, and the petty wisdom of a woman to boot.

Desiring to test the king with riddles, she at first sent to him fifty youths of tenderest age, and fifty maidens. They were all so cunningly dressed that the keenest eye could not have discerned their sex. “I shall call thee wise, O King,” said Balkis, “if thou shalt tell me which of them is woman, and which man.”

But the king burst out laughing, and ordered that every he and she sent him be brought a separate bason of silver, and a separate ewer of silver, for laving. And whereas the boys bravely splashed in the water and cast it in handfuls at their faces, drying their skin vigorously, the girls acted as women always do at their ablutions. They lathered each hand gently and solicitously, bringing it closely to their eyes.

In so easy a manner did the king solve the first riddle of Balkis-Mâkkedah.

Next she sent Solomon a large diamond, the size of a hazel nut. This stone had a thin, exceedingly tortuous flaw, that perforated its entire body with a narrow, intricate path. The task was to put a silken thread through the jewel. And the wise king let into the opening a silk worm, which, having passed through, left the finest of silken webs in its wake.

Also, the beauteous Balkis sent King Solomon a precious goblet of carved sardonyx, of magnificent workmanship. “This goblet shall be thine,” she had commanded that the king be told, “if thou fillest it with moisture taken neither from earth nor heaven.” And Solomon, having filled the goblet with froth falling from the body of a fatigued steed, ordered it to be carried to the queen.

Many such hard questions did the queen put to Solomon, but could not belittle his wisdom; nor with all her secret charms of love’s passion in the night might she contrive to retain his love. And when she had finally palled upon the king, he had cruelly, hurtfully made mock of her.

Everybody knew that the Savvian queen never showed her lower extremities to anyone, and for that reason wore a garment reaching to the ground. Even in the hours of love caresses did she keep her legs closely covered with raiment. Many strange and droll legends had sprung up on this account.

Some averred, that the queen had legs like a goat, grown over with wool; others swore, that instead of human feet she had webbed feet, like a goose. And they even related how the mother of Balkis had once, after bathing, sat down upon sand where just before a certain god, temporarily metamorphosed into a gander, had left his seed, and that through this she had borne the beauteous Queen of Sheba.

And so Solomon one day commanded to be built, in one of his chambers, a transparent floor of crystal, with an empty space beneath it, which was filled with water and stocked with live fish. All this was done with such extraordinary art that one not forewarned could never possibly notice the glass, and would take an oath that a pool of clear, fresh water lay before him.

And when all was in readiness, Solomon invited his regal guest to an interview. Surrounded by all the pomp of her retinue, she paced through the chambers of the House at Lebanon, and came up to the treacherous pool. At the other end of it sat the king, resplendent with gold and precious stones, and with a welcoming look in his dark eyes. The door opened before the queen, and she took a step forward⁠—but cried out and.⁠ ⁠…

Sulamith claps her palms and laughs, and her laughter is joyous and childlike.

“She stoops and lifts up her raiment?” asks Sulamith.

“Yea, my beloved, she acted as any among women would have acted. She raised up the hem of her garment, and although this lasted for but a moment, not only I but all my court saw that the beauteous Savvian Queen, Balkis-Mâkkedah, had ordinary human legs, but crooked and grown over with coarse hair. On the very next day she set off, without bidding me farewell, and departed with her magnificent caravan. I had not meant to offend her. I sent after her a trustworthy runner, whom I ordered to give to the queen a bundle of a rare mountain herb⁠—the best means for the extirpation of hair upon the body. But she returned to me the head of my emissary in a bag of costly purple.”

Solomon also told his beloved many things out of his life, which none other among men and women knew, and which Sulamith carried with her into the grave. He told her of the long and weary years of his wanderings, when, fleeing from the wrath of his brethren, he was forced to hide under an assumed name in foreign lands, enduring fearful poverty and privations. He told her how, in a far-off, unknown country, while he was standing in the market place, in expectation of being hired to work somewhere, the king’s cook had approached him and said:

“Stranger, help me carry this hamper of fish into the palace.”

Through his wit, adroitness, and skilled demeanor, Solomon so pleased the officers of the court, that in a short while he had made himself at home in the palace, and when the head cook died he had taken his place. Further, Solomon told of how the king’s only daughter⁠—a beautiful, ardent maiden⁠—had fallen in love with the new cook and had confessed her love to him; how they fled from the palace one night, and had been retaken and brought back; how Solomon had been condemned to die; and how, by a miracle, he succeeded in escaping from the dungeon.

Avidly did Sulamith listen to him, and, when he grew silent, amidst the stillness of the night their lips joined, their arms entwined each other, and breast touched breast. And when morning drew near, and Sulamith’s body seemed a foamy pink, and the fatigue of love encircled her splendid eyes with blue shadows, she would say with a tender smile:

“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick with love.”

X

In the temple of Isis, upon Mount Bath-El-Khav, the first part of the great mystery, to which the faithful of the lesser initiation were admitted, was just over. The priest on duty⁠—an ancient elder in white vestment, with shaven head, and neither moustache nor beard⁠—had turned from the elevation of the altar toward the people, and pronounced in a quiet, tired voice:

“Dwell in peace, my sons and daughters. Wax perfect through deeds. Extoll the name of the goddess. And may her blessings be over ye forever and aye.”

He raised his hands on high over the people, in benediction. And immediately all the initiates into the lesser rank of the mysteries prostrated themselves on the floor, and then, arising, softly and in silence made their way to the exit.

Today was the seventh day of the month Phamenoth, sacred to the mysteries of Osiris and Isis. Since evening the solemn procession had thrice made the circuit of the temple with lamps, palm-leaves, and amphorae; with the occult symbols of the gods and the sacred images of the Phallus. In the midst of the procession, upon the shoulders of the priests and the minor prophets, was reared the closed naos of costly wood, ornamented with pearl, ivory, and gold. Therein dwelt the goddess herself⁠—She, The Invisible, The Bestower of Fecundity, The Mysterious; Mother, Sister, and Wife of gods.

The evil Seth had enticed his brother, the divine Osiris, to a feast; through craftiness he made him to lie down in a magnificent sarcophagus, and, having clapped down the lid over him, cast the sarcophagus with the body of the great god into the Nile. Isis, who had just given birth to Horus, with yearning and tears searches all the world over for the body of her spouse, and for long can not find it. Finally, slaves inform her that the body had been borne out to sea by the waves, and that it had been cast up at Byblos, where an enormous tree had sprung up about it, enclosing within its trunk the body of the god and his floating dwelling. The king of that domain had commanded a mighty column to be made out of the enormous tree, not knowing that within it reposed the god Osiris himself, the great bestower of life. Isis goes to Byblos; she arrives there fatigued with sultriness, thirst, and the toilsome, stony road. She liberates the sarcophagus out of the midst of the tree, carries it with her, and buries it in the earth near the city wall. But Seth again secretly steals away the body of Osiris, cuts it up into fourteen parts, and strews them over all the towns and settlements of Upper and Lower Aegpyt.

And again with great grief and lamentations Isis set out in search of the sacred members of her spouse and brother. Her sister, the goddess Nephthys, and the mighty Thoth, and the son of the goddess, the radiant Horus⁠—Horus of the Horizon⁠—all join their plaints to her weeping.

Such was the hidden meaning of the present procession in the first half of the sacred service. Now, upon the departure of the common believers, and after a short rest, the second part of the great mystery was about to be consummated. In the temple were left only those initiated into the higher degrees⁠—mystagogues, epopts, prophets and sacrificators.

Boys in white vestments bore about, upon salvers of silver, flesh, bread, dried fruits, and sweet wine of Pelusium. Others poured hippocras out of narrow-necked Tyrian vessels⁠—a drink given in those days to condemned criminals before execution, to arouse their manhood, but which also possessed the great virtue of generating and sustaining in men the fire of a sacred madness.

At a sign from the priest on duty the boys withdrew. A priest who was also the keeper of the gates locked all doors. Then he attentively made the rounds of all those who remained, scrutinizing their faces and testing them with secret words that constituted the pass-orders for this night. Two other priests drew a silvern thurible upon wheels down the length of the temple and around each of its columns. The temple filled with the blue, thick, heady, aromatic fumes of incense, and through the layers of smoke grew barely visible the varicoloured flames of the lamp⁠—lamps made of translucent stones, lamps set in carved gold and suspended from the ceiling upon long chains of silver. In the times of eld this temple of Osiris and Isis was known for its small extent and its poverty, and was hollowed out like a cavern in the heart of the mountain. A narrow subterranean corridor led to it from without. But in the days of the reign of Solomon, who had taken under his protection all religions save those which permitted the offering of children in sacrifice, and thanks to the zeal of Queen Astis, an Aegyptian born, the temple had expanded in depth and height, and had become adorned with rich offerings.

The former altar still remained inviolate in its primordial, austere simplicity, together with a great number of small chambers surrounding it and serving for the keeping of treasures, sacrificial objects, and priestly appurtenances, as well as for special secret purposes during the most occult mystic orgies.

But then, the outer court was truly magnificent, with its pylons in honour of the goddess Hathor, and with a four-sided colonnade of four and twenty columns. The inner, subterranean, hypostylic hall for worshippers was built still more magnificently. Its mosaic floor was all adorned with cunningly wrought images of fishes, beasts, amphibians and reptiles; while the ceiling was overlaid with blue lazure, and upon it shone a sun of gold, glowed a moon of silver, innumerable stars twinkled, and birds soared upon outspread wings. The floor was the earth, the ceiling the sky, and they were joined by round and many-sided columns, like mighty tree trunks; and since all the columns were surmounted by capitals in the form of the tender flowers of lotus or the slender cylinders of the papyrus, the ceiling they supported did in reality seem as light and aethereal as the sky.

The walls to the height of a man were faced with plates of red granite, brought at the desire of Queen Astis out of Thebes, where the local master workers could impart to the granite a smoothness like that of a mirror, together with an amazing polish. Higher, to the very ceiling, the walls, as well as the columns, were gay with graven and limned images with the symbols of the gods of both Aegypts. Here was Sebekh, honoured in Fayum in the form of a crocodile; and Thoth, the god of the moon, depicted as an ibis in the city of Khmunu; and the sun-god Horus, to whom a small idol-temple was consecrated in Edfu; and Bast of Bubastis, in the form of a cat; Shu, the god of the air, as a lion; Ptah⁠—an Apis; Hathor, the goddess of mirth⁠—a heifer; Anubis, the god of embalming, with the head of a jackal; and Menthu out of Hermon; and the Coptic Minu; and Neith of Sais, the goddess of the sky; and, finally, in the form of a ram⁠—the dread god whose name was never uttered, and who was called Khenti-Amentiu, which signifieth: The Dweller in the West.

The half-dark altar reared above the entire temple, and the gold upon the walls of the sanctuary that hid the images of Isis gleamed within its depths. Three gates⁠—a large one in the middle, and two small ones flanking it⁠—opened into the sanctuary. Before the middle one stood a small sacrificial altar with a sacred stone knife of Aethiopian obsidian. Steps led up to the altar, and upon them were disposed young priests and priestesses with tympani and sistrums, with flutes and tabours.

Queen Astis was reclining within a little, secret chamber. A small quadrangular opening, artfully concealed by a large curtain, led directly to the altar, and permitted one to follow all the details of the sacred service without betraying one’s presence. A light, closely-fitting dress of linen gauze, interwoven with silver, tightly enveloped the body of the queen, leaving the arms bare up to the shoulders, and the legs halfway to the calf. Her skin gleamed pinkly through the diaphanous material, and one could see the pure lines and elevations of her graceful body, which, despite the queen’s age of thirty, still had lost none of its litheness, beauty and freshness. Her hair, stained a blue colour, was spread loosely over her shoulders and back, and was adorned with innumerable little aromatic pomanders. Her face was much rouged and whitened; while her eyes, finely outlined by kohl, seemed enormous and glowed in the darkness, like those of some powerful beasts of the feline species. A sacred uraeus of gold hung down from her neck, separating the half-bared breasts.

Ever since Solomon had cooled toward Queen Astis, tired of her unbridled sensuality, she, with all the ardour of southern love-passion, and with all the jealousy of a woman scorned, had given herself up to those secret orgies of perverted lust that constituted the highest cult of the castrates’ service of Isis. She always showed herself surrounded by priests-castrates, and, even now, as one of them fanned her head with measured strokes of a fan made of peacock feathers, others were seated upon the floor drinking in the beauty of the queen with eyes of insane bliss. Their nostrils were dilating and quivering from the scent of her body wafted to them, and they sought with trembling fingers to touch unperceived the hem of her light raiment, barely stirring in the breeze. Their excessive, never satiated sensuousness spurred on their imagination to its utmost limits. Their inventiveness in the pleasures of Kybele and Ashera surpassed all human possibilities. And being jealous of the queen toward one another, toward all men, women, and children⁠—being jealous of her own self⁠—they adored her even more than Isis, and, loving her, hated her as an inexhaustible, fiery fountainhead of delectable and cruel sufferings.

Dark, evil, fearful, and fascinating rumours were current about Queen Astis in Jerusalem. The parents of beautiful boys and girls hid their children from her gaze; men dreaded to utter her name upon the conjugal couch, as an omen of defilement and disaster. But agitating, irresistible curiosity drew all souls to her, and gave all bodies up into her power. They who had but once experienced her ferocious, sanguinary caresses could nevermore forget her, and became her lifelong, pitiful, spurned slaves. Ready, for a renewed possession of her, to commit every sin, to endure every degradation and crime, they came to resemble those unfortunates who, having once tasted of the bitter drink of the poppy from the Land of Ophir⁠—the drink that bestoweth sweet dreams⁠—will never more draw away from it, bowing down before it only and honouring it alone, until exhaustion and madness cut short their life.

The fan swayed slowly in the sultry air. In silent rapture the priests contemplated their dread sovereign. But she seemed to have forgotten their presence. Having moved the curtain slightly aside, she was ceaselessly gazing across toward that part of the altar where at one time, out of the dark fissures of the ancient curtains of beaten gold, was to be seen the beautiful, radiant countenance of the king of Israel. Him alone did the spurned queen, the cruel and lecherous Astis, love with all her flaming and depraved heart. His glance of a fleeting moment, a kind word of his, the touch of his hand, did she seek everywhere, and found not. Upon triumphal levees, court banquets, and upon the days of judgment, did Solomon pay his respects, due a queen and the daughter of a king; but his soul was not quick unto her. And the proud queen would often command herself to be borne at set hours past the House at Lebanon, to glimpse, even though afar and unnoticed, through the heavy stuffs of her litter, the proud, unforgettably splendid visage of Solomon, in the midst of the throng of courtiers. And long since her flaming love had grown so closely joined to searing hatred that Astis herself was unable to tell them apart.

In former days Solomon also had visited the temple of Isis on great festal days, had brought the goddess offerings, and had even accepted the title of her hierophant⁠—second after that of the Pharaoh of Aegypt. But the horrible mysteries of “The Sanguine Sacrifice of Fecundation” had turned his mind and heart from the service of the Mother of Gods.

“He that is castrated through ignorance or by force, or through accident or disease, is not abased before God,” the king hath said. “But woe be unto him that doth maim himself with his own hand.”

And now for a whole year his couch in the temple had remained vacant. And in vain did the flaming eyes of the queen now gaze feverishly at the unstirred hangings.

In the meanwhile, the wine, hippocras, and the stupefying burnt perfumes were already having a perceptible effect upon those gathered within the temple. Cries, and laughter, and the ring of silver vessels falling upon the stone floor came with greater frequency. The grand, mysterious moment of the sanguinary sacrifice was approaching. Ecstasy was overcoming the faithful.

With an abstracted gaze the queen surveyed the temple and the believers. Many honoured and illustrious men of Solomon’s retinue and many of his generals were here: Ben-Geber, ruler over the region of Argob; and Ahimaaz, who had Basmath, the daughter of the king, to wife; and the witty Ben-Dekar; and Zabud, who bore, in accordance with eastern customs, the high title of the King’s Friend; and the brother of Solomon by the first marriage of David⁠—Dalaiah, a debilitated, half-dead man, who had prematurely fallen into idiocy through excesses and drinking. They were all⁠—some through faith, some through ulterior designs, others out of adulation, and still others for lecherous purposes⁠—the adorants of Isis.

And now the eyes of the queen rested, long and attentively, intent in thought, on the comely, youthful face of Eliab, one of the officers of the king’s bodyguards.

The queen knew why his swarthy face was aflame with such a vivid colour, why his eyes were directed with such passionate yearning hitherward, upon the curtains, scarce stirring from the touch of the queen’s beautiful hands. Once, almost in jest, submitting to a momentary caprice, she had made Eliab to pass a whole night of felicity with her. In the morning she had let him depart, but ever since, for many days running, she had beheld everywhere⁠—in the palace, in the temple, in the streets⁠—two enamoured, submissive, yearning eyes, that followed her entranced.

The dark eyebrows of the queen contracted, and her green, elongated eyes suddenly darkened from a fearful thought. With a barely perceptible motion of her hand she ordered the castrate to lower the fan and said quietly:

“Get hence, all of you. Hushai, thou shalt go and summon to me Eliab, the officer of the king’s guard. Let him come alone.”

XI

Ten priests, in white vestments, maculated with red, stepped out to the centre of the altar. Following them came two other priests, clad in feminine garments. It was their duty today to represent Nephthys and Isis, bewailing Osiris. Then out of the depths of the altar came one in a white chiton, without a single ornament, and the eyes of all the men and women were eagerly drawn to him. This was the very same desert anchorite who had undergone a heavy trial of ten years’ wrestling with the flesh upon the mountains of Lebanon, and was now to bring a great, voluntary bloody sacrifice to Isis. His face, emaciated by hunger, wind-beaten and scorched, was stern and pallid, the eyes austerely cast down; and a supernatural horror was wafted from him upon the throng.

Finally, the chief priest of the temple also made his appearance⁠—a centenarian ancient, with a tiara upon his head, with a tiger skin upon his shoulders, in an apron of brocaded samite adorned with the tails of jackals.

Turning to the worshippers, he uttered in a senile voice, meek and tremulous:

“Suton-di-hotpu.” (“The king bringeth the sacrifice.”)

And then, turning around to the sacrificial altar, he took from the hands of an acolyte a white dove with little red feet, cut off the bird’s head, took the heart out of her breast, and sprinkled the sacrificial altar and the consecrated knife with her blood.

After a brief silence he proclaimed:

“Let us weep for Osiris, the god of Atum, the Great On-Nefer-Hophra, the god Ona!”

Two castrates in female garments⁠—Isis and Nephthys⁠—at once commenced the lamentation, in harmonious, high-pitched voices:

“Return to thy dwelling, O beauteous youth! To behold thee is bliss.

“Isis charges thee⁠—Isis, that was conceived in the one womb with thee⁠—Isis, thy spouse and thy sister.

“Show us thy countenance anew, radiant god. Here is Nephthys, thy sister. She is deluged in her tears and plucks out her hair in her grief.

“In a yearning like unto death do we seek after thy beauteous body. Return to thy dwelling, Osiris!”

Two other priests joined their voices to those of the first two. These were Horus and Anubis lamenting for Osiris, and each time they concluded a stanza, the chorus, disposed upon the steps of the staircase, repeated it to a solemn and sad motif.

Then with the same chant the elder priests brought out of the sanctuary the statue of the goddess, no longer covered with the naos. A black mantle, strewn over with golden stars, now enveloped the goddess from head to foot, leaving visible only her silvern feet, entwined by a serpent, as well as, over her head, a silvern disc, confined within the horns of a cow. And slowly, to the tinkling of the censers and sistra, with mournful weeping, the procession of the goddess Isis set out from the steps of the altar, down into the temple, along its walls, and in and out between the columns.

Thus did the goddess gather up the scattered members of her spouse, that she might resuscitate him with the aid of Thoth and Anubis.

“Glory to the city of Abydos, that preserved thy fair head, Osiris.

“Glory to thee, city of Memphis, where we did find the right hand of the great god⁠—the hand of war and protection.

“And to thee also, O city of Sais, that didst harbour the left hand of the radiant god⁠—the hand of justice.

“And be thou blessed, city of Thebes, where the heart of On-Nefer-Hophra did repose.”

Thus did the goddess make the round of the entire temple, coming back to the altar, and more and more passionate and loud did the singing of the chorus become. A sacred exaltation was taking possession of the priests and those praying. All the parts of the body of Osiris had Isis found, save one⁠—the sacred Phallus, impregnating the maternal womb, creating new life eternal. Now was approaching the grandest act in the mystery of Osiris and Isis.⁠ ⁠…

“Is it thou, Eliab?” the queen asked the youth, who had quietly entered the door.

In the darkness near the couch he noiselessly sank at her feet and pressed to his lips the hem of her raiment. And the queen felt him weeping with rapture, shame, and desire. Lowering her hand upon his curly, tousled head, the queen uttered:

“Tell me, Eliab, all that thou knowest of the king and this girl of the vineyard.”

“How thou dost love him, O queen!” said Eliab with a bitter moan.

“Speak!⁠ ⁠…” commanded Astis.

“What can I tell thee, queen? My heart is rent by jealousy.”

“Speak!”

“Never yet has the king loved any as he loveth her. He doth not part from her for an instant. His eyes shine with happiness. He lavishes favours and gifts all about him. He, the Abimelech18 and sage⁠—he, like a slave, lieth at her feet and, like a dog, taketh not his eyes off her.”

“Speak!”

“O, how thou dost torture me, queen! And she⁠ ⁠… she is all love, all tenderness and caresses! She is meek and abashed, she sees and knows naught save her love. She arouses wrath, envy, or jealousy in none.⁠ ⁠…”

“Speak!” furiously moaned out the queen, and, clutching with her pliant fingers the black curls of Eliab, she pressed his head against her body, scratching his face with the silver embroidery of her diaphanous chiton.

And in the meanwhile, at the altar, around the image of the goddess covered with its black pall, the priests and priestesses were careering in a holy frenzy, with shouts resembling barking, to the clashing of tympani and the jarring strum of sistrums.

Certain ones among them were flaying themselves with many-tailed whiplashes of rhinoceros hide; others were inflicting long, slashing wounds upon their own breasts and shoulders with short knives; others still were tearing their mouths with their fingers, tearing at their ears, and excoriating their faces with their nails. In the midst of this mad round-dance, at the very feet of the goddess, with inconceivable rapidity the anchorite from the mountains of Lebanon was whirling on one spot, in snowy-white, waving raiment. The head priest alone remained motionless. In his hand he was holding the sacred sacrificial knife of Aethiopian obsidian, ready to pass it over at the ultimate, frightful moment.

“The Phallus! The Phallus! The Phallus!” the maddened priests were crying in an ecstasy. “Where is thy Phallus, O radiant god? Come, fecundate the goddess! Her bosom languishes with desire! Her womb is like a desert in the sultry months of summer!”

And now a fearful, insane, piercing scream for an instant drowned all sound of the chorus. The priests quickly parted, and all those in the temple beheld the anchorite of Lebanon, utterly nude, horrible with his tall, gaunt, yellow body. The high priest held out the knife to him. The temple grew unbearably still. And he, quickly stooping, made some motion, straightened up, and with a wail of pain and rapture suddenly cast at the feet of the goddess a formless, bloody piece of flesh.

He was tottering. The high priest carefully supported him, putting his arm around his back; led him up to the image of Isis, painstakingly covered him with the black pall, and left him thus for a few moments, in order that in secret, unseen of the others, he might imprint his kiss upon the lips of the impregnated goddess.

Immediately thereafter he was laid upon a stretcher and borne from the altar. The priest who kept the gates went outside the temple. He struck an enormous copper disc with a wooden mallet, proclaiming to all the universe that the great mystery of the fecundation of the goddess had been consummated. And the high, singing sound of the copper floated away over Jerusalem.⁠ ⁠…

Queen Astis, her body still quivering without cease, threw back Eliab’s head. Her eyes were aflame with an intense, red fire. And she spake slowly, word by word:

“Eliab, wouldst have me make thee king over Judaea and Israel? Wouldst thou be sovereign over all Syria and Mesopotamia, over Phoenicia and Babylon?”

“Nay, queen, I desire thee alone.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yea, thou shalt be my lord. All my nights shall belong to thee. My every word, my every glance, my every breath shall be thine. Thou knowest the shibboleth. Thou shalt go this day into the palace and slay them. Thou shalt slay them both! Thou shalt slay them both!”

Eliab was fain to speak. But the queen drew him to her, and her burning lips and tongue clung to his mouth. This lasted excruciatingly long. Then, suddenly tearing the youth away from her, she said curtly and imperiously:

“Go!”

“I go,” answered Eliab, submissively.

XII

And it was the seventh night of Solomon’s great love.

Strangely quiet and deeply tender were the caresses of the king and Sulamith on this night. Some pensive melancholy, some cautious timidity, some distant premonition, seemed to have cast a slight shadow over their words, their kisses and embraces.

Gazing through the window at the sky, where night was already vanquishing the sinking flame of the evening, Sulamith let her eyes rest upon a bright, bluish star that trembled meekly and tenderly.

“What is that star called, my beloved?” she asked.

“That is the star Sopdit,” answered the king. “It is a sacred star. Assyrian magi tell us that the souls of all men dwell upon it after the death of the body.”

“Dost thou believe it, my king?”

Solomon made no reply. His right hand was under Sulamith’s head, and his left did embrace her; and she felt his aromatic breath upon her⁠—upon her hair, upon her temple.

“Mayhap we shall see each other there, my king, after we have died?” asked Sulamith uneasily.

The king again kept silence.

“Give me some answer, beloved,” timidly implored Sulamith.

Whereupon the king said:

“Brief is the life of man, but time is without end, and matter hath no death. Man dieth and maketh the earth fertile with the corruption of his body; the earth nourisheth the blade; the blade bringeth forth grain; man consumeth bread, and feedeth his body therewith. Multitudes, and multitudes upon multitudes, of ages shall pass; all things in the universe repeat themselves⁠—men, beasts, stones, plants⁠—all repeat themselves. In the multiform vortex of time and matter we, too, are repeated, my beloved. It is just as true as that, if thou and I were to fill a large bag up to the top with sea gravel, and were to cast therein but one precious sapphire⁠—though we were to take pebbles out of the bag many, many times, we still would, sooner or later, draw out the precious stone as well. Thou and I will meet, Sulamith, nor shall we know each other; but our hearts, with rapture and yearning, will strive to meet, for thou and I have already met⁠—my meek, my fair Sulamith⁠—though we remember it not.”

“Nay, my king, nay! I remember. When thou didst stand beneath the window and didst call to me: ‘My fair, come out, for my locks are filled with the drops of the night!’ I knew thee, I remembered thee; and fear and joy possessed my heart. Tell me, my king⁠—tell me, Solomon: if I were, say, to die on the morrow, wouldst thou recall thy swarthy maiden of the vineyard, thy Sulamith?”

And the king, pressing her to his breast, whispered in emotion:

“Never speak thus.⁠ ⁠… Speak not thus, O Sulamith! Thou art chosen of God, thou art the veritable one, thou art the queen of my soul.⁠ ⁠… Death shall not touch thee.⁠ ⁠…”

The strident sound of brass suddenly soared over Jerusalem. For long it trembled mournfully and wavered in the air, and when it had grown silent its quavering echoes still floated on for a long while.

“This marks the ending of the mystery in the temple of Isis,” said the king.

“I am afraid, my comely one,” whispered Sulamith. “A dark terror has penetrated into my soul.⁠ ⁠… I do not want to die.⁠ ⁠… I have not yet had time to enjoy my fill of thy embraces.⁠ ⁠… Embrace me.⁠ ⁠… Press me closer to thee.⁠ ⁠… Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm!⁠ ⁠…”

“Fear not death, Sulamith! For love is strong as death.⁠ ⁠… Drive sad thoughts from thee.⁠ ⁠… Wouldst have me tell thee of the wars of David, of the feasts and hunts of the Pharaoh Shishak? Wouldst hear one of those fairy tales that come from the land of Ophir?⁠ ⁠… Wouldst have me tell thee of the wonders of Bakramaditiah?”

“Yea, my king. Thou dost know thyself that when I hearken to thee, my heart doth expand from happiness! But I would ask a boon of thee.⁠ ⁠…”

“O Sulamith, all that thou dost desire! Ask my life of me⁠—I shall render it up to thee with delight. I shall only regret having paid too small a price for thy love.”

Then Sulamith smiled in the darkness for happiness, and, entwining the king with her arms, whispered in his ear:

“I beseech thee, when the morning cometh let us go together there⁠ ⁠… to the vineyard.⁠ ⁠… There, where it is green, and the cypresses are, and the cedars; where, nigh the stone wall, thou didst take my soul with thy hands.⁠ ⁠… I beseech thee to do this, my beloved.⁠ ⁠… There will I give thee my loves anew.⁠ ⁠…”

In a transport of delight the king kissed the lips of his love.

But Sulamith suddenly raised herself up on the couch and hearkened.

“What is it, my child?⁠ ⁠… What hath frightened thee?” asked Solomon.

“Stay, my beloved.⁠ ⁠… Someone is coming hither.⁠ ⁠… Yea⁠ ⁠… I hear steps.”

She became silent. And the stillness was such that they marked the beating of their hearts.

A slight rustling was heard beyond the door, and it was suddenly thrown ajar, quickly and without a sound.

“Who is there?” cried out Solomon.

But Sulamith had already sprung up from the bed, and with one move dashed toward the dark figure of a man with a gleaming sword in his hand. And immediately, stricken through by a short, quick stroke, she fell down to the floor with a faint cry, as though of wonder.

Solomon shattered with his hand the screen of carnelian that shaded the light of the night-lamp. He beheld Eliab, who was standing near the door, stooping a little over the body of the girl, swaying like one in wine. The young warrior raised his head under Solomon’s gaze, and, when his eyes met the wrathful, awesome eyes of the king, he blanched and groaned. An expression of despair and terror distorted his features. And suddenly, stooping, hiding his face in his mantle, he began timidly, like a frightened jackal, to slink out of the room. But the king stayed him, saying but three words:

“Who compelled thee?”

All a-tremble and with teeth chattering, with eyes grown white from fear, the young warrior let drop dully:

“Queen Astis.⁠ ⁠…”

“Get thee hence,” commanded Solomon. “Tell the guard on duty to watch thee.”

Soon people with lights commenced running through the innumerable rooms of the palace. All the chambers were illuminated. The leeches came; the friends and the military officers of the king gathered.

The chief leech said:

“King, neither science nor God will now avail. She will die the instant we draw out the sword left in her breast.”

But at this moment Sulamith came to and said with a calm smile:

“I would drink.”

And when she had drunk, her eyes rested with a tender, beautiful smile upon the king, nor did she again take them away, the while he stood upon his knees before her couch, all naked, even as she, without perceiving that his knees were laved in her blood, nor that his hands were encrimsoned with the scarlet of her blood.

Thus, with difficulty, gazing upon her beloved and smiling gently, did the beautiful Sulamith speak:

“I thank thee, my king, for all things: for thy love, for thy beauty, for thy wisdom, to which thou didst allow me to set my lips, as to a sweet well of living waters. Let me to kiss thy hands; take them not away from my mouth till such time when the last breath shall have fled from me. Never has there been, nor ever shall there be, a woman happier than I. I thank thee, my king, my beloved, my fair. Think ever and anon upon thy slave, upon thy Sulamith, scorched of the sun.”

And the king made answer to her, in a deep, slow voice:

“As long as men and women shall love one another; as long as beauty of soul and body shall be the best and sweetest dream in the universe⁠—so long, I swear to thee, Sulamith, shall thy name be uttered through many ages with emotion and gratefulness.”

Toward morning Sulamith ceased to be.

Then did the king rise up, command the means for laving to be brought to him, and, donning his most magnificent chiton of purple, broidered with golden scarabae, he placed upon his head a crown of bloodred rubies. After this he did call Benaiah to him, and spake calmly:

“Benaiah, thou shalt go and put Eliab to death.”

But the old man covered his face with his hands and fell prostrate before the king.

“Eliab is my grandson, O King.”

“Didst thou hear me, Benaiah?”

“Forgive me, O King⁠—threaten me not with thy wrath; command some other to do this. Eliab, having come out of the palace, did run to the temple, and caught hold on the horns of the altar. I am old, my death is nigh; I dare not take upon my soul this twofold crime.”

But the king retorted:

“Nevertheless, when I did instruct thee to put to death my brother Adonijah, who had likewise caught hold on the sacred horns of the altar, didst thou not hearken to me, Benaiah?”

“Forgive me! Spare me, King!”

“Lift up thy face,” commanded Solomon.

And when Benaiah did raise up his face, and beheld the king’s eyes, he quickly rose up from the floor and obediently made his way to the exit.

Then, turning to Ahishar, who was the seneschal, and over the household, he commanded:

“I do not want to give the queen up to death; let her live as she wishes, and die when she wishes. But nevermore shall she behold my countenance. This day, Ahishar, thou shalt fit out a caravan and escort the queen to the harbour at Jaffa; and thence to Aegypt, to the Pharaoh Shishak. Now let all get hence.”

And, left alone face to face with the body of Sulamith, he long contemplated her beautiful features. Her face was pale, and never had it been so fair during her life. The half-parted lips that Solomon had been kissing but half an hour ago were smiling enigmatically and beautifully; and her teeth, still humid, gleamed very faintly from between them.

For long did the king gaze upon his dead leman; then, he softly touched with his fingers her brow, already losing the warmth of life, and with slow steps withdrew from the chamber.

Beyond the doors the high priest Azariah, son of Zadok, was awaiting him. Approaching the king, he asked:

“What shall we do with the body of this woman? It is now the Sabbath.”

And the king recalled how, many years ere this, his father had expired and lay upon the sand, already beginning to decompose rapidly. Dogs, drawn by the scent of carrion, were already prowling about with eyes glaring from hunger and greediness. And, even as now, the high priest, a decrepit old man, the father of Azariah, had then asked him:

“Here lieth thy father; the dogs may rend his corpse.⁠ ⁠… What are we to do? Honour the memory of the king and profane the Sabbath; or observe the Sabbath but leave the corpse of thy father to be devoured of dogs?”

Thereupon Solomon made answer:

“Leave him. A living dog is better than a dead lion.”

And when now, after the words of the high priest, he did recall this, his heart did contract from sadness and fear.

Having made no answer to the high priest, he went on, into the Hall of Judgment.

As always of mornings, two of his scribes, Elihoreph and Ahiah, were already reclining upon mats, one on either side of the throne, holding in readiness their inks, reeds, and rolls of papyrus. Upon the king’s entrance they arose and salaamed to the ground before him. And the king sat down upon his throne of ivory with ornaments of gold, leant his elbow upon the back of a golden lion, and, bowing his head upon his palm, commanded:

“Write!

“Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a ring upon thy hand; for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as hell: the arrows thereof are arrows of fire.”

And, having kept a silence so prolonged that the scribes held their breath in alarm, he said:

“Leave me to myself.”

And all day, till the first shadows of evening, did the king remain alone with his thoughts; nor durst any enter the vast, empty Hall of Judgment.

I

The great white double-decked steamer, built after an American pattern, was gayly floating down the Volga. It was the time of sultry, languid July days. The passengers passed half the day on the little outside western balcony, and the other half on the eastern⁠—it all depended on which side the shade was. They got on and clambered off at the intermediate stops, and finally there was formed a permanent complement of travelers, whose faces had long since become mutually familiar and who had grown rather tedious to one another.

During the day they occupied themselves with indolent flirting, with buying strawberries, sun-cured, stringy fish, milk, cracknels, and sturgeons that smelt of kerosene. They ate without cease all day long, as is always the case on steamers, where the jolting of the vessel, the fresh air, the proximity of the water, and the ennui all develop an inordinate appetite.

In the evening, when it grew cooler, the scent of new-mown hay and of honey-yielding flowers would be borne to the deck from the river banks, and, when a dense summer mist would arise from the river, everybody gathered in the saloon.

A thin little miss from Moscow, who had studied at a conservatory⁠—the bones of her breast stood out sharply from her low-cut little blouse, while her eyes had an unnatural sparkle and her cheeks flamed with hectic spots⁠—sang the ballads of Dargomizhsky, in a voice tiny, but of an unusually pleasant timbre. Then, for a brief while, followed disputes about internal politics.

A thirty-year-old landowner of Simbir served as the general laughingstock and source of diversion⁠—he was as rosy and smooth-skinned as a Yorkshire suckling pig; his flaxen hair was clipped so short that it stood up like the quills of a hedgehog; his mouth gaped; the distance from his nose to his upper lip was enormous; his eyelashes were white, and his mustaches were shockingly so. He exuded an atmosphere of the ingenuous silliness, freshness, naivete and assiduity of the man who is close to the rich, black-loam land. He was just married, had put up his bonds, and had been appointed a justice of the peace. All these particulars, as well as the maiden name of his mother, and the names of all the people who had exerted their influence on his behalf, were known long since to everybody on the steamer, including in that number the captain and his two mates, and, it would seem, even the deckhands. As a representative of the ruling power, and a member of a noble family of all the Russias, he overdid his patriotism and was constantly babbling nonsense. From Lower Novgorod to Saratov he had already contrived to shoot and hang, over and over again, all the sheenies, Finns, Pollacks, damned Armenians, Little Russians and other outlanders.

During the stops he would come out on deck in his cap with its velvet band and two insignia, and, shoving his hands in his trouser-pockets, exposing his nobly-born, gray cloth-clad posterior, he would watch, as one having authority, the sailors, the porters, the drivers of three-horse stages in their round hats trimmed with peacock feathers. His wife, a slender, elegant demi vierge from St. Petersburg, with an exceedingly pale face and exceedingly vivid, malevolent lips, did not oppose her husband in anything and was taciturn; at times she would smile⁠—with a subtle, malignant smile⁠—at the follies of her husband; for the greater part of the day she sat in the blaze of the sun with a yellow-backed French novel in her hands, her little thoroughbred feet in red morocco slippers crossed and stretched out along the bench. Somehow, one involuntarily sensed in her a carrièriste, a future governor’s or some other high official’s lady; most probably, this would be the future Messalina of the entire district. There was always an odor of Crême Simon about her, and of some modish perfume⁠—sweet, pungent, and tart, that made one want to sneeze. Their name was Kostretzov.

Among the permanent passengers there was also a colonel of the artillery⁠—the most good-natured of men, a sloven and a glutton, with a grizzled stubble bristling on his cheeks and chin, and with his khaki-colored summer uniform jacket glistening over his abdomen from all possible sorts of soups and sauces. Every day, in the morning, he descended into the chef’s domain, and would there choose a stierlyadka or a sieuruzhka,22 which would be brought up to him on deck, still quivering in its wooden vessel, and, with his own hand, like an officiating high priest, breathing hard and smacking his lips, he would make marks with a knife upon the head of the fish, in circumvention of the cook’s slyness⁠—lest he be served with another fish, a dead one.

Every evening, after the singing of the young lady from Moscow and after the political disputes, the colonel would play at a variation of whist far into the night. His constant partners were: an inspector of excise who was traveling to Askhabad⁠—a man of absolutely indeterminate years, all wrinkled, with atrocious teeth, who was insane on the subject of amateur theatricals (in the intervals of the game, during deals, he would tell anecdotes of Hebrew life, with spirit and gayety, and not at all badly); the editor of some newspaper published near the Volga⁠—a bearded, beetle-browed man in golden spectacles; and a student by the name Drzhevetzky.

The student played with constant good luck. He grasped the plays with rapidity, had a splendid memory for all the scores and hands, and regarded the mistakes of his partners with unvarying benignity. Despite the great heat, he was always clad in a greenish frock-coat with very long skirts and an exaggeratedly high collar, and with every button buttoned. His shoulder-blades were so greatly developed that he seemed round-shouldered, even with his great height. His hair was light and curly; his eyes were blue; his face was long and clean-shaven. He bore a slight resemblance, to judge by antique portraits, to the twenty-five-year-old generals of the War of 1812, in defense of the fatherland. However, there was something peculiar about his appearance. At times, when he was off his guard, his eyes would assume such a tired, tortured expression, that one could freely, from his appearance, give his age even as fifty years. But the unobservant people on the steamer did not remark this, of course, just as his partners in play did not remark an unusual peculiarity of his hands: the student’s thumbs were so long that they were almost even with the tips of his index fingers, while all his finger nails were short, broad, flat and strong. These hands testified with unusual conclusiveness to an obdurate will, to a cold egoism that was a stranger to all vacillations, and to his being capable of crime.

Somehow, from Nizhnii Novgorod to Sizran, during two evenings running, there were little games of chance. The games were “twenty-one,” chemin de fer, and Polish banco. The student came out the winner to the tune of something like seventy roubles. But he had managed to do it so charmingly, and then had so obligingly proffered a loan of money to the petty lumber dealer he had won from, that everybody received an impression of his being a man of wealth, a man of good society and bringing-up.

II

In Samara it took a very long time for the steamer to unload and load again. The student went for a swim, and, upon his return, took a seat in the captain’s roundhouse⁠—a freedom permitted only to very likable passengers after having sailed together for a long time. With especial attention, he watched intently as three Jews boarded the steamer, apart from each other⁠—all three of them very well dressed, with rings on their hands and with sparkling pins in their cravats. He also managed to notice that the Jews pretended not to know one another, and also remarked a certain common trait in their appearance, which trait seemed to have been stamped upon them by the same profession, as well as certain almost imperceptible signals which they communicated to one another at a distance.

“Do you know who these men are?” he asked the captain’s mate.

The captain’s mate, a rather dark boy without a mustache, who, in the saloon, played the part of an old sea-wolf, was very kindly disposed toward the student. During his watches he would tell Drzhevetzky unseemly stories out of his past life and uttered abominable things about all the women who were then on the ship⁠—and the student would hear him out patiently and attentively, even though with a certain coolness.

“These?” the captain’s mate repeated the student’s question. “Commission merchants, beyond a doubt. Probably trading in flour or grain. Well, we shall find out right away. Listen, mister⁠—what’s your name⁠—listen!” he called out, leaning over the railings. “Are you with a freight? With grain?”

“All through!” answered the Jew, lifting up his clever, observant face. “Now I am travelling for my own pleasure.”

In the evening the young lady from Moscow again sang⁠—“Who Wedded Us”; the justice of the peace shouted about the good to be derived from exterminating all the sheenies and inaugurating corporal punishment throughout all the Russias; the colonel was ordering Sevriuzhka à l’Américaine, with capers. The two commission merchants sat down to a game of “sixty-six”⁠—with old cards; then, as though by chance, the third one sat down with them, and the game changed to “preference.” At the final settlement one of the players was short of change⁠—he could find only banknotes of large denominations.

He said:

“Well, gentlemen, how are we going to settle? Do you want to play at rouge et noir?”

“Oh, no, thanks⁠—I don’t play at any games of chance,” answered one of the others. “But then, it’s a mere trifle. You can keep the change.”

The first man appeared to take offense, but at this juncture the third one intervened:

“Gentlemen⁠—we aren’t any steamboat sharpers, I think, and are in good company. Pardon me⁠—how much did you win?”

“My, but you are a hot-tempered fellow,” said the first. “Six roubles and twenty kopecks.”

“Very well, then⁠ ⁠… I’ll play you for the whole thing.”

“Oi, don’t scare me!” said the first, and began to deal.

He lost, and in his vexation doubled his stakes. And so, within a few minutes, a lively game of the hazardous Polish banco was on⁠—in which game the banker deals three cards to each partner, and turns up one card for each partner for himself.

Not even half an hour had passed before the table was covered with heaps of banknotes, little stacks of gold and piles of silver. The banker was losing all the time, and, with all this, his portrayal of amazement and indignation was done with exceeding verisimilitude.

“Do you always have such a run of luck on steamers?” he would ask a partner with a venomous smile.

“Yes⁠—and on Thursdays especially,” the other would answer with sang froid.

The unlucky player demanded that the cards be cut anew. But once more he began to lose. First and second class passengers had crowded around their table. The play had, little by little, inflamed them all. The first to come in with them was the good-natured colonel of artillery; he was followed by the clerk of the excise, who was going to Akhsbad, and by the bearded editor. Madame Kostretzova’s eyes became enkindled⁠—a proof of her high-strung nervous temperament.

“Do put your stakes against him,” she said in an angry whisper to her husband. “Can’t you see that bad luck is pursuing him?”

“Mais, ma chérie.⁠ ⁠… Only God knows who these people are,” the justice of the peace protested feebly.

“Idiot!” said she, in a vehement whisper. “Bring my pocketbook from the cabin.”

III

The student had long since fathomed just what the matter was. It was perfectly clear to him that these three men formed the usual party of steamer card sharpers. But, evidently, it was necessary for him to ponder over certain things and to comprehend them. He took a long black cigar at the counter, and settled down on the balcony, watching the steamer’s shadow gliding over the yellow water, refracting the fantastic little spots of sunlight. The captain’s mate upon seeing him ran down from the bridge, laughing significantly.

“Do you want me to show you one of the most interesting people in Russia, professor?”

“Really?” said the student indifferently, flicking the ashes off his cigar with a fingernail.

“Look at that gentlernan over there⁠—the one with the gray mustaches and a green silk shade over his eyes. That’s Balunsky⁠—the King of the Cardsharpers.”

The student grew animated and threw a quick glance to his right.

“That fellow? Really? Is that truly Balunsky himself?”

“Yes. The very same.”

“Well, is he playing now?”

“No. He’s done for, entirely. And even if he were to sit down to play⁠—why then, as you know yourself, it would be our bounden duty to warn the public.⁠ ⁠… All he does is to hang about the tables, just watching and nothing more.”

At this moment Balunsky was passing by them, and the student’s eyes followed him with the liveliest interest. Balunsky was a tall, splendidly formed old man, with fine, proud features. The student saw much in his appearance: a habit from of old of bearing himself unconstrainedly with self-assurance before the eyes of a great gathering; soft, well-cared for hands; an assumed, extrinsic air of seigneur. But the student also noticed a slight defect in the use of his right leg, and the time-whitened seams of his one time splendid Parisian overcoat. And the student, with an unfailing attentiveness and some peculiar feeling compounded of indifferent pity and a contempt devoid of any malice, observed all these trifles.

“There was a chap for you⁠—but he’s all done for now,” said the captain’s mate.

“There’s rather a big game going on downstairs,” said the student calmly.

Then, suddenly, turning toward the captain’s mate and staring stonily into his very pupils, he said as simply as if he were ordering his breakfast or dinner:

“To tell you the truth, mon cher ami, I have been keeping my eye on you for two whole days now, and I see that you aren’t at all a stupid fellow, and, of course, are above any prejudices, such as are common to old women. For we are supermen, you and I⁠—isn’t that so?”

“Well, generally speaking.⁠ ⁠… And according to the general theory of Nietzsche⁠ ⁠…” the captain’s mate mumbled sententiously. “The life of man⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes⁠ ⁠… Particulars by mail.”

The student unbuttoned his frock-coat, and took a dandified wallet of red leather with a gold monogram out of his side-pocket, and extracted two bills of a hundred roubles each out of the wallet.

“Catch hold, admiral! They are yours,” said he, impressively.

“What for?” asked the captain’s mate, blinking his eyes in surprise.

“For your so-resplendent beauty,” said the student gravely. “And for the pleasure of conversing with a clever man who is unhampered by any prejudices.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

This time the student spoke curtly and significantly, just like a general before an encounter:

“First of all, not to warn anybody about Balunsky. I need him as a control and a sort of a left hand. Is that a go?”

“It’s a go!” answered the captain’s mate gayly.

“Secondly: show me which one of the waiters can bring my own pack of cards to the table.”

The sailor became somewhat hesitant.

“Procophii, perhaps?” he said, as though deliberating with himself.

“Ah, that’s the thin, yellow chap, with drooping mustaches? Isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s the fellow.”

“Very well, then⁠ ⁠… He has a suitable face. I’ll have a little private talk with him by myself, and a separate reckoning. After that, my youthful but ardent friend, I offer you the following proposition: I offer you two-and-a-half percent of the gross receipts.”

“Of the gross receipts?” the captain’s mate began to snicker in delight.

“Yes, sir! That ought to make, approximately, let me see⁠ ⁠… The colonel, I think, has a thousand roubles or so of his own, and, perhaps, some official money⁠—two thousand, let us say, in round figures. I estimate the justice of the peace at a thousand also. If we succeed in making his wife loosen up, I consider all this money as good as in my pocket already. All the others don’t amount to much. And then I reckon all those snot-noses have about six or seven thousand among them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Whom do you mean?”

“Why, these petty steamboat sharpers. These same young men that, as you say, trade in grain and flour.”

“But really⁠ ⁠… but really⁠ ⁠…” The captain’s mate suddenly saw the light.

“Oh, yes, really! I’ll show them how the game ought to be played. They ought to be working a three card monte game around some corner at fairs. Captain, you have three hundred more guaranteed you, beside these two hundred. But there must be an agreement: you must not pull any awful faces at me, even if I lose my shirt; you must not interfere where you are not asked; nor back me up to win; and⁠—most important of all⁠—no matter what happens to me, even the very worst, you must not reveal your acquaintance with me. Remember, you are neither a master nor a pupil, but just a capper.”

“A capper!” snickered the captain’s mate.

“What a fool!” said the student calmly.

And, throwing the stub of his cigar over board, he got up quickly to intercept Balunsky, who was passing by, and familiarly put his arm through that of the other. They conversed for not more than two minutes, and, when they had finished, Balunsky doffed his hat with an air of obsequity and mistrust.

IV

Late at night the student and Balunsky were sitting upon the ship’s bridge. The moonlight played and spattered on the water. The left shore, high, steep, all grown over with shaggy woods, taciturnly hung over the very steamer, that was now passing altogether near it. The shore to the right lay like a distant, flat splotch. Frankly slumping, hunched up even more than usual, the student was negligently sitting on a bench, his long legs stretched out before him. His face betrayed fatigue, and his eyes were dull.

“About how old are you?” asked Balunsky, gazing at the river.

The student let the question pass in silence.

“You must pardon my impertinence,” Balunsky persisted, after a little fidgeting. “I understand very well your reason for placing me near you. I also understand why you told that four-flusher that you would slap his face if, after inspection, the pack of cards would prove to be right. You uttered this superbly. I admired you. But, for God’s sake, do tell me how you did it?”

The student finally forced himself to speak, as though with revulsion:

“You see, the trick lies in that I do not resort to any contra-legal expedients. I base my play upon the human soul. Have no fear⁠—I know all the old devices you used to practice. Stacking, holding out, devices for concealment, cold decks⁠—am I right?”

“No,” remarked Balunsky, offended. “We had stunts even more complicated. I, for instance, was the first to bring satin cards into use.”

“Satin cards?” the student repeated.

“Why, yes. Satin is pasted over the card. By rubbing against cloth the pile of the satin is bent to one side, and a jack is drawn thereon. Then, when the colors have dried, the pile is reversed, and a queen drawn. If your queen is beaten, all you have to do is to draw the card over the table.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” said the student. “It did give one an extra chance. But then, stuss is such a fool game!”

“I do agree with you that it has gone out of fashion. But that was a time of the splendid efflorescence of the art. How much wit, how much resourcefulness we had to exert.⁠ ⁠… Poluboyarinov23 used to clip the skin at the tips of his fingers; his tactile sense was more exquisite than that of a blind man. He would recognize a card by the mere touch. And what about cold decks? Why, this took whole years to master.”

The student yawned.

“That was all a primitive game.”

“Yes, yes! That is just why I am questioning you. Wherein does your secret lie? I must tell you that I was in on large killings. During a single month I made more than six hundred thousand in Odessa and St. Petersburg. And, besides that, I won a four-story house and a bustling hotel.”

The student waited for him, on the chance of his adding something; then, a little later, he asked:

“Aha! You set up a mistress, a fine turnout, a lad in white gloves to wait at table⁠—yes?”

“Yes!” answered Balunsky, sadly and humbly.

“There, now, you see⁠—I guessed all that beforehand. There really was something romantic about your generation. And that is readily understood. Horse-fairs, hussars, gypsy-women, champagne.⁠ ⁠… Were you ever beaten up?”

“Yes⁠—after the Liebiyadinskaya fair I was laid up in Tambov for a whole month. You can just imagine; I even grew bald⁠—all my hair fell out. Nothing like that had ever happened to me up to that time⁠—not as long as I had Duke Kudukov about me. He worked with me on a ten percent basis. I must say that I had never in my life met a man of greater physical strength. His title and his strength screened us both. Besides that, he was a man of unusual courage. He’d be sitting and getting stewed on Teneriffe at the bar, and when he’d hear a hubbub in the card room he would rush to my rescue. Oh, what a racket he and I raised once in Penza! Candlesticks, mirrors, lustres⁠ ⁠…”

“Did drink do for him?” asked the student, as though in passing.

“How did you know that?” asked Balunsky, in amazement.

“Why, just so.⁠ ⁠… The actions of men are uniform in the extreme. Really, living becomes a bore at times.”

After a long silence, Balunsky asked:

“But why do you gamble yourself?”

“Really, that is something I do not know myself,” said the student with a melancholy sigh. “For instance, I have vowed to myself, on my word of honor, to abstain from gambling for exactly three years. And for two years I did abstain; but today, for some reason or other, I got my dander up. And, I assure you, gambling is repulsive to me. Nor am I in need of money.”

“Have you any saved?”

“Yes⁠—a few thousand. Formerly, I thought that it might be of use to me at some time or other. But time has sped somehow incongruously fast. I often ask myself⁠—what is it that I desire? I am surfeited with women. Pure love, marriage, a family, are not for me⁠—or, to put it more correctly, I do not believe in them. I eat with exceeding moderation, and I do not drink a drop. Am I to save up for an old age? But what am I to do in my old age? Others have a consolation⁠—religion. I often think: well, now, suppose I were made a king or an emperor this very day.⁠ ⁠… What would I desire? Upon my word of honor, I don’t know. There’s nothing for me to desire, even.”

The water gurgled monotonously as the steamer clove through it.⁠ ⁠… Radiantly, sadly and evenly the moon poured down its light upon the white sides of the steamer, upon the river, upon the distant shores. The steamer was going through a narrow, shallow splace⁠ ⁠… “Six⁠ ⁠… Si‑ix an’ a ha‑alf!⁠ ⁠… Go slow!” a man with a plummet was bawling nasally at the prow.

“But what is your system of playing?” asked Balunsky timidly.

“Why, I have no particular system,” answered the student lazily. “I do not play at cards, but upon human stupidity. I am not at all a sharper. I never prick or mark a pack. I only acquaint myself with the design on the back of the cards, and for that reason always play with secondhand cards. But it’s all the same to me⁠—after two or three deals I am bound to know every card, because my visual memory is phenomenal. Yet I do not want to expend the energy of my brain vainly. I am firmly convinced that if a man will set his heart on being fooled, fooled he will be, beyond a doubt. And therefore I knew beforehand the fate of today’s game.”

“In what way?”

“Very simply. For instance: the justice of the peace is a vain glorious and a silly fool⁠—if you will pardon the pleonasm. His wife does whatever she wants to with him. But she is a woman of passion; impatient, and, apparently, hysterical. I had to draw the two of them into the game. He committed many blunders; but she committed twice as many, just to spite him. In this way they let pass that one moment when they were having a run of pure luck. They failed to take advantage of it. They started winning back only when luck had turned its back upon them; whereas ten minutes before that they could have left me without my breeches.”

“Is it really possible to calculate all this?” asked Balunsky quietly.

“Of course. Now for another instance. Take the colonel. This man has far-flung, inexhaustible luck, which he himself does not suspect. And that is because he is an expansive, careless, magnanimous fellow. By God, I was a bit ashamed of plucking him. But it was already impossible to stop. The fact was, that those three little sheenies were irritating me.”

“ ‘Could not endure⁠—the heart burst into flame’?” asked the old sharper, quoting the stanza from Lermontov.

The student gnashed his teeth, and his face became somewhat animated.

“You’re perfectly right,” said he, contemptuously. “That’s just it⁠—I couldn’t endure it. Judge for yourself: they got on the steamer to shear the rams, yet they have no daring, nor skill, nor sang froid. When one of them was passing the deck to me, I at once noticed that his hands were clammy and trembling. ‘Eh, my dear fellow, your heart is in your mouth!’ As for their game, it was perfectly clear to me. The partner to the left⁠—the one on whose cheek was a little mole, all grown over with hair⁠—was stacking the cards. That was as plain as day. It was necessary to make them sit apart, and for that very reason⁠—” here the student resorted to patter, “I had recourse, cher maître, to your enlightened cooperation. And I must say that you carried out my idea with full correctness. Allow me to present you with your share.”

“Oh, but why so much?”

“A mere nothing. You shall do still another good turn for me.”

“I am listening.”

“Do you remember perfectly the face of the justice’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will go to her and say: ‘Your money was won purely through chance.’ You may even tell her that I am a sharper. Yes⁠—but that it is in such a lofty, Byronian manner, you know. She will bite. She will get her money in Saratov, at the Hotel Moscow, tonight, at six, from Drzhevetzky, the student. Room number one.”

“So I am to be a go-between⁠—is that it?” asked Balunsky.

“Why put it so unpleasantly? Isn’t ‘One good turn deserves another’ better?”

Balunsky got up, stood shifting on the same spot from one foot to the other, and took off his hat. Finally he said, hesitatingly:

“I’ll do it. After all, it’s a trifle. But, perhaps you will need me as an operative?”

“No,” answered the student. “To act collectively is the old style. I work alone.”

“Alone? Always alone?”

“Of course. Whom could I trust?” retorted the student with a calm bitterness. “If I am sure of your comradely rectitude⁠—an honor among thieves, you understand⁠—I am not at all sure of the steadiness of your nerves. Another may be brave, and without covetousness, and be a faithful friend, but⁠ ⁠… only until the first silken petticoat happens to make a swine, a dog, and a traitor of him. And what of blackmailings? What of extortions? What of importunities in old age, in incapacitation?⁠ ⁠… Eh, what’s the use!”

“I am amazed at you,” said Balunsky quietly. “You are the new generation. You have neither timidity, nor pity, nor imagination⁠ ⁠… You have a certain contempt for everything. Is it possible that all your secret consists of just that and nothing more?”

“Just that. But in a great concentration of the will as well. You may believe me or not⁠—it is all one to me⁠—but ten times today, by an effort of my will, have I compelled the colonel to stake small sums, when it was to his interests to have staked large ones. It doesn’t come easy to me.⁠ ⁠… I have a monstrous headache right now. And besides⁠ ⁠… besides, I don’t know, I can’t imagine, what it means to get a beating or to go to pieces from confusion. Organically, I am devoid of shame or fear, and that isn’t at all as joyous a thing as it may seem at first glance. True, I constantly carry a revolver about me⁠—but then, you must believe me when I tell you that at a critical moment I shall not forget about it. However⁠ ⁠…” the student simulated a yawn and extended his hand to Balunsky with a weary gesture. “However, au revoir, general. I can see your eyes closing.⁠ ⁠…”

“My best wishes,” said the old sharper respectfully, bowing his gray head.

Balunsky went off to bed. The student, hunched up, with weary, sad eyes for a long while regarded the waves that reflected the light like fish-scales. Late at night Kostretzova came out on deck. But he did not as much as turn in her direction.

I

At the time that the new city, together with its splendid street of Cannobierre, is, about eleven o’clock at night, plunging into deep, bourgeois slumber⁠—at that time the old city comes to life.

The old city is a capricious, odd network of crooked, narrow little streets, through which it would be impossible even for a one horse cab to drive. What inconceivable stench, filth and darkness reign in this involved cloaka! All sorts of domestic refuse, swill, greens, oyster-shells⁠—everything is dumped on the street, or simply thrown out of the window. And it is not at all a rare sight to see in the street some swarthy lad or girl of six or seven paying the debt to nature in one of those poses that Teniers, Van Braouveur, and Teniers the Younger (Teneers) used to depict with such naive art on their canvases. There are in the old city such bylanes, narrow, dark even in the daytime, that one has to run through them, stopping one’s nose with the fingers and holding the breath.

And so, when night comes on, the old city comes to life. Nearer the central streets it is still somewhat respectable; but, as the port draws nearer, as the streets sink down⁠—the old city becomes gayer and more unrestrained. To the right and left there is nothing but little taverns, gayly illuminated from within. There are sounds of music from everywhere. Sailors and cabin-boys, in fives and sixes, walk along the streets, holding one another around waists and necks⁠—French, Italian, Greek, English, Russian.⁠ ⁠… The bars are crowded to overflowing.⁠ ⁠… Tobacco smoke; absinthe; and cursing in all the tongues of the terrestrial globe.⁠ ⁠…

Of course, both Baedekers and people in the know will warn you that it is dangerous to go into the port even in the daytime. For that reason, quite naturally, we set out for it at night; and once more, for the hundreth time, I reiterate that all Baedekers lie; and that the most charming, peaceful and simple of folks are sailors, a trifle under the weather. We enter a low-ceiled, stuffy tavern and modestly ask for some lemonade and ice⁠—the nights are sultry now, and we are afflicted by thirst, and there is no better remedy in the world for quenching it. Immediately two crudely daubed young damsels sit down near me and my comrade, and, under the table, each lays her leg upon that of her neighbor. This is a special coquetry of the sea. They demand various drinks from us. We willingly submit⁠—for, surely, the bon ton of the place must be sustained. A quarter of an hour elapses. Our ladies perceive that we do not at all belong to that tribe of people who are buffeted for two or three months at a time in the midst of the stormy sea, without seeing a single woman during all that time. They beg for pin-money. Five francs not only pacify them, but even enrapture them, and they trustingly tell us of certain secret phases of their life. From boatswains and captains, especially those who are rather elderly, they take two or three francs; from sailors, a franc⁠—and sometimes even fifty centimes. Right above, over the bar, there are several labyrinthine corridors, with stall-like rooms to the right and left. A momentary love or its simulacrum⁠—and man and woman have gone their different directions. Is it much a sailor wants?

“But there’s one bad thing about it, monsieur,” says the lanky Henrietta gravely, “sometimes they drink too much whisky-and-soda, and then they start in to fight. That’s very unpleasant, dangerous, and troublesome for us. And it’s nothing else but whisky-and-soda that knocks them off their feet or drives them crazy. However, absinthe will also turn the trick.”

II

That day, no matter how we tried, we were not able to find the way back to our hotel, The Port. We were as confused as blind puppies near the grandiose, silent Veauban fortifications; and for ten times or so, after having gone around in a circle, we returned to the same spot. Finally we chanced to meet a knot of intoxicated sailors. We politely asked them for directions, and immediately all of them⁠—some ten or fifteen⁠—painstakingly and obligingly escorted us to our very house.

I also recall another night. We were sitting in a Spanish bar, situated on one of the innumerable streets of the port⁠—among which streets, by the way, I could never orientate myself. A party of Englishmen had planted themselves solidly alongside of us⁠—probably they belonged to the aristocracy of ships: skippers, machinists, or boatswains⁠—or something of that sort. They were all well-grown, austere, stalwart men, with sunburnt, weather beaten, rough-skinned faces. One of them, a clean-shaven chap, with a head as bare as a billiard ball, lit a pipe. I recognized my favorite Maryland tobacco by the smell, and, lifting my hat slightly and turning toward the billiard ball, I asked:

“Old Judge, sir?”

“Oh, yes, sir,”24 and, good-naturedly, having dried the mouthpiece by means of pressing his elbow hard against his side, he extended the pipe to me:

“Please, sir.”

Fortunately, I still had some Russian cigarettes (and they can be truly appreciated only in France, where everybody smokes the most execrable tobacco of the government monopoly), and I offered him my case. Five minutes later we were already squeezing one another’s hands, so that my bones cracked, and we were yelling all over the old city:

“Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!”

There was still another incident which, to this day, I recall with deep, joyous tenderness.

This happened when the night was on the wane⁠—about three or four o’clock, say. It was the peak of things, so to speak, in the little tavern. The waiters could barely manage to place on the little tables the most diversified “swell” drinks of all imaginable colors: glaucous, brown, light blue, and others. Barely visible through the dense tobacco smoke were the dark contours of the people, that walked just as though they were figures in a nightmare, that, just like drowned men under water, moved, swayed, and embraced one another.

And at this juncture an exceedingly queer fellow walked in through the wide-open doors. He was already old, about fifty or sixty, small of stature, and spare. His thick gray hair falls over his shoulders and back like a superb, beautiful mane. He has a lofty, broad brow, strong and splendid in structure; heavy, overhanging eyelids; puckered eyes; and dark pouches under the eyes. The color of the face is dark, earthy, unhealthy. He has a multitude of wrinkles, ashen gray mustaches and beard. In his hands he carries an odd musical instrument. It consists of an ordinary cigar box, upon which are still preserved the black, oval trademarks, “Colorado.” A round opening has been sawn in the lid. A small, narrow board, crudely glued on to the box, serves as its neck. There are homemade keys and six fine strings.

This man does not exchange greetings with anyone, and does not even seem to see anybody. He calmly squats down near the counter; then he lies down along its length, upon the bare floor, face upward. For a few seconds he tunes his amazing instrument, then loudly calls out, in the jargon of the south, the name of some popular national song, and, still lying down, commences to play.

I am very fond of the guitar⁠—that tender, chanting, expressive instrument, and I have frequent occasion to hear artists who have the mastery of virtuosos on this instrument⁠—up to celebrities, known to all Russia. But still, up to this incident, I could never imagine that a piece of wood with strings and ten human digits could create such full and harmonious singing music. The cigar box of this curious old man sang with silvern sounds, just like a distant, splendid choir, composed of children, women, or angels.

The noisy bar immediately became quiet. Pipes and cigars were put away somewhere or other. The sailors forgot about their beer mugs, and it seemed to me that this somber drinking place somehow grew brighter and cleaner. The women first, and then all the other visitors after them, got up from their places and surrounded the recumbent old man. From a neighboring dive came the sounds of a concertina harmonica. Someone tiptoed up to the door and closed it without a sound.

The old man concluded one song, and at once called out the name of another, and again commenced playing, directing his puckered eyes toward the ceiling. Thus, amidst the general, reverential silence⁠—yes, now it will be appropriate to use the word⁠—he played several popular songs through, now slow and passionate, then playfully and slyly provoking, in which one could involuntarily sense an ancient Arabian intricacy, sensuously passionate, indolently languishing. Having played the basal motif, he would begin to vary it, and I will scarcely be mistaken in saying that these variations entered his head but now, even as he lay on the spittle-covered floor and improvised.

Finally he said, in the purest of French:

“Now I shall play for you a waltz by Chopin. Valse Brillante,” he added, in explanation.

Who does not know this waltz, always difficult in technique, as it is executed on the forte piano? And I, with joy and amazement, not only heard, but, so it seems to me, saw, how from the strings stretched over the cigar box there suddenly poured shimmering stones of great value⁠—playing, sparkling, kindling with deep varicolored fires. A god was juggling diamonds.

Having finished, the old man took the instrument in his right hand, and stretched his left upward. At first his intention was not comprehended, and, with a certain insistence he repeated his gesture. K., my fellow traveler, was the first to surmise what the matter was, and took the old man by the hand, helping him to get up. At once scores of hands caught up the old man respectfully and cautiously, and put him on his feet. For a few moments the crowd hid him completely from my view, and it was then that I made a faux pas, at the recollection of which I blush even now, as I dictate these lines. I had not noticed that many of the auditors were extending money to the old man, and that he was courteously and firmly declining these profferings. With a heart moved to tenderness, with a gaucherie common to all people under such circumstances, I squeezed my way through to the old man and extended to him a handful of silver. But probably my humble gift, made with all the sincerity of my soul, was just the very drop that makes the goblet overflow. The old man looked at me, puckering his eyes contemptuously⁠—he had splendid, dark, profound eyes⁠—and said dryly, clipping off each word distinctly:

“I did not play for you, nor for them,” and he made a sweeping gesture that took in all the spectators. “But, had you in reality listened to me attentively, and if you do understand anything at all of music⁠—you must be aware that this is such a rare occasion that it is not you that have to thank me, but I that have to thank you,” and, having plunged his hand into a pocket of the widest of trousers, he drew thence a whole heap of copper coins, and majestically gave them to me.

Completely at a loss, confused, I began to mumble incoherent apologies:

“I am dreadfully ashamed, maître, over my action⁠ ⁠… I am in despair⁠ ⁠… You will confer a great honor upon me and will quiet my conscience if you will consent to sit down at our table and will take a swallow of some wine or other⁠ ⁠…”

The old man was a trifle mollified, and almost smiled, but never the less he declined the invitation.

“I neither drink nor smoke. And I wouldn’t advise you to. Landlord! I’ll have a glass of cold water, please.”

Probably never during his entire checquered life had the landlord⁠—stocky giant, all grown over with hair, with a bared neck like a bull’s⁠—poured out wine for anybody with that profound and attentive respect with which he filled a glass of water for the musician. The old man drank off the water, carelessly thanked the landlord, made a farewell sign with his hand to all of us, and walked out into the darkness of the night. Subsequently, I made a round of all the taverns, bars, and dram-shops of the old city, in the hope of running across a trace of my mysterious musician. But he had concealed himself somewhere, had vanished, just like water that hath flowed away, just like a cloud that has raced by and melted away, just like a magic dream. But one thing consoles me, when ever my recollections turn upon this astonishing man: never an American millionaire; never an Englishman, in the special costume of a tourist, with a pith helmet on his head, with a Baedeker under his armpit, a Kodak in one hand, an alpenstock in the other, and binoculars slung over his shoulder; never a prince of the blood, traveling incognito, never shall any one of them see and never shall any one of them hear anything of the sort. And this thought, willy nilly, gladdens me.