“I Say Nothing”

When he had been a young man, everybody used to call Alexander Romanov Shasha; at that time he was living in the settlement of Limovo, in an iron-roofed house that stood facing the common, and his beatings were administered to him by his father, Roman.

Roman deemed himself the first man in all that district⁠—he used to shove his hand out to all the gentry and the squires whenever he would meet them. He had a store in the settlement, and a mill beyond it; but the way he got richer and richer was by buying up groves from the landowners and then cutting them down. Makar, his own brother, had nothing to eat; all in tatters, he might be hobbling over the common, and, doffing his hat meekly, would say: “Greetings, brother.” But Roman, well-fed, looking like a deacon, would answer him from his stoop: “Don’t you brother me, you dolt. You’ve made your bow, so just keep on going on your way.” What, then, must have been the feelings of the sole heir of such a man? He used to stroll through the village in a cap that had come from the city; in a sleeveless overcoat of the finest broadcloth, in boots with patent-leather tops. He was all the time cracking polly-seeds, and playing polkas on an expensive accordion. Whenever he met any wenches or young lads⁠—all his relatives, all consanguine, every one of them⁠—he would be followed by that sort of gaze from which celebrities feel a chill run down their back. But he would meet such a gaze with a surly⁠—even a ferocious⁠—one; all his youth seemed to have passed in a preparation for that role in which he attained such perfection later on.

Roman, at the height of his prosperity, began to decline in strength, and to get muddled in his affairs. Grizzled, bearded, potbellied, clad in a sleeveless overcoat of casinette that resembled an under-cassock, it was only when he was in his cups that he plucked up heart; but when sober he was always despondent and deliberately churlish. He still retained his glory and his might. Out on the common, near the church, right opposite his windows, he had built a school; he was trustee over it, and could at any instant he liked make the teacher grovel at his feet. He was still able to give goods on credit to the landowners; to give bribes to the police inspector, without the least necessity; he could still regale one with smoked sprats, with a pickled lobster in a rusty can, with sherry and with wine from Tsimliyan, which is something like champagne⁠—and, even as he entertained, he would yell, if his guest were of the humbler sort: “Drink, you blockhead!” But it surely was high time to supplant him. But who could do it? That was just it⁠—there was no supplanting him. Shasha was withdrawing more and more into his role of a man upon whom had been inflicted an insult which could be wiped out only by blood, and his relations with Roman resolved themselves merely into Roman’s dragging him around by his “temples.” Shasha, to use Roman’s words, could make an angel lose his patience⁠—it was impossible not to be dragging him around. And drag him around Roman did. But the more he dragged him, the more unbearable did Shasha become.

Who but he should have taken pride in the house, the might, the ways of his father? His father would yell at him, in the presence of guests: “Go on, now, be a trifle more free and easy, you dolt!” But then, that was the way of those whom his father imitated, the way of the merchants; and was it not a matter for the highest pride to feel one’s self a merchant’s son? At times his father would even boast about him, self-complacently saying to the guest: “Wait, I’ll show youse my son!”⁠—and would shout all over the house: “Shash, c’mon over here⁠—Mikolai Mikhalich wants to have a look at ye!” But, oh, the way Shasha would enter the room where his father and the guest were sitting! He would enter with his face crimsoning, glowering from underneath his beetling and knit eyebrows, holding his arms stiffly akimbo, like a pretzel, and stepping still more stiffly, toeing in, and as elegantly as if he were dancing the fifth figure of the quadrille⁠—and, having made a scraping bow to the guest, he would instantly rush backward to the window, toward the lintel of the door; blowing out his nostrils, he would tear his hangnails with his teeth, and, in the expectation of an affront from the visitor, answered all questions with the most ludicrous brevity and abruptness.⁠ ⁠… How, then, could one refrain from beating him? The guest would depart; Roman, having seen him off, would walk up to Shasha without a word, and, swinging back his arm, would grab Shasha fast by his hair. Without a word, Shasha would extricate his head out of his father’s fingers, and, having run out into the anteroom, would smite his bosom with his fist:

“All r-r-right, father! I say nothing! I always say nothing!” he would hiss ominously.

“Why, she-animal that you are!” Roman would bawl at him. “Why, it’s for this same silence and hoiti-toitiness that I’m a-beating you of! So, then, you’re striving for the beating yourself? Why? Wherefore?”

“My ashes when I’m laid in my grave shall know it all!” Shasha would answer ferociously and enigmatically.

One could have wagered his head that he must have been in an excellent state of feelings. Had he not been born with a golden spoon in his mouth? He would order new boots two or three times in a year; he never ran short of money or of polly-seeds; he would promenade the main street with the teacher, and he played on the harmonica better and more spiritedly than everybody else; the wenches used to sing their “heartbreaking” songs without taking their languishing eyes off him. While in the fall, in the winter, he would pay court at evening parties to the coquettish daughters of the priest, to the daughters of the police inspector, dancing with them to the sounds of a talking machine; he was usher at weddings, donning a frock-coat, starched shirt, and new, tight shoes. But then, even his courting was somehow caustic, offhand. But what’s the use! Even when all by himself, looking in the mirror as he whipped up his browny fleece with a metallic comb, he would squint at himself like some monster. His nose was squashed, his voice hoarse, his appearance that of a convict⁠—the muzhiks used to call him a hangman.⁠ ⁠… No great honour, that, you would think. But no⁠—he took a delight even in that. “The low-down devil!” the muzhiks would say. “Nothing ever pleases him; everything ain’t his way, everything ain’t right!” And he, with all his might, tried to justify these bynames. “Who? Is it Shasha you mean by low-down?” Roman would ask with indignation. “Why, you can pave a pavement with blocks the likes of him! He’s a fool, a playactor, a born loafer⁠—and that’s all there is to it! What’s he putting on airs for? What the devil is he after?” But Shasha just looked on with a venomous smile, and never let a word out. “Well, now, just take a look at him⁠—do!” Roman was saying. “Just look what he’s trying to make out of himself!” But Shasha only knit his eyebrows, making them turn up higher and higher; more and more rapidly did he bite his nails, and by now was convinced even himself that something dreadful, was coming to a head within him. “Oh, father!” he would say, as though unable to hold out. “Oh, but I would like to tell you a certain thing!” Roman, despondent, with sagging pouches under his eyes, would smile like a martyr: “Well, what sort of a thing is it? Eh? Well, now, say it?” “Who, me?” Shasha would ask, throwing a glance at him from underneath his eyebrows. “Yes, you!” “My ashes when I’m laid in my grave shall know it all!” “But what is it that they’ll know? Are you drunk, you good-for-nought?” “Drunk!” Shasha would answer. “Drunk? I say nothing. I always say nothing!” And, almost weeping, Roman would again advance upon him, like a bear; would again catch him by the head, and, bending it down, would drag him by the hair in an excruciating transport.

From his twentieth year to his twenty-fifth, Shasha was almost never beaten⁠—unless it were sort of casually, of course. But he made up for this with something else. He sought other occasions for self-torture⁠—and of occasions there were as many as he wanted. He married⁠—and it was a splendid match⁠—the daughter of the manager of a great estate which belonged to a nobleman; his bride was a laughing, freckled girl, rather pretty. His marriage was celebrated magnificently. The owners of the estate resided abroad; therefore Shasha was able to go to the wedding ceremony in their carriage, and the priest, out of respect to this carriage, felicitated him upon his lawful marriage with especial eloquence and servility, although it did seem to Shasha that he was being made fun of. The wedding feast, too, was held in the owners’ house. Wine flowed like a river. Roman, amid the general clamour of delight, started in to dance, shaking the parquetry, the mirrors and the chandeliers. The owners’ flunky gave an excellent imitation of a railroad train: he began with a rumbling whistle through his fingers, then started in beating out, with his feet, the slow and heavy clatter of a train constantly increasing its momentum, and wound up with a riotous gallop. The sexton, having imbibed too much cognac at the feast, died on his way home. The deacon, having fallen down in his own yard into some half-liquid manure, was almost trampled to death by his sheep. The nastiest of autumn dawns, pallidly blue, looked in through the fog into the smoke-filled seigniorial halls⁠—but the lights were still burning there; the talking machine, now grown hoarse, was still gurgling out now the Lezguinka, now The Lancers; the ushers, all moist from the heat and their exertions, were still yelling as they supervised the dances; while the eyes of the young ladies grew glazed from fatigue, and the soles of their white slippers flew off as they danced.⁠ ⁠… But Shasha did not spare even his own high celebration; having convinced himself that he was infernally jealous of his young wife and a certain rather young landowner, he, feigning intoxication, suddenly stepped upon the long train of her dress during a waltz, and tore it off with a ripping sound. And after that he made a rush for a knife, trying to cut his own throat, and, upon being disarmed, he sobbed wildly, tearing off his starched collar and his white tie, calling upon the memory of his departed mother.⁠ ⁠… As for his behaviour after the wedding⁠—Shasha did everything that lay in his power to wreck his own domestic well-being, and to hasten the ruin of Roman.

Having attained the zenith, Roman was inevitably bound, as is always the case in Russia, to start rolling downward again, toward his former lowly lair. Soon after the wedding it turned out that he was entirely entangled, head and foot, in the toils of debt. He became awesome. His grizzled beard turned white. His face came to resemble a dirty-gray, milked-out udder. His eyes died out. His belly, grown flabby, hung down. But Shasha rejoiced malignantly: “I told you so! I told you so!”⁠—and was finishing him off; he rioted, kicked up rows, demanded a winding up of Roman’s affairs. And Roman, turning green from wrath, would rise up against him like a bear, thirsting to maim him⁠—but he no longer could; he no longer could! Crushed down by the thought of approaching disgrace, of approaching poverty, he took to drinking harder and harder. Having lost all shame, he got his mistress (a cook and a soldier’s wife), into his own house. Shasha, not being contented with his wife, lived with her too, just to spite him. As for his wife, he used to exhaust her with his jealousy and his scares; he used to stay away from the house and to send muzhiks with notes to her, upon which notes would be written: “Forgive me in death; I send my blessings to the children,”⁠—and below there would be drawn a grave with a cross. His wife was for a long while deluged with tears. And then she got together with the teacher, and now gave Shasha every reason to be saying “All r-r-right! Only my ashes when I’m bid in my grave will know it all!” The upshot of it all was, that Roman was laid low by a stroke of paralysis; that only the windmill beyond the settlement was left out of all his wealth; that Shasha’s wife, taking the children with her, fled to her father, who had gone to the city of Skopin. The while Shasha, drinking deep of the delicious draught of his misfortunes, treating everything and everybody with merciless criticism and opprobrium, was absenting himself in the village, drinking every bit as hard as his father, she pulled up stakes and disappeared.

Roman left the settlement for his mill beggared and barely alive. Beggared and widowed, gnashing his teeth with rage, Shasha followed him out of the village. What with toiling and moiling, even the mill would not have been a bad thing to live by. But how was Shasha to be bothered with it! How could you expect him to have the strength of getting up on his feet after the awful finishing stroke fate had dealt him! Even formerly he⁠—not understood, not appreciated, condemned to live in the midst of enemies and ill-wishers⁠—had had but one recourse left him: to say nothing, and again to say nothing, and to say nothing without end. And now? Why, he could have piled up thousands from this mill alone; there would have been no getting into it for the carts full of grain surrounding it⁠—if he only had two or three hundred to get him a new shaft and new millstones.⁠ ⁠… Yes, but where was a body to get that money? It’s only into the hands of fools that good luck plays; but you take an able, sensible man, and Fate will twist him into a ram’s horn. Well, let it⁠—let it! “I say nothing,” Shasha would say, malignantly rejoicing; “I always say nothing!”

The broken trough,8 familiar to him and appropriate to his former status of a muzhik, again appeared before Roman in place of palatial chambers. Nor did the rub lie at all in the fact that, instead of smoked sprats and Tsimliyan wine, a big slice of black bread and a wooden vessel of water turned up on his table⁠—he would have eaten such food with his former relish; the rub was in the torments of his pride⁠—the most cruel of all human torments. In a big hut, leaning all to one side, with an earthen floor and with holes in its corners, atop the bare oven⁠—there did Roman sleep now. In the morning he would crawl out beyond the threshold, with a tall staff in his hands. With pigweeds and high rank grass was the outside of the hut overgrown; stinging nettles choked up the huge shell of the wide-open windmill. All this stood out on the bare ridge of the plains, nigh the highway. And Roman would go out to the edge of the road, and would place his tremblng, cold paws upon his staff. He was without a hat; the wind tangled up his gray, shaggy locks, his gray beard⁠—the beard of a muzhik Job. He was barefooted, in short drawers of striped ticking, in a long blouse filthy from cinders and the rubbish of the oven. His legs were black and thin, his torso huge and emaciated. Those whom he had regaled and lectured at one time now rode past him. And Roman⁠—it was not for nothing that Shasha had sprung from his loins⁠—even rejoiced that folks saw him in poverty, in disgrace, and he bowed to the ground before them. And of evenings he would stand in the dark hut before a little painted board hung up in a corner, and with heavy sighs bowed before it still lower then he did before men, saying his prayers now in a whisper, now loudly⁠—warmly and grievously thanking God for all that He had visited upon him, a miserable, stricken old man.⁠ ⁠… Shasha, now, enjoyed his humiliation in a gayer fashion, in low-down inns, in low-down pothouses, drinking away the last scanty remnants of their former prosperity, and paying for his long tongue by being beaten.⁠ ⁠…

Then, from his twenty-fifth year on, his beatings became regular, administered to him upon a previously designated day; and no longer was he beaten the way his father used to beat him; he was beaten with heels now, until he would lose consciousness.

The soldier’s wife remained faithful to the house of Roman. She also moved to the mill. And when Roman died⁠—oh, how proud (with a malignantly joyous pride) Shasha was over this calamity⁠—she passed into Shasha’s hands openly. But in the meanwhile her lawful husband had come home from service. She was as needful to him as snow in the summertime; but nevertheless he held it to be his most sacred duty and his inalienable right to avenge his sullied honour. And he ingeniously timed this revenge with the day of the folk-festival at Limovo.

Every year, on the fifteenth of July, on a great holiday popularly called the Kiriki, a fair is held in Limovo. Rain pours down in chill torrents; one is reminded of the summer only by the rooks in the fields, by the height and the density of the grains and the grasses, and also by the skylarks, that sing above them in the rain and are blown aslant by the wind. But on the common at Limovo a little nomadic city of tents is already springing up. The traders from the city have arrived⁠—and it is an unaccustomed, strange sight to see in the settlement these city people, in their long-skirted coats. In building upon the common, and making it congested, they have changed the simple village picture with their thronging, their big, strong carts laden with goods; together with these goods they have brought the atmosphere of an Asiatic bazaar; their samovars smoke, and their braziers emit the fumes of frying mutton.⁠ ⁠… On the fifteenth, since the early morn, they are already standing behind their counters; while the muzhiks with their women-folk and little ones keep on streaming in, flocking from all directions toward the village; they have dammed up the common so that there isn’t room for a pin to fall. And above all this swarming, babel, hubbub, and creak of carts, booms the festal pealing of bells, summoning to mass.

To the sound of these bells, in full view of all the folks riding through the dirty by-lane that leads past the windmill, Shasha is standing nigh his threshold; his belt is loose, and, bending downward, he holds a wooden vessel with water in one hand and with the other hand, which is wet, he is rubbing his bearded, pockmarked face, all puffy from sleep. How little does this thickset muzhik in broken boots resemble the former Shasha! He appears calmer than before, yet still more morose. His hair is fearfully thick even now, but it is already shaggy, like a muzhik’s. Having washed himself, he tears his hair apart with a wooden comb, combs out his tangled round beard, clears his throat hoarsely, and eyes his little mirror askance⁠—eyes his broad, porous face, with the squashed nose. He hasn’t forgotten that he looks like a hangman. And really, he does look like one⁠—especially now. Having combed himself, he puts on a blouse that he saves for gala occasions⁠—it is of red calico, and its dye will come off on his body when he will begin to perspire. On week days he becomes stultified from ennui, from oversleeping, from the fact that no one any longer pays any attention to him, or listens to him; his boasting about his former state, his hints about that which was supposed to lurk within his soul, and his foul tattling about his runaway wife, have all long since palled upon everybody. But today is a holiday; today people would look with curiosity upon him, the erstwhile man of wealth now walking around on his uppers; today he would be playing before an enormous crowd, today he would be fearfully beaten⁠—beaten until he would lose conscience⁠—right before the eyes of all this crowd.⁠ ⁠… And lo, he is already entering into his role; he is already excited; his jaws are tightly clenched; his eyebrows are distorted.⁠ ⁠… Having togged himself out, he puts on a rusty cap, and, with a constrained step, resolutely and steadily sets out for the village.

The strangest part of all is the piety with which he begins this day. He goes directly toward the church, and, without looking at anybody, but with all his being feeling upon him the eyes of everybody surrounding him, he bows and makes the sign of the cross with all his might. In the church he shoves his way to the very ambo, where at one time he had had his own rightful place, and at that moment he is filled to the marrow of his bones with contempt for the muzhiks, reminding them briefly and sternly, like one having authority, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to wake up and stand aside. And the muzhiks hastily comply. Glowering like a bull from underneath his eyebrows at the officiating priests and the icons, he prays frenziedly and austerely until the very end of the mass, haughtily demonstrating to everybody that he is the only one who knows just the right time to bow and to make the sign of the cross. Just as austerely does he walk through the fair after the mass, proud of the fact that he had already had a drink or two, that he could approach some trader in his tent as an equal, shaking his hand and leaning over the counter, scooping up a handful of polly-seeds and bothering the trader with his conversations about the city, and about the state of trade.⁠ ⁠… He was also proud of the fact that he could at times yell at the droves of wenches, pressing one another against the counter, like sheep; or at some muzhik that, with a bag under his arm⁠—there would be a young pig squirming around in that bag⁠—has already tested all the penny whistles, all the mouth organs, and could not, for the life of him, decide which one to take. The people, pouring out of the church, have flooded the common; the belfries are pealing forth their chimes; the beggars are snufflingly clamorous; the livestock⁠—which is also bought and sold during the Kiriki⁠—bleats and hee-haws; and in the dense crowd, spitting out polly-seed shells and slipping up in the mire between the tents, there are already many intoxicated men. Shasha has already managed to drink some more, and feels that the right time has come. Having had his fill of talking with the traders, he goes with resolute steps toward the carrousels. A countless multitude of people has gathered there, watching, until their heads, too, begin to go ’round and ’round, the wooden horses and their riders. Almost all of Limovo is there, and, towering a head taller above everybody, is the soldier’s wife’s husband. Shasha’s hands grow cold; his lips quiver; but he pretends not to notice his foe. He approaches his acquaintances, pulls a bottle out of his pocket, regales anybody who comes along, and drinks himself. He talks a great deal, and loudly; he smokes, and laughs unnaturally and malevolently; but all the while he is on the alert, waiting.⁠ ⁠… And now, pretending to be hopelessly drunk, in a new cap with the store’s price tag still showing white upon it, clean shaven, well-fed, with sleepy blue eyes, the soldier advances straight upon Shasha, and with all his momentum, as though without seeing him, strikes him in the chest with his shoulder. Shasha, gritting his teeth, steps to one side and continues his conversation. But the soldier comes back, again passes him⁠—and once more hits him in the chest with his shoulder! Whereupon, as though unable to bear such insolence, Shasha distorts his face⁠—distorted enough without that⁠—and drawls out through his teeth:

“E-eh, young fellow! Watch out that I don’t shove you in my own way!”

And the soldier, instantly checking his headlong progress, suddenly staggers backward and roars out furiously:

“What’s ’at?”

Amid the hubbub and rumble of the fair, amid the clanging of the carrousel bells and the delighted, hypocritically-sympathizing shouts of the oh’ing and parting crowd, the soldier stuns Shasha and draws his blood with the very first blow. Shasha, trying to get his fingers into the soldier’s mouth, true to an old usage of the muzhiks, in order to tear his lips, pounces upon him like a beast⁠—and instantly falls down in the mire as if he were dead, underneath the iron-shod heels that beat heavily upon his chest, upon his shaggy head, upon his nose, upon his eyes⁠—already glazed, as in a ram with his throat cut. And all the folks “oh” and “ah” and wonder: “There’s a queer, incomprehensible fellow for you! Why, he knew, he knew beforehand how this matter would end! Why did he go into it, then?” And truly⁠—why did he? And toward what, in general, is he so insistently and undeviatingly heading, as he devastates his ruined dwelling from day to day, endeavouring to eradicate even to the last atom the very traces of that which was created, in such an unprecedented manner, by the uncouth genius of Roman, and ceaselessly thirsts after humiliations, disgrace, and beatings?

Within the church enclosure, on the way to the door of the chapel, there were some horrible specimens of humanity, standing ranged in two files. In her yearning for self-torture; in her yearning-loathing of the curbing bit, of toil, of her mode of existence; in her infatuation with all sorts of hideous visages (both those of the tragedian and of the scaramouche), in her dark, criminal desires, in her lack of will power, her eternal disquiet, in her misfortunes, sorrows and poverty⁠—Russia breeds these people from of old, and without end. In Limovo alone some half-hundred of them gather. And what faces are these, what heads! Just as if they had come out of the crude woodcuts made in Kiev, which depict both fiends and the striving anchorites of the Mother-Desert. There are ancients with such withered heads, with such scant locks of long gray hair, with such noses, as thin as thin can be, and with the slits of their unseeing eyes so deeply fallen in, that they seem to have lain for centuries in the caverns where they had been walled up still in the time of the Kiev princes.⁠ ⁠… And they had come out of there in half-rotted tatters; they had thrown upon their remains their beggars’ wallets, fastening them crosswise behind their shoulders with odd bits of rope, and had set off on their wanderings from one end of Russia to the other, through her forests, over her steppes, in the winds of her steppes.⁠ ⁠…

There are lantern-jawed blind men⁠—sturdy and squat muzhiks, that look just like pilloried convicts who have killed their scores of souls⁠—these have solid, square heads, their faces seem to have been hacked out by an axe, and their bare legs are swollen with livid blood and are unnaturally short, even as their arms are. There are common idiots, huge of shoulder and of leg. There are malignant dwarfs with birdlike faces. There are wedge-headed hunchbacks, who seem to be wearing pointed caps made out of horsehair. There are monstrous marasmi, squatting back on their crooked legs like terriers. There are foreheads squeezed in at the sides and forming skulls that look like the cap of an acorn. There are bony old women, without a vestige of a nose⁠—for all the world like Death itself.⁠ ⁠… And all this mass, prominently displaying its tatters, its sores and cankers, vociferate in a Bulgarian, old-church singsong, vociferates in rough basses, and castrated altos, and indescribably depraved tenors, about Lazarus and his sores, about Alexei the Man of God, who also, thirsting after poverty and martyrdom, did forsake his father’s roof, “knowing not whither he went.⁠ ⁠…”

All these people, with their eyebrows writhing above their dark eyes, with an intuition, an instinct, as keen as that of certain primary sea creatures, instantly sense, surmise, the approach of a generous hand; and by now they have already grabbed up a not unconsiderable quantity of bread-crusts, of round cracknels, and of the muzhiks’ coppers, grown green from contact with their execrable tobacco. After mass, with a chanting still more vigorous and importunate, they spread through the sea of the people, through the fair. The cripples, too, move after them⁠—legless creatures, crawling on their bottoms and on all fours, or lying in their eternal beds, in little carts. Here is one of these little carts. In it is a little bit of a man, about forty years of age, with his ears tied up in a woman’s kerchief; his milky-blue eyes are calm, and he has stuck out of his old rags a thin little hand⁠—violet-coloured, six-fingered. He is pulled about by a bright-eyed little lad, with exceedingly pointed little ears, and with fox-like down upon his head. All around him is a multitude of the fraternity, all of them, for some reason or other, also tied up with kerchiefs. And out of all this fraternity one muzhik with a large white face stands out he is all broken up, all maimed; there is no bottom to him at all, and he has on but one fusty bast shoe. Probably, he, too, had been beaten-up somewheres as thoroughly as Shasha: his entire kerchief, his ear, his neck and one shoulder are all in caked blood. In his long bag there are pieces of raw meat, cooked bits of mutton, bread crusts, and millet. His seat, now, is sewn up with a bit of leather⁠—and twisting himself all up, he squirms and starts off, on and on over the mire, extending in front of him his unshod foot, his leg half-bare, in lime-covered scabs that are oozing with matter and pasted over with strips of burdock.

“Look ye, ye faithful⁠—look and behold ye! This is reckoned, from of old, as the disease of leprosy!” a freckled tatterdemallion beside him is shouting in a rapid recitave, which is right rollicking.⁠ ⁠…

And it is toward these people that Shasha is heading. He lives for some two or three years more in his mill; he celebrates three or four fairs more; he again enters into battle with the soldier three or four times: kindhearted folks bring him to by throwing water out of wooden tubs upon him as he lies without breath or speech; without opening his eyes, he drags his wet head over the ground, back and forth, and moans out painfully through his clenched teeth.

“All r-r-right, good folks! I say nothing! I always say nothing!”

Then he is brought to the mill; he lies for two weeks over the stove, little by little getting better, and soon he is again traipsing around the low-down inns; he brags, he lies, he curses out everybody and everything, he smites his breast with his fists, threatening all his foes⁠—but the soldier especially. But once the Kiriki turn out to be unfortunate⁠—the soldier breaks Shasha’s arm with his heel, and shatters the bridge of his nose, and knocks out his eyes. Lo, now Shasha is both blind and a cripple. The soldier’s wife abandons him; his mill, his land, is taken by good folks for his debts. And now Shasha is safe in harbour; now he is a fully-privileged member of the horde of beggars that stand in the church enclosure during the Kiriki⁠—bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh. All in tatters, with a round and thick beard, with his head clipped so closely that it looks like a hedgehog, he wildly distorts his eyebrows over his empty, drawnover sockets, and hoarsely bawls in time with the others the beggars’ soul-wringing canticles. The chorus sombrely rends the air, to the best of each member’s ability, and the voices of the leader stand out resonantly, as they bawl out every syllable:

There once lived three sisters; there were once three Marys of Egypt⁠—
In three parts did they their wealth divide:
One part was set aside for the blind and the sick;
One part was set aside for prisons, for dark dungeons;
The third part was set aside for churches, for cathedrals.⁠ ⁠…

Shasha’s harsh voice chimes in, soaring above that of the others:

The time will come
When the earth, the sky shall be shaken;
The least stones shall crumble,
The Lord’s thrones shall tumble,
The sun and the moon shall grow dim⁠—
And the Lord shall cause a river of fire to flow.⁠ ⁠…

And blending, swelling, attaining a sinister and a triumphant force, the entire choir becomes throatily, sonorously clamorous:

Mi-cha-el the Archangel,
Shall make all earthly creatures perish;
He shall blow his trumpets,
He shall say to all mankind:
Ye had your life and being.
Having your own free will;
Ye did shun churchgoing⁠—
At matins ye were sleeping,
At vespers ye were eating⁠—
Your paradise stands ready:
Fires never dying,
Tortures past all bearing!