THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued 9)

III

Cock-of-the-Boots became gentler than a lamb when his family had all left him. He sat for days at a time in the hut with the Blue Rig, and they looked at each other. Village urchins came in and made fun of the old people, but they received no reply. Only at midnight, when the whole village was asleep, the neighbours could hear Cock-of-the-Boots wailing:

“My children, my children, what have I done with you?”

Neighbors stole up to the window, and they saw him wallowing on the ground and tearing his hair. In daytime he again sat down in his den, not leaving his place, and he was so sad, grey, and bald. When the villagers saw that the old people not only could not provide for themselves, but were even too weak to go a-begging, they began to bring them bread, water, and kvas.

“Why do you sit here, Grigóri Kuzmích?” old people would ask him, when he came a little to his senses.

“I am waiting for death, dear people! Maybe it will carry away my great grief, which I have tried all my life to drown in the taverns, but never succeeded in drowning!” And he began to weep bitterly, tears flowing in torrents.

We wondered much what grief he was talking about. He had feasted nearly all his life in taverns at other people’s expense, and now he was grieving. If he was weeping for his sons, he had himself taken them to be inscribed in the army.

His grief must, indeed, have been very great, for he lamented dreadfully at night, and often woke us up. He woke us with his awful cries, like the sound of the house spirit when he calls for an evil omen; and we, hearing them, were very much frightened and, rising in the morning, fervently prayed to our Lord⁠⸺

Nikoláy Nikoláevich Zlatovrátski. (1845-.)

Zlatovrátski, the son of a village priest, was born in Vladímir, where he attended the Gymnasium. His father having established a library for the people, Zlatovrátski had an opportunity to acquaint himself with Russian literature. He then studied at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute, but his extreme poverty compelled him to look for work, and he became a proof-reader in one of the newspapers. This gave him an impetus to try himself in authorship, and his first sketch, The Murrain, appeared in 1866. Since then he has written a large number of shorter and longer stories, dealing with the life of the peasants in the period of the emancipation, and also with the intelligent classes at the same time. To the latter he assumes a negative attitude, regarding them as having departed from the simple, fundamental life of the Russian peasant. Though he treats his peasants with more consideration, there is a strong element of pessimism even in the sketches of that kind, thus, differing from the similar stories by Uspénski. They also differ from Uspénski’s novels by the musicalness of their language and the greater wealth of detailed descriptions. Among his best stories are The History of a Village, Village Work Days, The Karaváevs, The Wanderer.

OLD SHADOWS

In moments of heavy anguish of soul my “little grandfather” would visit me, and he brought with him from the darkness of oblivion a series of just such little and insignificant existences as himself. My childhood and youth are, it seems, inseparably connected with these little existences. I particularly recall those strange, mysterious forms that suddenly appeared, one knew not whence,⁠—both in our “old house” in the provincial city, and in the old, weather-stained cabin of my grandfather,⁠—and just so vanished, one knew not whither. They were wandering shadows that frightened our childish imagination,⁠—especially, since my grandmother, whom I cannot picture to myself otherwise than in an enormous kerchief, with overhanging eyebrows and a huge frying fork in her hand, had no use for them and called them “tramps,” “loafing people,” and “worthless lot.” Yet, in spite of the existence of my stern old grandmother, who always appeared before me as an incarnation of that stern period,⁠—these “loafing people,” it seemed to me, were breeding more and more in our Russian land, and with it my stern grandmother gave ever more a piece of her mind to my visionary mother and to the “village windbag,” my little grandfather, who were giving refuge to these people, and to whom, it seemed, they clung as a moth flits about the light.

Dimly pass before me those strange, mysterious forms which that irrevocable past produced in such large numbers. I have before my mind the tall, smoke-stained old cabin of my grandfather that was roughly made of big logs. It is warm within, but in the open the frost is getting stronger towards evening. Half of the panes are already covered with downy hoar-frost, and there is a thumping, crackling sound now in one corner, now in another. Grandfather is sitting by a tallow dip, hurrying to mend his leaky felt boot with a piece of leather. Mother is solemnly and chantingly reading the versified paraphrase of the psalms, distinctly pronouncing the words,⁠—and I enjoy the harmonious sound of the words, though I ill understand their meaning.

Sister and I are snuggled up under a warm sheepskin, and we silently move in some frivolous fairy world, for which there is no time and no space: from the fantastic countries of the Eastern Shaherezade we are rapidly transferred to the warm, soft shores of the Jordan, to the stern kingdom of the Pharaohs, or suddenly we are borne in the whirl of a joyous, bright light, amidst a sea of festive sounds of music, to the splendour of a new, frivolous world of European capitals, whither so enticingly beckon and call us all those vigorous, fresh young people, who had managed before us to escape from the harsh and murky habitations of the manorial hamlets⁠⸺ Though sister and I are not saying anything, yet I am quite convinced that her thoughts are taking her to the same regions. I need only ask her: “Do you remember the letter mother read us yesterday from Uncle Sásha in St. Petersburg?” in order to be sure that her youthful fancy will immediately carry her, as it has carried me, far, far away from these dim and dusky, though warm, walls of grandfather’s cabin.

Suddenly a heavy creaking is heard on the bridge; the gate ring rattles; someone coughs behind the door. We all listen intently; the door is opened timidly and with indecision, and on the threshold appears a tall, lean, strange figure, merged in steaming frost: he has on a long sheepskin coat that is covered with snow, and on his head is a tall, thick, cotton-filled cap and in his hands a long staff; over his shoulder hangs a long calfskin-covered wallet; he has a long, thin, wet face, with sunken cheeks, thick tufts of a greyish beard, and timid, black eyes under long brows.

“Peace and blessing be upon your house!” distinctly enounces the stranger on the threshold, without moving from the spot.

“Thank you,” says grandfather. “Whither are you bound? Másha, get a slice of bread from grandmother,⁠—say it ’s for a pilgrim.”

“Don’t you recognise me, father?” in the meantime asks the pilgrim, without leaving the threshold.

“No, no⁠⸺ Or are we acquaintances?” says grandfather, as he is looking for his glasses. “Who are you?”

The pilgrim timidly surveys the room with his penetrating black eyes, and softly says:

“A despised servant of the Lord, a slave of men⁠—the manorial servant Aleksándr⁠—the wandering Jew, the accursed Ahasuerus⁠⸺”

“O Aleksándr! I do recognise you, I do,” says grandfather. “You want to warm yourself and stay over night; you are tired, no doubt. We will find a place!⁠⸺ Sit down, Aleksándr, pilgrim of the Lord!”

“Will you let me, father?” the pilgrim asks again, still timidly surveying all around him.

“Have no fear, no fear! The Lord be with you, come in, make yourself at home!”

The pilgrim slowly and with indecision takes off his wallet, and seats himself on the bench with a heavy sigh.

“Well, Aleksándr, have you not yet found rest for your soul?” asks grandfather.

But the pilgrim sits in silence, and lowers his head.

Then a deep sigh is heard again issuing from his breast. Then he begins to speak clearly, without hurrying, lowering his eyes all the time, as if ashamed to look at us.

“I have crossed all the borders⁠—have been everywhere⁠—have visited all the holy places⁠⸺ I have been in the countries of the midday sun and of midnight⁠—on sultry Athon and in the cold Solovétsk cells⁠⸺ Everywhere, father⁠⸺ I have continually looked for the eternal city, and there is no refuge for the despised slave!⁠⸺ Father, I have suffered hunger and cold⁠⸺ In summer and in winter I, as a thief, hide from the light, and wander at night-time⁠⸺ I come into cities, and they drive me out, I knock at the cells, and they do not receive the outcast⁠⸺ I see neither my kin, nor my relations, neither wife, nor children, who abide in servitude⁠⸺ Be accursed, despised slave, for having thought of liberty, abandoning your roof, and departing from your kin!⁠⸺ If I should wish to return to the house of my master, my children and my kin would deny me, for the fear of the Jews, and my master would turn me over to mockery and to outrage⁠⸺ I am afraid to return to slavery, and I shall wander about, as a thief, and my refuge shall be the lair of beasts⁠⸺”

And suddenly the pilgrim falls upon his knees with a dull sound, and begins to pray. For a long time are heard, amidst a complete silence, the deep sighs of the pilgrim and now and then a moan of my grandfather.

My mother, and sister, and I look with fixed attention at that lean, bony face, which is as swarthy as if cast of bronze, and on which lie the clear traces of his endless wanderings and immeasurable sorrow.

The pilgrim rises, straightens himself up, and still keeps his eyes on the holy image. Large tears course down his cheeks, while his black eyes sparkle at the same time evil despair and stern faith.

“Father!” he suddenly speaks, raising his hand to the image. “There⁠—there let us seek the eternal city!⁠⸺ Only there⁠⸺ There they will not cast you off⁠⸺”

“But do not despair, Aleksándr! God will uplift you,” says grandfather. “There is not a tear, Aleksándr, that floweth in vain, and is not heard at the throne of the Almighty! Not a hair of your head shall perish⁠⸺ Seek, and you shall always find! Knock, and the gates of truth shall be opened unto you!⁠⸺ Sit down, Aleksándr, and strengthen yourself with what God hath sent.”

The pilgrim is, it seems, quieted down, and he seats himself on the bench again; but now his head is raised, and his gleaming eyes look somewhere into the distance, as if they pierced the walls of our cabin, and a strange struggle shines in them, as if they did not yet know on what to rest their choice: on heaven or on earth.

“Well, Aleksándr, tell us something about God’s world. Many things are revealed to you pilgrims. Come, sit down here!”

The pilgrim seats himself at the table, and I see my mother, her eyes burning with some mysterious curiosity, moving up towards him, placing her arms on the table, leaning her head upon them, and fixing her dreamy eyes upon the pilgrim’s face.

And the pilgrim begins to speak. But my childish imagination is only impressed by his stern, misty form, and has preserved nothing else, and I recall his speeches only as the din of a turbid torrent that runs across the endless steppes. And over these steppes rapidly marches, driven by the wind, the tall, stern figure that is in vain seeking a place where the son of man may lay down his head.

And the pilgrim has not yet ended his stories, which, it seems, are so long that they last a whole night, and a day, and again a night, when there appears in the door of our cabin a new strange being that strikes our childish imagination.

At first we see only an immense old rough sheepskin coat that is held together by a belt, and large old felt boots, but it is quite impossible to define the sex, the age, or the occupation of the person that is hidden in the recesses of that huge coat, above which is barely seen the head so tightly wrapped in a frosted shawl that even the eyes cannot be discerned. The strange coat nervously and rapidly makes three deep inclinations before the holy image, and then to the corners of the room, and just as rapidly begins to unravel the shawl, and by degrees appears, at first, a thin, grey beard, then a thin, long nose, small, mouse-like, grey eyes, and finally an immense bald head is freed from a sheepskin cap, here and there feathered with dishevelled tufts of greyish red hair. And when the coat suddenly and unexpectedly falls off in the corner,⁠—there stands before us one of the commonest, the most “insignificant” of the “worthless lot” who, in the opinion of my grandmother, live in this world: it is an old serf, in a patched and torn gabardine. No sooner does the peasant feel himself freed from the weight of the huge sheepskin that has oppressed him, than he becomes nervously alive, sweetly smiles upon us all, bows again and again into both corners, and, rapidly twitching his feet before grandfather, cries out in an entreating voice: “Most worshipful one! Father! Give me a lodging! Refresh me! Give me hope!”

“Ah, Filimón, Filimón! Is it you again?” says my “little grandfather” in evident agitation, trying to find his snuff-box.

“Yes, I, worshipful man. Do not misjudge me,” says the peasant so softly that you would think he was afraid of his own voice.

“Ah, Filimón!” says grandfather, for some reason shaking his head in anguish and trying to console himself with a pinch of snuff. “When will you come to rest? Friend, is there a living spot in you?”

It appears to us, indeed, that there is not a living spot in the peasant: neither muscles, nor flesh, nor blood,⁠—nothing but strong, indestructible bones enclosed in a dark-brown skin.

The peasant, after grandfather’s words, smiles even more entreatingly; his grey, little eyes apparently become even smaller,⁠—and he suddenly grows once more enlivened and agitated; all his bony members are in motion, and, as if seized by some unusual care, he begins to rummage in the breast of his torn outer garment.

He finally brings to light something that is wrapped in a dark kerchief. He cautiously opens it with his trembling fingers and, timidly turning to both sides, with a careworn glance places before grandfather some old, stained papers, and again makes a low bow before him.

“Worshipful one! I have a request to make.”

“Ah, Filimón! Ah, Filimón!” sighs grandfather, again shaking his head in anguish: “Why do you tempt God our Lord? If you do not care for yourself, think of your kin. Pacify your spirit! It is enough! Enough, Filimón! You have chastised yourself enough, my friend! The Lord seeth, the Lord hath weighed and measured. He demandeth not complete exhaustion. Do not tempt fate!”

“Most worshipful man! I am going! I have to care for people! I must go!”

“Whither are you going, senseless man? Take a breath. At least heal your old wounds. Take your ease!”

“Father, they are healed! Do not misjudge me! I am going⁠—to the higher realms!”

And the peasant once more looks entreatingly into grandfather’s face, and it seems to us that grandfather is unable to withstand that entreating glance.

And grandfather rises, his glance becomes stern and serious, and he says with severity:

“Filimón! Have pity on me! God will punish me, your councillor and abettor, for you!”

“Father, do not deny me! I will knock once more: knock, knock, knock! Maybe the Lord will grant me⁠⸺ Just this way, lightly, father: knock, knock, knock! ‘Who is there?’ they will ask. ‘’T is I,’ says I, as before. ‘’T is I.’”

“How many times have you gone to knock?”

“’T is the eighth time, father. ’T is the eighth for the higher realms. I was driven off six times. Six times they flayed me⁠⸺”

“Dear Filimón, how much will there be left of you? Take pity on yourself. Pity me, I pray, pity my soul. Why should I aid in your suffering and destruction?”

The peasant once more smiles entreatingly into grandfather’s face, and suddenly falls down before his feet.

“Most worshipful one! Do not begrudge me!”

And rising to his feet just as swiftly, he nervously and excitedly flourishes his dry, bony hands, lets his mouse-like eyes roam timidly in the corners, and begins to speak, without cessation, as if everything is to come down in a rain, everything he has been carrying hither with the greatest care for days and miles⁠⸺ It is one endless, intent murmur, like the distant din of the mill water, interrupted by some sudden exclamations that make our childish hearts tremble with fear.

I remember how that intent murmur of the bony peasant made my head feel as though compressed in a vise, how terribly my blood beat in my temples, so that I was ready to burst out into sobs and run away from the cabin,⁠—far, far away from that terrible murmur, in spite of the frost, and the deep snowdrifts, and the night storm that howled around our cabin. And if that dreadful murmur that racked my nerves had lasted one minute longer, I should have come out from under my warm fur, and should have, indeed, run away as in a delirium. But the “little grandfather” stepped up to us, and thoughtfully stroked our heads. Why did he do it? He, evidently, did not notice it himself. Or, maybe, he unconsciously wanted to ask our consent for something. And, interrupting the peasant, he said:

“Filimón! For the last time, absolutely. I feel it, it is for the last time. There shall be an end! It can’t be otherwise! There must be an end! The Lord is great in His long-suffering, that is true, but also terrible in His anger!”

The peasant’s face beams with pleasure, and he at once breaks off his murmur.

“What shall I write about?” asks grandfather.

“Father, write the whole truth. Tell straight about everything. Hide nothing, and have no mercy upon us: crush the blood of Judas! The blood of Judas has begun to oppress the people! The main thing, father, tell the whole truth about everything.”

And the peasant solemnly raises his hands to heaven.

“Write! I have suffered, and I can suffer more. I am afraid of no new prison, and of no new chains. Most worshipful one, have no mercy! Write!”

And for a long, long time, through the speechless quiet of a winter night and through our disturbed dreams, we see the bony little peasant, with his entreating smile and a certain childishly naïve decision and faith, that enlighten his whole little face, and our “little grandfather,” who has suddenly become so serious and stern and who with the consciousness of some great obligation is slowly and deliberately drawing his legible semi-uncial letters on the paper.

“Write, write, father! There is truth! There will be truth!” we again hear the voice of the bony peasant, and the longer he watches grandfather’s pen, the brighter, it seems, his face is growing.

We are, for some reason, happy for the peasant and for grandfather, but at the same time we are oppressed by a mysterious feeling of terror and of fear, because it seems to us that our stern grandmother will soon come out of the living rooms, and will angrily cast her suspicious glance upon all of us “useless” and “loafing” people, and will cry:

“Where did that worthless lot come from? Whence does God carry them? Evidently punishments and threats do not take off all the loafing people⁠⸺ What have you found in each other? And why do you stick to each other, like flies to honey? Well, this one has been half-witted from her birth,” grandmother shakes her head at my mother, “but you, old man? O deacon! Some evil will befall you, some evil will! Make a note of my words. You will get a terrible reward for all these people!”

But the “loafing people,” who at first are really grieved and intimidated by the angry words of my stern grandmother, not only do not disappear, but grow more and more.

Vladímir Galaktiónovich Korolénko. (1853.-)

Korolénko is descended on his father’s side from the Cossacks; his mother was the daughter of a Polish landed proprietor. He graduated from a Real-Gymnasium in the Government of Zhitomír, and then, under untold hardships, studied in the Technological Institute of St. Petersburg and Peter’s Academy in Moscow. Here he was arrested for addressing a collective petition to the director of the school, and was sent to the Government of Vológda, and thence back to Krónstadt, where his family was residing. The next year he settled in St. Petersburg where he read proof. In 1879 he was again arrested, and his wanderings through all parts of European Russia and Siberia began. His first stories were published in 1879, but the first to attract the attention of the public was his Makár’s Dream, which deals with the semi-savages of the Siberian Tayga. The artistic perfection of his style, the harmoniousness of his diction, and the completeness of his stories are rare qualities among modern Russian authors. The sadness of his stories is not of the heartrending, cheerless kind, and rather invites a rereading. Among his best known books and separate sketches are The Blind Musician, The Forest Rustles, The Old Bell-ringer, In Bad Society.

Many of Korolénko’s stories have been well translated into English: The Vagrant and Other Tales (containing The Old Bell-ringer, The Forest Roughs, Easter Night, A Saghalinian, Sketches of a Siberian Tourist), translated by Mrs. A. Delano, New York and Boston, 1887 (2d ed. 1896); The Blind Musician, translated by Mrs. A. Delano, with an introduction by G. Kennan, Boston, 1890; the same, translated by W. Westall and S. Stepniak (International Series, No. 100), New York, 1890 (2d ed. 1893); the same (Seaside Library, No. 1515), New York, 1890; Makár’s Dream, in Cosmopolitan, vol. vi.; A Queer Girl, in Free Russia, vol. ii., Nos. 9 and 10, and In the Famine Year, vol. x., No. 2; A Saghalien Convict (in Pseudonym Library); In Two Moods (and In Bad Society), translated by S. Stepniak and W. Westall (Lovell’s International Series, No. 178), New York, 1891, and (Seaside Library, No. 1943) New York, 1892; The Old Bell-ringer, translated by M. P. de Schatokhin, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 8; An Involuntary Murderer, translated by Jessie Mackenzie, in Gentleman’s Magazine, 1898.

THE OLD BELL-RINGER

A SPRING IDYLL

It grows dark. Over the black, crenelated line of the dense forest stands the full moon; it stands, but does not shine⁠⸺ A small settlement that nestles over the distant brook, in the pine forest, is merged in that peculiar twilight, so common to spring nights, when the moon stands pensively over the horizon, shrouded by a smoky veil. The mist, rising from the earth, thickens the long shadows of the woods and covers the open places with a silvery azure glamour⁠⸺ All is quiet, pensive, melancholy.

The village slumbers quietly.

The humble cabins barely stand out in their dark contours; here and there glimmer fires; now and then a gate creaks, a watchful dog barks, and all is silent again. At times there issue from the dark mass of the softly rustling forest the figures of pedestrians, there passes by a rider, creaks a vehicle. These are the inhabitants of lonely forest hamlets who are going to their church to meet the spring holiday.

The church stands on a mound, in the centre of the village. Its windows are bright with lights. The tall, murky, old belfry is lost with its spire in the azure.

The steps of the staircase are creaking⁠⸺ The old bell-ringer Mikhyéich is ascending the bell tower, and soon his little lantern will be suspended in mid-air, like a shooting star in space⁠⸺

It is hard for the old man to climb the steep staircase. His old legs do not serve him well, he is worn out, and his eyes see but dimly⁠⸺’T is time, it has long been time, that the old man should take his rest, but God does not send him death. He has buried his sons, has buried his grandchildren, has accompanied old men to their celestial dwelling, has accompanied young men, but he is still alive. ’T is hard⁠⸺ Many is the time he has met the spring holiday, and he has lost the count of how often he has waited for the appointed time on that very bell tower. And there God has again decreed⁠⸺

The old man walks to the opening in the tower and leans over the banister. Below, around the church, the graves of the village cemetery dot the darkness; the old crosses look as though they protected them with their outstretched arms. Here and there leafless birches bend over them⁠⸺ From there, below, is wafted to Mikhyéich the aromatic odour of young buds and reminds him of the melancholy silence of the eternal sleep⁠⸺

What will become of him in a year? Will he again climb to this top, under the brass bell, in order to awaken light-sleeping night by its metallic din, or will he lie⁠—down there, in the dark corner of the cemetery, under a cross? God knows⁠⸺ He is prepared: in the meanwhile may God grant him to meet the holiday once more. “Glory to Thee, Lord!” his old lips mutter the customary formula and he looks upwards, at the starred heaven that glows with a million lights, and he makes the sign of the cross⁠⸺

“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich!” calls out to him from below the tremulous voice of an old man. The aged sexton looks up at the belfry, shades his unsteady and tearful eyes with his open hand, but he does not see Mikhyéich.

“What do you want? Here I am!” answers the bell-ringer, as he leans over the banister. “Can’t you see me?”

“No, I can’t. Say, is it not time to ring? What do you think?”

Both look at the stars. Thousands of God’s fires twinkle down to them from on high. The fiery “Wain” has risen way above them⁠⸺ Mikhyéich is making his calculation.

“No, not yet, wait a bit⁠⸺ I know when⁠⸺”

He does know. He needs no watch: God’s stars will tell him when the time has come. Heaven and earth, and the white cloud that gently swims in the azure, and the murky forest that indistinctly whispers below, and the plash of the brook lost in the darkness,⁠—all that is familiar to him, all that is his own⁠⸺ Not in vain has he passed his whole life here⁠⸺

The distant past arises before him⁠⸺ He recollects how he for the first time climbed this bell tower with his father. Lord, how long ago that is⁠—and yet how recent! He sees himself a blonde boy; his eyes are aflame; the wind⁠—not the wind that raises the dust in the streets, but some special kind of wind that flaps its noiseless wings way above the earth⁠—dishevels his hair⁠⸺ Below, way, way down, walk tiny people, and the huts of the village are tiny too, and the forest has receded, and the round clearing in which the village is situated looks so enormous, so endless⁠⸺

“Oh, there it is, all of it there!” the grey-haired old man smiles as he looks down at the small clearing.

That is the way with life. In your youth you can’t see the end of it, and there it is, all of it, as if in the palm of your hand, from the beginning to that very little grave that he has taken a fancy to for himself in the corner of the cemetery. Well, glory to Thee, Lord! ’t is time for rest. The hard road has been passed honourably, and the damp earth is his mother⁠⸺ Soon, yes, very soon!⁠⸺

But, it must be time! He looks once more at the stars, rises, takes off his cap, makes the sign of the cross, grasps the bell ropes⁠⸺ A minute later the night air reverberates from the hollow stroke⁠—another, a third, a fourth⁠—one after the other, filling the light-sleeping night of the holiday’s eve, there flow the mighty, drawn-out sonorous singing sounds⁠⸺

The ringing stops. In the church begins the service. In former years Mikhyéich used to go down the staircase and stand in the corner, at the door, in order to pray and hear the singing. But this time he stays in his belfry. It is hard for him to climb the stairs, and besides, he feels rather tired. He seats himself on the bench and, hearing the dying din of the rocking brass, falls into deep musing. About what? He is hardly able to answer that himself. The tower is dimly illumined by the lantern. The dull-sounding bells are merged in darkness; below, from the church, the singing reaches him from time to time as a weak murmur, and the night wind agitates the ropes that are attached to the iron hearts of the bells.

The old man bends on his breast his grey head that is disturbed by disconnected pictures. “They are singing the troparion!” he thinks to himself, and sees himself in the church. In the chancel dozens of children’s voices flow together; the aged priest, Father Naúm of blessed memory, reads the litany with a quivering voice; hundreds of peasants’ heads bow down and rise again, like the ripe ears when the wind blows through them. The peasants make the sign of the cross. They are all familiar faces, and all of them now dead. There is the stern face of his father; there his elder brother is with fervour making the sign of the cross, and sighing, as he is standing by the side of his father. There he is himself, abloom with health and strength, full of unconscious hope of future happiness and joys of life⁠⸺ Where is that happiness? The old man’s memory flashes like a dying flame and a bright beam, gliding through his consciousness, for a moment illumines all the nooks of his past life. He sees work above endurance, sorrow, care. Where is that happiness? A hard lot will make furrows on his young brow, will bend his powerful spine, will teach him to sigh, like his elder brother.

There, at the left, among the village women, stands his young wife, modestly bending her head. She has been a good woman, may she come to the kingdom of heaven! She has suffered so much, the dear woman. Want and work, and a woman’s inevitable sorrow will dry up her beauty; her eyes will grow dim, and an expression of an eternal, dull fear of sudden calamities will take the place of serenity in her face. Yes, where is her happiness? One son is left to them, their hope and joy, and human injustice has overpowered him.

There is also that rich fiend; he makes low obeisances, asking forgiveness for the bloody tears of orphans. He fervently crosses himself and falls upon his knees, and strikes his brow against the floor. And Mikhyéich’s heart boils furiously, and the dusky faces of the images look down from the walls upon human misery and human injustice.

All that is past, all that is behind him. Now his whole world is here in the dark tower, where the wind moans in the night and swings the bell-ropes. “God be your judge, God be your judge!” mutters the old man and bends his grey head, and tears gently roll down the old cheeks of the bell-ringer.

“Mikhyéich, oh, Mikhyéich! Oh there, have you fallen asleep?” they shout below.

“What?” the old man cries out and jumps to his feet. “Lord! Have I really fallen asleep? Never before have I so disgraced myself!”

Mikhyéich hastens to lay his hands on the ropes. Below him the peasant crowd moves about like an ant-hill; banners wave in the air and glimmer with their gilt brocade. The procession of the cross has made the round of the church, and the joyous call reaches Mikhyéich’s ears:

“Christ is risen from the dead!”

And this call stirs a wave in the old man’s heart. It seems to him that the flames of the wax tapers have burnt up more brightly in the darkness, and the crowd is more agitated, and the banners flutter, and the wakened wind seizes the waves of sound and with broad pinions carries them up, to run together with the loud, solemn tones of the bells.

Old Mikhyéich rings as he has never rung before.

It seems as though the old man’s full heart has passed into the dead brass, and the tones sing and waver, laugh and weep, and interweaving in a mighty stream are borne upwards, to the starry heaven. And the stars flash more brightly and burn, and the tones tremble and pour down and fall to the earth with loving grace.

A deep bass cries out loud in mighty tones that announces to heaven and earth: “Christ is risen!”

And two tenors, trembling with the alternate beats of their iron hearts, respond merrily and clangorously: “Christ is risen!”

And two soft sopranos, seemingly hastening not to be behindhand, push themselves in between the larger ones, and joyfully, like little children, sing out rapidly: “Christ is risen!”

And it seems as though the old tower were trembling and shaking, and as though the wind that blows around the face of the bell-ringer flapped its mighty pinions and repeated: “Christ is risen!”

The old heart forgets life that is full of cares and injury. The old bell-ringer forgets that his life is confined to the grim narrow space in the bell-tower, that he is alone in the world, like a lonely trunk that the storms have broken. He hears those singing and weeping sounds that rise to the heaven on high and fall down to poor earth, and it seems to him that he is surrounded by his sons and grandchildren, that he hears their joyful voices; the voices of the old and young are combined into a chorus, and they sing to him of happiness and joy, which he has not known in his life. The old bell-ringer jerks the ropes, tears roll down his face, and his heart beats violently with the illusion of happiness.

Down below people listen and say to each other that never before has old Mikhyéich rung the bells so wonderfully.

Suddenly the great bell utters an uncertain tone, and grows dumb. The disturbed smaller bells ring out with an unfinished trill, cutting it short, as if to listen to the sad hollow note which trembles and flows and weeps, gradually dying upon the air. The old bell-ringer drops down upon the bench in utter exhaustion, and two last tears softly roll over his pale cheeks⁠⸺

“Ho there, send up a change; the old bell-ringer has done his ringing⁠⸺”

Vsévolod Mikháylovich Garshín. (1855-1888.)

Garshín was born in the Government of Ekaterinosláv, where his father was a small landed proprietor. In his early childhood he travelled a great deal over Russia, as his father was in the military service. He was placed in the Gymnasium at St. Petersburg, and there he excelled as a student, but in 1872 he had the first attacks of insanity which afterwards returned periodically and finally caused him to commit suicide by throwing himself headlong from an upper story. He took part in the Turko-Russian War as a common soldier, and while in the field composed his first story, Four Days, in which he described the suffering of a wounded comrade of his. Upon his return he wrote, in his lucid intervals, a series of wonderfully realistic stories, many of which deal with painful situations. Among his best are The Coward, The Artists, The Red Flower, Attalea Princeps, and That Which Was Not.

In English translation are: Four Days, translated by N. H. Dole, in Poet Lore, vol. iii.; Mad Love, or, An Artist’s Dream, London, 1890, and Stories, translated by E. L. Voynich, London, 1893.

THAT WHICH WAS NOT

One beautiful June day⁠—it was beautiful because it was twenty-eight degrees Réaumur⁠—one beautiful June day it was warm everywhere, but it was even warmer in the clearing in the garden, where stood some ricks of newly mown hay, because the place was protected from the wind by a thick, impenetrable, cherry grove. Nearly everything was asleep: people had had their fill and were devoting themselves to post-prandial lateral occupations; the birds were silent; and even many insects had sought shelter from the heat.

That was even more true of the domestic animals: the cattle took refuge under some roof; the dog lay in a hole that he had dug out under the barn and, with eyes half open, breathed intermittently, while sticking out his tongue for almost more than a foot; at times he so yawned, evidently from ennui superinduced by the deadly heat, that one could hear a falsetto whine; the pigs, mother and her thirteen young ones, went down to the river bank and there lay down in the black, thick mud whence issued only their panting and snoring pig coins with two holes in them, their oblong, mud-washed spines, and enormous pendent ears. Only the hens were not afraid of the heat and managed to kill time by scratching up the dry earth opposite the kitchen entry, though they knew full well that there was not a kernel to be found there. The cock, evidently, was not feeling very well, for now and then he assumed a stupid attitude and cried amain: “What a scandal!”

There, we have walked away from the clearing where it was warmer than elsewhere, and yet a whole wakeful company was sitting there. That is, they were not all sitting. For example, the old bay, that was rummaging a hayrick at the danger of feeling the whip of coachman Antón, could not sit at all, being a horse; the caterpillar was not sitting either, but rather lying on its belly; but we need not be so particular about words. A small but very serious company was gathered under a cherry tree: a snail, a dung beetle, a lizard, and the above-mentioned caterpillar; then a grasshopper hopped up to them. Nearby stood the old bay, listening to their conversation with one of his bay ears, on the inside of which could be seen dark grey hairs. On the bay sat two flies.

The company discussed things politely, but with sufficient animation, and, as is proper in such cases, nobody agreed with his neighbour, for they all valued the independence of their opinions and characters.

“In my opinion,” said the Dung Beetle, “a decent animal must above all care for his posterity. Life is a labour for the next generation. He who conscientiously fulfils the obligations which Nature imposes upon him stands on a firm foundation. He knows what he has to do, and no matter what may happen, he is not responsible. Look at me: who works more than I? Who for whole days at a time rolls such a heavy ball, a ball that I have made with great art out of dung, with the great purpose in view of giving the opportunity to new dung beetles like myself to grow up? But then, I do not think there is anybody who has such a calm conscience, or could with such a pure heart say: ‘Yes, I have done all I can and all I ought to do,’ as I will say when these new dung beetles will see daylight. That ’s what I call labour!”

“Don’t mention your labour, friend!” said an Ant that during the Dung Beetle’s speech had dragged up an immense piece of a dry stalk. He stopped for a moment, sat down on his four hind legs, and with his two front legs wiped off the sweat from his tired-out face. “I work myself, and much harder than you! But you work for yourself, or, what is the same, for your baby beetles; not everybody is so fortunate as that. Just try dragging logs for the commonwealth’s stores, as I do! I do not know myself what it is that makes me work so hard, even in such hot weather. Nobody will say ‘thanks!’ to me for it. We, unlucky working ants, all work, and what good do we get out of it? It ’s just our fate!”

“You, Dung Beetle, look at life too dryly, and you, Ant, too gloomily,” protested the Grasshopper. “No, Beetle, I do like to chirrup and leap about a little, and, really, I have no scruples about it! Besides, you have not touched the question that Madam Lizard has put. She asked: ‘What is the world?’ and you are talking about your dung ball. Why, that is not even decent. The world is, in my opinion, a very good thing, if for nothing else, because we find in it juicy grass, the sun, and the breeze. And it is so big! Living under these trees, you can’t have the slightest conception how big it is. When I am in the field, I sometimes jump up as high as I can, and I assure you I reach an enormous height. I see from way up there that there is no end to the world.”

“That ’s right,” thoughtfully assented the Bay. “But all the same none of you will ever see one hundredth part of what I have seen in my lifetime. What a pity, you can’t understand what a verst is! A verst from here is the village Lupárevka: I go there every day with a barrel for water. But they never feed me there. On the other side is Efímovka and Kislyákovka; in the latter there is a church with a belfry. And then comes Svyáto-Tróitskoe, and then Bogoyávlensk. In Bogoyávlensk they always give me some hay, but the hay is not good there. And then there is Nikoláevsk,⁠—that ’s a town, twenty-eight versts from here,⁠—there the hay is better, and I get oats there; but I do not like to go to Nikoláevsk: our master generally drives there, and he tells the coachman to drive fast, and the coachman lays the whip on us dreadfully. And there are also Aleksándrovka, Byelózerka, Khérson,⁠—that ’s a town too⁠⸺ But how can you grasp that all! That is the world; I must say, not the whole world, but yet a considerable part of it.”

The Bay grew silent, but his lower lip was quivering as if whispering something. That was from old age: he was seventeen years old, and for a horse that is as much as seventy-seven for a man.

“I do not understand your wise equine words, and, I confess, I am not trying to catch their meaning,” said the Snail. “All I want is a burdock: it is now four days I have been crawling over one, and it is not yet all ended. Beyond this burdock there is another burdock, and in that burdock there is, no doubt, another snail. There you have it all. There is no need in leaping about,⁠—that ’s all empty talk and bosh; stay where you are, and eat the leaf on which you are sitting. If it were not for my laziness, I should have long ago crawled away from you and all your talk: it gives me only a headache, that ’s all.”

“Now, I beg your pardon, I don’t see why?” broke in the Grasshopper. “It is quite enjoyable to chirrup, particularly about pleasant matters, like infinity and so forth. Of course, there are practical natures who only think of filling their bellies, like you, or that charming Caterpillar⁠⸺”

“Oh, no, leave me alone, I pray, leave me alone, don’t touch me!” exclaimed the Caterpillar pitifully. “I am doing it all for the future life, only for the future life.”

“What future life are you talking about?” asked the Bay.

“Don’t you know that after death I shall be turned into a butterfly with colored wings?”

The Bay, the Lizard, and the Snail did not know it, but the insects had some notion of it. And they all kept silent for a moment, for none of them could say anything sensible about the future life.

“We ought to bow respectfully to solid convictions,” chirruped the Grasshopper. “Is there nobody else who wants to say anything? Maybe you?” he turned to the Flies.

And the older one answered:

“We can’t complain. We have just come out of the rooms; the lady had put out some fresh jam in some dishes, and we crawled in under the covers, and had lots to eat. We are satisfied. Dear mama stuck fast in the jam, but what ’s to be done? She has lived long enough in this world. But we are satisfied.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Lizard, “I think that you are all absolutely right! But, on the other hand⁠⸺”

The Lizard did not finish saying what there was on the other hand, because she felt that something was jamming her tail to the ground.

It was coachman Antón who had just awakened and had come to fetch the Bay. He accidentally stepped with his monstrous boot on the whole company and smashed it. Only the flies flew away to lick off their dead, sugared mama, and the Lizard got away with part of her tail. Antón took the Bay by the forelock and led him out of the garden to hitch him to the barrel, in order to fetch some water, and he kept saying: “Get up there, shagtail!” to which the Bay answered only with a lisp.

The Lizard was left without a tail. ’T is true, after a time it grew out again, but it always remained rather stumpy and blackish. When the Lizard was asked how she came to injure her tail in that way, she modestly answered:

“They tore it off, because I had made up my mind to express my convictions.”

And she was absolutely right.

Ignáti Nikoláevich Potápenko. (1856-.)

Potápenko was born in the Government of Khérson, where his father was a priest. He himself was educated for the priesthood in Khérson and Odéssa, but he left the Seminary for the university, and the university again for the Conservatory of Music, from which he finally graduated in singing. Potápenko wrote his first sketch in 1881, and became known as an author through his novel, Holy Art, in which he depicted the literary Bohemia of St. Petersburg. His reputation was still more confirmed by his later novels, In Active Service, Common Sense, and His Excellency’s Secretary. His productions are characterised by a healthy optimism and an exquisite humour, which make them very pleasant reading.

Potápenko has been translated into English by W. Gaussen, A Russian Priest (Sunshine Series, No. 86, and Pseudonym Library, No. 7), London, 1891; The General’s Daughter (Sunshine Series, No. 126, extra), London and New York, 1892; Father of Six, also Occasional Holiday (Unknown Library, No. 26), London, 1893; The Curse of Talent, in Memorials of a Short Life, London, 1895.

A THOUSAND TALENTS

“Yes, my friend, I have a great mass of talents, only nothing sensible comes of them. Yes, that ’s so. That is quite correct!⁠⸺”

“Well, well, don’t say that!”

“Not say it? Why, but I tell you, it is the real truth!”⁠⸺

“But how? And why?”

“Why? That is the question⁠⸺ That is, really, the question!”

The man who was possessed of such an immense mass of talents was sitting in a soft armchair, leaning with the whole weight of his body against its broad, inclined back. He had a remarkably happy exterior. He was neither handsome, nor stately, nor elegant, nor brilliant,⁠—no, his exterior cannot be defined by any other word than “happy.” There were even half a dozen pits on his face,⁠—traces of former smallpox; his nose, which had at first been straight and even, unexpectedly began to turn up at the point; there was not the slightest order in his russet beard and moustaches; his brow looked too large; and he was all as white as milk, while his face had a shade of copper. At last, his common, grey eyes were not out of the ordinary, but everything taken together, his whole face, breathed a serene, frank sincerity. There are such faces: you look at them, and you want to be open with them, and to confide some secret, to unburden your heart to them. He was awkwardly put together, his movements were halting, and his voice was a little shrill, but even thus he was sympathetic. In short, he had a happy exterior. His name was Nikoláy Petróvich Bobróv.

His interlocutor was simply a respectable gentleman, an attorney in important civil cases, the owner of large apartments, among which was a study, in which they were seated, with soft, heavy furniture and with bookshelves filled with a mass of learned and instructive books. That was Kurázhev, Sergyéy Aleksyéevich, a well-known and esteemed person in the city. He had but lately made Bobróv’s acquaintance, having met him two or three times, but he was already in the power of his exterior. Bobróv had this day called upon him for the first time, and a conversation ensued. Kurázhev outside of his practice busied himself with “social questions,” as he called them, and that meant that he was a live, responsive man who was interested in life and people, and who loved to “psychologise,” that is, to rummage in the human soul.

“I ’ll tell you why,⁠—because I am a Russian! Yes, that ’s it,” said Bobróv, this time not awaiting his host’s question.

“That is incomprehensible. You must make yourself clear!” remarked the host, looking at him with the curiosity of a professional psychologist, as if he were ready to take the knife, in order to cut open his breast, and take a look inside his soul.

“Make myself clear? Well, I can make myself clear. I can and I am prepared to make myself clear, only I shall have to go way back⁠⸺”

“That is all right. I am ready to follow you into the depths of time.”

“Well, it is not exactly the depths of time, but I shall have to mention my deceased progenitor, and maybe my grandmother too.”

“Or your great-grandfather, if you want to. You have interested me with your strange statement⁠⸺”

“My statement is not so strange, if you look at it closely. I affirm that Russians suffer from their talented natures. Yes, that ’s it. It ought not to be so. They always are possessed of a huge number of talents, and that is why they never amount to anything. Yes, I beg your pardon, you will contradict me later, but now let me⁠⸺ I have struck a good argument, so I can talk clearly and to the point. One does not always succeed in that. Let us take the simplest kind of an example. I had a cook,⁠—by the way, she is still in evidence,⁠—and she had a husband,⁠—he is at your service, too, and his name is Iván. By the way, you might have guessed a priori that all cooks have husbands by the name of Iván. Now I must tell you how that Iván has surprised me, simply stunned me, yes, sir! We hired his wife by herself, and he came to her a week later. He stayed a while, ate some pumpkin seeds, and went away: that was noble!

“Some three days later he made his appearance once more, but this time it was in the morning. He ate his breakfast with her, washed the dishes, remained for dinner,⁠—all in proper shape. We took a liking to him; we sent him on some errand, I think to the apothecary’s,⁠—he started on a run. Well, in short, to be done with it, two weeks later he settled in the kitchen, and all that looked so simple and clear that it never occurred to us to doubt his right to it, and to send him off. He is there still, but that is another matter. We soon noticed that he never went out to work, but that he was passing all the time in the kitchen, washing dishes, blackening boots, running on errands, eating and sleeping. I once asked him:

“‘Say, Iván! Do you know a trade?’

“‘I know all trades!’ he answered me with the greatest self-confidence.

“‘How so? You don’t mean all trades!’

“‘All, Nikoláy Petróvich!’ He never called me otherwise but Nikoláy Petróvich.

“‘If so, why are you not doing anything?’

“‘Oh, well, no work has turned up⁠⸺ I reckon, there is none for me⁠⸺’

“And you must know he was not lying, he really knew all trades. My dining table became unglued; I told them to send for a joiner.

“‘What ’s the use in a joiner Nikoláy Petróvich? I will fix it for you in first-class shape!’ he informed me, and, in reality, he fussed with the table about three hours, and brought it back to life. It is true, it was rather coarse work: the glue dried up in lumps, where it could be seen, and the heads of the nails somehow stuck sideways in the wood,⁠—but it was solid. My wife was about to have the baby’s bathtub fixed. He got hold of it, straightened out the indented sides, and somehow soldered it, and in addition painted it inside and outside white. Of course, I must say, it was not a particularly neat job, but passable enough,⁠—it could be used. We had to get one of the rooms papered over,⁠—he again proved himself a master, only in one corner he hung a strip upside down. Finally, when spring came, he disappeared, and did not return for three days. When he did show up, he was all smeared with clay and lime.

“‘Where have you been?’

“‘I, sir? I have been doing some masonry.’

“‘What? You are a mason, too?’

“‘Why not? I am a mason, too⁠⸺ I know all trades!’

“To make an end with Iván, I will tell you that he proved to be a tailor, too, and with his own hand he made an overcoat for himself. Of course, it was a wretched coat, but it held together over his back. He finished up by getting drunk and beating his wife. This Iván is a Russian, yes, sir. It is his misfortune to have too much ability, and a bent for too many things. Thanks to that, he has learned many things, but nothing properly, and he cannot stop, concentrate, and perfect himself at anything. No sooner has he taken up calcimining, than the mason is awakened in him; he takes up masonry, and he is at once drawn to the tailor’s trade, and so on. No wonder that this man is all his life suffering and tearing himself asunder, and that he, from time to time, balances his accounts by getting drunk and dealing out blows to his wife. And now it is clear to you that the misfortune of a Russian is in the many-sidedness of his talents.

“It is quite different with the other nations. Take, for example, a German. Of course, a German is not naturally stupid, but he has not the slightest talent. He has but one talent,⁠—patience, and just see what wonders he performs by the aid of that modest companion of his. By the aid of this patience alone, he accomplishes in all spheres of human activities those results that make us with all our talents hold up our hands in wonderment. And all that only because he has but that one talent. He knows that himself, and he begins to develop it in his swaddling clothes. I have heard it said that German babies rarely cry. That is so because they early get used to patience. Now let us take the English. No doubt, they are a clever nation, but they have only one talent, and that is their egotism in the broadest sense of the word, namely their self-respect, their worship of themselves, their contempt for everything that is not English, and its exploitation in their favour. That talent is carried out by them with the strictest consistency in every thing,⁠—from the most trifling to the most stupendous,⁠—and makes it possible for them to be the leaders in everything in the world. Yes, sir.”

“But you have deviated a little. You had intended to speak of yourself!” the attorney gently interrupted him.

“No, I did not deviate. I only began that way to come finally to my case. Now I will pass over to that notable subject. You must know that my father was not of high birth; he was of the gentry, but of those who are greatly impoverished. He was the manager of some count’s estate. He had received no education, but had seen and heard much, and was a man of practical sense. At eight years of age I felt a hankering for the violin. Yes, sir, for the violin. It was not the caprice of a spoilt child, but a real hankering. I remember how my heart beat at the thought of my father buying me a violin. Well, he bought me one. The leader of the church choir showed me the first steps, taught me how to hold the bow and the fingers, and I began scraping. I scraped horribly, but something came of it. When I was ten years old I was taken to town to be sent to the Gymnasium. Here I had a patented teacher whose violin was worth three hundred roubles, if he was not fibbing. My father paid him in kind: he would bring him cottage cheese, or a keg of herrings, or pickling cucumbers. I learned from him my first correct steps, and what do you suppose came of it all? Nothing. Many heard me and cried: ‘Oh, what talent!’ And really, I did have talent. But you understand that I ought to have played do-re-mi-fa-sol, and nothing else, when my aunt visited me.

“‘Give me a tune, my darling, and I will give you a silver rouble for it.’

“I began do-re-mi-fa-sol.

“‘Well, what is that? That is not even interesting. And yet they told me that you had some talent. What kind of talent is that? I could understand if you played something that would touch my soul. No, I don’t think you have any talent!’⁠—What, I have no talent? Aunty thinks so. Wait, I ’ll prove you differently!⁠—And I began secretly from the teacher to learn As I go alone into the street, and I played it before my aunt; it was so touching that she wiped her eyes, and said: ‘Now, that ’s a different matter,⁠—now I see that you have talent!’

“Then I learned The hussar leaning on his sabre, In a gloomy autumn evening, and finally, to cap the climax, a quadrille from Fair Helen. Then I went back to the village,⁠—everybody was delighted. My repertoire was popular. No sooner did anyone call at our house, than father began to boast:

“‘You ought to hear him play the violin! Well, Kólenka, give us The hussar!’

“I took up an attitude and played The hussar, and by degrees worked up to Fair Helen. In this manner I gave concerts all summer, and I forgot everything I had learned from my teacher, but above all I began to despise do-re-mi-fa-sol, because that did not bring me any fame. And thus, sir, I just stuck fast at the Fair Helen, yes, sir! Then, suddenly, a passion for versifying came over me. Again a hankering,⁠—what will you do about that? I began writing verses ‘standing, lying, sitting, walking.’ I first did it secretly, for poetry is a kind of love,⁠—it seeks mystery and solitude. Here again my accursed vanity ran away with me. My verses were not bad. I showed them to a schoolmate or two; they took them up and carried them around, and I became the attested school poet. The director found out about it, and he asked for my note-book, and approved of it: ‘You have, sir, a divine gift!’ They came to me for every solemn occasion: ‘Bobróv, write a poem!’ And Bobróv wrote it and solemnly recited it. You understand what it led to. Namely to this: Bobróv began to try acrobatic feats, and to write in bombastic style, to imitate Derzhávin, and his youthful poetry became flat. Consequently, nothing came of that. By that time I was in the seventh form, and my breast was filled with ecstasies of a different sort. I abandoned poetry, and was drawn to serious and clever books. At first I drank deep from Byelínski, than Dobrolyúbov, and then Písarev fell among us. I graduated from the Gymnasium, the university began⁠⸺”

Bobróv stopped, rose from his seat, and began to walk across the room, holding his hands behind his back.

“Yes, the university! I had brilliant ability, and what came of it all? Do you know what? The devil knows what! I was attracted to science, and I wanted to learn the history of the human race, and its creations,⁠—so I became a philologist, and began to swallow book after book. One of the professors directed his attention to me, and had an eye on me,⁠—but it appeared to me that my country was not in need of such a science; so I turned about, and began studying Smith, Mill, and Marx⁠⸺ A year later, behold, I was studying the law! Yes, sir! The law. And let me tell you I showed ability in Smith-Mill-Marx too. I do not know where I got all my eloquence, my indomitable logic, and so forth. I found mistakes in Mill, so I would say: ‘Here and here Mill has made a mistake!’ Yes, sir! We naturally recognised no authorities, except our own. Mill was to us not a source of wisdom, but only an excuse for showing the depth of our erudition before the ladies of our circle.

“There were some good-looking women among them, let me tell you. And it is really a wonder I did not get married then! Upon my word, it is a wonder. For they nearly all of them, one must say, paired off, and not just one way or other, but in legal wedlock. Then half of them went off with their wives, that is only natural. Though we had all come together on Mill’s platform, yet, everybody knows, life is not Mill. Yes, sir! And thus I came out hale. I must suppose that it was so because I was too late. The respected fellow-members had picked out all the good-looking ones, there was only left an indifferent lot, while I, after all, had some esthetic taste. It did not take us long to crush Mill⁠—that ’s it, we crushed him. It suddenly became as evident as daylight that he was not good for anything, because the salvation of our country lay not at all in political economy, but in anatomy and physiology. Well, the country had to be saved at all cost, and God forbid another man but myself should save it,⁠—that would have been a personal insult.

“You can guess that the result of it was my going over to the department of natural sciences. Just think of it! here I again found myself upon the summit of my calling. I was glued to a chair, and the microscope was glued to my nose. I sat there days and nights studying and analysing, and don’t imagine that it was without results. Indeed not! I even made a discovery: I brought to light, studied, and described some peculiar property of the blood corpuscle, yes, sir! I do not remember what property that was, but it produced an impression, and they even printed my description of it in some periodical. But while I was dissecting the blood corpuscle, a new tendency was ripening within me. The devil take it, another talent! Nature had implanted as many of them within me as I could hold, and each one of them was dying to show itself, and would not yield to any other.

“I was drawn from time to time to the paper. I used to sit by a kerosene lamp in the quiet of the night, and sketch some scene. At times it was not half bad, and again it was quite passable. Yes, sir! Some friend of mine read it: ‘Oh, but you have literary talent, you ought to write!’ Well, pictures of success, reputation, and even fame, the deuce take it, began to swarm before my eyes. Fame! Whose head would it not turn? What affair would one not throw to the dogs for it! And so, I was no longer sitting over the microscope, but passed whole nights producing artistic literary pictures. That took me from the province to St. Petersburg, whither I hastened at once to find fame. My first experiment was a success. They printed it, praised it, and entered it in the column of the ‘promising.’ I was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry, I wanted to pocket all fame at once, and, of course, I only made botch work of it, and spoiled matters. My later works did not call forth any praise, but were honoured with condescending silence. I was beside myself, began to insist, to work still faster, and to spoil more and more. When an idea flashed through my brain, I, instead of putting it away in a quiet corner of my soul, and living and feeling it over, used to sit down at once and work it out on paper. Something came out, but not what it ought to have been. It turned out to be something pale, something born before its time. Yes, sir! They would print it, but more as ballast. And yet, there was talent, there really was,⁠—everybody acknowledged it. But it was something unfinished, like a phrase half spoken, a picture half painted, furniture unpolished and unvarnished.

“At last, one more bent! My old talent for music awoke in me, and I rushed at once to a musical school. I, the future composer, was studying harmony and counterpoint, and again everybody found that I had talent. The world of sounds swallowed me. I wanted to produce and create, and before I had reached a fugue, I was writing little songs and publishing them⁠⸺ Ah, I did not finish here either. My two songs had success, they were sung at concerts, yes, sir, and I decided I could write an opera. What is the use learning when you have talent? That is a good Russian reason⁠⸺

“And do you know what I am now? I am a man without any definite specialty. I am a Russian who has a thousand talents and who is unfit for any definite business. I can play on the violin a quadrille from Fair Helen, I can write a sonnet, I can discuss Russian literature and history, I know a few things about Smith, Mill, and Marx, I have some ideas about the blood corpuscle, I possess a literary style, can compose a song,⁠—and to sum all up, I am head-scribe in a bureau, of course, through protection. Am I not the same Iván? We are both Russians. Both he and I can do everything, and yet are good for nothing. Both of us have a thousand talents apiece. Well? He is the husband of my cook, and I⁠—am head-scribe! The positions are different, but the sense of them is the same⁠⸺ Yes, sir!”

Here Bobróv rolled up a fat cigarette, gave a few puffs at it, took his cap, and bid his host farewell.

Semén Yákovlevich Nádson. (1862-1887.)

Nádson’s grandfather was a Jew. His father, who had been a good musician, died when he was but two years old, and he also lost his mother and brothers early in youth. He was taken care of by relatives of his, and was sent to the Gymnasium, where he devoted himself to literature and music. His first printed poem appeared when he was but fifteen years old. Soon after began to show themselves the symptoms of consumption to which he finally succumbed. He went to the Caucasus, and was later sent to the south of France. Yet, under the most adverse conditions, he produced a series of poems of exquisite beauty, and gave promise of rivalling the best Russian poets. Shortly before his death he was awarded the Púshkin prize of five hundred roubles.

Pity the stately cypress trees is given in John Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian, and a few shorter poems, by Mrs. M. S. Walker, in Free Russia, vol. xiii., No. 5.

MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER!

My friend, my brother, weary, suffering brother, whoever you be, be not discouraged: let untruth and evil have full sway upon earth that is watered with tears, let the sacred ideal be crushed and defamed, let them shed the innocent blood:⁠—believe me, the time is coming when Baal will perish, and Love will return upon earth!

Not with a crown of thorns, nor oppressed with chains, nor with a cross upon his bent shoulders,⁠—he will come into the world in his strength and splendor, in his hands a bright torch of glory. There will be in the world neither tears, nor warring, nor crossless graves, nor serfs, nor cheerless, deadening want, nor the sword, nor pillory.

O my friend! That bright vision is not a dream, nor an empty hope: look about you,⁠—everywhere evil oppresses too much, everywhere night is too dark! The world will grow tired of torments, will drown in the blood, will get weary of senseless battles,⁠—and it will raise to Love, to unhampered Love its eyes, full of yearning prayer⁠⸺

POETRY

Many years ago she descended from the quiet shades of Paradise into our world, in a garland of fragrant roses, with a youthful smile, charming, naked, and proud of her innocent beauty. She brought with her unknown feelings, the harmony of heaven, and loyalty to dreams,⁠—and her law was art for art’s sake, and her command was to serve beauty.

But at her first steps they tore and trod into the dust her superb flowers,⁠—and her beautiful virgin features were shrouded in a dark cloud of doubts and sorrow; and her former hymns are no more! The storm’s breath carried tracklessly away her exultant sounds,⁠—and her song breathes fire of her soul’s anguish, and thorns wound her divine brow.

⁠—From J. Pollen’s Rhymes from the Russian.

Antón Pávlovich Chékhov. (1860-.)

Chékhov is the son of a former serf. He was born in the city of Taganróg, where he went through the Gymnasium. He then attended the Moscow University, where he graduated from the Department of Medicine in 1884. He began early to contribute short stories to various periodicals, and established his reputation in 1887 upon the appearance of his first collected volume. Of his longer stories some of the most artistic are The Steppe, Fires, The Memoirs of an Unknown Man, A Wearisome Story. A pessimistic vein runs through all his productions, and all his characters seem to be fit subjects for the psychiatrist; this is especially the case in two of his dramas, The Mew and Three Sisters, in which there is not one redeeming person, and where the very language of the dramatis personæ is nothing but a series of semi-articulated hysterical ejaculations. He is a great favourite with the Russian reading public, but the foreigner will lay aside his books with great admiration for his talent and with a shudder at the hopeless condition of Russian society.

In English has appeared but Philosophy at Home, in Short Stories, October, 1891.

IN THE COURT-ROOM

In the cinnamon-coloured governmental building of the county seat of N., in which the meetings of the Agronomic Council alternate with those of the Justices of the Peace, of the Departments of Peasant Affairs, of the Sale of Liquor, of Military Conscription, and of many more, a division of the Circuit Court was one gloomy autumn day assembled to take up its cases. A local administrator had made a pun in regard to this cinnamon-coloured building:

“Here is Miss Justice, here is Police, here is Milice,⁠—a regular Institute for Noble Young Ladies.”

But, no doubt to justify the proverb that with seven nurses a child generally loses an eye, this building produces a heavy, oppressive sensation in a man who is neither officially connected nor familiar with it, by its melancholy, barrack-like appearance, by its age, and by the complete absence of any and all comforts, either within or without. Even in bright spring days it looks as if it were covered by a dense shade, and on clear, moonlit nights, when the trees and the houses of the citizens are welded into one continuous shadow and are merged in a quiet sleep, it alone rises awkwardly and out of place, like a crushing rock, over the modest landscape, spoils the general harmony, and stays awake, as though it could not rid itself of the grievous memory of past, unforgiven sins. Within, everything is barn-like and exceedingly unattractive. It is curious to see how easily all these elegant prosecutors, members, leaders, who at home will raise a row at the slightest sign of escaping coal gas or a mere speck on the floor, get used to the buzzing ventilators, the nauseating smell of smoking candles, and the dirty, eternally sweating walls.

The session of the Circuit Court began at ten o’clock. They at once took up the docket, being evidently in a hurry. The cases were disposed of one after the other, taking up no more time than a “mass without the singing,” so that no sensible being could have formed a complete, conceptual picture of that variegated crowd that moved about like a freshet, of all the motions, speeches, misfortunes, truth, lies⁠⸺ By two o’clock much was accomplished: two people were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; one privileged person was deprived of all his rights and sentenced to imprisonment in the jail; one man was found innocent, and one case was postponed.

Precisely at two o’clock the presiding judge announced that now was to be taken up the case of “the indictment found against the peasant Nikoláy Kharlámov for the murder of his wife.” The composition of the court remained the same as in the previous case, only the defence was represented by a new individual,⁠—a young, beardless candidate for judicial honours, in a coat with bright buttons.

“Bring in the defendant!” ordered the presiding judge.

But the defendant was prepared even before, and he marched toward the bench. He was a tall, muscular peasant, about fifty-five years of age, completely bald, with a repulsive, hirsute face, and a long red beard. He was followed by a small, wizened soldier with a gun.

When almost near the bench, there happened a slight accident to this guard. He suddenly stumbled and dropped his gun, but he immediately caught it in its fall, giving his knee a severe knock with the butt. Either from pain or, perhaps, from embarrassment at his awkwardness the soldier blushed crimson.

After the customary questions to the defendant, the rearrangement of the jury, the roll-call, and the oath of the witnesses,⁠—they began the reading of the bill of the indictment. A narrow-chested, pale-faced secretary, who had grown much too thin for his uniform and had a plaster on his cheek,⁠—he looked like a walking clinic,⁠—read rapidly, like a sexton, in a subdued, heavy bass, without raising or lowering his voice, as if afraid to exert his lungs; he was seconded by the ventilator that kept on buzzing behind the judge’s chair, and from this there resulted a sound that gave to the stillness of the room a soporific, narcotic character.

The presiding judge, who was not an old man, with an exceedingly tired face, and near-sighted, was sitting in his chair without stirring, and holding the palm of his hand near his brow, as if to keep the sun out of his eyes. During the buzzing of the ventilator and of the secretary he was thinking of something. When the secretary stopped for a second to draw breath before beginning a new page, he suddenly started and looked at the audience with his blinking eyes, then he leaned over the ear of the fellow-judge by his side; and asked him with a sigh:

“You, Matvyéy Petróvich, are stopping at Demyánov’s?”

“Yes, at Demyánov’s,” answered the member, also startled.

“Next time I think I shall stop there myself. I declare, it is impossible to stop at Tipyakóv’s. There is such a noise there all night long! They make a racket, they cough, and the children cry. It ’s just impossible to stand it!”

The associate prosecutor, a full-faced, well-fed, dark-complexioned man, in gold spectacles, and with a beautiful, well-groomed beard, sat immovably, like a statue, and, leaning his cheek on his closed hand, read Byron’s Cain. His eyes were full of ardent attention, and his brows rose admiringly higher and higher. Now and then he threw himself against the back of his chair, looked for a moment indifferently ahead of him, and then was once more lost in his reading.

The counsel for the defence moved the blunt end of his pencil over the table and, bending his head aside, was meditating something. His youthful face expressed nothing but unchangeable, cold ennui, such as is to be seen in the faces of schoolboys and officials who are obliged to sit day after day in one and the same place and to see all the time the same faces and the same walls. The forthcoming speech did not worry him in the least. What kind of a speech is it any way? By order of the authorities he will deliver it without passion or fire before the jury, according to an old stereotyped form, feeling all the time that it is colourless and tiresome, and then he will gallop through mud and rain to the station, then⁠—to the capital, to get soon another order for some other county seat, where he will make another speech⁠⸺ It ’s tiresome!

The defendant at first coughed nervously into his sleeve and grew pale, then the quiet, the universal monotony and the ennui were communicated to him also. He looked with a dull respect at the uniforms of the judges, at the tired faces of the jury, and calmly blinked with his eyes. The judicial surroundings and procedure, waiting for which his heart had been pining in the prison, now acted upon him most soothingly. He did not meet here at all what he could have expected. Over him hung the accusation of murder, and yet he did not meet here any threatening faces, nor scorning glances, nor loud phrases of revenge, nor any sympathy for his unusual fate; not one of those who were going to judge him had turned their long, inquiring glances upon him. The murky windows, the voice of the secretary, the pose of the prosecutor,⁠—all that was imbued with chancery indifference and exhaled a cold breath, as though the murderer were a simple appurtenance of the chancery, or as though not living men were judging him, but some unseen machine which God knows who had introduced.

The composed peasant did not know that they were here as used to the dramas and tragedies of life as one gets used to deaths in a hospital, and that in this very machine-like indifference lay the whole terror and the whole hopelessness of his position. I am sure that if he did not remain silent, but rose and began to plead and implore for mercy with tears in his eyes, to repent with fervour, if he died in despair,⁠—all that would break against their dull nerves and habit like a billow against a rock.

When the secretary had finished, the presiding judge for some reason rubbed the table, for a long time blinked at the defendant, and then asked him, lazily moving his tongue:

“Defendant, do you plead guilty to having killed your wife on the night of June 9th?”

“By no means,” answered the defendant, rising and holding the coat over his breast.

After that the court hurriedly passed over to the examination of the witnesses. There were examined two women, five peasants, and the coroner who had held the inquest. All of them, mud-bespattered and tired from their march and from the long waiting in the witness room, sad and gloomy, deposed the same thing. They declared that Kharlámov had lived “well” with his wife, just like anybody else: he used to strike her only when he was intoxicated. On the 9th of June, about sundown, the woman was found in the hall with her skull split open; an axe was lying near her in a pool of blood. When they tried to find Nikoláy, in order to tell him of the misfortune, he was neither in the house, nor in the street. They began to run up and down the village to find him, they went to all the taverns and cabins, but he could not be found. He had disappeared, and two days later he came himself to the office, pale, tattered, and trembling in his whole body. He was bound with ropes and placed in the lockup.

“Defendant,” said the presiding judge to Kharlámov, “can’t you explain to the court where you kept yourself during the two days after the murder?”

“I wandered over the field, without eating or drinking.”

“Why did you hide yourself, if you did not kill her?”

“I was frightened. I was afraid I ’d be sentenced.”

“Ah! Very well, take your seat!”

The last witness was the county physician who had made the autopsy on the old woman. He communicated to the court everything he could remember from his notes of the autopsy and from what he had managed to work out as he was walking to the court in the morning.

The presiding judge looked with half-closed eyes at his new shining, black suit, at his dandyish necktie, at his moving lips, and in his brain somehow stirred by itself the lazy thought: “Everybody wears now short coats; then why did he have made such a long one? Really, why a long one, and not a short one?”

Behind the presiding judge was heard the cautious creak of boots. It was the associate prosecutor who had gone to the table to take up some document.

“Mikhaíl Vladímirovich,” he leaned down to the ear of the presiding judge, “that Koréyski has made a very careless inquest. The brother was not examined, the elder was not examined, and you can’t make anything out of the description of the room.”

“What is to be done, what is to be done?” sighed the presiding judge, throwing himself back into the chair: “This is an endless sandglass!”

“By the way,” the associate prosecutor continued to whisper, “just look down the audience, in the front bench, the third man from the left,⁠—an actor’s phiz. That is the local financial big-bug. He has a cash capital of nearly five hundred thousand.”

“Yes? His face does n’t show it. How would it be, friend, if we took a recess now?”

“Let us end this case, and then we shall⁠⸺”

“Very well⁠⸺ Well?” the presiding judge turned his eyes upon the physician. “So you find that death was instantaneous?”

“Yes, on account of a considerable lesion of the brain matter.”

When the physician was through, the presiding judge looked into space, between the prosecutor and the counsel, and he proposed:

“Have n’t you anything to ask?”

The associate prosecutor did not turn his eyes away from Cain, and shook his head negatively, but the counsel moved unexpectedly and, clearing his throat, asked:

“Tell me, doctor, is it possible to tell the mental condition of the criminal by the dimension of the wound? That is, I want to know whether the amount of the injury gives us a right to presuppose that the defendant was mentally deranged.”

The presiding judge raised his sleepy, indifferent eyes upon the counsel. The prosecutor tore himself away from his Cain, and looked at the presiding judge. They only looked, but neither a smile, nor wonderment, nor perplexity,⁠—nothing was expressed upon their faces.

“Of course,” hesitated the physician, “if we take into consideration the power with which⁠—eh⁠—eh⁠—eh⁠—the criminal strikes a blow⁠⸺ However, pardon me, I did not quite understand your question.”

The counsel did not get any answer to his question, nor did he feel any need of it. It was quite clear to him that this question had strayed into his head and had escaped from his tongue only under the influence of the quiet, the ennui, and the buzzing ventilator. Having dismissed the physician, the court passed to the examination of the material instruments of evidence. First they examined the caftan, on the sleeve of which there was a dark blood spot. Being asked of the origin of this spot, Kharlámov declared:

“About three days before the death of my wife Penkóv bled his horse. I was there, and as I helped him, I naturally got some on me.”

“But Penkóv has just now declared that he does not remember your being present at the bleeding.”

“I don’t understand that!”

“Sit down!”

They passed to the examination of the axe with which the woman had been killed.

“That is not my axe,” declared the defendant.

“Whose then?”

“I don’t know. I had no axe.”

“A peasant can’t get on a single day without an axe. Your neighbour Iván Timoféich, with whom you fixed the sleigh, deposed that it is your axe.”

“I don’t know, only I swear before God,”⁠—Kharlámov stretched his hand with open fingers before him,⁠—“I swear by the true Creator, I don’t remember of ever having had an axe of my own. I once had one like it, only a little smaller, but my son Prokhór lost it. Two years before his military service he went out to cut some wood, but he was having a good time with the boys, and he lost it.”

“All right, sit down!”

This systematic suspicion and unwillingness to listen to him no doubt provoked and offended Kharlámov. He winked, and on his cheeks appeared red spots.

“As before the Lord!” continued he, stretching out his neck. “If you do not believe, ask my son Prokhór. Prokhór, where is my axe?” he suddenly asked with a coarse voice, abruptly turning to the guard. “Where?”

That was a shocking moment! All seemed to have seated themselves and to have become lower in stature⁠⸺ Through all the heads, as many as there were in the court-room, there flashed one and the same terrible, impossible thought, the thought of the probable fatal accident, and not a person risked or dared to look at the face of the soldier. All wished not to believe their thought and hoped they had not heard correctly.

“Defendant, it is not permitted to speak to the guard,” the judge hastened to say.

Nobody saw the face of the guard and terror invisibly passed through the court-room. The bailiff softly rose from his seat and, balancing himself with his arms, walked out of the room on tiptoes. Half a minute later were heard hollow steps and sounds, such as are heard during the change of sentinels.

Everybody raised his head and, trying to look as if nothing had happened, they continued the case.

Aleksyéy Maksímovich Pyeshkóv (pseud. Maksím Górki). (1871-.)

Born as the son of an upholsterer, Górki, by which name Pyeshkóv is best known, was brought up by his mother’s parents. He had barely entered school when his grandparents’ reverses caused him to be apprenticed to a shoemaker. After that he tried himself in every possible capacity⁠—as an engraver, painter of holy images, cook, hawker of apples, and so forth. In the meanwhile he had an opportunity to learn to read, and he read any and all books he could procure. Finally he fell in with a lawyer at Nízhni-Nóvgorod who did a great deal for his awakening. Then he once more started out on his wanderings, and in the Caucasus in 1893 wrote his first story, entitled Makár Chúdra, for a local paper. The next year he returned to Nízhni-Nóvgorod, and here he met the author Korolénko, under whose guidance his literary career began. Górki draws his vagabonds with a realism that surpasses all previous attempts in that field. Unlike Uspénski, Zlatovrátski, and the other writers who have treated similar subjects, he has no bias in any direction whatsoever, but depicts elementary passions at full play, quite unconcerned about the results to which they may lead. Not less characteristic are his pictures of southern scenes, of the steppe, the sea, and the noisy quay.

In English translation have appeared: Orloff Couple, translated by Emily Jakowleff and Dora B. Montefiore, London, 1901; Orloff and his Wife, translated by I. F. Hapgood, New York, 1902; Foma Gordyeeff, translated by I. F. Hapgood, New York, 1901; Foma Gordeyev, translated by H. Bernstein, New York, 1901; Twenty-six and One, New York, 1902; Twenty-six Men and a Girl, translated by B. Jakowleff and D. B. Montefiore, London, 1902; Tales from Gorky, translated by N. H. Bain, New York, 1902; The Devil, by L. Wiener, National Magazine, 1901; Makar Chudra, by M. Mojaysky, Monthly Review, 1901; Tchelkache, by Katherine Wylde, Fortnightly Review, and Living Age, 1901; Song of the Falcon, Contemporary Review, 1902; part of The Awakening of a Conscience, by L. Wiener, in Garnett’s Universal Anthology.

IN THE STEPPE

STORY OF A TRAMP

We left Perekóp in the worst possible mood,⁠—we were as hungry as wolves and angry with the whole world. For more than half a day we had unsuccessfully applied all our talents and efforts to steal or earn something, and when we at last convinced ourselves that we would fail in both attempts, we decided to move on. Whither? That was a matter of indifference, as long as we moved on. This was our unanimous resolution, as we had expressed it to each other, but we were ready to proceed in every respect upon the path of our actions upon which we had been travelling quite a while,⁠—that had been silently agreed to by everyone of us and, though it was not spoken of in the hearing of all, it sparkled clearly in the grim lustre of our hungry eyes.

There were three of us; we had but lately made each other’s acquaintance, having met at Khérson, in a saloon on the bank of the Dnieper.

One of us had been a soldier of a railroad battalion, later, as he professed, a roadmaster with one of the Polish railways; he was a red-haired, muscular man, with cold, grey eyes; he could speak German, and possessed a very detailed knowledge of prison life.

People of our class don’t like to talk much about their past, generally having more or less good reasons for not mentioning it; consequently we all believed each other, at least outwardly, for inwardly we hardly believed ourselves.

When our second companion, a small, wizened man with thin lips, that were all the time skeptically compressed, said of himself that he had been a student at the Moscow University,⁠—the soldier and I accepted this assertion as a fact. In reality, it was absolutely the same to us whether he had ever been a student, a detective, or one of the “orleans,”⁠—the only important point was that at the time of our acquaintanceship he was our equal: he was starving, he enjoyed in towns the especial attention of the police, and in the country the suspicious attitude of the peasants; he hated both with the hatred of a powerless, persecuted, and hungry animal, and dreamt of a universal revenge upon everybody and everything,⁠—in short, by his position amidst the kings of Nature and the potentates of life, and by his inclinations, he was a bird of our feather.

Misfortune is the best cement to unite even the most contradictory natures, and we were all convinced of our right to regard ourselves as unfortunates.

I was the third. Out of modesty, which has been my characteristic ever since my nails were grown, I will not say a word about my worth, and, not wishing to appear naïve to you, I will keep silent about my faults. However, to furnish you material for my characterisation, I will say that I always regarded myself better than others, and that I still successfully maintain this opinion.

So we left Perekóp and moved on, depending for that day upon the shepherds, whom one may always ask for a piece of bread and who never refuse it to pedestrians.

I walked by the side of the soldier, the “student” marched behind us. Over his shoulders hung something that somewhat reminded of a frock-coat; on his sharp-pointed, angular and clean-shaven head rested the remnant of a broad-brimmed hat; grey trowsers with many-coloured patches fitted tightly to his thin legs, and to the soles of his feet he had fastened parts of a bootleg, which he had picked up on his way; he held them in place by means of ropes which he had wound out of the lining of his costume, and this affair he called sandals; he marched silently, raising a great deal of dust and blinking with his small greenish eyes. The soldier was dressed in a red fustian shirt which, to use his words, he had by his own hand obtained at Khérson; over his shirt there was a warm cotton jacket, and his head was adorned by a soldier’s cap of indefinite colour, which was poised, according to the military rule, “with a bend of the upper circle over the right brow”; about his legs flapped broad Ukrainian carter’s pantaloons. He was barefooted.

I was similarly dressed, and also barefooted.

We marched on, and all about us extended the steppe with a heroic sweep and, being covered with the blue, burning cupola of a cloudless summer sky, lay before us like an enormous black dish. The grey, dusty road cut a broad swath across it, and burned our feet. Here and there we saw bristly stretches of harvested grainfields that bore a striking resemblance to the long-neglected cheeks of the soldier.

The soldier walked and sang with a hoarse voice: