IN BAD COMPANY
IN BAD COMPANY
THE RUINS
Mymother died when I was six years old. After her death my father surrendered himself entirely to his own grief, and seemed to forget my existence. He caressed my little sister at times, and saw to her welfare in his own way, because he could trace her mother’s features in her face, but I grew up like a wild sapling of the fields; no one gave me any especial care, though, on the other hand, no one restricted my freedom.
The little village where we lived was called Kniazh Gorodok or Princetown. It belonged to a proud but impoverished race of Polish noblemen, and presented all the typical features of any small town in Southwestern Russia, where the pitiful remnants of stately Polish grandeur drag out their weary days in a gently flowing current of incessant toil mingled with the trivial bustle of Jewish “geschäft” or business.
If you approached the village from the east, the first thing that caught your eye was the prison—the great architectural ornament of the town. The village itself lay spread below you on the shores ofits slumberous ponds, and you descended to it by a steep highway that was barred at last by the traditional city gates. The drowsy veteran who was toasting his red face in the sun, the very embodiment of tranquil sleep, would lazily raise the barrier, and behold! you were in the town, although at first you might not perceive it. Grey fences and vacant lots littered with piles of rubbish were interspersed here and there among the crumbling and staring-eyed little “khatkas” or huts. Farther on, the wide market place appeared, bright with the roofs of the Jewish “travellers’ rests,” while the Government buildings gave an air of melancholy to the scene, with their white walls and their barrack-like regularity of outline. The wooden bridge thrown across the little river would groan and tremble under the wheels of your carriage, swaying like a decrepit old man. A Jewish street led away from the bridge, lined with warehouses, shops, miserable bazaars, and bakers’ booths, while the Hebrew money-changers sat at their tables on the sidewalks under their parasols. Everywhere were dirt and swarms of children tumbling in the dust of the street. Another minute, however, and you were already beyond the village. Softly the birches would be whispering over the graves in the cemetery, while the breeze stirred the wheat fields, and sang in mournful cadences among the roadside telegraph wires.
The little river, spanned by the above mentionedbridge, flowed from one pond into another, and thus enclosed the town at the north and south by swamps and broad expanses of water. The ponds had grown shallower from year to year, until at last they had become choked by vegetation, and tall, thickly-growing reeds now rippled like the sea upon the wide marshes. In the centre of one of these ponds was an island, and on the island stood an old, half-ruined castle.
I remember with what terror I used always to contemplate this mighty, decaying pile. Stories and legends, each one more frightful than the last, were current about it. The island, it was said, was artificial, piled up by the hands of captive Turks. “The castle is built upon human bones;” so ran the saying among the old people of the village, and my childish imagination pictured with horror thousands of Turkish skeletons supporting with bony hands the island, the castle, and the tall, pyramidal poplar trees. Of course this only made the castle appear more terrible than ever, and even on bright days, if, emboldened by the sunlight and the loud voices of the birds, we approached it too closely, it would ofttimes throw us into spasms of panic fear, so horribly did the dark cavities of its windows glower down upon us. A mysterious rustling would seem to stray through its deserted halls, and pebbles and bits of plaster would come rattling down, awakening the muffled echoes. At such times we would scamper away without evena glance behind us, seeming to hear, long after, sounds of clattering and banging and laughter resounding in our ears.
But, on autumn nights, when the giant poplars swayed and chanted under the wind that came flying to them across the ponds, this horror would spread from the island to the mainland and would reign over the whole village. “Oi vei mir!” the Jews would whisper with terror, while God-fearing old citizens crossed themselves, and even our nearest neighbour, the blacksmith, the very incarnation of diabolical strength, would come out into his little yard and, making the sign of the cross, would mutter under his breath a prayer for the peace of departed souls.
Old, grey-bearded Yanush, who, for lack of any other abode, had taken refuge in a cellar of the castle, had often told us that on such nights as these he could clearly hear cries rising from under the ground. It was the Turks stirring under the island, knocking their bones together, and loudly charging their Polish masters with cruelty. Then in the old castle halls and on the island would resound the clanking of arms, and the lords would call their liegemen together with loud shouts. Yanush could hear quite plainly, through the moaning and howling of the storm, the stamping of horses’ hoofs, the clashing of swords, and the words of command. He even heard, once, the great-grandfather of the present Count, immortalised by the memory of his ruthlessdeeds, come trampling out on his blooded steed, and, riding to the centre of the island, cry out with a dreadful oath: “Silence there, you yelping heathen dogs!”
The descendants of this Count had long since abandoned the home of their ancestors. The greater part of the ducats and treasure with which their coffers had once been filled to overflowing had crossed over the bridge into the hands of the Jews, and the last representatives of the glorious line had built themselves a commonplace white house on a hill a little farther from the town. Here their tedious but vainglorious lives were spent in contemptuous and dignified isolation.
Only at rare intervals did the old Count, himself a ruin as gloomy as the castle and the island, appear in the little town, mounted on an old nag of English breed. At his side through the streets rode his daughter, majestic and thin, in a black riding-habit, while their head groom followed respectfully behind. The stately Countess was fated to remain forever unwed. Any possible suitors who were her equals in birth had faint-heartedly scattered across the world in search of the rich daughters of merchants in foreign lands, and had either deserted their ancestral castles or had turned them over to be pulled down by the Jews. As for the little town which lay spread out at the foot of the hill, not a youth could be found there who would dare to raise his eyes tothe beautiful Countess. We little boys, on catching sight of these three riders, would pick ourselves up out of the soft dust of the street, and, scattering timidly like a flock of birds into various houses, would follow the gloomy lords of the terrible castle with eyes full of curiosity and fear.
On a hill west of the town, among decaying crosses and sunken graves, there stood a long-deserted dissenting chapel, the offspring of a city in the valley proper below. Hither, in days of yore, the chapel bell had summoned the townsfolk in their clean if plain surtouts, with staves in their hands in place of the swords which rattled at the sides of the small farmers, also called hither from the neighbouring villages and farms by the clear notes of the chapel bell.
From here could be seen the island, with its great, sombre poplars, but the castle kept itself angrily and contemptuously hidden from the chapel behind their dense greenery. Only when the southwest wind rose from the reed-beds and descended upon the island did the sighing poplars sway aside and the castle windows gleam between them, allowing the castle to cast dark glances at the little chapel. Both were corpses now. The castle’s eyes were dim and no longer reflected the rays of the setting sun; the chapel’s roof had fallen in, and, in place of its sonorous, high-toned copper bell, the screech owlsnow raised their evil, midnight voices among its rafters.
But the old, historic gulf that had, in former times, divided the proud, lordly castle from the bourgeois dissenting chapel, continued even after their death, kept open by the worms that had burrowed into the crumbling corpses and had occupied the safest corners of their vaults and cellars. The coffin-worms infesting these lifeless buildings were men.
There had been a time when the ancient castle had served as a free refuge without restrictions of any kind for every poor wretch that needed it. Every one who could find no shelter in the town, every poor creature that had fallen on evil days and had lost, for one reason or another, the power to pay even the few copecks needed for a roof and fire by night and in stormy weather—all these poor wretches found their way to the island, and there hid their vanquished heads among the gloomy, threatening, tottering ruins, paying for the hospitality they found there only by the danger they ran of being buried alive under a pile of débris. “He lives in the castle” had come to be the expression used to denote the last stages of beggardom and civilian degradation. The old castle gladly received and sheltered every variety of wandering destitution: poor writers temporarily ruined, forlorn old women, and homeless vagabonds. These persons tore down the interior of the rotting building, broke up its floors and ceilings, lit theirstoves, cooked heaven knows what, and, in a word, fulfilled in some way or another their functions of life.
Nevertheless, there came a day when dissension broke out among the company roosting under the roof of those hoary ruins. Then it was that old Yanush, who had once been one of the Count’s smaller “officials,” prepared a sort of gubernatorial manifesto for himself and seized the reins of power. He set himself to reorganise things, and for several days such a hubbub ensued and such cries arose on the island that it seemed at times as if the Turks had torn themselves from their prison underground in order to avenge themselves upon their Polish tyrants. This Yanush sorted out the inhabitants of the ruins, dividing the sheep from the goats. The sheep, who remained in the castle as before, helped him to expel the unhappy goats, who were stubborn and put up a desperate but ineffectual resistance. When, at last, with the silent but no less effective coöperation of the policeman, order was once more restored on the island it appeared that the change effected had been distinctly aristocratic in character. Yanush had allowed only “good Christians,” that is, Roman Catholics, to remain in the castle, and, besides this, most of them were either former servants or descendants of servants of the Count’s family. They were all either old men in long, tattered cloaks with huge red noses, or hideous, scolding hags who still clung,in the last stages of destitution, to their caps and mantles. They formed a homogeneous, closely united, aristocratic circle that had established, as it were, a monopoly in the trade of beggary. On week-days these old dames and gaffers would go with prayers on their lips from house to house of the more prosperous townspeople, carrying gossip, complaining of their hard lot, and pouring forth tears and supplications; but on Sundays they would appear as the most honoured members of those long lines that, in Western Russia, extend from the doors of Roman Catholic churches. There they would proudly accept offerings in the name of the “Lord Jesus” and the “Lady Mother of God.”
Attracted by the uproar and shouts that came to us from the island during the revolution, I betook myself thither with a few of my companions, and, hiding behind the thick trunks of the poplars, we watched Yanush at the head of an army of red-nosed dotards and unsightly shrews drive out the last inhabitants of the castle that were liable to expulsion. Evening fell. Drops of rain were already falling from a cloud that was hanging over the high summits of the poplars. A few unhappy wretches, wrapping their impossibly tattered rags about them, still lingered about the island, piteous, confused, and scared, and, like toads that have been poked out of their holes by boys, tried to crawl back unnoticed into some cranny of the castle wall. But Yanush andthe beldames drove them away with curses and cries, threatening them with sticks and pitchforks, while the silent policeman stood by, also grasping a stout oaken cudgel, and preserving an armed neutrality, although he plainly favoured the conquering party. So this unhappy riffraff disappeared grumbling over the bridge, leaving the island forever, until one by one they were swallowed up in the rainy darkness of the rapidly falling night.
After that memorable evening both Yanush and the old castle, which had both, until then, impressed me with their vague grandeur, lost all their attraction in my eyes. Before that night I had liked to cross over to the island and to contemplate the grey castle walls and mossy roof, even from afar. When the motley figures of its inmates crawled out into the brightness of morning, yawning, coughing, and crossing themselves in the sunlight, I had looked upon them with a sort of reverence, as upon creatures clothed in the same mystery that surrounded the whole castle. “They sleep there at night,” thought I; “they hear everything that happens when the moon looks in at the broken windows and the wind howls through the great halls.” I had loved to listen to Yanush, when, with all the loquacity of seventy years, he had taken his seat beneath a poplar tree and told me tales of the glorious past of the dying building. Images of this past would rise before my childish imagination, and there would be waftedinto my heart a solemn melancholy and a vague sympathy for the life lived here of old inside these dismal walls. Romantic shades of an antiquity unknown to me would flit across my young soul as the light shadows of clouds flit across a bright field on a windy day.
But after that evening the castle and its bard appeared to me in a new light. Meeting me the following day near the island, Yanush called me to him and assured me with satisfaction that “the son of such honoured parents as mine” could now boldly visit the island, as he would find an absolutely orderly population upon it. He even led me by the hand up to the very castle, but I snatched my hand out of his almost in tears, and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me; the castle had become odious to me. The windows of the upper story had been boarded up, while the lower floor was ruled over by the “mantles and caps.” The old women crawled out, looking so unattractive, fawning upon me so mawkishly, and at the same time scolding one another so loudly that I honestly wondered how the old Count who was wont to discipline his Turks on stormy nights could stand having these old crones so near him. But chiefly I could not forget the cold ruthlessness with which the triumphant inhabitants of the castle had driven away their unfortunate fellow-inmates, and my heart contracted at the remembrance of the poor creatures left without a roof over their heads.
However this may be, the old castle taught me for the first time the great fact that, from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. That which was sublime in the castle was all overgrown with convolvulus and ivy, and that which was ridiculous was revolting to me, and wounded my childish susceptibility too keenly for me to feel the irony of the contrast; this was still inaccessible to me.
QUEER CHARACTERS
The nights following the revolution on the island were passed by the town in great anxiety. Dogs barked, house doors creaked, and the citizens kept emerging into the streets, knocking on the fences with sticks, and letting every one know how valiant they were. The town knew that a band of shivering and hungry folk was roaming through the streets, cold and wet, in the raw darkness of the rainy night, and realising full well that only harsh feelings could exist in the hearts of these people toward it, the town put itself on guard and answered these sentiments with threats. And, as if on purpose, the nights now fell upon the earth in the midst of torrents of cold rain, and passed away leaving low-flying clouds hanging close above the ground. And the wind bellowedin the heart of the evil weather, shaking the tree-tops, thundering against the walls, and chanting to me in my bed of the dozens of human creatures deprived of warmth, with no roof over their heads.
But at last spring triumphed over winter’s rage; the sun dried the wet earth, and in the meantime the homeless wanderers had slipped away, whither, heaven knows. The nightly barking of the dogs diminished, the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and life assumed once more its monotonous and sleepy aspect. The hot sun rose in the sky, scorched the dusty streets, and drove the lively sons of Israel into the shelter of their little booths; the “commissionaires” lounged lazily in the sun, sharply eyeing the passers-by and the Jewish “geschäft”; the scratching of official pens was heard through the open windows of the Government buildings; the town ladies wandered up and down the bazaars in the mornings with baskets on their arms, and in the evenings came out walking majestically, leaning upon the arms of their spouses, stirring up the street dust with the full trains of their dresses. The old men and women from the castle decorously made the round of their patrons without disturbing the universal harmony. The townsfolk gladly recognised their right to existence, and considered it absolutely proper that some people should receive alms every Saturday, while the denizens of the castle accepted this charity with the utmost respectability.
Only the unfortunate exiles now found no protection in the town. It is true they no longer roamed the streets at night, and people said they had taken refuge somewhere on the hill near the dissenting chapel, but how they had managed to find a dwelling place there no one could exactly say. All saw, however, the most impossible and suspicious-looking figures in the world climb down every morning from the cliffs on which the chapel stood and disappear again at twilight in the same direction. These people disturbed the quiet, sleepy life of the town by their appearance, standing out like sombre stains against the grey background of village life. The citizens looked at them askance with feelings of hostility and alarm, while they, on the other hand, watched the village with furtively attentive eyes that sent cold chills running down the back of many a townsman. These persons did not resemble in any way the aristocratic mendicants from the castle; the town did not recognise them and they did not ask for recognition. Their relations with the community were purely war-like in character; they preferred cursing a townsman to flattering him; they preferred taking things themselves to asking for them. Nevertheless, as often happens among a sombre mass of unfortunates, there were those among them who, for brains and talent, would have been an honour to the more select society of the castle, but who had been discontented there, and preferred the more democratic life of the dissentingchapel. A few of these poor creatures were distinguished by characteristics of profoundest tragedy.
I remember vividly to this day how merrily the street would hum as the melancholy, stooping figure of the old “Professor” walked along it. He was a gentle being, oppressed by a clouded intelligence, and he wore an old frieze overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with a faded cockade. His learned title he had appropriated, it seemed, because of a vague tradition that he had once, somehow, somewhere, been a tutor. It would be hard to imagine a creature more mild and harmless. He could generally be seen wandering about the streets with dim eyes and head sunk forward on his breast. The ingenious townsfolk knew two peculiarities of his which they made use of to procure a cruel enjoyment for themselves. The Professor was always muttering something to himself and no one could ever make out what he was saying. His words would trickle after one another with the troubled murmur of a little brooklet, while he fixed his vague eyes upon his listener’s face as if he were trying to convey to that man’s mind the elusive meaning of his long discourses. He could be wound up like a clock, and to do this it was only necessary for one of the lanky commissionaires dozing on the sidewalk to call the old man to him and ask him some question. The Professor would shake his head, pensively fix hisfaded eyes upon the face of his interlocutor, and begin to murmur something sorrowful without an end. Thereupon his questioner could calmly walk away or go to sleep, and when he woke he would still be certain to see over him that dark, melancholy figure, murmuring his unintelligible phrases. But, naturally, this situation was not, in itself, particularly interesting. It was the second of the Professor’s characteristics that enabled the louts of the street-corners to procure their most striking effects. The unhappy man could never hear sharp or pointed instruments mentioned without emotion. And so, at the very height of his unintelligible eloquence, his listener would suddenly jump up and scream in a harsh voice: “Knives, scissors, needles, pins!” Then the poor old man, interrupted in the midst of his reverie, would throw up his arms with the gesture of a wounded bird, and stare about him in terror with his hands clutching at his breast. Ah, how many sufferings are incomprehensible to lanky commissionaires because the sufferers cannot express their pain by means of a lusty blow! But the poor Professor would only look about him in deep distress, and his inexpressible suffering could be divined from his voice as he turned his clouded eyes upon his tormentor and cried, convulsively tearing at his breast:
“A hook—a hook in my heart!”
He was probably trying to say that his heart had been rent by the townsman’s exclamation, but naturallyit was his very circumstance that had served to dispel somewhat the tedium of the street loafer. So the poor Professor would hurry away, his head bowed even lower than before, as if he feared a blow, and loud peals of laughter would pursue him as the pert townsfolk ran out into the street, filling the air with screams like the blows of a lash and shouting:
“Knives, scissors, needles, pins!”
In justice to the exiles from the castle, it must be said that they always stood loyally by one another, and if two or three of Turkevich’s tatterdemalions, or, more especially, if the retired grenadier Zausailov descended upon the Professor’s pursuers at such a time a cruel punishment always overtook a large number of that crowd. Zausailov, who was the possessor of a huge frame, a purplish blue nose, and fiercely protruding eyes, had long since declared war on every living being, and recognised neither treaties nor neutrality. Each time that he met the Professor with the rabble in pursuit his angry shouts would fill the air then and long after, as he swept through the streets like Tamerlane, destroying everything that stood in the way of his redoubtable progress. Thus he practised “pogroms” on the Jews on a large scale long before they had begun to break out elsewhere. He would torture every Jew that fell a prisoner into his hands and wreak insults on the Hebrew ladies until at last the expedition of the bold grenadier would come to an end in the gaol,where he was invariably domiciled after his bloody bouts with the populace in which both sides always manifested no small amount of valour.
The other individual the sight of whose misfortunes and downfall was a source of great amusement to the people, was Lavrovski, a retired and absolutely drink-sodden Civil Servant. The inhabitants of the town could easily remember the time when Lavrovski was never spoken of as anything but “My Lord the Secretary”; when he went about in a uniform with brass buttons, his neck swathed in handkerchiefs of the most marvellous hues. It is likely that this circumstance lent an additional piquancy to the contemplation of his present state. The change in Lavrovski’s life had come swiftly; it had sufficed for a certain brilliant officer of dragoons to come to Kniazh Gorodok and live there for two weeks. In that time he succeeded in winning and carrying off a golden-haired lady, the rich inn-keeper’s daughter. The inhabitants of the town never heard of the beautiful Anna again, for she had sunk forever beneath their horizon. And so Lavrovski was left with all his bright-hued handkerchiefs, but without the hope that had once embellished the life of the little official. It was long since he had ceased to be a Civil Servant. Somewhere, in some remote village, there lived a family whose hope and mainstay he had once been, but he had lost all care for anything now. In his rare sober moments he would walk swiftly through thestreets with downcast eyes, looking at no one, as if he were overcome with shame at the fact of his own existence. Ragged, dirty, with long, unkempt hair, he was always a prominent figure in a crowd, and attracted universal attention to himself, but he seemed never to notice any one, or to hear anything. Only occasionally would he cast a wild look of bewilderment about him, as much as to say: “What do these strangers want of me? What have I done to them, and why do they follow me so persistently with their mockery?” If, during one of these flashes of consciousness, his ear caught the name of the lady with the golden hair a tempestuous fury would rise in his heart, his eyes would shine in his pale face with dark fire, and he would throw himself upon the crowd of his tormentors, which would then quickly disperse. These flashes of anger, rare as they were, strangely provoked the interest of the loafers who found that time hung heavily on their hands, and it is no wonder, then, that when Lavrovski walked down the street with downcast eyes, the rabble that followed him should try to rouse him from his apathy, and at last begin to throw mud and stones at him.
When Lavrovski was drunk he would obstinately seek out dark fence-corners and swampy meadows and other such extraordinary places, and there he would sit, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his poor grey head sunk on his breast. Solitude and vodka awoke in him a flow of expansiveness and adesire to pour forth the sorrow of his heavy heart, so he would embark upon endless stories of his ruined youth, addressing himself now to the grey posts of the ancient fence, now to the birch trees indulgently whispering something over his head, now to the magpies that came hopping up to his gloomy figure with feminine curiosity.
If any of us little boys succeeded in tracking him to such a place we would silently surround him and listen with beating hearts to his long and terrible stories. Our hair would stand on end as we gazed with horror at that pale creature accusing himself of every crime under the sun. According to Lavrovski’s own account he had killed his father, driven his mother into the grave, and brought disgrace on his brothers and sisters. We had no reason for not believing these fearful confessions, and were only surprised that Lavrovski seemed to have had several fathers; he had thrust a sword into the heart of one, another he had killed with slow poison, a third he had dragged down with him into some abyss or other. So we would listen, overwhelmed with sympathy and horror, until Lavrovski’s tongue became more and more entangled and at last ceased to be able to pronounce articulate sounds; merciful sleep would then put an end to the outpouring of his confessions.
The grown people laughed at us and told us that these stories were all moonshine, and that Lavrovski’sparents had died a natural death from sickness or starvation. But our tender, childish hearts heard the cries of genuine affliction in his groans, and, taking the allegories of the unhappy man literally, we came nearer than our elders to understanding the tragic wrecking of his life.
When Lavrovski’s head had sunk lower than ever and snores, broken by nervous sobs, came from his throat, we would lean our little heads over the poor man. We would peer into his face and watch the shadows of his misdeeds flitting across it even in his sleep; we would see his brows contract convulsively and his lips tighten in a piteous, almost childishly plaintive grimace.
“I’ll kill you!” he once shrieked suddenly, conscious of a vague uneasiness caused by our presence, and at this we scattered like a flock of startled birds.
It sometimes happened that rain fell on him sleeping thus, dust covered him, and several times in the autumn he was literally buried in snow. If he did not die an untimely death, he without doubt owed this to the care which other unfortunates like himself took of his pitiful person. Especially did he owe his life to the jolly Turkevich, who would search him out, pull him up, set him on his feet, and take him away with him.
Turkevich belonged to the class of people, who, as he himself expressed it, do not spit in their ownporridge, and while the Professor and Lavrovski were passive sufferers, he presented the appearance of a person who was happy and fortunate in many ways. To begin with, he had suddenly announced that he was a general without asking the assent of any one, and demanded that the townsfolk should call him by that honourable title. As no one dared to question his right to it, Turkevich very soon became imbued with a belief in his own greatness. He always stalked along very majestically, knitting his brows severely, and displaying a perfect readiness to break any one’s jaw, which last act he evidently considered the special prerogative of a general. If his care free brain was ever visited for a moment by doubts on the score of his title, he would catch the first man he saw on the street and sternly ask him:
“Who am I, eh?”
“General Turkevich!” the man would answer meekly, feeling himself in an awkward position, whereupon Turkevich would slowly release him and proudly twirl his whiskers.
“Ex-actly!”
And as he had, beside all this, a very special way of twirling his beetling moustache and an inexhaustible fund of quaint sayings and witticisms, it was not surprising that he was constantly surrounded by a crowd of lively listeners. Even the doors of the best restaurants, where the landholders of the country assembled to play billiards, were open to him. To tellthe truth, however, it not infrequently happened that General Turkevich would come flying out of them with the alacrity of a man who is being shoved rather unceremoniously from behind. But these incidents, which he explained by the lack of respect the landholders had for wit, had no effect upon Turkevich’s general frame of mind. A state of happy self-confidence and continual intoxication—that was his normal condition.
In this last circumstance lay the second key to his felicity; one glass of vodka was enough to keep him fuddled for a day. This fact people explained by the immense quantity which Turkevich had already drunk, and which was said to have converted his blood into a solution of vodka. All that was necessary now was for the General to bring this solution to a proper strength, for it to ripple and rush through his veins, painting the world for him with rainbow tints.
If, on the other hand, for one reason or another, the General could not procure a glass of vodka for a day or two, he would suffer the most excruciating torture. First he would fall into a fit of melancholy and low spirits. All knew that at these times the terrible General was more helpless than a child, and many hastened to wreak vengeance upon him then for insults received. They would beat him and spit upon him and cover him with mud, while he would not even try to run away from the disgrace, but wouldbellow at the top of his lungs while the tears streamed in torrents down his long, drooping moustache. The poor wretch would turn to every one, imploring them to kill him; saying that, anyhow, he was doomed to die a dog’s death in a fence corner. At that every one would stand aside, for there was something in the voice and face of the General at those times which sent even his most determined enemies away as fast as their legs could carry them. They could not bear to see the face, to hear the voice of a man who, for an instant, was conscious of the appalling tragedy of his lot.
Then another change would come over the General and he would grow terrible to look at. His eyes would flash feverishly, his cheeks would cave in, his short hair would bristle on his head, he would go off into a kind of frenzy, and, rising to his feet, would stalk triumphantly through the streets, beating his breast and announcing to every one in a loud voice:
“I am going! Like Jeremiah, I am going to denounce the ungodly!”
This was always the signal for an interesting scene.
It may safely be said that Turkevich played the part of a famous person in our little town, so it was small wonder that the sedatest and busiest of our townsmen should drop their work and mingle with the rabble at the heels of the new prophet, or that at least they should watch his progress from afar. He usually went first to the Secretary of the CountyCourt, and before his house he would hold something like a session of court, choosing suitable members of the crowd to take the parts of the plaintiff and the defendant. He himself would make the pleas and reply to them, mimicking very skilfully the voice and manner of a prisoner.
As he was always able to give a contemporary flavour to his performances by alluding to some fact well known to all, and as he was extremely well versed in the procedures of a court room, it was not surprising that the Secretary’s cook should come flying out of the house in a twinkling, touch Turkevich on the arm, and hastily disappear, repulsing as she went the attentions of Turkevich’s followers. Turkevich would laugh sardonically on receiving this gift, and, waving the money triumphantly, would retire to the nearest tavern.
Having slightly slaked his thirst there, he would continue to lead his audience from house to house of those whom he “denounced,” varying his programme to suit each particular case. As he always received money for each performance, his fierce tone would gradually become more mild, his moustache would begin to curl once more, and the denunciatory drama gradually became a merry vaudeville that generally ended in front of the house where Kotz, the Captain of Police, lived. Kotz was the most kindly of all the city officials and had only two little weaknesses: he dyed his grey hair black and had a partiality for fatcooks. In everything else he showed an implicit confidence in the will of God and the “gratitude” of the townsfolk. Having arrived in front of the Police Captain’s house, Turkevich would wink gaily at his companions, throw up his cap, and announce in stentorian tones that not the Police Captain lived here, but Turkevich’s own father and benefactor.
Then he would fix his eyes on the windows and await results. The consequence was always one of two things: either the fat, red-cheeked Matriona would come running out of the front door with a present from Turkevich’s “father and benefactor,” or the door would remain closed, and Turkevich would catch sight at a window of an angry old face in a frame of coal-black hair, while Matriona would creep through back ways to the police station. There the cobbler Mikita, who made a very good living out of these very affairs with Turkevich, was always sitting. On seeing Matriona he would immediately throw down his boot-last and rise from his seat.
Meanwhile Turkevich, seeing that no good results followed his dithyrambs, would, little by little, cautiously have recourse to satire. He would usually begin by remarking what a pity it was that his benefactor thought it necessary to dye his honourable grey hair with shoe blacking. Next, grieved by the absolute lack of attention which his eloquence received, he would raise his voice and begin to assail his benefactor as a melancholy example of aman living illegally with Matriona. By the time he reached this delicate subject, the General had always lost all hope of reconciliation with his “benefactor,” and would therefore arm himself with all the genuine eloquence of indignation. It was a pity that an unexpected interruption almost always came at this point in his speech. Kotz’s angry yellow face would appear thrust out of one of the windows of his house, and Mikita, who had crept up with marvellous dexterity, would seize Turkevich from behind. No member of his audience ever tried to warn the orator of his approaching danger, for Mikita’s artistic methods always called forth universal admiration. Cut off in the midst of a word, the General would suddenly whirl through the air and find himself upside down on Mikita’s back. A few seconds more, and the sturdy cobbler would be quietly making his way to the gaol, bending slightly beneath his burden, and followed by the deafening shouts of the populace. Another minute, and the black door of the police station would gape like a pair of forbidding jaws and the General would disappear into the darkness, helplessly kicking his feet. The thankless mob would cry, “Hurrah for Mikita!” and gradually melt away.
Beside these individuals who were conspicuous among the ranks of the vagabonds, a dark crew of pitiful, ragged creatures had taken refuge near the chapel, and these never failed to create intense excitement by their appearance at the bazaars. Themerchants would hastily seek to protect their goods with their hands, as a hen covers her brood when a hawk appears in the sky above her. There was a rumour afloat that these poor wretches had formed a fraternal organisation and that now, since they had been deprived of their last resources by their expulsion from the castle, they occupied themselves with petty thieving in the town and its environs. Such rumours were chiefly founded on the fact that a man cannot live without bread, and as all the suspicious persons had in some way or other abandoned the normal way of obtaining it, and had been cut off from the benefits of local charity, it was naturally concluded that they must either steal or die. As they did not die, the very fact of their remaining alive was evidence of their guilty practices.
If this was true, it was no less apparent that the organiser and leader of the band could be no other than Tiburtsi Drab, the most remarkable of all the queer characters that had lost their home in the castle.
Drab’s origin was shrouded in the most mystifying uncertainty. Those who were gifted with a vivid imagination credited him with having an aristocratic name which he had brought to shame; he was therefore obliged to conceal himself, at the same time taking part, it was said, in the exploits of the notorious Karmeliuk. But, in the first place, he was not old enough for this, and, in the second place, Tiburtsi’s appearance did not present one single aristocraticfeature. He was tall, and his heavily stooping shoulders seemed to tell of great burdens borne by the unfortunate man. His large features were coarsely expressive. His short, reddish hair bristled stiffly all over his head; his receding forehead, his slightly projecting lower jaw, and the rapid play of his facial muscles lent something apish to his face, but the eyes that sparkled under his beetling brows were determined and dark, and there shone in them, beside cunning, a keen perspicacity, energy, and an uncommon intelligence. While his features were changing under the kaleidoscopic play of his expressions, his eyes would retain their same fixed, unvarying look, and for this reason the buffoonery of the strange man filled me with unreasoning dread.
Tiburtsi’s hands were callous and rough, and he stamped his great feet like a peasant. Therefore the consensus of opinion among the townsfolk was that he was not of aristocratic birth, and the most they would concede was that he might have been the servant of a great family. But here another difficulty presented itself: how, then, explain the phenomenal learning that every one unanimously admitted he possessed? It was impossible not to acknowledge this obvious fact, for there was not a tavern in the whole town where Tiburtsi had not stood on a barrel and spouted whole speeches from Cicero and Xenophon for the benefit of the Little Russians collected there on market days. TheseLittle Russians would gape and nudge one another with their elbows, while Tiburtsi, towering above them in his rags, would thunder forth Catilinus or paint the exploits of Cæsar and the craft of Mithridates. Little Russians are, by nature, endowed with a glowing fancy, and these were able to read their own meaning into Tiburtsi’s fiery if unintelligible speeches. When the orator beat his breast and turned to them with flashing eyes, exclaiming: “Patres Conscripti!” they too would knit their brows and say to one another:
“Aha, the son of a gun, he does bark!”
Later, when Tiburtsi would raise his eyes to the ceiling and begin declaiming endless verses of Latin poetry, his whiskered audience would follow every word he uttered with timid and pitying sympathy. They felt as if the soul of their orator were soaring somewhere in an unknown region where people did not talk like Christians, and by his despairing gestures they concluded that it was there meeting with the most sorrowful adventures. But this sympathetic tension reached its height whenever Tiburtsi rolled up his eyes so that only the whites were visible and wrung his audience’s heart with endless recitations from Virgil and from Homer. Such hollow, sepulchral tones would then shake his voice that those who sat farthest away and were most under the influence of the Jewish “gorelka”[G]would hang theirheads until their long top-knots dangled before them, and begin to sob:
“Oh, oh, little mother, how sad it is!” while the tears would flow from their eyes and trickle piteously down their long whiskers.
This learning of the queer fellow’s made it necessary to invent a new hypothesis about him which should tally more closely with the obvious facts. It was at last agreed that Tiburtsi had once been the house-boy of a count who had sent him to a Jesuit school with his own son, desiring that he should clean the young gentleman’s boots. It appeared, however, that the young count had received most of the blows of the holy fathers’ three-tailed “disciplinarian,” while the servant had appropriated the learning intended for the head of his master.
As a result of the mystery which surrounded Tiburtsi, he was credited among other things with having an intimate knowledge of witchcraft. If a “witch-ball”[H]suddenly appeared in the billowy fields that closed like a sea about the last hovels of the town, no one could pull it up with less danger to himself and to the reapers than Tiburtsi. If an owl settled in the evening on some one’s roof and, with loud cries, summoned death to the house, Tiburtsi would be sent for and would drive the ill-omened bird away by reciting quotations from Livy.
No one could even conjecture how Tiburtsi happened to have children, and yet the fact was obvious; there were even two facts, a boy of seven, unusually well-grown and intelligent for his age, and a little girl of three. Tiburtsi had led, or rather carried, the boy with him during the early days of his appearance over our horizon. As for the little girl, he had seemed to vanish for several months into an absolutely unknown place in order to procure her.
The boy, whose name was Valek, was tall and thin and dark. He might sometimes be seen sauntering gloomily about the town with his hands in his pockets, casting sidelong glances about him without having anything in particular to do, and was the cause of many a palpitating heart to the bakers.
The little girl was only seen once or twice, borne aloft in Tiburtsi’s arms. She then disappeared and no one knew whither she had gone.
People spoke of certain subterranean passages on the hill near the dissenting chapel, and such places were not uncommon in that part of Russia, over which the Tartars had so often swept with fire and sword, where Polish licence had run high, and where the fierce heroes of the old Ukraine had held their bloody tribunals. So every one believed in the existence of these caves, especially as it was clear that the band of poor unfortunates must be living somewhere. They always disappeared toward evening in precisely the direction of the chapel. Thither the Professorhobbled with his drowsy gait; thither strode Tiburtsi, swiftly and resolutely; thither staggered Turkevich, leading the fierce and helpless Lavrovski; thither went a crowd of other suspicious creatures, and vanished into the darkness of night. There was no man brave enough to follow them up the slippery clay landslides that clothed the hillside. The hill, which was honeycombed with graves, enjoyed an evil reputation. Blue flames might be seen burning in the old cemetery in the dusk of autumn nights, and the screech owls hooted so shrilly and loudly in the chapel that even the blacksmith’s fearless heart would quail when the cries of the accursed birds came to his ears.
MY FATHER AND I
“This is bad, young man, bad!” old Yanush used often to say, meeting me in the street in Turkevich’s train or among Tiburtsi’s audience.
And as he said this the old man would wag his grey beard.
“This is bad, young man; you are in bad company. It is a pity, a very great pity to see the son of such honourable parents among them.”
As a matter of fact, since my mother had died and my father’s gloomy face had become even moresombre than before, I was very seldom seen at home. I used to creep into the garden like a young wolf in the late summer evenings, carefully avoid a meeting with my father, open my window which was half-concealed by lilac bushes, and slip silently into bed. If my little sister was not asleep in her cradle in the next room I used to go in to see her, and we would softly kiss one another and play together, taking care not to wake our grumbling old nurse.
In the morning, at break of day, while every one else in the house was still asleep, I was already tracing a dewy pathway through the tall grass of our garden, jumping across the fence, and making my way to the pond where my madcap companions would be waiting for me with fishing rods. Or else I would go down to the mill where the sleepy miller would have opened the sluices a few moments before, and where the water, its glassy surface delicately quivering, would already be plunging down the mill-race, going bravely on its way to its daily toil.
The big mill-wheels, roused by the water’s noisy blows, would quiver too and seem to yield unwillingly, as if loath to forego their sleep, but next moment they would be turning, splashing the foam about, and bathing themselves in the cold torrent.
Behind them the shafts would slowly begin to revolve; inside the mill pinions would rattle, millstones would whirr, and a white floury dust would rise inclouds through the cracks of the venerable building.
Then I would run on—I loved to meet Nature at her awakening. I was glad when I succeeded in rousing a sleepy lark or in startling a timid hare from its form. The dew-drops would be dripping from the maiden-hair and from the faces of the meadow flowers as I crossed the fields on my way to the woods beyond the town. The trees would greet me with a drowsy murmur. The pale, surly faces of the prisoners would not yet be peering from the windows of the gaol, and only the sentry would be walking around its walls, noisily rattling his rifle as he relieved the tired night-watchman.
Although I had made a long round, when I reached the town again I would still meet sleepy figures here and there, opening the shutters of the houses. But when the sun rose over the hill, a rackety bell would ring out across the ponds calling the school-boys together, and hunger would drive me home to my morning tea.
Every one called me a tramp and a young good-for-nothing, and I was on the whole so often reproached with my many wicked tendencies, that at last I came to be persuaded of them myself. My father believed in them too, and sometimes made an effort to take my education in hand, but these attempts invariably ended in failure. The sight of his stern, melancholy face on which lay the harshimprint of inconsolable grief frightened me and drove me into myself. I would stand uneasily before him, first on one foot and then on the other, glancing about me, and plucking at my little breeches. Sometimes I seemed to feel something rising in my breast; I wanted him to kiss me and take me on his knee. I should then have nestled to his breast and perhaps we should have wept together—the stern man and the child—at the thought of our common loss. But he would look at me instead with dim eyes that seemed to be staring at something over my head, and I would shrink under that gaze, which was incomprehensible to me.
“Do you remember your mother?”
Did I remember her? Ah, yes, I remembered! I remembered how, in the night, I used to awaken and, finding her soft arms in the darkness, would nestle near them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her as she had sat dying at the open window, gazing sorrowfully at the lovely Spring landscape before her, bidding it farewell in the last year of her life.
Ah, yes, I remembered her! As she lay beautiful, young, and covered with flowers, but with the seal of death upon her pale face, I had crouched in a corner like a young wild thing, staring at her with burning eyes before which the whole awful riddle of life and death was being unfolded. And at last, when a crowd of strangers had borne her away, wasit not my sobs that filled the house with low sounds of weeping on the first night of my bereavement?
Ah yes, I remembered her! And still, in the silence of night, I would awaken with my childish heart bursting with an overflowing love, a smile of happiness on my lips, in blessed forgetfulness, wrapped in the rosy dreams of childhood. And once more it seemed that she was with me, and that at any moment I might feel again her gentle, loving kiss. But my arms would reach out into the empty darkness, and again the consciousness of my bitter loneliness would pierce my soul. Then I would press my hands to my aching heart and scalding tears would trickle down my cheeks.
Ah yes, I remembered her! But at the question of that tall, stern man with whom I wished to feel a sense of kinship and could not, I would wince more than ever, and quietly withdraw my little hand from his.
And he would turn away from me with anger and pain. He felt that he had not the slightest influence over me, that an insurmountable barrier stood between us. He had loved her too much while she was alive to notice me in his happiness, and now his deep sorrow hid me from him.
So little by little the gulf dividing us grew ever wider and deeper. He became more and more convinced that I was a wicked, worthless boy, with a hard, selfish heart, and the feeling that heshouldbut could not teach me;shouldlove me, but could not find a corner in his heart to harbour this love, still more increased his dislike for me. And this I felt. I used to watch him sometimes from where I stood hidden behind the shrubbery. He would walk up and down the garden paths with ever quickening footsteps, groaning with the unbearable agony in his heart. My heart too would ache with sympathy and pity at the sight of him. Once, when he took his head in his hands and sank down sobbing on a bench, I could endure it no longer and ran out of the shrubbery into the path, impelled by an undefinable impulse to be near him.
But he, roused from his gloomy and hopeless meditations, looked at me sternly and checked me with the cold question:
“What do you want?”
I did not want anything. I turned quickly away, ashamed of my outburst, afraid lest my father should read it in my blushing face. I ran into the grove in the garden and falling on my face in the grass wept bitterly from vexation and pain.
At six years I had already experienced all the horrors of loneliness.
My sister Sonia was four. I loved her passionately and she returned my love, but the general, fixed opinion that I was an out-and-out little rascal at last succeeded in raising a high barrier between us. Whenever I began to play with her in my noisy,frolicsome way, our old nurse, always sleepy and always picking over hen feathers for pillows with closed eyes, would wake up in an instant, swiftly seize my Sonia, and carry her away, throwing an angry glance at me. At such times she always reminded me of a ruffled brood-hen, while I likened myself to a marauding hawk, and Sonia to a little chicken. I would be hurt and vexed. It was no wonder, then, that I soon abandoned all attempts to amuse Sonia with my objectionable games, and in a little while both our house and the little garden began to grow irksome to me, for I found there neither welcome nor kindness. I began to roam. My whole being was quivering with strange presentiments; a foretaste, as it were, of life. It seemed to me that I should surely find something somewhere out there, in that great, unknown world beyond the old walled garden; I felt as if I should and would do something, only I knew not what, and from the bottom of my soul a feeling that tempted me and teased me rose up to meet this mystery. I was constantly awaiting the solution of these riddles, and instinctively fled from our nurse and her feathers, from the familiar, lazy whispering of the apple trees in our little garden, and from the silly knife-blows that resounded whenever meat was being chopped in our kitchen. From then on the epithets of “street urchin” and “tramp” were added to my other unflattering appellations. But I paid no heed to this;I had grown accustomed to reproaches, and endured them as I endured sudden downpours of rain and the fierce heat of the sun. I listened scowling to all rebukes and went my own way. Wandering through the streets, I watched the life of the town with childishly inquiring eyes; I listened to the rumbling of the wagons on the highway and tried to catch the echoes of great far-away cities, either in the clatter of their wheels or in the whispering of the wind among the tall Cossack tombs by the roadside. More than once did my eyes open wide with fear, more than once did my heart stop beating at the panorama of life unfolding before me, picture after picture, impression after impression, each leaving a vivid imprint on my heart. I saw and knew a great deal that children much older than myself ordinarily never see, and all the while that unexplained something which had risen from the depths of my childish soul called to me as before, ceaseless, mysterious, vibrant.
After the shrews of the castle had deprived the old building of my respect and admiration, and when every corner of the town had become familiar to me down to the last filthy alley, then I began to turn my eyes into the distance, toward the hill on which the dissenting chapel stood. At first I approached it from one side and then from another like a timid animal, not daring to climb a hill that had such an evil reputation. But as I gradually grew more familiarwith the place, I began to see before me only peaceful graves and fallen crosses. Nowhere were there any visible signs of life or of the presence of human beings. It lay quiet, deserted and alone. Only the chapel frowned at me with its empty windows, as if absorbed in melancholy meditation. I longed to inspect the building from every point of view, to look inside it, and so to make sure that there was nothing in it but dust. But it was both terrifying and inconvenient to undertake such an expedition alone, and so I enlisted a small army of three scape-graces, urchins who were attracted to the adventure by the promise of cakes and of apples from our garden.
I MAKE SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES
We started on our expedition one day after dinner, and, having reached the hill, began climbing the clay landslides that had been torn from its side by grave diggers long dead and by the freshets of Spring. These landslides had stripped the hillside bare, and here and there white, crumbling bones protruded through the clay. In one place the rotting corner of a coffin jutted out; in another a human skull grinned at us, fixing us with its dark, hollow eyes.
At last, lending one another a hand, we scrambled up over the last cliff and found ourselves on the summit of the hill. The sun was already nearing the horizon. Its slanting rays were tenderly gilding the sward of the old cemetery, playing across its ancient, zig-zag crosses, and streaming through the windows of the chapel. The air was still, and about us reigned the deep peace of a deserted burial ground. Here we no longer saw skulls and shank-bones and coffins. A soft, gently sloping carpet of fresh green grass had lovingly concealed in its embrace the horror and ugliness of death.
We were alone. Only the sparrows were bustling merrily about us, and a few swallows were silently flying in and out of the windows of the chapel standing disconsolately among its grassy graves, modest crosses, and the tumble-down stone sepulchres on the débris of which gleamed the bright faces of butter-cups, violets, and clover blossoms.
“No one is here,” said one of my companions.
“The sun is setting,” added another, looking at the sun, which, although it had not yet set, was hanging low above the hill.
The doors and windows were boarded up for some distance above the ground, but, with the help of my companions, I had hopes of scaling them and peeping into the chapel.
“Don’t!” cried one of my band, suddenly losing his courage and seizing my arm.
“Get away, you old woman!” the oldest of our little army shouted at him, deftly offering me his back.
I jumped bravely upon it; he stood up, and I found myself with my feet on his shoulders. In this position I could easily reach the window-sill with my hand. I made sure of its strength, and then pulled myself up and sat on it.
“Well, what do you see?” the boys asked from below, with lively curiosity.
I was silent. By peering over the sill I could see down into the interior of the chapel, from whence there rose to meet me all the solemn quiet of an abandoned place of worship. The interior of the tall, narrow building was innocent of paint. The evening sunlight was streaming unobstructed through the open windows, staining the peeling walls a brilliant gold. I saw the inside of the closed door, the crumbling gallery, the ancient tottering columns. The distance from the window to the floor appeared much greater than from the window to the grass outside. I seemed to be looking down into a deep abyss, and at first I could not make out what certain strange objects were whose fantastic forms were resting upon the floor.
Meanwhile my friends were growing weary of standing below waiting for me to give them news, and one of them climbed up by the same method that I had employed, and took his seat beside me, holding on to the window frame.
“That’s the altar,” he said, looking down at one of the strange objects on the floor.
“And that’s the lustre.”
“And that’s the little table for the Bible.”
“Yes, but what’s that?” I asked, pointing to the dark shape that lay beside the altar.
“That’s a priest’s hat.”
“No, it’s a bucket.”
“What would they have used a bucket for?”
“To carry coals for the incense.”
“No, it certainly is a hat. Anyhow, we can find out!” I cried. “Here, let’s tie your belt to the window-sill, and you can let yourself down by it!”
“I like that! Let yourself down if you want to!”
“Do you think I wouldn’t go?”
“Go on then!”
Acting on impulse I tied the two belts together, slipped them under the window-sill, and, giving one end to my companion, let myself down by the other. I trembled as my feet touched the floor, but a glance at my friend’s face bending sympathetically over me reassured me. The sound of my heels rang out under the ceiling, resounding in the chapel’s void, and echoing among its dark corners. A few sparrows started up from their roosts in the gallery and fluttered out through a large hole in the roof. All at once I caught sight of a stern, bearded face under a crown of thorns looking down at me from over the window in which we had been sitting. It was animmense crucifix leaning out from high up under the rafters.
I was seized with dread. My companion’s eyes sparkled, and he held his breath with curiosity and sympathy.
“Are you going any farther?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” I answered in the same tone, summoning all my courage, but at that instant something totally unexpected happened. First, we heard the rattle of plaster falling in the gallery. Then something moved overhead, stirring up clouds of dust, and a big grey mass flapped its wings and rose to the hole in the roof. The chapel was darkened in a moment. A huge old owl, frightened out of a dark corner by our noise, hung poised for a moment in the aperture with outstretched wings, and then sailed away.
A wave of shuddering fear passed over me.
“Pull me up!” I cried to my playmate, and seized the strap.
“Don’t be frightened!” he answered soothingly and prepared to pull me up into the sunshine and the light of day.
But all at once I saw his face become distorted with alarm. He screamed, jumped down from the window-sill, and vanished in an instant. I instinctively looked behind me, and caught sight of a strange apparition which filled me, however, more with surprise than terror.
The dark object that had been the subject of our dispute, and that had first looked like a bucket, then like a hat, and then at last like a kettle, suddenly flashed across my vision and vanished behind the altar. All I could distinguish was the dim outline of a small, what seemed to be a child’s, hand, beckoning the object into its hiding place.
It would be hard to describe my sensations at that moment. They were not painful, the feeling that overcame me could not even be called fear. I seemed to be in another world. From somewhere, as if from the world that I had left, there came to me, a few seconds later, the swift frightened pattering of three pairs of children’s feet. This sound soon died away, and I was left alone in that tomb-like place, in the presence of an apparition inexplicable and strange.
Time ceased to exist for me, therefore I cannot say whether it was soon or not before I was aware of suppressed whispering under the altar.
“Why doesn’t he climb up again?”
“You can see, he’s frightened.”
The first voice seemed to be that of a very little child, the second might have belonged to a boy of my own age. I seemed to see, too, a pair of black eyes shining through the chinks in the old altar.
“What’s he going to do now?” the whisper recommenced.
“Wait and see,” answered the older voice.
Something moved so violently under the altar that the structure trembled, and a little figure emerged from underneath it.
It was a boy of nine, taller than I was, thin and slight as a reed. He was dressed in a dirty shirt, and his hands were thrust into the pockets of a pair of short, tight breeches. His black hair hung in shaggy elf-locks over his dark, pensive eyes.
Although he was a stranger and had appeared on the scene in such an unusual and unexpected manner, and although he was approaching me with that infinitely provocative look with which boys always met each other among our bazaars when they were preparing for a fight, I nevertheless felt very much braver than I had before. My courage increased when there appeared from under the altar, or rather from a trap-door in the floor which was concealed by the altar, another grimy little face framed in golden curls, and a pair of bright blue eyes fixed on me full of childish curiosity.
I moved slightly away from the wall and also put my hands into my pockets according to the rules of our bazaars. This was a sign that I was not afraid of my adversary and even partly wished to hint at my contempt for him.
We stood face to face, measuring each other with our eyes. Having stared at me from head to foot, the boy asked:
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “What business is it of yours?”
My adversary jerked his shoulder as if he intended to take his hand out of his pocket and strike me. I did not blink.
“I’ll show you!” he threatened.
I stuck out my chest.
“Hit me! Try!”
The moment was crucial. On it depended the character of our future relationship. I waited, but my opponent continued to fix me with the same scrutinising gaze and did not move.
“I’ll hit—too——” I said, but more peaceably this time.
Meanwhile the little girl, with her tiny hands resting on the floor of the chapel, was trying to scramble up out of the trap-door. She fell down, got up again, and at last came tottering with uncertain steps toward the boy. Having reached him, she seized him and nestled closely to him, at the same time fixing eyes of wonder and fear upon my face.
This decided the affair. It was obvious that the boy could not fight under conditions such as these. Of course I was too generous to take advantage of the awkward situation he was in.
“What’s your name?” asked the boy, stroking the little girl’s fair curls.
“Vasia. What’s yours?”
“Mine’s Valek. I know you. You live in the garden near the pond. You have big apples.”
“Yes, our apples are fine. Don’t you want some?”
Taking out of my pocket two apples that had been intended as payment for my shamefully fugitive band, I gave one to Valek and held out the other to the little girl. But she only hid her face and pressed closer to Valek.
“She’s frightened,” he said, and handed the apple to the child himself.
“What did you come down here for?” he asked next. “Did I ever come intoyourgarden?”
“You can come if you want to. I wish you would!” I answered joyfully.
Valek was taken back.
“I can’t play with you,” he answered sadly.
“Why not?” I asked, deeply grieved by the sorrowful voice in which he had spoken these words.
“Your father is a judge.”
“Well, what if he is?” I asked with candid amazement. “You’d play with me, not with my father!”
Valek shook his head.
“Tiburtsi wouldn’t let me.” And as if the name had reminded him of something, he suddenly recollected himself and went on: “Look here, you’re a fine boy, but you’d better go. If Tiburtsi should find you here it would be awful.”
I agreed that it was time for me to go. The last rays of the setting sun were already fading behindthe windows of the chapel, and the town was some distance away.
“How can I get out of here?”
“I’ll show you. We’ll go out together.”
“And what about her?” I asked, pointing to the little girl.
“What, Marusia? She’ll come with us.”
“How? Through the window?”
Valek reflected a moment.
“I’ll tell you what; I’ll help you to climb through the window and we’ll go out another way.”
With the help of my new friend I climbed up to the window-sill. Untying the belt, I slipped it around the sill, seized both ends, and swung myself into the air. Then, releasing one end, I dropped to the ground and jerked down the belt. Valek and Marusia were already waiting for me outside, at the foot of the wall.
The sun had just set behind the hill. The town was sunk in purple mist, only the tall poplars on the island, stained by the last glow of the sunset, stood out sharply defined in pure gold. I felt as if I had been in the old cemetery for a day and a night; it was as if I had come there the day before.
“It’s lovely here!” I exclaimed, struck by the freshness of the evening and filling my lungs with the cool, damp air.
“It’s lonely here,” said Valek sadly.
“Do you live here?” I asked, as the three of us began to descend the hill.