The sun was gliding into a lustrous copper haze, drawn in wide streaks, like transparent dust, across the distant scene. It sank behind some thick red firs left standing at the edge of a clearing and behind the dark trunks which lay rotting on the hillside. Its beams still lighted the corners of a cottage, gilding it and colouring it scarlet; they penetrated the folds of grey clouds, and glittered on the water.
A recent storm had laid the marshy plains and newly cultivated woodlands partly under water. Here and on the furrows of the stubble-fields and the fresh autumn ploughing the puddles turned red and their irridescent surface became like molten glass, while entrancing violet shadows, dazzling to the sight, fell on the grey, beaten-down clods; the sand hills turned yellow; the weeds growing on the banks, the bushes at the edge of the field paths, all borrowed some unwonted momentary colour.
In a deep hollow surrounded by sparsely wooded hills to the east, west and south ran a little brook,which overflowed into bays, swamps, shallows and creeks. Tangles of reeds grew at the water's edge, lank bulrushes, sweet-flags, and clumps of willows. The still, red water was now shining in formless pale-green patches from under the large leaves of the water-lilies and coarse water-weeds.
A flight of teals was hovering above with outstretched necks, and broke in upon the silence with the swish of their wings. Otherwise everything was still. Even the glassy blue dragon-flies, which had been hovering ceaselessly on their gossamer wings round the stems of the bulrushes, had disappeared. The untiring water-flies alone yet strayed over the illuminated surface of the swamps on their stilt-like legs.... And there were two human beings at work.
The marshes belonged to the manor house. Formerly the young owner, accompanied by his spaniel, had floundered through them, shooting ducks and snipe, which were to be found there before he cut down all the woods. He left quite half of the land uncultivated, and having very quickly run through his property, he found no means of supporting himself until he went to Warsaw, where he was now selling soda-water at a stall.
When a new and prudent owner appeared, he inspected the fields, stick in hand, and frequently stood still on the marshes, rubbing his nose.
He fumbled with his hands in the swamp, dug holes, measured, sniffed,—till he invented a strange thing. He ordered the bailiff to hire labourers daily to dig peat, to heap barrow-loads of the mud on to the fields, and to go on digging a hole until it was large enough for a pond. He was to make a dyke, and to choose a lower position for a second pond, till there were some thirteen in all; then to cut trenches; to let the water down, build water-gates, and set fish in the ponds.
Walek Gibała, a day labourer without any land of his own, who was working for wages in the neighbouring village, was hired to cart away the peat. Gibała had been groom to the former landlord, but had not stayed on with the new one. In the first place, the new landlord and the new steward had lowered the wages and allowances, and, in the second place, they made an enquiry into everything that was stolen. In the time of the former landlord each groom used half a bushel of oats for a pair of horses, and took the rest in the evening to the 'Berlin' Inn, in exchange for tobacco or a drop of brandy. However, this business had come to an end at once when the new steward appeared, and since he justly laid the blame of it on Walek, he had boxed his ears, and dismissed him from his service.
So from that time Walek and his wife had livedon their daily earnings in the village, because he could not find a situation; he was not likely even to apply for one, so thoroughly had the steward taken his character away. At harvest time they both earned something here and there from the peasants, but in winter and early spring they suffered terribly,—indescribably, from hunger. Large and bony, with iron muscles, the man was as thin as a board, with an ashen look, round-shouldered and weakened by privation. The woman—like a woman—supported herself by her neighbours; she sold mushrooms, raspberries and strawberries to the manor house, or to the Jews, and at least thus earned a loaf of wheat-bread. But, without food, she was no match for the man at threshing. When the bailiff gave the order for digging in the meadows, the eyes of both sparkled. The steward himself promised thirty kopeks for digging two cubic yards.
Walek kept his wife occupied with the digging every day and all day. She loaded the wheelbarrow, and he wheeled the mud on to the field along planks thrown across the swamp. They worked feverishly. They had two large, deep wheelbarrows, and before Walek had brought back the empty one, the second was already full; then he threw the strap round his shoulder and pushed the barrow up the hill. The iron wheel creaked horribly. The liquid, dark, rank slime,thick with marsh-weeds, overflowed and trickled down on to the man's bare knees, as the wheelbarrows were tilted from plank to plank; it penetrated to his neck and shoulders, marking his shirt with a dark, evil-smelling streak. His arms ached at the elbows, his feet were painful and stiff from being continually plunged into the mud, but—with a hard day's work, they dug out four cubic yards:—and he knew that he had sixty kopeks in his pocket.
They were hopeful, for they had earned thirty roubles by the end of the autumn. They paid their rent, bought a cask of pickled cabbage, five bushels of potatoes, a 'sukmana,'[9]boots, some aprons and homespun for the woman, and linen for shirts. Thus they could last till the spring, when they would be able to earn by threshing and weaving at other people's houses.
All of a sudden the steward considered it excessive to give thirty kopeks for two cubic yards. It struck him that no one would be tempted to patter about in a swamp from daybreak to nightfall unless on the verge of starvation, and these people had undertaken it without hesitation. 'Twenty kopeks is enough,' he said, 'if not,—well, go without.'
There was nothing to be earned at this time of year, and the manor house had enough of its ownpeople to attend to the threshing and machinery;—it was no use being fastidious in the matter. After this announcement Walek went to the inn, and made a beast of himself. Next day he beat his wife, and dragged her out to work for him.
From that time forward—beginning when it grew light—they dug out the four cubic yards, never stopping work from daybreak until night.
And now, indeed, night was drawing on from afar. The distant light-blue woods were growing dark, and melting into grey gloom. The radiance on the waters was extinguished. Immense shadows from the red firs standing towards the north fell on the summits of the hills, and along the clearings. The tree trunks alone remained crimson here and there, and then the stones. Small, fugitive rays were reflected from these points of light, and, falling into the deep wastes created among objects by the half-darkness, were refracted, quivered for an instant, and went out in turn. The trees and bushes lost their convexity and brilliance, their natural colours mingled with the grey distance, and they appeared only as flat and completely black forms with weird contours.
A thick mist was already gathering in the low-lying country, chilling the man through as he worked. The darkness was coming on in unseen waves, creeping along the slopes of the hills, gathering to itself the dreary colours of thestubble-fields, the water-courses, the clefts in the hills, and the rocks.
As the waves of mist met, others—white, transparent, and scarcely visible—which rose from the marshes, crept along in streaks, winding in balls round the undergrowth, trembling and curling over the surface of the water. The cold, damp wind drove the mist along the bottom of the valley, till it was stretched out flat like a face on the canvas of a picture.
'The mist is coming on,' Walkowa murmured. It was that moment of twilight, when every form seems to be visibly reducing itself to dust and nothingness, when a grey emptiness spreads over the surface of the earth, looks into the eyes, and oppresses the heart with unconscious sorrow. Terror seized Walkowa. Her hair stood on end, and a shudder passed through her body. The mists rose like a living thing, stealthily crawling over towards her; they came up from behind, retreated, lay in wait, and again crept forward in more impetuous pursuit. Her hands were clammy with the damp, it soaked through her skin to the bone, it irritated her throat, and tickled her chest. Then she remembered her child, whom she had not seen since noon. He was lying asleep,—locked up in a room quite alone,—in a cradle of lime wood, suspended from the beams of the ceiling by birch-twigs. Surelyhe was crying now,—choking,—sobbing? The mother heard that cry, as wailing and pitiful as that of a solitary bird in a desert place. It rang in her ears, it tormented a particular spot in her brain, it tore at her heart. She had not thought about him all day, for her hard work had scattered all her thoughts, in fact, it had drained and annihilated her power of thinking; but now the uncanny sensations caused by the twilight compelled her to concentrate herself and fasten her mind upon this small morsel of humanity.
'Walek' she said timidly, when the man brought up the barrow, 'shall I be off to the cottage and finish scraping the potatoes?'
Gibała did not answer, as though he had not heard. He seized the barrow and set forth. When he returned, the woman implored again: 'Walek, shall I be off?'
'Eh?' he grumbled carelessly.
She knew what his anger meant; she knew that he could catch a man under the ribs, gather up his skin in handfuls, and, having shaken him once or twice, throw him down like a stone among the rushes. She knew he was capable of tearing the handkerchief from her head, twisting her hair in a knot round his fist and dragging her in terror along the road; or, in a fit of absent-mindedness, of pulling his spade out of the swampquickly, and cutting her across the head without considering—whether it had hit, or not hit her.
But impatient anxiety, kindled to the point of pain, rose above the fear of punishment. At moments the woman thought of running away; it only meant creeping into the little ravine, leaping across the brooklet, and then making straight through the fields and plantations. As she stooped and filled her barrow, she was already escaping in thought, leaping like a marten, scarcely feeling the pain of running barefoot across the stubble, overgrown with thick blackthorn and blackberries. The sharp clods would sting not only her feet but her heart. She would come running to the cottage, and open the bolt with the wooden key; the warmth and close air of the room would meet her face; she would clasp the cradle ... Walek would kill her when he returned to the cottage,—beat her to death:—but what then? That would be for later....
As soon, however, as Walek emerged from the mist, she was seized afresh by a dread of his fists. Again she humbly begged him, although she knew that her tormentor would not set her free:
'Perhaps the baby is dead in there.'
He answered nothing, threw down the strap of the barrow from his shoulder, approached hiswife, and, by a movement of the head, pointed to the stakes up to which they must dig that day. Then he seized the spade, and began to throw mud into his barrow, time after time. He worked without thinking, quickly,—as fast as he could breathe. When he had filled the barrow he pushed it forward, running at top speed, and said as he left:
'Push yours too, you lazy brute....'
She took this mild concession to the object of her love, this brutal goodness, this hardness and severity as if it had been a caress. For it would be possible to finish the work far sooner if they both wheeled the mud. Rapidly and impetuously she now imitated his movements, like a monkey, and shovelled up the mud four times more quickly, no longer drawing on her muscular peasant's strength, but on her nervous power. Her chest rattled, dazzling colours passed under her eyelids, she felt faint, and large burning tears fell from her eyes into that cold, evil-smelling filth,—tears of unheeded pain. Every time she struck the spade into the ground she looked to see if it was still far to the stakes; her barrow ready, she seized it, and ran at full tilt after the man.
The mists rose high; they drew past the rushes and stood over the tops of the alders in an unmoving wall. The trees loomed through them as patches of indefinite colour, astonishingly large,but imperfect forms, which ran across the deep gorge like monstrous, terrible apparitions.
Their heads fell forward; their hands executed a uniform movement; their bodies were bowed to the ground....
The wheels of the barrows clattered and whined. Waves of mist like milk when poured into water, swayed amid the darkening hills.
The evening star shone low in the sky, and tremblingly threw its feeble light across the darkness.
Countess Anna Krzywosąd—Nasławska's youngest son had decided to take Holy Orders. From boyhood he had shown an unusual fondness for prayer, had been silent and obedient, and worn an earnest, pious expression. He had been educated in Rome under the eye of a distant cousin—a Cardinal—and completed his course at the seminary there with distinction, when barely twenty. Having not yet attained the proper age to hold any spiritual office, he went back to his own country for the first time for many years, and stayed at his mother's house.
He occupied a corner room in the mansion, as cold and damp as any monastic cell; he slept on the ground, fasted unceasingly, read Latin books, very probably scourged himself at nights, and wore a hair shirt under his shabby cassock. He was unspeakably good and gentle, forgave injuries, and was over-modest.
When he sat down, it was on the very edge of the chair, as if anxious that when he rosequickly his cassock should hinder him and make him move like a priest; he walked on tiptoe as if a mystic heel protected him from the dust of the earth; he shunned society, he murmured a prayer at the sight of a village girl.
Every day at dawn he left the house, and went into the fields. He felt that there he could be in closest communication with his Creator, there ecstatic visions came to him most clearly. He followed the beaten track through numberless rye-fields to the upland, where a half-ruined little chapel lay hidden in the shade of the pine forest.
One morning he went there as usual. The landscape was still buried in the night-mist, but a violet streak of daybreak had begun to spread on the horizon. The bearded rye brushed against his knees and scattered large dewdrops, yet the pathway was not damp, being sheltered by the full drooping ears. The corn, feebly illumined by the early morning light, rose in great waves along the hill, where the undulating line of the fields showed against the wood. The scent of earth and ripening corn hung on the breeze, bringing a sense of health, strength, and youth. From the dark gloom of the huge trees, whose tops were beginning to break up the expanse of dawning blue, came the keen, damp breath of the forest. The seminarist walked along slowly and lazily, passing his hand over the surface of the rye.Sky larks and crested larks rose at his feet, and dropped again like stones into the thickly-growing corn.
The dawn was now tinging the horizon with a rosy light; it burst forth like a wide flash of lightning, illuminating the rifts and curves in the dark clouds which lay idly over the wood. Unexpectedly hundreds of red firs, crowning the summit of the hill, emerged tall and grand from the night, their boughs standing out prominently against the transparent background of blue, as if stretching out their arms to the approaching sun.
Suddenly a thrill passed through the earth. The next moment a puff of wind, the forerunner of daybreak, stirred the boughs of the firs, and announced alike to plant, to grass, and corn—the coming of the sun.
It seemed as if the earth were quivering, as if her heart began to beat. Then the wind spread its wings, and hovered over the scented trunks, over the osiers and corn in the distance. A long, soothing moment of death-like silence followed, and then that mysterious moment of early dawn, when each living plant glows in its every part as if on fire.
The student walked with his face turned eastwards. Words of prayer rose from his heart to his lips as the sap rises to the bark of the pines when Spring comes. He went up to the littlechapel, opened the grey wooden door, studded with nails, and fell on his face with outstretched hands before the picture of Christ, clumsily drawn by a rustic hand.
He felt as if his soul had fled from earth to the very Throne of God. The scales had fallen from his eyes in a moment: he was gazing on the face of the Eternal.
All at once a rough, coarse peasant's song was heard:
'It was then that I liked you best, Hanka,When you bleached yourself in the fields, in the fields, like a gosling.'
This was answered by a woman's voice, approaching from a distance:
'I did not bleach myself, I bleached a linen shirt,But you, Kaśka, thought that I was painted.'
The young man rose from the ground, and stood at the door of the chapel. He saw a sturdy farmer's lad in shirt sleeves, bare-foot, in a straw hat, and loaded like a horse, with juniper wood. This strapping fellow was taking up a kilo of roots—digging out bushes with the clods, and moistening his hands in the branches. A girl was going along the path, carrying a load of weeds on her back. The corners of her petticoat were turned up and tucked into her belt, herbroad shoulders were bent together under the heavy burden, only her head, tied round with a red handkerchief, was raised towards the hill where the lad was working. When she reached the turn of the path, he stopped her, pulled down the hem of her skirt from her waist, and laid her bundle on the ground. She pushed him away with her hands, laughing.
The student shaded his eyes with his hand, but dropped it again the next minute, as the sound of the two singing a fresh song echoed through the glade. It was strange music. The wood, like a tuned string, seemed to quiver in harmony with the sound of those two voices:
'In the garden is a cherry tree,In the orchard there are two;I have loved you, Hanuś, since you were small,Nobody else but you.'
They went down into the hollow through the corn, which reached up to their heads, bent towards one another. Those two heads stood out in sharp relief against the dark rye, while the giant, brazen shield of the sun was rising over the ridge. They walked thus for a long time, never completely hidden by the corn.
Tears flowed from under the young man's closed eyes, and he clenched his hands convulsively.Words unknown to him, words known as longing and the desire for love, forced themselves unnoticed to his lips.
In a vision he saw moist eyes and a girl's long braided hair rising and sinking in some sea cavern. An unknown force, inexpressibly sweet, a force which could be neither expelled nor conquered, rose within him, carrying him far away into space. His soul threw off its fetters, and rushed forth in its wild freedom, as a colt starts for a mad gallop....
It happened in the year,...; but no matter what year. Suffice it to say that it happened, and that it happened at Yakutsk in the beginning of November, about a month after my arrival at that citadel of frosts. The thermometer was down to 35 degrees Réamur. I was therefore thinking anxiously of the coming fate of my nose and ears, which, fresh from the West, had been making silent but perceptible protests against their compulsory acclimatization, and to-day were to be submitted to yet further trials. These latest trials were due to the fact that one of the men in our colony, Peter Kurp, nicknamed Bałdyga,[10]had died in the local hospital two days before, and early that morning we were going to do him a last service, by laying his wasted body in the half-frozen ground.
I was only waiting for an acquaintance, who was to tell me the hour of the funeral, and I had not long to wait. Having wrapped up my nose and ears with the utmost care, I set out with the others to the hospital.
The hospital was outside the town. In the courtyard, and at some distance from the other buildings, stood a small shed—the mortuary.
In this mortuary lay Bałdyga's body.
When the doors were opened, we entered, and the scene within made a painful impression on the few of us present. We were about ten people, possibly a few more, and we all involuntarily looked at one another: we were standing opposite a cold and bare reality, not veiled by any vestige of pretence....
In the shed,—which possessed neither table nor stool, nothing but walls white with hoarfrost and a floor covered with snow,—lay a large bearded corpse, equally white, and tied up in some kind of sheet or shirt. This was Bałdyga.
The body, which was completely frozen, had been brought near the light to the door, where the coffin was standing ready.
Never shall I forget Bałdyga's face as I saw it then with the light full upon it, and washed by the snow. There was something strange and indescribably sad in the rough, strongly marked countenance; the large pupils and projecting eyeballsseemed to look far away into the distance towards the stern frosty sky.
'That man,—he was a good sort,' one of those present said to me, noticing the impression which the sight of Bałdyga made on me. 'He was always steady and industrious; people who were hard up used to go to him and he would help them. But there never was anyone so obstinate as Kurp: he believed to the last that he would go back to the Narev.[11]Yet before the end came it was plain that he knew he would never get there.'
Meanwhile the petrified body had been laid in the coffin, and placed upon the small one-horse Yakut sledge.
Then the tailor's wife—a person versed in religious practices,—undertook the office of priest for such time as we could give her, and began to sing 'Ave Maria,' while we joined in with voices broken with emotion. After this we proceeded to the cemetery.
We walked quickly; the frost was invigorating, and made us hasten our steps. At last we reached the cemetery. We each threw a handful of frozen earth on to the coffin.... A few deft strokes of the spade ... and in a moment only a small freshly turned mound of earth remained to bear witness to Bałdyga's yet recent existence in thisworld. This witness would not last long, however,—scarcely a few months. The spring would come, and, thawed by the sun, the mound on the grave would sink and become even with the rest of the ground, and grass and weeds would grow upon it. After a year or two the witnesses of the funeral would die, or be dispersed throughout the wide world, and if even the mother who bore him were to search for him, she would no longer find a trace on the earth. But, indeed, none would seek for the dead man, nor even a dog ask for him.
Bałdyga had known this; we knew it too: and we dispersed to our houses in silence.
The day following the funeral the frost was yet more severe. There was not a single building to be seen on the opposite side of the fairly narrow street in which I lived, for a thick mist of snow crystals overspread the earth, like a cloud. The sun could not penetrate this mist, and although there was not a living soul in the street, the air was so highly condensed through the extreme cold that I continually heard the metallic sound of creaking snow, the sharp reports of the walls and ground cracking in the frost, or the moaning song of a Yakut. Evidently those Yakut frosts were beginning, which reduce the most terrible Arctic cold to insignificance. They fill human beings with unspeakable dread. Everyliving thing feels its utter helplessness, and although it cowers down and shrinks into itself for protection, knows quite well—like the cur worried by fierce mastiffs,—that all is in vain, for sooner or later the inexorable foe is bound to be victorious.
And Bałdyga was continually in my mind, as if he were alive. I had sat for hours at my half-finished task. Somehow I could not stick to work; the pen fell from my hand, and my unruly thoughts ranged far away beyond the snowy frontier and frosty ground. In vain I appealed to my reason, in vain I repeated wholesome advice to myself for the tenth time. Hitherto I had offered some resistance to the sickness which had consumed me for several weeks; to-day I felt completely overcome and helpless. Homesickness was devouring and making pitiless havoc of me.
I had been unable to resist dreaming so many times already; was it likely I should withstand the temptation to-day? The temptation was stronger, and I was weaker than usual.
So begone frost and snow, begone the existence of Yakutsk! I threw down my pen, and surrounding myself with clouds of tobacco smoke, plunged into the waters of feverish imagination.
And how it carried me away!... My thoughts fled rapidly to the far West, acrossmorasses and steppes, mountains and rivers, across countless lands and cities, and spread a scene of true enchantment before me. There on the Vistula lay my native plains, free from misery and human passions, beautiful and harmonious. My lips cannot utter, nor my pen describe their charm!
I saw the golden fields, the emerald meadows; the dense forests murmured their old legends to me.
I heard the rustle of the waving corn; the chirping of the feathered poets; the sound of the giant oaks as they haughtily bid defiance to the gale.
And the air seemed permeated by the scent of those aromatic forests, and those blossoming fields, adorned in virgin freshness by the blue cornflowers and that sweetest beauty of Spring,—the innocent violet.
... Every single nerve felt the caress of my native air.... I was touched by the life-giving power of the sun's rays; and although the frost outside creaked more fiercely, and showed its teeth at me on the window panes more menacingly, yet the blood circulated in my veins more rapidly, my head burnt, and I sat as if spellbound, deaf, no longer seeing or hearing anything round me....
I did not notice that the door opened and someone entered my room, neither did I see the circles of vapour, which form in such numbers every time a door is opened that they obscure the face of the person entering. I did not feel the cold: it penetrates human dwellings here with a sort of shameless, premeditated violence. In fact, I had seen or heard nothing until suddenly I felt a man close to me, and even before catching sight of him, found myself involuntarily putting him the usual Yakut question:
'Toch nado?' ('What do you want?')
'If you please, Sir, I am a hawker,' was the answer.
I looked up. Although he was dressed in ox and stag's hide, I had no doubt that a typical Polish Jew from a small town stood before me. Anyone who had seen him at Lossitz or Sarnak would have recognized him as easily in Yakut as in Patagonian costume. I knew him at once. And since, as I have said, I was as yet only semi-conscious, and had asked the question almost mechanically, the Jew now standing before medid not interrupt my train of thought too harshly; the contrast was, therefore, not too disagreeable. Quite the reverse. I gazed into the well-known features with a certain degree of pleasure; the Jew's appearance at that moment seemed quite natural, since it carried me in thought and feeling to my native land, and the few Polish words sounded dear to my ear. Half dreaming still, I looked at him kindly.
The Jew stood still for a moment, then turned, and retreating to the door, began to pull off his multifarious coverings.
Then I came to myself, and realized that I had not yet answered him, and that my sagacious countryman, quite misinterpreting my silence, was anxious to dispose of his wares to me. I hastened to undeceive him.
'In heaven's name, man, what are you doing?' I cried quickly, 'I do not want to buy anything; I am not wanting anything. Do not unload yourself in vain, and go away with God's blessing!'
The Jew stopped undoing his things, and after a moment's consideration, came towards me with his long fur coat[12]half trailing behind him, and began to mumble quickly in broken sentences: 'It's all right; I know you won't buy anything, Sir. I saw you, for I have been here a long time, a very long time.... I didn't know beforethat you had come.... You come from Warsaw, don't you, Sir? They only told me yesterday evening that you had been here four months already; what a pity it was such a time before I heard of it! I should have come at once. I have been searching for you to-day for an hour, Sir. I went quite to the end of the town,—and there's such a frost here,—confound it!... If you will allow me Sir,—I won't interrupt for long?... Only just a few words....'
'What do you want of me?'
'I should only like to have a little chat with you, Sir.'
This answer did not greatly surprise me. I had already come across not a few people, Jews among them, who had called solely for the purpose of 'having a little chat' with a man recently arrived from their country. Those who came were interested in the most varied topics imaginable; there were the inquisitive gossipers pure and simple, there were the people who only enquired after their relations, and there were the politicians, including those whose heads had been turned. Among those who came, however, politics always played a specially important part. So it did not surprise me, I repeat, to hear the wish expressed by a fresh stranger, and although I should have been glad to rid my cottage as quickly as possible of the unpleasant odour of the ox-hidecoat,—badly tanned, as usual—I begged him in a friendly way to take it off and sit down.
The Jew was evidently pleased. He took a seat beside me at once and I could now observe him closely.
All the usual features of the Jewish race were united in the face beside me: the large, slightly crooked nose and penetrating hawk's eyes, the pointed beard of the colour of a well-ripened pumpkin, the low forehead, surrounded by thick hair; all these my guest possessed. And yet, strange to say, the haggard face expressed a certain frank sincerity, and did not make a disagreeable impression on me.
'Tell me where you come from, what your name is, what you are doing here, and why you wish to see me?'
'Please, Sir, I am Srul, from Lubartów. Perhaps you know it,—just a stone's throw from Lublin?—Well, at home everyone thinks it a long way from there, and formerly I thought so too. But now,' he added with emphasis, 'we know that Lubartów is quite close to Lublin, a mere stone's throw.'
'And have you been here long?'
'Very long; three good years.'
'That is not so very long; there are people who have lived here for over 20 years, and I met an old man from Vilna in the road, who had beenhere close upon 50 years. Those have really been a long time.'
But the Jew snubbed me. 'As to them, I can't say. I only know that I have been here a long time.'
'You must certainly live quite alone, if the time seems so long to you?'
'With my wife and child—my daughter. I had four children when I set out, but, may the Lord preserve us, it was such a long way, we were travelling a whole year. Do you know what such a journey means, Sir?... Three children died in one week—died of travelling, as it were. Three children!... An easy thing to say!... There was nowhere even to bury them, for there was no cemetery of ours there.... I am a Husyt,' he added more quietly. 'You know what that means Sir?... I keep the Law strictly ... and yet God punishes me like this....' He grew silent with emotion.
'My friend,' I tried to say to console him a little,—'no doubt under such circumstances it is difficult to remember that it makes no difference; but all earth is hallowed.'
But the Jew jumped as if he had been scalded.
'Hallowed! how hallowed! In what way is it hallowed! What are you saying, Sir? It's unclean! It's damned!... Hallowed earth?... You must not talk like that, Sir, you ought tobe ashamed! Is earth hallowed, which never thaws? This earth is cursed! God doesn't wish human beings to live here; it wouldn't have been like this, if He had wished it. Cursed! Bad! Damned! Damned!'
And he began to spit about him, and stamp his feet, threatening the innocent Yakut earth with tightened lips and his shrivelled hands, and muttering Jewish maledictions. At last, exhausted by the effort, he fell rather than sat down at the table beside me.
All exiles, without regard to religion or race, dislike Siberia: evidently a fanatic does not learn to hate it half-heartedly. I paused until he had calmed himself. Educated in a severe school, the Jew quickly regained his self-possession and mastered his emotion, and when I gazed questioningly into his eyes the next moment, he immediately answered me:
'You must pardon me; I do not speak of this to anyone, for to whom should I speak here?'
'Then are there very few Jews here?'
'Those here? Do you call them Jews, Sir? They're such low fellows, not one of them keeps the Law strictly.'
Fearing another outburst, I would not, however, allow him to finish, and decided to change the conversation by asking him straight out what he wanted to talk to me about now.
'I should like to know the news from there, Sir. I have been here so many years, and I have never yet heard what is going on there.'
'You are asking a good deal, for I can't exactly tell you everything. I don't know what interests you,—politics perhaps?'
The Jew was silent.
I concluded that my present guest, like many of the others, was interested in politics; but as I myself did not understand the very elements of the subject, I began to give the stereotyped account I had already composed with a view to frequent repetition of the situation of European politics, our own,[13]and so forth. But the Jew fidgeted impatiently.
'Then this does not interest you?' I asked.
'I have never thought about it,' he answered candidly.
'Ah, now I know why you have come! I am sure you wish to know how the Jews are doing, and how trade is going?'
'They are better off than I am.'
'Exactly. I am sure, under the circumstances, you will wish to know if living is dear with us, what the market prices are, how much for butter, meat, etc.'
'What does it concern me if it is ever so cheap there, if I can get nothing here?'
'Quite right again; but what the devil did you actually come here for?'
'Since I don't know myself, I ask you, Sir, how I am to tell you? You see, Sir, I often get thinking ... I think so much ... that Ryfka (that's my wife) asks, "Srul, what's the matter with you?" And what can I tell her, for I don't know myself what it is. Perhaps some people would laugh at me?' he added, as if fearing I were amongst them.
But I did not laugh; I was interested. Something, the cause of which he himself could not explain or express in words, was evidently weighing on him, and his unusually poor command of language added to this difficulty. In order to help him I re-assured him by telling him that I was in no hurry, as my work was not urgent and there would therefore be no harm in our having an hour's talk, and so on.—The Jew thanked me with a glance, and after a moment's thought opened the conversation thus:
'When did you leave Warsaw, Sir?'
'According to the Russian calendar, at the end of April.'
'Was it cold there then or warm?'
'Quite warm. I travelled in a summer suit at first.'
'Well, just fancy, Sir! Here it was freezing!'
'Then you have forgotten, is that it? Anyway,with us the fields are sown in April, and all the trees are green.'
'Green?' Joy shone in Srul's eyes. 'Why, yes, yes—green:—and here it was freezing!'
Now at last I knew why he had come to me. Wishing to make certain, however, I was silent: the Jew was evidently getting animated.
'Well, Sir, you might tell me if there is any—with us now ... but you see, I don't know what it's called; I have already forgotten Polish,' he apologized shyly, as if he had ever known it—'it's white like a pea blossom, yet it's not a pea, and in summer it grows in gardens round houses, on those tall stalks?'
'Kidney beans?'
'That's just it! Kidney beans! Kidney beans!' he repeated to himself several times, as if wishing to impress those words on his memory for ever.
'Of course there are plenty of those. But are there none here?'
'Here! I have never seen a single pod all these past three years. Here the peas are what at home we should not expect the ... the....'
'The pigs to eat,' I suggested.
'Well, yes! Here they sell them by the pound, and it's not always possible to get them.'
'Are you so fond of kidney beans?'
'It's not that I am so fond of them, but they are so beautiful that ... I don't know why ...I often get thinking and thinking how they may be growing round my house. Here there's nothing!'
'And now, Sir,' he recommenced, 'will you tell me, if those small grey birds are still there in the winter,—like this—' and he measured with his hand. 'I have forgotten their names too. Formerly there were a great many, when I used to pray by the window. They used to swarm round! Well, whoever even looked at them there? Do you know, Sir, I could never have believed that I should ever think about them! But here, where it's so cold that even the crows won't stop, you can't expect to see little things like that. But they are sure to be there with us? They are there, aren't they, Sir?...'
But I did not answer him now. I no longer doubted that this old fanatical Jew was pining for his country just as much as I was, and that we were both sick with the same sickness. This unexpected discovery moved me deeply, and I seized him by the hand, and asked in my turn:
'Then that was what you wished to talk to me about? Then you are not thinking of the people, of your heavy lot, of the poverty which is pinching you; but you are longing for the sun, for the air of your native country!... You are thinking of the fields and meadows and woods; of the little songsters, for whom you could not spare amoment's attention there when you were busy, and now that these beautiful pictures are fading from your recollection, you fear the solitude surrounding you, the vast emptiness which meets you and effaces the memories you value? You wish me to recall them to you, to revive them; you wish me to tell you what our country is like?...'
'Oh yes, Sir, yes, Sir! That was why I came here,' and he clasped my hands, and laughed joyfully, like a child.
'Listen, brother....'
And my friend, Srul, listened, all transformed by listening, his lips parted, his look rivetted to mine; he kindled, he inspired me by that look; he wrested the words from me, drank them in thirstily, and laid them in the very depth of his burning heart.... I do not doubt that he laid them there, for when I had finished my tale he began to moan bitterly, 'O weh mir! weh mir!' He struck his red beard, and in his misery tears like a child's rolled fast down his face.... And the old fanatic sat there a long time sobbing, and I cried with him....
Much water has flowed down the cold Lena since that day, and not a few human tears have rolled down suffering cheeks. All this happened long ago. Yet in the silence of the night, at times of sleeplessness, the statuesque face ofBałdyga, bearing the stigma of great sorrow, often rises before me, and invariably beside it Srul's yellow, drawn face, wet with tears. And when I gaze longer at that night-vision, many a time I seem to see the Jew's trembling, pale lips move, and I hear his low voice whisper:
'Oh Jehovah, why art thou so unmerciful to one of Thy most faithful sons?...'
The rain and bad weather, which had continued without interruption for several days, had kept the inhabitants of the hut, 'Talaki,'[14]prisoners indoors, and condemned them to idleness. They constantly went out of the room to gaze long and sadly at the weeping sky, for the hay was rotting in the fields;—but alas! a grey film of rain hung over all the surrounding country, and in vain their eyes sought longingly for the smallest chink of blue in the heavy, dark clouds.
To add to the misfortune, the rain, not content with the holes left in the roof from the year before, made a number of fresh ones. It thus poured into the room from all sides on to people's heads and shoulders, and formed quite a deep and ever-growing pool underfoot. Various forms of filth, remains of food, refuse of fish and game, the dung in the corner where the calves were kept, which had been trodden down and had dried in the course of the year, became moist, and filled theinterior of the 'yurta'[15]with an unbearable smell. It was therefore stuffy, cold, and damp there. The fire, burning rather slowly, was choked by balls of grey smoke, which went across the room.
The hut was tiny; it occupied no more than twenty-four square yards of the solitude surrounding it. The slanting walls, made of barked larch trees placed perpendicularly, and narrowing towards the top, diminished its size still more. The flat roof was built of rafters of the same wood, and came down so close to the inhabitants' heads that one of them, Michawio, a big lad, while unwinding a bundle of nets at the little window, hit his curly shock head against it.
A plank partition, hewn out with a hatchet, ran through the centre of the room, and divided it into equal parts, the right being for the men, the left for the women. By a post at the end of the room, with his face turned towards the fire, his hands on his right knee, and smoking a pipe, sat my host, Kyrsa,[16]a Yakut. Still hale, though no longer young, he was the wealthy and independent master of field labourers, and the owner of the house, of many nets, animals, and implements, as well as of three women:—a wife, and two daughters. The youngest was sold already, but she was living with her father, as the sum agreedupon for her had not yet been paid in full by the buyer.
There was deep silence in the room,—a rather unusual thing in a place where several Yakut people are together. The fire roared and hissed in the chimney, and behind the partition the girls made a squeaking sound as they rubbed the skins together. I had a foreboding that this silence would end badly; indeed, the storm soon broke out. The lad nicknamed 'Shmata' brought it on by his incompetence. After wandering from corner to corner all day, he now upset a bucket and spilt the water. This was the last straw. All eyes flashed, and faces grew pale.
The frightened Shmata tried to lay the blame on Michawio, who had been stooping down near him to look for a strap. Michawio in revenge reminded Shmata of what had happened about the rake the year before. The quarrel had begun in earnest. Their tongues, moving with the speed of a windmill, and throwing out invectives and sneers, formed an accompaniment to the host's threatening shouts, which rang out like the trump of the Archangel. Nor did our hostess fail to leave her seclusion to take part in the skirmish with the excitement peculiar to women all the world over. The yurta suddenly became like a disturbed beehive. The host affirmed, the hostess denied, the labourers hurled abuses at one another,the girls uttered war cries, the baby woke up and screamed in its cradle, and the calves lowed in answer to the loud mooing of the cows, whom evening had driven near the house door. This last occurence had a perceptible influence in diminishing the noise, for it caused the female element to withdraw from the fight; in fact, the disturbance might have been conjured away completely, if the happy thought of adding something at the very moment when everyone else was quieting down, had not entered our host's head.
This remark burst out unexpectedly, like a belated bomb after a battle, and produced such a din that the cows and calves were silent, the wind abated in fright, the clouds fled, and I became aware of a golden sunbeam penetrating the holes in the bladder at the window, and falling suddenly into the interior of our dark, dirty, noisy hovel. Merrily and brightly it rested in a shining circle on the closely cropped grey head of my host, before whose nose his wife's large closed fist was hovering at that moment. 'That's for you! Take that! Go on!' Kuimis cried, still beautiful in her anger. The fist came closer and closer to the unfortunate man's mouth.
What happened further? Did Kyrsa avenge himself like a man for that greatest of all insults possible to a Yakut from a woman? Or did he show himself to be the 'wife of his wife,' an oldwoman and a simpleton, as the neighbours called him, and refrain from knocking out the teeth or breaking the ribs of the active woman by whose work he lived and had grown rich? I do not know, because, foreseeing the overthrow of my friend, in whom love for his wife was always struggling against a sense of duty, and not wishing to be a witness of his defeat, I shouldered my gun and went out of the cottage.
The wind had dropped, the covering of clouds was torn open, and bits of pale blue sky were unveiled here and there. The sun peeped out suddenly through one of these little gaps, and the landscape, which had been dreary and joyless a moment before, brightened into a golden splendour. A light shadow, half cheerful, half sombre, fell across its faded autumn foliage, and in this half smile it resembled a forsaken woman, to whom the caprice of a lover, who has already grown cold, offers a moment of tenderness and happiness again. Drops of rain glistened like brilliants on the dark branches of the trees and bushes; the sky was coloured in shades of carmine, and the pearly tears of the passing storm trembled on the willows, still swaying from it.
Before me, between two high promontories overgrown by woods which ran in opposite directions, sparkled the surface of the lake. In proportion as it stretched into the distance, itsbank became more winding, lower, and mistier, until it disappeared at the outlet of a gorge. Owing to the distance, the tall, thin larches, the thick willows, bushes, and grass growing there looked quite small, but the rays of the sunset, falling on them from behind, produced a wonderful lace-work of dark branches and leaves against a pale-rose sky. Grey clouds hung above them, heavily embroidered with gold and purple. The waves sported and chased one another below on the foam-splashed banks of the lake, which was painted with colours from the sky.
I walked towards the gorge, by the footpath leading through a meadow which was now turning yellow.
That 'demons' forest'[17]looked dark and horrible close at hand. The flat hills, uniformly covered with soft moss of a dirty green, and with cranberry leaves, undulated gently westwards towards the sinking sun. The wood covering these hills was sparse and stunted, and disfigured them rather than otherwise, for single trees stood out here and there like the remaining hair on a bald man's head. Silence, and the gloom of oncoming night already filled the interior of the forest. Only here and there a forgotten ray of sunshine was burning itself out above in the bare, wind-twisted summits of the larches.
I stood for a moment, looking at that wild spot, which no native would have dared to approach. A deep stillness lay upon it; the waves beat more and more gently and noiselessly; the sunset was fading away, and only where the network of bushes was less close a transient gleam lighted the surface of some lakes, which had hitherto been unknown to me. I walked on towards them, impelled by curiosity and a feeling of longing.
The way proved more difficult than I had expected. At every moment I was obliged to jump or climb over bushes and avoid the deep, narrow wells, boarded round with tree-trunks felled a hundred years before and perfidiously concealed by the mosses and plants overgrowing them. As these wells were full of water, with bottoms as slippery as ice, an unwary pedestrian could easily break his neck or fracture a leg by falling into them. In many places swampy streams trickled along undefined channels, and though their banks were shallow, they were boggy and difficult to cross on account of the trunks and branches lying in them. The wood was full of trees with projecting, mud-covered roots, which now, when everything was assuming an indefinite shape in the twilight, looked twisted and monstrous. The white patches of lichen shining in the darkness at the foot of the trees like the immense shredsof a pall, emphasized and doubled their weird appearance. It is, therefore, no wonder that in the purple light of dawn, or in the moonlight, the natives should here see the tall wood-demon's pale face,—the Slav hunter who came from the South and now roams near the Yakut cottages, injuring cattle.
Woe to the district where his shadow passes! Often from fifty to two hundred beasts fall dead at one shot from those terrible Southern arms.
That evening, however, I met none of these inhabitants of the wood. I also did not see the 'demons,'—the dry Tungus corpses. At one time they were to be found here quite frequently, and the forest takes its name from them. Shrivelled and horrible, they usually sit somewhere under a tree or cleft in a rock, gazing eastwards with eye-sockets pecked by the birds. On their knees they hold a wooden bow, or a rifle, at their feet lies a hatchet with a broken handle, and at their belt, inlaid with silver and beads, hangs a broken knife in its sheath,—also broken, in order to prevent the dead man from doing any mischief after death. A little to one side lie scattered the bones of the reindeer, killed on his grave, the harness, and the small Tungus sledge. No one ever dares to possess himself of any of these considerably valuable articles, for punishment threatens the foolhardy, inasmuch as he loses hisway all day long until he returns to the same place and restores the stolen object. Until they give ample satisfaction, and atone to the angered owner by a gift, obstinate people return some thirty, even a hundred times without being able to escape from the magic circle. It is dangerous even to touch any of the things belonging to the dead man, since that evokes a storm, or, at best, a high wind. Although the kindly natives had advised me to avoid meeting with the 'demon,' since it brings early, and sometimes immediate death, I was very sorry not to have seized him red-handed that evening. However, I came to be severely punished for this sinful wish.
The twilight deepened. The last purple resplendance had already faded from the sunset, when tired and tattered, I at last succeeded in pushing my way through the bushes of the 'demon's forest.' The sky was dark, and twinkling with myriads of stars. My expedition had failed in every respect. To complete the misfortune, the white mists hung like muslin over the valley, and entirely prevented me from satisfying my curiosity. I was therefore only able to take pleasure in the play of the moonlight.
It was really a beautiful view, although rather wild and gloomy. Nearly the whole of the broad valley, to the very edge of the wood where the dark, bare tree-tops projected beyond the borderof mist, was filled by white balls of vapour; the moon was moving slowly above them. Looking for a moment into the depths of the valley, she drew aside the floating veil, and touched the sleeping lake below with her silvery kiss. I stood a long while to gaze and to rest. The deep silence, the stillness which always reigns in these woods, the knowledge that no one but myself was to be found in that solitude for twenty versts round, filled me with a strange feeling of anxiety and longing. I roused myself in order to dispel this. It was unfortunately time to think of returning;—no easy matter, however, for in making my way through the wood, I had lost a clear conception of the right track. At last I hit on a small footpath, and decided to follow it in the hope that it would lead me to some inhabited spot. I had scarcely gone twenty steps before becoming persuaded that I was not walking on a path, but on one of the numerous tracks made in the wood by water or animals. It was therefore necessary to return to the place from which I had started, for only thence could I more or less trace the way leading in a bee-line through the wood. But the place had disappeared; the night had shrouded it in new and different shadows, and the mist had drawn its silver web across it. I walked for some time, searching in vain, and haunted by the thought of forest madness. I hadseen people brought home from the 'taiga'[18]no longer in possession of their faculties, pale and miserable, and with the traces of terror and madness in their eyes. These unhappy men had often lost their way quite near houses, without seeing them or being able to recognize the points of the compass, although the sun was shining, and they had wandered about, crying and howling like wild animals. After recovering, they said that they had seen the demon. One of the causes of this illness is the fatigue brought on by the strain of the vain search. So I sat down on a felled trunk, resolving to wait for daybreak.
The air was cool. My clothes were wet with the mist and rain, besides being too thin for spending the night in the wood, so that I soon began to suffer from the cold. I tried to light a fire, but the matches were damp, and the only one which burnt could not set fire to the moist brushwood and logs. Having, therefore, gathered some grass, I hid my feet in it, as they were suffering the most from the cold; I examined my gun, and loaded it, and then, crouching against a tree, I tried to go to sleep.
In a situation of this kind every sense is rapidly dulled,—touch, smell, even sight; hearing alone becomes exceedingly acute. After only a few minutes I could hear my heart beating, the bloodpouring through my veins, the whisper of the trees, the rustle of the mist, so that the dead silence of the wood was broken in upon by sounds, which, though scarcely audible, continued to increase. Suddenly a very real sound rang out amid these fancied ones, and forced me to open my eyes. It came from the further end of the lake, and was like the measured strokes of an oar. I fixed my eyes on the spot whence it seemed to come. The veil of mist was trembling slightly, and beyond it, in the distance, something indistinct appeared low on the water. After a moment a small Yakut pirogue emerged from the shadows, and sped along the lake. I could perfectly well see the rower squatting in the bottom of the boat, and striking first with one, then with the other blade of his long oar, from the ends of which the water poured in a shining stream, like molten silver.
He soon approached the bank, and drew the boat to land. I crept towards him, hiding in order that he should not see me too soon, and run away, as I knew he would. He was engaged in taking something out of the boat.
'What news?' I greeted him, according to the local custom, coming slowly out of the bushes.
He started and exclaimed, but did not run away, for he recognized me, and I him. He was a poor Yakut, who lived about five versts from me.
'I know nothing! I have heard nothing! Oh, how you did frighten me,—but it's all right!' he said hastily, giving me his hand.
'What did you think it was?'
'Why should one meet a man in the wood at night time?' he answered evasively, eyeing me suspiciously from head to foot. 'You often think it's a man you know, and you talk to him as if you knew him, and then it turns out in the end not to be a man at all.'
'What are you doing here so late?'
'I am going home; it's a holiday to-morrow. I have a long way to go from here to Babylon[19]for fishing,—thirty versts. You know we're poor folk, we live by fishing,—we haven't any horses; so one is always in a boat, always in a boat. As I was dragging it through the wood I cut my foot, so I've got behindhand.'
'You have cut your foot?'
'It isn't much, for I've stopped the bleeding.'
'Then perhaps it was you whistling and calling?' I asked, remembering a strange sound I had heard a moment before.
'I!—No!' He was silent, and I noticed him lean over the boat, and cross himself.
'And what are you doing here?' he asked in his turn.
I hesitated.
'Looking for ducks,' I lied, not wishing to frighten him more.
'Ducks!' he repeated, laughing heartily, and his white teeth shone in the darkness like pearls.
'There have never been any ducks here!'
'Never been any? Why?' I asked, as I helped him to draw the boat along the edge of the wood towards the lake, which could be seen in the distance. The fisherman was limping.
'The lakes are different,' he explained, 'and there are as many lakes in our country as stars in the sky, and the stars are only the reflection of them. The lakes are as different as the stars:—there are large and small ones, and some so deep that you can't reach the bottom; or else they are shallow, or marshy. In one there are fine fish, in another small, in some the water's bad, and makes a man ill, because the cattle go into it, in others again it's as pure as air.'
We halted on the bank, let down the boat into the water, and entered it, the fisherman in front, I behind. Leaning lightly against one another, back to back, we sailed along like a god with two faces of which one was bearded and European, the other flat, clean-shaven, and Mongolian.
The Mongolian face continued its conversation, only interrupting it now and then to give me a warning not to move when the boat rocked too much.
'Everything comes from the water. Even the cow lived in the water until she was taken and tamed by man. There are different kinds of wild beasts and even people living in the water, as there are on land. Now just look!' and he pointed with his oar to the long water-weeds swaying under the passage of the pirogue. 'Isn't that a wood?' It was indeed a wood, dark and mysterious, visited only by fishes and drowned men. Once he had fallen in, no swimmer ever extricated himself from its thickets.
'Old people say,' the Yakut continued, 'that formerly everything was different,—everything was better, because there was more water, and that even the sables used to come up to the farm gates, and there was so much fish that it was enough to shoot an arrow into the lake to draw it back with a good catch. But now there's nothing; the sables have run away, and there isn't much fish. It's only the traders, our fathers, who save us, or we should die. They give the money to pay the taxes, they give tea, tobacco, and cotton. Eh yes! these traders! I'd just like to be a trader!'
The little boat struck the bank. We therefore drew it along to the next lake, and continued the rest of our journey in this manner, this being the sole means of travelling in summer in that country of lakes, marshes, and swampy woods.
After travelling thus for an hour along a narrow stream, overgrown with bulrushes, we ultimately arrived at the last lake. The sparks from a yurta chimney were glittering on its bank in the distance, like tiny red stars.
'I expect you are going to Chachak?' my companion asked, when we stopped on the bank. 'I am spending the night there.'
I took up some of the fisherman's things, and walked towards the yurta. I had known Chachak for some time past already. He was a queer man, who laughed at his own extravagances, and frequently even shocked the feeling of the neighbourhood. 'Chachak has made himself a cap of a whole wolf skin!' I had been told laughingly. 'Chachak has paid the merchants only two roubles for a brick of tea; "they would make too much profit by three roubles," he said!'
'What about the merchants? Did they give it to him?'
'Eh, why, his old woman gave it to them on the sly! Why! You don't know Chachak! He won't give three roubles;—he won't drink, and he won't give that!'
Chachak had been famous in his youth as the best hunter in the district, and wonders were related of his prowess and skill. He preferred bear hunting to any other, and set out to it summer and winter with his spear and gun, killingin the open field or lair, just as it happened. He was as ready for such encounters as he was for cards. Only let him hear of a bear, and from that moment he had no peace until he had tracked and killed it. Many a time he had been invited to accompany hunters who had found a den with several bears. But burning with the fever for the chase, he had been unable to wait until morning, and had slipped away in the grey dawn with his faithful dog to hasten to the spot, where he was usually to be found, pale and splashed with the blood of the 'forest lords.' There was nothing left for his companions to do but for each to eat a portion of the hard heart and liver of the vanquished, and to drink a cup of blood, shouting the triumphant 'uch!' three times. All eyes would be upon Chachak, who would try to appear indifferent, although excited and feeling the just pride of a hero. Once, moreover, he had killed a bear with a tail, which, as everyone knows, is not a bear, but a devil. Had he not killed the 'icy demon,' who tracked people, carried off cattle, and whom neither bullet nor spear could touch? Chachak himself never spoke or boasted of his victories; he was always modest and reserved, as befits a man who possibly knows more than others. Since the accident which befell him during his last hunt, however, he had been completely changed. He had given up hunting andplaying cards, become poor, and grown morose and strange:—he had lost his influence.
His yurta stood near the bank, so I quickly found myself at its gate. A bright fire was burning within, and voices could be heard talking. So they were not asleep yet! I went up to the door, and peeped through the chink. Chachak was sitting before the fire, with his face towards me, holding a net which he was not winding, for his hand was stretched slightly in front of him while he related something to the listeners gathered round him. At his feet a small naked child played with the brass chain of a knife hanging in a wooden sheath sewn to his leather trousers above the right shin. Chachak was very animated; every now and then he bent forward towards his listeners, and stamped his massive heel on the clay floor of the cottage.
'They have a horror of horseflesh, and eat pigs!' he was saying, 'yet a horse is a very clean and sensible animal.'
'Why, yes!' his listeners assented.
'But pigs!—I have seen them! They're disgusting! They've no hair! They're bare, dirty, stupid, and bad tempered! They've enormous mouths, thin curling tails like snakes, small eyes, and teeth like a dog's. They're spiteful too!—When I was at Yakutsk I had an adventure with the pigs, and they all but ate me. There're lotsof them there. I had gone out by myself in the early morning to finish my pipe in the passage; everyone was still asleep, and it had only just begun to dawn. The pigs were going round the courtyard, squealing. I was young, and liked a joke, so when they ran round me I shook my fist at them. They rushed at me like mad!' He broke off with a laugh. 'I ran along the passage, they after me; I jumped on to a bench, and they came grunting round me, while I kept shaking my fist at them. Ha-ha!'
He spat into his hand, and stretched it out before him.
Suddenly the door creaked. The woman exclaimed, the lads jumped up from the floor, the children began to cry.
'Who's coming? A Russian, perhaps, and pigs with him!' Chachak stopped talking, and drew back his outstretched fist.
The entrance, as is usual in a Yakut yurta, was behind the fireplace, the one source of light in the evening; thus a full minute of fear and anxious expectation passed before I entered from the darkness. Yes, it was a 'Russian,' but a well-known one, a friend, and, into the bargain, without pigs!