The quiet boy Grisha stood within the enclosure of enchanted sadness and mystery. His face was pale and reposeful, and there was a keen, quiet sparkle in his cool, sky-blue eyes.
The early evening sky was growing bluer—a blue reposefulness was pouring itself out upon the earth and extinguishing the ruby-coloured flames of the sunset. And silhouetted against the blueness of the heights birds were flying about. Why should they have wings, these earthly, preoccupied creatures?
As he stood there in the quiet of the enclosure, Grisha felt himself drawn by the fragrance of the lilies of the valley, no less innocent than he, the quiet, blue-eyed Grisha. It was as if some one were calling him outside the enclosure, towards the poor life which tormented itself in the blue and mist-enveloped distance, calling him despairingly and agonizingly—and he both wished and did not wish to go. Some one’s voice, full of distress, called him wearily to life outside.
How can calls of distress be resisted? When will the tranquil heart forget earthly travail wholly and for always?
At last Grisha walked out of the gate. He took a deep breath of the sharp but delicious outside air. He walked quietly upon the narrow, dusty path. His light footprints lay behind him, and his white clothes glimmered brightly, in quiet movement, against the dim verdure and the grey dust. Before him, barely visible, rose the white, lifeless, clear moon, powerless to enchant the tedious earthly spaces.
Then the town began—the grey, dull, tiresome town, with its dirty back yards, consumptive vegetable gardens, broken-down hedges, bathhouses, and sheds, and all manner of ugly projections and depressing amorphousness—all of it resembling a hopeless ruin.
Egorka, the eleven-year-old son of a local commoner, stood by the hedge of one of the vegetable gardens. What had been red calico once made up his torn shirt; but his face!—it was like that of an angel in a tawny mask covered with spots of dirt and dust. Wings are for light feet, but what can the earth do? Only dust and clay cling to light feet.
Egorka had come out to play. He waited for his companions, but for some reason none of them was to be seen. He stood alone there, now listening to this, now looking at that. He suddenly espied on the other side of the hedge an unknown quiet boy, who—all in white—was looking at him. Egorka asked in astonishment:
“Where do you come from?”
“You can never know,” said Grisha.
“Don’t be too sure of that!” shouted Egorka gaily. “Maybe I do know. Now tell me.”
“Would you like to know?” asked Grisha with a smile.
It was a tranquil smile. Egorka was about to stick his tongue out in response, but changed his mind for some reason. They began to converse, to exchange whispers.
Everything around them lapsed into deep quiet, and nothing appeared to give heed to them—it was as if the two little ones went off into quite another world, behind a thin curtain which no one could rend. So motionless stood the birches bewitched mysteriously by three fallen spirits. Grisha asked again:
“Yes, you would like to know?”
“Honest to God, I’d like to; here’s a cross to prove it,” said Egorka rather quickly, and he crossed himself with an oblique movement of the joined fingers of his dirty hand.
“Then follow me,” said Grisha.
He turned lightly homewards, and as he walked he did not stop to look round at the meagre, tiresome objects of this grey life. Egorka followed the white boy. He walked quietly and marvelled at the other. He thought for a while, then he asked:
“Are you not one of God’s angels? Why are you so white?”
The quiet boy smiled at these words. He said with a light sigh:
“No, I am a human being.”
“You don’t mean it? An ordinary boy?”
“Just like you—almost like you.”
“How clean you are! I should say you washed yourself seven times a day with egg-soap! You walk about barefoot, not at all like me, and the sunburn doesn’t seem to stick to you—there’s only a cover of dust on your feet.”
The aroma of violets came from somewhere, and it mingled now with the dry smell of the flying dust, now with the sickly, half-sweet, half-bitter odour of the smoke of a forest fire.
The two boys avoided the tiresome monotony of the fields and the roads, and entered the dark silence of the wood. They passed by glades and copses and quietly purling streams. The boys strode along narrow footpaths, where the gentle dew clung to their feet. Everything appeared wonderful in Egorka’s eyes, used only to the raging turbulence of a malignant yet dull and grey life. The time lingered on, running and consuming itself, wreathed in a circle of delicious moments, and it seemed to Egorka that he had come into some fabulous land. He slept somewhere at night, and he felt intensely happy on opening his eyes next morning, having been awakened by the twitter of birds which shook the dew from the pliant tree-limbs; then he played with the cheerful boys and listened to music.
Sometimes the white Grisha left Egorka all by himself. Then he again reappeared. Egorka noticed that Grisha kept apart from the others, the cheerful, noisy children; that he did not play with them, and that he spoke little—not that he was afraid, or deliberately turned aside, but simply because it seemed to arrange itself, and it was natural for him to be alone, radiant and sad.
Once Egorka and Grisha, on being left by themselves, went strolling together through a little wood which was all permeated with light. The wood grew denser and denser.
They came to two tall, straight trees. A bronze rod was suspended between them, and upon the rod, on rings, hung a dark red silk curtain. The light breeze caused the thin draperies to flutter. The quiet, blue-eyed Grisha drew the curtain aside. The red folds came together with a sharp rustle and with a sudden flare as of a flame. The opening revealed a wooded vista, all permeated with a strangely bright light, like a vision of a transfigured land. Grisha said:
“Go, Egorushka—it is good there.”
Egorka looked into the clear wooded distance: fear beset his heart, and he said quietly:
“I am afraid.”
“What are you afraid of, silly boy?” asked Grisha affectionately.
“I don’t know. Something makes me afraid,” said Egorka timidly.
Grisha felt aggrieved. He sighed quietly and then said:
“Well, go home, then, if you are afraid here.”
Egorka recalled his home, his mother, the town he lived in. He did not have a very happy time of it at home—they lived poorly, and he was whipped often. Egorka suddenly threw himself at the quiet Grisha, caught him by his gentle, cool hands, and cried:
“Don’t chase me away, dear Grisha, don’t chase me from you.”
“Am I chasing you away?” retorted Grisha. “You yourself don’t want to come.”
Egorka got down on his knees and whispered as he kissed Grisha’s feet:
“I pray to you angels with all my strength.”
“Then follow me,” said Grisha.
Light hands descended on Egorka’s shoulders and lifted him from the grass. Egorka followed Grisha obediently to the blue paradise of his quiet eyes. A peaceful valley opened before him and the quiet children played in it. The dew fell on Egorka’s feet, and its kisses gave him joy. The quiet children surrounded Egorka and Grisha and, all joining hands in one broad ring, carried the two boys with them in a swiftly moving dance.
“My dear angels,” shouted Egorka, twirling and rejoicing, “you have bright little faces, you have clean little eyes, you have white little hands, you have light little feet! Am I on earth or am I in Paradise? My dear ones, my little brothers and little sisters, where are your little wings?”
Some one’s near, sweet-sounding voice answered him:
“You are upon the earth, not in Paradise, and we have no need of wings—we fly wingless.”
They captivated, bewitched, and caressed him. They showed him all the wonders of the wood under the tree-stumps, the bushes, the dry leaves—little wood-sprites with rustling little voices, with spider-webby hair, straight ones and hunchbacked ones; little old men of the wood; the shadow-sprites and little companion spirits; bantering little sprites in green coats, midnight ones and daylight ones, grey ones and black ones; little jokers-pokers with shaggy little paws; fabulous birds and animals—everything that is not to be seen in the gloomy, everyday, earthly world.
Egorka had a splendid time with the quiet children. He did not notice how a whole week had passed by—from Friday to Friday. And suddenly he began to long for his mother. He heard her calling him at night, and as he woke in agitation he called:
“Mamma, where are you?”
There was stillness and silence all around him—it was an altogether unknown world. Egorka began to cry. The quiet children came to comfort him. They said to him:
“There’s nothing to cry about. You will return to your mother. And she will be glad, and she will caress you.”
“She may whip me,” said Egorka, sobbing.
The quiet children smiled and said:
“Fathers and mothers whip their children.”
“They like to do it.”
“It seems wicked to beat any one.”
“But they really mean well.”
“They beat whom they love.”
“People mix everything up shame, love, pain.”
“Don’t you be afraid, Egorushka—she’s a mother.”
“Very well, I’ll not be afraid,” said Egorka, comforted.
When Egorka took leave of the quiet children Grisha said to him:
“You had better not tell your mother where you have passed all this time.”
“No, I won’t tell,” replied Egorka vigorously, “not for anything.”
“You’ll blab it out,” said one of the girls.
She had dark, infinitely deep eyes; her thin, bare arms were always folded obstinately across her breast. She spoke even less than the other quiet children, and of all human words she liked “no” most.
“No, I shan’t blab anything,” asserted Egorka. “I shan’t even tell any one where I have been; I shall put all these words under lock and key.”
That same evening when Egorka left with Grisha, his mother suddenly missed him. She shouted a long time and cursed and threatened; but as there was no response she became frightened. “Perhaps he’s been drowned,” she thought. She ran among her neighbours, wailing and lamenting.
“My boy’s gone. I can’t find him anywhere. I simply don’t know where else to look. He’s either drowned in the river or fallen into a well—that’s what comes of mischief-making.”
One neighbour suggested:
“It’s most likely the Jews have caught him and are keeping him in some out-of-the-way spot, and only waiting to let his Christian blood and then drink it.”
This guess pleased them. They said with great assurance:
“It’s Jews’ work.”
“They are again at it, that accursed breed.”
“There’s no getting rid of them.”
“What a wretched affair!”
They all believed this. The disturbing rumour that the Jews had stolen a Christian boy spread about town. Ostrov took a most zealous share in disseminating the rumour. The markets were filled with noisy discussions. The tradesmen and dealers, instigated by Ostrov, bellowed loudly their denunciations. Why did Ostrov do this? He knew, of course, that it was a lie. But latterly, acting on the instructions of the local branch of the Black Hundred, he had been engaged in provocatory work. The new episode came in handily.
The police began an investigation. They looked for the boy, but without success. In any case, they found a Jew who had been seen by some one near Egorka’s house. He was arrested.
It was evening again. Egorka’s mother was at home when Egorka returned. There was a radiant sadness about him as he walked up to his mother, kissed her and said:
“Hello, mamma!”
Egorka’s mother assailed him with questions:
“Oh, you little wretch! Where have you been? What have you been doing? What unclean demons have carried you away?”
Egorka remembered his promise. He stood before his mother in obstinate silence. His mother questioned him angrily:
“Where have you been? tell me! Did the Jews try to crucify you?”
“What Jews?” exclaimed Egorka. “No one has tried to crucify me.”
“You just wait, you young brat,” shouted his mother in a rage, “I’ll make you talk.”
She caught hold of the besom and began to tear off its twigs. Then she stripped the boy of his light clothes. Still wrapt in his radiant sadness, Egorka looked at his mother with astonished eyes. He cried plaintively:
“Mamma, what are you doing?”
But, already seized by the rough hand, the little body that had been washed by the still waters began to struggle on the knees of the harshly crying woman. It was painful, and Egorka sobbed in a shrill voice. His mother beat him long and painfully, and she accompanied each blow with an admonition:
“Tell me where you’ve been! Tell me! I won’t stop until you tell me.”
At last she stopped and burst out into violent crying:
“Why has God punished me so? But no, I’ll yet beat a word out of you. I’ll give it to you worse to-morrow.”
Egorka was shaken less by the physical pain than by the unexpected harshness of his reception. He had been in touch with another world, and the quiet children in the enchanted valley had reconstructed his soul on another plane.
His mother, however, loved him. Of course, she loved him. That was why she beat him in her anger. Love and cruelty go always together among humankind. They like to torment, vengeance gives them pleasure. But later Egorka’s mother took pity on him; she thought she had flogged him too hard. And now she walked up quietly to him.
Egorka lay on the bench and moaned softly, then he grew silent. His mother smoothed his back awkwardly with her rough hands and left him. She thought he had gone to sleep.
In the morning she went to wake him. She found him lying cold and motionless on the bench, his face downward. And his radiance was gone from him—he lay there a dark, cold corpse. The horrified mother began to wail:
“He’s dead! Egorushka, are you really dead? Oh, God—and his little hands are quite cold!”
She dashed out to her neighbours, she aroused the whole neighbourhood with her shrill cries. Inquisitive women soon filled the house.
“I struck him ever so lightly with a thin twig,” the mother wailed. “Then my angel lay down on the bench, cried a little, then grew quiet and went to sleep, and in the morning he gave up his soul to God.”
Held by a heavy, death-like sleep, Egorka lay there motionless and to all appearances lifeless, and listened to his mother’s wailing and to the discordant clamour of voices. And he heard his mother keening over him:
“Those accursed Jews have sucked out all his blood! It was not the first time that I beat my little darling! It used to be that I’d beat him and put a bit of salt on afterwards, and nothing would come of it—and here I’ve hit him with a little twig and he, my handsome darling, my little angel....”
Egorka heard her groans and wondered at his fettered helplessness and immobility. He seemed to hear the noise of some one else’s body—he realized that it was his own as it was put on the floor to be washed. He had an intense longing to stir, to rise, but he could not. He thought:
“I have died: what are they going to do with me now?”
And again he thought:
“Why is it that my soul is not leaving my body? I do not feel that I have arms or legs, yet I can hear.”
He wondered and waited. Then, with a sudden powerless exertion, he tried to wake from his death-like sleep, to return to himself, to run away from the dark grave—and again his helpless will drooped, and again he waited.
And he heard the sounds of the funeral chant, and noted the blueness of the little cloud of incense-smoke and the fragrance that was wafted by the quietly sounding swings of the smoky censer.
Egorka was buried. His mother wept long over his grave in long-drawn-out wails, then went home. She was convinced that her boy would be far better off there than upon the earth, and was consoled. But such truly Russian people as Kerbakh, Ostrov, and others would not be consoled. They let loose evil rumours. The report spread:
“The Jews have tortured a Christian boy. They’ve cut him up with knives and used his blood in their matzoth."26
The slanderers were not deterred by the consideration that the Jewish Passover had taken place very much earlier than the running away of Egorka from his mother.
The townsmen were agitated—those who believed as well as those who did not believe the tale. Demands were made for an investigation and the opening of the grave.
Elisaveta came to Trirodov’s house early in the day and remained there long. Trirodov showed her his colony. The quiet boy Grisha accompanied them, and looked with the blue reposefulness of his impassionate eyes into the blue flames of her rapturous ones, soothing the sultriness and passion of her agitation.
Her light, ample dress seemed transparent—the perfect outlines of her body showed clearly; the red and white roses of her breast and shoulders were visible. Her sunburnt feet were bare—she loved the affectionate contact of the earth and the grass.
It was all like a paradise—the twittering of the birds, the hubbub of the children, the rustle of the wind in the grass and in the trees, the murmur of the brook in the wood. Everything was innocent, as in Paradise—girls, scantily dressed, came up, spoke to them, and were not ashamed. Everything was chaste, as in Paradise. And cloudless, the sky shone above the forest glades.
Towards evening Elisaveta sat at Trirodov’s. They read poems. Elisaveta loved poems even before she met Trirodov. Who else should love them if not girls? Now she read poems avidly. Whole hours passed by quickly in reading, and the poems gave birth in her to sweet and bitter emotions and passionate dreams.
Perhaps this was so because she was in love; in love she had found a new sun for herself, and she led a new dance round it of dreams, hopes, sorrows, joys, enchantments, and raptures. And, flaunting a rainbow of radiance, this round dance, this naming circle of impetuous emotions, was full of a rich music and vivid colour.
Trirodov caused her to fall in love with the verses of the new poets. She found such enchantments and such disillusions in the fragile music of new poetry, written so happily and so elusively, with a lightness and transparency like those of the dresses that she now loved to wear.
With the harmony of their souls thus achieved, why should they not love one another?
Once, after they had read together some beautiful love-poems, Trirodov remarked:
“Love says ‘No’ to the world, the lyrical ‘No’—marriage says ‘Yes’ to it, the ironic ‘Yes.’ To be in love, to strive, yet not to possess—that is the poetry of love, sweet but illusive. Externally love contradicts the world and conceals its fatal discord. To be together, to say ‘Yes’ to some one, to yield oneself—that is the way in which life reveals its irreconcilable contradictions. And how to be together when we are such solitary souls? And how to yield oneself? Mask after mask falls off, and it is terrible to see Janus-faced actuality. A weariness comes on—what has become of love, that love which had prided itself on being stronger than death?”
“You have had a wife,” said Elisaveta. “You loved her. Everything here is reminiscent of her. She was beautiful.”
Her voice became dark, and the blue flashes under the moist eyelids lit up with a jealous flame. Trirodov smiled and said sadly:
“She left life before the time had come for weariness to make its appearance. My Dulcinea did not want to become Aldonza.”
“Dulcinea is loved,” said Elisaveta, “but the fullness of life belongs to Aldonza becoming Dulcinea.”
“But does Aldonza want that?” asked Trirodov.
“She wants it, but cannot realize it,” said Elisaveta. “But we will help her, we will teach her.”
Trirodov smiled affectionately—if sadly—and said:
“But he, like the eternal Don Juan, always seeks Dulcinea. And what is to him the poor earthly Aldonza, poisoned by the dream of beauty?”
“It is for that that he will love her,” replied Elisaveta; “because she is poor and has been poisoned by the exultant dream of beauty. The basis for their union will be creative beauty.”
The night came: a darkness settled outside the windows, full of the whisperings of sad, pellucid voices. Trirodov walked up to the window. Elisaveta soon stood beside him—and almost at the same instant their eyes fixed themselves upon the distant, dimly visible cemetery. Trirodov said quietly:
“He has been buried there. But he will rise from his grave.”
Elisaveta looked at him in astonishment and asked:
“Who?”
Trirodov glanced at her like one suddenly awakened and said slowly:
“It is a boy who has not yet lived, and who is still chaste. His body contains all possibilities and not a single achievement. He is like one created to receive every energy directed at him. Now he is asleep in his tight coffin, in a grave. He will awake for a life free from passions and desires, for clear seeing and hearing, for the establishment of one will.”
“When will he awake?” asked Elisaveta.
“When I wish it,” said Trirodov, “I will wake him.”
The sound of his voice was sad and insistent—like the sound of an invocation.
“To-night?” asked Elisaveta.
“If you wish it,” answered Trirodov quietly.
“Must I leave?” she asked again.
“Yes,” he answered, just as simply and as quietly as before.
She bid him good-bye and left. Trirodov again walked up to the window. He called some one in a voice of invocation and whispered:
“You will awake, dear one. Wake, rise, come to me. I will open your eyes, and you will see what you have not yet seen. I will open your ears, and you will hear what you have not yet heard. You are of the earth—I will not part you from the earth. You are from me, you are mine, you are I; come to me. Wake!”
He waited confidently. He knew that when the sleeper had awakened in his grave they would come to him—the wise, innocent ones—and would tell him.
Kirsha walked into the room quietly. He walked up to his father and asked:
“Are you looking at the cemetery?”
Trirodov laid his hand silently on the boy’s head. Kirsha said:
“There is a boy in one of the graves who is not dead.”
“How do you know?” asked Trirodov.
But he knew what Kirsha’s answer would be. Kirsha said:
“Grisha told me that Egorka was not quite dead. He is asleep; but he will awake!”
“Yes,” said Trirodov.
“And will he come to you?” asked Kirsha.
“Yes,” was the answer.
“When will he come?” asked Kirsha again.
Trirodov said with a smile:
“Rouse Grisha and ask him whether the sleeper has yet begun to wake in his grave.”
Kirsha walked away. Trirodov looked in silence at the distant cemetery, where the dark, bereaved night stooped sadly over the crosses.
“And where are you, my happy beloved?”
A quiet rustle made itself audible behind the doors: the little house-sprites moved quietly near the walls, and whispered and waited.
Awakened by a low sigh, Grisha arose. He walked out into the garden and stood listening with downcast eyes near the railing. He was smiling, but without joy. Who knew whether the other would rejoice?
Kirsha walked up to him and, indicating the cemetery with a movement of his head, asked:
“Is he alive? Has he awakened?”
“Yes,” said Grisha. “Egorushka is sighing in his grave; he’s just awakened.”
Kirsha ran home to his father and repeated to him Grisha’s words.
“We must make haste,” said Trirodov.
He again experienced an agitation with which he had been long familiar. He felt in himself an ebb and flow as of some strange power. A kind of marvellous energy, gathered by some means known to himself alone, issued slowly from him. A mysterious current passed between himself and the grave where the boy who had departed from life lay in the throes of death-sleep; it cast a spell upon the sleeper and caused him to stir.
Trirodov quickly descended the stairway into the room where the quiet children slept. His light footsteps were barely audible, and his feet felt the cold that came from the planked floor. The quiet children lay upon their beds motionlessly, as if they did not breathe. It seemed as if there were many of them, and that they slept eternally in the endless darkness of that quiet bedchamber.
Trirodov paused seven times, and each time one of the sleepers awoke at his one glance. Three boys and four girls answered his call. They stood there tranquilly, looked at Trirodov and waited.
“Follow me!” said Trirodov.
They walked after him, the white quiet ones, and the rustle of their light footsteps was barely heard.
Kirsha waited in the garden—and he seemed earthly and dark among the white, quiet children.
They walked quickly upon the Navii path like gliding, nocturnal shadows, one after another, the whole ten of them, with Grisha leading. The dew fell upon their naked feet, and the ground under their feet was soft, warm, and sad.
Egorka awoke in his grave. It was dark and somewhat stuffy. His head felt oppressed as under a weight. There sounded in his ears the persistent call:
“Rise, come to me.”
Fear assailed him. His eyes looked but did not see. It was hard to breathe. He recalled something, and all that he recalled was like a horrible delirium. Then came the sudden awful realization:
“I am in a grave, in a coffin.”
He groaned, and his heart began to thump. His throat, as if clutched by some one’s fingers, shivered convulsively. His eyes dilated widely, and the flaming darkness of the nailed-up coffin swept before them. As he tossed about in the tight coffin, tormented by his dread, Egorka moaned, and whispered in a dull voice:
“Three house-sprites, three wood-sprites, three fallen sprites!”
The gate to the burial-ground was open. Trirodov and the children entered. They were among the poor graves—simple little mounds and wooden crosses. It was gloomy, damp, and quiet. There was a smell of grass—a graveyard reverie. The crosses gleamed white in the mist. A poignant silence hovered there, and the whole cemetery seemed filled with the dark reverie of the dead. Poignant feelings were re-experienced deliciously and painfully.
Nowhere does the soil feel so near to one as in a graveyard—it is the sacred soil of repose. They walked quietly, the whole ten of them, one after another, and felt the coolness and the softness of the ground under their bare feet. They passed near a grave. The little mound was quiet and poor, and it seemed as if the earth were crying, wailing, and suffering.
The boys, dimly discernible in the darkness against the lumps of black earth, began to dig the grave. The little girls stood very quietly, one at each of the four sides, and seemed engrossed in the nocturnal silence. The watchmen slept like the dead, and the dead slept, keeping a powerless watch over their graves.
Slowly the little coffin began to show. The low moan became audible. The boys already jumped into the grave. They bent over the poor little coffin. Though it was half-covered with earth, the boys already felt the tremors of its cover under their feet.
The cover, hammered down with nails, yielded easily to the exertions of the small, childish hands, and fell to the side against the grave’s earthen wall. The coffin opened as simply as the door of a room opens.
Egorka was already losing his consciousness. When the boys first looked at him he was lying on his side. He stirred faintly.
He breathed in the air as if with short, broken sighs. He shivered. He turned over on his back.
The fresh air blew into his face like a young rapture of deliverance. There was a sudden instant of joy—and it went out like a flame. Why indeed, should he rejoice? The tranquil, unjoyous ones bent over him.
Again to live? His soul felt strange, quiet, indifferent. Some one said affectionately over him:
“Rise, dear one, come to us; we will show you that which you have not seen and will teach you that which is secret.”
The stars of the far sky looked into his eyes, and some one’s near, affectionate eyes bent over him. Many, many gentle, cool hands stretched out to him; they took him, helped him up and lifted him out.
He stood in a circle. They looked at him. His arms again folded themselves across his breast, as in the grave—as, if the habit had been assimilated for ages. One of the little girls rearranged them and straightened them out.
Suddenly Egorka asked:
“What is this? A little grave?”
Grisha replied:
“This is your grave, but you will be with us and with our master.”
“And the grave?” asked Egorka.
“We will fill it up again,” replied Grisha.
The boys began to fill up the grave. Egorka looked on in quiet astonishment as lumps of earth fell into the grave and the little mound kept on growing. The ground was smoothed down and the cross placed as before. Egorka walked up to it and read the inscription:
“Boy Giorgiy Antipov.”
Then the year, month, and date of his death.
He was faintly astonished, but an ominous indifference already made captive his soul.
Some one touched his shoulder and asked something. Egorka was silent. He looked as if he did not understand.
“Come to me,” said Trirodov quietly to him.
The little girl who always said “No” took Egorka by the hand and led him away. They went back by the same road as they came. The darkness closed after them.
Egorka remained with the quiet children. He had no passport, and his life was different.
Trirodov returned home. Like one returned from a grave, he felt happy and light-hearted. His heart was consumed with exultation and resolution. He recalled the talk he had had that day with Elisaveta. There rose before him the proud joyous vision of life transfigured by the force of creative art, of life created by the proud will.
If love, or what seemed like love, came to him, why should he resist it? Whether it was a true emotion, or an illusion, was it not all the same? The will, exulting above the world, would determine everything as it wanted. It would have the power to erect a beautiful love over the helplessness of the exhausted senses.
That which has so long weighed in the scales of consciousness, that which has so long and so desperately wrestled in the dark region of the unconscious now stood at a clear decision. Let the word “Yes” be said. Once more Yes. For a new grief? For a glorious triumph? It was all the same. If only he believed in her—and she in him. So much did one mean to the other now.
Trirodov sat down at the table. He smiled, and for a few moments seemed lost in thought. Then he wrote quickly upon a light blue sheet of paper:
“Elisaveta, I want your love. Love me, dear one, love me. I forget my knowledge, I reject my doubts, I become again as simple and as humble as a communicant of a radiant kingdom, like my dear children—and I only want your nearness and your kisses. Upon the earth, dear to our heart, I will pass by, in simple and joyous humility, with bare feet, like you—in order that I may come to you as you come to me. Love me.
“Your GIORGIY.”
There was a slight rustle behind the door. It seemed as if the whole house were filled with the quiet children.
Trirodov sealed the letter. He wished to take it at once and leave it on the sill of her open window. He walked quietly, immersed in the wood’s darkness—and his feet felt the contact of warm moss, the dew-wet grass, and the simple, rough, beloved earth. A refreshing breeze blew from the river in the night coolness, but now and then there came a sickly, pungent gust of the forest fire.
Elisaveta could not fall asleep. She rose from her bed. She stood by the window, and yielded her naked body to the transparent embraces of the nocturnal breeze. She thought of something, mused of something. And all her thoughts and musings joined in one dancing circle around Trirodov.
Should she wait? He was a weary, sad man, and he would not say the sweet words for fear of appearing ridiculous, and of receiving a cold answer.
“Why should I wait?” she thought. “Or don’t I dare decide my fate like a queen, to call him to me, and to demand his love? Why should I remain silent?”
And she decided:
“I will tell him myself—I love you, I love you, come to me, love me.”
Elisaveta whispered the delicious words, entrusting her passionate reveries to the nocturnal silence. The dark eyes of the nocturnal guest who brought tempting reveries were aflame. The quiet splashing laughter of the water-nymph behind the reeds under the moon mingled with the quiet, delicious laughter of the nocturnal enchantress who had flaming eyes, burning lips, and a naked body formed from the coils of white flame. Her flaming body was like Elisaveta’s body, and the black lightnings of the invisible sorceress were like the blue lightnings of Elisaveta’s eyes. She tempted Elisaveta, and called to her:
“Go to him, go. Fall naked at his feet, kiss his feet, laugh for him, dance for him, tire yourself out for his sake, be a slave to him, be a thing in his hands—cling to him, and kiss him, and look into his eyes, and yield yourself up to him. Go, go, hurry, run, he is approaching even now—do you see him? It is he who has just come out of the wood—do you see? It is his feet that show white in the grass. Fling the door wide open and run as you are to meet him.”
Elisaveta saw Trirodov coming. Her heart began to beat with such pain and such delight. She walked away from the window. She waited. She heard his footsteps on the sand under the window. Something flashed through the window and fell on the floor. The footsteps retreated.
Elisaveta picked up the letter, lit a candle, and read the beloved blue sheet of paper. The nocturnal enchantress whispered to her:
“He’s going away. Hurry. You will know how sweet are the first kisses of love. Go to him, run after him, don’t look for tiresome robes.”
Elisaveta impetuously flung the door open on the veranda, and ran down the broad steps into the garden. She ran after Trirodov and shouted:
“Giorgiy!”
It was like the outcry of passionate desire. Trirodov paused, saw her, impetuously white and clear in the moonlight. Elisaveta fell into his arms and kissed him and laughed, and kept on repeating without end:
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And they kissed, and they laughed, and said something to one another. The red and white roses of her strong, graceful body were chaste and uncrumpled. The words they said to one another were chaste and sacred. The chaste moon looked down on them, and the stars also, as they spoke the words that bound them to one another. There were vows and rites not less durable than any other kind. There were smiles, kisses, tender words—in these consist the eternal rite and the eternal mystery.
The sky began to lighten and a new dew fell on a new dawn, and when the sunrise had extended its rapturous flames the sun rose—only then they parted.
Elisaveta returned to her room. But she could not sleep. She went into Elena’s room. Elena had only just awakened. Elisaveta lay down at her side under the bed-cover, and told her about her great love, her great joy. Elena rejoiced and laughed and kissed her sister without end.
Then Elisaveta put on her morning dress, and went to her father—to tell him about her joy, her happiness.
As for Trirodov, oppressed by morning fatigue, he walked home across the moist grass—and his soul was filled with perplexity and dread.
Later in the day he drove to the Rameyevs. He brought as a gift to Elisaveta a photograph he had taken of his first wife—upon her nude body was a bronze belt, its ends coming down to the knees being joined up in the front; upon her dark hair was a narrow round strip of gold. A slender, graceful body—a melancholy smile—intense dark eyes.
“Father knows,” said Elisaveta. “Father is glad. Let us go to him.”
When Elisaveta and Trirodov were once more alone, a dark thought came into Elisaveta’s mind. She became pensively sad, and asked:
“What of the sleeper in the grave?”
“He has awakened,” replied Trirodov. “He’s in my house. We’ve dug up his grave just in time to save his mother from having any qualms of conscience.”
“What do you mean?”
Trirodov explained:
“Early this morning the coroner had the grave dug up. They found the empty coffin. Luckily, I found out about this in time, before new stupid talk might arise, and gave them the necessary explanation.”
“What of the boy?” asked Elisaveta.
“He will remain with me. He does not wish to go to his mother, and he is not particularly necessary to her—she will receive money for him.”
Trirodov said all this in a dry, cold voice.
The news that Elisaveta would become Trirodov’s wife acted differently on her relatives. Rameyev liked Trirodov, and was glad because of the closer connexion; he was a little sorry for Piotr, but thought it was well that the matter had come to a decision, and Piotr would no longer torment himself by entertaining false hopes. Nevertheless Rameyev was disturbed for some unknown reason.
Elena loved Elisaveta and shared her joy. She loved Piotr, and was, therefore, even more glad; she pitied him—and, therefore, loved him even more. She loved him so deeply, and entertained such hopes of his love, that her pity for him became serene and radiant. She looked at Piotr with loving eyes.
Piotr was in a state of despair. But Elena’s eyes aroused in him a sweet agitation for a new love. His wearied heart thirsted, and suffered intensely from deceived hopes.
Misha was strangely distraught. He flushed, and ran off more than usual with his fishing-rod to the river; there he wept. Now he impetuously embraced Elisaveta, now Trirodov. He felt ashamed and bitter. He knew that Elisaveta did not even suspect his love, and that she looked at him as at an infant. Sometimes in his helplessness he hated her. He said to Piotr:
“I shouldn’t walk about with a long face if I were you. She is not worthy of your love. She puts on airs. Elena is much better. Elena is a dear, while the other fancies all sorts of things.”
Piotr walked away from him in silence. And it was well that there was some one who did not scold, and with whom it was possible to ease his soul. Misha, too, wanted to be with Elisaveta, and it made him feel ashamed and depressed.
Miss Harrison did not express her opinion. Many things had already shocked her, and she grew accustomed to bear herself indifferently to everything that happened here. Trirodov, in her opinion, was an adventurer, a man with a doubtful reputation, and a dark past.
Elisaveta was the most tranquil of all.
Piotr’s gloomy appearance disturbed Rameyev. He wanted to comfort him if only with words. Luckily, people believe even in words! They must believe in something.
Rameyev and Piotr happened to find themselves alone. Rameyev said:
“I must confess that I once thought Elisaveta loved you. Or that she might love you, if you wished it strongly.”
Piotr said with a gloomy smile:
“I too may be pardoned for the error. All the more since M. Trirodov does not lack lovers.”
“Any one may be pardoned for mistakes,” answered Rameyev calmly, “though they may be painful enough sometimes.”
Piotr grumbled something. Rameyev continued:
“I have been observing Elisaveta very attentively of late. And listen to what I say—pardon me for my frankness—I have come to the conclusion that you’d be better off with Elena. Perhaps you have also erred in your feelings.”
Piotr replied with a bitter smile:
“Why, of course—Elena is more simple. She doesn’t read philosophic books, she doesn’t wear over-classical frocks; and doesn’t detest any one.”
“Why drag self-love into everything?” asked Rameyev. “Elena is not as simple as you think. She is a very intelligent girl, though without pretensions to a deep and broad outlook—and she is good, attractive, and cheerful.”
“In fact, quite a match for me,” observed Piotr with an ironic smile.
“As for that,” said Rameyev, “you are not limited to choosing a charming wife from among my daughters.”
“That’s not so easy,” said Piotr with dejected irony. “But I see no need of insisting. Besides, the same thing might happen with Elena. She might come across a more brilliant match. And there are not a few charlatans in this world of the Trirodov brand.”
“Elena loves you,” said Rameyev. “Surely you have noticed it?”
Piotr laughed. He assumed a gaiety—or did he actually feel gay and joyous at the sudden thought of the charming Elena? Of course she loved him! But he asked:
“Why do you think, my dear uncle, that I need a wife at all costs? May God be with her!”
“You are in love generally, as is common in your years,” said Rameyev.
“Perhaps,” said Piotr, “but Elisaveta’s choice revolts me.”
“Why should it?” asked Rameyev.
“For many reasons,” replied Piotr. “For one thing, he presented her with a photograph of his dead wife, a naked beauty. Why? Is it right to make universal that which is intimate?27She revealed her body to her husband, and not for Elisaveta and for us.”
“You would do away with many fine pictures if you had your way,” said Rameyev.
“I am not so simple as not to be able to make a distinction,” replied Piotr animatedly. “In the one case it is pure art, always sacred; in the other there is an effort to inflame the feelings with pornographic pictures. And don’t you notice it yourself, uncle, that Elisaveta has poisoned herself with this sweet poison, and has become terribly passionate and insufficiently modest?”
“I do not find this at all,” said Rameyev dryly.
“She is in love—so what’s to be done? If there is sensuality in people, what is to be done with nature? Shall the whole world be maimed in order to gratify a decrepit morality?”
“Uncle, I did not suspect you of being such an amoralist,” said Piotr in vexation.
“There is morality and morality,” replied Rameyev, not without some confusion. “I do not uphold depravity, but nevertheless demand freedom of thought and feeling. A free feeling is always innocent.”
“And what will you say of those naked girls in his woods—is that also innocent?” asked Piotr rather spitefully.
“Of course,” replied Rameyev. “His problem is to lull to sleep the beast in man, and to awaken the man.”
“I have heard his discourses,” said Piotr, showing his annoyance, “and I do not believe them in the slightest. I’m only astonished that others can believe such nonsense. And I don’t believe either in his poetry or in his chemistry. He has too many secrets and mysteries, too many cunning mechanisms in his doors and his corridors. Then there are his quiet children—that I do not understand at all. Where have they come from? What does he do with them? There is something nasty behind it all.”
“That’s a work of the imagination,” answered Rameyev. “We see him often, we can always go to him, and we haven’t seen or heard anything in his house or in his colony to confirm the town tattle about him.”
Piotr recalled the evening that he met Trirodov on the river-bank. His sad but determined eyes suddenly flared up in Piotr’s memory—and the poison of his spite grew weaker. He seemed affected as by a strange bewitchment, as if some one persistently yet quietly urged him to believe that the ways of Trirodov were fair and clean. Piotr closed his eyes—and the radiant vision appeared before him of the semi-nude girls of the wood, who filed past him, and sanctified him by the serenity and the peace of their chaste eyes. Piotr sighed and said quietly, as if fatigued:
“I have no cause to say these malicious words. Perhaps you are right. But it is so hard for me!”
Nevertheless this conversation did much to soothe Piotr. Thoughts about Elena returned to him oftener and oftener, and became more and more tender.
It so happened that, acting upon some unspoken yet understood agreement, every one tried to direct Piotr’s attention to Elena. Piotr submitted to this general influence, and was affectionate and gentle with Elena. Elena expectantly waited for his love; and at night, turning her blazing face and loosened locks in the direction of the nymph’s laughter, she would whisper:
“I love you, I love you, I love you!”
And when left alone with Piotr, she would look at him with love-frightened eyes, all rosy like the spring, and pulsating with expectancy; and with every sigh of her tender breast, and with all the life of her passionate body she would repeat the same unspoken words: “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And Piotr began to understand that he had met his fate in Elena, and that whether he willed it or not he would grow to love her. This presentiment of a new love was like a sweet gnawing in a heart wounded by treacherous love.