Chapter 12

He lay on his back, turned a little to one side, with his left arm behind his head ... the right was thrust under his bent body. The toes of his feet, in high sailor’s boots, had been sucked into the slimy sea-mud; the short blue jacket, drenched through with brine, was still closely buttoned; a red scarf was fastened in a tight knot about his neck. The dark face, turned to the sky, looked as if it were laughing; the small close-set teeth could be seen under the lifted upper lip; the dim pupils of the half-closed eyes were scarcely discernible in the darkened eyeballs; the clotted hair, covered with bubbles of foam, lay dishevelled on the ground, and bared the smooth brow with the purple line of the scar; the narrow nose rose, a sharp white line, between the sunken cheeks. The storm of the previous night had done its work.... He would never see America again! The man who had outraged my mother, who had spoiled and soiled her life; my father--yes! my father--of that I could feel no doubt--lay helplessly outstretched in the mud at my feet. I experienced a sensation of satisfied revenge, and of pity, and repulsion, and horror, more than all ... a double horror, at what I saw, and at what had happened. The wicked criminal feelings of which I have spoken, those uncomprehended impulses of rage rose up in me ... choked me. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘so that is why I am like this ... that is how my blood shows itself!’ I stood beside the corpse, and stared in suspense. Would not those dead eyes move, would not those stiff lips quiver? No! all was still; the very seaweed seemed lifeless where the breakers had flung it; even the gulls had flown; not a broken spar anywhere, not a fragment of wood, nor a bit of rigging. On all sides emptiness ... only he and I, and in the distance the sounding sea. I looked back; the same emptiness there: a ridge of lifeless downs on the horizon ... that was all! My heart revolted against leaving this luckless wretch in this solitude, on the briny sand of the seashore, to be devoured by fishes and birds; an inner voice told me I ought to find people, call them, if not to help--what help could there be now!--at least to lift him up, to carry him into some living habitation ... but an indescribable panic suddenly seized on me. It seemed to me that this dead man knew I had come here, that he had himself planned this last meeting. I even fancied I heard the indistinct mutter I knew so well.... I ran away ... looked back once.... Something glittering caught my eye; it brought me to a halt. It was a hoop of gold on the hand of the corpse.... I knew it for my mother’s betrothal ring. I remember how I forced myself to turn back, to go up, to bend down ... I remember the clammy touch of the chill fingers; I remember how I held my breath, and half-closed my eyes, and set my teeth, tearing off the obstinate ring....

At last, it was off ... and I was running, running away at full speed, with something flying behind me, upon my heels, overtaking me.

XVI

All I had felt and gone through was probably written on my face when I got home. My mother abruptly drew herself up directly I went into her room, and looked with such urgent inquiry at me, that, after an unsuccessful attempt to explain, I ended by holding out the ring to her in silence. She turned fearfully white, her eyes opened extraordinarily and looked dead, like _those_ eyes; she uttered a faint cry, snatched the ring, reeled, fell on my breast, and fairly swooned away, her head falling back, and her blank wide-open eyes staring at me. I threw both my arms about her, and standing where I was, without moving, told her slowly, in a subdued voice, everything, without the slightest concealment: my dream, and the meeting, and everything, everything.... She heard me to the end without uttering a single word, only her bosom heaved more and more violently, and her eyes suddenly flashed and sank. Then she put the ring on her third finger, and, moving away a little, began getting her cape and hat. I asked her where she was going. She lifted eyes full of surprise upon me, and tried to answer, but her voice failed her. She shuddered several times, rubbed her hands, as though she were trying to warm them, and at last said, ‘Let us go there at once.’

‘Where, mother?’

‘Where he is lying ... I want to see ... I want to know ... I will know....’

I endeavoured to persuade her not to go; but she almost fell into a nervous attack. I saw it was impossible to oppose her wish, and we set off.

XVII

And now I was again walking along the sand; but this time not alone. I had my mother on my arm. The sea had ebbed away, had retreated farther still; it was calmer, but its roar, though fainter, was still menacing and malignant. There, at last, rose the solitary rock before us; there was the seaweed too. I looked intently, I tried to distinguish that curved object lying on the ground--but I saw nothing. We went closer; instinctively I slackened my pace. But where was the black still object? Only the tangles of seaweed rose black against the sand, which had dried up by now. We went right up to the rock.... There was no corpse to be seen; and only where it had been lying there was still a hollow place, and one could see where the arms and where the legs had lain.... The seaweed around looked as it were crushed, and prints were visible of one man’s feet; they crossed the dune, then were lost, as they reached the heaped-up shingle.

My mother and I looked at each other, and were frightened at what we saw in each other’s faces....

Surely he had not got up of himself and gone away?

‘You are sure you saw him dead?’ she asked in a whisper.

I could only nod in assent. Three hours had not passed since I had come upon the baron’s corpse.... Some one had discovered and removed it. I must find out who had done it, and what had become of it.

But first I had to look after my mother.

XVIII

While she had been walking to the fatal spot she had been in a fever, but she controlled herself. The disappearance of the dead body came upon her as a final blow. She was struck dumb. I feared for her reason. With great difficulty I got her home. I made her lie down again on her bed, again I sent for the doctor, but as soon as my mother had recovered herself a little, she at one desired me to set off without delay to find out ‘that man.’ I obeyed. But, in spite of every possible effort, I discovered nothing. I went several times to the police, visited several villages in the neighbourhood, put several advertisements in the papers, collected information in all directions, and all in vain! I received information, indeed, that the corpse of a drowned man had been picked up in one of the seaside villages near.... I at once hastened off there, but from all I could hear the body had no resemblance to the baron. I found out in what ship he had set sail for America; at first every one was positive that ship had gone down in the storm; but a few months later there were rumours that it had been seen riding at anchor in New York harbour. Not knowing what steps to take, I began seeking out the negro I had seen, offering him in the papers a considerable sum of money if he would call at our house. Some tall negro in a cloak did actually call on us in my absence.... But after questioning the maid, he abruptly departed, and never came back again.

So all traces were lost of my ... my father; so he vanished into silence and darkness never to return. My mother and I never spoke of him; only one day, I remember, she expressed surprise that I had never told her before of my strange dream; and added, ‘It must mean he really....’, but did not utter all her thought. My mother was ill a long while, and even after her recovery our former close relations never returned. She was ill at ease with me to the day of her death.... Ill at ease was just what she was. And that is a trouble there is no cure for. Anything may be smoothed over, memories of even the most tragic domestic incidents gradually lose their strength and bitterness; but if once a sense of being ill at ease installs itself between two closely united persons, it can never be dislodged! I never again had the dream that had once so agitated me; I no longer ‘look for’ my father; but sometimes I fancied--and even now I fancy--that I hear, as it were, distant wails, as it were, never silent, mournful plaints; they seem to sound somewhere behind a high wall, which cannot be crossed; they wring my heart, and I weep with closed eyes, and am never able to tell what it is, whether it is a living man moaning, or whether I am listening to the wild, long-drawn-out howl of the troubled sea. And then it passes again into the muttering of some beast, and I fall asleep with anguish and horror in my heart.

POEMS IN PROSE

I

[1878]

THE COUNTRY

The last day of July; for a thousand versts around, Russia, our native land.

An unbroken blue flooding the whole sky; a single cloudlet upon it, half floating, half fading away. Windlessness, warmth ... air like new milk!

Larks are trilling; pouter-pigeons cooing; noiselessly the swallows dart to and fro; horses are neighing and munching; the dogs do not bark and stand peaceably wagging their tails.

A smell of smoke and of hay, and a little of tar, too, and a little of hides. The hemp, now in full bloom, sheds its heavy, pleasant fragrance.

A deep but sloping ravine. Along its sides willows in rows, with big heads above, trunks cleft below. Through the ravine runs a brook; the tiny pebbles at its bottom are all aquiver through its clear eddies. In the distance, on the border-line between earth and heaven, the bluish streak of a great river.

Along the ravine, on one side, tidy barns, little storehouses with close-shut doors; on the other side, five or six pinewood huts with boarded roofs. Above each roof, the high pole of a pigeon-house; over each entry a little short-maned horse of wrought iron. The window-panes of faulty glass shine with all the colours of the rainbow. Jugs of flowers are painted on the shutters. Before each door, a little bench stands prim and neat; on the mounds of earth, cats are basking, their transparent ears pricked up alert; beyond the high door-sills, is the cool dark of the outer rooms.

I lie on the very edge of the ravine, on an outspread horse-cloth; all about are whole stacks of fresh-cut hay, oppressively fragrant. The sagacious husbandmen have flung the hay about before the huts; let it get a bit drier in the baking sunshine; and then into the barn with it. It will be first-rate sleeping on it.

Curly, childish heads are sticking out of every haycock; crested hens are looking in the hay for flies and little beetles, and a white-lipped pup is rolling among the tangled stalks.

Flaxen-headed lads in clean smocks, belted low, in heavy boots, leaning over an unharnessed waggon, fling each other smart volleys of banter, with broad grins showing their white teeth.

A round-faced young woman peeps out of window; laughs at their words or at the romps of the children in the mounds of hay.

Another young woman with powerful arms draws a great wet bucket out of the well.... The bucket quivers and shakes, spilling long, glistening drops.

Before me stands an old woman in a new striped petticoat and new shoes.

Fat hollow beads are wound in three rows about her dark thin neck, her grey head is tied up in a yellow kerchief with red spots; it hangs low over her failing eyes.

But there is a smile of welcome in the aged eyes; a smile all over the wrinkled face. The old woman has reached, I dare say, her seventieth year ... and even now one can see she has been a beauty in her day.

With a twirl of her sunburnt finger, she holds in her right hand a bowl of cold milk, with the cream on it, fresh from the cellar; the sides of the bowl are covered with drops, like strings of pearls. In the palm of her left hand the old woman brings me a huge hunch of warm bread, as though to say, ‘Eat, and welcome, passing guest!’

A cock suddenly crows and fussily flaps his wings; he is slowly answered by the low of a calf, shut up in the stall.

‘My word, what oats!’ I hear my coachman saying.... Oh, the content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian open country! Oh, the deep peace and well-being!

And the thought comes to me: what is it all to us here, the cross on the cupola of St. Sophia in Constantinople and all the rest that we are struggling for, we men of the town?

A CONVERSATION

‘Neither the Jungfrau nor the Finsteraarhorn has yet been trodden by the foot of man!’

The topmost peaks of the Alps ... A whole chain of rugged precipices ... The very heart of the mountains.

Over the mountain, a pale green, clear, dumb sky. Bitter, cruel frost; hard, sparkling snow; sticking out of the snow, the sullen peaks of the ice-covered, wind-swept mountains.

Two massive forms, two giants on the sides of the horizon, the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn.

And the Jungfrau speaks to its neighbour: ‘What canst thou tell that is new? thou canst see more. What is there down below?’

A few thousand years go by: one minute. And the Finsteraarhorn roars back in answer: ‘Thick clouds cover the earth.... Wait a little!’

Thousands more years go by: one minute.

‘Well, and now?’ asks the Jungfrau.

‘Now I see, there below all is the same. There are blue waters, black forests, grey heaps of piled-up stones. Among them are still fussing to and fro the insects, thou knowest, the bipeds that have never yet once defiled thee nor me.’

‘Men?’

‘Yes, men.’

Thousands of years go by: one minute.

‘Well, and now?’ asks the Jungfrau.

‘There seem fewer insects to be seen,’ thunders the Finsteraarhorn, ‘it is clearer down below; the waters have shrunk, the forests are thinner.’ Again thousands of years go by: one minute.

‘What seeest thou?’ says the Jungfrau.

‘Close about us it seems purer,’ answers the Finsteraarhorn, ‘but there in the distance in the valleys are still spots, and something is moving.’ ‘And now?’ asks the Jungfrau, after more thousands of years: one minute.

‘Now it is well,’ answers the Finsteraarhorn, ‘it is clean everywhere, quite white, wherever you look ... Everywhere is our snow, unbroken snow and ice. Everything is frozen. It is well now, it is quiet.’

‘Good,’ said the Jungfrau. ‘But we have gossipped enough, old fellow. It’s time to slumber.’

‘It is time, indeed.’

The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.

_February 1878._

THE OLD WOMAN

I was walking over a wide plain alone.

And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back.... Some one was walking after me.

I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face.

I went up to her.... She stopped.

‘Who are you? What do you want? Are you a beggar? Do you seek alms?’

The old woman did not answer. I bent down to her, and noticed that both her eyes were covered with a half-transparent membrane or skin, such as is seen in some birds; they protect their eyes with it from dazzling light.

But in the old woman, the membrane did not move nor uncover the eyes ... from which I concluded she was blind.

‘Do you want alms?’ I repeated my question. ‘Why are you following me?’ But the old woman as before made no answer, but only shrank into herself a little.

I turned from her and went on my way.

And again I hear behind me the same light, measured, as it were, stealthy steps.

‘Again that woman!’ I thought, ‘why does she stick to me?’ But then, I added inwardly, ‘Most likely she has lost her way, being blind, and now is following the sound of my steps so as to get with me to some inhabited place. Yes, yes, that’s it.’

But a strange uneasiness gradually gained possession of my mind. I began to fancy that the old woman was not only following me, but that she was directing me, that she was driving me to right and to left, and that I was unwittingly obeying her.

I still go on, however ... but, behold, before me, on my very road, something black and wide ... a kind of hole.... ‘A grave!’ flashed through my head. ‘That is where she is driving me!’

I turned sharply back. The old woman faced me again ... but she sees! She is looking at me with big, cruel, malignant eyes ... the eyes of a bird of prey.... I stoop down to her face, to her eyes.... Again the same opaque membrane, the same blind, dull countenance....

‘Ah!’ I think, ‘this old woman is my fate. The fate from which there is no escape for man!’

‘No escape! no escape! What madness.... One must try.’ And I rush away in another direction.

I go swiftly.... But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close.... And before me again the dark hole.

Again I turn another way.... And again the same patter behind, and the same menacing blur of darkness before.

And whichever way I run, doubling like a hunted hare ... it’s always the same, the same!

‘Wait!’ I think, ‘I will cheat her! I will go nowhere!’ and I instantly sat down on the ground.

The old woman stands behind, two paces from me. I do not hear her, but I feel she is there.

And suddenly I see the blur of darkness in the distance is floating, creeping of itself towards me!

God! I look round again ... the old woman looks straight at me, and her toothless mouth is twisted in a grin.

No escape!

THE DOG

Us two in the room; my dog and me.... Outside a fearful storm is howling.

The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face.

And I, too, look into his face.

He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself--but I understand him.

I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark.

Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing....

And the end!

Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us?

No! We are not beast and man that glance at one another....

They are the eyes of equals, those eyes riveted on one another.

And in each of these, in the beast and in the man, the same life huddles up in fear close to the other.

_February 1878._

MY ADVERSARY

I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views were never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us.

We argued about everything: about art, and religion, and science, about life on earth and beyond the grave, especially about life beyond the grave.

He was a person of faith and enthusiasm. One day he said to me, ‘You laugh at everything; but if I die before you, I will come to you from the other world.... We shall see whether you will laugh then.’

And he did, in fact, die before me, while he was still young; but the years went by, and I had forgotten his promise, his threat.

One night I was lying in bed, and could not, and, indeed, would not sleep.

In the room it was neither dark nor light. I fell to staring into the grey twilight.

And all at once, I fancied that between the two windows my adversary was standing, and was slowly and mournfully nodding his head up and down.

I was not frightened; I was not even surprised ... but raising myself a little, and propping myself on my elbow, I stared still more intently at the unexpected apparition.

The latter continued to nod his head.

‘Well?’ I said at last; ‘are you triumphant or regretful? What is this--warning or reproach?... Or do you mean to give me to understand that you were wrong, that we were both wrong? What are you experiencing? The torments of hell? Or the bliss of paradise? Utter one word at least!’

But my opponent did not utter a single sound, and only, as before, mournfully and submissively nodded his head up and down.

I laughed ... he vanished.

_February 1878._

THE BEGGAR

I was walking along the street ... I was stopped by a decrepit old beggar.

Bloodshot, tearful eyes, blue lips, coarse rags, festering wounds.... Oh, how hideously poverty had eaten into this miserable creature!

He held out to me a red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned, he mumbled of help.

I began feeling in all my pockets.... No purse, no watch, not even a handkerchief.... I had taken nothing with me. And the beggar was still waiting ... and his outstretched hand feebly shook and trembled.

Confused, abashed, I warmly clasped the filthy, shaking hand ... ‘Don’t be angry, brother; I have nothing, brother.’

The beggar stared at me with his bloodshot eyes; his blue lips smiled; and he in his turn gripped my chilly fingers.

‘What of it, brother?’ he mumbled; ‘thanks for this, too. That is a gift too, brother.’

I knew that I too had received a gift from my brother.

_February 1878._

‘THOU SHALT HEAR THE FOOL’S JUDGMENT....’--_PUSHKIN_

‘Thou shalt hear the fool’s judgment....’ You always told the truth, O great singer of ours. You spoke it this time, too.

‘The fool’s judgment and the laughter of the crowd’ ... who has not known the one and the other?

All that one can, and one ought to bear; and who has the strength, let him despise it!

But there are blows which pierce more cruelly to the very heart.... A man has done all that he could; has worked strenuously, lovingly, honestly.... And honest hearts turn from him in disgust; honest faces burn with indignation at his name. ‘Be gone! Away with you!’ honest young voices scream at him. ‘We have no need of you, nor of your work. You pollute our dwelling-places. You know us not and understand us not.... You are our enemy!’

What is that man to do? Go on working; not try to justify himself, and not even look forward to a fairer judgment.

At one time the tillers of the soil cursed the traveller who brought the potato, the substitute for bread, the poor man’s daily food.... They shook the precious gift out of his outstretched hands, flung it in the mud, trampled it underfoot.

Now they are fed with it, and do not even know their benefactor’s name.

So be it! What is his name to them? He, nameless though he be, saves them from hunger.

Let us try only that what we bring should be really good food.

Bitter, unjust reproach on the lips of those you love.... But that, too, can be borne....

‘Beat me! but listen!’ said the Athenian leader to the Spartan.

‘Beat me! but be healthy and fed!’ we ought to say.

_February 1878._

A CONTENTED MAN

A young man goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face.... He is all contentment and delight.

What has happened to him? Has he come in for a legacy? Has he been promoted? Is he hastening to meet his beloved? Or is it simply he has had a good breakfast, and the sense of health, the sense of well-fed prosperity, is at work in all his limbs? Surely they have not put on his neck thy lovely, eight-pointed cross, O Polish king, Stanislas?

No. He has hatched a scandal against a friend, has sedulously sown it abroad, has heard it, this same slander, from the lips of another friend, and--_has himself believed it_!

Oh, how contented! how kind indeed at this minute is this amiable, promising young man!

_February 1878._

A RULE OF LIFE

‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!

‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.

‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience.

If you, for instance, are a turncoat, reproach your opponent with having no convictions!