Part 2

The moon went down, and a small, whitish cloud appeared in the zenith, shining with suffused, phosphorescent lustre. It gathered size, it broke, it flickered, and rays of iridescent light spread swiftly from it in all directions, while the dark, semicircular cloud in the north grew blacker and blacker, more sombre than the forest which Makar was approaching.

The road wound through a dense, low thicket with little hills rising on either hand; the farther it advanced, the higher grew the trees, until at last the taiga[B] closed about it, mute and pregnant with mystery. The naked branches of the larches drooped under their loads of silvery rime. The soft radiance of the Aurora filtered through the tree-tops, and strayed across the frosty earth, unveiling now an icy glade, now the fallen trunk of some giant of the forest half buried in the snow.

Another moment, and again all was sunk in murky darkness, full-fraught with secrecy and silence. Makar stopped. Here, almost at the side of the road, were set the first units of an elaborate system of traps. He could see clearly in the phosphorescent light the low stockade of fallen timber and the first trap--three long, heavy logs resting upon an upright post, and held in place by a complicated arrangement of levers and horse-hair ropes.

To be sure, these traps were not his, but might not a fox have been caught in them, too? Makar quickly got out of his sled, left the clever piebald standing in the road, and listened attentively.

Not a sound in the forest! Only the solemn ringing of the church bells came floating as before from the distant, invisible village.

There was nothing to fear. Aliosha, the owner of the traps and Makar’s neighbour and bitter enemy, was no doubt in church. Not a track could be seen on the smooth breast of the new-fallen snow.

Makar struck into the thicket--no one was there.

The snow creaked under foot. The log traps lay side by side like a row of cannon with gaping jaws, in silent expectation.

Makar walked up and down the line without finding anything, and turned back to the road.

But what was that? A faint rustle! The gleam of red fur near at hand in a spot of light! Makar saw clearly the pointed ears of a fox; it waved its bushy tail from side to side as if to beckon him into the forest, and vanished among the tree-trunks in the direction of his traps. Next moment a dull, heavy thud resounded through the forest, ringing out clearly at first, and then echoing more faintly under the canopy of trees, until it died softly away in the dark abysses of the taiga.

Makar’s heart leapt--a trap had fallen!

He sprang toward the sound, pushing his way through the undergrowth. The icy twigs whipped his eyes and showered snow in his face; he stumbled and lost his breath.

At last he ran into a clearing that he himself had made. Hoary white trees surrounded the little glade, and a shrinking path crept across it, with the mouth of a large trap guarding its farther end. A few steps more and----

Suddenly, the figure of a man appeared on the path near the trap--appeared and vanished. Makar recognised Aliosha. He saw distinctly his short, massive, stooping form and his walk like a bear’s. His dark face looked blacker than he had ever seen it, Makar thought, and his large teeth showed in a wider grin than ever.

Makar was seized with genuine anger. “The scoundrel! He has been at my traps!” It was true that Makar had just made the round of Aliosha’s traps, but that was a different matter. The difference was that when he visited other men’s traps he felt afraid of being discovered, but when others came to his traps, he felt indignation and a longing to lay hands on the man who had violated his rights.

He darted toward the fallen trap. There was the fox! Aliosha, too, was approaching with his shuffling bear’s walk; Makar must reach the trap first!

There lay the fallen log and under it glistened the ruddy coat of the captive creature. The fox was scratching at the snow with its paws exactly as Makar had seen it scratch in his dream, and was watching his approach with bright, burning eyes, just as he had dreamt that it would.

“Titima! (Don’t touch it!) It is mine!” cried Makar to Aliosha.

“Titima!” came Aliosha’s voice like an echo. “It is mine!”

Both men ran up at the same moment, and both began quickly to raise the log, freeing the animal beneath it. As the log was lifted the fox rose too. It gave a little jump, stopped, looked at the two men with mocking eyes, and then, lowering its nose, licked the place that had been caught under the log. This done it hopped gaily away with a farewell flirt of its tail.

Aliosha would have thrown himself after it, but Makar caught him by the coat tails.

“Titima!” he cried. “It is mine!” And he started after the fox.

“Titima!” echoed Aliosha’s voice again, and Makar felt himself seized, in turn, by the tails of his coat, and saw Aliosha dart forward.

Makar was furious. He forgot the fox and rushed after Aliosha, who now turned to flee.

They ran faster and faster. The twigs of the larches knocked the cap from Aliosha’s head, but he could not stop to regain it. Makar was already upon him with a fierce cry. But Aliosha had always been more crafty than poor Makar. He suddenly stopped, turned round, and lowered his head; Makar ran straight into it with his stomach and turned head over heels in the snow. As he fell, that infernal Aliosha snatched the cap from his head and vanished into the forest.

Makar rose slowly to his feet. He felt thoroughly beaten and miserable. The state of his mind was pitiful. The fox had been in his hands and now--he thought he saw it again in the darkening forest wave its tail gaily once more and vanish forever.

Darkness was falling. The little white cloud in the zenith could barely be seen, and beams of fading light were flowing wearily and languidly from it as it gently melted away.

Sharp rivulets of icy water were running in streams over Makar’s heated body; the snow had gone up his sleeves and was trickling down his back and into his boots. That infernal Aliosha had taken away his cap and Makar well knew that the pitiless cold does not jest with men who go into the taiga without gloves and without a hat.

He had already walked far. According to his calculations he should long since have been in sight of the church steeple, but here he was still in the forest. The taiga held him in its embrace like a witch. The same solemn ringing came to his ears from afar; he thought he was walking toward it, but the sound kept growing more and more distant, and a dull despair crept into Makar’s heart as its echoes came ever more faintly to his ears.

He was tired; he was choking; his legs were shaking under him. His bruised body ached miserably, his breathing strangled him, his feet and hands were growing numb, and red-hot bands seemed tightening around his bare head.

“I shall die!” came more and more frequently into his mind, but still he walked on.

The taiga held its peace. It closed about him with obdurate hostility and gave him no light and no hope.

“I shall die!” Makar kept thinking.

His strength left him altogether. The saplings now beat him squarely in the face without the least shame, in derision at his helpless plight. As he crossed one little glade a white hare ran out, sat up on its hind legs, waved its long, black-tipped ears, and began to wash its face, making the rudest grimaces at Makar. It gave him to understand that it knew him well, knew him to be the same Makar who had devised cunning means of destruction for it in the forest; but now it was its turn to jeer.

Makar felt bitterly sad. The taiga grew more animated, but with a malign activity. Even the distant trees now threw their long branches across his way, snatched at his hair, and beat his face and eyes. The ptarmigans came out of their secret coverts and fixed their round, curious eyes upon him, and the wood-grouse ran in and out among them with drooping tails and angry, spreading wings, loudly telling their mates of him, Makar, and of his snares. Finally, a thousand fox-faces glanced from the distant thickets; they sniffed the air and looked derisively at him, pricking their sharp ears. Then the hares came and stood on their hind legs before him and shouted with laughter as they told of Makar’s misfortune.

That was too much.

“I shall die!” thought Makar, and he decided to do so as quickly as possible.

He lay down on the snow.

The cold increased. The last rays of the Aurora flickered faintly and stretched across the sky to peep at Makar through the tree-tops. The last echoes of the church bells came floating to him from far-away Chalgan.

The Northern Lights flared up and went out. The bells ceased ringing.

Makar died.

* * * * *

He did not notice how this came to pass. He knew that something should come out of him, and waited, thinking every moment it would come, but nothing appeared.

Nevertheless, he realised that he was now dead, and he therefore lay very still; he lay so long that he grew tired.

The night was dark when Makar felt someone push him with his foot. He turned his head and opened his eyes.

The larches were now standing meekly and quietly over him, as if ashamed of their former pranks. The shaggy spruces stretched out their long snow-covered arms and rocked themselves gently, gently, and the starry snowflakes settled softly through the air.

The kind, bright stars looked down through the branches from the dark blue sky, and seemed to be saying: “See, a poor man has died!”

Over Makar’s prostrate form and prodding him with his foot stood the old priest Ivan. His long cassock was white with snow; snow lay upon his fur hat, his shoulders, and his beard. Most surprising of all was the fact that this was the same Father Ivan who had died five years ago.

He had been a good priest. He had never pressed Makar for his tithes and had not even asked to be paid for the services of the church; Makar had always fixed the price of his own christenings and requiems, and he now remembered with confusion that it had sometimes been extremely low and that sometimes he had not even paid it at all. Father Ivan had never resented this, he had only required one thing: a bottle of vodka on every occasion. If Makar had no money, Father Ivan would send him for the bottle himself, and they would drink it together. The good priest always grew as drunk as a lord, but he fought neither fiercely nor often. Makar would see him home, and hand him over, helpless and defenseless, to the care of the Mother Priestess, his wife.

Yes, he had been a good priest, but his end had been bad.

One day, when there was no one else at home, the fuddled Father, who was lying alone on the bed, had taken it into his head to smoke. He got up and staggered toward the great, fiercely heated fireplace to light his pipe at the blaze. But he was too drunk, he swayed and fell into the fire. When his family returned, all that remained of the little Father were his feet.

Every one regretted good Father Ivan, but no doctor on earth could have saved him, as only his feet remained. So they buried the feet, and a new priest was appointed to fill the place of Father Ivan.

And now Ivan himself, sound and whole, was standing over Makar, prodding him with his foot.

“Get up, Makar, old man!” he was saying, “and let us be going.”

“Where must I go?” asked Makar with displeasure. He supposed that once dead he ought to lie still, and that there was no need for him now to be wandering about the forest, losing his way. If he had to do that, then why had he died?

“Let us go to the great Toyon.”[C]

“Why should I go to him?” Makar asked.

“He is going to judge you,” answered the priest in a sorrowful, compassionate voice.

Makar recollected that, in fact, one did have to appear at some judgment after one died. He had heard that at church. The priest was right after all; he would have to get up.

So Makar rose, muttering under his breath that they couldn’t even let a man alone after he was dead.

The priest walked before and Makar followed. They went always straight ahead, and the larches stood meekly aside and allowed them to pass; they were going eastward.

Makar noted with surprise that Father Ivan left no tracks in the snow behind him; he looked under his own feet and saw no tracks either; the snow lay as fresh and smooth as a table cloth.

How easy it would be now, he reflected, to rob other men’s traps, as no one could find him out! But the priest must have read his secret thought, for he turned and said: “Kabis! (stop that!). You don’t know what you will get for thoughts like that.”

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed the disgusted Makar. “Can’t I even think what I please? What makes you so strict these days? Hold your tongue!”

The priest shook his head and walked on.

“Have we far to go?” asked Makar.

“Yes, a long way,” answered the priest sadly.

“And what shall we have to eat?” Makar inquired with anxiety.

“You have forgotten that you are dead,” the priest answered turning toward him. “You won’t have to eat or drink now.”

Makar did not like that idea in the least. Of course it would be all right in case there were nothing to eat, but then one ought to lie still, as he did at first after his death. But to walk, and to walk a long way, and to eat nothing, that seemed to him to be absolutely outrageous. He began muttering again.

“Don’t grumble!”

“All right!” he answered in an injured voice and went on complaining and growling to himself about such a stupid arrangement.

“They make a man walk and yet he needn’t eat! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

He was extremely discontented as he followed the priest. And they walked a long way. Though Makar could not see the dawn, they seemed, by the distance they had covered, to have been walking a week. They had left so many ravines and hills behind them, so many rivers and lakes, so many forests and plains! Whenever Makar looked back, the dark taiga seemed to be running away behind them and the high, snowclad mountains seemed to be melting into the murky night and hiding swiftly behind the horizon.

They appeared to be climbing higher and higher. The stars grew larger and brighter; from the crest of the height to which they had risen they could see the rim of the setting moon. It seemed to have been in haste to escape, but Makar and the priest had overtaken it. Then it rose again over the horizon, and the travellers found themselves on a level, very high plain. It was light now, much lighter than early in the night, and this was due, of course, to the fact that they were much nearer the stars than they had been before. Each one of these, in size like an apple, glittered with ineffable brightness; the moon, as large as a huge barrel-head, blazed with the brilliance of the sun, lighting up the vast expanse from one edge to the other.

Every snowflake on the plain was sharply discernible, and countless paths stretched across it, all converging toward the same point in the east. Men of various aspects and in many different garbs were walking and riding along these roads.

Makar looked sharply at one horseman, and then suddenly turned off the road and pursued him.

“Stop! Stop!” cried the priest, but Makar did not even hear him. He had recognised a Tartar, an old acquaintance of his, who had stolen a piebald horse from him once, and who had died five years ago. There was that same Tartar now, riding along on the very same horse! The animal was skimming over the ground, clouds of snowy dust were rising from under its hoofs, glittering with the rainbow colours of twinkling stars. Makar was surprised that he should be able, on foot, to overtake the Tartar so easily in his mad gallop. Besides, when he perceived Makar a few steps behind him, he stopped with great readiness. Makar fell upon him with passion.

“Come to the sheriff with me!” he cried. “That is my horse; he has a split in his right ear. Look at the man, how smart he is, riding along on a stolen horse while the owner follows on foot like a beggar!”

“Gently,” said the Tartar. “No need to go for the sheriff! You say this is your horse, take him and be damned to the brute! This is the fifth year I have been riding him up and down on one and the same spot! Every foot-passenger overtakes me. It is humiliating for a good Tartar, it is indeed!”

He threw his leg over the saddle in act to alight, but at that moment the panting priest came running up and seized Makar by the arm.

“Unfortunate man!” he cried. “What are you about? Can’t you see that the Tartar is fooling you?”

“Of course he is fooling me!” shouted Makar waving his arms. “That was a lovely horse, a real gentleman’s horse; I was offered forty roubles for him before his third spring. Never you mind, brother! If you have spoilt that horse for me I shall cut him up for meat, and you shall pay me his full value in money! Do you think, because you are a Tartar, there are no laws for you?”

Makar was flying into a passion and shouting in order to draw a crowd about him, for he was afraid of Tartars from habit, but the priest broke in on his outburst.

“Gently, gently, Makar, you keep forgetting that you are dead! What do you want with a horse? Can’t you see that you travel much faster on foot than the Tartar does on horseback? Would you like to be forced to ride for a whole thousand years?”

Makar now understood why the Tartar had been so willing to give up his horse.

“They’re a crooked lot!” he thought, and he turned to the Tartar.

“Very well then,” he said. “Take the horse, brother; I forgive you!”

The Tartar angrily pulled his fur cap over his ears and lashed his horse. The pony galloped madly, and clouds of snow flew from under its hoofs, but long as Makar and the priest stood still, the Tartar did not budge an inch from their side.

He spat angrily and turned to Makar.

“Listen, friend, haven’t you a bit of mahorka with you? I do want to smoke so badly, and I finished all mine five years ago.”

“You’re a friend of dogs but no friend of mine,” retorted Makar in a rage. “You have stolen my horse and now you ask for mahorka! Confound you altogether, I’m not sorry for you one bit!”

With these words Makar moved on.

“You made a mistake not to give him a little mahorka,” said Father Ivan. “The Toyon would have forgiven you at least one hundred sins for that at the Judgment.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me that before?” snapped Makar.

“Ah, it is too late to teach you anything now. You should have learnt it from your priest while you were alive.”

Makar was furious. He saw no sense in priests who took their tithes and did not even teach a man when to give a leaf of mahorka to a Tartar in order to gain forgiveness for his sins. One hundred sins were no joke! And all for a leaf of tobacco! The mistake had cost him dear.

“Wait a moment!” he exclaimed. “One leaf will do very well for us two. Let me give the other four to the Tartar this minute, that will mean four hundred sins!”

“Look behind you,” answered the priest.

Makar looked round. The white, empty plain lay stretched out far behind them; the Tartar appeared for a second upon it, a tiny, distant dot. Makar thought he could distinguish the white cloud rising from under the hoofs of his piebald, but next moment the dot, too, had vanished.

“Well, well, the Tartar will manage all right without his mahorka. You see how he has ruined my horse, the scoundrel!”

“No, he has not ruined your horse,” answered the priest. “That horse was stolen. Have you not heard the old men say that a stolen horse will never go far?”

Makar had certainly heard this from the old men, but as he had often seen Tartars ride all the way to the city on horses that they had stolen, he had never put much belief in the saying. He now concluded that old men were sometimes right.

They now began to pass many other horsemen on the plain. All were hurrying along as fast as the first; the horses were flying like birds, the riders dripping with sweat, yet Makar and the priest kept overtaking them and leaving them behind.

Most of these horsemen were Tartars, but a few were natives of Chalgan; some of the latter were astride stolen oxen and were goading them on with lumps of ice.

Makar looked with hatred at the Tartars, and muttered every time he passed one that the fellow had deserved much worse than this, but when he met a peasant from Chalgan he would stop and chat amicably with him, as they were friends, after all, even if they were thieves! Sometimes he would even show his fellow-feeling by picking up a lump of ice and diligently beating the ox or horse from behind, but let him take so much as one step forward himself, and horse and rider would be left far in the rear, a scarcely visible dot.

The plain seemed to be boundless. Though Makar and his companion occasionally overtook these riders and pedestrians, the country around was deserted, and the travellers seemed to be separated by hundreds of thousands of miles.

Among others, Makar fell in with an old man unknown to him, who plainly hailed from Chalgan; this could be discerned from his face, his clothes, and even from his walk, but Makar could not remember ever having seen him before. The old man wore a ragged fur coat, a great shaggy hat, tattered and worn leather breeches, and still older calf-skin boots. Worst of all, he was carrying on his shoulders, in spite of his old age, a crone still more ancient than himself, whose feet trailed on the ground. The old man was wheezing and staggering along, leaning heavily on his stick. Makar felt sorry for him. He stopped and the old man stopped too.

“Kansi! (Speak!)” said Makar pleasantly.

“No,” answered the greybeard.

“What have you seen?”

“Nothing.”

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing.”

Makar was silent for a while, and then thought he might ask the old man who he was and whence he had crawled.

The old man told his name. Long since, he said--he did not know himself how many years ago--he had left Chalgan and gone up to the “mountain” to save himself. There he had done no work, had lived on roots and berries, and had neither ploughed nor sowed nor ground wheat nor paid taxes. When he died he went to the Judgment of the Toyon. The Toyon asked him who he was, and what he had done. He answered he had gone up on the “mountain” and had saved himself. “Very well,” the Toyon answered, “but where is your wife? Go and fetch her here.” So he went back for his old woman. But she had been forced to beg before she died, as there had been no one to support her, and she had had neither house, nor cow, nor bread. Her strength had failed, and now finally she was not able to move her legs. So he was obliged to carry her to the Toyon on his back.

As he said this, the old man burst into tears, but the old woman kicked him with her heels as if he had been an ox, and cried in a weak, cross voice:

“Go on!”

Makar felt more sorry than ever for the old man, and heartily thanked his stars that he had not succeeded in going to the “mountain” himself. His wife was large and lusty, and his burden would have been even heavier than that of the old man; if, in addition to this, she had begun to kick him as if he were an ox, he would certainly have died a second death.

He tried to hold the old woman’s feet out of pity for his friend, but he had scarcely taken three steps before he was forced to drop them hastily, or they would certainly have remained in his hands; another minute, and the old man and his burden were left far out of sight.