Part 2

Thus, swallowing the spittle of hunger, and endeavouring by friendly conversation to blunt the pangs of our stomachs, we went along the desolate and silent steppe--went along in the beautiful rays of the setting sun, full of a dull hope of something or other turning up. In front of us the setting sun was silently vanishing in the midst of soft clouds liberally embellished by his rays, and behind us and on both sides of us a dove-coloured mist, rising from the steppe into the sky, fixed unalterably the disagreeable horizon surrounding us.

"My brothers, let us collect materials for a camp fire," said the soldier, picking up from the road a chump of wood; "we shall have to make a night of it in the steppe, and the dew is about to fall ... cow-dung, twigs--take anything!"

We dispersed on the road in various directions, and began to collect dry grass and everything that could possibly burn. Every time we chanced to bend down towards the ground a passionate desire seized upon our whole body to lie down upon the earth--lie there immovably and eat the fat black stuff--eat a lot of it, eat till we could eat no more, and then fall asleep. Only to eat!--if we slept for evermore afterwards--to chew and chew and feel the thick warm mash flow gradually from our mouths along our dried-up gullet and food passages into our famished, extenuated stomachs, burning with the desire to suck up some sort of nutriment.

"If only we could find some root or other!" sighed the soldier; "there are roots you can eat, you know."

But in the black furrowed earth there were no roots. The southern night came on quickly, and the last ray of the sun had scarce disappeared when the stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky, and around us, more and more solidly, were gathering the dark shadows, and a smooth blankness engulfed the whole steppe.

"My brothers," said "the student," "yonder to the left a man is lying."

"A man?"--the soldier's tone was dubious--"what should he be lying there for?"

"Go and ask. He must certainly have bread with him if he lies down in the steppe," explained "the student."

The soldier looked in the direction where the man lay, and spitting with decision, said:

"Let us go to him!"

Only the keen, green eyes of "the student" could have made out that the dark patch rising up some fifty fathoms to the left of the road was a man. We went towards him, quickly stepping over the ploughed-up hummocks of earth, and we felt the hope of food new-born within us put a fresh edge upon our hunger. We were already quite close--the man did not move.

"Perhaps it is not a man at all!"--the soldier had put into words the thought common to us all.

But our doubts were resolved that selfsame instant, for the heap on the ground suddenly began to move, grew in size, and we saw that it was a real living man, now on his knees and stretching towards us an arm.

And he said to us in a hollow, tremulous voice:

"Another step--and I fire!"

A short and dry click resounded through the murky air.

We stopped short, as if at the word of command, and were silent for some seconds, dumfounded by such an unpleasant encounter.

"What a beast!" growled the soldier expressively.

"Well, I never!" said "the student," reflectively, "to go about with a revolver. A well-plucked one evidently!"

"Aye!" cried the soldier, "pretty resolute too."

The man never changed his pose, but remained silent.

"Hie, you there! We won't touch you ... Only give us some bread--got any, eh? Give us some, my brother, for Christ's sake--be anathema accursed one!"

The last words of the soldier, naturally, were muttered between his teeth.

The man was silent.

"Do you hear?" cried the soldier again, with a spasm of rage and despair. "Give us bread, we pray you! We won't go near to you--throw it to us!"

"All right!" said the man curtly.

He might have said "my dear brethren!" and if he had poured into these three Christian words the holiest and purest feelings they would not have excited us, they would not have humanized us so much, as did that short and hollow: "All right!"

"Do not be afraid of us, good man!" began the soldier softly, and with a sweet smile on his face, although the man could not have seen his smile, for he was at least twenty paces distant from us.

"We are peaceful folks ... we are going from Russia into the Kuban. We have lost our money on the road, we have eaten all our provisions, and this is now the second four and twenty hours that we haven't tasted a morsel...."

"Catch!" said the good man, flinging out his arm A black morsel flashed towards us and fell on a hummock not very far from us. "The student" fell upon it.

"Catch again!--again! There is no more!"

When "the student" had picked up this original gift it appeared that we had four pounds of stale wheaten bread. It had been buried in the earth and was very stale. The first piece barely arrested our attention, the second piece pleased us very much. Stale bread is more satisfying than fresh bread, there is less moisture in it.

"So--and so--and so!" said the soldier, concentrating all his attention on the division of the morsels. "Stay! That's fair, I think! A little corner ought to be nibbled off your piece, student, for his"--he meant mine--"is too little."

"The student," without a murmur, submitted to the subtraction from his portion of about an ounce in weight. I snatched it, and popped it into my mouth.

I began to chew it, chew it gradually, scarce able to control the convulsive movement of my jaws, ready to pulverize a stone. It afforded me a keen delight to feel the jerky throbs of my gullet, and to be able, by little and little, to gratify it with little rivulets of nutriment. Mouthful after mouthful, warm and inexplicably, indescribably tasty, penetrated at last to my burning stomach, and seemed instantly to turn into blood and muscle. Delight, such a strange, calm, and vivifying delight, warmed my heart proportionately to the filling of my stomach, and my general condition was similar to that of someone half asleep. I forgot all about those accursed days of chronic hunger, and I forgot about my comrades engulfed in the rapture of those very feelings which I myself had just experienced.

But when I had cast from my palm into my mouth the last crumb of bread, I felt a mortal desire for more.

"He must have about him--anathemas smite him!--some tallow or a bit of meat," cried the soldier, sitting down on the ground opposite to me and rubbing his belly with his hands.

"Certainly, for the bread has a smell of meat.... Yes, and he has more bread, I'll be bound," said "the student," and he added very quietly, "if only he hadn't a revolver!"

"Who is he, I wonder?"

"A hound!" said the soldier decidedly.

We sat together in a close group and cast sidelong glances in the direction where sat our benefactor with his revolver. Not a sound, not a sign of life now proceeded from that quarter.

Night had assembled her dark forces all around us. Mortally still it was in the steppe there--we could hear each other's breath. Now and then from somewhither resounded the melancholy whistle of the _suslik_[3].... The stars, the bright flowers of heaven, shone down upon us ... We wanted more to eat.

[3] The earless marmot of the steppe.

With pride I say it--I was neither better nor worse than my casual comrades on this somewhat strange night. I persuaded them to get up and go towards this man. We need not touch him, but we would eat everything we found upon him. He would fire--let him! Out of three of us only one could fall, even if one fell at all, and even if one of us did fall, a mere revolver bullet would scarcely be the death of him.

"Let us go," said the soldier, leaping to his feet.

"The student" rose to his feet more slowly than the soldier.

And we went, we almost ran. "The student" kept well behind us.

"Comrade!" cried the soldier reproachfully.

There met us a dull report and the sharp sound of a snapping trigger. There was a flash and the dry report of a firearm.

"It is over!" yelled the soldier joyfully, and with a single bound he was level with the man. "Now, you devil, I am going to have it out with you."

"The student" flung himself on the knapsack.

"The devil" fell from his knees on to his back, and stretching out his arms gave forth a choking sound.

"What the deuce!" cried the astonished soldier in the very act of raising his foot to give the man a kick. "What is he groaning for like that? Hie! Hie you! What's the matter? Have you shot yourself or what?"

"There's meat and some pancakes and bread--a whole lot, my brothers!"--and the voice of "the student" crowed with delight.

"But what the deuce ails him?--he is at the last gasp! Come then, let us eat, my friends!" cried the soldier. I had taken the revolver out of the hand of the man who had ceased to groan, and now lay motionless. There was only a single cartridge in the cartridge-box.

Again we ate--ate in silence. The man also lay there in silence, not moving a limb. We paid no attention to him whatever.

"My brothers, I suppose you have done all this simply for the sake of bread?" suddenly exclaimed a hoarse and tremulous voice.

We all started. "The student" even swallowed a crumb, and bending low towards the ground fell a coughing.

The soldier in the midst of his chewing became abusive.

"You soul of a dog! Take care I don't hack you like a clod of wood! Or would you prefer us to flay you alive, eh?--It was ours because we wanted it Shut your foolish mouth, you unclean spirit! A pretty thing!--To go about armed and fire at folks! May you be anathema!"

He cursed while he ate, and for that reason his cursing lost all its expression and force.

"Wait till we have eaten our fill and then we'll settle accounts with you," remarked "the student" viciously.

And then through the silence of the night resounded a wailing cry which frightened us.

"My brothers ... how could I tell? I fired because I was frightened. I am going from New Athos ... to the Government of Smolensk ... Oh, Lord! The fever has caught me ... it burns me up like the sun ... woe is me! Even when I left Athos the fever was upon me ... I was doing some carpenter's work ... I am a carpenter by trade ... At home is my wife and two little girls ... for three or four years I have not seen them ... my brothers ... you know all!"

"We are eating, don't bother," said "the student."

"Lord God! if only I had known that you were quiet peaceable folks ... do you think I would have fired? And here in the steppe too, at night, my brothers, you cannot say I am guilty, surely?"

He spoke and he wept, or to speak more accurately, he uttered a sort of tremulous terrified howl.

"He's a miser!" said the soldier contemptuously.

"He _must_ have money about him," observed "the student."

The soldier winked, looked at him, and smiled.

"How sharp you are ... I say, give us some of the firewood here, and we'll light up and go to sleep."

"And how about him?" inquired "the student."

"The deuce take him! He may roast himself with us if he likes--what?"

"He might follow us!" and "the student" shook his sharp head.

We went to fetch the materials we had collected, threw them down where the carpenter had brought us to a standstill with his threatening cry, set light to them, and soon were sitting round a bonfire. It burnt quietly in the windless night and lighted up the tiny space occupied by us. We ached to go to sleep, though for all that we should have liked a little more supper first.

"My brothers!" the carpenter called to us. He was lying three yards off, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was whispering something.

"Well!" said the soldier.

"May I come to you--to the fire? I am about to die ... all my bones are broken Oh, Lord! it is plain to me that I shall never live to get home."

"Crawl along then,"--it was "the student" who decided.

Very gradually, as if fearing to lose hand or foot, the carpenter moved along the ground towards the fire. He was a tall and frightfully wasted man, every part of him seemed to be quivering, and his large dim eyes expressed the pain that was consuming him. His shrivelled face was very bony, and had in the light of the fire a yellowish earthy cadaverous colour. He was still tremulous, and excited our contemptuous pity. Stretching his long thin hands towards the fire, he rubbed his bony fingers, and kneaded their joints slowly and wearily. At last it went against us to look at him.

"What do you cut such a figure for, and why do you go on foot?--to save expense, eh?" asked the soldier surlily.

"I was so advised ... don't go, said they, by water, but go by way of the Crimea, for the air, they said. And lo! I cannot go, I am dying, my brothers. I shall die alone in the steppe ... the birds will pick my bones and nobody will know about it ... My wife ... my little daughters will be waiting for me ... I wrote to them ... and my bones will be washed by the rains of the steppe ... Lord, Lord!"

He uttered the anguished howl of a wounded wolf.

"Oh, the devil!" cried the soldier, waxing wrath, and springing to his feet. "How you whine! Can't you leave folks in peace! You're dying, eh? Well, die then, and hold your tongue ... What use are you to anyone? Shut up!"

"Give him one on the chump!" suggested "the student."

"Lie down and sleep!" said I, "and if you want to be by the fire, don't howl, really, you know...."

"Now you have heard," said the soldier savagely, "pray understand. You fancy we shall pity you and pay attention to you because you flung bread to us and fired bullets at us, do you? You sour-faced devil you! Others would have... Ugh!"

The soldier ceased and stretched himself on the ground.

"The student" was already lying down I lay down too. The frightened carpenter huddled himself into a heap, and edging gradually towards the fire began to look at it in silence. I lay on his right, and heard how his teeth chattered. "The student" lay on his left, and appeared to have gone to sleep straight off after rolling himself into a ball. The soldier, placing his hands beneath his head, lay face upwards, and looked at the sky.

"What a night, eh?--what a lot of stars!--and warm, too!" said he, turning to me after a time. "What a sky--a bed-top, not a sky. Friend, I love this vagabond life. It is cold and hungry, but then it is as free as the air ... You have no superior over you ... you are the master of your own life ... Though you bite your own head off, nobody can say a word to you ... It is good ... I have been very hungry and very angry these last few days ... and now I am lying here as if nothing had happened and look at the sky ... The stars blink at me ... It is just as if they were saying: What matters it, Lakutin; go and know, and be subject to nobody on this earth ... There you are ... my heart is happy. And how is it with you, eh, carpenter? Don't be angry with me, and fear nothing. We ate up your food, I know, but it doesn't matter; you had food and we had none, so we ate up yours. And you are a savage fellow, you go about firing bullets. Are you not aware that bullets may do a man harm? I was very angry with you a little while ago, and if you had not fallen down I should have well trounced you, my brother, for your cheek. But as to the food--to-morrow you can go back to Perekop and buy some there ... you have money ... I know it ... How long is it since you caught the fever?"

For a long time the deep bass of the soldier and the tremulous voice of the sick carpenter hummed in my ears. The night was dark, almost black, obliterating everything here below, and a fresh sappy breeze streamed out of its bosom.

A uniform light and an enlivening warmth proceeded from the fire. One's eyes closed insensibly, and before them, as if seen through a vision, passed something soothing and purifying.

* * * * *

"Get up! awake! Let us go!"

I opened my eyes with a feeling of terror and quickly sprang to my feet, the soldier helping by pulling me violently from the ground by the arm.

"Come, look alive! March!"

His face was grim and anxious. I looked around me. The sun was rising, and his rosy rays already lay upon the immovable and dark blue face of the carpenter. His mouth was open, his eyes projected far out of their sockets, and stared with a glassy look expressive of horror. The clothes covering his bosom were all torn, and he lay in an unnatural, broken-up sort of pose. There was no sign of "the student."

"Well, have you looked your fill!... Come on, I say!" said the soldier excitedly, dragging at my sleeve.

"Is he dead?" I asked, shivering in the fresh morning air.

"Certainly. And he might have throttled _you_ ... and _you_ might have died," explained the soldier.

"He! Who? 'The Student'?" I exclaimed.

"Well, who else? It wasn't you, eh? And I suppose you won't say it was--me? Well, so much for your bookworms! He managed very cleverly with the man ... and has left his comrades in the lurch. Had I suspected it, I could have killed 'the student' yesterday evening. I could have killed him at a blow ... Smash with my fist on his forehead, and there would have been one blackguard the less in the world. See what he has done, and remember it! Now we must move on so that not a human eye may see us in the steppe. Do you understand? Recollect, we came upon the carpenter to-day, throttled and plundered. And we'll search for our brother ... find out in what direction he went, and where he passed the night. Well, suppose they seize us ... although we have nothing upon us ... except his revolver in my bosom!"

"Throw it away," I advised the soldier.

"Throw it away?" said he thoughtfully, "why it's a precious thing. And then, too, they may not seize us yet ... No, I'll not chuck it ... Who knows that the carpenter carried arms? I'll not chuck it ... It's worth three roubles ... And there's a bullet in it. How I should like to fire this selfsame bullet into the ear of our dear comrade! I wonder how much money he filched, the hound! May he be anathema!"

"And there are the carpenter's little daughters!" said I.

"Daughters? What?... Well, they'll grow up, and it's not for us to find them husbands; they don't concern us at all ... Let us go, my brother, quickly. Whither shall we go?"

"I don't know ... it's all one to me."

"And I don't know, and I know it is all one. Let us go to the right ... the sea must be there."

We went to the right.

I turned to look back. Far away from us in the steppe rose a dark little mound, and on it the sun was shining.

"Are you looking to see whether he will rise again? Don't be afraid, he won't rise up to pursue us. The scholar is evidently a chap up to a dodge or two, and dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has saddled us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my brother! Folks are degenerating! From year to year they degenerate more and more," observed the soldier sadly.

The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the bright morning sun, unfolded itself all around us, blending on the horizon with the sky, so bright and friendly and lavish of light, that any black and iniquitous deed seemed impossible in the midst of the grand spaciousness of that free expanse, covered by the blue cupola of heaven.

"Feel hungry, brother?" said the soldier, twisting himself a cigarette out of his _makharka._[4]

"Where are we going to-day, and how?"

"That's the question!"

* * * * *

Here the narrator--my next neighbour in the hospital hammock--broke off his story and said to me:

"That's all. I became very friendly with this soldier, and accompanied him all the way to the Kars District. He was a good and very experienced little fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, and then we lost sight of each other."

[4] Peasant's tobacco.

"Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?" I asked.

"As you see--or as you hear."

"And there was nothing more?"

He smiled.

"What ought my feelings to have been in such a case--do you mean that? I was not to blame foe what happened to him, just as you are not to blame for what has happened to me. And nobody is to blame for anything, for all of us alike are--beasts of the same kidney."

II.--TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER.[1]

[1] Written in 1899.

There were twenty-six of us--twenty-six living machines shut up in a damp cellar, where from morning to evening, we kneaded dough to make cakes and biscuits. The windows of our cellar looked upon a ditch yawning open before them and crammed full of bricks, green with damp; the window-frames were partly covered from the outside by an iron grating, and the light of the sun could not reach us through the window-panes covered with flour dust Our master had closed up the windows with iron in order that we might not give away a morsel of his bread to the poor, or to those of our comrades who were living without work, and therefore starving; our master called us galley-slaves, and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat.

It was a narrow, stuffy life we lived in that stone cage beneath the low and heavy rafters covered with soot and cobwebs. It was a grievous evil life we lived within those thick walls, plastered over with patches of dirt and mould.... We rose at five o'clock in the morning, without having had our sleep out, and--stupid and indifferent--at six o'clock we were sitting behind the table to make biscuits from dough already prepared for us by our comrades while we were still sleeping. And the whole day, from early morning to ten o'clock at night, some of us sat at the table kneading the yeasty dough and rocking to and fro so as not to get benumbed, while the others mixed the flour with water. And all day long, dreamily and wearily, the boiling water hummed in the cauldron where the biscuits were steamed, and the shovel of the baker rasped swiftly and evilly upon our ears from beneath the oven as often as it flung down baked bits of dough on the burning bricks. From morning to evening, in one corner of the stove, they burned wood, and the red reflection of the flames flickered on the wall of the workshop as if silently laughing at us. The huge stove was like the misshapen head of some fairy-tale monster--it seemed to stick out from under the ground, opening its wide throat full of bright fire, breathing hotly upon us, and regarding our endless labour with its two black vent-holes just over its forehead. Those two deep cavities were like eyes--the passionless and pitiless eyes of a monster; they always regarded us with one and the same sort of dark look, as if they were weary of looking at their slaves and, not expecting anything human from us, despised us with the cold contempt of worldly wisdom.