Part 5

But Natasha was talking all the time of something or other, talking so kindly and sympathetically, as only women can talk. Beneath the influence of her voice and kindly words a little fire began to burn up within me, and something inside my heart thawed in consequence.

Then tears poured from my eyes like a hailstorm, washing away from my heart much that was evil, much that was stupid, much sorrow and dirt which had fastened upon it before that night. Natasha, too, encouraged me:

"Come, come, that will do, little one! Don't take on! That'll do! God will give thee another chance ... thou wilt right thyself and stand in thy proper place again ... and it will be all right. And she kept kissing me ... many kisses did she give me ... burning kisses ... and all for nothing..."

Those were the first kisses from a woman that had ever been bestowed upon me, and they were the best kisses too, for all the subsequent kisses cost me frightfully dear, and really gave me nothing at all in exchange.

"Come, don't take on so, funny one! I'll manage for thee to-morrow if thou canst not find a place"--and her quiet persuasive whispering sounded in my ears as if it came through a dream....

There we lay till dawn....

And when the dawn came, we crept from behind the skiff and went into the town.... Then we took friendly leave of each other and never met again, although for half a year I searched for that kind Natasha, with whom I spent the autumn night just described by me, in every hole and corner If she be already dead--and well for her if it were so!--may she rest in peace! And if she be alive ... still I say: peace to her soul! And may the consciousness of her fall never enter her soul ... for that would be a superfluous and fruitless suffering if life is to be lived....

IV.--A ROLLING STONE.

I.

I MEET HIM.

Stumbling in the dark upon the hurdle fence I valiantly strided over puddles of mud from window to window, tapped, not very loudly, on the window-panes with my fingers, and cried:

"Give a traveller a night's lodging!"

In reply they sent me to the neighbours or to the Devil; from one window they promised to let the dog loose upon me, from another they threatened me silently but eloquently with their fists--and big fists too. A woman screamed at me.

"Go away, be off while you are still whole! My husband is at home."

I understood her: she only took in lodgers during the absence of her husband.... Regretting that he was at home I went on to the next window.

"Good people, give a traveller a night's lodging!"

They answered me politely:

"In God's name go--further on!"

The weather was wretched--a fine, cold rain was falling, and the muddy earth was thickly enveloped in darkness. From time to time a gust of wind blew from some quarter or other; it moaned softly in the branches of the trees, rustled the wet straw on the roofs, and gave birth to many other cheerless noises, breaking in upon the gloomy silence of the night with its miserable music of sighs and groans: Listening to this dolorous prelude to the grim poem which they call Autumn, the people under the roofs were no doubt in a bad humour, and therefore would not give me a night's lodging. For a long time I had fought against this resolution of theirs, they as doggedly opposed me and, at last, had annihilated my hopes of a night's lodging beneath any roof whatsoever. So I left the village and went forth into the fields, thinking that there, perhaps, I might find a haycock or a rick of straw ... though naught but chance could direct me to them in this thick and heavy darkness.

But lo and behold! I saw, three paces in front of me, something big rising up--something even darker than the darkness. I went thither, and discovered that it was a corn magazine. Corn magazines, you know, are built not right upon the earth but upon piles or stones; between the floor of the magazine and the ground is a space where an ordinary man can easily settle down ... all he has to do is to lie upon his belly and wriggle into it.

Clearly, Destiny desired that I should pass that night not only under a roof but under a floor. Content therewith, I wriggled along the dry ground, feeling with my breast and sides for a somewhat more level place for my night's lodging. And suddenly in the darkness resounded a calmly-anticipatory voice:

"A little more to the left, if you please!"

This was not alarming, but unexpected it certainly was.

"Who's there?" I inquired.

"A man ... with a stick...."

"I have a stick too."

"And matches?"

"Yes, I have matches also."

"That's good."

I didn't see anything at all good in this, for, according to my view of the matter, it would only have been good if I had had bread and tobacco and not merely matches.

"I suppose they wouldn't let you have a night's lodging in the village?" inquired the invisible voice.

"No, they wouldn't," I said.

"Me also they would not admit."

This was clear--if only he _had_ asked for a night's lodging. But he might _not_ have asked, he might simply have crept in here to await a favourable opportunity for executing some sort of risky operation absolutely desiderating the protection of the night. Every sort of labour is praiseworthy, I know, but for all that I resolved to clutch my stick firmly.

"They wouldn't let me in, the Devils!" resumed the voice. "Blockheads! In fine weather they let you in, while in weather like this ... may they howl for it!"

"And whither are you going?" I asked.

"To ... Nikolaiev. And you?"

I told him.

"Fellow-travellers that means. And now strike a match. I'm going to smoke."

The matches had got damp>--impatiently, it took me a long time, I struck them against the boards above my head. At last a tiny little light spluttered forth, and from out of the darkness stared a pale face with a thick black beard.

The big, sensible eyes looked at me with a smile, presently some white teeth gleamed from beneath the moustaches, and the man said to me: "Like a smoke?"

The match burnt out. We lit another, and by the light of it we stared once more at each other, after which my fellow lodger observed confidentially:

"Well, it seems to me we shan't clash ... take a cigarette."

Another cigarette was between his teeth and, brightening as he smoked it, illuminated his face with a faint reddish glimmer. Around his eyes and on the forehead of this man was a lot of deep and finely furrowed wrinkles. Earlier, by the light of the same match, I had observed that he was dressed in the remains of an old wadding paletot, girded with a piece of string, and on his feet were shoes made of a whole piece of leather--_porshni_ as we call them on the Don.

"A pilgrim?" I asked.

"Yes, I go on foot. And you?"

"Likewise."

He moved slightly, and there was a sort of metallic clank--evidently a kettle or tea-pot, that indispensable accessory of the pilgrim to holy places; but in his tone there was not a trace of that foxy unction which always betrays the pilgrim; in _his_ tone there was nothing of the pilgrim's obligatory thievish oiliness, and, so far, his words were unaccompanied by any pious groans or quotations from "the Scriptures." In general he did not at all resemble the professional loafers at the holy places--that shoddy and endless variety of "Russian Vagabondage," whose lies and superstitions have such an effect upon the spiritually-hungry and starving rural population. Besides, he was going to Nikolaiev, where there were neither shrines nor relics....

"And where are you coming from?" I inquired.

"From Astrakhan."

Now in Astrakhan also there are no relics. Then I asked him:

"Doesn't that mean you are going from sea to sea and not to the holy places at all?"

"Nay, but I go to the holy places too. Why should I not go to the holy places? I go with pleasure ... they always feed you well there ... especially if you get intimate with the monks. Our brother Isaac[1] is much respected by them, because he makes life a little less monotonous for them. What are your views on the subject?"

I explained.

"They are feeding-places," he admitted "And whither then do you go? Aha! you find the way is long, eh? Strike a match and we'll smoke a little more. When one smokes one grows a little warmer."

It really was cold, not only because of the wind, which impudently blew right in upon us, but because of our wet clothes.

"Perhaps you'd like something to eat? I have bread, potatoes, and two roasted ravens ... have some?"

"Ravens?" I inquired inquisitively.

"Never tasted them? They're not bad...."

He chucked me a large piece of bread.

I didn't try the raven.

"Come, try them! In the autumn they're capital. And after all it is much more pleasant to eat raven angled for by your own hands than bread or fat given to you by the hand of a neighbour out of the window of his house, which, after you have accepted it as an alms, you always want to burn."

His remarks were reasonable--reasonable and interesting. The use of raven as an article of food was new to me but did not cause me any surprise I knew that in winter at Odessa "the lower orders" eat rats, and at Rostov--slugs. There was nothing improbable in it Even the Parisians, when in a state of siege, were glad to eat all sorts of rubbish, and there are people who all their life long live in a state of siege.

[1] Himself.

"And how do you catch your ravens?" my desire for information led me to ask.

"Not with your mouth, anyhow. You can knock them down with a stick or a stone, but the surest way is to fish for them! You must tie a piece of fat meat or a bit of bread at the end of a long piece of cord. The raven seizes it, gulps it down, and you haul him in. Then you twist his neck, pluck him, draw him, and, fastening him on to a stick, roast him over a fire."

"Ah! it would be nice to be sitting by a fire now," I sighed.

The cold had become more sensible. It seemed as if the very wind were freezing, it beat against the walls of the magazine with such a painful tremulous whine. Sometimes it was wafted to us along with the howl of some dog, the crowing of a cock, and the melancholy sound of the bell of the village church, hidden in the darkness. Drops of rain fell heavily from the roof of the magazine on to the wet earth.

"'Tis dull to be silent," observed my fellow night-lodger.

"It's rather cold ... to talk," I said.

"Put your tongue in your pocket ... it will warm it up."

"Thanks for the hint!"

"We will go together, eh? When we take the road I mean...?"

"All right!"

"Let us introduce ourselves then ... I, for instance, am Pavel Ignat'ev Promtov, Esq."

I introduced myself likewise.

"That's right, now we know where we are! And now I'll ask you how you came to fall into these paths. Was it through a weakness for vodka, eh?"

"It was from disgust of life."

"That's possible, too. Do you know that publication of the Senate, entitled: Judicial Investigations?"

"Yes."

"Is your name also printed there?"

At that time I had had nothing printed about me, and so I told him.

"I also am not in print."

"But have you done anything?"

"Everything is in God's hands."

"But you are a merry fellow, apparently?"

"What's the good of grizzling?"

"Not everyone in your situation would talk like that..." I doubted the sincerity of his words.

"The situation ... is damp and cold, but then you see it will be quite different at dawn of day. The sun will come out, and then we shall creep out of this, have some tea, eat and drink, and warm ourselves. That won't be bad, eh?"

"Very good!" I admitted.

"So there, you see, every evil has its good side."

"And every good thing its evil side."

"Amen!" exclaimed Promtov with the voice of a deacon.

God knows he was a merry comrade enough. I regretted that I could not see his face, which, judging from the rich intonation of his voice, must have shown a very expressive play of feature. We talked about trifles for a long time, concealing from each other our mutual desire to be more closely acquainted, and I was inwardly lost in admiration at the dexterity with which he inveigled me into blabbing about myself while he kept his own counsel.

While we were quietly conversing the rain ceased, and the darkness began to melt away; already in the East a rosy strip of dawn was glowing with a vivid radiance. Simultaneously with the dawn the freshness of morning made itself felt--that freshness which is so stimulatingly pleasant when it meets a man dressed in warm and dry clothes.

"I wonder if we could find anything here for a fire--dry twigs for instance?" inquired Promtov.

Crawling on the floor we searched and searched, but could find nothing. Then we decided to drag out one of the boards not very firmly fixed in its place. We pulled it out and converted it into firewood. After that Promtov proposed that we should, if possible, bore a hole in the floor of the magazine in order to get some rye grain--for if rye grain is boiled it makes a very good dish. I protested, observing that it was not proper--for thereby we should waste some hundred-weights of grain for the sake of a pound or two.

"And what business is that of yours?" asked Promtov.

"I have heard that one must respect the property of others."

"That, my dear boy, is only necessary when the property is your own ... and it is only necessary then because your property is not other people's property...."

I was silent, but I reflected that this man must have extremely liberal views with regard to property, and that the pleasure of his acquaintance might, conceivably, have its drawbacks.

Soon the sun appeared, bright and cheerful. Blue patches of sky looked out from the broken clouds which were sailing slowly and wearily towards the north. Drops of rain were sparkling everywhere. Promtov and I crept out of the magazine and entered the fields, amidst the bristles of the mown corn, towards the green crooked ribbon of a village far away from us.

"There's a stream," said my acquaintance.

I looked at him, and thought that he must be about forty, and that life was no joke for him. His dark blue eyes, deeply sunken in their orbits, glistened calmly and confidently, and whenever he screwed them up a bit his face assumed a cunning and cruel expression. In his steady and combative gait, in the leather knapsack adroitly slung across his back, in his whole figure there could be detected the passion for a vagabond life, lupine experience and vulpine craft.

"We'll go along together, then," said he; "straight across the stream, five miles off, is the village of Mauzhelyeya, and from thence the straight road to New Prague. Around this little place live Stundists, Baptists, and other mystical muzhiks.... They'll feed us finely if we set about amusing them properly. But not a word about the Scriptures with them. They are at home, as it were, in the Scriptures...."

We chose us a place not far from a group of poplars, selected some stones, numbers of which had been cast upon the shore by the little stream, all turbid with the rain, and on the stones laid our fire. Two versts away from us, on rising ground, stood the village, and on the straw of its roofs shone the rosy glow of dawn. The walls of the white huts were hidden by the sharp pyramids of the poplars coloured by the tints of autumn and the rising sun. The poplars were enveloped by the grey smoke from the chimneys, which darkened the orange and purple hues of the foliage and the patches of fresh blue sky between it.

"I'm going to bathe," observed Promtov; "that is indispensable after so wretched a night. I advise you to do the same. And while we are refreshing ourselves the tea can be boiling. You know we ought to see to it that our nature should always be clean and fresh."

So saying he began to undress. His body was the body of a gentleman, beautifully shaped, with well-developed muscles. And when I saw him--naked, his dirty rags, which he had cast from him, seemed to me doubly filthy and disgusting--they had never seemed so bad till then. After ducking in the bubbling water of the stream we leaped upon the shore all tremulous and blue with cold, and hastily put on our clothes, which had been warming by the fire. Then we sat down by the fire to drink our tea.

Promtov had an iron pipkin, he poured scalding tea into it, and handed it to me first. But the Devil, who is always ready to mock a man, seized me by one of the lying chords of my heart, and I observed magnanimously:

"Thank you, you drink first, I'll wait."

I said this with the firm conviction that Promtov would infallibly vie with me in affability and politeness if I thus offered to surrender to him the first drink of tea, but he simply said: "Very well, then!" --and put the pipkin to his mouth.

I turned aside and began to gaze steadily at the desolate steppe, wishing to convince Promtov that I did not see how venomously his dark eyes were laughing at me. And he, while he sipped his tea, chewed his bread deliberately, smacked his lips with gusto, and did it all with a deliberation that was torture to me. My vitals were already shivering with cold, and I was ready to pour the boiling water in the kettle down my throat.

"Well," laughed Promtov, "it's not very profitable to do the polite, is it now?"

"Alas, no!" I said,

"Well, that's all right! You'll learn to know better in time.... Why yield to another what is profitable or pleasant to yourself?--that's what I say. They say all men are brethren, yet nobody has ever attempted to prove it by any system of measurement...."

"Is that really your opinion?"

"And why pray shouldn't I speak as I think?"

"Well, you know that a man always tries to brag a little bit whatever he may be..."

"I know not why I should have inspired you with such a distrust of me," and this wolf shrugged his shoulders--"I suppose it is because I gave you some bread and tea? I did this not from any brotherly feeling, but out of curiosity. I see a man not in his proper place and I want to know how and by what means he was chucked out of life...."

"And I, too, wanted to know the same thing. Tell me who and what you are?" I asked.

He looked searchingly at me and said, after a moment's silence: "A man never knows exactly who he is. One must be always asking him what he takes himself for."

"Weill, take it like that."

"Well ... I think I am a man who has no room in life. Life is narrow and I--am broad. Possibly this may not be true. But in this world there is a peculiar sort of people who must be descendants of the Wandering Jew. Their peculiarity is that they can never find a place for themselves in the world to which they can stick fast. Inside them lives an unruly aching desire for something new. The small fry of this order of men are never able to work things out to their liking, and for that reason are always discontented and unhappy, while the big fish are never satisfied with anything--whether it be women, money, or honour. Such people are not beloved in this life--they are audacious and unendurable. You see, the majority of people are sixpences in current coin, and all the difference between them is the date when they were struck off. This one is worn out, that one is quite new; but their value is the same, their substance is of the same sort, and in every respect they are absolutely similar. Now I am not of these sixpences ... although perhaps I may be a half-sovereign.... That is all."

He said all this smiling sceptically, and it seemed to me that he did not believe himself. But he excited in me an eager curiosity, and I resolved to go with him till I discovered who he was. It was plain that he was a so-called "intelligent person." There are many of them among the vagabonds, but they are all--dead people, people who have lost all self-respect, who lack the capacity of esteeming themselves, and only manage to live by falling lower every day into filth and nastiness; finally, they dissolve in it and disappear from life.

But there was something substantial and durable about Promtov. And he did not grumble at life as all the others do.

"Well, shall we go on?" he proposed.

"By all means."

We rose from the ground warmed by tea and sunshine, and descended the bank to the current of the stream.

"And how do you manage to get food?" I asked Promtov ... "do you work?"

"Wo-o-rk? No, I am no great lover of that."

"But how then do you manage?"

"You shall see."

He was silent. Presently, after walking a few steps, he began whistling through his teeth some merry song. His eyes keenly and confidently swept the steppe, and he walked firmly like a man sure of his object.

I looked at him, and the desire to know with whom I had to deal burnt still more strongly within me.

The steppe surrounded us, desolate and quiet; above us shone the friendly sun of the south; we breathed with all our lungs the pure stimulating air, and went along in the direction where fragments of clouds jostled one another in a chaos of shapes and colours.

When we came to the street of the village--a little dog from somewhere or other bounded under our very feet, and barking loudly began to turn round and round us. Every time we looked at her, she bounded to one side, like a ball, with a terrified yelp, and again fell upon us barking furiously. Some of her friends then ran out, but they did not distinguish themselves by equal zeal, for after giving a bark or two they retired to some hiding-place. Their indifference seemed, however, to excite still more our little reddish doggie.

"Do you see what a mean nature that dog has?" observed Promtov, shaking his head at the zealous little dog. "And it is all lies too. She knows very well that barking is not necessary here, and she is not spiteful--she is a coward, and only wants to show off before her master. The little devil is purely human, and without doubt she has been educated into it.... People spoil their beasts. The time will soon come when beasts will be as abject and insincere as you and me...."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't mention it. However, now I must take aim."

His expressive countenance now put on a pitiful mien, his eyes grew foolish, he became all bent and crooked, and his rags stood up straight like the fins of a chub.

"We must turn to our neighbour and ask for bread," he said by way of explaining to me his transformation, and he began to look keenly at the windows of the cottages. At the window of one of the cottages stood a woman suckling a child. Promtov did obeisance to her, and said in a supplicating tone:

"My sister, give bread to pilgrim folk!"

"Be not angry!" replied the woman, measuring us with suspicious eyes.

"May your breasts grow dry, then, daughter of a dog!" was the valediction my fellow-traveller sourly threw her.

The woman screamed like one who has been stung, and rushed out to us.

"Oh, you, you...." she began.

Promtov, without moving from the spot, looked her straight in the face with his black eyes, and their expression was savage and malevolent.... The woman grew pale, trembled, and murmuring something, quickly entered the hut.

"Let us go," I proposed to Promtov.

"No, we'll wait till she brings out the bread."

"She'll bring out the men upon us with pitchforks."

"A lot you know!" observed this wolf with a sceptical smile.

He was right. The woman appeared before us, holding in her hands half a loaf of bread and a solid bit of fat. Bowing low and silently to Promtov, she said to him with the tone of a suppliant:

"Pray take it, oh, man of God! be not angry!"

"God deliver thee from the evil eye, from sorcery, and from the ague!" was the unctuous farewell with which Promtov parted from her, and so we went on our way.

"Listen now!" said I, when we were already a good way from the cottage, "what an odd way of begging alms you have--to say no more."