Chapter 7

Bitska in a bowler-hat, red-faced, with thin whiskers such as are worn by the Letts, looked gravely round:

"You have not slept, Robert Edouardovitch?" asked Agrenev.

"No, I have not, and I am not in a good humour either." The man was silent a moment, then burst out; "Now I am forty years, and my vife she is eighteen. I am in vants of an earnest housekeeper. But my vife, she is always jesting and dragging me by the--how do you call it--the beard! And laughing and larking...." His little narrow eyes wrinkled up into a wry smile: "Ah, the larking vench!"

THE WOLF'S RAVINE

In childhood, as a small lad, Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev had heard from listening to his mother's conversation how--lo and behold! one morning at 9 o'clock Nina Kallistratovna Zamotkina had proceeded with her daughter to Doctor Chasovnikov's flat, in order to deliver a slap in the face to his wife for having broken up the family hearth by a liaison with Paul Alexander Zamotkin, Nina Kallistratovna's husband.

The child Agrenev had vividly pictured to himself how Nina Kallistratovna had walked, holding her daughter with one hand, an attaché-case in the other: of course her bearing must have been singular, as she was going to the flat to administer a slap in the face; no doubt she had walked either in a squatting or a bandy-legged fashion. The family hearth must have been something extremely valuable, as she was going to deliver a slap in the face on its account--perhaps it was some kind of stove.

It was highly interesting--in the child's imagination--to picture Nina Kallistratovna entering the flat, swinging back her arm, and delivering the slap: her gait, her arms, the flat--all had a sudden hidden and exceedingly curious meaning for the child.

This had remained out of his childhood memories of the little town and province, where all had seemed unusual as childhood itself.

Now in the Wolf's Ravine Agrenev recalled this incident, and he brooded bitterly over the certainty that no one would ever deliver a slap in the face on his account! What vulgarity--slaps in the face!... and a slap in the face was no solution.

It was now autumn, and as he stood in the ravine waiting for Olya, the cranes flew low over his head, stretching themselves out like arrows and crying discordantly. A wintry sulphurous light overspread the eastern sky, and the blue crest of the Vega shone out above him tremendous and triumphant, sweeping up into the very heart of the flaming sunset.

On a sudden, Olya arrived, her figure darkly silhouetted an instant-- a tiny insignificant atom--against the vastness of the hill and sky as she stood poised on the brink of the ravine; then she clambered down its precipitous side to Agrenev.

Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, mining engineer and married man, and Olya Andreevna Golovkina!

* * * * * * *

She was a school teacher, who, after passing through the eight classes of her college, now resided with her aunt. She was always known as Olya Golovkina, although she bore the ancient Russian surname made famous in the time of Peter the Great by Senator Golovkin. But even in the time of Peter the Great this name had sunk into the gutter and had left in this town a street Golovkinskaya, and in that same Golovkinskaya Street a house, by the letting of which Olya's aunt made her living.

Agrenev knew that the aunt--whose name he had never heard--was an old maid, and that she had one joy--Olya. He knew she sat at her window without a lamp throughout the evenings, waiting for Olya; and that for this reason her niece, on leaving him, went round by the back- way, in order to obviate suspicion.

Nothing was ever said of the aunt in a personal way; the name was uttered only indirectly, as though applying to a substance and not to a human being.

Olya was a very charming girl, of whom it was difficult to say anything definite: such a pretty provincial maid, like a slender willow-reed.

The town lay over hillocks and fields and the ancient quarries, all its energies flowing out from the factory at the further end--and a casual conversation which occured in the spring at the beginning of Agrenev's acquaintance with Olya was characteristic alike of the town and of her. Agrenev had said apropos of something:

"Balmont, Blok, Brusov, Sologub..."

She interrupted him hastily--a slender little reed: "As a whole I know little of foreign writers ..."

In the town--neither in the high-school, the library, nor the newspapers--did they know of Balmont or Blok, but Olya loved to declaim by rote from Kozlov, and she spoke French.

The factory lived its dark, noisy, unwholesome life sunk in poverty beneath the surface, steeped in luxury above; the little town lived amid the fields, scared and pressed down by the factory, but still carrying on its own individual life.

Beyond it, on the side away from the factory, lay the pass called the Wolf's Ravine. On the right, close to the river, was a grove where couples walked. They never descended to the ravine, because it was so unpoetic, a treeless, shallow, dull, unterrifying spot. Yet it skirted the hills, dominated the surrounding country; and people lying flat in the channel at its summit could survey the locality for a mile round without being seen themselves.

Alexander Alexandrovitch was a married man. The shepherd lads tending their herds at pasture began to notice how every evening a man on a bicycle turned off the main road into the ravine, and how--soon after--a girl hurried past them following in his steps, like a reed blown in the wind. As befitted their kind, the shepherds cried out every abomination after her.

All the summer Olya had begged Agrenev to bring her books to read; she did not notice, however, that he had never once brought her any!

Then one evening, early in September, after a spell of rain which had prevented their meeting for some days, there happened that which was bound to happen--which happens to a maiden only once in her life. They used always to meet at eight, but eight in September was not like eight in June. The rain was over, but a chill, desolating, autumnal wind remained. The sky was laden with heavy, leaden clouds; it was cold and wretched. That evening the cranes flew southward, gabbling in the sky. The grass in the ravine was yellow and withered. There was sunshine there in the daytime, and Olya wore a white dress. It was there the two of them, Agrenev and Olya, usually bade each other adieu.

But on that evening, Agrenev accompanied Olya to her home, and both were absorbed by the same thought--the aunt! Was she sitting by the window without a lamp waiting for her niece, or had she already lighted it in order to prepare the supper? Olya hoped desperately that her aunt would be in her usual place and the lamp unlit, so that she could slip by into her room unseen and secretly change her clothes.

Not only did Olya and Alexander Alexandrovitch walk arm-in-arm but they pressed close together, their heads bent the one to the other-- whispering ... only of the aunt. Olya could not think of the pain or the joy or the suffering--she was only thinking how she could pass her aunt unnoticed; Agrenev felt cold and sickened at the thought of a possible scandal.

They discovered there was a light at the aunt's window, and Olya began to tremble like a reed, whispering hoarsely--almost crying:

"I won't go in! I won't go in!"

But all the same she did--a willow-reed blown in the wind. Agrenev arranged to meet her the next day in the factory office, so that he might hear whether the aunt had created a scene or not, although he did not admit that reason, even to himself.

In the ravine when Olya--after yielding all--wept and clung to his knees, Agrenev's heart had been pierced with pangs of remorse. In the pitchblack darkness overhead the wild-geese could be heard rustling their wings as they flew southward, scared by his cigarette--the tenth in succession.

"Southward, geese, southward!... But you shall go nowhere, slave, useless among the useless!" Then he remembered that slap in the face Nina Kallistratovna had given for her husband--nobody would give Olya Golovkina one for him! "Olya is a useless accidental burden," he thought.

Then Agrenev dismissed her from his mind; and, as he bicycled from Golovkinskaya Street through the whole length of the town, past the factory to the engineers' quarters--there was no need to hide now it was dark--he thought only of Olya's aunt: of how she was an old maid with nothing else in her life but her niece, and that Olya was hiding her tragedy from her; of how she spent the entire evenings sitting alone by the window in the dark--assuredly not on Olya's account, but because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life! What tragedy lay in those evenings by the window in the darkness!

Every morning the housemaid used to bring Alexander Alexandrovitch in his study a cup of lukewarm coffee on a tray. Then he went out to the factory--the rest of the household was still asleep. There he came into contact with the workmen, and saw their hopeless, wretched, impoverished lives; listened to Bitska's jests, and to the rumbling of the wagonettes--identified himself with the life of the factory, which dominated all like some fabulous brooding monster.

During the luncheon interval he went home, washed himself, and listened to his wife rattling spoons on the other side of the wall. And this made up the entire substance of his life! Yes, it was certainly interesting how Nina Kallistratovna had entered that flat, swung back her hand--which hand had it been?--was it the one in which she held the attaché-case or was that transferred to the other hand first?--and delivered the smack to Madame Chasovnikova. Then there was Olya, darling Olya Golovkina, from whom--as from them all--he desired nothing.

That night, when he reached home at last, his daughter came in and made him a curtsey, saying:

"Goodnight, daddy."

Alexander Alexandrovitch caught her in his arms, placed her on his knees--his beloved, his only little daughter.

"Well, little Asya, what have you been doing?" he asked.

"When you went out to Olya Golovkina Mummy and I played tig."

The next morning, when Olya came into the office for business as usual, she exclaimed joyfully:

"My aunt has not found out anything. She opened the door for me without lighting the lamp, and as she groped through the passage I ran quickly past her. Then I changed my clothes and appeared at supper as though nothing had happened!"

A willow-reed blown by the wind!

In the office were many telephone calls and the rattling of counting- boards. Agrenev and Olya sat together and arranged when to meet again. She did not want to go to the Ravine because of the shepherd boys' rude remarks. Alexander Alexandrovitch did not tell her all was known at home. As she said goodby she clung to him like a reed in the wind and whispered:

"I have been awake all night. You have noticed surely that I have not called you by any name; I have no name for you."

And she begged him not to forget to bring her some books.

All that was known of the town was that it lay at the intersection of such and such a latitude and longitude. But articles on the factory were printed each year in the industrial magazines, and also occasionally in the newspapers, as when the workmen struck or were buried under a fall of limestone. The factory was run by a limited company. Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev made out the returns for his department; these were duly printed--not to be read, but so that beneath them might appear the signature: "A. A. Agrenev, Engineer." Olya only kept a report-book and the name-rolls, placing in her reports so many marks opposite the pupil's names.

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Mammy rose in the morning just as usual during those interminable months. I was accustomed to calling Alexander Alexandrovitch's mother "mammy." She always wore a dark dress and carried a large white handkerchief which she continually raised to her lips. It was bright and cheerful in the dining-room. The tea-service stood on the table and the samovar was boiling. The room always made me feel that we were going away--into the country, for all the pictures had been taken down, and a mirror that had been casually hung on the walls was now shrouded in a linen sheet. I generally rise very early, say my prayers, and immediately look at the newspapers. Formerly I scarcely even thought of them and was quite indifferent to their contents; now I cannot even imagine life without them! By the time my morning cup of tea is brought, I have already read all the news of the world, and I tell it to Mammy, who cannot read the papers herself.

She has the room Alexander Alexandrovitch formerly occupied; she is tall, always dresses in black, and there is a certain severity about her general demeanour. This is quite natural. She invariably makes the sign of the Cross over me, kisses me on the forehead and lips, and then--as ever--turns quickly away, bringing her handkerchief to her lips. I know, though, what it is that distresses her--it is that Georgie is killed, and Alexander Alexandrovitch is still "Out there" . . . and that I, Anna, alone am left to her of her family.

We are always silent at tea: we generally are at all times. She asks only a single question:

"What is in the newspapers?"

She always utters it in a hoarse voice, and very excitedly and clumsily I tell her all I know. After breakfast I walk about outside the window looking at the old factory and awaiting the postman's arrival.

Thus I pass my days one by one, watching for the post, for the newspapers, enduring the mother's grief--and my own. And whenever I wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and wearing a white bandage. I offered him tea, but he would not take it; pushing aside the mug and gripping my hand he said:

"Do you know what war is? Don't laugh! bayonets ... do you understand?"--his voice rose in a shriek--"... into bayonets ... that is, to cut, to kill, to slaughter one another--men! They turned the machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and, losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer, he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way, and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!' But you cannot understand.... Do not laugh!"

He told me this, now whispering, now shrieking. He told me that I could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those words express all the terror of war for me--Georgie's death, Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has brought: they express it with such force that my temples ache with an almost physical sense of anguish,

"Towny, bayonet me!" How simple, how superhuman!

I remember those words every day, especially when in the hall waiting for the post. Alexander writes seldom and his letters are very dry, merely telling me that he is well, that either there are no dangers or that they have passed; he writes to us all at the same time, to mother, to Asya, and to me.

It was like that to-day. I was waiting for the postman. He came and brought several letters, one of them from Alexander. I did not open it at once, but waited for Mother.

This is what he wrote:

"Darling Anna,

Yesterday and to-day (a Censor's erasure) I feel depressed and think of you, only of you. When things are quiet and there is little doing many a fine thing passes unobserved; I allude to the flowers, of which I am sending you specimens. They grow quite close to the trench, but it is difficult and dangerous to get them, as one may easily be killed. I have seen such flowers before, but am ignorant of their name."

"Goodbye. My love. Forgive the 'army style'; this letter is for you alone."

The letter contained two of those little blue violets which spring up directly the snow has melted.

I handed the letter, as always, to his mother that she might read it too; her lips began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears as she read, but in the midst of her tears she laughed. And we both of us, I the young woman, and Mammy the old mother, laughed and cried simultaneously, tightly clasped in each other's arms. I had pictured the War hitherto in the words: "Towny, bayonet me!". And now Alexander had sent me from it--violets! Two violets that are still unfaded.

I had noticed before the phenomenon of the four seasons suddenly bursting, as it were, upon the human consciousness. I remember that happening to me in my childhood when on holiday in the country. The summer was still in full swing, everything seemed just as usual, when suddenly one morning, in a most ordinary gust of wind, the red-vine leaves, then some three weeks old, were blown into my eyes, and all at once I realized that it was autumn. My mood changed on the instant, and I prepared to go home, back to town.

How many years is it since I have seen the autumn, winter, or spring-- since I felt their magic? But to-day, after a long-past summer, I have all at once felt the call of the spring. Only to-day I have noticed that our windows are tightly closed, that I am wearing a dark costume, that it is already May, and that bluebells are blossoming in the fields. I had forgotten that I was young. I remembered it to-day.

And I know further that I have faith, that I have love--love of Georgie and Alexander. I know too, although there is so much terror, so much that is foolish and ugly, there is still youth, love, and the spring--and the blue violets that grow by the trenches.

After Mammy and I had wept and laughed in each other's embrace, I went out alone into the fields beyond the factory--to love, to think, to dream . . . I love Alexander Alexandrovitch for ever and ever...

THE SEAS AND HILLS

A rainy night, trenches--not in the forest lands of Lithuania, but at the Vindavo-Rybinsky station in Moscow itself. The train is like a trench; voices are heard from the adjoining carriage.

"Where do you come from?" "Yes, yes, that is so, truly! You remember the ravine there, all rocks, and the lake below; many met their doom there." "Let me introduce you to the Commander of the Third Division." "Give me a light, old fellow! We are back from furlough."

The train is going at nightfall to Rzhov, Velikiya Luki, and Polotsk. Outside on the platform the brethren are lying at ease under benches, drinking tea, and full of contentment. The gas-jets shine dimly in the rain, and behind the spattered panes of glass the women's eyes gleam like lamp-lights. There is a smell of naphthaline.

"Where is the Commandant's carriage?" "No women allowed here! Men only! We're for the front!" And there is a smell of leather, tar, and leggings--a smell of men.

"Yes, yes, you're right! Ha-ha! He is a liar, an egregious liar! No, I bet you a beauty like that isn't going headlong into an attack!"

There is a sound of laughing and a deep base voice speaking with great assurance. The third bell.

"Where's the Commandant's carriage?" "Well, goodbye!" "Ha-ha-ha-ha! He lies, Madam, I assure you, he lies." "Bah! those new boots they have issued have given me corns; I'll have to send them back."

This conversation proceeded from beneath a bench and from the steps that led to a top-compartment; the men hung up their leggings which, though marked with fresh Government labels, were none the less reeking with perspiration. The lamps moved along the platform and disappeared into the night; the figures of women and stretcher- bearers silently crept along; a sentry began to flirt with one of the former; the rain fell slantingly, arrow-like, in the darkness.

They reached Rzhov at midnight in the train; the men climbed out of the windows for tea; then clambered in again with their rifles; the carriages resounded with the rattling of canteens. It was raining heavily and there was a sound of splashing water. The brethren in the corridors grumbled bitterly as they inspected papers. Under the benches there was conversation, and also garbage.

Then morning with its rose-coloured clouds: the sky had completely cleared; rain-drops fell from the trees; it was bright and fragrant. Velikiya Luki, Lovat; at the station were soldiers, not a single woman.

The train eludes the enemy's reconnaissance. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers!--rifles, rifles!--canteens:--the brethren! It is no longer Great Russia; around are pine woods, hills, lakes, and the land is everywhere strewn with cobble-stones and pebbles--- whilst at every little station from under fir-trees creep silent, sombre figures, barefooted and wearing sheep-skin coats and caps--in the summer. It is Lithuania.

The enemy's reconnaissance is a diversion: otherwise the day is long and dreary--all routine like a festival; already one knows the detachment, the number of wounded, the engagements with the enemy. Many had alighted from the train at Velikiya Luki, and nobody had got in. We are quiet and idle all day long.

Then towards night we reach Polotsk--the white walls of the monastery are left behind; we come to the Dvina, and the train rumbles over a bridge. Now we journey by night only, without a time-table or lights, and again under a drizzling rain. The train stops without whistling and as silently starts again. Around us all is still, as in October; the country-side is shrouded by night. Men alight at each stop after Polotsk; no one sits down again; and at every stop thirty miles of narrow gauge railway lead to the trenches. What monotony after Moscow! after the hustle and clatter of an endless day! There is the faintest glimmer of dawn, and the eastern sky looks like a huge green bottle.

"Get up--we have arrived!"

Budslav station; the roof is demolished by aeroplane bombs. Soldiers sleep side by side in a little garden on asphalt steps beneath crocuses. A drowsy Jew opens his bookstall on the arrival of the train: he sells books by Chirikov, Von Vizin, and Verbitskaya. And from the distance, with strange distinctness, comes a sound like muffled clapping.

"What is that?" "Must be the heavy artillery." "Where is the Commandant?" "The Commandant is asleep!..."

A week has passed by in the trenches, and another week has commenced. The bustle of the first few days is over; now all is in order. In a corner of a meadow, a little way from the front, hangs a man's body; the head by degrees has become severed from the trunk. But I do not see very much. We sleep in the day.

It is June, and there is scarcely any night. I know when it is evening by the sound of the firing; it begins from beyond the marshes at seven o'clock. Moment after moment a bullet comes--zip--into my dug-out: scarcely a second passes before there is another zip. The sound of the shot itself is lost amid the general crashing of guns; there is only the zip of the bullet as it strikes the earth or is embedded in the beams overhead. And so on all through the night, moment after moment, until seven in the morning.

There are three of us in the dug-out; two are playing chess, but I am reading--the same thing over and over again, for I am tired to death of lying idle, of sleeping and walking. Poor indeed are men's resources, for in three days we had exhausted all we had to say. Yesterday a soldier who had lost his hand when scouting, came running in to us crying wildly:

"Bayonet me, Towny, Bayonet me!"