CHAPTER XV

One time I noticed that a little, old, gray man, clean like a scraped bone, watched me eagerly. His eyes were set deep in his head, as if they had been frightened back. He was shriveled up, but strong like a buck and quick on his feet. He used to sidle up toward people and was always in the center of a crowd. He marched and scrutinized each face as if looking for an acquaintance. He seemed to want something from me but did not dare ask for it, and I pitied his timidity.

I was going to Lubin, to the sitting Aphanasia, and he followed me silently, leaning on his white staff. I asked him, "Have you been wandering long, Uncle?"

He grew happy, shook his head and tittered.

"Nine years already, my boy, nine years."

"You must be carrying a great sin," I said.

"Where is there measure or weight for sin? Only God knows my sins."

"Nevertheless, what have you done?" I laughed and he smiled.

"Nothing," he answered. "I have lived on the whole as every one else. I am a Siberian from beyond Tobolsk. I was a driver in my youth and later had an inn with a saloon and also kept a store."

"You've robbed some one." The old man started.

"Why, what is the matter with you? God save me from it."

"I was only joking," I said. "I saw a little man trotting along, and I thought to myself, how could such a little man commit a big sin." The old man stopped and shook his head.

"All souls have the same size," he answered, "and they are all equally acceptable to the devil. But tell me, what do you think about death? You have spoken in the shelters about life, always about life. But where is death?"

"Here somewhere," I answered.

He threatened me with his finger jokingly and said: "It is here. That's it, it is always here."

"Well, what if it is?" I asked.

"It is here," and rising on his tiptoes he whispered into my ear, "Death is all powerful. Even Christ could not escape it. 'Let this cup pass from me,' He said, but the Heavenly Father did not let it pass. He could not. There is a saying, 'Death appears and the sun disappears,' you see."

The little, old man began to talk like a stream rushing down a mountain. "Death circles around us all and man walks along as if he were crossing a precipice on a tightrope; one push with Death's wing and man is no more. O Lord, by Thy force Thou hast strengthened the world, but how has He strengthened it if death is placed above everything? You can be bold in thought, steeped in learning, but you will only live as long as death permits you." He smiled, but his eyes were full of tears.

What could I say to him? I had never thought of death and now I had no time.

He skipped along beside me, looking into my face with his faded eyes, his beard trembling and his left hand hid in the bosom of his cloak. He kept looking about him as if he expected death to jump out from some bush and catch him by the hand and throw him into hell.

I looked at him astonished.

Around us all life surged. The earth was covered with the emerald foam of the grass, unseen larks sang, and everything grew toward the sun in many colored brilliant shouts of gladness.

"How did you get such thoughts?" I asked my traveling companion. "Have you been very sick?"

"No," he said. "Up to my forty-seventh year I lived peacefully and contentedly, and then my wife died and my daughter-in-law hanged herself. Both were lost in the same year."

"Maybe you yourself drove her to the noose."

"No, it was from her own depravity that she killed herself. I did not bother her, though even if I had lived with her, it would have been forgiven in a widower. I am no priest, and she was no stranger to me. Even when my wife was alive I lived like a widower. She was sick for four years and did not once come down from the stove. When she died I crossed myself. 'Thank God,' I said, 'I am free.' I wanted to marry again when suddenly the thought occurred to me I live well, I am contented, but yet I have to die. Why should it be so? I was overcome. I gave everything I had to my son and began my wandering. I thought that on the road I would not notice that I was going to the grave, for everything about me was gay and shining and seemed to lead away from the graveyard. However, it is all the same."

"Your heart is heavy, Uncle?" I asked him.

"Oh, my son, it is so terrible I cannot describe it. In the daytime I try to be among people that I may hide behind them. Death is blind, perhaps it might not see me or make a mistake and take some one else, but at night, when each one remains unprotected, it is terrible to lie awake without sleep. It seems to me then that a black hand sweeps over me, feeling my breast and searching, 'Are you here? 'It plays with my heart like a cat with a mouse and my heart becomes frightened and beats. I get up and look about me. There are people lying down, but who knows whether they will arise? It happens that death takes away in crowds. In our village it took a whole family, a husband, a wife and two daughters who died of coal smoke in the bath house."

His mouth twitched in a vain effort to smile, but tears flowed from his eyes.

"If one would only die within a little hour, or in sleep, but first there comes sickness to eat one away little by little."

He frowned and his face contracted and looked like mildew. He walked quickly, almost skipping, but the light went out of his eyes, and he kept muttering in a low voice, neither to me nor to himself: "Oh, Lord, let me be a mosquito, only to live on the earth! Do not kill me, Lord; let me be a bug or even a little spider!"

"How pitiable!" I thought.

At the station, among people, he seemed to revive again, and he talked about his mistress, Death, but with courage. He preached to the people. "You will die," he said; "You will be destroyed on an unknown day and in an unknown hour. Perhaps three versts from here the lightning will strike you down."

He made some sad and others angry, and they quarreled with him. One young woman called out: "You have nothing the matter with you, and yet death bothers you."

She said it with such anger that I noticed her, and even the old man stopped his eulogy on death.

All the way to Lubin he comforted me, until he bored me to death. I have seen many such people who run away from death and foolishly play hide-and-seek with it. Even among the young there are some struck by fear, and they are worse than the old. They are all Godless; their souls are black within, like the pipe of a stove, and fear whistles through them even in the fairest weather. Their thoughts are like old pilgrims who patter on the earth, walking without knowing whither and blindly trampling under foot the living things in their path. They have the name of God on their lips, but they love no one and have no desire for anything. They are occupied with only one thing: To pass on their fears to others, so that people will take them up, the beggars, and comfort them.

They do not go to people to get honey, but that they may pour into another soul the deadly poison of their putrid selves. They love themselves and are without shame in their poverty, and resemble crippled beggars who sit on the road on the way to church and disclose their wounds and their sores and their deformities to people, that they may awaken pity and receive a copper.

They wander, sowing everywhere the gloomy seeds of unrest, and groan aloud, with the desire to hear their groans reecho. But around them surges a mighty wave--the wave of humble seekers for God and human suffering surrounds them many colored. For instance, like that of the young woman, the little Russian, who had talked up to the old man. She walked silent, her lips compressed, her face sunburnt and angry, and her eyes burning with a keen fire.. If spoken to she answered sharply, as if she wanted to stick you with a knife.

"Rather than getting angry," I said to her, "you had better tell me your trouble. You might feel better afterward."

"What do you want of me?"

"I don't want anything; don't be afraid."

"I am not afraid; but you are disgusting to me." "Why am I disgusting?"

"Stop insisting or I will call the people." And so she struck out at every one--old and young, and women, too.

"I do not need you," I answered. "I need your pain, for I want to know why people suffer."

She looked at me sideways and answered, "Go to others. They are all in need, the devil take them." "Why curse them?"

"Because I want to."

She seemed to me like one possessed.

"For whom are you making this pilgrimage?" I asked.

A smile spread over her face. She slackened her pace and she talked, though not to me:

"Last spring my husband went down the Dneiper to float lumber, and he never came back. Perhaps he was drowned, or perhaps he found another wife--who knows? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are very poor and very bad. I have two children-a boy and a girl--and how was I to feed them? I was ready to work--to break myself in two working--? but there was no work. And what can a woman earn? My father-in-law scolded. 'You and your children are a millstone around our necks, with your eating and drinking.' My mother-in-law nagged, 'You are young yet; go to the monastery; the monks desire women, and you can earn much money.' I could not stand the hunger of the children, and so I went. Should I have drowned them? I went."

She talked as in her sleep, through her teeth and indistinctly, and her eyes cried out with the pain of motherhood.

"My son is already in his fourth year; his name is Ossip and my daughter's name is Ganka. I beat them when they asked for bread; I beat them. I have wandered a whole month and I have earned four rubles. The monks are miserly. I would have earned more at honest labor. Oh, those devils! What waters can wash me now?"

I felt I ought to say something to her, so I said: "On account of your children, God will forgive you."

Here she cried out at me. "What is that to me? I'm not guilty before God! If He doesn't forgive me, He doesn't have to, and if He forgives me, I myself cannot forget it. It cannot be worse in hell. There the children will not be with me."

I excited her in vain, I said to myself. But already she could not restrain herself.

"There is no God for the poor. When we were in Zeleniklin on the banks of the Amur, how we celebrated mass and prayed and wept for aid! But did He aid us? We suffered there for three years, and those who did not die from fever returned paupers. My father died there, my mother had her leg broken by a wheel and both my brothers were lost in Siberia."

Her face became like stone. Although her features were heavy, she had a serious beauty about her and her eyes were dark and her hair thick. All night up to early morning I spoke with her sitting on the edge of the wood behind the box of the railroad watchman. I saw that her heart was all burned out, that she was no longer capable of weeping, and only when she spoke of her childhood did she smile twice, involuntarily, and her eyes became softer.

I thought to myself as she spoke, "She's ready to kill. She will murder some one yet or she will become the loosest of the loose. There is no outlet for her."

"I do not see God, and I do not love people," she said. "What kind of people are they if they cannot aid one another. Such people! Before the strong they are lambs and before the weak--wolves, but even the wolves live in packs but people live each one for himself and an enemy to his neighbor. I have seen and see much, and may they all go to ruin! To bear children and not to be able to bring them up! Is that right? I beat mine when they asked for bread; I beat them!"

In the morning she arose to sell her body to the monks, and going away she said to me spitefully, "What is the matter with you? We slept near each other and you are stronger than I am, and yet you did not take advantage of the bargain."

I felt as if she had slapped my face.

"You do wrong in insulting me," I answered.

She lowered her eyes and then said, "I feel like insulting every one, even those who are not guilty. You are young and you are worn out and your temples are gray. I know that you, too, suffer, but as for me, it is all the same, I pity no one. Good-by."

And she went away.