CHAPTER XX

It was good to look at him when he talked thus. He became dignified and even stern. His voice grew calmer and deeper, and he spoke evenly and in cadences, as if he were reading from the Apostles. His face was turned upward, his eyes were round and big, and he was on his knees, but he seemed taller to me than when he stood. At first I listened to his words with an incredulous smile, but soon I remembered the Russian history which Anthony gave me, and it again opened before my eyes. He recited the marvelous fairy tale to me, and I compared this fairy tale with the book. The words tallied, but the sense was different. He came to the decline of the Kiev government.

"Have you heard it?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Well, then, know that those heroes never existed; that it was the people themselves who incarnated their exploits into characters by which to remember their great labor in the building up of the Russian soil." Then he continued talking about the Sudzalsky land.

I remember that somewhere behind the mountains the sun rose and the night hid itself in the woods and woke the birds. Rosy masses of clouds hung over us and we lay on the dewy grass of the rock, one resuscitating the past, the other astonished, counting up the immeasurable labors of men and hardly believing the tale about the conquest of the hostile woody soil.

The old man seemed to see everything. He heard the hammering of heavy axes in strong hands; he saw the people drain the swamps and build up cities and monasteries; he saw them go ever farther along the cold rivers, into the depths of the thick forests; he saw them conquer the savage earth; he saw them render it beautiful. The princes, the lords of the people, cut and minced this earth into little pieces and fought against each other with the fists of the people whom they afterward robbed. Then from the steppes came the Tartars, but there was no defender of the people's liberty to arise from among the princes. There was no honor, no strength, no mind. They sold the people and made merchandise of them with the Khans as if they were cattle, and they bought princely power with the blood of the peasants, to have power over these same peasants. Later, when they had taught the Tartars how to govern, they sent each other to the Khans for slaughter.

The night around us was friendly and wise like an elder sister. The voice of the old man gave out from weariness. The sun saw him, but he went still farther into the past, and showed me the truth with flaming words.

"Do you see," he asked me, "what the people have done and what they have suffered up to the very day, when you abused them with your stupid words? I have told you mostly of that which they did through another's will, but after I am rested I will tell you on what their souls have lived and how they have sought God."

He coiled up on the rock and fell asleep like a little child. I could not sleep, but sat there as if surrounded by burning coals.

It was already morning. The sun was high and the birds were singing, full-throated. The wood bathed in the dew and rustled, meeting the day friendly and green. People walked along the road; ordinary, every-day people. They walked with bowed heads and I could not see anything new in them. They had not grown in any way in my eyes. My instructor slept and snored and I sat next to him lost in thought. Men passed by one after the other, looked askance at us and did not even bow their heads to my salute.

"Is it possible," I asked myself, "that these are the offspring of those righteous ones, those builders of the earth about whom I have just heard?"

The dream and the reality became confused in my head, yet I understood that this meeting meant very much for me. The old man's words about God, the Son of the spirit of the people, disturbed me, and I could not reconcile myself to them, not knowing any other spirit except that one which was living in me. I racked my mind for all the peasants and the people I had known and tried to remember their words. They had many sayings, but their thoughts were poor. On the other hand I saw the dark exile of life, the bitter toil for bread, the winters of famine, the everlasting sadness of empty days, all the degradation which man has suffered and every outrage against his soul. Where could God be in this life? Where was there room for Him?

The old man slept. I wanted to wake him and shout "Speak!"

Soon he awoke, blinked his eyes and smiled.

"Ah," he said, "the sun is already near noon. It is time for me to go."

"Where will you go in such heat?" I asked. "We have bread, tea and sugar. Besides, I can't let you go. You must give me what you have promised."

Then he became thoughtful and said:

"Matvei, you should drop your wandering. It is too late, or perhaps too early for you. You have to learn. It is time for you to learn."

"Is it not too late?"

"Look at me," he answered. "I am fifty-three years old, and up to this day I learn from some little children."

"Whose children?" I asked.

"They are some children I know. You should live with them a year or two. You ought to go to the factory. It is not very far from here, about a hundred versts, where I have good friends."

"First tell me what you wanted to say, and then I shall think where I am to go."

We walked together on the path alongside the road and again I heard his clear voice and his strange words.

"Christ was the first true people's God, born from the soul of the people like the phoenix from the flames."

He trembled all over and waved his hands before his face as if he wanted to catch new words from the air, and continued shouting:

"For a long time the people carried various men on their shoulders. Without question they gave them of their labor and their freedom, placed them above themselves and waited humbly for them to see from their height the paths of righteousness on earth. But these chosen ones of the people, when they reached the height, became drunk and degraded by their power and remained above, forgetting who placed them there, and became a heavy burden on the earth instead of a joy. When the people saw that the children who were fed by their blood were their enemies, they lost their faith in them and abandoned these powerful ones, who had to fall and the power and the strength of their government decayed. The people understood that the law was not that one from a family should be raised and after having fed him on their liberty that they should live by his mind, but that the true law was that all should be raised to one height and that each one should look upon the paths of life with his own eyes; and the day when the consciousness of the inevitable equality of man arose in the people, that day was the birth of Christ.

"Many people have tried to realize their dreams of justice by creating one live being, a common lord over all, and more than once various people, urged on by this common thought, have tried to bind it with strong words that it might live forever. And when all these thoughts were mustered in one, a living God arose for them, the beloved child of the people, Jesus Christ."

That which he said about Christ, the Son of God, was near to me; but about the people giving birth to Christ I could not understand. I told him that, and he answered:

"If you wish to know, you will understand. If you wish to believe, you will know."

We tramped together for three days, going slowly; he, teaching me all the time and explaining the past to me. He recited the whole history of the people from the beginning up to the present day; he told me of the troubled times when the churches persecuted the jesters and of the merry men who awakened the people's memory with their jokes and sowed truth by them.

"Do you understand," he asked me, "who this Savelko of yours was?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Remember that small things come from large and that the large is made up from small pieces."

We came to Stephan Verkhatour. The old man said to me:

"We must part here. My road lies with you no longer."

I did not want to go away from him, but I understood that it was necessary. My thoughts troubled me. I was agitated to the very depths and my soul was furrowed as with a plow.

"Why have you become thoughtful?" he asked me. "Go to the factory. Work there and mix with my friends. It will be no loss to you, I assure you. The people are intelligent. I learned from them, and you see I am no fool."

He wrote a little note and gave it to me.

"Go there. I wish you no harm, believe me. The people are new-born and alive. Don't you believe me?"

"Our small eyes can see much," I answered, "but is that when they see the truth?"

"Look with all your might," he cried, "with all your heart, with all your soul! Did I tell you to believe? I told you to learn and know."

We kissed and he went away. He walked lightly, like a youth of twenty, and as if some happiness awaited him. I became sad when I looked back at this bird flying away from me, Heaven knows where, to sing his song in new parts. My head was heavy; my thoughts raced like Little Russians at market in the early morning, sleepy, awkward, slow, and in no way able to make order. Everything became strangely confused. To my thoughts there was another's conclusion and to this other's conclusion my own beginning. It hurt me, yet it was funny, and I seemed all changed within.

When I went away from Verkhatour, I asked where the road led to, and they answered to the Isetsky factory. That was where the old man had wanted me to go, but I took a side road; I did not wish to go there. I wanted to go to the villages and look around me.

The people were gloomy and haughty and seemed to wish to speak with no one. They looked about cautiously, as if they were afraid some one would rob them.

"Here are the God-creators," I said to myself, looking at some pock-marked peasants. "I will ask them where this road leads to."

"To the Isetsky factory."

"What is it? Do all roads lead to that factory?" I asked myself, and wandered through villages and woods, crawling like a beetle through the grass, and seeing the factory from a distance. It smoked, but it did not lure me. I felt as if I had lost half of myself and I did not understand what I wanted. I was unhappy. A gray, idle pain filled my soul and evil laughter and a great desire to insult everybody and myself arose in me. Suddenly, without noticing it myself, I made up my mind: "I'll enter the factory, damn it!"