Part 5

“Yes, military.”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes, yes, to-morrow.”

“Death sentence threatened?”

“Mamma, please be yourself, for God’s sake. Perhaps something can be done.”

“We must go there. Get the things ready, Natasha. Mother and I are returning at once, and we will take the first train out.”

The conversation is at an end.

Natasha is alone. She runs about the deserted house, letting things fall in the poignant silence. She is busy with travelling bags and with pillows.

She stops to look at the time-table. There is a train at half-past twelve. Yes, there is still time to catch it.

Then the bell rings, frightening her even more than the earlier ring. The mother and the grandmother have arrived, pale and distraught.

XLVI

A sleepless, wearisome journey in the train. The wheels roll on with a measured, jarring sound. Stops are made. How slow it all is! How agonizing! If only it would be quicker, quicker!

Or were it better to wish that time should be arrested? That its huge, shaggy wings outspread and flapping above the world should suddenly become motionless? That its owlish glance should be stilled for ever in the instant just before the terrible word is said?

They reach their destination in the morning. At the station, a dirty, dejected place, they are met by a cousin of Natasha’s, an attorney by profession. From his pale, worried face, they guess that everything is over.

He talks quickly and incoherently. He comforts them with hopes in which he himself does not believe. The trial had been held early that morning. Boris and both his comrades—all of the same green youth—had been sentenced to die by hanging. The court would entertain no appeal. The only hope lay in the district general. He was really not a bad man at heart. Perhaps, by imploring, he might be induced to lighten the sentence to that of hard labour for an indefinite period.

Poor mothers! What is it they implore?

XLVII

Sofia Alexandrovna and Natasha arrived at the general’s. They waited long in the quiet, cold-looking reception-room; the glossy parquet floor shone, portraits in heavy gilt frames hung on the walls, and the careful steps of uniformed officials, coming through a large white door, resounded from time to time.

At last they were received. The general listened most amiably, but declined emphatically to do anything. He rose, clinked his spurs, and stretched himself to his full height; He stood there tall, erect, his breast decorated with orders, his head grey, his face ruddy, with black eyebrows and broad nose.

In vain the humiliating entreaties.

Pale, the proud mother knelt before the general and, weeping bitterly, she kissed his hands and at last threw herself at his feet—all in vain. She received the cold answer:

“I am sorry, madam, it is impossible. I understand your affliction, I sympathize fully; with your sorrow, but what can I do? Whose fault is it? Upon me lies a great responsibility toward my Emperor and my country. I have my duty—I can’t help you. It is against yourself that you ought to bring your reproaches—you’ve brought him up.”

Of what avail the tears of a poor mother? Strike thy head upon the parquet floor, bend thy face to the black glitter of his boots; or else depart, proud and silent. It is all the same, he can do nothing. Thy tears and thy entreaties do not touch him, thy curses do not offend him. He is a kind man, he is the loving father of a family, but his upright martial soul does not tremble before the word death. More than once he had risked his life boldly in battle—what is the life of a conspirator to him?

“But he is a mere boy!”

“No, madam, this is not a childish prank. I am sorry.”

He walks away. She hears the measured clinking of his spurs. The parquet floor reflects dimly his tall, erect figure.

“General, have pity!”

The cold, white door has swung to after him. She hears the quiet, pleasant voice of a young official. He raises her from the floor and helps her to find her way out.

XLVIII

They granted a last meeting. A few minutes passed in questions, answers, embraces, and tears.

Boris said very little.

“Don’t cry, mamma. I am not afraid. There is nothing else they can do. They don’t feed you at all badly here. Remember me to all. And you, Natasha, take care of mother. One sacrifice is enough from our family. Well, good-bye.”

He seemed somehow callous and distant. He seemed to be thinking of something else, of something he could tell no one. And his words had an external ring, as though merely to make conversation.

That night, before daybreak, Boris was hanged. The scaffold was set up in the gaol courtyard. The spot where he was buried was kept secret.

The mother implored the next day: “Show me his grave at least!”

What was there to show! He was laid in a coffin, he was put into a hole in the earth and the soil that covered him was smoothed down to its original level—we all know how such culprits are buried.

“Tell me at least how he died.”

“Well, he was a brave one. He was calm, a bit serious. And he refused a priest, and would not kiss the cross.”

They returned home. A fog of melancholy hung over them, and within them there lit up a spark of mad hope—no, Borya is not dead, Borya will return.

XLIX

The thought that Boris had been hanged could not enter into their habitual, everyday thoughts. Only in the hour when the sun was at its zenith, and in the hour of the midnight moon, it would penetrate their awakened consciousness like a sharp poniard. Again it would pierce the soul with a sharp, tormenting pain, and again it would vanish in the dim mist of dawn with a kind of dull agony. And again, the same unreasonable conviction would awake in their hearts.

No, Borya will return. The bell will suddenly ring, and the door will be opened to him.

“Oh, Borya! Where have you been wandering?”

How we shall kiss him! And how much there will be to tell!

“What does it matter where you have been wandering. You have been wandering, and, you have been found, like the prodigal son.”

How happy all will be!

The old nurse will not be consoled. She wails:

“Boryushka, Boryushka, my incomparable one! I say to him: ‘Boryushka, I’m going to the poor-house!’ And he says to me: ‘No,’ says he, ‘_nyanechka_,[4] I’ll not let you go to the poor-house. I,’ he says, ‘will let you stop with me, _nyanechka_; only wait till I grow up,’ says he, ‘and you can live with me.’ Oh, Boryushka, what’s this you’ve done!”

In the morning the old nurse enters the vestibule. Whose grey overcoat is it that she sees hanging on the rack? It is Borya’s, his _gymnasia_ uniform. Has he then not gone to the _gymnasia_ to-day?

She wanders into the dining-room, making a muffled noise with her soft slippers.

“Natashenka, is Boryushka home to-day? His overcoat’s there on the rack. Or is he sick?”

“_Nyanechka_!” exclaims Natasha.

And, frightened, she looks at her mother.

The old nurse has suddenly remembered. She is crying. The grey head shivers in its black wrap. The old woman wails:

“I go there and I look, what’s that I see? Borya’s overcoat. I say to myself, Borya’s gone to the _gymnasia_, why’s his overcoat here? It’s no holiday. Oh, my Boryushka is gone!”

She wails louder and louder. Then the old woman falls to the floor and begins to beat the boards with her head.

“Borechka, my own Borechka! If the Lord had only taken me, an old woman, instead of him. What’s the use of life to me? I drag along, of no cheer to myself or to any one else.”

Natasha, helpless, tries to quiet her.

“_Nyanechka_, dearest, rest a little.”

“May Thou rest me, O Lord! My heart told me something was wrong. I’ve been dreaming all sorts of bad dreams. These black dreams have come true! Oh, Borechka, my own!”

The old woman continues to beat her head and to wail. Natasha implores her mother:

“For God’s sake, mamma, have Borya’s overcoat taken from the rack.”

Sofia Alexandrovna looks at her with her dark, smouldering eyes and says morosely:

“Why? It had better hang there. He might suddenly need it.”

Oh, hateful memories! As long as the evil Dragon reigns in the heavens it is impossible to escape them.

Natasha roams restlessly, she can find no place for herself. She is off to the woods; she recalls Boris there, and that he has been hanged. She is off to the river; she recalls Boris there, and that he is no more. She is back at home, and the walls of the old house recall Boris to her, and that he will not return.

Like a pale shadow the mother wanders along the walks of the garden, choosing to pause there where the shade is densest. The old grandmother sits upon a bench and finishes the reading of the newspapers. It is the same every day.

[4] Little nurse.

L

And now the evening is approaching. The sun is low and red. It looks straight into people’s eyes as though, while expiring, it were begging for mercy. A breeze blows from the river, and it brings the laughter of white water nymphs.

A number of noisy urchins are running in the road; their shirt-tails flap merrily in the wind, while their sleeves are filled with wind like balloons. The sound of a harmonica comes from the distance, and its song runs on very merrily. The corncrake screeches in the field, and its call resembles a general’s loud snore.

The old house once more casts and arranges its long dark shadows disturbed by the intrusive day. Its windows blaze forth with the red fire of the evening sun.

The gilliflower exhales its seductive aroma in some of the distant paths. The roses seem even redder in the sunset, and more sweet. The eternal Aphrodite—the naked marble of her proud body taking on a rose tint—smiles again, and lets fall her draperies as fascinatingly as ever.

And everything is directed as before toward cherished, unreasonable hopes. Enfeebled by the day’s heat, and by the sadness of the bright day, the harassed soul has exhausted its measure of suffering, and it falls from the iron embrace of sorrow to the beloved dark earth of the past, once more besprinkled with dreamily refreshing dew.

And again, as at dawn, the three women in the old house await Boris, or a short time happy in their madness.

They await him, and they chat of him, until, from behind the trees of the dark wood, the cold moon shows her ever sad face. The dead moon is under a white shroud of mist.

Then again they remember that Borya has been hanged, and they meet at the green-covered pond to weep for him.

LI

Natasha is the first to leave the house. She has on a white dress and a black cloak. Her black hair is covered with a thin black kerchief. Her very deep dark eyes shine with flame-like brightness. She stands, her pale face uplifted toward the moon. She awaits the other two.

Elena Kirillovna and Sofia Alexandrovna arrive together.

Elena Kirillovna leaves the house slightly earlier, but Sofia Alexandrovna runs after her and overtakes her almost at the pond. They wear black cloaks, black kerchiefs on their heads, and black shoes.

Natasha begins:

“On the night before the execution he did not sleep. The moon, just as clear as to-night’s, looked into the narrow window of his cell. On the floor the moon sadly outlined a green rhomb, intersected lengthwise and crosswise by narrow dark strokes. Boris walked up and down his cell, and looked now at the moon, now at the green rhomb, and thought—I wish I knew his thoughts that night.”

Her remark has a quite tranquil sound. It might have been about a stranger.

Sofia Alexandrovna now and again wrings her hands, and as she begins to speak her voice is agitated and heavy with grief:

“What can one think at such moments! The moon, long dead, looks in. There are five steps from the door to the window, four steps across. The mind springs feverishly from object to object. That the execution is to take place on the morrow is the one thing you try not to think of. Stubbornly you repel the thought. But it remains, it refuses to depart, it throttles the soul with an oppressive, horrible nightmare. The anguish is intense and enfeebling. But I do not wish my gaolers and all these officials who are come to me to see my anguish. I will be calm. And yet what anguish—if only, lifting up my pale face, I could cry aloud to the pale moon!”

Elena Kirillovna whispers faintly:

“Terrible, Sonyushka.”

There are tears in her voice—simple, old-womanish, grandmotherly tears.

LII

Sofia Alexandrovna, ignoring the interruption, continues:

“Why should I really go to my death boldly and resolutely? Is it not all the same? I shall die in the courtyard, in the dark of night. Whether I die boldly, or weep like a coward, or beg for mercy, or resist the executioner—is it not all the same? No one will know how I died. I shall face death alone. Why should I really suffer this wild anguish? I will raise up my voice to wail and to weep, and I will shake the whole gaol with my despairing cries, and I will awake the town, the so-called free town, which is only a larger gaol—so that I shall not suffer alone, but that others shall share in my last agony, in my last dread. But no, I won’t do that. It is my fate to die alone.”

Natasha rises, trembles, presses her mother’s cold hand in hers, and says:

“Mamma, mamma, it is terrible, if alone. No, don’t say that he felt alone. We shall be with him.”

Elena Kirillovna whispers:

“Yes, Sonyushka, it would be terrible alone. In such moments!”

“We are with him,” insists Natasha vehemently. “We are with him now.”

A smile is on Sofia Alexandrovna’s lips, a smile such as a dying person smiles to greet his last consolation. Sofia Alexandrovna speaks:

“My last consolation is the thought that I am not alone. He is with me. These walls are unrealities, this gaol built by men is a lie. What is real and true is my suffering and I am one with them in my grief. A poor consolation! And yet I, just think, this extraordinary I, Boris, I am dying.”

“I am dying,” repeats Natasha.

Her voice is clouded, and it is fraught with despair. And all three remain silent for a brief while, overcome by the spell of these tragic words.

LIII

Sofia Alexandrovna speaks again. Her voice sounds tranquil, deliberate, measured:

“There is no consolation for the dying. His grief is boundless. The cold moon continues to torment him. A moan struggles to break from his throat, a moan like the wild baying of a caged beast.”

Natasha speaks sadly:

“But he is not alone, not alone. We are with him in his grief.”

Her eyes, darker than a dark night, look up toward the lifeless moon, and the green enchantress, reflected in them, torments her with a dull pain.

Sofia Alexandrovna smiles—and her smile is dead—and with the voice of inconsolable sorrow she speaks again slowly and calmly:

“We are with him only in his despair, in his pitiful inconsolability, in his dark solitude. But he was alone, alone, when he was strangled by the hand of a hired hangman; strangled in that dark enclosure which it is not for us to demolish. And the dead moon tormented him, as it torments us. She tempted him with the mad desire to moan wildly, like a wild beast before dying. And now we, in this hour, under this moon—are we not also tormented by the same mad desire to run, to run far from people, and to moan and to wail, and to flee from a grief too great to be borne!”

She rises abruptly and walks away, wringing her beautiful white hands. She walks fast, almost runs, driven as it were by some strange, furious will not her own. Natasha follows her with the measured yet rapid, deliberate, mechanical gait of an automaton. And behind them trips along Elena Kirillovna, who lets fall a few scant tears on her black cloak.

The moon follows them callously in their hurried journey across the garden, across the field, into that wood, into that still glade, where once the children sang their proud hymn, and where they let their mad desires be known to one who was to betray them for a price—young blood for gold.

The grass in the fields is wet with dew. The river is white with mist. The high moon is clear and cold. Everywhere it is quiet, as though all the earthly rustlings and noises had lost themselves in the moon’s dead light.

LIV

And here is the glade. “Natasha, do you remember? How warmly they all sang _Arise, ye branded with a curse!_ Natasha, will you sing it again? Do. Is it a torture?”

“I’ll sing,” replies Natasha quietly.

She sings in a low voice, almost to herself. The mother listens, and the grandmother listens—but what have the birches and the grass and the clear moon to do with human songs!

In the International As brothers all men shall meet!

Her song is at an end. The wood is silent. The moon waits. The mist is pensive. The birches seem to listen. The sky is clear.

Ah, for whom is all this life? Who calls? Who responds? Or is it all the play of the dead?

Loudly wailing, the mother calls: “Borya, Borya!”

Overflowing with tears Elena Kirillovna replies: “Borya won’t come. There is no Borya.”

Natasha stretches out her arms toward the lifeless moon, and cries out: “Borya has been hanged!”

All three now stand side by side, looking at the moon, and weeping. Louder grows their sobbing, fiercer the note of despair. Their moans merge finally into a prolonged, wild wailing, which can be heard for some distance.

The dog at the forester’s hut is restless. Trembling with all his lean body, his short hair bristling, he has pricked up his ears. Rising, he stretches his slender limbs. His sharp muzzle, showing its teeth, is uplifted to the tormenting moon. His eyes burn with a yearning flame. The dog bays in answer to the distant wail of the women in the wood.

People are asleep.

THE UNITER OF SOULS

Garmonov was extremely young, and had not yet learnt to time his visits; he usually came at the wrong hour and did not know when to leave. He realized at last that he was boring Sonpolyev almost to madness. It dawned upon him that he was taking Sonpolyev from his work. He recalled that Sonpolyev had borne himself with a constrained politeness toward him, and that at times a caustic phrase escaped his lips.

Garmonov grew painfully red, a sudden flame spread itself under the smooth skin of his drawn cheeks. He rose irresolutely. Then he sat down again, for he saw that Sonpolyev was about to say something. Sonpolyev took up the thread of the conversation in a depressed voice:

“So you’ve put a mask on! What do you want me to understand by that?”

Garmonov muttered in a confused way:

“It’s necessary to dissemble sometimes.”

Sonpolyev would not listen further, but gave way to his irritation:

“What do you understand about it? What do you know of masks? There is no mask without a responding soul. It is impossible to put on a mask without harmonizing your soul with its soul. Otherwise the mask is uncovered.”

Sonpolyev grew silent, and looked miserably before him. He did not look at Garmonov. He felt again a strange, instinctive hate for him, such as he felt at their first meeting. He had always tried to hide this hate under a mask of great heartiness; he had urged Garmonov most earnestly to visit him, and praised Garmonov’s verses to every one. But from time to time he spoke coarse, malicious words to the timid young man, who then flushed violently and shrank back within himself. Sonpolyev was quick to pity him, but soon again he detested his cautious, sluggish ways; he thought him secretive and cunning.

Garmonov rose, said good-bye, and went out. Sonpolyev was left alone. He felt miserable because his work had been interrupted. He no longer felt in the same working mood. A secret malice tormented him. Why should this seemingly insignificant youth, Garmonov, evoke such bitterness in him? He had a large mouth, a long, very smooth face; his movements were slow, his voice had a drawl; there was something ambiguous about him, and enigmatical.

Sonpolyev began sadly to pace the room. He stopped before the wall, and began to speak. There are many people nowadays who have long conversations with the wall—the wall, indeed, makes an interested interlocutor, and a faithful one.

“It is possible,” he said, “to hate so strongly and so poignantly only that which is near to one. But in what does this devilish nearness consist? By what impure magic has some demon bound our souls together? Souls so unlike one another! Mine, that of a man of action with a bent for repose; and his, the soul of a large-mouthed fledgling, who is as cunning as a conspirator, and as cautious as a coward. And what is there in his character that conflicts so strangely with his appearance? Who has stolen the best and most needful part from this moly-coddle’s soul?”

He spoke quietly, almost in a murmur. Then he exclaimed as though in a rage:

“Who has done this? Man, or the enemy of man?”

And he heard the strange answer:

“I!”

Some one spoke this word in a clear, shrill voice. It was like the sharp yet subdued ring of rusty steel. Sonpolyev trembled nervously. He looked round him. There was no one in the room.

He sat down in the arm-chair and looked, scowling, on the table, buried under books and papers; and he waited. He awaited something. The waiting grew painful. He said loudly:

“Well, why do you hide? You’ve begun to speak, you might as well appear. What do you wish to say? What is it?”

He began to listen intently. His nerves were strained. It seemed as though the slightest noise would have sounded like an archangel’s trumpet.

Then there was sudden laughter. It was sharp, and it was like the sound of rusty metal. The spring of some elaborate toy seemed to unwind itself, and trembled and tinkled in the subdued quiet of the evening. Sonpolyev put the palms of his hands over his temples, and rested upon his elbows. He listened intently. The laugh died away with mechanical evenness. It was evident that it came from somewhere quite near, perhaps from the table itself.

Sonpolyev waited. He gazed with intent eyes at the bronze inkstand. He asked derisively: “Ink sprite, was it not you that laughed?”

The sharp voice, quite unlike the muffled voice of phantoms, answered with the same derision: “No, you are mistaken; and you are not very brilliant. I am not an ink sprite. Don’t you know the rustling voices of ink sprites? You are a poor observer.”

And again there was laughter, again the rusty spring tinkled as it unwound itself.

Sonpolyev said: “I don’t know who you are—and how should I know! I cannot see you. Only I think that you are like the rest of your fraternity: you are always near us, you poke your noses into everything, and you bring sadness and evil spells upon us; yet you dare not show yourselves before our eyes.”

The metallic voice replied: “The fact is, I came to have a talk with you. I love to talk with such as yourself—with half-folk.”

The voice grew silent, and Sonpolyev waited for it to laugh. He thought: “He must punctuate his every phrase with that hideous laughter.”

Indeed, he was not mistaken. The strange visitor really talked in this way: first he would speak a few words, then he would burst out into his sharp, rusty laughter. It seemed as though he used his words to wind up the spring, and that later the spring relaxed itself with his laughter.

And while his laughter was still dying away with mechanical evenness the guest showed himself from behind the inkstand.