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John Philip Sousa - "The Fifth String"

Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik) - "John Halifax, Gentleman"

Olive Schreiner - "Dream Life and Real Life "

Geoffrey Chaucer - "The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems"

Through Russia

M >> Maxim Gorky >> Through Russia




At intervals such gasps would come from my companion that he
might well have been standing on the drying-board of a bath. Nor,
as they did so, was his appearance aught but comical, seeing that
his ears, appendages large and shaggy like a dog's, and
indifferently shielded with a shabby old cap, kept being pushed
forward by the wind until his small head bore an absurd
resemblance to a china bowl. And that, to complete the
resemblance, his long and massive nose, a feature grossly
disproportionate to the rest of his diminutive face, might
equally well have passed for the spout of the receptacle
indicated.

Yet a face out of the common it was, like the whole of his
personality. And this was the fact which had captivated me from
the moment when I had beheld him participating in a vigil service
held in the neighbouring church of the monastery of New Athos.
There, spare, but with his withered form erect, and his head
slightly tilted, he had been gazing at the Crucifix with a
radiant smile, and moving his thin lips in a sort of whispered,
confidential, friendly conversation with the Saviour. Indeed, so
much had the man's smooth, round features (features as beardless
as those of a Skopetz [A member of the Skoptzi, a non-Orthodox
sect the members of which "do make of themselves eunuchs for the
Lord's sake."], save for two bright tufts at the corners of the
mouth) been instinct with intimacy, with a consciousness of
actually being in the presence of the Son of God, that the
spectacle, transcending anything of the kind that my eyes had
before beheld, had led me, with its total absence of the
customary laboured, servile, pusillanimous attitude towards the
Almighty which I had generally found to be the rule, to accord
the man my whole interest, and, as long as the service had
lasted, to keep an eye upon one who could thus converse with God
without rendering Him constant obeisance, or again and again
making the sign of the cross, or invariably making it to the
accompaniment of groans and tears which had always hitherto
obtruded itself upon my notice.

Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the
workmen's barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery's guest-
chamber. Seated at a table under a circle of light falling from a
lamp suspended from the ceiling, he had gathered around him a
knot of pilgrims and their women, and was holding forth in low,
cheerful tones that yet had in them the telling, incisive note of
the preacher, of the man who frequently converses with his fellow
men.

"One thing it may be best always to disclose," he was saying,
"and another thing to conceal. If aught in ourselves seems harmful
or senseless, let us put to ourselves the question: 'Why is this
so?' Contrariwise ought a prudent man never to thrust himself
forward and say: 'How discreet am I!' while he who makes a parade
of his hard lot, and says, 'Good folk, see ye and hear how bitter
my life is,' also does wrong."

Here a pilgrim with a black beard, a brigand's dark eyes, and the
wasted features of an ascetic rose from the further side of the
table, straightened his virile frame, and said in a dull voice:

"My wife and one of my children were burnt to death through the
falling of an oil lamp. On THAT ought I to keep silence?"

No answer followed. Only someone muttered to himself:

"What? Again?": until the first speaker, the speaker seated
near the corner of the table, launched into the oppressive lull
the unhesitating reply:

"That of which you speak may be taken to have been a punishment
by God for sin."

"What? For a sin committed by one three years of age (for,
indeed, my little son was no more)? The accident happened of his
pulling down a lamp upon himself, and of my wife seizing him, and
herself being burnt to death. She was weak, too, for but eleven
days had passed since her confinement."

"No. What I mean is that in that accident you see a punishment
for sins committed by the child's father and mother."

This reply from the corner came with perfect confidence. The
black-bearded man, however, pretended not to hear it, but spread
out his hands as though parting the air before him, and proceeded
hurriedly, breathlessly to detail the manner in which his wife
and little one had met their deaths. And all the time that he was
doing so one had an inkling that often before had he recounted
his narrative of horror, and that often again would he repeat it.
His shaggy black eyebrows, as he delivered his speech, met in a
single strip, while the whites of his eyes
grew bloodshot, and their dull, black pupils never ceased their
nervous twitching.

Presently the gloomy recital was once more roughly,
unceremoniously broken in upon by the cheerful voice of the
Christ-loving pilgrim.

"It is not right, brother," the voice said, "to blame God for
untoward accidents, or for mistakes and follies committed by
ourselves."

"But if God be God, He is responsible for all things."

"Not so. Concede to yourself the faculty of reason."

"Pah! What avails reason if it cannot make me understand?"

"Cannot make you understand WHAT?"

"The main point, the point why MY wife had to be burnt rather
than my neighbour's?"

Somewhere an old woman commented in spitefully distinct tones:

"Oh ho, ho! This man comes to a monastery, and starts railing as
soon as he gets there!"

Flashing his eyes angrily, the black-bearded man lowered his head
like a bull. Then, thinking better of his position, and
contenting himself with a gesture, he strode swiftly, heavily
towards the door. Upon this the Christ-loving pilgrim rose with a
swaying motion, bowed to everyone present, and set about
following his late interlocutor.

"It has all come of a broken heart," he said with a smile as he
passed me. Yet somehow the smile seemed to lack sympathy.

With a disapproving air someone else remarked:

"That fellow's one thought is to enlarge and to enlarge upon his
tale."

"Yes, and to no purpose does he do so," added the Christ-loving
pilgrim as he halted in the doorway. "All that he accomplishes by
it is to weary himself and others alike. Such experiences are far
better put behind one."

Presently I followed the pair into the forecourt, and near the
entrance-gates heard a voice say quietly:

"Do not disturb yourself, good father."

"Nevertheless" (the second voice was that of the porter of the
monastery, Father Seraphim, a strapping Vetlugan) "a spectre
walks here nightly."

"Never mind if it does. As regards myself, no spectre would
touch me."

Here I moved in the direction of the gates.

"Who comes there?" Seraphim inquired as he thrust a hairy and
uncouth, but infinitely kindly, face close to mine. "Oh, it is
the young fellow from Nizhni Novgorod! You are wasting your time,
my good sir, for the women have all gone to bed."

With which he laughed and chuckled like a bear.

Beyond the wall of the forecourt the stillness of the autumn
night was the languid inertia of a world exhausted by summer, and
the withered grass and other objects of the season were exhaling
a sweet and bracing odour, and the trees looking like fragments
of cloud where motionless they hung in the moist, sultry air.
Also, in the darkness the half-slumbering sea could be heard
soughing as it crept towards the shore while over the sky lay a
canopy of mist, save at the point where the moon's opal-like blur
could be descried over the spot where that blur's counterfeit
image glittered and rocked on the surface of the dark waters.

Under the trees there was set a bench whereon I could discern
there to be resting a human figure. Approaching the figure, I
seated myself beside it.

"Whence, comrade?" was my inquiry.

"From Voronezh. And you?"

A Russian is never adverse to talking about himself. It would seem
as though he is never sure of his personality, as though he is
ever yearning to have that personality confirmed from some source
other than, extraneous to, his own ego. The reason for this must
be that we Russians live diffused over a land of such vastness
that, the more we grasp the immensity of the same, the smaller do
we come to appear in our own eyes; wherefore, traversing, as we
do, roads of a length of a thousand versts, and constantly losing
our way, we come to let slip no opportunity of restating
ourselves, and setting forth all that we have seen and thought
and done.

Hence, too, must it be that in conversations one seems to hear
less of the note of "I am I" than of the note of "Am I really
and truly myself?"

"What may be your name?" next I inquired of the figure on the
bench.

"A name of absolute simplicity--the name of Alexei Kalinin."

"You are a namesake of mine, then."

"Indeed? Is that so?"

With which, tapping me on the knee, the figure added:

"Come, then, namesake. 'I have mortar, and you have water, so
together let us paint the town.'"

Murmuring amid the silence could be heard small, light waves that
were no more than ripples. Behind us the busy clamour of the
monastery had died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed
subdued by the influence of the night--it seemed to have in it
less of the note of self-confidence.

"My mother was a wet-nurse," he went on to volunteer, and I her
only child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my
height, converted into a footman. It happened thus. One day, on
General Stepan (my mother's then employer) happening to catch
sight of me, he exclaimed: 'Evgenia, go and tell Fedor' (the
ex-soldier who was then serving the General as footman) 'that he
is to teach your son to wait at table! The boy is at least tall
enough for the work.' And for nine years I served the General in
this capacity. And then, and then--oh, THEN I was seized with an
illness. . . . Next, I obtained a post under a merchant who was
then mayor of our town, and stayed with him twenty-one months.
And next I obtained a situation in an hotel at Kharkov, and held
it for a year. And after that I kept changing my places, for,
steady and sober though I was, I was beginning to lack taste for
my profession, and to develop a spirit of the kind which deemed
all work to be beneath me, and considered that I had been created
to serve only myself, not others."

Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were
proceeding some invisible travellers whose scraping of feet as
they walked proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to
journeying on foot. Just as the party drew level with us, a
musical voice hummed out softly the line "Alone will I set forth
upon the road," with the word "alone" plaintively stressed.
Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of indolent
incisiveness:

"Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the
extent of--oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?"

"To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied
a voice feminine and youthful of timbre.

Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a
paler figure between them, come gliding into view.

"Strange indeed is it that, that--"

"That what?"

"That so many names proper to these parts should also be so
suggestive. Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk
hereabouts seem to have " amassed " things, and to have known how
to do so." [The verb nakopit means to amass, to heap up.]

"For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the
Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'"

"Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of
chastened enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and
inhale this restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it
be if I were to let everything go to the devil, and take up my
abode here for ever?'"

At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of
the monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance
that came borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:

Oh, if into a single word
I could pour my inmost thoughts!

To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head
tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it
in that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the
distance, he sighed, straightened himself, and said:

"Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as
they talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old
and ever-persistent point."

"To what point are you referring?"

My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:

"Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of
those people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?"

Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man
would do, Kalinin added in a half-whisper:

"More and more are folk coming to think to themselves: 'Now must
I forsake everything.' In the end I myself came to think it. For
many a year did I increasingly reflect: 'Why should I be a
servant? What will it ever profit me? Even if I should earn
twelve, or twenty, or fifty roubles a month, to what will such
earnings lead, and where will the man in me come in? Surely it
would be better to do nothing at all, but just to gaze into space
(as I am doing now), and let my eyes stare straight before me?'"

"By the way, what were you talking to those people about?"

"Which people do you mean?"

"The bearded man and the rest, the company in the guest-chamber?"

"Ah, THAT man I did not like--I have no fancy at all for fellows
who strew their grief about the world, and leave it to be
trampled upon by every chance-comer. For how can the tears of my
neighbour benefit me? True, every man has his troubles; but also
has every man such a predilection for his particular woe that he
ends by deeming it the most bitter and remarkable grief in the
universe--you may take my word for that."

Suddenly the speaker rose to his feet, a tall, lean figure.

"Now I must seek my bed," he remarked. "You see, I shall have
to leave here very early tomorrow."

"And for what point?"

"For Novorossisk."

Now, the day being a Saturday, I had drawn my week's earnings
from the monastery's pay-office just before the vigil service.
Also, Novorossisk did not really lie in my direction. Thirdly, I
had no particular wish to exchange the monastery for any other
lodging. Nevertheless, despite all this, the man interested me to
such an extent (of persons who genuinely interest one there never
exist but two, and, of them, oneself is always one) that
straightway I observed:

"I too shall be leaving here tomorrow."

"Then let us travel together."

*********************************

At dawn, therefore, we set forth to foot the road in company. At
times I mentally soared aloft, and viewed the scene from that
vantage-point. Whenever I did so, I beheld two tall men traversing
a narrow track by a seashore--the one clad in a grey military
overcoat and a hat with a broken crown, and the other in a drab
kaftan and a plush cap. At their feet the boundless sea was
splashing white foam, salt-dried ribands of seaweed were strewing
the path, golden leaves were dancing hither and thither, and the
wind was howling at, and buffeting, the travellers as clouds
sailed over their heads. Also, to their right there lay stretched
a chain of mountains towards which the clouds kept wearily,
nervelessly tending, while to their left there lay spread a
white-laced expanse over the surface of which a roaring wind kept
ceaselessly driving transparent columns of spray.

On such stormy days in autumn everything near a seashore looks
particularly cheerful and vigorous, seeing that, despite the
soughing of wind and wave, and the swift onrush of cloud, and the
fact that the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in
abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that
the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane,
but imperishable, forces--so much so that in time even one's puny
human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and,
catching fire, to cry to all the universe: " I love you! "

Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so
to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white
horses prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in
such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall
unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and
more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one
of its creatures, expressed by a human being who feels for the
earth what he would feel for a woman, and yearns to fertilise the
same to ever-increasing splendour.

Nevertheless,words are as heavy as stones, and after felling
fancy to the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and
cause one, as one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in
sheer self-derision. . . .

Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through
the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar
words:

"Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not
bad."

"How does Christ get on with them?" I asked.

"Christ? He does not enter into the matter."

"Is He hostile to them?"

"Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are
devils to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one
is Christ hostile" .............................. . . . . . .
[In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.]


As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows,
the path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and,
in doing so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift
correspondingly to our immediate front, where the masses of
vapour were darkening as though rain were probable.

Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from
time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.

"The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked.
"For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago
Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these
parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances
escape my memory."

So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows
that it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked
in the funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay
lashed with foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept
gliding towards it.

"Tell me more about those devils," I said at length.

"Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about
them?"

"All that you may happen to know."

"Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them."

To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued:

"I say that I know everything about those devils for the reason
that for my mother I had a most remarkable woman, a woman
cognisant of each and every species of proverb, anathema, and
item of hagiology. You must know that, after spreading my bed
beside the kitchen stove each night, and her own bed on the top
of the stove (for, after her wet-nursing of three of the
General's children, she lived a life of absolute ease, and did no
work at all)--"

Here Kalinin halted, and, driving his stick into the ground,
glanced back along the path before resuming his way with firm,
lengthy strides.

"I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina
Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."

"Remarkable for what?"

"Remarkable for EVERYTHING."

At this moment there came floating over our heads through the
damp-saturated air a cormorant--one of those voracious birds which
so markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its
powerful pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.

"Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.

And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never
did I climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat
of one), it was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the
edge of the top, and tell me stories. And though the room would
be too dark for me to see her face, I could yet see the things of
which she would be speaking. And at times, as these tales came
floating down to me, I would find them so horrible as to be
forced to cry out, 'Oh, Mamka, Mamka, DON'T! . . .' To this hour
I have no love for the bizarre, and am but a poor hand at
remembering it. And as strange as her stories was my mother.
Eventually she died of an attack of blood-poisoning and, though
but forty, had become grey-headed. Yes, and so terribly did she
smell after her death that everyone in the kitchen was
constrained to exclaim at the odour."

"Yes, but what of the devils?"

"You must wait a minute or two."

Ever as we proceeded, clinging, fantastic branches kept closing
in upon the path, so that we appeared to be walking through a sea
of murmuring verdure. And from time to time a bough would flick
us as though to say: "Speed, speed, or the rain will be upon
you!"

If anything, however, my companion slackened his pace as in
measured, sing-song accents he continued:

"When Jesus Christ, God's Son, went forth into the wilderness to
collect His thoughts, Satan sent devils to subject Him to
temptation. Christ was then young; and as He sat on the burning
sand in the middle of the desert, He pondered upon one thing and
another, and played with a handful of pebbles which He had
collected. Until presently from afar, there descried Him the
devils Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan--devils of equal age with
the Saviour.

"Drawing near unto Him, they said, 'Pray suffer us to sport with
Thee.' Whereupon Christ answered with a smile: 'Pray be seated.'
Then all of them did sit down in a circle, and proceed to
business, which business was to see whether or not any member of
the party could so throw a stone into the air as to prevent it
from falling back upon the burning sand.
.............................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .

[In the original Russian this hiatus occurs as given.]


"Christ Himself was the first to throw a stone; whereupon His
stone became changed into a six-winged dove, and fluttered away
towards the Temple of Jerusalem. And, next, the impotent devils
strove to do the same; until at length, when they saw that Christ
could not in any wise be tempted, Zmiulan, the senior of the
devils, cried:

"'0h Lord, we will tempt Thee no more; for of a surety do we
avail not, and, though we be devils, never shall do so!'

"'Aye, never shall ye!' Christ did agree. 'And, therefore, I
will now fulfil that which from the first I did conceive. That ye
be devils I know right well. And that, while yet afar off, ye
did, on beholding me, have compassion upon me I know right well.
While also ye did not in any wise seek to conceal from me the
truth as concerning yourselves. Hence shall ye, for the remainder
of your lives, be GOOD devils; so that at the last shall matters
be rendered easier for you. Do thou, Zmiulan, become King of the
Ocean, and send the winds of the sea to cleanse the land of foul
air. And do thou, Demon, see to it that the cattle shall eat of
no poisonous herb, but that all herbs of the sort be covered with
prickles. Do thou, Igamon, comfort, by night, all comfortless
widows who shall be blaming God for the death of their husbands?
And do thou, Hymen, as the youngest devil of the band, choose for
thyself wherein shall lie thy charge.'

"'0h Lord,' replied Hymen, 'I do love but to laugh.'

"And the Saviour replied:

"'Then cause thou folk to laugh. Only, mark thou, see to it
that they laugh not IN CHURCH.'

"'Yet even in church would I laugh, 0h Lord,' the devil objected.

" 'Jesus Christ Himself laughed.

" 'God go with you!' at length He said. 'Then let folk laugh even
in church--but QUIETLY.'

"In such wise did Christ convert those four evil devils into
devils of goodness."

Soaring over the green, bushy sea were a number of old oaks. On
them the yellow leaves were trembling as though chilled; here
and there a sturdy hazel was doffing its withered garments, and
elsewhere a wild cherry was quivering, and elsewhere an almost
naked chestnut was politely rendering obeisance to the earth.

"Did you find that story of mine a good one?" my companion
inquired.

"I did, for Christ was so good in it."

"Always and everywhere He is so," Kalinin proudly rejoined. "But
do you also know what an old woman of Smolensk used to sing
concerning Him?"

" I do not."

Halting, my strange traveller chanted in a feignedly senile and
tremulous voice, as he beat time with his foot:

In the heavens a flow'r doth blow,
It is the Son of God.
From it all our joys do flow,
It is the Son of God.
In the sun's red rays He dwells
He, the Son of God.
His light our every ill dispels.
Praised be the Son of God!

Each successive line seemed to inspire Kalinin's voice with added
youthfulness, until, indeed, the concluding words-- "The One and
Only God"-- issued in a high, agreeable tenor.

Suddenly a flash of lightning blazed before us, while dull
thunder crashed among the mountains, and sent its hundred-voiced
echoes rolling over land and sea. In his consternation, Kalinin
opened his mouth until a set of fine, even teeth became bared to
view. Then, with repeated crossings of himself, he muttered.

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