The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91 Read online

  But now the wheat too had flashed by and once again there stretched that scorched plain, those sun-baked hills, the sultry sky; again a kite hovered over the earth. And in the distance that windmill was waving its arms again, still resembling a tiny man swinging his arms. One grew weary of looking at it and it seemed to be running away from the carriage, never to be reached.

  Father Khristofor and Kuzmichov sat in silence. Deniska shouted as he whipped the bays. Yegorushka was no longer crying, but looked around apathetically. The burning heat and the tedium of the steppes had exhausted him. He felt that he had been travelling and bobbing up and down for ages, that the sun had been baking his back for an eternity. They had not even travelled seven miles, but already he was thinking: ‘It’s time we stopped for a rest!’ The good-humoured look had gradually faded from Uncle’s face, leaving only that matter-of-fact detachment which lends an implacable, inquisitorial expression to a lean, clean-shaven face, especially when it is bespectacled and when nose and temples are covered in dust. But Father Khristofor never stopped looking at God’s world in wonderment and smiling. Not saying a word, he was thinking about something agreeable and cheerful, and a kindly, genial smile was fixed on his face. The intense heat, it seemed, had made that agreeable, cheerful thought congeal in his brain…

  ‘Tell me, Deniska, do you think we’ll catch up with the carts today?’ asked Kuzmichov.

  Deniska glanced at the sky, sat up, whipped the horses and replied, ‘We’ll catch ’em up by nightfall, God willing…’

  There was a sound of barking. Six huge steppe sheepdogs suddenly leapt out as if they had been lying in ambush and rushed to meet the carriage with ferocious howls. All of them, exceptionally vicious, with shaggy spiderish muzzles and red-eyed with malice, surrounded the carriage, jealously hustled each other and set up a hoarse baying. They were filled with passionate loathing and seemed ready to tear horses, carriage and men to shreds. Deniska, who loved to tease and wield his whip, rejoiced at the opportunity, assumed an expression of malicious glee, leant over and lashed out at one of the dogs. This made them howl even more and the horses raced off. Yegorushka, who could barely hold on to the box, realized as he looked at the dogs’ eyes and teeth that he would be torn to pieces in a trice should he fall off. But he felt no fear, looked at them with the same malicious glee as Deniska and only regretted that he had no whip in his hands.

  The carriage drew level with a flock of sheep.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Kuzmichov. ‘Whoa!’

  Deniska flung his whole body backwards and reined in the horses. The carriage came to a halt.

  ‘Come here!’ Kuzmichov shouted at the drover. ‘Get those blasted dogs off will you!’

  The old drover, ragged and barefoot, with a warm fur cap, a filthy bag on his thigh and a long crook in his hands – a regular Old Testament figure – called off the dogs, doffed his cap and went over to the carriage. An identical patriarchal figure was standing stock-still on the other side of the flock, impassively surveying the travellers.

  ‘Whose flock is this?’ asked Kuzmichov.

  ‘Why, it’s Varlamov’s!’ the old man replied in a loud voice.

  ‘It’s Varlamov’s!’ repeated the drover on the other side of the flock.

  ‘Tell me, did Varlamov pass this way yesterday or didn’t he?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. But his bailiff did… that’s a fact…’

  ‘Let’s go!’

  The carriage rolled on, leaving the drovers and their vicious dogs behind. Yegorushka reluctantly peered at the lilac distance ahead and now he had the feeling that the turning windmill was getting nearer. It grew larger and larger until it loomed up in all its bulk and he could see its two sails quite clearly. One was old and patched, the other had been made from new wood only recently and was gleaming in the sun.

  Although the carriage was travelling in a straight line, for some reason the windmill began to recede to the left. On and on they drove, but still it kept moving to the left, never disappearing from view.

  ‘That’s a fine windmill Boltva’s built for his son!’ remarked Deniska.

  ‘But I can’t see his farm.’

  ‘It’s over there, on the other side of the gully.’

  Boltva’s farmstead soon appeared, but the windmill still did not recede and kept up with them, looking at Yegorushka and waving its shiny sail at him. What a sorcerer that windmill was!

  II

  Towards noon the carriage turned off the road to the right, continued for a short distance at walking pace and came to a stop. Yegorushka heard a most delicious, soft gurgling, and he felt as though some totally different kind of air had brushed his face like cool velvet. From a hill stuck together by nature from colossal unsightly rocks a thin stream of water was running through a pipe of hemlock wood put there by some unidentified philanthropist. Limpid, gaily sparkling in the sunlight and softly murmuring, as if it imagined itself a powerful raging torrent, it swiftly ran away somewhere to the left. Not far from the hill the little stream broadened out into a small pool. The sun’s scorching rays and the burning soil drained its strength as they thirstily drank from it, but a little further on it had most probably joined up with another similar small stream, since about a hundred steps from the hill there grew along its course lush green sedge, from which three snipe flew up crying when the carriage approached.

  The travellers settled down by the stream for a rest and to feed the horses. Kuzmichov, Father Khristofor and Yegorushka sat down on a felt mat they had spread out in the sparse shade produced by the carriage and the unharnessed horses and started eating. That agreeable, cheerful thought which had congealed in Father Khristofor’s brain from the heat simply craved expression after he had slaked his thirst with water and eaten a hard-boiled egg. He glanced at Yegorushka affectionately, chewed for a while and began:

  ‘I was student too, my boy. From my earliest years God endowed me with intelligence and understanding, so that I wasn’t like the others when I was your age and I gladdened my parents’ and tutors’ hearts with my powers of comprehension. Before I was fifteen I already spoke Latin and composed verses in Latin as well as in Russian. As I remember, I was crosier-bearer to Bishop Khristofor. One day after Mass – as I recall it was the name-day of the most pious Tsar Alexander Pavlovich of Blessed Memory – as the bishop was unrobing in the chancel he looked kindly at me and asked, “Puer bone, quam appellaris?” And I replied, “Christophorus sum.”3 And he replied, “Ergo connominati sumus” – that is, we were namesakes, so to speak. Then he asked in Latin whose son I was and I replied – in Latin too – that I was the son of Deacon Siryisky, of Lebedinskoye village. Seeing how quick and lucid my replies were the bishop blessed me and said, “Write and tell your father that I shan’t forget him and that I’ll keep you in mind.” When the priests and holy fathers who were in the chancel heard this exchange in Latin they were not a little surprised either and each one showed his pleasure by praising me. I hadn’t grown whiskers yet, but I could read Latin, French and Greek, I knew philosophy, mathematics, secular history and all the sciences. The Lord gave me the most wondrous memory. I only had to read something once or twice and I knew it by heart. My tutors and patrons were astonished and assumed that I would become an outstanding scholar, a luminary of the church. I did contemplate going to Kiev to continue my studies, but my parents wouldn’t agree to this. “You’ll be studying all your life,” my father said, “so when can we expect to see you again?” Hearing this, I gave up my studies and took up a church appointment. Of course, I never became a scholar – but then, I didn’t disobey my parents. I was a comfort to them in their old age and gave them a decent funeral. Obedience means more than fasting and prayers!’

  ‘I reckon you must have forgotten every single thing you learnt!’ observed Kuzmichov.

  ‘And is it surprising? Praise be to God, I’m in my seventies now. I still remember a little bit of philosophy and rhetoric, but I’ve completely forgotten languages and mathematics.’

/>   Father Khristofor screwed up his eyes, reflected for a moment and softly said:

  ‘What is substance? Substance is an independent entity needing no other for its effectuation!’

  He twisted his head round and laughed from emotion.

  ‘Nourishment for the spirit!’ he said. ‘Verily, matter nourishes the flesh, but spiritual sustenance feeds the soul!’

  ‘Learning’s all very well,’ sighed Kuzmichov, ‘but we’ll have learned our lessons all right if we don’t catch up with Varlamov!’

  ‘That man’s not a needle in a haystack, we’ll find him. He’s wandering around somewhere in these parts.’

  The familiar three snipe flew over the sedge and in their shrill cries there was a note of alarm and annoyance at having been driven off the stream. The horses steadily champed and whinnied; Deniska bustled around. Trying to demonstrate how completely indifferent he was to the cucumbers, pies and eggs that his masters were eating he embarked upon the slaughter of the horseflies and common flies that were clinging to the horses’ bellies and backs. Uttering peculiar, viciously exultant cries of triumph from deep in his throat, he swatted his victims with gusto and when he missed he grunted with frustration, following with his eyes every single one that was fortunate enough to escape death.

  ‘Deniska! What are you up to? Come and eat!’ Kuzmichov said with a deep sigh to show he had eaten his fill.

  Deniska meekly went over to the felt mat and selected five large yellow gherkins known as ‘yellties’ (he did not dare take any of the smaller, fresher ones), picked out two hard-boiled eggs that were black and cracked, after which he timidly, as if afraid of being struck on his outstretched arm, touched a small pie with his finger.

  ‘Help yourself! Go on!’ urged Kuzmichov.

  Deniska took the pie with determination, walked some distance away and sat down on the ground with his back to the carriage, whereupon such a loud chewing was heard that even the horses turned round and eyed Deniska suspiciously.

  When he had eaten, Kuzmichov took a sack containing something out of the carriage.

  ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ he told Yegorushka. ‘Now, mind no one takes this sack from under my head.’

  Father Khristofor removed his cassock, belt and caftan. Yegorushka took one look and was absolutely amazed. Not for one moment had he supposed that priests wore trousers, but Father Khristofor was wearing real canvas trousers tucked into his high boots and a short, coarse cotton jacket. Seeing him in a costume that was totally unbecoming to someone in holy orders and with that long hair and beard, Yegorushka thought he bore a striking resemblance to Robinson Crusoe. When he had unrobed, Father Khristofor lay down face to face with Kuzmichov in the shade under the carriage and they closed their eyes. After he had finished chewing Deniska stretched himself out belly upwards in the full glare of the sun and closed his eyes too.

  ‘Mind no one steals the horses!’ he told Yegorushka and immediately fell asleep.

  Silence fell. All that could be heard was the snorting and champing of the horses and the snores of the sleepers. Some way off a solitary lapwing wailed and there was an occasional squeak from the three snipe that had flown up to see if the uninvited guests had left. The stream softly lisped and gurgled, but none of these sounds broke the silence or stirred the lifeless air – on the contrary, they made nature still drowsier.

  Gasping from the heat which he found particularly oppressive after his meal, Yegorushka ran to the sedge and from there he surveyed the locality. He saw exactly what he had seen that morning: the plain, hills, sky, the lilac distance. Only, the hills were nearer and there was no sign of the windmill which had been left far behind by now. From behind the rocky hill where the stream was flowing rose another, smoother and wider, with a tiny hamlet of five or six farmsteads clinging to it. Around the huts there were no people, trees or shade to be seen and it was as if the hamlet had choked in the burning air and withered away. For want of something to do Yegorushka caught a fiddler-cricket in the grass, raised it to his ear in his fist and for a long time he listened to it playing its fiddle. Tiring of this music, he chased a swarm of yellow butterflies that had flown to the sedge to drink and he did not notice that he had come back to the carriage again. Uncle and Father Khristofor were fast asleep; now they would be sleeping for another two or three hours until the horses had rested. How could he pass the long hours and where could he escape the heat? No easy task… Without thinking, Yegorushka put his lips under the stream that was flowing from the pipe. His mouth became cold and there was a smell of hemlock. At first he drank eagerly, then he forced himself until the sharp coldness had spread from his mouth all over his body and the water had streamed over his shirt. Then he went to the carriage and watched the sleeping men. Uncle’s face still expressed that same cool detachment. A fanatical businessman – even in his sleep or at church prayers when they sang ‘And the Cherubim’4 – Kuzmichov was constantly thinking about deals and he could not put them out of his mind for one minute. And now he was probably dreaming of bales of wool, wagons, prices, Varlamov… But Father Khristofor, a gentle, easy-going, easily-amused man, had never in his whole life been involved in a single deal that might have coiled itself around his soul like a boa constrictor. In all the numerous business deals he had undertaken in his time he was attracted less by the business itself than by the bustle and social contact – part and parcel of every undertaking. Therefore, in the present expedition, he was not so much interested in the wool, Varlamov, prices, as in the long journey, the wayside conversations, sleeping under a carriage and eating at odd hours… And now, judging from his expression, he was most probably dreaming of Bishop Khristofor, Latin disputations, his wife, cream doughnuts and everything that Kuzmichov could not have been dreaming of.

  While Yegorushka was watching those sleepy faces, suddenly there came the unexpected sound of quiet singing. A woman was singing, some way off, but where the song was coming from and from which direction was difficult to determine. That soft, lingering, dirge-like song could be heard first to the right, then to the left, then up above, then from under the ground, as if some invisible spirit were hovering over the steppe and singing. As he looked around, Yegorushka could not make out where that strange singing was coming from. But then, when he had grown used to it, he fancied that the grass might be singing. Through its song, the half-dead, already doomed grass, plaintively and earnestly – and without any words – was trying to convince someone that it was guilty of no crime, that the sun had scorched it without reason. It insisted that it passionately wanted to live, that it was still young and would have been beautiful but for the burning heat and drought. Although guilty of no crime, it still begged someone for forgiveness and swore that it was suffering intolerable pain, melancholy, self-pity…

  Yegorushka listened for a while and now it seemed that the doleful, lingering song had made the air even more sultry, hot and motionless. To drown the sound he ran to the sedge, humming and trying to stamp his feet. From there he looked in every direction – and then he saw the singer. Near the last hut in the hamlet stood a peasant woman in a short petticoat, as long-legged as a heron; she was sowing. White dust lazily floated down the hill from her sieve. Now it was obvious that she was the singer. A few yards from her a small boy, wearing only a smock and with no cap on his head, was standing quite still. As though bewitched by her song he did not move and kept looking downwards at something – most likely Yegorushka’s red shirt.

  The singing stopped. Yegorushka wearily made his way to the carriage and to while away the time played with the stream of water again.

  Again he heard that droning song. That same long-legged woman was still singing in the hamlet, beyond the hill. But then he suddenly grew bored again. He left the pipe and looked up. What he saw was so unexpected that it rather scared him. On one of the large, cumbersome boulders above his head stood a small chubby boy wearing only a smock, with a large protruding stomach and thin little legs – the same boy who had been standing n
ear the peasant woman. In blank amazement, open-mouthed, unblinking and not without some apprehension, as though he was seeing an apparition, he was inspecting Yegorushka’s red shirt and the carriage. The colour of the shirt attracted and delighted him, whilst the carriage and the sleepers underneath made him curious. Perhaps he himself did not realize that the pleasant red colour and his curiosity had lured him down from the hamlet and now he was probably surprised at his own daring. For a long time Yegorushka looked him up and down – and he in turn Yegorushka. Neither said a word and both felt rather awkward. After a long silence Yegorushka asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  The stranger’s cheeks puffed out even more. He flattened his back against a rock, opened his eyes wide, moved his lips and replied huskily, ‘Titus.’

  The boys said nothing more to each other. After another silence and without taking his eyes off Yegorushka, the mysterious Titus hauled one leg up, felt around with his heel for a point of support and scrambled up the rock. From there, staring at Yegorushka as he retreated and apparently afraid he might be struck from behind, he clambered up onto the next rock and carried on climbing until he disappeared altogether over the crest of the hill.

  As he followed him with his eyes Yegorushka clasped his knees and lowered his head. The sun’s burning rays were scorching the nape of his neck and his back. Now that doleful song would die away and then waft towards him in the stagnant, sultry air; the stream gurgled monotonously, the horses champed and time seemed to be dragging on endlessly, as if it too had congealed and come to a stop. A hundred years seemed to have passed since morning… Was it not God’s wish that Yegorushka, the carriage and the horses should become transfixed in that air, turn to stone like the hills and remain in that same place for eternity?