Grin

Alexander Grin

Quarantine

  I.

  The garden glittered dazzlingly, dusted all over, from the roots to the treetops, with a transparent, fragrant snow. A green lake of tender young grass stood beneath, penetrated by the hot brilliance burning in the pale-blue sky. Like a cloudburst, this light scattered down, bathing the transparent apple-blossom snow, falling upon its curving features like gold silk on the body of a beauty. White and pink petals, unable to withstand the hot, golden weight, slowly broke away from their cups, floating down, graciously twirling in the crystalline ripples of air. As they fell, they fluttered like moths, silently dappling the serene, tender grass with dots of white.

  The air—heady, hot, and pure—luxuriated, basking in the rays of light. The apple and bird cherry trees stood as if spellbound, sleeping under the burden of their white, virgin color. The downy, velvety bumblebees hummed in a low bass, besieging the sweet-scented fortress. Fussing honeybees glistened with dusty bellies, buzzing through the grass, and, darting off suddenly, faded away, a swift black speck amid the pale-blue air. Sparrows called noisily and throatily, as loud as they could, concealed by the dark verdure of the rowans.

  The little garden bubbled like a mountain spring, broken by flashes of red-gold in the granite ledges, and, like a web of shadows and light, the reflection of this cheerful triumph flitted over Sergei’s face as he lay there beneath a tree in the pose of a mortally wounded man. His arms and legs were stretched out as widely and freely as possible, his dark hair mingled with the grass, his eyes looked up, and when he closed them, the light penetrated his lashes, casting a reddish shadow that touched his eyelids. Sweet insouciance, full of languid abstraction, entered through every pore in his skin, dandling and enervating him. Not a single identifiable, troubling thought had wormed its way into his head, and he wanted to lie there for a long time, serene, until the red sunset rose behind the black angles of the roofs and made everything dark, damp, and cold.

  It was difficult to say where his body ended and the earth began. To himself, he seemed to be the very green of the grass, which plunged white threads of roots far down into the intoxicated, friable earth. Twisting and turning, these roots escaped into its very depths, into the cramped, damp darkness of that underground kingdom of worms, beetles, and the gnarled, brown and pink roots of ancient trees that imbibed the vernal moisture. Melting, merging with the greenery and the amber light, Sergei broke into beatific laughter, tightly, concentratedly screwing up his eyes before suddenly opening them again. A blue swell washed directly over them, hot and bright, and in its midst, green, trembling leaves stretched out, upturned.

  He turned over onto his side and began to look at the dense, mysterious thicket of brushwood, last year’s brown leaves, and the miscellaneous dross of flora. Trouble was brewing there. Long black beetles resembling cathedral choristers were gadding around all over the place, tumbling over impetuously. Ants being lured into a glass would drag something along, give up, and drag it again, working their hindquarters. A butterfly took a turn around before perching. Wearing a businesslike frown, Sergei stretched out his fingers and took aim at the slowly flickering white wings.

  “Oh, pshaw! You’re only little! …”

  There came a clap of hands and the grass rustled. Sergei raised his eyebrows and looked around.

  “What are you playing at, Dunya? Where’s the little thing gone?”

  “I’ve frightened away your butterfly!” the girl explained, and laughing creases twitched across her delicate forehead and the lines of her lips. “I was looking for you, and lo, here you are … Every bit the little boy, Sergei Ivanych … Have you really nothing better to do?”

  “Oh, very well, then!” Sergei smiled, still frowning. “Anyway … I’d only have caught it and let it go again, for isn’t it said, ‘Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord’?”

  Dunya reached up, clutched a gnarled black branch, and lifted her delicate, classically proportioned face, which was adorned with a light, ruddy tan. And her inquiring black eyes reflected the flutter of the light, and the wind, and the verdure.

  “But you thought perhaps it wouldn’t? To be sure, it would praise Him,” she drawled. “It’s so hot. I’ve left a letter for you on the table; the postman just called.”

  “Did he indeed?” Sergei found himself asking.

  He stood up, reluctantly and sweetly stretching out. The girl’s slight, colorful figure stood before him, as the bended branch trembled and scattered little pieces of white over her head. There were no women like that where he had come from, naive in the natural simplicity of their movements, as simple and strong as the earth. Sergei lowered his eyes toward her delicate round breasts and immediately averted his gaze. Where had this letter come from?

  A vague, piercing sensation, strangely reminiscent of toothache, began to throb in him, and suddenly a dreary gray shadow fell over the colors of the green day. With thousands of unseeing glass eyes, a stone city glowered at him, while a motley din assaulted his ears. Dunya smiled, and he smiled back at her out of habit, with the corner of his lips. The sparrows chirped in agitation. The girl let go of the branch, which made a terrific noise as it rushed up.

  “I’m going on an outing today,” she announced cheerfully. “There’ll be me, Lina Gorshkova, too, the carpenter’s wife, and even the clerk himself, Dmitry Ivanych … We’ll have a rollicking time of it. Only we’ve no one to row us. But for that, we’d go a long way! …”

  “Marvelous,” said Sergei, lost in thought. “What a fine thing, to go for a boat ride …”

  “Oh …”

  Dunya opened her mouth slightly, intending to say something more, but only placed her hands to her head and smiled inquiringly.

  “‘Oh’ what?” echoed Sergei.

  “I dare say you won’t care to … But then if all of us … ʼMitry ʼVanych is going to play for us … Bought himself a new accordion just before the spring. With three rows, a lovely deep bass … Just makes you sigh when you hear it …”

  The unpleasant feeling of alarm was quickly replaced by the thought that the letter could well be insignificant and not in the least dreadful. Yet he hesitated to go to his room, preferring to talk.

  “You’re as kind, Dunya,” said Sergei with a bow, “as you are tall. And yet …”

  The girl snorted. Her teeth flashed boldly; dimples fleetingly appeared on her swarthy cheeks.

  “And yet,” Sergei continued, “I couldn’t possibly. Much to my regret … I’ll be writing letters, this and that … So thank you for the invitation but, all the same, my apologies.”

  “Oh well, as you wish. I only meant the rowing … Our gallant gentlemen are so unconscionably lazy … We’ll have to row them, these devils! …”

  She smiled crossly, and her pretty face grew stiff and awkward.

  “Shall I really not go?” thought Sergei. “Why shouldn’t I? They’ll be squealing, splashing water around, singing and pinching each other. ʼMitry ʼVanych will provide the music. Still, you’ll likely feel awkward. No, truly …”

  At this point, however, he envisaged the boat, the girl sitting beside him, and mentally sensed the close proximity of her slender, tantalizing body.

  “No, it would be awkward,” he told himself again, anxiously recalling the letter. And with that, his desire for something youthful and lighthearted was extinguished.

  “Come!” said Dunya. “I’ll put on the samovar and carve up some meat …”

  The girl turned and nimbly floated off. Between a gap in an old gray fence, which served as a garden gate, she turned and disappeared. A minute later, from a little white log cabin, her shriek came flying out, accompanied by spanking and the desperate crying of a child.

  II.

  Sergei climbed the porch stairs and stepped into the twilight cool of the vestibule. Just outside the low, worn doors leading to his room, blocking it with her body and bent over, Dunya was holding her little five-year-old sister Sanka by the arm as the latter tried desperately to sit down on the floor. The child was giving out a piercing scream and kicking its filthy little bare feet in every direction; its dress was bespattered with fresh wet mud. Noticing Sergei, Sanka immediately calmed down, sobbing and hostilely examining “uncle’s” figure with her puffy red eyes. Dunya stepped aside, lifting her tense, perspiring face.

  “Look! Just look what she’s done! Do you see this? You’re my torment of torments! I’ve never seen anything like it … It’s a punishment sent from God! …”

  Hurriedly tucking in her skirt, which had come undone, she shot a glance at Sergei and again set about dealing with Sanka, who had begun to wail even more loudly and desperately. The young man opened the door and entered his room.

  After the humid heat of spring and its dappled brilliance, it was pleasant for the eyes to rest as they met the walls; it was easier to breathe, too. A billowing white curtain covered the window; through its patterned net could be glimpsed the vague outline of a dusty, lighted street and little buildings with brickwork on the ground floor and gray roofs that looked like hats. Here and there the cheap, variegated wallpaper was hidden by lurid oleographs under glass in narrow black frames. Atop the ragged green baize of an open gaming table lay several books brought by Sergei and a writing set speckled with ink stains. Four canary-painted chairs stuck out around the table and a dresser, while on the floor there trailed a grimy canvas runner.

  Sitting in its broad envelope, the letter loomed blue on the table. Sergei picked it up and, for some while, with an unsettled feeling of vexed impatience, examined the jagged, undistinguished handwriting of the address. An old desire to clarify both to himself and to others the result of these two months of voluntary banishment flared up again, only to be broken by a feeling of vague, halting fear. Somewhat alarmed, as if this simple blue envelope had borne and hurled in his face those old, fiery thoughts that he had left behind in the city and, in so doing, broken the uncomplicated sequence of spring days, Sergei tore open the letter and extracted the slim, crisp leaf of paper. Having impatiently skimmed through the inevitable, conventional text, the mask of its true meaning, he lit a candle in a green copper candleholder and brought the paper to the flame, heating its clean, uninscribed side. It curled up, yellowed, and disintegrated in parts, but it remained stubbornly silent, like a man unwilling to betray a secret entrusted to him. And only then, when Sergei’s fingers had begun to ache from the heat of the flame and he wanted to take them away, did brown marks begin to appear on the paper. They snaked and twisted, and, before the last letter had been dressed in flesh and blood, Sergei already knew that tomorrow some fateful person would arrive, and after that he would have to go off and die.

  To begin with, he read the solid, even letters with absolute dispassion, registering them automatically in his mind and assembling them into words. When, however, they came to an end and stopped in the whole formidable nakedness of their significance, he braced himself and gritted his teeth, ready to repel an imminent blow. Only now did Sergei realize with absolute clarity and certainty that this could not and must not take place. There, where the brain, stupefied and ablaze, makes promises, and the border between life and death dissolves in the fierce heat of fitful struggle—that is where there is a truth, a logic all of its own. While there, where you want to live, where you want to eat, drink, kiss life, gathering up its littlest crumbs like precious stones—there, perhaps, there is no truth, no logic, but the sun, the body, and joy.

  In a corner, where the tattered wallpaper was beginning to peel, a distant road drew into view, with people, street lamps, and shop signs. Horses and carriages thronged the street. Someone was coming … Someone pale, with a clammy, cold sweat on his brow and a tempest in his heart, raised his hand, while everything around him roared with thundering, terrible laughter and collapsed …

  Outside, sparrows were chirping in greedy, importunate bursts. Hurtling carts clattered, and an axe was chopping. A distant city rose up before his eyes, surrounded by a forest of chimneys and flocks of carriages. Noisy, breathing heavily, it laughed in Sergei’s face—a ringing, metallic laugh, pervaded by a dark, fantastical flight of burning thought.

  There, in the middle of this seething, frenzied fever of nerves, an enormous weblike mechanism of living tissue forged tirelessly in hundreds and thousands of hearts waves of feelings and emotions, surrounding Sergei with the mysterious, mute force of impulse. But just as then, his exhausted soul had been keen to reckon with the executioners of life, so now it was plain and simple that he had no intention of dying—he did not want it, nor could he bring himself to want it.

  Never had he forgotten the bright, human side of life, and his lust for it had grown as his weary, overwrought body, full of hot, powerful blood, ate its fill and relaxed. The days passed—and he lived. The sun rose—and he washed himself and smiled at the sun. He inhaled the fresh, intoxicating air, himself growing intoxicated, and everything seemed heady and gay. The earth revealed itself to him day after day, fragrant, mighty, and green. His body grew big and heavy, full of vague desires.

  It was so simple and good, and he wanted it to remain like this forever: plain to see, good, and simple.

  Friends and acquaintances—or those whom he took to be friends and acquaintances—now reminded him of those droll, vocal little sparrows. While they just hopped around, making noise, trying to shout down life, life resounded all around them, quivering and resplendent. Alongside this picture flashed pale, haggard, harassed faces, hungry eyes, brains eternally starving, hearts turned everlastingly to stone in pain and suffering. Now he could clearly see hoards of heads, mountains of books, and sparse, uncomfortable rooms that recalled the faces of old maids. He set the past on rickety, feeble legs and looked on. The colors washed away, the shades faded, but the contours remained the same, sharp and angular. They had

been inscribed in blood—both in his own and in that of others. Only the figures of women and girls—vibrant and bright—softened the background, as flowers do the iconostasis of a church. Thus also do the lines of a great poet, taken as an epigraph for a scholarly work, leave their fragrant trace in those terse, heavy pages …

  And so the tireless, angry zeal he bore for his faith heaved, ready to collapse under the whole arsenal of sharpened, stinging, and wounding arguments. While farther on, in gloom-covered corners, vermin crept and a melancholy wailing droned out, fusing into one single stream tears of impotence, the sighing of a slave, dull, swinish malice, and a bloody, childish absence of comprehension …

  All of a sudden, Sergei felt crushed, disgusted, and wretched. Worried, listening to the hurried, enigmatic whisper of blood, he stood there, hesitating for a long while, unconsciously ready to break his train of thought with a decision. And finally it occurred to him, what was hidden inside, perhaps there, where a strong body in the prime of life indignantly refused the chill of death. This brief thought was expressed in three words: “Under no circumstances!”

  And although after this he felt calmer and more carefree, he was still annoyed at himself and regretted something. Annoyed because he too, like so many others, had turned out to be capable of constructing beautiful, brave deeds in his mind. In times of acute, nervous enthusiasm for an imaginary exploit, how pleasant it is to die a hero and at the same time rejoice that you are alive.

  Outside, the sparrows continued their restless, relentless call, and in their cries Sergei could hear:

  “Here’s a sparrow! Me! Chir-r-rup! …”

  Sergei sighed, opened his eyes, and rose from his chair. He grinned, narrowed his eyes sweetly, yawned, and, recollecting himself, quickly burnt the letter. It burst into flames and fell to the floor as a light, gray ash. He proceeded to turn on his heel, removed from the wall a little old single-barreled rifle, and went out.

  By the gate he met Dunya’s inquiring black eyes. She was sitting on a bench with her legs tucked under her as she quickly, deftly husked seeds. Her glossy raven hair had been done in a long, taut plait and was adorned with a yellow ribbon, while her rosy face against the background of a gray, decrepit fence looked like a flower pinned to a shopkeeper’s coat.

  “Off hunting, Sergei Ivanovich?” she asked, spitting out the husks. “What a pity Mitya Spiridonov isn’t here. Oh, he could show you some spots! Used to go himself and come back all draped with birds. What didn’t he hunt! …”

  “Splendid,” said Sergei as he examined the colorful calico of Dunya’s blouse, which snugly fitted her delicate, round shoulders. “Where has he gone?”

  “Somewhere far away—you won’t spot him from here!” the girl said, laughing. “He’s with the army, in Kostroma.”

  “Splendid,” Sergei repeated with a smile. For some reason he found it amusing that Mitya Spiridonov had gone off to be a soldier and now, hair cropped, arms and legs contorted by training, would be performing all manner of acrobatic tumbles.

  “Why don’t you come with me, Dunya?” he joked. “With you there, I think we’d bag a fair amount, you and I.”

  “Me?” said Dunya coolly, before adding after a pause: “I can’t, in any case. My aunt’s asked me to keep house for a while. Her children are terrors: you look away for only a second and they’ll burn the whole place down … The very thought!”

  “I thought you were going on an outing?”

  “Yes, an outing, but not across the marshes, hitching up my skirt, wading through the grassy bog,” the girl objected vividly. “How funny you are, Sergei Ivanovich, really!”

  And, gaily laughing, she flashed her even rows of white teeth. Sergei stood there, smiling at her cheerfulness, her health, and at the sun, which cast hot shadows in the corners of the fences, which were overgrown with a multitude of dark-green nettles.

  “Well, goodbye!”

  “Will you be back for dinner?”

  “I don’t know … Will you leave me something—in case I don’t make it back in time?”

  He set off slowly, his heavy boots raising a thick cloud of dust from the road; he could feel her intent feminine gaze on his back but could not bring himself to look around.

  “What a lot of nonsense!” he yawned, smiling to himself, before turning at the corner and heading toward the river.

  III.

  Sergei had walked quite a distance, almost five miles, trudging to the point of stupefaction. As he crossed an undulating green meadow, unevenly cut by the shady zigzagging of a little river bordered with tufty clusters of willows, he recalled April. Back then this place had been cold, damp, and inhospitable. His feet had squelched nastily in the sodden, waterlogged earth, which was covered over in last year’s faded grass and rotten twigs. The slush nested in pits, traitorously covering puddles and ruts, into whose cold water frozen feet would unexpectedly plunge. Hidden by rising mist, the sun would shine diffusely. A willow had stood naked and tattered, its boughs twisted outlandishly. The river had still slept, and the ice on its decaying black banks had swelled with a filthy white crest and was marked all over with a network of animal and bird tracks. By the banks, where dirty pools of spring water had glinted meanly, early sandpipers would sway despondently and, catching sight of a man, fly off with a frightened chirp.

  Now nature seemed like an elegant woman, refreshed after a long, intoxicated night. There was a trilling in the grass, which blended its wild, monotonous melody with the cries of birds. Greens and blues, dappled with the lilac-pink pattern of blossoms, flickered in the eyes. Air streamed over a flushed face now with the dryness of heat, now in cool, balsam waves.

  Far, far away, beyond a dove-gray strip of forest, the weak, plaintive whistle of a locomotive sounded, and again the enormous, thousand-eyed city flapped its sooty iron wings before Sergei’s eyes. But now the apparition lost its acuity and flitted off into the transparent, crystalline distance. Among the flowers and hillocks, densely overgrown with redheaded haircap moss and bushes of rosehip and raspberry, it seemed wan and lifeless, like a dream of long ago. It had no place here. The curly sorrel and the lacquered green of cowberries had taken Sergei under their aegis. He adjusted the belt of his shotgun and slyly, youthfully grinned at something hiding in the depths of the bushes.

  Yellow wagtails were hopping about, coquettishly shaking their long, straight tails. Somewhere a corncrake twitched lazily. Thirst tormented Sergei, and, ducking into the splintered bushes, he made his way down a steep, rocky bank toward the shallow-flowing river. By the bank the water pooled serenely, riddled with sedge and seaweed, and a large pebble glittered in the riverbed. Crouching down and soaking his knees, Sergei saw in the water’s dusky mirror a bright, pale-blue sky, leading off somewhere below, far beneath the bank, as well as his dark face, his tangle of hair, and the swollen veins on his forehead. Having drunk from the river, he looked at himself again, a little disappointed. In the courageous, handsome face of his watery double, there was not so much as a trace of struggle. It looked calm, carefree, weary, and, as usual, a little sardonic.

  He wiped his wet lips with a handkerchief, donned his cap, and, lazily grasping at tufts of grass, clambered up, feeling the sticky, cloying anxiety travel with him, following him, clinging to him, not letting him out of its sight, and poisoning the air with its breath. It was like someone else’s bothersome cargo, which could not be unloaded until it had been dragged to a certain point. All his annoyance and bewilderment found expression in the realization of tomorrow’s inescapability. At the same time, it seemed outrageous that people whom, in the recesses of his soul, he had somehow always ranked below himself, should now very likely despise and mock him, even though now he was no worse than they. But most vexing of all was that they, these people, seemed to have been granted the right to treat him in whatever manner they pleased. Moreover—a fact that was quite ironic and absurd, though this is truly how it seemed to have come about—it was he who had granted them this right.

  This disturbing thought thrashed about and squirmed anxiously for a while, upturning a whole heap of dirty laundry that had accumulated in his soul. Other thoughts followed, indolently flaring up and plaguing him, hostile to the green, thousand-eyed life that had amassed all around. Gray and uniform, having been re-examined so many times and at such length, worn down like old coins, they lingered intrusively, lumbering and sleepy. Fragments of them, forming words about freedom, heroism, and tyranny, crawled about like pathetic, legless cripples.

  Twilight was setting in, but still he kept walking, fingering the rosary of his past, until the time came when he desired to go home. His thoughts needed walls: there, free of the open air and exhaustion, simple and unadorned, long-familiar and tired of one another, they could flow by sonorously until morning, when the broad blade of an invisible axe would fall between him and them and reveal him, Sergei, to himself.

  IV.

  By the time he reached the outskirts of town, it was already dark, depressing, and sedate. Cattle were lowing in the yards; angry women’s voices leapt out. Somewhere there were drunkards shouting. Windows were lit here and there. His weary feet burned, as though having been scalded with boiling water. He wanted to eat, then to lie down and enjoy sweet repose. Sergei pushed open the clattering gate and entered the yard.

  He was unable to see any windows through the darkness and decided at first that everyone must already be asleep. However, as he went up the creaking porchsteps, he heard amid the blackness of the slumbering, humid air the muffled sounds of conversation and a woman’s gentle laugh. Sergei pricked up his ears. A man’s voice, contented and at the same time dreamy, slowly floated across the depths of the little garden:

  “Now look here, you aren’t in the right frame of mind to grasp this … But, upon my soul, it’s true … It’s like a burst of light, a revelation. It’s even described so in many works of philosophy.”

  “I shouldn’t agree to such a thing,” Dunya’s feminine voice quickly rejoined. “Just think about it! You’ll be eaten up by worms … You can stand there like a fool your whole life. And what if all of a sudden everything goes flying out the window?”

  “Like a fool?” the man objected, taking offense. “You’ve got it all wrong. It’s the opposite—the soul receives unto itself a special gift and then everything is revealed to it … For instance … I forget what his name was … but there was once an old man who stood on a post for thirty years and three months, and by the end he reached a point where he could understand how animals think.”

  “So stand, then,” the girl continued, her barely concealed laughter quivering in her chesty, singsong voice. “Stand right there; you can pray and pray, wrack your mind about the divine, go hungry and cold—but what if you should suddenly sin in your thoughts, then to hell with all your merits. It’s awfully harsh.”

  After a brief pause, she added:

  “No. I, for one, am going to roast in hell, so it’s all the same to me. Do you suppose it’s boring there, in hell? I think the people there must be rather jolly. I’ll take you there with me, ʼMitry ʼVanych! Ha-ha!”

  Sergei stood on the porch, listening and smiling. He wanted to go into the garden, to have a peaceful, fanciful conversation, seeing neither eyes nor faces and breathing in the warm, soporific murk. But he decided not to go, for in his soul he discerned a vague, reliable presentiment that his arrival would interrupt the conversation, and everyone would suddenly feel flat and awkward.

  “Dunechka,” Dmitry Ivanych retorted in a sweet, didactic tone of voice, “although I am of course ready to follow you to the very end of the earth, to the farthest shores of Tauris—forgive me, but I have no desire to boil my soul in tar, he-he … How can you talk like that, as if you’ve stacked up some great pile of sins?!”

  An accordion let out a few spasmodic fragments.

  “I’m a terrible sinner,” the girl laughingly announced. “Oh, there’ll be no redemption for me! I sin all the time. Here you are, talking of the divine, and all I can do is laugh. I’m just sitting here with you—and for what? That’s also a sin.”

“If you knew,” Dmitry Ivanych sighed, “the feelings … that …”

  “Please, don’t. You haven’t any feelings … Why don’t you play a little something?”

“Oh, you cruel … umm … siren! For you, though, I’d play anything at the drop of a hat! What shall it be? There’s a good waltz I learned yesterday—it’s Mexican.”

  “N-no,” the girl drawled thoughtfully. “I’d rather that other one … ‘Fragrant Verdure.’”

  There was a silence lasting several seconds, and suddenly the accordion began to speak, powerfully and melodiously. The player’s lively fingers rapidly poured over sad, sonorous trills, growled out basses, and trembled with deep, long sighs. The tremor of the night and the warm murk disintegrated and reverberated with soft, rounded phrases, and the sounds of the waltz sounded neither trite nor alien to this backwater of life. After around five minutes, Dmitry Ivanych lustily played out a few bass notes and fell silent.

  “Wonderful!” the girl said after a pause. “Teach me to waltz, ʼMitry ʼVanych.”

  “It would be my pleasure to be of service to you,” the cavalry officer replied gallantly. “It’s the simplest thing, as it happens … How’s your lodger, by the way?”

  “My lodger?” Dunya drawled reluctantly. “He’s fine … he’s alive.”

  “He’s a conspicuous chap,” Dmitry Ivanych continued. “And so haughty, too … He’s got a ruble’s worth of ambition for every half-copeck of ammunition. Just the other day I met him here … Well, you know how it is … a little chitchat, this and that … But no! ‘Goodbye,’ he says, ‘I haven’t the time …’ Though he is, as they say, a man of erudition.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk!” the girl objected, displeased. “He’s actually very polite and quite modest. Just last night he was playing with Sanka, like a little boy.”

  “Well, yes,” Dmitry Ivanych, now insulted, remarked tetchily. “Of course, for you he probably plays at being a fine fellow … since he’s been staying with you for two months … naturally—”

  “Oh, please!” Dunya pointedly interrupted. “Don’t make insinuations! So he’s staying with us—what of it? …”

  There was a tense silence before the accordion indignantly struck up a merry, skipping polka. Sergei smiled conceitedly and, passing through the vestibule, opened the door to his room. A muggy, black void breathed in his face. After groping for his matches, he lit a lamp, gobbled down his cold dinner, changed, and, now weary, relished stretching out on the bed as he lit a cigarette. Drowsiness and fatigue had made him absolutely indifferent as to whether somebody came tomorrow or not; all that he wanted now was to sleep.

  He extinguished the lamp, rolled onto his side, and opened his eyes wide, trying to imagine that the darkness was death and that he, Sergei, had thrown the bomb and died. But nothing came of it, and even the word “death” seemed to him like an empty, meaningless sound.

  And, already falling asleep, he envisaged the strong, slender body of a girl. Perhaps it was Dunya; perhaps it was somebody else. Whoever she was, she radiated the stirring, palpitating heat of blood. And all night long he dreamt of women’s delicate, supple hands.

  V.

  When—later, after much time—Sergei came to recall everything that took place between him and his comrade, who arrived the very next day to make the final arrangements, it always seemed to him as if it had all come out “amiss somehow,” and as if there had been some sort of mistake. What this was exactly, he himself could not say. However, one thing was beyond all doubt: that the reason for this mistake lay not with him, Sergei, and not with his comrade, Valerian, but somewhere else, beyond the realm of clear, detailed analysis. It was as if each man felt awkward before the other, not on account of his attitude toward himself and others generally, but on account of that enormous, blind thing whose name is Life, which jealously guarded each of them from a simple, dispassionate understanding of someone else’s soul. This realization was also hard and unpleasant to bear because the same thing might conceivably happen again in future and once more leave in the soul the trace of painful suffering and shuddering grief.

  Sergei had not known that it would be Valerian who would come. When, next morning, the shifty, swarthy, shrill revolutionary barged into his room and began to embrace and kiss Sergei, who was still drowsy and brooding over what was to come, the latter sensed right away that their interview would be pained and unpleasant. The sudden, jerking movements of the diminutive, ebullient man betrayed so much certainty in himself and in his knowledge of people that in the first instance it seemed inadmissible to back out of a decision that had been taken long ago, clearly and decisively. But this was immediately followed by the cold, fixed obduracy of desperation, whereupon he found that he could move more freely and breathe more easily.

  Along with this, a sour, mind-numbing feeling burdened his soul, yawning and wincing like a weary cat. Everything seemed astonishingly flat, absurd, and utterly devoid of sense. While Sergei was washing and dressing, Valerian bustled about, making absentminded remarks apropos of nothing, sat down, jumped to his feet, and kept talking and talking without pause, laughing and shrieking—about “the current situation,” about Liberationists and Social Democrats, about Revolutionary Russia and the Spark,* polemics and agitation. He spoke rapidly, piercingly, without end.

  Black-haired, shaggy, and hawk-nosed, wearing a pince-nez that covered his bulging, myopic eyes, impetuous and agitated, he seemed like a ball of nerves hastily wedged into a frail, sinuous body. Fidgeting on a chair, tilting back his head and adjusting his pince-nez every minute, taking Sergei by the hands and buttons, he would rapidly, trilling with smug, childish laughter, scatter sharp, nervous phrases. Even his clothing, intentionally garish, somewhat in the style of a southern shop assistant, roundly eclipsed Sergei’s usual string of impressions and seemingly brought with it all the echoes and excitement of far-flung provinical centers. He had known Sergei for a long time and always treated him with an air of hurried, businesslike condescension.

  When at last Sergei was ready and walked out with his comrade into the garden, where the laughing sun shone golden, scintillating among the greenery like a fine wine, where the sparrows tweeted deafeningly, and where the downy snow of the apple blossom smelled sweet, he felt his anger and alarm give way to an influx of morning cheer and an expectant indifference toward everything that Valerian might say or do. And yet, at the same time, he understood that from those very first words on the matter, it would be difficult and painful.

  They sat down on the grass, where a dense rowan bush hid the corner of a fence that flanked an old shed. Catching his breath a little and distractedly casting around his myopic eyes, Valerian was first to begin:

  “You weren’t expecting me, were you, my fine fellow? So, tell me the how and what of it, and so on and so forth. Is everything ready? Hmm? Well, tell me.”

  “The thing is …” Sergei forced a smile. “As you can see, I’ve come here, settled down, and I live … well, as you can see … in a healthy climate.”

  “Yes! Yes?! Hmm? Well?”

  “Well, it’s just … I eat, I’m putting on weight … food here is cheap. Since being here, I’ve had a hearty appetite. You might say I’ve been resurrected. You yourself saw how I was when I left—like a lemon …”

  “Like a squeezed lemon, ha-ha! Now, as for that matter … Have you covered your tracks here? Is anyone watching you?”

   “Not so loud …” Sergei looked around. “Of course no one’s watching me. How could they out here? When I first arrived … I thought I might say I was looking to take lessons, but I rejected that idea later; I mean, this isn’t even a town—it’s really more of a large village.”

  “Yes, yes! … Well?”

  “Well, what’s there to say? … I’ve set myself up here—under the simple guise of a convalescent. And there you have it. I haven’t any acquaintances, and seeing as there isn’t anyone to … Anyway, enough of that …”

  “Yes, yes, yes! … And do you realize that you, my fine fellow, are living in clover? … Others”—he lowered his voice—“are kept in quarantine for five or six or even nine months before the deed! There’s nothing to be done about it! It has to be this way. It has to, you understand? You’ve got to clean yourself so that there’s no trace of black powder and no root can be pulled up … Do you know, frankly speaking, I doubted you had it in you to stay in this … ha-ha! … this cell under a fir tree. But here you are, in the flesh. Hmm …”

  He dropped his pince-nez, picked it up, saddled it on his nose, and enigmatically asked:

  “Who’s putting you up? Eh?”

  “The head of the family and the owner of this little house works as a blacksmith at the railway depot. A gentle sort and, as they say, God-fearing. When he comes home from work in the evenings, sighing long and heavily, he takes tea, and on Sundays he gets blind drunk and says the sweetest little things. He cries and starts to repent of something … And then his wife’s a whole bazaar: pock-marked, stout, and coarse, with a voice like brass. From dawn till dusk, she curses everything under the sun. They have two daughters: one’s a little crybaby, but the older one isn’t half bad …”

  The diminutive man listened, chuckling with approval and slapping Sergei on the shoulder as he adjusted his pince-nez.

  “Well, well? Yes?” he repeated incessantly, thinking of something else all the while. And when Sergei had finished, Valerian looked him in the eyes pointedly, full of emotion and melancholy.

  “Well, what’s it to be?” he said quietly. “When do you expect you’ll be going, eh?”

  And, as though fearing that he had posed the cutting question much too soon and too bluntly, he quickly put in:

  “I suppose you’ve been dreadfully bored here, yes?”

  The noose gripping Sergei’s throat slowly loosened, and, trying to be cool-headed and firm, he said:

  “N-no … not very … I’ve been hunting, reading … I’m terribly fond of nature.”

  “Nature, yes …” said Valerian distractedly, and a tense concentration descended over the muscles of his sallow, swarthy face. “Well … it’s … are you ready?”

  He lowered his voice and looked Sergei straight in the eye with a thoughtful, measuring gaze. All at once everything amusing in his mannerisms and appearance inexplicably faded. He went on, as though arguing with himself:

  “I think that the time has probably come for you to get a move on … I brought the goods with me. I put it in your dresser. Now, listen—be careful, and watch what you’re doing! … So long as you don’t drop it or have a game of skittles with it, you could happily take it all the way to Kamchatka. That’s the first thing. Next up is money. How much do you have? …”

  The question lingered in the air, and even after it had died away, it continued to ring in Sergei’s ears. He began to feel painfully ashamed and sorry for himself on account of all the deception of this conversation, which was futile from first to last and disguised miserably by an air of nonchalance and the calm of a friendly chat. He grinned inanely, whistled dramatically through his teeth, and said in a devious, subtle voice:

  “Oh, Valerian! I feel just wretched … Essentially, what you’ve … quite in vain, that is … I mean to say … You see, I’ve … reconsidered. Only …”

  With a crushing, loathsome feeling, Sergei turned his head. Those myopic black, bewilderedly blinking eyes were staring right at him. Valerian gave a crooked grin and, raising his eyebrows, adjusted his pince-nez with an inquiring look. Something quivered in his thin, sallow throat, which rose and fell as though it were trying to swallow solid food. He said merely:

  “What?! Get out of my sight! …”

  The tone of his voice, curiously unfamiliar and dry, rendered any explanation unnecessary. He sat there, firmly biting his lower lip, and wiped his bulbous, perspiring forehead with the palm of his hand. So confident and restless only a moment ago, he now seemed weary and pitiful.

  “Valerian!” Sergei said after a pause. “Be that as it may … Valerian, are you listening?”

  However, as he watched him intently, he marked with astonishment that Valerian was weeping. Great, implacable tears were streaming down his swarthy cheeks from those rapidly blinking myopic eyes, while the nervous convulsions of a grin flashed at the corners of his mouth. And it was so difficult to see this hardened, grown man look pitiful and bemused that Sergei was in the first instance taken aback and at a total loss.

  “Now see here, what’s all this?” he said helplessly after a brief, awkward silence. “Come, where’s the good in this?”

  “Oh, leave me! Leave me! I said, leave me!” Valerian shrieked angrily, feeling Sergei’s hand on his shoulder. “Please, leave me …”

  But then, with a quick effort of will, he suppressed the momentary emotion and dried his eyes. He jumped to his feet, fixed his pince-nez in place before rattling off in a halting, subdued voice:

  “Here’s what we need to do: come on! Do you hear? You and I need to have a little chat! Where shall we go, eh? Do you know a good spot? Or shall we just head into the field? Into the field seems like the best option …”

  They went into the yard, which felt hot after the cool of the little green garden with its white perimeter of log buildings. Dunya was standing on the porch, dressed in tattered blue-striped calico; beside her stood Glafira, her mother, a fat, fleshy woman. They were feeding the chickens. On seeing Sergei, Glafira broke into a broad smile and bent double, bowing deeply to the youth.

  “Good day to you, Sergei Ivanych!” she sang. “You look as though you’re about to set out on a walk! Won’t you have some tea? You should at least give some tea to your guest! I say, you’re so undomesticated, so restless.”

  “Later,” Sergei said, as he smiled distractedly at Dunya, who was watching him from under her round, plump hand. “Do put the samovar on, though. We’ll be back later …”

  Something was stirring, bubbling in his chest: confused, agitated thoughts thrashed about incoherently, seeking clear, sure words of comfort. Yet everything that met his eyes distracted and diverted him. With cries and clattering, peasants rode by, goats bleated, the tolling of bells rang out before fading away, and gates rattled. Valerian walked beside him, dark and diminutive, clutching Sergei by the elbow and wildly gesticulating with his free hand. Tired and on edge, fingering his pince-nez, he kept repeating, scornfully and plaintively:

  “But how could you, eh? How? What? What have you done? Isn’t this the height of piggery and childishness, hmm? Really, you aren’t a child anymore, are you? Oh, oh! …”

  He groaned and smacked his lips. So very rapidly he was turning something over in his mind, and was barely keeping pace with his comrade’s long strides. Judging by the tone of his voice, which was calmer now, and by his slight, plaintive, malevolent grin, Sergei saw that the worst of it was already over, and now all that remained was talk—pointless and unnecessary though it was.

  “Well, what will you do now, hmm? Well?”

  All of a sudden, Sergei wanted this impetuous man, this good man whom he had deeply offended, to understand and feel his, Sergei’s, words, thoughts, and wishes—as he himself understood and felt them. And, forgetting the vast gulf that separated his inner world from that of the clear, grimly logical conclusions that constituted the center, the sense, the nucleus of this dark, diminutive man’s life, this man who was walking beside him, he shuddered from head to toe and grew impatient with the desire to express himself simply, justly, and powerfully.

  “Valerian, listen to me! …”

  Sergei took a deep breath and paused to choose his words. Inside him, everything was clean-cut and sure, but this was because the simplicity of his feelings stemmed from an incalculable complexity of impressions and thoughts—he had yet to grasp the principal, central theme of his emotions.

  “Well?” Valerian drawled wearily. “Speak! What do you have to say?”

  “Here’s what,” Sergei began. “Of course, not for anything should I ever be able to divulge this to another soul … But this is what it comes down to. This is the example I wanted to give you … So-o … here it is: have you ever walked past shop windows, and … well … looked … at … bronze statuettes? of women?”

  “I have … Go on! …”

  “Well, when I look at these elliptical, harmonious … distinct … lines … lines that are frozen forever in the form … that the artist has given them … dead, and yet soft and animate … I always think—now what do I think?—that this is how the soul of a revolutionary ought to be … Soft and yet like metal, definitive … Bright, cast from bronze, strong … and—feminine … Feminine because … well, in any case … Well now … Now see here … I’ve never considered myself one of them at all, and I still don’t … Of course, that would be ridiculous … Only because I’m not like that, but I wanted to live among such people … Their metal is altruism—and their lines the idea … Do you see? Whereas this isn’t altruism alone, but—”

  “Yes, of course,” Valerian interrupted distractedly. “But what of it?”

  “ … but perhaps it’s turned out just the same for me,” Sergei added quietly.

  His excitement suddenly waned. It seemed as if his true, sincere thoughts were still wasting away deep within him, and he was not saying what he thought. Valerian said nothing.

  “Yes …” Sergei slowly continued. “Everything’s the same, everything as it is: ambition, the desire for intense emotions, and, ultimately, often simply the thrill alone … But if that’s so, then I can no longer be like metal … And so I don’t want to die an effigy of vanity …”

  “Remarkable!” Valerian sneered. “Oh, you fool! Of course, all people are human, and nothing human is alien to them! So what? Are you disillusioned?”

  “By no means! …” Sergei dryly cut in.

  And with a fleeting, sly smile, his other, secret thoughts slipped out, along with his desire for a great, romantic life, one that was beautiful, whole, unrestrained, and devoid of suffering. What he had just told Valerian was sincere enough, but it bore little relation to what he wanted right then. Instead of all this complex labyrinth of petty disappointments, stale devotion, and dissatisfaction with people, the powerful, irrepressible voice of young blood cried out: “I don’t want to die; I want to live. It’s as simple as that.”

  “It’s a remarkable thing,” said Valerian, tilting his head back farther, adjusting his pince-nez, and curiously examining his comrade’s face. “You reason like a woman. You know, there’s a decadence about you … You haven’t been reading Max Stirner,* have you? Or, ha! … Ha! … Nietzsche? No? Well, let’s leave it. Do you have money?”

  “No, Valerian, you’ve got it all wrong,” Sergei began again, angry at himself for wanting and being unable to express the simple essence of what was and would continue to be inside him, as it would in any other person. “You know, I left prison broken, feeling spiteful, my nerves in tatters … I was like a drunkard … I was drunk on ideas—and so my plan ripened … My nerves reacted with painful speed … But as I’ve already told you, I cannot be a hero, and I do not want to be a cog in the machine …”

  “No!” Valerian laughed. “You haven’t told me anything yet! … Hmm? It’s only natural that you want to live, just like any other man, but what’s all this about bronze statues? these revelations of yours? And why did you … Ach! You know, I’d never doubted you for a second! …”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise and slowed his pace. The field exuded heat; in the distance the town was dappled with gray, red, and green roofs.

  “The Central Committee has had quite enough of you! You talked their ears off about this! Very nearly with tears in your eyes you begged and badgered them … Do you think there weren’t others? Shame on you! All that prancing and jumping around … So now what? … You might have written! Hmm?”

  Sergei said nothing. His irritation was growing and bubbling to the surface.

  “For a start, I hadn’t expected that the moment would come so soon …” he said brusquely. “But now … I just told you … Do as you will.”

  “Come, come … So, what do you intend to do now?”

  “I don’t know … In any case, it’s of no consequence.”

  “Yes-s … Perhaps that’s so … It’s your affair … Very well, then. Farewell!”

  “Where are you going?” Sergei was astonished.

  “There, of course!” Valerian waved his hand in the direction where, far beyond the thicket, stood the red brick structure of the railway station. “I can still catch my train; I’ve deposited my luggage … Well, all the best.”

  He firmly shook Sergei’s hand, while his quick, black eyes fixed their gaze on him through the convex lens of his pince-nez.

  “Yes!” He started. “I left it in your room. It’s of no use to me now … You can dispose of it somewhere—in the woods, perhaps, or in some out-of-the-way spot …”

  “All right,” Sergei said dejectedly. He felt sorry for Valerian and wanted to say something heartfelt and touching, but he hadn’t the words—only a sense of alarm and alienation.

  The dark, diminutive man hurried to the station, swinging his arms as he went. For a long time Sergei watched him go, until the scrawny little figure had turned into nothing but a crawling black speck. A moment later it appeared as though Valerian had turned around, and Sergei rushed to wave his handkerchief as he peered into the green emptiness. But no response came.

  The black speck rose up once again as it crossed a hillock before vanishing. The sun mercilessly cast its arid amber light, and the green of the young grass glittered and basked in it. In the distance the air quivered and shimmered, disturbing the outlines of fences, like lines on notepaper. Beyond the thicket, white puffs of smoke rose up, and a locomotive cried out in alarm.

  As Sergei walked home, he recalled everything he had said to Valerian. With an obscure, vague sorrow, he lamented the past.

  VI.

  He had grown weary of pacing back and forth in the small room, brushing against the corner of the table and slowly turning around when he reached the low, yellowing door. With each turn, Sergei listened to the springy squeak of his toe cap before setting off again, marking the sound of his footsteps without thinking. It was easier to think on his feet. He had been used to this since his days spent in a prison cell, of which this room somehow—probably in its dimensions—reminded him.

  His feeling of excitement had long since passed, and he was left instead with that of a man who goes to see a matinee: the evening light, the music, the acting … For several hours he watches and listens to a tidy, poetic slice of life … Only then for the shrill white light of day to rule and thunder once again, and for him to crave anew the deceitful, golden evening light.

  The flat, smug wallpaper flaunted a motley array of colors around a few grimy, painted flowers. The curtain billowed in the wind and rippled gently over the table, disturbing some scraps of paper and a gnawed pencil. Titles of books assaulted his eyes, provoking a sense of dreariness and disgust. Grim, cold, and unbearably tedious, they engendered visions of monotonous life in an industrial world, innumerable rows of figures, hemp, sugar, and iron, visions of everything that is and yet should not be.

  The light faded, fleeing the town with smooth, colossal steps, its sorry shadow creeping behind it. From somewhere came the rich, steady sound of an axe at work; a hammer quickly came to interrupt it, and for a long time two strikes, one heavy, the other light, chased one another in the quiet air. Sergei yawned sweetly, fitfully, cracked his knuckles, and came to a halt opposite the table.

  Between the books and the writing set stood a little metallic box that, in form and its dusky gray color, looked more like a soap dish than a bomb. There was something comic and at the same time tragic in its shunned, redundant danger, and it seemed as if it might avenge itself, suddenly, terribly, and without warning.

  He remembered now that he had immediately felt some foreign presence, an almost living entity, as he entered the room. This entity had peered at him craftily, probing him with its gaze, with one eye through the side of the dresser, docile and yet threatening, like a quick-tempered slave ready to cast off his submission. Now it lay there on the table, and Sergei observed this oblong steel box with an eerie curiosity, as when one observes an animal roaming outside the thick bars of its cage. He wanted to know what would happen if he were to take this object, so boring to look at, and lob it against the wall. An acute, alarming chill ran through him as he thought this, a ringing developed in his ears, and the building began to seem as if it were made of paper.

  The gray shadows of twilight entered the room unheard. Tedium tormented Sergei, and his body was afflicted with an impatient itch. In an attempt to banish it, he thought of the impending expanse of life, his youth, and the brilliance of a spring day. But turbid darkness blackened the window, and his thought, paralyzed by this, trembled in the embrace of dull, dreary uncertainty. This gave rise to irritation and timorous, quiet meditation. And all of a sudden, at first slowly, but then quickly and more distinctly, the antique melody of a naive children’s song appeared and sang out in his brain:

  The tsa-a-ar, tsa-a-ar, tsa-a-ar’s son,

  Trod upon her toe-sies, the tsa-a-ar, tsa-a-ar,

  Tsa-a-ar’s son,

  Take her to your heart-ie, the tsa-a-ar, tsa-a-ar,

  Tsa-a-ar’s son.

  This faint recollection of childhood flickered like a vague, ancient dream, only to be obscured suddenly by Valerian’s dark, bounding back. The image faded away. Sergei clenched his teeth and stared blankly at the wall. And the wall, decked in twilight, looked back at him, silently and sleepily.

  “I feel so dismal,” he thought. “It comes and goes, in waves. It will pass. Then everything will be fine again and I’ll regain my zest for life. In point of fact—what do I have to fear?”

  “Sergei, what do you have to fear?” he said in a hushed voice.

  But his brain gave no reply, nor did it spark any thoughts, and only slowly and ponderously did it roll over the stones of the past. There were all sorts there—big and small, dark and light. The dark ones were wet and slippery; hurriedly they fell back into their resting places, and he was loath to disturb them again.

  He would live. Every day he would see the sky and the empty body of air. The roofs, the dove-gray smoke, the animals. Every day he would eat, drink, and make merry. Breathe, move, talk, and think. Fall asleep while pondering the coming day. Someone else, and not he, would have to go to the appointed spot, pale with dread, and throw a cold, grey box just like this, resembling a soap dish. Throw it and die. But not him; he would live and hear of the death of this other man and what was said about his death.

  In the next room they were taking tea; someone was twisting and turning in a chair, which was groaning heavily. There was a rattle of crockery; the indistinct hum of conversation invaded his ears. The door in the hallway slammed and there came a quiet knock at the door to his room.

  Shaken, Sergei roused himself. “Yes?”

  A woman’s voice on the other side of the door asked:

  “Shall I light your lamp?”

  “Please, Dunya. Come in.”

  The girl entered unhurriedly, and her dark, lively shadow came to a halt. Sergei brightened up a little, as if the sounds of this youthful, sonorous voice were wresting his soul from the talons of limp, meaningless despair.

  “I can’t see a thing in here,” said Dunya as she fumbled in the darkness. “Where’s the lamp?”

  “It’s out of kerosene. Here, take it!”

  Carefully he handed her the cheap lamp in its cast-iron stand, and, as he did so, his fingers came into contact with Dunya’s, slender and warm that they were.

  “I’ll fill it up,” she said. “I won’t be a moment.”

  “Take your time … Say, Dunya, how was your outing yesterday?”

  “We didn’t go,” the girl drawled dejectedly. “There were no boats. They’d all been taken. It was such a disappointment … And our own needs a caulker … I’ll be back in just a moment …”

  She slipped silently into the darkness of the hallway, slamming the door behind her. Sergei began pacing about the room, whistling the old ditty about the tsar and his son, and envisaged the curly head of a hot-tempered little boy drowsily moving his plump lips. Was that what he had looked like? How strange. But already he felt happier and more convinced in his soul, and he wanted a cozy light, some tea, and an interesting book. What Valerian thought belonged to him and others like him; what Sergei thought was his own affair. And that was just it. One shouldn’t let oneself succumb to ideas.

  Like a faint, isolated blemish, the distant specter of the stone city swept over him once more before vanishing, frightened by the footfalls of passers-by. These heavy, uneven steps echoed indistinctly beneath the window and stopped there, having startled the silence.

  VII.

  Dunya came in, and the yellow light leapt into the room, exposing the walls and the furniture, which had been shrouded in darkness. The room looked relaxed and cheerful. The girl placed the lamp on the dresser and turned down the flame ever so slightly.

  “There we are,” she said. “Hmm, what’s that?”

  “I didn’t say a thing.” Sergei smiled as he got to his feet. Thrusting his hands in his trouser pockets, he stopped in front of Dunya.

  “There we are indeed,” he said. “So, how are you?”

  He wanted to talk, to joke and appear as people had always seen him: gentle, attentive, and straightforward. This had never cost him any effort, but to realize his qualities was both pleasant and reassuring.

  The girl stood by the door in a languid, unaffected pose, the hair on her wearily inclining head touching the door post. Sergei observed her strong, slender body with the covetous feeling of a sick man watching street life from the window of a dull, drab ward.

  “What did you get up to today?” he asked, gazing at her dark, shy eyes.

  “I must be off to bed soon!” The girl laughed and yawned, covering her mouth with a quick movement of her hand. “Can I really be so tired? All my joints are aching.”

  “Did you go somewhere?”

  “I did … To the woods to look for cones.” Dunya gave another long yawn and stretched out languidly and wearily. “Pine cones for the samovar … I collected a whole bag of them …”

  “Beautiful …” thought Sergei. “She’ll marry a tailor or some shopkeeper. She’ll sew, cook, nurse, sleep a lot, grow fat, and curse, just like Glafira.”

  “And I suppose you’ve been sitting with your books again?” Dunya put in quickly. “If only you’d bring me a novel … I do awfully like reading the interesting ones … And Pushkin too! …”

  “Dunya-a-a! Da-a-amn it!” Glafira shouted from the hallway in her usual angry voice. “Go and see to Sanka! …”

  “Oh, away with you!” the girl said quietly, listening as she watched Sergei. “I’ll be right there!” she shouted in a loud, agitated voice and, slamming the door loudly behind her, flew out of the room, a swift-moving blur of color. In the quiet that followed her departure, the rustle of her calico skirt could still be heard for a time, and in the air, by the doorframe, her pink smile still shimmered.

  Suddenly, as happens in the street when a passer-by stares at someone from behind and the person instinctively turns around, sensing this gaze, Sergei quite unexpectedly, recalling something, turned to the table. The eyeless little metal object that looked like a soap dish was watching him dimly in the gray reflection of its facets. Gathered in its steel walls were the fruits of centuries of thought and sleepless nights, a fiery ball of yet-unborn lightning, with the unsuspecting look of a child and the poisonous body of a rattlesnake—it gleamed with a silent, malevolent reproach, like the look of a woman scorned. Sergei fixed his gaze upon it; it was as if two enemies, lying in wait with bated breath, were gathering their strength. And the man sneered with a sense of malicious triumph.

  “You’re powerless,” he said quietly and mockingly. “You may conceal the terrible, blind power of destruction … The wrath of a dozen generations may be compressed within you. But what’s that to me? You’ll remain silent so long as I please … Here, let me pick you up … I’ll pick you up just as easily and calmly as I would a turnip. Somewhere in the forest, where the human voice cannot be heard, you can bark and shatter the dry, rotten stumps … But you won’t tear off my skin, you won’t burn my eyes, you won’t crush my skull like shattered glass … You won’t char me or make of my body a red pulp …

  He picked it up—it was heavy, cold, and smooth. Then he took a towel, carefully and meticulously wrapped the bomb in it, put on his hat, placed a ball of twine in his pocket, extinguished the lamp, and walked out of the room.

  VIII.

  The night spread itself triumphantly, filled with hush and faint, furtive sounds. Stars set the black expanse ablaze. The earth was lost in darkness, and a pair of feet trod cautiously though wet, unseen grass. A smooth, calm wind was blowing, abating every now and then, whereupon the air would exude a warmth. The hillocks and ditches were hidden and slowly emerged as dark, dormant outlines. On the horizon, like a distant fire, a thin sliver of moon showed red.

  Step by step, carefully advancing, trying not to stumble, Sergei navigated the hummocks and ruts. He came across silent black bushes in dense, uneven rows, and as he drew nearer to them, narrow, winding passages slowly unveiled themselves, filled with a damp, leafy rustle. They seemed to sleep by day, blinded by the light, and only now awoke to think secret, ancient thoughts. The grass rose up, taller and denser, and his feet trod through it with a gentle, moist squelch. As Sergei parted the bushes with his hands, their branches would stubbornly and quickly straighten again, lashing his face with their cold, wet leaves.

  He felt as though he were sleepwalking, carrying a heavy, fearsome metal in his breast, one that guarded his every step and every palpitation of his body, ready to abduct him and whisk him away, lonely, lost in a sleepy plain replete with mystery and silence. What had gone before this now appeared as a long, endless dream, and everything around him—the night, the darkness, the damp, and the bushes—seemed like a continuation of this same, eternal, alternatingly bright and vague dream.

  The night went on, silently moving in the heavens, and he went on too, tense and alert. Death seemed to vanish for him, while he, Sergei, would live forever, always conscious of himself, his body, and his thoughts. The sun would continue to rise and set; forests would rot and turn to dust; animals and birds would disappear; mountains would crumble; the sea would escape into the bowels of the earth; and he would never die but see eternally the bright blue sky, the gold of the sun, and listen to the nocturnal murk …

  There was a crack and a snap somewhere off to one side, and the faint cheeping of an invisible bird slipped through the bushes like a dreamy lament. The murk ahead rose up like a jagged black maw breathing a chill air. The forest was drawing near; its enormous sleeping body droned mournfully and whispered among the treetops. Another few steps and the trees stretched out ahead, faintly outlined, revealing row upon row of mysterious black corridors. The bushes yielded and then closed ranks behind him.

  Sergei entered under the drooping vaults of conifers. Brushwood snapped underfoot; ahead, like a dark crowd, trees emerged and parted. Up above, something creaked and sighed, as if someone enormous and covered in moss were rolling over, shedding cones that fell to the ground with a distinct, gentle rustle.

  A nervous sense of dread, not unlike the timidity felt by a thief, began to grip him as the twigs snapped, broken by his foot, and the silence seemed to quiver. Everything around was damp, vast, dormant. The fir trees’ shaggy paws hung down, brushing his head, while gnarled stumps stuck up like freakish gnomes out for a stroll. The roots of deadfall wrenched up from the earth loomed black like knotted, crooked shields, behind every one of which lurked some wild being. Somewhere there was a gasp and a groan. From time to time came the fluttering of some nocturnal bird moving noisily to a higher perch before settling down again.

  He found his way out into a clearing where it was even more desolate and somber because of the approaching dark storm clouds. He paused. Having placed his parcel carefully on the ground, he unwrapped the towel and tightly wrapped the twine in a crisscross formation around the metal object. Next, he selected a tree with high dried-out branches and, holding his breath, stood on tiptoe, looping the twine from the bomb around a branch as high up as his arms could reach. Having tied to that same branch the end of another piece of twine, a thicker one, he began to unwind it as he backed away toward the other side of the clearing.

  There was enough twine to cover a distance of about thirty paces. When it came to an end, Sergei lay down behind an enormous, tall stump, where, drawing his head tightly into his shoulders, and paralyzed with anticipation, he slowly tugged on the end. The twine stretched elastically, shaking, and Sergei, having suddenly lost his nerve, let it go, his heart now pounding.

  But the tree stump was reliable and the distance sufficient. So he closed his eyes and, with a chill, pulled with all his might.

  There was a painful ringing in his ears. The silence burst with a colossal, panicked rumble, and the murk leapt up, as the wooded depths were blinded and unveiled by the ringing blaze. The explosion rang with the sound of a thousand bells, a crash and prolonged, cackling screams. The noise danced in a frenzy all around, radiating out in fleeting, fading circles. Its echo began to sigh with a frail, polyphonous lament before dying away in the distance.

  Deafened and blinded by the milk-bright brilliance, Sergei staggered to his feet, his heart beating convulsively. The green corner of the forest, wrested from the murk by the shock of the explosion, still floated in his eyes. His ears ached, while a distinct, modulating ringing fractured inside them. It seemed that another moment would pass, and the secret of the darkness, outraged by this sacrilege, would rush at him with all the terror of the forest’s sly dread.

  He let out a deep sigh and straightened up. Fragments of branches, clods of earth, and sticks were still raining down from above, striking his clothes and hands. Sergei pricked up his ears. But all was quiet, as if nothing had disturbed the solitude.

  He raced over to the spot where only a minute ago a smooth, heavy box had been hanging from a branch. The tree lay there, shattered at the roots, while turf and damp churned-up earth had piled up all around. At the epicenter of the explosion, there was an uneven, elongated pit. He paused there for a moment, composed himself, and set off homeward.

  Once again the avid darkness came after him, dashing on ahead, while his feet now stepped lightly and quickly. Once again trees came rushing to meet him, parting to form narrow, twisting passageways. A silence embraced this space, reaching upward and beckoning with a dark, ambiguous swell.

  IX.

  The distant church bell gently tolled eleven times when, exhausted and overwrought, Sergei opened the gate and slipped under its clattering chain. He did not wish to sleep, and for several seconds he stood by the porch lost in thought, mopping his damp, perspiring forehead with the palm of his hand.

  The warm, starry sky exuded a calm, and in its black abyss the undulating clusters of trees in the garden grew still, like a chain of storm clouds that had come down to earth. Fading amid the silence, the sound of footfalls rang out; they seemed to be engendered by the dark, empty air itself. The watchman’s stick rattled with a gentle wooden vibration. The grass rustled faintly underfoot. Sergei entered the garden, which was enveloped by the spicy, aromatic sultriness of the floral grounds. The leaves were silent, as though cast in iron, and suddenly, coming to life with a soft, sorrowful sigh, they rustled with a quivering, lilting ripple. And it seemed to Sergei as if the curly, leafy waves were closing in all around in a dark embrace, trying to enfold his weary, exhausted body. In the trees’ black depths, the lighted windows of a neighboring house formed a red pattern, like hot coals smoldering among ashes.

  Somewhere, it must have been in the yard, there was a faint sound, a door creaking. Sergei automatically pricked up his ears; he thought he could hear the sound of footsteps. Perhaps it was Dunya. But everything was quiet, and the lights were all out. His thoughts ran to the daughter of the house, to the room where she was probably now sleeping, tossing and turning her white, lithe body in a hot bed. Thus he mused unconsciously and therefore pleasantly. The next moment, however, he felt an urge to speak and reveal the hidden seething of his soul, which was agitated and somehow both dolorous and happy. Damp, heavy perfumes emanated from the earth, swirling about his head like an intoxicating vapor. There was a smell of bird cherry, apple blossom, caraway, and damp, rotten tree stumps.

  The bushes rustled and, with a faint elastic snap, fell silent again. Someone alive and breathing was standing in the darkness, obscured by the garden’s black shadows. Alert now, Sergei started.

  “Who is it?!” he ventured quietly, straining his eyes.

  “Who’s there?!” a thin, frightened cry quivered in response.

  Sergei recognized it and smiled.

  “Dunya, is that you? Why aren’t you asleep?” he drawled encouragingly. “Surely you’ve collected enough pine cones for one day? You must be exhausted!”

  “Oh, Lord! You gave me such a fright just then, my heart’s pounding! … I don’t have to explain to you why I wasn’t asleep, you aren

t my keeper.” The girl had calmed down, and already a note of mockery was clear in her voice. “And what are you doing up at this hour? Hunting for buried treasure?”

  She broke into a quiet, quivering laugh. And it struck Sergei that here, probably, shrouded in darkness, she felt more assured and freer than when she came in with the lamp or swept the floor, awkwardly drawing out fragments of conversation.

  “I can’t sleep …” he said. “I’m not tired. I’m just taking a walk and thinking. It’s so lovely here in your little garden.”

  “I ought to be asleep,” the girl answered languidly, “but somehow I don’t quite feel like it …”

  She paused for a moment and, as she sat down on the ground, inquired suddenly:

   “You’re an educated man … Why do people sleep? …”

  “Because sleep restores the strength you lose during the day,” Sergei said in his habitual didactic tone of voice. “It’s essential …”

  “I see-e-e …” Dunya drawled thoughtfully. “I’m not sleepy. So my head must be as empty as a pail … I’ll just sit here until sleep comes …”

  Sergei drew nearer to the girl. He could hear her breathing—long and uneven—amid the darkness.

  “Shall I bring you some Pushkin?” he asked, lowering himself onto the grass beside her. His hand brushed her recoiling foot and sent a shiver through his body. “Why do you want Pushkin in particular, anyway?”

  “He writes poetry,” the girl sighed. “I do love a good poem … Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” Sergei said distractedly.

  A silence fell. And the longer it continued, the more intense became the sweet, aching excitement in Sergei’s soul, constricting his breath and thought. The blood flowed slowly to his head. In the darkness he could see only the hazy white of her face and her hands resting on her knees. Dunya sat with her head slightly raised. The silence grew, and it felt both luscious and chilling to break it.

  “Dunya!” Sergei barked all of a sudden; his voice, constrained and faltering, sounded alien to him. His anxious dread had grown into a hot, languorous agitation that made his body feel light and his breathing heavy and quick.

“Yes?” the girl quickly replied. She immediately carried on in an affectedly carefree tone of voice: “Oh, look, how many stars there are! See how they just float there in the sky!”

  Another keen, tense silence ensued. Its invisible thread stretched tremulously between them, hindering their thoughts and speech.

  “Dunya!” Sergei repeated. He reached out his hand gropingly and touched her fingers, quivering as he felt her soft, hot body. A heavy lump grew in his chest, which respired with short, deep contractions. The girl sat stock-still, as though slumbering. He proceeded to clasp her hand firmly, and, blushing in the darkness, he clumsily pulled her to himself. Her hand stubbornly resisted, trembling under his hot, powerful fingers. A feeble, bashful, feverish whisper flew out:

  “Stop that, please … Stop … Whatever are you doing?!”

  She tried to jerk her hand away, but, seeing that Sergei was relenting, she suddenly squeezed his palm with her moist, slender fingers. A wave of intoxication rushed to his face. He seized the girl by the arm, just above her elbow, while with his other hand he embraced her from the front, squeezing her pert breast and feverishly kissing her fragrant, fluffy hair. Dunya sighed feebly and, with a shudder, fell silent. With greedy, clumsy movements, Sergei rushed fumblingly to unbutton her blouse and thrilled at the touch of her hot, dewy body.

  All of a sudden she leapt up, desperately breaking free and reaching out her hands. Her crumpled white chemise fluttered against the dark curve of her figure. In a fog of confusion, Sergei threw himself at her, but two slender, feminine arms struck his chest, forcefully repelling it.

  “Dunya … darling—come, now … what are you doing?!”

  “No, no, no!” the girl hastened in a desolate, imploring whisper, staggering and breathing heavily. “No, no! … Sergei Ivanych, darling, you mustn’t! … Tomorrow … I’ll tell you tomorrow! …”

  Like birds, her words flitted past Sergei as a series of empty, meaningless sounds. And again, alarmed and rushing, he pulled her toward him, wringing her delicate, slender hand.

  Dunya wrenched herself away with one final, decisive movement, and after a crack and the sound of rapid steps, the bushes fell quiet. A moment later, in the depths of the yard, a door slammed and everything was silent, but to Sergei it still seemed as if in the dark, damp air the girl’s frightened heart was still beating loudly and rapidly. The illusion was so powerful that he instinctively reached out his hand. The hand touched the void before lowering again. It was his own heart that was beating so anxiously.

  He sat down on the ground, and, trembling all over from an unrelenting sense of excitement, he pressed damp, cold leaves to his burning face. His heart was still beating, but more quietly and evenly now. A hush filled the garden.

  Dunya, Valerian, the steel box, the explosion, the false passport, Dunya again—it all flashed by and became jumbled in his head, like a kaleidoscope of irregular images. Tomorrow he would leave this quiet, sleepy town—leave to lead another, uncertain life.

  “To live!” he said in a hushed voice, pricking up his ears. “How good it is to live …”

  * Liberationists … Spark: The Union of Liberation was a clandestine liberal political group founded in St. Petersburg in 1904 under the aegis of Pyotr Struve (1870–1944), a former Marxist who advocated, among other things, for a constitutional monarchy and the granting of full civil rights to citizens across the Russian Empire. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, a revolutionary socialist political party, was formed in 1898 with the aim of uniting disparate revolutionary organizations extant throughout Russia. Its newspaper, the Spark, founded by Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), was published abroad, variously in Leipzig, Munich, Geneva, and London, due to censorship, and smuggled back into Russia. Revolutionary Russia was a similar clandestine periodical, published in Geneva as an organ of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

Max Stirner: Johann Kaspar Schmidt (1806–1856), better known as Max Stirner, was a German philosopher, often regarded as a forerunner of, among other things, nihilism, individualism, existentialism, and anarchism.