The Steppe and Other Stories

Anton Chekhov The Steppe

and Other Stories

OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

THE STEPPE AND OTHER STORIES

Anton Chekhov was born in i86o in south Russia, the son of a poor grocer. At the age of 19 he followed his family to Moscow, where he studied mcdicine and helpcd to support the household by writing comic sketches for popu- lar magazines. By 1888 he was publishing in the prestigious literary monthlies of Moscow and St Petersburg: a sign that he had already attained maturity as a writer of serious fiction. During the next 15 years he wrote the short stories—50 or more of them—which form his chicf claim to world pre-eminence in the genre and are his main achieve- ment as a writer. His plays are almost cqually important, especially during his last years. He was closely associated with the Moscow Art Theatre and married its leading lady, Olga Knipper. In 1898 he was forced to move to Yalta, where he wrote his two greatest plays, Three Sisters and Tht Cherry Orchard. The premiere of the latter took place on his forty-fourth birthday. Chekhov died six months later, on 2 July 1904.

Ronald Hinglev, Emcritus Fellow of St Antony's Collcge, Oxford, edited and translated The Oxford Chekhov (9 volumes), and is the author of A Life of Anton Chekhov (also published by Oxford University Press). Hc is the translator of four othcr volumes of Chekhov stories in thc World's Classics: The Russian Master and Other Stories, Ward Number Six and Other Stories, A Woman's Kingdom and Other Stories, and The Princess and Other Stories. His transla- tions of all Chckhov's drama will be found in two World's Classics volumes, Five Plays and (forthcoming) Twelve Plays.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

ANTON CHEKHOV

The Steppe

and Other Stories

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

RONALD HINGLEY

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British Library Catal"Juing in Puhlication Data Chtkhov, A. P. (Anton Pavlovich) 18^1904 Tht sttppt and othrr storits.-(Tht World's classics). I. Titlt II. Hingky, Ronald fi9'-7W

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Library $f Congrrss Cataloging in Publication Data Chtkhov. Anton Pavlovifh, /0(^^1904. Tlrt sttppt, and othtr storirsfAnton Chrkhov: translattd with an introduction and notts by Ronald Hittglty. p. cm.—(Tht World's classics) Includrs bihliiographical rtfrrtncrs. r. Chtlthov, Anton Pavlovich, 18^^1904— Translations, English I. Tillt H. Srrits. I'GJ4J6.A tjH.16 1991 &9i.7j3—dcio ISBN —tij-jitj66}4

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CONTENTS

Introduction vii

Select Bibliography xv

A Chronology of Anton Chekhov xvi

THE STEPPE (1888) I

AN AWKWARD BUSINESS (1888) 82

THE BEAUTIES (l888) 99

THE COBBLER AND THE DEVIL (1888) I07

THE BET (1889) 113

THIEVES (1890) I20

GUSEV (1890) I34

PEASANT WOMEN (1891) 146

IN EXILE (1892) 159

rothschild's fiddle (1894) 167

THE STUDENT (1894) I76

THE HEAD GARDENER's STORY (1894) I80

PATCH (1895) I85

THE SAVAGE (1897) I90

IN THE CART (1897) 199

NEW VILLA (1899) 207

ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS (1899) 220

AT CHRISTMAS (I900) 234

FRAGMENT (I892) 239

THE STORY OF A COMMERCIAL VENTURE (1892) 24I vi CONTENTS

FROM A RETIRED TEACHER'S NOTEBOOK (1892) 244

A FISHY AFFAIR (1892) 245

Nfltfi 247

INTRODUCTION

The present volume is the fifth selection of Chekhov's short stories to be brought out in The World's Classics, and it completes the paperback publication for this series of his entire CFuvre as a mature fiction-writer. This means that the five volumes contain all those stories which received their first publication between March 1888 and the author's death in 1904. The text is that of the original hardback translation, The Oxĵord Chekhov, except that the stories are grouped differently and that textual variants have been omitted, as has much other scholarly apparatus.' The five volumes contain sixty titles altogether, and they maintain so high a level of excellence that many readers will rate them as the finest collection of short stories which any of the world's literatures has to offer. This high standard is maintained in the present volume, with a few minor reservations indicated below, and with the obvious exception of four trifles from the year 1892 which Chekhov himself excluded from his first Collected Works of 1899-1901; these are admitted here more for the sake of completeness than for their literary qualities.²

It is hoped that the completed paperback publication of these stories will help to correct the common view of Chekhov as a dramatist whose other work is comparatively unimportant. A playwright of genius he certainly was. But he surely deserves even greater admiration for what he achieved with the short story.

It is especially appropriate that this final selection should begin with, and take its title from, The Steppe, since it was the appearance of that renowned saga of the prairies which marked and brought about Chekhov's elevation from the minor to the major league among Russian writers. Its publication in the St

' The Oxford Chekhov (London and Oxford, 1965—80), vols. iv-ix.

² See pp. 239-46.

Petersburg monthly Scverny vestnik ('The Northern Herald') in March 1888 remains the most important single landmark in the crcativc evolution of its author, then 28 years old.

Chekhov had begun his literary career in 1880 as the author of short comic items possessing little artistic merit. They were written for money (but then, all Chekhov's work was written for money) and published in various humorous magazines of the pcriod. He felt obligcd to maximize such earnings by churning out more and more 'balderdash', as he himself later called it. But a more serious sense of purpose was sometimes dimly discernible even at the outset, and this asserted itself increasingly. The result was that Chekhov, chiefly popular in his early twenties as a lightweight humorist, had nevertheless already begun—during the two or three years preceding the publication of The Steppe—to attract the attention of influen- tial Russian critics and litterateurs. Older writers, of whom D. V. Grigorovich was the best known, began lecturing him on the need to take his talent more scriously, and to write less hasti Iy.

The first fruit of this advice was The Steppe, and particular significance attaches to the status of the publication in which it appeared. Scvcrny vestnik was onc of the revered 'thick journals' in which almost all scrious Russian literary works were first offered to readers. Now, nothing of Chekhov's had ever previously featurcd in any of these august literary monthlies, and so the importance of this promotion — from the pages of sundry despised or scmi-despised weeklies and dailies—could be lost on no one. Everyone knew that if the young man was ever to rival his great predecessors—Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and the others—Thick Journal status was indispensable.

Hc now had 'lift-off'. This is at once evident from the quality of the story itsclf—written, curiously, enough, at high speed despite the insistcnce of Chekhov's seniors that he should pace himself. His reward was the immcdiate ecstatic reception accorded by ordinary rcadcrs, as well as by his self-appointed senior mcntors and various influential reviewers, to a work which so cle.irly surpassed his most promising previous achievements. In the sixteen years of life remaining to him he was indeed to pace himself as he had been advised, becoming only a quarter as prolific—in terms of pages of fiction pub- lished per annum—as he had been during his eight-year-long immature phase. But the main point is that he first hit the highest level of the short-story writer's art with The Steppe, and that he afterwards rarely descended from it—even then for no more than the odd page or two.

Though The Steppe clearly pointed to Chekhov's future it is also important for its links with his past, since the background is that of his boyhood summer holidays—the Ukrainian and South Russian plains. The Chekhovs would camp there en Jamille on their way by horse- or ox-cart to visit the future author's paternal grandfather, Yegor, who had been a serf in youth, but who had since purchased his own and his family's freedom, and who had also become the manager of a vast Ukrainian estate. These details help to explain why Chekhov chose to make the central character of The Steppe a 9-year-old boy, and to present the world through the eyes of this youthful hero who is in many ways the author himself as a child. Here he was repeating on a larger scale the success of such early stories as Boys, Grisha, Volodya, An Incident, and Sleepy, which all centred, with varying degrees of humour and tragedy, on the lives of children. Perhaps Chekhov felt that The Steppe summed up all he had to say in fiction about children, for there were to be no comparable juvenile heroes in the fiction which followed. This is, incidentally, a substantial story by his standards, belonging in bulk as well as quality to a small group of later masterpieces of similar length: The Duel, An Anonymous Story, Three Years, and My Life. It is also remarkable for describing the most extensive journey in Chekhov's fiction. In 1887, some months before writing The Steppe, Chekhov had revived memories of his native prairies by revisiting his birthplace, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, and by touring the surrounding area so familiar to him from childhood. Hence the echoes in the story of such characteristic features as the archaeologically significant kurgany (ancient burial mounds) and kamennyye baby (menhirs), the buryan (coarse grass and wecds), the oxcn, the water-towers, the windmills, the kites, the Ukrainian peasants, the Cossacks, and above all the im- mense expanse of the seemingly endless plains. No other work of Chekhov's is so saturated with landscape.

Other noteworthy stories in this volume take us back again into southern landscapes familiar to the author. One of them, The Beauties, contains a recognizable portrait of his grandfather Yegor among other colourful locals. Thieves and Peasant Women too have their southern coloration, while The Savage evokes the Don Cossacks of the area in all the picturesque barbarity for which they were notorious—and which is often amusingly portrayed in Chckhov's correspondence.³ Yet more exotic autobiographical resonances echo from ln Exile and Cusev. These draw on the adventurous journey undertaken by Chekhov in 1890 across Siberia (the location of /n Exile) to the Island of Sakhalin, an unsavoury penal colony; he returned by ship via the Indian Ocean, which becomcs the last resting place of the Gusev who givcs his name to the story. Otherwise the settings of the scorics in this volume are somewhat vaguer, in Chckhov's more characteristic manner—rural, for the most part, and evoking the atmosphere of the ccntral Russian countryside south of Moscow where he owned an estate in the 1890S.

Ry that time Chckhov himself had, in effcct, become a member of Russia's social elite through his prowess in two of the libcral profcssions—the medical as wcll as the litcrary, for he was a qualificd and sporadically practising doctor; he also became a landowner on a more than modest scalc. Yet he never formally acquired the lcgal status of dvoryanin (member of the gcntry) normal for a succcssful professional man or country squire. Moreover, a.s thc storics in this volume so richly illustratc, hc nevcr forgot his origins as the son of a failcd provincial grocer and grandson of a onc-time peasant and serf.

In his work as a wholc hc chicfly focuses on thc privileged class which hc himself had joined as an outsidcr—that of thc ' Scu Thi' O.v/iirJ ClieHinv, iv. j; v. 4-5.

landed gentry, officials, and professional people; and also of the 'intelligentsia', a notoriously elusive group overlapping those previously mentioned. Eternal students, ailing university professors, bankrupt landowners, incompetent architects, fuddy-duddy grammar school masters, overworked doctors, conscience-stricken industrialists, self-deprecating, pompous, or ironical higher bureaucrats: for all their pathetic attributes (in much of Chekhov) these were yet members of the upper crust—as one look at the typical Russian peasant would at once make clear.

Typical of Chekhov such upper-crust characters indeed are, but just how far they are from exhausting his social range the present volume richly illustrates. It consists almost exclusively of stories in which the emphasis lies on characters from the less privileged levels of society.

The Russian underclass included principally, and at the lowest level, the peasantry, which accounted for four-fifths of the population, consisting mostly of illiterate, poor, and down- trodden individuals who retained the status of peasant in law without necessarily being employed on the land. As for the intermediate area between peasant and elite, one despairs of finding the right nomenclature, since 'middle class' suggests something foreign to Russian conditions. To the higher part of this intermediate stratum belonged the merchants and the clergy—as represented in The Steppe by Father Christopher and Kuzmichov. To the humbler class of intermediates belonged what might be called the junior NCOs of society— petty officials, artisans, parish clerks, hospital orderlies, and the like. Old-fashioned in their dress and customs, in which they often resembled the peasants rather than the gentry, and often speaking an 'earthy' form of substandard Russian, such persons also tend to adopt on Chekhov's pages a form of comic, pseudo-sophisticated speech which presents considerable prob- lems to those translators who are aware of its special nuances. It is persons of this social category that the judge in An Awkward Business calls 'in-betweeners' — those who belong to neither of 'the two poles of society . . . professional people and peasants'.

Elscwhere in the samc story thcy are dcscribed as 'neither peasant nor mastcr, ncither fish nor fowl'.

An Awku>ard Story prcscnts what The Steppe lacks: a clash of social classcs. The obstrcperous hospital orderly Smimovsky, an 'in-betwccner' if thcrc ever was onc, is locked in conAict with his superior oRicer, the doctor, who falls over himself trying to be fair to this appalling lout, but who is comically doomed by Russian conditions to win the contest, however hard he tries, in effect, to lose it. It is one of Chckhov's most acute comments on the Russian class system. On rcreading it I fcel that I did it less than justice in my second biography of Chekhov, whcre its inefectiveness is stressed—as I now think, wrongly. As for what rings like a dismissive scntence ('seldom did evcn Chekhov write so inconclusive a study of incon- clusiveness'), that still scems to be true, but is surely a compli- ment to the story rather than the reverse.⁴ For a very different confrontation, lacking the element of open conAict, between a gentleman and an 'in-betweener', rcaders may tum to the haunting In the Cart and to the relationship or non- relationship between Squire Khanov and thc unfortunate schoolmistress Mariya.

If a Smirnovsky, if a Mariya can ratc as Russian 'in- betwecncrs', what of the real social drcgs? We shall mcct them in plcnty—not his horsc rustlcrs (who formcd a special clite of their own), but his Siberian exilcs, his poor cobblcrs, his struggling coffin-makers, and their ilk. In At Christmas wc sink to the 1-'athetic world of thc villagc woman Vasilisa so cruelly dcfraudcd of hcr fifteen copecks by the scoundrelly Yegor. And in Patch our protagonist is a mcrc quadruped.

In three particularly eloquent stories Chckhov explorcs thc gulf which separates thc clite from this social stratum evcn lower than that of Hospital Ordcrly Smirnovsky. The cpony- mous hcro ofGusev is an innocent, if somcwhat brutal, pcasant soldier, and is shown in contrast with thc cmbittcred intcllcc- tual Paul Ivanovich—by no mcans a privilegcd member of

• n. Hinglcy. A New l.ife nf Anton Ckekhtiv (London, 11175); ri-pr. in pnpcrb.irk .is A Life of Anlnn Cliekhvv (Oxford, iyXy). p. 115.

society, but emphatically on the other side of the educational, linguistic, and class barrier to the dying soldier-hcro. This plain tale of a ship's sick bay in the tropics ends with a burial of both men at sea, and consists of death-bcd convcrsations that arc charactcrized by the lack of cffective communication between human beings which so fascinated Chekhov as a theme. Despite Paul Ivanovich's insistence on travelling third-class, and on airing his views in some splendid harangues, thc rift between first- and third-class Russian remains unbridged at the timc when both bodics are consigned to the occan.

Two further stimulating variants on this theme are presented by New Villa and On Official Business. In the first, an engineer successfully bridges a river ncar a village. But his well-meaning wife can build no bridge at all between herself and the local villagers, for all her attempts to fraternize with Rodion, Stepanida, and their kind. A bemused and sorry crew—some kind-hearted_t men and women, some malicious hooligans— Chekhov's muzhiks, as always in his work, are presented in a manner militantly contrary to the stereotype of Russian popu- list and Slavophile literature about the noble peasant. He had many times flouted thcse canons before, and most notoriously in his story Peasants (which will be found in the World's Classics volume The Russian Master and Other Stories), but he evidcntly felt that the point was worth making again and again. Howls of anguish from Russia's embattled pseudo-progressive and trcndy peasant-fanciers might annoy him, but he always stuck to telling the truth as he saw it.

A similar rift is that portrayed in On Official Business. A magistrate and a coroncr have been summoned to conduct an inquest in a village. Here they make memorable contact with the local constable, or sotsky, a downtrodden elderly messenger whose life consists largely of trudging through snow drifts to deliver official forms. The sotsky of this story was modclled on the real-life sotsky of Melikhovo, where Chekhov had his estate.

The two least typical items represented here are, probably, The Bet and The Head Gardener's Story. With their discmbodied settings and their powerful moralizing pretensions they might seem as far from Chekhov as it is possible to go. But they do have their parallels, reminding us of his experimental attempts of the late i88os to purvey Tolstoyan messages in fiction, as also does Rothschild's Fiddle. These are not vintage Chekhov, per- haps, but they are more than mere curiosities. To this same small group may be assigned a better-known item— The Student, that tantalizing, brief, plotless study which Chekhov once puzzlingly described as his own favourite among all his works, and which he also claimed as a manifesto in favour of optimism. It is, like Beauties, one of the items which most appeal to those who like to discourse on Chekhov's 'lyricism'; 'for sheer lyricism this takes the biscuit', as I seem to remember one reviewer writing. But The Student also has its charm for those who, like myself, prize Chekhov more for his inimitable astringency.

As this brief survey indicates, the stories in this volume are not quite what many readers of Chekhov may have come to expect. As studies of the Russian underclass they are typical, perhaps, of an important minor enclave within his work rather than of his work as a whole. But they have nothing to lose from comparison with more familiar material. On the con- trary, they enhance it, while also providing eloquent testimony to the power and flexibility of an art which everywhere transcends its sociological, its geographical, its psychological, and any other of its analysable or classifiable aspects.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. H. Bruford, Chekhov and his Russia: A Sociological Study (London, 1948).

Thc Oxford Chekhov. Tr. and ed. Ronald Hingley. Nine vols. (London, 1964—80).

Letters of Anton Chekhov. Tr. Michael Henry Heim in collab- oration with Simon Karlinsky. Selection, Commentary and Introduction by Simon Karlinsky (New York, 1973).

Letters of Anton Chekhov. Selected and edited by A vrahm Yarmolinsky (New York, 1973).

T. Eekman, ed., Anton Chekhov, i86o-ig6o (Leiden, 1960).

Ronald Hingley, Chekhov: A Biographical and Critical Study (London, 1950).

A New Life of Anton Chekhov (London, 1976); also, the

same in paperback, A Life of Anton Chekhov (Oxford, 1989).

Robert Louis Jackson, ed., Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967).

Karl D. Kramer, The Chameleon and the Dream: The Image of Reality in Cexov's Stories (The Hague, 1970).

Virginia Llewellyn Smith, Anton Chekhov and the Lady with the Dog. Foreword by Ronald Hingley (London, 1973).

A CHRONOLOGY OF ANTON CHEKHOV

All dates are given old style.

l86o 16 or 17 January. Born in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of

Azov in south Russia.

1876 His father goes bankrupt. The family moves to Moscow,

leaving Anton to finish his schooling.

Joins family and enrols in the Medical Faculty of Moscow

University.

Begins to contribute to Strekoza ('Dragonfly'), a St Petersburg comic weekly.

1882 Starts to write short stories and a gossip column for

Oskolki ('Splinters') and to depend on writing for an income.

1884 Graduates in medicine. Shows early symptoms of tuber-

culosis.

1885--6 Contributes to Peterburgskaya gazeta ('St Petersburg Gazette') and Novoye vremya ('New Time').

March. Letter from D. V. Grigorovich encourages him to take writing seriously.

First collection of stories: Motley Stories.

Literary reputation grows fast. Second collection of stories: In the Twilight.

19 November. First Moscow performance of Ivanov: mixed reception.

First publication (The Steppe) in a serious literary journal, Severny vestnik ('The Northern Herald').

3 I January. First St Petersburg performance of Ivanov: widely and favourably reviewed.

June. Death of brother Nicholas from tuberculosis.

April-December. Crosses Siberia to visit the penal settle- ment on Sakhalin Island. Returns via Hong Kong, Singapore, and Ceylon.

A CH RONOLOG Y OF ANTON CHEKIIOV xvii

18191 First trip to western Europe: Italy and France.

1892 March. Moves with family to small country cstate at

Melikhovo, 50 miles south of Moscow.

₁

1895 First meeting with Tolstoy.

1896 17 October. First—disastrous-performance of The Sea-

gull in St Petersburg.

[897 Suffers severe haemorrhage.

1897-8 Winters in France. Champions Zola's defence of Dreyfus.

Beginning of collaboration with the newly founded Moscow Art Theatre. Meets Olga Knipper. Spends the winter in Yalta, where he meets Gorky.

17 Decemher. First Moscow Art Theatre performance of The Seagull: successful.

Completes the building of a house in Yalta, where he settles with mother and sister.

26 October. First performance by Moscow An Theatre of Uncle Vanya (written ?i896).

1899-1901 First collected edition of his works (10 volumes).

1901 j 1 January. Three Sisiers fim performed.

25 May. Marries Olga Knipper.

1904 17 January. First performance of The Cherry Orchard.

2 July. Dies in Badenweiler, Germany.

THE STEPPE

THE STORY OF A JOURNEY I

On an early July morning a dilapidated springless carriage—one of those antediluvian britzkas now used in Russia only by merchants' clerks, cattle-dealers and poor priests^^rove out of N., a sizeable townwn in Z. County, and thundered along the post road. It rumbled and squeaked at the slightest movement, to the doleful accompaniment of a pail tied to the back-board. These sounds alone, and the wretched leather tatters flapping on the peeling chassis, showedjust how decrepit, how fit for the scrap heap it was.

Two residents of N. occupied the britzka. One was Ivan Kuzmichov, a clean-shaven, bespectacled merchant in a straw hat, who looked more like a civil servant than a trader. The other was Father Christo- pher Siriysky, principal priest at St. Nicholas's Church—a short, long-haired old man wearing a grey canvas caftan, a broad-brimmed top hat and a brightly embroidered belt. The former was absorbed in his thoughts, and kept tossing his head to keep himself awake. On his face a habitual businesslike reserve was in conflict with the cheerfulness of one who has just said good-bye to his family and had a drop to drink. The other man gazed wonderingly at God's world with moist eyes and a smile so broad that it cven seemed to take in his hat brim. His face was red, as if from cold. Both Kuzmichov and Father Christo- pher were on their way to sell wool. They had just been indulging in cream doughnuts while taking farewell of their households, and they had had a drink despite the early hour. Both were in excellent humour.

Besides the two already described, and the coachman Deniska tire- lessly whipping his pair of frisky bay horses, the (^mage had another occupant: a boy of nine with a sunb^nt, tear-stained face. This was Kuzmichov's nephew Yegorushka. With his uncle's permission and Father Christopher's bletting he was on his way to a school of the type intended for gentlemen's sons. His mother Olga—Kuzmichov's sister and widow of a minor official—adored educated people and refined society, and she had begged her brother to take the boy on his wool- selling trip and deliver him to this institution. Understanding neither where he was going nor why, the boy sat on the box by Deniska's side, holding the man's elbow to stop himself falling, and bobbing about like a kettle on the hob. The swift pace made his red shirt balloon at the back, and his new coachman-style hat with the peacock feather kept slipping to the back of his neck. He considered himself extremely unfortunate, and was ncar to tears.

As they drove past the prison Ycgorushka looked at the sentries slowly pacing ncar the high white wall, at the small barred windows, at the cross glittering on the roof, and remembered the day of Our Lady of Kazan, a week earlier, when he and his mother had attended the celebrations at the prison church. Before that he had visited the gaol at Easter with Dcniska and Lyudmila the cook, taking Easter cakes, Easter eggs, pies and roast beeЈ The convicts had thanked them and crossed themselves, and one had given the boy some tin studs of his own manufacture.

While the boy gazed at the familiar sights the hateful carriage raced on and left them all behind. Beyond the prison black, smoke-stained forges flashed past, and then the tranquil green cemetery with the stone wall round it. From behind the wall cheerful white crosses and tombstones peeped out, nestling in the foliage of cherry trees and seen as white patches from a distance. At blossom time, Ycgorushka remembered, the white patches mingled with the cherry blooms in a sea of white, and when the cherries had ripened the white tombs and crosses were crimson-spotted, as if with blood. Under the cherries behind the wall the boy's father and his grandmother Zinaida slept day and night. When Grandmother had died she had been put in a long, narrow coffin, and fivc-copcck pieces had been placed on her eyes, which would not stay shut. Before dying she had been alive, and she had brought him soft poppy-seed bun rings from the market, but now she just slept and slept.

Beyond the cemetery were the smoking brickyards. From long thatched roofs, huddling close to the ground, great puffs of thick black smoke rose and floated lazily upwards. The sky above the brickyards and cemetery was dark, and the great shadows of the smoke clouds crept over the fields and across the road. In the smoke ncar the roofs moved people and horses covered with red dust.

With the brickyards the town ended and open country began. Ycgorushka took a last look back at the to\wn, pressed his face against Dcniska's elbow and wept bitterly.

'What, still howling, you old cry-baby?' asked Kuzmichov. 'Still snivelling, you mother's darling. If you don't want to come, stay bchind—nobody's forcing you.'

'Never mind, Yegorushka, old son, it's all right,' Father Christopher rapidly muttered. 'Never mind, my boy. Call on God, for you seek not evil but good. Learning is light, they say, and ignorance is darkness. Verily it is so.'

'Do you want to go back?' Kuzmichov asked.

'Yes, I d-do,' sobbed the boy.

'Then you may as well. There's no point in your coming anyway— it's a complete fool's errand.'

'Never mind, son,' Father Christopher went on. 'Call on God. Lomonosov once travelled just like this with the fishermen, and he became famous throughout Europe. Le;arning conjoined with faith yields fruit pleasing to God. What does the prayer say? "For the glory of the Creator, for our parents' comfort, for the benefit of church and country.'' That's the way of it.'

'There's various kinds of benefit.' Kuzmichov lit a cheap cigar. 'There's some study for twenty years, and all to no purpose.'

'That does happen.'

'Some benefit from book-learning, others just get their brains addled. She has no sense, my sister—wants to be like gentlefolk, she does, and make a scholar of the boy. And she can't see that I could set him up for life, doing the business I do. The point is that if everyone becomes a scholar and gentleman there won't be anyone to trade and sow crops. We'll all starve.'

'But if everyone trades and sows crops there won't be anyone to master learning.'

Thinking they had each said something weighty and cogent, Kuzmichov and Father Christopher assumed a serious air and coughed simultaneously. Having heard their talk but making nothing of it, Deniska toued his head, sat up and whipped both bays. Silence followed.

By now a plain—broad, boundless, girdled by a chain of hills—lay stretched before the travellers' eyes. Huddling together and glancing out from behind one another, the hills merged into rising ground extending to the very horizon on the right of the road, and disappear- ing into the lilac-hued far distance. On and on you travel, but where it all begins and where it ends you just cannot make out. Behind them the sun was already peeping out over the to^ and had quietly, unfussily set about its work. First, far ahead where the sky met the earth—near some ancient burial mounds and a windmill resembling from afar a tiny man waving his arms—a broad, bright yellow band crept over the ground. Then, a minute later, another bright strip appeared a little nearer, crawled to the right and clasped the hills. Something warm touched Yegorushka's back as a stripe of light stole up behind him and darted over britzka and horses, soaring to meet other bands until the whole wide prairie suddenly flung off the penum- bra of da^, smiled and sparkled with dcw.

Mown rye, coarse steppe grass, milkwort, wild hem^—all that the heat had bro^ed, everything reddish and half dead—was now drenched in dew and caressed by the sun, and was reviving to bloom again. Arctic petrels swooped over the road with happy cries, gophers called to each other in the grass, and from somewhere far to the left came the plaint of lapwings. Scared by the carriage, a covey of par- tridges sprang up and flew off to the hills, softly trilling. Grasshoppers, cicadas, field crickets and mole crickets fiddled their squeaking, mono- tonous tunes in the gras.

But time passed, the dew evaporated, the air grew still and the dis- illusioned steppe assumed itsjadedJuly aspect. The grass drooped, the life went out of everything. The sunburnt hills, brown-green and—in the distance—mauvish, with their calm, pastel shades, the plain, the misty horizon, the sky arching overhead and appearing so awesomely deep and transparent here in the stcppe, where there are no woods or high hills—it all seemed boundless, now, and numb with misery.

How sultry and forlorn! As the carriage raced on Yegorushka saw only the same old sky, plain, hills. The music in the grau was hushed, the petrels had flown away, the partridges had vanished. Over the faded grass rooks idly hovered—all alike, making the steppe more monotonous still.

A kite ski^med the earth with even sweep of wings, suddenly paused in mid-air, as if pondering the tedium of existence, then flut- tered its wings and sped over the prairie like an arrow. Why did it fly? What did it want? No onc knew, and far away thc mill flapped its sails.

Now and then, to break the monotony, came the glimpse of a white skull or boulder in the tall graa. A grey menhir loomed for a moment, or a parched willow with a blue crow on its top branch. A gopher ran across the road, and once again grass, hills and rooks flitted before the eyes.

But now, thank God, a wagon approached—loaded with sheaves of com, with a peasant girl lying on top. Sleepy, exhausted by thc heat, she lifted her head to gaze at the travellers. Deniska gaped at her, die bays craned at the sheaves, the carriage screeched as it kissed the wagon, and the prickly ears of com brushed Father Christopher's hat.

'Look where you're going, dumpling!' shouted Deniska. 'Hey, balloon-face! Stung by a bumble bee, was you?'

The girl smiled sleepily, moved her lips and lay back again. Then a lone poplar appeared on a hill. Who planted it? Why was it there? God alone knows. It was hard to tear one's eyes away from the graceful form and green drapery. Was that beautiful object happy? There is summer's heat, there are winter's frosts and blizzards, and there are terrible autu^al nights when you see nothing but blackneu, and hear only the wayward, furiously howling wind. Worst of all, you are alone, alone, alone, all your life. Beyond the poplar bands of wheat stretched their bright yellow carpet from the roadside to the top of the hill. The com had already been cut and gathered into stooks on the hill, but at the bottom they were still reaping. Six reapers swung their scythes side by side, and the scythes cheerfully glittered, shrieking in shrill unison. The movements of the women binding the sheaves, the reapers' faces, the gleaming scythes—all showed how burning and still.ing the heat was. A black dog, its tongue hanging out, ran from the reapers towards the carriage, probably meaning to bark, but stopped half way and cast a bored glance at Deniska, who shook his whip at it. It was too hot for barking. A woman straightened up, clutched her tormented back with both hands and followed Yegorushka's red shirt with her eyes. Pleased by the colour or remembering her o^ children, she stood motionless for a while, staring after him.

But then, after the glimpse of wheat, came another expanse of scorched plain, burnt hills, sultry sky. Again a kite hovered over the ground. Far away the mill still whirled its sails, still resembling a tiny man waving his arms. What a tedious sight! It seemed that they would never reach it, that it was running away from the carriage.

Father Christopher and Kuzmichov said nothing. Deniska whipped up his horses and shouted. Yegorushka had stopped crying and gazed listleuly about him. The heat, the tedium of the prairie had exhausted him. He seemed to have been travelling and bobbing up and do^ with the sun baking his back for a very long time. They had not done seven miles yet, but he already felt that it was time for a rest. The cheerful expression had gradually disappeared from his uncle's face, leaving only the businesslike reserve that lends an implacably inquisi- torial air to a gaunt, clean-shaven face—«pecially if bespectacled, and with nose and temples covered with dust. But Father Christopher still gazed admiringly at God's world and smiled. Not speaking, he was thinking somc screne, checrful thought, and a kindly, good-humourcd smile was stamped on his face. It also looked as if that screne, checrful thought had becn stamped on his brain by the heat.

'Well, Deniska, shall we overtake thc wagons soon?' asked Kuzmichov.

Deniska lookcd at the sky, rose in his seat and whipped his horses. 'By nightfall, God willing.'

Barks were heard, and half a dozen huge prairie shecpdogs suddcnly pounced at the carriage with ferocious howls as if from ambush. Extremely vicious, red-eyed with malice, their shaggy muzzles rcsem- bling enormous spiders, they surrounded the britzka and set up a hoarse bellow, jealously jostling each other, imbued with utter loath- ing, and seeming ready to rend horses, vehicle and people asundcr. Deniska, who liked teasing and whipping, and who was glad of his opportunity, bent ovcr with an expression of unholy glce, and lashed one dog with his whip. The dogs growlcd more loudly than ever and the horses rushed on. Hardly able to kcep his seat, Yegorushka realized, as he looked at thc dogs' eyes and teeth, that he would be torn to pieces at once if hc fcll off. Yet he felt no fear, and looked on with malicious glec like Deniska, sorry to have no whip in his hands.

The carriage drew level with a drove of shecp.

'Stop!' shoutcd Kuzmichov. 'Pull up! Whoa!'

Dcniska flung his whole body back and pulled the horses up. Thc carriage stoppcd.

'Come here, man!' shoutcd Kuzmichov to the drover. 'And call your bloody dogs off!'

The old drover, ragged and barcfoot, in a warm cap with a dirty sack on his hip and a long crook—a regular Old Testament figure— called off the dogs, doffed his cap and came up to the carriage. At the other end of the flock another no leu patriarchial figure stood motionlcss, staring unconcernedly at the travellers.

'Whose sheep are these?' Kuzmichov asked.

'Varlamov's,' the old man answcred loudly.

'Varlamov's,' repcated the shcpherd at the other cnd of the flock.

'Now, did Varlamov pau this way yesterday or didn't he?'

'No, sir. 'Twas his bailiff as camc past, and that's a fact.'

'Drive on!'

The carriagc rollcd on and thc drovers were left bchind with their vicious dogs. Ycgorushka lookcd glumly ahead at the mauve horizon, and he now began to feel that the whirling windmill w:^s corning nearer. It grew bigger and bigger until it was quite large and its two sails were clearly distinguishable. One was old and patched, but the other had been made with new wood only recently, and shone in the sun.

The carriage drove srraight on while the windmill for some reason began moving to the left. On and on they travelled, and it kept moving to the left while remaining in view.

'A fine windmill Boltva has made for his son,' remarked Deniska.

'But why can't we see his farm?'

'It's over there, beyond the dip.'

Soon Boltva's farm did indeed appear, but the windmill still failed to retreat. Kceping pace with them, it watched Yegorushka, waving its shiny sail like some wizard of the steppes.

II

Towards midday the britzka turned off the road to the right, went on a little at walking pace, then stopped. Yegorushka heard a quiet, a most delectable gurgling, and felt a different air brush his face with its cool velvety touch. From the hill, that nature had glued together out of monstrous boulders, a thin stream of water jetted through a little pipe of hernlock wood put in by some unknown benefactor. It hit the ground, and—limpid, sparkling merrily in the sun, quietly murmuring as if fancying itself a mighty, turbulent torrent—swiftly ran away to the left. Not far from the hill the little brook broadened into a pool. The hot rays and parched soil thirstily drank it in, sapping its srrength. But it must have merged with another similar stream a little further on, because dense, green, lush sedge was visible along its course about a hundred yards from the hill. As the carriage approached three snipe flew up from there with a cry.

The travellers settled do^ by the brook to rest and feed the horses. Kuzrnichov, Father Christopher and Yegorushka sat on a felt rug in the sparse shadow cast by the britzka and the unharnessed horses, and began eating. After Father Christopher had drunk some water and eaten a hard-boiled egg the serene, cheerful thought—stamped on his brain by the heat^

'I myself have studied, son,' he began. 'From my earliest years God imbued me with sense and understanding. And so, unlike other boys, I was rejoicing my parents and teachers by my comprehension when

I was only your age. Before I was fifteen I could speak Latin, and write Latin verse, as well as Rusian. I remember being crozier-bearer to Bishop Christopher. After servicc one day, as I recall, on the saint's day of our most pious Sovereign Alexander the First of blessed memory, he unrobed in the chancel, lookcd at me kindly and asked: "Puer bont, quam appcllaris?" And I answcred: "Christophorus sum." And he said: "Ergo connominati sumus"—we were namesakes, that is. Then he asked me in Latin whose son I was. I answered, also in Latin, that my father was Deacon Siriysky of Lcbedinskoye village. Noting the celerity and clarity of my answers, the Bishop blessed me, saying: "Write and tell your father that I shall not forget him and shall kcep you in mind." Hearing this exchange in Latin, the priests and fathers in the chancel were also no littlc amazed, and each expresed his plcasure by praising me. Before I had gro^ whiskcrs, my boy, I could rcad Latin, Greek and French. I knew philosophy, mathematics, secular history and all branches of learning. God gave me a wonderful memory. Time was, if I'd read something once or twicc I could remcmbcr it by heart. My preceptors and patrons were amazed, expecting me to be- come a great scholar and a church luminary. I did think of going to Kiev to continue my studies, but my parents disapproved. "You'll be studying all your life," said my father. "We'll ncver see the end of it." Hearing thcse words, I gavc up Icarning and took an appointment. Aye, I ncver became a scholar, of course, but at least I didn't disobey my parents. I was a comfort to thcm in their old age, gave them a decent funeral. Obedience is more blessed than fasting and prayer.'

'I bet you've forgotten all you ever learnt,' Kuzmichov remarked.

'Of course I have. I'm past seventy now, praise be. I can still remem- ber a scrap or two of philosophy and rhctoric, but languages and mathematics—I've quite forgotten them.'

Father Christopher frowicd and pondcrcd. 'What is a being?' hc asked in a low voice. 'A being is an integral entity sufficient unto it- self.' He flexcd his neck and laughed delightedly. 'Food for the soul,' said he. 'Verily, matter nourisheth the flesh and spiritual sustenance the soul.'

'Learning's all very well,' sighed Kuzmichov. 'But if we don't ovcr- takc Varlamov we'll be taught a lesson we'll never forgct.'

'He's not a necdle in a ha; :ack. We'll fmd him—hc's knocking around in the arca.'

The same three snipe flcw over the sedge, their squeaks betraying alarm and vexation at bcing drivcn off the brook. The horses steadily munched and whinnied. Dcniska attended them, trying to demonstrate his utter indiffercnce to the cucumbers, pics and eggs that his mastcrs were eating by plunging into the slaughter of the flies and horse-flies clinging to the animals' bellies and backs. Uttering a peculiar, venom- ously exultant guttural sound, he swatted his victims with gusto, grunting with annoyance when he missed and following each lucky fly that escaped death with his eyes.

'Deniska, what are you up to? Come and eat.' Kuzmichov sighed deeply—a sign that he was replete.

Deniska approached the mat diffidently and picked out five large yellow cucumbers—what they called 'yolkies'—not venturing to choose smaller, fresher specimens. He then took two black, cracked hard-boiled eggs, and—hesitantly, as if afraid of someone slapping his outstretched hand—touched a pie with his finger.

'Go on, help yourself,' urged Kuzmichov.

Deniska seized the pie decisively, went off far to one side and sat on the ground, his back to the carriage. There ensued a chewing noise so loud that even the horses turned round and looked at Deniska sus- piciously.

After his meal Kuzmichov got a bag containing something out of the carriage. 'I'm going to sleep,' he told Yegorushka. 'You mind no one takes this bag from under my head.'

Father Christopher removed his cassock, belt and caftan, seeing which Yegorushka was do^right astounded. That priests wore trousers he had had no inkling, and Father Christopher was wearing real canvas trousers tucked into his high boots, and a short cotton jacket. With his long hair and beard, and in this costume so unsuited to his calling, he looked to the boy very like Robinson Crusoe. Having disrobed, Father Christopher and Kuzmichov lay in the shade undcr the britzka facing each other, and closed their eyes. Deniska, who had finished chewing, stretched out belly upwards in the sun's heat and also closed his eyes. 'Make sure no one steals the horses,' he told Ycgorudika and fell asleep at once.

Quictncss ensued. Nothing was heard but the horses' whinnying and chewing, and some snorcs from the sleepers. A little way off a single lapwing wailed, and there was an occasional squeak from the thrcc snipe, which had flo^ up to see if the uninvited guests had left. Thc brook softly lisped and gurgled, but none of thesc sounds tres- paued on the silence or stirred the sluggish air. Far from it, thcy only made nature drowsier still.

Panting in the heat, which was panicululy oppre^ive after the meal, Yegorushka ran to the sedge and surveyed the l^lity from there. He saw exactly what he had seen that morning: plain, hills, sky, purple horizons. But the hills were nearer and there was no ^mdmill, for that had been left far behind. From behind the rocky hiU where the stream flowed another—smoother and broader—hill loomed, with a small hamlet of five or six homesteads clinging to it. Near the huts neither people, trees nor shadows could be seen—Ae settlement might have choked in the hot air and withered away. To pass the time the boy caught a grasshopper in the herbage, held it to his ear in his closed hand, and listened to its pizzicato for some time. Bored with that music, he chased a flock of yellow butterflies flying up to the sedge to drink, and somehow found limselfnear the carriage again. His uncle and Father Christopher were fast asleep—a sleep that was sure to last two or three hours, to let the horses rest. How was the boy to get through all that time? Where could he escape the heat? No easy problem, that.

Without thinking, Yegorushka put his lips under thejet ^ning out of the pipe. His mouth felt cold, and there was a smell ofhemlock. He drank thirstily at first, and then forced himself to go on till the sharp cold had spread from his mouth throughout his body and water had spilt on his shirt. Then he went to the carriage and looked at the sleepers. His uncle's face still expressed businesslike reserve. Obsessed with his business, Kuzmichov was always brooding on it—even in his sleep, and in church during the anthem 'And the Cherubims'. Not for a minute could he forget it, and at this moment he was probably dream- ing of bales of wool, wagons, prices and Varlamov. But Father Chris- topher—gentle, light-hearted, always ready to laugh—had never in his life kno-wn anything capable of taking a stranglehold on his entire being. In the many deals he had embarked on in his time he had been le^ attracted by the business side than by the bustle and contact with other people that are part of any undertaking. For instance, what interested lim about their presentjourney was less the wool, Varlamov and the prices than the long road, conversation on the way, sleeping under the carriage and eating at the wrong times. From his expression he must be dreaming of Bishop Christopher, the Latin conversation, his wife, cream doughnuts and everything that Kuzmichov could not possibly be dreaming oЈ

Watching their sleepy faces, the boy unexpectedly heard someone quietly singing. It was a woman's voice—not near, but just where it came from and from what direction it was hard to tell. Despondent, dirgelike, scarcely audible, thc quiet song droned on. Now it came from the right, now from the left, now from above, now from under- ground, as if an invisible spirit floated, chanting, above the steppe. Looking around him, Yegorushka could not tell where the strange song originated, but as his ears became attuned he fancied that the grass must be the singer. Half dead, already perished, it was ^^ng— wordlessly, but plaintively and earnestly—to plead that it was guilty of no crime and that it was unfair for the sun to scorch it. It asserted the passionate love of life of a creature still young and, but for the heat and drought, potentially beautiful. Guiltless, it yet begged forgiveness, swearing that it was suffering agonies of grief and self-pity.

Ycgorushka listened for a while, until the lugubrious chant began to make the air seem more suffocating, hot and stagnant than ever. To drown the sound he hummed to himself and ran to the sedge, trying to bring his feet down noisily. Then he looked all around and found the singer. Near the last hut in the hamlet stood a woman in a short petti- coat, long-legged like a heron. She was sowing, and white dust floated languidly down the hillock from her sieve. That she was the singer was now patently obvious. Two paces from her a small bareheaded boy, wearing just a smock, stood stock-stili. As if bewitched by the song, he remained immobile, looking downhill—probably at Yego- rushka's red shirt.

The singing ceased. Yegorushka made his way back to the carriage and, having nothing else to do, started playing with the jet of water again.

Once again the song droned out. It was the same long-legged woman in the hamlet over the hill. Suddenly Yegorushka felt bored again, left the water-pipe and cast his eyes aloft. What he saw was so unexpected that he was a little frightened. On one of the large, awkward boulders above his head stood a chubby little boy wearingjust a smock. It was the same boy—with large, protruding stomach and thin legs—who had been with the woman. Open-mouthed, unblinking, with a blank stare and in some fear—as if contemplating a ghost—he inspected Yegorushka's crimson shirt and the britzka. The red colour attracted and beguiled him, while the carriage and the men asleep under it stirred his curiosity. Perhaps he himself had not been aware that the agreeable red colour and his own inquisitiveness had lurcd him down from the hamlet, and by now he was probably amazed at his o^ boldness. Yegorushka and he surveyed each other for a while, neither speaking, and both feeling slight embarrassment.

'What's your name?' Yegorushb askcd, aftcr a long silence.

The stranger's checks puRcd out still more. He braced his back against the rock, opencd his eyes widc, moved his lips and answered in a husky bass. 'Titus.'

That was all the boys said to each other. After more silence the mysterious Titus liftcd one foot, foimd a heelhold and climbed up the bouldcr backwards without taking his eyes off Yegorushka. Backing away, while staring at Yegorushka as ifafraid of being hit from behind, he clambercd on to the ncxt rock and so made his way up till he vanished altogether behind a crest.

Watching him out of sight, Ycgorushka clasped his knecs and bowed forward. Thc hot rays burnt the back of his head, neck and spine. Thc mclancholy song now died away, now floated again in the still, stifling air, the stream gurgled monotonously, the horses munched, and time sccmcd to drag on for ever, as if it too had stagnated and congealed. A hundred years might have passed since morning. Perhaps God wanted Yegorushka, the carriage and the horses to come to a standstill, turn to stone like thc hills, and stay in the same place for ever?

The boy raised his head and looked ahead with glazed cyes. The distant, lilac-coloured background, hitherto motionless, lurched and soared off, together with the sky, into the even furthcr beyond, dragging the bro-wn grass and sedge behind it, while Yegorushka hurtlcd after the retreating perspcctive with phenomenal spced. An unknown force silently drew him along with the heat and the weari- some song careering in his wake. He bowed his head, closing his eyes.

Deniska was the first to awake. Somcthing must havc bittcn him, for he jumpcd up and quickly scratched his shoulder with a 'damn you, blast you and perdition take you!'

Then he went over to the brook, drank and slowly washed. His snorting and splashing roused Yegorushka from oblivion. The boy looked at the man's \vet face, covcred with drops and large freckles that created a mottlcd effect. 'Shall wc be leaving soon?' he asked.

Deniska checked the sun's height. 'Soon, that's for sure.' He dried himself on his shirt tail, assumcd an air of the utmost gravity and bcgan hopping on one foot. 'Come on, hop! Race you to the sedgc!'

Yegorushka was drowsy and ediausted by the heat, but hopped aftcr him all the same. Deniska was about twenty, a working coach- man, and was going to bc married. But he was still a boy at heart. He was fond of flying kites, of racing pigeons, of playing knuckle- boncs and tag, and he was always taking part in children's games and quarrels. His employers only had to go away or fall asleep for him to start hopping, throwing stones and similar antics. Noting his genuine enthusiasm when cavorting in juvenile company, adults found it hard not to remark what a 'great oaf' he was. But children saw nothing odd in their domain being invaded by a large coachman—let him play so long as he wasn't too rough. Similarly, small dogssee nothing strange in an ^ophisticated big dog intruding on them and playing with them.

Deniska overtook Yegorushka, obviously delighted to do so. He winked, and—to show that he could hop any distance on- one foot— proposed that the boy should hop along the road with him, and then back to the carriage without stopping. This proposal Yegorushka declined, being out of breath and exhausted.

Suddenly asstuming an air even graver than that which he wore when Kuzmichov rebuked him or threatened him with his stick, Deniska cocked his ears and dropped quietly on one knee. A stem and fearful expresion, as of someone hearing heretical talk, appeared on his face, and he fixed his eyes on one spot, slowly raised his hand— holding it like a scoop—and then suddenly flopped on his stomach and slapped the scoop on the grass.

'Got him!' he hoarsely gloated, rising to his feet and presenting a big grasshopper to the boy's gaze.

T^^^g to please the grasshopper, Yegorushka and Deniska stroked its broad green back with their fingers and touched its whis- kers. Then Deniska caught a fat, blood-gorged fly and offered it to the grashopper. With sublime nonchalance—as if it were an old friend of Deniska's—the creature moved its large, visor-shaped jaws and bit off the fly's belly. They let the grasshopper go, and it flashed the pink lining of its wings, landed on the grass, and at once resumed trilling. They let the fly go too. It preened its wings and flew off to the horses minus a stomach.

From beneath the carriage a deep sigh proceeded—Kuzmichov had woken up. He quickly raised his head, cast a troubled look into the distance, a look that slid unconcernedly past Yegorushka and Deniska and showed that his waking thoughts had been ofwool and Varlamov.

'Father Christopher, get up—time to start,' he said anxiously. 'We've slept enough, we'll have missed our deal as it is. Hitch up the horses, Deniska.'

Father Christopher woke up, smiling the smile with which he had dozed off. Sleep had so creased and wrinkled his face that it seemed half its usual size. He washed, drnsed, unhurriedly took a small, greasy psaltcr out of his pocket, faced east and began a whispered rccital, croaing hi^^lf.

'Time to be off, Father Christopher,' Kuzmichov reproached him. 'The horses are ready. Now, look here '

)ust a minute,' muttered Father Christopher. 'Must read my doxG- Iogy. Didn't do it earlier.'

'Your doxology can wait.'

'I have to do one section every day, Kuzmichov, I really do.'

'God would forgive you.'

For a full quarter of an hour Father Christopher stood stock-still, facing east and moving his lips, while Kuzmichov looked at him almost with hatred, his shoulders fidgeting impatiently. He was par- ticularly enraged when—after each 'Glory!'—Father Christopher took a deep breath, quickly crossed himself and thrice intoned his 'Hal- leluja, halleluja, halleluja, glory be to Thee, O Lord!' in a deliberately loud voice so that the others had to cross themselves too.

At last he smiled, looked at the sky, put the psalter in his pocket, and said 'Finis'.

A minute later the britzka was under way. It might have been going back instead of preKing on, for the travellers saw the same scene as before noon. The hills still swam in the lilac-hued distance and there still seemed to be no end to them. High weeds and boulders flined past and strips of stubble sailed by, while the same rooks, and the same kite with its steadily flapping wings, flew over the steppe. More and more the air seemed to congeal in heat and silence, submissive naturc became petrified and soundless. There was no wind, no chcering fresh sound, no cloud.

But then at last, as the sun began setting in the west, the prairie, the hills and the air could stand the strain and torment no longer, lost patience and tried to cast off the burden. Behind the hills, a fleecy ash- grey cloud unexpectedly appeared. It exchanged glances with the steppe, as if to say 'I'm ready', and fro^ed. In the stagnant air something suddenly snapped, and a violent squall of wind swirled, roaring and whistling, about the area. At once the graK and last year's vegetation raised a murmur, while a dust spiral eddied over the road and sped along the prairie, swecping straw, dragonflies and feathers behind it in a gyrating black column, soarcd up into the sky, and obscured thc sun. Hither and thither over the hcath tufts ofloosc herbage raced off, stumbling and bobbing. One of them was caught by the whirlwind, pirouetted like a bird, flew aloft, t^ned into a black speck and van- ished. After it swept another, and then a third. Yegorushka saw two such tufts clash and grapple like wrestlers in the azure heights.

Right by the roadside a bustard flew up. Bathed in sunshine, wings and tail gleaming, it looked like an angler's artificial fly or a pond moth whose wings, as it darts over the water, merge with the whiskers that seem to have sprouted in front, behind and on all sides. Vibrating in the air like an insect, the bird soared vertically aloft with a shimmer of bright colours, and then—probably scared by a dust cloud— sw^ed aside, the glint of it remaining visible for a long time.

Then, alarmed and baffled by a whirlwind, a corncrake sprang up from the gras. It flew with the wind, not against it like other birds, and so its feathers were ruffled, puffing it out to a hen's size, and giving it a furious, imposing look. Only the rooks—grownwn old in the steppe and accustomed to its upsets—calmly floated over the grass, or pecked non- chalantly and heedlessly at the hard earth with their thick beaks.

There was a dull growl ofthunder from beyond the hills, and a puff of fresh air. Deniska whistled cheerfully, belabouring his horses, while Father Christopher and Kuzmichov held their hats and stared at the hills. A shower would not come amiss.

With a little more effort, with one more heave, the steppe would assert itself, it seemed. But an invisible, oppressive force gradually i^mobilized wind and air, laying the dust, until stillness reigned again as if it had never been broken. The cloud vanished, the scorched hills frownwned, and the subdued air was still, with only the troubled lapwings somewhere weeping and bemoaning their fate.

Soon evening came on.

III

A large bungalow with a rusty iron roof and dark windows showed up in the gloaming. It was called a posting in, though it had no stableyard, and it stood in the middle of the prairie with no fencing round it. A wretched little cherry orchard and some hurdles made a dark patch somewhat to one side, and under the windows stood sleepy sunflowers, their heavy heads drooping. In the orchard a miniature windmill rattled, having been put there to scare the hares. Near the house there was nothing to see or hear but the prairie.

Barely had the britzka halted at the porch, which had an a^wning, when delighted voices were heard from inside—a man's and a woman's. The door squeaked on its counterweight, and a tall, scraggy figure inst:ntly loomed up by the carriage in a flurry ofarms and coat-skirts. It was the innkeeper Moses. Eldcrly, very pale-faced, with a handsome jet-black beard, hc wore a threadbare black frock-coat that dangled from his narrow shoulders as from a coat-hanger, flapping its wing- likc skirts whcnever he threw his hands up in joy or horror. Besides the coat he wore broad whitc trousers not tucked into his boots, and a velvet waistcoat with .t pattern of reddish Aowers like gigantic bugs.

Recognizing the new arrivals, Moses was first rooted to the spot by the onrush of emotion, then flung up his arms and uttcred a groan. His frock-coat flappcd its skirts, his back curvcd into bow, and his pale face twisted into a smile, as if seeing the carriage was no mere pleasure but cxcruciating ccstasy.

'Oh, goodness me, what a happy days this is for me!' he reedily intoncd, gasping, bustling and hindering the travellers from getting out of their carriage by his antics. 'Ah, what, oh what, to do next? Mr. Kuzmichov! Father Christopher! And what a pretty little gentle- mans that is sitting on the box, or may God punish me! Goodness me, but why am I standing here? Why am I not asking the guests into the parlour? Come in, I bcg you most humbly. Make yourselves at home. Give me all your things. Goodness gracious me!'

Ferreting in the carriage and helping the visitors out, Moses sud- denly tumcd back. 'Solomon, Solomon!' he bellowed in a frantic, strangled voice likc a drowning man calling for help.

In the house a woman's voice rcpeatcd the 'Solomon, Solomon!'

The door squeakcd on its counterwcight, and on the threshold appeared a young Jew—short, with a large, beaked nose and a bald patch surrounded by coarse, curly hair. All his clothes were too short —his exccedingly shabby cutaway jacket, his sleeves and the woollen trousers that made him seem :Is docked and skimpy as a plucked bird. This was Moses' brother Solomon. Silently, with no greeting but a rather weird smile, hc approached the carriage.

'Mr. Kuzmichov and Father Christopher are hcre.' Moscs' tone hinted at a fear of being disbelicvcd. 'Aye, aye, and such a wonder it is that thcsc good peoples are paying us a visit. Well, Solomon, take their things. This way, my honoured guests.'

A little later Kuzmichov, Father Christopher and Ycgorushka were sitting at an old oak table in a large, gloomy, empty room. The table was almost isolatcd, since there was no other furniturc in the room except for a broad sofa covered with tattcred oilcloth and three objects that not everyone would have ventured to call chairs. They were a pathetic simulacr^ of fiurniture, with oilcloth that had seen better days, and with backs canted unnaturally far back so that they closely resembled children's toboggans. It was hard to see what amenity the unkno-wn carpenter had envisaged when giving those chair backs that pitileu curve, and one might have thought that it was not his doing but the work of some itinerant Hercules who had bent the chairs to show his strength and had then offered to put them right, only to make them even worse. The room had a lugubrious air. The walls were grey, the ceiling and cornices were smoke-stained, and there were long cracks and yawnwning holes of mysterious provenance on the floor, as if that same strong man had kicked them in with his heel. The room looked as if it would still have been dark even with a dozen lamps hanging in it. Neither walls nor windows boasted anything resembling decoration. On one wall, though, a list of regulations under the Two-Headed Eagle hung in a grey wooden frame, and on another wall was some engraving in a similar frame. It was inscribed 'Man's Indifference'. But to what man was indifferent was not clear since the engraving had faded considerably in course of time and was profusely fly-blown. The room smelt musty and sour.

After bringing his guests in, Moses went on twisting, gesticulating, cringing and uttering ecstatic cries, believing all these antics essential to the display of supreme courtesy and affability.

'When did our wagons go by?' Kuzmichov asked.

'One lot pawed this morning, Mr. Kuzmichov, and the others rested here at dinner time and left in late afternoon.'

'Aha! Has Varlamov been b) or not?'

'No, he hasn't. But his bailiffGregory drove past yesterday morning, and he reckoned Varlamov must be over at the Molokan's farm.'

'Good. So we'll first overtake the wagons, and then go on to the Molokan's.'

'Mercy on us, Mr. Kuzmichov!' Moses threw up his arms in horror. 'Where can you go so late in the days? You enjoy a bite of supper and spend the night, and tomorrow morning, God willing, you can go and catch anyone you like.'

'There's no time. I'm sorry, Moses—some other day, not now. We'll stay a quarter of an hour and then be off. We can spend the night at the Molokan's.'

'A quarter of an hour!' shrieked Moses. 'Why, have you no fear of God? You will be making me to hide your hats and lock the door. At least have a bite to eat and some tea.'

'We've no time for tea, sugar and the rest of it,' said Kuzmichov.

Moses leant his head to one side, bent his knees, and held his open hands before him as if warding off blows. 'Mr. Kuzmichov, Father Christopher, be so kind as to take tea with me,' he implored with an excruciatingly sweet smile. 'Am I really such a bad mans that Mr. Kuzmichov cannot take tea with me?'

'All right then, we'll have some tea.' Father Christopher gave a sympathetic sigh. 'It won't take long.'

'Very weii then,' agreed Kuzmichov.

Moses, flustered, gave a joyful gasp, cringed as ifhe had just jumped out of cold water into the warm, and ran to the door. 'Rosa, Rosa! Bring the samovar,' he shouted in the frantic, strangled voice with which he had previously called Solomon.

A minute later the door opened and in came Solomon carrying a large tray. He put it on the table, gave a sarcastic sidelong look, grinned the same weird grin. Now, by the light of the lamp, it was po^ible to see that smile distinctly. It was highly complex, expressing a variety of feelings, but with one predominant—blatant contempt. He seemed to be brooding on something both fi^y and silly, to feel both repugnance and scorn, to be rejoicing at something or other, and to be waiting for a suitable moment to launch a wounding sneer and a peal of laughter. His long nose, thick lips and crafty, bulging eyes seemed tense with the urge to cachinate. Looking at his face, Kuz- michov smiled sardonically.

'Why didn't you come over to the fair at N. and do us yourJewish impressions?' he asked.

Two years previously, as Yegorushka well remembered, Solomon had had great success performing scenes of Jewish life in a booth at the N. fair. But the allusion made no impression on him. He went out without answering and came back with the samovar a little later.

Having finished serving, Solomon stepped to one side, folded his arms on his chest, thrust one leg out in front of him and fixed Father Christopher with a derisive stare. There was something dcfiant, arro- gant and contemptuous about his pose, yet it was also highly pathetic and comic because the more portentous it became the more vividly it threw into relief his short trousers, docked jacket, grotesque nose :and his whole plucked, bird-like fi.gure.

Moses brought a stool from another room and sat a little way from the table. 'Good appetite! Tea! Sugar!' He began to entertain his guests. 'Enjoy your meal. Such rare, oh, such rare guests, and I haven't seen Father Christopher these five years. And will no one tell me who this nice little gentlemans is?' He looked tenderly at Yegorushka.

'It's my sister Olga's son,' answered Kuzmichov.

'Where is he going then?'

'To school. We're taking him to the high school.'

Out of politeness Moses registered surprise, sagely twisting his head. 'Is very good.' He wagged his finger at the samovar. 'And such a fme gentlemans you'll be when you leave school, we'll all take our hats off to you. You'll be clever, rich, and oh so grand. Now, won't your Mummy be pleased? Is good, good.'

He was silent for a while and stroked his knee. 'Forgive me, Father Christopher.' He spoke with a deferential, jocular air. 'I'm going to report you to the Bishop for robbing the merchants of their living. I'll get an official application form, and write that Father Christopher can't have much moneys of his if he has turned to trade and started selling wool.'

'Yes, it's a notion I've taken in my old age,' Father Christopher laughed. 'I've turned from priest to merchant, old son. I should be at home saying my prayers, but here I am galloping about in my chariot, even as a very Pharaoh. Ah, vanity!'

'Still, you will make much moneys.'

'A likely tale. I'll get more kicks than halfpence. The wool isn't mine, you know, it's my son-in-law Michael's.'

'Then why hasn't he gone himself?'

'Why, because—. He's only a young shaver. He bought the wool all right, but as for selling it—he has no idea, he's too young. He spent all his money, counted on making a packet and cutting a bit of a dash, but he's tried here and he's tried there, and no one will even give him what he paid for it. Well, the lad messes around with it for a twelve- month, and then he comes to me. "Dad," says he, "you sell the wool, be so kind. I'm no good at these things." Well, that's true enough. As soon as things go wrong he runs to his dad, but till then he could manage without his dad. Doesn't consult me when buying it, oh no, but now things have come unstuck it's daddy this and daddy that. But what can daddy do? If it wasn't for Ivan Kuzmichov daddy could have done nothing. What a nuisance they are.'

'Yes, childrens are a lot of trouble, believe me,' sighed Moses. 'I have six myselЈ It's teach the one, dose the other, carry the third round in your arms, and when they grow up they're even more nuisance. There ain't nothing new about it, it was the same in Holy Scripture.

When Jacob had small childrcns he wept, but when they grew up he wept more than ever.'

Father Christopher agreed, looking pensively at his glas. 'H'm, yes. Now, me, I haven't really done anything to anger God. I've lived out my span as lucky as could be. I've found good husbands for my daughters, I've set my sons up in life, and now I'm free, I've done my job, I can go where I like. I live quietly with my wife, eat, drink. sleep, enjoy my grandchildren, say my prayers—and that's all I need! Live on the fat of the land I do, and I don't need any favours. There has been no griefin my life. Suppose the Tsar asked me what I needed and wanted now—there isn't anything! I have ev^^^mg, thanks be to There's no happier man in all our True, I'm a great sinner, but then—only God's without sin, eh?'

'Aye, true enough.'

'I've lost my teeth ofcourse, my poor old back aches and so on, I'm shon of breath and all that. I fall ill, the flesh is weak, but I have lived, haven't I? You can see that for yourselЈ In my seventies, I am. You can't go on for ever—mustn't outstay your welcome.'

Struck by a sudden thought, Father Christopher snorted into his glaw, and then laughed himselfinto a coughing fit. Moses, too, laughed and coughed out of politenes.

'It was so funny!' Father Christopher made a helples gesture. 'My eldest son Gabriel comes to stay with me. He's in the medical line, a doctor with the rural council downwn Chernigov way. Well, now. "I'm short of breath and so on," I tell him. "Now, you're a doctor, so you cure your father." So he undresses me there and then, he does a bit of tapping and listening—the usual trick——squeezes my stomach. "Com- preHed air treatment's what you need, Dad," says he.'

Father Christopher laughed convulsively until he cried, and stood up.' "Confound your compressed air," says I. "Confound your air!" ' He laughed as he brought out the words and made a derisive gesture with both hands.

Moses also stood up, clutched his stomach and uttered a shrill peal of minh like the yap of a pekinese.

'Confound your compr^«d air!' the chortling Father Christopher repeated.

Laughing two notes higher, Moses unered a cackle so explosive that he almost lost his footing. 'Oh, my God,' groaned he in mid-guffaw. 'Let me get my breath back. Oh, such a scream you are—you'U be the death of me, you will.'

While laughing and speaking he cast apprehensive, suspicious glances at Solomon, who stood in his formcr posture, smiling. To judge from his eyes and grin his scorn and hatred werc genuine, but so incompatible were they with his plucked-hen look that Yegorushka interpreted the ch:^llenging mien and air of blistering contempt as buffoonery deliberately designed to amuse the honoured giests.

After silently drinking half a dozen glasses of tea Kuzmichov cleared a space on the table in front of him, took his bag—the same one that he had kept under his head when sleeping beneath the carriage—untied thc string and shook it. Bundles ofbanknotes tumbled out on the table.

'Let's count them while thcre's time, Father,' said Kuzmichov.

On seeing the money Moses showed embarrassment, stood up, and —as a sensitive man not wanting to know others' secrete—tiptoed from the room, balancing with his arms. Solomon stayed where he was.

'How much in the one-rouble packets?' began Father Christopher.

'They're in fifties, and the three-rouble notes are in ninety-rouble packets. The twenty-fives and the hundreds come in thousands. You count out seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov and I'll count Gusevich's. And mind you get it right.'

Never in his life had Yegorushka seen such a pile of moncy as that on the table. It must have been a vast amount indeed, because the bundle of seven thousand eight hundred put aside for Varlamov seemed so small compared to the pile as a whole. All this money might have impressed Yegorushka at any other time, moving him to ponder how many bagels, dough rolls and poppy-seed cakes you could buy with it. But now he looked at it unconcernedly, aware only of the foul smcll of rotten apples and paraffin that it gave off. Exhausted by the jolting ride in the britzka, he was worn out and slecpy. His head felt heavy, his eyes would scarcely stay open, and his thoughts werc like tangled threads. Had it been possible he would have been glad to lay his head on the tablc and close his eyes to avoid seeing the lamp and the fingers moving above the heap ofnotes, and he would have allowed his listless, slecpy thoughts to become more jumbled still. As he struggled to stay awake he saw everything double—lamplight, cups, fingers. The samovar throbbed, and the smell of rotten apples seemed yet more acrid and foul.

'Money, money, money!' sighed Father Christopher, smiling. 'What a nuisance you are! Now, I bet young Michael's asleep, dream- ing of me bringing him a pile like this.'

'Your Michael has no sense.' Kuzmichov spoke in an undertone.

'Right out ofhis depth, he is. But you are sensible and open to reason. You'd better let me have your wool, like I said, and go back home. Very well, then—1'd give you half a rouble a bale over and above your price, and that just out of respect '

'No thanks,' Father Christopher sighed. 'I'm grateful for your con- cern, and I wouldn't think twice about it, of course, ifl had the choice. But you see, it's not my wool, is it?'

In tiptoed Moses. Trying not to look at the heap of money out of delicacy, he stole up to Yegorushka and tugged the back of his shin. 'Come on, little gentlemans,' said he in a low voice. Tll show you such a nice little bear. He's oh such a fierce, cross little bear, he is.'

Sleepy Yegorushka stood up and sluggishly plodded after Moses to look at the bear. He entered a small room where his breath was caught, before he saw anything, by the sour, musty smell that was much stronger than in the big room, and was probably spreading through the house from here. One half of the room was dominated by a double bed covered with a greasy quilt, and the other by a chest of drawers and piles of miscellaneous clothing, beginning with stiffly starched skirts and ending with children's trousers and braces. On the chest of drawers a tallow candle b^rct, but instead ofthe promised bear Yegorushka saw a big fatJewess with her hair hanging loose, wearing a red fl^rnel dre» with black dots.

She had difficulty in t^rong in the narrow space between bed and chest of drawers, and emitted protracted groaning sighs as if from toothache. Seeing Yegorushka, she assumed a woebegone air, heaved a lengthy sigh, and—before he had time to look round—put a slice of bread and honey to his lips. 'Eat, sonny, eat. Your Mummy's not here, and there's no one to feed you. Eat it up.'

Yegorushka did so, though after the fruit-drops and honey cakes that he had at home every day he thought little of the honey, half of which was wax and bees' wings. While he ate, Moses and the Jewcss watched and sighed. 'Where are you going, sonny?' she asked.

'To school.'

'And how many childrens d^ your M^my have?'

'Only me, there's no others.'

'Ah me!' sighed the Jewess, turning up her eyes. 'Your poor, poor Mummy. How she will mis you, how she will cry! In a year we shall be taking our Nahum to school too. Ah me!'

'Oh, Nahum, Nahum!' sighed Moses, the loose skin ofhis pale face twitching nervously. 'And he is so poorly.'

The greasy quilt moved, and from it emergcd a child's curly head on a very thin neck. Two black eyes gleamed, staring quizzically at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moses and the Jewess went up to the chest of drawers and began a discussion in Yiddish. Moses spoke in a deep undertone, and his Yiddish sounded likc a non-stop boom, boom, booming, while his wife answered in a thin voice like a turkey hen's with a twitter, twitter, twitter. While they were conferring a second curly head on a thin neck peeped out from the greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth. Had Yegorushka possessed a vivid imagination he might have thought that the hundred-headed hydra lay beneath that quilt.

'Boom, boom, boom,' went Moses.

'Twitter, twitter, twitter,' answered his wife.

The conference ended with her diving with a deep sigh into the chest of drawen, unwrapping some kind of green rag there, and taking out a big, heart-shaped honey-cake. 'Take it, sonny.' She gave Yego- rushka the cake. 'You have no Mummy now, isn't it? Is no one to give you nice things.'

Yegorushka put the cake in his pocket and backed towards the door, unable to continue breathing the musty, sour air in which the inn- keeper aind his wife lived. Going back to the big room, he comfortably installed himself on the sofa and let his thoughts wander.

Kuzmichov had just finished counting the banknotes and was put- ting them back in his bag. He treated them with no particular respect, stuffmg them in the dirty bag without ceremony, as unconcernedly as if they had been so much waste paper.

Father Christopher was talking to Solomon. 'Well, now, Solomon thc Wise.' He yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth. 'How's business?'

'To what business do you allude?' Solomon stared at him as viciously as if some crime had been implied.

'Things in general. What are you up to?'

'Up to?' Solomon repe.ited the question with a shrug. 'Samc as everyone else. I am, you see, a servant. I am my brother's servant. My brother is his visitors' servant. His visitors are Varlamov's servants. And ifl had ten million Varlamov would be my servant.'

'But why should that be?'

'Why? Because ihere's no gentleman or millionaire who wouldn't lick the hand ofa dirty Yid to make an extra copeck. As it is I'm a dirty Yid and a beggar, and everyone look at me as if I was a dog. But if I had moneys, Varlamov would make as big a fool ofhimself for me as Moses docs for you.'

Father Christopher and Kuzmichov looked at each other, neither of them understanding Solomon.

'How cancan you compare yourselfto Varlamov, you idiot?' Kuzmichov gave Solomon a stcni, dour look.

'I'm not such an idiot as to compare myself to Varlamov.' Solomon looked at the others scornfully. 'Varlamov may be a Rusian, but he's a dirty Yid at heart. Moneys and gain are his whole life, but I b^t mine in the stove. I don't need moneys or land or sheep, and I don't need people to fear me and take off their hats when I pau. So I am wiser than your Varlamov and more of a man.'

A little latcr Yegorushka, half asleep, heard Solomon discussing Jcws in a hollow, lisping, rapid voice hoarse from the hatred that choked him. Having begun by speaking correctly, he had later lapsed into the style of a raconteur telling Jewish fi^y stories, employing the same exaggerated Yiddish accent that he had used at the fair.

Father Christopher inte^pted him. 'Just one moment. If your faith displeases you, change it. But to laugh at it is sinful. The man who mocks his faith is the lowest of the low.'

'You don't understand,' Solomon ruddy cut him short. 'That has nothing to do with what I was saying.'

'Now, that just shows what a stupid fellow you are.' Father Christo- pher sighed. 'I instruct you as best I can and you become angry. I speak to you as an old man, quietly, and you go off like a turkey— cackle, cackle, cackle. You really are a funny chap.'

In came Moses. He looked anxiously at Solomon and his guests, and again die loose skin on his face twitched nervously. Yegorushka shook his head and looked around him, catching a glimpse of Solomon's face just whcn it was turned three-quarters towards him and when the shadow of his long nose bisected his whole left cheek. The scornful smile half in shadow, the glittering, sncering cycs, the arrogant ex- preuion and the whole plucked hen's figure^^oubling and dancing before Yegorushka's eyes, they made Solomon look less like a clown than some nightmare fantasy or evil spirit.

'What a devil of a fellow he is, Moses, God help him.' Father Chris- topher smiled. 'You'd better get him a job, find him a wife or some- thing. He's not human.'

Kuzmichov frownwned angrily while M^^ cast another apprehensive,

quizzical look at his brother and the guests. 'Lcave the room, Solomon,' he said sternly. 'Go away.' And he added something in Yiddish. With a brusque laugh Solomon went out. 'What was it?' Moses fcarfully asked Father Christopher. 'He forgets himself,' Kuzmichov ^wered. 'He is rude and thinks too highly ofhimselЈ'

'I knew it!' Moses threw up his arms in horror. 'Oh, goodness gracious me!' he muttered in an undertone. 'Be so kind as to forgive him, don't be angry. That's what he's like, he is. Oh, goodness me! He's my ■ brothers, and he's been nothing but trouble to me, he

has. Why, do you know, he '

Moses tapped his forehcad. 'He's out of his mind—a hopeless casc, he is. I really don't know what I'm to do with him. He cares for no one, respects no one, fears no one. He laugh at everybody, you k:tow, he say silly things, he get on people's nerves. You'll never believe it, but when Varlamov was here once, Solomon made some remark to him and he gave us both a taste of his whip! What for he whip me, eh? Was it my fault? IfGod has robbed my brother ofhis wits, it must be God's will. How is it my fault, eh?'

About ten minutes passed, but Moses still kept up a low muttering and sighing. 'He doesn't sleep of a night, he keeps thinking, thinking, thinking, but what he thinks about, God knows. If you go near him at night he get angry and he laugh. He doesn't like me either. And there's nothing he wants. When our Dad dicd he left us six thousand roubles apiece. I bought an iim, I married, and now I have childrens, but he burnt his moneys in the stove. Such a pity. Why he burn it? If he not need it, why he not give it me? Why he burn it?'

Suddenly the door squeaked on its counterweight, and the floor vibrated with footsteps. Yegorushka felt a draught of air and had the imprcssion ofa big black bird swooping past and beating its wings right by his face. He opencd his eycs. His uncle had his bag in his hand, and stood near the sofa ready to lcave. Holding his broad-brimmcd top hat, Father Christopher was bowing to somcone and smiling—not softly and tenderly as was his wont, but in a respectful, strained fashion that ill suited him. Meanwhile Moses was doing a sort of balancing act as if his body had been broken in three parts and he was trying his best not to disintegrate. Only Solomon seemcd unaffectcd, and stood in a corner, his arms folded, his grin as disdainful as cver.

'Your Ladyship must forgive the untidinc»,' groaned Moses with an excruciatingly sweet smile, taking no more notice of Kuzmichov or Father Christopher, but just balancing his whole body so as not to disintegrate. 'We're plain folk, my lady.'

Yegorushka rubbed his eyes. In the middle of the room stood what indeed was a ladyship—a very beautiful, buxom young woman in a black dres and straw hat. Before Yegorushka could make out her features the solitary graceful poplar he had seen on the hill that day somehow came into his mind.

'Was Varlamov here today?' a woman's voice asked.

'No, my lady,' Moses answered.

'If you see him tomorrow ask him to call at my place for a minute.'

Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, about an inch from his eyes Yego- rushka saw velvety black eyebrows, big bro^ eyes and well-cared-for feminine cheeks with dimples from which smiles seemed to irradiate the whole face like sunbeams. There was a whiff of some splendid scent.

'What a pretty little boy,' said the lady. 'Who is he? See, Kazimir, what a charming child. Good heavens, he's asleep, the darling wee poppet!'

The lady firmly kissed Ycgorushka on both cheeks. He smiled and shut his eyes, thinking he was asleep. The door squeaked and hurried footsteps were heard as someone came in and went out.

Then came a deep whisper from two voices. 'Yegorushka, Yego- rushka, get up. We're leaving.'

Someone, Deniska apparently, set the boy on his feet and took his arm. On the way he half opened his eyes and once again saw the beautiful woman in the black dres who had kissed him. She stood in the middle of the room, watching him leave with a friendly smile and a nod. As he came to the door he saw a handsome, heavily built, dark man in a bowler hat and leggings. He must be the lady's escort.

From outside came a cry. 'Whoa there!'

At the front door Yegorushka saw a splendid new carriage and a pair of black horses. On the box sat a liveried groom holding a long whip.

Only Solomon came out to see tl— departing guests off, his face tense with the urge to guffaw, as if he was waiting impatiently for them to leave so that he could laugh at them to his heart's content.

'Countess Dranitsky,' whispered Fadier Christopher as he mounted the britzka.

'Yes, Countess Dranitsky,' repeated Kuzmichov, also in a whisper.

The impression made by the Countess's arrival must have been considerable, for even Deniska spoke in a whisper, not venturing to whip his bays and shout until the britzka had gone several hundred yards and nothing could be seen of the inn but a faint light.

IV

Who on earth was the elusive, mysterious Varlamov of whom so much was said, whom Solomon dcspised, whom even the beautiful Countess had need of? Sitting on the box by Deniska, the dozing Yegorushka thought about that personage. He had never set eyes on Varlamov, but he had often heard of him and imagined him. He knew that Varlamov ownwned acres by their scores of thousands, about a hundred thousand head of sheep and a lot of money. Of his life and activities the boy only knew that he was always 'knocking around' in the area, and that he was always in demand.

At home the boy had heard much of Countess Dranitsky too. She also owned acres by their scores of thousands, many sheep, a stud farm and a lot of money. Yct she did not 'knock around', but lived on a prosperous estate about which people he knew—including Kuz- michov, who often called there on business—told many a fabulous tale. For instance, it was said that in the Countess's drawing-room, which had the portraits of all the Kings of Poland hanging on the waU, there was a big, rock-shaped table-lock surmounted by .a rampant gold horse with jewelled eyes and a gold rider who swung his sabre from side to side whenever the clock struck. The Countess was also said to give a ball twice a year. The gentry and officials of the county were invited, and even Varlamov attended. The guests all drank tea made from water boiled in silver samovars, ate the oddest dishes—for instance, raspberries and strawberries were served at Christmas—and danced to a band that played day and night.

'And how beautiful she is,' thought Yegorushka, remembering her face and smile.

Kuzmichov must have been thinking about the Countess too, because he spoke as follows when the carriage had gone about a mile and a half. 'Yes, and doesn't that Kazimir rob her! Two years ago I bought some wool from her, remember? And he picked up three thousand on that deal alone.'

'Just what you'd expect from a wretched Pole,' Father Christopher said.

'But she doesn't let it bother her. Young and foolish she is, with something missing in the top storey, as folks say.'

Somehow Yegorushka wanted to think only of Varlamov and the Countess, especially the Countess. His drowsy brain utterly rejected mundane thoughts and became fuddled, retaining only such magical and fantastic images as have the advantage of somehow springing into the mind automatically without taxing the thinker, but vanish without trace of their own accord at a mere shake of the head. In any case the surroundings did not encourage ordinary thoughts. On the right were dark hills, seeming to screen off something mysterious and terrifying, while on the left the whole sky above the horizon was steeped in a crimson glow, and it was hard to tell whether there was a fne some- where or whether it was the moon about to rise. The distant prospect was visible, as by day, but now the delicate lilac hue had disappeared, obscured by the gloaming in which the whole steppe hid like Moses' children under the quilt.

On July evenings and nights quails and comcrakes no longer call, nightingales do not sing in wooded gullies, and there is no scent of flowers. But the steppe is still picturesque and full of life. Hardly has the sun gone downwn, hardly has darkness enfolded the earth when the day's misery is forgotten, all is forgiven, and the prairies breathe a faint sigh from their broad bosom. In the grass—as if it can no longer tell how old it is in the dark—a merry, youthful trilling, wikno^ by day, arises. The chattering, the whistling, the scratching, the bass, tenor and treble voices of the steppe—all blend in a continuous monotonous boom, a fme background to memories and mclancholy. The mono- tonous chirring soothes like a lullaby. You drive on, feeling as if you are dozing, but the brusque alarm call of a wakeful bird comes from somewhere, or a vague noise resounds, like a human voice uttering a surprised, protracted sigh, and slumber closes your eyelids. Or you may drive past a bushy gully and hear the bird that prairie folk call a 'sleeper', with its cry of 'sleep, slecp, sleep'. Or another bird guffaws, or weeps in hysterical peals—an owl. Whom do they cry for? Who hears them in the steppe? God alone knows, but their crics arc most mo^ful anel plaintive. There is a scent of hay, dry grass and late flowers—a scent dense, sickly-sweet, voluptuous.

Everything is visible through thc haze, but colours and outlines are hard to make out. All seems other than it is. As you journey onward you suddenly sec a silhouette likc a monk's on the roadside ahead of you. It does not move, but waits, holding something. A highwayman perhaps? The fi.gure approaches, swells, draws level with the britzka, and you see that it is a solitary bush or boulder, not a man. Such immobile, waiting figures stand on the hills, hide behind the ancient barrows, peep out from the. grass, all resembling human beings, all arousing suspicion.

When the moon rises the night grows pale and languid. It is as ifthe haze had never been. The air is limpid, fresh and warm, everything is clearly seen, and one can even make out individual blades of grau by the road. Stones and skulls stand out a long way ofЈ The suspicious monk-like figures look blacker and gloomier against the night's bright background. The surprised sighing resounds more and more often amid the monotonous chatter, troubling the still air, and you hear the cry of a wakeful or delirious bird. Broad shadows move over the plain like clouds acrou the sky, and in the mysterious distance, if you peer into it for a while, grotesque, misty images loom and tower behind each other. It is a little eerie. And if you gaze at the pale, green, star- spangled sky, free of the smallest cloud or speck, you will know why the warm air is still, and why nature is alert, fearing to stir. It is afr.aid and reluctant to lose one second's life. Of the sky's unfathomable depth, of its boundlessness, you can judge only at sea and on the moon- lit steppe by night. It is frightening and picturesque, yet kindly. Its gaze is languorous and magnetic, but its embraces make you dizzy.

You drive on for an hour or two. On your way you meet a silent barrow or menhir—God knows who put them up, or when. A night bird silently skims the earth. And the prairie legends, the travellers' yarns, the folk tales told by some old nurse from the steppes, together with whatever you yourself have contrived to see and to grasp in spirit—you gradually recall all these things. And then, in the insects' twittering, in the sinister figures and ancient barrows, in the depths of the sky, in the moonlight, in the flight of the night bird, in everything you see and hear, you seem to glimpse the triumph of beauty, youth in the prime of strength, a lust for life. Your spirit responds to its mag- nificent, stern homeland and you long to fly above the steppe with the night bird. In this triumph of beauty, in this exuberance ofhappi- ness, you feel a tenseness and agonized regret, as if the steppe knew how lonely she is, how her wealth and inspiration are lost to the world —vainly, unsung, unneeded, and tlrough the joyous clamour you hear her anguished, hopeless cry for a bard, a poet ofher own.

'Whoa! Halla there, Panteley. All well?'

'Thanks to God, Mr. Kuzmichov.' 'Seen Varlamov, lads?'

'No, we ain't.'

Ycgorushka awoke and opened his eyes. The britzka had stopped. A long way ahead on the right extended a train of wagons, and men were scurrying about ncar them. The huge balcs of wool made all the wagons seem very tall and bulging, and the horses small and short- legged.

'So we're to visit the Molokan's farm next,' said Kuzmichov in a loud voice. 'The Jew reckoned that Varlamov was staying the night there. Good-bye then, lads. Best of luck.'

'Good-bye, Mr. Kuzmichov,' answered several voices.

'I tell you what, lads,' said Kuzmichov briskly. 'You might take my boy with you. Why should hc traipse around with us? Put him on your bales, Pantclcy, and let him ride a bit, and we'll catch you up. Off you go, Ycgorushka. Go on, it'll be all right.'

Ycgorushka climbed down from his box scat, and several hands picked him up. They raised him aloft, and he found himself on some- thing big, soft and slightly wet with dew. He felt close to the sky and far from the ground.

'Hey, take your coat, old chap,' shouted Dcniska far below.

The boy's overcoat and bundle were thrown up from below and fell ncar him. Quickly, wishing to keep his mind a blank, he put the bundle under his head, covered himself with his coat, stretched his legs right out, shivering a little because of the dew, and laughed with pleasure.

'Sleep, sleep, sleep,' he thought.

'Don't you do him no harm, you devils.' It was Dcniska's voicc from below.

'Good-bye, lads, and good luck,' shouted Kuzmichov. 'I'm relying on you.'

'Never fear, mister.'

Dcniska shouted to his horses as the britzka creaked and rolled off, no longer along the road but somewhere off to one side. For a minute or two the wagons all seemed to have fallen asleep, since no sound was heard exccpt the gradually expiring distant clatter of thc pail tied to the britzka's back-board.

Then cam.e a muffled shout from the head of the convoy. 'On our way, Kiryukha!'

The foremost wagon creaked, then the second and the third. Yego- rushka felt his own vehicle jerk and creak as well—they were on the move. He took a firmer grip on the cord round his bale, gave another happy laugh, shifted the honey cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as he did in his bed at home.

When he awoke the sun was already rising. Screened by an ancient burial mound, it was trying to sprinkle its light on the world, urgently thrusting its rays in all directions and flooding the horizon with gold. Yegorushka thought it was in the wrong place because it had risen behind his back on the previous day, and was further to the left now. But the whole landscape had changed. There were no more hills, and the bleak bro\wn plain stretched endlessly in all directions. Here and there arose small barrows, and rooks flew about, as on the day before. Far ahead were the white belfries and huts of a village. As it was a Sunday the locals were at home cooking—witness the smoke issuing from all the chimneys and hanging over the village in a transparent blue-grey veil. In the gaps between the huts and beyond the church a blue river could be seen, and beyond that the hazy distance. But nothing was so unlike yesterday's scene as the road. Straddling the prairie was something less a highway than a lavish, i^rnensely broad, positively heroic spread of tract—a grey band, much traversed, dusty like all roads and several score yards in width. Its sheer scale baffled the boy, ronjuring up a fairy-tale world. Who drove here? Who needed all this space? It was strange and unc^my. One might suppose, indeed, that giants with seven-league boots were still among us, and that the heroic horses of folk myth were not extinct. Looking at the road, Yegorushka pictured half a dozen tall chariots racing side by side like some he had seen in drawings in books of Bible stories. Those chariots had each been drawn by a team of six wild and furious horses, their high wheels raising clouds of dust to the sky, while the horses were driven by men such as one might meet in dreams, or in reveries about the supernatural. How well they would have fitted the steppe and the road, these figures, had they existed!

Telegraph poles carrying two wires ran on the right-hand side of the road as far as eye could see. Ever dwindling, they vanished behind the huts and foliage near the village, onIy to reappear in the lilac-coloured background as thin little sticks resembling pencils stuck in the ground. On the wires sat hawks, merlins and crows, gazing unconcernedly at the moving wagons.

Lying on the last wagon of all, the boy had the whole convoy in view. There were about twenty wagons or carts, with one wagoner to three vehicles. Near Yegorushka's wagon, the last in line, walked an old, grey-bearded man, as shon and gaunt as Father Christopher, but with a bro^, sunb^nt face, stem and contemplative. The old man may have becn neither stem nor contemplative, but his red eye- lids and long, sharp nose gave his face the severe, reserved air of those accustomed to brood in solitude on serious matters. Like Father Christopher, he wore a broad-b^^med top hat—a bro^wn, felt affair more like a truncated cone than a gentleman's topper. His feet were bare. He kept slapping his thighs and stamping his feet as he walked— probably a habit contracted in the cold ^rnters, when he must often have come near to freezing beside his wagons. Noticing that Yego- rushka was awake, he looked at him.

'So you're awake, young man.' He was hunching his shoulders as if from cold. 'Mr. Kuzmichov's son, might you be?'

'No, his nephew.'

'His nephew, eh? Now, I've just taken off me boots, I'm bobbing along barefoot. There's something wrong with me legs, the frost got to them, and things is easier without boots. Easier, boy. Without boots, I mean. So you're his nephew, then? And he's a good son, he is. May God grant him health. A good sort. Mr. K^mchov, I mean. He's gone to see the Molokan. O Lord, have mercy on us!'

Tlte old man even spoke as if he was frozen, spacing out the words and not opening his mouth properly. He mispronounced his labial consonants, stuttering on them as if his lips were swollen. When addressing Yegorushka he did not smile once, and seemed severe.

Three wagons ahead of them walked a man in a long reddish-brownwn topcoat, carrying a whip. He wore a peaked cap and riding boots with sagging tops. He was not old^^nly about forty. When he ^roed round the boy saw a long red face with a thin goatee and a spongy swelling undcr the right eye. Besides this hideous swelling he had another specially striking peculiarity—while holding the whip in his left hand, he s-wung the right as if conducting an ^^en choir. Occa- sionally he tucked the whip under his arm and conducted with both hands, humming to hi^^lf.

The next caner was a tal upstanding fi^-e with noticeably sloping shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He hdd hi^^lf erect as if he was marching or had swallowed a ramrod, his arms not s^uging but hanging straight do^ like sticks as he walked in a sort of clockwork fashion like a toy soldicr, scarcely bcnding his knees and trying to take the longest stride pouible. Where the old man or the o-wner of the spongy swelling took two steps he contrived to take only one, so that he seemed to be moving more slowly than anyone and to be falling behind. His face was bound with a piece of cloth, and on his head sprouted something resembling a monk's cap. He was dressed in a short Ukrainian coat all covered with patches and in dark bluc oriental trousers over bast shoes.

Yegorushka could not make out the more distant carters. He lay on his stomach, picked a hole in his bale, and began twisting some wool into threads, having nothing better to do. The old man striding away below turned out less severe and serious than his face suggested. Having started a conversation he did not let it drop.

'Where are you going, then?' he asked, stamping his feet.

'To school,' answered Yegorushka.

'To school? Aha! Well, may Our Blessed Lady help you! Aye, one brain's good, but two is better. God gives one man one brain, and another man two brains, and another gets three, that's for sure. One's the brain you're born with, another comes from learning, and the third from living a good life. So it's a good thing for a man to have three brains, son. Living's easier for him, it is, and so is dying too. Dying—aye, we'll al of us come to it.'

After scratching his forehead the old man looked up, red-eyed, at Yegorushka, and went on. 'Maxim Nikolayevich, the squire from down Slavyanoserbsk way—he took his lad to school last year, he did. I don't know what he might be like in the book-lea^rng line, but he's a good, decent lad, he is. And may God prosper them, the fine gentle- folk that they be. Aye, so he takes the lad to school, like you, since they don't have no establislment—not for learning proper, like—in them parts, that they don't. But it's a good, decent to^. There's an ordinary school for the common folk, but for them as wants to be scholars there ain't nothing, there ain't. What's your name?'

'Yegorushka.'

'Yegorushka—"George", properly speaking. So your name-day's the twenty-third of April, seeing as how that's the day of the holy martyr St. Georgie-Porgie what killed the Dragon. Now, my name's Panteley—Panteley Kholodov. Aye, Kholodov's the name. I come from Tim in Kursk County myself, you may have heard tell of it. My brothers registered themselves as to^sfolk—they're craftsmen in the town, they are. But I'm a countryman, and a countryman I've remained. Seven years ago I visited there, home that is. I've been in my village and in the town—in Tim, I've been, say I. They were all alive and well then, thank God, but I don't know about now. A few ofthem may have died. And time it is for them to die—they're all old, and some is older than me. Death's all right, nothing wrong with it. But you mustn't die without repenting, stands to reason. Ain't nothing worse than dying contumacious-o—oh, it's a joy to the devil is a contumacious death. But if you want to die penitent, so they won't forbid you to enter the mansions of the Lord like, you pray to the martyred St. Barbara. She'll intercede for you, she will, you take it from me. That's her place in heaven that God gave her so everyone should have the right to pray to her for repentance, see?' ri?anteley muttered away, obviously not caring whether the boy heard him or not. He spoke listlessly, mumbling to himself, neither raising nor dropping his voice, but managing to say a great deal in a short time. His talk, all fragmentary and largely incoherent, lacked any interest for Yegorushka. Perhaps he spoke only to call the roll of his idcas—make sure that all were present and correct after tKe nlĝEt .spent in silence. Having finishe d talking about repentance, he went ott again about tnis Maxim Nikolayevich from do^ Slavyanoserbsk way. 'Yes, he took the lad to school, he did, true enough.'

One of the carters walking far in front gave a sudden lurch, darted to one side, and began lashing the ground with his whip. He was a burly, broad-shouldered man of about thirty, with fair, curly hair and a healthy, vigorous look. From the motions of his shoulders and whip, from the eagerness of his posture, he was beating some live creature. A second carter ran up--a short, thick-set fellow with a full black beard, in a waistcoat with his shirt outside his trousers. He broke out in a deep, coughing laugh. 'Dymov has killed a snake, lads, as God's my witnes.'

There are people whose intellect can be accurately gauged from their voice and laugh, and it was to this lucky category that the black- bearded man belonged, his voice and laugh betraying abysmal stupidity. The fair-haired Dymov had stopped lashing, picked his whip from the ground and laughed as he hurled something resembling a bit of rope towards the carts.

'It ain't a viper, 'tis a grass snake,' someone shouted.

The man with the clockwork stride and bandaged face quickly strode up to the dead snake, glanced at it and tlrew up his stick-like arms. 'You rotten scum!' he shouted in a hollow, tearful voice. 'Why kill the little grass snake? What had he done to you, damn you? Hey, he's killed a grass snake! How would you like to be treated like that?'

'Grau snakes oughtn't to be killed, that's true enough,' muttered

Panteley placidly. 'It ain't a viper. Look like a snake it may, but 'tis a quiet, innocent creature. A friend of man, it be, your grass snake '

Dymov and the black-bearded man were probably ashamed, for they gave loud laughs and sauntered back to their wagons without answering these grumbles. When the hindmost wagon drew level with the place where the dead grass snake lay, the man with the ban- daged face stood over the creature and addressed Pameley. 'Now, why did he kill the grass snake, old man?' he inquired plaintively.

Yegoruslka could now see that the speaker's eyes were small and lack-lustre. His face looked grey and sickly, also seeming lustreless, while his chin was red, appearing extremely swollen.

'Now, why did he kill the grass snake?' he repeated, striding by Panteley's side.

'A fool has itchy hands, that's why,' the old man said. 'But you shouldn't kill a grass snake, true enough. He's a trouble-maker is that Dymov, see, he'll kill anything that comes his way. But Ki^^kha didn't stop him when he should have, but just stood there a-chuckling and a-cackling. Don't take on, though, Vasya, don't let it anger you. They killed it, but never mind. Dymov's a mischief-maker and Ki^^kha's just silly like. No matter. Folks are stupid, folks don't understand, so let them be. Now, Yemelyan won't never touch any- thing he shouldn't. Never, that's true enough, seeing as how he's educated and they're stupid. He won't touch anything, not Yemelyan wont.'

The carter with the reddish-bro^ topcoat and the spongy swelling —the one who liked conducting the unseen choir—stopped when he heard his name spoken, waited for Panteley and Vasya to catch up, and fell in beside them. 'What are you on about?' he asked in a hoarse, strangled voice.

'Well, Vasya here's angry,' said Panteley. 'So I said a few things to stop him taking on. Oh, my poor legs, they're so cold. ft's because it's Sunday, the Lord's Day, that's why they're playing up.'

'It's the walking,' remarked Vasya.

'No, lad, no. It ain't the walking. When I walk it seems easier, it's when I lie do^ and warm meself—that's what does for me. Walking's easier like.'

Yemelyan, in his reddish-brown topcoat, took station between Panteley and Vasya, waving his hand as if that choir was about to sing. After a bit of a swing he lowered his arm and gave a grimt of despair. 'My voice has gone,' he said. 'Diabolical, it is. All night and all morning I've been haWlted by the triple "Lord Have Mercy" that we sang at the Marinovsky wedding. I've got it on me brain and I've got it in me gizzard. I feel I could sing it, but I

He brooded silently for a while and then went on. 'Fifteen years in the choir I was, and in all Lugansk no one had a better voice than me, belike. But then I have to go and bloody bathe in the Doncts two year ago, and not one proper note have I sWig since. A chill in the throat it was. Without me voice I'm like a workman with no hand.'

'True enough,' Panteley agreed.

'What I say is, I'm done for, and that's that.'

At that moment Vasya chanced to catch sight of Yegorus^u. His eyes glittcred and seemed even smaller. 'So therc's a yoWlg gentleman a-driving with us,' he said, hiding his nose with his sleeve as if from shyness. 'Now, that's what I call a real 'igh-clas cabbie! You stay with us riding the wagons and carting wool.'

The incongruity of one person combining the functions of yoWig gentleman and cabbie must have struck him as most curious and witty, for he gave a loud snigger and continued to develop the idea. Yemelyan looked up at Yegorushka too, but cursorily and coldly. He was ob- sessed with thoughts of his own, and would not have noticed the boy, had it not been for Vasya. Not five minutes had paued before he was waving his arms again. Then, as he described to his companions the beauties of the wedding anthem 'Lord Have Mercy' that he had remembered in the night, he put his whip under his arm and started conducting with both his hands.

Nearly a mile from the village the convoy stopped by a well with a sweep. Lowering his pail into the well, black-bearded Kiryukha lay stomach downwn on the framework and thrust his mop of hair, his shoulders and part of his chest into the black hole so that Yegorushka could see only his short legs, which barely touched the groWld. Seeing his head reflected from afar do^ at the well bottom, he was so pleased that he let off a cascade of stupid, deep-voiced laughter, and the well echoed it back. When he stood up his face and neck were red as a beetroot. The f rst to up and drink was Dymov. He laughed as he drank, frequently lifting his head from the pail and saying something funny to Kiryukha. Then he cleared his throat and bellowed out half a dozen swear words for all the steppe to hear. What such words meant Yegorushka had no idea, but that they were bad he was well aware. He knew of the Wlspoken revulsion that they evoked in his friends and relations, he shared their feelings himself without knowing why, and he had come to that only the drunk and disorderly

enjoyed the privilege of speaking these words aloud. He remembered the killing of the gras snake, listened to Dymov's laughter, and felt something like hatred for the man. At that moment, as ill luck would have it, Dymov spotted Yegorushka, who had climbed do^wn from his cart and was on his way to the well.

'Lads, the old man gave birth in the night!' shouted Dymov with a loud laugh.' 'Tis a baby boy.'

IGryukha gave his deep-throated laugh til he coughed. Someone else laughed too, while Yegorus^^ blushed and conclusively decided that Dymov was a very bad man.

Bareheaded, fair, ^ly hair and his shirt unbuttoned, Dymov seemed handsome and extremely strong, al his movements being those of the reckless bully who knows his worth. He flexed his shoulders, put his hands on his hips, talked and laughed louder than the others, and looked ready to lift with one hand some weight so pro- digious as to astound the entire world. His roving, ironical glance slid over the road, the string of wagons and the sky, never resting, and he seemed to be seeking something else to kill—as a pastime, just for a joke. He obviously feared no one, would stick at nothing, and prob- ably cared not a rap for Yegorushka's opinion. But the boy now wholeheartedly detested his fair head, his clean-cut face, his strength, list^wg to his laughter with fear and loathing and trying to think of a suitable insult to pay him back with.

Panteley too went up to the pail. He took a green lamp-glass from his pocket, wiped it with a cloth, scooped water from the pail, drank it, then scooped again before wrapping the glass in the cloth and replac- ing it in his pocket.

Yegorushka was astonished. 'Why do you drink from a lamp?' he asked the old man.

The answer was evasive. 'Some drinks from a pail and some from a lamp. It's every man to his own taste. If you're one as drinks from a bucket, then drink away, and much good may it do you.'

Suddenly Vasya gave tongue in a tender, plaintive voice. 'Oh, the darling, oh, you beauty, oh, the lovely creature!' His eyes, glinting and smiling, stared into the distance, while his face took on the expres- sion with which he had previously looked at Yegorushka.

'Who's that?' IGryukha asked.

'A vixen, that be—a-lying on her back, playing like a dog.'

All peered into the distance, all looking for the vixen, but no one spotted her. Only Vasya—he of the lack-lustre, grey eyo—could see anything, and he was entranced. His sight, as Yegorushka later dis- covered, was remarkably acute—so much so that the bro^ wastes of the prairie were always full of life and content for him. He had only to look into the distance to see a fox, a hare, a great bustard, or some other creature that sh^ humanity. To spot a hare ^^ing or a bustard in flight is not hard—anyone crossing the steppes saw those— but it is not given to everyone to detect wild creatures in their domestic habitat, when they are not ^^ing, hiding or looking about them in alarm. Now, Vasya could see the at play, the hare washing him- self with his paws, the great bustard preening his ^mgs, and the little bustard doing his courtshiJH!ance. Thanks to vision so keen, Vasya possesed, besides the world that everyone else sees, a whole world of his o^—inaccessible to others and most delectable, presumably, for it was hard not to envy him when he went into raptures over what he beheld.

the convoy resumed its jo^roey church bells had started ringing for service.

v

The wagon line was dra^ up on a river bank to one side of a village. As on the previous day the sun blazed away, and the air was stagnant and despondent. There were a few willows on the bank, their shadows not falling on the earth but on the water where they were wasted, while the shade under the wagons was stifling and oppresive. Azure from the reflected sky, the water urgently beckoned.

Styopka, a carter whom Yegorushka now noticed for the first time, was an eighteen-year-old Ukrainian lad in a long shirt without a belt and in broad trousers worn outside his boots and flapping like flags as he walked. He quickly undressed, ran do-wn the steep bank and dived into the water. After plunging three times he floated on his back and shut his eyes in his delight. He smiled and wrinkled his face as if from a combination of being tickled, hurt and amused.

On a hot day, when there is nowhere to hide from the stifling heat, splashing water and a bather's heavy breathing are music in the ears. Looking at Styopk.a, Dymov and Kiryukha quickly undressed, laughed loudly with anticipated joy, and flopped into the water one after the other. The quiet, humble brook bombinated with their mort- ing, splashing and shouting. Kir^^a coughed, laughed and yelled as if someone was trying to drownwn ^m, while Dymov chased him and tried to grab his leg.

'Hey there!' shouted Dymov. 'Catch him, hold ^m!'

Kiryukha was laughing and enjoying himself, but his expression was the same as on dry land: a stupid, flabbergasted look, as if someone had sneaked up from behind and clouted him on the head with a blunt instrument. Yegorushka also undressed. He did not lower himselfdo^ the bank, but took a run and a flying leap from a ten-foot height. Describing an arc in the air, he hit the water and sank deep, yet without reaching the bottom. Some power, cold and agreeable to the touch, seized him and bore him back to the surface. Snorting and blowing bubbles, he came up and opened his eyes, only to find the sun reflected on the stream close by his face. First blinding sparks, then rainbow colours and dark patches twitched before his eyes. He hurriedly plunged again, opened his eyes under water and saw something dull green like the sky on a moonlit night. Once more the same power would not let him touch the bottom and stay in the cool, but bore him aloft. Up he popped, and heaved a sigh so deep that he had a feel- ing of vast space and freshness, not only in his chest but even in his stomach. Then, to make the most of the water, he indulged in every extravagance. He lay on his back and basked, he splashed, he turned somersaults, he swam on his face, on his side, on his back, standing up—just as he pleased till he grew tired. Glinting gold in the sun, the other bank was thickly grownwn with reeds, and the handsome tassels of their flowers drooped over the water. At one point the reeds quivered and nodded their flowers, which gave out a crackling noise—Styopka and Kiryukha were 'tickling' crayfish.

'Here's one! Look, lads, a crayfish!' shouted Kiryukha triumphantly, displaying what indeed was a crayfish.

Yegorushka swam up to the reeds, dived, and began grubbing among the roots. Burrowing in slimy liquid mud, he felt something sharp and unpleasant. Perhaps it really was a crayfish, but at that moment someone grabbed his leg and hauled him to the surface. Gulping, coughing, he opened his eyes and saw the wet, grinning face of the mischievous Dymov. The rascal was breathing heavily, seeming bent on further tomfoolery from the look in his eyes. He held the boy tightly by the leg, and was lifting the other hand to take hold of his ne^ when Yegorushka broke away with revulsion and panic, shrink- ing from his touch as if afraid of the bully drownwning him.

'Idiot!' he pronounced. Tll bash your face in.' Then, feeling that this was inadequate to express his detestation, he paused in thought and spoke again. 'Swine! Son of a bitch!'

But this had no effect on Dymov, who ignored the boy and swam towards Kiryukha. 'Hey there!' he shouted. 'Let's catch some fish. Let's fish, lads!'

Kiryukha agreed. 'All right. There must be lots here.'

'Nip over to the village, Styopka, and ask the men for a net.'

'They won't lend us none.'

'They will, you ask them. Tell them it's their Christian duty, seeing as we're pilgrims, or as near as don't matter.'

'Aye, 'tis true.'

Styopka climbed out of the water, quickly dr^»d :and ran—bare- headed, his wide trousers flapping—to the village. As for Yegor^Ma, the water had lost all charm for ^m after the clash with Dymov. He climbed out and dressed. Pantdey and Vasya sat on the steep bank, dangling their legs, and watched the bathers. Close to the bank stood Yemelyan, naked and up to his knees in water, as he held the gras with one hand to stop himself falling over and stroked his body with the other. Bending do^, obviously frightened of the water, he cut a comic figure with his bony shoulder-blades and the swelling under his eye. His face was grave and severe, and he looked angrily at the water as if about to curse it for once having given him that chill in the Donets and robbed ^m of his voice.

'Why don't you go in?' Yegorushka asked Vasya.

'Oh, er—I don't care to.'

'Why is your chin swollen?'

'It hurts. I used to work at a match factory, young sir. The doctor did say as how that was what made me jaw swell. The air ain't healthy there, and there were three other lads beside me had swollen jaws, and one of them had it rot right away.'

Styopka soon came back with the net. After so long in the water Dymov and Kiryukha had become mauve and hoarse, but set about fishing with gusto. They first stalked the deep part near the reeds. Here Dymov was up to his neck and the squat Ki^^kha out of his depth. The latter gasped and blew bubbles, while Dymov bumped into prickly roots, kept falling, and got tangled in the net. Both thrashed about noisily, and all that came oftheir fishing was horseplay.

'It ain't half deep,' croaked Kiryukha. 'We won't catch nothing here.'

'Don't puU, blast you!' shouted Dymov, trying to work the net into position. 'Hold it where it is.'

'You won't catch nothing here,' shouted Panteley from the bank. 'You be only scaring the fish, you fools. Go to the left, 'tis shallower there.'

Once a huge fish gleamed above the net. Everyone gasped, and Dymov punched the spot where it had va^&ed, his face a picture of vexation.

Panteley g^mted, stamping his feet. 'We've miued a perch—got away, he did.'

Moving off to the left, Dymov and ^^^^a gradually worked their way to the shallows, and fishing began in earnest. Having gone about three hundred yards from the wagons, they were seen hauling the net silently, scarcely moving their feet, while trying to get as deep and close to the reeds as they could. To frighten the fish and drive them into the net they flogged the water with their fists and raised a crackle in the reeds. Making for the other bank from the reeds, they trawled there, and then went back to the reeds, looking disappointed and lifting their knees high. They were discussing something, but what it was no one could hear. The sun scorched their backs, insects bit them, and their bodies had turned from mauve to crimson. Styopka fol- lowed, carrying a bucket—his shirt was tucked up under his armpits, and he held it in his teeth by the hem. After each successful catch he raised a fish aloft and let it glitter in the sun. 'How about that for a perch?' he shouted. 'And we've fi.ve like that!'

Every time Dymov, Kiryukha and Styopka pulled the net out they were seen grubbing in the mud, putting things in the bucket and throwing other things out. Sometimes they passed something that had got into the net from hand to hand, scrutinized it keenly, and then threw that out too.

'What have you got?' shouted voices from the bank.

Styopka gave some answer, but it was hard to tell what. Then he climbed out of the water, gripped the bucket with both hands and ran to the wagons, forgetting to let his shirt drop. 'This one's full,' he shouted, panting hard. 'Let's have another.'

Yegorushka looked at the full bucket. A young pike poked its ugly snout out of the water, with crayfish and small fry swarming aroimd it. The boy put his hand down to the bottom and stirred the water. The pike disappeared beneath the crayfish, a perch and a tcnch floating up instead. Vasya also looked at the bucket. His eyes gleamed and his expresion became as tender as it had when he had seen the vixen. He took something from the bucket, put it in his mouth and staned to chew, making a c^nching noise.

Styopka was amazed. 'Vasya's eating a live gudgeon, mates-—ugh!'

'It ain't no gudgeon, 'tis a chub,' Vasya calmly answered, still munching.

He took the tail from his mouth, looked at it dotingly, and stuck it back again. While he chewed and ^rached his teeth Yegorushka felt that what he saw was not a h^an being. Vasya's swollen chin, his lustreles eyes, his phenomenal eyesight, the fuh tail in his mouth and the affectionate air with which he chewed the 'gudgeon'—it all made him look like an animal.

Yegorushka was beg^mng to find Vasya irksome, and in any the fishing was over. The boy walked about by the cans, thought for a while and then plodded off to the village out of boredom.

A little later he was standing in the church, leaning his forehead on someone's back—it smelt of hem^—and list^rng to the ^oir. The service was nearly over. He knew nothing about ^urch singing and did not care for it. After listening a while he ya^ed and began examin- ing people's necks and backs. In one head, reddish-bro^ and wet from recent bathing, he recognized Yemelyan. The back of his hair had been cropped in a straight line, higher than was ^al. The hair on his temples had also been cut back higher than it should have been, and Yemelyan's red ears stuck out like two burdock leaves, looking as if they felt out of place. Watching the back ofhis head and ears, the boy somehow felt that Yemdyan must be very unhappy. He remembered the man 'conducting' with his hands, his hoarse voice, his timid look during the bathing, and felt intensely sorry for him. He wanted to say something friendly. 'I'm here too.' He tugged Yemelyan's sleeve.

The tenors and ba»es of a choir, especially those who have ever chanced to conduct, are accustomed to looking at boys in a stem and forbidding way. Nor do they lose the habit even when they come to leave the choir. Turning to Yegorushka, Yemelyan looked at him rancorously and told him not to 'lark around' in church.

Yegorushka next made his way forward, closer to the icon-stand, where he saw some fascinating people. In front, on the right-hand nde, a lady and gentleman stood on a carpet with a chair behind each of them. Wearing a freshly ironed tussore suit, the gentleman stood stock-still like a soldier on parade, and held his bluish, shaved chin aloft. His stiff collar, blue ^rn, bald patch and cane—all conveyed great dignity. From exces of dignity his neck was tensed, and his chin was pulled upward with such force that his head seemed ready to snap off and soar into the air at any moment. As for the lady, she was stout and dderly, and wore a white silk shawl. She inclined her head to one ade, looking as if she had just done someone a favour and wanted to say: 'Don't trouble to th^i me, please—I dislike that sort of thing.' Al round the carpet stood a dense array of locals.

Yegorushka went up to the icon-stand and began kissing the local icons, slowly bowing to the ground before each one, looking back at the congregation without getting up, and then standing to apply his lips. The contact of his forehead with the cold floor was most gratify- ing. When the verger came out of the chancd with a pair of long muffers to put the candles out, the boy jumped quickly up from the floor and ran to him. 'Has the co^munion bread been given out?' he asked.

'There is none,' muttered the verger gruffly. 'And it's no use you '

When the service ^^ over the boy unhuriedly left the church and strolled round the market place. He had seen a good many villages, villagers and village greens in his time, and the present scene hdd no interest for him. Having nothing to do, he called—just to pass the time of day—at a shop with a broad strip of red calico over the door. It consisted of two spacious, badly lit rooms. In one drapery and gro- ceries were sold, while in the other were tubs of tar and horse-collars hanging from the ceiling. From the second room iuued the rich tang of leather and tar. The shop floor had been watered—by some great visionary and original ^^er, evidently, for it was sprinkled with embeUishments and cabbalistic signs. Behind the counter, leaning his stomach on a sort of desk, stood a well upholstered, broad-faced shop- keeper. He had a round beard, obviously came from the north, and was ^^^bg tea through a piece of sugar, sighing after each sip. His face was a mask of indifference, but each sigh seemed to say: just you wait—. You're for it!'

Yegorushka addresed him. 'A copeckworth ofsunflower seed.'

The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows, came out from the counter and poured a copeckworth of s^^ower seed into the boy's pocket, using an empty pomade jar as measure. Not wanting to leave, the boy spent a long time examining the trays of cakes, thought a little, and pointed to some small Vyazma gingerbreads rusty with antiquity. 'How much are those?'

'Two a copeck.'

Yegorushka took from his pocket the honey cake given to him by the Jewes on the previous day. 'How much are cakes like this?'

The shopkeeper took the cake in his hands, e^^^ed it from al sides and raised an eyebrow. 'Like this, eh?'

Then he raised the other eyebrow and thought for a while. 'Two for three copecks.'

Silence e^ed.

'Where do you come from?' The shopkeeper poured himself some tea from a copper teapot.

'I'm Uncle Ivan's nephew.'

'There's aU sorts of Uncle Ivans.' The shopkeeper sighed, glanced at the door over Yegorushka's head, paused a moment, and asked if the boy would 'care for a drop of tea'.

'I might.' Yego^^a made a show of relui^rnce, though he was dying for his usual mo^rng tea.

The shopkeeper poured a glass and gave it to him with a nibbled- looking piece of sugar. Yegorushka sat on a folding chair and drank. He also wanted to ask what a pound of sugared almonds cost, and had just broached the matter when in came a customer, and the shop- keeper put his glass to one side to attend to business. He took the customer into the part of the shop smelling of tar and had a long dis- cussion with ^m. The customer^ his —kept ^^^g his head in disagreement and backing towards the door, but the shopkeeper gained his point and began pouring oats into a large sack for him.

'Cal them oats?' asked the customer mournfully. 'Them ain't oats, they'm chaff. 'Tis enough to make a cat laugh. I'm going to Bon- darenko's, I am.'

When the boy got back to the rivcj a smaU camp-fire was smoking on the bank—the caners were cooking their meal. In the smoke stood Styopka sti^mg the pot with a large, jagged spoon. K.iryukha and Vasya, eyes red from smoke, sat a little to one side, cleaning fish. Before them lay the net, covered with slime and water weeds, and with gleaming fish and crawling cra^^ on it.

Yemelyan had just ret^^ed from church and was sitting next to Panteley, waving his arm and hununing 'We sing to Thee' just audibly in a hoarse voice. Dymov pottered near the horses.

After cleaning the fish Kiryukha and Vasya put them and the live crayfish in the pail, rinsed them, and slopped the lot into boiling water.

'Shall I put in some fat?' asked Styopka, skimming off the froth with his spoon.

'No need—the fish will provide their o^ juice,' replied Kiryukha.

Before taking the pot off the fire Styopka put in three handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt. Finally he tried it, smacked his lips, licked the spoon and gave a complacent g^t to signify that the stew was cooked.

All except Panteley sat round the pot plying their spoons.

'You there! Give the lad a spoon!' Panteley sternly remarked. 'He's surely hungry too, I reckon.'

' 'Tis plain country fare,' sighed Kiryukha.

'Aye, and it don't come amis ifyou've the relish for it.'

Yegorushka was given a spoon. He started to eat, not sitting downwn but standing near the pot and looking into it as if it was a deep pit. The brew smelt of fishy wetnes, with a fish-scale popping up now and again in the millet. The crayfish slid off their spoons, and so the men simply picked them out of the pot with their hands. Vasya was par- ticularly unconstrained, wetting his sleeves as well as his hands in the stew. Yet it tasted very good to Yegorushka, reminding him of the crayfish soup that his mother cooked at home on fast-days. Panteley sat to one side chewing bread.

'Why don't you eat, old 'un?' Yemelyan asked him.

The old man ^raed squeamishly aside. 'I eat crayfish, rot 'em!'

During the meal general conversation took place. From this Yego- rushka gathered that, despite differences of age and temper^ent, his new acquaintances al had one thing in common—each had a glorious past and a most unenviable present. To a man, they all spoke of their past enthusiastically, but their view of the present was almost con- temptuous. Your Russian prefers talking about his life to living it. But the boy had yet to le^ this, and before the stew was finished he fi.rmly believed that those sitting round the pot were injured victims of fate. Panteley told how, in the old days before the railway, he had served on wagon convoys to Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, and had earned so much that he hadn't knownwn what to do with his money. And what merchants there had been in those days! What fish! How cheap everything was! But now the roads had shr^^, the merchants were stingier, the co^rnon folk were poorer, bread was dearer, and eve^^mg had di^^shed and dwindled exceedingly. Yemelyan said that he had once been in the choir at Lugansk, had possessed a remark- able voice, and had read music excellently, but had now become a b^pkin living on the charity of his brother, who sent him out with his horses and took half his earnings. Vasya had worked in his match factory. Kiryukha had been a coachman to a good family, and had been rated the best troika driver in the district. Dymov, son of a well- t^Jo peasant, had enjoyed hi^^lf and had a good ^me without a care in the world. But when he wasjust twenty his stem, harsh father— wanting to teach him the job and afraid of his becoming spoilt at hom^—had begun sending him out on carer's work like a por peasant or hired labourer. Only Styopka said nothing, but you could tell from his clean-shaven face that for him too the past had b^ far better than the present.

Recalling his father, Dymov stopped eating, frownwned, looked sullenly at his mates, and then let his glance rest on 'Take

yer cap off, you heathen,' he said rudely. 'Eating with yer cap on—I must say! And you a gentleman's son!'

Yegorushka did take his hat off, not saying a word, but the stew had lost al relish for him. Nor did he hear Panteley and Vasya standing up for him. Anger with the bully rankled inside ^m, and he decided to do him some at all costs.

After dinner they all made for the

'Are we starting soon, Grandad?' Yegorus^u asked Panteley.

'We'll start in God's good time. We leave now, 'tis too hot. O Lord, Thy will be done, O Holy Mother. You lie do-wn, lad.'

Soon snoring proceeded from under the wagons. The boy m^At to go back to the village, but on reflection he yawnwned and lay do^wn by the old man.

VI

The wagons stayed by the river all day and left at sunset.

Once more the boy lay on the bales while his wagon quietly squeaked and swayed, and downwn below walked Panteley—stamping his feet, slapping his thighs, muttering. In the air, as on the day before, the prairie music trilled away.

The boy lay on his back with his hands behind his head, watching the sky. He saw the sunset blaze up and fade. Guardian angels, covering the horizon with their golden wings, had lain downwn to sleep—the day had passed serenely, a calm, untroubled night had come on, and they could stay peacefully at home in the sky. Yegorushka saw the heavens gradually darken. Mist descended on the earth, and the stars came out one after the other.

When you spend a long time gazing unwaveringly at the deep sky your thoughts and spirit somehow merge in a scnse of loneline^. You begin to feel hopelessly isolated, and all that you once thought near and dear becomes infinitely remote and worthless. The stars that have looked do^ from the sky for thousands of years, the mysterious sky itself and the haze, all so unconcerned with man's brief life—when you are confronted with them, and try to grasp their meaning, they oppress your spirits with their silence, you think of that solitarineu awaiting us all in the grave, and life's essence seems to be despair and horror.

The boy thought of his grandmother, now sleeping under the cherry trees in the cemetery. He remembered her lying in her coffin with copper coins on her eyes, remembered the lid being shut and her being lowered into the grave. He remembered, too, the hollow thud of earth clods against the lid. He pictured G^^e in the dark, cramped coffin—abandoned by all, helpless. Then he imagined her suddenly waking up, not knowing where she was, knocking on the lid, calling for help and—in the end, faint with horror—dying a second death. He imagined his mother, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky and Solomon as dead. But however hard he tried to see himself in a dark grave—far from his home, abandoned, helpless and dead—he did not succeed. For himself personaUy he could not admit the possibility of death, feeling that it was not for ^m.

Panteley, whose time to die had already come, walked by the wagon taking a roll-call of his thoughts. 'They was all right, proper gentle- folk they was,' he muttered. 'They took the little lad to school, but how he's doing—that we don't hear. At Slavyanoserbsk, as I say, they don't have no establishment—not for book-learning proper like. Nay, that they don't. But the lad's all right he is. When he grows up he'll help his dad. You're just a little lad now, son, but you'll grow up and keep your father and mother. That's how 'tis ordained of God— "'Honour thy father and thy mother". I had children meself, but they died in a fire, me wife and kids too. Aye, that they did. Our hut b^rot downwn on Twelfth Night eve. I weren't at home, having gone to Oryol. Aye, to Oryol. Marya—she j^ped out in the street, but she remem- bered the children asleep in the hut, she ran back and she was burnt to death along with the little ones. Aye, next day all they could find were the bones.'

About midnight Yegorushka and the wagoners once more sat by a small camp-fire. While the prairie brushwood blazed up, Ki^^kha and

Vasya were fetching water from a gully. They vanished in the dark- ness, but could be heard clanking their pails and talking all the time, which meant that the gully must be near by. The firelight was a large, flickering patch on the ground, and though the moon was bright, everything beyond that red patch seemed black as the pit. The light was in the wagoners' eyes, and they could see only a small part of the road. In the darkness wagons, bales and horses were barely visible in outline as vague mountainous hulks. About twenty paces from the fire, where road and prairie met, a wooden grave ctok sl^ped. Before the fire had been lit, while he could still see a long distance, the boy had spotted another such ramshackle old ctoh on the other side of the road.

Coming back with the water, Kiryukha and Vasya filled the pot and fixed it on the fire. Styopka took his place in the smoke near by, holding the jagged spoon, looking dreamily at the water and waiting for the scum to rise. Panteley and Yemelyan sat side by ride silently brooding, while Dymov lay on his stomach, his head propped on his fists, and watched the fire with Styopka's shadow dancing over ^m so that his handsome face darkened and lit up by t^ns. Kiryukha and Vasya were wandering a little way off gathering weeds and brush- wood for die fire. Yegorushka put his hands in his pockets, stood near Panteley and watched the flame devour the fuel.

Everyone was resting, reflecting and glancing cursorily at the cros with the red patches flickering on it. There is something poignant, wistful and highly romantic about a lonely grave. You feel its silence, sensing in it the soul of the unkno-wn beneath the cross. Is his spirit at ease in the steppe? Or docs it grieve in the moonlight? The prairie ncar the grave seems mournful, despondent and lost in thought, the grass is sadder, and the crickets appear to chatter with less abandon. Every passer-by spares a thought for the lonely spirit and turns to look at the grave until it is behind him and veiled in mist.

'Why is the cross there, Grandad?' Yegorushka asked Panteley.

Panteley looked at the cross and then at Dymov. 'Nicholas, might that be where the reapers murdered them merchants?'

Dymov reluctantly raised himself on an elbow and looked at the road. 'Aye, that it be.'

Silence followed. Kiryukha bundlcd some dry graK together with a crackling sound, and thrust it under the pot. The fire blazed up, enveloping Styopka in black smoke, and the shadow of the cross darted do^ the road near the wagons.

'Aye, they were killed,' said Dymov reluctantly. 'The merchants, father and son, were travelling icon-seUers. They put up near here in the inn that Ignatius Fomin now keeps. The old man had had a drop too much, and he started bragging about having a lot of cash on him —they're a boastful lot, of course, are merchants, God help us, and they needs must show off to the likes of us. Now, some reapers was staying at the in at the time. Well, they heard the merchant's boasts and they took due note of'em.'

'O Lord, mercy on us!' sighed Panteley.

Dymov continued. 'Next day, soon as it was light the merchants got ready to leave and the reapers tagged along. "Let's travel together, mister. It's more cheerful and leu risky like, seeing as these be lonely parts." The merchants had to travel at walking pace to avoid breaking their icons, and that just suited them reapers.'

Dymov rose to a kneeling position, stretched and ya-wned. 'Well, ev^^^mg went off all right, but no sooner had the merchants reached this spot than them reapers laid into 'em with the scythes. The son, good for ^m, grabbed a scythe from one of them and did a bit of reaping on 'is account. But the reapers got the best of it ofcourse, seeing there was about eight of 'em. They hacked at them merchants till there weren't a sound place on their bodies. They fiinished the job and dragged 'em both off the road, the father one side and the son the other. Opposite this crou there's another on the other side. Whether it still stands I don't know. You can't see from here.'

'It's there,' said ^^^^a.

'They do say as how they found little money on 'em.'

'Aye,' confirmed Panteley. 'About a hundred roubles it were.'

'Aye, and three of them died later on, seeing the merchant cut 'em so bad with the scythe. 'Twas by the blood they tracked 'em. The merchant cut the hand off one, and they do say he ran three miles without it, and was found on a little h^^ock right by Kurikovo. He was a-squatting with his head on his knees as if he was a-^^^mg, but when they looked at him the ghost had left ^m like, and he was dead.'

'They traced him by his bloody tracks,' said Panteley.

All looked at the cross and again there was a hush. From some- where, probably the gully, floated a bird's mournful cry: 'Sleep, sleep, sleep!'

'There's lots of wicked folks in the world,' said Yemelyan.

'Aye, that there is,' agreed Panteley, moving closer to the fire and looking overcome by dread. 'Lots of 'em,' he went on in an undertone. 'I've seen enough of them in my time—beyond numbering, they've been, the bad 'uns. I've seen many a saintly, righteous man, too, but the sinful ones are past counting. Save us, Holy Mother, have mercy! I remember once—thirty years ago, maybe more—I was driving a merchant from Morshansk. He was a grand fellow, a striking-looking man he was, that merchant, and he weren't short of money. He was a good man, no harm to him. Well, we're a-going along like, and we puts up at an inn for the night. Now, i^u in the north ain't like those in these parts. Their yards are roofed in, same as the cattle sheds and threshing barns on big southern estates-—only them barns would be higher.

'Well, we put up there, and it's all right. My merchant has a room, and I'm with the horses, and everything's proper like. Well, I says my prayers before going to sleep, lads, and I goes out for a walk in the yard. But the night's pitch black—not a blind thing can you see. I walks up and downwn a bit till I'm near the wagons like, and I sees a light a-twinkling. Now that's a bit rum, that is. The landlord and his lady have long been abed, it seems, and there ain't no other guests, barring me and the merchant. So what's that light doing? I don't like the look of things. So I goes up to it, and—Lord have mercy on us, Holy Mother save us! Right downwn on ground level I sees a little win- dow with bars on it—in the house, that is. I get downwn on the ground for a look, and a cold chill runs right through me.'

Kiryukha thrust a bundle of brushwood into the fire, trying to do so quietly, and the old man waited for it to stop crackling and hiuing before going on.

'I look in there and I see a big cellar—all dark and gloomy. There's a lamp a-burning on a barrel, and there's a dozen men in there in red shirts with rolled-up sleeves, a-sharpening of long knives. "Oho!" thinks I. "We've fallen in with a gang of highwaymen." So what's to be done? I run to the merchant, I wake him quiet like. "Don't be afeared, Mister Merchant," says I, "but we're in a bad way, we are. We're in a robbers' den." His face changes. "What shall we do, Pan- teley?" he asks. "I've a lot of money with me—' tis for the orphans. As for my soul," says he, "that's in the Lord's hands. I ain't afeared to die. But," says he, "I am afeared of losing the orphan fund." Well, I'm proper flummoxed. The gates are locked, there's no getting out by horse or by foot. If there'd been a fence you could have climbed over, but the yard has a roof to it. "Well, Mister Merchant," says I. "Never you fear, you say your prayers. Happen the Lord won't harm them orphans. Stay here," says I, "and don't let on, and happen I'll hit on something in the meantime."

'So far so good. I says a prayer, and the good Lord enlightens me mind. I climb on me carriage and, quiet as could be so no one will hear, I start stripping the thatch from the eaves, I make a hole and out I crawl. Then, when I'm outside, I jwnp off the roof and do^ the road I as fast as me legs'll carry me—run, ^m, till I'm worn to a frazzle. Happen I do three miles in one breath, or more. Then, praise the Lord, I see a village. I rush to a hut, bang on the window. "Good people," says I, and I tells them the tale. "Don't you let 'em destroy a Christian soul." I wake them all up, the villagers gather and off we go together. Some take rope, some cudgels, some pitchforks. We break the in gate do-wn and straight to the cellar we go.

'By now them robbers have finished sharpening their knives, and they're just going td cut the merchant's throat. The peasants grab the lot of them, tie them up and take them to the authorities. The mer- chant's so pleased he gives them three hundred roubles and me five gold coins-—and he writes my name do^ so he can remember me in his prayers. They do say a mighty lot of human bones was found in that cellar later. Aye, bones. They'd been a-robbing of people and then bu^rog them to cover the traces, see? Aye, and later on the Morshansk executioners has the flogging of 'em.'

His story finished, Panteley surveyed his audience while they said nothing and looked at him. The water was boiling now, and Styopka was skimming off the froth.

'Is the lard ready?' whispered ^^^^a.

'In a minute.'

Styopka—fixing his eyes on old Pantdey, as if fearing to miss the beginning ofanother story before he got back—ran to the wagons, but soon re^med with a small wooden bowl and began rubbing pork fat in it.

'I went on another journey with a merchant,' continued Panteley in the same low voice, not blinking his eyes. 'Name of Peter Grigor- yevich, as I now mind. A decent fellow he were, the merchant.

'We stay at an inn, same as before—him in a room, me with the horses. The landlord and his wife seem decent folks, kindly like, and their workers seem all right too. But I can't sleep, lads, there's some- thing on me mind. A hunch it were, no more to be said. The gates are open and there's lots of folk about, but I'm kind of frightened, I don't ffed right at all. Everyone has long been asleep, it's far into the night and it'll soon bt; time to get up, but I just lie alone there in me covered wagon, and I don't close me eyes no more than an owl do. And I can hear this tapping noise, lads: tap, tap, tap. Someone steals up to the wagon. I stick out me head for a look and there's a woman in nothing but a shift, barefoot.

'"What do you want, missus?" Iask and she's all of a dither,she looks like nothing on earth. "Get up, my good man!" says she. "It's trouble. The inn folks are up to no good, they want to do your merchant in. I heard it with me o^ ears—the landlord and his wife a-whispering together." Well, no wonder I'd had that feeling inside me. "And who might you be?" I asked. "Oh, I'm the cook," says she. So far so good. I get out of the carriage, go to the merchant, wake him up. "There's mischief afoot, Mister Merchant," says I, and so on and so forth. "There'll be time for sleep later, sir," says I. "But you get dressed now, before it's too late, and we'll make ourselves scarce while the going's good."

'Barely has he started dressing himself when—mercy on us!—the door opens, and blow me downwn if I don't see the landlord, his missus and three workmen come in. So they'd talked their workmen into joining in. "The merchant has a lot of money, and we'll go shares." Every one of the five holds a long knife—a knife apiece they had. The landlord locks the door. "Say your prayers, travellers," says he. "And if so be you start shouting," says he, "we shan't let you pray before you die." As if wc could shout! We're a-choking with fear, we ain't up to shouting. The merchant bursts into tears. "Good Christian folk," says he, "you've decided to murder me because you've taken a fancy to my money. Well, so be it. I ain't the first, and I shan't be the last. Not a few of us merchants have had our throats cut in inns. But why kill my driver, friends? Why must he suffer for my money?" And he says it all pathetic like. "If we leave him alive, he'll be the first to bear witness against us," says the innkeeper. "We c;in just as well kill two as one—may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb," says he. "You say your prayers and that's that, it ain't no use talking."

'The merchant and I kneel downwn together, weeping like, and we start praying. He remembers his children, while I'm still young, I am, I want to live. We look at the icons and we pray—so pathetic like, it makes me cry cven now. And the landlord's missus looks at us. "Don't bear a grudge against us in the other world, good people," says she. "And don't pray to God for us to be punished, for 'tis poverty as drove w to it." Well, we're a-praying and a-weeping away, and God hears us—takes pity on w, He do. Just when the innkeeper had the merchant by the beard—so he could cut his throat, see ?—suddenly there's no end of a knock on the window from outside. We cower do^ and the ^^eeper lets his hands fall. Someone bangs the window.

' "Mister Peter, are you there?" a voice shouts. "Get ready, it's ^me we left."

'The landlord and his missw see that someone's come for the mer- chant, they're afeared and they take to their heels. We hurry into the yard, hitch up the horses and make ourselves scarce.'

'But who was it banged the window?' asked Dymov.

'Oh, that. Some saint or angel, I reckon, for there weren't no one else. When we drove out of the yard there weren't no one in the street. 'Twas God's doing.'

Panteley told a few more 'long knives' figuring in al ofthem, and ;^ll having the same ring of fiction. Had he heard these tales from someone else, or had he made them up himself in the distant past, and then, be^^mg to lose his memory, conftued fact and fiction til he could no longer tell one from the other? All things are po^ible. It is odd, though. that whenever he happened to tell a story, now and throughout the joiurney, he clearly favoured fantasy and never recounted his actual experiences. Yegorushka took it all at face value at the time, believing every word, but he wondered afterwards that one who had travelled the length and breadth of Ruwia in his time— who had seen and kno^wn so much, whose wife and children had been burnt to death—should so disparage his eventful life that when he sat by the camp-fire he either said nothing or spoke of what had never been.

Over the stew all were silent, thinking of what they had just heard. Life is frightening and marvellow, and so whatever fearful stories you may tell in Russia, and however you embellish them with highway- men's lairs, long knives and such wonders, they will always ring true to the listener, and only a profoundly literate person will look askance, and even he will not say anything. The croa by the road, the dark bales, the vast expanse around them, the fate of those round the camp- fre—all this was so marvellow and frightening in itself that the fantas- tic element in fiction and folk-tale paled and became indistinguishable from reality.

Everyone ate out of the pot, but Panteley sat apart eating his stew from a wooden bowl. His spoon was different from the others', being of cypress wood with a little crou on it. Looking at him, Yegorushka remembered the lamp glass and quietly asked Styopka why the old fellow sat by himself.

'He's a Di^enter,' whispered Styopka and Vasya, looking as if they had mentioned a weakness or a secret vice.

All were silent, thinking. After the frightening tales they did not feel like talking about everyday things.

Suddenly in the silence Vasya drew himself upright, fixed his lustre- less eyes on one point and pricked up his ears.

'What is it?' Dymov asked.

'Someone's coming this way,' answered Vasya.

'Where do you see him?'

'There he is. A faint white shape.'

In the direction in which Vasya was looking nothing could be seen but darkness. All listened, but no steps were heard.

'Is he on the road?' asked Dymov.

'No, he's coming across country. He's coming this way.'

A minute paued in silence.

'Well, perhaps it's the merchant haunting the steppe, the one that's buried here,' said Dymov.

All cast a sidelong glance at the cross, but then they looked at each other and broke into a laugh, ashamed of their panic.

'Why should he haunt the place?' asked Panteley. 'The only ghosts are them that the earth don't accept. And the merchants were all right. They received a martyr's cro^wn, them merchants did.'

But then hurrying footsteps were heard.

'He's carrying something,' said Vasya.

They could hear the grass rustle and the coarse weeds crackle under the walker's feet, but could see no one because of the fire's glare. At last the steps sounded close by and someone coughed. The flickering light seemed to yield, the veil fell from their eyes, and the carters suddenly saw before them a man.

Whether it was due to the flickering light, or because all were keen to make out the man's face, it turned out—oddly enough—that it was neither his face nor his clothes that struck everyone first, but his smile. It was an unco^ionly good-natured, broad, gentle smile, as of a waking baby—infectious and tending to evoke an answering smile. When they had looked him over the stranger turned out to be a man of thirty, ugly and in no way remarkablc. He was a southerner—tall, with a long nose, long arms and long legs. Everything about him seemed long except his neck—so short that it gave him a stooped look. He wore a clean white shirt with an embroidered collar, baggy white trousers and new riding boots, seeming quite a dandy by comparison with the carters. He was carrying a large white object, mysterious at fmt sight, and from behind his shoulder peeped out a ^rn barrel, also long.

Emerging from darkness into the circle of light, he stood stock- still and looked at the carters for half a minute as if calling on them to admire his smile. Then he went to the fire, grinned even more broadly and asked if a stranger might claim their hospitality, 'country fashion'.

'You're welcome indeed,' Panteley answered for everyone.

The stranger laid the object he was carrying near the fire—a dead bustard—and greeted them again.

All went up and examined the bustard.

'A fine big bird—how did you get it?' asked Dymov.

'Buckshot. Small shot's no use, you can't get near enough. Like to buy it, lads? It's yours for twenty copecks.'

'It ain't no use to us. 'Tis good enough roasted, but stewed—powerful tough it be, I reckon!'

'Oh, bother it. I could take it to the squire's lot on the estate. They'd give me halfa rouble, but that's a way off—ten mile, it be.'

The stranger sat downwn, unslung his gun and put it by him. He seemed torpid and sleepy as he smiled and squinted in the light, evi- dently thinking agreeable thoughts. They gave him a spoon and he started eating.

'And who might you be?' asked Dymov.

Not hearing the question, the smiler neither answered nor even looked at Dymov. He probably could not taste the stew either, for he chewed lazily and rather automatically, his spoon sometimes chock full and sometimes quite empty as he raised it to his mouth. He was not drunk, but he did seem a trifle unhinged.

'I asked you who you were,' Dymov repeated.

'Me?' The stranger gave a start. 'I'm Constantine Zvonyk from Rovnoye, about three miles from here.'

To make it clear from the beginning that he was a cut above your average peasant, he hastened to add that he kept bees and pigs.

'Do you live with your father or in a place of your ownwn?'

'Oh, I'm by myself now, set up on me I have. I was married ^^ month after St. Peter's Day. So now I'm a husband. 'Tis the eight^nth day since we was wed.'

'That's a fine thing,' said Panteley. 'No harm in having a wife. God has bl^ttd you.'

'His young wife sleeps at home while he's a-wandering the steppes,' laughed Ki^^^a. 'Strange doings!'

Constantine winced as though pinched in a sensitive place, laughed and flared up. 'Lord love us, she ain't at home,' he said, quickly taking the spoon from his mouth and s^^eying everyone with glad surprise. 'That she ain't. She's gone to her mother's for two days. Aye, off she's gone, and I'm a bachelor, like.'

Constantine dismissed the subject with a gesture and flexed his ne^, wanting to go on th^&ng but hindered by the joy irradiating his face. He shifted his position, as if sitting was uncomfortable, laughed and then made another dismissive gesture. He was ashamed to betray his pleasant thoughts to strangers, yet felt an irresistible urge to share his happiness. 'She's gone to her mother's at Demidovo.' He blushed and moved his gun to another place. 'She'll be back tomorrow, she said she'd be back for diner.'

'Do you mi« her?' Dymov asked.

'Lord, yes—what do you think? I ain't been wed but a few days and she's already gone. See what I m^rn? And she's a little bundle of mischief, Lord love us. Aye, she's m^ellous she is, marvellous, always a-laughing and a-singing, a proper han^^ she be. When I'm with her I don't know whether I'm on me head or me heels, and without her I feel as how I've lost something and I wander over the steppe like a fool. I've been at it since diner—past praying for, I

Constantine rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire and laughed.

'You must love her then,' said Panteley, but Constantine did not hear.

'She's marvellous, m^ellous,' he repeated. 'She's such a good housewife, so clever, so intelligent—you couldn't find another woman like her in the whole county, not among us co^rnon folk you couldn't. She's gone away. But she misses me, I know. Aye, that she does, the naughty little thing. She said she'd be back by dinner tomorrow. But what a business it was.' Constantine almost shouted, suddenly pitching his voice higher and shifting his position. 'She loves me and miues me now, but she never did want to wed me, you know.'

'Have something to eat,' said Kiryukha.

'She wouldn't marry me,' Constantine went on, not hearing. 'Three years I spent arguing with her. I saw her at Kalachik fair, and I fell madly in love, I were downright desperate. I live at Rovnoye and she was at Demidovo nigh on twenty mile away and there weren't nothing I could do. I send matchmakers to her, but she says no, the naughty little creature. Well I one thing and another. I send her ear-rings, cakes and twenty pound of honey, but it's still no. Can you believe it? But then again, when you come to think of it, I'm no match for her. She's young, beautiful and a proper little spitfire, but I'm old —fll soon be thirty. And then I'm so handsome, ain't 1—what with me fine beard the size of a matchstick and me face so smooth that it's one mass of pimples? What chance had I got with her? The only thing was, we are quite well off, but them Vakhramenkos live well too. They keep six oxen and two labourers.

'Well, I were in love with her, lads—proper crazy I was. Couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. God help us, I were that befuddled. I longed to see her, but she was at Demidovo. And do you know—1 ain't lying, as God's my witness—I used to walk there about three times a week just to look at her. I stopped working, and I were in such a pother I even wanted to hire myself out as a labourer at Dcmidovo to be closer to her like. Sheer torture it was. My mother called in a village woman that could cast spells, and my father was ready to beat me a dozen times. Well, I put up with it for three years, and then I decided I'd go and be a cabbie in townwn, botheration take it! It weren't to be, I reckoned. At Easter I went to Demidovo for a last look at her.'

Constantine threw his head back and gave a peal of merry chuckles, as if he had just brought off a particularly cunning piece of deception. 'I see her with some lads near the stream,' he went on. 'And I feel proper angry. I call her to one side and I say all manner of things to her —for a full hour, maybe. And she falls in love with me! For three years she didn't love me, but she loved me for them words.'

'But what were them words?' Dymov asked.

'The words? I don't recall—how could I? At the time it all comes straight out like water from a gutter—blah, blah, blah, without me stopping to breathe. But I couldn't say one word of it now. So she weds me. And now she's gone to see her mother, the naughty lass, and here I am a-wandering the steppes without her. I can't stay at home, I can't abide to.'

Constantine awkwardly unwound his legs from under him, stretched out on the ground, propped his head on his fists, and then stood up and sat do-wn again. By now everyone could clearly see that here was a man happy in love, poignantly happy. His smile, his eyes, his every movement reflected overwhelming bli». He fidgeted, not knowing what posture to adopt or avoid, being drained of ,.;tality through excess of delectable thoughts. Having poured his heart out to strangers, he settled do^ quietly at last, deep in thought as he gazed at the fire.

Seeing a happy man, the others felt depretted, wanting to be happy themselves, and fell to pondering. D^nov stood up and slowly strolled about near the fire, his walk and the movement ofhis shoulder- blades showing how weary and depresed he was. He stood still for a while, looked at Constantine and sat do^.

The camp-fire was dying do^ by now, no longer flickering, and the patch of red had shrunk and di^rned. And the quicker the fire b^M out the clearer the moonlight became. Now the road could be seen in its full width—the bales of wool, the wagon shafts, the munch- ing horses. On the other side was the hazy outline of the second cross.

Dymov propped his cheek on his hand and softly sang a mournfUl ditty. Constantine smiled drowsily, and joined in with his reedy little voice. They sang for less than a minute and fell silent. Yemelyan gave a start, flexed his elbows and flicked his fingers. 'I say, lads, let's nng a holy song,' he entreated them.

Tears came into his eyes and he presed his hand to his heart, repeat- ing his appeal to sing 'a holy song'. Constantine said he 'didn't know any', and everyone else refused. Then Yemelyan started on his o^. He conducted with both hands, he totted his head back and he opened his mouth, but from his throat burst only a hoarse, voiceless breath. He sang with his arms, head and eyes, and even with the swelling on his cheek. He sang fervidly and with anguish, and the more he strained his chest to extract a note, be it but a single one, the lett sound did his breath carry.

Overcome by depreuion like everyone else, Yegorushka went to his wagon, climbed on the bales and lay downwn. He looked at the sky, t^^^g of lucky Constantine and his wife. Why do people marry? Why are there women in the world, the boy vaguely wondered, thinking how nice it must be for a man to have a loving, cheerful, beautiful woman constantly at his side. For some reason thoughts of Counteu Dranitsky came into his head. How agreeable it must be to live with a woman like that! Perhaps he would have liked to marry her himself, had the notion not been so embarrassing. He recalled her eyebrows, the pupils of her eyes, her coach and the clock with the horseman. The quiet, warm night settled do^ over him, whispering something in his ear, and he felt as if that same beautiful woman was bending over him, looking at him, smiling, wanting to kiss him.

Nothing was left of the camp-fire but two little red eyes that dwindled and dwindled. The carters and Constantine sat round it— dark, still figures—and there seemed to be f^r more of them than before. The twin crosses were equally visible, and somewhere far away on the road a red light glowed—someone else cooking a meal, probably.

'Here's to good old Mother Russia, Finest nation in the world,'

Kiryukha suddenly sang out in a harsh voice, then choked and grew silent. The prairie echo caught his voice and carried it on so that the very spirit of stupidity seemed to be trundling over the steppe on heavy wheels.

'Time to go,' said Panteley. 'Up you get, mates.'

While they were hitching up Constantine was walking about by the wagons singing his wife's praises. 'Thanks for the hospitality, lads, and good-bye,' he shouted as the convoy moved off. 'I'll make for the other fi.re. It's all too much for me, it is.'

He quickly disappeared in the gloom, and could long be heard walking towards the glimmering light so that he could tell those other strangers of his happiness.

When the boy woke up next day it was early morning and the sun had not risen. The wagons had halted. Talking to Dymov and Kiryukha by the leading vehicle was a man on a Cossack pony—he wore a white peaked cap and a suit of cheap grey cloth. About a mile and a half ahead of the wagons were long, low white barns and con.iges with tiled roofs. Neither yards nor trees were to be seen near them.

'What village is that?' Yegorushka asked the old man.

'Them farms are Armenian, young feller,' answered Panteley. ' 'Tis where the Armenians live—not a bad lot, they ain't.'

The man in grey finished talking to Dymov and Kiryukha, reined in his pony and looked at the farms.

' 'Tis a proper botheration,' sighed Panteley, also looking at the farms and shivering in the cool of the morning. 'He sent a man to the farm for some bit of paper, but he hasn't come back. He should have sent Styopka.'

'But who is he?' asked the boy.

'Varlamov.'

Varlamov! Yegorushka quickly jumped to his knees and looked at die white cap. It was hard to recognize the mysterious, elusive Varla- mov, who was so much in demand, who was always 'knocking around', and who had far more money than Countess Dranitsky, in this short, grey, large-booted little man on the ugly nag who was talking to peasants at an hour when all decent people are abed.

'He's all right, a good sort he is,' said Panteley, looking at the farms. 'God grant him health, he's a fine gentleman, is Simon Varlamov. It's the likes ofhim as keeps the world a-humming, lad. Aye, that they do. It ain't cock-crow yet, and he's already up and about. Another man would be asleep, or he'd be at home gallivanting with his guests, but Varlamov's out on the steppe all day, knocking around like. Never misses a deal, he don't—and good for him, say I.'

Varlamov was staring fixedly at one of the farms, discussing some- thing while his pony shifted impatiently from foot to foot.

'Hey, Mr. Varlamov!' shouted Panteley, taking off his hat. 'Let me send Styopka. Yemelyan, give a shout—send Styopka, tell 'em.'

But now at last a man on horseback was seen to leave the farm. Leaning heavily to one side and swinging his whip over his head, as if giving a rodeo performance and wanting to dazzle everyone with his horsemanship, he flew like a bird to the wagons.

'That must be one of his rangers,' said Panteley. 'A hundred of them he has, or more.'

Reaching the first wagon, the rider pulled up his horse, doffed his cap and gave a little book to Varlamov, who removed several papers from it and read them.

'Dut where's Ivanchuk's letter?' he shouted.

The horseman took the book back, looked at the papers and shrugged. He began saying sometliing, probably in self-defence, and asked permiaion to go back to the farms. The pony suddenly gave a start as if Varlamov had become heavier, and Varlamov also gave a start.

'Clear out!' he shouted angrily, brandishing his whip at the rider. Then he turned his pony round and rode along the wagons at a walk, examining the papers in the book. When he reached the last wagon Yegorushka strained his eyes to get a good look. Varlamov was quite old. He had a small grey beard, and his simple, sunburnt, typically Russian face was red, wet with dew and covered with little blue v^ra.

He had exactly the same busineslike expression as Ivan Kuzmichov, and the same fanatical devotion to affairs. But what a difference you could feel between him and Kuzmichov! Besides wearing an air of businesslike reserve, Uncle Ivan always looked worried and afraid— of not finding Varlamov, of being late, of missing a bargain. But in Varlamov's face and figure there was nothing of your typical little man's dependent look. This man fixed the price himselЈ He didn't go round looking for people, and he depended on no one. Nondescript though his appearance might be, everything about him—even the way he held his whi^^onveyed a sense ofpower and the habit of authority over the steppe.

He did not glance at the boy as he rode past. Only his pony deigned to notice Yegorushka, gazing at him with large, foolish eyes—and even the pony was not very interested. Panteley bowed to Varlamov, who noticed this but did not take his eyes olfhis papers and just said: 'Greetings, grandpa,' gargling the 'r's in his throat.

Varlamov's interchange with the horseman and the swish of his whip had evidently demoralized the whole party, for al looked grave. Quailing before the strong man's wrath, the horseman remained by the front wagon with his head bare, let his reins hang loose and said nothing, as if unable to believe that the day had begun so badly for him.

'He's a rough old boy,' muttered Panteley. 'Real hard. But he's all right—a good sort he is. He don't harm no one without reason. He's al right he is!'

After examining the papers, Varlamov thrust the book in his pocket. Seeming to understand his thoughts, the pony quivered and careered do^wn the road without waiting for orders.

VII

On the following night the wagoners again halted to cook their meal, but on this occasion everything seemed tinged with melancholy from the start. It was sultry and they had all dr^^ a great deal, but without in the least quenching their thirst. The moon rose—intensely crimson and sullen, as if it were ailing. The stars were gloomy too, the mist was thicker, the distant prospect was hazier, and all nature seemed to wilt at some intimation of doom.

There was no more of the previous day's excitement and conversa- tion round the camp-fire. Al were depressed, all spoke listlessly and reluctantly. Panteley did nothing but sigh and complain of his feet, while occasionally invoking the topic of dying 'contumaciously'.

Dymov lay on his stomach, silently chewing a straw. He wore a fastidious expresion as if the straw had a bad smell, and he looked il- tempered and tired. Vasya complained that his jaw ached, and for^^t bad weather. Yemelyan had stopped waving his a^re, and sat still, looking grimly at the fire. Yegorushka was wilting too. The slow pace had tired ^m, and he had a headache from the day's heat.

When the stew was cooked Dymov began picking on his mates out of boredom. He glared spitefully at Yemelyan. 'Look at old Lumpy Jaws sprawling there! Always first to shove his spoon in, he is. Talk about greed! Can't wait to grab first place by the pot, ^ he? Thi^a he's the lord of creation because he ^d to be a singer. We know your sort of choirboy, mister—there's tramps like you a-plenty singing for their suppers up and downwn the high road.'

Yemelyan ret^ed the other's angry glare. 'Why pick on me?'

'To teach you not to dip in the pot before others. Who do you think you are?'

'You're a fool, that's all I can say,' wheezed Yemelyan.

Knowing from experience how such conversations usually ended, Panteley and Vasya intervened, urging Dymov to stop picking a quarel.

'You—sing in a choir!' The irrepressible bully laughed derisively. 'Anyone ^ sing like that, rot you—sitting in the church porch a-<:hanting of your "Alms for Christ's sake!" '

Yemelyan said nothing. His silence exasperated Dymov, who looked at the ex-<:horister with even greater hatred. 'I don't want to soil me hands, or I'd teach you not to be so stuck up.'

Yemelyan flared up. 'Why pick on me, you ^^rn? What have I done to you?'

'What did you call me?' Dymov straightened up, his eyes blood- shot. 'What was that? Scum, eh? Very well—now you ^ go and look for that!'

He snatched the spoon from Yemelyan's hands and hurled it far to one side. Kir^^ha, Vasya and Styopka jumped up and went to look for it, while Yemelyan fixed an imploring and questioning look on Panteley. His face suddenly s^^mg, the former chorister frownwned, blinked and wept like a baby.

Yegorushka, who had long hated Dymov, felt as if he had started to choke, and the flames of the fire scorched his face. He wanted to ^m quickly into the darkness by the wagons, but the bully's spiteful, bored eyes had a magnetic effect. Longing to say something exceedingly offensive, the boy took a step towards Dymov. 'You're the worst of the lot,' he panted. 'I can't stand you!'

That was when he should have to the wagons, but he seemed rooted to the spot. 'You will burn in heU in the next world,' he con- tinued. 'I'm going to tell Uncle Ivan about you. How dare you insult Yemelyan?'

'Now, ain't that a nice surprise, I must say!' Dymov laughed. 'A little swine, what ain't dry behind the ears, a-laying do^wn the law! Want a clip on the ear-'ole?'

The boy felt as if there was no air to breathe. He suddenly shivered all over and stamped his feet, something that had never happened to him before.

'Hit him, hit ^m!' he yelled in a piercing voice. Tears spurted from his eyes, he felt ashamed and he ran staggering to the wagons. What impresion his outburst produced he did not see. 'Mother, Mother!' he whispered, lying on the bale, weeping, jerking his arms and legs.

The men, the shadows round the camp-fire, the dark bales and the distant lightning flashing far away every minute—it all seemed so inĥnman and terrifying now. He was horrified, wondering in his despair how and why he had landed in this unkno^ land in the com- pany ofthese awful peasants. Where were his uncle, Father Christopher and Deniska? Why were they so long in coming? Could they have forgotten ^m? To be forgotten and abandoned to the whim of fate— the thought so chilled and scared him that he several times felt like jumping off the bale and ^^ing headlong back along the road with- out looking behind him. What stopped him was the memory of those grim, dark crosses that he was bound to meet on his way, and also the distant lightning flashes. Only when he whispered 'Mother, Mother!' did he feel a little better.

The carters must have been scared too. After the boy had run from the fire they said nothing for a while, and then spoke of something in hollow undertones, saying that 'it' was on its way, and that they must h^^ up and get ready to escape it. They quickly fmished supper, put out the fire and began hitching up the horses in silence. Their agitation and staccato speech showed that they foresaw some disaster.

Before they started off Dymov went up to Pantcley. 'What's his n^e?' he asked quietly.

'Yegorwlka,' ^^ered Panteley.

Dymov put one foot on a wheel, seized the cord round a bale and hoisted himself. The boy saw his &ce and curly head—the face looked pale, weary and grave, but no longer spiteful. 'Hey, boy!' he said quietly. 'Go on, hit me!'

Yegorushka looked at him in amazement, and at that moment there was a flash of lightning.

'It's all right, hit me!' continucd Dymov. Without waiting to sec whether the boy would hit him or talk to ^m, he j^ped downwn. 'I'm bored,' he said. Then, rolling from side to side and working his shoulder-blades, he slowly strolled downwn the wagon line.

'God, I'm bored,' he repeated in a tone half plaintive, half irritated. 'No offence, old son,' hc said as he passed Yemelyan. 'It's ^el hard, our life.'

Lightning flashed on the right, and immediately flashed again far away, as ifreflected in a mirror.

'Take this, boy,' shouted Pantdey, handing up something large and dark from below.

'What is it?' asked Yegorus^a.

'Some matting. Put it over you when it rains.'

The boy sat up and looked around. It had grownwn noticeably blacker in the distance, with the pale light now winking more than once a minute. The blackness was veering to the right as if puled by its weight.

'Will there be a storm, Grandad?' asked the boy.

'Oh, my poor feet, they're so cold,' intoned Pantdey, not hearing him and stamping his feet.

On the left, as if a match had been struck on the sky, a pale phos- phorescent stripe gleamed and faded. Very far away someone was heard walking up and down on an iron roof—barefoot, presumably, because the iron gave out a hollow runible.

'Looks like a real old downpour,' shouted Kiryukha.

Far away, bcyond the horizon on the right, flashcd lightning so vivid that it lit up part of the steppe and the place where the clear sky met the black. An appalling cloud was moving up unhuriedly—a great hulk with large black shreds hanging on its rim. Similar shreds prcssed against each other, looming on the horizon to right and left. The jagged, tattered-looking cloud had a rather drunken and dis- orderly air. There was a clearly enunciated clap ofthunder. Yegorushka crossed himself, and quickly put on his overcoat.

'Real bored, I am.' Dymov's shout carried from the leading wagons, his tone showing that his bad temper was ret^^mg. 'Bored.'

There was a sudden squall ofwind so violent that it nearly snatched the boy's bundle and matting off him. '^fapping, tearing in all direc- tions, the mat slapped the bale and Yegorushka's face. The wind careered whistling over the steppe, swerving chaotically and raising such a din in the grau that it drownwned the thunder and creak of wagon wheels. It was blowing from the black thunderhead, bearing dust clouds, and the smell of rain and damp earth. The moon misted over, seeming dirtier, the stars grew di^mer still, dust clouds and their shadows were seen ^^^ing off somewhere back along the edge of the road. Eddying and drawing dust, dry gras and feathers from the ground, whirl^mds soared right into the upper heavens, it seemed. Uprooted plants must be flying around close by the blackest thunder- head, and how terrified they must feel! But dust clogged the eyes, blanking out eve^^ng except the lightning flashes.

^inHng the rain was just about to pour downwn, the boy knelt up and covered himself with his mat. From in front came a shout of 'Panteley', followed by some incomprehensible booming syllables.

'I ^'t hear!' loudly intoned Panteley in response, and the voice boomed out again.

An enraged clap of thunder rolled across the sky from right to left and then back again, dying away near the leading wagons.

'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,' whispered Yegorushka, crouing himself. 'Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.'

The sky's blacknes gaped, breathing white fire, and at once there was another thunderclap. Barely had it died away when there was a flash of lightning so broad that the boy could see the whole road into the far distance, all the carters and even Kiryukha's waistcoat through the cracks in the matting. The black tatters on the left were already soaring aloft, and one of them—cmde, clumsy, a paw with fingers— reached out towards the moon. Yegorushka decided to shut his eyes tightly, pay no attention and wait for it all to end.

The rain was long delayed for some reason, and the boy—hoping that the thunder cloud might pau over—peeped out from his mat. It was fearfully dark, and he could see neither Panteley nor the bale nor ^mself. He squinted towards where the moon had been, but it was pitch black there, as on the wagon. In the darkness the lightoing flashes seemed whiter and more blinding, hurting the eyes.

He called Panteley's name, but there was no answer. Then. in the end, the wind gave a last rip at the mat and flew off. A low, steady throb was heard, and a large, cold drop fell on the boy's btee, while another crawled do^wn his hand. Realizing that his knees were un- covered, he tried to rearrange the matting, but then came a pattering and a tapping of something on the road, and on the shafts and the bale. Rain. It seemed to have an understanding with the mat, for the two started some discussion—rapid, cheerful and exceedingly objectionable, like a couple of magpies.

Yegorushka knelt up—squatted, rather, on his boots. Whcn the rain rapped the mat he leant forward to shield his suddenly soaked btees. He managed to cover them, but in less than a minute he felt an unpleasant penetrating wetnes behind, on back and calves. He resumed his former position and stuck his knees out into the rain, wondering what to do and how to rearrange the mat that he could not see in the dark. But his arms were already wet, water was ^^ing downwn his sleeves and behind his collar, his shoulder-blades were cold. And so he decided to do nothing, but to sit still and wait for it all to end. 'Holy, holy, holy,' he whispered.

Suddenly, directly over his head, ^rne an almighty deafening crash and the sky broke in two. He bent forwards—holding his breath, expecting the pieces to fall on his neck and back. He chanced to open his eyes, blinking half a dozen times as a penetrating, blinding light flared up, and he saw his fingers, his wet sleeves and the streams flow- ing off the mat, over the bale and downwn below on the earth. Then a new blow, no less mighty and awesome, resounded. No longer did the sky groan or rumble, but gave out crackles like the splitting ofa dry tree.

The thunder's crash-bang beats were precisely enunciated as it rolled downwn the sky, staggered, and—somewhere by the leading wagons or far behind—tumbled over with a rancorous, staccato dru^rning.

The earlier lightning flashes had been awesome, but with thunder such as this they seemed downwnright menacing. The weird light pene- trated your closed eyelids, percolating chillingly through your whole body. Was therc a way to avoid seeing it? The boy decided to his face backwards. CarefuUy, as if afraid of being observed, he got on al fours, slid his palms over the wet bale and ^med round.

The great drumming swooped over his head, collapsed under the wagon and exploded.

Again his eyes chanced to open and he saw a new danger. Behind the wagon stalked three giants with long pikes. The lightning flashed on the points of their pikes, distinctly lighting up their figures. These were people ofvast dimensions with hidden faces, bowed heads and heavy footsteps. They seemed sad, despondent and lost in thought. Their aim in stalking the convoy may not have been to cause damage, but there was something horrible in their proximity.

The boy quickly turned forwards. 'Panteley! Grandad!' he shouted, shaking all over.

The sky answered him with a crash, bang, crash.

As he opened his eyes, to see whether the carters were there, the lightning flashed in two places, illuminating the road to the far horizon, the entire convoy and all the men. Rivulets streamed do^ the road, and bubbles danced. Panteley strode by his wagon, his high hat and shoulders covered with a small mat. His figure expressed neither fear nor alarm, as though he had been deafened by the thunder and blinded by the lightning.

'Grandad, see the giants!' the boy shouted at him, weeping.

But the old man heard nothing. Further ahead Yemelyan walked along, covered with a large mat from head to foot and triangular in shape. Vasya, who had nothing over him, stepped out in his usual clockwork style—lifting his feet high, not bending his knees. In the lightning the convoy seemed motionless, with the carters rooted to the spot and Vasya's raised leg frozen rigid in position.

Yegorushka called the old man again. Receiving no ^^'er, he sat still, but he was no longer expecting it aU to end. He was certain that the thunder would kiU him that very instant, that he would open his eyes by accident and see those frightful giants. No longer did he cross himself, caU the old man or think of his mother—he was simply n^b with cold and the certainty that the storm would never end.

Suddenly voices were heard.

'Yegorushka, you asleep, or what?' shouted Panteley from below. 'Get do^wn. Has he gone deaf, the silly lad?'

'Quite a storm!' It was a deep, unfamiliar voice, and the speaker cleared his throat as ifhe had tossed do^ a glassful of vodka.

The boy opened his eyes. Do^ near the wagon stood Panteley, triangle-shaped Yemelyan and the giants. The latter were now much shorter and ^med out, when Yegorushka got a proper sight of them, to be ordinary peasants shouldering iron pitch-forks, not pikes. In the space between Panteley and the triangular Yemelyan shone the window of a low hut—the wagons must have halted in a village. Yegorushka threw offhis mat, took his bundle and hurried do^wn from the wagon. Now, what with people speaking near by and the lighted window, he no longer felt afiraid, though the thunder crashed as loudly as ever and ligh^rng scourged the' whole sky.

'A decent storm—not bad at all, praise the Lord,' muttered Panteley. 'My feet have gone a bit soft in the rain, but no matter. Are you downwn, boy? Well, go in the hut. It's all right.'

'It must have struck somewhere, Lord save us,' wheezed Yemdyan. 'You from these parts?' he asked the giants.

'Nay, from Glinovo. From Glinovo we be. We work at the squire's place—name of Plater.'

'Threshers, are you?'

'We do different things. Just now we be getting in the wheat. But what ligh^mg, eh? There ain't been a storm like this for many a moon.

Yegorushka went into the hut, where he was greeted by a lean, hunchbacked old woman with a sharp chin. She held a tallow candle, screwing up her eyes and giving prolonged sighs.

'What a storm God has sent us!' she said. 'And our lads are spending the night on the steppe—what a time they'll have of it, poor souls. Now, take your clothes off, young sir^

Trembling with cold, s^^&ng fastidiously, the boy pulled off his wet overcoat, spread his hands and feet far apart and did not move for a long time. The slightest motion evoked a disagreeably damp, cold sensation. The sleeves and the back of his shirt were sopping, his trousers stuck to his legs, his head was dripping.

'Don't stand there splayed out like,' said the old woman. 'Come and sit do-wn, lad.'

Straddling his legs, Yegorushka went to the table and sat on a bench near someone's head. The head moved, emitting a stream of air through the nose, made a chewing sound and subsided. From the head a mound covered with a sheepskin stretched along the bench—a sleep- ing peasant woman.

Sighing, the old woman went out and suddenly <^me back with a big water-melon and a small sweet melon. 'Help yourself, young man, I've nothing else for you.'

Ya^ing, she dug into a table drawer and took out a long, sharp knife much like those used by highwaymen to cut merchants' throats in inns. 'Help yourself, young sir.'

Trembling as if in fever, the boy ate a slice of sweet melon with black bread, and then a slice of water-melon, which made him even colder.

'Out on the steppe our lads are tonight,' sighed the old woman while he ate. ' 'Tis a proper botheration. I did ought to light a candle before the icon, but I don't know where Stepanida's put it. Help your- self, young man, do.' The old woman ya^ed, reached back with her right hand, and scratched her left shoulder. 'Two o'cl^& it must be/ she said. 'Time to get up soon. Our lads are outside for the night. Soaked to the skin they'll be, for sure.'

'I'm sleepy, Grannie/ said the boy.

'Then lie do^wn, young man, do,' sighed the old woman, ya^^mng. 'I was asleep meself, when—Lord God Almighty!—I hear someone a-knocking. I wake up and I see God's sent us a storm. I'd light a candle, dear, but I couldn't find one.'

Talking to herself, she pulled some rags off the bench, probably her bedding, took two sheepskins from a nail near the stove, and began making up a bed for the boy. ' 'Tis as stormy as ever,' she muttered. 'I'm afeared it might start a fire, you never

The old soul's sighs and the measured breathing of the

sleeping woman, the hut's dim light, the sound of rain through the window—it all made him sleepy. Shy of taking his clothes off in the old woman's presence, he removed only his boots, lay do^ and covered with the sheepskin.

A minute later Panteley's whisper was heard. 'Is the lad lying downwn?'