Through Russia Part 54

Whereafter, turning a small and terrified face in my direction, and blinking his bright eyes, he added with hurried diction:

"Come, brother! Come! Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of lurking fever."

Off, therefore, we started, with the wind smiting us behind, and our kettles and teapots jangling, and my wallet, in particular, thumping me about the middle of the body as though it had been wielding a large, soft fist. Yet a far cry would it be to the mountains, nor was any dwelling in sight, while ever and anon branches caught at our clothes, and stones leapt aloft under our tread, and the air grew steadily darker, and the mountains seemed to begin gliding towards us.

Once more from the black cloud-ma.s.ses, heaven belched a fiery dart which caused the sea to scintillate with blue sapphires in response, and, seemingly, to recoil from the sh.o.r.e as the earth shook, and the mountain defiles emitted a gigantic scrunching sound of their rock-hewn jaws.

"Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One!" screamed Kalinin as he dived into the bushes.

In the rear, the waves lashed us as though they had a mind to arrest our progress; from the gloom to our front came a sort of sc.r.a.ping and rasping; long black hands seemed to wave over our heads; just at the point where the mountain crests lay swathed in their dense coverlet of cloud, there rumbled once more the deafening iron chariot of the thunder-G.o.d; more and more frequently flashed the lightning as the earth rang, and rifts cleft by the blue glare disclosed, amid the obscurity, great trees that were rustling and rocking and, to all appearances, racing headlong before the scourge of a cold, slanting rain.

The occasion was a hara.s.sing but bracing one, for as the fine bands of rain beat upon our faces, our bodies felt filled with a heady vigour of a kind to fit us to run indefinitely--at all events to run until this storm of rain and thunder should be outpaced, and clear weather be reached again.

Suddenly Kalinin shouted: "Stop! Look!"

This was because the fitful illumination of a flash had just shown up in front of us the trunk of an oak tree which had a large black hollow let into it like a doorway. So into that hollow we crawled as two mice might have done--laughing aloud in our glee as we did so.

"Here there is room for THREE persons," my companion remarked.

"Evidently it is a hollow that has been burnt out--though rascals indeed must the burners have been to kindle a fire in a living tree!"

However, the s.p.a.ce within the hollow was both confined and redolent of smoke and dead leaves. Also, heavy drops of rain still bespattered our heads and shoulders, and at every peal of thunder the tree quivered and creaked until the strident din around us gave one the illusion of being afloat in a narrow caique. Meanwhile at every flash of the lightning's glare, we could see slanting ribands of rain cutting the air with a network of blue, glistening, vitreous lines.

Presently, the wind began to whistle less loudly, as though now it felt satisfied at having driven so much productive rain into the ground, and washed clean the mountain tops, and loosened the stony soil.

"U-oh! U-oh!" hooted a grey mountain owl just over our heads.

"Why, surely it believes the time to be night!" Kalinin commented in a whisper.

"U-oh! U-u-u-oh!" hooted the bird again, and in response my companion shouted:

"You have made a mistake, my brother!"

By this time the air was feeling chilly, and a bright grey fog had streamed over us, and wrapped a semi-transparent veil about the gnarled, barrel-like trunks with their outgrowing shoots and the few remaining leaves still adhering.

Far and wide the monotonous din continued to rage--it did so until conscious thought began almost to be impossible. Yet even as one strained one's attention, and listened to the rain las.h.i.+ng the fallen leaves, and pounding the stones, and bespattering the trunks of the trees, and to the murmuring and splas.h.i.+ng of rivulets racing towards the sea, and to the roaring of torrents as they thundered over the rocks of the mountains, and to the creaking of trees before the wind, and to the measured thud-thud of the waves; as one listened to all this, the thousand sounds seemed to combine into a single heaviness of hurried clamour, and involuntarily one found oneself striving to disunite them, and to s.p.a.ce them even as one s.p.a.ces the words of a song.

Kalinin fidgeted, nudged me, and muttered:

"I find this place too close for me. Always I have hated confinement."

Nevertheless he had taken far more care than I to make himself comfortable, for he had edged himself right into the hollow, and, by squatting on his haunches, reduced his frame to the form of a ball.

Moreover, the rain-drippings scarcely or in no wise touched him, while, in general, he appeared to have developed to the full an apt.i.tude for vagrancy as a permanent condition, and for the allowing of no unpleasant circ.u.mstance to debar him from invariably finding the most convenient vantage-ground at a given juncture. Presently, in fact, he continued:

"Yes; despite the rain and cold and everything else, I consider life to be not quite intolerable."

"Not quite intolerable in what?"

"Not quite intolerable in the fact that at least I am bound to the service of no one save G.o.d. For if disagreeablenesses have to be endured, at all events they come better from Him than from one's own species."

"Then you have no great love for your own species?"

"One loves one's neighbour as the dog loves the stick." To which, after a pause, the speaker added:

"For WHY should I love him?"

It puzzled me to cite a reason off-hand, but, fortunately, Kalinin did not wait for an answer--rather, he went on to ask:

"Have you ever been a footman?"

"No," I replied.

"Then let me tell you that it is peculiarly difficult for a footman to love his neighbour."

"Wherefore?"

"Go and be a footman; THEN you will know. In fact, it is never the case that, if one serves a man, one can love that man.... How steadily the rain persists!"

Indeed, on every hand there was in progress a trickling and a splas.h.i.+ng sound as though the weeping earth were venting soft, sorrowful sobs over the departure of summer before winter and its storms should arrive.

"How come you to be travelling the Caucasus?" I asked at length.

"Merely through the fact that my walking and walking has brought me hither," was the reply. "For that matter, everyone ends by heading for the Caucasus."

"Why so?"

"Why NOT, seeing that from one's earliest years one hears of nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother, who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone tends. .h.i.ther. And another reason is the fact that the country is an easy one to live in, a country which enjoys much suns.h.i.+ne, and produces much food, and has a winter less long and severe than our own winter, and therefore presents pleasanter conditions of life."

"And what of the country's people?"

"What of the country's people? Oh, so long as you keep yourself to yourself they will not interfere with you."

"And why will they not?"

Kalinin paused, stared at me, smiled condescendingly, and, finally, said:

"What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you ought to be able to understand something?"

Then, with a change of subject, and subduing his tone to one of snuffling supplication, he added in the sing-song chant of a person reciting a prayer:

"'Oh Lord, suffer me not to become bound unto the clergy the priesthood, the diaconate, the tchinovstvo, [The official cla.s.s] or the intelligentsia!' This was a pet.i.tion which my mother used often to repeat."

The raindrops now were falling more gently, and in finer lines and more transparent network, so that one could once more descry the great trunks of the blackened oaks, with the green and gold of their leaves.

Also, our own hollow had grown less dark, and there could be discerned its smoky, satin-bright walls. From those walls Kalinin picked a bit of charcoal with finger and thumb, saying:

"It was shepherds that fired the place. See where they dragged in hay and dead leaves! A shepherd's fife hereabouts must be a truly glorious one!"

Lastly, clasping his head as though he were about to fall asleep, he sank his chin between his knees, and relapsed into silence.

Presently a brilliant, sinuous little rivulet which had long been laving the bare roots of our tree brought floating past us a red and fawn leaf.