The Project Gutenberg eBook of Orlóff and His Wife, by Maxim Gorky.

[14] Réaumur. Feodósia is on the shore of the Black Sea, in the Crimea. 30° Réau. = 84° Fahrenheit.—Translator.

Along a broken line of boards, flung down here and there, moved a long file of men, bending low over their barrows loaded with stone, and coming slowly to meet them, with empty barrows, was another file, who were dragging out one minute of rest into two.... By one of the pile-drivers stood a dense, motley-hued throng of men, and one of them was singing in a long-drawn, plaintive voice:

"Ee-ekhma, comrades,'tis awfully hot
Ee-ekh! On us no one has pity!
O-oi there, little oaken cu-ud ge-el,
He-eave-ho-o!"

The throng hummed mightily, as they hauled away on the cables, and the piece of cast-iron, flying up through the pipe of the pile-driver, fell thence, giving out a dull, groaning sound, and the whole pile-driver quivered.

On every spot of the open space between the mountain and the sea tiny gray people hurried to and fro, filling the air with their shouts, with dust, and the sour odor of man. Among them overseers were walking about, clad in white duck coats with metal buttons, which shone in the sun like someone's cold eyes. Over them were the cloudless, mercilessly-hot heaven, volumes of dust and waves of sounds—the symphony of toil, the only music which does not afford delight.

The sea stretched out to the misty horizon, and softly plashed its transparent billows against the strand, so full of sound and movement. All gleaming in the sunlight, it seemed to be smiling, with the good-natured smile of a Gulliver, conscious that, if he so wished, with one movement he could cause all the work of the Lilliputians to disappear.

There it lay, dazzling the eyes with its radiance—great, powerful, kind, and its mighty breath blew upon the beach, refreshing the weary men who were toiling to put a restraint upon the freedom of its waves, which now were so gently and musically caressing the disfigured shore. It seemed to feel sorry for them:—its centuries of existence had taught it to understand, that those who build are not the ones who cherish evil designs against it; it long ago found out that they are only slaves,-that their part is to wrestle with the elements face to face. And in this struggle, the vengeance of the elements awaits them. All they do is to build, they toil on forever, their sweat and blood are the cement of all the constructions on the earth; but they receive nothing for this, though they yield up all their forces to the eternal propensity to construct—a propensity which creates marvels on the earth, but, nevertheless, gives men no blood, and too little bread. They also are elementary forces, and that is why the sea gazes, not angrily but graciously, upon their labors from which they derive no profit. These gray little worms, who have thus excavated the mountain, are just the same thing as its drops, which are the first to fall upon the cold and inaccessible cliffs of the shore, in the eternal effort of the sea to extend its boundaries, and the first to perish as they are dashed in fragments against these crags. In the mass, too, these drops are nearly related to it, since they are exactly like the sea, as mighty as it, as inclined to destruction, so soon as the breath of the storm is wafted over them. In days of yore the sea also was acquainted with the slaves, who erected pyramids in the desert, and the slaves of Xerxes, that ridiculous man, who undertook to chastise the sea with three hundred lashes, because it had destroyed his toy bridges. Slaves have always been exactly alike, they have always been submissive, they have always been ill-fed, and they have always accomplished the great and the marvellous, sometimes enriching those who have set them to work, most frequently cursing them, rarely rising up in revolt against their masters ...

And, smiling with the calm smile of a Titan who is conscious of his strength, the sea fanned with its vivifying breath the earth, that Titan which is still spiritually blind, and enslaved and wofully riddled, instead of aspiring to affinity with heaven. The waves ran softly up the beach, sprinkled with a throng of men, engaged in constructing a stone barrier to their eternal motion, and as they ran they sang their ringing, gracious song about the past, about everything which, in the course of the ages, they have beheld on the shores of earth....

Among the laborers there were certain strange, spare, bronze figures, in scarlet turbans, in fezzes, in short blue jackets, and in trousers which were tight about the lower leg, but with full seats. These, as I afterward learned, were Turks from Anatolia. Their guttural speech mingled with the slow, drawling utterance of the men from Vyátka, with the strong, quick phrases of the Bulgarians, with the soft dialect of the Little Russians.

In Russia people were dying of starvation, and the famine had driven hither representatives of nearly all the provinces which had been overtaken by this disaster. They had separated into little groups, in the endeavor of the natives of each place to cling together, and only the cosmopolitan tramps were immediately discernible by their independent aspect, and costumes, and their peculiar turn of speech, which was that of men who still remained under the dominion of the soil, having only temporarily severed their connection with it, who had been torn from it by hunger, and had not yet forgotten it. They were in all the groups: both among the Vyátkans and among the Little Russians they felt themselves at home, but the majority of them were assembled round the pile-driver, because the work there was light, in comparison with the work of the barrow-men and of the diggers.

When I approached them, they were standing with their hands released from a hawser, waiting for the contractor to repair something connected with the pulley of the pile-driver, which, probably, was "eating into" the rope. He was poking about up aloft on the wooden tower, and every now and then he would shout down:

The leader of the singing,—a young fellow, long unshaved, with a pock-marked face and a soldierly air,—shrugged his shoulders, squinted his eyes to one side, cleared his throat, and started up:

The verse which followed would not pass muster with even the most lenient censor, and evoked an unanimous burst of laughter, which, evidently, proved that it was an impromptu, composed on the spot by the singer, who, as his comrades laughed, twirled his mustache with the air of an artist who is accustomed to that sort of success with his audience.

"Go a-he-ead!" roared the contractor fiercely from the summit of the pile-driver.—"Stop your neighing!...

The voice was familiar to me, and somewhere or other I had seen before that tall, broad-shouldered figure, with the oval face, and large, blue eyes. Was it Konováloff? But Konováloff had not the scar running from the right temple to the bridge of the nose, which intersected the lofty brow of this young fellow; Konováloff's hair was of a lighter hue, and did not crisp in such small curls as this fellow's; Konováloff had a handsome, broad beard, but this man was clean-shaven as to his chin, and wore a thick mustache, whose ends drooped downward, in Little Russian fashion. Yet, nevertheless, there was something about him which I knew well. I made up my mind to enter into conversation with him, in particular, as the person to whom I should apply, in order to "get a job," and assumed a waiting attitude, until they should have finished driving the pile.

"O-o-okh! O-o-okh!"—the crowd heaved a mighty sigh as they squatted down, hauled away on the ropes, and again swiftly straightened themselves up, as though on the point of tearing themselves from the ground, and taking flight through the air. The pile-driver steamed and quivered, above the heads of the crowd rose their bare, sun-burned, hairy arms, hauling in unison on the rope; their muscles swelled out like wens, but the piece of cast-iron, twenty puds in weight,[15] flew upwards to a constantly lessening height, and its blow upon the wood sounded more and more faintly. Anyone watching this work might have thought that this was a throng of idolaters, engaged in prayer, uplifting their arms, in despair and ecstasy, to their silent God, and bowing down before him. Their faces, bathed in sweat, dirty, strained in expression, with dishevelled hair, which clung to their damp brows, their light-brown necks, their shoulders quivering with intensity of effort,—all those bodies, barely covered with tattered shirts and trousers of motley hues, filled the air roundabout them with their hot exhalations, and melting together in one heavy mass of muscles, moved restlessly about in the humid atmosphere, impregnated with the sultriness of the southland, and the dense odor of sweat.

[15] Seven hundred and twenty pounds.—Translator.

The hands of the workmen dropped the ropes, and they hung limply down the sides of the pile-driver, while the laborers sank down heavily, where they stood, upon the ground, wiping away the sweat, breathing hard, feeling of their shoulders, and filling the air with a dull murmur, which resembled the roaring of a huge, irritated wild beast.

"Fellow-countryman!"—I addressed myself to the young fellow whom I had picked out.

He turned indolently toward me, ran his eyes over my face, and puckering them up, stared intently at me.

"Hold on...." he thrust my head backward with his hand, exactly as though he were about to seize me by the throat, and suddenly lighted up all over with a joyful, kindly smile.

"Maxím! Akh—curse you! My friend ... hey? And so you have broken loose from your career? You have enlisted in the barefoot brigade? Well, that's good! Now, it's truly fine! A vagabond—and that's all there is to it! Have you been so long? Where do you come from? Now you and I will tramp all over the earth! What a life ... that there behind us, isn't it? Downright misery, long drawn out; you don't live, you rot! But I've been roaming the fair world ever since then, my boy. What places I've been in! What air I have breathed.... No, you've improved cleverly ... one wouldn't know you again: from your clothing, one would think you a soldier, from your phiz, a student! Well, what do you think of it, isn't it fine to live so ... moving from place to place? For, you see, I remember Sténka ... and Tarás, and Pilá ... everything."

He punched me in the ribs with his fist, slapped me on the shoulder with his broad palm, exactly as though he were preparing a beefsteak out of me. I could not interpose a single word into the volley of his questions, and only smiled,—very foolishly, in all probability,—as I gazed at his kind face, which was radiant with satisfaction over our meeting. I, also, was very glad to see him; this meeting with him recalled to me the beginning of my life, which, undoubtedly, was better than its continuation.

At last, I managed, somehow, to ask my old friend, whence came that scar on his brow and those curls on his head.

"Why that, you see ... was a scrape. I undertook, with a couple of my chums, to make my way across the Roumanian frontier; we wanted to take a look at things in Roumania. Well, so we set out from Kalúga,—which is a small place in Bessarábia, close to the frontier. We went quietly on our way—by night, of course. All of a sudden: 'Halt!' The custom-house cordon had crawled straight down on it. Well, of course, we took to our heels! Then one insignificant little soldier hit me a whack over the pate. He didn't strike very hard, but, nevertheless, I lay in hospital about a month. And what an affair it was! It turned out that the soldier was from the same part of the country as myself! We were both Muróm men.... He was brought to the hospital, too, not long after—a smuggler had spoiled him by sticking a knife into his belly. We made it up between us, and got things straightened out. The soldier asks me: 'Did I slash you?'-'It must have been you, since you confess it.'—'I had to,' says he; 'don't you cherish a grudge,' says he, 'that's part of our service. We thought you were travelling with smuggled goods. Here,' says he, 'this is the way they treated me—they ripped my belly open. It can't be helped; life is a serious game.'—Well, and so he and I struck up a friendship. He was a good little soldier—was Yáshka Mázin.... And my curls? Curls? The curls, my boy, came after the typhoid fever. I've had the typhoid fever. They put me in jail in Kishinéff, with the intention of trying me for crossing the frontier illegally, and there I developed typhoid fever.... I lay there and lay there with it, and came near never getting up from it. And, in all probability, I shouldn't have recovered, only the nurse took a great deal of pains with me. I was simply astonished, my boy—she fussed over me as though I were a baby, and what did she care about me? 'Márya Petróvna,' I used to say to her, 'just drop that; I'm downright ashamed.' But she only kept laughing. She was a nice girl.... She sometimes read me soul-saving books. 'Well, now,' says I, 'aren't there any books;' says I, 'like ...' you know the sort. She brought a book about an English sailor, who was saved from a shipwreck on an uninhabited island, and created a new life for himself there. It was interesting, awfully interesting! That book pleased me greatly; I'd have liked to go there, to him. You understand, what sort of a life it was? An island, the sea, the sky,—you live there alone by yourself, and you have everything and you are entirely free! There was a savage there, too. Well, I'd have drowned the savage—what the devil should I want him for, hey? I don't get bored all alone. Have you read any such book?"

"They let me out. They tried me, acquitted me, and released me. It was very simple.... See here, I won't work any more to-day, devil take it! It's all right, I've rattled my arms round hard enough, and it's time to stop. I have three rubles on hand, and for this half day's work I shall get forty kopéks.[16] See what a big capital! That means that you're to come home to where we live. We're not in the barracks, but yonder, in the vicinity of the town ... there's a hole there, so very convenient for human habitation.... Two of us have our quarters in it, but my chum is ailing ... he's bothered with fever.... Well, now, you sit here while I go to the contractor ... I'll be back soon!"

[16] About half these amounts in dollars and cents.—Translator.

He rose swiftly, and walked off just at the moment when the men who were driving piles took hold of the ropes, and began their work. I remained sitting on a stone, looking at the noisy bustle which reigned around me, and at the blue-green sea. Konováloff's tall form, slipping swiftly among the laborers, the heaps of stone, lumber, and barrows, vanished in the distance. He walked, flourishing his hands, clad in a blue creton blouse, which was too short and too tight for him, crash drawers, and heavy boot-slippers. His cap of chestnut curls waved over his huge head. From time to time he turned round, and made some sort of signals to me with his hands. He was so entirely new, somehow, so animated, calmly confident, amiable, and powerful. Everywhere around him men were at work, wood was cracking, stone was being laid, barrows were screeching dolefully, clouds of dust were rising, something fell with a roar, and men were shouting and swearing, sighing and singing as though they were groaning. Amid all this confusion of sounds and movements, the handsome figure of my friend, as it retreated from it with firm strides, constantly tacking from side to side, stood out very sharply, and seemed to present a hint of something which explained Konováloff.

Three hours after we met, he and I were lying in the "hole, very convenient for human habitation." As a matter of fact, the "hole" was extremely convenient—stone had been taken out of the mountain at some distant period, and a large, rectangular niche had been hewn out, in which four persons could have lodged with perfect comfort. But it was low-studded, and over its entrance hung a block of stone, which formed a sort of pent-house, so that, in order to get into the hole, one was forced to lie flat on the ground in front of it, and then shove himself in. It was seven feet in depth, but it was not necessary to crawl into it head foremost, and, indeed, this was risky, for the block of stone over the entrance might slide down, and completely bury us there. We did not wish this to happen, and managed in this way: we thrust our legs and bodies into the hole, where it was very cool, but left our heads out in the sun, in the opening of the hole, so that if the block of stone should take a notion to fall, it would crush only our skulls.

The sick tramp had got the whole of himself out into the sun, and lay a couple of paces from us, so that we could hear his teeth chattering in a paroxysm of fever. He was a long, gaunt Little Russian: "from Piltáva, and, prehaps, from Kieff...." he told me pensively.[17]

[17] "Piltáva," for Poltáva; and "prehaps" are respectively, actual and approximated specimens of the Little Russian pronunciation; though this brief sentence contains a third not easily reproduced.—Translator.

"A man lives so much in the world, that it's of no consequence if he does forget where he was born ... and what difference does it make, anyway? It's bad enough to be born, and knowing where.... doesn't make it any the better!"

He rolled about on the ground, in the endeavor to wrap himself as snugly as possible in a gray overcoat, patched together out of nothing but holes, and swore very picturesquely, when he perceived that all his efforts were futile—he swore, but continued to wrap himself up. He had small, black eyes, which were constantly puckered up, as though he were inspecting something very intently.

The sun baked the backs of our necks intolerably, and Konováloff constructed from my military cloak something in the nature of a screen, driving sticks into the ground, and stretching my costume over them. Still, it was stifling. From afar there was wafted to us the dull roar of toil on the bay, but we did not see it; to the right of us, on the shore, lay the town in heavy masses of white houses, to our left—was the sea,—in front of us, the sea again, extending off into immeasurable distance, where marvellous, tender colors, never before beheld, which soothed the eye and the soul by the indescribable beauty of their tints, were intermingled, through soft half-tones, into a fantastic mirage.

"When the sun has set, we will light up a bonfire, and boil some water for tea: we have bread, and meat. But, in the meanwhile, would you like a cantaloupe or a watermelon?"

With his foot he rolled a watermelon out from a corner of the hole, pulled a knife out of his pocket, and as he operated upon the watermelon with it, he remarked: "Every time that I am by the sea, I keep wondering why so few people settle down near it. They would be the better for it, because it is soothing and sort of ... good thoughts come from it into a man's soul. But come, tell how you have been living yourself all these years."

I began to tell him. He listened; the ailing little Russian paid no attention whatever to us, as he roasted himself in the sun, which was already sinking into the sea. And in the far distance, the sea was already covered with crimson and gold, and out of it, to meet the sun, rose clouds of a pinkish-smoke color, with soft outlines. It seemed as though mountains with white peaks, sumptuously adorned with snow and rosy in the rays of the sunset, were rising from the depths of the sea. From the bay floated the mournful melody of "The Little Oaken Cudgel," and the roar of blasts of dynamite, which were destroying the mountain.... The rocks and inequalities of the soil in front of us cast shadows on the ground, and these, as they imperceptibly lengthened, crept over us.

"It's downright no good for you to haunt the towns, Maxím,"—said Konováloff persuasively, after he had listened to my epic narrative.—"And what is it that draws you to them? The life there is tainted and close. There's neither air, nor space, nor anything else that a man needs. People? What the devil do you want with them? You're an intelligent man, you can read and write, what are people to you? What do you need from them? And then, there are people everywhere...."

"Ehe!" interposed the Little Russian, as he writhed on the ground like an adder.—"There are people everywhere ... lots of them; a man can't pass to his own place without treading on their feet. Why, they are born in countless numbers! They're like mushrooms after a shower ... and even the gentry eat them!" He spat philosophically, and again began to chatter his teeth.

"Well, so far as you are concerned, I say it again,"—continued Konováloff,—"don't you live in the towns. What is there there? Nothing but ill-health and disorder. Books? Well, I think you must have read books enough by this time! You certainly weren't born for that.... Yes, and books are—trash! Well, buy one, and put it in your wallet, and start out. Do you want to go to Tashként with me? Or to Samarkánd, or where? And then we'll have a try at the Amúr—is it a bargain? I, my boy, have made up my mind to walk over the earth in various directions—that's the very best thing to do.... You walk along, and you're always seeing something new.... And you don't think of anything.... The breeze blows in your face, and it seems to drive all sorts of dust out of the soul. You feel light-hearted and free.... Nobody interferes with you: if you feel hungry, you come to a halt, and earn half a ruble by some sort of work; if there isn't any work, you ask for bread, and you'll get it. In that way, you'll see a great deal of the world, at any rate.... All sorts of beauty.... Come on!"

The sun set. The clouds over the sea darkened, the sea also grew dim, and wafted forth a refreshing coolness. Here and there stars shone out, the hum of toil on the bay ceased, and only now and then were exclamations of the men, soft as sighs, borne thence to us. And when the light breeze breathed upon us, it brought with it the melancholy sound of the breaking of the waves against the shore.

The nocturnal gloom speedily grew more dense, and the figure of the Little Russian, which five minutes previously had perfectly definite outlines, now looked like nothing but an uncouth clod ...

Konováloff pulled out a pile of chips from somewhere or other, set fire to them with a match, and thin tongues of flame began caressingly to lick the yellow, resinous wood. Slender streams of smoke curled through the night air, filled with the moisture and freshness of the sea. And everything grew quieter round about: ... life seemed to have withdrawn from us somewhither, and its sounds melted and were extinguished in mist. The clouds dispersed, stars began to glitter in the dark-blue sky, and upon the velvety surface of the sea, also, faintly flickered the tiny lights of fishing-boats, and the reflections of the stars. The fire in front of us blossomed out, like a huge, reddish-yellow flower.... Konováloff thrust the teapot into it, and clasping his knees, began to stare thoughtfully into the blaze. And the Little Russian, like a big lizard, crawled up, and lay down near it.

"People have built towns, houses, have assembled together there in heaps, and defile the earth, sigh, crowd one another.... A nice life that! No, this is life, this, such as we...."

"Oho!"—the Little Russian shook his head,—"if we could only manage to get a fur coat, or a warm hut in it for the winter, we'd live like lords...." He screwed up one eye, and looked at Konováloff, with a laugh.

"We-ell," said the latter abashed,—"winter—is ... a thrice-accursed time. Towns really are needed for the winter ... you can't get along without them.... But the big towns are no good, all the same.... Why cram people into such heaps, when two or three can't get along together?—That's what I was talking about. Of course, when you come to think of it, there's no room for a man either in the town, or in the steppe, or anywhere else. But it's better not to think of such things ... you can't think out anything, and you only harrow your soul...."

Up to this point I had thought that Konováloff had been changed by his vagrant life, that the excrescences of sadness which were on his heart during the first period of our acquaintance had fallen away from him, like a husk, from the action of the free air which he had breathed during those years; but the tone of his last phrase rehabilitated before me my friend as still the same man, seeking a point of support for himself, whom I had known before. The same rust of ignorance in the face of life, and venom of thoughts about it, were still corroding that powerful form, which had been born, to its misfortune, with a sensitive heart. There are many such "meditative" people in Russian life, and they are all more unhappy than anyone else, because the heaviness of their meditations is augmented by the blindness of their minds. I gazed with compassion on my friend, but he, as though confirming my thought, exclaimed, sadly:

"I have recalled that life of ours, Maxím, and all that—took place there. How much ground I have covered since then in my roamings, how much, of all sorts, I have seen ... No, for me there is nothing suitable on earth! I have not found my place!"

"Then why were you born with a neck that no yoke will fit?" inquired the Little Russian indifferently, taking the boiling teapot out of the fire.

"No, do you tell me,..." inquired Konováloff,—"why I can't be easy? Hey? Why do people live on, and feel all right, busy themselves with their affairs, have wives, children, and all the rest of it ... they complain of life, but they are easy. And they always want to do this, that, or the other. But I—can't. Why do things disgust me?"

"There's that man jawing,"—remarked the Little Russian in surprise.—"Well, will you feel any the easier for your jawing?"

"I always say little, but I know what I'm talking about," uttered the stoic, with a consciousness of his own dignity, yet without ceasing to contend with his fever.

"Let's drop that subject.... I was born, well, that means, live on, and don't argue...." said Konováloff, this time viciously.

"And don't force yourself anywhere; the time will come when, without your will, you must be dragged in and ground to dust ... Lie still, and hold your tongue.... Neither our tongues nor our hands are of any help to us...."

He articulated this, began to cough, wriggled about, and took to spitting into the fire with exasperation. Around us everything was obscure, curtained with a thick veil of gloom. The sky above us was dark, also, the moon had not yet risen. We felt rather than saw the sea—so dense was the mist in front of us. It seemed as though a black fog had been lowered over the earth. The fire went out ...

We made our way into the "hole," and lay down, with our heads thrust out into the open air. We were silent. Konováloff remained motionless, as though turned to stone, in the attitude in which he lay down. The Little Russian thrashed about incessantly, and his teeth kept chattering. I stared, for a long while, at the smouldering coals of the fire: at first brilliant and large, the coals gradually grew smaller, became covered with ashes, and disappeared beneath them. And soon nothing was left of the fire, except the warm odor. I gazed and thought:

"We are all of us like that.... The point is, to blaze up as brightly as possible!"

Three days later I took leave of Konováloff. I was going to the Kubán, he did not wish to go. But we both parted with the conviction that we should meet again on earth.

THE KHAN AND HIS SON

"... In the Crimea there was a Khan Mosolaïma el Asvab, and he had a son, Tolaïk Alhalla...."

With his back propped against the brilliant light-brown trunk of an arbutus-tree, a blind beggar, a Tatár, began, in these words, one of the ancient legends of the peninsula, which is rich in its memories, and round about the storyteller, on stone fragments of the palace of the khans, destroyed by time, sat a group of Tatárs in gay-colored kaftans and flat caps embroidered with gold. It was evening, and the sun was sinking softly into the sea; its red rays penetrated the dark mass of verdure around the ruins, and fell in brilliant spots upon the stones, overgrown with moss, enmeshed in the clinging greenery of the ivy. The breeze rustled in a clump of aged plane-trees, and their leaves fluttered as though brooks of water, invisible to the eye, were rippling through the air.

The voice of the blind beggar was weak, and trembled, but his stony face expressed in its wrinkles nothing except repose; the words he had learned by heart flowed on, one after the other, and before the hearers rose up a picture of past days, rich in the power of emotion.

"The Khan was old," said the blind man, "but he had a great many women in his harem. And they loved the old man, because he still had a good deal of strength and fire, and his caresses soothed and burned, and women will always love those who know how to caress strongly, be the man a gray-beard, or even if he have wrinkles on his countenance—for there is beauty in strength, but not in a soft skin and a ruddy cheek.

"They all loved the Khan, but he loved a kazák-prisoner maid, from the steppes of the Dnyépr, and always liked more to fondle her than the other women of his harem, his great harem, where there were three hundred women from divers lands, and they were all as beautiful as the flowers of spring, and they all lived well. Many were the sweet and dainty viands which the Khan ordered to be prepared for them, and he always permitted them to dance and play whenever they desired to do so..."

"But his kazák he often summoned to his own quarters in the tower, from which the sea was visible, and where he had everything for the kazák girl that a woman can want, that her life might be merry: sweet wine, and various fabrics, and gold, and precious stones of all colors, and music, and rare birds from distant countries, and the fiery caresses of the amorous Khan. In this tower he amused himself with her for whole days together, resting from the cares of his life, and knowing that his son Alhalla would not lower the glory of the Khan, as he galloped like a wolf over the Russian steppes, always returning thence with rich booty, with fresh women, with fresh glory, leaving there, behind him, terror and ashes, corpses and blood.

"Once he, Alhalla, returned from a raid on the Russians, and many festivals were arranged in his honor; all the murzas of the island assembled at them, and there were banquets and games, and they fired arrows from their bows into the eyes of the prisoners, testing their strength of arm, and again they drank, lauding the valor of Alhalla, the terror of enemies, the mainstay of the Khanate. And the old Khan rejoiced exceedingly at the glory of his son.—It was good for him, that old man, to behold in his son such a dashing warrior, and to know that when he, the old man, came to die, the Khanate would be in stout hands.

"It was good for him to know that, and so, being desirous to show his son the strength of his love, he said to him, in the presence of all the murzas and beys there, at the feast, beaker in hand, he said:

"I Thou art a good son, Alhalla! Glory be to Allah, and glorified be the name of his prophet!'

"And all glorified the name of the prophet in a chorus of mighty voices. Then the Khan said:

"'Great is Allah! Already, during my lifetime, he has renewed my youth in my gallant son, and now, with my aged eyes, I perceive that when the sun shall be hidden from them,—and when the worms shall devour my breast,—I shall still live on in my son! Great is Allah, and Mahomet is his true prophet! I have a good son, his arm is strong, and his heart is bold, and his mind is clear.... What wilt thou take from the hand of thy father, Alhalla? Tell me, and I will give thee everything, according to thy desire.'

"And the sound of the old Khan's voice had not yet died away when Tolaïk Alhalla rose to his feet, and said, with flashing eyes, black as the sea by night and blazing like the eyes of the mountain eagle:

"The Khan spake not—for a space he said no word, for so long as was required to crush the shudder in his heart,—and, after this pause, he said, boldly and firmly:

"Gallant Alhalla flushed all over, his eagle eyes flashed with the greatness of his joy; he rose to his full height, and said to his father-Khan:

"'I know what thou dost give me, sovereign father! I know ... I am thy slave—thy son. Take my blood, a drop an hour—twenty deaths will I die for thee!'

"'I require nothing!' said the Khan, and bowed his gray head, crowned with the glory of long years and many feats, upon his breast.

"Speedily did they finish the feast, and the two went silently, side by side, from the palace to the harem.

"The night was dark, and neither moon nor stars were visible for the clouds which covered the heaven like a thick carpet.

"Long did the father and son walk through the darkness, and now the Khan el Asvab spake:

"'Day by day my life is dying out, and my old heart beats more and more feebly, and less and still ever less is there of fire in my breast. The fervent caresses of the kazák woman have been the light and warmth of my life.... Tell me, Tolaïk, tell me, is she so necessary to thee? Take a hundred, take all my wives, save only her!...'

"'How many days are left to me? Few are my days on earth.... She is the last joy of my life,—that Russian girl. She knows me, she loves me,—who will love me now, when I no longer have her—me, an old man, who? Not one among them all, not one, Alhalla!'

"'How shall I live, knowing that thou art embracing her, that she is kissing thee? To a woman, there is no such thing as father or son, Tolaïk! To a woman, we are all men, my son.... Painful will it be for me to live out my days.... Bather let all the ancient wounds on my body open again, Tolaïk, and let them shed my blood—rather let me not survive this night, my son!'

"His son remained silent ... They halted at the door of the harem, and silently, bowing their heads on their breasts, they stood long before it. Gloom was round about them, and clouds raced across the sky, while the wind shook the trees, as though it were singing some song to them.

"''Tis plain that the wise mullah told me the truth-a woman is always injurious to a man: when she is handsome, she arouses in others the desire to possess her, and she delivers her husband over to the pangs of jealousy; when she is ugly, her husband, envying others, suffers from envy; but if die is neither handsome nor ugly,—a man imagines her very handsome, and when he comes to understand that he has made a mistake, he suffers again through her, that woman.'

"'Thou lovest thyself more than her and me,—' said the Khan softly, after meditating for a space.

"'Yes! And I, also,'—said the Khan mournfully. He had become a child through grief.

"'Let us fling her into the sea from the mountain,' the Khan repeated his son's words, like the echo of his son's voice.

"And then they entered the harem, where she already lay asleep upon the floor, on a rich rug. They paused in front of her and gazed; long did they gaze upon her. Tears trickled from the old Khan's eyes upon his silvery beard and gleamed in it like pearls, but his son stood with flashing eyes, and gnashing his teeth, to restrain his passion. He aroused the kazák girl. She awoke, and on her face, tender and rosy as the dawn, her blue eyes blossomed like corn-flowers. She did not perceive Alhalla, and stretched out her scarlet lips to the Khan.

"Then she saw Alhalla, and the tears in the eyes of her eagle, and she understood all, for she was clever.

"'I come,' she said,—'I come. I am to belong neither to the one nor to the other—is that what you have decided That is how the strong of heart should decide. I come.'

"And silently they all three went toward the sea. Through narrow ways they went, and the breeze rustled, rustled sonorously....

"She was tender, the girl, and wearied soon, but she was proud also—and would not tell them so.

"And when the Khan's son observed that she did not keep pace with them, he said to her:

"'Come, I will carry thee!'—said Alhalla, reaching out his arms to her. But she threw her arms around the neck of her old eagle. The Khan raised her in his arms, like a feather, and carried her; and she, as she sat in his arms, thrust aside the boughs of the trees from his face, fearing that they would strike his eyes. Long did they journey thus, and lo! the roar of the sea could be heard in the distance. Then Tolaïk—he walked behind them in the path—said to his father:

"'Pass on—Allah will take vengeance on thee for thy desire, or forgive thee—as he wills,—but I, thy father, forgive thee. I know what it means to love.'

"And lo! the sea lay before them, yonder below, black and shoreless. Its waves chanted dully at the very base of the cliff, and it was dark and cold and terrible there below.

"'She glanced out afar, where the waves were singing, and staggered back, pressing her hands to her breast ...

"Alhalla stretched out his hands to her and groaned, but the Khan took her in his arms, pressed her close to his breast, kissed her, and raising her high over his head,—he flung her from the cliff.

"There the waves were plashing and singing so noisily that neither of them heard when she reached the water. They heard no cry, nothing. The Khan sank down upon a stone, and began to gaze downward in silence into the darkness and distance, where the sea merged into the clouds, whence noisily floated the dull beating of the billows, whence flew the wind which fluttered the Khan's gray beard. Tolaïk stood over him, covering his face with his hands, motionless and silent as a stone. Time passed, and athwart the sky the clouds floated past, one after another, driven by the wind. Dark and heavy were they, as the thoughts of the aged Khan, who lay on the lofty cliff above the sea.

"And again much time elapsed, and still the waves beat below, and the wind flew to the cliff, making a noise in the trees.

"But still the Khan stirred not from the place, where he had lost the joy of his last days.

"But—all things have an end!—he rose, strong and proud, rose, knitted his brows, and said in a dull tone:

"'Why am I going and whither, Tolaïk?'—he asked his son.—? Why should I live now, when all my life was in her? I am old, no one will love me more, and if no one loves thee—it is senseless to live in the world.'

"'Give me but one kiss of hers, and take all that to thyself as reward. All that is dead, the love of woman alone is alive. There is no such love, there is no life in a man, a beggar is he, and pitiful are his days. Farewell, my son, the blessing of Allah be on thy head, and remain there all the days and nights of thy life.' And the Khan turned his face seaward.

"'Father,'—said Tolaïk, 'father!...' He could say no more, for there is nothing that one can say to a man on whom death smiles, and nothing canst thou say to him which shall restore to his soul the love of life.

With swift strides the Khan approached the brink, and hurled himself down. His son did not hold him back, there was no time for that. And again nothing was audible from the sea—neither shriek nor noise of the Khan's fall. Only the waves plashed on there, and the wind hummed wild songs.

"Thus perished Khan Mosolaïma el Asvab, and Tolaïk Alhalla became Khan of the Crimea."

THE EXORCISM

Along the village street, between rows of white-plastered cottages, a strange procession is moving along, with wild howls.

A crowd of people is walking along, walking slowly, in dense ranks,—moving like a huge wave, and in front of it strides a miserable little horse, a comically woolly little nag, with head drooping low. As it lifts a fore foot, it shakes its head strangely, as though it wanted to thrust its woolly muzzle into the dust of the road, and when it moves a hind foot, its crupper settles down toward the earth, and it seems as though the horse were on the point of falling.

Bound to the front of the peasant cart, with a rope about her wrists, is a small, entirely nude woman, almost a girl in years. She walks rather strangely—sideways, her head, with its thick, dishevelled hair of a dark chestnut hue, is raised and thrown a little backward, her eyes are opened widely and are gazing off into the distance with a dull, unintelligent look, which has nothing human about it. Her whole body is covered with blue and dark-red spots, both circular and oblong; her left breast, elastic, maidenly, is cleft, and from it the blood is dripping.... It forms a crimson streak on her body, and down along the left leg to the knee, while on her lower leg it is concealed by a light-brown coating of dust It seems as though a long, narrow strip of skin had been flayed from the woman's body, which must have undergone a prolonged beating with a club,—it is monstrously swollen and horribly blue all over.

The woman's feet, small and well-shaped, hardly tread the dust; her whole body is terribly bent over, and sways from side to side, and it is impossible to understand how she can still stand on her legs, thickly covered, like her whole body, with bruises, why she does not fall to the ground, and, suspended by her arms, is not dragged after the cart along the hot, dusty road....

And in the cart stands a tall peasant in a white shirt, a black lambskin cap, from beneath which, intersecting his brow, hangs a lock of bright-red hair; in one hand he grasps the reins, in the other a whip, and methodically bestows one lash upon the back of the nag, and one upon the body of the little woman, already beaten until it has lost the semblance of a human being. The eyes of the red-headed man are suffused with blood, and gleam with evil triumph. His hair blends with their greenish hue. His shirt-sleeves, stripped up to the elbow, display strong, muscular arms, thickly overgrown with reddish hair; his mouth, filled with sharp, white teeth, is open, and from time to time the peasant shouts hoarsely:

"Gi-ive it to her ... the wi-itch! Hey! Gi-ive it to her! Aha! Here goes!... Isn't that the thing, comrades?...."

And behind the cart and the woman bound to it, the crowd surges on in billows, shouting, howling, whistling, laughing, shouting the hunting cry ... teasing.... Wretched little boys are running alongside. Now and then one of them darts ahead, and shouts foul words in the woman's ear. Then a burst of laughter from the crowd drowns all other sounds, and the piercing whistle of the whiplash through the air.... Women are walking there, with excited faces, and eyes sparkling with satisfaction.... There are men, also, who shout something disgusting to the man in the cart.... He turns round toward them, and roars with laughter, opening his mouth very wide. A blow with the whip on the woman's back.... The long, thin whip curls round her shoulders, and now it lashes her under the armpit. Then the peasant who is flogging her draws the lash strongly toward him; the woman utters a shrill cry, and, throwing herself backward, falls on her back in the dust. Many of the crowd spring toward her, and hide her from sight with their bodies, as they bend over her.

The horse stops short, but, a moment later, moves on again, and the unmercifully beaten woman moves along with the cart as before. And the wretched nag, as it paces slowly onward, keeps shaking its woolly head, as though it wanted to say:

"See how vile a thing it is to be a beast! They can force you to take part in every sort of abominable thing!"

And the sky, the sky of the south, is perfectly clear,—there is not a single cloud, and from it the summer sun lavishly pours out its burning rays.

This, which I have written above, is not an allegorical description of the persecution and torture of a prophet, who has no honor in his own country,—no, unfortunately, it is not that! It is called an "exorcism." Thus do husbands punish their wives for infidelity; this is a picture from life, a custom,—and I beheld it in the year 1891, on the 15th of July, in the village of Kandybóvko, Government of Khersón.

MEN WITH PASTS

Vyézhaya (Entrance) Street consists of two rows of aged, one-story hovels, squeezed closely one against the other, with leaning walls and windows all awry; the hole-ridden roofs of these human habitations, thus crippled by time, are mottled with patches of the inner bark of the linden-tree, and overgrown with moss; above them, here and there, project tall poles surmounted by starling-houses, and they are shaded by the dusty verdure of elderberry bushes and crooked willows, the scanty flora of the town suburbs inhabited by poverty.

The window-panes of the tiny houses, of a turbid-green hue through age, stare at each other with the glances of cowardly sharpers. Up-hill, through the middle of the street, crawls a winding cart-track, which tacks back and forth among deep gullies, washed out by the rains. Here and there lie heaps of broken bricks and other rubbish, overgrown with high grass—representing the remnants or the beginnings of the constructions, unsuccessfully undertaken by the inhabitants in their fight with the floods of rain-water, which flow like torrents from the town. Up above, on the crest of the hill, handsome stone houses conceal themselves amid the luxuriant verdure of thick gardens, and the belfries of churches rise proudly into the blue sky, their golden crosses glitter dazzlingly in the sun.

During rains, the town sends its dirt down upon Vyézhaya Street; in dry weather, it sprinkles it with dust,—and all these deformed little houses look as though they, also, had been flung out of it, swept forth, like rubbish, by some mighty hand.

Flattened down against the earth, they were sprinkled all over the hill, half-decayed, infirm, decorated by sun, dust, and rain with that dirty grayish hue which defies description that wood acquires with age.

At the extremity of this wretched street, flung out of the town to the bottom of the hill, stood a long, two-story deserted house, which had escheated to the town, and had been purchased from the town by merchant Petúnnikoff. It was the last in the line, standing at the very foot of the hill, and beyond it extended a wide plain, intersected, half a verst from the house, by a steep declivity descending to the river.

This large and very aged house possessed the most gloomy aspect of all among its neighbors. It was all askew, in its two rows of windows there was not a single one which had preserved its regular shape, and the splinters of glass in the shattered frames had the turbidly-greenish hue of swamp water.

The walls between the windows were streaked with cracks and dark spots of peeling stucco—as though time had written its biography on the walls of the house in these hieroglyphs. The roof, which sloped toward the street, still further increased its rueful aspect—it seemed as though the house had bent down to the ground, and was submissively awaiting from Fate the final blow which should convert it into dust, into a shapeless heap of half-rotten fragments.

The gate stood open—one half of it, torn from its hinges, lay on the ground, and through the crevices between its planks had sprouted the grass, which thickly covered the desert courtyard of the house. At the far end of this courtyard stood a low, smoke-begrimed building with an iron roof, of one slant. The house itself was, of course, uninhabitable, but in this building, which had formerly been the blacksmith's shop, there was now installed a "night lodging-house," kept by Aristíd Fómitch Kuválda,[1] retired captain of cavalry.

THE KHAN AND HIS SON

THE EXORCISM

MEN WITH PASTS

I.