Chương Chương 7 · 第7章

On the following night the waggoners had halted and were cooking

their porridge. On this occasion there was a sense of overwhelming

oppression over everyone. It was sultry; they all drank a great

deal, but could not quench their thirst. The moon was intensely

crimson and sullen, as though it were sick. The stars, too, were

sullen, the mist was thicker, the distance more clouded. Nature

seemed as though languid and weighed down by some foreboding.

There was not the same liveliness and talk round the camp fire as

there had been the day before. All were dreary and spoke listlessly

and without interest. Panteley did nothing but sigh and complain

of his feet, and continually alluded to impenitent deathbeds.

Dymov was lying on his stomach, chewing a straw in silence; there

was an expression of disgust on his face as though the straw smelt

unpleasant, a spiteful and exhausted look. . . . Vassya complained

that his jaw ached, and prophesied bad weather; Emelyan was not

waving his arms, but sitting still and looking gloomily at the fire.

Yegorushka, too, was weary. This slow travelling exhausted him, and

the sultriness of the day had given him a headache.

While they were cooking the porridge, Dymov, to relieve his boredom,

began quarrelling with his companions.

"Here he lolls, the lumpy face, and is the first to put his spoon

in," he said, looking spitefully at Emelyan. "Greedy! always contrives

to sit next the cauldron. He's been a church-singer, so he thinks

he is a gentleman! There are a lot of singers like you begging along

the highroad!"

"What are you pestering me for?" asked Emelyan, looking at him

angrily.

"To teach you not to be the first to dip into the cauldron. Don't

think too much of yourself!"

"You are a fool, and that is all about it!" wheezed out Emelyan.

Knowing by experience how such conversations usually ended, Panteley

and Vassya intervened and tried to persuade Dymov not to quarrel

about nothing.

"A church-singer!" The bully would not desist, but laughed

contemptuously. "Anyone can sing like that--sit in the church

porch and sing 'Give me alms, for Christ's sake!' Ugh! you are a

nice fellow!"

Emelyan did not speak. His silence had an irritating effect on

Dymov. He looked with still greater hatred at the ex-singer and

said:

"I don't care to have anything to do with you, or I would show you

what to think of yourself."

"But why are you pushing me, you Mazeppa?" Emelyan cried, flaring

up. "Am I interfering with you?"

"What did you call me?" asked Dymov, drawing himself up, and his

eyes were suffused with blood. "Eh! I am a Mazeppa? Yes? Take that,

then; go and look for it."

Dymov snatched the spoon out of Emelyan's hand and flung it far

away. Kiruha, Vassya, and Styopka ran to look for it, while Emelyan

fixed an imploring and questioning look on Panteley. His face

suddenly became small and wrinkled; it began twitching, and the

ex-singer began to cry like a child.

Yegorushka, who had long hated Dymov, felt as though the air all

at once were unbearably stifling, as though the fire were scorching

his face; he longed to run quickly to the waggons in the darkness,

but the bully's angry bored eyes drew the boy to him. With a

passionate desire to say something extremely offensive, he took a

step towards Dymov and brought out, gasping for breath:

"You are the worst of the lot; I can't bear you!"

After this he ought to have run to the waggons, but he could not

stir from the spot and went on:

"In the next world you will burn in hell! I'll complain to Ivan

Ivanitch. Don't you dare insult Emelyan!"

"Say this too, please," laughed Dyrnov: "'every little sucking-pig

wants to lay down the law.' Shall I pull your ear?"

Yegorushka felt that he could not breathe; and something which had

never happened to him before--he suddenly began shaking all over,

stamping his feet and crying shrilly:

"Beat him, beat him!"

Tears gushed from his eyes; he felt ashamed, and ran staggering

back to the waggon. The effect produced by his outburst he did not

see. Lying on the bales and twitching his arms and legs, he whispered:

"Mother, mother!"

And these men and the shadows round the camp fire, and the dark

bales and the far-away lightning, which was flashing every minute

in the distance--all struck him now as terrible and unfriendly.

He was overcome with terror and asked himself in despair why and

how he had come into this unknown land in the company of terrible

peasants? Where was his uncle now, where was Father Christopher,

where was Deniska? Why were they so long in coming? Hadn't they

forgotten him? At the thought that he was forgotten and cast out

to the mercy of fate, he felt such a cold chill of dread that he

had several times an impulse to jump off the bales of wool, and run

back full speed along the road; but the thought of the huge dark

crosses, which would certainly meet him on the way, and the lightning

flashing in the distance, stopped him. . . . And only when he

whispered, "Mother, mother!" he felt as it were a little better.

The waggoners must have been full of dread, too. After Yegorushka

had run away from the camp fire they sat at first for a long time

in silence, then they began speaking in hollow undertones about

something, saying that it was coming and that they must make haste

and get away from it. . . . They quickly finished supper, put out

the fire and began harnessing the horses in silence. From their

fluster and the broken phrases they uttered it was apparent they

foresaw some trouble. Before they set off on their way, Dymov went

up to Panteley and asked softly:

"What's his name?"

"Yegory," answered Panteley.

Dymov put one foot on the wheel, caught hold of the cord which was

tied round the bales and pulled himself up. Yegorushka saw his face

and curly head. The face was pale and looked grave and exhausted,

but there was no expression of spite in it.

"Yera!" he said softly, "here, hit me!"

Yegorushka looked at him in surprise. At that instant there was a

flash of lightning.

"It's all right, hit me," repeated Dymov. And without waiting for

Yegorushka to hit him or to speak to him, he jumped down and said:

"How dreary I am!"

Then, swaying from one leg to the other and moving his shoulder-blades,

he sauntered lazily alongside the string of waggons and repeated

in a voice half weeping, half angry:

"How dreary I am! O Lord! Don't you take offence, Emelyan," he said

as he passed Emelyan. "Ours is a wretched cruel life!"

There was a flash of lightning on the right, and, like a reflection

in the looking-glass, at once a second flash in the distance.

"Yegory, take this," cried Panteley, throwing up something big and

dark.

"What is it?" asked Yegorushka.

"A mat. There will be rain, so cover yourself up."

Yegorushka sat up and looked about him. The distance had grown

perceptibly blacker, and now oftener than every minute winked with

a pale light. The blackness was being bent towards the right as

though by its own weight.

"Will there be a storm, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.

"Ah, my poor feet, how they ache!" Panteley said in a high-pitched

voice, stamping his feet and not hearing the boy.

On the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky; a pale

phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out. There was a sound as

though someone very far away were walking over an iron roof, probably

barefoot, for the iron gave a hollow rumble.

"It's set in!" cried Kiruha.

Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash

of lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the

spot where the clear sky met the blackness. A terrible cloud was

swooping down, without haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung

from its edge; similar shreds pressing one upon another were piling

up on the right and left horizon. The tattered, ragged look of the

storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air. There was a distinct,

not smothered, growl of thunder. Yegorushka crossed himself and

began quickly putting on his great-coat.

"I am dreary!" Dymov's shout floated from the foremost waggon, and

it could be told from his voice that he was beginning to be

ill-humoured again. "I am so dreary!"

All at once there was a squall of wind, so violent that it almost

snatched away Yegorushka's bundle and mat; the mat fluttered in all

directions and flapped on the bale and on Yegorushka's face. The

wind dashed whistling over the steppe, whirled round in disorder

and raised such an uproar from the grass that neither the thunder

nor the creaking of the wheels could be heard; it blew from the

black storm-cloud, carrying with it clouds of dust and the scent

of rain and wet earth. The moonlight grew mistier, as it were

dirtier; the stars were even more overcast; and clouds of dust could

be seen hurrying along the edge of the road, followed by their

shadows. By now, most likely, the whirlwind eddying round and lifting

from the earth dust, dry grass and feathers, was mounting to the

very sky; uprooted plants must have been flying by that very black

storm-cloud, and how frightened they must have been! But through

the dust that clogged the eyes nothing could be seen but the flash

of lightning.

Yegorushka, thinking it would pour with rain in a minute, knelt up

and covered himself with the mat.

"Panteley-ey!" someone shouted in the front. "A. . . a. . . va!"

"I can't!" Panteley answered in a loud high voice. "A . . . a

. . . va! Arya . . . a!"

There was an angry clap of thunder, which rolled across the sky

from right to left, then back again, and died away near the foremost

waggon.

"Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth," whispered Yegorushka, crossing

himself. "Fill heaven and earth with Thy glory."

The blackness in the sky yawned wide and breathed white fire. At

once there was another clap of thunder. It had scarcely ceased when

there was a flash of lightning so broad that Yegorushka suddenly

saw through a slit in the mat the whole highroad to the very horizon,

all the waggoners and even Kiruha's waistcoat. The black shreds had

by now moved upwards from the left, and one of them, a coarse,

clumsy monster like a claw with fingers, stretched to the moon.

Yegorushka made up his mind to shut his eyes tight, to pay no

attention to it, and to wait till it was all over.

The rain was for some reason long in coming. Yegorushka peeped out

from the mat in the hope that perhaps the storm-cloud was passing

over. It was fearfully dark. Yegorushka could see neither Panteley,

nor the bale of wool, nor himself; he looked sideways towards the

place where the moon had lately been, but there was the same black

darkness there as over the waggons. And in the darkness the flashes

of lightning seemed more violent and blinding, so that they hurt

his eyes.

"Panteley!" called Yegorushka.

No answer followed. But now a gust of wind for the last time flung

up the mat and hurried away. A quiet regular sound was heard. A big

cold drop fell on Yegorushka's knee, another trickled over his hand.

He noticed that his knees were not covered, and tried to rearrange

the mat, but at that moment something began pattering on the road,

then on the shafts and the bales. It was the rain. As though they

understood one another, the rain and the mat began prattling of

something rapidly, gaily and most annoyingly like two magpies.

Yegorushka knelt up or rather squatted on his boots. While the rain

was pattering on the mat, he leaned forward to screen his knees,

which were suddenly wet. He succeeded in covering his knees, but

in less than a minute was aware of a penetrating, unpleasant dampness

behind on his back and the calves of his legs. He returned to his

former position, exposing his knees to the rain, and wondered what

to do to rearrange the mat which he could not see in the darkness.

But his arms were already wet, the water was trickling up his sleeves

and down his collar, and his shoulder-blades felt chilly. And he

made up his mind to do nothing but sit motionless and wait till it

was all over.

"Holy, holy, holy!" he whispered.

Suddenly, exactly over his head, the sky cracked with a fearful

deafening din; he huddled up and held his breath, waiting for the

fragments to fall upon his head and back. He inadvertently opened

his eyes and saw a blinding intense light flare out and flash five

times on his fingers, his wet sleeves, and on the trickles of water

running from the mat upon the bales and down to the ground. There

was a fresh peal of thunder as violent and awful; the sky was not

growling and rumbling now, but uttering short crashing sounds like

the crackling of dry wood.

"Trrah! tah! tah! tah!" the thunder rang out distinctly, rolled

over the sky, seemed to stumble, and somewhere by the foremost

waggons or far behind to fall with an abrupt angry "Trrra!"

The flashes of lightning had at first been only terrible, but with

such thunder they seemed sinister and menacing. Their magic light

pierced through closed eyelids and sent a chill all over the body.

What could he do not to see them? Yegorushka made up his mind to

turn over on his face. Cautiously, as though afraid of being watched,

he got on all fours, and his hands slipping on the wet bale, he

turned back again.

"Trrah! tah! tah!" floated over his head, rolled under the waggons

and exploded "Kraa!"

Again he inadvertently opened his eyes and saw a new danger: three

huge giants with long pikes were following the waggon! A flash of

lightning gleamed on the points of their pikes and lighted up their

figures very distinctly. They were men of huge proportions, with

covered faces, bowed heads, and heavy footsteps. They seemed gloomy

and dispirited and lost in thought. Perhaps they were not following

the waggons with any harmful intent, and yet there was something

awful in their proximity.

Yegorushka turned quickly forward, and trembling all over cried:

"Panteley! Grandfather!"

"Trrah! tah! tah!" the sky answered him.

He opened his eyes to see if the waggoners were there. There were

flashes of lightning in two places, which lighted up the road to

the far distance, the whole string of waggons and all the waggoners.

Streams of water were flowing along the road and bubbles were

dancing. Panteley was walking beside the waggon; his tall hat and

his shoulder were covered with a small mat; his figure expressed

neither terror nor uneasiness, as though he were deafened by the

thunder and blinded by the lightning.

"Grandfather, the giants!" Yegorushka shouted to him in tears.

But the old man did not hear. Further away walked Emelyan. He was

covered from head to foot with a big mat and was triangular in

shape. Vassya, without anything over him, was walking with the same

wooden step as usual, lifting his feet high and not bending his

knees. In the flash of lightning it seemed as though the waggons

were not moving and the men were motionless, that Vassya's lifted

foot was rigid in the same position. . . .

Yegorushka called the old man once more. Getting no answer, he sat

motionless, and no longer waited for it all to end. He was convinced

that the thunder would kill him in another minute, that he would

accidentally open his eyes and see the terrible giants, and he left

off crossing himself, calling the old man and thinking of his mother,

and was simply numb with cold and the conviction that the storm

would never end.

But at last there was the sound of voices.

"Yegory, are you asleep?" Panteley cried below. "Get down! Is he

deaf, the silly little thing? . . ."

"Something like a storm!" said an unfamiliar bass voice, and the

stranger cleared his throat as though he had just tossed off a good

glass of vodka.

Yegorushka opened his eyes. Close to the waggon stood Panteley,

Emelyan, looking like a triangle, and the giants. The latter were

by now much shorter, and when Yegorushka looked more closely at

them they turned out to be ordinary peasants, carrying on their

shoulders not pikes but pitchforks. In the space between Panteley

and the triangular figure, gleamed the window of a low-pitched hut.

So the waggons were halting in the village. Yegorushka flung off

the mat, took his bundle and made haste to get off the waggon. Now

when close to him there were people talking and a lighted window

he no longer felt afraid, though the thunder was crashing as before

and the whole sky was streaked with lightning.

"It was a good storm, all right, . . ." Panteley was muttering.

"Thank God, . . . my feet are a little softened by the rain. It was

all right. . . . Have you got down, Yegory? Well, go into the hut;

it is all right. . . ."

"Holy, holy, holy!" wheezed Emelyan, "it must have struck something

. . . . Are you of these parts?" he asked the giants.

"No, from Glinovo. We belong to Glinovo. We are working at the

Platers'."

"Threshing?"

"All sorts. Just now we are getting in the wheat. The lightning,

the lightning! It is long since we have had such a storm. . . ."

Yegorushka went into the hut. He was met by a lean hunchbacked old

woman with a sharp chin. She stood holding a tallow candle in her

hands, screwing up her eyes and heaving prolonged sighs.

"What a storm God has sent us!" she said. "And our lads are out for

the night on the steppe; they'll have a bad time, poor dears! Take

off your things, little sir, take off your things."

Shivering with cold and shrugging squeamishly, Yegorushka pulled

off his drenched overcoat, then stretched out his arms and straddled

his legs, and stood a long time without moving. The slightest

movement caused an unpleasant sensation of cold and wetness. His

sleeves and the back of his shirt were sopped, his trousers stuck

to his legs, his head was dripping.

"What's the use of standing there, with your legs apart, little

lad?" said the old woman. "Come, sit down."

Holding his legs wide apart, Yegorushka went up to the table and

sat down on a bench near somebody's head. The head moved, puffed a

stream of air through its nose, made a chewing sound and subsided.

A mound covered with a sheepskin stretched from the head along the

bench; it was a peasant woman asleep.

The old woman went out sighing, and came back with a big water melon

and a little sweet melon.

"Have something to eat, my dear! I have nothing else to offer you,

. . ." she said, yawning. She rummaged in the table and took out a

long sharp knife, very much like the one with which the brigands

killed the merchants in the inn. "Have some, my dear!"

Yegorushka, shivering as though he were in a fever, ate a slice of

sweet melon with black bread and then a slice of water melon, and

that made him feel colder still.

"Our lads are out on the steppe for the night, . . ." sighed the

old woman while he was eating. "The terror of the Lord! I'd light

the candle under the ikon, but I don't know where Stepanida has put

it. Have some more, little sir, have some more. . . ."

The old woman gave a yawn and, putting her right hand behind her,

scratched her left shoulder.

"It must be two o'clock now," she said; "it will soon be time to

get up. Our lads are out on the steppe for the night; they are all

wet through for sure. . . ."

"Granny," said Yegorushka. "I am sleepy."

"Lie down, my dear, lie down," the old woman sighed, yawning. "Lord

Jesus Christ! I was asleep, when I heard a noise as though someone

were knocking. I woke up and looked, and it was the storm God had

sent us. . . . I'd have lighted the candle, but I couldn't find

it."

Talking to herself, she pulled some rags, probably her own bed, off

the bench, took two sheepskins off a nail by the stove, and began

laying them out for a bed for Yegorushka. "The storm doesn't grow

less," she muttered. "If only nothing's struck in an unlucky hour.

Our lads are out on the steppe for the night. Lie down and sleep,

my dear. . . . Christ be with you, my child. . . . I won't take

away the melon; maybe you'll have a bit when you get up."

The sighs and yawns of the old woman, the even breathing of the

sleeping woman, the half-darkness of the hut, and the sound of the

rain outside, made one sleepy. Yegorushka was shy of undressing

before the old woman. He only took off his boots, lay down and

covered himself with the sheepskin.

"Is the little lad lying down?" he heard Panteley whisper a little

later.

"Yes," answered the old woman in a whisper. "The terror of the Lord!

It thunders and thunders, and there is no end to it."

"It will soon be over," wheezed Panteley, sitting down; "it's getting

quieter. . . . The lads have gone into the huts, and two have stayed

with the horses. The lads have. . . . They can't; . . . the horses

would be taken away. . . . I'll sit here a bit and then go and take

my turn. . . . We can't leave them; they would be taken. . . ."

Panteley and the old woman sat side by side at Yegorushka's feet,

talking in hissing whispers and interspersing their speech with

sighs and yawns. And Yegorushka could not get warm. The warm heavy

sheepskin lay on him, but he was trembling all over; his arms and

legs were twitching, and his whole inside was shivering. . . . He

undressed under the sheepskin, but that was no good. His shivering

grew more and more acute.

Panteley went out to take his turn with the horses, and afterwards

came back again, and still Yegorushka was shivering all over and

could not get to sleep. Something weighed upon his head and chest

and oppressed him, and he did not know what it was, whether it was

the old people whispering, or the heavy smell of the sheepskin. The

melon he had eaten had left an unpleasant metallic taste in his

mouth. Moreover he was being bitten by fleas.

"Grandfather, I am cold," he said, and did not know his own voice.

"Go to sleep, my child, go to sleep," sighed the old woman.

Tit came up to the bedside on his thin little legs and waved his

arms, then grew up to the ceiling and turned into a windmill. . . .

Father Christopher, not as he was in the chaise, but in his full

vestments with the sprinkler in his hand, walked round the mill,

sprinkling it with holy water, and it left off waving. Yegorushka,

knowing this was delirium, opened his eyes.

"Grandfather," he called, "give me some water."

No one answered. Yegorushka felt it insufferably stifling and

uncomfortable lying down. He got up, dressed, and went out of the

hut. Morning was beginning. The sky was overcast, but it was no

longer raining. Shivering and wrapping himself in his wet overcoat,

Yegorushka walked about the muddy yard and listened to the silence;

he caught sight of a little shed with a half-open door made of

reeds. He looked into this shed, went into it, and sat down in a

dark corner on a heap of dry dung.

There was a tangle of thoughts in his heavy head; his mouth was dry

and unpleasant from the metallic taste. He looked at his hat,

straightened the peacock's feather on it, and thought how he had

gone with his mother to buy the hat. He put his hand into his pocket

and took out a lump of brownish sticky paste. How had that paste

come into his pocket? He thought a minute, smelt it; it smelt of

honey. Aha! it was the Jewish cake! How sopped it was, poor thing!

Yegorushka examined his coat. It was a little grey overcoat with

big bone buttons, cut in the shape of a frock-coat. At home, being

a new and expensive article, it had not been hung in the hall, but

with his mother's dresses in her bedroom; he was only allowed to

wear it on holidays. Looking at it, Yegorushka felt sorry for it.

He thought that he and the great-coat were both abandoned to the

mercy of destiny; he thought that he would never get back home, and

began sobbing so violently that he almost fell off the heap of dung.

A big white dog with woolly tufts like curl-papers about its face,

sopping from the rain, came into the shed and stared with curiosity

at Yegorushka. It seemed to be hesitating whether to bark or not.

Deciding that there was no need to bark, it went cautiously up to

Yegorushka, ate the sticky plaster and went out again.

"There are Varlamov's men!" someone shouted in the street.

After having his cry out, Yegorushka went out of the shed and,

walking round a big puddle, made his way towards the street. The

waggons were standing exactly opposite the gateway. The drenched

waggoners, with their muddy feet, were sauntering beside them or

sitting on the shafts, as listless and drowsy as flies in autumn.

Yegorushka looked at them and thought: "How dreary and comfortless

to be a peasant!" He went up to Panteley and sat down beside him

on the shaft.

"Grandfather, I'm cold," he said, shivering and thrusting his hands

up his sleeves.

"Never mind, we shall soon be there," yawned Panteley. "Never mind,

you will get warm."

It must have been early when the waggons set off, for it was not

hot. Yegorushka lay on the bales of wool and shivered with cold,

though the sun soon came out and dried his clothes, the bales, and

the earth. As soon as he closed his eyes he saw Tit and the windmill

again. Feeling a sickness and heaviness all over, he did his utmost

to drive away these images, but as soon as they vanished the

dare-devil Dymov, with red eyes and lifted fists, rushed at Yegorushka

with a roar, or there was the sound of his complaint: "I am so

dreary!" Varlamov rode by on his little Cossack stallion; happy

Konstantin passed, with a smile and the bustard in his arms. And

how tedious these people were, how sickening and unbearable!

Once--it was towards evening--he raised his head to ask for

water. The waggons were standing on a big bridge across a broad

river. There was black smoke below over the river, and through it

could be seen a steamer with a barge in tow. Ahead of them, beyond

the river, was a huge mountain dotted with houses and churches; at

the foot of the mountain an engine was being shunted along beside

some goods trucks.

Yegorushka had never before seen steamers, nor engines, nor broad

rivers. Glancing at them now, he was not alarmed or surprised; there

was not even a look of anything like curiosity in his face. He

merely felt sick, and made haste to turn over to the edge of the

bale. He was sick. Panteley, seeing this, cleared his throat and

shook his head.

"Our little lad's taken ill," he said. "He must have got a chill

to the stomach. The little lad must. . . away from home; it's a bad

lookout!"