The old man paid no heed, but said to Silantiev--said to him with an austere, derisive smile:
"Do you STILL think it necessary to struggle against what has been ordained of God? Do you STILL think that long-suffering is bad, and resistance good? Young man, your soul is weak indeed: and remember that it is only the soul that can overcome Satan."
In response Silantiev rose to his feet, shook his fist at the old man, and shouted in a rough, angry voice, a voice that was not his own:
"All that I have heard before, and from others besides yourself. The truth is that I hold all you father-confessors in abhorrence. "Moreover," (this last was added with a violent oath) "it is not Satan that needs to be resisted, but such devil's ravens, such devil's vampires, as YOU."
Which said, he kicked a stone away from the fire, thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned slowly on his heel, with his elbows pressed close to his sides. Nevertheless the old man, still smiling, said to me in an undertone:
"He is proud, but that will not last for long."
"Why not?"
"Because I know in advance that--"
Breaking off short, he turned his head upon his shoulder, and sat listening to some shouting that was going on across the river. Everyone in that quarter was drunk, and, in particular, someone could be heard bawling in a tone of challenge:
"Oh? I, you say? A-a-ah! Then take that!"
Silantiev, stepping lightly from stone to stone, crossed the river. Then he mingled--a conspicuous figure (owing to his apparent handlessness)--with the crowd. Somehow, on his departure, I felt ill at ease.
Twitching his fingers as though performing a conjuring trick, the old man continued to sit with his hands stretched over the embers. By this time his nose had swollen over the bridge, and bruises risen under his eyes which tended to obscure his vision. Indeed, as he sat there, sat mouthing with dark, bestreaked lips under a covering of hoary beard and moustache, I found that his bloodstained, disfigured, wrinkled, as it were "antique" face reminded me more than ever of those of great sinners of ancient times who abandoned this world for the forest and the desert.
"I have seen many proud folk," he continued with a shake of his hatless head and its sparse hairs. "A fire may burn up quickly, and continue to burn fiercely, yet, like these embers, become turned to ashes, and. so lie smouldering till dawn. Young man, there you have something to think of. Nor are they merely my words. They are the words of the Holy Gospel itself."
Ever descending, ever weighing more heavily upon us, the night was as black and hot and stifling as the previous one had been, albeit as kindly as a mother. Still the two fires on the opposite bank of the rivulet were aflame, and sending hot blasts of vapour across a seeming brook of gold.
Folding his arms upon his breast, the old man tucked the palms of his hands into his armpits, and settled himself more comfortably. Nevertheless, when I made as though to add more twigs and shavings to the embers he exclaimed imperiously:
"There is no need for that."
"Why is there not? "
"Because that would cause the fire to be seen, and bring some of those men over here."
Again, as he kicked away some boughs which I had just broken up, he repeated:
"There is no need for that, I tell you."
Presently, there approached us through the shimmering fire light on the opposite bank two carpenters with boxes on their backs, and axes in their hands.
"Are all the rest of our men gone?" inquired the foreman of the newcomers.
"Yes," replied one of them, a tall man with a drooping moustache and no beard.
"Well, 'shun evil, and good will result.'"
"Aye, and we likewise wish to depart."
"But a task ought not to be left unfinished. At dinner-time I sent Olesha to say that none of those fellows had better be released from work; but released they have been, and now the result is apparent! Presently, when they have drunk a little more of their poison, they will fire the barraque."
Every time that the first of the two carpenters inhaled the smoke of my cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a young fellow as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head upon his breast as soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.
Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But suddenly I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong accents which came from the very centre of the tumult:
"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I should like to know? "
"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning to me, he added more loudly:
"I say this of such fellows-- that a tavern... But what a noise those roisterers are making, to be sure!"
The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:
"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize him!"
While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:
"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"
"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from the ex-soldier-- whereupon the old man remarked to me in an undertone:
"It would seem that a fight is brewing."
Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I heard the old man say softly to his companions:
"He too is gone, thank God!"
Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd of men. Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be carrying or dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently a woman's voice screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised mingled shouts of "Throw him in! Give him a thrashing!" and "Drag him along!"
The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd, straighten himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl himself at the crowd again. As he did so the young fellow in the red shirt raised a gigantic arm, and there followed the sound of a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering backwards, Silantiev slid silently into the water, and lay there at my feet.
"That's right!" was the comment of someone.
For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way.
As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me. Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot where, half in and half out of the water, he lay with his head and breast resting against the stepping-stones.
"You have killed him!" next I shouted--not because I believed the statement to be true, but because I had a mind to frighten into sobriety the men who were impeding me.
Upon this someone exclaimed in a faltering, sobered tone:
"Surely not?"
As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he passed me by with a braggart, resentful shout of:
"Well? He had no right to insult me. Why should he have said that I was a nuisance to the whole country?"
And someone else shouted:
"Where is the ex-soldier? Who is the watchman here?"
"Bring a light," was the cry of a third.
Yet all these voices were more sober, more subdued, more restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again, and, dipping his hands into the water, said gravely:
"You have killed him. He is dead."
At the moment I did not believe the words; but presently, as I stood watching how the water coursed between Silantiev's legs, and turned them this way and that, and made them stir as though they were striving to divest themselves of the shabby old boots, I realised with all my being that the hands which were resting in mine were the hands of a corpse. And, true enough, when I released them they slapped down upon the surface like wet dish- cloths.
Until now, about a dozen men had been standing on the bank to observe what was toward, but as soon as the little muzhik's words rang out these men recoiled, and, with jostlings, began to vent, in subdued, uneasy tones, cries of:
"Who was it first struck him?"
"This will lose us our jobs."
"It was the soldier that first started the racket."
"Yes, that is true."
"Let us go and denounce him."
As for the young fellow in the red shirt, he cried:
"I swear on my honour, mates, that the affair was only a quarrel."
"To hit a man with a bludgeon is more than a quarrel."
"It was a stone that was used, not a bludgeon."
"The soldier ought to--"
A woman's high-pitched voice broke in with a plaintive cry of:
"Good Lord! Always something happens to us! "
As for myself, I felt stunned and hurt as I seated myself upon the stepping-stones; and though everything was plain to my sight, nothing was plain to my understanding, while in my breast a strange emptiness was present, save that the clamour of the bystanders aroused me to a certain longing to outshout them all, to send forth my voice into the night like the voice of a brazen trumpet.
Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first was a torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of golden sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin as a pike when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike countenance that was deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth perpetually half-agape, and round, owlish-looking eyes.
As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon his knee to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head and body. That head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no longer could I recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so buried was the jaunty forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and concealed by a swelling which had made its appearance above the left ear. Also, since the mouth and moustache had been bashed aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted, truly horrible smile, while, as the most horrible point of all, the left eye was hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large, gazing, seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's pea- jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.
Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air, and thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor mutilated face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he muttered with a smack of the lips:
"You can see for yourselves who the man is."
As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp and wet cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so played in the ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an added appearance of death.
Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch into the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion as he smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked almost greenish:
"Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been done to death."
"No; I should be afraid to go alone."
"Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."
"But I would much rather not."
"Don't be such a fool!"
Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the foreman.
"I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he scraped his foot against a stone:
"How horrible the blood smells! It would seem that my very foot is smeared with it."
With a frown the fair-headed muzhik eyed him, while the foreman returned the muzhik's gaze with a scrutiny that never wavered. Finally the elder man commented with cold severity:
"All the mischief has come of vodka and tobacco, the devil's drugs."
Not only were the pair strangely alike, but both of them strangely resembled wizards, in that both were short of stature, as sharp-finished as gimlets, and as green-tinted by the darkness as tufts of lichen.
"Let us go, brother," the foreman said. "Go we with the Holy Spirit."
And, omitting even to inquire who had been killed, or even to glance at the corpse, or even to pay it the last salute demanded of custom, the foreman departed down the stream, while in his wake followed the messenger, a man who kept stumbling as he picked his way from stone to stone. Amid the gloom the pair moved as silently as ghosts.
The narrow-chested, fair-headed little muzhik then raked me with his eyes; whereafter he produced a cigarette from a tin box, snapped-to the lid of the box, struck a match (illuminating once more the face of the dead man), and applied the flame to the cigarette. Lastly he said:
"This is the sixth murder which I have seen one thing and another commit."
"One thing and another commit?" I queried.
The reply came only after a pause; when the little muzhik asked: " What did you say? I did not quite catch it."
I explained that human beings, not inanimate entities, murdered human beings.
"Well, be they human beings or machinery or lightning or anything else, they are all one. One of my mates was caught in some machinery at Bakhmakh. Another one had his throat cut in a brawl. Another one was crushed against the bucket in a coal mine. Another one was--"
Carefully though the man counted, he ended by erring in his reckoning to the extent of making his total "five." Accordingly he re-computed the list--and this time succeeded in making the total amount to "seven."
"Never mind," he remarked with a sigh as he blew his cigarette into a red glow which illuminated the whole of his face. "The truth is that I cannot always repeat the list correctly, just as I should like. Were I older than I am, I too should contrive to get finished off; for old-age is a far from desirable thing. Yes, indeed! But, as things are, I am still alive, nor, thank the Lord, does anything matter very much."
Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued:
"Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of him, or a letter from him. Well, never again will he write, and as likely as not his kinsfolk will end by saying to themselves: 'He has taken to bad ways, and forgotten his family.' Yes, good sir."
