Tales of the Wilderness online

Vasena promptly answered: "Lord! you are not so young as to...."

They were silent. The old man lay back on the sofa and slept.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, you must take your walk!"

"Eh?"

It was a "St. Martin's Summer." Over the scattered blood-red vine
leaves on the terrace, which was deluged in mellow autumnal sunshine,
the bent-up old man walked, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane, and
supported by the sturdy Vasena. He had a skull-cap pulled down low
over his forehead, and wore a long, black overcoat.

IV

Sometimes the old man relapsed into a state of coma, lasting several
hours. Then life seemed to have ebbed from him entirely. A clay-like
pallor over-spread his face, he had the lips and open, glassy eyes of
a corpse, and he scarcely breathed. Then they sent post-haste for the
doctor, who sprinkled him with camphor, gave him oxygen and produced
artificial respiration. The old man slowly came to, rolling his eyes.

"Another minute and it would have been death," the doctor would say
in a deep, grave voice.

When the old man had at length recovered, Vasena used to say to him:
"Lord! We were so frightened, we were so frightened! ... We thought
you were quite gone. Yes, we did. For you know, you are not so young
as to...."

Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments,
half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his
lips, he laughed:

"He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He-
he!"

V

Ilya Ippolytovich walked through the empty rooms of the dying house.
How dusty and mouldy it seemed! The sun came through the tarnished
window-panes and the specks of dust looked golden in its radiant
light. He entered the room where he had passed his childhood. Dust
lay everywhere, on the window-sills, on the floor, and on the
furniture. Here and there fresh boot-prints were visible. A thin
portmanteau - not belonging to the house and pasted over with many
labels - lay on a table. A hard, icy stillness pervaded the entire
place.

Ilya Ippolytovich was stout like his father, but he still walked
erect. His hair was already thinning and growing grey over the
temples, but his face was clean-shaven, like a youth's. His lips were
wrinkled and he had large, grey, weary eyes.

He felt gloomy and unhappy, because his father's days were numbered;
and he brooded miserably over the awkwardness of approaching death,
wondering how one should behave towards a man who was definitely
doomed. To and fro, from corner to corner, he walked, with restless,
springy steps.

He met his father on the terrace.

"Hallo, father!" he said briskly, with an intentional show of
carelessness.

The old man looked at him blindly, not recognising his son at first.
But afterwards he smiled, went up the steps, and gave his cheek to be
kissed. It smelt of wax.

"Eh?" said the old man.

Ilya kissed him, laughed hilariously, and slapped him lightly on the
shoulder: "It is a long time since we met, father. How are you?"

His father looked at him from beneath his cap, gave a feeble smile,
then said after a pause: "Eh?"

Vasena answered for him: "You may well ask how he is doing, Ilya
Ippolytovich! Why, we are fearing the worst every day."

Ilya threw her a reproachful glance and said loudly: "It is nonsense,
father! You have still a hundred years to live! You are tired, let us
sit down here and have a talk together."

They sat down on the marble steps of the terrace. Silence. No words
came to Ilya. Try as he might, he could not think what to say.

"Well, I am still painting pictures," he tried at last; "I am
preparing to go abroad."

The old man did not hear him; he looked at his son without seeing or
understanding, plunged in his own reflections.

"You have come to look at me? You think I shall die soon?" he asked
suddenly.

Ilya Ippolytovich grew very pale and muttered confusedly: "What are
you saying, father? What do you mean?"

But his father no longer heard. He had fallen back in his chair, his
eyes half-closed and glassy, his face utterly expressionless. He was
asleep.

VI

The sun was shining, the sky was blue; in the limpid spaces above the
earth there was a flood of crystal light.

Ilya Ippolytovich strolled through the park and thought of his
father. The old man had lived a full, rich, and magnificent life. It
had possessed so much that was good, bright and necessary. Now -
death! Nothing would remain. Nothing! And this nothing was terrible
to Ilya Ippolytovitch.

Does not living man recognize life, the world, the sun, all that is
around and within him, through himself? he reflected. A man dies, and
the world dies for him. Thenceforward he feels and recognises
nothing. Nothing! Then what is the use of living, developing,
working, when in the end there will be - nothing?... Was there no
great wisdom in his father's hundred years? Nor in his fatherhood?

A crane was crying somewhere overhead. The sound came from a scarcely
visible dark arrow in the cloudless sky, which flew south. Red,
frost-covered leaves were rustling underfoot. Ilya's face was pale,
the wrinkles round his lips made him seem tired and feeble. He had
spent his whole life alone, in the solitude of a cold studio, living
arduously among pictures, for the sake of pictures. To what end?

VII

Ippolyte Ippolytovich sat in the large, bare dining-room eating
chicken cutlets and broth. A napkin was tied round his neck as if he
were a child. Vasena fed him from a tea-spoon, and afterwards led him
into his study. The old man lay down on a sofa, put his hand behind
his head and fell asleep, his eyes half-open.

Ilya went to him in the study. He again made a pretence of being
cheerful, but his tired eyes betrayed grief, and behind his clean-
shaven face, his grey English coat, and yellow boots, somehow one
felt there was a great shaken and puzzled soul suffering, yet seeking
to conceal its anguish.

He sat down at his father's feet.

For a long time the old man searched his face with his eyes, then in
a scraping, worn-out piping voice, said: "Eh?"

"It is so long since we met, father, I am longing to have a chat with
you! Somehow I have no one dearer to me than you! Absolutely no one!
How are you, sir?"

The old man gazed before him with bleary eyes. He did not seem to
have heard. But suddenly screwing up his eyes, straightening out his
lips and opening his empty jaws, he laughed:

"He-he! he-he!" he laughed, and said jovially: "I am dying soon. He-
he! he-he!"

However, Ilya no longer felt as embarrassed as on that first occasion
on the terrace. In a hasty undertone, almost under his breath, he
asked:

"But aren't you afraid?"

"No! He-he!"

"Don't you believe in God?"

"No! He-he!"

They were silent for a long time after that. Then the old man raised
himself on his elbows with a sly grin.

"You see," he said, "when a man is worn out ... sleep is the best
thing for him ... that is so with dying ... one wants to die....
Understand? When a man is worn out...."

He was silent for a moment, then grinned and repeated:

"He-he! He-he! Understand?"

Ilya gave his father a long look, standing there motionless, with
wide-open eyes, feeling a thrill of utter horror.

But the old man was already slumbering.

VIII

Day faded. The blue autumnal twilight spread over the earth and
peeped in through the windows. A purple mist filled the room with
vague, spectral shadows. Outside was a white frost. A silvery moon
triumphantly rode the clear cold over-arching sky.

Ippolyte Ippolytovich lay upon his sofa. He felt nothing. The space
occupied by his body resembled only a great, dark, hollow bin in
which there was - nothing! Close by, a rat flopped across the floor,
but the old man did not hear. A teasing autumnal fly settled on his
eyebrow, he did not wink. From the withered toes to the withered
legs, to the hips, stomach, chest, and heart, passed a faint,
agreeable, scarcely noticeable numbness.

It was evening now and the room was dark; the mist gathered thick and
threatening through the windows. Outside in the crisp, frosty
moonlight, it was bright. The old man's face - all over-grown with
white hair - and his bald skull, had a death-like look.

Vasena entered in her calm yet vigorous manner. Her broad hips and
deep bosom were only loosely covered by a red jacket.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, it is time for your meal," she called in a
matter of fact tone.

But he did not reply, nor utter his usual "Eh?"

They sent at once for the doctor, who felt his pulse, pressed a glass
to his lips, then said in a low, solemn tone:

"He is dead."

Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal,
answered calmly:

"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is
it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord,
they had everything!"

IX

Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the
morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell
in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes.

St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of
another earthly joy - the first white covering of snow, when it is so
delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in
hand.




THE HEIRS


I

Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain - called the Mountain of
Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence
came also Emelian Pugachev.

The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains,
making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.

Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close
to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a
mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when
it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held
there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya
Davydovna - the mistress - old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end
of her days.

She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was
occupied by - the heirs.

They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their
lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had
stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive
fury of the masses burst forth - and the remnants of the Rastorov
family gathered in their old nest - to be hidden from the Revolution
and famine.

Snow-storms - galloping snowy chargers - howled over the Steppe, the
Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of
Stenka Razin - thundered the Revolution.

The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old
cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the
Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its
steamers moored to their wharves.

The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was
nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room,
with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant,
worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived
utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow
of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their
thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.

General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded
closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and
dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through
the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his tasselled
Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing
hoarsely.

"Anna," he snarled, "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place
in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn
to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked
about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering
on his fingers.

"And it is your turn to go for the rations," retorted Anna Andreevna.

"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house
and they cannot organise themselves so as to go in turn for the
rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink."

The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants;
We must see to things ourselves. We can't
all perch like eagles, therefore,
I beg you to be more careful.
Kirill L. Lezhner."

Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of
the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the
ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the
lavatory door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling
brilliantly.

"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we
only one?" he grumbled. "I shall leave this den. They don't behave
like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?"

Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly:
"You know there are none. But I will look for some butt-ends in a
moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps."

"What bourgeois they are - throwing away fag-ends and keeping
servants!" her husband complained.

The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the
will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of
Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and
sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna,
the maid - a one-eyed Cyclop - had filled it with birch-wood, whereas
it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house
should be used as fuel first.

After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out
to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from
the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his
tea, leisurely drinking glass after glass, while Anna Andreevna
heated her stove in the corridor.

A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius - the
former head of a ministerial department - could be heard rousing
themselves behind the wall.

"You have had sufficient albumen; take hydrates now," rose Lina's
voice, calling to her children.

"Potatoes?"

"Yes."

"And fat?"

"You have had enough fat."

The general smiled craftily, then muttered grumpily:

"That is not eating, that is scientific alimentation." He cut himself
a piece of bacon, ate it with some white bread, and drank more tea
with sweet root and candied melon.

Gradually the occupants of the house roused themselves and half-
dressed, sleepy - carrying their towels, empty samovars, and tooth
brushes - they began to pass along the corridor in front of the
general's open door.

Kirill Lvovich eyed them maliciously as he sat drinking his tea and
inwardly cursed them all.

The Cyclop, Leontyevna, Sergius Andreevich's servant, tramped in
heavily with her man's boots from the Labour Exchange; her solitary
eye peered searchingly into Anna Andreevna's stove.

"I'll see she's not deceiving us over the firewood," she shouted
aggressively: "Oh, what a store she's got!"

"But you have used the birch-wood," the general hit back from his
room.

The Cyclop flew into a rage and slapped her thighs. One of the
periodic scenes ensued.

"What?" Leontyevna cried, "I am not trusted, I am being spied on!
Lina Fedorovna, I am going to complain to the Exchange."

Lina Fedorovna joined in from behind her door.

"She isn't trusted, she is being spied on," she echoed, "there must
be spies in this house! And they call themselves intellectual
people!"

"But you took the birch-wood!" protested Lvovich.

"And they call themselves intellectual!" screamed Lina.

The general came out into the passage and said severely:

"It is not for _us_ to judge, Lina Fedorovna. We are not the heirs
here. But it seems strange to me that Sergius should occupy three
rooms, and Anna only one - yes, very strange indeed."

The quarrel became more violent. Satisfied, the general put on his
overcoat and went out to take his place in the ration queue. Lina ran
to her husband; he went to get an explanation of the scene, but
Lvovich was not to be found, however; he remonstrated with his
sister, Anna Andreevna.

"This spying is impossible, it must stop," he insisted.

"But, can't you understand, it all began with searching for the butt-
end of a cigarette?" Anna pleaded in deep distress.

Lina had gone upstairs and was telling the whole story to Ekaterina.
Anna appealed to her younger brother, Constantine, a Lyceum student,
but he told her he was busy, immediately sitting down at his desk to
write. Soon after, however, he rose and went to Sergius.

"Busy?" he asked.

"What? Yes, I am busy."

"Have a smoke."

They began to smoke an inferior brand of tobacco known as "Kepsten."
They were silent.

"Will you have a game of chess?" Constantine asked after a while.

"Yes...But no, I think not," Sergius replied.

"Just one game?"

"Just one? Well, only one!"

They sat down and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a rumpled
Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and
Sergius, and an antique gold chain hung round his neck.

Being in constant dread of requisitioners and robbers they had
divided all the jewellery between them, and wore it for safety.

The brothers played one game, then a second, a fourth, a sixth -
smoking and quarrelling, disagreeing over the moves and trying to re-
arrange them. The general returned from the ration queue in the
market and came along the passage. He peeped in at the two players
through the open door, and after some hesitation decided to enter.

"Greenhorns, you don't know how to play!" he said.

"What do you mean? Don't know how to play?"

"Now, now, don't fly into a rage. If I am wrong - excuse an old man ...
I sent Kirka for the newspaper, I gave him a twenty copeck piece
for a tip."

"I am not in a rage!"

"Very well, then that's all right. But throw over your chess. Let us
play a game of chance."

They sat down and played it for the entire day, only interrupting the
game to go to their rooms for dinner.

Whenever Sergius had to pay a fine he would say:

"Anyhow, Kirill Lvovich, you have an objectionable manner."

"Now, now, greenhorn!" the general would reply.

They had not a penny between them. Katerina Andreevna had been
appointed guardian of their possessions. The men refused to recognise
her authority and called it merely a "femocracy." Only Sergius still
had some capital, the proceeds of an estate he had sold before the
Revolution. Therefore he could well afford to keep a servant.

Upstairs with Katerina were two girls who had thrown up their careers
on principle - the one her college studies, the other her
Conservatoire courses. They kept up a desultory conversation while
helping to clean potatoes. Presently Anna and Lina joined them, and
they all went down to the storeroom and began rummaging through their
grandparents' old wardrobes. They turned over a variety of
crinolines, farthingales, bustles and wigs, laying on one side the
articles of silver, bronze and porcelain - for the Tartars were coming
after dinner. The storeroom smelt of rats. Packed along its walls
were boxes, coffers, trunks, and a huge pair of rusty scales.

They all gathered together on the arrival of the Tartars, who greeted
them with handshakes. The general snorted. One of the Tartars, an old
man wearing new goloshes over felt boots, spoke to Katerina:

"How d'ye do, Barina?"

The general leisurely swung one leg over the other, and said stiffly:

"Be good enough to state your price."

The two Tartars looked over the old-fashioned articles, criticised
them, none too well, and fixed the most ridiculous prices. The
general burst out laughing and tried to be witty. Katerina grew
angrier and angrier, until at last she could no longer contain
herself:

"Kirill Lvovich," she shouted, "you are impossible!" "Very well,"
came the infuriated reply; "I am not one of the heirs, I can go!"

They calmed him, however, and then began bargaining with the Tartars,
who slung the old-fashioned articles carelessly over their arms -
laces worked by serfs, antique, hand made candle-sticks, a field-
glass and an acetylene lamp.

The twilight spread gently over the town, and through its dusky,
star-spangled veil, loomed the old Cathedral - reminiscent of Stenka
Razin; now and then came the chime of its deep-toned bells.

The Tartars at length succeeding in striking a bargain, rolled the
goods up into neat little packs with their customary promptitude,
paid out Kerensky notes from their bulging purses and left.

Then the heirs divided the proceeds. They were sitting in the
drawing-room. Blinds covered the low windows; some portraits hung on
the walls, a chandelier was shrouded in a muslin wrapper that had not
been changed for years. A yellow oaken piano was covered with dust,
and the furniture's velvet covering was tarnished and threadbare. The
house struck cold.

The heirs were dressed fantastically; the general in a dressing-gown
with gold embroideries and tassels; Sergius wore a black hooded coat;
Lina a warm hare-skin jacket, and Katerina, the eldest - the
moustached guardian - a man's thick overcoat, a petticoat and felt
shoes. On all were jewels - rings, ear-rings, bracelets and necklaces.

Sergius remarked ungallantly:

"This is a trying time for us all, and I propose that we divide the
proceeds among us according to the number of consumers."

"I am not one of the heirs," the general hastily interposed.

"I don't share your socialistic views." Constantine informed Sergius
with a cold smile; "I think they should be divided according to the
number of heirs."

A heated argument followed, above which rang the Cathedral bells. At
last, with great difficulty, they came to an agreement. Then Katerina
brought in the samovar. All fetched their own bread and sweet roots
and drank the tea, thankful not to have to prepare it for themselves.

Suddenly - with unexpected sadness and, therefore, unusually well - the
general began to speak:

"When I - a lieutenant-bridegroom - met our Aunt Kseniya for the first
time, she was wearing that bustle that you sold just now. Ah, will
things ever be the same again? If I were told the Bolshevik tyranny
would endure for another year, I should shoot myself! For, good Lord,
what I suffer! How my heart is wrung! And I am an old man.... Life is
simply not worth living."

All burst into tears; the general wept as old men weep, the
moustached Katerina cried in a sobbing bass. Neither could Anna
Andreevna, nor the two girls who stood clasping each other in the
corner, refrain from shedding tears, the girls for their youth and
the sparkling joys of their maidenhood of which they had been
deprived.

"I would shoot them all if I could!" Katerina declared.

Then Sergius' children, Kira and Lira, came in and Lina told them
they might take some albumen. Kira put butter on his.

The moon rose.... The stars shone brilliantly. The snow was dead-
white. The river Volga was deserted. It was dark and still by the old
Cathedral. The frost was hard and crisp, crackling underfoot. The two
young girls, Kseniya and Lena, with Sergius and the general, were
returning to the mansion to fetch their handsleighs and toboggan down
the slope to the river.

Constantine had gone into town, to a club of cocaine-eaters, to drug
himself, utter vulgar platitudes, and kiss the hands of loose women.
Leontyevna, the Cyclop maid from the Exchange, lay down on a bench in
the kitchen to rest from the day's work, said her prayers, and fell
into a sound sleep.

The general stood on the door-steps. Sergius drew up the sleighs, and
they took their seats - three abreast - Kseniya, Elena and himself, and
whirled along over the crackling snow, down to the ice-covered Volga.
The sleighs flew wildly down the slope, and in this impetuous flight,
in the sprinkling and crackling snow, and bitter, numbing frost,
Kseniya dreamed of a wondrous bliss: she felt a desire to embrace the
world! Life suddenly seemed so joyous.

The frost was harsh, cruel and penetrating. On regaining the house
the general bristled up like a sparrow - he was frozen - and called out
from the door-step:

"Sergius! There is a frost to-day that will certainly burst the
water-pipes. We will have to place a guard for the night."

Perhaps Sergius, and even the old man, had had a glimpse of wonderful
happiness in the sleigh's swift flight over the snow. The former
called back: