|
|
|
Chekhov -
The Steppe
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IV Who was this elusive, mysterious Varlamov of whom people talked
so much, whom Solomon despised, and whom even the beautiful
countess needed? Sitting on the box beside Deniska, Yegorushka,
half asleep, thought about this person. He had never seen him.
But he had often heard of him and pictured him in his
imagination. He knew that Varlamov possessed several tens of
thousands of acres of land, about a hundred thousand sheep, and
a great deal of money. Of his manner of life and occupation
Yegorushka knew nothing, except that he was always "going his
rounds in these parts," and he was always being looked for.
At home Yegorushka had heard a great deal of the Countess
Dranitsky, too. She, too, had some tens of thousands of acres, a
great many sheep, a stud farm and a great deal of money, but she
did not "go rounds," but lived at home in a splendid house and
grounds, about which Ivan Ivanitch, who had been more than once
at the countess's on business, and other acquaintances told many
marvellous tales; thus, for instance, they said that in the
countess's drawing-room, where the portraits of all the kings of
Poland hung on the walls, there was a big table-clock in the
form of a rock, on the rock a gold horse with diamond eyes,
rearing, and on the horse the figure of a rider also of gold,
who brandished his sword to right and to left whenever the clock
struck. They said, too, that twice a year the countess used to
give a ball, to which the gentry and officials of the whole
province were invited, and to which even Varlamov used to come;
all the visitors drank tea from silver samovars, ate all sorts
of extraordinary things (they had strawberries and raspberries,
for instance, in winter at Christmas), and danced to a band
which played day and night. . . .
"And how beautiful she is," thought Yegorushka, remembering her
face and smile.
Kuzmitchov, too, was probably thinking about the countess. For
when the chaise had driven a mile and a half he said:
"But doesn't that Kazimir Mihalovitch plunder her right and
left! The year before last when, do you remember, I bought some
wool from her, he made over three thousand from my purchase
alone."
"That is just what you would expect from a Pole," said Father
Christopher.
"And little does it trouble her. Young and foolish, as they say,
her head is full of nonsense."
Yegorushka, for some reason, longed to think of nothing but
Varlamov and the countess, particularly the latter. His drowsy
brain utterly refused ordinary thoughts, was in a cloud and
retained only fantastic fairy-tale images, which have the
advantage of springing into the brain of themselves without any
effort on the part of the thinker, and completely vanishing of
themselves at a mere shake of the head; and, indeed, nothing
that was around him disposed to ordinary thoughts. On the right
there were the dark hills which seemed to be screening something
unseen and terrible; on the left the whole sky about the horizon
was covered with a crimson glow, and it was hard to tell whether
there was a fire somewhere, or whether it was the moon about to
rise. As by day the distance could be seen, but its tender lilac
tint had gone, quenched by the evening darkness, in which the
whole steppe was hidden like Moisey Moisevitch's children under
the quilt.
Corncrakes and quails do not call in the July nights, the
nightingale does not sing in the woodland marsh, and there is no
scent of flowers, but still the steppe is lovely and full of
life. As soon as the sun goes down and the darkness enfolds the
earth, the day's weariness is forgotten, everything is forgiven,
and the steppe breathes a light sigh from its broad bosom. As
though because the grass cannot see in the dark that it has
grown old, a gay youthful twitter rises up from it, such as is
not heard by day; chirruping, twittering, whistling, scratching,
the basses, tenors and sopranos of the steppe all mingle in an
incessant, monotonous roar of sound in which it is sweet to
brood on memories and sorrows. The monotonous twitter soothes to
sleep like a lullaby; you drive and feel you are falling asleep,
but suddenly there comes the abrupt agitated cry of a wakeful
bird, or a vague sound like a voice crying out in wonder "A-ah,
a-ah!" and slumber closes one's eyelids again. Or you drive by a
little creek where there are bushes and hear the bird, called by
the steppe dwellers "the sleeper," call "Asleep, asleep,
asleep!" while another laughs or breaks into trills of
hysterical weeping -- that is the owl. For whom do they call and
who hears them on that plain, God only knows, but there is deep
sadness and lamentation in their cry. . . . There is a scent of
hay and dry grass and belated flowers, but the scent is heavy,
sweetly mawkish and soft.
Everything can be seen through the mist, but it is hard to make
out the colours and the outlines of objects. Everything looks
different from what it is. You drive on and suddenly see
standing before you right in the roadway a dark figure like a
monk; it stands motionless, waiting, holding something in its
hands. . . . Can it be a robber? The figure comes closer, grows
bigger; now it is on a level with the chaise, and you see it is
not a man, but a solitary bush or a great stone. Such motionless
expectant figures stand on the low hills, hide behind the old
barrows, peep out from the high grass, and they all look like
human beings and arouse suspicion.
And when the moon rises the night becomes pale and dim. The mist
seems to have passed away. The air is transparent, fresh and
warm; one can see well in all directions and even distinguish
the separate stalks of grass by the wayside. Stones and bits of
pots can be seen at a long distance. The suspicious figures like
monks look blacker against the light background of the night,
and seem more sinister. More and more often in the midst of the
monotonous chirruping there comes the sound of the "A-ah, a-ah!"
of astonishment troubling the motionless air, and the cry of a
sleepless or delirious bird. Broad shadows move across the plain
like clouds across the sky, and in the inconceivable distance,
if you look long and intently at it, misty monstrous shapes rise
up and huddle one against another. . . . It is rather uncanny.
One glances at the pale green, star-spangled sky on which there
is no cloudlet, no spot, and understands why the warm air is
motionless, why nature is on her guard, afraid to stir: she is
afraid and reluctant to lose one instant of life. Of the
unfathomable depth and infinity of the sky one can only form a
conception at sea and on the steppe by night when the moon is
shining. It is terribly lonely and caressing; it looks down
languid and alluring, and its caressing sweetness makes one
giddy.
You drive on for one hour, for a second. . . . You meet upon the
way a silent old barrow or a stone figure put up God knows when
and by whom; a nightbird floats noiselessly over the earth, and
little by little those legends of the steppes, the tales of men
you have met, the stories of some old nurse from the steppe, and
all the things you have managed to see and treasure in your
soul, come back to your mind. And then in the churring of
insects, in the sinister figures, in the ancient barrows, in the
blue sky, in the moonlight, in the flight of the nightbird, in
everything you see and hear, triumphant beauty, youth, the
fulness of power, and the passionate thirst for life begin to be
apparent; the soul responds to the call of her lovely austere
fatherland, and longs to fly over the steppes with the
nightbird. And in the triumph of beauty, in the exuberance of
happiness you are conscious of yearning and grief, as though the
steppe knew she was solitary, knew that her wealth and her
inspiration were wasted for the world, not glorified in song,
not wanted by anyone; and through the joyful clamour one hears
her mournful, hopeless call for singers, singers!
"Woa! Good-evening, Panteley! Is everything all right?"
"First-rate, Ivan Ivanitch!
"Haven't you seen Varlamov, lads?"
"No, we haven't."
Yegorushka woke up and opened his eyes. The chaise had stopped.
On the right the train of waggons stretched for a long way ahead
on the road, and men were moving to and fro near them. All the
waggons being loaded up with great bales of wool looked very
high and fat, while the horses looked short-legged and little.
"Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans'!" Kuzmitchov said
aloud. "The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the
night at the Molokans'. So good-bye, lads! Good luck to you!"
"Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch," several voices replied.
"I say, lads," Kuzmitchov cried briskly, "you take my little lad
along with you! Why should he go jolting off with us for
nothing? You put him on the bales, Panteley, and let him come on
slowly, and we shall overtake you. Get down, Yegor! Go on; it's
all right. . . ."
Yegorushka got down from the box-seat. Several hands caught him,
lifted him high into the air, and he found himself on something
big, soft, and rather wet with dew. It seemed to him now as
though the sky were quite close and the earth far away.
"Hey, take his little coat!" Deniska shouted from somewhere far
below.
His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to
Yegorushka. Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his
bundle under his head and covered himself with his coat, and
stretching his legs out and shrinking a little from the dew, he
laughed with content.
"Sleep, sleep, sleep, . . ." he thought.
"Don't be unkind to him, you devils!" he heard Deniska's voice
below.
"Good-bye, lads; good luck to you," shouted Kuzmitchov. "I rely
upon you!"
"Don't you be uneasy, Ivan Ivanitch!"
Deniska shouted to the horses, the chaise creaked and started,
not along the road, but somewhere off to the side. For two
minutes there was silence, as though the waggons were asleep and
there was no sound except the clanking of the pails tied on at
the back of the chaise as it slowly died away in the distance.
Then someone at the head of the waggons shouted:
"Kiruha! Sta-art!"
The foremost of the waggons creaked, then the second, then the
third. . . . Yegorushka felt the waggon he was on sway and creak
also. The waggons were moving. Yegorushka took a tighter hold of
the cord with which the bales were tied on, laughed again with
content, shifted the cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as
he did in his bed at home. . . .
When he woke up the sun had risen, it was screened by an ancient
barrow, and, trying to shed its light upon the earth, it
scattered its beams in all directions and flooded the horizon
with gold. It seemed to Yegorushka that it was not in its proper
place, as the day before it had risen behind his back, and now
it was much more to his left. . . . And the whole landscape was
different. There were no hills now, but on all sides, wherever
one looked, there stretched the brown cheerless plain; here and
there upon it small barrows rose up and rooks flew as they had
done the day before. The belfries and huts of some village
showed white in the distance ahead; as it was Sunday the Little
Russians were at home baking and cooking -- that could be seen
by the smoke which rose from every chimney and hung, a dark blue
transparent veil, over the village. In between the huts and
beyond the church there were blue glimpses of a river, and
beyond the river a misty distance. But nothing was so different
from yesterday as the road. Something extraordinarily broad,
spread out and titanic, stretched over the steppe by way of a
road. It was a grey streak well trodden down and covered with
dust, like all roads. Its width puzzled Yegorushka and brought
thoughts of fairy tales to his mind. Who travelled along that
road? Who needed so much space? It was strange and
unintelligible. It might have been supposed that giants with
immense strides, such as Ilya Muromets and Solovy the Brigand,
were still surviving in Russia, and that their gigantic steeds
were still alive. Yegorushka, looking at the road, imagined some
half a dozen high chariots racing along side by side, like some
he used to see in pictures in his Scripture history; these
chariots were each drawn by six wild furious horses, and their
great wheels raised a cloud of dust to the sky, while the horses
were driven by men such as one may see in one's dreams or in
imagination brooding over fairy tales. And if those figures had
existed, how perfectly in keeping with the steppe and the road
they would have been!
Telegraph-poles with two wires on them stretched along the right
side of the road to its furthermost limit. Growing smaller and
smaller they disappeared near the village behind the huts and
green trees, and then again came into sight in the lilac
distance in the form of very small thin sticks that looked like
pencils stuck into the ground. Hawks, falcons, and crows sat on
the wires and looked indifferently at the moving waggons.
Yegorushka was lying in the last of the waggons, and so could
see the whole string. There were about twenty waggons, and there
was a driver to every three waggons. By the last waggon, the one
in which Yegorushka was, there walked an old man with a grey
beard, as short and lean as Father Christopher, but with a
sunburnt, stern and brooding face. It is very possible that the
old man was not stern and not brooding, but his red eyelids and
his sharp long nose gave his face a stern frigid expression such
as is common with people in the habit of continually thinking of
serious things in solitude. Like Father Christopher he was
wearing a wide-brimmed top-hat, not like a gentleman's, but made
of brown felt, and in shape more like a cone with the top cut
off than a real top-hat. Probably from a habit acquired in cold
winters, when he must more than once have been nearly frozen as
he trudged beside the waggons, he kept slapping his thighs and
stamping with his feet as he walked. Noticing that Yegorushka
was awake, he looked at him and said, shrugging his shoulders as
though from the cold:
"Ah, you are awake, youngster! So you are the son of Ivan
Ivanitch?"
"No; his nephew. . . ."
"Nephew of Ivan Ivanitch? Here I have taken off my boots and am
hopping along barefoot. My feet are bad; they are swollen, and
it's easier without my boots . . . easier, youngster . . .
without boots, I mean. . . . So you are his nephew? He is a good
man; no harm in him. . . . God give him health. . . . No harm in
him . . . I mean Ivan Ivanitch. . . . He has gone to the
Molokans'. . . . O Lord, have mercy upon us!"
The old man talked, too, as though it were very cold, pausing
and not opening his mouth properly; and he mispronounced the
labial consonants, stuttering over them as though his lips were
frozen. As he talked to Yegorushka he did not once smile, and he
seemed stern.
Two waggons ahead of them there walked a man wearing a long
reddish-brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs
and carrying a whip in his hand. This was not an old man, only
about forty. When he looked round Yegorushka saw a long red face
with a scanty goat-beard and a spongy looking swelling under his
right eye. Apart from this very ugly swelling, there was another
peculiar thing about him which caught the eye at once: in his
left hand he carried a whip, while he waved the right as though
he were conducting an unseen choir; from time to time he put the
whip under his arm, and then he conducted with both hands and
hummed something to himself.
The next driver was a long rectilinear figure with extremely
sloping shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He held himself
as stiffly erect as though he were marching or had swallowed a
yard measure. His hands did not swing as he walked, but hung
down as if they were straight sticks, and he strode along in a
wooden way, after the manner of toy soldiers, almost without
bending his knees, and trying to take as long steps as possible.
While the old man or the owner of the spongy swelling were
taking two steps he succeeded in taking only one, and so it
seemed as though he were walking more slowly than any of them,
and would drop behind. His face was tied up in a rag, and on his
head something stuck up that looked like a monk's peaked cap; he
was dressed in a short Little Russian coat, with full dark blue
trousers and bark shoes.
Yegorushka did not even distinguish those that were farther on.
He lay on his stomach, picked a little hole in the bale, and,
having nothing better to do, began twisting the wool into a
thread. The old man trudging along below him turned out not to
be so stern as one might have supposed from his face. Having
begun a conversation, he did not let it drop.
"Where are you going?" he asked, stamping with his feet.
"To school," answered Yegorushka.
"To school? Aha! . . . Well, may the Queen of Heaven help you.
Yes. One brain is good, but two are better. To one man God gives
one brain, to another two brains, and to another three. . . . To
another three, that is true. . . . One brain you are born with,
one you get from learning, and a third with a good life. So you
see, my lad, it is a good thing if a man has three brains.
Living is easier for him, and, what's more, dying is, too. Dying
is, too. . . . And we shall all die for sure."
The old man scratched his forehead, glanced upwards at
Yegorushka with his red eyes, and went on:
"Maxim Nikolaitch, the gentleman from Slavyanoserbsk, brought a
little lad to school, too, last year. I don't know how he is
getting on there in studying the sciences, but he was a nice
good little lad. . . . God give them help, they are nice
gentlemen. Yes, he, too, brought his boy to school. . . . In
Slavyanoserbsk there is no establishment, I suppose, for study.
No. . . . But it is a nice town. . . . There's an ordinary
school for simple folks, but for the higher studies there is
nothing. No, that's true. What's your name? . . ."
"Yegorushka."
"Yegory, then. . . . The holy martyr Yegory, the Bearer of
Victory, whose day is the twenty-third of April. And my
christian name is Panteley, . . . Panteley Zaharov Holodov. . .
. We are Holodovs. . . . I am a native of -- maybe you've heard
of it -- Tim in the province of Kursk. My brothers are artisans
and work at trades in the town, but I am a peasant. . . . I have
remained a peasant. Seven years ago I went there -- home, I
mean. I went to the village and to the town. . . . To Tim, I
mean. Then, thank God, they were all alive and well; . . . but
now I don't know. . . . Maybe some of them are dead. . . . And
it's time they did die, for some of them are older than I am.
Death is all right; it is good so long, of course, as one does
not die without repentance. There is no worse evil than an
impenitent death; an impenitent death is a joy to the devil. And
if you want to die penitent, so that you may not be forbidden to
enter the mansions of the Lord, pray to the holy martyr Varvara.
She is the intercessor. She is, that's the truth. . . . For God
has given her such a place in the heavens that everyone has the
right to pray to her for penitence."
Panteley went on muttering, and apparently did not trouble
whether Yegorushka heard him or not. He talked listlessly,
mumbling to himself, without raising or dropping his voice, but
succeeded in telling him a great deal in a short time. All he
said was made up of fragments that had very little connection
with one another, and quite uninteresting for Yegorushka.
Possibly he talked only in order to reckon over his thoughts
aloud after the night spent in silence, in order to see if they
were all there. After talking of repentance, he spoke about a
certain Maxim Nikolaitch from Slavyanoserbsk.
"Yes, he took his little lad; . . . he took him, that's true . .
."
One of the waggoners walking in front darted from his place, ran
to one side and began lashing on the ground with his whip. He
was a stalwart, broad-shouldered man of thirty, with curly
flaxen hair and a look of great health and vigour. Judging from
the movements of his shoulders and the whip, and the eagerness
expressed in his attitude, he was beating something alive.
Another waggoner, a short stubby little man with a bushy black
beard, wearing a waistcoat and a shirt outside his trousers, ran
up to him. The latter broke into a deep guffaw of laughter and
coughing and said: "I say, lads, Dymov has killed a snake!"
There are people whose intelligence can be gauged at once by
their voice and laughter. The man with the black beard belonged
to that class of fortunate individuals; impenetrable stupidity
could be felt in his voice and laugh. The flaxen-headed Dymov
had finished, and lifting from the ground with his whip
something like a cord, flung it with a laugh into the cart.
"That's not a viper; it's a grass snake!" shouted someone.
The man with the wooden gait and the bandage round his face
strode up quickly to the dead snake, glanced at it and flung up
his stick-like arms.
"You jail-bird!" he cried in a hollow wailing voice. "What have
you killed a grass snake for? What had he done to you, you
damned brute? Look, he has killed a grass snake; how would you
like to be treated so?"
"Grass snakes ought not to be killed, that's true," Panteley
muttered placidly, "they ought not. . . They are not vipers;
though it looks like a snake, it is a gentle, innocent creature.
. . . It's friendly to man, the grass snake is."
Dymov and the man with the black beard were probably ashamed,
for they laughed loudly, and not answering, slouched lazily back
to their waggons. When the hindmost waggon was level with the
spot where the dead snake lay, the man with his face tied up
standing over it turned to Panteley and asked in a tearful
voice:
"Grandfather, what did he want to kill the grass snake for?"
His eyes, as Yegorushka saw now, were small and dingy looking;
his face was grey, sickly and looked somehow dingy too while his
chin was red and seemed very much swollen.
"Grandfather, what did he kill it for?" he repeated, striding
along beside Panteley.
"A stupid fellow. His hands itch to kill, and that is why he
does it," answered the old man; "but he oughtn't to kill a grass
snake, that's true. . . . Dymov is a ruffian, we all know, he
kills everything he comes across, and Kiruha did not interfere.
He ought to have taken its part, but instead of that, he goes
off into 'Ha-ha-ha!' and 'Ho-ho-ho!' . . . But don't be angry,
Vassya. . . . Why be angry? They've killed it -- well, never
mind them. Dymov is a ruffian and Kiruha acted from foolishness
-- never mind. . . . They are foolish people without
understanding -- but there, don't mind them. Emelyan here never
touches what he shouldn't; he never does;. . . that is true, . .
. because he is a man of education, while they are stupid. . . .
Emelyan, he doesn't touch things."
The waggoner in the reddish-brown coat and the spongy swelling
on his face, who was conducting an unseen choir, stopped.
Hearing his name, and waiting till Panteley and Vassya came up
to him, he walked beside them.
"What are you talking about?" he asked in a husky muffled voice.
"Why, Vassya here is angry," said Panteley. "So I have been
saying things to him to stop his being angry. . . . Oh, how my
swollen feet hurt! Oh, oh! They are more inflamed than ever for
Sunday, God's holy day!"
"It's from walking," observed Vassya.
"No, lad, no. It's not from walking. When I walk it seems
easier; when I lie down and get warm, . . . it's deadly. Walking
is easier for me."
Emelyan, in his reddish-brown coat, walked between Panteley and
Vassya and waved his arms, as though they were going to sing.
After waving them a little while he dropped them, and croaked
out hopelessly:
"I have no voice. It's a real misfortune. All last night and
this morning I have been haunted by the trio 'Lord, have Mercy'
that we sang at the wedding at Marionovsky's. It's in my head
and in my throat. It seems as though I could sing it, but I
can't; I have no voice."
He paused for a minute, thinking, then went on:
"For fifteen years I was in the choir. In all the Lugansky works
there was, maybe, no one with a voice like mine. But, confound
it, I bathed two years ago in the Donets, and I can't get a
single note true ever since. I took cold in my throat. And
without a voice I am like a workman without hands."
"That's true," Panteley agreed.
"I think of myself as a ruined man and nothing more."
At that moment Vassya chanced to catch sight of Yegorushka. His
eyes grew moist and smaller than ever.
"There's a little gentleman driving with us," and he covered his
nose with his sleeve as though he were bashful. "What a grand
driver! Stay with us and you shall drive the waggons and sell
wool."
The incongruity of one person being at once a little gentleman
and a waggon driver seemed to strike him as very queer and
funny, for he burst into a loud guffaw, and went on enlarging
upon the idea. Emelyan glanced upwards at Yegorushka, too, but
coldly and cursorily. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and
had it not been for Vassya, would not have noticed Yegorushka's
presence. Before five minutes had passed he was waving his arms
again, then describing to his companions the beauties of the
wedding anthem, "Lord, have Mercy," which he had remembered in
the night. He put the whip under his arm and waved both hands.
A mile from the village the waggons stopped by a well with a
crane. Letting his pail down into the well, black-bearded Kiruha
lay on his stomach on the framework and thrust his shaggy head,
his shoulders, and part of his chest into the black hole, so
that Yegorushka could see nothing but his short legs, which
scarcely touched the ground. Seeing the reflection of his head
far down at the bottom of the well, he was delighted and went
off into his deep bass stupid laugh, and the echo from the well
answered him. When he got up his neck and face were as red as
beetroot. The first to run up and drink was Dymov. He drank
laughing, often turning from the pail to tell Kiruha something
funny, then he turned round, and uttered aloud, to be heard all
over the steppe, five very bad words. Yegorushka did not
understand the meaning of such words, but he knew very well they
were bad words. He knew the repulsion his friends and relations
silently felt for such words. He himself, without knowing why,
shared that feeling and was accustomed to think that only drunk
and disorderly people enjoy the privilege of uttering such words
aloud. He remembered the murder of the grass snake, listened to
Dymov's laughter, and felt something like hatred for the man.
And as ill-luck would have it, Dymov at that moment caught sight
of Yegorushka, who had climbed down from the waggon and gone up
to the well. He laughed aloud and shouted:
"I say, lads, the old man has been brought to bed of a boy in
the night!"
Kiruha laughed his bass laugh till he coughed. Someone else
laughed too, while Yegorushka crimsoned and made up his mind
finally that Dymov was a very wicked man.
With his curly flaxen head, with his shirt opened on his chest
and no hat on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong;
in every movement he made one could see the reckless dare-devil
and athlete, knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put
his arms akimbo, talked and laughed louder than any of the rest,
and looked as though he were going to lift up something very
heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing so.
His mischievous mocking eyes glided over the road, the waggons,
and the sky without resting on anything, and seemed looking for
someone to kill, just as a pastime, and something to laugh at.
Evidently he was afraid of no one, would stick at nothing, and
most likely was not in the least interested in Yegorushka's
opinion of him. . . . Yegorushka meanwhile hated his flaxen
head, his clear face, and his strength with his whole heart,
listened with fear and loathing to his laughter, and kept
thinking what word of abuse he could pay him out with.
Panteley, too, went up to the pail. He took out of his pocket a
little green glass of an ikon lamp, wiped it with a rag, filled
it from the pail and drank from it, then filled it again,
wrapped the little glass in the rag, and then put it back into
his pocket.
"Grandfather, why do you drink out of a lamp?" Yegorushka asked
him, surprised.
"One man drinks out of a pail and another out of a lamp," the
old man answered evasively. "Every man to his own taste. . . .
You drink out of the pail -- well, drink, and may it do you
good. . . ."
"You darling, you beauty!" Vassya said suddenly, in a caressing,
plaintive voice. "You darling!"
His eyes were fixed on the distance; they were moist and
smiling, and his face wore the same expression as when he had
looked at Yegorushka.
"Who is it you are talking to?" asked Kiruha.
"A darling fox, . . . lying on her back, playing like a dog."
Everyone began staring into the distance, looking for the fox,
but no one could see it, only Vassya with his grey muddy-looking
eyes, and he was enchanted by it. His sight was extraordinarily
keen, as Yegorushka learnt afterwards. He was so long-sighted
that the brown steppe was for him always full of life and
interest. He had only to look into the distance to see a fox, a
hare, a bustard, or some other animal keeping at a distance from
men. There was nothing strange in seeing a hare running away or
a flying bustard -- everyone crossing the steppes could see
them; but it was not vouchsafed to everyone to see wild animals
in their own haunts when they were not running nor hiding, nor
looking about them in alarm. Yet Vassya saw foxes playing, hares
washing themselves with their paws, bustards preening their
wings and hammering out their hollow nests. Thanks to this
keenness of sight, Vassya had, besides the world seen by
everyone, another world of his own, accessible to no one else,
and probably a very beautiful one, for when he saw something and
was in raptures over it it was impossible not to envy him.
When the waggons set off again, the church bells were ringing
for service.
|
|
|
