Part 9 (1/2)
There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gus.h.i.+ng upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley lay beneath--empty, boundless, a region of illimitable s.p.a.ce.
”Do you hear?” Constantine asked.
”Hear what?”
”The earth's groans.”
”Yes, it is waking. Do you hear the soft stir and shudder among the roots of the flowers and gra.s.s? The whisper of the trees, the tremor of leaves and fronds? It is the earth's joyful welcome to the Spring.”
Constantine shook his head: ”Not joy ... sorrow. The air is permeated with the scent of decay. To-morrow will see the Annunciation, a great festival, little brother, and that recollection has set me thinking.
Look round you! Everywhere are savages--men gone mad with blood and terror. Death, famine, barbarity ride the world! Idolatry is still rampant: to this day men believe in wood-spirits, witches and the devil--and G.o.d, oh yes, men still believe in G.o.d! They bury their dead when the bodies should be burnt. They seek to drive away typhus by religious processions!”
He laughed mockingly.
”I stood the whole time in the train to avoid infection. But the people do not even think of that: their one thought is bread. I wanted to sleep through the journey; but a wretched woman, starving before my very eyes, prevented me. She said she was going to a sister so as to get milk to drink. She made me feel sick; she could not say bread, meat, milk, and b.u.t.ter, but called them 'brud,' 'mate,'
'mulk,' and 'buzzer'. 'Ah, for a bit of buzzer--how I will ate it and enjoy it!' she kept muttering.
”I tell you, Vilyashev, the people are bewildered. The world is returning to savagery. Remember the history of all times and of all peoples--an endless repet.i.tion of schisms, deceptions, stupidity, superst.i.tion and cannibalism--not so long ago--as late as the Thirty Years War--there was cannibalism in Europe; human flesh was cooked and eaten.... Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! How fine they sound! But better for Fraternity ever to remain a mere ideal than to be introduced by the b.u.t.t-end of a rifle.”
Constantine took off his cap, and his bony forehead seemed pale and green in the ghostly darkness of the night. His eyes were deep sunken, and for an instant his face resembled a skull.
”I am bewildered, brother; I feel so utterly alone! I am wretched and disillusioned. In what does man transcend the beast?...” He turned towards the west, and a cruel, rapacious, predatory look flitted over his face; he took a piece of bread from his overcoat pocket and handed it to Vilyashev:
”Eat, brother; you are hungry.”
From the valley uprose the m.u.f.fled chime of a church bell, and a low baying of dogs could be heard round the village settlements. Great gusts of wind swept over the earth, which shook and trembled beneath their rush. In thin, high, piercing notes it ascended--the song of the winds to the setting sun.
”Listen,” continued Constantine; ”I was thinking of the Annunciation ...
and I had a dream.
”The red glow of sunset was slowly fading. Around stretched huge, slumbering, primeval forests, shadow-filled bogs, and wide green marshes. Wolves howled mournfully through the woods and the valleys.
Carts were creaking; horses were neighing; men were shouting--this wild race of the Ancient Russians was marching to collect tribute.
Down a forest roadway they went, from the Oka to the rivers Sozh and Desna.
”A Prince pitched his camp on a hill: his son lay dying with the slowly-sinking sunlight. They prayed to the G.o.ds to spare the princeling. They burned youths and maidens at the stake. They cast men into the river to appease the water-spirit. They invoked the ancient Slavic G.o.d Perun. They called on Jesus and the Mother of G.o.d.
In vain! In the terrible, lurid light of that vernal evening the princeling died.
”Then they slew his horse and his wife, and raised the tumulus.
”In the Prince's suite was an Arab scholar named Ibn-Sadif. He was as thin as an arrow, pliant as a bow, as dark as pitch, with the eyes and nose of an eagle under his white turban. He was a wanderer over the earth, for, learned in all else, he still sought knowledge of men and of countries. He had gone up by the Volga to the Kama and to the Bulgarians. Now he was wending his way with the Russians to Kiev and Tsargrad.
”Ibn-Sadif ascended the hill, and beheld a blazing pile. On a log of wood lay a maiden with her left breast ripped open; flames licked her feet. Around were sombre, bearded men with swords in their hands. An ancient Shaman priest was circling in front of the funeral pyre and shouting furiously.
”Ibn-Sadif turned aside from the fire, and descended the forest pathway to the river.
”The sky was thickly studded with stars that shone like points of living gold in the warm deeps of the night; the water gave back a glittering reflection. The Arab gazed up at that vast s.p.a.ce where the s.h.i.+ning constellations swam towards the bosom of the Infinite, then down at their fantastically mirrored image in the river's depths--and cried aloud:
”'Woe! Woe!'”