Tales of the Wilderness

by Boris Pilniak

II

In the spring the rivers—now broad, free and mighty—overflowed their banks. Heavy waves broke up the face of the waters, which sent forth a deep, hoarse, subdued murmur, as restless and disquieting as the season itself. The snow thawed. The pine-trees showed resinous lights, and exhaled a strong, pungent odour.

In the day-time the sky was a broad expanse of blue; at dusk it had a soft murky hue and a melancholy attraction. In the heart of the woods, now that winter was over, the first deed of the beasts was being accomplished—birth. Eider-ducks, swans, and geese were crying noisily on the river.

At dusk the sky became greenish and murky, merging into a vast tent of deepest blue studded with a myriad of shining golden stars. Then the eider-ducks and swans grew silent and went to roost for the night, and the soft warm air was thrilled by the whines of bear-cubs and the cries of land-rails. It was then that the maidens assembled on the slope to sing of Lada and to dance their ancient dances, while strapping youths came forth from their winter dwellings in the woods and listened.

The slope down to the river was steep; below was the rustling sound of water among the reeds. Everything was wrapt in stillness, yet everywhere the throb and flow of life could be heard. The maidens sat huddled together on the top of the slope, where the granite and slate were covered with scanty moss and yellow grass.

They were dressed in gaily-coloured dresses: all of them strong and robust; they sang their love-songs—old and sad and free—and gazed into the gathering opalescent mists. Their songs seemed to overflow from their hearts, and were sung to the youths who stood around them like sombre, restive shadows, ogling and lustful, like the beasts in their forest-haunts.

This festive coupling-time had its law.

The youths came here to choose their wives; they quarrelled and fought, while the maidens remained listless, yielding to them in all. The young men ogled and fought and he who triumphed first chose his wife. Then he and she together retired from the festival.

III

Marina was twenty when she proceeded to the river-bank.

Her tall, somewhat heavy body was wonderfully moulded, with strong muscles and snowy skin. Her chest, back, hips, and limbs were sharply outlined; she was strong, supple, and well developed. Her round, broad breast rose high; her hair, eye-brows and eye-lashes were thick and dark. The pupils of her eyes were deep and liquid; her cheeks showed a flush of red. Her lips were soft—like a beast's—large, sensuous and rosy. She walked slowly, moving her long straight legs evenly, and slightly swaying from her hips….

She joined the maidens on the river slope.

They were singing their mysterious, alluring and illusive songs.

Marina mingled among the crowd of maidens, lay down upon her back, closed her dreamy eyes, and joined in the festive chorus. The maidens' souls became absorbed in the singing, and their song spread far and wide through all the shadowy recesses of the woods, like shining rays of sunlight. Their eyes closed in langour, their full- blooded bodies ached with a delicious sensation. Their hearts seemed to grow benumbed, the numbness spreading through their blood to their limbs; it deprived them of strength, and their thoughts became chaotic.

Marina stretched her limbs sensuously; then became absorbed in the singing, and she also sang. She felt strangely inert; only quivering at the sound of the lusty, excited voices of the youths.

Afterwards she lay on a couch in her suffocatingly close room; her hands were clasped behind her head; her bosom swelled. She stretched, opened her dark pensive eyes wide, compressed her lips, then sank again into the drowsy langour, lying thus for many hours.

She was twenty, and had grown up free and solitary—with the hunters, the woods, and the steep and the river—from her birth.

IV

Demid lived on his own plot of ground, which, like the village, stood on a hill above the river. But here the hill was higher and steeper, sweeping the edge of the horizon. The wood was nearer, and its grey- trunked cedars and pines rose from their beds of golden moss to shake their crests to the stars and stretch their dark-green forest hands right up to the house. The view was wide and sweeping from here: the dark, turbulent river, the marsh beyond, the deep-blue billowing woods fringing the horizon, the heavy lowering sky—all were clearly visible.

The house, made of huge pines, with timbered walls, plain white- washed ceilings and floors, was bestrewn with pelts of bears, elks, wolves, foxes, and ermines. Gunpowder and grape-shot lay on the tables. In the corners was a medley of lassoes, snares, and wolftraps. Some rifles hung round the walls. There was a strong pungent odour, as though all the perfumes of the woods were collected here. The house contained two rooms and a kitchen.

In the centre of one of the rooms stood a large, rough-hewn table; round it were some low wooden stools covered with bear-skin. This was Demid's own room; in the other was the young bear, Makar.

Demid lay motionless for a long time on his bear-skin bed, listening to the vibrations of his great body—how it lived and throbbed, how the rich blood coursed through its veins. Makar, the bear, approached, laid his heavy paws on his chest, and amicably sniffed at his body. Demid stroked the beast on its ear, and it seemed as if the man and animal understood each other. Outside the window loomed the wood.

Demid was rugged and broad-shouldered, a large, quiet, dark-eyed, good man. He smelt of the woods, and was strong and healthy. Like all the hunters, he dressed in furs and a rough, home-woven fabric streaked with red. He wore high, heavy boots made of reindeer hide, and his coarse, broad hands were covered with broken chilblains.

Makar was young, and, like all young things, he was foolish. He liked to roll about, and was often destructive—he would gnaw the nets and skins, break the traps, and lick up the gunpowder. Then Demid punished him, whereupon Makar would turn on his heel, make foolish grimaces, and whine plaintively.

V

Demid went to the maidens on the slope and took Marina to his plot of land. She became his wife.

VI

The dark-green, wind-swept grass grew sweet and succulent in summer. The sun seemed to shine from out a deep blue ocean of light. The nights were silvery, the sky seemed dissolved into a pale, pellucid mist; sunset and dawn co-mingled, and a white wavering haze crept over the earth. Here life was strong and swift, for it knew that its days were brief.

Marina was installed in Makar's room, and he was transferred to
Demid's.

Makar greeted Marina with an inhospitable snarl when he saw her for the first time; then, showing his teeth, he struck her with his paw. Demid beat him for this behaviour, and he quieted down. Then Marina made friends with him.

Demid went into the woods in the daytime, and Marina was left alone.

She decorated her room in her own fashion, with a crude, somewhat exaggerated, yet graceful, taste. She hung round in symmetrical order the skins and cloth hangings, brightly embroidered with red and blue cocks and reindeers. She placed an image of the God-Mother in the corner; she washed the floor; and her multi-coloured room—smelling as before of the woods—began to resemble a forest-chapel, where the forest folk pray to their gods.

In the pale-greenish twilight of the illimitable night, when only horn-owls cried in the woods and bear-cubs snarled by the river, Demid went in to Marina. She could not think—her mind moved slowly and awkwardly like a great lumbering animal—she could only feel, and in those warm, voluptuous, star-drenched nights she yielded herself to Demid, desiring to become one with him, his strength, and his passion.

The nights were pale, tremulous, and mysterious. There was a deep, heavy, nocturnal stillness. White spirals of mist drifted along the ground. Night-owls and wood spirits hooted. In the morning was a red blaze of glory as the great orb of day rose from the east into the azure vault of heaven.

The days flew by and summer passed.

VII

It snowed in September.

It had been noticeable, even in August, how the days drew in and darkened, how the nights lengthened and deepened. The wood all at once grew still and dumb; it seemed as though it were deserted. The air grew cold, and the river became locked in ice. The twilight was slow and lingering, its deepening shadows turning the snow and ice on the river to a keen, frosty blue.

Through the nights rang the loud, strange, fierce bellowing of the elks as they mated; the walls shook, and the hills re-echoed with their terrible roar.

Marina was with child in the autumn.

One night she woke before dawn. The room was stifling from the heat of the stove, and she could smell the bear. There was a faint glimmer of dawn, and the dark walls showed the window frames in a wan blue outline. Somewhere close by an old elk was bellowing: you could tell it was old by the hoarse, hissing notes of its hollow cries.

Marina sat up in bed. Her head swam, and she felt nauseated. The bear lay beside her; he was already awake and was watching her. His eyes shone with quiet, greenish lights; from outside, the thin crepuscular light crept into the room through little crevices.

Again Marina felt the nausea, and her head swam; the lights in Makar's eyes were re-enkindled in Marina's soul into a great, overwhelming joy that made her body quiver with emotion . . . Her heart beat like a snared bird—all was wavering and misty, like a summer morn.

She rose from her bed of bear-skin furs, and naked, with swift, awkward, uncertain steps, went in to Demid. He was still asleep—she put her burning arms about him and drew his head to her deep bosom, whispering to him softly:

"A child … it is the child…."

Little by little, the night lifted and in through the windows came the daylight. The elk ceased his bellowing The room filled with glancing morning shadows. Makar approached, sniffed, and laid his paws on the bed. Demid seized his collar with his free hand and patting him fondly said:

"That is right, Makar Ivanych—you know, don't you?" Then turning to
Marina, he added: "What do you think, Marinka? Doesn't he know?
Doesn't the old bear know, Marinka?"

Makar licked Demid's hand, and laid his head knowingly on his forepaws. The night had gone; rays of lilac-coloured light illumined the snow and entered the house. Round, red, and distant rose the sun. Below the hill lay the blue, ice-bound river, and away beyond it stretched the ribbed outline of the vast, marshy Siberian forest. Demid did not enter it that day, nor on many of the following days.

VIII

The winter descended.

The snow lay in deep layers, blue by day and night, lilac in the brief intervals of sunrise and sunset. The pale, powerless sun seemed far away and strange during the three short hours that it showed over the horizon. The rest of the time it was night. The northern lights flashed like quivering arrows across the sky, in their sublime and awful majesty. The frost lay like a veil over the earth, enveloping all in a dazzling whiteness in which was imprisoned every shade of colour under the sun. Crimsons, purples, softest yellows, tenderest greens, and exquisite blues and pinks flashed and quivered fiercely under the morning rays, shimmering in the brilliance. Over all hung the hush of the trackless desert, the stillness that betokened death!

Marina's eyes had changed—they were no longer dark, limpid, full of intoxication; they were wonderfully bright and clear. Her hips had widened, her body had increased, adding a new grace to her stature. She seldom went out, sitting for the most part in her room, which resembled a forest-chapel where men prayed to the gods. In the daytime she did her simple houskeeping—chopped wood, heated the stove, cooked meat and fish, helped Demid to skin the beasts he had slain, and to weed their plot of land. During the long evenings she spun and wove clothes for the coming babe. As she sewed she thought of the child, and sung and smiled softly.

An overwhelming joy possessed Marina when she thought of her approaching motherhood. Her heart beat faster and her happiness increased. Her own possible sufferings held no place in her thoughts.

In the lilac glow of dawn, when a round moon, solemn and immense, glowed in the south-western sky, Demid took his rifle and Finnish knife, and went on his sleigh into the forest.

The pine-trees and cedars stood starkly under their raiment of snow— mighty forest giants—beneath them clustered prickly firs, junipers and alders. The stillness was profound. Demid sped from trap to trap, from snare to snare, over the silent soundless snow. He strangled the beasts; he fired, and the crack of his gun resounded through the empty space. He sought for the trail of the elks and wolf-packs. He descended to the river and watched for otters, caught bewildered fish amidst the broken ice, and set his nets afresh. The scenes all round him were old and familiar. The majesty of day died down in the west on a flaming pyre of vivid clouds, and the quivering, luminous streamers of the north re-appeared.

Standing in his plot of ground in the evening, he cut up the fish and meat, hung it up to freeze, threw pieces to the bear, ate some himself, washed his hands in ice-cold water, and sat down beside Marina—big and rugged, his powerful legs wide apart, his hands resting heavily on his knees. The room became stifling with his presence. He smiled down quietly and good-naturedly at Marina.

The lamp shone cheerfully. Outside was snow, frost, and peace. Makar approached and lounged on the floor. There was an atmosphere of quiet joy and comfort in the chapel-like room. The walls cracked in the frost; some towels embroidered in red and blue with reindeer and cocks hung over them. Outside the frozen windows was darkness, cold, and night.

Demid rose from his bench, took Marina tenderly and firmly in his arms, and led her to the bed. The lamp flickered, and in the half- light Makar's eyes glowed. He had grown up during the winter and he was now an adult bear—with a sombre, solemn air and a kind of clumsy skill. He had a large flat nose and grave, good-natured eyes.

IX

It was the last days of December. There had been a merry Christmas festival and the snow had lain thick on house and slope. Wolves were now on the trail. Then Marina felt the first stirring of her child; soft, gentle movements, like the touch of eiderdown upon her body. She was filled with a triumphant joy, and pressed her hands softly and tenderly to her side; then sang a lullaby of how her son should become a great hunter and slay a thousand and three hundred elks, a thousand and three hundred bears, a thousand and three hundred ermines, and take the chief village beauty as his wife!

There was misty frost, the night, and stillness outside—the stillness that whispers of death. Wolves crept up to the plot of land, sat on their hind-legs and howled long and dismally at the sky.

In the spring the shores of the river were strewn with wild flocks of swans, geese, and eider-ducks. The forest resounded with the stir of the beasts. Its woody depths echoed with the noise of bears, elks, wolves, foxes, owls, and woodcocks. The herbage began to sprout and flourish. The nights now drew in, and the days were longer. Dawn and sunset were lilac and lingering. The twilight fell in pale green, shimmering floods of light, and as it deepened and spread the village maidens gathered again on the river slope and sang their songs of Lada, the Spring God.

In the morning the sun rose in a glory of golden splendour and swam into the limpid blue heavens. There, enthroned, it spent the many hours of spring. Then came the Easter Festival when, according to the legend, the sun smiled and the people exchanged red eggs as its symbol.

X

On this Festival, Marina became a mother.

That night the bear left Demid. He must surely have scented the spring and gone into the forest to find himself a mate.

He left late at night, after breaking down the door. It was dark. A scarcely noticeable streak of light lay over the eastern horizon. Somewhere afar the village maidens were singing their songs of Lada.

A THOUSAND YEARS

"LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD."—Matthew, ch. vii.

It was night time when Prince Constantine arrived at his brother's little cabin. Young Vilyashev himself opened the door, and throughout the brief conversation that ensued they remained in darkness—not even a candle was lighted. Tall, lean, cadaverous, dressed in a much- worn day suit, his cap under his arm, Constantine stonily listened to Vilyashev's terse account of their sister's last moments.

"She died peacefully," the young man told his brother, "and she was quite calm to the end, for she believed in God. But she could not rid herself of memories of the past. How could she when the present shows such an awful contrast? Famine, scurvy, typhus, sorrow brood over the countryside. Our old home is the hands of strangers: we ourselves are outcasts living in a peasant's cabin. Imagine what this meant to a delicately nurtured woman! Men are wild beasts, brother."

"There were three of us," Constantine said with quiet bitterness— "you, Natalia, and myself. It is ended! I travelled here in a cattle- truck, walking from the station on foot—and was too late for the funeral."

"She was buried yesterday. She knew from the first she was dying, and would not stir a step from here."

"Poor girl," sighed Constantine. "She had lived here all her life."

He left abruptly without a word of farewell, and they did not meet again until the next evening: both had spent the day wandering about the valleys.

At dawn the following morning Vilyashev ascended a steep hill; on the flat summit of a tumulus that crowned it he observed an eagle tearing a pigeon to pieces. At his approach the bird flew up into the clear, empty sky, towards the east, emitting a low, deep, unforgettable cry that echoed dolefully over the fragrant fields.

From the hill and tumulus could be seen a vast panorama of meadows, thickets, villages, and white steeples of churches. A golden sun rose and swung slowly above the hill, gilding the horizon, the clouds, hill-ridges, and the tumulus; steeping them in wave upon wave of shimmering yellow light.

Below, in wisps and long slender ribbons, a rosy mist crept over the fields; it covered everything with the softest of warmly tinted light. There was a morning frost, and thin sheets of ice crackled in the dykes. An invigorating breeze stirred gently, as if but half- awakened, and tenderly ruffled fronds of bracken, sliding softly upward from moss and roots, tremulously caressing the sweet-smelling grass, to sweep grandly over the hill-crest in ripples and eddies, increasing in volume as it sped.

The earth was throbbing: it panted like a thirsty wood-spirit. Cranes sent their weird, mournful cries echoing over the undulating plains and valleys; birds of passage were a-wing. It was the advent of teeming, tumultuous, perennial spring.

Bells tolled mournfully over the fragrant earth. Typhus, famine, death spread like a poisonous vapour through the villages, through the peasants' tiny cabins. The windowless huts waved the rotting straw of their thatch in the wind as they had done five hundred years ago, when they had been taken down every spring to be carried further into the forests—ever eastward—to the Chuvash tribe.

In every hut there was hunger. In every hut there was death. In every one the fever-stricken lay under holy ikons, surrendering their souls to the Lord in the same calm, stoical and wise spirit in which they had lived.

Those who survived bore the dead to the churches, and went in consternation and dread through the fields carrying crosses and banners. They dug trenches round the villages and sprinkled the dykes with Holy Water; they prayed for bread and for preservation from death, while the air resounded with the tolling of bells.

Nevertheless, at eventide the maidens came to the tumulus arrayed in their home-woven dresses, and sang their old, old songs, for it was spring and the mating season for all living things. Yet they sang alone, for their youths had been given to the Moloch of war: they had gone to Uralsk, to Ufa, and to Archangel. Only old men were left to plough the fields in the spring.

Vilyashev stood dejectedly on the crest of the hill, a solitary, lonely figure outlined darkly against the clear blue background of sky and distance. He gazed unseeingly into space; thought and movement alike were suspended. He was only conscious of pain. He knew all was ended. Thus his errant forbear from the north may have stood five hundred years ago, leaning upon his lance, a sword in his chain girdle.

Vilyashev pictured him with a beard like Constantine's. He had had glory and conquest awaiting him; he strode the world a victorious warrior! But now—little Natalya who had died of famine-typhus had realized that they were no longer needed, neither she, nor Constantine, nor himself! She was calling to him across the great gulf; it was as if her words were trembling on the air, telling him the hour had struck. The Vilyashev's power had been great; it had been achieved by force; by force it had been overthrown, the vulture- nest was torn to pieces. Men had become ravenous.

The Prince descended and made his way to the river Oka, ten miles distant, wandering all day through the fields and dales—a giant full seven feet high, with a beard to his waist. The heavy earth clung to his boots. At last he flung himself on to the ground, burying his face in his hands, and lay motionless, abandoning himself to an anxious, sorrowful reverie.

Snow still lay on the lowlands, but the sky was warm, pellucid, expansive. The Oka broadened out rushing in a mighty, irresistible torrent towards its outlet, and inundating its banks. Purling brooks danced and sang their way through the valleys. The wind breathed a feeling of expectancy—sweet, tender, evanescent, like the day-dream of a Russian maiden who has not yet known the secrets of love. With delicate gossamer fingers it gently caressed the barren hill that frowned above the Oka, uttering its gentle poignantly-stirring song at the same time.

Larks warbled. From all around echoed the happy cries of birds; the vernal air thrilled and vibrated in great running arpeggios to the wonder-music of the winds. The river alone preserved a rigid silence.

Vilyashev brooded a long while beside the swiftly running waters; but at sunset's approach he rose hastily, and returned to the tumulus. The sky was wrapped in its evening shroud of deep, mysterious darkness. Set brightly against the sombre background of the tumulus- crowned hill stood shining silver birch trees and dark shaggy firs: they now looked wan and spectral in the fading light. For a fleeting moment the world glowed like a huge golden ball; then the whole countryside was one vast vista of green, finally merging into a deep illimitable purple. Down the valley crept the mist, trailing its filmy veils over point and peak and ridge. The air throbbed with the cries of geese and bitterns. The hush of the spring-time night set in and covered the world—that hush that is more vibrant than thunder, that gathers the forest sounds and murmurs to itself, and weaves them all into a tense, vernal harmony.

Prince Constantine's gaunt form struck a sharp note of discord as he walked straight up to the tumulus. His presence breathed conflict and stress that accorded ill with the universal peace of nature.

He greeted his brother, and began to smoke; the light from his cigarette illumined his eagle nose and bony brow; his quiet grey eyes gleamed with a wintry look.

"One longs to fly away like a bird in the spring," he murmured; then added with a sharp change of tone; "How did Natalya die?"

"In her right mind, thank God! But, she had lived torn by a madness of hatred and contempt, loathing all, despising all."

"What wonder, look around you!" cried Constantine. He hesitated a moment then said softly: "To-morrow is the Annunciation—the recollection of that festival made me think. Look around!"

The tumulus stood out sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing 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 space.

"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 grass? 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 God, oh yes, men still believe in God! 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 butter, 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 repetition of schisms, deceptions, stupidity, superstition 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 butt-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 muffled 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 gods 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 god Perun. They called on Jesus and the Mother of God. 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 space where the shining 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!'"

"In the far distance beyond the water the wolves howled.

"At nightfall Ibn-Sadif joined the Prince who was directing the ancient funeral rites. The Arab raised his hands to the sky; his white garments flew round him like the wings of a bird; in a shrill, eerie voice like an eagle's he cried to the fierce bearded men gathered around:

"'This night just a thousand years ago, the Archangel told the Mother of God in Nazareth of the coming of your God, Jesus. Woe! A thousand years ago! Can it be?'

"Thus spoke Ibn-Sadif. None in the camp knew of the Annunciation, of that fair, sacred day when the birds will not even build their nests lest their labour desecrate its holiness."

Constantine paused; then lifted his head and listened.

"Do you hear, brother? Bells are tolling! Do you hear how the dogs are barking?… And, just as of yore, death, famine, barbarity, cannibalism shadow the earth. I am heart stricken!"

The night deepened to an intense blue; a faint chill stole through the air. Prince Constantine sat down resting his head on his stick. Suddenly he rose:

"It is late and cold; let us go. I am miserable, for I have lost my faith. This reversion to savagery is horrible and bewildering. What are we? What can we do when barbarians surround us? The loneliness and desolation of our plight! I feel utterly lost, Vilyashev. We are no good to anyone. Not so long ago our ancestors used to flog peasants in the stables and abduct maidens on their wedding-nights. How I curse them! They were wild beasts! Ibn-Sadif spoke the truth … a thousand years—and still the Mark of the Beast!"

The Prince's cry was low; but deep, and wild. Vilyashev answered quietly:

"I have the strength of a mailed knight, Constantine. I could smash, rend, and trample the peasants underfoot as my forebears did, but they have wound themselves round my heart; they are like little children!"

They went along by the hill; the tumulus was left behind. A light sparkling frost powdered the rich loamy earth. Through the darkness, swimming with purple shadows, came a great continuous murmur from the ancient forests. A pair of cranes cried softly as they roosted for the night, and a pearl grey mist rolled down to the meadows and enveloped them in innumerable murkyscarves. The brothers entered a village as still as the grave. Somewhere beyond, a dog barked. Not a sound broke the utter, solemn silence as they walked along.

"There is typhus and barbarity in every peasant's hut," Constantine muttered. Then he, too, lapsed into silence, listening.

Beyond some huts on a village by-path girls' voices could be heard singing an Annunciation hymn. In the vasts depths of silence it sounded solemn, simple, sane. The two princes felt it to be as immutable as the Spring with its law of birth. They remained standing there a long while, resting first on one foot, then on the other. Each felt that mankind's blood and energy still flowed bright and unsullied despite the world upheaval.

"Good! That is infinitely touching. That will not die," declared
Vilyashev. "It has come down to us through the Ages."

"Aye," replied Prince Constantine bitterly, "wonderfully good.
Pathetically good. Abominably good!"

From the bend in the road the girls appeared in their coloured aprons; they passed decorously in pairs, singing:

"Rejoice, O Virgin Mother! Blessed art Thou amongst women"….

The earth was moist and exhaled a sweet, delicate odour of rich, fresh vegetation. Reluctantly, at last, the two brothers resumed their way. They heard the weird midnight-crowing of the cock. A pale silvery moon—the last before Easter Day—rose gently in the East, letting down its luminous web from the sky, flinging back the dark shadows of the night.

On reaching home, the cabin seemed damp and cold and inexpressibly dreary—as on the day Natalya died; when the door had slammed incessantly. The brothers went hastily to their rooms without speaking or lighting up. Constantine lay on Natalya's bed.

At dawn he awoke Vilyashev.

"I am going. Goodbye! It is ended! I am going out of Russia, out of Europe. Here, where were we born, they have called us their masters, their fathers—carrion crows, vultures! Like the fierce Russian tribes of old, they have let loose the hounds of destruction on wolves and hares and men alike! Woe!… Ibn-Sadif!"

Constantine lighted a candle on a table, and crossed the room. In the strange blue light of dawn his livid shadow fell on the whitewashed wall. Vilyashev was amazed; the shadow was so extraordinarily blue and ghastly—it seemed as if his brother were dead.