His eyes had grown once more young and clear, and, seizing my hand in his strong and agreeably warm fingers, he continued:
"Why so? For the very simple reason that I cannot respect myself when I can learn nothing, simply nothing, about my fellows."
Moving nearer to me, he added in a mysterious undertone:
"In this Russia of ours none of us really knows why he has come into existence. True, each of us knows that he was born, and that he is alive, and that one day he will die; but which of us knows the reason why all that is so?"
Through renewed excitement, its colour had come back to the Lieutenant's face, and his gestures became so rapid as to cause the ring on his finger to flash through the air like the link of a chain. Also, I was able to detect the fact that on the small, neat wrist under his left cuff, there was a bracelet finished with a medallion.
"All this, my good sir, is because (partially through the fact that men forget the point, and partially through the fact that that point fails to be understood aright) the WORK done by a man is concealed from our knowledge. For my own part, I have an idea, a scheme—yes, a scheme—in two words, a, a—"
"N-n-o-u, n-n-o-u!" the bell of the monastery tolled over the tombs in languid, chilly accents.
"—a scheme that every town and every village, in fact, every unit of homogeneous population, should keep a record of the particular unit's affairs, a, so to speak, 'book of life.' This 'book of life' should be more than a list of the results of the unit's labour; it should also be a living narrative of the workaday activities accomplished by each member of the unit. Eh? And, of course, the record to be compiled without official interference—solely by the town council or district administration, or by a special 'board, of life and works' or some such body, provided only that the task be not carried out by nominees of the GOVERNMENT. And in that record there should be entered everything—that is to say, everything of a nature which ought to be made public concerning every man who has lived among us, and has since gone from our midst."
Here the Lieutenant stretched out his hand again in the direction of the tombs.
"My right it is," he added, "to know how those folk there spent their lives. For it is by their labours and their thoughts, and even on the product of their bones, that I myself am now subsisting. You agree, do you not?"