Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

“In place of this I tried to make my lessons as interesting as possible. My evenings were free.... It was boring. I’d begun to get accustomed to my young circle. And now—nothing. I went for my books. Worked like a dog and kept thinking: this must be interesting to them; it will be new and it answers such and such questions.... I read and dug in my books, collected everything interesting, attractive, that pushed apart the official walls and the official lessons.... I kept thinking of those conversations.... And I thought I was getting results.... I remember the whole class almost died from zeal.... Suddenly the director began to attend the lessons. He’d come in, sit down, and listen without saying a word.... You know what happened next. You act as if it were nothing, but both you and the class feel it’s not a lesson but a sort of investigation.... Again delicate questions on the side: ‘Really, excuse me, but where did you get this? Out of what official text book? How do you think this agrees with the courses of study?’

“I’ll be brief.... In a word, the enthusiasm finally died out of me.... The class became merely a class: the living people began to retire further and further; they disappeared in a sort of fog.... I lost intellectual contact. Remarks ... plan ... the enumeration of the stylistic beauties of a live work. In this there are twelve beauties. First ... second ... and so on.... It fitted the program.... That is, you understand, I didn’t notice how I dried up just like Budnikov.

“Anyway this young fellow finished his course and went to the capital.... He didn’t get into the university right away. It was the time of secret denunciations.... Perhaps my lectures were suspicious. To sum up,—he lost a year. He wrote his mother that he had entered and had a fellowship, but he really beat his way along, was poor and probably got disgusted. Then he began to tramp. Suddenly he had a great sorrow: his mother died before he could get home. As soon as her son left home, she began to waste away.... The guiding star of her life, so to speak, disappeared from the horizon—and she lost the power of resistance. Died of consumption, you know, quickly, almost gladly. ‘Vanya doesn’t need me any more,’ she’d say. ‘I got him on the right track, thank God. He’ll get along now.’ She said the Nunc Dimittis and died. Soon after they found the honored father in a ditch. And my Rogov was an orphan....

“The old woman was really in too much of a hurry; her son really needed her more than ever. He learned well and eagerly, so to speak, without wasting his time, as if he were hurrying somewhere. When he heard of his mother’s death, something broke in his soul.... In turn she seemed to have been the only ideal in his life. ‘I’ll finish, get on my feet, revive my shattered truth: even though she’s ready to die, mother’ll know that there is divine blessing, love, and gratitude.... For a year, a month, even a week.... An instant even, for her heart to be filled and melted with joy.’ Suddenly, in place of everything, the grave.... A crash ... and it’s all over! There’s no need of gratitude, nothing to go back to, to correct.... You’ve got to have strength to stand such a temptation without being shattered.... You need faith in the general meaning of life.... It mustn’t seem to you but blind chance....

“He didn’t hold on. He had no support.... He changed, got rough, and began to drink in with his wine a poisonous feeling of insult and of the injustice of fate.... So it went. He threw up his examinations—what was the use of getting a diploma? He drifted along like an empty boat on a river.... He came back to our city.... Perhaps he wanted to tie up by his mother’s grave.... But how could that help him?... If he’d tried to find some meaning, that would have been another thing.... And so ... he got in court a certificate, ‘to travel’ on business, and followed his father’s footsteps. He lived a dissolute life, spent his time in saloons, with worthless people, and engaged in business of the most shady character. One year of this life,—and he’d become a drunken, impudent bum, the enfant terrible of our peaceful city, a menace to the citizens. The devil knows how, but the bashful boy became insolent and diabolically clever: every one in the city was afraid of him.... It’s strange, but there isn’t a city in Russia without its Rogov. A sort of a state character. It was quiet everywhere, peaceful slumber, idyllic calm, M. Budnikov walking along the streets, obstinate, conceited, counting his steps.... Evenings, especially on holidays, these poetic murmurs, and there’s a lot of noise from some saloon like our ‘On the Crags,’ and some misshapen, sick and desperate soul carousing.... Satellites around, of course. This is a natural and necessary detail to fill up the provincial corners, so to speak....

“Rogov met me soon after he turned up.... He bowed shyly and went to one side, especially when he was drunk. One time I met him, spoke to him, and asked him in.... He came ... sober, serious, even bashful ... from old habit, of course.... But we didn’t stick together. Memories parted us: I was a young teacher with a lively faith in my calling, with lively feelings and words: He was a young man, still pure and respecting my moral authority.... Now he was Vanka Rogov, a Tikhodol bum, engaged in shady business.... And I.... In a word, we seemed to be parted by a solid wall: the main reason of all I won’t mention. I felt that I had to shatter the barrier, tell him something that would reach his soul and control it as I used to.... He seemed to be waiting for this in terror: waiting for the cruel blow.... His eyes showed his pain and expectation.... I didn’t have the strength. It was gone, ... lost probably when for the first time we parted in shame....

“I had to watch like a sympathetic witness, so to speak, how this young fellow degraded himself, grew fast, drank, and defiled himself.... He got insolent, lost all sense of shame. Then I heard that Rogov was an extortioner and begging. Business was poor; he was on the border between the merely offensive and the criminal. He was as clever as an acrobat and laughed at everything. In two or three years he was absolutely transformed. He had become a menacing, dirty, and very unpleasant figure.

“Sometimes he’d come when he was drunk.... It’s strange: but I seemed to feel more at home when he was that way.... It simplified matters, his fault was evident, and it was easier to draw a moral. I remember after one of his descents into the loathsome, I said to him:

“‘This and that’s not right, Rogov.’

“He shrugged his shoulders, turned away his eyes, as if he was afraid of a moral beating; then he shook his hair, looked me straight in the eye, obviously relying on his impudence: