“Take that!”
Chelkash gasped, put his hands to his head, staggered, swung round to face Gavrila and fell prone on the sand. Gavrila gazed at the prostrate man dumbfounded. He saw his leg move, he saw him try to raise his head and then stretch out and tremble like a taut string. And then Gavrila dashed off, as fast as his legs could carry him, into the distance, where a shaggy black cloud hung over the misty steppe, and where it was dark. The waves surged up on the sandy beach, merged with it and surged back again. The surf hissed, and the air was filled with spray.
Rain fell at first slowly, but soon in heavy dense streaks, pouring down from the sky. And the streaks wove an entire net of water threads, a net which at once covered the expanses of steppe and sea. Gavrila vanished in this net. For a long time nothing was visible except the rain, and the long body of the man lying on the sand on the seashore. But out of the rain Gavrila reappeared, running as fast as a bird upon the wing. He ran up to Chelkash, dropped to his knees in front of him and turned him over on the sand. His hand came in contact with something warm, red and sticky.... He shuddered and started back with horror written on his pallid face.
“Brother, get up!” he whispered into Chelkash’s ear amidst the pattering of the rain.
Chelkash came to, pushed Gavrila away and said in a hoarse voice: “Go away! ...”
“Brother! forgive me! It was the devil who tempted me ...” whispered Gavrila in a trembling voice, kissing Chelkash’s hand.
“Go.... Go away ...” gasped Chelkash.
“Take this sin from my soul! ... Please! Forgive! ...”
“For.... Go away! ... Go to hell!” Chelkash suddenly shouted, sitting up. His face was pale and angry, his eyes were dull and heavy, and the lids drooped as if he very much wanted to sleep. “What else do you want? You’ve done your job.... Now go! Clear out!”
And he lunged at grief-stricken Gavrila with his foot, but the effort was too much for him, and he would have sunk back to the sand had not Gavrila put his arm round his shoulders. Chelkash’s face was now on a level with Gavrila’s. Both were pale and horrible to look at.
“Pht!” and Chelkash spat into his hireling’s wide-open eyes.
Gavrila wiped his eyes with his sleeve and whispered:
“Do what you like.... I shan’t say a word. Forgive me, for the sake of Christ!”
“Worm! ... You haven’t got guts for anything! ...” shouted Chelkash contemptuously, and then, tearing his blouse from under his coat, he began silently to bandage his head, now and again grinding his teeth with pain. At last he said through his clenched teeth. “Did you take the money?”
“No, I didn’t take it, brother! I don’t want it! It only causes trouble! ...”
Chelkash put his hand into the pocket of his coat, drew out the roll of bills, took a rainbow-coloured one from it and put it back in his pocket, and threw the rest at Gavrila, saying:
“Take this and clear out!”
“I won’t take it, brother! . . . I can’t! Forgive me!”
“Take it, I tell you! . . .” roared Chelkash, rolling his eyes horribly.
“Forgive me . . . and then I’ll take it . . .” said Gavrila timidly, dropping down on the rain-drenched sand at Chelkash’s feet.
“Liar! You will take it! I know you will, you worm!” said Chelkash in a confident voice. Pulling Gavrila’s head up by the hair, he pushed the money into his face and said:
“Take it! Take it! You’ve earned it! Take it. Don’t be afraid! Don’t be ashamed of having nearly killed a man! Nobody would punish you for getting rid of a man like me. They would even thank you for it if they got to know of it. Take it!”
Seeing that Chelkash was joking, Gavrila felt relieved. He grasped the money tightly in his hand and enquired in a tearful voice:
“But you do forgive me, brother, don’t you, eh?”
“Angel! ...” answered Chelkash mockingly in the same tone of voice. Rising and swaying on his feet, he said: “Forgive? There’s nothing to forgive! You tried to do me in today, and I might try to do you in tomorrow.”
“Ekh, brother, brother!” sighed Gavrila, mournfully shaking his head.
Chelkash stood in front of him with a queer smile on his face; and the rag on his head, gradually becoming red, began to look like a Turkish fez.
The rain was now pouring down in torrents. The sea murmured with a hollow sound, and the waves beat furiously and angrily upon the shore.
The two men remained silent.
“Well, good-bye!” said Chelkash ironically, walking off.
He staggered, his legs trembled, and he held his head in a queer way, as if afraid it would drop off.
“Forgive me, brother!” Gavrila begged once again.
“Never mind!” answered Chelkash coldly, continuing on his way.
He staggered on, holding his head with his left hand and slowly twirling his yellow moustache with the right.
Gavrila gazed after him until he vanished in the curtain of rain, which was now pouring from the clouds more densely than ever, in thin, endless streaks, and enveloping the steppe with impenetrable gloom, the colour of steel.
He then took off his soaking cap, crossed himself, looked at the money that he grasped tightly in his hand, heaved a deep sigh of relief, put the money inside his blouse and strode firmly along the beach, in the direction opposite to that in which Chelkash had gone.
The sea howled and hurled large, ponderous waves upon the sandy shore, smashing them into spray and foam. The rain beat heavily upon the water and the land.... The wind shrieked.... The air all around was filled with whining, roaring, and rumbling.... The rain blotted out both sea and sky.
Soon the rain and the spray from the waves washed away the red stain on the spot where Chelkash had lain, and washed out the tracks that Chelkash and the young lad had made on the sandy beach.... And nothing was left on the deserted seashore to remind one of the little drama in which these two men had been the actors.
MAKAR CHUDRA
A COLD wet wind blew from the sea, wafting over the steppes the pensive melody of the splashing surf and the rustle of shrubbery on the beach. Now and then its gusts brought shrivelled yellow leaves and whirled them into the flickering flames of the campfire. The gloom of autumnal night around us quivered and receded apprehensively, disclosing for a brief moment the endless steppe on the left, the boundless sea on the right, and opposite me the figure of Makar Chudra, the old Gypsy, who was looking after the horses of his Gypsy camp pitched within fifty paces of where we sat.
Heedless of the cold blasts that blew open his Caucasian coat and mercilessly buffeted his bared hairy chest, he reclined in a graceful vigorous pose with his face towards me, drawing methodically at his huge pipe, emitting thick puffs of smoke through his mouth and nose, staring out over my head into the deathly hushed darkness of the steppes, talking incessantly and making not a single movement to shield himself from the cruel gusts of wind.
“So you’re on the tramp? That’s fine! You’ve made a splendid choice, my lad. That’s the way: trot around and see things, and when you’ve seen all you want, lie down and die—that’s all!
“Life? Other people?” he went on, having lent a sceptical ear to my protest about his “that’s all.” “H’m. Why should that worry you? Aren’t you Life? Other people live without you and’ll live their lives without you. Do you imagine anybody needs you? You’re neither bread nor a stick, and nobody wants you.
“To learn and teach, you say? But can you learn how to make people happy? No, you cannot. You get grey hairs first before talking about teaching. Teach what? Every one knows what he wants. Those that are cleverer take what there is to take, the sillier ones get nothing, but every man learns himself.
“They’re a curious lot, those people of yours. All herded together and treading on each other’s toes when there’s so much room in the world,” he waved a sweeping hand towards the steppes. “And toiling away all the time. What for? Whom for? Nobody knows. You see a fe
llow ploughing, and think—there he is sweating out his strength drop by drop on that land, then he’ll lie down in it and rot away. He leaves nothing after him, he sees nothing from that field of his and dies as he was born—a fool.
“D’you mean to say he was born to dig the earth and die without having managed to dig a grave for himself? Does he know what freedom is? Has he any idea of the vast and glorious steppe? Does the music of the steppe gladden his heart? He’s a slave, from the moment he is born, a slave all his life long, and that’s all! What can he do for himself? All he can do is to hang himself, if he learned a little sense.
“Now look at me; at fifty-eight I’ve seen so much that if you’d write it down on paper it would fill a thousand bags like the one you’ve got there. You just ask me what places I haven’t been to? There aren’t such places. You’ve got no idea of the places I’ve been to. That’s the way to live—gad about the world, and that’s all! Don’t stay long in one place—it’s not worth it! Like day and night that chase each other around the world, you keep chasing yourself away from thoughts of life, so as not to grow sick of it. Once you stop to think you’ll get sick of life—that’s how it always happens. It happened to me too. Humph! So it did, my lad.
“I was in prison, in Galicia. What am I living on this earth for?—I started to mope, feeling sort of dreary—it’s dreary in prison, my lad, ever so dreary! And I felt sick at heart when I looked out of the window at the fields, so sick as though some one were gripping and wrenching my heart. Who can say what he lives for? No one can say it, my lad! And it’s no use asking yourself about it. Live, and that’s all. Go about and look around, and you’ll never be bored. I very nearly hung myself by my belt that time that’s a fact!
“Huh! I spoke to a man once. He was a serious man, one of yours, a Russian. You must live, he says, not the way you want, but according to the word of God. Obey the Lord and he will give you everything you ask for. He himself was all in rags and holes. I told him to ask God for a new suit of clothes. He fell into a rage and drove me away, cursing. And he’d just been telling me that one should forgive and love his fellow creatures. He might have forgiven me if what I said offended his lordship. There’s a teacher for you! They teach you to eat less, while they themselves eat ten times a day.”
He spat into the fire and fell silent, while refilling his pipe. The wind moaned plaintively and softly, the horses whinnied in the darkness, and the tender passionate strains of the dumka melody floated up from the Gypsy camp. The beautiful Nonka, Makar’s daughter, was singing. I knew that deep throaty-toned voice of hers, that always sounded so strange, discontented and imperious, whether she sang a song or said “good day.” The warm pallor of her dark-skinned face was fixed in a look of queenly hauteur, and the deep pools of her dark brown eyes shone with a realization of her own irresistible loveliness and disdain for everything that was not she.
Makar held out his pipe.
“Take a smoke! She sings well, that lass, eh? I should say so! Would you like a girl like that to love you? No? That’s right! Never believe girls, and keep away from them. Girls find kissing better and more pleasant than I do smoking a pipe, but once you’ve kissed her say good-bye to your liberty. She’ll bind you to her by invisible strings which you’ll never be able to break, and you’ll lay your soul at her feet. That’s a fact! Beware of the girls! They’re all liars! She’ll say she loves you more’n anything in the world, but you just prick her with a pin and she’ll break your heart. I know a lot about their kind, I do! Well, my lad, d’you want me to tell you a story, a true story? Try to remember it if you can, and it’s a free bird you’ll be all your life.
“Once upon a time there was a young Gypsy, a young Gypsy named Loiko Zobar. All Hungary and Bohemia and Slavonia and all around the sea everybody knew him—he was a fine lad! There wasn’t a village in those parts, but where a half-dozen or so of the inhabitants didn’t swear to God they’d kill him. But Loiko went on living, and if he took a fancy to a horse, Zobar’d be curvetting about on that horse even if you was to put a regiment of soldiers to guard it! Ah! He wasn’t afraid of anybody, not likely! Why, if the prince of devils with all his pack came to him, he’d as likely as not stick a knife in him, and he’d certainly curse him roundly and send the whole pack off with a flea in its ear—you can take that from me!
“And all the Gypsy camps knew him or had heard of him. All he loved was horses, and nothing more, and even then not for long—he’d ride ‘em a bit then sell ’em, and the money was anybody’s for the asking. He had nothing that he cherished—if you wanted his heart he’d tear it out of his breast and give it to you, as long as it made you happy. That’s the kind he was, my lad!
“Our caravan was wandering at the time through Bukowina—that was about ten years ago. Once, on a night in spring, we were sitting around—myself, the old soldier Danilo who fought under Kossuth, and old Noor and all the others and Radda, Danilo’s daughter.
“You know my girl Nonka, don’t you? A beautiful maid she is! Well, you couldn’t compare her to Radda—too great an honour! There aren’t any words to describe that girl Radda. Maybe her beauty could be played on the violin, and even then only by a person who knew that violin as well as he did his own soul.
“She seared the hearts of many a fine lad she did, aye, many a fine lad! In Morava a magnate, an old, shock-headed man saw her and was struck all of a heap. Sat on his horse and stared, shivering as with the ague. He was pranked out like the devil on a holiday, in a rich Ukrainian coat embroidered with gold, and the sword at his side all set in precious stones flashed like lightning whenever his horse stamped its foot, and the blue velvet of his cap was like a bit of sky—he was a big lord, that old gent! He stared and stared, then he says to Radda: ‘Hi, give me a kiss, I’ll give you my purse!’ She just turned away without a word! ‘Forgive me if I’ve offended you, can’t you look at me more kindly?’ said the old magnate, immediately coming down a peg, and he threw a purse at her feet—a fat purse, brother! And she spurned it in the dust, casual like, with her foot, and that’s all.
“‘Ah, what a maid!’ he groaned, and flicked his horse with his riding crop and was gone in a cloud of dust.
“The next day he came again. ‘Who’s her father?’ he went thundering about the camp. Danilo stepped out. ‘Sell me your daughter, take whatever you want!’ And Danilo, he says: ‘Only the nobility sell everything from their pigs to their conscience, but I fought under Kossuth, and don’t traffic in anything!’ The other became furious, made a snatch for his sword, but one of the boys stuck a lighted tinder in the horse’s ear and he made off with his rider in a flash. We struck tents and moved off. We hadn’t been travelling two days when up he dashes again! ‘Hi, you,’ he says, ‘before God and you my conscience is clear, give that maid to me in marriage. I’ll share all I have with you, I’m mighty rich!’ He was all on fire and swaying in the saddle like feathergrass in the wind. That set us all thinking.
“‘Well, daughter, what do you say?’ Danilo muttered under his moustache.
“‘What would the eagle be if she went into the crow’s nest of her own free will?’ Radda asked us.
“Danilo laughed, and so did we all.
“‘Well said, daughter! Hear that, Sir? Nothing doing! Look among the doves—they’re more docile.’ And we moved on.
“That gentleman seized his cap, threw it to the ground and galloped away so furiously that the very earth shook. That’s the kind of girl Radda was, my lad!
“Yes! Well, one night as we sat around we heard music floating over the steppe. Fine music! It set your blood on fire and lured you into the unknown. That music, we all felt, made one yearn for something after which, if you got it, life would no longer be worth living, unless it was, as kings over all the earth, my lad!
“Well, a horse loomed out of the darkness, and on the horse a man sat and played as he approached us. He drew up at the campfire, ceased playing and smiled down at us.
“‘Ah, why, that’s yo
u, Zobar!’ Danilo cried out to him joyfully. Yes, that was Loiko Zobar!
“His moustaches lay on his shoulders and mingled with his locks, his eyes were as bright as stars and his smile was like the sun so help me God! He and his horse might have been forged of a single piece of iron. There he stood red as blood in the firelight, his teeth flashing in a smile! Damned if I didn’t love him then more than I loved myself, even before he had spoken a word to me or had as much as noticed my existence!
“Yes, my lad, that’s the kind of man he was! He’d look into your eyes and captivate your soul, and you wouldn’t be the least bit ashamed of it, only feel proud about it. With a man like that you feel nobler yourself. Such men are rare, my friend! Perhaps that’s better so. If there’d be too much of a good thing in this world it wouldn’t be looked on as a good thing. Aye! Well, let’s get on with the story.
“Radda she says: ‘You play well, Loiko! Who made you such a sweet-toned delicate fiddle?’ He laughed—‘I made it myself! And I made it not of wood, but from the breast of a young girl whom I loved dearly, and the strings I play on are her heartstrings. The fiddle plays a little false, but I know how to handle the bow!’
“Our breed, you know, tries straight away to befog a girl’s eyes, so they be dimmed with sad yearning for a fellow without kindling his own heart. That was Loiko’s way too. But Radda was not to be caught that way. She turned away with a yawn and said: ‘And people said Zobar was clever and adroit—what liars!’ With that she walked away.
“‘Oho, pretty maid, you’ve got sharp teeth!’ said Loiko with a flashing eye, getting off his horse. ‘How do you do, brothers! Well, here I am come to you!’
“‘Welcome, guest!’ said Danilo in reply. We kissed, had a talk and went to bed.... We slept soundly. In the morning we saw that Zobar’s head was tied up with a rag. What’s that? Oh, his horse accidentally hurt him with its hoof while he was asleep.
“Ha-a! We guessed who that horse was and smiled into our moustaches, and Danilo smiled too. Well, wasn’t Loiko worthy of Radda? I should think so! However fair a maid may be, she has a narrow, petty soul, and though you’d hang a pood of gold round her neck she’d never be any better than she was. Well, anyway!