Twenty-six and One and Other Stories Part 8

"Never mind, you could have the one that you have repaired. Do you own a horse?"

"A horse? Yes, there's one, but he's very old!"

"Then a horse, a good horse! A cow . . . sheep . . . poultry . . . eh?"

"Why do you say that? If only! . . . Ah! Lord, how I might enjoy life."

"Yes, brother, life under those circ.u.mstances would not be bad . . .

I, too, I know a little about such things. I also have a nest belonging to me. My father was one of the richest peasants of his village."

Tchelkache rowed slowly. The boat danced upon the waves which beat against its sides; it scarcely advanced over the somber sea, now disporting itself harder than ever. The two men dreamed, rocked upon the water and gazing vaguely around them. Tchelkache had spoken to Gavrilo of his village with the purpose of quieting him and helping him to recover from his emotion. He at first spoke with a sceptical smile hidden under his moustache, but as he talked and recalled the joys of country life, in regard to which he himself had long since been disabused, and that he had forgotten until this moment, he became carried away, and instead of talking to the lad, he began unconsciously to harangue:

"The essential part of the life of a peasant, brother, is liberty. You must be your own master. You own your house: it is not worth much, but it belongs to you. You possess a piece of ground, a little corner, perhaps, but it is yours. Your chickens, eggs, apples are yours. You are a king upon the earth. Then you must be methodical. . . As soon as you are up in the morning, you must go to work. In the spring it is one thing, in the summer another, in the autumn and winter still another. From wherever you may be you always return to your home.

There is warmth, rest! . . . You are a king, are you not?"

Tchelkache had waxed enthusiastic over this long enumeration of the privileges and rights of the peasant, forgetting only to speak of his duties.

Gavrilo looked at him with curiosity, and was also aroused to enthusiasm. He had already had time in the course of this conversation to forget with whom he was dealing; he saw before him only a peasant like himself, attached to the earth by labor, by several generations of laborers, by memories of childhood, but who had voluntarily withdrawn from it and its cares and who was now suffering the punishment of his ill-advised act.

"Yes, comrade, that's true! Oh! how true that is! See now, take your case, for instance: what are you now, without land? Ah! friend, the earth is like a mother: one doesn't forget it long."

Tchelkache came to himself. He felt within him that burning sensation that always seized upon him when his self-love as a das.h.i.+ng devil-may-care fellow was wounded, especially when the offender was of no account in his eyes.

"There he goes again!" he exclaimed fiercely. "You imagine, I suppose that I'm speaking seriously. I'm worth more than that, let me tell you!"

"Why, you funny fellow!" replied Gavrilo, again intimidated, "am I speaking of you? There are a great many like you! My G.o.d, how many unfortunate persons, vagabonds there are on the earth!"

"Take the oars again, dolt!" commanded Tchelkache shortly, restraining himself from pouring forth a string of fierce oaths that rose in his throat.

They again changed places. Tchelkache, while clambering over the bales to return to the helm, experienced a sharp desire to give Gavrilo a good blow that would send him overboard, and, at the same time, he could not muster strength to look him in the face.

The short conversation was ended; but now Gavrilo's silence even savored to Tchelkache of the village. He was lost in thoughts of the past and forgot to steer his boat; the waves had turned it and it was now going out to sea. They seemed to understand that this boat had no aim, and they played with it and lightly tossed it, while their blue fires flamed up under the oars. Before Tchelkache's inward vision, was rapidly unfolded a series of pictures of the past--that far distant past separated from the present by a wall of eleven years of vagrancy.

He saw himself again a child, in the village, he saw his mother, red-cheeked, fat, with kind gray eyes,--his father, a giant with a tawny beard and stern countenance,--himself betrothed to Amphissa, black-eyed with a long braid down her back, plump, easy-going, gay. . .

And then, himself, a handsome soldier of the guard; later, his father, gray and bent by work, and his mother, wrinkled and bowed. What a merry-making there was at the village when he had returned after the expiration of his service! How proud the father was of his Gregori, the moustached, broad-shouldered soldier, the c.o.c.k of the village!

Memory, that scourge of the unfortunate, brings to life even the stones of the past, and, even to the poison, drunk in former days, adds drops of honey; and all this only to kill man by the consciousness of his faults, and to destroy in his soul all faith in the future by causing him to love the past too well.

Tchelkache was enveloped in a peaceful whiff of natal air that was wafting toward him the sweet words of his mother, the sage counsel of his father, the stern peasant, and many forgotten sounds and savory odors of the earth, frozen as in the springtime, or freshly ploughed, or lastly, covered with young wheat, silky, and green as an emerald. . . Then he felt himself a pitiable, solitary being, gone astray, without attachments and an outcast from the life where the blood in his veins had been formed.

"Hey! Where are we going?" suddenly asked Gavrilo.

Tchelkache started and turned around with the uneasy glance of a wild beast.

"Oh! the devil! Never mind. . . Row more cautiously. . . We're almost there."

"Were you dreaming?" asked Gavrilo, smiling.

Tchelkache looked searchingly at him. The lad was entirely himself again; calm, gay, he even seemed complacent. He was very young, all his life was before him. That was bad! But perhaps the soil would retain him. At this thought, Tchelkache grew sad again, and growled out in reply:

"I'm tired! . . . and the boat rocks!"

"Of course it rocks! So, now, there's no danger of being caught with this?"

Gavrilo kicked the bales.

"No, be quiet. I'm going to deliver them at once and receive the money. Yes!"

"Five hundred?"

"Not less, probably. . ."

"It's a lot! If I had it, poor beggar that I am, I'd soon let it be known."

"At the village? . . ."

"Sure! without delay. . ."

Gavrilo let himself be carried away by his imagination. Tchelkache appeared crushed. His moustache hung down straight; his right side was all wet from the waves, his eyes were sunken in his head and without life. He was a pitiful and dull object. His likeness to a bird of prey had disappeared; self-abas.e.m.e.nt appeared in the very folds of his dirty blouse.

"I'm tired, worn out!"

"We are landing. . . Here we are."

Tchelkache abruptly turned the boat and guided it toward something black that arose from the water.

The sky was covered with clouds, and a fine, drizzling rain began to fall, pattering joyously on the crests of the waves.

"Stop! . . . Softly!" ordered Tchelkache.

The bow of the boat hit the hull of a vessel.

"Are the devils sleeping?" growled Tchelkache, catching the ropes hanging over the side with his boat-hook. "The ladder isn't lowered.

In this rain, besides. . . It couldn't have rained before! Eh! You vermin, there! Eh!"

"Is that you Selkache?" came softly from above.

"Lower the ladder, will you!"

"Good-day, Selkache."

"Lower the ladder, smoky devil!" roared Tchelkache.

"Oh! Isn't he ill-natured to-day. . . Eh! Oh!"

"Go up, Gavrilo!" commanded Tchelkache to his companion.

In a moment they were on the deck, where three dark and bearded individuals were looking over the side at Tchelkache's boat and talking animatedly in a strange and harsh language. A fourth, clad in a long gown, advanced toward Tchelkache, shook his hand in silence and cast a suspicious glance at Gavrilo.

"Get the money ready for to-morrow morning," briefly said Tchelkache.

"I'm going to sleep, now. Come Gavrilo. Are you hungry?"