“Or, for instance, look where I’m pointing. Not there, my dear. Look with your eyes, not with the back of your head, look where I point my finger. There, there. What do you think it is? You think it’s the wind twisty-twining one birch branch around another? You think it’s a bird decided to build a nest? As if it was. That’s a real devilish thing. It’s a water nymph making a wreath for her daughter. She heard people going by and left off. Got scared. At night she’ll finish plaiting it, you’ll see.
“Or, again, take your red banner. What do you think? You think it’s a flag? And yet, see, it’s not a flag at all, it’s the plaguie-girl’s fetching raspberry kerchief—fetching, I say, and why is it fetching? To wave and wink at the young lads, to fetch young lads for the slaughter, for death, to inflict the plague on them. And you believed it was a flag—come to me, prolety and poorlety of all lands.
“Now you’ve got to know everything, Mother Agafya, everything, everything, and I mean everything. What bird, what stone, what herb. A bird, now, for instance—that bird there would be a fairy-starling. That animal there would be a badger.
“Now, for instance, if you’ve a mind to make love to somebody, just say so. I’ll cast a pining spell on anybody you like. Your chief here, the Forester, if you like, or Kolchak, or Ivan Tsarevich.4 You think I’m boasting, lying? But I’m not lying. Well, look, listen. Winter will come, the blizzard will send whirlwinds thronging over the fields, it will spin up pillars. And into that snowy pillar, into that snow-whirl I’ll stick a knife for you, plunge it into the snow up to the hilt, and pull it out of the snow all red with blood. Have you ever seen such a thing? Eh? And you thought I was lying. And how is it, tell me, that blood can come from a stormy whirl? Isn’t it just wind, air, snowy powder? But the fact is, my pet, that the storm is not wind, it’s a changeling she-werewolf that’s lost her young one, and searches for him in the field, and weeps because she can’t find him. And my knife will go into her. That’s why the blood. And with this knife I’ll cut out the footprint of anybody you like, and take it and sew it to your hem with silk. And be it Kolchak, or Strelnikov, or some new tsar, he’ll follow in your tracks wherever you go. And you thought I was lying, you thought—come to me, barefooty and prolety of all lands.
“Or else, for instance, stones fall from the sky now, fall like rain. A man steps out of his house and stones fall on him. Or some have seen horsemen riding in the sky, the horses touching the rooftops with their hooves. Or there were magicians in olden times would discover: this woman’s got grain in her, or honey, or marten fur. And the knights in armor would bare the woman’s shoulder, like opening a coffer, and with a sword take from her shoulder blade a measure of wheat, or a squirrel, or a honeycomb.”
A great and powerful feeling is sometimes met with in the world. There is always an admixture of pity in it. The object of our adoration seems the more the victim to us, the more we love. In some men compassion for a woman goes beyond all conceivable limits. Their responsiveness places her in unrealizable positions, not to be found in the world, existing only in imagination, and on account of her they are jealous of the surrounding air, of the laws of nature, of the millennia that went by before her.
Yuri Andreevich was educated enough to suspect in the sorceress’s last words the beginning of some chronicle, the Novgorod or the Ipatyev,5 which layers of distortion had rendered apocryphal. For centuries they had been mangled by witch doctors and storytellers, who transmitted them orally from generation to generation. Still earlier they had been confused and garbled by scribes.
Why, then, did the tyranny of the legend fascinate him so? Why did he react to the unintelligible nonsense, to the senseless fable, as if it were a statement of reality?
Lara’s left shoulder had been opened. As a key is put into the secret door of an iron safe built into a closet, her shoulder blade had been unlocked by the turn of a sword. In the depths of the revealed inner cavity, the secrets kept by her soul appeared. Strange towns she had visited, strange streets, strange houses, strange expanses drew out in ribbons, in unwinding skeins of ribbons, ribbons spilling out in bundles.
Oh, how he loved her! How beautiful she was! Just as he had always thought and dreamed, as he had needed! But in what, in which side of her? In anything that could be named or singled out by examination? Oh, no, no! But in that incomparably simple and impetuous line with which the Creator had outlined her entirely at one stroke, from top to bottom, and in that divine contour had handed her to his soul, like a just-bathed child tightly wrapped in linen.
But now where is he and how is it with him? Forest, Siberia, partisans. They are surrounded, and he will share the common lot. What devilry, what fantasy! And again things grew dim in Yuri Andreevich’s eyes and head. Everything swam before him. At that moment, instead of the expected snow, rain began to drizzle. Like a poster on an enormous length of fabric stretched over a city street, there hung in the air from one side of the forest clearing to the other the diffuse, greatly magnified phantom of an astonishing, adored head. And the head wept, and the increasing rain kissed it and poured over it.
“Go,” the sorceress said to Agafya, “I’ve put a spell on your cow, she’ll get well. Pray to the Mother of God. For she is the chamber of light and the book of the living word.”6
8
Fighting was going on at the western border of the taiga. But the taiga was so immense that it all seemed to be playing out at the far confines of the state, and the camp lost in its thicket was so populous that, however many of its men went to fight, still more always remained, and it was never empty.
The noise of the distant battle barely reached the thick of the camp. Suddenly several shots rang out in the forest. They followed each other in quick succession and all at once turned into rapid, disorderly gunfire. Those surprised in the place where the shooting was heard dashed off in all directions. Men from the camp reserves ran to their carts. Turmoil ensued. Everyone began to put themselves into military readiness.
Soon the turmoil died down. It turned out to be a false alarm. But now again people began streaming towards the place where the shooting had been. The crowd grew. New people joined those already there.
The crowd surrounded a bloody human stump that was lying on the ground. The mutilated man was still breathing. He had had his right arm and left leg chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, the wretch had managed to crawl to the camp. The chopped off arm and leg, terrible, bloody lumps, were tied to his back, as was a wooden plank with a long inscription which, among choice curses, said that this had been done in revenge for the atrocities of such-and-such Red detachment, to which the partisans of the Forest Brotherhood had no relation. Besides which, it was added that the same would be done to all of them, unless the partisans submitted by the term stated and laid down their arms before the representatives of the troops of Vitsyn’s corps.
Bleeding profusely, faltering, with a weak voice and a thick tongue, losing consciousness every moment, the mangled, suffering man told of the tortures and ordeals in the court-martial and punitive units to the rear of General Vitsyn. The hanging to which he had been condemned had been replaced, in the guise of mercy, by cutting off his arm and leg and sending him to the partisan camp to terrify them. He had been carried as far as the advance posts of the camp’s sentry line, then put on the ground and told to crawl by himself, while they urged him on from a distance by firing in the air.
The tortured man could barely move his lips. To make out his indistinct mumbling, they bent down and leaned over him to listen. He was saying: