The coldness seemed to intensify when the moon appeared. Arseny thought the moon itself was pouring out the silvery cold that was spreading across the land. He took pity on his chilly body for a while but the pity left him when he suddenly remembered his body was defiled by another’s clothes and lice. This was no longer his body. It belonged to the lice, the person who previously wore his clothes, and, finally, the cold. But not to him.
As if I were dwelling in the body of another, thought Arseny.
However much sympathy one might have for another’s body, its pain cannot be perceived as one’s own. Arseny knew that, having helped infirm bodies. Though he had lived in the pain of others in order to ease it, he could never fathom all its depth. And now the matter at hand concerned a body he did not even sympathize with very much. A body that, for the most part, he despised.
Arseny was no longer cold, for someone dwelling in another’s body cannot be cold. Quite the contrary, he markedly felt how his (not his) body had filled with strength and was confidently moving along toward dawn. He was surprised at how firmly he strode and broadly he swung his arms. Waves of warmth rose in spurts from somewhere below and flowed to his head. After he’d fallen to the ground, Arseny did not even notice that his tireless motion had ceased.
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Do I want, thought Arseny, to forget everything and live from now on as if there had been nothing in my life before, as if I had just appeared on earth right now, as a grown-up from the start rather than as a child? Or perhaps: remember only what was good from what I have already lived, since it is typical for the memory to rid itself of what is torturous? My memory keeps abandoning me and next thing you know, it will abandon me forever. But would being freed of my memory become my absolution and salvation? I know it would not and I will not even pose the question that way. Because what kind of salvation would I have without the salvation of Ustina, who was the primary good fortune in my life as well as the primary misery? And so I pray to You: do not take away my memory, where there is hope for Ustina. If you summon me to Yourself, be mercifuclass="underline" pass judgment on her not based on our doings but on my hunger to save her. And register as hers the bit of kindness, which I haue made.
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A cow’s tongue is soft and does not scorn the lice-ridden. Its rough caress partially replaces human warmth. It is not easy for a person to take care of the festering and lice-ridden. He who enters can leave a crust of bread and a mug of water alongside the ill person, but one can only count on a cow for a true, unsqueamish caress. The cow quickly got used to Arseny and considered him one of her own. She licked dried clumps of blood and pus from his hair with her long tongue.
Arseny observed the sway of her udder for hours and sometimes pressed his lips upon it. The cow (how shall I udder your name?) had nothing against that, though all she took seriously were her morning and evening milkings. Only her mistress’s hands brought genuine relief. There was strength in them, unlike Arseny’s lips. The urge to squeeze all the milk out into a tightly woven birch-bark container, leaving nothing. The milk burst out of the udder with a loud gurgle, first delicate, almost chirring, but taking on fullness and range as it filled the container. Some of the milk flowed down the mistress’s fingers. Watching those fingers twice a day, Arseny remembered them better than the woman’s face. He knew what each individual finger looked like but had never once felt their touch.
Sometimes the cow would stand motionless and lift her tail a bit (it quivered), then warm patties would slap onto the cowshed floor right under the tassel of her tail. From time to time, those patties spattered in all directions under a strong stream. Arseny used a clump of hay to wipe off the drops that ended up on his face.
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The wound on his head had almost healed but then he had bouts of headaches. The pain came not from the wound but from somewhere in the very depths of his head. It felt to Arseny as if a worm had taken up residence there and that its movements were inducing this torture so difficult to endure. During these bouts, he would grasp his head with his hands or bury his head between his knees. He rubbed his head, frenzied, and the resulting external pain removed the internal pain for a moment. But the internal pain came on right away with new force, as if it had caught its breath. Arseny wanted to split his skull in two and toss out the worm along with his brains. He pounded himself on his forehead and on the top of his head but the worm sitting inside understood perfectly that it could not be reached. The worm’s invincibility allowed it to swagger, driving Arseny to wit’s end.
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But where is the cow? Arseny asked the closest of those present. The cow was a splendid comrade and showed me heaven-sent mercy.
Nobody answered him because those who seemed present were absent. The one closest to Arseny—small, hunched, and gray—turned out, upon careful examination, to be a plow handle. The others were also curved and bony. Horse yokes of gigantic sizes. (On whom, one might ask, do they ride here?) Sledge runners. Shafts and milkmaid’s yokes for buckets. But the room was completely different.
Interesting, said Arseny, feeling a wagon wheel underneath himself. Interesting that time moves along but I am lying on a wagon wheel, not thinking the slightest bit about the supertask of my existence.
Arseny laboriously stood and went outside the door, stepping unsteadily. The houses in the unfamiliar village lined up before him, their roofs like fluffy hats. Smoke extended from each, into completely calm air. It looked to Arseny as if the smoke plumes had evenly affixed all the houses to the sky. The connecting threads took on an unusual soundness once they lost the mobility characteristic of smoke. Wherever they were a bit shorter than necessary, the houses rose a few sazhens. Sometimes they rocked a little. There was something unnatural in that and Arseny’s head spun. As he grasped the doorframe, he said:
The connection of sky and earth is not as simple as they have apparently grown used to considering it in this village. This sort of view of things seems excessively mechanistic to me.