When he came back to Kovrin, his face was exhausted, offended.
“What can you do with these confounded people?” he said in a tearful voice, spreading his arms. “Styopka brought a load of manure during the night and tied his horse to an apple tree! The scoundrel wrapped the reins so tightly around it that the bark wore through in three places. Imagine! I tell him, and the dimwit just stands there blinking his eyes! Hanging’s too good for him!”
Having calmed down, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.
“Well, God be with you … God be with you …” he muttered. “I’m very glad you’ve come. I can’t tell you how glad … Thank you.”
Then at the same quick pace and with a preoccupied air he went around all the gardens and showed his former ward the conservatories, hothouses, potting sheds, and his two apiaries, which he called the wonder of our century.
As they walked about, the sun rose and brightly lit up the gardens. It became warm. Anticipating a clear, long, happy day, Kovrin remembered that it was still only the beginning of May and the whole summer still lay ahead, just as clear, long, and happy, and suddenly a joyful young feeling stirred in his breast, such as he had experienced in childhood running about in these gardens. And he embraced the old man and kissed him tenderly They were both moved. They went in and sat down to tea from old porcelain cups, with cream, with rich, buttery rolls—and these small things again reminded Kovrin of his childhood and youth. The beautiful present and the awakening impressions of the past flowed together in him; they made his soul feel crowded but good.
He waited till Tanya woke up and had his coffee with her, strolled a little, then went to his room and sat down to work. He read attentively, took notes, and occasionally raised his eyes to look at the open windows or the fresh flowers, still wet with dew, that stood in vases on the table, then lowered them to the book again, and it seemed to him that every fiber of him was thrilling and frolicking with pleasure.
II
In the country he went on leading the same nervous and restless life as in the city. He read and wrote a great deal, studied Italian, and while strolling thought with pleasure that he would soon sit down to work again. He slept so little that everyone was amazed; if he inadvertently dozed off for half an hour in the afternoon, he would not sleep all night afterwards, and following the sleepless night would feel himself as brisk and cheerful as if nothing had happened.
He talked a lot, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Often, if not every day, neighboring young ladies visited the Pesotskys, sang and played the piano with Tanya; occasionally a young man came, a neighbor, who was a good violinist. Kovrin listened eagerly to the music and singing, and it filled him with languor, which manifested itself physically in the closing of his eyes and the drooping of his head to one side.
Once after evening tea he was sitting on the balcony reading. In the drawing room, just then, Tanya—a soprano, one of her friends—a contralto, and the young man with the violin were rehearsing the famous serenade of Braga.2 Kovrin listened to the words—they were in Russian—and was quite unable to understand their meaning. Finally he put his book down and, listening attentively, understood: a girl with a morbid imagination heard some sort of mysterious sounds in the garden at night, so beautiful and strange that she could only take them for a sacred harmony, which we mortals were unable to understand and which therefore flew back to heaven. Kovrin’s eyes began to close. He got up and strolled languidly through the drawing room, then through the reception hall. When the singing stopped, he took Tanya under the arm and walked out to the balcony with her.
“Ever since this morning I’ve been thinking about a certain legend,” he said. “I don’t remember whether I read it or heard it somewhere, but the legend is somehow strange, incongruous. In the first place, it’s not distinguished by its clarity. A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, was walking in the desert somewhere in Syria or Arabia … Several miles from the place where he was walking, some fishermen saw another black monk moving slowly over the surface of a lake. This second monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend seems not to recognize, and listen further. The mirage produced another mirage, and that one a third, so that the image of the black monk began to be transmitted endlessly from one layer of the atmosphere to another. He was seen now in Africa, now in Spain, now in India, now in the Far North … Finally he left the limits of the earth’s atmosphere and is now wandering all over the universe, never getting into conditions that might enable him to fade away. Perhaps he can now be seen somewhere on Mars or on some star in the Southern Cross. But, my dear, the very essence, the crux, of the legend is that exactly a thousand years after the monk walked in the desert, the mirage will enter the earth’s atmosphere again and show itself to people. And the thousand years are now supposedly at an end … According to the legend, we ought to expect the black monk any day now.”
“A strange mirage,” said Tanya, who did not like the legend.
“But the most amazing thing,” laughed Kovrin, “is that I’m quite unable to remember how this legend came into my head. Did I read it? Hear it? Or maybe I dreamed of the black monk? I swear to God, I don’t remember. But I’m taken by this legend. I’ve been thinking about it all day today.”
Letting Tanya go back to her guests, he left the house and strolled pensively among the flower beds. The sun was setting. The flowers had just been watered and gave off a damp, irritating smell. There was singing in the house again, and from a distance the violin gave the impression of a human voice. Straining his mind to recall where he had heard or read the legend, Kovrin went unhurriedly towards the park and without noticing it came to the river.
Following the path that ran down the steep bank past the bared roots, he descended to the water, disturbing some snipe and scaring away two ducks. The last rays of the setting sun still glowed on the gloomy pines, but there was already real evening on the surface of the river. Kovrin crossed the river on some planks. Before him now lay a wide field covered with young, not yet flowering rye. No human dwelling, no living soul in the distance, and it seemed that the path, if one followed it, would lead you to that unknown, mysterious place where the sun had just gone down, and where the sunset flamed so vastly and majestically.
“How spacious, free, and quiet it is here!” thought Kovrin, walking along the path. “It seems the whole world is looking at me, hiding and waiting for me to understand it …”
But now waves passed over the rye, and a light evening breeze gently touched his bare head. A moment later there was another gust of wind, stronger now—the rye rustled, and the muted murmur of the pines came from behind him. Kovrin stopped in amazement. On the horizon, looking like a whirlwind or a tornado, a tall black pillar rose from the earth to the sky. Its contours were indistinct, but from the very first moment it was evident that it was not standing in place but moving at terrific speed, moving precisely there, straight at Kovrin, and the nearer it drew, the smaller and clearer it became. Kovrin rushed to one side, into the rye, to make way for it, and he barely had time to do so …
A monk dressed in black, with gray hair and black eyebrows, his arms crossed on his chest, raced past … His bare feet did not touch the ground. He was already some twenty feet past Kovrin when he looked back at him, nodded and smiled at him tenderly and at the same time slyly. But what a pale, terribly pale, thin face! Beginning to grow again, he flew across the river, noiselessly struck against the clayey bank and the pines, and, passing through them, vanished like smoke.