Everything is visible in the dusk, but it is hard to make out the colors and outlines of objects. Everything appears to be not what it is. You ride along and suddenly, ahead of you, you see a silhouette like a monk’s standing just by the road; he does not move, waits, and is holding something in his hands ... Is it a robber? The figure draws near, grows, now it comes even with the britzka, and you see that it is not a man but a solitary bush or a big stone. Such motionless figures, waiting for someone, stand on the hills, hide behind the barrows, peek from amidst the tall weeds, and they all look like people and arouse suspicion.
But when the moon rises, the night becomes pale and dark. It is as if the dusk had never been. The air is transparent, fresh, and warm, everything is clearly visible, and you can even make out the separate stalks of the weeds by the roadside. In the far distance, skulls and stones can be seen. The suspicious monklike figures seem blacker and look more sullen against the bright background of the night. More and more often, amidst the monotonous chirring, someone’s astonished ‘‘Ah!’’ is heard, and the cry of a sleepless or delirious bird rings out, troubling the motionless air. Broad shadows drift across the plain like clouds across the sky, and in the incomprehensible distance, if you look at it for a long time, misty, whimsical images loom and heap upon each other ... It is a little eerie. And once you gaze at the pale green sky spangled with stars, with not a cloud, not a spot on it, you understand why the warm air is motionless, why nature is on the alert and afraid to stir: she feels eerie and sorry to lose even one moment of life. The boundless depth and infinity of the sky can be judged only on the sea or on the steppe at night, when the moon is shining. It is frightening, beautiful, and caressing, it looks at you languorously and beckons, and its caress makes your head spin.
You ride for an hour, two hours ... On the way you come upon a silent old barrow or a stone idol set up God knows when or by whom, a night bird noiselessly flies over the ground, and steppe legends gradually come to your mind, stories of passing strangers, tales of some old nanny of the steppe, and all that you yourself have managed to see and grasp with your soul. And then, in the chirring of the insects, in the suspicious figures and barrows, in the blue sky, in the moonlight, in the flight of a night bird, in everything you see and hear, you begin to perceive the triumph of beauty, youth, flourishing strength, and a passionate thirst for life; your soul responds to the beautiful, stern motherland, and you want to fly over the steppe with the night bird. And in the triumph of beauty, in the excess of happiness, you feel a tension and anguish, as if the steppe were aware that it is lonely, that its riches and inspiration go for naught in the world, unsung by anyone, unneeded by anyone, and through the joyful hum you hear its anguished, hopeless calclass="underline" a singer! a singer!
‘‘Who-oa! Greetings, Pantelei! Is all well?’’
‘‘Thank God, it is, Ivan Ivanych!’’
‘‘Have you boys seen Varlamov?’’
‘‘No, haven’t seen him.’’
Egorushka woke up and opened his eyes. The britzka had stopped. Down the road to the right, a wagon train stretched far ahead, with some people scurrying up and down by it. The wagons, because of the big bales of wool piled on them, all seemed very tall and plump, and the horses small and short-legged.
‘‘Well, so that means now we go to the Molokan’s!’’ Kuzmichov was saying loudly. ‘‘The Yid said Varlamov would spend the night at the Molokan’s. In that case, good-bye, brothers! God be with you!’’
‘‘Good-bye, Ivan Ivanych!’’ several voices anwered.
‘‘Tell you what, boys,’’ Kuzmichov said briskly, ‘‘why don’t you take my little lad with you! So he doesn’t hang about uselessly with us? Put him on a bale, Pantelei, and let him ride slowly, and we’ll catch up with you. Go on, Egor! Go, it’s all right! ...’’
Egorushka got down from the box. Several hands picked him up, lifted him high, and he found himself on something big, soft, and slightly moist with dew. The sky now seemed close to him and the earth far away.
‘‘Hey, take your coat!’’ Deniska shouted somewhere far below.
The coat and little bundle, tossed up from below, fell next to Egorushka. Quickly, not wanting to think about anything, he put the bundle under his head, covered himself with his coat, stretched his legs out all the way, squirming from the dew, and laughed with pleasure.
‘‘Sleep, sleep, sleep ...’’ he thought.
‘‘Don’t rough him up, you devils!’’ Deniska’s voice came from below.
‘‘Good-bye, brothers, God be with you!’’ shouted Kuzmichov. ‘‘I’m counting on you!’’
‘‘Don’t worry, Ivan Ivanych!’’
Deniska hupped the horses, the britzka squealed and started rolling, no longer down the road but somewhere to one side. For two minutes it was silent, as if the wagon train had fallen asleep, and you could hear only the clanking of the bucket tied to the rear of the britzka gradually dying away in the distance. But then at the head of the train someone shouted:
‘‘Gee-up, Kiriukha!’’
The wagon at the very front creaked, after it the second, the third ... Egorushka felt the wagon he was lying on sway and also creak. The train got moving. Egorushka took a tight grip on the rope with which the bundle was tied, laughed again with pleasure, straightened the gingerbread in his pocket, and began to fall asleep the way he used to fall asleep at home in his bed ...
When he woke up, the sun was already rising; it was screened by a barrow, but in an effort to spray light over the world, it spread its rays tensely in all directions and flooded the horizon with gold. It seemed to Egorushka that it was not where it belonged, because the day before it had risen behind his back, while today it was much more to the left ... And the whole place was nothing like yesterday. There were no more hills, and wherever you looked, the endless, brown, bleak plain stretched away; here and there small barrows rose up on it, and yesterday’s rooks were flying about. Far ahead the belfries and cottages of some village showed white; on account of Sunday, the khokhly13 stayed home, baking and cooking—that could be seen by the smoke that came from all the chimneys and hung in a transparent dove-gray veil over the village. In the spaces between cottages and behind the church a blue river appeared, and beyond it the misty distance. But there was nothing that so little resembled yesterday as the road. Something extraordinarily broad, sweeping, and mighty stretched across the steppe instead of a road; it was a gray strip, well trodden and covered with dust, like all roads, but it was several dozen yards wide. Its vastness aroused perplexity in Egorushka and suggested folktale thoughts to him. Who drives on it? Who needs such vastness? Incomprehensible and strange. You might really think there were still enormous, long-striding people in Russia, like Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber,14 and that mighty steeds had not died out yet. Looking at the road, Egorushka imagined some six tall chariots galloping in a row, as he had seen in pictures from sacred history; harnessed to these chariots are six wild, furious horses, and they raise clouds of dust in the sky with their high wheels, and the horses are driven by people such as might appear in dreams or grow in folktale thoughts. And how those figures would suit the steppe and the road, if they existed!
On the right side of the road, for the whole of its length, stood telegraph poles with two wires. Getting smaller and smaller, they disappeared near the village behind the cottages and greenery, and then appeared again in the purple distance, in the guise of very small, thin sticks, like pencils stuck in the ground. On the wires sat hawks, merlins, and crows, looking indifferently at the moving train.