From the inn we went to the church and sat in the porch waiting for our coachman. Forty Martyrs stood a little way off, holding his hand to his mouth so that he could cough respectfully into it should need arise. It was dark. There was a strong smell of evening dampness and the moon was about to come up. There were only two clouds in the clear, starry sky: e.xactly overhead, one big, the other smaller, like mother and child. Alone up there, they were chasing each other towards the dying sunset's embers.
'What a marvellous evening,' said Silin.
• 'Exceptionally so,' Forty Martyrs agreed with a respectful cough into his hand.
'Whatever possessed you to come here, Mr. Silin ?' he asked in an ingratiating voice, evidently wanting to chat.
Silin made no answer and Forty Martyrs heaved a deep sigh.
'My sufferings are all on account of a cause for which I must answer to Almighty God,' he said quietly, not looking at us. 'Now, I'm a lost man, no doubt about it, and I ain't no good at anything, and I ain't got nothing to eat, honest, I'm worse off than a dog, I'm sorry to
I
say.
. Silin propped his head on his fists, unheeding, and meditated. The church stood on a high bank at the end of the street and through the churchyard railing could be seen a river, water-meadows on the far side and the crimson glare of a camp fire round which black figures were moving: men and horses. Beyond the fire, further away, were more lights: those of a hamlet whence came the sound ofsinging.
Mist rose above the river and there were patches of it above the meadow. High, narrow coils of thick, milky haze drifted over the river, masking the stars' refl.ections and clinging to the willows. They were constantly changing shape, some seemingly locked in embrace, others bowing low, while yet others lifted broad-sleeved arms aloft like priests at prayer. They probably suggested ghosts and departed spirits to Silin, for he turned his face to me with a sad smile and asked me why it was, 'that when we want to tell some frightening, mysterious, grotesque tale, we nevercull our material from life, my dear chap, but always from the world of phantoms and shades of the hereafter?'
'We fear what we don't understand.'
'But we don't understand life, do we? Do we understand life any better than the world hereafter, you tell me that?'
Silin sat down so close to me that I could feel his breath onmy cheek. His pale, lean face seemed yet paler in the gloaming and his dark beard was black as soot. His eyes were sad, earnest and rather frightened, as if he was about to tell me something terriffying.
'Our life and the world hereafter . .. they're both equally mysterious and terrifying,' he went on in his habitual pleading voice, gazing into my eyes. 'Anyone who's scared of ghosts should also be afraid of me, those lights and of the sky—for when you really come to think of it these things are alljust as mysterious and grotesque as any manifestations from another world. The reason why Hamlet didn't kill himself was dread of "in that sleep of death what dreams may come". I like that famous soliloquy, but it never really got home to me, quite frankly. I tell you, my friend, there have been anguished moments when I have pictured my last hour in my mind's eye, when my fancy has conjured up thousands of utterly lugubrious vistas, when I have managed to work myself up into a lather of agonized, nightmarish exaltation. Yet none of that has ever scared me anything like as much as everyday life, you take my word for it. Ghosts are frightening, it goes without saying, but so is life too. I can't make any sense of life, old boy, and I fear it. I don't know—perhaps I'm being morbid, perhaps I've gone off the rails. A sane, healthy man believes he understands everything he sees and hears, but I have lost any such impression and I'm poisoning my- self with terror day in day out. There is a complaint called fear of open spaces, but it's fear oflife that ails me. When I lie on the grass \vatching a little beetle—born only yesterday, understanding nothing—its life seems one long chain of horror. And that is just how I see mysel('
'But what exactly are you scared of?' I asked.
'Everything. I am not naturally profound, I'm not much interested in such questions as the hereafter or the fate of humanity and I'm not much of a one for flightsinto the sublime either. What terrifies me most s just ordinary everyday routine, the thing none of us can escape. The hings I do ... I can't tell the true from the false, and they trouble me. My living conditions and upbringing have imprisoned me in a closed circle of lies, I know. Worrying how to deceive myself and others every day without noticing that I'm doing so ... that's rriy entire existence, I know that too, and I dread not being rid of this fraud until I'm in my grave. I do something one day and next day I have no idea why I did it. I entered government service in St. Petersburg and took fright. Then I came here to farm and took fright again. We know so little, which is why we make mistakes every day, I see that—we're unfair, we slander people or pester the life out of them, we lavish all our efforts on futilities which oniy make things more difficult, and that scares me because I can't see what use it is to anyone. I don't understand people, old man, I'm so scared of them. The peasants are a terrifying spectacle—what lofty purposes their sufferings serve, what they live for, I have no idea. If life exists for pleasure they are superfluous and redundant. But if life's purpose and meaning is hardship and crass, hopeless barbarism, then what use is this ordeal to anyone? That's what I. don't see. I don't understand anyone or anything.
'Just you try and make sense of this specimen,' said Silin, pointing to Forty Martyrs. 'You just puzzle him out!'
Seeing us both looking at him, Forty Martyrs coughed deferentially into his fist.
'I have always been a faithful servant when I've had good masters, but' it was drinking spirits, mainly, what done for me. Now, if you was to take pity on a poor man and give me a job I'd take the pledge, like. My word is my bond.'
The verger walked by, gave us a baffled look and began tugging his rope. Slowly, lengthily, rudely shattering the calm of evening, the bell tolled ten.
'What—ten o'clock already!' said Silin. 'It's time we were going.
'Yes, old man,' he sighed, 'if you did but know how I dread my ordinary, everyday thoughts which one wouldn't expect to contain anything terrible. To stop myselfth^ing I seek distraction in my work and I try to tire myself out so that I may sleep soundly at night. Children, a wife . . . to other men these are perfectly normal things, but they're such a burden to me, old man.'
He rubbed his face with his hands, cleared his throat and gave a laugh.
'If only I could tell you what an idiotic role I've played,' he said. 'I have a lovely wife, I have delightful children, everyone tells me, and I'm a good husband and father. They think I'm so happy, they envy me. Well, since we've gone so far I'll let you into a secret: my happy family life's just a deplorable blunder, and I fear that too.'