‘Do you want to go back?’ asked Kuzmichov.
‘Ye-es I do!’ sobbed Yegorushka.
‘Then you should go back. No point in travelling all this way for nothing.’
‘Never mind, my boy, never mind,’ Father Khristofor continued. ‘You must call on God. Now, Lomonosov2 travelled like this with the fishermen, but then he became famous all over Europe. Intellect conjoined with faith brings forth fruit that is pleasing to God. What does the prayer say? “For the glory of our Creator, for the solace of our parents and for the benefit of church and country…” Yes, that’s so.’
‘But there’s different kinds of benefit,’ Kuzmichov said as he lit a cheap cigar. ‘There’s some who study for twenty years but still get no benefit from it.’
‘That does happen.’
‘Some folk benefit from learning, but there’s others that get their brains all in a muddle. My sister’s got no sense at all, she’s always trying to be so refined and she wants Yegorushka to be a scholar. But she doesn’t understand that with me in my line of business I could set him up for life. I’m telling you all this because if everyone became scholars or gentlemen there’d be no one left to do the trading or sowing. Everyone would starve to death.’
‘But if everyone started trading or sowing there’d be no one left to acquire learning.’
Thinking that they had both said something weighty and compelling, Kuzmichov and Father Khristofor assumed solemn expressions and cleared their throats simultaneously. Having listened to their conversation and made nothing of it, Deniska shook his head, sat up and lashed both horses. There was silence.
And meanwhile a wide, endless plain encircled by a chain of hills was stretching out before the travellers. Huddling together and peeping out from behind each other, these hills melted away into the rising ground which extended from the right of the road to the very horizon and vanished in the lilac distance: here you can travel on and on without ever being able to make out where the plain begins or ends… Behind, the sun was already looking out over the town and quietly, without any fuss, it was beginning its work. At first, a long way ahead, where sky met earth, close to small barrows and a windmill which from the distance resembled a tiny man waving his arms, a broad, bright yellow band stole over the ground. A moment later a similar bright band lit up a little closer, crept off to the right and enfolded the hills. Something warm touched Yegorushka’s back, a band of light that had crept up from behind darted between the carriage and horses and rushed away to meet other bands – and suddenly the whole wide plain cast off its early morning penumbra, smiled and sparkled with dew.
Newly-mown rye, coarse steppe grass, spurge and wild hemp – everything that had been half-dead, reddish-brown and darkened by the intense heat, washed by the dew now and caressed by the sun – came to life, to blossom anew. Arctic petrels cheerfully cried as they skimmed over the road, gophers called to each other in the grass, from somewhere far to the left came the lapwings’ plaintive song. Frightened by the carriage, a covey of partridges took wing and flew towards the hills, softly trilling. Grasshoppers, cicadas, field-crickets and mole-crickets struck up their monotonous chirring in the grass.
But after a short while the dew evaporated, the air became stagnant and once more the disappointed steppe took on its cheerless July aspect. The grass drooped and life stood still. The brownish-green, sun-baked hills, appearing lilac from afar with their soft muted tints, the plain and the hazy distance, and that overarching sky – so breathtakingly deep and transparent in the steppes where there are no forests or high mountains – now seemed endless and numb with anguish…
How sultry, how forlorn! The carriage races along and all Yegorushka can see is that same sky, plain, hills… The music in the grass grows hushed. The petrels fly off, the partridges vanish. Rooks idly hover over the withered grass: all of them are alike and they make the steppe look even more monotonous.
A kite skims the earth with an even sweep of its wings, suddenly stops in mid-air as if brooding over the tedium of existence and then flaps its wings and shoots off like an arrow over the steppe. Why did it fly and what did it need? That was a mystery. Far away the windmill waved its sails.
Now and then brief glimpses of white skulls or boulders break the monotony; an ancient grey monumental stone or a parched willow with a dark-blue crow on its topmost branch looms up for a fleeting moment, a gopher darts across the road – and once again tall weeds, hills, rooks flash before the eye.
But now, thank heavens, a cart laden with sheaves of corn approaches. On the very top lies a young peasant girl. Sleepy and exhausted by the heat she raises her head to look at the people coming towards her. Deniska gapes at her, the bays stretch their muzzles towards the sheaves, the carriage screeches as it grazes the cart and prickly ears of corn brush Father Khristofor’s hat like a besom.
‘Can’t you see where you’re going, you fat lump!’ shouts Deniska. ‘Gawping like you bin stung by a bee!’
The girl smiles sleepily, moves her lips and lies down again… And then a solitary poplar appears on a hill. God alone knows who planted it and why it was there. It was hard to take one’s eyes from its graceful trunk and green attire. Was that beautiful tree happy? Scorching heat in summer, biting frosts and blizzards in winter, terrifying nights in autumn when you see only pitch darkness and hear nothing but the wayward, angrily howling wind. But worst of all, you are alone, alone all your life…
Beyond the poplar a bright yellow carpet of wheat stretched from the crest of the hill down to the road. Up on the hill the wheat had already been cut and gathered into sheaves, but at the bottom reaping was still in progress. Six reapers were standing side by side swishing their cheerfully gleaming scythes in unison. The movements of the women who were binding the sheaves and the gleaming scythes told of blistering, stifling heat. A black dog with its tongue hanging out ran from the reapers towards the carriage, probably meaning to bark, but stopped halfway and casually looked at Deniska as he threatened it with his whip: it was too hot for barking! One woman stood erect, clutched her tormented back with both hands and followed Yegorushka’s red calico shirt with her eyes. Whether it was the colour that pleased her or whether she was thinking of her children, she stood motionless for a long time watching him pass.
But now the wheat too had flashed by and once again there stretched that scorched plain, those sun-baked hills, the sultry sky; again a kite hovered over the earth. And in the distance that windmill was waving its arms again, still resembling a tiny man swinging his arms. One grew weary of looking at it and it seemed to be running away from the carriage, never to be reached.
Father Khristofor and Kuzmichov sat in silence. Deniska shouted as he whipped the bays. Yegorushka was no longer crying, but looked around apathetically. The burning heat and the tedium of the steppes had exhausted him. He felt that he had been travelling and bobbing up and down for ages, that the sun had been baking his back for an eternity. They had not even travelled seven miles, but already he was thinking: ‘It’s time we stopped for a rest!’ The good-humoured look had gradually faded from Uncle’s face, leaving only that matter-of-fact detachment which lends an implacable, inquisitorial expression to a lean, clean-shaven face, especially when it is bespectacled and when nose and temples are covered in dust. But Father Khristofor never stopped looking at God’s world in wonderment and smiling. Not saying a word, he was thinking about something agreeable and cheerful, and a kindly, genial smile was fixed on his face. The intense heat, it seemed, had made that agreeable, cheerful thought congeal in his brain…