Remembering his father, Dymov stopped eating and frowned. He scowled at his mates and let his eyes rest on Yegorushka.
‘Heathen! Take your cap off!’ he snapped. ‘Do you think it’s right eating with your cap on? Call yourself a gentleman!’
Without a word Yegorushka took off his cap. But by now the stew had lost all taste for him, nor did he hear Panteley and Vasya stand up for him. An intense feeling of anger towards that bully welled up inside him and he decided to do him some injury, come what may.
After dinner they all trudged off to the wagons and collapsed in the shade.
‘Are we leaving soon, grandpa?’ Yegorushka asked Panteley.
‘We’ll leave when God wills it… No good leaving now, it’s too hot… Oh Lord, Thy will be done… Holy Mother of God!… Now, lie down, lad.’
The sound of snoring soon came from under the wagons. Yegorushka would have liked to go back to the village, but after a moment’s thought he yawned and lay down next to the old man.
VI
All day the wagons stayed by the river and they left when the sun was setting.
Once again Yegorushka was lying on a bale of wool; the wagon gently creaked and swayed. Down below walked Panteley, slapping his thighs and muttering. As on the day before, the music of the steppes trilled in the air.
Yegorushka lay on his back, his hands under his head, gazing up at the sky. He watched the sunset take fire and then fade. Guardian angels covered the horizon with their golden wings and were preparing themselves for slumber: the day had passed calmly, serene and tranquil night had come and now they could rest peacefully in their heavenly home. Yegorushka saw the sky gradually darken and darkness descend on the earth; one after the other the stars began to shine.
If you look at the deep sky for long, without averting your gaze, your thoughts and your spirit somehow blend in a consciousness of solitude. You begin to feel desperately lonely and all that you had once considered near and dear becomes infinitely remote and trivial. The stars that have been looking down for thousands of years, the inscrutable sky itself and the darkness, so indifferent to man’s short life – when you are confronted by them and try to fathom their meaning they oppress your spirit with their silence. Then you are reminded of the solitude that awaits all of us in the grave – and the reality of existence seems awful, terrible…
Yegorushka thought of Grandmother sleeping now in the graveyard beneath the cherry trees. He remembered her lying in her coffin with bronze coins over her eyes; he remembered how they had then closed the lid and lowered her into the grave; he remembered the dull thud of clods of earth on the lid… He visualized Grandmother in her dark, narrow coffin, helpless and forsaken by all. He imagined her suddenly awakening, unable to understand where she was, knocking on the lid, calling for help and in the end growing faint with terror and dying a second death. He imagined that Mother, Father Khristofor, Countess Dranitsky, Solomon were dead. But try as he might to picture himself in the dark grave, far from home, abandoned, helpless and dead, he did not succeed. He could not admit the possibility of death for himself, personally, and he felt that he would never die…
Panteley, whose time was approaching, was walking down below, making a roll-call of his thoughts.
‘Yes, they was fine gentlefolk,’ he was muttering. ‘They took their young lad off to school, but I ’aven’t heard say how he’s getting on… In Slavyanoserbsk there’s no establishment as can make you all brainy, like… No… that’s a fact… He’s a good lad, that boy, no worries with him. When he grows up he’ll be a help to his father. You’re just a shaver now, Yegory, but when you’re a grown man you’ll keep your father and mother. That’s what God’s ordained – “Honour thy father and thy mother.” I myself had little ones… but they was all burned to death in a fire. And me wife died too… and the children… that’s a fact… The hut burned down on Twelfth Night eve. I wasn’t at home, was on me way to Oryol18… to Oryol like. Marya jumped out into the street and she remembered the children was asleep in the hut so she ran back and was burned to death with the little ones… Yes… Next day all they found was bones…’
Around midnight Yegorushka and the drivers were once again seated around a small fire. While the dry brushwood was kindling Kiryukha and Vasya went to fetch some water from a gully. They vanished in the darkness, but the whole time one could hear them clanking their buckets and talking, which meant the gully wasn’t very far away. The light from the fire lay on the ground in a large flickering patch; although the moon was bright, everything outside that red patch seemed impenetrably dark. The light shone into the drivers’ eyes so that they could see only part of the road. In the darkness the wagons, bales and horses resembled vaguely shaped mountains and were barely visible. About twenty paces from the fire, where road and steppe converged, stood a wooden grave-cross, leaning to one side. Before they had lit the fire and he could still see a long way, Yegorushka noticed that there was an identical slanting cross on the other side of the road.
When Kiryukha and Vasya returned with the water they filled the pot and secured it over the fire. With the jagged spoon in his mouth, Styopka took up his post in the smoke near the pot and pensively gazed at the water as he waited for the first signs of scum. Panteley and Yemelyan sat side by side silently brooding. Dymov lay on his belly, his head propped on his fists, gazing at the fire. Styopka’s shadow danced over him, so that his handsome face would be momentarily in darkness and then light up again. A short way off Kiryukha and Vasya wandered around gathering weeds and birch bark for the fire. Hands in pockets, Yegorushka stood by Panteley and watched the flames devouring the weeds.
Everyone was resting, musing, fitfully glancing at the cross over which the red patches were dancing. There is something melancholy, dreamlike and highly poetic about a lonely grave. You can hear its very silence and in that silence you sense the presence of the soul of the unknown being lying beneath the cross. Is that soul at peace on the steppe? Does it not grieve on moonlit nights? Around a grave the steppe seems sad, cheerless and pensive, the grass sadder and the grasshoppers’ chatter more subdued. No passer-by would forget to mention that solitary soul in his prayers or stop looking back at the grave until it was far behind and veiled in darkness…