‘They’re very much poorer now,’ said Meliton.
‘They’re poorer because God’s taken their strength away. You can’t go against God.’
Meliton stared fixedly at one point again. After a pause for thought he sighed the way steady, sober-minded people sigh and shook his head.
‘And what’s the reason for all this?’ he said. ‘It’s because we sin so much, we’ve forgotten God and so the time is near when everything will come to an end. Honestly, you can’t expect the world to last for ever. It mustn’t outstay its welcome!’
The shepherd sighed and as if wishing to end that painful conversation he walked away from the birch and started counting the cattle in silence.
‘Hey-hey-hey!’ he shouted, ‘where d’ye think you’re all going, damn you! The devil himself’s driven them into the firs! Halloo-loo-loo!’
He glared angrily and went over to the bushes to round up the herd. Meliton rose and strolled quietly along the edge of the wood. He gazed at the ground beneath his feet and thought: he was still trying to remember at least one thing as yet untouched by death. Again, bright patches crept over the slanting belts of rain; they leapt into the tree tops and faded away in the wet foliage. Lady found a hedgehog under a bush and tried to attract her master’s attention by howling and barking.
‘You had an eclipse,3 didn’t you?’ the shepherd cried out from behind the bushes.
‘Yes, we did!’ replied Meliton.
‘I thought so. Everywhere folk are going on about it. It means, me friend, that there’s disorder in heaven too. It didn’t happen for nothing… Hey-hey-hey!’
After driving his herd out of the wood the shepherd leant against a birch, glanced at the sky and idly drew his pipe from his smock. As before he played mechanically, producing no more than five or six notes. The sounds that flew forth were hesitant, disjointed, wild and tuneless, as if he were holding the pipes for the very first time. But to Meliton, who was contemplating the world’s impending ruin, there was something deeply mournful and heart-rending in his playing, something that he would have preferred not to hear. The highest, shrillest notes which trembled and broke off abruptly seemed to be weeping inconsolably, as though the pipe was sick and frightened, while the lowest notes somehow evoked the mist, the dejected trees and the grey skies. Such music harmonized with the weather, the old man and what he had been saying.
Meliton felt an urge to complain. He went up to the old man, looked at his sad, mocking face and muttered, ‘And life’s got worse, old man. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand, what with bad harvests, poverty, cattle plagues the whole time, illness. We’re racked by poverty, we are.’
The bailiff’s podgy face turned crimson and took on a doleful, womanish expression. He twiddled his fingers as if looking for words to convey his vague feelings.
‘I’ve eight children,’ he continued, ‘and a wife… my mother is still alive and all they pay me is ten roubles a month without lodging. The poverty’s turned my wife into a real bitch and I’m on the bottle. In actual fact, I’m a sober-minded, steady sort of chap, I’ve had some education. I’d like to be sitting peacefully at home but all day long I keep wandering around with my gun, just like a dog, because I can’t stand it there. I hate my own home!’
Aware that his tongue was muttering the complete opposite of what he intended the bailiff waved his arm and continued bitterly, ‘If the world’s doomed to perish, the sooner the better! No point in dragging things out and letting people suffer for nothing!’
The old shepherd took the pipe from his lips, screwed up one eye and peered down the small mouthpiece. His face was sad and covered with large, tear-like splashes. He smiled and said, ‘It’s a pity, my friend. God, a real pity! The earth, forests, sky, animals – all these have been fashioned and fitted for some purpose, there’s a reason behind everything. But it’ll all come to nothing. It’s folk I feel most sorry for.’
Suddenly a heavy squall rustled through the wood as it approached the edge. Meliton looked towards where the noise was coming from and buttoned his coat right up.
‘I must get back to the village,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, old friend… what’s your name?’
‘Poor Luke.’
‘Well, goodbye Luke. It’s been nice talking to you. Lady, ici!’
When he had taken leave of the shepherd, Meliton trudged along the edge of the wood and then down to a meadow which gradually turned into a marsh. Water squelched underfoot and the reddish heads of sedge (its stems were still green and lush) bowed towards the earth as if afraid of being trampled. Beyond the marsh, on the banks of the Peschanka, about which the old shepherd had just been talking, stood willows, and beyond them, showing blue in the mist, could be seen the squire’s threshing-barn. One sensed the proximity of that bleak time which nothing can avert, when the fields darken, when the earth grows muddy and cold, when the weeping willow seems sadder than ever and tears trickle down her trunk, when the cranes alone are able to flee universal disaster. And even they, as if afraid of offending despondent nature by voicing their joy, fill the skies with their mournful, plaintive song.
Meliton wandered towards the river and heard the sounds of the pipe gradually dying away behind him. He still felt the urge to complain. Sadly he looked on both sides and he felt unbearably sorry for the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the woods, his Lady; and when the pipe’s highest note suddenly shrilled and hung in the air, trembling like the voice of someone weeping, he felt extraordinarily bitter and resentful at the disorder that was apparent in nature.
The top note quivered, broke off – and the panpipes were silent.
The Kiss
On 20 May, at eight o’clock in the evening, all six batteries of a reserve artillery brigade, on their way back to headquarters, stopped for the night at the village of Mestechki. At the height of all the confusion – some officers were busy with the guns, while others had assembled in the main square by the churchyard fence to receive their billetings – someone in civilian dress rode up from behind the church on a strange horse: it was small and dun-coloured with a fine neck and short tail, and seemed to move sideways instead of straight ahead, making small dancing movements with its legs as if they were being whipped. When the rider came up to the officers he doffed his hat and said, ‘Our squire, His Excellency, Lieutenant-General von Rabbeck, invites you for tea and would like you to come now…’
The horse performed a bow and a little dance, and retreated with the same sideways motion. The rider raised his hat again and quickly disappeared behind the church on his peculiar horse.
‘To hell with it!’ some of the officers grumbled as they rode off to their quarters. ‘We want to sleep and up pops this von Rabbeck with his tea! We know what that means all right!’
Every officer in the six batteries vividly remembered the previous year when they were on manoeuvres with officers from a Cossack regiment and had received a similar invitation from a landowning count, who was a retired officer. This hospitable and genial count had plied them with food and drink, would not hear of them returning to their billets and made them stay the night. That was all very well, of course, and they could not have hoped for better. But the trouble was that this retired officer was overjoyed beyond measure at having young men as his guests and he regaled them with stories from his glorious past until dawn, led them on a tour of the house, showed them his valuable paintings, old engravings and rare guns, and read out signed letters from eminent personages; and all this time the tired and weary officers listened, looked, pined for bed, and continuously yawned in their sleeves. When their host finally let them go, it was too late for bed.