When the moon rises the night grows pale and languid. It is as ifthe haze had never been. The air is limpid, fresh and warm, everything is clearly seen, and one can even make out individual blades of grau by the road. Stones and skulls stand out a long way ofЈ The suspicious monk-like figures look blacker and gloomier against the night's bright background. The surprised sighing resounds more and more often amid the monotonous chatter, troubling the still air, and you hear the cry of a wakeful or delirious bird. Broad shadows move over the plain like clouds acrou the sky, and in the mysterious distance, if you peer into it for a while, grotesque, misty images loom and tower behind each other. It is a little eerie. And if you gaze at the pale, green, star- spangled sky, free of the smallest cloud or speck, you will know why the warm air is still, and why nature is alert, fearing to stir. It is afr.aid and reluctant to lose one second's life. Of the sky's unfathomable depth, of its boundlessness, you can judge only at sea and on the moon- lit steppe by night. It is frightening and picturesque, yet kindly. Its gaze is languorous and magnetic, but its embraces make you dizzy.
You drive on for an hour or two. On your way you meet a silent barrow or menhir—God knows who put them up, or when. A night bird silently skims the earth. And the prairie legends, the travellers' yarns, the folk tales told by some old nurse from the steppes, together with whatever you yourself have contrived to see and to grasp in spirit—you gradually recall all these things. And then, in the insects' twittering, in the sinister figures and ancient barrows, in the depths of the sky, in the moonlight, in the flight of the night bird, in everything you see and hear, you seem to glimpse the triumph of beauty, youth in the prime of strength, a lust for life. Your spirit responds to its mag- nificent, stern homeland and you long to fly above the steppe with the night bird. In this triumph of beauty, in this exuberance ofhappi- ness, you feel a tenseness and agonized regret, as if the steppe knew how lonely she is, how her wealth and inspiration are lost to the world —vainly, unsung, unneeded, and tlrough the joyous clamour you hear her anguished, hopeless cry for a bard, a poet ofher own.
'Whoa! Halla there, Panteley. All well?'
'Thanks to God, Mr. Kuzmichov.' 'Seen Varlamov, lads?'
'No, we ain't.'
Ycgorushka awoke and opened his eyes. The britzka had stopped. A long way ahead on the right extended a train of wagons, and men were scurrying about ncar them. The huge balcs of wool made all the wagons seem very tall and bulging, and the horses small and short- legged.
'So we're to visit the Molokan's farm next,' said Kuzmichov in a loud voice. 'The Jew reckoned that Varlamov was staying the night there. Good-bye then, lads. Best of luck.'
'Good-bye, Mr. Kuzmichov,' answered several voices.
'I tell you what, lads,' said Kuzmichov briskly. 'You might take my boy with you. Why should hc traipse around with us? Put him on your bales, Pantclcy, and let him ride a bit, and we'll catch you up. Off you go, Ycgorushka. Go on, it'll be all right.'
Ycgorushka climbed down from his box scat, and several hands picked him up. They raised him aloft, and he found himself on some- thing big, soft and slightly wet with dew. He felt close to the sky and far from the ground.
'Hey, take your coat, old chap,' shouted Dcniska far below.
The boy's overcoat and bundle were thrown up from below and fell ncar him. Quickly, wishing to keep his mind a blank, he put the bundle under his head, covered himself with his coat, stretched his legs right out, shivering a little because of the dew, and laughed with pleasure.
'Sleep, sleep, sleep,' he thought.
'Don't you do him no harm, you devils.' It was Dcniska's voicc from below.
'Good-bye, lads, and good luck,' shouted Kuzmichov. 'I'm relying on you.'
'Never fear, mister.'
Dcniska shouted to his horses as the britzka creaked and rolled off, no longer along the road but somewhere off to one side. For a minute or two the wagons all seemed to have fallen asleep, since no sound was heard exccpt the gradually expiring distant clatter of thc pail tied to the britzka's back-board.
Then cam.e a muffled shout from the head of the convoy. 'On our way, Kiryukha!'
The foremost wagon creaked, then the second and the third. Yego- rushka felt his own vehicle jerk and creak as well—they were on the move. He took a firmer grip on the cord round his bale, gave another happy laugh, shifted the honey cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as he did in his bed at home.
When he awoke the sun was already rising. Screened by an ancient burial mound, it was trying to sprinkle its light on the world, urgently thrusting its rays in all directions and flooding the horizon with gold. Yegorushka thought it was in the wrong place because it had risen behind his back on the previous day, and was further to the left now. But the whole landscape had changed. There were no more hills, and the bleak bro\wn plain stretched endlessly in all directions. Here and there arose small barrows, and rooks flew about, as on the day before. Far ahead were the white belfries and huts of a village. As it was a Sunday the locals were at home cooking—witness the smoke issuing from all the chimneys and hanging over the village in a transparent blue-grey veil. In the gaps between the huts and beyond the church a blue river could be seen, and beyond that the hazy distance. But nothing was so unlike yesterday's scene as the road. Straddling the prairie was something less a highway than a lavish, i^rnensely broad, positively heroic spread of tract—a grey band, much traversed, dusty like all roads and several score yards in width. Its sheer scale baffled the boy, ronjuring up a fairy-tale world. Who drove here? Who needed all this space? It was strange and unc^my. One might suppose, indeed, that giants with seven-league boots were still among us, and that the heroic horses of folk myth were not extinct. Looking at the road, Yegorushka pictured half a dozen tall chariots racing side by side like some he had seen in drawings in books of Bible stories. Those chariots had each been drawn by a team of six wild and furious horses, their high wheels raising clouds of dust to the sky, while the horses were driven by men such as one might meet in dreams, or in reveries about the supernatural. How well they would have fitted the steppe and the road, these figures, had they existed!
Telegraph poles carrying two wires ran on the right-hand side of the road as far as eye could see. Ever dwindling, they vanished behind the huts and foliage near the village, onIy to reappear in the lilac-coloured background as thin little sticks resembling pencils stuck in the ground. On the wires sat hawks, merlins and crows, gazing unconcernedly at the moving wagons.
Lying on the last wagon of all, the boy had the whole convoy in view. There were about twenty wagons or carts, with one wagoner to three vehicles. Near Yegorushka's wagon, the last in line, walked an old, grey-bearded man, as shon and gaunt as Father Christopher, but with a bro^, sunb^nt face, stem and contemplative. The old man may have becn neither stem nor contemplative, but his red eye- lids and long, sharp nose gave his face the severe, reserved air of those accustomed to brood in solitude on serious matters. Like Father Christopher, he wore a broad-b^^med top hat—a bro^wn, felt affair more like a truncated cone than a gentleman's topper. His feet were bare. He kept slapping his thighs and stamping his feet as he walked— probably a habit contracted in the cold ^rnters, when he must often have come near to freezing beside his wagons. Noticing that Yego- rushka was awake, he looked at him.
'So you're awake, young man.' He was hunching his shoulders as if from cold. 'Mr. Kuzmichov's son, might you be?'
'No, his nephew.'
'His nephew, eh? Now, I've just taken off me boots, I'm bobbing along barefoot. There's something wrong with me legs, the frost got to them, and things is easier without boots. Easier, boy. Without boots, I mean. So you're his nephew, then? And he's a good son, he is. May God grant him health. A good sort. Mr. K^mchov, I mean. He's gone to see the Molokan. O Lord, have mercy on us!'