Recalling his father, Dymov stopped eating, frownwned, looked sullenly at his mates, and then let his glance rest on 'Take
yer cap off, you heathen,' he said rudely. 'Eating with yer cap on—I must say! And you a gentleman's son!'
Yegorushka did take his hat off, not saying a word, but the stew had lost al relish for him. Nor did he hear Panteley and Vasya standing up for him. Anger with the bully rankled inside ^m, and he decided to do him some at all costs.
After dinner they all made for the <carts and collapsed in their shade.
'Are we starting soon, Grandad?' Yegorus^u asked Panteley.
'We'll start in God's good time. We leave now, 'tis too hot. O Lord, Thy will be done, O Holy Mother. You lie do-wn, lad.'
Soon snoring proceeded from under the wagons. The boy m^At to go back to the village, but on reflection he yawnwned and lay do^wn by the old man.
VI
The wagons stayed by the river all day and left at sunset.
Once more the boy lay on the bales while his wagon quietly squeaked and swayed, and downwn below walked Panteley—stamping his feet, slapping his thighs, muttering. In the air, as on the day before, the prairie music trilled away.
The boy lay on his back with his hands behind his head, watching the sky. He saw the sunset blaze up and fade. Guardian angels, covering the horizon with their golden wings, had lain downwn to sleep—the day had passed serenely, a calm, untroubled night had come on, and they could stay peacefully at home in the sky. Yegorushka saw the heavens gradually darken. Mist descended on the earth, and the stars came out one after the other.
When you spend a long time gazing unwaveringly at the deep sky your thoughts and spirit somehow merge in a scnse of loneline^. You begin to feel hopelessly isolated, and all that you once thought near and dear becomes infinitely remote and worthless. The stars that have looked do^ from the sky for thousands of years, the mysterious sky itself and the haze, all so unconcerned with man's brief life—when you are confronted with them, and try to grasp their meaning, they oppress your spirits with their silence, you think of that solitarineu awaiting us all in the grave, and life's essence seems to be despair and horror.
The boy thought of his grandmother, now sleeping under the cherry trees in the cemetery. He remembered her lying in her coffin with copper coins on her eyes, remembered the lid being shut and her being lowered into the grave. He remembered, too, the hollow thud of earth clods against the lid. He pictured G^^e in the dark, cramped coffin—abandoned by all, helpless. Then he imagined her suddenly waking up, not knowing where she was, knocking on the lid, calling for help and—in the end, faint with horror—dying a second death. He imagined his mother, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky and Solomon as dead. But however hard he tried to see himself in a dark grave—far from his home, abandoned, helpless and dead—he did not succeed. For himself personaUy he could not admit the possibility of death, feeling that it was not for ^m.
Panteley, whose time to die had already come, walked by the wagon taking a roll-call of his thoughts. 'They was all right, proper gentle- folk they was,' he muttered. 'They took the little lad to school, but how he's doing—that we don't hear. At Slavyanoserbsk, as I say, they don't have no establishment—not for book-learning proper like. Nay, that they don't. But the lad's all right he is. When he grows up he'll help his dad. You're just a little lad now, son, but you'll grow up and keep your father and mother. That's how 'tis ordained of God— "'Honour thy father and thy mother". I had children meself, but they died in a fire, me wife and kids too. Aye, that they did. Our hut b^rot downwn on Twelfth Night eve. I weren't at home, having gone to Oryol. Aye, to Oryol. Marya—she j^ped out in the street, but she remem- bered the children asleep in the hut, she ran back and she was burnt to death along with the little ones. Aye, next day all they could find were the bones.'
About midnight Yegorushka and the wagoners once more sat by a small camp-fire. While the prairie brushwood blazed up, Ki^^kha and
Vasya were fetching water from a gully. They vanished in the dark- ness, but could be heard clanking their pails and talking all the time, which meant that the gully must be near by. The firelight was a large, flickering patch on the ground, and though the moon was bright, everything beyond that red patch seemed black as the pit. The light was in the wagoners' eyes, and they could see only a small part of the road. In the darkness wagons, bales and horses were barely visible in outline as vague mountainous hulks. About twenty paces from the fire, where road and prairie met, a wooden grave ctok sl^ped. Before the fire had been lit, while he could still see a long distance, the boy had spotted another such ramshackle old ctoh on the other side of the road.
Coming back with the water, Kiryukha and Vasya filled the pot and fixed it on the fire. Styopka took his place in the smoke near by, holding the jagged spoon, looking dreamily at the water and waiting for the scum to rise. Panteley and Yemelyan sat side by ride silently brooding, while Dymov lay on his stomach, his head propped on his fists, and watched the fire with Styopka's shadow dancing over ^m so that his handsome face darkened and lit up by t^ns. Kiryukha and Vasya were wandering a little way off gathering weeds and brush- wood for die fire. Yegorushka put his hands in his pockets, stood near Panteley and watched the flame devour the fuel.
Everyone was resting, reflecting and glancing cursorily at the cros with the red patches flickering on it. There is something poignant, wistful and highly romantic about a lonely grave. You feel its silence, sensing in it the soul of the unkno-wn beneath the cross. Is his spirit at ease in the steppe? Or docs it grieve in the moonlight? The prairie ncar the grave seems mournful, despondent and lost in thought, the grass is sadder, and the crickets appear to chatter with less abandon. Every passer-by spares a thought for the lonely spirit and turns to look at the grave until it is behind him and veiled in mist.
'Why is the cross there, Grandad?' Yegorushka asked Panteley.
Panteley looked at the cross and then at Dymov. 'Nicholas, might that be where the reapers murdered them merchants?'