The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ his eyes still dim, another man with red marks on his cheek and temple, a third speaking in a voice not his own for drowsiness, and all of them snuffling, wheezing, yawning, scratching their heads, and stretching themselves in a semiwaking condition. It seemed that dinner and sleep had combined to arouse an unquenchable thirst which parched the throat, for even dozens of cupfuls of tea could not assuage it, and, amid a chorus of sighs and grunts, resort had to be made to bilberry wine, to perry, to kvass, and even to more medicinal methods of moistening this avidity of gullet. The company sought relief from thirst as from a Heaven-sent plague, and all felt as exhausted as though they were travelling in the Arabian desert, and could nowhere find a spring.

      By his mother’s side the child gazed at the strange faces around him, and listened to the drowsy, drawling talk. Yet the spectacle delighted him, and he found each stray word interesting.

      After tea every one took up some minor occupation or another. One man repaired to the riverside, and strolled along the brink—kicking pebbles into the water as he did so. Another took a seat in a window, and followed with his eyes each passing occurrence. Should a cat cross the courtyard, or a jackdaw fly by, the watcher scanned both the one and the other, and turned his head to right and to left in order to do so. In the same way will dogs spend whole days at a window—their heads thrust into the sunlight, and their gaze taking stock of every passer-by.

      The mother took little Ilya’s head in her hands, drew it down into her lap, and combed his hair with a gentle caress as, inviting her maids to admire him, she talked concerning his future, and preordained for him the hero’s part in some splendid epic. For their part, the maids foretold for him mountains of gold.

      At length dusk began to draw in. Once more the fire crackled in the kitchen, and the clatter of knives became audible. Supper was being prepared. Meanwhile the rest of the servants gathered at the entrance gates, and thence came sounds of laughter, and of music, and of the playing of gorielki. The sun had sunk behind the forest, yet still was sending forth rays in a fiery, faintly warm streak which, as it passed over the surface of the treetops, touched to gold the tips of the pines. Finally these rays successively expired, until only a solitary beam could be seen fixed, needle-like, in a cluster of boughs before going to join its comrades. Objects then began to lose their outline, and the scene to become blurred in, first greyness, then a blank almost of total obscurity. The songs of birds grew fainter, then ceased altogether, save for one persistent singer which, as though disagreeing with its fellows, continued to break the silence with intermittent warbling. Presently it too took to uttering its song at rarer intervals, ana to whistling with’ more feeble insistence; until finally it breathed a last soft-drawn note, gave a flutter or two which gently stirred the foliage around it, and—fell asleep.

      After that all was silent, save that some crickets were chirping in chorus and against one another. A mist was rising from the earth, and spreading over lake and river. Like everything else, the latter had sunk to rest; and though something caused it to splash for a last time, the water instantly resumed its absolute immobility. In the air a dampness could be detected, and the air itself could be felt growing warmer and warmer. Amid it the trees looked like groups of monsters; and when, suddenly, something cracked in the weird depths of the forest, it might have been thought that one of those monsters had been shifting its position, and with its foot had snapped a dry bough in doing so. Overhead, the first star could be seen glowing like a living eye, while in the windows of the house were a few twinkling lights. The hour of nature’s most solemn, all-embracing silence had arrived—the hour when the creative brain can work at its best, and when poetic thought seethes most ardently, and when the heart flames with the greatest heat of passion or with the greatest poignancy of grief—the hour when the cruel soul ripens to a maximum of strength and composure as it meditates evil—the hour when, at Oblomovka, every one settled down to a night of profound, calm restfulness.

      “Let us go for a walk,” said little Ilya to his mother.

      “God bless the child!” she cried. “How could we go for a walk? It is now damp, and you would get your little feet wet. Besides, we should find it dreadful out of doors, for at this hour the wood goblin is abroad, and he carries off little boys.”

      “To what place does he carry them, and what is he like, and where does he live?” asked the child; whereupon the mother gave full rein to her unbridled fancy. As she did so the child listened with blinking eyes; until at length, on sleep completely overcoming him, the nurse approached, took him from his mother’s lap, and bore him to bed, with his head hanging over her shoulder.

      “Another day is over, praise be to God!” said the inmates of Oblomovka as, yawning, they made the sign of the cross and then retired to rest. “Well spent it has been, and God send that to-morrow be like it. Glory, O Lord, to Thee this night! Glory, O Lord, to Thee!”

      Oblomov dreamed a second dream. On a long winter’s evening he was pressing close to his nurse, and she was whispering of some unknown country where neither cold nor darkness were known, and where miracles took place, and where rivers ran honey and milk, and where no one did anything the year round, and where only good boys like Ilya Ilyitch himself walked day by day in company with maidens such as neither tongue nor pen could hope to describe. Also (the nurse said) there dwelt there a kind witch who sometimes revealed herself to mortals in the shape of a pikefish; and this witch singled out as her especial favourite a quiet, inoffensive boor who formerly had been the butt of his fellows, and, for some unknown reason, heaped him with her bounty, so that always he possessed plenty to eat, and clothes ever ready to wear, and ended by marrying a marvellous beauty whose name was Militrissa Kirbitievna.

      The nurse related the story, and the child, with alert eyes and ears, hung upon her words. So artfully did the nurse or tradition eliminate from the story all resemblance to everyday life that the boy’s keen intellect and imagination, fired by the device, remained enthralled until, in later years, he had come even to man’s estate. As a matter of fact, the tale which the nurse thus lovingly related was the legend of the fool Emel—that clever, biting satire upon our forefathers and, it may be, also upon ourselves. True, in proportion as he grew up, little Oblomov came to learn that no such things as rivers of honey and milk, or even such persons as kind witches, really existed; yet, though he came to smile at his nurse’s stories, that smile was never wholly sincere, since always it would be accompanied by a sigh. For him the legend confounded itself with life, and, unconsciously, he found himself regretting that the legend differed from life, and that life differed from the legend. Involuntarily he would dream of Militrissa Kirbitievna, and feel attracted towards the country whereof nothing was known except that folk there went for walks, and were free from sorrow and care. Never could he rid himself of a longing to spend his days in lying upon the stove (even as the favourite of the legend had done), and to be dressed in ready-made, unearned clothes, and to eat at the expense of a benevolent witch. To the same story had his father and his grandfather listened as, shaped according to the stereotyped version current throughout antiquity, it had issued from the mouths of male and female nurses through the long course of ages and of generations.

      Then Oblomov’s nurse proceeded to draw another picture for the imagination of her charge. That is to say, she told him of the exploits of the Russian Achilleses and Ulysseses, and of the manner in which those heroes had been used to wander about Russia, and to kill and slay; and of how once they had disputed as to which of them could best drain a beaker of wine at a draught. Also, she told the boy of cruel robbers, of sleeping princesses, and of cities and peoples which had been turned into stone. Lastly, she passed to Russian demonology, to dead folk, to monsters, and to werewolves. With a simplicity, yet a sincerity, worthy of Homer, with a lifelike similitude of detail and a power of clear-cut relief that might have vied with the great Greek poet’s, she fired the boy’s intellect and imagination to a love for that Iliad which our heroes founded during the dim ages when man had not yet become adapted to the sundry perils and mysteries of nature and of life—when still he trembled before werewolves and wood demons, and sought refuge with protectors like Alesha Popovitch from the calamities СКАЧАТЬ