and–
immeasurable joy, freedom! Freedom! The house, the old life–forever behind–death to them! The stones of the embankment crumbled, flew together with it down into the ravine (the wind of fall whispered: gviu!…) and everything showered down like sparks of eyes from the fall–and then remained only: a red heart. A scout overhead called out something, and then: the fires of the hungry folk, the railway sleepers, a snatch of a song of the hungry folk, and the water of the Vologa. –Freedom, freedom! Having nothing, refusing everything–being poor! –And night, and days, and dawns, and the sun, and the scorching heat, and the mists, and the storms–not knowing one’s tomorrow. And the days in the scorching heat– like a soldier’s wife in a sarafan, at thirty years of age–like those who lived in the woods, behind the Ordinins, where the sky closes over the north: how sweet it is, on such nights, to kiss that soldier’s wife in the barn.
In May the earth beckons–in May, at dawn, in the mist, a young girl may wish to lie down on the earth, and you will enter the earth: the earth pulls. And the very first evening, when Andrei came to Chornye Rechki, in Poperechye, the girls rapped on his window and shouted:
“Andy, come out to play! We’ll play tag!” –girlish laughter showered and gushed down from the window.
Andrei came out of the hut. In the green dusk, beyond the church, on the hill, over the ravine, stood the girls in their multicolored dresses and white head-scarves, and around them the boys stood out in ragged disheveled silhouettes.
“Come on out! Don’t be afraid! We’ll play tag!”
For a moment there was silence. In the distance the landrails cried out. Then all at once the chorus rang out:
“Chi-vi-li-vi-li-vi-li!
Take whoever you choose.
A fir tree stands on top of the hill
Right at the very top.
Create, oh Lord, create for me,
For me a pretty, young beauty…”
The evening was calm and clear, with white stars. In Nikola, which stands near Belye-Kolodezy the church seemed blue, stern, its tall black roof and cross went up to the sky, to the white stars. Over the river and water-meadows there was peace and tranquillity. There was a troubled, green noise, but still there was that silence–the one night creates. And all night till the crystal dawn the girls sang. And in the night the storm came, it came from the east, roaring and lit with lightning, the tempestuous rain, necessary for the plants, passed hurriedly. Andrei wandered throughout the night along the slopes. –Another life! Being poor. Having nothing. Refusing everything.
The Nikola church, at Belye-Kolodezy, made of limestone, stood on a hill over the river. Once a monastery had stood here, now just a white church remains, sinking into the ground, overgrown with moss, with mica windows looking down, with a crooked, blackened roof–the churchyard of Belye-Kolodezy. From the hill there was a view of the river, of the lands beyond the river, of the blue fir woods of the lands beyond the river, on an endless expanse. Around the graveyard copper-boled pine trees and
moss were growing. Out of the earth, to the right of the church steps, flowed an ice-cold spring, made into an artificial well (hence the name Belye-Kolodezy*) –for hundreds of years the spring water had flowed down the slope, cutting out a gully in the hillside and across a country lane–on the other side on a slope, under the high point, the Ordinin princes’ estate was situated. Beyond the river in the woods lay the village of Chornye Rechki. The lonely bald Mount Uvek towered. And around were woods, woods to the northern horizon, and steppes, steppes–to the south.
On the evening Andrei arrived, he couldn’t find Yegorka. In the hut there was a smell of herbs, and some bread and honey–the first honey–Arina had given him. Then the cocks were already singing, and Arina, the beauty, had gone into the woods, into the night.
–The earth beckons in May–in May, at dawn, in the mist. The May herbs smell of sweet honeys, in May of a night there is a bitter smell of the birch and the cherry trees, May nights are deep, heady, and the dawns in May are crimson, like blood and fire. Arina was born in her grandfather Yegorka’s house in May and there were: May, the sky, pines, water-meadows and the river. Together with her mother and Yegorka she would gather herbs, and from them Arina learned that as the earth goes wild in May with nightingales and cuckoos, at night–a man’s blood is wild, like May, the month of blossoming. A breed of sorcerer lives according to its own rules–it must have been May time for Arina–without a priest, without incense, with the incense of the cherry tree and the nightingale funeral songs. Who doesn’t know how young blood, lonely blood, in a young body, on nights in May, on floriferous May nights can be restive?… Was this not why Arina’s words became cheeky and bold like an old woman’s–a witch? Arina the girl–became a woman, beautiful, sturdy, ruddy-complexioned, broad-shouldered, with dark eyes which had a cheeky look about them–a cheeky, self-willed, free, young witch? The Revolution came to Chornye Rechki, in May–the earth beckons in May–Arina met the Rebellion as did Yegorka, the sorcerer.
Grandpa Yegorka, the sorcerer, was fishing when Andrei arrived and Andrei went up to him. The water was swift, free, murky, it rippled as if it were breathing. And all night there was a marsh-green dusk with a white cavalry of clouds. It stood by the whirlpool, holding a line, stooping Yegorka, with his white shock of hair and in white trousers, the water circled in eddies, fizzed, crazy pike crashed against the net forecefully–Andrei caught them in flight, cold and clammy, shining in the night murkiness like a dove’s wing.
“Jus think,” Yegor said in a whisper. “When did this net come about? Do you think it’s only just been invented? What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well I think our forebears fished with it. What?… When St. Nicholas’s was founded–five hundred years ago–there was already the net then… There used to be a monastery here, a bandit founded it. Redenya–well, then, I’m telling you, this monastery was taken so many times by the Kalmyks, the Tatars, and the Kirghiz. Because of this they takes me away from the Bolsheviks–straight to jail.”
“For what?”
“Russia was under the Tatars–it was the Tatar yoke. Russia was under the Germans–it was the German yoke. Russia is intelligent. The German–he’s clever, but he has a stupid mind–we uses it in the john. I spoke out at a meeting: there’s no Internashnal, but there is a popular Russian Revolution, a rebellion–and nothing more. Like Stepan Timofeevich’s. –‘And Karl Marx?’ they asked. –‘A German,’ I say, ‘so he must have been stupid.’–‘And Lenin?’–‘Lenin,’ I say, ‘was of peasant stock, a Bolshevik, and I suppose you are Communests. You shout of–the merchants! Get rid of–the landowners, graspers! Get rid of the Constichat Assembly, what’s needed is a council for all the land, so that anyone who wants can come and sort it out in the open. Get rid of–tea; get rid of–coffee!–homebrewed booze! Let there be faith and justice. The capital is–Moscow. Believe in what you like, even a block! But get rid, too, of–the Communests!–the Bolsheviks, I say, will sort things out by themselves.’ Well, I was promptly put in jail to cool my heels.”
A pike splashed in the murky water, and went away, frightened by Yegorka’s loud voice.
“I’m making too much noise,” said Yegorka in a whisper, “Take your Shak… …Shakespearov, is that his name?–You’ve read ‘Hamlet,’ but you don’t know our game ‘tag’ which the girls play. Or, let’s take–‘It Was On a Rainy Saturday.’ Do you know it? Well?”
“No, I don’t.”
“There then! There’s your Communests for you!”
And at that moment on the hill the girls began singing their chorus:
“The white swan straggled behind the flock,
And got attached to a flock of gray geese.”
Because today crashed in so imperiously, because in the stormy human element he was a leaf–torn out of time–Andrei came to thoughts of another freedom–inner freedom, not outer: refusing things, time, having nothing, wanting nothing, regretting nothing,
being poor–just living to see if it’s with potato or sauerkraut, if it’s in a hut, if free or tied–it’s all the same: let the elements swirl and crash, the soul will always stay fresh and calm, in order to see. Smallpox and hungry typhus walked over the earth. In the mornings corpses were brought to Nikola, sometimes in the afternoons, at about four o’clock, they would come to christen the young children, and then they rang the bells, which had long ago been heard by the Tatars. And every evening the girls sang near Nikola. It was June.
And in the village of Chornye Rechki lived the peasants–not of the family, but from Kononov’s. From spring to autumn they worked their guts out from dawn till dusk, old and young alike, burning from sun and sweat. And from autumn to spring they also worked, burning up from the smoke, like huts without chimneys, freezing, starving.
Life was hard, severe–yet they loved their life very much, with its smoke, cold and scorching heat, and sickliness. They lived with the woods, with the field, with the sky–it was necessary to live in friendship with them, but also to struggle relentlessly. It was necessary to remember the nights, the dawns and one’s broods, to have a look at the damp corner, keep an eye on the north wind, listen to the noise and clamor of the forest. The eldest in the village was–grandfather Kononov, Ionov. He is stooped and no longer remembers what his grandfather was called, but he knows the old days and can recall how his forefathers and great-grandparents lived and how one ought to live. And the huts stood with their backs to the wood, over the river, and looked out from under the pines with their pockmarked mugs, sullenly, the dim windows–eyes–glare lupinely, shed tears. The gray timber has sagged. The ruddy thatch–hair in a clip–has fallen to the ground. The huts look like a thousand years ago.
–But on the Ordinin Princes’ estate, just before spring, the anarchists settled. –This is–through the eyes of Andrei Volkovich.
One April night the anarchists came to the princes’ home (let the buckle of the tale be the story of how the princes fled from the estate) unexpectedly no one knows whence, took up their positions during the night, brought cartloads of machine-guns, rifles and magazines, and already by morning the flag flew over the front of the house:
–Let the black flag of the free fly!
April passed, May passed, the cherry tree, the lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley finished flowering, the nightingales in the brushwood near the estate finished their songs. The anarchists, who arrived in the night, unexpected and unforeseen, on the second morning, in their blue working shirts and caps, drove out into the field to plough. –Andrei came to Chornye Rechki just before St. John’s day. And towards nighttime on St. John’s day Andrei went to the commune–to live. Mermaid weeks passed, the women from the commune went out down the hill to Nikola and sang songs, and St. John’s night arrived. On St. John’s night they lit the campfires. It was a white witches’ night, they burned the campfires in the mist by the river, danced their folk dances and jumped through the flames. Aganka, Comrade Aganka, galloped heartily, sang heartily, seized Andrei by the arm, plunged with him into the darkness, to the water-meadows, stopped, holding his hands, said quickly to him, a stranger:
“My heart aches, I’m from Tambov. My daughter is still there. She’s gone into service, wanted to live her own life. My heart aches. Some daughter, eh?” –again she hurled herself towards the fire, towards Pavlenko.
And on that very night Andrei spoke for the first time to Anna. Thirty years–thirty of Anna’s years had gone, forever, vanished without trace, and in Anna there was transparency and tenderness:–such as autumn has in the golden season of falling leaves and on the satin falling-star nights. Andrei was going into the night quarters. Before dawn (the white misty fortune telling St. John’s night was passing)–in the meadow Andrei met Anna, she was walking alone, in the white mist, in a white dress. Andrei went up to her and said:
“The horses are feeding peacefully. It’s damp–the gadflies aren’t bothering them. Let’s go, I’ll ferry you across in the boat. What a mist! Sometimes I feel like walking–walking, walking–into the mist!”
Andrei talked a lot with Anna in that gloomy dawn. Anna had a husband, an engineer at the factory, everything it was necessary to overcome, there in town with her husband, was overcome, made obsolete, unnecessary. And Andrei knew that in that June dawn Anna was weeping. One must live. Her husband would never understand that there is a Russia with her Time of Troubles, Razinovshchina and Pugachovshchina, with ‘17, the old churches, the ikons, folk tales, ceremonies, Juliana Lazarevskaya and Andrei Rublyov, with her woods and steppes, marshes and rivers, water-sprites and goblins. He would never understand freedom from everything–having nothing, giving up everything, like Andrei, not having any underwear to call one’s own. Let the trains in Russia come to a halt–surely there’s beauty in a burning torch, hunger, sickness? One must learn to look at everything and at oneself from without, to simply look, not to belong to anyone. To keep moving, moving, to overcome joy and suffering.
It was haymaking time, the harvest time. There was almost no nighttime, at night it seemed that there was no sky over the river in flood, the creeks, the dry valleys and woods–and over Uvek. When Andrei came first to the commune, they shouted out to him:
“Who goes there?!”
And grandfather Yegorka answered with the password:
“Come on!”
The road from the gates with the lions, under the hill, passed by the stone wall with vases on pillars. Down the hillside went the stone paths to a kitchen garden, the meadow and the river. Behind clumps of trees, behind the green square, behind the stable yard stood a sullen house of classical architecture, along its sides stretched outbuildings and wings. On the porch a snub-nosed machine-gun, a Maxim, looked out from behind the columns. There was nobody in the yard. They went round the house by the path, walked through the thickets of almond bushes and lilacs up to the terrace. In the dining room, at long tables sat the anarchists, who were finishing supper. Grandfather Yegorka pulled a wry face and walked away. The cows had been rounded up, and the women had gone to milk them. Pavlenko went to the night quarters. The hour was already late, but the sky was still green, the mist had begun to crawl over the meadow. Many had gone away to sleep, to get up tomorrow at dawn. Andrei was sitting with comrade Yuzik in the study, with a candle, the walls glistened with the golden bindings of the books. Comrade Yuzik was standing by the window and looking at the sky.
“What a quiet Spring here!” said Yuzik. “And what quiet stars you have–they look so sad. Were you never attwacted by astwonomy?–When you think about the stars, you begin to feel, that we are totally insignificant. The earth–is a wordly pwison; what are we, humans? What do our wevolution and injustice mean?”
Andrei replied quickly:
“Yes, yes! That’s what I think, too! One must be free and give up everything. It’s remarkable how our thoughts coincide.”
“Yes, of course!…” –Yuzik grew silent. “Nowhere are there stars like those in the Indian Ocean–the Southern Cwoss… I’ve been all round the world, and nowhere is there a countwy like Wussia. We came here, in order to live on the earth, to cweate life… How nice it is here, and what books are on these shelves, the books have been collected over two centuries!… From the Euwopeans’ point of view we Wussians, are living in the Middle Ages.”
In came Pavlenko, Svirid, Natalya, Irina, and Aganka. Aganka had brought a wooden jug of milk and some oatcakes.
“Who wants some?”
In the lounge the candle burned lonely, the golden Empire-style furniture stood in meticulous order, through the arch was the completely empty hall. The windows of the lounge and study were open. Under the slope in the meadow the birds and insects were calling, making noises and singing in their various voices, as in an opera before an overture, when the orchestra is tuning up. Irina lazily played a few bars on the piano, and Aganka got ready to dance. In came Semyon Ivanovich, with a beard like Marx’s–with a pile of newspapers and began speaking in irritated
tones of the destruction. –On that evening Andrei returned to Nikola and, standing by St. Nikola’s once again relived keenly, painfully and tenderly all that joy, his joy which had been created for him by a dream, the Revolution–a dream about the truth of poverty, about justice, about the beauty–of old five-hundred-year-old churches.
With the anarchists Andrei would rise with the dawn–summer-like, immeasurably clear, –and with a pair of barrels on poles he rushed down to the river for water. Aganka helped him to work the pump. After pumping and watering the horses, they bathed, separated by a bush. Andrei carted the water away, first to the kitchen garden and the park, then to the kitchen. The sun came up red and slow, clothing got soaked with the honey dew, from the water-meadows the last puffs of mist moved away. They would knock off work between twelve and three, the men steaming hot, gathered for lunch, bronzed with the sun, sweaty with work, their collars unbuttoned. Never before had Andrei worked with his muscles–his shoulders ached sweetly, and his waist and thighs, his head was light, his thoughts–clear and calm. Calm and clear evenings came, Andrei wanted to sleep, his shoulders ached, and–in insomnia–the world seemed transparent, crystal and fragile, like June dawns. Always in the evenings Comrade Natasha would go walking with Andrei, she would weave daisy chains for herself and for him and, laughing, would talk to Andrei about how quiet he was, like the cornflower. In the evenings the papers were brought, the newspaper reporters wrote about the socialist fatherland being in danger, the Cossacks were in rebellion, the Ukrainians, the Poles–and this seemed unimportant–who would break the glassy backwater of insomnia? His thoughts were clear and light, fractured in the brittle thirst for sleep. And June with its porcelain jasmines, with its crystal sunrises, had already passed.
In the day Andrei worked in the park with Aganka–and admired her. She always had a ready song or tale, he never saw her tired and never knew when she slept. Short, thick-set, barefooted, with a laughing face, she used to wake him at dawn, splashing him with water, having already milked the cows. Like a frog she could swim, shameless, bathing, and then all day she was never still–in the park, in the potato patch, in the kitchen garden. In the evenings she would “get distracted”–at first with Pavlenko, then with Svirid–“ach–whose business is it who I sit with all night?” At haymaking Andrei and Aganka turned hay together in the garden, Andrei would stop for a smoke, Aganka would play with a rake and with her thighs, just like a young horse, she would say mischievously:
The Naked Year Page 8