by Iliazd
One comfort remained—Ivlita. Ivlita was with him, she understood him, she would disappear, worn down, like him, by banality, the plains, the mountains, it made no difference, and would die, but would not surrender to these misshapen peasant women, or he to Arcady
A comforter? What was wrong with him? Where had his musing led him? In what was she his comforter? A monstrous absurdity. Ivlita, that was all. Ivlita loved Laurence. What more did he need? Riches? But did she really need them? Look, he’d brought them, and had she paid them any attention? How many times had he told himself: exploits, money, that’s not the main thing; and he hadn’t listened to himself. Fool. What was he running around for when happiness was here, simple normal mutual happiness
It was like a weight fell from Laurence. And, lighter now, he felt just as innocent and green as he had been the year before. If only Ivlita would come round soon, they’d get through everything safely, and it would be possible, after disavowing his murders, to live a tranquil life
But when Ivlita, regaining consciousness, lifted her eyes, hostile in the light of the pinewood chips, while trying to push Laurence away and straining to enunciate something bad, what exactly Laurence could not immediately catch, the young man sensed that his fragile happiness was on the verge of falling to pieces any minute
And he divined what had happened in the cave before he arrived. Not the external event, that was not important, but the internal event, whose expression Ivlita now was. And although Laurence did not completely hear what Ivlita was attempting to utter, he got the message: her words must contain a verdict that would not only destroy the happiness he had nearly attained, but, most likely, would make it altogether irrecoverable. If only the silence would go on for as long as possible and the denouement arrive as late as possible. For it was horribly evident that the denouement of their romance was inevitable, that Laurence lacked the power to forestall it; and, a purportedly valiant man, he took fright, decided to draw it out, understanding perfectly that he could not draw it out to infinity. He admirably acknowledged that the time allotted him was dwindling, and, all the same, he clamped Ivlita’s mouth shut, not wanting to let fall from her lips the inexorable judgment
Ivlita quickly understood why Laurence was pressing on her face. In not allowing her to speak, what did he want to forestall? Could this madness really go on? Could they think of persisting further in their errors? Persisting, if only for a minute? As long as the affair dealt only with Laurence, he had been free to act as he saw fit. But this one, the third, not yet arrived, was he not already showing Laurence and Ivlita the way? Were they really free, even now? Didn’t they belong to the one to whom the future belonged, the one destined to be a monument to their love?
And as her powers returned, Ivlita struggled more insistently to remove Laurence’s seal from her lips. She recalled that she had, in just the same way, wanted to force Jonah to shut up because Jonah had been crying out what she wanted to say now, he had already foreseen then what she was only now assimilating, after a second trial. She could not put it off any longer, she had been cruelly mistaken when she refused to listen to Jonah; Laurence would never dare keep her from speaking, he was only doing it because he was no longer her husband and not her protector, but the murderer of the whole world and of her offspring
Poor Laurence. This time, perhaps, he saw more clearly than ever and in the way most devastating to himself. He guessed that if he allowed Ivlita to express herself, he would hear what he had just told himself, her resentment aimed against his freethinking, she would invite him to repent, to renounce murder, fighting, to have done, as they say, with soiling himself. But Laurence understood plainly the difference between freedom and coercion and, after fleeing into the mountains in order not to kill on command, could he now surrender on command? And this violence emanating from Ivlita would have removed any possibility of repenting; he could not under such conditions lay down his arms, and while he recognized that he needed, all the same, to repent, Laurence was prepared to do anything that would keep him from having to hear out her injunction and would preserve freedom as though inviolate
And after pressing down on Ivlita with all his weight, while continuing to clamp her mouth shut with his left hand, the young man grasped the pregnant woman by the throat with his right, determined to strangle her sooner than let her speak out. He felt something beginning to seethe under his palm and a rattle he had heard once before escaped through Ivlita’s clenched teeth. Hadn’t the former forester torn at this throat in the same way? Laurence was already the same mad and dying old man. His fingers suddenly refused to obey and, despite his efforts, Laurence could not continue to bring them, turned wooden, together
With a force he had never supposed in her, Ivlita sunk her teeth into the hand covering her mouth, broke the other one that had grown into her throat, pushed Laurence away, and jumped up, raining blows, writhing in pain and rage
Unfit for battle, stunned, wounded, he staggered back toward the exit from the cave and as the light increased, the spectacle of the beauty with the swollen, paint-smudged belly became more repulsive, a vision so unbearable that Laurence closed his eyes, turned, and made a break to run off into the unknown
Captain Arcady’s authority was unlimited. He could send off peasants in whole families for resettlement and forced labor, confiscate their property, subject them to torture: probing with an iron or scourging, and execute anyone at whim, even without a court-martial. These rights were granted Arcady by law. Government custom allowed the captain and his soldiers to make use of local women to satisfy their needs. However, in view of the captain’s peculiar tastes, boys were assigned to him, about eleven years old, no older, and green-eyed, without fail, the weaker sex was entirely placed at his troops’ disposal
It would be a mistake to call such actions arbitrary or excessive. No, Arcady’s behavior (and any other would have acted in exactly the same way in his place) was subject to a strict design, which was, to repeat, not the captain’s property, but, after being worked out through centuries of government tyranny, framed the rite by which all punitive squadrons were inalterably guided
This rite began with seven days of mayhem. The task set before the squadron was: massacring as much of the populace as possible, spoiling their goods, and fouling their living quarters. When, toward the end of the week, only pitiful ruins of the dwellings remained, and beyond the village—hastily dug open pits filled with the shot and strangled, the epoch of social confidence was established
The extraordinary, epidemic flight of sawyers somewhat complicated Arcady’s task. In order to reward the soldiers, he was forced to send them chasing after women in the surrounding area, and was left to content himself with God knows what and trample plantings, cut down orchards, and burn forests just to keep busy. But the populace had hidden in the mountains, where no detachment would be so bold as to penetrate. Therefore, the sack of the village with the sawmill lost all its picturesque quality, and no matter how much the newspapers tried to puff up events and satiate society, it was obvious that Arcady had not been especially fortunate
The epoch of confidence began with belles lettres. In all the village halls and taverns, on columns and fences a touching appeal was pasted, and since the district was never distinguished for literacy, meetings were called everywhere, at which it was announced: the administration, in need of working hands to rebuild the village and the sawmill, was recruiting volunteers, and those who stepped forward would be given the refugees’ land and property. And on the next day, pitiful, starving shades actually began to arrive in the mucked-up village, expressing their willingness to help the economic steward and requesting the apportionment of this or that piece of real estate. That the newcomers were, in fact, the owners of the requested land and that no outsider ever showed up, about this fact not only everyone in the district knew perfectly well, but also Captain Arcady. But this was a regulation comedy, and Arcady pretended to believe in the newcomers’ sincerity, making out that they were emi
grants from some overpopulated village
During the first week only a few unfortunates crawled into the village, one at a time. But when they received what they asked for and no one touched them, the populace started to return in droves; a rumor circulated around the district that the soldiers were no longer acting up, that they were even removed from the village and occupying a special barracks built near the church, which they were forbidden to leave at night, that the captain had executed two who dared shove an old woman who was on her way to get water, and mayhem was mayhem, but now it was all past and Arcady was the most honorable of rulers. And in the inaccessible gorges and gullies, in the virgin or godforsaken thickets, the refugees bestirred themselves, preparing to return and transform the deserted village into a lively mill village
In vain did Laurence attempt to rally the refugees and rouse them to fight. To no effect, he picked his way through one backwoods nook after another, talked, argued—nothing helped. They answered him either with reference to the story about the gendarmes or with silence. And before the young man could be convinced that you couldn’t inspire anything in his fellow villagers, the return began and he was forced to think no longer about an uprising, but about how he could hold back or slow down the backsliding. At times, the thought flashed through Laurence’s mind that his efforts on this point would also be fruitless and his isolation was just a question of time. But engrossed in current affairs, he didn’t let this thought gain a foothold, not knowing what he would do if he didn’t manage to hold the peasants back. And he was prepared to pass a winter in the woods, even more than one, if need be, hoping that Arcady’s patience was not infinite. The young man also failed to notice that his grandeur was melting away from day to day, and if everyone had not yet discarded him once and for all, this could only be explained by that fact that the comedy of return was playing out according to the rules. It still seemed to Laurence that he was the same Laurence he had been on the morning he first visited his native village in his capacity as bandit, although the wennies were in hiding and no one paid him tribute anymore, while the money he’d received from the party had been spent not on his wife, but to support the refugees who remained in the mountains
When most of the sawyers had returned, there was a new appeal, proclaimed at meetings just as solemnly as the first and pasted up everywhere. A most significant sum of money was posted for Laurence’s capture and return, dead or alive. But the captain, understanding quite well that this was the very goal of the invasion, took into account also that, unlike the literature on allotments, the new proclamation could have no immediate value, and that among the highlanders a traitor would never be found for money. Therefore, when the latest literature provoked a panic among the peasants, who feared cruelty on the part of Arcady in his desire to find out where Laurence was, they were swiftly reassured, and Arcady did not, in fact, interrogate anyone, since he was confident: an occasion would turn up when a traitor would reveal himself, without fail—but disinterestedly like the artist Luke or, most likely, even unconsciously
What happened in the village with the sawmill was repeated in the cretins’ hamlet. When Arcady dispatched a platoon of soldiers a few days after the incursion, the hamlet was deserted, everything had been carried from the houses beforehand, and the soldiery was stuck smashing just walls
Not counting the cretins, who had not abandoned their stable and who, for some unknown reason, even the soldiers wouldn’t touch, the only person not wishing to leave the hamlet (and no one could make him) was the old wenny. He descended from the pastures at the first shots heard from the vicinity of the sawmill, calmly contemplated the ruin of his fatherland, received a series of rifle-butt blows and a wound from a fascine knife, and now, ailing, was lying on some straw in the cabin where Laurence and Ivlita once lived. And the wenny’s stamina, about which Laurence had often heard in recent weeks, seemed to the bandit not wisdom, but a challenge tossed his way, and one of the fundamental reasons for the villagers’ return. Not once since the day when the wenny’s children had been taken by Laurence for instruction had the old man expressed his views about the way things were going. And from the time when Laurence departed for the shipping traffic with Galaction, the young man hadn’t even seen the wenny and now concluded that he wouldn’t escape a severe rebuke when they met. And with every minute that Laurence put off their meeting, the thought that it was necessary, that the old man had turned out to be right in his dark prophecies and judgments, and that his advice might be, especially at the present time, extremely valuable, irritated him all the more, and, in acknowledging that the wenny was right, Laurence would add, every time: right, but not once and for all—and he hoped, day after day, that circumstances would turn and Laurence would no longer be vanquished. And gradually it dawned on the young man that words were to blame for everything, and that words, which had raised him to the dignity of bandit, were now standing guard over him and suffocating him, and he needed a new word to ward off failure, a spell that undoubtedly only the wenny knew and could teach. This made Laurence go on pondering all the more (in the secret hope that, lo and behold, he would stumble on the necessary word) and act all the less, convinced that he had been tardy with his thoughts: he should have thought before acting, or not have thought at all. Where, however, could he stick this inflamed brain that kept him from sleeping, wasting him more than any battle or march. To return, but in what way? And when the word “return” had finally been pronounced by Laurence, when it arose in his head at the sight of the insensate Ivlita, after he lit up the pitch-dark cave, Laurence did not see himself saved, but on the edge of an abyss
His next impressions were of an expansive cirque filled with eternal snow, air slightly humid but without losing its purity, the finest feathery clouds, a clump of them lying at the very bottom of the sky, and indistinct voices. It was so good that all Laurence desired now was not to move, to stay like this in this place forever. Life is a swoon, and when it passes, blessed death arrives—waking life, full of snow and clouds. Laurence looked at the clouds that put tortoiseshell to shame—barely melting, but dwindling all the same—and on the extremely slowly draining, but, for all that, depleted day. The azure became now brighter, now bluer until, finally, unfaithful to both, it preferred a straw-colored hue. Alas, if choice exists, that means death is not yet, and the swoon is not over. Oh, to regain consciousness
The young man made an effort. There was pain throughout his body. What had caused it? Had he plunged down a steep slope or simply fallen down after losing consciousness? And how did it happen? How could he have fallen from the cave onto glaciers that lay much higher up? And his head, supposedly dead and empty, from which everything had ostensibly been eroded, had in fact lost nothing. Memories crowded in, so clearly delineated that they required no effort, you didn’t even need to call on them, they were just there, in the most austere implacable sequence
The young man opened his eyes wide and peered into the depths, hoping they would deliver him from the past. But the heavens were turning gray, scarcely warm, and night, less forbearing than day, was stepping up to the rack
Alpine night! The concluding blaze on the jags edged in icicles has not yet been extinguished when, without giving dusk even half an hour’s existence, darkness crawls out from under the snow, rumbling and booming, and a penetrating cold freezes all creation. The crags, spangled with diamonds and blemished by damp, throw on an icy veil so as to see nothing. The mountains sit up, stretch their numbed extremities and rise higher and higher, no matter how high they already are, turning the slightest hollow into a precipice, a gully into a canyon, while the valleys recede into immeasurable distance. And when it has risen up, the mountain tears through the sky, reaches the countless stars and, once covered with them, drops off—to sleep. What does it care about the victim on the rack? Only some avalanches, and then as quietly as possible, laugh and slide down to the mountain’s feet
The objects that have surrounded a person during the course of a life lose th
eir materiality, becoming phantom and diaphanous. All night, freed from reality, they float, pure concepts, and in vain does a person attempt, peering into the darkness, to catch what, essentially, is happening and what his life was
And only long after midnight, bled by the search for meaning where there isn’t any, the reader of his own fate, doomed to mountain solitude, turns out to be for the first time not alone, but in his own company, and, rapted to a fearsome height, floats, girded with himself and the saving circle of death
But Laurence endured the night and, when dawn descended, illuminating the pink glaciers with its blood, he was forced to return to his wretched existence, from now on deprived of all meaning. The answer Ivlita had given him—from which, because it was coercive, he had fled the evening before—while it had undoubtedly been a way out, no longer seemed so to Laurence. Can death, when there is no other way out, be a solution? Did returning mean regaining? After the bitterness of defeat came the bitterness of disillusionment. There was nothing to regain. Was he afraid to die? Oh no, how gladly he would! How content he would have been lying broken on the floor of a canyon or shot through the head. And, truly, what was to consider: whether it was a way out or not, there was no other outcome. If it were otherwise, everything lost because of idle curiosity—joy, gooseberries, the glades, the lumber mill—would remain forever out of reach. Laurence wasn’t thinking about Ivlita. She had immediately vanished from his existence, set like the sun, leaving him to hunt for a way where there was none
But Laurence, looking at the whitening glaciers, had only to recall the old wenny, and all pain passed from his body. And the young man jumped up as though nothing were the matter and with swift steps, assured as never before, began descending along the glacier, taking running leaps across the crevasses or carefully crawling over them, or even taking them on a sled. And then along the cliffs, following shelves and ledges, seeking out chimneys and suitable ridges, he moved with inhuman spontaneity. It had seemed everything was finished, once and for all. But now his nature did not want to yield to his frazzled head and was latching onto the slightest pretext for action. This world was suddenly fine and fair, funny, just, one Laurence would never abandon. The curling ice formations hanging over the precipice, and the stream digging in far below under the cliffs heed the young man’s steps with such attention, as though afraid he might stumble. A kite shoots out of a fissure, frightening the lizards, whose presence you divine at a distance by the stones they knock down; the grass, mowed by the goats that went down at night to their watering place and would go down, naturally, today, too, is a glorious place for a hunter. A grass snake judiciously makes way