Tales of the Wilderness by Boris Pilniak

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Prince Prozorovsky had risen at daybreak. The sun glared fiercely
over the bare autumn-swept park and into the drawing-room windows.
The wedding cry of the ravens echoed through the autumnal stillness
that hung broodingly over the Steppe.

On such a dazzling golden day as this, the Prince's ancestors had set
off with their blood-hounds in by-gone days. In this house a whole
generation had lived--now the old family was forced to leave it--for
ever!

A red notice--"The Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor"--had been
affixed to the front door the previous evening, and the intruders had
bustled all night arranging something in the hall. The drawing-room
had not so far been touched; the gilt backs of books still glittered
from behind glass cases in the study. Oh books! Will not your poison
and your delights still abide?

Prince Prozorovsky went out into the fields; they were barren but for
dead rye-stalks that stuck up starkly from the earth. Wolves were
already on the trail. He wandered all day long, drank the last wine
of autumn and listened to the ravens' wedding cries.

When he had beheld this bird's carnival as a child, he had clapped
his hands, crying: "Hurrah for my wedding! Hurrah for my wedding!" He
had never had a wedding. Now his days were numbered. He had lived for
love. He had known many affections, had felt bitter pangs. He had
tasted the poison of the Moscow streets, of books and of women; had
been touched by the autumnal sadness of Bielokonsky, where he always
stayed in the autumn. Now he knew grief!

He walked aimlessly through the trackless fields and down into
hollows; the aspens glowed in a purple hue around him; on a hill
behind him the old white house stood amid the lilac shrubbery of a
decaying park. The crystal clear, vast, blue vista was immeasurably
distant.

The hair on his temples was already growing thin and gray--there was
no stopping, no returning!

He met a peasant, a rough, plain man in a sheep-skin jacket, driving
a cart laden with sacks. The man took off his cap and stopped his
horse, to make way for the ... _gentleman_.

"Good morning, little Father," he wheezed, then addressed his beast,
pulled the reins, drove on, then stopped again and called out:

"Listen, Barin, I want to tell you...."

The Prince turned round and looked at the man. The peasant was old,
his face was covered with hair and wrinkles.

"What will your Excellency do now?"

"That is difficult to say," replied the Prince.

"When will you go?" the old man asked. "Those Committees of the Poor
are taking away the corn. There are no matches, no manufacturers, and
I am burning splinters for light.... They say no corn is to be
sold.... Listen, Barin, I will take some secretly to the station.
People are coming from Moscow ... and ... and ... about thirty five
of them ... thirty five I tell you!... But then, what will there be
to buy with the proceeds?... Well, well! It is a great time all the
same ... a great time, Barin! Have a smoke, your Excellency."

Prozorovsky refused the proffered pipe, and rolled himself a small
cigar of an inferior brand. Around was the Steppe. No one saw, no one
knew of the peasant's compassion. The prince shook hands with him,
turned sharply on his heel and went home.

The cold, clear, glassy water in the park lake was blue and limpid,
for it was still too early for it to freeze all over. The sun was now
sinking towards the west in an ocean of ruddy gold and amethyst.

Prince Prozorovsky entered his study, sat down at the desk and drew
out a drawer full of letters. No! he could not take all his life away
with him: He laid the drawer on the desk, then went into the drawing-
room. A jug of milk and some bread stood on an album-table. The
Prince lighted the fire, burnt some papers, and stood by the
mantelpiece drinking his milk and eating the bread, for he had grown
hungry during the day.... The milk was sour, the bread stale.

Already the room was filling with the dim shadows of evening, a
purplish mist hung outside; the fire burnt with a bright yellow
flame.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the silence of the corridor, and Ivan
Koloturov appeared in the doorway. Koloturov! As young lads they had
played together, Ivan had developed into a sober, sensible, thrifty,
and industrious peasant. Standing in the middle of the room, the
President silently handed the Prince his paper--it had taken him a
whole hour to type it out.

On the sheet was typed "To the Barin Prozorovsky. The Bielokonsky
Committee of the Poor order you to withdraw from the Soviet Estate of
Bielokonsky and from the district precincts. President Koloturov."

"Very well," said the Prince quietly; "I will go this evening."

"You will take no horse."

"I will go on foot."

"As you like," Koloturov replied. "You will take nothing with you."
He turned round, stood a moment with his back to the Prince, then
went out of the room.

At that instant, a clock struck three quarters of the hour. It was
the work of Kuvaldin, the eighteenth century master. It had been in
the Moscow Kremlin and had afterwards travelled through the Caucasus
with the Vadkovsky Princes. How many times had its ticking sounded
during the course of those centuries.

Prozorovsky sat down by the window and looked out at the neglected
park. He remained there for about an hour, leaning his arms on the
marble sill, thinking, remembering. His reflections were interrupted
by Koloturov. The peasant came in silently with two of his men and
passed through into the office. They endeavoured silently to lift a
writing-table. Something cracked.

The Prince rose and put on his big grey overcoat, a felt hat, and
went out. He walked through the rustling gold-green foliage of the
park, passed close by some stables and a distillery, descended into a
dell, came up on its opposite side. Then, feeling tired, he decided
to walk slowly--walk twenty miles on foot for the first time in his
life. After all, how simple the whole thing was ... it was only
terrible in its simplicity.

The sun had already sunk beneath the horizon. The last ravens had
flown. An autumn hush over-hung the Steppe. He walked on briskly
through the wide, windy, open space, walking for the first time he
knew not whither, nor wherefore. He carried nothing, he possessed
nothing. The night was silent, dark, autumnal, and frosty.

He walked on briskly for eight miles, heedless of everything around,
then he stopped a moment to tie his shoe lace. Suddenly he felt an
overwhelming weariness and his legs began to ache; he had covered
nearly forty miles during the day.

In front of him lay the village of Makhmytka; he had often ridden
there in his youth on secret visits to a soldier's wife; but now he
would not go to her; no, not for anything in the world! The village
lay pressed to the earth and was ornamented with numerous stacks
which smelt of straw and dung. On its outskirts the Prince was met by
a pack of baying dogs, who flitted over the ground like dark, ghostly
shadows as they leapt round him.

At the first cabin he tapped at the little window, dimly lighted
within by some smouldering splinters.

"Who is there?" came the tardy response.

"Let me in for the night, good people," called the Prince.

"Who is it?"

"A traveller."

"Well, just a minute," came the grudging answer.

A bare-footed peasant in red drawers came out holding a lighted
splinter over his head and looking round.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "it is you, Prince! So you were too wise to stay,
were you? Well, come in."

An immense quantity of straw was spread over the floor. A cricket was
chirruping, and there was a smell of soot and dung.

"Lay yourself down, Barin, and God bless you!"

The peasant climbed on to the stove and sighed. His old wife began to
mutter something, the man grumbled, then said to the Prince:

"Barin, you can have your sleep, only get up in the morning and leave
before daylight, so that none will see you. You know yourself these
are troubled times, there is no gainsaying it. You are a gentleman,
Barin, and gentlemen have got to be done away with. The old woman
will wake you.... Sleep now."

Prozorovsky lay down without undressing, put his cape under his head--
and at once caught a cockroach on his neck! Some young pigs grunted
in a corner. The hut was swarming with vermin, blackened by smoke and
filled with stenches. Here, where men, calves and pigs herded all
together, the Prince lay on his straw, tossing about and scratching.
He thought of how, some centuries hence, people would be writing of
this age with love, compassion, and tenderness. It would be thought
of as an epoch of the most sublime and beautiful manifestation of the
human spirit.

A little pig came up, sniffed all round him, then trotted away again.
A low, bright star peeped in through the window. How infinite the
world seemed!

He did not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at
daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and
cold, and the grass was covered with a light frost. He walked along
briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up.
The sky was marvellously deep and blue.

At the station the Prince squeezed himself into a warm place on the
train, amongst other passengers carrying little sacks and bags of
flour. Thus, pressed against the sides of a truck, his clothes
bedaubed with white flour, he journeyed off to--Moscow.

Prince Prozorovsky had left at evening. Immediately after, furniture
was pulled about and re-arranged, the veneer was chipped off the
desk. The clock was about to be transferred to the office, but some
one noticed that it had only one hand. None of the men realised that
Kuvaldin's old clocks were necessarily one-handed, and moved every
five minutes simply because the minutes were not counted singly in
those days. Somebody suggested that the clock could be removed from
its case.

"Take the clock out of the box," Ivan Koloturov ordered. "Tell the
joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the
office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!"

That night an old woman came running in. There was a great turmoil in
the village: a girl had been abused--no one knew by whom, whether by
the villagers themselves or the people who had come from Moscow for
flour; the old woman began to accuse the Committee men. She stood by
the window and reviled them at the top of her voice. Ivan Koloturov
drove her away with a blow on the neck, and she went off wailing
bitterly.

It was pitch-dark. The house was quiet. Milkmaids outside were
singing boisterously. Ivan went into the study, sat down on the sofa,
felt its softness, found a forgotten electric lamp and played with
it, flashing its light on the walls as he passed through. He noticed
the clock on the floor of the drawing-room and began to think what he
would do with it, then he picked it up and threw it into the water-
closet. A band of his men had broken their way into the other end of
the house, and some one was thumping on the piano; Ivan Koloturov
would have liked to have driven them away, to prevent them from doing
damage, but he dared not. He suddenly felt sorry for himself and his
old wife and he wanted to go home to his stove.

A bell clanged--supper! Ivan quietly stole to the wine-cellar, filled
up his jug, and drank, then hurriedly locked the cellar door.

On the way home he fell down in the park; he lay there a long time,
trying to lift himself, wanting all the while to say something and to
explain--but he fell asleep.

The dark, dismal autumn night enfolded the empty, frozen, desolate
Steppe.

DEATH

I

It seemed as though the golden days of "St. Martin's" summer had come
to stay.

The sun shone without warmth in the vast blue expanse of sky, across
which swept the gabbling cranes on their annual flight southward. A
hoar-frost lay in the shadow of the houses. The air was crisp and
sapphire, the cold invigorating, a brooding stillness wrapped the
world.

The vine-wreathed columns on the terrace, the maple avenue and the
ground beneath, all glowed under a purple pall of fallen leaves. The
lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining
surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the
statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves
were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees
after summer seemed!

In days such as these, the mind grows at once alert and calm. It
dwells peacefully on the past and the future. The individual feels
impelled by a kind of langour just to walk over the fallen leaves, to
look in the gardens for unnoticed, forgotten apples, and to listen to
the cries of the cranes flying south.

II

Ippolyte Ippolytovich was a hundred years old less three months and
some days. He had been a student in the Moscow University with
Lermontov, and they had been drawn together in friendship through
their mutual admiration of Byron. In the "sixties,"--he was then
close to his fiftieth birthday--he constantly conferred with the
Emperor Alexander on liberative reforms, and pored over Pisarev's
writings in his own home.

It was only by the huge, skeleton frame over which stretched the
parchment skin, that it could be seen he had once been a tall, big,
broad-shouldered man; his large face was covered with yellowish-white
hair that crept from the nose, the cheek-bones, the forehead and the
ears, while the skull was completely bald; the eyes were white and
discoloured; the hands and legs shrunken, and seemed as though
emaciated by nature's own design.

There was a smell of wax in his room, and that peculiar fusty odour
that pervades every old nobleman's home. It was a large, bare
apartment containing only a massive mahogany writing-table, covered
with a faded green cloth and bestrewn with a quantity of old-
fashioned ornaments; there was also an armchair and a sofa.

The moulded ceiling, the greenish-white marbled walls, the dragon
fire-place, the inlaid flooring of speckled birch, the window panes,
rounded at the tops, curtainless and with frequent intersecting of
their framework, all, had become tarnished and lustreless, covered
over with all the colours of the rainbow. Through the windows
streamed the mellow golden rays of the autumn sun, resting on the
table, a part of the sofa, and on the floor.

For many years the old man had ceased to sleep at night so as to sit
up by day. It might truly be said that he slept almost the entire
twenty-four hours, and also that he sat up during the whole of that
time! He was always slumbering, lying with half-open, discoloured
eyes on a large sofa tapestried in pig-skin of English make, and
covered with a bear-skin rug. He lay there day and night, his right
arm flung back behind his head. Whenever, by day or night, he was
called by his name--Ippolyte Ippolytovich, he would remain silent a
moment collecting his wits, then answer:

"Eh?"

He had no thoughts. All that took place round him, all that he had
gone through in life, was meaningless to him now. It was all
outlived, and he had nothing to think about. Neither had he any
feelings, for all his organs of receptivity had grown dulled.

At night mice could be heard; while through the empty, columned hall
out of which his room opened, rats scurried, flopping about and
tumbling down from the armchairs and tables. But the old man did not
hear them.

III

Vasilisa Vasena came every morning at seven o'clock; she was a
country-woman of about thirty seven, strong, healthy, red-faced,
reminiscent of a July day in her floridness and vigorous health.

She used to say quietly: "Good morning to you, Ippolyte
Ippolytovich."

And he would give a base "Eh?" in a voice like a worn-out gramophone
record.

Vasena promptly began washing him with a sponge, then fed him with
manna-gruel. The old man sat bent up on the sofa, his hands resting
on his knees. He ate slowly from a spoon. They were silent, his eyes
gazing inwardly, seeing nothing. Sunbeams stole in through the window
and glistened on his yellowish hair.

"Your good son, Ilya Ippolytovich, has come," Vasena said.

"Eh?"

Ippolyte Ippolytovich had married at about the age of forty; of his
three sons only Ilya was living. The old man called his son to
memory, pictured him in his mind, but felt neither joy nor interest--
felt nothing!

Dimly, somewhere far away in the dark recesses of his memory, lurked
a glimmering, wavering image of his son; at first he saw him as an
infant, then as a boy, finally a youth. He recollected that now
already he too was almost an old man. It came to him that once, long
ago, this image was necessary and very dear to him, that afterwards
he had lost sight of it, and that now it had become meaningless to
him.

Dully, through inertia, the old man inquired: "He has come, you say?"

"Yes, came in the night, alone. He is resting now."

"Eh? He has come to have a look at me before I die."

Vasena promptly answered: "Lord! you are not so young as to...."

They were silent. The old man lay back on the sofa and slept.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, you must take your walk!"

"Eh?"

It was a "St. Martin's Summer." Over the scattered blood-red vine
leaves on the terrace, which was deluged in mellow autumnal sunshine,
the bent-up old man walked, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane, and
supported by the sturdy Vasena. He had a skull-cap pulled down low
over his forehead, and wore a long, black overcoat.

IV

Sometimes the old man relapsed into a state of coma, lasting several
hours. Then life seemed to have ebbed from him entirely. A clay-like
pallor over-spread his face, he had the lips and open, glassy eyes of
a corpse, and he scarcely breathed. Then they sent post-haste for the
doctor, who sprinkled him with camphor, gave him oxygen and produced
artificial respiration. The old man slowly came to, rolling his eyes.

"Another minute and it would have been death," the doctor would say
in a deep, grave voice.

When the old man had at length recovered, Vasena used to say to him:
"Lord! We were so frightened, we were so frightened! ... We thought
you were quite gone. Yes, we did. For you know, you are not so young
as to...."

Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments,
half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his
lips, he laughed:

"He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He-
he!"

V

Ilya Ippolytovich walked through the empty rooms of the dying house.
How dusty and mouldy it seemed! The sun came through the tarnished
window-panes and the specks of dust looked golden in its radiant
light. He entered the room where he had passed his childhood. Dust
lay everywhere, on the window-sills, on the floor, and on the
furniture. Here and there fresh boot-prints were visible. A thin
portmanteau--not belonging to the house and pasted over with many
labels--lay on a table. A hard, icy stillness pervaded the entire
place.

Ilya Ippolytovich was stout like his father, but he still walked
erect. His hair was already thinning and growing grey over the
temples, but his face was clean-shaven, like a youth's. His lips were
wrinkled and he had large, grey, weary eyes.

He felt gloomy and unhappy, because his father's days were numbered;
and he brooded miserably over the awkwardness of approaching death,
wondering how one should behave towards a man who was definitely
doomed. To and fro, from corner to corner, he walked, with restless,
springy steps.

He met his father on the terrace.

"Hallo, father!" he said briskly, with an intentional show of
carelessness.

The old man looked at him blindly, not recognising his son at first.
But afterwards he smiled, went up the steps, and gave his cheek to be
kissed. It smelt of wax.

"Eh?" said the old man.

Ilya kissed him, laughed hilariously, and slapped him lightly on the
shoulder: "It is a long time since we met, father. How are you?"

His father looked at him from beneath his cap, gave a feeble smile,
then said after a pause: "Eh?"

Vasena answered for him: "You may well ask how he is doing, Ilya
Ippolytovich! Why, we are fearing the worst every day."

Ilya threw her a reproachful glance and said loudly: "It is nonsense,
father! You have still a hundred years to live! You are tired, let us
sit down here and have a talk together."

They sat down on the marble steps of the terrace. Silence. No words
came to Ilya. Try as he might, he could not think what to say.

"Well, I am still painting pictures," he tried at last; "I am
preparing to go abroad."

The old man did not hear him; he looked at his son without seeing or
understanding, plunged in his own reflections.

"You have come to look at me? You think I shall die soon?" he asked
suddenly.

Ilya Ippolytovich grew very pale and muttered confusedly: "What are
you saying, father? What do you mean?"

But his father no longer heard. He had fallen back in his chair, his
eyes half-closed and glassy, his face utterly expressionless. He was
asleep.

VI

The sun was shining, the sky was blue; in the limpid spaces above the
earth there was a flood of crystal light.

Ilya Ippolytovich strolled through the park and thought of his
father. The old man had lived a full, rich, and magnificent life. It
had possessed so much that was good, bright and necessary. Now--
death! Nothing would remain. Nothing! And this nothing was terrible
to Ilya Ippolytovitch.

Does not living man recognize life, the world, the sun, all that is
around and within him, through himself? he reflected. A man dies, and
the world dies for him. Thenceforward he feels and recognises
nothing. Nothing! Then what is the use of living, developing,
working, when in the end there will be--nothing?... Was there no
great wisdom in his father's hundred years? Nor in his fatherhood?

A crane was crying somewhere overhead. The sound came from a scarcely
visible dark arrow in the cloudless sky, which flew south. Red,
frost-covered leaves were rustling underfoot. Ilya's face was pale,
the wrinkles round his lips made him seem tired and feeble. He had
spent his whole life alone, in the solitude of a cold studio, living
arduously among pictures, for the sake of pictures. To what end?

VII

Ippolyte Ippolytovich sat in the large, bare dining-room eating
chicken cutlets and broth. A napkin was tied round his neck as if he
were a child. Vasena fed him from a tea-spoon, and afterwards led him
into his study. The old man lay down on a sofa, put his hand behind
his head and fell asleep, his eyes half-open.

Ilya went to him in the study. He again made a pretence of being
cheerful, but his tired eyes betrayed grief, and behind his clean-
shaven face, his grey English coat, and yellow boots, somehow one
felt there was a great shaken and puzzled soul suffering, yet seeking
to conceal its anguish.

He sat down at his father's feet.

For a long time the old man searched his face with his eyes, then in
a scraping, worn-out piping voice, said: "Eh?"

"It is so long since we met, father, I am longing to have a chat with
you! Somehow I have no one dearer to me than you! Absolutely no one!
How are you, sir?"

The old man gazed before him with bleary eyes. He did not seem to
have heard. But suddenly screwing up his eyes, straightening out his
lips and opening his empty jaws, he laughed:

"He-he! he-he!" he laughed, and said jovially: "I am dying soon. He-
he! he-he!"

However, Ilya no longer felt as embarrassed as on that first occasion
on the terrace. In a hasty undertone, almost under his breath, he
asked:

"But aren't you afraid?"

"No! He-he!"

"Don't you believe in God?"

"No! He-he!"

They were silent for a long time after that. Then the old man raised
himself on his elbows with a sly grin.

"You see," he said, "when a man is worn out ... sleep is the best
thing for him ... that is so with dying ... one wants to die....
Understand? When a man is worn out...."

He was silent for a moment, then grinned and repeated:

"He-he! He-he! Understand?"

Ilya gave his father a long look, standing there motionless, with
wide-open eyes, feeling a thrill of utter horror.

But the old man was already slumbering.

VIII

Day faded. The blue autumnal twilight spread over the earth and
peeped in through the windows. A purple mist filled the room with
vague, spectral shadows. Outside was a white frost. A silvery moon
triumphantly rode the clear cold over-arching sky.

Ippolyte Ippolytovich lay upon his sofa. He felt nothing. The space
occupied by his body resembled only a great, dark, hollow bin in
which there was--nothing! Close by, a rat flopped across the floor,
but the old man did not hear. A teasing autumnal fly settled on his
eyebrow, he did not wink. From the withered toes to the withered
legs, to the hips, stomach, chest, and heart, passed a faint,
agreeable, scarcely noticeable numbness.

It was evening now and the room was dark; the mist gathered thick and
threatening through the windows. Outside in the crisp, frosty
moonlight, it was bright. The old man's face--all over-grown with
white hair--and his bald skull, had a death-like look.

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