Tales of the Wilderness by Boris Pilniak

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Vasena entered in her calm yet vigorous manner. Her broad hips and
deep bosom were only loosely covered by a red jacket.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, it is time for your meal," she called in a
matter of fact tone.

But he did not reply, nor utter his usual "Eh?"

They sent at once for the doctor, who felt his pulse, pressed a glass
to his lips, then said in a low, solemn tone:

"He is dead."

Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal,
answered calmly:

"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is
it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord,
they had everything!"

IX

Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the
morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell
in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes.

St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of
another earthly joy--the first white covering of snow, when it is so
delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in
hand.

THE HEIRS

I

Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain--called the Mountain of
Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence
came also Emelian Pugachev.

The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains,
making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.

Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close
to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a
mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when
it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held
there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya
Davydovna--the mistress--old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end
of her days.

She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was
occupied by--the heirs.

They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their
lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had
stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive
fury of the masses burst forth--and the remnants of the Rastorov
family gathered in their old nest--to be hidden from the Revolution
and famine.

Snow-storms--galloping snowy chargers--howled over the Steppe, the
Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of
Stenka Razin--thundered the Revolution.

The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old
cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the
Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its
steamers moored to their wharves.

The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was
nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room,
with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant,
worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived
utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow
of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their
thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.

General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded
closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and
dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through
the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his tasselled
Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing
hoarsely.

"Anna," he snarled, "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place
in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn
to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked
about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering
on his fingers.

"And it is your turn to go for the rations," retorted Anna Andreevna.

"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house
and they cannot organise themselves so as to go in turn for the
rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink."

The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants;
We must see to things ourselves. We can't
all perch like eagles, therefore,
I beg you to be more careful.
Kirill L. Lezhner."

Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of
the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the
ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the
lavatory door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling
brilliantly.

"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we
only one?" he grumbled. "I shall leave this den. They don't behave
like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?"

Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly:
"You know there are none. But I will look for some butt-ends in a
moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps."

"What bourgeois they are--throwing away fag-ends and keeping
servants!" her husband complained.

The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the
will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of
Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and
sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna,
the maid--a one-eyed Cyclop--had filled it with birch-wood, whereas
it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house
should be used as fuel first.

After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out
to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from
the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his
tea, leisurely drinking glass after glass, while Anna Andreevna
heated her stove in the corridor.

A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius--the
former head of a ministerial department--could be heard rousing
themselves behind the wall.

"You have had sufficient albumen; take hydrates now," rose Lina's
voice, calling to her children.

"Potatoes?"

"Yes."

"And fat?"

"You have had enough fat."

The general smiled craftily, then muttered grumpily:

"That is not eating, that is scientific alimentation." He cut himself
a piece of bacon, ate it with some white bread, and drank more tea
with sweet root and candied melon.

Gradually the occupants of the house roused themselves and half-
dressed, sleepy--carrying their towels, empty samovars, and tooth
brushes--they began to pass along the corridor in front of the
general's open door.

Kirill Lvovich eyed them maliciously as he sat drinking his tea and
inwardly cursed them all.

The Cyclop, Leontyevna, Sergius Andreevich's servant, tramped in
heavily with her man's boots from the Labour Exchange; her solitary
eye peered searchingly into Anna Andreevna's stove.

"I'll see she's not deceiving us over the firewood," she shouted
aggressively: "Oh, what a store she's got!"

"But you have used the birch-wood," the general hit back from his
room.

The Cyclop flew into a rage and slapped her thighs. One of the
periodic scenes ensued.

"What?" Leontyevna cried, "I am not trusted, I am being spied on!
Lina Fedorovna, I am going to complain to the Exchange."

Lina Fedorovna joined in from behind her door.

"She isn't trusted, she is being spied on," she echoed, "there must
be spies in this house! And they call themselves intellectual
people!"

"But you took the birch-wood!" protested Lvovich.

"And they call themselves intellectual!" screamed Lina.

The general came out into the passage and said severely:

"It is not for _us_ to judge, Lina Fedorovna. We are not the heirs
here. But it seems strange to me that Sergius should occupy three
rooms, and Anna only one--yes, very strange indeed."

The quarrel became more violent. Satisfied, the general put on his
overcoat and went out to take his place in the ration queue. Lina ran
to her husband; he went to get an explanation of the scene, but
Lvovich was not to be found, however; he remonstrated with his
sister, Anna Andreevna.

"This spying is impossible, it must stop," he insisted.

"But, can't you understand, it all began with searching for the butt-
end of a cigarette?" Anna pleaded in deep distress.

Lina had gone upstairs and was telling the whole story to Ekaterina.
Anna appealed to her younger brother, Constantine, a Lyceum student,
but he told her he was busy, immediately sitting down at his desk to
write. Soon after, however, he rose and went to Sergius.

"Busy?" he asked.

"What? Yes, I am busy."

"Have a smoke."

They began to smoke an inferior brand of tobacco known as "Kepsten."
They were silent.

"Will you have a game of chess?" Constantine asked after a while.

"Yes...But no, I think not," Sergius replied.

"Just one game?"

"Just one? Well, only one!"

They sat down and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a rumpled
Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and
Sergius, and an antique gold chain hung round his neck.

Being in constant dread of requisitioners and robbers they had
divided all the jewellery between them, and wore it for safety.

The brothers played one game, then a second, a fourth, a sixth--
smoking and quarrelling, disagreeing over the moves and trying to re-
arrange them. The general returned from the ration queue in the
market and came along the passage. He peeped in at the two players
through the open door, and after some hesitation decided to enter.

"Greenhorns, you don't know how to play!" he said.

"What do you mean? Don't know how to play?"

"Now, now, don't fly into a rage. If I am wrong--excuse an old man ...
I sent Kirka for the newspaper, I gave him a twenty copeck piece
for a tip."

"I am not in a rage!"

"Very well, then that's all right. But throw over your chess. Let us
play a game of chance."

They sat down and played it for the entire day, only interrupting the
game to go to their rooms for dinner.

Whenever Sergius had to pay a fine he would say:

"Anyhow, Kirill Lvovich, you have an objectionable manner."

"Now, now, greenhorn!" the general would reply.

They had not a penny between them. Katerina Andreevna had been
appointed guardian of their possessions. The men refused to recognise
her authority and called it merely a "femocracy." Only Sergius still
had some capital, the proceeds of an estate he had sold before the
Revolution. Therefore he could well afford to keep a servant.

Upstairs with Katerina were two girls who had thrown up their careers
on principle--the one her college studies, the other her
Conservatoire courses. They kept up a desultory conversation while
helping to clean potatoes. Presently Anna and Lina joined them, and
they all went down to the storeroom and began rummaging through their
grandparents' old wardrobes. They turned over a variety of
crinolines, farthingales, bustles and wigs, laying on one side the
articles of silver, bronze and porcelain--for the Tartars were coming
after dinner. The storeroom smelt of rats. Packed along its walls
were boxes, coffers, trunks, and a huge pair of rusty scales.

They all gathered together on the arrival of the Tartars, who greeted
them with handshakes. The general snorted. One of the Tartars, an old
man wearing new goloshes over felt boots, spoke to Katerina:

"How d'ye do, Barina?"

The general leisurely swung one leg over the other, and said stiffly:

"Be good enough to state your price."

The two Tartars looked over the old-fashioned articles, criticised
them, none too well, and fixed the most ridiculous prices. The
general burst out laughing and tried to be witty. Katerina grew
angrier and angrier, until at last she could no longer contain
herself:

"Kirill Lvovich," she shouted, "you are impossible!" "Very well,"
came the infuriated reply; "I am not one of the heirs, I can go!"

They calmed him, however, and then began bargaining with the Tartars,
who slung the old-fashioned articles carelessly over their arms--
laces worked by serfs, antique, hand made candle-sticks, a field-
glass and an acetylene lamp.

The twilight spread gently over the town, and through its dusky,
star-spangled veil, loomed the old Cathedral--reminiscent of Stenka
Razin; now and then came the chime of its deep-toned bells.

The Tartars at length succeeding in striking a bargain, rolled the
goods up into neat little packs with their customary promptitude,
paid out Kerensky notes from their bulging purses and left.

Then the heirs divided the proceeds. They were sitting in the
drawing-room. Blinds covered the low windows; some portraits hung on
the walls, a chandelier was shrouded in a muslin wrapper that had not
been changed for years. A yellow oaken piano was covered with dust,
and the furniture's velvet covering was tarnished and threadbare. The
house struck cold.

The heirs were dressed fantastically; the general in a dressing-gown
with gold embroideries and tassels; Sergius wore a black hooded coat;
Lina a warm hare-skin jacket, and Katerina, the eldest--the
moustached guardian--a man's thick overcoat, a petticoat and felt
shoes. On all were jewels--rings, ear-rings, bracelets and necklaces.

Sergius remarked ungallantly:

"This is a trying time for us all, and I propose that we divide the
proceeds among us according to the number of consumers."

"I am not one of the heirs," the general hastily interposed.

"I don't share your socialistic views." Constantine informed Sergius
with a cold smile; "I think they should be divided according to the
number of heirs."

A heated argument followed, above which rang the Cathedral bells. At
last, with great difficulty, they came to an agreement. Then Katerina
brought in the samovar. All fetched their own bread and sweet roots
and drank the tea, thankful not to have to prepare it for themselves.

Suddenly--with unexpected sadness and, therefore, unusually well--the
general began to speak:

"When I--a lieutenant-bridegroom--met our Aunt Kseniya for the first
time, she was wearing that bustle that you sold just now. Ah, will
things ever be the same again? If I were told the Bolshevik tyranny
would endure for another year, I should shoot myself! For, good Lord,
what I suffer! How my heart is wrung! And I am an old man.... Life is
simply not worth living."

All burst into tears; the general wept as old men weep, the
moustached Katerina cried in a sobbing bass. Neither could Anna
Andreevna, nor the two girls who stood clasping each other in the
corner, refrain from shedding tears, the girls for their youth and
the sparkling joys of their maidenhood of which they had been
deprived.

"I would shoot them all if I could!" Katerina declared.

Then Sergius' children, Kira and Lira, came in and Lina told them
they might take some albumen. Kira put butter on his.

The moon rose.... The stars shone brilliantly. The snow was dead-
white. The river Volga was deserted. It was dark and still by the old
Cathedral. The frost was hard and crisp, crackling underfoot. The two
young girls, Kseniya and Lena, with Sergius and the general, were
returning to the mansion to fetch their handsleighs and toboggan down
the slope to the river.

Constantine had gone into town, to a club of cocaine-eaters, to drug
himself, utter vulgar platitudes, and kiss the hands of loose women.
Leontyevna, the Cyclop maid from the Exchange, lay down on a bench in
the kitchen to rest from the day's work, said her prayers, and fell
into a sound sleep.

The general stood on the door-steps. Sergius drew up the sleighs, and
they took their seats--three abreast--Kseniya, Elena and himself, and
whirled along over the crackling snow, down to the ice-covered Volga.
The sleighs flew wildly down the slope, and in this impetuous flight,
in the sprinkling and crackling snow, and bitter, numbing frost,
Kseniya dreamed of a wondrous bliss: she felt a desire to embrace the
world! Life suddenly seemed so joyous.

The frost was harsh, cruel and penetrating. On regaining the house
the general bristled up like a sparrow--he was frozen--and called out
from the door-step:

"Sergius! There is a frost to-day that will certainly burst the
water-pipes. We will have to place a guard for the night."

Perhaps Sergius, and even the old man, had had a glimpse of wonderful
happiness in the sleigh's swift flight over the snow. The former
called back:

"Never mind!"--and again whirled wildly down from the old Cathedral
to the Volga, where the boats and steamers plied amid the deep-blue,
massive ice-floes, so sparkling and luminous in their snowy raiment.

But the general had now worked himself up to a state of great
excitement. He rushed indoors and roused everyone:

"I tell you, it will freeze and the pipes will burst unless you let
the water run a little. There are 27 degrees of frost!"

"But the tap is in the kitchen and Leontyevna is sleeping there,"
objected Lina.

"Well, waken her!"

"Impossible!"

"Damn rot!" snarled the general and went into the kitchen and shook
Leontyevna, explaining to her about the pipes.

"I will go to the Exchange and complain! Not even letting one
rest!...Stealing in to an undressed woman!..."

Lina jabbered her words after her like a parrot. Sergius ran in.

"Leave off, please," he begged. "It is I who am responsible. Let
Leontyevna sleep."

"Certainly, I am not one of the heirs," the general retorted
smoothly.

The night and the frost swept over the Volga, the Steppe, and
Saratov. The general was unable to sleep. Kseniya and Lena were
crying in the attic. Constantine arrived home late, and noiselessly
crept in to Leontyevna.

Bluish patches of moonlight fell in through the windows.

The water pipes froze in the night and burst.

THE CROSSWAYS

Forest, thickets, marshes, fields, a tranquil sky--and the crossways!
The sky is overcast at times with dove-coloured clouds; the forest
now gabbles, now groans in the glittering summer sunshine.

The crossways creep and crawl like a winding thread, without
beginning and without end. Sometimes their stretch tires and vexes--
one wants to go by a shorter route and turns aside, goes astray,
comes back to the former way. Two wheel-tracks, ripple grass, a foot-
path and around them, besides sky or rye or snow or trees, are the
crossways, without beginning or end or limit. And over them pass the
peasants singing their low toned songs. At times these are sorrowful,
as endless as the crossways themselves: Russia was borne in these
songs, born with them, from them.

Our ways lie through the crossways as they ever have done, and ever
will. All Russia is in the crossways--amid the fields, thickets
marshes, and forests.

But there were also those Others who wanted to march over the bog-
ways, who planned to throw Russia on to her haunches, to press on
through the marshlands, make main-roads straight as rules, and
barricade themselves behind granite and steel, forgetful of Russia's
peasant cottages. And on they marched!

Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to
the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the
people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back
again into the crossways.

Near the main-road lies the railway. By turning aside from it,
walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a
dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some
ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through
dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki
is reached, surrounded by forest.

In the village were three cottages, their backs to the forest; their
rugged noses seemed to scowl from beneath the pine-trees, and their
dim, tear-dribbling window-eyes looked wolfish. Their grey timbers
lay on them like wrinkles, their reddish-yellow thatch, like bobbed
hair, hung to the ground. Behind them was the forest; in front,
pasture, thickets, forest again, and sky. The neighbouring crossways
coiled round them in a ring, then narrowed away into the forest.

In all three cottages dwelt Kononovs: they were not kinsfolk, though
they bore that name, closer linked through their common life than
kinsmen ever were. Kononov-Yonov, the One-Eyed, was the village
elder: he no longer remembered his grandfather's name, but knew the
olden times well, and remembered how his great-grandfathers and his
great-great-grandfathers had lived and how it was good for men to
live.

From the oldest to the youngest they toiled with all their strength
from spring to autumn, from autumn to spring, and from sunrise to
sundown, growing grey like their hen-coops from smoke, scorching in
the heat and steaming sweat like boiling tar.

The kinsfolk of Yonov the One-eyed made tar besides tilling the land,
while Yonov himself kept bee-hives in the forest. The sisters Yonov
barked lime-trees and made bast shoes. It was a hard, stern life,
with its smoke, heat, frosts, and languour; but they loved it
profoundly.

The Kononovs lived alone in friendship with the woods, the fields,
and the sky; yet ever engaged in stubborn struggle against them. They
had to remember the rise and set of the sun, the nights and the dung-
mounds. They had to look into putrid corners, watch for cold blasts
from the north, and give ear to the rumbling and gabbling of the
forest.

They knew:

With January, mid-winter time,
Starts the year its frosty prime,
Blows wild the wind e'er yet'tis still,
Crackles the ice in the frozen rill;
Epiphany betimes is past,
Approaches now the Lenten Fast.

In February there's a breath of heat,
Summer and winter at Candlemas meet.
In April the year grows moist and warm the air,
The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair;
The woodcock then comes flying from the sea,
Brings back the Spring from its captivity.

Under a showery sky,
Bloom wide the fields of rye,
Ever blue and chill
May will the granaries fill.

It was necessary to work stubbornly, sternly, in harmony with the
earth, to fight hand-to-hand with the forest, the axe, the plough and
the scythe. They had learnt to keep their eyes wide open, for each
had to hold his own against the wood-spirit, the rumbling forest,
famine, and the marshes. They had learnt to know their Mother-Earth
by the birds, sky, wind, and stars, like those men of whom Yonov the
One-Eyed told them--those who of old wended their way to Chuvsh
tribes and the Murman Forest.

All the Kononovs were built alike, strong, rugged, with short legs
and broad, heavy feet like juniper-roots, long backs, arms that hung
down to their knees, shoulder-blades protruding as though made for
harness, mossy green eyes that gazed with a slow stubborn look, and
noses like earthen whistles.

They lived with the rye, horses, cows, the sheep, the woods, and the
grass. They knew that as the rye dropped seeds to the ground and
reproduced in abundance so also bred beast and bird, counteracting
death with birth. They knew too that to breed was also man's lot.

Ulyanka reached her seventeenth year, Ivan his eighteenth: they bowed
to the winds and went to the altar.

Ivan Kononov did not think of death when he went to the war, for what
was death when through it came birth? Were there not heat-waves and
drought in summer? Did not the winter sweep the earth by blizzards?
Yet in spring all began to pulsate again with life.

The War came: Ivan Kononov went without understanding, without
reason--what concern was it of Pochinki? He was dragged through
towns, he pined in spittle-stained barracks; and then he was sent to
the Carpathians. He fired. He fought hand-to-hand: he fled; he
retreated forty versts a day, resting in the woods singing his
peasant-songs with the soldiers--and yearning for Pochinki. He found
all spoke like Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed; he learnt of the land
in the olden time order, of the people's Rising. At its approach he
went on furlough to Pochinki, met it there, and there remained.

The Rising came like happy tidings, like the cool breath of dawn,
like a May-time shower:

Under a showery sky
Bloom wide the fields of rye,
Ever blue and chill
May will the granaries fill.

Formerly there were the village constable, the district clerk,
trumperies, requisitions, and taxations; for then it was the gentry
who were the guardians. But now, Yonov the One-Eyed croaked
exultantly:

"Now it's ourselves! We ourselves! In our own way! In our own world!
The land is ours! We are the masters: it is the Rising! _Our_ Rising!"

There were no storms that winter; it was cold and dark, and the wolf-
packs were astir. One after another the inhabitants were stricken
down with typhoid--it was with typhoid that they paid for the Rising!
Half the village succumbed and was borne on the peasants' sleighs to
the churchyard.

By Candlemas, when winter and summer meet, all the provisions were
exhausted, and the villagers drove to the station. But even that had
changed. New people congregated there, some shouting, others hurrying
to and fro with sacks. The villagers returned with nothing and sat
down to their potatoes.

In the spring prayers were offered up for the dead and a religious
procession paraded round the village, the outskirts of which were
bestrewn with ashes. Then the villagers started to take tar and bast
shoes to the station; they wanted to sell them, and with the proceeds
buy ploughshares, harrows, scythes, sickles, and leather straps. But
they never reached the station.

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