Tales of the Wilderness by Boris Pilniak

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A willow-reed blown by the wind!

In the office were many telephone calls and the rattling of counting-
boards. Agrenev and Olya sat together and arranged when to meet
again. She did not want to go to the Ravine because of the shepherd
boys' rude remarks. Alexander Alexandrovitch did not tell her all was
known at home. As she said goodby she clung to him like a reed in the
wind and whispered:

"I have been awake all night. You have noticed surely that I have not
called you by any name; I have no name for you."

And she begged him not to forget to bring her some books.

All that was known of the town was that it lay at the intersection of
such and such a latitude and longitude. But articles on the factory
were printed each year in the industrial magazines, and also
occasionally in the newspapers, as when the workmen struck or were
buried under a fall of limestone. The factory was run by a limited
company. Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev made out the returns for
his department; these were duly printed--not to be read, but so that
beneath them might appear the signature: "A. A. Agrenev, Engineer."
Olya only kept a report-book and the name-rolls, placing in her
reports so many marks opposite the pupil's names.

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Mammy rose in the morning just as usual during those interminable
months. I was accustomed to calling Alexander Alexandrovitch's mother
"mammy." She always wore a dark dress and carried a large white
handkerchief which she continually raised to her lips. It was bright
and cheerful in the dining-room. The tea-service stood on the table
and the samovar was boiling. The room always made me feel that we
were going away--into the country, for all the pictures had been
taken down, and a mirror that had been casually hung on the walls was
now shrouded in a linen sheet. I generally rise very early, say my
prayers, and immediately look at the newspapers. Formerly I scarcely
even thought of them and was quite indifferent to their contents; now
I cannot even imagine life without them! By the time my morning cup
of tea is brought, I have already read all the news of the world, and
I tell it to Mammy, who cannot read the papers herself.

She has the room Alexander Alexandrovitch formerly occupied; she is
tall, always dresses in black, and there is a certain severity about
her general demeanour. This is quite natural. She invariably makes
the sign of the Cross over me, kisses me on the forehead and lips,
and then--as ever--turns quickly away, bringing her handkerchief to
her lips. I know, though, what it is that distresses her--it is that
Georgie is killed, and Alexander Alexandrovitch is still "Out there"
. . . and that I, Anna, alone am left to her of her family.

We are always silent at tea: we generally are at all times. She asks
only a single question:

"What is in the newspapers?"

She always utters it in a hoarse voice, and very excitedly and
clumsily I tell her all I know. After breakfast I walk about outside
the window looking at the old factory and awaiting the postman's
arrival.

Thus I pass my days one by one, watching for the post, for the
newspapers, enduring the mother's grief--and my own. And whenever I
wait for the letters, I recall a little episode of the War told me by
a wounded subaltern at an evacuated point. He had sustained a slight
head wound, and I am certain he was not normal, but was suffering
from shell-shock. Dark-eyed, swarthy, he was lying on a stretcher and
wearing a white bandage. I offered him tea, but he would not take it;
pushing aside the mug and gripping my hand he said:

"Do you know what war is? Don't laugh! bayonets ... do you
understand?"--his voice rose in a shriek--"... into bayonets ... that
is, to cut, to kill, to slaughter one another--men! They turned the
machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and
I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and,
losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer,
he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way,
and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!'
But you cannot understand.... Do not laugh!"

He told me this, now whispering, now shrieking. He told me that I
could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those
words express all the terror of war for me--Georgie's death,
Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has
brought: they express it with such force that my temples ache with an
almost physical sense of anguish,

"Towny, bayonet me!" How simple, how superhuman!

I remember those words every day, especially when in the hall waiting
for the post. Alexander writes seldom and his letters are very dry,
merely telling me that he is well, that either there are no dangers
or that they have passed; he writes to us all at the same time, to
mother, to Asya, and to me.

It was like that to-day. I was waiting for the postman. He came and
brought several letters, one of them from Alexander. I did not open
it at once, but waited for Mother.

This is what he wrote:

"Darling Anna,

Yesterday and to-day (a Censor's erasure) I feel depressed and think
of you, only of you. When things are quiet and there is little doing
many a fine thing passes unobserved; I allude to the flowers, of
which I am sending you specimens. They grow quite close to the
trench, but it is difficult and dangerous to get them, as one may
easily be killed. I have seen such flowers before, but am ignorant of
their name."

"Goodbye. My love. Forgive the 'army style'; this letter is for you
alone."

The letter contained two of those little blue violets which spring up
directly the snow has melted.

I handed the letter, as always, to his mother that she might read it
too; her lips began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears as she
read, but in the midst of her tears she laughed. And we both of us, I
the young woman, and Mammy the old mother, laughed and cried
simultaneously, tightly clasped in each other's arms. I had pictured
the War hitherto in the words: "Towny, bayonet me!". And now
Alexander had sent me from it--violets! Two violets that are still
unfaded.

I had noticed before the phenomenon of the four seasons suddenly
bursting, as it were, upon the human consciousness. I remember that
happening to me in my childhood when on holiday in the country. The
summer was still in full swing, everything seemed just as usual, when
suddenly one morning, in a most ordinary gust of wind, the red-vine
leaves, then some three weeks old, were blown into my eyes, and all
at once I realized that it was autumn. My mood changed on the
instant, and I prepared to go home, back to town.

How many years is it since I have seen the autumn, winter, or spring--
since I felt their magic? But to-day, after a long-past summer, I
have all at once felt the call of the spring. Only to-day I have
noticed that our windows are tightly closed, that I am wearing a dark
costume, that it is already May, and that bluebells are blossoming in
the fields. I had forgotten that I was young. I remembered it to-day.

And I know further that I have faith, that I have love--love of
Georgie and Alexander. I know too, although there is so much terror,
so much that is foolish and ugly, there is still youth, love, and the
spring--and the blue violets that grow by the trenches.

After Mammy and I had wept and laughed in each other's embrace, I
went out alone into the fields beyond the factory--to love, to think,
to dream . . . I love Alexander Alexandrovitch for ever and ever...

THE SEAS AND HILLS

A rainy night, trenches--not in the forest lands of Lithuania, but at
the Vindavo-Rybinsky station in Moscow itself. The train is like a
trench; voices are heard from the adjoining carriage.

"Where do you come from?" "Yes, yes, that is so, truly! You remember
the ravine there, all rocks, and the lake below; many met their doom
there." "Let me introduce you to the Commander of the Third
Division." "Give me a light, old fellow! We are back from furlough."

The train is going at nightfall to Rzhov, Velikiya Luki, and Polotsk.
Outside on the platform the brethren are lying at ease under benches,
drinking tea, and full of contentment. The gas-jets shine dimly in
the rain, and behind the spattered panes of glass the women's eyes
gleam like lamp-lights. There is a smell of naphthaline.

"Where is the Commandant's carriage?" "No women allowed here! Men
only! We're for the front!" And there is a smell of leather, tar, and
leggings--a smell of men.

"Yes, yes, you're right! Ha-ha! He is a liar, an egregious liar! No,
I bet you a beauty like that isn't going headlong into an attack!"

There is a sound of laughing and a deep base voice speaking with
great assurance. The third bell.

"Where's the Commandant's carriage?" "Well, goodbye!" "Ha-ha-ha-ha!
He lies, Madam, I assure you, he lies." "Bah! those new boots they
have issued have given me corns; I'll have to send them back."

This conversation proceeded from beneath a bench and from the steps
that led to a top-compartment; the men hung up their leggings which,
though marked with fresh Government labels, were none the less
reeking with perspiration. The lamps moved along the platform and
disappeared into the night; the figures of women and stretcher-
bearers silently crept along; a sentry began to flirt with one of the
former; the rain fell slantingly, arrow-like, in the darkness.

They reached Rzhov at midnight in the train; the men climbed out of
the windows for tea; then clambered in again with their rifles; the
carriages resounded with the rattling of canteens. It was raining
heavily and there was a sound of splashing water. The brethren in the
corridors grumbled bitterly as they inspected papers. Under the
benches there was conversation, and also garbage.

Then morning with its rose-coloured clouds: the sky had completely
cleared; rain-drops fell from the trees; it was bright and fragrant.
Velikiya Luki, Lovat; at the station were soldiers, not a single
woman.

The train eludes the enemy's reconnaissance. Soldiers, soldiers,
soldiers!--rifles, rifles!--canteens:--the brethren! It is no
longer Great Russia; around are pine woods, hills, lakes, and the
land is everywhere strewn with cobble-stones and pebbles--- whilst at
every little station from under fir-trees creep silent, sombre
figures, barefooted and wearing sheep-skin coats and caps--in the
summer. It is Lithuania.

The enemy's reconnaissance is a diversion: otherwise the day is long
and dreary--all routine like a festival; already one knows
the detachment, the number of wounded, the engagements with the
enemy. Many had alighted from the train at Velikiya Luki, and nobody
had got in. We are quiet and idle all day long.

Then towards night we reach Polotsk--the white walls of the monastery
are left behind; we come to the Dvina, and the train rumbles over a
bridge. Now we journey by night only, without a time-table or lights,
and again under a drizzling rain. The train stops without whistling
and as silently starts again. Around us all is still, as in October;
the country-side is shrouded by night. Men alight at each stop after
Polotsk; no one sits down again; and at every stop thirty miles of
narrow gauge railway lead to the trenches. What monotony after
Moscow! after the hustle and clatter of an endless day! There is the
faintest glimmer of dawn, and the eastern sky looks like a huge green
bottle.

"Get up--we have arrived!"

Budslav station; the roof is demolished by aeroplane bombs. Soldiers
sleep side by side in a little garden on asphalt steps beneath
crocuses. A drowsy Jew opens his bookstall on the arrival of the
train: he sells books by Chirikov, Von Vizin, and Verbitskaya. And
from the distance, with strange distinctness, comes a sound like
muffled clapping.

"What is that?" "Must be the heavy artillery." "Where is the
Commandant?" "The Commandant is asleep!..."

A week has passed by in the trenches, and another week has commenced.
The bustle of the first few days is over; now all is in order. In a
corner of a meadow, a little way from the front, hangs a man's body;
the head by degrees has become severed from the trunk. But I do not
see very much. We sleep in the day.

It is June, and there is scarcely any night. I know when it is
evening by the sound of the firing; it begins from beyond the marshes
at seven o'clock. Moment after moment a bullet comes--zip--into my
dug-out: scarcely a second passes before there is another zip. The
sound of the shot itself is lost amid the general crashing of guns;
there is only the zip of the bullet as it strikes the earth or is
embedded in the beams overhead. And so on all through the night,
moment after moment, until seven in the morning.

There are three of us in the dug-out; two are playing chess, but I am
reading--the same thing over and over again, for I am tired to death
of lying idle, of sleeping and walking. Poor indeed are men's
resources, for in three days we had exhausted all we had to say.
Yesterday a soldier who had lost his hand when scouting, came running
in to us crying wildly:

"Bayonet me, Towny, Bayonet me!"

Sometimes we come out at night to enjoy the fireworks. They fire on
us hoping to unnerve us, and their bullets strike--zip-zip-zip--into
our earthworks. We stand and look on as though spell-bound. Guns
belch out in the distance, a green light begins to quiver over the
whole horizon. Rockets incessantly tear their way, screaming, through
the air, amongst them some similar to those we ourselves used to send
up over the river Oka. Balls of fire burst in twain, and huge discs
emitting a hundred different deadly lights flare above us.

Soon the rockets disappear, and from behind the frost creep three
gigantic luminous figures; at first they stretch up into the sky,
then, quivering convulsively, they fall down upon us, upon the
trenches upon our right and left. In their lurid light our uniforms
show white. Over the graves in the Lithuanian forests stand enormous
crosses--as enormous as those in Gogol's "_Dreadful Vengance_" and
now, on the hill behind us, we discern two of them, one partly
shattered and overhanging the other--a bodeful grim reminder!

Always soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Not a single old man, not a
single woman, not a single child. For three weeks now I have not seen
a glimpse of a woman. That is what I want to speak of--the meaning of
woman.

We were dining at a spot behind the lines, and from the other side of
the screen a woman laughed: I never heard sweeter music. I can find
no other words "sweeter music." This sister had come up from the
hospital; her dress, her veil--what a joy! She had made some remark
to the Commanding Officer: I have never heard more beautiful poetry
than those words. All that is best, most noble, most virginal--all
that is within me, all that life has bestowed is woman, woman! That
is what I wish to explain.

I visited the staff cinema in the evening. I took a seat in a box.
When the lights were switched off, I wrote in blue pencil on the
railing in front of me:

"I am a blonde with blue eyes. Who are you? Come, I am waiting."

I had done a cruel thing!

Directly I had written those words, I felt ashamed. I could not stay
in the cinema. I wandered about between the benches, went out into
the little village, walked round its chapels--every window of which
was smashed; and gathered a bunch of forget-me-nots from a ditch
by the cemetery. On returning to the crowded cinema I noticed that
the box in which I had been sitting was empty; presently an officer
entered it; sat down leisurely to enjoy the pictures; read what I had
written; and all at once became a different man. I had injected a
deadly poison, he left the box. I walked out after him. He went
straight in the direction of the chapel. Ah, I had done a cruel thing!

I had written of a blonde with blue eyes; and I went out, saw her,
and awaited her--I who had written the message. It seemed as though
hundreds of instruments were making music within me, yet my heart was
sad and weighed down with oppresion--it felt crushed. More than
anything, more than anything in the whole world, I loved and awaited
a blonde who did not exist, to whom I would have surrendered all that
was most beautiful within me.

I could not stay in the cinema, but crawled through the trenches. On
the hill towered the two huge crosses; sitting down beneath their
shadow, I clenched my hands, and murmured:

"Darling, darling, darling! Beloved and tender one! I am waiting."

Far in the distance, the green rockets soared skyward, the same as
those we used to send up over the river Oka. Then the gargantuan
fingers of a searchlight began to sweep the area, my uniform appeared
white in its gleam, and all at once a shell fell by the crosses. I
had been observed, I had become a target.

The bullets fell zip-zip-zip into the earthworks. I lay in my bunk
and buried my head in the pillow. I felt horribly alone as I lay
there, murmuring to myself, and breathing all the tenderness I was
capable of into my words:

"Darling, darling, darling!..."

III

Love!

Can one credit the romanticists that--across the seas and hills and
years--there is so strange a thing as a single-hearted love, an all-
conquering, all-subduing, all-renovating love?

In the train at Budslav--where the staff-officers were billeted--it
was known that Lieutenant Agrenev had such a single, overmastering,
life-long love.

A wife--the woman, the maiden who loves only once--to whom love is
the most beautiful and only thing in life, will do heroic deeds to
get past all the Army ordinances, the enemy's reconnaissance, and
reach her beloved. To her there is but one huge heart in the world
and nothing more.

Lieutenant Agrenev's quarters were in a distant carriage, Number 30-
35.

The Staff Officers' train stood under cover. No one was allowed to
strike a light there. In the evening, after curtaining the windows
with blankets, the officers gathered together in the carriage of the
General Commanding the XXth Corps, to play cards and drink cognac.
Someone cynically remarked that there was a close resemblance between
life at the front and life in a monastery, in as much as in both the
chief topic of conversation was women: there was no reason,
therefore, why monks should not be sent to the front for fasting and
prayer.

While they were playing cards, the guard, Pan Ponyatsky, came in and
spoke to the cavalry-captain Kremnev. He told him of a woman, young
and very beautiful. The captain's knees began to tremble; he sat
helplessly on the step of the carriage, and fumbled in his pocket for
a cigarette. Pan Ponyatsky warned him that he must not strike a
light. In the distance could be heard the roar of cannon, like an
approaching midnight storm. Kremnev had never felt such a throbbing
joy as he felt now, sitting on the carriage step. Pan Ponyatsky
repeated that she was a beauty, and waiting--that the captain must
not delay; and led him through the dark corridor of the train.

The carriage smelt of men and leather; behind the doors of the
compartments echoed a sound of laughter from those who were playing
cards. The two men walked half the length of the train.

As they passed from one waggon to another they saw the flare of a
rocket in the distance, and in its baleful green light the number of
carriage--30-35--loomed in faint outline.

Pan Ponyatsky unlocked the door and whispered:

"Here. Only mind, be quiet."

The Pan closed the door after Kremnev. It was an officer's
compartment; there was a smell of perfume, and on one of the lower
bunks was a woman--sleeping. Kremnev threw off his cloak and sat down
by the sleeping figure.

The door opened; Pan Ponyatsky thrust in his head and whispered:

"Don't worry about her, sir; she is all right, only a little quieter
now." Then the head disappeared.

Love! Love over the seas and hills and years!

It had become known that a woman was to visit Agrenev, and forthwith
he was ordered away for twenty-four hours on Detachment. Who then
would ever know what guard had opened the door, what officer had
wrought the deed? Would a woman dare scream, having come where she
had no right to be? Or would she dare tell ... to a husband or a
lover? No, not to a husband, nor a lover, nor to anyone! And Pan
Ponyatsky? Why should he not earn an odd fifty roubles? Who was he to
know of love across the seas and hills?

Yesterday, the day before, and again to-day, continuous fighting and
retreating. The staff-train moved off, but the officers went on foot.
A wide array of men, wagons, horses, cannon, ordinance. All in a vast
confusion. None could hear the rattling fire of the machine-guns and
rifles. All was lost in a torrential downpour of rain. Towards
evening there was a halt. All were eager to rest. No one noticed the
approaching dawn. Then a Russian battery commenced to thunder. They
were ordered to counter-attack. They trudged back through the rain,
no one knew why--Agrenev, Kremnev, the brethren--three women.

THE SNOW WIND

A cruel, biting blizzard swept across the snow; over the earth moved
misty, fantastic clouds, that drifted slowly across the face of a
pale troubled moon. Towards night-fall, the wolves could be heard in
the valley, howling a summons to their leader from the spot where the
pack always assembled.

The valley descended sharply to a hollow thickly overgrown with red
pines. Thirteen years back an unusually violent storm had swept the
vicinity, and hurled an entire pine belt to the ground. Now, under
the wide, windy sky, spread a luxuriant growth of young firs, while
little oaks, hazels, and alders here and there dotted the depression.

Here the leader of the wolf-pack had his lair. Here for thirteen
years his mate had borne his cubs. He was already old, but huge,
strong, greedy, ferocious, and fearless, with lean legs, powerful
snapping jaws, a short, thick neck on which the hair stood up
shaggily like a short mane and terrified his younger companions.

This great, gaunt old wolf had been leader for seven years, and with
good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and
relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his
mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout
the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms
and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but
also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived--as
every wolf must live--to hunt, to eat, and to breed.

In winter the snow lay over the land like a dead white pall, and food
was scarce. The wolves sat round in a circle, gnashed their teeth,
and wailed long and plaintively through the night, their noses
pointed at the moon.

Five days back, on a steep slope of the valley not far from the wolf
track to a watering place, and close to a belt of young fir-trees
surrounded by a snow-topped coppice, some men from a neighbouring
farm had set a powerful wolf-trap, above which they had thrown a dead
calf. On their nocturnal prowls the wolves discovered the carcase.
For a long time they sat round it in the grey darkness, howling
plaintively, hungrily gnashing their fangs, afraid to move nearer,
and each one timidly jostling the other forward with cruel vicious
eyes.

At last one young wolf's hunger overcame his fear; he threw himself
on the calf with a shrill squeal, and after him rushed the rest,
whining, growling, raising their tails, bending their bony backs,
bristling the hair on their short thick necks--and into the trap fell
the leader's mate.

They paid no attention to her, but eagerly devoured the calf, and it
was only when they had finished and cleared away all traces of the
orgy that they realised the she-wolf was trapped there for good.

All night she howled and threw herself about, saliva falling from her
dripping jaws, her eyes rolling wildly and emitting little sparks of
green fire as she circled round and round on a clanking chain. In the
morning two farm-hands arrived, threw her on their sleigh and drove
away.

The leader remained alone the whole day. Then, when night again
returned, he called his band together, tore one young wolf to pieces,
rushed round with lowered head and bristling hair, finally leaving
the pack and returning to his lair. The wolves submitted to his
terrible punishment, for he was their chief, who had seized power by
force, and they patiently awaited his return, thinking he had gone on
a solitary food-hunt.

But as the night advanced and he did not come, they began to howl
their urgent summons to him, and now there was an undercurrent of
menace in their cries, the lust to kill, for the code of the wild
beasts prescribed only one penalty for the leader who deserted his
pack--death!

II

All through that night, and the following days and nights, the old
wolf lay immovable in his lair. At last, with drooping head, he rose
from his resting-place, stretched himself mournfully, first on his
fore-paws, then on his hind-legs, arched his back, gnashed his fangs
and licked the snow with his clotted tongue. The sky was still
shrouded in a dense, velvety darkness: the snow was hard, and
glittered like a million points of white light. The moon--a dark red
orb--was blotted over with ragged masses of inky clouds and was fast
disappearing on the right of the horizon; on the left, a crimson dawn
full of menace was slowly breaking. The snow-wind blew and whistled
overhead. Around the wolf, under a bleak sky, were fallen pines and
little fir trees cloaked with snow.

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