At the same moment a window opened in the upper story of the house. Old Tarabas’s head appeared. He shouted:
“Andrey! Where is that good-for-nothing? Throw the tramp out! Go through his pockets! Where’s Yury? How many times have I got to tell the lot of you that I won’t have beggars in my place! To hell with you all!”—The old man’s voice capsized; he leaned still farther over the window-sill, the blood rushed to his head, and he screeched: “Get rid of him! At once! At once!” countless times without stopping.
Andrey took Tarabas gently by the arm and led him to the back gate.
“Go with God!” said Andrey softly. Then shut the heavy gate with much noise. It creaked on its hinges and fell to with a heavy crash of irretrievable finality. It quivered a little with the force of it.
Tarabas took the willow-path, the narrow way between the marshes.
26
A FINE, dry summer set in. But it did not warm the heart of Tarabas. The torn boots in which he had gone home for the last time he had thrown away in the swamps behind the house. They were lost to sight in a moment. There was first a slight gurgling, then the green face of the marsh had smoothed itself out again without a wrinkle to show where they had sunk. Before leaving the narrow path beside the willow trees, Tarabas put on the other shoes that he had brought with him. Trusty and faithful shoes, they had waited for him all the years of the war, and since, at the foot of his own bed. He had worn them in America. In those shoes — they pinched a little now — he had roamed the stone streets of New York every evening on his way to fetch Katharina from her work. This must be the very spot, too, where he had met Maria years ago. He remembered the rage of passion with which he had stared at the lacings of her boots; and how the two of them had trod the narrow way, one behind the other with such care, lest they miss the path and step into the marsh; and the turmoil of their senses as they pressed on impatiently towards the wood.
Those were the events of a long by-gone life. Remembrance of them lay within Tarabas, dead and cold, corpses of memories. Like a stone coffin his heart enclosed them. The sky of home, the meadows of his childhood, the familiar song of the frogs, the sweet, mild soughing of the rain, even the perfume of the limes in early blossom, and the well-known monotonous knocking of the wood-pecker, all were dead to Tarabas, although they were all round him, and he could feel and hear them. It was as though, in the moment when he had kissed his sleeping father’s hand, he had taken leave not only of the house in which he was born, and of his birthright and his home, but also of every sentiment for them and for the past. So long as he had still feared to set his foot over the threshold of the house again his parents and his sister and the landscape of home had been alive; living objects of that dangerous nostalgia which might yet have the power to seduce Tarabas from his endless, aimless wanderings. How foolish the fear had been! An unknown, mustachioed, crippled man was his father; a frightened, grey-haired simpleton, his mother. If love had lived in either of them years ago, now they were cold and empty, like Nicholas himself. He might have said: “I am your son,” and they would not have had the power to open their hearts to take him in, for their hearts were no longer alive, but had turned to stone. Had they died, had he come home to find only their two graves, his warm remembrance could have brought them back to life again, them and the house. But they were not dead; they moved about, or stood; they slept and fed the chickens; they chased beggars from their door — they were animated mummies, in which they themselves were buried, each one his own walking sarcophagus.
As Tarabas came out of the little wood that ended at the avenue of birches, he turned round once again. He saw the shimmering white façade of the house which closed the avenue at the far end, and the dark silver of the trees in front of it. Between the house and Tarabas the rain hung a flowing, thick grey curtain.
“It was all over long ago!” said Tarabas to himself.
Even in the hot noons of those summer days the shivering frosts assailed him now more and more often. His great body, which had not yet lost the strength that dwelt in it, was borne down by the fierce fever, which accompanied him throughout the halcyon summer days like his own personal and separate winter. Without warning, just as its inexplicable moods would prompt, it leapt upon him. And Tarabas learnt not to resist its onslaughts any more, as one learns in time not to resist the shadow that each man has inseparably attached to him. Sometimes he lay exhausted on the edge of the road, and felt the good sun and the radiant sky as through a thick, cold wall of glass, and froze and shivered. There he would lie, and wait for the pains to come, in the back and in the chest, together with the fits of helpless coughing. These took place with a certain regularity; one could await them confidently, like faithful, dependable enemies. Sometimes blood would flow from his mouth. It reddened the rich green of the slope, or the light, earthy grey of the road. Tarabas had seen the flowing of much blood in his time, had caused much to flow. He spat it from him, red liquid life. It dropped out of him and away. Sometimes, when he felt that the great weakness was coming on him, he would go into a tavern, fumble a coin or two out of his bag, and drink a glass of strong spirits. This was followed by hunger, as in his old days. It was as though his body still remembered the old Tarabas whom it had once enclosed within itself. The stomach still felt hunger, the throat thirst. The feet still desired to walk, and then to rest. The hands still desired to grasp and touch things. And when the night came, the eyes closed and sleep descended upon Tarabas. And when the morning broke, it was as though Tarabas had to wake himself by force, and scold his limbs for being tired and lazy; he had to order his feet to move, command them to march, as he had once commanded his regiment to do these things.
Regularly on every fifteenth day of the month, he appeared in the great hall of the post-office in the capital. And regularly he was met by the young man, who handed him his pension. These meetings were attended by a certain laconic ceremonial. Tarabas raised two fingers to his cap, while the young man lifted his hat respectfully. He said: “Thank you very much, sir!” when Tarabas had signed. He raised his hat again when they separated.
One day, however, he did not go at once but stood a while regarding Tarabas, and said then: “If I may take the liberty of suggesting it, sir, I think you should see a doctor. Hadn’t I perhaps better say something to His Excellency?”
“Say nothing whatever, please!” said Tarabas.
He inspected his face in the little mirror of the weighing-machine which had been lately set up in the vestibule of the post-office, in order to give it the final touch of modernity. And he saw that his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and that a thick network of tiny blue veins criss-crossed both his temples. He stood on the platform and dropped a coin into the slot. He weighed one hundred and eight pounds just as he was.
He went out smiling, like one who has at last learnt what he is to do. He left the capital by the road along which the dairy-farmer had driven him a few months before. A mile down, there was a parting of the ways. At this point there stood two ancient, weather-faded wooden sign-posts with arrows. On the left-hand one could be deciphered the half-erased word, “Koryla.” The arrow on the other pointed to the right towards Koropta. Tarabas took the road to Koropta.
He went slowly, almost meditatively. He did not want to reach the little town before nightfall. He seemed to be sunk in long-drawn sweet anticipation of an inescapable happiness that must await him in Koropta. When the first cottages of the little town came into sight — it was late in the afternoon — his heart began to beat fast with joy. One more curve in the road, and already the wall round the inn of the White Eagle was within view. Tarabas granted himself a rest. For the first time in many a long, long day the summer peace which lay upon the world entered him too. No fever had him in its grip. In the evening glory a happy swarm of tiny mayflies, golden in the sun, danced before his face. He watched their intricate play. He received it like a kind of welcome and recognition. The sun moved farther down the sky, the mayflies withdrew. Tarabas got up. When he reached Kristian-poller’s inn it was already evening. Fedya was standing on a ladder outside the great brown door, pouring fresh oil into the red lantern which hung on an iron arm at right-angles to the wall.