"You've taken my land, so here you are!" Saying this Aksinya snatched up the pitcher with the boiling water and flung it over Nikifor.
After this there was heard a scream such as had never been heard before in Ukleyevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly quiet in the yard. Askinya walked into the house in silence with the old naive smile on her lips. . . . The deaf man kept mov- ing about the yard with his arms full of linen, then he began hanging it up again, silently, without haste. And until the cook came back from the river no one ventured
to go into the kitchen to see what had happened there.
VIII
Nikifor was taken to the district hospital, and towards evening he died there. Lipa did not wait to be fetched, but wrapped the dead baby in its little quilt and carried it home.
The hospital, a new one recently built, with big win- dows, stood high up on a hill; it was glittering in the setting sun and looked as though it were on fire from inside. There was a little village below. Lipa went down the road, and before reaching the village sat down by a pond. A woman brought a horse to water but the horse would not drink.
"What more do you want?" the woman said to it softly, in perplexity. "What more do you want?''
A boy in a red shirt, sitting at the water's edge, was washing his father's boots. And not another soul was in sight either in the village or on the hill.
"It's not drinking," said Lipa, looking at the horse.
Then the woman witi the horse and the boy with the boots walked away, and there was no one left at all. The sun went to sleep, covering itself with cloth of gold and purple, and long clouds, red and lilac, stretched across the sky, guarded its rest. Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound as of a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields, the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining them- selves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are(" What a noise there wasl It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.
A silver half-moon was shining in the sky; there were many stars. Lipa had no idea how long she sat by the pond, but when she got up and walked on everybody was asleep in the little village, and there was not a single light. It was probably about eight miles' walk home, but neither body nor mind seemed equal to it. The moon gleamed now in front, now on the right, and the same cuckoo kept calling in a voice grown husky, with a chuckle as though gibing at her: "Hey, look out, you'll lose your way!" Lipa walked rapidly; she lost her ker- chief . . . she looked at the sky and wondered where her baby's soul was now: was it following her, or float- ing aloft yonder among the stars and not thinking of her, the mother, any more? Oh, how lonely it is in the open country at night, in the midst of that singing when you yourself cannot sing; in the midst of the incessant cries of joy when you yourself cannot be joyful, when the moon, which cares not whether it is spring or winter, whether men are alive or dead, looks do^, lonely, too. . . . When there is grief in the heart it is hard to be without people. If only her mother, Praskovya, had been with her, or Crutch, or the cook, or some peasant!
"Boo-oo!" cried the bittern. "Boo-oo!"
And suddenly the sound of human speech became clearly audible:
"Hitch up the horses, Vavila!"
Ahead of her, by the wayside a camp fire was burning: the flames had died down, there were only red embers. She could hear the horses munching. In the darkness she could see the outlines of two carts, one with a barrel, the other, a lower one, with sacks in it, and the figures of two men; one was leading a horse to put it into the shafts, the other was standing motionless by the fire with his hands behind his back. A dog growled near the carts. The one who was leading the horse stopped and said:
"Someone seems to be coming along the road."
"Sharik, be quiet!" the other man called to the dog.
And from the voice one could tell that he was an old man. Lipa stopped and said:
"God aid you."
The old man went up to her and said after a pause:
"Good evening!"
"Your dog does not bite, grandfather?"
"No, come along, he won't touch you."
"I have been at the hospital," said Lipa after a pause. "My little son died there. Here I am carrying him home."
It must have been unpleasant for the old man to hear this, for he moved away and said hurriedly:
"No matter, my dear. It's God's will. You are daw- dling, lad," he added, addressing his companion; "look alive!"
"Your yoke isn't there," said the young man; "I don't •. »» see it."
"That's just like Vavila!"
The old man picked up an ember, blew on it—only his eyes and nose were lighted up—then, when they had found the yoke, he went over to Lipa with the light and looked at her, and his look expressed compassion and tenderness.
"You are a mother," he said; "every mother grieves for her child."
And he sighed and shook his head as he said it. Vavila threw something on the fire, stamped it out—and at once it was very dark; the immediate scene vanished, and as before there were only the fields, the sky with the stars, and the noise of the birds keeping each other from sleep. And the landrail caUed, it seemed, in the very place where the fire had been.
But a minute passed, and the two ^ts and the old man and lanky Vavila became visible again. The carts creaked as they rolled out on the road.
"Are you holy men?" Lipa asked the old man.
"No. We are from Firsanovo."
"You looked at me just now and my heart was soft- ened. And the lad is so gentle. I thought you must be hŭly men."
"Have you far to go?"
"To Ukleyevo."
"Get in, we will give you a lift as far as Kuzmenki, then you go straight on and we turn off to the left."
Vavila got into the cart with the barrel and the old man and Lipa got into the other. They moved at a walk- ing pace, Vavila in front.
"My baby was in torment all day," said Lipa. "He looked at me with his little eyes and said nothing; he wanted to speak and could not. Lord God! Queen of Heaven! In my grief I kept falling down on the floor. I would be standing there and then I would fall down by the bedside. And tell me, grandfather, why should a little one be tormented before his death? When a grown-up person, a man or woman, is in torment, his sins are forgiven, but why a little one, when he has no sins? Why?"
"Who can tell?" answered the old man.
They drove on for half an hour in silence.
"We can't know everything, how and why," said the old man. "A bird is given not four wings but two be- cause it is able to fly with two; and so man is not per- mitted to know everything but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows."
"It is better for me to go on foot, grandfather. Now my heart is all of a tremble."
"Never mind, sit still."
The old man yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.
"Never mind," he repeated. "Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is long, there is good and bad yet to come, there is everything yet to come. Great is mother Russia," he said, and looked round on either side of him. "I have been all over Russia, and I have seen every- thing in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a delegate from my viUage to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I lived in Siberia; I worked the land there, then I got homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. We went back to Russia on foot; and I remember we went on a ferry, and I was thin as thin, all in rags, bare- foot, freezing with cold, and gnawing a crust, and a gen- tleman who was on the ferry—the kingdom of Heaven be his if he is dead—looked at me pitifully, and tears came into his eyes. 'Ah,' he said, 'your bread is black, your days are black. . . .' And when I got home, as the saying is, there was neither stick nor stone; I had a wife, but I left her behind in Siberia, she was buried there. So I am a hired man now. And I tell you: since then I have had it good as well as bad. Here I do not want to die, my dear, I would be glad to live another twenty years; so there has been more of the good. And great is our mother Russia!" and again he gazed on either side and looked round.