The old man looked like a magician in an opera, and indeed both of them looked as though they were per- forming in a theater:
"We go on, go on, go on! You are where it is warm and bright and cozy, but we go on in the cold, in the storm, through deep snow. We know nothing of rest, we know nothing of joy. We carry the whole burden of this life, of ours and yours. Hoo-oo-oo! We go on, go on, go on . . ."
Lyzhin woke and sat up in bed. What a muddled, bad dream! And why did he couple the policeman and the agent in his dream? What nonsense! And now, as Lyzhin sat up in bed, clasping his head in his hands, his heart beating wildly, it seemed that indeed the lives of the policeman and the insurance agent had something in common. Didn't they go through life side by side, holding on to one another? Some tie, invisible yet sig- nificant and essential, existed between the two of them, even between them and von Taunitz, and among all, all; in this life, even in these wilds, nothing is accidental, everything is filled with one common idea, everything has one soul, one aim, and to understand it, it is not enough to think, to reason, perhaps one must also have the gift of insight into life, a gift vvhich evidently is not vouchsafed to all. And the unhappy "neurasthenic"—as the doctor called him—who had broken down and killed himself, as well as the old peasant who spent his whole life trotting from one man to another every day, were accidents, fragments of life, only for him who thought of his own life as accidental, but were parts of one marvelous and rational organism for one who re- garded his own life as part of that common whole, and had a penetrating insight into that fact. So Lyzhin thought, and it was a thought that he had long secretly harbored and that only now unfolded fully and dis- tinctly in his consciousness.
He lay down and began to drop off; and suddenly they were again walking along together and chanting: "We go on, go on, go on. . . . We take from life all that it holds of what is most bitter and burdensome, and we leave to you what is easy and joyous; and sitting at supper, you can discuss coldly and reasonably why we suffer and perish, and why we are not as healthy and contented as you."
What they were chanting had occurred to him before, but this thought crouched somewhere in the background behind other thoughts and flickered timidly like a dis- tant light in misty weather. And he felt that this suicide and the peasant's misery lay on his conscience, too; to be reconciled to the fact that these people, submitting to their f ate, shouldered all that was darkest and most bur- densome in life—how terrible that was! To be recon- ciled to this, and to wish for oneself a bright and active life among happy, contented people, and constantly to dream of such a life, that meant dreaming of new sui- cides of men crushed by toil and care, or of weak, for- gotten men of whom people only talk sometimes at supper with vexation or sneers, but to whom no help is offered. And again:
'We go on, go on, go on. . . ." As though someone were knocking with a little ham- mer on his temples.
He woke early in the morning with a headache, roused by a noise; in the next room von Taunitz was saying to the doctor in a loud voice:
"You can't leave now. Look at what's doing outdoors. Don't argue, but just ask the coachman: he won't drive you in such weather if you pay him a million."
"But it's only two miles," the doctor was saying in an imploring voice.
"But even if it were a quarter of a mile. If you can't, you can't. As soon as you drive out of the gates, it will be just hell, you will lose your way in a minute. I won't let you go, no matter what you say."
"By evening it's bound to quiet do^," said the peas- ant who was lighting the stove.
In the next room the doctor began talking of the severe climate that influences the Russian character, of the long winters that, restricting freedom of movement, interfere with the intellectual growth of the people; and Lyzhin heard these pronouncements with vexation, looked out of the window at the drifts that had piled up against the fence, stared at the white dust that filled all visible space, at the trees that bent despairing now to the right, now to the left, listened to the howling and the banging, and thought gloomily:
"Well, what moral can you draw from all this? It's a blizzard, and that's all there is to it . . ."
They lunched at noon, then wandered aimlessly about the house; they stood at the windows.
"And Lesnitzky is lying there," thought Lyzhin, as he watched the snow eddies furiously circling above the
drifts. "Lesnitzky is lying there, and the inquest wit-
nesses are waiting—"
They spoke of the weather, remarking that the snow- storm usually lasted two days and two nights, rarely longer. At six they dined, then they played cards, sang, danced; finally they had supper. The day was over, they went to bed.
In the small hours of the morning everything quieted do^. When they got up and looked out of the windows, the naked willows with their weakly drooping branches were standing quite motionless; the sky was overcast and the air was still, as though nature were now ashamed of its orgy, its mad nights, and the free rein it had given its passions. The horses, harnessed tandem, had been waiting at the steps since five o'clock in the morning. When it was fully light the doctor and the magistrate put on their fur coats and felt boots, and tak- ing leave of their host, went out.
At the steps beside the coachman stood our police- man, Ilya Loshadin, hatless, with his old leather bag slung over his shoulder, covered with snow all over; his face was red and wet with perspiration. The footman who had gone out to help the guests into the sleigh and cover their legs, looked at him severely and said:
"What are you standing here for, you old devil? Go chase yourselfl"
"Your honor, folks are uneasy," said Loshadin, a naive smile spreading over his face, and evidently glad to see at last the men he had been waiting for so long. "Folks are very uneasy, the children are crying. They thought, your honor, as you had gone back to the town again. Show us the mercy of heaven, kind gentlemenl"
The doctor and the magistrate said nothing, got into the sleigh, and drove off to Syrnya.
In the Ravine
T
HE village of Ukleyevo lay in a ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highroad and the railway station. When visitors asked what village this was, they were told:
"That's the village where the sexton ate all the caviar at the funeral."
It had happened at a funeral feast in the house of the manufacturer Kostukov that the old sexton saw among the savories some large-grained caviar and began eating it greedily; people nudged him, tugged at his sleeve, but he seemed petrified with enjoyment: felt nothing, and only went on eating. He ate up all the caviar, and there were some four pounds in the jar. And years had passed since then, the sexton had long been dead, but the caviar was still remembered. Whether life was so poor here or people had not been clever enough to no- tice anything but that unimportant incident that had occurred ten years before, anyway the people had noth- ing else to tell about the village of Ukleyevo.
The village was never free from fever, and the mud was thick there even in the summer, especially near the fences over which hung old willow-trees that gave deep shade. Here there was always a smell from the factory refuse and the acetic acid which was used in the manu- facture of the calico.
The three cotton mills and the tanyard were not in the village itself, but a little way off. They were small plants, and not more than four hundred workmen were employed in all of them. The tanyard often made the water in the little river stink; the refuse contaminated the meadows, the peasants' cattle suffered from anthrax, and the tanyard was ordered closed. It was considered to be closed but went on working in secret with the con- nivance of the local police officer and the district doctor, each of whom was paid ten rubles a month by the owner. In the whole village there were only two decent houses built of brick with iron roofs; one of them was occupied by the district gover^ent office, in the other, a two-storied house just opposite the church, lived Grig- ory Petrovich Tzybukin, a townsman who hailed from Yepifan.