The Breakup

On the river opposite the city, seven carpenters were hurriedly repairing an ice apron the townsfolk had taken apart for firewood during the winter.

The spring was late that year – the stripling March looked more like October; only around midday, and not every day at that, a pale, wintry sun would appear in a sky shot through with sunbeams, and diving through the blue rents in the clouds, squint down ill-naturedly at the earth.

It was already Friday of Passion Week and still at night the dripping eaves froze into blue icicles a good half-arshin long; the ice on the river, now bare of snow, had the same bluish tint as the wintry clouds.

While the carpenters worked, the church bells in the town rang out their mournful, metallic appeal. The workers raised their heads and gazed into the murky haze that enveloped the town, and often an axe poised for a blow would hang for a moment in mid air as though reluctant to cleave the gentle sound.

Here and there on the broad surface of the river fir branches, stuck into the ice to mark the paths, cracks and fissures, pointed skywards like the hands of a drowning man twisted with the ague.

The river presented a dreary spectacle; deserted and bare, its surface a scabrous mass, it spread desolately away into the gloomy space from which a dank, chill wind breathed lazily and dismally.

…Foreman Osip, a neat well-built little chap with a tidy silver heard that clung in tiny curls to his pink cheeks and mobile neck, old Osip always in the fore, was shouting:

“Get a move on there, you hen’s spawn!’

And turning to me, he said mockingly:

“Now then, overseer. What’re you standing there mooning for? What do you think you’re supposed to be doing? Didn’t Vassil Sergeich, the contractor, put you here? Well, then it’s your job to keep us at it, ‘Get a move on you so-and-so!’ You’re supposed to yell at me. That’s what you’re here for, and you stand there blinking like a fish. You’re not supposed to blink, you’re supposed to keep your eyes open, and do some shouting too. You’re a sort of boss around here. Well, then, go ahead and give orders, you cuckoo’s.

“Get moving there, you demons!” he yelled at the men. “We’ve got to finish the work today, don’t we?”

He himself was the laziest of the lot. He knew his business quite well, and could work with dexterity and zeal when he had a mind to, but he didn’t care to take the trouble and preferred to entertain the others with tall stories. And so when work would be forging ahead and the men would be at it in silent absorption, suddenly obsessed by the desire to do everything well and smoothly, Osip would begin in his purring voice:

“Did I ever tell you about the time…”

For two or three minutes the men would appear to pay no heed to him, engrossed in their sawing and planing, and his soft tenor would flow dreamily on, meandering around them and claiming their attention. His light-blue eyes half-closed, Osip fingered his curly beard and, smacking his lips with pleasure, mulled happily over each word.

“So he catches this here carp, puts it away in his basket and goes off into the woods, thinking about the fine fish soup he’s going to have… And all of a sudden he hears a woman’s voice pipe up, he can’t tell from where: ‘Yelesy-a-a, Yelesy-a-a!..’”

Lyonka, the lanky, angular Mordvinian, nicknamed Narodets, a young man with small eyes full of wonderment, lowered his axe and stood gaping.

“And from the basket a deep bass voice answers: ‘Here I am!’ And that very same minute the lid of the basket snaps back and out jumps the fish and darts straight back into the pool…”

Sanyavin, an old discharged soldier and a saturnine drunk who suffered from asthma and had a grudge of long-standing against life, croaked hoarsely:

“How could a carp move about on land?”

“Have you ever heard of a fish that could talk?” Osip retorted sweetly.

Mokei Budyrin, a dull-witted muzhik whose prominent cheekbones, jutting chin and receding forehead lent his face a canine appearance, a silent unprepossessing fellow, gave vent to his three favourite words in his slow nasal drawl:

“That’s true enough… ”

His unfailing response to any story – incredible, horrible, filthy or malicious – would be those three words uttered in a low voice that rang with conviction.

“That’s true enough.”

Each time I heard them it was as though some heavy fist struck me thrice on the chest.

Work stopped because lame and stuttering Yakov Boyev also wanted to tell a fish story, in fact he had already begun his tale, but no one listened to him; instead everybody laughed at his painful efforts to speak. He cursed and swore, brandished his chisel and foaming at the mouth yelled to everyone’s amusement:

“When one man lies like a trooper you take it for gospel, but I’m telling you a true story and all you can do is cackle like a lot of numbskulls, blast you…”

By now the men had dropped their tools and were shouting and gesticulating, whereupon Osip took off his cap, baring his venerable silver head with its bald pale, and sternly admonished:

“Hey that’ll do now! You’ve had your breathing spell, now get back to work!”

“You started it,” croaked the ex-soldier spitting disgustedly on his hands.

Osip began nagging at me:

“Now then, overseer…”

I felt that he had some definite purpose in distracting the men from their work with his chatter, but what I did not understand was whether he did it to conceal his own laziness or to give the workers a breather. When the contractor was around, Osip behaved with the utmost servility, acting the simpleton in front of the boss, contriving every Saturday to wheedle a little extra money out of him for the artel.

On the whole he was devoted to the men. but the old workers had no use for him – they considered him a clown and a good-for-nothing and had little respect for him: and even the young folk who enjoyed listening to hid stories did not take him seriously, regarding him rather with ill-concealed mistrust and often with hostility. I once asked the Mordvinian, an intelligent chap with whom I often had some heart-to-heart talks, what he thought of Osip.

“I dunno…” he replied with a grin. “Devil knows… he’s all right, I suppose…” Then after a pause he went on:

“Mikhailo, the chap who died a sharp-tongued fellow he was, and clever too, quarrelled with him once, with Osip, that is, and lammed into Osip something fierce. ‘What kind of a man are you?’ says he. ‘As a workingman you’re finished and you haven’t learned to be a boss, so you’ll spend your days dangling like a forgotten plummet on a string.’ That’s pretty near the truth, and no mistake…”

Then after another pause he added uneasily: “But he’s all right, a good chap on the whole…” My own position among these men was an extremely embarrassing one. Here I was, a lad of fifteen, put there by the contractor to keep accounts, to see that the carpenters did not steal the nails or turn the boards in at the saloon. Of course, they filched nails right under my nose, going out of their way to show me that I was quite superfluous, a downright nuisance, in fact. And if any opportunity afforded itself to bump me with a board or to do me some other minor injury, as if by accident, they would not hesitate to make the most of it.

I felt awkward and ashamed in their midst; I would have liked to say something to reconcile them to my presence, but I could not find the words and the oppressive sense of my own uselessness weighed heavily upon me.

Whenever I entered in my book the materials taken, Osip would walk over to me in his deliberate way and say:

“Got it? Now then, let’s have a look…”

And he would screw up his eyes and scrutinize the entry. “You don’t write clearly enough,” he would comment somewhat vaguely.

He could read only printed lettering and he wrote in church Slavonic letters, too. Ordinary writing was unintelligible to him What’s that funny-looking curlicue there?”

“It’s the letter “D.”

“Ah, D! What a fancy loop… And what’ve you written on that line?”

“Boards, nine arshin, five.”

“Six, you mean.”

“No, five.”

“What do you mean, five? Look, Soldier cut up one…”

“He shouldn’t have…”

“Who says he shouldn’t? He took half to the pub…”

He looked straight at me with his eyes as blue as corn-flowers, twinkling merrily, and, fingering his beard, said with shameless imperturbability:

“Come on, now, put down six! Look here, you cuckoo’s egg, it’s wet and cold and the work’s hard; a fellow’s got to have a little drink now and again to warm his soul, don’t he? Don’t be so upright, you won’t bribe God that way…”

He talked long and earnestly, his gentle, caressing words seemed to engulf me like a shower of sawdust until I felt dazed and blinded by them and found myself altering the figure without protest, “Now that’s more like it! Why, the figure even looks nicer, sitting there on the line like a nice, fat kind-hearted wench…”

I saw him triumphantly reporting his victory to the carpenters and knew that they all despised me for my weakness, and my fifteen-year-old heart wept with humiliation and ugly, dreary thoughts whirled in my head.

“How strange and stupid all this is. Why is he so sure that I won’t go and change the six back to a five, and that I won’t tell the contractor they sold the board for drinks?”

Once they stole two pounds of eight-inch spikes and clamps.

“Listen here,” I earned Osip, “I’m going to put that down!”

“Go ahead!” he replied lightly, his grey eyebrows twitching. “It’s time to put a stop to all this nonsense! Go ahead, write it down, that’ll teach the sons of bitches…”

And he shouted to the men:

“Hey you, loafers, you’ll be paying a fine for those spikes and clamps!”

“What for?” the ex-soldier demanded grimly.

“You can’t get away with that sort of thing all the time,” Osip calmly explained.

The carpenters grumbled and looked askance at me, and I was not at all sure that I would carry out my threat and whether, if I did, I would be doing right.

“I’m going to quit this job,” I said to Osip. “You can all go to the devil! I’ll be taking to thieving myself if I stay with you fellows much longer.”

Osip pondered this for a while, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Then he squatted down beside me and said softly:

“You know, lad, you’re quite right!”

“Eh?”

“You’ve got to clear out. What sort of a foreman or overseer are you? In a job like this a man must have respect for property, he’s got to have the soul of a watchdog to guard his master’s belongings like his own hide… A pup like you’s no good for a job like this, you haven’t any feeling for property. If Vassil Sergeich knew how you let us carry on he would take you by the scruff of your neck and throw you right out, he would! Because you’re not an asset to him, you’re a liability and a man has to be an asset to his master. See what I mean?”

He rolled a cigarette and handed it to me.

“Have a smoke, penpusher, it’ll clear your head. If you weren’t such a smart, handy lad, my advice to you would be: take the holy orders! But you haven’t got the character for that; you’re a stubborn, hard sort of chap, you wouldn’t give in to the abbot himself. With a character like yours you’ll never get on in the world. And a monk’s like a jackdaw, he don’t care what he pecks; so long as there are seeds he don’t care where they come from. I’m telling you all this from the bottom of my heart because I can see that you’re out of place here, a cuckoo’s egg in a strange nest…”

He took off his cap, as he always did when he was about to say something particularly important – stared up at the bleak sky and observed piously:

“God knows we’re a thieving lot and he won’t forgive us for it…”

“That’s true enough,” Mokei Budyrin trumpeted.

From that moment silver-haired Osip with his bright eyes and dusky soul had a pleasant fascination for me; a sort of friendship sprang up between us, although I noticed that his good relations with me embarrassed him somehow; in front of the others he looked at me vacantly, his corn-flower blue eyes darting this way and that, and his lips twisted in a false, unpleasant grimace as he addressed me: “Now then, keep you eyes peeled, earn your living, can’t you see Soldier over there chewing nails for all he’s worth…”

But when we were alone he spoke with a gentle wisdom and a clever little gleam played in his bright blue eyes as they looked straight into mine. I listened carefully to what this old man had to say, for his words were true and honestly weighed, although sometimes he spoke strangely.

“A man ought to be good,” I remarked once. “Yes, indeed!” he agreed. Then he chuckled and with downcast eyes, he went on softly:

“But what exactly do you mean by ‘good’? The way I see it, people don’t care a hang about your goodness or honesty so long as it doesn’t benefit them. No, it pays to be nice to them, amuse them, humour them… and someday perhaps it will bring you good returns! Of course, I don’t deny it must be a fine thing to look at yourself in the mirror and know you’re a good man. But as far as I can see it’s all the same to folks whether you’re a ruffian or a saint so long as you’re nice to them… That’s about the size of it, lad!”

I am in the habit of observing people carefully for I feel that each individual I come in contact with might help me fathom the secret of this mysterious, muddled, painful business called life; moreover, there is one question that has never ceased to torment me: What is the human soul?

It seems to me that some souls must be like brass globes fixed rigidly to the breast so that the reflection they cast back is distorted, ugly and repulsive. And then there are souls that are as flat as mirrors. Such souls might just as well not be there at all.

But most human souls I imagine to be formless as clouds, of an indeterminate opaqueness like the fickle opal always ready to change its hue to conform to whatever colour comes in contact with it.

I did not know, nor could I imagine what comely old Osip’s soul was like; it was something my mind could not fathom.

I pondered these things as I gazed out over the river to where the town clung to the hillside, vibrating with the peal of bells from all of its belfries that soared skywards like the white pipes of my beloved organ in the Polish church. The crosses on the churches, like blurred stars captured by the dreary sky, winked and trembled and seemed to be reaching out toward the clear sky behind the grey blanket of wind-torn clouds; but the clouds scurried along, effacing with dark shadows the gay colours down below, and each time the sunbeams emerged from the bottomless abysses between them to bathe the town in bright hues, they hastened to blot them out again, the dank shadows grew heavier, and after one instant of gladness all was gloomy and dreary again.

The buildings of the town were like heaps of soiled snow, the ground beneath them was black and bare, and the trees in the gardens were like clods of earth; the dull gleam of the windowpanes in the grey house walls reminded one of winter, and the poignant sadness of the pale northern spring spreads softly over the whole scene.

Mishuk Dyatlov, a tow-headed, broad-shouldered, gawky lad with a harelip, essayed a song:

 

She came to him in the morning,

But he died the night before…

 

“Shut up, you bastard,” the ex-soldier shouted at him, “have you forgotten what day it is?”

Boyev was also angry. He shook his fist at Dyatlov, hissing: “S-swine!”

“We’re a hardy, tough lot,” Osip said to Budyrin as he sat astride the top of the icebreak measuring its slant with narrowed eyes “Slip it out an inch to the left… that’s it! A savage lot, that’s what we are: Once I saw a bishop come along and the people crowded around him, fell on their knees and begged and implored him: ‘Your Reverence,’ they said, ‘drive away the wolves, the wolves are ruining us!’ And he towered over them and thundered: ‘You’re supposed to be Orthodox Christians? I’ll have you all severely punished!’ Very wrathful he was, why he even spat in their faces. A little old chap he was, with a kindly face, bleary-eyed…”

About fifty yards down the river from the ice aprons some boatmen and tramps were chopping the ice around the barges; the crowbars cracked into the ice, crushing the brittle, greyish-blue crust of the river, the slender handles of the boat-hooks swayed back and forth pushing the broken pieces under the solid ice, the current gurgled and from the sandy beach came the murmur of streamlets. On the ice apron planes cut into wood, saws screeched and hammers pounded, driving clamps into the yellow, smoothly planed wood – and all these sounds mingled with the ringing of the bells which, softened by the distance, stirred the soul. It was as if all the labour of the bleak day had been a paean to spring, urging her to descend upon the thawing but still naked and wretched earth…

“Call the German!” someone yelled hoarsely, “we need more men…”

From shore came the response:

“Where is he?”

“Look in the pub…”

The voices floated heavily in the moisture-laden air and echoed drearily over the broad river.

The men worked feverishly but carelessly; everyone was anxious to get to town, to the bathhouse and then to church as quickly as possible. Sashok Dyatlov a well-built, agile lad with a shock of curly hair bleached white like his brother’s was particularly worried. He kept glancing up-stream, saying softly to his brother:

“Don’t you hear it crackling?”

The ice had stirred the night before and the river police had been keeping the horses off the river ever since the morning before; a few pedestrians were still slipping across over the foot-bridges, like beads sliding on strings, and you could hear the boards smacking against the water as they bent under the weight.

“It’s cracking up,” said Mishuk, blinking his white lashes.

Osip, who had been scanning the river his eyes shaded with his hand, cut him short.

“It’s the sawdust in your noodle cracking!”’ he said. “You get on with the job, son of a sorceress! Overseer, take your nose out of your book and keep them at it!”

There was about two hours’ work left; the sides of the icebreak were already covered with gleaming planks as yellow as butter, and only the thick iron bands remained to be spiked on. Boyev and Sanyavin had out the grooves for the strips of iron but it was now discovered that they had made them too narrow.

“You blind bat, you!” Osip scolded the Mordvinian, clasping his head in despair. “Call that work?”

Suddenly a voice raised in a joyful shout was heard from the shore.

“It’s moving! Hoorray!”

As if in accompaniment to the howl, a faint crunching rustling sound came down the river; the gnarled claws of the pine-bough markers trembled and seamed to clutch at the air for support, and, waving their boat-hooks, the boatmen and tramps noisily clambered up rope ladders to board their barges.

It was strange to see the deserted river suddenly become crowded with people; they seemed to have popped up from under the ice and were now rushing back and forth like jackdaws scared by a gunshot, running hither and thither hauling boards and poles, dropping them and picking them up again.

“Get your tools together!” roared Osip. “Lively there, you… We’re going ashore!”

“There goes Easter Sunday!” exclaimed Sashok bitterly.

To us it seemed as if the river stood still, while the city shuddering and swaying, with the hill under it, began to sail slowly up the river. The grey sandy landslip about seventy feet ahead of us also stirred and floated away.

“Get moving!” Osip shouted, giving me a push. “What’re you gaping at?”

A dread sensation of danger gripped me, and my feet, feeling the ice shift underneath, mechanically propelled my body to the sand spit where the willow wands broken and bent by the winter winds jutted up naked and bare. Boyev, Soldier, Budyrin and the two Dyatlovs got there ahead of me. The Mordvinian ran beside me swearing angrily while Osip brought up the rear.

“Stop your howling, Narodets…” I heard Osip shout.

“But what are we going to do, Uncle Osip…”

“Everything’s all right, you’ll see.”

“We’ll be stuck here for a couple of days.”

“Then you’ll sit it out…”

“What about the holiday?”

’They’ll manage this year without you.”

“Bunch of cowards,” sneered Soldier, sitting on the sand and smoking his pipe. “It’s only a hop skip and a jump to the shore and you’re ready to run like mad.”

“You were the first to take to your heels,” Mokei put in.

“What’re you afraid of?” Soldier continued. “Christ was the Saviour and even he had to die…”

“But he was resurrected, wasn’t he?” the Mordvinian muttered, hurt by the other’s remarks.

“Shut up, you pup!” Boyev shouted at him. “Sure he was resurrected. Today’s Friday, not Sunday!”

The March sun broke through a blue gulf between the clouds, and the ice glistened as if mocking at us. Osip scanned the deserted river, shading his eyes with his hand.

“She’s stopped,” he said. “But not for long…”

“No holiday for us,” Sashok muttered sullenly.

Angry furrows cleft the Mordvinian’s beardless, moustacheless face, as dark and rough-hewn as an unpared potato.

“So we can sit right here,” he muttered, blinking, “with nothing to eat and no money. People are enjoying themselves, but we… Victims of greed, that’s what we are…”

“It’s a matter of need, not greed!” Osip, his eyes glued to the river and his thoughts apparently far away, spoke as if talking in his sleep. “What are these ice breakers for? To protect the barges and everything else from the ice. The ice hasn’t any sense, it’ll just pile up on the string of boats – and good-bye property…

“Spit on it. It isn’t ours, is it?”

“No use reasoning with a fool…”

“Ought to’ve fixed them earlier…”

Soldier twisted his face in a frightful grimace.

“Shut up, Mordvinian!” he shouted.

“It’s stopped,” Osip repeated.

The boatmen were shouting on board their vessels. From the river a chill breath and an evil, ominous silence were wafted. The pattern of the markers scattered over the ice altered, and everything seemed altered, pregnant with tense expectation.

“Uncle Osip, what are we going to do?” one of the young lads asked timidly.

“Eh?” he responded absently.

“Are we going to stay here?”

“Maybe the Lord doesn’t want you sinners celebrating his holiday, eh?” Boyev said, in a mocking nasal twang.

Soldier came to the assistance of his comrade and pointing to the river with his pipe muttered:

“Want to go to town, eh? Who’s stopping you? The ice’ll go too. Maybe you’ll get drowned – it’d save you from getting hauled to the clink anyway.”

“That’s true enough,” said Mokei.

The sun slipped out of sight, the river grew dark, and the town was now more clearly visible. The young men gazed at it with impatient, longing eyes, silent and still.

I had’ that oppressive feeling which comes with the realization that everyone around you is concerned with his own thoughts and that there is no single purpose that might unite all into an integral, stubborn force. I wanted to get away from them and set off down the ice alone.

With a movement so sudden that he might have just awakened from a deep sleep, Osip got up, removed his cap and, making the sign of the cross in the direction of the town, said in a simple, calm tone of authority:

“Well, lads, let’s go, and God be with us…”

“To town?” cried Sashok, jumping to his feet.

Soldier made no effort to move.

“We’ll drown!” he declared.

“Stay here, then.”

Casting his eye over the men around him, Osip cried:

“Come on, let’s get going!”

Everybody was now on his feet and gathered in a huddle. Boyev, who was rearranging the tools in his basket complained:

“Once you’re told to go, you might as well go… But the one who gives the orders will have to answer…

Osip seemed to have grown younger and stronger. The crafty, good-natured expression had faded from his rosy face, his eyes grew darker, graver and more matter-of-fact. The indolent swagger too disappeared and he now walked with a firm, confident tread.

“Pick up a board, each of you, and hold it crosswise in front. In case the ice cracks, which God forbid, the ends will hit the solid ice and stop you from going under. They’ll help in crossing the cracks too. Anybody got a rope? Here, you, give me the level… Ready? I’ll go ahead, and after me… who’s the heaviest? I suppose you, Soldier. Then Mokei, Mordvinian, Boyev, Mishuk, Sashok. Maximych, being the lightest, will bring up the rear…Off with your caps and let’s pray to the Virgin. Here comes the sun to give us a send-off…”

With one accord the grey and brown heads of matted hair were bared, and the sun glanced down at them through a thin white cloud, only to hide again as if loth to raise unwarranted hopes.

“Let’s go!” said Osip in a dry, strange voice. “God be with us! Keep your eyes on my feet. And no crowding. Keep at least a sagene apart and the more space the better. Come on, lads!”

Shoving his cap inside his coat and carrying the level, Osip stepped on the ice, cautiously sliding his feet along its surface. No sooner had he done so than a wild cry came from the river bank behind.

“Where’re you going, you… sheep.”

“Keep going, no looking behind!” the leader commanded crisply.

“Get back, you devils!”

“Come on, lads, and keep God in your mind! He’s not going to invite us for the holidays…”

A policeman’s whistle was heard.

“Now we’re in for it!” Soldier grumbled aloud. “They’ll let the police know over on the other side – and if we get through alive we’ll be locked up for sure… I’m not going to take any responsibility for this…”

The string of men on the ice followed Osip’s ringing voice as if it were something tangible to cling to.

“Watch the ice in front of your feet!”

We were crossing the river diagonally upstream, and being the last I had a good view of small, dapper Osip with his white, fluff) head as he skilfully slid along, barely lifting his feet from the ice. Behind him, as if threaded on an invisible string, filed six dark figures, doubled over and unsteady on their feet; now and then their shadows appeared next to them, then disappeared underfoot only to spread out on the ice once more. Their heads were bent low, as if they were coming down a mountainside and were afraid of stumbling.

On the shore behind us a crowd evidently had gathered, for the outcry had risen to an unpleasant roar and you could no longer make out what they were shouting.

The cautious procession resolved itself into mechanical, tiresome work. Accustomed to walking fast, I now found myself sinking into that somnolent, detached frame of mind when the soul seems to grow void and all thought of self is forgotten, while vision and hearing become inordinately sharp. Underfoot was the bluish-grey, leaden ice worn thin by the current; its diffused glitter was blinding. Here and there it had cracked and jammed into hummocks, ground by the movement of the river into fragments porous like pumice-stone and as jagged as broken glass. Blue fissures yawned coldly, ready to trap the unwary foot. The wide-soled boots shuffled along and the voices of Boyev and Soldier, continually harping on the same theme, tried my patience.

“I’m not going to answer for this…”

“Neither will I…”

“Just because a man has the right to order you about doesn’t mean someone else mightn’t be a thousand times smarter…”

“You think being smart means anything – it’s a glib tongue that counts around here…”

Osip had tucked the hem of his sheepskin jacket under his belt and his legs, encased in pants of grey army cloth, strode along with the ease and resilience of a spring. It was as if some creature visible to him alone were dancing in front of him, preventing him from walking straight ahead, and he was doing his best to circumvent it, slip away from it, darting to the left or the right, sometimes doubling sharply in his tracks, and doing it all at a dance-step describing loops and semicircles on the ice. His voice rang out clearly and resonantly, and it was pleasant to hear it merge with the ringing of the church hells.

We were half-way across the four-hundred-sagene strip of ice when an ominous rumble came from upstream and at the same moment the ice shifted under my feet; taken by surprise I lost my balance and fell down on one knee. I looked up the river and terror gripped me by the throat, throttled me and made the world turn black in my eyes: the grey crust of ice had sprung to life, it was buckling up, sharp angles appeared on the even surface, and a strange crunching like heavy boots walking over broken glass, filled the air.

With a quiet rush, clear water appeared next to me, somewhere splintering wood whined like a living thing, the men shouted huddling together, and through it all rang the voice of Osip:

’’Scatter, there… Get away from each other… What are you crowding together for! She’s going good and proper now. Get a move on, lads!”

He leapt about as if attacked by wasps, jabbing the air around him with the level as though it were a gun and he were holding off some invisible assailant, while the town swam jerkily past him. Under me the ice crunched and crumpled into fine slivers, water washed against my feet and, springing up. I made a wild dash toward Osip.

“Where d’you think you’re going!” he shouted, swinging the level, “Stop, you bloody fool!”

The man before us was not the old Osip; the face had grown strangely young, all the familiar features had gone, his blue eyes were now grey, and the man seemed to have grown a half-arshin taller. Straight as a brand-new nail, his feet firmly planted, he was shouting with his mouth wide open:

“If you don’t stop running around and getting into a huddle I’ll smash your skulls in!”

Again he swung at me with the level.

“Where’re you going?”

“We’ll drown!” I said in a whisper.

“Hush!” Then, observing my sorry plight, he added softly:

“Any fool can drown, you make it your business to get out of here!”

Again he began shouting encouragements to the others his chest thrust out and his head thrown back.

The ice crackled and crunched as it broke up lazily. In the meantime we were slowly being carried past the town. Ashore it seemed some fabulous titan had awakened and was rending the earth asunder; the shoreline below us was stationary while the bank opposite was slowly moving upstream – it could only be a matter of moments before it was ripped apart.

This ominous, creeping movement seemed to cut off our last link with land; the familiar world was receding into oblivion and my breast was laden with grief and my knees quaked. Red clouds slowly sailed across the sky and the jagged chunks of ice catching their reflection turned red too as if with the strain of reaching out for me. All the vast earth was in the throes of the birth pangs of spring, racked by convulsions, its shaggy, moist breast heaving and its joints cracking; and in the massive body of the earth the river was a vein pulsating with thick, warm blood.

It hurt to realize one’s insignificance and helplessness in the midst of the calm, irresistible movement of the mass, and deep in the soul a bold dream took shape fed by this sensation of humiliation: if only I could reach out and lay my hand on the hill on shore and say:

“Stop until I reach you!”

The resonant pealing of the bells was now waning to a melancholy sigh, but I remembered that the next night they would once more speak out gaily to proclaim the resurrection.

If only I could live to hear them ringing!

…Seven dark figures danced Before my eyes as they leapt from one foothold to another and paddled in thin air with the boards they were carrying; and ahead of them the old man turned and twisted like a groundling, reminiscent of Nicholas the Miracle-Maker, his imperative voice ringing out ceaselessly:

“Keep your eyes op-e-n!”

The ice buckled and the living back of the river shivered and heaved underfoot like the whale in the “Hunch-Backed Horse“; and with increasing frequency the fluid body of the stream gushed from under the armour of ice – the cold, murky water that greedily licked at the men’s feet.

We moved along a narrow perch overhanging a deep abyss. The quiet, luring splash of the water conjured up visions of bottomless depths, of my body settling slowly, slowly into the dense icy mass, saw my eyes grow blind, my heart ceasing to beat. I recalled the drowned bodies I had seen, with their slimy skulls, bloated faces and glassy, bulging eyes, the fingers jutting out from swollen hands and the sodden skin that hung on the palms like a rag.

The first to get a ducking was Mokei Budyrin; he had been ahead of the Mordvinian, as silent and retiring as always; he had been calmer than the others and yet he disappeared as suddenly as if he had been pulled in by the legs, only his head and his hands gripping the plank remained above the ice.

“Lend a hand!” Osip cried. “Not all of you, one or two’ll be enough.”

“Never mind, boys,” said Mokei to the Mordvinian and me, as he blew the water out of his mouth. “I’ll manage… myself.”

He clambered onto the ice and shook himself.

“Damn it anyway, it looks as if you really might drown down here.”

His teeth chattering, he licked his wet moustache with his large tongue, his resemblance to a big, genial dog more marked than ever.

A transient recollection flashed in my mind; I remembered how a month before he had chopped off the thumb of his left hand at the first joint and picking up the pallid, blue-nailed joint had looked at it darkly, with wondering eyes, and addressed it in a low, apologetic tone:

“I’ve hacked at the poor thing so many times I’ve just lost count… It was out of joint anyway, didn’t work properly… So now I suppose I’ve got to bury it.” He carefully wrapped the amputated thumb into some shavings and put it in his pocket. Only then did he proceed to bandage the wound.

The next to get a ducking was Boyev; it looked as if he had purposely dived tinder the ice. He let out a frenzied cry at once.

“O-ow, help! I’m drowning! Save me, brothers, don’t let me go down…”

He thrashed about so hard out of sheer terror that we barely managed to haul him up, and in the fuss we almost lost the Mordvinian who went right under, head and all.

“That was pretty nearly a trip straight to the devils,” he said with an abashed smile as he clambered back on the ice, looking lankier and more angular than ever.

A minute later Boyev went down again with a shriek.

“Shut up, Yashka, you soul of a goat!” Osip shouted, threatening him with the level. “Why must you scare everybody out of their wits? I’ll teach you a lesson! Loosen your belts, boys, and turn your pockets inside out, it’ll be easier that way…”

Every dozen paces or so the ice, crunching and spuming, opened wide, sharp-fanged jaws dripping a murky froth and the jagged blue teeth reached out for our feet; the river seemed anxious to suck us down as a snake swallows a frog. The sodden boots and clothes hampered our movement and pulled us down; we were all clammy as if we had been licked down; clumsy and speechless, we plodded along slowly and submissively.

Osip, as wet as the rest of us, seemed to divine where the fissures were and leapt like a hare from floe to floe. After each leap we would pause for a moment, look around and give a resonant whoop:

“Thai’s how it’s done, see?”

He was playing with the river; the river stalked him, but so light and nimble on his feet was he that he easily dodged its passes and avoided the pitfalls. One might have thought he was steering the course of the ice and driving the large, solid floes for us to walk on,

“Keep your chin up, you children of God! Ho! ho!”

“Good for Uncle Osip!” the Mordvinian said in quiet admiration. “There’s a man for you! The real sort…”

The closer we got to the shore the finer the ice was chopped and men kept falling through it more and more frequently. The town had already practically floated by and the Volga was not far ahead; there the ice had not moved yet and we were in danger of being sucked under.

“Looks like we’ll drown,” the Mordvinian said quietly, looking over his left shoulder at the blue haze of evening.

Suddenly, as if out of pity for us. a huge ice floe ran end on against the shore, climbed up it shivering and crunching, and then stopped.

“Run!” Osip shouted frenziedly. “Leg it for all you’re worth!”

He jumped for the floe, slipped and fell down, and sitting on the edge of the ice where the water lapped up to him he let the rest of us pass. Five of us dashed for the shore jostling one another in an effort to get there first; the Mordvinian and I stopped to lend Osip a hand.

“Run, you pig’s progeny, d’you hear me!”

His face was blue and trembling, his eyes had lost their lustre, and his jaw hung queerly.

“Come on, Uncle…” His head dropped.

“Must have broken my leg… Can’t get up…”

We picked him up and carried him while he kept on mumbling through chattering teeth, clinging to our necks.

“You’ll drown yourselves, you fools… We’d better thank the Lord for pulling us through… Look out, it won’t carry three, step easy there! Follow the spots where there’s no snow… it’s more solid there… Better drop me, though…”

Osip screwed up an eye and looked me in the face.

“That ledger of yours where our sins are recorded must’ve gotten all soaked up, or maybe you’ve lost it, eh?” he said.

As we stepped off the end of the ice floe that had piled up on the bank, smashing a boat into smithereens in the process, the other end of the floe which was still afloat scrunched, broke off and sailed away, rocking in the current.

“Well, well,” the Mordvinian said approvingly. “It knew what it was about!”

Soaking wet and chilled to the marrow but in high spirits, we were now ashore surrounded by a crowd of townsfolk. Boyev and the ex-soldier were already having an altercation with them.

“Well boys,” Osip cried gaily as we lowered him onto some timbers, “the book’s all mucked up, soaked right through…”

The book, tucked away inside my coat, weighed like a brick; I pulled it out when no one was looking and threw it far out into the stream where it plunked into the dark water like a frog. The Dyatlovs were racing up the hillside to the saloon for some vodka, pounding each other with their fists as they ran and shouting:

“R-r-rah!”

“Ekh, you!”

A tall old man with the beard of an apostle and the eyes of a thief was speaking earnestly right into my ear.

“You ought to have your mugs bashed in for scaring peaceable folk, you anathemas, you…” he was saying.

“What the hell did we do to you?” shouted Boyev, who was busy pulling on his boots.

“Christian folk were drowning and what did you do?” Soldier complained, his voice hoarser than ever. “What could we have done?”

Osip was lying on the ground, his leg stretched out, going over his jacket with trembling hands.

“Soaked all the way through. Oh mother mine,” he moaned. “Done for, these clothes are, and I didn’t wear them a year!”

He had shrunk and his face was wrinkled and he seemed to be growing smaller and smaller as he lay there on the ground.

Suddenly he raised himself, sat up, groaned and was off in an angry, high-pitched voice:

“So you had to get to the bathhouse and the church, you bloody fools. Devil’s spawn! You can go straight to hell! As if the Lord couldn’t celebrate his day without you… Pretty nearly lost our lives… And clothes all mucked up… Hope you croak…”

Everybody else was draining the water from shoes and wringing clothes, wheezing and groaning from exhaustion and arguing back and forth with the townsfolk, but Osip went on still more vehemently:

“Of all the things to do, damn their hides! Had to get to the bathhouse – the police station is where they belong, that’s where you’d get your backwashing…”

“They’ve sent for the police,” one of the townsmen said in a placating tone.

“What’re you trying to do?” Boyev turned on Osip. “Why put on the act?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“Wait a minute! What do you mean?”

“Who started this business of coming across, eh?”

“Well, who?”

“You!”

“Me?”

Osip started as if a spasm had seized him.

“Me-e?” he repeated, his voice breaking.

“That’s true enough,” Budyrin said in a level, distinct voice.

“Honest, it was you, Uncle Osip,” the Mordvinian bore out the others, but quietly, apologetically. “You must’ve forgotten…”

“Of course you started it,” the ex-soldier ejaculated sullenly and emphatically.

“Forgotten eh!” Boyev cried in fury. “Tell me another one! I know him, he’s trying to shove the blame onto somebody else!”

Osip fell silent and narrowing his eyes surveyed the dripping, half-naked men.

Then emitting a strange whimper – I could not make out whether he was laughing or sobbing – twitching his shoulders and spreading out his arms, he muttered:

“That’s right… true enough, it was my idea… now what do you make of that!”

“Aha that’s better!” Soldier cried triumphantly.

Gazing at the river, which was now seething like a millet gruel coming to a boil, Osip puckered up his face and guiltily looked away.

“My mind must have gone blank like that, by God!” he continued. “How we ever made it I don’t understand… Makes me sick to think of it. Anyway, boys, I hope you won’t hold it against me – after all, there was the holiday coming, wasn’t there? You’ll forgive me. I must have sort of gone off a bit or something… True enough, I started it… old fool that I am…”

“You see?” said Boyev. “And what’d you say if I got drowned?”

It seemed to me that Osip really was stricken by the uselessness and foolishness of what he had done as he sat there on the ground, looking as slippery as a new-born calf licked by its dam; he shook his head, passed his fingers through the sand around him and continued mumbling penitently in a strange voice, all the while avoiding everyone’s eyes.

I looked at him and wondered what had happened to the captain of men who had taken his place at the head of his fellows and led them so considerately, ably and imperiously.

An unpleasant emptiness welled up in my soul. I dropped down beside Osip and, hoping to salvage something from the wreckage, spoke to him in a low voice.

“Don’t, Uncle Osip…”

“Ever see anything like it?” he responded in the same lone, giving me a sidelong glance while his fingers were busy untangling his matted beard. Then he went on as loudly as before for everybody’s benefit: “What a to-do, eh?”

…The dark stubble of the tree-tops on the crest of the hill was silhouetted against the extinguished sky, and the hill itself pressed against the shore like some huge beast. The blue shadows of evening appeared from behind the roofs of the houses that clung scab-like to the dusky hide of the hillside, and looked out from the wide-open rusty-red, moist maw of a clayey gully creating the illusion that it was reaching out thirstily for the river.

The river grew black and the rustle and crunching of the ice became duller and more regular; every now and then an ice floe dug end on into the shore as the hog roots the earth, remained motionless for a moment, then rocked, broke loose and sailed on farther while the next floe crept into its place.

The level of the water rose rapidly, sweeping against the bank and washing away the mud, and the silt spread a dark stain in the murky blue water. Strange noises filled the air – a scrunching and champing as if some tremendous beast were devouring its meal and licking its chops with a giant tongue.

From the direction of the town the sweet and pensive melody of the pealing bells, now muted by distance, floated down.

Like two romping puppies the Dyatlovs dashed down the hillside carrying bottles in their hands while at right angles to them, alone the river front, came a grey-coated police officer and two policemen in black.

“God Almighty!” Osip groaned, tenderly rubbing his knee.

As the police approached, the townspeople cleared a passage for them and an expectant silence fell. The police officer, a lean little chap with a small face and a waxed reddish moustache, strode up to us.

“So you were the devils…” he began sternly in a rather hoarse affected bass.

Osip threw himself back on the ground and began hastily to explain:

“It was me, Your Honor, who started the business… Begging your pardon. Your Honor, it was because of the holidays…”

“You old devil,” the police officer yelled, but his shouting was lost in the avalanche of humble entreaties.

“We live here in town and on the other bank we’ve got nothing; didn’t even have money to buy bread and, Your Honor, the day after tomorrow’s Easter – got to take a bath and go to church like all good Christians, so I says, let’s go, fellows, and take a chance; we weren’t doing anything wrong. I’ve been punished for my fool idea though – leg’s broken, see.

“That’s all very well and good!” the police officer shouted sternly. “But what if you had drowned?”

Osip heaved a deep, tired sigh.

“What would have happened, Your Honor? Begging your pardon, probably nothing…”

The policeman swore, and everybody listened to him in attentive silence as if the man was uttering words of wisdom to be heard and remembered instead of mouthing obscene, brazen insults.

After taking down our names he left. We had drunk down the fiery vodka and feeling warmed up and in better spirits were getting ready to head for home when Osip, chuckling and throwing a look after the receding policeman, jumped lightly to his feet and fervently crossed himself.

“Thank God that’s the end…”

“Why… looks like your legs all right!” Boyev said in his nasal twang, astonished and disappointed. “D’you mean you didn’t break it?”

“You wish I had, eh?”

“Oh, you old comedian! You miserable clown…”

“Come on, boys!” Osip commanded, pulling his wet cap on his head.

…I walked alongside him behind the others, and as we went, he spoke to me in a quiet, tender way as if sharing a secret known only to him.

“No matter what you do and how you try, you just can’t live unless you’re crafty and cunning – that’s life for you, damn it anyway… You would like to climb to the top of the hill but there’s always some devil tripping you up…”

It was dark, and in the gloom, red and yellow lights burst forth as if signalling the message:

“This way!”

We walked up the hill toward the ringing of bells. At our feet rivulets rippled, drowning Osip’s caressing voice in their babble.

“Got around the police neatly, didn’t I? That’s how you’ve got to do it, so that nobody knows what it’s all about and everybody thinks he’s the main spring. Yes… it’s best to let everyone think he’s the one who did it…”

I listened to him, but found it hard to understand what he was saying.

Nor did I want to understand him; as it is my heart was light and at ease. I did not know whether I liked Osip or not, but I was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, even across the river once more, over ice that would be constantly slipping away from under my feet.

The bells pealed and sang, and the joyous thought came to my mind: How many more times shall I be able to welcome spring!

“The human soul’s got wings,” Osip sighed. “It soars in your dreams…”A winged soul? Wonderful!

1912