On the Road

A little golden cloud had found its bed

For the night upon a giant cliff’s breast...

In the room which the innkeeper himself, the Cossack Semyon Chistoplyui, called "the travelers’ room" – that is, the room set aside exclusively for passers-through – a tall, broad-shouldered man of about forty sat at a large unpainted table. Leaning on the table and propping up his head with his fist, he was asleep. A stub of tallow candle, stuck into a pomade jar, lit up his light-brown beard, his thick broad nose, his sunburned cheeks, and the heavy black eyebrows that hung over his closed eyes... The nose, the cheeks, the eyebrows – every feature, taken separately, was coarse and heavy, like the furniture and the stove in "the travelers’ room," but together they made something harmonious, even handsome. Such, as they say, is the fate of the Russian face: the coarser and sharper its features, the softer and more good-natured it seems. The man was dressed in a gentleman’s coat, worn but trimmed with new wide braid, a plush waistcoat, and wide black trousers tucked into large boots.

On one of the benches that ran unbroken along the wall, on the fur of a fox coat, a girl of about eight lay sleeping, in a brown little dress and long black stockings. Her face was pale, her hair fair, her shoulders narrow, her whole body thin and slight, but her nose stuck out in the same thick, ungainly lump as the man’s. She slept soundly and did not feel the half-round comb, fallen from her head, cutting into her cheek.

"The travelers’ room" had a festive look. The air smelled of freshly washed floors; on the line that ran diagonally across the whole room, the usual rags did not hang; and in the corner, above the table, a little lamp burned before the icon of St. George the Victor, laying a red patch of light upon it. Observing the strictest and most careful gradation in the passage from the divine to the secular, a row of cheap popular prints stretched out on either side of the corner. In the dim light of the candle-stub and the red lamp the pictures made a single continuous strip, covered with black blotches; but when the tiled stove, wishing to sing in unison with the weather, drew in its breath with a howl, and the logs, as if starting awake, flared up in bright flame and grumbled crossly, then ruddy patches would begin to leap along the log walls, and one could see, above the sleeping man’s head, now old Serafim rising up, now the Shah Nasr-ed-Din, now a fat brown infant with staring eyes, whispering something into the ear of a maiden with an extraordinarily dull and indifferent face...

Outside, the foul weather roared. Something wild, malicious, but deeply unhappy, tore about the inn with the fury of a wild beast and struggled to break in. Banging the doors, rattling the windows and the roof, scratching at the walls, it now threatened, now pleaded, now fell quiet for a little while, and then, with a joyful, treacherous howl, burst into the chimney – but there the logs would flare up and the fire, like a chained dog, would rush snarling to meet its enemy; a struggle would begin, and after it, sobbing, shrieking, an angry roar. In all of it one heard both a spiteful anguish and an unsatisfied hatred and the wounded helplessness of one who had once been used to victory...

Enchanted by this wild, inhuman music, "the travelers’ room" seemed to have grown numb forever. But then the door creaked, and into the room came the inn boy in a new calico shirt. Limping on one leg and blinking his sleepy eyes, he pinched the candle with his fingers, put some logs into the stove, and went out. At once, in the church, which in Rogachi stood three hundred paces from the inn, they began to strike midnight. The wind played with the ringing as it played with the snowflakes; chasing after the bell-sounds, it whirled them over a vast space, so that some strokes broke off or stretched into a long, wavy sound, while others vanished altogether in the general roar. One stroke rang out so distinctly in the room that it seemed as if they were ringing just outside the windows. The girl, asleep on the fox fur, gave a start and raised her head. For a moment she gazed senselessly at the dark window, at Nasr-ed-Din, over whom at that moment a crimson light from the stove was gliding, then turned her eyes to the sleeping man.

"Papa!" she said.

But the man did not stir. The girl frowned crossly, lay back down, and drew up her legs. Behind the door, in the inn, someone gave a loud, drawn-out yawn. Soon after this came the squeal of a door-hinge and indistinct voices. Someone came in and, shaking the snow off himself, stamped dully in felt boots.

"What is it?" a woman’s voice asked lazily.

"The young lady Ilovaiskaya has arrived..." answered a bass voice.

The door-hinge squealed again. There was a sound of the wind rushing in. Someone – probably the lame boy – ran up to the door leading into "the travelers’ room," coughed respectfully, and touched the latch.

"This way, please, dear young lady," said a singsong woman’s voice, "it’s clean here, my beauty..."

The door flew open, and on the threshold appeared a bearded peasant in a coachman’s coat, with a large trunk on his shoulder, plastered from head to foot with snow. Behind him came a short figure, almost half the coachman’s height, a woman’s shape without a face and without arms, wrapped up, swathed round, looking like a bundle, and likewise covered with snow. From the coachman and the bundle there came a smell of damp, as from a cellar, and the candle flame wavered.

"What nonsense!" the bundle said crossly. "We could easily have driven on! There were only twelve versts left, mostly through the forest, and we wouldn’t have lost our way..."

"We wouldn’t have lost our way, that’s true enough, but the horses wouldn’t go, miss!" the coachman answered. "As God’s my witness, it was as if I’d done it on purpose!"

"God knows where he’s brought us... But hush... They seem to be asleep here. Go along now..."

The coachman set the trunk down on the floor, whereupon layers of snow fell from his shoulders, gave a sniffling sound through his nose, and went out. Then the girl saw two little hands emerge from the middle of the bundle, reach upward, and begin crossly to untangle the confusion of shawls, kerchiefs, and scarves. First a large shawl fell to the floor, then a hood, then a white knitted kerchief. Having freed her head, the newcomer took off her cloak and at once shrank by half. Now she was in a long gray coat with large buttons and bulging pockets. From one pocket she drew a paper parcel with something in it, from the other a bunch of large, heavy keys, which she set down so carelessly that the sleeping man gave a start and opened his eyes. For a while he stared dully about him, as though not understanding where he was, then shook his head, went into the corner, and sat down... The newcomer took off her coat, whereupon she shrank by half again, pulled off a pair of plush boots, and she too sat down.

Now she no longer looked like a bundle. She was a small, slight brunette of about twenty, slender as a little snake, with a long white face and curling hair. Her nose was long and sharp, her chin likewise long and sharp, her eyelashes long, the corners of her mouth sharp, and thanks to this general sharpness her expression seemed prickly. Laced into a black dress, with a mass of lace at the throat and sleeves, with sharp elbows and long pink fingers, she called to mind the portraits of medieval English ladies. A serious, concentrated expression heightened the resemblance still further...

The brunette looked round the room, glanced sidelong at the man and the girl, and, shrugging her shoulders, moved over to sit by the window. The dark windowpanes trembled in the damp west wind. Large flakes of snow, gleaming white, settled on the glass, but vanished at once, borne away by the wind. The wild music grew still louder...

After a long silence the girl suddenly stirred and said, angrily clipping each word:

"Oh God! Oh God! How unhappy I am! Unhappier than anyone!"

The man rose and, with a guilty gait that did not at all suit his enormous height and great beard, shuffled over to the girl.

"Aren’t you asleep, my darling?" he asked in an apologetic voice. "What do you want?"

"I don’t want anything! My shoulder hurts! You’re a bad man, Papa, and God will punish you! You’ll see, He’ll punish you!"

"My dear one, I know your shoulder hurts, but what can I do about it, my darling?" the man said, in the tone in which husbands who have had a little too much to drink apologize to their strict wives. "It’s from the journey, Sasha, that your shoulder hurts. Tomorrow we’ll arrive, we’ll rest, and it will pass..."

"Tomorrow, tomorrow... Every day you tell me tomorrow. We’ll be travelling for another twenty days!"

"But my darling, on my word as your father, we’ll arrive tomorrow. I never lie, and if the blizzard has held us up, that’s not my fault."

"I can’t bear it any longer! I can’t, I can’t!"

Sasha jerked her leg sharply and filled the room with an unpleasant, shrill wailing. Her father waved his hand and looked helplessly at the brunette. She shrugged and went over to Sasha, hesitating.

"Listen, dear," she said, "why cry? It’s true it’s not nice if your shoulder hurts, but what’s to be done?"

"You see, madam," the man said quickly, as if excusing himself, "we haven’t slept for two nights, and we’ve been travelling in a wretched carriage. Well, naturally, it’s understandable that she’s unwell and out of sorts... And on top of it all, you know, we got a drunken driver, our trunk was stolen... it’s been blizzarding the whole way – but what’s the use of crying, madam? Though I confess this sleeping sitting up has worn me out, and I’m like a drunk man myself. For heaven’s sake, Sasha, it’s sickening enough without you crying too!"

The man shook his head, waved his hand, and sat down.

"Of course, one oughtn’t to cry," said the brunette. "Only babies in arms cry. If you’re not well, dear, you should undress and sleep... Come, let’s get you undressed!"

When the girl had been undressed and calmed, silence fell once more. The brunette sat by the window, looking about the inn room, the icon, the stove, with bewilderment. It seemed the room struck her as strange, and so did the girl with her thick nose, in her short boyish nightshirt, and the girl’s father as well. This strange man sat in the corner, looking about him helplessly, like a drunkard, kneading his face with his palm. He was silent, blinking his eyes, and, looking at his guilty figure, it was hard to suppose he would soon begin to speak. But it was he who spoke first. Stroking his knees, coughing, he gave a little laugh and said:

"A comedy, upon my word... I look and can’t believe my own eyes: what the devil has fate driven us into this wretched inn for? What was it trying to express? Life sometimes performs such salto mortale mortal leaps (Latin). that all one can do is stare in bewilderment and blink. Are you travelling far, madam, if I may ask?"

"No, not far," the brunette answered. "I’m coming from our estate, about twenty versts from here, to our own farmstead, to my father and brother. I am myself an Ilovaisky, and the farmstead is also called Ilovaiskoe, twelve versts from here. What dreadful weather!"

"Couldn’t be worse!"

The lame boy came in and set a new candle-stub into the pomade jar.

"How about putting on the samovar for us, lad?" the man said to him.

"Who drinks tea at this hour?" the lame boy grinned. "It’s a sin before the morning service."

"Never mind, lad, it won’t be you burning in hell for it, it’ll be us..."

Over tea the new acquaintances fell into conversation. Ilovaiskaya learned that her companion’s name was Grigory Petrovich Likharev, that he was the own brother of that same Likharev who served as marshal of the nobility in one of the neighboring districts, and that he himself had once been a landowner, but had "gone through his money in good time." Likharev, for his part, learned that Ilovaiskaya’s name was Marya Mikhailovna, that her father’s estate was enormous, but that the running of it fell to her alone, since her father and brother looked at life through their fingers, careless and altogether too fond of borzois.

"My father and brother are all alone at the farmstead," Ilovaiskaya was saying, moving her fingers – she had a habit, when talking, of moving her fingers in front of her sharp little face and, after each sentence, licking her lips with the tip of her sharp tongue – "they, men that they are, are a careless lot, and won’t lift a finger for themselves. I can just imagine who’ll see to it that they break the fast properly! We have no mother, and our servants are the sort who can’t so much as lay a tablecloth straight without me. Now you can imagine their situation! They will be left without their Easter meal, while I have to sit here all night. How strange it all is!"

Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from her cup, and said:

"There are holidays that have their own particular smell. At Easter, at Trinity, at Christmas, the air smells of something special. Even unbelievers love these holidays. My brother, for instance, holds forth that there is no God, and yet on Easter he’s the first to run to matins."

Likharev raised his eyes to Ilovaiskaya and laughed.

"They hold forth that there is no God," Ilovaiskaya went on, laughing too, "but why is it, tell me, that all the famous writers, scholars, all clever people generally, come to believe by the end of their lives?"

"Whoever, madam, did not know how to believe in his youth, will not come to believe in his old age either, were he ten times over a man of letters."

Judging by his cough, Likharev had a bass voice, but, probably out of fear of speaking loudly, or from excessive shyness, he spoke in a tenor. After a short silence he sighed and said:

"As I understand it, faith is a faculty of the spirit. It’s just like a talent – one must be born with it. As far as I can judge by myself, by the people I’ve seen in my time, by everything that has gone on around me, this faculty is present in the Russian people to the very highest degree. Russian life presents an unbroken series of beliefs and infatuations, and as for unbelief or denial – if you want to know – it hasn’t so much as caught a whiff of them. If a Russian doesn’t believe in God, it only means he believes in something else."

Likharev took his cup of tea back from Ilovaiskaya, drank off half of it at once, and went on:

"I’ll tell you about myself. Into my soul nature put an extraordinary capacity for believing. Half my life, if it’s not ill-omened to say so before nightfall, I spent among the ranks of atheists and nihilists, but there was not a single hour in my life when I did not believe in something. All talents usually show themselves in early childhood, and so did my capacity make itself known while I was still knee-high, walking under the table. My mother loved to see her children eat a great deal, and whenever she fed me she used to say: ’Eat! The main thing in life is soup!’ I believed her, and ate that soup ten times a day, ate it like a shark, till I was sick and faint with it. Nurse told fairy tales, and I believed in house-spirits, in wood-goblins, in every sort of devilry. There were times I’d steal corrosive sublimate from my father, sprinkle it on gingerbread, and carry it up to the attic so that – you see – the house-spirits would eat it and die. And when I learned to read and understand what I read, well, then the real business began! I ran off to America, and joined robber bands, and begged to be let into a monastery, and hired boys to torment me for Christ’s sake. And mind you, my faith was always active, never a dead thing. If I ran off to America, it wasn’t alone – I’d seduce some other fool just like myself into coming along, and I was glad when I froze beyond the town gates and when I got a whipping for it; if I joined the robbers, I invariably came back with my face smashed in. A most troublesome childhood, I can tell you! And when they sent me to the gymnasium and showered me there with every sort of truth, such as that the earth goes round the sun, or that white is not white at all but is made up of seven colors, my head fairly spun! Everything went head over heels for me: Joshua, who stopped the sun, and my mother, who in the name of the Prophet Elijah denied the existence of lightning-rods, and my father, indifferent to the truths I had learned. My enlightenment inspired me. Like a madman I went about the house, about the stables, preaching my truths, filled with horror at ignorance, blazing with hatred for everyone who saw only white in the color white... But all that, of course, is trifling, mere boyishness. My serious, so to speak, manly infatuations began at the university. And you, madam, did you finish your studies somewhere?"

"At Novocherkassk, at the Don Institute."

"But you weren’t at the higher courses? Then you don’t know what the sciences are. Every science there is in the world, however many there are, carries one and the same passport, without which they consider themselves unthinkable: the striving for truth! Every one of them, even some little branch like pharmacognosy, has for its aim not usefulness, not the conveniences of life, but truth. Remarkable! When you set out to study some science, the first thing that strikes you is its beginning. I tell you, there is nothing more captivating and more grandiose, nothing so overwhelms and seizes the human spirit, as the beginning of a science. From the very first five or six lectures you’re already borne up on the brightest hopes, you already fancy yourself the master of truth. And I gave myself to the sciences without reserve, passionately, as to a beloved woman. I was their slave, and beyond them I wanted to know no other sun. Day and night, without straightening my back, I crammed, ruined myself buying books, wept when I saw people exploiting science for their own personal ends before my very eyes. But my enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a beginning but no end at all, just like a repeating decimal. Zoology has discovered thirty-five thousand species of insects, chemistry counts sixty simple elements. If in time ten more zeros are added to the right of those figures, zoology and chemistry will be just as far from their end as they are now, and all of modern scientific work consists precisely in adding to the figures. I grasped this trick when I discovered the thirty-five-thousand-and-first species and felt no satisfaction. Well, I hadn’t time to live out my disappointment, for soon a new faith took hold of me. I threw myself into nihilism, with its proclamations, its black repartitions, and all its tricks. I went to the people, worked in factories, as a greaser, as a barge-hauler. Then, when, wandering about Russia, I got a good whiff of Russian life, I turned into a passionate devotee of that life. I loved the Russian people to the point of suffering, loved and believed in their God, their language, their creative power... And so on, and so on... In my time I was a Slavophile, I pestered Aksakov with letters, and a Ukrainophile, and an archaeologist, and a collector of specimens of folk art... I threw myself into ideas, into people, into events, into places... I never let up! Five years ago I was in the service of the denial of property; my latest faith was non-resistance to evil."

Sasha caught her breath and stirred. Likharev got up and went over to her.

"My darling, wouldn’t you like some tea?" he asked tenderly.

"Drink it yourself!" the girl answered rudely.

Likharev grew embarrassed and, with his guilty gait, went back to the table.

"So then, you’ve had a merry life," said Ilovaiskaya. "There’s something to look back on."

"Oh yes, all of it’s merry enough when you’re sitting over tea with a kind companion, chatting away, but you might ask what this merriment has cost me? What has the variety of my life cost me? For I, madam, didn’t believe the way a German doctor of philosophy believes, not primly, not mincingly – I didn’t live in a wilderness – every one of my faiths bent me double, tore my body to pieces. Judge for yourself. I was rich, like my brothers, but now I’m a beggar. In the smoke of my infatuations I squandered my own fortune and my wife’s – a mass of other people’s money besides. I’m forty-two now, old age is on my heels, and I’m as homeless as a dog that’s fallen behind the wagon-train at night. In all my life I have never known what peace is. My soul has languished without pause, suffered even from its hopes... I’ve worn myself out with heavy, disorderly labor, endured privations, sat in prison some five times, dragged myself through the provinces of Archangel and Tobolsk... it hurts to remember! I lived, but in the smoke of it all I never felt the actual process of living. Would you believe it, I don’t remember a single spring, I never noticed how my wife loved me, how my children were born. What else can I tell you? To everyone who loved me, I was a misfortune... My mother has been in mourning for me these fifteen years now, and my proud brothers, who on my account have had to ache in their hearts, blush, bow their backs, throw away their money, have come in the end to hate me like poison."

Likharev got up and sat down again.

"If I were only unhappy, I would thank God for it," he went on, not looking at Ilovaiskaya. "My personal unhappiness fades into the background when I remember how often, in my infatuations, I was absurd, far from the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often with my whole soul I hated and despised those I ought to have loved – and the reverse. I have been unfaithful a thousand times. Today I believe, I fall prostrate, and tomorrow already I flee like a coward from my gods and friends of today, and silently swallow the insult flung after me by some scoundrel. God alone saw how often, from shame at my own infatuations, I wept and gnawed my pillow. Not once in my life have I knowingly told a lie or done evil, but my conscience is unclean! Madam, I can’t even boast that there is no one’s life upon my conscience, for before my very eyes my wife died, worn out by my recklessness. Yes, my wife! Listen – among us, in society, two attitudes to women now prevail. Some measure women’s skulls in order to prove that woman is beneath man, seek out her shortcomings in order to mock her, to show off their originality before her very eyes and justify their own animality. Others do their utmost to raise woman up to their own level – that is, to make her cram thirty-five thousand species by heart, to make her speak and write the same foolishness they themselves speak and write..."

Likharev’s face darkened.

"And I tell you that woman always has been and always will be the slave of man," he said, speaking now in his bass and striking the table with his fist. "She is a soft, tender wax out of which man has always molded whatever he pleased. Good God, for the sake of some man’s paltry infatuation she has cropped her hair, abandoned her family, died in a foreign land... Among the ideas for which she has sacrificed herself, there is not one that was a woman’s own... A selfless, devoted slave! I haven’t measured any skulls, but I say this from bitter, hard-earned experience. The proudest, most independent women, whenever I managed to communicate my inspiration to them, followed me without reasoning, without asking, doing everything I wanted; out of a nun I made a nihilist, who, as I heard afterward, fired a shot at a gendarme; my wife never left me for a moment in all my wanderings and, like a weathervane, changed her faith to match every change in my own infatuations."

Likharev jumped up and began pacing about the room.

"A noble, an exalted slavery!" he said, throwing up his hands. "In it precisely lies the lofty meaning of a woman’s life! Out of the terrible chaos that has piled up in my head over the whole time of my dealings with women, what has survived in my memory, as if filtered through, is not ideas, not clever words, not philosophy, but this extraordinary submission to fate, this extraordinary mercy, this all-forgiveness..."

Likharev clenched his fists, stared at one point, and with a kind of passionate strain, as if sucking out every word, hissed through his set teeth:

"This... this magnanimous endurance, this faithfulness unto the grave, this poetry of the heart... The meaning of life lies precisely in this uncomplaining martyrdom, in the tears that soften stone, in the boundless, all-forgiving love that brings light and warmth into the chaos of life..."

Ilovaiskaya rose slowly, took a step toward Likharev, and fixed her eyes on his face. From the tears glistening on his eyelashes, from his trembling, passionate voice, from the flush on his cheeks, it was plain to her that women had been no chance and no simple theme of conversation. They were the subject of his newest infatuation, or, as he himself would say, his newest faith! For the first time in her life Ilovaiskaya saw before her a man carried away, ardently believing. Gesturing, his eyes flashing, he seemed to her mad, frenzied, but in the fire of his eyes, in his speech, in the movements of his whole large body, there was so much beauty that she, without noticing it herself, stood before him rooted to the spot, gazing rapturously into his face.

"Now take my mother!" he was saying, stretching out his hands to her and making a pleading face. "I poisoned her existence, disgraced, by her notions, the whole Likharev name, caused her as much harm as the bitterest enemy could cause – and what then? My brothers hand her a few kopecks for prosphora and prayer services, and she, doing violence to her own religious feeling, saves up this money and secretly sends it to her good-for-nothing Grigory! That one small thing will educate and ennoble a soul far more powerfully than all the theories, all the clever words, all the thirty-five thousand species! I could give you a thousand examples. Take even you, for instance! There’s a blizzard outside, it’s night, and yet you’re travelling to your brother and father so as to warm them with your affection on the holiday, though they, perhaps, aren’t even thinking of you, have forgotten about you. But wait – come to love someone, and you’ll follow him to the North Pole. Won’t you?"

"Yes – if... I should love him."

"There, you see!" Likharev rejoiced, and even stamped his foot. "By God, I’m so glad to have made your acquaintance! Such is my good fortune, I’m always meeting magnificent people. Not a day goes by without some such acquaintance, such that I’d simply give my soul for the person. In this world there are far more good people than wicked ones. Just see – here we are, you and I, talking frankly and from the heart, as if we’d known each other a hundred years. Sometimes, I tell you, you hold yourself in check for ten years, keep silent, hide things even from friends and wife, and then you meet some cadet on a train and pour out your whole soul to him. I have the honor of seeing you for the very first time, and yet I’ve confessed to you as I’ve never confessed to anyone. Why is that, I wonder?"

Rubbing his hands and smiling cheerfully, Likharev walked up and down the room and began talking about women again. Meanwhile the bells began ringing for matins.

"Good heavens!" Sasha burst into tears. "He won’t let me sleep with all his talking!"

"Ah, yes!" Likharev caught himself. "Forgive me, my darling. Sleep, sleep... Besides her, I have two boys as well," he whispered. "They, madam, live with their uncle, but this one can’t breathe a single day without her father. She suffers, she grumbles, but she clings to me like a fly to honey. I’ve run on too long, madam, and it wouldn’t hurt you to rest either. Would you allow me to make up a bed for you?"

Without waiting for permission, he shook out the damp cloak and spread it along the bench, fur side up, gathered up the scattered kerchiefs and shawls, laid the rolled-up coat at the head for a pillow, and did all this in silence, with an expression of humble reverence on his face, as if he were handling not a woman’s wraps but the fragments of some consecrated vessel. In his whole figure there was something guilty, abashed, as though in the presence of a weak creature he were ashamed of his own height and strength...

When Ilovaiskaya had lain down, he put out the candle and sat down on a stool by the stove.

"So it is, madam," he whispered, lighting a thick cigarette and blowing the smoke into the stove. "Nature has put into the Russian an extraordinary capacity for believing, a searching mind, and a gift for thought, but all of it is shattered to dust by carelessness, laziness, and dreamy frivolity... Yes indeed..."

Ilovaiskaya, gazing in wonder into the darkness, could make out only the red patch on the icon and the flickering of the stove’s light on Likharev’s face. The darkness, the ringing of bells, the roar of the blizzard, the lame boy, the grumbling Sasha, the unhappy Likharev and his talk – all of it mingled together, swelled into one enormous impression, and the world of God seemed to her fantastical, full of wonders and enchanting powers. Everything she had just heard rang in her ears, and human life appeared to her a beautiful, poetic fairy tale that had no end.

The enormous impression grew and grew, clouded over her consciousness, and turned into a sweet sleep. Ilovaiskaya slept, but still saw the little lamp and the thick nose over which the red light leapt.

She heard weeping.

"Dear Papa," a child’s voice pleaded tenderly, "let’s go back to uncle’s! There’s a Christmas tree there! There’s Styopa and Kolya!"

"My darling, but what can I do?" a quiet man’s bass persuaded. "Try to understand me! Do try!"

And to the child’s weeping a man’s weeping was joined. This voice of human grief, amid the howling of the foul weather, touched the girl’s hearing with such sweet, human music that she could not bear the delight of it and began to weep too. Afterward she heard how a great black shadow came quietly up to her, lifted a fallen shawl from the floor, and wrapped it round her feet.

Ilovaiskaya was woken by a strange roar. She sprang up and looked about her in astonishment. In the windows, half drifted over with snow, showed the blue of dawn. In the room stood a gray twilight, through which the stove, and the sleeping girl, and Nasr-ed-Din stood out clearly. The stove and the little lamp had already gone out. Through the door, thrown wide open, could be seen the large tavern room with its counter and tables. Some fellow with a dull, gypsy-like face and astonished eyes stood in the middle of the room, in a puddle of melted snow, holding up a large red star on a pole. Around him crowded a knot of boys, motionless as statues, plastered with snow. The light of the star, passing through the red paper, tinged their wet faces a ruddy color. The crowd roared in disorder, and out of the roar Ilovaiskaya could make out only a single verse:

Hey there, little lad,

Take your slender knife,

Let’s kill, let’s kill the Jew,

That wretched son...

Near the counter stood Likharev, gazing with tender delight at the singers and tapping his foot in time. Catching sight of Ilovaiskaya, he smiled all over his face and came up to her. She smiled too.

"A happy feast day to you!" he said. "I saw that you slept well."

Ilovaiskaya looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling.

After the night’s conversations he no longer seemed to her tall, broad-shouldered, but small – just as the very largest steamship, of which they say it has crossed the ocean, seems small to us.

"Well, it’s time for me to go," she said. "I must get dressed. Tell me, where are you headed now?"

"I? To Klinushki station, from there to Sergievo, and from Sergievo forty versts by horse to the coal pits of a certain fool, one General Shashkovsky. My brothers have found me a place there as manager... I’m going to dig coal."

"Wait, I know those pits. Why, Shashkovsky is my uncle. But... why are you going there?" Ilovaiskaya asked, looking at Likharev in astonishment.

"As manager. To manage the pits."

"I don’t understand!" Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders. "You’re going to the pits. But it’s bare steppe there, desolation, such boredom you won’t survive a single day! The coal is wretched, no one buys it, and my uncle is a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt... You won’t even be paid your wages!"

"It’s all the same," Likharev said indifferently. "And thank God even for the pits."

Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders and, agitated, began to pace about the room.

"I don’t understand, I don’t understand!" she said, moving her fingers in front of her face. "It’s impossible, and... and unreasonable! You must understand that this... this is worse than exile, it’s a grave for a living man! Oh, good heavens," she said hotly, coming up to Likharev and moving her fingers before his smiling face; her upper lip trembled and her sharp face went pale. "Just picture it – the bare steppe, the solitude. There’s not a soul there to say a word to, and you... you’re carried away by women! Coal pits and women!"

Ilovaiskaya suddenly grew ashamed of her own vehemence and, turning away from Likharev, moved off to the window.

"No, no, you mustn’t go there!" she said, quickly tracing her finger along the glass.

Not only with her soul but even with her back she felt that behind her stood an infinitely unhappy, ruined, forsaken man, while he, as though unaware of his own misfortune, as though it had not been he who wept in the night, looked at her and smiled good-naturedly. Better if he had gone on weeping! Several times, in her agitation, she walked the length of the room, then stopped in a corner and fell to thinking. Likharev was saying something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back to him, she drew a twenty-five-ruble note from her purse, crumpled it for a long while in her hands, and, glancing round at Likharev, blushed and thrust the note into her pocket.

Outside the door came the coachman’s voice. Ilovaiskaya, in silence, with a stern, concentrated face, began to dress. Likharev wrapped her up and chattered gaily, but each word of his fell upon her soul like a weight. It is never cheering to hear people joke when they are unhappy, or dying.

When the transformation of a living person into a shapeless bundle was complete, Ilovaiskaya looked round "the travelers’ room" one last time, stood a moment in silence, and slowly went out. Likharev went to see her off...

Outside, the winter, for God knows what reason, still raged on. Whole clouds of soft, large snow whirled restlessly over the ground, finding no place to settle. The horses, the sledge, the trees, the bull tied to a post – everything was white and seemed soft, downy.

"Well, God be with you," Likharev muttered, settling Ilovaiskaya into the sledge. "Don’t think ill of me..."

Ilovaiskaya said nothing. When the sledge started off and began to drive round a large snowdrift, she looked back at Likharev with an expression as though she wanted to say something to him. He ran up to her, but she did not say a word to him, only glanced at him through her long eyelashes, on which snowflakes hung...

Whether his sensitive soul truly succeeded in reading that glance, or whether it was only his imagination deceiving him, it suddenly seemed to him that just two or three more good, strong strokes, and this girl would forgive him his failures, his old age, his homelessness, and would go after him without asking, without reasoning. He stood a long while, rooted to the spot, gazing at the track left by the runners. The snowflakes settled greedily on his hair, his beard, his shoulders... Soon the track of the runners vanished, and he himself, covered in snow, came to look like a white crag, but his eyes still searched for something in the clouds of snow.