DEPARTURE
After having taken supper with my friends, I took my seat in the kibitka.
The driver drove the horses at full gallop, as was his wont, and in a few
minutes we were outside the city. It is hard to part, even for a short time,
from those who have become necessary to us at every moment of our existence.
It is hard to part,-- but happy is he who can part without smiling, for
love or friendship is his consolation. You weep as you say " good-bye
"; but think of your return,-- and let your tears dry up at this thought,
as dries up the dew before the face of the sun. Happy is he who weeps, hoping
to be consoled! Happy is he who sometimes lives in the future! Happy is
he who lives in meditation! His existence is enriched; his joy is multiplied,
and calm assuages the gloom of his pining, generating images of happiness
in the mirrors of his contemplation.
I lay in the kibltka. The tinkling of the post bell was monotonous to my
ears, and finally brought to me beneficent Morpheus. The grief of my parting
persecuted me in my deathlike state, and painted me to my imagination as
forlorn. I saw myself in a spacious vale which had lost all its amenity
and greenness of leafage through the hot rays of the sun. There was not
a spring to offer coolness, nor treeshade to protect from the heat. I was
a hermit, left in the midst of Nature! I shuddered. "Miserable man!"
I sighed, " where are you? What has become of all that has enticed
you? Where is all that has made your life agreeable? Is it possible that
the pleasures which you have tasted are only an idle dream ? "
Luckily there was a deep rut in the road, and my kibltka, getting into it,
jostled me and woke me up. The kibitka stopped. I raised my head and saw
three habitations in a barren spot.
" What is that ? " I asked my driver.
" A post station."
" Where are we? "
" In Sofiya, " and he unhitched the horses.
SOFIYA
All around me was silence. I was absorbed in contemplation and did not notice
that the kibitka had been standing quite a while without the horses. My
driver broke my meditation:
" Master, father, some money for a drink!
This tax is illegal, but no one objects to paying it, in order that he may
be able to travel at his ease; the twenty kopeks I gave him were a good
investment. Who has travelled by post knows that a passport is a precaution
without which any purse, unless it be a general's, will have to suffer.
I took it out of my pocket and went with it, as people sometimes go with
the cross for their defence.
I found the Post Commissary snoring. I touched his shoulder.
"Whom does the devil drive so? What a miserable habit to depart from
the city at night ? There are no horses here, -it's too early yet. Go into
the inn and drink tea, or go to sleep! "
Having said that, the Commissary turned to the wall, and went to snoring
again. What was I to do? I once more shook the Commissary by his shoulder.
"What is the matter with you ? I told you there are no horses! "
and, covering himself with the blanket, the Commissary turned away from
me.
If the horses are all engaged, I thought to myself, then it is not right
for me to disturb the Commissary's sleep. But if there are any horses in
the stable . . . I made up my mind I would find out whether the Commissary
told the truth. I went into the yard, hunted up the stable and found some
twenty horses in it. It is true, one could count the bones on them, yet
they would have taken me to the next station. From the stable I returned
to the Commissary, and shook him harder than before, for I felt I had a
right to do so, having discovered that he had told a lie. He jumped up from
his bed and without opening his eyes asked who had arrived. " I . .
. " But coming to his senses, and noticing me, he said:
" Young man, yon are evidently in the habit of commanding drivers of
olden days, when they used to beat them with sticks. Well, that won't work
now-a-days." The Commissary lay down angrily in his bed again. I had
really a desire to treat him like one of those drivers when they were discovered
cheating; but my generosity to the city driver caused the Sofiya drivers
to hurry up and hitch the horses to the kibitka. just as I was getting ready
to commit a crime on the back of the Commissary, the bells were heard in
the yard. I remained a good citizen, and thus twenty kopeks saved a peaceable
man from an inquest, my children from an example of incontinence in anger,
and I discovered that reason is a slave to impatience.
The horses carried me away. The driver started a song which, as usual, was
a doleful one. He who knows the tunes of Russian popular songs will admit
that there is something in them that speaks of sadness of spirit. Nearly
all the tunes of such songs are in the minor key. In this musical inclination
of the popular ear one may find a solution of the trend of his actions.
In it one may discover the condition of the nation's soul. Look at a Russian!
You will always find him lost in meditation. If he wants to drive away ennui,
or, as he calls it, have a good time, he goes to the inn. In his intoxication
he is impulsive, bold, quarrelsome. If anything takes place not to his liking,
he at once starts a brawl or fight. A churl who goes into the inn with a
downcast look and returns from it covered with blood from having had his
ears boxed may throw a light on many an enigmatic point in Russian history.
My driver was singing. It was three o'clock in the morning. As before the
bell, so now his song put me to sleep:
0 Nature! Having swathed man at his birth in the winding-sheets of sorrow,
dragging him all his life over the forbidding crags of fear, ennui and sadness,
you have given him sleep as a consolation. You fall asleep, and all is at
an end! Unbearable is the awakening to the unfortunate man. Oh, how acceptable
death is to him! And if it is the end of sorrow. . . . All-kind Father!
Wilt Thou turn away Thy look from him who ends his life in a manly way?
To Thee, the source of all goodness, this sacrifice is brought. Thou alone
givest strength when creation trembles and is convulsed. It is the voice
of the Father, calling His child unto Himself! Thou hast given me life,
to Thee I return it: upon earth it has become useless."
TOSNA
When I left St. Petersburg I thought I would find a very good road. All
those who have travelled upon it after the Emperor have thought so. It had
been such, indeed, but only for a short time. The dirt which had been put
upon the road in dry weather in order to make it even had been washed by
the rains, forming a swamp in the summer, and made it impassable. Fearing
bad weather, I got out of the kibitka and went into the post station, intending
to take a rest. In the room I found a traveller who was sitting behind a
long, common peasant table in the nearer corner and was turning over some
papers. He asked the Post Commissary to give him horses as soon as possible.
To my question who he was, I learned that he was a pettifogger of the old
style, and that he was going to St. Petersburg with a stack of torn papers
which he was then examining. I immediately entered into a conversation with
him, and here is what he said:
" Dear sir,--I, your humble servant, have been a Registrar in the Archives
of the Estates, where I had an opportunity to make good use of my position:
by assiduous labour I have collected a genealogy, based on clear documentary
proof, of many Russian families, and I can trace their princely or noble
origin several centuries back. I can reinstate many a man in his princely
dignity, by showing his origin from Vladimir Monomakh, or even from Rurik.
Dear sir," he continued, as he pointed to his papers, " all Great-Russian
nobles ought to purchase my work, paying for it more than for any other
wares. But with the leave of your High Birth, Noble Birth, or High and Noble
Birth, for I do not know how to honour you, they do not know what they need.
You know how the orthodox Tsar Feodor Aleksyeevich of blessed memory has
injured the Russian nobility by doing away with the prefecture. That severe
legislation placed many honourable princely and royal families on a level
with the Novgorod nobility. But the orthodox Emperor Peter the Great has
entirely put them in the shade by his Table of Ranks. He opened the way
to all for obtaining the title of nobility through military and civil service,
and he, so to say, has trampled the old nobility in the dirt. Our Most Gracious
Mother, now reigning, has confirmed the former decrees by her august Law
of the Nobility, which has very much disquieted all our higher nobles, for
the old families are placed in the Book of the Nobility lower than the rest.
There is, however, a rumour that there will soon be issued a supplementary
decree by which those families that can trace their noble origin two or
three hundred years back will be granted the title of Marquis or something
like it, so that they will have some distinguishing feature from the other
families. For this reason, dear sir, my work must be acceptable to all the
old nobility. But there are rascals everywhere. In Moscow I fell in with
a company of young gentlemen to whom I proposed my work, in order to be
repaid through their kindness at least for the paper and ink wasted upon
it. But instead of kindness they heaped raillery upon me; so I left that
capital from grief, and am on my way to St. Petersburg, where there is more
culture."
Saying this, he made a deep bow, and straightening himself up, stood before
me with the greatest respect. I understood his thought, took something out
of my purse and, giving it to him, advised him to sell his paper by weight
to peddlers for wrapping paper, for the prospective marquisates would only
turn people's heads, and he would be the cause of a recrudescence of an
evil, now passed in Russia, of boasting of old genealogies.
LYUBANI
I suppose it is all the same to you, whether I travelled in summer or winter,
especially since it is not uncommon for travellers to travel both summer
and winter, starting out in a sleigh and returning in a wheel carriage.
The corduroy road wore out my sides. I crawled out of the kibitka, and started
on foot. While I was lying in the kibitka, my thoughts were directed to
the immeasurableness of the world, and while my soul flitted away from the
earth, it seemed easier to bear the jostling of the carriage. But spiritual
exercises do not always distract our corporeality, and it was in order to
save my sides that I went on foot.
A few steps from the road I noticed a peasant who was ploughing his field.
It was warm; I looked at my watch: it was twenty minutes to one. I left
the city on Saturday, so it was Sunday then. The peasant that was ploughing
evidently belonged to a landowner that did not receive any tax from him.
The peasant was ploughing with great care; evidently the field did not belong
to the master. He was turning the plough with remarkable ease.
God aid you! " I said as I approached the ploughman, who did not stop
but finished the furrow he had begun.
" God aid you! " I repeated.
" Thank you, sir! " said the ploughman as he cleaned the ploughshare
and transferred the plough to a new furrow.
You are, of course, a dissenter, since you work on Sunday. "
"No, sir, I make the correct sign of the cross," he said, and
showed me his three fingers put together; " but God is merciful and
does not want a person to starve, as long as he has a family and sufficient
strength."
" Have you not any time to work during the week, that you work on a
Sunday, and at that in a great heat? "
" In the week, sir, there are six days, and we have to work for the
manor six times a week, and in the evening we haul the hay from the meadows,
if the weather is good; and on holidays the women and girls go to the woods
to gather mushrooms and berries. God grant a rain this evening," he
added as he made the sign of the cross. " Sir, if you have any peasants,
they are praying for the same."
" I have no peasants, my friend; and so nobody curses me. Have you
a large family?
Three sons and three daughters. My eldest is ten years old. "
" How do you manage to get enough grain, if you have only the Sundays
to yourself ? "
Not only the Sundays,-- the nights are ours too. We need not starve, if
we are not lazy. You see, one horse is resting; and when this one gets tired,
I'll take the other, and that's the way I make my work count."
" Do you work the same way for your master?
" No, sir! It would be sinful to work the same way; he has in his fields
one hundred hands for one mouth, and I have but two hands for seven mouths,
if you count it up. If you were to work yourself to death at your master's
work, he would not thank you for it. The master will not pay the capitation
tax; he will let you have no mutton, no hempen cloth, no chicken, no butter.
Our people are fortunate in those places where the master receives a rent
from the peasant, particularly without a superintendent! It is true, some
good masters ask more than three roubles for each soul, yet that is better
than tenant labour. They are now getting in the habit of letting farms out
to renters who, being poor, flay us alive. They do not give us our own time,
and do not let us go out in the winter to work for ourselves, because they
pay our capitation tax. It is a devilish idea to let one's peasants do work
for somebody else! There is at least a chance of complaining against a superintendent,
but to whom is one to complain against a tenant ? "
" My friend! You are mistaken: the laws do not permit to torture people."
" Torture, yes! But, sir, you would not want to be in my hide ! "
In the meantime the ploughman hitched another horse to his plough and, bidding
me good-bye, began a new furrow.
The conversation with this agriculturist awakened a multitude of thoughts
in me. Above all, I thought of the inequality of the peasant's condition.
I compared the crown peasants with those of the proprietors. Both live in
villages, but while the first pay a stated tax, the others have to be ready
to pay whatever the master wishes. The first are judged by their peers;
the others are dead to the laws, except in criminal matters. A member of
society only then is taken cognisance of by the Government that protects
him when he violates the social bond, when he becomes a criminal! That thought
made all my blood boil. Beware, cruel proprietor! On the brow of every one
of your peasants I see your condemnation!
Absorbed in these thoughts I accidentally turned my eyes to my servant,
who was sitting in front of me in the kibltka and was shaking from side
to side. I felt a sudden darkness come over me, which passed through all
my blood and drove a burning feeling upwards and made it spread over my
face. I felt so heartily ashamed of myself, that I wanted to cry. "
In your anger," I said to myself, " you attack the cruel master
who maltreats his peasants in the field; and are you not doing the same,
or even worse? What crime did your poor Petrushka commit that you do not
allow him to enjoy the comfort of our misfortunes, the greatest gift of
Nature to the unfortunate man,-- sleep ? 'He receives his pay, his food
and dress; I never have him whipped with a scourge or sticks.' 0 you kind
man! You think that a piece of bread and a rag give you the right to treat
a being that resembles you as a top? You are merely boasting that you do
not very often whip it as it is whirling about. Do you know what is written
in the first law of each man's heart? 'If I strike anyone, he has the right
to strike me also.' Remember the day when Petrushka was drunk and did not
dress you fast enough! Remember how you boxed his ears! Oh, if he had then,
drunk as he was, come to his senses, and had answered your question in a
befitting manner! Who has given you the right over him? The law! Law! And
you dare besmirch that sacred name! Wretch!
Tears flowed from my eyes, and in this condition the post horses brought
me to the next station.