A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [37]
I started to scrutinize the face of this blind boy. But what would you suggest I read in a face that has no eyes? . . . I looked at him with involuntary pity for a while, when suddenly a barely visible smile scampered across his thin lips, and, I don’t know why, but it produced in me a most unpleasant impression. The suspicion that this blind boy wasn’t as blind as he seemed was born in my mind. In vain I tried to persuade myself that you couldn’t mimic a walleye, and why would you? But what was I to do? I am often prone to prejudice . . .
“Are you the son of the proprietress?” I asked him eventually.
“No.”
“Who are you then?”
“An orphan, a cripple.”
“And does the proprietress have children?”
“No. There was a daughter, ran away cross the sea with a Tatar.”
“Which Tatar?”
“The devil knows! A Crimean Tatar, a boatman from Kerchi.”
I went into the shack. The sum total of furniture inside consisted of two benches and a table and an enormous trunk by the stove. There wasn’t a single image on the wall—a bad sign! The sea wind burst into the room through a broken windowpane. I pulled the end of a wax candle out of my valise and, having lit it, started to unpack my things, putting my saber and rifle down in the corner. I put my pistols on the table, spread out my felt cloak on the bench, while my Cossack put his on the other. After ten minutes he started snoring, but I couldn’t get to sleep. In the darkness the boy with the wall-eyes continued to circle before me.
Thus an hour passed. The moon shone through the window, and its light played on the earthen floor of the peasant house. Suddenly, a shadow flew through a bright ray that cut across the floor. I half-rose and looked through the window. Someone ran past it a second time and hid God knows where. I couldn’t imagine that this being had run down the steep slope to the water; however, there was nowhere else to go. I stood up, threw on my beshmet, girded myself with my dagger-belt, and quietly exited the peasant house. The blind boy was standing in front of me. I hid by the fence, and with a sure but careful gait he walked past me. He was carrying some kind of bundle under his arm, and turning toward the jetty, he descended a narrow and steep path. “On that day the dumb shall cry out and the blind shall see,”4 I thought, following him at a distance from which I wouldn’t lose sight of him.
In the meantime, the moon was becoming shrouded in clouds, and a fog rose on the sea. The lamp on the stern of the nearest ship just barely shined through it—and closer to shore, foam glittered on the boulders, which threatened to sink it at any moment. I descended with difficulty, stole down the steep slope, and this is what I saw: the blind boy paused, then turned right at the bottom. He walked so close to the water that it seemed as if a wave might grab him and take him away at any moment. But it was evident that this wasn’t his first walk along these parts, judging from the conviction with which he stepped from stone to stone, avoiding the grooves between them. At last he stopped, as though he was listening for something, sat on the ground and put the bundle down beside him. Hiding behind a protruding part of the rock-face, I observed his movements. Several minutes later a white figure appeared on the other side of him. She walked up to the blind boy and sat next to him. The wind brought me their conversation from time to time:
“So, blind boy,” said the female voice, “the storm is fierce. Yanko won’t come.”
“Yanko isn’t afraid of storms,” he replied.
“The fog is thickening,” the female voice rejoined in a sad tone.
“Fog is better for getting past patrol ships,” was the reply.
“And if he drowns?”
“Well then, on Sunday you’ll have to go to church without