Through Russia [47]
Yes. Well, go on, and say, 'I am a lantern unto thee--"
"I want to sing, it."
"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it. For the moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of things. So say after me--"
"0 Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from the idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:
"We shall all of us have to die."
"Yes, but come, come! " expostulated Vologonov. " What are you blurting out NOW? That much I know without your telling me--always have I known, little friend, that each of us is hastening towards his death. Yet your want of understanding exceeds what should be."
"Dogs run-"
"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."
"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine," continued Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.
"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of his may mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal. Now, say: 'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"
"No, I want to SING something."
With a splutter Vologonov said:
"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"
And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful strides as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:
"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"
****************************
Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul, mean, unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and rounded off the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity. He resembled an apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten tree, whence all the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only the branches wave in the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a sole-surviving picture in the pages of a ragged, soiled old book which has neither a beginning nor an ending, and therefore can no longer be read, is no longer worth the reading, since now its pages contain nothing intelligible.
And as smiling his gracious smile, the lad's pathetic, legendary figure flitted past the mouldy buts and cracked fences and riotous beds of nettles, there would readily recur to the memory, and succeed one another, visions of some of the finer and more reputable personages of Russian lore--there would file before one's mental vision, in endless sequence, men whose biographies inform us how, in fear for their souls, they left the life of the world, and, hieing them to the forests and the caves, abandoned mankind for the wild things of nature. And at the same time would there recur to one's memory poems concerning the blind and the poor-in particular, the poem concerning Alexei the Man of God, and all the multitude of other fair, but unsubstantial, forms wherein Russia has embodied her sad and terrified soul, her humble and protesting grief. Yet it was a process to depress one almost to the point of distraction.
Once, forgetting that Nilushka was imbecile, I conceived an irrepressible desire to talk with him, and to read him good poetry, and to tell him both of the world's youthful hopes and of my own personal thoughts.
The occasion happened on a day when, as I was sitting on the edge of the ravine, and dangling my legs over the ravine's depths, the lad came floating towards me as though on air. In his hands, with their fingers as slender as a girl's, he was holding a large leaf; and as he gazed at it the smile of his clear blue eyes was, as it were, pervading him from head to foot.
"Whither, Nilushka?" said I.
With a start he raised his head and eyes heavenward. Then timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was crawling a ladybird.
"A bukan," he observed.
"It is so. And whither are you going to take it?"
"We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it."
"But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are dead."
Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.
"I should like to sing something," he remarked.
"Rather, do you SAY something."
He glanced at the ravine
"I want to sing, it."
"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it. For the moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of things. So say after me--"
"0 Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from the idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:
"We shall all of us have to die."
"Yes, but come, come! " expostulated Vologonov. " What are you blurting out NOW? That much I know without your telling me--always have I known, little friend, that each of us is hastening towards his death. Yet your want of understanding exceeds what should be."
"Dogs run-"
"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."
"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine," continued Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.
"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of his may mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal. Now, say: 'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"
"No, I want to SING something."
With a splutter Vologonov said:
"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"
And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful strides as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:
"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"
****************************
Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul, mean, unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and rounded off the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity. He resembled an apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten tree, whence all the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only the branches wave in the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a sole-surviving picture in the pages of a ragged, soiled old book which has neither a beginning nor an ending, and therefore can no longer be read, is no longer worth the reading, since now its pages contain nothing intelligible.
And as smiling his gracious smile, the lad's pathetic, legendary figure flitted past the mouldy buts and cracked fences and riotous beds of nettles, there would readily recur to the memory, and succeed one another, visions of some of the finer and more reputable personages of Russian lore--there would file before one's mental vision, in endless sequence, men whose biographies inform us how, in fear for their souls, they left the life of the world, and, hieing them to the forests and the caves, abandoned mankind for the wild things of nature. And at the same time would there recur to one's memory poems concerning the blind and the poor-in particular, the poem concerning Alexei the Man of God, and all the multitude of other fair, but unsubstantial, forms wherein Russia has embodied her sad and terrified soul, her humble and protesting grief. Yet it was a process to depress one almost to the point of distraction.
Once, forgetting that Nilushka was imbecile, I conceived an irrepressible desire to talk with him, and to read him good poetry, and to tell him both of the world's youthful hopes and of my own personal thoughts.
The occasion happened on a day when, as I was sitting on the edge of the ravine, and dangling my legs over the ravine's depths, the lad came floating towards me as though on air. In his hands, with their fingers as slender as a girl's, he was holding a large leaf; and as he gazed at it the smile of his clear blue eyes was, as it were, pervading him from head to foot.
"Whither, Nilushka?" said I.
With a start he raised his head and eyes heavenward. Then timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was crawling a ladybird.
"A bukan," he observed.
"It is so. And whither are you going to take it?"
"We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it."
"But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are dead."
Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.
"I should like to sing something," he remarked.
"Rather, do you SAY something."
He glanced at the ravine