Dream Tales and Prose Poems Read online

  Flaxen-headed lads in clean smocks, belted low, in heavy boots, leaning over an unharnessed waggon, fling each other smart volleys of banter, with broad grins showing their white teeth.

  A round-faced young woman peeps out of window; laughs at their words or at the romps of the children in the mounds of hay.

  Another young woman with powerful arms draws a great wet bucket out of the well…. The bucket quivers and shakes, spilling long, glistening drops.

  Before me stands an old woman in a new striped petticoat and new shoes.

  Fat hollow beads are wound in three rows about her dark thin neck, her grey head is tied up in a yellow kerchief with red spots; it hangs low over her failing eyes.

  But there is a smile of welcome in the aged eyes; a smile all over the wrinkled face. The old woman has reached, I dare say, her seventieth year … and even now one can see she has been a beauty in her day.

  With a twirl of her sunburnt finger, she holds in her right hand a bowl of cold milk, with the cream on it, fresh from the cellar; the sides of the bowl are covered with drops, like strings of pearls. In the palm of her left hand the old woman brings me a huge hunch of warm bread, as though to say, 'Eat, and welcome, passing guest!'

  A cock suddenly crows and fussily flaps his wings; he is slowly answered by the low of a calf, shut up in the stall.

  'My word, what oats!' I hear my coachman saying…. Oh, the content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian open country! Oh, the deep peace and well-being!

  And the thought comes to me: what is it all to us here, the cross on the cupola of St. Sophia in Constantinople and all the rest that we are struggling for, we men of the town?

  A CONVERSATION

  'Neither the Jungfrau nor the Finsteraarhorn has yet been trodden by the foot of man!'

  The topmost peaks of the Alps … A whole chain of rugged precipices …

  The very heart of the mountains.

  Over the mountain, a pale green, clear, dumb sky. Bitter, cruel frost; hard, sparkling snow; sticking out of the snow, the sullen peaks of the ice-covered, wind-swept mountains.

  Two massive forms, two giants on the sides of the horizon, the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn.

  And the Jungfrau speaks to its neighbour: 'What canst thou tell that is new? thou canst see more. What is there down below?'

  A few thousand years go by: one minute. And the Finsteraarhorn roars back in answer: 'Thick clouds cover the earth…. Wait a little!'

  Thousands more years go by: one minute.

  'Well, and now?' asks the Jungfrau.

  'Now I see, there below all is the same. There are blue waters, black forests, grey heaps of piled-up stones. Among them are still fussing to and fro the insects, thou knowest, the bipeds that have never yet once defiled thee nor me.'

  'Men?'

  'Yes, men.'

  Thousands of years go by: one minute.

  'Well, and now?' asks the Jungfrau.

  'There seem fewer insects to be seen,' thunders the Finsteraarhorn, 'it is clearer down below; the waters have shrunk, the forests are thinner.' Again thousands of years go by: one minute.

  'What seeest thou?' says the Jungfrau.

  'Close about us it seems purer,' answers the Finsteraarhorn, 'but there in the distance in the valleys are still spots, and something is moving.' 'And now?' asks the Jungfrau, after more thousands of years: one minute.

  'Now it is well,' answers the Finsteraarhorn, 'it is clean everywhere, quite white, wherever you look … Everywhere is our snow, unbroken snow and ice. Everything is frozen. It is well now, it is quiet.'

  'Good,' said the Jungfrau. 'But we have gossipped enough, old fellow. It's time to slumber.'

  'It is time, indeed.'

  The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.

  February 1878.

  THE OLD WOMAN

  I was walking over a wide plain alone.

  And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back…. Some one was walking after me.

  I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face.

  I went up to her…. She stopped.

  'Who are you? What do you want? Are you a beggar? Do you seek alms?'

  The old woman did not answer. I bent down to her, and noticed that both her eyes were covered with a half-transparent membrane or skin, such as is seen in some birds; they protect their eyes with it from dazzling light.

  But in the old woman, the membrane did not move nor uncover the eyes … from which I concluded she was blind.

  'Do you want alms?' I repeated my question. 'Why are you following me?' But the old woman as before made no answer, but only shrank into herself a little.

  I turned from her and went on my way.

  And again I hear behind me the same light, measured, as it were, stealthy steps.

  'Again that woman!' I thought, 'why does she stick to me?' But then, I added inwardly, 'Most likely she has lost her way, being blind, and now is following the sound of my steps so as to get with me to some inhabited place. Yes, yes, that's it.'

  But a strange uneasiness gradually gained possession of my mind. I began to fancy that the old woman was not only following me, but that she was directing me, that she was driving me to right and to left, and that I was unwittingly obeying her.

  I still go on, however … but, behold, before me, on my very road, something black and wide … a kind of hole…. 'A grave!' flashed through my head. 'That is where she is driving me!'

  I turned sharply back. The old woman faced me again … but she sees! She is looking at me with big, cruel, malignant eyes … the eyes of a bird of prey…. I stoop down to her face, to her eyes…. Again the same opaque membrane, the same blind, dull countenance….

  'Ah!' I think, 'this old woman is my fate. The fate from which there is no escape for man!'

  'No escape! no escape! What madness…. One must try.' And I rush away in another direction.

  I go swiftly…. But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close…. And before me again the dark hole.

  Again I turn another way…. And again the same patter behind, and the same menacing blur of darkness before.

  And whichever way I run, doubling like a hunted hare … it's always the same, the same!

  'Wait!' I think, 'I will cheat her! I will go nowhere!' and I instantly sat down on the ground.

  The old woman stands behind, two paces from me. I do not hear her, but I feel she is there.

  And suddenly I see the blur of darkness in the distance is floating, creeping of itself towards me!

  God! I look round again … the old woman looks straight at me, and her toothless mouth is twisted in a grin.

  No escape!

  THE DOG

  Us two in the room; my dog and me…. Outside a fearful storm is howling.

  The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face.

  And I, too, look into his face.

  He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself—but I understand him.

  I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark.

  Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing….

  And the end!

  Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us?

  No! We are not beast and man that glance at one another….

  They are the eyes of equals, those eyes riveted on one another.

  And in each of these, in the beast and in the man, the same life huddles up in fear close to the other.

  February 1878.

  MY ADVERSARY

  I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views wer
e never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us.

  We argued about everything: about art, and religion, and science, about life on earth and beyond the grave, especially about life beyond the grave.

  He was a person of faith and enthusiasm. One day he said to me, 'You laugh at everything; but if I die before you, I will come to you from the other world…. We shall see whether you will laugh then.'

  And he did, in fact, die before me, while he was still young; but the years went by, and I had forgotten his promise, his threat.

  One night I was lying in bed, and could not, and, indeed, would not sleep.

  In the room it was neither dark nor light. I fell to staring into the grey twilight.

  And all at once, I fancied that between the two windows my adversary was standing, and was slowly and mournfully nodding his head up and down.

  I was not frightened; I was not even surprised … but raising myself a little, and propping myself on my elbow, I stared still more intently at the unexpected apparition.

  The latter continued to nod his head.

  'Well?' I said at last; 'are you triumphant or regretful? What is this—warning or reproach?… Or do you mean to give me to understand that you were wrong, that we were both wrong? What are you experiencing? The torments of hell? Or the bliss of paradise? Utter one word at least!'

  But my opponent did not utter a single sound, and only, as before, mournfully and submissively nodded his head up and down.

  I laughed … he vanished.

  February 1878.

  THE BEGGAR

  I was walking along the street … I was stopped by a decrepit old beggar.

  Bloodshot, tearful eyes, blue lips, coarse rags, festering wounds…. Oh, how hideously poverty had eaten into this miserable creature!

  He held out to me a red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned, he mumbled of help.

  I began feeling in all my pockets…. No purse, no watch, not even a handkerchief…. I had taken nothing with me. And the beggar was still waiting … and his outstretched hand feebly shook and trembled.

  Confused, abashed, I warmly clasped the filthy, shaking hand … 'Don't be angry, brother; I have nothing, brother.'

  The beggar stared at me with his bloodshot eyes; his blue lips smiled; and he in his turn gripped my chilly fingers.

  'What of it, brother?' he mumbled; 'thanks for this, too. That is a gift too, brother.'

  I knew that I too had received a gift from my brother.

  February 1878.

  'THOU SHALT HEAR THE FOOL'S JUDGMENT….'—PUSHKIN

  'Thou shalt hear the fool's judgment….' You always told the truth, O great singer of ours. You spoke it this time, too.

  'The fool's judgment and the laughter of the crowd' … who has not known the one and the other?

  All that one can, and one ought to bear; and who has the strength, let him despise it!

  But there are blows which pierce more cruelly to the very heart…. A man has done all that he could; has worked strenuously, lovingly, honestly…. And honest hearts turn from him in disgust; honest faces burn with indignation at his name. 'Be gone! Away with you!' honest young voices scream at him. 'We have no need of you, nor of your work. You pollute our dwelling-places. You know us not and understand us not…. You are our enemy!'

  What is that man to do? Go on working; not try to justify himself, and not even look forward to a fairer judgment.

  At one time the tillers of the soil cursed the traveller who brought the potato, the substitute for bread, the poor man's daily food…. They shook the precious gift out of his outstretched hands, flung it in the mud, trampled it underfoot.

  Now they are fed with it, and do not even know their benefactor's name.

  So be it! What is his name to them? He, nameless though he be, saves them from hunger.

  Let us try only that what we bring should be really good food.

  Bitter, unjust reproach on the lips of those you love…. But that, too, can be borne….

  'Beat me! but listen!' said the Athenian leader to the Spartan.

  'Beat me! but be healthy and fed!' we ought to say.

  February 1878.

  A CONTENTED MAN

  A young man goes skipping and bounding along a street in the capital. His movements are gay and alert; there is a sparkle in his eyes, a smirk on his lips, a pleasing flush on his beaming face…. He is all contentment and delight.

  What has happened to him? Has he come in for a legacy? Has he been promoted? Is he hastening to meet his beloved? Or is it simply he has had a good breakfast, and the sense of health, the sense of well-fed prosperity, is at work in all his limbs? Surely they have not put on his neck thy lovely, eight-pointed cross, O Polish king, Stanislas?

  No. He has hatched a scandal against a friend, has sedulously sown it abroad, has heard it, this same slander, from the lips of another friend, and—has himself believed it!

  Oh, how contented! how kind indeed at this minute is this amiable, promising young man!

  February 1878.

  A RULE OF LIFE

  'If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,' said a crafty old knave to me, 'you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant … and reproach him!

  'To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.

  'In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere…. You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience.

  If you, for instance, are a turncoat, reproach your opponent with having no convictions!

  'If you are yourself slavish at heart, tell him reproachfully that he is slavish … the slave of civilisation, of Europe, of Socialism!'

  'One might even say, the slave of anti-slavishness,' I suggested.

  'You might even do that,' assented the cunning knave.

  February 1878.

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  A DREAM

  I fancied I was somewhere in Russia, in the wilds, in a simple country house.

  The room big and low pitched with three windows; the walls whitewashed; no furniture. Before the house a barren plain; gradually sloping downwards, it stretches into the distance; a grey monotonous sky hangs over it, like the canopy of a bed.

  I am not alone; there are some ten persons in the room with me. All quite plain people, simply dressed. They walk up and down in silence, as it were stealthily. They avoid one another, and yet are continually looking anxiously at one another.

  Not one knows why he has come into this house and what people there are with him. On all the faces uneasiness and despondency … all in turn approach the windows and look about intently as though expecting something from without.

  Then again they fall to wandering up and down. Among us is a small-sized boy; from time to time he whimpers in the same thin voice, 'Father, I'm frightened!' My heart turns sick at his whimper, and I too begin to be afraid … of what? I don't know myself. Only I feel, there is coming nearer and nearer a great, great calamity.

  The boy keeps on and on with his wail. Oh, to escape from here! How stifling! How weary! how heavy…. But escape is impossible.

  That sky is like a shroud. And no wind…. Is the air dead or what?

  All at once the boy runs up to the window and shrieks in the same piteous voice, 'Look! look! the earth has fallen away!'

  'How? fallen away?' Yes; just now there was a plain before the house, and now it stands on a fearful height! The horizon has sunk, has gone down, and from the very house drops an almost overhanging, as it were scooped-out, black precipice.

  We all crowded to the window…. Horror froze our hearts. 'Here it is … here it is!' whispers one next me.

  And behold, along the whole far boundary of the earth, something began to stir, some sort of small, roundish hillocks began heaving and falling.

  'It is the sea!' the thought flashed on us all at the same instant. 'It will swallow us all up directly…. Only how can it
grow and rise upwards? To this precipice?'

  And yet, it grows, grows enormously…. Already there are not separate hillocks heaving in the distance…. One continuous, monstrous wave embraces the whole circle of the horizon.

  It is swooping, swooping, down upon us! In an icy hurricane it flies, swirling in the darkness of hell. Everything shuddered—and there, in this flying mass—was the crash of thunder, the iron wail of thousands of throats….

  Ah! what a roaring and moaning! It was the earth howling for terror….

  The end of it! the end of all!

  The child whimpered once more…. I tried to clutch at my companions, but already we were all crushed, buried, drowned, swept away by that pitch-black, icy, thundering wave! Darkness … darkness everlasting!

  Scarcely breathing, I awoke.

  March 1878.

  MASHA

  When I lived, many years ago, in Petersburg, every time I chanced to hire a sledge, I used to get into conversation with the driver.

  I was particularly fond of talking to the night drivers, poor peasants from the country round, who come to the capital with their little ochre-painted sledges and wretched nags, in the hope of earning food for themselves and rent for their masters.

  So one day I engaged such a sledge-driver…. He was a lad of twenty, tall and well-made, a splendid fellow with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks; his fair hair curled in little ringlets under the shabby little patched cap that was pulled over his eyes. And how had that little torn smock ever been drawn over those gigantic shoulders!

  But the handsome, beardless face of the sledge-driver looked mournful and downcast.

  I began to talk to him. There was a sorrowful note in his voice too.