Men of One Soil
There had been showers during the night and a distant growl of thunder. But a brisk morning chased the sun out of the mists and liquid silver flowed through the trembling wet leaves. The mists gathered in the hollows, then unwillingly left the earth.
An old man knows how to think calmly about death. Only then is all the hidden marvellous and eternal beauty of Life reveals to him. Somebody wants him to take it all in painfully for the last time. And then go away.
They all do go away. And the sound of their going is as soft and slow as the jingle of warm bridle-bits in the mouths of weary horses. How good, how tormentingly good life has been. If only it were not time to go.
A grey-haired old man was walking along the wet road. He was on his way to mow grass for his cow.
The village had dropped out of sight behind the hills. He was making for the foothills. When you got to the top of one of the hills, the whole valley lay spread before you, walled in on three sides by silent mountains. A land of rolling green, where men had mowed grass for centuries.
On the "brows" and "manes" of the hills the grass grew as high as a horse's belly. The hollows were cool and the thickets at the bottom of them had a damp musty smell. Clear, cold springs bubbled out of the rich, rusty soil. Sweet water! It made you want to sit there, in the chilly gloom, feeling sad and lonely. Of course, someone did care whether you were alive or dead. But all the same... Well, it was a mystery anyway. What was all this unbearable beauty for? What were you supposed to do with it?.. That was the pity-you just hurried by without noticing it...
But then you came out into the light of day and you were sorry to lose your own sadness. It was as if something still and tender as the dawn had just entered your heart; you felt full of joy and wanted to keep that joy in your soul. But no, all kinds of thought came crowding in and you forgot to rejoice...
The sun was climbing higher. The mists rose and melted away. The earth steamed a little. But this steam did not obscure the light; it merely deflected it from the earth, lifted it a little higher.
The birch leaves had dried, but they still retained their freshly washed, youthful tenderness and were gloaming in the heat. Invisible birds were piercing the great stillness of morning with their song.
It grew steadily warmer. The heat came rolling down the hillsides into the still damp valleys and the earth smelled overpoweringly of its abundant green strength.
The old man walked faster, but not so fast as to tire himself. He was not so strong now; he had to husband his energy.
How often had he walked or ridden along this road-all his life. He knew every turn in it. He knew where to give a horse its head and where to hold it back, so that it would not waste its morning strength either and then be fagged out for the rest of the day. He owned no horse now, but he could remember all the horses he had ever had. To anyone who cared to listen he could have described the character and habits of them all. His heart ached quietly when he thought of his horses, particularly his last. He had not sold it or bartered it, and it had not been stolen by Gypsies-he himself had ridden it to death.
It was in 1933. In those days he had been no old man, but a sturdy peasant farmer, Anisim Kvasov, or Anisimka, as people called him. Already a member of the collective farm, he had been given the job of patrolling the fields. But that year there was a famine. People were reduced to eating goosefoot and nettles; many did themselves great harm with the sweepings of grain left on the threshing floors through the winter. It was all a matter of somehow getting through the summer, of holding out till the next harvest. Everything depended on the cows; only their milk could save the children, whose bellies were already swollen with starvation.
One day, also during the mowing season, the village herdsman, a feeble little fellow, wore himself out completely rounding up the herd and fell down in a dead faint. God knows how long he lay there-a long time, so he said afterwards; and meanwhile the cows roamed into the clover. Late at night he drove them back into the village, all swollen, and shouted to the first person he met, "Do something! They've been stuffing themselves with clover!" What a commotion there was then!.. The women started wailing, the men grabbed their whips and rushed out to chase the cows about the streets. This was a disaster, and a great howl of grief went up all over the village. The cows staggered and fell, people collapsed from exhaustion. Anisim had a horse (when he had been put on patrol work the collective farm had given him the horse he had once owned himself, his own gelding Mishka); seeing what had happened, Anisim jumped on to Mishka and also started chasing the cows. They were at it all night, driving the cows about to help them overcome the effects of the clover, and at daybreak Mishka began to wheeze and his forelegs crumpled under him. Anisim did all he could, but there was no bringing the horse back to life. He wept and lamented over the dying animal. And after that he was charged with sabotage and spent six weeks in the local gaol. Still, it all blew over eventually...
And here at last was the old man's mowing patch: a gently sloping ravine, just off the road with a little marsh at the bottom, and a spring.
The sun was hand's breadth above the horizon now; he was a bit late.
After a hasty breakfast of bread and freshly salted cucumber, the old man adjusted his scythe and ran the whetstone along its blade.
There's no better work than mowing. And the old man liked mowing alone best of all. He could think of so much in the course of a day.
The scythe swung with a swish and a crunch; the grass trembled and fell. Three paces away a snake raised its head, and wriggled off through the grass, its supple, repulsive body glittering. And another memory: one day as a boy he had been riding along at a good canter. All of a sudden the horse had seen or sensed a snake and jumped aside. And Anisim had fallen clean off his horse, and landed on his bottom, right on that snake. He was "running" for a week afterwards.
Still memory continued to raise those days of cherished brightness from the depths of his past life, just as the pure springs well up in the murky waters of a still lake. Snakes... In those days there was old grandfer Kudelka in the village. He used to tell the children that for every snake they killed they would be pardoned forty sins. And if a snake was thrown into fire, they would see dozens of tiny feet on its belly. So the children set about redeeming their sins with zest. They burned the snakes and, sure enough, when a snake writhed in the flames it looked as if it had a multitude of little white feet on its gloaming underbelly. And all the children would shout, "There! There they are!" All of them saw the feet.
The old man mowed until dinnertime, when the grass had dried out completely. The sun was blazing down now and he felt as if someone had placed a hot pancake on top of his head.
"Thank goodness for that," the old man murmured as he looked back at the patch he had mown. He had cleared a good stretch, and felt well content with his morning's work. He went into the little shelter he had prepared for himself some time ago, when he had come out to look at the meadow. Now he could have a good, unhurried meal.
The shelter was warm with a scent of withered grass. Somewhere a tiny insect was keeping up a piercing high-pitched hum; the hot stillness was full of the dry, tireless buzzing of the grasshoppers. From above came the silver trilling of the swooping larks.
Ah, how good it was! It's rare for a man to feel good and to know that he feels good. It's only when he feels bad that he thinks, "Well, somewhere someone is enjoying life." If we're enjoying life, we just don't think it may not be so good for someone else. When things are good, they're good, and that's all there is to it.
The old man spread a clean faded bit of cloth on the grass and laid out his cucumbers, bread and clean spring onions, then went down to the spring, where he had left a bottle of milk, firmly corked with a rag stopper. He leaned over the stream, supporting himself with his hands on the damp springy bank, and drank for a long time, but not greedily. He could see the tiny light-coloured grains of sand darting after one another over the rusty stream-bed.
Just as if they were alive, the old man thought. He rose with an effort, picked up the bottle and returned to his shelter. And there on a stump by the shelter sat another old man, in a soft felt hat and with a stick between his knees. He was smoking.
"Good-day to you," the old man in the hat greeted him. "I saw there was someone here so I sat down for a rest. You don't mind, do you?"
"Why should I?" Anisim replied, "Come inside. It's not quite so hot in here."
"Yes, it's a scorcher today." The old man in the hat joined him in the shelter and sat down on the grass. "Pretty hot, eh?"
Those good trousers of his will be all green, Anisim thought to himself.
"Take a bite with me, if you feel like it," he suggested.
"No thanks, I had a meal not long ago." The old man in the hat stared so hard at Anisim that he felt uneasy for a moment. "Are you mowing?"
"Has to be done. You're a stranger in these parts, I see?"
"No, I'm a local man."
Anisim glanced at his guest and said nothing.
"I don't look it, eh?"
"Why not? We've got all kinds now." As Anisim munched a cucumber, he saw his guest's glance stray to the plain peasant fare on the cloth. Must be hungry, he thought.
"Have a bite," he said again.
"No, you eat it. You have a whole afternoon's work to do yet."
"There's plenty here!"
The old man from town took off his hat, revealing a gloaming bald pate, moved nearer, picked a cucumber and broke off a piece of bread.
"Have you got a newspaper?" Anisim asked.
"What for?"
"To sit on. You'll make your trousers green. That's a fine pair of trousers."
"A-ah... Never mind them. Cucumbers!"
"What about 'em?"
"Delicious!"
"You're a local man, you say... Where from?"
"Just around here."
Anisim couldn't believe that his guest was a man from these parts. He certainly didn't look like one.
"I don't live here now. I was born here."
"A-ah. Just come for a visit like?"
"Had to see my homeland... Won't have the chance much longer. What village are you from?"
"Lebyazhye. Down this road."
"Are you just with your old woman?"
"Uh-huh."
"Got any children?"
"Yes, three. And two more were killed in the war."
"Where are the three? In town?"
"Kolka in town. The girls are married... One's in Cheburlak. She's married to a team-leader on the collective farm there. The other's a bit farther off." He didn't say that his other daughter's husband was not a Russian. "Ninka was here last spring... Her kiddies are quite big now."
"And what town is Kolka in?"
"Well, he's sometimes in town, and sometimes he isn't. Always on the move. They're looking for metal."
"But what town is it?"
"Leningrad. He writes to us, sends us money sometimes...He's not badly off, you know. Keeps on saying he'll come and see us, but can't find the time. Maybe he'll come one day."
The old man from town drank a little milk and wiped his lips with a handkerchief.
"Thank you. That was good."
"It's nothing."
"Will you go and mow now?"
"No, I'll wait a bit."
"How old is Kolka?" Another question.
"He was born in 'twenty..." Only after he had replied did it occur to Anisim to wonder why his guest was asking all these questions. He gave him a look.
The other responded with a short laugh that was not particularly cheerful, but not sad either.
"Now I see," he said.
He's a queer fish, Anisim decided. He's too old to be fooling about.
"What's your health like?" the townsman continued his inquiry.
"Not so bad, thank the Lord... Headaches sometimes. Half our village has trouble that way, even the youngsters."
"Any of your family around? Brothers, sisters?"
"Not for a long time now."
"Dead?"
"My sisters, are. My brother never came back from the first war."
"Was he killed?"
"Must have been. That's the usual reason, isn't it?"
The man from town lighted a cigarette, and a blue wisp of smoke floated towards the entrance. Clearly visible in the green shade of the shelter, it vanished at once in the brightness of the open air, although there was not a breath of wind. The grasshoppers buzzed, the birds twittered in the bushes pouring out their endless song on to the earth's warm breast.
A ladybird was creeping up a tall stem of grass near the entrance to the shelter. It climbed steadily and without fear... The two old men became absorbed in watching it.
The ladybird reached the very top of the stem, swayed for a moment on its tip, spread its wings and flew off sideways over the grass.
"So we've lived our lives," the old man from town said softly.
Anisim gave a start; the phrase seemed strangely familiar. Not the phrase itself, but the way it had been said. His father used to speak that way when he was thoughtful-with a kind of surprised little laugh, which he would follow p with an affectionate curse or two.
"Doesn't it make you sad, countryman?"
"Maybe it does. But what's the use?"
"There must be some help for a man at such a time?"
"Something ails you?"
"Yes. Regrets... I haven't had enough of life yet. I'm not tired. I'm not ready."
"Huh!.. When can you ever have enough of life? Who wants to lie there, in old Mother Earth?"
"Some people commit suicide."
'They're the ailing kind. A man can snap inside. He may look all right, but there's no life left in him. He's finished."
"I feel I haven't got to the bottom of things... Yet I know it's foolish. I've got as far as I could." The towns-man was silent for a while. "It's this peace around here I regret... I've done too much rushing about. But you have to yield place to others, don't you?"
"Aye, that you do. Huh!"
"Wouldn't I just like to find a spot where everyone would forget about me, and then go on living there for another couple of centuries! Eh?" The old man laughed gaily. There was something disturbingly familiar in him, in that laugh. "Somewhere where everything would stay the same forever. Eh?"
"You'd get fed up with it, I reckon."
"I'm not a bit fed up with it now!"
"Don't think so much about it beforehand, then you won't be afraid. When it comes, it comes... You may be ill for a bit, but not long! People go under in a week."
"They do, indeed."
"You keep looking ahead, and I'm forever looking back. That's just as bad, only upsets you."
"Memories?"
"Ave."
"But that's good."
"Good it may be, but it pulls at your heartstrings. Why upset yourself?"
"It's good all the same. What memories do you have? Childhood?"
"Childhood mainly."
'Tell me some of them! Did you get up to a lot of pranks?"
"Grinka, my brother, did. He was a caution, he was."
Anisim smiled at the thought. "Where it all came from?.. I expect he was the same in the war-always sticking his neck out..."
"What did he get up to then?" the old man from town asked with lively interest. "Tell me about it... Please, while you're resting."
"Huh!.." Anisim shook his head and lapsed into a long silence. "He was a smart lad, he was... One day our neighbour Yegor Chalyshev caught us on his vegetable patch. He thrashed us, of course, and with good reason. Those watermelons were still green and we'd have spoilt more than we ate. You can't see in the dark. You just bang one on your knee, then take a bite and, if it's green, throw it away. Aye. He laid into us, that he did. And father added some for good measure. That put Grinka's back up. And you know what he thought of? He took a pig's bladder-we'd just killed a pig-and rubbed it in ash... You know how they make 'em into balloons?"
"I do."
"Well, he dried it and blew it up and drew a terrible face on it..." Anisim broke into a chuckle. "I wonder where he saw such a mug! Then we waited till it was dark, crept quietly o" to Yegor's porch and tied that bladder with string to the door beam... When Yegor opened up in the morning there it was, that awful mug staring him right in the face. The poor chap nearly fouled his pants. He slammed the door shut and locked himself in and started shouting up the chimney, 'Help! Help! There's a devil on my porch!' "
The old man from town burst into a roar of laughter and laughed till the tears came into his eyes.
"Gave him a proper scare, eh? Ha-ha!"
"Aye, after that they used to call him 'Yegor, devil on my porch! And another time-when we were a bit older-in the mowing season too... There was a man called Mikolai Rogodin-cunning fellow he was and a bit of a thief-one evening he says, 'Grinka, put a saddle on one of the horses-take mine if you like-ride back to the village and snatch a few chickens off someone. I feel tike a nice bit of chicken.' So Grinka didn't think twice, saddled up a horse and off to the village he went. Before long he was back with five chickens with their necks wrung. We were pleased no end. Into the pot they went and what a feast
we had! Mikolai praised my brother all the time he was eating. 'Good lad, Grinka!' he says. And then Grinka comes back at him: 'Eat up. Uncle Mikolai. Eat up, as if they were all your own!"
Both the old men laughed heartily. The one from town lit another cigarette.
"He didn't half swear when he found out they were all his own! But what could he do? He was the one who had sent for them."
"Yes..." The old man from town dried his eyes, and fell into a muse.
Both men were silent for some time, each full of his own thoughts. The world outside the shelter buzzed and sang in the growing heat, and ever more prodigally and mysteriously exposed its beauty in the dazzling sunshine.
"Well. I'll be getting on..." Anisim said. "Seems a bit cooler now."
"It's still very hot."
"Never mind."
"Do you have to keep a cow?"
"Of course."
Anisim picked up his scythe and swept the whetstone along the blade. His eye roamed over the swathes of mown grass-he hadn't done so badly since morning. The old man from town watched him intently and sadly.
"Well, I'm off," Anisim said again.
"Right you are," the townsman assented. "Good-bye to you then." He looked straight into Anisim's eyes, said no more, shook his hand firmly and strode away up the slope towards the road. When he came out on the road, he stood looking round for a moment, then walked away and soon disappeared round the bend.
The old man went on mowing till late in the evening.
Finally he went home.
His wife-as he saw at once-had been waiting for him impatiently.
"We've had a visitor!" she announced as soon as Anisim appeared at the gate. "Drove up in a great long motor-car, asked for you. Where's your husband?' he says."
Anisim sat down on the doorstep and placed his bundle on the ground.
"Wearing a hat, was he? An old fellow?"
"Yes, a hat. And such a fine suit. Like a schoolteacher."
The old man sat staring at the ground in silence. Now he had recognised the strange likeness that had surprised him a few hours ago. Now he realised what it was. But could it really be that?!
"Perhaps it was Grinka? Didn't you notice anything?"
"Heavens above! Are you out of your mind? Grinka? Back from the dead?"
It's better not to talk to a woman about any vague surmises you may have. She'll never understand. When she's young you can fill her stupid head with any nonsense you like and she'll believe you; but when she's old, you try to share a thought that's just struck you-you 11 be the fool right away.
"Has he gone now?"
"Yes, he's gone."
Could it have been Grinka? Surely not? The old man scarcely closed his eyes that night. By morning he had come to the conclusion that it was just a likeness.
Plenty of people look like each other! And why shouldn't he have admitted who he was? Maybe he hadn't wanted to cause a lot of fuss? He had always been funny as a boy.
But could it really have been Grinka?
A week later the old couple received a telegram:
"To Anisim Kvasov.
"Your brother Grigory passed away on the 12th. He asked us to let you know. Kvasov family."
So it had been his brother, after all.
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