LITMIR.BIZ

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built up and demolished before his eyes, a whole churchyard giving up its dead, who began living over again; whole races and peoples came into being and passed away before his eyes; finally, every one of his thoughts, every immaterial fancy, now took bodily shape around his sick-bed; took bodily shape almost at the moment of its conception: at last he saw himself thinking not in immaterial ideas, but in whole worlds, whole, creations, saw himself borne along like an atom in this infinite, strange world from which there was no escape, and all this life in its mutinous independence crushing and oppressing him and pursuing him with eternal, infinite irony; he felt that he was dying, dissolving into dust and ashes for ever, and even without hope of resurrection, he tried to flee, but there was no corner in all the universe to hide him At last, in an access of despair, he made an intense effort, uttered a shriek and woke up.

      He woke up, bathed in a chill, icy sweat. About him was a deadly silence; it was the dead of night. But still it seemed to him that somewhere the wonderful fairy tale was going on, that some hoarse voice was really telling a long story of something that seemed familiar to him. He heard talk of dark forests, of bold brigands, of some daring bravoes, maybe of Stenka Razin himself, of merry drunken bargemen, of some fair maiden, and of Mother Volga. Was it not a fairy tale? Was he really hearing it? For a whole hour he lay, open-eyed, without stirring a muscle, in agonising numbness. At last he got up carefully, and joyfully felt that his strength had come back to him after his severe illness. The delirium was over and reality was beginning. He noticed that he was dressed exactly as he had been during his talk with Katerina, so that it could not have been long since the morning she had left him. The fire of resolution ran through his veins. Mechanically he felt with his hand for a big nail for some reason driven into the top of the partition near which stood his bed, seized it, and hanging his whole weight upon it, succeeded in pulling himself up to the crevice from which a hardly perceptible light stole into his room. He put his eye to the opening and, almost breathless with excitement, began peeping in.

      There was a bed in the corner of the landlord’s room; before it was a table covered with a cloth and piled up with books of old-fashioned shape, looking from their bindings like devotional books. In the corner was an ikon of the same old-fashioned pattern as in his room; a lamp was burning before it. On the bed lay the old man, Murin, sick, worn out with suffering and pale as a sheet, covered with a fur rag. On his knees was an open book. On a bench beside the bed lay Katerina, with her arm about the old man’s chest and her head bent on his shoulder. She was looking at him with attentive, childishly wondering eyes, and seemed, breathless with expectation, to be listening with insatiable curiosity to what Murin was telling her. From time to time the speaker’s voice rose higher, there was a shade of animation on his pale face; he frowned, his eyes began to flash, and Katerina seemed to turn pale with dread and expectation. Then something like a smile came into the old man’s face and Katerina began laughing softly: Sometimes tears came into her eyes; then the old man tenderly stroked her on the head like a child, and she embraced him more tightly than ever with her bare arm that gleamed like snow, and nestled even more lovingly to his bosom.

      At times Ordynov still thought this was part of his dream; in fact, he was convinced of it; but the blood rushed to his head and the veins throbbed painfully in his temples. He let go of the nail, got off the bed, and staggering, feeling his way like a lunatic, without understanding the impulse that flamed up like fire in his blood, he went to the door and pushed violently; the rusty bolt flew open at once, and with a bang and a crash he suddenly found himself in the middle of the landlord’s bedroom. He saw Katerina start and tremble, saw the old man’s eyes flash angrily under his lowering brows, and his whole face contorted with sudden fury. He saw the old man, still keeping close watch upon him, feel hurriedly with fumbling hand for a gun that hung upon the wall; then he saw the barrel of the gun flash, aimed straight at his breast with an uncertain hand that trembled with fury…. There was the sound of a shot, then a wild, almost unhuman, scream, and when the smoke parted, a terrible sight met Ordynov’s eyes. Trembling all over, he bent over the old man. Murin was lying on the floor; he was writhing in convulsions, his face was contorted in agony, and there was foam upon his working lips. Ordynov guessed that the unhappy man was in a severe epileptic fit. He flew, together with Katerina, to help him…

      CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

       THE whole night was spent in agitation. Next day Ordynov went out early in the morning, in spite of his weakness and the fever that still hung about him. In the yard he met the porter again. This time the Tartar lifted his cap to him from a distance and looked at him with curiosity. Then, as though pilling himself together, he set to work with his broom, glancing askance at Ordynov as the latter slowly approached him.

      “Well, did you hear nothing in the night?” asked Ordynov.

      “Yes, I heard.”

      “What sort of man is he? Who is he?”

      “Self took lodgings, self should know; me stranger.”

      “Will you ever speak?” cried Ordynov, beside himself with an access of morbid irritability.

      “What did me do? Your fault — you frightened the tenants. Below lives the coffin-maker, he deaf, but heard it all, and his wife deaf, but she heard, and in the next yard, far away, they heard. I go to the overseer.”

      “I am going to him myself,” answered Ordynov; and he went to the gate.

      “As you will; self took the room…. Master, master, stay.” Ordynov looked round; the porter touched his hat from politeness.

      “Well!”

      “If you go, I go to the landlord.”

      “What?”

      “Better move.”

      “You’re stupid,” said Ordynov, and was going on again. “Master, master, stay.” The porter touched his hat again and grinned. “Listen, master: be not wrathful; why persecute a poor man? It’s a sin to persecute a poor man. It is not God’s law — do you hear?”

      “You listen, too: here, take that. Come, what is he?”

      “What is he?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’ll tell you without money.”

      At this point the porter took up his broom, brandished it once or twice, then stopped and looked intently, with an air of importance, at Ordynov.

      “You’re a nice gentleman. If you don’t want to live with a good man, do as you like; that’s what I say.”

      Then the Tatar looked at him still more expressively, and fell to sweeping furiously again.

      Making a show of having finished something at last, he went up to Ordynov mysteriously, and with a very expressive gesture pronounced —

      “This is how it is.”

      “How — what?”

      “No sense.”

      “What?”

      “Has flown away. Yes! Has flown away!” he repeated in a still more mysterious tone. “He is ill. He used to have a barge, a big one, and a second and a third, used to be on the Volga, and me from the Volga myself. He had a factory, too, but it was burnt down, and he is off his head.”

      “He is mad?”

      “Nay!… Nay!..,” the Tatar answered emphatically. “Not mad. He is a clever man. He knows everything; he has read many books, many, many; he has read everything, and tells others the truth. Some bring two roubles, three roubles, forty roubles, as much as you please; he looks in a book, sees and tells the whole truth. And the money’s on the table at once — nothing without money!”

      At this point the Tatar positively laughed with glee, throwing himself into Murin’s interests with extreme zest.

      “Why, does he tell fortunes, prophesy?”

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