“My husband used to be so respectable, mean and polite. He never beat me—he was not a cultured man for nothing—and he never even used coarse words. If he had but called me a fool! I sometimes think that I wouldn’t have left him if our quarrels hadn’t passed so quietly, if he had but beat me, pulled me by my hair, lashed me with something.”
“Sweet?” asked Trirodov.
“Life is so dull,” continued Alkina. “One struggles in the nets of petty annoyances. If one could but cry out, but give wail to one’s yearning, one’s woe, one’s unendurable pain!”
She said this with a passion unusual to her and grew silent.
XIII
It was drawing towards evening, and once more Trirodov was alone, tormented by his unceasing sadness. His mind was in a whirl. He was in a half-somnolent state, which was like the foreboding of a nightmare. His half-dreams and half-illusions were full of the day’s impressions, full of burning, cruel reveries.
It had just grown dark. A fire was visible on a height near the town. The town boys were making merry. They had lit a bonfire, and were throwing the brands into the air; as they rose swiftly, the burning brands appeared like skyrockets against the blue sky. And these beautiful flights of fire in the darkness gave joy and sadness.
Kirsha, silent as always, came to his father. He placed himself at the window and looked out with his dark, sad eyes upon the distant fires of St. John’s Eve. Trirodov went up to him. Kirsha turned quietly towards his father:
“This will be a terrible night.”
Trirodov answered as quietly:
“There will be nothing terrible. Don’t be afraid, Kirsha. You had better go to sleep, my boy, it is time.”
As if he had not heard his father, Kirsha went on:
“The dead will soon rise from their graves.”
“The dead are already rising from their graves,” replied Trirodov.
A strange feeling of astonishment stirred within him, why did he speak of this? Or was it due to the urgency of the questioner’s desire? Quietly, ever so quietly, half questioning, half relating, Kirsha persisted:
“The dead will walk on the Navii15 footpath, the dead will speak Navii words.”
And again, as though submitting to a strange will, not his own, Trirodov replied:
“The dead have already risen, they are already walking upon the Navii footpath, towards the Navii town, they are already speaking Navii words about Navii affairs.”
And Kirsha asked:
“Are you going?”
“I am going,” said Trirodov after a brief silence.
“I am going with you,” said Kirsha resolutely.
“You had better not go, dear Kirsha,” said his father tenderly.
But Kirsha persistently repeated:
“I will spend this night with you there, at the Navii footpath. I will see and I will hear. I will look into dead eyes.”
Trirodov said sternly:
“I do not wish to take you with me—you ought to remain here.”
There was entreaty in Kirsha’s voice:
“Perhaps mother will come by.”
Trirodov, falling into deep thought, said finally:
“Very well, come with me.”
The evening dragged on slowly and sadly. The father and son waited. It grew quite dark by the time they went.
They walked through the garden, past the closed greenhouse with its mysteriously glittering windowpanes. The quiet children were not yet asleep. Quietly they swung in the garden upon their swings. Quietly clinked the swing rings, quietly creaked the wooden seats. Upon the swings sat the quiet children, lit up by the dead moon and cooled by the night breeze, and they swung softly and sang their songs. The night listened to their quiet songs, and the full, clear, dead moon also. Kirsha, lowering his voice so that the quiet children might not hear, asked:
“Why don’t they sleep? They swing on their swings neither upward nor downward, but evenly. Why do they do this?”
“They must not sleep tonight,” answered Trirodov, also in a whisper. “They cannot sleep until the dawn grows rosy, until the dawn begins to laugh. There is really no reason why they should sleep. They can sleep as well by day.”
Again Kirsha asked:
“Will they go with us? They want to go.”
“No, Kirsha, they don’t want anything.”
“Don’t want anything?” repeated Kirsha sadly.
“They ought not to go with us unless we call them.”
“Shall we call them?” asked Kirsha joyously.
“We shall call one. Which one would you like?”
Kirsha, after some thought, said:
“Grisha.”
“Very well, we’ll call Grisha,” said Trirodov.
He turned in the direction of the swings, and called out:
“Grisha!”
A boy, who resembled the sad-faced Nadezhda, quietly jumped down from his swing, and walked behind them, without approaching too closely. The other quiet children looked tranquilly after him, and continued to swing and to sing as before.
Trirodov opened the gate, and was followed by Kirsha and Grisha. The night hovered all around them, and the forgotten Navii footpath stretched in a black strip through the darkness.
Kirsha shivered—he felt the cold, heavy earth under his bare feet; the cold air pressed against his bare knees, the cold moist freshness of the night blew against his half-bared breast. He heard his father ask in a low voice:
“Kirsha, are you not afraid?”
“No,” whispered Kirsha, as he breathed in the fresh aroma of the dew and the light mist.
The light of the moon was seductive with mystery. She smiled with her lifeless, tranquil face, and appeared to be saying:
“What was will be again. What was will happen more than once.”
The night was peaceful and clear. They walked a long time—Trirodov and Kirsha, and some distance behind them the quiet Grisha followed. At last there appeared, quite near, peering through the mist, the low white cemetery wall. Another road cut across theirs. Quite narrow, its worn cobblestones gleamed dimly in the moonlight. The road of the living and the road of the dead crossed each other at the entrance of the cemetery. In the field near the crossing several mounds were visible—they were the unmarked graves of suicides and convicts.
The whole
