Something came to his mind on a sudden: he hurried to the yard. All the doors were wide open, and the men snoring in the shadow of the barn. He looked into the stables, patted the horses; they whinnied at his touch. Then he peered into the byre: the cows lay in a row, and only their rumps were visible in the light of the moon.
He then tried to drag a cart out of the shed; but a glittering plough hard by the sties drew off his attention, and he moved towards it … and ceased to think of it before he got there.
In the middle of the yard he stopped short and looked round on every side, for he thought someone had called him.
The well-sweep stood high in front of him, throwing a long shadow.
“What is it?” he asked, and paused for a reply.
The orchard, slashed with moonbeams, seemed to block his way; its silvered leaves were whispering to him.
“Who calls?” he asked, stumbling against a tree.
Lapa, following at his heels, uttered a whine. At the sound he stopped and drew a deep breath; then he said, gaily: “Quite right, good dog! Aye, it is seedtime!”
And this idea too passed from his mind in an instant: everything slipped out of his memory, as dry sand creeps through the fingers.
Continually fresh thoughts kept him moving, puzzled, bewildered, and like a spindle that is turned round by the thread that runs out, though it turns in the same place.
“Aye, aye, it is seedtime,” he repeated, and moved quickly to the part of the premises which adjoined the fields. There he saw before him that hayrick of bitter memory, burnt down last winter, and but just set up again.
He meant to pass by it, but started back on a sudden. In a flash he saw the past, which memory made present. He tore a stake from the fence; brandishing it in both hands like a pitchfork, he dashed forward with rage in his eyes, ready to smite and slay; but before his blow could be struck, the stake fell from his grasp, now weak and slack.
Beyond the rick, along the road that skirted the potato-field, there stretched a long strip of ploughed land. Here he stopped, and cast troubled glances round him.
The moon had gone through half her course, bathing the earth in misty beams; it lay covered with pearls of dew, and, as it were, silent in rapt attention.
Impenetrable depths of silence came down from the upper fields, and from where earth and sky met in the hazy distance; from the meadows rose up white vapours, crawling over the corn, enveloping it in its warm damp folds, as it rose.
The tall yellow-green rye-borders bent over the field-pathways, drooping under the weight of the ears, that hung down like the saffron-hued beaks of unfledged birds in their nests; the wheat stood upright boldly, as straight as so many pillars, lifting their glossy and dusky heads; the oats and barley, as yet in the blade, lay green as meadows, but silvered by the moonlight and blurred with dark veils of mist.
It was about the second cockcrow now, and the night far spent. The fields rested, lost in profound sleep, sometimes rustling quietly as it were with an echo of the day’s toil and troubles, and sighing as a mother may sigh when she lays herself down to rest with her little ones.
Boryna knelt down immediately, and set to gathering earth in a fold of his shirt, like seed-corn in a sower’s bag, and in such quantity that he could scarce rise. He made the sign of the cross, swept his arm round to try his reach, and began to sow.
Bent down beneath the burden, he went slowly, step by step, sowing the field with that semicircular sweep of his arm, like a priest’s benediction.
Lapa followed him; and when some frightened bird rose from before his feet, he would run after it awhile, and then go back to his master.
In this charmed world of night and spring, Boryna, gazing straight before him, walked on through the patches of corn, like a spirit blessing every clod of earth, every ear of corn; sowing on, sowing ever.
At the furrows he stumbled; at the hollows he staggered, sometimes even fell. But of this he was unconscious—aware of nothing but the dull irresistible craving to sow the land.
Thus he walked on to the end of the field. When there was no earth remaining for him to throw, he took up more and sowed on. When his way was barred by trees and brambles, he would turn back.
He had walked a good distance. The birds’ twitterings were no longer to be heard; the whole village had disappeared in the misty darkness, and the billowy sea of tawny cornfields surged all about him. There he stood, forlorn and lonely and lost—as a soul that is wandering away from this world.—And then, once more he came back towards the village, towards the ring within which the twittering of birds was again audible, and towards the circle of human activity, now stilled for a time: he, a waif thrown back to the shores of life and existence by those waves of the surging sea of corn!
So the time passed, and so he went on sowing indefatigably, stopping at times to rest his limbs a little. Then he would again take up his bootless toil and vain exertions.
Later, and near the close of the night, he worked more slowly, stopped oftener, forgot to gather the earth for his seed, and sowed empty-handed: as though he were now sowing his very being in those fields of his fathers—all the days he had lived, all that life he had received, and was now giving back (a sacred harvest) to the Everlasting Lord!
And in those last moments of his life
