Seryozha stared at the hand, his mind making no comment, only registering the fact—a dead man—a dead man—a dead man. … In two strides he stood beside the dead man. He looked down at the heavy, fair, unshaven face of a Russian soldier. Raindrops stood on the cheeks like tears; the eyes watched the sky intently and anxiously. The dead man had no boots on and no gun. His tunic was open at the neck to show a broken string. How curious to be robbed and not mind, thought Seryozha, and at once this seemed to him the most startling thing about death—the loss of the delight in possession. He thought of the property he himself loved so anxiously—his silk handkerchief, his spangled gilt picture of the crowned Christ, his English sweater that the missionaries had given him, his marvellously complete sloughed snakeskin (even the skin of the eyeballs unbroken) that lived in an abalone shell in a biscuit-box, the ribbon that Sonia gave him, his chisel with the black handle. … It was quite unimaginable that these things might be taken away before his open, indifferent eyes. This was death. The snakeskin would suddenly become no marvel but a thing good only for the rubbish heap; (oh, he would rise from the dead to prevent his mother from using the black-handled chisel as a screwdriver!). This dead man had probably known every wrinkle in his dear boots—poverty means such intimacy between a man and his possessions. Yet now his feet, muddy and swollen and ringed with callouses, bore nakedness without protest. And his boots, shorn of that familiarity which is the sacred soul of things—encased a thief’s irreverent shins.
With a jingle and a splintering screech the cart arrived at the door of the hut. Old Sergei, followed by the soldiers, came round the corner of the ruin. One of the soldiers trod on the dead Russian’s hand before he saw it, but after seeing it he trod on it again, as if to see if the man would mind.
“It is a dead Big-nose,” all the soldiers told one another.
Old Sergei seemed to come alive when he saw the dead man. Death was Old Sergei’s hobby. “How surprised he looks!” he said. “The surprise was soon over, though. Only just lasted long enough to raise his eyebrows. Or one might say it lasted forever—his eyebrows were never lowered again.” Old Sergei sighed. “One forgets,” he said, “that bodies are so soft in a dangerous world—softer than cheese is to the knife. Why do we trust one another so, living in such soft bodies? Of course we must trust one another; we dare not remember the hardness of steel or of men’s hearts—being so soft. If we had steel skins, we should dare to know everything.”
Seryozha listened to his father with some interest, clutching the bosom of his blouse, pinching his chest to feel how soft his skin was. But he put on the mulish, deliberately prosaic expression sons generally wear when their fathers express themselves in a way that seems to the young unelderly.
“His boots have been stolen,” said Seryozha.
“Oh, it is so very interesting,” said Old Sergei, leaning eagerly over the dead man, “to think that this experience cannot escape us. We shall all, some day, know what it is to be dead.”
“It escaped him,” said Seryozha. “The experience must have been over almost before it began.”
“How do you know?”
But Seryozha’s interest flagged. He did not really believe he would ever die. This was why he so often killed things—birds—beetles—fishes … because he could not imagine death.
“There are probably more of them,” he said, and looked up the hill. The soldiers were quicker-sighted than he was. So was his dog. The soldiers pointed out his dog, shoulder deep in brush, halfway up the hill. The dog, with its ears strained back, its nose waving, pointed doubtfully at a couple of gray mounds among the scrub-oaks.
As soon as Old Sergei and his son left the shelter of the sagging eaves, the rain hammered sharply on their faces and shoulders. Seryozha’s dog, with a skin of wet mud, looking half its natural size, came down the hill to meet him and ask about this disquieting marvel of two dead gods. The dog had not known before that gods could die, but, like all dogs, it was perfectly open-minded about marvels, and, having learned its lesson of divine mortality, would not now have been surprised to see every god in sight fall down dead. Seryozha had carried two spades all the way, corded across his back. Halfway up the hill he unstrapped the spades. Old Sergei selected the site of the three graves.
It was hard work digging, though the northern earth, baked in summer and frozen in winter, was now, under rain, at its softest. The Chinese soldiers stood very close, watching each spadeful eagerly, as though it might disclose gold. They did not move till Seryozha actually came near to cutting the earth from under their feet. To a Chinese, any white man doing anything is an absorbing show.
“I’d rather be burying one of you,” said Seryozha, rudely, to the smiling corporal. “You wouldn’t need so big a hole.” All the soldiers laughed affably.
Old Sergei worked rather weakly with his spade. As he dug he thought with deliberate pathos of the three dead men and presently made himself cry. “No doubt,” he sniffed, “they had women they loved, and perhaps little children, too. Their last thoughts were perhaps of the sunshine filtering through the forests of happy Russia—dark Russian trees in whose shade they wooed their loves. Perhaps their last thought of all was a rapture—I have found
