The dark trees of Russia meant nothing to Seryozha, who had had a hard-baked dusty north China childhood. He did not even think of it as exile. The word exile to him was just a whining plaint of parents. He grunted indifferently as he dug, the sweat dripping from his yellow forelock.
“You young things have no hearts,” continued Old Sergei, turning over with his spade a few lumps of red earth and then holding his hand out to enjoy the pathos of its senile tremblings. “You have no tears to shed for the desecrated earth of Russia that bore you. You have never even worshiped God in a house of God in company with men and women of your own race. It is nothing to you that these men—no doubt men who feared God and loved His Son—should lie dead in these rough holes without a priest to bless them.”
“Why don’t you bless them yourself, then?” asked Seryozha, straightening his back. “You know so many prayers.”
“How can I?” exclaimed Old Sergei, shocked. “It would be entirely improper for me to take a priest’s words into my mouth.”
In a silence broken only by the scraping of the spades and the sniffing of Old Sergei, they finished their digging. The Chinese watched them, as though in a trance. When, however, Seryozha took the shoulders of the first of the three dead men, and Old Sergei prepared to fumble with the feet, the Chinese corporal said, “Let’s make sure there’s no money on them. It is a pity to bury money.”
“You wicked man,” croaked Old Sergei passionately. “It is much more of a pity to rob the dead. We Russians hold our dead sacred. We shall bury these men with what few poor treasures they have.”
But Seryozha laid the body down and looked at his father. “If we don’t search them,” he said in Russian, “these coolies will wait till we have gone and then come back and open the graves. Better to show them there is nothing.”
“Oi! oi! Sacrilege!” cried Old Sergei. But, seeing Seryozha hesitate, he added on a firmer note, “Oi! Sacrilege! … but have it your own way. You young people always think you know best. You have no hearts. I shall certainly not be a party to your robbery of the dead.” He walked away a few steps and, with his back to his son, bent down and fumbled with the boughs of a dark pink azalea. As he did so he recaptured his checked tearful mood by imagining the little weeping children of the dead men picking flowers in the darling forests of Russia.
The Chinese came and stood very close to Seryozha as he knelt down beside one dead man, then another, then the last. There was no money in their pockets; a cross or amulet had been torn from the neck of one. Their clothes were in rags, their fur caps were moth-eaten. “Ours are better,” said the soldiers, laughing. The boots of all three Russians had already been taken by their assailants. In the pocket of one Seryozha found a bill for a bicycle; another wore a ring that might be gold of poor quality on his little finger. The ring was tightly fixed and for one moment Seryozha sweated cold as the Chinese corporal’s hand went helpfully toward his dagger. But a cracking wrench drew the ring off the wet finger at last. They all looked at it. It was very light and was decorated with two little thin joined hearts. “It is the price of a ride in our cart,” said the corporal, laughing winningly into Seryozha’s face. He took it from Seryozha’s palm as though to examine it, and slipped it into his wallet.
Seryozha stood a moment, thinking, and then called to his father, “The sacrilege is all over now.”
“Oi! oi! Heartless, heartless!” cried Old Sergei, coming fussily back.
Between them, father and son lifted the first man into his grave, and Old Sergei, crying still, was going to shovel the earth into the trench when Seryozha seized his arm.
“Ah no, no, no!” cried Seryozha.
His father gaped at him. “What then? Are we not burying the poor fellow?”
Seryozha said, “But not earth on his face. …” Then, recollecting himself, the boy laughed sheepishly. “Oh, it was just an idea. …” He felt that their faces were their vanity, somehow, and the mud was so ugly. … “Let’s put leaves on his face. … Let’s put flowers on the poor fool …”
There were plenty of flowers. They heaped heads of pink azaleas, purple scabeus, poppies, big blue daisies, scarlet lilies, leaves of scrub-oak, on the dead man’s vanity. Seryozha was very much ashamed of his outburst. He giggled nervously several times, trying to think of something cynical and grown-up to say, to cover his childish mistake.
“Now I’ll chant his blessing,” he said, impudently. “I’m no priest, but what of it—he was no Christian, perhaps. Goodbye, little brother, go and search the sky for a heaven. I can climb a tree without a ladder, so you can reach your sky without a prayer. I’ll drink your health, little brother, in Japanese whisky, next time I can afford it. …” He said it in so solemn a tone that the Chinese were rather impressed. “That is a Big-nose prayer,” said one soldier. But, watching the burial of the other two, they were rather disappointed. Over the second Seryozha chanted only, “To our next meeting, brother,” and over the third, “Oi! to sleep with you,” as he patted the last spadeful down.
“It is all sacrilege,” said Old Sergei, who was rather afraid of his son in this boisterous mood. “Do go away for a little while, Seryozha, and take these Chinese pigs away, while I say a real fellow-Christian’s prayer for their peace.”
He bowed his head and Seryozha wandered away with his dog. Near the road was an ants’-nest and Seryozha scratched at it with his boot, and at once forgot everything else. Things in little always delighted him—the reflection in a
