Part 52 (1/2)
”You are a namesake of mine, then.”
”Indeed? Is that so?”
With which, tapping me on the knee, the figure added:
”Come, then, namesake. 'I have mortar, and you have water, so together let us paint the town.'”
Murmuring amid the silence could be heard small, light waves that were no more than ripples. Behind us the busy clamour of the monastery had died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed subdued by the influence of the night--it seemed to have in it less of the note of self-confidence.
”My mother was a wet-nurse,” he went on to volunteer, ”and I her only child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my height, converted into a footman. It happened thus. One day, on General Stepan (my mother's then employer) happening to catch sight of me, he exclaimed: 'Evgenia, go and tell Fedor' (the ex-soldier who was then serving the General as footman) 'that he is to teach your son to wait at table! The boy is at least tall enough for the work.' And for nine years I served the General in this capacity. And then, and then--oh, THEN I was seized with an illness.... Next, I obtained a post under a merchant who was then mayor of our town, and stayed with him twenty-one months. And next I obtained a situation in an hotel at Kharkov, and held it for a year. And after that I kept changing my places, for, steady and sober though I was, I was beginning to lack taste for my profession, and to develop a spirit of the kind which deemed all work to be beneath me, and considered that I had been created to serve only myself, not others.”
Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were proceeding some invisible travellers whose sc.r.a.ping of feet as they walked proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to journeying on foot.
Just as the party drew level with us, a musical voice hummed out softly the line ”Alone will I set forth upon the road,” with the word ”alone”
plaintively stressed. Next, a resonant ba.s.s voice said with a sort of indolent incisiveness:
”Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the extent of--oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?”
”To the extent of total loss of power of articulation,” replied a voice feminine and youthful of timbre.
Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a paler figure between them, come gliding into view.
”Strange indeed is it that, that--”
”That what?”
”That so many names proper to these parts should also be so suggestive.
Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk hereabouts seem to have ”ama.s.sed” things, and to have known how to do so.” [The verb nakopit means to ama.s.s, to heap up.]
”For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'”
”Look here,” interrupted the musical voice in a tone of chastened enthusiasm. ”As I contemplate all this beauty, and inhale this restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it be if I were to let everything go to the devil, and take up my abode here for ever?'”
At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of the monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance that came borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:
Oh, if into a single word I could pour my inmost thoughts!
To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it in that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the distance, he sighed, straightened himself, and said:
”Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as they talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old and ever-persistent point.”
”To what point are you referring?”
My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:
”Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of those people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?”
Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man would do, Kalinin added in a half-whisper: