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In A Mountain Defile
by
“Had I not better consider WHY it is my lot, and so forth? Why, damn it, the causes are many. For one thing, if one has neighbours who neither live nor see things as oneself does, but are uncongenial, what does one do? One just leaves them, and clears out–more especially if one be neither a priest nor a magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better consider why this is my lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man able to consider things, possessed of a brain? “
And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor’s features as the firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an undertone:
“Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours, yet lack a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us, just fall to wandering, troubling other folk, and earning dislike!”
“The dislike of whom?” gruffly queried the ex-soldier.
“The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!”
In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili’s voice had in it an agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while enunciating its words roundly and distinctly.
A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have the crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a mouse, made the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of this species I once encountered among the defile’s crags, and as the creature sailed over my head it startled me with the glassy eyes which, as round as buttons, seemed to be lit from within with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment or two I stood half- stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive what the creature was.
“Whence did you get that splendid pipe?” next asked Vasili as he rolled himself a cigarette. “Surely it is a pipe of old German make?”
“You need not fear that I stole it,” the ex-soldier responded as he removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. “It was given me by a woman.”
To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.
“Tell me how it happened,” said Vasili softly. Then he flung up his arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:
“Ah, these nights here! Never again may God send me such bad ones! Try to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier, indeed, is it to sleep during the daytime, provided that one can find a shady spot. During such nights I go almost mad with thinking, and my heart swells and murmurs.”
The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows raised even higher than usual, responded to this:
“It is the same with me. If one could only–What did you say?”
This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, “The same with me also,” but on seeing the pair exchanging a strange glance (as though involuntarily they had surprised one another), had left the words unspoken. My companions then set themselves to a mutually eager questioning with respect to their respective identities, past experiences, places of origin, and destinations, even as though they had been two kinsmen who, meeting unexpectedly, had discovered for the first time their bond of relationship.
Meanwhile the black, fringed boughs of the pine trees hung stretched over the flames of the Molokans’ fire as though they would catch some of the fire’s glow and warmth, or seize it altogether, and put it out. And when, at times, their red tongues projected beyond the corner of the barraque, they made the building look as though it had caught alight, and extended their glow even to the rivulet. Constantly the night was growing denser and more stifling; constantly it seemed to embrace the body more and more caressingly, until one bathed in it as in an ocean. Also, much as a wave removes dirt from the skin, so the softly vocal darkness seemed to refresh and cleanse the soul. For it is on such nights as that that the soul dons its finest raiment, and trembles like a bride at the expectation of something glorious.