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“And for what point?”

“For Novorossisk.”

Now, the day being a Saturday, I had drawn my week’s earnings from the monastery’s pay-office just before the vigil service. Also, Novorossisk did not really lie in my direction. Thirdly, I had no particular wish to exchange the monastery for any other lodging. Nevertheless, despite all this, the man interested me to such an extent (of persons who genuinely interest one there never exist but two, and, of them, oneself is always one) that straightway I observed:

“I too shall be leaving here tomorrow.”

“Then let us travel together.”

*********************************

At dawn, therefore, we set forth to foot the road in company. At times I mentally soared aloft, and viewed the scene from that vantage-point. Whenever I did so, I beheld two tall men traversing a narrow track by a seashore–the one clad in a grey military overcoat and a hat with a broken crown, and the other in a drab kaftan and a plush cap. At their feet the boundless sea was splashing white foam, salt-dried ribands of seaweed were strewing the path, golden leaves were dancing hither and thither, and the wind was howling at, and buffeting, the travellers as clouds sailed over their heads. Also, to their right there lay stretched a chain of mountains towards which the clouds kept wearily, nervelessly tending, while to their left there lay spread a white-laced expanse over the surface of which a roaring wind kept ceaselessly driving transparent columns of spray.

On such stormy days in autumn everything near a seashore looks particularly cheerful and vigorous, seeing that, despite the soughing of wind and wave, and the swift onrush of cloud, and the fact that the sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in abysses of blue, and resembles a drooping flower, one feels that the apparent chaos has lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane, but imperishable, forces–so much so that in time even one’s puny human heart comes to imbibe the prevalent spirit of revolt, and, catching fire, to cry to all the universe: ” I love you! “

Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so to live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea’s white horses prance the higher, as one’s mouth acclaims the earth in such a paean that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall unfold its riches with added bountifulness and display more and more manifest beauty under the spur of the love expressed by one of its creatures, expressed by a human being who feels for the earth what he would feel for a woman, and yearns to fertilise the same to ever-increasing splendour.

Nevertheless,words are as heavy as stones, and after felling fancy to the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and cause one, as one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in sheer self-derision. . . .

Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through the plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar words:

“Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not bad.”

“How does Christ get on with them?” I asked.

“Christ? He does not enter into the matter.”

“Is He hostile to them?”

“Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are devils to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one is Christ hostile” ………………………… . . . . . . [In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.]

As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows, the path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and, in doing so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift correspondingly to our immediate front, where the masses of vapour were darkening as though rain were probable.

Kalinin’s discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.

“The locality is not without its perils,” once he remarked. “For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory.”