Whereafter, having crossed himself with a faltering hand, he carefully scrutinised the corpse, and at last let his eyes halt upon the lad's sweet features. Then he muttered sadly:
"How extraordinarily he has grown! Yes, death has indeed enlarged him! Ah, well, so be it! Soon I too shall have to be stretching myself out. Oh that it were now!"
Then with cautious movements of his deformed fingers he straightened the folds of the lad's smock, and drew it over the legs. Whereafter he pressed his flushed lips to the hem of the garment.
Said I to him at that moment:
"What is it that you have been wanting of him? Why is it that you have been trying to teach him strange words?"
Straightening himself, and glancing at me with dim eyes, Antipa repeated:
"What is it that I have been wanting of him?" To the repetition he added with manifest sincerity, though also with a self-depreciatory movement of the head:
"To tell the truth, I scarcely know WHAT it is that I have been wanting of him. By God I do not. Yet, as one speaking the truth in the presence of death, I say that never during my long lifetime had I so desired aught else. . . . Yes, I have waited and waited for fortune to reveal it to me; and ever has fortune remained mute and tongueless. Foolish was it of me to have expected otherwise, to have expected, for instance, that some day there might occur something marvellous, something unlooked-for."
With a short laugh, he indicated the corpse with his eyes, and continued more firmly:
"Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence. . . This is usually the case.
Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby gaining some provision against her old age."
"But you yourself were the person who suggested that? You yourself wished it? "
"I?"
Presently. thrusting his hands up his sleeves, he added dully and brokenly:
"Yes, I DID wish it. Why not, indeed, seeing that at least it would have brought comfort to the poor people of this place?
Sometimes I feel very sorry for them with their bitter, troublous lives--lives which may be the lives of rogues and villains, yet are lives which have produced amongst us a pravednik," [A "just person," a human being without sin].
All the evening sky was now aflame. Upon the ear there fell the mournful lament:
When snow has veiled the earth in white, The snowy plain the wild wolves tread.
They wail for the cheering warmth of spring As I bewail the bairn that's dead.
Vologonov listened for a moment. Then he said firmly:
"These are mere accesses of impulse which come upon her. And that is only what might be expected. Even as in song or in vice there is no holding her, so remorse, when it has fastened upon such a woman's heart, will know no bounds. I may tell you that on one occasion two young merchants took her, stripped her stark naked, and drove her in their carriage down Zhitnaia Street, with themselves sitting on the seats of the vehicle, and Felitzata standing upright between them--yes, in a state of nudity! Thereafter they beat her almost to death."
As I stepped out into the dark, narrow vestibule, Antipa, who was following me, muttered:
"Such a lament as hers could come only of genuine grief."
We found Felitzata in front of the hut, with her back covering the window. There, with hands pressed to her bosom, and her skirt all awry, she was straining her dishevelled head towards the heavens, while the evening breeze, stirring her fine auburn hair, scattered it promiscuously over her flushed, sharply-defined features and wildly protruding eyes. A bizarre, pitiable, and extraordinary figure did she cut as she wailed in a throaty voice which constantly gathered strength:
0h winds of ice, winds cruel and rude, Press on my heart till its throbbings fail!
Arrest the current of my blood!
Turn these hot melting tears to hail!
Before her there was posted a knot of women, compassionate contemplators of the singer's distracted, grief-wrought features. Through the ravine's dark opening I could see the sun sinking below the suburb before plunging into the marshy forest and having his disk pierced by sharp, black tips of pine trees.
Already everything around him was red. Already, seemingly, he had been wounded, and was bleeding to death.
