Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

its crown. In a cleft on the slope of this peak one can still see the remains of a human habitation. There is a touching legend connected with this spot. A man very high in life was exiled to Siberia many years ago. For a long time he lived in different places, until he finally settled here, in the cleft of the mountain peak. He cut his own wood and brought up his own water. Once, when he was going up the mountain with a bundle of wood on his shoulders, he suddenly saw on the path above him a well-known figure. It was his wife, who had at last found him in this lonely spot. The exile recognized her, but because of joy or of shock, he fainted, and fell down into the precipice.

It was in vain that I tried to learn the name of this man and the details of the occurrence. Cold and indifferent, Siberia does not preserve such information, and the memory of the tragedy dies away as the afterglow of a dim legend connected merely with the rock, and not with the man⁠ ⁠…

The origin of the boy whom I met in the Nuysk hamlet is just as uncertain and just as dim. But whenever I think of Siberia, there inevitably rises in my imagination the spectacle of the dark crevice, the rapid river, the wretched huts of the hamlet, and the dying rays of the departing sun fading away in the sad eyes of the last offspring of a lost family.

The Old Bell-Ringer

The evening dusk has set in.

The little village, situated in a forest on the banks of a small river, is sunk in that peculiar dusk that sets in on a starry spring night, when a light fog rises from the ground, deepening the shadows cast by the forest and enveloping the open spots with a silvery-bluish haze. Everything is quiet, pensive, sad.

The village seems plunged in light slumber.

The huts are dimly outlined against the dark shadows; tiny specks of light are visible here and there; sometimes a gate would creak on its hinges; a dog would set up a howl, and become silent once more; occasionally human figures would appear from the dark forest, on foot, or on horseback, or on a squeaking wagon. They are the inhabitants of outlying hamlets going to their church to celebrate the spring holiday.

The church stands on a hillock, in the very center of the village. Its windows are lit up. Its belfry-tower, dark with age, thrusts its tall top into the bluish dusk.

The steps of the belfry staircase squeak, as the old bell-ringer, Mikheich, ascends the tower. Soon his little lantern hangs in the air like a star that has suddenly flown upward.

It is hard for the old man to climb those stairs. His old legs scarcely obey him, his eyes see very badly. It is time for the old man to rest from life’s labors, but God does not send him death. He has buried his sons, and his grandsons, has followed old and young to the graveyard, but he himself is still alive. The climbing is so hard⁠ ⁠… Many a time has he met the spring holiday on that belfry; he has already lost count of the number of times spring found him with his bells. And yet God has granted him another spring night.

The old man approached the edge of the platform, and leaned on the railing. Below him stretched the cemetery of the village; it seemed that the old crosses protected it, as if with outstretched arms. Here and there birch-trees, still leafless and bare, bent over the graves. Sweet fragrance of budding leaves was wafted up to where Mikheich was standing, and with it came a feeling of the solemn quiet that attends eternal sleep.

Where will he be a year hence? Will he again climb up this tower, to this platform under the great brass bell, and, with a resounding peal, awaken the slumbering night; or will he lie there, below, in a dark corner of the cemetery, under a wooden cross? God knows⁠ ⁠… He is ready, but God has granted him to meet at least another spring holiday. “Glory be to the Lord,” whisper his lips, repeating the formula he knows so well, and Mikheich, making the sign of the cross, looks upward into the starry sky that burns as with a million lights.

“Mikheich, eh, Mikheich!” a trembling old voice calls to him from below. The old deacon looks up from the ground, shielding his watery eyes with the palm of his hand, but he does not see Mikheich.

“What is it? I am here,” answers the bell-ringer, leaning over the rail. “Don’t you see me?”

“No. Isn’t it time to strike? What do you think?”

Both look up at the stars. Thousands of God’s bright eyes shine upon them from above. The fiery constellation is already high above the horizon. Mikheich is considering⁠ ⁠…

“No, I guess we’ll wait awhile⁠ ⁠… I know my time.”

He knows it well enough. He does not need a clock, for God’s stars will tell him when the right time comes. The earth and the sky, and the little white cloud that sails through the blue, and the dark forest whispering something there below, and the splashing of the little river invisible in the darkness⁠—all this is so familiar to him, so near. It is not in vain that he has spent his whole life here.

The faraway past springs into life again. He remembers how he climbed this tower for the first time, when he was still a child and his father brought him there. He sees himself as a little, blond-haired boy; his eyes are burning with excitement; the wind⁠—not the wind that whirls the dust through the village street, but a different one, one that shakes its invisible wings high above the ground⁠—raises his soft hair, making it flutter in the air⁠ ⁠… And there, far, far below, little human figures are moving to