The Created Legend, Fyodor Sologub [ebook reader with android os .txt] 📗

The muzhik touched the enchanted line. Pain and terror transpierced him. He stared with his dead eyes, but quickly lowered them; as he was unable to withstand the look of the living, he fell with his forehead to the ground just beyond the line and begged for mercy.

“Go!” said Trirodov.

The muzhik rose to his feet and scampered away. But he soon paused, and again burst out into abuse; then ran farther.

Two lean, poorly dressed boys, with green faces, walked by. The rags which bound their feet hung loosely. One of them said:

“Do you understand? They tormented me, tyrannized over me. I ran away and they caught me again⁠—I had no strength left. I went to the garret and strangled myself. I don’t know what I shall get for it now.”

The other green boy replied:

“As for me, I was beaten with salted rods. My hands are quite clean.”

“Yes, you are lucky,” said the first boy enviously. “You will get a little golden wreath, but what will happen to me?”

“I will entreat the angels, the archangels, the cherubim and the seraphim for you⁠—give me but your full name and address.”

“My sin is quite a big one, and my name is Mitka Sosipatrov, from Nizhniya Kolotilovka.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said the birched boy. “As soon as they let me in to the upper chambers, I will at once fall at the feet of the Virgin Mary until you are forgiven.”

“Yes, do me this great favour.”

Kirsha stood pale. His eyes sparkled. He trembled from head to foot and kept on repeating:

“Mamma, come to me! Mamma, come to me!”

A radiant apparition suddenly appeared in the throng, and Kirsha throbbed with joy. Kirsha’s mother passed by⁠—all white, all lovely, all gentle. She turned her tranquil eyes upon her dear ones and whispered:

“I will come.”

Kirsha, transported with a quiet joy, stood motionless. His eyes gleamed like the eyes of the quiet angel who stood there on guard.

Again the dead throng moved on. A governor passed by. All his figure breathed might and majesty. Yet hardly awake, he grumbled:

“Make way for the Russian Governor! I’ll have no patience with you. I will not permit it! You cannot frighten me. What! Feed the hungry, you say?”

He appeared, as it were, to awaken at these words; he looked around him and said in great astonishment, as he shrugged his shoulders:

“What a strange disorder! How did I get into this crowd? Where is the police?”

Then he suddenly bawled out:

“Let the Cossacks come!”

In response to the Governor’s cry a detachment of Cossacks came flying. Without noticing Trirodov and the children, they swept along past them and savagely flourished their nagaikas.17 The dead, pressed from behind by the Cossacks’ horses, became a confused, wavering mass, and answered with malignant laughter to the blows of the nagaikas upon their lifeless bodies.

The grey witch sat down on a nearby stone and shook with her hideous, creaking laughter.

Elisaveta dressed herself up as a boy. She loved to do this and she did it quite often; so tedious is the monotony of our lives that even a change of dress furnishes a diversion!

Elisaveta put on a white sailor-jacket with a blue collar, and blue knee-breeches which revealed the beauty and grace of her sunburnt lower limbs; she put on a cap, took a fishing-rod and went to the river. Elisaveta looked like a rather tall stripling of fourteen in this dress.

It was quiet and bright on the river’s bank. Elisaveta sat down on a stone at the edge, lowered her feet into the water, and watched the float. A rowing-boat appeared. Elisaveta looked intently and saw that it contained Stchemilov. The latter called out:

“I say, my lad, if you belong here, can you tell me if.⁠ ⁠…”

Then he paused because Elisaveta was laughing.

“Well, who would have thought it⁠—comrade Elisaveta?”

“You didn’t recognize me, comrade?” asked Elisaveta with a merry laugh, as she approached the landing-place where Stchemilov was already fastening his boat.

“I must confess that I didn’t know you at once,” he replied, as he pressed her hand warmly. “I have come for you. Tonight we are to hold our mass meeting.”

“Is it really tonight?” asked Elisaveta.

She grew cold from agitation and confusion as she recalled that she had promised to speak that evening.

“Yes, tonight,” said Stchemilov; “I hope you haven’t changed your mind. You will speak, eh?”

“I thought it was to be tomorrow,” she replied. “Just wait a moment. I’ll get a small bundle of clothes. I will change at your place.”

She quickly and gaily tripped up the bank. Stchemilov whistled as he sat waiting in the boat. Elisaveta soon reappeared, and deftly jumped into the boat.

It was necessary to row past the whole length of the town. No one on either bank recognized Elisaveta in her boy’s attire. Stchemilov’s house, a cabin in the middle of a vegetable garden, stood on a steep bank of the river, just along the edge of the town.

No one had yet arrived at the house. Elisaveta picked up a periodical which lay on the table and asked:

“Tell me, comrade, how do you like these verses?”

Stchemilov looked at the periodical, open at a page which contained Trirodov’s verses. He smiled and said:

“What shall I say? His revolutionary poems are not bad. Nowadays, however, everybody writes them. As for his other works, they are not written about us. Noblemen’s delights are not for us.”

“It’s a long time since I’ve been here,” said Elisaveta. “What a mess you’ve got here.”

“A house without a mistress,” answered Stchemilov, rather confused.

Elisaveta began to put things in order and to clean and to scrub. She moved about with agile grace. Stchemilov admired her graceful limbs; it was fascinating to watch the play of the muscles under the brown skin of her calves. He exclaimed in a clear, almost ecstatic voice:

“How graceful you are, Elisaveta! Like a statue! I never saw such arms and legs.”

“I feel embarrassed, comrade Aleksei. You praise me to