Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

are lantern-jawed blind men⁠—sturdy and squat muzhiks, that look just like pilloried convicts who have killed their scores of souls⁠—these have solid, square heads, their faces seem to have been hacked out by an axe, and their bare legs are swollen with livid blood and are unnaturally short, even as their arms are. There are common idiots, huge of shoulder and of leg. There are malignant dwarfs with birdlike faces. There are wedge-headed hunchbacks, who seem to be wearing pointed caps made out of horsehair. There are monstrous marasmi, squatting back on their crooked legs like terriers. There are foreheads squeezed in at the sides and forming skulls that look like the cap of an acorn. There are bony old women, without a vestige of a nose⁠—for all the world like Death itself.⁠ ⁠… And all this mass, prominently displaying its tatters, its sores and cankers, vociferate in a Bulgarian, old-church singsong, vociferates in rough basses, and castrated altos, and indescribably depraved tenors, about Lazarus and his sores, about Alexei the Man of God, who also, thirsting after poverty and martyrdom, did forsake his father’s roof, “knowing not whither he went.⁠ ⁠…”

All these people, with their eyebrows writhing above their dark eyes, with an intuition, an instinct, as keen as that of certain primary sea creatures, instantly sense, surmise, the approach of a generous hand; and by now they have already grabbed up a not unconsiderable quantity of bread-crusts, of round cracknels, and of the muzhiks’ coppers, grown green from contact with their execrable tobacco. After mass, with a chanting still more vigorous and importunate, they spread through the sea of the people, through the fair. The cripples, too, move after them⁠—legless creatures, crawling on their bottoms and on all fours, or lying in their eternal beds, in little carts. Here is one of these little carts. In it is a little bit of a man, about forty years of age, with his ears tied up in a woman’s kerchief; his milky-blue eyes are calm, and he has stuck out of his old rags a thin little hand⁠—violet-coloured, six-fingered. He is pulled about by a bright-eyed little lad, with exceedingly pointed little ears, and with fox-like down upon his head. All around him is a multitude of the fraternity, all of them, for some reason or other, also tied up with kerchiefs. And out of all this fraternity one muzhik with a large white face stands out he is all broken up, all maimed; there is no bottom to him at all, and he has on but one fusty bast shoe. Probably, he, too, had been beaten-up somewheres as thoroughly as Shasha: his entire kerchief, his ear, his neck and one shoulder are all in caked blood. In his long bag there are pieces of raw meat, cooked bits of mutton, bread crusts, and millet. His seat, now, is sewn up with a bit of leather⁠—and twisting himself all up, he squirms and starts off, on and on over the mire, extending in front of him his unshod foot, his leg half-bare, in lime-covered scabs that are oozing with matter and pasted over with strips of burdock.

“Look ye, ye faithful⁠—look and behold ye! This is reckoned, from of old, as the disease of leprosy!” a freckled tatterdemallion beside him is shouting in a rapid recitave, which is right rollicking.⁠ ⁠…

And it is toward these people that Shasha is heading. He lives for some two or three years more in his mill; he celebrates three or four fairs more; he again enters into battle with the soldier three or four times: kindhearted folks bring him to by throwing water out of wooden tubs upon him as he lies without breath or speech; without opening his eyes, he drags his wet head over the ground, back and forth, and moans out painfully through his clenched teeth.

“All r-r-right, good folks! I say nothing! I always say nothing!”

Then he is brought to the mill; he lies for two weeks over the stove, little by little getting better, and soon he is again traipsing around the low-down inns; he brags, he lies, he curses out everybody and everything, he smites his breast with his fists, threatening all his foes⁠—but the soldier especially. But once the Kiriki turn out to be unfortunate⁠—the soldier breaks Shasha’s arm with his heel, and shatters the bridge of his nose, and knocks out his eyes. Lo, now Shasha is both blind and a cripple. The soldier’s wife abandons him; his mill, his land, is taken by good folks for his debts. And now Shasha is safe in harbour; now he is a fully-privileged member of the horde of beggars that stand in the church enclosure during the Kiriki⁠—bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh. All in tatters, with a round and thick beard, with his head clipped so closely that it looks like a hedgehog, he wildly distorts his eyebrows over his empty, drawnover sockets, and hoarsely bawls in time with the others the beggars’ soul-wringing canticles. The chorus sombrely rends the air, to the best of each member’s ability, and the voices of the leader stand out resonantly, as they bawl out every syllable:

There once lived three sisters; there were once three Marys of Egypt⁠—
In three parts did they their wealth divide:
One part was set aside for the blind and the sick;
One part was set aside for prisons, for dark dungeons;
The third part was set aside for churches, for cathedrals.⁠ ⁠…

Shasha’s harsh voice chimes in, soaring above that of the others:

The time will come
When the earth, the sky shall be shaken;
The least stones shall crumble,
The Lord’s thrones shall tumble,
The sun and the moon shall grow dim⁠—
And the Lord shall cause a river of fire to flow.⁠ ⁠…

And blending, swelling, attaining a sinister and a triumphant force, the entire choir becomes throatily, sonorously clamorous:

Mi-cha-el the Archangel,
Shall make all earthly creatures perish;
He shall blow his trumpets,
He shall say to all mankind:
Ye had your life and being.
Having your own free will;
Ye