Читать книгу Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories - Владимир Галактионович Короленко - Страница 10

Andrey Ivanovich stared into the darkness and suddenly he caught hold of my hand, exclaiming:

“Stop! We shouldn’t have come.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I told the truth. Don’t chase on after them! Wait for me. … I’ll run and see. …”

He quickly disappeared in the darkness. I stayed with Ivan Ivanovich in the road. When the steps of the bootmaker died away, we heard merely the quiet noises of the night. The grass rustled gently; at times a rail whistled as it ran nervously from place to place. In the vague distance the frogs were croaking dreamily and playing in the swamp. Hardly visible clouds were rising.

“That’s just like him. … My comrade loves to walk at night,” complained Ivan Ivanovich. “What’s the use of it? Why not by day?”

“Was he in a monastery too?”

“Yes,” answered Ivan Ivanovich. Then, with a sigh, “He’s from a good family. His father was a deacon in the city of N. You may have heard of him. … His brother is a secretary in a police office. He was betrothed. …”

“Why didn’t he marry?”

“Don’t you see, he’d already gone wrong. … He ran away … but he wasn’t a wanderer yet. He had the outfit but he didn’t wander. … He passed as a suitor. He was accepted. The girl loved him, and her father didn’t object. … Oh! … Oh! … Of course, it was sinful, … he deceived them. Sometimes, when he tells about it, you’ll cry, and then again it’s really funny.”

Ivan Ivanovich acted strangely. He laughed and then began to choke and put his hand over his mouth. At first you could hardly tell he was laughing. But he really was—an hysterical, bashful, rather explosive laugh, which ended like a cough. When he quieted down, Ivan Ivanovich said, half-pityingly:

“Only he tells it different every time. … You can’t tell whether it’s the truth or not.”

“He wouldn’t lie?”

“Not exactly, … but he’s not always accurate. You see, the truth——”

“Just what does he say?”

“You know, the clerk, he says, was clever. He saw the young man wasting his time, really doing nothing. He pretended to go to a bazaar—so he went to the city, left the old woman in the house, and gave her strict orders to keep an eye on him. Avtonomov, you see, didn’t live with them, but in the village with the woman who baked the bread for the church. … He kept visiting them. … Every day. … They’d sit by the river bank. … And the old woman was there, too. And, of course, she watched them. … One time, my dear little Avtonomov saw two men coming from the city in a cart—and both drunk. They came up and turned out to be the clerk and his older brother, the secretary. He hadn’t even looked around—when they landed on him and licked him. The reason why: his brother, because he ran away from the seminary; the clerk, for deceiving and disgracing him. …”

Ivan Ivanovich sighed.

“He hardly got off alive, he says. … They were both angry and drunk. … He ran to the house where he was living, grabbed his wallet, and off into the woods. … Since then, he says, he’s been wandering. … But, another time, he really … tells something else.”

He came nearer to me and wanted to tell me something very confidentially. But suddenly out of the darkness near us came the figure of Andrey Ivanovich. He walked rapidly with a deliberately menacing scowl.

“Come here, if you please.” He took me aside and whispered:

“You and I are in a nice mess!”

“How?”

“This Avtonomov, the monk, seems to have gone off to steal. … We’ll get into trouble over him yet. …”

“That’s enough, Andrey Ivanovich.”

“Yes, for you. Did you hear what he asked in the village? Of the soldier’s wife? About a certain clerk? Is the clerk actually at home or not?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Do you remember where that clerk lived?”

“Yes, by a cemetery.”

“There it is!” said Andrey Ivanovich maliciously, pointing ahead in the darkness.

“What of it?”

“Just this. … The old woman, you heard, is alone. … And he went right there. … He walked around the yard and looked. You’ll see for yourself. … That’s the sort of a fellow you wanted to drop an old companion for. … If he’d crossed the bridge without a board creaking, we’d have gone straight along the road. … I turned aside. … Let’s go ahead quietly.”

Behind us some one coughed plaintively. Andrey Ivanovich looked around and said:

“Come with us, novice. … What can we do with you? You love your comrade.”

We crossed the bridge, followed the road and came to the cemetery. On the hill a little light shone through the trees. I saw the whitish walls of a small house, perched on the edge of a hill, and behind it was the dark outline of a bell-tower. Below on the right it was easier to imagine than to see the little stream.

“There he is,” said Andrey Ivanovich. “Do you see him?”

Not far from us, between the wall and the slope, near an arbor covered with foliage, was a figure. A man seemed to be crowded against and fastened to the fence and looking through the bushes. By the light of the window, I saw the pointed cap, the long neck, and the familiar profile of Avtonomov. The light streamed out through the trees and lilac blossoms. When I went nearer, I saw in the window the head of an old woman in a cap and with horn spectacles. Her head nodded like that of a man who is working when he is terribly sleepy, and the needles moved rapidly in her hands. The old woman was evidently waiting for her husband to return.