Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
and began to smoke. The tall figure of Andrey Ivanovich went on, ascended a hill and disappeared.
I bent over the water and began to meditate. I thought I was absolutely alone, but I suddenly felt that some one was looking at me and then on a hill under some birch trees, I saw two men. One had a small and almost childish face. He at once hid from shame in the grass behind the crest of the hill. The other was the preacher of the preceding evening. As he lay on the grass, he quietly turned his bold, gray eyes upon me.
“Come, join us, we’ll have more fun together,” he said simply.
I got up and to my surprise I saw the feet of Andrey Ivanovich sticking out of the grass by the road; he was sitting nearby in the boundary strip, and his cigar smoke was rising above the tops of the grass. I pretended not to see him and walked up to the strangers.
The one whom I had taken for a child proved to be a young, sickly creature in a striped cassock, with thin hair around his narrow, sallow face and a nose like a bird’s beak. He kept straightening his cassock, was uneasy, kept moving around and was clearly ashamed of his condition.
“Sit down and be our guest,” the preacher suggested with a slight gesture. Just then the tall figure of Andrey Ivanovich rose like the shade of Banquo above the grain.
“Let’s be going!” he said in a not very kind tone of voice, as he threw away the butt of his cigar.
“I’ll stay here,” I answered.
“I see you like those parasites better. …” And Andrey Ivanovich glanced at me sorrowfully, as if he wished to impress upon me the impropriety of my choice.
“Yes, there’s more fun here,” I answered.
“I’m through with you. I hope you remain in good company.”
He pulled his cap down over his face and started off with long strides, but he soon stopped, came back, and said angrily:
“Don’t ask me again! You rascal, I’ll never go with you again. Don’t you dare to ask me! I refuse.”
“It’s my business whether I ask you or not. … Yours is to go or not.”
“A serious-minded gentleman!” The wanderer nodded after him as he started off.
“He doesn’t approve of us,” the little man said in a voice that was between a sigh and a squeak.
“What do we care whether he does or not?” remarked the preacher indifferently. Then he turned to me:
“Haven’t you a cigarette, sir? … Please.”
I held out my case to him. He took out two cigarettes, lighted one and placed the other beside him. His small companion interpreted this in a favorable way and rather irresolutely reached for the free cigarette. But the preacher, with perfect composure, took the cigarette out of his hands and placed it on the other side. The little fellow was embarrassed, again squeaked from shame and straightened his robes.
I gave him a cigarette. This embarrassed him still more—his thin, transparent fingers trembled; he smiled sadly and bashfully.
“I don’t know how to beg,” he said in shame. “Avtonomov orders and orders. … But I can’t.”
“Who’s this Avtonomov?” I asked.
“That’s me—Gennady Avtonomov,” said the preacher with a stern glance at his small companion, who quailed under the glance and dropped his sallow face. His thin hair fell and rose.
“Are you walking for your health, or why?” Avtonomov asked me.
“Because I want to. … Where are you going?”
He looked into the distance and answered:
“To Paris or nearer, to Italy or further. …” And, noticing that I did not understand, he added:
“I was joking. … I am wandering aimlessly wherever it suits me. For eleven years——”
He spoke with a faint touch of sadness. Then he quietly exhaled some tobacco smoke and watched the blue clouds melt away in the air. His face had a new expression, a quality I had never noticed before.
“A wasted life, signor! A ruined existence, which deserved a better lot.”
The sadness disappeared and he concluded grandiloquently, with a flourish of his cigarette:
“Yet, good sir, the wanderer will never be willing to exchange his liberty for luxurious palaces.”
Just then a bold little bird flew over our heads like a clod of earth thrown up into the air, perched on the lowest branch of the birch, and began to twitter without paying any attention to our presence. The face of the little wanderer brightened and was suffused with a ludicrous kindness. He kept time with his thin lips and, at the successful completion of any tune, he looked at us with triumphant, smiling, and weeping eyes.
“O God!” he said finally, when the bird flew away at the end of its song. “A creature of God. It sang as much as it needed to, it praised Him, and flew off on its own business. O darling! … Yes, by heaven, that’s right.”
He looked at us joyfully, and then became embarrassed, stopped talking, and straightened his cassock, but Avtonomov waved his hand and added like a teacher:
“Behold the birds of heaven. We, signor, are the same kind of birds. We sow not, neither do we reap, nor gather into barns. …”
“You studied in the seminary?” I asked.
“Yes. I could tell a lot about that; only there’s little worth hearing. But, as you see, the horizon is being covered with clouds. Up, Ivan Ivanovich; rise, comrade, rise. The portion of the wanderer is journeying, not resting. Let us wish you every sort of blessing.”
He nodded and started rapidly along the road. He took free, even strides, leaning on a long staff and thrusting it back with every step. The wind blew out the skirts of his cassock, he bent forward under his wallet, and his wedge-shaped beard projected in front. It seemed as if this sun-burned, dried, and faded figure had been created for the poor Russian plain with the dark villages in the distance and the clouds which thoughtfully gathered in the sky.
“A scholar!” Ivan Ivanovich shook his head sadly as he tied up his wallet with trembling hands. “A most learned man! But he falls to nothing just as I. On the same plane … we wander together. God forgive us, the last. …”
“Why?”
“Why? How? The modern wanderer has a good wallet, a cassock or kaftan, boots, for example—in a word, equipment for every circumstance, so to speak. And we! You see yourself. I’m coming, I’m coming, Gennady Sergeich, I’m coming. Right away!”
The little fellow soon overtook his companion. Thinking that they had reasons for not inviting me to accompany them, I kept sitting on the hill, and watching a heavy, dark cloud rise from behind the woods and spread quietly, sadly, imperceptibly, almost stealthily over the sky, and then I went on alone, regretting the controversy with Andrey Ivanovich.
It was quiet and sad. The grain waved and rustled drily. In the distance, behind the woods, growled the thunder and at times a large drop of rain fell.
It was an empty threat. Towards evening I came to the village of K. and it had not rained yet, but the cloud was advancing quietly and spreading out; it grew dark and the thunder sounded nearer and nearer.
III
To my surprise, on the bank of earth around one of the first huts of the village, I saw Andrey Ivanovich, with his long legs reaching almost to the very middle of the street. As I approached, he looked utterly unconcerned.
“What are you doing, Andrey Ivanovich?”
“Drinking tea. Did you think I was waiting for you?