Beasts, Men and Gods | Page 7

spoke up and told me
that not far from there was a small branch of the Mana, at the mouth of
which was a hut.
"What do you say? Shall we push on there or spend the night by the
naida?"
I suggested going to the hut, because I wanted to wash and because it
would be agreeable to spend the night under a genuine roof again. Ivan
knitted his brows but acceded.
It was growing dark when we approached a hut surrounded by the
dense wood and wild raspberry bushes. It contained one small room
with two microscopic windows and a gigantic Russian stove. Against
the building were the remains of a shed and a cellar. We fired the stove
and prepared our modest dinner. Ivan drank from the bottle inherited
from the soldiers and in a short time was very eloquent, with brilliant
eyes and with hands that coursed frequently and rapidly through his
long locks. He began relating to me the story of one of his adventures,
but suddenly stopped and, with fear in his eyes, squinted into a dark
corner.
"Is it a rat?" he asked.
"I did not see anything," I replied.
He again became silent and reflected with knitted brow. Often we were
silent through long hours and consequently I was not astonished. Ivan
leaned over near to me and began to whisper.

"I want to tell you an old story. I had a friend in Transbaikalia. He was
a banished convict. His name was Gavronsky. Through many woods
and over many mountains we traveled in search of gold and we had an
agreement to divide all we got into even shares. But Gavronsky
suddenly went out to the 'Taiga' on the Yenisei and disappeared. After
five years we heard that he had found a very rich gold mine and had
become a rich man; then later that he and his wife with him had been
murdered. . . ." Ivan was still for a moment and then continued:
"This is their old hut. Here he lived with his wife and somewhere on
this river he took out his gold. But he told nobody where. All the
peasants around here know that he had a lot of money in the bank and
that he had been selling gold to the Government. Here they were
murdered."
Ivan stepped to the stove, took out a flaming stick and, bending over,
lighted a spot on the floor.
"Do you see these spots on the floor and on the wall? It is their blood,
the blood of Gavronsky. They died but they did not disclose the
whereabouts of the gold. It was taken out of a deep hole which they had
drifted into the bank of the river and was hidden in the cellar under the
shed. But Gavronsky gave nothing away. . . . AND LORD HOW I
TORTURED THEM! I burned them with fire; I bent back their fingers;
I gouged out their eyes; but Gavronsky died in silence."
He thought for a moment, then quickly said to me:
"I have heard all this from the peasants." He threw the log into the
stove and flopped down on the bench. "It's time to sleep," he snapped
out, and was still.
I listened for a long time to his breathing and his whispering to himself,
as he turned from one side to the other and smoked his pipe.
In the morning we left this scene of so much suffering and crime and
on the seventh day of our journey we came to the dense cedar wood
growing on the foothills of a long chain of mountains.

"From here," Ivan explained to me, "it is eighty versts to the next
peasant settlement. The people come to these woods to gather cedar
nuts but only in the autumn. Before then you will not meet anyone.
Also you will find many birds and beasts and a plentiful supply of nuts,
so that it will be possible for you to live here. Do you see this river?
When you want to find the peasants, follow along this stream and it
will guide you to them."
Ivan helped me build my mud hut. But it was not the genuine mud hut.
It was one formed by the tearing out of the roots of a great cedar, that
had probably fallen in some wild storm, which made for me the deep
hole as the room for my house and flanked this on one side with a wall
of mud held fast among the upturned roots. Overhanging ones formed
also the framework into which we interlaced the poles and branches to
make a roof, finished off with stones for stability and snow for warmth.
The front of the hut was ever open but was constantly protected