Savva and The Life of Man | Page 9

are different too--yes--but that's a small thing. I was in a city inhabited by a hundred thousand people. The windows in the house of that city are all small. Those living in them are all fond of light, but it never occurs to anyone that the windows might be made larger. And when a new house is built, they put in the same kind of windows, just as small, just as they have always been.
LIPA
The idea! I never would have thought it. But they can't all be like that. You must have met good people who knew how to live.
SAVVA
I don't know how to make you understand. Yes, I did meet, if not altogether good people, yet--The last people with whom I lived were a pretty good sort. They didn't accept life ready-made, but tried to make it over to suit themselves. But--
LIPA
Who were they--students?
SAVVA
No. Look here--how about your tongue--is it of the loose kind?
LIPA
Savva, you ought to be ashamed!
SAVVA
All right. Now then. You've read of people who make bombs--little bombs, you understand? Now if they see anybody who interferes with life, they take him off. They're called anarchists. But that isn't quite correct. (Contemptuously) Nice anarchists they are!
LIPA (starting back, awestruck)
What are you talking about? You can't possibly be in earnest. It isn't true. And you in it, too? Why, you look so simple and talk so simply, and suddenly--I was hot a moment ago, but now I am cold, _(The rooster crows-under the window, calling the chickens to share some seed he has found)_
SAVVA
There now--you're frightened. First you want me to tell you, and then--
LIPA
Don't mind me, Savva, it's nothing. It was so unexpected. I thought such people didn't really exist--that they were just a fiction of the imagination. And then, all of a sudden, to find you, my brother--You are not joking, Savva? Look me straight in the eye.
SAVVA
But why did you get frightened? They are not so terrible after all. In fact, they are very quiet, orderly people, and very deliberate. They meet and meet, and weigh and consider a long time, and then--bang!--a sparrow drops dead. The next minute there is another sparrow in its place, hopping about on the very same branch. Why are you looking at my hands?
LIPA
Oh, nothing. Give me your hand--no, your right hand.
SAVVA
Here.
LIPA
How heavy it is. Feel how cold mine are. Go on, tell me all about it. It's so interesting.
SAVVA
What's there to tell? They are a brave set of people, I must admit; but it is a bravery of the head, not of the hands. And their heads are partitioned off into little chambers; they are always careful not to do anything which is unnecessary or harmful. Now you can't clear a dense forest by cutting down one tree at a time, can you? That's what they do. While they chop at one end, it grows up at the other. You can't accomplish anything that way; it's labor lost. I proposed a scheme to them, something on a larger scale. They got frightened, wouldn't hear of it. A little weak-kneed they are. So I left them. Let them practise virtue. A narrow-minded bunch. They lack breadth of vision.
LIPA
You say it as calmly as if you were joking.
SAVVA
No, I am not joking.
LIPA
Aren't you afraid?
SAVVA
I? So far I haven't been, and I don't ever expect to be. What worse can happen to a man than to have been born? It's like asking a man who is drowning whether he is not afraid of getting wet. (Laughs)
LIPA
So that's the kind you are.
SAVVA
One thing I learned from them: respect for dynamite. It's a powerful instrument, dynamite is--nothing like it for a convincing argument.
LIPA
You are only twenty-three years old. You have no beard yet, not even a moustache.
SAVVA (feeling his face)
Yes, a measly growth; but what conclusions do you draw from that?
LIPA
Fear will come to you yet.
SAVVA
No. If I haven't been frightened so far by watching life, there's nothing else to fear. Life, yes. I embrace the earth with my eyes, the whole of it, the entire little planetoid, and I can find nothing more terrible on it than man and human life. And I am not afraid of man.
LIPA (scarcely listening to him; ecstatically)
Yes, that's the word. That's it. Savva, dear, I am not afraid of bodily suffering either. Burn me on a slow fire. Cut me to pieces. I won't cry. I'll laugh. I know I will. But there is another thing I am afraid of. I am afraid of people's suffering, of the misery from which they cannot escape. When in the stillness of the night, broken only by the striking of the hours, I think of how much suffering there is all around us--aimless, needless suffering; suffering one doesn't even know of--when I think of that, I am chilled with