He lies there, thinking how he will pass the long day, whom he will meet—and this is so alluring, so delicious, that he would like to go on lying there for ever.... He looks up at the wallpaper, on which a Chinese pagoda with a curly roof, a humpy bridge, two Chinese under umbrellas, and a third, with a hat like a lamp shade, fishing from the bridge, are endlessly repeated.
The dear, funny Chinese, how happy they are in their pagoda on the stream.... That was his mother's voice in the passage:
"Vadim, are you coming?
I'm ready." And this serene beloved voice seems to permeate his whole life with happiness and well-being. Now he is standing beside his mother in the blue shirt with the white spots.
She is wearing an elegant silk dress.
She kisses him, takes a comb from her head and passes it through his hair.
"Now you look nice.
Let's go...." She descends the broad staircase, opening her parasol.
On the swept drive, where the marks of the broom can be seen, the "troika" of chestnut horses can scarcely stand still in their impatience. The outrunner is being troublesome, and even the sedate shaft horse has hollowed out a small pit with his hoof.
The well-fed, complacent coachman, his crimson shirt sleeves showing from beneath his velvet waistcoat, says, wagging his bushy beard:
"A happy Easter to you!"
His mother settles herself comfortably against the sun-warmed upholstery of the carriage.
Vadim " snuggles up to her, overcome by happy anticipations of the wind which will soon be blowing past his ears, and the trees which will come flying to meet them.
The horses gallop on, rounding the estate.
And here is the broad village street, with the respectfully bowing peasants, and the scraggy hens gathering themselves up from beneath the carriage wheels.
The whitewashed fence round the church, the green meadow, the birch trees, just putting out tiny buds of foliage, beneath them the slanting crosses, the mounds.... The porch, and the beggars in it... the familiar smell of incense....
The church and the birch trees are still there.
Vadim Petrovich seems to see their fretted green against the blue.... Beneath one of them—the fifth from the corner of the church—his mother has long lain, her grave surrounded by a railing.
Three years before, the old sexton had written to Vadim Petrovich that the railing was broken, and the wooden cross had rotted.... And now he suddenly remembered, with profound remorse, that he had never replied to this letter.
The dear face, the kind hands, the voice waking him in the morning and filling his whole day with joy.... Her love for every hair and scratch on his body.... He knew that whatever his grief, she would be able to drown it in her love.
And now all this lay mute beneath the mound under the birch tree—part of the earth itself.
Vadim Petrovich put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands.
Long years passed.
It always seemed as if it only needed one more effort, and he would again wake up with a joyful heart on such a blue morning.
The two Chinese under their umbrellas would lead him across the humpy bridge into the pagoda with the raised roof. And there a being inexpressibly near and dear awaited him....
"My native land," thought Vadim Petrovich, and once more remembered the "troika" galloping through the village.
"Russia... that which was once Russia. There's nothing left of it, and it will never come again. The little boy in the sateen shirt has become a murderer."
He rose quickly, his hands folded at his back, and began pacing the grass, pulling at the joints of his fingers till they cracked.
His thoughts had carried him back to places on which he had believed the door had finally banged.
He had been sure he was going to his death.... And he had not died.... How simple it would have been to lie in some gully in the steppe, covered with flies....
"Ah, well," he thought, "death is easy, it's living that's hard.... And it is the duty of each of us to give our dying native land not just a mere bag of flesh and bones, but all the years which lie behind us, our affections, our hopes, the Chinese pagoda, and all our purity...."
He groaned, and then looked round sharply to see if anybody could have heard him.
But the children's voices were still singing as before, pigeons were cooing on a rusty cornice.... Hurriedly, almost furtively, he recalled yet another moment of intolerable pity. (He had never reminded Katya of it.) It had been a year ago, in Moscow. Roshchin had discovered at the station that Ekaterina Dmitrevna's husband had just been buried that day, and that she was now alone—quite alone.
He had gone to her in the twilight, the servant had told him she was asleep, and he had decided to wait in the drawing room.
The servant had come to him there, telling him that Ekaterina Dmitrevna was crying all the time:
"Lying on her bed with her face turned to the wall, and weeping like a child —we had to shut the kitchen door, we couldn't bear it." He had made up his mind to wait all night if necessary, sitting on the sofa and listening to the distant ticking of a clock, which was bearing away time, ticking off the ruthless, inexorable seconds gradually planting wrinkles on the beloved face, silvering the hair.... It seemed to Roshchin that Katya, if she was not asleep, must be lying listening to the clock and thinking the same thoughts.
Then he had heard her footsteps, feeble and uncertain, as if one of the heels of her slippers had turned under.
She was" walking about the bedroom, whispering to herself.
Then she stood a long time motionless.
Roshchin began to be afraid, as if he could penetrate through the wall into Katya's thoughts.
The door creaked, and she came into the dining room, and opened a door in the sideboard, making the glasses jingle.
Roshchin went taut, ready to rush to her.
She opened the door a crack.
"Is that you, Liza?"
She was wearing a camel-hair dressing gown and had a wineglass in one hand, and a wretched little phial in the other. She had intended by this means to get rid of her grief, her loneliness, to escape from inexorable time, from everything.... Her drawn, grey-eyed face was like that of a deserted child. It was she who needed to be taken into the Chinese pagoda....
Vadim Petrovich had said to her then:
"My whole life is at your disposal." And she had believed him, she had believed that all her loneliness, all the rest of the years of her life would be dissolved in his pity, his love....
Ah, God, ah, God!
He had known all along that Katya had never left him for a moment—not even when hatred had pressed upon his skull like a leaden ring, not even in that terrible month of battle.
Like a wraith, spreading its arms wide, praying wordlessly, she had barred his way, and he, hoarse from frantic shouting, had thrust his bayonet into the Red Army coat, right through the inexorable wraith, and then taken off his cap to wipe the blade....