At night, tossing and turning sleeplessly on the soft down, he thought about things. He imagined the town, the streets, the izbas, the Golubchiks. In his head he went over all the faces he knew. Ivan Beefich-does he have a book? But he doesn't even know his letters. How could that be: the Golubchik doesn't know how to read, but he has a book? Does it happen? Yes, it happens. He uses it instead of a soup top… Or to press marshrooms into a salting barrel… He was filled with bad blood, he thought bad things about Ivan Beefich. Should he try a confiscation?… Ivan Beefich doesn't have any legs, his feet come right out of his underarms. You need a short hook here, with a thick handle. But Ivan Beefich does have strong hands. So a short one won't do…
Yaroslav. Should he check out Yaroslav? They studied letters together, and counting… If he hid something, he wouldn't admit it. He thought about Yaroslav. He could see him going into the izba, bolting the door. Yaroslav looked around. He walked over to the window on tiptoe, pulled the bladder back: was anyone looking? Now to the stove… He stuck a candle in there to light it… Now to the bed… He turned around again, like he'd felt something. He stood there for a minute… He bent over to pull a box out from under the bed… He rifles around in the box for a while, fumbling… shifts something from one hand into the other… Benedikt tensed, he could see it like it was really happening. Only it was kind of see-through, transparent-the candle nickered and crackled straight through Yaroslav, as though he was hanging there in the twilight air like a sleepy shadow, rummaging and rummaging: his see-through back covered with a homespun shirt, his transparent shoulder blades moving back and forth: he was looking for something; his vertebrae moved like shadowy bumps along his spine…
Benedikt looked into the darkness with eyes wide open. It was just darkness, there was nothing in it, right? But no, there was Yaroslav, and he'd gotten so stuck that he wouldn't come unstuck! You toss and turn on the pillows, or get up to smoke, or to go to the privy, or somewhere else-and there he is. Yaroslav, Yaroslav… You tell yourself: Don't think about Yaroslav! I don't know anything about him! But no, how can you say that, I mean, there's his back, there he is, rummaging… You pass the night without sleep, you get up, gloomy as a storm cloud. Nothing at breakfast seems tasty, everything's wrong somehow… You take a bite and drop it: it's not right, not right… You blurt out: Maybe we should check Yaroslav?… Father-in-law isn't pleased, he scrapes the floor, his eyes reproach you: always obsessed with trivia, son, always avoiding the most important things…
By summer Benedikt's hook flew like a bird. Yaroslav was checked-and nothing was found; Rudolf, Myrtle, Cecilia Al-bertovna, Trofim, Shalva-nothing; Jacob, Vampire, Mikhail, another Mikhail, Lame Lyalya, Eustachius-nothing. He bought Brades's Tables at the market-just numbers. He'd like to catch that Brades, and stuff his head in a barrel.
No one around. Nothing. Only a leap year blizzard in his heart: it slips and sticks, sticks and slips, and the blizzard hums, like distant, unhappy voices-they wail softly, complain, but all without words. Or like in the steppe-hear it?-hands outstretched, they shuffle along on all sides. The Broken Ones shuffle along; there they are heading in all directions, though there aren't any directions for them; they've gone astray and there's no one to tell, and if there were, if they met a real live person, he wouldn't feel sorry for them, he doesn't need them. And they wouldn't recognize him, they don't even recognize themselves.
"Nikolai!… We're going to the pushkin!"
A damp blizzard had thrown a heap of snow on the pushkin's hunched head and shoulders and the crook of his arm, as though he'd been crawling around other people's izbas, filching things from their closets, taking whatever he could find-and what he found was a sorry sight, all frayed, just rags-and he had crawled out of the room, clasping the rags to his chest. Molder-ing hay was falling from his head; it kept falling.
Well then, brother pushkin? You probably felt the same way, didn't you? You probably tossed and turned at night, walked with heavy legs over scraped floors, oppressed by your thoughts?
Did you, too, hitch the fastest steed to the sleigh and ride gloomily with no destination across the snowy fields, listening to the clatter of the lonely sleigh bells, the drawn-out song of the courier?
Did you, too, conjure the past, fear the future?
Did you rise higher than the column?-and while you rose, while you saw yourself weak and threatening, pitiful and triumphant, while you looked for what we are all looking for-the white bird, the main book, the road to the sea-did your dung heap Terenty Petrovich drop in on your wife, the bootlicker, mocker, helpful wheeler-dealer? Did his lewd, empty talk burble through the rooms? Did he tempt with wondrous marvels? "You know, Olga Kudeyarovna, there's a place I know… Underground guzzelean water… Just toss in a match, and fuckin' A, we'll go up in smoke. Kaboom! Would you care to?"… Let's soar above the sands!
Tell me, pushkin! How should I live? I hacked you out of a dumb log all by myself, bent your head, bent your elbow so you would cross your chest and listen to your heart: What has passed? What is yet to come? Without me you would be an eyeless chunk, an empty log, a nameless tree in the forest; you'd rustle in the wind in spring, drop your acorns in fall, creak in winter: no one would know about you! Without me-you wouldn't be here! "Who was it, with iniquitous power, called me forth from nothingness?" It was me, I called you! I did!
It's true, you came out a little crooked, the back of your head is flat, your fingers aren't quite right, and you don't have any legs. I can see that for myself, I understand carpentry.
But you're who you are, be patient, my child-you're the same as us, no different!
You're our be all and end all and we're yours, and there's no one else! No one! Help me!
YERY
"Give me the book," whined Benedikt. "Don't try to jew me out of it, give me the book!"
Nikita Ivanich looked at Lev Lvovich of the Dissidents. Lev Lvovich of the Dissidents looked out the window. It was a summer's eve, still light, the bladder off the window-you could see far, far away.
"It's too soon!" said Nikita Ivanich.
"Soon for what? The sun is already setting."
"Too early for you. You don't know the ABCs yet. You're uncivilized."
"Steppe and nothing else… as far as the eye can see… And neither fish nor fowl…" said Lev Lvovich through his teeth.
"What do you mean, I don't know them?" answered Benedikt in amazement. "Me? Why, I… I… Why… Do you know how many books I've read? How many I've copied?"
"It doesn't matter if it's a thousand."
"It's more than that!"
"Even if it's a thousand, it hardly matters. You don't really know how to read, books are of no use to you. They're just empty page-turning, a collection of letters. You haven't learned the alphabet of life. Of life, do you hear me?"
Benedikt was flabbergasted. He didn't know what to say. To be told such a bold-faced lie straight out like that. Nikita Ivanich might as well have said: You're not you, you're not Benedikt, and you aren't living on this earth, and… and… and I don't know what.
"You already said that… What do you mean I don't know? The alphabet… There's Az… Slovo… Myslete… Fert."
"There's Fert, but there's Theta, and Yat, and Izhitsa, there are concepts inaccessible to you: sensitivity, compassion, generosity…"
"The rights of individuals," piped up Lev Lvovich of the Dissidents.
"Honesty, justice, spiritual insight…"
"Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association," added Lev Lvovich.