570
PARTISAN REVIEW
the stream and he found the loner already dead, suffocated by his own
green vomit. The vomit was compact and dry, it had settled into a paste
around the loner's mouth, and white small-caliber worms were at work in
it.
At night Zakhar Pavlovich woke up and listened to rain-the second
rain since April. "That would have given the loner a surprise," he thought.
But the loner was soaking alone in the torrents that poured evenly from
the sky, and was quietly swelling up.
Through the sleepy, windless rain something sang out sadly, in a muf–
fled voice, from so far away that there was probably no rain where it was
singing, and it was probably day. Zakhar Pavlovich immediately forgot the
loner, and the rain, and hunger, and got up. It was the whistle of a distant
machine, a living, working steam engine. Zakhar Pavlovich went outside
and stood in the damp of the warm rain that sang of a peaceful life, of the
vastness of the long-lasting earth. The dark trees were dozing, squatting
down, embraced by the caress of the calm rain; they felt so happy that it
made them weak and they rustled their branches without the least wind.
Zakhar Pavlovich paid no attention to the joy of nature; what excited
him was the unknown, now-silent engine. As he lay down to sleep again,
he thought how even the rain was at work, while hejust slept and hid away
in the forest to no purpose: "The loner's died, and you'll die too. He never
made one thing in all his life-all he ever did was size things up and try to
fit in; he wondered at everything; he saw marvels in the simplest places and
never turned his hand to anything in case he spoiled it; all he did was pick
mushrooms and he didn't even know how to do that, and now he's dead,
and he never harmed nature in any way."
In the morning there was a big sun and the forest sang with all the
density of its voice, letting the morning wind pass beneath its underleaves.
What Zakhar Pavlovich noticed was not so much morning as a change of
shift: the rain had gone to sleep in the soil, the sun had taken its place, and
now the wind had begun to fuss about because of the sun, the trees were
dishevelled, grasses and bushes had begun to mutter and even the rain
itself, without having had any rest, was getting back onto its feet again,
aroused by the tickling warmth, and gathering its body into clouds.
Zakhar Pavlovich put his wooden objects into a sack-as many as
would fit in it-and set off into the distance, along the women's mush–
room path. He did not look at the loner: the dead are not appealing.
Translated from the Russian
by
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
