Chapter 37

September 3rd.

The reason why I did not finish my last letter, Makar
Alexievitch, was that I found it so difficult to write. There are
moments when I am glad to be alone--to grieve and repine without
any one to share my sorrow: and those moments are beginning to
come upon me with ever-increasing frequency. Always in my
reminiscences I find something which is inexplicable, yet
strongly attractive-so much so that for hours together I remain
insensible to my surroundings, oblivious of reality. Indeed, in
my present life there is not a single impression that I
encounter--pleasant or the reverse-- which does not recall to my
mind something of a similar nature in the past. More particularly
is this the case with regard to my childhood, my golden
childhood. Yet such moments always leave me depressed. They
render me weak, and exhaust my powers of fancy; with the result
that my health, already not good, grows steadily worse.

However, this morning it is a fine, fresh, cloudless day, such as
we seldom get in autumn. The air has revived me and I greet it
with joy. Yet to think that already the fall of the year has
come! How I used to love the country in autumn! Then but a child,
I was yet a sensitive being who loved autumn evenings better than
autumn mornings. I remember how beside our house, at the foot of
a hill, there lay a large pond, and how the pond--I can see it
even now!--shone with a broad, level surface that was as clear as
crystal. On still evenings this pond would be at rest, and not a
rustle would disturb the trees which grew on its banks and
overhung the motionless expanse of water. How fresh it used to
seem, yet how cold! The dew would be falling upon the turf,
lights would be beginning to shine forth from the huts on the
pond's margin, and the cattle would be wending their way home.
Then quietly I would slip out of the house to look at my beloved
pond, and forget myself in contemplation. Here and there a
fisherman's bundle of brushwood would be burning at the water's
edge, and sending its light far and wide over the surface. Above,
the sky would be of a cold blue colour, save for a fringe of
flame-coloured streaks on the horizon that kept turning ever
paler and paler; and when the moon had come out there would be
wafted through the limpid air the sounds of a frightened bird
fluttering, of a bulrush rubbing against its fellows in the
gentle breeze, and of a fish rising with a splash. Over the dark
water there would gather a thin, transparent mist; and though, in
the distance, night would be looming, and seemingly enveloping
the entire horizon, everything closer at hand would be standing
out as though shaped with a chisel--banks, boats, little islands,
and all. Beside the