The young man, in crossing his horizonless prison cell and after resting near the wall, had only to resolve on four more steps, and he felt: in the sole of one of his shoes there was some kind of surplus that caused him pain at every step. But, preoccupied with his anger and bitterness, he didn’t even wonder why

The narrow loophole of the ancient fortress (turned into a prison) that served as a window for his cell was not sufficient to light up the stone receptacle, but that made the brightness outside all the more blinding and objects in the outside world stood out all the more. Reaching into a crack, Laurence contrived to lift himself up and have a look, and the snow-covered mountains, the mountains of his fatherland that erased the horizon to the north-northeast, were just as near and obtrusive as if Laurence were looking at them from his native village. But now their sight did not instill joy, nor did it leave him indifferent. They oppressed him, with no respite, and Laurence, ostensibly self-contained, walled off from the world, but in reality, one who had not escaped that same old familiar, boring world, one chained to the mountains, surmised that in prison his last hope for redemption had been lost. At last he understood how small and intolerably cramped was the castle prepared for him

And Laurence decided he would make no attempt to get out and therefore would never leave from this time forth. Court and executioner were of no account. Life had been traversed, and death was already present in light puffy clouds. Redemptive death would lead him away into a dungeon without sleep, sun, and air

The young man played mechanically with the shackles that weighed down his legs and it seemed to him that it wasn’t the first time he had reckoned up the links. But when was that? And, stepping back from one day to another in which, once he had reviewed a life that had not touched him at all, had indifferently passed by Ivlita’s infidelity, Basilisk’s perfidy, the mercenary Galaction, and the traitor Luke, always searching for the origin of these chains, Laurence finally recalled them ornamenting the spine and entwining the neck of Brother Mocius that evening. When the monk was flying from the precipice, the iron was disentangled and left shining on the riverbank. Wasn’t Laurence, crouched down, worrying the chains just so, demanding from them the story of the man who had worn them voluntarily

It wasn’t worth digging out: memories were just memories, for Laurence was still alive, but his mind was already dead. The penitential chains provoked neither revulsion nor fear; after all, he, too, had donned them of his own free will. They clanked, and that was all

Laurence tried standing up and again felt pain in the sole of his foot. He decided to take off his shoe. The sole was hard, thick, hiding something. Laurence tore the shoe apart, split the sole, and noticed there was a saw sewn into it

What could this mean? And no matter how much his mind had deserted him, Laurence still guessed the saw had been sewn in on purpose, someone had slipped him the shoes while he was being admitted to the prison so he could save himself, some unknown admirers were trying to help him, and betrayed by all, he was, nevertheless, not alone. And new might surged from somewhere, new resolve and hope. And hadn’t he, all his life, sawn just like this through trunks and boards in his native village, hadn’t the fine steel always destroyed chestnuts and pines, as it did now government iron? The work was done. A break until tomorrow. To run as soon as possible to freedom

The prison walls ceased not just to be formidable, but even sound. It turned out the frame around the loophole had been carefully loosened by someone and it didn’t take much effort to push the stones out. Soon, the opening was so wide he could stick not just his head through, but also his shoulders

Down below, beneath the fortress, ran the river that, making its way from the paradisiacal valley and the village with the sawmill, became muddier and stouter. But no matter how troubled its waters suffering shortness of breath, the bottom was visible, and on the bottom some drowned man lay prone, surrounded by fish

“Can it really be Brother Mocius, yet again?” Laurence flared up. “If so, the monk is positively starting to meddle too much. Well, it doesn’t matter, I spared him in the cathedral, today I’ll get rid of him once and for all.” And Laurence, crimson with rage, applied himself and, pushing more stones out, flew headlong with them into the river

When he had disappeared beneath the water, the swimmer opened his eyes. Fish were hurtling past in schools and looked especially huge through the emerald water, changing color and position every second, meeting together, circling, chasing one another, tumbling, and vanishing. In an eddy of sand and silt, turning now into trees, now into beasts’ muzzles, now to ice and fog, they hurtled by. Sometimes a crayfish claw would butt in, threatening the swimmer

Several times, drowned people who had not lost their human image slid above Laurence. But whether Brother Mocius was among them, there was no chance of saying. Fighting the current, and not wanting to rise to the surface, Laurence dove deeper and deeper, suffocating, groping around and frightening hosts of fish

And the desire to pursue the monk unexpectedly disappeared, the search lost all meaning, and Laurence realized that not just his mind, but all of him was dying, there was no need to search when in death was everything, nothing to avenge when death is life without offense. And he sensed that, deceased, he was floating upward, escorted by fish, to the surface of another world and the unbearable lightness of eternal appeasement. But the fish drew back, the wind burst into his lungs, and the still unfinished day broke over his eyes. A shot, it seems. That means they’ve noticed the flight. Need to escape. Good thing the wooded bank across from the castle is close and reaching it won’t be any trouble

First thing is shaking the guards from the trail and changing this prison garb for something passable. But, once he crawled onto the bank, the young man noticed that dusk was near. Let them follow. But which way should he get going? What kind of welcome was waiting in the first village?

Laurence’s deliberations were interrupted by the sudden appearance of an unfamiliar villager who stepped out of the bushes. Laurence was ready to pounce on the stranger, but then he, waving his arms, cried out: “Don’t be afraid, I’m one of yours, I have everything ready for you to change clothes.” The villager untied a package. There really was clothing in it. In a minute, Laurence was transformed. Taking his hand, the villager hurriedly led him into the thicket, and after they’d passed through, took off running along the edge of the forest

Laurence had not yet had time to ask who his savior was and what this story in the spirit of what Basilisk meant when they reached some structures standing not far from the bank that resembled an inn and stables

His conductor entered one of the houses with the bandit and, saying nothing to his landsmen who were in the room, invited Laurence to sit at a table, wonderfully set, and fortify himself

“Hurry up,” said the stranger. “The horse is ready, but the gendarmes won’t be on foot, either, and you’d best keep them at a respectable distance. What can you do?” he added, as if justifying himself. “Everyone has to work. We’ve organized a concern to arrange escapes from the fortress. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Yours came off quite well. But when you’re home, don’t be stingy settling accounts with our emissary. The police, naturally, suspect some enterprising dispensation, but for now, they don’t have enough evidence, and we give them the fattest bribes we can, so they don’t keep us from earning our milk money. Well, get flying. Here’s a weapon, just in case. And as for the way…”

And the stranger furnished the necessary information in brief

When Laurence had left, his hosts gathered peacefully together and, watching some mutton turn on a spit, waited for the gendarmes until midnight. But there was no pursuit

Laurence, when, toward morning, he had covered half the way separating him from the mountains, ran into a crowd of peasants (whether they were participants in the enterprise or simply fans, he couldn’t tell) who warned him it wasn’t safe to show his face in the nearest settlement and showed him a detour. He got a fresh horse from them and continued his flight

Why, for the third time, was he fighting his way back to the village where he had been betrayed and abandoned by everyone? What magnet drew him, despite all the prisons and his own resolutions, into the mountains, not permitting him to die in a foreign land? And although the question answered itself, Laurence pored over it for a long time, assuring himself that he was mistaken—altogether, as he said, not for that reason. But to the extent that his native ground came closer, he resisted less, and was obliged at last to admit that, no matter how hard he tried to think about something else, he was being pulled toward Ivlita

He was dying, so be it, but she must die with him. And no matter how distasteful it was for Laurence to note that he was moved by desire for revenge on a woman, and although he considered himself guilty for entering into her confidence and silly for plunging into so many affairs on account of a moll—and not just himself, the surrounding world and way of life were also to blame—the desire to settle accounts, to kill her, got the upper hand over all other considerations. And why the hell, he added, bestow meaning on seaweed, on his memories of Brother Mocius, and exaggerate Ivlita’s role? A whore, that’s all there was to it; a whore like all the others. But she’d get what she deserved, and the past would be wiped out with her

And to reinforce the threat, Laurence reached for his pistol. But he had only to touch his gun and Ivlita rose up before him, soaring aloft over the road and stretching her arms out toward him, in her superhuman glory, in her beauty, for the sake of which you could accept any humiliation, suffer every kind of want. And the young man bowed his head and let his arms fall to his sides. Letting go of the bridle, not noticing that the horse was going along at a walk, he was ready to weep in self pity

Such lack of will? Was he a bandit, or not? Honor, dignity—did these words still mean anything, or had they been hollowed out for all time? And had the name of Laurence really lost its shock music? So fainthearted before a whore? Laurence jerked the gun up and shot. But Ivlita melted away

No matter, he would find her there, in the hamlet. And the bandit gave his horse free rein to gallop, annoyed at wasting a bullet. As he approached his native village, he drank in the surroundings and once more acquired powers that would have no end

The sun had already spurned the hills, but the colors of sunset, splayed across the humid sky, two-thirds in cloud cover, and whirling in the air with the dead leaves, made the landscape soothing to the point of irritation. The shepherds’ whistles and the bleating of goats descending from the pastures and intersecting, here and there, the road, channeling toward the villages, and the scent of fermenting corn spoke of an end to long and pointless tumult. From the forest that clothed the slopes of the nearby mountains, implacable, spotted with evergreens scattered among legions of beeches, the fogs flowed in streams, and the wind, evenly and lovingly, used them to cover the trees that had begun shivering. To keep his horse from slowing its pace, he had to spur and whip it every minute, but it insisted on its own way, as though considering it unseemly to gallop in the midst of this autumnal calm

The village with the sawmill was as familiar and ordinary as if Arcady, who had left the evening before, had never been quartered there. Despite the late hour, the whine of saws reached him from the mill: overtime before the winter break. The cattle, reluctantly yielding the path to the rider, the sound of little bells, the cackling of hens. In front of the taverns and the village hall a multitude of people, hurrying to talk their fill before the snows. They’re beating tambourines and dancing

Spattering mud, dismounting and jumping back into the saddle at a gallop, peppering the air with bullets, Laurence hurtled past the gaping mouths of his fellow villagers. He was already far away when the people began exclaiming in response and the musicians, who had pulled up short, began playing a welcome; he didn’t see the tavern keepers dragging skins onto the street and filling every jug gratis, and he didn’t take part in the drinking celebration, the first since their liberation from the soldiers, with which the peasants rewarded themselves in plenty for what they had lived through. But the accordion’s notes slid along behind the rider for a long time, and now and then, scaring them off, a lone clarinetist overstrained his instrument

Today Laurence could have tasted the delights of the reception he had been dreaming of. But there wasn’t time

The path to the hamlet was too steep and winding. The horse couldn’t go any farther. This played in Laurence’s favor. “The gendarmes won’t be able to ride through, either,” he thought, “and on foot, can they really catch a highlander?” And, abandoning the horse, he ran, despite the slippery needles and the boughs and the acclivity, through the woods with the swiftness of a deer and was soon on the breakpoint to the other slope

Night was ready to step in at any moment and, it seemed, was only waiting for a long and fanciful pink cloud in the sky to dim. It smelled of moss and mushrooms. There was no wind, and even the red squirrels didn’t shake the oak branches. Traveling along the western slope was much more difficult, he ended up sliding down every ten steps. Beyond the forest, on the grassy escarpment, keeping a foothold was inconceivable. Laurence tripped and went flying downhill. Here he is down below. The glade was spangled with fireflies, and the lights of the unpronounceable hamlet melted among the numberless stars. Above, the constellations, swelling with damp, differed in no way from the insects and conducted the same silent chorus. Neither birds (become altogether extinct), nor jingling bells, nor a stream to trouble the bottomless silence. And all of a sudden a rumbling hum that made the abyss still more apparent reached Laurence, something the young man had heard many times before, but had remained deaf to until now. The cretins were singing

How much Laurence had been dreaming during these last days about a return to the good life, lost through carelessness, but it had never occurred to him that he would have to return, no matter what, and that the good life was death. But now the meaningless, lifeless, useless sounds had touched the bandit and it became clear (why, however, so late) that only behind these nonhuman sounds was hidden a happiness he had stubbornly sought away from home. Why, horrified (who cares about the rules of singing, were they really worth happiness?), did Laurence then, on the morning after Luke’s murder, abandon the cretins’ salvific stable? To return to them. To remain near them forever

The young man became suddenly alert. Shots, it seems. Most likely, the chase. Yes, and the cretins have gone silent. It’s late to be dreaming of happiness

And Laurence ran off to Ivlita’s house. Before the guard ran him down, everything would be over. He was about to break the door wide open with a blow when it opened on its own, and a woman, in whom he immediately recognized the wenny’s eldest daughter, sprang up from the threshold and grasped the bandit’s shoulder: “Quiet,” she whispered loudly, “She’s not well, she’s been in labor two days and can’t be delivered”

Laurence pushed the beldam out of the way and burst into the house. But when he saw a bed in its depths and was engulfed in groans, he paused, not daring to move. Giving birth? Could he kill both? Let the mother perish, but his offspring?

“Get out, don’t you see?” the wenny daughter pressed him, shoving him into the next room. Feeling for his pistol, Laurence paced from one corner to another, stopping now and then to listen

The silence wasn’t broken from outside. Time was passing. “Where are my pursuers, why are they dillydallying?” Laurence asked. Are they wondering how to behave? Or are they surrounding the house so they can propose surrender?…A futile business. That would cost them dearly. Should, however, determine what the problem is. Laurence went up to the attic and pulled himself onto the roof. No one. Evidently, the guard had decided to put off an attack until morning in order to avoid pointless shootouts. Most likely

Night wheeled slowly and wearyingly. The distant howling of wolves and growling of bears, still performing their weddings somewhere, could be heard for a minute without even provoking a bark from the village dogs, and then dissipated forever. Nothing except Ivlita’s groans. Not one window, not a heavenly body shining. But in that blind and speechless night, something swelled, rotated, accumulated, the air had already become heavier, weighing down on his breast like lead. Why don’t they kill? Are they creeping up?

And when the tension approached its highest point and, grasping his pistol, Laurence was prepared to shoot and shoot wherever his gun pointed, snow suddenly came down. Large flakes rapidly piled up, not melting, and now the barbed mountains they emphasized emerged from the hideous night, the sides of the dale covered in forest and patched in places by cliffs, the miserable creek, the few sleeping chimneys scattered on the glade, and right close up, Laurence’s hand, still extended, the ill-suited pistol already dropped

“Why isn’t Ivlita groaning anymore?” Laurence recollected and decided to go down. But his body refused to obey. He got to the stairs, couldn’t bear up, and tumbled down. Was he really dying, and Ivlita would remain alive? Convulsively scratching the floor, Laurence made it, crawling, to the bedroom. The door opened part way with a lament

Next to the bed, feebly colored by a candle, the beldam was puttering about. The door made the wenny daughter turn her head. But Laurence no longer thought to interrogate her. A most lightsome smoke was emanating from the corner, and in the smoke swayed two trees—they were blossoming, but without leaves, they filled the room, leaning lovingly toward the fallen man, rendering him into rapture, and the words “the infant is dead, too” resounded far, far away from Laurence, a needless echo