WHAT A REAL joy it is to tell stories to a paralyzed person! Healthy people are so unreliable; they look at things, now from one viewpoint, now from another, and after you’ve been walking with them for an hour and they’ve always been to the right of you, they sometimes answer you from the left all of a sudden, merely because it occurs to them that it’s more polite and shows better breeding. With a paralyzed man one need have no fear of that. His immobility makes him resemble inanimate objects, with which he actually has many cordial relationships; it makes him, so to speak, an object far superior to all the rest, an object that not only listens with its taciturnity, but also with its very few, quiet phrases and with its gentle, respectful feelings.
I like best of all to tell stories to my friend Ewald. And I was very happy when he called to me from his daily window: “I must ask you something.”
I walked over to him quickly and said hello. “What is the source of the story you told me recently?” he finally asked. “Did it come from a book?” “Yes,” I replied sadly, “the scholars have buried it in one ever since it died, which isn’t very long ago. A hundred years ago it was still alive, and certainly quite carefree, on many lips. But the words that people now use, these heavy words that are hard to sing to, were hostile to it and stole one mouth after another from it, so that finally it lived on, but very withdrawn and impoverished, only on a few dry lips, as if on a poor widow’s farm. There it also died, without leaving any descendants, and, as I mentioned, was buried with all honors in a book, where others of its lineage already lay.” “And was it very old when it died?” my friend asked, picking up my metaphor. “Four or five hundred years old,” I reported truthfully; “several of its relatives have attained an immeasurably greater age.” “What, without ever reposing in a book?” Ewald asked in surprise. I explained: “As far as I know, they were journeying from mouth to mouth the whole time.” “And they never slept?” “Oh, yes; arising from the lips of the singer, they surely remained occasionally in someone’s heart, where it was warm and dark.” “Then, were people so tranquil that songs could sleep in their hearts?” Ewald seemed quite incredulous to me. “It must have been that way. It’s claimed that they spoke less, performed slowly accelerating dances that had a cradling motion, and above all, didn’t laugh loudly the way you can often hear people do today despite our universally loftier social graces.”
Ewald prepared himself to ask another question, but he repressed it and said with a smile: “I keep on asking things—but perhaps you have a story in mind?” He looked at me expectantly.
“A story? I don’t know. I merely wanted to say: Those songs were the heirlooms in certain families. That inherited property had been received and handed down again, not quite as good as new, showing the traces of daily use, but nevertheless undamaged, just as an old Bible, let’s say, goes from forefather to grandchild. The man without inheritance differed from his siblings who had received their rightful due in that he couldn’t sing, or else at least he knew only a small part of his father’s and grandfather’s songs, and, losing the rest of the songs, he lost that large segment of experience which all those byliny and skazki mean to the people. And so, for example, Yegor Timofeievich had married a young, beautiful woman against the wishes of his father, old Timofei, and had moved with her to Kiev, the holy city, in which the tombs of the great martyrs of the holy orthodox church have gathered. His father Timofei, who was reputed to be the most knowledgeable singer in a radius of ten days’ journey, cursed his son and told his neighbors that he was often convinced that he had never had one. All the same, he grew mute in his grief and sorrow. And he rejected all the young men who crowded into his hut in order to fall heir to the many songs that were shut away in the old man, as in a dust-covered violin. ‘Father, little father of ours, just give us one song or another. You see, we’ll take it to the villages, and you’ll hear it from every courtyard as soon as evening comes and the cattle have become quiet in their stables.’ The old man, who constantly sat on the heated platform, shook his head all day long. His hearing was no longer good, and since he didn’t know whether one of the lads who were now forever listening around his house had just made another request, he would signal no, no, no with his trembling white head until he fell asleep, and even kept doing it for a while in his sleep. He would gladly have done what the lads wanted; he himself was sorry that his mute, dead dust would lie upon these songs, perhaps very soon now. But if he had tried to teach one of them anything, it would surely have reminded him of his Yegorushka, and then, who knows what might have happened? Because it was only his perpetual silence that kept anyone from seeing him cry. Behind each word of his lay a sob, and he always had to shut his mouth very quickly and carefully to keep it from escaping at the same time.
“From early on, old Timofei had taught his only son, Yegor, a few songs, and when a boy of fifteen he was already able to sing more songs more correctly than any of the fully grown lads in the village or in its vicinity. All the same, the old man used to say to the lad, generally on holidays, when he was slightly drunk: ‘Yegorushka, my little dove, I’ve already taught you to sing many songs, many byliny, and also the legends of the saints, one for nearly every day. But, as you know, I’m the most knowledgeable in the whole guberniya,2 and my father knew every song in Russia, so to speak, and Tatar stories, besides. You’re still very young, and so I have not yet told you the best byliny, in which the words are like icons and can’t be compared with everyday words, and you have not yet learned how to sing those melodies which no one yet, be he a Cossack or a peasant, has ever been able to hear without weeping.’ Timofei would repeat this to his son on every Sunday and all the many feast days in the Russian calendar; that is, fairly often. Until, after a violent scene with the old man, the boy had vanished together with the beautiful Ustyonka, the daughter of a poor peasant.
“In the third year after that incident, Timofei fell ill, just at the time when one of those numerous bands of pilgrims which constantly converge on Kiev from all sections of the extensive empire was about to set out. Then the sick man’s neighbor Osip came to see him: ‘I’m leaving with the pilgrims, Timofei Ivanich; permit me to embrace you once again.’ Osip wasn’t friendly with the old man, but now that he was undertaking that distant journey, he felt it needful to take leave of him, as if of a father. ‘I’ve hurt your feelings at times,’ he sobbed; ‘forgive me, dear heart, it happened while I was drunk and no one can help that, as you know. Now, I’ll pray for you and light a candle for you; farewell, Timofei Ivanich, little father; perhaps you’ll get well again, if God wishes, then you’ll sing to us again. Yes, yes, it’s been a long time since you’ve sung. What songs those were! The one about Dyuk Stepanovich,3 for instance: do you think I’ve forgotten it? How foolish you are! I still know it all by heart. Of course, not like you; you really and truly knew it, I’ve got to say! God gave you that, to another man he gives other gifts. To me, for example—’
“The old man, who was lying on the heated platform, turned around with a groan and made a gesture as if he wanted to say something. It was as if the name of Yegor could be faintly heard. Perhaps he wanted to send him some news. But when his neighbor, already at the door, asked: ‘Did you say something, Timofei Ivanich?’ he was already lying there perfectly still and merely shaking his white head gently. Nevertheless, God knows how it happened, scarcely a year after Osip’s departure Yegor returned quite unexpectedly. The old man didn’t recognize him immediately because it was dark in the hut and his aged eyes didn’t easily accept a strange new figure. But after Timofei heard the stranger’s voice, he became alarmed and leaped off the heated platform onto his shaky old legs. Yegor caught him, and they hugged each other. Timofei was weeping. The young man kept on asking: ‘Have you been sick long, father?’ After the old man calmed down a bit, he crept back onto his heated platform and inquired, in a different, severe tone: ‘And your wife?’ A pause. Yegor spat out the words: ‘I’ve chased her away, you know, along with the child.’ He was silent for a while. ‘Osip came to see me once. “Osip Nikiforovich?” I said. “Yes,” he answered, “it’s me. Your father is sick, Yegor. He can’t sing anymore. It’s completely quiet in the village now, as if it had no more soul, our village. No one knocks, no one budges, no one cries anymore, and there’s no real reason for laughing, either.” I thought about it. What was to be done? So I called over my wife. “Ustyonka,” I said, “I must go home, no one else sings there anymore, it’s up to me. My father is sick.” “All right,” said Ustyonka. “But I can’t take you along,” I explained to her, “as you know, my father doesn’t want you. And I probably won’t come back to you, either, once I’m back there singing.” Ustyonka understood me: “Well, then, God go with you! There are many pilgrims here now, so people give lots of alms. God will help me, Yegor.” And so I left. And now, father, tell me all your songs!’
“Word got around that Yegor had returned and that old Timofei was singing again. But that autumn the wind blew so violently through the village that no passerby could ascertain with any assurance whether there was really singing in Timofei’s house or not. And the door wasn’t opened to anyone who knocked. The two men wanted to be alone. Yegor sat on the edge of the heated platform on which his father lay, and at times brought his ear right up to the old man’s lips; for he was indeed singing. His old voice, somewhat stooped and trembling, carried all the best songs over to Yegor, who often waved his head or moved his dangling feet, exactly as if he were already singing them himself. Things went on that way for many days. Timofei kept finding some even lovelier song in his memory; often he’d awaken his son at night and, while making indistinct gestures with his withered, twitching hands, he’d sing a short song and then another and yet another, until the lazy morning began to stir. Soon after the most beautiful one he died. In the last days he had frequently lamented that he still had a vast number of songs inside him and had no more time to impart them to his son. He lay there with furrowed brow, in strained, anxious thought, and his lips trembled with expectancy. From time to time he sat up, waved his head to and fro for a while, and moved his lips, and finally some quiet song was added to the sum; but now he generally kept repeating the same stanzas about Dyuk Stepanovich that were his special favorites, and his son had to act amazed, as if he were hearing them for the first time, to avoid getting him angry.
“After old Timofei Ivanich died, the house, in which Yegor now lived alone, still remained locked for a time. Then, in early spring, Yegor Timofeievich, who now had a fairly long beard, stepped out of his door and began to wander through the village singing. Afterward he visited the neighboring villages, too, and the peasants were already telling one another that Yegor had become a singer at least as knowledgeable as his father Timofei, for he knew a large number of religious and heroic songs and all those melodies which no one, be he a Cossack or a peasant, could hear without weeping. In addition, he was said to have a soft, sad tone that no other singer had yet possessed. And this tone was always to be heard, quite unexpectedly, in the refrains, which made him particularly effective emotionally. At least, that’s what I heard tell.”
“So he didn’t learn that tone from his father?” my friend Ewald asked after a while. “No,” I replied, “no one knows where he got it from.” After I had already stepped away from the window, the paralyzed man made another gesture and called after me: “Perhaps he was thinking about his wife and child. Besides, did he never send for them, seeing that his father was now dead?” “No, I don’t think so. At any rate, when he died afterward he was alone.”