INTERMEZZO by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky

translation from Ukrainian

Dedicated to the fields of Kononivka

Characters:

My weariness.

Fields in June.

The sun.

Three white shepherd dogs.

Cuckoo.

Larks.

The iron hand of the city.

Human grief.

Only packing remained… It was one of those numerous “have to” that left me so tired and sleepless. It doesn’t matter if this “have to” is big or small, what matters is that each time it demands attention, that it’s not me who controls it, but it takes control over me. In fact, you become a slave of this multi-headed beast. If only I could break free from it, at least for some time, forget, have rest. I’m tired.

Because life is coming at me unceasingly and relentlessly, like a wave to the shore. And it’s not only my life, it’s the life of others too. But, in the end, do I know where my life ends and someone else’s begins? I feel the existence of other people entering mine, like air enters through doors and windows, like waters of tributaries enter a river. I cannot avoid a human being. I cannot be, alone. I confess, I envy the planets — they’ve got their own orbits and nothing stands in their way. While in mine, everywhere and always, I meet a person.

Yes, you stand on my way and think that you are entitled to me. You are everywhere. It was you, who clothed the earth into stone and iron; this is you, who always breathes stench through windows of houses — thousands of black mouths. You scourge earth’s sacred silence with the grinding factories, rattling wheels, you pollute the air with dust and smoke, roar with pain, with happiness, anger. Like a beast. I meet your gaze everywhere; your eyes, curious, greedy, they crawl inside me and you in your variety of colours and forms get stuck in my eye. I cannot avoid you…I cannot be alone…Not only are you walking by my side, you are crawling inside me. You throw your suffering and pain, your broken hopes and despair into my heart, like it’s your own hiding place. You throw there your cruelty and your savage instincts. All the horror, all the dirt of your existence. What do you care if you torment me? You want to be my master, you want to take me…my hands, my mind, my will and my heart…You want to suck me dry, all of my blood, like a vampire. And you are doing this. I don’t live like I want to, I live like you tell me to in your countless “have to”, endless “must to”.

I’m tired.

People wore me down. I’m tired of being an inn for those screaming, fussing and littering creatures.

Open the windows! Let the fresh air in! Take out the trash together with those who leave it. Let cleanness and peace fill the house.

Who can console me with loneliness? Death?

Dream?

How I waited for them sometimes!

And when that beautiful brother of death took me with him, even there people were waiting for me. They entwined their existence with mine in a chimerical net, they tried to fill my ears and my heart with what they themselves were full of… Listen, you, listen! Have you brought your suffering to me even here? Your loathsomeness? My heart cannot hold any more. It is full to the brim. Leave me alone…

This is what happened at nights.

And during the day I was shaking with fear every time I felt a human shadow behind my back and was listening with disgust to the roaming floods of human life, rushing from all the city streets, like wild horses.

* * *

Full of human noise, the train was speeding. It seemed that the city was stretching its iron hand into the fields after me and wasn’t letting go. I was irritated by the uncertainty that trembled in me: would the hand release its iron fingers and let me go? Will I escape from this clamour and enter deserted green landscapes? Will the fingers clench behind me and will the iron hand be clanging its bones in vain? And will there be silence in and around me?

But when all of this happened, so effortlessly and unnoticed, I did not hear silence: it was broken by other people’s voices, petty, unnecessary words, like chips and straw in spring streams…

…One lady I know had a heart condition for fifteen years…cling-clang…cling-clang…That time our division was located at…cling-clang-clang… Where are you going?…Please show your tickets…. Cling-clang-clang…cling-clang-clang…

Some kind of green chaos was spinning around me and was grabbing the carriage by all wheels, there was so much sky that the eyes were drowning in it, like in a sea, and were looking for something to cling to. And they were helpless.

Finally we are home. White walls of the house help me regain consciousness. As soon as the carriage rolled into a wide green yard, a cuckoo started singing. Then, I suddenly heard a great silence. It filled out the whole yard, hid in the trees, lay down in deep azure terrains. It was so quiet that I felt ashamed of my pounding heart.

* * *

Ten black rooms filled with darkness to the brim. They are adjacent to my room. I close the door, as if scared that all the lamplight would leak out through the cracks. Here I am, alone. Not a soul around. It’s quiet and deserted, but I can hear something there, behind my wall. It bothers me. What is there?

I feel form and hardness of the furniture, flooded on the bottom of black darkness, and I hear squeaking of the wooden floors under the weight of furniture. Well, stand still, rest calmly. I don’t want to think about you. I’d better lie down. Turn off the lamp and drown in the black darkness myself. Maybe I will also turn into a soulless object that feels nothing, into “nothing”. It would be so good to become “nothing” — voiceless, motionless stillness. And yet there is something behind my wall. I know that if I entered the dark rooms like that and struck a match, everything would suddenly fall into place — chairs, sofas, windows and even cornices. Who knows, maybe my eye would manage to catch an image of people, pale, indistinct, as if from tapestries, all those who left their faces in mirrors, their voices in crevices and cracks, their forms in soft hair mattresses of furniture, and shadows on the walls. Who knows what’s going on where one cannot see…

Well, here! What nonsense. You wanted silence and solitude — and now you have it. You shake your head! Don’t you believe in solitude?

What do I know? Do I know…Can I be sure that the door will not open up…just a little, with a slight creak, and people will not start entering from the unknown darkness, so deep and endless… all those, who were putting their hopes, anger and suffering or bloody beastly cruelness into my heart, like it’s their own hideaway. All those, whom I cannot avoid, those who have made me tired…Would it be really strange if they came to me again… Here, I already see them. Oh my! There are so many of you… Here you are, those who lost your blood through a little hole from a soldier’s bullet, and you…dry remains; you were wrapped in white sacks, swung on ropes in the air, and then put in poorly covered pits, from where dogs dug you out…You look at me with reproach — and you are right. You know, I once read how all twelve of you were hanged…twelve of you…and I yawned. And the second time, I washed down the news about a row of white sacks with a ripe plum. Yes, you know, I took a delicious juicy plum…and felt a pleasant sweet taste in my mouth… You see, I don’t even blush, my face is white, just like yours, because the horror has drained out all of my blood. I no longer have a drop of hot blood even for those living dead among whom you walk, like a bloody mirage. Pass by! I am tired.

And the people keep on coming. They go one after the other, without end. Enemies and friends, close and distant — and they all scream in my ears with a cry of their life or their death, and all of them leave their footprints on my soul. I will cover my ears, lock my soul and will shout: the entrance is not free here!

…I open my eyes and suddenly see deep skies and birch branches in the windows. The cuckoo sings. It hits a huge crystal bell with a little hammer — koo-koo! koo-koo! — and sows silence in the grass. I suddenly imagine a green yard — it consumed my room already, — and I jump from the bed and call out to the cuckoo from the window: “koo-koo… koo-koo… Good day!..”

Ah, there’s so much of everything: the sky, the sun, cheerful greenery. I run to the yard. Iron chains clang and dogs bark fiercely over there. Big white shepherd dogs, like bears, jump on their hind legs and long shaggy wool jumps on them. I come closer. Well, come on, dog… what’s your name? Come on, Overko… He doesn’t hear, he doesn’t see. Red eyes, wide forehead and white furry legs are jumping. Absolutely fierce rage is struggling to break free from his deep throat and cannot, it just tosses a pile of wool. Come on, Overko. Why do your red eyes burn and melt fear with hatred together in a fire? I am not your enemy and I am not afraid of you. The worst you can do is tear off a piece of my body or make my leg bleed… Ah, what a trifle! What a trifle, if only you knew. Now then, get quiet dog, get quiet. Yes, I understand, the chain… Maybe you’re more angry with it than with me… Your front paws have to grab the air because of it, the chain chokes your throat and drives your fiery anger back into it. Wait a moment. You’ll be free now. What will you do to me then? Now, stand still, don’t move, wait till the chain is off… and now run free. Where are you going? Ha-ha! What a silly dog. Closed his eyes, turned his head to the side, put his feet together and ran blindly, senseless. He tears the grass with his claws, throws it away, and shaggy fur on his back catches up with him. Well, what about me? Have you forgotten about me?

Now runs in a circle… run in a circle…once more…like that. Oh, noble dog, for you freedom is more precious than satisfied anger.

Meanwhile I’m being introduced to Pava, a respectable mother, and her second son — the horrible Trepov. While Overko is a pure optimist and pounces on everything blindly, as if there’s always some pink fog hanging before his red eyes, Trepov is solemn, prudent. He will rip your throat out quite solemnly, as if deliberately, and there will be a lot of self-respect in his strong legs that will stand on your chest. Even when he lies calmly and nibbles fleas off his pink belly, cropped ears are listening carefully, wide forehead is thinking and his wet tongue hangs solemnly from his fanged mouth.

* * *

Now my days flow in the steppe, in the middle of a valley filled with green crops. Endless paths, hidden, intimate, as if they are for the closest only, lead me through the fields, green waves are rolling and rolling in the fields and splash them all the way to the edge of the sky. Now I have a separate world, it is like a pearl mussel shell: two halves have come together — one is green, the other is blue — and the sun is enclosed inside, like a pearl. And I wander there, inside of it, looking for peace. I am walking. A cloud of small flies rushes after me inexorably. I can think that I’m a planet moving together with satellites. I see how the blue sky was split in two by the black breathing wings of a crow. And because of this, the sky is bluer; the wings are blacker.

The sun is in the sky — I am in the fields. There’s no one around. I am walking. My hand strokes the sable fur of barley, the silk of spiky wave. Wind fills my ears with bits of sounds, tousled noise. The wind is so hot, so impatient, that it makes the silver oats boil. I go on — they are boiling. Flax flows quietly in blue rivers. It’s so quiet, so peaceful in the green shores, that you want to get on a boat and swim. Further on, the barley bends and weaves…it weaves a green hazy veil of thin bristles. I’m going further. Everything weaves, stirring the haze. Paths run deep in the rye, like snakes, the eye does not see them, the foot itself catches them. Cornflowers look at the sky. They wanted to be like the sky and became like the sky. Further on, there’s wheat. A hard, thornless spike hits the hands, and the stem climbs under the feet. I go on — more and more wheat. When will it end? It runs after the wind, like a herd of foxes, their wavy backs glisten in the sun. And I keep walking, lonely on earth, like the sun in the sky, and I’m so pleased that the shadow of someone else will not fall between us. Breaking waves of the spiky sea run through me somewhere into the unknown.

In the end I stop. White foam of blooming buckwheat, fragrant, light, as if whipped by the wings of bees, stops me. Right under my feet a playing harp lay down and hums with all its strings. I stand and listen.

My ears are full of that strange noise of the field, that rustling of silk, that ceaseless, like flowing water, pouring grain. And my eyes are full of sun’s radiance, because each stem takes the sunshine in and reflects it back.

Suddenly everything goes out, dies. I shudder. What’s happened? Where? A shadow? Is there really someone else? No, it’s only a cloud. A tiny moment of dark grief, and in an instant — a smile to the right, a smile to the left — and the golden field waved its wings to the edges of the blue sky. As if it wanted to take off. Only then did its immensity, its warm, living, invincible might stand before me. Oats, wheat, barley — everything merged into one powerful wave; it drowns everything, takes everything captive. Young strength trembles and tears out from every vein of the stem; hope and that great desire, called fertility, are bubbling in the juices. I only now see the village — a needy pile of thatched roofs. It is barely noticeable. It is hugged and squeezed by the green hands that stretched out to the very houses. The village got entangled in the field, like a fly in the spiderweb. What do those huts mean to that force? Nothing. Green waves will meet pouring over them and will devour them. What does a person mean to them? Nothing. A small white speck went out into the field and drowned in it. Is it screaming? Singing? Does it move? Mute powerlessness of vast expanses swallowed it all. And again there’s nothing. Even the traces of man are erased and covered: the field has hidden paths and roads. It just rolls and rolls the green waves and splashes them all the way up to the edge of the sky. Only a rhythmic, restrained noise reigns over everything, calm, self-assured, like the lifeblood of eternity. Like the wings of those windmills that blacken over the field: they indifferently and ceaselessly make a circle in the air, as if saying: it will be like this forever… it will be like this forever… in saecula saeculorum… in saecula saeculorum…

* * *

I was returning home late. I was coming back wrapped in the spirit of fields, fresh as a wildflower. I was bringing home the smell of fields in the folds of my clothes, like Old Testament Esau. Calm, solitary, I used to sit somewhere on the porch of an empty house and watch how the night was being built. How it was placing light columns, weaving a net of shadows, shifting and raising uncertain, trembling walls, and when everything became stronger and darkened, the night was closing a vaulted starry dome over them.

Now I can sleep peacefully, your strong walls will stand between me and the whole world. Good night to you, fields. And to you, cuckoo. I know, tomorrow, with the morning sun your female contralto will fly into my house: “koo-koo!… koo-koo!…” And your greeting, my closest friend, will put me in the mood at once.

* * *

Trepov! Overko! Pava! I put four fingers in my mouth — and wild steppe whistle comes out. They are running, like three polar bears. Maybe they will tear me apart, or maybe they will accept my invitation to go to the field. Ho-ho! That Overko can’t do without tricks. He jumps like a silly calf, and looks askance at me with his red eye. Trepov carries his woolly fur proudly and moves his legs, like white columns. His cropped ears are alert. Pava treads solemnly, she sways her back melancholically and falls behind. I follow them, and can see the slight swaying of all three stout backs, soft, woolly and beastly strong.

It seems they rather don’t like it that the sun, which makes them appear particularly bright, is too hot today, but I’m full of affection for the sun and I walk right towards it, face to face. Turn my back on it — god forbid! Such ingratitude! I’m so happy that I’m meeting it here, in the open, where no-one can cover its face, and I say to it: sun! I’m so grateful to you. You are sowing golden seeds in my soul — who knows what will grow out of these seeds? Maybe, the lights?

You are dear to me. I drink you, sun, I drink your warm healing liquid, like a child drinks milk from the mother’s breast, just as warm and as dear. Even when you burn — I willingly pour myself this fiery liquid and get drunk from it.

I love you. Because…listen:

I appeared into this world from the darkness of “the unknown”, my first breath, my first move were in the darkness of my mother’s womb. To this day that darkness reigns over me — all nights, half of my life it stands between you and me. Its servants — clouds, mountains, dungeons — hide you from me — and all three of us know well that inevitably there will come a time, when I, like salt in water, will dissolve in this darkness forever. You are merely a guest in my life, sun, a desirable guest, — and when you leave, I cling to you. I catch the last ray of light in the clouds, I make you last in fire, in a lamp, in fireworks, I gather you from flowers, from the laughter of a child, from eyes of the beloved. When you fade and run away from me — I create your likeness, name it “ideal” and hide it in my heart. And it shines for me.

Look at me, sun, and singe my soul, like you singed my body, to make it unaccessible to a mosquito’s sting… (I find myself addressing the sun as a living being. Does this mean that I already lack the companionship of people?)

We walk in the field. Three white shepherd dogs and I. Quiet whisper floats before us, the breath of young spikelets gathers into blue vapour. Somewhere on the side, a quail sings damply, the silver string of a cricket rang in the rye. The air trembles from the heat, and distant poplars dance in silver haze. It’s all wide, beautiful, calm.

Dogs are stuffy. They lay on a narrow border between the fields like three piles of wool, their tongues hung out of their mouths and their chests rising and falling with a short whistle. I sat down next to them. We are all just breathing. Quietly.

Has the time stopped or is it flowing? Maybe we should get going?

Everyone has got up lazily, we are lazily putting one foot in front of the other and carefully carrying the peace home. We walk past the black steam. Soft black plowed land breathed warmly in the face, full of peace and hope. Hello. Rest quietly under the sun, you are just as tired, earth, as I am. I also let my soul under the black steam…

* * *

I have never felt such a clear connection with the land, as I do here. In cities the earth is cast in stone and iron and is inaccessible. Here I have become close to it. On fresh mornings I was the first one to wake up the still sleepy water of the well. When an empty bucket splashed against the water’s chest, water let out a loud hollow sound sleepily from the depth and then lazily poured into the bucket. It trembled, dove grey in the sun. I drank it, fresh, cold, still full of dreams, and splashed it in my face.

After that there was milk. White fragrant drink foamed in the glass, and as I put it to my mouth, I knew that soft, like children’s curls, vetch was pouring into me, only yesterday it was covered by swarms of purple butterfly-like blooms. I’m drinking an extract of the meadow.

There also was that dark whole wheat bread, that smells so well, so country-like. It is dear to me, like a child who grew before my eyes. There, it runs in the fields, like a wild wooly beast and bends its spine. At the edge of the field there are windmills, like traps meant to catch it, they are already preparing their teeth to grind the grains into white flour. I see that all and my simple, immediate relations with the land.

Here I feel rich, even though I have nothing. Because beyond all programs and parties — the land belongs to me. It is mine. All the vast, lavish, already created land I contain in myself. There I create it anew, for the second time, and then it seems to me that I have even more right to it.

* * *

When you lie in the field with your face turned to the sky and listen to the many-voiced silence of the fields, you notice that there is something not earthly to it, but celestial.

Something seems to be drilling the sky there, as if grinding the metal, and only small, sifted sounds fall down. The fields are noisy all around, they disturb. I drive away the voices of the field, and then celestial ones fall on me like rain. Then I realise. These are larks. Here they are, invisible, throwing their piercing song from the sky onto the field. A ringing, metallic and capricious song, the ear tries to catch its overtones and cannot. Maybe they are singing, maybe the are laughing, or maybe they broke out into tears.

Isn’t it better to sit quietly and close the eyes? This is what i’ll do. I sit down. It’s dark around me. Only sharp, piercing sounds flash, and laughter sprinkles down on a metal board like lead shot. I want to catch it, record it in my memory, but I’m not able to do so. Well, it seems just like… Tew-y, tew-y, ty-y-y… No, not like that at all. Tre-uuu tih-tih… Not even close.

How do they do it, I wonder? Are they hitting the sun’s gold with their beaks? Do they play on its rays, as if on strings? Do they sift the song through a fine sieve and sow the fields with it?

I open my eyes. Now I’m certain that a silver net of oats has come out of that sowing, long-awned barley bends and shines like a blade, the rushing water of wheat flows.

And it pours and pours from above… shakes the soul out of small bells, grinds silver boards and drills steel, cries, wails and sifts laughter on a fine sieve. Here, one bright chime slipped out and fell into the fields as a red corncockle.

I can no longer listen to anything. This song has something poisonous in it. It awakens greed. The more you listen, the more you want to hear. The more you catch, the harder it is to catch.

Now I run to the field and listen for hours how choirs sing in the sky, whole orchestras play.

I wake up at night, sit on the bed and listen intently to something drilling my brain, tickling my heart and trembling near my ear elusively.

Tew-y, tew-y, ty-y-y… No, not like this at all.

I’m curious to know, how do they do it?

In the end, I peeked.

A small grey bird, like a lump of earth, hung low over the field. It fluttered its wings in place tensely, frequently and with difficulty pulled up an invisible string from the ground all the way up to the sky. The string trembled and hummed. Then, having finished, the bird fell down quietly and wound another string from the sky to the ground. It united the sky with the earth into a loud harp and played the symphony of the field on strings.

It was amazing.

* * *

This is how days of my intermezzo flowed in the midst of solitude, silence and purity. And I was blessed between the golden sun and green earth. Blessed was the peace of my soul. A new, clean page peeked out from under the old page of life — and I couldn’t believe it. What will be written there? Will I no longer tremble before the shadow of a person, will I no longer be horrified by the thought that, perhaps, human grief is lurking somewhere, waiting for me?

When such a miracle happens, it will be the merit of green silkily rustling fields, and yours, cuckoo. Your mournful “koo-koo” flowed down like tears on a weeping birch and washed away my weariness.

* * *

In the end, we did meet in the field — and stood in silence for a minute — me and a person. He was an ordinary man. I don’t know what I looked like to him, but through him I suddenly saw a bunch of black thatched roofs, rubbed by the fields, girls in a cloud of dust returning after working on someone else’s field, dirty, unpleasant, with sagging breasts, bony backs… pale women in black, tattered skirts, leaning like shadows over the hemp… sickly looking children together with hungry dogs… Everything that I looked at and didn’t seem to see. For me, he was like a conductor’s baton, that suddenly evoked a whole blizzard of sounds from the dead silence.

I didn’t run away; on the contrary, we even started a conversation as if we were old acquaintances.

He spoke of things full of horror to me, as easily and calmly as a lark dropping a song on a field, and I stood and listened, something was trembling within me.

Aha, human grief, have you decided to catch me after all? And I’m not running away! The weakened strings have already been fixed, someone else’s grief can play on them already!

Speak, speak…

What is there to say? In this green sea he has only a drop. Some people lost their children to fever, it’s a bit easier for them. God is merciful for some… While he has five mouths, like windmills, to feed, he needs to throw something on a millstone.

“For some reason the fever hasn’t taken away five hungry kids”.

Speak, speak…

People wanted to take the land with their bare hands, and now they’ve got it: one eats it raw, the other digs it in Siberia… Comparing to others, he’s fine: he’s just picked lice in prison for a year and now once a week he gets hit in the face by the chief of police…

“Once a week they hit a person in the face.”

Speak, speak!..

On Sundays people go to church, but he must go to the chief of police for a “check-up”. Still, it’s less of an insult than getting this from the close ones. It’s scary to even say a word. He used to be your friend, was like-minded, but now he may be secretly selling you out. You tell him something, tear the words out from your heart, and he will throw them to the dogs.

“The closest person is ready to sell you out.”

Speak, speak!..

You walk among people like among wolves. Only trying to be careful. Perked ears and outstretched hands everywhere. The poor steal from the needy, a neighbour from a neighbour, a father from a son.

“Among people like among wolves”.

Speak, speak!..

Syphilis, misery, liquor are eating people alive, and they devour each other in darkness. How can the sun still shine for us and not go out? How can we live?

Speak, speak. Sear the celestial dome with anger. Cover it with the clouds of your grief to bring on the lightning and thunder. Refresh the sky and the earth. Extinguish the sun and light up another one in the sky. Speak, speak…

* * *

Again the city has stretched its iron hand into the green fields after me. I let it take me obediently and while the iron was shaking and clanging I, for the last time, was taking in the calmness of the flatlands, the blue slumber of distant spaces. Farewell, fields. Roll your rustle on the sun-gilded ridges. Maybe someone will need it, as I did. And you, cuckoo, from the top of the birch. You also tuned the strings of my soul. They were weakened, pulled with rough fingers, and now they getting tight again. Do you hear this? They’ve even strummed just now… Farewell. I will walk among people again. The strings are tight and tuned, the soul is ready, it is already playing…

September 1908