第33章 NILUSHKA(7)

"Ah, well! God will understand. He is the friend of all blessed ones." [Idiots; since persons mentally deficient are popularly deemed to stand in a peculiarly close relation to the Almighty.]

Again, great was Nilushka's interest in anything spherical.

Also, he had a love for handling the heads of children; when, softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children, not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and, bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out their tongues at him, and drawl in a nasal chorus:

"Nilka, the bottle-neck, the neck without a nape to it"

[Probably the attractiveness of this formula lay rather in the rhyming of the Russian words: "Nilka, butilka, bashka bez zatilka!" than in their actual meaning].

Yet their fear of him was in no way reciprocated, nor, for that matter, did they ever assault him, despite the fact that occasionally they would throw an old boot or a chip of wood in his direction-throw it aimlessly, and without really desiring to hit the mark aimed at.

Also, anything circular--for example, a plate or the wheel of a toy, engaged Nilushka's attention and led him to caress it as eagerly as he did globes and balls. Evidently the rotundity of the object was the point that excited his interest. And as he turned the object over and over, and felt the flat part of it, he would mutter:

"But what about the other one?"

What "the other one " meant I could never divine. Nor could Antipa. Once, drawing the idiot to him, he said:

"Why do you always say 'What about the other one'?"

Troubled and nervous, Nilushka merely muttered some unintelligible reply as his fingers turned and turned about the circular object which he was holding.

"Nothing," at length he replied.

"Nothing of what?

"Nothing here."

"Ah, he is too foolish to understand," said Vologonov with a sigh as his eyes darkened in meditative fashion.

"Yes, though it may seem foolish to say so," he added, "some people would envy him."

"Why should they?"

"For more than one reason. To begin with, he lives a life free from care--he is kept comfortably, and even held in respect.

Since no one can properly understand him, and everyone fears him, through a belief that folk without wit, the 'blessed ones of God,' are more especially the Almighty's favourites than persons possessed of understanding. Only a very wise man could deal with such a matter, and the less so in that it must be remembered that more than one 'blessed one' has become a Saint, while some of those possessed of understanding have gone--well, have gone whither? Yes, indeed!"

And, thoughtfully contracting the bushy eyebrows which looked as though they had been taken from the face of another man, Vologonov thrust his hands up his sleeves, and stood eyeing Nilushka shrewdly with his intangible gaze.

Never did Felitzata say for certain who the boy's father had been, but at least it was known to me that in vague terms she had designated two men as such--the one a young " survey student," and the other a merchant by name Viporotkov, a man notorious to the whole town as a most turbulent rake and bully.

But once when she and Antipa and I were seated gossiping at the entrance-gates, and I inquired of her whether Nilushka's father were still surviving, she replied in a careless way:

"He is so, damn him!"

"Then who is he? "

Felitzata, as usual, licked her faded, but still comely, lips with the tip of her tongue before she replied:

"A monk."

"Ah!" Vologonov exclaimed with unexpected animation. "That, then, explains things. At all events, we have in it an intelligible THEORY of things."

Whereafter, he expounded to us at length, and with no sparing of details, the reason why a monk should have been Nilushka's father rather than either the merchant or the young "survey student." And as Vologonov proceeded he grew unwontedly enthusiastic, and went so far as to clench his fists until presently he heaved a sigh, as though mentally hurt, and said frowningly and reproachfully to the woman:

"Why did you never tell us this before? It was exceedingly negligent of you."

Felitzata looked at the old man with sarcasm and sauciness gleaming in her brown eyes. Suddenly, however, she contracted her brows, counterfeited a sigh, and whined:

"Ah, I was good-looking then, and desired of all. In those days I had both a good heart and a happy nature."

"But the monk may prove to have been an important factor in the question," was Antipa's thoughtful remark.

"Yes, and many another man than he has run after me for his pleasure," continued Felitzata in a tone of reminiscence. This led Vologonov to cough, rise to his feet, lay his hand upon the woman's claret-coloured sleeve of satin, and say sternly:

"Do you come into my room, for I have business to transact with you."

As she complied she smiled and winked at me. And so the pair departed--he shuffling carefully with his bandy legs, and she watching her steps as though at any moment she might collapse on to her left side.

Thenceforth, Felitzata visited Vologonov almost daily; and once during the time of two hours or so that the pair were occupied in drinking tea I heard, through the partition-wall, the old man say in vigorous, level, didactical tones:

"These tales and rumours ought not to be dismissed save with caution. At least ought they to be given the benefit of the doubt. For, though all that he says may SEEM to us unintelligible, there may yet be enshrined therein a meaning, such as--"

"You say a meaning?"

"Yes, a meaning which, eventually, will be vouchsafed to you in a vision. For example, you may one day see issue from a dense forest a man of God, and hear him cry aloud: Felitzata, Oh servant of God, Oh sinner most dark of soul--"

"What a croaking, to be sure!"