After old Timofei died, the house, in which Yegor now lived by himself, remained shut up for a period of time. Then, in the early spring, Yegor Timofeyevitch, who now had a rather long beard, came out the door and began pacing back and forth in the village and singing. Later he went to the neighboring villages as well, and the peasants began telling one another that Yegor had turned into at least as accomplished a singer as his father, Timofei. For he knew a great number of grave and heroic songs and those tunes that no one—be he Cossack or peasant—could listen to without breaking into tears. And on top of that, it was said, he sang with a sad and tender tone such as had never been heard from any singer. And this tone always appeared quite expectedly in the refrain, where it had a particularly moving effect.

“So he didn’t learn this tone from his father?” said my friend Ewald after a while.

“No,” I replied, “no one knows where it came from.” After I had already taken a few steps away from the window, the crippled man called after me:

“Maybe he was thinking about his wife and his child. By the way, did he never send for them, even after his father died?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least he later died alone.”

1. Skaski is Russian for “stories” or “fairy tales.”—Ed.

The Song of Justice

The next time I passed by Ewald’s window, he waved me over and smiled. “Did you promise the children something specific?”

“What do you mean?” I said, surprised.

“Well, when I told the story about Yegor, they complained that God did not appear in the story.” I was stunned.

“What? A story without God? How is that possible?” Then I reflected. “It’s true, actually, when I think about it now, the story doesn’t say anything about God. I don’t understand how that could have happened. If somebody had requested such a story, I think I could have thought about it my whole life through without coming up with one—”

My friend smiled at this heated response. “You shouldn’t excite yourself about it,” he interrupted me in a kindly sort of a way. “My own view is that you can never know whether or not God is in a story until you get all the way to the end. For if only two words are still missing, yes, even if the pause after the final words still hasn’t occurred, He can always still show up.” I nodded, and the crippled man said in another tone of voice, “Don’t you know something more about these Russian singers?”

I hesitated. “Yes, well, wouldn’t we rather just talk about God, Ewald?”

He shook his head. “I’d like so much to hear more about these remarkable men. I don’t know how it happens, but I’m always thinking, if one of them were to come here to my place . . .” and he turned his head toward the interior of the room, toward the door. But then his eyes turned back to me, not without embarrassment, “But that is of course not possible,” he chastened himself hurriedly.