CHAPTER 9. RITTLED FOUNDATIONS.

February 9, 1941.

Movement after movement, jerk after jerk, breath after breath—with each moment he plunged deeper and deeper into the earth's surface: why, for what reason was he inflicting these, indeed, extraordinarily precise and hard, but by no means cruel and by no means fatal, wounds on the corresponding natural matter—why was he changing the seemingly pristine, rough, yet natural soil, uncultivated by anyone or anything? The answer to this question was not even known to him—he was only the executor of a certain, more powerful and less ordinary will than the will of the aforementioned man: than the will of a forty-five-year-old owner of significantly thinned sandy hair. His movements, although they were the creation of human flesh and human mind, were indeed ceaseless and persistent—it seemed as if it was not a person, but a certain iron mechanism, created by someone and for some unknown purpose. No, it was not an iron mechanism—it was fate itself, for those movements were unyielding and, what is more important, their quantity and their supply, at first, of course, superficial, glance, were inexhaustible… In those moments, Étienne Lemoi was only fulfilling the very destiny that fate had prepared for him—he was changing the relief of the very earth's surface with exceptional diligence, which was soon to be nothing less than the direct abode for a certain human flesh completely devoid of an ethereal, and therefore invisible, lightweight spirit.

The extraordinarily rough work—the work of a gravedigger—made Étienne Lemoi’s hands rough, but it failed to make his soul rough: despite his lot, he was a genuine, the most genuine person—he believed in many things, but even more was what his being in no way showed a sense of faith in. He, like no one else, knew perfectly well about the existence of life after death—true, this life did not manifest itself in the form of angels, seraphim, the devil, and demons, but in the form of the most ordinary worms, which, with permanent chaoticness, of course, for the gaze of Étienne Lemoi, but, undoubtedly, with exceptional purposefulness in their understanding, silently swarmed in their corresponding natural habitat: he did not make friends with them, but he was not their adversary either—he studied them, watched them, just as inaccessible stars constantly observe the amazing movement of those very beings, limited in the time of their existence, who in their common denominator are characterized by an unremarkable, but very significant word, “man.” In his soul, due to the profession he chose, as well as his own natural constitution, there were never any revolutions—there was always, just as within the confines of the cemetery, boundless tranquility and peace: someone once said of him that “he is as imperturbable as St. Paul's Cathedral in Rome”—this someone was extremely close to the truth. And yet, like the peace of the cemetery, his peace, it must be noted, was sometimes, to a certain extent, disturbed by relatively grieving representatives of the human race—many of them tirelessly talked about their own grief, about the deceased, and about God: he never saw such people in the cemetery after the funeral—it seemed that after the funeral, having acquired a certain freedom or even a certain state, they forever forgot about the existence of grief, the deceased, and, what is more important, God… He was able to see every day how love, friendship, hatred, betrayal, happiness, and envy were very hurriedly buried in the ground to a depth of no less than 6 feet—having been buried there, they never returned from there again, to his memory: they rested there, as if in some capsule, as if until better times came—times that clergymen often called the Second Coming… It happened that he had to make new graves at night, it happened that in the rain, hail, or snow, however, it never happened that he did not make new graves. One grave closed, and another one just opened—the wheel of time, and accordingly of life, without stopping for a moment, and therefore mercilessly, moves forward: Étienne Lemoi understood this better than any more extraordinary and less vicious representative of the human race. And yet, with all his peculiarities, or rather with all those peculiarities that the environment, time, the world, and life had cultivated in him, Étienne Lemoi was the same person as all others—just like everyone else, he sometimes felt anger, fear, joy, admiration, however, he never felt happiness or unhappiness.

Étienne Lemoi!… He was so immersed in himself that he even, as it were, completely ceased to understand and comprehend the nature of time—it happened that he worked continuously for days, and it also happened that night was the most favorable working time for him: for him, time had no definitions and components—it was a single whole, and accordingly unlimited. He never knew what day of the week it was at one or another minute—however, he did not need to: he felt perfectly well when he needed to work, when he needed to be active. At the same time, taking into account all the above, Étienne Lemoi was not a slave to his work—he performed his work for some reason, and not for something: not because something prompted him to it, but because it was his lot, which, it must be admitted, he fully understood and, what is most important, accepted. His favorite book was the Book of Ecclesiastes—the Book of the Preacher: the pages in it were unusually dirty and significantly torn—this man too often drew certain information from its depths. Perhaps he wanted to find certain answers to his own questions among its pages? Most likely, reading this book was his only entertainment—he read the Bible not at all to find God among this ocean: no, on the contrary, by reading it, he became more and more distant from Him. It was for this reason that the pages of that book looked the way they did at the present hour. Despite his purpose, he did not show due respect for this book. And in general, he treated only one matter with genuine respect—this matter was by no means a person, but an instrument, the weapon of Étienne Lemoi's labor: his sharp, like a Damascene blade, bayonet shovel.