Fomorians

“ The name of Fomorians was generally applied to pirates who appeared as late as the heroic period; and in our tale Conor is, in his attack on the house of Gerg, supported by [2] the Fomorians only, not by the warriors of Ulster. A poet, who sympathised with the defeated men of Connaught, could therefore with safety show his sympathy without any fear of wounding the susceptibilities of the ruling race of Ulster, provided he did full justice to the valour of the Ulster king who employed the pirate warriors. ”

“ Foma listened, and his imagination, captivated by the quiet, charming narrative, pictured to him those wide fields and dense forests, full of beauty and soul-pacifying silence.
“You look at the sky, as you rest somewhere under a little bush, and the sky seems to descend upon you as though longing to embrace you. Your soul is warm, filled with tranquil joy, you desire nothing, you envy nothing. And it actually seems to you that there is no one on earth save you and God.” ”

“ One is a convict, utterly ruined; the other, a drunkard. I have little hope in him. My daughter, to whom, then, shall I leave my labour before my death? If I had but a son-in-law. I thought Foma would become a man and would be sharpened up, then I would give you unto him, and with you all I have—there! But Foma is good for nothing, and I see no one else in his stead. What sort of people we have now! In former days the people were as of iron, while now they are of india-rubber. They are all bending now. And nothing—they have no firmness in them. ”

“ And Foma, intoxicated, but sad and calm, spoke to them with heavy voice:
“That’s the way I understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows. The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms. Such is their destined lot. They are necessary But I and you—all of you—are to no purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything—without justification, merely at random. ”

“ But at times a different feeling awoke in her, a feeling not less powerful, and by which Foma became still more attached to her—something similar to a mother’s yearning to guard her beloved son from errors, to teach him the wisdom of life. Oftentimes at night, sitting in his embraces on the deck, she spoke to him tenderly and sadly:
“Mind me as an older sister of yours. I have lived, I know men. I have seen a great deal in my life! Choose your companions with care, for there are people just as contagious as a disease. ”

“ While here everything is enveloped in a gray, dead fog, and we are foolishly struggling about in it, yearning for freedom and light. There below they have started to sing something in scarcely audible voices; it was half song, half prayer. Again someone is shouting, scolding. And still they seek the way:
“Seven and a half. Seven!”
“And you have no care,” spoke the pilgrim, and his voice murmured like a brook. “Anybody will give you a crust of bread; and what else do you need in your freedom? In the world, cares fall upon the soul like fetters.”
“You speak well,” said Foma with a sigh. ”

“ Thus lived Foma, day in and day out, always turning around on one and the same place, amid people who were always alike, and who never inspired him with any noble feelings. And then he considered himself superior to them, because the thoughts of the possibility of freeing himself from this life was taking deeper and deeper root in his mind, because the yearning for freedom held him in an ever firmer embrace, because ever brighter were the pictures as he imagined himself drifting away to the border of life, away from this tumult and confusion. ”

“ Mayakin, winking his eyes, looked after her, tapped the table with his fingers and said:
“I shall instruct you, Foma. I shall teach you the most genuine, true knowledge and philosophy, and if you understand them, your life will be faultless.”
Foma saw how the wrinkles on the old man’s forehead were twitching, and they seemed to him like lines of Slavonic letters.
“First of all, Foma, since you live on this earth, it is your duty to think over everything that takes place about you. Why? That you may not suffer for your own senselessness, and may not harm others by your folly. ”

“ And after that Foma always fell asleep amid the velvet-like sounds of the old woman’s voice, which painted before him a magic life. Giants defeating monsters, wise princesses, fools who turned out to be wise—troops of new and wonderful people were passing before the boy’s bewitched imagination, and his soul was nourished by the wholesome beauty of the national creative power. ”

“ And Foma kept on rocking and said:
“There are times when I feel guilty before men. Everybody lives, makes noise, while I am frightened, staggered—as if I did not feel the earth under me. Was it, perhaps, my mother that endowed me with apathy? My godfather says that she was as cold as ice—that she was forever yearning towards something. I am also yearning. Toward men I am yearning. ”

“ And Foma went on straying and raving, passing his days and nights in taverns and dens, and mastering more and more firmly his contemptuously-hateful bearing toward the people that surrounded him. At times they awakened in him a sad yearning to find among them some sort of resistance to his wicked feeling, to meet a worthy and courageous man who would cause him to blush with shame by his burning reproach. This yearning became clearer—each time it sprang up in him it was a longing for assistance on the part of a man who felt that he had lost his way and was perishing. ”

“ Eh, you fat pig, ha, ha! And you, Lup, open again a brothel, and fleece your guests there as before. And then the devil will fleece you, ha, ha! It is good to be a rascal with a pious face like yours! Whom did you kill then, Lup?”
Foma spoke, interrupting his speech with loud, malevolent laughter, and saw that his words were producing an impression on these people. Before, when he had spoken to all of them they turned away from him, stepping aside, forming groups, and looking at their accuser from afar with anger and contempt. ”

“ What do you need to study so much for?” asked Foma.
“Because I am poor. The poor must study hard so that they may become rich. They become doctors, functionaries, officers. I shall be a ‘tinkler.’ A sword at my side, spur on my boots. Cling, cling! And what are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” said Foma, pensively, examining his companion.
“You need not be anything. And are you fond of pigeons?” ”

“ Swaying because of the motion of the steamer, Foma stood leaning against the tarpaulin, and attentively listened to each and every sound about him. And everything was blended into one picture, which was familiar to him. Through fog and uncertainty, surrounded on all sides by gloom impenetrable to the eye, life of man is moving somewhere slowly and heavily. And men are grieved over their sins, they sigh heavily, and then fight for a warm place, and asking each other for the sake of possessing the place, they also receive blows from those who strive for order in life. ”

“ Foma became confused at his words and looked about him; the peasants were smiling morosely, disdainfully, sarcastically. And these smiles stung him like needles. A serious-looking peasant, with a big gray beard, who had not yet opened his mouth up to that time, suddenly opened it now, came closer to Foma and said slowly:
“And even if we were to drink the Volga dry, and eat up that mountain, into the bargain—that too would be forgotten, your Honour. Everything will be forgotten. Life is long. It is not for us to do such deeds as would stand out above everything else. ”

“ Dead, empty; how will you live? What will you give to mankind?” she said with malice, in a low voice.
“I’ll give nothing; let them strive for it themselves,” answered Foma, knowing that these words would augment her anger. ”

“ The companions looked at him fixedly: the old man, with a fine, wise smile; the large-eyed man, unfriendly, askance. This confused Foma; he blushed and walked away, thinking of Fate and wondering why it had first treated him kindly by giving him a woman, and then took back the gift from him, so simply and abusively? And he now understood that the vague, caustic feeling which he carried within him was a grudge against Fate for thus sporting with him. ”

“ They constantly do but their dirty, hard work, they eat poorly, are poorly clad, they drink. One man is sixty years old, and yet he keeps on toiling side by side with the young fellows. And they all appeared to Foma as a huge pile of worms, which battled about on earth just to get something to eat. ”

“ Have you transformed the tears of the past into pearls? What have you contributed toward life? What have you accomplished? You have permitted yourselves to be conquered? What are you doing? You permit yourselves to be mocked.’”
He stamped his feet with rage, and setting his teeth together stared at Foma with burning, angry looks, and resembled an infuriated wild beast.
“I would say to them: ‘You! You reason too much, but you are not very wise, and you are utterly powerless, and you are all cowards! ”

“ It often happens, that the man who lives in filth is purer than he who goes about in silks. If you only knew what I think of you, you dogs, what wrath I bear against you! And because of this wrath—I am silent! For I fear that if I should sing it to you—my soul would become empty. I would have nothing to live on.” Foma looked at her, and now he was pleased with her. ”

“ Any one who watches the symptoms of a hysterical-epileptic patient, or a maniac, will see how naturally in the infancy of medical science demoniacal possession came to be the accepted theory of disease, and the exorcism or expulsion of these demons the ordinary method of treatment. It is so among savages, as when a sick Australian will believe that the angry ghost of a dead man has got into him and is gnawing his liver; or when in a Patagonian skin hut the wizards may be seen dancing, shouting, and drumming to drive out the evil demon from a man down with fever. ”

“ Foma bent his head, leaned his arms against the table and thus, like a bull, went on to explain himself:
“Nothing pleases him—business, work, all people and deeds. Suppose I see that all is deceit, that business is not business, but merely a plug that we prop up with it the emptiness of our souls; that some work, while others only give orders and sweat, but get more for that. ”

“ Then it appeared to Foma that it was he who was riding at night on the white horse, and that the moans and the implorings were addressed to him. His heart contracts with some incomprehensible desire; sorrow compressed his breast and tears gathered in his eyes, which he had firmly closed and now feared to open.
He is tossing about in his bed restlessly.
“Sleep, my child. Christ be with you!” says the old woman, interrupting her tale of men suffering for their sins. ”

“ Do we observe the memory, the imagination, and the judgment, to be affected by diseases, particularly by madness? Where is the physician who has not seen the moral faculty affected from the same causes! How often do we see the temper wholly changed by a fit of sickness! And how often do we hear persons of the most delicate virtue, utter speeches in the delirium of a fever, that are offensive to decency or good manners! ”

“ Hereupon Hermogen drew himself one step backwards, and fixing on the old man, a dark, gloomy look, almost with an expression of repressed rage, which was truly frightful:—
"Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny—the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime, which I thus endeavour to expiate in misery and in despair!—Therefore, I beseech you, be compassionate, and implore, too, my father's consent, that he may allow me to go into a monastery!" ”

“ They would fatten on my heart's-blood,—but then—I should die—I should die—Death would release me from thy vengeance!"
"My serpents," howled out the spectre, who now seemed like an infernal fury,—"my serpents may nourish themselves from thy heart's-blood, but herein consists not thy torment, oh wretched sinner! Thy pain is within thine own bosom, and in vain hopest thou for release in death. Thy torment is the thought of thine own crimes, and this thought is eternal!"
Hereafter the figure of Hermogen, streaming with blood, rose up out of the dusky void, and Euphemia fled before him. ”

“ This supposition—namely, that Elementals can be instrumental in working evil—coincides with my theory that diseases are primarily due to powers or spirits antagonistic to the human race, and that such powers or spirits exist in multitudinous forms; but whereas Morbas have the widest range possible, the other two species of Elementals, i.e., Vice Elementals and Clanogrians, or Family Ghosts, are confined to certain families and houses. ”

“ In an instant all those above had rushed down to the margin, and while some caught the drowned boy and attempted to restore the life that seemed so hopelessly fled, others, and the medical man among them, devoted more than equal anxiety to the man who appeared to have paid so dearly for his heroism. He was senseless, but his pulse still beat—the doctor discovered so much; and a fairer hand than that of the doctor sought the heart and found that the motion of that mysterious red current which bears the whole of life upon its bosom was not yet stilled forever. ”