The sky above the yards was murky and the big shadows cast by the clouds of smoke crept over the fields and across the road. Men and horses, covered in red dust, were moving about in the smoke by the roofs.

The town came to an end with the brickyards and the open country began. For the last time Yegorushka looked back at the town, pressed his face to Deniska’s elbow and wept bitterly.

‘Still blubbering, eh? Little cry-baby!’ said Kuzmichov. ‘Mama’s darling’s snivelling again! If you don’t want to come you’d better stay behind. No one’s forcing you.’

‘Never mind, Yegor my boy, never mind,’ Father Khristofor said in a rapid patter. ‘Never mind, boy… Call on God. It’s for a good purpose you’re travelling, not an evil one. As they say, knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness. Verily it is so!’

‘Do you want to go back?’ asked Kuzmichov.

‘Ye-es I do!’ sobbed Yegorushka.

‘Then you should go back. No point in travelling all this way for nothing.’

‘Never mind, my boy, never mind,’ Father Khristofor continued. ‘You must call on God. Now, Lomonosov2 travelled like this with the fishermen, but then he became famous all over Europe. Intellect conjoined with faith brings forth fruit that is pleasing to God. What does the prayer say? “For the glory of our Creator, for the solace of our parents and for the benefit of church and country…” Yes, that’s so.’

‘But there’s different kinds of benefit,’ Kuzmichov said as he lit a cheap cigar. ‘There’s some who study for twenty years but still get no benefit from it.’

‘That does happen.’

‘Some folk benefit from learning, but there’s others that get their brains all in a muddle. My sister’s got no sense at all, she’s always trying to be so refined and she wants Yegorushka to be a scholar. But she doesn’t understand that with me in my line of business I could set him up for life. I’m telling you all this because if everyone became scholars or gentlemen there’d be no one left to do the trading or sowing. Everyone would starve to death.’

‘But if everyone started trading or sowing there’d be no one left to acquire learning.’

Thinking that they had both said something weighty and compelling, Kuzmichov and Father Khristofor assumed solemn expressions and cleared their throats simultaneously. Having listened to their conversation and made nothing of it, Deniska shook his head, sat up and lashed both horses. There was silence.

And meanwhile a wide, endless plain encircled by a chain of hills was stretching out before the travellers. Huddling together and peeping out from behind each other, these hills melted away into the rising ground which extended from the right of the road to the very horizon and vanished in the lilac distance: here you can travel on and on without ever being able to make out where the plain begins or ends… Behind, the sun was already looking out over the town and quietly, without any fuss, it was beginning its work. At first, a long way ahead, where sky met earth, close to small barrows and a windmill which from the distance resembled a tiny man waving his arms, a broad, bright yellow band stole over the ground. A moment later a similar bright band lit up a little closer, crept off to the right and enfolded the hills. Something warm touched Yegorushka’s back, a band of light that had crept up from behind darted between the carriage and horses and rushed away to meet other bands – and suddenly the whole wide plain cast off its early morning penumbra, smiled and sparkled with dew.

Newly-mown rye, coarse steppe grass, spurge and wild hemp – everything that had been half-dead, reddish-brown and darkened by the intense heat, washed by the dew now and caressed by the sun – came to life, to blossom anew. Arctic petrels cheerfully cried as they skimmed over the road, gophers called to each other in the grass, from somewhere far to the left came the lapwings’ plaintive song. Frightened by the carriage, a covey of partridges took wing and flew towards the hills, softly trilling. Grasshoppers, cicadas, field-crickets and mole-crickets struck up their monotonous chirring in the grass.

But after a short while the dew evaporated, the air became stagnant and once more the disappointed steppe took on its cheerless July aspect. The grass drooped and life stood still. The brownish-green, sun-baked hills, appearing lilac from afar with their soft muted tints, the plain and the hazy distance, and that overarching sky – so breathtakingly deep and transparent in the steppes where there are no forests or high mountains – now seemed endless and numb with anguish…

How sultry, how forlorn! The carriage races along and all Yegorushka can see is that same sky, plain, hills… The music in the grass grows hushed.