XVII

The faces gazed out in complete immobility from their shell-work frames. Here was a scene which had never taken place and could not take place: In the field, amid the thick-growing rye, lay two persons⁠—Tikhon Ilitch himself and a young merchant named Rostovtzeff, holding in their hands glasses exactly half filled with dark beer. What a close friendship had sprung up between Rostovtzeff and Tikhon Ilitch! How well he remembered that grey day in Carnival Week when the picture was taken! But in what year had that happened? What had become of Rostovtzeff? Perhaps he had died in Voronezh⁠—and now no one knew for a certainty whether he were still alive in this world or not. And yonder stood three petty burghers, drawn up in military style and perfectly wooden, with their hair parted in the middle and very smooth, dressed in embroidered Russian shirts opening at the side and long coats, with their boots well polished⁠—Butchneff, Vystavkin, and Bogomoloff. Vystavkin, the one in the middle, was holding in front of his breast the bread and salt of hospitality on a wooden platter, covered with a towel embroidered with cocks, while Butchneff and Bogomoloff each held a holy picture. They had been photographed on a dusty, windy day, when the grain-elevator had been blessed⁠—when the Bishop and the Governor had come for the ceremony, when Tikhon Ilitch had felt so proud that he had been one of the crowd appointed to greet the officials. But what had his memory retained about that day? Merely this⁠—that they had waited beside the elevator for five hours, on the new brown rails of the track, that the white dust had been blown in clouds by the wind, that the railway carriages and the trees were all covered with dust, that the Governor, a long, lean man, exactly like a corpse in white trousers with gold stripes, a uniform embroidered in gold, and a three-cornered hat, walked towards the deputation in a remarkably deliberate manner⁠—that it was very alarming when he began to speak as he accepted the bread and salt, that everyone