"And I helped you as much as it was in my power to do," answered grandmother, calmly, "and God will pay us back, you know."

"It was little enough you did, little enough."

Grandmother was bored and worried by her sister's untiring tongue. I listened to her squeaky voice and wondered how grandmother could put up with it. In that moment I did not love her.

The young mistress came out of her room and nodded affably to grandmother.

"Come into the dining-room. It is all right; come along!"

The master would receive grandmother joyfully.

"Ah, Akulina, wisest of all, how are you? Is old man Kashirin still alive?"

And grandmother would give him her most cordial smile.

"Are you still working your hardest?"

"Yes; always working, like a convict."

Grandmother conversed with him affectionately and well, but in the tone of a senior. Sometimes he called my mother to mind.

"Ye-es, Varvara Vassilievna. What a woman! A heroine, eh?"

His wife turned to grandmother and put in:

"Do you remember my giving her that cloak—black silk trimmed with jet?"

"Of course I do."

"It was quite a good one."

"Ye-es," muttered the master, "a cloak, a palm; and life is a trickster."[1]

"What are you talking about?" asked his wife, suspiciously.

"I? Oh, nothing in particular. Happy days and good people soon pass away."

"I don't know what is the matter with you," said my mistress, uneasily.

Then grandmother was taken to see the new baby, and while I was clearing away the dirty cups and saucers from the table the master said to me:

"She is a good old woman, that grandmother of yours."

I was deeply grateful to him for those words, and when I was alone with grandmother, I said to her, with a pain in my heart:

"Why do you come here? Why? Can't you see how they—".

"Ach, Olesha, I see everything," she replied, looking at me with a kind smile on her wonderful face, and I felt conscience-stricken. Why, of course she saw everything and knew everything, even what was going on in my soul at that moment. Looking round carefully to see that no one was coming, she embraced me, saying feelingly:

"I would not come here if it were not for you. What are they to me? As a matter of fact, grandfather is ill, and I am tired with looking after him. I have not been able to do any work, so I have no money, and my son Mikhail has turned Sascha out. I have him now to give food and drink, too. They promised to give you six rubles a month, and I don't suppose you have had a ruble from them, and you have been here nearly half a year." Then she whispered in my ear: "They say they have to lecture you, scold you, they say that you do not obey; but, dear heart, stay with them. Be patient for two short years while you grow strong. You will be patient, yes?"

I promised. It was very difficult. That life oppressed me; it was a threadbare, depressing existence. The only excitement was about food, and I lived as in a dream. Sometimes I thought that I would have to run away, but the accursed winter had set in. Snow-storms raged by night, the wind rushed over the top of the house, and the stanchions cracked with the pressure of the frost. Whither could I run away?

*

They would not let me go out, and in truth it was no weather for walking. The short winter day, full of the bustle of housework, passed with elusive swiftness. But they made me go to church, on Saturday to vespers and on Sunday to high mass.

I liked being in church. Standing somewhere in a corner where there was more room and where it was darker, I loved to gaze from a distance at the iconastasis, which looked as if it were swimming in the candlelight flowing in rich, broad streams over the floor of the reading-desk. The dark figures of the icons moved gently, the gold embroidery on the vestments of the priests quivered joyfully, the candle flames burned in the dark-blue atmosphere like golden bees, and the heads of the women and children looked like flowers. All the surroundings seemed to blend harmoniously with the singing the choir. Everything seemed to be imbued with the weird spirit of legends. The church seemed to oscillate like a cradle, rocking in pitch-black space.

Sometimes I imagined that the church was sunk deep in a lake in which it lived, concealed, a life peculiar to itself, quite different from any other form of life. I have no doubt now that this idea had its source in grandmother's stories of the town of Kitej, and I often found myself dreamily swaying, keeping time, as it were, with the movement around me. Lulled into somnolence by the singing of the choir, the murmur of prayers, the breath of the congregation, I concentrated myself upon the melodious, melancholy story:

"They are closing upon us, the accursed Tatars.
Yes, these unclean beasts are closing in upon Kite;
The glorious; yea, at the holy hour of matins.
O Lord, our God!
Holy Mother of God!
Save Thy servants
To sing their morning praises,
To listen to the holy chants!
Oi, let not the Tatars
Jeer at holy church;
Let them not put to shame
Our women and maidens;
Seize the little maids to be their toys,
And the old men to be put to a cruel death!
And the God of Sabaoth heard,
The Holy Mother heard,
These human sighs,
These Christians' plaints.
And He said, the Lord of Sabaoth,
To the Holy Angel Michael,
'Go thou, Michael,
Make the earth shake under Kite;;
Let Kite; sink into the lake!'
And there to this day
The people do pray,
Never resting, and never weary
From matins to vespers,
Through all the holy offices,
Forever and evermore!"

At that time my head was full of grandmother's poetry, as full as a beehive of honey. I used even to think in verse.

I did not pray in church. I felt ashamed to utter the angry prayers and psalms of lamentation of grandfather's God in the presence of grandmother's God, Who, I felt sure, could take no more pleasure in them than I did myself, for the simple reason that they were all printed in books, and of course He knew them all by heart, as did all people of education. And this is why, when my heart was oppressed by a gentle grief or irritated by the petty grievances of every day, I tried to make up prayers for myself. And when I began to think about my uncongenial work, the words seemed to form themselves into a complaint without any effort on my part:

"Lord, Lord! I am very miserable!
Oh, let me grow up quickly,
For this life I can't endure.
O Lord, forgive!
From my studies I get no benefit,
For that devil's puppet, Granny Matrena,
Howls at me like a wolf,
And my life is very bitter!"

To this day I can remember some of these prayers. The workings of the brain in childhood leave a very deep impression; often they influence one's whole life.

I liked being in church; I could rest there as I rested in the forests and fields. My small heart, which was already familiar with grief and soiled by the mire of a coarse life, laved itself in hazy, ardent dreams. But I went to church only during the hard frosts, or when a snow-storm swept wildly up the streets, when it seemed as if the very sky were frozen, and the wind swept across it with a cloud of snow, and the earth lay frozen under the snow-drifts as if it would never live again.

When the nights were milder I used to like to wander through the streets of the town, creeping along by all the darkest corners. Sometimes I seemed to walk as if I had wings, flying along like the moon in the sky. My shadow crept in front of me, extinguishing the sparkles of light in the snow, bobbing up and down comically. The night watchman patrolled the streets, rattle in hand, clothed in a heavy sheepskin, his dog at his side. Vague outlines of people came out of yards and flitted along the streets, and the dog gave chase. Sometimes I met gay young ladies with their escorts. I had an idea that they also were playing truant from vespers.

Sometimes through a lighted fortochka[1] there came a peculiar smell, faint, unfamiliar, suggestive of a kind of life of which I was ignorant. I used to stand under the windows and inhale it, trying to guess what it was to live like the people in such a house lived. It was the hour of vespers, and yet they were singing merrily, laughing, and playing on a sort of guitar. The deep, stringy sound flowed through the fortochka.

Of special interest to me were the one-storied, dwarfed houses at the corners of the deserted streets, Tikhonovski and Martinovski. I stood there on a moonlight night in mid-Lent and listened to the weird sounds—it sounded as if some one were singing loudly with his mouth closed—which floated out through the fortochka together with a warm steam. The words were indistinguishable, but the song seemed to be familiar and intelligible to me; but when I listened to that, I could not hear the stringy sound which languidly interrupted the flow of song. I sat on the curbstone thinking what a wonderful melody was being played on some sort of insupportable violin—insupportable because it hurt me to listen to it. Sometimes they sang so loudly that the whole house seemed to shake, and the panes of the windows rattled. Like tears, drops fell from the roof, and from my eyes also.

The night watchman had come close to me without my being aware of it, and, pushing me off the curbstone, said:

"What are you stuck here for?"

"The music," I explained.

"A likely tale! Be off now!"

I ran quickly round the houses and returned to my place under the window, but they were not playing now. From the fortochka proceeded sounds of revelry, and it was so unlike the sad music that I thought I must be dreaming. I got into the habit of running to this house every Saturday, but only once, and that was in the spring, did I hear the violoncello again, and then it played without a break till midnight. When I reached home I got a thrashing.

These walks at night beneath the winter sky through the deserted streets of the town enriched me greatly. I purposely chose streets far removed from the center, where there were many lamps, and friends of my master who might have recognized me. Then he would find out how I played truant from vespers. No "drunkards," "street-walkers," or policemen interfered with me in the more remote streets, and I could see into the rooms of the lower floors if the windows were not frozen over or curtained.

Many and diverse were the pictures which I saw through those windows. I saw people praying, kissing, quarreling, playing cards, talking busily and soundlessly the while. It was a cheap panoramic show representing a dumb, fish-like life.

I saw in one basement room two women, a young one and another who was her senior, seated at a table; opposite them sat a school-boy reading to them. The younger woman listened with puckered brows, leaning back in her chair; but the elder, who was thin, with luxuriant hair, suddenly covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. The school-boy threw down the book, and when the younger woman had sprung to her feet and gone away, he fell on his knees before the woman with the lovely hair and began to kiss her hands.

Through another window I saw a large, bearded man with a woman in a red blouse sitting on his knee. He was rocking her as if she had been a baby, and was evidently singing something, opening his mouth wide and rolling his eyes. The woman was shaking with laughter, throwing herself backward and swinging her feet. He made her sit up straight again, and again began to sing, and again she burst out laughing. I gazed at them for a long time, and went away only when I realized that they meant to keep up their merriment all night.

There were many pictures of this kind which will always remain in my memory, and often I was so attracted by them that I was late in returning home. This aroused the suspicions of my employers, who asked me:

"What church did you go to? Who was the officiating priest?"

They knew all the priests of the town; they knew what gospel would be read, in fact, they knew everything. It was easy for them to catch me in a lie.

Both women worshiped the wrathful God of my grandfather—the God Who demanded that we should approach Him in fear. His name was ever on their lips; even in their quarrels they threatened one another:

"Wait! God will punish you! He will plague you for this! Just wait!"

On the Sunday in the first week of Lent, the old woman cooked some butters and burned them all. Flushed with the heat of the stove, she cried angrily:

"The devil take you!" And suddenly, sniffing at the frying-pan, her face grew dark, and she threw the utensil on the floor and moaned: "Bless me, the pan has been used for flesh food! It is unclean! It did not catch when I used it clean on Monday."

Falling on her knees, she entreated with tears: "Lord God, Father, forgive me, accursed that I am! For the sake of Thy sufferings and passion forgive me! Do not punish an old fool, Lord!"

The burned fritters were given to the dog, the pan was destroyed, but the young wife began to reproach her mother-in-law in their quarrels.

"You actually cooked fritters in Lent in a pan which had been used for flesh-meat."

They dragged their God into all the household affairs, into every corner of their petty, insipid lives, and thus their wretched life acquired outward significance and importance, as if every hour was devoted to the service of a Higher Power. The dragging of God into all this dull emptiness oppressed me, and I used to look involuntarily into the corners, aware of being observed by invisible beings, and at night I was wrapped in a cloud of fear. It came from the corner where the ever-burning lamp flickered before the icon.

On a level with this shelf was a large window with two sashes joined by a stanchion. Fathomless, deep-blue space looked into the window, and if one made a quick movement, everything became merged in this deep-blue gulf, and floated out to the stars, into the deathly stillness, without a sound, just as a stone sinks when it is thrown into the water.

I do not remember how I cured myself of this terror, but I did cure myself, and that soon. Grandmother's good God helped me, and I think it was then that I realized the simple truth, namely, that no harm could come to me; that I should not be punished without fault of my own; that it was not the law of life that the innocent should suffer; and that I was not responsible for the faults of others.

I played truant from mass too, especially in the spring, the irresistible force of which would not let me go to church. If I had a seven-copeck piece given me for the collection, it was my destruction. I bought hucklebones, played all the time mass was going on, and was inevitably late home. And one day I was clever enough to lose all the coins which had been given me for prayers for the dead and the blessed bread, so that I had to take some one else's portion when the priest came from the altar and handed it round.

I was terribly fond of gambling, and it became a craze with me. I was skilful enough, and strong, and I swiftly gained renown in games of hucklebones, billiards, and skittles in the neighboring streets.

During Lent I was ordered to prepare for communion, and I went to confession to our neighbor Father Dorimedont Pokrovski. I regarded him as a hard man, and had committed many sins against him personally. I had thrown stones at the summer-house in his garden, and had quarreled with his children. In fact he might call to mind, if he chose, many similar acts annoying to him. This made me feel very uneasy, and when I stood in the poor little church awaiting my turn to go to confession my heart throbbed tremulously.

But Father Dorimedont greeted me with a good-natured, grumbling exclamation.

"Ah, it is my neighbor! Well, kneel down! What sins have you committed?"

He covered my head with a heavy velvet cloth. I inhaled the odor of wax and incense. It was difficult to speak, and I felt reluctant to do so.

"Have you been obedient to your elders?"

"No."

"Say, 'I have sinned.'"

To my own surprise I let fall:

"I have stolen."

"How was that? Where?" asked the priest, thoughtfully and without haste.

"At the church of the three bishops, at Pokrov, and at Nikoli."

"Well, that is in all the churches. That was wrong, my child; it was a sin. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Say, 'I have sinned.' What did you steal for? Was it for something to eat?"

"Sometimes and sometimes it was because I had lost money at play, and, as I had to take home some blessed bread, I stole it."

Father Dorimedont whispered something indistinctly and wearily, and then, after a few more questions, suddenly inquired sternly:

"Have you been reading forbidden books?"

Naturally I did not understand this question, and I asked:

"What books do you mean?"

"Forbidden books. Have you been reading any?"

"No; not one."

"Your sins are remitted. Stand up!"

I glanced at his face in amazement. He looked thoughtful and kind. I felt uneasy, conscience-stricken. In sending me to confession, my employers had spoken about its terrors, impressing on me to confess honestly even my slightest sins.

"I have thrown stones at your summer-house," I deposed.

The priest raised his head and, looking past me, said:

"That was very wrong. Now go!"

"And at your dog."

"Next!" called out Father Dorimedont, still looking past me.

I came away feeling deceived and offended. To be put to all that anxiety about the terrors of confession, and to find, after all, that it was not only far from terrible, but also uninteresting! The only interesting thing about it was the question about the forbidden books, of which I knew nothing. I remembered the school-boy reading to the women in that basement room, and "Good Business," who also had many black, thick books, with unintelligible illustrations.

The next day they gave me fifteen copecks and sent me to communion. Easter was late. The snow had been melted a long time, the streets were dry, the roadways sent up a cloud of dust, and the day was sunny and cheerful. Near the church was a group of workmen gambling with hucklebones. I decided that there was plenty of time to go to communion, and asked if I might join in.

"Let me play."

"The entrance-fee is one copeck," said a pock-marked, ruddy-faced man, proudly.

Not less proudly I replied:

"I put three on the second pair to the left."

"The stakes are on!" And the game began.

I changed the fifteen-copeck piece and placed my three copecks on the pair of hucklebones. Whoever hit that pair would receive that money, but if he failed to hit them, he had to give me three copecks. I was in luck. Two of them took aim and lost. I had won six copecks from grown-up men. My spirits rose greatly. But one of the players remarked:

"You had better look out for that youngster or he will be running away with his winnings."

This I regarded as an insult, and I said hotly: "Nine copecks on the pair at the extreme left." However, this did not make much impression on the players. Only one lad of my own age cried:

"See how lucky he is, that little devil from the Zvezdrinki; I know him."

A thin workman who smelt like a furrier said maliciously:

"He is a little devil, is he? Goo-oo-ood!"

Taking a sudden aim, he coolly knocked over my stake, and, bending down to me, said:

"Will that make you howl?"

"Three copecks on the pair to the right!"

"I shall have another three," he said, but he lost.

One could not put money on the same "horse" more than three times running, so I chose other hucklebones and won four more copecks. I had a heap of hucklebones. But when my turn came again, I placed money three times, and lost it all. Simultaneously mass was finished, the bell rang, and the people came out of church.

"Are you married?" inquired the furrier, intending to seize me by the hair; but I eluded him, and overtaking a lad in his Sunday clothes I inquired politely:

"Have you been to communion?"

"Well, and suppose I have; what then?" he answered, looking at me contemptuously.

I asked him to tell me how people took communion, what words the priest said, and what I ought to have done.

The young fellow shook me roughly and roared out in a terrifying voice:

"You have played the truant from communion, you heretic! Well, I am not going to tell you anything. Let your father skin you for it!"

I ran home expecting to be questioned, and certain that they would discover that I had not been to communion; but after congratulating me, the old woman asked only one question:

"How much did you give to the clerk? Much?"

"Five copecks," I answered, without turning a hair.

"And three copecks for himself; that would leave you seven copecks, animal!"

It was springtime. Each succeeding spring was clothed differently, and seemed brighter and pleasanter than the preceding one. The young grass and the fresh green birch gave forth an intoxicating odor. I had an uncontrollable desire to loiter in the fields and listen to the lark, lying face downward on the warm earth; but I had to clean the winter coats and help to put them away in the trunks, to cut up leaf tobacco, and dust the furniture, and to occupy myself from morning till night with duties which were to me both unpleasant and needless.

In my free hours I had absolutely nothing to live for. In our wretched street there was nothing, and beyond that I was not allowed to go. The yard was full of cross, tired workmen, untidy cooks, and washerwomen, and every evening I saw disgusting sights so offensive to me that I wished that I was blind.

I went up into the attic, taking some scissors and some colored paper with me, and cut out some lacelike designs with which I ornamented the rafters. It was, at any rate, something on which my sorrow could feed. I longed with all my heart to go to some place where people slept less, quarreled less, and did not so wearisomely beset God with complaints, and did not so frequently offend people with their harsh judgments.

On the Saturday after Easter they brought the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Vlandimirski from the Oranski Monastery to the town. The image became the guest of the town for half of the month of June, and blessed all the dwellings of those who attended the church. It was brought to my employers' house on a week-day. I was cleaning the copper things in the kitchen when the young mistress cried out in a scared voice from her room:

"Open the front door. They are bringing the Oranski icon here."

I rushed down, very dirty, and with greasy hands as rough as a brick opened the door. A young man with a lamp in one hand and a thurible in the other grumbled gently:

"Are you all asleep? Give a hand here!"

Two of the inhabitants carried the heavy icon-case up the narrow staircase. I helped them by supporting the edge, of it with my dirty hands and my shoulder. The monk came heavily behind me, chanting unwillingly with his thick voice:

"Holy Mother of God, pray for us!"

I thought, with sorrowful conviction:

"She is angry with me because I have touched her with dirty hands, and she will cause my hands to wither."

They placed the icon in the corner of the antichamber on two chairs, which were covered with a clean sheet, and on each side of it stood two monks, young and beautiful like angels. They had bright eyes, joyful expressions, and lovely hair.

Prayers were said.

"O, Mother Renowned," the big priest chanted, and all the while he was feeling the swollen lobe of his ear, which was hidden in his luxuriant hair.

"Holy Mother of God, pray for u-u-us!" sang the monks, wearily.

I loved the Holy Virgin. According to grandmother's stories it was she who sowed on the earth, for the consolation of the poor, all the flowers, all the joys, every blessing and beauty. And when the time came to salute her, without observing how the adults conducted themselves toward her, I kissed the icon palpitatingly on the face, the lips. Some one with powerful hands hurled me to the door. I do not remember seeing the monks go away, carrying the icon, but I remember very well how my employers sat on the floor around me and debated with much fear and anxiety what would become of me.

"We shall have to speak to the priest about him and have him taught," said the master, who scolded me without rancor.

"Ignoramus! How is it that you did not know that you should not kiss the lips? You must have been taught that at school."

For several days I waited, resigned, wondering what actually would happen to me. I had touched the icon with dirty hands; I had saluted it in a forbidden manner; I should not be allowed to go unpunished.

But apparently the Mother of God forgave the involuntary sin which had been prompted by sheer love, or else her punishment was so light that I did not notice it among the frequent punishments meted out to me by these good people.

Sometimes, to annoy the old mistress, I said compunctiously:

"But the Holy Virgin has evidently forgotten to punish me."

"You wait," answered the old woman, maliciously. "We shall see."

While I decorated the rafters of the attic with pink tea-wrappers, silver paper, leaves from trees, and all kinds of things, I used to sing anything that came into my head, setting the words to church melodies, as the Kalmucks do on the roads.

"I am sitting in the attic
With scissors in my hand,
Cutting paper—paper.
A dunce am I, and dull.
If I were a dog,
I could run where'er I wished;
But now they all cry out to me:
'Sit down! Be silent, rogue,
While your skin is whole!'"

The old woman came to look at my work, and burst out laughing.

"You should decorate the kitchen like that."

One day the master came up to the attic, looked at my performance, and said, with a sigh:

"You are an amusing fellow, Pyeshkov; the devil you are? I wonder what you will become, a conjurer or what? One can't guess." And he gave me a large Nikolaivski five-copeck piece.

By means of a thin wire I fastened the coin in the most prominent position among my works of art. In the course of a few days it disappeared. I believe that the old woman took it.

CHAPTER V

However, I did run away in the spring. One morning when I went to the shop for bread the shopkeeper, continuing in my presence a quarrel with his wife, struck her on the forehead with a weight. She ran into the street, and there fell down. People began to gather round at once. The woman was laid on a stretcher and carried to the hospital, and I ran behind the cab which took her there without noticing where I was going till I found myself on the banks of the Volga, with two grevens in my hand.

The spring sun shone caressingly, the broad expanse of the Volga flowed before me, the earth was full of sound and spacious, and I had been living like a mouse in a trap. So I made up my mind that I would not return to my master, nor would I go to grandmother at Kunavin; for as I had not kept my word to her, I was ashamed to go and see her, and grandfather would only gloat over my misfortunes.

For two or three days I wandered by the river-side, being fed by kind-hearted porters, and sleeping with them in their shelters. At length one of them said to me:

"It is no use for you to hang about here, my boy. I can see that. Go over to the boat which is called The Good. They want a washer-up."

I went. The tall, bearded steward in a black silk skullcap looked at me through his glasses with his dim eyes, and said quietly:

"Two rubles a month. Your passport?"

I had no passport. The steward pondered and then said:

"Bring your mother to see me."

I rushed to grandmother. She approved the course I had taken, told grandfather to go to the workman's court and get me a passport, and she herself accompanied me to the boat.

"Good!" said the steward, looking at us. "Come along."

He then took me to the stern of the boat, where sat at a small table, drinking tea and smoking a fat cigar at the same time, an enormous cook in white overalls and a white cap. The steward pushed me toward him.

"The washer-up."

Then he went away, and the cook, snorting, and with his black mustache bristling, called after him:

"You engage any sort of devil as long as he is cheap."

Angrily tossing his head of closely cropped hair, he opened his dark eyes very wide, stretched himself, puffed, and cried shrilly:

"And who may you be?"

I did not like the appearance of this man at all. Although he was all in white, he looked dirty. There was a sort of wool growing on his fingers, and hairs stuck out of his great ears.

"I am hungry," was my reply to him.

He blinked, and suddenly his ferocious countenance was transformed by a broad smile. His fat, brick-red cheeks widened to his very ears; he displayed his large, equine teeth; his mustache drooped, and all at once he had assumed the appearance of a kind, fat woman.

Throwing the tea overboard out of his glass, he poured out a fresh lot for me, and pushed a French roll and a large piece of sausage toward me.

"Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you steal? You needn't be afraid; they are all thieves here. You will soon learn."

He talked as if he were barking. His enormous, blue, clean-shaven face was covered all round the nose with red veins closely set together, his swollen, purple nose hung over his mustache. His lower lip was disfiguringly pendulous. In the corner of his mouth was stuck a smoking cigarette. Apparently he had only just come from the bath. He smelt of birch twigs, and a profuse sweat glistened on his temples and neck.

After I had drunk my tea, he gave me a ruble-note.

"Run along and buy yourself two aprons with this. Wait! I will buy them for you myself."

He set his cap straight and came with me, swaying ponderously, his feet pattering on the deck like those of a bear.

At night the moon shone brightly as it glided away from the boat to the meadows on the left. The old red boat, with its streaked funnel, did not hurry, and her propeller splashed unevenly in the silvery water. The dark shore gently floated to meet her, casting its shadow on the water, and beyond, the windows of the peasant huts gleamed charmingly. They were singing in the village. The girls were merry-making and singing—and when they sang "Aie Ludi," it sounded like "Alleluia."

In the wake of the steamer a large barge, also red, was being towed by a long rope. The deck was railed in like an iron cage, and in this cage were convicts condemned to deportation or prison. On the prow of the barge the bayonet of a sentry shone like a candle. It was quiet on the barge itself. The moon bathed it in a rich light while behind the black iron grating could be seen dimly gray patches. These were the convicts looking out on the Volga. The water sobbed, now weeping, now laughing timidly. It was as quiet here as in church, and there was the same smell of oil.

As I looked at the barge I remembered my early childhood; the journey from Astrakhan to Nijni, the iron faces of mother and grandmother, the person who had introduced me to this interesting, though hard, life, in the world. And when I thought of grandmother, all that I found so bad and repulsive in life seemed to leave me; everything was transformed and became more interesting, pleasanter; people seemed to be better and nicer altogether.

The beauty of the nights moved me almost to tears, and especially the barge, which looked so like a coffin, and so solitary on the broad expanse of the flowing river in the pensive quietness of the warm night. The uneven lines of the shore, now rising, now falling, stirred the imagination pleasantly. I longed to be good, and to be of use to others.

The people on our steamboat had a peculiar stamp. They seemed to me to be all alike, young and old, men and women. The boat traveled slowly. The busy folk traveled by fast boat, and all the lazy rascals came on our boat. They sang and ate, and soiled any amount of cups and plates, knives and forks and spoons from morning to night. My work was to wash up and clean the knives and forks, and I was busy with this work from six in the morning till close on midnight. During the day, from two till six o'clock, and in the evening, from ten till midnight, I had less work to do; for at those times the passengers took a rest from eating, and only drank, tea, beer, and vodka. All the buffet attendants, my chiefs, were free at that time, too. The cook, Smouri, drank tea at a table near the hatchway with his assistant, Jaakov Ivanich; the kitchen-man, Maxim; and Sergei, the saloon steward, a humpback with high cheek-bones, a face pitted with smallpox, and oily eyes. Jaakov told all sorts of nasty stories, bursting out into sobbing laughs and showing his long, discolored teeth. Sergei stretched his frog-like mouth to his ears. Frowning Maxim was silent, gazing at them with stern, colorless eyes.

"Asiatic! Mordovan!" said the old cook now and again in his deep voice.

I did not like these people. Fat, bald Jaakov Ivanich spoke of nothing but women, and that always filthily. He had a vacant-looking face covered with bluish pimples. On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of red hair growing from it. He used to pull out these hairs by twisting them round a needle. Whenever an amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sex appeared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar, timid manner like a beggar. He spoke to her sweetly and plaintively, he licked her, as it were, with the swift movements of his tongue. For some reason I used to think that such great fat creatures ought to be hang-men.

"One should know how to get round women," he would teach Sergei and Maxim, who would listen to him much impressed, pouting their lips and turning red.

"Asiatics!" Smouri would roar in accents of disgust, and standing up heavily, he gave the order, "Pyeshkov, march!"

In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound in leather, and lie down in his hammock by the wall of the ice-house.

"Read!" he would say.

I sat on a box and read conscientiously:

"'The umbra projected by the stars means that one is on good terms with heaven and free from profanity and vice.'"

Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke and growled:

"Camels! They wrote—"

"'Baring the left bosom means innocence of heart.'" "Whose bosom?"

"It does not say."

"A woman's, it means. Eh, and a loose woman."

He closed his eyes and lay with his arms behind his head. His cigarette, hardly alight, stuck in the corner of his mouth. He set it straight with his tongue, stretched so that something whistled in his chest, and his enormous face was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Sometimes I thought he had fallen asleep and I left off reading to examine the accursed book, which bored me to nauseation. But he said hoarsely: "Go on reading!"

"'The venerable one answered, "Look! My dear brother Suvyerin—"'"

"Syevyeverin—"

"It is written Suvyerin."

"Well, that's witchcraft. There is some poetry at the end. Run on from there."

I ran on.

"Profane ones, curious to know our business,
Never will your weak eyes spy it out,
Nor will you learn how the fairies sing."

"Wait!" said Smouri. "That is not poetry. Give me the book."

He angrily turned over the thick, blue leaves, and then put the book under the mattress.

"Get me another one."

To my grief there were many books in his black trunk clamped with iron. There were "Precepts of Peace," "Memories of the Artillery," "Letters of Lord Sydanhall," "Concerning Noxious Insects and their Extinction, with Advice against the Pest," books which seemed to have no beginning and no end. Sometimes the cook set me to turn over all his books and read out their titles to him, but as soon as I had begun he called out angrily:

"What is it all about? Why do you speak through your teeth? It is impossible to understand you. What the devil has Gerbvase to do with me? Gervase! Umbra indeed!"

Terrible words, incomprehensible names were wearily remembered, and they tickled my tongue. I had an incessant desire to repeat them, thinking that perhaps by pronouncing them I might discover their meaning. And outside the port-hole the water unweariedly sang and splashed. It would have been pleasant to go to the stern, where the sailors and stokers were gathered together among the chests, where the passengers played cards, sang songs, and told interesting stories. It would have been pleasant to sit among them and listen to simple, intelligible conversation, to gaze on the banks of the Kama, at the fir-trees drawn out like brass wires, at the meadows, wherein small lakes remained from the floods, looking like pieces of broken glass as they reflected the sun.

Our steamer was traveling at some distance from the shore, yet the sound of invisible bells came to us, reminding us of the villages and people. The barks of the fishermen floated on the waves like crusts of bread. There, on the bank a little village appeared, here a crowd of small boys bathed in the river, men in red blouses could be seen passing along a narrow strip of sand. Seen from a distance, from the river, it was a very pleasing sight; everything looked like tiny toys of many colors.

I felt a desire to call out some kind, tender words to the shore and the barge. The latter interested me greatly; I could look at it for an hour at a time as it dipped its blunt nose in the turbid water. The boat dragged it along as if it were a pig: the tow-rope, slackening, lashed the water, then once more drew taut and pulled the barge along by the nose. I wanted very much to see the faces of those people who were kept like wild animals in an iron cage. At Perm, where they were landed, I made my way to the gangway, and past me came, in batches of ten, gray people, trampling dully, rattling their fetters, bowed down by their heavy knapsacks. There were all sorts, young and old, handsome and ugly, all exactly like ordinary people except that they were differently dressed and were disfiguringly close-shaven. No doubt these were robbers, but grandmother had told me much that was good about robbers. Smouri looked much more like a fierce robber than they as he glanced loweringly at the barge and said loudly:

"Save me, God, from such a fate!"

Once I asked him:

"Why do you say that? You cook, while those others kill and steal."

"I don't cook; I only prepare. The women cook," he said, bursting out laughing; but after thinking a moment he added: "The difference between one person and another lies in stupidity. One man is clever, another not so clever, and a third may be quite a fool. To become clever one must read the right books—black magic and what not. One must read all kinds of books and then one will find the right ones."

He was continually impressing upon me:

"Read! When you don't understand a book, read it again and again, as many as seven times; and if you do not understand it then, read it a dozen times."

To every one on the boat, not excluding the taciturn steward, Smouri spoke roughly. Sticking out his lower lip as if he were disgusted, and, stroking his mustache, he pelted them with words as if they were stones. To me he always showed kindness and interest, but there was something about his interest which rather frightened me. Sometimes I thought he was crazy, like grandmother's sister. At times he said to me:

"Leave off reading."

And he would lie for a long time with closed eyes, breathing stertorously, his great stomach shaking. His hairy fingers, folded corpse-like on his chest, moved, knitting invisible socks with invisible needles. Suddenly he would begin growling:

"Here are you! You have your intelligence. Go and live! Rut intelligence is given sparingly, and not to all alike. If all were on the same level intellectually—but they are not. One understands, another does not, and there are some people who do not even wish to understand!"

Stumbling over his words, he related stories of his life as a soldier, the drift of which I could never manage to catch. They seemed very uninteresting to me. Besides, he did not tell them from the beginning, but as he recollected them.

"The commander of the regiment called this soldier to him and asked: 'What did the lieutenant say to you?' So he told everything just as it had happened—a soldier is bound to tell the truth—but the lieutenant looked at him as if he had been a wall, and then turned away, hanging his head. Yes—"

He became indignant, puffed out clouds of smoke, and growled:

"How was I to know what I could say and what I ought not to say? Then the lieutenant was condemned to be shut up in a fortress, and his mother said—ah, my God! I am not learned in anything."

It was hot. Everything seemed to be quivering and tinkling. The water splashed against the iron walls of the cabin, and the wheel of the boat rose and fell. The river flowed in a broad stream between the rows of lights. In the distance could be seen the line of the meadowed bank. The trees drooped. When one's hearing had become accustomed to all the sounds, it seemed as if all was quiet, although the soldiers in the stern of the boat howled dismally, "Se-e-even! Se-e-ven!"

I had no desire to take part in anything. I wanted neither to listen nor to work, but only to sit somewhere in the shadows, where there was no greasy, hot smell of cooking; to sit and gaze, half asleep, at the quiet, sluggish life as it slipped away on the water.

"Read!" the cook commanded harshly.

Even the head steward was afraid of him, and that mild man of few words, the dining-room steward, who looked like a sandre, was evidently afraid of Smouri too.

"Ei! You swine!" he would cry to this man. "Come here! Thief! Asiatic!"

The sailors and stokers were very respectful to him, and expectant of favors. He gave them the meat from which soup had been made, and inquired after their homes and their families. The oily and smoke-dried White Russian stokers were counted the lowest people on the boat. They were all called by one name, Yaks, and they were teased, "Like a Yak, I amble along the shore."

When Smouri heard this, he bristled up, his face became suffused with blood, and he roared at the stokers:

"Why do you allow them to laugh at you, you mugs? Throw some sauce in their faces."

Once the boatswain, a handsome, but ill-natured, man, said to him:

"They are the same as Little Russians; they hold the same faith."

The cook seized him by the collar and belt, lifted him up in the air, and said, shaking him:

"Shall I knock you to smithereens?"

They quarreled often, these two. Sometimes it even came to a fight, but Smouri was never beaten. He was possessed of superhuman strength, and besides this, the captain's wife, with a masculine face and smooth hair like a boy's, was on his side.

He drank a terrible amount of vodka, but never became drunk. He began to drink the first thing in the morning, consuming a whole bottle in four gulps, and after that he sipped beer till close on evening. His face gradually grew brown, his eyes widened.

Sometimes in the evening he sat for hours in the hatchway, looking large and white, without breaking his silence, and his eyes were fixed gloomily on the distant horizon. At those times they were all more afraid of him than ever, but I was sorry for him. Jaakov Ivanich would come out from the kitchen, perspiring and glowing with the heat. Scratching his bald skull and waving his arm, he would take cover or say from a distance:

"The fish has gone off."

"Well, there is the salted cabbage."

"But if they ask for fish-soup or boiled fish?"

"It is ready. They can begin gobbling."

Sometimes I plucked up courage to go to him. He looked at me heavily.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing."

"Good.".

On one of these occasions, however, I asked him:

"Why is every one afraid of you? For you are good."

Contrary to my expectations, he did not get angry.

"I am only good to you."

But he added distinctly, simply, and thoughtfully:

"Yes, it is true that I am good to every one, only I do not show it. It does not do to show that to people, or they will be all over you. They will crawl over those who are kind as if they were mounds in a morass, and trample on them. Go and get me some beer."

Having drunk the bottle, he sucked his mustache and said:

"If you were older, my bird, I could teach you a lot. I have something to say to a man. I am no fool. But you must read books. In them you will find all you need. They are not rubbish—books. Would you like some beer?"

"I don't care for it."

"Good boy! And you do well not to drink it. Drunkenness is a misfortune. Vodka is the devil's own business. If I were rich, I would spur you on to study. An uninstructed man is an ox, fit for nothing but the yoke or to serve as meat. All he can do is to wave his tail."

The captain's wife gave him a volume of Gogol. I read "The Terrible Vengeance" and was delighted with it, but Smouri cried angrily:

"Rubbish! A fairy-tale! I know. There are other books."

He took the book away from me, obtained another one from the captain's wife, and ordered me harshly:

"Read Tarass'—what do you call it? Find it! She says it is good; good for whom? It may be good for her, but not for me, eh? She cuts her hair short. It is a pity her ears were not cut off too."

When Tarass called upon Ostap to fight, the cook laughed loudly.

"That's the way! Of course! You have learning, but I have strength. What do they say about it? Camels!"

He listened with great attention, but often grumbled:

"Rubbish! You could n't cut a man in half from his shoulders to his haunches; it can't be done. And you can't thrust a pike upward; it would break it. I have been a soldier myself."

Andrei's treachery aroused his disgust.

'There's a mean creature, eh? Like women! Tfoo!

But when Tarass killed his son, the cook let his feet slip from the hammock, bent himself double, and wept. The tears trickled down his cheeks, splashed upon the deck as he breathed stertorously and muttered:

"Oh, my God! my God!"

And suddenly he shouted to me:

"Go on reading, you bone of the devil!"

Again he wept, with even more violence and bitterness, when I read how Ostap cried, out before his death, "Father, dost thou hear?"

"Ruined utterly!" exclaimed Smouri. "Utterly! Is that the end? Ekh! What an accursed business! He was a man, that Tar ass. What do you think? Yes, he was a man."

He took the book out of my hands and looked at it with attention, letting his tears fall on its binding.

"It is a fine book, a regular treat."

After this we read "Ivanhoe." Smouri was very pleased with Richard Plantagenet.

"That was a real king," he said impressively.

To me the book had appeared dry. In fact, our tastes did not agree at all. I had a great liking for "The Story of Thomas Jones," an old translation of "The History of Tom Jones, Foundling," but Smouri grumbled:

"Rubbish! What do I care about your Thomas? Of what use is he to me? There must be some other books."

One day I told him that I knew that there were other books, forbidden books. One could read them only at night, in underground rooms. He opened his eyes wide.

"Wha-a-t's that? Why do you tell me these lies?"

"I am not telling lies. The priest asked me about them when I went to confession, and, for that matter, I myself have seen people reading them and crying over them."

The cook looked sternly in my face and asked:

"Who was crying?"

"The lady who was listening, and the other actually ran away because she was frightened."

"You were asleep. You were dreaming," said Smouri, slowly covering his eyes, and after a silence he muttered: "But of course there must be something hidden from me somewhere. I am not so old as all that, and with my character—well, however that may be—"

He spoke to me eloquently for a whole hour.

Imperceptibly I acquired the habit of reading, and took up a book with pleasure. What I read therein was pleasantly different from life, which was becoming harder and harder for me.

Smouri also recreated himself by reading, and often took me from my work.

"Pyeshkov, come and read."

"I have a lot of washing up to do."

"Let Maxim wash up."

He coarsely ordered the senior kitchen-helper to do my work, and this man would break the glasses out of spite, while the chief steward told me quietly:

"I shall have you put off the boat."

One day Maxim on purpose placed several glasses in a bowl of dirty water and tea-leaves. I emptied the water overboard, and the glasses went flying with it.

"It is my fault," said Smouri to the head steward. "Put it down to my account."

The dining-room attendants began to look at me with lowering brows, and they used to say:

"Ei! you bookworm! What are you paid for?"

And they used to try and make as much work as they could for me, soiling plates needlessly. I was sure that this would end badly for me, and I was not mistaken.

One evening, in a little shelter on the boat, there sat a red-faced woman with a girl in a yellow coat and a new pink blouse. Both had been drinking. The woman smiled, bowed to every one, and said on the note O, like a church clerk:

"Forgive me, my friends; I have had a little too much to drink. I have been tried and acquitted, and I have been drinking for joy."

The girl laughed, too, gazing at the other passengers with glazed eyes. Pushing the woman away, she said:

"But you, you plaguy creature—we know you."

They had berths in the second-class cabin, opposite the cabin in which Jaakov Ivanich and Sergei slept.

The woman soon disappeared somewhere or other, and Sergei took her place near the girl, greedily stretching his frog-like mouth.

That night, when I had finished my work and had laid myself down to sleep on the table, Sergei came to me, and seizing me by the arm, said:

"Come along! We are going to marry you."

He was drunk. I tried to tear my arm away from him, but he struck me.

"Come along!"

Maxim came running in, also drunk, and the two dragged me along the deck to their cabin, past the sleeping passengers. But by the door of the cabin stood Smouri, and in the doorway, holding on to the jamb, Jaakov Ivanich. The girl stuck her elbow in his back, and cried in a drunken voice:

"Make way!"

Smouri got me out of the hands of Sergei and Maxim, seized them by the hair, and, knocking their heads together, moved away. They both fell down.

"Asiatic!" he said to Jaakov, slamming the door on him. Then he roared as he pushed me along:

"Get out of this!"

I ran to the stern. The night was cloudy, the river black. In the wake of the boat seethed two gray lines of water leading to the invisible shore; between these two lines the barge dragged on its way. Now on the right, now on the left appeared red patches of light, without illuminating anything. They disappeared, hidden by the sudden winding of the shore. After this it became still darker and more gruesome.

The cook came and sat beside me, sighed deeply, and pulled at his cigarette.

"So they were taking you to that creature? Ekh! Dirty beasts! I heard them trying."

"Did you take her away from them?"

"Her?" He abused the girl coarsely, and continued in a sad tone:

"It is all nastiness here. This boat is worse than a village. Have you ever lived in a village?"

"No."

"In a village there is nothing but misery, especially in the winter."

Throwing his cigarette overboard, he was silent. Then he spoke again.

"You have fallen among a herd of swine, and I am sorry for you, my little one. I am sorry for all of them, too. Another time I do not know what I should have done. Gone on my knees and prayed. What are you doing, sons of ——? What are you doing, blind creatures? Camels!"

The steamer gave a long-drawn-out hoot, the tow-rope splashed in the water, the lights of lanterns jumped up and down, showing where the harbor was. Out of the darkness more lights appeared.

"Pyani Bor [a certain pine forest]. Drunk," growled the cook. "And there is a river called Pyanaia, and there was a captain called Pyenkov, and a writer called Zapivokhin, and yet another captain called Nepei-pivo.[1] I am going on shore."

The coarse-grained women and girls of Kamska dragged logs of wood from the shore in long trucks. Bending under their load-straps, with pliable tread, they arrived in pairs at the stoker's hold, and, emptying their sooty loads into the black hole, cried ringingly:

"Logs!"