From Christmas till the beginning of Lent drew near, Davidov lay in the loft, coughing protractedly, spitting blood, which, if it did not fall into the wash-hand basin, splashed on the floor. At night he woke the others with his delirious shrieks.
Almost every day they said:
"We must take him to the hospital!"
But it turned out that Davidov's passport had expired. Then he seemed better, and they said:
"It is of no consequence after all; he will soon be dead!"
And he would say to himself:
"I shall soon be gone!"
He was a quiet humorist and also tried to relieve the dullness of the workshop by jokes, hanging down his dark bony face, and saying in a wheezy voice:
"Listen, people, to the voice of one who ascended to the loft.
"In the loft I live,
Early do I wake;
Asleep or awake
Cockroaches devour me."
"He is not downhearted!" exclaimed his audience.
Sometimes Pavl and I went to him, and he joked with difficulty.
"With what shall I regale you, my dear guests? A fresh little spider—would you like that?"
He died slowly, and he grew very weary of it. He said with unfeigned vexation:
"It seems that I can't die, somehow; it is really a calamity!"
His fearlessness in the face of death frightened Pavl very much. He awoke me in the night and whispered:
"Maximich, he seems to be dying. Suppose he dies in the night, when we are lying beneath him—Oh, Lord! I am frightened of dead people."
Or he would say:
"Why was he born? Not twenty-two years have passed over his head and he is dying."
Once, on a moonlight night he awoke, and gazing with wide-open, terrified eyes said:
"Listen!"
Davidov was croaking in the loft, saying quickly and clearly:
"Give it to me—give—"
Then he began to hiccup.
"He is dying, by God he is; you see!" said Pavl agitatedly.
I had been carrying snow from the yard into the fields all day, and I was very sleepy, but Pavl begged me:
"Don't go to sleep, please; for Christ's sake don't go to sleep!"
And suddenly getting on to his knees, he cried frenziedly:
"Get up! Davidov is dead!"
Some of them awoke; several figures rose from the beds; angry voices were raised, asking questions.
Kapendiukhin climbed up into the loft and said in a tone of amazement:
"It is a fact; he is dead, although he is still warm." It was quiet now. Jikharev crossed himself, and wrapping himself round in his blanket, said:
"Well, he is in the Kingdom of Heaven now!" Some one suggested:
"Let us carry him into the vestibule."
Kapendiukhin climbed down from the loft and glanced through the window.
"Let him lie where he is till the morning; he never hurt any one while he was alive."
Pavl, hiding his head under the pillow, sobbed.
But Sitanov did not even wake!
The snow melted away from the fields; the wintry clouds in the sky passed away; wet snow and rain fell upon the earth; the sun was slower and slower in performing his daily journey; the air grew warmer; and it seemed that the joyful spring had already arrived, sportively hiding herself behind the fields, and would soon burst upon the town itself. In the streets there was brown mud; streams ran along the gutters; in the thawed places of Arestantski Square the sparrows hopped joyfully. And in human creatures, also, was apparent the same excitement as was shown by the sparrows. Above the sounds of spring, almost uninterruptedly from morning to night, rang out the Lenten bells, stirring one's heart with their muffled strokes. In that sound, as in the speech of an old man, there was hidden something of displeasure, as if the bells had said with cold melancholy:
"Has been, this has been, has been—"
On my name-day the workmen gave me a small, beautifully painted image of Alexei, the man of God, and Jikharev made an impressive, long speech, which I remember very well.
"What are you?" said he, with much play of finger and raising of eyebrows. "Nothing more than a small boy, an orphan, thirteen years old—and I, nearly four times your age, praise you and approve of you, because you always stand with your face to people and not sideways! Stand like that always, and you will be all right!"
He spoke of the slaves of God, and of his people, but the difference between people and slaves I could never understand, and I don't believe that he understood it himself. His speech was long-winded, the workshop was laughing at him, and I stood, with the image in my hand, very touched and very confused, not knowing what I ought to do. At length Kapendiukhin called out irritably:
"Oh, leave off singing his praises; his ears are already turning blue!"
Then clapping me on the shoulder, he began to praise me himself:
"What is good in you is what you have in common with all human creatures, and not the fact that it is difficult to scold and beat you when you have given cause for it!"
They all looked at me with kind eyes, making good-natured fun of my confusion. A little more and I believe I should have burst out crying from the unexpected joy of finding myself valued by these people. And that very morning the shopman had said to Petr Vassilich, nodding his head toward me:
"An unpleasant boy that, and good for nothing!"
As usual I had gone to the shop in the morning, but at noon the shopman had said to me:
"Go home and clear the snow off the roof of the warehouse, and clean out the cellar."
That it was my name-day he did not know, and I had thought that no one knew it. When the ceremony of congratulations had finished in the workshop, I changed my clothes and climbed up to the roof of the shed to throw off the smooth, heavy snow which had accumulated during that winter. But being excited, I forgot to close the door of the cellar, and threw all the snow into it. When I jumped down to the ground, I saw my mistake, and set myself at once to get the snow away from the door. Being wet, it lay heavily; the wooden, spade moved it with difficulty; there was no iron one, and I broke the spade at the very moment when the shopman appeared at the yard-gate. The truth of the Russian proverb, "Sorrow follows on the heels of joy," was proved to me.
"So—o—o!" said the shopman derisively, "you are a fine workman, the devil take you! If I get hold of your senseless blockhead—" He flourished the blade of the shovel over me.
I move away, saying angrily:
"I was n't engaged as a yardman, anyhow."
He hurled the stick against my legs. I took up a snowball and threw it right in his face. He ran away snorting, and I left off working, and went into the workshop. In a few minutes his fiancée came running downstairs. She was an agile maiden, with pimples on her vacant face.
"Maximich, you are to go upstairs!"
"I am not going!" I said.
Larionich asked in an amazed undertone:
"What is this? You are not going?"
I told him about the affair. With an anxious frown he went upstairs, muttering to me:
"Oh, you impudent youngster—"
The workshop resounded with abuse of the shopman, and Kapendiukhin said:
"Well, they will kick you out this time!"
This did not alarm me. My relations with the shopman had already become unbearable. His hatred of me was undisguised and became more and more acute, while, for my part, I could not endure him. But what I wanted to know was: why did he behave so absurdly to me? He would throw coins about the floor of the shop, and when I was sweeping, I found them, and laid them on the counter in the cup which contained the small money kept for beggars. When I guessed what these frequent finds meant I said to him:
"You throw money about in my way on purpose!" He flew out at me and cried incautiously:
"Don't you dare to teach me! I know what I am doing!"
But he corrected himself immediately:
"And what do you mean by my throwing it about purposely? It falls about itself."
He forbade me to read the books in the shop, saying:
"That is not for you to trouble your head about! What! Have you an idea of becoming a valuer, sluggard?"
He did not cease his attempts to catch me in the theft of small money, and I realised that if, when I was sweeping the floor, the coin should roll into a crevice between the boards, he would declare that I had stolen it. Then I told him again that he had better give up that game, but that same day, when I returned from the tavern with the boiling water, I heard him suggesting to the newly engaged assistant in the neighboring shop:
"Egg him on to steal psalters. We shall soon be having three hampers of them."
I knew that they were talking about me, for when I entered the shop they both looked confused; and besides these signs, I had grounds for suspecting them of a foolish conspiracy against me.
This was not the first time that that assistant had been in the service of the man next door. He was accounted a clever salesman, but he suffered from alcoholism; in one of his drinking bouts the master had dismissed him, but had afterwards taken him back. He was an anaemic, feeble person, with cunning eyes. Apparently amiable and submissive to the slightest gesture of his master, he smiled a little, clever smile in his beard all the time, was fond of uttering sharp sayings, and exhaled the rotten smell which comes from people with bad teeth, although his own were white and strong.
One day he gave me a terrible surprise; he came towards me smiling pleasantly, but suddenly seized my cap off my head and took hold of my hair. We began to struggle. He pushed me from the gallery into the shop, trying all the time to throw me against the large images which stood about on the floor. If he had succeeded in this, I should have broken the glass, or chipped the carving, and no doubt scratched some of the costly icons. He was very weak, and I soon overcame him; when to my great amazement the bearded man sat on the floor and cried bitterly, rubbing his bruised nose.
The next morning when our masters had both gone out somewhere and we were alone, he said to me in a friendly manner, rubbing the lump on the bridge of his nose and under his eyes with his finger:
"Do you think that it was of my own will or desire that I attacked you? I am not a fool, you know, and I knew that you would be more than a match for me. I am a man of little strength, a tippler. It was your master who told me to do it. 'Lead him on,' he said, 'and get him to break something in the shop while he is fighting you. Let him damage something, anyhow!' I should never have done it of my own accord; look how you have ornamented my phiz for me."
I believed him, and I began to be sorry for him. I knew that he lived, half-starved, with a woman who knocked him about. However, I asked him:
"And if he told you to poison a person, I suppose you would do it?"
"He might do that," said the shopman with a pitiful smile; "he is capable of it."
Soon after this he asked me:
"Listen, I have not a farthing; there is nothing to eat at home; my missus nags at me. Couldn't you take an icon out of your stock and give it to me to sell, like a friend, eh? Will you? Or a breviary?"
I remembered the boot-shop, and the beadle of the church, and I thought: "Will this man give me away?" But it was hard to refuse him, and I gave him an icon. To steal a breviary worth several rubles, that I could not do; it seemed, to me a great crime. What would you have? Arithmetic always lies concealed in ethics; the holy ingenuousness of "Regulations for the Punishment of Criminals" clearly gives away this little secret, behind which the great lie of property hides itself.
When I heard my shopman suggesting that this miserable man should incite me to steal psalters I was afraid. It was clear that he knew how charitable I had been on the other's behalf, and that the man from next door had told him about the icon.
The abominableness of being charitable at another person's expense, and the realization of the rotten trap that had been set for me—both these things aroused in me a feeling of indignation and disgust with myself and every one else. For several days I tormented myself cruelly, waiting for the arrival of the hamper with the books. At length they came, and when I was putting them away in the store-room, the shopman from next door came to me and asked me to give him a breviary.
Then I asked him:
"Did you tell my master about the icon?"
"I did," he answered in a melancholy voice; "I can keep nothing back, brother."
This utterly confounded me, and I sat on the floor staring at him stupidly, while he muttered hurriedly, confusedly, desperately miserable:
"You see your man guessed—or rather, mine guessed and told yours—"
I thought I was lost. These people had been conspiring against me, and now there was a place ready for me in the colony for youthful criminals! If that were so, nothing mattered! If one must drown, it is better to drown in a deep spot. I put a breviary into the hands of the shopman; he hid it in the sleeves of his greatcoat and went away. But he returned suddenly, the breviary fell at my feet, and the man strode away, saying:
"I won't take it! It would be all over with you." I did not understand these words. Why should it be all over with me? But I was very glad that he had not taken the book. After this my little shopman began to regard me with more disfavor and suspicion than ever.
I remembered all this when Larionich went upstairs. He did not stay there long, and came back more depressed and quiet than usual, but before supper he said to me privately:
"I tried to arrange for you to be set free from the shop, and given over to the workshop, but it was no good. Kouzma would not have it. You are very much out of favor with him."
I had an enemy in the house, too—the shopman's fiancée, an immoderately sportive damsel. All the young fellows in the workshop played about with her; they used to wait for her in the vestibule and embrace her. This did not offend her; she only squeaked like a little dog. She was chewing something from morning to night; her pockets were always full of gingerbread or buns; her jaws moved ceaselessly. To look at her vacant face with its restless gray eyes was unpleasant. She used to ask Pavl and me riddles which always concealed some coarse obscenity, and repeated catchwords which, being said very quickly, became improper words.
One day one of the elderly workmen said to her:
"You are a shameless hussy, my girl!"
To which she answered swiftly, in the words of a ribald song:
"If a maiden is too modest,
She 'll never be a woman worth having."
It was the first time I had ever seen such a girl. She disgusted and frightened me with her coarse playfulness, and seeing that her antics were not agreeable to me, she became more and more spiteful toward me.
Once when Pavl and I were in the cellar helping her to steam out the casks of kvass and cucumbers she suggested:
"Would you like me to teach you how to kiss, boys?"
"I know how to kiss better than you do," Pavl answered, and I told her to go and kiss her future husband. I did not say it very politely, either.
She was angry.
"Oh, you coarse creature! A young lady makes herself agreeable to him and he turns up his nose. Well, I never! What a ninny!"
And she added, shaking a threatening finger at me: "You just wait. I will remember that of you!" But Pavl said to her, taking my part:
"Your young man would give you something if he knew about your behavior!"
She screwed up her pimply face contemptuously.
"I am not afraid of him! I have a dowry. I am much better than he is! A girl only has the time till she is married to amuse herself."
She began to play about with Pavl, and from that time I found in her an unwearying calumniator.
My life in the shop became harder and harder. I read church books all the time. The disputes and conversations of the valuers had ceased to amuse me, for they were always talking over the same things in the same old way. Petr Vassilich alone still interested me, with his knowledge of the dark side of human life, and his power of speaking interestingly and enthusiastically. Sometimes I thought he must be the prophet Elias walking the earth, solitary and vindictive. But each time that I spoke to the old man frankly about people, or about my own thoughts, he repeated all that I had said to the shopman, who either ridiculed me offensively, or abused me angrily.
One day I told the old man that I sometimes wrote his sayings in the note-book in which I had copied various poems taken out of books. This greatly alarmed the valuer, who limped towards me swiftly, asking anxiously:
"What did you do that for? It is not worth while, my lad. So that you may remember? No; you just give it up. What a boy you are! Now you will give me what you have written, won't you?"
He tried long and earnestly to persuade me to either give him the notebook, or to burn it, and then he began to whisper angrily with the shopman.
As we were going home, the latter said to me: "You have been taking notes? That has got to be' stopped! Do you hear? Only detectives do that sort of thing!"
Then I asked incautiously:
"And what about Sitanov? He also takes notes." "Also. That long fool?"
He was silent for a long time, and then with unusual gentleness he said:
"Listen; if you show me your note-book and Sitanov's, too, I will give you half a ruble! Only do it on the quiet, so that Sitanov does not see."
No doubt he thought that I would carry out his wish, and without saying another word, he ran in front of me on his short legs.
When I reached the house, I told Sitanov what the shopman had proposed to me. Evgen frowned.
"You have been chattering purposely. Now he will give some one instructions to steal both our notebooks. Give me yours—I will hide it. And he will turn you out before long—you see!"
I was convinced of that, too, and resolved to leave as soon as grandmother returned to the town. She had been living at Balakhania all the winter, invited by some one to teach young girls to make lace. Grandfather was again living in Kunavin Street, but I did not visit him, and when he came to the town, he never came to see me. One day we ran into each other in the street. He was walking along in a heavy racoon pelisse, importantly and slowly. I said "How do you do" to him. He lifted his hands to shade his eyes, looked at me from under them, and then said thoughtfully:
"Oh, it is you; you are an image-painter now. Yes, yes; all right; get along with you."
Pushing me out of his way, he continued his walk, slowly and importantly.
I saw grandmother seldom. She worked unweariedly to feed grandfather, who was suffering from the malady of old age—senile weakness—and had also taken upon herself the care of my uncle's children.
The one who caused her the most worry was Sascha, Mikhail's son, a handsome lad, dreamy and book-loving. He worked in a dyer's shop, frequently changed his employers, and in the intervals threw himself on grandmother's shoulders, calmly waiting until she should find him another place. She had Sascha's sister on her shoulders, too. She had made an unfortunate marriage with a drunken workman, who beat her and turned her out of his house.
Every time I met grandmother, I was more consciously charmed by her personality; but I felt already that that beautiful soul, blinded by fanciful tales, was not capable of seeing, could not understand a revelation of the bitter reality of life, and my disquietude and restlessness were strange to her.
"You must have patience, Olesha!"
This was all she had to say to me in reply to my stories of the hideous lives, of the tortures of people, of sorrow—of all which perplexed me, and with which I was burning.
I was unfitted by nature to be patient, and if occasionally I exhibited that virtue which belongs to cattle, trees, and stones, I did so in the cause of self-discipline, to test my reserves of strength, my degree of stability upon earth. Sometimes young people, with the stupidity of youth, will keep on trying to lift weights too heavy for their muscles and bones; will try boastfully, like full-grown men of proved strength, to cross themselves with heavy weights, envious of the strength of their elders.
I also did this in a double sense, physically and spiritually, and it is only due to some chance that I did not strain myself dangerously, or deform myself for the rest of my life. Besides, nothing disfigures a man more terribly than his patience, the submission of his strength to external conditions.
And though in the end I shall lie in the earth disfigured, I can say, not without pride, to my last hour, that good people did their best for forty years to disfigure my soul, but that their labors were not very successful.
The wild desire to play mischievous pranks, to amuse people, to make them laugh, took more and more hold upon me. I was successful in this. I could tell stories about the merchants in the market-place, impersonating them; I could imitate the peasant men and women buying and selling icons, the shopman skilfully cheating them; the valuers disputing amongst themselves.
The workshop resounded with laughter. Often the workmen left their work to look on at my impersonations, but on all these occasions Larionich would say:
"You had better do your acting after supper; otherwise you hinder the work."
When I had finished my performance I felt myself easier, as if I had thrown off a burden which weighed upon me. For half an hour or an hour my head felt pleasantly clear, but soon it felt again as if it were full of sharp, small nails, which moved about and grew hot. It seemed to me that a sort of dirty porridge was boiling around me, and that I was being gradually boiled away in it.
I wondered: Was life really like this? And should I have to live as these people lived, never finding, never seeing anything better?
"You are growing sulky, Maximich," said Jikharev, looking at me attentively.
Sitanov often asked me:
"What is the matter with you?"
And I could not answer him.
Life perseveringly and roughly washed out from my soul its most delicate writings, maliciously changing them into some sort of indistinct trash, and with anger and determination I resisted its violence. I was floating on the same river as all the others, only for me the waters were colder and did not support me as easily as it did the others. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was gently sinking into unfathomable depths.
People behaved better to me; they did not shout at me as they did at Pavl, nor harass me; they called me by my patronymic in order to emphasize their more respectful attitude toward me. This was good; but it was torturing to see how many of them drank vodka, how disgustingly drunk they became, and how injurious to them were their relations with women, although I understood that vodka and women were the only diversions that life afforded.
I often called to mind with sorrow that that most intelligent, courageous woman, Natalia Kozlovski, was also called a woman of pleasure. And what about grandmother? And Queen Margot?
I used to think of my queen with a feeling almost of terror; she was so removed from all the others, it was as if I had seen her in a dream.
I began to think too much about women, and I had already revolved in my own mind the question: Shall I go on the next holiday where all the others go? This was no physical desire. I was both healthy and fastidious, but at times I was almost mad with a desire to embrace some one tender, intelligent, and frankly, unrestrainedly, as to a mother, speak to her of the disturbances of my soul.
I envied Pavl when he told me at night of his affair with a maidservant in the opposite house.
"It is a funny thing, brother! A month ago I was throwing snowballs at her because I did not like her, and now I sit on a bench and hug her. She is dearer to me than any one!"
"What do you talk about?"
"About everything, of course! She talks to me about herself, and I talk to her about myself. And then we kiss—only she is honest. In fact, brother, she is so good that it is almost a misfortune! Why, you smoke like an old soldier!"
I smoked a lot; tobacco intoxicated me, dulled my restless thoughts, my agitated feelings. As for vodka, it only aroused in me a repulsion toward my own odor and taste, but Pavl drank with a will, and when he was drunk, used to cry bitterly:
"I want to go home, I want to go home! Let me go home!"
As far as I can remember he was an orphan; his mother and father had been dead a long time. Brother and sister he had none; he had lived among strangers for eight years.
In this state of restless dissatisfaction the call of spring disturbed me still more. I made up my mind to go on a boat again, and if I could get as far as Astrakhan, to run away to Persia.
I do not remember why I selected Persia particularly. It may have been because I had taken a great fancy to the Persian merchants on the Nijigorodski market-place, sitting like stone idols, spreading their dyed beards in the sun, calmly smoking their hookas, with large, dark, omniscient eyes.
There is no doubt that I should have run away somewhere, but one day in Easter week, when part of the occupants of the workshop had gone to their homes, and the rest were drinking, I was walking on a sunny day on the banks of the Oka, when I met my old master, grandmother's nephew.
He was walking along in a light gray overcoat, with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his teeth, his hat on the back of his head. His pleasant face smiled kindly at me. He had the appearance of a man who is at liberty and is happy, and there was no one beside ourselves in the fields.
"Ah, Pyeshkov, Christ is risen!"
After we had exchanged the Easter kiss, he asked how I was living, and I told him frankly that the workshop, the town and everything in general were abhorrent to me, and that I had made up my mind to go to Persia.
"Give it up," he said to me gravely. "What the devil is there in Persia? I know exactly how you are feeling, brother; in my youth I also had the wander fever."
I liked him for telling me this. There was something about him good and springlike; he was a being set apart.
"Do you smoke?" he asked, holding out a silver cigarette-case full of fat cigarettes.
That completed his conquest of me.
"What you had better do, Pyeshkov, is to come back to me again," he suggested. "For this year I have undertaken contracts for the new market-place, you understand. And I can make use of you there; you will be a kind of overseer for me; you will receive all the material; you will see that it is all in its proper place, and that the workmen do not steal it. Will that suit you? Your wages will be five rubles a month, and five copecks for dinner! The women-folk will have nothing to do with you; you will go out in the morning and return in the evening. As for the women; you can ignore them; only don't let them know that we have met, but just come to see us on Sunday at Phomin Street. It will be a change for you!"
We parted like friends. As he said good-by, he pressed my hand, and as he went away, he actually waved his hat to me affably from a distance.
When I announced in the workroom that I was leaving, most of the workmen showed a flattering regret. Pavl, especially, was upset.
"Think," he said reproachfully; "how will you live with men of all kinds, after being with us? With carpenters, house-painters—Oh, you—It is going out of the frying-pan into the fire."
Jikharev growled:
"A fish looks for the deepest place, but a clever young man seeks a worse place!"
The send-off which they gave me from the workshop was a sad one.
"Of course one must try this and that," said Jikharev, who was yellow from the effects of a drinking bout. "It is better to do it straight off, before you become too closely attached to something or other."
"And that for the rest of your life," added Larionich softly.
But I felt that they spoke with constraint, and from a sense of duty. The thread which had bound me to them was somehow rotted and broken.
In the loft drunken Golovev rolled about, and muttered hoarsely:
"I would like to see them all in prison. I know their secrets! Who believes in God here? Aha-a—!"
As usual, faceless, uncompleted icons were propped against the wall; the glass balls were fixed to the ceiling. It was long since we had had to work with a light, and the balls, not being used, were covered with a gray coating of soot and dust. I remember the surroundings so vividly that if I shut my eyes, I can see in the darkness the whole of that basement room: all the tables, and the jars of paint on the windowsills, the bundles of brushes, the icons, the slop-pail under the brass washstand-basin which looked like a fireman's helmet, and, hanging from the ceiling, Golovev's bare foot, which was blue like the foot of a drowned man.
I wanted to get away quickly, but in Russia they love long-drawn-out, sad moments. When they are saying good-by, Russian people behave as if they were hearing a requiem mass.
Jikharev, twitching his brows, said to me:
"That book—the devil's book—I can't give it back to you. Will you take two greven for it?"
The book was my own,—the old second lieutenant of the fire-brigade had given it to me—and I grudged giving Lermontov away. But when, somewhat offended, I refused the money, Jikharev calmly put the coins back in his purse, and said in an unwavering tone:
"As you like; but I shall not give you back the book. It is not for you. A book like that would soon lead you into sin."
"But it is sold in shops; I have seen it!"
But he only said with redoubled determination:
"That has nothing to do with the matter; they sell revolvers in shops, too—"
So he never returned Lermontov to me.
As I was going upstairs to say good-by to my mistress, I ran into her niece in the hall.
"Is it true what they say—that you are leaving?"
"Yes."
"If you had not gone of your own accord, you would have been sent away," she assured me, not very kindly, but with perfect frankness.
And the tipsy mistress said:
"Good-by, Christ be with you! You are a bad boy, an impudent boy; although I have never seen anything bad in you myself, they all say that you are a bad boy!" And suddenly she burst out crying, and said through her tears:
"Ah, if my dead one, my sweet husband, dear soul, had been alive, he would have known how to deal with you; he would have boxed your ears and you would have stayed on. We should not have had to send you away! But nowadays things are different; if all is not exactly as you like, away you go! Och! And where will you be going, boy, and what good will it do you to stroll from place to place?"
I was in a boat with my master, passing along the market-place between shops which were flooded to the height of the second story. I plied the oars, while my master sat in the stern. The paddle wheel, which was useless as a rudder, was deep in the water, and the boat veered about awkwardly, meandering from street to street on the quiet, muddily sleepy waters.
"Ekh! The water gets higher and higher. The devil take it! It is keeping the work back," grumbled my master as he smoked a cigar, the smoke of which had an odor of burning cloth. "Gently!" he cried in alarm, "we are running into a lamp-post!"
He steered the boat out of danger and scolded me: "They have given me a boat, the wretches!"
He showed me the spot on which, after the water had subsided, the work of rebuilding would begin. With his face shaved to a bluish tint, his mustache clipped short, and a cigar in his mouth, he did not look like a contractor. He wore a leathern jacket, high boots to his knees, and a game-bag was slung over his shoulders. At his feet was an expensive two-barelled gun, manufactured by Lebed. From time to time he restlessly changed the position of his leathern cap, pulling it over his eyes, pouting his lips and looking cautiously around. He pushed the cap to the back of his head, looked younger, and smiled beneath his mustache, thinking of something pleasant. No one would have thought that he had a lot of work to do, and that the long time the water took in subsiding worried him. Evidently thoughts wholly unconnected with business were passing through his mind.
And I was overwhelmed by a feeling of quiet amazement; it seemed so strange to look upon that dead town, the straight rows of buildings with closed windows. The town was simply flooded with water, and seemed to be floating past our boat. The sky was gray. The sun had been lost in the clouds, but sometimes shone through them in large, silver, wintry patches.
The water also was gray and cold; its flow was unnoticeable; it seemed to be congealed, fixed to one place, like the empty houses beside the shops, which were painted a dirty yellow. When the pale sun looked through the clouds, all around grew slightly brighter. The water reflected the gray texture of the sky; our boat seemed to hang in the air between two skies; the stone buildings also lifted themselves up, and with a scarcely perceptible movement floated toward the Volga, or the Oka. Around the boat were broken casks, boxes, baskets, fragments of wood and straw; sometimes a rod or joist of wood floated like a dead snake on the surface.
Here and there windows were opened. On the roofs of the rows of galleries linen was drying, or felt boots stuck out. A woman looked out of a window onto the gray waters. A boat was moored to the top of the cast-iron columns of a galley; her red deck made the reflection of the water look greasy and meat-like.
Nodding his head at these signs of life, my master explained to me:
"This is where the market watchman lives. He climbs out of the window onto the roof, gets into his boat, and goes out to see if there are any thieves about. And if there are none, he thieves on his own account."
He spoke lazily, calmly, thinking of something else. All around was quiet, deserted, and unreal, as if it were part of a dream. The Volga and the Oka flowed into an enormous lake; in the distance on a rugged hillside the town was painted in motley colors. Gardens were still somberly clothed, but the buds were bursting on the trees, and foliage clad houses and churches in a warm, green mantle. Over the water crept the muffled sound of the Easter-tide bells. The murmur of the town was audible, while here it was just like a forgotten graveyard.
Our boat wended its way between two rows of black trees; we were on the high road to the old cathedral. The cigar was in my master's way; its acrid smoke got into his eyes and caused him to run the nose of the boat into the trunks of the trees. Upon which he cried, irritably and in surprise:
"What a rotten boat this is!"
"But you are not steering it."
"How can I?" he grumbled. "When there are two people in a boat, one always rows while the other steers. There—look! There's the Chinese block."
I knew the market through and through; I knew that comical-looking block of buildings with the ridiculous roofs on which sat, with crossed legs, figures of Chinamen in plaster of Paris. There had been a time when I and my playfellow had thrown stones at them, and some of the Chinamen had had their heads and hands broken off by me. But I no longer took any pride in that sort of thing.
"Rubbish!" said my master, pointing to the block. "If I had been allowed to build it—"
He whistled and pushed his cap to the back of his head.
But somehow I thought that he would have built that town of stone just as dingily, on that low-lying ground which was flooded by the waters of two rivers every year. And he would even have invented the Chinese block.
Throwing his cigar over the side of the boat, he spat after it in disgust, saying:
"Life is very dull, Pyeshkov, very dull. There are no educated people—no one to talk to. If one wants to show off one's gifts, who is there to be impressed? Not a soul! All the people here are carpenters, stonemasons, peasants—"
He looked straight ahead at the white mosque which rose picturesquely out of the water on a small hill, and continued as if he were recollecting something he had forgotten:
"I began to drink beer and smoke cigars when I was working under a German. The Germans, my brother, are a business-like race—such wild fowl! Drinking beer is a pleasant occupation, but I have never got used to smoking cigars. And when you 've been smoking, your wife grumbles: 'What is it that you smell of? It is like the smell at the harness-makers.' Ah, brother, the longer we live, the more artful we grow. Well, well, true to oneself—"
Placing the oar against the side of the boat, he took up his gun and shot at a Chinaman on a roof. No harm came to the latter; the shot buried itself in the roof and the wall, raising a dusty smoke.
"That was a miss," he admitted without regret, and he again loaded his gun.
"How do you get on with the girls? Are you keen on them? No? Why, I was in love when I was only thirteen."
He told me, as if he were telling a dream, the story of his first love for the housemaid of the architect to whom he had been apprenticed. Softly splashed the gray water, washing the corners of the buildings; beyond the cathedral dully gleamed a watery waste; black twigs rose here and there above it. In the icon-painter's workshop they often sang the Seminarski song:
"O blue sea,
Stormy sea...."
That blue sea must have been deadly dull.
"I never slept at nights," went on my master. "Sometimes I got out of bed and stood at her door, shivering like a dog. It was a cold house! The master visited her at night. He might have discovered me, but I was not afraid, not I!"
He spoke thoughtfully, like a person looking at an old worn-out coat, and wondering if he could wear it once more.
"She noticed me, pitied me, unfastened her door, and called me: 'Come in, you little fool.'"
I had heard many stories of this kind, and they bored me, although there was one pleasing feature about them—almost every one spoke of their "first love" without boasting, or obscenity, and often so gently and sadly that I understood that the story of their first love was the best in their lives.
Laughing and shaking his head, my master exclaimed wonderingly:
"But that's the sort of thing you don't tell your wife; no, no! Well, there's no harm in it, but you never tell. That's a story—"
He was telling the story to himself, not to me. If he had been silent, I should have spoken. In that quietness and desolation one had to talk, or sing, or play on the harmonica, or one would fall into a heavy, eternal sleep in the midst of that dead town, drowned in gray, cold water.
"In the first place, don't marry too soon," he counseled me. "Marriage, brother, is a matter of the most stupendous importance. You can live where you like and how you like, according to your will. You can live in Persia as a Mahommedan; in Moscow as a man about town. You can arrange your life as you choose. You can give everything a trial. But a wife, brother, is like the weather—you can never rule her! You can't take a wife and throw her aside like an old boot."
His face changed. He gazed into the gray water with knitted brows, rubbing his prominent nose with his fingers, and muttered:
"Yes, brother, look before you leap. Let us suppose that you are beset on all sides, and still continue to stand firm; even then there is a special trap laid for each one of us."
We were now amongst the vegetation in the lake of Meshtcherski, which was fed by the Volga.
"Row softly," whispered my master, pointing his gun into the bushes. After he had shot a few lean woodcocks, he suggested:
"Let us go to Kunavin Street. I will spend the evening there, and you can go home and say that I am detained by the contractors."
Setting him down at one of the streets on the outskirts of the town, which was also flooded, I returned to the market-place on the Stravelka, moored the boat, and sitting in it, gazed at the confluence of the two rivers, at the town, the steamboats, the sky, which was just like the gorgeous wing of some gigantic bird, all white feathery clouds. The golden sun peeped through the blue gaps between the clouds, and with one glance at the earth transfigured everything thereon. Brisk, determined movement went on all around me: the swift current of the rivers lightly bore innumerable planks of wood; on these planks bearded peasants stood firmly, wielding long poles and shouting to one another, or to approaching steamers. A little steamer was pulling an empty barge against the stream. The river dragged at it, and shook it. It turned its nose round like a pike and panted, firmly setting its wheels against the water, which was rushing furiously to meet it. On a barge with their legs hanging over the side sat four peasants, shoulder to shoulder. One of them wore a red shirt, and sang a song the words of which I could not hear, but I knew it.
I felt that here on the living river I knew all, was in touch with all, and could understand all; and the town which lay flooded behind me was an evil dream, an imagination of my master's, as difficult to understand as he was himself.
When I had satiated myself by gazing at all there was to see, I returned home, feeling that I was a grown man, capable of any kind of work. On the way I looked from the hill of the Kreml on to the Volga in the distance. From the hill, the earth appeared enormous, and promised all that one could possibly desire.
I had books at home. In the flat which Queen Margot had occupied there now lived a large family,—five young ladies, each one more beautiful than the others, and two schoolboys—and these people used to give me books. I read Turgenieff with avidity, amazed to find how intelligible, simple, and pellucid as autumn he was; how pure were his characters, and how good everything was about which he succinctly discoursed. I read Pomyalovski's "Bourse" and was again amazed; it was so strangely like the life in the icon-painting workshop. I was so well acquainted with that desperate tedium which precipitated one into cruel pranks. I enjoyed reading Russian books. I always felt that there was something about them familiar and melancholy, as if there were hidden in their pages the frozen sound of the Lenten bell, which pealed forth softly as soon as one opened a book.
"Dead Souls" I read reluctantly; "Letters from the House of the Dead," also. "Dead Souls," "Dead Houses," "Three Deaths," "Living Relics"—these books with titles so much alike arrested my attention against my will, and aroused a lethargic repugnance for all such books. "Signs of the Times," "Step by Step," "What to Do," and "Chronicles of the Village of Smourin," I did not care for, nor any other books of the same kind. But I was delighted with Dickens and Walter Scott. I read these authors with the greatest enjoyment, the same books over and over again. The works of Walter Scott reminded me of a high mass on a great feast day in rich churches—somewhat long and tedious, but always solemn. Dickens still remains to me as the author to whom I respectfully bow; he was a man who had a wonderful apprehension of that most difficult of arts—love of human nature.
In the evenings a large company of people used to gather on the roof: the brothers K. and their sisters, grown up; the snub-nosed schoolboy, Vyacheslav Semashko; and sometimes Miss Ptitzin, the daughter of an important official, appeared there, too. They talked of books and poetry. This was something which appealed to me, and which I could understand; I had read more than all of them together. But sometimes they talked about the high school, and complained about the teachers. When I listened to these recitals, I felt that I had more liberty than my friends, and was amazed at their patience. And yet I envied them; they had opportunities of learning!
My comrades were older than I, but I felt that I was the elder. I was keener-witted, more experienced than they. This worried me somewhat; I wanted to feel more in touch with them. I used to get home late in the evening, dusty and dirty, steeped in impressions very different from theirs—in the main very monotonous. They talked a lot about young ladies, and of being in love with this one and that one, and they used to try their hands at writing poetry. They frequently solicited my help in this matter. I willingly applied myself to versification, and it was easy for me to find the rhymes, but for some reason or other my verses always took a humorous turn, and I never could help associating Miss Ptitzin, to whom the poetry was generally dedicated, with fruits and vegetables.
Semashko said to me:
"Do you call that poetry? It is as much like poetry as hobnails would be."
Not wishing to be behind them in anything, I also fell in love with Miss Ptitzin. I do not remember how I declared my feelings, but I know that the affair ended badly. On the stagnant green water of the Zvyezdin Pond floated a plank, and I proposed to give the young lady a ride on it. She agreed. I brought the log to the bank; it held me alone quite well. But when the gorgeously dressed young lady, all ribbons and lace, graciously stepped on the other end, and I proudly pushed off with a stick, the accursed log rolled away from under us and my young lady went head over heels into the water.
I threw myself in knightly fashion after her, and swiftly brought her to shore. Fright and the green mire of the pond had quite destroyed her beauty! Shaking her wet fist at me threateningly, she cried:
"You threw me in the water on purpose!"
And refusing to believe in the sincerity of my protestations, from that time she treated me as an enemy.
On the whole, I did not find living in the town very interesting. My old mistress was as hostile as she had ever been; the young one regarded me with contempt; Victorushka more freckled than ever, snorted at every one, and was everlastingly aggrieved about something.
My master had many plans to draw. He could not get through all the work with his brother, and so he engaged my stepfather as assistant.
One day I came home from the market-place early, about five o'clock, and going into the dining-room, saw the man whose existence I had forgotten, at the table beside the master. He held his hand out to me.
"How do you do?"
I drew back at the unexpectedness of it. The fire of the past had been suddenly rekindled, and burned my heart.
My stepfather looked at me with a smile on his terribly emaciated face; his dark eyes were larger than ever. He looked altogether worn out and depressed. I placed my hand in his thin, hot fingers.
"Well, so we 've met again," he said, coughing.
I left them, feeling as weak as if I had been beaten.
Our manner to each other was cautious and restrained; he called me by my first name and my patronymic, and spoke to me as an equal.
"When you go to the shops, please buy me a quarter of a pound of Lapherm's tobacco, a hundred packets of Vitcorson's, and a pound of boiled sausage."
The money which he gave me was always unpleasantly heated by his hot hands. It was plain that he was a consumptive, and not long to be an inhabitant of this earth. He knew this, and would say in a calm, deep voice, twisting his pointed black beard:
"My illness is almost incurable. However, if I take plenty of meat I may get better—I may get better."
He ate an unbelievably large amount; he smoked cigarettes, which were only out of his lips when he was eating. Every day I bought him sausages, ham, sardines, but grandmother's sister said with an air of certainty, and for some reason maliciously:
"It is no use to feed Death with dainties; you cannot deceive him."
The mistress regarded my stepfather with an air of injury, reproachfully advised him to try this or that medicine, but made fun of him behind his back.
"A fine gentleman? The crumbs ought to be swept up more often in the dining-room, he says; crumbs cause the flies to multiply, he says."
The young mistress said this, and the old mistress repeated after her:
"What do you mean—a fine gentleman! With his coat all worn and shiny, and he always scraping it with a clothes-brush. He is so faddy; there must not be a speck of dust on it!"
But the master spoke soothingly to them:
"Be patient, wild fowl, he will soon be dead!" This senseless hostility of the middle class toward a man of good birth somehow drew me and my stepfather closer together. The crimson agaric is an unwholesome fungus, yet it is so beautiful. Suffocated among these people, my stepfather was like a fish which had accidentally fallen into a fowl-run—an absurd comparison, as everything in that life was absurd.
I began to find in him resemblances to "Good Business"—a man whom I could never forget. I adorned him and my Queen with the best that I got out of books. I gave them all that was most pure in me, all the fantasies born of my reading. My stepfather was just such another man, aloof and unloved, as "Good Business." He behaved alike to every one in the house, never spoke first, and answered questions put to him with a peculiar politeness and brevity. I was delighted when he taught my masters. Standing at the table, bent double, he would tap the thick paper with his dry nails, and suggest calmly:
"Here you will have to have a keystone. That will halve the force of the pressure; otherwise the pillar will crash through the walls."
"That's true, the devil take it," muttered the master, and his wife said to him, when my stepfather had gone out:
"It is simply amazing to me that you can allow any one to teach you your business like that!"
For some reason she was always especially irritated when my stepfather cleaned his teeth and gargled after supper, protruding his harshly outlined Adam's apple.
"In my opinion," she would say in a sour voice, "it is injurious to you to bend your head back like that, Evgen Vassilvich!"
Smiling politely he asked:
"Why?'
"Because—I am sure it is."
He began to clean his bluish nails with a tiny bone stick.
"He is cleaning his nails again; well, I never!" exclaimed the mistress. "He is dying—and there he is."
"Ekh!" sighed the master. "What a lot of stupidity has flourished in you, wild fowl!"
"Why do you say that?" asked his wife, confused. But the old mistress complained passionately to God at night:
"Lord, they have laid that rotten creature on my shoulders, and Victor is again pushed on one side." Victorushka began to mock the manners of my stepfather,—his leisurely walk, the assured movements of his lordly hands, his skill in tying a cravat, and his dainty way of eating. He would ask coarsely: "Maximov, what's the French for 'knee'?"
"I am called Evgen Vassilevich," my stepfather reminded him calmly.
"All right. Well, what is 'the chest'?"
Victorushka would say to his mother at supper: "Ma mère, donnez moi encore du pickles!"
"Oh, you Frenchman!" the old woman would say, much affected.
My stepfather, as unmoved as if he were deaf or dumb, chewed his meat without looking at any one. One day the elder brother said to the younger: "Now that you are learning French, Victor, you ought to have a mistress."
This was the only time I remember seeing my stepfather smile quietly.
But the young mistress let her spoon fall on the table in her agitation, and cried to her husband:
"Are n't you ashamed to talk so disgustingly before me?"
Sometimes my stepfather came to me in the dark vestibule, where I slept under the stairs which led to the attic, and where, sitting on the stairs by the window, I used to read.
"Reading?" he would say, blowing out smoke. There came a hissing sound from his chest like the hissing of a fire-stick. "What is the book?"
I showed it to him.
"Ah," he said, glancing at the title, "I think I have read it. Will you smoke?"
We smoked, looking out of the window onto the dirty yard. He said:
"It is a great pity that you cannot study; it seems to me that you have ability."
"I am studying; I read."
"That is not enough; you need a school; a system." I felt inclined to say to him:
"You had the advantages of both school and system, my fine fellow, and what is the result?"
But he added, as if he had read my thoughts: "Given the proper disposition, a school is a good educator. Only very well educated people make any mark in life."
But once he counseled me:
"You would be far better away from here. I see no sense or advantage to you in staying."
"I like the work."
"Ah—what do you find to like?"
"I find it interesting to work with them."
"Perhaps you are right."
But one day he said:
"What trash they are in the main, our employers—trash!"
When I remembered how and when my mother had uttered that word, I involuntarily drew back from him. He asked, smiling:
"Don't you think so?"
"I don't know."
"Well, they are; I can see that."
"But I like the master, anyhow."
"Yes, you are right; he is a worthy man, but strange."
I should have liked to talk with him about books, but it was plain that he did not care for them, and one day he advised me:
"Don't be led away; everything is very much embellished in books, distorted one way or another. Most writers of books are people like our master, small people."
Such judgments seemed very daring to me, and quite corrupted me.
On the same occasion he asked me:
"Have you read any of Goncharov's works?"
'The Frigate Palada.'"
"That's a dull book. But really, Goncharov is the cleverest writer in Russia. I advise you to read his novel, 'Oblomov.' That is by far the truest and most daring book he wrote; in fact, it is the best book in Russian literature."
Of Dickens' works he said:
"They are rubbish, I assure you. But there is a most interesting thing running in the 'Nova Vremya,'-'The Temptation of St. Anthony.' You read it? Apparently you like all that pertains to the church, and 'The Temptation' ought to be a profitable subject for you."
He brought me a bundle of papers containing the serial, and I read Flaubert's learned work. It reminded me of the innumerable lives of holy men, scraps of history told by the valuers, but it made no very deep impression on me. I much preferred the "Memoirs of Upilio Faimali, Tamer of Wild Beasts," which was printed alongside of it.
When I acknowledged this fact to my stepfather, he remarked coolly:
"That means that you are still too young to read such things? However, don't forget about that book."
Sometimes he would sit with me for a long time without saying a word, just coughing and puffing out smoke continuously. His beautiful eyes burned painfully, and I looked at him furtively, and forgot that this man, who was dying so honestly and simply, without complaint, had once been so closely related to my mother, and had insulted her. I knew that he lived with some sort of seamstress, and thought of her with wonder and pity. How could she not shrink from embracing those lanky bones, from kissing that mouth which gave forth such an oppressive odor of putrescence? Just like "Good Business," my stepfather often uttered peculiarly characteristic sayings:
"I love hounds; they are stupid, but I love them. They are very beautiful. Beautiful women are often stupid, too."
I thought, not without pride:
"Ah, if he had only known Queen Margot!"
"People who live for a long time in the same house all have the same kind of face," was one of his sayings which I wrote down in my note-book.
I listened for these sayings of his, as if they had been treats. It was pleasant to hear unusual, literary words used in a house where every one spoke a colorless language, which had hardened into well-worn, undiversified forms. My stepfather never spoke to me of my mother; he never even uttered her name. This pleased me, and aroused in me a feeling of sympathetic consideration for him.
Once I asked him about God—I do not remember what brought up the subject. He looked at me, and said very calmly:
"I don't know. I don't believe in God."
I remembered Sitanov, and told my stepfather about him. Having listened attentively to me, he observed, still calmly:
"He was in doubt; and those who are in doubt must believe in something. As for me, I simply do not believe——"
"But is that possible?"
"Why not? You can see for yourself I don't believe."
I saw nothing, except that he was dying. I hardly pitied him; my first feeling was one of keen and genuine interest in the nearness of a dying person, in the mystery of death.
Here was a man sitting close to me, his knee touching mine, warm, sensate, calmly regarding people in the light of their relations to himself; speaking about everything like a person who possessed power to judge and to settle affairs; in whom lay something necessary to me, or something good, blended with something unnecessary to me. This being of incomprehensible complexity was the receptacle of continuous whirlwinds of thought. It was not as if I were merely brought in contact with him, but it seemed as if he were part of myself, that he lived somewhere within me. I thought about him continually, and the shadow of his soul lay across mine. And to-morrow he would disappear entirely, with all that was hidden in his head and his heart, with all that I seemed to read in his beautiful eyes. When he went, another of the living threads which bound me to life would be snapped. His memory would be left, but that would be something finite within me, forever limited, immutable. But that which is alive changes, progresses. But these were thoughts, and behind them lay those inexpressible words which give birth to and nourish them, which strike to the very roots of life, demanding an answer to the question, Why?
"I shall soon have to lie by, it seems to me," said my stepfather one rainy day. "This stupid weakness! I don't feel inclined to do anything."
The next day, at the time of evening tea, he brushed the crumbs of bread from the table and from his knees with peculiar care, and brushed something invisible from his person. The old mistress, looking at him from under her brows, whispered to her daughter-in-law:
"Look at the way he is plucking at himself, and brushing himself."
He did not come to work for two days, and then the old mistress put a large white envelope in my hand, saying:
"Here you are! A woman brought this yesterday about noon, and I forgot to give it to you. A pretty little woman she was, but what she wants with you I can't imagine, and that's the truth!"
On a slip of paper with a hospital stamp, inside the envelope, was written in large characters:
"When you have an hour to spare, come and see me. I am in the Martinovski Hospital. "E. M."
The next morning I was sitting in a hospital ward on my stepfather's bed. It was a long bed, and his feet, in gray, worn socks, stuck out through the rails. His beautiful eyes, dully wandering over the yellow walls, rested on my face and on the small hands of a young girl who sat on a bench at the head of the bed. Her hands rested on the pillow, and my stepfather rubbed his cheek against them, his mouth hanging open. She was a plump girl, wearing a shiny, dark frock. The tears flowed slowly over her oval face; her wet blue eyes never moved from my stepfather's face, with its sharp bones, large, sharp-pointed nose, and dark mouth.
"The priest ought to be here," she whispered, "but he forbids it—he does not understand." And taking her hands from the pillow, she pressed them to her breast as if praying.
In a minute my stepfather came to himself, looked at the ceiling and frowned, as if he were trying to remember something. Then he stretched his lank hand toward me.
"You? Thank you. Here I am, you see. I feel to stupid."
The effort tired him; he closed his eyes. I stroked his long cold fingers with the blue nails. The girl asked softly:
"Evgen Vassilvich, introduce us, please!"
"You must know each other," he said, indicating her with his eyes. "A dear creature—"
He stopped speaking, his mouth opened wider and wider, and he suddenly shrieked out hoarsely, like a raven. Throwing herself on the bed, clutching at the blanket, waving her bare arms about, the girl also screamed, burying her head in the tossed pillow.
My stepfather died quickly, and as soon as he was dead, he regained some of his good looks. I left the hospital with the girl on my arm. She staggered like a sick person, and cried. Her handkerchief was squeezed into a ball in her hand; she alternately applied it to her eyes, and rolling it tighter, gazed at it as if it were her last and most precious possession.
Suddenly she stood still, pressing close to me, and said:
"I shall not live till the winter. Oh Lord, Lord! What does it mean?"
Then holding out her hand, wet with tears, to me: "Good-by. He thought a lot of you. He will be buried to-morrow."
"Shall I see you home?"
She looked about her.
"What for? It is daytime, not night."
From the corner of a side street I looked after her. She walked slowly, like a person who has nothing to hurry for. It was August. The leaves were already beginning to fall from the trees. I had no time to follow my stepfather to the graveyard, and I never saw the girl again.
Every morning at six o'clock I set out to my work in the market-place. I met interesting people there. There was the carpenter, Osip, a grayhaired man who looked like Saint Nikolai, a clever workman, and witty; there was the humpbacked slater, Ephimushka, the pious bricklayer, Petr, a thoughtful man who also reminded me of a saint; the plasterer, Gregory Shishlin, a flaxen-bearded, blue-eyed, handsome man, beaming with quiet good-nature.
I had come to know these people during the second part of my life at the draughtsman's house. Every Sunday they used to appear in the kitchen, grave, important-looking, with pleasant speech, and with words which had a new flavor for me. All these solid-looking peasants had seemed to me then to be easy to read, good through and through, all pleasantly different from the spiteful, thieving, drunken inhabitants of the Kunavin and its environs.
The plasterer, Shishlin, pleased me most of all, and I actually asked if I might join his gang of workmen. But scratching his golden brow with a white finger, he gently refused to have me.
"It is too soon for you," he said. "Our work is not easy; wait another year."
Then throwing up his handsome head, he asked:
"You don't like the way you are living? Never mind, have patience; learn to live a life of your own, and then you will be able to bear it!"
I do not know all that I gained from this good advice, but I remember it gratefully.
These people used to come to my master's house every Sunday morning, sit on benches round th? kitchen-table, and talk of interesting things while they waited for my master. When he came, he greeted them loudly and gayly, shaking-their strong hands, and then sat down in the chief corner. They produced their accounts and bundles of notes, the workmen placed their tattered account-books on the table, and the reckoning up for the week began.
Joking and bantering, the master would try to prove them wrong in their reckoning, and they did the same to him. Sometimes there was a fierce dispute, but more often friendly laughter.
"Eh, you're a dear man; you were born a rogue!" the workmen would say to the master.
And he answered, laughing in some confusion:
"And what about you, wild fowl? There's as much roguery about you as about me!"
"How should we be anything else, friend?" agreed Ephimushka, but grave Petr said:
"You live by what you steal; what you earn you give to God and the emperor."
"Well, then I 'll willingly make a burnt offering of you," laughed the master.
They led him on good-naturedly:
"Set fire to us, you mean?"
"Burn us in a fiery furnace?"
Gregory Shishl in, pressing his luxuriant beard to his breast with his hands, said in a sing-song voice: "Brothers, let us do our business without cheating. If we will only live honestly, how happy and peaceful we shall be, eh? Shall we not, dear people?"
His blue eyes darkened, grew moist; at that moment he looked wonderfully handsome. His question seemed to have upset them all; they all turned away from him in confusion.
"A peasant does not cheat much," grumbled good-looking Osip with a sigh, as if he pitied the peasant.
The dark bricklayer, bending his round-shouldered back over the table, said thickly:
"Sin is like a sort of bog; the farther you go, the more swampy it gets!"
And the master said to them, as if he were making a speech:
"What about me? I go into it because something calls me. Though I don't want to."
After this philosophising they again tried to get the better of one another, but when they had finished their accounts, perspiring and tired from the effort, they went out to the tavern to drink tea, inviting the master to go with them.