In the World

In the World

"Yes."

"That's right. I know all about Czar Peter, and that never happened to him. Run along."

I realized that the cook was right, but nevertheless the book pleased me. I bought the "Story" again and read it a second time. To my amazement, I discovered that it was really a bad book. This puzzled me, and I began to regard the cook with even more respect, while he said to me more frequently and more crossly than ever:

"Oh, what a lot you need to be taught! This is no place for you."

I also felt that it was no place for me. Sergei behaved disgustingly to me, and several times I observed him stealing pieces of the tea-service, and giving them to the passengers on the sly. I knew that this was theft. Smouri had warned me more than once:

"Take care. Do not give the attendants any of the cups and plates from your table."

This made life still harder for me, and I often longed to run away from the boat into the forest; but Smouri held me back. He was more tender to me every day, and the incessant movement on the boat held a terrible fascination for me. I did not like it when we stayed in port, and I was always expecting something to happen, and that we should sail from Kama to Byela, as far as Viatka, and so up the Volga, and I should see new places, towns, and people. But this did not happen. My life on the steamer came to an abrupt end. One evening when we were going from Kazan to Nijni the steward called me to him. I went. He shut the door behind me, and said to Smouri, who sat grimly on a small stool:

"Here he is."

Smouri asked me roughly:

"Have you been giving Serejka any of the dinner- and tea-services?"

"He helps himself when I am not looking."

The steward said softly:

"He does not look, yet he knows."

Smouri struck his knee with his fist; then he scratched his knee as he said:

"Wait; take time."

I pondered. I looked at the steward. He looked at me, and there seemed to be no eyes behind his glasses.

He lived without making a noise. He went about softly, spoke in low tones. Sometimes his faded beard and vacant eyes peeped out from some corner and instantly vanished. Before going to bed he knelt for a long time in the buffet before the icon with the ever-burning lamp. I could see him through the chink of the door, looking like a black bundle; but I had never succeeded in learning how the steward prayed, for he simply knelt and looked at the icon, stroking his beard and sighing.

After a silence Smouri asked:

"Has Sergei ever given you any money?"

"No."

"Never?"

"Never."

"He does not tell lies," said Smouri to the steward, who answered at once in his low voice:

"It comes to the same thing, please--"

"Come!" cried the cook to me, and he came to my table, and rapped my crown lightly with his fingers.

"Fool! And I am a fool, too. I ought to have looked after you."

At Nijni the steward dismissed me. I received nearly eight rubles, the first large money earned by me. When Smouri took farewell of me he said roughly:

"Well, here you are. Now keep your eyes open,--do you understand? You mustn't go about with your mouth open."

He put a tobacco-pouch of colored beads into my hand.

"There you are! That is good handwork. My godchild made it for me. Well, good-by. Read books; that is the best thing you can do."

He took me under the arms, lifted me up, kissed me, and placed me firmly on the jetty. I was sorry for him and for myself. I could hardly keep from crying when I saw him returning to the steamer, pushing aside the porters, looking so large, heavy, solitary. So many times since then I have met people like him, kind, lonely, cut off from the lives of other people.

CHAPTER VII

Grandfather and grandmother had again gone into the town. I went to them, prepared to be angry and warlike; but my heart was heavy. Why had they accounted me a thief?

Grandmother greeted me tenderly, and at once went to prepare the samovar. Grandfather asked as mockingly as usual:

"Have you saved much money?"

"What there is belongs to me," I answered, taking a seat by the window. I triumphantly produced a box of cigarettes from my pocket and began to smoke importantly.

"So-o-o," said grandfather, looking at me fixedly--"so that sit! You smoke the devil's poison? Isn't it rather soon?"

"Why, I have even had a pouch given to me," I boasted.

"A pouch?" squeaked grandfather. "What! Are you saying this to annoy me?"

He rushed upon me, with his thin, strong hands outstretched, his green eyes flashing. I leaped up, and stuck my head into his stomach. The old man sat on the floor, and for several oppressive moments looked at me, amazedly blinking, his dark mouth open. Then he asked quietly:

"You knock me down, your grandfather? The father of your mother?"

"You have knocked me about enough in the past," I muttered, not understanding that I had acted abominably.

Withered and light, grandfather rose from the floor, sat beside me, deftly snatched the cigarette from me, threw it out of the window, and said in a tone of fear:

"You mad fool! Don't you understand that God will punish you for this for the rest of your life? Mother,"--he turned to grandmother,--"did you see that? He knocked me down--he! Knocked me down! Ask him!"

She did not wait to ask. She simply came over to me, seized me by the hair, and beat me, saying:

"And for that--take this--and this!"

I was not hurt, but I felt deeply insulted, especially by grandfather's laughter. He jumped on a chair, slapped his legs with his hands, and croaked through his laughter:

"Th-a-t's right! Tha-a-t's right!"

I tore myself away, and ran out to the shed, where I lay in a corner crushed, desolate, listening to the singing of the samovar.

Then grandmother came to me, bent over me, and whispered hardly audibly:

"You must forgive me, for I purposely did not hurt you. I could not do otherwise than I did, for grandfather is an old man. He has to be treated with care. He has fractured some of his small bones, and, besides, sorrow has eaten into his heart. You must never do him any harm. You are not a little boy now. You must remember that. You must, Olesha! He is like a child, and nothing more."

Her words laved me like warm water. That friendly whisper made me feel ashamed of myself, and, light-hearted, I embraced her warmly. We kissed.

"Go to him. Go along. It is all right, only don't smoke before him yet. Give him time to get used to the idea."

I went back to the room, glanced at grandfather, and could hardly keep from laughing. He really was as pleased as a child. He was radiant, twisting his feet, and running his paws through his red hair as he sat by the table.

"Well, goat, have you come to butt me again? Ach, you--brigand! Just like your father! Freemason! You come back home, never cross yourself; and start smoking at once. Ugh, you--Bonaparte! you copeck's worth of goods!"

I said nothing. He had exhausted his supply of words and was silent from fatigue. But at tea he began to lecture me.

"The fear of God is necessary to men; it is like a bridle to a horse. We have no friend except God. Man is a cruel enemy to man." That men were my enemies, I felt was the truth, but the rest did not interest me.

"Now you will go back to Aunt Matrena, and in the spring you can go on a steamboat again. Live with them during the winter. And you need not tell them that you are leaving in the spring."

"Now, why should he deceive people?" said grandmother, who had just deceived grandfather by pretending to give me a beating.

"It is impossible to live without deceit," declared grandfather. "Just tell me now. Who lives without deceiving others?"

In the evening, while grandfather was reading his office, grandmother and I went out through the gate into the fields. The little cottage with two windows in which grandfather lived was on the outskirts of the town, at the back of Kanatni Street, where grandfather had once had his own house.

"So here we are again!" said grandmother, laughing. "The old man cannot find a resting-place for his soul, but must be ever on the move. And he does not even like it here; but I do."

Before us stretched for about three versts fields of scanty herbage, intersected by ditches, bounded by woods and the line of birches on the Kazan highroad. From the ditches the twigs of bushes projected, the rays of a cold sunset reddened them like blood. A soft evening breeze shook the gray blades of grass. From a nearer pathway, also like blades of grass, showed the dark form of town lads and girls. On the right, in the distance, stood the red walls of the burial-ground of the Old Believers. They called it "The Bugrovski Hermitage." On the left, beyond the causeway, rose a dark group of trees; there was the Jewish cemetery. All the surroundings were poor, and seemed to lie close to the wounded earth. The little houses on the outskirts of the town looked timidly with their windows on the dusty road. Along the road wandered small, ill-fed fowl. Toward the Dyevichia Monastery went a herd of lowing cows, from the camp came the sound of martial music. The brass instruments brayed.

A drunken man came along, ferociously holding out a harmonica. He stumbled and muttered:

"I am coming to thee--without fail."

"Fool!" said grandmother, blinking in the red sunlight. "Where are you going? Soon you will fall down and go to sleep, and you will be robbed in your sleep. You will lose your harmonica, your consolation."

I told her all about the life on the boat as I looked about me. After what I had seen I found it dull here; I felt like a fish out of water. Grandmother listened in silence and with attention, just as I liked to listen to her. When I told her about Smouri she crossed herself and said:

"He is a good man, help him, Mother of God; he is good! Take care, you, that you do not forget him! You should always remember what is good, and what is bad simply forget."

It was very difficult for me to tell her why they had dismissed me, but I took courage and told her. It made no impression whatever on her. She merely said calmly:

"You are young yet; you don't know how to live."

"That is what they all say to one another, 'You don't know how to live'--peasants, sailors, Aunt Matrena to her son. But how does one learn?"

She compressed her lips and shook her head.

"I don't know myself."

"And yet you say the same as the others!"

"And why should I not say it?" replied grandmother, calmly. "You must not be offended. You are young; you are not expected to know. And who does know, after all? Only rogues. Look at your grandfather. Clever and well educated as he is, yet he does not know."

"And you--have you managed your life well?"

"I? Yes. And badly also; all ways."

People sauntered past us, with their long shadows following them. The dust rose like smoke under their feet, burying those shadows. Then the evening sadness became more oppressive. The sound of grandfather's grumbling voice flowed from the window:

"Lord, in Thy wrath do not condemn me, nor in Thy rage punish me!"

Grandmother said, smiling:

"He has made God tired of him. Every evening he has his tale of woe, and about what? He is old now, and he does not need anything; yet he is always complaining and working himself into a frenzy about something. I expect God laughs when He hears his voice in the evening. There's Vassili Kashirin grumbling again!' Come and go to bed now." . . . . . . . .

I made up my mind to take up the occupation of catching singing-birds. I thought it would be a good way of earning a living. I would catch them, and grandmother would sell them. I bought a net, a hoop, and a trap, and made a cage. At dawn I took my place in a hollow among the bushes, while grandmother went in the woods with a basket and a bag to find the last mushrooms, bulbs, and nuts.

The tired September sun had only just risen. Its pale rays were now extinguished by clouds, now fell like a silver veil upon me in the causeway. At the bottom of the hollow it was still dusk, and a white mist rose from it. Its clayey sides were dark and bare, and the other side, which was more sloping, was covered with grass, thick bushes, and yellow, brown, and scarlet leaves. A fresh wind raised them and swept them along the ditch.

On the ground, among the turnip-tops, the goldfinch uttered its cry. I saw, among the ragged, gray grass, birds with red caps on their lively heads. About me fluttered curious titmouses. They made a great noise and fuss, comically blowing out their white cheeks, just like the young men of Kunavin Street on a Sunday. Swift, clever, spiteful, they wanted to know all and to touch everything, and they fell into the trap one after the other. It was pitiful to see how they beat their wings, but my business was strictly commerce. I changed the birds over into the spare cage and hid them in a bag. In the dark they kept quiet.

A flock of siskins settled on a hawthorn-bush. The bush was suffused by sunlight. The siskins were glad of the sun and chirped more merrily than ever. Their antics were like those of schoolboys. The thirsty, tame, speckled magpie, late in setting out on his journey to a warmer country, sat on the bending bough of a sweetbriar, cleaning his wing feathers and insolently looking at his prey with his black eyes. The lark soared on high, caught a bee, and, carefully depositing it on a thorn, once more settled on the ground, with his thievish head alert. Noiselessly flew the talking-bird,--the hawfinch,--the object of my longing dreams, if only I could catch him. A bullfinch, driven from the flock, was perched on an alder-tree. Red, important, like a general, he chirped angrily, shaking his black beak.

The higher the sun mounted, the more birds there were, and the more gayly they sang. The hollow was full of the music of autumn. The ceaseless rustle of the bushes in the wind, and the passionate songs of the birds, could not drown that soft, sweetly melancholy noise. I heard in it the farewell song of summer. It whispered to me words meant for my ears alone, and of their own accord they formed themselves into a song. At the same time my memory unconsciously recalled to my mind pictures of the past. From somewhere above grandmother cried:

"Where are you?"

She sat on the edge of the pathway. She had spread out a handkerchief on which she had laid bread, cucumber, turnips, and apples. In the midst of this display a small, very beautiful cut-glass decanter stood. It had a crystal stopper, the head of Napoleon, and in the goblet was a measure of vodka, distilled from herbs.

"How good it is, O Lord!" said grandmother, gratefully.

"I have composed a song."

"Yes? Well?"

I repeated to her something which I thought was like poetry.

"That winter draws near the signs are many; Farewell to thee, my summer sun!"

But she interrupted without hearing me out.

"I know a song like that, only it is a better one."

And she repeated in a singsong voice:

"_Oi_, the summer sun has gone To dark nights behind the distant woods! _Ekh!_ I am left behind, a maiden, Alone, without the joys of spring. Every morn I wander round; I trace the walks I took in May. The bare fields unhappy look; There it was I lost my youth. _Oi,_ my friends, my kind friends, Take my heart from my white breast, Bury my heart in the snow!"

My conceit as an author suffered not a little, but I was delighted with this song, and very sorry for the girl.

Grandmother said:

"That is how grief sings. That was made up by a young girl, you know. She went out walking all the springtime, and before the winter her dear love had thrown her over, perhaps for another girl. She wept because her heart was sore. You cannot speak well and truly on what you have not experienced for yourself. You see what a good song she made up."

When she sold a bird for the first time, for forty copecks, she was very surprised.

"Just look at that! I thought it was all nonsense, just a boy's amusement; and it has turned out like this!"

"You sold it too cheaply."

"Yes; well?"

On market-days she sold them for a ruble, and was more surprised than ever. What a lot one might earn by just playing about!

"And a woman spends whole days washing clothes or cleaning floors for a quarter of a ruble, and here you just catch them! But it is n't a nice thing to do, you know, to keep birds in a cage. Give it up, Olesha!"

But bird-catching amused me greatly; I liked it. It gave me my independence and inconvenienced no one but the birds. I provided myself with good implements. Conversations with old bird-catchers taught me a lot. I went alone nearly three versts to catch birds: to the forest of Kstocski, on the banks of the Volga, where in the tall fir-trees lived and bred crossbills, and most valuable to collectors, the Apollyon titmouse, a long-tailed, white bird of rare beauty.

Sometimes I started in the evening and stayed out all night, wandering about on the Kasanski high-road, and sometimes in the autumn rains and through deep mud. On my back I carried an oilskin bag in which were cages, with food to entice the birds. In my hand was a solid cane of walnut wood. It was cold and terrifying in the autumn darkness, very terrifying. There stood by the side of the road old lightning-riven birches; wet branches brushed across my head. On the left under the hill, over the black Volga, floated rare lights on the masts of the last boats and barges, looking as if they were in an unfathomable abyss. The wheels splashed in the water, the sirens shrieked.

From the hard ground rose the huts of the road-side villages. Angry, hungry dogs ran in circles round my legs. The watchman collided with me, and cried in terror:

"Who is that? He whom the devils carry does not come out till night, they say."

I was very frightened lest my tackle should be taken from me, and I used to take five-copeck pieces with me to give to the watchmen. The watchman of the village of Thokinoi made friends with me, and was always groaning over me.

"What, out again? O you fearless, restless night-bird, eh?"

His name was Niphront. He was small and gray, like a saint. He drew out from his breast a turnip, an apple, a handful of peas, and placed them in my hand, saying:

"There you are, friend. There is a little present for you. Eat and enjoy it." And conducting me to the bounds of the village, he said, "Go, and God be with you!"

I arrived at the forest before dawn, laid my traps, and spreading out my coat, lay on the edge of the forest and waited for the day to come. It was still. Everything was wrapped in the deep autumn sleep. Through the gray mist the broad meadows under the hill were hardly visible. They were cut in two by the Volga, across which they met and separated again, melting away in the fog. In the distance, behind the forest on the same side as the meadows, rose without hurry the bright sun. On the black mane of the forest lights flashed out, and my heart began to stir strangely, poignantly. Swifter and swifter the fog rose from the meadows, growing silver in the rays of the sun, and, following it, the bushes, trees, and hayricks rose from the ground. The meadows were simply flooded with the sun's rays and flowed on each side, red-gold. The sun just glanced at the still water by the bank, and it seemed as if the whole river moved toward the sun as it rose higher and higher, joyfully blessed and warmed the denuded, chilled earth, which gave forth the sweet smell of autumn. The transparent air made the earth look enormous, boundlessly wide. Everything seemed to be floating in the distance, and to be luring one to the farthest ends of the world. I saw the sunrise ten times during those months, and each time a new world was born before my eyes, with a new beauty.

I loved the sun so much that its very name delighted me. The sweet sound of it was like a bell hidden in it. I loved to close my eyes and place my face right in the way of its hot rays to catch it in my hands when it came, like a sword, through the chinks of the fence or through the branches. Grandfather had read over and over again "Prince Mikhail Chemigovski and the Lady Theodora who would not Worship the Sun," and my idea of these people was that they were black, like Gipsies, harsh, malignant, and always had bad eyes, like poor Mordovans. When the sun rose over the meadows I involuntarily smiled with joy.

Over me murmured the forest of firs, shaking off the drops of dew with its green paws. In the shadows and on the fern-leaves glistened, like silver brocade, the rime of the morning frost. The reddening grass was crushed by the rain; immovable stalks bowed their heads to the ground: but when the sun's rays fell on them a slight stir was noticeable among the herbs, as if, may be, it was the last effort of their lives.

The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they fell from bough to bough. Flaming crossbills pecked with their crooked beaks the knots on the tallest firs. On the end of the fir-branches sang a white Apollyon titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking askance suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the net which I had spread. And suddenly the whole forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly pensive, was filled with the sound of a thousand bird-voices, with the bustle of living beings, the purest on the earth. In their image, man, the father of earthly beauty, created for his own consolation, elves, cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels.

I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and had scruples about squeezing them into cages. I would rather have merely looked at them; but the hunter's passion and the desire to earn money drove away my pity.

The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The blue titmouse, after a careful examination of the trap, understood her danger, and, approaching sidewise without running any risk, helped herself to some seed between the sticks of the trap. Titmouses are very clever, but they are very curious, and that is their undoing. The proud bullfinches are stupid, and flocks of them fall into the nets, like over-fed citizens into a church. When they find themselves shut up, they are very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers with their stout beaks. The crossbill entered the trap calmly and seriously. This grasping, ignorant bird, unlike all the others, used to sit for a long time before the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like the woodpecker, always escorting the titmouse. About this smoke-gray singing-bird there is something unpleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one. Like the magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things.

Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home through the forest. If I had gone by the high-road past the villages, the boys and young men would have taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle. I had already experienced that once.

I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but I felt that I had grown older, had learned something new, and had gained strength during that day. This new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and without resentment to grandfather's jeers; seeing which, grandfather began to speak sensibly and seriously.

"Give up this useless business! Give it up! No one ever got on through birds. Such a thing has never happened that I know of. Go and find another place, and let your intelligence grow up there. Man has not been given life for nothing; he is God's grain, and he must produce an ear of corn. Man is like a ruble; put out at good interest it produces three rubles. You think life is easy to live? No, it is not all easy. The world of men is like a dark night, but every man must make his own light. To every person is given enough for his ten fingers to hold, but every one wants to grasp by handfuls. One should be strong, but if one is weak, one must be artful. He who has little strength is weak, and he is neither in heaven nor in hell. Live as if you are with others, but remember that you are alone. Whatever happens, never trust any one. If you believe your own eyes, you will measure crookedly. Hold your tongue. Neither town or house was built by the tongue, but rubles are made by the ax. You are neither a fool nor a Kalmuck, to whom all riches are like lice on sheep."

He could talk like this all the evening, and I knew his words by heart. The words pleased me, but I distrusted their meaning. From what he said it was plain that two forces hindered man from doing as he wished, God and other people.

Seated at the window, grandmother wound the cotton for her lace. The spindle hummed under her skilful hands. She listened for a long time to grandfather's speech in silence, then she suddenly spoke.

"It all depends upon whether the Mother of God smiles upon us."

"What's that?" cried grandfather. "God! I have not forgotten about God. I know all about God. You old fool, has God sown fools on the earth, eh?"

*

In my opinion the happiest people on earth were Cossacks and soldiers. Their lives were simple and gay. On fine mornings they appeared in the hollow near our house quite early. Scattering over the bare fields like white mushrooms, they began a complicated, interesting game. Agile and strong in their white blouses, they ran about the field with guns in their hands, disappeared in the hollow, and suddenly, at the sound of the bugle, again spread themselves over the field with shouts of "Hurrah!" accompanied by the ominous sounds of the drum. They ran straight at our house with fixed bayonets, and they looked as if they would knock it down and sweep it away, like a hayrick, in a minute. I cried "Hurrah!" too, and ran with them, quite carried away. The wicked rattle of the drum aroused in me a passionate desire to destroy something, to break down the fence, to hit other boys. When they were resting, the soldiers used to give me a treat by teaching me how to signal and by showing me their heavy guns. Sometimes one of them would stick his bayonet into my stomach and cry, with a pretense of anger:

"Stick the cockroach!"

The bayonet gleamed; it looked as if it were alive, and seemed to wind about like a snake about to coil itself up. It was rather terrifying, but more pleasant.

The Mordovan drummer taught me to strike the drum with my fingers. At first he used to take me by the wrist, and, moving them so that he hurt me, would thrust the sticks into my crushed fingers.

"Hit it--one, two-one-tw-o-o! Rum te--tum! Beat it--left--softly, right--loudly, rum te--!" he shouted threateningly, opening wide his bird-like eyes.

I used to run about the field with the soldiers, almost to the end of the drill, and after it was finished, I used to escort them across the town to the barracks, listening to their loud songs, looking into their kind faces, all as new as five-ruble pieces just coined. The close-packed mass of happy men passing up the streets in one united body aroused a feeling of friendliness in me, a desire to throw myself in among them as into a river, to enter into them as into a forest. These men were frightened of nothing; they could conquer anything; they were capable of anything; they could do anything they liked; and they were all simple and good.

But one day during the time they were resting a young non-commissioned officer gave me a fat cigarette.

"Smoke this! I would not give them to any one. In fact I hardly like to give you one, my dear boy, they are so good."

I smoked it. He moved away a few steps, and suddenly a red flame blinded me, burning my fingers, my nose, my eyebrows. A gray, acrid smoke made me splutter and cough. Blinded, terrified, I stamped on the ground, and the soldiers, who had formed a ring around me, laughed loudly and heartily. I ran away home. Whistles and laughter followed me; something cracked like a shepherd's whip. My burned fingers hurt me, my face smarted, tears flowed from my eyes; but it was not the pain which oppressed me, only a heavy, dull amazement. Why should this amuse these good fellows?

When I reached home I climbed up to the attic and sat there a long time brooding over this inexplicable cruelty which stood so repulsively in my path. I had a peculiarly clear and vivid memory of the little soldier from Sarapulia standing before me, as large as life, and saying:

"Well, do you understand?"

Soon I had to go through something still more depressing and disgusting.

I had begun to run about in the barracks of the Cossacks, which stood near the Pecherski Square. The Cossacks seemed different from the soldiers, not because they rode so skilfully oh horseback and were dressed more beautifully, but because they spoke in a different way, sang different songs, and danced beautifully. In the evening, after they had seen to their horses, they used to gather in a ring near the stables, and a little red-haired Cossack, shaking his tufts of hair, sang softly in a high-pitched voice, like a trumpet. The long-drawn-out, sad song flowed out upon the Don and the blue Dounia. His eyes were closed, like the eyes of a linnet, which often sings till it falls dead from the branch to the ground. The collar of his Cossack shirt was undone. His collar-bone was visible, looking like a copper band. In fact, he was altogether metallic, coppery. Swaying on his thin legs, as if the earth under him were rocking, spreading out his hands, he seemed sightless, but full of sound. He, as it were, ceased to be a man, and became a brass instrument. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was falling, that he would fall on his back to the ground, and die like the linnet, because he put into the song all his soul and all his strength.

With their hands in their pockets or behind their broad backs, his comrades stood round in a ring, sternly looking at his brassy face. Beating time with their hands, softly spitting into space, they joined in earnestly, softly, as if they were in the choir in church. All of them, bearded and shaven, looked like icons, stern and set apart from other people. The song was long, like a long street, and as level, as broad and as wide. When I listened to him I forgot everything else, whether it was day or night upon the earth, whether I was an old man or a little boy. Everything else was forgotten. The voice of the singer died away. The sighs of the horses were audible as they grieved for their native steppes, and gently, but surely, the autumn night crept up from the fields. My heart swelled and almost burst with a multitude of extraordinary feelings, and a great, speechless love for human creatures and the earth.

The little copper-colored Cossack seemed to me to be no man, but something much more significant--a legendary being, better and on a higher plane than ordinary people. I could not talk to him. When he asked me a question I smiled blissfully and remained shyly silent. I was ready to follow him anywhere, silently and humbly, like a dog. All I wanted was to see him often, and to hear him sing.

CHAPTER VIII

When the snows came, grandfather once more took me to grandmother's sister.

"It will do you no harm," he said to me.

I seemed to have had a wonderful lot of experience during the summer. I felt that I had grown older and cleverer, and the dullness of my master's house seemed worse than ever. They fell ill as often as ever, upsetting their stomachs with offensive poisons, and giving one another detailed accounts of the progress of their illnesses. The old woman prayed to God in the same terrible and malignant way. The young mistress had grown thin, but she moved about just as pompously and slowly as when she was expecting her child. When she stitched at the baby-clothes she always sang the same song softly to herself:

"Spiria, Spiria, Spiridon, Spiria, my little brother, I will sit in the sledge myself And Spiria on the foot-board."

If any one went into the room she left off singing at once and cried angrily:

"What do you want?"

I fully believed that she knew no other song but that.

In the evenings they used to call me into the sitting-room, and the order was given:

"Now tell us how you lived on the boat."

I sat on a chair near the door and spoke. I liked to recall a different life from this which I was forced to lead against my will. I was so interested that I forgot my audience, but not for long.

The women, who had never been on a boat, asked me:

"But it was very alarming, was n't it?"

I did not understand. Why should it be alarming?

"Why, the boat might go down any moment, and every one would be drowned."

The master burst out laughing, and I, although I knew that boats did not sink just because there were deep places, could not convince the women. The old woman was certain that the boat did not float on the water, but went along on wheels on the bottom of the river, like a cart on dry land.

"If they are made of iron, how can they float? An ax will not float; no fear!"

"But a scoop does not sink in the water."

"There's a comparison to make! A scoop is a small thing, nothing to speak of."

When I spoke of Smouri and his books they regarded me with contempt. The old lady said that only fools and heretics wrote books.

"What about the Psalms and King David?"

"The Psalms are sacred writings, and King David prayed God to forgive him for writing the Psalms."

"Where does it say so?"

"In the palms of my hands; that's where! When I get hold of you by the neck you will learn where."

She knew everything; she spoke on all subjects with conviction and always savagely.

"A Tatar died on the Pechorka, and his soul came out of his mouth as black as tar."

"Soul? Spirit?" I said, but she cried contemptuously:

"Of a Tatar! Fool!"

The young mistress was afraid of books, too.

"It is very injurious to read books, and especially when you are young," she said. "At home, at Grebeshka, there was a young girl of good family who read and read, and the end of it was that she fell in love with the deacon, and the deacon's wife so shamed her that it was terrible to see. In the street, before everybody."

Sometimes I used words out of Smouri's books, in one of which, one without beginning or end, was written, "Strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder; as is always the case, it appeared at the end of a long series of minor observations and discoveries." I do not know why I remembered these words so well. What I liked best of all was the joining of two phrases, "strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder." I was aware of force underlying them; but they brought me sorrow, ludicrous sorrow. It happened thus.

One day when my employers proposed that I should tell them about something which had happened on the boat I answered:

"I have n't anything left to tell, strictly speaking." This amazed them. They cried:

"What? What's that you said?"

And all four began to laugh in a friendly fashion, repeating:

"'Strictly speaking,'--ah, Lord!"

Even the master said to me:

"You have thought that out badly, old fellow." And for a long time after that they used to call me:

"Hi, 'strictly speaking,' come here and wipe up the floor after the baby, strictly speaking."

This stupid banter did not offend, but it greatly surprised, me. I lived in a fog of stupefying grief, and I worked hard in order to fight against it. I did not feel my inefficiencies when I was at work. In the house were two young children. The nurses never pleased the mistresses, and were continually being changed. I had to wait upon the children, to wash baby-clothes every day, and every week I had to go to the Jandarmski Fountain to rinse the linen. Here I was derided by the washerwomen:

"Why are you doing women's work?"

Sometimes they worked me up to such a pitch that I slapped them with the wet, twisted linen. They paid me back generously for this, but I found them merry and interesting.

The Jandarmski Fountain ran along the bottom of a deep causeway and fell into the Oka. The causeway cut the town off from the field which was called, from the name of an ancient god, Yarilo. On that field, near Semika, the inhabitants of the town had made a promenade. Grandmother had told me that in the days of her youth people still believed in Yarilo and offered sacrifices to him. They took a wheel, covered it with tarred tow, and let it roll down the hill with cries and songs, watching to see if the burning wheel would roll as far as the Oka. If it did, the god Yarilo had accepted the sacrifice; the summer would be sunny and happy.

The washerwomen were for the most part from Yarilo, bold, headstrong women who had the life of the town at their finger-ends. It was very interesting to hear their tales of the merchants, _chinovniks_, and officers for whom they worked. To rinse the linen in winter in the icy water of the river was work for a galley-slave. All the women had their hands so frost-bitten that the skin was broken. Bending over the stream, inclosed in a wooden trough, under an old penthouse full of crevices, which was no protection against either wind or snow, the women rinsed the linen. Their faces were flushed, pinched by the frost. The frost burned their wet fingers; they could not bend them. Tears trickled from their eyes, but they chatted all the time, telling one another different stories, bearing themselves with a peculiar bravery toward every one and everything.

The best of all the stories were told by Natalia Kozlovski, a woman of about thirty, fresh-faced, strong, with laughing eyes and a peculiarly facile and sharp tongue. All her companions had a high regard for her; she was consulted on all sorts of affairs, and much admired for her skill in work, for the neatness of her attire, and because she had been able to send her daughter to the high school. When, bending under the weight of two baskets of wet linen, she came down the hill on the slippery footpath, they greeted her gladly, and asked solicitously:

"Well, and how is the daughter?"

"Very well, thank you; she is learning well, thank God!"

"Look at that now! She will be a lady."

"That's why I am having her taught. Where do the ladies with the painted faces come from? They all come from us, from the black earth. And where else should they come from? He who has the most knowledge has the longest arms and can take more, and the one who takes the most has the honor and glory. God sends us into the world as stupid children and expects to take us back as wise old people, which means that we must learn!"

When she spoke every one was silent, listening attentively to her fluent, self-confident speech. They praised her to her face and behind her back, amazed at her cleverness, her intellect; but no one tried to imitate her. She had sewn brown leather from the leg of a boot, over the sleeve of her bodice which saved her from the necessity of baring her arms to the elbow, and prevented her sleeves from getting wet. They all said what a good idea it was, but not one of them followed her example. When I did so they laughed at me.

"_Ekh_, you? Letting a woman teach you!"

With reference to her daughter she said:

"That is an important affair. There will be one more young lady in the world. Is that a small thing? But of course she may not be able to finish her studies; she may die. And it is not an easy life for those who are students, you see. There was that daughter of the Bakhilovs. She studied and studied, and even became a teacher herself. Once you become a teacher, you know, you are settled for life."

"Of course, if they marry, they can do without education; that is, if they have something else to recommend them."

"A woman's wit lies not in her head."

It was strange and embarrassing to hear them speak about themselves with such lack of reticence. I knew how sailors, soldiers, and tillers of the soil spoke about women. I heard men always boasting among themselves of their skill in deceiving women, of cunning in their relations with them. I felt that their attitude toward "females" was hostile, but generally there was a ring of something in these boastings which led me to suppose that these stories were merely brag, inventions, and not the truth.

The washerwomen did not tell one another about their love adventures, but in whatever they said about men I detected an undercurrent of derision, of malice, and I thought it might be true that woman was strength.

"Even when they don't go about among their fellows and make friends, they come to women, every one of them!" said Natalia one day, and an old woman cried to her in a rheumy voice:

"And to whom else should they go? Even from God monks and hermits come to us."

These conversations amid the weeping splash of the water, the slapping of wet clothes on the ground, or against the dirty chinks, which not even the snow could hide with its clean cover--these shameless, malicious conversations about secret things, about that from which all races and peoples have sprung, roused in me a timid disgust, forced my thoughts and feelings to fix themselves on "the romances" which surrounded and irritated me. For me the understanding of the "romances" was closely intertwined with representations of obscure, immoral stories.

However, whether I was with the washerwomen, or in the kitchen with the orderlies or in cellars where lived the field laborers, I found it much more interesting than to be at home, where the stilted conversations were always on the same lines, where the same things happened over and over again, arousing nothing but a feeling of constraint and embittered boredom. My employers dwelt within the magic circle of food, illness, sleep, and the anxieties attendant on preparing for eating and sleeping. They spoke of sin and of death, of which they were much afraid. They rubbed against one another as grains of corn are rubbed against the grindstone, which they expect every moment to crush them. In my free time I used to go into the shed to chop wood, desiring to be alone. But that rarely happened. The orderlies used to come and talk about the news of the yard.

Ermokhin and Sidorov came more often than the others. The former was a long, bow-backed Kalougan, with thick, strong veins all over him, a small head, and dull eyes. He was lazy and irritatingly stupid; he moved slowly and clumsily, and when he saw a woman he blinked and bent forward, just as if he were going to throw himself at her feet. All the yard was amazed by his swift conquest of the cooks and the maids, and envied him. They were all afraid of his bear-like strength. Sidorov, a lean, bony native of Tula, was always sad, spoke softly, and loved to gaze into dark corners. He would relate some incident in a low voice, or sit in silence, looking into the darkest corner.

"What are you looking at?"

"I thought I saw a mouse running about. I love mice; they run to and fro so quietly."

I used to write letters home for these orderlies--love-letters. I liked this, but it was pleasanter to write letters for Sidorov than for any of the others. Every Saturday regularly he sent a letter to his sister at Tula.

He invited me into his kitchen, sat down beside me at the table, and, rubbing his close-cropped hair hard, whispered in my ear:

"Well, go on. Begin it as it ought to be begun. 'My dearest sister, may you be in good health for many years'--you know how it ought to go. And now write, 'I received the ruble; only you need not have sent it. But I thank you. I want for nothing; we live well here.' As a matter of fact, we do not live at all well, but like dogs; but there is no need to write that. Write that we live well. She is little, only fourteen years old. Why should she know? Now write by yourself, as you have been taught."

He pressed upon me from the left side, breathing into my ear hotly and odorously, and whispered perseveringly:

"Write 'if any one speaks tenderly to you, you are not to believe him. He wants to deceive you, and ruin you.'"

His face was flushed by his effort to keep back a cough. Tears stood in his eyes. He leaned on the table and pushed against me.

"You are hindering me!"

"It is all right; go on! 'Above all, never believe gentlemen. They will lead a girl wrong the first time they see her. They know exactly what to say. And if you have saved any money, give it to the priest to keep for you, if he is a good man. But the best thing, is to bury it in the ground, and remember the spot.'"

It was miserable work trying to listen to this whisper, which was drowned by the squeaking of the tin ventilator in the _fortochka._ I looked at the blackened front of the stove, at the china cupboard covered with flies. The kitchen was certainly very dirty, overrun with bugs, redolent with an acrid smell of burnt fat, kerosene, and smoke. On the stove, among the sticks of wood, cockroaches crawled in and out. A sense of melancholy stole over my heart. I could have cried with pity for the soldier and his sister. Was it possible, was it right that people should live like this?

I wrote something, no longer listening to Sidorov's whisper. I wrote of the misery and repulsiveness of life, and he said to me, sighing:

"You have written a lot; thank you. Now she will know what she has to be afraid of."

"There is nothing for her to be afraid of," I said angrily, although I was afraid of many things myself.

The soldier laughed, and cleared his throat.

"What an oddity you are! How is there nothing to be afraid of? What about gentlemen, and God? Is n't that something?"

When he received a letter from his sister he said restlessly:

"Read it, please. Be quick!"

And he made me read the badly scrawled, insultingly short, and nonsensical letter three times.

He was good and kind, but he behaved toward women like all the others; that is, with the primitive coarseness of an animal. Willingly and unwillingly, as I observed these affairs, which often went on under my eyes, beginning and ending with striking and impure swiftness, I saw Sidorov arouse in the breast of a woman a kind feeling of pity for him in his soldier's life, then intoxicate her with tender lies, and then tell Ermokhin of his conquest, frowning and spitting his disgust, just as if he had been taking some bitter medicine. This made my heart ache, and I angrily asked the soldiers why they all deceived women, lied to them, and then, jeering among themselves at the woman they had treated so, gave her away and often beat her.

One of them laughed softly, and said:

"It is not necessary for you to know anything about such things. It is all very bad; it is sin. You are young; it is too early for you."

But one day I obtained a more definite answer, which I have always remembered.

"Do you think that she does not know that I am deceiving her?" he said, blinking and coughing. "She kno-o-ows. She wants to be deceived. Everybody lies in such affairs; they are a disgrace to all concerned. There is no love on either side; it is simply an amusement. It is a dreadful disgrace. Wait, and you will know for yourself. It was for that God drove them out of paradise, and from that all unhappiness has come."

He spoke so well, so sadly, and so penitently that he reconciled me a little to these "romances." I began to have a more friendly feeling toward him than towards Ermokhin, whom I hated, and seized every occasion of mocking and teasing. I succeeded in this, and he often pursued me across the yard with some evil design, which only his clumsiness prevented him from executing.

"It is forbidden," went on Sidorov, speaking of women.

That it was forbidden I knew, but that it was the cause of human unhappiness I did not believe. I saw that people were unhappy, but I did not believe what he said, because I sometimes saw an extraordinary expression in the eyes of people in love, and was aware of a peculiar tenderness in those who loved. To witness this festival of the heart was always pleasant to me.

However, I remember that life seemed to me to grow more and more tedious, cruel, fixed for ever in those forms of it which I saw from day to day. I did not dream of anything better than that which passed interminably before my eyes.

But one day the soldiers told me a story which stirred me deeply. In one of the flats lived a cutter-out, employed by the best tailor in the town, a quiet, meek foreigner. He had a little, childless wife who read books all day long. Over the noisy yard, amid houses full of drunken people, these two lived, invisible and silent. They had no visitors, and never went anywhere themselves except to the theater in holiday-time.

The husband was engaged from early morning until late at night. The wife, who looked like an undersized girl, went to the library twice a week. I often saw her walking with a limp, as if she were slightly lame, as far as the dike, carrying books in a strap, like a school-girl. She looked unaffected, pleasant, new, clean, with gloves on her small hands. She had a face like a bird, with little quick eyes, and everything about her was pretty, like a porcelain figure on a mantel-shelf. The soldiers said that she had some ribs missing in her left side, and that was what made her sway so curiously as she walked; but I thought this very nice, and at once set her above all the other ladies in the yard--the officers' wives. The latter, despite their loud voices, their variegated attire, and _haut tournure_, had a soiled look about them, as if they had been lying forgotten for a long time, in a dark closet among other unneeded things.

The little wife of the cutter-out was regarded in the yard as half witted. It was said that she had lost her senses over books, and had got into such a condition that she could not manage the housekeeping; that her husband had to go to the market himself in search of provisions, and order the dinner and supper of the cook, a great, huge foreign female. She had only one red eye, which was always moist, and a narrow pink crevice in place of the other. She was like her mistress, they said of her. She did not know how to cook a dish of fried veal and onions properly, and one day she ignominiously bought radishes, thinking she was buying parsley. Just think what a dreadful thing that was!

All three were aliens in the building, as if they had fallen by accident into one of the compartments of a large hen-house. They reminded me of a titmouse which, taking refuge from the frost, flies through the _fortochka_ into a stifling and dirty habitation of man.

And then the orderlies told me how the officers had played an insulting and wicked trick on the tailor's little wife. They took turns to write her a letter every day, declaring their love for her, speaking of their sufferings and of her beauty. She answered them, begging them to leave her in peace, regretting that she had been the cause of unhappiness to any one, and praying God that He would help them to give up loving her. When any one of them received a letter like that, they used to read it all together, and then make up another letter to her, signed by a different person.

When they told me this story, the orderlies laughed too, and abused the lady.

"She is a wretched fool, the crookback," said Ermokhin in a bass voice, and Sidorov softly agreed with him.

"Whatever a woman is, she likes being deceived. She knows all about it."

I did not believe that the wife of the cutter-out knew that they were laughing at her, and I resolved at once to tell her about it. I watched for the cook to go down into the cellar, and I ran up the dark staircase to the flat of the little woman, and slipped into the kitchen. It was empty. I went on to the sitting-room. The tailor's wife was sitting at the table. In one hand she held a heavy gold cup, and in the other an open book. She was startled. Pressing the book to her bosom, she cried in a low voice:

"Who is that? Auguste! Who are you?"

I began to speak quickly and confusedly, expecting every minute that she would throw the book at me. She was sitting in a large, raspberry-colored armchair, dressed in a pale-blue wrap with a fringe at the hem and lace on the collar and sleeves over her shoulders was spread her flaxen, wavy hair. She looked like an angel from the gates of heaven. Leaning against the back of her chair, she looked at me with round eyes, at first angrily, then in smiling surprise.

When I had said what I wanted to say, and, losing my courage, turned to the door, she cried after me:

"Wait!"

Placing the cup on the tray, throwing the book on the table, and folding her hands, she said in a husky, grown-up voice:

"What a funny boy you are! Come closer!"

I approached very cautiously. She took me by the hand, and, stroking it with her cold, small fingers, said:

"Are you sure that no one sent you to tell me this? No? All right; I see that you thought of it yourself."

Letting my hand go, she closed her eyes, and said softly and drawingly:

"So that is how the soldiers speak of me?"

"Leave this place," I advised her earnestly.

"Why?"

"They will get the better of you."

She laughed pleasantly. Then she asked:

"Do you study? Are you fond of books?"

"I have no time for reading."

"If you were fond of it, you would find the time. Well, thank you."

She held out a piece of silver money to me, grasped between her first finger and her thumb. I felt ashamed to take that cold thing from her, but I did not dare to refuse. As I went out, I laid it on the pedestal of the stair-banisters.

I took away with me a deep, new impression from that woman. It was as if a new day had dawned for me. I lived for several days in a state of joy, thinking of the spacious room and the tailor's wife sitting in it, dressed in pale blue and looking like an angel. Everything around her was unfamiliarly beautiful. A dull-gold carpet lay under her feet; the winter day looked through the silver panes of the window, warming itself in her presence. I wanted very much to look at her again. How would it be if I went to her and asked her for a book?

I acted upon this idea. Once more I saw her in the same place, also with a book in her hand; but she had a red handkerchief tied round her face, and her eyes were swollen. As she gave me a book with a black binding, she indistinctly called out something. I went away feeling sad, carrying the book, which smelt of creosote and aniseed drops. I hid it in the attic, wrapping it up in a clean shirt and some paper; for I was afraid that my employers might find it and spoil it.

They used to take the "Neva" for the sake of the patterns and prizes, but they never read it. When they had looked at the pictures, they put it away in a cupboard in the bedroom, and at the end of the year they had been bound, placing them under the bed, where already lay three volumes of "The Review of Painting." When I washed the floor in the bedroom dirty water flowed under these books. The master subscribed to the "Russian Courier," but when he read it in the evening he grumbled at it.

"What the devil do they want to write all tins for? Such dull stuff!"

On Saturday, when I was putting away the linen in the attic, I remembered about the book. I undid it from its wrappings, and read the first lines: "Houses are like people; they all have physiognomies of their own." The truth of this surprised me, and I went on reading farther, standing at the dormer-window until I was too cold to stay longer. But in the evening, when they had gone to vespers, I carried the book into the kitchen and buried myself in the yellow, worn pages, which were like autumn leaves. Without effort, they carried me into another life, with new names and new standards, showed me noble heroes, gloomy villains, quite unlike the people with whom I had to do. This was a novel by Xavier de Montepaine. It was long, like all his novels, simply packed with people and incidents, describing an unfamiliar, vehement life. Everything in this novel was wonderfully clear and simple, as if a mellow light hidden between the lines illuminated the good and evil. It helped one to love and hate, compelling one to follow with intense interest the fates of the people, who seemed so inextricably entangled. I was seized with sudden desires to help this person, to hinder that, forgetting that this life, which had so unexpectedly opened before me, had its existence only on paper. I forgot everything else in the exciting struggles. I was swallowed up by a feeling of joy on one page, and by a feeling of grief on the next.

I read until I heard the bell ring in the front hall. I knew at once who it was that was ringing, and why.

The candle had almost burned out. The candlestick, which I had cleaned only that morning, was covered with grease; the wick of the lamp, which I ought to have looked after, had slipped out of its place, and the flame had gone out. I rushed about the kitchen trying to hide the traces of my crime. I slipped the book under the stove-hole, and began to put the lamp to rights. The nurse came running out of the sitting-room.

"Are you deaf? They have rung!"

I rushed to open the door.

"Were you asleep?" asked the master roughly. His wife, mounting the stairs heavily, complained that she had caught cold. The old lady scolded me. In the kitchen she noticed the burned-out candle at once, and began to ask me what I had been doing. I said nothing. I had only just come down from the heights, and I was all to pieces with fright lest they should find the book. She cried out that I would set the house on fire. When the master and his wife came down to supper she complained to them.

"There, you see, he has let the candle gutter, he will set the house on fire."

While they were at supper the whole four of them lashed me with their tongues, reminding me of all my crimes, wilful and involuntary, threatening me with perdition; but I knew quite well that they were all speaking not from ill-feeling, or for my good, but simply because they were bored. And it was curious to observe how empty and foolish they were compared with the people in books.

When they had finished eating, they grew heavy, and went wearily to bed. The old woman, after disturbing God with her angry complaints, settled herself on the stove and was silent. Then I got up, took the book from the stove-hole, and went to the window. It was a bright night, and the moon looked straight into the window; but my sight was not good enough to see the small print. My desire to read was tormenting me. I took a brass saucepan from the shelf and reflected the light of the moon from it on the book; but it became still more difficult and blurred. Then I betook myself to the bench in the corner where the icon was, and, standing upon it, began to read by the light of the small lamp. But I was very tired, and dozed, sinking down on the bench. I was awakened by the cries and blows of the old woman. She was hitting me painfully over the shoulders with the book, which she held in her hand. She was red with rage, furiously tossing her brown head, barefooted, and wearing only her night-dress. Victor roared from the loft:

"Mamasha, don't make such a noise! You make life unbearable."

"She has found the book. She will tear it up!" I thought.

My trial took place at breakfast-time. The master asked me, sternly:

"Where did you get that book?"

The women exclaimed, interrupting each other. Victor sniffed contemptuously at the pages and said:

"Good gracious! what does it smell of?"

Learning that the book belonged to the priest, they looked at it again, surprised and indignant that the priest should read novels. However, this seemed to calm them down a little, though the master gave me another long lecture to the effect that reading was both injurious and dangerous.

"It is the people who read books who rob trains and even commit murders."

The mistress cried out, angry and terrified:

"Have you gone out of your mind? What do you want to say such things to him for?"

I took Montepaine to the soldier and told him what had happened. Sidorov took the book, opened a small trunk, took out a clean towel, and, wrapping the novel in it, hid it in the trunk.

"Don't you take any notice of them. Come and read here. I shan't tell any one. And if you come when I am not here, you will find the key hanging behind the icon. Open the trunk and read."

The attitude my employers had taken with regard to the book raised it to the height of an important and terrible secret in my mind. That some "readers" had robbed a train or tried to murder some one did not interest me, but I remembered the question the priest had asked me in confession, the reading of the gymnasiast in the basement, the words of Smouri, the "proper books," and grandfather's stories of the black books of freemasonry. He had said:

"In the time of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich of blessed memory the nobles took up the study of 'black books' and freemasonry. They planned to hand over the whole Russian people to the Pope of Rome, if you please! But General Arakcheev caught them in the act, and, without regard to their position, sent them all to Siberia, into prison. And there they were; exterminated like vermin."

I remembered the _"umbra"_ of Smouri's book and "Gervase" and the solemn, comical words:

Profane ones who are curious to know our business, Never shall your weak eyes spy it out!

I felt that I was on the threshold of the discovery of some great secret, and went about like a lunatic. I wanted to finish reading the book, and was afraid that the soldier might lose it or spoil it somehow. What should I say to the tailor's wife then?

The old woman watched me sharply to see that I did not run to the orderly's room, and taunted me:

"Bookworm! Books! They teach dissoluteness. Look at that woman, the bookish one. She can't even go to market herself. All she can do is to carry on with the officers. She receives them in the daytime. I kno-o-w."

I wanted to cry, "That's not true. She does not carry on," but I was afraid to defend the tailor's wife, for then the old woman might guess that the book was hers.

I had a desperately bad time of it for several days. I was distracted and worried, and could not sleep for fear that Montepaine had come to grief. Then one day the cook belonging to the tailor's household stopped me in the yard and said:

"You are to bring back that book."

I chose the time after dinner, when my employers lay down to rest, and appeared before the tailor's wife embarrassed and crushed. She looked now as she had the first time, only she was dressed differently. She wore a gray skirt and a black velvet blouse, with a turquoise cross upon her bare neck. She looked like a hen bullfinch. When I told her that I had not had time to read the book, and that I had been forbidden to read, tears filled my eyes. They were caused by mortification, and by joy at seeing this woman.

"Foo! what stupid people!" she said, drawing her fine brows together. "And your master has such an interesting face, too! Don't you fret about it. I will write to him."

"You must not! Don't write!" I begged her. "They will laugh at you and abuse you. Don't you know that no one in the yard likes you, that they all laugh at you, and say that you are a fool, and that some of your ribs are missing?"

As soon as I had blurted this out I knew that I had said something unnecessary and insulting to her. She bit her lower lip, and clapped her hands on her hips as if she were riding on horseback. I hung my head in confusion and wished that I could sink into the earth; but she sank into a chair and laughed merrily, saying over and over again:

"Oh, how stupid! how stupid! Well, what is to be done?" she asked, looking fixedly at me. Then she sighed and said, "You are a strange boy, very strange."

Glancing into the mirror beside her, I saw a face with high cheek-bones and a short nose, a large bruise on the forehead, and hair, which had not been cut for a long time, sticking out in all directions. That is what she called "a strange boy." The strange boy was not in the least like a fine porcelain figure.

"You never took the money that I gave you. Why?"

"I did not want it."

She sighed.

"Well, what is to be done? If they will allow you to read, come to me and I will give you some books."

On the mantel-shelf lay three books. The one which I had brought back was the thickest. I looked at it sadly. The tailor's wife held out her small, pink hand to me.

"Well, good-by!"

I touched her hand timidly, and went away quickly.

It was certainly true what they said about her not knowing anything. Fancy calling two _gravities_ money! It was just like a child.

But it pleased me.

CHAPTER IX

I have sad and ludicrous reasons for remembering the burdensome humiliations, insults, and alarms which my swiftly developed passion for reading brought me.

The books of the tailor's wife looked as if they were terribly expensive, and as I was afraid that the old mistress might burn them in the stove, I tried not to think of them, and began to buy small colored books from the shop where I bought bread in the mornings.

The shopkeeper was an ill-favored fellow with thick lips. He was given to sweating, had a white, wizen face covered with scrofulous scars and pimples, and his eyes were white. He had short, clumsy fingers on puffy hands. His shop took the place of an evening club for grown-up people; also for the thoughtless young girls living in the street. My master's brother used to go there every evening to drink beer and play cards. I was often sent to call him to supper, and more than once I saw, in the small, stuffy room behind the shop, the capricious, rosy wife of the shopkeeper sitting on the knee of Victorushka or some other young fellow. Apparently this did not offend the shopkeeper; nor was he offended when his sister, who helped him in the shop, warmly embraced the drunken men, or soldiers, or, in fact any one who took her fancy. The business done at the shop was small. He explained this by the fact that it was a new business, although the shop had been open since the autumn. He showed obscene pictures to his guests and customers, allowing those who wished to copy the disgraceful verses beneath them.

I read the foolish little books of Mischa Evstignev, paying so many copecks for the loan of them. This was dear, and the books afforded me no pleasure at all. "Guyak, or, the Unconquerable Truth," "Franzl, the Venitian," "The Battle of the Russians with the Kabardines," or "The Beautiful Mahomedan Girl, Who Died on the Grave of her Husband,"--all that kind of literature did not interest me either, and often aroused a bitter irritation. The books seemed to be laughing at me, as at a fool, when they told in dull words such improbable stories.

"The Marksmen," "Youri Miloslavski," "Monks' Secrets," "Yapacha, the Tatar Freebooter," and such books I like better. I was the richer for reading them; but what I liked better than all was the lives of the saints. Here was something serious in which I could believe, and which at times deeply stirred me. All the martyrs somehow reminded me of "Good Business," and the female martyrs of grandmother, and the holy men of grandfather in his best moments.

I used to read in the shed when I went there to chop wood, or in the attic, which was equally uncomfortable and cold. Sometimes, if a book interested me or I had to read it quickly, I used to get up in the night and light the candle; but the old mistress, noticing that my candle had grown smaller during the night, began to measure the candles with a piece of wood, which she hid away somewhere. In the morning, if my candle was not as long as the measure, or if I, having found the measure, had not broken it to the length of the burned candle, a wild cry arose from the kitchen. Sometimes Victorushka called out loudly from the loft:

"Leave off that howling, Mamasha! You make life unbearable. Of course he burns the candles, because he reads books. He gets them from the shop. I know. Just look among his things in the attic."

The old woman ran up to the attic, found a book, and burned it to ashes.