In the World

In the World

"He has begun!"

"Look at the time!"

All eyes were turned in a business-like manner on the face of the glutton, on his lower jaw, on the round protuberances near his ears; they watched the sharp chin rise and fall regularly, and drowsily uttered their thoughts.

"He eats cleanly--like a bear."

"Have you ever seen a bear eat?"

"Do I live in the woods? There is a saying, 'he gobbles like a bear.'"

"Like a pig, it says."

"Pigs don't eat pig."

They laughed unwillingly, and soon some one knowingly said:

"Pigs eat everything--little pigs and their own sisters."

The face of the glutton gradually grew darker, his ears became livid, his running eyes crept out of their bony pit, he breathed with difficulty, but his chin moved as regularly as ever.

"Take it easy, Mikhail, there is time!" they encouraged him.

He uneasily measured the remains of the meat with his eyes, drank some beer, and once more began to munch. The spectators became more animated. Looking more often at the watch in the hand of Mishka's master, they suggested to one another:

"Don't you think he may have put the watch back? Take it away from him! Watch Mishka in case he should put any meat up his sleeve! He won't finish it in the time!"

Mishka's master cried passionately:

"I'll take you on for a quarter of a ruble! Mishka, don't give way!"

They began to dispute with the master, but no one would take the bet.

And Mishka went on eating and eating; his face began to look like the ham, his sharp grisly nose whistled plaintively. It was terrible to look at him. It seemed to me that he was about to scream, to wail:

"Have mercy on me!"

At length he finished it all, opened his tipsy eyes wide, and said in a hoarse, tired voice:

"Let me go to sleep."

But his master, looking at his watch, cried angrily:

"You have taken four minutes too long, you wretch!"

The others teased him:

"What a pity we did not take you on; you would have lost."

"However, he is a regular wild animal, that fellow."

"Ye--e--es, he ought to be in a show."

"You see what monsters the Lord can make of men, eh?"

"Let us go and have some tea, shall we?"

And they swam like barges to the tavern.

I wanted to know what stirred in the bosoms of these heavy, iron-hearted people that they should gather round the poor fellow because his unhealthy gluttony amused them.

It was dark and dull in that narrow gallery closely packed with wool, sheepskins, hemp, ropes, felt, boots, and saddlery. It was cut off. from the pavement by pillars of brick, clumsily thick, weather-beaten, and spattered with mud from the road. All the bricks and all the chinks between them, all the holes made by the fallen-away mortar, had been mentally counted by me a thousand times, and their hideous designs were forever heavily imprinted on my memory.

The foot-passenger dawdled along the pavement; hackney carriages and sledges loaded with goods passed up the road without haste. Beyond the street, in a red-brick, square, two-storied shop, was the marketplace, littered with cases, straw, crumpled paper, covered with dirt and trampled snow.

All this, together with the people and the horses, in spite of the movement, seemed to be motionless, or lazily moving round and round in one place to which it was fastened by invisible chains. One felt suddenly that this life was almost devoid of sound, or so poor in sounds that it amounted to dumbness. The sides of the sledges squeaked, the doors of the shops slammed, sellers of pies and honey cried their wares, but their voices sounded unhappy, unwilling. They were all alike; one quickly became used to them, and ceased to pay attention to them.

The church-bells tolled funerally. That melancholy sound was always in my ears. It seemed to float in the air over the market-place without ceasing from morning to night; it was mingled with all my thoughts and feelings; it lay like a copper veneer over all my impressions.

Tedium, coldness, and want breathed all around: from the earth covered with dirty snow, from the gray snow-drift on the roof, from the flesh-colored bricks of the buildings; tedium rose from the chimneys in a thick gray smoke, and crept up to the gray, low, empty sky; with tedium horses sweated and people sighed. They had a peculiar smell of their own, these people--the oppressive dull smell of sweat, fat, hemp oil, hearth-cakes, and smoke. It was an odor which pressed upon one's head like a warm close-fitting cap, and ran down into one's breast, arousing a strange feeling of intoxication, a vague desire to shut one's eyes, to cry out despairingly, to run away somewhere and knock one's head against the first wall.

I gazed into the faces of the merchants, over-nourished, full-blooded, frost-bitten, and as immobile as if they were asleep. These people often yawned, opening their mouths like fish which have been cast on dry land.

In winter, trade was slack and there was not in the eyes of the dealer that cautious, rapacious gleam which somehow made them bright and animated in the summer. The heavy fur coats hampered their movements, bowed them to the earth. As a rule they spoke lazily, but when they fell into a passion, they grew vehement. I had an idea that they did this purposely, in order to show one another that they were alive.

It was perfectly clear to me that tedium weighed upon them, was killing them, and the unsuccessful struggle against its overwhelming strength was the only explanation I could give of their cruelty and senseless amusements at the expense of others.

Sometimes I discussed this with Petr Vissilich.

Although as a rule he behaved to me scornfully and jeeringly, he liked me for my partiality for books, and at times he permitted himself to talk to me instructively, seriously.

"I don't like the way these merchants live," I said.

Twisting a strand of his beard in his long fingers, he said:

"And how do you know how they live? Do you then often visit them at their houses? This is merely a street, my friend, and people do not live in a street; they simply buy and sell, and they get through that as quickly as they can, and then go home again! People walk about the streets with their clothes on, and you do not know what they are like under their clothes. What a man really is is seen in his own home, within his own four walls, and how he lives there--that you know nothing about!"

"Yes, but they have the same ideas whether they are here or at home, don't they?"

"And how can any one know what ideas his neighbors have?" said the old man, making his eyes round. "Thoughts are like lice; you cannot count them. It may be that a man, on going to his home, falls on his knees and, weeping, prays to God: 'Forgive me, Lord, I have defiled Thy holy day!' It may be that his house is a sort of monastery to him, and he lives there alone with his God. You see how it is! Every spider knows its own corner, spins its own web, and understands its own position, so that it may hold its own."

When he spoke seriously, his voice went lower and lower to a deep base, as if he were communicating secrets.

"Here you are judging others, and it is too soon for you; at your age one lives not by one's reason but by one's eyes. What you must do is to look, remember, and hold your tongue. The mind is for business, but faith is for the soul. It is good for you to read books, but there must be moderation in all things, and some have read themselves into madness and godlessness."

I looked upon him as immortal; it was hard for me to believe that he might grow older and change. He liked to tell stories about merchants and coiners who had become notorious. I had heard many such stories from grandfather, who told them better than the valuer, but the underlying theme was the same--that riches always lead to sin towards God and one's fellow-creatures. Petr Vassilich had no pity for human creatures, but he spoke of God with warmth of feeling, sighing and covering his eyes.

"And so they try to cheat God, and He, the Lord Jesus Christ, sees it all and weeps. 'My people, my people, my unhappy people, hell is being prepared for you!'"

Once I jokingly reminded him:

"But you cheat the peasants yourself."

He was not offended by this.

"Is that a great matter as far as I am concerned?" he said. "I may rob them of from three to five rubles, and that is all it amounts to!"

When he found me reading, he would take the book out of my hands and ask me questions about what I had read, in a fault-finding manner. With amazed incredulity he would say to the shopman:

"Just look at that now; he understands books, the young rascal!"

And he would give me a memorable, intelligent lecture:

"Listen to what I tell you now; it is worth your while. There were two Kyrills, both of them bishops; one Kyrill of Alexandria, and the other Kyrill of Jerusalem. The first warred against the cursed heretic, Nestorius, who taught obscenely that Our Lady was born in original sin and therefore could not have given birth to God; but that she gave birth to a human being with the name and attributes of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, and therefore she should be called not the God-Bearer, but the Christ-Bearer. Do you understand? That is called heresy! And Kyrill of Jerusalem fought against the Arian heretics."

I was delighted with his knowledge of church history, and he, stroking his beard with his well-cared-for, priest-like hands, boasted:

"I am a past master in that sort of thing. When I was in Moscow, I was engaged in a verbal debate against the poisonous doctrines of the Nikonites, with both priests and seculars. I, my little one, actually conducted discussions with professors, yes! To one of the priests I so drove home the verbal scourge that his nose bled infernally, that it did!"

His cheeks were flushed; his eyes shone.

The bleeding of the nose of his opponent was evidently the highest point of his success, in his opinion; the highest ruby in the golden crown of his glory, and he told the story voluptuously.

"A ha--a--andsome, wholesome-looking priest he was! He stood on the platform and drip, drip, the blood came from his nose. He did not see his shame. Ferocious was the priest as a desert lion; his voice was like a bell. But very quietly I got my words in between his ribs, like saws. He was really as hot as a stove, made red-hot by heretical malice--ekh--that was a business!"

Occasionally other valuers came. These were Pakhomi, a man with a fat belly, in greasy clothes, with one crooked eye who was wrinkled and snarling; Lukian, a little old man, smooth as a mouse, kind and brisk; and with him came a big, gloomy man looking like a coachman, black bearded, with a deathlike face, unpleasant to look upon, but handsome, and with eyes which never seemed to move. Almost always they brought ancient books, icons and thuribles to sell, or some kind of bowl. Sometimes they brought the vendors--an old man or woman from the Volga. When their business was finished, they sat on the counter, looking just like crows on a furrow, drank tea with rolls and lenten sugar, and told each other about the persecutions of the Nikonites.

Here a search had been made, and books of devotion had been confiscated; there the police had closed a place of worship, and had contrived to bring its owner to justice under Article 103. This Article 103 was frequently the theme of their discussions, but they spoke of it calmly, as of something unavoidable, like the frosts of winter. The words police, search, prison, justice, Siberia--these words, continually recurring in their conversations about the persecutions for religious beliefs, fell on my heart like hot coals, kindling sympathy and fellow feeling for these Old Believers. Reading had taught me to look up to people who were obstinate in pursuing their aims, to value spiritual steadfastness.

I forgot all the bad which I saw in these teachers of life. I felt only their calm stubbornness, behind which, it seemed to me, was hidden an unwavering belief in the teachings of their faith, for which they were ready to suffer all kinds of torments.

At length, when I had come across many specimens of these guardians of the old faith, both among the people and among the intellectuals, I understood that this obstinacy was the oriental passivity of people who never moved from the place whereon they stood, and had no desire to move from it, but were bound by strong ties to the ways of the old words, and worn-out ideas. They were steeped in these words and ideas. Their wills were stationary, incapable of looking forward, and when some blow from without cast them out of their accustomed place, they mechanically and without resistance let themselves roll down, like a stone off a hill. They kept their own fasts in the graveyards of lived-out truths, with a deadly strength of memory for the past, and an insane love of suffering and persecution; but if the possibility of suffering were taken away from them, they faded away, disappeared like a cloud on a fresh winter day.

The faith for which they, with satisfaction and great self-complacency, were ready to suffer is incontestably a strong faith, but it resembles well-worn clothes, covered with all kinds of dirt, and for that very reason is less vulnerable to the ravages of time. Thought and feeling become accustomed to the narrow and oppressive envelope of prejudice and dogma, and although wingless and mutilated, they live in ease and comfort.

This belief founded on habits is one of the most grievous and harmful manifestations of our lives. Within the domains of such beliefs, as within the shadows of stone walls, anything new is born slowly, is deformed, and grows anaemic. In that dark faith there are very few of the beams of love, too many causes of offense, irritations, and petty spites which are always friendly with hatred. The flame of that faith is the phosphorescent gleam of putrescence.

But before I was convinced of this, I had to live through many weary years, break up many images in my soul, and cast them out of my memory. But at the time when I first came across these teachers of life, in the midst of tedious and sordid realities, they appeared to me as persons of great spiritual strength, the best people in the world. Almost every one of them had been persecuted, put in prison, had been banished from different towns, traveling by stages with convicts. They all lived cautious, hidden lives.

However, I saw that while pitying the "narrow spirit" of the Nikonites, these old people willingly and with great satisfaction kept one another within narrow bounds.

Crooked Pakhomie, when he had been drinking, liked to boast of his wonderful memory with regard to matters of the faith. He had several books at his finger-ends, as a Jew has his Talmud. He could put his finger on his favorite page, and from the word on which he had placed his finger, Pakhomie could go on reciting by heart in his mild, snuffling voice. He always looked on the floor, and his solitary eye ran over the floor disquietingly, as if he were seeking some lost and very valuable article.

The book with which he most often performed this trick was that of Prince Muishetzki, called "The Russian Vine," and the passage he best knew was, "The long suffering and courageous suffering of wonderful and valiant martyrs," but Petr Vassilitch was always trying to catch him in a mistake.

"That's a lie! That did not happen to Cyprian the Mystic, but to Denis the Chaste."

"What other Denis could it be? You are thinking of Dionysius."

"Don't shuffle with words!"

"And don't you try to teach me!"

In a few moments both, swollen with rage, would be looking fixedly at one another, and saying:

"Perverter of the truth! Away, shameless one!"

Pakhomie answered, as if he were adding up accounts:

"As for you, you are a libertine, a goat, always hanging round the women."

The shopman, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, smiled maliciously, and, encouraging the guardians of the ancient religion, cried, just like a small boy:

"Th--a--at's right! Go it!"

One day when the old men were quarreling, Petr Vassilitch slapped his comrade on the face with unexpected swiftness, put him to flight, and, wiping the sweat from his face, called after the fugitive:

"Look out; that sin lies to your account! You led my hand into sin, you accursed one; you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

He was especially fond of reproaching his comrades in that they were wanting in firm faith, and predicting that they would fall away into "Protestantism."

"That is what troubles you, Aleksasha--the sound of the cock crowing!"

Protestantism worried and apparently frightened him, but to the question, "What is the doctrine of that sect?" he answered, not very intelligibly:

"Protestantism is the most bitter heresy; it acknowledges reason alone, and denies God! Look at the Bible Christians, for example, who read nothing but the Bible, which came from a German, from Luther, of whom it was said: He was rightly called Luther, for if you make a verb of it, it runs: Lute bo, lubo luto![1] And all that comes from the west, from the heretics of that part of the world."

Stamping his mutilated foot, he would say coldly and heavily:

"Those are they whom the new Ritualists will have to drive out, whom they will have to watch,--yes, and burn too! But not us--we are of the true faith. Eastern, we are of the faith, the true, eastern, original Russian faith, and all the others are of the west, spoiled by free will! What good has ever come from the Germans, or the French? Look what they did in the year 12--."

Carried away by his feelings, he forgot that it was a boy who stood before him, and with his strong hands he took hold of me by the belt, now drawing me to him, now pushing me away, as he spoke beautifully, emotionally, hotly, and youthfully:

"The mind of man wanders in the forest of its own thoughts. Like a fierce wolf it wanders, the devil's assistant, putting the soul of man, the gift of God, on the rack! What have they imagined, these servants of the devil? The Bogomuili,[2] through whom Protestantism came, taught thus: Satan, they say, is the son of God, the elder brother of Jesus Christ, That is what they have come to! They taught people also not to obey their superiors, not to work, to abandon wife and children; a man needs nothing, no property whatever in his life; let him live as he chooses, and the devil shows him how. That Aleksasha has turned up here again."

[Footnote 1: From Lutui which means hard, violent.]

[Footnote 2: Another sect of Old Believers.]

At this moment the shopman set me to do some work, and I left the old man alone in the gallery, but he went on talking to space:

"O soul without wings! O blind-born kitten, whither shall I run to get away from you?"

And then, with bent head and hands resting on his knees, he fell into a long silence, gazing, intent and motionless, up at the gray winter sky.

He began to take more notice of me, and his manner was kinder. When he found me with a book, he would glance over my shoulder, and say:

"Read, youngster, read; it is worth your while! It may be that you are clever; it is a pity that you think so little of your elders. You can stand up to any one, you think, but where will your sauciness land you in the end? It will lead you nowhere, youngster, but to a convict's prison. Read by all means; but remember that books are books, and use your own brains! Danilov, the founder of the Xlist sect, came to the conclusion that neither old nor new books were necessary, and he put them all in a sack, and threw them in the water. Of course that was a stupid thing to do, but----And now that cur, Aleksasha, must come disturbing us."

He was always talking about this Aleksasha, and one day he came into the shop, looking preoccupied and stem, and explained to the shopman:

"Aleksander Vassiliev is here in the town; he came yesterday. I have been looking for him for a long time, but he has hidden himself somewhere!"

The shopman answered in an unfriendly tone:

"I don't know anything about him!"

Bending his head, the old man said:

"That means that for you, people are either buyers or sellers, and nothing more! Let us have some tea."

When I brought in the big copper tea-pot, there were visitors in the shop. There was old Lukian, smiling happily, and behind the door in a dark corner sat a stranger dressed in a dark overcoat and high felt boots, with a green belt, and a cap set clumsily over his brows. His face was indistinct, but he seemed to be quiet and modest, and he looked somewhat like a shopman who had just lost his place and was very dejected about it.

Petr Vassilich, not glancing in his direction, said something sternly and ponderously, and he pulled at his cap all the time, with a convulsive movement of his right hand. He would raise his hand as if he were about to cross himself, and push his cap upwards, and he would do this until he had pushed it as far back as his crown, when he would again pull it over his brows. That convulsive movement reminded me of the mad beggar, Igosha, "Death in his pocket."

"Various kinds of reptiles swim in our muddy rivers, and make the water more turbid than ever," said Petr Vassilich.

The man who resembled a shopman asked quietly and gently:

"Do you mean that for me?"

"And suppose I do mean it for you?"

Then the man asked again, not loudly but very frankly:

"Well, and what have you to say about yourself, man?"

"What I have to say about myself, I say to God--that is my business."

"No, man, it is mine also," said the new-comer solemnly and firmly. "Do not turn away your face from the truth, and don't blind yourself deliberately; that is the great sin towards God and your fellow-creatures----"

I liked to hear him call Petr Vassilich "man," and his quiet, solemn voice stirred me. He spoke as a good priest reads, "Lord and Master of my life," and bending forward, got off his chair, spreading his hands before his face:

"Do not judge me; my sins are not more grievous than yours."

The samovar boiled and hissed, the old valuer spoke contemptuously, and the other continued, refusing to be stopped by his words:

"Only God knows who most befouls the source of the Holy Spirit. It may be your sin, you book-learned, literary people. As for me, I am neither book-learned nor literary; I am a man of simple life."

"We know all about your simplicity--we have heard of it--more than we want to hear!"

"It is you who confuse the people; you break up the true faith, you scribes and Pharisees. I--what shall I say? Tell me--"

"Heresy," said Petr Vassilich. The man held his hands before his face, just as if he were reading something written on them, and said warmly: "Do you think that to drive people from one hole to another is to do better than they? But I say no! I say: Let us be free, man! What is the good of a house, a wife, and all your belongings, in the sight of God? Let us free ourselves, man, from all that for the sake of which men fight and tear each other to pieces--from gold and silver and all kinds of property, which brings nothing but corruption and uncleanness! Not on earthly fields is the soul saved, but in the valleys of paradise! Tear yourself away from it all, I say; break all ties, all cords; break the nets of this world. They are woven by antichrist. I am going by the straight road; I do not juggle with my soul'; the dark world has no part in me."

"And bread, water, clothes--do you have any part in them? They are worldly, you know," said the valuer maliciously.

But these words had no effect on Aleksander. He talked all the more earnestly, and although his voice was so low, it had the sound of a brass trumpet.

"What is dear to you, man? The one God only should be dear to you. I stand before Him, cleansed from every stain. Remove the ways of earth from your heart and see God; you alone--He alone! So you will draw near to God; that is the only road to Him. That is the way of salvation--to leave father and mother--to leave all, and even thine eye, if it tempts thee--pluck it out! For God's sake tear yourself from things and save your soul; take refuge in the spirit, and your soul shall live for ever and ever."

"Well, it is a case with you, of the dog returning to his vomit," said Petr Vassiliev, rising, "I should have thought that you would have grown wiser since last year, but you are worse than ever."

The old man went swaying from the shop onto the terrace, which action disturbed Aleksander. He asked amazedly and hastily:

"Has he gone? But--why?"

Kind Lukian, winking consolingly, said:

"That's all right--that's all right!"

Then Aleksander fell upon him:

"And what about you, worldling? You are also sewing rubbishy words, and what do they mean? Well--a threefold alleluia--a double----"

Lukian smiled at him and then went out on the terrace also, and Aleksander, turning to the shopman, said in a tone of conviction:

"They can't stand up to me, they simply can't! They disappear like smoke before a flame."

The shopman looked at him from under his brows, and observed dryly:

"I have not thought about the matter."

"What! Do you mean you have not thought about it? This is a business which demands to be thought about."

He sat for a moment in silence, with drooping head. Then the old men called him, and they all three went away.

This man had burst upon me like a bonfire in the night. He burned brightly, and when he was extinguished, left me feeling that there was truth in his refusal to live as other men.

In the evening, choosing a good time, I spoke about him excitedly to the head icon-painter. Quiet and kind Ivan Larionovich listened to what I had to say, and explained:

"He belongs to the Byegouns,[1] a sort of sect; they acknowledge no authority."

"How do they live?"

"Like fugitives they wander about the earth; that is why they have been given the name Byegoun. They say that no one ought to have land, or property. And the police look upon them as dangerous, and arrest them."

Although my life was bitter, I could not understand how any one could run away from everything pleasant. In the life which went on around me at that time, there was much that was interesting and precious to me, and Aleksander Vassiliev soon faded from my mind.

[Footnote 1: Byegouns, or wanderers, still another sect of Old Believers.]

But from time to time, in hours of darkness, he appeared to me. He came by the fields, or by the gray road to the forest, pushed his cap aside with a convulsive movement of his white hands, unsoiled by work, and muttered:

"I am going on the straight road; I have no part in this world; I have broken all ties."

In conjunction with him I remembered my father, as grandmother had seen him in her dream, with a walnut stick in his hand, and behind him a spotted dog running, with its tongue hanging out.

CHAPTER XIII

The icon-painting workshop occupied two rooms in a large house partly built of stone. One room had three windows overlooking the yard and one overlooking the garden; the other room had one window overlooking the garden and another facing the street. These windows were small and square, and their panes, irisated by age, unwillingly admitted the pale, diffused light of the winter days. Both rooms were closely packed with tables, and at every table sat the bent figures of icon-painters. From the ceilings were suspended glass balls full of water, which reflected the light from the lamps and threw it upon the square surfaces of the icons in white cold rays.

It was hot and stifling in the workshop. Here worked about twenty men, icon-painters, from Palekh, Kholia, and Mstir. They all sat down in cotton overalls with unfastened collars. They had drawers made of ticking, and were barefooted, or wore sandals. Over their heads stretched, like a blue veil, the smoke of cheap tobacco, and there was a thick smell of size, varnish, and rotten eggs. The melancholy Vlandimirski song flowed slowly, like resin:

How depraved the people have now become; The boy ruined the girl, and cared not who knew.

They sang other melancholy songs, but this was the one they sang most often. Its long-drawn-out movement did not hinder one from thinking, did not impede the movement of the fine brush, made of weasel hair, over the surface of the icons, as it painted in the lines of the figure, and laid upon the emaciated faces of the saints the fine lines of suffering. By the windows the chaser, Golovev, plied his small hammer. He was a drunken old man with an enormous blue nose. The lazy stream of song was punctuated by the ceaseless dry tap of the hammer; it was like a worm gnawing at a tree. Some evil genius had divided the work into a long series of actions, bereft of beauty and incapable of arousing any love for the business, or interest in it. The squinting joiner, Panphil, ill-natured and malicious, brought the pieces of cypress and lilac-wood of different sizes, which he had planed and glued; the consumptive lad, Davidov, laid the colors on; his comrade, Sorokin, painted in the inscription; Milyashin outlined the design from the original with a pencil; old Golovev gilded it, and embossed the pattern in gold; the finishers drew the landscape, and the clothes of the figures; and then they were stood with faces or hands against the wall, waiting for the work of the face-painter.

It was very weird to see a large icon intended for an iconastasis, or the doors of the altar, standing against the wall without face, hands, or feet,--just the sacerdotal vestments, or the armor, and the short garments of archangels. These variously painted tablets suggested death. That which should have put life into them was absent, but it seemed as if it had been there, and had miraculously disappeared, leaving only its heavy vestments behind.

When the features had been painted in by the face-painter, the icon was handed to the workman, who filled in the design of the chaser. A different workman had to do the lettering, and the varnish was put on by the head workman himself Ivan Larionovich, a quiet man. He had a gray face; his beard, too, was gray, the hair fine and silky; his gray eyes were peculiarly deep and sad. He had a pleasant smile, but one could not smile at him. He made one feel awkward, somehow. He looked like the image of Simon Stolpnik, just as lean and emaciated, and his motionless eyes looked far away in the same abstracted manner, through people and walls.

Some days after I entered the workshop, the banner-worker, a Cossack of the Don, named Kapendiukhin, a handsome, mighty fellow, arrived in a state of intoxication. With clenched teeth and his gentle, womanish eyes blinking, he began to smash up everything with his iron fist, without uttering a word. Of medium height and well built, he cast himself on the workroom like a cat chasing rats in a cellar. The others lost their presence of mind, and hid themselves away in the corners, calling out to one another:

"Knock him down!"

The face-painter, Evgen Sitanov, was successful in stunning the maddened creature by hitting him on the head with a small stool. The Cossack subsided on the floor, and was immediately held down and tied up with towels, which he began to bite and tear with the teeth of a wild beast. This infuriated Evgen. He jumped on the table, and with his hands pressed close to his sides, prepared to jump on the Cossack. Tall and stout as he was, he would have inevitably crushed the breast-bone of Kapendiukhin by his leap, but at that moment Larionovich appeared on the scene in cap and overcoat, shook his finger at Sitanov, and said to the workmen in a quiet and business-like tone:

"Carry him into the vestibule, and leave him there till he is sober."

They dragged the Cossack out of the workshop, set the chairs and tables straight, and once again set to work, letting fall short remarks on the strength of their comrade, prophesying that he would one day be killed by some one in a quarrel.

"It would be a difficult matter to kill him," said Sitanov very calmly, as if he were speaking of a business which he understood very well.

I looked at Larionovich, wondering perplexedly why these strong, pugilistic people were so easily ruled by him. He showed every one how he ought to work; even the best workmen listened willingly to his advice; he taught Kapendiukhin more, and with more words, than the others.

"You, Kapendiukhin, are what is called a painter--that is, you ought to paint from life in the Italian manner. Painting in oils requires warm colors, and you have introduced too much white, and made Our Lady's eyes as cold as winter. The cheeks are painted red, like apples, and the eyes do not seem to belong to them. And they are not put in right, either; one is looking over the bridge of the nose, and the other has moved to the temple; and the face has not come out pure and holy, but crafty, wintry. You don't think about your work, Kapendiukhin."

The Cossack listened and made a wry face. Then smiling impudently with his womanish eyes, he said in his pleasant voice, which was rather hoarse with so much drinking:

"Ekh! I--va--a--n Larionovich, my father, that is not my trade. I was born to be a musician, and they put me among monks."

"With zeal, any business may be mastered."

"No; what do you take me for? I ought to have been a coachman with a team of gray horses, eh?" And protruding his Adam's apple, he drawled despairingly:

"Eh, i-akh, if I had a leash of grayhounds And dark brown horses, Och, when I am in torment on frosty nights I would fly straight, straight to my love!"

Ivan Larionovich, smiling mildly, set his glasses straight on his gray, sad, melancholy nose, and went away. But a dozen voices took up the song in a friendly spirit, and there flowed forth a mighty stream of song which seemed to raise the whole work-shop into the air and shake it with measured blows:

"By custom the horses know Where the little lady lives."

The apprentice, Pashka Odintzov, threw aside his work of pouring off the yolks of the eggs, and holding the shells in his hand, led the chorus in a masterly manner. Intoxicated by the sounds, they all forgot themselves, they all breathed together as if they had but one bosom, and were full of the same feelings, looking sideways at the Cossack. When he sang, the workshop acknowledged him as its master; they were all drawn to him, followed the brief movements of his hands; he spread his arms out as if he were about to fly. I believe that if he had suddenly broken off his song and cried, "Let us smash up everything," even the most serious of the workmen would have smashed the workshop to pieces in a few moments.

He sang rarely, but the power of his tumultuous songs was always irresistible and all-conquering. It was as if these people were not very strongly made, and he could lift them up and set them on fire; as if everything was bent when it came within the warm influence of that mighty organ of his.

As for me, these songs aroused in me a hot feeling of envy of the singer, of his admirable power over people. A painful emotion flowed over my heart, making it feel as if it would burst. I wanted to weep and call out to the singers:

"I love you!"

Consumptive, yellow Davidov, who was covered with tufts of hair, also opened his mouth, strangely resembling a young jackdaw newly burst out of the egg.

These happy, riotous songs were only sung when the Cossack started them. More often they sang the sad, drawn-out one about the depraved people, and another about the forests, and another about the death of Alexander I, "How our Alexander went to review his army." Sometimes at the suggestion of our best face painter, Jikharev, they tried to sing some church melodies, but it was seldom a success. Jikharev always wanted one particular thing; he had only one idea of harmony, and he kept on stopping the song.

He was a man of forty-five, dry, bald, with black, curly, gipsy-like hair, and large black brows which looked like mustaches. His pointed, thick beard was very ornamental to his fine, swarthy, un-Russian face, but under his protuberant nose stuck out ferocious-looking mustaches, superfluous when one took his brows into consideration. His blue eyes did not match, the left being noticeably larger than the right.

"Pashka," he cried in a tenor voice to my comrade, the apprentice, "come along now, start off: 'Praise--'Now people, listen!"

Wiping his hands on his apron, Pashka led off:

"Pr--a--a--ise--"

"The Name of the Lord," several voices caught it up, but Jikharev cried fussily:

"Lower, Evgen! Let your voice come from the very depths of the soul."

Sitanov, in a voice so deep that it sounded like the rattle of a drum, gave forth:

"R--rabi Gospoda (slaves of the Lord)--"

"Not like that! That part should be taken in such a way that the earth should tremble and the doors and windows should open of themselves!"

Jikharev was in a state of incomprehensible excitement. His extraordinary brows went up and down on his forehead, his voice broke, his fingers played on an invisible dulcimer.

"Slaves of the Lord--do you understand?" he said importantly. "You have got to feel that right to the kernel of your being, right through the shell. Slaves, praise the Lord! How is it that you--living people--do not understand that?"

"We never seem to get it as you say it ought to be," said Sitanov quietly.

"Well, let it alone then!"

Jikharev, offended, went on with his work. He was the best workman we had, for he could paint faces in the Byzantine manner, and artistically, in the new Italian style. When he took orders for iconostasis, Larionovich took counsel with him. He had a fine knowledge of all original image-paintings; all the costly copies of miraculous icons, Theodorovski, Kazanski, and others, passed through his hands. But when he lighted upon the originals, he growled loudly:

"These originals tie us down; there is no getting away from that fact."

In spite of his superior position in the workshop, he was less conceited than the others, and was kind to the apprentices--Pavl and me. He wanted to teach us the work, since no one else ever bothered about us.

He was difficult to understand; he was not usually cheerful, and sometimes he would work for a whole week in silence, like a dumb man. He looked on every one as at strangers who amazed him, as if it were the first time he had come across such people. And although he was very fond of singing, at such times he did not sing, nor did he even listen to the songs. All the others watched him, winking at one another. He would bend over the icon which stood sideways, his tablet on his knees, the middle resting on the edge of the table, while his fine brush diligently painted the dark, foreign face. He was dark and foreign-looking himself. Suddenly he would say in a clear, offended tone:

"Forerunner--what does that mean? _Tech_ means in ancient language 'to go.' A forerunner is one who goes before,--and that is all."

The workshop was very quiet; every one was glancing askance at Jikharev, laughing, and in the stillness rang out these strange words:

"He ought to be painted with a sheepskin and wings."

"Whom are you talking to?" I asked.

He was silent, either not hearing my question or not caring to answer it. Then his words again fell into the expectant silence:

"The lives of the saints are what we ought to know! What do we know? We live without wings. Where is the soul? The soul--where is it? The originals are there--yes--but where are the souls?"

This thinking aloud caused even Sitanov to laugh derisively, and almost always some one whispered with malicious joy:

"He will get drunk on Saturday."

Tall, sinewy Sitanov, a youngster of twenty-two years, with a round face without whiskers or eyebrows, gazed sadly and seriously into the corner.

I remember when the copy of the Theodorovski Madonna, which I believe was Kungur, was finished. Jikharev placed the icon on the table and said loudly, excitedly:

"It is finished, Little Mother! Bright Chalice, Thou! Thou, bottomless cup, in which are shed the bitter tears from the hearts of the world of creatures!"

And throwing an overcoat over his shoulders, he went out to the tavern. The young men laughed and whistled, the elder ones looked after him with envious sighs, and Sitanov went to his work. Looking at it attentively, he explained:

"Of course he will go and get drunk, because he is sorry to have to hand over his work. That sort of regret is not given to all."

Jikharev's drinking bouts always began on Saturday, and his, you must understand, was not the usual alcoholic fever of the workman. It began thus: In the morning he would write a note and sent Pavl somewhere with it, and before dinner he would say to Larionovich:

"I am going to the bath to-day."

"Will you be long?"

"Well, Lord--"

"Please don't be gone over Tuesday!"

Jikharev bowed his bald cranium in assent; his brows twitched. When he returned from the baths, he attired himself fashionably in a false shirt-front and a cravat, attached a long silver chain to his satin waistcoat, and went out without speaking, except to say to Pavl and me:

"Clean up the workshop before the evening; wash the large table and scrape it."

Then a kind of holiday excitement showed itself in every one of them. They braced themselves up, cleaned themselves, ran to the bath, and had supper in a hurry. After supper Jikharev appeared with light refreshments, beer, and wine, and following him came a woman so exaggerated in every respect that she was almost a monstrosity. She was six feet five inches in height. All our chairs and stools looked like toys when she was there, and even tall Sitanov looked undersized beside her. She was well formed, but her bosom rose like a hillock to her chin, and her movements were slow and awkward. She was about forty years of age, but her mobile face, with its great horse-like eyes, was fresh and smooth, and her small mouth looked as if it had been painted on, like that of a cheap doll. She smiled, held out her broad hand to everyone, and spoke unnecessary words:

"How do you do? There is a hard frost to-day. What a stuffy smell there is here! It is the smell of paint. How do you do?"

To look at her, so calm and strong, like a large river at high tide, was pleasant, but her speech had a soporific influence, and was both superfluous and wearisome. Before she uttered a word, she used to puff, making her almost livid cheeks rounder than ever. The young ones giggled, and whispered among themselves:

"She is like an engine!"

"Like a steeple!"

Pursing her lips and folding her hands under her bosom, she sat at the cloth-covered table by the samovar, and looked at us all in turn with a kind expression in her horse-like eyes.

Every one treated her with great respect, and the younger ones were even rather afraid of her. The youths looked at that great body with eager eyes, but when they met her all-embracing glance, they lowered their own eyes in confusion. Jikharev was also respectful to his guest, addressed her as "you," called her "little comrade," and pressed hospitality upon her, bowing low the while.

"Now don't you put yourself out," she drawled sweetly. "What a fuss you are making of me, really!"

As for herself, she lived without hurry; her arms moved only from the elbow to the wrist, while the elbows themselves were pressed against her sides. From her came an ardent smell, as of hot bread. Old Golovev, stammering in his enthusiasm, praised the beauty of the woman, like a deacon chanting the divine praises. She listened, smiling affably, and when he had become involved in his speech, said of herself:

"We were not a bit handsome when we were young; this has all come through living as a woman. By the time we were thirty, we had become so remarkable that even the nobility interested themselves in us, and one district commander actually promised a carriage with a pair of horses."

Kapendiukhin, tipsy and dishevelled, looked at her with a glance of hatred, and asked coarsely:

"What did he promise you that for?"

"In return for our love, of course," explained the guest.

"Love," muttered Kapendiukhin, "what sort of love?"

"Such a handsome young man as you are must know all about love," answered the woman simply.

The workshop shook with laughter, and Sitanov growled to Kapendiukhin:

"A fool, if no worse, she is! People only love that way through a great passion, as every one knows."

He was pale with the wine he had drunk; drops of sweat stood on his temples like pearls; his intelligent eyes burned alarmingly.

But old Golovev, twitching his monstrous nose, wiped the tears from his eyes with his fingers, and asked:

"How many children did you have?"

"Only one."

Over the table hung a lamp; over the stove, another. They gave a feeble light; thick shadows gathered in the corners of the workshop, from which looked half-painted headless figures. The dull, gray patches in place of hands and heads look weird and large, and, as usual, it seemed to me that the bodies of the saints had secretly disappeared from the painted garments. The glass balls, raised right up to the ceiling, hung there on hooks in a cloud of smoke, and gleamed with a blue light.

Jikharev went restlessly round the table, pressing hospitality on every one. His broad, bald skull inclined first to one and then to another, his thin fingers always were on the move. He was very thin, and his nose, which was like that of a bird of prey, seemed to have grown sharper; when he stood sideways to the light, the shadow of his nose lay on his cheek.

"Drink and eat, friends," he said in his ringing tenor.

"Why do you worry yourself, comrade? They all have hands, and every one has his own hands and his own appetite; more than that no one can eat, however much they may want to!"

"Rest yourself, people," cried Jikharev in a ringing voice. "My friends, we are all the slaves of God; let us sing, 'Praise His Name.'"

The chant was not a success; they were all enervated and stupefied by eating and vodka-drinking. In Kapendiukhin's hands was a harmonica with a double keyboard; young Victor Salautin, dark and serious as a young crow, took up a drum, and let his fingers wander over the tightly stretched skin, which gave forth a deep sound; the tambourines tinkled.

"The Russian dance!" commanded Jikharev, "little comrade, please."

"Ach!" sighed the woman, rising, "what a worry you are!"

She went to the space which had been cleared, and stood there solidly, like a sentry. She wore a short brown skirt, a yellow batiste blouse, and a red handkerchief on her head.

The harmonica uttered passionate lamentations; its little bells rang; the tambourines tinkled; the skin of the drum gave forth a heavy, dull, sighing sound. This had an unpleasant effect, as if a man had gone mad and was groaning, sobbing, and knocking his head against the wall.

Jikharev could not dance. He simply moved his feet about, and setting down the heels of his brightly polished boots, jumped about like a goat, and that not in time with the clamorous music. His feet seemed to belong to some one else; his body writhed unbeautifully; he struggled like a wasp in a spider's web, or a fish in a net. It was not at all a cheerful sight. But all of them, even the tipsy ones, seemed to be impressed by his convulsions; they all watched his face and arms in silence. The changing expressions of his face were amazing. Now he looked kind and rather shy, suddenly he became proud, and frowned harshly; now he seemed to be startled by something, sighed, closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, wore a sad expression. Clenching his fists he stole up to the woman, and suddenly stamping his feet, fell on his knees in front of her with arms outspread and raised brows, smiling ardently. She looked down upon him with an affable smile, and said to him calmly:

"Stand up, comrade."

She tried to close her eyes, but those eyes, which were in circumference like a three copeck piece, would not close, and her face wrinkled and assumed an unpleasant expression.

She could not dance either, and did nothing but move her enormous body from side to side, noiselessly transferring it from place to place. In her left hand was a handkerchief which she waved languidly; her right was placed on her hip. This gave her the appearance of a large pitcher.

And Jikharev moved round this massive woman with so many different changes of expression that he seemed to be ten different men dancing, instead of one. One was quiet and humble, another proud and terrifying; in the third movement he was afraid, sighing gently, as if he desired to slip away unnoticed from the large, unpleasant woman. But still another person appeared, gnashing his teeth and writhing convulsively like a wounded dog. This sad, ugly dance reminded me of the soldiers, the laundresses, and the cooks, and their vile behavior.

Sitanov's quiet words stuck in my memory:

"In these affairs every one lies; that's part of the business. Every one is ashamed; no one loves any one--but it is simply an amusement."

I did not wish to believe that "every one lied in these affairs." How about Queen Margot, then? And of course Jikharev was not lying. And I knew that Sitanov had loved a "street" girl, and she had deceived him. He had not beaten her for it, as his comrades advised him to do, but had been kind to her.

The large woman went on rocking, smiling like a corpse, waving her handkerchief. Jikharev jumped convulsively about her, and I looked on and thought: "Could Eve, who was able to deceive God, have been anything like this horse?" I was seized by a feeling of dislike for her.

The faceless images looked from the dark walls; the dark night pressed against the window-panes. The lamps burned dimly in the stuffy workshop; if one listened, one could hear above the heavy trampling and the din of voices the quick dropping of water from the copper wash-basin into the tub.

How unlike this was to the life I read of in books! It was painfully unlike it. At length they all grew weary of this, and Kapendiukhin put the harmonica into Salautin's hands, and cried:

"Go on! Fire away!"

He danced like Vanka Tzigan, just as if he was swimming in the air. Then Pavl Odintzov and Sorokhin danced passionately and lightly after him. The consumptive Davidov also moved his feet about the floor, and coughed from the dust, smoke, and the strong odor of vodka and smoked sausage, which always smells like tanned hide.

They danced, and sang, and shouted, but each remembered that they were making merry, and gave each other a sort of test--a test of agility and endurance.

Tipsy Sitanov asked first one and then another:

"Do you think any one could really love a woman like that?"

He looked as if he were on the verge of tears.

Larionovich, lifting the sharp bones of his shoulders, answered:

"A woman is a woman--what more do you want?"

The two of whom they spoke disappeared unnoticed. Jikharev reappeared in the workshop in two or three days, went to the bath, and worked for two weeks in his corner, without speaking, pompous and estranged from every one.

"Have they gone?" asked Sitanov of himself, looking round the workshop with sad blue-gray eyes. His face was not handsome, for there was something elderly about it, but his eyes were clear and good. Sitanov was friendly to me--a fact which I owed to my thick note-book in which I had written poetry. He did not believe in God, but it was hard to understand who in the workshop, beside Larionovich, loved God and believed in Him. They all spoke of Him with levity, derisively, just as they liked to speak of their mistresses. Yet when they dined, or supped, they all crossed themselves, and when they went to bed, they said their prayers, and went to church on Sundays and feast days.

Sitanov did none of these things, and he was counted as an unbeliever.

"There is no God," he said.

"Where did we all come from, then?"

"I don't know."

When I asked him how God could possibly not be, he explained:

"Don't you see that God is height!"

He raised his long arm above his head, then lowered it to an arshin from the floor, and said:

"And man is depth! Is that true? And it is written: Man was created in the image and likeness of God,--as you know! And what is Golovev like?"

This defeated me. The dirty and drunken old man, in spite of his years, was given to an unmentionable sin. I remembered the Viatski soldier, Ermokhin, and grandmother's sister. Where was God's likeness in them?

"Human creatures are swine--as you know," said Sitanov, and then he tried to console me. "Never mind, Maxim, there are good people; there are!"

He was easy to get on with; he was so simple. When he did not know anything, he said frankly:

"I don't know; I never thought about it!"

This was something unusual. Until I met him, I had only come across people who knew everything and talked about everything. It was strange to me to see in his note-book, side by side with good poetry which touched the soul, many obscene verses which aroused no feeling but that of shame. When I spoke to him about Pushkin, he showed me "Gavrialad," which had been copied in his book.

"What is Pushkin? Nothing but a jester, but that Benediktov--he is worth paying attention to."

And closing his eyes he repeated softly:

"Look at the bewitching bosom Of a beautiful woman."

For some reason he was especially partial to the three lines which he quoted with joyful pride:

"Not even the orbs of an eagle Into that warm cloister can penetrate And read that heart."

"Do you understand that?"

It was very uncomfortable to me to have to acknowledge that I did not understand what he was so pleased about.

CHAPTER XIV

My duties in the workshop were not complicated.

In the morning when they were all asleep, I had to prepare the samovar for the men, and while they drank tea in the kitchen, Pavl and I swept and dusted the workshop, set out red, yellow, or white paints, and then I went to the shop. In the evening I had to grind up colors and "watch" the work. At first I watched with great interest, but I soon realized that all the men who were engaged on this handicraft which was divided up into so many processes, disliked it, and suffered from a torturing boredom.

The evenings were free. I used to tell them stories about life on the steamer and different stories out of books, and without noticing how it came about, I soon held a peculiar position in the workshop as story-teller and reader.

I soon found out that all these people knew less than I did; almost all of them had been stuck in the narrow cage of workshop life since their childhood, and were still in it. Of all the occupants of the workshop, only Jikharev had been in Moscow, of which he spoke suggestively and frowningly:

"Moscow does not believe in tears; there they know which side their bread is buttered."

None of the rest had been farther than Shuya, or Vladimir. When mention was made of Kazan, they asked me:

"Are there many Russians there? Are there any churches?"

For them, Perm was in Siberia, and they would not believe that Siberia was beyond the Urals.

"Sandres come from the Urals; and sturgeon--where are they found? Where do they get them? From the Caspian Sea? That means that the Urals are on the sea!"

Sometimes I thought that they were laughing at me when they declared that England was on the other side of the Atlantic, and that Bonaparte belonged by birth to a noble family of Kalonga. When I told them stories of what I had seen, they hardly believed me, but they all loved terrible tales intermixed with history. Even the men of mature years evidently preferred imagination to the truth. I could see very well that the more improbable the events, the more fantastic the story, the more attentively they listened to me. On the whole, reality did not interest them, and they all gazed dreamily into the future, not wishing to see the poverty and hideousness of the present.

This astonished me so much the more, inasmuch as I had felt keenly enough the contradiction existing between life and books. Here before me were living people, and in books there were none like them--no Smouri, stoker Yaakov, fugitive Aleksander Vassiliev, Jikharev, or washerwoman Natalia.

In Davidov's trunk a torn copy of Golitzinski's stories was found--"Ivan Vuijigin," "The Bulgar," "A Volume of Baron Brambeuss." I read all these aloud to them, and they were delighted. Larionovich said:

"Reading prevents quarrels and noise; it is a good thing!"

I began to look about diligently for books, found them, and read almost every evening. Those were pleasant evenings. It was as quiet as night in the workshop; the glass balls hung over the tables like white cold stars, their rays lighting up shaggy and bald heads. I saw round me at the table, calm, thoughtful faces; now and again an exclamation of praise of the author, or hero was heard. They were attentive and benign, quite unlike themselves. I liked them very much at those times, and they also behaved well to me. I felt that I was in my right place.

"When we have books it is like spring with us; when the winter frames are taken out and for the first time we can open the windows as we like," said Sitanov one day.

It was hard to find books. We could not afford to subscribe to a library, but I managed to get them somehow, asking for them wherever I went, as a charity. One day the second officer of the fire brigade gave me the first volume of "Lermontov," and it was from this that I felt the power of poetry, and its mighty influence over people. I remember even now how, at the first lines of "The Demon," Sitanov looked first at the book and then at my face, laid down his brush on the table, and, embracing his knee with his long arms, rocked to and fro, smiling.

"Not so much noise, brothers," said Larionovich, and also laying aside his work, he went to Sitanov's table where I was reading. The poem stirred me painfully and sweetly; my voice was broken; I could hardly read the lines. Tears poured from my eyes. But what moved me still more was the dull, cautious movement of the workmen. In the workshop everything seemed to be diverted from its usual course--drawn to me as if I had been a magnet. When I had finished the first part, almost all of them were standing round the table, closely pressing against one another, embracing one another, frowning and laughing.

"Go on reading," said Jikharev, bending my head over the book.

When I had finished reading, he took the book, looked at the title, put it under his arm, and said:

"We must read this again! We will read it to-morrow! I will hide the book away."

He went away, locked "Lermontov" in his drawer, and returned to his work. It was quiet in the workshop; the men stole back to their tables. Sitanov went to the window, pressed his forehead against the glass, and stood there as if frozen. Jikharev, again laying down his brush, said in a stern voice:

"Well, such is life; slaves of God--yes--ah!"

He shrugged his shoulders, hid his face, and went on:

"I can draw the devil himself; black and rough, with wings of red flame, with red lead, but the face, hands, and feet--these should be bluish-white, like snow on a moonlight night."

Until close upon supper-time he revolved about on his stool, restless and unlike himself, drumming with his fingers and talking unintelligibly of the devil, of women and Eve, of paradise, and of the sins of holy men.

"That is all true!" he declared. "If the saints sinned with sinful women, then of course the devil may sin with a pure soul."

They listened to him in silence; probably, like me, they had no desire to speak. They worked unwillingly, looking all the time at their watches, and as soon as it struck ten, they put away their work altogether.

Sitanov and Jikharev went out to the yard, and I went with them. There, gazing at the stars, Sitanov said:

"Like a wandering caravan Thrown into space, it shone."

"You did not make that up yourself!"

"I can never remember words," said Jikharev, shivering in the bitter cold. "I can't remember anything; but he, I see--It is an amazing thing--a man who actually pities the devil! He has made you sorry for him, hasn't he?"

"He has," agreed Sitanov.

"There, that is a real man!" exclaimed Jikharev reminiscently. In the vestibule he warned me: "You, Maxim, don't speak to any one in the shop about that book, for of course it is a forbidden one."

I rejoiced; this must be one of the books of which the priest had spoken to me in the confessional.

We supped languidly, without the usual noise and talk, as if something important had occurred and we could not keep from thinking about it, and after supper, when we were going to bed, Jikharev said to me, as he drew forth the book:

"Come, read it once more!"

Several men rose from their beds, came to the table, and sat themselves round it, undressed as they were, with their legs crossed.

And again when I had finished reading, Jikharev said, strumming his fingers on the table:

"That is a living picture of him! Ach, devil, devil--that's how he is, brothers, eh?"

Sitanov leaned over my shoulder, read something, and laughed, as he said:

"I shall copy that into my own note-book." Jikharev stood up and carried the book to his own table, but he turned back and said in an offended, shaky voice:

"We live like blind puppies--to what end we do not know. We are not necessary either to God or the devil! How are we slaves of the Lord? The Jehovah of slaves and the Lord Himself speaks with them! With Moses, too! He even gave Moses a name; it means 'This is mine'--a man of God. And we--what are we?"

He shut up the book and began to dress himself, asking Sitanov:

"Are you coming to the tavern?"

"I shall go to my own tavern," answered Sitanov softly.

When they had gone out, I lay down on the floor by the door, beside Pavl Odintzov. He tossed about for a long time, snored, and suddenly began to weep quietly.

"What is the matter with you?"

"I am sick with pity for all of them," he said. "This is the fourth year of my life with them, and I know all about them."

I also was sorry for these people. We did not go to sleep for a long time, but talked about them in whispers, finding goodness, good traits in each one of them, and also something which increased our childish pity.

I was very friendly with Pavl Odintzov. They made a good workman of him in the end, but it did not last long; before the end of three years he had begun to drink wildly, later on I met him in rags on the Khitrov market-place in Moscow, and not long ago I heard that he had died of typhoid. It is painful to remember how many good people in my life I have seen senselessly ruined. People of all nations wear themselves out, and to ruin themselves comes natural but nowhere do they wear themselves out so terribly quickly, so senselessly, as in our own Russia.

Then he was a round-headed boy two years older than myself; he was lively, intelligent, and upright; he was talented, for he could draw birds, cats, and dogs excellently, and was amazingly clever in his caricatures of the workmen, always depicting them as feathered. Sitanov was shown as a sad-looking woodcock standing on one leg, Jikharev as a cock with a torn comb and no feathers on his head; sickly Davidov was an injured lapwing. But best of all was his drawing of the old chaser, Golovev, representing him as a bat with large whiskers, ironical nose, and four feet with six nails on each. From the round, dark face, white, round eyes gazed forth, the pupils of which looked like the grain of a lentil. They were placed crossways, thus giving to the face a lifelike and hideous expression.

The workmen were not offended when Pavl showed them the caricatures, but the one of Golovev made an unpleasant impression on them all, and the artist was sternly advised:

"You had better tear it up, for if the old man sees it, he will half kill you!"

The dirty, putrid, everlastingly drunk old man was tiresomely pious, and inextinguishably malicious. He vilified the whole workshop to the shopman whom the mistress was about to marry to her niece, and who for that reason felt himself to be master of the whole house and the workpeople. The workmen hated him, but they were afraid of him, and for the same reason were afraid of Golovev, too.

Pavl worried the chaser furiously and in all manner of ways, just as if he had set before himself the aim of never allowing Golovev to have a moment's peace. I helped him in this with enthusiasm, and the workshop amused itself with our pranks, which were almost always pitilessly coarse. But we were warned:

"You will get into trouble, children! Kouzka-Juchek will half kill you!"

Kouzka-Juchek was the nickname of the shopman, which was given to him on the quiet by the workshop.

The warning did not alarm us. We painted the face of the chaser when he was asleep. One day when he was in a drunken slumber we gilded his nose, and it was three days before he was able to get the gold out of the holes in his spongy nose. But every time that we succeeded in infuriating the old man, I remembered the steamboat, and the little Viatski soldier, and I was conscious of a disturbance in my soul. In spite of his age, Golovev was so strong that he often beat us, falling upon us unexpectedly; he would beat us and then complain of us to the mistress.

She, who was also drunk every day, and for that reason always kind and cheerful, tried to frighten us, striking her swollen hands on the table, and crying: "So you have been saucy again, you wild beast? He is an old man, and you ought to respect him! Who was it that put photographic solution in his glass, instead of wine?"

"We did."

The mistress was amazed.

"Good Lord, they actually admit it! Ah, accursed ones, you ought to respect old men!"

She drove us away, and in the evening she complained to the shopman, who spoke to me angrily:

"How can you read books, even the Holy Scriptures, and still be so saucy, eh? Take care, my brother!"

The mistress was solitary and touchingly sad. Sometimes when she had been drinking sweet liqueurs, she would sit at the window and sing:

"No one is sorry for me, And pity have I from none; What my grief is no one knows; To whom shall I tell my sorrow."

And sobbingly she drawled in the quavering voice of age:

"U--00--00--"

One day I saw her going down the stairs with a jug of warm milk in her hands, but suddenly her legs gave way under her. She sat down, and descended the stairs, sadly bumping from step to step, and never letting the jug out of her hand. The milk splashed over her dress, and she, with her hands outstretched, cried angrily to the jug:

"What is the matter with you, satyr? Where are you going?"

Not stout, but soft to flabbiness, she looked like an old cat which had grown beyond catching mice, and, languid from overfeeding, could do no more than purr, dwelling sweetly on the memories of past triumphs and pleasures.