My Universities

My University Days

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS

MAXIM GORKY

BONI & LIVERIGHT

NEW YORK

1923

AND so I am going to Kazan; to study at the university; nothing less than that.

It was the student Nikolai Yevreinov, a gentle handsome lad, with the caressing eyes of a woman, who inspired me with the idea of going to the university. He lived in the garret of the house where I roomed, and saw me frequently with a book under my arm, and this interested him. We became acquainted, and Yeyreinov soon began to convince me that I "possessed exceptional qualifications for science."

"You are destined by nature to serve science," he would say, gracefully shaking his long mane of hair.

Then I did not know that one could serve science in the capacity of a rabbit, and Yevreinov demonstrated to me so clearly that the universities were in need of exactly such young men as I. Naturally the spirit of Michael Lomonosov was called up for the argument. Yevreinov said that in Kazan I could live with him, go through the usual school courses during the autumn and winter, pass "a few' examinations. That is how he put it, "a few.' And once in the university I would be granted a scholarship and five years later emerge as a scientist. All this seemed very

1 Lomonosov was the first scientist in Russia and lived in the 18th century. Translator's note.

simple to Yevreinov who was only nineteen years old and kind of heart.

After passing his examinations he departed. And very soon after that, I followed him.

My grandmother gave me some sound advice as she saw me off:

'Don't be angry with people — you are always angry, you have become stern and aggressive. You get this from your grandfather; well — what good came to him of that? He lived in that way and finished like a fool, the poor old man. Remember one thing: 'Tis not God who judges people — the devil does that. Well, good-bye..." And wiping scanty tears from her brown shrivelled cheeks, she said:

"I know that we shall never meet again; you, a restless creature, will stray far away, and I shall die ..."

Lately I had seen little of the dear old lady and now I suddenly felt that never again will a human being become so close to me, so near to my heart.

I leant on the stern of the ship and watched how she stood there, in the harbour, making the sign of the cross with one hand while the other one was wiping the tears from her face with the end of her shabby little shawl, and from her dark eyes, filled with a radiance of unshatterable love for people.

In July I found myself in the semi-Tartar city, in the close quarters of a one-story house. The little house stood alone on an elevation at the end of a narrow miserable street. One of its walls faced the ruins of a building destroyed by a fire. Weeds had sprung up thickly all over the place. From amidst the growth of wormwood, nettles, horse-sorrel and clumps of eldertrees, rose the remains of a brick structure under the

wreckage of which was a large cellar where homeless dogs lived and died.

This cellar I remember well as one of my universities.

The Yevreinovs, a mother and two sons, lived on a miserable pension. I saw from the very first days with what tragic pain the grey little widow, after returning from the market and arranging her purchases on the kitchen table, would decide the difficult question how to prepare from the little pieces of poor meat a sufficient quantity of good food for three healthy lads, without taking herself into account. She was silent, noiseless, and in her grey eyes lay concealed the hopeless, meek obstinacy of a completely exhausted horse. The little horse was dragging a wagon uphill, thinking "I won't be able to pull through," but nevertheless steadily went on.

About three days after my arrival, when the children were still asleep and I was helping her in the kitchen to clean vegetables, she asked me cautiously:

'What was your purpose in coming here?"

"To study in the university."

Her eye-brows crept upwards, together with the yellow skin of her forehead. She cut her finger with the knife and sank into a chair sucking the blood, but immediately jumped up, exclaiming "The devil!" and wrapped a handkerchief around her sore finger.

"You can peel potatoes very nicely."

I should think I could! And I told her of my service on the steamship. She asked:

"Do you think that is enough to gain admission to the university?" |

At that time, my sense of humour being poor, I took

her question seriously and told her in detail of the procedure which was finally to open the doors of the temple of science to me. She sighed, "ah, Nikolai, Nikolai!"

Just then he entered the kitchen to have a wash, sleepy-eyed, dishevelled but cheerful as usual.

"Mother, it would be nice to have 'pelmeni' to-day!"

"Yes, it would be nice," she agreed.

Desirous of showing off my knowledge of the culinary art, I said that for '"'pelmeni" the meat was of too inferior quality and that there was not enough of it.

Here Varvara Ivanovna grew angry and shot at me a few words of such strength that the blood rushed to my ears and they suddenly lengthened. She left the kitchen, throwing a bunch of carrots on the table, and Nikolai, winking at me, explained her conduct with the words: 'She is in a bad mood."

He sat down on the bench and informed me that women generally are more nervous than men. This is their natural tendency, and a certain great authority irrefutably proved it. John Stuart Mill, the Englishman, or perhaps it was some one else, also said something to the same effect.

Nikolai enjoyed teaching me very much and made use of every convenient occasion to force some indispensable knowledge into my brain; things "without which one could not live." I listened to him eagerly, and after that Foucauld, La Rochefoucauld and La Rochejacquelein fused into one in my mind, and I could not remember who chopped whose head off: Lavoisier Dumouriez's or the other way about.

1 Russian dish made of flour and meat.

He was a noble lad and sincerely wanted "to make a man out of me' — he positively promised me that he would succeed in doing so but he lacked both the time and the other necessary conditions to concentrate his efforts seriously on me.

The egoism and frivolity of youth prevented him from seeing with what exertion and adroitness his mother managed the household. Even less did his younger brother, a heavy phlegmatic schoolboy, notice it. But I had long ago learned thoroughly the complicated tricks of the chemistry and economy of a kitchen and clearly saw the resourcefulness with which the woman was compelled to deceive daily the stomachs of her children and feed, too, for an unknown reason, a stray youth of unpleasant appearance and bad manners. Naturally every slice of bread which fell to my share was like a stone on my heart and I soon began to look for some kind of work. [I left home in the morning in order to be absent for dinner and in bad weather I passed my time away in the cellar under the adjoining ruins. Inhaling the odor of the dead bodies of cats and dogs under the pattering of rain and the howling of the wind, I soon guessed that the university was a fantasy and that I should do far better if I went to Persia. And I had seen myself already as a greybearded magician inventing a method of cultivating grain the size of an apple and potatoes weighing a pood each, and had altogether thought of the many blessings I would bring to this earth on which it was so devilishly difficult for others to live and not only for me alone.

I had also learnt by that time to dream of extraordinary adventures and great deeds of heroism. This

helped me considerably during the hard days of life and since those days were many I revelled ever more in my dreams. From the outside I expected no help and did not believe in unexpected happiness, but gradually my will developed its power of resistance and the harder life grew, the stronger and even more intelligent I felt myself to be. I understood very early that resistance to his environment is what makes a man.

In order not to starve I went to the boat-landing on the Volga where it was easy to earn fifteen or twenty kopecks a day. There, among the longshoremen and tramps and sharpers, I felt like a piece of iron thrown into the midst of red-hot coals. Every day satiated me with a multitude of sharp, burning impressions. There whirled before me a hurricane of men, naked in their greed, men of coarse instincts. I liked their bitterness against life, their scoffingly hostile attitude towards the whole world and their carelessness concerning themselves. All my past life drew me towards these men, arousing a desire to immerse myself in their corroding depths. Bret Harte and an enormous number of boulevard novels helped to arouse further my sympathies for this life.

The professional thief Bashkin, a former student of the Teachers' Institute, a cruelly beaten, consumptive person, eloquently persuaded me as follows:

"Why do you shrink like a girl? Are you afraid of losing your virtue? All that a girl has is her virtue, but to you it is only a yoke. 'The bullock is virtuous, but then he only eats straw.' " .

Red-haired, clean-shaven like an actor, Bashkin by the soft movements of his small body reminded

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS' 13

one of a kitten. He regarded himself as my instructor and protector, and I saw that he sincerely wished me success and happiness. He was very intelligent and had read many good books.. The best of them all he considered the novel of Dumas '"'The Count of Monte Cristo," of which he said, "There is both a purpose and a heart in that book."

He liked women and spoke of them with enthusiasm, sensuously smacking his lips and with a peculiar twitch in his broken body. This twitch aroused in me a feeling of disgust, there was something sickly in it, but I listened attentively to his words, awake to their beauty.

"Woman, woman," he drawled, and the yellow skin on his face glowed with color, his dark eyes sparkled with delight.

"For a woman I would do anything. Sin does not exist for her, just as there is none for Satan! Spend your life being in love, you can invent nothing better!"

He had a gift for story-telling and easily composed touching rhymes for the street-girls about the sorrows of unhappy love. His verses were sung in all the cities on the Volga and he was the author, among other songs, of the widely known jingle:

I am homely and poor, In shreds is my blouse, No one will take

Such a girl for a spouse.

I was on good terms, too, with Trusov, an ignorant fellow, good-looking, foppishly dressed, and with the fine hands of a musician. He ran a little shop bearing

the sign "Watchmaker" in the Admiralty Suburb, but his business was the sale of stolen goods.

"Don't you, Peshkov, learn the tricks of thievery," he would say to me, stroking his greyish beard in a dignified manner and screwing up his sly, insolent eyes. "I see that your path lies in a different direction, you are a spiritual person."

"What do you mean — spiritual?"

"Oh, one who harbours no envy, only curiosity."

As far as I was concerned this was not true, for I was very envious; for instance my jealousy was aroused by the ability of Bashkin to tell a story in a peculiar verse-like manner, with unexpected similes and figures of speech. I recall the beginning of one of his accounts of a certain love-adventure:

"I was sitting in my hotel room in the miserable town of Sviajak, on a dull-eyed night, all alone like a screech-owl in the hollow of a tree. It was autumn, in October, and the rain was falling lazily, the wind breathing like an injured Tartar who is spinning out his chant, a melody without an end, o-o-o-uh-uh-uh. ...And then she came, light and rosy, like a cloud at dawn, with deceitful innocence in her eyes. 'Dear,' she said with sincerity, 'I have not been unfaithful to you!' I know it is a lie, but I believe it to be the truth. In my mind I am certain of it, but my heart will not believe she was unfaithful — never!"

While narrating he swayed rhythmically, shutting his eyes, and frequently, with a gentle gesture, put his hand to his heart.

His voice was monotonous and dull, but his words were luminous, and there was something of the song of a nightingale in them.

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS K5

Tenvied Trusov. That man could tell in a remarkably interesting way of Siberia, Khiva, Bokhara, and humorously and very viciously of the life of the prelates. Once he mysteriously said of the Tsar Alexander III: "That Tsar — he knows how to manage his affairs."

Trusov seemed to me one of those "villains" who unexpectedly for the reader, at the end of the novel, turn into magnanimous heroes.

On a suffocating night these men would sometimes cross the little stream Kazanka into the meadows of bushes where they ate and drank and talked of their affairs, but oftener of the complexity of life, of the strange entanglement of human relations, and especially a lot about women. The latter were spoken of wrathfully, mournfully, at times touchingly, and nearly always with a feeling of one peering into a darkness full of anguishing surprises. I spent a few nights with them underneath a black sky and dim stars, in the stifling heat of a hollow way overgrown with shrubs of broom-corn. In the darkness, damp from the proximity of the Volga, the lights of mastlamps crawled like gold spiders in all directions. 'The black heap of the hilly bank beyond was studded with fiery flakes and veins: the illuminated windows of taverns and houses in the prosperous village of Uslon. Dull was the thud of the steamboats' paddle-wheels on the water; wolf-like the strenuous howling of the boatmen on a chain of barges; somewhere a hammer was striking iron, a song dolefully vibrated in the air — somebody's soul was quietly burning out. From the song sprang grief which covered one's heart like ashes.

And it was even sadder to listen to the silently gliding words of the men who were meditating about life, each speaking about himself, almost insensible to the others. Sitting or lying under the bushes, they would smoke cigarettes, every now and then take a drink of vodka or beer, but not too greedily, and then resume their backward wanderings on the road of reminiscence.

"Now, here is something that once happened to me," says some one, crushed to the earth by the blackness of the night.

At the end of the story the men would agree:

"It happens that way sometimes, many things hapDenia aie

"It happens, it happens, it used to happen," I hear, and it seems to me that on this night man has reached the last hour of his life — everything has been already, nothing wé// be any more.

This estranged me from Bashkin and Trusov but I liked them nevertheless, and according to all the logic of my past life it would have been entirely natural if I had followed them. The frustrated aspiration to rise and acquire an education also drove me toward them. In the hours of hunger, exasperation and yearning I felt capable of committing a crime, and not only "against the sacred institution of property." However, the romanticism of youth prevented me from turning off the path which I was destined to follow. In addition to the very human Bret Harte and the boulevard novels, I had already read many serious books. They aroused in me a longing for something vague and yet more significant than anything I had seen until now.

At the same time new acquaintances, new impressions arose in my life. On the deserted grounds adjoining the house of the Yevreinovs, schoolboys gathered to play skittles and-one of them, Guri Pletnev, fascinated me. Swarthy of skin, blue-haired like a Japanese, his face peppered with tiny black spots as if gun-powder had been ground into it, inexhaustibly jolly, skillful at games, sharp-witted in conversation, he was imbued with the germs of every kind of talent, and like many gifted Russians, lived by the talents with which nature had endowed him without trying to strengthen and develop them. Possessing a very delicate ear and a wonderful sense for music, which he loved, he played like an artist on the dulcimer and the balalaika, without attempting to master a more difficult and noble instrument. He was poor — he dressed shabbily — but the dashing bold movements of his sinewy body, his sweeping gestures, were in harmony with his crumpled shirt, his tattered trousers, and his badly-worn gaping boots.

He was like a man who had just got on his feet after a serious and protracted illness, or like a prisoner just released from jail. Everything in life for him was new and pleasant, everything aroused roaring merriment in him. He scampered over the ground noisy like the racket of a buffoon.

When he learned what a difficult and dangerous life I led, he invited me to live with him and prepare myself to be a rural teacher.

And so there I was, living in the weird, gay hole "Marussovka," probably familiar to more than one generation of Kazan students. It was a large halfruined house on the Ribnoriadskaia Street (Fish Mar-

ket) which looked as though it were captured from its owners by hungry students, street-girls and ghosts of men whose lives were behind them. Pletnev's quarters were under the staircase leading to the garret. His folding-cot stood there; at the end of the corridor next to the window there was a table, a chair and that was all. Three doors opened onto the passage: behind two of them lived prostitutes and behind the third a consumptive student of mathematics from the seminary; tall, thin and overgrown with bristly reddish hair, a person of almost terrifying appearance, scarcely covered with dirty rags, through the holes of which shone his bluish skin and the ribs of a skeleton filling one with horror. His only nourishment was apparently his own fingernails which he bit to blood. Day and night he drew figures and made calculations and endlessly coughed a rattling cough. The street-girls, considering him insane, were afraid of him, but out of pity they would leave bread, tea, and sugar at his door. He picked up the little packages and carried them into his room, crunching away like a tired horse. But whenever they forgot or were unable for .. some reason to bring him their gifts, he would open the door and bellow down the passage:

"Bread!"

In his eyes, sunk into dark holes, there glittered the pride of a maniac happy with the knowledge of his own greatness. On rare occasions he was visited by a little hunchback, a cripple with a leg out of joint, grey-haired, and with a sly smile on his yellow eunuchlike face, who wore thick glasses on a swollen nose. They would shut the door tightly and sit silently for

hours in a weird calmness. Only once, late in the night, was I awakened by the hoarse and furious cry of the mathematician:

"And I say it's a prison! Geometry is a cell, yes, a mouse-trap, yes, a prison!"

The little hunchback monster tittered squeakingly, repeating many times a peculiar word, and the mathematician suddenly roared out:

"Go to the devil! Get out of here!"

When his guest rolled out into the passage, frothing, yelping, muffling himself in his broad cloak, the mathematician, standing on the threshold of his door, gaunt and terrifying, with his fingers stuck in the dishevelled hair on his head, rattled:

"Euclid is a fool! A f-o-o-l! I will prove that God is cleverer than a Greek!"

And he slammed the door so hard that something in his room fell with a loud thud.

I soon learned that the man wanted to prove mathematically the existence of God. But he died before he was able to accomplish it.

Pletnev worked in a printing-shop as a newspaper proof-reader, making eleven kopecks a night, and whenever I failed to earn something, we lived on four pounds of bread a day, two kopecks' worth of tea and three of sugar. There was little time left for work and I had to study. I overcame sciences with the greatest difficulty; especially was I oppressed by the grammar with its monstrously narrow, stiff forms. I was altogether unable to squeeze into them the living, difficult and capriciously flexible Russian language. But it soon appeared to my satisfaction that I had

8 hie

begun studying too early and had I even passed the examinations for a rural teacher, I could not have received an appointment on account of my age.

Pletnev and I slept on the same cot — I — in the night — — he — during the day. Worn out by asleepless night, his face of a still darker hue and with inflamed eyes, he would come back early in the morning. I immediately rushed to the public-house to fetch some boiling water, for of course we had no kettle, and sitting by the window we drank our tea and ate our bread. Guri told me all the news from the papers, read the amusing verses of the alcoholic journalist "Red Domino" and amazed me by his jocose attitude towards life — it seemed to me that he treated it in the same way as he did the fat-faced woman Galkina, the one who traded in ladies' second-hand clothes and also in things of less scrupulous character. He rented from her a corner under the staircase, but he had no money with which to pay for his "flat'" — so he substituted for it merry jokes, played on the harmonium and sang sentimental songs. When he started humming them in his small tenor voice, his eyes shone with a mocking smile. The woman Galkina in her youth had sung in the chorus of the Opera. She had a certain knowledge of songs and often out of her impudent eyes onto her purple, puffy cheeks of a drunkard and a glutton, small tears would flow in a torrent; she shook them off the skin of her cheeks with greasy fingers and then wiped the fingers with a dirty handkerchief.

"Oh, Gurotchka," she sighed, "what an artist you are! And were you a bit handsome, I'd have ar-

ranged your fate for you! How many youths have

I not brought together with women whose hearts cry from loneliness."

One of "those youths" lived here above us. He was a student, the son of an apprentice-furrier, a middle-sized lad with a broad chest and hideously narrow hips. He resembled a triangle with a_broken-off sharp edge turned downwards. His ankles were as small as a woman's. Also his head, deeply set into his shoulders and arrayed with a heap of red hair, was too small for his height; on his white, bloodless face two bulging greenish eyes sullenly stared at one.

With tremendous efforts, against the will of his father, starving like a homeless dog, he managed to finish school and enter the university, but suddenly he discovered himself to be the owner of a deep soft bass voice and decided to learn to sing. Galkina took advantage of that and "arranged" him with the rich wife of a merchant, a woman about forty, whose son was a student about to finish his studies and whose daughter was also finishing school. The merchant's wife was thin and flat and straight as a soldier; she had the dry face of an ascetic nun and big grey eyes, hidden in dark cavities; she was always dressed in black; on her head she wore an old-fashioned cap and poisonously green stones trembled in her ears.

Sometimes in the evening or early in the morning she would come to see her student and Pletnev and I often used to observe how the woman as though jumping through the portal, crossed the yard with a firm and steady gait. Her face seemed terrible to us, her lips were tightly pressed together so that they were hardly perceptible; her eyes were wide-opened and as she walked along, her glance became desperate and

doomed; it seemed as if she were blind. One could not say she was hideous, but one felt in her a tension which disfigured her — stretching out her body and crumpling together her face. 'Watch her," said Pletnev, ''she looks like a maniac."

The student hated the merchant's wife and he hid from her, but she persecuted him like a merciless creditor or a spy.

"I am a lost man," he would own up, after having had some drink. "And why do I want to sing? With such a face and figure who will let me go on the stage?"

"Stop all this nonsense," Pletnev advised him.

"Yes, of course...But then, I am sorry for her. I can't stand her, but I am sorry. If you only knew how she ...oh!" We did know for we heard how that woman standing on the stairs in the night was beseeching in a trembling, dull voice.

"For God's sake ...my darling, for God's sake!

.' She was the owner of a large factory, had many houses and horses and gave thousands for the benefit of obstetric courses and, like a beggar, prayed for a caress.

After tea Pletnev went to bed and I departed searching for work and came home late at night, when Guri was expected at the printer's office. If I succeeded in bringing home some bread, sausage or boiled fish we shared the lot together and he carried his half away with him.

Remaining alone, I walked about the passages and corners of "Marussovka" watching how lived all these people who were new to me. The house was thickly crowded with them and resembled an ant heap. It

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS "3

was impregnated with sour, corrosive smells and in all corners were concealed heavy shadows, hostile to people. From morning till late at night the house droned, the sewing machines of the seamstresses rattled without interruption, the operetta singers tried their songs, the student practised his scales with his bass voice, a drunken, half-mad actor loudly repeated his part, prostitutes shouted hysterically and tipsily, and the natural but insoluble question rose in my mind:

"What is all that for?'

Among the hungry young people a red-haired, bald man with high cheek bones and a great belly on thin legs was often to be seen, aimlessly wandering about. He had a huge mouth and the teeth of a horse — which gave him the nickname of "Red Horse." He was continually at law with some of his relatives who were Simbirsk merchants and announced to everybody: "I don't care if I die! — but I'l] ruin them to the core! They will go beggaring in the world for three years, — after that I will give them everything back and ask them: well, how did you like it, you devils? Yes, pesrit"

"Ts this the aim of your life, Horse?"

"Yes, all my soul has strained itself in the effort to accomplish this and I cannot do anything else!"

He stuck the whole day in the different courts of justice, at his lawyers', often brought back in the evenings innumerable packages and bottles and organised loud festivals in his dirty room with the shattered ceiling and uneven floor, inviting students and seamstresses, every one in fact who wanted to eat and drink well. 'Red Horse" himself drank only Rhum, a beverage which left dark-red stains on the napkin,

dresses and floor. When he had had some drink, he howled: 'Dear little birdies! I love you, you are such an honest folk — And I, an evil-minded scoundrel and cr-rocodile — I want to ruin my relatives and I shall ruin them, by Jove, I will! — TIll die of it, DUG ie:

His eyes twinkled pitifully and his peculiar face with high cheek-bones was wet with drunken tears, he shook them off with the palm of his hand and wiped it on his knee — his trousers were always covered with grease-stains.

"How do you live?" he cried. "Hunger, cold, poor dress — is that alaw? What can you learn, leading such a life? Hah, if the Tsar knew how you Lve. ieee

And snatching out of his pocket a handful of notes he offered them:

"Who wants money? 'Take some, you fellows!" _ The singers and seamstresses greedily snatched the money out of his hairy hand, but he laughed at them, saying: "That's not for you! 'It's for the students!"

But the students refused to take the money.

"Money may go to the devil!" angrily shouted the son of the furrier.

One day he brought a packet of ten rouble notes crumbled into a hard roll to Pletnev and said, throwing them on the table:

"There — do you want it? I don't...

And lying down on our cot, he growled and sobbed so hard that we had to give him water to cool him down. When he fell asleep, Pletnev tried to smooth out the money, but that was impossible; the notes were

so tightly pressed together that one had to separate each bit by softening it in water.

In the smoky, dirty room — the windows of which stared into the stone wall of the house next door — it is crowded and stuffy, noisy and horrible. 'The Horse" shouts louder and louder. I ask him:

"Why do you live here and not in an hotel?"

"My dear friend, I do it for my soul! My soul warms itself at your fire... ." The furrier's son confirms: "Right you are, 'Horse.' In any other place I would have gone to the dogs..."

"The Horse" begs Pletnev:

"Play us something! Sing to us!"

And laying the dulcimer on his knees, Guri sings "Rise, rise, you crimson sun." His voice is soft, it penetrates the soul.

Everything grows silent in the room, all listen pensively to the sad words and the low treble of the instrument's chords.;

"How well you sing, you devil!" growls the miserable consoler of the merchant's wife.

Among the weird inhabitants of the old house, Guri Pletnev, possessing the wisdom which is called gaiety, played the part of the good spirit of the fairy stories. His soul, dyed in the bright colours of youth, lightened up life with a fire-works of charming jokes, cheerful songs, sharp mockeries on the customs and habits of people, dashing speeches on the brutal lies of life. He was only twenty years old, and seemed quite a youth in appearance, but every one in the house considered him a man to whom one could turn in a hard moment and he would always give both sound advice and help. The better people liked him — the worst

were afraid of him, and even the old porter Nikiforich always greeted him with a cunning smile.

The yard of "Marussovka" was a "passage." Leading uphill it joined two streets, the Ribnoriadskaia and Staro Grebechaia, and on the latter, not far from the gate of our home was situated in a cosy corner the shop of Nikiforich. He was the head policeman of our quarter, a tall, dry old man whose breast was covered with medals. He had a clever face, a polite smile and cunning eyes. He watched attentively our rowdy colony of the people of the past and of the future and several times a day his neatly cut figure would appear in the yard; he walked without haste and peeped into the windows of the flats with the air with which a guard of the Zoological Gardens looks into the cages of the animals. In the winter they arrested in one of the flats the one-armed officer Smirnoff and the soldier Muratoff, both officers of the order of St. George and partakers in the Akhaltekin expedition of Skobeleff; also Zohnin, Orsiankin Grigorieft Kriloff and some one else for an attempt to open a secret printing office. And one night the policemen seized a sullen inhabitant, whom I had called "The erring tower.' When Guri heard of it in the morning, he ruffled his black hair in agitation and said to me:

"Look here, Maximich, damn you, run as fast as you can i253"

He explained where I had to run to and added: "Take care! There might be some spies there ..."

I enjoyed immensely the mysterious commission and flew to the Admiralty suburb with the rapidity of a sand-martin. There, in the dark work-shop of a cop-

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS 2]

persmith I found a curly-headed young man with wonderfully blue eyes; he was tinning a stew-pan, but did not look like a workman. — And in a corner, at the jawvices, fussed about a little old man with a strap on his grey hair. I asked the coppersmith:

"Have you got some work?"

The old man answered angrily: "We have some, but none for you!" The young man looked up at me and bent his head down again over the stew-pan. I gently touched his foot with mine, he looked at me with his blue eyes, amazed and angry, holding the stew-pan by the handle as if preparing to fling it at me. But seeing that I was winking at him, said quickly:

i a eee

I winked again and went out of the room, waiting outside the door; the curly-haired one, stretching himself out, soon rejoined me and stood silently looking at me, lighting a cigarette.

"You are — Tikhon?"'

"Well — yes."'

"Peter is arrested."

He frowned, watching me angrily.

"What Peter?"

_ The long one, who resembles a deacon."

"Well?"

"Nothing more."

"And what have I to do with your Peter, the deacon?" he asked and the shape of his question convinced me that he was no workman. I ran home, proud of having fulfilled my task.

Such was my first participation in conspirative matters. Guri Pletnev was in contact with the whole

business, but in answer to my demands to lead me into its secrets, he said:

"It is too early for you yet, my boy! (You must learn a lot first."

At that time Yevreinov introduced me to a mysterious person. This introduction was complicated by precautions, which inspired me with a premonition of something important. Yevreinov took me outside the city, to the Arskoye Field, warning me on the way that this meeting demanded a great prudence on my part and that it was necessary to keep it a secret. Pointing out to me in the distance a small grey figure, moving slowly across the barren field, Yevreinov looked about cautiously, remarking in a low voice:

"There he is! Follow him, and when he stops, walk up to him and say: 'I am the newcomer.' "

The mysterious is always pleasant, but here it seemed tome funny. An arid brilliant day, a solitary little man rolling across the field like a grey speck, — that was all. I caught up with him at the gates of the cemetery, and I saw before me a young fellow with a small dry face and a severe look in his eyes which were round like a bird's. He was dressed in the grey uniform overcoat of a school-boy, but the bright buttons had been removed and black iron ones substituted for them. The marks left by the insignia could be noticed on the worn cap, and altogether there was something about him resembling a bird which had been prematurely plucked, as though he was anxious to represent a fully matured person even to himself. We sat among the graves in the shadows of thick bushes. He talked drily, in a matter-of-fact way, and I thoroughly disliked him. Severely questioning me

as to what I read, he proposed that I should join a circle which he had organized — I agreed and we parted, he walking off first, inspecting the bleak field with circumspection.

In the circle where Pletnev and three or four other youths belonged, I was the youngest and was completely unprepared to study the works of Adam Smith with Chernishevsky's commentaries. We met in the lodging of Milovsky, a student of the Teachers' Institute, who later wrote stories under the pseudonym of Ekeonski and after writing about five volumes of them, ended by committing suicide. How many of the men I came to know parted with life of their own free will!

He was taciturn, timid in his thoughts, careful in his words. He lived in the basement of a filthy house and worked as a carpenter "for the equilibrium of the body and soul." It was tedious to be with him. The reading of Smith's book did not captivate me, the fundamental theses of economics soon appeared very familiar to me, I had mastered them by direct experience, they were inscribed on my flesh and, in my opinion, it was not worth while writing a thick book full of difficult words about something which was absolutely clear to any one who had spent his vital force for the welfare and comfort of ''the strange uncle." With the greatest effort I would sit through two or three hours daily in that hole, saturated with the odour of slime, watching the water-bugs creep along the filthy wall.

Once our teacher was late in coming and we, think- _ing he would not come at all, arranged a little feast by buying a bottle of vodka, some bread and cucum-

bers. Suddenly his grey legs flashed past the windows, and scarcely did we have time to hide the vodka under the table when he appeared among us, and we began again commenting on the wise deductions of Chernishevsky. We all sat as motionless as idols, anticipating with fear that one of us should upset the bottle with his foot. It was upset by the teacher himself and having done the deed, he looked under the table but did not utter a word. But it would have been better if he had cursed us roundly!

His silence, his rigid face and screwed-up offended eyes confused me terribly. Looking from the corner of my eyes at the faces of my comrades, crimson with shame, I felt like a criminal towards our '"'religious" instructor and pitied him from my heart, although the vodka had not been bought on my initiative.

One felt bored at these readings and longed to go to a Tartar settlement where kind-hearted, gentle folk led a different, wholesome life. They spoke a ludicrously distorted Russian; in the evening they were summoned to the mosques by the wailing cry of the muezzin coming from the tall minarets; it seemed to me that the whole life of the Tartars was built on different foundations, unfamiliar and unlike the cheerless existence I knew.

I felt the lure of the Volga, and the music of a life of toil and to this day that music pleasantly intoxicates my heart. I well remember the day when I first felt the heroic poetry of labor.

A large barge, loaded with goods from Persia, struck a rock below Kazan, smashing a hole in its bottom. A company of loaders hired me to help unload the barge. It was September, an easterly wind was blow-

ing, the waves were leaping angrily on the surface of the grey river; the wind, furiously tearing at their crests, sprinkled the water with cold rain-drops. The company, which numbered about fifty hands, sullenly arranged itself on the deck of the empty barge, the men muffling themselves in mats and tarpaulins. A small panting tugboat towed the barge, throwing up red sheaves of sparks into the rain.

Dusk had come. The wet, leaden sky, as it grew darker, descended on the river. The loaders grumbled and cursed the rain, the wind and life in general; they lazily crawled along the deck, trying to find shelter from the cold and the dampness. It seemed to me that these half-numbed men were incapable of work, that they would not save the perishing freight.

Towards midnight we reached the fall of the river bed and moored the empty barge alongside the one which was stranded on the rock. The chief of the company, a venomous-looking old man, marked with small-pox and having the eyes and nose of a kite, a crafty fellow who continually spouted abusive language, shouted in a loud feminine voice, tearing off a wet cap from his bald skull: "To prayer — boys?"'

The men on the deck of the barge assembled in a black heap in the darkness and began to growl like bears. And the chief, finishing his prayer before the others, yelped out: "The lanterns! Hey, fellows, show me some work! Don't bluff, my boys. Let's start, with God's help."

And the sluggish, lazy, drenched men began to "show some work." They swooped down upon the - deck and into the hold of the flooded barge with

_ whoops, yells and cheers as if going into battle. All

around me sacks of rice, bales of raisins and hides and Persian lamb started flying about with the lightness of feather pillows, and thick-set figures raced along, encouraging one another by howling, whistling and using tough slang. It was difficult to believe that the same sluggish, morose men who shortly before complained sullenly of life, rain and cold, were now working with such joy, ease, and efficiency. 'The rain had grown thicker and colder, the wind stronger; it tore at their shirts and blew them over their heads exposing their bellies. In the damp darkness, under the meager light of six lanterns, dusky men tossed about, their feet falling with a dull sound on the decks of the barges. They worked as if they had been hungering for labor, as if they had waited long for the pleasure of throwing from hand to hand four-pood sacks and running a race with bales on their backs. They worked as if they were playing, with the gay enthusiasm of children, with that intoxicating joy of accomplishing a task which is only surpassed by the embrace of a woman.

A large bearded man in a reefer, all wet and sticky, apparently the owner of the freight, or his agent, suddenly yelled excitedly:

"Boys, I'll put up a bucket! Two buckets, my little pirates! Step lively!"

From all sides in the darkness voices barked hoarsely at the same time:

"Three buckets!"

"All right. I'll make it three. Work away! Right-o!"

And the hurricane of work grew in intensity. I too was grabbing sacks, dragging and throwing them

about, then running and grabbing again, and it seemed to me that I myself and everything about me were twisted round in a stormy dance, that these men could work with such terrible intensity and hilarity without interruption; without sparing themselves for months, years; that they could move the very city to any place they liked by taking hold of its steeples and minarets.

That night I lived through such joy as I had never before experienced, my soul was lit up with the desire to spend my whole life in such a half-mad ecstasy of activity. The waves lashed the sides of the barge, the rain whipped the decks, the wind howled on the river, and in the grey mist of the dawn half-naked, soaked men impetuously and untiringly raced about, shouted and laughed, delighting in their power, in their work. And then the wind rent the heavy masses of clouds and a rosy sunbeam scintillated on the blue and bright patch of sky, and it was hailed by a common roar from the cheerful beasts, who shook the wet hair off their good-natured snouts. One wanted to hug and kiss these two-legged animals who were so intelligent and skillful in their work and so self-denyingly lured by it.

It seemed that nothing could resist such a tension of joyously frenzied energies, that it was capable of accomplishing miracles on earth, that in one night it could cover the whole globe with beautiful palaces and cities, as the prophetic tales will have it. Glimpsing for a minute or two the labor of man, the sunbeam could not overcome the heavy density of the clouds and drowned in them, like a child in the sea, while the rain turned into a torrential shower.

"Stop!" cried a voice, but it was angrily answered:

"T'll stop you!"

And up to two o'clock in the afternoon, until the entire freight was transferred, the half-naked men worked without resting, under a pouring rain and a sharp wind, forcing me to contemplate with reverence how rich in mighty forces was man's earth.

We then boarded a steamboat and fell asleep on it like drunkards, and on arriving in Kazan poured out on the sand of the river bank in a stream of grey dirt and went to the tavern to drink the three buckets of vodka.

There the thief Bashkin came up to me, looked at me from head to foot, and asked:

"What did they do with you?"

I described our work to him with enthusiasm. He listened to my story, sighed and remarked contemptuously:

"You are a fool! Worse than that, an idiot!"

Whistling and wagging his body like a fish, he swam away among the crowded tables at which the loaders noisily caroused. In the corner somebody with a tenor voice started an obscene song:

"Ah, this affair happened in the dark of the night, When the lady left the house for a stroll in the garden, . ."

A dozen men, clapping their hands on the tables, roared in a deafening voice the refrain.

"The watchman guards the town, And finds a lady lying ..."

Then came a burst of laughter and whistling and a thunder of words which, in their violent cynicism, probably have no equal on earth.

The apple trees are in flower, the village is

wrapped up in rosy-coloured drifts and in a bitter aroma that penetrates everywhere, suppressing the smells of tar and manure. Hundreds of trees are in bloom, arrayed as for a feast in the rosy satin of petals, — stretch out in regular lines from the huts in the direction of the field — In moonlight nights, shaken by a gentle wind, the moth-like flowers rustle imperceptibly, and it seems as though the whole village was bathed in heavy golden-blue waves. — The nightingales sing incessantly and passionately, while in the day the starlings tease provokingly and the unseen larks pour onto the earth their tender uninterrupted chime. On holidays, the girls and the young women walk about at night in the street, and sing songs, opening their mouths like young birds and smiling a languorous, intoxicating smile. Isot also smiled like a drunken man, he grew thin, his eyes sank into dark cavities, and his face became more stern, more handsome and — more saintly. He slept the whole day, appearing on the street only towards the evening, gently thoughtful and preoccupied. Kukushkin affectionately but coarsely, made fun of him, and he smiled shyly and said:

"You shut up! What is there to be done?' And rapturously went on:

"Ah, how sweet life is! — And with what tenderness

one can live — what words reach to your heart! — There are things — which one shan't forget until death, and at resurrection they'll be the first that one shall remember!"

"Take care that the husbands don't give you a licking,' warned the Khokhol, laughing gently.

"They'd be in their right," agreed Isot.

Nearly every night, together with the nightingales, rang out in the gardens, in the fields and on the river the high and troubling voice of Migun; he sang fine songs in a wonderful way, and a lot was forgiven him on that account by the peasants. On Saturday evenings, people assembled more and more around our shop and unavoidably the old Susloff, Barinoff, the smith Krotoff and Migun would sit down and start discussing. Some went away, others appeared, and so it lasted until midnight. Sometimes the drunken men began to grow rowdy; oftener this happened than with others with the soldier Kostin, a man with one eye and two fingers missing on one hand. Lifting up his sleeves and brandishing his fists, he approached the shop with the gait of a fighting cock and shouted hoarsely:

"You, Khokhol, you son of unwholesome folks of Turkish faith! Answer, why is it you don't go to church? You heretic soul! You confounded rioter! Answer, who are you at heart?"

They tease him:

"Mishka, why have you shot your fingers off? — Got scared of the Turk?"

He rushes to fight, but is seized with laughs and shrill cries and thrown down the ravine where rolling head first down the slope, he yelps shrilly:

"Help! They've killed me."

Then he crawls out, all covered with dust and asks the Khokhol to give him a measure of vodka.

"What for?"

"For the fun you've had with me," replies Kostin. The peasants all laugh heartily.

One day — it was a holiday — the cook, after having lit the wood in the stove, went out in the yard. I was sitting in the shop — when suddenly a terrific sigh was to be heard from the kitchen, the whole shop trembled, tin boxes with caramels tumbled from the shelves, the broken window-panes began to tinkle and the whole floor drummed. I rushed into the kitchen, black clouds of smoke were crawling from the door which led into it and behind them something hissed and cracked. The Khokhol grabbed me by the shoulder:

"Stand back..."

The cook was howling in the entrance:

eae idint tis."

Romass thrust himself into the smoke, one heard a rumbling, then he swore and shouted out:

"Stop that noise! Some water!"

On the floor of the kitchen the logs of wood were smoking, one chip was still burning, bricks were lying about and the black mouth of the stove was empty, as though it had been swept out with a broom. Groping through the smoke for a bucket of water, I extinguished with it the fire on the floor and started throwing the logs back into the stove.

"Take care!" said the Khokhol, leading the cook by the hand and pushing her inside the room, he ordered in a stern voice: "Lock up the shop! Take care, Maximich, it might

explode again!"

And kneeling down, he began examining the round pine logs, dragging out the ones I had pushed into the stove.

"What are you doing?"

"Ah, here it is!"

He handed me a queer round log blown up from inside, drilled out and strangely blackened with smoke.

"Do you see? The devils stuffed the log with gun-powder! What idiots! As though a pound of gun-powder could do any harm!"

He put the log aside and began washing his hands, saying:

"It's a good thing that Axinia had gone out, or she'd have been hurt..." The acid smoke had dispersed — it became noticeable that the glass on the shelves was broken, the window panes too, and the bricks at the aperture of the stove had been torn out. At that moment the Khokhol's calmness did not appeal to me, he behaved as though this absurd joke did not make him in the least indignant. And outside the streetboys rushed about, screaming: '"There's a fire at the Khokhol's! Fire!"

Somewhere a woman howled and lamented, and Axinia cried anxiously from the shop:

"They are trying to break into the shop, Mikheilo Antonovich!"

"Now, now, gently," he was saying, wiping his wet beard with a towel. Through the open windows of the room peered hairy faces, distorted by fear and

anger, their eyes closed from the corroding smoke and some one cried agitatedly and shrilly:

"Let's drive them away from the village! They're always raising some scandal! What is it, my God?"

A small, red-haired peasant, moving his lips and making the sign of the cross, was trying to scramble inside the window — unsuccessfully: he was holding an axe in his right hand, while the left one, grabbing convulsively at the window-sill, was continually slipping off and losing its hold.

Romass, holding the log in his hand, asked him: "Where are you going to?"

"To put out the fire, my dear man."

"But it isn't burning anywhere...

The peasant, opening his mouth in awe, disappeared, while Romass went out on the door-steps and showing the log to the crowd, said:

"One of you, my boys, has stuffed this log with gun-powder and thrown it together with our wood. But there was too little gunpowder, and no harm came of We io

I stood behind the Khokhol, watching the crowd, and heard how the peasant with the axe was telling the others in a frightened tone:

"And as he brandished the log at me... ."

The soldier Kostin, already tipsy, was shouting:

"Send 'im away, the zealot! Let's have him judged!"

But the majority were staring at Romass in silence and listening distrustfully to his words:

"In order to blow up a hut one needs a lot of gun-

powder, I should think about forty pounds of it. Well, why don't you go?"

Some one was asking:

"Where's the bailiff?"

"One must call the police!"

The crowd dispersed unwillingly without haste, as though regretfully leaving something behind. We sat down to tea. Axinia poured it out, kinder and more affectionate than usual and said, looking compassionately at Romass: "You don't complain at them, that's why they make those pranks!"

"Does it not make you furious?" I asked.

"There is not enough time to get angry at every absurdity!"

I thought: if all people went about doing their work with such calm!

And he was already telling me that he intended going soon to Kazan and asked me what books I wanted him to bring. It seemed to me sometimes, that that man had a certain mechanism instead of a soul; like clock-work, which had been wound up for life. I loved the Khokhol and respected him very much, but I experienced a great desire to see him get angry one day at me or at some one else, watch him shout and trample his feet with fury. But he was not capable or did not want to be capable of getting into a fury. When he was irritated by meanness or stupidity, he merely mockingly half-closed his grey eyes and said in short cold words something usually very simple and merciless. One day, for instance, he asked Susloff:

"Why is it, that you, an old man, always play a false game, eh?"

The yellow cheeks and forehead of the old man slowly flushed to a purple tinge; it seemed as though even his white beard had blushed to the roots of the hairs.

"There's no profit for you in it, is there? And people will lose respect for you!"

Susloff, with a bent head, agreed. "Yes, that's true — I get no profit from it... ."

And afterwards he said to Isot: '"That's a leader of souls for you! If we could get people like him to govern us!"

. In short and clear words Romass suggests to me bias I must act in his absence, and it seems to me that he has already forgotten the attempt to blow him up, as one forgets the sting of a fly.

Pankov comes to see us, he examines the stove and inquires moodily:

"Did you get frightened?"

"'Peuh, what of 2"

"It means war, does it?"

"Sit down and have some tea."

"The wife is waiting —

"Where have you been?"

"Fishing. With Isot."

He went away and in the kitchen repeated once more thoughtfully:

Vics) itneans. war...

He always speaks in short sentences with the Khokhol, as though having long ago talked over everything 'complicated and of any importance. I remember having heard from Romass the story of the reign of Ivan Grosni, Isot announced:

"A dull Tsar, he was."

"A butcher," added Kukushkin, while Pankov declared resolutely:

"JT don't see much brains about him. Well, he killed all the princes, but then he put in their places quantities of small noblemen. And what is still worse — foreigners. There's nothing clever in that. A small landowner is worse than a rich one. A fly isn't a wolf — you can't kill it with a rifle, but it can annoy you more than a wolf can."

Kukushkin appeared with a bucket of soft clay and, smearing the bricks into the stove, kept saying: "There's no saying, they've got some head, the confounded devils. Their own louse, that they cannot exterminate, but as to a man — they're only too ready to doso! Look here, Antonovich, don't you bring too many goods at once, better do it oftener — or else they'll set the fire to you. Now that you've gone and arranged this here thing, — there's going to be trouble, I tell you!"

This "thing" was a matter very unpleasant for the rich peasants of the village, a working company of orchard-owners. The Khokhol had organised it already, with the aid of Pankov, Susloff and two or three other reasonable peasants. The majority of the men began to look upon Romass more favourably, the number of customers in our shop augmented considerably, and even "good-for-nothing" beggars like Barinoff and Migun tried in every way to assist the Khokhol in his enterprise.

_ liked Migun, I enjoyed listening to his beautiful, sad songs. When he sang, he used to shut his eyes, and his face of a martyr ceased being distorted by convulsions. He lived in the dark of the night, when

there is no moon and the sky is concealed under a thick cover of clouds. Sometimes in the evenings he would whisper gently to me:

"Come on to the Volga!"

And there, setting the forbidden tackle for the sterlets, sitting astride on the stern of his boat, his crooked, brown feet hanging in the dark waters, he spoke in a low voice: 'When a noble person bullies me — all right, Pll bear it, confound him, he's a great person and knows things that I don't know. But when a peasant, just like I am, goes at me — how can I accept this? What difference is there between him and me? He counts with roubles, I with kopecks — that's about all." His face contorts painfully, his eye-brow trembles, his fingers move rapidly, examining and sharpening with a file the hooks of the tackle, and his hearty voice rings out gently:

"T'm considered a thief, yes, Iadmit I am one! But then who isn't? They all live by plunder, all suck and gnaw at one another. Yes — yes — God doesn't love us, it's only the devil who does!"

The black river crawls in front of us, black clouds glide above it and in the darkness one fails to see the meadowed coast. The waves cautiously shuffle against the sand of the shore and sweep at my feet as though drawing me away with them in the fathomless, sailing darkness. "One must live, mustn't one?" asks Migun, sighing.

In the hill, a dog howls mournfully. As in a dream, I wonder: "Why should such as you live as you do?"

It is very still on the river, very black and weird. And there seems to be no end to that warm darkness.

"They will kill the Khokhol. And you, too, if you don't look out!" mutters Migun, then all of a sudden, he gently starts a song.

"My mother loved me, yes, she did — and she often said

My darling son, you heart of mine, live your life in POI pia

He closes his eyes, his voice rings out stronger and

sadder and his fingers, pulling at the string of the

tackle, move more slowly.

"I did not listen to the dear one, No, I did not listen..."

I am seized with a queer sensation: as though the earth, stirred by the heavy motion of the dark, liquid space, Overturns in it and [I slide and fall from the earth into the darkness, where the sun has sunk down for ever.

Having stopped singing as suddenly as he began, Migun silently pushes the boat into the water, and sitting down in it, noiselessly disappears in the black shadows. I follow him with a glance and think again: "Why do such people live?"

I was on very friendly terms too, with Barinoff, an absurd fellow, a lazy boaster, a gossip and a restless vagabond. He had lived in Moscow and spoke of it with disgust:

"A hell of a town. Absurd it is. Fourteen thousand and six churches in it — and the people — all swindlers — and all have the itch, just like horses, honour bright! Merchants and army men and citizens — all of them, like one man, go about and scratch

themselves. It is true there is a big gun, there, called the Tsar-Cannon — a huge instrument it is. Peter the Great he cast it himself, to shoot at the rioters; a woman, a noble one, raised a revolt against him because of her love for him. He lived with her exactly seven years, day for day, and then left her with three children. She flew into a temper — and — on with a revolt! — And, my boy, he gave them 'what for' from that cannon — in one shot down went nine thousand three hundred and eight men! — He got frightened himself about it and said to Philaret the archbishop: let us close it up, the damned thing, to escape temptation! — So they closed it up..."

I tell him that this is all nonsense — and he gets angry:

"My heavens, what a nasty temper you've got. I got this story from a learned man and you ..."

He also had been to Kiev, to see the saints, and described it like this:

"That town — is like our village. It also stands on a hill and — there is a river, only I've forgotten its name: a pool it is to compare with the Volga. The town is a tangled one to say the truth. All the streets in it are crooked and all go uphill. The people are Khokhols, not of the same blood as Mikheilo Antonovich though, but a half-Polish, half-Tartar one. They cackle instead of speaking. An uncombed and unwashed folk they are. They eat frogs — frogs there weigh about ten pounds each. They ride on oxen and plough with them too. Their oxen are wonderful ones, the smallest is about four times as big as ours are. Three hundred and twenty-two poods of weight. — They have there fifty-seven thousand monks and two

hundred seventy-three bishops...You fool! How can you contradict? I've seen it all with my own eyes and you, have you been there? No. — Well, there you are. I, my dear man, like precision better than anything else." He liked ciphers — I had taught him to add them up and multiply them — but he hated division. He multiplied complicated numbers with enthusiasm, bravely made mistakes over them and, having written a long line of ciphers on the sand with a stick, watched it in amazement, opening wide his childish eyes and exclaiming: "No one can even pronounce such a thing!"

He is an ungainly person, dishevelled and torn, but his face is very nearly handsome and his blue eyes, in a curly, merry beard, smile with the smile of a child. There is a certain likeness between him and Kukushkin, and probably because of that they steadily keep apart.

Barinoff has been twice on the Caspian Sea to catch fish and raves about it:

"The sea, my boy, is not like anything else! You are like a — midge next to it. You watch it — and it is as though you weren't there! — And life is very sweet thereabouts. Every kind of people gather near it, even an archbishop got there once — and worked, too, like the others. — A cook I saw there too; she lived as a mistress to the judge — what more could she want, do you think? Well, no, she couldn't stand it and said to him: I like you very much, my judge, but all the same: good-bye. For — who has once seen the sea is drawn to it again. There is space in the sea. No throng, just like in the skies. — I too will go there one day, for ever. You see, I don't like to have people

about me. — I ought to have lived as an hermit, in the desert — but there, I don't know any decent deserts. ...' He roamed about the village like a homeless dog, he was despised, but one listened to his stories with as much pleasure as to the songs of Migun.

He was clever at lying. Very amusing it was to listen to him.

His stories sometimes confused even such sober-minded people as Pankoy. One day that mistrustful peasant told the Khokhol:

"Barinoff says that not all has been written in books about Grossny — a lot has been concealed. He says Grossny was a were-wolf and used to turn into an eagle — from that time one coins eagles on money — in his honour, that is."

I noticed — how many times? that everything unusual and phantastical, however far from the truth it might be — appeals to people much more than serious stories of actual life.

But when I spoke of this to the Khokhol, he used to say, laughing:

"People will get over that! What is wanted is that they should learn to think and they'll soon find out the truth. And those odd dreamers like Barinoff, Kukushkin, you must understand them. They are — artists, inventors — I think Christ must have been an odd dreamer like that — And you must admit that some of the things he invented were not bad... ."

It surprised me that all these people spoke little and unwillingly of God — only old Susloff remarked often and with conviction '"Everything — comes from God!" And always in those words there sounded something

"helpless to me. It was good to live among those peo-

ple and I learnt a lot from them in those nights of discussion. It seemed to me that every question put by Romass dug its roots into the flesh of life, like a powerful tree; there in its depths, those roots entangled themselves with the roots of another equally ancient tree and on every branch thoughts bloomed dazzlingly and the leaves of resounding words flourished in splendour. — I felt my own growth, due to the intoxicating honey of books; I knew I could speak with more assurance and the Khokhol often used to praise me, with a smile:

"Bravo! You get on splendidly, Maximich."

How grateful I was to him for these words!

Sometimes Pankov used to bring his wife with him. She was a small woman with a meek face and a clever look in her dark blue eyes and was dressed in "'town" dress. She would sit down quietly in a corner, modestly pursing her lips together, but very soon her mouth would open wide and her eyes stare in wonder and fear — And sometimes it happened that hearing a strong retort, she would cover her face with her hands, laughing in confusion. Pankov, at this, would wink to Romass, saying:

"She understands, by Jove!"

Some markedly prudent people used to come to see Romass: he would go with them to my attic and sit there for hours.

Axinia served them their food and drink there; they slept there too, unseen by anybody except myself and the cook, who like a dog was devoted to Romass and worshipped him. In the nights Isot and Pankov would drive those people away in their boats

to the ship passing by or to the harbour in Lobishki. I watched from the top of the hill, how on the black, or, if there was moonlight — silvery river glided the lentiform boat, above it flashed the light of a lantern, attracting the attention of the captain of the ship — I watched this and felt myself to be a participator in a great and mysterious undertaking. — Maria Derenkova used also to come sometimes from the town, but I did not find again in her eyes the look which had troubled me so before. Her eyes seemed to me now the eyes of a young girl, happy in the consciousness of her charm and glad to feel that the big bearded man was in love with her. — He spoke to her just as quietly as he did to others, also just as mockingly, but he stroked his beard oftener than usual and his eyes shone with a warmer light. Her fine voice rang out gaily, she was all dressed in blue, with a blue ribbon in her fair hair. — Her childish hands were strangely restless — as though they were searching for something to get hold of. She was continually humming something without opening her mouth, and fanning her rosy, melting face with a handkerchief. There was something in her that troubled me in a new way, angrily and inimically, and I tried to come together with her as rarely as possible.

In the middle of July — Isot disappeared. It was said that he was drowned, and in a few days the rumour was confirmed. About seven versts beyond the village, towards the pastured coast, his canoe was driven towards the shore with a fractured bottom and a broken stern. The misfortune was explained thus: Isot must have gone to sleep on the river and his boat

had been driven towards the wash of the three barges which rode at anchor, some five versts from the village.

Romass was in Kazan when this happened. In the evening Kukushkin came to the shop, dismally sat on the sacks, silently stared at his feet, then, lighting a cigarette, asked me:

"When is the Khokhol coming here?'

"I don't know."

He rubbed his bruised face very hard with his palm, gently swearing in the worst possible language and growling like a dog with a bone stuck in its throat.

"What's the matter?"

He watched me, biting his lips. His eyes were red, his jaw trembled. Seeing that he was unable to speak from emotion I waited anxiously to hear some sad news. At last, looking out on the street, he uttered with an effort, stumbling over his words:

"T've been to see the boat. Together with Migun. Isot's boat. The bottom's been broken through with an axe. See? That means Isot's been killed. Killed! — Sure of that I am... ."

And shaking his head, he began stringing on strong words one after another, stifling with hot, suppressed tears, then, growing silent, began crossing himself. — It was unbearable to watch how that man wanted to sob and could not. He did not know how and sat trembling, smothered by grief and anger. He then jumped up and rushed away, still shaking his head.

The next day some urchins out bathing found Isot under the broken barge, which had landed on the shore a little higher than the village. Half of its bottom lay on the stones of the coast, the other was

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS SI

still in the water and under it, near the stern, hanging on the bended hollows of the rudder, was stretched face downwards the long body of Isot with an empty, fractured skull: the water had swept the brain matter away. The fisherman had been struck a blow from behind, the nape of his neck was as though hewed off with a hatchet. The stream of the river shook him about, throwing his legs to the shore and dangling his arms — it seemed as though he was straining all his strength in the attempt to scramble on to the coast.

Gruffly and morosely about twenty rich peasants stood on the shore — the poor had not yet returned from the field. The bailiff, a thievish, cowardly little old man, was bustling about, brandishing a crook, snorting and wiping his nose with the sleeve of his rose shirt. Standing with his feet spread wide apart and a protruding belly, the stumpy little shop-keeper Kusmin watched the mournful picture, glancing from Kukushkin on to me. He was frowning sternly but his colourless eyes were misty with tears and his pock-marked face seemed to me pitiful.