My Universities
"My goodness, what a misfortune!" lamented the bailiff, mincing about with his crooked feet. "You, peasants, how wrong all this is!" His daughter-inlaw, a plump young woman, sat on a stone and looked dully at the water, making the sign of the cross with a trembling hand; her lips moved incessantly, the lower one, thick and red, hung down like a dog's, disclosing the yellow teeth of a sheep. Like coloured snow-heaps crowds of girls and children rolled from the hill; dusty peasants strode along hastily in our direction.
The crowd growled cautiously and not loudly:
"A quarrelsome peasant he was...
"How's that?"
"That is more in Kukushkin's line . .
"The man's been killed for no reason whatever wan
"Isot was a quiet man."
"Quiet?" roared Kukushkin, rushing at them, "Then what did you kill him for, eh? You... skunks!"
Suddenly one heard the hysterical laugh of a woman and her wail struck the crowd like a whip — the peasants shouted, pressing on to each other, growling and swearing, and Kukushkin jumping up to the shop-keeper struck him a blow on his rough cheek with a swing of the palm.
"Here, get this, you dog!"
Brandishing his fists, he pushed out of the brawl and gaily shouted to me: "Get out, there's going to be some fighting!"
He had been struck already, and was spitting blood from his torn lip but his face shone with indescribable pleasure..."Did you see how I punched Kusmin? ..." Barinoff ran up to us, looking in terror at the crowd round the barge that had been gathered into a thick heap from which came the thin voice of the bailiff: "No, you're going to prove to me, to whom is it that I am indulgent. Prove it to me?"
"We must get away from here," grumbled Barinoff, turning to go uphill. The evening was sultry, an oppressive heat prevented one from breathing. The purple sun sank into thick, bluish clouds, its crimson reflection flashed on the green of the bushes. Somewhere afar rattled thunder.
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The body of Isot moved in front of me, and on his fractured skull the hairs, straightened by the stream, stood upright. I remembered his low smothered voice, his fine words:
"Every man has a lot of the child in him. That is what one must go at — — Take the Khokhol: he seems to be made of iron, and his soul is a child's soul."
Kukushkin, walking at my side, muttered angrily:
"We'll all be done for, like he has been done for. . - - My God, how darned stupid it all is!"
The Khokhol came two days later, late at night, apparently very pleased with something, peculiarly affectionate. When I let him inside the hut, he slapped me on the shoulder:
"You sleep too little, Maximich."
"Isot has been killed."
"Wha-at 2?"
His cheek bones swelled up in bumps and his beard trembled like a stream, flowing onto his chest. Without taking off his cap, he stopped in the middle of the room, his eyes half-closed, shaking his head. "'So. One doesn't know who did it? No, of course .. ."
He slowly came up to the window and sat down there, stretching out his feet. |
"I told him so...Has the police been?"
"Yesterday the policeman came."
'Well, and ...2?" he asked, and answered to himself: 'Nothing, of course!"
I told him that the policeman. had stopped as usual at Kusmin's house and had ordered Kukushkin to be put under arrest for having given the shop-keeper a blow in the face. "So. Well, what can one say to
that?" I went to the kitchen to put the kettle to boil.
At tea, Romass was saying:
"One pities those people — they kill the best men they've got. One might think they were afraid of them. As they say here, 'it's no place' for them. — . When I was marched off to Siberia — one of the convicts told me the following story: he used to live on plunder and had a gang of five men under him. One of them said to the others one day: look here, fellows, let's drop this thieving business, — nothing comes of it, we lead a poor life. And they strangled him for that one day, when he was sleeping after having got drunk. The one who told me the story praised him very much, he owned to have killed three men after this occasion, without any remorse whatever, but this comrade he regrets until this day, he was such a good friend, so clever and gay, such an honest soul, too. — 'But there was nothing to be done — one couldn't go on living with him, he, the one righteous man among sinners. It was no good... ."
The Khokhol got up and began walking up and down the room, his hands folded behind his back, holding a pipe between his teeth, all dressed in white in a long Tartar shirt reaching to the soles. — Stepping firmly with his bare feet on the ground, he spoke in low and thoughtful tones, as though conversing with himself.
"How often I've knocked against this fear of the righteous person, this desire to banish a good man from life. There are two ways of treating such people: either they are systematically hunted and exterminated in every way — or else one looks up to them
MY UNIVERSITY DAYS a
in a dog-like fashion and crawls on one's belly before them. This happens more rarely though. But never does one try and learn how to live from them, never does one attempt to imitate them. — They can't do it. — Or, perhaps, they do not want to?"
He lifted his glass of cold tea and said:
"Yes, they can, but they won't. Just think of that: people have organised this kind of life for themselves and with tremendous efforts have grown used to it — and suddenly someone appears and revolts: no, you live in the wrong way. In the wrong way? — But, confound you, we've put into this life all our best strength and all our efforts! And — down with the righteous teacher! — Don't come troubling us! Although surely, the vital truth lies with those who say: "You live in the wrong way.' Yes, the truth is with them. And it is they who are leading life to perfection." And pointing to the shelf with books, he added:
"Those especially! — Ah! if only I could write a book! — But I can't do it — my thoughts are too heavy and ungainly."
He sat down to the table, leant on it with his elbow, and, pressing his head between his hands, said:
"What a pity it is about Isot. .. ."
And remained sitting like that a long time, in silence.
"Well, let us go to bed now... ."
I went up to my attic and sat down by the window. Over the fields flashed sparkles of heat-lightning, embracing half of the skies — it seemed as though the moon shivered in terror when the transparent reddish gleams transpierced the clouds. — Dogs howled and
barked in a frenzy, and were it not for this howling one might have thought oneself on a desert island. — The thunder rumbled from afar and a stream of hot, oppressive air poured in through the window.
I saw in front of me the body of Isot — lying on the shore, under the bushes of willow. His blue face was turned towards the sky, and the glassy eyes looked sternly into their own depths. The golden beard stuck out in sharp clots and concealed the mouth — which was half-opened in a kind of amazement.
I thought I could hear him say:
"Kindness, tenderness, Maximich, that's what is wanted, most of all' — I love Easter, because it is the gentlest feast of the year!" To his blue legs, washed very carefully by the Volga, the blue trousers clung, dried by the hot sun. Flies hummed over the fisherman's face and a stupefying nauseous smell emanated from his body...I heard heavy steps on the' stairs; Romass, bending in the doorway, came in, sat down on my cot and, gathering his beard in his hand, said:
"You know, I'm going to get married! Yes, J am!"
"It will be hard for a woman to live here." He looked at me intently, waiting for me to say something more. But I could not find anything more to say tohim. The reflections of heat-lightning invaded the room, flooding it with a phantom-like glimmer.
"I am going to marry Masha Derenkova. .. ." I could not help smiling: up to that minute the idea never came into my head that one might call that girl — Masha. It seemed funny. I did not remember whether her father and brothers ever called her that.
"Why do you laugh?"
MY UNIVERSITY DAYS LF
"Nothing in particular."
"You think I'm too old for her?"
"Oh, no!"
"She told me that you had been in love with her."
"Yes, I think I was.'
"And now? Has it passed?"
"Yes, I think so."
He let go his beard and spoke gently:
"At your age one often thinks to be in love, but at mine — one doesn't think of it any more — one is simply seized by that feeling and one thinks of nothing else, one has no strength for anything else..."
And, showing his strong white teeth, he went on: "Antony lost the battle of Actium to Octavius because, abandoning his fleet and the command of it, he sailed away on his ship, following Cleopatra, who had got frightened and had retired from the battle — You see the things that can happen sometimes from love!"
He stood up, straightened himself out and repeated as one acting against his own will:
"So that's how it is, 'm going to get fratried #2
"Soon?"
"Tn the autumn. As soon as I've finished with the apples."
- He went away, bending his head under the door-
way lower than was necessary, and I went to bed, thinking that I would do better by going away from here in the autumn. — Why had he spoken of Antony? I did not like that at all.
In the first days of August, Romass came from Kazan with a cargo-boat carrying fresh goods and another one loaded with hamper. It was in the morning, on a week-day, at about eight o'clock. The
Khokhol had just had time to change his dress and wash and was sitting down to have some tea, saying gaily:
'How fine it is to sail on the river at night... ." And sniffled all of a sudden, asking anxiously: "Tsp £ there a smell of smoke about?' And at that same moment rang out Axinia's cry:
"wire!"
We rushed to the yard — the wall of the shed was burning on the side of the orchard, we kept some petroleum there, and tar and oil. For a few seconds we stared, dumbfounded, at the yellow tongues of fire, discoloured by the glare of the sun, that were busily licking the wall and passing on to the roof.
Axinia brought a bucket of water, the Khokhol flung it on the burning wall, then threw it down and said:
"Confound it! Get out the barrels, Maximich. Axinia, you go into the shop!"
I rolled out rapidly a barrel of tar into the yard and further on to the street and was going to do the same with petroleum, but as I grabbed at the barrel I saw that it had been opened and the petroleum was pouring out to the earth — While I searched for the stopper, the fire did not wait, its sharp wedges penetrated through the boards of the shed, the roof cracked and something hissed mockingly about. Rolling out the half-filled barrel, I noticed that along the street women and children were rushing, clamouring and shouting — The Khokhol and Axinia were dragging the goods out of the shop, dropping them into the ravine, and in the middle of the street stood a black, grey-haired old woman who, shaking her fist, shouted shrilly:
"Ah! The d-d-devils!"
Again running back to the shed, I found it already filled with smoke in which something droned and cracked; crimson ribbons hung down in a winding like from the roof, and the wall had already become like a red-hot grate. The smoke smothered and blinded me, I hardly had the strength to roll the barrel to the door, where it got stuck and I could not push it along, for sparkles fell down on me from the roof, scalding my skin. I cried for help and the Khokhol rushed to me, grabbed me by the arm and dragged ~ me into the yard.
"Run away! It will blow up in a moment!"
He rushed to the entrance and I followed him, running upstairs to my attic, where lay all my books. Thrusting them out of the window, I wanted to do the same with a case of caps, but the window was too narrow for it and I began pushing out the posts with a balance-weight. Then came a dull thud, something streamed on to the roof. I understood that it was the barrel of petroleum that had exploded, the roof above me flared up and cracked sinisterly, a red stream of fire flamed past the window, peering into it and it became unbearably hot. I rushed to the staircase — thick clouds of smoke mounted up to me and purple serpents crawled on the steps. Downstairs one heard a crackling, as though iron teeth were gnawing at wood. I lost my head. Blinded by the smoke and smothering from it, I stood motionless for several seconds. Inside the dormer-window, over the stairs, peered a red-bearded yellow snout, and, convulsively distorted, disappeared, while the roof was pierced by the bloody spears of flames. I remember — it seemed
to me that the hairs on my head were cracking and I could hear no other sound but that; I knew I was dying, my legs grew as heavy as lead and my eyes smarted, although I had covered them with my hands.
The wise instinct of life whispered to me the only way to salvation: I grabbed together my mattress, my pillow and a heap of bast, wrapped my head in the sheepskin coat of Romass and — jumped out of the window.
I came to my senses on the edge of the ravine. Romass was kneeling at my side and shouting:
"Well?"
I got on to my feet, watching, in a stunned way, how our hut was thawing away, all in crimson filings, while angry tongues licked the black earth round it. The windows breathed with black smoke and yellow flowers grew vacillating on the roof.
"Well, what?" cried the Khokhol. His face, bathed in sweat, covered with soot, was flooded with dirty tears, his eyes winked in terror and some bast had entangled itself in his beard. I was seized by a wave of refreshing joy, by a huge and powerful sensation — then came a burning pain in my left foot and I lay down, saying to the Khokhol:
"Tve sprained my foot."
He examined my foot, and pulled at it suddenly; I was flooded with a sharp pain, and a minute later, drunk with joy, although limping a little, was carrying to our bath-house the rescued things, while Romass, a pipe between his teeth, said gaily:
"I was sure you would be burnt alive, when the barrel exploded and the petroleum flowed to the roof. The fire rose like a pillar, high up in the air, then
a large mushroom grew in the sky and the whole hut was suddenly buried in fire. Well, I thought, it's up with my Maximich!"'
He was already as calm as ever, carefully putting the things together in a heap and saying to the dishevelled and slovenly Axinia: "Sit here and watch this, so as they shouldn't steal it all, and I will go to help putting it out... ."
In the smoke over the ravine glided white leaves of paper.
"Oh," said Romass, "how I regret the books! They were so dear to me, those books!"
Four huts were already on fire. The day was a windless one and the fire advanced without hurry — spreading to right and left, its flexible hooks catching as though unwillingly at the hedges and roofs. The red-hot crests grabbed at the straw on the houses, the crooked fingers of blood ran over the hedges as though playing on the strings of a dulcimer, in the smoky air rang out the wailing, malevolent and glaring song of the flames and the soft, tender crackling of thawing wood. Golden "rooks" fell, out of the clouds of smoke, on to the street and the yards, men and women bustled about aimlessly, all of them anxious only for their own possessions, and everywhere resounded incessantly the wailing cry:
"Wa-a-ter!"
The water was far away, at the bottom of the hill, in the Volga. Romass gathered promptly all the peasants into a heap, grabbing them by the shoulders, pushing them about, then divided them into two groups and ordered them to hew down the hedges and sheds on both sides of the region gained by fire. — He was
obeyed implacably and then began a more reasonable struggle with the steady aim of the fire to devour all the "order," the whole street. — But the people nevertheless worked in a kind of fear and so hopelessly, as though they were doing somebody else's job.
I was in indescribably joyful spirits and felt myself stronger than ever. At the end of the street I noticed a circle of rich peasants with the bailiff and Kusmin at their head, who were standing about, doing nothing, like an audience, brandishing hands and sticks and shouting. Some peasants came riding on horses from the field, elbows in the air, women met them with clamours, urchins rushed about with shrill cries.
The fire had gained the sheds of another yard and one had to hurry up, disjointing the wall of the stable, plaited out of thick branches and already adorned with the crimson ribbons of flames. The men began to saw at the stakes of the wattle, sparks and coals flowed on them and they jumped away, rubbing with their palms their burning shirts.
"Don't funk!" cried the Khokhol. This did not help. Then he grabbed some one's cap off, shoved it onto my head:
"Saw at the other side and I will go at it here!"
I sawed off one, then two stakes, the wall shook, I scrambled onto it, grabbing at its crest, while the Khokhol pulled me by the legs to the ground and the whole wattle fell down, covering me up nearly completely. The peasants dragged together all the hedge into the street.
"Are you hurt?" asked Romass. His solicitudes augmented my strength and my agility. I wanted to distinguish myself before this man who was so dear
to me, and I worked in a frenzy only to get a word of praise from him. And in the clouds of smoke the pages of our books continued flying like pigeons.
From the right side we succeeded in preventing the fire spreading, but to the left it went further and further, invading already the tenth yard. Leaving a few peasants to watch the craftiness of the crimson serpents, Romass moved the majority to the left side. Rushing past the wealthy loafers, I heard someone exclaiming maliciously:
"It's arson!"
And the shop-keeper added:
"We ought to have a look at his bath-house..."
These words stuck unpleasantly in my mind.-
It is known that stimulation, and a joyful one particularly, increases one's strength...I was in a state of glad enthusiasm and worked self-denyingly for a long time, then finally broke down, completely exhausted. I remember sitting on the ground, leaning against something hot. Romass was pouring water on me from a bucket and the peasants surrounding us muttered respectfully:
"The child's got some strength!"
"This one's no traitor!"
I pressed my head to Romass's foot and shamelessly burst into tears while he stroked my wet hair, saying:
"Now, now, that's enough, you must have a rest!"
Kukushkin and Barinoff, both looking like smoked devils, led me to the ravine, consoling me on the way:
"It's all right, my lad! It's all up now!"
"Got scared?" I did not have time to rest and come to my senses, when I saw about ten "Creesuses,"' with the bailiff, de-
scending into the ravine, towards our bath-house. Two soldiers were leading Romass, holding him by the hands.
He was hatless, the sleeve of his wet shirt was torn off and his pipe was pressed between his teeth; his brows were knitted together and his face was terrible. The soldier Kostin, brandishing a stick, cried frantically:
"Into the fire, the heretic soul!'
"Unlock the bath-house."
"Break the lock, the key has been lost,"' Romass said loudly.
I jumped to my feet, seized a stick from the ground and stood at his side. The soldiers moved away and the bailiff wailed in terror:
"Look here, Christian souls, it is not allowed to break locks!"
Kusmin pointed to me, shouting:
"And him, too! Who's he?'
"Be calm, Maximich,"' Romass was saying. "They think that I hid the goods in the bath-house and set the fire to the shop myself..."
"Both of you!"
"Break it open!"
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"We'll answer. for lite. .-5
Romass whispered to me:
"Stand with your back to mine, so as they shouldn't strike from behind..."
The lock was broken, several people pushed themselves promptly inside and immediately crept back, while I profited by the occasion to hand my stick to Romass and lift another one from the ground.
"There's nothing there..."
"Nothing?"
"Devils, they are!"
Someone said timidly:
"Look here, peasants, stop that." — And in answer to this came the sound of fierce, drunken voices:
"Why stop it?"
"Into the fire with him!"
"The rioters!"
"Starting workmen's companies!"
"Thieves! And all their friends are thieves!"
"Shut up!" Romass shouted out loudly. ''You've seen, haven't you, that I have no goods hidden in my bath-house — what more do you want? Everything is burnt down, you see what has remained? What profit can I have in ee the fire to my property?"
"It's insured."
And again about a dozen voices roared furiously:
'What are we looking at them for?"
"Enough of that! We've had enough to bear!
My legs trembled and things grew dim in my eyes. Through a reddish fog I saw ferocious snouts with the hairy holes of the mouths staring on them, and struggled with an invincible desire to thrash these people to death. And they roared, jumping around us:
"Ah, they've got hold of sticks!"
"With sticks, eh?"
"They're sure to pull off my beard," said the Khokhol, and I felt that he was smiling. "And you'll get some licking too, Maximich; yes, you will! But
keep calm, keep calm."
-"Look out, the young one has a hatchet!"
It was true, I had a carpenter's hatchet staring out of the belt of my trousers, and I had entirely forgotten about it.
"They seem to be funking it," considered Romass; "however, don't you act with your hatchet, if things come to a point."
An unknown crippled little peasant yelped shrilly, jumping on one leg:
"With bricks at them from afar! Out with them!"
He actually seized a fragment of a brick and flung it at my stomach, but before I had time to reply to him Kukushkin flew at him from above like a hawk and, embracing each other, they rolled together into the ravine. Behind Kukushkin came Pankov, Barinoff, the smith, and about a dozen men more, and immediately Kusmin began speaking in a steadier tone: "You, Mikheilo Antonovich, you're a clever man; you know that fire drives a peasant mad... ."
"Come on, Maximich, let us go to the public-house on the shore," said Romass, and, taking the pipe out of his mouth, stuck it with a sharp movement into the pocket of his trousers. Helping himself on with a stick, he crawled out of the ravine, and when Kusmin, walking at his side, went on saying something to him, he replied, without looking at him:
"Get out, you idiot!"
On the spot where our hut used to stand a golden heap of coals was smouldering; in the middle of it stood the stove, and from its chimney, which had been spared, rose in the hot air a bluish smoke. The red-hot rods of the cot stuck out like the claws of a spider. — The carbonised wherries of the gate stood by the wood-pile like black sentries: one of them in a crim-
a i a
son hat of coals and in sparkles resembling a cock's feathers.
"Yes, the books are all burnt," said the Khokhol with a sigh. "What a pity... ."
Urchins drove big fire-brands like pigs into the mud of the street with sticks; they hissed and glowed, filling the air with a white thick smoke. A young boy, about five years old, white-haired and blue-eyed, sitting in a warm black pool, drummed with a stick on a bucket, intently admiring the sounds of wood striking iron. The victims of the fire were marching about gloomily, gathering the rescued objects. In the gardens behind the scene of the fire, trees stood motionless, their leaves had reddened from the heat and the number of pink apples was more perceptible.
We went down to the river, bathed in it and then sat down in silence to drink our tea in a public-house on the shore.
"All the same, the engrossers have lost their case in regards to the apples," remarked Romass. Pankov joined us, he was thoughtful and more soft than usual.
"Well, my friend?" said the Khokhol. Pankov shrugged his shoulders:
"My hut was insured."
- We sat in silence, watching each other searchingly in a peculiar fashion, as though strangers to each other.
"What will you do now, Mikheilo Antonovich?"
"T'll think it over."
"You ought to get away from here."
SE ib see."
"T've got a plan," said Pankov. "Let's go outside and talk it over."
They went. In the doorway Pankov turned round
and said to me:
"There's no saying you're a timid one! You can live here all right, they'll be afraid of you!"
I also went out to the shore and lay down under the bushes, watching the river. It was hot, although the sun was sinking westwards. In a wide roll — all that I had lived through in this village was spread out in front of me, as though painted in vivid colours on the tract of the river. I felt a queer sadness filling my heart. But soon fatigue overcame me, and I fell sound asleep.
"Hullo!" I heard as in a dream, feeling that I was being shaken and dragged somewhere. "Are you dead or what? Wake up!"
Beyond the river over the meadows shone a purple
moon, as large as a wheel. I saw Barinoff bending over me, shaking me by the shoulder:
"Come on, the Khokhol is anxious, he is looking for you."
Walking behind me he grumbled: "You can't go to sleep like that, anywhere. Anyone passing by might stumble and throw a stone at you. And he might do it on purpose, too. People, my dear lad, are always ready to remember evil. They've got nothing else to remember, so to say."
In the bushes on the shore some one was bustling about; the branches rustled. "Have you found him?" asked the resounding voice of Migun.
"I'm bringing him," replied Barinoff. And, as we went on, he said, sighing: "He's out stealing fish. Migun, too, hasn't. got an easy life..."
Romass met me with angry reproach: "What are
you roaming about for? Do you want to be thrashed 2"
And as we remained alone, he said softly and gloomily:
"Pankov proposes that you should remain with him. He wants to start a shop here. I don't advise you to accept. As to myself — lI've sold everything that remained to him, will go to Viatka and in a short time will write to you to come and join me. Does that suit you?"
SLi think'of it...."
"Right."
He lay down on the floor, tossed about a little and then remained silent. I sat by the window, looking at the Volga.
"Are you angry with the peasants?" Romass asked sleepily. "You mustn't be. They are only silly. Anger is silliness."
Those words did not console me, they could not smooth down my fury and the sharpness of the offense. I continually saw in front of me the beastly hairy mouths — vomiting an evil yelping: 'With bricks at them from afar!"
At that time I did not possess the capacity of forgetting all that I did not need to remember. Yes, I perceived of course that in each of those men, taken apart, there was very little wickedness, sometimes none. They were at least good-natured beasts, it was not difficult to make any of them smile with the smile of a child, listen with a child's confidence to your stories on the search for intellect and happiness, in the great deeds of magnanimity. To the queer soul of these people everything that rouses the dream of
an easy life, submitted to laws of personal will, is always very dear.
But when those people gather in a grey heap in village meetings or in the public-house on the shore, they conceal all that is good in them and array themselves like priests in the chasubles of lies and hypocrisy — they display a dog-like sneakiness before the strong and then it is repulsive to look at them. Or else — all of a sudden they are seized by a wolf-like fierceness, bristling up and showing their teeth, they roar furiously at each other, they are ready to fight and do fight — over a trifle; in those moments they are terrible and can destroy the same church into which they went last night as meekly as sheep into a sty. They have among them some poets and storytellers — but they are loved by nobody and live as the laughing-stocks of the village, without help and subject to general contempt. I do not know how to live with such people, I cannot live with them. And I stated all these bitter thoughts to Romass on the day of our parting. "It is a premature deduction," he remarked with reproach.
"But what am I to do if it has formed itself in my mind?' — "'It isn't right. It is unfounded." He tried to convince me with a lot of fine words that I was wrong and mistaken.
"Do not be in a hurry to condemn. It is very easy to condemn — do not run away with that kind of thing. Watch everything with calm, remembering one thing: everything passes, everything changes for the better! Too slowly you find? But then so much the more lasting. Look into every corner, feel all that you come into contact with, be fearless, but — do
not be in a hurry to condemn. Good-bye, my dear friend! We'll soon meet again!"
The next meeting took place fifteen years later in Sedletz after Romass had gone through ten more years of exile in the Jakoutsk district, for the case of the "narodopravtzi."
I was seized by a leaden melancholy when he left Krasnovidovo. I roamed about like a puppy that had lost its master. We walked about with Barinoff in the villages, worked for rich peasants, thrashed corn, dug potatoes, cleaned the gardens. I lived in his bath-house.
"Lexei Maximich, you chief without an army, how is it to be, eh?" he asked me on a rainy night. "Shall we go to the sea to-morrow? By God, that would be the right thing to do! What do we want here? They don't like such folk as we are, in this place. And one day, if we don't look out, after a drunken Daw: an"
It was not the first time that he spoke to me of this. He, too, had grown melancholy for some reason, his monkey-like hands hung weakly, and he looked gloomily around as a man lost in a wood.
The rain flapped at the window-panes of the bath-house, a stream of water ran into the corner of the room and flowed fiercely down from it to the bottom of the ravine.
The pale lightning of a recent storm flashed feebly on the sky.
Barinoff said softly:
"Shall we go, eh? To-morrow?'
And we went.
It is indescribably beautiful to sail on the Volga on an autumn night, sitting on the stern of the barge, at the rudder, which is steered by a hairy monster with a huge head — he steers, trampling his thick feet on the deck and sighing heavily:
"Hallo-o-up! Ha-rr-o — !"
Beyond the stern the water ripples like silk and softly splashes, thick like resin and knowing no bounds. Over the river glide the black clouds of the autumn. All around there exists only the slow stream of darkness, it has rubbed out the shores and it seems as though the whole earth has melted in it and has become something smoky and liquid, incessantly and continually flowing down into a dumb, deserted space, where there is neither sun, nor moon, nor stars. In front of us, in the damp darkness, the steam-tug heavily flutters and pants about, struggling against the elastic force that is drawing it. Three lights — two just above the water and one very high up over them — follow it; nearer to me, under the clouds, swim like golden crucians four other ones — one of them is the light of the lantern on the stern of our barge.
I feel myself confined in a cold, oily bubble; it glides softly on a sloping plane, while I am stuck into it like a midge. It seems to me that the movement gradually slows down, and that the moment is near when it will stop quite. The ship will cease growling and flapping with the rods of its wheels on the thick waters; all the sounds will fall off, like leaves off a tree; they will be rubbed out like inscriptions in chalk and the immobility and the silence will wrap me up imperiously.
And the big man in.a torn sheepskin coat and in
a shagged sheepskin hat, that is marching about near the rudder, will also stop motionless, spellbound for ever, and will not growl any more: Hul-lo-up ...
I asked him what his name was.
"What do you want to know it for?" he replied in a smothered voice.
At sunset, as we sailed away from Kazan, I noticed that this man, clumsy as a bear, had a hairy, eyeless face. Placing himself at the steer, he poured a bottle of vodka into a wooden jug, drank it up in two gulps as though it were water and ate an apple on the top of it. And when the steam-tug pulled at the barge, this man, seizing the lever of the rudder, glanced at the red circle of the sun and, shaking his head with a jolt, said sternly: "God bless us!"
The ship is leading from the fair in Nijni to Astrakhan four barges loaded with crude iron, barrels of sugar and some other heavy cases — all this for Persia. Barinoff knocked at the cases with his foot, inhaled the smell, reflected a while and said:
"It's nothing else but rifles from the Ijev facoe a
But the man at the wheel digs a fist into his belly and asks:
"What business is it of yours?"
"In my thoughts..."
"And do you want to get it in the face?"
We have no money to pay for our travelling-fare; we are taken on the barge "out of kindness," and although we keep watch, just like the sailors, all the people on the barge look upon us as on_ beggars. "And you talk about people ..." Barinoff reproaches "me. "It is all a question of who is saddled first..."
The darkness is so thick that one fails to see the barges, one only perceives the spears of the masts on the background of smoky clouds, illuminated by the lights of the lanterns. The clouds smell of naphtha. The gloomy silence of the steersman exasperates me. I have been appointed by the boatsman to watch on the steerage and to help this animal. Following the movement of the lights, at the turnings, he says to me softly:
"Look out!"
I jump up and turn the lever of the rudder.
"That's right," he growls.
I sit down again on the deck. There is no way of talking to that man, he answers in questions:
"What business is it of yours?" What is he thinking about? As we passed the spot where the yellow waters of the Kama flow into the steel track of the Volga, he looked towards the north and growled:
"Skunk!"
"Who is?"
He did not answer.
Far away, somewhere in the abyss of darkness, dogs are howling and barking. That reminds one of some fragments of one's life, which the darkness has not yet crushed. It all seems unattainably far and useless.
"There are bad dogs here," says suddenly the man at the wheel.
_'Where — here?"
"Everywhere. Our dog is a real beast.: . ."
"Where are you from?"
'Vologda."
And like potatoes from a rended sack, grey and heavy words poured out:
"Who's that with you — an uncle? He's a dunce, to my mind. My uncle's a clever one. A dashing fellow. Rich, too. He's got a harbour in Simbirsk — and a public house on shore."
He pronounced all this slowly and with an effort, then stared with imperceptible eyes at the mast-lantern of the ship, watching how it crawled in the net of the darkness like a golden spider.
"Give it a tum... you. ...... Can you: read? Do you know who is it who writes the laws?"
He does not wait for an answer and continues:
"Some say one thing! That it's the Tsar. Others say: it's the Archbishop Senate. If I knew for sure who it is ''d goto him. Id tell him: you write such laws that I shouldn't be allowed even to lift my arm at someone, leave alone strike him. A law must be like iron. Like a key. It must lock up my heart and have done with it. Then I can answer for myself. But like it is — I can't answer. No, I can't... ."
He muttered to himself more and more softly and incoherently, knocking his fist against the wood of the lever. Someone shouted from the ship through a speaking-trumpet and the dull voice of the man was just as useless as the barking and howling of the dogs not yet swallowed up by the greasy night. The reflection of the lights like yellow, oily stains swims near the stern of the ship on the black waters and melts away, incapable of illuminating anything. And it is as though slime were flowing above us, so clammy and thick are the dark, juicy clouds. We slide deeper and deeper into the silent depths of the darkness. The man complains gloomily: "What has it all brought me to? My heart can't breathe... ." An
indifference has filled my heart, an indifference and a cold melancholy — lI wanted to sleep.
Cautiously, pushing with difficulty through the clouds, stealthily came the dawn without sun, sickly and grey. It coloured the water with a leaden tinge, displayed the yellow bushes on the shore, the iron, rusty pine-trees, the dark paws of their branches, the lines of huts in the villages and the silhouette of the peasant, as though cut out of stone!
Over the barge flew a sea-gull, whizzing with her crooked wings.
The steersman and I were relieved from our watchduty, I crawled under a tarpaulin and went to sleep, but soon it seemed to me that I was awakened by the trample of feet and cries. Peering from under my tarpaulin I saw that three sailors, pressing the steersman to the wall of the deck, were shouting in varied voices:
"Leave that, Petrushka!"
"Bless you — that's nothing!"
"That's enough of it!"
He stood quietly with folded hands, clinging with his fingers to his own shoulders, pressing a bundle to the deck with his foot, watching them all in turn and persuading them:
"Let me get away from sin!"
He was bare-footed, and bare-headed, with only a shirt and trousers on him, a dark heap of unkempt hair stuck on his head and fell onto his obstinate and prominent forehead, under which shone the small blood-shot eyes of a mole. Their look was anguished and appealing.
"You'll drown!" they told him.
"I? Never. Let me go, fellows! If you don't, Pll kill him! As soon as we get to the Simbirsk harLTT AR i) RE pa
"Stop that nonsense. .. .
"Oh, you boys!"
He slowly spread out his hands, kneeled down and, touching the boards with them as though crucified, repeated:
"Let me get away from sin."
In his voice, strangely deep, there was something violently disturbing; his hands spread out like oars, trembled, their palms turned towards the people. His bearish face in a shagged beard trembled too, the molelike unseeing eyes rolled out of their orbits like dark little balls. It seemed as though an unseen hand had seized him by the throat and was strangling him.
The peasants stood away from him in silence as he clumsily lifted himself to his feet, took the bundle and said:
"There, thank you!"
And coming up to the stern with an unexpected agility — jumped into the river.
I also rushed to the stern and saw how Petrushka, waggling his head, pushed onto it the bundle instead of a hat and swam along, against the stream, towards the sandy bank, where he was met by the bushes, bending under the gusts of wind and throwing their yellow leaves into the water.
The peasants were saying:
'He got the better of himself, all the same."
I asked:
"Has he gone mad?":
"No, why mad? He's done it to save his soul...
be)
Petrukha had already landed on a shallow spot, was standing up to his breast in water and brandishing the bundle above his head. 'The sailors shouted:
1?
"Good-by-y-y-e:
In Simbirsk, the sailors rather ungraciously asked us to leave the barge and land on shore.
"You're not suitable people for us," they said.
They brought us in boats to the harbour of Simbirsk and we dried up on shore, having thirty-seven kopecks in our pockets.
We went to the public-house to have some tea.
"What are we going to do?"
Barinoff said with assurance:
"How, what? We've got to go further along, of course."
We sailed like "hares" on a passenger-ship to Samara, got some work there on a barge and in seven days safely arrived at the shores of the Caspian, where we joined a small company of fishermen on the Kalmuk fishery Kahankul-bai.
Someone introduced me to Andrei Derenkovy, the owner of a small grocery concealed at the end of a miserable narrow little street over a ditch filled up with refuse.
Derenkov, a man with a withered arm, a kind face framed by a fair beard and a pair of intelligent eyes, possessed the best collection of rare and prohibited
2 Without tickets.
books in town. They were at the disposal of students of the numerous Kazan schools and various revolutionary-minded people. Derenkov's grocery was situated in a low appendage to the house of a money-changer who belonged to the sect of the '"'skoptzi''; the door of the grocery led into a large room, faintly lit by a window looking out on the yard; beyond that room, continuing it, was a small kitchen, behind which in a dark entrance that joined the appendage with the house was concealed a lumber-room containing the wicked library. A part of its books was copied in ink into thick copybooks — for instance, the "Historical Letters" of Lavrov, "What Must One Do?" of Chernishevsky, some articles of Pissareff, "King Hunger," "Cunning Machinery," all these manuscripts were considerably shabby and worn out.
When I came for the first time into the grocery, Derenkov, who was busy with some customers, motioned me with his head into the next room. I entered it and this is what I saw. In the dusk and kneeling down in the corner and fervently engrossed in prayer was a little old man, resembling a picture of St. Seraphim of Sarov. Looking at him, I experienced something strange and contradictory — Derenkov was said to be a "narodniki." In my understanding that meant a revolutionary, and a revolutionary should not believe in God — therefore the little praying old man seemed out of place in this house. Having ended his prayer, he neatly stroked the white hairs of his head and beard — observed me carefully and said:
1A saint whose relics were found in 1906 at the order of the Emperor Nicholas II. and in his presence.
2"Narodnichestvo," a social-democratic and literary movement, taking root in Pan-slavism.
"I am Andrei's father. And you? Ah, is that so? I thought you were a student in disguise."
'What does a student want to disguise himself for?' I asked.
"Yes, that's right," returned the old man. "God will recognise one in spite of all disguise!"
He went out into the kitchen, and I sat at the window, buried in my thoughts, when I heard someone exclaim: "That's what he is like!"
At the floor-post, leading into the kitchen, stood a young girl all in white; her fair hair was cut short and in her pale, plump face shone and smiled a pair of dark-blue eyes. She looked like the angels that are represented on cheap chromo-lithographs.
"Why did you start? Am I then so terrible?" she said in a thin, trembling voice and came nearer to me, slowly and prudently, holding to the wall as she went, as though instead of the firm floor she was walking on a vacillating rope stretched out in the air. This incapacity for walking made her still more like a being from another world. Her body trembled as though needles were driven into her feet, and the wall burned her round childish hands. And her fingers were strangely motionless.
I stood in silence in front of her, experiencing a strange sensation of sharp compassion and consternation. Everything was very unusual in this dark room!
The young girl sat down on a chair as cautiously as if she were afraid that it would fly away from her. She told me very simply that this was only the fifth day that she had got out of bed, where she had lain for nearly three months: her legs and hands had been paralysed.
"It is a nervous disease of some kind," she said, smiling.
I can remember wishing that her condition should have been explained in a different way: a nervous disease seemed too common for a girl like that in such a weird room, where all the objects had pressed themselves so timidly to the walls and where even the light of the hanging-lamp glowed too brightly in the corner under the ikons, throwing aimlessly the shadow of its chains of brass onto the white cloth of the great big dinner-table.
"I have heard a lot about you — that's why I wanted to see what you were like,' she said to me in her childishly faint voice.
This young girl watched me with a glance I could not stand; I felt something penetrating in her dark-blue eyes. I could not speak to her, I did not know how to begin. I stood in silence, admiring the pictures of Herzen, Darwin and Garibaldi on the walls. A boy about my age, a fair youth with impudent eyes, came out of the grocery and disappeared into the kitchen, shouting in a breaking voice:
"What are you doing here, Maria?"
"That is my younger brother, Alexei," said the girl. "And I was studying obstetrics, but felt ill all of a sudden. Why don't you speak? Are you shy?" .
Then came Andrei Derenkov, with his withered hand hidden in the breast-pocket of his suit; he stroked silently his sister's soft hair, ruffling it, and asked what kind of work I was looking for? A little later appeared a red-haired slim girl with greenish eyes; she looked at me severely, and, taking the white-
gowned young woman by the arm, led her away, saying: .
"Enough for to-day, Maria."
The name did not suit the girl; it was too common for her.
I also went away, strangely agitated, and the next evening found me again in that room, trying to understand how people lived in it and what they had in their souls. Anyhow — they led a peculiar life.
The kind, meek old man, Stefan Ivanovich, all white and nearly transparent, used to sit in the corner and look out from there, continually moving his lips and smiling — as though he were praying:
"Please don't touch me!"
The fear of a hare lived in him, the presentiment of a misfortune; that was clear to me.
The one-handed Andrei, arrayed in a grey jacket, the front of which was so thickly smeared with oil and flour that it had become as hard as the bark of a tree, walked about the room leaning somewhat guiltily on one side and smiling like a child to whom one has just forgiven a prank. His brother Alexei, a brutal and lazy lad, helped him in the shop, while the third brother, Ivan, studied in the Teachers' Institute and lived there, coming home only on Sundays. He was a small, neatly dressed little man, and resembled an old government official. The sick sister lived somewhere in the attic and rarely came down, and when she did I used to feel uneasy. The house was run by the mistress of the money-changer, a tall woman with the face of a wooden doll and the stern eyes of a wicked "man nun." Her daughter, the red-haired
Nastja, bustled about the house, too; when she looked at men with her green eyes the nostrils of her sharp nose trembled.
But the actual masters in the flat of the Derenkovs were the students of the University; of the Spiritual Academy and Veterinarian Institute — a loud company of people who lived in a state of continual solicitude as regards the Russian peasant and incessant anxiety as to the future of Russia. Perpetually agitated by the newspaper articles and the deductions made from recently read books; by the events in the life of the town and the University, they used to assemble in the evenings from all the streets of Kazan in Derenkoy's grocery to lead furious discussions and whisper softly in the corners. They brought thick books under their arms and, poking their fingers at some of the pages, shouted at each other, each of them affirming the truth he liked best.
Of course, I understood those discussions deficiently, the truths were lost to me in the amount of words, like the little stars of grease in the thin soup of the poor. Some of the students reminded me of the old sectarian Bible-readers of the Povoljie, but I realised that in front of me were people attempting to transform life, and, although their sincerity was smothered in the stormy torrent of words, it did not drown in it. The questions which they tried to solve were clear to me and I felt myself personally affected by the successful conclusion they would make. It often seemed to me that my dumb thoughts rang in their words and IJ treated those people with the rapture of a captive to whom one promises freedom.
They looked at me as a joiner looks at a piece of wood out of which he might make something rather uncommon.
"A virgin nature!" they would say, recommending me to each other, with just as much pride as the one displayed by street-urchins showing to each other a penny found on the pavement. For some reason I did not like to be called a "virgin nature" or a "son of the people'; I felt myself to be a step-son of life and often experienced the weight of the power that governed the development of my mind. For instance, having seen in the window of a book-shop a book carrying the unknown title of "Aphorisms and Maxims," I flared up with the desire to read it and begged a student of the Spiritual Academy to lend it to me. "What more do you want!" exclaimed ironically the future bishop, a man with a negro's head — curly, thick-lipped, with a row of glistening white teeth. "That's nonsense, my boy! You read what is given to you and don't poke your nose into matters which have nothing to do with you!" The rude tone of the man offended me greatly. Of course I bought the book, having earned some money in the harbours and borrowed some from Andrei Derenkoy. That was the first serious book I had bought and I have kept it until now. Altogether I was treated with great severity. Having read the "A.B.C. of Social Sciences," it seemed to me that the part of pastoral tribes in the organisation of cultural life was exaggerated by the author and the enterprising vagabonds and hunters underrated by him. I communicated my doubts to a philologist, and he, trying to lend an imposing expression to his feminine face, spoke to me for a whole hour
of the "right to criticise." 'In order to have the right to criticise — one must believe in some fundamental truths — what do you believe in?" he asked.
That man used to read even in the street. He walked on the pavement, his face concealed by a book, pushing the passers-by. At the time when he was laid up in his attic with a bad case of typhoid he tossed about in bed, crying:;
"Morality must combine with harmony the elements of freedom and violence, with har-har-harm. .. ." He was a fragile man, worn out with chronic starvation, exhausted by obstinate attempts to find stable truths. He knew no other joys in life except reading and when he imagined to have reconciled the contradictions between two strong minds, his nice dark eyes would smile with childish happiness. About ten years after my life in Kazan I met him again in Kharkov; he had done five years of exile in Kem and was studying again in the university. He seemed to me to be living in an ants' heap of contradictory ideas; although dying of consumption, he attempted to reconcile Nietzsche with Marx, spat blood and whispered hoarsely, grabbing at my hands with his cold, sticky fingers:
"You can't live without a synthesis!"
He died in a tram-car on his way to the university.
Many similar martyrs to the cause of intellect have I met in my life — and their memory is sacred to me forever.
About a dozen of men like that assembled in the flat of Derenkov — among them was even a Japanese, a student of the Spiritual Academy, Panteleimon Sato. Sometimes there also came a large broad-shouldered
man with a huge square beard and a head shaved in the Tartar fashion. He looked laced up in a tightfitting grey jacket buttoned up to the neck. Usually he sat in some corner, smoking a short pipe and watching everybody with grey, calm, penetrating eyes. His glance often stopped on my face; I felt that this earnest man was mentally weighing me up and I was afraid of him, I do not know why. His silence amazed me, everybody spoke loudly, resolutely and eloquently and of course the sharper sounded the words, the more they pleased me — for a long time I did not conceive how often sharp words conceal miserable and deceitful thoughts. Why then does this bearded Hercules not speak? He was called "Khokhol," and I think no one knew his real name except Andrei. I soon learnt that he had just returned from exile in the district of Jakoutsk, where he had spent ten years. This excited my interest for him still more, but did not inspire me with enough courage to make his acquaintance, although I was not afflicted with timidity or shyness and, on the contrary, suffered with an anxious curiosity, a longing to know everything and as rapidly as possible. This prevented me all my life from studying any one particular thing thoroughly. When one spoke of the people, I felt a certain lack of confidence in myself, that I could not make myself think on that matter in the same lines as the others did. For them — the people were an incarnation of wisdom, spiritual beauty and kind-heartedness — a being very nearly god-like and consubstantial, a receptacle of all things beautiful, stately and just. I did not know such a
1The name which Great-Russians use when speaking of LittleRussians.
people. I had seen carpenters, loaders, brick-layers, I knew Jacob Ossip and Gregori, and here I heard of a consubstantial people, whom they placed above themselves and on whose will they made themselves dependent. To me it was they who incarnated beauty and power of thought, in them I felt to be concentrated the good and human desire of vitality, of freedom to build life according to some new canons of love for each other. It was exactly this love for each other that I had not seen among the men with whom IJ had lived until now — and here it rang in every word, burned in every glance.
The words of the people-worshippers fell like a refreshing rain onto my heart and I also found great help in the ingenuous literature on the dismal existence of the peasant, the martyr-peasant. I realised that only given a very strong, a very passionate love for man can one draw from it the necessary strength to enable one to find and grasp the sense of life. I ceased thinking of myself and began to treat other people with greater attention. Andrei Derenkov trustingly confided to me that the modest profit of his trade went entirely for the benefit of the men who believed that "the happiness of the people goes before everything else." He restlessly moved about among them, like a sincerely believing acolyte at the service held by a bishop, without concealing his rapture before the quick wisdom of the bookworms. Smiling happily, his dry hand hidden on his chest, while the other one pulled in all directions his small soft beard, he asked me:
"Isn't it splendid, eh?"
And when the veterinary surgeon Lavroff, the owner
of a voice strangely like the gabble of a goose, heretically opposed the "narodniki" (people-lovers), Derenkov, closing his eyes in terror, whispered:
"What a rioter!"
His relations towards the "narodniki" were similar to mine, but the way the students treated him seemed to me the same coarse and careless way with which grand gentlemen treat a lackey. But he himself did not notice it. Very often having seen off all the guests, he persuaded me to 'spend the night with him. We cleaned out the room and then, lying on the floor on mats spread out, spoke in a friendly whisper in a darkness slightly illuminated by.the light coming from the lamp before the images. With the peaceful joy of the believer he told me:
"Hundreds, thousands of such splendid people will assemble together, occupy all the important posts in Russia and immediately transform the whole life."
He was about ten years older than we. I could see that the red-haired Nastja fascinated him; he tried not to look into her provoking eyes, spoke with her before others in the dry, commanding tones of the master, but followed her with a longing glance, and when talking with her alone pulled his beard and smiled shyly and timidly. "His little sister also observed the battles of words from her corner; her childish face pouted funnily with the effort of attention, she gazed with wide-open eyes, and at the sound of particularly harsh words sighed deeply, as though sprinkled with ice-water. A red-haired medical student hovered around her like a steady cock; he spoke to her in a mysterious whisper and frowned imposingly. It was all so frightfully interesting. -
But soon came the autumn, and life without regular work became impossible for me. Fascinated by all that happened around me, I worked less and less and fed on the bread of others, which always somehow sticks in one's throat. I had to look out for a job for the winter and found it in the baker's shop of Vassili Semenoff.
This period of my life I described in the stories "The Master," ''Konovalov," 'Twenty-six and One." It was a very hard time! But an instructive one! And it was hard not merely physically, but morally, too.
At the moment when I sank into the basement of the workshop — between me and the people whom it had become necessary for me to watch and listen to — there rose the "'wall of forgetfulness." None of them came to'see me in the workshop and I, working fourteen hours a day, could not get to Derenkov's on week-days — and spent my holidays either in bed or together with my comrades'at work. A part of the latter began from the very first to look upon me as on an amusing jester, while some treated me with the ingenuous love of children for a man who can tell fascinating stories. The devil alone knows what I used to tell them; anyhow it was something that should have inspired them with the hope of another, easier and more sensible life. Sometimes I succeeded in that, and seeing how the swollen faces lighted up with human sadness and their eyes flared up with offense and anger I felt my soul at peace and thought with pride that I was working "among the people" and "instructing" them.
But it oftener happened, of course, that I experi-
enced my helplessness, my lack of knowledge, my incapacity to answer the simplest questions of life and history. I then felt thrust into a dark hole, where men swarmed like blind worms in their attempts to forget actuality and found this forgetfulness in numerous bars and in the arms of street-girls. The visit of the "houses of joy" was obligatory every month on the day of the payment of the wages: the men dreamt aloud of this forthcoming pleasure a week before the happy day was to come, and, having lived through it, told long stories about the delights they had experienced. In those discussions they used to brag cynically of their sexual energy, cruelly jeering at the women and speaking of them in tones of disgust. But strangely enough — behind all this I could hear — or was it my imagination? — a certain sadness and shame. I noticed that in the "'houses of consolation," where, for a rouble, one could get a woman for a whole night, my friends behaved timidly and guiltily. This seemed natural to me. Others held themselves with an exaggerated audacity and boldness which I knew to be false and affected. The relation of the sexes thrilled me weirdly and I observed it with peculiar sharpness.
I did not make use myself of the caresses of a woman and that placed me in an unpleasant position: both the women and the friends wickedly turned me to ridicule. Very soon they stopped asking me to come with them, openly announcing:
"You, my boy, don't you come with us!"
"Why not?"
"It is no fun when you are there."
I grabbed greedily at these words, perceiving in
them something of great importance to myself, but got no better explanation from them. "Don't hang on! We tell you — stay away! It is dull to go with you... ." And Artem added, laughing: "It is just as though we were watched by a priest or a father." The girls at first made fun of my reserve, then they began asking in an offended way:
"Do we disgust you?"
The housekeeper, Theresa Boruta, forty years old, a plump and pretty Pole, watching me with the clever eyes of a high-bred hound, announced one day: '"'Leave him alone, girls — he surely has a bride, haven't you? Such an athlete can only be held back by a bride, not by anything else!"
She was alcoholic and drank savagely, being unspeakably repulsive when in a state of intoxication, but in her sober moments amazed me by the thoughtful way with which she watched people and tried quietly to find some sense in their actions.
"The most astonishing people are the students of the Academy, I assure you!" she would tell my friends. "What do they not do with a girl! They make her smear the floor with soap, put her on all fours with her hands and feet leaning on plates and push her from behind, to see how far she will glide? They do this first with one, then with the other. And there you are! What do they do it for?"
vou lie>.<." said I:
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Theresa, not the least bit offended, very quietly, and in this quietness there was something crushing.
"Well, you are inventing all this!"
'How should a girl invent anything like that?
Am I then mad?' The men listened with greedy attention to our discussion and Theresa continued telling about the pranks of the guests in the passionless tone of a person who only wants to understand: what is it all for?
The listeners expressed their disgust coarsely and swore savagely at the students, and I, seeing that Theresa was rousing an hostile feeling towards the people I had learnt to love, would begin saying that students love the people and only want to do them good.
"You mean the little students from the Voskresenskaia Street, the civil ones from the University, but I am speaking of the spiritual ones from the Arskoe Pole! They, the spiritual ones, are orphans all of them, and an orphan always grows up to be a thief or a ne'er-do-well, in one word, a bad man; he has nothing to hold on to, an orphan!" The quiet tales of the "housekeeper," and the evil complaints of the girls of the students and government officials, altogether on the "clean public" roused in my friends not only a disgust and hostility, but a kind of joy that was expressed in the words:
"The educated ones are apparently no better than Welares
It was hard and painful to me to hear this. I saw all the filth of the town flow together into the dusky, small rooms as into a ditch, boil there on a vaporous fire and, imbued with hostility and wickedness, return in a flow back to the town. I observed how touching songs on the anxieties and pains of love were formed of unsuitable words in those holes to which people were driven by instinct and by the boredom
of life. I saw how the hideous legends arose on the lives of "educated people" and where the mocking and hostile feeling towards something took root so that they failed to understand and I perceived that the "houses of consolation" were universities, from which my friends drew a knowledge of an intensely poisonous character. I watched how "the girls of joy" moved on the dirty floor, lazily dragging their feet, how repulsively they shook their flabby bodies, dancing to the appalling squall of the accordion or to the aggravatingly cracking chords of a demolished piano. I watched all this, and my thoughts were full of a vague anguish. From all these surroundings arose a boredom that poisoned the soul with a powerless desire to get away and hide somewhere. When I began telling the men in the workshop that there were people who disinterestedly sought for the ways of freedom, for the happiness of the people, I was met with an opposition:
"But why do the girls speak of them differently?"
Mercilessly, with a cynical anger, they laughed at me — and I, like an aggressive kitten, who felt himself no sillier and braver than the grown-up dogs — I got angry with them, too. I began to realise that thoughts on life are no easier than life itself and at times I felt hatred blazing in my soul towards the obstinate and patient people with whom I worked. What made me particularly indignant was their capacity of forbearance, the meek humility with which they submitted to the raving cruelties of a drunken master.
And — as though on purpose — in those hard days I happened to get acquainted with a perfectly new idea,
which agitated me greatly, although in a way it too was hostile to me.
On one of those stormy nights when it seems that the evil wailing wind has torn the grey sky to pieces and that these pieces fall on the earth, burying her under snow-drifts of icy dust, when the life of the earth seems coming to an end, and the sun extinguished, never to rise again — on such a night, during the carnival week, I was returning to the workshop from the Derenkovs — I walked with my eyes shut, facing the wind — across the troubled effervescence of the grey chaos — and all of a sudden fell down, stumbling against a man lying on the pavement. We both swore — I in Russian, he in French: "Oh, the devil!"
This roused my curiosity. I lifted him onto his feet — he was small and light. He pushed me, crying angrily: 'My hat, damn you! Give me back my hat! I am freezing!" I found his hat in the snow, shook it out and put it on his bristly head, but he tore it off again and, shaking it at me, swore in two languages, trying to drive me away: "Get out!"
And then, all of a sudden, he ran forward and sank in the effervescent gruel. Walking on, I found him again: he was standing with his arms round the wooden lamp-post of the extinguished lantern, speaking persuasively. '"Lena — I am dying — Oh, Lena ..." He was evidently drunk and had I left him on the street he might have frozen to death. I asked him where he lived?
"What street is this?" he cried with tears in his voice. "TI do not know where to go."
I put my arm round his waist and led him away, trying to find out where he lived.
"On the Boulak," he murmured, trembling. "On the Boulak ...there, where the bath-house ...a UISET Sas
He walked unsteadily, shakily, and prevented me from moving on; I could hear his teeth chatter.
"Si tu savais!" he muttered, pushing me aside.
"What are you saying?"
He stopped, lifted his hand and said distinctly with what seemed to me a certain pride:
"Si tu savais, ou je te méne ..."
And stuck his fingers into his mouth, keeping his balance with great difficulty. I knelt down, took him on my back and carried him along, while he pressed his chin to my skull and grumbled:
"Si tu savais ou... But I am freezing. Oh, God!"
On the Boulak I found out after some trouble in which house he lived; at last we scrambled into the entrance of a small building, hidden at the end of the yard under huge snow-heaps. He groped for the door in the darkness, knocked gently and hissed: ''"Sh — sh Peeoeentiy .. 03
The door was opened by a woman in a red dressing-gown, holding a lighted candle in her hand. She let us pass, standing aside, and, finding an eyeglass, began to observe me from head to foot.
I told her that the man's hands were stiff with cold and that one ought to undress and put him to bed.
"Yes?" she asked, in a young sonorous voice.
"One must put his hands into cold water..."
She silently pointed with the eyeglass into the corner; there, on an easel, stood a picture representing a
river and some trees. I looked at the weirdly motion-