My Universities
less face of the woman in amazement, while she retired to the other end of the room, to a table on which stood a lamp under a rose shade; she sat down there and, taking up from the table the knave of hearts, began staring at it.
"Have you any alcohol?' I asked loudly. She did not answer, busy laying the cards out on the table. The man I had brought home was sitting on a chair, bending his head very low and letting his red arms hang along his body. I put him on the sofa and started undressing him, understanding nothing, living as one in a dream. The wall opposite me was all strewn with photographs; among them shone dully a gold wreath with white bows of ribbon, on the end of which was engraved in gold letters:
"To the incomparable Gilda."
"Damn you, be careful,' moaned the man, as I started rubbing his hands. The woman laid out the cards with a silent, preoccupied air. Her face was sharp-featured like a bird's, it was lighted up by a pair of large motionless eyes. Suddenly she ruffled with her small girlish hands her grey hair fluffy like a wig and asked in a low, distinct voice:
"Did you see Mischa, Georges?"
Georges pushed me away, quickly sat down and said hastily:
"But he has gone to Kiev..."
: "Yes, to Kiev," repeated the woman, without taking her eyes off the cards, and I noticed that her voice was monotonous, inexpressive.
"He will soon be back ..."
faces. 2 =
"Oh, yes! Very soon."
"Yes? .. ." repeated the woman.
Georges, half undressed, jumped to the floor and in two strides was already on his knees at the woman's feet, saying something to her in French.
"I am quiet," she answered in Russian.
"I lost my way, do you know? There is a snow-storm, outside, an awful wind; I thought I should freeze to death. We did not drink much." Georges spoke hastily, caressing the hand that lay on her knee. He was about forty years old; his red thick-lipped face, with a black moustache, seemed frightened and anxious; he rubbed hard the grey bristle of his hairs on his round skull and became soberer every moment.
"To-morrow we go to Kiev," said the woman — halfinterrogatively, half-affirmingly.
"Yes, to-morrow! And you must have some rest. Why don't you go to bed? It is very late... ."
"You think Mischa will not come to-day?'
"Oh, no! In such a snow-storm...Come to bed..." He led her away through a small door behind the bookcase, taking the lamp off the table. I sat alone for a long time, thinking of nothing, listening to his low hoarse voice. Hairy paws scraped against the window-panes. A pool of melted snow reflected timidly the flame of the candle. The room was overcrowded with furniture; it was filled with a strange warm smell that drove one's thoughts to sleep.
Georges came back, vacillating on his feet, holding the lamp in his hand, the lamp-shade rapping at the glass.
"She's in bed."
He put the lamp on the table, stopped pensively
in the middle of the room and then spoke without looking at me: "Well, what is there to say? I'd have probably been dead but for you... thank you. Who are you?"
He put his hand to one side, listening to the noise in the next room and trembling.
"Is that your wife?" I asked gently.
"My wife. Everything. All my life," said the man, pronouncing each word separately, not loudly and looking down on the floor. Then he again rubbed his head with his hands very hard.
"Some tea, eh?"
He went absent-mindedly to the door and then stopped, remembering that the servant had eaten too much fish and had been sent to the hospital.
I offered to put the kettle to boil. He shook his head affirmingly and, forgetting evidently that he was undressed, led me into the kitchen, dragging his bare feet on the wet floor. There, leaning with his back to the stove, he repeated: "But for you I'd have been frozen to death, thank you!" And, starting suddenly, stared at me with frightened, wide-open eyes.
"What would have happened to her then. Oh, Goode: t27 3"
Hastily, in a whisper, looking into the dark hole of the door, he said:
"You see — she is ill! Her son, a musician, has committed suicide in Moscow, and she is still waiting for him; it is two years now..."
Afterwards, as we drank our tea, he told me in incoherent, unusual words that the woman was the owner of a country house and that he had been the teacher of her son and had fallen in love with her;
that she had left her husband, a German baron, and had sung in the opera; they had been very happy together, although her first husband tried in every way to ruin her life.
He told me all this as though reading an unintelligible writing, half-closing his eyes and glancing intensely at something in the semi-darkness of the dirty kitchen where the floor was rotting all round the stove. He drank such hot tea that it burnt his lips, his face wrinkled up and his round eyes winked anxiously.
"Who are you?" he asked again. 'Ah, a baker, a workman. That is strange. You are unlike one. What does it mean?"
His tone was restless, he looked at me suspiciously with the air of a hunted beast.
I gave him a short description of my life.
"Ts that so?" he exclaimed softly. "Yes, yes...
And all of a sudden grew animated, asking:
"Do you know the tale of the 'Ugly Duckling'? Have you read it?"
His face was distorted, he spoke in a tone of anger, amazing me with the unnaturally shrill modulation of his hoarse voice.
"That tale — fascinates one! At your age I too thought I was a swan. And how I was to enter the Academy, but went instead into the University. My father — a priest — refused to have anything more to do with me, I studied in Paris — the history of the miseries of mankind, the history of progress. And I wrote, yes, I wrote! Oh, how it is all..." He jumped on his chair, listened for a short time and went on:
"Progress is an invention for self-consolation. Life
— is not a thing of reason, it has no sense. Without slavery — there is no progress, without the submission of the majority to the minority mankind would get no further on the path it is following. In our desire to simplify our life, our work, we complicate it by augmenting the amount of work. Factories and machines exist in order to produce more machines — that is stupid! Workmen become more and more numerous, when after all only the peasant, the bread-producer, is of any necessity. Bread is the one thing that one must seize from nature through work. The less a man wants the happier he is; the more wishes — the less freedom."
Perhaps he used other words, but these crushing thoughts I had heard for the first time and, what is more, in such a harsh, naked shape. The man, shrieking from agitation, looked in terror at the door that opened into the inner rooms — listened to the silence and whispered again in a frenzy: "Do you understand? A man needs very little: a piece of bread and a woman... ."
And beginning to speak of women in a mysterious whisper, using words I had never heard, verses I had never read, he suddenly reminded me of the thief Bashkin.
"Beatrice, Fiametta, Laura, Ninon." He murmured names unfamiliar to me and spoke of the love of kings and poets, recited French verses, defining the rhythm with his thin arm, naked to the elbow.
"Love and hunger govern the world."
I heard his hot whisper and remembered that these words stood above the title of the revolutionary pamphlet, "King Hunger," which lent a particu-
larly great importance to them in my thoughts. 'People seek forgetfulness, consolation, not knowledge!' This idea stupefied me completely. I left the little kitchen in the early morning, the small clock on the wall showed a few minutes past six. I walked in the grey shadows across the snow-drifts, listening to the wail of the storm and, recalling the furious shrieking of the broken man, felt that his words had stopped somewhere in my throat, strangling me. I did not want to go to the workshop and meet people, so I roamed in the streets of the Tartar suburb, dragging heaps of snow behind me, until it became quite light and the dark figures of the town inhabitants glimpsed here and there among the waves of snow.
Never again did I meet the master nor did I want to meet him. But later on I often heard people speak of the senselessness of life and uselessness of labour; this idea was expressed by illiterate vagabonds, homeless tramps and highly-cultured people. I heard it from a monk-priest, a doctor of theosophy, a chemist working on explosives, a neo-vitalist, a biologist and many others. But they did not impress me so cruelly as then when I heard them for the first time. And only about two years ago, thirty years after my first conversation on that subject, I heard all of a sudden the thoughts, expressed in very nearly the same words, from an old friend of mine, a workman.
We had started a conversation "from soul to soul" and that man, a "political leader" as he called himself, sadly joking, told me with the fearless sincerity which only Russians, I think, can have:
"My dear Alexei Maximich, all this is of no use whatever, no one needs them, all these Academies,
HELEN-JRAN MOO RE LIB POINT PARK couLecr si
sciences, aeroplanes, they are superfluous. One only needs a peaceful corner — and a woman, whom I could take in my arms whenever I liked and who would respond to me honourably, in body and soul; there, that's all! You reason like 'the intelligentsia,' you are not one of us any more; for you an idea is above the people — you think in the Jewish way: the man — for the Saturday?"
"Jews do not think like that."
"The devil alone knows how they think; we are ignorant folk," he answered, throwing his cigarette into the river and watching it.
We were sitting on the quay of the Neva, on a bench of granite, it was a moonlight night in the autumn, and we both were exhausted by a day of fruitless emotions, of obstinate but unsuccessful desire to do some good, to be useful.
"You are with us, but you are not one of us, that is what I say," he continued gently, thoughtfully. The 'intelligentsia' enjoys worrying, she is used from the dark ages to join all revolt. Like Christ, who was an idealist and revolted for heavenly aims, so revolts the 'intelligentsia' for an utopia. The idealist revolts and is joined by scoundrels, ne'er-do-wells, by a rabble who act out of evil-mindedness, feeling that there is no place for them in the world. The workman rises for the sake of the revolution, he must obtain the proper distribution of the instruments and products of labour. But having finally usurped the power — do you think he will consent to govern? Not for anything in the world! They will all disperse and every one of them on his own responsibility will build himself a quiet refuge...Technics, you say? But
they only serve to tighten the knot round our necks — bind us up still stronger. No, we must free ourselves from superfluous labour! The man needs rest. Factories and sciences will not give it to us. A man needs so little. Why should I pile up a whole town when I only need a small house? Where people live in heaps — then they start inventing aqueducts, canals and electricity. And what if you tried to live without all that? How much simpler it would be! No, truly speaking, we have too many unnecessary things about us — and they all come from the 'intelligentsia' — therefore I say: the 'intelligentsia' is an unwholesome lot!"
I told him that no one managed so deeply and resolutely to deprive life of its sense as we Russians do. "The nation which is the freest of all in spirit," smiled my interlocutor. "Don't you be angry with me; I reason in the right way, as millions of us reason — only they do not know how to express it...Life must be organised in a simpler fashion, then it will become more merciful to people... ." That man never was a Tolstoyan; never displayed any tendency for anarchies — for I know well the history of his spiritual development. After my conversation with him I unwillingly began to think: what if it actually is the case that millions of Russian peasants bear the abominable pains of the revolution; only fostering in the depths of their souls the hope that it will free them from labour? A minimum of labour brings a maximum of delight, that idea is fascinating and tempting, like everything that is impracticable, like all utopia. And I recalled the verses of Henrik Tbsen:
"Am I a conservative — Oh no!
I am the same as I was all my life,
I do not like to displease figures
But I would enjoy mixing up the whole game!
I remember only one revolution,
It was cleverer than all the following ones
And could have destroyed everything,
I mean of course the Great Flood.
But even the Devil was outwitted!
You know — Noah became the dictator!
Oh, if it all could be done in a way more honourable I would not refrain from helping you:
You busy yourself arranging the Great Flood,
Then I, with joy, will thrust a torpedo under the Ark!"
The shop of Derenkov made a very poor profit, while the number of people and "combinations" that needed material support augmented the whole time.
"We must find a way out," would say Andrei, pulling thoughtfully at his beard, and sigh, smiling guiltily.
It seemed to me that this man considered himself sentenced for life to help others, and although he had reconciled himself with this punishment at times I think it weighed on him.
Often, on different occasions, I asked him:
"Why do you do all this?"
He, evidently not grasping the sense of my questions, answered the question "What for?" and spoke like a book, not convincingly at all, of the hard life of the people, of the necessity of instruction and knowledge.
"But do they want knowledge, do they seek for it?"
"As if they didn't. Oh, of course they do. You do, I guess?"
Yes, I did. But I remembered the words of the little teacher of history: "People seek forgetfulness and consolation, but not knowledge."
For such sharp ideas — it is unwholesome to meet youths of seventeen years of age — the ideas get blunt from those collisions, and the youths, too, gain little from them. I began to think that I had always noticed a fact: that people like thrilling stories only because they allow them to forget at least for an hour or so their usual, hard life. The more "imagination" in the story the greedier the interest with which it is listened to. The more beautiful "fantasy" in a book the more it is to people's taste. To put it shortly, I swam in a vaporous fog.
Derenkov decided to start a baker's shop. I remember he had made a very exact calculation that this undertaking was to bring him no less than thirtyfive per cent to each turn-over of the rouble. I was to work as the assistant baker, and being ''of the house" was to watch that the first baker should not steal flour, eggs, wheat, butter and also the ready goods.
And so I moved from the barge and filthy basement to a smaller and a trifle cleaner one — it was my duty to look after its condition. Instead of a company of forty people to deal with — I had only one — he had grey hair, a small pointed beard, a face that looked as if it had been smoked, a pair of dark, pensive eyes and a peculiar mouth — it was small like the
mouth of a perch, with pouting lips, folded as though he was mentally kissing himself. And a kind of mockery lay hidden in the depths of his eyes.
There was no doubt that he stole — in the first night of our combined labour he laid aside ten eggs, about three pounds of flour and a large piece of butter.
"Where does that go to?"
"This goes to a little girl," he said in a friendly tone, and, wrinkling up his nose, added: "A very nice little girl!' I tried to persuade him that thieving was a crime. But — whether I was not eloquent enough, or perhaps not convinced enough myself in what I was attempting to prove — anyhow, my speech had no success whatever.
Lying on the bin of pastry and looking out of the window at the stars, the baker murmured wonderingly:
"He is trying to teach me. Sees me for the first time, and — there you are! — teaches me already. And he is about three times as young as I am! That zs funny.icsee
He watched the stars and then asked: "It seems to me that I have seen you somewhere before — where did you work? At Semenoff's? That's where there was some rioting going on? So — so. Well — I must ' have seen you in my dreams then..."
In a few days I noticed that that man could sleep any amount of time and in any posture, even standing up leaning on a spade. When falling asleep, he lifted his eyebrows and his face changed queerly, acquiring an ironically amazed expression. His favourite topics of conversation were stories of treasures and dreams. He used to say, in a convinced tone:
"I can see all through the earth: it is stuffed with treasures like a huge pie: boilers of money, trunks, cast-iron pots are buried in it. Often has it happened to me in my dream that I see a familiar place, let us say the bath-house; under one end of it is buried a trunk of silver plate. I wake up and begin to dig there in the night. One day I get as far as one arshin and a half — and what do you think I found? Coals and a dog's skull. There it is — the treasure! All of a sudden — crack — the window of the bath-house is broken into bits and a woman shouts out furiously: 'Help! Help! Thieves!' I ran away, of course, or else I'd have got what for! Funny — isn't it?"
That word — funny — TI heard very often from him, but Ivan Kosmich Latonin did not laugh, only smilingly half-closed his eyes, wrinkling up his nose and swelling out his nostrils.
His dreams were not ingenious at all — they were just as absurd and dull as reality and I could not understand why he enjoyed speaking of his dreams and avoided speaking of anything happening around him?
The whole town was in great agitation. The daughter of a rich tea-merchant who had been married to some one by force committed suicide immediately after the bridal ceremony. A crowd of young people, several thousands of them, followed her coffin, students made speeches over her grave and were dispersed by the police. In a small shop next door to the baker's everybody shouted their opinion of this dramatic incident; the room behind the shop was crowded with students and the sound of excited voices and sharp words reached even to us in the basement.
"They spared the rod too much when they were bringing up that girl," says Latonin, and then informs me: "I was fishing for crucians, when all of a sudden appeared a policeman. 'Stop that!" he cried. 'How dare you!' I could not run away, so I dipped into the water and — woke up." But although reality ran by somewhere beyond the limits of his attention, he very soon became aware that something unusual was going on in the shop: the girls that worked in it, a big, pink-cheeked girl with caressing eyes, the sister of the master and her friend, were not adapted for this work — they read books more willingly. Students came and went, sat endlessly in the room behind the shop, shouting or whispering something. The master himself came in rarely, and I, the assistant, was at the same time something like the manager of the shop.
"Are you a relation of the master's?" asked Latonin. "Or perhaps he's thinking of you for his son-in-law? No? Very funny. And the students — why do they come? For the girls...Y-yes. That's possible. Although I shouldn't say the girls were specially sweet to look at...The students, I guess, come more to eat the rolls than to hover round the girls..." Nearly every day at five or six in the morning a short-legged young woman appears on the street, opposite the shop; she is built of hemispheres of different dimensions and looks like a bag of melons. Sitting with her bare feet hanging over the ditch before the window she yawns, calling out:
"Vania!"
She has a speckled handkerchief on her head, from under which peeps out her face, her curly hair fall-
ing in little ringlets that tickle her sleepy eyes over her small low forehead and her red cheeks that look like blown-out balls. They tickle her sleepy eyes, but she lazily fans them away with small hands which have the spread-out fingers of a new-born babe.
I cannot understand what one can talk about with a girl like that.
I wake up the baker — he asks her:
"You've come?"
"As you see."
"Did you sleep?"
"Well, what do you suppose I did?"
"What did you dream of?"
_A dont Temember: ..."
The town is quiet. Only the broom of a dvornik scrapes on the street and one can hear the twittering of sparrows, who have just awakened. The warm little rays of the rising sun press themselves to the window-panes. I like these pensive beginnings of a day. The baker, stretching his hairy hand out of the window, grabs at the girl's legs; she submits to this with indifference, without a smile, winking her sleepy eyes at him.
"Peshkoff, get the warm bread out, it is time."
I take the iron leaves out of the stove, the baker snatches from them about a dozen rolls and other pastry, throwing them in the girl's lap, while she, flapping the pan-cakes from one palm to another, bites at them with the yellow teeth of a sheep, burns her tongue with them and groans angrily. The baker, admiring her, says:
"Put down your skirt, you shameless creature!"
_1A house-porter.
And when she is gone he turns to me, boastfully:
"Have you seen? Like a ewe-lamb she looks in her ringlets! I, my boy, am a very clean man. I never have anything to do with women, only with girls. She is my thirteenth. Nikiforich is her godfather."
Listening to his raptured remarks, I wonder:
"Must I live in that way, too?"
Getting the long pieces of white bread out of the stove, I put about ten or twelve of them in a row on the board and hurriedly take them to the shop of Derenkov. Then, returning, I fill a two-pood basket with rolls and run to the Academy to be in time for the students' breakfast. There I stand in the large dining-room, distributing the bread on account or for ready money. [I stand and listen to their discussions on Tolstoy. One of the professors of the Academy — Gusseff — is a furious enemy of Tolstoy. Sometimes under the rolls I have some hidden notes which I must pass on to them, unseen, while they hide other books and notes in my basket in return.
Once a week I run still further — to the 'Mac House," where Professor Bekhtereff holds lectures, demonstrating the patients. One day he was exhibiting to the students a patient suffering from "mania grandiosa"' when a tall man in a white dress and a cap resembling a stocking appeared at the door of the auditorium. I could not help smiling, but he, stopping for a moment in front of me, looked into my eyes, and I jumped away as though he had struck at my heart with the fiery, black spear of his glance. And the whole time while Bekhtereff, pulling at his beard, talked respectfully with the patient, I softly
stroked my face with the palm of my hand, as though it had been scalded by boiling dust.
The patient spoke in a low bass voice; he demanded | something, menacingly pulling his long hand with long fingers out of the sleeve of his dressing-gown. It seemed to me that his body stretched out unnaturally, grew endlessly, and that with this dark hand he would reach me without moving from his place and seize me by the throat. Threateningly and dominatingly shone the penetrating glance of his black eyes out of the dark cavities of his bony face. About twenty students observed the man in the absurd cap, some of them smiling, the majority, concentratedly and sadly — their eyes were particularly common in comparison with his burning glances. He was terrible, . but there was something majestic about him.
In the fish-like silence of the students the voice of the professor rang out loudly, and every question produced the menacing retort of the dull voice. It seemed to come from the ground or from the dead white walls. The movements of his body were grave and slow like those of a bishop.
In the night I wrote some poetry about the maniac, calling him "the lord of all lords, the friend and counsellor of God," and his image lived for a long time with me, interfering with my life. Working from six in the evening till nearly midday, I slept in the afternoon and read only during working hours, having kneaded the pastry and waiting until the next should leaven, and also after I had laid the bread into the stove. Seeing that I had grasped the mysteries of the profession, the baker worked less and less; he "instructed" me, saying with kind amazement:
"You've got a knack for working — in a year or two you will become a baker. How funny! You are young, people won't listen to you, they won't respect you... ssa
He treated disparagingly my interest for books:
"You had better sleep, instead of reading," he advised me with solicitude, but never inquired what books I read. Dreams of treasures and the round and short little girl completely absorbed him. The girl often came in the night and then he would lead her away into the entrance, where lay the sacks of flour, or else, if it was cold, he would tell me, wrinkling up his nose:
"Go out for half an hour!"
And I departed, thinking how horribly unlike his love was to that of which one reads in books...
In the small room behind the shop lived the master's sister. I used to put her kettle to boil, but avoided meeting her, for I felt uneasy in her presence. Her childish eyes continued to look at me unbearably, as at our first meetings. I suspected there might be a smile in the depths of those eyes and thought that it Was a mocking one.
Owing to an excessive abundance of strength, my movements were clumsy; the baker, watching how I dragged about and lifted sacks of flour weighing five poods on the average, used to say, pityingly:
"You have strength enough for three, but no dexterity! And you are long enough, but you look like a bull, all the same..."
In spite of having read many books by that time and possessing a strong liking for verses — I had even tried to compose some myself — I used my "own"
words when speaking. I felt them to be heavy and harsh, but it seemed to me that they alone could express the deep entanglement of my thoughts.
And sometimes I was intentionally coarse in my expressions — out of a feeling of rebellion against something strange in me, something that aggravated me. One of my teachers — a student of mathematics — reproached me:
"Hang it all, how queerly you speak! It isn't words you use, it's balance-weights!"'
Altogether, I did not care for myself, as it often happens with adolescents. I pictured myself as being ridiculous and coarse. I disliked my face — with the high cheek-bones of a Kalmik — and my voice, which did not obey me.
And the master's sister moved swiftly and lightly like a swallow gliding in the air, and it seemed to me that the lightness of her movements did not correspond to her round and soft little figure.. There was something unsteady and unreal in her gestures and gait. Her voice rang out gaily, for she used to laugh very often, and, listening to her, I thought: she wants me to forget how I saw her for the first time. And I did not want to forget it, I treasured everything un- -usual, I wanted to know that it was possible, that it existed.
She would ask me sometimes: 'What do you read?"
I answered shortly and wanted to ask her in return:
"Why do you want to know?"
One day the baker, caressing his short-legged beauty, said to me in a strangely hoarse voice: ''Go out for a moment! Hang you, why don't you go to the mas-
ter's sister, instead of losing your time here! Studentsaae sc.
I promised I would dash his head to pieces with a weight if he uttered another word on this matter and went out into the entrance, where lay the bags of flour. I could hear Latonin's voice coming from the cleft of the half-closed door:
'Why should I be angry with him? He has filled himself with some knowledge out of books and lives liké a madman: i
In the vestibule I could hear the swarming of rats — in the bakery the girl's moaning and groaning. I go out into the yard, where lazily and noiselessly falls a thin rain, but the air nevertheless is oppressive and imbued with the smell of burning, for there is a wood fire around. It is long past midnight. In the house opposite the baker's the windows are open, one can hear people sing in the dimly-lit rooms. I attempt to picture myself with Maria Derenkova lying in my arms — like the baker's girl in his — and feel with my whole being that this is impossible, that it even terrifies me.
And all the night through
He drinks and he sings,
Also other strange things... He is teyimg. coi
Very provokingly rings in the choir the deep bass voice on the "also." Bending down and leaning with both hands on my knees, I look into the window; through the lace of the curtain I can see a square hole, whose grey walls are illuminated by the light of a small lamp under a blue shade. In front of it, with her
face to the window, sits a young girl and writes. Now she lifts up her head and arranges a tuft of hair on her temple with a red penholder. Her eyes are half-closed and she is smiling. She slowly folds up the letter, closes the envelope, passing her tongue on its edge and throwing it on the table, threatens it with her fore-finger which is smaller than my little one.
Then she takes it up again, tears it open, reads the letter through, puts it into another envelope and writes the address, bending over the table. She then brandishes it in the air like a flag. She dances around, clapping her hands, then goes to the end of the room where her bed stands and comes forward again, having taken off her blouse; her shoulders are round like puffs. She takes the lamp off the table and disappears into the corner.
When one observes how a man behaves when he is alone — he always seems to be a maniac. IJ walk up and down the yard, thinking in what a queer fashion this young girl lives when she is alone in her hole. And when the red-haired student came to see her and spoke to her of something in a low voice, nearly in a whisper, she shrivelled up, becoming still smaller and looked at him, smiling timidly, hiding her hands behind her back or under the table. I did not like that red-haired man. I did not like him at all.
Walking unsteadily, wrapping herself up in a shawl, the short-legged beauty comes up to me and mutters:
"You are wanted in the bakery."
And the baker, throwing the dough out of the bin, tells me how consoling, how indefatigable is his beloved — while I consider: what shall become of me in
time? And it seems to me that somewhere near by, behind the corner, a misfortune awaits me.
The affairs of the bakery advance so well that Derenkov tries to find another shop, a larger one, and decides to engage another assistant. That is well, for I have too much work to do and am completely exhausted. "In the new bakery you will be the head assistant," the baker promises me. "I will ask them to augment your wages ten roubles a month. Yes, I will." — I understand that it is convenient for him to have me as head-assistant — he does not like to work while I do it willingly, for I know that being tired is good for me, it extinguishes the anxieties of the soul and holds back the obstinate requirements of the sexual instinct. But it prevents me from reading.
"It is well that you've left off reading — let the rats get them, the books," says the baker. "But is it possible that you don't dream? I am sure you do, only you're so secretive...Funny man you are! To speak of one's dreams — there is no harm in that — there's nothing to be afraid of ..." He was very kind to me, I think he even respected me. Or perhaps was he afraid of me, as one of the protégés of the master, although that did not prevent him from stealing the goods systematically.
My grandmother died. I heard of her death seven | weeks after the burial, from a letter written to me by my cousin. In this short letter, without commas — it was said that grandmother gathering alms on the porch of the church fell down and broke her leg. On the eighth day she got the "fire of Anthony" (gangrene). Later on I heard that both my brothers and my sister with her children all sat on the old woman's
neck, feeding on the alms she had gathered. They did not have enough reason to call the doctor to see her.
It said in the letter:
"We buried her in the Petropavlowsky (cemetery) we followed her there all of us the beggars too they liked her and cried. Grandfather also cried and drove us away and himself remained on the grave we watched from behind the bushes how he cried he will also die soon.":
I did not cry, but I remember it was as if an icy wind had passed over my soul. In the night, sitting in the yards on logs of wood, I felt an indescribable longing to tell someone about my grandmother, how kind and clever she was, what a mother to all people. I carried about that desperate longing with me for a long time — but there was no one to confide in and so it burned out, unsaid. I recalled those days many years after, when I read the wonderfully true story of A. P. Tchekoff, about the coachman who spoke to his horse of his son's death. And I bitterly regretted that in those days of sharp misery I had neither a dog nor a horse at my side and that I did not think of sharing my grief with the rats — there were many of them in the bakery and I was on very friendly terms with them.
At that time the policeman Nikiforich started turning round me like a kite. Stately and broad-shouldered, his hair standing on his head like a silver bristle, his face framed by a square, carefully groomed beard, he smacked his lips with relish, watching me as though I had been a Christmas goose. "You like reading, I hear?" he would ask. 'What kind of books, for instance? "The Lives of Saints,' or the
Bible perhaps?" I read the Bible and the 'TchetiiMiner." 'This surprised Nikiforich and baffled him unpleasantly.
"Y-ye-es. Reading is lawfully wholesome. And what about Count Tolstoy? Have you had the chance of reading his books?"
I had also read Tolstoy, but, as it appeared, not the works which interested my policeman. 'Those are, I should say — ordinary works, like every one writes, but they say that in some of his writings he agitates against the 'popes' (popular name for priests), if only one was to get hold of their books!"
"Some of his writings" I had also read; they were published on hectograph, but I had found them dull and knew, too, that it was better not to discuss them with the police.
After a few discourses like that on the street, the old man began to invite me:
"Come into my sentry-box and have some tea!"
I knew of course what he was after — but I had a great desire to go and see him. I consulted with some clever people and it was decided that if I declined his kind invitations, it might strengthen his suspicions concerning the bakery.
So here I am, a guest of Nikiforich. One third of a small wretched lodging is occupied by a Russian stove, the second one — by a double bed behind a cotton-print curtain with numerous pillows in fustian pillow-cases — the rest of the space is occupied by a large cupboard with plateware, a table, two chairs and a bench under the window. Nikiforich, his uniform unbuttoned, sits on the bench shutting out with his
1A Russian Church edition of "The Lives of Saints"
body the only small window in the room; next to me sits his wife — a plump little woman with a luxurious bosom, about twenty years of age; her cheeks are pink and her eyes of a peculiar violet shade are cunning and wicked. Her bright red lips pout capriciously, her voice has angry, dry notes in it.
"I hear," says the policeman, "that my god-child Sechetea visits your shop frequently. She is a mean and depraved girl. All women are mean!"
"Every one of them?" asks his wife.
"Without exception!" resolutely affirms Nikiforich, jingling his medals as a horse does his harness. And sipping the tea out of his saucer — repeats with relish:
"They're all mean and depraved from the last street-girl and ...up to the queens. The queen of Sheba rode thousands of versts in the desert of depravity, when she came to see King Solomon. And our Catherine too, although she was called the Great
He tells in detail the story of a stove-heater, who after one night spent with Catherine II got promoted from a Sergeant to a General. His wife, listening attentively, passed her tongue over her lips continually and kept pushing my leg under the table.
Nikiforich speaks very flowingly, with savoury words and imperceptibly passes on to another topic.
"For instance: there is here a student called Pletev, bs.
His wife puts in, with a sigh:
"Fle isn't handsome, but so nice!"
"Who is that?"
"Mr. Pletnev."
"First of all: he is no Mister, hell be one when he has finished studying — up till then — he's just a student; we have thousands of them. Secondly: what does nice mean?"
'He is gay and young."
"Firstly: a buffoon at a fair is also gay...
"A buffoon laughs for money."
"Be quiet! Secondly: a dog has also been a puppy once upon a time... ."
"'A buffoon is like a aonkegan
'Shut up, I've told you Already! Have you heard?"
"Well, yes; -vemieara. 2c ys:
~Lbat a tignt.ass. a a
And having subdued his wife he advises me: "Yes, I tell you, try and get to know Pletnev — a very interesting fellow!"
Knowing that he has seen me probably many times with Pletnev in the street, I say: "I know him."
"Oh, is that so?"
One can see that he is vexed, he moves about jerkily, his medals jingle. And J am on the alert; I knew that Pletnev was printing some leaflets on the hectograph.
The woman, pushing me under the table, slily provokes the old man, while he, swelling up like a peacock, spreads out the sumptuous tail of his speech.
The pranks of his spouse distract my attention and again I do not notice how his voice changes, becomes lower and full of meaning. "An unseen thread — do you see?" he asks and looks into my face with round eyes, as though frightened of something.
"Take the Emperor to be a spider..."
"Good God, what are you saying!" exclaimed the woman.
"You be silent! You dunce — don't you see this is said for clearness, not in slander, you mare! Take the kettle away..."
And drawing together his eyebrows, half-closing his eyes, he continues, impressively:
"An unseen thread, like a spider's web, issues from the heart of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Alexander III., etc., etc., it goes through all the Ministers, through His Most High Excellency the Governor and all the ranks down to myself and even the lowest soldier. This thread binds everything together, everything is twined round by it. This unseen strength is the one that holds together for ever and ever the kingdom of the Tsar. And the Poles, Jews and Russians are bribed by the cunning English Queen, and try to break this thread wherever they can on the pretence that they are for the 'people'!"
In a stern whisper he asks, bending to me across the table:
"Do you see? That's right. Why do I tell you all this? Your baker praises you, he says that you are altogether a good fellow and a clever one and that you live all by yourself. But students keep coming and going the whole time to your bakery and sit with the Derenkovs late by night. I should understand if it were only one! But so many of them? Eh? I don't say anything against the students: to-day he is a student — to-morrow he'll be a public prosecutor. Students are a nice folk, but they are in a hurry to play some part, and the enemies of the Tsar set them against order. Do yousee? Andagain I'll say .. ."
But he did not have time to say what he wanted — for the door opened wide and a little red-nosed old man with a strap on his head and a bottle of vodka in his hand came in. He was already slightly tipsy.
"What about moving the chess-figures?"' he asked gaily and immediately produced a whole shower of small-talk.
"My father-in-law," said Nikiforich, in a sullen, vexed tone.
A few moments later, I said good-bye and went away. The sly woman, closing the door behind me, pinched me and said:
"Look at the clouds, how red they are, just like Ate...
Only one small golden cloud was melting in the sky.
Without any desire to offend my teachers, I will say all the same that the sentry-man explained to me more perspicuously and resolutely than they the organisation of state mechanism. Somewhere sits a spider and issues an "unseen thread" that binds together and entangles the whole life. I soon learnt to feel everywhere the strong little loops of that thread.
Late at night, having shut up the shop, the master's sister called me to her room and in a business-like way informed me that she was charged to ask me what my conversation with the policeman had been like.
"Oh, dear me!" she exclaimed anxiously, on hearing my detailed account and began running like a mouse up and down the room, shaking her head. "Tell me, does the baker try to get something out of
you? His mistress is a relation of Nikiforich, isn't she? We must discharge him..."
I stood leaning by the door-post, looking at her stealthily. She had pronounced too simply the word "mistress." I did not like that. Also I did not like her decision to discharge the baker.
"Be very careful," she continued, and as usual I was confused by the clinging glance of her eyes; it seemed as if she was asking me about something that I did not understand. Now she stopped in front of me, her hands folded behind her back.
"Why are you always so sullen?"
"My grandmother has died lately."
This seemed to amuse her and she asked, smiling:
"Did you love her very much?"
"Yes. Do you want anything else from me?"
"No."
I went away and composed in the night some verses, in which, I remember, there was an obstinate line:
"You are not that which you want to appear."
It was decided that the students should come as rarely as possible to the bakery. Deprived of the occasions of meeting them, I lost the possibility of asking them about things I did not understand in the books I read, and wrote down the questions that thrilled me into a large copy-book. But once, feeling tired, I went to sleep over it and the baker read my notes. Waking me up, he asked:
"What is it you write? 'Why did Garibaldi not drive the King away? Who is Garibaldi? And
since when is it allowed to drive away kings?"
He threw the copy-book angrily on to the bin — crawled into the stove-cleft and grumbled there:
"A nice business! Wanting to drive kings away, is he? Very funny! You leave that nonsense aside! Bookworm, indeed! About five years ago in Saratov such bookworms were caught by the policemen like mice! Yes, yes! Nikiforich is interested in you without that already. You stop driving kings away..."
He spoke with a kind feeling towards me and I could not answer him as I wanted to for I was forbidden to speak with him on "'dangerous topics."
III
An exciting book circulated in the town at that time — which roused a lot of dissent. I begged the veterinary surgeon Lavroff to get it for me, but he declined, saying it was hopeless. 'No, my boy, don't you expect that! But I think they are going to read it aloud here in some place; perhaps I'll find it possible to take you then..."
And at midnight, on the day of Assumption, I march along the Arskoe Pole, watching, through the darkness, for the silhouette of Lavroff, who is walking about | fifty paces in front of me. The field is desolate, but I advance, nevertheless, "with precautions," advised so by Lavroff — whistling and singing and pretending to be a slightly tipsy artisan. Black tufts of clouds lazily glide above me and among them like a golden ball rolls the moon; shadows cover the earth; pools glisten here and there like steel and silver. Behind my back angrily clamours the town.
My guide stops at the gate of a garden, behind the Spiritual Academy, and I hastily overtake him. We scramble over the hedge in silence, walk across a thickly overgrown garden, catching at the branches of the trees which let large drops of rain fall on us. Stopping next to the wall of the house, we softly knock at the shutter of a hermetically closed window — it is opened by a bearded person; behind him I can see only darkness, and do not hear a sound. ''Who's there?"
"From Jakov."
"Get. in."
One perceives the presence of many people in the pitch darkness, one also hears the rustle of clothes and feet, some one's gentle cough and a whisper. The flash of a match illuminates my face and I notice several dark figures lying on the floor near to the wall.
"All there?"
Be fh
"Get down the curtains, so as one should not see the light through the clefts in the shutters."
An angry voice grumbles:
"Who is the one who chose a forsaken house for us to gather in?"
"'Sh — sh — don't make a noise ...
The light is a small lamp in the corner of the room. The room is empty, with no furniture in it, except two packing cases, on which is laid a board and on it are perched five people like jack-daws on a hedge. The lamp also stands on a case turned over with its bottom upwards. On the floor near the wall sit three more men, and one on the window sill, a long-haired youth, very slim and fair; except him and the bearded person I know every one. The latter proclaims in a low voice that he is going to read the pamphlet "Our Dissen- | sions," written by Georgi Plekhanoff, a "former narodovcletz."' In the dark someone growls from the floor: "We know!"
The mysteriousness of the surroundings excites me pleasantly — the poetry of the secret is always the highest poetry. I feel myself like a believer at early Mass and recall the catacombs and the first Christians. The room is filled by the sound of a low bass voice, distinctly pronouncing every word.
"Rub-bish," growls someone again out of the corner.
Out there — in the darkness glistens enigmatically and dully a circle of copper, reminding one of a warrior's helmet. I realise that it is the ventilator of the stove.
Lowered voices resound in the room; they get tangled into a dark chaos of hot words and one cannot distinguish the words from the speaker. From the window sill above my head comes the mocking, loud question: "Are we going to read or not?"
This comes from the long-haired, pale youth. All remain silent — alone the bass voice of the reader is to be heard. Matches flash around, the red fires of cigarettes shine about, illuminating the pensive faces of the people, their half-closed or wide-open eyes.
The reading lasts eternally — lI get tired of listening to it, although I enjoy the sharp, fascinating words which get connected lightly and simply into convincing ideas.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the voice of the reader breaks off and the room fills immediately with indignant exclamations. 'The renegade!"
"It is all mere jingling of copper!"
"It is a spit into the blood shed by heroes!"
"After the executions of Generaloff and Uli-
And again comes from the window sill the voice of the youth:
"My dear sirs — can't you try and substitute serious substantial oppositions to swearing?"
I do not like discussions and do not know how to listen to them; it is hard for me to follow the capri-
cious leaps of an excited mind and the naked self-love of the disputers always exasperates me.
The youth, leaning over the window sill, asks me: "You are Peshkoff, the baker, aren't you? I am Fedosseff. We must get better acquainted. After all — we have nothing more to do here — this noise will last long yet — and no good will come of it. Shall we go?"
I had heard of Fedosseff as being the organiser of a very serious circle for the young and I liked_his — pale nervous face with its deep eyes. Walking along with me in the field, he wanted to know whether I had any friends among the workmen, what I had read and whether I had a lot of time to spare. Then he said: "I have heard about this baker business of yours — it is so strange that you fill your life with such rubbish. What do you want to do it for?'
I had felt, myself, lately that I did not need it any more and told him of this. This seemed to please him, he shook my hand heartily, smiling with a clear smile, and told me that he was going away the next day for about three weeks, but would let me know as soon as he would be back, in order that we might meet again.
_ The bakery was prospering, but my personal condition was growing worse and worse. My duties augmented in number as we moved into the new building. I had to work in the bakery, distribute the bread in the different houses, in the Academy and the "Institute for Noble Maidens." The maidens when taking the rolls out of my basket used to smuggle little notes inside and often would I read the most cynical words written with a childish writing on beau-
tiful sheets of paper. I felt uneasy when the gay crowd of clean, bright-eyed young girls surrounded my basket and, making the funniest grimaces, fiddled inside the heap of rolls — I watched them and tried to guess which of them had written the shameless words, perhaps not realising their licentious meaning. And remembering the filthy "houses of consolation," I thought:
"Can it be possible that the 'unseen thread' reaches from those houses to here?' One of the girls, a brunette with a high bosom and a thick plait of hair, stopped me one day in the corridor and asked in a hasty, low voice:
"I will give you ten kopecks if you take this note to its destination."
Her dark, caressing eyes were filled with tears, she watched me, biting her lips very hard and blushing up to her ears. I refused proudly to accept the ten kopecks, but took the note and handed it to the son of one of the members of the Court of Justice, a long, lanky student with a consumptive flush on his cheeks. He offered me half a rouble, slowly and pensively counted out the money in small change and when I said I did not want it, stuffed it back into the pocket of his trousers, but missed it and it all fell on the floor witha clash. Looking distractedly as the pennies rolled in different directions, he rubbed his hands so hard that the joints of his fingers cracked, and muttered, sighing heavily: "What am I todonow? Well, good-bye! I must think it all over..."
I do not know what he had to think over and at what results he arrived, but I pitied the young girl heartily. Very soon she disappeared from the Insti-
tute and I met her fifteen years after, as a teacher in a school in the Crimea; she was consumptive and spoke of everything in the world with the mercilessness of a being that has been cruelly thwarted by life.
When I had finished distributing the rolls, I went to bed, and in the evenings worked in the bakery in order to be able to deliver the warm pastry to the shop before midnight — for the bakery was situated in front of the town theater and after the performance people used to flow to us and gobble up the warm puffs. Then I would go to knead the paste for French breads, and kneading about fifteen or twenty poods with one's hands is no joke! Then again I slept for two or three hours and again went on carrying the bread to its destination.
And so it went on, day after day. But I was obsessed by the idea of sowing "the good, the reasonable, the eternal." I was a sociable person and liked to share with others the fruits of my imagination, roused by all I had gone through. I needed little to build up a thrilling story out of an every-day event, basing myself on the capricious curve of the "unseen thread." I had many friends among the workmen of the factories, Krestovnikoff and Alafonsoff, and was on especially good terms with the old weaver Nikita Rubzoff, a man who worked in nearly all the weaving factories of Russia — a clever and restless soul.
"It is fifty-seven years to-day that I am walking about on this earth, my friend Alexei Maximich, you young one, you fresh little quill!" he would say in a smothered voice, smiling with his inflamed grey eyes in dark eyeglasses tied clumsily together with
MY UNIVERSITY DAYS Bad
a brass wire, which left green oxygenated stains behind his ears and on the bridge of his nose. The weavers called him the "German" on account of his beard that left a short moustache and a thick tuft of grey hairs under his lip. He was middle-sized and broad-shouldered and was always imbued with sorrowful gladness. ''What I like is going to the circus," he was wont to say, leaning his bald bumpy skull onto his left shoulder. "Only look what they do not manage to teach to the animals, to the horses! Consoling, I find it. I watch the beasts with respect and think: well, that proves that one should be able to teach a man some reason, too! The beast is bribed by the circus-people with a bit of sugar — well, we can get it just as well in the grocery. We need sugar for the soul and that would be as a caress to us. Therefore, my boy, it is with a caress that one must act, not with a log of wood, as it is the custom with us, eh?" He himself was not kind to people, spoke to them disdainfully and mockingly, and in discussions contradicted with short exclamations and with the evident desire to hurt his opponent. I made his acquaintance in a brewery where some other men were preparing to beat him and had even struck him twice already. I interfered in that business and led him away.
"Did they hurt you?" I asked him, walking along in the darkness, under a thin autumn rain.
'What! That isn't real thrashing!" he retorted indifferently. 'Look here, why do you speak to me with a kind of respect?"
Our friendship began with this. At first he ridi-
culed me cleverly and wittily, but when I told him of the part which the "unseen thread" plays in our lives, he exclaimed thoughtfully:
"You're a clever one, do you know that! Fancy thinking of such a thing!" And he began treating me with a fatherly solicitude and with greater respect. 'Your thoughts, my friend Alexei Maximich, you dear owl of mine, they are right thoughts — but who is going to believe you? It is far too unprofitable! a e
"But you believe, don't you?"
"T'm a homeless dog, with a short tail, while the rest of the people are watch-dogs, each keeping quantities of burdock-seeds on their tails, like wives, children, harmoniums, rubber-boots. And each one loves his own kennel dearly. No, they won't believe anything. We've had something of the kind at our factory at Marosoft's. Who goes in front gets his forehead bruised, and the forehead isn't like a back, it smarts for a long time."
He spoke in a different way after having made the acquaintance of Shaposhnikoff, the carpenter, a workman from Krestovnikoff's. The consumptive Jakoy, a great expert on the Bible and a skilful player on the guitar, amazed him by his fierce denial of God. Spitting to right and left the bloody threads of his decayed lungs, Jakov passionately and harshly announced:
"First of all, I have not been created in the image and likeness of God, I do not know anything, I cannot do anything and I am not a good man; no, I am not! Secondly, God either does not know how hard my life is, or knows and is powerless to help, or else
He can help — and won't! Thirdly, God is not allknowing, all-powerful — He is not merciful, either — in one word, He is not! It is all an invention, all life is an invention, but you won't succeed in fooling me!"
Rubzoff was dumbfounded with amazement, then got grey with fury and swore wildly at him, but Jakov disarmed him with the solemn words of the Bible quotations; he remained silent and shrivelled up in thought.
Shaposhnikoff, when he spoke, became terrible to look at. His face was swarthy and lean, his hair curly and black like a gypsy's and out of his bluish lips flashed a row of teeth sharp as a wolf's. His dark motionless eyes looked fiercely at his opponent and it was hard to stand that heavy, unbending glance; he reminded me of the patient who suffered from the "mania grandiosa."'
Walking away with me from Jakov's, Rubzoff said sullenly:
"Never have I heard anyone rise against God before. ve heard every kind of thing, but that — never! Of course that man will not remain long on this earth. Well — it's a pity. Did you see how red-hot with anger he got? .. ."
"Very interesting, isn't it, my friend?"
He rapidly made friends with Jakov and somehow grew agitated and restless and continually rubbed his inflamed eyes with his fingers. "So — so,' he said, smiling slyly, 'God, then, is to be dismissed!. Hm. . .. As to the Tsar, my darling, Pve got my own mind on it — the Tsar is no hindrance to me. The whole business does not lie in Tsars but in masters! I can get on with any Tsar, even with Van Grosing
himself if you like; let him sit on the throne as much as he wants, but let me have a free hand in the matter, there! If you do — I'll forge you with golden chains to your throne, and pray to you... ."
Having read "King Hunger," he said: "It is all quite right!"
And when he saw for the first time a pamphlet in lithograph, he asked me: "Who wrote this to you? Very distinctly he did it! You must say thank you to him!"
He possessed an insatiable hunger for knowledge and listened with intense attention to the crushing blasphemies of Shaposhnikoff as well as to my stories about books. He would laugh gladly, throwing back his head and arching his Adam's apple, and say admiringly: "What a clever thing a man's brain is, by Jove!"
He himself read little — his bad eyes prevented him from it — but he knew a lot and amazed me in this. "The Germans have a joiner of wonderful intelligence — the king himself always asks for his advice."
It appeared on my investigations that he was speaking of Bebel.
"How is it that you know of him?"
"I know," he answered shortly, scratching his lumpy skull with his little finger.
Shaposhnikoff was not interested in the hubbub of life, he was too engrossed in the denial of God, his ridiculing of the clergy, hating especially the monks.
One day Rubzoff amicably asked him: '"Jakov, why is it that you grumble the whole time only about God?"
And Jakov howled still more fiercely: "Is there anything else that lies in my way? For nearly twenty years I believed, I lived in the terror of Him and bore everything patiently. To discuss that was not allowed. Everything was established from above! I lived in ties. Then I read the Bible properly and saw the whole thing is a put-up job. Everything is, Nikita!' And stretching out his hand, as though tearing at the "unseen thread," he cried:
"There, through all this, I die before my time!"
I had several other good friends and often went into the bakery of Semenoff to see my old comrades who always greeted me with joy and listened to me readily. But Rubzoff lived in the Admiralteisky suburb, and Shaposhnikoff in the Tartar one, at a distance of about five versts from each other, and I could go to them very rarely. And they could not come to see me, for I had no place to receive my guests. Also the new baker, a soldier in retreat, was acquainted with policemen — the back of the police station was connected with our yard and the stiff "blue uniforms" used often to scramble over the hedge to take rolls for the Colonel Nanhardt and bread for themselves. I was told, too, not to 'come out too much in the light" in order not to attract attention to the bakery. I realised that my work was no longer essential. It happened oftener and oftener that people, not considering the profit of the business, drew money from the cash so imprudently, so that there often was not sufficient money to pay for the flour. Derenkov, pulling at his beard, gloomly smiled:
"We'll soon be bankrupt."
He was not getting on well; the red-haired Nastja was "in an interesting condition' and hissed like a cat, looking at everyone and everything with a green, offended glance. She used to walk at Andrei, as though not noticing him, and he guiltily would get out of her way and sigh.
Sometimes he complained to me. "This is not all serious. They all grab at everything! I bought myself half a dozen pairs of socks lately and — they've all disappeared already!" That was funny — about the socks — but I did not laugh, seeing what efforts were made by this modest, disinterested man, trying to organise a business which could be of some good to others, while everybody else was trying lightheartedly and carelessly to destroy it. Derenkov did not count on the gratitude of people for whom he worked, but he had a right to mere attention and friendly treatment and did not get it. His family fell to pieces very rapidly — his father suddenly became a religious maniac, the younger brother started drinking and going about with street-girls; his sister behaved like a stranger in the house and was evidently on the verge of a sad love affair with the red-haired student; I often noticed that her eyes were swollen from tears and I grew to hate the student.
I thought myself in love with Maria Derenkova. I was also in love with the girl at the counter in our bakery, Nadijda Shcherbatova, a plump, red-cheeked girl, with an eternal smile on her red lips. I was altogether in love. My age, my nature and all the entanglements of my life sought for a connection with a woman. I needed badly a woman's affection, or, at least, her friendly attention. I wanted to be able
to speak sincerely of myself, throw some light on the confusion of disconnected ideas and the chaos of impressions.
I had no friends. The people who looked upon me, as on "material demanding to be cultivated," did not rouse any sympathies or provoke my open-heartedness. When I spoke to them of things which did not interest them — they advised me: "Let this be!"
Guri Pletnev was arrested and taken to Petersburg, to the prison ''Kresti." The first to tell me of this was Nikiforich, whom I met in the early morning in the street. Stepping solemnly and pensively in front of me, all his medals adorning his breast — as though returning from a parade — he lifted his hand to his cap and silently turned away from me, but stopped immediately and growled behind my back:
"Guri Alexandrovich has been arrested to- 1 es
And with a gesture of despair added, lowering his voice and looking aside: '"He's done for, the youth!" It seemed to me that tears shone in his cunning eyes.
I knew that Pletnev expected to be arrested — he had warned me of this himself and had advised me as well as Rubzoff, with whom he was also on friendly terms, not to meet him. Nikiforich, looking down at his feet, asked dully:
"Why don't you come to me any more?"
I came to him in the evening. He had just awakened and was sitting up in bed, drinking kvas. His wife was mending a pair of trousers by the window. "Yes — ye-es, so it is!" said the policeman, scratching his broad chest, overgrown with raccoon hairs, and
watching me pensively. "They've arrested him. They found a frying-pan in his room, in which he boiled the paint for the leaflets against the Emperor?"
And he spat on the floor, shouting angrily to his wife:
"Here with the trousers!"
"In a minute," she answered, without lifting up her head.
"She pities him and cries over him," the old man continued, pointing to his wife. "I pity him, too, but what can a student do against the Emperor?"
He started dressing, but continued to speak:
"I will go out for,a minute... the kettle, FOU bts ates
His wife was staring motionless out of the window, but as soon as he got out of the sentry box she, turning rapidly, showed a tightly set fist to the door and with a great fierceness hissed between her teeth:
"You — you old skunk!"
Her face was swollen with tears, her left eye was closed by a bruise. She jumped up, went to the stove and hissed, bending over the kettle:
"Tll get the better of him, I will. Tl set him howling like a wolf from pain. Don't you believe him, don't you believe a word he says; he's trying to catch you. He's lying, he has no pity for anyone. The fisherman! He knows all about you all. That's what he lives on. It's like a hunt for him, to catch people. %s,)-."
She came up to me very near and, with the voice of a beggar, said: "Won't you give me a kiss, eh?" That woman was repulsive to me, but her eye looked at me with such a fierce, sharp longing that I put my
arms round her and stroked her harsh hair, dishevelled and greasy.
"Whom is he watching now?"
"On the Ribnoriadskaia, someone who lives there in rooms."
"The names you don't know?" she continued, smiling. "Look out, or I will tell him what you have been asking me about! Here he is...He found out Burochana. .. ." And she jumped back to the stove. Nikiforich brought a bottle of vodka, some bread and jam. We sat down to drink tea. Marina, sitting next to me, looked after me with emphasised tenderness, peering into my face with her normal eye, while her husband instructed me:
"That unseen thread lies deep in the hearts, in the bones. You can well try to break it! The Tsar is a God to the people!" And then unexpectedly asked me:
"You, here, are a well-read man. You've read the Bible, haven't you? Well, do you think that all it says there is right?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I think there's a lot of unnecessary things init. Alot of them. For instance about the beggars: Blessed are the beggars ...what is it they are blessed with? Quite useless altogether; about the poor there is a lot of queer things. One must distinguish the poor from the one who has become poor. If he's poor, it means he's no good. But the one who's become poor, it might be he was unlucky? That's the way one ought to reason. It would be better so."
"Why?"
He watched me searchingly, remained silent and
again began speaking distinctly and with weight, evidently having thought the whole thing well over:
"There's too much pity and compassion in the Bible, and compassion is an unwholesome feeling! So I think. Compassion demands huge expenses for unnecessary and even corrupting people. Almshouses, prisons, madhouses. One must help strong, healthy people, see that they should not waste their energy unwontingly. And we help the weak — as if we could make a strong man out of a weak one! From all this rubbish the strong get weak and the weak scramble on their necks. This is what one ought to think about! Try and alter it. One must realise that life has turned away from the Bible — her way is another one! You see why Hetneff went to the dogs? Out of compassion. We give to the poor and the students go under. Is there reason in that, eh?"
I was hearing these ideas for the first time in such sharp words, although I had come in contact with them before; they are more vital and have a greater spread than is supposed. About seven years after this, reading Nietzsche, I very vividly remembered the psychology of the Kazan policeman. I will say as a matter of fact that it has happened to me very rarely to strike against ideas in books which I had not met before in life. And the old "fisher of men' was talking on, striking the edge of the dish with his fingers to the rhythm of his words. His dry face frowned sternly, but he did not look at me — he looked instead into the brass looking-glass of the brightly glistening kettle. 'You must go now, it is time," his wife reminded him several times. He never answered her, but, stringing word after word on the
shaft of his thought, he suddenly flowed into a new channel. 'You are a clever fellow, you can read, is it suitable that you should be a baker? You could have gained much more by serving the Tsar's kingdom in a different fashion..."