My Universities

My Universities

And when IJ imagined that all this, which belonged to me so thoroughly, she might, in an intimate mo-

ment disclose to another man, I became tormented, and it seemed to me that there was something in this that resembled treason. Perhaps it is this fear that lies at the root of all jealousy? I felt that such an existence might turn me away altogether from the road I had chosen. I had already begun to believe that no other place existed for me in the world except in literature. And under such conditions I could not work. The thing which withheld me from scandal was that in the course of my life I had learnt to treat people with tolerance without, however, losing either interest or respect for them. I knew already that all people are sinners before the unknown God of absolute truth, and that the greatest sinners before man himself are the confirmed godly creatures; they are bastards, born from the union of vice and virtue and one must note that this union does not occur owing to a violence on the part of vice over virtue — or the other way round; it is the natural result of their lawful marriage, in which ironical necessity plays the part of the priest. And marriage is a sacrament in which two brilliant contrasts, joined together, give birth nearly without exception to some kind of gloomy mediocrity. At that time I revelled in paradoxes, like a little boy in

ice-creams; their sharpness excited me like good old

wine and the paradoxicality of words always helped to smooth down the brutal and offensive paradox of facts. "I think it will be better if I go," I said to my wife. She remained thoughtful for a moment, and agreed. "Yes, you are right! This life is not for you; I know it." We embraced each other in silence, a little sadly;

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS ove

then I left town and very soon she, too, went away, having decided to go on the stage. Thus ended the story of my first love; a very good story, in spite of its bad end.

A short time ago the woman of my first love died.

I will say it in her favour: she was a real woman. She knew how to live with what she had, but every day for her was the eve of a feast; she lived in a continual expectation that to-morrow would dawn upon a new, wonderful world, with fresh and beautiful flowers, uncommonly clever people and marvellous events. She mocked at the troubles of life, scorned them and drove them away as though they were mosquitoes. And there always lived and trembled in her soul the readiness to be amazed. This was, however, not the ingenuous rapture of a schoolgirl, but the healthy gladness of a human being who enjoys the dazzling bustle of life, the tragi-comically entangled human relations, the stream of small events, sparkling like grains of dust in the sun-rays.

I would not say that she cared for her fellow-people; no, but she liked to watch them. She sometimes complicated and hastened the development of every-day dramas between couples and lovers, skilfully ex- - citing the jealousy of the one, contributing to the union of the other; this rather dangerous game enthralled her.

"Love and hunger govern the world, and philosophy is its plague," she used to say. "One lives for love — that is one's principal task in life."

Among our friends, there was an official of the State Bank, a long and lanky fellow, who walked about slowly and gravely like a crane. He always dressed

very elaborately and, carefully inspecting his clothes, would take off the grains of dust visible only to himself with his dry and yellow fingers. His mind was hostile to any new thought or brilliant word; it was as if they scorned his manner of speech, which was heavy and precise. He always spoke with great weight, and very impressively and before uttering a sentence, which was never to be contradicted, he would smooth down his scanty reddish whiskers with his thin cold fingers. "With time the science of chemistry will acquire a great importance in an industry working with raw materials. It is said with justice of women that they are capricious. There is no physiological difference between a wife and a mistress; the difference is merely a juridical one."

I would then ask my wife very seriously: "Can you affirm that all lawyers have got wings?"

She replied, guiltily and sadly: "Oh, no, I could not afford to do so, but I affirm that it is silly to feed elephants with boiled eggs." Our friend, after listening a short time to this dialogue, would announce sagaciously:

"It seems to me that all you say is not serious."

One day, having struck his knee painfully against the foot of the table, he winced and said with conviction: "Compactness is the indisputable property of TNACEET i's i

After seeing him out, my wife, pleasantly excited, flushed and light-footed, would say, sitting down on my lap:

"Don't you see how perfectly,-how entirely stupid he is. He is stupid in everything, in his gait, in his

gestures. I like him for being so unadulterated. Stroke my cheeks."

She liked when I stroked gently with my fingers the hardly perceptible lines under her dear eyes. She would press them together and stretching herself out, purr like a cat: "How interesting people are. Even then, when a man is not interesting to others, he excites me. I want to look into him as one looks into a small box; perhaps there is something hidden there, something that has not been exposed to others and has not been noticed by anyone before; I and I alone will have the privilege of seeing it."

There was no tension in her attempts to find that "what no one had seen." She looked for it with the curiosity and anticipation of a child, that enters for the first time into a room unknown to it before. And at times she actually managed to light a sharp flicker of concentrated thought in the colourless eyes of a dull person, although more often she roused the obstinate desire to possess her.

She loved her body, and standing naked before the glass, she would say with rapture: "What a splendid thing a woman is! What harmony there is in her!"

She also said:

'When I am well dressed, I feel healthier, stronger and cleverer!"

It was actually the case. She became more cheerful and witty, her eyes sparkled victoriously. She could make herself lovely dresses out of cotton print and wore them as though they had been of silk and velvet, and although she always dressed very simply, she seemed magnificently dressed to me. Women ad-

mired her clothes, of course not always sincerely, but loudly; they envied her and I remember one of them saying sadly:

"My dress is three times as expensive as yours and

ten times uglier; I feel injured and hurt when I look at ou!" : Women, of course, did not like her, and gossiped about us. A lady-doctor I knew, a very beautiful woman, but a very stupid one, used to warn me magnanimously: "That woman will suck all your blood out."

I learned a lot, living with the lady of my first love. But I burned, nevertheless, with the fire of desperation, noticing how irreconciliably different we were.

Life for me was a serious task; I had seen too much, thought too intensely, and lived in a perpetual anxiety. Questions, totally strange to the spirit of this fine woman, sang in a discordant choir deep in my soul.

One day, on the market-place, a policeman thrashed a fine-looking old one-eyed Jew, suspecting him of having stolen a bunch of horse-radish from a shop-keeper. J met the old man in the street. He was all covered with dust and walked along slowly, with a picturesque solemnity, his big black eye looking gravely into the empty and sultry sky while from his wounded mouth on to the long white beard ran thin little streams of blood, dyeing the silvery hair into bright red colour. |

This was thirty years ago and I can still see vividly before me his glance raised to the sky in silent reproach and his eye-brows trembling like silvery threads in his old wrinkled face.

No, one does not forget the insults inflicted on a

man — and should they always remain unforgotten!

I came home, crushed and distorted with anger and grief. Such impressions somehow thrust me out of life, made me a stranger in it, a stranger to whom one exposes in order to torture him all the filthiness and the stupidity and all the horrors of the world, all the things that can injure his soul forever.

And it was in those hours, in those days, that I felt most acutely how far away from me was the being who was nearest of all to me.

When I told her of the thrashed Jew, she was greatly surprised. ''And this nearly drives you mad! What a poor nervous system you must have!" And she asked: "You say he was a fine-looking old man? But how could he be fine-looking if he only had one eye?"

Every kind of suffering was hostile to her; she did not care to hear about other people's miseries; lyrical verses did not move her; compassion hardly ever was roused in her small and cheerful heart. Her favourite poets were Béranger and Heine, the man who laughed - in torment.

There was something in her attitude towards life which resembled the faith of a child in the unlimited skill of a conjurer; all the tricks which have been exhibited are interesting, but the most interesting is still to come. It will be exhibited in the next few hours, perhaps to-morrow — anyhow it will be exhibited.

I think that at the moment of her death she probably still hoped to see this last, most wonderful and perfectly incomprehensible trick.

VII

I LEFT Tsaritzin in May, on the dawn of a dismal

and windy day, expecting to be in Nijni in September. That was the year I had to serve off my time as a soldier. A part of the way — in the night — I used to travel with conductors of luggage-trains on the platforms of the freight-cars; the greater part I walked off on foot, earning my bread in Cossack villages, farms and monasteries. .I roamed about the Don district, in the governments of Tambor and Riazan — from Riazan along the Oka; then I turned off to Moscow, and on my way decided to visit Tolstoy in Khamorniki, but at my arrival there Sofia Andreevna informed me that he had gone to the Troitzo-Sergiersk monastery. I met her in the courtyard, at the door of a shed, filled to the brim with books; she led me into the kitchen, kindly offering me a glass of coffee and a roll of bread, and among other things told me that Tolstoy was perpetually surrounded by crowds of suspicious ne'er-do-wells and that Russia altogether possessed too many of that kind of people. I had had time to notice this myself by that time, and with an easy heart politely confirmed the observation of this clever woman as being perfectly correct. It was already the end of September, and the ground was rich with heavy autumn rains, a cold wind roamed about the bristly fields, the woods were attired in their most vivid colouring; it was altogether a beauti-

ful time of the year, but rather ill arranged for travelling on foot, especially in rotten shoes.

At the Moscow luggage-platform I managed to persuade the conductor to let me into the cattle-van, in which eight bulls of Tehorkassi were being taken to Nijni to be slaughtered. Five of them behaved very decently towards me, but the others for some reason did not like my company and tried the whole time to make my life unpleasant; when they succeeded in doing so, they sniffled and bellowed in satisfied tones. The conductor, a drunken, bandy-legged little fellow with tangled whiskers, presented me with the task of feeding my travelling companions; he would thrust handfuls of hay into the car at the different stations and command me: "Offer it to them."

I spent thirty-four hours in the company of bulls, ingenuously believing that never again should I meet more brutal beasts in my life.

In my satchel I had a copy-book of verses and a wonderful poem in prose and verse, "The Song of the Old Oak." I never suffered from conceit and at that time believed myself to be very poorly educated, but I was sincerely convinced that I had written an uncommonly fine thing. I stuffed it with every idea that had got into my head during ten years of my hard and varied life and I was sure that all reading humanity, after having acquainted itself with my poem, would be gladly amazed at the novelty of all that I had imparted to it. I felt sure that the truth of my story would shatter the hearts of all people and that then we would see the beginning of an honest, pure and joyful life. I did not expect or desire any- 'thing more than that.

In Nijni lived at that time Karonin. I used to go and see him sometimes, but never dared to show him my philosophical treatise. Nikolai Elpidiforovitch was a man of very poor health and roused in me a feeling of sharp compassion, for I felt with all my soul that he was tormented with a persistent obsession.

"Perhaps it is like that,' he would say, blowing thick smoke through his nostrils, then sigh deeply and add, with a smile: "And perhaps not."

His speeches always excited in me a sensation of troubled perplexity; it seemed to me that this halftortured man had the right to speak somehow in a different, more precise fashion and that his duty was to do so. All this, and also my sincere affection for him, inspired me with a certain cautiousness in regard to this hero of Petropavlovsk, as if I feared to disturb something in him and hurt him.

I had seen him in Kazan, where he stopped for a few days on his way back from the exile. He roused in me the everlasting impression of a man who never in his life could find the place he was looking for.

"After all, it was quite unnecessary for me to come here."

These words were the first which reached my ears as I entered the gloomy room of the one-storied house in the dirty yard of a public-house for draymen. A tall, stooping man stood in the middle of the room looking pensively at the dial of a big watch which he held in his hand. A cigarette smoked between the fingers of the other one. He began walking up and down the room in long strides, answering shortly to the questions which were put to him by the landlord,

S. M. Somoff. His short-sighted, childishly clear eyes looked tired and troubled. His cheek bones and chin were adorned with a downy beard of uneven length, while on his angular skull grew the straight unwashed hair of a priest.

He was jingling some copper in the trouser-pockets of his crumpled suit, and his right hand brandished a cigarette like the stick of an orchestra conductor. His breath came in clouds of smoke; he coughed hoarsely, gloomily smacked his lips and kept continually looking at his watch. The movements of his thin, badlybuilt body made one realise that the man was ineffably worn out. Gradually the room filled with about a dozen dismal-looking schoolboys and students, a baker and a glazier.

Karonin spoke in the smothered, voice of a consumptive, of his life in exile, of the state of mind of the political exiles. He spoke without looking at any one, as if talking to himself, often pausing for a short time between his speech and, sitting on the window-sill, fidgeting in a helpless way, for through an open casement above his head came gusts of cold air filled with the smell of manure and horse-urine. The hair on his head fluttered about, he stroked it with the long fingers of his bony hand and answered to all the questions which were showered at him. "It is possible that it isso! But I am not sure. I do not know. I cannot say."

Karonin did not appeal to the boys. They had been used to people who knew everything and who could answer everything. And the cautiousness of his manner excited an ironical estimation in them:

"A frightened crow!"

Only my friend the glazier Anatoli interpreted the honest thoughtfulness of Karonin's childish eyes and his repeated "I do not know" by another kind of fear: that of a man who knows life and who is afraid of misleading the dismal-looking kittens by telling them more than he can say in sincerity. People of real direct experience, Anatoli and I, treated the men of books with a certain lack of confidence. We knew the schoolboys well and perceived that in that moment they affected a seriousness which they did not usually have. About midnight Karonin suddenly stopped speaking, came out into the middle of the room and, standing in a cloud of smoke, rubbed his face roughly with the palms of his hands, as if washing it in invisible water. He then got his watch out of some place in his belt, carried it to his nose and said, hastily: "That's so. I must gonow. My daughter is ill. Very ill. Good-bye."

He pressed the hands stretched out to him with his hot, moist hand and went unsteadily out of the room, while we started a "civil dissension," the obligatory and unavoidable consequence of all such discourses.

In Nijni, Karonin surveyed anxiously the development of the Tolstoyan movement among the "'intelligentsia" and assisted in organising the colony in the government of Simkirsk. The rapid failure of this enterprise he described in the story "The Colony of Borsk." "What if you tried, too, to 'establish yourself on earth'?" he advised me. "Perhaps it might suit you."

But the deadening experiences made by the lovers of self-torture did not attract me, also I had met in Moscow one of the chief founders of the "'Tolstoyan

movement," M. Novoseloff, the organiser of the Tver and Smolensk workmen's association, who afterwards became a collaborator of the "Orthodox Review" and an infuriated enemy of Lyof Tolstoy.

He was a tall man, apparently of great physical strength, and affected an extreme simplicity, bordering sometimes on coarseness of thought and manner; behind this coarseness I perceived the badly-dissimulated anger of an ambitious man. He harshly denied all "culture." This I did not like, for culture was the domain toward which I strove with great difficulty through a whole series of obstacles.

I met him in the flat of a Netchaeff man, Orloff, a translator of Leopardi and Flaubert, and one of the organisers of the splendid collection, '"The Pantheon of Literature." Novoseloff was a clever, highly educated old man and spent the whole evening in turning into ridicule and pulling to pieces the "Tolstoyan movement," which at that time rather appealed to me, although I sought in it merely the possibility of temporarily finding a secluded corner in life where I could think over everything that life had taught me.

I knew, of course, that V. G. Korolenko lived in Nijni. I had read his "Dream of Makar," which, for

an unknown reason, I did not like.

On a rainy day a friend with whom I was walking along the street suddenly squinted to one side and said:

"Korolenko!"

A broad-shouldered, squarely-built man was walking with a firm gait along the pavement. I could only see the curly beard of his face under the wet umbrella. That man reminded me of the Tombov

sextons and I had every reason to regard people of that breed with a certain hostility, so that I felt no desire to get acquainted with Korolenko. This desire equally did not arise after the advice given to me by a general of the secret police — one of the most amusing jokes in curious Russian life.

A few days later I was arrested and locked up in one of the four towers of the Nijni-Novgorod prison. In my round cell there was nothing of any interest, barring the inscription engraved on the door which was done up in iron. The inscription said:

"All that exists — comes from a cell."

I reflected a long time, wondering what the man who had carved this out had meant by these words. And not knowing this to be the axiom of biology I decided to consider it the sentence of a humourist.

I was called to be examined by the great General Posnansky himself, and he snorted, striking his purple swollen fist on the papers which had been taken away from me:

"I see you write verses and altogether ... Well, after all, go on writing them. It is pleasant to read nice verses. .. ." I, too, was pleased to hear that certain truths were not inaccessible to the General. I did not think that the epithet "nice" was applied to my verses in particular. But at that time very few members of the "'intelligentsia" could have acquiesced in the policeman's aphorism on verses.

I. I. Svedenzoff, a writer and an officer of the Guards, who had been in exile, spoke with great admiration of the "narodovoltzi," with particular en-

thusiasm of Vera Figner; he published gloomy stories in "fat" reviews, but when I read him the poem of Fofanoff:

"I did not well hear what you said to me, But I know you said something tender...

he snuffed angrily:

"What rubbish! She most probably asked him what time it was. And he, the ass, rejoiced over it... ."' The General was a heavy man and went about in a grey waistcoat with missing buttons and in grey, stained trousers with stripes. His swollen face in its rim of white hair was all variegated with purple veins, and his watery, troubled eyes looked wistful and tired. He seemed to me to be abandoned and lonely but good-natured, reminding one of a wellbred hound who in his old age thinks it a bore to have to go on barking. I knew from the book of the speeches of A. F. Koni about the sad drama which had fallen to the General's lot; I knew that his daughter was a gifted pianist and he himself a morphine maniac. He had been the organiser and the president of the "Technical Society" in Nijni, proclaimed at the meetings of this society the importance of house industry and opened a shop on the principal street of the town where the house production of the different governments was being sold; he sent denouncements to Petersburg on the workers of the Zemstvo, on Korolenko and on the governor Baranoff, who used to indulge in that kind of thing himself. Everything that surrounded the general was untidy: dirty bedlinen dragged about behind the leather sofa; from under it peeped a dirty shoe and a piece of alabaster

of about two poods of weight. On the posts of the windows, in various cages, goldfinches, bullfinches and siskins skipped about, and the large writing-table was crowded with instruments for physical experiments. Opposite to me lay a fat French book, "The Theory of Electricity," and a volume of Schenoff's "The Reflexes of the Cephalic Brain." The old man smoked short and fat little cigarettes without interruption and their thick smoke troubled me, giving me the idea that tobacco is imbibed in morphia.

"What revolutionary are you?" he said surlily. "You are neither a Jew nor a Pole. You write — well, what of that? When I shall set you free, go and show your manuscripts to Korolenko. Do you know him? No? He isa real writer, not any worse than Turgeneff. .. ."

A heavy, oppressive smell emanated from him. He did not want to go on talking and dragged out lazily word after word with a great effort. It was very dull. I sat observing a small show-case standing next to the table in which metallic jugs were set out in rows.

The general noticed my oblique glances, got up with some difficulty and asked:

"Are you interested?"

Then he moved his chair to the show-case and, opening it, explained: "These are medals, in memory of different historical events and personalities. Here you see the taking of the Bastille, and this is in honour of Nelson's victory at Abukir. You know the history of France? Here is the union of Swiss unions and this is the famous Galvani. Look how wonderfully it is made. This is a Cuvier, considerably inferior!"

His eyeglass trembled on his purple nose, the watery eyes lighted up; he lifted each medal as carefully with his thick fingers as if it were glass instead of bronze.

"What perfect art!" he grumbled and, blowing the dust off the medals, funnily pursed up his lips.

I marvelled sincerely at the beauty of the little metallic circles and saw that the old man loved them very tenderly. Shutting up the show-case with a sigh, he asked me whether I liked singing birds? Well, in that domain I knew probably more than three generals put together. And we started an animated discussion on birds. The old man had already summoned the policeman who had to escort me to prison; an impressive quartermaster stood upright by the door-post, while his chief still went on, smacking his lips regretfully:

"Yes, think of it only, I cannot get hold of a bee-eater! What a wonderful bird! Altogether birds are a fine people, aren't they? Well, now, off you go, bless you... .

"Oh, yes..." he remembered suddenly, "you ought to learn writing and all that, and not this..."

In several days I again sat in front of the General and he muttered crossly:

"You knew, of course, where Somoff had gone off to; you ought to have told me and I would have let you out immediately. And it was quite unnecessary to scoff at the officer who searched your house. .. . mltopether: 4-2."

But then, suddenly, bending towards me, he asked good-naturedly: "Now, you don't catch birds any more, do you?"

About ten years after this amusing encounter with the General, I was sitting under arrest in the Nijni police-station waiting to be examined.

A young adjutant came up to me and asked:

"Do you remember General Posnansky? He was my father. He died in Tomsk. He was greatly interested in your career, watched your successes in literature and often remarked that he had been the first to perceive your talent. Not long before his death he asked me to hand over to you some medals, which you had admired. Of course if you care to have thems)?

I was sincerely moved. On getting out of prison I took the medals and deposited them in the museum of Nijni.

They did not accept me as a soldier. A fat, jocose doctor, who resembled slightly a butcher and disposed of everyone like a slaughterer dealing with bulls, announced after having examined me:

"You are full of holes, my fellow! 'Your lung is perforated! Also, you have an extended vein on your leg. Not suitable!" I was very grieved over this. Not long before the citation I made the acquaintance | of a topographical-officer — I do not recall whether his name was Paskhin or Paskhaloff. He had participated in the battle of Kushka and gave vivid descriptions of the life on the border of Afghanistan. In the spring he was to start for the Pamir to work on the establishment of Russian frontiers. He was tall, nervous and sinewy and drew with great art oil-paintings, representing small, amusing pictures of military life in the style of Fedosoff. I scented in him something

contradictory and unbalanced, that which is usually called "abnormal." He kept persuading me:

"Come and join our topographic company and I will take you on to the Pamir. You will see the most beautiful thing in the world — a desert! Mountains — they are a chaos, the desert is harmony."' And half-closing his big grey strangely-roving eyes, lowering to a whisper his soft caressing voice, he hummed mysteriously of the beauty of the desert, while I listened to him, stricken dumb with amazement: how could one speak so fascinatingly of a void, of unlimited sands, of unshakable silence, of sultriness and the tortures of thirst?

"That is of no consequence," he said when he heard I had failed to become a soldier. 'You must address a petition, saying that you want to join the company of topographers as a volunteer and undertake to submit to the necessary examinations — and I will arrange all the rest!"

I wrote the petition, handed it, anxiously waited for the result. In a few days Paskhaloff announced to me in a somewhat confused manner: "It appears that you are politically unsafe; there 1s nothing to be done in that case!" And lowering his eyes he added softly: "It is a pity that you concealed this fact from me." JI told him that this 'fact' was equally new to me, but I think he did not believe me. He left the town very soon and some time after New Year I read in the Moscow papers that he had cut his throat with a razor in the bath.

My life went on, confused and difficult. I worked in a beer-store, rolling about barrels of beer in a damp

cellar from one place to the other, washing and closing up bottles. This filled up my whole day. Then I joined an office of a spirit factory, but on the first day of my service a greyhound belonging to the wife of the factory manager rushed at me; I killed him with a knock of my fist on the skull and was immediately discharged on this ground.

At last, on a very hard day, I decided to show my poem to V. G. Korolenko. The snowstorm had raged for three days, the streets were barricaded with snow-heaps, the roofs of the houses had attired themselves in sumptuous white head-dresses, the breeding-boxes in silvery lace nightcaps were drawn before the window-panes and in the pale sky shone a cold, dazzlingly corrosive sun.

Vladimir Galantinovich lived at the outskirts of the town in the second floor of a wooden house. On the pavement in front of the house a thick-set man in a fur hat of a peculiar shape with ear-caps, in a short, badly cut sheepskin coat reaching to his knees and heavy Viatka snow-boots, skilfully worked with a broad spade.

I clambered over the snow-heap to the entrance.

"Who is it you want?"

"Korolenko."

"That's me."

Out of a thick, curly beard, richly adorned with hoar frost, a pair of kind, brown eyes were looking at me. I did not recognise him, for on meeting him on the street I had not seen his face. Leaning on his spade, he silently listened to my explanations concerning the aim of my visit, then half-closed his eyes, as if remembering something.

"Your name is familiar. Was it not about you that I heard some two years ago from Romass? Mikheilo Antonovich. Yes, yes!' He mounted the stairs, asking me:

"Are you not cold? You are so lightly dressed."

And in a low voice, as if talking to himself:

"What a stubborn old peasant, Romass. A clever Ukrainian! Where is he now? Ah, in Viatka..."

In a small corner-room, with the windows coming out into the garden, encumbered with two writingdesks, bookcases and three chairs, he wiped his wet beard with a handkerchief and turned over the pages of my thick manuscript, saying:

"I will read this, all right! What a queer handwriting; it looks simple and clear and is at the same time difficult to read."

My manuscript was lying in his lap; he kept glancing from its pages to me and back again. I felt intensely confused. "Here you have: 'zizgag.' This is ...evidently a slip of the pen. There is no such word; it ought to be 'zigzag.' "

The small pause before the word "slip" made me realise that V. G. Korolenko was a man who knew how to spare people's pride.

"Romass wrote to me that the peasants attempted to blow him up with gunpowder and set fire to his house afterwards, wasn't it so? You lived with him at that time?' He spoke and kept turning over the pages. 'Foreign words ought to be used only in case of absolute necessity; speaking in general it is better to avoid them. The Russian language is rich enough for itself and it possesses all the means of expressing the most subtle feelings and all the shades of thought."

He said all this, questioning at the same time about Romass and about the country.

'What a stern face you have!" he said all of a sudden, and asked with a smile:

"You probably find life hard?"

His soft speech differed considerably from the coarse Volga pronounciation with a stress on the "o," but I found a peculiar resemblance in him to the Volga pilot — not only in his well-set, broad-chested stature and the sharp look of a pair of intelligent eyes, but also in the good-natured calmness which is so familiar to people who observe life like the flow of a river along a sinuous bed among hidden stones and sandbanks.

"You often use coarse words, probably because you think them stronger? That happens."

I told him that I knew that coarseness was natural to me, but that I had had neither the time to enrich myself with soft words and sensations, nor the place wherein to do it.

Looking at me attentively, he continued, gently: "You write here:

"I came into the world, not to acquiesce.' "That is like that' — that — like that — is wrong. It is a clumsy and unattractive form of speech. 'That is so' — do you hear?"

I heard all this for the first time and felt all the truth of his remarks.

Further it appeared in my poem that someone was sitting "like a hawk" on the ruins of a temple. "That is an unsuitable place for such an attitude, for it is not as stately as it is indecent," remarked Korolenko with a smile. Here he found another "slip" and again

and again. I was squashed by their multitude and probably became red like a burning coal. Noticing my state of mind, Korolenko laughingly told me of some mistakes made by Glieb Uspensky. This was generous, but I could listen to nothing more, and could understand nothing, only praying to be able to rush away from this shame... .

It is known that literary men and actors have got the self-pride of a poodle. I went away and spent the next few days in a state of absolute depression. I had been confronted with an uncommon kind of writer: he was unlike the unbalanced and kind-hearted Karonin, not mentioning the amusing Starostin. He had nothing in common with the surly Svedevzoff Ivanovich, the author of ponderous stories, who used to tell me:

"A story must strike a man's soul as though it were a stick, in order that the reader should realise what an animal he is."

There was something in these words that approached the spirit I was in. Korolenko had been the first to address to me some weighty human words on the importance of structure, on the beauty of a sentence and I was surprised at the simplicity and truth of these words. Listening to him, I perceived with a certain anguish that writing was no easy work. I sat with him for more than two hours; he told me a lot, but not a word on the essence, on the contents of my poem. And I knew already that I would hear no good of it.

' About two weeks after that the little red-haired professor of statistics, Professor W. I. Deriagin, a charming and clever man, brought me the manuscript and announced to me:

"Korolenko thinks he intimidated you too much. He says you have capacities, but that one must write from nature, without philosophising. You have also got humour, although it is a trifle coarse, but that's all right. And about the poetry — he said it was delirious!" On the cover of the manuscript was written in pencil in a sharp angular writing:

"It is difficult to judge of your capacities by the 'Song' — but I think you have got them. Write about something that really happened to you and show it to me. I am not a judge of poetry; yours seems to me only confused meaning, although some lines are very strong and vivid. — V. Kor." Not a word on the contents of the manuscript. I could not understand what he had read in it, the queer man!

Two leaves flew out of the manuscript. One was a verse called "The Voice from the Mountain to the One Who Ascends," the other "The Discussion Between the Devil and the Wheel." I do not remember what they discussed; I think it was the circular motion of life. I can neither recall what the "voice from the mountain" said exactly; I tore up the verse and the manuscript, stuck them into the burning Dutch stove and pondered, sitting on the floor, as to what it could mean to write about "something that had really happened."

All that I had written in the poem had really happened to me.

And the poetry! It had got into my manuscript by mistake. It had been my little secret; I had not shown it to anyone, and did not understand it well myself. Among my friends the leather-like translations of Barikova and Likhat from Coppée, Richepin,

T. Good and similar poets were much better valued than Pushkin and still less the comedies of Fofanoff. The king of poetry then was Nekraffoff, the young admired Nadson, while the elder ones did not accept him either, and, if they did, only condescendingly. I was considered to be a serious person; weighty peo-~ ple, whom I sincerely respected, talked to me twice a week on the importance of house industry, on the demands of the people and the tasks of the "intelligentsia,"' on the rotten contagion of capitalism, which never — Oh, never — will penetrate in the Russia of peasants and socialists.

And now, everyone will know that I write delirious verses! I pitied the people who would be compelled to alter their kind and serious attitude towards me. I decided never again to write either poetry or prose and actually did not write a line during all the time of my life in Nijni — that is, for nearly two years. And sometimes the desire to write was great.

With intense grief I brought the sacrifice of all my wisdom to the altar of the "fire that purifies everything."

V. G. Korolenko stood aside from the group of the "intelligentsia" which went under the name of "radicals" and among which I felt myself like a siskin in a family of wise ravens. The favourite writer for that society was N. N. Zlatovratsky. One used to say of him: ''Zlatovratsky purifies and elevates the soul." And one of the teachers of the young recommended him like that: .

"Read Zlatovratsky. I know him personally; he is an honest man."

Glieb Uspensky was read attentively, although he

was suspected of a scepticism in regard to the country which was inadmissible. They read Karonin, Machtet, Zasodimsky, and inspected Potapenko.

"He seems to be all right."

Mamim-Sibiriak was greatly honoured, but one used to say that he had a "'vague, undetermined tendency."

Turgeneff, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, were still somewhere beyond the limits of interest.

Korolenko drove my friends to confusion; he had been in exile, had written the "'Dream of Makar." This of course established his position. But there was in his stories something that roused suspicion, that was unfamiliar to the mind of people who had been limited to biographical literature on the country and the _ peasant.

"He writes from the brains," one said of him, ''and the people can only be understood by the soul." Particularly disturbed were they over the splendid story, "In the Night," in which they perceived a tendency of the author in the direction of "metaphysics," and that was considered criminal. Someone of the circle of V. G. — I think it was L. I. Bodganovich — wrote a rather wicked and witty pamphlet on that story.

"R-rubbish!" said S. Somoff, stuttering a little, a man not quite in his right mind, but who possessed a certain influence among the young. 'The d-description of the physiological act of birth — is the job of scientif-fic lit-terature and has nothing whatever to do with cockroaches! He im-mitates Tolstoy, that K-Korolenko!"

But the name of Korolenko rang already in all the circles of the town. He became the central figure of

cultured life and like a magnet attracted the sympathy or the hostility of all people.

"He seeks popularity," said those who were not capable of saying anything else.

At that time a considerable theft had been disclosed in the local bank of the nobility and this very usual story had the most tragic consequences: the chief culprit, a provincial "lion and lady-killer' died in prison, his wife poisoned herself with muriatic acid, having dissolved some copper in it; immediately after her burial a man who had loved her committed suicide on her grave, two more people who had been summoned before the judge on that business died one after the other, and there was a rumour that they, too, had committed suicide. V. G. published articles in the "Vostnik of the Volga" on the affairs of the bank and his articles coincided in time with these dramas; tender-hearted people began saying that Korolenko "kills people by his correspondence," and my boss, A. I. Lanin, proclaimed hotly that "'there are no events in the world which are foreign to an artist."

It is known that calumny is one of the cheapest things in the world and one of the easiest. Therefore people poor of spirit generously rewarded Korolenko with the most varied kind of it.

VIII

I returned to Nijni from Tiflis. V. G.

Korolenko was in Petersburg.

Having no other work at hand, I wrote a few short stories and sent them to the "Voljski Vertnia" of Rheinhardt, the most important paper of the '"Vovolje,"' owing to the permanent collaboration in it of V. G.

The stories were signed: M. G. or G — i, and were published very rapidly. Rheinhardt sent me a rather flattering letter and heaps of money, about thirty roubles. From some unknown motives, which I have now forgotten, I jealously concealed my authorship even from people with whom I was on very good terms, like N. Z. Vaisilieff and A. I. Lanin; I did not attach a great importance to these stories and certainly did not think that they would have any decisive influence on my fate. MRheinhardt, however, revealed my incognito to Korolenko and when the latter came back from Petersburg I was told that he wanted to see me.

He still lived in the same wooden house of the architect Lembke, on the outskirts of the town. I found him sitting at the tea-table in a small room with windows opening on the street, flowers on the windowsills and in the corners, and a quantity of books and

papers spread all over the place. His wife and chil-

dren, having had their tea, went out for a walk. V. G. appeared to me to be still steadier, still more sure of himself, and his hair — more curly than it was before.

"We have just read your story 'About the Siskin.' So you've started publishing your things? Let me congratulate you. I see you are stubborn — you still write in allegories. Well, an allegory has its good sides, if it is witty, and obstinacy is not a bad quality either"

He said a few more affectionate words to me, looking at me under half-closed eyelids. His forehead and neck were thoroughly sunburnt, and his beard was discoloured by the sun. He wore a dark blue linen shirt with a leather belt, and black trousers stuck into high boots. It seemed as though he had come from somewhere far away and was going to go back immediately. His quiet intelligent eyes shone with courage and cheerfulness. I told him that I had written a few more stories and that one of them had been printed in the paper "the Caucasus."

"You have brought nothing with you? What a pity! You have a very peculiar way of writing. It is all a little disconnected and rough, but very curious. They say you have been going about a lot on foot? I too have been roaming the whole summer beyond the Volga, on the Kerjenetz, the Vetlodga. And you, where have you been?" After I had given him a short account of my ramblings, he exclaimed approvingly:

"By Jove, that is some walking! That is why you have become so virile in those three years. And you have probably accumulated a huge amount of strength."

I had just read his story, "The River Plays," and

had admired it' very much for the beauty of its structure as well as for its contents. I had experienced a feeling of gratitude towards its author and began to speak rapturously of it. In my opinion, Korolenko had given, in the face of the ferryman Tinlin, a wonderfully accurate and a beautifully outlined image of the peasant who is a "hero for an hour." Such a man can quietly and with complete self-denial commit a deed of greatest magnanimity and directly after that thrash his own wife to death or impale his neighbour. He can captivate you with good-natured smiles and hundreds of charming words as bright as flowers, and then, without apparent reason, step on your face with his foot in a muddy shoe. Like Kozma Minin, he is capable of organising a national movement and after that "drink himself to death and go to the dogs and perish of lice." V. G. listened to my confused speech, without interrupting it, watching me attentively all the time. This intimidated me very much. At times, closing his eyes, he began striking his palm on the table, then he got up, leant his back against the wall and said, laughing good-naturedly:

"You exaggerate. Let us put it simply like this: the story is a successful one. That is enough. I will not conceal that I am pleased with it myself. But whether altogether the peasant is like Tinlin, that I do not know. But look here, you speak well, your words are strong, vivid and prominent. Here is what you get in return for your praise! And one feels that you have been reflecting a lot and seen a lot, too. I congratulate you with all my heart! With all my heart, do you hear?"

He stretched out his hand to me with corns on the

palms, probably from the axe or the oars; he enjoyed splitting wood and altogether liked all physical exercise.

"Well, tell me about what you have seen?"

And telling him about it, I broached the subject of my meetings with different seekers of truth; they walk in hundreds from town to town, from convent to convent, on the entangled roads of Russia.

Korolenko, looking out of the window on the street, said:

"They are, usually, merely miscreants. Unsuccessful heroes, disgustingly in love with themselves. Have you noticed that they are mostly evil-minded people? The majority of them do not seek 'the holy truth' at all, but only an easy way of earning their bread and also of scrambling on somebody else's neck."

Those words, although said very quietly, amazed me, revealing to me a truth of which I was vaguely conscious before.

"What good orators there are among them," continued Korolenko. 'What a rich tongue they have! Some of them speak as though they were wearing silk embroideries!"

"The seekers of truth, the callers to account," those were the favourite heroes of the historical literature of the "'narodniki,"' and here is Korolenko calling them miscreants and evil-minded ones in addition. It sounded like blasphemy, but one saw that he had thought it over carefully and decided that it was like that. And his words strengthened my opinion of the firmness of this man's soul. 'Have you been on the Volyn or in the Podolje? It is very beautiful there!" I told him of my enforced conversation with Johann

of Kronstadt, and he exclaimed excitedly: 'Well, what do you think of him? What kind of a man is he?"

"He is a sincere believer, like some unwise little village priests of honest heart. I think he is awed by his own popularity. It weighs on him; he feels it to be too great a burden. One feels in him something accidental and as though he were not acting on his own will. He is continually asking his God: am I right, Almighty? and is always afraid that he is not right."

"How strange it is to hear that," says V. G. pensively. Then he began telling me his discussions with the peasants of Lukojanoff, sectarians of Korbjsnets — underlining splendidly, with a fine and clinging humour, the peculiar combination of ignorance and craft in the speeches of his interlocutors, cleverly noting the sound reason of the peasant and his cautious distrust toward every stranger.

"I think sometimes that nowhere is there such a various spiritual life as we have in Russia. And even if this is not the case, anyway the natures of our believers and thinkers are infinitely and unmatchably multifarious." He spoke imposingly of the necessity of studying the spiritual life of the country.

"This cannot be scooped by ethnography; one must approach it differently, more deeply. The country is the ground on which we all grow and it possesses a lot of thistle and uselessly growing weeds. To sow 'the reasonable, the eternal, the kind' on that ground one must act not only with prudence, but also with energy. One day during this summer I spoke to a

OO

young man, a rather clever one, who very seriously tried to convince me that the idea of village usurers is an idea of progress, for, don't you see, the usurers accumulate capital and Russia is bound to become a capitalistic state! If such an agitator gets to the country ..." He laughed.

Seeing me off, he again wished me luck.

"So you really think that I can write?" I asked.

"But of course!" he exclaimed, a little surprised. "You write already, you get your things printed. What more do you want? If you want advice, bring your manuscripts and we'll talk them over."

I left him with the alert sensation of a man who, after a hot day and a great fatigue, has bathed in the cool waters of a forest brook. V. G. Korolenko inspired me with a feeling of great respect but, for some reason, I felt no sympathy towards the author, and this grieved me very much. I think that this happened because at that time teachers and instructors somehow weighed upon me; I wanted some repose from them; I wanted to talk in a friendly way with a good man, simply, not feeling ashamed of all that troubled me mercilessly the whole time. And when I brought the essence of my impressions to my teachers they hacked at it and cut it up and sewed it according to the fashions and traditions of the political and philosophical theories, whose tailors and cutters they were; I knew well that they could not cut or sew differently in all sincerity, but I saw that they ruined my material. About two weeks later, I brought to Korolenko the manuscripts of the fairy-tales "Of the Fisherman and the Fairy" and of the story "The Old

Woman Isergil," which I had only just rewritten. V. G. was not at home. I left the manuscripts and the next day received from him a note.

"Come this evening to have a talk. Vl. Kor."

He met me on the stairs with an axe in his hand.

"Do not think that this is the tool of my criticism," he said, brandishing the axe. "No, I have been adjusting some shelves in the lumber-room. But a certain decapitation is awaiting you, my dear sir..."

His face shone good-naturedly, his eyes smiled gaily and a smell of fresh bread emanated from him as it does from a good, healthy Russian countrywoman.

"I wrote the whole night — and went to sleep after lunch, then woke up and felt I needed a little bustling about!"

He was not at all like the man I had seen two weeks ago; one did not feel the teacher in him and the instructor. In front of me was a nice man, imbued with friendly attention towards the whole world.

"Well," he began, taking my manuscript from the table and flapping it against his knee, "I've read your fairy-tale. Had it been written by a young girl who had swallowed too much of de Musset, and in the translation of our Missovskaia — the dear old lady — I would have told the young woman: It is not bad — but, all the same, make haste and get married. But for the fierce young giant that you are, writing gentle verses is rather abominable; in any case it is criminal. When did you break out with them?"

"le svascin Piflis, cna.

"Hah! That's what it is! A kind of pessimism rings in it. You must remember that to think pessimistically of love is a sickness of youth — it is a

theory more contradictory to practice than all other theories. We know you, you old pessimists; we've heard something about you!"

He winked at me cunningly, and continued very earnestly:

"Out of this funeral service one can publish only the verses; they are interesting. That I will arrange for you. "The Old Woman' is written considerably better, more earnestly, but again and again you bring in allegory. That won't be any good to you. Have you been in prison? Well, you'll be put in again for sure!" He stopped thoughtfully, turning over the manuscript. 'What a peculiar thing this is! It's romanticism — which has been dead long ago. And I doubt very much that this Lazarus ought to be resurrected. It seems to me that you sing in a voice that is not yourown. You are a realist, not a romanticist; do you hear, a realist! As to details, there is a place there about a Pole. I think it is very personal, is it not?"

"It is possible."

"Ah, you see? I tell you — we know something about you! But that cannot be allowed; strike out everything personal! I mean of course everything narrowly personal."

He spoke gaily and enthusiastically, his eyes shone brilliantly; I watched him in amazement, like a man I was seeing for the first time. He threw the manuscript on the table, brought his chair nearer to me and put his hand on my knee.

"Look here, can I speak openly to you? I know you very little, I hear a lot about you — and can notice some things myself. You live badly. You haven't

hit on the right place. I think you ought to get away from here and marry a nice, clever young girl."

"But I am married already!"

"That is exactly what is wrong about you."

I said to him that I did not want to discuss that topic. "Oh, well, then forgive me." He began joking and making fun of me, then all of a sudden asked anxiously:

"Oh, yes, have you heard that Romass is arrested? Long ago, is it? Really?"

"TI had no idea of it and heard of it only yesterday. Where, in Smolensk? What was he doing there?"

In Romass's flat they had arrested the printing office of the "narodopravtzi" which he had organised.

"What a restless person he is!" V. G. remarked pensively. ''Now again he shall be exiled somewhere. How is he, well? He was such a strong peasant.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

"No, no, all this is not what is wanted! You will not attain anything in that way. The case of Astirev is a good lesson — it shows to us that we must start rough legal work, the everyday work of culture. Autocracy is a decayed but strong truth — its root is branchy and has grown inside very deeply. Our generation will not succeed in pulling it out. We must at first attempt to shake it, and for this we need more than ten years of legal work."

He spoke a long time on this topic, and one felt that he was talking of something that was the faith of his life.

Avdotia Semenovna came in; the children began

racketing about. I said good-bye and went away with my heart at rest.

Everyone knows that in the province one lives under a glass cover. People learn everything about you. They know what you were thinking of on Wednesday about two o'clock and on Saturday after evening mass; they know all your secret intentions and are very angry if you do not justify the prophecies and premonitions.

The whole town heard of course that Korolenko was well disposed towards me, and I had to listen to many advices of the following kind: 'Take care, this crowd of people 'who have become wise' will finish by leading you astray."

They meant the story of P. D. Boborikin that was very popular at that time: "The man who became wise," about a revolutionary who undertook legal work in the Zemstvo, after having lost his umbrella and been forsaken by his wife.

"You are a democrat; there is nothing that these generals can teach you. You are a son of the people," they suggested to me.

But I had felt myself a long time to be a stepson of the people. This feeling was strengthened by years _ and, as I said already, the people-worshippers themselves appeared to me to be also such stepsons. When I pointed to this they shouted at me: "You see, you are infected by them already."

A group of students from the Jaroslav Lyceum invited me to a party where I read something to them; they poured vodka and beer into my glass, trying to do it unnoticed. I perceived their little artful devices, understood that they wanted to get me "drunk as a

sailor," but could not see what they needed it for. One of them, a self-loving consumptive, tried to convince me: "First of all — send to the devil all ideas, ideals and all that rubbish! Write simply! Down with ideass7 dita"

All these advices bored me intensely.

V. G. Korolenko, like all noticeable people, underwent various criticisms on the part of the inhabitants of the town. Some of them, sincerely appreciating his attentive treatment of man, attempted to involve the author in their small personal affairs, others made him the object of light slander.

My friends did not admire his stories very much.

"That Korolenko of yours — he seems even to believe in God," they told me. For some reason the story they disliked the most was "Behind the Image." They found it was mere "ethnography." 'Pavel Jakoushkin already wrote like that."

They affirmed that the figure of the hero-shoemaker was taken from the "Customs of the Street Rasterjajevskaia," by Glieb Uspensky. Altogether the critics reminded me of a Voronej monk, who, having listened to a detailed description of the voyage of MikhlukhaMaclay, asked angrily and wonderingly:

"But allow me! You said that he brought a Papuan to Russia! But why exactly a Papuan? And also, why only one?"

es e es

Early in the morning I was returning from the field where I had spent the night, and met V. G. at the entrance of his flat.

"Where do you come from?" he asked, surprised. "I am going out for a walk! What a splendid morning! Come on with me!" He too had evidently not slept that night; his eyes were inflamed and dry and had a tired look in them; his beard was all crumpled up and he was untidily dressed.

"['ve read in the 'Volgar' your 'Grandfather Arhip.' It is not a bad thing; one can publish it in a magazine. Why didn't you show it to me before publishing it? And why don't you come to see me?"

I told him that he had repulsed me by the way in which he had lent me three roubles some time ago; he had handed me the money in silence, with his back turned to me. This had offended me. It is so hard to borrow money; I had recourse to that only in case of extreme necessity. He grew thoughtful and frowned. "I can't recall it! Of course, since you say it — it means that it is true. But you must forgive my rudeness; I probably was in a bad temper. This happens rather often to me lately. I suddenly get in my thoughts, as though I had sunk down into a well. I neither see nor hear anything, but just listen to something with great tension." He drew his hand under my arm and looked into my eyes.

"Forget this, please. You have no reason to be offended, for I feel very friendly towards you, but that you got offended altogether, is well. We are usually not liable to get offended; that is what is wrong with us. Well, let us forget this. Look here, what I wanted to tell you. You write a lot, hastily; very often one notices a certain unfinished touch in your stories, a certain unclearness. In the 'Arhip,' for instance, that place where you describe the rain is

neither in verse nor in rhythmical prose. That is not right."

He spoke a lot and in a very detailed way of the other stories. It was clear that he read with great attention all that I published. This, of course, touched me immensely. ''We must help each other," he said in answer to the gratitude I expressed. "We are not many! And we are all hard up!" He lowered his voice, and asked: 'Have you heard, is it true that in the case of Nathenson, Romass and the other, a girl Istomina has been mixed up?"

I knew that girl. I had become acquainted with her, having dragged her out of the Volga, into which she had thrown herself from the stern of a flatboat. It was easy enough, for she had chosen a shallow place to drown herself. She was a colourless, rather silly little creature, with an inclination to be hysterical and an abnormal liking for lies. Afterwards she was, I think, a governess at the house of Stolypine in Saratoff and was killed with the others by the bomb of Maximalists at the explosion of the minister's house on the Aptekarsky Island.

Having heard my story, V. G. said, in a rather furious tone: "It is criminal to involve children in such a risky business. I met this young girl about four years ago or more. She did not seem to me to be like what you picture her. She was simply a rather nice little thing, troubled by the obvious lies of life. She might have become a good village teacher. They say she spoke too much at the interrogations? But what could she know? No, I cannot justify this sacrificing of children to the God of politics."

MY UNIVERSITY DAYS oly

He walked on quickly, but my feet ached. I stumbled and hung back.

"What is the matter with you?"

"[ve got rheumatism."

"You begin early! No, you spoke wrong of the girl, in my opinion. But altogether you are a good reciter. Look here, try and write something bigger, for a review. It is time for you to do it. They will publish you in a review and I hope then you'll treat yourself with greater earnestness." I do not think he ever spoke to me so charmingly as he did on that splendid morning, after two days of uninterrupted rain, in the middle of a refreshed field.

We sat for a long time on the edge of the ravine by the Jewish cemetery, admiring the emerald of the dew on the leaves of the trees and on the grass. He told me of the tragi-comical life of the Jews in the "line of settledness,' and under his eyes grew the shadows of weariness. It was already nine o'clock when we returned to town. Saying good-bye, he reminded me:

"So you promise to try and write a long story, eh?"

I came home and sat down immediately to write the "Tchelkash," the story of a tramp from Odessa, who was my neighbour in the hospital of Nikolaeff. I wrote it in two days and sent the rough manuscript to V. G. In a few days he brought some injured peasants to my chief, and heartily, as he alone could do it, congratulated me, saying: "You have written a good thing, quite a good story! It is all made of ane" piece..."

1 The region where the Jews were allowed to live in Russia unhindered.

I was greatly confused by his praise. In the evening, sitting astride on a chair in his little study, he spoke animatedly:

"It is not bad at all! You know how to create characters; the people with you speak and act for themselves from their own essence; you manage not to mix in the stream of their thought the game of their feelings. Not every one succeeds in this! And the best thing of all is that you appreciate a man, such as he actually is. I told you long ago that you were a realist."

But after some reflection he added: "But a romanticist at the same time! And look here: you have been here for a quarter of an hour and you are smoking your fourth cigarette..."

"I am greatly excited."

"That is unnecessary. You are always a little excited; that's why, probably, people say that you drink. You are all bones and no flesh. You smoke without particular pleasure. What is the matter with you?"

"TI don't know."

"And do you really drink, as they say?"

"No, that's a lie."

"And about your having orgies over there at your place..." And laughing, looking at me searchingly all the time, he told me of some quite ingeniously concocted slander in my regard.

And then said memorably:

"When someone thrusts himself a trifle forward — he is thrashed on the head to prevent him, at any rate, from going any further; that is a sentence of a student from Petersburg. Well, now — set all rubbish aside, however much you care for it. We shall publish

the "Tchelkash' in the 'Russkoje Bogatstvo' and on the first page; that will be an honour and a distinction. You have a few collisions with grammar in your manuscript which are unfavourable to the latter; I have corrected that. I haven't touched anything else. Do you want to see?"

I refused, of course.

Walking up and down the room, rubbing his hands, he said:

"I rejoice so sincerely over your success." I felt the captivating sincerity of his joy and admired this man who spoke of literature as of a woman whom one loves with a strong, peaceful love — forever. I will never forget how happy I was at that moment with the pilot. I silently watched his eyes; there shone in them such a lot of kind gladness over man.

The gladness over man — it is so rarely experienced by people, although it is the greatest gladness on earth! Korolenko stopped in front of me and laid his heavy hands on my shoulders. .

"Look here, don't you want to go away from here? To Samara, for instance? I have a friend there in the Samara paper; if you like, I shall write to him telling him to give you some work? Shall 1?"

"Do I stand in somebody's way here?'

"No, but people stand in your way... . It was clear that he believed the stories about my drinking, about the orgies in "the bath-house," and altogether about my "vicious" life, the greatest vice of which was poverty. The persistent advices of V. G., insisting that I should leave the town, somehow offended me, but at the same time his desire to draw me out of the depths of vice touched me to the

core. Greatly moved, I told him everything about my life. He listened to me in silence and frowned, shrugging his shoulders. 'But you must see for yourself that this is all quite impossible and that you are a stranger in all this phantasy. Now really, do as I tell you! It is absolutely necessary that you should go away, change the train of your life... ." He persuaded me to do so.

Afterwards, when I wrote in the "Samara paper' bad every-day feuilletons, signing them by the fine pseudonym Aegudiil Khlamida, Korolenko used to send me letters, criticising my work mockingly, severely, impressingly — but always with a great friendly feeling towards me.

I remember especially well such an occasion: I was bored to repulsion by a poet who wore a name fatal to him: Skukin. He used to send me his works to the editor's office by the yards. They displayed a hopeless ignorance and were abominably mean; it was impossible to print them. The thirst for glory inspired this man with an original idea: he had his verses printed on separate rose-coloured leaves and distributed them in the different groceries in town; the boys at the counter wrapped tea, packets of candies, conserves and sausage in them, and in that way the customers received as a prize for their purchase about half a yard of verses, extolling the town authorities, the marshal, the nobility, the governor and the bishop.

All those people were remarkable in their own way

1 Skuka = duliness.

and were quite worthy of attention, but the bishop was an especially noticeable figure. He had forced a young Tartar girl to get baptised, which nearly provoked a revolt in a whole district of Tartars; he organised a perfectly idiotical case against '"Khlisti," in which many quite innocent people (their innocence was known to me) were sentenced. His most glorious deed was the following one: during a drive in his diocese in bad weather his carriage broke down near a small forsaken village and he had to wait in the hut of a peasant. There on a shelf near the images he noticed a clay figure of Zeus; this of course surprised him. On investigations and inquiries in other huts it was proved that the image of the lord of Olympus, as well as a statuette of the goddess Venus, was to be found at the house of other peasants as well, but none of them wanted to say where they came from.

This was sufficient to get up a criminal case on the sect of the pagans of Samara, who worship the gods of ancient Rome. The pagans were imprisoned, and remained there until the investigation established that they had killed and robbed a merchant of clay figures in the Soldatskaia Sohoda in Viatka and distributed among each other the gods in a friendly fashion. That was all.

In one word, I was displeased with the governor, the bishop, the town, the world, my own self and many other things. So, in a state of irritation and anger, I called the poet who had sung the praise of the people I hated unpleasant names by adding to his name Skukin, the word — son."

1 Religious sect. 2 Skukin — Sukin: that of a dog.

V. G. immediately sent me a reproaching letter, saying that even when in one's right one should always have a sense of measure when abusing people. It was a fine letter, but it was taken away from me by policemen during a search and disappeared together with other letters of Korolenko.

By the way, a few words on the policemen.

I was arrested in Nijni early in the spring of 1897 and not very politely transferred to Tiflis. There in the Castle of Metekh the Colonel Konissky, who afterwards became the Chief of the Petersburg Police Station, interrogating me, said sullenly:

"What fine letters Korolenko writes to you, and he is the best writer in Russia now."

He was a strange man, that officer: he was small, had soft, cautious, undecided movements and a hideously large nose mournfully bent down. His eyes were quite foreign to his face and the pupils very queerly tried to conceal themselves in the bridge of his nose.