In the world

HANDBOUND
AT THE

I

IN THE WORLD

GGt*^fev

'*IN THE WORLD

BY

MAXIM GORKY)

Author of "My Childhood," etc.

TRANSLATED BY

MRS. GERTRUDE M. FOAKES

7r. i>/ l/ lyuJyoKk

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

Copyright, 1917, by
The Century Co.

Fublishea, July, 1917

IN THE WORLD

IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

1WENT out into the world as ''shop-boy'' at a fash-
ionable boot-shop in the main street of the town.

My master was a small, round man. He had a
brown, rugged face, green teeth, and watery, mud-
colored eyes. At first I thought he was blind, and
to see if my supposition was correct, I made a grimace.

"Don't pull your face about I" he said to me gently,
but sternly. The thought that those dull eyes could
see me was unpleasant, and I did not want to believe
that this was the case. Was it not more than probable
that he had guessed I was making grimaces *?

"I told you not to pull your face about," he said
again, hardly moving his thick lips.

"Don't scratch your hands," his dry whisper came
to me, as it were, stealthily. "You are serving in a
first-class shop in the main street of the town, and you
must not forget it. The door-boy ought to stand like
a statue."

I did not know what a statue was, and I could n't
help scratching my hands, which were covered with
red pimples and sores, for they had been simply de-
voured by vermin.

3

4 IN THE WORLD

"What did you do for a living when you were at
home?" asked my master, looking at my hands.

I told him, and he shook his round head, which was
closely covered with gray hair, and said in a shocked
voice :

"Rag-picking! Why, that is worse than begging
or stealing!"

I informed him, not without pride :

"But I stole as well."

At this he laid his hands on his desk, looking just
like a cat with her paws up, and fixed his eyes on my
face with a terrified expression as he whispered :

"Wha— a— t*? How did you steal?"

I explained how and what I had stolen.

"Well, well, I look upon that as nothing but a prank.
But if you rob me of boots or money, I will have you
put in prison, and kept there for the rest of your life."

He said this quite calmly, and I was frightened,
and did not like him any more.

Besides the master, there were serving in the shop
my cousin, Sascha Jaakov, and the senior assistant, a
competent, unctuous person with a red face. Sascha
now wore a brown frock-coat, a false shirt-front, a
cravat, and long trousers, and was too proud to take
any notice of me.

When grandfather had brought me to my master,
he had asked Sascha to help me and to teach me.
Sascha had frowned with an air of importance as he
said warningly:

"He will have to do what I tell him, then."

IN THE WORLD 5

Laying his hand on my head, grandfather had
forced me to bend my neck.

"You are to obey him; he is older than you both in
years and experience."

And Sascha said to me, with a nod :

"Don't forget what grandfather has said." He lost
no time in profiting by his seniority.

"Kashirin, don't look so goggle-eyed," his master
would advise him.

"I — I 'm all right," Sascha would mutter, putting
his head down. But the master would not leave him
alone.

"Don't butt; the customers will think you are a
goat."

The assistant smiled respectfully, the master
stretched his lips in a hideous grin, and Sascha, his
face flushing, retreated behind the counter. I did not
like the tone of these conversations. Many of the
words they used were unintelligible to me, and some-
times they seemed to be speaking in a strange language.
When a lady customer came in, the master would take
his hands out of his pockets, tug at his mustache, and
fix a sweet smile upon his face — a smile which wrin-
kled his cheeks, but did not change the expression of
his dull eyes. The assistant would draw himself up,
with his elbows pressed closely against his sides, and
his wrists respectfully dangling. Sascha would blink
shyly, trying to hide his protruding eyes, while I would
stand at the door, surreptitiously scratching my hands,
and observing the ceremonial of selling.

6 IN THE WORLD

Kneeling before the customer, the assistant would
try on shoes with wonderfully deft fingers. He
touched the foot of the woman so carefully that his
hands trembled, as if he were afraid of breaking her
leg. But the leg was stout enough. It looked like a
bottle with sloping shoulders, turned neck downward.

One of these ladies pulled her foot away one day,
shrieking :

"Oh, you are tickling me !"

"That is — because — you are so sensitive," the as-
sistant explained hastily, with warmth.

It was comical to watch him fawning upon the cus-
tomers, and I had to turn and look through the glass
of the door to keep myself from laughing. But some-
thing used to draw me back to watcli the sale. The
proceedings of the assistant were very interesting, and
while I looked at him I was thinking that I should never
be able to make my fingers move so delicately, or so
deftly put boots on other people's feet.

It often happened that the master went away from
the shop into a little room behind it, and he would
call Sascha to him, leaving the assistant alone with
the customer. Once, lingering over the foot of a
red-haired woman, he took it between his fingers and
kissed it.

"Oh," breathed the woman, "what a bold man you
are!"

He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-
out sound :

"0—0— hi"

IN THE WORLD 7

At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I
had to hang on to the handle of the door. It flew
open, and my head knocked against one of the panes
of glass and broke it. The assistant stamped his foot
at me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy
gold ring, and Sascha tried to pull my ears. In the
evening, when we were on our way home, he said to
me, sternly:

"You will lose your place for doing things like that.
I 'd like to know where the joke comes in." And then
he explained: "If ladies take a fancy to the assist-
ant, it is good for trade. A lady may not be in need
of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not
want just to have a look at the assistant, who pleases
her. But you — you can't understand ! One puts one-
self out for you, and — "

This incensed me. No one put himself out for me,
and he least of all.

In the morning the cook, a sickly, disagreeable
woman, used to call me before him. I had to clean
the boots and brush the clothes of the master, the as-
sistant, and Sascha, get the samovar ready, bring in
wood for all the stoves, and wash up. When I got to
the shop I had to sweep the floor, dust, get the tea
ready, carry goods to the customers, and go home to
fetch the dinner, my duty at the door being taken in
the meantime by Sascha, who, finding it lowering to
his dignity, rated me.

"Lazy young wretch! I have to do all your work
for you."

8 IN THE WORLD

This was a wearisome, dull life for me. I was ac-
customed to live independently in the sandy streets
of Kunavin, on the banks of the turbid Oka, in the
fields or woods, from morning to night. I was parted
from grandmother and from my comrades. I had no
one to speak to, and life was showing me her seamy,
false side. There were occasions on which a customer
went away without making ' a purchase, when all
three would feel themselves affronted. The master
would put his sweet smile away in his pocket as he
said :

"Kashirin, put these things away.'' Then he would
grumble :

"There 's a pig of a woman ! The fool found it dull
sitting at home, so she must come and turn our shop
upside down ! If you were my wife, I 'd give you
something I"

His wife, a dried-up woman with black eyes and
a large nose, simply made a door-mat of him. She
used to scold him as if he were a servant.

Often, after he had shown out a frequent customer
with polite bows and pleasant words, they would all
begin to talk about her in a vile and shameless man-
ner, arousing in me a desire to run into the street after
her and tell her what they said. I knew, of course,
that people generally speak evil of one another be-
hind one another's backs, but these spoke of every one
in a particularly revolting manner, as if they were in
the front rank of good people and had been appointed
to judge the rest of the world. Envious of many of

IN THE WORLD 9

them, they were never known to praise any one, and
knew something bad about everybody.

One day there came to the shop a young woman
with bright, rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, attired
in a velvet cloak with a collar of black fur. Her face
rose out of the fur like a wonderful flower. When
she had thrown the cloak off her shoulders and handed
it to Sascha, she looked still more beautiful. Her fine
figure was fitted tightly with a blue-gray silk robe;
diamonds sparkled in her ears. She reminded me of
"Vassilissa the Beautiful," and I could have believed
that she was in truth the governor's wife. They re-
ceived her with particular respect, bending before her
as if she were a bright light, and almost choking them-
selves in their hurry to get out polite words. All three
rushed about the shop like wild things : their reflections
bobbed up and down in the glass of the cupboard.
But when she left, after having bought some expensive
boots in a great hurry, the master, smacking his lips,
whistled and said :

"Hussy!"

"An actress — that sums her up," said the assistant,
contemptuously. They began to talk of the lovers of
the lady and the luxury in which she lived.

After dinner the master went to sleep in the room
behind the shop, and I, opening his gold watch, poured
vinegar into the works. It was a moment of supreme
joy to me when he awoke and came into the shop, with
his watch in his hand, muttering wildly:

"What can have happened? My watch is all wet.

10 IN THE WORLD

I never remember such a thing happening before. It
is all wet; it will be ruined."

In addition to the burden of my duties in the shop
and the housework, I was weighed down by depression.
I often thought it would be a good idea to behave so
badly that I should get my dismissal. Snow-covered
people passed the door of the shop without making a
sound. They looked as if on their way to somebody's
funeral. Having meant to accompany the body to the
grave, they had been delayed, and, being late for the
funeral procession, were hurrying to the grave-side.
The horses quivered with the effort of making their
way through the snow-drifts. From the belfry of the
church behind the shop the bells rang out with a melan-
choly sound every day. It was Lent, and every stroke
of the bell fell upon my brain as if it had been a pillow,
not hurting, but stupefying and deafening, me. One
day when I was in the yard unpacking a case of new
goods just received, at the door of the shop, the watch-
man of the church, a crooked old man, as soft as if he
were made of rags and as ragged as if he had been torn
to pieces by dogs, approached me.

"Are you going to be kind and steal some goloshes
for me^" he asked.

I was silent. He sat down on an empty case,
yawned, made the sign of the cross over his mouth,
and repeated:

"Will you steal them for me^"

"It is wrong to steal," I informed him.

IN THE WORLD ii

"But people steal all the same. Old age must have
its compensations."

He was pleasantly different from the people among
whom I lived. I felt that he had a firm belief in my
readiness to steal, and I agreed to hand him the
goloshes through the window.

"That 's right," he said calmly, without enthusiasm.
"You are not deceiving me*? No, I see that you are
not."

He was silent for a moment, trampling the dirty, wet
snow with the soles of his boots. Then he lit a long
pipe, and suddenly startled me.

"But suppose it is I who deceive you*? Suppose I
take the goloshes to your master, and tell him that
you have sold them to me for half a ruble? What
then? Their price is two rubles, and you have sold
them for half a ruble. As a present, eh*?"

I gazed at him dumbly, as if he had already done
what he said he would do; but he went on talking
gently through his nose, looking at his boots, and blow-
ing out blue smoke.

"Suppose, for example, that your master has said
to me, 'Go and try that youngster, and see if he is a
thief? What then?"

"I shall not give you the goloshes," I said, angry and
frightened.

"You must give them now that you have promised."

He took me by the arm and drew me to him, and,
tapping my forehead with his cold fingers, drawled:

12 IN THE WORLD

'What are you thinking of, with your 'take this*
and 'take that'?"

"You asked me for them yourself."

"I might ask you to do lots of things. I might ask
you to come and rob the church. Would you do it*?
Do you think you can trust everybody? Ah, you
young fool!" He pushed me away from him and
stood up.

"I don't want stolen goloshes. I am not a gentle-
man, and I don't wear goloshes. I was only making
fun of you. For your simplicity, when Easter comes,
I will let you come up into the belfry and ring the
bells and look at the town."

"I know the town."

"It looks better from the belfry."

Dragging his broken boots in the snow, he went
slowly round the corner of the church, and I looked
after him, wondering dejectedly and fearfully
whether the old man had really been making fun of
me, or had been sent by my master to try me. I did
not want to go back to the shop.

Sascha came hurriedly into the yard and shouted:

"What the devil has become of you?"

I shook my pincers at him in a sudden access of
rage. I knew that both he and the assistant robbed
the master. They would hide a pair of boots or
slippers in the stovepipe, and when they left the shop,
would slip them into the sleeves of their overcoats. I
did not like this, and felt alarmed about it, for I re-
membered the threats of the master.

IN THE WORLD 13

"Are you stealing*?" I had asked Sascha.

"Not I, but the assistant," he would explain
crossly. "I am only helping him. He says, *Do as I
tell you,' and I have to obey. If I did not, he would
do me some mischief. As for master, he was an assist-
ant himself once, and he understands. But you hold
your tongue."

As he spoke, he looked in the glass and set his tie
straight with just such a movement of his naturally
spreading fingers as the senior assistant employed. He
was unwearying in his demonstrations of his seniority
and power over me, scolding me in a bass voice, and
ordering me about with threatening gestures. I was
taller than he, but bony and clumsy, while he was com-
pact, flexible, and fleshy. In his frock-coat and long
trousers he seemed an important and substantial figure
in my eyes, and yet there was something ludicrous and
unpleasing about him. He hated the cook, a curious
woman, of whom it was impossible to decide whether
she was good or bad.

"What I love most in the world is a fight," she said,
opening wide her burning black eyes. "I don't care
what sort of fight it is, cock-fights, dog-fights, or fights
between men. It is all the same to me."

And if she saw cocks or pigeons fighting in the yard,
she would throw aside her work and watch the fight to
the end, standing dumb and motionless at the window.
In the evenings she would say to me and Sascha:

"Why do you sit there doing nothing, children *?
You had far better be fighting."

14 IN THE WORLD

This used to make Sascha angry.

"I am not a child, you fool; I am junior assist-
ant."

"That does not concern me. In my eyes, while you
remain unmarried, you are a child."

"Fool! Blockhead!"

"The devil is clever, but God does not love
him."

Her talk was a special source of irritation to Sascha,
and he used to tease her ; but she would look at him con-
temptuously, askance, and say:

"Ugh, you beetle ! One of God's mistakes !"

Sometimes he would tell me to rub blacking or soot
on her face when she was asleep, stick pins into her
pillow, or play other practical jokes on her; but I was
afraid of her. Besides, she slept very lightly and used
to wake up frequently. Lighting the lamp, she would
sit on the side of her bed, gazing fixedly at something
in the corner. Sometimes she came over to me, where
I slept behind the stove, and woke me up, saying
hoarsely :

"I can't sleep, Leksyeka. I am not very well. Talk
to me a little."

Half asleep, I used to tell her some story, and she
would sit without speaking, swaying from side to side.
I had an idea that her hot body smelt of wax and in-
cense, and that she would soon die. Every moment I
expected to see her fall face downward on the floor
and die. In terror I would begin to speak loudly, but
she would check me.

IN THE WORLD 15

" 'S-sh ! You will wake the whole place up, and
they will think that you are my lover."

She always sat near me in the same attitude, doubled
up, with her wrists between her knees, squeezing them
against the sharp bones of her legs. She had no chest,
and even through the thick linen night-dress her ribs
were visible, just like the ribs of a broken cask. After
sitting a long time in silence, she would suddenly whis-
per:

"What if I do die, it is a calamity which happens to
all." Or she would ask some invisible person, "Well,
I have lived my life, have n't If

"Sleep!" she would say, cutting me short in the
middle of a word, and, straightening herself, would
creep noiselessly across the dark kitchen.

"Witch !" Sascha used to call her behind her back.

I put the question to him:

"Why don't you call her that to her face?"

"Do you think that I am afraid to'?" But a sec-
ond later he said, with a frown: "No, I can't say it
to her face. She may really be a witch."

Treating every one with the same scornful lack of
consideration, she showed no indulgence to me, but
would drag me out of bed at six o'clock every morn-
ing, crying:

"Are you going to sleep forever? Bring the wood
in! Get the samovar ready! Clean the door-
plate!"

Sascha would wake up and complain:

"What are you bawling like that for? I will tell

i6 IN THE WORLD

the master. You don't give any one a chance to
sleep."

Moving quickly about the kitchen with her lean,
withered body, she would flash her blazing, sleepless
eyes upon him.

"Oh, it's you, God's mistake*? If you were my
son, I would give you something !"

Sascha would abuse her, calling her "accursed one,"
and when we were going to the shop he said to me:
"We shall have to do something to get her sent away.
We '11 put salt in everything when she 's not looking.
If everything is cooked with too much salt, they will
get rid of her. Or paraffin would do. What are you
gaping about?"

"Why don't you do it yourself?"

He snorted angrily :

"Coward!"

The cook died under our very eyes. She bent down
to pick up the samovar, and suddenly sank to the floor
without uttering a word, just as if some one had given
her a blow on the chest. She moved over on her side,
stretched out her arms, and blood trickled from her
mouth.

We both understood in a flash that she was dead,
but, stupefied by terror, we gazed at her a long time
without strength to say a word. At last Sascha rushed
headlong out of the kitchen, and I, not knowing
what to do, pressed close to the window in the light.
The master came in, fussily squatted down beside her,
and touched her face with his finger.

IN THE WORLD 17

"She is dead; that 's certain," he said. "What can
have caused it*?" He went into the corner where hung
a small image of Nikolai Chudovortz and crossed him-
self; and, when he had prayed he went to the door
and commanded:

"Kashirin, run quickly and fetch the police !"

The police came, stamped about, received money
for drinks, and went. They returned later, accom-
panied by a man with a cart, lifted the cook by the
legs and the head, and carried her into the street. The
mistress stood in the doorway and watched them.
Then she said to me :

"Wash the floor!"

And the master said :

"It is a good thing that she died in the evening."

I could not understand why it was a good thing.
When we went to bed Sascha said to me with unusual
gentleness :

"Don't put out the lamp!"

"Are you afraid?"

He covered his head with the blanket, and lay
silent a long time. The night was very quiet, as if it
were listening for something, waiting for something.
It seemed to me that the next minute a bell rang out,
and suddenly the whole town was running and shout-
ing in a great terrified uproar.

Sascha put his nose out of the blanket and suggested
softly:

"Let 's go and lie on the stove together."

"It is hot there."

i8 IN THE WORLD

After a silence he said:

"How suddenly she went oif, didn't she^ I am
sure she was a witch. I can't get to sleep."

"Nor I, either."

He began to tell tales about dead people — ^how they
came out of their graves and wandered till midnight
about the town, seeking the place where they had
lived and looking for their relations.

"Dead people can only remember the town," he
said softly; "but they forget the streets and houses at

once."

It became quieter and quieter and seemed to be get-
ting darker. Sascha raised his head and asked :

"Would you like to see what I have got in my
trunk?"

I had long wanted to know what he hid in his trunk.
He kept it locked with a padlock, and always opened
it with peculiar caution. If I tried to peep he would
ask harshly :

"What do you want, eh*?"

When I agreed, he sat up in bed without putting
his feet to the floor, and ordered me in a tone of au-
thority to bring the trunk to the bed, and place it at
his feet. The key hung round his neck with his bap-
tismal cross. Glancing round at the dark corners of
the kitchen, he frowned importantly, unfastened the
lock, blew on the lid of the trunk as if it had been hot,
and at length, raising it, took out several linen gar-
ments.

The trunk was half-full of chemist's boxes, packets

IN THE WORLD 19

of variously colored tea-paper, and tins which had
contained blacking or sardines.

"What is it^"

"You shall see."

He put a foot on each side of the trunk and bent
over it, singing softly :

"Czaru nebesnui "

I expected to see toys. I had never possessed any
myself, and pretended to despise them, but not with-
out a feeling of envy for those who did possess them.
I was very pleased to think that Sascha, such a serious
character, had toys, although he hid them shame-
facedly; but I quite understood his shame.

Opening the first box, he drew from it the frame of
a pair of spectacles, put them on his nose, and, look-
ing at me sternly, said :

"It does not matter about there not being any
glasses. This is a special kind of spectacle."

"Let me look through them."

"They would not suit your eyes. They are for
dark eyes, and yours are light," he explained, and be-
gan to imitate the mistress scolding; but suddenly
he stopped, and looked about the kitchen with an ex-
pression of fear.

In a blacking tin lay many different kinds of but-
tons, and he explained to me with pride:

"I picked up all these in the street. All by my-
self! I already have thirty-seven."

In the third box was a large brass pin, also found in

20 IN THE WORLD

the street; hobnails, worn-out, broken, and whole;
buckles off shoes and slippers; brass door-handles,
broken bone cane-heads; girls' fancy combs, "The
Dream Book and Oracle"; and many other things of
similar value.

When I used to collect rags I could have picked
up ten times as many such useless trifles in one month.
Sascha's things aroused in me a feeling of disillusion,
of agitation, and painful pity for him. But he gazed
at every single article with great attention, lovingly
stroked them with his fingers, and stuck out his thick
lips importantly. His protruding eyes rested on them
affectionately and solicitously ; but the spectacles made
his childish face look comical.

"Why have you kept these things^"

He flashed a glance at me through the frame of the
spectacles, and asked :

"Would you like me to give you something?"

"No; I don't want anything."

He was obviously offended at the refusal and the
poor impression his riches had made. He was silent
a moment; then he suggested quietly:

"Get a towel and wipe them all; they are covered
with dust."

When the things were all dusted and replaced, he
turned over in the bed, with his face to the wall. The
rain was pouring down. It dripped from the roof,
and the wind beat against the window. Without
turning toward me, Sascha said :

"You wait! When it is dry in the garden I will

IN THE WORLD 21

show you a thing — something to make you gasp."

I did not answer, as I was just dropping off to
sleep.

After a few seconds he started up, and began to
scrape the wall with his hands. With quivering ear-
nestness, he said :

"I am afraid — ^Lord, I am afraid! Lord, have
mercy upon me! What is it*?"

I was numbed by fear at this. I seemed to see the
cook standing at the window which looked on the
yard, with her back to me, her head bent, and her
forehead pressed against the glass, just as she used
to stand when she was alive, looking at a cock-fight.
Sascha sobbed, and scraped on the wall. I made a
great effort and crossed the kitchen, as if I were walk-
ing on hot coals, without daring to look around, and
lay down beside him. At length, overcome by wear-
iness, we both fell asleep.

A few days after this there was a holiday. We
were in the shop till midday, had dinner at home, and
when the master had gone to sleep after dinner, Sascha
said to me secretly :

"Come along!"

I guessed that I was about to see the thing which
was to make me gasp. We went into the garden. On
a narrow strip of ground between two houses stood
ten old lime-trees, their stout trunks covered with
green lichen, their black, naked branches sticking up
lifelessly, and not one rook's nest between them.
They looked like monuments in a graveyard. There

22 IN THE WORLD

was nothing besides these trees in the garden; neither
bushes nor grass. The earth on the pathway was
trampled and black, and as hard as iron, and where
the bare ground was visible under last year's leaves it
was also flattened, and as smooth as stagnant water.

Sascha went to a corner of the fence which hid us
from the street, stood under a lime-tree, and, rolling
his eyes, glanced at the dirty windows of the neigh-
boring house. Squatting on his haunches, he turned
over a heap of leaves with his hands, disclosing a thick
root, close to which were placed two bricks deeply em-
bedded in the ground. He lifted these up, and beneath
them appeared a piece of roof iron, and under this a
square board. At length a large hole opened before
my eyes, running under the root of the tree.

Sascha lit a match and applied it to a small piece of
wax candle, which he held over the hole as he said to
me:

"Look in, only don't be frightened."

He seemed to be frightened himself. The piece of
candle in his hand shook, and he had turned pale.
His lips drooped unpleasantly, his eyes were moist, and
he stealthily put his free hand behind his back. He
infected me with his terror, and I glanced very cau-
tiously into the depths under the root, which he had
made into a vault, in the back of which he had lit three
little tapers that filled the cave with a blue light. It
was fairly broad, though in depth no more than the
inside of a pail. But it was broad, and the sides were
closely covered with pieces of broken glass and broken

IN THE WORLD 23

earthenware. In the center, on an elevation, covered
with a piece of red cloth, stood a little coffin orna-
mented with silver paper, half covered with a frag-
ment of material which looked like a brocaded pall.
From beneath this was thrust out a little gray bird's
claw and the sharp-billed head of a sparrow. Behind
the coffin rose a reading-stand, upon which lay a brass
baptismal cross, and around which burned three wax
tapers, fixed in candlesticks made out of gold and sil-
ver paper which had been wrapped round sweets.

The thin flames bowed toward the entrance to the
cave. The interior was faintly bright with many col-
ored gleams and patches of light. The odor of wax,
the warm smell of decay and soil, beat against my
face, made my eyes smart, and conjured up a broken
rainbow, which made a great display of color. All
this aroused in me such an overwhelming astonishment
that it dispelled my terror.

"Is it good'?"

"What is it for?"

"It is a chapel," he explained. "Is it like one*?"

"I don't know."

"And the sparrow is a dead person. Perhaps there
will be relics of him, because he suffered undeserv-
edly."

"Did you find him dead'?"

"No. He flew into the shed and I put my cap over
him and smothered him."

"But why'?"

"Because I chose to."

24 IN THE WORLD

He looked into my eyes and asked again :

"Is it good'?" ^

"No."

Then he bent over the hole, quickly covered it with
the board, pressed the bricks into the earth with the
iron, stood up, and, brushing the dirt from his knees,
asked sternly:

"Why don't you like it?"

"I am sorry for the sparrow."

He stared at me with eyes which were perfectly
stationary, like those of a blind person, and, striking
my chest, cried :

"Fool, it is because you are envious that you say
that you do not like it ! I suppose you think that the
one in your garden in Kanatnoe Street was better
done."

I remembered my summer-house, and said with con-
viction :

"Certainly it was better."

Sascha pulled off his coat and threw it on the
ground, and, turning up his sleeves, spat on his hands
and said:

"If that is so, we will fight about it."

I did not want to fight. My courage was under-
mined by depression; I felt uneasy as I looked at the
wrathful face of my cousin. He made a rush at me,
struck my chest with his head, and knocked me over.
Then he sat astride of me and cried :

"Is it to be life or death*?"

IN THE WORLD 25

But I was stronger than he and very angry. In a
few minutes he was lying face downward with his
hands behind his head and a rattling in his throat.
Alarmed, I tried to help him up, but he thrust me
away with his hands and feet. I grew still more
alarmed. I went away to one side, not knowing what
else to do, and he raised his head and said :

"Do you know what you have brought on yourself?
I will work things so that when the master and mis-
tress are not looking I shall have to complain of you,
and then they will dismiss you."

He went on scolding and threatening me, and his
words infuriated me. I rushed to the cave, took away
the stones, and threw the coffin containing the spar-
row over the fence into the street. I dug Out all the
inside of the cave and trampled it under my feet.

Sascha took my violence strangely. Sitting on the
ground, with his mouth partly covered and his e5^e-
brows drawn together, he watched me, saying nothing.
When I had finished, he stood up without any hurry,
shook out his clothes, threw on his coat, and then said
calmly and ominously:

"Now you will see what will happen; just wait a
little I I arranged all this for you purposely; it is
witchcraft. Aha !"

I sank down as if his words had physically hurt me,
and I felt quite cold inside. But he went away with-
out glancing back at me, which accentuated his calm-
ness still more. I made up my mind to run away

26 IN THE WORLD

from the town the next day, to run away from my mas-
ter, from Sascha with his witchcraft, from the whole
of that worthless, foolish life.

The next morning the new cook cried out when she
called me:

"Good gracious ! what have you been doing to your
face?'

"The witchcraft is beginning to take effect," I
thought, with a sinking heart.

But the cook laughed so heartily that I also smiled
involuntarily, and peeped into her glass. My face
was thickly smeared with soot.

"Sascha did this?" I asked.

"Or I," laughed the cook.

When I began to clean the boots, the first boot into
which I put my hand had a pin in the lining, which
ran into my finger.

"This is his witchcraft!"

There were pins or needles in all the boots, put in
so skilfully that they always pricked my palm. Then
I took a bowl of cold water, and with great pleasure
poured it over the head of the wizard, who was either
not awake or was pretending to sleep.

But all the same I was miserable. I was always
thinking of the coffin containing the sparrow, with its
gray crooked claws and its waxen bill pathetically
sticking upward, and all around the colored gleams
which seemed to be trying unsuccessfully to form
themselves into a rainbow. In my imagination the

IN THE WORLD 27

coffin was enlarged, the claws of the bird grew,
stretched upward quivering, were alive.

I made up my mind to run away that evening, but
in warming up some food on an oil-stove before din-
ner I absent-mindedly let it catch fire. When I was
trying to put the flames out, I upset the contents of
the vessel over my hand, and had to be taken to the
hospital. I remember well that oppressive night-
mare of the hospital. In what seemed to be a yellow-
gray wilderness there were huddled together, grum-
bling and groaning, gray and white figures in shrouds,
while a tall man on crutches, with eyebrows like whis-
kers, pulled his black beard and roared :

"I will report it to his Eminence I"

The pallet beds reminded me of the coffin, and
the patients, lying with their noses upward, were like
dead sparrows. The yellow walls rocked, the ceiling
curved outward like a sail, the floor rose and fell be-
side my cot. Everything about the place was hope-
less and miserable, and the twigs of trees tapped
against the window like rods in some one's hand.

At the door there danced a red-haired, thin dead
person, drawing his shroud round him with his thin
hands and squeaking:

"I don't want mad people."

The man on crutches shouted in his ear :

"I shall report it to his Eminence !"

Grandfather, grandmother, and every one had told
me that they always starved people in hospitals, so I

28 IN THE WORLD

looked upon my life as finished. A woman with
glasses, also in a shroud, came to me, and wrote some-
thing on a slate hanging at the head of the bed. The
chalk broke and fell all over me.

"What is your name^"

"I have no name."

"But you must have one."

"No."

"Now, don't be silly, or you will be whipped."

I could well believe that they would whip me ; that
was why I would not answer her. She made a hiss-
ing sound like a cat, and went out noiselessly, also like
a cat.

Two lamps were lit. The yellow globes hung down
from the ceiling like two eyes, hanging and winking,
dazzled, and trying to get closer together.

Some one in the corner said:

"How can I play without a hand^"

"Ah, of course; they have cut off your hand."

I came to the conclusion at once that they cut off
a man's hand because he played at cards! What
would they do with me before they starved me^

My hands burned and smarted just as if some one
were pulling the bones out of them. I cried softly
from fright and pain, and shut my eyes so that the
tears should not be seen; but they forced their way
through my eyelids, and, trickling over my temples,
fell into my ears.

The night came. All the inmates threw themselves
upon their pallet beds, and hid themselves under gray

IN THE WORLD 29

blankets. Every minute it became quieter. Only
some one could be heard muttering in a comer, "It is
no use ; both he and she are rotters."

I would have written a letter to grandmother, tell-
ing her to come and steal me from the hospital while I
was still alive, but I could not write; my hands could
not be used at all. I would try to find a way of get-
ting out of the place.

The silence of the night became more intense every
moment, as if it were going to last forever. Softly
putting my feet to the floor, I went to the double door,
half of which was open. In the corridor, under the
lamp, on a wooden bench with a back to it, appeared
a gray, bristling head surrounded by smoke, looking at
me with dark, hollow eyes. I had no time to hide
myself.

"Who is that wandering about *? Come here!"

The voice was not formidable; it was soft. I went
to him. I saw a round face with short hair sticking
out round it. On the head the hair was long and
stuck out in all directions like a silver halo, and at the
belt of this person hung a bunch of keys. If his beard
and hair had been longer, he would have looked like
the Apostle Peter.

"You are the one with the burned hands*? Why
are you wandering about at night*? By whose au-
thority*?"

He blew a lot of smoke at my chest and face, and,
putting his warm hands on my neck, drew me to him.

"Are you frightened*?"

30 IN THE WORLD

"Yes."

"Every one is frightened when they come here first,
but that is nothing. And you need not be afraid of
me, of all people. I never hurt any one. Would you
like to smoke"? No, don't! It is too soon; wait a
year or two. And where are your parents? You
have none? Ah, well, you don't need them; you will
be able to get along without them. Only you must
not be afraid, do you see?"

It was a long time since I had come across any one
who spoke to me simply and kindly in language that I
could understand, and it was inexpressibly pleasant
to me to listen to him. When he took me back to my
cot I asked him :

"Come and sit beside me."

"All right," he agreed.

"Who are you?"

"I? I am a soldier, a real soldier, a Cossack. And
I have been in the wars — well, of course I have ! Sol-
diers live for war. I have fought with the Hun-
garians, with the Circassians, and the Poles, as many
as you like. War, my boy, is a great profession."

I closed my eyes for a minute, and when I opened
them, there, in the place of the soldier, sat grand-
mother, in a dark frock, and he was standing by her.
She was saying:

"Dear me! So they are all dead?"

The sun was playing in the room, now gilding every
object, then hiding, and then looking radiantly upon
us all again, just like a child frolicking.

IN THE WORLD 31

Babushka bent over me and asked :

*'What is it, my darling'? They have been mutila-
ting you'? I told that old red devil — "

"I will make all the necessary arrangements," said
the soldier, going away, and grandmother, wiping the
tears from her face, said:

"Our soldier, it seems, comes from Balakhna."

I still thought that I must be dreaming, and kept
silence. The doctor came, bandaged my burns, and,
behold! I was sitting with grandmother in a cab, and
driving through the streets of the town. She told
me:

"That grandfather of ours he is going quite out of
his mind, and he is so greedy that it is sickening to
look at him. Not long ago he took a hundred rubles
out of the office-book of Xlist the furrier, a new friend
of his. What a set-out there was ! E-h-h-h !"

The sun shone brightly, and clouds floated in the
sky like white birds. We went by the bridge across
the Volga. The ice groaned under us, water was vis-
ible under the planks of the bridge, and the golden
cross gleamed over the red dome of the cathedral in
the market-place.

We met a woman with a broad face. She was
carrying an armful of willow-branches. The spring
was coming; soon it would be Easter.

"I love you very much. Grandmother !"

This did not seem to surprise her. She answered
in a calm voice :

"That is because we are of the same family. But

32 IN THE WORLD

— and I do not say it boastfully — there are others who
love me, too, thanks to thee, O Blessed Lady!" She
added, smiling:

"She will soon be rejoicing; her Son will rise again!
Ah, Variusha, my daughter!"

Then she was silent.

CHAPTER II

GRANDFATHER met me in the yard; he was
on his knees, chopping a wedge with a hatchet.
He raised the ax as if he were going to throw it at my
head, and then took off his cap, saying mockingly:

"How do you do, your Holiness? Your Highness*?
Have you finished your term of service *? Well, now
you can live as you like, yes. U-ugh ! you — ^"

"We know all about it, we know all about it !" said
grandmother, hastily waving him away, and when she
went into her room to get the samovar ready she told
me:

"Grandfather is fairly ruined now. What money
there was he lent at interest to his godson Nikolai,
but he never got a receipt for it. I don't quite know
yet how they stand, but he is ruined; the money is
lost. And all this because we have not helped the
poor or had compassion on the unfortunate. God has
said to Himself, 'Why should I do good to the
Kashirins*?' and so He has taken everything from us."

Looking round, she went on:

"I have been trying to soften the heart of the Lord
toward us a little, so that He may not press too hardly
on the old man, and I have begun to give a little in
charity, secretly and at night, from what I have earned.

34 IN THE WORLD

You can come with me to-day if you like. I have
some money — "

Grandfather came in blinking and asked :

"Are you going to have a snack *?"

"It is not yours," said grandmother. "However,
you can sit down with us if you like ; there 's enough
for you."

He sat down at the table, murmuring:

"Pour out—"

Everything in the room was in its old place. Only
my mother's corner was sadly empty, and on the wall
over grandfather's bed hung a sheet of paper on which
was inscribed in large, printed letters:

"Jesus save. Life of the world! May Thy holy
name be with me all the days and hours of my life !"

"Who wrote that?"

Grandfather did not reply, and grandmother, wait-
ing a little, said with a smile :

"The price of that paper is — a hundred rubles!"

"That is not your business !" cried grandfather. "I
give away everything to others."

"It is all right to give now, but time was when you
did not give," said grandmother, calmly.

"Hold your tongue !" he shrieked.

This was all as it should be, just like old times.

In the corner, on a box, in a wicker basket, Kolia
woke up and looked out, his blue, washed-out eyes
hardly visible under their lids. He was grayer, more
faded and fragile-looking, than ever. He did not rec-
ognize me, and, turning away in silence, closed his

IN THE WORLD 35

eyes. Sad news awaited me in the street. Viakhir
was dead. He had breathed his last in Passion Week.
Khabi had gone away to live in town. Yaz's feet had
been taken off, and he would walk no more.

As he was giving me this information, black-eyed
Kostrom said angrily:

*'Boys soon die I"

"Well, but only Viakhir is dead."

"It is the same thing. Whoever leaves the streets
is as good as dead. No sooner do we make friends, get
used to our comrades, than they either are sent into
the town to work or they die. There are new people
living in your yard at Chesnokov's; Evsyenki is their
name. The boy, Niushka, is nothing out of the ordi-
nary. He has two sisters, one still small, and the
other lame. She goes about on crutches ; she is beauti-
ful!"

After thinking a moment he added :

"Tchurka and I are both in love with her, and
quarrel."

"With her r

"Why with her? Between ourselves. With her —
very seldom."

Of course I knew that big lads and even men fell
in love. I was familiar also with coarse ideas on this
subject. I felt uncomfortable, sorry for Kostrom, and
reluctant to look at his angular figure and angry, black
eyes.

I saw the lame girl on the evening of the same day.
Coming down the steps into the yard, she let her

36 IN THE WORLD

crutch fall, and stood helplessly on the step, holding
on to the balustrade with her transparent, thin, fragile
hands. I tried to pick up the crutch, but my band-
aged hands were not much use, and I had a lot of
trouble and vexation in doing it. Meanwhile she,
standing above me, and laughing gently, watched me.

"What have you done to your hands?" she said.

"Scalded them."

"And I — am a cripple. Do you belong to this yard*?
Were you long in the hospital *? I was there a lo-o-ong
time." She added, with a sigh, "A very long time."

She had a white dress and light blue overshoes, old,
but clean; her smoothly brushed hair fell across her
breast in a thick, short plait. Her eyes were large
and serious; in their quiet depths burned a blue light
which lit up the pale, sharp-nosed face. She smiled
pleasantly, but I did not care about her. Her sickly
figure seemed to say, "Please don't touch me !" How
could my friends be in love with her*?

"I have been lame a long time," she told me, will-
ingly and almost boastfully. "A neighbor bewitched
me; she had a quarrel with mother, and then bewitched
me out of spite. Were you frightened in the hos-
pital?'

"Yes."

I felt awkward with her, and went indoors.

About midnight grandmother tenderly awoke me.

"Are you coming? If you do something for other
people, your hand will soon be well."

IN THE WORLD 37

She took my arm and led me in the dark, as if I
had been blind. It was a black, damp night; the wind
blew continuously, making the river flow more swiftly
and blowing the cold sand against my legs. Grand-
mother cautiously approached the darkened windows
of the poor little houses, crossed herself three times,
laid a five-copeck piece and three cracknel biscuits on
the window-sills, and crossed herself again. Glancing
up into the starless sky, she whispered :

"Holy Queen of Heaven, help these people I We
are all sinners in thy sight, Mother dear."

Now, the farther we went from home, the denser
and more intense the darkness and silence became.
The night sky was pitch black, unfathomable, as if the
moon and stars had disappeared forever. A dog sprang
out from somewhere and growled at us. His eyes
gleamed in the darkness, and I cravenly pressed close
to grandmother.

"It is all right," she said; "it is only a dog. It is
too late for the devil ; the cocks have already begun to
crow."

Enticing the dog to her, she stroked it and admon-
ished it :

"Look here, doggie, you must not frighten my grand-
son."

The dog rubbed itself against my legs, and the three
of us went on. Twelve times did grandmother place
"secret alms" on a window-sill. It began to grow
light: gray houses appeared out of the darkness; the

38 IN THE WORLD

belfry of Napolni Church rose up white like a piece
of sugar; the brick wall of the cemetery seemed to be-
come transparent.

"The old woman is tired," said grandmother; "it is
time we went home. When the women wake up they
will find that Our Lady has provided a little for their
children. When there is never enough, a very little
comes in useful. O Olesha, our people live so poorly
and no one troubles about them !

"The rich man about God never thinks;
Of the terrible judgment he does not dream;
The poor man is to him neither friend nor brother ;
All he cares about is getting gold together.
But that gold will be coal in hell !

"That 's how it is. But we ought to live for one
another, while God is for us all. I am glad to have
you with me again."

And I, too, was calmly happy, feeling in a confused
way that I had taken part in something which I should
never forget. Close to me shivered the brown dog,
with its bare muzzle and kind eyes which seemed to be
begging forgiveness.

"Will it live with us?"

"What*? It can, if it likes. Here, I will give it
a cracknel biscuit. I have two left. Let us sit down
on this bench. I am so tired."

We sat down on a bench by a gate, and the dog lay
at our feet, eating the dry cracknel, while grand-
mother informed me :

IN THE WORLD 39

'There's a Jewess living here; she has about ten
servants, more or less. I asked her, *Do you live by
the law of Moses?' But she answered, 1 live as if
God were with me and mine; how else should I live?' "

I leaned against the warm body of grandmother and
fell asleep.

Once more my life flowed on swiftly and full of in-
terest, with a broad stream of impressions bringing
something new to my soul every day, stirring it to en-
thusiasm, disturbing it, or causing me pain, but at
any rate forcing me to think. Before long I also was
using every means in my power to meet the lame girl,
and I would sit with her on the bench by the gate,
either talking or in silence. It was pleasant to be
silent in her company. She was very neat, and had a
voice like a singing bird. She used to tell me prettily
of the way the Cossacks lived on the Don, where she
had lived with her uncle, who was employed in some
oil-works. Then her father, a locksmith, had gone to
live at Nijni. "And I have another uncle who serves
the czar himself."

In the evenings of Sundays and festivals all the in-
habitants of the street used to stand "at the gate."
The boys and girls went to the cemetery, the men to
the taverns, and the women and children remained in
the street. The women sat at the gate on the sand
or on a small bench.

The children used to play at a sort of tennis, at
skittles, and at sharmazL The mothers watched

40 IN THE WORLD

the games, encouraging the skilful ones and laughing
at the bad players. It was deafeningly noisy and gay.
The presence and attention of the " grown-ups" stimu-
lated us; the merest trifles brought into our games
extra animation and passionate rivalry. But it seemed
that we three, Kostrom, Tchurka, and I, were not so
taken up with the game that we had not time, one or
the other of us, to run and show off before the lame
girl.

"Ludmilla, did you see that I knocked down five of
the ninepins in that game of skittles^"

She would smile sweetly, tossing her head.

In old times our little company had always tried to
be on the same side in games, but now I saw that
Kostrom and Tchurka used to take opposite sides, try-
ing to rival each other in all kinds of trials of skill
and strength, often aggravating each other to tears and
fights. One day they fought so fiercely that the adults
had to Interfere, and they had to pour water over the
combatants, as if they were dogs. Ludmilla, sitting on
a bench, stamped her sound foot on the ground, and
when the fighters rolled toward her, pushed them away
with her crutch, crying In a voice of fear:

"Leave off!"

Her face was white, almost livid; her eyes blazed
and rolled like a person possessed with a devil.

Another time Kostrom, shamefully beaten by
Tchurka in a game of skittles, hid himself behind a
chest of oats In the grocer's shop, and crouched there,
weeping silently. It was terrible to see him. His

IN THE WORLD 41

teeth were tightly clenched, his cheek-bones stood out,
his bony face looked as if it had been turned to stone,
and from his black, surly eyes flowed large, round tears.
When I tried to console him he whispered, choking back
his tears :

"You wait! I'll throw a brick at his head.
You '11 see."

Tchurka had become conceited; he walked in the
middle of the street, as marriageable youths walk,
with his cap on one side and his hands in his pocket.
He had taught himself to spit through his teeth like a
fine bold fellow, and he promised :

"I shall leam to smoke soon. I have already tried
twice, but I was sick."

All this was displeasing to me. I saw that I was
losing my friends, and it seemed to me that the person
to blame was Ludmilla. One evening when I was in
the yard going over the collection of bones and rags
and all kinds of rubbish, she came to me, swaying from
side to side and waving her right hand.

"How do you do?" she said, bowing her head
three times. "Has Kostrom been with you? And
Tchurka?"

"Tchurka is not friends with us now. It is all your
fault. They are both in love with you and they have
quarreled."

She blushed, but answered mockingly :

"What next! How is it my fault?"

"Why do you make them fall in love with you?"

"I did not ask them to," she said crossly, and as she

42 IN THE WORLD

went away she added: "It is all nonsense. I am
older than they are ; I am fourteen. People do not fall
in love with big girls."

"A lot you know I" I cried, wishing to hurt her.
"What about the shopkeeper, Xlistov's sister^ She
is quite old, and still she has the boys after her."

Ludmilla turned on me, sticking her crutch deep into
the sand of the yard.

"You don't know anything yourself," she said
quickly, with tears in her voice and her pretty eyes
flashing finely. "That shopkeeper is a bad woman,
and I — what am I*? I am still a little girl; and — ^but
you ought to read that novel, 'Kamchadalka," the sec-
ond part, and then you would have something to talk
about."

She went away sobbing. I felt sorry for her. In
her words was the ring of a truth of which I was igno-
rant. Why had she embroiled my comrades? But
they were in love; what else was there to say?

The next day, wishing to smooth over my difference
with Ludmilla, I bought some barley sugar, her fav-
orite sweet, as I knew well.

"Would you like some?"

She said fiercely:

"Go away ! I am not friends with you !" But pres-
ently she took the barley sugar, observing : "You might
have had it wrapped up in paper. Your hands are so
dirty I"

"I have washed them, but it won't come off."

IN THE WORLD 43

She took my hand in her dry, hot hand and looked
at it.

"How you have spoiled it !"

"Well, but yours are roughened."

"That is done by my needle. I do a lot of sewing."
After a few minutes she suggested, looking round : "I
say, let 's hide ourselves somewhere and read *Kam-
chadalka.' Would you like it*?"

We were a long time finding a place to hide in, for
every place seemed uncomfortable. At length we de-
cided that the best place was the wash-house. It was
dark there, but we could sit at the window, which over-
looked a dirty corner between the shed and the neigh-
boring slaughter-house. People hardly ever looked
that way. There she used to sit sidewise to the win-
dow, with her bad foot on a stool and the sound one
resting on the floor, and, hiding her face with the torn
book, nervously pronounced many unintelligible and
dull words. But I was stirred. Sitting on the floor,
I could see how the grave eyes with the two pale-blue
flames moved across the pages of the book. Some-
times they were filled with tears, and the girl's voice
trembled as she quickly uttered the unfamiliar words,
running them into one another unintelligibly. How-
ever, I grasped some of these words, and tried to make
them into verse, turning them about in all sorts of
ways, which effectually prevented me from understand-
ing what the book said.

On my knees slumbered the dog, which I had named

44 IN THE WORLD

"Wind," because he was rough and long, swift in run-
ning, and howled like the autumn wind down the
chimney.

"Are you listening?" the girl would ask. I nodded
my head.

The mixing up of the words excited me more and
more, and my desire to arrange them as they would
sound in a song, in which each word lives and shines
like a star in the sky, became more insistent. When
it grew dark Ludmilla would let her pale hand fall
on the book and ask:

"Is n't it good? You will see."

After the first evening we often sat in the wash-
house. Ludmilla, to my joy, soon gave up reading
"Kamchadalka." I could not answer her questions
about what she had read from that endless book — end-
less, for there was a third book after the second part
which we had begun to read, and the girl said there
was a fourth. What we liked best was a rainy day,
unless it fell on a Saturday, when the bath was heated.
The rain drenched the yard. No one came out or
looked at us in our dark comer. Ludmilla was in
great fear that they would discover us.

I also was afraid that we should be discovered. We
used to sit for hours at a time, talking about one thing
and another. Sometimes I told her some of grand-
mother's tales, and Ludmilla told me about the lives
of the Kazsakas, on the River Medvyedietz.

"How lovely it was there!" she would sigh.
"Here, what is it? Only beggars live here."

IN THE WORLD 45

Soon we had no need to go to the wash-house. Lud-
milla's mother found work with a fur-dresser, and left
the house the first thing in the morning. Her sister
was at school, and her brother worked at a tile fac-
tory. On wet days I went to the girl and helped her
to cook, and to clean the sitting-room and kitchen. She
said laughingly :

"We live together — ^just like a husband and wife.
In fact, we live better; a husband does not help his
wife."

If I had money, I bought some cakes, and we had
tea, afterward cooling the samovar with cold water,
lest the scolding mother of Ludmilla should guess that
it had been heated. Sometimes grandmother came to
see us, and sat down, making lace, sewing, or telling us
wonderful stories, and when grandfather went to the
town, Ludmilla used to come to us, and we feasted
without a care in the world.

Grandmother said :

"Oh, how happily we live! With our own money
we can do what we like."

She encouraged our friendship.

"It is a good thing when a boy and girl are friends.
Only there must be no tricks," and she explained in the
simplest words what she meant by "tricks." She spoke
beautifully, as one inspired, and made me understand
thoroughly that it is wrong to pluck the flower before
it opens, for then it will have neither fragrance nor
fruit.

We had no inclination for "tricks," but that did not

46 IN THE WORLD

hinder Ludmilla and me from speaking of that subject,
on which one is supposed to be silent. Such subjects
of conversation were in a way forced upon us because
the relationship of the sexes was so often and tire-
somely brought to our notice in their coarsest form,
and was very offensive to us.

Ludmilla's father was a handsome man of forty,
curly-headed and whiskered, and had an extremely
masterful way of moving his eyebrows. He was
strangely silent; I do not remember one word uttered
by him. When he caressed his children he uttered un-
intelligible sounds, like a dumb person, and even when
he beat his wife he did it in silence.

On the evenings of Sundays and festivals, attired in
a light-blue shirt, with wide plush trousers and highly
polished boots, he would go out to the gate with a
harmonica slung with straps behind his back,
and stand there exactly like a soldier doing sen-
try duty. Presently a sort of "promenade" would be-
gin past our gate. One after the other girls and
women would pass, glancing at Evsyenko furtively
from under their eyelashes, or quite openly, while he
stood sticking out his lower lip, and also looking with
discriminating glances from his dark eyes. There was
something repugnantly dog-like in this silent conver-
sation with the eyes alone, and from the slow, rapt
movement of the women as they passed it seemed as if
the chosen one, at an imperious flicker of the man's
eyelid, would humbly sink to the dirty ground as if
she were killed.

IN THE WORLD 47

"Tipsy brute ! Brazen face !" grumbled Ludmilla's
mother. She was a tall, thin woman, with a long face
and a bad complexion, and hair which had been cut
short after typhus. She was like a worn-out broom.

Ludmilla sat beside her, unsuccessfully trying to
turn her attention from the street by asking questions
about one thing and another.

''Stop it, you monster!" muttered the mother, blink-
ing restlessly. Her narrow Mongol eyes were strangely
bright and immovable, always fixed on something and
always stationary.

"Don't be angry, Mamochka; it doesn't matter,"
Ludmilla would say. "Just look how the mat-mak-
er's widow is dressed up !"

"I should be able to dress better if it were not for
you three. You have eaten me up, devoured me,"
said the mother, pitilessly through her tears, fixing her
eyes on the large, broad figure of the mat-maker's
widow.

She was like a small house. Her chest stuck out like
the roof, and her red face, half hidden by the green
handkerchief which was tied round it, was like a dor-
mer-window when the sun is reflected on it. Evsy-
enko, drawing his harmonica to his chest, began to
play. The harmonica played many tunes; the sounds
traveled a long way, and the children came from all
the street around, and fell in the sand at the feet of
the performer, trembling with ecstasy.

"You wait; I'll give you something!" the woman
promised her husband.

48 IN THE WORLD

He looked at her askance, without speaking. And
the mat-maker's widow sat not far off on the Xlistov's
bench, listening intently.

In the field behind the cemetery the sunset was red.
In the street, as on a river, floated brightly clothed,
great pieces of flesh. The children rushed along like
a whirlwind; the warm air was caressing and intoxi-
cating. A pungent odor rose from the sand, which
had been made hot by the sun during the day, and pe-
culiarly noticeable was a fat, sweet smell from the
slaughter-house — the smell of blood. From the yard
where the fur-dresser lived came the salt and bitter
odor of tanning. The women's chatter, the drunken
roar of the men, the bell-like voices of the children,
the bass melody of the harmonica — all mingled to-
gether in one deep rumble. The earth, which is ever
creating, gave a mighty sigh. All was coarse and
naked, but it instilled a great, deep faith in that gloomy
life, so shamelessly animal. At times above the noise
certain painful, never-to-be-forgotten words went
straight to one's heart :

"It is not right for you all together to set upon one.
You must take turns." "Who pities us when we do
not pity ourselves^" "Did God bring women into the
world in order to deride them?"

The night drew near, the air became fresher, the
sounds became more subdued. The wooden houses
seemed to swell and grow taller, clothing themselves
with shadows. The children were dragged away from
the yard to bed. Some of them were already asleep

IN THE WORLD 49

by the fence or at the feet or on the knees of their
mothers. Most of the children grew quieter and more
docile with the night. Evsyenko disappeared unno-
ticed; he seemed to have melted away. The mat-
maker's widow was also missing. The bass notes of
the harmonica could be heard somewhere in the dis-
tance, beyond the cemetery. Ludmilla's mother sat
on a bench doubled up, with her back stuck out like a
cat. My grandmother had gone out to take tea with
a neighbor, a midwife, a great fat woman with a nose
like a duck's, and a gold medal "for saving lives" on
her flat, masculine-looking chest. The whole street
feared her, regarding her as a witch, and it was re-
lated of her that she had carried out of the flames,
when a fire broke out, the three children and sick wife
of a certain colonel. There was a friendship between
grandmother and her. When they met in the street
they used to smile at each other from a long way off,
as if they had seen something specially pleasant.

Kostrom, Ludmilla, and I sat on the bench at the
gate. Tchurka had called upon Ludmilla's brother to
wrestle with him. Locked in each other's arms they
trampled down the sand and became angry.

"Leave off!" cried Ludmilla, timorously.

Looking at her sidewise out of his black eyes, Kos-
trom told a story about the hunter Kalinin, a gray-
haired old man with cunning eyes, a man of evil fame,
known to all the village. He had not long been dead,
but they had not buried him in the earth in the grave-
yard, but had placed his coffin above ground, away from

50 IN THE WORLD

the other graves. The coffin was black, on tall trestles ;
on the lid were drawn in white paint a cross, a spear,
a reed, and two bones. Every night, as soon as it grew
dark, the old man rose from his coffin and walked
about the cemetery, looking for something, till the
first cock crowed.

''Don't talk about such dreadful things!" begged
Ludmilla.

"Nonsense I" cried Tchurka, breaking away from
her brother. "What are you telling lies for*? I saw
them bury the coffin myself, and the one above ground
is simply a monument. As to a dead man walking
about, the drunken blacksmith set the idea afloat."

Kostrom, without looking at him, suggested:

"Go and sleep in the cemetery; then you will see."

They began to quarrel, and Ludmilla, shaking her
head sadly, asked:

"Mamochka, do dead people walk about at night?"

"They do," answered her mother, as if the question
had called her back from a distance.

The son of the shopkeeper Valek, a tall, stout, red-
faced youth of twenty, came to us, and, hearing what
we were disputing about, said:

"I will give three greven and ten cigarettes to which-
ever of you three will sleep till daylight on the coffin,
and I will pull the ears of the one who is afraid — as
long as he likes. Well?"

We were all silent, confused, and Ludmilla's mother
said :

IN THE WORLD 51

"What nonsense! What do you mean by putting
the children up to such nonsense?"

"You hand over a ruble, and I will go," announced
Tchurka, gruffly.

Kostrom at once asked spitefully :

"But for two greven — you would be afraid?"
Then he said to Valek: "Give him the ruble. But
he won't go; he is only making believe."

"Well, take the ruble."

Tchurka rose, and, without saying a word and with-
out hurrying, went away, keeping close to the fence.
Kostrom, putting his fingers in his mouth, whistled
piercingly after him.; but Ludmilla said uneasily :

"O Lord, what a braggart he is I I never I"

"Where are you going, coward?" jeered Valek.
"And you call yourself the first fighter in the street I"

It was offensive to listen to his jeers. We did not
like this overfed youth; he was always putting up
little boys to do wrong, told them obscene stories of
girls and women, and taught them to tease them. The
children did what he told them, and suffered dearly
for it. For some reason or other he hated my dog, and
used to throw stones at it, and one day gave it some
bread with a needle in it. But it was still more of-
fensive to see Tchurka going away, shrinking and
ashamed.

I said to Valek:

"Give me the ruble, and I will go."

Mocking me and trying to frighten me, he held out

52 IN THE WORLD

the ruble to Ludmilla's mother, who would not take
it, and said sternly :

"I don't want it, and I won't have it I" Then she
went out angrily.

Ludmilla also could not make up her mind to take
the money, and this made Valek jeer the more. I was
going away without obtaining the money when grand-
mother came along, and, being told all about it, took
the ruble, saying to me softly :

"Put on your overcoat and take a blanket with you,
for it grows cold toward morning."

Her words raised my hopes that nothing terrible
would happen to me.

Valek laid it down on a condition that*I should either
lie or sit on the coffin until it was light, not leaving it,
whatever happened, even if the coffin shook when the
old man Kalinin began to climb out of the tomb. If I
jumped to the ground I had lost.

"And remember," said Valek, "that I shall be watch-
ing you all night."

When I set out for the cemetery grandmother made
the sign of the cross over me and kissed me.

"If you should see a glimpse of anything, don't
move, but just say, 'Hail, Mary.' "

I went along quickly, my one desire being to begin
and finish the whole thing. Valek, Kostrom, and an-
other youth escorted me thither. As I was getting
over the brick wall I got mixed up in the blanket, and
fell down, but was up in the same moment, as if the
earth had ejected me. There was a chuckle from the

IN THE WORLD 53

other side of the wall. My heart contracted; a cold
chill ran down my back.

I went stumblingly on to the black coffin, against
one side of which the sand had drifted, while on the
other side could be seen the short, thick legs. It looked
as if some one had tried to lift it up, and had succeeded
only in making it totter. I sat on the edge of the
coffin and looked around. The hilly cemetery was
simply packed with gray crosses; quivering shadows
fell upon the graves.

Here and there, scattered among the graves, slender
willows stood up, uniting adjoining graves with their
branches. Through the lace-work of their shadows
blades of grass stuck up.

The church rose up in the sky like a snow-drift,
and in the motionless clouds shone the small setting
moon.

The father of Yaz, "the good-for-nothing peasant,"
was lazily ringing his bell in his lodge. Each time, as
he pulled the string, it caught in the iron plate of the
roof and squeaked pitifully, after which could be
heard the metallic clang of the little bell. It sounded
sharp and sorrowful.

"God give us rest!" I remembered the saying of
the watchman. It was very painful and somehow it
was suffocating. I was perspiring freely although the
night was cool. Should I have time to run into the
watchman's lodge if old Kalinin really did try to
creep out of his graved

I was well acquainted with the cemetery. I had

54 IN THE WORLD

played among the graves many times with Yaz and
other comrades. Over there by the church my mother
was buried.

Every one was not asleep yet, for snatches of laugh-
ter and fragments of songs were borne to me from the
village. Either on the railway embankment, to which
they were carrying sand, or in the village of Katizovka
a harmonica gave forth a strangled sound. Along the
wall, as usual, went the drunken blacksmith Myachov,
singing. I recognized him by his song :

"To our mother's door
One small sin we lay.
The only one she loves
Is our Papasha."

It was pleasant to listen to the last sighs of life, but
at each stroke of the bell it became quieter, and the
quietness overflowed like a river over a meadow, drown-
ing and hiding everything. One's soul seemed to float
in boundless and unfathomable space, to be extin-
guished like the light of a catch in the darkness, be-
coming dissolved without leaving a trace in that ocean
of space in which live only the unattainable stars, shin-
ing brightly, while everything on earth disappears as
being useless and dead. Wrapping myself in the
blanket, I sat on the coffin, with my feet tucked under
me and my face to the church. Whenever I moved,
the coffin squeaked, and the sand under it crunched.

Something twice struck the ground close to me, and

IN THE WORLD 55

then a piece of brick fell near by. I was frightened,
but then I guessed that Valek and his friends were
throwing things at me from the other side of the wall,
trying to scare me. But I felt all the better for the
proximity of human creatures.

I began unwillingly to think of my mother. Once
she had found me trying to smoke a cigarette. She be-
gan to beat me, but I said :

"Don't touch me; I feel bad enough without that.
I feel very sick."

Afterward, when I was put behind the stove as a
punishment, she said to grandmother :

"That boy has no feeling; he does n't love any one."

It hurt me to hear that. When my mother punished
me I was sorry for her. I felt uncomfortable for
her sake, because she seldom punished me deservedly
or justly. On the whole, I had received a great deal
of ill treatment in my life. Those people on the other
side of the fence, for example, must know that I was
frightened of being alone in the cemetery, yet they
wanted to frighten me more. Why*?

I should like to have shouted to them, "Go to the
devil I" but that might have been disastrous. Who
knew what the devil would think of it, for no doubt
he was somewhere near^ There was a lot of mica
in the sand, and it gleamed faintly in the moonlight,
which reminded me how, lying one day on a raft on
the Oka, gazing into the water, a bream suddenly swam
almost in my face, turned on its side, looking like a

56 IN THE WORLD

human cheek, and, looking at me with its round, bird-
like eyes, dived to the bottom, fluttering like a leaf
falling from a maple-tree.

My memory worked with increasing effort, recalling
different episodes of my life, as if it were striving to
protect itself against the imaginations evoked by
terror.

A hedgehog came rolling along, tapping on the
sand with its strong paws. It reminded me of a hob-
goblin; it was just as little and as disheveled-looking.

I remembered how grandmother, squatting down be-
side the stove, said, "Kind master of the house, take
away the beetles."

Far away over the town, which I could not see, it
grew lighter. The cold morning air blew against my
cheeks and into my eyes. I wrapped myself in my
blanket. Let come what would !

Grandmother awoke me. Standing beside me and
pulling off the blanket, she said :

"Get up! Aren't you chilled? Well, were you
frightened?"

"I was frightened, but don't tell any one; don't tell
the other boys."

"But why not?" she asked in amazement. "If you
were not afraid, you have nothing to be proud about."

As he went home she said to me gently :

"You have to experience things for yourself in this
world, dear heart. If you can't teach yourself, no one
else can teach you."

By the evening I was the "hero" of the street, and

IN THE WORLD 57

every one asked me, "Is it possible that you were not
afraid?" And when I answered, "I was afraid," they
shook their heads and exclaimed, "Aha I you see!"

The shopkeeper went about saying loudly :

"It may be that they talked nonsense when they said
that Kalinin walked. But if he did, do you think he
would have frightened that boy? No, he would have
driven him out of the cemetery, and no one would
know v/here he went."

Ludmilla looked at me with tender astonishment.
Even grandfather was obviously pleased with me.
They all made much of me. Only Tchurka said
gruffly :

"It was easy enough for him; his grandmother is a
witch I"

CHAPTER III

IMPERCEPTIBLY, like a little star at dawn, my
brother Kolia faded away. Grandmother, he, and
I slept in a small shed on planks covered with various
rags. On the other side of the chinky wall of the out-
house was the family poultry-house. We could hear
the sleepy, overfed fowls fluttering and clucking in
the evening, and the golden, shrill-voiced cock awoke
us in the morning.

"Oh, I should like to tear you to pieces!" grand-
mother would grumble when they woke her.

I was already awake, watching the sunbeams fall-
ing through the chinks upon my bed, and the silver
specks of dust which danced in them. These little
specks seemed to me just like the words in a fairy-tale.
Mice had gnawed the planks, and red beetles with black
spots ran about there.

Sometimes, to escape from the stifling fumes which
arose from the soil in the fowl-house, I crept out of
the wooden hut, climbed to the roof, and watched the
people of the house waking up, eyeless, large, and
swollen with sleep. Here appeared the hairy noddle
of the boatman Phermanov, a surly drunkard, who
gazed at the sun with blear, running eyes and grunted
like a bear. Then grandfather came hurrying out into

58

IN THE WORLD 59

the yard and hastened to the wash-house to wash him-
self in cold water. The garrulous cook of the land-
lord, a sharp-nosed woman, thickly covered with
freckles, was like a cuckoo. The landlord himself was
like an old fat dove. In fact, they were all like some
bird, animal, or wild beast.

Although the morning was so pleasant and bright,
it made me feel sad, and I wanted to get away into the
fields where no one came, for I had already learned
that human creatures always spoil a bright day.

One day when I was lying on the roof grandmother
called me, and said in a low voice, shaking her head
as she lay on her bed :

"Kolia is dead."

The little boy had slipped from the pillow, and
lay livid, lanky on the felt cover. His night-shirt
had worked itself up round his neck, leaving bare his
swollen stomach and crooked legs. His hands were
curiously folded behind his back, as if he had been
trying to lift himself up. His head was bent on one
side.

*Thank God he has gone!" said grandmother as
she did her hair. ''What would have become of the
poor little wretch had he lived?"

Treading almost as if he were dancing, grandfather
made his appearance, and cautiously touched the closed
eyes of the child with his fingers.

Grandmother asked him angrily:

"What do you mean by touching him with un-
washen hands?"

6o IN THE WORLD

He muttered:

"There you are ! He gets born, lives, and eats, and
all for nothing."

"You are half asleep," grandmother cut him short.

He looked at her vacantly, and went out in the yard,
saying :

"I am not going to give him a funeral; you can
do what you like about it."

"Phoo! you miserable creature!"

I went out, and did not return until it was close upon
evening. They buried Kolia on the morning of the
following day, and during the mass I sat by the re-
opened grave with my dog and Yaz's father. He had
dug the grave cheaply, and kept praising himself for
it before my face.

"I have only done this out of friendship; for any
one else I should have charged so many rubles."

Looking into the yellow pit, from which arose a
heavy odor, I saw some moist black planks at one side.
At my slightest movement the heaps of sand around
the grave fell to the bottom in a thin stream, leaving
wrinkles in the sides. I moved on purpose, so that
the sand would hide those boards.

"No larks now!" said Yaz's father, as he smoked.

Grandmother carried out the little coffin. The
"trashy peasant" sprang into the hole, took the coffin
from her, placed it beside the black boards, and, jump-
ing out of the grave, began to hurl the earth into it with
his feet and his spade. Grandfather and grandmother

IN THE WORLD 61

also helped him in silence. There were neither priests
nor beggars there ; only we four amid a dense crowd of
crosses. As she gave the sexton his money, grand-
mother said reproachfully:

"But you have disturbed Varina's coffin."

"What else could I do? If I had not done that, I
should have had to take some one else's piece of ground.
But there 's nothing to worry about."

Grandmother prostrated herself on the grave, sobbed
and groaned, and went away, followed by grandfather,
his eyes hidden by the peak of his cap, clutching at
his worn coat.

"They have sown the seed in unplowed ground,"
he said suddenly, running along in front, just like a
crow on the plowed field.

"What does he mean?" I asked grandmother.

"God bless him ! He has his thoughts," she an-
swered.

It was hot. Grandmother went heavily; her feet
sank in the warm sand. She halted frequently, mop-
ping her perspiring face with her handkerchief.

"That black thing in the grave," I asked her, "was
it mother's coffin?"

"Yes," she said angrily. "Ignorant dog! It is not
a year yet, and our Varia is already decayed! It is
the sand that has done it; it lets the water through.
If that had to happen, it would have been better to — "

"Shall we all decay?"

"All. Only the saints escape it."

62 IN THE WORLD

"You — you will not decay I"

She halted, set my cap straight, and said to me seri-
ously :

"Don't think about it; it is better not. Do you
hear?'

But I did think of it. How offensive and revolting
death was I How odious! I felt very badly about
it

When we reached home grandfather had already
prepared the samovar and laid the table.

"Come and have some tea. I expect you are hot,"
he said. "I have put in my own tea as well. This is
for us all."

He went to grandmother and patted her on the shoul-
der.

"Well, Mother, well?"

Grandmother held up her hands.

"Whatever does it all mean?"

"This is what it means: God is angry with us; He
is tearing everything away from us bit by bit. If
families lived together in unity, like fingers on a
hand—"

It was long since he had spoken so gently and
peaceably. I listened, hoping that the old man would
extinguish my sense of injury, and help me to forget
the yellow pit and the black moist boards in protuber-
ance in its side. But grandmother cut him short
harshly :

"Leave off, Father ! You have been uttering words
like that all your life, and I should like to know who

IN THE WORLD 63

is the better for them? All your life you have eaten
into every one as rust corrodes iron."

Grandfather muttered, looked at her, and held his
tongue.

In the evening, at the gate, I told Ludmilla sorrow-
fully about what I had seen in the morning, but it did
not seem to make much impression on her.

"Orphans are better off. If my father and mother
were to die, I should leave my sister to look after my
brother, and I myself would go into a convent for the
rest of my life. Where else should I go? I don't
expect to get married, being lame and unable to work.
Besides, I might bring crippled children into the
world."

She spoke wisely, like all the women of our street,
and it must have been from that evening that I lost
interest in her. In fact, my life took a turn which
caused me to see her very seldom.

A few days after the death of my brother, grand-
father said to me :

"Go to bed early this evening, while it is still light,
and I will call you. We will go into the forest and
get some logs."

"And I will come and gather herbs," declared grand-
mother.

The forest of fir- and birch- trees stood on a marsh
about three versts distant from the village. Abound-
ing in withered and fallen trees, it stretched in one
direction to the Oka, and in the other to the high road
to Moscow. Beyond it, with its soft, black bristles

64 IN THE WORLD

looking like a black tent, rose the fir-thicket on the
"Ridge of Savelov."

All this property belonged to Count Shuvalov, and
was badly guarded. The inhabitants of Kunavin re-
garded it as their own, carried away the fallen trees
and cut off the dried wood, and on occasion were not
squeamish about cutting down living trees. In the
autumn, when they were laying in a stock of wood
for the winter, people used to steal out here by the
dozen, with hatchets and ropes on their backs.

And so we three went out at dawn over the silver-
green, dewy fields. On our left, beyond the Oka,
above the ruddy sides of the Hill of Dyatlov, above
white Nijni-Novgorod, on the hillocks in the gardens,
on the golden domes of churches, rose the lazy Russian
sun in its leisurely manner. A gentle wind blew
sleepily from the turbid Oka; the golden buttercups,
bowed down by the dew, sway to and fro; lilac-colored
bells bowed dumbly to the earth; everlasting flowers
of different colors stuck up dryly in the barren turf;
the blood-red blossoms of the flower called "night
beauty" opened like stars. The woods came to meet
us like a dark army; the fir-trees spread out their wings
like large birds; the birches looked like maidens. The
acrid smell of the marshes flowed over the fields. My
dog ran beside me with his pink tongue hanging out,
often halting and snuffing the air, and shaking his fox-
like head, as if in perplexity. Grandfather, in grand-
mother's short coat and an old peakless cap, blinking
and smiling at something or other, walked as cautiously

IN THE WORLD 65

as if he were bent on stealing. Grandmother, wearing
a blue blouse, a black skirt, and a white handkerchief
about her head, waddled comfortably. It was diffi-
cult to hurry when walking behind her.

The nearer we came to the forest, the more animated
grandfather became. Walking with his nose in the
air and muttering, he began to speak, at first dis-
jointedly and inarticulately, and afterward happily
and beautifully, almost as if he had been drinking.

"The forests are the Lord's gardens. No one
planted them save the wind of God and the holy breath
of His mouth. When I was working on the boats in
my youth I went to Jegoulya. Oh, Lexei, you will
never have the experiences I have had! There are
forests along the Oka, from Kasimov to Mouron, and
there are forests on the Volga, too, stretching as far as
the Urals. Yes; it is all so boundless and wonderful."

Grandmother looked at him askance, and winked
at me, and he, stumbling over the hillocks, let fall
some disjointed, dry words that have remained for-
ever fixed in my memory.

"We were taking some empty oil-casks from Saratov
to Makara on the Yamarka, *and we had with us as
skipper Kyril of Poreshka. The mate was a Tatar —
Asaph, or some such name. When we reached Jegulia
the wind was right in our faces, blowing with all its
force; and as it remained in the same quarter and tossed
us about, we went on shore to cook some food for our-
selves. It was Maytime. The sea lay smooth around
the land, and the waves just floated on her, like a flock

66 IN THE WORLD

of birds — like thousands of swans which sport on the
Caspian Sea. The hills of Jegulia are green in the
springtime; the sun floods the earth with gold. We
rested; we became friendly; we seemed to be drawn to
one another. It was gray and cold on the river, but
on shore it was warm and fragrant. At eventide our
Kyril — he was a harsh man and well on in years —
stood up, took off his cap, and said : *Well, children,
I am no longer either chief or servant. Go away by
yourselves, and I will go to the forest.' We were all
startled. What was it that he was saying*? We
ought not to be left without some one responsible to
be master. You see, people can't get on without a
head, although it is only on the Volga, which is like
a straight road. It is possible to lose one's way, for
people alone are only like a senseless beast, and who
cares what becomes of them? We were frightened;
but he — he had made up his mind. T have no desire
to go on living as your shepherd; I am going into the
forest.' Some of us had half a mind to seize and keep
him by force, but the others said, *Wait!' Then the
Tatar mate set up a cry: T shall go, too!' It was
very bad luck. The Tatar had not been paid by the
proprietors for the last two journeys; in fact, he had
done half of a third one without pay, and that was a
lot of money to lose in those days. We wrangled
over the matter until night, and then seven of our com-
pany left us, leaving only sixteen or fourteen of us.
That 's what your forests do for people !"
"Did they go and join the brigands?"

IN THE WORLD 67

"Maybe, or they may have become hermits. We
did not inquire into the matter then."

Grandmother crossed herself.

"Holy Mother of God ! When one thinks of peo-
ple, one cannot help being sorry for them."

"We are all given the same powers of reason, you
know, where the devil draws."

We entered the forest by a wet path between
marshy hillocks and frail fir-trees. I thought that it
must be lovely to go and live in the woods as Kyril of
Poreshka had done. There are no chattering human
creatures there, no fights or drunkenness. There I
should be able to forget the repulsive greediness of
grandfather and mother's sandy grave, all of which
things hurt me, and weighed on my heart with an op-
pressive heaviness. When we came to a dry place
grandmother said:

"We must have a snack now. Sit down."

In her basket there were rye bread, onions, cucum-
bers, salt, and curds wrapped in a cloth. Grandfather
looked at all this in confusion and blinked.

"But I did not bring anything to eat, good Mother."

"There is enough for us all."

We sat down, leaning against the mast-like trunk
of a fir-tree. The air was laden with a resinous odor;
from the fields blew a gentle wind; the shave-grass
waved to and fro. Grandmother plucked the herbs
with her dark hands, and told me about the medicinal
properties of St. John's-wort, betony, and rib-wort,
and of the secret power of bracken. Grandfather

68 IN THE WORLD

hewed the fallen trees in pieces, and it was my part to
carry the logs and put them all in one place; but I
stole away unnoticed into the thicket after grand-
mother. She looked as if she were floating among
the stout, hardy tree-trunks, and as if she were diving
when she stooped to the earth, which was strewn with
fir-cones. She talked to herself as she went along.

"We have come too early again. There will be
hardly any mushrooms. Lord, how badly Thou look-
est after the poor! Mushrooms are the treat of the
poor."

I followed her silently and cautiously, not to at-
tract her attention. I did not wish to interrupt her
conversation with God, the herbs, and the frogs. But
she saw me.

"Have you run away from grandfather?" And
stooping to the black earth, splendidly decked in
flowered vestments, she spoke of the time when God,
enraged with mankind, flooded the earth with water
and drowned all living creatures. "But the sweet
Mother of God had beforehand collected the seeds
of everything in a basket and hidden them, and when
it was all over, she begged the sun: *Dry the earth
from end to end, and then will all the people sing thy
praises.' The sun dried the earth, and she sowed the
seed. God looked. Once more the earth was covered
with living creatures, herbs, cattle, and people. 'Who
has done this against My will?' He asked. And here
she confessed, and as God had been sorry Himself to

IN THE WORLD 69

see the earth bare, He said to her, *You have done
well.' "

I liked. this story, but it surprised me, and I said
very gravely :

"But was that really so^ The Mother of God
was born long after the flood."

It was now grandmother's turn to be surprised.

"Who told you that?'

"It was written in the books at school."

This reassured her, and she gave me the advice:

"Put all that aside; forget it. It is only out of
books; they are lies, those books." And laughing
softly, gayly, "Think for a moment, silly! God was;
and His Mother was not*? Then of whom was He
born?"

"I don't know."

"Good! You have learned enough to be able to
say 1 don't know.' "

"The priest said that the Mother of God was bom
of Joachim and Anna."

Then grandmother was angry. She faced about,
and looked sternly into my eyes.

"If that is what you think, I will slap you." But
in the course of a few minutes she explained to me.
"The Blessed Virgin always existed before any one and
anything. Of Her was God born, and then — "

"And Christ, what about Him?"

Grandmother was silent, shutting her eyes in her
confusion.

70 IN THE WORLD

"And what about Christ *? Eh? thV

I saw that I was victor, that I had caused the di-
vine mysteries to be a snare to her, and it was not a
pleasant thought.

We went farther and farther into the forest, into
the dark-blue haze pierced by the golden rays of the
sun. There was a peculiar murmur, dreamy, and
arousing dreams. The crossbill chirped, the titmouses
uttered their bell-like notes, . the goldfinch piped, the
cuckoo laughed, the jealous song of the chaffinch was
heard unceasingly, and that strange bird, the hawfinch,
sang pensively. Emerald-green frogs hopped around
our feet; among the roots, guarding them, lay an adder,
with his golden head raised; the squirrel cracked nuts,
his furry tail peeping out among the fir-trees. The
deeper one went into the forest, the more one saw.

Among the trunks of the fir-trees appeared trans-
parent, aerial figures of gigantic people, which dis-
appeared into the green mass through which the blue
and silver sky shone. Under one's feet there was a
splendid carpet of moss, sown with red bilberries, and
moor-berries shone in the grass like drops of blood.
Mushrooms tantalized one with their strong smell.

"Holy Virgin, bright earthly light," prayed grand-
mother, drawing a deep breath.

In the forest she was like the mistress of a house with
all her family round her. She ambled along like a
bear, seeing and praising everything and giving thanks.
It seemed as if a certain warmth flowed from her

I

IN THE WORLD 71

through the forest, and when the moss, crushed by her
feet, raised itself and stood up in her wake, it was
peculiarly pleasing to me to see it.

As I walked along I thought how nice it would be
to be a brigand; to rob the greedy and give the spoil
to the poor; to make them all happy and satisfied,
neither envying nor scolding one another, like bad-
tempered curs. It was good to go thus to grand-
mother's God, to her Holy Virgin, and tell them all
the truth about the bad lives people led, and how
clumsily and offensively they buried one another in rub-
bishy sand. And there was so much that was un-
necessarily repulsive and torturing on earth! If the
Holy Virgin believed what I said, let her give me such
an intelligence as would enable me to construct every-
thing differently and improve the condition of things.
It did not matter about my not being grown-up. Christ
had been only a year older than I was when the wise
men listened to Him.

Once in my preoccupation I fell into a deep pit,
hurting my side and grazing the back of my neck.
Sitting at the bottom of this pit in the cold mud, which
was as sticky as resin, I realized with a feeling of in-
tense humiliation that I should not be able to get out
by myself, and I did not like the idea of frightening
grandmother by calling out. However, I had to call
her in the end. She soon dragged me out, and, cross-
ing herself, said:

'The Lord be praised! It is a lucky thing that the

72 IN THE WORLD

bear's pit was empty. What would have happened to
you if the master of the house had been lying there*?"
And she cried through her laughter.

Then she took me to the brook, washed my wounds
and tied them up with strips of her chemise, after lay-
ing some healing leaves upon them, and took me into
the railway signal-box, for I had not the strength to
get all the way home.

And so it happened that almost every day I said to
grandmother :

"Let us go into the forest."

She used to agree willingly, and thus we lived all
the summer and far into the autumn, gathering herbs,
berries, mushrooms, and nuts. Grandmother sold
what we gathered, and by this means we were able to
keep ourselves.

"Lazy beggars!" shrieked grandfather, though we
never had food from him.

The forest called up a feeling of peace and solace
in my heart, and in that feeling all my griefs were
swallowed up, and all that was unpleasant was ob-
literated. During that time also my senses acquired
a peculiar keenness, my hearing and sight became more
acute, my memory more retentive, my storehouse of im-
pressions widened.

And the more I saw of grandmother, the more she
amazed me. I had been accustomed to regard h^r as
a higher being, as the very best and the wisest creature
upon the earth, and she was continually strengthening
this conviction. For instance, one evening we had

IN THE WORLD 73

been gathering white mushrooms, and when we arrived
at the edge of the forest on our way home grandmother
sat down to rest while I went behind the tree to see if
there were any more mushrooms. Suddenly I heard
her voice, and this is what I saw : she was seated by the
footpath calmly putting away the root of a mushroom,
while near her, with his tongue hanging out, stood a
gray, emaciated dog.

"You go away now I Go away I" said grandmother.
"Go, and God be with you I"

Not long before that Valek had poisoned my dog,
and I wanted very much to have this one. I ran to
the path. The dog hunched himself strangely with-
out moving his neck, and, looking at me with his green,
hungry eyes, leaped into the forest, with his tail be-
tween his legs. His movements were not those of a
dog, and when I whistled, he hurled himself wildly
into the bushes.

"You saw?" said grandmother, smiling. "At first
I was deceived. I thought it was a dog. I looked
again and saw that I was mistaken. He had the fangs
of a wolf, and the neck, too. I was quite frightened.
'Well,' I said, 'if you are a wolf, take yourself off!'
It is a good thing that wolves are not dangerous in the
summer."

She was never afraid in the forest, and always found
her way home unerringly. By the smell of the grass
she knew what kind of mushrooms ought to be found
in such and such a place, what sort in another, and
often examined me in the subject.

74 IN THE WORLD

"What sort of trees do this and that fungus love*?
How do you distinguish the edible from the poison-
ous?'

By hardly visible scratches on the bark of a tree
she showed me where the squirrel had made his home in
a hollow, and I would climb up and ravage the nest of
tlie animal, robbing him of his winter store of nuts.
Sometimes there were as many as ten pounds in one
nest. And one day, when I was thus engaged, a
hunter planted twenty-seven shot in the right side of my
body. Grandmother got eleven of them out with a
needle, but the rest remained under my skin for many
years, coming out by degrees.

Grandmother was pleased with me for bearing pain
patiently.

"Brave boy!" she praised me. '*He who is most
patient will be the cleverest."

Whenever she had saved a little money from the
sale of mushrooms and nuts, she used to lay it on win-
dow-sills as "secret alms," and she herself went about
in rags and patches even on Sundays.

"You go about worse than a beggar. You put me
to shame," grumbled grandfather.

"What does it matter to you*? I am not your
daughter. I am not looking for a husband."

Their quarrels had become more frequent.

"I am not more sinful than others," cried grand-
father in injured tones, "but my punishment is
greater."

Grandmother used to tease him.

IN THE WORLD 75

"The devils know what every one is worth." And
she would say to me privately: "My old man is
frightened of devils. See how quickly he is aging !
It is all from fear; eh, poor man!"

I had become very hardy during the summer, and
quite savage through living in the forest, and I had
lost all interest in the life of my contemporaries, such
as Ludmilla. She seemed to me to be tiresomely sensi-
ble.

One day grandfather returned from the town very
wet. It was autumn, and the rains were falling.
Shaking himself on the threshold like a sparrow, he
said triumphantly:

"Well, young rascal, you are going to a new situa-
tion to-morrow."

"Where now?" asked grandmother, angrily.

"To your sister Matrena, to her son."

"O Father, you have done very wrong."

"Hold your tongue, fool ! They will make a man
of him."

Grandmother let her head droop and said nothing
more.

In the evening I told Ludmilla that I was going to
live in the town.

"They are going to take me there soon," she in-
formed me, thoughtfully. "Papa wants my leg to be
taken off altogether. Without it I should get well."

She had grown very thin during the summer; the
skin of her face had assumed a bluish tint, and her eyes
had grown larger.

76 IN THE WORLD

"Are you afraid?" I asked her.

"Yes," she replied, and wept silently.

I had no means of consoling her, for I was fright-
tened myself at the prospect of life in town. We sat
for a long time in painful silence, pressed close against
each other. If it had been summer, I should have asked
grandmother to come begging with me, as she had done
when she was a girl. We might have taken Ludmilla
with us; I could have drawn her along in a little cart.
But it was autumn. A damp wind blew up the streets,
the sky was heavy with rain-clouds, the earth frowned.
It had begun to look dirty and unhappy.

. CHAPTER IV

ONCE more I was in the town, in a two-storied
white house which reminded me of a coffin meant
to hold a lot of people. It was a new house, but it
looked as if were in ill health, and was bloated like
a beggar who has suddenly become rich and has over-
eaten. It stood sidewise to the street, and had eight
windows to each floor, but where the face of the house
ought to have been there were only four windows.
The lower windows looked on a narrow passage and on
the yard, and the upper windows on the laundress's
little house and the causeway.

No street, as I understood the term, existed. In
front of the house a dirty causeway ran in two direc-
tions, cut in two by a narrow dike. To the left, it
extended to the House of Detention, and was heaped
with rubbish and logs, and at the bottom stood a thick
pool of dark-green filth. On the right, at the end of
the causeway, the slimy Xvyexdin Pond stagnated.
The middle of the causeway was exactly opposite the
house, and half of it w^s strewn with filth and over-
grown with nettles and horse sorrel, while in the other
half the priest Doriedont Pokrovski had planted a
garden in which was a summer-house of thin lathes
painted red. If one threw stones at it, the lathes split
with a crackling sound.

The place was intolerably depressing and shame-

17

78 IN THE WORLD

lessly dirty. The autumn had ruthlessly broken up
the filthy, rotten earth, changing it into a sort of red
resin which clung to one's feet tenaciously. I had
never seen so much dirt in so small a space before,
and after being accustomed to the cleanliness of the
fields and forests, this corner of the town aroused my
disgust.

Beyond the causeway stretched gray, broken-down
fences, and in the distance I recognized the little
house in which I had lived when I was shop-boy. The
nearness of that house depressed me still more. I had
known my master before; he and his brother used to
be among mother's visitors. His brother it was who
had sung so comically :

"Andrei — papa, Andrei — papa — "

They were not changed. The elder, with a hook
nose and long hair, was pleasant in manner and
seemed to be kind; the younger, Victor, had the same
horse-like face and the same freckles. Their mother,
grandmother's sister, was very cross and fault-finding.
The elder son was married. His wife was a splendid
creature, white like bread made from Indian corn,
with very large, dark eyes. She said to me twice dur^
ing the first day:

"I gave your mother a silk cloak trimmed with
jet."

Somehow I did not want to believe that she had
given, and that my mother had accepted, a present.
When she reminded me of it again, I said:

IN THE WORLD 79

"You gave it to her, and that is the end of the mat-
ter; there is nothing to boast about."
She started away from me. ^

"Wh-a-at*? To whom are you speaking^'*
Her face came out in red blotches, her eyes rolled,
and she called her husband.

He came into the kitchen, with his compasses in
his hand and a pencil behind his ear, listened to what
his wife had to say, and then said to me :

"You must speak properly to her and to us all.
There must be no insolence." Then he said to his
wife, impatiently, "Don't disturb me with your non-

sense!"

"What do you mean — nonsense*? If your rela-
tives— "

"The devil take my relatives!" cried the master,
rushing away.

I myself was not pleased to think that they were
relatives of grandmother. Experience had taught me
that relatives behave worse to one another than do
strangers. Their gossip is more spiteful, since they
know more of the bad and ridiculous sides of one an-
other than strangers, and they fall out and fight more
often.

I liked my master. He used to shake back his hair
with a graceful movement, and tuck it behind his
ears, and he reminded me somehow of "Good Busi-
ness." He often laughed merrily; his gray eyes looked
kindly upon me, and funny wrinkles played divert-
ingly about his aquiline nose.

8o IN THE WORLD

"You have abused each other long enough, wild
fowl," he would say to his mother and his wife, show-
ing his small, closely set teeth in a gentle smile.

The mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law abused
each other all day. I was surprised to see how swiftly
and easily ^hey plunged into a quarrel. The first thing
in the morning, with their hair unbrushed and their
clothes unfastened, they would rush about the rooms
as if the house were on fire, and they fussed about all
day, only pausing to take breath in the dining-room
at dinner, tea, or supper. They ate and drank till
they could eat and drink no more, and at dinner they
talked about the food and disputed lethargically, pre-
paring for a big quarrel. No matter what it was that
the mother-in-law had prepared, the daughter-in-law
was sure to say:-

"My mother did not cook it this way."

"Well, if that is so, she did it badly, that 's all."

"On the contrary, she did it better."

"Well, you had better go back to your mother."

"I am mistress here."

"And who am I?"

Here the master would intervene.

"That will do, wild fowl I What is the matter
with you? Are you mad*?"

For some inexplicable reason everything about that
house was peculiar and mirth-provoking. The way
from the kitchen to the dining-room lay through a
small closet, the only one in the house, through
which they carried the samovar and the food into the

I

IN THE WORLD 81

dining-room. It was the cause of merry witticisms and
often of laughable misunderstandings. I slept in the
kitchen, between that door and the one leading to the
stairs. My head was hot from the heat of the cook-
ing-stove, but the draft from the stairs blew on my
feet. When I retired to bed, I used to take all the
mats off the floor and wrap them round my feet.

The large reception-room, with its two pier-glasses,
its pictures in gilt frames, its pair of card-tables, and
its dozen Vienna chairs, was a dreary, depressing place.
The small drawing-room was simply packed with a
medley of soft furniture, with wedding presents, silver
articles, and a tea-service. It was adorned with three
lamps, one larger than the other two.

In the dark, windowless bedroom, in addition to the
wide bed, there were trunks and cupboards from
which came the odors of leaf tobacco and Persian
camomile. These three rooms were always unoccu-
pied, while the entire household squeezed itself into
the little dining-room. Directly after breakfast, at
eight o'clock, the master and his brother moved the
table, and, laying sheets of white paper upon it, with
cases, pencils, and saucers containing Indian ink, set
to work, one at each end of the table. The table was
shaky, and took up nearly the whole of the room, and
when the mistress and the nurse came out of the
nursery they had to brush past the corners.

"Don't come fussing about here!" Victor would
cry.

"Vassia, please tell him not to shout at me," the

82 IN THE WORLD

mistress would say to her husband in an offended tone.

"All right; but don't come and shake the table,"
her husband would reply peaceably.

"I am stout, and the room is so small."

"Well, we will go and work in the large drawing-
room."

But at that she cried indignantly:

"Lord ! why on earth should you work in the large
drawing-room?"

At the door of the closet appeared the angry face
of Matrena Ivanovna, flushed with the heat of the
stove. She called out :

"You see how it is, Vassia? She knows that you
are working, and yet she can't be satisfied with the
other four rooms."

Victor laughed maliciously, but the master said:

"That will do!"

And the daughter-in-law, with a venomously elo-
quent gesture, sank into a chair and groaned :

"I am dying I I am dying I"

"Don't hinder my work, the devil take you !" roared
the master, turning pale with the exertion. "This is
nothing better than a mad-house. Here am I break-
ing my back to feed you. Oh, you wild fowl !"

At first these quarrels used to alarm me, especially
when the mistress, seizing a table knife, rushed into
the closet, and, shutting both the doors, began to
shriek like a mad thing. For a minute the house
was quiet, then the master, having tried to force the
door, stooped down, and called out to me :

IN THE WORLD 83

"Climb up on my back and unfasten the hook."
I swiftly jumped on his back, and broke the pane
of glass over the door; but when I bent down, the
mistress hit me over the head with the blade of the
knife. However, I succeeded in opening the door,
and the master, dragging his wife into the dining-room
after a struggle, took the knife away from her. As I
sat in the kitchen rubbing my bruised head, I soon
came to the conclusion that I had suffered for noth-
ing. The knife was so blunt that it would hardly
cut a piece of bread, and it would certainly never have
made an incision in any one's skin. Besides, there
had been no need for me to climb on the master's back.
I could have broken the glass by standing on a chair,
and in any case it would have been easier for a grown
person to have unfastened the hook, since his arms
would have been longer. After that episode the
quarrels in the house ceased to alarm me.

The brothers used to sing in the church choir; some-
times they used to sing softly over their work. The
elder would begin in a baritone :

"The ring, which was the maiden's heart,
I cast from me into the sea."

And the younger would join with his tenor:

"And I with that very ring
Her earthly joy did ruin."

The mistress would murmur from the nursery:
"Have you gone out of your minds'? Baby is

84 IN THE WORLD

asleep," or: *'How can you, Vassia, a married man,
be singing about girls'? Besides, the bell will ring
for vespers in a minute."

"What's the matter now*? We are only singing
a church tune."

But the mistress intimated that it was out ox place
to sing church tunes here, there, and everywhere. Be-
sides, and she pointed eloquently to the little door.

"We shall have to change our quarters, or the devil
knows what will become of us," said the master.

He said just as often that he must get another table,
and he said it for three years in succession.

When I listened to my employers talking about
people, I was always reminded of the boot-shop. They
used to talk in the same way there. It was evident
to me that my present masters also thought themselves
better than any one in the town. They knew the
rules of correct conduct to the minutest detail, and,
guided by these rules, which were not at all clear to
me, they judged others pitilessly and unsparingly.
This sitting in judgment aroused in me a ferocious re-
sentment and anger against the laws of my employers,
and the breaking of those laws became a source of
pleasure to me.

I had a lot of work to do. I fulfilled all the duties
of a housemaid, washed the kitchen over on Wednes-
day, cleaning the samovar and all the copper vessels,
and on Saturday cleaned the floor of the rest of the
house and both staircases. I had to chop and bring
in the wood for the stoves, wash up, prepare vege-

IN THE WORLD 85

tables for cooking, and go marketing with the mis-
tress, carrying her basket of purchases after her, be-
sides running errands to the shops and to the chemist.

My real mistress, grandmother's sister, a noisy, in-
domitable, implacably fierce old woman, rose early
at six o'clock, and after washing herself in a hurry,
knelt before the icon with only her chemise on, and
complained long to God about her life, her children,
and her daughter-in-law.

*'Lord," she would exclaim, with tears in her voice,
pressing her two first fingers and her thumbs
against her forehead — "Lord, I ask nothing, I want
nothing; only give me rest and peace, Lord, by Thy
power I"

Her sobs used to wake me up, and, half asleep, I
used to peep from under the blanket, and listen with
terror to her passionate prayers. The autumn morn-
ing looked dimly in at the kitchen window through
panes washed by the rain. On the floor in the cold
twilight her gray figure swayed from side to side; she
waved her arms alarmingly. Her thin, light hair fell
from her small head upon her neck and shoulders from
under the swathing handkerchief, which kept slipping
off. She would replace it angrily with her left hand,
muttering "Oh, bother you !"

Striking her forehead with force, beating her breast
and her shoulders, she would wail:

"And my daughter-in-law — punish her, O Lord,
on my account ! Make her pay for all that she has
made me suffer ! And open the eyes of my son — open

86 IN THE WORLD

his eyes and Victor's I Lord, help Victor; be merciful
to him!"

Victorushka also slept in the kitchen, and, hearing
the groans of his mother, would cry in a sleepy voice :

"Mamasha, you are running down the young wife
again. It is really dreadful."

"All right; go to sleep," the old woman would
whisper guiltily. She would be silent for a minute
perhaps, and then she would begin to murmur vin-
dictively, "May their bones be broken, and may there
be no shelter for them on earth. Lord!"

Even grandfather had never prayed so terribly.

When she had said her prayers she used to wake
me up.

"Wake up ! You will never get on if you do not
get up early. Get the samovar ready! Bring the
wood in! Didn't you get the sticks ready over^
night?'

I tried to be quick in order to escape hearing the
frothy whisper of the old woman, but it was impos-
sible to please her. She went about the kitchen like
a winter snow-storm, hissing:

"Not so much noise, you little devil! Wake Vic-
torushka up, and I will give you something! Now
run along to the shop !"

On week-days I used to buy two pounds of wheaten
bread and two copecks' worth of rolls for the young
mistress. When I brought it in, the women would
look at it suspiciously, and, weighing it in the palms
of their hands, would ask ;

IN THE WORLD 87

*Was n't there a make- weight*? No? Open your
mouth I" And then they would cry triumphantly:
"He has gobbled up the make-weight; here are the
crumbs in his teeth! You see, Vassia?''

I worked willingly enough. It pleased me to abol-
ish dirt from the house, to wash the floors, to clean
the copper vessels, the warm-holes, and the door-han-
dles. More than once I heard the women remark
about me in their peaceful moments:

"He is zealous."

"And clean."

"Only he is very impudent."

"Well, Mother, who has educated him?'

They both tried to educate me to respect them, but
I regarded them as half witted. I did not like them;
I would not obey them, and I used to answer them
back. The young mistress must have noticed what a
bad effect their speeches had upon me, for she said
with increasing frequency:

"You ought to remember from what a poor family
you have been taken. I gave your mother a silk cloak
trimmed with jet."

One day I said to her:

"Do you want me to skin myself to pay for the
cloak?"

"Good gracious!" she cried in a tone of alarm,
"this boy is capable of setting fire to the place !"

I was extremely surprised. Why did she say that?

They both complained to the master about me on
this occasion, and he said to me sternly:

88 IN THE WORLD

"Now, my boy, you had better look out." But
one day he said coolly to his wife and his mother:
"You are a nice pair ! You ride the boy as if he were
a gelding ! Any other boy would have run away long
ago if you had not worked him to death first."

This made the women so angry that they wept,
and his wife stamped her foot, crying:

"How can you speak like that before him, you long-
haired fool? What can I do with him after this?
And in my state of health, too I"

The mother cried sadly:

"May God forgive you, Vassia Vassilich! Only,
mark my words, you are spoiling that boy."

When they had gone away raging, the master said to
me sternly:

"You see, you little devil, what rows you cause!
I shall take you back to your grandfather, and you can
be a rag-picker again."

This insult was more than I could bear, and I said:

" I had a better life as a rag-picker than I have with
you. You took me as a pupil, and what have you
taught me ? To empty the dish-water I"

He took me by the hair, but not roughly, and looked
into my eyes, saying in a tone of astonishment :

"I see you are rebellious. That, my lad, won't suit
me. N-o-o."

I thought that I should be sent away for this, but
a few days later he came into the kitchen with a roll
of thick paper, a pencil, a square, and a ruler in his
hands.

IN THE WORLD 89

"When you have finished cleaning the knives, draw
this."

On one sheet of paper was outlined the fagade of
a two-storied house, with many windows and absurd
decorations.

"Here are compasses for you. Place dots on the
paper where the ends of the lines come, and then draw
from point to point with a ruler, lengthwise first —
that will be horizontal — and then across — that will
be vertical. Now get on with it."

I was delighted to have some clean work to do, but
I gazed at the paper and the instruments with reverent
fear, for I understood nothing about them. How-
ever, after washing my hands, I sat down to learn. I
drew all the horizontal lines on the sheet and compared
them. They were quite good, although three seemed
superfluous. I drew the vertical lines, and observed
with astonishment that the face of the house was ab-
surdly disfigured. The windows had crossed over to
the partition wall, and one came out behind the wall
and hung in mid-air. The front steps were raised in
the air to the height of the second floor; a cornice ap-
peared in the middle of the roof; and a dormer-window
on the chimney.

For a long time, hardly able to restrain my tears,
I gazed at those miracles of inaccuracy, trying to make
out how they had occurred; and not being able to
arrive at any conclusion, I decided to rectify the mis-
takes by the aid of fancy. I drew upon the fagade of
the house, upon the cornices, and the edge of the roof,

90 IN THE WORLD

crows, doves, and sparrows, and on the ground in front
of the windows, people with crooked legs, under um-
brellas which did not quite hide their deformities.
Then I drew slanting lines across the whole, and took
my work to my master.

He raised his eyebrows, ruffled his hair, and gruffly
inquired :

"What is all this about?"

"That is rain coming down," I explained. "When
it rains, the house looks crooked, because the rain it-
self is always crooked. The birds — ^you see, these are
all birds — are taking shelter. They always do that
when it rains. And these people are running home.
There — that is a lady who has fallen down, and that
is a peddler with lemons to sell."

"I am much obliged to you," said my master, and
bending over the table till his hair swept the paper,
he burst out laughing as he cried:

"Och! you deserve to be torn up and thrown away
yourself, you wild sparrow!"

The mistress came in, and having looked at my
work, said to her husband:

"Beat him !"

But the master said peaceably:

"That's all right; I myself did not begin any bet-
ter."

Obliterating the spoiled house with a red pencil,
he gave me some paper.

"Try once more."

The second copy came out better, except that a win-

IN THE WORLD 91

dow appeared in place of the front door. But I did
not like to think that the house was empty, so I filled
it with all sorts of inmates. At the windows sat ladies
with fans in their hands, and cavaliers with cigarettes.
One of these, a non-smoker, was making a "long nose"
at all the others. A cabman stood on the steps, and
near him lay a dog.

"Why, you have been scribbling over it again!"
the master exclaimed angrily.

I explained to him that a house without inhabitants
was a dull place, but he only scolded me.

"To the devil with all this foolery! If you want
to learn, learn ! But this is rubbish !"

When at length I learned to make a copy of the
fagade which resembled the original he was pleased.

"There, you see what you can do! Now, if you
choose, we shall soon get on," and he gave me a les-
son.

"Make a plan of this house, showing the arrange-
ment of the rooms, the places of the doors and win-
dows, and the rest. I shall not show you how. You
must do it by yourself."

I went to the kitchen and debated. How was I to
do it? But at this point my studies in the art of draw-
ing came to a standstill.

The old mistress came to me and said spitefully:

"So you want to draw*?"

Seizing me by the hair, she bumped my head on the
table so hard that my nose and lips were bruised. Then
she darted upon and tore up the paper, swept the in-

92 IN THE WORLD

struments from the table, and with her hands on her
hips said triumphantly:

"That was more than I could stand. Is an outsider
to do the work while his only brother, his own flesh
and blood, goes elsewhere?"

The master came running in, his wife rushed after
him, and a wild scene began. All three flew at one
another, spitting and howling, and it ended in the
women weeping, and the master saying to me :

"You will have to give up the idea for a time, and
not learn. You can see for yourself what comes of
it!"

I pitied him. He was so crushed, so defenseless,
and quite deafened by the shrieks of the women. I
had realized before that the old woman did not like
my studying, for she used to hinder me purposely, so I
always asked her before I sat down to my drawing:

"There is nothing for me to do'?"

She would answer frowningly:

"When there is I will tell you," and in a few min-
utes she would send me on some errand, or she would
say: "How beautifully you cleaned the staircase to-
day ! The corners are full of dirt and dust. Go and
sweep them!"

I would go and look, but there was never any dust.

"Do you dare to argue with me?" she would cry.

One day she upset kvass all over my drawings, and
at another time she spilt oil from the image lamp over
them. She played tricks on me like a young girl,
with childish artfulness, and with childish ignorance

IN THE WORLD 93

trying to conceal her artfulness. Never before or
since have I met a person who was so soon put into a
temper and for such trivial reasons, nor any one so
passionately fond of complaining about every one and
everything. People, as a rule, are given to complain-
ing, but she did it with a peculiar delight, as if she were
singing a song.

Her love for her son was like an insanity. It
amused me, but at the same time it frightened me
by what I can only describe as its furious intensity.
Sometimes, after her morning prayers, she would stand
by the stove, with her elbows resting on the mantel-
board, and would whisper hotly:

"My luck ! My idol ! My little drop of hot blood,
like a jewel! Light as an angel! He sleeps. Sleep
on, child! Clothe thy soul with happy dreams!
Dream to thyself a bride, beautiful above all others,
a princess and an heiress, the daughter of a merchant !
As for your enemies, may they perish as soon as they
are born ! And your friends, may they live for a hun-
dred years, and may the girls run after you like ducks
after the drake !"

All this was inexpressibly ludicrous to me. Coarse,
lazy Victor was like a woodpecker, with a wood-
pecker's large, mottled nose, and the same stubborn
and dull nature. Sometimes his mother's whispers
awoke him, and he muttered sleepily:

"Go to the devil, Mamasha! What do you mean
by snorting right in my face*? You make life unbear-
able.''

94 IN THE WORLD

Sometimes she stole away humbly, laughing:

"Well, go to sleep! Go to sleep, saucy fellow!"

But sometimes her legs seemed to give way, her feet
came down heavily on the edge of the stove, and she
opened her mouth and panted loudly, as if her tongue
were on fire, gurgling out caustic words.

"So-o*? It 's your mother you are sending to the
devil. Ach! you! My shame! Accursed heart-
sore! The devil must have set himself in my heart
to ruin you from birth !"

She uttered obscene words, words of the drunken
streets. It was painful to listen to her. She slept
little, fitfully jumping down from the stove some-
times several times in the night, and coming over to
the couch to wake me.

"What is it*?"

"Be quiet!" she would whisper, crossing herself and
looking at something in the darkness. "O Lord, Elias
the prophet, great martyr Varvara, save me from sud-
den death!"

She lighted the candle with a trembling hand.
Her round, nosy face was swollen tensely; her gray
eyes, blinking alarmingly, gazed fixedly at the sur-
roundings, which looked different in the twilight.
The kitchen, which was large, but encumbered with
cupboards and trunks, looked small by night. There
the moonbeams lived quietly; the flame of the lamp
burning before the icon quivered; the knives gleamed
like icicles on the walls ; on the floor the black frying-
pans looked like faces without eyes.

IN THE WORLD 95

The old woman would clamber down cautiously
from the stove, as if she were stepping into the water
from a river-bank, and, slithering along with her bare
feet, went into the corner, where over the wash-stand
hung a ewer that reminded me of a severed head.
There was also a pitcher of water standing there.
Choking and panting, she drank the water, and then
looked out of the window through the pale-blue pat-
tern of hoar-frost on the panes.

"Have mercy on me, O God! have mercy on me!"
she prayed in a whisper. Then putting out the candle,
she fell on her knees, and whispered in an aggrieved
tone : "Who loves me, Lord^ To whom am I neces-
sary?'

Climbing back on the stove, and opening the little
door of the chimney, she tried to feel if the flue-plate
lay straight, soiling her hands with soot, and fell
asleep at that precise moment, just as if she had been
struck by an invisible hand. When I felt resentful
toward her I used to think what a pity it was that she
had not married grandfather. She would have led
him a life!

She often made me very miserable, but there were
days when her puffy face became sad, her eyes
were suffused with tears, and she said very touch-
ingly :

"Do you think that I have an easy time^ I brought
children into the world, reared them, set them on their
feet, and for what"? To live with them and be their
general servant. Do you think that is sweet to me"?

96 IN THE WORLD

My son has brought a strange woman and new blood
into the family. Is it nice for me? Well?"

"No, it is not," I said frankly.

"Aha! there you are, you seel" And she began
to talk shamelessly about her daughter-in-law. "Once
I went with her to the bath and saw her. Do you
think she has anything to flatter herself about? Can
she be called beautiful?"

She always spoke objectionably about the relations
of husband and wife. At first her speeches aroused my
disgust, but I soon accustomed myself to listen to them
with attention and with great interest, feeling that
there was something painfully true about them.

"Woman is strength; she deceived God Himself.
That is so," she hissed, striking her hand on the table.
"Through Eve are we all condemned to hell. What
do you think of that?"

On the subject of woman's power she could talk
endlessly, and it always seemed as if she were try-
ing to frighten some one in these conversations.
I particularly remembered that "Eve deceived
God."

Overlooking our yard was the wing of a large build-
ing, and of the eight flats comprised in it, four were
occupied by officers, and the fifth by the regimental
chaplain. The yard was always full of officers' serv-
ants and orderlies, after whom ran laundresses, house-
maids, and cooks. Dramas and romances were being
carried on in all the kitchens, accompanied by tears,
quarrels, and fights. The soldiers quarreled among

IN THE WORLD 97

themselves and with the landlord's workmen; they
used to beat the women.

The yard was a seething pot of what is called vice,
immorality, the wild, untamable appetites of healthy
lads. This life, which brought out all the cruel sens-
uality, the thoughtless tyranny, the obscene boastful-
ness of the conqueror, was criticized in every detail by
my employers at dinner, tea, and supper. The old
woman knew all the stories of the yard, and told them
with gusto, rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. The
younger woman listened to these tales in silence, smil-
ing with her swollen lips. Victor used to burst out
laughing, but the master would frown and say:

*That will do, Mamasha!"

"Good Lord! I mustn't speak now, I suppose!"
the story-teller complained; but Victor encouraged her.

"Go on, Mother! What is there to hinder you*?
We are all your own people, after all."

I could never understand why one should talk
shamelessly before one's own people.

The elder son bore himself toward his mother with
contemptuous pity, and avoided being alone with her,
for if that happened, she would surely overwhelm him
with complaints against his wife, and would never fail
to ask him for money. He would hastily press into
her hand a ruble or so or several pieces of small silver.

"It is not right, Mother; take the money. I do not
grudge it to you, but it is unjust."

"But I want it for beggars, for candles when I go to
church."

98 IN THE WORLD

"Now, where will you iind beggars there ^ You
will end by spoiling Victor."

"You don't love your brother. It is a great sin
on your part."

He would go out, waving her away.

Victor's manner to his mother was coarse and de-
risive. He was very greedy, and he was always hun-
gry. On Sundays his mother used to bake custards,
and she always hid a few of them in a vessel under
the couch on which I slept. When Victor left the din-
ner-table he would get them out and grumble:

"Could n't you have saved a few more, you old'
fool'?"

"Make haste and eat them before any one sees you."

"I will tell how you steal cakes for me behind their
backs."

Once I took out the vessel and ate two custards, for
which Victor nearly killed me. He disliked me as
heartily as I disliked him. He used to jeer at me and
make me clean his boots about three times a day, and
when I slept in the loft, he used to push up the trap-
door and spit in the crevice, trying to aim at my head.

It may be that in imitation of his brother, who often
said "wild fowl," Victor also needed to use some catch-
words, but his were all senseless and particularly ab-
surd.

"Mamasha! Left wheel! where are my socks'?"

And he used to follow me about with stupid ques-
tions.

"Alesha, answer me. Whv do we write 'sinenki'

IN THE WORLD 99

and pronounce it 'phiniki'^ Why do we say *Kolo-
kola' and not 'Okolokola"? Why do we say
'K'derevou' and not 'gdye plachou'?"

I did not like the way any of them spoke, and hav-
ing been educated in the beautiful tongue which grand-
mother and grandfather spoke, I could not understand
at first how words that had no sort of connection came
to be coupled together, such as "terribly funny," "I am
dying to eat," "awfully happy." It seemed to me that
what was funny could not be terrible, that to be happy
could not be awful, and that people did not die for
something to eat.

"Can one say that*?" I used to ask them; but they
jeered at me:

"I say, what a teacher I Do you want your ears
plucked?"

But to talk of "plucking" ears also appeared incor-
rect to me. One could "pluck" grass and flowers and
nuts, but not ears. They tried to prove to me that
ears could be plucked, but they did not convince me,
and I said triumphantly:

"Anyhow, you have not plucked my ears."

All around me I saw much cruel insolence, filthy
shamelessness. It was far worse here than in the
Kunavin streets, which were full of "houses of resort"
and "street-walkers." Beneath the filth and brutality
in Kunavin there was a something which made itself
felt, and which seemed to explain it all — a strenuous,
half-starved existence and hard work. But here they
were overfed and led easy lives, and the work went on

loo IN THE WORLD

its way without fuss or worry. A corrosive, fretting
weariness brooded over all.

My life was hard enough, anyhow, but I felt it still
harder when grandmother came to see me. She would
appear from the black flight of steps, enter the kitchen,
cross herself before the icon, and then bow low to her
younger sister. That bow bent me down like a heavy
weight, and seemed to smother me.

"Ah, Akulina, is it you^" was my mistress's cold and
negligent greeting to grandmother.

I should not have recognized grandmother. Her
lips modestly compressed, her face changed out of
knowledge, she set herself quietly on a bench near
the door, keeping silence like a guilty creature, except
when she answered her sister softly and submissively.
This was torture to me, and I used to say angrily :

"What are you sitting there for^'*

Winking at me kindly, she replied:

"You be quiet. You are not master here."

"He is always meddling in matters which do not
concern him, however we beat him or scold him," and
the mistress was launched on her complaints.

She often asked her sister spitefully:

"Well, Akulina, so you are living like a beggar^"

"That is a misfortune."

"It is no misfortune where there is no shame."

"They say that Christ also lived on charity."

"Blockheads say so, and heretics, and you, old fool,
listen to them ! Christ was no beggar, but the Son of
God. He will come, it is said, in glory, to judge the

IN THE WORLD loi

quick and dead — and dead, mind you. You will not
be able to hide yourself from Him, Matushka, al-
though you may be burned to ashes. He is punishing
you and Vassili now for your pride, and on my account,
because I asked help from you when you were rich."

"And I helped you as much as it was in my power
to do,*' answered grandmother, calmly, "and God will
pay us back, you know." <

"It was little enough you did, little enough."

Grandmother was bored and worried by her sister's
untiring tongue. I listened to her squeaky voice and
wondered how grandmother could put up with it. In
that moment I did not love her.

The young mistress came out of her room and
nodded affably to grandmother.

"Come into the dining-room. It is all right; come
along I"

The master would receive grandmother joyfully.

"Ah, Akulina, wisest of all, how are you? Is old
man Kashirin still alive?"

And grandmother would give him her most cordial
smile.

"Are you still working your hardest?"

"Yes; always working, like a convict."

Grandmother conversed with him affectionately and
well, but in the tone of a senior. Sometimes he called
my mother to mind.

"Ye-es, Varvara Vassilievna. What a woman ! A
heroine, eh?"

His wife turned to grandmother and put in:

102 IN THE WORLD

"Do you remember my giving her that cloak — black
silk trimmed with jet^"

"Of course I do."

"It was quite a good one."

"Ye-es," muttered the master, "a cloak, a palm ; and
life is a trickster." ^

"What are you talking about*?" asked his wife, sus-
• piciously.

"I? Oh, nothing in particular. Happy days and
good people soon pass away."

"I don't know what is the matter with you," said
my mistress, uneasily.

Then grandmother was taken to see the new baby,
and while I was clearing away the dirty cups and
saucers from the table the master said to me :

"She is a good old woman, that grandmother of
yours."

I was deeply grateful to him for those words, and
when I was alone with grandmother, I said to her,
with a pain in my heart:

"Why do you come here^ Why? Can't you see
how they — "

"Ach, Olesha, I see everything," she replied, look-
ing at me with a kind smile on her wonderful face, and
I felt conscience-stricken. Why, of course she saw
everything and knew everything, even what was go-
ing on in my soul at that moment. Looking round
carefully to see that no one was coming, she embraced
me, saying feelingly:

1 A play on the words " tal'ma, cloak ; pal'ma, palm ; shelma, trickster.

IN THE WORLD 103

"I would not come here if it were not for you. What
are they to me'? As a matter of fact, grandfather is
ill, and I am tired with looking after him. I have not
been able to do any work, so I have no money, and my
son Mikhail has turned Sascha out. I have him now to
give food and drink, too. They promised to give you
six rubles a month, and I don't suppose you have had
a ruble from them, and you have been here nearly
half a year." Then she whispered in my ear : "They
say they have to lecture you, scold you, they say that
you do not obey ; but, dear heart, stay with them. Be
patient for two short years while you grow strong.
You will be patient, yes?"

I promised. It was very difficult. That life op-
pressed me; it was a threadbare, depressing existence.
The only excitement was about food, and I lived as
in a dream. Sometimes I thought that I would have
to run away, but the accursed winter had set in.
Snow-storms raged by night, the wind rushed over the
top of the house, and the stanchions cracked with the
pressure of the frost. Whither could I run away?

They would not let me go out, and in truth it was
no weather for walking. The short winter day, full of
the bustle of housework, passed with elusive swift-
ness. But they made me go to church, on Saturday to
vespers and on Sunday to high mass.

I liked being in church. Standing somewhere in a
corner where there was more room and where it was
darker, I loved to gaze from a distance at the icon-

104 IN THE WORLD

astasis, which looked as if it were swimming in the
candlelight flowing in rich, broad streams over the
floor of the reading-desk. The dark figures of the
icons moved gently, the gold embroidery on the vest-
ments of the priests quivered joyfully, the candle
flames burned in the dark-blue atmosphere like golden
bees, and the heads of the women and children looked
like flowers. All the surroundings seemed to blend
harmoniously with the singing the choir. Everything
seemed to be imbued with the weird spirit of legends.
The church seemed to oscillate like a cradle, rocking
in pitch-black space.

Sometimes I imagined that the church was sunk deep
in a lake in which it lived, concealed, a life peculiar to
itself, quite different from any other form of life. I
have no doubt now that this idea had its source in
grandmother's stories of the town of Kitej, and I often
found myself dreamily swaying, keeping time, as it
were, with the movement around me. Lulled into
somnolence by the singing of the choir, the murmur of
prayers, the breath of the congregation, I concentrated
myself upon the melodious, melancholy story:

"They are closing upon us, the accursed Tatars.
Yes, these unclean beasts are closing in upon Kitej
The glorious ; yea, at the holy hour of matins.

O Lord, our God!

Holy Mother of God!

Save Thy servants
To sing their morning praises,
To listen to the holy chants !

Oi, let not the Tatars

IN THE WORLD 105

Jeer at holy church;

Let them not put to shame

Our women and maidens;

Seize the little maids to be their toys,

And the old men to be put to a cruel death!
And the God of Sabaoth heard,

The Holy Mother heard,

These human sighs,

These Christians' plaints.
And He said, the Lord of Sabaoth,
To the Holy Angel Michael,

*Go thou, Michael,
Make the earth shake under Kitej ;
Let Kitej sink into the lake!'
And there to this day

The people do pray.

Never resting, and never weary

From matins to vespers.

Through all the holy offices.

Forever and evermore!"

At that time my head was full of grandmother's
poetry, as full as a beehive of honey. I used even to
think in verse.

I did not pray in church. I felt ashamed to utter
the angry prayers and psalms of lamentation of grand-
father's God in the presence of grandmother's God,
Who, I felt sure, could take no more pleasure in them
than I did myself, for the simple reason that they were
all printed in books, and of course He knew them all
by heart, as did all people of education. And this is
why, when my heart was oppressed by a gentle grief
or irritated by the petty grievances of every day, I tried

io6 IN THE WORLD

to make up prayers for myself. And when I began to
think about my uncongenial work, the words seemed
to form themselves into a complaint without any ef-
fort on my part :

"Lord, Lord ! I am very miserable !
Oh, let me grow up quickly.
For this life I can't endure.
O Lord, forgive!
From my studies I get no benefit.
For that devil's puppet. Granny Matrena,
Howls at me like a wolf,
And my life is very bitter !"

To this day I can remember some of these prayers.
The workings of the brain in childhood leave a very
deep impression; often they influence one's whole life.

I liked being in church; I could rest there as I rested
in the forests and fields. My small heart, which was
already familiar with grief and soiled by the mire of
a coarse life, laved itself in hazy, ardent dreams. But
I went to church only during the hard frosts, or when
a snow-storm swept wildly up the streets, when it
seemed as if the very sky were frozen, and the wind
swept across it with a cloud of snow, and the earth lay
frozen under the snow-drifts as if it would never live
again.

When the nights were milder I used to like to wan-
der through the streets of the town, creeping along by
all the darkest corners. Sometimes I seemed to walk
as if I had wings, flying along like the moon in the sky.
My shadow crept in front of me, extinguishing the

IN THE WORLD 107

sparkles of light in the snow, bobbing up and down
comically. The night watchman patrolled the streets,
rattle in hand, clothed in a heavy sheepskin, his dog at
his side. Vague outlines of people came out of yards
and flitted along the streets, and the dog gave chase.
Sometimes I met gay young ladies with their escorts.
I had an idea that they also were playing truant from
vespers.

Sometimes through a lighted fortochka ^ there came
a peculiar smell, faint, unfamiliar, suggestive of a kind
of life of which I was ignorant. I used to stand un-
der the windows and inhale it, trying to guess what
it was to live like the people in such a house lived. It
was the hour of vespers, and yet they were singing
merrily, laughing, and playing on a sort of guitar.
The deep, stringy sound flowed through the fortochka.

Of special interest to me were the one-storied,
dwarfed houses at the corners of the deserted streets,
Tikhonovski and Martinovski. I stood there on a
moonlight night in mid-Lent and listened to the weird
sounds — it sounded as if some one were singing loudly
with his mouth closed — which floated out through the
fortochka together with a warm steam. The words
were indistinguishable, but the song seemed to be fa-
miliar and intelligible to me; but when I listened to
that, I could not hear the stringy sound which lan-
guidly interrupted the flow of song. I sat on the
curbstone thinking what a wonderful melody was be-

1 A small square of g:lass in the double window which is set on hinges
and serves as a ventilator.

io8 IN THE WORLD

ing played on some sort of insupportable violin — in-
supportable because it hurt me to listen to it. Some-
times they sang so loudly that the whole house seemed
to shake, and the panes of the windows rattled.
Like tears, drops fell from the roof, and from my eyes
also.

The night watchman had come close to me with-
out my being aware of it, and, pushing me off the
curbstone, said:

"What are you stuck here for*?"

"The music," I explained.

"A likely tale I Be off now!"

I ran quickly round the houses and returned to my
place under the window, but they were not playing
now. From the fortochka proceeded sounds of rev-
elry, and it was so unlike the sad music that I thought
I must be dreaming. I got into the habit of running
to this house every Saturday, but only once, and that
was in the spring, did I hear the violoncello again,
and then it played without a break till midnight.
When I reached home I got a thrashing.

These walks at night beneath the winter sky througn
the deserted streets of the town enriched me greatly.
I purposely chose streets far removed from the center,
where there were many lamps, and friends of my mas-
ter who might have recognized me. Then he would
find out how I played truant from vespers. No
"drunkards," "street-walkers," or policemen inter-
fered with me in the more remote streets, and I could

IN THE WORLD io$

see into the rooms of the lower floors if the windows
were not frozen over or curtained.

Many and diverse were the pictures which I saw
through those windows. I saw people praying, kiss-
ing, quarreling, playing cards, talking busily and
soundlessly the while. It was a cheap panoramic
show representing a dumb, fish-like life.

I saw in one basement room two women, a young
one and another who was her senior, seated at a table ;
opposite them sat a school-boy reading to them. The
younger woman listened with puckered brows, leaning
back in her chair; but the elder, who was thin, with
luxuriant hair, suddenly covered her face with her
hands, and her shoulders heaved. The school-boy
threw down the book, and when the younger woman
had sprung to her feet and gone away, he fell on his
knees before the woman with the lovely hair and be-
gan to kiss her hands.

Through another window I saw a large, bearded
man with a woman in a red blouse sitting on his knee.
He was rocking her as if she had been a baby, and
was evidently singing something, opening his mouth
wide and rolling his eyes. The woman was shaking
with laughter, throwing herself backward and swing-
ing her feet. He made her sit up straight again, and
again began to sing, and again she burst out laughing.
I gazed at them for a long time, and went away only
when I realized that they meant to keep up their mer-
riment all night.

no IN THE WORLD

There were many pictures of this kind which will
always remain in my memory, and often I was so at-
tracted by them that I was late in returning home.
This aroused the suspicions of my employers, who
asked me :

"What church did you go to*? Who was the offi-
ciating priest'?"

They knew all the priests of the town; they knew
what gospel would be read, in fact, they knew every-
thing. It was easy for them to catch me in a lie.

Both women worshiped the wrathful God of my
grandfather — the God Who demanded that we should
approach Him in fear. His name was ever on their
lips; even in their quarrels they threatened one an-
other:

"Wait I God will punish you! He will plague
you for this ! Just wait !"

On the Sunday in the first week of Lent the old
woman cooked some butters and burned them all.
Flushed with the heat of the stove, she cried angrily:

"The devil take you!" And suddenly, sniffing at
the frying-pan, her face grew dark, and she threw the
utensil on the floor and moaned : "Bless me, the pan
has been used for flesh food! It is unclean! It did
not catch when I used it clean on Monday."

Falling on her knees, she entreated with tears :

"Lord God, Father, forgive me, accursed that I
am ! For the sake of Thy sufferings and passion for-
give me ! Do not punish an old fool, Lord !"

The burned fritters were given to the dog, the pan

IN THE WORLD in

was destroyed, but the young wife began to reproach
her mother-in-law in their quarrels.

"You actually cooked fritters in Lent in a pan
which had been used for flesh-meat."

They dragged their God into all the household af-
fairs, into every corner of their petty, insipid lives, and
thus their wretched life acquired outward significance
and importance, as if every hour was devoted to the
service of a Higher Power. The dragging of God
into all this dull emptiness oppressed me, and I used
to look involuntarily into the corners, aware of being
observed by invisible beings, and at night I was
wrapped in a cloud of fear. It came from the corner
where the ever-burning lamp flickered before the
icon.

On a level with this shelf was a large window with
two sashes joined by a stanchion. Fathomless, deep-
blue space looked into the window, and if one made
a quick movement, everything became merged in this
deep-blue gulf, and floated out to the stars, into the
deathly stillness, without a sound, just as a stone sinks
when it is thrown into the water.

I do not remember how I cured myself of this terror,
but I did cure myself, and that soon. Grandmother's
good God helped me, and I think it was then that I
realized the simple truth, namely, that no harm could
come to me; that I should not be punished without
fault of my own; that it was not the law of life that
the innocent should suffer; and that I was not responsi-
ble for the faults of others.

112 IN THE WORLD

I played truant from mass too, especially in the
spring, the irresistible force of which would not let
me go to church. If I had a seven-copeck piece given
me for the collection, it was my destruction. I bought
hucklebones, played all the time mass was going on,
and was inevitably late home. And one day I was
clever enough to lose all the coins which had been
given me for prayers for the dead and the blessed bread,
so that I had to take some one else's portion when the
priest came from the altar and handed it round.

I was terribly fond of gambling, and it became a
craze with me. I was skilful enough, and strong, and
I swiftly gained renown in games of hucklebones, bil-
liards, and skittles in the neighboring streets.

During Lent I was ordered to prepare for com-
munion, and I went to confession to our neighbor
Father Dorimedont Pokrovski. I regarded him as a
hard man, and had committed many sins against him
personally. I had thrown stones at the summer-house
in his garden, and had quarreled with his children. In
fact he might call to mind, if he chose, many similar
acts annoying to him. This made me feel very uneasy,
and when I stood in the poor little church awaiting my
turn to go to confession my heart throbbed trem-
ulously.

But Father Dorimedont greeted me with a good-na-
tured, grumbling exclamation.

"Ah, it is my neighbor! Well, kneel down!
What sins have you committed'?"

He covered my head with a heavy velvet cloth. I

IN THE WORLD 113

inhaled the odor of wax and incense. It was difficult
to speak, and I felt reluctant to do so.

"Have you been obedient to your elders'?"

"No."

"Say, 1 have sinned.' "

To my own surprise I let fall :

"I have stolen."

"How was that*? Where?" asked the priest,
thoughtfully and without haste.

"At the church of the three bishops, at Pokrov, and
at Nikoli."

"Well, that is in all the churches. That was
wrong, my child; it was a sin. Do you understand*?"

"I understand."

"Say, T have sinned.' What did you steal for'?
Was it for something to eat*?"

"Sometimes and sometimes it was because I had
lost money at play, and, as I had to take home some
blessed bread, I stole it."

Father Dorimedont whispered something indis-
tinctly and wearily, and then, after a few more ques-
tions, suddenly inquired sternly:

"Have you been reading forbidden books'?"

Naturally I did not understand this question, and I
asked : '

"What books do you mean?"

"Forbidden books. Have you been reading any?"

"No; not one."

"Your sins are remitted. Stand up!"

I glanced at his face in amazement. He looked

114 IN THE WORLD

thoughtful and kind. I felt uneasy, conscience-
stricken. In sending me to confession, my employers
had spoken about its terrors, impressing on me to con-
fess honestly even my slightest sins.

"I have thrown stones at your summer-house," I de-
posed.

The priest raised his head and, looking past me,
said:

"That was very wrong. Now go I"

"And at your dog."

"Next!" called out Father Dorimedont, still look-
ing past me.

I came away feeling deceived and offended. To
be put to all that anxiety about the terrors of confes-
sion, and to find, after all, that it was not only far
from terrible, but also uninteresting! The only in-
teresting thing about it was the question about the
forbidden books, of which I knew nothing. I remem-
bered the school -boy reading to the women in that
basement room, and "Good Business," who also had
many black, thick books, with unintelligible illustra-
tions.

The next day they gave me fifteen copecks and sent
me to communion. Easter was late. The snow had
been melted a long time, the streets were dry, the
roadways sent up a cloud of dust, and the day was
sunny and cheerful. Near the church was a group of
workmen gambling with hucklebones. I decided that
there was plenty of time to go to communion, and
asked if I might join in.

IN THE WORLD 115

"Let me play."

"The entrance-fee is one copeck," said a pock-
marked, ruddy-faced man, proudly.
Not less proudly I replied:
"I put three on the second pair to the left."
"The stakes are on!" And the game began.
I changed the fifteen-copeck piece and placed my
three copecks on the pair of hucklebones. Whoever
hit that pair would receive that money, but if he failed
to hit them, he had to give me three copecks. I was in
luck. Two of them took aim and lost. I had won
six copecks from grown-up men. My spirits rose
greatly. But one of the players remarked :

"You had better look out for that youngster or he
will be running away with his winnings."

This I regarded as an insult, and I said hotly:
"Nine copecks on the pair at the extreme left."
However, this did not make much impression on
the players. Only one lad of my own age cried:

"See how lucky he is, that little devil from the
Zvezdrinki; I know him."

A thin workman who smelt like a furrier said ma-
liciously:

"He is a little devil, is he^ Goo-00-ood!"
Taking a sudden aim, he coolly knocked over my
stake, and, bending down to me, said :
"Will that make you howl?'
"Three copecks on the pair to the right!"
"I shall have another three," he said, but he lost.
One could not put money on the same "horse" more

ii6 IN THE WORLD

than three times running, so I chose other hucklebones
and won four more copecks. I had a heap of huckle-
bones. But when my turn came again, I placed money-
three times, and lost it all. Simultaneously mass was
finished, the bell rang, and the people came out of
church.

"Are you married^" inquired the furrier, intending
to seize me by the hair; but I eluded him, and over-
taking a lad in his Sunday clothes I inquired politely:

*'Have you been to communion *?"

"Well, and suppose I have; what then^" he an-
swered, looking at me contemptuously.

I asked him to tell me how people took communion,
what words the priest said, and what I ought to have
done.

The young fellow shook me roughly and roared
out in a terrifying voice :

"You have played the truant from communion, you
heretic! Well, I am not going to tell you anything.
Let your father skin you for it I"

I ran home expecting to be questioned, and certain
that they would discover that I had not been to com-
munion; but after congratulating me, the old woman
asked only one question :

"How much did you give to the clerk*? Much^"

"Five copecks," I answered, without turning a hair.

"And three copecks for himself; that would leave
you seven copecks, animal !"

It was springtime. Each succeeding spring was
clothed differently, and seemed brighter and pleas-

IN THE WORLD 117

anter than the preceding one. The young grass and
the fresh green birch gave forth an intoxicating odor.
I had an uncontrollable desire to loiter in the fields
and listen to the lark, lying face downward on the
warm earth; but I had to clean the winter coats and
help to put them away in the trunks, to cut up leaf
tobacco, and dust the furniture, and to occupy myself
from morning till night with duties which were to me
both unpleasant and needless.

In my free hours I had absolutely nothing to live
for. In our wretched street there was nothing, and
beyond that I was not allowed to go. The yard was
full of cross, tired workmen, untidy cooks, and washer-
women, and every evening I saw disgusting sights so
offensive to me that I wished that I was blind.

I went up into the attic, taking some scissors and
some colored paper with me, and cut out some lace-
like designs with which I ornamented the rafters. It
was, at any rate, something on which my sorrow could
feed. I longed with all my heart to go to some place
where people slept less, quarreled less, and did not so
wearisomely beset God with complaints, and did not
so frequently offend people with their harsh judg-
ments.

On the Saturday after Easter they brought the mi-
raculous icon of Our Lady of Vlandimirski from the
Oranski Monastery to the town. The image became
the guest of the town for half of the month of June,
and blessed all the dwellings of those who attended
the church. It was brought to my employers' house

ii8 IN THE WORLD

on a week-day. I was cleaning the copper things in
the kitchen when the young mistress cried out in a
scared voice from her room:

"Open the front door. They are bringing the
Oranski icon here."

I rushed down, very dirty, and with greasy hands as
rough as a brick opened the door. A young man with
a lamp in one hand and a thurible in the other grum-
bled gently:

"Are you all asleep? Give a hand here!"

Two of the inhabitants carried the heavy icon-case
up the narrow staircase. I helped them by supporting
the edge, of it with my dirty hands and my shoulder.
The monk came heavily behind me, chanting unwill-
ingly with his thick voice :

"Holy Mother of God, pray for us !"

I thought, with sorrowful conviction:

"She is angry with me because I have touched her
with dirty hands, and she will cause my hands to
wither."

They placed the icon in the corner of the anti-
chamber on two chairs, which were covered with a
clean sheet, and on each side of it stood two monks,
young and beautiful like angels. They had bright
eyes, joyful expressions, and lovely hair.

Prayers were said.

"O, Mother Renowned," the big priest chanted, and
all the while he was feeling the swollen lobe of his
ear, which was hidden in his luxuriant hair.

IN THE WORLD 119

"Holy Mother of God, pray for u-u-us!" sang the
monks, wearily.

I loved the Holy Virgin. According to grand-
mother's stories it was she who sowed on the earth,
for the consolation of the poor, all the flowers, all the
joys, every blessing and beauty. And when the time
came to salute her, without observing how the adults
conducted themselves toward her, I kissed the icon pal-
pitatingly on the face, the lips. Some one with pow-
erful hands hurled me to the door. I do not remem-
ber seeing the monks go away, carrying the icon, but I
remember very well how my employers sat on the floor
around me and debated with much fear and anxiety
what would become of me.

"We shall have to speak to the priest about him and
have him taught," said the master, who scolded me
without rancor.

"Ignoramus! How is it that you did not know
that you should not kiss the lips'? You must have
been taught that at school."

For several days I waited, resigned, wondering what
actually would happen to me. I had touched the icon
with dirty hands; I had saluted it in a forbidden man-
ner ; I should not be allowed to go unpunished.

But apparently the Mother of God forgave the in-
voluntary sin which had been prompted by sheer love,
or else her punishment was so light that I did not no-
tice it among the frequent punishments meted out to
me by these good people.

120 IN THE WORLD

Sometimes, to annoy the old mistress, I said com-
punctiously :

"But the Holy Virgin has evidently forgotten to
punish me."

"You wait," answered the old woman, maliciously.
"We shall see."

While I decorated the rafters of the attic with pink
tea-wrappers, silver paper, leaves from trees, and all
kinds of things, I used to sing anything that came
into my head, setting the words to church melodies,
as the Kalmucks do on the roads.

"I am sitting in the attic
With scissors in my hand,
Cutting paper — paper.
A dunce am I, and dull.
If I were a dog,
I could run where'er I wished;
But now they all cry out to me :
*Sit down ! Be silent, rogue,
While your skin is whole I' "

The old woman came to look at my work, and burst
out laughing.

"You should decorate the kitchen like that."

One day the master came up to the attic, looked
at my performance, and said, with a sigh :

"You are an amusing fellow, Pyeshkov; the devil
you are! I wonder what you will become, a conjurer
or what*? One can't guess." And he gave me a large
Nikolaivski five-copeck piece.

By means of a thin wire I fastened the coin in the

IN THE WORLD ill

most prominent position among my works of art. In
the course of a few days it disappeared. I believe
that the old woman took it.

CHAPTER V

HOWEVER, I did run away in the spring. One
morning when I went to the shop for bread the
shopkeeper, continuing in my presence a quarrel with
his wife, struck her on the forehead with a weight.
She ran into the street, and there fell down. People
began to gather round at once. The woman was laid
on a stretcher and carried to the hospital, and I ran
behind the cab which took her there without noticing
where I was going till I found myself on the banks of
the Volga, with two gr evens in my hand.

The spring sun shone caressingly, the broad ex-
panse of the Volga flowed before me, the earth was
full of sound and spacious, and I had been living like
a mouse in a trap. So I made up my mind that I
would not return to my master, nor would I go to
grandmother at Kunavin; for as I had not kept my
word to her, I was ashamed to go and see her, and
grandfather would only gloat over my misfortunes.

For two or three days I wandered by the river-side,
being fed by kind-hearted porters, and sleeping with
them in their shelters. At length one of them said
to me:

"It is no use for you to hang about here, my boy.
I can see that. Go over to the boat which is called
The Good. They want a washer-up."

I went. The tall, bearded steward in a black silk

122

IN THE WORLD 123

skullcap looked at me through his glasses with his dim
eyes, and said quietly :

"Two rubles a month. Your passport*?"

I had no passport. The steward pondered and then
said:

"Bring your mother to see me."

I rushed to grandmother. She approved the course
I had taken, told grandfather to go to the workman's
court and get me a passport, and she herself accom-
panied me to the boat.

"Good I" said the steward, looking at us. "Come
along."

He then took me to the stern of the boat, where sat
at a small table, drinking tea and smoking a fat cigar
at the same time, an enormous cook in white overalls
and a white cap. The steward pushed me toward
him.

"The washer-up."

Then he went away, and the cook, snorting, and
with his black mustache bristling, called after him :

"'You engage any sort of devil as long as he is
cheap."

Angrily tossing his head of closely cropped hair, he
opened his dark eyes very wide, stretched himself,
puffed, and cried shrilly:

"And who may you be^"

I did not like the appearance of this man at all.
Although he was all in white, he looked dirty. There
was a sort of wool growing on his fingers, and hairs
stuck out of his great ears.

124 IN THE WORLD

"I am hungry," was my reply to him.

He blinked, and suddenly his ferocious countenance

' was transformed by a broad smile. His fat, brick-red

cheeks widened to his very ears ; he displayed his large,

equine teeth; his mustache drooped, and all at once he

had assumed the appearance of a kind, fat woman.

Throwing the tea overboard out of his glass, he
poured out a fresh lot for me, and pushed a French
roll and a large piece of sausage toward me.

"Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you
steal? You needn't be afraid; they are all thieves
here. You will soon learn."

He talked as if he were barking. His enormous,
blue, clean-shaven face was covered all round the nose
with red veins closely set together, his swollen, purple
nose hung over his mustache. His lower lip was dis-
iiguringly pendulous. In the corner of his mouth was
stuck a smoking cigarette. Apparently he had only
just come from the bath. He smelt of birch twigs,
and a profuse sweat glistened on his temples and
neck.

After I had drunk my tea, he gave me a ruble-note.

"Run along and buy yourself two aprons with this.
Wait! I will buy them for you myself."

He set his cap straight and came with me, swaying
ponderously, his feet pattering on the deck like those
of a bear.

At night the moon shone brightly as it glided away
from the boat to the meadows on the left. The old
red boat, with its streaked funnel, did not hurry, and

IN THE WORLD 125

her propeller splashed unevenly in the silvery water.
The dark shore gently floated to meet her, casting
its shadow. on the water, and beyond, the windows of
the peasant huts gleamed charmingly. They were
singing in the village. The girls were merry-making
and singing — and when they sang "Aie Ludi," it
sounded like "Alleluia."

In the wake of the steamer a large barge, also red,
was being towed by a long rope. The deck was railed
in like an iron cage, and in this cage were convicts
condemned to deportation or prison. On the prow of
the barge the bayonet of a sentry shone like a candle.
It was quiet on the barge itself. The moon bathed it
in a rich light while behind the black iron grating
could be seen dimly gray patches. These were the
convicts looking out on the Volga. The water sobbed,
now weeping, now laughing timidly. It was as quiet
here as in church, and there was the same smell of oil.

As I looked at the barge I remembered my early
childhood; the journey from Astrakhan to Nijni, the
iron faces of mother and grandmother, the person who
had introduced me to this interesting, though hard, life,
in the world. And when I thought of grandmother,
all that I found so bad and repulsive in life seemed
to leave me; everything was transformed and became
more interesting, pleasanter; people seemed to be bet-
ter and nicer altogether.

The beauty of the nights moved me almost to tears,
and especially the barge, which looked so like a coffin,
and so solitary on the broad expanse of the flowing

126 IN THE WORLD

river in the pensive quietness of the warm night. The
uneven lines of the shore, now rising, now falling,
stirred the imagination pleasantly. I longed to be
good, and to be of use to others.

The people on our steamboat had a peculiar stamp.
They seemed to me to be all alike, young and old, men
and women. The boat traveled slowly. The busy
folk traveled by fast boat, and all the lazy rascals
came on our boat. They sang and ate, and soiled any
amount of cups and plates, knives and forks and spoons
from morning to night. My work was to wash up
and clean the knives and forks, and I was busy with
this work from six in the morning till close on mid-
night. During the day, from two till six o'clock,
and in the evening, from ten till midnight, I had less
work to do; for at those times the passengers took a
rest from eating, and only drank, tea, beer, and vodka.
All the buffet attendants, my chiefs, were free at that
time, too. The cook, Smouri, drank tea at a table
near the hatchway with his assistant, Jaakov Ivanich;
the kitchen-man, Maxim; and Sergei, the saloon stew-
ard, a humpback with high cheek-bones, a face pitted
with smallpox, and oily eyes. Jaakov told all sorts
of nasty stories, bursting out into sobbing laughs and
showing his long, discolored teeth. Sergei stretched
his frog-like mouth to his ears. Frowning Maxim was
silent, gazing at them with stern, colorless eyes.

"Asiatic ! Mordovan !" said the old cook now and
again in his deep voice.

I did not like these people. Fat, bald Jaakov Ivan-

IN THE WORLD 127

ich spoke of nothing but women, and that always filth-
ily. He had a vacant-looking face covered with bluish
pimples. , On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of
red hair growing from it. He used to pull out these
hairs by twisting them round a needle. Whenever an
amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sex ap-
peared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar,
timid manner like a beggar. He spoke to her sweetly
and plaintively, he licked her, as it were, with the
swift movements of his tongue. For some reason I
used to think that such great fat creatures ought to be
hang-men.

"One should know how to get round women," he
would teach Sergei and Maxim, who would listen to
him much impressed, pouting their lips and turning
red.

"Asiatics!" Smouri would roar in accents of dis-
gust, and standing up heavily, he gave the order,
"Pyeshkov, march!"

In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound
in leather, and lie down in his hammock by the wall
of the ice-house.

"Read!" he would say.

I sat on a box and read conscientiously :

" The umbra projected by the stars means that one
is on good terms with heaven and free from profanity
and vice.' "

Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke
and growled:

"Camels! They wrote— "

128 IN THE WORLD

" 'Baring the left bosom means innocence of heart.' "

"Whose bosom?"

"It does not say."

"A woman's, it means. Eh, and a loose woman."

He closed his eyes and lay with his arms behind
his head. His cigarette, hardly alight, stuck in the
corner of his mouth. He set it straight with his
tongue, stretched so that something whistled in his
chest, and his enormous face was enveloped in a cloud
of smoke. Sometimes I thought he had fallen asleep
and I left off reading to examine the accursed book,
which bored me to nauseation. But he said hoarsely :

"Go on reading!"

"The venerable one answered, "Look! My dear
brother Suvyerin — " ' "

"Syevyeverin — "

"It is written Suvyerin."

"Well, that's witchcraft. There is some poetry
at the end. Run on from there."

I ran on.

"Profane ones, curious to know our business,
Never will your weak eyes spy it out,
Nor will you learn how the fairies sing."

"Wait!" said Smouri. "That is not poetry. Give
me the book."

He angrily turned over the thick, blue leaves, and
then put the book under the mattress.

"Get me another one."

To my grief there were many books in his black

IN THE WORLD 129

trunk clamped with iron. There were "Precepts of
Peace," "Memories of the Artillery," "Letters of Lord
Sydanhall," "Concerning Noxious Insects and their
Extinction, with Advice against the Pest," books which
seemed to have no beginning and no end. Sometimes
the cook set me to turn over all his books and read out
their titles to him, but as soon as I had begun he called
out angrily:

"What is it all about? Why do you speak through
your teeth'? It is impossible to understand you.
What the devil has Gerbvase to do with me*? Ger-
vasel U??ibra indeed!"

Terrible words, incomprehensible names were wearily
remembered, and they tickled my tongue. I had an
incessant desire to repeat them, thinking that perhaps
by pronouncing them I might discover their meaning.
And outside the port-hole the water unweariedly sang
and splashed. It would have been pleasant to go to
the stern, where the sailors and stokers were gathered
together among the chests, where the passengers played
cards, sang songs, and told interesting stories. It
would have been pleasant to sit among them and listen
to simple, intelligible conversation, to gaze on the banks
of the Kama, at the fir-trees drawn out like brass wires,
at the meadows, wherein small lakes remained from
the floods, looking like pieces of broken glass as they
reflected the sun.

Our steamer was traveling at some distance from
the shore, yet the sound of invisible bells came to us,
reminding us of the villages and people. The barks

130 IN THE WORLD

of the fishermen floated on the waves like crusts of
bread. There, on the bank a little village appeared,
here a crowd of small boys bathed in the river, men in
red blouses could be seen passing along a narrow strip
of sand. Seen from a distance, from the river, it was
a very pleasing sight ; everything looked like tiny toys
of many colors.

I felt a desire to call out some kind, tender words
to the shore and the barge. The latter interested me
greatly; I could look at it for an hour at a time as it
dipped its blunt nose in the turbid water. The boat
dragged it along as if it were a pig: the tow-rope,
slackening, lashed the water, then once more drew
taut and pulled the barge along by the nose. I wanted
very much to see the faces of those people who were
kept like wild animals in an iron cage. At Perm, where
they were landed, I made my way to the gangway,
and past me came, in batches of ten, gray people, tram-
pling dully, rattling their fetters, bowed down by their
heavy knapsacks. There were all sorts, young and
old, handsome and ugly, all exactly like ordinary peo-
ple except that they were differently dressed and were
disfiguringly close-shaven. No doubt these were rob-
bers, but grandmother had told me much that was good
about robbers. Smouri looked much more like a fierce
robber than they as he glanced loweringly at the barge
and said loudly:

"Save me, God, from such a fate I"

Once I asked him :

IN THE WORLD 131

''Why do you say that? You cook, while those
others kill and steal."

"I don't cook; I only prepare. The women cook,"
he said, bursting out laughing; but after thinking a
moment he added: "The difference between one per-
son and another lies in stupidity. One man is clever,
another not so clever, and a third may be quite a
fool. To become clever one must read the right books
— black magic and what not. One must read all kinds
of books and then one will find the right ones."

He was continually impressing upon me :

"Read I When you don't understand a book, read
it again and again, as many as seven times ; and if you
do not understand it then, read it a dozen times."

To every one on the boat, not excluding the taci-
turn steward, Smouri spoke roughly. Sticking out his
lower lip as if he were disgusted, and, stroking his mus-
tache, he pelted them with words as if they were
stones. To me he always showed kindness and in-
terest, but there was something about his interest
which rather frightened me. Sometimes I thought he
was crazy, like grandmother's sister. At times he said
to me:

"Leave off reading."

And he would lie for a long time with closed eyes,
breathing stertorously, his great stomach shaking. His
hairy fingers, folded corpse-like on his chest, moved,
knitting invisible socks with invisible needles. Sud-
denly he would begin growling:

132 IN THE WORLD

"Here are you! You have your intelligence. Go
and live ! But intelligence is given sparingly, and not
to all alike. If all were on the same level intellec-
tually— but they are not. One understands, another
docs not, and there are some people who do not even
wish to understand !"

Stumbling over his words, he related stories of his
life as a soldier, the drift of which I could never man-
age to catch. They seemed very uninteresting to me.
Besides, he did not tell them from the beginning, but as
he recollected them.

'The commander of the regiment called this soldier
to him and asked: 'What did the lieutenant say to
you?' So he told everything just as it had happened
— a soldier is bound to tell the truth — but the lieu-
tenant looked at him as if he had been a wall, and
then turned away, hanging his head. Yes — "

He became indignant, puffed out clouds of smoke,
and growled:

"How was I to know what I could say and what I
ought not to say? Then the lieutenant was con-
demned to be shut up in a fortress, and his mother said
— ah, my God ! I am not learned in anything."

It was hot. Everything seemed to be quivering and
tinkling. The water splashed against the iron walls
of the cabin, and the wheel of the boat rose and fell.
The river flowed in a broad stream between the rows
of lights. In the distance could be seen the line of
the meadowed bank. The trees drooped. When one's
hearing had become accustomed to all the sounds, it

IN THE WORLD 133

seemed as if all was quiet, although the soldiers in the
stem of the boat howled dismally, "Se-e-evenI
Se-e-ven !"

I had no desire to take part in anything. I wanted
neither to listen nor to work, but only to sit some-
where in the shadows, where there was no greasy, hot
smell of cooking; to sit and gaze, half asleep, at the
quiet, sluggish life as it slipped away on the water.

"Read!" the cook commanded harshly.

Even the head steward was afraid of him, and that
mild man of few words, the dining-room steward, who
looked like a sandre^ was evidently afraid of Smouri
too.

"Ei! You swine!" he would cry to this man.
"Come here ! Thief ! Asiatic !"

The sailors and stokers were very respectful to him,
and expectant of favors. He gave them the meat from
which soup had been made, and inquired after their
homes and their families. The oily and smoke-dried
White Russian stokers were counted the lowest people
on the boat. They were all called by one name. Yaks,
and they were teased, "Like a Yak, I amble along the
shore."

When Smouri heard this, he bristled up, his face
became suffused with blood, and he roared at the
stokers :

"Why do you allow them to laugh at you, you mugs*?
Throw some sauce in their faces."

Once the boatswain, a handsome, but ill-natured,
man, said to him :

134 IN THE WORLD

"They are the same as Little Russians; they hold
the same faith."

The cook seized him by the collar and belt, lifted
him up in the air, and said, shaking him :

"Shall I knock you to smithereens'?"

They quarreled often, these two. Sometimes it even
came to a fight, but Smouri was never beaten. He
was possessed of superhuman strength, and besides
this, the captain's wife, with a masculine face and
smooth hair like a boy's, was on his side.

He drank a terrible amount of vodka, but never be-
came drunk. He began to drink the first thing in the
morning, consuming a whole bottle in four gulps, and
after that he sipped beer till close on evening. His
face gradually grew brown, his eyes widened.

Sometimes in the evening he sat for hours in the
hatchway, looking large and white, without breaking
his silence, and his eyes were fixed gloomily on the
distant horizon. At those times they were all more
afraid of him than ever, but I was sorry for him.
Jaakov Ivanich would come out from the kitchen, per-
spiring and glowing with the heat. Scratching his
bald skull and waving his arm, he would take cover
or say from a distance :

"The fish has gone off."

"Well, there is the salted cabbage."

"But if they ask for fish-soup or boiled fish'?"

"It is ready. They can begin gobbling."

Sometimes I plucked up courage to go to him. He
looked at me heavily.

IN THE WORLD 135

"What do you want?"

'^Nothing."

"Good." .

On one of these occasions, however, I asked him :

"Why is every one afraid of you? For you are
good."

Contrary to my expectations, he did not get
angry.

"I am only good to you."

But he added distinctly, simply, and thoughtfully :

"Yes, it is true that I am good to every one, only I
do not show it. It does not do to show that to people,
or they will be all over you. They will crawl over
those who are kind as if they were mounds in a morass,
and trample on them. Go and get me some beer."

Having drunk the bottle, he sucked his mustache and
said :

"If you were older, my bird, I could teach you a
lot. I have something to say to a man. I am no
fool. But you must read books. In them you will
find all you need. They are not rubbish — books.
Would you like some beer?"

"I don't care for it."

"Good boy! And you do well not to drink it.
Drunkenness is a misfortune. Vodka is the devil's own
business. If I were rich, I would spur you on to study.
An uninstructed man is an ox, fit for nothing but the
yoke or to serve as meat. All he can do is to wave his
tail."

The captain's wife gave him a volume of Gogol. I

136 IN THE WORLD

read "The Terrible Vengeance" and was delighted with
it, but Smouri cried angrily :

"P.ubbish! A fairy-tale! I know. There arc
other books."

He took the book away from me, obtained another
one from the captain's wife, and ordered me harshly:

"Read Tarass' — what do you call it^ Find it!
She says it is good; good for whom^ It may be good
for her, but not for me, eh*? She cuts her hair short.
It is a pity her ears were not cut off too."

When Tarass called upon Ostap to fight, the cook
laughed loudly.

"That's the way! Of course! You have learning,
but I have strength. What do they say about it'?
Camels!"

He listened with great attention, but often grum-
bled:

"Rubbish ! You could n't cut a man in half from
his shoulders to his haunches; it can't be done. And
you can't thrust a pike upward; it would break it. I
have been a soldier myself."

Andrei's treachery aroused his disgust.

"There's a mean creature, eh? Like women!
Tfoor

But when Tarass killed his son, the cook let his feet
slip from the hammock, bent himself double, and wept.
The tears trickled down his cheeks, splashed upon the
deck as he breathed stertorously and muttered :

"Oh, my God! my God!"

And suddenly he shouted to me :

IN THE WORLD 137

"Go on reading, you bone of the devil I"

Again he wept, with even more violence and bitter-
ness, when I read how Ostaf cried^out before his death,
"Father, dost thou hear?'

"Ruined utterly!" exclaimed Smouri. "Utterly!
Is that the end? EM/ What an accursed business!
He was a man, that Tarass. What do you think*?
Yes, he was a man."

He took the book out of my hands and looked at it
with attention, letting his tears fall on its binding.

"It is a fine book, a regular treat."

After this we read "Ivanhoe." Smouri was very
pleased with Richard Plantagenet.

"That was a real king,' he said impressively.

To me the book had appeared dry. In fact, our
tastes did not agree at all. I had a great liking for
"The Story of Thomas Jones," an old translation of
"The History of Tom Jones, Foundling," but Smouri
grumbled :

"Rubbish! What do I care about your Thomas?
Of what use is he to me? There must be some other
books."

One day I told him that I knew that there were
other books, forbidden books. One could read them
only at night, in underground rooms. He opened his
eyes wide.

"Wha-a-t's that? Why do you tell me these
lies?"

"I am not telling lies. The priest asked me about
them when I went to confession, and, for that matter,

138 IN THE WORLD

I myself have seen people reading them and crying
over them."

The cook looked sternly in my face and asked :

"Who was crying *?"

"The lady who was listening, and the other actually
ran away because she was frightened."

"You were asleep. You were dreaming," said
Smouri, slowly covering his eyes, and after a silence he
muttered: "But of course there must be something
hidden from me somewhere. I am not so old as all
that, and with my character — well, however that may
be—"

He spoke to me eloquently for a whole hour.

Imperceptibly I acquired the habit of reading, and
took up a book with pleasure. What I read therein
was pleasantly different from life, which was becom-
ing harder and harder for me.

Smouri also recreated himself by reading, and often
took me from my work.

"Pyeshkov, come and read."

"I have a lot of washing up to do."

"Let Maxim wash up."

He coarsely ordered the senior kitchen-helper to do
my work, and this man would break the glasses out of
spite, while the chief steward told me quietly :

"I shall have you put off the boat."

One day Maxim on purpose placed several glasses
in a bowl of dirty water and tea-leaves. I emptied
the water overboard, and the glasses went flying with
it.

IN THE WORLD 139

"It is my fault," said Smouri to the head steward.
"Put it down to my account."

The dining-room attendants began to look at me
with lowering brows, and they used to say :

"Eil you bookworm! What are you paid for?"

And they used to try and make as much work as
they could for me, soiling plates needlessly. I was
sure that this would end badly for me, and I was not
mistaken.

One evening, in a little shelter on the boat, there sat
a red-faced woman with a girl in a yellow coat and a
new pink blouse. Both had been drinking. The
woman smiled, bowed to every one, and said on the
note O, like a church clerk:

"Forgive me, my friends; I have had a little too
much to drink. I have been tried and acquitted, and
I have been drinking for joy."

The girl laughed, too, gazing at the other passen-
gers with glazed eyes. Pushing the woman away, she
said:

"But you, you plaguy creature — we know you."

They had berths in the second-class cabin, opposite
the cabin in which Jaakov Ivanich and Sergei slept.

The woman soon disappeared somewhere or other,
and Sergei took her place near the girl, greedily stretch-
ing his frog-like mouth.

That night, when I had finished my work and had
laid myself down to sleep on the table, Sergei came to
me, and seizing me by the arm, said:

"Come along! We are going to marry you."

HO IN THE WORLD

He was drunk. I tried to tear my arm away from
him, but he struck me.

"Come along!"

Maxim came running in, also drunk, and the two
dragged me along the deck to their cabin, past the
sleeping passengers. But by the door of the cabin
stood Smouri, and in the doorway, holding on to the
jamb, Jaakov Ivanich. The girl stuck her elbow
in his back, and cried in a drunken voice:

"Make way!"

Smouri got me out of the hands of Sergei and
Maxim, seized them by the hair, and, knocking their
heads together, moved away. They both fell down.

"Asiatic !" he said to Jaakov, slamming the door on
him. Then he roared as he pushed me along:

"Get out of this !"

I ran to the stern. The night was cloudy, the river
black. In the wake of the boat seethed two gray lines
of water leading to the invisible shore; between these
two lines the barge dragged on its way. Now on the
right, now on the left appeared red patches of light,
without illuminating anything. They disappeared,
hidden by the sudden winding of the shore.
After this it became still darker and more grue-
some.

The cook came and sat beside me, sighed deeply, and
pulled at his cigarette.

"So they were taking you to that creature*? Ekh!
Dirty beasts ! I heard them trying."

"Did you take her away from them?"

IN THE WORLD 141

"Her?" He abused the girl coarsely, and continued
in a sad tone :

"It is all nastiness here. This boat is worse than a
village. Have you ever lived in a village?''

"No."

"In a village there is nothing but misery, especially
in the winter."

Throwing his cigarette overboard, he was silent.
Then he spoke again.

"You have fallen among a herd of swine, and I am
sorry for you, my little one. I am sorry for all of
them, too. Another time I do not know what I should
have done. Gone on my knees and prayed. What

are you doing, sons of ? What are you doing,

blind creatures'? Camels!"

The steamer gave a long-drawn-out hoot, the tow-
rope splashed in the water, the lights of lanterns
jumped up and down, showing where the harbor was.
Out of the darkness more lights appeared.

"Pyani Bor [a certain pine forest]. Drunk,"
growled the cook. "And there is a river called Py-
anaia, and there was a captain called Pyenkov, and a
writer called Zapivokhin, and yet another captain called
Nepei-pivo.^ I am going on shore."

The coarse-grained women and girls of Kamska
dragged logs of wood from the shore in long trucks.
Bending under their load-straps, with pliable tread,
they arrived in pairs at the stoker's hold, and, emptying

1 Pyanaia means "drunk," and the other names mentioned come from
the same root. Nepci-pivo means, "Do not drink beer."

142 IN THE WORLD

their sooty loads into the black hole, cried ringingly:

"Logs!"

-When they brought the wood the sailors would take
hold of them by the breasts or the legs. The women
squealed, spat at the men, turned back, and defended
themselves against pinches and blows with their trucks.
I saw this a hundred times, on every voyage and at
every land-stage where they took in wood, and it was
always the same thing.

I felt as if I were old, as if I had lived on that boat
for many years, and knew what would happen in a
week's time, in the autumn, in a year.

It was daylight now. On a sandy promontory above
the harbor stood out a forest of fir-trees. On the hills
and through the forests women went laughing and sing-
ing. They looked like soldiers as they pushed their
long trucks.

I wanted to weep. The tears seethed in my breast;
my heart was overflowing with them. It was painful.
But it would be shameful to cry, and I went to help
the sailor Blyakhin wash the deck.

Blyakhin was an insignificant-looking man. He had
a withered, faded look about him, and always stowed
himself away in corners, whence his small, bright eyes
shone.

"My proper surname is not Blyakhin, but be-
cause, you see, my mother was a loose woman. I have
a sister, and she also. That happened to be their des-
tiny. Destiny, my brother, is an anchor for all of us.
You want to go in one direction, but wait !"

IN THE WORLD 143

And now, as he swabbed the deck, he said softly to
me:

"You see what a lot of harm women do I There it
is"? Damp wood smolders for a long time and then
bursts into flame. I don't care for that sort of thing
myself; it does not interest me. And if I had been
born a woman, I should have drowned myself in a
black pool. I should have been safe then with Holy
Christ, and could do no one any harm. But while one
is here there is always the chance of kindling a fire.
Eunuchs are no fools, I assure you. They are clever
people, they are good at divination, they put aside all
small things and serve God alone — cleanly."

The captain's wife passed us, holding her skirts high
as she came through the pools of water. Tall and
well built, she had a simple, bright face. I wanted to
run after her and beg her from my heart :

"Say something to me! Say something!"

The boat drew slowly away from the pier. Blya-
khin crossed himself and said :

"We are off!"

CHAPTER VI

AT Sarapulia, Maxim left the boat. He went
away in silence, saying farewell to no one, se-
rious and calm. Behind him, laughing, came the gay
woman, and, following her, the girl, looking dis-
heveled, with swollen eyes. Sergei was on his knees a
long time before the captain's cabin, kissing the panel
of the door, knocking his forehead against it, and cry-
ing:

"Forgive me ! It was not my fault, but Maxim's."

The sailors, the stewards, and even some of the pas-
sengers knew that he was lying, yet they advised:

"Come, forgive him !"

But the captain drove him away, and even kicked
him with such force that he fell over. Notwithstand-
ing, he forgave him, and Sergei at once rushed on deck,
carrying a tray of tea-things, looking with inquiring,
dog-like expression into the eyes of the passengers.

In Maxim's place came a soldier from Viatski, a bony
man, with a small head and brownish red eyes. The
assistant cook sent him first to kill some fowls. He
killed a pair, but let the rest escape on deck. The pas-
sengers tried to catch them, but three hens flew over-
board. Then the soldier sat on some wood near the
fowl-house, and cried bitterly.

144

IN THE WORLD 145

"What's the matter, you fool?" asked Smouri,
angrily. "Fancy a soldier crying I"

"I belong to the Home Defense Corps," said the sol-
dier in a low voice.

That was his ruin. In half an hour every one on
the boat was laughing at him. They would come
quite close to him, fix their eyes on his face, and ask:

"Is this the one?"

And then they would go off into harsh, insulting, ab-
surd laughter.

At first the soldier did not see these people or hear
their laughter; he was drying his tears with the sleeve
of his old shirt, exactly as if he were hiding them up
his sleeve. But soon his brown eyes flashed with ragt,
and he said in the quick speech of Viatski :

"What are you staring at me for? Oi, may you be
torn to bits I"

But this only amused the passengers the more, and
they began to snap their fingers at him, to pluck at his
shirt, his apron, to play with him as if he had been a
goat, baiting him cruelly until dinner-time. At din-
ner some one put a piece of squeezed lemon on the
handle of a wooden spoon, and tied it behind his back
by the strings of his apron. As he moved, the spoon
waggled behind him, and every one laughed, but he was
in a fluster, like an entrapped mouse, ignorant of what
had aroused their laughter.

Smouri sat behind him in silence. His face had be-
come like a woman's. I felt sorry for the soldier, and
asked :

146 IN THE WORLD

"May I tell him about the spoon?"

He nodded his head without speaking.

When I explained to the soldier what they were
laughing at, he hastily seized the spoon, tore it off,
threw it on the floor, crushed it with his foot, and took
hold of my hair with both hands. We began to fight,
to the great satisfaction of the passengers, who made
a ring round us at once.

Smouri pushed the spectators aside, separated us,
and, after boxing my ear, seized the soldier by the ear.
When the passengers saw how the little man danced
under the hand of the cook they roared with excite-
ment, whistled, stamped their feet, split their sides
with laughter.

"Hurrah I Garrison I Butt the cook in the
stomach I"

This wild joy on the part of others made me feel
that I wanted to throw myself upon them and hit their
dirty heads with a lump of wood.

Smouri let the soldier go, and with his hands behind
his back turned upon the passengers like a wild boar,
bristling, and showing his teeth terrifyingly.

"To your places I March I March I"

The soldier threw himself upon me again, but
Smouri seized him round the body with one hand and
carried him to the hatchway, where he began to pump
water on his head, turning his frail body about as if
he were a rag-doll.

The sailors came running on the scene, with the
boatswain and the captain's mate. The passengers

IN THE WORLD 147

crowded about again. A head above the others stood
the head-steward, quiet, dumb, as always.

The soldier, sitting on some wood near the kitchen
door, took off his boots and began to wring out his leg-
gings, though they were not wet. But the water
dripped from his greasy hair, which again amused the
passengers.

"All the same," said the soldier, "I am going to kill
that boy."

Taking me by the shoulder, Smouri said something
to the captain's mate. The sailors sent the passengers
away, and when they had all dispersed, he asked the
soldier:

"What is to be done with you*?"

The latter was silent, looking at me with wild eyes,
and all the while putting a strange restraint upon him-
self.

"Be quiet, you devilskin!" said Smouri.

"As you are not the piper, you can't call the tune,"
answered the soldier.

I saw that the cook was confused. His blown-out
cheeks became flabby; he spat, and went away, taking
me with him. I walked after him, feeling foolish, with
backward glances at the soldier. But Smouri mut-
tered in a worried tone :

"There 's a wild creature for you I What? What
do you think of him*?"

Sergei overtook us and said in a whisper:

"He is going to kill himself."

"Where is he*?" cried Smouri, and he ran.

148 IN THE WORLD

The soldier was standing at the door of the stew-
ard's cabin with a large knife in his hand. It was the
knife which was used for cutting off the heads of
fowls and for cutting up sticks for the stoves. It was
blunt, and notched like a saw. In front of the cabin
the passengers were assembled, looking at the funny
little man with the wet head. His snub-nosed face
shook like a jelly; his mouth hung wearily open; his
lips twitched. He roared:

' Tormentors ! Tormentors I ' '

Jumping up on something, I looked over the heads
of people into their faces. They were smiling, gig-
gling, and saying to one another :

"Look! Look!"

When he pushed his crumpled shirt down into his
trousers with his skinny, childish hand, a good-look-
ing man near me said:

"He is getting ready to die, and he takes the trouble
to hitch up his trousers."

The passengers all laughed loudly. It was per-
fectly plain that they did not think it probable that the
soldier would really kill himself, nor did I think so;
but Smouri, after one glance at him, pushed the people
aside with his stomach, saying:

"Get away, you fools !"

He called them fools over and over again, and ap-
proaching one little knot of people, said:

"To your place, fool !"

This was funny ; but, however, it seemed to be true,

IN THE WORLD 149

for they had all been acting like one big fool from the
first thing in the morning. When he had driven the
passengers, off, he approached the soldier, and, hold-
ing out his hand, said:

"Give me that knife."

"I don't care," said the soldier, holding out the han-
dle of the knife.

The cook gave the knife to me, and pushed the sol-
dier into the cabin.

"Lie down and go to sleep. What is the matter
with you, eh?"

The soldier sat on a hammock in silence.

"He shall bring you something to eat and some
vodka. Do you drink vodka'?"

"A little sometimes."

"But, look you, don't you touch him. It was not
he who made fun of you, do you hear? I tell you
that it was not he."

"But why did they torment me?" asked the soldier,
softly.

Smouri answered gruffly after a pause:

"How should I know?"

As he came with me to the kitchen he muttered :

"Well, they have fastened upon a poor wretch this
time, and no mistake! You see what he is? There
you are! My lad, people can be sent out of their
minds; they can really. Stick to them like bugs, and
the thing is done. In fact, there are some people here
like bugs — worse than bugs !"

150 IN THE WORLD

When I took bread, meat, and vodka to the soldier
he was still sitting in the hammock, rocking himself
and crying softly, sobbing like a woman.

I placed the plate on the table, saying:

''Eat."

"Shut the door."

"That will make it dark."

"Shut it, or they will come crawling in here."

I went away. The sight of the soldier was un-
pleasant to me. He aroused my commiseration and
pity and made me feel uncomfortable. Times with-
out number grandmother had told me:

"One must have pity on people. We are all un-
happy. Life is hard for all of us."

"Did you take it to him?" asked the cook. "Well,
how is he — the soldier*?"

"I feel sorry for him."

"Well, what's the matter now, eh?'

"One can't help being sorry for people."

Smouri took me by the arm, drew me to him, and
said:

"You do not pity in vain, but it is waste of time
to chatter about it. When you are not accustomed to
mix jellies, you must teach yourself the way."

And pushing me away from him, he added gruffly:

"This is no place for you. Here, smoke."

I was deeply distressed, quite crushed by the be-
havior of the passengers. There was something in-
expressibly insulting and oppressive in the way they
had worried the soldier and had laughed with glee when

IN THE WORLD 151

Smouri had him by the ear. What pleasure could
they find in such a disgusting, pitiful affair? What
was there to cause them to laugh so joyfully?

There they were again, sitting or lying under the
awning, drinking, making a buzz of talk, playing cards,
conversing seriously and sensibly, looking at the river,
just as if they had never whistled and hooted an hour
ago. They were all as quiet and lazy as usual. From
morning to night they sauntered about the boat like
pieces of fluff or specks of dust in the sunbeams. In
groups of ten they would stroll to the hatchway, cross
themselves, and leave the boat at the landing-stage
from which the same kind of people embarked as they
landed, bending their backs under the same heavy
wallets and trunks and dressed in the same fashion.

This continual change of passengers did not alter
the life on the boat one bit. The new passengers spoke
of the same things as those who had left: the land,
labor, God, women, and in the same words. "It is
ordained by the Lord God that we should suffer; all
we can do is to be patient. There is nothing else to
be done. It is fate."

It was depressing to hear such words, and they ex-
asperated me. I could not endure dirt, and I did not
wish to endure evil, unjust, and insulting behavior to-
ward myself. I was sure that I did not deserve such
treatment. And the soldier had not deserved it,
either. Perhaps he had meant to be funny.

Maxim, a serious, good-hearted fellow, had been
dismissed from the ship, and Sergei, a mean fellow,

152 IN THE WORLD

was left. And why did these people, capable of goad-
ing a man almost to madness, always submit humbly to
the furious shouts of the sailors, and listen to their
abuse without taking offense'?

"What are you rolling about on the deck for"?"
cried the boatswain, blinking his handsome, though
malevolent, eyes. "If the boat heeled, it would be
the end of you, you devils."

The "devils" went peaceably enough to the other
deck, but they chased them away from there, too, as
if they had been sheep.

"Ah, accursed ones !"

On hot nights, under the iron awning, which had
been made red-hot by the sun during the day, it was
suffocating. The passengers crawled over the deck
like beetles, and lay where they happened to fall. The
sailors awoke them at the landing-stages by prodding
them with marlinespikes.

"What are you sprawling in the way for^ Go
away to your proper place I"

They would stand up, and move sleepily in the di-
rection whither they were pushed. The sailors were
of the same class as themselves, only they were dressed
differently; but they ordered them about as if they
were policemen. The first thing which I noticed about
these people was that they were so quiet, so timid, so
sadly meek. It was terrible when through that crust
of meekness burst the cruel, thoughtless spirit of mis-
chief, which had very little fun in it. It seemed to me
that they did not know where they were being taken;

IN THE WORLD 153

it was a matter of indifference to them where they
were landed from the boat. Wherever they went on
shore they stayed for a short time, and then they em-
barked again on our boat or another, starting on a fresh
journey. They all seemed to have strayed, to have no
relatives, as if all the earth were strange to them. And
every single one of them was senselessly cowardly.

Once, shortly after midnight, something burst in
the machinery and exploded like a report from a can-
non. The deck was at once enveloped in a cloud of
steam, which rose thickly from the engine-room and
crept through every crevice. An invisible person
shouted deafeningly:

"Gavrilov, some red lead — and some felt!"

I slept near the engine-room, on the table on which
the dishes were washed up, and the explosion and shak-
ing awoke me. It was quiet on deck. The engine
uttered a hot, steamy whisper; a hammer sounded re-
peatedly. But in the course of a few minutes all the
saloon passengers howled, roared with one voice, and
suddenly a distressing scene was in progress.

In a white fog which swiftly rarefied, women with
their hair loose, disheveled men with round eyes like
fishes' eyes, rushed about, trampling one another, carry-
ing bundles, bags, boxes, stumbling, falling, call-
ing upon God and St. Nicholas, striking one another.
It was very terrible, but at the same time it was in-
teresting. I ran aft^r them to see what they would do
next.

This was my first experience of a night alarm, yet

154 IN THE WORLD

I understood at once that the passengers had made a
mistake. The boat had not slowed down. On the
right hand, quite near, gleamed the life-belts. The
night was light, the full moon stood high. But the
passengers rushed wildly about the deck, and now those
traveling in the other classes had come up, too. Some
one jumped overboard. He was followed by another,
and yet a third. Two peasants and a monk with heavy
pieces of wood broke off a bench which was screwed
to the desk. A large cage of fowls was thrown into
the water from the stern. In the center of the deck,
near the steps leading to the captain's bridge, knelt a
peasant who prostrated himself before the people as
they rushed past him, and howled like a wolf:

"I am Orthodox and a sinner — "

*'To the boats, you devils!" cried a fat gentleman
who wore only trousers and no shirt, and he beat his
breast with his fist.

The sailors came running, seized people by the col-
lars, knocked their heads together, and threw them on
the deck. Smouri approached heavily, wearing his
overcoat over his night-clothes, addressed them all in
a resounding voice:

"Yes, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
What are you making all this fuss for? Has the
steamer stopped, eh? Are we going slower? There
is the shore. Those fools who jumped into the water
have caught the life-belts, they have had to drag them
out. There they are. Do you see? Two boats — "

He struck the third-class passengers on the head

IN THE WORLD lyj

with his fist, and they sank like sacks to the deck.

The confusion was not yet hushed when a lady in a
cloak flew to Smouri with a tablespoon in her hand,
and, flourishing it in his face, cried:

"How dare you?"

A wet gentleman, restraining her, sucked his mus-
tache and said irritably:

"Let him alone, you imbecile!"

Smouri, spreading out his hands, blinked with em-
barrassment, and asked me:

"What's the matter, eh? What does she want
with me? This is nice, I must say! Why, I never
saw her before in my life !"

And a peasant, with his nose bleeding, cried :

"Human beings, you call them? Robbers!"

Before the summer I had seen two panics on board
the steamboat, and on both occasions they were caused
not by real danger, but by the mere possibility of it.
On a third occasion the passengers caught two thieves,
one of them was dressed like a foreigner, beat them
for almost an hour, unknown to the sailors, and when
the latter took their victims away from them, the
passengers abused them.

"Thieves shield thieves. That is plain. You are
rogues yourselves, and you sympathize with rogues."

The thieves had been beaten into unconsciousness.
They could not stand when they were handed over
to the police at the next stopping-place.

There were many other occasions on which my feel-
ings were aroused to a high pitch, and I could not make

156 IN THE WORLD

up my mind as to whether people were bad or good,
peaceful or mischief-making, and why they were so
peculiarly cruel, lusting to work malevolence, and
ashamed of being kind.

I asked the cook about this, but he enveloped his
face in a cloud of smoke, and said briefly in a tone of
vexation :

"What are you chattering about now? Human
creatures are human creatures. Some are clever, some
are fools. Read, and don't talk so much. In books,
if they are the right sort, you will find all you want to
know."

I wanted to please him by giving him a present of
some books.

In Kazan I bought, for five copecks, "The Story
of how a Soldier Saved Peter the Great" ; but at that
time the cook was drinking and was very cross, so I
began to read it myself. I was delighted with it, it
was so simple, easy to understand, interesting, and
short. I felt that this book would give great pleasure
to my teacher; but when I took it to him he silently
crushed it in his hand into a round ball and threw it
overboard.

"That for your book, you fool!" he said harshly.
"I teach you like a dog, and all you want to do is to
gobble up idle tales, eh*?" He stamped and roared.
"What kind of book is that? Do I read nonsense?
Is what is written there true? Well, speak!"

"I don't know."

"Well, I do know. If a man's head were cut off,

IN THE WORLD 157

his body would fall down the staircase, and the other
man would not have climbed on the haystack. Sol-
diers are not fools. He would have set fire to the hay,
and that would have been the end. Do you under-
stand'?"

"Yes."

"That 's right. I know all about Czar Peter, and
that never happened to him. Run along."

I realized that the cook was right, but nevertheless
the book pleased me. I bought the "Story" again and
read it a second time. To my amazement, I discov-
ered that it was really a bad book. This puzzled me,
and I began to regard the cook with even more respect,
while he said to me more frequently and more crossly
than ever:

"Oh, what a lot you need to be taught! This is no
place for you."

I also felt that it was no place for me. Sergei be-
haved disgustingly to me, and several times I observed
him stealing pieces of the tea-service, and giving them
to the passengers on the sly. I knew that this was
theft. Smouri had warned me more than once :

"Take care. Do not give the attendants any of
the cups and plates from your table."

This made life still harder for me, and I often
longed to run away from the boat into the forest;
but Smouri held me back. He was more tender to
me every day, and the incessant movement on the boat
held a terrible fascination for me. I did not like it
when we stayed in port, and I was always expecting

158 IN THE WORLD

something to happen, and that we should sail from
Kama to Byela, as far as Viatka, and so up the Volga,
and I should see new places, towns, and people. But
this did not happen. My life on the steamer came to an
abrupt end. One evening when we were going from
Kazan to Nijni the steward called me to him. I went.
He shut the door behind me, and said to Smouri, who
sat grimly on a small stool:

"Here he is."

Smouri asked me roughly :

"Have you been giving Serejka any of the dinner-
and tea-services?"

"He helps himself when I am not looking."

The steward said softly:

"He does not look, yet he knows."

Smouri struck his knee with his fist; then he
scratched his knee as he said :

"Wait; take time."

I pondered. I looked at the steward. He looked
at me, and there seemed to be no eyes behind his glasses.

He lived without making a noise. He went about
softly, spoke in low tones. Sometimes his faded beard
and vacant eyes peeped out from some corner and in-
stantly vanished. Before going to bed he knelt for a
long time in the buffet before the icon with the ever-
burning lamp. I could see him through the chink of
the door, looking like a black bundle ; but I had never
succeeded in learning how the steward prayed, for he
simply knelt and looked at the icon, stroking his beard
and sighing.

IN THE WORLD 159

, After a silence Smouri asked:

"Has Sergei ever given you any money?"

"No." ■

"Never?"

"Never."

"He does not tell lies," said Smouri to the steward,
who answered at once in his low voice:

"It comes to the same thing, please — "

"Come!" cried the cook to me, and he came to my
table, and rapped my crown lightly with his fingers.

"Fool I And I am a fool, too. I ought to have
looked after you."

At Nijni the steward dismissed me. I received
nearly eight rubles, the first large money earned by me.

When Smouri took farewell of me he said roughly :

"Well, here you are. Now keep your eyes open,
— do you understand? You mustn't go about with
your mouth open."

He put a tobacco-pouch of colored beads into my
hand.

"There you are! That is good handwork. My
godchild made it for me. Well, good-by. Read
books; that is the best thing you can do."

He took me under the arms, lifted me up, kissed
me, and placed me firmly on the jetty. I was sorry
for him and for myself. I could hardly keep from
crying when I saw him returning to the steamer, push-
ing aside the porters, looking so large, heavy, solitary.
So many times since then I have met people like him,
kind, lonely, cut off from the lives of other people.

CHAPTER VII

GRANDFATHER and grandmother had again
gone into the town. I went to them, prepared
to be angry and warlike; but my heart was heavy.
Why had they accounted me a thief 9

Grandmother greeted me tenderly, and at once went
to prepare the samovar. Grandfather asked as mock-
ingly as usual:

"Have you saved much money?"

"What there is belongs to me," I answered, taking
a seat by the window. I triumphantly produced a box
of cigarettes from my pocket and began to smoke im-
portantly.

"So-o-o," said grandfather, looking at me fixedly —
"so that 's it I You smoke the devil's poison? Is n't
it rather soon?"

"Why, I have even had a pouch given to me," I
boasted.

"A pouch?" squeaked grandfather. "What! Are
you saying this to annoy me?"

He rushed upon me, with his thin, strong hands out-
stretched, his green eyes flashing. I leaped up, and
stuck my head into his stomach. The old man sat on
the floor, and for several oppressive moments looked
at me, amazedly blinking, his dark mouth open. Then

he asked quietly:

i6o

IN THE WORLD 161

"You knock me down, your grandfather^ The
father of your mother'?"

"You have knocked me about enough in the past," I
muttered, not understanding that I had acted abomi-
nably.

Withered and light, grandfather rose from the floor,
sat beside me, deftly snatched the cigarette from me,
threw it out of the window, and said in a tone of fear:

"You mad fool I Don't you understand that God
will punish you for this for the rest of your life?
Mother," — ^he turned to grandmother, — "did you see
that? He knocked me down — he! Knocked me
down I Ask him!"

She did not wait to ask. She simply came over to
me, seized me by the hair, and beat me, saying:

"And for that — take this — and this!"

I was not hurt, but I felt deeply insulted, especially
by grandfather's laughter. He jumped on a chair,
slapped his legs with his hands, and croaked through
his laughter:

"Th-a-t 's right ! Tha-a-t 's right !"

I tore myself away, and ran out to the shed, where
I lay in a comer crushed, desolate, listening to the sing-
ing of the samovar.

Then grandmother came to me, bent over me, and
whispered hardly audibly:

"You must forgive me, for I purposely did not hurt
you. I could not do otherwise than I did, for grand-
father is an old man. He has to be treated with care.
He has fractured some of his small bones, and, be-

i62 IN THE WORLD

sides, sorrow has eaten into his heart. You must never
do him any harm. You are not a little boy now.
You must remember that. You must, Oleshal He
is like a child, and nothing more."

Her words laved me like warm water. That
friendly whisper made me feel ashamed of myself,
and, light-hearted, I embraced her warmly. We
kissed.

"Go to him. Go along. It is all right, only don't
smoke before him yet. Give him time to get used to
the idea."

I went back to the room, glanced at grandfather,
and could hardly keep from laughing. He really was
as pleased as a child. He was radiant, twisting his
feet, and running his paws through his red hair as he
sat by the table.

''Well, goat, have you come to butt me again?
Ach, you — brigand I Just like your father! Free-
mason! You come back home, never cross yourself,
and start smoking at once. Ugh, you — Bonaparte!
you copeck's worth of goods !"

I said nothing. He had exhausted his supply of
words and was silent from fatigue. But at tea he be-
gan to lecture me.

"The fear of God is necessary to men.; it is like a
bridle to a horse. We have no friend except God.
Man is a cruel enemy to man." That men were my
enemies, I felt was the truth, but the rest did not in-
terest me.

"Now 3^ou will go back to Aunt Matrena, and in

IN THE WORLD 163

the spring you can go on a steamboat again. Live
with them during the winter. And you need not tell
them that you are leaving in the spring."

"Now, why should he deceive people?" said grand-
mother, who had just deceived grandfather by pre-
tending to give me a beating.

"It is impossible to live without deceit," declared
grandfather. "Just tell me now. Who lives with-
out deceiving others?"

In the evening, while grandfather was reading his
office, grandmother and I went out through the gate
into the fields. The little cottage with two windows
in which grandfather lived was on the outskirts of the
town, at the back of Kanatni Street, where grand-
father had once had his own house.

"So here we are again I" said grandmother, laughing.
"The old man cannot find a resting-place for his soul,
but must be ever on the move. And he does not even
like it here; but I do."

Before us stretched for about three versts fields of
scanty herbage, intersected by ditches, bounded by
woods and the line of birches on the Kazan highroad.
From the ditches the twigs of bushes projected, the
rays of a cold sunset reddened them like blood. A soft
evening breeze shook the gray blades of grass. From
a nearer pathway, also like blades of grass, showed the
dark form of town lads and girls. On the right, in the
distance, stood the red walls of the burial-ground of
the Old Believers. They called it "The Bugrovski
Hermitage." On the left, beyond the causeway, rose

i64 IN THE WORLD

a dark group of trees; there was the Jewish cemetery.
All the surroundings were poor, and seemed to lie
close to the wounded earth. The little houses on the
outskirts of the town looked timidly with their win-
dows on the dusty road. Along the road wandered
small, ill-fed fowl. Toward the Dyevichia Monas-
tery went a herd of lowing cows, from the camp came
the sound of martial music. The brass instruments
brayed.

A drunken man came along, ferociously holding out
a harmonica. He stumbled and muttered:

"I am coming to thee — without fail."

"Fool !" said grandmother, blinking in the red sun-
light. "Where are you going ^ Soon you will fall
down and go to sleep, and you will be robbed in your
sleep. You will lose your harmonica, your consola-
tion."

I told her all about the life on the boat as I looked
about me. After what I had seen I found it dull
here; I felt like a fish out of water. Grandmother lis-
tened in silence and with attention, just as I liked to
listen to her. When I told her about Smouri she
crossed herself and said:

"He is a good man, help him. Mother of God; he
is good I Take care, you, that you do not forget him !
You should always remember what is good, and what
is bad simply forget."

It was very difficult for me to tell her why they had
dismissed me, but I took courage and told her. It

IN THE WORLD 165

made no impression whatever on her. She merely
said calmly:

"You are young yet; you don't know how to live."
"That is what they all say to one another, 'You
don't know how to live' — peasants, sailors, x\unt Ma-
trena to her son. But how does one learn?"
She compressed her lips and shook her head.
"I don't know myself."

"And yet you say the same as the others!"
"And why should I not say it?" replied grand-
mother, calmly. "You must not be offended. You
are young; you are not expected to know. And who
does know, after all? Only rogues. Look at your
grandfather. Clever and well educated as he is, yet he
does not know."

"And you — have you managed your life well?"
"I? Yes. And badly also; all ways."
People sauntered past us, with their long shadows
following them. The dust rose like smoke under their
feet, burying those shadows. Then the evening sad-
ness became miore oppressive. The sound of grand-
father's grumbling voice flowed from the window:

"Lord, in Thy wrath do not condemn me, nor in
Thy rage punish me I"

Grandmother said, smiling:

"He has made God tired of him. Every evening he
has his tale of woe, and about what? He is old now,
and he does not need anything; yet he is always com-
plaining and working himself into a frenzy about

i66 IN THE WORLD

something. I expect God laughs when He hears his
voice in the evening. There's Vassili Kashirin
grumbling again!' Come and go to bed now."

I made up my mind to take up the occupation of
catching singing-birds. I thought it would be a good
way of earning a living. I would catch them, and
grandmother would sell them. I bought a net, a hoop,
and a trap, and made a cage. At dawn I took my place
in a hollow among the bushes, while grandmother went
in the woods with a basket and a bag to find the last
mushrooms, bulbs, and nuts.

The tired September sun had only just risen. Its
pale rays were now extinguished by clouds, now fell
like a silver veil upon me in the causeway. At the
bottom of the hollow it was still dusk, and a white
mist rose from it. Its clayey sides were dark and bare,
and the other side, which was more sloping, was cov-
ered with grass, thick bushes, and yellow, brown, and
scarlet leaves. A fresh wind raised them and swept
them along the ditch.

On the ground, among the turnip-tops, the gold-
finch uttered its cry. I saw, among the ragged, gray
grass, birds with red caps on their lively heads. About
me fluttered curious titmouses. They made a great
noise and fuss, comically blowing out their white
cheeks, just like the young men of Kunavin Street on
a Sunday. Swift, clever, spiteful, they wanted to
know all and to touch everything, and they fell into

IN THE WORLD 167

the trap one after the other. It was pitiful to see how
they beat their wings, but my business was strictly
commerce. I changed the birds over into the spare
cage and hid them in a bag. In the dark they kept
quiet.

A flock of siskins settled on a hawthorn-bush. The
bush was suffused by sunlight. The siskins were glad
of the sun and chirped more merrily than ever. Their
antics were like those of schoolboys. The thirsty,
tame, speckled magpie, late in setting out on his jour-
ney to a warmer country, sat on the bending bough
of a sweetbriar, cleaning his wing feathers and inso-
lently looking at his prey with his black eyes. The
lark soared on high, caught a bee, and, carefully de-
positing it on a thorn, once more settled on the ground,
with his thievish head alert. Noiselessly flew the talk-
ing-bird,— the hawfinch, — the object of my longing
dreams, if only I could catch him. A bullfinch,
driven from the flock, was perched on an alder-tree.
Red, important, like a general, he chirped angrily,
shaking his black beak.

The higher the sun mounted, the more birds there
were, and the more gayly they sang. The hollow was
full of the music of autumn. The ceaseless rustle of
the bushes in the wind, and the passionate songs of the
birds, could not drown that soft, sweetly melancholy
noise. I heard in it the farewell song of summer. It
whispered to me words meant for my ears alone, and
of their own accord they formed themselves into a

i68 IN THE WORLD

song. At the same time my memory unconsciously
recalled to my mind pictures of the past. From some-
where above grandmother cried:

"Where are you'?"

She sat on the edge of the pathway. She had
spread out a handkerchief on which she had laid bread,
cucumber, turnips, and apples. In the midst of this
display a small, very beautiful cut-glass decanter
stood. It had a crystal stopper, the head of Napoleon,
and in the goblet was a measure of vodka, distilled
from herbs.

"How good it is, O Lord!" said grandmother, grate-
fully.

"I have composed a song."

"Yes*? Well?"

I repeated to her something which I thought was
like poetry.

"That winter draws near the signs are many ;
Farewell to thee, my summer sun !"

But she interrupted without hearing me out.

"I know a song like that, only it is a better one."

And she repeated in a singsong voice:

"Oi, the summer sun has gone
To dark nights behind the distant woods!
Ekh! I am left behind, a maiden,
Alone, without the joys of spring.
Every morn I wander round;
I trace the walks I took in May.
The bare fields unhappy look;

IN THE WORLD 169

There it was I lost my youth.
Oif my friends, my kind friends,
Take my heart from my white breast,
Bury my heart in the snow !**

My conceit as an author suffered not a little, but I
was delighted with this song, and very sorry for the
girl.

Grandmother said::

"That is how grief sings. That was made up by
a young girl, you know. She went out walking all the
springtime, and before the winter her dear love had
thrown her over, perhaps for another girl. She wept
because her heart was sore. You cannot speak well
and truly on what you have not experienced for your-
self. You see what a good song she made up."

When she sold a bird for the first time, for forty
copecks, she was very surprised.

"Just look at that ! I thought it was all nonsense,
just a boy's amusement; and it has turned out like
this!"

"You sold it too cheaply."

"Yes; well?"

On market-days she sold them for a ruble, and was
more surprised than ever. What a lot one might earn
by just playing about!

"And a woman spends whole days washing clothes
or cleaning floors for a quarter of a ruble, and here you
just catch them ! But it is n't a nice thing to do, you
know, to keep birds in a cage. Give it up, Olesha!"

But bird-catching amused me greatly; I liked it.

170 IN THE WORLD

It gave me my independence and inconvenienced no
one but the birds. I provided myself with good im-
plements. Conversations with old bird-catchers
taught me a lot. I went alone nearly three versts to
catch birds : to the forest of Kstocski, on the banks of
the Volga, where in the tall fir-trees lived and bred
crossbills, and most valuable to collectors, the Apoll-
yon titmouse, a long-tailed, white bird of rare beauty.

Sometimes I started in the evening and stayed out
all night, wandering about on the Kasanski high-road,
and sometimes in the autumn rains and through deep
mud. On my back I carried an oilskin bag in which
were cages, with food to entice the birds. In my hand
was a solid cane of walnut wood. It was cold and
terrifying in the autumn darkness, very terrifying.
There stood by the side of the road old lightning-riven
birches ; wet branches brushed across my head. On the
left under the hill, over the black Volga, floated rare
lights on the masts of the last boats and barges, look-
ing as if they were in an unfathomable abyss. The
wheels splashed in the water, the sirens shrieked.

From the hard ground rose the huts of the road-side
villages. Angry, hungry dogs ran in circles round my
legs. The watchman collided with me, and cried in
terror :

"Who is that*? He whom the devils carry does not
come out till night, they say."

I was very frightened lest my tackle should be taken
from me, and I used to take five-copeck pieces with me
to give to the watchmen. The watchman of the vil-

IN THE WORLD 171

lage of Thokinoi made friends with me, and was al-
ways groaning over me.

"What, out again? O you fearless, restless night-
bird, eh?"

His name was Niphront. He was small and gray,
like a saint. He drew out from his breast a turnip,
an apple, a handful of peas, and placed them in my
hand, saying:

"There you are, friend. There is a little present for
you. Eat and enjoy it." And conducting me to the
bounds of the village, he said, "Go, and God be with
you I"

I arrived at the forest before dawn, laid my traps,
and spreading out my coat, lay on the edge of the
forest and waited for the day to come. It was still.
Everything was wrapped in the deep autumn sleep.
Through the gray mist the broad meadows under the
hill were hardly visible. They were cut in two by the
Volga, across which they met and separated again,
melting away in the fog. In the distance, behind the
forest on the same side as the meadows, rose without
hurry the bright sun. On the black mane of the for-
est lights flashed out, and my heart began to stir
strangely, poignantly. Swifter and swifter the fog
rose from the meadows, growing silver in the rays of
the sun, and, following it, the bushes, trees, and hay-
ricks rose from the ground. The meadows were sim-
ply flooded with the sun's rays and flowed on each
side, red-gold. The sun just glanced at the still wa-
ter by the bank, and it seemed as if the whole river

172 IN THE WORLD

moved toward the sun. as it rose higher and higher,
joyfully blessed and warmed the denuded, chilled
earth, which gave forth the sweet smell of autumn.
The transparent air made the earth look enormous,
boundlessly wide. Everything seemed to be floating
in the distance, and to be luring one to the farthest
ends of the world. I saw the sunrise ten times during
those months, and each time a new world was born be-
fore my eyes, with a new beauty.

I loved the sun so much that its very name delighted
me. The sweet sound of it was like a bell hidden in
it. I loved to close my eyes and place my face right
in the way of its hot rays to catch it in my hands when
it came, like a sword, through the chinks of the fence
or through the branches. Grandfather had read over
and over again "Prince Mikhail Chernigovski and the
Lady Theodora who would not Worship the Sun," and
my idea of these people was that they were black, like
Gipsies, harsh, malignant, and always had bad eyes,
like poor Mordovans. When the sun rose over the
meadows I involuntarily smiled with joy.

Over me murmured the forest of firs, shaking off the
drops of dew with its green paws. In the shadows
and on the fern-leaves glistened, like silver brocade,
the rime of the morning frost. The reddening grass
was crushed by the rain ; immovable stalks bowed their
heads to the ground: but when the sun's rays fell on
them a slight stir was noticeable among the herbs, as
if, may be, it was the last effort of their lives.

The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they

IN THE WORLD 173

fell from bough to bough. Flaming crossbills pecked
with their crooked beaks the knots on the tallest firs.
On the end of the fir-branches sang a white Apollyon
titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking
askance suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the
net which I had spread. And suddenly the whole
forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly pensive,
was filled with the sound of a thousand bird- voices,
with the bustle of living beings, the purest on the
earth. In their image, man, the father of earthly
beauty, created for his own consolation, elves,
cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels.

I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and
had scruples about squeezing them into cages. I
would rather have merely looked at them; but the
hunter's passion and the desire to earn money drove
away my pity.

The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The
blue titmouse, after a careful examination of the trap,
understood her danger, and, approaching sidewise
without running any risk, helped herself to some seed
between the sticks of the trap. Titmouses are very
clever, but they are very curious, and that is their un-
doing. The proud bullfinches are stupid, and flocks
of them fall into the nets, like over-fed citizens into a
church. When they find themselves shut up, they are
very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers
with their stout beaks. The crossbill entered the trap
calmly and seriously. This grasping, ignorant bird,
unlike all the others, used to sit for a long time before

174 IN THE WORLD

the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on
his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like
the woodpecker, always escorting the titmouse. About
this smoke-gray singing-bird there is something un-
pleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one.
Like the magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things.

Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home
through the forest. If I had gone by the high-road
past the villages, the boys and young men would have
taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle.
I had already experienced that once.

I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but
I felt that I had grown older, had learned something
new, and had gained strength during that day. This
new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and
without resentment to grandfather's jeers; seeing
which, grandfather began to speak sensibly and seri-
ously.

*'Give up this useless business! Give it up! No
one ever got on through birds. Such a thing has never
happened that I know of. Go and find another place,
and let your intelligence grow up there. Man has not
been given life for nothing; he is God's grain, and he
must produce an ear of corn. Man is like a ruble;
put out at good interest it produces three rubles. You
think life is easy to live*? No, it is not all easy. The
world of men is like a dark night, but every man must
make his own light. To every person is given enough
for his ten fingers to hold, but every one wants to grasp
by handfuls. One should be strong, but if one is

IN THE WORLD 175

weak, one must be artful. He who has little strength
is weak, and he is neither in heaven nor in hell. Live
as if you are with others, but remember that you are
alone. Whatever happens, never trust any one. If
you believe your own eyes, you will measure crook-
edly. Hold your tongue. Neither town or house was
built by the tongue, but rubles are made by the ax.
You are neither a fool nor a Kalmuck, to whom all
riches are like lice on sheep."

He could talk like this all the evening, and I knew
his words by heart. The words pleased me, but I
distrusted their meaning. From what he said it was
plain that two forces hindered man from doing as he
wished, God and other people.

Seated at the window, grandmother wound the cot-
ton for her lace. The spindle hummed under her skil-
ful hands. She listened for a long time to grand-
father's speech in silence, then she suddenly spoke.

"It all depends upon whether the Mother of God
smiles upon us."

"What's that?" cried grandfather. "God! I
have not forgotten about God. I know all about God.
You old fool, has God sown fools on the earth, eh?"

In my opinion the happiest people on earth were
Cossacks and soldiers. Their lives were simple and
gay. On fine mornings they appeared in the hollow
near our house quite early. Scattering over the bare
fields like white mushrooms, they began a complicated,
interesting game. Agile and strong in their white

176 IN THE WORLD

blouses, they ran about the field with guns in their
hands, disappeared in the hollow, and suddenly, at
the sound of the bugle, again spread themselves over
the field with shouts of "Hurrah I" accompanied by the
ominous sounds of the drum. They ran straight at our
house with fixed bayonets, and they looked as if they
would knock it down and sweep it away, like a hay-
rick, in a minute. I cried "Hurrah I" too, and ran
with them, quite carried away. The wicked rattle of
the drum aroused in me a passionate desire to destroy
something, to break down the fence, to hit other boys.
When they were resting, the soldiers used to give me
a treat by teaching me how to signal and by showing
me their heavy guns. Sometimes one of them would
stick his bayonet into my stomach and cry, with a pre-
tense of anger:

"Stick the cockroach!"

The bayonet gleamed; it looked as if it were alive,
and seemed to wind about like a snake about to coil
itself up. It was rather terrifying, but more pleas-
ant.

The Mordovan drummer taught me to strike the
drum with my fingers. At first he used to take me
by the wrist, and, moving them so that he hurt me,
would thrust the sticks into my crushed fingers.

"Hit it — one, two-one-tw-o-o ! Rum te — tum!
Beat it — left — softly, right — loudly, rum te — !" he
shouted threateningly, opening wide his bird-like eyes.

I used to run about the field with the soldiers, almost
to the end of the drill, and after it was finished, I used

IN THE WORLD 177

to escort them across the town to the barracks, listen-
ing to their loud songs, looking into their kind faces,
all as new as five-ruble pieces just coined. The close-
packed mass of happy men passing up the streets in one
united body aroused a feeling of friendliness in me, a
desire to throw myself in among them as into a river,
to enter into them as into a forest. These men were
frightened of nothing; they could conquer anything;
they were capable of anything; they could do anything
they liked; and they were all simple and good.

But one day during the time they were resting a
young non-commissioned ofBcer gave me a fat cigar-
ette.

"Smoke this! I would not give them to any one.
In fact I hardly like to give you one, my dear boy, they
are so good."

I smoked it. He moved away a few steps, and sud-
denly a red flame blinded me, burning my fingers, my
nose, my eyebrows. A gray, acrid smoke made me
splutter and cough. Blinded, terrified, I stamped on
the ground, and the soldiers, who had formed a ring
around me, laughed loudly and heartily. I ran away
home. Whistles and laughter followed me; some-
thing cracked like a shepherd's whip. My burned
fingers hurt me, my face smarted, tears flowed from
my eyes; but it was not the pain which oppressed me,
only a heavy, dull amazement. Why should this
amuse these good fellows?

When I reached home I climbed up to the attic and
sat there a long time brooding over this inexplicable

178 IN THE WORLD

cruelty which stood so repulsively in my path. I had
a peculiarly clear and vivid memory of the little sol-
dier from Sarapulia standing before me, as large as life,
and saying:

"Well, do you understand*?"

Soon I had to go through something still more de-
pressing and disgusting.

I had begun to run about in the barracks of the Cos-
sacks, which stood near the Pecherski Square. The
Cossacks seemed different from the soldiers, not because
they rode so skilfully oh horseback and were dressed
more beautifully, but because they spoke in a different
way, sang different songs, and danced beautifully. In
the evening, after they had seen to their horses, they
used to gather in a ring near the stables, and a little
red-haired Cossack, shaking his tufts of hair, sang
softly in a high-pitched voice, like a trumpet. The
long-drawn-out, sad song flowed out upon the Don and
the blue Dounia. His eyes were closed, like the eyes
of a linnet, which often sings till it falls dead from the
branch to the ground. The collar of his Cossack shirt
was undone. His collar-bone was visible, looking like
a copper band. In fact, he was altogether metallic,
coppery. Swaying on his thin legs, as if the earth un-
der him were rocking, spreading out his hands, he
seemed sightless, but full of sound. He, as it were,
ceased to be a man, and became a brass instrument.
Sometimes it seemed to me that he was falling, that he
would fall on his back to the ground, and die like the

IN THE WORLD 179

linnet, because he put into the song all his soul and
all his strength.

With their hands in their pockets or behind their
broad backs, his comrades stood round in a ring, sternly-
looking at his brassy face. Beating time with their
hands, softly spitting into space, they joined in ear-
nestly, softly, as if they were in the choir in church.
All of them, bearded and shaven, looked like icons,
stern and set apart from other people. The song was
long, like a long street, and as level, as broad and as
wide. When I listened to him I forgot everything
else, whether it was day or night upon the earth,
whether I was an old man or a little boy. Everything
else was forgotten. The voice of the singer died away.
The sighs of the horses were audible as they grieved
for their native steppes, and gently, but surely, the
autumn night crept up from the fields. My heart
swelled and almost burst with a multitude of extraor-
dinary feelings, and a great, speechless love for human
creatures and the earth.

The little copper-colored Cossack seemed to me to
be no man, but something much more significant — a
legendary being, better and on a higher plane than or-
dinary people. I could not talk to him. When he
asked me a question I smiled blissfully and remained
shyly silent. I was ready to follow him anywhere,
silently and humbly, like a dog. All I wanted was to
see him often, and to hear him sing.

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN the snows came, grandfather once more
took me to grandmother's sister.

"It will do you no harm," he said to me.

I seemed to have had a wonderful lot of experience
during the summer. I felt that I had grown older and
cleverer, and the dullness of my master's house seemed
worse than ever. They fell ill as often as ever, up-
setting their stomachs with offensive poisons, and giv-
ing one another detailed accounts of the progress of
their illnesses. The old woman prayed to God in the
same terrible and malignant way. The young mis-
tress had grown thin, but she moved about just as
pompously and slowly as when she was expecting her
child. When she stitched at the baby-clothes she al-
ways sang the same song softly to herself:

"Spiria, Spiria, Spiridon,
Spiria, my little brother,
I will sit in the sledge myself
And Spiria on the foot-board."

If any one went into the room she left off singing
at once and cried angrily:

"What do you want*?"

I fully believed that she knew no other song but that.

In the evenings they used to call me into the sitting-
room, and the order was given:

i8o

IN THE WORLD 181

"Now tell us how you lived on the boat."

I sat on a chair near the door and spoke. I liked
to recall a different life from this which I was forced
to lead against my will. I was so interested that I for-
got my audience, but not for long.

The women, who had never been on a boat, asked
me:

"But it was very alarming, was n't it*?"

I did not understand. Why should it be alarm-
ing?

"Why, the boat might go down any moment, and
every one would be drowned."

The master burst out laughing, and I, although I
knew that boats did not sink just because there were
deep places, could not convince the women. The old
woman was certain that the boat did not float on the
water, but went along on wheels on the bottom of the
river, like a cart on dry land.

"If they are made of iron, how can they float? An
ax will not float; no fear!"

"But a scoop does not sink in the water."

"There 's a comparison to make ! A scoop is a
small thing, nothing to speak of."

When I spoke of Smouri and his books they re-
garded me with contempt. The old lady said that
only fools and heretics wrote books.

"What about the Psalms and King David?"

"The Psalms are sacred writings, and King David
prayed God to forgive him for writing the Psalms."

"Where does it say so?"

i82 IN THE WORLD

"In the palms of my hands; that 's where! When
I get hold of you by the neck you will learn
where."

She knew everything; she spoke on all subjects with
conviction and always savagely.

"A Tatar died on the Pechorka, and his soul came
out of his mouth as black as tar."

"Soul? Spirit*?" I said, but she cried contemp-
tuously :

"Of a Tatar! Fool!"

The young mistress was afraid of books, too.

"It is very injurious to read books, and especially
when you are young," she said. "At home, at Gre-
beshka, there was a young girl of good family who
read and read, and the end of it was that she fell in
love with the deacon, and the deacon's wife so shamed
her that it was terrible to see. In the street, before
everybody."

Sometimes I used words out of Smouri's books, in
one of which, one without beginning or end, was
written, "Strictly speaking, no one person really in-
vented powder; as is always the case, it appeared at
the end of a long series of minor observations and
discoveries." I do not know why I remembered these
words so well. What I liked best of all was the join-
ing of two phrases, "strictly speaking, no one person
really invented powder." I was aware of force under-
lying them ; but they brought me sorrow, ludicrous sor-
row. It happened thus.

One day when my employers proposed that I should

IN THE WORLD 183

tell them about something which had happened on the
boat I answered:

"I have n't anything left to tell, strictly speaking."

This amazed them. They cried:

"What? What 's that you said?'

And all four began to laugh in a friendly fashion,
repeating :

"'Strictly speaking,' — ah. Lord I"

Even the master said to me :

"You have thought that out badly, old fellow."

And for a long time after that they used to call
me:

"Hi, 'strictly speaking,' come here and wipe up the
floor after the baby, strictly speaking."

This stupid banter did not offend, but it greatly sur-
prised, me. I lived in a fog of stupefying grief, and
I worked hard in order to fight against it. I did not
feel my inefficiencies when I was at work. In the
house were two young children. The nurses never
pleased the mistresses, and were continually being
changed. I had to wait upon the children, to wash
baby-clothes every day, and every week I had to go
to the Jandarmski Fountain to rinse the linen. Here
I was derided by the washerwomen:

"Why are you doing women's work?"

Sometimes they worked me up to such a pitch that
I slapped them with the wet, twisted linen. They
paid me back generously for this, but I found them
merry and interesting.

The Jandarmski Fountain ran along the bottom of

i84 IN THE WORLD

a deep causeway and fell into the Oka. The cause-
way cut the town off from the field which was called,
from the name of an ancient god, Yarilo. On that
field, near Semika, the inhabitants of the town had
made a promenade. Grandmother had told me that in
the days of her youth people still believed in Yarilo
and offered sacrifices to him. They took a wheel, cov-
ered it with tarred tow, and let it roll down the hill
with cries and songs, watching to see if the burning
wheel would roll as far as the Oka. If it did, the god
Yarilo had accepted the sacrifice; the summer would
be sunny and happy.

The washerwomen were for the most part from
Yarilo, bold, headstrong women who had the life of
the town at their finger-ends. It was very interesting
to hear their tales of the merchants, chinovniks^ and
officers for whom they worked. To rinse the linen in
winter in the icy water of the river was work for a
galley-slave. All the women had their hands so frost-
bitten that the skin was broken. Bending over the
stream, inclosed in a wooden trough, under an old
penthouse full of crevices, which was no protection
against either wind or snow, the women rinsed the
linen. Their faces were flushed, pinched by the frost.
The frost burned their wet fingers ; they could not bend
them. Tears trickled from their eyes, but they chatted
all the time, telling one another different stories,
bearing themselves with a peculiar bravery toward
every one and everything.

The best of all the stories were told by Natalia Koz-

IN THE WORLD 185

lovski, a woman of about thirty, fresh-faced, strong,
with laughing eyes and a peculiarly facile and sharp
tongue. All her companions had a high regard for
her; she was consulted on all sorts of affairs, and much
admired for her skill in work, for the neatness of her
attire, and because she had been able to send her daugh-
ter to the high school. When, bending under the
weight of two baskets of wet linen, she came down the
hill on the slippery footpath, they greeted her gladly,
and asked solicitously:

"Well, and how is the daughter*?"

"Very well, thank you; she is learning well, thank
God!"

"Look at that now I She will be a lady."

"That 's why I am having her taught. Where do
the ladies with the painted faces come from^ They
all come from us, from the black earth. And where
else should they come from^ He who has the most
knowledge has the longest arms and can take more,
and the one who takes the most has the honor and
glory. God sends us into the world as stupid children
and expects to take us back as wise old people, which
means that we must learn!"

When she spoke every one was silent, listening at-
tentively to her fluent, self-confident speech. They
praised her to her face and behind her back, amazed
at her cleverness, her intellect ; but no one tried to imi-
tate her. She had sewn brown leather from the leg of
a boot, over the sleeve of her bodice which saved her
from the necessity of baring her arms to the elbow, and

i86 IN THE WORLD

prevented her sleeves from getting v^et. They all
said what a good idea it was, but not one of them
followed her example. When I did so they laughed
at me.

''Ekh, you ! Letting a woman teach you !"
With reference to her daughter she said:
"That is an important affair. There will be one
more young lady in the world. Is that a small thing^
But of course she may not be able to finish her studies ;
she may die. And it is not an easy life for those who
are students, you see. There was that daughter of
the Bakhilovs. She studied and studied, and even be-
came a teacher herself. Once you become a teacher,
you know, you are settled for life."

"Of course, if they marry, they can do without edu-
cation; that is, if they have something else to recom-
mend them."

"A woman's wit lies not in her head."
It was strange and embarrassing to hear them speak
about themselves with such lack of reticence. I knew
how sailors, soldiers, and tillers of the soil spoke about
women. I heard men always boasting among them-
selves of their skill in deceiving women, of cunning
in their relations with them. I felt that their attitude
toward "females" was hostile, but generally there was
a ring of something in these boastings which led me
to suppose that these stories were merely brag, in-
ventions, and not the truth.

The washerwomen did not tell one another about
their love adventures, but in whatever they said about

IN THE WORLD 187

men I detected an undercurrent of derision, of malice,
and I thought it might be true that woman was
strength.

"Even when they don't go about among their fel-
lows and make friends, they come to women, every one
of them!" said Natalia one day, and an old woman
cried to her in a rheumy voice:

"And to whom else should they go^ Even from
God monks and hermits come to us."

These conversations amid the weeping splash of the
water, the slapping of wet clothes on the ground, or
against the dirty chinks, which not even the snow could
hide with its clean cover — these shameless, malicious
conversations about secret things, about that from
which all races and peoples have sprung, roused in me
a timid disgust, forced my thoughts and feelings to
fix themselves on "the romances" which surrounded and
irritated me. For me the understanding of the "ro-
mances" was closely intertwined with representations
of obscure, immoral stories.

However, whether I was with the washerwomen, or
in the kitchen with the orderlies or in cellars where
lived the field laborers, I found it much more inter-
esting than to be at home, where the stilted conversa-
tions were always on the same lines, where the same
things happened over and over again, arousing noth-
ing but a feeling of constraint and embittered bore-
dom. My employers dwelt within the magic circle of
food, illness, sleep, and the anxieties attendant on pre-
paring for eating and sleeping. They spoke of sin

i88 IN THE WORLD

and of death, of which they were much afraid. They
rubbed against one another as grains of corn are rubbed
against the grindstone, which they expect every mo-
ment to crush them. In my free time I used to go
into the shed to chop wood, desiring to be alone. But
that rarely happened. The orderlies used to come and
talk about the news of the yard.

Ermokhin and Sidorov came more often than the
others. The former was a long, bow-backed Kalou-
gan, with thick, strong veins all over him, a small head,
and dull eyes. He was lazy and irritatingly stupid;
he moved slowly and clumsily, and when he saw a
woman he blinked and bent forward, just as if he were
going to throw himself at her feet. All the yard was
amazed by his swift conquest of the cooks and the
maids, and envied him. They were all afraid of his
bear-like strength. Sidorov, a lean, bony native of
Tula, was always sad, spoke softly, and loved to gaze
into dark corners. He would relate some incident in
a low voice, or sit in silence, looking into the darkest
corner.

"What are you looking at?"

"I thought I saw a mouse running about. I love
mice ; they run to and fro so quietly."

I used to write letters home for these orderlies —
love-letters. I liked this, but it was pleasariter to
write letters for Sidorov than for any of the others.
Every Saturday regularly he sent a letter to his sister
at Tula.

He invited me into his kitchen, sat down beside me

IN THE WORLD 189

at the table, and, rubbing his close-cropped hair hard,
whispered in my ear :

"Well, go on. Begin it as it ought to be begun.
'My dearest sister, may you be in good health for
many years' — you know how it ought to go. And now
write, *I received the ruble; only you need not have
sent it. But I thank you. I want for nothing; we
live well here.' As a matter of fact, we do not live
at all well, but like dogs; but there is no need to write
that. Write that we live well. She is little, only
fourteen years old. Why should she know? Now
write by yourself, as you have been taught."

He pressed upon me from the left side, breathing
into my ear hotly and odorously, and whispered per-
severingly :

"Write 'if any one speaks tenderly to you, you are
not to believe him. He wants to deceive you, and ruin
you.' "

His face was flushed by his effort to keep back a
cough. Tears stood in his eyes. He leaned on the
table and pushed against me.

"You are hindering me !"

"It is all right; go on I 'Above all, never believe
gentlemen. They will lead a girl wrong the first time
they see her. They know exactly what to say. And
if you have saved any money, give it to the priest to
keep for you, if he is a good man. But the best thing,
is to bury it in the ground, and remember the spot.' "

It was miserable work trying to listen to this whis-

190 IN THE WORLD

per, which was drowned by the squeaking of the tin
ventilator in the fortochka, I looked at the black-
ened front of the stove, at the china cupboard covered
with flies. The kitchen was certainly very dirty, over-
run with bugs, redolent with an acrid smell of burnt
fat, kerosene, and smoke. On the stove, among the
sticks of wood, cockroaches crawled in and out. A
sense of melancholy stole over my heart. I could have
cried with pity for the soldier and his sister. Was it
possible, was it right that people should live like this?

I wrote something, no longer listening to Sidorov's
whisper. I wrote of the misery and repulsiveness of
life, and he said to me, sighing:

"You have written a lot; thank you. Now she
will know what she has to be afraid of."

"There is nothing for her to be afraid of," I said
angrily, although I was afraid of many things myself.

The soldier laughed, and cleared his throat.

"What an oddity you are! How is there nothing
to be afraid of? What about gentlemen, and God?
Isn't that something?"

When he received a letter from his sister he said
restlessly :

"Read it, please. Be quick!"

And he made me read the badly scrawled, insult-
ingly short, and nonsensical letter three times.

He was good and kind, but he behaved toward
women like all the others; that is, with the primitive
coarseness of an animal. Willingly and unwillingly,
as I observed these affairs, which often went on under

IN THE WORLD 191

my eyes, beginning and ending with striking and im-
pure swiftness, I saw Sidorov arouse in the breast of a
woman a kind feeling of pity for him in his soldier's
life, then intoxicate her with tender lies, and then tell
Ermokhin of his conquest, frowning and spitting his
disgust, just as if he had been taking some bitter medi-
cine. This made my heart ache, and I angrily asked
the soldiers why they all deceived women, lied to
them, and then, jeering among themselves at the
woman they had treated so, gave her away and often
beat her.

One of them laughed softly, and said :

"It is not necessary for you to know anything about
such things. It is all very bad; it is sin. You are
young; it is too early for you."

But one day I obtained a more definite answer,
which I have always remembered.

"Do you think that she does not know that I am
deceiving her^" he said, blinking and coughing. "She
kno-o-ows. She wants to be deceived. Everybody
lies in such affairs ; they are a disgrace to all concerned.
There is no love on either side; it is simply an amuse-
ment. It is a dreadful disgrace. Wait, and you will
know for yourself. It was for that God drove them
out of paradise, and from that all unhappiness has
come."

He spoke so well, so sadly, and so penitently that he
reconciled me a little to these "romances." I began
to have a more friendly feeling toward him than to-
wards Ermokhin, whom I hated, and seized every oc-

192 IN THE WORLD

casion of mocking and teasing. I succeeded in this,
and he often pursued me across the yard with some evil
design, which only his clumsiness prevented him from
executing.

"It is forbidden," went on Sidorov, speaking of
women.

That it was forbidden I knew, but that it was the
cause of human unhappiness I did not believe. I
saw that people were unhappy, but I did not believe
what he said, because I sometimes saw an extraordi-
nary expression in the eyes of people in love, and was
aware of a peculiar tenderness in those who loved. To
witness this festival of the heart was always pleasant
to me.

However, I remember that life seemed to me to
grow more and more tedious, cruel, fixed for ever in
those forms of it which I saw from day to day. I did
not dream of anything better than that which passed
interminably before my eyes.

But one day the soldiers told me a story which
stirred me deeply. In one of the flats lived a cutter-
out, employed by the best tailor in the town, a quiet,
meek foreigner. He had a little, childless wife who
read books all day long. Over the noisy yard, amid
houses full of drunken people, these two lived, invisi-
ble and silent. They had no visitors, and never went
anywhere themselves except to the theater in holiday-
time.

The husband was engaged from early morning until
late at night. The wife, who looked like an under-

IN THE WORLD 193

sized girl, went to the library twice a week. I often
saw her walking with a limp, as if she were slightly
lame, as far as the dike, carrying books in a strap, like
a school-girl. She looked unaffected, pleasant, new,
clean, with gloves on her small hands. She had a face
like a bird, with little quick eyes, and everything
about her was pretty, like a porcelain figure on a man-
tel-shelf. The soldiers said that she had some ribs
missing in her left side, and that was what made her
sway so curiously as she walked; but I thought this
very nice, and at once set her above all the other
ladies in the yard — the officers' wives. The latter,
despite their loud voices, their variegated attire, and
haut tournure^ had a soiled look about them, as if they
had been lying forgotten for a long time, in a dark
closet among other unneeded things.

The little wife of the cutter-out was regarded in
the yard as half witted. It was said that she had lost
her senses over books, and had got into such a con-
dition that she could not manage the housekeeping;
that her husband had to go to the market himself in
search of provisions, and order the dinner and supper
of the cook, a great, huge foreign female. She had
only one red eye, which was always moist, and a nar-
row pink crevice in place of the other. She was like
her mistress, they said of her. She did not know how
to cook a dish of fried veal and onions properly, and
one day she ignominiously bought radishes, thinking
she was buying parsley. Just think what a dreadful
thing that was I

194 IN THE WORLD

All three were aliens in the building, as if they
had fallen by accident into one of the compartments
of a large hen-house. They reminded me of a tit-
mouse which, taking refuge from the frost, flies through
the fortochka into a stifling and dirty habitation of
man.

And then the orderlies told me how the officers had
played an insulting and wicked trick on the tailor's lit-
tle wife. They took turns to write her a letter every
day, declaring their love for her, speaking of their suf-
ferings and of her beauty. She answered them, begging
them to leave her in peace, regretting that she had been
the cause of unhappiness to any one, and praying God
that He would help them to give up loving her. When
any one of them received a letter like that, they used
to read it all together, and then make up another let-
ter to her, signed by a different person.

When they told me this story, the orderlies laughed
too, and abused the lady.

"She is a wretched fool, the crookback," said
Ermokhin in a bass voice, and Sidorov softly agreed
with him.

"Whatever a woman is, she likes being deceived.
She knows all about it."

I did not believe that the wife of the cutter-out
knew that they were laughing at her, and I resolved
at once to tell her about it. I watched for the cook
to go down into the cellar, and I ran up the dark
staircase to the flat of the little woman, and slipped
into the kitchen. It was empty. I went on to the

IN THE WORLD 195

sitting-room. The tailor's wife was sitting at the
table. In one hand she held a heavy gold cup, and
in the other an open book. She was startled. Press-
ing the book to her bosom, she cried in a low voice :

"Who is that^ Angus te ! Who are you^"

I began to speak quickly and confusedly, expecting
every minute that she would throw the book at me.
She was sitting in a large, raspberry-colored arm-
chair, dressed in a pale-blue wrap with a fringe at
the hem and lace on the collar and sleeves over her
shoulders was spread her flaxen, wavy hair. She
looked like an angel from the gates of heaven. Lean-
ing against the back of her chair, she looked at me
with round eyes, at first angrily, then in smiling sur-
prise.

When I had said what I wanted to say, and, losing
my courage, turned to the door, she cried after me :

"Wait!"

Placing the cup on the tray, throwing the book on
the table, and folding her hands, she said in a husky,
grown-up voice:

"What a funny boy you are ! Come closer I"

I approached very cautiously. She took me by the
hand, and, stroking it with her cold, small fingers,
said :

"Are you sure that no one sent you to tell me this?
No*? All right; I see that you thought of it your-
self."

Letting my hand go, she closed her eyes, and said
softly and drawingly:

196 IN THE WORLD

"So that is how the soldiers speak of me*?"

"Leave this place," I advised her earnestly.

"Why?'

"They will get the better of you/'

She laughed pleasantly. Then she asked :

"Do you study ^ Are you fond of books?"

"I have no time for reading."

"If you were fond of it, you would find the time.
Well, thank you."

She held out a piece of silver money to me, grasped
between her first finger and her thumb. I felt ashamed
to take that cold thing from her, but I did not dare
to refuse. As I went out, I laid it on the pedestal of
the stair-banisters.

I took away with me a deep, new impression from
that woman. It was as if a new day had dawned for
me. I lived for several days in a state of joy, think-
ing of the spacious room and the tailor's wife sitting
in it, dressed in pale blue and looking like an angel.
Everything around her was unfamiliarly beautiful. A
dull-gold carpet lay under her feet; the winter day
looked through the silver panes of the window, warm-
ing itself in her presence. I wanted very much to
look at her again. How would it be if I went to
her and asked her for a book*?

I acted upon this idea. Once more I saw her in
the same place, also with a book in her hand; but she
had a red handkerchief tied round her face, and her
eyes were swollen. As she gave me a book with a
black binding, she indistinctly called out something.

IN THE WORLD 197

I went away feeling sad, carrying the book, which
smelt of creosote and aniseed drops. I hid it in the
attic, wrapping it up in a clean shirt and some paper;
for I was afraid that my employers might find it and
spoil it.

They used to take the "Neva" for the sake of the
patterns and prizes, but they never read it. When
they had looked at the pictures, they put it away in
a cupboard in the bedroom, and at the end of the year
they had been bound, placing them under the bed,
where already lay three volumes of "The Review of
Painting." When I washed the floor in the bedroom
dirty water flowed under these books. The master
subscribed to the "Russian Courier," but when he read
it in the evening he grumbled at it.

"What the devil do they want to write all this for*?
Such dull stuff!"

On Saturday, when I was putting away the linen
in the attic, I remembered about the book. I undid
it from its wrappings, and read the first lines:
"Houses are like people; they all have physiognomies
of their own." The truth of this surprised me, and I
went on reading farther, standing at the dormer-win-
dow until I was too cold to stay longer. But in the
evening, when they had gone to vespers, I carried the
book into the kitchen and buried myself in the yellow,
worn pages, which were like autumn leaves. Without
effort, they carried me into another life, with new
names and new standards, showed me noble heroes,
gloomy villains, quite unlike the people with whom

198 IN THE WORLD

I had to do. This was a novel by Xavier de Monte-
paine. It was long, like all his novels, simply packed
with people and incidents, describing an unfamiliar,
vehement life. Everything in this novel was won-
derfully clear and simple, as if a mellow light hid-
den between the lines illuminated the good and evil.
It helped one to love and hate, compelling one to
follow with intense interest the fates of the people, who
seemed so inextricably entangled. I was seized with
sudden desires to help this person, to hinder that, for-
getting that this life, which had so unexpectedly
opened before me, had its existence only on paper. I
forgot everything else in the exciting struggles. I was
swallowed up by a feeling of joy on one page, and
by a feeling of grief on the next.

I read until I heard the bell ring in the front hall.
I knew at once who it was that was ringing, and why.

The candle had almost burned out. The candle-
stick, which I had cleaned only that morning, was
covered with grease; the wick of the lamp, which I
ought to have looked after, had slipped out of its
place, and the flame had gone out. I rushed about the
kitchen trying to hide the traces of my crime. I
slipped the book under the stove-hole, and began to
put the lamp to rights. The nurse caine running out
of the sitting-room.

"Are you deaf? They have rung I"

I rushed to open the door.

"Were you asleep?" asked the master roughly.
His wife, mounting the stairs heavily, complained that

IN THE WORLD 199

she had caught cold. The old lady scolded me. In
the kitchen she noticed the burned-out candle at once,
and began to ask me what I had been doing. I said
nothing. I had only just come down from the
heights, and I was all to pieces with fright lest they
should find the book. She cried out that I would set
the house on fire. When the master and his wife
came down to supper she complained to them.

* 'There, you see, he has let the candle gutter, he
will set the house on fire."

W^hile they were at supper the whole four of them
lashed me with their tongues, reminding me of all my
crimes, wilful and involuntary, threatening me with
perdition; but I knew quite well that they were all
speaking not from ill-feeling, or for my good, but
simply because they were bored. And it was curious
to observe how empty and foolish they were compared
with the people in books.

When they had finished eating, they grew heavy,
and went wearily to bed. The old woman, after dis-
turbing God with her angry complaints, settled her-
self on the stove and was silent. Then I got up,
took the book from the stove-hole, and went to the
window. It was a bright night, and the moon looked
straight into the window ; but my sight was not good
enough to see the small print. My desire to read was
tormenting me. I took a brass saucepan from the
shelf and reflected the light of the moon from it on
the book; but it became still more difficult and blurred.
Then I betook myself to the bench in the corner where

200 IN THE WORLD

the icon was, and, standing upon it, began to read by
the light of the small lamp. But I was very tired,
and dozed, sinking down on the bench. I was awak-
ened by the cries and blows of the old woman. She
was hitting me painfully over the shoulders with the
book, which she held in her hand. She was red with
rage, furiously tossing her brown head, barefooted,
and wearing only her night-dress. Victor roared from
the loft:

"Mamasha, don't make such a noise! You make
life unbearable."

"She has found the book. She will tear it up!" I
thought.

My trial took place at breakfast-time. The master
asked me, sternly:

"Where did you get that book?"

The women exclaimed, interrupting each other.
Victor sniffed contemptuously at the pages and said:

"Good gracious! what does it smell of?"

Learning that the book belonged to the priest, they
looked at it again, surprised and indignant that the
priest should read novels. However, this seemed to
calm them down a little, though the master gave me
another long lecture to the effect that reading was both
injurious and dangerous.

"It is the people who read books who rob trains and
even commit murders."

The mistress cried out, angry and terrified :

"Have you gone out of your mind? What do you
want to say such things to him for?"

IN THE WORLD 201

I took Montepaine to the soldier and told him what
had happened. Sidorov took the book, opened a small
trunk, took out a clean towel, and, wrapping the novel
in it, hid it in the trunk.

"Don't you take any notice of them. Come and
read here. I shan't tell any one. And if you come
when I am not here, you will find the key hanging be-
hind the icon. Open the trunk and read."

The attitude my employers had taken with regard
to the book raised it to the height of an important and
terrible secret in my mind. That some "readers" had
robbed a train or tried to murder some one did not
interest me, but I remembered the question the priest
had asked me in confession, the reading of the gym-
nasiast in the basement, the words of Smouri, the
"proper books," and grandfather's stories of the black
books of freemasonry. He had said:

"In the time of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich
of blessed memory the nobles took up the study of
'black books' and freemasonry. They planned to hand
over the whole Russian people to the Pope of Rome,
if you please! But General Arakcheev caught them
in the act, and, without regard to their position, sent
them all to Siberia, into prison. And there they were ;
exterminated like vermin."

I remembered the ''umbra'' of Smouri' s book and
"Gervase" and the solemn, comical words:

Profane ones who are curious to know our business,
Never shall your weak eyes spy it out !

202 IN THE WORLD

I felt that I was on the threshold of the discovery
of some great secret, and went about like a lunatic.
I wanted to finish reading the book, and was afraid
that the soldier might lose it or spoil it somehow.
What should I say to the tailor's wife then^

The old woman watched me sharply to see that I
did not run to the orderly's room, and taunted me :

* 'Bookworm! Books! They teach dissoluteness.
Look at that woman, the bookish one. She can't even
go to market herself. All she can do is to carry on with
the officers. She receives them in the daytime. I
kno-o-w."

I wanted to cry, "That's not true. She does not
carry on," but I was afraid to defend the tailor's wife,
for then the old woman might guess that the book was
hers.

I had a desperately bad time of it for several days.
I was distracted and worried, and could not sleep for
fear that Montepaine had come to grief. Then one
day the cook belonging to the tailor's household
stopped me in the yard and said :

"You are to bring back that book."

I chose the time after dinner, when my employers
lay down to rest, and appeared before the tailor's wife
embarrassed and crushed. She looked now as she had
the first time, only she was dressed differently. She
wore a gray skirt and a black velvet blouse, with a
turquoise cross upon her bare neck. She looked like
a hen bullfinch. When I told her that I had not had
time to read the book, and that I had been forbidden

IN THE WORLD 203

to read, tears filled my eyes. They were caused by
mortification, and by joy at seeing this woman.

'Too I what stupid people I" she said, drawing her
fine brows together. "And your master has such an
interesting face, too I Don't you fret about it. I will
write to him."

"You must not! Don't write I" I begged her.
"They will laugh at you and abuse you. Don't you
know that no one in the yard likes you, that they all
laugh at you, and say that you are a fool, and that
some of your ribs are missing?"

As soon as I had blurted this out I knew that I had
said something unnecessary and insulting to her. She
bit her lower lip, and clapped her hands on her hips
as if she were riding on horseback. I hung my head
in confusion and wished that I could sink into the
earth; but she sank into a chair and laughed merrily,
saying over and over again:

"Oh, how stupid I how stupid! Well, what is to
be done?" she asked, looking fixedly at me. Then she
sighed and said, "You are a strange boy, very strange."

Glancing into the mirror beside her, I saw a face
with high cheek-bones and a short nose, a large bruise
on the forehead, and hair, which had not been cut for a
long time, sticking out in all directions. That is what
she called "a strange boy." The strange boy was not
in the least like a fine porcelain figure.

"You never took the money that I gave you.
Why?"

"I did not want it."

204 IN THE WORLD

She sighed.

"Well, what is to be done*? If they will allow you
to read, come to me and I will give you some books."

On the mantel-shelf lay three books. The one
which I had brought back was the thickest. I looked
at it sadly. The tailor's wife held out her small, pink
hand to me.

"Well, good-by!"

I touched her hand timidly, and went away quickly.

It was certainly true what they said about her not
knowing anything. Fancy calling two grevines
money! It was just like a child.

But it pleased me.

CHAPTER IX

I HAVE sad and ludicrous reasons for remember-
ing the burdensome humiliations, insults, and
alarms which my swiftly developed passion for read-
ing brought me.

The books of the tailor's wife looked as if they were
terribly expensive, and as I was afraid that the old
mistress might burn them in the stove, I tried not to
think of them, and began to buy small colored books
from the shop where I bought bread in the mornings.

The shopkeeper was an ill-favored fellow with thick
lips. He was given to sweating, had a white, wizen
face covered with scrofulous scars and pimples, and his
eyes were white. He had short, clumsy fingers on
puffy hands. His shop took the place of an evening
club for grown-up people; also for the thoughtless
young girls living in the street. My master's brother
used to go there every evening to drink beer and play
cards. I was often sent to call him to supper, and
more than once I saw, in the small, stuffy room behind
the shop, the capricious, rosy wife of the shopkeeper sit-
ting on the knee of Victorushka or some other young
fellow. Apparently this did not offend the shop-
keeper ; nor was he offended when his sister, who helped
him in the shop, warmly embraced the drunken men,

205

2o6 IN THE WORLD

or soldiers, or, in fact any one who took her fancy.
The business done at the shop was small. He ex-
plained this by the fact that it was a new business, al-
though the shop had been open since the autumn. He
showed obscene pictures to his guests and customers,
allowing those who wished to copy the disgraceful
verses beneath them.

I read the foolish little books of Mischa Evstignev,
paying so many copecks for the loan of them. This
was dear, and the books afforded me no pleasure at all.
"Guyak, or, the Unconquerable Truth," "Franzl, the
Venitian," "The Battle of the Russians with the Ka-
bardines," or "The Beautiful Mahomedan Girl, Who
Died on the Grave of her Husband," — all that kind of
literature did not interest me either, and often aroused
a bitter irritation. The books seemed to be laughing
at me, as at a fool, when they told in dull words such
improbable stories.

"The Marksmen," "Youri Miloslavski," "Monks'
Secrets," "Yapacha, the Tatar Freebooter," and such
books I like better. I was the richer for reading them;
but what I liked better than all was the lives of the
saints. Here was something serious in which I could
believe, and which at times deeply stirred me. All
the martyrs somehow reminded me of "Good Business,"
and the female martyrs of grandmother, and the holy
men of grandfather in his best moments.

I used to read in the shed when I went there to
chop wood, or in the attic, which was equally uncom-
fortable and cold. Sometimes, if a book interested me

IN THE WORLD 207

or I had to read it quickly, I used to get up in the night
and light the candle; but the old mistress, noticing
that my candle had grown smaller during the night,
began to measure the candles with a piece of wood,
which she hid away somewhere. In the morning, if
my candle was not as long as the measure, or if I, hav-
ing found the measure, had not broken it to the length
of the burned candle, a wild cry arose from the kitchen.
Sometimes Victorushka called out loudly from the loft :

"Leave off that howling, Mamasha! You make
life unbearable. Of course he burns the candles, be-
cause he reads books. He gets them from the shop.
I know. Just look among his things in the attic."

The old woman ran up to the attic, found a book,
and burned it to ashes.

This made me very angry, as you may imagine, but
my love of reading increased. I understood that if a
saint had entered that household, my employers would
have set to work to teach him, tried to set him to their
own tune. They would have done this for something
to do. If they had left off judging people, scolding
them, jeering at them, they would have forgotten how
to talk, would have been stricken with dumbness, and
would not have been themselves at all. When a man
is aware of himself, it must be through his relations
with other people. My employers could not behave
themselves toward those about them otherwise than as
teachers, always ready to condemn; and if they had
taught somebody to live exactly as they lived them-
selves, to think and feel in the same way, even then

2o8 IN THE WORLD

they would have condemned him for that very rea-
son. They were that sort of people.

I continued to read on the sly. The old woman de-
stroyed books several times, and I suddenly found my-
self in debt to the shopkeeper for the enormous
amount of forty-seven copecks. He demanded the
money, and threatened to take it from my employers'
money when they sent me to make purchases.

"What would happen then?" he asked jeeringly.

To me he was unbearably repulsive. Apparently
he felt this, and tortured me with various threats from
which he derived a peculiar enjoyment. When I went
into the shop his pimply face broadened, and he would
ask gently :

"Have you brought your debt*?"

"No."

This startled him. He frowned.

"How is that? Am I supposed to give you things
out of charity? I shall have to get it from you by
sending you to the reformatory."

I had no way of getting the money, my wages were
paid to grandfather. I lost my presence of mind.
What would happen to me? And in answer to my
entreaty that he wait for settlement of the debt, the
shopkeeper stretched out his oily, puffy hand, like a
bladder, and said:

"Kiss my hand and I will wait."

But when I seized a weight from the counter and
brandished it at him, he ducked and cried :

IN THE WORLD 209

"What are you doing*? What are you doing? I
was only joking."

Knowing well that he was not joking, I resolved
to steal the money to get rid of him. In the morning
when I was brushing the master's clothes, money
jingled in his trousers' pockets, and sometimes it fell
out and rolled on the floor. Once some rolled into a
crack in the boards under the staircase. I forgot to
say anything about this, and remembered it only sev-
eral days afterward when I found two greven between
the boards. When I gave it back to the master his
wife said to him :

"There, you see ! You ought to count your money
when you leave it in your pockets."

But my master, smiling at me, said:

"He would not steal, I know."

Now, having made up my mind to steal, I remem-
bered these words and his trusting smile, and felt how
hard it would be for me to rob him. Several times I
took silver out of the pockets and counted it, but I
could not take it. For three days I tormented myself
about this, and suddenly the whole affair settled itself
quickly and simply. The master asked me unexpect-
edly:

"What is the matter with you, Pyeshkov? You
have become dull lately. Are n't you well, or what?"

I frankly told him all my troubles. He frowned.

"Now you see what books lead to ! From them, in
some way or another, trouble always comes."

210 IN THE WORLD

He gave me half a ruble and admonished me
sternly :

"Now look here; don't you go telling my wife or my
mother, or there will be a row."

Then he smiled kindly and said :

"You are very persevering, devil take you ! Never
mind; it is a good thing. Anyhow, give up books.
When the New Year comes, I will order a good paper,
and you can read that."

And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-
time, I read aloud to my employers "The Moscow
Gazette," the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin, Rudin-
skovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of
people who suffered from deadly dullness.

I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from
understanding what I read. But my employers lis-
tened attentively, with a sort of reverential eagerness,
sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes, and say-
ing proudly to one another :

"And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know
nothing of such things, thank God I"

They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of
the famous brigand Churkin to the post-boy Thoma
Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I corrected
their mistakes they were surprised.

"What a memory he has !"

Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared
in "The Moscow Gazette." I was delighted with
them. I copied several of them into a note-book, but
my employers said of the poet:

IN THE WORLD 211

"He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry."
"A drunkard or an imbecile, it is all the same."

I liked the poetry of Strujkin, and the Count Me-
mento Mori, but both the women said the verses were
clumsy.

''Only the Petrushki or actors talk in verse."

It was a hard life for me on winter evenings, under
the eyes of my employers, in that close, small room.
The dead night lay outside the window, now and again
the ice cracked. The others sat at the table in silence,
like frozen iish. A snow-storm would rattle the win-
dows and beat against the walls, howl down the chim-
ney, and shake the flue-plate. The children cried in
the nursery. I wanted to sit by myself in a dark cor-
ner and howl like a wolf.

At one end of the table sat the women, knitting socks
or sewing. At the other sat Victorushka, stooping,
copying plans unwillingly, and from time to time call-
ing out :

"Don't shake the table ! Goats, dogs, mice !"

At the side, behind an enormous embroidery-frame,
sat the master, sewing a tablecloth in cross-stitch.
Under his fingers appeared red lobsters, blue fish, yel-
low butterflies, and red autumn leaves. He had made
the design himself, and had sat at the work for three
winters. He had grown very tired of it, and often
said to me in the daytime, when I had some spare time :

"Come along, Pyeshkov; sit down to the tablecloth
and do some of it!"

I sat down, and began to work with the thick needle.

212 IN THE WORLD

I was sorry for my master, and always did my best to
help him. I had an idea that one day he would give
up drawing plans, sewing, and playing at cards, and
begin doing something quite different, something in-
teresting, about which he often thought, throwing his
work aside and gazing at it with fixed, amazed eyes,
as at something unfamiliar to him. His hair fell over
his forehead and cheeks ; he looked like a laybrother in
a monastery.

"What are you thinking of?" his wife would ask
him.

"Nothing in particular," he would reply, returning
to his work.

I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a
man what he was thinking of. It was a question
which could not be answered. One's thoughts were
always sudden and many, about all that passed before
one's eyes, of what one saw yesterday or a year ago.
It was all mixed up together, elusive, constantly mov-
ing and changing.

The serial in "The Moscow Gazette" was not
enough to last the evening, and I went on to read the
journals which were put away under the bed in the
bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously:

"What do you find to read there? It is all pic-
tures."

But under the bed, besides the "Painting Review,"
lay also "Flames," and so we read "Count Tyatin-
Baltiski," by Saliass. The master took a great fancy
to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed merci-

IN THE WORLD 213

lessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the mel-
ancholy adventures of the hero, crying:

"Really, that is most amusing!"

"Piffle !" said the mistress to show her independence
of mind.

The literature under the bed did me a great service.
Through it, I had obtained the right to read the pa-
pers in the kitchen, and thus made it possible to read
at night.

To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the
nursery for the nurse had a drunken fit. Victorushka
did not interfere with me. As soon as the household
was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared
somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have
a light, for they took the candles into the bedrooms,
and I had no money to buy them for myself; so I be-
gan to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the
quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also
poured lamp oil, and, making a wick with some thread,
was able to make a smoky light. This I put on the
stove for the night.

When I turned the pages of the great volumes, the
bright red tongue of flame quivered agitatedly, the
wick was drowned in the burning, evil-smelling fat,
and the smoke made my eyes smart. But all this un-
pleasantness was swallowed up in the enjoyment with
which I looked at the illustrations and read the de-
scription of them. These illustrations opened up be-
fore me a world which increased daily in breadth — a
world adorned with towns, just like the towns of story-

214 IN THE WORLD

land. They showed me lofty hills and lovely sea-
shores. Life developed wonderfully for me. The
earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abound-
ing in towns and all kinds of things. Now when I
gazed into the distance beyond the Volga, I knew that
it was not space which lay beyond, but before that,
when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly mis-
erable. The meadows lay flat, bushes grew in clumps,
and where the meadows ended, rose the indented black
wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull,
cold blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place.
And my heart also was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped
it; all desires had departed, and I thought of nothing.
All I wanted was to shut my eyes. This melancholy
emptiness promised me nothing, and sucked out of my
heart all that there was in it.

The description of the illustrations told me in lan-
guage which I could understand about other countries,
other peoples. It spoke of various incidents of the
past and present, but there was a lot which I did not
understand, and that worried me. Sometimes strange
words stuck in my brain, like * 'metaphysics," "chil-
iasm," "chartist." They were a source of great anx-
iety to me, and seemed to grow into monsters obstruct-
ing my vision. I thought that I should never under-
stand anything. I did not succeed in finding out the
meaning of those words. In fact, they stood like sen-
tries on the threshold of all secret knowledge. Often
whole phrases stuck in my memory for a long time, like

IN THE WORLD 215

a splinter in my finger, and hindered me from think-
ing of anything else.

I remembered reading these strange verses:

"All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land,
Silent and gloomy as the grave,
Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla.
Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying,
'Where, then, is Rome ; where is Rome the mighty V "

That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth
were the Huns? I simply had to find that out.

Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master.

"The Huns?" he cried in amazement. "The devil
knows who they are. Some trash, I expect."

And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:

"That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is
very bad, Pyeshkov."

Bad or good, I wanted to know.

I had an idea that the regimental chaplain. Solo-
viev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I
caught him in the yard, I asked him. The pale, sickly,
always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows,
and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the
earth, said to me :

"And what is that to do with you, eh?"

Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a
ferocious :

"What-a-t?"

Then I concluded that the right person to ask about
the Huns was the dispenser at the chemist's. He al-

2i6 IN THE WORLD

ways looked at me kindly. He had a clever face, and
gold glasses on his large nose.

"The Huns," said the dispenser, "were a nomad
race, like the people of Khirgiz. There are no more
of these people now. They are all dead."

I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were
dead, but because the meaning of the word that had
worried me for so long was quite simple, and was also
of no use to me.

But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision
with the word ceased to worry me so much, and thanks
to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of the dispenser
Goldberg.

This man knew the literal meaning of all words of
wisdom. He had the keys to all knowledge. Set-
ting his glasses straight with two fingers, he looked
fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving
small nails into my forehead:

"Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If
we want to find out why the leaves take one form in-
stead of another, we must learn how the tree grows.
We must study books, my dear boy. Men are like a
good garden in which everything grows, both pleas-
ant and profitable."

I often had to run to the chemist's for soda-water
and magnesia for the adults of the family, who were
continually suffering from heartburn, and for castor-
oil and purgatives for the children.

The short instructions which the dispenser gave me
instilled into my mind a still deeper regard for books.

IN THE WORLD 217

They gradually became as necessary to me as vodka
to the drunkard. They showed me a new life, a life
of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite
people to deeds of heroism and crimes. I saw that the
people about me were fitted for neither heroism nor
crime. They lived apart from everything that I read
about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they
found interesting in their lives. I had no desire to
live such a life. I was quite decided on that point. I
would not.

From the letterpress which accompanied the draw-
ings I had learned that in Prague, London, and Paris
there are no open drains in the middle of the city, or
dirty gulleys choked with refuse. There were straight,
broad streets, and different kinds of houses and
churches. There they did not have a six-months-long
winter, which shuts people up in their houses, and no
great fast, when only fermenting cabbage, pickled
mushrooms, oatmeal, and potatoes cooked in disgust-
ing vegetable oil can be eaten. During the great fast
books are forbidden, and they took away the "Review
of Painting" from me, and that empty, meager life
again closed about me. Now that I could compare
it with the life pictured in books, it seemed more
wretched and ugly than ever. When I could read I
felt well and strong; I worked well and quickly, and
had an object in life. The sooner I was finished, the
more time I should have for reading. Deprived of
books, I became lazy, and drowsy, and became a victim
to forgetfulness, to which I had been a stranger before.

2i8 IN THE WORLD

I remember that even during those dull days some-
thing mysterious happened. One evening when we
had all gone to bed the bell of the cathedral suddenly
rang out, arousing every one in the house at once.
Half-dressed people rushed to the windows, asking one
another :

"Is it a fire'? Is that the alarm-bell?'

In the other flats one could hear the same bustle
going on. Doors slammed; some one ran across the
yard with a horse ready saddled. The old mistress
shrieked that the cathedral had been robbed, but the
master stopped her.

"Not so loud, Mamasha! Can't you hear that that
is not an alarm-bell?"

"Then the archbishop is dead."

Victorushka climbed down from the loft, dressed
himself, and muttered :

"I know what has happened. I know !"

The master sent me to the attic to see if the sky
was red. I ran up-stairs and climbed to the roof
through the dormer-window. There was no red light
in the sky. The bell tolled slowly in the quiet frosty
air. The town lay sleepily on the earth. In the dark-
ness invisible people ran about, scrunching the snow
under their feet. Sledges squealed, and the bell
wailed ominously. I returned to the sitting-room.

"There is no red light in the sky."

"Foo, you ! Good gracious !" said the master, who
had on his greatcoat and cap. He pulled up his col-

IN THE WORLD 219

lar and began to put his feet into his goloshes unde-
cidedly.

The mistress begged him:

''Don't go out ! Don't go out !"

"Rubbish !"

Victorushka, who was also dressed, teased them all.

"I know what has happened."

When the brothers went out into the street the
women, having sent me to get the samovar ready,
rushed to the window. But the master rang the street
door-bell almost directly, ran up the steps silently,
shut the door, and said thickly:

"The Czar has been murdered I"

"How murdered?" exclaimed the old lady.

"He has been murdered. An officer told me so.
What will happen now?"

Victorushka rang, and as he unwillingly took off his
coat said angrily:

"And I thought it was war!"

Then they all sat down to drink tea, and talked to-
gether calmly, but in low voices and cautiously. The
streets were quiet now, the bells had given up tolling.
For two days they whispered together mysteriously,
and went to and fro. People also came to see them,
and related some event in detail. I tried hard to un-
derstand what had happened, but they hid the news-
papers from me. When I asked Sidorov why they had
killed the Czar he answered, softly:

"It is forbidden to speak of it."

220 IN THE WORLD

But all this soon wore away. The old empty life
was resumed, and I soon had a very unpleasant expe-
rience.

On one of those Sundays when the household had
gone to early mass I set the samovar ready and turned
my attention to tidying the rooms. While I was so
occupied the eldest child rushed into the kitchen, re-
moved the tap from the samovar, and set himself under
the table to play with it. There was a lot of charcoal
in the pipe of the samovar^ and when the water had
all trickled away from it, it came unsoldered. While
I was doing the other rooms, I heard an unusual noise.
Going into the kitchen, I saw with horror that the
samovar was all blue. It was shaking, as if it wanted
to jump from the floor. The broken handle of the
tap was drooping miserably, the lid was all on one
side, the pewter was melted and running away drop
by drop. In fact the purplish blue samovar looked as
if it had drunken shivers. I poured water over it. It
hissed, and sank sadly in ruins on the floor.

The front door-bell rang. I went to open the door.
In answer to the old lady's question as to whether the
samovar was ready, I replied briefly :

"Yes; it is ready."

These words, spoken, of course, in my confusion and
terror, were taken for insolence. My punishment was
doubled. They half killed me. The old lady beat
me with a bunch of fir-twigs, which did not hurt much,
but left under the skin of my back a great many splin-

IN THE WORLD 221

ters, driven in deeply. Before night my back was
swollen like a pillow, and by noon the next day the
master was obliged to take me to the hospital.

When the doctor, comically tall and thin, examined
me, he said in a calm, dull voice :

"This is a case of cruelty which will have to be in-
vestigated."

My master blushed, shuffled his feet, and said some-
thing in a low voice to the doctor, who looked over his
head and said shortly:

"I can't. It is impossible."

Then he asked me :

"Do you want to make a complaint*?"

I was in great pain, but I said :

"No, make haste and cure me."

They took me into another room, laid me on a table,
and the doctor pulled out the splinters with pleasantly
cold pincers. He said, jestingly:

"They have decorated your skin beautifully, my
friend; now you will be waterproof."

When he had finished his work of pricking me un-
mercifully, he said:

"Forty-two splinters have been taken out, my friend.
Remember that. It is something to boast of! Come
back at the same time to-morrow to have the dressing
replaced. Do they often beat you*?"

I thought for a moment, then said :

"Not so often as they used to."

The doctor burst into a hoarse laugh.

222 IN THE WORLD

"It is all for the best, my friend, all for the best."

When he took me back to my master he said to
him:

"I hand him over to you; he is repaired. Bring
him back to-morrow without fail. I congratulate you.
He is a comical fellow you have there."

When we were in the cab my master said to me :

"They used to beat me too, Pyeshkov. What do
you think of that? They did beat me, my lad ! And
you have me to pity you; but I had no one, no one.
People are very hard everywhere ; but one gets no pity
— no, not from any one. Ekh! Wild fowl I"

He grumbled all the way home. I was very sorry
for him, and grateful to him for treating me like a man.

They welcomed me at the house as if it had been
my name-day. The women insisted on hearing in de-
tail how the doctor had treated me and what he had
said. They listened and sighed, then kissed me ten-
derly, wrinkling their brows. This intense interest
in illness, pain, and all kinds of unpleasantness always
amazed me.

I saw that they were pleased with me for not com-
plaining of them, and I took advantage of the mo-
ment to ask if I might have some books from the tail-
or's wife. They did not have the heart to refuse me.
Only the old lady cried in surprise:

"What a demon he is !"

The next day I stood before the tailor's wife, who
said to me kindly:

IN THE WORLD 223

'They told me that you were ill, and that you had
been taken to hospital. You see what stories get
about."

I was silent. I was ashamed to tell her the truth.
Why should she know of such sad and coarse things?
It was nice to think that she was different from other
people.

Once more I read the thick books of Dumas pere^
Ponson de Terraille, Montepaine, Zakonier, Gaboriau,
and Bourgobier. I devoured all these books quickly,
one after the other, and I was happy. I felt myself
to be part of a life which was out of the ordinary,
which stirred me sweetly and aroused my courage.
Once more I burned my improvised candle, and read
all through the night till the morning, so that my eyes
began to hurt me a little. The old mistress said to me
kindly :

"Take care, bookworm. You will spoil your sight
and grow blind I"

However, I soon realized that all these interestingly
complicated books, despite the different incidents, and
the various countries and town? about which they were
written, had one common theme: good people made
unhappy and oppressed by bad people, the lat-
ter were always more successful and clever than the
good, but in the end something unexpected always
overthrowing the wicked, and the good winning.
The "love," of which both men and women
spoke in the same terms, bored me. In fact, it was not

224 IN THE WORLD

only uninteresting to me, but it aroused a vague con-
tempt.

Sometimes from the very first chapters I began to
wonder who would win or who would be vanquished,
and as soon as the course of the story became clear, I
would set myself to unravel the skein of events by the
aid of my own fancy. When I was not reading I was
thinking of the books I had on hand, as one would think
about the problems in an arithmetic. I became more
skilful every day in guessing which of the characters
would enter into the paradise of happiness and which
would be utterly confounded.

But through all this I saw the glimmer of living
and, to me, significant truths, the outlines of another
life, other standards. It was clear to me that in Paris
the cabmen, working men, soldiers, and all ''black peo-
ple" ^ were not at all as they were in Nijni, Kazan, or
Perm. They dared to speak to gentlefolk, and be-
haved toward them more simply and independently
than our people. Here, for example, was a soldier
quite unlike any I had known, unlike Sidorov, unlike
the Viatskian on the boat, and still more unlike Er-
mokhin. He was more human than any of these. He
had something of Smouri about him, but he was not so
savage and coarse. Here was a shopkeeper, but he
was much better than any of the shopkeepers I had
known. And the priests in books were not like the
priests I knew. They had more feeling, and seemed to
enter more into the lives of their flocks. And in gen-

^The common people.

IN THE WORLD 225

cral it seemed to me that life abroad, as it appeared in
books, was more interesting, easier, better than the life
I knew. Abroad, people did not behave so brutally.
They never jeered at other human creatures as cruelly
as the Viatskian soldier had been jeered at, nor prayed
to God as importunately as the old mistress did.
What I noticed particularly was that, when villains,
misers, and low characters were depicted in books, they
did not show that incomprehensible cruelty, that in-
clination to jeer at humanity, with which I was ac-
quainted, and which was often brought to my notice.
There was method in the cruelty of these bookish vil-
lains. One could almost always understand why they
were cruel ; but the cruelty which I witnessed was aim-
less, senseless, an amusement from which no one ex-
pected to gain any advantage.

With every book that I read this dissimilarity
between Russian life and that of other countries stood
out more clearly, causing a perplexed feeling of irri-
tation within me, strengthening my suspicion of the
veracity of the old, well-read pages with their dirty
"dogs'-ears."

And then there fell into my hands Goncourt's novel,
"The Brothers Zemganno." I read it through in one
night, and, surprised at the new experience, read the
simple, pathetic story over again. There was nothing
complicated about it, nothing interesting at first sight.
In fact, the first pages seemed dry, like the lives of the
saints. Its language, so precise and stripped of all
adornment, was at first an unpleasant surprise to me;

226 IN THE WORLD

but the paucity of words, the strongly constructed
phrases, went straight to the heart. It so aptly de-
scribed the drama of the acrobat brothers that my hands
trembled with the enjoyment of reading the book. I
wept bitterly as I read how the unfortunate artist, with
his legs broken, crept up to the loft where his brother
was secretly engaged in his favorite art.

When I returned this glorious book to the tailor's
wife I begged her to give me another one like it.

"How do you mean like that^" she asked, laugh-
ing.

This laugh confused me, and I could not explain
what I wanted. Then she said :

"That is a dull book. Just wait ! I will give you
another more interesting."

In the course of a day or two she gave me Green-
wood's "The True History of a little Waif." The
title of the book at first turned me agairieTit, but the
first pages called up a smile of joy, and still smiling, I
read it from beginning to end, re-reading some of the
pages two or three times.

So in other countries, also, boys lived hard and
harassing lives! After all, I was not so badly off; I
need not complain.

Greenwood gave me a lot of courage, and soon after
that I was given a "real" book, "Eugenie Grandet."

Old Grandet reminded me vividly of grandfather.
I was annoyed that the book was so small, and sur-
prised at the amount of truth it contained. Truths
which were familiar and boring to me in life were

IN THE WORLD 227

shown to me in a different light in this book, without
malice and quite calmly. All the books which I had
read before Greenwood's, condemned people as se-
verely and noisily as my employers did, often arousing
my sympathy for the villain and a feeling of irritation
with the good people. I was always sorry to see that
despite enormous expenditure of intelligence and will-
power, a man still failed to obtain his desires. The
good characters stood awaiting events from first to
last page, as immovable as stone pillars, and although
all kinds of evil plots were formed against these stone
pillars, stones do not arouse sympathy. No matter
how beautiful and strong a wall may be, one does not
love it if one wants to get the apple on the tree on the
other side of it. It always seemed to me that all that
was most worth having, and vigorous was hidden be-
hind the "good" people.

In Goncourt, Greenwood, and Balzac there were no
villains, but just simple people, wonderfully alive.
One could not doubt that, whatever they were alleged
to have said and done, they really did say and do, and
they could not have said and done anything else.

In this fashion I learned to understand what a great
treat a "good and proper" book can be. But how to
find it? The tailor's wife could not help me in this.

"Here is a good book," she said, laying before me
Arsene Huissier's "Hands full of Roses, Gold, and
Blood." She also gave me the novels of Beyle, Paul
de Kock and Paul Feval, and I read them all with
relish. She liked the novels of Mariette and Vernier,

228 IN THE WORLD

which to me appeared dull. I did not care for Spiel-
hagen, but I was much taken with the stories of Auer-
bach. Sue and Huga, also, I did not like, preferring
Walter Scott. I wanted books which excited me, and
made me feel happy, like wonderful Balzac.

I did not care for the porcelain woman as much as I
had done at first. When I went to see her, I put on a
clean shirt, brushed my hair, and tried to appear good-
looking. In this I was hardly successful. I always
hoped that, seeing my good looks, she would speak to
me in a simple and friendly manner, without that fish-
like smile on her frivolous face. But all she did was
to smile and ask me in her sweet, tired voice :

"Have you read it*? Did you like it?"

"No."

Slightly raising her eyebrows, she looked at me, and,
drawing in her breath, spoke through her nose.

"But why'?"

"I have read about all that before."

"Above what?"

"About love."

Her eyes twinkled, as she burst out into her honeyed
laugh.

""Ach^ but you see all books are written about love!"

Sitting in a big arm-chair, she swung her small feet,
incased in fur slippers, to and fro, yawned, wrapped
her blue dressing-gown around her, and drummed with
her pink fingers on the cover of the book on her knee.
I wanted to say to her:

IN THE WORLD 229

"Why don't you leave this flat? The officers write
letters to you, and laugh at you."

But I had not the audacity to say this, and went
away, bearing with me a thick book on "Love," a sad
sense of disenchantment in my heart.

They talked about this woman in the yard more
evilly, derisively, and spitefully than ever. It of-
fended me to hear these foul and, no doubt, lying
stories. When I was away from her, I pitied the
woman, and suffered for her ; but when I was with her,
and saw her small, sharp eyes, the cat-like flexibility
of her small body, and that always frivolous face, pity
and fear disappeared, vanished like smoke.

In the spring she suddenly went away, and in a few
days her husband moved to new quarters.

While the rooms stood empty, awaiting a new ten-
ant, I went to look at the bare walls, with their square
patches where pictures had hung, bent nails, and
wounds made by nails. Strewn about the stained floor
were pieces of different-colored cloth, balls of paper,
broken boxes from the chemist, empty scent-bottles.
A large brass pin gleamed in one spot.

All at once I felt sad and wished that I could see
the tailor's little wife once more to tell her how grate-
ful I was to her.

CHAPTER X

BEFORE the departure of the tailor's wife there
had come to live under the flat occupied by my
employers a black-eyed young lady, with her little girl
and her mother, a gray-haired old woman, everlast-
ingly smoking cigarettes in an amber mouthpiece. The
young lady was very beautiful, imperious, and proud.
She spoke in a pleasant, deep voice. She looked at
every one with head held high and unblinking eyes,
as if they were all far away from her, and she could
hardly see them. Nearly every day her black soldier-
servant, Tuphyaev, brought a thin-legged, brown horse
to the steps of her flat. The lady came out in a long,
steel-colored, velvet dress, wearing white gauntleted
gloves and tan boots. Holding the train of her skirt
and a whip with a lilac-colored stone in its handle in
one hand, with the other little hand she lovingly
stroked the horse's muzzle. He fixed his great eyes
upon her, trembling all over, and softly trampled the
soaked ground under his hoofs.

"Robaire, Robaire," she said in a low voice, and
patted the beautiful, arched neck of the steed with a
firm hand.

Then setting her foot on the knee of Tuphyaev, she
sprang lightly into the saddle, and the horse, prancing

230

IN THE WORLD 231

proudly, went through the gateway. She sat in the
saddle as easily as if she were part of it. She was
beautiful with that rare kind of beauty which always
seems new and wonderful, and always fills the heart
with an intoxicating joy. When I looked at her I
thought that Diana of Poitiers, Queen Margot, the
maiden La Valliere, and other beauties, heroines of
historical novels, were like her.

She was constantly surrounded by the officers of the
division which was stationed in the town, and in the
evenings they used to visit her, and play the piano,
violin, guitar, and dance and sing. The most frequent
of her visitors was Major Olessov, who revolved about
her on his short legs, stout, red-faced, gray-haired, and
as greasy as an engineer on a steamboat. He played
the guitar well, and bore himself as the humble, de-
voted servant of the lady.

As radiantly beautiful as her mother was the little
five-year-old, curly-haired, chubby girl. Her great,
dark-blue eyes looked about her gravely, calmly ex-
pectant, and there was an air of thoughtfulness about
her which was not at all childish.

Her grandmother was occupied with housekeeping
from morning to night, with the help of Tuphyaev, a
morose, taciturn man, and a fat, cross-eyed housemaid.
There was no nursemaid, and the little girl lived al-
most without any notice being taken of her, playing
about all day on the front steps or on a heap of planks
near them. I often went out to play with her in the
evenings, for I was very fond of her. She soon be-

232 IN THE WORLD

came used to me, and would fall asleep in my arms
while I was telling her a story. When this happened,
I used to carry her to bed. Before long it came about
that she would not go to sleep, when she was put to
bed, unless I went to say good night to her. When I
went to her, she would hold out her plump hand with
a grand air and say :

"Good-by till to-morrow. Grandmother, how
ought I to say it?"

"God preserve you I" said the grandmother, blowing
a cloud of dark-blue smoke from her mouth and thin
nose.

"God preserve you till to-morrow ! And now I am
going to sleep," said the little girl, rolling herself up
in the bedclothes, which were trimmed with lace.

The grandmother corrected her.

"Not till to-morrow, but for always."

"But does n't to-morrow mean for always*?"

She loved the word "to-morrow," and whatever
pleased her specially she carried forward into the fu-
ture. She would stick into the ground flowers that had
been plucked or branches that had been broken by the
wind, and say :

"To-morrow this will be a garden."

"To-morrow, some time, I shall buy myself a horse,
and ride on horseback like mother."

She was a clever child, but not very lively, and
would often break off in the midst of a merry game to
become thoughtful, or ask unexpectedly:

"Why do priests have hair like women *?"

IN THE WORLD 233

If she stung herself with nettles, she would shake
her finger at them, saying:

"You wait I I shall pray God to do something vewy
bady to you. God can do bad things to every one;
He can even punish mama." Sometimes a soft, seri-
ous melancholy descended upon her. She would press
close to me, gazing up at the sky with her blue, ex-
pectant eyes, and say:

"Sometimes grandmother is cross, but mama never;
she on'y laughs. Every one loves her, because she
never has any time. People are always coming to see
her and to look at her because she is so beautiful. She
is 'ovely, mama is. 'Oseph says so — 'ovely!"

I loved to listen to her, for she spoke of a world of
which I knew nothing. She spoke willingly and often
about her mother, and a new life gradually opened out
before me. I was again reminded of Queen Margot,
which deepened my faith in books and also my interest
in life. One day when I was sitting on the steps wait-
ing for my people, who had gone for a walk, and the
little girl had dozed off in my arms, her mother rode
up on horseback, sprang lightly to the ground, and,
throwing back her head, asked :

"What, is she asleep?"

"Yes."

"That's right."

The soldier Tuphyaev came running to her and
took the horse. She stuck her whip into her belt and,
holding out her arms, said:

"Give her to me!"

234 IN THE WORLD

"I '11 carry her in myself."

"Come on I" cried the lady, as if I had been a horse,
and she stamped her foot on the step.

The little girl woke up, blinking, and, seeing her
mother, held out her arms to her. They went away.

I was used to being shouted at, but I did not like
this lady to shout at me. She had only to give an
order quietly, and every one obeyed her.

In a few minutes the cross-eyed maid came out for
me. The little girl was naughty, and would not go
to sleep without saying good night.

It was not without pride in my bearing toward the
mother that I entered the drawing-room, where the
little girl was sitting on the knees of her mother, who
was deftly undressing her.

"Here he is," she said. "He has come — this mon-
ster."

"He is not a monster, but my boy."

"Really^ Very good. Well, you would like to
give something to your boy, would n't you?"

"Yes, I should."

"A good idea ! I will see to it, and you will go to
bed."

"Good-by till to-morrow," said the little girl, hold-
ing out her hand to me. "God preserve you till to-

morrow !"

The lady exclaimed in surprise:

"Who taught you to say that*? Grandmother*?'

"Ye-es."

IN THE WORLD 235

When the child had left the room the lady beckoned
to me.

"What shall we give you?"

I told her that I did not want anything; but could
she let me have a book to read?

She lifted my chin with her warm, scented fingers,
and asked, with a pleasant smile:

"So you are fond of reading? Yes; what books
have you read?"

When she smiled she looked more beautiful than
ever. I confusedly told her the names of several
books.

"What did you find to like in them?" she asked,
laying her hand on the table and moving her fingers
slightly.

A strong, sweet smell of some sort of flowers came
from her, mixed with the odor of horse-sweat. She
looked at me through her long eyelashes, thoughtfully
grave. No one had ever looked at me like that before.

The room was packed as tightly as a bird's nest with
beautiful, soft furniture. The windows were covered
with thick green curtains; the snowy white tiles of the
stove gleamed in the half-light; beside the stove shone
the glossy surface of a black piano; and from the walls,
in dull-gold frames, looked dark writings in large Rus-
sian characters. Under each writing hung a large
dark seal by a cord. Everything about her looked at
that woman as humbly and timidly as I did.

I explained to her as well as I could that my life

236 IN THE WORLD

was hard and uninteresting and that reading helped
me to forget it.

"Yes; so that's what it is," she said, standing up.
"It is not a bad idea, and, in fact, it is quite right.
Well, what shall we do'? I will get some books for
you, but just now I have none. But wait I You can
have this one."

She took a tattered book with a yellow cover from
the couch.

"When you have read this I will give you the second
volume; there are four."

I went away with the "Secrets of Peterburg,"
by Prince Meshtcheski, and began to read the book
with great attention. But before I had read many
pages I saw that the Peterburgian "secrets" were con-
siderably less interesting than those of Madrid, Lon-
don, or Paris. The only part which took my fancy
was the fable of Svoboda (Liberty) and Palka (stick).

"I am your superior," said Svoboda, "because I am
cleverer."

But Palka answered her:

"No, it is I who am your superior, because I am
stronger than you."

They disputed and disputed and fought about it.
Palka beat Svoboda, and, if I remember rightly,
Svoboda died in the hospital as the result of her in-
juries.

There was some talk of nihilists in this book. I re-
member that, according to Prince Meshtcheski, a ni-
hilist was such a poisonous person that his very

IN THE WORLD 237

glance would kill a fowl. What he wrote about ni-
hilists struck me as being offensive and rude, but I un-
derstood nothing else, and fell into a state of melan-
choly. It was evident that I could not appreciate
good books; for I was convinced that it was a good
book. Such a great and beautiful lady could never
read bad books.

"Well, did you like it*?" she asked me when I took
back the yellow novel by Meshtcheski.

I found it very hard to answer no ; I thought it would
make her angry. But she only laughed, and going
behind the portiere which led into her sleeping-cham-
ber, brought back a little volume in a binding of dark-
blue morocco leather.

"You will like this one, only take care not to soil
it."

This was a volume of Pushkin's poems. I read all
of them at once, seizing upon them with a feeling of
greed such as I experienced whenever I happened to
visit a beautiful place that I had never seen before. I
always tried to run all over it at once. It was like
roaming over mossy hillocks in a marshy wood, and
suddenly seeing spread before one a dry plain covered
with flowers and bathed in sun-rays. For a second one
gazes upon it enchanted, and then one begins to race
about happily, and each contact of one's feet with the
soft growth of the fertile earth sends a thrill of joy
through one.

Pushkin had so surprised me with the simplicity and
music of poetry that for a long time prose seemed un-

238 IN THE WORLD

natural to me, and it did not come easy to read it. The
prologue to "Ruslan" reminded me of grandmother's
best stories, all wonderfully compressed into one, and
several lines amazed me by their striking truth.

There, by ways which few observe,
Are the trails of invisible wild creatures.

I repeated these wonderful words in my mind, and
I could see those footpaths so familiar to me, yet
hardly visible to the average being. I saw the mysteri-
ous footprints which had pressed down the grass, which
had not had time to shake off the drops of dew, as
heavy as mercury. The full, sounding lines of poetry
were easily remembered. They adorned everything of
which they spoke as if for a festival. They made me
happy, my life easy and pleasant. The verses rang
out like bells heralding me into a new life. What
happiness it was to be educated !

The magnificent stories of Pushkin touched me more
closely, and were more intelligible to me than any-
thing I had read. When I had read them a few times
I knew them by heart, and when I went to bed I whis-
pered the verses to myself, with my eyes closed, until
I fell asleep. Very often I told these stories to the
orderlies, who listened and laughed, and abused me
jokingly. Sidorov stroked my head and said softly:

"That 's fine, is n't it'? O Lord—"

The awakening which had come to me was noticed
by my employers. The old lady scolded me.

"You read too much, and you have not cleaned the

IN THE WORLD 239

samovar for four days, you young monkey I I shall
have to take the rolling-pin to you — "

What did I care for the rolling-pin? I took refuge
in verses.

Loving black evil with all thy heart,
O old witch that thou art!

The lady rose still higher in my esteem. See what
books she read! She was not like the tailor's porce-
lain wife.

When I took back the book, and handed it to her
with regret, she said in a tone which invited confidence :

"Did you like it*? Had you heard of Pushkin be-
fore?"

I had read something about the poet in one of the
newspapers, but I wanted her to tell me about him, so I
said that I had never heard of him.

Then she briefly told me the life and death' of Push-
kin, and asked, smiling like a spring day:

"Do you see how dangerous it is to love women?"

All the books I had read had shown me it was really
dangerous, but also pleasant, so I said :

"It is dangerous, yet every one falls in love. And
women suffer for love, too."

She looked at me, as she looked at every one, through
her lashes, and said gravely:

"You think so? You understand that? Then the
best thing I can wish you is that you may not forget
it."

And then she asked me what verses I liked best.

240 IN THE WORLD

I began to repeat some from memory, with gesticu-
lations. She listened silently and gravely, then rose,
and, walking up and down the room, said thought-
fully:

"We shall have to have you taught, my little wild
animal. I must think about it. ,Your employers —
are they relatives of yours ^"

When I answered in the affirmative she exclaimed:
"Oh !" as if she blamed me for it.

She gave me "The Songs of Beranger," a special
edition with engravings, gilt edges, and a red leather
binding. These songs made me feel giddy, with their
strange mixture of bitter grief and boisterous happi-
ness.

With a cold chill at my heart I read the bitter words
of "The Old Beggar."

Homeless worm, have I disturbed you?

Crush me under your feet !

Why be pitiful ? Crush me quickly !

Why is it that you have never taught me,

Nor given me an outlet for my energy?

From the grub an ant might have come.

I might have died in the love of my fellows.

But dying as an old tramp,

I shall be avenged on the world !

And directly after this I laughed till I cried over the
"Weeping Husband." I remembered especially the
words of Beranger:

A happy science of life

Is not hard for the simple.

IN THE WORLD 241

Beranger aroused me to moods of joyfulness, to a
desire to be saucy, and to say something rude to peo-
ple,— rude, sharp words. In a very short time I had
become proficient in this art. His verses I learned by
heart, and recited them with pleasure to the orderlies,
running into the kitchen, where they sat for a few
minutes at a time.

But I soon had to give this up because the lines,

But such a hat is not becoming
To a young girl of seventeen,

gave rise to an offensive conversation about girls that
made me furiously disgusted, and I hit the soldier
Ermokhin over the head with a saucepan. Sidorov
and the other orderlies tore me away from his clumsy
hands, but I made up my mind from that time to go
no more to the officers' kitchen.

I was not allowed to walk about the streets. In
fact, there was no time for it, since the work had so
increased. Now, in addition to my usual duties as
housemaid, yardman, and errand-boy, I had to nail
calico to wide boards, fasten the plans thereto, and copy
calculations for my master's architectural work. I
also had to verify the contractor's accounts, for my
master worked from morning to night, like a machine.

At that time the public buildings of the Yarmarka ^
were private property. Rows of shops were built
very rapidly, and my master had the contracts for the
reconstruction of old shops and the erection of new

1 Market-place.

242 IN THE WORLD

ones. He drew up plans for the rebuilding of vaults,
the throwing out of a dormer-window, and such
changes. I took the plans to an old architect, to-
gether with an envelop in which was hidden paper
money to the value of twenty-five rubles. The
architect took the money, and wrote under the plans:
*'The plans are correct, and the inspection of the work
has been performed by me. Imraik." As a matter of
fact, he had not seen the original of the plans, and he
could not inspect the work, as he was always obliged
to stay at home by reason of his malady.

I used to take bribes to the inspector of the Yar-
marka and to other necessary people, from whom I re-
ceived what the master called papers, which permitted
all kinds of illegalities. For this service I obtained
the right to wait for my employers at the door on the
front steps when they went out to see their friends in
the evenings. This did not often happen, but when it
did, they never returned until after midnight. I used
to sit at the top of the steps, or on the heap of planks
opposite them, for hours, looking into the windows of
my lady's flat, thirstily listening to the gay conversa-
tion and the music.

The windows were open. Through the curtains
and the screen of flowers I could see the fine figures of
officers moving about the room. The rotund major
waddled about, and she floated about, dressed with
astonishing simplicity, but beautifully.

In my own mind I called her "Queen Margot."

"This is the gay life that they write about in French

IN THE WORLD ^ 243

books," I thought, looking in at the window. And I
always felt rather sad about it. A childish jealousy
made it painful for me to see "Queen Margot" sur-
rounded by men, who buzzed about her like bees over
flowers.

Her least-frequent visitor was a tall, unhappy-look-
ing officer, with a furrowed brow and deep-sunken
eyes, who always brought his violin with him and
played marvelously — so marvelously that the passers-
by used to stop under the window, and all the dwellers
in the street used to gather round. Even my employ-
ers, if they happened to be at home, would open the
window, listen, and praise. I never remember their
praising any one else except the subdeacon of the
cathedral, and I knew that a fish-pie was more pleasing
to them than any kind of music.

Sometimes this officer sang, or recited verses in a
muffled voice, sighing strangely and pressing his hand
to his brow. Once when I was playing under the
window with the little girl and "Queen Margot" asked
him to sing, he refused for a long time. Then he said
clearly:

"Only a song has need of beauty,
While beauty has no need of songs."

I thought these lines were lovely, and for some reason
I felt sorry for the officer.

What I liked best was to look at my lady when she
sat at the piano, alone in the room, and played. Music
intoxicated me, and I could see nothing but the win-

244 IN THE WORLD

dow, and beyond that, in the yellow light of the lamp,
the finely formed figure of the woman, with her haughty
profile and her white hands hovering like birds over
the keys. I gazed at her, listened to the plaintive
music, and dreamed. If I could find some treasure, I
would give it all to her, so that she should be rich. If
I had been Skobelev, I would have declared war on
the Turks again. I would have taken money for ran-
soms, and built a house for her on the Otkossa, the best
site in the whole town, and made her a present of it.
If only she would leave this street, where every one
talked offensively about her. The neighbors, the serv-
ants belonging to our yard, and my employers more
than all spoke about "Queen Margot" as evilly and
spitefully as they had talked about the tailor's wife,
though more cautiously, with lowered voices, and
looking about them as they spoke.

They were afraid of her, probably because she was
the widow of a very distinguished man. The writ-
ings on the walls of her rooms, too, were privileges be-
stowed on her husband's ancestors by the old Russian
emperors Goudonov, Alexei, and Peter the Great.
This was told me by the soldier Tuphyaev, a man of
education, who was always reading the gospels. Or
it may have been that people were afraid lest she
should thrash them with her whip with the lilac-colored
stone in the handle. It was said that she had once
struck a person of position with it.

But words -uttered under the breath are no better

IN THE WORLD 245

than words uttered aloud. My lady lived in a cloud
of enmity — an enmity which I could not understand
and which, tormented me.

Now that I knew there was another life; that there
were different people, feelings, and ideas, this house
and all its tenants aroused in me a feeling of disgust
that oppressed me more and more. It was entangled
in the meshes of a dirty net of disgraceful tittle-tattle,
there was not a single person in it of whom evil was
not spoken. The regimental chaplain, though he was
ill and miserable, had a reputation for being a drunkard
and a rake ; the officers and their wives were living, ac-
cording to my employers, in a state of sin; the soldiers'
conversation about women, which ran on the same
lines, had become repulsive to me. But my employers
disgusted me most of all. I knew too well the real
value of their favorite amusement, namely, the merci-
less judgment of other people. Watching and com-
menting on the crimes of others was the only amuse-
ment in which they could indulge without paying for
it. They amused themselves by putting those about
them verbally on the rack, and, as it were, revenged
themselves on others because they lived so piously,
laboriously, and uninterestingly themselves.

When they spoke vilely about "Queen Margot"
I was seized by a convulsion of feeling which was not
childish at all. My heart swelled with hatred for the
backbiters. I was overcome by an irresistible desire
to do harm to every one, to be insolent, and sometimes

246 IN THE WORLD

a flood of tormenting pity for myself and every one
else swept over me. That dumb pity was more pain-
ful than hatred.

I knew more about my queen than they did, and I
was always afraid that they would find out what I
knew.

On Sundays, when my employers had gone to the
cathedral for high mass, I used to go to her the first
thing in the morning. She would call me into her
bedroom, and I sat in a small arm-chair, upholstered
in gold-colored silk, with the little girl on my knee,
and told the mother about the books I had read. She
lay in a wide bed, with her cheek resting on her small
hands, which were clasped together. Her body was
hidden under a counterpane, gold in color, like every-
thing else in the bedroom ; her dark hair lay in a plait
over her swarthy shoulder and her breast, and some-
times fell over the side of the bed till it touched the
floor.

As she listened to me she looked into my face with
her soft eyes and a hardly perceptible smile and said:

"That's right."

Even her kind smile was, in my eyes, the condescend-
ing smile of a queen. She spoke in a deep, tender
voice, and it seemed to me that it said always :

"I know that I am immeasurably above all other
people ; no one of them is necessary to me."

Sometimes I found her before her mirror, sitting in a
low chair and doing her hair, the ends of which lay on
her knees, over the arms, and back of the chair, and

IN THE WORLD 247

fell almost to the floor. Her hair was as long and
thick as grandmother's. She put on her stockings in
my presence, but her clean nudity aroused in me no
feeling of shame. I had only a joyful feeling of pride
in her. A flowerlike smell always came from her,
protecting her from any evil thoughts concerning her.

I felt sure that the love of the kitchen and the pantry
was unknown to Queen Margot. She knew something
different, a higher joy, a different kind of love.

But one day, late in the afternoon, on going into her
drawing-room, I heard from the bedroom the ringing
laugh of the lady of my heart. A masculine voice
said:

'Wait a minute! Good Lord! I can't believe — "
I ought to have gone away. I knew that, but I
could not.

"Who is that?" she asked. "You? Come in!"
The bedroom was heavy with the odor of flowers.
It was darkened, for the curtains were drawn. Queen
Margot lay in bed, with the bedclothes drawn up to
her chin, and beside her, against the wall, sat, clad
only in his shirt, with his chest bared, the officer violin-
ist. On his breast was a scar which lay like a red
streak from the right shoulder to the nipple and was
so vivid that even in the half-light I could see it dis-
tinctly. The hair of the officer was ruffled comically,
and for the first time I saw a smile on his sad, fur-
rowed countenance. He was smiling strangely. His
large, feminine eyes looked at the "queen" as if it were
the first time he had gazed upon her beauty.

248 IN THE WORLD

"This is my friend," said Queen Margot. I did
not know whether she were referring to me or to him.

"What are you looking so frightened about?" I
heard her voice as if from a distance. "Come here."

When I went to her she placed her hands on my bare
neck and said :

"You will grow up and you will be happy. Go
along!"

I put the book on the shelf, took another, and went
away as best I could.

Something seemed to grate in my heart. Of course
I did not think for a moment that my queen loved as
other women nor did the officer give me reason to think
so. I saw his face before me, with that smile. He
was smiling for joy, like a child who has been pleas-
antly surprised, and his sad face was wonderfully
transfigured. He had to love her. Could any one
not love her*? And she also had cause to bestow her
love upon him generously. He played so wonder-
fully, and could quote poetry so touchingly.

But the very fact that I had to find these consola-
tions showed me clearly that all was not well with
my attitude toward what I had seen or even toward
Queen Margot herself. I felt that I had lost some-
thing, and I lived for several days in a state of deep
dejection. One day I was turbulently and recklessly
insolent, and when I went to my lady for a book, she
said to me sternly:

"You seem to be a desperate character from what
I have heard. I did not know that."

IN THE WORLD 249

I could not endure this, and I began to explain
how nauseating I found the life I had to lead, and how
hard it was for me to hear people speaking ill of her.
Standing in front of me, with her hand on my shoul-
der, she listened at first attentively and seriously; but
soon she was laughing and pushing me away from her
gently.

"That will do; I know all about it. Do you un-
derstand^ I know."

Then she took both my hands and said to me very
tenderly :

"The less attention you pay to all that, the better
for you. You wash your hands very badly."

She need not have said this. If she had had to
clean the brasses, and wash the floor and the dirty
cloths, her hands would not have been any better than
mine, I think.

"When a person knows how to live, he is slan-
dered; they are jealous of him. And if he doesn't
know how to live, they despise him," she said thought-
fully, drawing me to her, and looking into my eyes
with a smile. "Do you love me?''

"Yes."

"Very much?"

"Yes."

"But how?"

"I don't know."

"Thank you I You are a good boy. I like peo-
ple to love me." She smiled, looked as if she were
going to say something more, but remained silent, still

250 IN THE WORLD

keeping me in her arms. "Come oftener to see me;
come whenever you can."

I took advantage of this, and she did me a lot of
good. After dinner my employers used to lie down,
and I used to run down-stairs. If she was at home,
I would stay with her for an hour and sometimes even
longer.

"You must read Russian books; you must know
all about Russian life."

She taught me, sticking hair-pins into her fragrant
hair with rosy fingers. And she enumerated the Rus-
sian authors, adding:

"Will you remember them?"

She often said thoughtfully, and with an air of
slight vexation:

"We must have you taught, and I am always for-
getting. Ach, my God I"

After sitting with her, I ran down-stairs with a new
book in my hands, feeling as if I had been washed
inside.

I had already read Aksakov's "Family Chronicle,"
the glorious Russian poem "In the Forests," the amaz-
ing "Memoirs of a Hunter," several volumes of Greb-
enkov and Solugub, and the poetry of Venevitinov,
Odoevski, and Tutchev. These books laved my soul,
washing away the husks of barren and bitter reality.
I felt that these were good books, and realized that
they were indispensable to me. One result of read-
ing them was that I gained a firm conviction that I

IN THE WORLD 251

was not alone in the world, and the fact that I should
not be lost took root in my soul.

When grandmother came to see me I used to tell
her joyfully about Queen Margot, and she, taking
a pinch of snuff with great enjoyment, said heartily:

Well, well; that is very nice. You see, there are
plenty of good people about. You only have to look
for them, and then you will find them."

And one day she suggested:

"How would it be if I went to her and said thank
you for what she does for you^"

"No; it is better not."

"Well, if you don't want me to Lord! Lord!

how good it all is! I would like to go on living for
ever and ever !"

Queen Margot never carried out her project of hav-
ing me taught, for an unpleasant affair happened on
the feast of the Holy Trinity that nearly ruined me.

Not long before the holiday my eyelids became
terribly swollen, and my eyes were quite closed up.
My employers were afraid that I should go blind, and
I also was afraid. They took me to the well-known
doctor, Genrikh Rodzevich, who lanced my eyelids
and for days I lay with my eyes bandaged, in tor-
menting, black misery. The day before the feast of
the Trinity my bandages were taken off, and I walked
about once more, feeling as if I had come back from
a grave in which I had been laid alive. Nothing
can be more terrible than to lose one's sight. It is an

252 IN THE WORLD

unspeakable injury which takes away a hundred worlds
from a man.

The joyful day of the Holy Trinity arrived, and,
as an invalid, I was off duty from noon and went to
the kitchen to pay a visit to the orderlies. All of
them, even the strict Tuphyaev, were drunk, and to-
ward evening Ermokhin struck Sidorov on the head
with a block of wood. The latter fell senseless to the
ground, and Ermokhin, terrified, ran out to the cause-
way.

An alarming rumor that Sidorov had been mur-
dered soon spread over the yard. People gathered
on the steps and looked at the soldier stretched mo-
tionless across the threshold. There were whispers
that the police ought to be sent for, but no one went
to fetch them, and no one could be persuaded to touch
the soldier.

Then the washerwoman Natalia Kozlovski, in a
new, blue frock, with a white neckerchief, appeared
on the scene. She pushed the people aside angrily,
went into the entrance passage, squatted down, and
said loudly:

"Fools! He is alive I Give me some water I"

They began to protest.

''Don't meddle with what' is not your business !"

'Water, I tell you!" she cried, as if there were
a fire. She lifted her new frock over her knees in
a businesslike manner, spread out her underskirt, and
laid the soldier's bleeding head on her knees.

The crowd dispersed, disapproving and fearful.

IN THE WORLD 253

In the dim light of the passage I could see the eyes
of the washerwoman full of tears, flashing angrily
in her white, round face. I took her a pail of water,
and she ordered me to throw it over the head and
breast of Sidorov with the caution:

"Don't spill it over me. I am going to pay a visit
to some friends."

The soldier came to himself, opened his dull eyes,
and moaned.

"Lift him up," said Natalia, holding him under
the armpits with her hands outstretched lest he should
soil her frock. We carried the soldier into the kitchen
and laid him on the bed. She wiped his face with
a wet cloth, and went away, saying:

"Soak the cloth in water and hold it to his head.
I will go and find that fool. Devils ! I suppose they
won't be satisfied until they have drunk themselves
into prison."

She went out, after slipping her soiled under-
petticoat to the floor, flinging it into a corner and
carefully smoothing out her rustling, crumpled frock.

Sidorov stretched himself, hiccupped, sighed.
Warm drops of thick blood fell on my bare feet
from his head. This was unpleasant, but I was too
frightened to move my feet away from those drops.

It was bitter. The sun shone festively out in the
yard; the steps of the houses and the gate were dec-
orated with young birch; to each pedestal were tied
freshly cut branches of maple and mountain ash.
The whole street was gay with foliage; everything

254 IN THE WORLD

was young, new. Ever since the morning I had felt
that the spring holiday had come to stay, and that it
had made life cleaner, brighter, and happier.

The soldier was sick. The stifling odor of warm
vodka and green onion filled the kitchen. Against
the window were pressed dull, misty, broad faces, with
flattened noses, and hands held against their cheeks,
which made them look hideous.

The soldier muttered as he recollected himself:

*'What happened to me*? Did I fall, Ermokhin'?
Go-o-od comrade!" Then he began to cough, wept
drunken tears, and groaned, "My little sister I my little
sister !"

He stood up, tottering, wet. He staggered, and,
falling back heavily upon the bed, said, rolling his
eyes strangely:

"They have quite killed me!"

This struck me as funny.

"What the devil are you laughing at^" he asked,
looking at me dully. "What is there to laugh at'?
I am killed forever!"

He began to hit out at me with both hands, mut-
tering :

"The first time was that of Elias the prophet; the
second time, St. George on his steed; the third —
Don't come near me! Go away, wolf!"

"Don't be a fool !" I said.

He became absurdly angry, roared, and stamped
his feet.

"I am killed, and you — "

IN THE WORLD 255

With his heavy, slow, dirty hand he struck me in
the eyes. I set up a howl, and blindly made for the
yard, where I ran into Natalia leading Ermokhin by
the arm, crying: "Come along, horse I What is the
matter with you^" she asked, catching hold of me-*

"He has come to himself."

"Come to himself, eh?" she drawled in amazement.
And drawing Ermokhin along, she said, "Well,
werwolf, you may thank your God for this I"

I washed my eyes with water, and, looking through
the door of the passage, saw the soldiers make their
peace, embracing each other and crying. Then they
both tried to embrace Natalia, but she hit out at them,
shouting :

"Take your paws off me, curs I What do you take
me for*? Make haste and get to sleep before your
masters come home, or there will be trouble for you I"

She made them lie down as if they were little chil-
dren, the one on the floor, the other on the pallet-
bed, and when they began to snore, came out into the
porch.

"I am in a mess, and I was dressed to go out visit-
ing, too! Did he hit you"? What a fool! That's
what it does — vodka! Don't drink, little fellow,
never drink."

Then I sat on the bench at the gate with her, and^
asked how it was that she was not afraid of drunken
people.

"I am not afraid of sober people, either. If they
come near me, this is what they get!" She showed

256 IN THE WORLD

me her tightly clenched, red list. "My dead hus-
band was also given to drink too much, and once when
he was drunk I tied his hands and feet. When he
had slept it off, I gave him a birching for his health.
'Don't drink; don't get drunk when you are married,'
I said. 'Your wife should be your amusement, and
not vodka.' Yes, I scolded him until I was tired, and
after that he was like wax in my hands."

"You are strong," I said, remembering the woman
Eve, who deceived even God Himself.

Natalia replied, with a sigh:

"A woman needs more strength than a man. She
has to have strength enough for two, and God has
bestowed it upon her. Man is an unstable creature."

She spoke calmly, without malice, sitting with her
arms folded over her large bosom, resting her back
against the fence, her eyes fixed sadly on the dusty
gutter full of rubbish. Listening to her clever talk,
I forgot all about the time. Suddenly I saw my
master coming along arm in arm with the mistress.
They were walking slowly, pompously, like a turkey-
cock with his hen, and, looking at us attentively, said
something to each other.

I ran to open the front door for them, and as she
came up the steps the mistress said to me, venomously :

"So you are courting the washerwoman? Are you
learning to carry on with ladies of that low class *?"

This was so stupid that it did not even annoy
me but I felt offended when the master said, laugh-
ing:

IN THE WORLD 257

"What do you expect? It is time."

The next morning when I went into the shed for
the wood I found an empty purse, in the square hole
which was made for the hook of the door. As I had
seen it many times in the hands of Sidorov I took it
to him at once.

"Where is the money gone'?" he asked, feeling in-
side the purse with his fingers. "Thirty rubles there
were I Give them here I"

His head was enveloped in a turban formed of a
towel. Looking yellow and wasted, he blinked at me
angrily with his swollen eyes, and refused to believe
that I had found the purse empty.

Ermokhin came in and backed him up, shaking his
head at me.

"It is he who has stolen it. Take him to his mas-
ter. Soldiers do not steal from soldiers."

These words made me think that he had stolen
the money himself and had thrown the purse into
my shed. I called out to his face, without hesita-
tion:

"Liar! You stole it yourself!"

I was convinced that I had guessed right when I
saw his wooden face drawn crooked with fear and rage.
As he writhed, he cried shrilly :

"Prove it!"

How could I prove it? Ermokhin dragged me,
with a shout, across the yard. Sidorov followed us,
also shouting. Several people put their heads out of
the windows. The mother of Queen Margot looked

258 IN THE WORLD

on, smoking calmly. I realized that I had fallen in
the esteem of my lady, and I went mad.

I remember the soldiers dragging me by the arms
and my employers standing before them, sympathet-
ically agreeing with them, as they listened to the com-
plaint. Also the mistress saying:

"Of course he took it I He was courting the
washerwoman at the gate last evening, and he must
have had some money. No one gets anything from
her without money."

"That 's true," cried Ermokhin.

I was swept off my feet, consumed by a wild rage.
I began to abuse the mistress, and was soundly beaten.

But it was not so much the beating which tortured
me as the thought of what my Queen Margot was
now thinking of me. How should I ever set myself
right in her eyes? Bitter were my thoughts in that
dreadful time. I did not strangle myself only be-
cause I had not the time to do so.

Fortunately for me, the soldiers spread the story
over the whole yard, the whole street, and in the
evening, as I lay in the attic, I heard the loud voice
of Natalia Kozlovski below.

"No! Why should I hold my tongue? No, my
dear fellow, get away! Get along with you! Go
away, I say! If you don't, I will go to your gentle-
man, and he will give you something!"

I felt at once that this noise was about me. She
was shouting near our steps ; her voice rang out loudly
and triumphantly.

IN THE WORLD 259

"How much money did you show me yesterday?
Where did you get it from? Tell us I"

Holding my breath with joy, I heard Sidorov drawl
sadly :

''Ate/ aze! Ermokhin— "

"And the boy has had the blame for it? He has
been beaten for it, eh?"

I felt like running down to the yard, dancing there
for joy, kissing the washerwoman out of gratitude;
but at that moment, apparently from the window, my
mistress cried:

"The boy was beaten because he was insolent. No
one believed that he was a thief except you, you slut !"

"Slut yourself, madam I You are nothing better
than a cow, if you will permit me to say so."

I listened to this quarrel as if it were music. My
heart burned with hot tears of self-pity, and gratitude
to Natalia. I held my breath in the effort to keep
them back.

Then the master came slowly up to the attic, sat
on a projecting beam near me, and said, smoothing
his hair:

"Well, brother Pyeshkov, and so you had nothing
to do with it?"

I turned my face away without speaking.

"All the same, your language was hideous," he went
on. I announced quietly:

"As soon as I can get up I shall leave you."

He sat on in silence, smoking a cigarette. Looking
fixedly at its end, he said in a low voice :

26o IN THE WORLD

"What of it? That is your business. You are
not a little boy any longer; you must look about and
see what is the best thing for yourself."

Then he went away. As usual, I felt sorry for him.

Four days after this I left that house. I had a
passionate desire to say good-by to Queen Margot,
but I had not the audacity to go to her, though I
confess I thought that she would have sent for me her-
self.

When I bade good-by to the little girl I said:

"Tell your mother that I thank her very much,
will you?"

"Yes, I will," she promised, and she smiled lov-
ingly and tenderly. "Good-by till to-morrow, eh?
Yes?"

I met her again twenty years later, married to an
officer in the gendarmerie.

CHAPTER XI

ONCE more I became a washer-up on a steamboat,
the Perm^ a boat as white as a swan, spacious,
and swift. This time I was a "black" washer-up, or
a "kitchen man." I received seven rubles a month,
and my duties were to help the cook.

The steward, stout and bloated, was as bald as a
billiard-ball. He walked heavily up and down the
deck all day long with his hands clasped behind his
back, like a boar looking for a shady corner on a
sultry day. His wife flaunted herself in the buffet.
She was a woman of about forty, handsome, but
faded, and so thickly powdered that her colored dress
was covered with the white, sticky dust that fell from
her cheeks.

The kitchen was ruled over by an expensive cook,
Ivan Ivanovich, whose surname was Medvyejenok.
He was a small, stout man, with an aquiline nose and
mocking eyes. He was a coxcomb, wore starched col-
lars, and shaved every day. His cheeks were dark blue,
and his dark mustaches curled upward. He spent all
his spare moments in the arrangement of these mus-
taches, pulling at them with fingers stained by his
work at the stove, and looking at them in a small hand-
glass.

The most interesting person on the boat was the

261

262 IN THE WORLD

stoker, Yaakov Shumov, a broad-chested, square man.
His snub-nosed face was as smooth as a spade; his
coffee-colored eyes were hidden under thick eyebrows;
his cheeks were covered with small, bristling hairs,
like the moss which is found in marshes ; and the same
sort of hair, through which he could hardly pass his
crooked fingers, formed a close-fitting cap for his head.

He was skilful in games of cards for money, and
his greed was amazing. He was always hanging
about the kitchen like a hungry dog, asking for pieces
of meat and bones. In the evenings he used to take
his tea with Medvyejenok and relate amazing stories
about himself. In his youth he had been assistant to
the town shepherd of Riazin. Then a passing monk
lured him into a monastery, where he served for four
years.

"And I should have become a monk, a black star
of God," he said in his quick, comical way, "if a
pilgrim had not come to our cloister from Penza.
She was very entertaining, and she upset me. 'Eh,
you 're a fine strong fellow,' says she, 'and I am a
respectable widow and lonely. You shall come to
me,' she says. 'I have my own house, and I deal in
eider-down and feathers.' That suited me, and I went
to her. I became her lover, and lived with her as
comfortably as warm bread in a oven, for three
years."

"You lie hardily," Medvyejenok interrupted him,
anxiously examining a pimple on his nose. "If lies
could make money, you would be worth thousands."

IN THE WORLD 263

Yaakov hummed. The blue, bristling hairs moved
on his impassive face, and his shaggy mustaches quiv-
ered. After he had heard the cook's remark he con-
tinued as calmly and quickly as before:

*'She was older than I, and she began to bore mc.
Then I must go and take up with her niece, and she
found it out, and turned me out by the scruff of the
neck."

"And served you right, you did not deserve any-
thing better," said the cook as easily and smoothly as
Yaakov himself.

The stoker went on, with a lump of sugar in his
check :

"I was at a loose end till I came across an old
Volodimerzian peddler. Together we wandered all
over the world. We went to the Balkan Hills to
Turkey itself, to Rumania, and to Greece, to differ-
ent parts of Austria. We visited every nation.
Wherever there were likely to be buyers, there we
went, and sold our goods."

"And stole others?" asked the cook, gravely.

" *No ! no !' the old man said to me. *You must act
honestly in a strange land, for they are so strict here,
it is said, that they will cut off your head for a mere
nothing.' It is true that I did try to steal, but the
result was not at all consoling. I managed to get a
horse away from the yard of a certain merchant, but
I had done no more than that when they caught me,
knocked me about, and dragged me to the police sta-
tion. There were two of us. The other was a real

264 IN THE WORLD

horse-steal er, but I did it only for the fun of the
thing. But I had been working at the merchant's
house, putting in a new stove for his bath, and the
merchant fell ill, and had bad dreams about me, which
alarmed him, so that he begged the magistrate, 'Let
him go,' — that was me, you know, — 'let him go; for
I have had dreams about him, and if you don't let him
off, you will never be well. It is plain that he is a
wizard.' That was me, if you please — a wizard!
However, the merchant was a person of influence, and
they let me go."

"I should not have let you go. I should have let
you lie in water for three days to wash the foolery
out of you," said the cook.

Yaakov instantly seized upon his words.

"True, there is a lot of folly about me, and that
is the fact — enough folly for a whole village."

Thrusting his fingers into his tight collar, the cook
angrily dragged it up, and complained in a tone of
vexation :

''Fiddlesticks! How a villain like you can live,
gorge himself, drink, and stroll about the world, beats
me. I should like to know what use you are."

Munching, the stoker, answered:

"I don't know myself. I live, and that is all I
•can say about it. One man lies down, and another
walks about. A chinovnik leads a sedentary life, but
every one must eat."

The cook was more incensed than ever.

IN THE WORLD 265

''You are such a swine that you are absolutely un-
bearable. Really, pigs' food — "

"What are you in such a rage about?" asked Ya-
akov, surprised. "All men are acorns from the same
oak. But don't you abuse me. It won't make me
any better, you know."

This man attracted me and held me at once. I
gazed at him with unbounded astonishment, and lis-
tened to him with open mouth. I had an idea that
he possessed a deep knowledge of life. He said
"thou" to every one, looked at every one from under
his bushy brows with the same straight and inde-
pendent glance, and treated every one — the captain,
the steward, and the first-class passengers, who were
very haughty — as if they were the equals of himself,
the sailors, the waiters, and the deck passengers.

Sometimes he stood before the captain or the chief
engineer, with his ape-like hands clasped behind his
back, and listened while they scolded him for lazi-
ness, or for having unscrupulously won money at
cards. He listened, but it was evident that scolding
made not the slightest impression upon him, and that
the threats to put him off the boat at the first stopping-
place did not frighten him. There was something
alien about him, as there had been about "Good Busi-
ness." Evidently he was aware of his own peculiari-
ties and of the fact that people could not understand
him.

I never once knew this man to be offended, and,

266 IN THE WORLD

when I think of it, do not remember that he was ever
silent for long. From his rough mouth and, as it
were, despite himself, a stream of words always flowed.
When he was being scolded or when he was listening
to some interesting story, his lips moved just as if he
were repeating what he heard to himself or simply
continued speaking quietly to himself. Every day,
when he had finished his watch, he climbed out of the
stoke-hole, barefooted, sweating, smeared with naph-
tha, in a wet shirt without a belt, showing his bare
chest covered with thick, curly hair, and that very
minute his even, monotonous, deep voice could be
heard across the deck. His words followed one an-
other like drops of rain.

"Good morning. Mother! Where are you going ^
To Chistopol^ I know it; I have been there. I
lived in the house of a rich Tatar workman; his name
was Usan Gubaildulin. The old man had three
wives. A robust man he was, with a red face, and one
of his wives was young. An amu-u-sing little Tatar
girl she was."

He had been everywhere, and apparently had com-
mitted sin with all the women who had crossed his
path. He spoke of every one without malice, calmly,
as he had never in his life been hurt or scolded. In
a few minutes his voice would be heard in the stem.

"Good people, who will have a game of cards ^
Just a little flutter, ei? Cards are a consolation.
You can make money sitting down, a profitable un-
dertaking."

IN THE WORLD 267

I noticed that he hardly ever said that anything
was good, bad, or abominable, but always that it was
amusing, consoling, or curious. A beautiful woman
was to him an amusing little female. A fine sunny
day was a consoling little day. But more often than
anything else he said:

"I spit upon it!"

He was looked upon as lazy, but it seemed to me
that he performed his laborious task in that infernal,
suffocating, and fetid heat as conscientiously as any
of the others. I never remember that he complained
of weariness or heat, as the other stokers did.

One day some one stole a purse containing money
from one of the old women passengers. It was a
clear, quiet evening; every one was amiable and peace-
ably inclined. The captain gave the old woman five
rubles. The passengers also collected a small sum
among themselves. When the old woman was given
the money, she crossed herself, and bowed low, say-
ing:

"Kind friends, you have given me three graven too
much."

Some one cried gayly:

"Take it all, my good woman, — all that your eyes
fall upon. Why do you talk nonsense? No bne can
have too much."

But Yaakov went to the old woman and said quite
seriously :

"Give me what you don't want; I will play cards
with it."

268 IN THE WORLD

The people around laughed, thinking that the stoker
was joking, but he went on urging the confused woman
perseveringly :

"Come, give it to me, woman ! What do you want
the money for? To-morrow you will be in the church-
yard."

They drove him away with abuse, but he said to
me, shaking his head, and greatly surprised:

"How funny people are I Why do they interfere
in what does not concern them? She said herself
that she had more than she wanted. And three
greven would have been very consoling to me."

The very sight of money evidently pleased him.
While he was talking he loved to clean the silver
and brass on his breeches, and would polish coins
till they shone. Moving his eyebrows up and down,
he would gaze at them, holding them in his crooked
fingers before his snub-nosed face. But he was not
avaricious.

One day he asked me to play with him, but I could
not.

"You don't know how?" he cried. "How is that?
And you call yourself educated! You must learn.
We will play for lumps of sugar."

He won from me half a pound of the best sugar,
and hid every lump in his furry cheek. As soon as
he found that I knew how to play he said:

"Now we will play seriously for money. Have
you any money?"

"I have five rubles."

IN THE WORLD 269

*'And I have two."

As may be imagined, he soon won from mc. De-
siring to have my revenge, I staked my jacket, worth
five rubles, and lost. Then I staked my new boots,
and lost again. Yaakov said to me, unwillingly, al-
most crossly :

*'No, you don't know how to play yet; you get too
hot about it. You must go and stake everything,
even your boots. I don't care for that sort of thing.
Come, take back your clothes and your money, — four
rubles, — and I will keep a ruble for teaching you.
Agreed?'

I was very grateful to him.

"It is a thing to spit upon," he said in answer to
my thanks. "A game is a game, just an amusement,
you know; but you would turn it into a quarrel. And
even in a quarrel it does n't do to get too warm. You
want to calculate the force of your blows. What
have you to get in a stew about? You are young;
you must learn to hold yourself in. The first time
you don't succeed; five times you don't succeed; the
seventh time — spit ! Go away, get yourself cool, and
have another go! That is playing the game."

He delighted me more and more, and yet he jarred
on me. Sometimes his stories reminded me of grand-
mother. There was a lot in him which attracted me,
but his lifelong habit of dull indifference repelled me
violently.

Once at sunset a drunken second-class passenger,
a corpulent merchant of Perm, fell overboard, and

270 IN THE WORLD

was carried away, struggling on the red-gold water-
way. The engineers hastily shut off steam, and the
boat came to a standstill, sending off a cloud of foam
from the wheel, which the red beams of the sun made
look like blood. In that blood-red, seething, caldron
a dark body struggled, already far away from the
stern of the boat. Wild cries were heard from the
river; one's heart shook. The passengers also
screamed, and jostled one another, rolling about the
deck, crowding into the stern. The friend of the
drowning man, also drunk, red, and bald, hit out with
his fists and roared:

"Get out of the way ! I will soon get him !"

Two sailors had already thrown themselves into
the water, and were swimming toward the drowning
man. The boats were let down. Amid the shouts
of the commander and the shrieks of the women
Yaakov's deep voice rang out calmly and evenly :

"He will be drowned; he will certainly be drowned,
because he has his clothes on. Fully dressed as he is,
he must certainly drown. Look at women for ex-
ample. Why do they always drown sooner than
men*? Because of their petticoats. A woman, when
she falls into the water, goes straight to the bottom,
like a pound weight. You will see that he will be
drowned. I do not speak at random."

As a matter of fact, the merchant was drowned.
They sought for him for two hours, and failed to find
him. His companion, sobered, sat on the deck, and,
panting heavily, muttered plaintively:

IN THE WORLD 271

"We are almost there. What will happen when
we arrive, eh^ What will his family say? He had
a family."

Yaakov stood in front of him, with his hands be-
hind his back, and began to console him.

"There is nothing to worry about. No one knows
when he is destined to die. One man will eat mush-
rooms, fall ill and die, while thousands of people can
eat mushrooms and be all the better for them. Yet
one will die. And what are mushrooms?"

Broad and strong, he stood like a rock in front of
the merchant, and poured his words over him like
bran. At first the merchant wept silently, wiping the
tears from his beard with his broad palms, but when
he had heard him out, he roared:

"What do you mean by torturing me like this?
Fellow-Christians, take him away, or there will be
murder !"

Yaakov went away, calmly saying:

"How funny people are! You go to them out of
kindness, and all they do is to abuse you !"

Sometimes I thought the stoker a fool, but more
often I thought that he purposely pretended to be
stupid. I asked him straight out about his youth and
his wanderings around the world. The result was not
what I meant it to be. Throwing his head back, al-
most closing his dark, copper-colored eyes, he stroked
his mossy face with his hand and drawled :

"People everywhere. Brother, — everywhere, — are
simple as ants I And where there are people, there

272 IN THE WORLD

is always trouble, I tell you ! The greater number, of
course, are peasants. The earth is absolutely strewn
with muzhiks^ — like autumn leaves, as we say. I
have seen the Bulgars, and Greeks, too, and those —
what do you call them? — Serbians; Rumanians also,
and all kinds of Gipsies. Are there many different
sorts? What sort of people? What do you mean by
that? In the towns they are townspeople, and in the
country — why, they are just like the country people
among us. They resemble them in many ways.
Some of them even speak our tongue, though badly, as,
for instance, the Tatars and the Mordovans. The
Greeks cannot speak our language. They chatter
whatever comes into their heads, and it sounds like
words; but what they say or about what it is impos-
sible to understand. You have to talk on your fingers
to them. But my old man managed to talk so that
even the Greeks understood him. He muttered some-
thing, and they knew what he meant. An artful old
man he was. He knew how to work upon them.
Again you want to know what sort of people? You
funny fellow! What should people be like? They
were black, of course; and the Rumanians, too, were
of the same faith. The Bulgars are also black, but
they hold the same religion as ourselves. As for the
Greeks, they are of the same race as the Turks."

It seemed to me that he was not telling me all
he knew; that there was something which he did not
wish to tell. From illustrations in the magazines I
knew that the capital of Greece was Athens, an ancient

IN THE WORLD 273

and most beautiful town. But Yaakov shook his
head doubtfully as he rejected the idea.

"They have been telling you lies, my friend. There
is no place called Athens, but there is a place called
Athon; only it is not a town, but a hill with a mon-
astery on it, and that is all. It is called the Holy
Hill of Athon. There are pictures of it; the old man
used to sell them. There is a town called Byelgorod,
which stands on the Dounai River, built in the style
of Yaroslav or Nijni. Their towns are nothing out
of the ordinary, but their villages, that is another mat-
ter. Their women, too — well, they are absolutely
killingly pleasant. I very nearly stayed there alto-
gether for the sake of one. What the deuce was her
name?'

He rubbed his perspiring face hard with the palms
of his hands, and his coarse hair clicked softly. In
his throat, somewhere deep down, rumbled his laugh,
like the rattle of a drum.

"How forgetful a man can be ! And yet, you know,
we were — When she said good-by to me- she cried,
and I cried, too. Good — go-o — " Calmly and with
an entire absence of reticence, he began to instruct me
in the way to behave to women.

We were sitting on the deck. The warm moon-
light night swam to meet us; the meadow-land of the
shore was hardly visible beyond the silver water. In
the heavens twinkled yellow lights; these were cer-
tain stars which had been captivated by the earth.
All around there was movement, sleeplessly palpitat-

274 IN THE WORLD

ing, quiet ; but real life was going on. Into this pleas-
ant, melancholy silence fell the hoarse words:

"And so we let go of each other's hands and parted."
Yaakov's stories were immodest, but not repulsive,
for they were neither boastful nor cruel, and there was
a ring of artlessness and sorrow in them. The moon
in the sky was also shamelessly naked, and moved me
in the same way, setting me fretting for I knew not
what. I remembered only what was good, the very
best thing in my life — Queen Margot and the verses,
unforgettable in their truth:

Only a song has need of beauty,
While beauty has no need of songs.

Shaking off this dreamy mood as if it had been a
light doze, I again asked the stoker about his life and
what he had seen.

"You 're a funny fellow," he said. "What am I
to tell ycu? I have seen everything. You ask have
I seen a monastery^ I have. Traktirs? I have
seen them also. I have seen the life of a gentleman
and the life of a peasant. I have lived well-fed, and
I have lived hungry."

Slowly, as if he were crossing a deep stream by a
shaky, dangerous bridge, he recalled the past.

"For instance, I was sitting in the police station
after the horse-stealing affair. *They will send me
to Siberia,' I was thinking when the constable began
to rage because the stove in his new house smoked.

IN THE WORLD 275

I said to him, 'This is a business which I can set right
for you, your Honor.' He shut me up. *It is
a thing,' he grumbled, 'which the cleverest workman
could not manage.' Then I said to him, 'Sometimes
a shepherd is cleverer than a general.' I felt very
brave toward every one just then. Nothing mattered
now, with Siberia before me. 'All right ; try,' he said,
'but if it smokes worse afterwards I will break all your
bones for you.' In two days I had finished the work.
The constable was astonished. 'AchP he cried, 'you
fool, you blockhead! Why, you are a skilled work-
man, and you steal horses! How is it? I said to
him, 'That was simply a piece of foolery, your Honor.'
'That's true,' he said, 'it was foolery. I am sorry
for you.' 'Yes, I am sorry,' he repeated. Do you
see"? A man in the police force, carrying out his du-
ties without remorse, and yet he was sorry for me."

"Well, what happened then^" I asked him.

"Nothing. He was sorry for me. What else
should happen^"

"What was the use of pitying you? You are like
a stone."

Yaakov laughed good-naturedly.

"Funny fellow! A stone, you say? Well, one
may feel for stones. A stone also serves in its proper
place; streets are paved with stones. One ought to
pity all kinds of materials; nothing is in its place by
chance. What is soil? Yet little blades of grass
grow in it/'

276 IN THE WORLD

When the stoker spoke like this, it was quite clear
to me that he knew something more than I could
grasp.

"What do you think of the cook?" I asked him.

"Of Medvyejenok?" said Yaakov, calmly. "What
do I think of him*? There is nothing to think about
him at all."

That was true. Ivan Ivanovich was so strictly cor-
rect and smooth that one's thoughts could get no
grip on him. There was only one interesting thing
about him: he loved the stoker, was always scolding
him, and yet always invited him to tea.

One day he said to him:

"If you had been my serf and I had been your
master, I would have flogged you seven times each
week, you sluggard!"

Yaakov replied in a serious tone:

"Seven times? That's rather a lot!"

Although he abused the stoker, the cook for some
reason or other fed him with all kinds of things. He
would throw a morsel to him roughly and say:

*"There. Gobble it up !"

Yaakov would devour it without any haste, say-
ing:

"I am accumulating a reserve of strength through
you, Ivan Ivanovich."

"And what is the use of strength to you, lazy-
bones?"

"What is the use? Why, I shall live all the longer
for it.'

IN THE WORLD 277

"Why should you live, useless one?"

"But useless people go on living. Besides, you
know, it is very amusing to be alive, isn't it? Liv-
ing, Ivan Ivanovich, is a very comforting business."

"What an idiot I"

"Why do you say that?"

"I-di-ot!"

"There's a way of speaking!" said Yaakov in
amazement, and Medvyejenok said to me:

"Just think of it! We dry up our blood and roast
the marrow out of our bones in that infernal heat at
the stoves while he guzzles like a boar!"

"Every one must work out his own fate," said the
stoker, masticating.

I knew that to stoke the furnaces was heavier and
hotter work than to stand at the stove, for I had
tried several times at night to stoke with Yaakov, and
it seemed strange to me that he did not enlighten the
cook with regard to the heaviness of his labors. Yes,
this man certainly had a peculiar knowledge of his
own.

They all scolded him, — the captain, the engineer,
the first mate, all of those who must have known
he was not lazy. I thought it very strange. Why
did they not appraise him rightly? The stokers be-
haved considerably better to him than the rest al-
though they made fun of his incessant chatter and his
love of cards.

I asked them: "What do you think of Yaakov?
Is he a good man?"

278 IN THE WORLD

"Yaakov? He's all right. You can't upset him
whatever you do, even if you were to put hot coals
in his chest."

What with his heavy labor at the boilers, and his
appetite of a horse, the stoker slept but little. Often,
when the watches were changed, without changing his
clothes, sweating and dirty, he stayed the whole night
on deck, talking with the passengers, and playing
cards.

In my eyes he was like a locked trunk in which
something was hidden which I simply must have, and
I obstinately sought the key by which I might open
it.

*'What you are driving at, little brother, I can-
not, for the life of me, understand," he would say,
looking at me with his eyes almost hidden under his
eyebrows. "It is a fact that I have traveled about
the world a lot. W^hat about it'? Funny fellow!
You had far better listen to a story I have to tell you
about what happened to me once "

And he told me how there had lived, somewhere
in one of the towns he had passed through, a young
consumptive lawyer who had a German wife — a fine,
healthy woman, without children. And this German
woman was in love with a dry-goods merchant. The
merchant was married, and his wife was beautiful and
had three children. When he discovered that the
German woman was in love with him, he planned to
play a practical joke on her. He told 'her to meet

IN THE WORLD 279

him in the garden at night, and invited two of his
friends to come with him, hiding them in the garden
among the bushes.

* 'Wonderful I When the German woman came, he
said, 'Here she is, all there I' And to her, he said,
'I am no use to you, lady; I am married. But I
have brought two of my friends to you. One of them
is a widower, and the other a bachelor.' The Ger-
man woman — ach! she gave him such a slap on the
face that he fell over the garden bench, and then she
trampled his ugly mug and his thick head with her
heel I I had brought her there, for I was dvornik at
the lawyer's house. I looked through a chink in the
fence, and saw how the soup was boiling. Then the
friends sprang out upon her, and seized her by the
hair, and I dashed over the fence, and beat them off.
'You must not do this, Mr. Merchants I' I said. The
lady had come trustfully, and he had imagined that
she had evil intentions. I took her away, and they
threw a brick at me, and bruised my head. She was
overcome with grief, and almost beside herself. She
said to me, as we crossed the yard: 'I shall go back
to my own people, the Germans, as soon as my hus-
band dies!' I said to her, 'Of course you must go
back to them.' And when the lawyer died, she went
away. She was very kind, and so clever, tool And
the lawyer was kind, too, — God rest his soul I"

Not being quite sure that I had understood the
meaning of this story, I was silent. I was conscious

28o IN THE WORLD

of something familiar, something which had hap-
pened before, something pitiless and blind about it.
But what could I say?

"Do you think that is a good story?" asked
Yaakov.

I said something, making some confused objections,
but he explained calmly :

"People who have more than is necessary are easily
amused, but sometimes, when they want to play a
trick on some one, it turns out not to be fun at all.
It does n't come off as they expected. Merchants are
brainy people, of course. Commerce demands no lit-
tle cleverness, and the life of clever persons is very
dull, you see, so they like to amuse themselves."

Beyond the prow, all in a foam, the river rushed
swiftly. The seething, running water was audible,
the dark shore gliding slowly along with it. On the
deck lay snoring passengers. Among the benches,
among the sleeping bodies, a tall faded woman in a
black frock, with uncovered gray head, moved quietly,
coming towards us. The stoker, nudging me, said
softly :

"Look — she is in trouble!"

And it seemed to me that other people's griefs were
amusing to him. He told me many stories, and I
listened greedily. I remember his stories perfectly,
but I do not remember one of them that was happy.
He spoke more calmly than books. In books, I was
often conscious of the feelings of the writer, — of his
rage, his joy, his grief, his mockery; but the stoker

IN THE WORLD 281

never mocked, never judged. Nothing excited either
his disgust or his pleasure to any extent. He spoke
like an impartial witness at a trial, like a man who
was a stranger alike to accuser, accused, and judge.
This equanimity aroused in me an ever-increasing
sense of irritated sorrow, a feeling of angry dislike
for Yaakov.

Life burned before his eyes like the flame of the
stove beneath the boilers. He stood in front of the
stove with a wooden mallet in his pock-marked, coffee-
colored hands, and softly struck the edge of the regu-
lator, diminishing or increasing the heat.

"Has n't all this done you harm^"

"Who would harm me? I am strong. You sec
what blows I can give I"

"I am not speaking of blows, but has not your soul
been injured?"

"The soul cannot be hurt. The soul does not re-
ceive injuries," he said. "Souls are not affected by
any human agency, by anything external."

The deck passengers, the sailors, every one, in fact,
used to speak of the soul as often and as much as
they spoke of the land, of their work, of food and
women. "Soul" is the tenth word in the speech of
simple people, a word expressive of life and move-
ment.

I did not like to hear this word so habitually on
people's slippery tongues, and when the peasants used
foul language, defiling their souls, it struck me to the
heart.

282 IN THE WORLD

1 remember so well how carefully grandmother used
to speak of the soul, — that secret receptacle of love,
beauty, and joy. I believed that, after the death of
a good person, white angels carried his soul to the
good God of my grandmother, and He greeted it with
tenderness.

"Well, my dear one, my pure one, thou hast suf-
fered and languished below."

And He would give the soul the wings of seraphim
— six white wings. Yaakov Shumov spoke of the
soul as carefully, as reluctantly, and as seldom as
grandmother. When he was abused, he never
blasphemed, and when others discussed the soul he
said nothing, bowing his red, bull-like neck. When
I asked him what the soul was like, he replied:

'The soul is the breath of God."

This did not enlighten me much, and I asked for
more; upon which the stoker, inclining his head, said:

*'Even priests do not know much about the soul,
little brother; that is hidden from us."

He held my thoughts continually, in a stubborn
effort to understand him, but it was an unsuccessful
effort. I saw nothing else but him. He shut out
everything else with his broad figure.

The stewardess bore herself towards me with sus-
picious kindness. In the morning, I was deputed to
take hot water for washing to her, although this was
the duty of the second-class chambermaid, Lusha, a
fresh, merry girl. When I stood in the narrow cabin,
near the stewardess, who was stripped to the waist, and

IN THE WORLD 283

looked upon her yellow body, flabby as half-baked
pastry, I thought of the lissom, swarthy body of
"Queen Margot," and felt disgusted. And the stew-
ardess talked all the time, now complainingly and
scolding, now crossly and mockingly.

I did not grasp the meaning of her speech, although
I dimly guessed at it — at its pitiful, low, shameful
meaning. But I was not disturbed by it. I lived far
away from the stewardess, and from all that went on
in the boat. I lived behind a great rugged rock, which
hid from me all that world. All that went on dur-
ing those days and nights flowed aVay into space.

"Our Gavrilovna is quite in love with you." I
heard the laughing words of Lusha as in a dream.
"Open your mouth, and take your happiness."

And not only did she make fun of me, but all the
dining-room attendants knew of the weakness of their
mistress. The cook said, with a frown:

"The woman has tasted everything, and now she

has a fancy for pastry ! People like that 1 You

look, Pyeshkov, before you leap."

And Yaakov also gave me paternal advice.

"Of course, if you were a year or two older, I
should give you different advice, but at your age, it
is better for you to keep yourself to yourself. How-
ever, you must do as you like."

"Shut up I" said I. "The whole thing is disgust-
ing."

"Of course it is."

But almost immediately after this, trying to make

284 IN THE WORLD

the limp hair on his head stand up with his fingers,
he said tersely, in well-rounded periods:

"Well, one must look at it from her point of view,
too. She has a miserable, comfortless job. Even a
dog likes to be stroked, and how much more a human
being. A female lives by caresses, as a mushroom by
moisture. She ought to be ashamed of herself, but
what is she to do*?"

I asked, looking intently into his elusive eyes:

"Do you begrudge her that, then?"

"What is she to me? Is she my mother? And
if she were But you are a funny fellow I"

He laughed in a low voice, like the beating of a
drum.

Sometimes when I looked at him, I seemed to be
falling into silent space, into a bottomless pit full of
twilight.

"Every one is married but you, Yaakov. Why
have n't you ever married?"

"Why? I have always been a favorite with the
women, thank God, but it's like this. When one is
married, one has to live in one place, settle down on
the land. My land is very poor, a very small piece,
and my uncle has taken even that from me. When
my young brother came back from being a soldier,
he fell out with our uncle, and was brought before
the court for punching his head. There was blood
shed over the matter, in fact. And for that they sent
him to prison for a year and a half. When you come
out of prison, son, there is only one road for you; and

IN THE WORLD 285

that leads back to prison again. His wife was such a
pleasant young woman — but what is the use of talk-
ing about it? When one is married, one ought to be
master of one's own stable. But a soldier is not even
master of his own life."

"Do you say your prayers*?"

"You fun — ^n — y — ^y fellow, of course I do!"

"But how?"

"All kinds of ways."

"What prayers do you say?"

"I know the night prayers. I say quite simply, my
brother : *Lord Jesus, while I live, have mercy on me,
and when I am dead give me rest. Save me. Lord,
from sickness ' and one or two other things I say."

"What things?"

"Several things. Even what you don't say, gets to
Him."

His manner to me was kind, but full of curiosity,
as it might have been to a clever kitten which could
perform amusing tricks. Sometimes, when I was sit-
ting with him at night, when he smelt of naphtha,
burning oil, and onions, for he loved onions and used
to gnaw them raw, like apples, he would suddenly ask :

"Now, Olekha, lad, let 's have some poetry."

I knew a lot of verse by heart, besides which I had
a large notebook in which I had copied my favorites.
I read "Rousslan" to him,- and he listened without
moving, like a deaf and dumb man, holding his wheezy
breath. Then he said to me in a low voice :

"That 's a pleasant, harmonious, little story. Did

286 IN THE WORLD

you make it up yourself? There is a gentleman called
Mukhin Pushkin. I have seen him."

"But this man was killed ever so long ago."

"What for?"

I told him the story in short words, as "Queen Mar-
got" had told it to me. Yaakov listened, and then
said calmly:

"Lots of people are ruined by women."

I often told him similar stories which I had read in
books. They were all mixed up, effervescing in my
mind into one long story of disturbed, beautiful lives,
interspersed with flames of passion. They were full
of senseless deeds of heroism, blue-blooded nobility,
legendary feats, duels and deaths, noble words and
mean actions. Rokambol was confused with the
knightly forms of Lya-Molya and Annibal Kokonna,
Ludovic XI took the form of the Pere Grandet, the
Cornet Otletaev was mixed up with Henry IV. This
story, in which I changed the character of the people
and altered events according to my inspiration, became
a whole world to me. I lived in it, free as grand-
father's God, Who also played with every one as it
pleased Him. While not hindering me from seeing
the reality, such as it was, nor cooling my desire to
understand living people, nevertheless this bookish
chaos hid me by a transparent but impenetrable cloud
from much of the infectious obscenity, the venomous
poison of life. Books rendered many evils innocuous
for me. Knowing how people loved and suffered, I
could never enter a house of ill fame. Cheap de-

IN THE WORLD 287

pravity only roused a feeling of repulsion and pity for
those to whom it was sweet. Rokambol taught me to
be a Stoic, and not be conquered by circumstances.
The hero of Dumas inspired me with the desire to give
myself for some great cause. My favorite hero was
the gay monarch, Henry IV, and it seemed to me that
the glorious songs of Beranger were written about him.

He relieved the peasants of their taxes,
And himself he loved to drink.
Yes, and if the whole nation is happy, ,
Why should the king not drink?

Henry IV was described in novels as a kind man,
in touch with his people. Bright as the sun, he gave
me the idea that France — the most beautiful country
in the whole world, the country of the knights — was
equally great, whether represented by the mantle of a
king or the dress of a peasant. Ange Piutou was just
as much a knight as D'Artagnan. When I read how
Henry was murdered, I cried bitterly, and ground my
teeth with hatred of Ravaillac. This king was nearly
always the hero of the stories I told the stoker, and it
seemed to me that Yaakov also loved France and
^'Khenrik."

"He was a good man was King 'Khenrik,' whether
he was punishing rebels, or whatever he was doing,"
he said.

He never exclaimed, never interrupted my stories
with questions, but listened in silence, with lowered
brows and immobile face, like an old stone covered

288 IN THE WORLD

with fungus growth. But if, for some reason, I broke
off my speech, he at once asked:

"Is that the end?^'

"Not yet."

"Don't leave off, then I"

Of the French nation he said, sighing:

"They had a very easy time of it I"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you and I have to live in the heat. We have
to labor, while they lived at ease. They had nothing
to do but to sing and walk about — a very consoling
life!"

"They worked, too !"

"It does n't say so in your stories," observed the
stoker with truth, and I suddenly realized clearly that
the greater number of the books which I had read
hardly ever spoke of the heroes working, or of the
hardships they had to encounter.

"Now I am going to sleep for a short time," said
Yaakov, and falling back where he lay, he was soon
snoring peacefully.

In the autumn, when the shores of the Kama were
turning red, the leaves were taking a golden tinge, and
the crosswise beams of the sun grew pallid, Yaakov
unexpectedly left the boat. The day before, he had
said to me :

"The day after to-morrow, you and I, my lad,
will be in Perm. We will go to the bath, steam our-
selves to our hearts' content, and when we have
finished will go together to a Traktir. There is music

IN THE WORLD 289

and it is very pleasant. I like to see them playing
on those machines."

But at Sarapulia there came on the boat a stout
man with a flabby, womanish face. He was beard-
less and whiskerless. His long warm cloak, his cap
with car flaps of fox fur, increased his resemblance to
a woman. He at once engaged a small table near the
kitchen, where it was warmest, asked for tea to be
served to him, and began to drink the yellow boiling
liquid. As he neither unfastened his coat nor re-
moved his cap, he perspired profusely.

A fine rain fell unweariedly from the autumn mist.
It seemed to me that when this man wiped the sweat
from his face with his checked handkerchief, the rain
fell less, and in proportion as he began to sweat again,
it began to rain harder.

Very soon Yaakov appeared, and they began to
look at a map together. The passenger drew his
finger across it, but Yaakov said :

"What's that"? Nothing I I spit upon it I"

"All right," said the passenger, putting away the
map in a leather bag which lay on his knees. Talk-
ing softly together, they began to drink tea.

Before Yaakov went to his watch, I asked him what
sort of a man this was. He replied, with a laugh :

"To see him, he might be a dove. He is a eunuch,
that's what he is. He comes from Siberia — a long
way off I He is amusing; he lives on a settlement."

Setting his black strong heels on the deck, like
hoofs, once again he stopped, and scratched his side.

290 IN THE WORLD

"I have hired myself to him as a workman. So
when we get to Perm, I shall leave the boat, and it will
be good-by to you, lad I We shall travel by rail, then
by river, and after that by horses. For five weeks we
shall have to travel, to get to where the man has his
colony."

"Did you know him before?" I asked, amazed
at his sudden decision.

"How should I know him"? I have never seen
him before. I have never lived anywhere near him."

In the morning Yaakov, dressed in a short, greasy
fur-coat, with sandals on his bare feet, wearing Med-
vyejenok's tattered, brimless straw hat, took hold of
my arm with his iron grasp, and said :

"Why don't you come with me, eh*? He will take
you as well, that dove, if you only tell him you want
to go. Would you like to*? Shall I tell him? They
will take away from you something which you will not
need, and give you money. They make a festival of
it when they mutilate a man, and they reward him
for it."

The eunuch ^ stood on board, with a white bundle
under his arm, and looked stubbornly at Yaakov with
his dull eyes, which were heavy and swollen, like those
of a drowned person. I abused him in a low voice,
and the stoker once more took hold of my arm.

"Let him alone ! There 's no harm in him. Every

1 Skoptsi, or eunuchs, form a sect in Russia, or rather part of the
schism known as the Old Believers. Sexual purity being enjoined on
its members, and the practice of it being found to be lax, mutilation
was resorted to.

IN THE WORLD 291

one has his own way of praying. What business is it
of ours^? Well, good-by. Good luck, to you!"

And Yaakov Shumov went away, rolling from side
to side like a bear, leaving in my heart an uneasy, per-
plexed feeling. I was sorry to lose the stoker, and
angry with him. I was, I remember, a little jealous
and I thought fearfully, "Fancy a man going away like
that, without knowing where he is going!"

And what sort of a man was he — Yaakov Shumov 1

CHAPTER XII

LATE in the autumn, when the steamboat voyage*
finished, I went as pupil in the workshop of an
icon painter. But in a day or two my mistress, a
gentle old lady given to tippling, announced to me in
her Vladimirski speech:

"Hie days are short now and the evenings long,
so you will go to the shop in the mornings, and be
shop-boy. In the evenings you will learn."

She placed me under the authority of a small, swift-
footed shopman, a young fellow with a handsome,
false face. In the mornings, in the cold twilight of
dawn, I went with him right across the town, up the
sleepy mercantile street, Ilnik, to the Nijni bazaar, and
there, on the second floor of the Gostini Dvor, was
the shop. It had been converted from a warehouse
into a shop, and was dark, with an iron door, and one
small window on the terrace, protected by iron bars.
The shop was packed with icons of different sizes, with
image-cases, and with highly finished books in church
Slav characters, bound in yellow leather. Beside our
shop there was another, in which were also sold icons
and books, by a black-bearded merchant, kinsman to
an Old Believer valuer. He was celebrated beyond
the Volga as far as the boundaries of Kirjinski, and

was assisted by his lean and lively son, who had the

292

IN THE WORLD 293

9m*ll gray face of in old man, and the rcstleai eyes of
a mouse.

When I had opened the shop, I had to run to the
tavern for boiling water, and when I had finished
breakfast, I had to set the shop in order, dust the goods,
and then go out on the terrace and watch with vigilant
eyes, lest customers should enter the neighboring shop.

"Customers are fools," said the shopman forcibly to
me. "They don't mind where they buy, so long as it
is cheap, and they do not understand the value of the
goods."

Lightly tapping the wooden surface of an icon, he
aired his slight knowledge of the business to me. He
instructed me :

"This is a clever piece of work — very cheap — three
or four vershoks — stands by itself. Here is another
— six or seven vershoks — stands by itself. Do you
know about the saints'? Remember Boniface is a
protection against drink; Vvaara, the great martyr,
against toothache and death by accident ; Blessed Vas-
sili, against fevers. Do you know all about Our
Lady*? Look! This is Our Lady of Sorrows, and
Our Lady of Abalak, Most Renowned. Do not weep
for me, Mother. Assuage my griefs. Our lady of
Kazan, of Pokrove; Our Lady of Seven Dolors."

I soon remembered the prices of the icons, accord-
ing to their size and the work on them, and learned to
distinguish between the different images of Our Lady.
But to remember the significations of the various saints
was difficult.

294 IN THE WORLD

Sometimes I would be standing at the door of the
shop, dreaming, when the shopman would suddenly-
test my knowledge.

*'Who is the deliverer from painful childbirth*?"

If I answered wrongly, he would ask scornfully :

"What is the use of your head*?"

Harder still was it for me to tout for customers.
The hideously painted icons did not please me at all,
and I did not like having to sell them. According to
grandmother's stories, I had imagined Our Lady as
young, beautiful, and good, just as she was in pictures
in the magazines, but the icons represented her as old
and severe, with a long crooked nose, and wooden
hands.

On market days, Wednesdays and Fridays, business
was brisk. Peasants, old women, and sometimes
whole families together, appeared on the terrace, — all
old Ritualists from Zavoljia, suspicious and surly
people of the forests. I would see, perhaps, coming
along slowly, almostly timidly, across the gallery, a
ponderous man wrapped in sheepskin and thick, home-
made cloth, and I would feel awkward and ashamed
at having to accost him. At last by a great effort I
managed to intercept him, and revolving about his
feet in their heavy boots, I chanted in a constrained,
buzzing voice:

"What can we do for you, your honor*? We have
psalters with notes and comments, the books of Eph-
rem Siren, Kyrillov, and all the canonical books and
breviaries. Please come and look at them. All kinds

IN THE WORLD 295

of icons, whatever you want, at various prices. Only
the best work, — dark colors I We take orders, too, if
you wish it, for all kinds of saints and madonnas.
Perhaps you would like to order something for a
Name Day, or for your family? This is the best
workshop in Russia! Here are the best goods in the
town !"

The impervious and inscrutable customer would look
at me for a long time in silence. Suddenly pushing
me aside with an arm like a piece of wood, he would
go into the shop next door, and my shopman, rub-
bing his large ears, grumbled angrily :

"You have let him go! You're a nice sales-
man!"

In the next shop could be heard a soft, sweet voice,
pouring forth a speech which had the effect of a nar-
cotic.

"We don't sell sheepskins or boots, my friend, but
the blessing of God, which is of more value than silver
or gold; which, in fact, is priceless."

"The devil !" whispered our shopman, full of envy
and almost beside himself with rage. "A curse on the
eyes of that muzhik! You must learn! You must
learn!"

I did honestly try to learn, for one ought to do well
whatever one has to do. But I was not a success at
enticing the customers in, nor as a salesman. These
gruff men, so sparing of their words, those old women
who looked like rats, always for some reason timid and
abject, aroused my pity, and I wanted to tell them on

296 IN THE WORLD

the quiet the real value of the icons, and not ask for the
extra two greven.

They amazed me by their knowledge of books, and
of the value of the painting on the icons. One day
a gray-haired old man whom I had herded into the shop
said to me shortly :

"It is not true, my lad, that your image workshop
\s, the best in Russia — the best is Rogoshin's in Mos-

cow."

In confusion I stood aside for him to pass, and he
went to another shop, not even troubling to go next
door.

''Has he gone away?" asked the shopman spitefully.

''You never told me about Rogoshin's workshop."

He became abusive.

"They come in here so quietly, and all the time
they know all there is to know, curse them! They
understand all about the business, the dogs I"

Handsome, overfed, and selfish, he hated the peas-
ants. When he was in a good humor, he would com-
plain to me:

"I am clever! I like cleanliness and scents, in-
cense, and eau-de-Cologne, and though I set such a
value on myself, I am obliged to bow and scrape to
some peasant, to get five copecks' profit out of him for
the mistress. Do you think it is fair? What is a
peasant, after all? A bundle of foul wool, a winter
louse, and yet "

And he fell into an indignant silence.

I liked the peasants. There was something elusive

IN THE WORLD 297

about each one of them which reminded me of Yaakov.

Sometimes there would climb into the shop a miser-
able-looking figure in a chapan^ put on over a short,
fur-coat. He would take off his shaggy cap, cross
himself with two fingers, look into the corner where
the lamp glimmered, yet try not to, lest his eyes rest
on the unblessed icons. Then glancing around, with-
out speaking for some time, he would manage at length
to say:

"Give me a psalter with a commentary."

Tucking up the sleeves of his chapan^ he would read
the pages, as he turned them over with clumsy move-
ment, biting his lips the while.

"Have n't you any more ancient than this*?"

"An old one would cost a thousand rubles, as you
know."

"I know."

The peasant moistened his finger as he turned over
the leaves, and there was left a dark finger-print where
he had touched them. The shopman, gazing with an
evil expression at the back of his head, said :

"The Holy Scriptures are all of the same age; the
word of God does not change."

"We know all about that; we have heard that!
God did not change it, but Nikon ^ did."

Closing the book, he went out in silence.

^The Nikonites are the followers of Nikon, patriarch of Moscow,
who objected to the innovation of Peter the Great in suppressing the
patriarchate of Moscow, and establishing a State Church upon the lines
of the old patriarchal church. They are also termed the Old Be-
lievers, who are split up into several extraordinary schisms which
existed before and after the suppression of the patriarchate, but who, in
the main, continue their orthodoxy.

298 IN THE WORLD

Sometimes these forest people disputed with the
shopman, and it was evident to me that they knew
more about the sacred writings than he did.

"Outlandish heathen!" grumbled the shop-
man.

I saw also that, although new books were not to the
taste of the peasants, they looked upon a new book
with awe, handling it carefully, as if it were a bird
which might fly out of their hands. This was very
pleasant to me to see, because a book was a miracle to
me. In it was inclosed the soul of the writer, and
when I opened it, I set this soul free, and it spoke to
me in secret.

Often old men and women brought books to sell
printed in the old characters of the pre-Nikonovski
period, or copies of such books, beautifully made by
the monks of Irgiz and Kerjentz. They also brought
copies of missals uncorrected by Dmitry Rostovski,
icons with ancient inscriptions, crosses, folding icons
with brass mountings, and silver, eucharist spoons given
by the Muscovite princes to their hosts as keepsakes.
All these were offered secretly, from their hoards under
the floor.

Both my shopman and his neighbor kept a very
sharp lookout for such vendors, each trying to take
them away from the other. Having bought antiques
for anything up to ten rubles, they would sell them
on the market-place to rich Old Ritualists for hun-
dreds of rubles.

"Mind you look out for those were- wolves, those

IN THE WORLD 299

wizards! Look for them with all your eyes; they
bring luck with them."

When a vendor of this kind appeared, the shop-
man used to send me to fetch the valuer, Petr Vas-
silich, a connoisseur in old books, icons, and all kind
of antiques.

He was a tall old man with a long beard, like
Blessed Vassili, with intelligent eyes in a pleasant
face. The tendon of one of his legs had been re-
moved, and he walked lame, with a long stick. Sum-
mer and winter he wore a light garment, like a cassock,
and a velvet cap of a strange shape, which looked like
a saucepan. Usually brisk and upright, when he en-
tered the shop, he let his shoulders droop, and bent
his back, sighing gently and crossing himself often,
muttering prayers and psalms to himself all the time.
This pious and aged feebleness at once inspired the
vendor with confidence in the valuer.

"What is the matter^ Has something gone
wrong ^" the old man would ask.

*'Here is a man who has brought an icon to sell.
He says it is a Stroganovski."

"What I"

"A Stroganovski."

"Aha, my hearing is bad. The Lord has stopped
my ears against the abomination of the Nikonites."

Taking off his cap, he held the icon horizontally,
looked at the inscription lengthways, sideways, straight
up, examined the knots in the wood, blinked, and
murmured :

300 IN THE WORLD

"The godless Nikonites, observing our love of an-
cient beauties, and instructed by the devil, have mali-
ciously made forgeries. In these days it is very easy
to make holy images, — oh, very easy I At first sight,
this might be a real Stroganovski, or an Ustiujcki
painting, or even a Suzdulski, but when you look into
it, it is a forgery."

If he said "forgery," it meant, "This icon is precious
and rare."

By a series of pre-arranged signs, he informed the
shopman how much he was to give for the icon or book.
I knew that the words "melancholy" and "affliction"
meant ten rubles. "Nikon the tiger" meant twenty-
five. I felt ashamed to see how they deceived the
sellers, but the skilful by-play of the valuer amused
me.

"Those Nikonites, black children of Nikon the
tiger, will do anything, — led by the Devil as they
are! Look! Even this signature looks real, and the
bas-relief as if it were painted by the one hand. But
look at the face — that was not done by the same brush.
An old master like Pimen Ushakov, although he was a
heretic, did the whole icon himself. He did the bas-
relief, the face, and even the chasing very carefully,
and sketched in the inscription, but the impious people
of our day cannot do anything like it! In old times
image painting was a holy calling, but now they make
what concerns God merely a matter of art."

At length he laid the icon down carefully on the
counter, and putting on his hat, said :

IN THE WORLD 301

"It is a sin !"

This meant "buy it."

Overwhelmed by his flow of sweet words, astounded
by the old man's knowledge, the client would ask in an
impressed tone :

"Well, your honor, what is your opinion of the
icon?"

"The icon was made by Nikonite hands."

"That cannot be ! My grandfather and my grand-
mother prayed before it!"

"Nikon lived before your grandfather lived."

The old man held the icon close to the face of the
seller, and said sternly :

"Look now what a joyous expression it has! Do
you call that an icon*? It is nothing more than a
picture — a blind work of art, a Nikonski joke — there
is no soul in it! Would I tell you what is not true*?
I, an old man, persecuted for the sake of the truth!
I shall soon have to go to God. I have nothing to
gain by acting unfairly."

He went out from the shop onto the terrace, languid
with the feebleness of old age, offended by the doubt
cast upon his valuation. The shopman paid a few
rubles for the picture, the seller left, bowing low to
Petr Vassilich, and they sent me to the tavern to
get boiling water for the tea. When I returned, I
would find the valuer brisk and cheerful, looking lov-
ingly at the purchase, and thus instructing the
shopman :

"Look, this icon has been very carefully done!

302 IN THE WORLD

The painting is very fine, done in the fear of God.
Human feelings had no part in it."

"And whose work is it*?" asked the shopman, beam-
ing and jumping about for joy.

"It is too soon for you to know that."

"But how much would connoisseurs give for it^"

"That I could not say. Give it to me, and I will
show it to some one."

"Och, Petr Vassilich."

"And if I sell it, you shall have half the hundred
rubles. Whatever there is over, that is mine!"

"Och!"

"You need not keep on saying 'Och' I"

They drank their tea, bargaining shamelessly, look-
ing at one another with the eyes of conspirators. That
the shopman was completely under the thumb of the
old man was plain, and when the latter went away, he
would say to me :

"Now don't you go chattering to the mistress about
this deal."

When they had finished talking about the sale of
the icon, the shopman would ask :

"And what news is there in the town, Petr Vassil-
ich *?"

Smoothing his beard with his yellow fingers, laying
bare his oily lips, the old man told stories of the lives
of the merchants. He spoke of commercial successes,
of feasts, of illnesses, of weddings, and of the infideli-
ties of husbands and wives. He served up these
greasy stories quickly and skilfully, as a good cook

IN THE WORLD 303

serves up pancakes, with a sauce of hissing laughter.
The shopman's round face grew dark with envy and
rapture. His eyes were wide with dreamy wistful-
ness, as he said complainingly :

"Other people live, and here am I !"

"Every one has his appointed destiny," resounded
the deep voice. "Of one, the fate is heralded by
angels with little silver hammers, and' of another, by
devils with the butt-end of an ax."

This strong, muscular, old man knew everything —
the whole life of the town, all the secrets of the mer-
chants, chinovniks, priests, and citizens. He was
keensighted as a bird of prey, and with this had some
of the qualities of the wolf and fox. I always wanted
to make him angry, but he looked at me from afar, al-
most as if through a fog. He seemed to me to be
surrounded by a limitless space. If one went closer to
him, one seemed to be falling. I felt in him some
affinity to the stoker Shumov.

Although the shopman went into ecstasies over his
cleverness, both to his face and behind his back, there
were times when, like me, he wanted to provoke or
offend the old man.

"You are a deceiver of men," he would say, sud-
denly looking heatedly into the old man's face.

The latter, smiling lazily, answered:

"Only the Lord lives without deceit, and we live
among fools, you see. Can one meet fools, and not
deceive them? Of what use would they be, then*?"

The shopman lost his temper.

304 IN THE WORLD

"Not all the peasants are fools. The merchants
themselves came from the peasantry I"

"We are not talking about merchants. Fools do
not live as rogues do. A fool is like a saint — his
brains are asleep."

The old man drawled more and more lazily, and
this was very irritating. It seemed to me that he was
standing on a hillock in the midst of a quagmire. It
was impossible to make him angry. Either he was
above rage, or he was able to hide it very successfully.

But he often happened to be the one to start a dis-
pute with me. He would come quite close to me, and
smiling into his beard, remark:

"What do you call that French writer — Ponoss^"

I was desperately angry at this silly way of turning
the names upside down. But holding myself in for
the time, I said:

"Ponson de Terrail."

"Where was he lost?' ^

"Don't play the fool. You are not a child."

"That is true. I am not a child. What are you
reading?"

"*Ephrem Siren.'"

"And who writes best. Your foreign authors'? or
he?"

I made no reply.

"What do the foreign ones write about most?"

"About everything which happens to exist in life."

1 Terryat in Russian means "to lose."

IN THE WORLD 305

"That is to say, about dogs and horses — whichever
may happen to come their way."

The shopman laughed. I was enraged. The
atmosphere was oppressive, unpleasant to me. But
if I attempted to get away, the shopman stopped me.

"Where are you going ^"

And the old man would examine me.

"Now, you learned man, gnaw this problem. Sup-
pose you had a thousand naked people standing be-
fore you, five hundred women and five hundred men,
and among them Adam and Eve. How would you
tell which were Adam and Eve"?"

He kept asking me this, and at length explained
triumphantly :

"Little fool, don't you see that, as they were not
bom, but were created, they would have no navels I"

The old man knew an innumerable quantity of these
"problems." He could wear me out with them.

During my early days at the shop, I used to tell
the shopman the contents of some of the books I had
read. Now these stories came back to me in an evil
form. The shopman retold them to Petr Vassilich,
considerably cut up, obscenely mutilated. The old
man skilfully helped him in his shameful questions.
Their slimy tongues threw the refuse of their obscene
words at Eugenie Grandet, Ludmilla, and Henry IV.

I understood that they did not do this out of ill-
nature, but simply because they wanted something to
do. All the same, I did not find it easy to bear. Hav-

3o6 IN THE WORLD

ing created the filth, they wallowed in it, like hogs,
and grunted with enjoyment when they soiled what
was beautiful, strange, unintelligible, and therefore
comical to them.

The whole Gostinui Dvor, the whole of its popula-
tion of merchants and shopinen, lived a strange life,
full of stupid, puerile, and always malicious diversions.
If a passing peasant asked which was the nearest way
to any place in the town, they always gave him the
wrong direction. This had become such a habit with
them that the deceit no longer gave them pleasure.
They would catch two rats, tie their tails together, and
let them go in the road. They loved to see how they
pulled in different directions, or bit each other, and
sometimes they poured paraffin-oil over the rats, and
set fire to them. They would tie an old iron pail on
the tail of a dog, who, in wild terror, would tear
about, yelping and growling, while they all looked on,
and laughed.

There were many similar forms of recreation, and it
seemed to me that all kinds of people, especially coun-
try people, existed simply for the amusement of the
Gostinui Dvor. In their relations to other people,
there was a constant desire to make fun of them, to
give them pain, and to make them uncomfortable.
It was strange that the books I had read were silent
on the subject of this unceasing, deep-seated tendency
of people to jeer at one another.

One of the amusements of the Gostinui Dvor seemed
to me peculiarly offensive and disgusting.

IN THE WORLD 307

Underneath our shop there was a dealer in woolen
and felt footwear, whose salesman amazed the whole
of Nijni by his gluttony. His master used to boast
of this peculiarity of his employee, as one boasts of the
fierceness of a dog, or the strength of a horse. He
often used to get the neighboring shopkeepers to bet.

"Who will go as high as ten rubles? I will bet that
Mishka devours ten pounds of ham in two hours !"

But they all knew that Mishka was well able to
do that, and they said:

"We won't take your bet, but buy the ham and let
him eat it, and we will look on."

"Only let it be all meat and no bones I"

They would dispute a little and lazily, and then
out of the dark storehouse crept a lean, beardless
fellow with high cheek-bones, in a long cloth coat
girdled with a red belt all stuck round with tufts of
wool. Respectfully removing his cap from his small
head, he gazed in silence, with a dull expression in his
deep-set eyes, at the round face of his master which
was suffused with purple blood. The latter was say-
ing in his thick harsh voice :

"Can you eat a gammon of ham?"

"How long shall I have for it?" asked Mishka
practically, in his thin voice.

"Two hours."

"That will be difficult."

"Where is the difficulty?"

"Well, let me have a drop of beer with it."

"All right," said his master, and he would boast:

3o8 IN THE WORLD

"You need not think that he has an empty stomach.
No! In the morning he had two pounds of bread,
and dinner at noon, as you know."

They brought the ham, and the spectators took their
places. All the merchants were tightly enveloped in
their thick fur-coats and looked like gigantic weights.
They were people with big stomachs, but they all had
small eyes and some had fatty tumors. An unconquer-
able feeling of boredom oppressed them all.

With their hands tucked into their sleeves, they
surrounded the great glutton in a narrow circle, armed
with knives and large crusts of rye bread. He crossed
himself piously, sat down on a sack of wool and placed
the ham on a box at his side, measuring it with his
vacant eyes.

Cutting off a thin slice of bread and a thick one of
meat, the glutton folded them together carefully, and
held the sandwich to his mouth with both hands. His
lips trembled; he licked them with his thin and long
canine tongue, showing his small sharp teeth, and with
a dog-like movement bent his snout again over the
meat.

"He has begun !"

"Look at the time!"

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

"He eats cleanly — like a bear."

IN THE WORLD 309

*'Have you ever seen a bear eat?"

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

"Like a pig, it says."

"Pigs don't eat pig."

They laughed unwillingly, and soon some one know-
ingly said :

"Pigs eat everything — little pigs and their own sis-
ters."

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

"Take it easy, Mikhail, there is time I" they encour-
aged him.

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

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

Mishka's master cried passionately:

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

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

And Mishka went on eating and eating; his face

310 IN THE WORLD

began to look like the ham, his sharp grisly nose
whistled plaintively. It was terrible to look at him.
It seemed to me that he was about to scream, to
wail:

"Have mercy on me !"

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

"Let me go to sleep."

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

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

The others teased him:

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

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

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

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

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

And they swam like barges to the tavern.

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

It was dark and dull in that narrow gallery closel3f
packed with wool, sheepskins, hemp, ropes, felt, boots,
and saddlery. It was cut off- from the pavement by
pillars of brick, clumsily thick, weather-beaten, and
spattered with mud from the road. All the bricks and
all the chinks between them, all the holes made by

IN THE WORLD 311

the fallen-away mortar, had been mentally counted by
me a thousand times, and their hideous designs were
forever heavily imprinted on my memory.

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

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

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

Tedium, coldness, and want breathed all around:
from the earth covered with dirty snow, from the gray
snow-drift on the roof, from the flesh-colored bricks
of the buildings; tedium rose from the chimneys in a

312 IN THE WORLD

thick gray smoke, and crept up to the gray, low, empty
sky; with tedium horses sweated and people sighed.
They had a peculiar smell of their own, these people
— the oppressive dull smell of sweat, fat, hemp oil,
hearth-cakes, and smoke. It was an odor which
pressed upon one's head like a warm close-fitting cap,
and ran down into one's breast, arousing a strange feel-
ing of intoxication, a vague desire to shut one's eyes, to
cry out despairingly, to run away somewhere and knock
one's head against the first wall.

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

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

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

Sometimes I discussed this with Petr Vissilich.

IN THE WORLD 313

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

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

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

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

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

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

When he spoke seriously, his voice went lower and

314 IN THE WORLD

lower to a deep base, as if he were communicating
secrets.

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

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

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

Once I jokingly reminded him:

"But you cheat the peasants yourself."

He was not offended by this.

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

IN THE WORLD 315

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

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

And he would give me a memorable, intelligent lec-
ture:

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

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

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

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His cheeks were flushed ; his eyes shone.

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

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

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

Here a search had been made, and books of devo-
tion had been confiscated; there the police had closed

IN THE WORLD 317

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

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

At length, when I had come across many specimens
of these guardians of the old faith, both among the
people and among the intellectuals, I understood that
this obstinacy was the oriental passivity of people who
never moved from the place whereon they stood, and
had no desire to move from it, but were bound by
strong ties to the ways of the old words, and worn-out
ideas. They were steeped in these words and ideas.
Their wills were stationary, incapable of looking for-
ward, and when some blow from without cast them
out of their accustomed place, they mechanically and
without resistance let themselves roll down, like a
stone off a hill. They kept their own fasts in the

3i8 IN THE WORLD

graveyards of lived-out truths, with a deadly strength
of memory for the past, and an insane love of suffer-
ing and persecution; but if the possibility of suffering
were taken away from them, they faded away, disap-
peared like a cloud on a fresh winter day.

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

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

But before I was convinced of this, I had to live
through many weary years, break up many images in
my soul, and cast them out of my memory. But at the
time when I first came across these teachers of life,
in the midst of tedious and sordid realities, they ap-
peared to me as persons of great spiritual strength, the

IN THE WORLD 319

best people in the world. Almost every one of them
had been persecuted, put in prison, had been banished
from different towns, traveling by stages with convicts.
They all lived cautious, hidden lives.

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't shuffle with words !"

320 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

Pakhomie answered, as if he were adding up ac-
counts :

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

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

"Th— a— at 's right I Go it I"

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

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

He was especially fond of reproaching his com-
rades in that they were wanting in firm faith, and
predicting that they would fall away into "Protes-
tantism."

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

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

"Protestantism is the most bitter heresy ; it acknowl-
edges reason alone, and denies God! Look at the

IN THE WORLD 321

Bible Christians, for example, who read nothing but
the Bible, which came from a German, from Luther,
of whom it was said : He was rightly called Luther, for
if you make a verb of it, it runs : Lute bo, lubo luto ! ^
And all that comes from the west, from the heretics of
that part of the world."

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

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

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

''The mind of man wanders in the forest of its own
thoughts. Like a fierce wolf it wanders, the devil's
assistant, putting the soul of man, the gift of God, on
the rack! What have they imagined, these servants
of the devil*? The Bogomuili,^ through whom Prot-
estantism came, taught thus: Satan, they say, is the
son of God, the elder brother of Jesus Christ, That

^ From Lutui which means hard, violent.
2 Another sect of Old Believers.

322 IN THE WORLD

is what they have come to ! They taught people also
not to obey their superiors, not to work, to abandon
wife and children; a man needs nothing, no property
whatever in his life; let him live as he chooses, and
the devil shows him how. That Aleksasha has turned
up here again."

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

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

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

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

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

but And now that cur, Aleksasha, must come

disturbing us."

IN THE WORLD 323

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

"Aleksander Vassiliev is here in the town; he came
yesterday. I have been looking for him for a long
time, but he has hidden himself somewhere 1"

The shopman answered in an unfriendly tone:

"I don't know anything about him I"

Bending his head, the old man said:

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

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

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

"Various kinds of reptiles swim in our muddy

324 IN THE WORLD

rivers, and make the water more turbid than ever,"
said Petr Vassilich.

The man who resembled a shopman asked quietly
and gently :

"Do you mean that for me?"

*'And suppose I do mean it for you*?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Only God knows who most befouls the source
of the Holy Spirit. It may be your sin, you book-
learned, literary people. As for me, I am neither

IN THE WORLD 325

book-learned nor literary; I am a man of simple life."

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

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

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

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

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

"What is dear to you, man? The one God only

326 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

"Has he gone? But— why*?"

Kind Lukian, winking consolingly, said:

"That's all right— that's all right I"

Then Aleksander fell upon him :

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

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

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

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

IN THE WORLD 327

"I have not thought about the matter."

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

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

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

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

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

"How do they live?"

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

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

^Byegouns, or wanderers, still another sect of Old Believers.

328 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

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

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

How depraved the people have now become ;
The boy ruined the girl, and cared not who knew.
329

330 IN THE WORLD

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

It was very weird to see a large icon intended for
an iconastasis, or the doors of the altar, standing
against the wall without face, hands, or feet, — just
the sacerdotal vestments, or the armor, and the short
garments of archangels. These variously painted tab-

IN THE WORLD 331

lets suggested death. That which should have put
life into them was absent, but it seemed as if it had
been there, and had miraculously disappeared, leav-
ing only its heavy vestments behind.

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

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

"Knock him down !"

The face-painter, Evgen Sitanov, was successful in
stunning the maddened creature by hitting him on the

332 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

" You, Kapendiukhin, are what is called a painter
— that is, you ought to paint from life in the Italian
manner. Painting in oils requires warm colors, and

IN THE WORLD 333

you have introduced too much white, and made Our
Lady's eyes as cold as winter. The cheeks are painted
red, like apples, and the eyes do not seem to belong
to them. And they are not put in right, either ; one is
looking over the bridge of the nose, and the other has
moved to the temple; and the face has not come out
pure and holy, but crafty, wintry. You don't think
about your work, Kapendiukhin."

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

"Ekhl I — va — a — ^n Larionovich, my father, that
is not my trade. I was bom to be a musician, and
they put me among monks."

"With zeal, any business may be mastered."

"No; what do you take me for? I ought to have
been a coachman with a team of gray horses, eh?"

And protruding his Adam's apple, he drawled de-
spairingly:

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

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

334 IN THE WORLD

shop into the air and shake it with measured blows:

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

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

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

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

"I love you!"

Consumptive, yellow Davidov, who was covered

IN THE WORLD 335

with tufts of hair, also opened his mouth, strangely
resembling a young jackdaw newly burst out of the

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

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

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

Wiping his hands on his apron, Pashka led off :

"Pr— a— a— ise— "

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

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

336 IN THE WORLD

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

*'R — rabi Gospoda (slaves of the Lord) — ''

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

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

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

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

"Well, let it alone then !"

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

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

In spite of his superior position in the workshop,

IN THE WORLD 337

he was less conceited than the others, and was kind
to the apprentices — Pavl and me. He wanted to
teach us the work, since no one else ever bothered
about us.

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

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

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

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

"Whom are you talking to^" I asked.

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

338 IN THE WORLD

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

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

"He will get drunk on Saturday."

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

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

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

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

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

Jikharev's drinking bouts always began on Satur-
day, and his, you must understand, was not the usual
alcoholic fever of the workman. It began thus: In

IN THE WORLD 339

the morning he would write a note and sent Pavl some-
where with it, and before dinner he would say to
Larionovich :

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

"Will you be long?'

"Well, Lord—"

"Please don't be gone over Tuesday!"

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

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

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

340 IN THE WORLD

looked as if it had been painted on, like that of a cheap
doll. She smiled, held out her broad hand to every
one, and spoke unnecessary words :

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

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

"She is like an engine !"

"Like a steeple !"

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

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

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

IN THE WORLD 341

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

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

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

"What did he promise you that for*?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

342 IN THE WORLD

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

''How many children did you have?"

"Only one."

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

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

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

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

"Rest yourself, people," cried Jikharev in a ringing

IN THE WORLD 343

voice. "My friends, we are all the slaves of God; let
us sing, Traise His Name.' "

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

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

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

She v/ent to the space which had been cleared, and
stood there solidly, like a sentry. She wore a short
brown skirt, a yellow batiste blouse, and a red hand-
kerchief on her head.

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

Jikharev could not dance. He simply moved his
feet about, and setting down the heels of his brightly
polished boots, jumped about like a goat, and that not
in time with the clamorous music. His feet seemed
to belong to some one else; his body writhed unbeau-
tifully; he struggled like a wasp in a spider's web, or

344 IN THE WORLD

a fish in a net. It was not at all a cheerful sight.
But all of them, even the tipsy ones, seemed to be im-
pressed by his convulsions; they all watched his face
and arms in silence. The changing expressions of his
face were amazing. Now he looked kind and rather
shy, suddenly he became proud, and frowned harshly;
now he seemed to be startled by something, sighed,
closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them,
wore a sad expression. Clenching his fists he stole up
to the woman, and suddenly stamping his feet, fell
on his knees in front of her with arms outspread and
raised brows, smiling ardently. She looked down
upon him with an affable smile, and said to him
calmly :

"Stand up, comrade."

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

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

And Jikharev moved round this massive woman
with so many different changes of expression that he
seemed to be ten different men dancing, instead of
one. One was quiet and humble, another proud and
terrifying; in the third movement he was afraid, sigh-

IN THE WORLD 345

ing gently,, as if he desired to slip away unnoticed
from the large, unpleasant woman. But still another
person appeared, gnashing his teeth and writhing con-
vulsively like a wounded dog. This sad, ugly dance
reminded me of the soldiers, the laundresses, and the
cooks, and their vile behavior.

Sitanov's quiet words stuck in my memory :

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

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

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

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

How unlike this was to the life I read of in books !
It was painfully unlike it. At length they all grew

346 IN THE WORLD

weary of this, and Kapendiukhin put the harmonica
into Salautin's hands, and cried:

"Go on ! Fire away !"

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

They danced, and sang, and shouted, but each re-
membered that they were making merry, and gave
each other a sort of test — a test of agility and en-
durance.

Tipsy Sitanov asked first one and then another:

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

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

Larionovich, lifting the sharp bones of his shoul-
ders, answered:

"A woman is a woman — what more do you want*?"

The two of whom they spoke disappeared unno-
ticed. Jikharev reappeared in the workshop in two
er three days, went to the bath, and worked for two
weeks in his comer, without speaking, pompous and
estranged from every one.

"Have they gone?" asked Sitanov of himself, look-
ing round the workshop with sad blue-gray eyes. His
face was not handsome, for there was something eld-

IN THE WORLD 347

erly about it, but his eyes were clear and good. Sit-
anov was friendly to me — a fact which I owed to my
thick note-book in which I had written poetry. He
did not believe in God, but it was hard to understand
who in the workshop, beside Larionovich, loved God
and believed in Him. They all spoke of Him with
levity, derisively, just as they liked to speak of their
mistresses. Yet when they dined, or supped, thev all
crossed themselves, and when they went to bed, they
said their prayers, and went to church on Sundays
and feast days.

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

"There is no God," he said.

•"Where did we all come from, then*?"

"I don't know."

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

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

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

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

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

348 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

And closing his eyes he repeated softly :

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

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

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

"Do you understand that*?"

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

CHAPTER XIV

MY duties in the workshop were not complicated.
In the morning when they were all asleep, I had
to prepare the samovar for the men, and while they
drank tea in the kitchen, Pavl and I swept and dusted
the workshop, set out red, yellow, or white paints,
and then I went to the shop. In the evening I had
to grind up colors and "watch" the work. At first
I watched with great interest, but I soon realized that
all the men who were engaged on this handicraft which
was divided up into so many processes, disliked it, and
suffered from a torturing boredom.

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

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

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

340

350 IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN THE WORLD 351

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

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

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

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

It was hard to find books. We could not afford to
subscribe to a library, but I managed to get them
somehow, asking for them wherever I went, as a
charity. One day the second officer of the fire bri-
gade gave me the first volume of "Lermontov," and
it was from this that I felt the power of poety, and
its mighty influence^ over people. I remember even
now how, at the first lines of "The Demon," Sitanov

352 IN THE WORLD

looked first at the book and then at my face, laid down
his brush on the table, and, embracing his knee with
his long arms, rocked to and fro, smiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN THE WORLD 353

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You did not make that up yourself!"
"I can never remember words," said Jikharev, shiv-
ering in the bitter cold. "I can't remember anything;
but he, I see — It is an amazing thing — a man who
actually pities the devil ! He has made you sorry for
him, hasn't he?"

354 IN THE WORLD

"He has," agreed Sitanov.

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

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

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

"Come, read it once more!"

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

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

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

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

"I shall copy that into my own note-book."

Jikharev stood up and carried the book to his own
table, but he turned back and said in an offended,
shaky voice:

"We live like blind puppies — to what end we do
not know. We are not necessary either to God or
the devil! How are we slaves of the Lord? The
Jehovah of slaves and the Lord Himself speaks with

IN THE WORLD 355

them I With Moses, tool He even gave Moses a
name; it means This is mine' — a man of God. And
we — what are we*?"

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

"Are you coming to the tavern?"

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

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

"What is the matter with you*?"

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

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

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

3ir6 IN THE WORLD

natural^ but nowhere do they wear themselves out so
terribly quickly, so senselessly, as in our own Russia.

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

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

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

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

IN THE WORLD 357

but thcj were afraid of him, and for th€ same reason
were afraid of Golovev, too.

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

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

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

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

She, who was also drunk every day, and for that
reason always kind and cheerful, tried to frighten us,
striking her swollen hands on the table, and crying:

"So you have been saucy again, you wild beast*?
He is an old man, and you ought to respect him!
Who was it that put photographic solution in his glass,
instead of wine?"

358 IN THE WORLD

"We did."

The mistress was amazed.

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

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

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

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

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

And sobbingly she drawled in the quavering voice
of age:

"U— oo— oc^"

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

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

Not stout, but soft to flabbiness, she looked like

IN THE WORLD 3^9

an old cat which had grown beyond catching mice, and,
languid from overfeeding, could do no more than purr,
dwelling sweetly on the memories of past triumphs
and pleasures.

''Here," said Sitanov, frowning thoughtfully, "was
a large- business, a fine workshop, and clever men la-
bored at this trade; but now that is all done with, all
gone to ruin, all directed by the paws of Kuzikin I . It
is a case of working and working, and all for strangers !
When one thinks of this, a sort of spring seems to
break in one's head. One wants to do nothing, — a
fig for any kind of work I — ^just to lie on the roof, lie
there for the whole summer and look up into the
sky."

Pavl Odintzov also appropriated these thoughts of
Sitanov, and smoking a cigarette which had been given
him by his elders, philosophized about God, drunken-
ness, and women. He enlarged on the fact that all
work disappears; certain people do it and others de-
stroy it, neither valuing it nor understanding it.

At such times his sharp, pleasant face frowned, aged.
He would sit on his bed on the floor, embracing his
knees, and look long at the blue square of the window,
at the roof of the shed which lay under a fall of
snow, and at the stars in the winter sky.

The workmen snored, or talked in their sleep; one
of them raved, choking with words ; in the loft, Davi-
dov coughed away what was left of his life. In the
corner, body to body, wrapped in an iron-bound sleep
of intoxication, lay those "slaves of God" — Kapend-

36o IN THE WORLD

iukhin, Sorokhin, Pcrshin; from the walls icons with-
out faces, hands, or feet looked forth. There was a
close smell of bad eggs, and dirt, which had turned
sour in the crevices of the floor.

"How I pity them all!'' whispered Pavl. "Lord!"

This pity for myself and others disturbed me more
and more. To us both, as I have said before, all the
workmen seemed to be good people, but their lives
were bad, unworthy of them, unbearably dull. At
the time of the winter snowstorms, when everything
on the earth — the houses, the trees — was shaken,
howled, and wept, and in Lent, when the melancholy
bells rang out, the dullness of it all flowed over the
workshop like a wave, as oppressive as lead, weighing
people down, killing all that was alive in them, driv-
ing them to the tavern, to women, who served the same
purpose as vodka in helping them to forget.

On such evenings books were of no use, so Pavl and
I tried to amuse the others in our own way: smearing
our faces with soot and paint, dressing ourselves up
and playing different comedies composed by ourselves,
heroically fighting against the boredom till we made
them laugh. Remembering the "Account of how the
soldier saved Peter the Great," I turned this book into
a conversational form, and climbing on to Davidov's
pallet-bed, we acted thereon cheerfully, cutting off
the head of an imaginary Swede. Our audience burst
out laughing.

They were especially delighted with the legend of
the Chinese devil, Sing-U-Tongia. Pashka repre-

IN THE WORLD 361

sented the unhappy devil who had planned to do a
good deed, and I acted all the other characters — the
people of the field, subjects, the good soul, and even
the stones on which the Chinese devil rested in great
pain after each of his unsuccessful attempts to perform
a good action.

Our audience laughed loudly, and I was amazed
when I saw how easily they could be made to laugh.
This facility provoked me unpleasantly.

"Ach, clowns," they cried. "Ach, you devils I"

But the further I went, the more I was troubled
with the thought that sorrow appealed more than joy
to the hearts of these people. Gaiety has no place
in their lives, and as such has no value, but they evoke
it from under their burdens, as a contrast to
the dreamy Russian sadness. The inward strength
of a gaiety which lives not of itself not be-
cause it wishes to live, but because it is aroused
by the call of sad days, is suspect. And too often
Russian gaiety changes suddenly into cruel tragedy.
A man will be dancing as if he were breaking the
shackles which bound him. Suddenly a ferocious wild
beast is let loose in him, and with the unreasoning
anguish of a wild beast he will throw himself upon all
who come^in his way, tear them in pieces, bite them,
destroy them.

This intense joy aroused by exterior forces irritated
me, and stirred to self-oblivion, I began to compose
and act suddenly created fantasies — for I wanted so
much to arouse a real, free, and unrestrained joy in

362 IN THE WORLD

these people. I succeeded in some measure. They
praised me, they were amazed at me, but the sadness
which I had almost succeeded in shaking off, stole
back again, gradually growing denser and stronger,
harassing them.

Gray Larionovich said kindly:

"Well, you are an amusing fellow, God bless you I"

"He is a boon to us," Jikharev seconded him.
"You know, Maxim, you ought to go into a circus, or
a theater; you would make a good clown."

Out of the whole workshop only two went to the
theaters, on Christmas or carnival weeks, Kapendiukhin
and Sitanov, and the older workmen seriously counseled
them to wash themselves from this sin in the baptismal
waters of the Jordan. Sitanov particularly would
often urge me :

"Throw up everything and be an actor!"

And much moved, he would tell me the "sad" story
of the life of the actor, Yakolev.

"There, that will show you what may happen !"

He loved to tell stories about Marie Stuart, whom
he called "the rogue," and his peculiar delight was the
"Spanish nobleman."

"Don Csesar de Bazan was a real nobleman. Maxi-
mich! Wonderful!"

There was something of the "Spanish nobleman"
about himself.

One day in the market-place, in front of the fire-sta-
tion, three firemen were amusing themselves by beating
a peasant. A crowd of people, numbering about forty

IN THE WORLD 363

persons, looked on and cheered the soldiers. Sitanov
threw himself into the brawl. With swinging blows
of his long arms he struck the firemen, lifted the peas-
ant, and carried him into the crowd, crying:

"Take him away I"

But he remained behind himself, one against three.
The yard of the fire-station was only about ten steps
away; they might easily have called others to their
aid and Sitanov would have been killed. But by good
luck the firemen were frightened and ran away into
the yard.

"Dogs!" he cried after them.

On Sunday the young people used to attend boxing-
matches held in the Tyessni yard behind the Petro-
pavlovski churchyard, where sledge-drivers and peas-
ants from the adjacent villages assembled to fight with
the workmen. The wagoners put up against the town
an eminent boxer, a Mordovan giant with a small head,
and large eyes always full of tears. Wiping away
the tears with the dirty sleeve of his short caftan^ he
stood before his backers with his legs planted widely
apart, and challenged good-naturedly:

"Come on, then; what is the matter with you? Arc
you cold?'

Kapendiukhin was set up against him on our side,
and the Mordovan always beat him. But the bleed-
ing, panting Cossack said :

"I '11 lick that Mordovan if I die for it!"

In the end, that became the one aim of his life. He
even went to the length of giving up vodka, rubbed

364 IN THE WORLD

his body with snow before he went to sleep, ate a lot
of meat, and to develop his muscles, crossed himself
many times every evening with two pound weights.
But this did not avail him at all. Then he sewed a
piece of lead inside his gloves, and boasted to Sitanov :

"Now we will finish the Mordovan!"

Sitanov sternly warned him :

"You had better throw it away, or I will give you
away before the fight."

Kapendiukhin did not believe him, but when the
time for the fight arrived, Sitanov said abruptly to the
Mordovan :

"Step aside, Vassili Ivanich; I have something to
Bay to Kapendiukhin first!"

The Cossack turned purple and roared :

"I have nothing to do with you ; go away !"

"Yes, you have!" said Sitanov, and approaching
him, he looked into the Cossack's face with a compel-
ling glance.

Kapendiukhin stamped on the ground, tore the
gloves from his hands, thrust them in his breast, and
went quickly away from the scene of his fight.

Both our side and the other were unpleasantly sur-
prised, and a certain important personage said angrily
to Sitanov :

"That is quite against the rules, brother, — to bring
private affairs to be settled in the world of the prize
ring!"

They fell upon Sitanov from all sides, and abused

IN THE WORLD 365

him. He kept silence for a long time, but at length
he said to the important personage :

"Am I to stand by and see murder done^"

The important personage at once guessed the truth,
and actually taking off his cap said :

"Then our gratitude is due to you I"

"Only don't go and spread it abroad, uncle I'*

"Why should I*? Kapendiukhin is hardly ever the
victor, and ill-success embitters a man. We under-
stand! But in future we will have his gloves ex-
amined before the contest."

"That is your affair!"

When the important personage had gone away, our
side began to abuse Kapendiukhin:

"You have made a nice mess of it. He would have
killed his man, our Cossack would, and now we have to
stay on the losing side !"

They abused him at length, captiously, to their
hearts' content.

Sitanov sighed and said:

"Oh, you guttersnipes !"

And to the surprise of everyone he challenged the
Mordovan to a single contest. The latter squared up
and flourishing his fists said jokingly:

"We will kill each other."

A good number of persons, taking hands, formed a
wide, spacious circle. The boxers, looking at each
other keenly, changed over, the right hand held out,
the left on their breasts. The experienced people no-

366 IN THE WORLD

ticed at once that Sitanov's arms were longer than
those of the Mordovan. It was very quiet; the snow
crunched under the feet of the boxers. Some one, un-
able to restrain his impatience, muttered complain-
ingly and eagerly:

"They ought to have begun by now."

Sitanov flourished his right hand, the Mordovan
raised his left for defense, and received a straight blow
under the right arm from Sitanov's left hand. He
gasped, retired, and exclaimed in a tone of satisfac-
tion:

"He is young, but he Is no fool !"

They began to leap upon one another, striking each
other's breasts with blows from their mighty fists. In
a few minutes not only our own people, but strangers
began to cry excitedly :

"Get your blows in quicker, image-painter! Fix
him up, embosser."

The Mordovan was a little stronger than Sitanov,
but as he was considerably the heavier, he could not
deal such swift blows, and received two or three to
every one he gave. But his seasoned body apparently
did not suffer much, and he was laughing and exclaim-
ing all the time, when, suddenly, with a heavy upward
blow he put Sitanov's right arm out of joint from the
shoulder.

"Part them; it is a draw!" cried several voices, and,
breaking the circle, the crowd gathered round the pugi-
lists.

"He is not very strong but he is skilful, the image-

IN THE WORLD 367

painter," said the Mordovan good-naturedly. *'He
will make a good boxer, and that I say before the
whole world I"

The elder persons began a general wrestling match,
and I took Sitanov to the Feldsher bone-setter. His
deed had raised him still higher in my esteem, had in-
creased my sympathy with him, and his importance in
my eyes.

He was, in the main, very upright and honorable,
and he felt that he had only done his duty, but the
graceless Kapendiukhin made fun of him lightly.

"Ekh, Genya, you live for show I You have pol-
ished up your soul like a samovar before a holiday,
and you go about boasting, 'look how brightly it
shines !' But your soul is really brass, and a very dull
affair, too."

Sitanov remained calmly silent, either working hard
or copying Lermontov's verses into his note-book. He
spent all his spare time in this copying, and when I
suggested to him:

"Why, when you have plenty of money, don't you
buy the book^" he answered:

"No, it is better in my own handwriting."

Having written a page in his pretty, small hand-
writing, he would read softly while he was waiting for
the ink to dry:

"Without regret, as a being apart,
You will look down upon this earth,
Where there is neither real happiness
Nor lasting beauty."

368 IN THE WORLD

And he said, half-closing his eyes :

"That is true. Ekhl and well he knows the truth,
too!"

The behavior (5f Sitanov to Kapendiukhin always
amazed me. When he had been drinking, the Cos-
sack always tried to pick a quarrel with his comrade,
and Sitanov would go on for a long time bearing it,
and saying persuasively :

"That will do, let me alone !"

And then he would start to beat the drunken man
so cruelly that the workmen, who regarded internal dis-
sensions amongst themselves merely as a spectacle, in-
terfered between the friends, and separated them.

"If we did n't stop Evgen in time, he would beat
any one to death, and he would never forgive him-
self," they said.

When he was sober Kapendiukhin ceaselessly
jeered at Sitanov, making fun of his passion for poetry
and his unhappy romance, obscenely, but unsuccess-
fully trying to arouse jealousy. Sitanov listened to
the Cossack's taunts in silence, without taking offense,
and he sometimes even laughed with Kapendiukhin at
himself.

They slept side by side, and at night they would
feold long, whispered conversations about something.
These conversations gave me no peace, for I was anx-
ious to know what these two people who were so un-
like each other found to talk about in such a friendly
manner. But when I went near them, the Cossack
veiled :

IN THE WORLD 369

*'What do you want?"

But Sitanov did not seem to see me.

However, one day they called me, and the Cossack
asked :

"Maximich, if you were rich, what would you do?"

"I would buy books."

"And what else?"

"I don't know."

"Ekhl" said Kapendiukhin, turning away from me
in disgust, but Sitanov said calmly:

"You see; no one knows that, whether they be old
or young. I tell you that riches in themselves are
worth nothing, unless they are applied to some special
purpose."

I asked them, "What are you talking about?"

"We don't feel inclined to sleep, and so we are
talking," answered the Cossack.

Later, listening to them, I found that they were dis-
cussing by night those things which other people dis-
cussed by day — God, truth, happiness, the stupidity
and cunning of women, the greediness of the rich, and
the fact that life is complicated and incomprehensible.

I always listened to their conversations eagerly;
they excited me. I was pleased to think that almost
every one had arrived at the same conclusion; namely,
that life is evil, and that we ought to have a better
form of existence! But at the same time I saw that
the desire to live under better conditions would have
no effect, would change nothing in the lives of the
work-people, in their relations one with another. All

370 IN THE WORLD

these talks, throwing a light upon my life as it lay
before me, revealed at the same time, beyond it, a
sort of melancholy emptiness; and in this emptiness,
like specks of dust in a pond ruffled by the wind, floated
people, absurdly and exasperatingly, among them those
very people who had said that such a crowd was de-
void of sense. Always ready to give their opinion,
they were always passing judgment on others, repeat-
ing, bragging, and starting bitter quarrels about mere
trifles. They were always seriously offending one an-
other. They tried to guess what would happen to
them after death ; while on the threshold of the work-
shop where the washstand stood, the floor-boards had
rotted away. From that damp, fetid hole rose the
cold, damp smell of sour earth, and it was this that
made one's feet freeze. Pavl and I stopped up this
hole with straw and cloths. We often said that the
boards should be renewed, but the hole grew larger
and larger, and in bad weather fumes rose from it as
from a pipe. Every one caught cold, and coughed.
The tin ventilator in the fortochka squeaked, and when
some one had oiled it, though they had all been grum-
bling at it, Jikharev said:

"It is dull, now that the fortochka has stopped
squeaking."

To come straight from the bath and lie down on a
dirty, dusty bed, in the midst of dirt and bad smells,
did not revolt any one of them. There were many
insignificant trifles which made our lives unbearable.

IN THE WORLD 371

which might easily have been remedied, but no one
took the trouble to do anything.

They often said:

"No one has any mercy upon human creatures, —
neither God nor we ourselves."

But when Pavl and I washed dying Davidov, who
was eaten up with dirt and insects, a laugh was raised
against us. They took off their shirts and invited us
to search them, called us blockheads, and jeered at
us as if we had done something shameful and very
ludicrous.

From Christmas till the beginning of Lent drew
near, Davidov lay in the loft, coughing protractedly,
spitting blood, which, if it did not fall into the wash-
hand basin, splashed on the floor. At night he woke
the others with his delirious shrieks.

Almost every day they said :

"We must take him to the hospital !"

But it turned out that Davidov's passport had ex-
pired. Then he seemed better, and they said :

"It is of no consequence after all; he will soon be
dead I"

And he would say to himself:

"I shall soon be gone I"

He was a quiet humorist and also tried to relieve
the dullness of the workshop by jokes, hanging down
his dark bony face, and saying in a wheezy voice :

"Listen, people, to the voice of one who ascended
to the loft.

372 IN THE WORLD

"In the loft I live,
Early do I wake;
Asleep or awake
Cockroaches devour me."

"He is not downhearted I" exclaimed his audience.

Sometimes Pavl and I went to him, and he joked
with difficulty.

"With what shall I regale you, my dear guests? A
fresh little spider — would you like that?"

He died slowly, and he grew very weary of it. He
said with unfeigned vexation:

"It seems that I can't die, somehow; it is really a
calamity !'*

His fearlessness in the face of death frightened Pavl
very much. He awoke me in the night and whis-
pered:

"Maximich, he seems to be dying. Suppose he dies
in the night, when we are lying beneath him — Oh,
Lord ! I am frightened of dead people."

Or he would say :

"Why was he born? Not twenty-two years have
passed over his head and he is dying."

Once, on a moonlight night he awoke, and gazing
with wide-open, terrified eyes said:

"Listen I"

Davidov was croaking in the loft, saying quickly and
clearly :

"Give it to me — give — "

Then he began to hiccup.

IN THE WORLD 373

"He is dying, by God he is; you see!" said Pavl
agitatedly.

I had been carrying snow from the yard into the
fields all day, and I was very sleepy, but Pavl begged
me:

"Don't go to sleep, please; for Christ's sake don't
go to sleep !"

And suddenly getting on to his knees, he cried
f renziedly :

"Get up! Davidov is dead!"

Some of them awoke; several figures rose from the
beds; angry voices were raised, asking questions.

Kapendiukhin climbed up into the loft and said in
a tone of amzement:

"It is a fact; he is dead, although he is still warm."

It was quiet now. Jikharev crossed himself, and
wrapping himself round in his blanket, said :

"Well, he is in the Kingdom of Heaven now !"

Some one suggested:

"Let us carry him into the vestibule."

Kapendiukhin climbed down from the loft and
glanced through the window.

"Let him lie where he is till the morning; he never
hurt any one while he was alive."

Pavl, hiding his head under the pillow, sobbed.

But Sitanov did not even wake !

CHAPTER XV

THE snow melted away from the fields; the win-
try clouds in the sky passed away; wet snow
and rain fell upon the earth; the sun was slower and
slower in performing his daily journey; the air grew
warmer; and it seemed that the joyful spring had al-
ready arrived, sportively hiding herself behind the
fields, and would soon burst upon the town itself. In
the streets there was brown mud; streams ran along
the gutters; in the thawed places of Arestantski Square
the sparrows hopped joyfully. And in human crea-
tures, also, was apparent the same excitement as was
shown by the sparrows. Above the sounds of spring,
almost uninterruptedly from morning to night, rang
out the Lenten bells, stirring one's heart with their
muffled strokes. In that sound, as in the speech of an
old man, there was hidden something of displeasure,
as if the bells had said with cold melancholy :
"Has been, this has been, has been — "
On my name-day the workmen gave me a small,
beautifully painted image of Alexei, the man of God,
and Jikharev made an impressive, long speech, which
I remember very well.

"What are you*?" said he, with much play of finger
and raising of eyebrows. "Nothing more than a small

374

IN THE WORLD 375

boy, an orphan, thirteen years old — and I, nearly four
times your age, praise you and approve of you, because
you always stand with your face to people and not
sideways! Stand like that always, and you will be
all right!"

He spoke of the slaves of God, and of his people,
but the difference between people and slaves I could
never understand, and I don't believe that he under-
stood it himself. His speech was long-winded, the
workshop was laughing at him, and I stood, with the
image in my hand, very touched and very confused,
not knowing what I ought to do. At length Kapen-
diukhin called out irritably :

"Oh, leave off singing his praises; his ears are al-
ready turning blue !"

Then clapping me on the shoulder, he began to
praise me himself:

"What is good in you is what you have in common
with all human creatures, and not the fact that it is
difficult to scold and beat you when you have given
cause for it!"

They all looked at me with kind eyes, making good-
natured fun of my confusion. A little more and I
believe I should have burst out crying from the un-
expected joy of finding myself valued by these people.
And that very morning the shopman had said to Petr
Vassilich, nodding his head toward me :

"An unpleasant boy that, and good for nothing!"

As usual I had gone to the shop in the morning, but
at noon the shopman had said to me :

376 IN THE WORLD

"Go home and clear the snow off the roof of the
warehouse, and clean out the cellar."

That it was my name-day he did not know, and I
had thought that no one knew it. When the cere-
mony of congratulations had finished in the work-
shop, I changed my clothes and climbed up to the roof
of the shed to throw off the smooth, heavy snow which
had accumulated during that winter. But being ex-
cited, I forgot to close the door of the cellar, and threw
all the snow into it. When I jumped down to the
ground, I saw my mistake, and set myself at once to
get the snow away from the door. Being wet, it lay
heavily; the wooden spade moved it with difficulty;
there was no iron one, and I broke the spade at the
very moment when the shopman appeared at the yard-
gate. The truth of the Russian proverb, "Sorrow
follows on the heels of joy," was proved to me.

"So — o — o!" said the shopman derisively, "you are
21 fine workman, the devil take you ! If I get hold of
your senseless blockhead — " He flourished the blade
of the shovel over me.

I move away, saying angrily :

"I was n't engaged as a yardman, anyhow."

He hurled the stick against my legs. I took up a
snowball and threw it right in his face. He ran away
snorting, and I left off working, and went into the
workshop. In a few minutes his fiancee came run-
ning downstairs. She was an agile maiden, with pim-
ples on her vacant face.

"Maximich, you are to go upstairs !"

IN THE WORLD 377

"I am not going I" I said.
Larionich asked in an amazed undertone:
"What is this? You are not going "?"
I told him about the affair. With an anxious frown
he went upstairs, muttering to me:
"Oh, you impudent youngster — "
The workshop resounded with abuse ©f the shop-
man, and Kapendiukhin said:

"Well, they will kick you out this time !''
This did not alarm me. My relations with the
shopman had already become unbearable. His hatred
of me was undisguised and became more and more
acute, while, for my part, I could not endure him. But
what I wanted to know was: why did he behave so
absurdly to me"? He would throw coins about the
floor of the shop, and when I was sweeping, I found
them, and laid them on the counter in the cup which
contained the small money kept for beggars. When
I guessed what these frequent finds meant I said to
him:

"You throw money about in my way on purpose !*'
He flew out at me and cried incautiously:
"Don't you dare to teach me! I know what I am
doing!"

But he corrected himself immediately:
"And what do you mean by my throwing it about
purposely? It falls about itself."

He forbade me to read the books in the shop, say-
ing:

"That is not for you to trouble your head about I

378 IN THE WORLD

What ! Have you an idea of becoming a valuer, slug-
gard?'

He did not cease his attempts to catch me in the
theft of small money, and I realised that if, when I
was sweeping the floor, the coin should roll into a
crevice between the boards, he would declare that I
had stolen it. Then I told him again that he had bet-
ter give up that game, but that same day, when I re-
turned from the tavern with the boiling water, I heard
him suggesting to the newly engaged assistant in the
neighboring shop:

"Egg him on to steal psalters. We shall soon be
having three hampers of them."

I knew that they were talking about me, for when
I entered the shop they both looked confused; and
besides these signs, I had grounds for suspecting them
of a foolish conspiracy against me.

This was not the first time that that assistant had
been in the service of the man next door. He was ac-
counted a clever salesman, but he suffered from alco-
holism; in one of his drinking bouts the master had
dismissed him, but had afterwards taken him back.
He was an anaemic, feeble person, with cunning eyes.
Apparently amiable and submissive to the slightest
gesture of his master, he smiled a little, clever smile
in his beard all the time, was fond of uttering sharp
sayings, and exhaled the rotten smell which comes
from people with bad teeth, although his own were
white and strong.

One day he gave me a terrible surprise; he came to-

IN THE WORLD 379

wards me smiling pleasantly, but suddenly seized my
cap off my head and took hold of my hair. We be-
gan to struggle. He pushed me from the gallery into
the shop, trying all the time to throw me against the
large images which stood about on the floor. If he
had succeeded in this, I should have broken the glass,
or chipped the carving, and no doubt scratched some
of the costly icons. He was very weak, and I soon
overcame him; when to my great amazement the
bearded man sat on the floor and cried bitterly, rubbing
his bruised nose.

The next morning when our masters had both gone
out somewhere and we were alone, he said to me in a
friendly manner, rubbing the lump on the bridge of
his nose and under his eyes with his finger :

"Do you think that it was of my own will or desire
that I attacked you^ I am not a fool, you know, and
I knew that you would be more than a match for me.
I am a man of little strength, a tippler. It was your
master who told me to do it. 'Lead him on,' he said,
'and get him to break something in the shop while
he is fighting you. Let him damage something,
anyhow!' I should never have done it of my own
accord; look how you have ornamented my phiz for
me."

I believed him, and I began to be sorry for him. I
knew that he lived, half-starved, with a woman who
knocked him about. However, I asked him:

"And if he told you to poison a person, I suppose
you would do it^"

38o IN THE WORLD

"He might do that," said the shopman with a piti-
ful smile; "he is capable of it."

Soon after this he asked me :

"Listen, I have not a farthing; there is nothing to
eat at home ; my missus nags at me. Couldn't you take
an icon out of your stock and give it to me to sell, like
a friend, eh? Will you"? Or a breviary?"

I remembered the boot-shop, and the beadle of the
church, and I thought: "Will this man give me
away?" But it was hard to refuse him, and I gave
him an icon. To steal a breviary worth several ru-
bles, that I could not do; it seemed, to me a great crime.
What would you have? Arithrnetic always lies con-
cealed in ethics; the holy ingenuousness of "Regula-
tions for the Punishment of Criminals" clearly gives
away this little secret, behind which the great lie of
property hides itself.

When I heard my shopman suggesting that this mis-
erable man should incite me to steal psalters I was
afraid. It was clear that he knew how charitable I
had been on the other's behalf, and that the man from
next door had told him about the icon.

The abominableness of being charitable at another
person's expense, and the realization of the rotten trap
that had been set for me — both these things aroused in
me a feeling of indignation and disgust with myself
and every one else. For several days I tormented my-
self cruelly, waiting for the arrival of the hamper with
the books. At length they came, and when I was put-
ting them away in the store-room, the shopman from

IN THE WORLD 381

next door came to me and asked me to give him a
breviary.

Then I asked him :

"Did you tell my master about the icon*?"

"1 did," he answered in a melancholy voice; "I can
keep nothing back, brother."

This utterly confounded me, and I sat on the floor
staring at him stupidly, while he muttered hurriedly,
confusedly, desperately miserable:

"You see your man guessed — or rather, mine
guessed and told yours — "

I thought I was lost. These people had been con-
spiring against me, and now there was a place ready
for me in the colony for youthful criminals! If that
were so, nothing mattered! If one must drown, it is
better to drown in a deep spot. I put a breviary into
the hands of the shopman; he hid it in the sleeves of
his greatcoat and went away. But he returned sud-
denly, the breviary fell at my feet, and the man strode
away, saying:

"I won't take it! It would be all over with you."

I did not understand these words. Why should it
be all over with me? But I was very glad that he
had not taken the book. After this my little shop-
man began to regard me with more disfavor and sus-
picion than ever.

I remembered all this when Larionich went upstairs.
He did not stay there long, and came back more de-
pressed and quiet than usual, but before supper he said
to me privately :

382 IN THE WORLD

"I tried to arrange for you to be set free from the
shop, and given over to the workshop, but it was no
good. Kouzma would not have it. You are very-
much out of favor with him."

I had an enemy in the house, too — the shopman's
fiancee, an immoderately sportive damsel. All the
young fellows in the workshop played about with her;
they used to wait for her in the vestibule and embrace
her. This did not offend her; she only squeaked like
a little dog. She was chewing something from morn-
ing to night; her pockets were always full of ginger-
bread or buns; her jaws moved ceaselessly. To look
at her vacant face with its restless gray eyes was un-
pleasant. She used to ask Pavl and me riddles which
always concealed some coarse obscenity, and repeated
catchwords which, being said very quickly, became im-
proper words.

One day one of the elderly workmen said to her:

"You are a shameless hussy, my girl !"

To which she answered swiftly, in the words of a
ribald song:

"If a maiden is too modest,
She '11 never be a woman worth having."

It was the first time I had ever seen such a girl.
She disgusted and frightened me with her coarse play-
fulness, and seeing that her antics were not agreeable
to me, she became more and more spiteful toward
me.

Once when Pavl and I were in the cellar helping her

IN THE WORLD 383

to steam oiit the casks of kvass and cucumbers she sug-
gested :

"Would you like me to teach you how to kiss,
boys'?"

"I know how to kiss better than you do/' Pavl an-
swered, and I told her to go and kiss her future hus-
band. I did not say it very politely, either.

She was angry.

*'0h, you coarse creature! A young lady makes
herself agreeable to him and he turns up his nose.
Well, I never ! What a ninny I"

And she added, shaking a threatening finger at me :

"You just wait. I will remember that of you !"

But Pavl said to her, taking my part :

"Your young man would give you something if he
knew about your behavior !"

She screwed up her pimply face contemptuously.

"I am not afraid of him ! I have a dowry. I am
much better than he is ! A girl only has the time till
she is married to amuse herself."

She began to play about with Pavl, and from that
time I found in her an unwearying calumniator.

My life in the shop became harder and harder. I
read church books all the time. The disputes and
conversations of the valuers had ceased to amuse me,
for they were always talking over the same things in
the same old way. Petr Vassilich alone still inter-
ested me, with his knowledge of the dark side of hu-
man life, and his power of speaking interestingly and
enthusiastically. Sometimes I thought he must be the

384 IN THE WORLD

prophet Elias walking the earth, solitary and vindic-
tive. But each time that I spoke to the old man
frankly about people, or about my own thoughts, he
repeated all that I had said to the shopman, who either
ridiculed me offensively, or abused me angrily.

One day I told the old man that I sometimes wrote
his sayings in the note-book in which I had copied vari-
ous poems taken out of books. This greatly alarmed
the valuer, who limped towards me swiftly, asking
anxiously :

"What did you do that for? It is not worth while,
my lad. So that you may remember*? No; you just
give it up. What a boy you are ! Now you will give
me what you have written, won't you?"

He tried long and earnestly to persuade me to either
give him the notebook, or to burn it, and then he began
to whisper angrily with the shopman.

As we were going home, the latter said to me:

"You have been taking notes? That has got to be"
stopped! Do you hear? Only detectives do that
sort of thing!"

Then I asked incautiously:

"And what about Sitanov? He also takes notes."

"Also. That long fool?"

He was silent for a long time, and then with un-
usual gentleness he said:

"Listen; if you show me your note-book and Sita-
nov's, too, I will give you half a ruble! Only do it
on the quiet, so that Sitanov does not see."

No doubt he thought that I would carry out his

IN THE WORLD 385

wish, and without saying another word, he ran in front
of me on his short legs.

When I reached the house, I told Sitanov what the
shopman had proposed to me. Evgen frowned.

"You have been chattering purposely. Now he
will give some one instructions to steal both our note-
books. Give me yours — I will hide it. And he will
turn you out before long — you see I"

I was convinced of that, too, and resolved to leave
as soon as grandmother returned to the town. She
had been living at Balakhania all the winter, invited
by some one to teach young girls to make lace. Grand-
father was again living in Kunavin Street, but I did
not visit him, and when he came to the town, he never
came to see me. One day we ran into each other in
the street. He was walking along in a heavy racoon
pelisse, importantly and slowly. I said "How do you
do" to him. He lifted his hands to shade his eyes,
looked at me from under them, and then said thought-
fully:

"Oh, it is you; you are an image-painter now. Yes,
yes; all right; get along with you."

Pushing me out of his way, he continued his walk,
slowly and importantly.

I saw grandmother seldom. She worked un-
weariedly to feed grandfather, who was suffering
from the malady of old age — senile weakness — and
had also taken upon herself the care of my uncle's
children.

The one who caused her the most worry was Sascha,

386 IN THE WORLD

Mikhail's son, a handsome lad, dreamy and book-lov-
ing. He worked in a dyer's shop, frequently changed
his employers, and in the intervals threw himself on
grandmother's shoulders, calmly waiting until she
should find him another place. She had Sascha's sis-
ter on her shoulders, too. She had made an unfor-
tunate marriage with a drunken workman, who beat
her and turned her out of his house.

Every time I met grandmother, I was more con-
sciously charmed by her personality; but I felt already
that that beautiful soul, blinded by fanciful tales, was
not capable of seeing, could not understand a revela-
tion of the bitter reality of life, and my disquietude
and restlessness were strange to her.

"You must have patience, Oleshal"

This was all she had to say to me in reply to my
stories of the hideous lives, of the tortures of people,
of sorrow — of all which perplexed me, and with which
I was burning.

I was unfitted by nature to be patient, and if occa-
sionally I exhibited that virtue which belongs to cattle,
trees, and stones, I did so in the cause of self-discipline,
to test my reserves of strength, my degree of stability
upon earth. Sometimes young people, with the stu-
pidity of youth, will keep on trying to lift weights too
heavy for their muscles and bones; will try boastfully,
like full-grown men of proved strength, to cross them-
selves with heavy weights, envious of the strength of
their elders.

IN THE WORLD 387

I also did this in a double sense, physically and
spiritually, and it is only due to some chance that I did
not strain myself dangerously, or deform myself for
the rest of my life. Besides, nothing disfigures a man
more terribly than his patience, the submission of his
strength to external conditions.

And though in the end I shall lie in the earth dis-
figured, I can say, not without pride, to my last hour,
that good people did their best for forty years to dis-
figure my soul, but that their labors were not very suc-
cessful.

The wild desire to play mischievous pranks, to
amuse people, to make them laugh, took more and more
hold upon me. I was successful in this. I could tell
stories about the merchants in the market-place, im-
personating them ; I could imitate the peasant men and
women buying and selling icons, the shopman skilfully
cheating them; the valuers disputing amongst them-
selves.

The workshop resounded with laughter. Often the
workmen left their work to look on at my impersona-
tions, but on all these occasions Larionich would say:

"You had better do your acting after supper; other-
wise you hinder the work."

When I had finished my performance I felt myself
easier, as if I had thrown off a burden which weighed
upon me. For half an hour or an hour my head felt
pleasantly clear, but soon it felt again as if it were
full of sharp, small nails, which moved about and grew

388 IN THE WORLD

hot. It seemed to me that a sort of dirty porridge was
boiling around me, and that I was being gradually
boiled away in it.

I wondered: Was life really like this^ And
should I have to live as these people lived, never find-
ing, never seeing anything better?

"You are growing sulky, Maximich," said Jikharev,
looking at me attentively.

Sitanov often asked me:

"What is the matter with )^ou'?"

And I could not answer him.

Life perseveringly and roughly washed out from
my soul its most delicate writings, maliciously
changing them into some sort of indistinct trash, and
with anger and determination I resisted its violence.
I was floating on the same river as all the others, only
for me the waters were colder and did not support me
as easily as it did the others. Sometimes it seemed to
me that I was gently sinking into unfathomable depths.

People behaved better to me; they did not shout at
me as they did at Pavl, nor harass me; they called me
by my patronymic in order to emphasize their more
respectful attitude toward me. This was good; but
it was torturing to see how many of them drank vodka,
how disgustingly drunk they became, and how injuri-
ous to them were their relations with women, although
I understood that vodka and women were the only di-
versions that life afforded.

I often called to mind with sorrow that that most
intelligent, courageous woman, Natalia Kozlovski, was

IN THE WORLD 389

also called a woman of pleasure. And what about
grandmother? And Queen Margot?

I used to think of my queen with a feeling almost
of terror ; she was so removed from all the others, it was
as if I had seen her in a dream.

I began to think too much about women, and I had
already revolved in my own mind the question : Shall
I go on the next holiday where all the others go?
This was no physical desire. I was both healthy and
fastidious, but at times I was almost mad with a de-
sire to embrace some one tender, intelligent, and
frankly, unrestrainedly, as to a mother, speak to her
of the disturbances of my soul.

I envied Pavl when he told me at night of his affair
with a maidservant in the opposite house.

"It is a funny thing, brother ! A month ago I was
throwing snowballs at her because I did not like her,
and now I sit on a bench and hug her. She is dearer
to me than any one I"

"What do you talk about?"

"About everything, of course! She talks to me
about herself, and I talk to her about myself. And
then we kiss — only she is honest. In fact, brother,
she is so good that it is almost a misfortune! Why,
you smoke like an old soldier!"

I smoked a lot; tobacco intoxicated me, dulled my
restless thoughts, my agitated feelings. As for vodka,
it only aroused in me a repulsion toward my own odor
and taste, but Pavl drank with a will, and when he
was drunk, used to cry bitterly :

390 IN THE WORLD

"I want to go home, I want to go home I Let me
go home I"

As far as I can remember he was an orphan; his
mother and father had been dead a long time.
Brother and sister he had none; he had lived among
strangers for eight years.

In this state of restless dissatisfaction the call of
spring disturbed me still more. I made up my mind
to go on a boat again, and if I could get as far as As-
trakhan, to run away to Persia.

I do not remember why I selected Persia particu-
larly. It may have been because I had taken a great
fancy to the Persian merchants on the Nijigorodski
market-place, sitting like stone idols, spreading their
dyed beards in the sun, calmly smoking their hookas,
with large, dark, omniscient eyes.

There is no doubt that I should have run away
somewhere, but one day in Easter week, when part of
the occupants of the workshop had gone to their homes,
and the rest were drinking, I was walking on a sunny
day on the banks of the Oka, when I met my old mas-
ter, grandmother's nephew.

He was walking along in a light gray overcoat,
with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his
teeth, his hat on the back of his head. His pleasant
face smiled kindly at me. He had the appearance of
a man who is at liberty and is happy, and there was
no one beside ourselves in the fields.

"Ah, Pyeshkov, Christ is risen I"

IN THE WORLD 391

After we had exchanged the Easter kiss, he asked
how I was living, and I told him frankly that the work-
shop, the town and everything in general were abhor-
rent to me, and that I had made up my mind to go to
Persia.

"Give it up," he said to me gravely. "What the
devil is there in Persia? I know exactly how you arc
feeling, brother; in my youth I also had the wander
fever."

I liked him for telling me this. There was some-
thing about him good and springlike; he was a being
set apart.

"Do you smoke?" he asked, holding out a silver
cigarette-case full of fat cigarettes.

That completed his conquest of me.

"What you had better do, Pyeshkov, is to come back
to me again," he suggested. "For this year I have un-
dertaken contracts for the new market-place, you un-
derstand. And I can make use of you there; you will
be a kind of overseer for me; you will receive all the
material ; you will see that it is all in its proper place,
and that the workmen do not steal it. Will that suit
you? Your wages will be five rubles a month, and
five copecks for dinner! The women-folk will have
nothing to do with you ; you will go out in the morn-
ing and return in the evening. As for the women ; you
can ignore them; only don't let them know that we
have met, but just come to see us on Sunday at Pho-
min Street. It will be a change for you I"

392 IN THE WORLD

We parted like friends. As he said good-by, he
pressed my hand, and as he went away, he actually
waved his hat to me affably from a distance.

When I announced in the workroom that I was
leaving, most of the workmen showed a flattering re-
gret. Pavl, especially, was upset.

"Think," he said reproachfully; "how will you live
with men of all kinds, after being with us^ With
carpenters, house-painters — Oh, you — It is going
out of the frying-pan into the fire."

Jikharev growled:

"A fish looks for the deepest place, but a clever
young man seeks a worse place!"

The send-off which they gave me from the work-
shop was a sad one.

**Of course one must try this and that," said Jik-
harev, who was yellow from the effects of a drinking
bout. "It is better to do it straight off, before you
become too closely attached to something or other."

"And that for the rest of your life," added Larion-
ich softly.

But I felt that they spoke with constraint, and from
a sense of duty. The thread which had bound me to
them was somehow rotted and broken.

In the loft drunken Golovev rolled about, and mut-
tered hoarsely:

"I would like to see them all in prison. I know
their secrets I Who believes in God here? Aha —
a—!"

As usual, faceless, uncompleted icons were propped

IN THE WORLD 393

against the wall ; the glass balls were fixed to the ceil-
ing. It was long since we had had to work with a
light, and the balls, not being used, were covered with
a gray coating of soot and dust. I remember the sur-
roundings so vividly that if I shut my eyes, I can see
in the darkness the whole of that basement room: all
the tables, and the jars of paint on the windowsills,
the bundles of brushes, the icons, the slop-pail under
the brass washstand-basin which looked like a fire-
man's helmet, and, hanging from the ceiling, Go-
lovev's bare foot, which was blue like the foot of a
drowned man.

I wanted to get away quickly, but in Russia they
love long-drawn-out, sad moments. When they are
saying good-by, Russian people behave as if they were
hearing a requiem mass.

Jikharev, twitching his brows, said to me:

"That book — the devil's book — I can't give it back
to you. Will you take two greven for it*?"

The book was my own, — the old second lieutenant
of the fire-brigade had given it to me — and I grudged
giving Lermontov away. But when, somewhat of-
fended, I refused the money, Jikharev calmly put the
coins back in his purse, and said in an unwavering
tone:

"As you like ; but I shall not give you back the book.
It is not for you. A book like that would soon lead
you into sin."

"But it is sold in shops; I have seen it!"

But he only said with redoubled determination:

394 IN THE WORLD

"That has nothing to do with the matter; they sell
revolvers in shops, too — "

So he never returned Lermontov to me.

As I was going upstairs to say good-by to my mis-
tress, I ran into her niece in the hall.

"Is it true what they say — that you are leaving?'

"Yes."

"If you had not gone of your own accord, you would
have been sent away," she assured me, not very kindly,
but with perfect frankness.

And the tipsy mistress said:

"Good-by, Christ be with you ! You are a bad boy,
an impudent boy; although I have never seen anything
bad in you myself, they all say that you are a bad boy !"
And suddenly she burst out crying, and said through
her tears:

"Ah, if my dead one, my sweet husband, dear soul,
had been alive, he would have known how to deal with
you; he would have boxed your ears and you would
have stayed on. We should not have had to send you
away! But nowadays things are different; if all is
not exactly as you like, away you go! Och! And
where will you be going, boy, and what good will it
do you to stroll from place to place*?"

CHAPTER XVI

I WAS in a boat with my master, passing along the
market-place between shops which were flooded to
the height of the second story. I plied the oars, while
my master sat in the stern. The paddle wheel, which
was useless as a rudder, was deep in the water, and the
boat veered about awkwardly, meandering from street
to street on the quiet, muddily sleepy waters.

"Ekh! The water gets higher and higher. The
devil take it! It is keeping the work back," grum-
bled my master as he smoked a cigar, the smoke of
which had an odor of burning cloth. "Gently I" he
cried in alarm, "we are running into a lamp-post !"
He steered the boat out of danger and scolded me :
"They have given me a boat, the wretches I"
He showed me the spot on which, after the water
had subsided, the work of rebuilding would begin.
With his face shaved to a bluish tint, his mustache
clipped short, and a cigar in his mouth, he did not look
like a contractor. He wore a leathern jacket, high
boots to his knees, and a game-bag was slung over his
shoulders. At his feet was an expensive two-barelled
gun, manufactured by Lebed. From time to time he
restlessly changed the position of his leathern cap, pull-
ing it over his eyes, pouting his lips and looking cau-
tiously around. He pushed the cap to the back of his

395

396 IN THE WORLD

head, looked younger, and smiled beneath his mustache,
thinking of something pleasant. No one would have
thought that he had a lot of work to do, and that the
long time the water took in subsiding worried him.
Evidently thoughts wholly unconnected with business
were passing through his mind.

And I was overwhelmed by a feeling of quiet amaze-
ment; it seemed so strange to look upon that dead
town, the straight rows of buildings with closed win-
dows. The town was simply flooded with water, and
seemed to be floating past our boat. The sky was
gray. The sun had been lost in the clouds, but some-
times shone through them * in large, silver, wintry
patches.

The water also was gray and cold; its flow was un-
noticeable; it seemed to be congealed, fixed to one
place, like the empty houses beside the shops, which
were painted a dirty yellow. When the pale sun
looked through the clouds, all around grew slightly
brighter. The water reflected the gray texture of the
sky; our boat seemed to hang in the air between two
skies; the stone buildings also lifted themselves up,
and with a scarcely perceptible movement floated to-
ward the Volga, or the Oka. Around the boat were
broken casks, boxes, baskets, fragments of wood and
straw; sometimes a rod or joist of wood floated like a
dead snake on the surface.

Here and there windows were opened. On the
roofs of the rows of galleries linen was drying, or felt

IN THE WORLD 397

boots stuck. out. A woman looked out of a window
onto the gray waters. A boat was moored to the top
of the cast-iron columns of a galley; her red deck made
the reflection of the water look greasy and meat-like.

Nodding his head at these signs of life, my master
explained to me:

"This is where the market watchman lives. He
climbs out of the window onto the roof, gets into his
boat, and goes out to see if there are any thieves about.
And if there are none, he thieves on his own account."

He spoke lazily, calmly, thinking of something else.
All around was quiet, deserted, and unreal, as if it
were part of a dream. The Volga and the Oka flowed
into an enormous lake; in the distance on a rugged
hillside the town was painted in motley colors. Gar-
dens were still somberly clothed, but the buds were
bursting on the trees, and foliage clad houses and
churches in a warm, green mantle. Over the water
crept the muffled sound of the Easter-tide bells. The
murmur of the town was audible, while here it was just
like a forgotten graveyard.

Our boat wended its way between two rows of black
trees; we were on the high road to the old cathedral.
The cigar was in my master's way ; its acrid smoke got
into his eyes and caused him to run the nose of the
boat into the trunks of the trees. Upon which he
cried, irritably and in surprise:

*'What a rotten boat this is !"

"But you are not steering it."

398 IN THE WORLD

"How can I*?" he grumbled. "When there are
two people in a boat, one always rows while the
other steers. There — look ! There 's the Chinese
block."

I knew the market through and through; I knew
that comical-looking block of buildings with the ridicu-
lous roofs on which sat, with crossed legs, figures of
Chinamen in plaster of Paris. There had been a time
when I and my playfellow had thrown stones at them,
and some of the Chinamen had had their heads and
hands broken off by me. But I no longer took any
pride in that sort of thing.

"Rubbish!" said my master, pointing to the block.
"If I had been allowed to build it — "

He whistled and pushed his cap to the back of his
head.

But somehow I thought that he would have built
that town of stone just as dingily, on that low-lying
ground which was flooded by the waters of two rivers
every year. And he would even have invented the
Chinese block.

Throwing his cigar over the side of the boat, he spat
after it in disgust, saying:

"Life is very dull, Pyeshkov, very dull. There are
no educated people — no one to talk to. If one wants
to show off one's gifts, who is there to be impressed?
Not a soul ! All the people here are carpenters, stone-
masons, peasants — "

He looked straight ahead at the white mosque which
rose picturesquely out of the water on a small hill, and

IN THE WORLD 399

continued as. if he were recollecting something he had
forgotten :

"I began to drink beer and smoke cigars when I
was working under a German. The Germans, my
brother, are a business-like race — such wild fowl!
Drinking beer is a pleasant occupation, but I have
never got used to smoking cigars. And when you 've
been smoking, your wife grumbles: 'What is it that
you smell of? It is like the smell at the harness-
makers.' Ah, brother, the longer we live, the more
artful we grow. Well, well, true to oneself — "

Placing the oar against the side of the boat, he took
up his gun and shot at a Chinaman on a roof. No
harm came to the latter; the shot buried itself in the
roof and the wall, raising a dusty smoke.

'That was a miss," he admitted without regret, and
he again loaded his gun.

"How do you get on with the girls? Are you keen
on them? No? Why, I was in love when I was only
thirteen."

He told me, as if he were telling a dream, the story
of his first love for the housemaid of the architect to
whom he had been apprenticed. Softly splashed the
gray water, washing the corners of the buildings; be-
yond the cathedral dully gleamed a watery waste;
black twigs rose here and there above it. In the icon-
painter's workshop they often sang the Seminarski

song:

"O blue sea,
Stormy sea . . ."

400 IN THE WORLD

That blue sea must have been deadly dull.

"I never slept at nights," went on my master.
"Sometimes I got out of bed and stood at her door,
shivering like a dog. It was a cold house ! The mas-
ter visited her at night. He might have discovered
me, but I was not afraid, not 1 1"

He spoke thoughtfully, like a person looking at an
old worn-out coat, and wondering if he could wear it
once more.

"She noticed me, pitied me, unfastened her door,
and called me: 'Come in, you little fool.' "

I had heard many stories of this kind, and they
bored me, although there was one pleasing feature
about them — almost every one spoke of their "first
love" without boasting, or obscenity, and often so
gently and sadly that I understood that the story of
their first love was the best in their lives.

Laughing and shaking his head, my master ex-
claimed wonderingly:

"But that 's the sort of thing you don't tell )^our
wife; no, no! Well, there's no harm in it, but you
never tell. That 's a story — "

He was telling the stor^^ to himself, not to me. If
he had been silent, I should have spoken. In that
quietness and desolation one had to talk, or sing, or
play on the harmonica, or one would fall into a heavy,
eternal sleep in the midst of that dead town, drowned
in gray, cold water.

"In the first place, don't marry too soon," he coun-
seled me. "Marriage, brother, is a matter of the most

IN IHE WORLD 401

stupendous importance. You can live where you like
and how you like, according to your will. You can
live in Persia as a Mahommedan ; in Moscow as a man
about town. You can arrange your life as you choose.
You can give everything a trial. But a wife, brother,
is like the weather — you can never rule her! You
can't take a wife and throw her aside like an old boot."

His face changed. He gazed into the gray water
with knitted brows, rubbing his prominent nose with
his fingers, and muttered:

"Yes, brother, look before you leap. Let us sup-
pose that you are beset on all sides, and still continue
to stand firm ; even then there is a special trap laid for
each one of us."

We were now amongst the vegetation in the lake of
Meshtcherski, which was fed by the Volga.

"Row softly," whispered my master, pointing his
gun into the bushes. After he had shot a few lean
woodcocks, he suggested:

"Let us go to Kunavin Street. I will spend the
evening there, and you can go home and say that I am
detained by the contractors."

Setting him down at one of the streets on the out-
skirts of the town, which was also flooded, I returned
to the market-place on the Stravelka, moored the boat,
and sitting in it, gazed at the confluence of the two
rivers, at the town, the steamboats, the sky, which was
just like the gorgeous wing of some gigantic bird, all
white feathery clouds. The golden sun peeped
through the blue gaps between the clouds, and with

402 IN THE WORLD

one glance at the earth transfigured everything thereon.
Brisk, determined movement went on all around me:
the swift current of the rivers lightly bore innumerable
planks of wood; on these planks bearded peasants
stood firmly, wielding long poles and shouting to one
another, or to approaching steamers. A little steamer
was pulling an empty barge against the stream. The
river dragged at it, and_ shook it. It turned its nose
round like a pike and panted, firmly setting its wheels
against the water, which was rushing furiously to meet
it. On a barge with their legs hanging over the side
sat four peasants, shoulder to shoulder. One of them
wore a red shirt, and sang a song the words of which
I could not hear, but I knew it.

I felt that here on the living river I knew all, was
in touch with all, and could understand all; and the
town which lay flooded behind me was an evil dream,
an imagination of my master's, as difficult to under-
stand as he was himself.

When I had satiated myself by gazing at all there
was to see, I returned home, feeling that I was a grown
man, capable of any kind of work. On the way I
looked from the hill of the Kreml on to the Volga in
the distance. From the hill, the earth appeared enor-
mous, and promised all that one could possibly desire.

I had books at home. In the flat which Queen Mar-
got had occupied there now lived a large family, —
five young ladies, each one more beautiful than the
others, and two schoolboys — and these people used to
give me books. I read Turgenieff with avidity, amazed

IN THE WORLD 403

to find how intelligible, simple, and pellucid as au-
tumn he was; how pure were his characters, and how-
good everything was about which he succinctly dis-
coursed. I read Pomyalovski's "Bourse" and was
again amazed; it was so strangely like the life in the
icon-painting workshop. I was so well acquainted
with that desperate tedium which precipitated one into
cruel pranks. I enjoyed reading Russian books. I
always felt that there was something about them fa-
miliar and melancholy, as if there were hidden in their
pages the frozen sound of the Lenten bell, which
pealed forth softly as soon as one opened a book.

"Dead Souls" I read reluctantly; "Letters from the
House of the Dead," also. "Dead Souls," "Dead
Houses," "Three Deaths," "Living Relics"— these
books with titles so much alike arrested my attention
against my will, and aroused a lethargic repugnance
for all such books. "Signs of the Times," "Step by
Step," "WOiat to Do," and "Chronicles of the Village
of Smourin," I did not care for, nor any other books
of the same kind. But I was delighted with Dickens
and Walter Scott. I read these authors with the
greatest enjoyment, the same books over and over
again. The works of Walter Scott reminded me of
a high mass on a great feast day in rich churches —
somewhat long and tedious, but always solemn.
Dickens still remains to me as the author to whom I
respectfully bow ; he was a man who had a wonderful
apprehension of that most difficult of arts — love of
human nature.

404 IN THE WORLD

In the evenings a large company of people used to
gather on the roof: the brothers K. and their sisters,
grown up; the snub-nosed schoolboy, Vyacheslav Se-
mashko; and sometimes Miss Ptitzin, the daughter of
an important official, appeared there, too. They
talked of books and poetry. This was something
which appealed to me, and which I could understand;
I had read more than all of them together. But some-
times they talked about the high school, and com-
plained about the teachers. When I listened to these
recitals, I felt that I had more liberty than my friends,
and was amazed at their patience. And yet I envied
them; they had opportunities of learning!

My comrades were older than I, but I felt that I
was the elder. I was keener-witted, more experienced
than they. This worried me somewhat; I wanted to
feel more in touch with them. I used to get home
late in the evening, dusty and dirty, steeped in im-
pressions very different from theirs — in the main very
monotonous. They talked a lot about young ladies,
and of being in love with this one and that one, and
they used to try their hands at writing poetry. They
frequently solicited my help in this matter. I will-
ingly applied myself to versification, and it was easy
for me to find the rhymes, but for some reason or other
my verses always took a humorous turn, and I never
could help associating Miss Ptitzin, to whom the
poetry was generally dedicated, with fruits and vege-
tables.

Semashko said to me:

IN THE WORLD 405

"Do you call that poetry^ It is as much like
poetry as hobnails would be."

Not wishing to be behind them in anything, I ^Iso
fell in love with Miss Ptitzin. I do not remember
how I declared my feelings, but I know that the affair
ended badly. On the stagnant green water of the
Zvyezdin Pond floated a plank, and I proposed to give
the young lady a ride on it. She agreed. I brought
the log to the bank; it held me alone quite well. But
when the gorgeously dressed young lady, all ribbons
and lace, graciously stepped on the other end, and I
proudly pushed off with a stick, the accursed log rolled
away from under us and my young lady went head
over heels into the water.

I threw myself in knightly fashion after her, and
swiftly brought her to shore. Fright and the green
mire of the pond had quite destroyed her beauty I
Shaking her wet fist at me threateningly, she cried:

"You threw me in the water on purpose !''

And refusing to believe in the sincerity of my pro-
testations, from that time she treated me as an enemy.

On the whole, I did not find living in the town very
interesting. My old mistress was as hostile as she
had ever been; the young one regarded me with con-
tempt; Victorushka more freckled than ever, snorted
at every one, and was everlastingly aggrieved about
something.

My master had many plans to draw. He could
not get through all the work with his brother, and so
he engaged my stepfather as assistant.

4o6 IN THE WORLD

One day I came home from the market-place early,
about five o'clock, and going into the dining-room,
saw the man whose existence I had forgotten, at the
table beside the master. He held his hand out to me.

"How do you do^"

I drew back at the unexpectedness of it. The fire
of the past had been suddenly rekindled, and burned
my heart.

My stepfather looked at me with a smile on his
terribly emaciated face ; his dark eyes were larger than
ever. He looked altogether worn out and depressed.
I placed my hand in his thin, hot fingers.

"Well, so we 've met again," he said, coughing.

I left them, feeling as weak as if I had been beaten.

Our manner to each other was cautious and re-
strained; he called me by my first name and my pa-
tronymic, and spoke to me as an equal.

"When you go to the shops, please buy me a quar-
ter of a pound of Lapherm's tobacco, a hundred pack-
ets of Vitcorson's, and a pound of boiled sausage."

The money which he gave me was always unpleas-
antly heated by his hot hands. It was plain that he
was a consumptive, and not long to be an inhabitant
of this earth. He knew this, and would say in a
calm, deep voice, twisting his pointed black beard:

"My illness is almost incurable. However, if I take
plenty of meat I may get better — I may get better."

He ate an unbelievably large amount; he smoked
cigarettes, which were only out of his lips when he was
eating. Every day I bought him sausages, ham, sar-

IN THE WORLD 407

dines, but grandmother's sister said with an air of
certainty, and for some reason maliciously :

"It is no use to feed Death with dainties; you can-
not deceive him."

The mistress regarded my stepfather with an air of
injury, reproachfully advised him to try this or that
medicine, but made fun of him behind his back.

"A fine gentleman I The crumbs ought to be swept
up more often in the dining-room, he says; crumbs
cause the flies to multiply, he says."

The young mistress said this, and the old mistress
repeated after her:

"What do you mean — a fine gentleman I With his
coat all worn and shiny, and he always scraping it
with a clothes-brush. He is so faddy; there must not
be a speck of dust on it I"

But the master spoke soothingly to them :

"Be patient, wild fowl, he will soon be dead!"

This senseless hostility of the middle class toward
a man of good birth somehow drew me and my step-
father closer together. The crimson agaric is an un-
wholesome fungus, yet it is so beautiful. Suffocated
among these people, my stepfather was like a fish
which had accidentally fallen into a fowl-run — an ab-
surd comparison, as everything in that life was absurd.

I began to find in him resemblances to "Good Busi-
ness"— a man whom I could never forget. I adorned
him and my Queen with the best that I got out of books.
I gave them all that was most pure in me, all the fan-
tasies born of my reading. My stepfather was just

4o8 IN THE WORLD

such another man, aloof and unloved, as "Good Busi-
ness." He behaved alike to every one in the house,
never spoke first, and answered questions put to him
with a peculiar politeness and brevity. I was de-
lighted when he taught my masters. Standing at the
table, bent double, he would tap the thick paper with
his dry nails, and suggest calmly :

"Here you will have to have a keystone. That will
halve the force of the pressure; otherwise the pillar
will crash through the walls."

"That 's true, the devil take it," muttered the mas-
ter, and his wife said to him, when my stepfather had
gone out:

"It is simply amazing to me that you can allow any
one to teach you your business like that I"

For some reason she was always especially irritated
when my stepfather cleaned his teeth and gargled after
supper, protruding his harshly outlined Adam's apple.

"In my opinion," she would say in a sour voice, "it
is injurious to you to bend your head back like that,
Evgen Vassilvich !"

Smiling politely he asked:

"Why?"

"Because — I am sure it is."

He began to clean his bluish nails with a tiny bone
stick.

"He is cleaning his nails again ; well, I never !" ex-
claimed the mistress. "He is dying — and there he

"Ekhl" sighed the master. "What a lot of stu-

IN THE WORLD 409

pidity has flourished in you, wild fowl I"

"Why do you say that?" asked his wife, confused.
But the old mistress complained passionately to God
at night :

"Lord, they have laid that rotten creature on my
shoulders, and Victor is again pushed on one side."

Victorushka began to mock the manners of my step-
father,— ^his leisurely walk, the assured movements of
his lordly hands, his skill in tying a cravat, and his
dainty way of eating. He would ask coarsely :
''Maximov, what's the French for 'knee"?"
"I am called Evgen Vassilevich," my stepfather re-
minded him calmly.

"All right. Well, what is 'the chest'?"
Victorushka would say to his mother at supper:
"Ma mere, donnez moi encore du pickles !"
"Oh, you Frenchman I" the old woman would say,
much affected.

My stepfather, as unmoved as if he were deaf or
dumb, chewed his meat without looking at any one.
One day the elder brother said to the younger:
"Now that you are learning French, Victor, you
ought to have a mistress."

This was the only time I remember seeing my step-
father smile quietly.

But the young mistress let her spoon fall on the
table in her agitation, and cried to her husband :

"Are n't you ashamed to talk so disgustingly before
me*?"

Sometimes my stepfather came to me in the dark

410 IN THE WORLD

vestibule, where I slept under the stairs which led to
fhe attic, and where, sitting on the stairs by the win-
dow, I used to read.

"Reading^" he would say, blowing out smoke.
There came a hissing sound from his chest like the
hissing of a fire-stick. "What is the book^"

I showed it to him.

"Ah," he said, glancing at the title, "I think I have
read it. Will you smoke?"

We smoked, looking out of the window onto the
dirty yard. He said:

"It is a great pity that you cannot study; it seems to
me that you have ability."

"I am studying; I read."

"That is not enough; you need a school; a system."

I felt inclined to say to him:

"You had the advantages of both school and system,
my fine fellow, and what is the result *?"

But he added, as if he had read my thoughts :

"Given the proper disposition, a school is a good edu-
cator. Only very well educated people make any
mark in life."

But once he counseled me:

"You would be far better away from here. I see
no sense or advantage to you in staying."

"I like the work."

"Ah — what do you find to like'?"

"I find it interesting to work with them."

"Perhaps you are right."

But one day he said:

IN THE WORLD 411

"What trash they are in the main, our employers —
trash !"

When I remembered how and when my mother had
uttered that word, I involuntarily drew back from him.
He asked, smiling:

"Don't you think so*?"

"I don't know."

"Well, they are; I can see that."

"But I like the master, anyhow."

"Yes, you are right; he is a worthy man, but
strange."

I should have liked to talk with him about books,
but it was plain that he did not care for them, and
one day he advised me :

"Don't be led away; everything is very much em-
bellished in books, distorted one way or another. Most
writers of books are people like our master, small peo-
ple."

Such judgments seemed very daring to me, and quite
corrupted me.

On the same occasion he asked me :

"Have you read any of Goncharov's works?"

" The Frigate Palada.' "

"That 's a dull book. But really, Goncharov is the
cleverest writer in Russia. I advise you to read his
novel, 'Oblomov.' That is by far the truest and most
daring book he wrote; in fact, it is the best book in
Russian literature."

Of Dickens' works he said:

"They are rubbish, I assure you. But there is a

412 IN THE WORLD

most interesting thing running in the 'Nova Vremya/
— The Temptation of St. Anthony.' You read it*?
Apparently you like all that pertains to the church,
and 'The Temptation' ought to be a profitable sub-
ject for you."

He brought me a bundle of papers containing the
serial, and I read Flaubert's learned work. It re-
minded me of the innumerable lives of holy men, scraps
of history told by the valuers, but it made no very
deep impression on me. I much preferred the "Mem-
oirs of Upilio Faimali, Tamer of Wild Beasts," which
was printed alongside of it.

When I acknowledged this fact to my stepfather,
he remarked coolly:

*'That means that you are still too young to read
such things! However, don't forget about that
book."

Sometimes he would sit with me for a long time
without saying a word, just coughing and puffing out
smoke continuously. His beautiful eyes burned pain-
fully, and I looked at him furtively, and forgot that
this man, who was dying so honestly and simply, with-
out complaint, had once been so closely related to my
mother, and had insulted her. I knew that he lived
with some sort of seamstress, and thought of her with
wonder and pity. How could she not shrink from em-
bracing those lanky bones, from kissing that mouth
which gave forth such an oppressive odor of putres-
cence *? Just like "Good Business," my stepfather
often uttered peculiarly characteristic sayings:

IN THE WORLD 413

"I love hounds; they are stupid, but I love them.
They are very beautiful. Beautiful women arc often
stupid, too."

I thought, not without pride:

"Ah, if he had only known Queen Margotl"

"People who live for a long time in the same house
all have the same kind of face," was one of his say-
ings which I wrote down in my note-book.

I listened for these sayings of his, as if they had
been treats. It was pleasant to hear unusual, literary
words used in a house where every one spoke a color-
less language, which had hardened into well-worn, un-
diversified forms. My stepfather never spoke to me
of my mother; he never even uttered her name. This
pleased me, and aroused in me a feeling of sympathetic
consideration for him.

Once I asked him about God — I do not remember
what brought up the subject. He looked at me, and
said very calmly:

"I don't know. I don't believe in God."

I remembered Sitanov, and told my stepfather about
him. Having listened attentively to me, he observed,
still calmly:

"He was in doubt; and those who are in doubt must
believe in something. As for me, I simply do not be-
lieve !"

"But is that possible?"

"Why not? You can see for yourself I don't be-
lieve."

I saw nothing, except that he was dying. I hardly

414 IN THE WORLD

pitied him; my first feeling was one of keen and gen-
uine interest in the nearness of a dying person, in the
mystery of death.

Here was a man sitting close to me, his knee touch-
ing mine, warm, sensate, calmly regarding people in
the light of their relations to himself; speaking about
everything like a person who possessed power to judge
and to settle affairs; in whom lay something necessary
to me, or something good, blended with something un-
necessary to me. This being of incomprehensible com-
plexity was the receptacle of continuous whirlwinds of
thought. It was not as if I were merely brought in
contact with him, but it seemed as if he were part of
myself, that he lived somewhere within me. I
thought about him continually, and the shadow of
his soul lay across mine. And to-morrow he would
disappear entirely, with all that was hidden in his
head and his heart, with all that I seemed to read in
his beautiful eyes. When he went, another of the
living threads which bound me to life would be
snapped. His memory would be left, but that would
be something finite within me, forever limited, im-
mutable. But that which is alive changes, progresses.
But these were thoughts, and behind them lay those
inexpressible words which give birth to and nourish
them, which strike to the very roots of life, demand-
ing an answer to the question, Why?

"I shall soon have to lie by, it seems to me," said
my stepfather one rainy day. "This stupid weak-
ness! I don't feel inclined to do anything."

IN THE WORLD 415

The next day, at the time of evening tea, he brushed
the crumbs of bread from the table and from his knees
with peculiar care, and brushed something invisible
from his person. The old mistress, looking at him
from under her brows, whispered to her daughter-in-
law:

"Look at the way he is plucking at himself, and
brushing himself."

He did not come to work for two days, and then
the old mistress put a large white envelope in my hand,
saying :

"Here you are! A woman brought this yesterday
about noon, and I forgot to give it to you. A pretty
little woman she was, but what she wants with you I
can't imagine, and that 's the truth I"

On a slip of paper with a hospital stamp, inside the
envelope, was written in large characters:

"When you have an hour to spare, come and see me.
I am in the Martinovski Hospital. "E. M."

The next morning I was sitting in a hospital ward
on my stepfather's bed. It was a long bed, and his
feet, in gray, worn socks, stuck out through the rails.
His beautiful eyes, dully wandering over the yellow
walls, rested on my face and on the small hands of a
young girl who sat on a bench at the head of the bed.
Her hands rested on the pillow, and my stepfather
rubbed his cheek against them, his mouth hanging open.
She was a plump girl, wearing a shiny, dark frock.
The tears flowed slowly over her oval face; her wet

4i6 IN THE WORLD

blue eyes never moved from my stepfather's face,
with its sharp bones, large, sharp-pointed nose, and
dark mouth.

*The priest ought to be here," she whispered, "but
he forbids it — he does not understand." And taking
her hands from the pillow, she pressed them to her
breast as if praying.

In a minute my stepfather came to himself, looked
at the ceiling and frowned, as if he were trying to re-
member something. Then he stretched his lank hand
toward me.

"You? Thank you. Here I am, you sec. I feel
•o stupid."

The effort tired him; he closed his eyes. I stroked
his long cold fingers with the blue nails. The girl
asked softly:

"Evgen Vassilvich, introduce us, please!"

"You must know each other," he said, indicating her
with his eyes. "A dear creature — "

He stopped speaking, his mouth opened wider and
wider, and he suddenly shrieked out hoarsely, like a
raven. Throwing herself on the bed, clutching at the
blanket, waving her bare arms about, the girl also
screamed, burying her head in the tossed pillow.

My stepfather died quickly, and as soon as he was
dead, he regained some of his good looks. I left the
hospital with the girl on my arm. She staggered like
a sick person, and cried. Her handkerchief was
squeezed into a ball in her hand; she alternately ap-
plied it to her eyes, and rolling it tighter, gazed at it

IN THE WORLD 417

as if it were her last and most precious possession.

Suddenly she stood still, pressing close to me, and
said:

"I shall not live till the winter. Oh Lord, Lord!
What does it mean?"

Then holding out her hand, wet with tears, to me:

"Good-by. He thought a lot of you. He will be
buried to-morrow."

''Shall I see you home?'

She looked about her.

"What for? It is daytime, not night."

From the corner of a side street I looked after her.
She walked slowly, like a person who has nothing to
hurry for. It was August. The leaves were already
beginning to fall from the trees. I had no time to fol-
low my stepfather to the graveyard, and I never saw
the girl again.

CHAPTER XVII

EVERY morning at six o'clock I set out tor my
work in the market-place. I met interesting
people there. There was the carpenter, Osip, a gray-
haired man who looked like Saint Nikolai, a clever
workman, and witty; there was the humpbacked slater,
Ephimushka, the pious bricklayer, Petr, a thoughtful
man who also reminded me of a saint; the plasterer,
Gregory Shishlin, a flaxen-bearded, blue-eyed, hand-
some man, beaming with quiet good-nature.

I had come to know these people during the second
part of my life at the draughtsman's house. Every
Sunday they used to appear in the kitchen, grave, im-
portant-looking, with pleasant speech, and with words
which had a new flavor for me. All these solid-look-
ing peasants had seemed to me then to be easy to read,
good through and through, all pleasantly different
from the spiteful, thieving, drunken inhabitants of the
Kunavin and its environs.

The plasterer, Shishlin, pleased me most of all, and
I actually asked if I might join his gang of workmen.
But scratching his golden brow with a white finger, he
gently refused to have me.

"It is too soon for you," he said. "Our work is not
easy; wait another year."

Then throwing up his handsome head, he asked:

418

IN THE WORLD 419

"You don't like the way you are living*? Never
mind, have patience; learn to live a life of your own,
and then you will be able to bear it!"

I do not know all that I gained from this good ad-
vice, but I remember it gratefully.

These people used to come to my master's house
every Sunday morning, sit on benches round the
kitchen-table, and talk of interesting things while they
waited for my master. When he came, he greeted
them loudly and gayly, shaking their strong hands,
and then sat down in the chief corner. They pro-
duced their accounts and bundles of notes, the work-
men placed their tattered account-books on the table,
and the reckoning up for the week began.

Joking and bantering, the master would try to
prove them wrong in their reckoning, and they did the
same to him. Sometimes there was a fierce dispute,
but more often friendly laughter.

''Eh, you're a dear man; you were born a rogue!"
the workmen would say to the master.

And he answered, laughing in some confusion:

"And what about you, wild fowl? There's as
much roguery about you as about me I"

"How should we be anything else, friend?" agreed
Ephimushka, but grave Petr said :

"You live by what you steal; what you earn you
give to God and the emperor."

"Well, then I '11 willingly make a burnt offering of
you," laughed the master.

They led him on good-naturedly :

420 IN THE WORLD

"Set fire to us, you mean?"

"Bum us in a fiery furnace^"

Gregory Shishlin, pressing his luxuriant beard to
his breast with his hands, said in a sing-song voice :

"Brothers, let us do our business without cheating.
If we will only live honestly, how happy and peaceful
we shall be, eh^ Shall we not, dear people?"

His blue eyes darkened, grew moist ; at that moment
he looked wonderfully handsome. His question
seemed to have upset them all; they all turned away
from him in confusion.

"A peasant does not cheat much," grumbled good-
looking Osip with a sigh, as if he pitied the peasant.

The dark bricklayer, bending his round-shouldered
back over the table, said thickly:

"Sin is like a sort of bog; the farther you go, the
more swampy it gets !"

And the master said to them, as if he were making a
speech :

"What about me? I go into it because something
calls me. Though I don't want to."

After this philosophising they again tried to get
the better of one another, but when they had finished
their accounts, perspiring and tired from the effort,
they went out to the tavern to drink tea, inviting the
master to go with them.

On the market-place it was my duty to watch these
people, to see that they did not steal nails, or bricks,
or boards. Every one of them, in addition to my mas-
ter's work, held contracts of his own, and would try to

IN THE WORLD 421

steal something for his own work under my very nose.

They welcomed me kindly, and Shishlin said :

"Do you remember how you wanted to come into
my gang? And look at you now; put over me as
chief I"

"Well, well," said Osip bantcringly, "keep watch
over the river-banks, and may God help you !"

Petr observed in an unfriendly tone :

"They have put a young crane to watch old mice."

My duties were a cruel trial to me. I felt ashamed
in the presence of these people. They all seemd to
possess some special knowledge which was hidden from
the rest of the world, and I had to watch them as if
they had been thieves and tricksters. The first part
of the time it was very hard for me, but Osip soon
noticed this, and one day he said to me privately :

"Look here, young fellow, you won't do any good by
sulking — understand *?"

Of course I did not understand, but I felt that he
realized the absurdity of my position, and I soon ar-
rived at a frank understanding with him.

He took me aside in a corner and explained:

"If you want to know, the biggest thief among us
is the bricklayer, Petrukha. He is a man with a
large family, and he is greedy. You want to watch
him well. Nothing is too small for him; everything
comes in handy. A pound of nails, a dozen of bricks,
a bag of mortar — he '11 take all. He is a good man.
God-fearing, of severe ideas, and well educated, but
he loves to steal! Ephimushka lives like a woman.

422 IN THE WORLD

He is peaceable, and is harmless as far as you are con-
cerned. He is clever, too — humpbacks are never fools !
And there 's Gregory Shishlin. He has a fad — he will
neither take from others nor give of his own. He
works for nothing; any one can take him in, but he can
deceive no one. He is not governed by his reason."

"He is good, then'?"

Osip looked at me as if I were a long way from him,
and uttered these memorable words :

"True enough, he is good. To be good is the easiest
way for lazy people. To be good, my boy, does not
need brains."

"And what about you?" I asked Osip.

He laughed and answered:

"I? I am like a young girl. When I am a grand-
mother I will tell you all about myself; till then you
will have to wait. In the meanwhile you can set your
brains to work to find out where the real T is hidden.
Find out; that is what you have to do!"

He had upset all my ideas of himself and his friends.

It was difficult for me to doubt the truth of his
statement. I saw that Ephimushka, Petr, and Greg-
ory regarded the handsome old man as more clever
and more learned in worldly wisdom than themselves.
They took counsel with him about everything, lis-
tened attentively to his advice, and showed him every
sign of respect.

"Will you be so good as to give us your advice,"
they would ask him. But after one of these questions,

IN THE WORLD 423

when Osip had gone away, the bricklayer said softly
to Grigori:

"Heretic!"

And Grigori burst out laughing and added:

"Clown!"

The plasterer warned me in a friendly way:

"You look out for yourself with the old man, Maxi-
mich. You must be careful, or he will twist you round
his finger in an hour; he is a bitter old man. God
save you from the harm he can do."

"What harm?"

"That I can't say!" answered the handsome work-
man, blinking.

I did not understand him in the least. I thought
that the most honest and pious man of them all was
the bricklayer, Petr; He spoke of everything briefly,
suggestively; his thoughts rested mostly upon God,
hell, and death.

"Ekh! my children, my brothers, how can you not
be afraid"? How can you not look forward, when the
grave and the churchyard let no one pass them*?"

He always had the stomachache, and there were
some days when he could not eat anything at all.
Even a morsel of bread brought on the pain to such
an extent as to cause convulsions and a dreadful sick-
ness.

Humpbacked Ephimushka also seemed a very good
and honest, but always queer fellow. Sometimes he
was happy and foolish, like a harmless lunatic. He

424 IN THE WORLD

was everlastingly falling in love with different women,
about whom he always used the same words:

"I tell you straight, she is not a woman, but a flower
in cream — ei, bo — o!"

When the lively women of Kunavin Street came to
wash the floors in the shops, Ephimushka let himself
down from the roof, and standing in a corner some-
where, mumbled, blinking his gray, bright eyes, stretch-
ing his mouth from ear to ear:

"Such a butterfly as the Lord has sent to me; such
a joy has descended upon me ! Well, what is she but
a flower in cream, and grateful I ought to be for the
chance which has brought me such a gift! Such
beauty makes me full of life, afire!"

At first the women used to laugh at him, calling out
to each other:

"Listen to the humpback running on! Oh Lord!"

The slater caused no little laughter. His high
cheek-boned face wore a sleepy expression, and he used
to talk as if he were raving, his honeyed phrases flow-
ing in an intoxicating stream which obviously went to
the women's heads. At length one of the elder ones
said to her friend in a tone of amazement :

"Just listen to how that man is going on ! A clean
young fellow he is!"

"He sings like a bird."

"Or like a beggar in the church porch," said an ob-
stinate girl, refusing to give way.

But Ephimushka was not like a beggar at all. He
stood firmly, like a squat tree-trunk; his voice rang out

IN THE WORLD 425

like a challenge; his words became more and more al-
luring; the women listened to him in silence. In fact,
it seemed as if his whole being was flowing away in a
tender, narcotic speech.

It ended in his saying to his mates in a tone of aston-
ishment at supper-time, or after the Sabbath rest, shak-
ing his heavy, angular head:

"Well, what a sweet little woman, a dear little
thing ! I have never before come across anything like
her!"

When he spoke of his conquests Ephimushka was
not boastful, nor jeered at the victim of his charms, as
the others always did. He was only joyfully and
gratefully touched, his gray eyes wide open with as-
tonishment.

Osip, shaking his head, exclaimed :

"Oh, you incorrigible fellow I How old are you?"

"Forty- four years, but that's nothing! I have
grown five years younger to-day, as if I had bathed
in the healing water of a river. I feel thoroughly fit,
and my heart is at peace ! Some women can produce
that effect, diV

The bricklayer said coarsely:

"You are going on for fifty. You had better be
careful, or you will find that your loose way of life
will leave a bitter taste."

"You are shameless, Ephimushka I" sighed Grigori
Shishlin.

And it seemed to- me that the handsome fellow
envied the success of the humpback.

426 IN THE WORLD

Osip looked round on us all from under his level
silver brows, and said jestingly:

"Every Mashka has her fancies. One will love
cups and spoons, another buckles and ear-rings, but
all Mashkas will be grandmothers in time."

Shishlin was married, but his wife was living in the
country, so he also cast his eyes on the floorscrubbers.
They were all of them easy of approach. All of them
"earned a bit" to add to their income, and they re-
garded this method of earning money in that poverty-
stricken area as simply as they would have regarded
any other kind of work. But the handsome workman
never approached the women. He just gazed at them
from afar with a peculiar expression, as if he were pity-
ing some one — ^himself or them. But when they be-
gan to sport with him and tempt him, he laughed bash-
fully and went away.

"Well, you—"

"What's the matter with you, you fool^" asked
Ephimushka, amazed. "Do you mean to say you are
going to lose the chance?"

"I am a married man," Grigori reminded him.

"Well, do you think your wife will know anything
about it?"

"My wife would always know if I lived unchastely.
I can't deceive her, my brother."

"How can she know?"

"That I can't say, but she is bound to know, while
she lives chaste herself; and if I lead a chaste life,
and she were to sin, I should know it."

IN THE WORLD 427

"But how^" cried Ephimushka, but Grigori repeated
calmly:

"That I can't say.''

The slater waved his hands agitatedly.

"There, if you please ! Chaste, and does n't know !
Oh, you blockhead !"

Shishlin's workmen, numbering seven, treated him
as one of themselves and not as their master, and be-
hind his back they nicknamed him "The Calf."

When he came to work and saw that they were lazy,
he would take a trowel, or a spade, and artistically do
the work himself, calling out coaxingly:

"Set to work, children, set to work I"

One day, carrying out the task which my master had
angrily set me, I said to Grigori :

"What bad workmen you have."

He seemed surprised.

"Why?"

"This work ought to have been finished yesterday,
and they won't finish it even to-day."

"That is true; they won't have time," he agreed,
and after a silence he added cautiously:

"Of course, I see that by rights I ought to dismiss
them, but you see they are all my own people from
my own village. And then again the punishment of
God is that every man should eat bread by the sweat of
his brow, and the punishment is for all of us — for you
and me, too. But you and I labor less than they do,
and — well, it would be awkward to dismiss them."

He lived in a dream. He would walk along the de-

428 IN THE WORLD

serted streets of the market-place, and suddenly halt-
ing on one of the bridges over the Obvodni Canal,
would stand for a long time at the railings, looking into
the water, at the sky, or into the distance beyond the
Oka. If one overtook him and asked:

"What are you doing?"

"What?" he would reply, waking up and smiling
confusedly. "I was just standing, looking about me
a bit."

"God has arranged everything very well, brother,"
he would often say. "The sky, the earth, the flowing
rivers, the steamboats running. You can get on a
boat and go where you like — to Riazan, or to Ribinsk,
to Perm, to Astrakhan. I went to Riazan once. It
was n't bad — a little town — ^but very dull, duller than
Nijni. Our Nijni is wonderful, gay! And Astrak-
han is still duller. There are a lot of Kalmucks there,
and I don't like them. I don't like any of those Mor-
dovans, or Kalmucks, Persians, or Germans, or any of
the other nations."

He spoke slowly ; his words cautiously felt for sym-
pathy in others, and always found it in the bricklayer,
Petr.

"Those are not nations, but nomads," said Petr with
angry conviction. "They came into the world before
Christ and they '11 go out of it before He comes again."

Grigori became animated ; he beamed.

"That's it, isn't it? But I love a pure race like
the Russians, my brother, with a straight look. I
don't like Jews, either, and I cannot understand how

IN THE WORLD 429

they are the people of God. It is wisely arranged, no
doubt."

The slater added darkly :

"Wisely — but there is a lot that is superfluous!"

Osip listened to what they said, and then put in,
mockingly and caustically :

* 'There is much that is superfluous, and your con-
versation belongs to that category. Ekhl you bab-
blers; you want a thrashing, all of you!"

Osip kept himself to himself, and it was impossible
to guess with whom he would agree, or with whom
he would quarrel. Sometimes he seemed inclined to
agree calmly with all men, and with all their ideas;
but more often one saw that he was bored by all of
them, regarding them as half-witted, and he said to
Petr, Grigori, and Ephimushka:

"Ekh, you sow's whelps !"

They laughed, not very cheerfully or willingly, but
still they laughed.

My master gave me five copecks a day for food.
This was not enough, and I was rather hungry. See-
ing this, the workmen invited me to breakfast and sup-
per with them, and sometimes the contractors would
invite me to a tavern to drink tea with them. I will-
ingly accepted the invitations. I loved to sit among
them and listen to their slow speeches, their strange
stories. I gave them great pleasure by my readings
out of church books.

"You 've stuck to books till you are fed up with
them. Your crop is stuffed with them," said Osip, re-

430 IN THE WORLD

garding me attentively with his cornflower-blue eyes.
It was difficult to catch their expression; his pupils al-
ways seemed to be floating, melting.

"Take it a drop at a time — it is better; and when
you are grown up, you can be a monk and console
the people by your teaching, and in that way you may
become a millionaire."

"A missioner," corrected the bricklayer in a voice
which for some reason sounded aggrieved.

"What?" asked Osip.

"A missioner is what you mean ! You are not deaf,
are you?"

"All right, then, a missioner, and dispute with
heretics. And even those whom you reckon as heretics
have the right to bread. One can live even with a
heretic, if one exercises discretion."

Grigori laughed in an embarrassed manner, and
Petr said in his beard :

"And wizards don't have a bad time of it, and other
kinds of godless people."

But Osip returned quickly:

"A wizard is not a man of education; education is
not usually a possession of the wizard."

And he told me :

"Now look at this; just listen. In our district there
lived a peasant, Tushek was his name, an emaciated
little man, and idle. He lived like a feather, blown
about here and there by the wind, neither a worker
nor a do-nothing. Well, one day he took to praying,
because he had nothing else to do, and after wander-

IN THE WORLD 431

ing about for two years, he suddenly showed himself
in a new character. His hair hung down over his
shoulders ; he wore a skull-cap, and a brown cassock of
leather; he looked on all of us with a baneful eye, and
said straight out : *Repent, ye cursed !' And why not
repent, especially if you happened to be a woman"?
And the business ran its course: Tushek overfed,
Tushek drunk, Tushek having his way with the women
to his heart's content — "

The bricklayer interrupted him angrily :

"What has that got to do with the matter, his over-
feeding, or overdrinking"?"

"What else has to do with it, then^"

"His words are all that matter."

"Oh, I took no notice of his words; I am abun-
dantly gifted with words myself."

"We know all we want to know about Tushinkov,
Dmitri Vassilich," said Petr indignantly, and Grigori
said nothing, but let his head droop, and gazed into
his glass.

"I don't dispute it," replied Osip peaceably. "I
was just telling our Maximich of the different path-
ways to the morsel — "

"Some of the roads lead to prison !"

"Occasionally," agreed Osip. "But you will meet
with priests on all kinds of paths; one must learn
where to turn off."

He was always somewhat inclined to make fun of
these pious people, the plasterer and the bricklayer;
perhaps he did not like them, but he skilfully concealed

432 IN THE WORLD

the fact. His attitude towards people was always
elusive.

He looked upon Ephimushka more indulgently, with
more favor than upon the other. The slater did not
enter into discussions about God, the truth, sects, the
woes of humanity, as his friends did. Setting his chair
sidewise to the table, so that its back should not be
in the way of his hump, he would calmly drink glass
after glass of tea. Then, suddenly alert, he would
glance round the smoky room, listening to the inco-
herent babel of voices, and darting up, swiftly disap-
pear. That meant that some one had come into the
tavern to whom Ephimushka owed money, — he had a
good dozen creditors, — so, as some of them used to
beat him when they saw him, he just fled from sin.

"They get angry, the oddities!" he would say in a
tone of surprise. "Can't they understand that if I
had the money I would give it to them*?"

"Oh, bitter poverty I" Osip sped after him.

Sometimes Ephimushka sat deep in thought, hear-
ing and seeing nothing; his high cheek-boned face
softened, his pleasant eyes looking pleasanter than
usual.

"What are you thinking about'?" they would ask
him. •

"I was thinking that if I were rich I would marry
a real lady, a noblewoman — by God, I would! A
colonel's daughter, for example, and, Lord! how I
would love her ! I should be on fire with love of her.

IN THE WORLD 433

because, my brothers, I once roofed the country house
of a certain colonel — "

"And he had a widowed daughter; we 've heard all
that before !" interrupted Petr in an unfriendly tone.

But Ephimushka, spreading his hands out on his
knees, rocked to and fro, his hump looking as if it were
chiselling the air, and continued:

"Sometimes she went into the garden, all in white:
glorious she looked. I looked at her from the roof,
and I did n't know what the sun had done to me. But
what caused that white light? It was as if a white
dove had flown from under her feet I She was just a
cornflower in cream! With such a lady as that, one
would like all one's life to be night."

"And how would you get anything to eat?" asked
Petr gruffly. But this did not disturb Ephimushka.

"Lord I" he exclaimed. "Should we want much?
Besides, she is rich."

Osip laughed.

"And when are you going in for all this dissipation,
Ephimushka, you rogue?"

Ephimushka never talked on any other subject but
women, and he was an unreliable workman. At one
time he worked excellently and profitably, at another
time he did not get on at all; his wooden hammer
tapped the ridges lazily, leaving crevices. He always
smelt of train-oil, but he had a smell of his own as
well, a healthy, pleasant smell like that of a newly
cut tree.

434 IN THE WORLD

One could discuss everything that was interesting
with the carpenter. His words always stirred one's
feelings, but it was hard to tell when he was serious
and when joking.

With Grigori it was better to talk about God; this
was a subject which he loved, and on which he was
an authority.

"Grisha," I asked, "do you know there are people
who do not believe in God*?"

He laughed quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"They say there is no God."

"Oh, that 's what you mean I I know that."

And as if he were brushing away invisible flies, he
went on:

"King David said in his time, you remember, 'The
fool hath said in his heart "There is no God." '
That 's what he said about that kind of fool. We
can't do without God !"

Osip said, as if agreeing with him :

"Take away God from Petrukha here, and he will
show you !"

Shishlin's handsome face became stern. He touched
his beard with fingers the nails of which were covered
with dried lime, and said mysteriously:

"God dwells in every incarnate being; the con-
science and all the inner life is God-given."

"And sin?'

"Sin comes from the flesh, from Satan I Sin is an
external thing, like smallpox, and nothing more ! He

IN THE WORLD 435

who thinks too much of sin, sins all the more. If you
do not remember sin, you will not sin. Thoughts
about sin are from Satan, the lord of the flesh, who
suggests."

The bricklayer queried this.

"You are wrong there."

"I am not ! God is sinless, and man is in His image
and likeness. It is the image of God, the flesh, which
sins, but His likeness cannot sin; it is a spirit."

He smiled triumphantly, but Petr growled :

"That is wrong."

"According to you, I suppose," Osip asked the brick-
layer, "if you don't sin, you can't repent, and if you
don't repent, you won't be saved?"

"That 's a more hopeful way. Forget the devil and
you cease to love God, the fathers said."

Shishlin was not intemperate, but two glasses would
make him tipsy. His face would be flushed, his eyes
childish, and his voice would be raised in song.

"How good everything is, brothers ! Here we live,
work a little, and have as much as we want to eat, God
be praised ! Ah, how good it is !"

He wept. The tears trickled down his beard and
gleamed on the silken hairs like false pearls.

His laudation of our life and those tears were un-
pleasant to me. My grandmother had sung the praises
of life more convincingly, more sympathetically, and
not so crudely.

All these discussions kept me in a continual ten-
sion, and aroused a dull emotion in me. I had already

436 IN THE WORLD

read many books about peasants, and I saw how ut-
terly unlike the peasants in the books were to those in
real life. In books they were all unhappy. Good or
evil characters, they were all poorer in words and ideas
than peasants in real life. In books they spoke less
of God, of sects, of churches, and more of government,
land, and law. They spoke less about women, too, but
quite as coarsely, though more kindly. For the peas-
ants in real life, women were a pastime, but a danger-
ous one. One had to be artful with women; other-
wise they would gain the upper hand and spoil one's
whole life. The muzhik in books may be good or
bad, but he is altogether one or the other. The real
muzhik is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but he
is wonderfully interesting. If the peasant in real life
does not blurt out all his thoughts to you, you have a
feeling that he is keeping something back which he
means to keep for himself alone, and that very un-
said, hidden thing is the most important thing about
him.

Of all the peasants I had read of in books, the one
I liked the best was Petr in ''The Carpenter's Gang."
I wanted to read the story to my comrades, and I
brought the book to the Yarmaka. I often spent the
night in one or another of the workshops ; sometimes it
was because I was so tired that I lacked the strength
to get home.

When I told them that I had a book about car-
penters, my statement aroused a lively interest, espe-
cially in Osip. He took the book out of my hands,

IN THE WORLD 437

and turned over the leaves distrustfully, shaking his
head.

"And it is really written about us! Oh, you ras-
cal! Who wrote it? Some gentleman? I thought
as much! Gentlemen, and chinovniks especially, are
experts at anything. Where God does not even guess,
a chinovnik has it all settled in his mind. That's
what they live for."

"You speak very irreverently of God, Osip," ob-
served Petr.

"That 's all right ! My words are less to God than
a snowflake or a drop of rain are to me. Don't you
worry; you and I don't touch God."

He suddenly began to play restlessly, throwing off
sharp little sayings like sparks from a flint, cutting off
with them, as with scissors, whatever was displeasing
to him. Several times in the course of the day he
asked me :

"Are we going to read, Maximich? That's right!
A good idea !"

When the hour for rest arrived we had supper with
him in his workshop, and after supper appeared Petr
with his assistant Ardalon, and Shishlin with the lad
Phoma. In the shed where the gang slept there was
a lamp burning, and I began to read. They listened
without speaking, but they moved about, and very soon
Ardalon said crossly:

"I've had enough of this !"

And he went out. The first to fall asleep was
Grigori, with his mouth open surprisingly; then the

438 IN THE WORLD

carpenters fell asleep ; but Petr, Osip, and Phoma drew
nearer to me and listened attentively. When I fin-
ished reading Osip put out the lamp at once. By the
stars it was nearly midnight.

Petr asked in the darkness :

"What was that written for? Against whom*?"

"Now for sleep I" said Osip, taking off his boots.

Petr persisted in his question :

"I asked, against whom was that written?"

"I suppose they know I" replied Osip, arranging him-
self for sleep on a scaffolding.

"If it is written against stepmothers, it is a waste
of time. It won't make stepmothers any better," said
the bricklayer firmly. "And if it is meant for Petr.
it is also futile; his sin in his answer. For murder you
go to Siberia, and that 's all there is about it ! Books
are no good for such sins; no use, eh?"

Osip did not reply, and the bricklayer added :

"They can do nothing themselves and so they dis-
cuss other people's work. Like women at a meeting.
Good-by, it is bedtime."

He stood for a minute in the dark blue square of
the open door, and asked:

"Are you asleep, Osip? What do you think about
it?"

"Eh?" responded the carpenter sleepily.

"All right; go to sleep."

Shishlin had fallen on his side where he had been
sitting. Phoma lay on some trampled straw beside

IN THE WORLD 439

me. The whole neighborhood was asleep. In the
distance rose the shriek of the railway engines, the
heavy rumbling of iron wheels, the clang of buffers.
In the shed rose the sound of snoring in different keys.
I felt uncomfortable. I had expected some sort of
discussion, and there had been nothing of the kind.

But suddenly Osip spoke softly and evenly :

"My child, don't you believe anything of that.
You are young; you have a long while to live; treasure >
up your thoughts. Your own sense is worth twice \^
some one else's. Are you asleep, Phoma^"

"No," replied Phoma with alacrity.

"That's right! You have both received some edu-
cation, so you go on reading. But don't believe all
5^ou read. They can print anything, you know. That
is their business !"

He lowered his feet from the scaffolding, and rest-
ing his hands on the edge of the plank, bent over us,
and continued:

"How ought you to regard books? Denunciation
of certain people, that 's what a book is ! Look, they
say, and see what sort of a man this is — a carpenter,
or any one else — and here is a gentleman, a different
kind of man I A book is not written without an ob-
ject, and generally around some one."

Phoma said thickly:

"Petr was right to kill that contractor!"

"That was wrong. It can never be right to kill a
man. I know that you do not love Grigori, but put

440 IN THE WORLD

that thought away from you. We are none of us
rich people. To-day I am master, to-morrow a work-
man again."

"I did not mean you, Uncle Osip."

"It is all the same."

"You are just — "

"Wait; I am telling you why these books are writ-
ten," Osip interrupted Phoma's angry words. "It is
a very cunning idea! Here we have a gentleman
without a muzhik; here a muzhik without a gentle-
tlemanl Look now! Both the gentleman and the
muzhik are badly off. The gentleman grows weak,
crazy, and the muzhik becomes boastful, drunken,
sickly, and offensive. That 's what happens ! But in
his lord's castle it was better, they say. The lord hid
himself behind the muzhik and the muzhik behind the
master, and so they went round and round, well-fed,
and peaceful. I don't deny that it was more peace-
ful living with the nobles. It was no advantage to the
lord if his muzhik was poor, but it was to his good
if he was rich and intelligent. He was then a weapon
in his hand. I know all about it; you see I lived in
a nobleman's domain for nearly forty years. There 's
a lot of my experience written on my hide."

I remembered that the carter, Petr, who committed
suicide, used to talk in the same way about the no-
bility, and it was very unpleasant to my mind that
the ideas of Osip should run on the same lines as those
of that evil old man.

Osip touched my leg with his hand, and went on :

IN THE WORLD 441

*'One must understand books and all sorts of writ-
ings. No one does anything without a reason, and
books are not written for nothing, but to muddle peo-
ple's heads. Every one is created with intelligence,
without which no one can wield an ax, or sew a shoe."

He spoke for a long time, and lay down. Again
he jumped up, throwing gently his well turned, quaint
phrases into the darkness and quietness.

"They say that the rlobles are quite a different race
from the peasants, but it is not true. We are just
like the nobles, only we happen to have been bom
low down in the scale. Of course a noble learns from
books, while I learn by my own noddle, and a gentle-
man has a delicate skin; that is all the difference.
No — o, lads, it is time there was a new way of living;
all these writings ought to be thrown aside! Let
every one ask himself 'What am IT A man! 'And
what is he? Also a man! What then'? Does God
need his superfluous wealth? No-o, we are equal in
the sight of God when it comes to gifts."

At last, in the morning, when the dawn had put out
the light of the stars, Osip said to me:

"You see how I could write? I have talked about
things that I have never thought about. But you
mustn't place too much faith in what I say. I was
talking more because I was sleepless than with any
serious intention. You lie down and think of some-
thing to amuse you. Once there was a raven which
flew from the fields to the hills, from boundary to
boundary, and lived beyond her time; the Lord pun-

442 IN THE WORLD

ished her. The raven is dead and dried up. What is
the meaning of that? There is no meaning in it,
none. Now go to sleep; it will soon be time to get
up."

CHAPTER XVIII

AS Yaakov, the stoker, had done in his time, so
now Osip grew and grew in my eyes, until he hid
all other people from me. There was some resem-
blance to the stoker in him, but at the same time he
reminded me of grandfather, the valuer, Petr Vassiliev,
Smouri, and the cook. When I think of all the people
who are firmly fixed in my memory, he has left be-
hind a deeper impression than any of them, an impres-
sion which has eaten into it, as oxide eats into a brass
bell. What was remarkable about him was that he
had two sets of ideas. In the daytime, at his work
among people, his lively, simple ideas were business-
like and easier to understand than those to which he
gave vent when he was off duty, in the evenings, when
he went with me into the town to see his cronies, the
dealers, or at night when he could not sleep. He had
special night thoughts, many-sided like the flame of a
lamp. They burned brightly, but where were their
real faces'? On which side was this or that idea,
nearer and dearer to Osip^

He seemed to me to be much cleverer than any one
else I had met, and I hovered about him, as I used
to do with the stoker, trying to find out about the
man, to understand him. But he glided away from
me; it was impossible to grasp him. Where was the

443

444 IN THE WORLD

real man hidden? How far could I believe in him?

I remember how he said to me :

"You must find out for yourself where I am hid-
den. Look for me I"

My self-love was piqued, but more than that, it had
become a matter of life and death to me to understand
the old man.

With all his elusiveness he was substantial. He
looked as if he could go on living for a hundred years
longer and still remain the same, so unchangeably did
he preserve his ego amid the instability of the people
around him. The valuer had made upon me an equal
impression of steadfastness, but it was not so pleasing
to me. Osip's steadfastness was of a different kind;
although I cannot explain how, it was more pleasing.

The instability of human creatures is too often
brought to one's notice; their acrobatic leaps from one
position to another upset me. I had long ago grown
weary of being surprised by these inexplicable somer-
saults, and they had by degrees extinguished my lively
interest in humanity, disturbed my love for it.

One day at the beginning of July, a rackety hackney
cab came dashing up to the place where we were work-
ing. On the box-seat a drunken driver sat, hiccuping
gloomily. He was bearded, hatless, and had a bruised
lip. Grigori Shishlin rolled about in the carriage,
drunk, while a fat, red-cheeked girl held his arm. She
wore a straw hat trimmed with a red ribbon and glass
cherries ; she had a sunshade in her hand, and goloshes

IN THE WORLD 445

on her bare feet. Waving her sunshade, swaying, she
giggled and screamed:

"What the devil I The market-place is not open;
there is no market-place, and he brings me to the mar-
ket-place. Little mother — "

Grigori, dishevelled and limp, crept out of the cab,
sat on the ground and declared to us, the spectators
of the scene, with tears:

"I am down on my knees; I have sinned greatly!
I thought of sin, and I have sinned. Ephimushka
says 'Grisha! Grisha!' He speaks truly, but you —
forgive me; I can treat you all. He says truly, 'We
live once only, and no more.' "

The girl burst out laughing, stamped her feet, and
lost her goloshes, and the driver called out gruffly :

"Let us get on farther! The horse won't stand
still !"

The horse, an old, worn-out jade, was covered with
foam, and stood as still as if it were buried. The
whole scene was irresistibly comical.

Grigori's workmen rolled about with laughter as
they looked at their master, his grand lady, and the
bemused coachman.

The only one who did not laugh was Phoma, who
stood at the door of one of the shops beside me and
muttered :

"The devil take the swine. And he has a wife at
home — a bee-eautiful woman!"

The driver kept on urging them to start. The girl

446 IN THE WORLD

got out of the cab, lifted Grigori up, set him on his
feet, and cried with a wave of her sunshade :

"Goon!"

Laughing good-naturedly at their master, and envy-
ing him, the men returned to their work at the call
of Phoma. It was plain that it was repugnant to him
to see Grigori made ridiculous.

"He calls himself master," he muttered. "I have
not quite a month's work left to do here. After
that I shall go back to the country. I can't stand
this."

I felt vexed for Grigori; that girl with the cherries
looked so annoyingly absurd beside him.

I often wondered why Grigori Shishlin was the mas-
ter and Phoma Tuchkov the workman. A strong, fair
fellow, with curly hair, an aquiline nose, and gray,
clever eyes in his round face, Phoma was not like a
peasant. If he had been well-dressed, he might have
been the son of a merchant of good family. He was
gloomy, taciturn, businesslike. Being well educated,
he kept the accounts of the contractor, drew up the es-
timates, and could set his comrades to work success-
fully, but he worked unwillingly himself.

"You won't make work last forever," he said
calmly. He despised books.

"They can print what they like, but I shall go on
thinking as I like," he said. "Books are all non-
sense."

But he listened attentively to every one, and if
something interested him, he would ask all the details

IN THE WORLD 447

about it, perseveringly, always thinking of it in his
own way, measuring it by his own measure.

Once I told Phoma that he ought to be a contractor.
He replied indolently:

"If it were a question of turning over thousands,
yes. But to worry myself for the sake of making a
few copecks, it is not worth while. No, I am just
looking about; then I shall go into a monastery in
Oranko. I am good-looking, powerful in muscle; I
may take the fancy of some merchant's widow I Such
things do happen. There was a Sergatzki boy who
made his fortune in two years, and married a girl
from these parts, from the town. He had to take an
icon to her house, and she saw him."

This was an obsession with him; he knew many
tales of how taking service in a monastery had led
people to an easy life. I did not care for these stories,
nor did I like the trend of Phoma's mind, but I felt
sure that he would go to a monastery.

When the market was opened, Phoma, to every
one's surprise, went as waiter to a tavern. I do not
say that his mates were surprised, but they all began
to treat him mockingly. On holidays they would all
go together to drink tea, saying to one another :

"Let us go and see our Phoma."

And when they arrived at the tavern they would
call out:

"Hi, waiter! Curly mop, come here!"

He would come to them and ask, with his head
held high :

448 IN THE WORLD

"What can I get for you*?"

"Don't you recognize acquaintances now*?"

"I never recognize any one."

He felt that his mates despised him and were mak-
ing fun of him, and he looked at them with dully ex-
pectant eyes. His face might have been made of
wood, but it seemed to say:

"Well, make haste; laugh and be done with it."

"Shall we give him a tip*?" they would ask, and
after purposely fumbling in their purses for a long
time, they would give him nothing at all.

I asked Phoma how he could go out as a waiter
when he had meant to enter a monastery.

"I never meant to go into a monastery!" he re-
plied, "and I shall not stay long as a waiter."

Four years later I met him in Tzaritzin, still a
waiter in a tavern; and later still I read in a news-
paper that Phoma Tuchkov had been arrested for an
attempted burglary.

The history of the mason, Ardalon, moved me
deeply. He was the eldest and best workman in
Petr's gang. This black-bearded, light-hearted man
of forty years also involuntarily evoked the query,
"Why was he not the master instead of Petr^" He
seldom drank vodka and hardly ever drank too much;
he knew his work thoroughly, and worked as if he
loved it; the bricks seemed to fly from his hands like
red doves. In comparison with him, the sickly, lean
Petr seemed an absolutely superfluous member of the
gang. He used to speak thus of his work:

IN THE WORLD 449

"I build stone houses for people, and a wooden
coffin for myself."

But Ardalon laid his bricks with cheerful energy as
he cried: "Work, my child, for the glory of God."

And he told us all that next spring he would go to
Tomsk, where his brother-in-law had undertaken a
large contract to build a church, and had invited him
to go as overseer.

"I have made up my mind to go. Building
churches is work that I love!" he said. And he sug-
gested to me: "Come with me! It is very easy,
brother, for an educated person to get on in Siberia.
There, education is a trump card!"

I agreed to his proposition, and he cried triumph-
antly :

"There! That is business and not a joke."

Toward Petr and Grigori he behaved with good-
natured derision, like a grown-up person towards chil-
dren, and he said to Osip :

"Braggarts! Each shows the other his cleverness,
as if they were playing at cards. One says: 'My
cards are all such and such a color,' and the other says,
*And mine are trumps !' "

Osip observed hesitatingly:

"How could it be otherwise^ Boasting is only hu-
man; all the girls walk about with their chests stuck
out."

"All, yes, all. It is God, God all the time. But
they hoard up money themselves!" said Ardalon im-
patiently.

450 IN THE WORLD

"Well, Grisha does n't/'

"I am speaking for myself. I would go with this
God into the forest, the desert. I 'am weary of being
here. In the spring I shall go to Siberia."

The workmen, envious of Ardalon, said:

"If wc had such a chance in the shape of a brother-
in-law, we should not be afraid of Siberia either."

And suddenly Ardalon disappeared. He went
away from the workshop on Sunday, and for three
days no one knew where he was.

This made anxious conjectures.

"Perhaps he has been murdered."

"Or maybe he is drowned."

But Ephimushka came, and declared in an em-
barrassed manner:

"He has gone on the drink."

"Why do you tell such lies?" cried Petr incredu-
lously.

"He has gone on the drink; he is drinking madly.
He is just like a com kiln which burns from the very
center. Perhaps his much-loved wife is dead."

"He is a widower I Where is he?"

Petr angrily set out to save Ardalon, but the latter
fought him.

Then Osip, pressing his lips together firmly, thrust
his hands in his pockets and said:

"Shall I go have a look at him, and see what it is
all about? He is a good fellow."

I attached myself to him.

IN THE WORLD 451

"Here 's a man," said Osip on the way, "who lives
for years quite decently, when suddenly he loses con-
trol of himself, and is all over the place. Look,
Maximich, and learn."

We went to one of the cheap "houses of pleasure"
of Kunavin Village, and we were welcomed by a pre-
datory old woman. Osip whispered to her, and she
ushered us into a small empty room, dark and dirty,
like a stable. On a small bed slept, in an abandoned
attitude, a large, stout woman. The old woman thrust
her fist in her side and said :

"Wake up, frog, wake up!"

The woman jumped up in terror, rubbing her face
with her hands, and asked :

"Good Lord I who is it? What is it?"

"Detectives are here," said Osip harshly. With a
groan the woman disappeared, and he spat after her
and explained to me:

"They are more afraid of detectives than of the
devil."

Taking a small glass from the w^all, the old woman
raised a piece of the wall-paper.

"Look I Is he the one you want?"

Osip looked through a chink in the partition.

"That is he ! Get the woman away."

I also looked through the chink into just such a
narrow stable as the one we were in. On the sill of
the window, which was closely shuttered, burned a tin
lamp, near which stood a squinting, naked, Tatar

452 IN THE WORLD

woman, sewing a chemise. Behind her, on two pil-
lows on the bed, was raised the bloated face of Arda-
lon, his black, tangled beard projecting.

The Tatar woman shivered, put on her chemise, and
came past the bed, suddenly appearing in our room.

Osip looked at her and again spat.

"Ugh! Shameless hussy I"

"And you are an old fool!" she replied, laughing,
Osip laughed too, and shook a threatening finger at
her.

We went into the Tatar's stable. The old man sat
on the bed at Ardalon's feet and tried for a long time
unsuccessfully to awaken him. He muttered:

"All right, wait a bit. We will go — "

At length he awoke, gazed wildly at Osip and at
me, and closing his bloodshot eyes, murmured :

"Well, well !"

"What is the matter with you?" asked Osip gently,
without reproaches, but rather sadly.

"I was driven to it," explained Ardalon hoarsely,
and coughing.

"How?"

"Ah, there were reasons."

"You were not contented, perhaps?"

"What is the good — "

Ardalon took an open bottle of vodka from the
table, and began to drink from it. He then asked
Osip:

"Would you like some? There ought to be some-
thing to eat here as well."

IN THE WORLD 453

The old man poured some of the spirit into his
mouth, swallowed it, frowned, and began to chew a
small piece of bread carefully, but muddled Ardalon
said drowsily:

"So I have thrown in my lot with the Tatar woman.
She is a pure Tatar, as Ephimushka says, young, an
orphan from Kasimov; she was getting ready for the
fair."

From the other side of the wall some one said in
broken Russian:

"Tatars are the best, like young hens. Send him
away; he is not your father."

"That's she," muttered Ardalon, gazing stupidly
at the wall.

"I have seen her," said Osip.

Ardalon turned to me:

"That is the sort of man I am, brother."

I expected Osip to reproach Ardalon, to give him
a lecture which would make him repent bitterly. But
nothing of the kind happened; they sat side by side,
shoulder to shoulder, and uttered calm, brief words.
It was melancholy to see them in that dark, dirty
stable. The woman called ludicrous words through
the chink in the wall, but they did not listen to them.
Osip took a walnut off the table, cracked it against
his boot, and began to remove the shell neatly, as he
asked :

"All your money gone?"

"There is some with Petrucha."

454 IN THE WORLD

"I say! Are n't you going away*? If you were to
go to Tomsk, now — "

"What should I go to Tomsk for^"

"Have you changed your mind, then^"

"If I had been going to strangers, it would have
been different."

"What do you mean?"

"But to go to my sister and my brother-in-law — "

"What of it?"

"It is not particularly pleasant to begin again with
one's own people."

"The beginning is the same anywhere."

"All the same—"

They talked in such an amicably serious vein that
the Tatar woman left off teasing them, and coming
into the room, took her frock down from the wall in
silence, and disappeared.

"She is young," said Osip.

Ardalon glanced at him and without annoyance re*
plied :

"Ephimushka is wrong-headed. He knows noth-
ing, except about women. But the Tatar woman is
joyous; she maddens us all."

"Take care; you won't be able to escape from her,"
Osip warned him, and having eaten the walnut, took
his leave.

On the way back I asked Osip:

"Why did you go to him?"

"Just to look at him. He is a man I have known

IN THE WORLD 455

a long time. I have seen ma-a-ny such cases. A man
leads a decent life, and suddenly he behaves as if he
had just escaped from prison." He repeated what he
had said before, "One should be on one's guard against
vodka."

But after a minute he added :

"But life would be dull without it."

"Without vodka ^"

"Well, yes! When you drink, it is just as if you
were in another world."

Ardalon never came back for good. At the end
of a few days he returned to work, but soon disap-
peared again, and in the spring I met him among the
dock laborers ; he was melting the ice round the barges
in the harbor. We greeted each other in friendly
fashion and went to a tavern for tea, after which he
boasted :

"You remember what a workman I was, eh? I tell
you straight, I was an expert at my own business I I
could have earned hundreds."

"However, you did not."

"No, I didn't earn them," he cried proudly. "I
spit upon work!"

He swaggered. The people in the tavern listened
to his impassioned words and were impressed.

"You remember what that sly thief Petrucha used
to say about work*? For others stone houses; for him-
self a wooden coffin! Well, that's true of all
work!"
I said:

456 IN THE WORLD

"Petrucha is ill. He is afraid of death."

But Ardalon cried :

"I am ill, too; my heart is out of order."

On holidays I often wandered out of the town to
*'Millioni Street," where the dockers lived, and saw
how quickly Ardalon had settled down among those
uncouth ruffians. Only a year ago, happy and serious-
minded, Ardalon had now become as noisy as any of
them. He had acquired their curious, shambling
walk, looked at people defiantly, as if he were invit-
ing every one to fight with him, and was always boast-
ing:

"You see how I am received; I am like a chieftain
here!"

Never grudging the money he had earned, he lib-
erally treated the dockers, and in fights he always
took the part of the weakest. He often cried :

'That's not fair, children I You've got to fight
fair!"

And so they called him "Fairplay," which delighted
him.

I ardently studied these people, closely packed in
that old and dirty sack of a street. All of them were
people who had cut themselves off from ordinary life,
but they seemed to have created a life of their own,
independent of any master, and gay. Careless, au-
dacious, they reminded me of grandfather's stories
about the bargemen who so easily transformed them-
selves into brigands or hermits. When there was no
work, they were not squeamish about committing small

IN THE WORLD 457

thefts from the barges and steamers, but that did not
trouble me, for I saw that life was sewn with theft,
like an old coat with gray threads. At the same time
I saw that these people never worked with enthusiasm,
unsparing of their energies, as happened in cases of
urgency, such as fires, or the breaking of the ice. And,
as a rule, they lived more of a holiday life than any
other people.

But Osip, having noticed my friendship with
Ardalon, warned me in a fatherly way :

"Look here, my boy; why this close friendship with
the folk of Millioni Street? Take care you don't do
yourself harm by it."

I told him as well as I could how I liked these people
who lived so gaily, without working.

"Birds of the air they are!" he interrupted me,
laughing. "That 's what they are — idle, useless peo-
ple; and work is a calamity to them!"

"What is work, after all? As they say, the labors
of the righteous don't procure them stone houses to
live in!"

I said this glibly enough. I had heard the proverb
so often, and felt the truth of it.

But Osip was very angry with me, and cried :

"Who says so? Fools, idlers! And you are a
youngster; you ought not to listen to such things!
Oh, you — ! That is the nonsense which is uttered by
the envious, the unsuccessful. Wait till your feath-
ers are grown ; then you can fly ! And I shall tell your
master about this friendship of yours."

458 IN THE WORLD

And he did tell. The master spoke to me about
the matter.

"You leave the Millioni folk alone, Pyeshkov!
They are thieves and prostitutes, and from there the
path leads to the prison and the hospital. Let them
alone!''

I began to conceal my visits to Millioni Street, but
I soon had to give them up. One day I was sitting
with Ardalon and his comrade, Robenok, on the roof
of a shed in the yard of one of the lodging-houses.
Robenok was relating to us amusingly how he had
made his way on foot from Rostov, on the Don, to
Moscow. He had been a soldier-sapper, a Geogriv-
sky horseman, and he was lame. In the war with
Turkey he had been wounded in the knee. Of low
stature, he had a terrible strength in his arms, a strength
which was of no profit to him, for his lameness pre-
vented him from working. He had had an illness
which had caused the hair to fall from his head and
face ; his head was like that of a new-born infant.

With his brown eyes sparkling he said :

"Well, at Serpoukhov I saw a priest sitting in a
sledge. Tather,' I said, 'give something to a Turkish
hero.' "

Ardalon shook his head and said :

"That's a lie!"

"Why should I lie?" asked Robenok, not in the
least offended, and my friend growled in lazy reproof :

"You are incorrigible ! You have the chance of be-
coming a watchman — they always put lam^e men to

IN THE WORLD 459

that job — and you stroll about aimlessly, and tell
lies."

"Well, I only do it to make people laugh. I lie
just for the sake of amusement."

"You ought to laugh at yourself."

In the yard, which was dark and dirty although the
weather was dry and sunny, a woman appeared and
cried, waving some sort of a rag about her head :

"Who will buy a petticoat? Hi, friends I"

Women crept out from the hidden places of the
house and gathered closely round the seller. I rec-
ognized her at once; it was the laundress, Natalia. I
jumped down from the roof, but she, having given the
petticoat to the first bidder, had already quietly left
the yard.

"How do you do?" I greeted her joyfully as I
caught her at the gate.

"What next, I wonder?" she exclaimed, glancing
at me askance, and then she suddenly stood still, cry-
ing angrily: "God save us! What are you doing
here?"

Her terrified exclamation touched and confused me.
I realized that she was afraid for me; terror and
amazement were shown so plainly in her intelligent
face. I soon explained to her that I was not living in
that street, but only went there sometimes to see what
there was to see.

"See?" she cried angrily and derisively. "What
sort of a place is this that you should want to see it?
It 's the women you 're after."

46o IN THE WORLD

Her face was wrinkled, dark shadows lay under her
eyes, and her lips drooped feebly.

Standing at the door of a tavern she said :

"Come in; I am going to have some teal You are
well-dressed, not like they dress here, yet I cannot be-
lieve what you say."

But in the tavern she seemed to believe me, and
as she poured out tea, she began to tell me how she
had only awakened from sleep an hour ago, and had
not had anything to eat or drink yet.

"And when I went to bed last night I was as drunk
as drunk. I can't even remember where I had the
drink, or with whom."

I felt sorry for her, awkward in her presence, and
I wanted to ask her where her daughter was. After
she had drunk some vodka and hot tea, she began to
talk in a familiar, lively way, coarsely, like all the
women of that street, but when I asked about her
daughter she was sobered at once, and cried:

"What do you want to know for^ No, my boy,
you won't get hold of her; don't think it!"

She drank more, and then she said :

"I have nothing to do with my daughter. What am
I? A laundress! What sort of a mother for her?
She is well brought up, educated. That she is, my
brother! She left me to live with a rich friend, as a
teacher, like — "

After a silence she said :

"That 's how it is ! The laundress does n't please
you, but the street- walker does'?"

IN THE WORLD 461

That she was a street-walker I had seen at once, of
course. There was no other kind of woman in that
street. But when she told me so herself, my eyes
filled with tears of shame and pity for her. I felt
as if she had burned me by making that admission, —
she, who not long ago had been so brave, independent,
and clever.

"Ekh! you!" she said, looking at me and sighing.
"Go away from this place, I beg you! I urge you,
don't come here, or you will be lost !"

Then she began to speak softly and brokenly, as if
she were talking to herself, bending over the table
and drawing figures on the tray with her fingers.

"But what are my entreaties and my advice to you*?
When my own daughter would not listen to me I cried
to her: *You can't throw aside your own mother.
What are you thinking of?' And she — she said, T
shall strangle myself !' And she went away to Kazan ;
she wants to learn to be a midwife. Good — good!
But what about me? You see what I am now?
What have I to cling to? And so I went on the
streets."

She fell into a silence, and thought for a long time,
soundlessly moving her lips. It was plain that she
had forgotten me. The corners of her lips drooped;
her mouth was curved like a sickle, and it was a tor-
turing sight to see how her lips quivered, and how the
wavering furrows on her face spoke without words.
Her face was like that of an aggrieved child. Strands
of hair had fallen from under her headkerchief, and

462 IN THE WORLD

lay on her cheek, or coiled behind her small ear. Her
tears dropped into her cup of cold tea, and seeing this,
she pushed the cup away and shut her eyes tightly,
squeezing out two more tears. Then she wiped her
face with her handkerchief. I could not bear to stay
with her any longer. I rose quietly.

"Good-by!"

"Eh^ Go — go to the devil!" She waved me
away without looking at me; she had apparently for-
gotten who was with her.

I returned to Ardalon in the yard. He had meant
to come with me to catch crabs, and I wanted to tell
him about the woman. But neither he nor Robenok
were on the roof of the shed; and while I was look-
ing for him in the disorderly yard, there arose from
the street the sound of one of those rows which were
frequent there.

I went out through the gate and came into collision
with Natalia, sobbing, wiping her bruised face with
her headkerchief. Setting straight her disordered hair
with her other hand, she went blindly along the foot-
path, and following her came Ardalon and Robenok.
The latter was saying:

"Give her one more; come on!"

Ardalon overtook the woman, flourishing his fist.
She turned her bosom full toward himi; her face was
terrible ; her eyes blazed with hatred.

"Go on, hit me !" she cried.

I hung on to Ardalon's arm; he looked at me in
amazement.

IN THE WORLD 463

"What's the matter with you*?"

"Don't touch her!" I just managed to say.

He burst out laughing.

"She is your lover*? Aie, that Natashka, she has
devoured our little monk."

Robenok laughed, too, holding his sides, and for a
long time they roasted me with their hot obscenity. It
was unbearable I But while they were thus occupied,
Natalia went away, and I, losing my temper at last,
struck Robenok in the chest with my head, knocking
him over, and ran away.

For a long time after that I did not go near Mil-
lion! Street. But I saw Ardalon once again; I met
him on the ferry-boat.

"Where have you been hiding yourself?" he asked
joyfully.

When I told him that it was repulsive to me to re-
member how he had knocked Natalia about and ob-
scenely insulted me, Ardalon laughed good-naturedly.

"Did you take that seriously*? We only rubbed it
into you for a joke! As for her, why shouldn't she
be knocked about, a street-walker*? People beat their
wives, so they are certainly not going to have more
mercy on such as that! Still, it was only a joke, the
whole thing. I understand, you know, that the fist is
no good for teaching!"

"What have you got to teach her*? How are you
better than she is^"

He put his hands on my shoulders and, shaking me,
said banteringly:

464 IN THE WORLD

"In our disgraceful state no one of us is better than
another."

Then he laughed and added boastfully:

"I understand everything from within and without,
brother, everything! I am not wood I"

He was a little tipsy, at the jovial stage; he looked
at me with the tender pity of a good master for an
unintelligent pupil.

Sometimes I met Pavl Odintzov. He was livelier
than ever, dressed like a dandy, and talked to me con-
descendingly and always reproachfully.

"You are throwing yourself away on that kind of
work ! They are nothing but peasants."

Then he would sadly retail all the latest news from
the workshop.

"Jikharev is still taken up with that cow. Sitanov
is plainly fretting; he has begun to drink to excess.
The wolves have eaten Golovev; he was coming home
from Sviatka; he was drunk, and the wolves devoured
him." And bursting into a gay peal of laughter he
comically added:

"They ate him and they all became drunk them-
selves I They were very merry and walked about the
forests on their hind legs, like performing dogs. Then
they fell to fighting and in twenty-fours hours they
were all dead I"

I listened to him and laughed, too, but I felt that
the workshop and all I had experienced in it was very
far away from me now.

This was rather a melancholy reflection.

CHAPTER XIX

THERE was hardly any work in the market-
square during the winter, and instead I had in-
numerable trivial duties to perform in the house.
They swallowed up the whole day, but the evenings
were left free. Once more I read to the household
novels which were unpalatable to me, from the "Neva"
and the "Moscow Gazette"; but at night I occupied
myself by reading good books and by attempts at writ-
ing poetry.

One day when the women had gone out to vespers
and my master was kept at home through indisposi-
tion, he asked me :

"Victor is making fun of you because he says you
write poetry, Pyeshkov. Is that true*? Well then,
read it to me I' \

It would have been awkward to refuse, and I read
several of my poetical compositions. These evidently
did not please him, but he said :

"Stick to it! Stick to it! You may become a
Pushkin; have you read Pushkin?"

" *Do the gobUns have funeral rites ?
Are the witches given in marriage T "

In his time people still believed in goblins, but he

465

4.66 IN THE WORLD

did not believe in them himself. Of course he was
just joking.

"Ye-es, brother," he drawled thoughtfully, '"^jou
ought to have been taught, but now it is too late. The
devil knows what will become of you ! I should hide
that note-book of yours more carefully, for if the
women get hold of it, they will laugh at you.
Women, brother, love to touch one on a weak spot."

For some time past my master had been quiet and
thoughtful; he had a trick of looking about him cau-
tiously, and the sound of the bell startled him. Some-
times he would give way to a painful irritability about
trifles, would scold us all, and rush out of the house,
returning drunk late at night. One felt that some-
thing had come into his life which was known only
to himself, which had lacerated his heart; and that
he was living not sensibly, or willingly, but simply
by force of habit.

On Sundays from dinner-time till nine o'clock I was
free to go out and about, and the evenings I spent
at a tavern in Yamski Street. The host, a stout and
always perspiring man, was passionately fond of sing-
ing, and the choristers of most of the churches knew
this, and used to frequent his house. He treated them
with vodka, beer, or tea, for their songs. The chor-
isters were a drunken and uninteresting set of peo-
ple; they sang unwillingly, only for the sake of the
hospitality, and almost always it was church music.
As certain of the pious drunkards did not consider that
the tavern was the place for them, the host used to

IN THE WORLD 467

invite them to his private room, and I could only hear
the singing through the door. But frequently peas-
ants from the villages, and artisans came. The tav-
ern-keeper himself used to go about the town inquir-
ing for singers, asking the peasants who came in on
market-days, and inviting them to his house.

The singer was always given a chair close to the
bar, his back to a cask of vodka; his head was outlined
against the bottom of the cask as if it were in a round
frame.

The best singer of all — and they were always par-
ticularly good singers — was the small, lean harness-
maker, Kleshtchkov, who looked as if he had been
squeezed, and had tufts of red hair on his head. His
little nose gleamed like that of a corpse; his. benign,
dreamy eyes were immovable.

Sometimes he closed his eyes, leaned the back of
his head against the bottom of the cask, protruding
his chest, and in his soft but all-conquering tenor
voice sang the quick moving:

"Ekh ! how the fog has fallen upon the clean fields already !
And has hidden the distant roads I"

Here he would stop, and resting his back against
the bar, bending backwards, went on, with his face
raised toward the ceiling:

"Ekh! where — where am I going'?
Where shall I find the broad ro-oad^"

His voice was small like himself, but it was un-
wearied ; he permeated the dark, dull room of the tav-

468 IN THE WORLD

ern with silvery chords, melancholy words. His
groans and cries conquered every one ; even the drunken
ones became amazedly surprised, gazing down in si-
lence at the tables in front of them. As for me, my
heart was torn, and overflowed with those mighty feel-
ings which good music always arouses as it miracu-
lously touches the very depths of the soul.

It was as quiet in the tavern as in a church, and
the singer seemed like a good priest, who did not
preach, but with all his soul, and honestly, prayed for
the whole human family, thinking aloud, as it were,
of all the grievous calamities which beset human life.
Bearded men gazed upon him; childlike eyes blinked
in fierce, wild faces ; at moments some one sighed, and
this seemed to emphasize the triumphant power of
the music. At such times it always seemed to me that
the lives led by most people were unreal and meaning-
less, and that the reality of life lay here.

In the corner sat the fat-faced old-clothes dealer,
Luissukha, a repulsive female, a shameless, loose
woman. She hid her head on her fat shoulder and
wept, furtively wiping the tears from her bold eyes.
Not far from her sat the gloomy chorister, Mitropolski,
a hirsute young fellow who looked like a degraded
deacon, with great eyes set in his drunken face. He
gazed into the glass of vodka placed before him, took
it up, and raised it to his mouth, and then set it down
again on the table, carefully and noiselessly. For
some reason he could not drink.

IN THE WORLD 469

And all the people in the tavern seemed to be glued
to their places, as if they were listening to something
long forgotten, but once dear and near to them.

When Kleshtchkov, having finished his song, mod-
estly sank down in the chair, the tavern-keeper, giving
him a glass of wine, would say with a smile of satis-
faction :

"Well, that was very good, sure! Although you
can hardly be said to sing, so much as to recite ! How-
ever, you are a master of it, whatever they say ! No
one could say otherwise."

Kleshtchkov, drinking his vodka without haste,
coughed carefully and said quietly:

"Any one can sing if he has a voice, but to show
what kind of soul the song contains is only given to
me."

"Well, you need n't boast, anyhow."

"He who has nothing to boast about, does not
boast," said the singer as quietly but more firmly than
before.

"You are conceited, Kleshtchkov I" exclaimed the
host, annoyed.

"One can't be more conceited than one's conscience
allows."

And from the corner the gloomy Mitropolski roared :

"What do you know about the singing of this fallen
angel, you worms, you dirt I"

He always opposed every one, argued with every
one, brought accusations against every one; and al-

470 IN THE WORLD

most every Sunday he was cruelly punished for this
by one of the singers, or whoever else had a mind for
the business.

The tavern-keeper loved Kleshtchkov's singing, but
he could not endure the singer. He used to complain
about him, and obviously sought occasions to humiliate
him and to make him ridiculous. This fact was known
to the frequenters of the tavern and to Kleshtchkov
himself.

"He is a good singer, but he is proud; he wants
taking down," he said, and several guests agreed with
him.

"That 's true; he 's a conceited fellow !"

"What 's he got to be conceited about? His voice?
That comes from God; he has nothing to do with it!
And he hasn't a very powerful voice, has he?" the
tavern-keeper persisted.

His audience agreed with him.

"True, it is not so much his voice as his intelli-
gence."

One day after the singer had refreshed himself
and gone away, the tavern-keeper tried to persuade
Luissukha.

"Why don't you amuse yourself with Kleshtchkov
for a bit, Marie Evdokimova; you'd shake him up,
wouldn't you? What would you want for it?"

"If I were younger," she said with a laugh.

The tavern-keeper cried loudly and warmly:

"What can the young ones do? But you — you will

IN THE WORLD 471

get hold of him! We shall see him dancing round
you! When he is bowed down by grief he will be
able to sing, won't he^ Take him in hand, Evdo-
kimova, and do me a favor, will you?"

But she would not do it. Large and fat, she low-
ered her eyes and played with the fringe of the hand-
kerchief which covered her bosom, as she said in a
monotonous, lazy drawl:

"It 's a young person that is needed here. If I were
younger, well, I would not think twice about it."

Almost every night the tavern-keeper tried to make
Kleshtchkov drunk, but the latter, after two or three
songs and a glassful after each, would carefully wrap
up his throat with a knitted scarf, draw his cap well
over his tufted head, and depart.

The tavern-keeper often tried to find a rival for
Kleshtchkov. The harness-maker would sing a song
and then the host, after praising him, would say :

"Here is another singer. Come along now, show
what you can do !"

Sometimes the singer had a good voice, but I do not
remember an occasion on which any of Kleshtchkov's
rivals sang so simply and soulfully as that little con-
ceited harness-maker.

"M — yes," said the tavern-keeper, not without re-
gret, "it's good, certainly! The chief thing is that
it is a voice, but there 's no soul in it."

The guests teased him:

"No, you can't better the harness-maker, you see!

f>»

472 IN THE WORLD

And Kleshtchkov, looking at them all from under
his red, tufted eyebrows, said to the tavern-keeper
calmly and politely:

"You waste your time. You will never find a singer
with my gifts to set up in opposition to me; my gift is
from God."

"We are all from God!"

"You may ruin yourself by the drink you give, but
you '11 never find one."

The tavern-keeper turned purple and muttered:
^ "How do we know? How do we know?"

But Kleshtchkov pointed out to him firmly :

"Again I tell you this is singing, not a cock-fight."

"I know that! Why do you keep harping on it?"

"I am not harping on it; I am simply pointing out
something to you. If a song is nothing but a diver-
sion, it comes from the devil!"

"All right! You 'd better sing again."

"I can always sing, even in my sleep," agreed
Kleshtchkov, and carefully clearing his throat he be-
gan to sing.

And all nonsense, trashy talk, and ambitions van-
ished into smoke as by a miracle; the refreshing streams
of a different life, reflective, pure, full of love and
sadness, flowed over us all.

I envied that man, envied intensely his talent and
his power over people. The way he took advantage
of this power was so wonderful! I wanted to make
the acquaintance of the harness-maker, to hold a long

IN THE WORLD 473

conversation with him, but I could not summon up
courage to go to him.

Kleshtchkov had such a strange way of looking at
everybody with his pale eyes, as if he could not see
any one in front of him. But there was something
about him which offended me and prevented me from
liking him; and I wanted to like him for himself, not
only when he was singing. It was unpleasant to see
him pull his cap over his head, like an old man, and
swathe his neck, just for show, in that red, knitted scarf
of which he said:

"My little one knitted this; my only little girl."

When he was not singing he pouted importantly,
rubbed his dead, frozen nose with his fingers, and an-
swered questions in monosyllables, and unwillingly.
When I approached him and asked him something, he
looked at me and said:

"Go away, lad!"

I much preferred the chorister, Mitropolski. When
he appeared in the tavern, he would walk into his cor-
ner with the gait of a man carrying a heavy load, move
a chair away with the toe of his boot, and sit down
with his elbows on the table, resting his large shaggy
head on his hands. After he had drunk two or three
glasses in silence, he would utter a resounding cry.
Every one would start and look towards him, but with
his chin in his hands he gazed at them defiantly, his
mane of unbrushed hair wildly surrounding his puffy,
sallow face.

474 IN THE WORLD

"What are you looking af? What do you see?"
he would ask with sudden passion.

Sometimes they replied:

"We are looking at a werwolf."

There were evenings on which he drank in silence,
and in silence departed, heavily dragging his feet.
Several times I heard him denounce people, playing
the prophet:

"I am the incorruptible servant of my God, and I
denounce you. Behold Isaiah I Woe to the town of
Ariel. Come, ye wicked, and ye rogues, and all kinds
of dark monstrosities living in the mire of your own
base desires I Woe to the ships of this world, for they
carry lewd people on their sinful way. I know you,
drunkards, gluttons, dregs of this world; there is no
time appointed for you. Accursed ones, the very earth
refuses to receive you into her womb I"

His voice resounded so that the window-panes shook,
which delighted his audience. They praised the
prophet :

"He barks finely, the shaggy cur!"

It was easy to become acquainted with him; it cost
no more than to offer him hospitality; he required a
decanter of vodka and a portion of ox liver. When
I asked him to tell me what kind of books one ought
to read, he answered me with stubborn ferocity by an-
other question:

"Why read at all?"

But mollified by my confusion, he added in ringing
tones :

IN THE WORLD 475

"Have you read Ecclesiastes ^"

"Yes."

"Read Ecclesiastes. You need nothing more.
There is all the wisdom of the world, only there are
sheep who do not understand it; that is to say, no one
understands it. Can you sing at all^"

"No."

"Why? You ought to sing. It is the most ridicu-
lous way of passing time."

Some one asked him from an adjacent table:

"But you sing yourself?"

"Yes; but I am a vagrant. Well?"

"Nothing."

"That is nothing new. Every one knows that
there is nothing in that blockhead of yours, and there
never will be anything. Amen!"

In this tone he was in the habit of speaking to me
and to every one else, although after the second or
third time of my treating him, he began to be more
gentle with me. One day he actually said with a
shade of surprise:

"I look at you and I cannot make out what you are,
who are you, or why you are ! But whatever you are,
may the devil take you!"

He behaved in an incomprehensible manner to
Kleshtchkov. He listened to him with manifest en-
joyment sometimes even with a benign smile, but he
would not make closer acquaintance with him, and
spoke about him coarsely and contemptuously.

"That barber's block! He knows how to breathe,

476 IN THE WORLD

he understands what to sing about, but for the rest, he
is an ass."

"Whyr'

"Like all his kind.''

I should have liked to talk with him when he was
sober, but when sober he only bellowed, and looked
upon all the world with misty, dull eyes. I learned
from some one that this permanently inebriated man
had studied in the Kazan Academy, and might have
become a prelate. I did not believe this. But one
day when I was telling him about myself, I recalled
the name of the bishop, Chrisanph. He tossed his
head and said:

"Chrisanph^ I know him. He was my tutor and
benefactor. At Kazan, in the academy, I remember!
Chrisanph means 'golden flower.' Yes, that was a
true saying of Pavm Beruind. Yes, he was a flower
of gold, Chrisanph!"

"And who is Pavm Beruind?" I added, but Mitro-
polski replied shortly:

"That is none of your business."

When I reached home I wrote in my note-book, "I
must read the works of Pavm Beruind." I felt, some-
how, that I should find therein the answers to many
questions which perplexed me.

The singer was very fond of using names which
were unknown to me, and curiously coined words.
This irritated me greatly.

"Life is not aniso^'' he said.

"What is aniso?" I asked.

IN THE WORLD 477

"Something advantageous to you," he answered,
and my perplexity amused him.

These little sayings, and the fact that he had studied
in the academy, led me to think that he knew a great
deal, and I was offended with him for not speaking of
his knowledge, or if he did allude to it, being so un-
intelligible. Or was it that I had no right to ask him,*?
However, he left an impression on my mind. I liked
the drunken boldness of his denunciations, which were
modelled on those of the prophet Isaias.

"Oh, unclean and vile ones of earth!" he roared,
"the worst among you are famous, and the best are
persecuted. The day of judgment draws nigh. You
will repent then, but it will be too late, too late!"

As I listened to his roar, I remembered "Good Busi-
ness," the laundress Natalia, ruined so hideously and
easily. Queen Margot, wrapped in a cloud of dirty
scandal. I already had some memories!

My brief acquaintance with this man finished curi-
ously.

I met him in the spring, in the fields near the camp.
He was walking like a camel, moving his head from
side to side, solitary, bloated-looking.

"Going for a walk?" he asked hoarsely. "Let us
go together. I also am taking a walk. I am ill.
Brother; yes."

We walked some yards without speaking, when
suddenly we saw a man in a pit which had been made
under a tent. He was sitting in the bottom of the
pit, leaning on one side, his shoulder resting against

478 IN THE WORLD

the side of the trench. His coat was drawn up on one
side above his ear, as if he had been trying to take it
off and had not succeeded.

"Drunk," decided the singer, coming to a standstill.

But on the young grass under the man's arm lay a
large revolver, not far from him lay a cap, and beside
it stood a bottle of vodka, hardly begun. Its empty
neck was buried in the long grass. The face of the
man was hidden by his overcoat, as if he were
ashamed.

For a moment we stood in silence. Then Mitro-
polski, planting his feet wide apart, said:

"He has shot himself."

Then I understood that the man was not drunk, but
dead, but it came upon me so suddenly that I could
not believe it. I remember that I felt neither fear
nor pity as I looked at that large, smooth skull, visible
above the overcoat, and on that livid ear. I could
not believe that a man would kill himself on such a
pleasant spring day.

The singer rubbed his unshaven cheeks with his
hand, as if he were cold, and said hoarsely :

"He is an oldish man. Perhaps his wife has left
him, or he has made off with money not belonging to
him."

He sent me into the town to fetch the police, and
himself sat down on the edge of the pit, letting his
feet hang over, wrapping his worn overcoat closely
round him. Having informed the police of the sui-
cide, I ran back quickly, but in the meantime the chor-

IN THE WORLD 479

ister had drunk the dead man's vodka, and came to
meet me, waving the empty bottle.

"This is what ruined him," he cried, and furiously
dashing the bottle to the ground, smashed it to atoms.

The town constable had followed me. He looked
into the pit, took off his hat, and crossing himself in-
decisively, asked the singer :

"Who may you be^"

"That is not your business."

The policeman reflected, and then asked more po-
litely:

"What account do you give of yourself, then^
Here is a dead man, and here are you, drunk!"

"I have been drunk for twenty years!" said the
singer proudly, striking his chest with the palm of his
hand.

I felt sure that they would arrest him for drinking
the vodka. People came rushing from the town; a
severe-looking police inspector cartie in a cab. de-
scended into the pit, and, lifting aside the overcoat of
the suicide, looked into his face.

"Who saw him first ^"

"I," said Mitropolski.

The inspector looked at him and drawled omi-
nously :

"A-ah ! Congratulations, my lord !"

Sightseers began to gather round; there were a
dozen or so of people. Panting, excited, they sur-
rounded the pit and looked down into it, and one of
them cried :

48o IN THE WORLD

"It is a chinovnik who lives in our street; I know
him!"

The singer, swaying, with his cap off, stood before
the inspector, and argued with him inarticulately,
shouting something indistinctly. Then the inspector
struck him in the chest. He reeled and sat down, and
the policeman without haste took some string from his
pocket and bound the hands of the singer. He folded
them meekly behind his back, as if he were used to this
procedure. Then the inspector began to shout an-
grily to the crowd:

"Be off, now!"

After this there came another, older policeman, with
moist, red eyes, his mouth hanging open from weari-
ness, and he took hold of the end of the cord with
which the singer was bound, and gently led him into
the town. I also went away dejected from the field.
Through my memory, like a dull echo, rang the aveng-
ing words:

"Woe to the town Ariel !"

And before my eyes rose that depressing spectacle
of the policeman slowly drawing the string from the
pocket of his ulster, and the awe-inspiring prophet
meekly folding his red, hairy hands behind his back,
and crossing his wrists as if he were used to it.

I soon heard that the prophet had been sent out of
the town. And after him, Kleshtchkov disappeared;
he had married well, and had gone to live in a
district where a harness-maker's workshop had been
opened.

IN THE WORLD 481

I had praised his singing so warmly to my master
that he said one day:

"I must go and hear him !"

And so one night he sat at a little table opposite to
me, raising his brows in astonishment, his eyes wide
open.

On the way to the tavern he had made fun of me,
and during the first part of the time he was in the
tavern, he was railing at me, at the people there, and
at the stuffy smell of the place. When the harness-
maker began to sing he smiled derisively, and began to
pour himself a glass of beer, but he stopped half-way,
saying :

"Who the devil—'?"

His hand trembled; he set the bottle down gently,
and began to listen with intentness.

"Ye-es, Brother," he said with a sigh, when Klesht-
chkov had finished singing, "he can sing! The devil
take him ! He has even made the air hot."

The harness-maker sang again, with his head back,
gazing up at the ceiling:

"On the road from the flourishing village
A young girl came over the dewy fields."

"He can sing," muttered my master, shaking his
head and smiling.

And Kleshtchkov poured forth his song, clear as the
music of a reed:

"And the beautiful maiden answered him:
*An orphan am I, no one wants me,' "

482 IN THE WORLD

"Good!" whispered my master, blinking his red-
dening eyes. "Phew I it is devilish good I"

I looked at him and rejoiced, and the sobbing words
of the song conquered the noise of the tavern, sounded
more powerful, more beautiful, more touching every
moment.

I live solitary in our village.

A young girl am I ; they never ask me out.

Oie, poor am I, my dress it is not fine;

I am not fit, I know, for a brave young man.

A widower would marry me to do his work;

I do not wish to bow myself to such a fate.

My master wept undisguisedly; he sat with his head
bent; his prominent nose twitched, and tears splashed
on his knees. After the third song, agitated and
dishevelled, he said:

"I can't sit here any longer; I shall be stifled with
these odors. Let us go home."

But when we were in the street he said :

"Come along, Pyeshkov, let us go to a restaurant
and have something to eat. I don't want to go
home!"

He hailed a sledge, without haggling about the
charge, and said nothing while we were on the way,
but in the restaurant, after taking a table in a corner,
he began at once in an undertone, looking about him
the while, to complain angrily.

"He has thoroughly upset me, that goat; to such
a state of melancholy he has driven me! Here you
are — you read and think about things — just tell me

IN THE WORLD 483

now, what the devil is the use of it all? One lives;
forty years pass by; one has a wife and children, and
no one to talk to ! There are times when I want to un-
burden my soul, to talk to some one about all sorts of
things, but there is no one I can talk to. I can't talk
to my wife; I have nothing in common with her.
What is she, after all? She has her children and the
house; that's her business. She is a stranger to my
soul. A wife is your friend till the first child comes.
In fact, she is — on the whole — Well, you can see
for yourself she does not dance to my piping. Flesh
without spirit, the devil take you! It is a grief to
me, Brother."

He drank the cold, bitter beer feverishly, was silent
for a time, ruffling his long hair, and then he went on :

"Human creatures are riff-raff for the most part.
Brother! There you are, for instance, talking to the
workmen. Oh yes, I understand there is a lot of trick-
ery, and baseness; it is true. Brother; they are thieves
all of them! But do you think that what you say
makes any difference to them! Not an atom! No!
They are all — Petr, Osip as well — rogues! They
speak about me, and you speak for me, and all — what
is the use of it, Brother?"

I was dumb from sheer amazement.

"That 's it !" said my master, smiling. "You were
right to think of going to Persia. There you would
understand nothing; it is a foreign language they speak
there ! But in your own language you '11 hear nothing
but baseness!"

484 IN THE WORLD

"Has Osip been telling you about me'?" I asked.

''Well, yes! But what did you expect *? He talks
more than any of them; he is a gossip. He is a sly
creature, Brother! No, Pyeshkov, words don't touch
them. Am I not right? And what the devil is the
use of it*? And what the devil difference does it
make? None! It is like snow in the autumn, fall-
ing in the mud and melting. It only makes more mud.
You had far better hold your tongue."

He drank glass after glass of beer. He did not get
drunk, but he talked more and more quickly and
fiercely.

"The proverb says, 'Speech is silver, silence is
golden.' Ekh, Brother, it is all sorrow, sorrow! He
sang truly, 'Solitary I live in our village.' Human
life is all loneliness."

He glanced round, lowered his voice, and con-
tinued :

"And I had found a friend after my own heart.
There was a woman who happened to be alone, as
good as a widow; her husband had been condemned
to Siberia for coining money, and was in prison there.
I became acquainted with her; she was penniless; it
was that, you know, which led to our acquaintance.
I looked at her and thought, 'What a nice little per-
son!' Pretty, you know, young, simply wonderful.
I saw her once or twice, and then I said to her : 'Your
husband is a rogue. You are not living honestly your-
self. Why do you want to go to Siberia after him?'
But she would follow him into exile. She said to

IN THE WORLD 485

me: 'Whatever he is, I love him; he is good to me I
It may be that it was for me he sinned. I have sinned
with you. For' his sake,' she said, 'I had to have
money; he is a gentleman and accustomed to live well.
If I had been single,' she said, 'I should have lived
honorably. You are a good man, too,' she said, *and
I like you very much, but don't talk to me about this
again.' The devil! I gave her all I had — eighty
rubles or thereabouts — and I said: *You must par-
don me, but I cannot see you any more. I cannot!'
And I left her — and that 's how — "

He was silent, and then he suddenly became drunk.
He sank into a huddled-up heap and muttered :

"Six times I went to see her. You can't under-
stand what it was like ! I might have gone to her flat
six more times, but I could not make up my mind to
it. I could not ! Now she has gone away."

He laid his hands on the table, and in a whisper,
moving his fingers, said :

"God grant I never meet her again! God grant
it ! Then it would be going to the devil ! Let us go
home. Come !"

We went. He staggered along, muttering:

"That 's how it is, Brother."

I was not surprised by the story he had told me; I
had long ago guessed that something unusual had hap-
pened to him. But I was greatly depressed by what
he had said about life, and more by what he had said
about Osip.

CHAPTER XX

I LIVED three years as overseer in that dead town,
amid empty buildings, watching the workmen
pull down clumsy stone shops in the autumn, and re-
build them in the same way in the spring.

The master took great care that I should earn his
five rubles. If the floor of a shop had to be laid
again, I had to remove earth from the whole area to
the depth of one arshin. The dock laborers were paid
a ruble for this work, but I received nothing; and
while I was thus occupied, I had no time to look after
the carpenters, who unscrewed the locks and handles
from the doors and committed petty thefts of all kinds.

Both the workmen and the contractors tried in every
way to cheat me, to steal something, and they did it
almost openly, as if they were performing an unpleas-
ant duty; were not in the least indignant when I
accused them, but were merely amazed.

"You make as much fuss over five rubles as you
would over twenty. It is funny to hear you !"

I pointed out to my riiaster that, while he saved
one ruble by my labor, he lost ten times more in this
way, but he merely blinked at me and said :

"That will do I You are making that up !"

I understood that he suspected me of conniving at
the thefts, which aroused in me a feeling of repulsion

486

IN THE WORLD 487

towards him, but I was not offended. In that class
of life they all steal, and even the master liked to take
what did not belong to him.

When, after the fair, he looked into one of the shops
which he was to rebuild, and saw a forgotten samovar,
a piece of crockery, a carpet, or a pair of scissors which
had been forgotten, even sometimes a case, or some
merchandise, my master would say, smiling:

"Make a list of the things and take them all to the
store-room."

And he would take them home with him from the
store-room, telling me sometimes to cross them off the
list.

I did not love "things"; I had no desire to possess
them; even books were an embarrassment to me. I
had none of my own, save the little volumes of Ber-
anger and the songs of Heine. I should have liked to
obtain Pushkin, but the book-dealer in the town was an
evil old man, who asked a great deal too much for
Pushkin's works. The furniture, carpets, and mir-
rors, which bulked so largely in my master's house,
gave me no pleasure, irritated me by their melancholy
clumsiness and smell of paint and lacquer. Most of
all I disliked the mistress's room, which reminded me
of a trunk packed with all kinds of useless, superfluous
objects. And I was disgusted with my master for
bringing home other people's things from the store-
house. Queen Margot's rooms had been cramped too,
but they were beautiful in spite of it.

Life, on the whole, seemed to me to be a discon-

I

488 IN THE WORLD

nected, absurd affair; there was too much of the ob-
viously stupid about it. Here we were building shops
which the floods inundated in the spring, soaking
through the floors, making the outer doors hang
crooked. When the waters subsided the joists had be-
gun to rot. Annually the water had overflowed the
market-place for the last ten years, spoiling the build-
ings and the bridges. These yearly floods did enor-
mous damage, and yet they all knew that the waters
would not be diverted of themselves.

Each spring the breaking of the ice cut up the
barges, and dozens of small vessels. The people
groaned and built new ones, which the ice again broke.
It was like a ridiculous treadmill whereon one remains
always in the same place. I asked Osip about it. He
looked amazed, and then laughed.

"Oh, you heron! What a young heron he is!
What is it to do with you at all? What is it to you,

But then he spoke more gravely, although he could
not extinguish the light of merriment in his pale blue
eyes, which had a clearness not belonging to old age.

"That 's a very intelligent observation ! Let us
suppose that the affair does not concern you; all the
same it may be worth something to you to understand
it. Take this case, for example — "

And he related in a dry speech, interspersed lavishly
with quaint sayings, unusual comparisons, and all
kinds of drollery:

"Here is a case where people are to be pitied; they

IN THE WORLD 489

have only a little land, and in the springtime the Volga
overflows its banks, carries away the earth, and lays
it upon its own sand-banks. Then others complain
that the bed of the Volga is choked up. The spring-
time streams and summer rains tear up the gulleys,
and again earth is carried away to the river."

He spoke without either pity or malice, but as if
he enjoyed his knowledge of the miseries of life, and
although his words were in agreement with my own
ideas, yet it was unpleasant to listen to them.

"Take another instance; fires."

I don't think I can remember a summer when the
forests beyond the Volga did not catch fire. Every
July the sky was clouded by a muddy yellow smoke;
the leaden sun, all its brightness gone, looked down on
the earth like a bad eye.

"As for forests, who cares about them*?" said Osip.
"They all belong to the nobles, or the crown; the peas-
ants don't own them. And if towns catch fire, that is
not a very serious business either. Rich people live in
towns ; they are not to be pitied. But take the villages.
How many villages are burned down every summer?
Not less than a hundred, I should think; that 's a seri-
ous loss!"

He laughed softly.

"Some people have property and don't know how to
manage it, and between ourselves, a man has to work
not so much on his own behalf, or on the land, as
against fire and water."

"Why do you laugh *?"

490 IN THE WORLD

"Why not? You won't put a fire out with your
tears, nor will they make the floods more mighty."

I knew that this handsome old man was more clever
than any one I had met; but what were his real sym-
pathies and antipathies'? I was thinking about this all
the time he was adding his little dry sayings to my
store.

"Look round you, and see how little people preserve
their own, or other people's strength. How your mas-
ter squanders yours! And how much does water cost
in a village? Reflect a little; it is better than any
cleverness which comes from learning. If a peasant's
hut is burned, another one can be put up in its place,
but when a worthy peasant loses his sight, you can't
set that right! Look at Ardalon, for example, or
Grisha ; see how a man can break out ! A foolish fel-
low, the first, but Grisha is a man of understanding.
He smokes like a hayrick. Women attacked him, as
worms attack a murdered man in a wood."

I asked him without anger, merely out of curiosity:

"Why did you go and tell the master about my
ideas?'

He answered calmly, even kindly:

"So that he might know what harmful ideas you
have. It w^s necessary, in order that he may teach
you better ones. Who should teach you, if not he? I
did not speak to him out of malice, but out of pity for
you. You are not a stupid lad, but the devil is rack-
ing your brain. If I had caught you stealing, or run-
ning after the girls, or drinking, I should have held

IN THE WORLD 491

my tongue. But I shall always repeat all your wild
talk to the master; so now you know."

"I won't talk to you, then I"

He was silent, scratching the resin off his hands
with his nails. Then he looked at me with an expres-
sion of affection and said:

"That you will! To whom else will you talk?
There is no one else."

Clean and neat, Osip at times reminded me of the
stoker, Yaakov, absolutely indifferent to every one.
Sometimes he reminded me of the valuer, Petr Vas-
siliev, sometimes of the drayman, Petr; occasionally
he revealed a trait which was like grandfather. In
one way or another he was like all the old men I had
known. They were all amazingly interesting old
men, but I felt that it was impossible to live with them ;
it would be oppressive and repulsive. They had cor-
roded their own hearts, as it were ; their clever speeches
hid hearts red with rust. Was Osip good-hearted?
No. Malevolent? Also no. That he was clever
was all that was clear to me. But while it astounded
me by its pliability, that intelligence of his deadened
me, and the end of it was that I felt he was inimical
to me in all kinds of ways.

In my heart seethed the black thoughts :

"All human creatures are strangers to one another
despite their sweet words and smiles. And more; we
are all strangers on the earth, too; no one seems to be
bound to it by a powerful feeling of love. Grand-
mother alone loved to be alive, and loved all crea-

492 IN THE WORLD

tures — grandmother and gracious Queen Margot.

Sometimes these and similar thoughts increased the
density of the dark fog around me. Life had become
suffocating and oppressive; but how could I live a
different life? Whither could I go*? I had no one
to talk to, even, except Osip, and I talked to him more
and more often. He listened to my heated babbling
with evident interest, asked me questions, drove home
a point, and said calmly :

"The persistent woodpecker is not terrible; no one
is afraid of him. But with all my heart I advise you
to go into a monastery and live there till you are grown
up. You will have edifying conversations with holy
men to console you, you will be at peace, and you will
be a source of revenue to the monks. That 's my sin-
cere advice to you. It is evident that you are not fit
for worldly business."

I had no desire to enter a monastery, but I felt that
I was being entangled and bewildered in the enchanted
circle of the incomprehensible. I was miserable. Life
for me was like a forest in autumn. The mush-
rooms had come and gone, there was nothing to do in
the empty forest, and I seemed to know all there was
to know in it.

I did not drink vodka, and I had nothing to do with
girls; books took the place of these two forms of in-
toxication for me. But the more I read, the harder
it was for me to go on living the empty, unnecessary
life that most people lived.

I had only just turned fifteen years of age, but some-

IN THE WORLD 493

times I felt like an elderly man. I was, as it were,
inwardly swollen and heavy with all I had lived
through and read, or restlessly pondered. Looking
into myself, I discovered that my receptacle for im- |
pressions was like a dark lumber-room closely packed '
with all kinds of things, of which I had neither the
strength nor the wit to rid myself. 1

And although they were so numerous, all these cum- j
bersome articles were not solidly packed, but floated
about, and made me waver as water makes a piece of
crockery waver which does not stand firm.

I had a fastidious dislike of unhappiness, illness,
and grievances. When I saw cruelty, blood, fights
even verbal baiting of a person, it aroused a physical
repulsion in me which was swiftly transformed into
a cold fury. This made me fight myself, like a wild
beast, after which I would be painfully ashamed of
myself.

Sometimes I was so passionately desirous of beating
a bully that I threw myself blindly into a fight, and
even now I remember those attacks of despair, born of
m/ impotence, with shame and grief.

Within me dwelt two persons. One was cog-
nizant of only too many abominations and obscenities,
somewhat timid for that reason, was crushed by the
knov/ledge of everyday horrors, and had begun to view
life and people distrustfully, contemptuously, with a
feeble pity for every one, including himself. This
person dreamed of a quiet, solitary life with books,
without people, of monasteries, of a forest-keeper's

494 IN THE WORLD

lodge, a railway signal box, of Persia, and the office of
the night watchman somewhere on the outskirts of
the town. Only to see fewer people, to be remote
from human creatures!

The other person, baptized by the holy spirit of
noble and wise books, observing the overwhelming
strength of the daily horrors of life, felt how easily that
strength might sap one's brain-power, trample the
heart with dirty footprints, and, fighting against it
with all his force, with clenched teeth and fists, was
always ready for a quarrel or a fight. He loved and
pitied actively, and, like the brave hero in French
novels, drew his sword from his scabbard on the slight-
est provocation, and stood in a warlike position.

At that time I had a bitter enemy in the door-keeper
of one of the brothels in Little Pokrovski Street. I
made his acquaintance one morning as I was going to
the market-place; he was dragging from a hackney-
carriage, standing at the gate in front of the house, a
girl who was dead drunk. He seized her by the legs
in their wrinkled stockings, and thus held her shame-
lessly, bare to the waist, exclaiming and laughing. He
spat upon her body, and she came down with a jolt out
of the carriage, dishevelled, blind, with open mouth,
with her soft arms hanging behind her as if they had
no joints. Her spine, the back of her neck, and her
livid face struck the seat of the carriage and the step,
and at length she fell on the pavement, striking her
head on the stones.

The driver whipped up his horse and drove off, and

IN THE WORLD 495

the porter, taking one foot in each hand and stepping
backward, dragged her along as if she had been a
corpse. I lost control of myself and made a rush at
him, but as luck would have it, I hurled myself against,
or accidentally ran into a rainwater-barrel, which
saved both the porter and me a great deal of unpleas-
antness. Striking him on the rebound, I knocked him
over, darted up the steps, and desperately pulled the
bell-handle. Some infuriated people rushed on the
scene, and as I could not explain anything, I went
away, picking up the barrel.

On the way I overtook the cab. The driver looked
down at me from the coach-box and said:

"You knocked him over smartly."

I asked him angrily how he could allow the portel
to make sport of the girl, and he replied calmly, with
a fastidious air:

"As for me, let them go to the dogs ! A gentleman
paid me when he put her in my cab. What is it to
me if one person beats another'?"

"And if he had killed her?'

"Oh, well ; you soon kill that sort !" said the driver,
as if he had repeatedly tried to kill drunken girls.

After that I saw the porter nearly every day. When
I passed up the street he would be sweeping the pave-
ment, or sitting on the steps as if he were waiting for
me. As I approached him he would stand up, tuck up
his sleeves, and announce kindly:

"I am going to smash you to atoms now !"

He was over forty, small, bow-legged, with a pen-

496 IN THE WORLD

dulous paunch. When he laughed he looked at me
with beaming eyes, and it was terribly strange to me to
see that they were kind and merry. He could not
fight, because his arms were shorter than mine, and
after two or three turns he let me go, leaned his back
against the gate, and said, apparently in great sur-
prise :

"All right; you wait, clever!"

These fights bored me, and one day I said to him :

^'Listen, fool I Why don't you let me alone?"

"Why do you fight, then*?" he asked reproachfully.

I asked him in turn why he had maltreated the girl.

"What did it matter to you*? Are you sorry for
her?'

"Of course I am!"

He was silent, rubbing his lips, and then asked:

"And would you be sorry for a cat?"

"Yes, I should."

Then he said:

"You are a fool, rascal! Wait; I'll show you
something."

I never could avoid passing up that street — it was
the shortest way — but I began to get up earlier, in
order not to meet the man. However, in a few days
I saw him again, sitting on the steps and stroking a
smoke-colored cat which lay on his knees. When I
was about three paces from him he jumped up, seized
the cat by the legs, and dashed its head against the
stone balustrade, so that I was splashed with the warm

IN THE WORLD 497

blood. He then hurled the cat under my feet and
stood at the gate, crying:

"What now?"

What could I do? Wc rolled about the yard like
two curs, and afterward, as I sat on a grassy slope,
nearly crazy with inexpressible grief, I bit my lips to
keep myself from howling. When I remember it I
shiver with a feeling of sickening repulsion, amazed
that I did not go out of my mind and kill some one.

Why do I relate these abominations'? So that you
may know, kind sirs, that is not all past and done
with! You have a liking for grim fantasies; you are
delighted with horrible stories well told; the gro-
tesquely terrible excites you pleasantly. But I know of
genuine horrors, everyday terrors, and I have an un-
deniable right to excite you unpleasantly by telling
you about them, in order that you may remember how
we live, and under what circumstances. A low and
unclean life it is, ours, and that is the truth I

I am a lover of humanity and I have no desire to
make any one miserable, but one must not be senti-
mental, nor hide the grim truth with the motley words
of beautiful lies. Let us face life as it is I All that
is good and human in our hearts and brains needs re-
newing. What went to my head most of all was the
attitude of the average man toward women. From
my reading of novels I had learned to look upon
woman as the best and most significant thing in life.
Grandmother had strengthened me in this belief by

498 IN THE WORLD

her stories about Our Lady and Vassilissia the Wise.
What I knew of the unhappy laundress, Natalia, and
those hundred and thousands of glances and smiles
which I observed, with which women, the mothers of
life, adorn this life of sordid joys, sordid loves, also
helped me.

The books of Turgenieff sang the praises of woman,
and with all the good I knew about women I had
adorned the image of Queen Margot in my memory.
Heine and Turgenieff especially gave me much that
was precious for this purpose.

In the evenings as I was returning from the market-
place I used to halt on the hill by the walls of the
Kreml and look at the sun setting beyond the Volga.
Fiery streams flowed over the heavens; the terrestrial,
beloved river had turned purple and blue. Some-
times in such moments the land looked like an enor-
mous convict barge ; it had the appearance of a pig be-
ing lazily towed along by an invisible steamer.

But I thought more often of the great world, of
towns which I had read about, of foreign countries
where people lived in a different manner. Writers of
other countries depicted life as cleaner, more attrac-
tive, less burdensome than that life which seethed slug-
gishly and monotonously around me. This thought
calmed my disturbed spirit, aroused visions of the pos-
sibility of a different life for me.

And I felt that I should meet some simple-minded,
wise man who would lead me on that broad, bright
road.

IN THE WORLD 499

One day as I sat on a bench by the walls of the
Kreml my Uncle Yaakov appeared at my side. I had
not noticed his approach, and I did not recognize him
at once. Although we had lived in the same town dur-
ing several years, we had met seldom, and then only
accidentally and for a mere glimpse of each other.

*'Ekh! how you have stretched out!" he said jest-
ingly, and we fell to talking like two people long ac-
quainted but not intimate.

From what grandmother had told me I knew that
Uncle Yaakov had spent those years in quarrelling and
idleness; he had had a situation as assistant warder at
the local goal, but his term of service ended badly.
The chief warder being ill, Uncle Yaakov arranged
festivities in his own quarters for the convicts. This
was discovered, and he was dismissed and handed over
to the police on the charge of having let the prisoners
out to "take a walk" in the town at night. None of
them had escaped, but one was caught in the act of
trying to throttle a certain deacon. The business
draggged on for a long time, but the matter never
came into court; the convicts and the warders were
able to exculpate my good uncle. But now he lived
without working on the earnings of his son who sang
in the church choir at Rukavishnikov, which was fa-
mous at that time. He spoke oddly of this son:

"He has become very solemn and important I He
is a soloist. He gets angry if the samovar is not ready
to time, or if his clothes are not brushed. A very
dapper fellow he is, and clean."

500 IN THE WORLD

Uncle himself had aged considerably; he looked
grubby and fallen away. His gay, curly locks had
grown very scanty, and his ears stuck out ; in the whites
of his eyes and on the leathery skin of his shaven cheeks
there appeared thick, red veins. He spoke jestingly,
but it seemed as if there were something in his mouth
which impeded his utterance, although his teeth were
sound.

I was glad to have the chance of talking to a man
who knew how to live well, had seen much, and must
therefore know much. I well remembered his lively,
comical songs and grandfather's words about him:

"In songs he is King David, but in business he plots
evil, like Absalom!"

On the promenade a well-dressed crowd passed and
repassed : luxuriously attired gentlemen, chinovniks^ of-
ficers ; uncle was dressed in a shabby, autumn overcoat,
a battered cap, and brown boots, and was visibly
pricked by annoyance at the thought of his own cos-
tume. We went into one of the public-houses on the
Pochainski Causeway, taking a table near the window
which opened on the market-place.

"Do you remember how you sang:

" *A beggar hung his leggings to dry,

And another beggar came and stole them away'?"

When I had uttered the words of the song, I felt
for the first time their mocking meaning, and it seemed
to me that my gay uncle was both witty and malicious.
But he, pouring vodka into a glass, said thoughtfully :

IN THE WORLD 501

"Well, I am getting on in years, and I have made
very little of my life. That song is not mine; it was
composed by a teacher in the seminary. What was
his name now? He is dead; I have forgotten. We
were great friends. He was a bachelor. He died in
his sleep, in a fit. How many people have gone to
sleep that I can remember I It would be hard to count
them. You don't drink? That is right; don't I Do
you see your grandfather often? He is not a happy
old man. I believe he is going out of his mind."

After a few drinks he became more lively, held him-
self up, looked younger, and began to speak with
more animation. I asked him for the story of the
convicts.

"You heard about it?" he inquired, and with a
glance around, and lowering his voice, he said :

"What about the convicts? I was not their judge,
you know ; I saw them merely as human creatures, and
I said : 'Brothers, let us live together in harmony, let
us live happily ! There is a song,' I said, 'which runs
like this :

"Imprisonment to happiness is no bar.
Let them do with us as they will!
Still we shall live for sake of laughter,
He is a fool who lives otherwise."

He laughed, glanced out of the window on the dark-
ening causeway, and continued, smoothing his whis-
kers :

"Of course they were dull in that prison, and as soon
as the roll-call was over, they came to me. We had

502 IN THE WORLD

vodka and dainties, sometimes provided by me, some-
times by themselves. I love songs and dancing, and
among them were some excellent singers and dancers.
It was astonishing I Some of them were in fetters,
and it was no calumny to say that I undid their chains ;
it is true. But bless you, they knew how to take them
off by themselves without a blacksmith; they are a
handy lot of people; it is astonishing I But to say
that I let them wander about the town to rob people is
rubbish, and it was never proved !"

He was silent, gazing out of the window on the
causeway where the merchants were shutting up their
chests of goods ; iron bars rattled, rusty hinges creaked,
some boards fell with a resounding crash. Then wink-
ing at me gaily, he continued in a low voice :

*'To speak the truth, one of them did really go out
at night, only he was not one of the fettered ones, but
simply a local thief from the lower end of the town;
his sweetheart lived not far away on the Pechorka.
And the affair with the deacon happened through a mis-
take; he took the deacon for a merchant. It was a
winter night, in a snowstorm; everybody was wearing
a fur coat ; how could he tell the difference in his haste
between a deacon and a merchant?"

This struck me as being funny, and he laughed him-
self as he said:

"Yes, by gad ! It was the very devil — "

Here my uncle became unexpectedly and strangely
angry. He pushed away his plate of savories,

IN THE WORLD 503

frowned with an expression of loathing, and, smoking
a cigarette, muttered:

"They rob one another; then they catch one another
and put one another away in prisons in Siberia, in the
galleys; but what is it to do with me^ I spit upon
them all I I have my own soul I"

The shaggy stoker stood before me ; he also had been
wont to "spit upon" people, and he also was called
Yaakov.

"What are you thinking about ^" asked my uncle
softly.

"Were you sorry for the convicts^"

"It is easy to pity them, they are such children; it
is amazing! Sometimes I would look at one of them
and think: I am not worthy to black his boots; al-
though I am set over him ! Clever devils, skilful with
their hands."

The wine and his reminiscences had again pleas-
antly animated him. With his elbows resting on the
window-sill, waving his yellow hand with the cigarette
between its fingers, he spoke with energy:

"One of them, a crooked fellow, an engraver and
watchmaker, was convicted of coining. You ought to
have heard how he talked! It was like a song, a
flame! 'Explain to me,' he would say; 'why may the
exchequer coin money while I may not^ Tell me
that!' And no one could tell him why, no one, not
even I, and I was chief over him. There was another,
a well-known Moscow thief, quiet mannered, foppish,

504 IN THE WORLD

neat as a pin, who used to say courteously: 'People
work till their senses are blunted, and I have no de-
sire to do the same. I have tried it. You work and
work till weariness has made a fool of you, get drunk
on two copecks, lose seven copecks at cards, get a
woman to be kind to you for five copecks, and then, all
over again, cold and hungry. No,' he says, *I am not
playing that game.' "

Uncle Yaakov bent over the table and continued,
reddening to the tips of his ears. He was so excited
that even his small ears quivered.

"They were no fools. Brother; they knew what was
right I To the devil with red tape I Take myself,
for instance; what has my life been? I look back on
!t with shame, everything by snatches, stealthily; my
sorrows were my own, but all my joys were stolen.
Either my father shouted, 'Don't you dare !' or my wife
screamed, 'You cannot I' I was afraid to throw down
a ruble. And so all my life has passed away, and here
I am acting the lackey to my own son. Why should I
hide it? I serve him, Brother, meekly, and he scolds
me like a gentleman. He says, 'Father I' and I obey
like a footman. Is that what I was born for, and
what I struggled on in poverty for — that I should be
servant to my own son*? But, even without that, why
was I born? What pleasure have I had in life?"

I listened to him inattentively. However, I said re-
luctantly, and not expecting an answer:

"I don't know what sort of a life mine will be."

He burst out laughing.

IN THE WORLD 505

"Well, and who does know? I have never met any
one yet who knew I So people live; he who can get
accustomed to anything — "

And again he began to speak in an offended, angry
tone:

"One of the men I had was there for assault, a man
from Orla, a gentleman, who danced beautifully. He
made us all laugh by a song about Vanka :

"Vanka passes by the churchyard,
That is a very simple matter!
Ach! Vanka, draw your horns in
For you won't get beyond the graveyard!

"I don't think that is at all funny, but it is true!
As you can't come back, you can't see beyond the
graveyard. In that case it is the same to me whether
I am a convict, or a warder over convicts."

He grew tired of talking, drank his vodka, and
looked into the empty decanter with one eye, like a
bird. He silently lighted another cigarette, blowing
the smoke through his mustache.

"Don't struggle, don't hope for anything, for the
grave and the churchyard let no man pass them," the
mason, Petr, used to say sometimes, yet he was ab-
solutely dissimilar to Uncle Yaakov. How many
such sayings I knew already !

I had nothing more to ask my uncle about. It was
melancholy to be with him, and I was sorry for him.
I kept recalling his lively songs and the sound of the
guitar which produced joy out of a gentle melancholy.

5o6 IN THE WORLD

I had not forgotten merry Tzigan. I had not for-
gotten, and as I looked at the battered countenance of
Uncle Yaakov, I thought involuntarily:

"Does he remember how he crushed Tzigan to
death with the cross?"

But I had no desire to ask him about it. I looked
into the causeway, which was flooded with a gray
August fog. The smell of apples and melons floated
up to me. Along the narrow streets of the town the
lamps gleamed; I knew it all by heart. At that mo-
ment I heard the siren of the Ribinsk steamer, and then
of that other which was bound for Perm.

*'Well, we 'd better go," said my uncle.

At the door of the tavern as he shook my hand he
said jokingly:

"Don't be a hypochondriac. You are rather in-
clined that way, eh? Spit on it! You are young.
The chief thing you have to remember is that Tate is
no hindrance to happiness.' Well, good-by; I am go-
ing to UspenI"

My cheerful uncle left me more bewildered than
ever by his conversation.

I walked up to the town and came out in the fields.
It was midnight; heavy clouds floated in the sky, ob-
literating my shadow on the earth by their own black
shadows. Leaving the town for the fields, I reached
the Volga, and there I lay in the dusty grass and
looked for a long time at the river, the meadow, on
that motionless earth. Across the Volga the shadows
of the clouds floated slowly; by the time they had

IN THE WORLD 507

reached the meadows they looked brighter, as if they
had been washed in the water of the river. Every-
thing around seemed half asleep, stupefied as it were,
moving unwillingly, and only because it was compelled
to do so, and not from a flaming love of movement and
life.

And I desired so ardently to cast a beneficent spell
over the whole earth and myself, which would cause
every one, myself included, to be swept by a joyful
whirlwind, a festival dance of people, loving one an-
other in this life, spending their lives for the sake of
others, beautiful, brave, honorable.

I thought:

"I must do something for myself, or I shall be
ruined."

On frowning autumn days, when one not only did
not see the sun, but did not feel it, either — forgot all
about it, in fact — on autumn days, more than once —
I happened to be wandering in the forest. Having
left the high road and lost all trace of the pathways,
I at length grew tired of looking for them. Setting
my teeth, I went straight forward, over fallen trees
which were rotting, over the unsteady mounds which
rose from the marshes, and in the end I always came
out on the right road.

It was in this way that I made up my mind.

In the autumn of that year I went to Kazan, in the
secret hope of finding some means of studying there.

THE END

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