BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
We should not give very much for the chances of a poor friendless lad of feeble constitution, vagrant disposition, and an overpowering taste for excitement, who should be turned adrift to shift for himself at an age when most young lads are still safe at school. The fortunes of such a one, if adequately recorded, might, and no doubt would, be infinitely more engrossing, if less edifying, than the humdrum chronicle of the steady clerk or patient mechanic; but a prison, or workhouse infirmary, might safely be predicted as the ultimate and inevitable receptacle of such a piece of human flotsam.
But now let us suppose—a handy supposition, I admit—that our imaginary little nomad were endowed with that illuminating spark we call genius; let us suppose, too, that in late boyhood, or early manhood, he learnt to love letters, and deliberately set about describing his extraordinary experiences, as well as the strange bedfellows whom misery from time to time threw in his way—what piquant, what grotesque pen-and-ink sketches we might expect from such an inspired ragamuffin! It would be Oliver Twist or Humphrey Clinker telling his own tale without the softening intervention of Mr. Charles Dickens or Mr. Tobias Smollett.
Let us further suppose not England but Russia to be the theatre of our hero's miseries and adventures, and the interest of the story will at once be infinitely enhanced. The odds would now be a thousand to one against our hero's attaining to manhood at all, and a hundred thousand to one against his ever attaining to authorship. His risks would be out of all proportion to his chances. From first to last starvation would constantly dog his footsteps, and Siberian exile would be the least terrible of a score of those administrative measures by means of which the servants of the Tsar wage unintermittent warfare against the vagrant population of their master's immense Empire. The career, then, of a professional tramp in Russia must needs be of tragic intensity, and it was my good fortune, some eighteen months ago, in the pages of "The Pilot," to be the first to call the attention of English readers to the strange history of a Russian tramp of genius, who is, moreover, his own chronicler. Maksim Gorky—Maximus the Bitter—is the pseudonym deliberately chosen, at the outset of his career, by the young Muscovite author who is at the present moment (and I do not even except the revered name of Tolstoi) by far the most popular story-teller in the Russian Empire. The following brief biographical sketch of this remarkable man is the best introduction I can affix to this selection from Gorky's unique "Razskazui," in all of which the author has, more or less, embodied his grim experiences of life beneath the transparent veil of fiction.
Aleksyei Maksimovich Pyeshkov was born on March 14th, 1869, at Nijni-Novgorod. His mother Barbara was the daughter of a house painter and decorator, Vasily Kacherin; his father was Maksim Savvatiev Pyeshkov, an upholsterer of Perm. Aleksyei's parents seem to have been worthy, colourless people, and fairly well educated for their station; but they dwindle into insignificance before their respective fathers. Young Pyeshkov's two grandfathers were undeniably men of character, self-made men of brutal energy, who terrorized their respective families, and were as hard and cold as the money they worshipped. So severe, indeed, was the regimen of Aleksyei's paternal grandfather, that his own son ran away from him five times in the course of seven years. On the fifth occasion he did not return, but walked all the way (he was only seventeen) from Tobolsk in Siberia, where the family then lived, to Nijni-Novgorod, where he settled down as an apprentice to a clothier. Five years later we find him occupying a responsible position in the office of a steamship company at Astrakhan. Gorky's maternal grandfather may well have been the prototype of Ignat Gordyeev, the most impressive character in Gorky's romance, "Thoma Gordyeev." Beginning life as a raftsman on the Volga, in the course of a short time he became a man of substance, started a dyeing factory at his native place, Nijni-Novgorod, was elected Starshina, or Chief of the Traders' Guild there, and was generally looked up to by everyone but his wretched daughter, whom he made more wretched still when she threw herself away—or so he accounted it—on such a poor non-descript as Maksim Pyeshkov.
The earlier years of Aleksyei Pyeshkov were as uneventful as are the years of most children. In 1873, however, when he was only four years old, he met with his first misfortune: his rolling stone of a father died of cholera at Astrakhan. His mother re-married shortly afterwards, and transferred him to the care of his grandfather, who seems to have been kind to the little lad—cruel fathers are very often indulgent grandfathers—and taught him to read with the aid of the Psalter and other liturgical books, by way of preparing him for school, whither he was presently sent But his regular schooling lasted no longer than five months, for about this time his mother died of consumption, and almost simultaneously his last natural prop gave way, his grandfather suddenly ruining himself utterly by over-speculation. Little Aleksyei, therefore, was obliged to exchange his schoolroom for the shop of a cobbler to whom he was apprenticed; but after serving his master for two months, he burnt one hand so severely with boiling pitch that he was pronounced useless to the trade, and sent about his business.
On recovering from the effects of this accident he was apprenticed by his kinsfolk to a draughtsman, who treated him so harshly that he ran away, becoming first an assistant to an ikon-maker, and then a turnspit on a steamer on the Volga. Here he met with an unexpected piece of good luck. His new master, the cook on board the steamer, Smurny by name, happened to be a lettered man of superior ability, and he proved to be one of the best friends young Pyeshkov ever had. But for him, indeed, modern Russian Literature in all probability would now have been minus of one of its chief ornaments. Smurny awakened within the lad a love of literature, and placed at his disposal his own little library, a miscellaneous collection enough, in which fantastic lives of the Greek Orthodox Saints and interminable treatises on Freemasonry lay cheek by jowl; it was, however, an inestimable boon to Aleksyei, and it included, at any rate, the works of one indisputable European classic—Gogol—besides some of the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Pyeshkov himself, in his fragmentary autobiography, insinuates that his chance encounter with the cultured cook was a turning-point in his career. "Till the advent of the cook," says he, "I could not endure books, or, indeed, any sort of printed paper—passports included." Why he quitted Smurny we are not told; but we do know that when he left the steamer to become a gardener's assistant, he pursued his studies whenever and wherever he had the chance. At the age of fifteen, indeed, his thirst for learning induced him to present himself at the gates of the University of Kazan, the great Volgan seminary, where Tolstoi had been educated forty years earlier, in the naïve belief that instruction of all sorts was to be had there by anyone for the simple asking. "I was mistaken, it appeared," he observes with pathetic sarcasm, "so I entered a biscuit factory at three roubles (6s.) a month." He has related his experiences of this grinding slavery in a subterranean "stone cage" in that powerful story, "Twenty-Six of Us and one Other."[1]
"It was a grievous evil life we lived within those thick walls.... We rose at five o'clock in the morning without having had our sleep out, and—stupid and indifferent—at six o'clock we were sitting at the table to make biscuits from dough already prepared for us by our comrades while we were still sleeping.... Our master called us niggers, and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat." No wonder he calls this drudgery "the hardest work I ever experienced."
And here there is a blank in our biographical record—a blank, however, which may, partially, be filled up from conjecture. To this period belongs, I opine, the first of Pyeshkov's gipsy-like wanderings through Russia. The most casual reader of his tales is struck at once by his delight for the free, careless life of a vagabond. The justification, the philosophy of that life, so to speak, he has put into the mouth of that prince of vagabonds, [Promtov[2], evidently a real person, whose antitype Pyeshkov must have met with on his rambles, and who is one of his best creations It was now, too, that he must have made the acquaintance of the so-called "Buivshie Lyudi,"[3]—or "Have-beens," whom he has immortalized in so many of his tales, that numerous and unhappy class who have fallen, beyond recovery, from positions of trust or emolument. These, too, were the days when, as he tells us, "I sawed wood, dragged loads," and, in fact, did all sorts of ill-paid, menial labour. On the other hand, he made the acquaintance of numerous students at Kazan, was admitted into their clubs, and his unquenchable ardour for learning revived. We do not know what he read during these years, but he must have read a very great deal. None can take up his works without being impressed by the richness and variety of his vocabulary, and it is not too much to say that no other Russian writer ever uses, or has used, so many foreign terms (English and French especially), or has coined so many new words from extraneous western sources. It is also plain from internal evidence that he has studied history, philosophy, and science with enthusiasm, and I agree with those Russian critics who complain that he has assimilated more Nietzschianism than is good for him, although, on the other hand, I consider that his obligations to Nietzsche are far less considerable than is commonly supposed. And at the same time he was consorting freely with ruffians of every description,[4] sleeping round camp fires with murderers and thieves, for the sake of a crust of bread, and once would actually have starved to death but for the charity of a kind-hearted prostitute[5] Naturally courageous, and with the buoyancy of youth to hold him up, he seems to have endured these hardships cheerfully enough, and a fine sunset, or a majestic seascape, or even a glimpse of the monotonous grandeur of the endless steppe, would, as a rule, be compensation enough for the fatigues of a hard day at its close. But he, too, had his dark moments, and in 1888 (when only nineteen) he tried to commit suicide from sheer wretchedness. Fortunately the bullet struck no vital part, and he was nursed into convalescence at a hospital in Kazan. "Having sufficiently recovered," says Gorky, sarcastically summing up his position at this period, "I survived in order to devote myself to the apple-selling trade."
On quitting Kazan, Pyeshkov appeared at Tsaritsuin, where, for a time, he was a railway porter. He was summoned from thence to his native place, Nijni-Novgorod, to serve as a recruit. But Aleksyei was not of the stuff of which soldiers are made. "They don't take rubbish like me," he explains, so he eked out a living by selling lager-beer in the streets till he attracted the attention of the benevolent advocate, A. J. Lanin, who made young Pyeshkov his secretary.
According to Gorky's own admission, Lanin had a considerable influence on his future development. But Gorky, who always felt himself "out of place among intellectual folk," and has an undisguised contempt for mere book-learning, now quitted his patron and returned to Tsaritsuin, whence he rambled through Southern Russia, the Ukraine, and Bessarabia, finally working his way through the Crimea and the Kuban District to the Caucasus. The tour was rich in new experiences, and may be said to have matured his genius, and taught him more than whole libraries of books could have done, but he suffered terrible privations by the way. He made a particular study during this period of the cities of Southern Russia, their commercial activity and their shifting, nondescript population, and that noble story, "Chelkash," which contains his finest descriptions of nature, was the ultimate result of his experiences.
At Tiflis he worked as a navvy for a time, and in 1892 his first printed story, "Makar Chudra," appeared in the columns of the Tiflis journal, Kavkaz. I have described elsewhere[6] his dramatic introduction to the astonished but appreciative editor on that occasion. Returning to Nijni-Novgorod, Gorky got several subsequent stories inserted in the principal newspapers of the various Volgan cities; but he wrote but little at this period, and that little did not win general favour.
In 1893 he made the acquaintance of the eminent Russian writer, Korolenko, to whose encouragement he always attributed his ultimate success. Korolenko urged him to have done with trifles, aim high, and, above all things, cultivate his style. Shortly afterwards, Gorky published his first indisputable masterpiece, "Chelkash," No. 8 of the present collection, which opened "the big reviews" to the young author, and made him famous. "Chelkash" was speedily followed by a whole series of vivid stories. In 1900 appeared his first romance, "Thoma Gordyeev," a disappointing performance on the whole, though not without superlative merits. The descriptions of Volgan scenery are magnificent, and the characterization is masterly. But it is far too long, and, the narrative is swamped by floods of second-rate philosophy. A collection of all Gorky's works, under the title of "Razskazui" (Tales), is still in progress. At present Gorky is, without doubt, by far the most popular author in Russia, and the authorities there have already paid him the compliment of branding his writings as even more dangerous than those of his veteran contemporary, Count Leo Tolstoi. He is also, I fancy, likely to give them much more trouble in future than the Count, as his temperament and genius are distinctly of the volcanic order.
R. NISBET BAIN.
[1] No. 2 of the present collection.
[2] In "A Rolling Stone."
[3] Lit., those who have been.
[4] See "In the Steppe."
[5] See "One Autumn Night."
[6] In the Monthly Review for December. In the same number of the same periodical appeared the first English translation of one of Gorky's tales, curiously enough, the first tale he wrote.
[TALES FROM GORKY.]
[I.—IN THE STEPPE.]
We quitted Perekop in the vilest spirits—hungry as wolves and at war with all the world. In the course of a whole twelve hours we had unsuccessfully employed all our talents and capabilities to earn or steal something, and when we became convinced, at last, that success was impossible either way, we resolved to go further on. Whither? Simply—further on.
This resolution was unanimous, and by mutual agreement. Moreover, we were resolved to go further in every respect. The manner of life we lately had been leading was to be a mere starting-point, and although we did not so express ourselves aloud, it blazed forth plainly enough in the sullen glare of our hungry eyes.
There were three of us, and we had all quite recently made one another's acquaintance, having first rubbed shoulders together at Kherson, in a little tavern on the banks of the Dnieper.
One of us had been a soldier of the railway battalion, and after that a sort of upper road-mender on one of the Polish roads; he was a red-haired, muscular chap with cold grey eyes; he could speak German, and was very intimately acquainted with the minutiæ of prison life.
Our friend did not like to speak very much of his past for more or less well-founded reasons, and indeed we all of us took each other on trust, at least we ostensibly took each other on trust, for, privately, not one of us even trusted himself.
When our second comrade, a withered little mannikin with small teeth, always pressed together sceptically—when our second comrade, I say, speaking of himself, said that he had formerly been a student at the University of Moscow, I and the soldier accepted the statement as a fact. In reality it was all one to us whether he had been a student, a bailiff's man, or a thief. The only matter of any importance to us was that at the moment of our first acquaintance he stood on our level, in other words: he was starving, engaged the particular attention of the police in the towns, was an object of suspicion to the peasants in the villages, hated everyone with the hatred of an impotent, bated, and starving wild beast, and was intent on a universal vengeance—in a word, he was of precisely the same kidney as ourselves.
Misfortune is the most durable cement for the joining together of natures even diametrically opposed to each other, and we were all convinced of our right to account ourselves unfortunate.
I was the third. The modesty inherent in me from my earliest years forbids me to say a single word as to my merits, and, not wishing to seem naïve, I will be reticent as to my defects. But by way of supplying materials for an estimate of my character, I will add, if you like, that I had always accounted myself better than other people, and have successfully held to the same opinion down to this very day.
Thus we emerged from Perekop and went further on, our objective for that day being the Chabans,[1] from whom it is always possible to cadge a little bread, and who very rarely turn tramps away empty-handed.
I walked with the soldier, "the student" was slouching along behind us. On his shoulders hung something dimly reminiscent of a pea-jacket; on his head reposed a sharp, singular, and smoothly clipped fragment of a broad-brimmed hat; grey breeches, covered with variegated patches, fitted tightly round his thin little legs, and by way of foot gear he made use of the leg of a boot which he had picked up on the road, and attached to its proper place by means of little bandages ripped from the inner lining of his costume. This invention he called sandals, and he shambled along in silence, raising a great deal of dust, and blinking around with his tiny, greenish little eyes. The soldier wore a red woollen shirt, which, to use his own words, he had "gained with his own hands" at Kherson; over the shirt he wore a warm wadding vest; on his head was a military forage cap of indeterminate colour, worn, according to the service regulations, "with the flap of the upper segment over the left brow"; on his legs were broad baggy chumak trousers. He was barefooted.
[1] Shepherds of Southern Russia.
I also had clothes on and was barefooted.
On we went, and around us in every direction, in heroic proportions, stretched the steppe, covered by the blue sultry cupola of the cloudless summer sky, and lying before us like a huge round black platter. The grey dusty road intersected it like a broad ribbon and burnt our feet Here and there we fell in with bristly patches of trampled-down corn, having a strange resemblance to the long unshaven cheeks of the soldier.
The soldier marched along, singing in a hoarse bass:
"And thus, oh Holy Eastertide,
Thy fame we sing and pr-r-raise."
While under arms he had held some sort of office resembling that of clerk in the battalion church, and knew a countless number of liturgical snatches and fragments, the knowledge of which he constantly abused every time our conversation happened to flag.
In front of us on the horizon certain forms with soft outlines and pleasant shades of colour, from faint lilac to fresh pink, began to stand forth prominently.
"Evidently those are the Crimean mountains," said "the student" with a dry voice.
"Mountains?" cried the soldier, "it's jolly early yet to see mountains. They are clouds—simply clouds. Don't you see—just like cranberry vinegar with milk."
I observed that it would be in the highest degree acceptable if they were clouds and did indeed consist of cranberry vinegar. This suddenly awakened our hunger—the evil of our days.
"Deuce take it!" growled the soldier, spitting a bit; "if only we could fall in with a single living soul! There's nobody at all! We shall have to do as the bears do in winter-time and suck our own paws."
"I said we ought to have gone towards inhabited places," observed "the student" didactically.
"You said, did you!" the soldier fired up at once. "Talk—that's about all you students are up to! What sort of inhabited places are there here? The Devil knows where they are."
"The student" was silent, he only pressed his lips tightly together. The sun was setting, and the clouds on the horizon exhibited a play of colour of every shade that language fails to grasp. There was a smell of earth and of salt in the air, and this dry and tasty smell piqued our appetites still more.
There was a sucking sensation in our stomachs, a strange and unpleasant feeling. It seemed as if the juice was gradually trickling out of every muscle in our bodies—trickling away somewhither, and evaporating, and that our muscles were losing their vital elasticity. A feeling of prickly dryness filled the hollow of the mouth and throat, there was a dull sensation in our heads, and dark spots really arose and flashed before our eyes. Sometimes they took the form of steaming pieces of meat—nourishing beef. Memory provided these "visions of the past, dumb visions," with their own peculiar fragrance, and then it was just as if a knife were turning round in our stomachs.
We went along all the same, giving one another a description of our feelings, casting angry sidelong glances about us in case we might peradventure perceive a sheepfold, and listening for the sharp creak of a Tatar arba[2] carrying fruit to the Armenian bazaar.
But the steppe was desolate and voiceless.
On the eve of this hard day we three had eaten four pounds of rye bread and five melons, had walked about thirty-five miles—our income was scarcely equal to our expenditure!—and after going to sleep in the bazaar square at Perekop were awakened by hunger.
"The student" had very properly advised us not to lie down to sleep, but in the course of the night to occupy ourselves with ... but in orderly society it is not considered the right thing openly to speak of any project for infringing the rights of property, and I will therefore keep silence. I only want to be just and not rude to others even in my own interests. I know that people in our highly cultured days are becoming more and more soft hearted, and even when they take their neighbours by the throat with the obvious intention of throttling them—they try to do it with as much amiability as possible, and with the observance of all the consideration which the circumstances will admit of. The experience! of my own throat has caused me to observe this progress in morals, and I maintain, with a pleasant feeling of conviction, that everything in this world is developing towards perfection. In particular this remarkable process is solidly established every year by the growth of prisons, taverns, and tolerated houses.
[2] A two-wheeled cart used in the Crimea.
Thus, swallowing the spittle of hunger, and endeavouring by friendly conversation to blunt the pangs of our stomachs, we went along the desolate and silent steppe—went along in the beautiful rays of the setting sun, full of a dull hope of something or other turning up. In front of us the setting sun was silently vanishing in the midst of soft clouds liberally embellished by his rays, and behind us and on both sides of us a dove-coloured mist, rising from the steppe into the sky, fixed unalterably the disagreeable horizon surrounding us.
"My brothers, let us collect materials for a camp fire," said the soldier, picking up from the road a chump of wood; "we shall have to make a night of it in the steppe, and the dew is about to fall ... cow-dung, twigs—take anything!"
We dispersed on the road in various directions, and began to collect dry grass and everything that could possibly burn. Every time we chanced to bend down towards the ground a passionate desire seized upon our whole body to lie down upon the earth—lie there immovably and eat the fat black stuff—eat a lot of it, eat till we could eat no more, and then fall asleep. Only to eat!—if we slept for evermore afterwards—to chew and chew and feel the thick warm mash flow gradually from our mouths along our dried-up gullet and food passages into our famished, extenuated stomachs, burning with the desire to suck up some sort of nutriment.
"If only we could find some root or other!" sighed the soldier; "there are roots you can eat, you know."
But in the black furrowed earth there were no roots. The southern night came on quickly, and the last ray of the sun had scarce disappeared when the stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky, and around us, more and more solidly, were gathering the dark shadows, and a smooth blankness engulfed the whole steppe.
"My brothers," said "the student," "yonder to the left a man is lying."
"A man?"—the soldier's tone was dubious—"what should he be lying there for?"
"Go and ask. He must certainly have bread with him if he lies down in the steppe," explained "the student."
The soldier looked in the direction where the man lay, and spitting with decision, said:
"Let us go to him!"
Only the keen, green eyes of "the student" could have made out that the dark patch rising up some fifty fathoms to the left of the road was a man. We went towards him, quickly stepping over the ploughed-up hummocks of earth, and we felt the hope of food new-born within us put a fresh edge upon our hunger. We were already quite close—the man did not move.
"Perhaps it is not a man at all!"—the soldier had put into words the thought common to us all.
But our doubts were resolved that selfsame instant, for the heap on the ground suddenly began to move, grew in size, and we saw that it was a real living man, now on his knees and stretching towards us an arm.
And he said to us in a hollow, tremulous voice:
"Another step—and I fire!"
A short and dry click resounded through the murky air.
We stopped short, as if at the word of command, and were silent for some seconds, dumfounded by such an unpleasant encounter.
"What a beast!" growled the soldier expressively.
"Well, I never!" said "the student," reflectively, "to go about with a revolver. A well-plucked one evidently!"
"Aye!" cried the soldier, "pretty resolute too."
The man never changed his pose, but remained silent.
"Hie, you there! We won't touch you ... Only give us some bread—got any, eh? Give us some, my brother, for Christ's sake—be anathema accursed one!"
The last words of the soldier, naturally, were muttered between his teeth.
The man was silent.
"Do you hear?" cried the soldier again, with a spasm of rage and despair. "Give us bread, we pray you! We won't go near to you—throw it to us!"
"All right!" said the man curtly.
He might have said "my dear brethren!" and if he had poured into these three Christian words the holiest and purest feelings they would not have excited us, they would not have humanized us so much, as did that short and hollow: "All right!"
"Do not be afraid of us, good man!" began the soldier softly, and with a sweet smile on his face, although the man could not have seen his smile, for he was at least twenty paces distant from us.
"We are peaceful folks ... we are going from Russia into the Kuban. We have lost our money on the road, we have eaten all our provisions, and this is now the second four and twenty hours that we haven't tasted a morsel...."
"Catch!" said the good man, flinging out his arm A black morsel flashed towards us and fell on a hummock not very far from us. "The student" fell upon it.
"Catch again!—again! There is no more!"
When "the student" had picked up this original gift it appeared that we had four pounds of stale wheaten bread. It had been buried in the earth and was very stale. The first piece barely arrested our attention, the second piece pleased us very much. Stale bread is more satisfying than fresh bread, there is less moisture in it.
"So—and so—and so!" said the soldier, concentrating all his attention on the division of the morsels. "Stay! That's fair, I think! A little corner ought to be nibbled off your piece, student, for his"—he meant mine—"is too little."
"The student," without a murmur, submitted to the subtraction from his portion of about an ounce in weight. I snatched it, and popped it into my mouth.
I began to chew it, chew it gradually, scarce able to control the convulsive movement of my jaws, ready to pulverize a stone. It afforded me a keen delight to feel the jerky throbs of my gullet, and to be able, by little and little, to gratify it with little rivulets of nutriment. Mouthful after mouthful, warm and inexplicably, indescribably tasty, penetrated at last to my burning stomach, and seemed instantly to turn into blood and muscle. Delight, such a strange, calm, and vivifying delight, warmed my heart proportionately to the filling of my stomach, and my general condition was similar to that of someone half asleep. I forgot all about those accursed days of chronic hunger, and I forgot about my comrades engulfed in the rapture of those very feelings which I myself had just experienced.
But when I had cast from my palm into my mouth the last crumb of bread, I felt a mortal desire for more.
"He must have about him—anathemas smite him!—some tallow or a bit of meat," cried the soldier, sitting down on the ground opposite to me and rubbing his belly with his hands.
"Certainly, for the bread has a smell of meat.... Yes, and he has more bread, I'll be bound," said "the student," and he added very quietly, "if only he hadn't a revolver!"
"Who is he, I wonder?"
"A hound!" said the soldier decidedly.
We sat together in a close group and cast sidelong glances in the direction where sat our benefactor with his revolver. Not a sound, not a sign of life now proceeded from that quarter.
Night had assembled her dark forces all around us. Mortally still it was in the steppe there—we could hear each other's breath. Now and then from somewhither resounded the melancholy whistle of the suslik[3].... The stars, the bright flowers of heaven, shone down upon us ... We wanted more to eat.
[3] The earless marmot of the steppe.
With pride I say it—I was neither better nor worse than my casual comrades on this somewhat strange night. I persuaded them to get up and go towards this man. We need not touch him, but we would eat everything we found upon him. He would fire—let him! Out of three of us only one could fall, even if one fell at all, and even if one of us did fall, a mere revolver bullet would scarcely be the death of him.
"Let us go," said the soldier, leaping to his feet.
"The student" rose to his feet more slowly than the soldier.
And we went, we almost ran. "The student" kept well behind us.
"Comrade!" cried the soldier reproachfully.
There met us a dull report and the sharp sound of a snapping trigger. There was a flash and the dry report of a firearm.
"It is over!" yelled the soldier joyfully, and with a single bound he was level with the man. "Now, you devil, I am going to have it out with you."
"The student" flung himself on the knapsack.
"The devil" fell from his knees on to his back, and stretching out his arms gave forth a choking sound.
"What the deuce!" cried the astonished soldier in the very act of raising his foot to give the man a kick. "What is he groaning for like that? Hie! Hie you! What's the matter? Have you shot yourself or what?"
"There's meat and some pancakes and bread—a whole lot, my brothers!"—and the voice of "the student" crowed with delight.
"But what the deuce ails him?—he is at the last gasp! Come then, let us eat, my friends!" cried the soldier. I had taken the revolver out of the hand of the man who had ceased to groan, and now lay motionless. There was only a single cartridge in the cartridge-box.
Again we ate—ate in silence. The man also lay there in silence, not moving a limb. We paid no attention to him whatever.
"My brothers, I suppose you have done all this simply for the sake of bread?" suddenly exclaimed a hoarse and tremulous voice.
We all started. "The student" even swallowed a crumb, and bending low towards the ground fell a coughing.
The soldier in the midst of his chewing became abusive.
"You soul of a dog! Take care I don't hack you like a clod of wood! Or would you prefer us to flay you alive, eh?—It was ours because we wanted it Shut your foolish mouth, you unclean spirit! A pretty thing!—To go about armed and fire at folks! May you be anathema!"
He cursed while he ate, and for that reason his cursing lost all its expression and force.
"Wait till we have eaten our fill and then we'll settle accounts with you," remarked "the student" viciously.
And then through the silence of the night resounded a wailing cry which frightened us.
"My brothers ... how could I tell? I fired because I was frightened. I am going from New Athos ... to the Government of Smolensk ... Oh, Lord! The fever has caught me ... it burns me up like the sun ... woe is me! Even when I left Athos the fever was upon me ... I was doing some carpenter's work ... I am a carpenter by trade ... At home is my wife and two little girls ... for three or four years I have not seen them ... my brothers ... you know all!"
"We are eating, don't bother," said "the student."
"Lord God! if only I had known that you were quiet peaceable folks ... do you think I would have fired? And here in the steppe too, at night, my brothers, you cannot say I am guilty, surely?"
He spoke and he wept, or to speak more accurately, he uttered a sort of tremulous terrified howl.
"He's a miser!" said the soldier contemptuously.
"He must have money about him," observed "the student."
The soldier winked, looked at him, and smiled.
"How sharp you are ... I say, give us some of the firewood here, and we'll light up and go to sleep."
"And how about him?" inquired "the student."
"The deuce take him! He may roast himself with us if he likes—what?"
"He might follow us!" and "the student" shook his sharp head.
We went to fetch the materials we had collected, threw them down where the carpenter had brought us to a standstill with his threatening cry, set light to them, and soon were sitting round a bonfire. It burnt quietly in the windless night and lighted up the tiny space occupied by us. We ached to go to sleep, though for all that we should have liked a little more supper first.
"My brothers!" the carpenter called to us. He was lying three yards off, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was whispering something.
"Well!" said the soldier.
"May I come to you—to the fire? I am about to die ... all my bones are broken Oh, Lord! it is plain to me that I shall never live to get home."
"Crawl along then,"—it was "the student" who decided.
Very gradually, as if fearing to lose hand or foot, the carpenter moved along the ground towards the fire. He was a tall and frightfully wasted man, every part of him seemed to be quivering, and his large dim eyes expressed the pain that was consuming him. His shrivelled face was very bony, and had in the light of the fire a yellowish earthy cadaverous colour. He was still tremulous, and excited our contemptuous pity. Stretching his long thin hands towards the fire, he rubbed his bony fingers, and kneaded their joints slowly and wearily. At last it went against us to look at him.
"What do you cut such a figure for, and why do you go on foot?—to save expense, eh?" asked the soldier surlily.
"I was so advised ... don't go, said they, by water, but go by way of the Crimea, for the air, they said. And lo! I cannot go, I am dying, my brothers. I shall die alone in the steppe ... the birds will pick my bones and nobody will know about it ... My wife ... my little daughters will be waiting for me ... I wrote to them ... and my bones will be washed by the rains of the steppe ... Lord, Lord!"
He uttered the anguished howl of a wounded wolf.
"Oh, the devil!" cried the soldier, waxing wrath, and springing to his feet. "How you whine! Can't you leave folks in peace! You're dying, eh? Well, die then, and hold your tongue ... What use are you to anyone? Shut up!"
"Give him one on the chump!" suggested "the student."
"Lie down and sleep!" said I, "and if you want to be by the fire, don't howl, really, you know...."
"Now you have heard," said the soldier savagely, "pray understand. You fancy we shall pity you and pay attention to you because you flung bread to us and fired bullets at us, do you? You sour-faced devil you! Others would have... Ugh!"
The soldier ceased and stretched himself on the ground.
"The student" was already lying down I lay down too. The frightened carpenter huddled himself into a heap, and edging gradually towards the fire began to look at it in silence. I lay on his right, and heard how his teeth chattered. "The student" lay on his left, and appeared to have gone to sleep straight off after rolling himself into a ball. The soldier, placing his hands beneath his head, lay face upwards, and looked at the sky.
"What a night, eh?—what a lot of stars!—and warm, too!" said he, turning to me after a time. "What a sky—a bed-top, not a sky. Friend, I love this vagabond life. It is cold and hungry, but then it is as free as the air ... You have no superior over you ... you are the master of your own life ... Though you bite your own head off, nobody can say a word to you ... It is good ... I have been very hungry and very angry these last few days ... and now I am lying here as if nothing had happened and look at the sky ... The stars blink at me ... It is just as if they were saying: What matters it, Lakutin; go and know, and be subject to nobody on this earth ... There you are ... my heart is happy. And how is it with you, eh, carpenter? Don't be angry with me, and fear nothing. We ate up your food, I know, but it doesn't matter; you had food and we had none, so we ate up yours. And you are a savage fellow, you go about firing bullets. Are you not aware that bullets may do a man harm? I was very angry with you a little while ago, and if you had not fallen down I should have well trounced you, my brother, for your cheek. But as to the food—to-morrow you can go back to Perekop and buy some there ... you have money ... I know it ... How long is it since you caught the fever?"
For a long time the deep bass of the soldier and the tremulous voice of the sick carpenter hummed in my ears. The night was dark, almost black, obliterating everything here below, and a fresh sappy breeze streamed out of its bosom.
A uniform light and an enlivening warmth proceeded from the fire. One's eyes closed insensibly, and before them, as if seen through a vision, passed something soothing and purifying.
"Get up! awake! Let us go!"
I opened my eyes with a feeling of terror and quickly sprang to my feet, the soldier helping by pulling me violently from the ground by the arm.
"Come, look alive! March!"
His face was grim and anxious. I looked around me. The sun was rising, and his rosy rays already lay upon the immovable and dark blue face of the carpenter. His mouth was open, his eyes projected far out of their sockets, and stared with a glassy look expressive of horror. The clothes covering his bosom were all torn, and he lay in an unnatural, broken-up sort of pose. There was no sign of "the student."
"Well, have you looked your fill!... Come on, I say!" said the soldier excitedly, dragging at my sleeve.
"Is he dead?" I asked, shivering in the fresh morning air.
"Certainly. And he might have throttled you ... and you might have died," explained the soldier.
"He! Who? 'The Student'?" I exclaimed.
"Well, who else? It wasn't you, eh? And I suppose you won't say it was—me? Well, so much for your bookworms! He managed very cleverly with the man ... and has left his comrades in the lurch. Had I suspected it, I could have killed 'the student' yesterday evening. I could have killed him at a blow ... Smash with my fist on his forehead, and there would have been one blackguard the less in the world. See what he has done, and remember it! Now we must move on so that not a human eye may see us in the steppe. Do you understand? Recollect, we came upon the carpenter to-day, throttled and plundered. And we'll search for our brother ... find out in what direction he went, and where he passed the night. Well, suppose they seize us ... although we have nothing upon us ... except his revolver in my bosom!"
"Throw it away," I advised the soldier.
"Throw it away?" said he thoughtfully, "why it's a precious thing. And then, too, they may not seize us yet ... No, I'll not chuck it ... Who knows that the carpenter carried arms? I'll not chuck it ... It's worth three roubles ... And there's a bullet in it. How I should like to fire this selfsame bullet into the ear of our dear comrade! I wonder how much money he filched, the hound! May he be anathema!"
"And there are the carpenter's little daughters!" said I.
"Daughters? What?... Well, they'll grow up, and it's not for us to find them husbands; they don't concern us at all ... Let us go, my brother, quickly. Whither shall we go?"
"I don't know ... it's all one to me."
"And I don't know, and I know it is all one. Let us go to the right ... the sea must be there."
We went to the right.
I turned to look back. Far away from us in the steppe rose a dark little mound, and on it the sun was shining.
"Are you looking to see whether he will rise again? Don't be afraid, he won't rise up to pursue us. The scholar is evidently a chap up to a dodge or two, and dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has saddled us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my brother! Folks are degenerating! From year to year they degenerate more and more," observed the soldier sadly.
The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the bright morning sun, unfolded itself all around us, blending on the horizon with the sky, so bright and friendly and lavish of light, that any black and iniquitous deed seemed impossible in the midst of the grand spaciousness of that free expanse, covered by the blue cupola of heaven.
"Feel hungry, brother?" said the soldier, twisting himself a cigarette out of his makharka.[4]
"Where are we going to-day, and how?"
"That's the question!"
Here the narrator—my next neighbour in the hospital hammock—broke off his story and said to me:
"That's all. I became very friendly with this soldier, and accompanied him all the way to the Kars District. He was a good and very experienced little fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, and then we lost sight of each other."
[4] Peasant's tobacco.
"Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?" I asked.
"As you see—or as you hear."
"And there was nothing more?"
He smiled.
"What ought my feelings to have been in such a case—do you mean that? I was not to blame foe what happened to him, just as you are not to blame for what has happened to me. And nobody is to blame for anything, for all of us alike are—beasts of the same kidney."
II.—TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER.[1]
[1] Written in 1899.
There were twenty-six of us—twenty-six living machines shut up in a damp cellar, where from morning to evening, we kneaded dough to make cakes and biscuits. The windows of our cellar looked upon a ditch yawning open before them and crammed full of bricks, green with damp; the window-frames were partly covered from the outside by an iron grating, and the light of the sun could not reach us through the window-panes covered with flour dust Our master had closed up the windows with iron in order that we might not give away a morsel of his bread to the poor, or to those of our comrades who were living without work, and therefore starving; our master called us galley-slaves, and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat.
It was a narrow, stuffy life we lived in that stone cage beneath the low and heavy rafters covered with soot and cobwebs. It was a grievous evil life we lived within those thick walls, plastered over with patches of dirt and mould.... We rose at five o'clock in the morning, without having had our sleep out, and—stupid and indifferent—at six o'clock we were sitting behind the table to make biscuits from dough already prepared for us by our comrades while we were still sleeping. And the whole day, from early morning to ten o'clock at night, some of us sat at the table kneading the yeasty dough and rocking to and fro so as not to get benumbed, while the others mixed the flour with water. And all day long, dreamily and wearily, the boiling water hummed in the cauldron where the biscuits were steamed, and the shovel of the baker rasped swiftly and evilly upon our ears from beneath the oven as often as it flung down baked bits of dough on the burning bricks. From morning to evening, in one corner of the stove, they burned wood, and the red reflection of the flames flickered on the wall of the workshop as if silently laughing at us. The huge stove was like the misshapen head of some fairy-tale monster—it seemed to stick out from under the ground, opening its wide throat full of bright fire, breathing hotly upon us, and regarding our endless labour with its two black vent-holes just over its forehead. Those two deep cavities were like eyes—the passionless and pitiless eyes of a monster; they always regarded us with one and the same sort of dark look, as if they were weary of looking at their slaves and, not expecting anything human from us, despised us with the cold contempt of worldly wisdom.
From day to day in tormenting dust, in dirt brought in by our feet from the yard, in a dense malodorous steaming vapour, we kneaded dough and made biscuits, moistening them with our sweat, and we hated our work with a bitter hatred; we never ate of that which came forth from our hands, preferring black bread to the biscuits. Sitting behind the long table, face to face with each other, nine over against nine, we mechanically used our arms and fingers during the long hours, and were so accustomed to our work that we no longer noticed our own movements. And we had examined one another so thoroughly that everyone of us knew all the wrinkles in the faces of his comrades. We had nothing to talk about, so we got accustomed to talking about nothing, and were silent the whole time unless we quarrelled—there is always a way to make a man quarrel, especially if he be a comrade. But it was rarely that we even quarrelled—how can a man be up to much if he is half dead, if he is like a figure-head, if his feelings are blunted by grievous labour? But silence is only a terror and a torture to those who have already said all they have to say and can say no more; but for people who have not begun to find their voices, silence is simple and easy.... Sometimes, however, we sang; it came about in this way. One of us in the midst of his work would suddenly whinny like a tired horse and begin to croon very softly one of those protracted ditties, the sadly caressing motif of which always lightens the heaviness of the singer's soul. One of us would begin singing, I say, and the rest would, at first, merely listen to his lonely song, and beneath the heavy roof of the cellar his song would flicker and die out like a tiny camp-fire in the steppe on a grey autumn night when the grey sky hangs over the earth like a leaden roof. Presently the first singer would be joined by another, and then two voices, softly and sadly, would float upwards from the stifling heat of our narrow ditch. And then, suddenly, several voices together would lay hold of the song, and the song would swell forth like a wave, and become stronger and more sonorous, and seem to amplify the heavy grey walls of our stony prison.
And so it came about that the whole six-and-twenty of us would find ourselves singing—our sustained, sonorous concert would fill the work-room, and the song would seem not to have room enough therein. It would beat against the stone wall, wail, weep, stir within the benumbed heart the sensation of a gentle tickling ache, re-open old wounds in it, and awake it to anguish. The singers would sigh deeply and heavily; one of them would unexpectedly break off his own song and listen to the singing of his comrades, and then his voice would blend once more with the common billow of sound. Another of us, perhaps, would utter an anguished "Ah!" and then continue singing with fast-closed eyes. No doubt the broad dense wave of sound presented itself to his mind as a road stretching far, far away—a broad road lit up by the bright sun, with he himself walking along that road.
And all the time the flame of the furnace was flickering and the baker's shovel was harshly scraping the brick floor, and the boiling water was humming in the cauldron, and the reflection of the fire was quivering on the wall and laughing at us noiselessly.... And we were wailing forth in the words of others our dull misery, the heavy anguish of living beings deprived of the sun, the anguish of slaves. Thus we lived, twenty-six of us, in the cellar of a large stone house, and life was as grievous to us as if all the three upper storeys of this house had been built right upon our very shoulders.
But, besides the singing, we had one other good thing—a thing we set great store by and which, possibly, stood to us in the place of sunshine. In the second storey of our house was a gold-embroidery factory, and amongst the numerous factory girls employed there was a damsel sixteen years old, Tanya by name. Every morning she would come to the little window pierced through the door in the wall of our workshop, and pressing against it her tiny rosy face, with its merry blue eyes, would cry to us with a musical, friendly voice: "Poor little prisoners! give me some little biscuits!"
All of us would instantly turn round at the familiar sound of that bright voice, and gaze good-naturedly and joyously at the pure virginal little face smiling upon us so gloriously. It became a usual and very pleasant thing for us to see the little nose pressed against the window-pane, to see the tiny white teeth gleaming from under the rosy lips parted by a smile. There would then be a general rush to open the door, each one trampling upon his fellows in his haste, and then in she would come, always so bright and pleasant, and stand before us, her head perched a little on one side, holding up her apron and smiling all the time. The long thick locks of her chestnut hair, falling across her shoulders, lay upon her breast. We dirty, grimy, misshapen wretches stood there looking up at her—the threshold of the door was four steps above the level of the floor—we had to raise our heads to look at her, we would wish her good morning, and would address her in especial language—the words seemed to come to us expressly for her and for her alone. When we conversed with her our voices were gentler than usual, and our jests were less rough. We had quite peculiar and different manners—and all for her. The baker would take out of the oven a shovelful of the ruddiest, best toasted biscuits, and skilfully fling them into Tanya's apron.
"Take care you don't fall into the clutches of the master!" we would always caution her. And she, roguishly laughing, would call to us: "Good-bye, little prisoners," and vanish as quickly as a little mouse.
Only—long after her departure, we would talk pleasantly about her among ourselves; we always said the same thing, and we said it late and early, because she and we and everything around us was always the same early and late. It is a heavy torment for a man to live where everything around him is unchanging, and if this does not kill the soul within him, the longer he lives the more tormenting will the immobility of his environment become. We always spoke of women in such a way that sometimes it went against the grain with us to listen to our own coarse, shameful speeches, and it will be understood that the sort of women we knew were unworthy to be alluded to in any other way. But we never spoke ill of Tanya. None of us ever permitted himself to lay so much as a finger upon her; nay, more, she never heard a loose jest from any of us. Possibly this was because she never remained very long with us: she twinkled before our eyes like a star falling from heaven and vanished; but, possibly also, it was because she was so tiny and so very pretty, and everything beautiful awakens respect for it even in coarse people. And there was something else. Although our prison-like labour had made dull brutes of us, for all that we were still human beings, and, like all human beings, we could not live without worshipping something or other. We had nothing better than she, and nobody but she took any notice of us who lived in that vault; nobody, though scores of people lived in that house. And finally—and that, after all, was the chief thing—we all of us accounted her as in some sort our own, as, in some sort, only existing thanks to our biscuits; we looked upon it as our duty to give her biscuits piping hot, and this became to us a daily sacrifice to our idol; it became almost a sacred office, and every day bound us to her more and more. Besides the biscuits we gave to Tanya a good deal of advice—she was to put on warmer clothes, not run rapidly upstairs, not to carry heavy loads of wood. She listened to our advice with a smile, responded to it with laughter, and never followed it at all; but we were not offended with her on that account, we only wanted to show her that we were taking care of her.
Sometimes she asked us to do different things for her; such, for instance, as to open the heavy cellar door, to chop up wood and so on, and we joyfully, nay, with a sort of pride, did for her all that she asked us to do.
But, once, when one of us asked her to mend his only shirt, she sniffed contemptuously and said: "What next! do you think I've nothing better to do."
We laughed heartily at the silly fellow—and never asked her to do anything more. We loved her—and when that is said all is said. A man always wants to lay his love upon someone, although sometime he may crush her beneath the weight of it, and sometimes he may soil her; he may poison the life of his neighbour with his love, because in loving he does not revere the beloved. We were obliged to love Tanya because we had none else to love.
At times one or other of us would begin to reason about it like this: "Why are we spoiling the wench like this? What is there in her after all? Eh? We are making a great deal of fuss about her!"
The fellow who ventured to use such language was pretty roughly snubbed, I can tell you. We wanted something to love, we had found what we wanted, and we loved it; and what we six-and-twenty loved was bound to be inviolate, because it was our holy shrine, and everyone who ran contrary to us in this matter was our enemy. No doubt people often love what is not really good—but here we were, all twenty-six of us, in the same boat, and therefore what we considered dear we would have others regard as sacred.
Besides the biscuit factory our master had a fancy-bakery; it was located in the same house, and only separated from our hole by a wall; but the fancy-bakers—there were four of them—kept us at arm's-length, considering their work as cleaner than ours, and for that reason considering themselves as better than we. So they did not come into our workshop, and laughed contemptuously at us when they met us in the yard. We, too, did not go to them; our master had forbidden us to do so for fear we should steal the milk scones. We did not like the fancy-bakers because we envied them. Their work was lighter than ours; they got more than we did and were better fed; they had a spacious, well-lighted workshop, and they were all so clean and healthy—quite the opposite to us. We indeed, the whole lot of us, looked greyish or yellowish; three of us were suffering from disease, others from consumption, one of us was absolutely crippled by rheumatism. They, on feast-days and in their spare time, put on pea-jackets and boots that creaked; two of them had concertinas, and all of them went strolling in the Park—we went about in little better than dirty rags, with down-at-heel slippers or bast shoes on our feet, and the police would not admit us into the Park—how could we possibly love the fancy-bakers?
Presently we heard that their overseer had taken to drink, that the master had dismissed him and hired another, and that this other was a soldier who went about in a rich satin waistcoat, and on great occasions wore a gold chain. We were curious to see such a toff, and, in the hope of seeing him, took it in turns to run out into the yard one after the other.
But he himself appeared in our workshop. He kicked at the door, it flew open, and, keeping it open, he stood on the threshold, smiled, and said to us: "God be with you! I greet you, my children!"
The frosty air, rushing through the door in thick smoky clouds, whirled round his feet, and there he stood on the threshold looking down upon us from his eminence, and from beneath his blonde, skilfully twisted moustaches gleamed his strong yellow teeth. His vest really was something quite out of the common—it was blue, embroidered with flowers, and had a sort of sparkle all over it, and its buttons were made of pretty little pearls. And the gold chain was there....
He was handsome, that soldier was, quite tall, robust, with ruddy cheeks, and his large bright eyes looked good and friendly and clear. On his head was a white stiffly starched cap, and from beneath his clean spotless spats appeared the bright tops of his modish brilliantly polished boots.
Our baker asked him, respectfully, to shut the door. He did so, quite deliberately, and began asking us questions about our master. We outdid each other in telling him that our master was a blood-sucker, a slave-driver, a malefactor, and a tormentor; everything in short that we could and felt bound to say about our master, but it is impossible to write it down here. The soldier listened, twirled his moustache, and regarded us with a gentle, radiant look.
"And I suppose now you've a lot of little wenches about here?" he suddenly said.
Some of us laughed respectfully, others made languishing grimaces; one of us made it quite clear to the soldier that there were wenches here—a round dozen of them.
"Do you amuse yourselves?" asked the soldier, blinking his eyes.
Again we laughed, not very loudly, and with some confusion of face.... Many of us would have liked to show the soldier that they were as dashing fellows as himself, but none dared to do so; no, not one. One of us indeed hinted as much by murmuring: "Situated as we are...."
"Yes, of course, it would be hard for you!" observed the soldier confidentially, continuing to stare at us. "You ought to be—well, not what you are. You're down on your luck—there's a way of holding one's self—there's the look of the thing—you know what I mean! And women you know like a man with style about him. He must be a fine figure of a man—everything neat and natty you know. And then, too, a woman respects strength. Now what do you think of that for an arm, eh?"
The soldier drew his right arm from his pocket, with the shirt-sleeve stripped back, bare to the elbow, and showed it to us It was a strong, white arm, bristling with shiny, gold-like hair.
"Legs and breast the same—plenty of grit there, eh? And then, too, a man must be stylishly dressed, and must have nice things. Now look at me—all the women love me! I neither call to them nor wink at them—they come falling on my neck by the dozen."
He sat down on a flour-basket and discoursed to us for a long time about how the women loved him, and how valiantly he comported himself with them. After he had gone, and when the creaking door had closed behind him, we were silent for a long time, thinking of him and of his yarns. And after a bit we suddenly all fell a-talking at once, and agreed unanimously that he was a very pleasant fellow. He was so straightforward and jolly—he came and sat down and talked to us just as if he were one of us. No one had ever come and talked to us in such a friendly way before. And we talked of him and of his future successes with the factory girls at the gold-embroiderer's, who, whenever they met us in the yard, either curled their lips contemptuously, or gave us a wide berth, or walked straight up to us as if we were not in their path at all. And as for us, we only feasted our eyes upon them when we met them in the yard, or when they passed by our window, dressed in winter in peculiar little fur caps and fur pelisses, and in summer in hats covered with flowers, and with sunshades of various colours in their hands. But, on the other hand, among ourselves, we talked of these girls in such a way that, had they heard it, they would have gone mad with rage and shame.
"But how about little Tanya—I hope he won't spoil her!" said our chief baker suddenly with a gloomy voice.
We were all silent, so greatly had these words impressed us. We had almost forgotten about Tanya: the soldier had shut her out from us, as it were, with his fine burly figure. Presently a noisy dispute began. Some said that Tanya would not demean herself by any such thing; others maintained that she would be unable to stand against the soldier; finally, a third party proposed that if the soldier showed any inclination to attach himself to Tanya, we should break his ribs. And, at last, we all resolved to keep a watch upon the soldier and Tanya, and warn the girl to beware of him.... And so the dispute came to an end.
A month passed by. The soldier baked his fancy-rolls, walked out with the factory girls, and frequently paid us a visit in our workshop, but of his victories over the wenches he said never a word, but only twirled his moustaches and noisily smacked his lips.
Tanya came to us every morning for her "little biscuits," and was always merry, gentle, and friendly with us. We tried to talk to her about the soldier—she called him "the goggle-eyed bull-calf," and other ridiculous names, and that reassured us. We were proud of our little girl when we saw how the factory girls clung to the soldier. Tanya's dignified attitude towards him seemed to raise the whole lot of us, and we, as the directors of her conduct, even began to treat the soldier himself contemptuously. But her we loved more than ever, her we encountered each morning more and more joyfully and good-humouredly.
But one day the soldier came to us a little the worse for liquor, he sat him down, began laughing, and when we asked him what he was laughing about, he explained:
"Two of the wenches have been quarrelling about me, Liddy and Gerty," said he. "How they did blackguard each other! Ha, ha, ha! They caught each other by the hair, and were down on the floor in a twinkling, one on the top of the other; ha, ha, ha! And they tore and scratched like anything, and I was nearly bursting with laughter. Why can't women fight fair? Why do they always scratch, eh?"
He was sitting on the bench; there he sat so healthy, clean, and light-hearted, and roared with laughter. We were silent. Somehow, or other, he was disagreeable to us at that moment.
"No, I can't make it out. What luck I do have with women, it is ridiculous. I've but to wink, and—she is ready. The d-deuce is in it."
His white arms, covered with shining gold down, rose in the air and fell down again on his knees with a loud bang. And he regarded us with such a friendly look of amazement, just as if he himself were frankly puzzled by the felicity of his dealings with women. His plump, ruddy face regularly shone with happiness and self-complacency, and he kept on noisily smacking his lips.
Our chief baker scraped his shovel along the hearth violently and angrily, and suddenly remarked, with a sneer:
"It is no great feat of strength to fell little fir-trees, but to fell a full-grown pine is a very different matter.
"Is that meant for me, now?" queried the soldier.
"It is meant for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing ... Never mind."
"Nay, stop a bit! What's your little game? What pine-tree do you mean?"
Our master-baker didn't answer, he was busily working with his shovel at the stove, shovelled out the well-baked biscuits, sifted those that were ready, and flung them boisterously on to the floor to the lads who were arranging them in rows on the bast wrappings. He seemed to have forgotten the soldier and his talk with him. But the soldier suddenly became uneasy. He rose to his feet and approached the stove, running the risk of a blow in the chest from the handle of the shovel which was whirling convulsively in the air.
"Come, speak—what she did you mean? You have insulted me. Not a single she shall ever get the better of me, n-no—I say. And then, too, you used such offensive words to me...."
He really seemed to be seriously offended. No doubt he had but a poor opinion of himself except on this one point: his ability to win women. Possibly, except this one quality, there was nothing really vital in the man at all, and only this single quality allowed him to feel himself a living man.
There are people who look upon some disease, either of the body, or of the soul, as the best and most precious thing in life. They nurse it all their lives, and only in it do they live at all. Though they suffer by it, yet they live upon it. They complain of it to other people, and by means of it attract to themselves the attention of their neighbours. They use it as a means of obtaining sympathy, and without it—they are nothing at all. Take away from them this disease, cure them, and they will be unhappy because they are deprived of the only means of living—there they stand empty. Sometimes the life of a man is poor to such a degree that he is involuntarily obliged to put a high value on some vice, and live thereby; indeed, we may say straight out that very often people become vicious from sheer ennui.
The soldier was offended, rushed upon our master-baker, and bellowed: "Come, I say—speak out! Who was it?"
"Speak out, eh?"—and the master-baker suddenly turned round upon him.
"Yes!—Well?"
"Do you know Tanya?"
"Well!"
"Well, there you are!—try her!"
"I?"
"You."
"Pooh! That's nothing."
"Let us see!"
"You shall see. Ha-ha-ha!"
"She look at you!"
"Give me a month!"
"What a braggart you are, soldier!"
"A fortnight! I'll show you. Who's she? Little Tanya! Pooh!"
"And now be off!—you're in the way."
"A fortnight, I say—and the thing's done. Poor you, I say!"
"Be off, I say."
Our baker suddenly grew savage; and flourished his shovel. The soldier backed away from him in astonishment, and observed us in silence. "Good!" he said at last with ominous calmness—and departed.
During the dispute we all remained silent, we were too deeply interested in it to speak. But when the soldier departed, there arose from among us a loud and lively babble of voices.
Someone shrieked at the baker: "A pretty business you've set a-going, Paul!"
"Go on working, d'ye hear!" replied the master-baker fiercely.
We felt that the soldier would make the assault, and that Tanya was in danger. We felt this, and yet at the same time we were all seized by a burning curiosity that was not unpleasant—what would happen? Would Tanya stand firm against the soldier? And almost all of us cried, full of confidence:
"Little Tanya? She'll stand firm enough!"
We had all of us a frightful longing to put the fortitude of our little idol to the test. We excitedly proved to each other that our little idol was a strong little idol, and would emerge victorious from this encounter. It seemed to us, at last, that we had not egged on our soldier enough, that he was forgetting the contest, and that we ought to spur his vanity just a little bit. From that day forth we began to live a peculiar life, at high nervous tension, such as we had never lived before. We quarrelled with each other for days together, just as if we had all grown wiser, and were able to talk more and better. It seemed to us as if we were playing a sort of game with the Devil, and the stake on our part was—Tanya. And when we heard from the fancy-bread-bakers that the soldier had begun "to run after our little Tanya," it was painfully well with us, and so curious were we to live it out, that we did not even observe that our master, taking advantage of our excitement, had added 14 poods[2] of paste to our daily task. We practically never left off working at all. The name of Tanya never left our tongues all day. And every morning we awaited her with a peculiar sort of impatience.
[2] 560 lbs.
Nevertheless we said not a word to her of the contest actually proceeding. We put no questions to her, and were kind and affectionate to her as before. Yet in our treatment of her there had already crept in something new and strangely different to our former feeling for Tanya—and this new thing was a keen curiosity, keen and cold as a steel knife.
"My friends, the time's up to-day," said the master-baker one morning as he set about beginning his work.
We knew that well enough without any reminder from him, but we trembled all the same.
"Look at her well, she'll be here immediately," continued the baker.
Someone exclaimed compassionately:
"As if eyes could see anything!"
And again a lively, stormy debate arose among us. To-day we were to know at last how clean and inviolable was the vessel in which we had placed our best. That morning, all at once and as if for the first time, we began to feel that we were really playing a great game, and that this test of the purity of our divinity might annihilate it altogether so far as we were concerned. We had all heard during the last few days that the soldier was obstinately and persistently persecuting Tanya, yet how was it that none of us asked her what her relations with him were? And she used to come to us regularly, every morning, for her little biscuits, and was the same as ever.
And this day also we very soon heard her voice.
"Little prisoners, I have come...."
We crowded forward to meet her, and when she came in, contrary to our usual custom, we met her in silence. Looking at her with all our eyes, we knew not what to say to her, what to ask her. We stood before her a gloomy, silent crowd. She was visibly surprised at this unusual reception—and all at once we saw her grow pale, uneasy, fidget in her place, and inquire in a subdued voice:
"What's the matter with you?"
"And how about yourself?" the master-baker sullenly said, never taking his eyes off her.
"Myself? What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing."
"Come, give me the biscuits!—quick!"
Never before had she been so sharp with us.
"You're in a hurry," said the baker, not moving and never taking his eyes from her face.
Then she suddenly turned round and disappeared through the door.
The baker caught up his shovel and, turning towards the stove, remarked quietly:
"It means—she's all ready for him. Ah, that soldier ... the scoundrel ... the skunk!"
We like a flock of sheep, rubbing shoulders with each other, went to our table, sat down in silence, and wearily began to work. Presently, someone said: "Yet is it possible...?"
"Well, well, what's the good of talking?" screeched the baker.
We all knew that he was a wise man, far wiser than we. And we understood his exclamation as a conviction of the victory of the soldier.... We felt miserable and uneasy.
At twelve o'clock—dinner-time—the soldier arrived. He was as usual spruce and genteel and—as he always did—looked us straight in the eyes. But we found it awkward to look at him.
"Well, my worthy gentlemen, if you like, I'll show you a bit of martial prowess," said he, laughing proudly. "Just you come out into the outhouse and look through the crevices—do you understand?"
Out we went, elbowing each other on the way, and glued our faces to the crevices in the boarded-up wall of the outhouse looking upon the courtyard. We had not long to wait. Very soon, at a rapid pace, and with a face full of anxiety, Tanya came tearing through the yard, springing over the puddles of stale snow and mud. Shortly afterwards, in not the least hurry and whistling as he went, appeared the soldier, making his way in the same direction as Tanya, evidently they had arranged a rendezvous. His arms were thrust deep down in his pockets, and his moustaches were moving up and down.... He also disappeared....
Then the rain came, and we watched the raindrops falling into the puddles, and the puddles wrinkle beneath their impact. The day was damp and grey—a very wearying day. Snow still lay upon the roofs, and on the earth dark patches of mud were already appearing. And the snow on the roofs also got covered with dirty dark-brown smuts. The rain descended slowly with a melancholy sound. We found it cold and unpleasant to stand waiting there, but we were furious with Tanya for having deserted us, her worshippers, for the sake of a common soldier, and we waited for her with the grim delight of executioners.
After a while—we saw Tanya returning. Her eyes—yes, her eyes, actually sparkled with joy and happiness, and her lips—were smiling. And she was walking as if in a dream, rocking a little to and fro, with uncertain footsteps....
We could not endure this calmly. The whole lot of us suddenly burst through the door, rushed into the yard, and hissed and yelled at her with evil, bestial violence.
On perceiving us she trembled—and stood as if rooted in the mud beneath her feet. We surrounded her and, maliciously, without any circumlocution, we reviled her to our hearts' content, and called her the most shameful things.
We did not raise our voices, we took our time about it. We saw that she had nowhere to go, that she was in the midst of us, and we might vent our rage upon her as much as we liked. I don't know why, but we did not beat her. She stood in the midst of us, and kept turning her head now hither, now thither, as she listened to our insults. And we—bespattered her, more and more violently, with the mud and the venom of our words.
The colour quitted her face, her blue eyes, a minute before so radiant with happiness, opened widely, her bosom heaved heavily, and her lips trembled.
And we, surrounding her, revenged ourselves upon her, for she had robbed us. She had belonged to us, we had expended our best upon her, and although that best was but a beggar's crumb, yet we were six-and-twenty and she was but one, therefore we could not devise torments worthy of her fault. How we did abuse her! She was silent all along—all along she looked at us with the wild eyes of a hunted beast, she was all of a tremble.
We ridiculed, we reviled, we baited her.... Other people came running up to us.... One of us plucked Tanya by the sleeve.
Suddenly her eyes sparkled, she leisurely raised her hands to her head and, tidying her hair, looked straight into our faces, and cried loudly but calmly:
"Ugh! you wretched prisoners!"
And she walked straight up to us, walked as simply as if we were not standing there before her at all, as if we were not obstructing her way. And for that very reason not one of us was actually standing in her way when she came up to us.
And proceeding out of our midst and, without so much as turning towards us, loudly, and with indescribable contempt, she kept on saying:
"Ugh! you wretches! you vermin!"
And—off she went.
We remained standing in the yard, in the midst of the mud, beneath the pouring rain and the grey, sunless sky.
Presently we returned in silence to our grey, stony dungeon. As before, the sun never once looked through our window, and—there was no Tanya now.
[III.—ONE AUTUMN NIGHT.]
Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town where I had just arrived and where I knew not a soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket and without a night's lodging.
Having sold during the first few days every part of my costume, without which it was still possible to go about, I passed from the town into the quarter called "Yste,"[1] where were the steamship wharves—a quarter which during the navigation season fermented with boisterous laborious life, but now was silent and deserted, and indeed we were in the last days of October.
Dragging my feet along the moist sand, and obstinately scrutinising it with the desire to discover in it any sort of fragment of food, I wandered alone among the deserted buildings and warehouses, and thought how good it would be to get a fair bellyful.
In our present state of culture hunger of the mind is more quickly satisfied than hunger of the body. You wander about the streets, you are surrounded by buildings not bad-looking from the outside and— you may safely say it—not so badly furnished inside, and the sight of them may excite within you stimulating ideas about architecture, hygiene, and many other wise and high-flying subjects. You may meet warmly and neatly dressed folks—all very polite, and turning away from you tactfully, not wishing offensively to notice the lamentable fact of your existence. Well, well, the mind of a hungry man is always better nourished and healthier than the mind of the well-fed man—and there you have a situation from which you may draw a very ingenious conclusion in favour of the ill fed!
[1] River's mouth.
The evening was approaching, the rain was falling, and the wind blew violently from the north. It whistled in the empty booths and shops, blew into the plastered window-panes of the taverns, and whipped into a foam the wavelets of the river which splashed noisily on the sandy shore, casting high their white crests, racing one after another into the dim distance, and leaping impetuously over one another's shoulders.... It seemed as if the river felt the proximity of winter, and was running at random away from the fetters of ice which the north wind might well have flung upon her that very night. The sky was heavy and dark, down from it swept incessantly scarcely visible drops of rain, and the melancholy elegy in nature all around me was emphasised by a couple of battered and misshapen willow-trees, and a boat, bottom upwards, that was fastened to their roots.
The overturned canoe with its battered keel, and the old and miserable trees rifled by the cold wind ... everything around me bankrupt, barren, and dead, and the sky flowing with undryable tears ... everything around waste and gloomy ... it seemed as if everything were dead, leaving me alone among the living, and me also a cold death awaited.
And I was then eighteen years old—a good time!
I walked and walked along the cold wet sand, making my chattering teeth warble in honour of cold and hunger, and suddenly, as I was carefully searching for something to eat behind one of the empty crates, I perceived behind it, crouching on the ground, a figure in woman's clothes dank with the rain and clinging fast to her stooping shoulders. Standing over her, I watched to see what she was doing. It appeared that she was digging a trench in the sand with her hands, digging away under one of the crates.
"Why are you doing that?" I asked, crouching down on my heels quite close to her.
She gave a little scream and was quickly on her legs again. Now that she stood there staring at me, with her wide-open grey eyes full of terror, I perceived that it was a girl of my own age, with a very pleasant face embellished unfortunately by three large blue marks. This spoilt her, although these blue marks had been distributed with a remarkable sense of proportion, one at a time, and all of equal size: two under the eyes, and one a little bigger on the forehead just over the bridge of the nose. This symmetry was evidently the work of an artist well inured to the business of spoiling the human physiognomy.
The girl looked at me, and the terror in her eyes gradually died out.... She shook the sand from her hands, adjusted her cotton head-gear, cowered down, and said:
"I suppose you too want something to eat? Dig away then!—my hands are tired. Over there"—she nodded her head in the direction of a booth—"there is bread for certain ... and sausages too ... That booth is still carrying on business."
I began to dig. She, after waiting a little and looking at me, sat down beside me and began to help me.
We worked in silence. I cannot say now whether I thought at that moment of the criminal code, of morality, of proprietorship, and all the other things about which, in the opinion of many experienced persons, one ought to think every moment of one's life. Wishing to keep as close to the truth as possible, I must confess that apparently I was so deeply engaged in digging under the crate that I completely forgot about everything else except this one thing: what could be inside that crate.
The evening drew on. The grey, mouldy, cold fog grew thicker and thicker around us. The waves roared with a hollower sound than before, and the rain pattered down on the boards of the crate more loudly and more frequently. Somewhere or other the night-watchman began springing his rattle.
"Has it got a bottom or not?" softly inquired my assistant. I did not understand what she was talking about, and I kept silence.
"I say, has the crate got a bottom, for if it has we shall vainly try to break into it. Here we are digging a trench, and we may, after all, come upon nothing but solid boards. How shall we take them off? Better smash the lock—it is a wretched lock."
Good ideas rarely visit the heads of women, but as you see, they do visit them sometimes. I have always valued good ideas, and have always tried to utilise them as far as possible.
Having found the lock, I tugged at it and wrenched off the whole thing. My accomplice immediately stooped down and wriggled like a serpent into the gaping-open, four-cornered cover of the crate whence she called to me approvingly, sotto voce:
"You're a brick!"
Nowadays a little crumb of praise from a woman is dearer to me than a whole dithyramb from a man, even though he be more eloquent than all the ancient and modern orators put together. Then, however, I was less amiably disposed than I am now, and, paying no attention to the compliment of my comrade, I asked her curtly and anxiously:
"Is there anything?"
In a monotonous tone she set about calculating our discoveries.
"A basketful of bottles—thick furs—a sunshade—an iron pail."
All this was uneatable. I felt that my hopes had vanished.... But suddenly she exclaimed vivaciously:
"Aha! here it is!"
"What?"
"Bread ... a loaf ... it's only wet ... take it!"
A loaf flew to my feet, and after it herself, my valiant comrade. I had already bitten off a morsel, stuffed it in my mouth, and was chewing it....
"Come, give me some too!... And we mustn't stay here.... Where shall we go?" she looked inquiringly about on all sides.... It was dark, wet, and boisterous.
"Look! there's an upset canoe yonder ... let us go there."
"Let us go then!" And off we set, demolishing our booty as we went, and filling our mouths with large portions of it.... The rain grew more violent, the river roared; from somewhere or other resounded a prolonged mocking whistle—just as if Someone great who feared nobody was whistling down all earthly institutions and along with them this horrid autumnal wind and us its heroes. This whistling made my heart throb painfully, in spite of which I greedily went on eating, in which respect the girl, walking on my left hand, kept even pace with me.
"What do they call you?" I asked her, why I know not.
"Natasha," she answered shortly, munching loudly.
I stared at her—my heart ached within me, and then I stared into the mist before me, and it seemed to me as if the inimical countenance of my Destiny was smiling at me enigmatically and coldly.
The rain scourged the timbers of the skiff incessantly, and its soft patter induced melancholy thoughts, and the wind whistled as it flew down into the boat's battered bottom—through a rift, where some loose splinters of wood were rattling together—a disquieting and depressing sound. The waves of the river were splashing on the shore, and sounded so monotonous and hopeless, just as if they were telling something unbearably dull and heavy, which was boring them into utter disgust something from which they wanted to run away and yet were obliged to talk about all the same. The sound of the rain blended with their splashing, and a long-drawn sigh seemed to be floating above the overturned skiff—the endless, labouring sigh of the earth, injured and exhausted by the eternal changes from the bright and warm summer to the cold misty and damp autumn. And the wind blew continually over the desolate shore and the foaming river—blew and sang its melancholy songs.
Our position beneath the shelter of the skiff was utterly devoid of comfort; it was narrow and damp, tiny cold drops of rain dribbled through the damaged bottom ... gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat in silence and shivered with cold. I remember that I wanted to go to sleep. Natasha leaned her back against the hull of the boat and curled herself up into a tiny ball. Embracing her knees with her hands, and resting her chin upon them, she stared doggedly at the river with wide-open eyes; on the pale patch of her face they seemed immense, because of the blue marks below them. She never moved, and this immobility and silence—I felt it—gradually produced within me a terror of my neighbour. I wanted to talk to her, but I knew not how to begin.
It was she herself who spoke.
"What a cursed thing life is!" she exclaimed plainly, abstractedly, and in a tone of deep conviction.
But this was no complaint. In these words there was too much of indifference for a complaint. This simple soul thought according to her understanding, thought and proceeded to form a certain conclusion which she expressed aloud, and which I could not confute for fear of contradicting myself. Therefore I was silent. And she, as if she had not noticed me, continued to sit there immovable.
"Even if we croaked ... what then...." Natasha began again, this time quietly and reflectively. And still there was not one note of complaint in her words. It was plain that this person, in the course of her reflections on life, was regarding her own case, and had arrived at the conviction that in order to preserve herself from the mockeries of life, she was not in a position to do anything else but simply "croak," to use her own expression.
The clearness of this line of thought was inexpressibly sad and painful to me, and I felt that if I kept silence any longer I was really bound to weep.... And it would have been shameful to have done this before a woman, especially as she was not weeping herself. I resolved to speak to her.
"Who was it that knocked you about?" I asked. For the moment I could not think of anything more sensible or more delicate.
"Pashka did it all," she answered in a dull and level tone.
"And who is he?"
"My lover.... He was a baker."
"Did he beat you often?"
"Whenever he was drunk he beat me.... Often!"
And suddenly, turning towards me, she began to talk about herself, Pashka, and their mutual relations. She was "one of the street-walking girls who ..."—and he was a baker with red moustaches and played very well on the banjo. He came to see her at "the establishment," and greatly pleased her, for he was a merry chap and wore nice clean clothes. He had an under-vest which cost fifteen roubles and boots with dress tops. For these reason she had fallen in love with him, and he became her "creditor." And when he became her creditor he made it his business to take away from her the money which the other guests gave to her for bonbons, and getting drunk on this money would fall to beating her; but that would have been nothing if he hadn't also begun to "run after" other girls before her very eyes.
"Now, wasn't that an insult? I am not worse than the others. Of course that meant that he was laughing at me, the blackguard. The day before yesterday I asked leave of my mistress to go out for a bit, went to him, and there I found Dimka sitting beside him drunk. And he, too, was half seas over. I said to him: 'You scoundrel, you!' And he gave me a thorough hiding. And he kicked me and dragged me by the hair—and did everything. But that was nothing to what came after. But he spoiled everything I had on—left me just as I am now! How could I appear before my mistress? He spoiled everything ... my dress and my jacket too—it was quite a new one—I gave a fiver for it ... and tore my kerchief from my head ... Oh, Lord! What will become of me now!" she suddenly whined in a lamentable overstrained voice.
And the wind howled, and became ever colder and more boisterous ... Again my teeth began to dance up and down. And she, too, huddled up to avoid the cold, pressing as closely to me as she could, so that I could see the gleam of her eyes through the darkness.
"What wretches all you men are! I'd burn you all in an oven, I'd cut you in pieces. If anyone of you was dying I'd spit in his mouth, and not pity him a bit. Mean skunks. You wheedle and wheedle, you wag your tails like cringing dogs, and we fools give ourselves up to you, and it's all up with us! Immediately you trample us underfoot ... Miserable loafers!"
She cursed us up and down, but there was no vigour, no malice, no hatred of these "miserable loafers" in her cursing that I could hear. The tone of her language by no means corresponded with its subject-matter, for it was calm enough, and the gamut of her voice was terribly poor.
Yet all this made a stronger impression on me than the most eloquent and convincing pessimistic books and speeches, of which I had and have read not a few, both earlier and later, and still read to this day. And this, you see, was because the agony of a dying person is much more natural and violent than the most minute and picturesque descriptions of death.
I felt really wretched, more from cold than from the words of my neighbour. I groaned softly and gnashed my teeth.
And almost at the same moment I felt two little arms about me—one of them touched my neck and the other lay upon my face, and at the same time an anxious, gentle, friendly voice uttered the question:
"What ails thee?"
I was ready to believe that someone was asking me this and not Natasha, who had just declared that all men were scoundrels, and expressing a wish for their destruction. But she it was, and now she began speaking quickly, hurriedly.
"What ails thee, eh? Art cold? Art frozen? Ah, what a one thou art, sitting there so silent like a little owl! Why, thou shouldst have told me long ago that thou wert cold. Come ... lie on the ground ... stretch thyself out and I will lie ... there! how's that? Now put your arms round me!... tighter! How's that! thou shouldst be warm very soon now ... And then we'll lie back to back.... The night will pass so quickly, see if it won't I say ... hast thou too been drinking?... turned out of thy place, eh?... It doesn't matter."
And she comforted me ... She encouraged me.
May I be thrice accursed! What a world of irony was in this single fact for me! Just imagine! Here was I, seriously occupied at this very time with the destiny of humanity, thinking of the re-organization of the social system, of political revolutions, reading all sorts of devilishly-wise books whose abysmal profundity was certainly unfathomable by their very authors—at this very time, I say, I was trying with all my might to make of myself "a potent active social force." It even seemed to me that I had partially accomplished my object; anyhow, at this time, in my ideas about myself I had got so far as to recognise that I had an exclusive right to exist, that I had the necessary greatness to deserve to live my life, and that I was fully competent to play a great historical part therein. And a venal woman was now warming me with her body, a wretched, battered, hunted creature, who had no place and no value in life, and whom I had never thought of helping till she helped me herself, and whom I really would not have known how to help in any way even if the thought of it had occurred to me.
Ah! I was ready to think that all this was happening to me in a dream—in a disagreeable, an oppressive dream.
But, ugh! it was impossible for me to think that, for cold drops of rain were dripping down upon me, the woman was pressing close to me, her warm breath was fanning my face, and despite a slight bouquet of vodka it did me good. The wind howled and raged, the rain smote upon the skiff, the waves splashed, and both of us, embracing each other convulsively, nevertheless shivered with cold. All this was only too real, and I am certain that nobody ever dreamed such an oppressive and horrid dream as that reality.
But Natasha was talking all the time of something or other, talking so kindly and sympathetically, as only women can talk. Beneath the influence of her voice and kindly words a little fire began to burn up within me, and something inside my heart thawed in consequence.
Then tears poured from my eyes like a hailstorm, washing away from my heart much that was evil, much that was stupid, much sorrow and dirt which had fastened upon it before that night. Natasha, too, encouraged me:
"Come, come, that will do, little one! Don't take on! That'll do! God will give thee another chance ... thou wilt right thyself and stand in thy proper place again ... and it will be all right. And she kept kissing me ... many kisses did she give me ... burning kisses ... and all for nothing..."
Those were the first kisses from a woman that had ever been bestowed upon me, and they were the best kisses too, for all the subsequent kisses cost me frightfully dear, and really gave me nothing at all in exchange.
"Come, don't take on so, funny one! I'll manage for thee to-morrow if thou canst not find a place"—and her quiet persuasive whispering sounded in my ears as if it came through a dream....
There we lay till dawn....
And when the dawn came, we crept from behind the skiff and went into the town.... Then we took friendly leave of each other and never met again, although for half a year I searched for that kind Natasha, with whom I spent the autumn night just described by me, in every hole and corner If she be already dead—and well for her if it were so!—may she rest in peace! And if she be alive ... still I say: peace to her soul! And may the consciousness of her fall never enter her soul ... for that would be a superfluous and fruitless suffering if life is to be lived....