II.
On arriving at the skirts of the wood Efimushka and his comrade resolved to rest, and sat down on the grass round the trunk of a huge oak. The prisoner slowly unloosed his knapsack from his shoulder, and said to the Sotsky indifferently: "Would you like some bread?"
"Give me some, and I'll show you," said Efimushka, smiling.
And they began to munch their bread in silence. Efimushka ate slowly, sighing to himself from time to time, and gazing about the fields to the left of him; but his comrade, altogether absorbed in the process of assimilation, ate quickly, and chewed noisily, with his eyes fixed steadily on his morsel of bread. The fields were growing dark, the ears of corn had already lost their golden colouring, and were turning a rosy-yellow; ragged clouds were creeping up the sky from the south-west, and their shadows fell upon the plain—fell and crept along the corn towards the wood, where sat the two dusky human figures. And from the trees also shadows descended upon the earth, and the breath of these shadows wafted sorrow into the soul.
"Glory be to Thee, O Lord!" exclaimed Efimushka, gathering up the crumbs of his piece of bread from the ground, and licking them off the palm of his hand.... "The Lord hath fed us, no eye beheld us. And if any eye hath seen, unoffended it hath been. Well, friend, shall we sit here a little while? How about that cold dungeon of ours?"
The other shook his head.
"Well, this is a very nice place, and has many memories for me. Over there used to be the mansion of Squire Tuchkov...."
"Where?" asked the prisoner quickly, turning in the direction indicated by a wave of Efimushka's hand.
"Over there, behind that rising land. Everything around here belongs to them They were the richest people hereabouts, but after the emancipation they dwindled ... I also belonged to them once. All of us hereabouts belonged to them It was a great family. The squire himself, Aleksander Nikietich Tuchkov, was a colonel. There were children, too, four sons; I wonder what has become of them all now? Really folks are carried away like autumn leaves by the wind. Only one of them, Ivan Aleksandrovich, is safe and sound—I am taking you to him now—he is our district magistrate.... He is old already."
The prisoner laughed. It was a hollow, internal sort of laugh—his bosom and his stomach were convulsed, but his face remained immovable, and through his gnashing teeth came hollow sounds like sharp barks.
Efimushka shuddered painfully, and, moving his stick closer to his hand, asked: "What ails you? Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing—or at any rate, it is all over now," said the prisoner, spasmodically, but amicably—"but go on with your story."
"Well, that's how it is, you see—the Tuchkov Squires used to be something here, and now there are none left.... Some of them died, and some of them came to grief, and now never a word do you hear of them—never a word. There was one in particular who used to be here ... the youngest of the lot ... they called him Victor ... Vick.... He and I were comrades. In the days when the emancipation was promulgated, he and I were lads fourteen years old.... Ah, what a fine young chap he was—the Lord be good to his dear little soul! A pure stream, if ever there was one!—flashing along and gurgling merrily all day long. I wonder where he is now? Alive or already no more?"
"Was he such a frightfully good fellow as all that?" inquired Efimushka's fellow-traveller quietly.
"That he was!" exclaimed Efimushka, "handsome, with a head of his own, and such a good heart! Ah, thou pilgrim man, good heart alive, he was a ripe berry if you like! If only you—could have seen the pair of us in those days! Aye, aye, aye! What games we did play! What a merry life was ours!—raspberries la la[1]!—'Efimka!' he would cry, 'let us go a hunting!' He had a gun of his own—his father gave it to him on his name-day—and he let me carry it for him. And off we went to the woods for a whole day, nay, for two, for three days! When we came home—he had an imposition, and I had a whacking. Yet look you! the next day he would say: 'Efimka! shall we go after mushrooms?' Thousands of birds we killed together. And as for mushrooms—we gathered poods[2] of them! And the butterflies and cockchafers he caught, and stuck them on pins in little boxes! And he taught me my lessons too! 'Efimka,' said he, 'I'll teach you.' And he went at it hammer and tongs. 'Come, begin,' says he; 'say A,' and I roared 'A-a-a!' How we laughed. At first I looked upon it as a joke. What does a boor want with reading and writing? But he persuaded me. 'Come, you little fool,' says he, 'the emancipation was given to you that you might learn. You must learn your letters in order to know how to live and where to seek for justice.' Of course, children heard their parents speak like that in those days, and began to talk the same way themselves.—It was all nonsense, of course—true learning is in the heart, and it is the heart that teaches the right way. So he taught me, you see! How he made me stick to it! He gave me no rest, I can tell you. What torments! 'Vick,' I said, 'I can't learn my letters. It's not in me. I really can't do it.' Oh, how he pitched into me. Sometimes he lambed it into me with a whip—but teach me he would! 'Oh, be merciful,' I'd cry! 'Learn, then,' he would say! Once I ran away from him, regularly bolted, and there was a to do. He searched for me all day with a gun—he would have shot me. He said to me afterwards: 'If I had met you that day,' said he, 'I should have shot you;' that's what he said! Ah, he was so fierce! Fiery, unbending, a genuine master. He loved me, and he had a soul of flame. Once my papa scored my back with the birch-rod, and when Vick saw it he rushed off to our hut, and there was a scene, my brother! He was all pale and trembling, clenched his fists, and went after my father into his bedroom 'How dare you do it?' he asked. Papa said: 'But I'm his father!' 'Father, eh? Very well, father! I cannot cope with you single-handed, but your back shall be the same as Efimka's.' He burst into tears after these words, and ran away. And what do you say to this, my father—he was as good as his word. Evidently he said something to the manor-house servants about it. For one day my father came home groaning, and began to take off his shirt, but it was sticking to his back! My father was very angry with me that time. 'I've suffered all through you,' he said, 'you're a sneak, the squire's sneak.' And he gave me a sound hiding. But he was wrong about my being the squire's sneak I was never that, he might have let it alone."
[1] Equivalent to "beer and skittles."
[2] A pood = 40 lb.
"No, you were never that, Efim!" said the prisoner with conviction, and he trembled all over, "that's plain, you could not become a lickspittle," he added hastily.
"Ah, he was a one!" exclaimed Efimushka, "and I loved him. Ah, Vick, Vick! Such a talented lad, too. Everyone loved him, it was not only I. He spoke several languages ... I don't remember what they were. It's thirty years ago. Ah! Lord, Lord! Where is he now? Well, if he be alive, he is either in high places ... or else he's in hot water. Life is a strange distracting thing! It seethes and seethes, and makes a pretty brew of the best of us! And folks, vanish away; it is pitiful, to the last gasp it is pitiful!" Efimushka sighed heavily, and his head sank upon his breast. For a moment there was silence.
"And are you sorry for me?" asked the prisoner merrily. There was no doubt about his merry way of asking, his whole face was lit up by a good and kindly smile.
"You're a rum 'un!" exclaimed Efimushka; "one cannot but pity you of course! What are you, if you come to think of it? Wandering about as you do, it is plain that you have nothing of your own in the earth—not a corner, not a chip that you can call your own. Maybe, too, you carry about with you some great sin—who knows what you are? In a word, you're a miserable creature."
"So it is," answered the prisoner.
And again they were silent. The sun had already set, and the shadows were growing thicker. In the air there was a fresh smell of earth and flowers and sylvan humidity. For a long time they sat there in silence.
"However nice it may be to stay here we must still be going. We have some eight versts before us. Come now, my father, let us be going!"
"Let us sit a little longer," begged "the father."
"Well, I don't care, I love to be about the woods at night myself. But when shall we get to the district magistrate? He will blow me up, it is late."
"Rubbish, he won't blow you up."
"I suppose you'll say a little word on our behalf, eh?" remarked the Sotsky with a smile.
"I may."
"Oh—ai!"
"What do you mean?"
"You're a joker. He'll pepper you finely."
"Flog me, eh?"
"He's cruel! And quick to box one's ears, and at any rate you'll leave him a little groggy on your pins."
"Well, well, we'll make it all right with him," said the prisoner confidently, at the same time giving his escort a friendly tap on the shoulder.
This familiarity did not please Efimushka. At any rate he, after all, was the person in authority, and this blockhead ought not to have forgotten that Efimushka carried his copper plaque of office on his bosom. Efimushka rose to his feet, took up his stick, drew forth his plaque, let it hang openly on the middle of his breast, and said, severely:
"Stand up! Let's be off!"
"I'm not going," said the prisoner.
Efimushka was flabbergasted. Screwing up his eyes he was silent for a moment, not understanding why this prisoner should suddenly have taken to jesting.
"Come, don't make a pother, let's be going!" he said somewhat more softly.
"I am not going," repeated the prisoner emphatically.
"Why not?" shrieked Efimushka, full of rage and amazement.
"Because I want to pass the night here with you. Come! let us light a fire!"
"I let you pass the night here? I light a fire here by your side, eh? A pretty thing, indeed!" growled Efimushka Yet at the bottom of his soul he was amazed. The man had said: I won't go! but had shown no signs of opposition, no disposition to quarrel, but simply lay down on the ground and that was all. What was to be the end of it?
"Don't make a row, Efim!" advised the prisoner coolly.
Efimushka was again silent, and, shifting from leg to leg as he stood over the prisoner, regarded him with wide-open eyes. And the latter kept looking at him and looking at him and smiling. Efimushka fell a pondering as to what he ought to be doing next.
And how was it that this vagabond, who had been so surly and sullen all along, should all at once have become so gentle? Wouldn't it be as well to fall upon him, twist his arms, give him a couple of whacks on the neck, and so put an end to all this nonsense? And with as severely an official tone as he could command, Efimushka said:
"Come, you rascal, stir your stumps! Get up, I say! And I tell you this, I'll make you trot along then, never fear! Do you understand? Very well! Look! I am about to strike."
"Strike me?" asked the prisoner with a smile.
"Yes, you; what are you thinking about, eh?"
"What! would you, Efimushka Gruizlov, strike me, Vic Tuchkov?"
"Alas! you are a little wide of the mark, you are," cried Efimushka in astonishment; "but who are you, really? What sort of game is this?"
"Don't screech so, Efimushka! It is about time you recognised me, I think," said the prisoner, smiling quietly and regaining his feet; "how do you find yourself, eh?"
Efimushka bounded back from the hand extended to him, and gazed with all his eyes at the face of his prisoner. Then his lips began to tremble, and his whole face puckered up.
"Viktor Aleksandrovich—is it really and truly you?" he asked in a whisper.
"If you like I'll show you my documents, or better still, I'll call to mind old times. Let's see—don't you recollect how you fell into the wolf's lair in the Ramensky fir-woods? Or how I climbed up that tree after the nest, and hung head downwards for the fun of the thing? Or how we stole the plums of that old Quaker woman Petrovna? And the tales she used to tell us?"
Efimushka sat down on the ground heavily and laughed awkwardly.
"You believe me now, eh?" asked the prisoner, and he sat down alongside of him, looked him in the face, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. Efimushka was silent. It had grown absolutely dark around them. In the forest a confused murmuring and whispering had arisen. Far away in the thickest part of the wood the wail of a night-bird could be heard. A cloud was passing over the wood with an almost perceptible motion.
"Well, Efim, art thou not glad to meet me? Or art thou so very glad after all? Ah—holy soul! Thou hast remained the child thou wert wont to be. Efim? Say something, my dear old paragon!"
Efimushka cleared his throat violently.
"Well, my brother! Aye, aye, aye!" and the prisoner shook his head reproachfully. "What's up, eh? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Here are you, in your fiftieth year, and yet you waste your time in this wretched sort of business. Chuck it!"—and putting his arm round the Sotsky's shoulder he lightly shook him. The Sotsky laughed, a tremulous sort of laugh, and at last he spoke, without looking at his neighbour.
"What am I?... I'm glad, of course... And you to be like this? How can I believe it? You and ... such a business as this! Vic—and in such a plight! In a dungeon ... without passports ... living on crusts of bread ... without tobacco ... Oh, Lord!... Is this a right state of things? If I were like that for instance ... and you were even a Sotsky ... even that would be easier to bear! And now how will it end? How can I look you in the face? I had always a joyful recollection of you ... Vic ... as you may think ... Even then my heart ached. But now! Oh, Lord! Why, if I were to tell people—they wouldn't believe it."
He murmured these broken phrases, gazing fixedly at his feet, and clutching now his bosom and now his throat with one hand.
"There's no need to tell folks anything about it. And pray cease ... it is not your fault, is it? Don't be disquieted about me ... I've got my papers. I didn't show them to the Starosta because I didn't want to be known about here. Brother Ivan won't put me in quod; on the contrary, he will help to put me on my legs again ... I'll stay with him a bit, and you and I shall go out hunting again, eh ... You see how well things are turning out."
Vic said these words soothingly, in the tone used by grown-up people when they would soothe spoilt children. The moon emerged from the forest to meet the advancing cloud, and the edge of the cloud, silvered by her rays, assumed a soft opal tint In the corn the quails were calling; somewhere or other a land-rail rattled. The darkness of the night was growing denser and denser.
"And this is all really true," began Efimushka softly; "Ivan Aleksandrovich will be glad to see his own brother, and you, of course, will begin your life again. And this is really so ... And we will go hunting again ... Only 'tis not altogether as it was. I daresay you have done some deeds in the course of your life. And it is—ah, what is it?"
Vic Tuchkov laughed.
"Brother Efimushka, I have certainly done deeds in my life and to spare ... I have run through my share of the property ... I have not succeeded in the service, I have been an actor, I have been a timber-trade clerk, after that I've had a troupe of actors of my own ... and after that I've gone quite to the dogs, have owed debts right and left, got mixed up in a shady affair. Ah! I've been everything—and lost everything."
The prisoner waved his hand and smiled good-humouredly.
"Brother Efimushka, I am no longer a gentleman. I am quite cured of that. Now you and I will live together. Eh! what do you say?"
"Nothing at all," said Efimushka with a stifled voice; "I'm ashamed, that's all. Here have I been saying to you all sorts of things ... senseless words, and all sorts of rubbish. If it were a muzhik I could understand it.... Well, shall we make a night of it here? I'll make a fire."
"All right! make it!"
The prisoner stretched himself at full length on the ground, face upwards, while the Sotsky disappeared into the skirt of the wood, from whence speedily resounded the cracking of twigs and branches. Soon Efimushka reappeared with an armful of firewood, and in a few moments a fiery serpent was merrily creeping along a little hillock of dry branches.
The old comrades gazed at it meditatively, sitting opposite each other, and smoking their one pipe alternately.
"Just like it used to be," said Efimushka sadly.
"Only times are changed," said Tuchkov.
"Well, life is stronger than character. Lord, how she has broken you down."
"It is still undecided which of the two will prevail—she or I," laughed Tuchkov.
For a time they were silent.
"Oh, Lord God! Vic! how lightly you take it all!" exclaimed Efimushka bitterly.
"Certainly! Why not? What has been—is gone for ever!" observed Tuchkov philosophically.
Behind them arose the dark wall of the softly whispering forest, the bonfire crackled merrily; all around them the shadows danced their noiseless dance, and over the plain lay impenetrable darkness.
[VII.—HER LOVER.]
An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story.
When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside one of those ladies who—you know what I mean. She was a Pole, and they called her Teresa. She was a tallish, powerfully-built brunette, with black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face as if carved out by a hatchet—the bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, worthy of a fishwife, inspired me with horror. I lived on the top flight and her garret was opposite to mine. I never left my door open when I knew her to be at home But this, after all, was a very rare occurrence. Sometimes I chanced to meet her on the staircase or in the yard, and she would smile upon me with a smile which seemed to me to be sly and cynical. Occasionally, I saw her drunk, with bleary eyes, touzled hair, and a particularly hideous smile. On such occasions she would speak to me:
"How d'ye do, Mr. Student!" and her stupid laugh would still further intensify my loathing of her. I should have liked to have changed my quarters in order to have avoided such encounters and greetings; but my little chamber was a nice one, and there was such a wide view from the window, and it was always so quiet in the street below—so I endured.
And one morning I was sprawling on my couch, trying to find some sort of excuse for not attending my class, when the door opened, and the bass voice of Teresa the loathsome, resounded from my threshold:
"Good health to you, Mr. Student!"
"What do you want?" I said. I saw that her face was confused and supplicatory.... It was a very unusual sort of face for her.
"Look ye, sir! I want to beg a favour of you. Will you grant it me?"
I lay there silent, and thought to myself:
"Gracious! An assault upon my virtue, neither more nor less.—Courage, my boy!"
"I want to send a letter home, that's what it is," she said, her voice was beseeching, soft, timid.
"Deuce take you!" I thought; but up I jumped, sat down at my table, took a sheet of paper, and said:
"Come here, sit down, and dictate!"
She came, sat down very gingerly on a chair, and looked at me with a guilty look.
"Well, to whom do you want to write?"
"To Boleslav Kashput, at the town of Svyeptsyana, on the Warsaw Road...."
"Well, fire away!"
"My dear Bolés ... my darling ... my faithful lover. May the Mother of God protect thee! Thou heart of gold, why hast thou not written for such a long time to thy sorrowing little dove, Teresa?"
I very nearly burst out laughing. "A sorrowing little dove!" more than five feet high, with fists a stone and more in weight, and as black a face as if the little dove had lived all its life in a chimney, and had never once washed itself! Restraining myself somehow, I asked:
"Who is this Bolest?"
"Bolés, Mr. Student," she said, as if offended with me for blundering over the name, "he is Bolés—my young man."
"Young man!"
"Why are you so surprised, sir? Cannot I, a girl, have a young man?"
She? A girl? Well!
"Oh, why not?" I said, "all things are possible. And has he been your young man long?"
"Six years."
"Oh, ho!" I thought. "Well, let us write your letter ..."
And I tell you plainly that I would willingly have changed places with this Bolés if his fair correspondent had been not Teresa, but something less than she.
"I thank you most heartily, sir, for your kind services," said Teresa to me, with a curtsey. "Perhaps I can show you some service, eh?"
"No, I most humbly thank you all the same."
"Perhaps, sir, your shirts or your trousers may want a little mending?"
I felt that this mastodon in petticoats had made me grow quite red with shame, and I told her pretty sharply that I had no need whatever of her services.
She departed.
A week or two passed away. It was evening. I was sitting at my window whistling and thinking of some expedient for enabling me to get away from myself. I was bored, the weather was dirty. I didn't want to go out, and out of sheer ennui I began a course of self-analysis and reflection. This also was dull enough work, but I didn't care about doing anything else. Then the door opened. Heaven be praised, someone came in.
"Oh, Mr. Student, you have no pressing business, I hope?"
It was Teresa. Humph!
"No. What is it?"
"I was going to ask you, sir, to write me another letter."
"Very well! To Bolés, eh?"
"No, this time it is from him."
"Wha-at?"
"Stupid that I am! It is not for me, Mr. Student, I beg your pardon. It is for a friend of mine, that is to say, not a friend but an acquaintance—a man acquaintance. He has a sweetheart just like me here, Teresa. That's how it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this Teresa?"
I looked at her—her face was troubled, her fingers were trembling. I was a bit fogged at first—and then I guessed how it was.
"Look here, my lady," I said, "there are no Boleses or Teresas at all, and you've been telling me a pack of lies. Don't you come sneaking about me any longer. I have no wish whatever to cultivate your acquaintance. Do you understand?"
And suddenly she grew strangely terrified and distraught; she began to shift from foot to foot without moving from the place, and spluttered comically, as if she wanted to say something and couldn't. I waited to see what would come of all this, and I saw and felt that, apparently, I had made a great mistake in suspecting her of wishing to draw me from the path of righteousness. It was evidently something very different.
"Mr Student!" she began, and suddenly, waving her hand, she turned abruptly towards the door and went out. I remained with a very unpleasant feeling in my mind. I listened. Her door was flung violently to—plainly the poor wench was very angry.... I thought it over, and resolved to go to her, and, inviting her to come in here, write everything she wanted.
I entered her apartment. I looked round. She was sitting at the table, leaning on her elbows, with her head in her hands.
"Listen to me," I said.
Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, well!
"Listen to me," I said.
She leaped from her seat, came towards me with flashing eyes, and laying her hands on my shoulders began to whisper, or rather to hum in her peculiar bass voice:
"Look you, now! It's like this. There's no Bolés, at all, and there's no Teresa either. But what's that to you? Is it a hard thing for you to draw your pen over paper? Eh? Ah, and you, too! Still such a little fair-haired boy! There's nobody at all, neither Bolés, nor Teresa, only me. There you have it, and much good may it do you!"
"Pardon me!" said I, altogether flabbergasted by such a reception, "what is it all about? There's no, Bolés, you say?"
"No. So it is."
"And no Teresa either?"
"And no Teresa. I'm Teresa."
I didn't understand it at all. I fixed my eyes upon her, and tried to make out which of us was taking leave of his or her senses. But she went again to the table, searched about for something, came back to me, and said in an offended tone:
"If it was so hard for you to write to Bolés, look, there's your letter, take it! Others will write for me."
I looked. In her hand was my letter to Bolés. Phew!
"Listen, Teresa! What is the meaning of all this? Why must you get others to write for you when I have already written it, and you haven't sent it."
"Sent it where?"
"Why, to this—Bolés."
"There's no such person."
I absolutely did not understand it. There was nothing for me but to spit and go. Then she explained.
"What is it?" she said, still offended. "There's no such person, I tell you," and she extended her arms as if she herself did not understand why there should be no such person. "But I wanted him to be.... Am I then not a human creature like the rest of them? Yes, yes, I know, I know, of course.... Yet no harm was done to anyone by my writing to him that I can see...."
"Pardon me—to whom?"
"To Bolés, of course."
"But he doesn't exist."
"Alas! alas! But what if he doesn't? He doesn't exist, but he might! I write to him, and it looks as if he did exist. And Teresa—that's me, and he replies to me, and then I write to him again...."
I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable, so ashamed, somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and this human being had invented a friend for herself!
"Look, now! you wrote me a letter to Bolés, and I gave it to someone else to read it to me; and when they read it to me I listened and fancied that Bolés was there. And I asked you to write me a letter from Bolés to Teresa—that is to me. When they write such a letter for me, and read it to me, I feel quite sure that Bolés is there. And life grows easier for me in consequence."
"Deuce take thee for a blockhead!" said I to myself when I heard this.
And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to Bolés, and an answer from Bolés to Teresa. I wrote those answers well.... She, of course, listened to them, and wept like anything, roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in return for my thus moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Bolés, she began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history, began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this time she is dead.
My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up at the sky, and thus concluded:
Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of better things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do not understand this.
And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly—-and very cruelly. The fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh, and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after day for ages. And we actually listen—and the Devil only knows how hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud sermonizing of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and so far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough of this. It is all as old as the hills—so old that it is a shame to speak of it Very old indeed—yes, that's where it is!
[VIII.—CHELKASH.]
The blue southern sky was bedimmed by the dust rising from the haven; the burning sun looked dully down into the greenish sea as if through a thin grey veil. It could not reflect itself in the water, which indeed was cut up by the strokes of oars and the furrows made by steam-screws and the sharp keels of Turkish feluccas and other sailing vessels, ploughing up in every direction the crowded harbour in which the free billows of the sea were confined within fetters of granite and crushed beneath the huge weights gliding over their crests, though they beat against the sides of the ships, beat against the shore, beat themselves into raging foam—foam begrimed by all sorts of floating rubbish.
The sound of the anchor chains, the clang of the couplings of the trucks laden with heavy goods, the metallic wail of the iron plates falling on the stone flagging, the dull thud of timber, the droning of the carrier-wagons, the screaming of the sirens of the steamships, now piercingly keen, now sinking to a dull roar, the cries of the porters, sailors, and custom-house officers—all these sounds blended into the deafening symphony of the laborious day, and vibrating restlessly, remained stationary in the sky over the haven, as if fearing to mount higher and disappear. And there ascended from the earth, continually, fresh and ever fresh waves of sound—some dull and mysterious, and these vibrated sullenly all around, others clangorous and piercing which rent the dusty sultry air.
Granite, iron, the stone haven, the vessels and the people—everything is uttering in mighty tones a madly passionate hymn to Mercury. But the voices of the people, weak and overborne, are scarce audible therein. And the people themselves to whom all this hubbub is primarily due, are ridiculous and pitiful. Their little figures, dusty, strenuous, wriggling into and out of sight, bent double beneath the burden of heavy goods lying on their shoulders, beneath the burden of the labour of dragging these loads hither and thither in clouds of dust, in a sea of heat and racket—are so tiny and insignificant in comparison with the iron colossi surrounding them, in comparison with the loads of goods, the rumbling wagons, and all the other things which these same little creatures have made! Their own handiwork has subjugated and degraded them.
Standing by the quays, heavy giant steamships are now whistling, now hissing, now deeply snorting, and in every sound given forth by them there seems to be a note of ironical contempt for the grey, dusty little figures of the people crowding about on the decks, and filling the deep holds with the products of their slavish labour. Laughable even to tears are the long strings of dockyard men, dragging after them tens of thousands of pounds of bread and pitching them into the iron bellies of the vessels in order to earn a few pounds of that very same bread for their own stomachs—people, unfortunately, not made of iron and feeling the pangs of hunger. These hustled, sweated crowds, stupefied by weariness and by the racket and heat, and these powerful machines, made by these selfsame people, basking, sleek and unruffled, in the sunshine—machines which, in the first instance, are set in motion not by steam, but by the muscles and blood of their makers—in such a juxtaposition there was a whole epic of cold and cruel irony.
The din is overwhelming, the dust irritates the nostrils and blinds the eyes, the heat burns and exhausts the body, and everything around—the buildings, the people, the stone quays—seem to be on the stretch, full-ripe, ready to burst, ready to lose all patience and explode in some grandiose catastrophe, like a volcano, and thus one feels that one would be able to breathe more easily and freely in the refreshened air; one feels that then a stillness would reign upon the earth, and this dusty din, benumbing and irritating the nerves to the verge of melancholy mania, would vanish, and in the town, and on the sea, and in the sky, everything would be calm, clear, and glorious. But it only seems so. One fancies it must be so, because man has not yet wearied of hoping for better things, and the wish to feel himself free has not altogether died away within him.
Twelve measured and sonorous strokes of a bell resound. When the last brazen note has died away the wild music of labour has already diminished by at least a half. Another minute and it has passed into a dull involuntary murmur. The voices of men and the splashing of the sea have now become more audible. The dinner-hour has come.