"There is no God," he said.
"Where did we all come from, then?"
"I don't know."
When I asked him how God could possibly not be, he explained:
"Don't you see that God is height!"
He raised his long arm above his head, then lowered it to an arshin from the floor, and said:
"And man is depth! Is that true? And it is written: Man was created in the image and likeness of God,—as you know! And what is Golovev like?"
This defeated me. The dirty and drunken old man, in spite of his years, was given to an unmentionable sin. I remembered the Viatski soldier, Ermokhin, and grandmother's sister. Where was God's likeness in them?
"Human creatures are swine—as you know," said Sitanov, and then he tried to console me. "Never mind, Maxim, there are good people; there are!"
He was easy to get on with; he was so simple. When he did not know anything, he said frankly: