"I don't know."
"Ekh!" said Kapendiukhin, turning away from me in disgust, but Sitanov said calmly:
"You see; no one knows that, whether they be old or young. I tell you that riches in themselves are worth nothing, unless they are applied to some special purpose."
I asked them, "What are you talking about?"
"We don't feel inclined to sleep, and so we are talking," answered the Cossack.
Later, listening to them, I found that they were discussing by night those things which other people discussed by day—God, truth, happiness, the stupidity and cunning of women, the greediness of the rich, and the fact that life is complicated and incomprehensible.
I always listened to their conversations eagerly; they excited me. I was pleased to think that almost every one had arrived at the same conclusion; namely, that life is evil, and that we ought to have a better form of existence! But at the same time I saw that the desire to live under better conditions would have no effect, would change nothing in the lives of the work-people, in their relations one with another. All these talks, throwing a light upon my life as it lay before me, revealed at the same time, beyond it, a sort of melancholy emptiness; and in this emptiness, like specks of dust in a pond ruffled by the wind, floated people, absurdly and exasperatingly, among them those very people who had said that such a crowd was devoid 'of sense. Always ready to give their opinion, they were always passing judgment on others, repeating, bragging, and starting bitter quarrels about mere trifles. They were always seriously offending one another. They tried to guess what would happen to them after death; while on the threshold of the workshop where the washstand stood, the floor-boards had rotted away. From that damp, fetid hole rose the cold, damp smell of sour earth, and it was this that made one's feet freeze. Pavl and I stopped up this hole with straw and cloths. We often said that the boards should be renewed, but the hole grew larger and larger, and in bad weather fumes rose from it as from a pipe. Every one caught cold, and coughed. The tin ventilator in the fortochka squeaked, and when some one had oiled it, though they had all been grumbling at it, Jikharev said:
"It is dull, now that the fortochka has stopped squeaking."
To come straight from the bath and lie down on a dirty, dusty bed, in the midst of dirt and bad smells, did not revolt any one of them. There were many insignificant trifles which made our lives unbearable, which might easily have been remedied, but no one took the trouble to do anything.
They often said: