And Foma was at this time about four hundred versts away from his godfather, in a village hut, on the shore of the Volga. He had just awakened from sleep, and lying on the floor, on a bed of fresh hay, in the middle of the hut, he gazed gloomily out of the window at the sky, which was covered with gray, scattered clouds.
The wind was tearing them asunder and driving them somewhere; heavy and weary, one overtaking another, they were passing across the sky in an enormous flock. Now forming a solid mass, now breaking into fragments, now falling low over the earth, in silent confusion, now again rising upward, one swallowed by another.
Without moving his head, which was heavy from intoxication, Foma looked
long at the clouds and finally began to feel as though silent clouds
were also passing through his breast,—passing, breathing a damp
coldness upon his heart and oppressing him. There was something impotent
in the motion of the clouds across the sky. And he felt the same within
him. Without thinking, he pictured to himself all he had gone through
during the past months. It seemed to him as though he had fallen into a
turbid, boiling stream, and now he had been seized by dark waves, that
resembled these clouds in the sky; had been seized and carried away
somewhere, even as the clouds were carried by the wind. In the darkness
and the tumult which surrounded him, he saw as though through a mist
that certain other people were hastening together with him—to-day not
those of yesterday, new ones each day, yet all looking alike—equally
pitiful and repulsive. Intoxicated, noisy, greedy, they flew about
him as in a whirlwind, caroused at his expense, abused him, fought,
screamed, and even wept more than once. And he beat them. He remembered
that one day he had struck somebody on the face, torn someone’s coat off
and thrown it into the water and that some one had kissed his hands with
wet, cold lips as disgusting as frogs. Had kissed and wept, imploring
him not to kill. Certain faces flashed through his memory, certain
sounds and words rang in it. A woman in a yellow silk waist, unfastened
at the breast, had sung in a loud, sobbing voice:
“And so let us live while we can
And then—e’en grass may cease to grow.”
All these people, like himself, grown wild and beastlike, were seized by the same dark wave and carried away like rubbish. All these people, like himself, must have been afraid to look forward to see whither this powerful, wild wave was carrying them. And drowning their fear in wine, they were rushing forward down the current struggling, shouting, doing something absurd, playing the fool, clamouring, clamouring, without ever being cheerful. He was doing the same, whirling in their midst. And now it seemed to him, that he was doing all this for fear of himself, in order to pass the sooner this strip of life, or in order not to think of what would be afterward.
Amid the burning turmoil of carouses, in the crowd of people, seized by debauchery, perplexed by violent passions, half-crazy in their longing to forget themselves—only Sasha was calm and contained. She never drank to intoxication, always addressed people in a firm, authoritative voice, and all her movements were equally confident, as though this stream had not taken possession of her, but she was herself mastering its violent course. She seemed to Foma the cleverest person of all those that surrounded him, and the most eager for noise and carouse; she held them all in her sway, forever inventing something new and speaking in one and the same manner to everybody; for the driver, the lackey and the sailor she had the same tone and the same words as for her friends and for Foma. She was younger and prettier than Pelageya, but her caresses were silent, cold. Foma imagined that deep in her heart she was concealing from everybody something terrible, that she would never love anyone, never reveal herself entire. This secrecy in the woman attracted him toward her with a feeling of timorous curiosity, of a great, strained interest in her calm, cold soul, which seemed even as dark as her eyes.
Somehow Foma said to her one day:
“But what piles of money you and I have squandered!”
She glanced at him, and asked:
“And why should we save it?”
“Indeed, why?” thought Foma, astonished by the fact that she reasoned so simply.