And suddenly he was struck by a thought which appeared great to him:
“And hard work is cheaper than easy work! Some man will give himself up entire to his work for a rouble, while another takes a thousand with one finger.”
He was pleasantly roused by this thought. It seemed to him that he discovered another falsehood in the life of man, another fraud which they conceal. He recalled one of his stokers, the old man Ilya, who, for ten copecks, used to be on watch at the fireplace out of his turn, working for a comrade eight hours in succession, amid suffocating heat. One day, when he had fallen sick on account of overwork, he was lying on the bow of the steamer, and when Foma asked him why he was thus ruining himself, Ilya replied roughly and sternly:
“Because every copeck is more necessary to me than a hundred roubles to you. That’s why!”
And, saying this, the old man turned his body, which was burning with pain, with its back to Foma.
Reflecting on the stoker his thoughts suddenly and without any effort, embraced all those petty people that were doing hard work. He wondered, Why do they live? What pleasure is it for them to live on earth? They constantly do but their dirty, hard work, they eat poorly, are poorly clad, they drink. One man is sixty years old, and yet he keeps on toiling side by side with the young fellows. And they all appeared to Foma as a huge pile of worms, which battled about on earth just to get something to eat. In his memory sprang up his meetings with these people, one after another—their remarks about life—now sarcastic and mournful, now hopelessly gloomy remarks—their wailing songs. And now he also recalled how one day in the office Yefim had said to the clerk who hired the sailors:
“Some Lopukhin peasants have come here to hire themselves out, so don’t give them more than ten roubles a month. Their place was burned down to ashes last summer, and they are now in dire need—they’ll work for ten roubles.”
Sitting on the beams, Foma rocked his whole body to and fro, and out of the darkness, from the river, various human figures appeared silently before him—sailors, stokers, clerks, waiters, half-intoxicated painted women, and tavern-loungers. They floated in the air like shadows; something damp and brackish came from them, and the dark, dense throng moved on slowly, noiselessly and swiftly, like clouds in an autumn sky. The soft splashing of the waves poured into his soul like sadly sighing music. Far away, somewhere on the other bank of the river, burned a wood-pile; embraced by the darkness on all sides, it was at times almost absorbed by it, and in the darkness it trembled, a reddish spot scarcely visible to the eye. But now the fire flamed up again, the darkness receded, and it was evident that the flame was striving upward. And then it sank again.
“Oh Lord, Oh Lord!” thought Foma, painfully and bitterly, feeling that grief was oppressing his heart with ever greater power. “Here I am, alone, even as that fire. Only no light comes from me, nothing but fumes and smoke. If I could only meet a wise man! Someone to speak to. It is utterly impossible for me to live alone. I cannot do anything. I wish I might meet a man.”
Far away, on the river, two large purple fires appeared, and high above them was a third. A dull noise resounded in the distance, something black was moving toward Foma.