And he wept, shedding many drunken tears. A drunken, small-sized, swarthy man sat down close to him, began to remind him of something, tried to kiss him, and striking a knife against the table, shouted:
“True! Silence! These are powerful words! Let the elephants and the mammoths of the disorder of life speak! The raw Russian conscience speaks holy words! Roar on, Gordyeeff! Roar at everything!” And again he clutched at Foma’s shoulders, flung himself on his breast, raising to Foma’s face his round, black, closely-cropped head, which was ceaselessly turning about on his shoulders on all sides, so that Foma was unable to see his face, and he was angry at him for this, and kept on pushing him aside, crying excitedly:
“Get away! Where is your face? Go on!”
A deafening, drunken laughter smote the air about them, and choking with laughter, the son of the brandy-distiller roared to someone hoarsely:
“Come to me! A hundred roubles a month with board and lodging! Throw the paper to the dogs. I’ll give you more!”
And everything rocked from side to side in rhythmic, wave-like movement. Now the people moved farther away from Foma, now they came nearer to him, the ceiling descended, the floor rose, and it seemed to Foma that he would soon be flattened and crushed. Then he began to feel that he was floating somewhere over an immensely wide and stormy river, and, staggering, he cried out in fright:
“Where are we floating? Where is the captain?”
He was answered by the loud, senseless laughter of the drunken crowd, and by the shrill, repulsive shout of the swarthy little man:
“True! we are all without helm and sails. Where is the captain? What? Ha, ha, ha!”
Foma awakened from this nightmare in a small room with two windows, and the first thing his eyes fell upon was a withered tree. It stood near the window; its thick trunk, barkless, with a rotten heart, prevented the light from entering the room; the bent, black branches, devoid of leaves, stretched themselves mournfully and helplessly in the air, and shaking to and fro, they creaked softly, plaintively. A rain was falling; streams of water were beating against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there. This sobbing sound was joined by another sound—a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling.