"When I'm big, I shall be a soldier. Then there'll be a war, and I'll go to the war. I'm brave, and so I'll rush at the enemy before all the others and capture the standard—that's what my uncle did—and General Gourko gave Kim a medal and five roubles."
Ilya listened, smiling, and looked at the pock-marked face, and the wide, twitching nostrils. In the evening when the shop was shut, Ilya went into the little room at the back. The samovar made ready by the lad was on the table, and bread and sausage. Gavrik had his tea and bread and went into the shop to sleep, but Ilya sat long by the samovar, often as much as two hours. Two chairs, a table, a bed, and a cupboard for household utensils made up all the furniture of Ilya's new home. The room was small and low, with a square window from which could be seen the feet of the passers-by, the roofs of the houses over the way, and the sky above the roofs. He hung a white muslin curtain before the window. An iron railing cut the window off from the street, and this displeased Ilya very much. Over his bed was a picture—"The Steps of Man's Life." This picture was a great favourite with Ilya, and he had long wished to buy it, but for one reason and another he had never possessed it till he opened his shop, though it cost but ten kopecks.
The steps of man's life were arranged in the form of an arch, under which was represented Paradise; here the Almighty, surrounded with rays of light and flowers, talked with Adam and Eve. There were seventeen steps in all. On the first stood a child supported by his mother, and underneath, in red letters: "The first step." On the second the child was beating a drum, and the inscription ran: "Five years old—he plays." At seven years of age he began "to learn;" at ten, "goes to school;" at twenty-one he stood on the step with a rifle in his hand, and a smiling face, and underneath was written: "Serves his time as a soldier." On the next step he is twenty-five, he is in evening dress, with an opera hat in one hand and a bouquet in the other—"he is a bridegroom." Then his beard is grown, he has a long coat and a red tie, and is standing near a stout lady in yellow, and pressing her hand. Next he is thirty-five; he stands with rolled-up shirt-sleeves by an anvil and hammers the iron. At the top of the arch he is sitting in a red chair reading the paper, his wife and four children are listening to him. He himself and all his family are well dressed, respectable, with healthy, happy faces. At this time he is fifty years old. But note how the steps begin to go down; the man's beard is already grey, he is clad in a long yellow coat, and in his hands he holds a bag of fish and a jar of some sort. This step is labelled: "Household duties." On the following step the man is rocking the cradle of his grandson; lower down "he is led," being now eighty years old; and in the last—he is ninety-five—he is in a chair with his feet in a coffin, and behind the chair stands Death, with the scythe in his hand.
When Ilya sat by the samovar he looked at the picture, and it pleased him to see the life of man so accurately and simply depicted. The picture radiated peace, the bright colours seemed to smile at him, and he was persuaded that the series represented honourable life wisely and intelligibly, as an example to men—life exactly as it should be led. As he gazed at this representation of life, he thought that now that he had attained his desire, his career must henceforth follow the picture exactly. He would mount upwards, and right at the summit, when he had saved enough money, he would marry a modest girl who had learned to read and to write.
The samovar hummed and whistled in a melancholy way. The sky looked dull through the glass of the window and the muslin curtain, and the stars were hardly visible. There is always something disturbing in the glance of the stars.
"Perhaps it would be better to marry at forty," thought Ilya. "Life is so disturbed with women; they bring such useless hurrying and so many petty things: and it is better to marry a girl who is close on thirty. But then, if you marry late, you die and never have time to start your children for themselves."
The samovar whistles more gently but more shrilly. The fine sound pierces the ears unbearably; it is like the buzzing of a fly, and distracts and confuses thought. But Ilya does not put the lid on the chimney, for if the samovar ceases to whistle, the room becomes so still. In his new house, new feelings, hitherto unknown, come to visit him. Formerly he had lived constantly close to people, separated from them only by thin partitions; now he was shut off by stone walls and felt no man at his back. "Why must we die?" Lunev asks himself suddenly, looking at the man declining from the height of his fortune towards the grave. Then he remembers Jakov, who was always pondering on death, and Jakov's saying: "It is interesting to die."
Angrily Ilya thrusts the memory away, and tries to think of something quite different.
"How are Pavel and Vyera getting on?" he wonders suddenly. A droshky drives by; the window-panes shake with the noise of the wheels on the stony street, the lamp trembles on the wall. Then strange sounds arise in the shop—it is Gavrik talking in his sleep. The dense darkness in the corner of the room seems to move. Ilya sits propped up at the table, presses his temples with the palms of his hands, and looks at the picture. Next to the Almighty is a fine big lion, on the ground crawls a tortoise, and there is a badger and a frog jumping, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is adorned with great blood-red flowers. The old man with his feet in the coffin is like Poluektov, he is bald-headed and lean, and his neck is of just the same thin kind. A dull noise of footsteps sounds from the street. Some one goes slowly past the shop. The samovar has gone out, and now the room is so still that the air in it seems thickened and as solid as the walls.
The memory of Poluektov did not trouble Ilya and, generally speaking, his thoughts were not disturbing—they lay soft and easily on his soul, enwrapping it as a cloud the moon. The colours of the picture were made a little pale by them, and a vague dark spot appeared on it, while the stillness round about grew denser. Frequently he thought with calmness, as he had done after the murder of Poluektov, that there must be justice in life, and that, sooner or later, men must be punished for their sins. After such thoughts, he would look sharply into the dark corner of the room, where it was so mysteriously still, and where the darkness would take on a definite form. Then he undressed, lay down, and extinguished the lamp. He did not put it out at once, but turned the wick first up, then down. The light would all but go out, then again flare up, and the darkness danced round the bed, now threw itself on the bed from all sides, now again sprung back into the corner of the room. Ilya watched how the pitiless black waves tried to overwhelm him, and he played in this way for a long time, whilst trying to pierce the darkness with wide-open eyes, as though he expected to catch sight of something. At last the light flickered for the last time, and went out in a moment. The blackness flooded the room, and seemed to waver as though still disturbed by its struggle with the light. Then the dull bluish patch of the window became visible. When the moon shone, black streaks of shadow from the railings in front of the window fell across the table and the floor. There was so tense a stillness in the room that it seemed as if his whole frame must quiver if he sighed. He wrapped the bed-clothes round him, drawing them up to his chin, but with his face uncovered, and lay and looked at the twilight of the window till sleep overpowered him. In the morning he woke fresh and rested, almost ashamed of his follies of the night before. He had tea with Gavrik at the counter and looked at his shop as at a new thing. Sometimes Pavel came in from his work, covered with dirt and grease, in a scorched blouse and with smoke-blackened face. He was working again with a well-sinker, and carried with him a little kettle, with lead piping and soldering-iron. He was always in a hurry to get home, and if Ilya asked him to stay, he would say, with a shame-faced smile: