Ilya and Jakov took their tea in the evenings with Masha as a regular custom. The three children sat at table, and drank long and deeply, chattering of everything that interested them. Ilya related all that he had seen in the town, and Jakov, who read all day long, told of his books, the scenes in the tap room, complained of his father and many times poured out a screed, quite confused and unintelligible to the other two. Masha sat all day in her underground room, worked and sang, listened to the conversation of the lads, speaking herself seldom and laughing when she felt inclined. To them all the tea tasted admirable, and the samovar covered with a thick layer of rust grinned at them in a friendly cunning way with its funny old face. Almost every day, just when the children had arranged things to their liking, it would begin to murmur and hum, pretending anger, and it would appear that there was no water in it, Masha must take it out and fill it, and this performance had to be repeated several times every evening. When the moon rode in the heavens, her light would share the festival, falling through the windows into the little room in great, glimmering streaks. This little cave, shut in with a low, heavy ceiling, and half-rotten walls, almost always lacked air and light, water and bread, and sugar and many things, but life went all the more merrily, and every night many generous feelings and many naïve youthful thoughts were born there.
From time to time Perfishka joined the company. Generally he sat on a kind of bench in a dark corner near the sturdy stove, half buried in the ground, or else he climbed on to the stove itself, and his head hung down into the room, so that if he spoke or laughed his little white teeth glimmered in the darkness. His daughter passed him a big mug of tea and a piece of sugar and bread, he would take them, laughing and say: "Many thanks Maria Perfilyevna, I am overwhelmed with your kindness." Many a time he would say with a sigh of envy, "You have a fine life, children—confound you! first rate, just like men and women," and then laughing and sighing he would go on:
"Life gets better and better—it's jollier every year; at your age I got nothing but the strap. It was always on my back, and I howled for pleasure as loud as I could. When it stopped, my back began to hurt and grumble and sulk, because it missed its old friend; but it didn't have to wait long for it—it was a most sympathetic strap. That was all the company I had in my young days. You'll soon be growing up now, and will want to look back at things—the talks, and all the different things that have happened and all this jolly life, and I'm grown big and old—thirty-six—and have nothing I want to remember. Not a spark; nothing has remained in my memory, as if I'd been deaf and blind all my young days, I only remember how my teeth chattered for hunger and cold, and the blue patches on my face; how my bones and my ears and my hair stayed healthy I can't understand. They didn't quite hit me with the stove, but on the stove, bless you, they thrashed me to their hearts' content. That was an education for you; they twisted me about like a bit of thread; but flog me as they liked, and hack me to pieces, and suck my blood as they liked, the Russian in me clung to his life! tough fellows these Russians! Pound them to bits, and they'll come up smiling! See me! they ground me to powder and cut me to ribbons, and here I live happily like the cuckoo in the wood, flutter from one alehouse to another, and am at peace with all the world. God loves me, you know; if he saw me, He'd just say: 'Oh! it's you,' He'd say, and let me go on."
The youngsters listened and laughed. Ilya laughed with the others, though Perfishka's sing-song voice awakened in him a thought which always came back and back obstinately and occupied him greatly. One day he tried to get clear about it and asked the cobbler with an incredulous laugh: "And is there really nothing in all the world that you want, Perfishka?"
"Oh! I don't say that. A mouthful of brandy, for instance, I'm always wanting."
"No, tell me the truth! There must be something in the world that you want," persisted Ilya.
"Want to know the truth, do you? Well then, I should like a new harmonica, a right-down good harmonica, say twenty-five roubles. Ha! ha! then I'd play to you!"
He stopped and laughed comfortably. Suddenly a thought pricked him, he became serious and said to Ilya, gravely:
"N—no, brother! I don't want a new one! In the first place, it's dear and I should pawn it for drink, for sure, and secondly, suppose it turned out worse than the one I have, what then? She's a real beauty, the one I've got. Beyond all money. My soul's gone into her, she understands me so well, just my finger on the keys and away she sings! She's a rare treasure—perhaps there's not another like her in the world. A harmonica, she's like a wife. Once I had a wife too, an angel—not a woman, and if I wanted to marry again—how could I? I'd never find another like my dear. Whether you like it or not, you get measuring the new one by the old, and if she isn't enough, it's bad, for me and for her. That's the way of things. Ah! brother, a thing isn't good when it's good, but when it pleases you."
Ilya could readily agree with Perfishka's praise of his instrument. No one who heard it but wondered at its ringing, tender tone. But he could not reconcile himself with the thought that the cobbler had no desire in the world. Clear and sharp, the question met him—can a man live his whole life in dirt, go about in rags, drink brandy, play the harmonica and never long for anything different, better? He had no wish to regard the contented Perfishka as half silly. He observed him constantly with the greatest interest, and was convinced that the cobbler at heart was better than all the other people in the house, tippler and good for nothing though he were.