We quitted Perekop in the vilest spirits--hungry as wolves and at
war with all the world. In the course of a whole twelve hours we had
unsuccessfully employed all our talents and capabilities to earn or
steal something, and when we became convinced, at last, that success
was impossible either way, we resolved to go further on. Whither?
Simply--further on.
This resolution was unanimous, and by mutual agreement. Moreover, we
were resolved to go further in every respect. The manner of life we
lately had been leading was to be a mere starting-point, and although
we did not so express ourselves aloud, it blazed forth plainly enough
in the sullen glare of our hungry eyes.
There were three of us, and we had all quite recently made one
another's acquaintance, having first rubbed shoulders together at
Kherson, in a little tavern on the banks of the Dnieper.
One of us had been a soldier of the railway battalion, and after that
a sort of upper road-mender on one of the Polish roads; he was a
red-haired, muscular chap with cold grey eyes; he could speak German,
and was very intimately acquainted with the _minutiæ_ of prison life.
Our friend did not like to speak very much of his past for more or less
well-founded reasons, and indeed we all of us took each other on trust,
at least we ostensibly took each other on trust, for, privately, not
one of us even trusted himself.
When our second comrade, a withered little mannikin with small teeth,
always pressed together sceptically--when our second comrade, I say,
speaking of himself, said that he had formerly been a student at the
University of Moscow, I and the soldier accepted the statement as a
fact. In reality it was all one to us whether he had been a student, a
bailiff's man, or a thief. The only matter of any importance to us was
that at the moment of our first acquaintance he stood on our level,
in other words: he was starving, engaged the particular attention of
the police in the towns, was an object of suspicion to the peasants in
the villages, hated everyone with the hatred of an impotent, bated,
and starving wild beast, and was intent on a universal vengeance--in a
word, he was of precisely the same kidney as ourselves.
Misfortune is the most durable cement for the joining together of
natures even diametrically opposed to each other, and we were all
convinced of our right to account ourselves unfortunate.
I was the third. The modesty inherent in me from my earliest years
forbids me to say a single word as to my merits, and, not wishing
to seem naïve, I will be reticent as to my defects. But by way of
supplying materials for an estimate of my character, I will add, if you
like, that I had always accounted myself better than other people, and
have successfully held to the same opinion down to this very day.
Thus we emerged from Perekop and went further on, our objective for
that day being the Chabans,[1] from whom it is always possible to cadge
a little bread, and who very rarely turn tramps away empty-handed.
I walked with the soldier, "the student" was slouching along behind us.
On his shoulders hung something dimly reminiscent of a pea-jacket; on
his head reposed a sharp, singular, and smoothly clipped fragment of
a broad-brimmed hat; grey breeches, covered with variegated patches,
fitted tightly round his thin little legs, and by way of foot gear he
made use of the leg of a boot which he had picked up on the road, and
attached to its proper place by means of little bandages ripped from
the inner lining of his costume. This invention he called sandals,
and he shambled along in silence, raising a great deal of dust, and
blinking around with his tiny, greenish little eyes. The soldier wore
a red woollen shirt, which, to use his own words, he had "gained with
his own hands" at Kherson; over the shirt he wore a warm wadding vest;
on his head was a military forage cap of indeterminate colour, worn,
according to the service regulations, "with the flap of the upper
segment over the left brow"; on his legs were broad baggy chumak
trousers. He was barefooted.
[1] Shepherds of Southern Russia.