The snow melted away from the fields; the wintry clouds in the sky
passed away; wet snow and rain fell upon the earth; the sun was slower
and slower in performing his daily journey; the air grew warmer; and it
seemed that the joyful spring had already arrived, sportively hiding
herself behind the fields, and would soon burst upon the town itself.
In the streets there was brown mud; streams ran along the gutters; in
the thawed places of Arestantski Square the sparrows hopped joyfully.
And in human creatures, also, was apparent the same excitement
as was shown by the sparrows. Above the sounds of spring, almost
uninterruptedly from morning to night, rang out the Lenten bells,
stirring one's heart with their muffled strokes. In that sound, as in
the speech of an old man, there was hidden something of displeasure, as
if the bells had said with cold melancholy:
"Has been, this has been, has been--"
On my name-day the workmen gave me a small, beautifully painted image
of Alexei, the man of God, and Jikharev made an impressive, long
speech, which I remember very well.
"What are you?" said he, with much play of finger and raising of
eyebrows. "Nothing more than a small boy, an orphan, thirteen years
old--and I, nearly four times your age, praise you and approve of you,
because you always stand with your face to people and not sideways!
Stand like that always, and you will be all right!"
He spoke of the slaves of God, and of his people, but the difference
between people and slaves I could never understand, and I don't believe
that he understood it himself. His speech was long-winded, the workshop
was laughing at him, and I stood, with the image in my hand, very
touched and very confused, not knowing what I ought to do. At length
Kapendiukhin called out irritably:
"Oh, leave off singing his praises; his ears are already turning blue!"
Then clapping me on the shoulder, he began to praise me himself:
"What is good in you is what you have in common with all human
creatures, and not the fact that it is difficult to scold and beat you
when you have given cause for it!"
They all looked at me with kind eyes, making good-natured fun of my
confusion. A little more and I believe I should have burst out crying
from the unexpected joy of finding myself valued by these people. And
that very morning the shopman had said to Petr Vassilich, nodding his
head toward me:
"An unpleasant boy that, and good for nothing!"
As usual I had gone to the shop in the morning, but at noon the shopman
had said to me:
"Go home and clear the snow off the roof of the warehouse, and clean
out the cellar."
That it was my name-day he did not know, and I had thought that no
one knew it. When the ceremony of congratulations had finished in the
workshop, I changed my clothes and climbed up to the roof of the shed
to throw off the smooth, heavy snow which had accumulated during that
winter. But being excited, I forgot to close the door of the cellar,
and threw all the snow into it. When I jumped down to the ground, I saw
my mistake, and set myself at once to get the snow away from the door.
Being wet, it lay heavily; the wooden, spade moved it with difficulty;
there was no iron one, and I broke the spade at the very moment when
the shopman appeared at the yard-gate. The truth of the Russian
proverb, "Sorrow follows on the heels of joy," was proved to me.
"So--o--o!" said the shopman derisively, "you are a fine workman,
the devil take you! If I get hold of your senseless blockhead--" He
flourished the blade of the shovel over me.
I move away, saying angrily:
"I was n't engaged as a yardman, anyhow."
He hurled the stick against my legs. I took up a snowball and threw
it right in his face. He ran away snorting, and I left off working,
and went into the workshop. In a few minutes his fiancée came running
downstairs. She was an agile maiden, with pimples on her vacant face.
"Maximich, you are to go upstairs!"
"I am not going!" I said.
Larionich asked in an amazed undertone:
"What is this? You are not going?"
I told him about the affair. With an anxious frown he went upstairs,
muttering to me:
"Oh, you impudent youngster--"
The workshop resounded with abuse of the shopman, and Kapendiukhin said:
"Well, they will kick you out this time!"
This did not alarm me. My relations with the shopman had already become
unbearable. His hatred of me was undisguised and became more and more
acute, while, for my part, I could not endure him. But what I wanted
to know was: why did he behave so absurdly to me? He would throw coins
about the floor of the shop, and when I was sweeping, I found them, and
laid them on the counter in the cup which contained the small money
kept for beggars. When I guessed what these frequent finds meant I said
to him:
"You throw money about in my way on purpose!" He flew out at me and
cried incautiously:
"Don't you dare to teach me! I know what I am doing!"
But he corrected himself immediately:
"And what do you mean by my throwing it about purposely? It falls about
itself."
He forbade me to read the books in the shop, saying:
"That is not for you to trouble your head about! What! Have you an
idea of becoming a valuer, sluggard?"
He did not cease his attempts to catch me in the theft of small money,
and I realised that if, when I was sweeping the floor, the coin should
roll into a crevice between the boards, he would declare that I had
stolen it. Then I told him again that he had better give up that game,
but that same day, when I returned from the tavern with the boiling
water, I heard him suggesting to the newly engaged assistant in the
neighboring shop:
"Egg him on to steal psalters. We shall soon be having three hampers of
them."
I knew that they were talking about me, for when I entered the shop
they both looked confused; and besides these signs, I had grounds for
suspecting them of a foolish conspiracy against me.
This was not the first time that that assistant had been in the service
of the man next door. He was accounted a clever salesman, but he
suffered from alcoholism; in one of his drinking bouts the master had
dismissed him, but had afterwards taken him back. He was an anaemic,
feeble person, with cunning eyes. Apparently amiable and submissive
to the slightest gesture of his master, he smiled a little, clever
smile in his beard all the time, was fond of uttering sharp sayings,
and exhaled the rotten smell which comes from people with bad teeth,
although his own were white and strong.
One day he gave me a terrible surprise; he came towards me smiling
pleasantly, but suddenly seized my cap off my head and took hold of
my hair. We began to struggle. He pushed me from the gallery into the
shop, trying all the time to throw me against the large images which
stood about on the floor. If he had succeeded in this, I should have
broken the glass, or chipped the carving, and no doubt scratched some
of the costly icons. He was very weak, and I soon overcame him; when to
my great amazement the bearded man sat on the floor and cried bitterly,
rubbing his bruised nose.
The next morning when our masters had both gone out somewhere and we
were alone, he said to me in a friendly manner, rubbing the lump on the
bridge of his nose and under his eyes with his finger:
"Do you think that it was of my own will or desire that I attacked
you? I am not a fool, you know, and I knew that you would be more than
a match for me. I am a man of little strength, a tippler. It was your
master who told me to do it. 'Lead him on,' he said, 'and get him to
break something in the shop while he is fighting you. Let him damage
something, anyhow!' I should never have done it of my own accord; look
how you have ornamented my phiz for me."
I believed him, and I began to be sorry for him. I knew that he lived,
half-starved, with a woman who knocked him about. However, I asked him:
"And if he told you to poison a person, I suppose you would do it?"
"He might do that," said the shopman with a pitiful smile; "he is
capable of it."
Soon after this he asked me:
"Listen, I have not a farthing; there is nothing to eat at home; my
missus nags at me. Couldn't you take an icon out of your stock and give
it to me to sell, like a friend, eh? Will you? Or a breviary?"
I remembered the boot-shop, and the beadle of the church, and I
thought: "Will this man give me away?" But it was hard to refuse him,
and I gave him an icon. To steal a breviary worth several rubles, that
I could not do; it seemed, to me a great crime. What would you have?
Arithmetic always lies concealed in ethics; the holy ingenuousness of
"Regulations for the Punishment of Criminals" clearly gives away this
little secret, behind which the great lie of property hides itself.
When I heard my shopman suggesting that this miserable man should
incite me to steal psalters I was afraid. It was clear that he knew how
charitable I had been on the other's behalf, and that the man from next
door had told him about the icon.
The abominableness of being charitable at another person's expense,
and the realization of the rotten trap that had been set for me--both
these things aroused in me a feeling of indignation and disgust with
myself and every one else. For several days I tormented myself cruelly,
waiting for the arrival of the hamper with the books. At length they
came, and when I was putting them away in the store-room, the shopman
from next door came to me and asked me to give him a breviary.
Then I asked him:
"Did you tell my master about the icon?"
"I did," he answered in a melancholy voice; "I can keep nothing back,
brother."
This utterly confounded me, and I sat on the floor staring at him
stupidly, while he muttered hurriedly, confusedly, desperately
miserable:
"You see your man guessed--or rather, mine guessed and told yours--"
I thought I was lost. These people had been conspiring against me, and
now there was a place ready for me in the colony for youthful criminals!
If that were so, nothing mattered! If one must drown, it is better
to drown in a deep spot. I put a breviary into the hands of the
shopman; he hid it in the sleeves of his greatcoat and went away. But
he returned suddenly, the breviary fell at my feet, and the man strode
away, saying:
"I won't take it! It would be all over with you." I did not understand
these words. Why should it be all over with me? But I was very glad
that he had not taken the book. After this my little shopman began to
regard me with more disfavor and suspicion than ever.
I remembered all this when Larionich went upstairs. He did not stay
there long, and came back more depressed and quiet than usual, but
before supper he said to me privately:
"I tried to arrange for you to be set free from the shop, and given
over to the workshop, but it was no good. Kouzma would not have it. You
are very much out of favor with him."
I had an enemy in the house, too--the shopman's fiancée, an
immoderately sportive damsel. All the young fellows in the workshop
played about with her; they used to wait for her in the vestibule and
embrace her. This did not offend her; she only squeaked like a little
dog. She was chewing something from morning to night; her pockets were
always full of gingerbread or buns; her jaws moved ceaselessly. To
look at her vacant face with its restless gray eyes was unpleasant.
She used to ask Pavl and me riddles which always concealed some coarse
obscenity, and repeated catchwords which, being said very quickly,
became improper words.
One day one of the elderly workmen said to her:
"You are a shameless hussy, my girl!"
To which she answered swiftly, in the words of a ribald song:
"If a maiden is too modest,
She 'll never be a woman worth having."
It was the first time I had ever seen such a girl. She disgusted and
frightened me with her coarse playfulness, and seeing that her antics
were not agreeable to me, she became more and more spiteful toward me.
Once when Pavl and I were in the cellar helping her to steam out the
casks of kvass and cucumbers she suggested:
"Would you like me to teach you how to kiss, boys?"
"I know how to kiss better than you do," Pavl answered, and I told her
to go and kiss her future husband. I did not say it very politely,
either.
She was angry.
"Oh, you coarse creature! A young lady makes herself agreeable to him
and he turns up his nose. Well, I never! What a ninny!"
And she added, shaking a threatening finger at me: "You just wait. I
will remember that of you!" But Pavl said to her, taking my part:
"Your young man would give you something if he knew about your
behavior!"
She screwed up her pimply face contemptuously.
"I am not afraid of him! I have a dowry. I am much better than he is! A
girl only has the time till she is married to amuse herself."
She began to play about with Pavl, and from that time I found in her an
unwearying calumniator.
My life in the shop became harder and harder. I read church books all
the time. The disputes and conversations of the valuers had ceased to
amuse me, for they were always talking over the same things in the same
old way. Petr Vassilich alone still interested me, with his knowledge
of the dark side of human life, and his power of speaking interestingly
and enthusiastically. Sometimes I thought he must be the prophet Elias
walking the earth, solitary and vindictive. But each time that I spoke
to the old man frankly about people, or about my own thoughts, he
repeated all that I had said to the shopman, who either ridiculed me
offensively, or abused me angrily.
One day I told the old man that I sometimes wrote his sayings in the
note-book in which I had copied various poems taken out of books. This
greatly alarmed the valuer, who limped towards me swiftly, asking
anxiously:
"What did you do that for? It is not worth while, my lad. So that you
may remember? No; you just give it up. What a boy you are! Now you will
give me what you have written, won't you?"
He tried long and earnestly to persuade me to either give him the
notebook, or to burn it, and then he began to whisper angrily with the
shopman.
As we were going home, the latter said to me: "You have been taking
notes? That has got to be' stopped! Do you hear? Only detectives do
that sort of thing!"
Then I asked incautiously:
"And what about Sitanov? He also takes notes." "Also. That long fool?"
He was silent for a long time, and then with unusual gentleness he said:
"Listen; if you show me your note-book and Sitanov's, too, I will give
you half a ruble! Only do it on the quiet, so that Sitanov does not
see."
No doubt he thought that I would carry out his wish, and without
saying another word, he ran in front of me on his short legs.
When I reached the house, I told Sitanov what the shopman had proposed
to me. Evgen frowned.
"You have been chattering purposely. Now he will give some one
instructions to steal both our notebooks. Give me yours--I will hide
it. And he will turn you out before long--you see!"
I was convinced of that, too, and resolved to leave as soon as
grandmother returned to the town. She had been living at Balakhania
all the winter, invited by some one to teach young girls to make lace.
Grandfather was again living in Kunavin Street, but I did not visit
him, and when he came to the town, he never came to see me. One day
we ran into each other in the street. He was walking along in a heavy
racoon pelisse, importantly and slowly. I said "How do you do" to him.
He lifted his hands to shade his eyes, looked at me from under them,
and then said thoughtfully:
"Oh, it is you; you are an image-painter now. Yes, yes; all right; get
along with you."
Pushing me out of his way, he continued his walk, slowly and
importantly.
I saw grandmother seldom. She worked unweariedly to feed grandfather,
who was suffering from the malady of old age--senile weakness--and had
also taken upon herself the care of my uncle's children.
The one who caused her the most worry was Sascha, Mikhail's son, a
handsome lad, dreamy and book-loving. He worked in a dyer's shop,
frequently changed his employers, and in the intervals threw himself
on grandmother's shoulders, calmly waiting until she should find him
another place. She had Sascha's sister on her shoulders, too. She had
made an unfortunate marriage with a drunken workman, who beat her and
turned her out of his house.
Every time I met grandmother, I was more consciously charmed by her
personality; but I felt already that that beautiful soul, blinded
by fanciful tales, was not capable of seeing, could not understand
a revelation of the bitter reality of life, and my disquietude and
restlessness were strange to her.
"You must have patience, Olesha!"
This was all she had to say to me in reply to my stories of the hideous
lives, of the tortures of people, of sorrow--of all which perplexed me,
and with which I was burning.
I was unfitted by nature to be patient, and if occasionally I exhibited
that virtue which belongs to cattle, trees, and stones, I did so in the
cause of self-discipline, to test my reserves of strength, my degree
of stability upon earth. Sometimes young people, with the stupidity of
youth, will keep on trying to lift weights too heavy for their muscles
and bones; will try boastfully, like full-grown men of proved strength,
to cross themselves with heavy weights, envious of the strength of
their elders.
I also did this in a double sense, physically and spiritually, and it
is only due to some chance that I did not strain myself dangerously, or
deform myself for the rest of my life. Besides, nothing disfigures a
man more terribly than his patience, the submission of his strength to
external conditions.
And though in the end I shall lie in the earth disfigured, I can say,
not without pride, to my last hour, that good people did their best for
forty years to disfigure my soul, but that their labors were not very
successful.
The wild desire to play mischievous pranks, to amuse people, to make
them laugh, took more and more hold upon me. I was successful in
this. I could tell stories about the merchants in the market-place,
impersonating them; I could imitate the peasant men and women buying
and selling icons, the shopman skilfully cheating them; the valuers
disputing amongst themselves.
The workshop resounded with laughter. Often the workmen left their work
to look on at my impersonations, but on all these occasions Larionich
would say:
"You had better do your acting after supper; otherwise you hinder the
work."
When I had finished my performance I felt myself easier, as if I had
thrown off a burden which weighed upon me. For half an hour or an hour
my head felt pleasantly clear, but soon it felt again as if it were
full of sharp, small nails, which moved about and grew hot. It seemed
to me that a sort of dirty porridge was boiling around me, and that I
was being gradually boiled away in it.
I wondered: Was life really like this? And should I have to live as
these people lived, never finding, never seeing anything better?
"You are growing sulky, Maximich," said Jikharev, looking at me
attentively.
Sitanov often asked me:
"What is the matter with you?"
And I could not answer him.
Life perseveringly and roughly washed out from my soul its most
delicate writings, maliciously changing them into some sort of
indistinct trash, and with anger and determination I resisted its
violence. I was floating on the same river as all the others, only for
me the waters were colder and did not support me as easily as it did
the others. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was gently sinking into
unfathomable depths.
People behaved better to me; they did not shout at me as they did
at Pavl, nor harass me; they called me by my patronymic in order to
emphasize their more respectful attitude toward me. This was good; but
it was torturing to see how many of them drank vodka, how disgustingly
drunk they became, and how injurious to them were their relations
with women, although I understood that vodka and women were the only
diversions that life afforded.
I often called to mind with sorrow that that most intelligent,
courageous woman, Natalia Kozlovski, was also called a woman of
pleasure. And what about grandmother? And Queen Margot?
I used to think of my queen with a feeling almost of terror; she was so
removed from all the others, it was as if I had seen her in a dream.
I began to think too much about women, and I had already revolved in
my own mind the question: Shall I go on the next holiday where all
the others go? This was no physical desire. I was both healthy and
fastidious, but at times I was almost mad with a desire to embrace some
one tender, intelligent, and frankly, unrestrainedly, as to a mother,
speak to her of the disturbances of my soul.
I envied Pavl when he told me at night of his affair with a maidservant
in the opposite house.
"It is a funny thing, brother! A month ago I was throwing snowballs at
her because I did not like her, and now I sit on a bench and hug her.
She is dearer to me than any one!"
"What do you talk about?"
"About everything, of course! She talks to me about herself, and I talk
to her about myself. And then we kiss--only she is honest. In fact,
brother, she is so good that it is almost a misfortune! Why, you smoke
like an old soldier!"
I smoked a lot; tobacco intoxicated me, dulled my restless thoughts,
my agitated feelings. As for vodka, it only aroused in me a repulsion
toward my own odor and taste, but Pavl drank with a will, and when he
was drunk, used to cry bitterly:
"I want to go home, I want to go home! Let me go home!"
As far as I can remember he was an orphan; his mother and father had
been dead a long time. Brother and sister he had none; he had lived
among strangers for eight years.
In this state of restless dissatisfaction the call of spring disturbed
me still more. I made up my mind to go on a boat again, and if I could
get as far as Astrakhan, to run away to Persia.
I do not remember why I selected Persia particularly. It may have been
because I had taken a great fancy to the Persian merchants on the
Nijigorodski market-place, sitting like stone idols, spreading their
dyed beards in the sun, calmly smoking their hookas, with large, dark,
omniscient eyes.
There is no doubt that I should have run away somewhere, but one day
in Easter week, when part of the occupants of the workshop had gone to
their homes, and the rest were drinking, I was walking on a sunny day
on the banks of the Oka, when I met my old master, grandmother's nephew.
He was walking along in a light gray overcoat, with his hands in his
pockets, a cigarette between his teeth, his hat on the back of his
head. His pleasant face smiled kindly at me. He had the appearance
of a man who is at liberty and is happy, and there was no one beside
ourselves in the fields.
"Ah, Pyeshkov, Christ is risen!"
After we had exchanged the Easter kiss, he asked how I was living,
and I told him frankly that the workshop, the town and everything in
general were abhorrent to me, and that I had made up my mind to go to
Persia.
"Give it up," he said to me gravely. "What the devil is there in
Persia? I know exactly how you are feeling, brother; in my youth I also
had the wander fever."
I liked him for telling me this. There was something about him good and
springlike; he was a being set apart.
"Do you smoke?" he asked, holding out a silver cigarette-case full of
fat cigarettes.
That completed his conquest of me.
"What you had better do, Pyeshkov, is to come back to me again," he
suggested. "For this year I have undertaken contracts for the new
market-place, you understand. And I can make use of you there; you
will be a kind of overseer for me; you will receive all the material;
you will see that it is all in its proper place, and that the workmen
do not steal it. Will that suit you? Your wages will be five rubles a
month, and five copecks for dinner! The women-folk will have nothing to
do with you; you will go out in the morning and return in the evening.
As for the women; you can ignore them; only don't let them know that we
have met, but just come to see us on Sunday at Phomin Street. It will
be a change for you!"
We parted like friends. As he said good-by, he pressed my hand, and as
he went away, he actually waved his hat to me affably from a distance.
When I announced in the workroom that I was leaving, most of the
workmen showed a flattering regret. Pavl, especially, was upset.
"Think," he said reproachfully; "how will you live with men of all
kinds, after being with us? With carpenters, house-painters--Oh,
you--It is going out of the frying-pan into the fire."
Jikharev growled:
"A fish looks for the deepest place, but a clever young man seeks a
worse place!"
The send-off which they gave me from the workshop was a sad one.
"Of course one must try this and that," said Jikharev, who was yellow
from the effects of a drinking bout. "It is better to do it straight
off, before you become too closely attached to something or other."
"And that for the rest of your life," added Larionich softly.
But I felt that they spoke with constraint, and from a sense of duty.
The thread which had bound me to them was somehow rotted and broken.
In the loft drunken Golovev rolled about, and muttered hoarsely:
"I would like to see them all in prison. I know their secrets! Who
believes in God here? Aha-a--!"
As usual, faceless, uncompleted icons were propped against the wall;
the glass balls were fixed to the ceiling. It was long since we had
had to work with a light, and the balls, not being used, were covered
with a gray coating of soot and dust. I remember the surroundings so
vividly that if I shut my eyes, I can see in the darkness the whole
of that basement room: all the tables, and the jars of paint on the
windowsills, the bundles of brushes, the icons, the slop-pail under
the brass washstand-basin which looked like a fireman's helmet, and,
hanging from the ceiling, Golovev's bare foot, which was blue like the
foot of a drowned man.
I wanted to get away quickly, but in Russia they love long-drawn-out,
sad moments. When they are saying good-by, Russian people behave as if
they were hearing a requiem mass.
Jikharev, twitching his brows, said to me:
"That book--the devil's book--I can't give it back to you. Will you
take two _greven_ for it?"
The book was my own,--the old second lieutenant of the fire-brigade had
given it to me--and I grudged giving Lermontov away. But when, somewhat
offended, I refused the money, Jikharev calmly put the coins back in
his purse, and said in an unwavering tone:
"As you like; but I shall not give you back the book. It is not for
you. A book like that would soon lead you into sin."
"But it is sold in shops; I have seen it!"
But he only said with redoubled determination:
"That has nothing to do with the matter; they sell revolvers in shops,
too--"
So he never returned Lermontov to me.
As I was going upstairs to say good-by to my mistress, I ran into her
niece in the hall.
"Is it true what they say--that you are leaving?"
"Yes."
"If you had not gone of your own accord, you would have been sent
away," she assured me, not very kindly, but with perfect frankness.
And the tipsy mistress said:
"Good-by, Christ be with you! You are a bad boy, an impudent boy;
although I have never seen anything bad in you myself, they all say
that you are a bad boy!" And suddenly she burst out crying, and said
through her tears:
"Ah, if my dead one, my sweet husband, dear soul, had been alive, he
would have known how to deal with you; he would have boxed your ears
and you would have stayed on. We should not have had to send you away!
But nowadays things are different; if all is not exactly as you like,
away you go! Och! And where will you be going, boy, and what good will
it do you to stroll from place to place?"