Every morning at six o'clock I set out to my work in the market-place.
I met interesting people there. There was the carpenter, Osip, a
grayhaired man who looked like Saint Nikolai, a clever workman,
and witty; there was the humpbacked slater, Ephimushka, the pious
bricklayer, Petr, a thoughtful man who also reminded me of a saint; the
plasterer, Gregory Shishlin, a flaxen-bearded, blue-eyed, handsome man,
beaming with quiet good-nature.
I had come to know these people during the second part of my life
at the draughtsman's house. Every Sunday they used to appear in the
kitchen, grave, important-looking, with pleasant speech, and with words
which had a new flavor for me. All these solid-looking peasants had
seemed to me then to be easy to read, good through and through, all
pleasantly different from the spiteful, thieving, drunken inhabitants
of the Kunavin and its environs.
The plasterer, Shishlin, pleased me most of all, and I actually asked
if I might join his gang of workmen. But scratching his golden brow
with a white finger, he gently refused to have me.
"It is too soon for you," he said. "Our work is not easy; wait another
year."
Then throwing up his handsome head, he asked:
"You don't like the way you are living? Never mind, have patience;
learn to live a life of your own, and then you will be able to bear it!"
I do not know all that I gained from this good advice, but I remember
it gratefully.
These people used to come to my master's house every Sunday morning,
sit on benches round th? kitchen-table, and talk of interesting things
while they waited for my master. When he came, he greeted them loudly
and gayly, shaking-their strong hands, and then sat down in the chief
corner. They produced their accounts and bundles of notes, the workmen
placed their tattered account-books on the table, and the reckoning up
for the week began.
Joking and bantering, the master would try to prove them wrong in their
reckoning, and they did the same to him. Sometimes there was a fierce
dispute, but more often friendly laughter.
"Eh, you're a dear man; you were born a rogue!" the workmen would say
to the master.
And he answered, laughing in some confusion:
"And what about you, wild fowl? There's as much roguery about you as
about me!"
"How should we be anything else, friend?" agreed Ephimushka, but grave
Petr said:
"You live by what you steal; what you earn you give to God and the
emperor."
"Well, then I 'll willingly make a burnt offering of you," laughed the
master.
They led him on good-naturedly:
"Set fire to us, you mean?"
"Burn us in a fiery furnace?"
Gregory Shishl in, pressing his luxuriant beard to his breast with his
hands, said in a sing-song voice: "Brothers, let us do our business
without cheating. If we will only live honestly, how happy and peaceful
we shall be, eh? Shall we not, dear people?"
His blue eyes darkened, grew moist; at that moment he looked
wonderfully handsome. His question seemed to have upset them all; they
all turned away from him in confusion.
"A peasant does not cheat much," grumbled good-looking Osip with a
sigh, as if he pitied the peasant.
The dark bricklayer, bending his round-shouldered back over the table,
said thickly:
"Sin is like a sort of bog; the farther you go, the more swampy it
gets!"
And the master said to them, as if he were making a speech:
"What about me? I go into it because something calls me. Though I don't
want to."
After this philosophising they again tried to get the better of one
another, but when they had finished their accounts, perspiring and
tired from the effort, they went out to the tavern to drink tea,
inviting the master to go with them.
On the market-place it was my duty to watch these people, to see that
they did not steal nails, or bricks, or boards. Every one of them, in
addition to my master's work, held contracts of his own, and would try
to steal something for his own work under my very nose. They welcomed
me kindly, and Shishlin said:
"Do you remember how you wanted to come into my gang? And look at you
now; put over me as chief!"
"Well, well," said Osip banteringly, "keep watch over the river-banks,
and may God help you!"
Petr observed in an unfriendly tone:
"They have put a young crane to watch old mice."
My duties were a cruel trial to me. I felt ashamed in the presence of
these people. They all seemed to possess some special knowledge which
was hidden from the rest of the world, and I had to watch them as if
they had been thieves and tricksters. The first part of the time it was
very hard for me, but Osip soon noticed this, and one day he said to me
privately:
"Look here, young fellow, you won't do any good by sulking--understand?"
Of course I did not understand, but I felt that he realized the
absurdity of my position, and I soon arrived at a frank understanding
with him.
He took me aside in a corner and explained:
"If you want to know, the biggest thief among us is the bricklayer,
Petrukha. He is a man with a large family, and he is greedy. You want
to watch him well. Nothing is too small for him; everything comes in
handy. A pound of nails, a dozen of bricks, a bag of mortar--he 'll
take all. He is a good man, God-fearing, of severe ideas, and well
educated, but he loves to steal! Ephimushka lives like a woman. He is
peaceable, and is harmless as far as you are concerned. He is clever,
too--humpbacks are never fools! And there's Gregory Shishlin. He has a
fad--he will neither take from others nor give of his own. He works for
nothing; any one can take him in, but he can deceive no one. He is not
governed by his reason."
"He is good, then?"
Osip looked at me as if I were a long way from him, and uttered these
memorable words:
"True enough, he is good. To be good is the easiest way for lazy
people. To be good, my boy, does not need brains."
"And what about you?" I asked Osip.
He laughed and answered:
"I? I am like a young girl. When I am a grandmother I will tell you all
about myself; till then you will have to wait. In the meanwhile you can
set your brains to work to find out where the real 'I' is hidden. Find
out; that is what you have to do!"
He had upset all my ideas of himself and his friends.
It was difficult for me to doubt the truth of his statement. I saw that
Ephimushka, Petr, and Gregory regarded the handsome old man as more
clever and more learned in worldly wisdom than themselves. They took
counsel with him about everything, listened attentively to his advice,
and showed him every sign of respect.
"Will you be so good as to give us your advice," they would ask him.
But after one of these questions, when Osip had gone away, the
bricklayer said softly to Grigori:
"Heretic!"
And Grigori burst out laughing and added:
"Clown!"
The plasterer warned me in a friendly way:
"You look out for yourself with the old man, Maximich. You must be
careful, or he will twist you round his finger in an hour; he is a
bitter old man. God save you from the harm he can do."
"What harm?"
"That I can't say!" answered the handsome workman, blinking.
I did not understand him in the least. I thought that the most honest
and pious man of them all was the bricklayer, Petr; He spoke of
everything briefly, suggestively; his thoughts rested mostly upon God,
hell, and death.
"Ekh! my children, my brothers, how can you not be afraid? How can you
not look forward, when the grave and the churchyard let no one pass
them?"
He always had the stomachache, and there were some days when he could
not eat anything at all. Even a morsel of bread brought on the pain to
such an extent as to cause convulsions and a dreadful sickness.
Humpbacked Ephimushka also seemed a very good and honest, but always
queer fellow. Sometimes he was happy and foolish, like a harmless
lunatic. He was everlastingly falling in love with different women,
about whom he always used the same words:
"I tell you straight, she is not a woman, but a flower in cream--ei,
bo--o!"
When the lively women of Kunavin Street came to wash the floors in the
shops, Ephimushka let himself down from the roof, and standing in a
corner somewhere, mumbled, blinking his gray, bright eyes, stretching
his mouth from ear to ear:
"Such a butterfly as the Lord has sent to me; such a joy has descended
upon me! Well, what is she but a flower in cream, and grateful I ought
to be for the chance which has brought me such a gift! Such beauty
makes me full of life, afire!"
At first the women used to laugh at him, calling out to each other:
"Listen to the humpback running on! Oh Lord!" The slater caused no
little laughter. His high cheek-boned face wore a sleepy expression,
and he used to talk as if he were raving, his honeyed phrases flowing
in an intoxicating stream which obviously went to the women's heads. At
length one of the elder ones said to her friend in a tone of amazement:
"Just listen to how that man is going on! A clean young fellow he is!"
"He sings like a bird."
"Or like a beggar in the church porch," said an obstinate girl,
refusing to give way.
But Ephimushka was not like a beggar at all. He stood firmly, like
a squat tree-trunk; his voice rang out like a challenge; his words
became more and more alluring; the women listened to him in silence.
In fact, it seemed as if his whole being was flowing away in a tender,
narcotic speech.
It ended in his saying to his mates in a tone of astonishment at
supper-time, or after the Sabbath rest, shaking his heavy, angular head:
"Well, what a sweet little woman, a dear little thing! I have never
before come across anything like her!"
When he spoke of his conquests Ephimushka was not boastful, nor
jeered at the victim of his charms, as the others always did. He was
only joyfully and gratefully touched, his gray eyes wide open with
astonishment.
Osip, shaking his head, exclaimed:
"Oh, you incorrigible fellow! How old are you?" "Forty-four years, but
that's nothing! I have grown five years younger to-day, as if I had
bathed in the healing water of a river. I feel thoroughly fit, and my
heart is at peace! Some women can produce that effect, eh?"
The bricklayer said coarsely:
"You are going on for fifty. You had better be careful, or you will
find that your loose way of life will leave a bitter taste."
"You are shameless, Ephimushka!" sighed Grigori Shishlin.
And it seemed to me that the handsome fellow envied the success of the
humpback.
Osip looked round on us all from under his level silver brows, and said
jestingly:
"Every Mashka has her fancies. One will love cups and spoons, another
buckles and ear-rings, but all Mashkas will be grandmothers in time."
Shishlin was married, but his wife was living in the country, so he
also cast his eyes on the floor-scrubbers. They were all of them easy
of approach. All of them "earned a bit" to add to their income, and
they regarded this method of earning money in that poverty-stricken
area as simply as they would have regarded any other kind of work.
But the handsome workman never approached the women. He just gazed at
them from afar with a peculiar expression, as if he were pitying some
one--himself or them. But when they began to sport with him and tempt
him, he laughed bashfully and went away.
"Well, you--"
"What's the matter with you, you fool?" asked Ephimushka, amazed. "Do
you mean to say you are going to lose the chance?"
"I am a married man," Grigori reminded him.
"Well, do you think your wife will know anything about it?"
"My wife would always know if I lived unchastely. I can't deceive her,
my brother."
"How can she know?"
"That I can't say, but she is bound to know, while she lives chaste
herself; and if I lead a chaste life, and she were to sin, I should
know it."
"But how?" cried Ephimushka, but Grigori repeated calmly:
"That I can't say."
The slater waved his hands agitatedly.
"There, if you please! Chaste, and does n't know! Oh, you blockhead!"
Shishlin's workmen, numbering seven, treated him as one of themselves
and not as their master, and behind his back they nicknamed him "The
Calf."
When he came to work and saw that they were lazy, he would take a
trowel, or a spade, and artistically do the work himself, calling out
coaxingly:
"Set to work, children, set to work!"
One day, carrying out the task which my master had angrily set me, I
said to Grigori:
"What bad workmen you have."
He seemed surprised.
"Why?"--
"This work ought to have been finished yesterday, and they won't finish
it even to-day."
"That is true;'they won't have time," he agreed, and after a silence he
added cautiously:
"Of course, I see that by rights I ought to dismiss them, but you see
they are all my own people from my own village. And then again the
punishment of God is that every man should eat bread by the sweat of
his brow, and the punishment is for all of us--for you and me, too. But
you and I labor less than they do, and--well, it would be awkward to
dismiss them."
He lived in a dream. He would walk along the deserted streets of the
market-place, and suddenly halting on one of the bridges over the
Obvodni Canal, would stand for a long time at the railings, looking
into the water, at the sky, or into the distance beyond the Oka. If one
overtook him and asked:
"What are you doing?"
"What?" he would reply, waking up and smiling confusedly. "I was just
standing, looking about me a bit."
"God has arranged everything very well, brother," he would often say.
"The sky, the earth, the flowing rivers, the steamboats running. You
can get on a boat and go where you like--to Riazan, or to Ribinsk, to
Perm, to Astrakhan. I went to Riazan once. It was n't bad--a little
town--but very dull, duller than Nijni. Our Nijni is wonderful, gay!
And Astrakhan is still duller. There are a lot of Kalmucks there, and
I don't like them. I don't like any of those Mordovans, or Kalmucks,
Persians, or Germans, or any of the other nations."
He spoke slowly; his words cautiously felt for sympathy in others, and
always found it in the bricklayer, Petr.
"Those are not nations, but nomads," said Petr with angry conviction.
"They came into the world before Christ and they 'll go out of it
before He comes again."
Grigori became animated; he beamed.
"That's it, isn't it? But I love a pure race like the Russians, my
brother, with a straight look. I don't like Jews, either, and I cannot
understand how they are the people of God. It is wisely arranged, no
doubt."
The slater added darkly:
"Wisely--but there is a lot that is superfluous!"
Osip listened to what they said, and then put in, mockingly and
caustically:
"There is much that is superfluous, and your conversation belongs to
that category. Ekh! you babblers; you want a thrashing, all of you!"
Osip kept himself to himself, and it was impossible to guess with whom
he would agree, or with whom he would quarrel. Sometimes he seemed
inclined to agree calmly with all men, and with all their ideas; but
more often one saw that he was bored by all of them, regarding them as
half-witted, and he said to Petr, Grigori, and Ephimushka:
"Ekh, you sow's whelps!"
They laughed, not very cheerfully or willingly, but still they laughed.
My master gave me five copecks a day for food. This was not enough, and
I was rather hungry. Seeing this, the workmen invited me to breakfast
and supper with them, and sometimes the contractors would invite me to
a tavern to drink tea with them. I willingly accepted the invitations.
I loved to sit among them and listen to their slow speeches, their
strange stories. I gave them great pleasure by my readings out of
church books.
"You've stuck to books till you are fed up with them. Your crop is
stuffed with them," said Osip, regarding me attentively with his
cornflower-blue eyes. It was difficult to catch their expression; his
pupils always seemed to be floating, melting.
"Take it a drop at a time--it is better; and when you are grown up, you
can be a monk and console the people by your teaching, and in that way
you may become a millionaire."
"A missioner," corrected the bricklayer in a voice which for some
reason sounded aggrieved.
"What?" asked Osip.
"A missioner is what you mean! You are not deaf, are you?"
"All right, then, a missioner, and dispute with heretics. And even
those whom you reckon as heretics have the right to bread. One can live
even with a heretic, if one exercises discretion."
Grigori laughed in an embarrassed manner, and Petr said in his beard:
"And wizards don't have a bad time of it, and other kinds of godless
people."
But Osip returned quickly:
"A wizard is not a man of education; education is not usually a
possession of the wizard."
And he told me:
"Now look at this; just listen. In our district there lived a peasant,
Tushek was his name, an emaciated little man, and idle. He lived like
a feather, blown about here and there by the wind, neither a worker
nor a do-nothing. Well, one day he took to praying, because he had
nothing else to do, and after wandering about for two years, he
suddenly showed himself in a new character. His hair hung down over
his shoulders; he wore a skull-cap, and a brown cassock of leather; he
looked on all of us with a baneful eye, and said straight out: 'Repent,
ye cursed!' And why not repent, especially if you happened to be a
woman? And the business ran its course: Tushek overfed, Tushek drunk,
Tushek having his way with the women to his heart's content--"
The bricklayer interrupted him angrily:
"What has that got to do with the matter, his overfeeding, or
overdrinking?"
"What else has to do with it, then?"
"His words are all that matter."
"Oh, I took no notice of his words; I am abundantly gifted with words
myself."
"We know all we want to know about Tushinkov, Dmitri Vassilich," said
Petr indignantly, and Grigori said nothing, but let his head droop, and
gazed into his glass.
"I don't dispute it," replied Osip peaceably. "I was just telling our
Maximich of the different pathways to the morsel--"
"Some of the roads lead to prison!"
"Occasionally," agreed Osip. "But you will meet with priests on all
kinds of paths; one must learn where to turn off."
He was always somewhat inclined to make fun of these pious people, the
plasterer and the bricklayer; perhaps he did not like them, but he
skilfully concealed the fact. His attitude towards people was always
elusive.
He looked upon Ephimushka more indulgently, with more favor than upon
the other. The slater did not enter into discussions about God, the
truth, sects, the woes of humanity, as his friends did. Setting his
chair sidewise to the table, so that its back should not be in the way
of his hump, he would calmly drink glass after glass of tea. Then,
suddenly alert, he would glance round the smoky room, listening to the
incoherent babel of voices, and darting up, swiftly disappear. That
meant that some one had come into the tavern to whom Ephimushka owed
money,--he had a good dozen creditors,--so, as some of them used to
beat him when they saw him, he just fled from sin.
"They get angry, the oddities!" he would say in a tone of surprise.
"Can't they understand that if I had the money I would give it to them?"
"Oh, bitter poverty!" Osip sped after him.
Sometimes Ephimushka sat deep in thought, hearing and seeing nothing;
his high cheek-boned face softened, his pleasant eyes looking
pleasanter than usual.
"What are you thinking about?" they would ask him.
"I was thinking that if I were rich I would marry a real lady, a
noblewoman--by God, I would! A colonel's daughter, for example, and,
Lord! how I would love her! I should be on fire with love of her,
because, my brothers, I once roofed the country house of a certain
colonel--"
"And he had a widowed daughter; we 've heard all that before!"
interrupted Petr in an unfriendly tone.
But Ephimushka, spreading his hands out on his knees, rocked to and
fro, his hump looking as if it were chiselling the air, and continued:
"Sometimes she went into the garden, all in white; glorious she looked.
I looked at her from the roof, and I did n't know what the sun had done
to me. But what caused that white light? It was as if a white dove had
flown from under her feet! She was just a cornflower in cream! With
such a lady as that, one would like all one's life to be night."
"And how would you get anything to eat?" asked Petr gruffly. But this
did not disturb Ephimushka.
"Lord!" he exclaimed. "Should we want much? Besides, she is rich."
Osip laughed.
"And when are you going in for all this dissipation, Ephimushka, you
rogue?"
Ephimushka never talked on any other subject but women, and he was an
unreliable workman. At one time he worked excellently and profitably,
at another time he did not get on at all; his wooden hammer tapped the
ridges lazily, leaving crevices. He always smelt of train-oil, but he
had a smell of his own as well, a healthy, pleasant smell like that of
a newly cut tree.
One could discuss everything that was interesting with the carpenter.
His words always stirred one's feelings, but it was hard to tell when
he was serious and when joking.
With Grigori it was better to talk about God; this was a subject which
he loved, and on which he was an authority.
"Grisha," I asked, "do you know there are people who do not believe in
God?"
He laughed quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"They say there is no God."
"Oh, that's what you mean! I know that."
And as if he were brushing away invisible flies, he went on:
"King David said in his time, you remember, 'The fool hath said in his
heart "There is no God."' That's what he said about that kind of fool.
We can't do without God!"
Osip said, as if agreeing with him:
"Take away God from Petrukha here, and he will show you!"
Shishlin's handsome face became stern. He touched his beard with
fingers the nails of which were covered with dried lime, and said
mysteriously:
"God dwells in every incarnate being; the conscience and all the inner
life is God-given."
"And sin?"
"Sin comes from the flesh, from Satan! Sin is an external thing, like
smallpox, and nothing more! He who thinks too much of sin, sins all
the more. If you do not remember sin, you will not sin. Thoughts about
sin are from Satan, the lord of the flesh, who suggests."
The bricklayer queried this.
"You are wrong there."
"I am not! God is sinless, and man is in His image and likeness. It is
the image of God, the flesh, which sins, but His likeness cannot sin;
it is a spirit."
He smiled triumphantly, but Petr growled:
"That is wrong."
"According to you, I suppose," Osip asked the bricklayer, "if you don't
sin, you can't repent, and if you don't repent, you won't be saved?"
"That's a more hopeful way. Forget the devil and you cease to love God,
the fathers said."
Shishlin was not intemperate, but two glasses would make him tipsy. His
face would be flushed, his eyes childish, and his voice would be raised
in song.
"How good everything is, brothers! Here we live, work a little, and
have as much as we want to eat, God be praised! Ah, how good it is!"
He wept. The tears trickled down his beard and gleamed on the silken
hairs like false pearls.
His laudation of our life and those tears were unpleasant to me. My
grandmother had sung the praises of life more convincingly, more
sympathetically, and not so crudely.
All these discussions kept me in a continual tension, and aroused a
dull emotion in me. I had already read many books about peasants, and
I saw how utterly unlike the peasants in the books were to those in
real life. In books they were all unhappy. Good or evil characters,
they were all poorer in words and ideas than peasants in real life.
In books they spoke less of God, of sects, of churches, and more of
government, land, and law. They spoke less about women, too, but quite
as coarsely, though more kindly. For the peasants in real life, women
were a pastime, but a dangerous one. One had to be artful with women;
otherwise they would gain the upper hand and spoil one's whole life.
The _muzhik_ in books may be good or bad, but he is altogether one or
the other. The real _muzhik_ is neither wholly good nor wholly bad,
but he is wonderfully interesting. If the peasant in real life does
not blurt out all his thoughts to you, you have a feeling that he is
keeping something back which he means to keep for himself alone, and
that very unsaid, hidden thing is the most important thing about him.
Of all the peasants I had read of in books, the one I liked the best
was Petr in "The Carpenter's Gang." I wanted to read the story to my
comrades, and I brought the book to the Yarmaka. I often spent the
night in one or another of the workshops; sometimes it was because I
was so tired that I lacked the strength to get home.
When I told them that I had a book about carpenters, my statement
aroused a lively interest, especially in Osip. He took the book out of
my hands, and turned over the leaves distrustfully, shaking his head.
"And it is really written about us! Oh, you rascal! Who wrote it? Some
gentleman? I thought as much! Gentlemen, and _chinovniks_ especially,
are experts at anything. Where God does not even guess, a _chinovnik_
has it all settled in his mind. That's what they live for."
"You speak very irreverently of God, Osip," observed Petr.
"That's all right! My words are less to God than a snowflake or a drop
of rain are to me. Don't you worry; you and I don't touch God."
He suddenly began to play restlessly, throwing off sharp little sayings
like sparks from a flint, cutting off with them, as with scissors,
whatever was displeasing to him. Several times in the course of the day
he asked me:
"Are we going to read, Maximich? That's right! A good idea!"
When the hour for rest arrived we had supper with him in his workshop,
and after supper appeared Petr with his assistant Ardalon, and Shishlin
with the lad Phoma. In the shed where the gang slept there was a lamp
burning, and I began to read. They listened without speaking, but they
moved about, and very soon Ardalon said crossly:
"I've had enough of this!"
And he went out. The first to fall asleep was Grigori, with his mouth
open surprisingly; then the carpenters fell asleep; but Petr, Osip,
and Phoma drew nearer to me and listened attentively. When I finished
reading Osip put out the lamp at once. By the stars it was nearly
midnight.
Petr asked in the darkness:
"What was that written for? Against whom?"
"Now for sleep!" said Osip, taking off his boots.
Petr persisted in his question:
"I asked, against whom was that written?"
"I suppose they know!" replied Osip, arranging himself for sleep on a
scaffolding.
"If it is written against stepmothers, it is a waste of time. It won't
make stepmothers any better," said the bricklayer firmly. "And if it is
meant for Petr, it is also futile; his sin in his answer. For murder
you go to Siberia, and that's all there is about it! Books are no good
for such sins; no use, eh?"
Osip did not reply, and the bricklayer added;
"They can do nothing themselves and so they discuss other people's
work. Like women at a meeting. Good-by, it is bedtime."
He stood for a minute in the dark blue square of the open door, and
asked:
"Are you asleep, Osip? What do you think about it?"
"Eh?" responded the carpenter sleepily.
"All right; go to sleep."
Shishlin had fallen on his side where he had been sitting. Phoma lay on
some trampled straw beside me. The whole neighborhood was asleep. In
the distance rose the shriek of the railway engines, the heavy rumbling
of iron wheels, the clang of buffers. In the shed rose the sound
of snoring in different keys. I felt uncomfortable. I had expected
some sort of discussion, and there had been nothing of the kind. But
suddenly Osip spoke softly and evenly:
"My child, don't you believe anything of that. You are young; you have
a long while to live; treasure up your thoughts. Your own sense is
worth twice some one else's. Are you asleep, Phoma?"
"No," replied Phoma with alacrity.
"That's right! You have both received some education, so you go on
reading. But don't believe all you read. They can print anything, you
know. That is their business!"
He lowered his feet from the scaffolding, and resting his hands on the
edge of the plank, bent over us, and continued:
"How ought you to regard books? Denunciation of certain people, that's
what a book is! Look, they say, and see what sort of a man this is--a
carpenter, or any one else--and here is a gentleman, a different kind
of man! A book is not written without an object, and generally around
some one."
Phoma said thickly:
"Petr was right to kill that contractor!"
"That was wrong. It can never be right to kill a man. I know that you
do not love Grigori, but put that thought away from you. We are none
of us rich people. To-day I am master, to-morrow a workman again."
"I did not mean you, Uncle Osip."
"It is all the same."
"You are just--"
"Wait; I am telling you why these books are written," Osip interrupted
Phoma's angry words. "It is a very cunning idea! Here we have a
gentleman without a _muzhik;_ here a _muzhik_ without a gentleman! Look
now! Both the gentleman and the _muzhik_ are badly off. The gentleman
grows weak, crazy, and the _muzhik_ becomes boastful, drunken, sickly,
and offensive. That's what happens! But in his lord's castle it was
better, they say. The lord hid himself behind the _muzhik_ and the
_muzhik_ behind the master, and so they went round and round, well-fed,
and peaceful. I don't deny that it was more peaceful living with the
nobles. It was no advantage to the lord if his _muzhik_ was poor, but
it was to his good if he was rich and intelligent. He was then a weapon
in his hand. I know all about it; you see I lived in a nobleman's
domain for nearly forty years. There's a lot of my experience written
on my hide."
I remembered that the carter, Petr, who committed suicide, used to talk
in the same way about the nobility, and it was very unpleasant to my
mind that the ideas of Osip should run on the same lines as those of
that evil old man.
Osip touched my leg with his hand, and went on:
"One must understand books and all sorts of writings. No one does
anything without a reason, and books are not written for nothing, but
to muddle people's heads. Every one is created with intelligence,
without which no one can wield an ax, or sew a shoe." He spoke for a
long time, and lay down. Again he jumped up, throwing gently his well
turned, quaint phrases into the darkness and quietness.
"They say that the nobles are quite a different race from the peasants,
but it is not true. We are just like the nobles, only we happen to have
been born low down in the scale. Of course a noble learns from books,
while I learn by my own noddle, and a gentleman has a delicate skin;
that is all the difference. No--o, lads, it is time there was a new
way of living; all these writings ought to be thrown aside! Let every
one ask himself 'What am I?' A man! 'And what is he?' Also a man! What
then? Does God need his superfluous wealth? No-o, we are equal in the
sight of God when it comes to gifts."
At last, in the morning, when the dawn had put out the light of the
stars, Osip said to me:
"You see how I could write? I have talked about things that I have
never thought about. But you mustn't place too much faith in what I
say. I was talking more because I was sleepless than with any serious
intention. You lie down and think of something to amuse you. Once there
was a raven which flew from the fields to the hills, from boundary to
boundary, and lived beyond her time; the Lord punished her. The raven
is dead and dried up. What is the meaning of that? There is no meaning
in it, none. Now go to sleep; it will soon be time to get up."