In the rainy nights of autumn short broken sounds came from the roof
under Yevsey's window. They disquieted him and prevented him from
sleeping. On one such night he heard the angry exclamations of his
master:
"You vile woman!"
Rayisa Petrovna answered as always in a low singing voice:
"I cannot permit you, Matvey Matveyevich."
"You low creature! Look at the money I am paying you!"
The door to the master's room was open, and the voices came in clearly
to Yevsey. The fine rain sang a tearful song outside the window. The
wind crept over the roof, panting like a large homeless bird fatigued by
the bad weather and softly flapping its wet wings against the panes. The
boy sat up in bed, put his hands around his knees, and listened
shivering.
"Give me back the twenty-five rubles, you thief!"
"I do not deny it. Dorimedont Lukin gave me the money."
"Aha! You see, you hussy!"
"No, permit me--when you asked me to spy on the man--"
"Hush! What are you screaming for?"
Now the door was closed, but even through the wall Yevsey could hear
almost everything that was said.
"Remember, you vile woman, you, that you are in my hands," said the
master, rapping his fingers on the table. "And if I notice that you've
struck up relations with Dorimedont--"
The woman's voice was warm and flexible like the supple movements of a
kitten, and it stole in softly, coiled around the old man's malicious
words, wiping them from Yevsey's memory.
The woman must be right. Her composure and the master's entire relation
to her convinced the boy that she was. Yevsey was now in his fifteenth
year, and his inclination for this gentle and beautiful woman began to
be marked by a pleasant sense of agitation. Since he met Rayisa very
rarely and for only a minute at a time, he always looked into her face
with a secret feeling of bashful joy. Her kindly way of speaking to him
caused a grateful tumult in his breast, and drew him to her more and
more powerfully.
While still in the village he had learned the hard truth of the relation
between man and woman. The city bespattered this truth with mud, but it
did not sully the boy himself. His being a timid nature, he did not dare
to believe what was said about women, and such talk instead of exciting
any feeling of temptation aroused painful aversion. Now, as he was
sitting up in bed, Yevsey remembered Rayisa's amiable smile, her kind
words; and carried away by the thought of them he had no time to lie
down before the door to the master's room opened, and she stood before
him, half dressed, with loose hair, her hand pressed to her breast. He
grew frightened and faint. The woman wanted to open the door again to
the old man's room and had already put out her hand, but suddenly
smiling she withdrew it and shook a threatening finger at Yevsey. Then
she walked into her room. Yevsey fell asleep with a smile.
In the morning as he was sweeping the kitchen floor he saw Rayisa at the
door of her room. He straightened himself up before her with the broom
in his hands.
"Good morning," she said. "Will you take coffee with me?"
Rejoiced and embarrassed, the boy replied:
"I haven't washed yet. One minute."
In a few minutes he was sitting at the table in her room, seeing nothing
but the fair face with the dark brows, and the good, moist eyes with the
smile in them.
"Do you like me?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"You are good and beautiful."
He answered as in a dream. It was strange to hear her questions. Her
eyes fixed upon him vanquished him. They must know everything that went
on in his soul.
"And do you like Matvey Matveyevich?" Rayisa asked in a slow undertone.
"No," Yevsey answered simply.
"Is that so? He loves you. He told me so himself."
"No," rejoined the boy.
Rayisa raised her brows, moved a little nearer to him, and asked:
"Don't you believe me?"
"I believe you, but I don't believe my master, not a bit."
"Why? Why?" she asked in a quick whisper, moving still nearer to him.
The warm gleam of her look penetrated the boy's heart, and stirred
within him little thoughts never yet expressed to anybody. He quickly
uttered them to this woman.
"I am afraid of him. I am afraid of everybody except you."
"Why are you afraid?"
"You know."
"What do I know?"
"You, too, are wronged, not by one master. I saw you cry. You were not
crying then because you had been drinking. I understand. I understand
much. Only I do not understand everything together. I see everything
separately in its tiniest details, but side by side with them something
different, not even resembling them. I understand this, too. But what is
it all for? One thing is at variance with the other, and they do not go
together. There is one kind of life and another besides."
"What are you talking about?" Rayisa asked in amazement.
"That's true."
For several moments they looked at each other in silence. The boy's
heart beat quickly. His cheeks grew red with embarrassment.
"Well, now, go," said Rayisa quietly arising. "Go, or else he will ask
you why you stayed away so long. Don't tell him you were with me. You
won't, will you?"
Yevsey walked away filled with the tender sound of the singing voice,
and warmed by the sympathetic look. The woman's words rang in his memory
enveloping his heart in quiet joy.
That day was strangely long. Over the roofs of the houses and the Circle
hung a grey cloud. The day, weary and dull, seemed to have become
entangled in its grey mass, and, like the cloud, to have halted over the
city. After dinner two customers entered the shop, one a stooping lean
man with a pretty, grizzled mustache, the other a man with a red beard
and spectacles. Both pottered about among the books long and minutely.
The lean man kept whistling softly through his quivering mustache, while
the red-bearded man spoke with the master.
Yevsey knew beforehand just what the master would say and how he would
say it. The boy was bored. He was impatient for the evening to come, and
he tried to relieve the tedium by listening to the words of the old man
Raspopov, and verifying his conjectures while he arranged in a row the
books the customers had selected.
"You are buying these books for a library?" the old man inquired
affably.
"For the library of the Teachers' Association," replied the red-bearded
man. "Why?"
"Now he'll praise them up," thought Yevsey, and he was not mistaken.
"You show extremely good judgment in your choice. It is pleasant to see
a correct estimate of books."
"Pleasant?"
"Now he'll smile," thought Yevsey.
"Yes, indeed," said the old man, smiling graciously. "You get used to
these books, so that you get to love them. You see they aren't dead
wood, but products of the mind. So when a customer also respects books,
it is pleasant. Our average customer is a comical fellow. He comes and
asks, 'Have you any interesting books?' It's all the same to him. He
seeks amusement, play, but no benefit. But occasionally someone will
suddenly ask for a prohibited book."
"How's that? Prohibited?" asked the man screwing up his small eyes.
"Prohibited from libraries--published abroad, or secretly in Russia."
"Are such books for sale?"
"Now he will speak real low." Again Yevsey was not mistaken.
Fixing his glasses upon the face of the red-bearded man, the master
lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
"Why not? Sometimes you buy a whole library, and you come across
everything there, everything."
"Have you such books now?"
"Several."
"Let me see them, please."
"Only I must ask you not to say anything about them. You see it's not
for the sake of profit, but as a courtesy. One likes to do favors now
and then."
The stooping man stopped whistling, adjusted his spectacles, and looked
attentively at the old man.
To-day the master was utterly loathsome to Yevsey, who kept looking at
him with cold, gloomy malice. And now when Raspopov went over to the
corner of the shop to show the red-bearded man some books there, the boy
suddenly and quite involuntarily said in a whisper to the stooping
customer:
"Don't buy those books."
Yevsey trembled with fright the moment he had spoken. The man raised his
glasses, and peered into the boy's face with his bright eyes.
"Why?"
With a great effort Yevsey answered after a pause:
"I don't know."
The customer readjusted his glasses, moved away from him, and began to
whistle louder, looking sidewise at the old man. Then he raised his
hand, which made him straighter and taller, stroked his grey mustache,
and without haste walked up to his companion, from whom he took the
book. He looked it over, and dropped it on the table. Yevsey followed
his movements expecting some calamity to befall himself. But the
stooping man merely touched his companion's arm, and said simply and
calmly:
"Well, let's go."
"But the books?" exclaimed the other.
"Let's go. I won't buy any books here."
The red-bearded man looked at him, then at the master, his small eyes
winking rapidly. Then he walked to the door, and out into the street.
"You don't want the books?" demanded Raspopov.
Yevsey realized by his tone that the old man was surprised.
"I don't," answered the customer, his eyes fixed upon the face of the
master.
Raspopov shrank. He went to his chair, and suddenly said with a wave of
his hand in an unnaturally loud voice, which was new to Yevsey:
"As you please, of course. Still--excuse me, I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?" asked the stooping man, smiling.
"You looked through the books for two hours or more, agreed on a price,
and suddenly--why?" cried the old man in excitement.
"Well, because I recollected your disgusting face. You haven't given up
the ghost yet? What a pity!"
The stooping man pronounced his words slowly, not loud, and precisely.
He left the shop deliberately, with a heavy tread.
For a minute the old man looked after him, then tore himself from where
he was standing, and advanced upon Yevsey with short steps.
"Follow him, find out where he lives," he said in a rapid whisper,
clutching the boy's shoulder. "Go! Don't let him see you! You
understand? Quick!"
Yevsey swayed from side to side, and would have fallen, had the old man
not held him firmly on his feet. He felt a void in his breast, and his
master's words crackled there drily like peas in a rattle.
"What are you trembling about, you donkey? I tell you--"
When Yevsey felt his master's hand release his shoulder, he ran to the
door.
"Stop, you fool!" Yevsey stood still. "Where are you going? Why, you
won't be able--oh, my God! Get out of my sight!"
Yevsey darted into a corner. It was the first time he had seen his
master so violent. He realized that his annoyance was tinged with much
fear, a feeling very familiar to himself; and notwithstanding the fact
that his own soul was desolate with fear, it pleased him to see
Raspopov's alarm.
The little dusty old man threw himself about in the shop like a rat in a
trap. He ran to the door, thrust his head into the street, stretched his
neck out, and again turned back into the shop. His hands groped over his
body impotently, and he mumbled and hissed, shaking his head till his
glasses jumped from his nose.
"Umm, well, well--the dirty blackguard--the idea! The dirty blackguard!
I'm alive--alive!" Several minutes later he shouted to Yevsey. "Close
the shop!"
On entering his room the old man crossed himself. He drew a deep breath,
and flung himself on the black sofa. Usually so sleek and smooth, he was
now all ruffled. His face had grown wrinkled, his clothes had suddenly
become too large for him, and hung in folds from his agitated body.
"Tell Rayisa to give me some peppered brandy, a large glassful." When
Yevsey brought the brandy the master rose, drank it down in one gulp,
and opening his mouth wide looked a long time into Yevsey's face.
"Do you understand that he insulted me?"
"Yes."
"And do you understand why?"
"No."
The old man raised his hand, and silently shook his finger.
"I know him--I know a great deal," he said in a broken voice.
Removing his black cap he rubbed his bare skull with his hands, looked
about the room, again touched his head with his hands, and lay down on
the sofa.
Rayisa Petrovna brought in supper.
"Are you tired?" she asked as she set the table.
"It seems I am a little under the weather. Fever, I think. Give me
another glass of brandy. Sit down with us. It's too early for you to
go."
He talked rapidly. Rayisa sat down, the old man raised his glasses, and
scanned her suspiciously from head to foot. At supper he suddenly lifted
his spoon and said:
"Impossible for me to eat. I'll tell you about something that happened."
Bending over the plate he was silent for some time as if considering
whether or not to speak of the incident. Then he began with a sigh.
"Suppose a man has a wife, his own house, not a large house, a garden,
and a vegetable garden, a cook, all acquired by hard labor without
sparing himself. Then comes a young man, sickly, consumptive, who rents
a room in the garret, and takes meals with the master and mistress."
Rayisa listened calmly and attentively. Yevsey felt bored. While looking
into the woman's face he stubbornly endeavored to comprehend what had
happened in the shop that day. He felt as if he had unexpectedly struck
a match and set fire to something old and long dried, which began to
burn alarmingly and almost consumed him in its sudden malicious blaze.
"I must keep quiet," he thought.
"Were you the man?" asked Rayisa.
Raspopov quickly raised his head.
"Why I?" he asked. He struck his breast, and exclaimed with angry heat,
"The question here is, not about the man but about the law. Ought a man
uphold the law? Yes, he ought. Without law it is impossible to live. You
people are stupid, because man is in every respect like a beast. He is
greedy, malicious, cruel."
The old man rose a little from his armchair, and shouted his words in
Rayisa's face. His bald pate reddened. Yevsey listened to his
exclamations without believing in their sincerity. He reflected on how
people are bound together and enmeshed by some unseen threads, and how
if one thread is accidentally pulled, they twist and turn, rage and cry
out. So he said to himself:
"I must be more careful."
The old man continued:
"Words bring no harm if you do not listen to them. But when the fellow
in the garret began to trouble her heart with his ideas, she, a stupid
young woman, and that friend of his who--who to-day--" The old man
suddenly came to a stop, and looked at Yevsey. "What are you thinking
about?" he asked in a low suspicious tone.
Yevsey rose and answered in embarrassment:
"I am not thinking."
"Well, then, go. You've had your supper. So go. Clear the table."
Desiring to vex his master Yevsey was intentionally slow in removing the
dishes from the table.
"Go, I tell you!" the old man screamed in a squeaking voice. "Oh, what a
fool you are!"
Yevsey went to his room, and seated himself on the chest. Having left
the door slightly ajar, he could hear his master's rapid talk.
"They came for him one night. She got frightened, began to shiver,
understood then on what road these people had put her. I told her--"
"So it was you?" Rayisa asked aloud.
The old man now began to speak in a low voice, almost a whisper. Then
Yevsey heard Rayisa's clear voice:
"Did he die?"
"Well, what of it?" the old man shouted excitedly. "You can't cure a man
of consumption. He would have died at any rate."
Yevsey sat upon the chest listening to the low rasping sound of his
talk.
"What are you sitting there for?"
The boy turned around, and saw the master's head thrust through the
door.
"Lie down and sleep."
The master withdrew his head, and the door was tightly closed.
"Who died?" Yevsey thought as he lay in bed.
The dry words of the old man came fluttering down and fluttering down,
like autumn leaves upon a grave. The boy felt more and more distinctly
that he lived in a circle of dread mystery. Sometimes the old man grew
angry, and shouted; which prevented the boy from thinking or sleeping.
He was sorry for Rayisa, who kept peacefully silent in answer to his
ejaculations. At last Yevsey heard her go to her own room. Perfect
stillness then prevailed in the master's room for several minutes, after
which Raspopov's voice sounded again, but now even as usual:
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor
standeth in the way of sinners, nor sit--"
With these reassuring words ringing in his ears Yevsey fell asleep.
The next morning Rayisa again called him to her.
"What happened in the shop yesterday?" she asked with a smile when he
had seated himself.
Yevsey told her everything in detail, and she laughed contentedly and
happily. She suddenly drew her brows together and asked in an undertone:
"Do you understand who he is?"
"No."
"A spy," she whispered, her eyes growing wide with fright.
Yevsey was silent. She rose and went to him.
"What a tragic fellow you are!" she said thoughtfully and kindly,
stroking his head. "You don't understand anything. You're so droll. What
was the stuff you told me the other day? What other life?"
The question animated him; he wanted very much to talk about it. Raising
his head and looking into her face with the fathomless stare of blind
eyes, he began to speak rapidly.
"Of course there's another life. From where else do the fairy-tales
come? And not only the fairy-tales, but--"
The woman smiled, and rumpled his hair with her warm fingers.
"You little stupid! They'll seize you," she added seriously, even
sternly, "they'll lead you wherever they want to, and do with you
whatever they want to. That will be your life."
Yevsey nodded his head, silently assenting to Rayisa's words.
She sighed and looked through the window upon the street. When she
turned to Yevsey, her face surprised him. It was red, and her eyes had
become smaller and darker.
"If you were smarter," she said in an indolent, hollow voice, "or more
alert, maybe I would tell you something. But you're such a queer chappie
there's no use telling you anything, and your master ought to be choked
to death. There, now, go tell him what I've said--you tell him
everything."
Yevsey rose from the table, feeling as if a cold stream of insult had
been poured over him. He inclined his head and mumbled:
"I'll never tell anything about you--to nobody. I love you very much,
and--even if you choked him, I wouldn't tell anybody. That's how I love
you."
He shuffled to the door, but the woman's hands caught him like warm
white wings, and turned him back.
"Did I insult you?" he heard. "Well, excuse me. If you knew what a devil
he is, how he tortures me, and how I hate him. Dear me!" She pressed his
face tightly to her breast, and kissed him twice. "So you love me?"
"Yes," whispered Yevsey, feeling himself turning around lightly in a hot
whirlpool of unknown bliss.
"How?"
"I don't know. I love you very much."
Laughing and fondling him, she said:
"You'll tell me about it. Ah, you little baby!"
Going down the stairs he heard her satisfied laugh, and smiled in
response. His head turned, his entire body was suffused with sweet
lassitude. He walked quietly and cautiously, as if afraid of spilling
the hot joy of his heart.
"Why have you been so long?" asked the master.
Yevsey looked at him, but saw only a confused, formless blur.
"I have a headache," he answered slowly.
"And I, too. What does it mean? Has Rayisa gotten up?"
"Yes."
"Did she speak to you?"
"Yes."
"What about?" the master asked hastily.
The question was like a slap in Yevsey's face. He recovered, however,
and answered indifferently:
"She said I hadn't swept the kitchen clean."
A few moments later Yevsey heard the old man's low dejected exclamation:
"That woman is a dangerous creature! Yes, yes! She tries to find
everything out, and makes you tell her whatever she wants."
Yevsey looked at him from a distance, and thought:
"I wish you were dead."
The days passed rapidly, fused in a jumbled mass, as if joy were lying
in wait ahead. But every day grew more and more exciting.