At about noon Zarubin called out to Yevsey.
"Hey there, Klimkov, you know Rayisa Petrovna Fialkovskaya, she's your
master Lukin's mistress, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"There now!"
"What's the matter?" asked Yevsey hastily.
"She cut her throat."
Yevsey rose to his feet, stung in the back by a sharp blow of terror.
"She was just found in a store-room. Let's go and look."
Zarubin ran off, announcing to the clerks on his way:
"I told you she was Dorimedont Lukin's mistress."
He shouted the word "mistress" with particular emphasis and zest.
Yevsey looked after him with wide-open eyes. Before him in the air hung
Rayisa's head, her heavy luxuriant hair flowed from it in streams, her
face was pale green, her lips were tightly compressed, and instead of
eyes there were deep dark stains. Everything round about him was hidden
behind the dead face, which Yevsey, numb with terror and pity, was
unable to remove from his vision.
"Why don't you go to lunch?" asked the Smokestack.
Scarcely anybody remained in the office. Yevsey sighed and answered:
"My mistress cut her throat."
"Oh, yes. Well, go to the café."
The Smokestack walked off carefully picking his steps. Yevsey jumped up
and seized his hand:
"Take me."
"Come."
"No, take me to stay with you altogether," Yevsey besought him.
The Smokestack bent toward him.
"What do you mean by 'altogether?'"
"To your rooms--to live with you--for all the time."
"Aha! Well, in the meantime let's get our lunch. Come on."
In the café a canary bird kept up a piercing song. The old man silently
ate fried potatoes. Yevsey was unable to eat, and looked into his
companion's face inquiringly.
"So you want to live with me? Well, come on."
When Yevsey heard these words, he instantly felt that they partitioned
him off from the terrible life. Encouraged he said gratefully:
"I will clean your shoes for you."
The Smokestack thrust his long foot shod in a torn boot from under the
table.
"You needn't clean this one. How about your mistress? Was she a good
woman?"
The old man's eyes looked directly and kindly, and seemed to say:
"Speak the truth."
"I don't know," said Yevsey, dropping his head, and for the first time
feeling that he used the phrase very often.
"So?" said the Smokestack. "So?"
"I don't know anything," said Yevsey, disappointed with himself.
Suddenly he grew bold. "I see this and that; but what it is, what for,
why, I cannot understand. And there must be another life."
"Another?" repeated the Smokestack, screwing up his eyes.
"Yes. It would be impossible otherwise."
The Smokestack smiled quietly. He hit his knife on the table, and
shouted to the waiter:
"A bottle of beer. So it can't be otherwise? That's curious. Yes--we'll
see who will do whom."
"Do, please, let me live with you," Yevsey repeated.
"Well, we'll live together. All right."
"I'll come to you to-day."
"Come on."
The Smokestack began to drink his beer in silence.
When they returned to the office, they found Dorimedont Lukin there, who
hastened up to Yevsey. His bandages had loosened, the one eye visible
was suffused with blood.
"Did you hear about Rayisa?" he inquired gravely.
"Yes, I did."
"She did it out of--it was drink that did it, upon my word," whispered
the spy, putting his uninjured hand to his breast.
"I won't go back there any more," said Yevsey.
"What then? Where will you go?"
"I am going to live with Kapiton Ivanovich."
"Um-m-m!"
Dorimedont suddenly became embarrassed, and looked around.
"Take care! He's not in his right senses. They keep him here from pity.
He's even a dangerous man. Be careful with him. Keep mum about all you
know."
Yevsey thought the spy would fly into a passion. He was surprised at his
whispering, and listened attentively to what he said.
"I am going to leave the city. Good-by. I am going to tell my chief
about you, and when he needs a new man, he will take you, rest assured.
Move your bed and whatever there is in my rooms to your new quarters.
Take the things to-day, do you hear? I'll go from there this evening to
a hotel. Here are five rubles for you. They'll be useful to you. Now,
keep quiet, do you understand?"
He continued to whisper long and rapidly, his eyes running about
suspiciously on all sides, and when the door opened he started from his
chair as if to run away. The smell of an ointment emanated from him. He
seemed to have grown less bulky and lower in stature, and to have lost
his importance.
"Good-by," he said, placing his hand on Yevsey's shoulder. "Live
carefully, don't trust people, especially women. Know the value of
money. Buy with silver, save the gold, don't scorn copper, defend
yourself with iron--a Cossack saying. I am a Cossack, you know."
It was hard and tiresome for Yevsey to listen to his softened voice. He
did not believe one word of the spy's, and, as always, feared him.
Klimkov felt relieved when he walked away, and went eagerly at his work,
trying to use it as a shield against the recollection of Rayisa and all
other troublesome thoughts. Something turned and bestirred itself within
him that day. He felt he was standing on the eve of another life, and
gazed after the Smokestack from the corners of his eyes. The old man
bent over his table in a cloud of grey smoke. Yevsey involuntarily
thought:
"How everything happens at once. There she cut her throat, and now maybe
I will--"
He could not picture to himself what might be; in fact, he did not
understand what he wanted, and impatiently awaited the evening, working
quickly in an endeavor to shorten the time.
In the evening as he walked along the street at the Smokestack's side,
he remarked that almost everybody noticed the old man, some even
stopping to look at him. He walked not rapidly but in long strides,
swinging his body and thrusting his head forward like a crane. He held
his hands behind his back, and his open jacket spreading wide flapped
against his sides like broken wings. In Klimkov's eyes the attention the
old man attracted seemed to sever him from the rest of the world.
"What is your name?"
"Yevsey."
"John is a good name," observed the old man, arranging his crumpled hat
with his long hand. "I had a son named John."
"Where is he?"
"That doesn't concern you," answered the old man calmly. After taking
several steps he added in the same tone, "If I say 'had,' that means I
have him no longer, no longer." He stuck out his lower lip, and pinched
it with his little finger. "We shall see who will do whom." Now he
inclined his head on one side, and looked into Klimkov's eyes. "To-day a
friend will come to me," he said solemnly, shaking his finger. "I have a
certain friend. What we speak about and what we do, does not concern
you. What you know I do not know, and what you do I do not want to know.
The same applies to you. Absolutely."
Yevsey nodded his head.
"You must make this a general rule. Apply it to everybody. No one knows
anything about you. That's the way it should be. And you do not know
anything about others. The path of human destruction is knowledge sown
by the devil. Happiness is ignorance. That's plain."
Yevsey listened attentively, looking into his face. The old man observed
his regard, and grumbled:
"There is something human in you. I noticed it." He stopped
unexpectedly, then went on, "But there's something human even in a dog."
They climbed a narrow wooden stairway with several windings to a
stifling garret, dark and smelling of dust. At the Smokestack's request
Yevsey held up burning matches while he fumbled a long time over opening
the door. As Yevsey held up the matches, which scorched his fingers, a
new hope flickered in his breast.
At last the old man opened the door, covered with torn oilcloth and
ragged felt, and they entered a long, narrow white room, with a ceiling
resembling the roof of a tomb. Opposite the door a wide window gleamed
dimly. In the corner to the right of the entrance stood a little stove,
which was scarcely noticeable. The bed extended along the left wall, and
opposite sprawled a sunken red sofa. The room smelled strongly of
camphor and dried herbs. The old man opened the window, and heaved a
noisy breath.
"It's good to have pure air. You will sleep on the sofa. What is your
name? I've forgotten. Aleksey?"
"Yevsey."
"Oh, yes." He raised the lamp, and pointed to the wall. "There's my son
John."
A portrait made in thin pencil strokes and set in a narrow white frame
hung inconspicuously upon the wall. It was a young but stern face, with
a large forehead, a sharp nose, and stubbornly compressed lips. The lamp
shook in the old man's hands, the shade knocked against the chimney,
filling the room with a gentle whining sound.
"John," he repeated, setting the lamp back on the table. "A man's name
means a great deal."
He thrust his head through the window, breathed in the cold air noisily,
and without turning to Yevsey asked him to prepare the samovar.
When Yevsey was busying himself around the oven, a hunch-backed man
entered, removed his straw hat in silence, and fanned his face with it.
"It's close, even though it's autumn already," he said in a beautiful
chest voice.
"Aha, you here!" said the Smokestack.
They began to converse in low tones while standing at the window. Yevsey
realizing that they were speaking about him strained his ears to catch
what they were saying. But he could not distinguish any words.
The three then seated themselves at the table, and the Smokestack began
to pour the tea. Yevsey from time to time stole a look at the guest. His
face, shaven like the Smokestack's, was bluish with a huge thin-lipped
mouth and dark eyes sunk in two hollows under a high smooth forehead.
His head, bald to the crown, was angular and large. He kept drumming
quietly on the table with his long fingers.
"Well, read," said the Smokestack.
"From the beginning?"
"Yes."
The hunch-back pulled out a package of papers from his coat-pocket and
opened it. "I'll skip the titles. This is the way I've done it." He
coughed, and half closing his eyes began to read. "'We people known to
nobody and already arrived at a ripe age now fall slavishly at your feet
with this distressing statement of grievances, which wells from the very
depths of our hearts, our hearts shattered by life but not robbed of
sacred faith in the grace and wisdom of Your Majesty.' Well, is it
good?"
"Continue," said the Smokestack.
"'For you are the father of the Russian people, the source of good
counsel, and the only power on earth capable--'"
"Better say, 'the only power on earth endowed with authority,'"
suggested the Smokestack.
"Wait, wait. 'The only power capable of restoring and maintaining order,
justice--' Here we must put in a third word for the sake of symmetry,
but I don't know what word."
"Be more careful in your choice of words," said the Smokestack, sternly
but not aloud. "Remember that they convey a different meaning to every
man."
The hunchback looked at him, and adjusted his glasses.
"Yes, that will come later. 'Great Russia is falling into ruin. Evil is
rampant in our country and horror prevails. People are oppressed by
want. The heart has become perverted with envy. The patient and gentle
Russian is perishing, and a heartless tribe ferocious with greed is
being born, a race of wolves, cruel animals of prey. Faith is dissolved,
and outside her fortress the people stand perturbed. Persons of depraved
minds aim at the defenseless, take them captive with satanic shrewdness,
and entice them onto the road of crime against all thy laws, Master of
our lives.'"
"'Master?' That's for a bishop," grumbled the Smokestack.
"Don't you like it?"
"No, we must make it different."
"How?"
"We must tell him directly that a general revolt against life is
stirring among the people, and that 'therefore Thou, who art called by
God--'"
The hunchback shook his head disapprovingly.
"We may point out. We have no right to advise."
"Who is our enemy, and what is his name? Atheist, Socialist, and
Revolutionist, a trinity. The destroyer of the family, the robber of our
children, the fore-runner of the anti-Christ."
"You and I don't believe in the anti-Christ," said the hunchback
quietly.
"That doesn't matter. We are speaking of the masses. They believe in the
anti-Christ. And we must point out the root of the main evil where we
see it. In the doctrine of destruction--"
"He knows it himself."
"How should he? Who would tell him the truth? Nobody cast the noose of
insanity around his children. And on what are their teachings based? On
general poverty and discontent with poverty. And we ought to say to him
straight out, 'Thou art the father, and thou art rich. Then give the
riches thou hast accumulated to thy people. Thus thou wilt cut off the
root of the evil, and everything will have been saved by thy hand.'"
The hunchback drew up his shoulders, and spread his mouth into a wide,
thin crack.
"They'll send us to the mines for that."
Then he looked into Yevsey's face and at the master.
Klimkov listened to the reading and the conversation as to a fairytale,
and felt that all the words entered his head and fixed themselves
forever in his memory. With parted lips and popping eyes he looked now
at one, now at the other, and did not drop his gaze even when the dark
look of the hunchback fastened upon his face. He was fascinated by the
proceedings.
"Anyway," said the hunchback, "this is inconvenient."
"What is it, Klimkov?" asked the Smokestack glumly.
Yevsey's throat grew dry, and he did not answer at once.
"I am listening."
Suddenly he realized by their faces that they did not believe him, that
they were afraid of him. He rose from the table, and said, getting his
words mixed:
"I won't say anything to a soul--I need it myself. Please let me
listen--why, I myself said to you, Kapiton Ivanovich, that things ought
to be different."
"You see?" said the Smokestack crossly, pointing at Yevsey. "You see,
Anton, what does it mean? Still a boy, a little boy, yet, he, too, says
things should be different. That's where they get their strength from."
"Yes, yes," said the hunchback.
Yevsey grew timid, and dropped back on his chair. The Smokestack, moving
his eyelids, bent toward him.
"I will tell you--we are writing a letter to the Czar. We ask him to
take more rigorous measures against those who are under supervision for
political infidelity. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Those people," the hunchback began to say clearly and slowly, "are
agents of foreign governments, chiefly of England. They receive huge
salaries for stirring up the Russian people to revolt and for weakening
the power of the government. The Englishmen do it so that we should not
take India from them."
They spoke to Yevsey by turns. When one had finished, the other took up
the word. He listened attentively trying to remember their strange,
eloquent flow of language. Finally, however, he tired from the unusual
exertion of his brain. It seemed to him he would soon understand
something huge, which would illuminate the whole of life and all people,
their entire misfortune and their malicious irritation. It was
inexpressibly pleasant for him to recognize that two wise men spoke to
him as to an adult, and he was powerfully gripped by a feeling of
gratitude and respect for these men, poorly dressed and so preoccupied
with deliberations upon the construction of a new life. But now, his
head grown heavy, as if filled with lead, he involuntarily closed his
eyes, oppressed by a painful sensation of fullness in his breast.
"Go, lie down and sleep," said the Smokestack.
Klimkov rose obediently, undressed, and lay down on the sofa.
The autumn night breathed warm fragrant moisture into the window.
Thousands and thousands of bright stars quivered in the dark sky, flying
up higher and higher. The fire of the lamp flickered, and likewise tore
itself upward. The two men bending toward each other read and spoke
gravely and quietly. Everything round about was mysterious,
awe-inspiring. It lifted Yevsey upward pleasantly, to something new, to
something good.