On the way Zarubin said in a business-like way:
"After all your people seem to have been trash."
"Why?" asked Klimkov offended. He sighed, and said in a lower voice.
"Not trash a bit."
"They gave little for them, very little. Ugh! I know how such things are
done. You can't fool me, no, indeed. Krasavin once caught a single
revolutionist, and he got a hundred rubles. Do you hear? And they sent
him another hundred from St. Petersburg. Solovyov got seventy-five for
an illegal lady. You see? And Maklakov, Ugh! Of course he catches
advocates, professors, writers, who have a special price. They are not
dangerous, but I suppose it must be hard to catch them."
Zarubin spoke without cease. Klimkov was satisfied with his tattle,
which kept him from thinking of the oppressive something that lay in his
breast like a cold stone.
The two youths entered a public house. Zarubin in the confident voice of
a habitué asked the tall, thin, one-eyed housekeeper:
"Is Lydia well? And Kapa? There, Yevsey, you will get acquainted with
Kapa. She's a girl, I tell you, a monster! She'll teach you what you
wouldn't learn in a hundred years without her. Well, give us lemonade
and cognac. First of all, Yevsey, we must take a bit of cognac with
lemonade. That's a sort of champagne. It lifts you up into the air at
once. All right?"
"All the same to me."
The house, apparently, was an expensive one. The windows were hung with
sumptuous curtains. The furniture seemed unusual to Yevsey, the prettily
dressed girls, proud and inaccessible. All this distracted him. He
squeezed himself into a corner, stepping aside to let the girls pass,
who went by him as if they did not notice him. Their clothes grazed his
legs. The half-dressed bodies, painted and already sweaty, lazily
floated by in oppressive heaps. Their eyes set in pencilled lids turned
in their orbits. The eyes were all large, though dead and uniform,
notwithstanding their various colors.
"Students?" asked a reddish girl of her companion, a stout brunette with
a high bare bosom and a blue ribbon about her neck. The one who
whispered in her ear made a grimace at Yevsey. He turned away from her,
and asked Zarubin in annoyance:
"Do they know who we are?"
"Yes, of course. That's why they take only half the price for entrance,
and discount twenty-five per cent. from the bill."
Yevsey emptied two beakers of the sparkling beverage. Though it did not
make him merrier, everything around him, nevertheless, assumed a more
uniform, less irritating aspect. Two girls seated themselves at their
table, Lydia and Kapitolina, the one tall and strong, the other broad
and heavy. Lydia's head was absurdly small in proportion to her body;
her forehead, too, was small, her chin was sharp and prominent, her
mouth round, her teeth, little and fine, like those of a fish, and her
eyes dark and cunning. Kapitolina seemed put together from a number of
balls of various sizes. Her protruding eyes were also like balls, and
dull as a blind person's.
Little black Zarubin was restless as a fly. He smelt of everything,
turned his head from side to side, moved his legs up and down, back and
forth, sent his thin dark hands flying over the table to seize
everything and feel everything. Yevsey suddenly began to feel a heavy
dull irritation rising in him against Zarubin.
"The skunk!" he thought. "He brought me a monster for my money, and
chose a pretty one for himself."
But Yevsey knew that his annoyance at Zarubin had a deeper-seated cause
than this. He filled a large glass of cognac, swallowed it, and opened
his burned mouth and rolled his eyes.
"Capital!" shouted Yakov.
The girls laughed, and for a minute Yevsey was deaf and blind, as if he
had fallen fast asleep.
"This Lydia, Yevsey, my true friend, is a wise girl, oh, so wise!"
Zarubin pulled Yevsey's sleeve to rouse him. "Whenever I merit the
attention of the officials, I will take her away from here, will marry
her, and will establish her in my business. Yes, Lydia darling? Ugh!"
"We'll see," replied the girl, languidly, looking sidewise at his oily
eyes.
"Why are you silent, friend Yevsey?" asked Kapitolina, slapping Yevsey's
shoulder with her heavy hand.
"She addresses everybody by the first name," Yakov remarked.
"All the same to me," said Yevsey, without looking at the girl, and
moving away from her. "Only tell her that I don't like her, and she
should go away."
For a few seconds all kept silence.
"To the devil with you!" said Kapitolina, thickly and calmly. Propping
herself on the table with her hands, she slowly lifted her heavy body
from the chair. Yevsey was annoyed because she was not offended. He
looked at her, and said:
"A species of elephant."
"How impolite!" shouted Lydia compassionately.
"Ugh! Yes, Yevsey. That's impolite, brother. Kapitolina Nikolayevna is
an excellent girl. All connoisseurs value her."
"To me it's all the same," said Yevsey. "I want beer."
"Hey, there, beer!" shouted Zarubin. "Kapa dear, be so kind as to see we
get beer."
The stout girl turned, and left scraping her feet. Zarubin bending over
to Yevsey began insinuatingly and didactically:
"You see, Yevsey, of course this is an establishment of such a kind, and
so on, but still the girls are human beings like you and me. Why should
you insult them uselessly? Ugh! They're not all here of their own
accord."
"Stop!" said Klimkov.
He wanted everything around him to be quiet. He wanted the girls to
cease floating in the air, like melancholy drifts of spring clouds torn
by the wind. He wanted the shaven pianist with the dark blue face, like
that of a drowned person, to stop rapping his fingers on the yellow
teeth of the piano, which resembled the jaw of a huge monster, a monster
that roared and shrieked loud laughter. He wanted the curtains of the
windows to cease flapping so strangely, as if someone's unseen and
spiteful hand were pulling at them from the street. Olga dressed in
white should station herself at the door. Then he would rise, walk
around the room, and would strike everybody in the face with all his
might. Let Olga see that they were all repulsive to him, and that she
wasn't right, and understood nothing.
The complaining words of Zarubin settled themselves obstinately in his
ears:
"We came here to make merry, but you at once begin a scandal."
Yevsey, his whole body swaying, gave a dull glance into Yakov's face,
and suddenly said to himself with cold precision:
"On account of that--sneak, I fell into this pit of an infernal life.
All on account of him!"
He took a full bottle of beer into his hands, filled a glass for
himself, drank it out, and without letting go of the bottle, rose from
his seat.
"The money is mine, not yours, you skunk!"
"What of it? We are comrades!"
Zarubin's black head, cropped and prickly, fell back. Yevsey saw the
sharp gleaming little eyes on the swarthy face, saw the set teeth.
"You wait. Sit down."
Klimkov waved the bottle, and hit him in the face, aiming at his eyes.
The ruddy blood gleamed oily and moist, awakening a ferocious joy in
Klimkov. He swung his hand once again, pouring the beer over himself.
Everybody began to cry "Oh, oh!" to scream, and rock. Somebody's nails
drove themselves into Klimkov's face. He was seized by the arms and
legs, lifted from the floor, and carried off. Somebody spat warm sticky
saliva into his face, squeezed his throat, and tore his hair.
He came to his senses in the police station, all in tatters, scratched,
and wet. He at once remembered everything.
"What will happen now?" was his first thought, though unaccompanied by
alarm.
A police officer whom he knew advised him to wash his face and ride
home.
"Are they going to try me?"
"I don't know," said the police officer, who sighed, and added
enviously, "Hardly. Your department is a power. It is permitted
everything. So they'll take care of you."
Yevsey smiled.
After several days of a sort of even indistinct life without impressions
and excitement, Yevsey was summoned to the presence of Filip
Filippovich, who shouted shrilly a long time.
"You, idiot, you ought to set other people an example of good conduct.
You ought not to make scandals. Please remember that. If I learn
anything of the same kind about you, I'll place you under arrest for a
month. Do you hear?"
Klimkov was frightened. He shrank within himself, and began to live
quietly, silently, unobserved, trying to exhaust himself as much as
possible, in order to escape thought.
When he met Yakov Zarubin, he saw a small red scar over his right eye;
which new feature on the mobile face was pleasant to him. The
consciousness that he had found the courage and the power to strike a
person raised him in his own eyes.
"Why did you do it to me?" asked Yakov.
"So," said Yevsey. "I was drunk."
"Oh, you devil! You know what a face means in our service. We can't
afford to spoil it."
Zarubin demanded a treat for a good dinner from Yevsey.