The water of the river was smooth, and dull silver of tint. Also, so
barely perceptible was the current that it seemed to be almost stagnant
under the mist of the noontide heat, and only by the changes in the
aspect of the banks could one realise how quietly and evenly the river
was carrying on its surface the old yellow-hulled steamer with the
white-rimmed funnel, and also the clumsy barge which was being towed in
her wake.
Dreamily did the floats of the paddle-wheels slap the water. Under the
planks of the deck the engines toiled without ceasing. Steam hissed and
panted. At intervals the engine-room bell jarred upon the car. At
intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid to and fro with a dull,
rattling sound. Yet, owing to the somnolent stillness settled upon the
river, these sounds escaped, failed to catch one's attention.
Through the dryness of the summer the water was low. Periodically, in
the steamer's bow, a deck hand like a king, a man with a lean, yellow,
black-avised face and a pair of languishing eyes, threw overboard a
polished log as in tones of melting melancholy he chanted:
"Se-em, se-em, shest!"
["Seven, seven, six!" (the depth of water, reckoned in sazheni or
fathoms)]
It was as though he were wailing:
"Seyem, seyem, a yest-NISHEVO"
[Let us eat, let us eat, but to eat there is--nothing]
Meanwhile, the steamer kept turning her stearlet-like [The stearlet is
a fish of the salmon species] prow deliberately and alternately towards
either bank as the barge yawed behind her, and the grey hawser kept
tautening and quivering, and sending out showers of gold and silver
sparkles. Ever and anon, too, the captain on the bridge kept shouting,
hoarsely through a speaking-trumpet:
"About, there!"
Under the stem of the barge a wave ran which, divided into a pair of
white wings, serpentined away towards either bank.
In the meadowed distance peat seemed to be being burnt, and over the
black forest there had gathered an opalescent cloud of smoke which also
suffused the neighbouring marshes.
To the right, the bank of the river towered up into lofty, precipitous,
clayey slopes intersected with ravines wherein aspens and birches found
shelter.
Everything ashore had about it a restful, sultry, deserted look. Even
in the dull blue, torrid sky there was nought save a white-hot sun.
In endless vista were meadows studded with trees--trees sleeping in
lonely isolation, and, in places, surmounted with either the cross of a
rural church which looked like a day star or the sails of a windmill;
while further back from the banks lay the tissue cloths of ripening
crops, with, here and there, a human habitation.
Throughout, the scene was indistinct. Everything in it was calm,
touchingly simple, intimate, intelligible, grateful to the soul. So
much so that as one contemplated the slowly-varying vistas presented by
the loftier bank, the immutable stretches of meadowland, and the green,
timbered dance-rings where the forest approached the river, to gaze at
itself in the watery mirror, and recede again into the peaceful
distance; as one gazed at all this one could not but reflect that
nowhere else could a spot more simply, more kindly, more beautiful be
found, than these peaceful shores of the great river.
Yet already a few shrubs by the river's margin were beginning to
display yellow leaves, though the landscape as a whole was smiling the
doubtful, meditative smile of a young bride who, about to bear her
first child, is feeling at once nervous and delighted at the prospect.
* * * * *
The hour was past noon, and the third-class passengers, languid with
fatigue induced by the heat, were engaged in drinking either tea or
beer. Seated mostly on the bulwarks of the steamer, they silently
scanned the banks, while the deck quivered, crockery clattered at the
buffet, and the deck hand in the bows sighed soporifically:
Six! Six! Six-and-a-half!
From the engine-room a grimy stoker emerged. Rolling along, and
scraping his bare feet audibly against the deck, he approached the
boatswain's cabin, where the said boatswain, a fair-haired,
fair-bearded man from Kostroma was standing in the doorway. The senior
official contracted his rugged eyes quizzically, and inquired:
"Whither in such a hurry?"
"To pick a bone with Mitka."
"Good!"
With a wave of his black hand the stoker resumed his way, while the
boatswain, yawning, fell to casting his eyes about him. On a locker
near the companion of the engine-room a small man in a buff pea-jacket,
a new cap, and a pair of boots on which there were clots of dried mud,
was seated.
Through lack of diversion the boatswain began to feel inclined to
hector somebody, so cried sternly to the man in question:
"Hi there, chawbacon!"
The man on the locker turned about--turned nervously, and much as a
bullock turns. That is to say, he turned with his whole body.
"Why have you gone and put yourself THERE?" inquired the boatswain.
"Though there is a notice to tell you NOT to sit there, it is there
that you must go and sit! Can't you read?"
Rising, the passenger inspected not the notice, but the locker. Then he
replied:
"Read? Yes, I CAN read."
"Then why sit there where you oughtn't to?"
"I cannot see any notice."
"Well, it's hot there anyway, and the smell of oil comes up from the
engines.... Whence have you come?"
"From Kashira."
"Long from home?"
"Three weeks, about."
"Any rain at your place?"
"No. But why?"
"How come your boots are so muddy?"
The passenger lowered his head, extended cautiously first one foot, and
then the other, scrutinised them both, and replied:
"You see, they are not my boots."
With a roar of laughter that caused his brilliant beard to project from
his chin, the boatswain retorted:
"I think you must drink a bit."
The passenger said nothing more, but retreated quietly, and with short
strides, to the stem. From the fact that the sleeves of his pea-jacket
reached far below his wrists, it was clear that the garment had
originated from the shoulders of another man.
As for the boatswain, on noting the circumspection and diffidence with
which the passenger walked, he frowned, sucked at his beard, approached
a sailor who was engaged in vigorously scrubbing the brass on the door
of the captain's cabin with a naked palm, and said in an undertone:
"Did you happen to notice the gait of that little man there in the
light pea-jacket and dirty boots?"
"I did."
"Then see here. Do keep an eye upon him."
"But why? Is he a bad lot?"
"Something like it, I think."
"I will then."
At a table near the hatchway of the first-class cabin, a fat man in
grey was drinking beer. Already he had reached a state of moderate
fuddlement, for his eyes were protruding sightlessly and staring
unwinkingly at the opposite wall. Meanwhile, a number of flies were
swarming in the sticky puddles on the table, or else crawling over his
greyish beard and the brick-red skin of his motionless features.
The boatswain winked in his direction, and remarked:
"Half-seas over, HE is."
"'Tis his way," a pockmarked, eyebrow-less sailor responded.
Here the drunken man sneezed: with the result that a cloud of flies
were blown over the table. Looking at them, and sighing as his
companion had done, the boatswain thoughtfully observed:
"Why, he regularly sneezes flies, eh?"
* * * * *
The resting-place which I myself had selected was a stack of firewood
over the stokehole shoot; and as I lay upon it I could see the hills
gradually darkening the water with a mourning veil as calmly they
advanced to meet the steamer; while in the meadows, a last lingering
glow of the sunset's radiance was reddening the stems of the birches,
and making the newly mended roof of a hut look as though it were cased
in red fustian--communicating to everything else in the vicinity a
semblance of floating amid fire--and effacing all outline, and causing
the scene as a whole to dissolve into streaks of red and orange and
blue, save where, on a hill above the hut, a black grove of firs stood
thrown into tense, keen, and clear-cut relief.
Under a hill a party of fishermen had lit a wood fire, the flames of
which could be seen playing upon, and picking out, the white hull of a
boat--the dark figure of a man therein, a fishing net suspended from
some stakes, and a woman in a yellow bodice who was sitting beside the
fire. Also, amid the golden radiance there could be distinguished a
quivering of the leaves on the lower branches of the tree whereunder
the woman sat shaded.
All the river was calm, and not a sound occurred to break the stillness
ashore, while the air under the awning of the third-class portion of
the vessel felt as stifling as during the earlier part of the day. By
this time the conversation of the passengers, damped by the shadow of
dusk, had merged into a single sound which resembled the humming of
bees; and amid it one could not distinguish nor divine who was
speaking, nor the subject of discussion, since every word therein
seemed disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably,
and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a suppressed
laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the cabin, a party who
had agreed to sing a song of general acceptation were failing to hit
upon one, and disputing the point in low and dispassionate accents; and
in each, such sound there was something vespertinal, gently sad, softly
prayer-like.
From behind the firewood near me a thick, rasping voice said in
deliberate tones:
"At first he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and spruce;
but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going to the dogs."
Another voice, loud and gruff, replied:
"Aha! Avoid the ladies, or one is bound to go amiss."
"The saying has it that always a fish makes for deeper water."
"Besides, he is a fool, and that is worse still. By the way, he is a
relative of yours, isn't he?"
"Yes. He is my brother."
"Indeed? Then pray forgive me."
"Certainly; but, to speak plainly, he is a fool."
At this moment I saw the passenger in the buff pea-jacket approach the
sally-port, grasp with his left hand a stanchion, and step on to the
grating under which one of the paddle-wheels was churning the water to
foam. There he stood looking over the bulwarks with a swinging motion
akin to that of a bat when, grappling some object or another with its
wings, it hangs suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was
drawn tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to
the point of absurdity.
Presently he turned and peered into the gloom under the awning, though,
seemingly, he failed to distinguish myself reposing on the firewood.
This enabled me to gain a clear view of a face with a sharp nose, some
tufts of light-coloured hair on cheeks and chin, and a pair of small,
muddy-looking eyes. He stood there as though he were listening to
something.
All of a sudden he stepped firmly to the sally-port, swiftly unlashed
from the iron top-rail a mop, and threw it overboard. Then he set about
unlashing a second article of the same species.
"Hi!" I shouted to him. "What are you doing there?"
With a start the man turned round, clapped a hand to his forehead to
discover my whereabouts, and replied softly and rapidly, and with a
stammer in his voice:
"How is that your business? Get away with you!"
Upon this I approached him, for I was astonished and amused at his
impudence.
"For what you have done the sailors will make you pay right enough," I
remarked.
He tucked up the sleeves of his pea-jacket as though he were preparing
for a fight. Then, stamping his foot upon the slippery grating, he
muttered:
"I perceived the mop to have come untied, and to be in danger of
falling into the water through the vibration. Upon that I tried to
secure it, and failed, for it slipped from my hands as I was doing so."
"But," I remarked in amazement, "my belief is that you WILLFULLY untied
the mop, to throw it overboard!"
"Come, come!" he retorted. "Why should I have done that? What an
extraordinary thing it would have been to do! How could it have been
possible?"
Here he dodged me with a dexterous movement, and, rearranging his
sleeves, walked away. The length of the pea-jacket made his legs look
absurdly short, and caused me to notice that in his gait there was a
tendency to shuffle and hesitate.
Returning to my retreat, I stretched myself upon the firewood once
more, inhaled its resinous odour, and fell to listening to the
slow-moving dialogue of some of the passengers around me.
"Ah, good sir," a gruff, sarcastic voice began at my side--but
instantly a yet gruffer voice intervened with:
"Well?"
"Oh, nothing, except that to ask a question is easy, and to answer it
may be difficult."
"True."
From the ravines a mist was spreading over the river.
* * * * *
At length night fell, and as folk relapsed into slumber the babel of
tongues became stilled. The car, as it grew used to the boisterous roar
of the engines and the measured rhythm of the paddle-wheels, did not at
first notice the new sound born of the fact that into the sounds
previously made familiar there began to intrude the snores of
slumberers, and the padding of soft footsteps, and an excited whisper
of:
"I said to him--yes, I said: 'Yasha, you must not, you shall not, do
this.'"
The banks had disappeared from view. Indeed, one continued to be
reminded of their existence only by the slow passage of the scattered
fires ashore, and the fact that the darkness lay blacker and denser
around those fires than elsewhere. Dimly reflected in the river, the
stars seemed to be absolutely motionless, whereas the trailing, golden
reproductions of the steamer's lights never ceased to quiver, as though
striving to break adrift, and float away into the obscurity. Meanwhile,
foam like tissue paper was licking our dark hull, while at our stern,
and sometimes overtaking it, there trailed a barge with a couple of
lanterns in her prow, and a third on her mast, which at one moment
marked the reflections of the stars, and at another became merged with
the gleams of firelight on one or the other bank.
On a bench under a lantern near the spot where I was lying a stout
woman was asleep. With one hand resting upon a small bundle under her
head, she had her bodice torn under the armpit, so that the white flesh
and a tuft of hair could be seen protruding. Also, her face was large,
dark of brow, and full of jowl to a point that caused the cheeks to
roll to her very ears. Lastly, her thick lips were parted in an
ungainly, corpselike smile.
From my own position on a level higher than hers, I looked dreamily
down upon her, and reflected: "She is a little over forty years of age,
and (probably) a good woman. Also, she is travelling to visit either
her daughter and son-in-law, or her son and daughter-in-law, and
therefore is taking with her some presents. Also, there is in her large
heart much of the excellent and maternal."
Suddenly something near me flashed as though a match had been struck,
and, opening my eyes, I perceived the passenger in the curious
pea-jacket to be standing near the woman spoken of, and engaged in
shielding a lighted match with his sleeve. Presently, he extended his
hand and cautiously applied the particle of flame to the tuft of hair
under the woman's armpit. There followed a faint hiss, and a noxious
smell of burning hair was wafted to my nostrils.