His intimacy with Olympiada, so unexpectedly begun from a woman's whim,
rendered Ilya at first quite arrogant. A proud self-confident feeling
awakened in him, healing the little wounds that life had dealt his
heart.
The thought that a lovely well-dressed lady gave him her precious
kisses out of pure affection and demanded nothing in return, raised him
more and more in his own eyes, and he felt as though he were floating
in a broad stream, borne along by a peaceful flood that caressed his
body tenderly and waked strength and courage in his limbs.
"My dear lad," said Olympiada to him, as she played with his hair
or passed her finger over the dark down that covered his upper lip.
"You're nicer every day, you've such a bold, confident heart, and I can
see you're sure to get what you want. I like that. I'm made that way,
too. If I were younger, I'd marry you and together we'd have a splendid
time."
Ilya treated her with great respect. She seemed so sensible, and he
liked her for the way she respected herself in spite of her vicious
life. She never drank and used no foul words like the other women that
he knew. Her body was as supple and strong as her full deep voice,
and as tense as her character. Even her frugality, her love of order
and cleanliness, and the readiness with which she could speak on any
subject and ward off anything that irritated her pride, delighted
him. Sometimes though, if he visited her and found her lying with
dishevelled hair and pale, languid face, a bitter feeling of disgust
would arise, and then as he looked gloomily into her wearied eyes he
could bring no greeting from his lips. She must have understood his
feeling readily, for she would wrap the coverlet round her and say:
"Off with you!--go and see Vyera--tell the old woman to bring me some
snow-water!"
He would go to the clean little room and Vyera would laugh guiltily at
the sight of his gloomy, displeased face. One day she asked him:
"Well, Ilya Jakovlevitsch, how are you getting on? How do you like it
here?"
"Ah, Vyerotchka, sin can't stick to you; if you only smile it melts
away like snow."
"I'm so sorry for you, both of you, poor fellows."
Ilya liked Vyera very much. He treated her as a little child, was very
disturbed if she quarrelled with Pashka, and made the peace between
them every time. He liked to sit in her room and watch her comb her
golden hair, or sew at something, singing softly. Often he surprised
in her eyes a gnawing pain, and sometimes her face twitched with a
hopeless weary smile. At such a time he felt even more drawn to her,
the misery of this little girl touched him more keenly and he would
comfort her as well as he could. But she said:
"No, no, Ilya, we can't go on like this, it's quite impossible;
think--I--I must live on in this filth, but Pavel, what place is there
for him near me?"
"But he chooses it," said Ilya.
"Chooses?" came like an echo from her lips.
Olympiada interrupted the conversation, entering noiselessly in a wide
blue cloak, like a cold moonbeam.
"Come to tea, my lad, and you come in too, presently, Vyerotchka."
Fresh and rosy from the cold water, clean, neat and calm, she took Ilya
to her room without many words, and he followed, marvelling that this
could be the same Olympiada he had seen before, faded and soiled by
lustful hands.
While they drank their tea, she said to him: "It's a pity you're only
a peasant lad and have learned so little, that'll make it harder for
you in life, but anyhow you must drop your present business and try
something else. Wait, I'll look out for a place for you--you must be
looked after. As soon as I've fixed things up with Poluektov, I'll
manage it."
"Is he going to give you the five thousand?"
"Of course," she answered with conviction.
"Well, if I ever meet him near you, I'll pull his head off," cried Ilya
jealously.
"Why? he doesn't get in your way."
"He does, most decidedly, get in my way."
"But he's old and horrid," said Olympiada, laughing.
"Laugh away! I'll never believe that it's anything but a great sin to
caress such a dirty beast."
"Wait a little, at least, till I get hold of his money."
The merchant did everything for her that she desired. Soon Ilya was
sitting in her new house, seeing the thick carpets and the heavy
plush-covered furniture, and listening to his lady's business-like
remarks. He found in her no special pleasure in her altered
surroundings, she was as calm and self-contained as ever. It was as
though only the clothes were changed, nothing else.
"I am now twenty-seven,--when I am thirty, I shall have ten thousand
roubles. Then I'll throw over the old man and be free; learn from me,
my lad, how to deal with life."
Ilya learnt from her obstinate perseverance to attain a predetermined
goal, but often the thought tortured him, that he shared her caresses
with another, and a painful sense of degradation and weakness. At such
times the vision would rise again of his shop, with the clean room,
where he might entertain his lady. He didn't believe that he loved
Olympiada, but she seemed quite necessary to him, as a sensible good
comrade.
In this way, two months--three months passed away. One day, when he
returned home, he betook himself to Perfishka's cellar, and saw with
amazement Perfishka at the table with a bottle of brandy, and opposite
him, Jakov sat, leaning heavily on the table, his head swaying, and
said unsteadily:
"Splendid! If God sees everything and knows everything, then He sees me
too. Every one has forsaken me, brother. I'm all alone. My father hates
me, he's a scoundrel! He's a robber and a cheat, isn't he, Perfishka?"
"Right, Jakov. It's a pity, but it's true."
"Well, then, how am I to live? What am I to believe in?" asked Jakov,
stammering and shaking his dishevelled hair. "I can't believe in my
father. Ilya goes his own way. Masha is a child. Where is there a man?
Perfishka, I tell you, there's not a man left in the world."
Ilya stood in the doorway, and heard his friend's drunken speech. His
heart sank painfully. He saw Jakov's head loll, drooping and weak,
on his thin neck, saw Perfishka's thin, yellow face lighted up with
a pleased smile, and he would not believe that this could really be
Jakov, the quiet, modest Jakov.
"What are you doing here?" he said reproachfully as he entered.
Jakov started, looked with startled eyes into Ilya's face, and said,
with a despairing smile: "Ah, Ilya--is that all! I thought--my
father----"
"What's all this about, tell me," Ilya interrupted.
"You let him alone, Ilya," cried Perfishka, and rose swaying from his
chair. "He can please himself. Thank God that he still likes brandy."
"Ilya," cried Jakov convulsively, "my father thrashed me."
"That's so. I was a witness," explained Perfishka, and smote his breast
with his fist. "I saw everything. I can take my oath! He knocked his
teeth out, and made his nose bleed."
In fact, Jakov's face was swollen and his upper lip covered with blood.
He stood in front of his comrade, and said, smiling mournfully:
"How dare he beat me? I'm nineteen, and I'd done nothing wrong."
"Why did he beat you, then?"
Jakov's lips twitched as though he was about to speak, but he said
nothing. His bruised face quivered. He sank heavily on a chair, took
his head in his hands, and began to sob aloud, so that his whole body
shook. Perfishka, who had supported him as he sank down, poured out
a glass of brandy, and said: "Let him cry. It's good when a man can.
Mashutka, too, was in a state, quite bathed in tears. 'I'll scratch his
eyes out,' she screamed right on, till I took her to Matiza."
"But what happened?"
"I can tell you exactly. It was quite a crazy business. Terenti, that
uncle of yours, he began the thing. All at once he said to Petrusha,
'Let me go to Kiev,' he said, 'to the holy men!' Petrusha was
delighted; that hump of Terenti's has worried his eyes, and to tell
the truth, he's jolly glad to see Terenti's back; it's not nice to
have some one about who knows a secret of yours--he! he! 'All right,'
he says. 'Go along, and put in a little word for me too with the holy
men.' And then Jakov starts in all of a sudden: 'Let me go too,' he
says."
Perfishka began to roll his eyes, made a fierce grimace, and cried in a
hoarse voice, imitating Petrusha:
"'Wha--a--at do you want to do?'"
"'I want to go with uncle to the holy men.'
"'What do you mean?'
"Jakov says, 'I could pray for you too.' Then Petrusha begins to roar,
'I'll teach you to pray!' Jakov sticks to his point. 'Let me go. God is
pleased with the prayers of sons for their fathers' sins.' My word, how
Petrusha hit him in the mouth, and again and again."
"I can't live with him," cried Jakov. "I'll go away. I'll hang myself.
Why did he beat me--why? All I said came from my heart."
Ilya's heart sank at this outcry, and with a despairing shrug of his
shoulders, he left the cellar. He was glad to hear that his uncle was
going on a pilgrimage. Once Terenti was gone, he would finally leave
this house, take a little room somewhere for himself, and be his own
master. As he entered his room, Terenti appeared, following him. His
eyes shone, his face wore an expression of joy. He approached Ilya and
said: "Well, I'm going. O Lord, how glad I am! To step out of a cave, a
cellar, into God's world. Surely He will not despise my prayer, since
He lets me get away from this place."
"Do you know what's happened to Jakov?" said Ilya, drily.
"What?"
"He's got drunk."
"What do you say? That is wrong of him! Silly boy! And just now he was
begging his father to let him go with me."
"Were you there when his father beat him?"
"Yes, of course. Why?"
"Why, can't you understand? That's why he's got drunk."
"Because of that? It's not possible!"
Ilya saw clearly that Jakov's fate was a matter of indifference to
his uncle, and that strengthened his feeling of enmity against the
hunchback. He had never seen Terenti so overjoyed, and the sight of
this happiness, coming right after Jakov's misery, moved him strangely.
He sat down at the window and said:
"Go on into the bar."
"Petrusha is there. I want to talk to you."
"Oh! what about?"
The hunchback came up to him and said mysteriously:
"I'm getting away. You're staying behind and that means--well----"
"Hurry up," said Ilya.
"Yes--yes, I want to; it isn't easy to say," said Terenti, in a subdued
way, while his eyes blinked.
"Do you want to talk about me? eh?"
"Yes--yes--about you, too, but presently. I've saved some money."
Ilya looked at him and laughed maliciously.
"What d'you mean? Why d'you laugh?" cried his uncle, frightened.
"Oh, nothing. Well, then, you've _saved_ some money, have you?"