Time passed on. Ilya stood behind the counter, twisted his moustache,
and conducted his business, but it began to seem to him that the days
went more slowly. Sometimes he felt a desire to close the shop and go
for a walk, but he knew that such a proceeding would be bad for his
business and he did not go. To walk in the evenings was inconvenient;
Gavrik was afraid to be alone in the shop and there was a certain risk
in leaving him, he might set the place on fire by accident or let
in some rascal or other. Business went fairly well. Ilya thought it
might be necessary to take an assistant. His intimacy with Tatiana had
insensibly grown less, and she seemed willing that it should come to an
end. She laughed cheerfully when she came, and looked very carefully
through the book that recorded the day's business. While she sat and
made calculations in Ilya's room, he felt that this woman with the
bird's face was repugnant to him; but still from time to time she would
be pert and gay, jesting and making eyes at him, and calling him her
partner. Then he would rouse himself and re-enter what in his heart
he called a horrible web. Sometimes Kirik came too, stretched himself
out in a chair by the counter and cracked jokes with the tailoresses
who came in to make purchases while he was there. He had discarded
his police uniform, and boasted of his success in his new commercial
employment.
"Sixty roubles salary and then in different ways I make as much again
extra--not so bad, eh? I work very carefully for the extras, keep
within the law--ho! ho! We've moved, did you hear? We've a jolly house
now. We've taken on a cook--cooks splendidly, the wretch! When the
autumn comes we'll ask lots of our friends and play cards; it's very
pleasant, by Jove! To have a good time and make money at it; we play
into one another's hands, I and my wife, one of us must always win,
and the winnings pay the cost of entertainment, ho! ho! my boy! There,
that's living cheaply and pleasantly!"
He settled himself in a chair, puffed out the smoke of his cigarette
and went on, lowering his voice:
"A little while ago, brother, I was in a village--have you heard? I
tell you, the girls there--d'you know, such children of Nature, so
solid you know, you can't pinch them, the rascals,--and so cheap, too;
a bottle of Schnapps, a pound of honey cakes, and she is yours!"
Lunev listened, but said nothing. For some reason or other he was sorry
for Kirik, and pitied him without realising why this fat and stupid
fellow should rouse such a feeling. At the same time he almost always
wanted to laugh at the sight of him. Ilya did not believe Kirik's tales
of his adventures in the village, but thought he was only boasting,
talking as he had heard others talk. But when he was in a gloomy mood,
then he listened to Kirik and thought: "Fighting for crumbs!"
"Yes, brother, it's splendid to make love in the bosom of Nature, in
the shade of the leaves as they say in books."
"But if Tatiana Vlassyevna knew?"
"She won't know, brother," answered Kirik, and winked cheerfully.
But when Avtonomov departed Ilya thought of his words, and felt hurt.
It was evident that Kirik, good-tempered and ridiculous though he were,
yet held himself to be a man out of the common, whom Ilya could not
hope to equal, higher in station and more important. Yet he profited
by the business Ilya carried on with his wife. Perfishka had told them
that Petrusha laughed at his shop and called him a rascal. Jakov had
said to the cobbler that formerly Ilya was better and more friendly
than now and did not think so much of himself, and Gavrik's sister
constantly demonstrated that she thought herself superior to him.
The daughter of a postman, who went about almost in rags, behaved as
though it were too much for her to live on the same world as he did.
Ilya's ambition had grown since he had opened his shop, and he was more
sensitive than before. His interest deepened in this girl who was so
ugly, but had so strong a personality; he sought to understand whence
came this pride in a poor ragged girl, a pride which grew to annoy him
more and more. At first she would not talk to him, and that pained
him. Her brother was his servant, and therefore she ought to be more
friendly with him, the employer. He said to her once:
"I'm reading the book of 'Don Quixote.'"
"Well, do you like it?" she asked, without looking at him.
"Rather, most amusing,--he was a funny old owl that fellow!"
She looked at him, and Ilya felt as though her proud dark eyes pierced
his face angrily.
"I knew you would say something like that," she said, slowly and with
meaning.
Ilya was conscious of something reproachful, contemptuous and hostile
in her words.
"I'm an uneducated man," he said, and shrugged his shoulders.
She said nothing as though she had not heard him.
Once again the mood that long ago had possessed Ilya, began to invade
his soul again; once more he was angered at mankind, pondered long and
deeply upon justice, and his sins, and what might be in store for him
in the future. The last question troubled him persistently. He liked
his shop, he liked almost all his life at this time; in comparison with
the life of his younger days it was cleaner, more peaceful, freer. But
would it always be like this; to squat in his shop from morning to
night, then sit awhile with his thoughts by the samovar, and then go
to sleep, only to wake and begin again in the shop? He knew that many
tradesmen, perhaps all, lived just such a life. But then they were
married, and had children, they drank brandy, played cards, and among
them all there was hardly one like himself.
He had many reasons, outward as well as inward, to consider himself an
unusual man, unlike the rest.
He did not care for tradesmen; some of them were like Kirik, boasted
of everything and spoke of nothing but their business, others swindled
openly. Once, as he meditated on all these things, he remembered
Jakov's words: "God guard you from good fortune--you are greedy," and
the words appeared to him a deep insult. No, he was not covetous; he
wanted to live simply, cleanly, and quietly, to have men respect him
and to have no one say: "I stand higher than you, Ilya Lunev, I am
better than you."
Again he began to wonder what the future held in store for him. Would
the murder be avenged on him or not? Up and down, he thought, whether
it would be unjust for the sin to be avenged on him. He had had no
desire to strangle the man, it happened of itself, he said to himself
a hundred times. In the town there live many murderers, libertines,
robbers, all know they are murderers and robbers and libertines of
their own choice, yet all live, and enjoy the good things of life, and
no punishment is swift to fall upon them. In justice, every injury done
to man must be avenged on the evildoer, and in the Bible it is written:
"He rewardeth him and he shall know it." These thoughts set all his old
wounds throbbing and a raging thirst burned in his heart to revenge his
blighted life. Sometimes the idea came to him to do some daring deed;
to go and set fire to Petrusha's house, and when it began to burn, and
people began to run from it, to cry out: "I have done it, and I have
murdered Poluektov, the merchant." Then men would seize him and judge
him, and send him to Siberia as they had sent his father. This thought
roused him and narrowed his thirst for revenge to the desire to tell
Kirik of his intimacy with Tatiana, or to visit old Ehrenov and thrash
him for torturing Masha.
Often he lay on his bed in the darkness listening to the deep
stillness, and felt as though all round him life quivered, and twisted
in a wild whirlpool with noise and outcry. The whirlpool would suck him
in, and sweep him away like a feather or a fallen leaf, and destroy
him, and he shuddered with the premonition of something uncanny.
One evening, as he was about to close the shop, Pavel appeared, and
said quietly, without greeting him: "Vyera has run away."
He sat down on a chair, rested his elbows on the counter, and whistled
softly as he gazed out into the street. His face was as though turned
to stone, but his fair moustache twitched like a cat's whiskers.
"Alone?" asked Ilya.
"I don't know; it's three days ago."
Ilya looked at him without speaking. The quiet face and voice made it
impossible to tell how Gratschev felt the flight of his companion, but
in the stillness Ilya was aware of an unalterable resolution.
"What are you going to do?" he asked at length, when he saw that Pavel
would not speak. Pavel stopped whistling, and said sharply, without
turning round: "I'll cut her throat!"
"Ah! talking like that again!" cried Ilya, and with a gesture of
annoyance.
"She's trod my heart under foot," said Pavel half-aloud. "There's the
knife!" He drew from his bosom a little bread-knife and shook it.
"I'll stick it in her throat."
Ilya caught his hand, tore the knife away, and threw it on the counter,
and said angrily:
"An ox once raged against a fly----"
Pavel sprang from his chair and turned his face on Ilya. His eyes were
blazing, his face convulsed, and he trembled in all his limbs; then he
sank back again on his chair and said, contemptuously:
"You're a fool!"
"You're so very clever, aren't you?"
"The strength is in the hand, not in the knife."
"Talk!"
"And if my hands fall off, I'd tear her windpipe with my teeth."
"Don't talk so horribly!"
"Don't talk to me Ilya," said Pavel, once more quietly. "Believe or
don't believe, but don't torment me. Fate is bad enough."
"Think, think, you silly fellow----" began Ilya, speaking in a friendly
tone.
"I've thought for two years. Everything's settled long ago. Anyhow,
I'll go--how can a fellow talk to you? You're well fed; you're no
comrade for me."
"Get rid of your crazy thoughts!" cried Ilya reproachfully.
"But I'm hungry, body and soul."
"It surprises me, the way men judge," said Ilya mockingly and shrugged
his shoulders. "A woman is to be a man's property, like a cow or a
horse! Will you do what I want? All right, you shan't be beaten,--won't
you? then crack! there's one on the head for you, devil! A woman is
like a man, and has a character of her own."
Pavel looked at him and laughed hoarsely.
"Then who am I, am I no man?"
"Well, ought you to be just or not?"
"Oh, go to the devil with your old justice!" shouted Gratschev
furiously, and sprang up again. "Be just, that's easy for the well fed,
d'you hear? Now, good-bye."
He went quickly from the shop and in the doorway, for some reason, took
off his cap. Ilya sprang from behind the counter after him, but already
Gratschev was away down the street, holding his cap in his hand, and
shaking it excitedly.
"Pavel!" cried Ilya. "Stop!"
He did not stop, nor turn round once, but turned into a side street,
and disappeared.
Ilya turned slowly back and felt his face burn with the words of his
friend as though he had looked into a hot oven.
"How angry he was!" said Gavrik.
Ilya smiled.
"Whose throat did he want to cut?" asked the boy, and came up to the
counter. He held his hands behind his back, his head thrown up, and his
coarse face was red with excitement.
"His wife," said Ilya.
Gavrik was silent for a moment, then he wrinkled his forehead and said
softly and thoughtfully to his master:
"There was a woman near us poisoned her husband last Christmas with
arsenic, because he was always drinking."
"It does happen," said Lunev slowly, thinking of Pavel.
"But this man, will he really kill her?"
"Go away now, Gavrik."