THE OUTCASTS
And other Stories
BY MAXIM GORKY
_SECOND IMPRESSION_
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
MCMV
CONTENTS
THE OUTCASTS
Translated by DORA B. MONTEFIORE
and EMILY JAKOWLEFF.
WAITING FOR THE FERRY.
Translated by DORA B. MONTEFIORI
and EMILY JAKOWLEFF.
THE AFFAIR OF THE CLASPS.
Translated by VERA VOLKHOVSKY.
THE OUTCASTS
I
The High Street consists of two rows of one-storeyed hovels, squeezed
close one against another; old hovels with leaning walls and crooked
windows, with dilapidated roofs, disfigured by time, patched with
shingles, and overgrown with moss; here and there above them rise tall
poles surmounted with starling houses, whilst the roofs are shaded by
the dusty green of pollard willows and elder bushes, the sole miserable
vegetation of suburbs where dwell the poorest classes.
The windows of these hovels, their glass stained green with age, seem
to watch each other with the shifty, cowardly glance of thieves. Up
the middle of the street crawls a winding channel passing between
deep holes, washed out by the heavy rain; here and there lie heaps
of old, broken bricks and stones overgrown with weeds, the remains
of the various attempts made from time to time by the inhabitants to
build dwellings; but these attempts have been rendered useless by
the torrents of stormwater sweeping down from the town above. On the
hill nestle, amongst the luxuriant green of gardens, magnificent
stone-built houses; the steeples of churches rise proudly towards the
blue heavens, their golden crosses glittering in the sun.
In wet weather the town pours into this outlying suburb all its surface
water, and in the dry weather all its dust, and this miserable row of
hovels has the appearance of having been swept down at one of these
moments by some powerful hand.
Crushed into the ground, these half-rotten human shelters seem to cover
all the hill, whilst, stained by the sun, by the dust, and by the
rains, they take on them the dirty nondescript colour of old decaying
wood.
At the end of this miserable street stood an old, long, two-storeyed
house, which seemed to have been cast out in this way from the town,
and which had been bought by the merchant Petounnikoff. This was the
last house in the row, standing just under the hill, and stretching
beyond it were fields, ending at a distance of half a verst from the
house in an abrupt fall towards the river. This large and very old
house had a more sinister aspect than its neighbours; all its walls
were crooked, and in its rows of windows there was not one that had
preserved its regular form; whilst the remnants of the window panes
were of the dirty green colour of stagnant water.
The spaces between the windows were disfigured with discoloured patches
of fallen plaster, as if time had written the history of the house in
these hieroglyphics. Its roof, sagging forwards towards the street,
increased its pathetic aspect; it seemed as if the house were bowing
itself towards the ground, and were humbly waiting for the last stroke
of fate to crumble it into dust, or into a deformed heap of half-rotten
ruins.
The front gates were ajar. One side, torn from its hinges, lay on the
ground, and from the cracks between the boards sprang grass, which
also covered the great desolate yard. At the farther end of this yard
stood a low, smoke-blackened shed with an iron roof. The house itself
was uninhabited, but in this mean shed, which had been a forge, was
installed a common lodging-house or doss-house, kept by a retired
cavalry officer, Aristide Fomitch Kouvalda.
Inside, this doss-house appeared as a long, dark den, lighted by four
square windows and a wide door. The brick unplastered walls were dark
with smoke, which had also blackened the ceiling. In the middle stood
a large stove, round which, and along the walls, were ranged wooden
bunks containing bundles of rubbish which served the dossers for beds.
The walls reeked with smoke, the earthen floor with damp, and the bunks
with sweat and rotten rags.
The master's bunk was on the stove, and those in its immediate
neighbourhood were looked upon as places of honour, and were granted to
the inmates who rejoiced in his favour and friendship. The master spent
the greater part of the day seated at the door of the shed in a sort of
arm-chair, which he had himself constructed of bricks, or else in the
beerhouse of Jegor Vaviloff, just across the way, where Aristide dined
and drank vodka.
Before starting the lodging-house, Aristide Kouvalda used to keep
a servants' registry office in the town; and glancing farther back
into his life, we should find he had had a printing establishment;
and before the printing business, according to his own account, he
lived--and "lived, devil take it, well; lived as a connoisseur, I can
assure you!"
He was a broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a pock-marked face,
bloated with drink, and a bushy, yellow beard. His eyes were grey,
large, audaciously gay; he spoke with a bass voice, and almost always
held between his teeth a German china pipe with a curved stem. When
he was angry the nostrils of his red crooked nose would dilate wide,
and his lips would quiver, showing two rows of large yellow teeth like
those of a wolf. Long-handed and bow-legged, he dressed always in an
old dirty military overcoat and a greasy cap with a red band, but
without a peak; and in worn felt boots reaching to his knees. In the
morning he was always in a state of drunken stupor, and in the evening
he became lively. Drunk he never could be; for however much liquor he
stowed away, he never lost his gay humour.
In the evening he might be seen seated in his brick arm-chair, his pipe
between his teeth, receiving his lodgers.
"Who are you?" he would ask, on the approach of some ragged,
depressed-looking individual, who had been turned out of the town for
drunkenness or for some other reason.
The man would reply.
"Show me your papers, to prove that you are not lying!"
The papers were shown, if there were any forthcoming. The master would
push them into his shirt, not caring to look at their contents.
"All right! For one night two kopecks; a week, ten kopecks; a month,
twenty kopecks; go and take your place, but mind not to take anyone
else's, or you will catch it. The people who live here are particular."
The new-comer would ask him, "Can one get tea, bread, and grub? Don't
you sell them?"
"I sell only walls and roof, for which I pay the rogue Petounnikoff,
the owner of this hole, five roubles a month," Kouvalda would explain
in a business-like tone. "People who come to me are not used to luxury,
and if you are in the habit of guzzling every day, there's a beershop
just opposite. But you'd better get out of that bad habit as soon as
possible, you skulker; you are not a gentleman born, then why do you
want to eat? You had better eat yourself!"
For these and like speeches, uttered in a pretended severe voice, but
always with a laugh in his eyes, and for his attention to his lodgers,
Kouvalda was very popular among the outcasts of the town.
It sometimes happened that a former client would come into the
doss-house, no longer ragged and down-trodden, but in more or less
decent clothes, and with a cheerful face.
"Good-day, your honour; how are you?"
"All right; quite well; what do you want?"
"Don't you recognise me?"
"No, I don't."
"Don't you remember last winter I spent a month with you, when you had
a police raid and three were taken up?"
"Oh, my good fellow, the police often come under my hospitable roof!"
"And, good Lord! don't you remember how you cheeked the police officer?"
"Well, that will do with recollections; just say simply what you want."
"Let me stand you something. When I lived with you, you were so"--
"Gratitude should be always encouraged, my friend, for we seldom meet
with it. You must be a really good fellow, though I can't remember you;
but I'll accompany you to the vodka shop with pleasure, and drink to
your success in life."
"Ah! you're always the same--always joking."
"Well, what else can one do when one lives among a miserable set like
you?"
Then they would go off, and often the former lodger would return
staggering to the doss-house. Next day the entertainment would begin
anew; and one fine morning the lodger would come to his senses, to find
that he had drunk away all that he possessed.
"See, your honour! Once more I am one of your crew; what am I to do
now?"
"Well, it's a position you can't boast about, but being in it, it's no
use crying," argued the captain. "You must look at your position with
equanimity, my friend, and not spoil life with philosophising and
reasoning. Philosophy is always useless, and to philosophise before
the drink is out of one is inexpressibly foolish. When you are getting
over a bout of drinking you want vodka, and not remorse and grinding of
teeth. You must take care of your teeth, otherwise there will be none
to knock out. Here are twenty kopecks; go and bring some vodka and a
piece of hot tripe or lights, a pound of bread, and two cucumbers. When
we get over our drink then we'll think over the state of affairs."
The state of affairs would become clear in two or three days, when
the master had nothing more left of the four or five roubles which
had found their way into his pocket on the day of the return of the
grateful lodger.
"Here we are, at the end of our tether!" the captain would say. "Now,
you fool, that we have drunk all we had, let us try to walk in the
paths of sobriety and of virtue. As it is, how true is the saying,
'If one hasn't sinned, one can't repent; and if one hasn't repented,
one can't be saved!' The first commandment we have fulfilled; but
repentance is of no use, so let's go straight for salvation. Be off to
the river and start work. If you are not sure of yourself, tell the
contractor to keep your money back, or else give it to me to keep When
we've saved a good sum I'll buy you some breeches and what is necessary
to make you look like a decent, tidy, working man persecuted by fate.
In good breeches you will still stand a good chance. Now be off with
you!"
The lodger went off to work on the towpath, down by the river, smiling
to himself at the long, wise speeches of Kouvalda. The pith of the
wisdom he did not understand, but watching the merry eyes, and feeling
the influence of the cheerful spirit, he knew that in the discursive
captain he had a friend who would always help him in case of need.
And, indeed, after a month or two of hard work, the lodger, thanks to
the strict supervision of the captain, found himself in a pecuniary
position which enabled him to rise a step above that condition into
which he had fallen, thanks also to the kind assistance of the same
captain.
"Well, my friend," Kouvalda would say, critically inspecting his
renovated acquaintance, "here you are now with breeches and a coat.
These matters are very important, believe me. As long as I had decent
breeches I lived as a decent man in the town; but, damn it all! as soon
as these fell to pieces, I fell also in the estimation of mankind, and
I had to leave the town and come out here. People, you fool, judge by
the outer appearance only; the inner meaning is inaccessible to them,
because of their innate stupidity. Put that into your pipe and smoke
it.--Pay me half your debt if you like, and go in peace. Seek and you
will find."
"How much, Aristide Fomitch, do I owe you?" the lodger would ask
confusedly.
"One rouble and seventy. You may give me the rouble or the seventy
kopecks, whichever you like now; and for the rest I'll wait for the
time when you can steal or earn more than you have now."
"Many thanks for your kindness," replied the lodger, touched by such
consideration. "You are--well, you are--such a good soul; it's a pity
that life has been so hard on you. You must have been a proud sort of
eagle when you were in your right place."
The captain could not get on without grandiloquent phrases. "What do
you mean by being in my right place? Who knows what his right place
should be? Everyone wants to put his neck into someone else's yoke.
Judah Petounnikoff's place should be in penal servitude, but he walks
freely about the town, and is even going to build a new factory. Our
schoolmaster's place should be by the side of a nice, fat, quiet wife,
with half a dozen children round him, instead of lying about drunk in
Vaviloff's vodka shop. Then there's yourself, who are going to look
for a place as a waiter or porter, whereas I know you ought to be a
soldier. You can endure much, you are not stupid, and you understand
discipline. See how the matter stands! Life shuffles us up like cards,
and it's only now and then we fall into our right places; but when that
does happen, it's not for long; we are soon shuffled out again."
Sometimes such farewell speeches would serve only as a preface to a
renewed friendship, which would start with a fresh booze, and would end
with the lodger being surprised to find that he had nothing left, when
the captain would again treat him, till both were in the same state of
destitution.
These backslidings never spoilt the good understanding on either
side. The aforementioned schoolmaster was amongst those friends who
only got put on his feet in order to be knocked over again. He was
intellectually the most on a level with the captain, and this was
perhaps just the reason that, once having fallen to the doss-house, he
could never rise again.
He was the only one with whom Aristide Kouvalda could philosophise,
and be sure that he was understood. He appreciated the schoolmaster
for this reason, and when his renovated friend was about to leave the
doss-house, having again earned some money with the intention of taking
a decent room in town, Aristide Kouvalda would begin such a string of
melancholy tirades, that both would recommence drinking, and once more
would lose all. In all probability Kouvalda was conscious of what he
was doing, and the schoolmaster, much as he desired it, could never
get away from the doss-house. Could Aristide Kouvalda, a gentleman
by birth, and having received an education, the remnants of which
still flashed through his conversation, along with a love of argument
acquired during the vicissitudes of fortune--could he help desiring
to keep by his side a kindred spirit? It is always ourselves we pity
first. This schoolmaster once upon a time used to give lessons in a
training school for teachers in a town on the Volga, but as the result
of some trouble he was expelled; after that he became a clerk at a
tanner's, and was forced, after a time, to leave that place as well;
then he became a librarian in a private library, tried various other
professions, and at length, having passed an attorney's examination,
he began drinking, and came across the captain. He was a bald-headed
man, with a stoop, and a sharp-pointed nose. In a thin, yellow face,
with a pointed beard, glittered restless, sad, deep-sunk eyes, and
the corners of his mouth were drawn down, giving him a depressed
expression. His livelihood, or rather the means to get drunk, he earned
by being a reporter on the local newspapers. Sometimes he would earn
as much as fifteen roubles a week; these he would give to the captain,
saying, "This is the last of it! Another week of hard work, and I shall
get enough to be decently dressed, and then--_addio, mio caro!_"
"That's all right; you have my hearty approbation. I won't give you
another glass of vodka the whole week," the captain would reply
severely.
"I shall be very grateful. You must not give me a single drop."
The captain heard in these words something approaching very near to a
humble appeal, and would add still more severely, "You may shout for
it, but I won't give you any more."
"Well, that's an end of it," the teacher would sigh, and go off to his
work. But in a day or two, feeling exhausted, fatigued, and thirsty, he
would look furtively at the captain, with sad, imploring eyes, hoping
anxiously that his friend's heart would melt. The captain would keep a
severe face, uttering speeches full of the disgrace of weak natures,
of the bestial pleasures of drunkenness, and other words applicable to
the circumstances. To give him his due, it is right to add that he
was sincere in his rôle of mentor and of moralist, but the patrons of
his doss-house always inclined to be sceptical, and while listening
to the scathing words of the captain, would say to each other with a
wink, "He's a sly one for knowing how to get rid of all responsibility
himself! 'I told you so; but you wouldn't listen to me; now blame
yourself.'"
"The gentleman is an old soldier; he doesn't advance without preparing
a retreat."
The schoolmaster would catch his friend in a dark corner, and holding
him by his dirty cloak, trembling and moistening his parched lips with
his tongue, would look into the captain's eyes with an expression so
deeply tragic that no words could describe it.
"Can't you?" the captain would question sombrely.
The schoolmaster would silently nod, and then drop his head on his
chest, trembling through all his long, thin body.
"Try one more day; perhaps you will conquer yourself," proposed
Kouvalda.
The schoolmaster would sigh and shake his head in a hopeless negative.
When the captain saw that his friend's lean body was shaken with the
thirst for poison, he would take the money out of his pocket.
"It's generally useless to argue with fate," he would say, as if
wishing to justify himself.
But if the schoolmaster held out the whole week, the farewell of the
friends terminated in a touching scene, the end of which generally
took place in Vaviloff's vodka shop.
The schoolmaster never drank all his money; at least half of it he
spent on the children of the High Street. Poor people are always rich
in children, and in the dust and ditches in this street might be seen
from morning till night groups of torn, hungry, noisy youngsters.
Children are the living flowers of the earth, but in the High Street
they were like flowers faded before their time; probably because they
grew on soil poor in nourishing qualities.
Sometimes the schoolmaster would gather the children round him, buy a
quantity of bread, eggs, apples, nuts, and go with them into the fields
towards the river. There they would greedily eat up all he had to offer
them, filling the air around with merry noise and laughter. The lank,
thin figure of the drunkard seemed to shrivel up and grow small like
the little ones round him, who treated him with complete familiarity,
as if he were one of their own age. They called him "Philippe," not
adding even the title of "uncle." They jumped around him like eels,
they pushed him, got on his back, slapped his bald head, and pulled
his nose. He probably liked it, for he never protested against these
liberties being taken. He spoke very little to them, and his words were
humble and timid, as if he were afraid that his voice might soil or
hurt them. He spent many hours with them, sometimes as plaything, and
at other times as playmate. He used to look into their bright faces
with sad eyes, and would then slowly and thoughtfully slink off into
Vaviloff's vodka shop, where he would drink till he lost consciousness.
Almost every day when he returned from his reporting, the schoolmaster
would bring back a paper from the town, and the outcasts would form a
circle round him. As soon as they saw him coming, they would gather
from the different corners of the yard, some drunk, some in a state
of stupor, all in different stages of raggedness, but all equally
miserable and dirty.
First would appear Alexai Maximovitch Simtzoff, round as a barrel;
formerly a surveyor of forest lands, but now a pedlar of matches, ink,
blacking, and bad lemons. He was an old man of sixty, in a canvas coat
and a broad-brimmed crushed hat, which covered his fat red face, with
its thick white beard, out of which peeped forth a small red nose, and
thick lips of the same colour, and weak, running, cynical eyes. They
called him "Kubar," a top, and this nickname well portrayed his round,'
slowly moving figure and his thick, humming speech.
Louka Antonovitch Martianoff, nicknamed Konetz, "The End," would
come out of some corner, a morose, black, silent drunkard, formerly
an inspector of a prison; a man who gained his livelihood at present
by playing games of hazard, such as the three-card trick and
thimble-rig, and by the display of other talents equally ingenious, but
equally unappreciated by the police. He would drop his heavy, often
ill-treated, body on the grass beside the schoolmaster, his black eyes
glistening, and stretching forth his hand to the bottle, would ask in
a hoarse bass voice--
"May I?"
Then also would draw near the mechanic Pavel Sontseff, a consumptive
of about thirty. The ribs on his left side had been broken in a street
row; and his face, yellow and sharp, was constantly twisted into a
cunning, wicked smile. His thin lips showed two rows of black, decayed
teeth, and the rags on his thin shoulders seemed to be hanging on a
peg. They used to call him "Scraps"; he earned his living by selling
brooms of his own making, and brushes made of a certain kind of grass,
which were very useful for brushing clothes.
Besides these, there was a tall, bony, one-eyed man with uncertain
antecedents; he had a scared expression in his large, round, silent,
and timid eyes. He had been three times condemned for thefts, and had
suffered imprisonment for them. His name was Kisselnikoff, but he
was nicknamed "Tarass and a half" because he was just half the size
again of his inseparable friend Tarass, a former church deacon, but
degraded now for drunkenness and dissipation. The deacon was a short,
robust little man with a broad chest and a round, matted head of hair;
he was famous for his dancing, but more so for his swearing; both he
and "Tarass and a half" chose as their special work wood-sawing on
the river-bank, and in their leisure hours the deacon would tell long
stories "of his own composition," as he expressed it, to his friend or
to anyone who cared to hear them. Whilst listening to these stories,
the heroes of which were always saints, kings, clergy, and generals,
even the habitués of the doss-house used to spit the taste of them out
of their mouths, and opened wide eyes of astonishment at the wonderful
imagination of the deacon, who would relate these shameless, obscene,
fantastic adventures with great coolness, and with eyes closed in
rapture. The imagination of this man was powerful and inexhaustible; he
could invent and talk the whole day long, and never repeated himself.
In him the world lost perhaps a great poet, and certainly a remarkable
story-teller, who could put life and soul even into stones, by his foul
but imaginatively powerful thought.
Besides these there was an absurd youth, who was called by Kouvalda
"The Meteor." He once came to seek a night's lodging, and to the
astonishment of all he never left. At first no one noticed him, for
during the day he would go out to earn a livelihood, as did the rest,
but in the evening he stuck closely to the friendly doss-house society.
One day the captain asked him--
"My lad, what do you do in this world?"
The boy answered shortly and boldly, "I? I'm a tramp."
The captain looked at him critically. The lad had long hair, a broad,
foolish face adorned with a snub nose; he wore a blue blouse without a
belt, and on his head were the remains of a straw hat. His feet were
bare.
"You are a fool!" said Aristide Kouvalda. "What are you doing here? You
are of no use to us. Do you drink vodka? No! And can you steal? Not
that either? Well, go and learn all that, and make a man of yourself,
and then come back."
The lad smiled. "No, I shan't; I'll stay where I am!"
"Why?"
"Because"--
"Ah! you're a meteor!" said the captain.
"Let me knock some of his teeth out," proposed Martianoff.
"But why?" asked the lad.
"Because"--
"Well, then, I should take a stone and knock you on the head," replied
the boy respectfully.
Martianoff would have thrashed him if Kouvalda had not interfered.
"Leave him alone; he is distantly related to you, brother, as he is to
all of us. You, without sufficient reason, want to knock his teeth out;
and he, also without sufficient reason, wants to live with us. Well,
damn it all! We all have to live without sufficient reason for doing
so. We live, but ask us why; we can't say. Well, it's so with him, so
let him be."
"But still, young man, you had better leave us," the schoolmaster
intervened, surveying the lad with sad eyes.
The lad did not answer, but remained. At last they grew accustomed to
him, and paid no attention to him, but he watched closely all that they
said and did.
All the above-mentioned individuals formed the captain's bodyguard, and
with good-natured irony he used to call them his "Outcasts." Besides
these, there were five or six tramp rank-and-file in the doss-house;
these were country-folk who could not boast of such antecedents as the
outcasts, though they had undergone no less vicissitudes of fate; but
they were a degree less degraded, and not so completely broken down. It
may be that a decent man from the educated classes in town is somewhat
above a decent peasant; but it is inevitable that a vicious townsman
should be immeasurably more degraded in mind than a criminal from the
country. This rule was strikingly illustrated by the inhabitants of
Kouvalda's dwelling.
The most prominent peasant representative was a rag-picker of the name
of Tiapa. Tall, and horribly thin, he constantly carried his head so
that his chin fell on his breast, and from this position his shadow
always assumed the shape of a hook.
One could never see his full face, but his profile showed an aquiline
nose, projecting underlip, and bushy grey eyebrows. He was the
captain's first lodger, and it was rumoured that he possessed large
sums of money hidden somewhere about him. It was for this money that
two years ago he had had his throat cut, since when he had been forced
to keep his head so strangely bent. He denied having any money, and
said that he had been struck with a knife for fun; and this accident
had made it convenient for him to become a rag and bone picker, as his
head was always necessarily bent forward towards the ground. When he
walked about with his swaying, uncertain gait, and without his stick
and bag, the badges of his profession, he seemed a being absorbed with
his own thoughts, and Kouvalda, pointing at him with his finger, would
say, "Look out! there is the escaped conscience of Judah Petounnikoff,
seeking for a refuge! See how ragged and dirty this fugitive conscience
looks!"
Tiapa spoke with such a hoarse voice that it was almost impossible
to understand him, and that was perhaps why he spoke little, and
always sought solitude. Each time, when a new-comer, driven from the
village, arrived at the doss-house, Tiapa at sight of him would fall
into a state of angry irritation and restlessness. He would persecute
the miserable being with sharp, mocking words, which issued from his
throat in an angry hiss; and he would set on him one of the most savage
amongst the tramps, and finally threaten to beat and rob him himself in
the night. He nearly always succeeded in driving out the terrified and
disconcerted peasant, who never returned.
When Tiapa was somewhat appeased, he would hide himself in a corner to
mend his old clothes or to read in a Bible, as old, as tom, as dirty
as himself. Tiapa would come out of his corner when the schoolmaster
brought the newspaper to read. Generally Tiapa listened silently to
the news, sighed deeply, but never asked any questions. When the
schoolmaster closed the newspaper, Tiapa would stretch out his bony
hand and say--
"Give it here."
"What do you want it for?"
"Give it; perhaps there is something written concerning us."
"Concerning whom?"
"The village."
They laughed at him, and threw the paper at him. He would take it and
read those parts which told of corn beaten down by the hail; of thirty
holdings being destroyed by fire, and of a woman poisoning a whole
family; in fact, all those parts about village life which showed it as
miserable, sordid, and cruel. Tiapa read all these in a dull voice, and
emitted sounds which might be interpreted as expressing either pity or
pleasure. On Sunday he never went out rag-picking, but spent most of
his day reading his Bible, during which process he moaned and sighed.
His book he always held resting on his chest, and he was angry if
anyone touched it or interrupted his reading.
"Hullo, you magician!" Kouvalda would say; "you don't understand
anything of that; leave the book alone!"
"And you? What do you understand?"
"Well, old magician, I don't understand anything; but then I don't read
books."
"But I do."
"More fool you!" answered the captain. "It's bad enough to have vermin
in the head. But to get thoughts into the bargain. How will you ever be
able to live, you old toad?"
"Well, I have not got much longer to live," said Tiapa quietly.
One day the schoolmaster inquired where he had learned to read, and
Tiapa answered shortly--
"In prison."
"Have you been there?"
"Yes, I have."
"For what?"
"Because--I made a mistake. It was there I got my Bible. A lady gave it
me. It's good in prison, don't you know that, brother?"
"It can't be. What is there good in it?"
"They teach one there. You see how I was taught to read. They gave me a
book, and all that free!"
When the schoolmaster came to the doss-house, Tiapa had been there
already a long time. He watched the schoolmaster constantly; he would
bend his body on one side in order to get a good look at him, and would
listen attentively to his conversation.
Once he began, "Well, I see you are a learned man. Have you ever read
the Bible?"
"Yes, I have."
"Well, do you remember it?"
"I do! What then?"
The old man bent his whole body on one side and looked at the
schoolmaster with grey, morose, distrustful eyes.
"And do you remember anything about the Amalekites?"
"Well, what then?"
"Where are they now?"
"They have died out, Tiapa--disappeared."
The old man was silent, but soon he asked again--
"And the Philistines?"
"They've gone also."
"Have they all disappeared?"
"Yes, all."
"Does that mean that we shall also disappear as well?"
"Yes, when the time comes," the schoolmaster replied, in an indifferent
tone of voice.
"And to which tribe of Israel do we belong?"
The schoolmaster looked at him steadily, thought for a moment, and
began telling him about the Cymri, the Scythians, the Huns, and the
Slavs.
The old man seemed to bend more than ever on one side, and watched the
schoolmaster with scared eyes.
"You are telling lies!" he hissed out, when the schoolmaster had
finished.
"Why do you think I am lying?" asked the astonished schoolmaster.
"Those people you have spoken of, none of them are in the Bible!" He
rose and went out, deeply insulted, and cursing angrily.
"You are going mad, Tiapa!" cried the schoolmaster after him.
Then the old man turned round, and stretching out his hand shook with a
threatening action his dirty, crooked forefinger.
"Adam came from the Lord. The Jews came from Adam. And all people come
from the Jews--we amongst them."
"Well?"
"The Tartars came from Ishmael. And he came from a Jew!"
"Well, what then?"
"Nothing. Only why do you tell lies?"
And he went off, leaving his companion in a state of bewilderment. But
in two or three days' time he approached him again.
"As you are a learned man, you ought at least to know who we are!"
"Slavs, Tiapa--Slavs!" replied the schoolmaster.
And he awaited with interest Tiapa's answer, hoping to understand him.
"Speak according to the Bible! There are no names like that in the
Bible. Who are we, Babylonians or Edomites?"
The teacher began criticising the Bible. The old man listened long and
attentively, and finally interrupted him.
"Stop all that! Do you mean that among all the people known to God
there were no Russians? We were unknown to God? Is that what you mean
to say? Those people, written about in the Bible, God knew them all.
He used to punish them with fire and sword; He destroyed their towns
and villages, but still He sent them His prophets to teach them, which
meant He loved them. He dispersed the Jews and Tartars, but He still
preserved them. And what about us? Why have we no prophets?"
"Well, I don't know," said the schoolmaster, trying in vain to
understand the old man.
The old peasant put his hand on the schoolmaster's shoulder, rocking
him gently to and fro whilst he hissed and gurgled as if swallowing
something, and muttered in a hoarse voice--
"You should have said so long ago. And you went on talking as if you
knew everything. It makes me sick to hear you. It troubles my soul.
You'd better hold your tongue. See, you don't even know why we have no
prophets. You don't know where we were when Jesus was on earth. And
such lies too. Can a whole people die out? The Russian nation can't
disappear; it's all lies. They are mentioned somewhere in the Bible,
only I don't know under what name. Don't you know what a nation means?
It is immense. See how many villages there are! And in each village
look at the number of people; and you say they will die out. A people
cannot die out, but a person can. A people is necessary to God, for
they till the soil. The Amalekites have not died out; they are the
French or the Germans. And see what you have been telling me. You ought
to know why we don't possess God's favour; He never sends us now either
plagues or prophets. So how _can_ we be taught now?"
Tiapa's speech was terribly powerful. It was penetrated with irony,
reproach, and fervent faith. He spoke for a long time, and the
schoolmaster, who was as usual half drunk, and in a peaceful frame
of mind, got tired of listening. He felt as if his nerves were being
sawn with a wooden saw. He was watching the distorted body of the
old man, and feeling the strange oppressive strength in his words.
Finally he fell to pitying himself, and from that passed into a sad,
wearied mood. He also wanted to say something forcible to old Tiapa,
something positive, that might win the old man's favour, and change
his reproachful, morose tone into one that was soft and fatherly. The
schoolmaster felt as if words were rising to his lips, but could not
find any strong enough to express his thought.
"Ah! You are a lost man," said Tiapa. "Your soul is torn, and yet you
speak all sorts of empty fine words. You'd better be silent!"
"Ah, Tiapa!" sadly exclaimed the schoolmaster, "all that you say is
true. And about the people also. The mass of the people is immense!
But I am a stranger to it, and it is a stranger to me. There lies the
tragedy of my life! But what's to be done? I must go on suffering.
Indeed there are no prophets; no, not any. And it's true I talk too
much and to no purpose. I had better hold my tongue. But you mustn't be
so hard on me. Ah, old man, you don't know! You don't know. You can't
understand."
Finally the schoolmaster burst into tears; he cried so easily and
freely, with such abundant tears, that afterwards he felt quite
relieved.
"You should go into the country; you should get a place as schoolmaster
or as clerk. You would be comfortable there, and have a change of air.
What's the use of leading this miserable life here?" Tiapa hissed
morosely.
But the schoolmaster continued to weep, enjoying his tears.
From that time forth they became friends, and the outcasts, seeing them
together, would say--
"The schoolmaster is making up to old Tiapa; he is trying to get at his
money."
"It's Kouvalda who has put him up to trying to find out where the old
man's hoard is."
It is very possible that their words were not in agreement with their
thoughts; for these people had one strange trait in common--they liked
to appear to each other worse than they really were.
The man who has nothing good in him likes sometimes to show himself in
the worst light.
When all of them were gathered round the schoolmaster with his
newspaper, the reading would begin.
"Now," would say the captain, "what does the paper offer us to-day? Is
there a serial story coming out in it?"
"No," the schoolmaster would reply.
"Your editor is mean. Is there a leading article?"
"Yes, there is one to-day. I think it is by Gouliaff."
"Give us a taste of it! The fellow writes well. He's a cute one, he is!"
"The valuation of real estate," reads the schoolmaster, "which took
place more than fifteen years ago, continues still to form a basis for
present-day rating, to the great advantage of the town."
"The rogues!" interjects Captain Kouvalda.
"'Still continues to form!' It's indeed absurd! It's to the advantage
of the merchants who manage the affairs of the town that it should
continue to form the basis, and that's why it does continue!"
"Well, the article is written with that idea," says the schoolmaster.
"Ah! is it? How strange! It would be a good theme for the serial story,
where it could be given a spicy flavour!"
A short dispute arises. The company still listens attentively, for they
are at their first bottle of vodka. After the leading article they take
the local news. After that they attack the police news, and law cases.
If in these a merchant is the sufferer, Aristide Kouvalda rejoices.
If a merchant is robbed, all is well; it is only a pity they did not
take more. If his horses ran away with him and smashed him up, it was
pleasant to listen to, and only a pity that the fellow escaped alive.
If a shopkeeper lost a lawsuit, that was a good hearing; the sad point
was that he was not made to pay the expenses twice over.
"That would have been illegal," remarks the schoolmaster.
"Illegal?" Kouvalda exclaims hotly. "But does a shopkeeper himself act
always according to the law? What is a shopkeeper? Let us examine this
vulgar, absurd creature. To begin with, every shopkeeper is a moujik.
He comes from the country, and after a certain time he takes a shop
and begins to trade. To keep a shop one must have money, and where can
a moujik or peasant get money? As everyone knows, money is not earned
by honest labour. It means that the peasant by some means or other has
cheated. It means that a shopkeeper is a dishonest peasant!"
"That's clever!" The audience shows its approbation of the orator's
reasoning.
Tiapa groans and rubs his chest; the sound is like that which he makes
after swallowing his first glass of vodka.
The captain is buoyant. They now begin reading provincial
correspondence. Here the captain is in his own sphere, as he expresses
it. Here it is apparent how shamefully the shopkeeper lives, and how
he destroys and disfigures life. Kouvalda's speech thunders round the
shopkeeper, and annihilates him. He is listened to with pleasure, for
he uses violent words.
"Oh, if I could only write in newspapers!" he exclaims, "I'd show the
shopkeeper up in his right colours! I'd show he was only an animal who
was temporarily performing the duties of man. I can see through him
very well! I know him. He's a coarse fool with no taste for life, who
has no notion of patriotism, and understands nothing beyond kopecks!"
"Scraps," knowing the weak side of the captain, and delighting in
arousing anger, would interpose--
"Yes, since the gentry are dying out from hunger, there is no one of
any account left in the world."
"You are right, you son of a spider and of a frog! Since the gentry
have gone under no one is left. There are nothing but shopkeepers, and
I hate them!"
"That's easy to see; for have they not trodden you under foot?"
"What's that to me? I came down in the world through my love of life,
while the shopkeeper does not understand living. That's just why I hate
him so, and not because I am a gentleman. But just take this as said,
that I'm no longer a gentleman, but just simply an outcast, the shadow
only of my former self. I spit at all and everything, and life for me
is like a mistress who has deserted me. That is why I despise it, and
am perfectly indifferent towards it."
"All lies!" says "Scraps."
"Am I a liar?" roars Aristide Kouvalda, red with anger.
"Why roar like that?" says Martianoff's bass voice, coolly and
gloomily. "What's the use of arguing? Shopkeeper or gentleman, what
does it matter to us?"
"That's just it, for we are neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red
herring," interposes Deacon Tarass.
"Leave him in peace, 'Scraps,'" says the schoolmaster pacifically.
"What's the use of throwing oil on the fire?"
The schoolmaster did not like quarrels and noise. When passions grew
hot around him his lips twitched painfully, and he unobtrusively tried
to make peace; not succeeding in which, he would leave the company to
themselves. The captain knew this well, and if he was not very drunk
he restrained himself, not wishing to lose the best auditor of his
brilliant speeches.
"I repeat," he continued now, with more restraint--"I repeat, that
I see that life is in the hands of foes, not only of foes of the
nobility, but foes of all that is noble; of greedy, ignorant people,
who won't do anything to improve the conditions of life. Still," argues
the schoolmaster, "merchants created Genoa, Venice, Holland. It was the
merchants, the merchants of England who won India. It was the merchants
Stroganoff's"--
"What have I to do with those merchants? I am speaking of Judah
Petounnikoff and his kind, with whom I have to do."
"And what have you to do with these?" asked the schoolmaster softly.
"Well, I'm alive. I'm in the world. I can't help being indignant at the
thought of these savages, who have got hold of life, and who are doing
their best to spoil it!"
"And who are laughing at the noble indignation of a captain and an
outcast!" interjects "Scraps" provokingly.
"It's stupid, very stupid! I agree with you. As an outcast I must
destroy all the feelings and thoughts that were once in me. That's
perhaps true; but how shall we arm ourselves, you and I, if we throw on
one side these feelings?"
"Now you are beginning to speak reasonably," says the schoolmaster
encouragingly.
"We want something different. New ways of looking at life, new
feelings, something fresh, for we ourselves are a new phase in life."
"Yes, indeed, that's what we want," says the schoolmaster.
"What's the use of discussing and thinking?" inquires "The End"; "we
haven't got long to live; I'm forty, you are fifty. There is no one
under thirty among us. And even if one were twenty, one could not live
very long in such surroundings as these."
"And then again, what new phase are we? Tramps, it seems to We, have
always existed in the world," says "Scraps" satirically.
"Tramps created Rome," says the schoolmaster.
"Yes; that was so!" said the captain jubilantly. "Romulus and Remus,
were they not tramps? And we--when our time comes--we shall also
create." "A breach of the peace!" interjects "Scraps," and laughs,
pleased with his own wit.
His laugh is wicked, and jars on the nerves. He is echoed by Simtzoff,
by the deacon, and by "Tarass and a half." The naïve eyes of the lad
"Meteor" burn with a bright glow, and his cheeks flush red. "The End"
mutters, in tones that fall like a hammer on the heads of the audience--
"All that's trash and nonsense, and dreams!"
It was strange to hear these people, outcasts from life, ragged,
saturated with vodka, anger, irony, and filth, discussing life in this
way.
For the captain such discussions were a feast. He spoke more than the
others, and that gave him a chance of feeling his superiority. For
however low a person may fall, he can never refuse himself the delight
of feeling stronger and better off than the rest. Aristide Kouvalda
abused this sensation, and never seemed to have enough of it, much to
the disgust of "Scraps," "The Top," and the other outcasts, little
interested in similar questions. Politics was with them the favourite
topic. A discussion on the necessity of conquering India, and of
checking England, would continue endlessly. The question as to the best
means of sweeping the Jews off the face of the earth, was no less hotly
debated. In this latter question the leader was always "Scraps," who
invented marvellously cruel projects; but the captain, who liked always
to be first in a discussion, evaded this topic. Women were always
willingly and constantly discussed, but with unpleasant allusions; and
the schoolmaster always appeared as women's champion, and grew angry
when the expressions used by the others were of too strong a nature.
They gave in to him, for they looked upon him as a superior being, and
on Saturdays they would borrow money from him, which he had earned
during the week.
He enjoyed besides many privileges. For instance, he was never knocked
about on the frequent occasions when the discussions finished in a
general row. He was allowed to bring women into the doss-house; and no
one else enjoyed this right, for the captain always warned his clients--
"I'll have no women here! Women, shopkeepers, and philosophy have been
the three causes of my ruin. I'll knock down anyone I see with a woman,
and I'll knock the woman down as well. On principle, I would twist the
neck of"--
He could have twisted anyone's neck, for in spite of his years he
possessed wonderful strength. Besides, whenever he had a fighting job
on, he was always helped by Martianoff. Gloomy and silent as the tomb
in the usual way, yet on these occasions, when there was a general
row on, he would stand back to back with Kouvaloff, these two forming
together a destructive but indestructible engine. If Kouvalda was
engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, "The End" would creep up and throw his
opponent on the ground.
Once when Simtzoff was drunk, he, without any reason, caught hold of
the schoolmaster's hair and pulled a handful out. Kouvalda, with one
blow of his fist, dropped Simtzoff unconscious, and he lay where he
fell for half an hour. When the fellow came to his senses he was made
to swallow the schoolmaster's hair, which he did for fear of being
beaten to death.
Besides the reading of the newspaper, discussions, and laughter, the
other amusement was card-playing. They always left Martianoff out, for
he could not play honestly. After being several times caught cheating,
he candidly confessed--
"I can't help cheating; it's a habit of mine." "Such things do happen,"
corroborated Deacon Tarass. "I used to have the habit of beating my
wife every Sunday after mass; and, would you believe it, after she died
I had such a gnawing feeling come over me every Sunday I can scarcely
describe it. I got over one Sunday, but things seemed to go all wrong.
Another Sunday passed, and I felt very bad. The third Sunday I could
not bear it any longer, and struck the servant girl. She kicked up a
row, and threatened to take me before a magistrate. Just imagine my
position! When the fourth Sunday came I knocked her about as I used
to do my wife; I paid her ten roubles down, and arranged that I should
beat her as a matter of course until I married again."
"Deacon, you are telling lies! How could you marry again?" broke in
"Scraps."
"Well--I--she--we did without the ceremony. She kept house for me."
"Had you any children?" asked the schoolmaster.
"Yes, five of them. One got drowned--the eldest. He was a queer boy.
Two died of diphtheria. One daughter married a student, and followed
him to Siberia. The other wanted to study in Petersburg, and died
there; I am told it was consumption. Yes, five of them. We clergy are
very prolific."
And he began giving reasons for this, causing by his explanations
Homeric laughter. When they were tired of laughing, Alexai Maximovitch
Simtzoff remembered that he also had a daughter.
"She was called Lidka. Oh, how fat she was!" Probably he remembered
nothing more, for he looked round deprecatingly, smiled, and found
nothing more to say.
These people spoke but little of their past. They seldom recalled it,
and if ever they did so, it was in general terms, and in a more or
less scoffing tone. Perhaps they were right in treating their past
slightingly, for recollections with most people have a tendency to
weaken present energy, and destroy hope in the future.
On rainy days, and during dark, cold, autumn weather, these outcasts
would gather in Vaviloff's vodka shop. They were habitués there, and
were feared as a set of thieves and bullies; on one hand they were
despised as confirmed drunkards, and on the other hand they were
respected and listened to as superior people. Vaviloff's vodka shop was
the club of the neighbourhood, and the outcasts were the intellectuals
of the club.