vodka shop was full of people, and the outcasts were welcome guests.
They brought with them, amongst these inhabitants of the High Street,
oppressed as they were by poverty and misery, a rollicking humour, in
which there was something that seemed to brighten these lives, broken
and worn out in the struggle for bread. The outcasts' art of talking
jestingly on every subject, their fearlessness of opinion, their
careless audacity of expression, their absence of fear of everything
which the neighbourhood feared, their boldness, their dare-devilry--all
this did not fail to please. Besides, almost all of them knew something
of law, could give advice on many matters, could write a petition, or
could give a helping hand in a shady transaction without getting into
trouble. They were paid in vodka, and in flattering encomiums on their
various talents.
According to their sympathies, the street was divided into two nearly
equal parties. One considered that the captain was very superior to
the schoolmaster: "A real hero! His pluck and his intelligence are
far greater!" The other considered that the schoolmaster outbalanced
Kouvalda in every respect. The admirers of Kouvalda were those who were
known in the street as confirmed drunkards, thieves, and scapegraces,
who feared neither poverty nor prison. The schoolmaster was admired
by those who were more decent, who were always hoping for something,
always expecting something, and yet whose bellies were always empty.
The respective merits of Kouvalda and the schoolmaster may be judged of
by the following example. Once in the vodka shop they were discussing
the town regulations under which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood
were bound to fill up the ruts and holes in the streets; the dead
bodies of animals and manure were not to be used for this purpose, but
rubble and broken bricks from buildings.
"How the devil am I to get broken bricks? I, who all my life have been
wanting to build a starling house, and yet have never been able to
begin?" complained in a pitiful voice Mokei Anissimoff, a seller of
kringels[1] which were made by his wife.
The captain considered that he ought to give an opinion on the
question, and thumped the table energetically to attract the attention
of the company.
"Don't you know where to get bricks and rubble? Let's go all of us, my
lads, into the town together and demolish the Town Hall. It's an old,
good-for-nothing building, and your work will be crowned by a double
success. You will improve the town by forcing them to build a new Town
Hall, and you will make your own neighbourhood decent. You can use the
Mayor's horses to draw the bricks, and you can take his three daughters
as well; the girls would look well in harness! Or else you may pull
down Judah Petounnikoff's house, and mend the street with wood. By the
bye, Mokei, I know what your wife was using to-day to heat the oven for
baking her kringels! It was the shutters from the third window, and the
boards from two of the steps!"
[Footnote 1: A sort of white bread of a particular shape, which is very
popular amongst the Russian peasantry.]
When the audience had had its laugh out, and had finished joking at the
captain's proposal, the serious-minded gardener Pavluguine asked--
"But, after all, captain, what's to be done? What do you advise us to
do?"
"I--I advise you not to move hand or foot. If the rain destroys the
street, let it. It isn't our fault."
"Some of the houses are tumbling down already."
"Leave them alone, let them fall! If they come down the town must pay
damages, and if the authorities refuse, bring the matter before a
magistrate. For just consider where the water comes from; doesn't it
come down from the town? Well, that shows the town is to blame for the
houses being destroyed."
"They will say it's rain water."
"But in the town the rain doesn't wash down the houses, does it? The
town makes you pay rates and gives you no vote to help you claim your
rights. The town destroys your life and your property, and yet holds
you responsible for them. Pitch into the town on every side!"
And one half of the dwellers in the street, convinced by the radical
Kouvalda, decided to wait till the storm-waters of the town had washed
down their hovels.
The more serious half got the schoolmaster to write out an elaborate,
convincing report for presentation to the town authorities. In this
report, the refusal to carry out the town regulations was based on
such solid reasons that the municipality was bound to take them into
consideration. The dwellers in the street were granted permission to
use the refuse left after the rebuilding of the barracks, and five
horses from the fire brigade were lent to cart the rubbish. Besides
this it was decided to lay a drain down the street.
This, added to other circumstances, made the schoolmaster very popular
in the neighbourhood. He wrote petitions, got articles put into the
papers. Once, for instance, the guests at Vaviloff's noticed that the
herrings and other coarse food were not up to the mark, and two days
later Vaviloff, standing at the counter with the newspaper in his
hands, made a public recantation.
"It's quite just I have nothing to say for myself. The herrings
were indeed rotten when I bought them, and the cabbage--that's also
true--had been lying about too long. Well, it's only natural everyone
wants to put more kopecks into his own pocket. And what comes of it?
Just the opposite to what one hopes. I tried to get at other men's
pockets, and a clever man has shown me up for my avarice. Now we're
quits!"
This recantation produced an excellent effect on his audience, and gave
Vaviloff the chance of using up all his bad herrings and stale cabbage,
the public swallowing them down unheeding their ancient flavour, which
was concealed with the spice of a favourable impression. This event
was remarkable in two ways; it not only increased the prestige of the
schoolmaster, but it taught the inhabitants the value of the Press.
Sometimes the schoolmaster would hold forth on practical morality.
"I saw," he would say, accosting the house painter Jashka Turine, "I
saw, Jakoff, how you were beating your wife to-day."
Jashka had already raised his spirits with two glasses of vodka, and
was in a jovial mood. The company looked at him, expecting some sally,
and silence reigned in the vodka shop.
"Well, if you saw it I hope you liked it!" said Jashka.
The company laughed discreetly.
"No, I didn't like it," answered the schoolmaster; his tone of voice
was suggestively serious, and silence fell on the listeners.
"I did what I could; in fact I tried to do my best," said Jashka,
trying to brave it out, but feeling he was about to catch it from the
schoolmaster. "My wife has had enough; she won't be able to get out of
bed to-day."
The schoolmaster traced with his forefinger some figures on the table,
and whilst examining them said--
"Look here, Jakoff, this is why I don't like it. Let us go thoroughly
into the question of what you are doing, and of what may be the result
of it. Your wife is with child; you beat her yesterday all over the
body; you might, when you do that, kill the child, and when your wife
is in labour she might die or be seriously ill. The trouble of having
a sick wife is not pleasant; it may cost you also a good deal, for
illness means medicine, and medicine means money. If, even, you are
fortunate enough not to have killed the child, you have certainly
injured it, and it will very likely be born hunchbacked or crooked, and
that means it won't be fit for work. It is of importance to you that
the child should be able to earn its living. Even supposing it is only
born delicate, that also will be an awkward business for you. It will
be a burden to its mother, and it will require care and medicine. Do
you see what you are laying up in store for yourself? Those who have to
earn their living must be born healthy and bear healthy children. Am I
not right?"
"Quite right," affirms the company.
"But let's hope this won't happen," says Jashka, rather taken aback by
the picture drawn by the schoolmaster. "She's so strong one can't touch
the child through her. Besides, what's to be done? she's such a devil.
She nags and nags at me for the least trifle."
"I understand, Jakoff, that you can't resist beating your wife,"
continued the schoolmaster, in his quiet, thoughtful voice. "You may
have many reasons for it, but it's not your wife's temper that causes
you to beat her so unwisely. The cause is your unenlightened and
miserable condition."
"That's just so," exclaimed Jakoff. "We do indeed live in darkness--in
darkness as black as pitch!"
"The conditions of your life irritate you, and your wife has to suffer
for it. She is the one nearest to you in the world, and she is the
innocent sufferer just because you are the stronger of the two. She is
always there ready to your hand; she can't get away from you. Don't you
see how absurd it is of you?"
"That's all right, damn her! But what am I to do? Am I not a man?"
"Just so; you are a man. Well, don't you see what I want to explain to
you? If you must beat her, do so; but beat her carefully. Remember that
you can injure her health and that of the child. Remember, as a general
rule, it is bad to beat a woman who is with child on the breasts, or
the lower part of the body. Beat her on the back of the neck, or take a
rope and strike her on the fleshy parts of the body."
As the orator finished his speech, his sunken dark eyes glanced at the
audience as if asking pardon or begging for something. The audience
was in a lively, talkative mood. This morality of an outcast was to it
perfectly intelligible--the morality of the vodka shop and of poverty.
"Well, brother Jashka, have you understood?"
"Damn it all! there's truth in what you say."
Jakoff understood one thing--that to beat his wife unwisely might be
prejudicial to himself.
He kept silence, answering his friends' jokes with shamefaced smiles.
"And then again, look what a wife can be to one," philosophises the
kringel-seller, Mokei Anissimoff. "One's wife is a friend, if you look
at the matter in the right light. She is, as it were, chained to one
for life, like a fellow-convict, and one must try and walk in step with
her. If one gets out of step, the chain galls."
"Stop!" says Jakoff. "You beat your wife also, don't you?"
"I'm not saying I don't, because I do. How can I help it? I can't beat
the wall with my fists when I feel I must beat something!"
"That's just how I feel," says Jakoff.
"What an existence is ours, brothers! So narrow and stifling, one can
never have a real fling."
"One has even to beat one's wife with caution," humorously condoles
someone.
Thus they would go on gossiping late into the night, or until a
row would begin, provoked by their state of drunkenness, or by the
impressions aroused by these conversations.
Outside the rain beats against the window and the icy wind howls
wildly. Inside the air is close, heavy with smoke, but warm. In the
street it is wet, cold, and dark; the gusts of wind seem to strike
insolently against the window panes as if inviting the company to go
outside, and threatening to drive them like dust over the face of the
earth. Now and then is heard in its howling a suppressed moan, followed
at intervals by what sounds like a hoarse, chill laugh. These sounds
suggest sad thoughts of coming winter; of the damp, short, sunless
days, and of the long nights; of the necessity for providing warm
clothes and much food. There is little sleep to be got during these
long winter nights if one has an empty stomach! Winter is coming--is
coming! How is one to live through it?
These sad thoughts encouraged thirst among the dwellers in the High
Street, and the sighs of the outcasts increased the number of wrinkles
on their foreheads. Their voices sounded more hollow, and their dull,
slow thought kept them, as it were, at a distance from each other.
Suddenly amongst them there flashed forth anger like that of wild
beasts or the desperation of those who are overdriven and crushed down
by a cruel fate, or else they seemed to feel the proximity of that
unrelenting foe who had twisted and contorted their lives into one
long, cruel absurdity. But this foe was invulnerable because he was
unknown.
Then they took to beating one another, and they struck each other
cruelly, wildly. After making it up again they would fall to drinking
once more, and drink till they had pawned everything that the easygoing
Vaviloff would accept as a pledge.
Thus, in dull anger, in trouble that crushed the heart, in the
uncertainty of the issue of this miserable existence, they spent
the autumn days awaiting the still harder days of winter. During
hard times like these Kouvalda would come to their rescue with his
philosophy.
"Pluck up courage, lads! All comes to an end!--that's what there is
best about life! Winter will pass and summer will follow; good times
when, as they say, 'even a sparrow has beer'!"
But his speeches were of little avail; a mouthful of pure water does
not satisfy a hungry stomach.
Deacon Tarass would also try to amuse the company by singing songs
and telling stories. He had more success. Sometimes his efforts would
suddenly arouse desperate, wild gaiety in the vodka shop. They would
sing, dance, shout with laughter, and for some hours would behave like
maniacs. And then--
And then they would fall into a dull, indifferent state of despair as
they sat round the gin-shop table in the smoke of the lamps and the
reek of tobacco; gloomy, ragged, letting words drop idly from their
lips while they listened to the triumphant howl of the wind; one
thought uppermost in their minds--how to get more vodka to drown their
senses and to bring unconsciousness. And each of them hated the other
with a deadly, senseless hatred, but hid that hatred deep down in his
heart.
II
Everything in this world is relative, and there is no situation which
cannot be matched with a worse one.
One fine day at the end of September Captain Kouvalda sat, as was his
custom, in his arm-chair at the door of the doss-house looking at the
big brick building erected by the merchant Petounnikoff by the side of
Vaviloff's vodka shop. Kouvalda was deep in thought.
This building, from which the scaffolding had not yet been removed,
was destined to be a candle factory; and for some time it had been
a thorn in the captain's side, with its row of dark, empty, hollow
windows and its network of wood surrounding it from foundation to roof.
Blood-red in colour, it resembled some cruel piece of machinery, not
yet put into motion, but which had already opened its row of deep,
greedy jaws ready to seize and gulp down everything that came in its
way. The grey, wooden vodka shop of Vaviloff, with its crooked roof
overgrown with moss, leaned up against one of the brick walls of the
factory, giving the effect of a great parasite drawing its nourishment
from it. The captain's mind was occupied by the thought that the old
house would soon be replaced by a new one and the doss-house would be
pulled down. He would have to seek another shelter, and it was doubtful
if he would find one as cheap and as convenient. It was hard to be
driven from a place one was used to, and harder still because a damned
shopkeeper takes it into his head to want to make candles and soap. And
the captain felt that if he had the chance of spoiling the game of this
enemy of his he would do it with the greatest pleasure.
Yesterday, the shopkeeper, Ivan Andreevitch Petounnikoff, was in the
yard of the doss-house with his son and an architect. They made a
survey of the yard and stuck in pegs all over the place, which, after
Petounnikoff had left, the captain ordered "The Meteor" to pull up and
throw away.
The shopkeeper was for ever before the captain's eyes--short, lean,
shrivelled up, dressed in a long garment something between an overcoat
and a kaftan, with a velvet cap on his head, and wearing long, brightly
polished boots. With prominent cheek-bones and a grey, sharp-pointed
beard; a high, wrinkled forehead, from under which peeped narrow, grey,
half-closed, watchful eyes; a hooked, gristly nose and thin-lipped
mouth--taken altogether, the merchant gave the impression of being
piously rapacious and venerably wicked.
"Damned offspring of a fox and a sow!" said the captain angrily to
himself, as he recalled some words of Petounnikoff's.
The merchant had come with a member of the town council to look at the
house, and at the sight of the captain he had asked his companion in
the abrupt dialect of Kostroma--
"Is that your tenant--that lunatic at large?"
And since that time, more than eighteen months ago, they had rivalled
each other in the art of insult.
Yesterday again there had been a slight interchange of "holy words," as
the captain called his conversations with the merchant. After having
seen the architect off, Petounnikoff approached the captain.
"What, still sitting--always sitting?" asked he, touching the peak of
his cap in a way that left it uncertain whether he were fixing it on
his head or bowing.
"And you--you are still on the prowl," echoed the captain, jerking out
his lower jaw and making his beard wag in a way that might be taken for
a bow by anyone not too exacting in these matters; it might also have
been interpreted as the act of removing his pipe from one corner of his
mouth to the other.
"I've plenty of money; that's why I'm always on the go. Money needs
putting out, so I'm obliged to keep it moving," says the shopkeeper in
an aggravating voice to the other, screwing up his eyes slyly.
"Which means that you are the slave of money, and not money your
slave," replies Kouvalda, resisting an intense desire to kick his enemy
in the stomach.
"It's all the same either way where money is concerned. But if you have
no money!"--and the shopkeeper looked at the captain with bold but
feigned compassion, while his trembling upper lip showed large, wolfish
teeth.
"Anyone with a head on his shoulders and with a good conscience can do
without it. Money generally comes when the conscience begins to grow a
little out-at-elbows. The less honesty the more money!"
"That's true, but there are some people who have neither honesty nor
money."
"That describes you when you were young, no doubt," said Kouvalda
innocently.
Petounnikoff wrinkles his nose, he sighs, closes his narrow eyes, and
says, "Ah! when I was young, what heavy burdens I had to bear!"
"Yes, I should think so!"
"I worked! Oh, how I worked!"
"Yes, you worked at outwitting others!"
"People like you and the nobility--what does it matter? Many of them
have, thanks to me, learnt to extend the hand in Christ's name."
"Ah! then you did not assassinate, you only robbed?" interrupted the
captain.
Petounnikoff turns a sickly green and thinks it is time to change the
conversation.
"You are not an over polite host; you remain sitting while your visitor
stands."
"Well, he can sit down."
"There is nothing to sit on."
"There is the ground. The ground never rejects any filth!"
"You prove that rule, but I had better leave you, you blackguard!" says
Petounnikoff coolly, though his eyes dart cold venom at the captain.
He went off leaving Kouvalda with the agreeable sensation that the
merchant was afraid of him. If it were not so he would have turned
him out of the doss-house long ago. It was not for the five roubles a
month that the Jew let him remain on! ... And the captain watches with
pleasure the slowly retreating back of Petounnikoff, as he walks slowly
away. Kouvalda's eyes still follow the merchant as he climbs up and
down the scaffolding of his new building. He feels an intense desire
that the merchant should fall and break his back. How many times has he
not conjured up results of this imaginary fall, as he has sat watching
Petounnikoff crawling about the scaffolding of his new factory, like
a spider crawling about its net. Yesterday he had even imagined that
one of the boards had given way under the weight of the merchant; and
Kouvalda had jumped out of his seat with excitement--but nothing had
come of it.
And to-day, as always, before the eyes of Aristide Kouvalda stands the
great red building, so foursquare, so solid, so firmly fixed into the
ground, as if already drawing from thence its nourishment. It seemed as
if mocking the captain through the cold dark yawning openings in its
walls. And the sun poured on its autumn rays with the same prodigality
as on the distorted tumble-down little houses of the neighbourhood.
"But what if?" exclaimed the captain to himself, measuring with his eye
the factory wall. "What if?"
Aroused and excited by the thought which had come into his mind,
Aristide Kouvalda jumped up and hastened over to Vaviloff's vodka
shop, smiling, and muttering something to himself. Vaviloff met him at
the counter with a friendly exclamation: "How is your Excellency this
morning?"
Vaviloff was a man of medium height, with a bald head surrounded by a
fringe of grey hair; with clean-shaved cheeks, and moustache bristly
as a toothbrush. Upright and active, in a dirty braided jacket, every
movement betrayed the old soldier, the former non-commissioned officer.
"Jegor! Have you the deeds and the plan of your house and property?"
Kouvalda asked hastily.
"Yes, I have."
And Vaviloff closed his suspicious thievish eyes and scrutinised the
captain's face, in which he observed something out of the common.
"Just show them to me!" exclaimed the captain, thumping on the counter
with his fist, and dropping on to a stool.
"What for?" asked Vaviloff, who decided, in view of the captain's state
of excitement, to be on his guard.
"You fool! Bring them at once!"
Vaviloff wrinkled his forehead, and looked up inquiringly at the
ceiling.
"By the bye, where the devil are those papers?"
Not finding any information on this question on the ceiling, the old
soldier dropped his eyes towards the ground, and began thoughtfully
drumming with his fingers on the counter.
"Stop those antics!" shouted Kouvalda, who had no love for the old
soldier; as, according to the captain, it was better for a former
non-commissioned officer to be a thief than a keeper of a vodka shop.
"Well now, Aristide Kouvalda, I think I remember! I believe those
papers were left at the law-courts at the time when"--
"Jegorka! stop this fooling. It's to your own interest to do so. Show
me the plans, the deed of sale, and all that you have got at once!
Perhaps you will gain by this more than a hundred roubles! Do you
understand now?"
Vaviloff understood nothing; but the captain spoke in such an
authoritative and serious tone that the eyes of the old soldier
sparkled with intense curiosity; and saying that he would go and see if
the papers were not in his strong box, he disappeared behind the door
of the counter. In a few moments he returned with the papers in his
hand, and a look of great surprise on his coarse face.
"Just see! The damned things were after all in the house!"
"You circus clown! Who would think you had been a soldier!"
Kouvalda could not resist trying to shame him, whilst snatching from
his hands the cotton case containing the blue legal paper. Then he
spread the papers out before him, thus exciting more and more the
curiosity of Vaviloff, and began reading and scrutinising them;
uttering from time to time interjections in a meaning tone. Finally, he
rose with an air of decision, went to the door leaving the papers on
the counter, shouting out to Vaviloff--
"Wait a moment! Don't put them away yet!" Vaviloff gathered up
the papers, put them in his cash box, locked it, felt to see that
it was securely fastened. Then rubbing his bald head, he went and
stood in the doorway of his shop. There he saw the captain measuring
with his stride the length of the front of the vodka shop, whilst
he snapped his fingers from time to time, and once more began his
measurements--anxious but satisfied.
Vaviloff's face wore at first a worried expression; then it grew long,
and at last it suddenly beamed with joy.
"'Ristide Fomitch! Is it possible?" he exclaimed, as the captain drew
near.
"Of course it's possible! More than a yard has been taken off! That's
only as far as the frontage is concerned; as to the depth, I will see
about that now!"
"The depth is thirty-two yards!"
"Well, I see you've guessed what I'm after. You stupid fool!"