"So it is written: 'he spat out his teeth with the blood?' But the
letters are just like all the other letters.... O Lord! How it hurt
him, didn't it? Even his teeth.... And what will there be at the end?
The execution? Aha! Thank the Lord, they execute a man, all the same!"
He expressed his joy over the execution with so much passion, with so
much satisfaction in his eyes, that I shuddered at that compassion
which so violently desired death for the tortured Sténka.
The whole of that day passed for us in a strange sort of mist: we
talked incessantly about Sténka, recalled his life, the songs which had
been composed about him, his torments. A couple of times Konováloff
began to sing ballads, in a ringing baritone voice, and broke off
suddenly.
He and I were closer friends from that day forth.
*
I read "The Revolt of Sténka Rázin" to him several times more, "Tarás
Bulba"[7] and "Poor People."[8] My hearer was also greatly delighted
with "Tarás," but it could not obscure the vivid impression made on him
by Kostomároff's book. Konováloff did not understand Makár Dyévushkin,
and Várya. The language of Makár's letters appeared to him ridiculous,
and he bore himself sceptically toward Várya.
[7] N. V. Gógol's famous kazák epic. Tarás Bulba is an imaginary
character. The book has been translated into English by the translator
of this book.
[8] F. M. Dostoévsky's famous first book. There have been several
translations. Makár Dyévushkin and Várya are the principal--almost the
only--characters in "Poor People."
"Just look at that, she's making up to the old man! She's a sharp
one!... And he ... what a blockhead he was! But see here, Maxím, drop
that long-drawn-out thing. What is there to it? He's after her, and
she's after him.... They ruined a lot of paper ... well, off with them
to the pigs on the farm! It's neither pitiful nor funny: what was it
written for?"
I reminded him of the story about the Peasants of Podlípovo, but he did
not agree with me.
"Pilá and Sysóika--that's another pattern entirely! They are live
people, they live and struggle ... but what are these? They write
letters--they're tiresome! They're not even human beings, but just
so-so--a mere invention. Now if you were to put Tarás and Sténka
alongside of them ... Heavens! what feats they would have performed!
Then Pilá and Sysóika would have ... plucked up some spunk, I rather
think?"
He had no clear conception of time, and in his imagination, all his
beloved heroes existed contemporaneously, only--two of them dwelt in
Usólye, one among the "top-knots,"[9] on the Vólga.... I had great
difficulty in convincing him, that, had Pilá and Sysóika "gone down,"
following the Káma down-stream, they would not have met Sténka, and
that if Sténka had "kept on through the kazáks of the Don and the
Top-knots," he would not have found Bulba there.[10]
[9] The popular nickname, among the Great Russians, for the Little
Russians,--_kókhly_. Possibly the term is derived from the fact that
the famous kazáks of the Ukráina (Little Russia), known to history as
the Zaporózhian kazáks--or the kazáks dwelling "below the rapids" of
the Dnyépr river--shaved their heads, and wore only a top-knot of hair.
[10] Sténka Rázin, a kazák of the Don, turned pirate, ravaged the
Caspian Sea, the shores of Persia, and the Vólga, capturing towns and
stirring up a revolt against the government He was executed in Moscow,
in 1671. He is famous, not only in history, but also in legends, in
Epic Songs and in ballads.
Konováloff was chagrined when he came to understand the matter. I
tried to treat him to the history of Pugatchóff's revolt,[11] as I
was desirous of observing how he would bear himself toward Emélka.
Konováloff rejected Pugatchóff.
[11] Emelyan Pugatchóff, a kazák deserter and Old Ritualist (1778),
gave himself out as the Emperor Peter III. With the avowed intention of
marching to St. Petersburg, deposing "his wife" (the Empress Katherine
II.), and placing "his son" (afterwards the Emperor Paul I.) on the
throne, he raised a serious revolt in the Vólga provinces. It was
put down, with difficulty, by troops, and Pugatchóff was captured and
executed.--Translator.
"Akh, the branded rascal--just look at him! He sheltered himself
under the Tzar's name, and got up a revolution.... How many folks he
ruined, the dog!... Sténka?--that's quite another matter, brother.
But Pugatchóff, was just a nit, and nothing more. A mighty important
mess of victuals, truly! Aren't there any little books in the style of
Sténka? Hunt them up ... But fling away that calf of a Makár--he isn't
interesting. You'd better read over again, how they executed Sténka."
On holidays Konováloff and I went off to the river, or the meadows. We
took with us a little vódka, some bread, a book, and set off early in
the morning "for the free air," as Konováloff called these excursions.
We were especially fond of going to "the glass factory." For some
reason or other, this name had been given to a building which stood at
a short distance from the town, in the fields. It was a three-story,
stone house, with a ruined roof and broken window-frames, and cellars
which were filled, all summer long, with liquid, foul-smelling mud.
Greenish-gray in hue, half-ruined, as though it were sinking into the
earth, it gazed from the fields at the town with the dark eye-sockets
of its distorted windows, and seemed a blind singer of religious
ballads, hardly treated by Fate, who had been ejected from the city
limits, and was in a very pitiful and dying condition. Year after
year, the water, at its flood, undermined this house, but it stood
indestructibly firm; covered all over, from roof to foundation, with a
green crust of mould, guarded by puddles against frequent visits from
the police,--it stood on, and, although it had no roof, it afforded
shelter to various shady and homeless individuals.
There were always a great many of them in it; tattered, half-starved,
afraid of the light of the sun, they dwelt in this ruin like owls,
and Konováloff and I were always welcome guests among them, because
both he and I, when we left the bakery, each took with us a loaf of
bread, and on our way, purchased a measure of vódka, and a whole tray
of "hot-stuff "--liver, lights, heart and tripe. At a cost of two or
three rubles we provided a very filling treat for "the glass folks," as
Konováloff called them.
They repaid us for these treats by stories, wherein terrible,
soul-rending truth was fantastically intermingled with the most
ingenuous falsehood. Every tale presented itself to us like a bit
of lace, in which the black threads predominated--they represented
the truth;--and in which threads of brilliant hues were to be met
with--representing the falsehood. This lace fell over brain and heart,
and oppressed them both painfully, compressing them with its cruel,
torturing varied pattern. "The glass folks" loved us, after their own
fashion, and almost always were my attentive auditors. One day I read
to them: "For whom is Life in Russia Good?"[12], and together with
homeric laughter, I heard from them many valuable opinions on that
subject.
[12] By Nekrasoff.--Translator.
Every man, who has fought with life, who has been vanquished by it, and
who is suffering in the pitiless captivity of its mire, is more of a
philosopher than even Schopenhauer himself, because an abstract thought
never moulds itself in such an accurate and picturesque form, as does
the thought which is directly squeezed out of a man by suffering.
The knowledge of life possessed by these people whom life had flung
overboard, astonished me by its profundity, and I listened eagerly to
their stories, while Konováloff listened to them for the purpose of
arguing against the philosophy of the story-teller, and of dragging me
into a dispute with himself.
After listening to a story of life and fall, narrated by some
fantastically-unclothed fellow, with the physiognomy of a man, with
whom one must be strictly on his guard,--after listening to such
a story, which always bore the character of a justificatory and
defensive statement, Konováloff smiled thoughtfully and shook his head
negatively. This was noticed because it was done openly.
"Don't you believe me, Lesá?" exclaimed the storyteller in distress.
"Yes, I believe you ... How is it possible not to believe a man? And
even if you perceive that he is lying, believe him, that is to say,
listen, and try to understand why he lies? Sometimes a lie shows up
a man better than the truth does.... And besides, what truth can any
of us tell about ourselves? The nastiest.... But one can invent fine
things.... Isn't that true?"
"Yes...." assented the story-teller.... "But what were you shaking your
head at?"
"What about? Because you reason irregularly.... You tell your story
in such a way that a fellow is bound to understand that you yourself
didn't make your life what it is, but that your neighbors and various
passers-by made it. But where were you all that time? And why didn't
you offer any resistance to your fate? And the way it turns out is,
that we all of us complain about people, yet we are people ourselves,
and, of course, others may, also, complain of us. Other people
interfere with our lives--and that means that we, also, have interfered
with other people's lives, isn't that so? Well, then, how is that to be
explained?"
"Such a life must be constructed so that everyone will have plenty
of room in it, and no one will interfere with the rest," they
sententiously propounded to Konováloff in argument.
"But who ought to construct life?" he retorted triumphantly, and,
fearing that they would prove too sharp for him in answering his
question, he immediately answered it himself:--"We! We ourselves! And
how shall we construct life, if we don't understand it, and our life
has not been a success? So it turns out, brethren, that our sole prop
is--ourselves! Well, and we all know what we are like...."
They replied to him, defending themselves, but he obstinately repeated
his opinion: "no one was in anywise to blame concerning them, but each
one of us is responsible to himself for himself."
It was extremely difficult to drive him from his stand on this
proposition, and it was extremely difficult for these people to
master his point of view. On the one hand, in his presentation of the
matter, they appeared fully competent to construct a free life; on the
other--they appeared as weak, puny, decidedly incapable of anything,
except making complaints of one another.
It very frequently happened that these discussions, begun at mid-day,
ended about midnight, and Konováloff and I returned from "the glass
folks" through the darkness and in mud up to our knees.
One day we came near being drowned in a quagmire; on another, we fell
into the hands of the police round-up, and spent the night in the
station-house, together with a couple of score of assorted friends
from the "glass factory," who turned out to be suspicious characters,
from the point of view of the police. Sometimes we did not care to
philosophize, and then we went far a-field, in the meadows beyond the
river, where there were tiny lakes, abounding in small fish, which
entered them at the season of flood-water. Among the bushes, on the
shore of one of these lakes, we lighted a bonfire, which we required
merely for the purpose of augmenting the beauty of the surroundings,
and read a book, or talked about life. And sometimes Konováloff would
meditatively suggest:
"Maxím! Let's stare at the sky!"
We lay down on our backs, and gazed at the fathomless blue abyss above
us. At first, we heard the rustle of wings around us, and the plashing
of the water in the lake, we felt the earth under us, and around us
everything that was there at the moment.... Later on, the blue sky
seemed to be gradually drawing us toward it, enfolded our consciousness
in mist, we lost the sensation of existence, and, as though tearing
ourselves away from the earth, we seemed to be floating in the waste
expanse of the heavens, finding ourselves in a semi-conscious,
contemplative condition, and endeavoring not to disturb it either by a
word or a movement.
Thus we would lie for several hours at a stretch, and return home to
our work, renewed in body and soul, and refreshed by this union with
Nature.
Konováloff loved Nature with a profound, inexpressible love, which was
indicated only by the soft gleam of his eyes, and always, when he was
in the fields or on the river, he was completely permeated by a certain
pacifically-affectionate mood, which still further heightened his
resemblance to a little child. Sometimes he said, with a deep sigh, as
he gazed at the sky:
"Ekh ... How good it is!"
And in this exclamation there was always more meaning and feeling than
in the rhetorical figures of many poets, who go into raptures more for
the sake of maintaining their reputations as persons with an exquisite
sense of the beautiful, than out of genuine adoration before the
unspeakably caressing beauty of Nature ...
Like everything else, poetry loses its holy beauty and directness, when
it is turned into a profession.
*
Two months passed, day by day, in the course of which Konováloff and
I discussed many things and read a great deal. I read the "Revolt of
Sténka" so often to him, that he could narrate it fluently, in his own
words, page after page, from beginning to end.
This book had become for him what a fairy-tale sometimes becomes to an
impressionable child. He called the objects with which he had to deal
by the names of its heroes, and when, one day, one of the bread-moulds
fell from the shelf and broke, he exclaimed, sadly and angrily:
"Akh you, voevóda!"[13]
[13] Sometimes used to mean: "the governor of a province or town";
sometimes, "the commander of an army."--Translator.
Unsuccessful bread he nicknamed "Frólka," the yeast he christened
"Sténka's thoughts"; Sténka himself was the synonym for everything
exceptional, huge, unhappy, unsuccessful.
During all this time he hardly alluded to Kapitólina, whose letter I
had read, and to whom I had composed a reply, on the first day of our
acquaintance.
I knew that Konováloff had sent her money, to the care of a certain
Philip, with a request that the latter would act as surety for her to
the police, but no answer arrived, either from Philip or from the girl.
And all of a sudden, one evening when Konováloff and I were preparing
to place the bread in the oven, the door of the bakery opened, and
from out of the darkness of the damp ante-room a low-pitched, feminine
voice, which was both timid and irritable, exclaimed:
"Excuse me...."
"Whom do you want?" I inquired, while Konováloff, dropping the shovel
at his feet, plucked at his beard in confusion.
"Does baker Konováloff work here?"
She now stood on the threshold, and the light of the hanging-lamp fell
directly upon her head--on her white woollen kerchief. From beneath
the kerchief gazed around, pretty, snub-nosed little face, with plump
cheeks, and dimples in them from the smile of her full, red lips.
"Yes!" I answered her.
"Yes, yes!" Konováloff exulted suddenly and very noisily, it seemed,
throwing aside his shovel, and hastening forward, with huge strides,
toward the visitor.
"Sáshenka!" she sighed deeply, as she advanced to meet him.
They embraced, Konováloff bending low to reach her.
"Well, what now? How did you get here? Have you been here long? Hey?
So it's you! Are you free? That's good! Now do you see? I told you
... your way is open before you again! Go ahead boldly!"--Konováloff
hastily explained himself to her, as he still stood on the threshold,
without removing his arms, which encircled her neck and waist.
"Maxím ... you fight it out alone to-day, my boy, while I attend to the
ladies' department.... Where are you stopping, Kápa?"
"I came straight here to you...."
"He-e-ere? You can't possibly stay here--we bake bread here, and ...
it's utterly impossible! Our boss is the strictest sort of a man. I
must settle you for the night somewhere ... in lodgings, say. Come on!"
And they departed. I remained to struggle with the bread, and had no
expectation of seeing Konováloff before the next morning; but, to
my no small surprise, he made his appearance three hours later. My
astonishment was still further increased, when, on glancing at him,
with the anticipation of seeing the radiance of joy in his face, I
perceived that it was merely cross, bored, and fatigued.
"What's the matter with you?" I asked, intensely interested in this
mood of my friend, which was so unsuited to the event.
"Nothing," he replied dejectedly, and, after a pause, he spat with
considerable ferocity.
"No, but all the same?..." I persisted.
"Well, what business is it of yours?" he retorted wearily, stretching
himself at full length on the bin.--"All the same ... all the same....
All the same--she's a woman! There you have the whole thing!"
I had great difficulty in getting an explanation out of him, and, at
last, he gave it to me, approximately in the following words:
"I say--she's a woman! And if I hadn't been a fool, nothing would have
come of it. You understand? Well.... Now you say; a woman is also a
human being! Of course, she walks on her hind paws, doesn't eat grass,
talks with words, laughs ... in short, she isn't a beast. But, all
the same, she's no company for the likes of us men.... Ye-es! Why?
Well ... I don't know! I feel that she doesn't fit in, but why--is
more than I can understand.... Now, there she--Kapitólina,--this is
the line she takes up:--'I want to live with you'--that means with
me--'as your wife. I want,' says she, 'to be your watch-dog.... 'It's
perfectly absurd! Come, now, my dear girl,' says I, 'you're a fool;
just consider, what will it be like to live with me? In the first
place, there's my tippling; in the second place, I have no home; in the
third, I am a vagabond, and I can't live in one place....' and so forth
and so on, with a lot more, says I to her. But she--doesn't care a fig
about my tippling. 'All men who work at trades are bitter drunkards,'
says she, 'yet they have wives; you'll get a house,' says she, 'when
you have a wife, and then you won't run off anywhere....' Says I:
'Kápa, I can't possibly bring myself to do it, because I know that I
don't understand how to lead such a life, and I can't learn how.' And
says she, 'Then I'll jump into the river!' And says I to her: 'You
ffo-oo-oll!' Then she took to lashing me with her tongue, and didn't
she let it loose! 'Akh, you meddler, you brazen-faced monster, you
deceiver, you long-legged devil!' says she.... And she started in to
rail at me, and rail ... she simply seemed to be in such a rage at me,
that I came near taking to my heels. Then she began to cry. She cried
and upbraided me: 'Why did you take me out of that place,' says she,
'if you didn't want me? Why did you lure me away from that place,' says
she, 'and where am I to go now?' says she. 'You red-headed fool,' says
she.... Faugh! Well, and what am I to do with her now?"
"Well, and why did you get her away from that place, as a matter of
fact?" I inquired.
"Why? What a queer fellow you are! Because I was sorry for her,
apparently! You see, a man gets stuck in the mud ... and he feels sorry
for every passer-by. But set up a wife, and all the rest of it ... not
much! I won't consent to that. What sort of a family man would I make?
And if I could stick to that, I would have married long ago. What good
chances I have had! I might have married money.. and all that sort of
thing. But if this sort of thing is beyond my power, how am I to do it?
She's crying ... that's not a good thing ... of course.... But what am
I to do about it? I can't help it!"
He went so far as to shake his head in confirmation of his plaintive "I
can't." He rose from the bin, and ruffling his beard and his hair with
both hands, he began to stride about the bakery with drooping head, and
spitting in disgust.
"Maxím!" he began, in an entreating, disconcerted way, "couldn't you go
to her, sort of tell her the why and how of it ... hey? Do go, that's a
good fellow!"
"What am I to say to her?"
"Tell her the whole truth--Say 'He just can't do it. It isn't the right
thing for him to do ...' And see here, this is what you can say to her
... tell her ... 'there is something the matter with him.'"
"Is that the truth?" I laughed.
"We-ell ... no, it isn't the truth.... But it's a good excuse, isn't
it? Akh, devil take you! What a mess a wife is! Isn't that so? And I
never thought of such a thing, not even one little minute. Come, now,
what am I to do with a wife?"
He flourished his hands with so much perplexity and terror as he said
this, that it was clear he absolutely did not know what to do with
a wife! And, despite the comicality of his statement of this whole
affair, its dramatic side made me do some hard thinking over the
situation of my comrade and of this girl. Meanwhile, he continued to
stalk about the bakery, and talk to himself, as it were.
"And she doesn't please me now, it's awful how repulsive she is to me!
She's just sucking me in, and dragging me down somewhere, exactly like
a bottomless bog. A nice husband you've picked out for yourself! You're
not very clever, but you're a crafty girl."
This was the instinct of the vagabond beginning to speak in him,
aroused by the feeling of eternal striving after his freedom, which had
been assailed.
"No, you won't catch me with that sort of worm, I'm too big a fish for
that!" he exclaimed vauntingly.--"This is the way I'll take it, yes
... and, after all, what of it?"--And, coming to a halt in the middle
of the bakery, he sighed, and fell into thought. I watched the play
of expression on his excited countenance, and tried to divine what
conclusion he had arrived at.
"Maxím! Hey, there, let's be off for the Kubán!"
I had not expected this. I had certain literary--pedagogical designs
on him: I cherished the hope of teaching him to read and write, and of
imparting to him all that I knew myself at that time. It would have
been curious to observe how this experiment would turn out.... He had
given me his word not to move from the spot for the whole summer; this
had lightened my task, and now, all of a sudden ...
"Now you are talking nonsense!" I said to him, somewhat disconcerted.
"Well, what else is there for me to do?" he cried.
I began to tell him that, in all probability, Kapitólina's designs on
him were not so decidedly serious as he imagined, and that he must
watch and wait.
And, as it turned out, he had not so very long to wait.
We were sitting on the floor, with our backs to the windows, and
chatting. It was almost midnight, and an hour and a half or two hours
had elapsed since Konováloff's return. All at once, the crash of
breaking glass rang out behind us, and a pretty heavy stone thundered
noisily down upon the floor beside us. We both sprang to our feet in
affright, and rushed to the window.
"I missed fire!" screamed a shrill voice through the opening.--"My aim
was bad! If it hadn't been for that...."
"C-cco-ome 'long!" bellowed a fierce bass voice.--"C-cco-ome'l-llong,
and I'll settle him ... later on!"
A despairing, hysterical, and drunken laugh, shrill and
nerve-splitting, floated in from the street through the shattered
window.
"It's she!" said Konováloff, sorrowfully.
All I had been able to descry, so far, was a pair of legs hanging from
the sidewalk into the opening before the window. There they dangled and
bobbed about in a queer fashion, the heels striking against the brick
wall, as though in search of a support.
"C-co-ome'long, now!" jabbered the fierce bass voice.
"Let me go! Don't drag me, give me a chance to ease my heart. Good-bye,
Sáshka! Good-bye...." An unprintable curse followed these words.
On approaching closer to the window, I caught sight of Kapitólina.
Bending down very low, with her hands propped on the sidewalk, she
was trying to look into the bakery, and her dishevelled hair lay
in disorder over her shoulders and bosom. The white kerchief was
pushed on one side, the bodice of her gown was tom. Kapitólina was
horribly drunk, and was reeling from side to side, hiccoughing,
cursing, screaming hysterically, trembling all over, her garments all
dishevelled, her face red, intoxicated, drenched with tears.
Over her leaned the tall figure of a man, and he, resting one hand on
her shoulder, and the other against the wall of the house, kept on
roaring:
"C-cco-ome'long!" ...
"Sáshka! You have ruined me ... remember that! Curse you, you
red-headed devil! May you never behold an hour of God's sunshine! I did
hope ... I should reform ... you jeered at me, you gallow's-bird ...
all right! Let's make up! Ah!... He has hid himself! Shame on you, you
cursed ugly mug! ... Sásha ... dearest...."
"I haven't hid myself," said Konováloff, in a deep, thick voice,
approaching the window and climbing up on a bin.--"I'm not hiding ...
but there's no use in your going on like this ... I certainly meant
kindly by you; it will be a good thing, I thought, but you have rushed
off wildly, in the most utterly absurd way...."
"Sáshka! Can you kill me?"
"Why did you get drunk? Don't you know what would have happened ...
to-morrow?" ...
"Sáshka! Sáshka! Drown me!"
"Sto-o-op that! C-co-ome'long!"
"You scound-rrrel! Why did you pretend to be a good man?"
"What's all this noise, hey? Who are you?"
The whistle of the night-watchman interposed in this dialogue, drowned
it, then subsided.
"Why did I trust you, you devil!..." sobbed the girl under the window.
Then her legs suddenly quivered, flashed upward in haste, and vanished
in the gloom. A dull sound of voices and uproar rang out.
"I won't go to the station-house! Sá-ásha!" shrieked the girl
plaintively.
Feet trampled noisily along the pavement.
Whistles, a dull roaring, yells.
"Sá-ásha! Dear man!"
It appeared as though someone were being mercilessly tortured.... All
these noises retreated from us, grew fainter, duller, and died away,
like a nightmare. Stunned, crushed by this scene, which had been
enacted with astonishing swiftness, Konováloff and I stared into the
street through the darkness, and could not recover ourselves from the
weeping, roaring, curses, shouts of the police, groans of anguish. I
recalled individual sounds, and could hardly persuade myself that it
had all actually taken place. This brief but painful drama had come to
an end with terrible rapidity.
"That's all.. said Konováloff, with peculiar gentleness and simplicity,
after listening a while longer in silence in the dark night, which
gazed silently and sternly in at him through the window.
"How she gave it to me!..." he continued with amazement, after
the lapse of several seconds, retaining his former attitude on
the bin, kneeling and supporting his hands on the slope of the
window-sill.--"She has got into the hands of the police ... drunk ...
in company with some devil or other. She made up her mind quick!" He
heaved a deep sigh, descended from the bin, seated himself on the sacks
of flour, with his head clasped in his hands, rocked himself to and
fro, and asked me, in an undertone:
"Tell me, Maxím, what was it that took place there just now?... That is
to say, what share have I in it all now?"
I told him. It was all his affair, all the way through. First of all,
one must understand what he wants to do, and when he begins a thing, he
must set before himself its probable termination. He had not understood
this in the least, did not know it, and was thoroughly to blame in
every point. I was incensed at him--Kapitólina's groans and cries, that
drunken "C-come'long!" ... all these things still rang in my ears, and
I did not spare my comrade.
He listened to me with bowed head, and when I had finished, he raised
it, and on his countenance I read alarm and amazement.
"There you have it!" he exclaimed ... "That's clever! Well, and ...
what now? Hey? How is it? What am I to do with her?"
In the tone of his words there was so much purely-childish in the
sincerity of his confession of his fault toward the girl, and so
much helpless astonishment, that I immediately felt sorry for my
comrade, and reflected that, possibly, I had spoken very sharply and
dictatorially to him.
"And why did I move her from that place?" said Konováloff,
regretfully.--"Ekhma! She must be angry with me now ... for now I
have.... I'll go there, to the police-station, and I'll try ... I'll
see her--and all the rest of it. I'll say to her ... something or
other.... Shall I go?"
I remarked that not much was likely to come of his seeing her again.
What could he say to her? Moreover, intoxicated as she was, she was,
probably, fast asleep by this time.
But he fortified himself in his idea.
"I'll go, just wait. All the same, I wish her well ... indeed I do. And
what sort of people are they for her? I'll go.... Here, you, just ...
I'll be back before long."
And putting on his cap, he hastily quitted the bakery, without even
donning the boot-slippers, of which he was, generally, so vain.
I finished my work and lay down to sleep, but when I awoke in the
morning, and, according to my wont, cast a glance at the place where
Konováloff slept, he was not yet there.
He did not make his appearance until toward evening, when he presented
himself gloomy, dishevelled, with harsh lines on his brow, and a sort
of mist over his blue eyes. Without looking at me, he stepped up to the
bins, to see what I had been doing, and then lay down, in silence, upon
the floor.
"Well, did you see her?" I asked.
"That's what I went for."
"Well, what happened?"
"Nothing."
It was plain that he did not wish to talk. Assuming that this mood
of his would not last long, I did not bother him with questions. And
all that day he maintained silence, only flinging at me curt remarks
bearing on the work, when it was absolutely necessary, striding about
the bakery with drooping head, and still with the same beclouded eyes
with which he had arrived. Something seemed to have been extinguished
within him; he worked slowly and languidly, as though held in bondage
by his thoughts. At night, when we had already placed the last batch
of loaves in the oven, and had not gone to sleep, for fear of their
getting over-done, he asked me:
"Come, now, read me something about Sténka."
As the description of the tortures stirred him up more than anything
else, I began to read that passage to him. He listened, stretched out
motionless upon the floor, breast upward, and stared unwinkingly at the
smoke-begrimed vaults of the ceiling.
"Sténka died. So they set one man free," said Konováloff slowly.--"And
yet, in those days, a man could live. Life was free. There was
somewhere to go, a man could divert his spirit. Now we have silence,
and peaceableness ... order ... if you look at it so, from one side,
life has now even become perfectly peaceful. Books, reading and
writing.... And, nevertheless, a man lives without protection, and
there is no sort of guardianship over him. He sins in a forbidden
way, but it is impossible not to sin.... For there is order in the
streets, but in the soul there is--confusion. And nobody can understand
anybody."
"Sásha! On what terms are you with Kapitólina?" I asked.
"Hey?" He bristled up.--"With Kápa? Enough!" ... He waved his hand with
decision.
"That means--you have made an end of it?"
"I? No--she herself has made an end of it."
"How?"
"Very simply. She insisted on her point of view, and wouldn't see any
others whatever.... Just as before. Only, formerly, she did not drink,
and now she has taken to drinking.... Take the bread out while I get
some sleep."
Silence reigned in the bakery. The lamp smoked, the oven-door cracked
from time to time, and the crusts of baked bread on the shelves
cracked also, in drying. In the street, opposite our windows, the
night-watchmen were chatting. And still another sound, a strange sound,
reached the ear, now and then, from the street, like a sign-board
creaking somewhere, or someone groaning.
I took out the bread, and lay down to sleep, but I could not get to
sleep, and I lent an ear to all the nocturnal sounds, as I lay there,
with half-shut eyes. All at once, I beheld Konováloff rise noiselessly
from the floor, go to the shelf, take from it Kostomároff's book, open
it, and hold it up to his eyes. His thoughtful face was clearly visible
to me, and I watched him draw his fingers along the lines, shake his
head, turn over a leaf, and again stare intently at it, and then
transfer his eyes to me. There was an odd, strained, and interrogative
expression on his pensive, sunken face, and this face--an entirely new
one to me--he kept turned toward me for a long time.