Accident came to the rescue of Tikhon Ilitch. Quite unexpectedly he
became reconciled to his brother, and persuaded him to undertake the
management of Durnovka.
He had learned from an acquaintance in the town that Kuzma had ceased
to drink and for a long time had been serving as clerk with a landed
proprietor named Kasatkin. And, what was most amazing of all, he had
become “an author.” Yes, it was said that he had printed a whole little
volume of his verses, and on the cover was the inscription: “For sale
by the Author.”
“Oh, come no-ow!” drawled Tikhon Ilitch when he heard this. “He’s the
same old Kuzma, and that’s all right! But let me ask one thing: Did he
really print it so--‘The Works of Kuzma Krasoff’?”
“Give you my word he did,” replied the acquaintance, being fully
persuaded, nevertheless--as were many others in the town--that Kuzma
“skinned” his verses from books and newspapers.
Thereupon Tikhon Ilitch, without quitting his seat at the table of
Daeff’s eating-house, wrote a brief, peremptory letter to his brother:
’twas high time for old men to make peace, to repent. And there, in
that same eating-house, the reconciliation took place--swiftly, almost
without the utterance of a word. And on the following day came the
business talk.
It was morning; the eating-house was still almost empty. The sun shone
through the dusty windows, lighted up the small tables covered with
greyish-red tablecloths, the floor newly washed with bran and emitting
an odour of the stable, and the waiters in their white shirts and white
trousers. In a cage a canary was singing in all possible modulations,
but like a mechanical bird which had been wound up rather than a live
one. Next door, the bells of St. Michael Archangel’s church were
ringing for the Liturgy, and the dense, sonorous peal shook the walls
and boomed quivering overhead. With nervous, serious countenance,
Tikhon Ilitch seated himself at a table, ordered at first only tea for
two, but became impatient and reached for the bill-of-fare--a novelty
which had excited the mirth of all Daeff’s patrons. On the card was
printed: “A small carafe of vodka, with snack, 25 kopeks. With tasty
snack, 40 kopeks.” Tikhon Ilitch ordered the carafe of vodka at forty
kopeks. He tossed off two glasses with avidity and was on the point
of drinking a third, when a long-familiar voice resounded in his ear:
“Well, good morning once more.”
Kuzma was garbed in the same fashion as his brother. He was shorter
of stature, with larger bones, more withered, and a trifle broader of
shoulder. He had the large thin face with prominent cheek-bones of a
shrewd old peasant shopkeeper, grey overhanging eyebrows, and large
greenish eyes. His manner of beginning was not simple:
“First of all, I must expound to you, Tikhon Ilitch,” he began, as
soon as Tikhon Ilitch had poured him a cup of tea, “I must expound to
you what sort of a man I am, so that you may know”--he chuckled--“with
whom you are dealing.” He had a way of enunciating his words very
distinctly, elevating his brows, unfastening and fastening the upper
button of his short coat while he talked. So, having buttoned it, he
continued: “I, you see, am an anarchist....”
Tikhon Ilitch raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t be afraid. I don’t meddle with politics. But you can’t give a
man orders how he is to think. It won’t harm you in the least. I shall
manage the estate faithfully, but I tell you straight from the shoulder
that I will not skin the people.”
“Anyway, that can’t be done at the present time,” sighed Tikhon Ilitch.
“Well, times are the same as they always were. It is still possible to
fleece people. I’ll do my managing properly, but my leisure I shall
devote to self-development. That is to say, to reading.”
“Okh, bear in mind: Too much poking in books is bad for the poke!” said
Tikhon Ilitch, shaking his head, and making a grimace. “However, that’s
no affair of ours.”
“Well, that’s not the way I look at it,” retorted Kuzma. “I,
brother--how shall I put it to you?--I’m a strange Russian type.”
“I’m a Russian man myself, bear that in mind,” interposed Tikhon
Ilitch.
“But another sort. I don’t mean to say that I’m better than you,
but--I’m different. Now here are you, I see, priding yourself on being
a Russian, while I, brother, okh! am very far from being a Slavophil!
It’s not proper to jabber much, but one thing I will say: for God’s
sake, don’t brag of being a Russian! We’re an uncivilized people and an
extremely unreliable one--neither candle for God nor oven-fork for the
devil. But we will discuss this as time goes on.”
Tikhon Ilitch contracted his brows, drummed on the table with his
fingers. “That’s right, probably,” he said, and slowly filled his
glass. “We’re a savage lot. A crack-brained race.”
“Well, and that’s precisely the point. I have, I may say, roamed about
the world a good bit. Well, and what then? Absolutely nowhere have I
seen more tiresome and lazy types. And those who are not lazy”--here
Kuzma shot a sidelong look at his brother--“have no sense at all. They
toil and strive and acquire a nest for themselves; but where’s the
sense in it, after all?”
“What do you mean by that? What’s sense?” asked Tikhon Ilitch.
“Just what I say. One must use sense in making one’s nest. I’ll weave
me a nest, says the man, and then I’ll live as a man should. In this
way and in that.”
Here Kuzma tapped his breast and his brow with his finger.
Tikhon Ilitch poured himself out another glass of liquor. Kuzma, having
donned a silver-framed pair of eyeglasses, sipped the boiling-hot amber
fluid from his saucer. Tikhon Ilitch gazed at him with beaming eyes;
and after turning something over in his mind, he said: “Evidently,
brother, that sort of thing is not for the likes of us. If you live in
the country, sup your coarse cabbage-soup and wear wretched bast-shoes.
Do as your neighbours do!”
“Bast-shoes!” retorted Kuzma tartly. “We’ve been wearing them a couple
of thousand years, brother--the thrice-accursed things! For two
thousand years we’ve been living with our mouths agape. We’re doing
the devil’s work. And who is to blame? What I have to say about it is
this: ’tis high time to get ashamed of casting shame for everything on
our neighbours--blaming our neighbours instead of ourselves! The Tatars
oppressed us, you see! We’re a young nation, you see! Just as if, over
there in Europe, all sorts of Mongols didn’t oppress folks a lot, too!
As if the Germans were any older than we are! Well, anyhow, that’s a
special subject.”
“Correct!” said Tikhon Ilitch. “Come on, we’d better get down to
business.”
Kuzma turned his empty glass upside down on the saucer, lighted a
cigarette, and resumed his exposition.
“I don’t go to church.”
“That signifies that you are a molokan?”[9] asked Tikhon Ilitch, and
said to himself: “I’m lost! Evidently, I must get rid of Durnovka!”
“A sort of molokan,” grinned Kuzma. “And do you go to church? If it
weren’t for fear and necessity, one would forget all about it.”
“Well, I’m not the first, neither am I the last,” retorted Tikhon
Ilitch, again contracting his brows in a scowl. “We are all sinners.
But ’tis stated, you know: One sigh buys forgiveness for everything.”
Kuzma shook his head.
“You’re saying the usual things!” he remarked, severely. “But if you
will only pause and reflect, how can that be so? You’ve been living on
and on pig-fashion all your life, and you utter a sigh--and everything
is wiped out without leaving a trace! Is there any sense in that, or
not?”
The conversation was becoming painful. “That’s correct,” Tikhon Ilitch
said to himself, as he stared at the table with flashing eyes. But, as
always, he wanted to dodge thought, and discussion about God and about
life; and he said the first thing that came to the tip of his tongue:
“I’d be glad enough to go to Paradise, but my sins won’t let me.”
“There, there, there!” Kuzma caught him up, tapping the table with his
finger-nail. “The very thing we love the best, our most pernicious
characteristic, is precisely that: words are one thing, deeds are quite
another! ’Tis the genuine Russian tune, brother: I live disgustingly,
pig-fashion, but nevertheless I am living, and I shall continue to
live, pig-fashion! You’re a type, brother! A type!--Well, now talk
business.”
The pealing of the bells had ceased, the canary had quieted down.
People had assembled in the eating-house, and conversation was
increasing at the little tables. A waiter opened a window, and chatter
from the bazaar also became audible. Somewhere in a shop a quail was
uttering his call, very clearly and melodiously. And while the business
talk was in progress Kuzma kept listening to it, and from time to
time interposed, “That’s clever!” in an undertone. And when all had
been said he slapped the table with the palm of his hand and said
energetically: “Well, all right, so be it--don’t let’s discuss it!”
and thrusting his hand into the side pocket of his short coat, he drew
forth a regular heap of papers and paper scraps, sorted out from among
them a small book in a grey-marbled binding, and laid it in front of
his brother. “There!” said he. “I yield to your request and to my own
weakness. ’Tis a wretched little book, casual verses, written long ago.
But ’tis done, and it cannot be helped. Here, take it and put it out of
sight.”
And once more Tikhon Ilitch, who had already become extremely red in
the face from the vodka, was agitated by the consciousness that his
brother was an author; that upon that grey-marbled cover was printed:
“Poems by K. I. Krasoff.” He turned the book about in his hands, and
said diffidently: “Suppose you read me something. Hey? Pray do, read me
three or four verses.”
And, with head bent low and in some confusion, holding the book at a
distance and gazing severely at it through his glasses, Kuzma read
the sort of thing which the self-taught usually write: imitations of
Koltzoff and Nikitin, complaints against Fate and misery, challenges
to impending storm-clouds and bad weather. It is true that he himself
was conscious that all this was old and false. But behind the alien,
incongruous form lay the truth--that which had been violently and
painfully experienced at some time or other. And upon his thin
cheek-bones patches of pink made their appearance, and his voice
trembled from time to time. Tikhon Ilitch’s eyes gleamed, too. It was
of no importance whether the verses were good or bad--the important
point was that they had been composed by his own brother, a poor man, a
simple plain fellow who reeked of cheap tobacco and old boots.
“But with us, Kuzma Ilitch,” he said when Kuzma had finished and,
removing his eyeglasses, dropped his eyes, “but with us there is only
one song.” And he twisted his lips unpleasantly and bitterly: “The only
song we know is: ‘What’s the price of pig’s bristles?’”