take your salary," the engineer went on, looking at me; "you keep
relying on patronage to faire le carrière as quickly and as easily as
possible. Well, I don't care for patronage. No one took any trouble on
my behalf. Before they gave me a railway contract I went about as a
mechanic and worked in Belgium as an oiler. And you, Panteley, what are
you doing here?" he asked, turning to Radish. "Drinking with them?"
He, for some reason, always called humble people Panteley, and such as
me and Tcheprakov he despised, and called them drunkards, beasts, and
rabble to their faces. Altogether he was cruel to humble subordinates,
and used to fine them and turn them off coldly without explanations.
At last the horses came for him. As he said good-bye he promised to turn
us all off in a fortnight; he called his bailiff a blockhead; and then,
lolling at ease in his carriage, drove back to the town.
"Andrey Ivanitch," I said to Radish, "take me on as a workman."
"Oh, all right!"
And we set off together in the direction of the town. When the station
and the big house with its buildings were left behind I asked: "Andrey
Ivanitch, why did you come to Dubetchnya this evening?"
"In the first place my fellows are working on the line, and in the
second place I came to pay the general's lady my interest. Last year I
borrowed fifty roubles from her, and I pay her now a rouble a month
interest."
The painter stopped and took me by the button.
"Misail Alexeyitch, our angel," he went on. "The way I look at it is
that if any man, gentle or simple, takes even the smallest interest, he
is doing evil. There cannot be truth and justice in such a man."
Radish, lean, pale, dreadful-looking, shut his eyes, shook his head,
and, in the tone of a philosopher, pronounced:
"Lice consume the grass, rust consumes the iron, and lying the soul.
Lord, have mercy upon us sinners." V
Radish was not practical, and was not at all good at forming an
estimate; he took more work than he could get through, and when
calculating he was agitated, lost his head, and so was almost always out
of pocket over his jobs. He undertook painting, glazing, paperhanging,
and even tiling roofs, and I can remember his running about for three
days to find tilers for the sake of a paltry job. He was a first-rate
workman; he sometimes earned as much as ten roubles a day; and if it had
not been for the desire at all costs to be a master, and to be called a
contractor, he would probably have had plenty of money.
He was paid by the job, but he paid me and the other workmen by the day,
from one and twopence to two shillings a day. When it was fine and dry
we did all kinds of outside work, chiefly painting roofs. When I was new
to the work it made my feet burn as though I were walking on hot bricks,
and when I put on felt boots they were hotter than ever. But this was
only at first; later on I got used to it, and everything went
swimmingly. I was living now among people to whom labour was obligatory,
inevitable, and who worked like cart-horses, often with no idea of the
moral significance of labour, and, indeed, never using the word "labour"
in conversation at all. Beside them I, too, felt like a cart-horse,
growing more and more imbued with the feeling of the obligatory and
inevitable character of what I was doing, and this made my life easier,
setting me free from all doubt and uncertainty.
At first everything interested me, everything was new, as though I had
been born again. I could sleep on the ground and go about barefoot, and
that was extremely pleasant; I could stand in a crowd of the common
people and be no constraint to anyone, and when a cab horse fell down in
the street I ran to help it up without being afraid of soiling my
clothes. And the best of it all was, I was living on my own account and
no burden to anyone!
Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and colours, was regarded as
a particularly profitable job, and so this rough, dull work was not
disdained, even by such good workmen as Radish. In short breeches, and
wasted, purple-looking legs, he used to go about the roofs, looking like
a stork, and I used to hear him, as he plied his brush, breathing
heavily and saying: "Woe, woe to us sinners!"
He walked about the roofs as freely as though he were upon the ground.
In spite of his being ill and pale as a corpse, his agility was
extraordinary: he used to paint the domes and cupolas of the churches
without scaffolding, like a young man, with only the help of a ladder
and a rope, and it was rather horrible when standing on a height far
from the earth; he would draw himself up erect, and for some unknown
reason pronounce:
"Lice consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!"
Or, thinking about something, would answer his thoughts aloud:
"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"
When I went home from my work, all the people who were sitting on
benches by the gates, all the shopmen and boys and their employers, made
sneering and spiteful remarks after me, and this upset me at first and
seemed to be simply monstrous.
"Better-than-nothing!" I heard on all sides. "House painter! Yellow
ochre!"
And none behaved so ungraciously to me as those who had only lately been
humble people themselves, and had earned their bread by hard manual
labour. In the streets full of shops I was once passing an ironmonger's
when water was thrown over me as though by accident, and on one occasion
someone darted out with a stick at me, while a fishmonger, a grey-headed
old man, barred my way and said, looking at me angrily:
"I am not sorry for you, you fool! It's your father I am sorry for."
And my acquaintances were for some reason overcome with embarrassment
when they met me. Some of them looked upon me as a queer fish and a
comic fool; others were sorry for me; others did not know what attitude
to take up to me, and it was difficult to make them out. One day I met
Anyuta Blagovo in a side street near Great Dvoryansky Street. I was
going to work, and was carrying two long brushes and a pail of paint.
Recognizing me Anyuta flushed crimson.
"Please do not bow to me in the street," she said nervously, harshly,
and in a shaking voice, without offering me her hand, and tears suddenly
gleamed in her eyes. "If to your mind all this is necessary, so be it .
. . so be it, but I beg you not to meet me!"
I no longer lived in Great Dvoryansky Street, but in the suburb with my
old nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old woman, who always
foreboded some harm, was afraid of all dreams, and even in the bees and
wasps that flew into her room saw omens of evil, and the fact that I had
become a workman, to her thinking, boded nothing good.
"Your life is ruined," she would say, mournfully shaking her head,
"ruined."
Her adopted son Prokofy, a huge, uncouth, red-headed fellow of thirty,
with bristling moustaches, a butcher by trade, lived in the little house
with her. When he met me in the passage he would make way for me in
respectful silence, and if he was drunk he would salute me with all five
fingers at once. He used to have supper in the evening, and through the
partition wall of boards I could hear him clear his throat and sigh as
he drank off glass after glass.
"Mamma," he would call in an undertone.
"Well," Karpovna, who was passionately devoted to her adopted son, would
respond: "What is it, sonny?"
"I can show you a testimony of my affection, mamma. All this earthly
life I will cherish you in your declining years in this vale of tears,
and when you die I will bury you at my expense; I have said it, and you
can believe it."
I got up every morning before sunrise, and went to bed early. We house
painters ate a great deal and slept soundly; the only thing amiss was
that my heart used to beat violently at night. I did not quarrel with my
mates. Violent abuse, desperate oaths, and wishes such as, "Blast your
eyes," or "Cholera take you," never ceased all day, but, nevertheless,
we lived on very friendly terms. The other fellows suspected me of being
some sort of religious sectary, and made good-natured jokes at my
expense, saying that even my own father had disowned me, and thereupon
would add that they rarely went into the temple of God themselves, and
that many of them had not been to confession for ten years. They
justified this laxity on their part by saying that a painter among men
was like a jackdaw among birds.
The men had a good opinion of me, and treated me with respect; it was
evident that my not drinking, not smoking, but leading a quiet, steady
life pleased them very much. It was only an unpleasant shock to them
that I took no hand in stealing oil and did not go with them to ask for
tips from people on whose property we were working. Stealing oil and
paints from those who employed them was a house painter's custom, and
was not regarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so upright a
man as Radish would always carry away a little white lead and oil as he
went home from work. And even the most respectable old fellows, who
owned the houses in which they lived in the suburb, were not ashamed to
ask for a tip, and it made me feel vexed and ashamed to see the men go
in a body to congratulate some nonentity on the commencement or the
completion of the job, and thank him with degrading servility when they
had received a few coppers.
With people on whose work they were engaged they behaved like wily
courtiers, and almost every day I was reminded of Shakespeare's
Polonius.
"I fancy it is going to rain," the man whose house was being painted
would say, looking at the sky.
"It is, there is not a doubt it is," the painters would agree.
"I don't think it is a rain-cloud, though. Perhaps it won't rain after
all."
"No, it won't, your honour! I am sure it won't."
But their attitude to their patrons behind their backs was usually one
of irony, and when they saw, for instance, a gentleman sitting in the
verandah reading a newspaper, they would observe:
"He reads the paper, but I daresay he has nothing to eat."
I never went home to see my own people. When I came back from work I
often found waiting for me little notes, brief and anxious, in which my
sister wrote to me about my father; that he had been particularly
preoccupied at dinner and had eaten nothing, or that he had been giddy
and staggering, or that he had locked himself in his room and had not
come out for a long time. Such items of news troubled me; I could not
sleep, and at times even walked up and down Great Dvoryansky Street at
night by our house, looking in at the dark windows and trying to guess
whether everything was well at home. On Sundays my sister came to see
me, but came in secret, as though it were not to see me but our nurse.
And if she came in to see me she was very pale, with tear-stained eyes,
and she began crying at once.
"Our father will never live through this," she would say. "If anything
should happen to him-God grant it may not-your conscience will torment
you all your life. It's awful, Misail; for our mother's sake I beseech
you: reform your ways."
"My darling sister," I would say, "how can I reform my ways if I am
convinced that I am acting in accordance with my conscience? Do
understand!"
"I know you are acting on your conscience, but perhaps it could be done
differently, somehow, so as not to wound anybody."
"Ah, holy Saints!" the old woman sighed through the door. "Your life is
ruined! There will be trouble, my dears, there will be trouble!" VI
One Sunday Dr. Blagovo turned up unexpectedly. He was wearing a military
tunic over a silk shirt and high boots of patent leather.
"I have come to see you," he began, shaking my hand heartily like a
student. "I am hearing about you every day, and I have been meaning to
come and have a heart-to-heart talk, as they say. The boredom in the
town is awful, there is not a living soul, no one to say a word to. It's
hot, Holy Mother," he went on, taking off his tunic and sitting in his
silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let me talk to you."
I was dull myself, and had for a long time been craving for the society
of someone not a house painter. I was genuinely glad to see him.
"I'll begin by saying," he said, sitting down on my bed, "that I
sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart, and deeply respect the
life you are leading. They don't understand you here in the town, and,
indeed, there is no one to understand, seeing that, as you know, they
are all, with very few exceptions, regular Gogolesque pig faces here.
But I saw what you were at once that time at the picnic. You are a noble
soul, an honest, high-minded man! I respect you, and feel it a great
honour to shake hands with you!" he went on enthusiastically. "To have
made such a complete and violent change of life as you have done, you
must have passed through a complicated spiritual crisis, and to continue
this manner of life now, and to keep up to the high standard of your
convictions continually, must be a strain on your mind and heart from
day to day. Now to begin our talk, tell me, don't you consider that if
you had spent your strength of will, this strained activity, all these
powers on something else, for instance, on gradually becoming a great
scientist, or artist, your life would have been broader and deeper and
would have been more productive?"
We talked, and when we got upon manual labour I expressed this idea:
that what is wanted is that the strong should not enslave the weak, that
the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, nor a vampire for
ever sucking its vital sap; that is, all, without exception, strong and
weak, rich and poor, should take part equally in the struggle for
existence, each one on his own account, and that there was no better
means for equalizing things in that way than manual labour, in the form
of universal service, compulsory for all.
"Then do you think everyone without exception ought to engage in manual
labour?" asked the doctor.
"Yes."
"And don't you think that if everyone, including the best men, the
thinkers and great scientists, taking part in the struggle for
existence, each on his own account, are going to waste their time
breaking stones and painting roofs, may not that threaten a grave danger
to progress?"
"Where is the danger?" I asked. "Why, progress is in deeds of love, in
fulfilling the moral law; if you don't enslave anyone, if you don't
oppress anyone, what further progress do you want?"
"But, excuse me," Blagovo suddenly fired up, rising to his feet. "But,
excuse me! If a snail in its shell busies itself over perfecting its own
personality and muddles about with the moral law, do you call that
progress?"
"Why muddles?" I said, offended. "If you don't force your neighbour to
feed and clothe you, to transport you from place to place and defend you
from your enemies, surely in the midst of a life entirely resting on
slavery, that is progress, isn't it? To my mind it is the most important
progress, and perhaps the only one possible and necessary for man."
"The limits of universal world progress are in infinity, and to talk of
some 'possible' progress limited by our needs and temporary theories is,
excuse my saying so, positively strange."
"If the limits of progress are in infinity as you say, it follows that
its aims are not definite," I said. "To live without knowing definitely
what you are living for!"
"So be it! But that 'not knowing' is not so dull as your 'knowing.' I am
going up a ladder which is called progress, civilization, culture; I go
on and up without knowing definitely where I am going, but really it is
worth living for the sake of that delightful ladder; while you know what
you are living for, you live for the sake of some people's not enslaving
others, that the artist and the man who rubs his paints may dine equally
well. But you know that's the petty, bourgeois, kitchen, grey side of
life, and surely it is revolting to live for that alone? If some insects
do enslave others, bother them, let them devour each other! We need not
think about them. You know they will die and decay just the same,
however zealously you rescue them from slavery. We must think of that
great millennium which awaits humanity in the remote future."
Blagovo argued warmly with me, but at the same time one could see he was
troubled by some irrelevant idea.
"I suppose your sister is not coming?" he said, looking at his watch.
"She was at our house yesterday, and said she would be seeing you to-
day. You keep saying slavery, slavery . . ." he went on. "But you know
that is a special question, and all such questions are solved by
humanity gradually."
We began talking of doing things gradually. I said that "the question of
doing good or evil every one settles for himself, without waiting till
humanity settles it by the way of gradual development. Moreover, this
gradual process has more than one aspect. Side by side with the gradual
development of human ideas the gradual growth of ideas of another order
is observed. Serfdom is no more, but the capitalist system is growing.
And in the very heyday of emancipating ideas, just as in the days of
Baty, the majority feeds, clothes, and defends the minority while
remaining hungry, inadequately clad, and defenceless. Such an order of
things can be made to fit in finely with any tendencies and currents of
thought you like, because the art of enslaving is also gradually being
cultivated. We no longer flog our servants in the stable, but we give to
slavery refined forms, at least, we succeed in finding a justification
for it in each particular case. Ideas are ideas with us, but if now, at
the end of the nineteenth century, it were possible to lay the burden of
the most unpleasant of our physiological functions upon the working
class, we should certainly do so, and afterwards, of course, justify
ourselves by saying that if the best people, the thinkers and great
scientists, were to waste their precious time on these functions,
progress might be menaced with great danger."
But at this point my sister arrived. Seeing the doctor she was fluttered
and troubled, and began saying immediately that it was time for her to
go home to her father.
"Kleopatra Alexyevna," said Blagovo earnestly, pressing both hands to
his heart, "what will happen to your father if you spend half an hour or
so with your brother and me?"
He was frank, and knew how to communicate his liveliness to others.
After a moment's thought, my sister laughed, and all at once became
suddenly gay as she had been at the picnic. We went out into the
country, and lying in the grass went on with our talk, and looked
towards the town where all the windows facing west were like glittering
gold because the sun was setting.
After that, whenever my sister was coming to see me Blagovo turned up
too, and they always greeted each other as though their meeting in my
room was accidental. My sister listened while the doctor and I argued,
and at such times her expression was joyfully enthusiastic, full of
tenderness and curiosity, and it seemed to me that a new world she had
never dreamed of before, and which she was now striving to fathom, was
gradually opening before her eyes. When the doctor was not there she was
quiet and sad, and now if she sometimes shed tears as she sat on my bed
it was for reasons of which she did not speak.
In August Radish ordered us to be ready to go to the railway-line. Two
days before we were "banished" from the town my father came to see me.
He sat down and in a leisurely way, without looking at me, wiped his red
face, then took out of his pocket our town Messenger, and deliberately,
with emphasis on each word, read out the news that the son of the branch
manager of the State Bank, a young man of my age, had been appointed
head of a Department in the Exchequer.
"And now look at you," he said, folding up the newspaper, "a beggar, in
rags, good for nothing! Even working-class people and peasants obtain
education in order to become men, while you, a Poloznev, with ancestors
of rank and distinction, aspire to the gutter! But I have not come here
to talk to you; I have washed my hands of you-" he added in a stifled
voice, getting up. "I have come to find out where your sister is, you
worthless fellow. She left home after dinner, and here it is nearly
eight and she is not back. She has taken to going out frequently without
telling me; she is less dutiful-and I see in it your evil and degrading
influence. Where is she?"
In his hand he had the umbrella I knew so well, and I was already
flustered and drew myself up like a schoolboy, expecting my father to
begin hitting me with it, but he noticed my glance at the umbrella and
most likely that restrained him.
"Live as you please!" he said. "I shall not give you my blessing!"
"Holy Saints!" my nurse muttered behind the door. "You poor, unlucky
child! Ah, my heart bodes ill!"
I worked on the railway-line. It rained without stopping all August; it
was damp and cold; they had not carried the corn in the fields, and on
big farms where the wheat had been cut by machines it lay not in sheaves
but in heaps, and I remember how those luckless heaps of wheat turned
blacker every day and the grain was sprouting in them. It was hard to
work; the pouring rain spoiled everything we managed to do. We were not
allowed to live or to sleep in the railway buildings, and we took refuge
in the damp and filthy mud huts in which the navvies had lived during
the summer, and I could not sleep at night for the cold and the woodlice
crawling on my face and hands. And when we worked near the bridges the
navvies used to come in the evenings in a gang, simply in order to beat
the painters-it was a form of sport to them. They used to beat us, to
steal our brushes. And to annoy us and rouse us to fight they used to
spoil our work; they would, for instance, smear over the signal boxes
with green paint. To complete our troubles, Radish took to paying us
very irregularly. All the painting work on the line was given out to a
contractor; he gave it out to another; and this subcontractor gave it to
Radish after subtracting twenty per cent. for himself. The job was not a
profitable one in itself, and the rain made it worse; time was wasted;
we could not work while Radish was obliged to pay the fellows by the
day. The hungry painters almost came to beating him, called him a cheat,
a blood-sucker, a Judas, while he, poor fellow, sighed, lifted up his
hand to Heaven in despair, and was continually going to Madame
Tcheprakov for money. VII
Autumn came on, rainy, dark, and muddy. The season of unemployment set
in, and I used to sit at home out of work for three days at a stretch,
or did various little jobs, not in the painting line. For instance, I
wheeled earth, earning about fourpence a day by it. Dr. Blagovo had gone
away to Petersburg. My sister had given up coming to see me. Radish was
laid up at home ill, expecting death from day to day.
And my mood was autumnal too. Perhaps because, having become a workman,
I saw our town life only from the seamy side, it was my lot almost every
day to make discoveries which reduced me almost to despair. Those of my
fellow-citizens, about whom I had no opinion before, or who had
externally appeared perfectly decent, turned out now to be base, cruel
people, capable of any dirty action. We common people were deceived,
cheated, and kept waiting for hours together in the cold entry or the
kitchen; we were insulted and treated with the utmost rudeness. In the
autumn I papered the reading-room and two other rooms at the club; I was
paid a penny three-farthings the piece, but had to sign a receipt at the
rate of twopence halfpenny, and when I refused to do so, a gentleman of
benevolent appearance in gold-rimmed spectacles, who must have been one
of the club committee, said to me:
"If you say much more, you blackguard, I'll pound your face into a
jelly!"
And when the flunkey whispered to him what I was, the son of Poloznev
the architect, he became embarrassed, turned crimson, but immediately
recovered himself and said: "Devil take him."