Osip Abramovich, the barber, arranged a dirty sheeting on his
customer’s chest, and tucking it into his collar, shouted abruptly in a
sharp tone, “Boy! water!”
The customer, examining his face in the glass with that sharpened
intentness and interest which is exhibited only at the barber’s,
observed that another pimple had appeared on his chin, and turning his
eyes away in dissatisfaction they fell straight on a thin little hand,
which stretched out from somewhere at the side, and put a tin of hot
water down on the ledge below the looking-glass. When he raised his
eyes still higher, they caught the strange and distorted looking
reflection of the barber, and he noticed the sharp threatening glance
which he was casting down on the head of some one, and the silent
movements of his lips, caused by an inaudible but expressive whisper.
If the master himself was not doing the shaving but one of the
assistants, Prokopy or Mikhailo, then the whisper would become loud,
and take the form of a vague threat:
“Just you wait!”
This meant that the boy was not quick enough with the water, and that
punishment awaited him. “Serve ”m right too,” thought the customer,
bending his head down sideways, and contemplating the great moist hand
by the side of his nose, three fingers of which were spread out, while
the fore-finger and thumb, all sticky and smelly, gently touched cheek
and chin as the blunt razor, with a disagreeable grating noise, took
off the lather, and with it the stiff bristles of his beard.
At this barber’s shop, permeated with the oppressive smell of cheap
scents, full of tiresome flies and dirt, the customers were not very
exacting. They consisted of hall-porters, overseers, and sometimes
minor officials, or workmen, and often coarsely handsome but
suspicious-looking fellows with ruddy cheeks, slender moustaches, and
insolent oleaginous eyes.
Close by was a quarter full of houses of cheap debauchery. They lorded
it over the whole neighbourhood, and gave to it a special character of
something dirty, disorderly and disquieting.
The boy, who was called out to most frequently, was named Petka, and
was the smallest of all who served in the establishment. The other boy
Nikolka was his elder by three years, and would soon develop into an
assistant. Already when a more than ordinarily humble customer looked
in, and the assistants in the absence of the master were too lazy to
work, they would set Nikolka to cut his hair, and laugh when he had to
raise himself on tiptoe to see the back hair of some fat _dvornik._
Sometimes the customer would be offended that his hair was badly cut
and utter a loud complaint, and then the assistants would scold
Nikolka, not seriously, but only to satisfy the cropped lout. But such
cases were not of frequent occurrence, and Nikolka gave himself the
airs of a man; he smoked cigarettes, spat through his teeth, used bad
language, and even boasted to Petka that he drank vodka; but there he
probably lied. In company with the assistants he would run to the
neighbouring street to look on at a coarse fight, and when he came back
laughing with delight, Osip Abramovich would give him a couple of
smacks, one on each cheek.
Petka was only ten years old. He did not smoke, or drink vodka, or
swear, though he knew plenty of bad words, and in all these respects he
envied his companion. When there were no customers, and Prokopy, who
usually had spent a sleepless night somewhere or other, and in the
daytime would drowsily stumble about and throw himself into the dark
corner behind the partition, and Mikhailo was reading the _Police
News_, and amongst the accounts of thefts and robberies was looking out
for the name of some regular customer, Petka and Nikolka would chat
together. The latter was kinder when the two were alone together, and
used to explain to the younger the meaning of the terms used to
describe the various styles of hair-cutting.
Sometimes they sat at the window, by the side of a half-length figure
of a female in wax with pink cheeks, staring glass eyes, and straight
sparse eyelashes, and looked out on the boulevard, where life had been
stirring since the early morning. The trees of the boulevard, powdered
with dust, drooped motionless under the merciless burning rays of the
sun, and afforded an equally grey, unrefreshing shade. On all the
benches were seated men and women in dirty, uncouth attire, without
kerchiefs or hats, just as though they lived there and had no other
home. Whether the faces were indifferent, malignant, or dissolute, on
all alike was impressed the stamp of utter weariness and contempt of
their surroundings. Ofttimes a frowsy head would nod helplessly on a
shoulder, and the body would try to stretch itself out to sleep like a
third-class passenger after an unbroken journey of one thousand versts,
but there was nowhere to lie down. The park-keeper, in a bright blune
uniform with a cane in his hand, walked up and down the pathways,
looking out that no one lay down on the benches, or threw himself upon
the grass, which, though parched by the sun, was still so soft, so
cool. The women, for the most part more neatly dressed, and even with a
hint at fashion, were seemingly all of one type of countenance and of
one age; although here and there might be found some old, and others
quite young, almost children. All of these talked with hoarse, harsh
voices; and scolded, embracing the men as simply as though they were
alone on the boulevard. Sometimes they would take a snack and a drop of
vodka. It might happen that a drunken man would beat an equally drunken
woman. She would fall down, and get up again, and fall down again, but
no one would take her part. Only the faces of the crowd as they
gathered round the couple would light up with some intelligence and
animation, and wear a broader grin. But when the blue-coated keeper
drew near, they would listlessly disperse to their former places. Only
the ill-used woman would keep on weeping, uttering meaningless oaths,
with her rumpled hair covered with sand, and her semi-made bust looking
dirty and yellow in the morning light, cynically and piteously exposed.
They would put her on the bottom of a cab and drive her off with her
head hanging down, and swaying, as if she were dead.
Nikolka knew several of the men and women by name, and told Petka nasty
stories about them, and laughed showing his sharp teeth. And Petka
admired his knowledge and daring, and thought that some day he would be
like him. But meanwhile he wanted to be somewhere else. Wanted badly!
Petka’s days dragged on wonderfully monotonously, as like to one
another as two brothers. Summer and winter alike he saw the same
mirrors, one of which was cracked, and another was contorted and
amusing. On the stained wall hung one and the same picture,
representing two half-dressed women on the sea-shore, the only
difference being that their pink bodies became more spotted with fly
dirt, and that the black patch of soot became larger above the place
where the common kerosene lamp gleamed all the whole winter’s day. And
morning, evening, and the whole livelong day, there hung over Petka the
one and the same abrupt cry, “Boy, water!” and he was always bringing
it—always. There were no holidays. On Sundays, when the windows of the
stores and shops ceased to illuminate the street, those of the
hair-dresser’s till late at night cast a bright sheaf of light upon the
pavement, and the passer-by might observe a little thin figure huddled
upon his seat in the corner, and immersed in something between thought
and a heavy slumber. Petka slept a great deal, but still for some
reason or other he was always wanting to sleep, and it often seemed to
him that all around him was not real, but a very unpleasant dream.
Ofttimes he would spill the water, or fail to hear the sharp call,
“Boy, water!” He grew thinner and thinner, and unsightly scabs came out
on his closely-cropped head. Even the not too fastidious customers
looked with aversion on this thin, freckled boy, whose eyes were always
sleepy, his mouth half-open, and his hands and neck ingrained with
dirt. Round his eyes and under his nose faint lines were forming as
though traced by a sharp needle, and they made him look like an aged
dwarf.
Petka did not know whether he was happy or unhappy, but he did want to
go to some other place; but where, or what, that place was he could not
have told you. When his mother, the cook, Nadejda, paid him a visit, he
would eat listlessly the sweets she brought him. He never, never
complained, but only asked to be taken away from the place. But he soon
forgot his request, and would coolly take leave of his mother, without
asking when she was coming again. And Nadejda thought with sorrow that
she had only one son—and that one an imbecile.
How long he had lived in this fashion, Petka did not know, when
suddenly one day his mother came to dinner, had a talk with Osip
Abramovich, and told Petka that he was to be allowed to go to the
bungalow at Tzaritzyno, where her master and mistress were living. At
first, Petka could not realize the good news, but after a time his face
broke out into faint wrinkles of soft laughter, and he began to hasten
his mother’s departure. But for decency’s sake she had to talk to Osip
Abramovich about his wife’s health, while Petka was gently dragging her
by the hand and shoving her towards the door. He had no idea what a
bungalow was like, but he supposed that it must be the very place which
he had so longed to go to. With simple egotism he quite forgot Nikolka,
who was standing there with his hands in his pockets endeavouring to
regard Nadejda with his usual insolence. But instead of insolence there
shone in his eyes a profound grief. He had no mother, and at that
moment he would not have objected to having just such a stout one as
Nadejda. The fact was that he too had never been at a bungalow.
The railway station with its many voices, with its bustle and the
rumble of incoming trains, and the whistles of the engines, some thick
and irate like the voice of Osip Abramovich, others thin and shrill
like the voice of his sickly wife, with its hurrying passengers who
kept coming and going in a continuous stream, as if there were no end
to them—all this presented itself for the first time to the puzzled
gaze of Petka, and filled him with a feeling of excitement and
impatience. Like his mother, he was afraid of being late, though it
wanted a good half-hour to the time of the departure of the suburban
train. But when they were once seated in the carriage, and the train
had started, he stuck to the window, and only his cropped head kept
turning about on his thin neck, as though on a metal spindle.
Petka had been born and bred in the city, and was now in the country
for the first time in his life, and everything there was to him
strikingly new and strange; that you could see so far; that the world
looked like a lawn; and that the sky of this new world was so
wonderfully bright and far-stretching—just as if you were looking at it
from the roof of a house! Petka looked at it from his own side, and
when he turned to his mother, there was the same sky shining blue
through the opposite window, and on its surface were flocking—like
little angels—small, merry white flecks of clouds. Now Petka would turn
back to his own window, now run over to the other side of the carriage,
with confidence laying his ill-washed little hands on the shoulders and
knees of strangers, who answered him back with a smile. But one
gentleman who was reading a newspaper, and yawning all the time, either
from excessive fatigue or from ennui, looked askance at the boy once or
twice in not too friendly a manner, and Nadejda hastened to apologise:
“It is his first journey by rail—and he is interested.”
“Humph,” growled the gentleman, and buried himself in his newspaper.
Nadejda would very much have liked to tell him, how that Petka had
lived three years with a barber, who had promised to set him upon his
feet; and that this would be a very good thing, since she was a lone
weak woman, with no other means of support in case of sickness or when
she became old. But the expression of his face was so uninviting, that
she kept all this to herself.
To the right of the railway there was a broad stretch of undulating
plain, dark green with the continual moisture, and on its edge there
stood grey little houses, just like toys, and upon a high green hill,
at the foot of which flowed a silvery river, was perched a similarly
toy-like white church. When the train, with a noisy metallic clanking,
which suddenly became intensified, rushed on to a bridge, and seemed to
hang suspended in the air over the mirror-like surface of a river,
Petka gave a little shiver of fright and surprise, and started back
from the window; but immediately turned to it again, for fear of losing
a single detail of the journey. His eyes had long ceased to look
sleepy, and the lines had disappeared from his face. It was as though
some one had passed a hot flat-iron over his face, smoothing out the
wrinkles, and leaving the surface white and shining.
For the first two days of his sojourn at the bungalow the wealth and
force of the new impressions which inundated him from above and from
below confused his timid little soul. In contradistinction to the
savages of a former age, who felt lost on coming into a city from the
wilderness, this modern savage, who had been snatched away from the
stony embrace of the massive city, felt weak and impotent in the face
of nature. Here everything was to him living, sentient, and possessed
of conscious will. He was afraid of the forest, which gently rustled
over his head, and was so dark, so passive, so terrible in its
immensity. But the bright green joyful meadows, which seemed to be
singing with all their bright flowers, he loved, and wished to fondle
them as a sister; and the dark blue sky called him to itself, and
laughed like a mother. Petka would become agitated, shudder, and grow
pale, would smile at something, and slowly, like an old man, walk along
the outskirts of the forest, and on the wooded shore of the pond.
There, weary and out of breath, he would fling himself down on the
thick damp grass, and sink into it, only his little freckled nose
appearing above the green surface. For the first two days he was always
going back to his mother, and nestling up to her: and when the master
of the house asked him whether he liked being at the bungalow, he would
smile in confusion and answer:
“Very much!”
And then he would go off again to the threatening forest, and the still
water, and it was as though he were questioning them.
But after two days Petka had arrived at a complete understanding with
Nature. This was brought about by the co-operation of a schoolboy named
Mitya from old Tzaritzyno. The schoolboy had a swarthy countenance, the
colour of a second-class carriage. His hair stood erect on the crown of
his head, and was quite white, so bleached was it by the sun. He was
fishing in the pond, when Petka caught sight of him and unceremoniously
entered into conversation with him. They came to terms with wonderful
promptitude; he allowed Petka to hold one of the rods, and afterwards
took him some distance off to bathe. Petka was very much afraid of
going into the water, but when once in, he did not wish to come out
again, but pretended to swim, putting his forehead and nose above the
water. Then he got a great gulp of water in his mouth, and beat the
water with his hands and made a great splashing. At this moment he was
very like a puppy, that had for the first time fallen into the water.
When Petka dressed himself he was as blue as a corpse with the cold,
and as he talked his teeth chattered. At the proposal of Mitya, who was
of inexhaustible resource, they next explored the ruins of a mansion.
They clambered upon the roof overgrown with shoots, and wandered
between the broken-down walls of the great building. They did enjoy
themselves there! All about heaps of stones were piled up, on which
they climbed with difficulty, and between which grew young rowan and
birch trees. It was still as death, and it seemed as though some one
suddenly jumped out from a corner, or that some horrible, terrible face
appeared through the aperture left by a broken window. By degrees Petka
began to feel quite at home at the bungalow, and he forgot that there
was any Osip Abramovich or barber’s shop in the world.
“Just look how he is putting on flesh! He’s a regular merchant!”
Nadejda at this time would exclaim with delight.
She was stout enough herself and her face shone with the heat of the
kitchen like a copper samovar. She attributed his improvement to the
fact that she gave him plenty to eat. But in reality Petka ate very
little indeed, not because he did not care for his food, but because he
could scarcely find time for it. If only it had been possible to bolt
his food without mastication!—but one must masticate, and during the
intervals swing one’s feet, since Nadejda ate deuced slowly, polishing
the bones and wiping her fingers on her apron, while she kept up a
perpetual chatter. But he was up to the neck in business: he had to
bathe four times, to cut a fishing-rod in the hazel coppice, to dig for
worms—all this required time. Now Petka ran about bare-foot, and that
was a thousand times pleasanter than wearing boots with thick soles:
the rustling ground now warmed, now cooled his feet so deliciously. He
had even discarded his second-hand school-jacket, in which he looked
like a full-grown master-barber, and thereby became amazingly
rejuvenated. He put it on only in the evening, when he went and stood
on the dam to watch the Master and Mistress boating. Well-dressed and
cheerful they would laughingly take their seats in the rocking boat,
which leisurely ploughed the mirror-like surface of the water on which
the reflection of the trees swayed as though agitated by a breeze.
At the end of the week the Master brought from the city a letter
addressed “to Cook Nadejda.” When he had read it over to her she began
to cry, and smeared her face all over with the soot which was on her
apron. From the fragmentary remarks which accompanied this operation,
it might be deduced that the contents of the letter affected Petka.
This took place in the evening. Petka was playing athletic sports by
himself in the back court, and puffing out his cheeks, because that
made it considerably easier to jump. The schoolboy Mitya had taught him
this stupid but interesting occupation, and now Petka, like a true
“sportsman,” was practising alone. The master came out, and laying his
hand on his shoulder, said:
“Well, my friend, you have to go!”
Petka smiled in confusion and said nothing. “What a strange lad,”
thought the master.
“Yes, have to go.”
Petka smiled. Nadejda coming up with tears in her eyes repeated:
“You have to go, sonny.”
“Where?” said Petka in surprise. He had forgotten the city; and the
other place, to which he had always so wanted to go away—was found.
“To your master, Osip Abramovich.”
Still Petka failed to understand, though the matter was as clear as
daylight. But his mouth felt suddenly dry, and his tongue moved with
difficulty as he asked:
“How then can I go fishing to-morrow? Look, here is the rod.”
“But what can one do? He wants you. Prokopy, he says, is ill, and has
been taken to the hospital. He says he has not enough hands. Don’t cry!
See, he’ll be sure to let you come again. He is kind is Osip
Abramovich.”
But Petka was not thinking of crying, and still did not understand. On
one side there was the fact, the fishing-rod—on the other the phantom,
Osip Abramovich. But gradually Petka’s thoughts began to clear and a
strange metamorphosis took place: Osip Abramovich became the fact, and
the fishing-rod, which had not yet had time to dry, was changed into
the phantom. And then Petka surprised his mother, and distressed the
master and his wife, and would have been surprised himself if he had
been capable of self-analysis. He did not begin to cry, as town
children, thin and half-starved, cry; he simply bawled louder than the
strongest-voiced man; and began to roll on the ground, as the drunken
women rolled on the boulevard. He clenched his skinny fists, and struck
his mother’s hands and the ground, in fact everything he came across,
feeling, indeed, the pain caused by the pebbles and sharp stones, but
striving, as it were, to increase it.
In course of time Petka became calm again, and the master said to his
wife, who was standing before the glass arranging a white rose in her
hair:
“You see he has left off. Children’s grief is not long-lived.”
“All the same I am very sorry for the poor little boy.”
“Yes, indeed! they live under terrible conditions, but there are people
who are still worse off. Are you ready?”
And they went off to Bigman’s Gardens, where dances had been arranged
for the evening, and a military band was already playing.
The next day Petka started for Moscow by the 7 a.m. train. Again he saw
the green fields, grey with the night’s dew, only they did not now run
in the same direction as before, but in the opposite. The second-hand
school jacket enveloped his thin body, and from the opening at the neck
stuck out the corner of a white paper collar. Petka did not turn to the
window, indeed, he hardly looked at it, but sat so still and modest,
with his little hands primly folded upon his knees. His eyes were
sleepy and apathetic, and fine wrinkles, as in the case of an old man,
gathered about his eyes and under his nose. Suddenly the pillars and
the planks of the platform flashed before the window, and the train
stopped.
They pressed through the hurrying crowd, and came out into the noisy
street; and the great, greedy city callously swallowed up its little
victim.
“Put away the fishing tackle for me,” said Petka, when his mother
deposited him at the door of the barber’s shop.
“Trust me for that, sonny! Maybe you will come again.”
And once more in the dirty, stuffy shop was heard the sharp call, “Boy,
water!” and the customer saw a small, dirty hand thrust out to the
ledge below the mirror, and heard the vague, threatening whisper. “Just
you wait a bit!” This meant that the sleepy boy had either spilled the
water, or had bungled the orders. But at nights from the place where
Nikolka and Petka lay side by side, a little low and agitated voice
might be heard telling about the bungalow, and speaking of what is not,
and what no one has ever seen or heard. And when silence supervened,
and only the irregular breathing of the children was audible, another
voice, unusually deep and strong for a child, would exclaim:
“The devils! May they bu’st!”
“Who are devils?”
“Why, the whole blooming lot, of course!”
A string of cars passed by, and drowned the boys’ voices with its noisy
rumbling; and then that distant cry of complaint was heard, which had
for long been borne in from the boulevard, where a drunken man was
beating an equally drunken woman.