Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

"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.

I could not restrain my curiosity, and asked him what he was doing.

"Ah, I thought you were asleep...." he answered in confusion; then he approached me, holding the book in his hand, sat down beside me, and said, hesitatingly: "You see, I want to ask you about something ... Isn't there some book or other about the rules of life? That is to say, instruction as to how a man ought to live? I want to have my deeds explained to me--which are injurious, and which are of no consequence ... You see, I am troubled about my deeds.... A deed which seems to me good at the start, turns out bad in the end. Now, in that matter of Kápa" He drew a long breath, and went on with an effort, and inquiringly: "So, won't you search, and see if there isn't a little book about deeds? And read it to me."

Several minutes of silence.

"Maxím!" ...

"What?"

"How black Kapitólina did paint me!"

"That's all right, now.... Say no more about it...."

"Of course, it's no matter now.... But, tell me ... was she right?"

This was a ticklish question, but, on reflection, I replied to it in the affirmative.

"There, that's just what I think myself.... She was right ... yes...." drawled Konováloff, sadly, and fell silent.

He fidgeted about for a long time on his mat, which was laid flat on the floor, rose to his feet several times, smoked, sat down by the window, and again lay down.

Then I fell asleep, and when I awoke he was no longer in the bakery, and made his appearance only toward nightfall. He turned out to be covered all over with some sort of dust, and in his clouded eyes a fixed expression had congealed. Flinging his cap on a shelf he heaved a sigh, and seated himself by my side.

"Where have you been?"

"I went to take a look at Kápka."

"Well, and what of it?"

"Stop that, brother! Didn't I tell you...."

"Evidently, you can't do anything with those people," I said, in the endeavor to dispel his mood, and began to talk about the mighty power of habit, and about everything else which seemed appropriate to the occasion. Konováloff remained obstinately mute, and stared at the floor.

"No, there's no u-use! It is too much for me! I'm simply a man who spreads infection.... I have not long to live in this world.... Such a woful, poisonous breath emanates from me. And just as soon as I go near a man, he immediately catches the infection from me. And woe is all that I can bring to anyone ...? For, when you come to think of it, to whom have I ever brought any satisfaction all my life long? To no one! And I've had dealings with a great many people, too.... I'm a rotting man."

"That's nonsense...."

"No, it's true!..." and he nodded his head with conviction.

I tried to convince him of the contrary, but from my remarks he drew still greater certainty as to his unfitness for life.

Altogether, he had begun to undergo a swift, sharp change from the moment of the affair with Kápka. He became meditative, lost his interest in books, did not work with his previous ardor, became taciturn and reserved.

During the intervals of freedom from work, he lay down on the floor, and stared fixedly at the vault of the ceiling. His face grew thin, his eyes lost their clear, childlike brilliancy.

"Sásha, what's the matter with you?" I asked him.

"My drunken spree is coming on," he explained simply.--"I shall soon let myself loose ... that is, I shall begin to gulp down vódka.... I'm all on fire inside, already ... like a burn, you know.... The time has come ... if it hadn't been for that same story, I might have been able to hold out a little longer. But that affair is eating me up.... How so? I wanted to do good to a person, and--all of a sudden--it turns out entirely wrong! Yes, brother, a rule for one's deeds is very necessary in life.... And couldn't such a set of rules be invented, so that all men might act like one, and everyone might understand the others? For it is utterly impossible to live at such a distance from one another! Don't the wise people understand, that order must be established on the earth, and men must be brought to a clear knowledge?... E-ekhma!"

Absorbed in these thoughts as to the indispensability of a rule of life, he did not listen to my remarks. I even noticed that he seemed to hold somewhat aloof from me. One day, after listening for the hundredth time to my project for reorganizing life, he appeared to become enraged with me.

"Well, devil take you.... I've heard of that before.... The point doesn't lie in life, but in man. The first thing is ... the man ... do you understand? Well, and there's nothing more to it.... So, according to you, it appears, that until all this has been made over, man, all the same, must remain just as he is now. Also.... No, you make him over first, show him his way.... Let things be bright and not cramped for him on the earth--that's what you must seek after for man. Teach him to find his path.... But that stuff of yours is ... mere fiction."

I retorted, he waxed hot or grew surly, and exclaimed weariedly:

"Eh, do stop!"

One day it chanced that he went away in the evening, and did not return at night to work, nor the following day. In his place, the proprietor made his appearance with a troubled face, and announced:

"Our Leksákha has gone off on a carouse. He's sitting in 'The Little Wall.' We must hunt up a new baker...."

"But perhaps he will recover himself?!"

"Well, of course, just wait ... I know him...."

I went to "The Little Wall"--a dram-shop cleverly constructed in a stone wall. It was distinguished by the peculiarity that it had no windows, and that the light fell into it through a hole in the ceiling. As a matter of fact, it was a square pit, excavated in the ground, and covered overhead with boards. An earthy odor forever reigned within it, along with cheap, domestic tobacco, and wódka grown bitter with age--a symphony of odors which made one's head ache horribly after half an hour's sojourn among them. But the steady patrons of this den were accustomed to it--they were shady people, with no definite occupations--as they became accustomed to a mass of things which are intolerable to a man. And there they stuck, for whole days at a time, waiting for some artisan on a spree, that they might ply him with drink until he was stark naked.

Konováloff was sitting at a large table in the centre of the dram-shop, surrounded by a circle of six gentlemen, in fantastically-tattered costumes, with faces like those of the heroes of Hoffmann's "Tales," who were listening to him with respectful and flattering attention.

They were drinking beer and vódka together, and eating something which resembled dry lumps of clay.

"Drink, my lads, drink, each one as much as he can. I have money and clothing.... They'll last three days in all. I'll drink up everything and ... enough! I don't want to work any more, and I don't want to live here."

"It's the nastiest sort of a town," remarked someone, who looked like Sir John Falstaff.

"Work?" inquired another, with a surprised and interrogative stare at the ceiling.--"And was man born into this world for that?"

Then all of them began to yell at once, demonstrating to Konováloff his right to drink up everything, and even elevating that right to the rank of an express obligation--to drink away his all precisely with them.

"Ah, Maxím," jested Konováloff, on catching sight of me.--"Come on, now, you book-reader and pharisee, take your whack! I've jumped the track for good, my lad. Don't say a word! I mean to drink until I haven't a stitch of clothes to my back.... When nothing is left on my body but the hair, I'll stop. Pitch in, too, won't you?"

He was not drunk, as yet, but his blue eyes flashed with desperate excitement and sorrow, and his luxuriant beard, which fell over his chest in a silky fan, kept moving to and fro, because his lower lip was twitching with a nervous quiver. His shirt-collar was unbuttoned, tiny drops of perspiration gleamed on his forehead, and the hand which he stretched out to me with a glass of liquor shook.

"Drop it, Sásha, let's leave this place together," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder.

"Drop it?...." he burst out laughing.--"If you had come to me ten years ago and said that ... perhaps I would have dropped it. But now it's better for me not to drop it.... What else is there for me to do? What? You see, I feel, I feel every movement of life ... but I can't understand anything, and I don't know my way ... I feel ... and I drink, because there's nothing else I can do.... Have a drink!"

His companions stared at me with open disapproval, and all twelve of their eyes surveyed my figure with anything but a conciliatory air.

The poor fellows were afraid that I would carry off Konováloff,--and the treat, which they had been awaiting, perhaps, for a whole week.

"Brethren! This is my chum ... a learned fellow, devil take him! Maxím, can you read to us here about Sténka?... Akh, comrades, what books there are in the world! About Pilá?... Hey, Maxím!... Comrades, it isn't a book, but blood and tears. But, you know, Pilá ... that's myself? Maxím!... And Sysóika, I ... By God! How it's plain to me!"

He stared at me with widely-opened eyes, in which lay terror, and his lower lip quivered strangely. The company, not very willingly, made room for me at the table. I sat down beside Konováloff, just at the moment when he seized a glass of beer and vódka, half and half.

Evidently, he wished to stun himself as speedily as possible with this mixture. After taking a drink, he picked up from his plate a piece of the stuff which looked like clay, but was really boiled meat, inspected it, and flung it over his shoulder against the wall of the dram-shop.

The company grumbled in an undertone, like a pack of hungry dogs over a bone.

"I'm a lost man.... Why did my mother and father bring me into the world? Nothing is known ... Darkness! Stifling closeness! That's all.... Goodbye, Maxím, if you won't drink with me. I won't go to the bakery. I have some money owing me from the boss--get it, and give it to me, I'll spend it for liquor.... No! Take it yourself, for books.... Will you take it? You don't want to? Then don't.... But won't you take it? You're a pig, if that's the case.... Get away from me! G-go a-way!"

He was getting intoxicated, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. The company was quite ready to fling me out from among them by the scruff of the neck, and I, not caring to wait for that, took myself off.

Three hours later I was again in "The Little Wall." Konováloff's party had been augmented by two men. They were all drunk, he--the least of all. He was drinking with his elbows resting on the table, and staring at the sky through the opening in the ceiling. The drunken men were listening to him, in various attitudes, and several of them were hiccoughing.

*

Konováloff was singing in a baritone voice, which passed into a falsetto on the high notes, as is the case with all artisan singers. Supporting his cheek on his hand, he was feelingly producing mournful roulades, and his face was pale with emotion, his eyes were half closed, his throat was curved forward. Eight drunken, senseless, crimson faces were gazing at him, and only from time to time did the muttering and hiccoughing make themselves heard. Konováloff's voice vibrated and wept, and moaned, and it was a sight pitiful to the verge of tears, to behold this magnificent fellow singing his melancholy lay.

The heavy smell, the sweaty, drunken, ugly faces, two smoking kerosene lamps and the planks which formed the walls of the dram-shop, black with dirt and soot, its earthen floor and the twilight which filled that pit--all these things were gloomy and painfully fantastic. It seemed as though men who had been buried alive were banqueting in a sepulchre, and one of them was singing, for the last time, before his death, and bidding farewell to the sky. Hopeless sadness, calm despair, everlasting anguish resounded in my comrade's song.

"Is Maxím here? Do you want to come with me as my assistant officer of bandits? Go, my friend!----" he said, breaking off his elegy, as he offered me his hand.... "I'm all ready, my lad!... I've collected a gang for myself ... here it is ... there'll be more men later on.... We'll find them! This is n-nothing! We'll call ourselves Pilá and Sysóika.... And we'll feed them every day on buckwheat groats and roast beef ... isn't that good? Will you go? Take your books with you ... you shall read about Sténka and about other people.... Friend! Akh, I'm disgusted, I'm disgusted ... dis-gus-ted!..."

He banged his fist down on the table, with all his might. The glasses and bottle rattled, and the company, recovering its senses, immediately filled the dram-shop with an uproar which was frightful in its indecency.

"Drink, my lads!" shouted Konováloff. "Drink! Ease your hearts ... do your uttermost!"

I retreated from them, stood in the door which opened on the street, listened to Konováloff orating with a twisting tongue, and when he began to sing again, I went off to the bakery, and his uncouth, drunken song moaned and wept after me for a long time in the nocturnal stillness.

Two days later, Konováloff vanished from the town.

I happened to encounter him again.

*

A man must have been born in cultured society, in order to find within himself the patience necessary to live out the whole of his life in the midst of it, and never once desire to escape somewhere, away from the sphere of all those oppressive conventions, legalized by custom, of petty, malicious lies, from the sphere of sickly self-conceit, of sectarianism of ideas, of all sorts of insincerity,--in a word, from all that vanity of vanities which chills the emotions, and perverts the mind. I was born and reared outside that circle of society, and for that reason--a very agreeable one to me--I cannot take in its culture in large doses, without a downright necessity of getting out of its framework cropping up in me, and of refreshing myself, in some measure, after the extreme intricacy and unhealthy refinement of that existence.

In the country it is almost as intolerably tedious and dull as it is among educated people. The best thing one can do is to betake himself to the dives of the towns, where, although everything is filthy, it is still simple and sincere, or to set out for a walk over the fields and roads of his native land, which is extremely curious, affords great refreshment, and requires no outfit except good legs with plenty of endurance.

Five years ago I undertook precisely that sort of a trip, and as I tramped across holy Russia, without any definite plan of march, I chanced to reach Feodósia. At that time they were beginning to build the jetty there, and, in the expectation of earning a little money for my journey, I betook myself to the spot where construction was under way.

Being desirous of taking a look at the work first, as a picture, I climbed a hill and seated myself there, gazing down upon the boundless, mighty sea, and the tiny men who were forging fetters for it.

An extensive picture of man's labor was spread out before me:--the whole rocky shore along the bay was dug up, there were holes and piles of stone and lumber everywhere, wheelbarrows, strips of iron, pile-drivers, and some other constructions of beams, and among all these things men were hastening to and fro in every direction. After having ripped up the mountain with dynamite, they were breaking it into small pieces with pickaxes, clearing a space for a line of railway, they were mixing cement in vast mortar-pits, and making out of it stones almost a fathom in cubic measurement, lowering them into the sea, erecting upon them a rampart against the titanic strength of its turbulent waves. They seemed as tiny as worms against the background of the dark-brown hill, disfigured by their hands, and like worms they swarmed busily about among the heaps of rubbish, and bits of wood in fragment of stone dust, and in the sultry heat, reaching to thirty degrees[14] of the southern day. The chaos around them, and the red-hot sky above them, imparted to them the appearance of being engaged in burrowing into the hill, trying to escape into its bosom from the fervor of the sun and the melancholy picture of destruction which surrounded them.

In the suffocating air hung a mighty moaning murmur and uproar, the blows of masons' hammers on stone, the wheels of the barrows screeched dolefully, iron pile-drivers descended upon the wood of the piles, the ballad of "The Little Oaken Cudgel" wailed out, the axes tapped away as they rough-hewed the beams, and the dark, and gray, bustling little figures of men shouted in all tones.

In one spot, a cluster of them, loudly chanting "heave-ho!", were handling a huge fragment of rock, endeavoring to move it from its resting-place; in another spot, a heavy beam was being raised, and the men were shouting as they strained:

"Ca-a-atch ho-old!"--And the mountain, furrowed with cracks, repeated dully: "Hold-old-old!"

[14] Réaumur. Feodósia is on the shore of the Black Sea, in the Crimea. 30° Réau. = 84° Fahrenheit.--Translator.

Along a broken line of boards, flung down here and there, moved a long file of men, bending low over their barrows loaded with stone, and coming slowly to meet them, with empty barrows, was another file, who were dragging out one minute of rest into two.... By one of the pile-drivers stood a dense, motley-hued throng of men, and one of them was singing in a long-drawn, plaintive voice:

"Ee-ekhma, comrades,'tis awfully hot
Ee-ekh! On us no one has pity!
O-oi there, little oaken cu-ud ge-el,
He-eave-ho-o!"

The throng hummed mightily, as they hauled away on the cables, and the piece of cast-iron, flying up through the pipe of the pile-driver, fell thence, giving out a dull, groaning sound, and the whole pile-driver quivered.

On every spot of the open space between the mountain and the sea tiny gray people hurried to and fro, filling the air with their shouts, with dust, and the sour odor of man. Among them overseers were walking about, clad in white duck coats with metal buttons, which shone in the sun like someone's cold eyes. Over them were the cloudless, mercilessly-hot heaven, volumes of dust and waves of sounds--the symphony of toil, the only music which does not afford delight.

The sea stretched out to the misty horizon, and softly plashed its transparent billows against the strand, so full of sound and movement. All gleaming in the sunlight, it seemed to be smiling, with the good-natured smile of a Gulliver, conscious that, if he so wished, with one movement he could cause all the work of the Lilliputians to disappear.

There it lay, dazzling the eyes with its radiance--great, powerful, kind, and its mighty breath blew upon the beach, refreshing the weary men who were toiling to put a restraint upon the freedom of its waves, which now were so gently and musically caressing the disfigured shore. It seemed to feel sorry for them:--its centuries of existence had taught it to understand, that those who build are not the ones who cherish evil designs against it; it long ago found out that they are only slaves,-that their part is to wrestle with the elements face to face. And in this struggle, the vengeance of the elements awaits them. All they do is to build, they toil on forever, their sweat and blood are the cement of all the constructions on the earth; but they receive nothing for this, though they yield up all their forces to the eternal propensity to construct--a propensity which creates marvels on the earth, but, nevertheless, gives men no blood, and too little bread. They also are elementary forces, and that is why the sea gazes, not angrily but graciously, upon their labors from which they derive no profit. These gray little worms, who have thus excavated the mountain, are just the same thing as its drops, which are the first to fall upon the cold and inaccessible cliffs of the shore, in the eternal effort of the sea to extend its boundaries, and the first to perish as they are dashed in fragments against these crags. In the mass, too, these drops are nearly related to it, since they are exactly like the sea, as mighty as it, as inclined to destruction, so soon as the breath of the storm is wafted over them. In days of yore the sea also was acquainted with the slaves, who erected pyramids in the desert, and the slaves of Xerxes, that ridiculous man, who undertook to chastise the sea with three hundred lashes, because it had destroyed his toy bridges. Slaves have always been exactly alike, they have always been submissive, they have always been ill-fed, and they have always accomplished the great and the marvellous, sometimes enriching those who have set them to work, most frequently cursing them, rarely rising up in revolt against their masters ...

And, smiling with the calm smile of a Titan who is conscious of his strength, the sea fanned with its vivifying breath the earth, that Titan which is still spiritually blind, and enslaved and wofully riddled, instead of aspiring to affinity with heaven. The waves ran softly up the beach, sprinkled with a throng of men, engaged in constructing a stone barrier to their eternal motion, and as they ran they sang their ringing, gracious song about the past, about everything which, in the course of the ages, they have beheld on the shores of earth....

Among the laborers there were certain strange, spare, bronze figures, in scarlet turbans, in fezzes, in short blue jackets, and in trousers which were tight about the lower leg, but with full seats. These, as I afterward learned, were Turks from Anatolia. Their guttural speech mingled with the slow, drawling utterance of the men from Vyátka, with the strong, quick phrases of the Bulgarians, with the soft dialect of the Little Russians.