I.

Vyézhaya (Entrance) Street consists of two rows of aged, one-story hovels, squeezed closely one against the other, with leaning walls and windows all awry; the hole-ridden roofs of these human habitations, thus crippled by time, are mottled with patches of the inner bark of the linden-tree, and overgrown with moss; above them, here and there, project tall poles surmounted by starling-houses, and they are shaded by the dusty verdure of elderberry bushes and crooked willows, the scanty flora of the town suburbs inhabited by poverty.

The window-panes of the tiny houses, of a turbid-green hue through age, stare at each other with the glances of cowardly sharpers. Up-hill, through the middle of the street, crawls a winding cart-track, which tacks back and forth among deep gullies, washed out by the rains. Here and there lie heaps of broken bricks and other rubbish, overgrown with high grass—representing the remnants or the beginnings of the constructions, unsuccessfully undertaken by the inhabitants in their fight with the floods of rain-water, which flow like torrents from the town. Up above, on the crest of the hill, handsome stone houses conceal themselves amid the luxuriant verdure of thick gardens, and the belfries of churches rise proudly into the blue sky, their golden crosses glitter dazzlingly in the sun.

During rains, the town sends its dirt down upon[Pg 196] Vyézhaya Street; in dry weather, it sprinkles it with dust,—and all these deformed little houses look as though they, also, had been flung out of it, swept forth, like rubbish, by some mighty hand.

Flattened down against the earth, they were sprinkled all over the hill, half-decayed, infirm, decorated by sun, dust, and rain with that dirty grayish hue which defies description that wood acquires with age.

At the extremity of this wretched street, flung out of the town to the bottom of the hill, stood a long, two-story deserted house, which had escheated to the town, and had been purchased from the town by merchant Petúnnikoff. It was the last in the line, standing at the very foot of the hill, and beyond it extended a wide plain, intersected, half a verst from the house, by a steep declivity descending to the river.

This large and very aged house possessed the most gloomy aspect of all among its neighbors. It was all askew, in its two rows of windows there was not a single one which had preserved its regular shape, and the splinters of glass in the shattered frames had the turbidly-greenish hue of swamp water.

The walls between the windows were streaked with cracks and dark spots of peeling stucco—as though time had written its biography on the walls of the house in these hieroglyphs. The roof, which sloped toward the street, still further increased its rueful aspect—it seemed as though the house had bent down to the ground, and was submissively awaiting from Fate the final blow which should convert it into dust, into a shapeless heap of half-rotten fragments.

The gate stood open—one half of it, torn from its hinges, lay on the ground, and through the crevices[Pg 197] between its planks had sprouted the grass, which thickly covered the desert courtyard of the house. At the far end of this courtyard stood a low, smoke-begrimed building with an iron roof, of one slant. The house itself was, of course, uninhabitable, but in this building, which had formerly been the blacksmith's shop, there was now installed a "night lodging-house," kept by Aristíd Fómitch Kuválda,[1] retired captain of cavalry.

[1] Kuválda means a mallet; or, figuratively, a clown.—Translator.

The interior of the night lodging-house presented a long, gloomy burrow, four fathoms by ten; it was lighted on one side by four small, square windows, and a broad door. Its unplastered brick walls were black with soot, the ceiling, of barge-bottom wood,[2] was also smoked until it was black; in the middle of the place stood a huge stove, for which the forge served as foundation, and around the stove, and along the walls, ran wide sleeping-shelves with heaps of all sorts of stuff, which served the lodgers as beds. The wall reeked with smoke, the earthen floor reeked with dampness, from the sleeping-shelves proceeded an odor of sweaty and decaying rags.

[2] The barges for transporting wood, and so forth, on Russian rivers, are put together with huge wooden pegs. After being unloaded, at their destination, they are broken up, and the hole-riddled planks are sold at a very low price.—Translator.

The quarters of the lodging-house's proprietor were on the stove; the sleeping-shelves around the stove were the places of honor, and upon them the night-lodgers who enjoyed the favor and friendship of the proprietor disposed themselves.

The cavalry captain always spent the day at the door of the night lodging-house, seated in something after the likeness of an arm-chair, which he had put together, with his[Pg 198] own hands, out of bricks; or in the eating-house of Egór Vavíloff, which was situated slantwise opposite the Petúnnikoff house; there the captain dined and drank vódka.

Before he hired these quarters, Aristíd Kuválda had had an employment office for servants in the town; if we were to penetrate further back in his past, we should discover that he had had a printing-office, and before the printing-office he had—to use his own language—"simply lived. And I lived magnificently, devil take it! I may say, that I lived like a man who knows how!"

He was a broad-shouldered, tall man, fifty years of age, with a pock-marked face which was bloated with intoxication, framed in a broad, dirty-yellow beard. His eyes were gray, huge, audaciously jolly; he spoke in a bass voice, with a rumbling in his throat, and from his lips a German porcelain pipe, with a curved stem, almost always projected. When he was angry, the nostrils of his huge, hooked, bright-red nose became widely inflated, and his lips quivered, revealing two rows of yellow teeth, as large as those of a wolf. Long-armed, knock-kneed, always clad in a dirty and tattered officer's cloak, a greasy cap with a red band but without a visor, and in wretched felt boots, which reached to his knees—he was always in a depressed state of drunken headache in the morning, while in the evening he was jolly drunk. Drink as he would, he could not get dead drunk, and he never lost his merry mood.

In the evenings, as he sat in his brick arm-chair, with his pipe in his teeth, he received lodgers.

"Who are you?"—he inquired of the man who approached him, a tattered, downtrodden individual who had been ejected from the town for drunkenness, or who, for some other, no less solid reason, had gone down hill.

The man replied.

[Pg 199]

"Present the legal document, in confirmation of your lies."

The document was presented, if there was one.[3] The captain thrust it into his breast, rarely interesting himself in its contents, and said:

"Everything is in order. Two kopéks a night, ten kopéks a week, by the month—thirty kopéks. Go and occupy a place, but look out that it doesn't belong to somebody else, or you'll get thrashed. The people who live in my house are stern...."

[3] "Document" or (literally) "paper," here, as often, means the passport.—Translator.

Novices asked him:

"And you don't deal in bread, tea or anything eatable?"

"I deal only in a wall and a roof, and for that I pay my rascally landlord, Judas[4] Petúnnikoff, merchant of the second Guild, five rubles a month,"—explained Kuválda, in a business-like tone; "the people who come to me are not used to luxury ... and if you are accustomed to gobble every day,—there's the eating-house opposite. But it would be better if you, you wreck, would break yourself of that bad habit. You're not a nobleman, you know,—so why should you eat? Eat yourself!"

[4] As the reader will perceive, later on, Petúnnikoff's name was not Iuda (Judas). This is Kuválda's sarcasm.—Translator.

For these and similar speeches, uttered in a tone of mock severity, and always with laughing eyes, and for his courteous behavior to his lodgers, the captain enjoyed wide popularity among the poor people of the town. It often happened that a former patron of the captain presented himself to him in the courtyard, no longer tattered and oppressed, but in a more or less decent guise, and with a brisk countenance.

[Pg 200]

"Good-day, your Well-Born! How's your health?"

"I'm well. I'm alive. Speak further."

"Don't you recognise me?"

"No."

"But you remember, I lived about a month with you in the winter ... when that police round-up took place, and they gathered in three men!"

"We-ell now, brother, the police are constantly visiting my hospitable roof!"

"Akh, oh Lord! It was the time when you made that insulting gesture at the police-captain!"

"Wait, spit on all memories, and say simply, what do you want?"

"Won't you accept a little treat from me? When I lived with you that time, you treated me, so...."

"Gratitude ought to be encouraged, my friend, for it is rarely met with among men. You must be a fine young fellow, and although I don't remember you in the least, I'll accompany you to the dram-shop with pleasure, and drink to your success in life with delight."

"And you're just the same as ever ... always joking?"

"But what else could I do, living among you unfortunates?"

They went. Sometimes the captain's former patron returned to the lodging-house completely unscrewed and shaken lose by the treat; on the following day, they both treated each other again, and one fine morning, the former patron awoke with the consciousness that he had once more drunk up his last penny.

"Your Well-Born! A misfortune has befallen me! I've got into your squad again. What am I to do now?"

"A situation on which you are not to be congratulated,[Pg 201] but, since you are in it, it's not proper to be stingy,"—argued the captain.—"You must bear yourself with indifference toward everything, not spoiling your life with philosophy, and not putting questions. It is always stupid to philosophize, and to philosophize when one has a drunken headache—is inexpressibly stupid. A drunken headache demands vódka, and not gnawings of conscience and gnashing of teeth.?. spare your teeth, or there won't be anything to beat you on. Here now, are twenty kopéks for you,—go and bring a measure of vódka, five kopék's worth of hot tripe or lights, a pound of bread, and two cucumbers. When we get rid of our headache, we'll consider the situation of affairs."

The situation of affairs was defined with entire clearness, a couple of days later, when the captain had not a kopék left out of the three-ruble or five-ruble bank-note which he had had in his pocket on the day when his grateful patron had made his appearance.

"We've arrived! Enough!"—said the cavalry captain. "Now that you and I, you fool, have ruined ourselves with drink, let us try to enter again upon the path of sobriety and virtue. How just is the saying: If you don't sin, you don't repent, and if you don't repent, you won't be saved. We have performed the first, but repentance is useless, so let's save ourselves at once. Take yourself off to the river and work. If you can't trust yourself, tell the contractor to retain your money, or give it to me. When we have amassed a capital, I'll buy you some trousers and the other things that are necessary to enable you to appear again as a respectable and quiet toiler, persecuted by fate. In new trousers you can go a long way! March!"

The patron took himself off to act as porter at the riverside, laughing at the captain's long and wise speeches. He[Pg 202] only dimly understood their poignant wit, but he beheld before him the merry eyes, felt the courageous spirit, and knew, that in the eloquent cavalry-captain he had a hand which could uphold him in case of need.

And, as a matter of fact, after a month or two of hard labor the patron, thanks to stem supervision of his conduct on the part of the captain, was in possession of the material possibility of rising again a step higher than the place to which he had descended through the benevolent sympathy of that same captain.

"We-ell, my friend," said Kuválda, as he took a critical survey of his restored patron,—"you have trousers and a pea-jacket. These articles are of vast importance—trust my experience. As long as I had decent trousers, I lived in the town, in the character of a respectable man, but, devil take it, as soon as my trousers dropped off, I fell in people's estimation, and was obliged to drop down here myself, from the town. People, my very fine blockhead, judge of everything by its form, but the essence of things is inaccessible to them, because of men's inborn stupidity. Carve that on your nose, and when you have paid me even one half of your debt, go in peace, and seek, and thou shalt find!"

"How much do I owe you, Aristíd Fómitch?" inquired the patron in confusion.

"One ruble and seventy kopéks ... Now give me a ruble or seventy kopéks, and I'll wait for the rest until you have stolen or earned more than you have now."

[Pg 203]

"Thank you most sincerely for your kindness!" said the patron, much affected. "What a good sort of fellow you are, really! Ekh, life did wrong in treating you hardly.... I think you must have been a regular eagle in your own place?!"

The captain could not exist without speeches of declamatory eloquence.

"What signifies 'in my own place?' No one knows his own place in life, and everyone of us gets his head into someone else's harness. The place for merchant Judas Petúnnikoff is among the hard-labor exiles, but he walks about in broad day through the streets, and even wants to build some sort of a factory. The place for our teacher is by the side of a good wife, and in the midst of half a dozen children, but he is lying around at Vavíloff's, in the dram-shop. And here are you—you're going off to seek a place as a footman or a corridor-waiter,[5] but I see that your place is among the soldiers, for you are stupid, you have endurance, and you understand discipline. You see what sort of affair it is? Life shuffles us like cards, and only accidentally—and that not for long—do we fall into our own places!"

[5] This "corridor-waiter" in Russian hotels, prepares the samovár, or makes coffee, in a small, up-stairs buffet, near the bedrooms of his allotted section, and serres, with bread, butter and cream, or whatever is ordered. It is also his duty to bring up all other meals which are served in private rooms.—Translator.

Sometimes such conversations at parting served as prefaces to a continuation of the acquaintance, which again began with a good drinking-bout, and again reached the point where the patron had drunk up his all, and was amazed; the captain gave him his revenge, and ... both drank up their last penny.

Such repetitions of what had gone before, did not, in the least, interfere with the kindly relations between the parties. The teacher mentioned by the captain was precisely one of those patrons who had reformed only to ruin himself again immediately. By his intellect, he was a man[Pg 204] who stood closer to the captain than all the rest, and, possibly, it was precisely to this cause that he was indebted for the fact that, after having descended to the night-lodging-house, he could no longer raise himself.

With him alone could Aristíd Kuválda philosophize with the certainty of being understood. He prized this, and when the reformed teacher prepared to leave the lodging-house, after having earned a little money, and with the intention of hiring a nook for himself in the town,—Aristíd Kuválda escorted him with so much sorrow, spouted so many melancholy tirades, that they both infallibly set out on a spree, and drank up all they owned. In all probability, Kuválda deliberately arranged the matter so that the teacher, despite all his desires, could not get away from his lodging-house. Was it possible for Aristíd Kuválda, a member of the gentry, with education, the remnants of which even now glittered in his speech, from time to time, with a habit of thinking developed by the vicissitudes of fate,—was it possible for him not to desire and to try to behold always by his side a man of the same sort as himself? We know how to have compassion on ourselves.

This teacher had once taught some branch in the Teachers' Institute of some town on the Vólga, but, in consequence of several scrapes, had been discharged from the institute. Then he had been a counting-house clerk at a tanning factory, and had been obliged to quit that also. He had been a librarian in some private library, he had tried a few more professions, and, finally, after passing an examination as attorney-at-law, he took to drinking like a fish, and hit upon the cavalry captain. He was tall, round-shouldered, with a long, sharp nose, and a perfectly bald head. In his bony, yellow face, with its small, pointed[Pg 205] beard, shone large, restlessly-melancholy eyes, deeply sunk in their orbits, and the corners of his mouth drooped dolefully downward. He earned his means of livelihood, or rather of drink, by acting as reporter to the local newspapers. It did happen that he earned as much as fifteen rubles a week. Then he gave the money to the captain, and said:

"Enough! I'm going to return to the lap of culture. One week more of work,—and I shall dress myself decently, and addio, mio caro!"

"Very laudable!... As I, from my soul, sympathize with your resolution, Philip, I shall not give you a single glass during that entire week,"—the captain gave him friendly warning.

"I shall be grateful!—You won't give even a single drop?"

The captain detected in his words something approaching a timid entreaty for relaxation, and said, still more sternly:

"Even if you roar for it—I won't give it!"

"Well, that settles it"—sighed the teacher, and set off about his reporting. A day later, or, at most, two days, defeated, weary and thirsty he was staring at the captain from some nook, with mournful, beseeching eyes, and waiting in trepidation, for the heart of his friend to soften. The captain assumed a surly aspect, and uttered speeches impregnated with deadly irony, on the theme of the disgrace of having a weak character, about the beastly delight of drunkenness, and on all other themes appropriate to the occasion. To do him justice—he was sincerely carried away with his r?le as mentor and moralist; but his steady customers at the night-lodging-house, being of a sceptical cast of mind, said one to another, winking in the[Pg 206] direction of the captain, as they watched him and listened to his croaking speeches.

"The sly dog! He puts him off cleverly! 'I told you so,' says he, 'and you wouldn't listen to me—now you may thank yourself!'"

But the teacher caught his friend somewhere in a dark corner, and tightly clutching his dirty cloak, trembling all over, licking his dry lips, he gazed in his face with a deeply-tragic glance inexpressible in words.

"You can't?"—inquired the captain morosely.

The teacher nodded, in silent assent, and then dropped his head dejectedly on his breast, trembling all over his long, gaunt body.

"Hold out one day more ... perhaps you'll reform?" suggested Kuválda.

The teacher sighed, and shook his head negatively, hopelessly. The captain saw that his friend's gaunt body was all quivering with thirst for the poison, and pulled the money out of his pocket.

"In the majority of cases, it is useless to contend with destiny,"—he remarked as he did so, as though desirous of justifying himself to someone.

But if the teacher did hold out the entire week, a touching scene of the farewell of friends was enacted between him and the captain, and its final act usually took place in Vavíloff's eating-house.

The teacher did not drink up the whole of his money: he spent at least half of it on the children in Vyézhaya Street. Poor people are always rich in children, and in this street, in its dust and holes, swarms of dirty, tattered and half-starved little brats moved restlessly and noisily about, all day long, from morning till night.

Children are the living flowers of earth, but in Vyézhaya[Pg 207] Street they had the appearance of flowers which had withered prematurely; it must have been because they grew on soil which was poor in healthy juices.

So the teacher often collected them about him, and having purchased rolls, eggs, apples and nuts, he walked with them into the fields, to the river. There they disposed themselves on the ground, and, first of all, hungrily devoured everything the teacher offered them, and then began to play, filling the air for a whole verst[6] round about with their careless noise and laughter. The long, gaunt figure of the drunkard somehow shrunk together in the midst of these little folks, who treated him with entire familiarity, as one of their own age. They even addressed him simply as Philip, without adding to his name "uncle" or "little uncle." As they flitted swiftly around him, they jostled him, sprang upon his back, slapped him on his bald head, seized him by the nose. All this must have delighted him, for he did not protest against such liberties. On the whole, he talked very little with them, and if he did speak, he did it as cautiously and even timidly as though his words might spot them, or, in general, do them harm. He passed several hours at a time, in the r?le of their plaything and comrade, surveying their animated little faces with his mournfully-sad eyes, and then, thoughtfully and slowly, he went away from them to Vavíloff's tavern, and there, quickly and silently, he drank himself into a state of unconsciousness.

[6] A verst is two-thirds of a mile.—Translator.

*

Almost every day, on his return from his reportorial work, the teacher brought with him a newspaper, and a general assembly of all the men with pasts formed around him. On catching sight of him, they moved toward him[Pg 208] from the various nooks of the courtyard, in an intoxicated condition, or suffering from drunken headaches, diversely dishevelled, but all equally wretched and dirty.

Alexéi Maxímovitch Símtzoff came: he was as fat as a cask, had been a forester in the service of the Crown Estates, but was now a peddler of matches, ink, blacking, and refuse lemons. He was an old man of fifty, clad in a sail-cloth great-coat, and a broad-brimmed hat, which sheltered his fat, red face, with its thick, white beard, from amid which his tiny, crimson nose and his thick lips of the same color, and his tearful, cynical little eyes peered forth upon God's world. They called him "The Peg-top"; and this nickname accurately described his round figure, and his speech, which resembled the humming of a top.

From somewhere in a corner, "The End" crawled forth,—a gloomy, taciturn and desperate drunkard, formerly prison-superintendent Luká Antónovitch Martyánoff, a man who subsisted by gambling at "Little Belt," at "Three Little Leaves," at "Little Bank," and by other arts, equally witty, and equally disliked by the police. He lowered his heavy body, which had been more than once soundly beaten, heavily upon the grass, alongside the teacher, flashed his black eyes, and stretching out his hand for the bottle, inquired in a hoarse bass voice:

"May I?"

Mechanician Pável Sólntzeff made his appearance, a consumptive man, thirty years of age. His left side had been smashed in a fight, and his yellow, sharp face, like that of a fox, was constantly contorted by a venomous smile. His thin lips disclosed two rows of yellow teeth, which had been ruined by illness, and the rags on his narrow, bony shoulders fluttered as though from a clothes-rack. His nickname was "The Gnawed Bone." His business[Pg 209] consisted in peddling linden-bast brushes, of his own manufacture, and switches made of a certain sort of grass, which were very convenient for cleaning clothes.

There came, also, a tall, bony man, of unknown extraction, with a frightened expression in his large, round eyes, the left of which squinted,—a taciturn, timid fellow, who had thrice been incarcerated for theft, on the sentence of the judge of the peace, and the district judge. His surname was Kisélnikoff, but he was called Tarás-and-a-Half, because he was exactly one half taller than his inseparable friend, Deacon Tarás, who had been unfrocked for drunkenness and depraved conduct. The deacon was a short, thick man, with the chest of an epic hero, and a round, shaggy head. He danced wonderfully well, and was even more wonderful in his use of ribald language. He, in company with Tarás-and-a-Half, had selected for his specialty wood-sawing on the bank of the river, and in his leisure hours the deacon was wont to narrate to his friend, and to anyone who cared to listen, tales "of his own composition," as he announced. As they listened to these tales, the heroes of which were always saints, kings, priests, and generals, even the inhabitants of the night lodging-house spat with squeamishness, and opened their eyes to their full extent in amazement at the fantasies of the deacon, who narrated, with his eyes screwed up, and with a dispassionate countenance, astonishingly shameless things, and foully-fantastic adventures. The imagination of this man was inexhaustible,—he could invent and talk all day long, from morning till night, and never repeated himself, In his person a great poet may have perished, possibly, or, at any rate, a remarkable story-teller, who knew how to animate everything, and even invested the stones with a soul by his vile but picturesque and powerful words.

[Pg 210]

There was also an awkward sort of youth, whom Kuválda called The Meteor. One day he had made his appearance to spend the night, and from that day forth he had remained among these men, to their astonishment. At first they did not notice him,—by day, like the rest of them, he went off to seek his livelihood, but in the evening he clung about this amicable company, and at last the captain noticed him.

"Little boy! What are you doing in this land?"

The little boy answered boldly and briefly:

"I'm ... a tramp...."

The captain eyed him over critically. He was a longhaired young fellow, with a rather foolish face, with high cheek-bones, adorned with a snub nose. He wore a blue blouse without a belt, and on his head was stuck the remains of a straw hat. His feet were bare.

"You're—a fool!" Aristíd Kuválda pronounced his decision.—"What axe you knocking about here for? You're of no use to us.... Do you drink vódka? No ... Well, and do you know how to steal? No, again. Go and learn, and then come back when you have become a man...."

The young fellow laughed.

"No, I think I'll go on living with you."

"What for?"

"Oh, because...."

"Akh, you ... Meteor!" said the captain.

"Come, now, I'll knock his teeth out for him, in a minute," suggested Martyánoff.

"And what for?" inquired the captain.

"Nothing...."

"And I'll take a stone and smash you over the head,"—announced the young fellow deferentially.

[Pg 211]

Martyánoff would have given him a drubbing, had not Kuválda intervened.

"Let him alone.... He's a sort of relation to you, and to all of us, I think. You want to knock his teeth out without sufficient foundation; he, like yourself, wants to live with us, without sufficient foundation. Well, and devil take him.... We all live without sufficient foundation for it.... We live, but what for? Because! And he, also, because ... let him alone."

"But you'd better go away from us, young man," advised the teacher, surveying the young fellow with his mournful eyes.

The latter made no reply, and remained. Later on, they got used to him, and ceased to notice him. But he lived among them, and observed everything.

All the individuals enumerated above constituted the captain's General Staff, and he, with good-humored irony, called them "the have-beens." In addition to them, five or six men constantly inhabited the night, lodging-house—ordinary tramps. They were men from the country, they could not boast of any such pasts as "the have-beens," and although they, no less than the rest, had experienced the vicissitudes of fate, yet they were more unadulterated folks than those, not so horribly shattered. It is possible that a respectable man of the cultured class is higher than the same sort of man of the peasant class, but the depraved man from a town is always immeasurably more foul and disgusting than a depraved man from the country. This rule was made sharply apparent by comparing the former educated men with the former peasants who inhabited Kuválda's refuge.

An old rag-gatherer, Tyápa by name, was a conspicuous[Pg 212] representative of the former peasants. Long, and thin to deformity, he held his head in such a manner that his chin rested on his chest, so that his shadow reminded one, by its shape, of an oven-fork. From the front, his face was not visible, in profile, nothing was to be seen except an aquiline nose, a pendulous lower lip, and shaggy, gray eyebrows. He was the captain's first lodger, in point of time, and they said of him that he had a lot of money concealed somewhere. Precisely on account of this money they had "scraped" his throat with a knife two years before, and from that day forth he had hung his head in that strange manner. He denied the existence of the money, he said that "they had scratched him simply for nothing, out of impudence," and that since then he had found it very convenient to gather rags and bones—his head was constantly bent earthward. As he walked along, with a swaying, uncertain gait, without a stick in his hand or a sack on his back—the insignia of his profession—he looked like a man who was meditative to the point of losing consciousness, but Kuválda was wont to say, at such moments, pointing his finger at him:

"See there, it's the conscience of merchant Judas Petúnnikoff, which has run away from him, and is seeking a refuge for itself! See how frayed, and vile, and filthy that runaway conscience is!"

Tyápa spoke in a harsh voice, which hardly permitted one to understand his remarks, and it must have been for that reason that he rarely talked, and was very fond of solitude. But every time that some fresh example of a man, who had been forced out of the country by poverty, made his appearance in the night lodging-house, Tyápa, at the sight of him, fell into melancholy ire and uneasiness. He persecuted the unfortunate man with caustic jeers,[Pg 213] which emerged from his throat in a vicious rattle; he set some malicious tramp on him, and, in conclusion, he threatened to thrash him with his own hands, and rob him by night, and he almost always managed to make the frightened and disconcerted peasant disappear from the lodging-house and never appear there again.

Then Tyápa calmed down, and tucked himself away in a corner, where he mended his rags, or read a Bible, which was as old, dirty, and tattered as himself. He crawled out of his nook again when the teacher brought the newspaper and read it aloud. Generally, Tyápa listened to all that was read in silence, and sighed deeply, asking no questions about anything. But when the teacher folded up the paper, after he had finished reading it, Tyápa extended his bony hand, and said:

"Give it to me...."

"What do you want with it?"

"Give it ... perhaps there's something about us in in...."

"About whom?"

"About the village...."

They laughed at him, and flung the paper at him. He took it, and read that in such and such a village the grain had been beaten down by hail, and in another thirty houses had been burned, and in a third a woman had poisoned her family—everything which it is customary to write about the country, and which depicts it as merely unfortunate, silly, and evil. Tyápa read all this in a dull tone, and bellowed, expressing by this sound, possibly compassion, possibly satisfaction.

He spent the greater part of Sunday, on which day he never went out to gather rags, in reading his Bible. As he read, he bellowed and sighed. He held the book[Pg 214] supported on his chest, and was angry when anyone touched it, or interfered with his reading.

"Hey, there, you necromancer,"—Kuválda said to him,—"what do you understand? drop it!"

"And what do you understand?"

"Just so, you sorcerer! Neither do I understand anything; but then, I don't read books...."

"But I do read them...."

"Well, and you're stupid," ...—declared the captain.—"When insects breed in the head, it's uncomfortable, but if thoughts crawl in it also,—how will you live, you old toad?"

"Well, my time isn't very long,"—said Tyápa calmly.

One day the teacher tried to find out where he had learned to read and write. Tyápa answered him curtly:

"In jail."

"Have you been there?"

"Yes...."

"What for?"

"Nothing.... I made a mistake.... And I brought this Bible from there. A lady gave it to me.... The jail is a nice place, brother...."

"You don't say so? How's that?"

"It teaches you.... You see, I learned to read and write there.... I got a book.... Everything ... is gratis...."

When the teacher made his appearance in the lodging-house, Tyápa had already been living in it a long time. He stared long at the teacher,—in order to look in a man's face Tyápa bent his whole body to one side,—listened long to his remarks, and one day he sat down beside him.

"Now, you're one of those ... you've been learned.... Have you read the Bible?"

[Pg 215]

"Yes...."

"Exactly so.... Do you remember it?"

"Well ... yes...."

The old man bent his body on one side, and gazed at the teacher with his gray, sullen, distrustful eyes.

"And do you remember whether there were Amalekites there?"

"Well?"

"Where are they now?"

"They have disappeared, Tyápa ... died out...."

The old man said nothing for a while, then asked another question:

"And the Philistines?"

"It's the same with them."

"Have they all died off?"

"Yes ... all...."

"Exactly.... And we shall all die off?"

"The time will come when we, also, shall die off,"—the teacher predicted with indifference.

"And from which of the tribes of Israel do we come?"

The teacher looked at him, reflected, and then began to tell him about the Cimmerians, the Scythians, the Huns, the Slavs.... The old man curved himself still more on one side, and stared at him with terrified eyes.

"You're inventing all that!"—he said hoarsely, when the teacher had finished.

"Why am I inventing?"—asked the other, in surprise.

"What did you tell me the names of those people were? They're not in the Bible."

He rose and went away, deeply offended, and muttering angrily.

"You've outlived your mind, Tyápa," the teacher called after him, with conviction.

[Pg 216]

Then the old man turned again toward him, and stretching out his arm, he menaced him with his hooked and dirty finger:

"Adam came from the Lord, and the Hebrews descended from Adam, which signifies that all men are descended from the Hebrews.... And we, also...."

"Well?"

"The Tatárs came from Ishmael ... and he came from a Hebrew...."

"Yes, but what do you want?"

"Nothing! Why did you lie?"

And he went away, leaving his interlocutor dumfounded. But a couple of days later he again sat down beside him.

"You've had education ... well, and you ought to know—who are we?"

"Slavonians, Tyápa,"—replied the teacher, and began attentively to await Tyápa's words, being desirous of understanding him.

"Speak according to the Bible—there are no such folks there. Who are we—Babylonians? Or from Edom?"

The teacher launched out upon a criticism of the Bible. The old man listened to him long and attentively, and interrupted:

"Hold on ... stop that! You mean to say, that among the people known to God, there aren't any Russians? Are we people who aren't known to God? Is that it? Those who are inscribed in the Bible—those the Lord knew.... He annihilated them with fire and sword, he destroyed their towns and villages, but he also sent the prophets to them, for their instruction ... that is to say, he had pity on them. He dispersed the Hebrews and the Tatárs, but he preserved them.... But how about us? Why haven't we any prophets?

[Pg 217]

"I—I don't know!"—said the teacher slowly, trying to understand the old man. But the latter laid his hand on the teacher's shoulder, began to push him gently to and fro, and said hoarsely, as though he were endeavoring to swallow something:

"Tell me, now!... You talk a great deal, as though you knew everything. It disgusts me to listen to you ... you muddle my soul.... You'd better have held your tongue!... Who are we? Exactly! Why haven't we any prophets? Aha!—And where were we when Christ walked the earth? You see! Ekh, you stupid! And you keep on lying ... could a whole nation die out? The Russian people can't disappear—you're lying ... ifs written down in the Bible, only it isn't known under what word.... You know the nation, what ifs like? Ifs huge.... How many villages are there on the earth? The whole nation lives there ... a genuine, great nation.... And you say—it will die out.... A nation can't die out, a man may ... but a nation is necessary to God, he is the creator of the earth. The Amalekites didn't die—they're the Germans or the French ... but you ... ekh, you liar!... Come, now, tell me why God has passed us over? Haven't we any treasure or prophets from the Lord? Who teaches us?...."

Tyápa's speech was strangely forceful; ridicule, and reproach, and profound faith resounded in it. He talked for a long time, and the teacher, who was, as usual, the worse for liquor, and in a peaceable mood, finally felt as uncomfortable in listening to him as though he were being sawed in twain with a wooden saw. He listened to the old man, watched his distorted countenance, felt this strange, crushing power of words, and, all of a sudden, he[Pg 218] felt sorry to the verge of pain, for himself, and sad over something. He, also, felt a desire to say something powerful, something confident, to the old man, something which would interest Tyápa in his favor, would make him talk not in that reproachfully-surly tone, but in a different,—a soft, paternally-affectionate one. And the teacher felt something gurgling in his breast, rising in his throat ... but he could find in himself no powerful words.

"What sort of a man are you?... your soul is torn to rags ... and you have said various words.... As though you knew.... You'd better have held your tongue...."

"Ekh, Tyápa,"—exclaimed the teacher sadly,—"what you say is true.... And it's true ... about the nation!... It's huge ... but I am a stranger to it ... and it's strange to me.... That's where the tragedy of my life lies.... But—let me go! I shall suffer.... And there are no prophets ... none!... I really do talk a great deal ... and that's of no use to anybody.... But I will hold my tongue ... only, don't talk to me like that.... Ekh, old man! you don't know ... you don't know ... you can't understand...."

The teacher began to weep at last. He wept so easily and freely, with such an abundance of tears, that he felt terribly pleased at the tears.

"You ought to go into a village ... you might ask for the place of teacher or scribe there ... and you'd get enough to eat, and you'd get aired. Why do you tarry?"—croaked Tyápa surlily.

But the teacher continued to weep, enjoying his tears.

From that time forth they became friends, and when the Men with Pasts saw them together they said:

[Pg 219]

"The teacher's running after Tyápa ... he's steering his course to the money."

"Kuválda put him up to that.... 'Find out,' says he, 'where the old fellow's capital is....'"

It is possible that, when they talked thus, they thought otherwise. There was one absurd characteristic about these men: they were fond of displaying themselves, one to another, as worse than they were in reality.

A man who has nothing good in him sometimes is not averse to strutting in his bad qualities.

*

When all these men had assembled around the teacher with his newspaper, the reading began.

"Well, sir," said the captain, "what does that nasty little newspaper discuss to-day? Is there a feuilleton?"

"No," answered the teacher.

"Your publisher is getting grasping.... And is there a leading article?"

"Yes, there is one to-day ... Gulyáeff's, apparently."

"Aha! Let's have it; that rascal writes sensibly; he has an eye as sharp as a nail."

"Assessment of real estate," reads the teacher.

"The appraisal of real estate,"—reads the teacher,—"which was made more than fifteen years ago, and continues to serve at the present time as the basis for the collection of an assessment, for the benefit of the town...."

"That's ingenious,"—comments Captain Kuválda;—"'continues to serve'! That's ridiculous. It's profitable for the merchant who runs the town to have it continue to serve; well, and so it does continue to serve...."

"The article is written on that theme,"—says the teacher.

[Pg 220]

"Yes? Strange! That's the theme for a feuilleton ... it must be written about in a peppery way."

A small dispute blazes up. The audience listens attentively to him, for only one bottle of vódka has been drunk thus far. After the leading article, the city items and the court record are read. If a merchant appears in these criminal sections either as an active or a suffering personality—Aristíd Kuválda sincerely exults. If the merchant has been plundered—very fine, only, it's a pity that he was robbed of so little. If his horses have smashed him up,—it's delightful news, only it's a great shame that he is still alive. If a merchant has lost his suit in court,—magnificent, but it's sad that the court costs were not imposed upon him in double measure.

"That would have been illegal,"—remarks the teacher.

"Illegal? But is the merchant himself legal?"—inquires Kuválda bitterly.—"What's a merchant? Let us examine that coarse and awkward phenomenon: first of all, every merchant is a peasant. He makes his appearance from the village, and, after the lapse of a certain time, he becomes a merchant. In order to become a merchant, he must have money. Where can the peasant get money? It is well known that money is not the reward of the labors of the upright. Hence, the peasant has played the scoundrel, in one way or another. Hence, a merchant is a scoundrelly-peasant!"

"That's clever!"—the audience expresses its approval of the orator's deduction.

But Tyápa roars, as he rubs his chest. He roars in exactly the same way when he drinks his first glass of vódka to cure his drunken headache. The captain is radiant. The letters from correspondents are read. These contain, for the captain, "an overflowing sea," to use his own[Pg 221] words. Everywhere he sees how evil a thing the merchant is making of life, and how cleverly he crushes and spoils it. His speeches thunder out, and annihilate the merchant. They listen to him with satisfaction in their eyes, because he swears viciously.

"If only I wrote for the newspapers!"—he exclaims.—"Oh, I'd show up the merchant in his true light ... I'll demonstrate that he's only an animal, temporarily discharging the functions of a man. I understand him! He? He's rough, he's stupid, he has no taste in life, he has no idea of the fatherland, and knows nothing more elevated than a five-kopék coin."

The Gnawed Bone, who knew the captain's weak side, and was fond of exasperating people, put in venomously:

"Yes, ever since the time when noblemen began unanimously to die of starvation—real men are disappearing from life...."

"You're right, you son of a spider and a toad; yes, ever since the nobles fell, there are no people! There are only merchants ... and I ha-a-ate them!"

"That's easily understood, because you, brother, also have been trodden into dust by them...."

"I? I was ruined through my love of life ... you fool! I loved life.—. but the merchant plunders it. I can't endure him, for precisely that reason ... and not because I'm a nobleman. I'm not a nobleman, if you want to know it, but simply a man who has seen better days. I don't care a fig now for anything or anybody ... and all life is to me a mistress who has abandoned me ... for which I despise her, and am profoundly indifferent to her."

"You lie!"—says The Gnawed Bone.

"I lie?"—yells Aristíd Kuválda, red with wrath.

[Pg 222]

"Why shout?"—rings out Martyánoff's cold, gloomy bass.—"Why dispute? What do we care for either merchant or nobleman?"

"Inasmuch as we are neither one thing nor the other," interpolates the deacon.

"Stop it, Gnawed Bone,"—says the teacher pacifically.—"Why salt a herring?"

He did not like quarrels, and, in general, did not like noise. When passions flared up around him, his lips were contorted in a painful grimace, and he calmly and persuasively endeavored to reconcile everybody with everybody else, and if he did not succeed in this, he left the company. Knowing this, the captain, if he was not particularly drunk, would restrain himself, as he was not desirous of losing, in the person of the teacher, the best listener to his speeches.

"I repeat,"—he continues, more quietly,—"I behold life in the hands of enemies, enemies not only of the noblemen, but enemies of every well-born man, greedy enemies, incapable of adorning life in any way...."

"Nevertheless, brother,"—says the teacher,—"the merchants created Genoa, Venice, Holland,—it was merchants, the merchants of England who won India for their country, the Counts Stróganoff...."[7]

[7] Yermák Timoféevitch, the conqueror of Siberia, was in the service of the Counts Stróganoff.—Translator.

"What have I to do with those merchants? I have in view Judas Petúnnikoff, and along with him...."

"And what have you to do with them?" asks the teacher softly.

"Am not I alive? Aha! I am—hence I must feel indignant at the sight of the way in which the savage people who fill it are spoiling it."

"And they laugh at the noble indignation of the cavalry[Pg 223] captain, and of the man on the retired list," teased The Gnawed Bone.

"Good! It's stupid, I agree.... As a man who has seen better days, I am bound to obliterate in myself all the feelings and thoughts which were formerly mine. That's true, I admit.... But wherewith shall I and all of you—wherewith shall we arm ourselves, if we discard these feelings?"

"Now you're beginning to talk sensibly," the teacher encourages him.

"We require something else, different views of life, different feelings ... we require something new ... for we ourselves are a novelty in life...."

"We undoubtedly do require that,"—says the teacher.

"Why?"—inquires The End.—"Isn't it all the same what we say or think? We haven't long to live ... I'm forty years old, you're fifty ... not one among us is under thirty. And even at twenty, you wouldn't live long such a life."

"And how are we a novelty?"—grins The Gnawed Bone.—"The naked brigade has always existed."

"And it founded Rome,"—says the teacher.

"Yes, of course,"—exults the captain.—"Romulus and Remus,—weren't they members of the Golden Squad of robbers? And we, also, when our hour comes, will found...."

"A breach of the public tranquillity and peace," interpolates The Gnawed Bone. He laughs loudly, pleased with himself. His laugh is evil, and soul-rending. Símtzoff, the deacon, and Tarás-and-a-Half join in. The ingenuous eyes of the dirty little lad Meteor burn with clear flame, and his cheeks flush. The End says, exactly as though he were pounding on their heads with a hammer:

[Pg 224]

"All that's nonsense ... dreams ... rubbish!"

It was strange to see these people, driven out of life, tattered, impregnated, with vódka and wrath, irony and dirt, thus engaged in discussion.

To the captain such conversations were decidedly a feast for the heart. He talked more than anybody else, and this afforded him the opportunity of thinking himself better than all the rest. But, no matter how low a man has fallen,—he will never deny himself the delight of feeling himself stronger, more sensible, although even better fed than his neighbor. Aristíd Kuválda abused this delight, but did not get surfeited with it, to the dissatisfaction of The Gnawed Bone, The Peg-top, and other "Have-beens," who took very little interest in such questions.

But, on the other hand, politics was a universal favorite. A conversation on the theme of the imperative necessity that India should be conquered, or about the repression of England, might go on interminably. With no less passion did they discuss the means for radically exterminating the Hebrews from the face of the earth, but in this question The Gnawed Bone always got the upper hand, and had concocted wonderfully harsh projects, and the captain, who always wished to be the leading personage, avoided this theme. They talked readily, much, and evilly of women, but the teacher always came to their rescue, and got angry if they smeared it on too thickly. They yielded to him, for they all regarded him as an extraordinary man, and they borrowed from him, on Saturdays, the money which he had earned during the week.

Altogether, he enjoyed many privileges: for example, they did not beat him on those rare occasions when the discussion wound up in a universal thrashing match. He[Pg 225] was permitted to bring women to the night lodging-house; no one else enjoyed that right, for the captain warned everyone:

"Don't you bring any women to my house.... Women, merchants, and philosophy are the three causes of my had luck. I'll give any man a sound drubbing whom I see making his appearance with a woman ... and I'll thrash the woman too.... For indulging in philosophy, I'll tear off the offender's head...."

He could tear off a head: in spite of his age, he possessed astonishing strength. Moreover, every time that he fought, he was aided by Martyánoff. Gloomy and taciturn as a grave-stone, when a general fight was in progress the latter always placed himself back to back with Kuválda, and then they formed an all-destroying and indestructible machine.

One day, drunken Símtzoff, without rhyme or reason, wound his talons in the teacher's hair and pulled out a lock of it. Kuválda, with one blow of his fist, laid him out senseless for half an hour, and when he came to himself he made him eat the teacher's hair. The man ate it, fearing that he would be beaten to death.

In addition to reading the newspaper, discussions, and fighting, card-playing formed one of their diversions. They played without Martyánoff, because he could not play honestly, which he announced himself, after he had been caught several times cheating.

"I can't help smuggling a card.... It's my habit...."

"That does happen,"—deacon Tarás confirmed his statement.—"I got into the habit of beating my wife after the Liturgy on Sundays; so, you know, when she died, such sadness overpowered me on Sundays as is even in[Pg 226]credible. I lived through one Sunday, and I saw that things were bad! Another—I bore it. On the third—I hit my cook one blow.... She took offence.... 'I'll hand you over to the justice of the peace,' says she. Imagine my position! On the fourth Sunday I thrashed her as though she were my wife! Then I paid her ten rubles, and went on beating her after the plan I had established until I got married...."[8]

[8] The Parish (or White) Clergy, in the Holy Orthodox Church of the East, beginning with the rank of Sub-Deacon, must be married—and must be married before they are ordained. They cannot marry again. This rule ceases with an Arch-Priest, which is the highest rank attainable by the White Clergy. Bishops must be celibates.—Translator.

"Deacon,—you lie! How could you marry a second time?"—The Gnawed Bone interrupted him.

"Hey? Why I did it so ... she looked after my household affairs...."

"Did you have any children?"—the teacher asked him.

"Five.... One was drowned.... The eldest, ... he was an amusing little boy! Two died of diphtheria.... One daughter married some student or other, and went with him to Siberia, and the other wanted to educate herself, and died in Peter[9] ... of consumption, they say.... Ye-es ... there were five of them ... of course! We ecclesiastics are fruitful...."

[9] The colloquial abbreviation for St. Petersburg.—Translator.

He began to explain precisely why this was so, arousing homeric laughter by his narration. When they had laughed until they were tired, Alexéi Maxímovitch Símtzoff remembered that he, also, had a daughter.

"Her name was Lídka.... She was such a fat girl...."

[Pg 227]

And it must have been that he could recall nothing further, for he stared at them all, smiled apologetically ... and stopped talking.

These people talked little with one another about their pasts, referred to them very rarely, and always in general terms, and in a more or less sneering tone. Possibly, such an attitude toward the past was wise, for, to the majority of people, the memory of the past relaxes energy in the present, and undermines hope for the future.

*

But on rainy, overcast, cold days of autumn, these people with pasts assembled in Vavíloff's tavern. There they were known, somewhat feared, as thieves and bullies, rather despised as desperate drunkards, but, at the same time, they were respected and listened to, being regarded as very clever people. Vavíloff's tavern was the Club of Vyézhaya Street, and the men with pasts were the intelligent portion of the Club.

On Saturday evenings, on Sundays from morning until night, the tavern was full, and the people with a past were welcome guests there. They brought with them, into the midst of the inhabitants of the street, ground down with poverty and woe, their spirit, which contained some element that lightened the lives of these people, exhausted and distracted in their pursuit of a morsel of bread, drunkards of the same stamp as the denizens of Kuválda's refuge, and outcasts from the town equally with them. Skill in talking about everything and ridiculing everything, fearlessness of opinion, harshness of speech, the absence of fear in the presence of that which the entire street feared, the challenging audacity of these men—could not fail to please the street. Moreover, nearly all of them knew the laws, were able to give any bit of advice, write a petition,[Pg 228] help in cheating with impunity. For all this they were paid with vódka, and flattering amazement at their talents.

In their sympathies, the street was divided into two nearly equal parties: one asserted that the "captain was a lot more of a man than the teacher, a real warrior! His bravery and brains were huge!" The other party was convinced that the teacher, in every respect, "tipped the scales" over Kuválda. Kuválda's admirers were those petty burghers who were known to the street as thoroughgoing drunkards, thieves, and hair-brained fellows, to whom the path from the beggar's wallet to the prison did not seem a dangerous road. The teacher was admired by the more steady-going people, who cherished hopes of something, who expected something, who were eternally busy about something, and were rarely full-fed. The character of the relations of Kuválda and the teacher toward the street is accurately defined by the following example. One day, the subject under discussion in the tavern was an ordinance of the city council, by which the inhabitants of Vyézhaya Street were bound: to fill up the ruts and holes in their street, but not to employ manure and the corpses of domestic animals for that purpose, but to apply to that end only broken bricks and rubbish from the place where some buildings were in process of erection.

"Where am I to get those same broken bricks, if, during the whole course of my life I never have wanted to build anything but a starling-house, and haven't yet got ready even for that?"—plaintively remarked Mokéi Anísimoff, a man who peddled rusks, which his wife baked for him.

The captain felt himself called upon to express his opinion upon the matter in hand, and banged his fist down upon the table, thereby attracting attention to himself.

"Where are you to get broken bricks and rubbish? Go,[Pg 229] my lads, the whole street-full of you, into town, and pull down the city hall. It's so old that it's not fit for anything. Thus you will render double service in beautifying the town—you will make Vyézhaya Street decent, and you will force them to build a new city hall. Take the Mayor's horses to cart the stuff, and seize his three daughters—they're girls thoroughly suited to harness. Or tear down the house of Judas Petúnnikoff, and pave the street with wood. By the way, Mokéi, I know what your wife used to-day to bake your rolls:—the shutters from the third window, and two steps from the porch of Judas' house."

When the audience had laughed their fill and had exercised their wits on the captain's proposition, staid market-gardener Pavliúgin inquired:

"But what are we to do, anyway, Your Well-Born? ... Hey? What do you think?..."

"I? Don't move hand or foot! If the street gets washed away—well, let it!"

"Several houses are about to tumble down...."

"Don't hinder them, let them tumble down! If they do—squeeze a contribution out of the town; if it won't give it,—go ahead and sue it! Whence does the water flow? From the town? Well, then the town is responsible for the destruction of the houses...."

"They say the water comes from the rains...."

"But the houses in the town don't tumble down on account of that? Hey? It extorts taxes from you, and gives you no voice in discussing your rights! It ruins your lives and your property, and then makes you do the repairs! Thrash it from the front and the rear!"

And one half of the street, convinced by the radical Kuválda, decided to wait until their wretched hovels should be washed away by rain-water from the town.

[Pg 230]

The more sedate persons found in the teacher a man who drew up a capital and convincing statement to the city council on their behalf.

In this statement the refusal of the street to comply with the city council's ordinance was so solidly founded that the council granted it. The street was permitted to use the rubbish which was left over from repairs to the barracks, and five horses from the fire-wagon were assigned to them to cart it.[8] More than this—it was recognized as indispensable that, in due course, a drain-pipe should be laid through the street. This, and many other things, created great popularity in the street for the teacher. He wrote petitions, printed remarks in the newspapers. Thus, for example, one day Vavíloff's patrons noticed that the herrings and other victuals in Vavíloff's tavern were entirely unsuited to their purpose. And so, two days later, as Vavíloff stood at his lunch-counter, newspaper in hand, he publicly repented.

"It's just—that's the only thing I can say! It's a fact that I did buy rusty herrings, herrings that weren't quite good. And the cabbage—had rather forgotten itself ... that's so! Everybody knows that every man wants to chase as many five-kopék pieces into his pocket as possible. Well, and what of that? It has turned out exactly the other way; I made the attempt, and a clever man has held me up to public scorn for my greed.... Quits!"

This repentance produced a very good impression on the public, and furnished Vavíloff with the opportunity of[Pg 231] feeding the public with the herrings and the cabbage, and all this the public devoured unheeding to the sauce of their own impressions. A very significant fact, for it not only augmented the prestige of the teacher, but it made the residents acquainted with the power of the printed word. It happened that the teacher was reading a lecture on practical morals in the tavern. "I saw you,"—said he, addressing the painter Yáshka Tiúrin,—"I saw you, Yákoff, beating your wife...."

Yáshka had already "touched himself up" with two glasses of vódka, and was in an audaciously free-and-easy mood. The public looked at him, in the expectation that he would immediately surprise them with some wild trick, and silence reigned in the tavern.

"You saw me, did you? And were you pleased?"—inquired Yáshka.

The audience laughed discreetly.

"No, I wasn't,"—replied the teacher. His tone was so impressively serious that the audience kept quiet.

"It struck me that I was doing my best,"—Yáshka braved it out, foreseeing that the teacher would "floor" him.—"My wife was satisfied ... she can't get up to-day...."

The teacher thoughtfully traced some figures on the table with his finger, and as he inspected them he said:

"You see, Yákoff, the reason I'm not pleased is this.... Let's make a thorough examination into what you are doing, and what you may expect from it. Your wife is with child: you beat her, yesterday, on her body and on her sides—which means, that you beat not only her, but the baby also. You might have killed him, and your wife would have died in childbed, or from this, or have fallen into very bad health. It's unpleasant and troublesome to[Pg 232] worry over a sick wife, and it will cost you dear, for illness requires medicines, and medicines require money. But if you haven't yet killed the child, you certainly have crippled it, and perhaps it will be born deformed; lopsided, or hunchbacked. That means, that it will not be fit to work, but it is important for you that he should be a worker. Even if he is born merely ailing,—and that's bad—he will tie his mother down, and require doctoring. Do you see what you have prepared for yourself? People who live by the toil of their hands ought to be born healthy, and ought to bring forth healthy children.... Am I speaking the truth?"

"Yes,"—the audience hacked him up.

"Well, I don't think ... that will happen,"—said Yáshka, somewhat abashed at the prospect as depicted by the teacher.—"She's healthy ... you can't get through her to the child, can you now? For she, the devil, is an awful witch!"—he exclaimed bitterly. "As soon as I do anything ... she starts in to nag at me, as rust gnaws iron!"

"I understand, Yákoff, that you can't help beating your wife,"—the teacher's calm, thoughtful voice made itself heard again;—"you have many causes for that.... It's not your wife's character that is to blame for your beating her so incautiously ... but your whole sad and gloomy life...."

"There, now, that's so,"—ejaculated Yákoff,—"we really do live in darkness like that in the bosom of a chimneysweep."

"You're enraged at life in general, but your wife suffers ... your wife, the person who is nearest to you—and suffers without being to blame toward you, simply because you are stronger than she is; she is always at your[Pg 233] elbow, she has no place to go to get away from you. You see how ... foolish ... it is!"

"So it is ... devil take her! And what am I to do? Ain't I a man?"

"Exactly so, you are a man!... Well, this is what I want to say to you: beat her, if you must, if you can't get along without it, but beat her cautiously: remember, that you may injure her health, or the health of the child. In general, it is never right to beat women who are with child ... on the body, the breast, or the sides ... beat her on the neck, or take a rope, and ... strike on the soft places...."

The orator finished his speech, and his deeply-sunken, dark eyes gazed at his audience, and seemed to be apologizing to them or guiltily asking them about something.

And the audience rustled with animation. This morality of a man who had seen better days, the morality of the dram-shop and of misery, was comprehensible to it.

"Well, brother Yáshka, do you understand?"

"That's what the truth is like!"

Yákoff understood: to beat his wife incautiously was—injurious to himself.

He said nothing, replying to his comrades' jeers with an abashed smile.

"And then again—what is a wife?"—philosophized rusk-peddler Mokéi Anísimoff:—"A wife's a friend, if you get rightly at the root of the matter. She's in the nature of a chain, that has been riveted on you for life ... and both you and she are, after a fashion, hard-labor convicts. So try to walk evenly, in step with her ... and if you can't, you will feel the chain...."

"Hold on,"—said Yákoff,—"you beat your wife, too, don't you?"

[Pg 234]

"And did I say that I didn't? I do.... One can't get along otherwise.... Whom have I to thump my fists against—the wall?—when I can't endure things any longer?"

"Well, there then, it's the same way with me...." said Yákoff.

"Well, what a cramped and doleful life is ours, my brethren! We haven't space anywhere for a regular good swing of our arms!"

"And you must even beat your wife with care!"—moaned someone humorously. And thus they went on talking until late at night, or until they fell into a fight, which arose on the basis of intoxication, or of the moods which these discussions inspired.

The rain dashed against the windows of the tavern, and the cold wind howled wildly. Inside the tavern the air was close, impregnated with smoke, but warm; outside all was damp, cold, and dark. The wind beat upon the windows, as though it were impudently summoning all these men forth from the tavern, and threatening to disperse them over the earth, like dust. Sometimes, amid its roar, a repressed, hopeless groan became audible, and then a cold, cruel laugh rang out. This music prompted to melancholy thoughts about the close approach of winter, the accursed short days without sunshine, the long nights, and the indispensable necessity of having warm clothing and plenty to eat. One sleeps so badly on an empty stomach during the endless winter nights. Winter was coming, coming.... How were they to live?

These sorrowful meditations evoked in the inhabitants of Vyézhaya Street an augmented thirst, and in the speeches of the men with pasts the quantity of sighs increased and the number of wrinkles on their foreheads,[Pg 235] their voices became duller, their relations to one another more blunt. And all of a sudden, savage wrath blazed up among them, the exasperation of outcasts, tortured by their harsh fate, awoke. Or they were conscious of the approach of that implacable enemy, which converted their whole life into one cruel piece of stupidity. But this enemy was intangible, for it was invisible.

And so they thrashed one another; they thrashed mercilessly, they thrashed savagely, and again, having made peace, they began to drink, drinking up everything that Vavíloff, who was not very exacting, would accept as a pledge.

Thus, in dull wrath, in sadness which clutched at their hearts, in ignorance as to the outcome of their wretched existence, they passed the autumnal days, in anticipation of the still more inclement days of winter.

At such times, Kuválda came to their aid with philosophy.

"Don't get down in the mouth, my boys! There's an end to everything—that's the merit of life.—The winter will pass, and summer will come again ... a splendid season, when, they say, the sparrows have beer."—But his harangues had no effect—a starving man cannot be fed to satiety with a swallow of water.

Deacon Tarás also tried to divert the public, by singing songs and narrating his stories. He was more successful. Sometimes his efforts led to the result that desperate, audacious mirth bubbled up in the tavern; they sang, danced, roared with laughter, and, for the space of several hours, resembled madmen. Only....

And then again they fell back into dull, indifferent despair, and sat around the tavern tables, in the soot of the lamps and tobacco-smoke, morose, tattered, languidly chatting[Pg 236] together, listening to the triumphant howl of the gale, and meditating as to how they might get a drink of vódka, and drink until they lost their senses.

And all of them were profoundly opposed to each, and each concealed within himself unreasonable wrath against all.
II.

Everything is comparative in this world, and there is for man no situation so utterly bad that nothing could be worse.

On a bright day, toward the end of September, Captain Aristíd Kuválda was sitting, as was his wont, in his arm-chair at the door of the night lodging-house, and as he gazed at the stone[1] building erected by merchant Petúnnikoff, next door to Vavíloff's tavern, he meditated.

The building, which was still surrounded by scaffolding, was intended for a candle-factory, and had long been an eye-sore to the captain, with the empty and dark hollows of its long row of windows, and that spider's web of wood, which surrounded it, from foundation to roof. Red, as though it were smeared with blood, it resembled some cruel machine, which was not yet in working-order, but which had already opened a row of deep, yawning maws, and was ready to engulf, masticate, and devour. Vavíloff's gray wooden tavern, with its crooked roof, overgrown with moss, leaned against one of the brick walls of the factory, and looked like some huge parasite, which was driving its suckers into it.

[1] "A stone building" does not mean literally stone in Russia, as it does elsewhere. "Stone," in this connection, means brick, rubble, or any other substance, with an external dressing of mastic, washed with white or any gay hue. Briefly, not of wood.—Translator.

[Pg 237]

The captain reflected, that they would soon begin to build on the site of the old house also. They would tear down the lodging-house, too. He would be compelled to seek other quarters, and no others, so convenient and so cheap, could be found. It was a pity, it was rather sad, to move away from a place where he had been so long. But move he must, merely because a certain merchant had taken it into his head to manufacture candles and soap. And the captain felt, that if any opportunity should present itself to him, of ruining the life of that enemy, even temporarily—oh! with what delight would he ruin it!

On the previous evening, merchant Iván Andréevitch Petúnnikoff had been in the courtyard of the night lodging-house with the architect and his son. They had measured the courtyard, and had stuck little sticks everywhere in the ground, which, after Petúnnikoff had departed, the captain ordered The Meteor to pull out of the ground and throw away.

Before the captain's eyes stood that merchant—small, gaunt, in a long garment which simultaneously resembled both an overcoat and an undercoat, in a velvet cap, and tall, brilliantly-polished boots. His bony face, with high cheek-bones, with its gray, wedge-shaped beard, with a lofty brow furrowed with wrinkles, from beneath which sparkled small, narrow, gray eyes, which always appeared to be on the watch for something.... A pointed, cartilaginous nose, a small mouth, with thin lips.... Altogether, the merchant's aspect was piously-rapacious, and respectably-evil.

"A damned mixture of fox and hog!"—swore the captain to himself, and recalled to mind Petúnnikoff's first phrase with regard to himself. The merchant had come with a member of the town court to purchase the house,[Pg 238] and, catching sight of the captain, he had asked of his guide, in alert Kostromá dialect:

"Isn't he a candle-end himself ... that lodger of yours?"

And from that day forth—now eighteen months gone by—they had vied with one another in their cleverness at insulting man.

And on the preceding evening, a little "drill in vituperation," as the captain designated his conversation with the merchant, had taken place between them. After he had seen the architect off, the merchant had stepped up to the captain.

"You're sitting?"—he asked, tugging with his hand at the visor of his cap so that it was not possible to understand whether he was adjusting it or intended to express a salutation.

"You're trotting about?"—said the captain, imitating his tone, and made a movement with his lower jaw, which caused his beard to waggle, and which a person who was not exacting might take for a bow, or for a desire on the part of the captain to shift his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"I have a great deal of money—so I trot about. Money demands that it shall be put out in life, so I'm giving it circulation...." the merchant mocked the captain a little, cunningly narrowing his little eyes.

"The ruble doesn't serve you, that is to say, but you serve the ruble,"—commented Kuválda, contending with a desire to give the merchant a kick in the belly.

"Isn't it all the same thing? With it, with money, everything is agreeable.... But if you haven't any...."

And the merchant eyed the captain over, with[Pg 239] shamelessly-counterfeit compassion. The captain's upper lip twitched, disclosing his large, wolfish teeth.

"A man who has brains and conscience can get along without it ... It generally makes its appearance precisely at the time when a man's conscience begins to dry up.... The less conscience, the more money....

"That's true....? But, on the other hand, there are people who have neither money, nor conscience...."

"Were you just the same when you were young?"—inquired Kuválda innocently. It was now the turn of Petúnnikoff's nose to twitch. Iván Andréevitch sighed, screwed up his little eyes, and said:

"In my youth, o-okh! I was forced to raise great weights!"

"I think...."

"I worked, okh, how I worked!"

"And you worked up a good many people!"

"Such as you? Noblemen? Never mind ... they learned plenty of prayers to Christ from me...."

"You didn't murder, you merely stole?"—said the captain sharply. Petúnnikoff turned green, and found it expedient to change the subject.

"You're a bad host, you sit, while your guest stands."

"Let him sit down, too," Kuválda gave permission.

"But there's nothing to sit on, you see...."

"Sit on the earth ... the earth accepts all sorts of rubbish...."

"I see that, from you.... But I shall leave you, you scold," said Petúnnikoff, in a calm, equable voice, but his eyes poured forth cold poison on the captain.

And he took his departure, leaving Kuválda with the pleasing consciousness that the merchant was afraid of him. If he had not been afraid of him, he would long[Pg 240] ago have driven him out of the night lodging-house. He would not have refrained from expelling him for those five rubles a month! And the captain found it pleasant to stare at Petúnnikoff's back, as he slowly left the courtyard. Then the captain watched the merchant walk around his factory, walk over the scaffoldings, upstairs and down. And he longed greatly to have the merchant fall and break his bones. How many clever combinations he had made of the fall, and the injuries, as he gazed at Petúnnikoff climbing over the scaffoldings of his factory, like a spider over his web! On the preceding evening, it had even seemed to him that one plank trembled under the merchant's feet, and the captain sprang from his seat in excitement.... But nothing happened.

And to-day, as always, before the eyes of Aristíd Kuválda rose aloft that red building, so well-built, and solid, which had laid as firm a hold upon the earth as though it were already sucking the juices out of it. And it seemed to be laughing coldly and gloomily at the captain, with the yawning holes of its walls. The sun poured its autumnal rays upon it as lavishly as upon the wretched hovels of Vyézhaya Street.

"Is it really going to happen!"—exclaimed the captain mentally, as he measured the wall of the factory with his eye.—"Akh, you rascal, devil take you! If ..." and all startled and excited by his thought, Aristíd Kuválda sprang up, and went hastily into Vavíloff's tavern, smiling and muttering something to himself.

Vavíloff met him at the lunch-counter, with the friendly exclamation:

"We wish health to Your Well-Born!"

Of medium height, with a bald head surrounded by a wreath of curly gray hair, with smoothly-shaven cheeks,[Pg 241] and a mustache which bristled straight up, clad in a greasy leather jacket, by his every movement he permitted one to discern in him the former non-commissioned officer.

"Egór! Have you the deed of sale and the plan of the house?" inquired Kuválda hastily.

"I have."

Vavíloff suspiciously narrowed his knavish eyes, and rivetted them intently on the face of the captain, in which he perceived something particular.

"Show them to me!"—cried the captain, banging the counter with his fist, and dropping upon a stool alongside it.

"Why?"—asked Vavíloff, who had made up his mind, on beholding Kuválda's excitement, that he would be on his guard.

"Bring them here quick, you blockhead!"

Vavíloff wrinkled up his brow, and raised his eyes scrutinizingly to the ceiling.

"Where have I put them, those same papers?"

He found on the ceiling no information on that point; then the non-commissioned officer fixed his eyes on his stomach, and with an aspect of anxious meditation, began to drum on the bar with his fingers.

"Stop making faces!" shouted the captain at him, for he did not like the man, considering the former soldier to be more adapted for a thief than for a tavern-keeper. "Well, I've just called it to mind,'Ristíd Fómitch. It appears that they were left in the district court. When I entered into possession....

"drop that, Egórka![2] In view of your own profit, show me immediately the plan, the deed of purchase, and[Pg 242] everything there is! Perhaps you'll make several hundred rubles out of this—do you understand?"

[2] Diminutive of Egór (George).—Translator.

Vavíloff understood nothing, but the captain spoke so impressively, with such a serious mien, that the underofficer's eyes began to blaze with burning curiosity, and, saying that he would look and see whether he had not the documents packed away in the house, he went out of the............