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The Man Who Was Afraid

by Maksim Gorky · English · Gutenberg #2709 · 700,716 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Man Who Was Afraid

Author: Maksim Gorky

Translator: Herman Bernstein


        
Release date: July 1, 2001 [eBook #2709]
                Most recently updated: November 7, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2709

Credits: Produced by Martin Adamson, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID ***




Produced by Martin Adamson





FOMA GORDYEFF

(The Man Who Was Afraid)

By Maxim Gorky


Translated by Herman Bernstein




INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery
abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the
vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly
imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller
displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to
the world,--nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus this commoner of Nizhni Novgorod
spurs on his troops of freedom-loving heroes to conquer, as it were,
the placid, self-satisfied literatures of to-day, and bring new life to
pale, bloodless frames.

Like Byron’s impassioned utterances, “borne on the tones of a wild and
quite artless melody,” is Gorky’s mad, unbridled, powerful voice, as he
sings of the “madness of the brave,” of the barefooted dreamers, who are
proud of their idleness, who possess nothing and fear nothing, who are
gay in their misery, though miserable in their joy.

Gorky’s voice is not the calm, cultivated, well-balanced voice
of Chekhov, the Russian De Maupassant, nor even the apostolic,
well-meaning, but comparatively faint voice of Tolstoy, the preacher: it
is the roaring of a lion, the crash of thunder. In its elementary power
is the heart rending cry of a sincere but suffering soul that saw the
brutality of life in all its horrors, and now flings its experiences
into the face of the world with unequalled sympathy and the courage of a
giant.

For Gorky, above all, has courage; he dares to say that he finds the
vagabond, the outcast of society, more sublime and significant than
society itself.

His Bosyak, the symbolic incarnation of the Over-man, is as naive and
as bold as a child--or as a genius. In the vehement passions of the
magnanimous, compassionate hero in tatters, in the aristocracy of his
soul, and in his constant thirst for Freedom, Gorky sees the rebellious
and irreconcilable spirit of man, of future man,--in these he sees
something beautiful, something powerful, something monumental, and is
carried away by their strange psychology. For the barefooted dreamer’s
life is Gorky’s life, his ideals are Gorky’s ideals, his pleasures and
pains, Gorky’s pleasures and pains.

And Gorky, though broken in health now, buffeted by the storms of fate,
bruised and wounded in the battle-field of life, still like Byron and
like Lermontov,

     “--seeks the storm
     As though the storm contained repose.”

And in a leonine voice he cries defiantly:

     “Let the storm rage with greater force and fury!”

HERMAN BERNSTEIN.

September 20, 1901.




FOMA GORDYEEF

     Dedicated to

     ANTON P. CHEKHOV

     By

     Maxim Gorky




CHAPTER I

ABOUT sixty years ago, when fortunes of millions had been made on the
Volga with fairy-tale rapidity, Ignat Gordyeeff, a young fellow, was
working as water-pumper on one of the barges of the wealthy merchant
Zayev.

Built like a giant, handsome and not at all stupid, he was one of those
people whom luck always follows everywhere--not because they are gifted
and industrious, but rather because, having an enormous stock of energy
at their command, they cannot stop to think over the choice of means
when on their way toward their aims, and, excepting their own will,
they know no law. Sometimes they speak of their conscience with fear,
sometimes they really torture themselves struggling with it, but
conscience is an unconquerable power to the faint-hearted only; the
strong master it quickly and make it a slave to their desires, for
they unconsciously feel that, given room and freedom, conscience would
fracture life. They sacrifice days to it; and if it should happen
that conscience conquered their souls, they are never wrecked, even in
defeat--they are just as healthy and strong under its sway as when they
lived without conscience.

At the age of forty Ignat Gordyeeff was himself the owner of three
steamers and ten barges. On the Volga he was respected as a rich and
clever man, but was nicknamed “Frantic,” because his life did not flow
along a straight channel, like that of other people of his kind, but
now and again, boiling up turbulently, ran out of its rut, away from
gain--the prime aim of his existence. It looked as though there were
three Gordyeeffs in him, or as though there were three souls in Ignat’s
body. One of them, the mightiest, was only greedy, and when Ignat lived
according to its commands, he was merely a man seized with untamable
passion for work. This passion burned in him by day and by night, he
was completely absorbed by it, and, grabbing everywhere hundreds and
thousands of roubles, it seemed as if he could never have enough of
the jingle and sound of money. He worked about up and down the Volga,
building and fastening nets in which he caught gold: he bought up grain
in the villages, floated it to Rybinsk on his barges; he plundered,
cheated, sometimes not noticing it, sometimes noticing, and, triumphant,
be openly laughed at by his victims; and in the senselessness of his
thirst for money, he rose to the heights of poetry. But, giving up so
much strength to this hunt after the rouble, he was not greedy in
the narrow sense, and sometimes he even betrayed an inconceivable but
sincere indifference to his property. Once, when the ice was drifting
down the Volga, he stood on the shore, and, seeing that the ice was
breaking his new barge, having crushed it against the bluff shore, he
ejaculated:

“That’s it. Again. Crush it! Now, once more! Try!”

“Well, Ignat,” asked his friend Mayakin, coming up to him, “the ice is
crushing about ten thousand out of your purse, eh?”

“That’s nothing! I’ll make another hundred. But look how the Volga is
working! Eh? Fine? She can split the whole world, like curd, with a
knife. Look, look! There you have my ‘Boyarinya!’ She floated but once.
Well, we’ll have mass said for the dead.”

The barge was crushed into splinters. Ignat and the godfather, sitting
in the tavern on the shore, drank vodka and looked out of the window,
watching the fragments of the “Boyarinya” drifting down the river
together with the ice.

“Are you sorry for the vessel, Ignat?” asked Mayakin.

“Why should I be sorry for it? The Volga gave it to me, and the Volga
has taken it back. It did not tear off my hand.”

“Nevertheless.”

“What--nevertheless? It is good at least that I saw how it was all done.
It’s a lesson for the future. But when my ‘Volgar’ was burned--I was
really sorry--I didn’t see it. How beautiful it must have looked when
such a woodpile was blazing on the water in the dark night! Eh? It was
an enormous steamer.”

“Weren’t you sorry for that either?”

“For the steamer? It is true, I did feel sorry for the steamer. But
then it is mere foolishness to feel sorry! What’s the use? I might have
cried; tears cannot extinguish fire. Let the steamers burn. And even
though everything be burned down, I’d spit upon it! If the soul is but
burning to work, everything will be erected anew. Isn’t it so?”

“Yes,” said Mayakin, smiling. “These are strong words you say. And
whoever speaks that way, even though he loses all, will nevertheless be
rich.”

Regarding losses of thousands of roubles so philosophically, Ignat knew
the value of every kopeika; he gave to the poor very seldom, and only to
those that were altogether unable to work. When a more or less healthy
man asked him for alms, Ignat would say, sternly:

“Get away! You can work yet. Go to my dvornik and help him to remove the
dung. I’ll pay you for it.”

Whenever he had been carried away by his work he regarded people
morosely and piteously, nor did he give himself rest while hunting for
roubles. And suddenly--it usually happened in spring, when everything on
earth became so bewitchingly beautiful and something reproachfully wild
was breathed down into the soul from the clear sky--Ignat Gordyeeff
would feel that he was not the master of his business, but its low
slave. He would lose himself in thought and, inquisitively looking about
himself from under his thick, knitted eyebrows, walk about for days,
angry and morose, as though silently asking something, which he feared
to ask aloud. They awakened his other soul, the turbulent and lustful
soul of a hungry beast. Insolent and cynical, he drank, led a depraved
life, and made drunkards of other people. He went into ecstasy, and
something like a volcano of filth boiled within him. It looked as though
he was madly tearing the chains which he himself had forged and carried,
and was not strong enough to tear them. Excited and very dirty, his face
swollen from drunkenness and sleeplessness, his eyes wandering madly,
and roaring in a hoarse voice, he tramped about the town from one tavern
to another, threw away money without counting it, cried and danced
to the sad tunes of the folk songs, or fought, but found no rest
anywhere--in anything.

It happened one day that a degraded priest, a short, stout little
bald-headed man in a torn cassock, chanced on Ignat, and stuck to him,
just as a piece of mud will stick to a shoe. An impersonal, deformed and
nasty creature, he played the part of a buffoon: they smeared his
bald head with mustard, made him go upon all-fours, drink mixtures of
different brandies and dance comical dances; he did all this in silence,
an idiotic smile on his wrinkled face, and having done what he was told
to do, he invariably said, outstretching his hand with his palm upward:

“Give me a rouble.”

They laughed at him and sometimes gave him twenty kopeiks, sometimes
gave him nothing, but it sometimes happened that they threw him a
ten-rouble bill and even more.

“You abominable fellow,” cried Ignat to him one day. “Say, who are you?”

The priest was frightened by the call, and bowing low to Ignat, was
silent.

“Who? Speak!” roared Ignat.

“I am a man--to be abused,” answered the priest, and the company burst
out laughing at his words.

“Are you a rascal?” asked Ignat, sternly.

“A rascal? Because of need and the weakness of my soul?”

“Come here!” Ignat called him. “Come and sit down by my side.”

Trembling with fear, the priest walked up to the intoxicated merchant
with timid steps and remained standing opposite him.

“Sit down beside me!” said Ignat, taking the frightened priest by the
hand and seating him next to himself. “You are a very near man to me. I
am also a rascal! You, because of need; I, because of wantonness. I am a
rascal because of grief! Understand?”

“I understand,” said the priest, softly. All the company were giggling.

“Do you know now what I am?”

“I do.”

“Well, say, ‘You are a rascal, Ignat!’”

The priest could not do it. He looked with terror at the huge figure of
Ignat and shook his head negatively. The company’s laughter was now like
the rattling of thunder. Ignat could not make the priest abuse him. Then
he asked him:

“Shall I give you money?”

“Yes,” quickly answered the priest.

“And what do you need it for?”

He did not care to answer. Then Ignat seized him by the collar, and
shook out of his dirty lips the following speech, which he spoke almost
in a whisper, trembling with fear:

“I have a daughter sixteen years old in the seminary. I save for her,
because when she comes out there won’t be anything with which to cover
her nakedness.”

“Ah,” said Ignat, and let go the priest’s collar. Then he sat for a long
time gloomy and lost in thought, and now and again stared at the priest.
Suddenly his eyes began to laugh, and he said:

“Aren’t you a liar, drunkard?”

The priest silently made the sign of the cross and lowered his head on
his breast.

“It is the truth!” said one of the company, confirming the priest’s
words.

“True? Very well!” shouted Ignat, and, striking the table with his fist,
he addressed himself to the priest:

“Eh, you! Sell me your daughter! How much will you take?”

The priest shook his head and shrank back.

“One thousand!”

The company giggled, seeing that the priest was shrinking as though cold
water was being poured on him.

“Two!” roared Ignat, with flashing eyes.

“What’s the matter with you? How is it?” muttered the priest, stretching
out both hands to Ignat.

“Three!”

“Ignat Matveyich!” cried the priest, in a thin, ringing voice. “For
God’s sake! For Christ’s sake! Enough! I’ll sell her! For her own sake
I’ll sell her!”

In his sickly, sharp voice was heard a threat to someone, and his eyes,
unnoticed by anybody before, flashed like coals. But the intoxicated
crowd only laughed at him foolishly.

“Silence!” cried Ignat, sternly, straightening himself to his full
length and flashing his eyes.

“Don’t you understand, devils, what’s going on here? It’s enough to make
one cry, while you giggle.”

He walked up to the priest, went down on his knees before him, and said
to him firmly:

“Father now you see what a rascal I am. Well, spit into my face!”

Something ugly and ridiculous took place. The priest too, knelt before
Ignat, and like a huge turtle, crept around near his feet, kissed his
knees and muttered something, sobbing. Ignat bent over him, lifted him
from the floor and cried to him, commanding and begging:

“Spit! Spit right into my shameless eyes!”

The company, stupefied for a moment by Ignat’s stern voice, laughed
again so that the panes rattled in the tavern windows.

“I’ll give you a hundred roubles. Spit!”

And the priest crept over the floor and sobbed for fear, or for
happiness, to hear that this man was begging him to do something
degrading to himself.

Finally Ignat arose from the floor, kicked the priest, and, flinging at
him a package of money, said morosely, with a smile:

“Rabble! Can a man repent before such people? Some are afraid to hear
of repentance, others laugh at a sinner. I was about to unburden myself
completely; the heart trembled. Let me, I thought. No, I didn’t think at
all. Just so! Get out of here! And see that you never show yourself to
me again. Do you hear?”

“Oh, a queer fellow!” said the crowd, somewhat moved.

Legends were composed about his drinking bouts in town; everybody
censured him strictly, but no one ever declined his invitation to those
drinking bouts. Thus he lived for weeks.

And unexpectedly he used to come home, not yet altogether freed from
the odour of the kabaks, but already crestfallen and quiet. With humbly
downcast eyes, in which shame was burning now, he silently listened to
his wife’s reproaches, and, humble and meek as a lamb, went away to his
room and locked himself in. For many hours in succession he knelt before
the cross, lowering his head on his breast; his hands hung helplessly,
his back was bent, and he was silent, as though he dared not pray. His
wife used to come up to the door on tiptoe and listen. Deep sighs were
heard from behind the door--like the breathing of a tired and sickly
horse.

“God! You see,” whispered Ignat in a muffled voice, firmly pressing the
palms of his hands to his broad breast.

During the days of repentance he drank nothing but water and ate only
rye bread.

In the morning his wife placed at the door of his room a big bottle of
water, about a pound and a half of bread, and salt. He opened the door,
took in these victuals and locked himself in again. During this time he
was not disturbed in any way; everybody tried to avoid him. A few days
later he again appeared on the exchange, jested, laughed, made contracts
to furnish corn as sharp-sighted as a bird of prey, a rare expert at
anything concerning his affairs.

But in all the moods of Ignat’s life there was one passionate desire
that never left him--the desire to have a son; and the older he grew the
greater was this desire. Very often such conversation as this took place
between him and his wife. In the morning, at her tea, or at noon during
dinner hour he gloomily glared at his wife, a stout, well-fed woman,
with a red face and sleepy eyes, and asked her:

“Well, don’t you feel anything?”

She knew what he meant, but she invariably replied:

“How can I help feeling? Your fists are like dumb-bells.”

“You know what I’m talking about, you fool.”

“Can one become pregnant from such blows?”

“It’s not on account of the blows that you don’t bear any children;
it’s because you eat too much. You fill your stomach with all sorts of
food--and there’s no room for the child to engender.”

“As if I didn’t bear you any children?”

“Those were girls,” said Ignat, reproachfully. “I want a son! Do you
understand? A son, an heir! To whom shall I give my capital after my
death? Who shall pray for my sins? Shall I give it to a cloister? I have
given them enough! Or shall I leave it to you? What a fine pilgrim you
are! Even in church you think only of fish pies. If I die, you’ll marry
again, and my money will be turned over to some fool. Do you think this
is what I am working for?”

And he was seized with sardonic anguish, for he felt that his life was
aimless if he should have no son to follow him.

During the nine years of their married life his wife had borne him four
daughters, all of whom had passed away. While Ignat had awaited their
birth tremblingly, he mourned their death but little--at any rate they
were unnecessary to him. He began to beat his wife during the second
year of their married life; at first he did it while being intoxicated
and without animosity, but just according to the proverb: “Love your
wife like your soul and shake her like a pear-tree;” but after each
confinement, deceived in his expectation, his hatred for his wife grew
stronger, and he began to beat her with pleasure, in revenge for not
bearing him a son.

Once while on business in the province of Samarsk, he received a
telegram from relatives at home, informing him of his wife’s death.
He made the sign of the cross, thought awhile and wrote to his friend
Mayakin:

“Bury her in my absence; look after my property.”

Then he went to the church to serve the mass for the dead, and, having
prayed for the repose of the late Aquilina’s soul, he began to think
that it was necessary for him to marry as soon as possible.

He was then forty-three years old, tall, broad-shouldered, with a heavy
bass voice, like an arch-deacon; his large eyes looked bold and wise
from under his dark eyebrows; in his sunburnt face, overgrown with a
thick, black beard, and in all his mighty figure there was much truly
Russian, crude and healthy beauty; in his easy motions as well as in
his slow, proud walk, a consciousness of power was evident--a firm
confidence in himself. He was liked by women and did not avoid them.

Ere six months had passed after the death of his wife, he courted the
daughter of an Ural Cossack. The father of the bride, notwithstanding
that Ignat was known even in Ural as a “pranky” man, gave him his
daughter in marriage, and toward autumn Ignat Gordyeeff came home with
a young Cossack-wife. Her name was Natalya. Tall, well-built, with large
blue eyes and with a long chestnut braid, she was a worthy match for the
handsome Ignat. He was happy and proud of his wife and loved her with
the passionate love of a healthy man, but he soon began to contemplate
her thoughtfully, with a vigilant eye.

Seldom did a smile cross the oval, demure face of his wife--she was
always thinking of something foreign to life, and in her calm blue eyes
something dark and misanthropic was flashing at times. Whenever she was
free from household duties she seated herself in the most spacious room
by the window, and sat there silently for two or three hours. Her
face was turned toward the street, but the look of her eyes was so
indifferent to everything that lived and moved there beyond the window,
and at the same time it was so fixedly deep, as though she were looking
into her very soul. And her walk, too, was queer. Natalya moved about
the spacious room slowly and carefully, as if something invisible
restrained the freedom of her movements. Their house was filled with
heavy and coarsely boastful luxury; everything there was resplendent,
screaming of the proprietor’s wealth, but the Cossack-wife walked past
the costly furniture and the silverware in a shy and somewhat frightened
manner, as though fearing lest they might seize and choke her.
Evidently, the noisy life of the big commercial town did not interest
this silent woman, and whenever she went out driving with her husband,
her eyes were fixed on the back of the driver. When her husband took
her visiting she went and behaved there just as queerly as at home; when
guests came to her house, she zealously served them refreshments, taking
no interest whatever in what was said, and showing preference toward
none. Only Mayakin, a witty, droll man, at times called forth on her
face a smile, as vague as a shadow. He used to say of her:

“It’s a tree--not a woman! But life is like an inextinguishable
wood-pile, and every one of us blazes up sometimes. She, too, will take
fire; wait, give her time. Then we shall see how she will bloom.”

“Eh!” Ignat used to say to her jestingly. “What are you thinking about?
Are you homesick? Brighten up a bit!”

She would remain silent, calmly looking at him.

“You go entirely too often to the church. You should wait. You have
plenty of time to pray for your sins. Commit the sins first. You know,
if you don’t sin you don’t repent; if you don’t repent, you don’t work
out your salvation. You better sin while you are young. Shall we go out
for a drive?”

“I don’t feel like going out.”

He used to sit down beside her and embrace her. She was cold, returning
his caresses but sparingly. Looking straight into her eyes, he used to
say:

“Natalya! Tell me--why are you so sad? Do you feel lonesome here with
me?”

“No,” she replied shortly.

“What then is it? Are you longing for your people?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“I am not thinking.”

“What then?”

“Oh, nothing!”

Once he managed to get from her a more complete answer:

“There is something confused in my heart. And also in my eyes. And it
always seems to me that all this is not real.”

She waved her hand around her, pointing at the walls, the furniture and
everything. Ignat did not reflect on her words, and, laughing, said to
her:

“That’s to no purpose! Everything here is genuine. All these are costly,
solid things. If you don’t want these, I’ll burn them, I’ll sell them,
I’ll give them away--and I’ll get new ones! Do you want me to?”

“What for?” said she calmly.

He wondered, at last, how one so young and healthy could live as though
she were sleeping all the time, caring for nothing, going nowhere,
except to the church, and shunning everybody. And he used to console
her:

“Just wait. You’ll bear a son, and then an altogether different life
will commence. You are so sad because you have so little anxiety, and he
will give you trouble. You’ll bear me a son, will you not?

“If it pleases God,” she answered, lowering her head.

Then her mood began to irritate him.

“Well, why do you wear such a long face? You walk as though on glass.
You look as if you had ruined somebody’s soul! Eh! You are such a
succulent woman, and yet you have no taste for anything. Fool!”

Coming home intoxicated one day, he began to ply her with caresses,
while she turned away from him. Then he grew angry, and exclaimed:

“Natalya! Don’t play the fool, look out!”

She turned her face to him and asked calmly:

“What then?”

Ignat became enraged at these words and at her fearless look.

“What?” he roared, coming up close to her.

“Do you wish to kill me?” asked she, not moving from her place, nor
winking an eye.

Ignat was accustomed to seeing people tremble before his wrath, and it
was strange and offensive to him to see her calm.

“There,” he cried, lifting his hand to strike her. Slowly, but in time,
she eluded the blow; then she seized his hand, pushed it away from her,
and said in the same tone:

“Don’t you dare to touch me. I will not allow you to come near me!”

Her eyes became smaller and their sharp, metallic glitter sobered Ignat.
He understood by her face that she, too, was a strong beast, and if she
chose to she wouldn’t admit him to her, even though she were to lose her
life.

“Oh,” he growled, and went away.

But having retreated once, he would not do it again: he could not bear
that a woman, and his wife at that, should not bow before him--this
would have degraded him. He then began to realise that henceforth his
wife would never yield to him in any matter, and that an obstinate
strife for predominance must start between them.

“Very well! We’ll see who will conquer,” he thought the next day,
watching his wife with stern curiosity; and in his soul a strong desire
was already raging to start the strife, that he might enjoy his victory
the sooner.

But about four days later, Natalya Fominichna announced to her husband
that she was pregnant.

Ignat trembled for joy, embraced her firmly, and said in a dull voice:

“You’re a fine fellow, Natalya! Natasha, if it should be a son! If you
bear me a son I’ll enrich you! I tell you plainly, I’ll be your slave!
By God! I’ll lie down at your feet, and you may trample upon me, if you
like!”

“This is not within our power; it’s the will of the Lord,” said she in a
low voice.

“Yes, the Lord’s!” exclaimed Ignat with bitterness and drooped his head
sadly.

From that moment he began to look after his wife as though she were a
little child.

“Why do you sit near the window? Look out. You’ll catch cold in your
side; you may take sick,” he used to say to her, both sternly and
mildly. “Why do you skip on the staircase? You may hurt yourself. And
you had better eat more, eat for two, that he may have enough.”

And the pregnancy made Natalya more morose and silent, as though she
were looking still deeper into herself, absorbed in the throbbing of new
life within her. But the smile on her lips became clearer, and in her
eyes flashed at times something new, weak and timid, like the first ray
of the dawn.

When, at last, the time of confinement came, it was early on an autumn
morning. At the first cry of pain she uttered, Ignat turned pale and
started to say something, but only waved his hand and left the bedroom,
where his wife was shrinking convulsively, and went down to the little
room which had served his late mother as a chapel. He ordered vodka,
seated himself by the table and began to drink sternly, listening to the
alarm in the house and to the moans of his wife that came from above. In
the corner of the room, the images of the ikons, indifferent and dark,
stood out confusedly, dimly illumined by the glimmering light of the
image lamp. There was a stamping and scraping of feet over his head,
something heavy was moved from one side of the floor to the other, there
was a clattering of dishes, people were bustling hurriedly, up and down
the staircase. Everything was being done in haste, yet time was creeping
slowly. Ignat could hear a muffled voice from above,

“As it seems, she cannot be delivered that way. We had better send to
the church to open the gates of the Lord.”

Vassushka, one of the hangers-on in his house, entered the room next to
Ignat’s and began to pray in a loud whisper:

“God, our Lord, descend from the skies in Thy benevolence, born of
the Holy Virgin. Thou dost divine the helplessness of human creatures.
Forgive Thy servant.”

And suddenly drowning all other sounds, a superhuman, soul-rending cry
rang out, and a continuous moan floated softly over the room and died
out in the corners, which were filled now with the twilight. Ignat cast
stern glances at the ikons, heaved a deep sigh and thought:

“Is it possible that it’s again a daughter?”

At times he arose, stupidly stood in the middle of the room, and crossed
himself in silence, bowing before the ikons; then he went back to the
table, drank the vodka, which had not made him dizzy during these hours,
dozed off, and thus passed the whole night and following morning until
noon.

And then, at last, the midwife came down hastily, crying to him in a
thin, joyous voice.

“I congratulate you with a son, Ignat Matveyich!”

“You lie!” said he in a dull voice. “What’s the matter with you,
batushka!” Heaving a sigh with all the strength of his massive chest,
Ignat went down on his knees, and clasping his hands firmly to his
breast, muttered in a trembling voice:

“Thank God! Evidently Thou didst not want that my stem should be
checked! My sins before Thee shall not remain without repentance. I
thank Thee, Oh Lord. Oh!” and, rising to his feet, he immediately began
to command noisily:

“Eh! Let someone go to St. Nicholas for a priest. Tell him that Ignat
Matveyich asked him to come! Let him come to make a prayer for the
woman.”

The chambermaid appeared and said to him with alarm:

“Ignat Matveyich, Natalya Fominichna is calling you. She is feeling
bad.”

“Why bad? It’ll pass!” he roared, his eyes flashing cheerfully. “Tell
her I’ll be there immediately! Tell her she’s a fine fellow! I’ll just
get a present for her and I’ll come! Hold on! Prepare something to eat
for the priest. Send somebody after Mayakin!”

His enormous figure looked as though it had grown bigger, and
intoxicated with joy, he stupidly tossed about the room; he was smiling,
rubbing his hands and casting fervent glances at the images; he crossed
himself swinging his hand wide. At last he went up to his wife.

His eyes first of all caught a glimpse of the little red body, which the
midwife was bathing in a tub. Noticing him, Ignat stood up on tiptoes,
and, folding his hands behind his back, walked up to him, stepping
carefully and comically putting forth his lips. The little one was
whimpering and sprawling in the water, naked, impotent and pitiful.

“Look out there! Handle him more carefully! He hasn’t got any bones
yet,” said Ignat to the midwife, softly.

She began to laugh, opening her toothless mouth, and cleverly throwing
the child over from one hand to the other.

“You better go to your wife.”

He obediently moved toward the bed and asked on his way:

“Well, how is it, Natalya?”

Then, on reaching her, he drew back the bed curtain, which had thrown a
shadow over the bed.

“I’ll not survive this,” said she in a low, hoarse voice.

Ignat was silent, fixedly staring at his wife’s face, sunk in the white
pillow, over which her dark locks were spread out like dead snakes.
Yellow, lifeless, with black circles around her large, wide-open
eyes--her face was strange to him. And the glance of those terrible
eyes, motionlessly fixed somewhere in the distance through the
wall--that, too, was unfamiliar to Ignat. His heart, compressed by a
painful foreboding, slackened its joyous throbbing.

“That’s nothing. That’s nothing. It’s always like this,” said he softly,
bending over his wife to give her a kiss. But she moaned right into his
face:

“I’ll not survive this.”

Her lips were gray and cold, and when he touched them with his own he
understood that death was already within her.

“Oh, Lord!” he uttered, in an alarmed whisper, feeling that fright was
choking his throat and suppressing his breath.

“Natasha? What will become of him? He must be nursed! What is the matter
with you?”

He almost began to cry at his wife. The midwife was bustling about him;
shaking the crying child in the air. She spoke to him reassuringly, but
he heard nothing--he could not turn his eyes away from the frightful
face of his wife. Her lips were moving, and he heard words spoken in
a low voice, but could not understand them. Sitting on the edge of the
bed, he spoke in a dull and timid voice: “Just think of it! He cannot
do without you; he’s an infant! Gather strength! Drive this thought away
from you! Drive it away.”

He talked, yet he understood he was speaking useless words. Tears welled
up within him, and in his breast there came a feeling heavy as stone and
cold as ice.

“Forgive me. Goodbye! Take care. Look out. Don’t drink,” whispered
Natalya, soundlessly.

The priest came, and, covering her face with something, and sighing,
began to read gentle, beseeching words:

“Oh God, Almighty Lord, who cureth every disease, cure also Thy servant
Natalya, who has just given birth to a child; and restore her from the
bed on which she now lies, for in the words of David, ‘We indulge in
lawlessness and are wicked in Thine eyes.”’

The old man’s voice was interrupted now and then, his thin face was
stern and from his clothes came the odour of rock-rose.

“Guard the infant born of her, guard him from all possible temptation,
from all possible cruelty, from all possible storms, from evil spirits,
night and day.”

Ignat listened to the prayer, and wept silently. His big, hot tears fell
on the bare hand of his wife. But the hand, evidently, did not feel that
the tears were dropping upon it: it remained motionless, and the skin
did not tremble from the fall of the tears. After the prayer Natalya
became unconscious and a day later she died, without saying another
word--she died just as quietly as she had lived. Having arranged
a pompous funeral, Ignat christened his son, named him Foma, and
unwillingly gave his boy into the family of the godfather, his old
friend Mayakin, whose wife, too, had given birth to a child not long
before. The death of his wife had sown many gray hairs in Ignat’s dark
beard, but in the stern glitter of his eyes appeared a new expression,
gentle, clear and mild.



CHAPTER II

MAYAKIN lived in an enormous two-story house near a big palisade, where
sturdy, old spreading linden trees were growing magnificently. The rank
branches covered the windows with a dense, dark embroidery, and the sun
in broken rays peeped into the small rooms, which were closely crowded
with miscellaneous furniture and big trunks, wherefore a stern and
melancholy semi-darkness always reigned there supreme. The family was
devout--the odour of wax, of rock-rose and of image-lamp oil filled the
house, and penitent sighs and prayers soared about in the air. Religious
ceremonials were performed infallibly, with pleasure, absorbing all the
free power of the souls of the dwellers of the house. Feminine figures
almost noiselessly moved about the rooms in the half-dark, stifling,
heavy atmosphere. They were dressed in black, wore soft slippers on
their feet, and always had a penitent look on their faces.

The family of Yakov Tarazovich Mayakin consisted of himself, his wife, a
daughter and five kinswomen, the youngest of whom was thirty-four years
old. These were alike devout and impersonal, and subordinate to Antonina
Ivanovna, the mistress of the house. She was a tall, thin woman, with
a dark face and with stern gray eyes, which had an imperious and
intelligent expression. Mayakin also had a son Taras, but his name
was never mentioned in the house; acquaintances knew that since the
nineteen-year-old Taras had gone to study in Moscow--he married there
three years later, against his father’s will--Yakov disowned him. Taras
disappeared without leaving any trace. It was rumoured that he had been
sent to Siberia for something.

Yakov Mayakin was very queerly built. Short, thin, lively, with a little
red beard, sly greenish eyes, he looked as though he said to each and
every one:

“Never mind, sir, don’t be uneasy. Even though I know you for what you
are, if you don’t annoy me I will not give you away.”

His beard resembled an egg in shape and was monstrously big. His high
forehead, covered with wrinkles, joined his bald crown, and it seemed
as though he really had two faces--one an open, penetrating and
intellectual face, with a long gristle nose, and above this face another
one, eyeless and mouthless, covered with wrinkles, behind which Mayakin
seemed to hide his eyes and his lips until a certain time; and when that
time had arrived, he would look at the world with different eyes and
smile a different smile.

He was the owner of a rope-yard and kept a store in town near the
harbour. In this store, filled up to the ceiling with rope, twine, hemp
and tow, he had a small room with a creaking glass door. In this room
stood a big, old, dilapidated table, and near it a deep armchair,
covered with oilcloth, in which Mayakin sat all day long, sipping
tea and always reading the same “Moskovskiya Vedomosty,” to which he
subscribed, year in and year out, all his life. Among merchants he
enjoyed the respect and reputation of a “brainy” man, and he was very
fond of boasting of the antiquity of his race, saying in a hoarse voice:

“We, the Mayakins, were merchants during the reign of ‘Mother’
Catherine, consequently I am a pure-blooded man.”

In this family Ignat Gordyeeff’s son lived for six years. By the time
he was seven years old Foma was a big-headed, broad-shouldered boy,
seemingly older that his years, both in his size and in the serious look
of his dark, almond-shaped eyes. Quiet, silent and persistent in his
childish desires, he spent all his days over his playthings, with
Mayakin’s daughter, Luba, quietly looked after by one of the kinswomen,
a stout, pock-marked old maid, who was, for some reason or other,
nicknamed “Buzya.” She was a dull, somewhat timid creature; and even to
the children she spoke in a low voice, in words of monosyllables. Having
devoted her time to learning prayers, she had no stories to tell Foma.

Foma was on friendly terms with the little girl, but when she angered
or teased him he turned pale, his nostrils became distended, his eyes
stared comically and he beat her audaciously. She cried, ran to her
mother and complained to her, but Antonina loved Foma and she paid but
little attention to her daughter’s complaints, which strengthened the
friendship between the children still more. Foma’s day was long and
uniform. Getting out of bed and washing himself, he used to place
himself before the image, and under the whispering of the pock-marked
Buzya he recited long prayers. Then they drank tea and ate many
biscuits, cakes and pies. After tea--during the summer--the children
went to the big palisade, which ran down to a ravine, whose bottom
always looked dark and damp, filling them with terror. The children were
not allowed to go even to the edge of the ravine, and this inspired in
them a fear of it. In winter, from tea time to dinner, they played in
the house when it was very cold outside, or went out in the yard to
slide down the big ice hill.

They had dinner at noon, “in Russian style,” as Mayakin said. At first a
big bowl of fat, sour cabbage soup was served with rye biscuits in,
but without meat, then the same soup was eaten with meat cut into small
pieces; then they ate roast meat--pork, goose, veal or rennet, with
gruel--then again a bowl of soup with vermicelli, and all this was
usually followed by dessert. They drank kvass made of red bilberries,
juniper-berries, or of bread--Antonina Ivanovna always carried a stock
of different kinds of kvass. They ate in silence, only now and then
uttering a sigh of fatigue; the children each ate out of a separate
bowl, the adults eating out of one bowl. Stupefied by such a dinner,
they went to sleep; and for two or three hours Mayakin’s house was
filled with snoring and with drowsy sighs.

Awaking from sleep, they drank tea and talked about local news, the
choristers, the deacons, weddings, or the dishonourable conduct of this
or that merchant. After tea Mayakin used to say to his wife:

“Well, mother, hand me the Bible.”

Yakov Tarasovich used to read the Book of Job more often than anything
else. Putting his heavy, silver-framed spectacles on his big, ravenous
nose, he looked around at his listeners to see whether all were in their
places.

They were all seated where he was accustomed to see them and on their
faces was a familiar, dull and timid expression of piety.

“There was a man in the land of Uz,” began Mayakin, in a hoarse voice,
and Foma, sitting beside Luba on the lounge in the corner of the room,
knew beforehand that soon his godfather would become silent and pat his
bald head with his hand. He sat and, listening, pictured to himself
this man from the land of Uz. The man was tall and bare, his eyes were
enormously large, like those of the image of the Saviour, and his voice
was like a big brass trumpet on which the soldiers played in the camps.
The man was constantly growing bigger and bigger; and, reaching the sky,
he thrust his dark hands into the clouds, and, tearing them asunder,
cried out in a terrible voice:

“Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged
in?”

Dread fell on Foma, and he trembled, slumber fled from his eyes, he
heard the voice of his godfather, who said, with a light smile, now and
then pinching his beard:

“See how audacious he was!”

The boy knew that his godfather spoke of the man from the land of Uz,
and the godfather’s smile soothed the child. So the man would not break
the sky; he would not rend it asunder with his terrible arms. And then
Foma sees the man again--he sits on the ground, “his flesh is clothed
with worms and clods of dust, his skin is broken.” But now he is small
and wretched, he is like a beggar at the church porch.

Here he says:

“What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of woman,
that he should be righteous?” [These words attributed by Mayakin to Job
are from Eliphaz the Temanite’s reply--Translator’s Note.]

“He says this to God,” explained Mayakin, inspired. “How, says he, can I
be righteous, since I am made of flesh? That’s a question asked of God.
How is that?”

And the reader, triumphantly and interrogatively looks around at his
listeners.

“He merited it, the righteous man,” they replied with a sigh.

Yakov Mayakin eyes them with a smile, and says:

“Fools! You better put the children to sleep.”

Ignat visited the Mayakins every day, brought playthings for his son,
caught him up into his arms and hugged him, but sometimes dissatisfied
he said to him with ill-concealed uneasiness:

“Why are you such a bugbear? Oh! Why do you laugh so little?”

And he would complain to the lad’s godfather:

“I am afraid that he may turn out to be like his mother. His eyes are
cheerless.”

“You disturb yourself rather too soon,” Mayakin smilingly replied.

He, too, loved his godson, and when Ignat announced to him one day that
he would take Foma to his own house, Mayakin was very much grieved.

“Leave him here,” he begged. “See, the child is used to us; there! he’s
crying.”

“He’ll cease crying. I did not beget him for you. The air of the
place is disagreeable. It is as tedious here as in an old believer’s
hermitage. This is harmful to the child. And without him I am lonesome.
I come home--it is empty. I can see nothing there. It would not do for
me to remove to your house for his sake. I am not for him, he is for me.
So. And now that my sister has come to my house there will be somebody
to look after him.”

And the boy was brought to his father’s house.

There he was met by a comical old woman, with a long, hook-like nose and
with a mouth devoid of teeth. Tall, stooping, dressed in gray, with gray
hair, covered by a black silk cap, she did not please the boy at first;
she even frightened him. But when he noticed on the wrinkled face her
black eyes, which beamed so tenderly on him, he at once pressed his head
close to her knees in confidence.

“My sickly little orphan!” she said in a velvet-like voice that trembled
from the fulness of sound, and quietly patted his face with her hand,
“stay close to me, my dear child!”

There was something particularly sweet and soft in her caresses,
something altogether new to Foma, and he stared into the old woman’s
eyes with curiosity and expectation on his face. This old woman led him
into a new world, hitherto unknown to him. The very first day, having
put him to bed, she seated herself by his side, and, bending over the
child, asked him:

“Shall I tell you a story, Fomushka?”

And after that Foma always fell asleep amid the velvet-like sounds of
the old woman’s voice, which painted before him a magic life. Giants
defeating monsters, wise princesses, fools who turned out to be
wise--troops of new and wonderful people were passing before the boy’s
bewitched imagination, and his soul was nourished by the wholesome
beauty of the national creative power. Inexhaustible were the treasures
of the memory and the fantasy of this old woman, who oftentimes,
in slumber, appeared to the boy--now like the witch of the
fairy-tales--only a kind and amiable old witch--now like the beautiful,
all-wise Vasilisa. His eyes wide open, holding his breath, the boy
looked into the darkness that filled his chamber and watched it as it
slowly trembled in the light of the little lamp that was burning before
the image. And Foma filled this darkness with wonderful pictures of
fairy-tale life. Silent, yet living shadows, were creeping over the
walls and across the floor; it was both pleasant and terrible to him to
watch their life; to deal out unto them forms and colours, and, having
endowed them with life, instantly to destroy them all with a single
twinkle of the eyelashes. Something new appeared in his dark eyes,
something more childish and naive, less grave; the loneliness and the
darkness, awaking in him a painful feeling of expectation, stirred his
curiosity, compelled him to go out to the dark corner and see what
was hidden there beyond the thick veils of darkness. He went and found
nothing, but he lost no hope of finding it out.

He feared his father and respected him. Ignat’s enormous size, his
harsh, trumpet-like voice, his bearded face, his gray-haired head, his
powerful, long arms and his flashing eyes--all these gave to Ignat the
resemblance of the fairy-tale robbers.

Foma shuddered whenever he heard his voice or his heavy, firm steps; but
when the father, smiling kind-heartedly, and talking playfully in a loud
voice, took him upon his knees or threw him high up in the air with his
big hands the boy’s fear vanished.

Once, when the boy was about eight years old, he asked his father, who
had returned from a long journey:

“Papa, where were you?”

“On the Volga.”

“Were you robbing there?” asked Foma, softly.

“Wha-at?” Ignat drawled out, and his eyebrows contracted.

“Aren’t you a robber, papa? I know it,” said Foma, winking his eyes
slyly, satisfied that he had already read the secret of his father’s
life.

“I am a merchant!” said Ignat, sternly, but after a moment’s thought he
smiled kind-heartedly and added: “And you are a little fool! I deal in
corn, I run a line of steamers. Have you seen the ‘Yermak’? Well, that
is my steamer. And yours, too.”

“It is a very big one,” said Foma with a sigh.

“Well, I’ll buy you a small one while you are small yourself. Shall I?”

“Very well,” Foma assented, but after a thoughtful silence he again
drawled out regretfully: “But I thought you were a robber or a giant.”

“I tell you I am a merchant!” repeated Ignat, insinuatingly, and there
was something discontented and almost timorous in his glance at the
disenchanted face of his son.

“Like Grandpa Fedor, the Kalatch baker?” asked Foma, having thought
awhile.

“Well, yes, like him. Only I am richer than he. I have more money than
Fedor.”

“Have you much money?”

“Well, some people have still more.”

“How many barrels do you have?”

“Of what?”

“Of money, I mean.”

“Fool! Is money counted by the barrel?”

“How else?” exclaimed Foma, enthusiastically, and, turning his face
toward his father, began to tell him quickly: “Maksimka, the robber,
came once to a certain town and filled up twelve barrels with money
belonging to some rich man there. And he took different silverware and
robbed a church. And cut up a man with his sword and threw him down the
steeple because he tried to sound an alarm.”

“Did your aunt tell you that?” asked Ignat admiring his son’s
enthusiasm.

“Yes! Why?”

“Nothing!” said Ignat, laughing. “So you thought your father was a
robber.”

“And perhaps you were a robber long ago?”

Foma again returned to his theme, and it was evident on his face that he
would be very glad to hear an affirmative answer.

“I was never a robber. Let that end it.”

“Never?”

“I tell you I was not! What a queer little boy you are! Is it good to
be a robber? They are all sinners, the robbers. They don’t believe in
God--they rob churches. They are all cursed in the churches. Yes. Look
here, my son, you’ll have to start to study soon. It is time; you’ll
soon be nine years old. Start with the help of God. You’ll study during
the winter and in spring I’ll take you along with me on the Volga.”

“Will I go to school?” asked Foma, timidly.

“First you’ll study at home with auntie.” Soon after the boy would sit
down near the table in the morning and, fingering the Slavonic alphabet,
repeat after his aunt:

“Az, Buky, Vedy.”

When they reached “bra, vra, gra, dra” for a long time the boy could not
read these syllables without laughter. Foma succeeded easily in gaining
knowledge, almost without any effort, and soon he was reading the first
psalm of the first section of the psalter: “Blessed is the man that
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.”

“That’s it, my darling! So, Fomushka, that’s right!” chimed in his aunt
with emotion, enraptured by his progress.

“You’re a fine fellow, Foma!” Ignat would approvingly say when informed
of his son’s progress. “We’ll go to Astrakhan for fish in the spring,
and toward autumn I’ll send you to school!”

The boy’s life rolled onward, like a ball downhill. Being his teacher,
his aunt was his playmate as well. Luba Mayakin used to come, and when
with them, the old woman readily became one of them.

They played at “hide and seek” and “blind man’s buff;” the children
were pleased and amused at seeing Anfisa, her eyes covered with a
handkerchief, her arms outstretched, walking about the room carefully,
and yet striking against chairs and tables, or looking for them in each
and every commodious corner, saying:

“Eh, little rascals. Eh, rogues. Where have they hidden themselves? Eh?”

And the sun shone cheerfully and playfully upon the old worn-out body,
which yet retained a youthful soul, and upon the old life, that was
adorning, according to its strength and abilities, the life-path of two
children.

Ignat used to go to the Exchange early in the morning and sometimes
stayed away until evening; in the evening he used to go to the
town council or visiting or elsewhere. Sometimes he returned home
intoxicated. At first Foma, on such occasions, ran from him and hid
himself, then he became accustomed to it, and learned that his father
was better when drunk than sober: he was kinder and plainer and was
somewhat comical. If it happened at night, the boy was usually awakened
by his trumpet-like voice:

“Anfisa! Dear sister! Let me in to my son; let me in to my successor!”

And auntie answered him in a crying and reproachful voice:

“Go on. You better go to sleep, you cursed devil! Drunk again, eh? You
are gray already?”

“Anfisa! May I see my son, with one eye?” Foma knew that Anfisa would
not let him in, and he again fell asleep in spite of the noise of
their voices. But when Ignat came home intoxicated during the day he
immediately seized his son with his enormous paws and carried him about
the rooms, asking him with an intoxicated, happy laughter:

“Fomka! What do you wish? Speak! Presents? Playthings? Ask! Because you
must know there’s nothing in this world that I wouldn’t buy for you. I
have a million! Ha, ha, ha! And I’ll have still more! Understand? All’s
yours! Ha, ha!”

And suddenly his enthusiasm was extinguished like a candle put out by
a violent puff of the wind. His flushed face began to shake, his eyes,
burning red, filled with tears, and his lips expanded into a sad and
frightened smile.

“Anfisa, in case he should die, what am I to do then?”

And immediately after these words he was seized with fury.

“I’d burn everything!” he roared, staring wildly into some dark corner
of the room. “I’d destroy everything! I’d blow it up with dynamite!”

“Enough, you ugly brute! Do you wish to frighten the child? Or do you
want him to take sick?” interposed Anfisa, and that was sufficient for
Ignat to rush off hastily, muttering:

“Well, well, well! I am going, I am going, but don’t cry! Don’t make any
noise. Don’t frighten him.”

And when Foma was somewhat sick, his father, casting everything aside,
did not leave the house for a moment, but bothered his sister and his
son with stupid questions and advice; gloomy, sighing, and with fear in
his eyes, he walked about the house quite out of sorts.

“Why do you vex the Lord?” said Anfisa. “Beware, your grumblings will
reach Him, and He will punish you for your complaints against His
graces.”

“Eh, sister!” sighed Ignat. “And if it should happen? My entire life is
crumbling away! Wherefore have I lived? No one knows.”

Similar scenes and the striking transitions of his father from one mood
to another frightened the child at first, but he soon became accustomed
to all this, and when he noticed through the window that his father,
on coming home, was hardly able to get out of the sledge, Foma said
indifferently:

“Auntie, papa came home drunk again.”

.............................

Spring came, and, fulfilling his promise, Ignat took his son along on
one of his steamers, and here a new life, abounding in impressions, was
opened before Foma’s eyes.

The beautiful and mighty “Yermak,” Gordyeeff’s steam tow-boat, was
rapidly floating down the current, and on each side the shores of the
powerful and beautiful Volga were slowly moving past him--the left side,
all bathed in sunshine, stretching itself to the very end of the sky
like a pompous carpet of verdure; the right shore, its high banks
overgrown with woods, swung skyward, sinking in stern repose.

The broad-bosomed river stretched itself majestically between the
shores; noiselessly, solemnly and slowly flowed its waters, conscious of
their invincible power; the mountainous shore is reflected in the water
in a black shadow, while on the left side it is adorned with gold and
with verdant velvet by a border of sand and the wide meadows. Here and
there villages appear on mountain and on meadow, the sun shines bright
on the window-panes of the huts and on the yellow roofs of straw, the
church crosses sparkle amid the verdure of the trees, gray wind-mill
wings revolve lazily in the air, smoke from the factory chimney rises
skyward in thick, black curling clouds. Crowds of children in blue, red
or white shirts, standing on the banks, shouted loudly at the sight of
the steamer, which had disturbed the quiet of the river, and from under
the steamer’s wheels the cheerful waves are rushing toward the feet
of the children and splash against the bank. Now a crowd of children,
seated in a boat, rowed toward the middle of the river to rock there
on the waves as in a cradle. Trees stood out above the water; sometimes
many of them are drowned in the overflow of the banks, and these stand
in the water like islands. From the shore a melancholy song is heard:

“Oh, o-o-o, once more!”

The steamer passes many rafts, splashing them with waves. The beams are
in continual motion under the blows of the waves; the men on the rafts
in blue shirts, staggering, look at the steamer and laugh and shout
something. The big, beautiful vessel goes sidewise on the river; the
yellow scantlings with which it is loaded sparkle like gold and are
dimly reflected in the muddy, vernal water. A passenger steamer comes
from the opposite side and whistles--the resounding echo of the whistle
loses itself in the woods, in the gorges of the mountainous bank, and
dies away there. In the middle of the river the waves stirred up by the
two vessels strike against one another and splash against the steamers’
sides, and the vessels are rocked upon the water. On the slope of the
mountainous bank are verdant carpets of winter corn, brown strips of
fallow ground and black strips of ground tilled for spring corn. Birds,
like little dots, soar over them, and are clearly seen in the blue
canopy of the sky; nearby a flock is grazing; in the distance they look
like children’s toys; the small figure of the shepherd stands leaning on
a staff, and looks at the river.

The glare of the water--freedom and liberty are everywhere, the meadows
are cheerfully verdant and the blue sky is tenderly clear; a restrained
power is felt in the quiet motion of the water; above it the generous
May sun is shining, the air is filled with the exquisite odour of
fir trees and of fresh foliage. And the banks keep on meeting them,
caressing the eyes and the soul with their beauty, as new pictures
constantly unfold themselves.

Everything surrounding them bears the stamp of some kind of tardiness:
all--nature as well as men--live there clumsily, lazily; but in that
laziness there is an odd gracefulness, and it seems as though beyond the
laziness a colossal power were concealed; an invincible power, but as
yet deprived of consciousness, as yet without any definite desires and
aims. And the absence of consciousness in this half-slumbering life
throws shades of sadness over all the beautiful slope. Submissive
patience, silent hope for something new and more inspiriting are heard
even in the cry of the cuckoo, wafted to the river by the wind from the
shore. The melancholy songs sound as though imploring someone for help.
And at times there is in them a ring of despair. The river answers the
songs with sighs. And the tree-tops shake, lost in meditation. Silence.

Foma spent all day long on the captain’s bridge beside his father.
Without uttering a word, he stared wide-eyed at the endless panorama of
the banks, and it seemed to him he was moving along a broad silver path
in those wonderful kingdoms inhabited by the sorcerers and giants of his
familiar fairy-tales. At times he would load his father with questions
about everything that passed before them. Ignat answered him willingly
and concisely, but the boy was not pleased with his answers; they
contained nothing interesting and intelligible to him, and he did not
hear what he longed to hear. Once he told his father with a sigh:

“Auntie Anfisa knows better than you.”

“What does she know?” asked Ignat, smiling.

“Everything,” replied the boy, convincedly.

No wonderful kingdom appeared before him. But often cities appeared on
the banks of the river, just such cities as the one where Foma lived.
Some of them were larger, some smaller, but the people, and the houses,
and the churches--all were the same as in his own city. Foma examined
them in company with his father, but was still unsatisfied and returned
to the steamer gloomy and fatigued.

“Tomorrow we shall be in Astrakhan,” said Ignat one day.

“And is it just the same as the other cities?”

“Of course. How else should it be?”

“And what is beyond Astrakhan?”

“The sea. The Caspian Sea it is called.”

“And what is there?”

“Fishes, queer fellow! What else can there be in the water?”

“There’s the city Kitezh standing in the water.”

“That’s a different thing! That’s Kitezh. Only righteous people live
there.”

“And are there no righteous cities on the sea?”

“No,” said Ignat, and, after a moment’s silence, added: “The sea water is
bitter and nobody can drink it.”

“And is there more land beyond the sea?”

“Certainly, the sea must have an end. It is like a cup.”

“And are there cities there too?”

“Again cities. Of course! Only that land is not ours, it belongs to
Persia. Did you see the Persians selling pistachio-nuts and apricots in
the market?”

“Yes, I saw them,” replied Foma, and became pensive.

One day he asked his father:

“Is there much more land left?”

“The earth is very big, my dear! If you should go on foot, you couldn’t
go around it even in ten years.”

Ignat talked for a long time with his son about the size of the earth,
and said at length:

“And yet no one knows for certain how big it really is, nor where it
ends.”

“And is everything alike on earth?”

“What do you mean?”

“The cities and all?”

“Well, of course, the cities are like cities. There are houses,
streets--and everything that is necessary.”

After many similar conversations the boy no longer stared so often into
the distance with the interrogative look of his black eyes.

The crew of the steamer loved him, and he, too, loved those fine,
sun-burnt and weather-beaten fellows, who laughingly played with him.
They made fishing tackles for him, and little boats out of bark, played
with him and rowed him about the anchoring place, when Ignat went to
town on business. The boy often heard the men talking about his father,
but he paid no attention to what they said, and never told his father
what he heard about him. But one day, in Astrakhan, while the steamer
was taking in a cargo of fuel, Foma heard the voice of Petrovich, the
machinist:

“He ordered such a lot of wood to be taken in. What an absurd man! First
he loads the steamer up to the very deck, and then he roars. ‘You
break the machinery too often,’ he says. ‘You pour oil,’ he says, ‘at
random.’”

The voice of the gray and stern pilot replied:

“It’s all his exorbitant greediness. Fuel is cheaper here, so he is
taking all he can. He is greedy, the devil!”

“Oh, how greedy!”

This word, repeated many times in succession, fixed itself in Foma’s
memory, and in the evening, at supper, he suddenly asked his father:

“Papa!”

“What?”

“Are you greedy?”

In reply to his father’s questions Foma told him of the conversation
between the pilot and the machinist. Ignat’s face became gloomy, and his
eyes began to flash angrily.

“That’s how it is,” ejaculated Ignat, shaking his head. “Well,
you--don’t you listen to them. They are not your equals; don’t have
so much to do with them. You are their master, they are your servants,
understand that. If we choose to, we can put every one of them ashore.
They are cheap and they can be found everywhere like dogs. Understand?
They may say many bad things about me. But they say them, because I am
their master. The whole thing arises because I am fortunate and rich,
and the rich are always envied. A happy man is everybody’s enemy.”

About two days later there was a new pilot and another machinist on the
steamer.

“And where is Yakov?” asked the boy.

“I discharged him. I ordered him away.”

“For that?” queried Foma.

“Yes, for that very thing.”

“And Petrovich, too?”

“Yes, I sent him the same way.”

Foma was pleased with the fact that his father was able to change the
men so quickly. He smiled to his father, and, coming out on the deck,
walked up to a sailor, who sat on the floor, untwisting a piece of rope
and making a swab.

“We have a new pilot here,” announced Foma.

“I know. Good health to you, Foma Ignatich! How did you sleep?”

“And a new machinist, too.”

“And a new machinist. Are you sorry for Petrovich?”

“Really? And he was so good to you.”

“Well, why did he abuse my father?”

“Oh? Did he abuse him?”

“Of course he did. I heard it myself.”

“Mm--and your father heard it, too?”

“No, I told him.”

“You--so”--drawled the sailor and became silent, taking up his work
again.

“And papa says to me: ‘You,’ he says, ‘you are master here--you can
drive them all away if you wish.’”

“So,” said the sailor, gloomily looking at the boy, who was so
enthusiastically boasting to him of his supreme power. From that day
on Foma noticed that the crew did not regard him as before. Some became
more obliging and kind, others did not care to speak to him, and
when they did speak to him, it was done angrily, and not at all
entertainingly, as before. Foma liked to watch while the deck was being
washed: their trousers rolled up to their knees, or sometimes taken off
altogether, the sailors, with swabs and brushes in their hands, cleverly
ran about the deck, emptying pails of water on it, besprinkling one
another, laughing, shouting, falling. Streams of water ran in every
direction, and the lively noise of the men intermingled with the gray
splash of the water. Before, the boy never bothered the sailors in this
playful and light work; nay, he took an active part, besprinkling them
with water and laughingly running away, when they threatened to pour
water over him. But after Yakov and Petrovich had been discharged, he
felt that he was in everybody’s way, that no one cared to play with him
and that no one regarded him kindly. Surprised and melancholy, he left
the deck, walked up to the wheel, sat down there, and, offended, he
thoughtfully began to stare at the distant green bank and the dented
strip of woods upon it. And below, on the deck, the water was splashing
playfully, and the sailors were gaily laughing. He yearned to go down to
them, but something held him back.

“Keep away from them as much as possible,” he recalled his father’s
words; “you are their master.” Then he felt like shouting at the
sailors--something harsh and authoritative, so his father would scold
them. He thought a long time what to say, but could not think of
anything. Another two, three days passed, and it became perfectly clear
to him that the crew no longer liked him. He began to feel lonesome on
the steamer, and amid the parti-coloured mist of new impressions, still
more often there came up before Foma the image of his kind and gentle
Aunt Anfisa, with her stories, and smiles, and soft, ringing laughter,
which filled the boy’s soul with a joyous warmth. He still lived in the
world of fairy-tales, but the invisible and pitiless hand of reality
was already at work tearing the beautiful, fine web of the wonderful,
through which the boy had looked at everything about him. The incident
with the machinist and the pilot directed his attention to his
surroundings; Foma’s eyes became more sharp-sighted. A conscious
searchfulness appeared in them and in his questions to his father rang a
yearning to understand which threads and springs were managing the deeds
of men.

One day a scene took place before him: the sailors were carrying wood,
and one of them, the young, curly-haired and gay Yefim, passing the deck
of the ship with hand-barrows, said loudly and angrily:

“No, he has no conscience whatever! There was no agreement that I should
carry wood. A sailor--well, one’s business is clear--but to carry wood
into the bargain--thank you! That means for me to take off the skin I
have not sold. He is without conscience! He thinks it is clever to sap
the life out of us.”

The boy heard this grumbling and knew that it was concerning his father.
He also noticed that although Yefim was grumbling, he carried more wood
on his stretcher than the others, and walked faster than the others.
None of the sailors replied to Yefim’s grumbling, and even the one who
worked with him was silent, only now and then protesting against the
earnestness with which Yefim piled up the wood on the stretchers.

“Enough!” he would say, morosely, “you are not loading a horse, are
you?”

“And you had better keep quiet. You were put to the cart--cart it and
don’t kick--and should your blood be sucked--keep quiet again. What can
you say?”

Suddenly Ignat appeared, walked up to the sailor and, stopping in front
of him, asked sternly:

“What were you talking about?”

“I am talking--I know,” replied Yefim, hesitating. “There was no
agreement--that I must say nothing.”

“And who is going to suck blood?” asked Ignat, stroking his beard.

The sailor understood that he had been caught unawares, and seeing no
way out of it, he let the log of wood fall from his hands, rubbed his
palms against his pants, and, facing Ignat squarely, said rather boldly:

“And am I not right? Don’t you suck it?”

“I?”

“You.”

Foma saw that his father swung his hand. A loud blow resounded, and the
sailor fell heavily on the wood. He arose immediately and worked on in
silence. Blood was trickling from his bruised face on to the white bark
of the birch wood; he wiped the blood off his face with the sleeve of
his shirt, looked at his sleeve and, heaving a sigh, maintained silence,
and when he went past Foma with the hand-harrows, two big, turbid
tears were trembling on his face, near the bridge of his nose, and Foma
noticed them.

At dinner Foma was pensive and now and then glanced at his father with
fear in his eyes.

“Why do you frown?” asked his father, gently.

“Frown?”

“Are you ill, perhaps? Be careful. If there is anything, tell me.”

“You are strong,” said Foma of a sudden musingly.

“I? That’s right. God has favoured me with strength.”

“How hard you struck him!” exclaimed the boy in a low voice, lowering
his head.

Ignat was about to put a piece of bread with caviar into his mouth,
but his hand stopped, held back by his son’s exclamation; he looked
interrogatively at Foma’s drooping head and asked:

“You mean Yefim, don’t you?”

“Yes, he was bleeding. And how he walked afterward, how he cried,” said
the boy in a low voice.

“Mm,” roared Ignat, chewing a bite. “Well, are you sorry for him?”

“It’s a pity!” said Foma, with tears in his voice.

“Yes. So that’s the kind of a fellow you are,” said Ignat.

Then, after a moment’s silence, he filled a wineglass with vodka,
emptied it, and said sternly, in a slightly reprimanding tone:

“There is no reason why you should pity him. He brawled at random,
and therefore got what he deserved. I know him: he is a good fellow,
industrious, strong and not a bit foolish. But to argue is not his
business; I may argue, because I am the master. It isn’t simple to be
master. A punch wouldn’t kill him, but will make him wiser. That’s
the way. Eh, Foma! You are an infant, and you do not understand these
things. I must teach you how to live. It may be that my days on earth
are numbered.”

Ignat was silent for awhile, drank some more vodka and went on
instinctively:

“It is necessary to have pity on men. You are right in doing so. But you
must pity them sensibly. First look at a man, find out what good there
is in him, and what use may be made of him! And if you find him to
be strong and capable--pity and assist him. And if he is weak and
not inclined to work--spit upon him, pass him by. Just keep this in
mind--the man who complains against everything, who sighs and moans all
the time--that man is worth nothing; he merits no compassion and you
will do him no good whatever, even if you help him. Pity for such people
makes them more morose, spoils them the more. In your godfather’s house
you saw various kinds of people--unfortunate travellers and hangers-on,
and all sorts of rabble. Forget them. They are not men, they are just
shells, and are good for nothing. They are like bugs, fleas and other
unclean things. Nor do they live for God’s sake--they have no God. They
call His name in vain, in order to move fools to pity, and, thus pitied,
to fill their bellies with something. They live but for their bellies,
and aside from eating, drinking, sleeping and moaning they can do
nothing. And all they accomplish is the soul’s decay. They are in your
way and you trip over them. A good man among them--like fresh apples
among bad ones--may soon be spoilt, and no one will profit by it. You
are young, that’s the trouble. You cannot comprehend my words. Help him
who is firm in misery. He may not ask you for assistance, but think of
it yourself, and assist him without his request. And if he should happen
to be proud and thus feel offended at your aid, do not allow him to see
that you are lending him a helping hand. That’s the way it should be
done, according to common sense! Here, for example, two boards, let us
say, fall into the mud--one of them is a rotten one, the other, a good
sound board. What should you do? What good is there in the rotten board?
You had better drop it, let it stay in the mud and step on it so as not
to soil your feet. As to the sound board, lift it up and place it in the
sun; if it can be of no use to you, someone else may avail himself of
it. That’s the way it is, my son! Listen to me and remember. There is no
reason why Yefim should be pitied. He is a capable fellow, he knows his
value. You cannot knock his soul out with a box on the ear. I’ll just
watch him for about a week, and then I’ll put him at the helm. And
there, I am quite sure, he’ll be a good pilot. And if he should be
promoted to captain, he wouldn’t lose courage--he would make a clever
captain! That’s the way people grow. I have gone through this school
myself, dear. I, too, received more than one box on the ear when I was
of his age. Life, my son, is not a dear mother to all of us. It is our
exacting mistress.”

Ignat talked with his son about two hours, telling him of his own youth,
of his toils, of men; their terrible power, and of their weakness; of
how they live, and sometimes pretend to be unfortunate in order to live
on other people’s money; and then he told him of himself, and of how he
rose from a plain working man to be proprietor of a large concern. The
boy listened to his words, looked at him and felt as though his father
were coming nearer and nearer to him. And though his father’s story
did not contain the material of which Aunt Anfisa’s fairy-tales were
brimful, there was something new in it, something clearer and
more comprehensible than in her fairy-tales, and something just as
interesting. Something powerful and warm began to throb within his
little heart, and he was drawn toward his father. Ignat, evidently,
surmised his son’s feelings by his eyes: he rose abruptly from his seat,
seized him in his arms and pressed him firmly to his breast. And Foma
embraced his neck, and, pressing his cheek to that of his father, was
silent and breathed rapidly.

“My son,” whispered Ignat in a dull voice, “My darling! My joy! Learn
while I am alive. Alas! it is hard to live.”

The child’s heart trembled at this whisper; he set his teeth together,
and hot tears gushed from his eyes.

Until this day Ignat had never kindled any particular feeling in his
son: the boy was used to him; he was tired of looking at his enormous
figure, and feared him slightly, but was at the same time aware that his
father would do anything for him that he wanted. Sometimes Ignat would
stay away from home a day, two, a week, or possibly the entire summer.
And yet Foma did not even notice his absence, so absorbed was he by his
love for Aunt Anfisa. When Ignat returned the boy was glad, but he could
hardly tell whether it was his father’s arrival that gladdened him or
the playthings he brought with him. But now, at the sight of Ignat, the
boy ran to meet him, grasped him by the hand, laughed, stared into his
eyes and felt weary if he did not see him for two or three hours: His
father became interesting to him, and, rousing his curiosity, he fairly
developed love and respect for himself. Every time that they were
together Foma begged his father:

“Papa, tell me about yourself.”

.........................

The steamer was now going up the Volga. One suffocating night in July,
when the sky was overcast with thick black clouds, and everything on the
Volga was somewhat ominously calm, they reached Kazan and anchored near
Uslon at the end of an enormous fleet of vessels. The clinking of the
anchor chains and the shouting of the crew awakened Foma; he looked
out of the window and saw, far in the distance, small lights glimmering
fantastically: the water about the boat black and thick, like oil--and
nothing else could be seen. The boy’s heart trembled painfully and he
began to listen attentively. A scarcely audible, melancholy song reached
his ears--mournful and monotonous as a chant on the caravan the watchmen
called to one another; the steamer hissed angrily getting up steam.
And the black water of the river splashed sadly and quietly against the
sides of the vessels. Staring fixedly into the darkness, until his eyes
hurt, the boy discerned black piles and small lights dimly burning high
above them. He knew that those were barges, but this knowledge did
not calm him and his heart throbbed unevenly, and, in his imagination,
terrifying dark images arose.

“O-o-o,” a drawling cry came from the distance and ended like a wail.

Someone crossed the deck and went up to the side of the steamer.

“O-o-o,” was heard again, but nearer this time.

“Yefim!” some one called in a low voice on the deck. “Yefimka!”

“Well?”

“Devil! Get up! Take the boat-hook.”

“O-o-o,” someone moaned near by, and Foma, shuddering, stepped back from
the window.

The queer sound came nearer and nearer and grew in strength, sobbed and
died out in the darkness. While on the deck they whispered with alarm:

“Yefimka! Get up! A guest is floating!”

“Where?” came a hasty question, then bare feet began to patter about the
deck, a bustle was heard, and two boat-hooks slipped down past the boy’s
face and almost noiselessly plunged into the water.

“A gue-e-est!” Some began to sob near by, and a quiet, but very queer
splash resounded.

The boy trembled with fright at this mournful cry, but he could not tear
his hands from the window nor his eyes from the water.

“Light the lantern. You can’t see anything.”

“Directly.”

And then a spot of dim light fell over the water. Foma saw that the
water was rocking calmly, that a ripple was passing over it, as though
the water were afflicted, and trembled for pain.

“Look! Look!” they whispered on the deck with fright.

At the same time a big, terrible human face, with white teeth set
together, appeared on the spot of light. It floated and rocked in the
water, its teeth seemed to stare at Foma as though saying, with a smile:

“Eh, boy, boy, it is cold. Goodbye!”

The boat-hooks shook, were lifted in the air, were lowered again into
the water and carefully began to push something there.

“Shove him! Shove! Look out, he may be thrown under the wheel.”

“Shove him yourself then.”

The boat-hooks glided over the side of the steamer, and, scratching
against it, produced a noise like the grinding of teeth. Foma could
not close his eyes for watching them. The noise of feet stamping on the
deck, over his head, was gradually moving toward the stern. And then
again that moaning cry for the dead was heard:

“A gue-e-est!”

“Papa!” cried Foma in a ringing voice. “Papa!” His father jumped to his
feet and rushed toward him.

“What is that? What are they doing there?” cried Foma.

Wildly roaring, Ignat jumped out of the cabin with huge bounds. He soon
returned, sooner than Foma, staggering and looking around him, had time
to reach his father’s bed.

“They frightened you? It’s nothing!” said Ignat, taking him up in his
arms. “Lie down with me.”

“What is it?” asked Foma, quietly.

“It was nothing, my son. Only a drowned man. A man was drowned and he is
floating. That’s nothing! Don’t be afraid, he has already floated clear
of us.”

“Why did they push him?” interrogated the boy, firmly pressing close to
his father, and shutting his eyes for fright.

“It was necessary to do so. The water might have thrown him under the
wheel. Under ours, for instance. Tomorrow the police would notice
it, there would be trouble, inquests, and we would be held here for
examination. That’s why we shoved him along. What difference does it
make to him? He is dead; it doesn’t pain him; it doesn’t offend him. And
the living would be troubled on his account. Sleep, my son.

“So he will float on that way?”

“He will float. They’ll take him out somewhere and bury him.”

“And will a fish devour him?”

“Fish do not eat human bodies. Crabs eat them. They like them.”

Foma’s fright was melting, from the heat of his father’s body, but
before his eyes the terrible sneering face was still rocking in the
black water.

“And who is he?”

“God knows! Say to God about him: ‘Oh Lord, rest his soul! ’”

“Lord, rest his soul!” repeated Foma, in a whisper.

“That’s right. Sleep now, don’t fear. He is far away now! Floating on.
See here, be careful as you go up to the side of the ship. You may fall
overboard. God forbid! And--”

“Did he fall overboard?”

“Of course. Perhaps he was drunk, and that’s his end! And maybe he threw
himself into the water. There are people who do that. They go and throw
themselves into the water and are drowned. Life, my dear, is so arranged
that death is sometimes a holiday for one, sometimes it is a blessing
for all.”

“Papa.”

“Sleep, sleep, dear.”



CHAPTER III

DURING the very first day of his school life, stupefied by the lively
and hearty noise of provoking mischiefs and of wild, childish games,
Foma picked out two boys from the crowd who at once seemed more
interesting to him than the others. One had a seat in front of him.
Foma, looking askance, saw a broad back; a full neck, covered with
freckles; big ears; and the back of the head closely cropped, covered
with light-red hair which stood out like bristles.

When the teacher, a bald-headed man, whose lower lip hung down, called
out: “Smolin, African!” the red-headed boy arose slowly, walked up to
the teacher, calmly stared into his face, and, having listened to the
problem, carefully began to make big round figures on the blackboard
with chalk.

“Good enough!” said the teacher. “Yozhov, Nicolai. Proceed!”

One of Foma’s neighbours, a fidgety little boy with black little
mouse-eyes, jumped up from his seat and passed through the aisle,
striking against everything and turning his head on all sides. At the
blackboard he seized the chalk, and, standing up on the toes of his
boots, noisily began to mark the board with the chalk, creaking and
filling with chalk dust, dashing off small, illegible marks.

“Not so loud!” said the teacher, wrinkling his yellow face and
contracting his fatigued eyes. Yozhov spoke quickly and in a ringing
voice:

“Now we know that the first peddler made 17k. profit.”

“Enough! Gordyeeff! Tell me what must we do in order to find out how
much the second peddler gained?”

Watching the conduct of the boys, so unlike each other, Foma was thus
taken unawares by the question and he kept quiet.

“Don’t you know? How? Explain it to him, Smolin.”

Having carefully wiped his fingers, which had been soiled with chalk,
Smolin put the rag away, and, without looking at Foma, finished the
problem and again began to wipe his hands, while Yozhov, smiling and
skipping along as he walked, returned to his seat.

“Eh, you!” he whispered, seating himself beside Foma, incidentally
striking his side with his fist. “Why don’t you know it? What was the
profit altogether? Thirty kopecks. And there were two peddlers. One of
them got 17. Well, how much did the other one get?”

“I know,” replied Foma, in a whisper, feeling confused and examining the
face of Smolin, who was sedately returning to his seat. He didn’t like
that round, freckled face, with the blue eyes, which were loaded with
fat. And Yozhov pinched his leg and asked:

“Whose son are you? The Frantic’s?”

“Yes.”

“So. Do you wish me to prompt you always?”

“Yes.”

“And what will you give me for it?”

Foma thought awhile and asked:

“And do you know it all yourself?”

“I? I am the best pupil. You’ll see for yourself.”

“Hey, there! Yozhov, you are talking again?” cried the teacher, faintly.

Yozhov jumped to his feet and said boldly:

“It’s not I, Ivan Andreyich--it’s Gordyeeff.”

“Both of them were whispering,” announced Smolin, serenely.

Wrinkling his face mournfully and moving his big lip comically, the
teacher reprimanded them all, but his words did not prevent Yozhov from
whispering immediately:

“Very well, Smolin! I’ll remember you for telling.”

“Well, why do you blame it all on the new boy?” asked Smolin, in a low
voice, without even turning his head to them.

“All right, all right,” hissed Yozhov.

Foma was silent, looking askance at his brisk neighbour, who at once
pleased him and roused in him a desire to get as far as possible away
from him. During recess he learned from Yozhov that Smolin, too, was
rich, being the son of a tan-yard proprietor, and that Yozhov himself
was the son of a guard at the Court of Exchequer, and very poor. The
last was clearly evident by the adroit boy’s costume, made of gray
fustian and adorned with patches on the knees and elbows; by his pale,
hungry-looking face; and, by his small, angular and bony figure. This
boy spoke in a metallic alto, elucidating his words with grimaces and
gesticulations, and he often used words whose meaning was known but to
himself.

“We’ll be friends,” he announced to Foma.

“Why did you complain to the teacher about me?” Gordyeeff reminded
Yozhov, looking at him suspiciously.

“There! What’s the difference to you? You are a new scholar and rich.
The teacher is not exacting with the rich. And I am a poor hanger-on; he
doesn’t like me, because I am impudent and because I never bring him any
presents. If I had been a bad pupil he would have expelled me long ago.
You know I’ll go to the Gymnasium from here. I’ll pass the second class
and then I’ll leave. Already a student is preparing me for the second
class. There I’ll study so that they can’t hold me back! How many horses
do you have?”

“Three. What do you need to study so much for?” asked Foma.

“Because I am poor. The poor must study hard so that they may become
rich. They become doctors, functionaries, officers. I shall be a
‘tinkler.’ A sword at my side, spur on my boots. Cling, cling! And what
are you going to be?”

“I don’t know,” said Foma, pensively, examining his companion.

“You need not be anything. And are you fond of pigeons?”

“Yes.”

“What a good-for-nothing you are! Oh! Eh!” Yozhov imitated Foma’s slow
way of speaking. “How many pigeons do you have?”

“I have none.”

“Eh, you! Rich, and yet you have no pigeons. Even I have three. If my
father had been rich I would have had a hundred pigeons and chased them
all day long. Smolin has pigeons, too, fine ones! Fourteen. He made me
a present of one. Only, he is greedy. All the rich are greedy. And you,
are you greedy, too?”

“I don’t know,” said Foma, irresolutely.

“Come up to Smolin’s and the three of us together will chase the
pigeons.”

“Very well. If they let me.”

“Why, does not your father like you?”

“He does like me.”

“Well, then, he’ll let you go. Only don’t tell him that I am coming.
Perhaps he would not let you go with me. Tell him you want to go to
Smolin’s. Smolin!”

A plump boy came up to them, and Yozhov accosted him, shaking his head
reproachfully:

“Eh, you red-headed slanderer! It isn’t worth while to be friends with
you, blockhead!”

“Why do you abuse me?” asked Smolin, calmly, examining Foma fixedly.

“I am not abusing you; I am telling the truth,” Yozhov explained,
straightening himself with animation. “Listen! Although you are a
kissel, but--let it go! We’ll come up to see you on Sunday after mass.”

“Come,” Smolin nodded his head.

“We’ll come up. They’ll ring the bell soon. I must run to sell the
siskin,” declared Yozhov, pulling out of his pocket a paper package,
wherein some live thing was struggling. And he disappeared from the
school-yard as mercury from the palm of a hand.

“What a queer fellow he is!” said Foma, dumfounded by Yozhov’s
adroitness and looking at Smolin interrogatively.

“He is always like this. He’s very clever,” the red-headed boy
explained.

“And cheerful, too,” added Foma.

“Cheerful, too,” Smolin assented. Then they became silent, looking at
each other.

“Will you come up with him to my house?” asked the red-headed boy.

“Yes.”

“Come up. It’s nice there.”

Foma said nothing to this. Then Smolin asked him:

“Have you many friends?”

“I have none.”

“Neither did I have any friends before I went to school. Only cousins.
Now you’ll have two friends at once.”

“Yes,” said Foma.

“Are you glad?”

“I’m glad.”

“When you have lots of friends, it is lively. And it is easier to study,
too--they prompt you.”

“And are you a good pupil?”

“Of course! I do everything well,” said Smolin, calmly.

The bell began to bang as though it had been frightened and was hastily
running somewhere.

Sitting in school, Foma began to feel somewhat freer, and compared his
friends with the rest of the boys. He soon learned that they both were
the very best boys in school and that they were the first to attract
everybody’s attention, even as the two figures 5 and 7, which had not
yet been wiped off the blackboard. And Foma felt very much pleased that
his friends were better than any of the other boys.

They all went home from school together, but Yozhov soon turned into
some narrow side street, while Smolin walked with Foma up to his very
house, and, departing, said:

“You see, we both go home the same way, too.”

At home Foma was met with pomp: his father made him a present of a heavy
silver spoon, with an ingenious monogram on it, and his aunt gave him
a scarf knitted by herself. They were awaiting him for dinner, having
prepared his favourite dishes for him, and as soon as he took off his
coat, seated him at the table and began to ply him with questions.

“Well, how was it? How did you like the school?” asked Ignat, looking
lovingly at his son’s rosy, animated face.

“Pretty good. It’s nice!” replied Foma.

“My darling!” sighed his aunt, with feeling, “look out, hold your own
with your friends. As soon as they offend you tell your teachers about
it.”

“Go on. What else will you tell him?” Ignat smiled. “Never do that! Try
to get square with every offender yourself, punish him with your own
hand, not with somebody else’s. Are there any good fellows there?”

“There are two,” Foma smiled, recalling Yozhov. “One of them is so
bold--terrible!”

“Whose is he?”

“A guard’s son.”

“Mm! Bold did you say?”

“Dreadfully bold!”

“Well, let him be! And the other?”

“The other one is red-headed. Smolin.”

“Ah! Evidently Mitry Ivanovitch’s son. Stick to him, he’s good company.
Mitry is a clever peasant. If the son takes after his father it is all
right. But that other one--you know, Foma, you had better invite them
to our house on Sunday. I’ll buy some presents and you can treat them.
We’ll see what sort of boys they are.”

“Smolin asked me to come to him this Sunday,” said Foma, looking up at
his father questioningly.

“So. Well, you may go! That’s all right, go. Observe what kind of
people there are in the world. You cannot pass your life alone, without
friendship. Your godfather and I, for instance, have been friends for
more than twenty years, and I have profited a great deal by his common
sense. So you, too, try to be friendly with those that are better and
wiser than you. Rub against a good man, like a copper coin against
silver, and you may then pass for a silver coin yourself.”

And, bursting into laughter at his comparison, Ignat added seriously:

“I was only jesting. Try to be, not artificial, but genuine. And have
some common sense, no matter how little, but your own. Have you many
lessons to do?”

“Many!” sighed the boy, and to his sigh, like an echo, his aunt answered
with a heavy sigh.

“Well, study. Don’t be worse than others at school. Although, I’ll tell
you, even if there were twenty-five classes in your school, they could
never teach you there anything save reading, writing and arithmetic. You
may also learn some naughty things, but God protect you! I shall give
you a terrible spanking if you do. If you smoke tobacco I’ll cut your
lips off.”

“Remember God, Fomushka,” said the aunt. “See that you don’t forget our
Lord.”

“That’s true! Honour God and your father. But I wish to tell you that
school books are but a trivial matter. You need these as a carpenter
needs an adze and a pointer. They are tools, but the tools cannot teach
you how to make use of them. Understand? Let us see: Suppose an adze
were handed to a carpenter for him to square a beam with it. It’s not
enough to have hands and an adze; it is also necessary for him to know
how to strike the wood so as not to hit his foot instead. To you the
knowledge of reading and writing is given, and you must regulate your
life with it. Thus it follows that books alone are but a trifle in this
matter; it is necessary to be able to take advantage of them. And it is
this ability that is more cunning than any books, and yet nothing about
it is written in the books. This, Foma, you must learn from Life itself.
A book is a dead thing, you may take it as you please, you may tear it,
break it--it will not cry out. While should you but make a single wrong
step in life, or wrongly occupy a place in it, Life will start to bawl
at you in a thousand voices; it will deal you a blow, felling you to the
ground.”

Foma, his elbows leaning on the table, attentively listened to his
father, and under the sound of his powerful voice he pictured to himself
now the carpenter squaring a beam, now himself, his hands outstretched,
carefully and stealthily approaching some colossal and living thing, and
desiring to grasp that terrible something.

“A man must preserve himself for his work and must be thoroughly
acquainted with the road to it. A man, dear, is like the pilot on a
ship. In youth, as at high tide, go straight! A way is open to you
everywhere. But you must know when it is time to steer. The waters
recede--here you see a sandbank, there, a rock; it is necessary to know
all this and to slip off in time, in order to reach the harbour safe and
sound.”

“I will reach it!” said the boy, looking at his father proudly and with
confidence.

“Eh? You speak courageously!” Ignat burst into laughter. And the aunt
also began to laugh kindly.

Since his trip with his father on the Volga, Foma became more lively and
talkative at home, with his father, with his aunt and with Mayakin. But
on the street, in a new place, or in the presence of strangers, he was
always gloomy, always looking about him with suspicion, as though he
felt something hostile to him everywhere, something hidden from him
spying on him.

At nights he sometimes awoke of a sudden and listened for a long time
to the silence about him, fixedly staring into the dark with wide-open
eyes. And then his father’s stories were transformed before him into
images and pictures. Without being aware of it, he mixed up those
stories with his aunt’s fairy-tales, thus creating for himself a chaos
of adventures wherein the bright colours of fantasy were whimsically
intertwined with the stern shades of reality. This resulted in something
colossal, incomprehensible; the boy closed his eyes and drove it all
away from him and tried to check the play of his imagination, which
frightened him. In vain he attempted to fall asleep, and the chamber
became more and more crowded with dark images. Then he quietly roused
his aunt.

“Auntie! Auntie!”

“What? Christ be with you.”

“I’ll come to you,” whispered Foma.

“Why? Sleep, darling, sleep.”

“I am afraid,” confessed the boy.

“You better say to yourself, ‘And the Lord will rise again,’ then you
won’t be afraid.”

Foma lies with his eyes open and says the prayer. The silence of the
night pictures itself before him in the form of an endless expanse
of perfectly calm, dark water, which has overflowed everything and
congealed; there is not a ripple on it, not a shadow of a motion, and
neither is there anything within it, although it is bottomlessly deep.
It is very terrible for one to look down from the dark at this dead
water. But now the sound of the night watchman’s mallet is heard, and
the boy sees that the surface of the water is beginning to tremble, and,
covering the surface with ripples, light little balls are dancing upon
it. The sound of the bell on the steeple, with one mighty swing, brings
all the water in agitation and it is slightly trembling from that sound;
a big spot of light is also trembling, spreading light upon the water,
radiating from its centre into the dark distance, there growing paler
and dying out. Again there is weary and deathlike repose in this dark
desert.

“Auntie,” whispers Foma, beseechingly.

“Dearest?”

“I am coming to you.”

“Come, then, come, my darling.”

Going over into auntie’s bed, he presses close to her, begging:

“Tell me something.”

“At night?” protests auntie, sleepily.

“Please.”

He does not have to ask her long. Yawning, her eyes closed, the old
woman begins slowly in a voice grown heavy with sleep:

“Well, my dear sir, in a certain kingdom, in a certain empire, there
lived a man and his wife, and they were very poor. They were so
unfortunate that they had nothing to eat. They would go around begging,
somebody would give them a crust of stale bread and that would keep them
for awhile. And it came to pass that the wife begot a child--a child was
born--it was necessary to christen it, but, being poor, they could not
entertain the godparents and the guests, so nobody came to christen the
child. They tried this and they tried that--yet nobody came. And they
began to pray to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord! Oh Lord!’”

Foma knew this awful story about God’s godchild. He had heard it more
than once and was already picturing to himself this godchild riding on
a white horse to his godfather and godmother; he was riding in the
darkness, over the desert, and he saw there all the unbearable miseries
to which sinners are condemned. And he heard their faint moans and
requests:

“Oh! Man! Ask the Lord yet how long are we to suffer here!”

Then it appeared to Foma that it was he who was riding at night on the
white horse, and that the moans and the implorings were addressed to
him. His heart contracts with some incomprehensible desire; sorrow
compressed his breast and tears gathered in his eyes, which he had
firmly closed and now feared to open.

He is tossing about in his bed restlessly.

“Sleep, my child. Christ be with you!” says the old woman, interrupting
her tale of men suffering for their sins.

But in the morning after such a night Foma rose sound and cheerful,
washed himself hastily, drank his tea in haste and ran off to school,
provided with sweet cakes, which were awaited by the always hungry
little Yozhov, who greedily subsisted on his rich friend’s generosity.

“Got anything to eat?” he accosted Foma, turning up his sharp-pointed
nose. “Let me have it, for I left the house without eating anything. I
slept too long, devil take it! I studied up to two o’clock last night.
Have you solved your problems?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Eh, you lazy bones! Well, I’ll dash them off for you directly!”

Driving his small, thin teeth into the cakes, he purred something like a
kitten, stamped his left foot, beating time, and at the same time solved
the problem, rattling off short phrases to Foma:

“See? Eight bucketfuls leaked out in one hour. And how many hours did it
leak--six? Eh, what good things they eat in your house! Consequently, we
must multiply six by eight. Do you like cake with green onions? Oh, how
I like it! So that in six hours forty-eight bucketfuls leaked out of
the first gauge-cock. And altogether the tub contained ninety. Do you
understand the rest?”

Foma liked Yozhov better than Smolin, but he was more friendly with
Smolin. He wondered at the ability and the sprightliness of the little
fellow. He saw that Yozhov was more clever and better than himself; he
envied him, and felt offended on that account, and at the same time he
pitied him with the condescending compassion of a satisfied man for a
hungry one. Perhaps it was this very compassion that prevented him from
preferring this bright boy to the boring red-headed Smolin. Yozhov,
fond of having a laugh at the expense of his well-fed friends, told them
quite often: “Eh, you are little trunks full of cakes!”

Foma was angry with him for his sneers, and one day, touched to the
quick, said wickedly and with contempt:

“And you are a beggar--a pauper!”

Yozhov’s yellow face became overcast, and he replied slowly:

“Very well, so be it! I shall never prompt you again--and you’ll be like
a log of wood!”

And they did not speak to each other for about three days, very much to
the regret of the teacher, who during these days had to give the lowest
markings to the son of the esteemed Ignat Matveyich.

Yozhov knew everything: he related at school how the procurator’s
chambermaid gave birth to a child, and that for this the procurator’s
wife poured hot coffee over her husband; he could tell where and when it
was best to catch perch; he knew how to make traps and cages for birds;
he could give a detailed account of how the soldier had hanged himself
in the garret of the armoury, and knew from which of the pupils’ parents
the teacher had received a present that day and precisely what sort of a
present it was.

The sphere of Smolin’s knowledge and interests was confined to the
merchant’s mode of life, and, above all, the red-headed boy was fond of
judging whether this man was richer than that, valuing and pricing their
houses, their vessels and their horses. All this he knew to perfection,
and spoke of it with enthusiasm.

Like Foma, he regarded Yozhov with the same condescending pity, but more
as a friend and equal. Whenever Gordyeeff quarrelled with Yozhov, Smolin
hastened to reconcile them, and he said to Foma one day, on their way
home:

“Why do you always quarrel with Yozhov?”

“Well, why is he so self-conceited?” said Foma, angrily.

“He is proud because you never know your lessons, and he always helps
you out. He is clever. And because he is poor--is he to blame for that?
He can learn anything he wants to, and he will be rich, too.”

“He is like a mosquito,” said Foma, disdainfully; “he will buzz and
buzz, and then of a sudden will bite.”

But there was something in the life of these boys that united them all;
there were hours when the consciousness of difference in their natures
and positions was entirely lost. On Sundays they all gathered at
Smolin’s, and, getting up on the roof of the wing, where they had an
enormous pigeon-house, they let the pigeons loose.

The beautiful, well-fed birds, ruffling their snow-white wings, darted
out of the pigeon-house one by one, and, seating themselves in a row
on the ridge of the roof, and, illumined by the sun, cooing, flaunted
before the boys.

“Scare them!” implored Yozhov, trembling for impatience.

Smolin swung a pole with a bast-wisp fastened to its end, and whistled.

The frightened pigeons rushed into the air, filling it with the hurried
flapping of their wings. And now, outlining big circles, they easily
soar upwards, into the blue depths of the sky; they float higher and
higher, their silver and snow-white feathers flashing. Some of them are
striving to reach the dome of the skies with the light soaring of the
falcon, their wings outstretched wide and almost motionless; others
play, turn over in the air, now dropping downward in a snowy lump, now
darting up like an arrow. Now the entire flock seems as though hanging
motionless in the desert of the sky, and, growing smaller and smaller,
seems to sink in it. With heads thrown back, the boys admire the birds
in silence, without taking their eyes from them--their tired eyes, so
radiant with calm joy, not altogether free from envying these winged
creatures, which so freely took flight from earth up into the pure
and calm atmosphere full of the glitter of the sun. The small group of
scarcely visible dots, now mere specks in the azure of the sky, leads
on the imagination of the children, and Yozhov expresses their common
feeling when, in a low voice, he says thoughtfully:

“That’s the way we ought to fly, friends.”

While Foma, knowing that human souls, soaring heavenward, oftentimes
assume the form of pigeons, felt in his breast the rising of a burning,
powerful desire.

Unified by their joy, attentively and mutely awaiting the return of
their birds from the depths of the sky, the boys, pressing close to one
another, drifted far away from the breath of life, even as their pigeons
were far from earth; at this moment they are merely children, knowing
neither envy nor anger; free from everything, they are near to one
another, they are mute, judging their feelings by the light in their
eyes--and they feel as happy as the birds in the sky.

But now the pigeons come down on the roof again, and, tired out by their
flight, are easily driven into the pigeon-house.

“Friends, let’s go for apples?” suggests Yozhov, the instigator of all
games and adventures.

His call drives out of the children’s souls the peacefulness brought
into them by the pigeons, and then, like plunderers, carefully listening
for each and every sound, they steal quietly across the back yards
toward the neighbouring garden. The fear of being caught is balanced by
the hope of stealing with impunity. But stealing is work and dangerous
work at that, and everything that is earned by your own labour is so
sweet! And the more effort required to gain it, the sweeter it is.
Carefully the boys climb over the fence of the garden, and, bending
down, crawl toward the apple trees and, full of fright, look around
vigilantly. Their hearts tremble and their throbbing slackens at the
faintest rustle. They are alike afraid of being caught, and, if noticed,
of being recognised, but in case they should only see them and yell
at them, they would be satisfied. They would separate, each going in a
different direction, and then, meeting again, their eyes aglow with joy
and boldness, would laughingly tell one another how they felt when they
heard some one giving chase to them, and what happened to them when they
ran so quickly through the garden, as though the ground were burning
under their feet.

Such invasions were more to Foma’s liking than all other adventures
and games, and his behaviour during these invasions was marked with
a boldness that at once astounded and angered his companions. He was
intentionally careless in other people’s gardens: he spoke loud, noisily
broke the branches of apple trees, and, tearing off a worm-eaten apple,
threw it in the direction of the proprietor’s house. The danger of being
caught in the act did not frighten him; it rather encouraged him--his
eyes would turn darker, his teeth would clench, and his face would
assume an expression of anger and pride.

Smolin, distorting his big mouth contemptibly, would say to him:

“You are making entirely too much fuss about yourself.”

“I am not a coward anyway!” replied Foma.

“I know that you are not a coward, but why do you boast of it? One may
do a thing as well without boasting.”

Yozhov blamed him from a different point of view:

“If you thrust yourself into their hands willingly you can go to the
devil! I am not your friend. They’ll catch you and bring you to your
father--he wouldn’t do anything to you, while I would get such a
spanking that all my bones would be skinned.”

“Coward!” Foma persisted, stubbornly.

And it came to pass one day that Foma was caught by the second captain,
Chumakov, a thin little old man. Noiselessly approaching the boy, who
was hiding away in his bosom the stolen apples, the old man seized him
by the shoulders and cried in a threatening voice:

“Now I have you, little rogue! Aha!”

Foma was then about fifteen years old, and he cleverly slipped out of
the old man’s hands. Yet he did not run from him, but, knitting his brow
and clenching his fist, he said threateningly:

“You dare to touch me!”

“I wouldn’t touch you. I’ll just turn you over to the police! Whose son
are you?”

Foma did not expect this, and all his boldness and spitefulness suddenly
left him.

The trip to the police station seemed to him something which his father
would never forgive him. He shuddered and said confusedly:

“Gordyeeff.”

“Ignat Gordyeeff’s?”

“Yes.”

Now the second captain was taken aback. He straightened himself,
expanded his chest and for some reason or other cleared his throat
impressively. Then his shoulders sank and he said to the boy in a
fatherly tone:

“It’s a shame! The son of such a well-known and respected man! It is
unbecoming your position. You may go. But should this happen again! Hm!
I should be compelled to notify your father, to whom, by the way, I have
the honour of presenting my respects.”

Foma watched the play of the old man’s physiognomy and understood that
he was afraid of his father. Like a young wolf, he looked askance at
Chumakov; while the old man, with comical seriousness, twisted his
gray moustache, hesitating before the boy, who did not go away,
notwithstanding the given permission.

“You may go,” repeated the old man, pointing at the road leading to his
house.

“And how about the police?” asked Foma, sternly, and was immediately
frightened at the possible answer.

“I was but jesting,” smiled the old man. “I just wanted to frighten
you.”

“You are afraid of my father yourself,” said Foma, and, turning his back
to the old man, walked off into the depth of the garden.

“I am afraid? Ah! Very well!” exclaimed Chumakov after him, and Foma
knew by the sound of his voice that he had offended the old man. He felt
sad and ashamed; he passed the afternoon in walking, and, coming home,
he was met by his father’s stern question:

“Foma! Did you go to Chumakov’s garden?”

“Yes, I did,” said the boy, calmly, looking into his father’s eyes.

Evidently Ignat did not expect such an answer and he was silent for
awhile, stroking his beard.

“Fool! Why did you do it? Have you not enough of your own apples?”

Foma cast down his eyes and was silent, standing before his father.

“See, you are shamed! Yozhishka must have incited you to this! I’ll
give it to him when he comes, or I’ll make an end of your friendship
altogether.”

“I did it myself,” said Foma, firmly.

“From bad to worse!” exclaimed Ignat. “But why did you do it?”

“Because.”

“Because!” mocked the father. “Well, if you did it you ought to be
able to explain to yourself and to others the reason for so doing. Come
here!”

Foma walked up to his father, who was sitting on a chair, and placed
himself between his knees. Ignat put his hand on the boy’s shoulders,
and, smiling, looked into his eyes.

“Are you ashamed?”

“I am ashamed,” sighed Foma.

“There you have it, fool! You have disgraced me and yourself.”

Pressing his son’s head to his breast, he stroked his hair and asked
again:

“Why should you do such a thing--stealing other people’s apples?”

“I--I don’t know,” said Foma, confusedly. “Perhaps because it is so
lonesome. I play and play the same thing day after day. I am growing
tired of it! While this is dangerous.”

“Exciting?” asked the father, smiling.

“Yes.”

“Mm, perhaps it is so. But, nevertheless, Foma, look out--drop this, or
I shall deal with you severely.”

“I’ll never climb anywhere again,” said the boy with confidence.

“And that you take all the blame on yourself--that is good. What will
become of you in the future, only God knows, but meanwhile--it is pretty
good. It is not a trifle if a man is willing to pay for his deeds with
his own skin. Someone else in your place would have blamed his friends,
while you say: ‘I did it myself.’ That’s the proper way, Foma. You
commit the sin, but you also account for it. Didn’t Chumakov strike
you?” asked Ignat, pausing as he spoke.

“I would have struck him back,” declared Foma, calmly.

“Mm,” roared his father, significantly.

“I told him that he was afraid of you. That is why he complained.
Otherwise he was not going to say anything to you about it.”

“Is that so?”

“‘By God! Present my respects to your father,’ he said.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! the dog! See what kind of people there are; he is robbed and yet he
makes a bow and presents his respects! Ha, ha! It is true it might have
been worth no more than a kopeck, but a kopeck is to him what a rouble
is to me. And it isn’t the kopeck, but since it is mine, no one dares
touch it unless I throw it away myself. Eh! The devil take them! Well,
tell me--where have you been, what have you seen?”

The boy sat down beside his father and told him in detail all the
impressions of that day. Ignat listened, fixedly watching the animated
face of his son, and the eyebrows of the big man contracted pensively.

“You are still but floating on the surface, dear. You are still but a
child. Eh! Eh!”

“We scared an owl in the ravine,” related the boy. “That was fun! It
began to fly about and struck against a tree--bang! It even began to
squeak so pitifully. And we scared it again; again it rose and flew
about here and there, and again it struck against something, so that its
feathers were coming out. It flew about in the ravine and at last hid
itself somewhere with difficulty. We did not try to look for it, we felt
sorry it was all bruised. Papa, is an owl entirely blind in daytime?”

“Blind!” said Ignat; “some men will toss about in life even as this owl
in daytime. Ever searching for his place, he strives and strives--only
feathers fly from him, but all to no purpose. He is bruised, sickened,
stripped of everything, and then with all his might he thrusts himself
anywhere, just to find repose from his restlessness. Woe to such people.
Woe to them, dear!”

“How painful is it to them?” said Foma in a low voice.

“Just as painful as to that owl.”

“And why is it so?”

“Why? It is hard to tell. Someone suffers because he is darkened by his
pride--he desires much, but has but little strength. Another because of
his foolishness. But then there are a thousand and one other reasons,
which you cannot understand.”

“Come in and have some tea,” Anfisa called to them. She had been
standing in the doorway for quite a long while, and, folding her hands,
lovingly admired the enormous figure of her brother, who bent over Foma
with such friendliness, and the pensive pose of the boy, who clung to
his father’s shoulder.

Thus day by day Foma’s life developed slowly--a quiet, peaceful life,
not at all brimful of emotions. Powerful impressions, rousing the boy’s
soul for an hour or for a day, sometimes stood out strikingly against
the general background of this monotonous life, but these were soon
obliterated. The boy’s soul was as yet but a calm lake--a lake hidden
from the stormy winds of life, and all that touched the surface of the
lake either sank to the bottom, stirring the placid water for a moment,
or gliding over the smooth surface, swam apart in big circles and
disappeared.

Having stayed at the district school for five years, Foma passed four
classes tolerably well and came out a brave, dark-haired fellow, with
a swarthy face, heavy eyebrows and dark down on the upper lip. His
big dark eyes had a naive and pensive look, and his lips were like a
child’s, half-open; but when meeting with opposition to his desires
or when irritated by something else, the pupils of his eyes would grow
wide, his lips press tight, and his whole face assume a stubborn and
resolute expression. His godfather, smiling sceptically, would often say
to him:

“To women, Foma, you’ll be sweeter than honey, but as yet not much
common sense can be seen in you.”

Ignat would heave a sigh at these words.

“You had better start out your son as soon as possible.”

“There’s time yet, wait.”

“Why wait? He’ll go about the Volga for two or three years and then
we’ll have him married. There’s my Lubov.”

Lubov Mayakina was now studying in the fifth class of some boarding
school. Foma often met her on the street at which meeting she always
bowed condescendingly, her fair head in a fashionable cap. Foma liked
her, but her rosy cheeks, her cheerful brown eyes and crimson lips could
not smooth the impression of offence given to him by her condescending
bows. She was acquainted with some Gymnasium students, and although
Yozhov, his old friend, was among them, Foma felt no inclination to be
with them, and their company embarrassed him. It seemed to him that
they were all boasting of their learning before him and that they were
mocking his ignorance. Gathered together in Lubov’s house they would
read some books, and whenever he found them reading or loudly arguing,
they became silent at his sight. All this removed them further from him.
One day when he was at Mayakin’s, Luba called him to go for a walk in
the garden, and there, walking by his side, asked him with a grimace on
her face:

“Why are you so unsociable? You never talk about anything.”

“What shall I talk about, since I know nothing!” said Foma, plainly.

“Study--read books.”

“I don’t feel like doing it.”

“You see, the Gymnasium students know everything, and know how to talk
about everything. Take Yozhov, for instance.”

“I know Yozhov--a chatterbox.”

“You simply envy him. He is very clever--yes. He will soon graduate from
the Gymnasium--and then he’ll go to Moscow to study in the University.”

“Well, what of it?” said Foma, indifferently.

“And you’ll remain just an ignorant man.”

“Well, be it so.”

“That will be nice!” exclaimed Luba, ironically.

“I shall hold my ground without science,” said Foma, sarcastically. “And
I’ll have a laugh at all the learned people. Let the hungry study. I
don’t need it.”

“Pshaw, how stupid you are, bad, disgusting!” said the girl with
contempt and went away, leaving him alone in the garden. Offended and
gloomy, he looked after her, moved his eyebrows and lowering his head,
slowly walked off into the depth of the garden.

He already began to recognise the beauty of solitude and the sweet
poison of contemplation. Oftentimes, during summer evenings, when
everything was coloured by the fiery tints of sunset, kindling the
imagination, an uneasy longing for something incomprehensible penetrated
his breast. Sitting somewhere in a dark corner of the garden or lying
in bed, he conjured up before him the images of the fairy-tale
princesses--they appeared with the face of Luba and of other young
ladies of his acquaintance, noiselessly floating before him in the
twilight and staring into his eyes with enigmatic looks. At times these
visions awakened in him a mighty energy, as though intoxicating him--he
would rise and, straightening his shoulders, inhale the perfumed air
with a full chest; but sometimes these same visions brought to him a
feeling of sadness--he felt like crying, but ashamed of shedding tears,
he restrained himself and never wept in silence. Or suddenly his heart
began to tremble with the desire to express his gratitude to God, to
bow before Him; the words of the prayer flashed through his memory, and
beholding the sky, he whispered them for a long time, one by one, and
his heart grew lighter, breathing into prayer the excess of his power.

The father patiently and carefully introduced him into commercial
circles, took him on the Exchange, told him about his contracts and
enterprises, about his co-associates, described to him how they had made
their way, what fortunes they now possessed, what natures were theirs.
Foma soon mastered it, regarding everything seriously and thoughtfully.

“Our bud is blooming into a blood-red cup-rose!” Mayakin smiled, winking
to Ignat.

And yet, even when Foma was nineteen years old, there was something
childish in him, something naive which distinguished him from the boys
of his age. They were laughing at him, considering him stupid; he kept
away from them, offended by their relations toward him. As for his
father and Mayakin, who were watching him vigilantly, this uncertainty
of Foma’s character inspired them with serious apprehensions.

“I cannot understand him!” Ignat would say with contrite heart. “He does
not lead a dissipated life, he does not seem to run after the women,
treats me and you with respect, listens to everything--he is more like a
pretty girl than a fellow! And yet he does not seem to be stupid!”

“No, there’s nothing particularly stupid about him,” said Mayakin.

“It looks as though he were waiting for something--as though some kind
of shroud were covering his eyes. His late mother groped on earth in the
same way.

“Just look, there’s Afrikanka Smolin, but two years older than my
boy--what a man he has become! That is, it is difficult to tell whether
he is his father’s head or his father his. He wants to go to some
factory to study. He swears:

“‘Eh,’ says he, ‘papa, you have not taught me enough.’ Yes. While mine
does not express himself at all. Oh Lord!”

“Look here,” Mayakin advised him, “you had better push him head foremost
into some active business! I assure you! Gold is tested in fire. We’ll
see what his inclinations are when at liberty. Send him out on the
Kama--alone.”

“To give him a trial?”

“Well, he’ll do some mischief--you’ll lose something--but then we’ll
know what stuff he is made of.”

“Indeed--I’ll send him off,” Ignat decided.

And thus in the spring, Ignat sent his son off on the Kama with two
barges laden with corn. The barges were led by Gordyeeff’s steamer
“Philezhny,” under the command of Foma’s old acquaintance, the former
sailor Yefim--now, Yefim Ilyich, a squarely built man of about thirty
with lynx-like eyes--a sober-minded, steady and very strict captain.

They sailed fast and cheerfully, because all were contented. At first
Foma was proud of the responsible commission with which he had been
charged. Yefim was pleased with the presence of the young master, who
did not rebuke or abuse him for each and every oversight; and the happy
frame of mind of the two most important persons on the steamer reflected
in straight rays on the entire crew. Having left the place where they
had taken in their cargo of corn in April, the steamer reached the place
of its destination in the beginning of May, and the barges were anchored
near the shore with the steamer at their side. Foma’s duty was to
deliver the corn as soon as possible, and receiving the payments, start
off for Perm, where a cargo of iron was awaiting him, which Ignat had
undertaken to deliver at the market.

The barges stood opposite a large village, near a pine forest, about two
versts distant from the shore. On the very next day after their arrival,
a big and noisy crowd of women and peasants, on foot and on horses,
came up to the shore early in the morning. Shouting and singing, they
scattered on the decks and in an instant work started expeditiously.
Having descended into the holds, the women were filling the sacks with
rye, the peasants, throwing the sacks upon their shoulders, ran over the
gang-planks to the shore, and from the shore, carts, heavily laden with
the long-expected corn, went off slowly to the village. The women sang
songs; the peasants jested and gaily abused one another; the sailors
representing the guardians of peace, scolded the working people now and
then; the gang-planks, bending under the feet of the carriers, splashed
against the water heavily; while on the shore the horses neighed, and
the carts and the sand under the wheels were creaking.

The sun had just risen, the air was fresh and invigorating and densely
filled with the odour of pines; the calm water of the river, reflecting
the clear sky, was gently murmuring, breaking against the sides of the
vessels and the chains of the anchors. The loud and cheerful noise
of toil, the youthful beauty of nature, gaily illumined by the
sunbeams--all was full of a kind-hearted, somewhat crude, sound power,
which pleasantly stirred Foma’s soul, awakening in him new and perplexed
sensations and desires. He was sitting by the table under the awning of
the steamer and drinking tea, together with Yefim and the receiver of
the corn, a provincial clerk--a redheaded, short-sighted gentleman in
glasses. Nervously shrugging his shoulders the receiver was telling in
a hoarse voice how the peasants were starving, but Foma paid little
attention to his words, looking now at the work below, now at the other
side of the river--a tall, yellow, sandy steep shore, whose edges were
covered with pine trees. It was unpeopled and quiet.

“I’ll have to go over there,” thought Foma. And as though from a
distance the receiver’s tiresome, unpleasant, harsh voice fell on his
ears:

“You wouldn’t believe it--at last it became horrible! Such an incident
took place! A peasant came up to a certain intelligent man in Osa and
brought along with him a girl about sixteen years old.

“‘What do you wish?”

“‘Here,’ he says, ‘I’ve brought my daughter to your Honour.’

“‘What for?’

“‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘you’ll take her--you are a bachelor.’

“‘That is, how? What do you mean?’

“‘I took her around town,’ he says. ‘I wanted to hire her out as a
servant--but nobody would have her--take her at least as your mistress!’

“Do you understand? He offered his own daughter--just think of it! A
daughter--as a mistress! The devil knows what that is! Eh? The man, of
course, became indignant and began abusing the peasant. But the peasant
spoke to him reasonably:

“‘Your Honour! Of what use is she to me at this time? Utterly useless.
I have,’ says he, ‘three boys--they will be working men; it is necessary
to keep them up. Give me,’ says he, ‘ten roubles for the girl, and that
will improve my lot and that of my boys.’

“How is that? Eh? It is simply terrible, I tell you.”

“No good!” sighed Yefim. “As they say--hunger will break through stone
walls. The stomach, you see, has its own laws.”

This story called forth in Foma a great incomprehensible interest in the
fate of the girl, and the youth hastened to enquire of the receiver:

“Well, did the man buy her?”

“Of course not!” exclaimed the receiver, reproachfully.

“Well, and what became of her?”

“Some good people took pity on her--and provided for her.”

“A-h!” drawled Foma, and suddenly he said firmly and angrily: “I would
have given that peasant such a thrashing! I would have broken his head!”
 And he showed the receiver his big tightly-clenched fist.

“Eh! What for?” cried the receiver in a sickly, loud voice, tearing his
spectacles from his eyes. “You do not understand the motive.”

“I do understand it!” said Foma, with an obstinate shake of his head.

“But what could he do? It came to his mind.”

“How can one allow himself to sell a human being?”

“Ah! It is brutal, I agree with you.”

“And a girl at that! I would have given him the ten roubles!”

The receiver waved his hand hopelessly and became silent. His gesture
confused Foma. He arose from his seat, walked off to the railing
and looked down at the deck of the barge, which was covered with an
industriously working crowd of people. The noise intoxicated him, and
the uneasy something, which was rambling in his soul, was now defined
into a powerful desire to work, to have the strength of a giant, to
possess enormous shoulders and put on them at one time a hundred bags of
rye, that every one looking at him might be astonished.

“Come now, hurry up there!” he shouted down in a ringing voice. A few
heads were raised to him, some faces appeared before him, and one of
them--the face of a dark-eyed woman--smiled at him a gentle and enticing
smile. Something flared up in his breast at this smile and began to
spread over his veins in a hot wave. He drew back from the railing and
walked up to the table again, feeling that his cheeks were burning.

“Listen!” said the receiver, addressing him, “wire to your father asking
him to allow some grain for waste! Just see how much is lost here. And
here every pound is precious! You should have understood this! What a
fine father you have,” he concluded with a biting grimace.

“How much shall I allow?” asked Foma, boldly and disdainfully. “Do
you want a hundred puds? [A pud is a weight of 40 Russian pounds.] Two
hundred?”

“I--I thank you!” exclaimed the receiver, overjoyed and confused, “if
you have the right to do it.”

“I am the master!” said Foma, firmly. “And you must not speak that way
about my father--nor make such faces.”

“Pardon me! I--I do not doubt that you have full power. I thank you
heartily. And your father, too--in behalf of all these men--in behalf of
the people!”

Yefim looked cautiously at the young master, spreading out and smacking
his lips, while the master with an air of pride on his face listened
to the quick-witted speech of the receiver, who was pressing his hand
firmly.

“Two hundred puds! That is Russian-like, young man! I shall directly
notify the peasants of your gift. You’ll see how grateful they will
be--how glad.” And he shouted down:

“Eh, boys! The master is giving away two hundred puds.”

“Three hundred!” interposed Foma.

“Three hundred puds. Oh! Thank you! Three hundred puds of grain, boys!”

But their response was weak. The peasants lifted up their heads and
mutely lowered them again, resuming their work. A few voices said
irresolutely and as though unwillingly:

“Thanks. May God give you. We thank you very humbly.”

And some cried out gaily and disdainfully:

“What’s the use of that? If they had given each of us a glass of vodka
instead--that would be a just favour. For the grain is not for us--but
for the country Council.”

“Eh! They do not understand!” exclaimed the receiver, confused. “I’ll go
down and explain it to them.”

And he disappeared. But the peasants’ regard for his gift did not
interest Foma. He saw that the black eyes of the rosy-cheeked woman were
looking at him so strangely and pleasingly. They seemed to thank him
and caressingly beckoned him, and besides those eyes he saw nothing. The
woman was dressed like the city women. She wore shoes, a calico waist,
and over her black hair she had a peculiar kerchief. Tall and supple,
seated on a pile of wood, she repaired sacks, quickly moving her hands,
which were bare up to the elbows, and she smiled at Foma all the time.

“Foma Ignatyich!” he heard Yefim’s reproachful voice, “you’ve showed off
too much. Well, if it were only about fifty puds! But why so much? Look
out that we don’t get a good scolding for this.”

“Leave me alone!” said Foma, shortly.

“What is it to me? I’ll keep quiet. But as you are so young, and as I
was told to keep an eye on you, I may get a rap on the snout for being
heedless.”

“I’ll tell my father all about it. Keep quiet!” said Foma.

“As for me--let it be so--so that you are master here.”

“Very well.”

“I have said this, Foma Ignatyich, for your own sake--because you are so
young and simple-minded.”

“Leave me alone, Yefim!”

Yefim heaved a sigh and became silent, while Foma stared at the woman
and thought:

“I wish they would bring such a woman for sale to me.”

His heart beat rapidly. Though as yet physically pure, he already knew
from conversations the mysteries of intimate relations between men and
women. He knew by rude and shameful names, and these names kindled in
him an unpleasant, burning curiosity and shame; his imagination worked
obstinately, for he could not picture it to himself in intelligible
images. And in his soul he did not believe that those relations were
really so simple and rude, as he had been told. When they had laughed
at him and assured him that they were such, and, indeed, could not be
otherwise, he smiled stupidly and confusedly, but thought nevertheless
that the relations with women did not have to be in such a shameful form
for everyone, and that, in all probability, there was something purer,
less rude and abusive to a human being.

Now looking at the dark-eyed working woman with admiration, Foma
distinctly felt just that rude inclination toward her, and he was
ashamed and afraid of something. And Yefim, standing beside him, said
admonitively:

“There you are staring at the woman, so that I cannot keep silence any
longer. You do not know her, but when she winks at you, you may, because
of your youth--and with a nature like yours--you may do such a thing
that we’ll have to go home on foot by the shore. And we’ll have to thank
God if our trousers at least remain with us.”

“What do you want?” asked Foma, red with confusion.

“I want nothing. And you had better mind me. In regard to affairs with
women I may perfectly well be a teacher. You must deal with a woman very
plainly--give her a bottle of vodka, something to eat after it, then a
couple of bottles of beer and after everything give her twenty kopecks
in cash. For this price she will show you all her love in the best way
possible.”

“You are lying,” said Foma, softly.

“I am lying? Why shall I lie to you since I have observed that same
policy perhaps a hundred times? Just charge me to have dealings with
her. Eh? I’ll make you acquainted with her in a moment.”

“Very well,” said Foma, feeling that he could hardly breathe and that
something was choking his throat.

“Well, then, I’ll bring her up in the evening.”

And Yefim smiled approvingly into Foma’s face and walked off. Until
evening Foma walked about as though lost in mist, not noticing the
respectful and beseeching glances with which the peasants greeted him
at the receiver’s instigation. Dread fell on him, he felt himself guilty
before somebody, and to all those that addressed him he replied humbly
and gently, as though excusing himself for something. Some of the
working people went home toward evening, others gathered on the shore
near a big, bright bonfire and began cooking their supper. Fragments of
their conversation floated about in the stillness of the evening. The
reflection of the fire fell on the river in red and yellow stripes,
which trembled on the calm water and on the window panes of the cabin
where Foma was sitting. He sat in the corner on a lounge, which was
covered with oilcloth--and waited. On the table before him were a few
bottles of vodka and beer, and plates with bread and dessert. He
covered the windows and did not light the lamp; the faint light from
the bonfire, penetrating through the curtains, fell on the table, on
the bottles and on the wall, and trembled, now growing brighter, now
fainter. It was quiet on the steamer and on the barges, only from
the shore came indistinct sounds of conversation, and the river was
splashing, scarcely audible, against the sides of the steamer. It seemed
to Foma that somebody was hiding in the dark near by, listening to him
and spying upon him. Now somebody is walking over the gang-plank of the
barges with quick and heavy steps--the gang-plank strikes against the
water clangously and angrily. Foma hears the muffled laughter of the
captain and his lowered voice. Yefim stands by the cabin door and
speaks softly, but somewhat reprimandingly, as though instructing. Foma
suddenly felt like crying out:

“It is not necessary!”

And he arose from the lounge--but at this moment the cabin door was
opened, the tall form of a woman appeared on the threshold, and,
noiselessly closing the door behind her, she said in a low voice:

“Oh dear! How dark it is! Is there a living soul somewhere around here?”

“Yes,” answered Foma, softly.

“Well, then, good evening.”

And the woman moved forward carefully.

“I’ll light the lamp,” said Foma in a broken voice, and, sinking on the
lounge, he curled himself up in the corner.

“It is good enough this way. When you get used to it you can see
everything in the dark as well.”

“Be seated,” said Foma.

“I will.”

She sat down on the lounge about two steps away from him. Foma saw the
glitter of her eyes, he saw a smile on her full lips. It seemed to
him that this smile of hers was not at all like that other smile
before--this smile seemed plaintive, sad. This smile encouraged him;
he breathed with less difficulty at the sight of these eyes, which, on
meeting his own, suddenly glanced down on the floor. But he did not know
what to say to this woman and for about two minutes both were silent. It
was a heavy, awkward silence. She began to speak:

“You must be feeling lonesome here all alone?”

“Yes,” answered Foma.

“And do you like our place here?” asked the woman in a low voice.

“It is nice. There are many woods here.”

And again they became silent.

“The river, if you like, is more beautiful than the Volga,” uttered
Foma, with an effort.

“I was on the Volga.”

“Where?”

“In the city of Simbirsk.”

“Simbirsk?” repeated Foma like an echo, feeling that he was again unable
to say a word.

But she evidently understood with whom she had to deal, and she suddenly
asked him in a bold whisper:

“Why don’t you treat me to something?”

“Here!” Foma gave a start. “Indeed, how queer I am? Well, then, come up
to the table.”

He bustled about in the dark, pushed the table, took up one bottle, then
another, and again returned them to their place, laughing guiltily and
confusedly as he did so. She came up close to him and stood by his side,
and, smiling, looked at his face and at his trembling hands.

“Are you bashful?” she suddenly whispered.

He felt her breath on his cheek and replied just as softly:

“Yes.”

Then she placed her hands on his shoulders and quietly drew him to her
breast, saying in a soothing whisper:

“Never mind, don’t be bashful, my young, handsome darling. How I pity
you!”

And he felt like crying because of her whisper, his heart was melting
in sweet fatigue; pressing his head close to her breast, he clasped
her with his hands, mumbling to her some inarticulate words, which were
unknown to himself.

“Be gone!” said Foma in a heavy voice, staring at the wall with his eyes
wide open.

Having kissed him on the cheek she walked out of the cabin, saying to
him:

“Well, good-bye.”

Foma felt intolerably ashamed in her presence; but no sooner did she
disappear behind the door than he jumped up and seated himself on the
lounge. Then he arose, staggering, and at once he was seized with the
feeling of having lost something very valuable, something whose presence
he did not seem to have noticed in himself until the moment it was lost.
But immediately a new, manly feeling of self-pride took possession of
him. It drowned his shame, and, instead of the shame, pity for the woman
sprang up within him--for the half-clad woman, who went out alone into
the dark of the chilly May night. He hastily came out on the deck--it
was a starlit, but moonless night; the coolness and the darkness
embraced him. On the shore the golden-red pile of coals was still
glimmering. Foma listened--an oppressive stillness filled the air, only
the water was murmuring, breaking against the anchor chains. There was
not a sound of footsteps to be heard. Foma now longed to call the woman,
but he did not know her name. Eagerly inhaling the fresh air into his
broad chest, he stood on deck for a few minutes. Suddenly, from beyond
the roundhouse--from the prow--a moan reached his ears--a deep, loud
moan, resembling a wail. He shuddered and went thither carefully,
understanding that she was there.

She sat on the deck close to the side of the steamer, and, leaning her
head against a heap of ropes, she wept. Foma saw that her bare white
shoulders were trembling, he heard her pitiful moans, and began to feel
depressed. Bending over her, he asked her timidly:

“What is it?”

She nodded her head and said nothing in reply.

“Have I offended you?”

“Go away,” she said.

“But, how?” said Foma, alarmed and confused, touching her head with his
hand. “Don’t be angry. You came of your own free will.”

“I am not angry!” she replied in a loud whisper. “Why should I be angry
at you? You are not a seducer. You are a pure soul! Eh, my darling! Be
seated here by my side.”

And taking Foma by the hand, she made him sit down, like a child, in
her lap, pressed his head close to her breast, and, bending over him,
pressed her lips to his for a long time.

“What are you crying about?” asked Foma, caressing her cheek with one
hand, while the other clasped the woman’s neck.

“I am crying about myself. Why have you sent me away?” she asked
plaintively.

“I began to feel ashamed of myself,” said Foma, lowering his head.

“My darling! Tell me the truth--haven’t you been pleased with me?” she
asked with a smile, but her big, hot tears were still trickling down on
Foma’s breast.

“Why should you speak like this?” exclaimed the youth, almost
frightened, and hotly began to mumble to her some words about her
beauty, about her kindness, telling her how sorry he was for her and
how bashful in her presence. And she listened and kept on kissing his
cheeks, his neck, his head and his uncovered breast.

He became silent--then she began to speak--softly and mournfully as
though speaking of the dead:

“And I thought it was something else. When you said, ‘Be gone!’ I got
up and went away. And your words made me feel sad, very sad. There was
a time, I remembered, when they caressed me and fondled me unceasingly,
without growing tired; for a single kind smile they used to do for me
anything I pleased. I recalled all this and began to cry! I felt sorry
for my youth, for I am now thirty years old, the last days for a woman!
Eh, Foma Ignatyevich!” she exclaimed, lifting her voice louder, and
reiterating the rhythm of her harmonious speech, whose accents rose and
fell in unison with the melodious murmuring of the water.

“Listen to me--preserve your youth! There is nothing in the world better
than that. There is nothing more precious than youth. With youth, as
with gold, you can accomplish anything you please. Live so that you
shall have in old age something to remind you of your youth. Here I
recalled myself, and though I cried, yet my heart blazed up at the very
recollection of my past life. And again I was young, as though I drank
of the water of life! My sweet child I’ll have a good time with you, if
I please you, we’ll enjoy ourselves as much as we can. Eh! I’ll burn to
ashes, now that I have blazed up!”

And pressing the youth close to herself, she greedily began to kiss him
on the lips.

“Lo-o-ok o-u-u-u-t!” the watch on the barge wailed mournfully, and,
cutting short the last syllable, began to strike his mallet against the
cast-iron board.

The shrill, trembling sounds harshly broke the solemn quiet of the
night.

A few days later, when the barges had discharged their cargo and the
steamer was ready to leave for Perm, Yefim noticed, to his great sorrow,
that a cart came up to the shore and that the dark-eyed Pelageya, with a
trunk and with some bundles, was in it.

“Send a sailor to bring her things,” ordered Foma, nodding his head
toward the shore.

With a reproachful shake of his head, Yefim carried out the order
angrily, and then asked in a lowered voice:

“So she, too, is coming with us?”

“She is going with me,” Foma announced shortly.

“It is understood. Not with all of us. Oh, Lord!”

“Why are you sighing?”

“Yes. Foma Ignatyich! We are going to a big city. Are there not plenty
of women of her kind?”

“Well, keep quiet!” said Foma, sternly.

“I will keep quiet, but this isn’t right!”

“What?”

“This very wantonness of ours. Our steamer is perfect, clean--and
suddenly there is a woman there! And if it were at least the right sort
of a woman! But as it is, she merely bears the name of woman.”

Foma frowned insinuatingly and addressed the captain, imperiously
emphasizing his words:

“Yefim, I want you to bear it in mind, and to tell it to everybody here,
that if anyone will utter an obscene word about her, I’ll strike him on
the head with a log of wood!”

“How terrible!” said Yefim, incredulously, looking into the master’s
face with curiosity. But he immediately made a step backward. Ignat’s
son, like a wolf, showed his teeth, the apples of his eyes became wider,
and he roared:

“Laugh! I’ll show you how to laugh!”

Though Yefim lost courage, he nevertheless said with dignity:

“Although you, Foma Ignatyich, are the master, yet as I was told,
‘Watch, Yefim,’ and then I am the captain here.”

“The captain?” cried Foma, shuddering in every limb and turning pale.
“And who am I?”

“Well, don’t bawl! On account of such a trifle as a woman.”

Red spots came out on Foma’s pale face, he shifted from one foot to the
other, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket with a convulsive
motion and said in a firm and even voice:

“You! Captain! See here, say another word against me--and you go to
the devil! I’ll put you ashore! I’ll get along as well with the pilot!
Understand? You cannot command me. Do you see?”

Yefim was dumfounded. He looked at his master and comically winked his
eyes, finding no reply to his words.

“Do you understand, I say?”

“Yes. I understand!” drawled Yefim. “But what is all this noise about?
On account of--”

“Silence!”

Foma’s eyes, which flashed wildly, and his face distorted with wrath,
suggested to the captain the happy thought to leave his master as soon
as possible and, turning around quickly, he walked off.

“Pshaw! How terrible! As it seems the apple did not fall too far from
the tree,” he muttered sneeringly, walking on the deck. He was angry at
Foma, and considered himself offended for nothing, but at the same time
he began to feel over himself the real, firm hand of a master. For years
accustomed to being subordinate, he rather liked this manifestation of
power over him, and, entering the cabin of the old pilot, he related
to him the scene between himself and his master, with a shade of
satisfaction in his voice.

“See?” he concluded his story. “A pup coming from a good breed is an
excellent dog at the very first chase. From his exterior he is so-so. A
man of rather heavy mind as yet. Well, never mind, let him have his
fun. It seems now as though nothing wrong will come out of this. With a
character like his, no. How he bawled at me! A regular trumpet, I tell
you! And he appointed himself master at once. As though he had sipped
power and strictness out of a ladle.”

Yefim spoke the truth: during these few days Foma underwent a striking
transformation. The passion now kindled in him made him master of the
soul and body of a woman; he eagerly absorbed the fiery sweetness of
this power, and this burned out all that was awkward in him, all that
gave him the appearance of a somewhat stupid, gloomy fellow, and,
destroying it, filled his heart with youthful pride, with the
consciousness of his human personality. Love for a woman is always
fruitful to the man, be the love whatever it may; even though it were to
cause but sufferings there is always much that is rich in it. Working
as a powerful poison on those whose souls are afflicted, it is for the
healthy man as fire for iron, which is to be transformed into steel.

Foma’s passion for the thirty-year-old woman, who lamented in his
embraces her dead youth, did not tear him away from his affairs; he was
never lost in the caresses, or in his affairs, bringing into both his
whole self. The woman, like good wine, provoked in him alike a thirst
for labour and for love, and she, too, became younger from the kisses of
the youth.

In Perm, Foma found a letter waiting for him. It was from his godfather,
who notified him that Ignat, out of anxiety for his son, had begun to
drink heavily, and that it was harmful to drink thus, for a man of his
age. The letter concluded with advice to hurry up matters in order
to return home the sooner. Foma felt alarmed over this advice, and it
clouded the clear holiday of his heart. But this shadow soon melted in
his worries over his affairs, and in the caresses of Pelageya. His life
streamed on with the swiftness of a river wave, and each day brought to
him new sensations, awakening in him new thoughts. Pelageya’s relations
with him contained all the passion of a mistress, all that power of
feeling which women of her age put into their passion when drinking the
last drops from the cup of life. But at times a different feeling awoke
in her, a feeling not less powerful, and by which Foma became still more
attached to her--something similar to a mother’s yearning to guard her
beloved son from errors, to teach him the wisdom of life. Oftentimes at
night, sitting in his embraces on the deck, she spoke to him tenderly
and sadly:

“Mind me as an older sister of yours. I have lived, I know men. I have
seen a great deal in my life! Choose your companions with care, for
there are people just as contagious as a disease. At first you cannot
tell them even when you see them; he looks to be a man like everybody
else, and, suddenly, without being aware of it yourself, you will start
to imitate him in life. You look around--and you find that you have
contracted his scabs. I myself have lost everything on account of a
friend. I had a husband and two children. We lived well. My husband was
a clerk at a volost.” She became silent and looked for a long time at
the water, which was stirred by the vessel. Then she heaved a sigh and
spoke to him again:

“May the Holy Virgin guard you from women of my kind--be careful. You
are tender as yet, your heart has not become properly hardened. And
women are fond of such as you--strong, handsome, rich. And most of all
beware of the quiet women. They stick to a man like blood-suckers, and
suck and suck. And at the same time they are always so kind, so gentle.
They will keep on sucking your juice, but will preserve themselves.
They’ll only break your heart in vain. You had better have dealings with
those that are bold, like myself. These live not for the sake of gain.”

And she was indeed disinterested. In Perm Foma purchased for her
different new things and what-not. She was delighted, but later, having
examined them, she said sadly:

“Don’t squander your money too freely. See that your father does not get
angry. I love you anyway, without all this.”

She had already told him that she would go with him only as far as
Kazan, where she had a married sister. Foma could not believe that she
would leave him, and when, on the eve of their arrival at Kazan, she
repeated her words, he became gloomy and began to implore her not to
forsake him.

“Do not feel sorry in advance,” she said. “We have a whole night before
us. You will have time to feel sorry when I bid you good-bye, if you
will feel sorry at all.”

But he still tried to persuade her not to forsake him, and,
finally--which was to be expected--announced his desire to marry her.

“So, so!” and she began to laugh. “Shall I marry you while my husband
is still alive? My darling, my queer fellow! You have a desire to marry,
eh? But do they marry such women as I am? You will have many, many
mistresses. Marry then, when you have overflowed, when you have had your
fill of all sweets and feel like having rye bread. Then you may marry!
I have noticed that a healthy man, for his own peace, must not marry
early. One woman will not be enough to satisfy him, and he’ll go to
other women. And for your own happiness, you should take a wife only
when you know that she alone will suffice for you.”

But the more she spoke, the more persistent Foma became in his desire
not to part with her.

“Just listen to what I’ll tell you,” said the woman, calmly. “A splinter
of wood is burning in your hand, and you can see well even without its
light--you had better dip it into water, so that there will be no smell
of smoke and your hand will not be burned.”

“I do not understand your words.”

“Do understand. You have done me no wrong, and I do not wish to do you
any. And, therefore, I am going away.”

It is hard to say what might have been the result of this dispute if an
accident had not interfered with it. In Kazan Foma received a telegram
from Mayakin, who wrote to his godson briefly: “Come immediately on the
passenger steamer.” Foma’s heart contracted nervously, and a few hours
later, gloomy and pale, his teeth set together, he stood on the deck
of the steamer, which was leaving the harbour, and clinging to the rail
with his hands, he stared motionlessly into the face of his love, who
was floating far away from him together with the harbour and the shore.
Pelageya waved her handkerchief and smiled, but he knew that she was
crying, shedding many painful tears. From her tears the entire front
of Foma’s shirt was wet, and from her tears, his heart, full of gloomy
alarm, was sad and cold. The figure of the woman was growing smaller
and smaller, as though melting away, and Foma, without lifting his eyes,
stared at her and felt that aside from fear for his father and sorrow
for the woman, some new, powerful and caustic sensation was awakening in
his soul. He could not name it, but it seemed to him as something like a
grudge against someone.

The crowd in the harbour blended into a close, dark and dead spot,
faceless, formless, motionless. Foma went away from the rail and began
to pace the deck gloomily.

The passengers, conversing aloud, seated themselves to drink tea; the
porters bustled about on the gallery, setting the tables; somewhere
below, on the stern, in the third class, a child was crying, a harmonica
was wailing, the cook was chopping something with knives, the dishes
were jarring--producing a rather harsh noise. Cutting the waves and
making foam, shuddering under the strain and sighing heavily, the
enormous steamer moved rapidly against the current. Foma looked at the
wide strip of broken, struggling, and enraged waves at the stern of the
steamer, and began to feel a wild desire to break or tear something;
also to go, breast foremost, against the current and to mass its
pressure against himself, against his breast and his shoulders.

“Fate!” said someone beside him in a hoarse and weary voice.

This word was familiar to him: his Aunt Anfisa had often used it as
an answer to his questions, and he had invested in this brief word a
conception of a power, similar to the power of God. He glanced at the
speakers: one of them was a gray little old man, with a kind face;
the other was younger, with big, weary eyes and with a little black
wedge-shaped beard. His big gristly nose and his yellow, sunken cheeks
reminded Foma of his godfather.

“Fate!” The old man repeated the exclamation of his interlocutor with
confidence, and began to smile. “Fate in life is like a fisherman on the
river: it throws a baited hook toward us into the tumult of our life and
we dart at it with greedy mouths. Then fate pulls up the rod--and the
man is struggling, flopping on the ground, and then you see his heart is
broken. That’s how it is, my dear man.”

Foma closed his eyes, as if a ray of the sun had fallen full on them,
and shaking his head, he said aloud:

“True! That is true!”

The companions looked at him fixedly: the old man, with a fine, wise
smile; the large-eyed man, unfriendly, askance. This confused Foma; he
blushed and walked away, thinking of Fate and wondering why it had first
treated him kindly by giving him a woman, and then took back the gift
from him, so simply and abusively? And he now understood that the vague,
caustic feeling which he carried within him was a grudge against Fate
for thus sporting with him. He had been too much spoiled by life, to
regard more plainly the first drop of poison from the cup which was
just started, and he passed all the time of the journey without sleep,
pondering over the old man’s words and fondling his grudge. This grudge,
however, did not awaken in him despondency and sorrow, but rather a
feeling of anger and revenge.

Foma was met by his godfather, and to his hasty and agitated question,
Mayakin, his greenish little eyes flashing excitedly, said when he
seated himself in the carriage beside his godson:

“Your father has grown childish.”

“Drinking?”

“Worse--he has lost his mind completely.”

“Really? Oh Lord! Tell me.”

“Don’t you understand? A certain lady is always around him.”

“What about her?” exclaimed Foma, recalling his Pelageya, and for some
reason or other his heart was filled with joy.

“She sticks to him and--bleeds him.”

“Is she a quiet one?”

“She? Quiet as a fire. Seventy-five thousand roubles she blew out of his
pocket like a feather!”

“Oh! Who is she?”

“Sonka Medinskaya, the architect’s wife.”

“Great God! Is it possible that she--Did my father--Is it possible that
he took her as his sweetheart?” asked Foma, with astonishment, in a low
voice.

His godfather drew back from him, and comically opening his eyes wide,
said convincedly:

“You are out of your mind, too! By God, you’re out of your mind! Come to
your senses! A sweetheart at the age of sixty-three! And at such a price
as this. What are you talking about? Well, I’ll tell this to Ignat.”

And Mayakin filled the air with a jarring, hasty laughter, at which his
goat-like beard began to tremble in an uncomely manner. It took Foma a
long time to obtain a categorical answer; the old man, contrary to his
habit, was restless and irritated; his speech, usually fluent, was now
interrupted; he was swearing and expectorating as he spoke, and it was
with difficulty that Foma learned what the matter was. Sophya Pavlovna
Medinskaya, the wealthy architect’s wife, who was well known in the city
for her tireless efforts in the line of arranging various charitable
projects, persuaded Ignat to endow seventy-five thousand roubles for the
erection of a lodging-house in the city and of a public library with
a reading-room. Ignat had given the money, and already the newspapers
lauded him for his generosity. Foma had seen the woman more than once
on the streets; she was short; he knew that she was considered as one of
the most beautiful women in the city, and that bad rumours were afoot as
to her behaviour.

“Is that all?” exclaimed Foma, when his godfather concluded the story.
“And I thought God knows what!”

“You? You thought?” cried Mayakin, suddenly grown angry. “You thought
nothing, you beardless youngster!”

“Why do you abuse me?” Foma said.

“Tell me, in your opinion, is seventy-five thousand roubles a big sum or
not?”

“Yes, a big sum,” said Foma, after a moment’s thought.

“Ah, ha!”

“But my father has much money. Why do you make such a fuss about it?”

Yakov Tarasovich was taken aback. He looked into the youth’s face with
contempt and asked him in a faint voice:

“And you speak like this?”

“I? Who then?”

“You lie! It is your young foolishness that speaks. Yes! And my old
foolishness--brought to test a million times by life--says that you are
a young dog as yet, and it is too early for you to bark in a basso.”

Foma hearing this, had often been quite provoked by his godfather’s too
picturesque language.

Mayakin always spoke to him more roughly than his father, but now the
youth felt very much offended by the old man and said to him reservedly,
but firmly:

“You had better not abuse me without reflection, for I am no longer a
small child.”

“Come, come!” exclaimed Mayakin, mockingly lifting his eyebrows and
squinting.

This roused Foma’s indignation. He looked full into the old man’s eyes
and articulated with emphasis:

“And I am telling you that I don’t want to hear any more of that
undeserved abuse of yours. Enough!”

“Mm! So-o! Pardon me.”

Yakov Tarasovich closed his eyes, chewed a little with his lips, and,
turning aside from his godson, kept silent for awhile. The carriage
turned into a narrow street, and, noticing from afar the roof of his
house, Foma involuntarily moved forward. At the same time Mayakin asked
him with a roguish and gentle smile:

“Foma! Tell me--on whom you have sharpened your teeth? Eh?”

“Why, are they sharp?” asked Foma, pleased with the manner in which
Mayakin now regarded him.

“Pretty good. That’s good, dear. That’s very good! Your father and I
were afraid lest you should be a laggard. Well, have you learned to
drink vodka?”

“I drank it.”

“Rather too soon! Did you drink much of it?”

“Why much?”

“Does it taste good?”

“Not very.”

“So. Never mind, all this is not so bad. Only you are too outspoken.
You are ready to confess all your sins to each and every pope that comes
along. You must consider it isn’t always necessary to do that. Sometimes
by keeping silent you both please people and commit no sins. Yes. A
man’s tongue is very seldom sober. Here we are. See, your father does
not know that you have arrived. Is he home yet, I wonder?”

He was at home: his loud, somewhat hoarse laughter was heard from the
open windows of the rooms. The noise of the carriage, which stopped at
the house, caused Ignat to look out of the window, and at the sight of
his son he cried out with joy:

“Ah! You’ve come.”

After a while he pressed Foma to his breast with one hand, and, pressing
the palm of his other hand against his son’s forehead, thus bending
his head back, he looked into his face with beaming eyes and spoke
contentedly:

“You are sunburnt. You’ve grown strong. You’re a fine fellow! Madame!
How’s my son? Isn’t he fine?”

“Not bad looking,” a gentle, silver voice was heard. Foma glanced from
behind his father’s shoulder and noticed that a slender woman with
magnificent fair hair was sitting in the front corner of the room,
resting her elbows on the table; her dark eyes, her thin eyebrows and
plump, red lips strikingly defined on her pale face. Behind her armchair
stood a large philodendron-plant whose big, figured leaves were hanging
down in the air over her little golden head.

“How do you do, Sophya Pavlovna,” said Mayakin, tenderly, approaching
her with his hand outstretched. “What, are you still collecting
contributions from poor people like us?”

Foma bowed to her mutely, not hearing her answer to Mayakin, nor what
his father was saying to him. The lady stared at him steadfastly and
smiled to him affably and serenely. Her childlike figure, clothed in
some kind of dark fabric, was almost blended with the crimson stuff
of the armchair, while her wavy, golden hair and her pale face shone
against the dark background. Sitting there in the corner, beneath the
green leaves, she looked at once like a flower, and like an ikon.

“See, Sophya Pavlovna, how he is staring at you. An eagle, eh?” said
Ignat.

Her eyes became narrower, a faint blush leaped to her cheeks, and she
burst into laughter. It sounded like the tinkling of a little silver
bell. And she immediately arose, saying:

“I wouldn’t disturb you. Good-bye!”

When she went past Foma noiselessly, the scent of perfume came to him,
and he noticed that her eyes were dark blue, and her eyebrows almost
black.

“The sly rogue glided away,” said Mayakin in a low voice, angrily
looking after her.

“Well, tell us how was the trip? Have you squandered much money?” roared
Ignat, pushing his son into the same armchair where Medinskaya had been
sitting awhile before. Foma looked at him askance and seated himself in
another chair.

“Isn’t she a beautiful young woman, eh?” said Mayakin, smiling, feeling
Foma with his cunning eyes. “If you keep on gaping at her she will eat
away all your insides.”

Foma shuddered for some reason or other, and, saying nothing in reply,
began to tell his father about the journey in a matter-of-fact tone. But
Ignat interrupted him:

“Wait, I’ll ask for some cognac.”

“And you are keeping on drinking all the time, they say,” said Foma,
disapprovingly.

Ignat glanced at his son with surprise and curiosity, and asked:

“Is this the way to speak to your father?”

Foma became confused and lowered his head.

“That’s it!” said Ignat, kind-heartedly, and ordered cognac to be
brought to him.

Mayakin, winking his eyes, looked at the Gordyeeffs, sighed, bid them
good-bye, and, after inviting them to have tea with him in his raspberry
garden in the evening, went away.

“Where is Aunt Anfisa?” asked Foma, feeling that now, being alone with
his father, he was somewhat ill at ease.

“She went to the cloister. Well, tell me, and I will have some cognac.”

Foma told his father all about his affairs in a few minutes and he
concluded his story with a frank confession:

“I have spent much money on myself.”

“How much?”

“About six hundred roubles.”

“In six weeks! That’s a good deal. I see as a clerk you’re too expensive
for me. Where have you squandered it all?”

“I gave away three hundred puds of grain.”

“To whom? How?”

Foma told him all about it.

“Hm! Well, that’s all right!” Ignat approved. “That’s to show what stuff
we are made of. That’s clear enough--for the father’s honour--for the
honour of the firm. And there is no loss either, because that gives a
good reputation. And that, my dear, is the very best signboard for a
business. Well, what else?”

“And then, I somehow spent more.”

“Speak frankly. It’s not the money that I am asking you about--I just
want to know how you lived there,” insisted Ignat, regarding his son
attentively and sternly.

“I was eating, drinking.” Foma did not give in, bending his head
morosely and confusedly.

“Drinking vodka?”

“Vodka, too.”

“Ah! So. Isn’t it rather too soon?”

“Ask Yefim whether I ever drank enough to be intoxicated.”

“Why should I ask Yefim? You must tell me everything yourself. So you
are drinking? I don’t like it.”

“But I can get along without drinking.”

“Come, come! Do you want some cognac?”

Foma looked at his father and smiled broadly. And his father answered
him with a kindly smile:

“Eh, you. Devil! Drink, but look out--know your business. What can
you do? A drunkard will sleep himself sober, a fool--never. Let us
understand this much at least, for our own consolation. And did you have
a good time with girls, too? Be frank! Are you afraid that I will beat
you, or what?”

“Yes. There was one on the steamer. I had her there from Perm to Kazan.”

“So,” Ignat sighed heavily and said, frowning: “You’ve become defiled
rather too soon.”

“I am twenty years old. And you yourself told me that in your days
fellows married at the age of fifteen,” replied Foma, confused.

“Then they married. Very well, then, let us drop the subject.
Well, you’ve had dealings with a woman. What of it? A woman is like
vaccination, you cannot pass your life without her. As for myself, I
cannot play the hypocrite. I began to go around with women when I was
younger than you are now. But you must be on your guard with them.”

Ignat became pensive and was silent for a long time, sitting motionless,
his head bent low on his breast.

“Listen, Foma,” he started again, sternly and firmly. “I shall die
before long. I am old. Something oppresses my breast. I breathe with
difficulty. I’ll die. Then all my affairs will fall on your shoulders.
At first your godfather will assist you--mind him! You started quite
well; you attended to everything properly; you held the reins firmly
in your hands. And though you did squander a big sum of money, it is
evident that you did not lose your head. God grant the same in the
future. You should know this: business is a living, strong beast; you
must manage it ably; you must put a strong bridle on it or it will
conquer you. Try to stand above your business. Place yourself so that it
will all be under your feet; that each little tack shall be visible to
you.”

Foma looked at his father’s broad chest, heard his heavy voice and
thought to himself:

“Oh, but you won’t die so soon!”

This thought pleased him and awakened in him a kind, warm feeling for
his father.

“Rely upon your godfather. He has enough common sense in his head to
supply the whole town with it. All he lacks is courage, or he would have
risen high. Yes, I tell you my days on earth are numbered. Indeed, it
is high time to prepare myself for death; to cast everything aside; to
fast, and see to it that people bear me good-will.”

“They will!” said Foma with confidence.

“If there were but a reason why they should.”

“And the lodging-house?”

Ignat looked at his son and began to laugh.

“Yakov has had time to tell it to you already! The old miser. He must
have abused me?”

“A little.” Foma smiled.

“Of course! Don’t I know him?”

“He spoke of it as though it were his own money.”

Ignat leaned back in his chair and burst into still louder laughter.

“The old raven, eh? That’s quite true. Whether it be his own money or
mine, it is all the same to him. There he is trembling now. He has an
aim in view, the bald-headed fellow. Can you tell me what it is?”

Foma thought awhile and said:

“I don’t know.”

“Eh, you’re stupid. He wants to tell our fortunes.”

“How is that?”

“Come now, guess!”

Foma looked at his father and--guessed it. His face became gloomy, he
slightly raised himself from the armchair and said resolutely:

“No, I don’t want to. I shall not marry her!”

“Oh? Why so? She is a strong girl; she is not foolish; she’s his only
child.”

“And Taras? The lost one? But I--I don’t want to at all!”

“The lost one is gone, consequently it is not worthwhile speaking of
him. There is a will, dear, which says: ‘All my movable and real estates
shall go to my daughter, Lubov.’ And as to the fact that she is your
godfather’s daughter, we’ll set this right.”

“It is all the same,” said Foma, firmly. “I shall not marry her!”

“Well, it is rather early to speak of it now! But why do you dislike her
so much?”

“I do not like such as she is.”

“So-o! Just think of it! And which women are more to your liking, sir,
may I ask?”

“Those that are more simple. She’s always busy with her Gymnasium
students and with her books. She’s become learned. She’ll be laughing at
my expense,” said Foma, emotionally.

“That is quite true. She is too bold. But that is a trifle. All sorts of
rust can be removed if you try to do it. That’s a matter for the future.
And your godfather is a clever old man. His was a peaceful, sedentary
life; sitting in one place he gave a thought to everything. It is
worthwhile listening to him, for he can see the wrong side of each
and every worldly affair. He is our aristocrat--descending from Mother
Yekaterina--ha, ha! He understands a great deal about himself. And as
his stem was cut off by Taras, he decided to put you in Taras’s place,
do you see?”

“No, I’d rather select my place myself,” said Foma, stubbornly.

“You are foolish as yet.” Ignat smiled in reply to his son’s words.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Aunt Anfisa.

“Foma! You’ve come,” she cried out, somewhere behind the doors. Foma
rose and went to meet her, with a gentle smile.

Again his life streamed on slowly, calmly, monotonously. Again the
Exchange and his father’s instructions. Retaining a kindly sarcastic and
encouraging tone in his relation toward his son, Ignat began to treat
him more strictly. He censured him for each and every trifle and
constantly reminded him that he brought him up freely; that he was never
in his way and that he never beat him.

“Other fathers beat fellows like yourself with logs of wood. And I never
even touched you with a finger.”

“Evidently I didn’t deserve it,” said Foma one day, calmly.

Ignat became angry at his son for these words and for the tone.

“Don’t talk so much!” he roared. “You’ve picked up courage because of
the softness of my hand. You find an answer to every word I say. Beware;
though my hand was soft, it can nevertheless still squeeze you so that
tears will gush forth from your heels. You’ve grown up too soon, like
a toad-stool, just sprung up from the ground. You have a bad smell
already.”

“Why are you so angry at me?” asked Foma, perplexed and offended, when
his father chanced to be in a happy frame of mind.

“Because you cannot tolerate it when your father grumbles at you. You’re
ready to quarrel immediately.”

“But it is offensive. I have not grown worse than I was before. Don’t I
see how others live at my age?”

“Your head wouldn’t fall off from my scolding you. And I scold you
because I see there is something in you that is not mine. What it is,
I do not know, but I see it is there. And that something is harmful to
you.”

These words of Ignat made the son very thoughtful. Foma also felt
something strange in himself, something which distinguished him from the
youth of his age, but he, too, could not understand what it was. And he
looked at himself with suspicion.

Foma liked to be on the Exchange amid the bustle and talk of the sedate
people who were making deals amounting to thousands of roubles; the
respect with which the less well-to-do tradesmen greeted and spoke to
him--to Foma, the son of the millionaire--flattered him greatly. He
felt happy and proud whenever he successfully managed some part of his
father’s business, assuming all responsibility on his own shoulders, and
received a smile of approval from his father for it. There was in him
a great deal of ambition, yearning to appear as a grown-up man of
business, but--just as before his trip to Perm--he lived as in solitude;
he still felt no longing for friends, although he now came in contact
everyday with the merchants’ sons of his age. They had invited him
more than once to join them in their sprees, but he rather rudely and
disdainfully declined their invitations and even laughed at them.

“I am afraid. Your fathers may learn of your sprees, and as they’ll give
you a drubbing, I might also come in for a share.”

What he did not like in them was that they were leading a dissipated and
depraved life, without their fathers’ knowledge, and that the money
they were spending was either stolen from their parents or borrowed on
long-termed promissory notes, to be paid with exorbitant interest.
They in turn did not like him for this very reserve and aversion, which
contained the pride so offensive to them. He was timid about speaking to
people older than himself, fearing lest he should appear in their eyes
stupid and thick-headed.

He often recalled Pelageya, and at first he felt melancholy whenever her
image flashed before his imagination. But time went on, and little by
little rubbed off the bright colours of this woman; and before he
was aware of it his thoughts were occupied by the slender, angel-like
Medinskaya. She used to come up to Ignat almost every Sunday with
various requests, all of which generally had but one aim--to hasten the
building of the lodging-asylum. In her presence Foma felt awkward, huge,
heavy; this pained him, and he blushed deeply under the endearing look
of Sophya Pavlovna’s large eyes. He noticed that every time she looked
at him, her eyes would grow darker, while her upper lip would tremble
and raise itself slightly, thus displaying very small white teeth. This
always frightened him. When his father noticed how steadfastly he was
staring at Medinskaya he told him one day:

“Don’t be staring so much at that face. Look out, she is like a
birch ember: from the outside it is just as modest, smooth and
dark--altogether cold to all appearances--but take it into your hand and
it will burn you.”

Medinskaya did not kindle in the youth any sensual passion, for there
was nothing in her that resembled Pelageya, and altogether she was not
at all like other women. He knew that shameful rumours about her were
in the air, but he did not believe any of them. But his relations to her
were changed when he noticed her one day in a carriage beside a stout
man in a gray hat and with long hair falling over his shoulders. His
face was like a bladder--red and bloated; he had neither moustache nor
beard, and altogether he looked like a woman in disguise. Foma was told
that this was her husband. Then dark and contradicting feelings sprang
up within him: he felt like insulting the architect, and at the same
time he envied and respected him. Medinskaya now seemed to him less
beautiful and more accessible; he began to feel sorry for her, and yet
he thought malignantly:

“She must surely feel disgusted when he kisses her.”

And after all this he sometimes perceived in himself some bottomless and
oppressive emptiness, which could not be filled up by anything--neither
by the impressions of the day just gone by nor by the recollection
of the past; and the Exchange, and his affairs, and his thoughts of
Medinskaya--all were swallowed up by this emptiness. It alarmed him: in
the dark depth of this emptiness he suspected some hidden existence of
a hostile power, as yet formless but already carefully and persistently
striving to become incarnate.

In the meantime Ignat, changing but little outwardly, was growing ever
more restless and querulous and was complaining more often of being ill.

“I lost my sleep. It used to be so sound that even though you had torn
off my skin, I would not have felt it. While now I toss about from side
to side, and I fall asleep only toward morning. And every now and then
I awaken. My heart beats unevenly, now, though tired out; often thus:
tuk-tuk-tuk. And sometimes it sinks of a sudden--and it seems as though
it would soon tear itself away and fall somewhere into the deep; into
the bosom. Oh Lord, have pity upon me through Thy great mercy.” And
heaving a penitent sigh, he would lift heavenward his stern eyes, grown
dim now, devoid of their bright, sparkling glitter.

“Death keeps an eye on me somewhere close by,” he said one day morosely,
but humbly. And indeed, it soon felled his big, sturdy body to the
ground.

This happened in August, early in the morning. Foma was sound asleep
when suddenly he felt somebody shaking him by the shoulder, and a hoarse
voice called at his ear:

“Get up.”

He opened his eyes and saw that his father was seated in a chair near
his bed, monotonously repeating in a dull voice:

“Get up, get up.”

The sun had just risen, and its light, falling on Ignat’s white linen
shirt, had not yet lost its rosy tints.

“It’s early,” said Foma, stretching himself.

“Well, you’ll sleep enough later.”

Lazily muffling himself in the blanket, Foma asked:

“Why do you need me?”

“Get up, dear, will you, please?” exclaimed Ignat, adding, somewhat
offended: “It must be necessary, since I am waking you.”

When Foma looked closely at his father’s face, he noticed that it was
gray and weary.

“Are you ill?”

“Slightly.”

“Shall we send for a doctor?”

“The devil take him!” Ignat waved his hand. “I am not a young man any
longer. I know it as well without him.”

“What?”

“Oh, I know it!” said the old man, mysteriously, casting a strange
glance around the room. Foma was dressing himself, and his father, with
lowered head, spoke slowly:

“I am afraid to breathe. Something tells me that if I should now heave a
deep sigh, my heart would burst. Today is Sunday! After the morning mass
is over, send for the priest.”

“What are you talking about, papa?” Foma smiled.

“Nothing. Wash yourself and go into the garden. I ordered the samovar
to be brought there. We’ll drink our tea in the morning coolness. I feel
like drinking now hot, strong tea. Be quicker.”

The old man rose with difficulty from the chair, and, bent and
barefooted, left the room in a staggering gait. Foma looked at his
father, and a shooting chill of fear made his heart shrink. He washed
himself in haste, and hurried out into the garden.

There, under an old, spreading apple-tree sat Ignat in a big oaken
armchair. The light of the sun fell in thin stripes through the
branches of the trees upon the white figure of the old man clad in his
night-garments. There was such a profound silence in the garden that
even the rustle of a branch, accidentally touched by Foma’s clothes,
seemed to him like a loud sound and he shuddered. On the table, before
his father, stood the samovar, purring like a well-fed tom-cat and
exhaling a stream of steam into the air. Amid the silence and the fresh
verdure of the garden, which had been washed by abundant rains the day
before, this bright spot of the boldly shining, loud brass seemed to
Foma as something unnecessary, as something which suited neither the
time nor the place--nor the feeling that sprang up within him at the
sight of the sickly, bent old man, who was dressed in white, and who sat
alone underneath the mute, motionless, dark-green foliage, wherein red
apples were modestly peeping.

“Be seated,” said Ignat.

“We ought to send for a doctor.” Foma advised him irresolutely, seating
himself opposite him.

“It isn’t necessary. It’s a little better now in the open air. And now
I’ll sip some tea and perhaps that will do me more good,” said Ignat,
pouring out tea into the glasses, and Foma noticed that the teapot was
trembling in his father’s hand.

“Drink.”

Silently moving up one glass for himself, Foma bent over it, blowing the
foam off the surface of the tea, and with pain in his heart, hearing the
loud, heavy breathing of his father. Suddenly something struck against
the table with such force that the dishes began to rattle.

Foma shuddered, threw up his head and met the frightened, almost
senseless look of his father’s eyes. Ignat stared at his son and
whispered hoarsely:

“An apple fell down (the devil take it!). It sounded like the firing of
a gun.”

“Won’t you have some cognac in your tea?” Foma suggested.

“It is good enough without it.”

They became silent. A flight of finches winged past over the garden,
scattering a provokingly cheerful twittering in the air. And again the
ripe beauty of the garden was bathed in solemn silence. The fright was
still in Ignat’s eyes.

“Oh Lord, Jesus Christ!” said he in a low voice, making the sign of the
cross. “Yes. There it is--the last hour of my life.”

“Stop, papa!” whispered Foma.

“Why stop? We’ll have our tea, and then send for the priest, and for
Mayakin.”

“I’d rather send for them now.”

“They’ll soon toll for the mass--the priest isn’t home--and then there’s
no hurry, it may pass soon.”

And he noisily started to sip the tea out of the saucer.

“I should live another year or two. You are young, and I am very much
afraid for you. Live honestly and firmly; do not covet what belongs to
other people, take good care of your own.”

It was hard for him to speak, he stopped short and rubbed his chest with
his hand.

“Do not rely upon others; expect but little from them. We all live in
order to take, not to give. Oh Lord! Have mercy on the sinner!”

Somewhere in the distance the deep sound of the bell fell on the silence
of the morning. Ignat and Foma crossed themselves three times.

After the first sound of the bell-tone came another, then a third, and
soon the air was filled with sounds of the church-bells, coming from all
sides--flowing, measured, calling aloud.

“There, they are tolling for the mass,” said Ignat, listening to the
echo of the bell-metal. “Can you tell the bells by their sounds?”

“No,” answered Foma.

“Just listen. This one now--do you hear? the bass--this is from the
Nikola Church. It was presented by Peter Mitrich Vyagin--and this, the
hoarse one--this is at the church of Praskeva Pyatnitza.”

The singing waves of the bell-tones agitated the air, which was filled
with them, and they died away in the clear blue of the sky. Foma
stared thoughtfully at his father’s face and saw that the alarm was
disappearing from his eyes, and that they were now brighter.

But suddenly the old man’s face turned very red, his eyes distended and
rolled out of their orbits, his mouth opened with fright, and from it
issued a strange, hissing sound:

“F-F-A-A-ch.”

Immediately after this Ignat’s head fell back on his shoulder, and his
heavy body slowly slipped down from the chair to the ground as if the
earth had dragged him imperiously unto itself. Foma was motionless and
silent for awhile, then he rushed up to Ignat, lifted his head from the
ground and looked into his face. The face was dark, motionless, and the
wide-open eyes expressed nothing--neither pain, nor fear, nor joy.
Foma looked around him. As before, nobody was in the garden, and the
resounding chatter of the bells was still roaring in the air. Foma’s
hands began to tremble, he let go his father’s head, and it struck
heavily against the ground. Dark, thick blood began to gush in a narrow
stream from his open mouth across his blue cheek.

Foma struck his breast with both hands, and kneeling before the dead
body, he wildly cried aloud. He was trembling with fright, and with eyes
like those of a madman he was searching for someone in the verdure of
the garden.



CHAPTER IV

HIS father’s death stupefied Foma and filled him with a strange
sensation; quiet was poured into his soul--a painful, immovable quiet,
which absorbed all the sounds of life without accounting for it.
All sorts of acquaintances were bustling about him; they appeared,
disappeared, said something to him--his replies to them were untimely,
and their words called forth no images in him, drowning, without leaving
any trace, in the bottomless depths of the death-like silence which
filled his soul. He neither cried, nor grieved, nor thought of anything;
pale and gloomy, with knitted brow, he was attentively listening to this
quiet, which had forced out all his feelings, benumbed his heart and
tightly clutched his brains. He was conscious but of the purely physical
sensation of heaviness in all his frame and particularly in his breast,
and then it also seemed to him that it was always twilight, and even
though the sun was still high in the sky--everything on earth looked
dark and melancholy.

The funeral was arranged by Mayakin. Hastily and briskly he was bustling
about in the rooms, making much clatter with the heels of his boots;
he cried at the household help imperiously, clapped his godson on the
shoulder, consoling him:

“And why are you petrified? Roar and you will feel relieved. Your father
was old--old in body. Death is prepared for all of us, you cannot escape
it--consequently you must not be prematurely torpid. You cannot bring
him to life again with your sorrow, and your grief is unnecessary
to him, for it is said: ‘When the body is robbed of the soul by the
terrible angels, the soul forgets all relatives and acquaintances,’
which means that you are of no consequence to him now, whether you cry
or laugh. But the living must care for the living. You had better cry,
for this is human. It brings much relief to the heart.”

But neither did these words provoke anything in Foma’s head or in his
heart. He came to himself, however, on the day of the funeral, thanks to
the persistence of his godfather, who was assiduously and oddly trying
to rouse his sad soul.

The day of the funeral was cloudy and dreary. Amid a heavy cloud of dust
an enormous crowd of people, winding like a black ribbon, followed
the coffin of Ignat Gordyeeff. Here and there flashed the gold of the
priest’s robes, and the dull noise of the slow movement of the crowd
blended in harmony with the solemn music of the choir, composed of the
bishop’s choristers. Foma was pushed from behind and from the sides; he
walked, seeing nothing but the gray head of his father, and the mournful
singing resounded in his heart like a melancholy echo. And Mayakin,
walking beside him, kept on intrusively whispering in his ears:

“Look, what a crowd--thousands! The governor himself came out to
accompany your father to the church, the mayor, and almost the entire
city council. And behind you--just turn around! There goes Sophya
Pavlovna. The town pays its respects to Ignat.”

At first Foma did not listen to his godfather’s whisper, but when he
mentioned Medinskaya, he involuntarily looked back and noticed the
governor. A little drop of something pleasant fell into his heart at
the sight of this important personage, with a bright ribbon across
his shoulder, with orders on his breast, pacing after the coffin, an
expression of sorrow on his stern countenance.

“Blessed is the road where this soul goeth today,” Yakov Tarasovich
hummed softly, moving his nose, and he again whispered in his godson’s
ear:

“Seventy-five thousand roubles is such a sum that you can demand so many
escorts for it. Have you heard that Sonka is making arrangements for the
laying of the corner-stone on the fifteenth? Just forty days after the
death of your father.”

Foma again turned back, and his eyes met the eyes of Medinskaya. He
heaved a deep sigh at her caressing glance, and felt relieved at once,
as if a warm ray of light penetrated his soul and something melted
there. And then and there he considered that it was unbecoming him to
turn his head from side to side.

At church Foma’s head began to ache, and it seemed to him that
everything around and underneath him was shaking. In the stifling air,
filled with dust, with the breathing of the people and the smoke of
the incense, the flames of the candles were timidly trembling. The meek
image of Christ looked down at him from the big ikon, and the flames
of the candles, reflected in the tarnished gold of the crown over the
Saviour’s brow, reminded him of drops of blood.

Foma’s awakened soul was greedily feeding itself on the solemn, gloomy
poetry of the liturgy, and when the touching citation was heard, “Come,
let us give him the last kiss,” a loud, wailing sob escaped from Foma’s
chest, and the crowd in church was stirred to agitation by this outburst
of grief.

Having uttered the sob, Foma staggered. His godfather immediately caught
him by his arms and began to push him forward to the coffin, singing
quite loudly and with some anger:

 “Kiss him who was but lately with us.
 Kiss, Foma, kiss him--he is given over to the grave, covered with a stone.
 He is settling down in darkness, and is buried with the dead.”

Foma touched his father’s forehead with his lips and sprang back from
the coffin with horror.

“Hold your peace! You nearly knocked me down,” Mayakin remarked to him,
in a low voice, and these simple, calm words supported Foma better than
his godfather’s hands.

“Ye that behold me mute and lifeless before you, weep for me, brethren
and friends,” begged Ignat through the mouth of the Church. But his son
was not crying any longer; his horror was called forth by the black,
swollen face of his father, and this horror somewhat sobered his soul,
which had been intoxicated by the mournful music of the Church’s lament
for its sinful son. He was surrounded by acquaintances, who were kindly
consoling him; he listened to them and understood that they all felt
sorry for him and that he became dear to them. And his godfather
whispered in his ear:

“See, how they all fawn upon you. The tom-cats have smelt the fat.”

These words were unpleasant to Foma, but they were useful to him, as
they caused him to answer at all events.

At the cemetery, when they sang for Ignat’s eternal memory, he cried
again bitterly and loud. His godfather immediately seized him by the
arms and led him away from the grave, speaking to him earnestly:

“What a faint-hearted fellow you are! Do I not feel sorry for him? I
have known his real value, while you were but his son. And yet, I do
not cry. For more than thirty years we lived together in perfect
harmony--how much had been spoken, how much thought--how much sorrow
drunk. You are young; it is not for you to grieve! Your life is before
you, and you will be rich in all sorts of friendship; while I am old,
and now that I buried my only friend, I am like a pauper. I can no
longer make a bosom friend!”

The old man’s voice began to jar and squeak queerly. His face was
distorted, his lips were stretched into a big grimace and were
quivering, and from his small eyes frequent tears were running over the
now contracted wrinkles of his face. He looked so pitiful and so unlike
himself, that Foma stopped short, pressed him close to his body with the
tenderness of a strong man and cried with alarm:

“Don’t cry, father--darling! Don’t cry.”

“There you have it!” said Mayakin, faintly, and, heaving a deep sigh, he
suddenly turned again into a firm and clever old man.

“You must not cry,” said he, mysteriously, seating himself in the
carriage beside his godson. “You are now the commander-in-chief in the
war and you must command your soldiers bravely. Your soldiers are the
roubles, and you have a great army of these. Make war incessantly!”

Surprised at the quickness of his transformation, Foma listened to his
words and for some reason or other they reminded him of those clods of
earth, which the people threw into Ignat’s grave upon his coffin.

“On whom am I to make war?” said Foma with a sigh.

“I’ll teach you that! Did your father tell you that I was a clever old
man and that you should mind me?”

“He did.”

“Then do mind me! If my mind should be added to your youthful strength,
a good victory might be won. Your father was a great man, but he did not
look far before him and he could not take my advice. He gained success
in life not with his mind, but more with his head. Oh, what will become
of you? You had better move into my house, for you will feel lonesome in
yours.”

“Aunt is there.”

“Aunt? She is sick. She will not live long.”

“Do not speak of it,” begged Foma in a low voice.

“And I will speak of it. You need not fear death--you are not an old
woman on the oven. Live fearlessly and do what you were appointed to
do. Man is appointed for the organisation of life on earth. Man is
capital--like a rouble, he is made up of trashy copper groshes and
copecks. From the dust of the earth, as it is said; and even as he
has intercourse with the world, he absorbs grease and oil, sweat and
tears--a soul and a mind form themselves in him. And from this he starts
to grow upward and downward. Now, you see his price is a grosh, now a
fifteen copeck silver piece, now a hundred roubles, and sometimes he is
above any price. He is put into circulation and he must bring interests
to life. Life knows the value of each of us and will not check our
course before time. Nobody, dear, works to his own detriment, if he is
wise. And life has saved up much wisdom. Are you listening?”

“I am.”

“And what do you understand?”

“Everything.”

“You are probably lying?” Mayakin doubted.

“But, why must we die?” asked Foma in a low voice.

Mayakin looked into his face with regret, smacked his lips and said:

“A wise man would never ask such a question. A wise man knows for
himself that if it is a river, it must be flowing somewhere, and if it
were standing in one place, it would be a swamp.”

“You’re simply mocking me at random,” said Foma, sternly. “The sea is
not flowing anywhere.”

“The sea receives all rivers into itself, and then, powerful storms rage
in it at times. Then the sea of life also submits on agitation, stirred
up by men, and death renovates the waters of the sea of life, that they
might not become spoiled. No matter how many people are dying, they are
nevertheless forever growing in number.”

“What of it? But my father is dead.”

“You will die as well.”

“Then what have I to do with the fact that people are growing in
number?” Foma smiled sadly.

“Eh, he, he!” sighed Mayakin. “That, indeed, concerns none of us. There,
your trousers probably reason in the same way: what have we to do with
the fact that there are all sorts of stuff in the world? But you do not
mind them--you wear them out and throw them away.”

Foma glanced at his godfather reproachfully, and noticing that the old
man was smiling, he was astonished and he asked respectfully:

“Can it be true, father, that you do not fear death?”

“Most of all I fear foolishness, my child,” replied Mayakin with humble
bitterness. “My opinion is this: if a fool give you honey, spit upon it;
if a wise man give you poison, drink it! And I will tell you that the
perch has a weak soul since his fins do not stand on end.”

The old man’s mocking words offended and angered Foma. He turned aside
and said:

“You can never speak without these subterfuges.”

“I cannot!” exclaimed Mayakin, and his eyes began to sparkle with alarm.
“Each man uses the very same tongue he has. Do I seem to be stern? Do
I?”

Foma was silent.

“Eh, you. Know this--he loves who teaches. Remember this well. And as to
death, do not think of it. It is foolish, dear, for a live man to think
of death. ‘Ecclesiastes’ reflected on death better than anybody else
reflected on it, and said that a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

They came home. The street near the house was crowded with carriages,
and from the open windows came loud sounds of talk. As soon as Foma
appeared in the hall, he was seized by the arms and led away to the
table and there was urged to drink and eat something. A marketplace
noise smote the air; the hall was crowded and suffocating. Silently,
Foma drank a glass of vodka, then another, and a third. Around him they
were munching and smacking their lips; the vodka poured out from the
bottles was gurgling, the wine-glasses were tinkling. They were speaking
of dried sturgeon and of the bass of the soloist of the bishop’s choir,
and then again of the dried sturgeon, and then they said that the mayor
also wished to make a speech, but did not venture to do so after the
bishop had spoken, fearing lest he should not speak so well as the
bishop. Someone was telling with feeling:

“The deceased one used to do thus: he would cut off a slice of salmon,
pepper it thickly, cover it with another slice of salmon, and then send
it down immediately after a drink.”

“Let us follow his example,” roared a thick basso. Offended to the
quick, Foma looked with a frown at the fat lips and at the jaws chewing
the tasty food, and he felt like crying out and driving away all these
people, whose sedateness had but lately inspired him with respect for
them.

“You had better be more kind, more sociable,” said Mayakin in a low
voice, coming up to him.

“Why are they gobbling here? Is this a tavern?” cried Foma, angrily.

“Hush,” Mayakin remarked with fright and hastily turned to look around
with a kind smile on his face.

But it was too late; his smile was of no avail. Foma’s words had been
overheard, the noise and the talk was subsiding, some of the guests
began to bustle about hurriedly, others, offended, frowned, put down
their forks and knives and walked away from the table, all looking at
Foma askance.

Silent and angry, he met these glances without lowering his eyes.

“I ask you to come up to the table!” cried Mayakin, gleaming amid the
crowd of people like an ember amid ashes. “Be seated, pray! They’re soon
serving pancakes.”

Foma shrugged his shoulders and walked off toward the door, saying
aloud:

“I shall not eat.”

He heard a hostile rumbling behind him and his godfather’s wheedling
voice saying to somebody:

“It’s for grief. Ignat was at once father and mother to him.”

Foma came out in the garden and sat down on the same place where his
father had died. The feeling of loneliness and grief oppressed his
heart. He unbuttoned the collar of his shirt to make his breathing
easier, rested his elbows on the table, and with his head tightly
pressed between his hands, he sat motionless. It was drizzling and the
leaves of the apple-tree were rustling mournfully under the drops of the
rain. He sat there for a long time alone, motionless, watching how the
small drops were falling from the apple-tree. His head was heavy from
the vodka, and in his heart there was a growing grudge against men.
Some indefinite, impersonal feelings and thoughts were springing up and
vanishing within him; before him flashed the bald skull of his godfather
with a little crown of silver hair and with a dark face, which resembled
the faces of the ancient ikons. This face with the toothless mouth and
the malicious smile, rousing in Foma hatred and fear, augmented in
him the consciousness of solitude. Then he recalled the kind eyes of
Medinskaya and her small, graceful figure; and beside her arose the
tall, robust, and rosy-cheeked Lubov Mayakina with smiling eyes and with
a big light golden-coloured braid. “Do not rely upon men, expect but
little at their hands”--his father’s words began to ring in his memory.
He sighed sadly and cast a glance around him. The tree leaves were
fluttering from the rain, and the air was full of mournful sounds. The
gray sky seemed as though weeping, and on the trees cold tears were
trembling. And Foma’s soul was dry, dark; it was filled with a painful
feeling of orphanhood. But this feeling gave birth to the question:

“How shall I live now that I am alone?”

The rain drenched his clothes, and when he felt that he was shivering
with cold he arose and went into the house.

Life was tugging him from all sides, giving him no chance t

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