by Maxim Gorky
“Yes, my fine fellow, we are old pals,” agreed Kouvalda in a tone of familiarity. “How often have I bribed you and the like of you to hold your tongues?”
“Gentlemen!” said the police officer, “did you hear that? I beg you will remember those words. I won’t forgive that. That’s how it is, then? Well, you shan’t forget me! I’ll give you something, my friend, to remember me by.”
“Don’t holloa till you are out of the wood, my dear friend,” said Aristide Fomitch coolly. The doctor, a young man in spectacles, looked at him inquiringly; the magistrate with an attention that boded no good; Petounnikoff with a look of triumph; whilst the police officer shouted and gesticulated threateningly.
At the door of the doss-house appeared the dark figure of Martianoff; he came up quietly and stood behind Petounnikoff, so that his chin appeared just above the merchant’s head. The old deacon peeped from behind Martianoff, opening wide his small, swollen red eyes.
“Well, something must be done,” suggested the doctor.
Martianoff made a frightful grimace, and suddenly sneezed straight on to the head of Petounnikoff. The latter yelled, doubled up his body, and sprang on one side, nearly knocking the police officer off his feet, and falling into his arms.
“There, you see now!” said the merchant, trembling and pointing at Martianoff. “You see now what sort of people they are, don’t you?”
Kouvalda was shaking with laughter, in which the doctor and the magistrate joined; whilst round the door of the doss-house clustered every moment more and more figures. Drowsy, dissipated faces, with red, inflamed eyes, and dishevelled hair, stood unceremoniously surveying the doctor, the magistrate, and the police officer.
“Where are you shoving to?” said a constable who had accompanied the police officer, pulling at their rags, and pushing them away from the door.
But he was one against many; and they, paying no heed to him, continued to press forward in threatening silence, their breath heavy with sour vodka. Kouvalda glanced first at them and then at the officials, who began to show signs of uneasiness in the midst of this overwhelmingly numerous society of undesirables, and sneeringly remarked to the officials—
“Perhaps, gentlemen, you would like me to introduce you formally to my lodgers and my friends. Say so if you wish it, for sooner or later, in the exercise of your duties, you will have to make their acquaintance.”
The doctor laughed with an embarrassed air; the magistrate closed his lips firmly; and the police officer was the only one who showed himself equal to the emergency; he shouted into the yard—
“Sideroff, blow your whistle, and when they come, tell them to bring a cart.”
“Well, I’m off,” said Petounnikoff, appearing from some remote corner. “You’ll be kind enough, sirs, to clear out my little shed to-day. I want to have it pulled down. I beg you to make the necessary arrangements; if not, I shall have to apply to the authorities.”
In the yard the policeman’s whistle was sounding shrilly; and round the doss-house door stood the compact crowd of its occupants, yawning and scratching themselves.
“So you don’t want to make their acquaintance; that’s not quite polite,” said Aristide Kouvalda, laughing.
Petounnikoff drew his purse from his pocket, fumbled with it for a few minutes, finally pulling out ten kopecks; he crossed himself and placed them at the feet of the dead man.
“God rest his soul! Let this go towards burying the sinful ashes.”
“How!” roared the captain. “You! you! giving towards the burial? Take it back; take it back, I command you, you rogue! How dare you give your dishonest gains towards the burial of an honest man! I’ll smash every bone in your body!”
“Sir!” exclaimed the alarmed shopkeeper, seizing the police officer imploringly by the elbow.
The doctor and the magistrate hurried outside, while the police officer shouted again loudly, “Sideroff! Come inside here!”
The outcasts formed a barrier round the door of the doss-house, watching and listening to the scene with an intense interest which lighted up their haggard faces.
Kouvalda, shaking his fist over Petounnikoff’s head, roared wildly, rolling his bloodshot eyes—
“Rogue and thief! take the coppers back! you vile creature; take them back, I tell you, or I’ll smash them into your eyes! Take them back!”
Petounnikoff stretched out one trembling hand towards his little offering, whilst shielding himself with the other against Kouvalda’s threatening fist, and said—
“Bear witness, you, sir, the police officer, and you, my good people.”
“We are not good people, you damned old shopkeeper!” was heard in the creaking tones of “Scraps.”
The police officer, distending his face like a bladder, was whistling wildly, whilst defending Petounnikoff, who was writhing and twisting about in front of him, as if wishing to get inside the officer for protection.
“You vile thing! I’ll make you kiss the feet of this dead body if you don’t mind! Come here with you!”
And seizing Petounnikoff by the collar, Kouvalda flung him out of the door, as he would have done a kitten.
The outcasts moved on one side to make room for the merchant to fall; and he pitched forward, frightened and yelling at their feet.
“They are killing me! Murder! They have killed me!”
Martianoff slowly lifted his foot, and took aim at the head of the shopkeeper; “Scraps,” with an expression of extreme delight, spat full into the face of Petounnikoff. The merchant raised himself on to his hands and knees, and half rolled, half dragged himself farther out into the yard, followed by peals of laughter. At this moment two constables arrived in the yard, and the police officer, pointing to Kouvalda, exclaimed in a voice of triumph—
“Arrest him! Tie him up!”
“Yes, tie him up tightly, my dears!” implored Petounnikoff.
“I defy you to touch me! I’m not going to run away! I’ll go wherever I have to go,” said Kouvalda, defending himself against the constables, who approached him.
The outcasts dropped off one by one. The cart rolled into the yard. One or two ragged strangers, who had been called in, were already dragging the schoolmaster’s body out of the doss-house.
“You shall catch it! just wait a bit!” said the police officer threateningly to Kouvalda.
“Well, captain, how goes it now?” jeered Petounnikoff, maliciously pleased and happy at the sight of his foe’s hands being tied. “Well, you are caught now; only wait, and you will get something warmer by and by!”
But Kouvalda was silent; he stood between the two constables, terrible and erect, and was watching the schoolmaster’s body being hoisted into the cart. The man who was holding the corpse under the arms, being too short for the job, could not get the schoolmaster’s head into the cart at the same moment as his legs were thrown in. Thus, for a second it appeared as if the schoolmaster were trying to throw himself head foremost out of the cart, and hide himself in the ground, away from all these cruel and stupid people, who had never given him any rest.
“Take him away!” ordered the police officer, pointing to the captain.
Kouvalda, without a word of protest, walked silent and scowling from the yard, and, passing by the schoolmaster, bent his head towards the body, without looking at it. Martianoff followed him, his face set like a stone.
Petounnikoff’s yard emptied rapidly.
“Gee-up!” cried the driver, shaking the reins on the horse’s back. The cart moved off, jolting along the uneven surface of the yard. The schoolmaster’s body, covered with some scanty rags, and lying face upwards, shook and tumbled about with the jolting of the cart He seemed to be quietly and peacefully smiling, as if pleased with the thought that he was leaving the doss-house, never to return—never any more. Petounnikoff, following the cart with his eyes, crossed himself devoutly
, and then began carefully dusting his clothes with his cap to get rid of the rubbish that had stuck to them. Gradually, as the dust disappeared from his coat, a serene expression of contentment and of self-reliance spread over his face. Looking up the hill, as he stood in the yard, he could see Captain Aristide Fomitch Kouvalda, with hands tied behind his back, tall and grey, wearing a cap with an old red band like a streak of blood round it, being led away towards the town. Petounnikoff smiled with a smile of triumph, and turned towards the doss-house, but suddenly stopped, shuddering. In the doorway facing him stood a terrible old man, horrible to look at in the rags which covered his long body, with a stick in his hand, and a large sack on his back, stooping under the weight of his burden, and bending his head forward on his chest as if he were about to rush forward at the merchant.
“What do you want?” cried Petounnikoff. “Who are you?”
“A man,” hissed a muffled, hoarse voice.
This hoarse, hissing sound pleased Petounnikoff, and reassured him.
“A man!” he exclaimed. “Was there ever a man who looked like you?”
And moving on one side, he made way for the old man, who walked straight towards him, muttering gloomily—
“There are men of all sorts. That’s just as God wills. Some are worse than I am, that’s all—much worse than I am.”
The threatening sky looked down quietly at the dirty yard, and the trim little old man with the sharp grey beard, who walked about measuring and calculating with his cunning eyes. On the roof of the old house sat a crow triumphantly croaking, and swaying backwards and forwards with outstretched neck.
The grey lowering clouds, with which the whole sky was covered, seemed fraught with suspense and inexorable design, as if ready to burst and pour forth torrents of water, to wash away all that soiled this sad, miserable, tortured earth.
WAITING FOR THE FERRY
As my hooded sleigh jolted across the confines of the wood, and we came out on to the open road, a broad, dull-hued horizon lay stretched out before us. Isaiah stood up on the coach-box, and, stretching forward his neck, exclaimed—
“Devil take it all! it seems to have started already!”
“Is that so?”
“Yes; it looks as if it were moving.”
“Drive on, then, as fast as you can, you scoundrel!”
The sturdy little pony, with ears like a donkey and coat like a poodle dog, jumped forward at the crack of the whip; then stopped short suddenly, stamping its feet and shaking its head with a sort of injured look.
“Come! I’ll teach you to play tricks!” shouted Isaiah, pulling at the reins.
The clerk, Isaiah Miakunikoff, was a frightfully ugly man of about forty years of age. On his left cheek and under his jaw grew a sandy beard; while on his right cheek there was an immense swelling which closed up one eye and hung down to his shoulder in a kind of wrinkly bag. Isaiah was a desperate drunkard, and something of a philosopher and a satirist. He was taking me to see his brother, who had been a fellow-teacher with me in a village school, but who now lay dying of consumption. After five hours’ travelling, we had scarcely done twenty versts, partly because the road was bad, and partly because our fantastic steed was a cross-grained brute. Isaiah called it every name he could lay his tongue to—“a clumsy brute,” “a mortar,” “a mill-stone,” etc.—each of which epithets seemed to express equally well one or other of the inward or outward characteristics of the animal. In the same way one comes across at times human beings with similar complex characters, so that whatever name one applies to them seems a fitting one. Only the one word “man” seems inapplicable to them.
Above us hung a heavy, grey, clouded sky. Around us stretched enormous snow-covered fields, dotted with black spaces, showing where the snow was thawing. In front of us, and three versts ahead, rose the blue hills of the mountain range through which flowed the Volga. The distant hills looked low under the leaden, lowering sky, which seemed to crush and weigh them down. The river itself was hidden from our sight by a hedge of thick tangled bushes. A south wind was blowing, covering the surfaces of the little pools with quivering ripples; the air seemed full of a dull, heavy moisture; the water splashed under the horse’s feet. A spirit of sadness seemed diffused over everything visible, as if Nature were wearied with waiting for the bright sun of spring, and as if she were dissatisfied with the long absence of the warm sun-rays, without which she was melancholy and depressed.
“The flood-tide in the river will stop us!” cried Isaiah, jumping up and down on the coach-box. “Jakoff will die before we get there; then our journey will have been a useless torment of the flesh. And even if we do find him alive, what will be the good of it all? No one should force himself into the presence of the dying at the moment of death; the dying person should be left alone, so that his thoughts may not be distracted from the consideration of the needs of his soul, nor his mind turned from the depths of his own heart to the contemplation of trifles. For we, who are alive, are in fact nothing but trifles and of no use to one who is dying.… It is true that our customs demand that we should remain near them; but if we only would make use of the brains in our heads instead of the brains in our heels, we should soon see that this custom is good neither for the living nor for the dying, but is only an extra torment for the heart. The living ought not to think of death, nor remember that it is waiting somewhere for them; it is bad for them to do so, for it darkens their joys. Holloa! you stock! Move your legs more briskly! Look alive!”
Isaiah spoke in a monotonous, thick, hoarse voice, and his awkward, thin figure, wrapped in a clumsy, ragged, rusty armiah, rocked heavily backwards and forwards on the coach-box. Now and again he would jump up from his seat, then he would sway from side to side, then nod his head, or toss it backwards. His broad-brimmed black hat—a present from the priest—was fastened under his chin with tapes, the floating ends of which were blown into his face by the wind. With his hat slouched forward over his eyes, and his coat-tails puffed out behind by the wind, he shook his queer-shaped head, and jumped and swore, and twisted about on his seat. As I watched him, I thought how much needless trouble men take about most insignificant things! If the miserable worm of small commonplace evils had not so much power over us, we might easily crush the great horrible serpent of our serious misfortunes!
“It’s gone!” exclaimed Isaiah.
“Can you see it?”
“I can see horses standing near the bushes. And there are people with them!” Isaiah spat on one side with a gesture of despair.
“That means there is no chance of getting across?”
“Oh, we shall manage to get over somehow! Yes, of course we shall get over, when the ice has gone down stream, but what are we to do till then? That’s the question now! Besides, I’m hungry already; I’m too hungry for words! I told you we ought to have had something to eat. ‘No, drive on!’ Well, now you see I have driven on!”
“I’m as hungry as you are! Didn’t you bring something with you?”
“And what if I have forgotten to bring something?” replied Isaiah crossly.
Looking ahead over his shoulders, I caught sight of a landau, drawn by a troika, and a wicker char-a-banc with a pair of horses. The horses’ heads were turned towards us, and several people were standing near them; one, a tall Russian functionary with a red moustache, and wearing a cap with a scarlet band, the badge of Russian nobility. The other man wore a long fur coat.
“That’s our district judge, Soutchoff, and the miller Mamaieff,” muttered Isaiah, in a tone that denoted respect. Then, addressing the pony, he shouted, “Whoa, my benefactor!”
Then, pushing his hat to the back of his head, he turned to the fat coachman standing near the troika, and remarked, “We are too late, it seems; eh?”
The coachman glanced with a sulky look at Isaiah’s egg-shaped head, and turned away without deigning to reply.
“Yes,
you are behindhand,” said the miller, with a smile. He was a short, thick-set man, with a very red face and cunning, smiling eyes.
The district judge scanned us from under his full eyebrows, as he leant against the foot-board of his carriage, smoked a cigarette, and twisted his moustache. There were two other people in the group—Mamaieff’s coachman, a tall fellow with a curly head, and a miserable bandy-legged peasant in a torn sheepskin overcoat swathed tightly round him. His figure seemed bent into the chronic position of a low bow, which at the present moment was evidently meant for us. His small, shrunk face was covered with a scanty grey beard, his eyes were almost hidden in his wrinkled countenance, and his thin blue lips were drawn into a smile, expressive at one and the same time of respect and of derision, of stupidity and of cunning. He was sitting in an ape-like attitude, with his legs drawn up under his body; and, as he turned his head from side to side, he followed each one of us closely with his glance, without showing his own eyes. Through the many holes of his ragged sheepskin bunches of wool protruded, and he produced altogether a singular impression—an impression of having been half masticated before escaping from the iron jaws of some monster, who had meant to swallow him up.
The high sandy bank behind which we were standing sheltered us from the blasts of wind, though it concealed the river from our view.
“I am going to see how matters stand yonder,” said Isaiah, as he started climbing up the bank.
The district judge followed him in gloomy silence; and finally the merchant and myself, with the unhappy-looking peasant, who scrambled on his hands and feet, brought up the rear. When we had all reached the top of the bank we all sat down again, looking as black and as gloomy as a lot of crows. About three or four arshines away from us, and eight or nine below us, lay the river, a broad blue-grey line, its surface wrinkled and dotted with heaps of broken ice. These little heaps of ice had the appearance of an unpleasant scab, moving ever slowly forward with an indomitable force lying hidden under its furtive movement. A grating, scraping sound was heard through the raw, damp air.