by Maxim Gorky
There came, also, a tall, bony man, of unknown extraction, with a frightened expression in his large, round eyes, the left of which squinted,—a taciturn, timid fellow, who had thrice been incarcerated for theft, on the sentence of the judge of the peace, and the district judge. His surname was Kisélnikoff, but he was called Tarás-and-a-Half, because he was exactly one half taller than his inseparable friend, Deacon Tarás, who had been unfrocked for drunkenness and depraved conduct. The deacon was a short, thick man, with the chest of an epic hero, and a round, shaggy head. He danced wonderfully well, and was even more wonderful in his use of ribald language. He, in company with Tarás-and-a-Half, had selected for his specialty wood-sawing on the bank of the river, and in his leisure hours the deacon was wont to narrate to his friend, and to anyone who cared to listen, tales “of his own composition,” as he announced. As they listened to these tales, the heroes of which were always saints, kings, priests, and generals, even the inhabitants of the night lodging-house spat with squeamishness, and opened their eyes to their full extent in amazement at the fantasies of the deacon, who narrated, with his eyes screwed up, and with a dispassionate countenance, astonishingly shameless things, and foully-fantastic adventures. The imagination of this man was inexhaustible,—he could invent and talk all day long, from morning till night, and never repeated himself, In his person a great poet may have perished, possibly, or, at any rate, a remarkable story-teller, who knew how to animate everything, and even invested the stones with a soul by his vile but picturesque and powerful words.
There was also an awkward sort of youth, whom Kuválda called The Meteor. One day he had made his appearance to spend the night, and from that day forth he had remained among these men, to their astonishment. At first they did not notice him,—by day, like the rest of them, he went off to seek his livelihood, but in the evening he clung about this amicable company, and at last the captain noticed him.
“Little boy! What are you doing in this land?”
The little boy answered boldly and briefly:
“I’m…a tramp.…”
The captain eyed him over critically. He was a longhaired young fellow, with a rather foolish face, with high cheek-bones, adorned with a snub nose. He wore a blue blouse without a belt, and on his head was stuck the remains of a straw hat. His feet were bare.
“You’re—a fool!” Aristíd Kuválda pronounced his decision.—“What axe you knocking about here for? You’re of no use to us.… Do you drink vódka? No…Well, and do you know how to steal? No, again. Go and learn, and then come back when you have become a man.…”
The young fellow laughed.
“No, I think I’ll go on living with you.”
“What for?”
“Oh, because.…”
“Akh, you…Meteor!” said the captain.
“Come, now, I’ll knock his teeth out for him, in a minute,” suggested Martyánoff.
“And what for?” inquired the captain.
“Nothing.…”
“And I’ll take a stone and smash you over the head,”—announced the young fellow deferentially.
Martyánoff would have given him a drubbing, had not Kuválda intervened.
“Let him alone.… He’s a sort of relation to you, and to all of us, I think. You want to knock his teeth out without sufficient foundation; he, like yourself, wants to live with us, without sufficient foundation. Well, and devil take him.… We all live without sufficient foundation for it.… We live, but what for? Because! And he, also, because…let him alone.”
“But you’d better go away from us, young man,” advised the teacher, surveying the young fellow with his mournful eyes.
The latter made no reply, and remained. Later on, they got used to him, and ceased to notice him. But he lived among them, and observed everything.
All the individuals enumerated above constituted the captain’s General Staff, and he, with good-humored irony, called them “the have-beens.” In addition to them, five or six men constantly inhabited the night, lodging-house—ordinary tramps. They were men from the country, they could not boast of any such pasts as “the have-beens,” and although they, no less than the rest, had experienced the vicissitudes of fate, yet they were more unadulterated folks than those, not so horribly shattered. It is possible that a respectable man of the cultured class is higher than the same sort of man of the peasant class, but the depraved man from a town is always immeasurably more foul and disgusting than a depraved man from the country. This rule was made sharply apparent by comparing the former educated men with the former peasants who inhabited Kuválda’s refuge.
An old rag-gatherer, Tyápa by name, was a conspicuous representative of the former peasants. Long, and thin to deformity, he held his head in such a manner that his chin rested on his chest, so that his shadow reminded one, by its shape, of an oven-fork. From the front, his face was not visible, in profile, nothing was to be seen except an aquiline nose, a pendulous lower lip, and shaggy, gray eyebrows. He was the captain’s first lodger, in point of time, and they said of him that he had a lot of money concealed somewhere. Precisely on account of this money they had “scraped” his throat with a knife two years before, and from that day forth he had hung his head in that strange manner. He denied the existence of the money, he said that “they had scratched him simply for nothing, out of impudence,” and that since then he had found it very convenient to gather rags and bones—his head was constantly bent earthward. As he walked along, with a swaying, uncertain gait, without a stick in his hand or a sack on his back—the insignia of his profession—he looked like a man who was meditative to the point of losing consciousness, but Kuválda was wont to say, at such moments, pointing his finger at him:
“See there, it’s the conscience of merchant Judas Petúnnikoff, which has run away from him, and is seeking a refuge for itself! See how frayed, and vile, and filthy that runaway conscience is!”
Tyápa spoke in a harsh voice, which hardly permitted one to understand his remarks, and it must have been for that reason that he rarely talked, and was very fond of solitude. But every time that some fresh example of a man, who had been forced out of the country by poverty, made his appearance in the night lodging-house, Tyápa, at the sight of him, fell into melancholy ire and uneasiness. He persecuted the unfortunate man with caustic jeers, which emerged from his throat in a vicious rattle; he set some malicious tramp on him, and, in conclusion, he threatened to thrash him with his own hands, and rob him by night, and he almost always managed to make the frightened and disconcerted peasant disappear from the lodging-house and never appear there again.
Then Tyápa calmed down, and tucked himself away in a corner, where he mended his rags, or read a Bible, which was as old, dirty, and tattered as himself. He crawled out of his nook again when the teacher brought the newspaper and read it aloud. Generally, Tyápa listened to all that was read in silence, and sighed deeply, asking no questions about anything. But when the teacher folded up the paper, after he had finished reading it, Tyápa extended his bony hand, and said:
“Give it to me.…”
“What do you want with it?”
“Give it…perhaps there’s something about us in in.…”
“About whom?”
“About the village.…”
They laughed at him, and flung the paper at him. He took it, and read that in such and such a village the grain had been beaten down by hail, and in another thirty houses had been burned, and in a third a woman had poisoned her family—everything which it is customary to write about the country, and which depicts it as merely unfortunate, silly, and evil. Tyápa read all this in a dull tone, and bellowed, expressing by this sound, possibly compassion, possibly satisfaction.
He spent the greater part of Sunday, on which day he never went out to gather rags, in reading his Bible. As he read, he bellowed and sighed. He held the book supported on his chest, and was a
ngry when anyone touched it, or interfered with his reading.
“Hey, there, you necromancer,”—Kuválda said to him,—“what do you understand? Drop it!”
“And what do you understand?”
“Just so, you sorcerer! Neither do I understand anything; but then, I don’t read books.…”
“But I do read them.…”
“Well, and you’re stupid,” …—declared the captain.—“When insects breed in the head, it’s uncomfortable, but if thoughts crawl in it also,—how will you live, you old toad?”
“Well, my time isn’t very long,”—said Tyápa calmly.
One day the teacher tried to find out where he had learned to read and write. Tyápa answered him curtly:
“In jail.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yes.…”
“What for?”
“Nothing.… I made a mistake.… And I brought this Bible from there. A lady gave it to me.… The jail is a nice place, brother.…”
“You don’t say so? How’s that?”
“It teaches you.… You see, I learned to read and write there.… I got a book.… Everything…is gratis.…”
When the teacher made his appearance in the lodging-house, Tyápa had already been living in it a long time. He stared long at the teacher,—in order to look in a man’s face Tyápa bent his whole body to one side,—listened long to his remarks, and one day he sat down beside him.
“Now, you’re one of those…you’ve been learned.… Have you read the Bible?”
“Yes.…”
“Exactly so.… Do you remember it?”
“Well…yes.…”
The old man bent his body on one side, and gazed at the teacher with his gray, sullen, distrustful eyes.
“And do you remember whether there were Amalekites there?”
“Well?”
“Where are they now?”
“They have disappeared, Tyápa…died out.…”
The old man said nothing for a while, then asked another question:
“And the Philistines?”
“It’s the same with them.”
“Have they all died off?”
“Yes…all.…”
“Exactly.… And we shall all die off?”
“The time will come when we, also, shall die off,”—the teacher predicted with indifference.
“And from which of the tribes of Israel do we come?”
The teacher looked at him, reflected, and then began to tell him about the Cimmerians, the Scythians, the Huns, the Slavs.… The old man curved himself still more on one side, and stared at him with terrified eyes.
“You’re inventing all that!”—he said hoarsely, when the teacher had finished.
“Why am I inventing?”—asked the other, in surprise.
“What did you tell me the names of those people were? They’re not in the Bible.”
He rose and went away, deeply offended, and muttering angrily.
“You’ve outlived your mind, Tyápa,” the teacher called after him, with conviction.
Then the old man turned again toward him, and stretching out his arm, he menaced him with his hooked and dirty finger:
“Adam came from the Lord, and the Hebrews descended from Adam, which signifies that all men are descended from the Hebrews.… And we, also.…”
“Well?”
“The Tatárs came from Ishmael…and he came from a Hebrew.…”
“Yes, but what do you want?”
“Nothing! Why did you lie?”
And he went away, leaving his interlocutor dumfounded. But a couple of days later he again sat down beside him.
“You’ve had education…well, and you ought to know—who are we?”
“Slavonians, Tyápa,”—replied the teacher, and began attentively to await Tyápa’s words, being desirous of understanding him.
“Speak according to the Bible—there are no such folks there. Who are we—Babylonians? Or from Edom?”
The teacher launched out upon a criticism of the Bible. The old man listened to him long and attentively, and interrupted:
“Hold on…stop that! You mean to say, that among the people known to God, there aren’t any Russians? Are we people who aren’t known to God? Is that it? Those who are inscribed in the Bible—those the Lord knew.… He annihilated them with fire and sword, he destroyed their towns and villages, but he also sent the prophets to them, for their instruction…that is to say, he had pity on them. He dispersed the Hebrews and the Tatárs, but he preserved them.… But how about us? Why haven’t we any prophets?
“I—I don’t know!”—said the teacher slowly, trying to understand the old man. But the latter laid his hand on the teacher’s shoulder, began to push him gently to and fro, and said hoarsely, as though he were endeavoring to swallow something:
“Tell me, now!… You talk a great deal, as though you knew everything. It disgusts me to listen to you…you muddle my soul.… You’d better have held your tongue!… Who are we? Exactly! Why haven’t we any prophets? Aha!—And where were we when Christ walked the earth? You see! Ekh, you stupid! And you keep on lying…could a whole nation die out? The Russian people can’t disappear—you’re lying…ifs written down in the Bible, only it isn’t known under what word.… You know the nation, what ifs like? Ifs huge.… How many villages are there on the earth? The whole nation lives there…a genuine, great nation.… And you say—it will die out.… A nation can’t die out, a man may…but a nation is necessary to God, he is the creator of the earth. The Amalekites didn’t die—they’re the Germans or the French…but you…ekh, you liar!… Come, now, tell me why God has passed us over? Haven’t we any treasure or prophets from the Lord? Who teaches us?.…”
Tyápa’s speech was strangely forceful; ridicule, and reproach, and profound faith resounded in it. He talked for a long time, and the teacher, who was, as usual, the worse for liquor, and in a peaceable mood, finally felt as uncomfortable in listening to him as though he were being sawed in twain with a wooden saw. He listened to the old man, watched his distorted countenance, felt this strange, crushing power of words, and, all of a sudden, he felt sorry to the verge of pain, for himself, and sad over something. He, also, felt a desire to say something powerful, something confident, to the old man, something which would interest Tyápa in his favor, would make him talk not in that reproachfully-surly tone, but in a different,—a soft, paternally-affectionate one. And the teacher felt something gurgling in his breast, rising in his throat…but he could find in himself no powerful words.
“What sort of a man are you?… your soul is torn to rags…and you have said various words.… As though you knew.… You’d better have held your tongue.…”
“Ekh, Tyápa,”—exclaimed the teacher sadly,—“what you say is true.… And it’s true…about the nation!… It’s huge…but I am a stranger to it…and it’s strange to me.… That’s where the tragedy of my life lies.… But—let me go! I shall suffer.… And there are no prophets…none!… I really do talk a great deal…and that’s of no use to anybody.… But I will hold my tongue…only, don’t talk to me like that.… Ekh, old man! you don’t know…you don’t know…you can’t understand.…”
The teacher began to weep at last. He wept so easily and freely, with such an abundance of tears, that he felt terribly pleased at the tears.
“You ought to go into a village…you might ask for the place of teacher or scribe there…and you’d get enough to eat, and you’d get aired. Why do you tarry?”—croaked Tyápa surlily.
But the teacher continued to weep, enjoying his tears.
From that time forth they became friends, and when the Men with Pasts saw them together they said:
“The teacher’s running after Tyápa…he’s steering his course to the money.”
“Kuválda put him up t
o that.… ‘Find out,’ says he, ‘where the old fellow’s capital is.…’”
It is possible that, when they talked thus, they thought otherwise. There was one absurd characteristic about these men: they were fond of displaying themselves, one to another, as worse than they were in reality.
A man who has nothing good in him sometimes is not averse to strutting in his bad qualities.
* * * *
When all these men had assembled around the teacher with his newspaper, the reading began.
“Well, sir,” said the captain, “what does that nasty little newspaper discuss to-day? Is there a feuilleton?”
“No,” answered the teacher.
“Your publisher is getting grasping.… And is there a leading article?”
“Yes, there is one to-day…Gulyáeff’s, apparently.”
“Aha! Let’s have it; that rascal writes sensibly; he has an eye as sharp as a nail.”
“Assessment of real estate,” reads the teacher.
“The appraisal of real estate,”—reads the teacher,—“which was made more than fifteen years ago, and continues to serve at the present time as the basis for the collection of an assessment, for the benefit of the town.…”
“That’s ingenious,”—comments Captain Kuválda;—“‘continues to serve’! That’s ridiculous. It’s profitable for the merchant who runs the town to have it continue to serve; well, and so it does continue to serve.…”
“The article is written on that theme,”—says the teacher.
“Yes? Strange! That’s the theme for a feuilleton…it must be written about in a peppery way.”
A small dispute blazes up. The audience listens attentively to him, for only one bottle of vódka has been drunk thus far. After the leading article, the city items and the court record are read. If a merchant appears in these criminal sections either as an active or a suffering personality—Aristíd Kuválda sincerely exults. If the merchant has been plundered—very fine, only, it’s a pity that he was robbed of so little. If his horses have smashed him up,—it’s delightful news, only it’s a great shame that he is still alive. If a merchant has lost his suit in court,—magnificent, but it’s sad that the court costs were not imposed upon him in double measure.