by Maxim Gorky
Every time I met grandmother, I was more consciously charmed by her personality; but I felt already that that beautiful soul, blinded by fanciful tales, was not capable of seeing, could not understand a revelation of the bitter reality of life, and my disquietude and restlessness were strange to her.
“You must have patience, Olesha!”
This was all she had to say to me in reply to my stories of the hideous lives, of the tortures of people, of sorrow—of all which perplexed me, and with which I was burning.
I was unfitted by nature to be patient, and if occasionally I exhibited that virtue which belongs to cattle, trees, and stones, I did so in the cause of self-discipline, to test my reserves of strength, my degree of stability upon earth. Sometimes young people, with the stupidity of youth, will keep on trying to lift weights too heavy for their muscles and bones; will try boastfully, like full-grown men of proved strength, to cross themselves with heavy weights, envious of the strength of their elders.
I also did this in a double sense, physically and spiritually, and it is only due to some chance that I did not strain myself dangerously, or deform myself for the rest of my life. Besides, nothing disfigures a man more terribly than his patience, the submission of his strength to external conditions.
And though in the end I shall lie in the earth disfigured, I can say, not without pride, to my last hour, that good people did their best for forty years to disfigure my soul, but that their labors were not very successful.
The wild desire to play mischievous pranks, to amuse people, to make them laugh, took more and more hold upon me. I was successful in this. I could tell stories about the merchants in the market-place, impersonating them; I could imitate the peasant men and women buying and selling icons, the shopman skilfully cheating them; the valuers disputing amongst themselves.
The workshop resounded with laughter. Often the workmen left their work to look on at my impersonations, but on all these occasions Larionich would say:
“You had better do your acting after supper; otherwise you hinder the work.”
When I had finished my performance I felt myself easier, as if I had thrown off a burden which weighed upon me. For half an hour or an hour my head felt pleasantly clear, but soon it felt again as if it were full of sharp, small nails, which moved about and grew hot. It seemed to me that a sort of dirty porridge was boiling around me, and that I was being gradually boiled away in it.
I wondered: Was life really like this? And should I have to live as these people lived, never finding, never seeing anything better?
“You are growing sulky, Maximich,” said Jikharev, looking at me attentively.
Sitanov often asked me:
“What is the matter with you?”
And I could not answer him.
Life perseveringly and roughly washed out from my soul its most delicate writings, maliciously changing them into some sort of indistinct trash, and with anger and determination I resisted its violence. I was floating on the same river as all the others, only for me the waters were colder and did not support me as easily as it did the others. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was gently sinking into unfathomable depths.
People behaved better to me; they did not shout at me as they did at Pavl, nor harass me; they called me by my patronymic in order to emphasize their more respectful attitude toward me. This was good; but it was torturing to see how many of them drank vodka, how disgustingly drunk they became, and how injurious to them were their relations with women, although I understood that vodka and women were the only diversions that life afforded.
I often called to mind with sorrow that that most intelligent, courageous woman, Natalia Kozlovski, was also called a woman of pleasure. And what about grandmother? And Queen Margot?
I used to think of my queen with a feeling almost of terror; she was so removed from all the others, it was as if I had seen her in a dream.
I began to think too much about women, and I had already revolved in my own mind the question: Shall I go on the next holiday where all the others go? This was no physical desire. I was both healthy and fastidious, but at times I was almost mad with a desire to embrace some one tender, intelligent, and frankly, unrestrainedly, as to a mother, speak to her of the disturbances of my soul.
I envied Pavl when he told me at night of his affair with a maidservant in the opposite house.
“It is a funny thing, brother! A month ago I was throwing snowballs at her because I did not like her, and now I sit on a bench and hug her. She is dearer to me than any one!”
“What do you talk about?”
“About everything, of course! She talks to me about herself, and I talk to her about myself. And then we kiss—only she is honest. In fact, brother, she is so good that it is almost a misfortune! Why, you smoke like an old soldier!”
I smoked a lot; tobacco intoxicated me, dulled my restless thoughts, my agitated feelings. As for vodka, it only aroused in me a repulsion toward my own odor and taste, but Pavl drank with a will, and when he was drunk, used to cry bitterly:
“I want to go home, I want to go home! Let me go home!”
As far as I can remember he was an orphan; his mother and father had been dead a long time. Brother and sister he had none; he had lived among strangers for eight years.
In this state of restless dissatisfaction the call of spring disturbed me still more. I made up my mind to go on a boat again, and if I could get as far as Astrakhan, to run away to Persia.
I do not remember why I selected Persia particularly. It may have been because I had taken a great fancy to the Persian merchants on the Nijigorodski market-place, sitting like stone idols, spreading their dyed beards in the sun, calmly smoking their hookas, with large, dark, omniscient eyes.
There is no doubt that I should have run away somewhere, but one day in Easter week, when part of the occupants of the workshop had gone to their homes, and the rest were drinking, I was walking on a sunny day on the banks of the Oka, when I met my old master, grandmother’s nephew.
He was walking along in a light gray overcoat, with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his teeth, his hat on the back of his head. His pleasant face smiled kindly at me. He had the appearance of a man who is at liberty and is happy, and there was no one beside ourselves in the fields.
“Ah, Pyeshkov, Christ is risen!”
After we had exchanged the Easter kiss, he asked how I was living, and I told him frankly that the workshop, the town and everything in general were abhorrent to me, and that I had made up my mind to go to Persia.
“Give it up,” he said to me gravely. “What the devil is there in Persia? I know exactly how you are feeling, brother; in my youth I also had the wander fever.”
I liked him for telling me this. There was something about him good and springlike; he was a being set apart.
“Do you smoke?” he asked, holding out a silver cigarette-case full of fat cigarettes.
That completed his conquest of me.
“What you had better do, Pyeshkov, is to come back to me again,” he suggested. “For this year I have undertaken contracts for the new market-place, you understand. And I can make use of you there; you will be a kind of overseer for me; you will receive all the material; you will see that it is all in its proper place, and that the workmen do not steal it. Will that suit you? Your wages will be five rubles a month, and five copecks for dinner! The women-folk will have nothing to do with you; you will go out in the morning and return in the evening. As for the women; you can ignore them; only don’t let them know that we have met, but just come to see us on Sunday at Phomin Street. It will be a change for you!”
We parted like friends. As he said good-by, he pressed my hand, and as he went away, he actually waved his hat to me affably from a distance.
When I announced in the workroom that I was leaving, most of the workmen showed a flattering r
egret. Pavl, especially, was upset.
“Think,” he said reproachfully; “how will you live with men of all kinds, after being with us? With carpenters, house-painters—Oh, you—It is going out of the frying-pan into the fire.”
Jikharev growled:
“A fish looks for the deepest place, but a clever young man seeks a worse place!”
The send-off which they gave me from the workshop was a sad one.
“Of course one must try this and that,” said Jikharev, who was yellow from the effects of a drinking bout. “It is better to do it straight off, before you become too closely attached to something or other.”
“And that for the rest of your life,” added Larionich softly.
But I felt that they spoke with constraint, and from a sense of duty. The thread which had bound me to them was somehow rotted and broken.
In the loft drunken Golovev rolled about, and muttered hoarsely:
“I would like to see them all in prison. I know their secrets! Who believes in God here? Aha-a—!”
As usual, faceless, uncompleted icons were propped against the wall; the glass balls were fixed to the ceiling. It was long since we had had to work with a light, and the balls, not being used, were covered with a gray coating of soot and dust. I remember the surroundings so vividly that if I shut my eyes, I can see in the darkness the whole of that basement room: all the tables, and the jars of paint on the windowsills, the bundles of brushes, the icons, the slop-pail under the brass washstand-basin which looked like a fireman’s helmet, and, hanging from the ceiling, Golovev’s bare foot, which was blue like the foot of a drowned man.
I wanted to get away quickly, but in Russia they love long-drawn-out, sad moments. When they are saying good-by, Russian people behave as if they were hearing a requiem mass.
Jikharev, twitching his brows, said to me:
“That book—the devil’s book—I can’t give it back to you. Will you take two greven for it?”
The book was my own,—the old second lieutenant of the fire-brigade had given it to me—and I grudged giving Lermontov away. But when, somewhat offended, I refused the money, Jikharev calmly put the coins back in his purse, and said in an unwavering tone:
“As you like; but I shall not give you back the book. It is not for you. A book like that would soon lead you into sin.”
“But it is sold in shops; I have seen it!”
But he only said with redoubled determination:
“That has nothing to do with the matter; they sell revolvers in shops, too—”
So he never returned Lermontov to me.
As I was going upstairs to say good-by to my mistress, I ran into her niece in the hall.
“Is it true what they say—that you are leaving?”
“Yes.”
“If you had not gone of your own accord, you would have been sent away,” she assured me, not very kindly, but with perfect frankness.
And the tipsy mistress said:
“Good-by, Christ be with you! You are a bad boy, an impudent boy; although I have never seen anything bad in you myself, they all say that you are a bad boy!” And suddenly she burst out crying, and said through her tears:
“Ah, if my dead one, my sweet husband, dear soul, had been alive, he would have known how to deal with you; he would have boxed your ears and you would have stayed on. We should not have had to send you away! But nowadays things are different; if all is not exactly as you like, away you go! Och! And where will you be going, boy, and what good will it do you to stroll from place to place?”
CHAPTER XVI
I was in a boat with my master, passing along the market-place between shops which were flooded to the height of the second story. I plied the oars, while my master sat in the stern. The paddle wheel, which was useless as a rudder, was deep in the water, and the boat veered about awkwardly, meandering from street to street on the quiet, muddily sleepy waters.
“Ekh! The water gets higher and higher. The devil take it! It is keeping the work back,” grumbled my master as he smoked a cigar, the smoke of which had an odor of burning cloth. “Gently!” he cried in alarm, “we are running into a lamp-post!”
He steered the boat out of danger and scolded me: “They have given me a boat, the wretches!”
He showed me the spot on which, after the water had subsided, the work of rebuilding would begin. With his face shaved to a bluish tint, his mustache clipped short, and a cigar in his mouth, he did not look like a contractor. He wore a leathern jacket, high boots to his knees, and a game-bag was slung over his shoulders. At his feet was an expensive two-barelled gun, manufactured by Lebed. From time to time he restlessly changed the position of his leathern cap, pulling it over his eyes, pouting his lips and looking cautiously around. He pushed the cap to the back of his head, looked younger, and smiled beneath his mustache, thinking of something pleasant. No one would have thought that he had a lot of work to do, and that the long time the water took in subsiding worried him. Evidently thoughts wholly unconnected with business were passing through his mind.
And I was overwhelmed by a feeling of quiet amazement; it seemed so strange to look upon that dead town, the straight rows of buildings with closed windows. The town was simply flooded with water, and seemed to be floating past our boat. The sky was gray. The sun had been lost in the clouds, but sometimes shone through them in large, silver, wintry patches.
The water also was gray and cold; its flow was unnoticeable; it seemed to be congealed, fixed to one place, like the empty houses beside the shops, which were painted a dirty yellow. When the pale sun looked through the clouds, all around grew slightly brighter. The water reflected the gray texture of the sky; our boat seemed to hang in the air between two skies; the stone buildings also lifted themselves up, and with a scarcely perceptible movement floated toward the Volga, or the Oka. Around the boat were broken casks, boxes, baskets, fragments of wood and straw; sometimes a rod or joist of wood floated like a dead snake on the surface.
Here and there windows were opened. On the roofs of the rows of galleries linen was drying, or felt boots stuck out. A woman looked out of a window onto the gray waters. A boat was moored to the top of the cast-iron columns of a galley; her red deck made the reflection of the water look greasy and meat-like.
Nodding his head at these signs of life, my master explained to me:
“This is where the market watchman lives. He climbs out of the window onto the roof, gets into his boat, and goes out to see if there are any thieves about. And if there are none, he thieves on his own account.”
He spoke lazily, calmly, thinking of something else. All around was quiet, deserted, and unreal, as if it were part of a dream. The Volga and the Oka flowed into an enormous lake; in the distance on a rugged hillside the town was painted in motley colors. Gardens were still somberly clothed, but the buds were bursting on the trees, and foliage clad houses and churches in a warm, green mantle. Over the water crept the muffled sound of the Easter-tide bells. The murmur of the town was audible, while here it was just like a forgotten graveyard.
Our boat wended its way between two rows of black trees; we were on the high road to the old cathedral. The cigar was in my master’s way; its acrid smoke got into his eyes and caused him to run the nose of the boat into the trunks of the trees. Upon which he cried, irritably and in surprise:
“What a rotten boat this is!”
“But you are not steering it.”
“How can I?” he grumbled. “When there are two people in a boat, one always rows while the other steers. There—look! There’s the Chinese block.”
I knew the market through and through; I knew that comical-looking block of buildings with the ridiculous roofs on which sat, with crossed legs, figures of Chinamen in plaster of Paris. There had been a time when I and my playfellow had thrown stones at them, and some of the Chinamen had had their heads and
hands broken off by me. But I no longer took any pride in that sort of thing.
“Rubbish!” said my master, pointing to the block. “If I had been allowed to build it—”
He whistled and pushed his cap to the back of his head.
But somehow I thought that he would have built that town of stone just as dingily, on that low-lying ground which was flooded by the waters of two rivers every year. And he would even have invented the Chinese block.
Throwing his cigar over the side of the boat, he spat after it in disgust, saying:
“Life is very dull, Pyeshkov, very dull. There are no educated people—no one to talk to. If one wants to show off one’s gifts, who is there to be impressed? Not a soul! All the people here are carpenters, stonemasons, peasants—”
He looked straight ahead at the white mosque which rose picturesquely out of the water on a small hill, and continued as if he were recollecting something he had forgotten:
“I began to drink beer and smoke cigars when I was working under a German. The Germans, my brother, are a business-like race—such wild fowl! Drinking beer is a pleasant occupation, but I have never got used to smoking cigars. And when you’ve been smoking, your wife grumbles: ‘What is it that you smell of? It is like the smell at the harness-makers.’ Ah, brother, the longer we live, the more artful we grow. Well, well, true to oneself—”
Placing the oar against the side of the boat, he took up his gun and shot at a Chinaman on a roof. No harm came to the latter; the shot buried itself in the roof and the wall, raising a dusty smoke.
“That was a miss,” he admitted without regret, and he again loaded his gun.
“How do you get on with the girls? Are you keen on them? No? Why, I was in love when I was only thirteen.”