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 abhor — rent 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 arc 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 regret. 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 fire-man’s helmet, and, hanging from the ceiling, Go — lovev’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: