“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 cau — tiously 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.