He always had the stomachache, and there were some days when he could not eat anything at all. Even a morsel of bread brought on the pain to such an extent as to cause convulsions and a dreadful sickness.
Humpbacked Ephimushka also seemed a very good and honest, but always queer fellow. Sometimes he was happy and foolish, like a harmless lunatic.
He was everlastingly falling in love with different women, about whom he always used the same words:
“I tell you straight, she is not a woman, but a flower in cream — ei, bo — o!”
When the lively women of Kunavin Street came to wash the floors in the shops, Ephimushka let himself down from the roof, and standing in a corner somewhere, mumbled, blinking his gray, bright eyes, stretch — ing his mouth from ear to ear:
“Such a butterfly as the Lord has sent to me; such a joy has descended upon me! Well, what is she but a flower in cream, and grateful I ought to be for the chance which has brought me such a gift!
Such beauty makes me full of life, afire!”
At first the women used to laugh at him, calling out to each other:
“Listen to the humpback running on! Oh Lord!”
The slater caused no little laughter. His high cheek-boned face wore a sleepy expression, and he used to talk as if he were raving, his honeyed phrases flowing in an intoxicating stream which obviously went to the women’s heads.
At length one of the elder ones said to her friend in a tone of amazement:
“Just listen to how that man is going on! A clean young fellow he is!”
“He sings like a bird.”
“Or like a beggar in the church porch,” said an obstinate girl, refusing to give way.
But Ephimushka was not like a beggar at all. He stood firmly, like a squat tree-trunk; his voice rang out like a challenge; his words became more and more alluring; the women listened to him in silence.
In fact, it seemed as if his whole being was flowing away in a tender, narcotic speech.
It ended in his saying to his mates in a tone of astonishment at supper-time, or after the Sabbath rest, shak — ing his heavy, angular head:
“Well, what a sweet little woman, a dear little thing! I have never before come across anything like her!”
When he spoke of his conquests Ephimushka was not boastful, nor jeered at the victim of his charms, as the others always did. He was only joyfully and gratefully touched, his gray eyes wide open with astonishment.
Osip, shaking his head, exclaimed:
“Oh, you incorrigible fellow!
How old are you?”
“Forty — four years, but that’s nothing!
I have grown five years younger today, as if I had bathed in the healing water of a river. I feel thoroughly fit, and my heart is at peace!
Some women can produce that effect, diV
The bricklayer said coarsely:
“You are going on for fifty. You had better be careful, or you will find that your loose way of life will leave a bitter taste.”
“You are shameless, Ephimushka!” sighed Grigori Shishlin.
And it seemed to — me that the handsome fellow envied the success of the humpback.
Osip looked round on us all from under his level silver brows, and said jestingly:
“Every Mashka has her fancies. One will love cups and spoons, another buckles and earrings, but all Mashkas will be grandmothers in time.”
Shishlin was married, but his wife was living in the country, so he also cast his eyes on the floorscrubbers.
They were all of them easy of approach. All of them “earned a bit” to add to their income, and they regarded this method of earning money in that poverty — stricken area as simply as they would have regarded any other kind of work.
But the handsome workman never approached the women. He just gazed at them from afar with a peculiar expression, as if he were pitying some one — himself or them. But when they be — gan to sport with him and tempt him, he laughed bash — fully and went away.
“Well, you —”
“What’s the matter with you, you fool?” asked Ephimushka, amazed. “Do you mean to say you are going to lose the chance?”
“I am a married man,” Grigori reminded him.
“Well, do you think your wife will know anything about it?”
“My wife would always know if I lived unchastely. I can’t deceive her, my brother.”
“How can she know?”
“That I can’t say, but she is bound to know, while she lives chaste herself; and if I lead a chaste life, and she were to sin, I should know it.”
“But how?” cried Ephimushka, but Grigori repeated calmly:
“That I can’t say.”
The slater waved his hands agitatedly.
“There, if you please!
Chaste, and doesn’t know!
Oh, you blockhead!”
Shishlin’s workmen, numbering seven, treated him as one of themselves and not as their master, and behind his back they nicknamed him “The Calf.”
When he came to work and saw that they were lazy, he would take a trowel, or a spade, and artistically do the work himself, calling out coaxingly:
“Set to work, children, set to work!”