“Now look at this; just listen. In our district there lived a peasant, Tushek was his name, an emaciated little man, and idle. He lived like a feather, blown about here and there by the wind, neither a worker nor a do-nothing.
Well, one day he took to praying, because he had nothing else to do, and after wandering about for two years, he suddenly showed himself in a new character. His hair hung down over his shoulders; he wore a skull-cap, and a brown cassock of leather; he looked on all of us with a baneful eye, and said straight out: ‘Repent, ye cursed!’
And why not repent, especially if you happened to be a woman”?
And the business ran its course: Tushek overfed, Tushek drunk, Tushek having his way with the women to his heart’s content — ”
The bricklayer interrupted him angrily:
“What has that got to do with the matter, his over-feeding, or overdrinking”?”
“What else has to do with it, then?”
“His words are all that matter.”
“Oh, I took no notice of his words; I am abundantly gifted with words myself.”
“We know all we want to know about Tushinkov, Dmitri Vassilich,” said Petr indignantly, and Grigori said nothing, but let his head droop, and gazed into his glass.
“I don’t dispute it,” replied Osip peaceably. “I was just telling our Maximich of the different pathways to the morsel — ”
“Some of the roads lead to prison!”
“Occasionally,” agreed Osip. “But you will meet with priests on all kinds of paths; one must learn where to turn off.”
He was always somewhat inclined to make fun of these pious people, the plasterer and the bricklayer; perhaps he did not like them, but he skilfully concealed the fact.
His attitude towards people was always elusive.
He looked upon Ephimushka more indulgently, with more favor than upon the other.
The slater did not enter into discussions about God, the truth, sects, the woes of humanity, as his friends did.
Setting his chair sidewise to the table, so that its back should not be in the way of his hump, he would calmly drink glass after glass of tea. Then, suddenly alert, he would glance round the smoky room, listening to the incoherent babel of voices, and darting up, swiftly disap — pear.
That meant that some one had come into the tavern to whom Ephimushka owed money, — he had a good dozen creditors, — so, as some of them used to beat him when they saw him, he just fled from sin.
“They get angry, the oddities!” he would say in a tone of surprise. “Can’t they understand that if I had the money I would give it to them?”
“Oh, bitter poverty!” Osip sped after him.
Sometimes Ephimushka sat deep in thought, hearing and seeing nothing; his high cheek-boned face softened, his pleasant eyes looking pleasanter than usual.
“What are you thinking about?” they would ask him. •
“I was thinking that if I were rich I would marry a real lady, a noblewoman — by God, I would! A colonel’s daughter, for example, and, Lord! how I would love her!
I should be on fire with love of her. because, my brothers, I once roofed the country house of a certain colonel — ”
“And he had a widowed daughter; we ‘ve heard all that before!” interrupted Petr in an unfriendly tone.
But Ephimushka, spreading his hands out on his knees, rocked to and fro, his hump looking as if it were chiselling the air, and continued:
“Sometimes she went into the garden, all in white: glorious she looked. I looked at her from the roof, and I didn’t know what the sun had done to me. But what caused that white light?
It was as if a white dove had flown from under her feet!
She was just a cornflower in cream!
With such a lady as that, one would like all one’s life to be night.”
“And how would you get anything to eat?” asked Petr gruffly. But this did not disturb Ephimushka.
“Lord!” he exclaimed. “Should we want much?
Besides, she is rich.”
Osip laughed.
“And when are you going in for all this dissipation, Ephimushka, you rogue?”
Ephimushka never talked on any other subject but women, and he was an unreliable workman. At one time he worked excellently and profitably, at another time he did not get on at all; his wooden hammer tapped the ridges lazily, leaving crevices.
He always smelt of train-oil, but he had a smell of his own as well, a healthy, pleasant smell like that of a newly cut tree.
One could discuss everything that was interesting with the carpenter. His words always stirred one’s feelings, but it was hard to tell when he was serious and when joking.
With Grigori it was better to talk about God; this was a subject which he loved, and on which he was an authority.
“Grisha,” I asked, “do you know there are people who do not believe in God?”
He laughed quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“They say there is no God.”
“Oh, that’s what you mean!
I know that.”
And as if he were brushing away invisible flies, he went on:
“King David said in his time, you remember,
‘The fool hath said in his heart “There is no God.” ’ That’s what he said about that kind of fool.
We can’t do without God!”