“I never meant to go into a monastery!” he replied, “and I shall not stay long as a waiter.”
Four years later I met him in Tzaritzin, still a waiter in a tavern; and later still I read in a newspaper that Phoma Tuchkov had been arrested for an attempted burglary.
The history of the mason, Ardalon, moved me deeply. He was the eldest and best workman in Petr’s gang.
This black-bearded, light-hearted man of forty years also involuntarily evoked the query, “Why was he not the master instead of Petr?”
He seldom drank vodka and hardly ever drank too much; he knew his work thoroughly, and worked as if he loved it; the bricks seemed to fly from his hands like red doves.
In comparison with him, the sickly, lean Petr seemed an absolutely superfluous member of the gang. He used to speak thus of his work:
“I build stone houses for people, and a wooden coffin for myself.”
But Ardalon laid his bricks with cheerful energy as he cried:
“Work, my child, for the glory of God.”
And he told us all that next spring he would go to Tomsk, where his brother-in-law had undertaken a large contract to build a church, and had invited him to go as overseer.
“I have made up my mind to go.
Building churches is work that I love!” he said. And he suggested to me: “Come with me!
It is very easy, brother, for an educated person to get on in Siberia. There, education is a trump card!”
I agreed to his proposition, and he cried triumphantly:
“There!
That is business and not a joke.”
Toward Petr and Grigori he behaved with good-natured derision, like a grown-up person towards children, and he said to Osip:
“Braggarts! Each shows the other his cleverness, as if they were playing at cards.
One says: ‘My cards are all such and such a color,’ and the other says, ‘And mine are trumps!’ ”
Osip observed hesitatingly:
“How could it be otherwise?
Boasting is only human; all the girls walk about with their chests stuck out.”
“All, yes, all. It is God, God all the time. But they hoard up money themselves!” said Ardalon impatiently.
“Well, Grisha doesn’t/’
“I am speaking for myself.
I would go with this God into the forest, the desert.
I ‘am weary of being here. In the spring I shall go to Siberia.”
The workmen, envious of Ardalon, said:
“If wc had such a chance in the shape of a brother-in-law, we should not be afraid of Siberia either.”
And suddenly Ardalon disappeared.
He went away from the workshop on Sunday, and for three days no one knew where he was.
This made anxious conjectures.
“Perhaps he has been murdered.”
“Or maybe he is drowned.”
But Ephimushka came, and declared in an embarrassed manner:
“He has gone on the drink.”
“Why do you tell such lies?” cried Petr incredulously.
“He has gone on the drink; he is drinking madly.
He is just like a com kiln which burns from the very center.
Perhaps his much-loved wife is dead.”
“He is a widower!
Where is he?”
Petr angrily set out to save Ardalon, but the latter fought him.
Then Osip, pressing his lips together firmly, thrust his hands in his pockets and said:
“Shall I go have a look at him, and see what it is all about?
He is a good fellow.”
I attached myself to him.
“Here’s a man,” said Osip on the way, “who lives for years quite decently, when suddenly he loses control of himself, and is all over the place.
Look, Maximich, and learn.”
We went to one of the cheap “houses of pleasure” of Kunavin Village, and we were welcomed by a predatory old woman.