However, he left an impression on my mind. I liked the drunken boldness of his denunciations, which were modelled on those of the prophet Isaias.
“Oh, unclean and vile ones of earth!” he roared, “the worst among you are famous, and the best are persecuted. The day of judgment draws nigh. You will repent then, but it will be too late, too late!”
As I listened to his roar, I remembered “Good Business,” the laundress Natalia, ruined so hideously and easily. Queen Margot, wrapped in a cloud of dirty scandal. I already had some memories!
My brief acquaintance with this man finished curiously.
I met him in the spring, in the fields near the camp. He was walking like a camel, moving his head from side to side, solitary, bloated-looking.
“Going for a walk?” he asked hoarsely. “Let us go together.
I also am taking a walk.
I am ill. Brother; yes.”
We walked some yards without speaking, when suddenly we saw a man in a pit which had been made under a tent. He was sitting in the bottom of the pit, leaning on one side, his shoulder resting against the side of the trench. His coat was drawn up on one side above his ear, as if he had been trying to take it off and had not succeeded.
“Drunk,” decided the singer, coming to a standstill.
But on the young grass under the man’s arm lay a large revolver, not far from him lay a cap, and beside it stood a bottle of vodka, hardly begun. Its empty neck was buried in the long grass.
The face of the man was hidden by his overcoat, as if he were ashamed.
For a moment we stood in silence. Then Mitropolski, planting his feet wide apart, said:
“He has shot himself.”
Then I understood that the man was not drunk, but dead, but it came upon me so suddenly that I could not believe it.
I remember that I felt neither fear nor pity as I looked at that large, smooth skull, visible above the overcoat, and on that livid ear. I could not believe that a man would kill himself on such a pleasant spring day.
The singer rubbed his unshaven cheeks with his hand, as if he were cold, and said hoarsely:
“He is an oldish man.
Perhaps his wife has left him, or he has made off with money not belonging to him.”
He sent me into the town to fetch the police, and himself sat down on the edge of the pit, letting his feet hang over, wrapping his worn overcoat closely round him. Having informed the police of the suicide, I ran back quickly, but in the meantime the chor — ister had drunk the dead man’s vodka, and came to meet me, waving the empty bottle.
“This is what ruined him,” he cried, and furiously dashing the bottle to the ground, smashed it to atoms.
The town constable had followed me. He looked into the pit, took off his hat, and crossing himself indecisively, asked the singer:
“Who may you be?”
“That is not your business.”
The policeman reflected, and then asked more politely:
“What account do you give of yourself, then? Here is a dead man, and here are you, drunk!”
“I have been drunk for twenty years!” said the singer proudly, striking his chest with the palm of his hand.
I felt sure that they would arrest him for drinking the vodka.
People came rushing from the town; a severe-looking police inspector cartie in a cab. descended into the pit, and, lifting aside the overcoat of the suicide, looked into his face.
“Who saw him first?”
“I,” said Mitropolski.
The inspector looked at him and drawled ominously:
“A-ah! Congratulations, my lord!”
Sightseers began to gather round; there were a dozen or so of people. Panting, excited, they surrounded the pit and looked down into it, and one of them cried:
“It is a chinovnik who lives in our street; I know him!”
The singer, swaying, with his cap off, stood before the inspector, and argued with him inarticulately, shouting something indistinctly. Then the inspector struck him in the chest. He reeled and sat down, and the policeman without haste took some string from his pocket and bound the hands of the singer. He folded them meekly behind his back, as if he were used to this procedure. Then the inspector began to shout angrily to the crowd:
“Be off, now!”
After this there came another, older policeman, with moist, red eyes, his mouth hanging open from weariness, and he took hold of the end of the cord with which the singer was bound, and gently led him into the town.
I also went away dejected from the field. Through my memory, like a dull echo, rang the avenging words:
“Woe to the town Ariel!”
And before my eyes rose that depressing spectacle of the policeman slowly drawing the string from the pocket of his ulster, and the awe-inspiring prophet meekly folding his red, hairy hands behind his back, and crossing his wrists as if he were used to it.
I soon heard that the prophet had been sent out of the town.
And after him, Kleshtchkov disappeared; he had married well, and had gone to live in a district where a harness-maker’s workshop had been opened.
I had praised his singing so warmly to my master that he said one day:
“I must go and hear him!”
And so one night he sat at a little table opposite to me, raising his brows in astonishment, his eyes wide open.
On the way to the tavern he had made fun of me, and during the first part of the time he was in the tavern, he was railing at me, at the people there, and at the stuffy smell of the place.
When the harness-maker began to sing he smiled derisively, and began to pour himself a glass of beer, but he stopped half-way, saying:
“Who the devil —?”
His hand trembled; he set the bottle down gently, and began to listen with intentness.