“Ye-es, Brother,” he said with a sigh, when Kleshtchkov had finished singing, “he can sing! The devil take him!
He has even made the air hot.”
The harness-maker sang again, with his head back, gazing up at the ceiling:
“On the road from the flourishing village
A young girl came over the dewy fields.”
“He can sing,” muttered my master, shaking his head and smiling.
And Kleshtchkov poured forth his song, clear as the music of a reed:
“And the beautiful maiden answered him:
‘An orphan am I, no one wants me,’ ”
“Good!” whispered my master, blinking his reddening eyes. “Phew! it is devilish good!”
I looked at him and rejoiced, and the sobbing words of the song conquered the noise of the tavern, sounded more powerful, more beautiful, more touching every moment.
I live solitary in our village.
A young girl am I; they never ask me out.
Oie, poor am I, my dress it is not fine;
I am not fit, I know, for a brave young man.
A widower would marry me to do his work;
I do not wish to bow myself to such a fate.
My master wept undisguisedly; he sat with his head bent; his prominent nose twitched, and tears splashed on his knees.
After the third song, agitated and dishevelled, he said:
“I can’t sit here any longer; I shall be stifled with these odors.
Let us go home.”
But when we were in the street he said:
“Come along, Pyeshkov, let us go to a restaurant and have something to eat.
I don’t want to go home!”
He hailed a sledge, without haggling about the charge, and said nothing while we were on the way, but in the restaurant, after taking a table in a corner, he began at once in an undertone, looking about him the while, to complain angrily.
“He has thoroughly upset me, that goat; to such a state of melancholy he has driven me!
Here you are — you read and think about things — just tell me now, what the devil is the use of it all?
One lives; forty years pass by; one has a wife and children, and no one to talk to!
There are times when I want to unburden my soul, to talk to some one about all sorts of things, but there is no one I can talk to.
I can’t talk to my wife; I have nothing in common with her.
What is she, after all?
She has her children and the house; that’s her business.
She is a stranger to my soul.
A wife is your friend till the first child comes.
In fact, she is — on the whole — Well, you can see for yourself she does not dance to my piping. Flesh without spirit, the devil take you!
It is a grief to me, Brother.”
He drank the cold, bitter beer feverishly, was silent for a time, ruffling his long hair, and then he went on:
“Human creatures are riff-raff for the most part. Brother!
There you are, for instance, talking to the workmen. Oh yes, I understand there is a lot of trickery, and baseness; it is true. Brother; they are thieves all of them!
But do you think that what you say makes any difference to them!
Not an atom!
No!
They are all — Petr, Osip as well — rogues!
They speak about me, and you speak for me, and all — what is the use of it, Brother?”
I was dumb from sheer amazement.
“That’s it!” said my master, smiling. “You were right to think of going to Persia. There you would understand nothing; it is a foreign language they speak there!
But in your own language you’ll hear nothing but baseness!”
“Has Osip been telling you about me?”
I asked.
“Well, yes! But what did you expect?