He talks more than any of them; he is a gossip.
He is a sly creature, Brother!
No, Pyeshkov, words don’t touch them.
Am I not right?
And what the devil is the use of it? And what the devil difference does it make? None!
It is like snow in the autumn, falling in the mud and melting.
It only makes more mud.
You had far better hold your tongue.”
He drank glass after glass of beer. He did not get drunk, but he talked more and more quickly and fiercely.
“The proverb says, ‘Speech is silver, silence is golden.’
Ekh, Brother, it is all sorrow, sorrow!
He sang truly,
‘Solitary I live in our village.’
Human life is all loneliness.”
He glanced round, lowered his voice, and continued:
“And I had found a friend after my own heart. There was a woman who happened to be alone, as good as a widow; her husband had been condemned to Siberia for coining money, and was in prison there.
I became acquainted with her; she was penniless; it was that, you know, which led to our acquaintance.
I looked at her and thought, ‘What a nice little person!’
Pretty, you know, young, simply wonderful.
I saw her once or twice, and then I said to her: ‘Your husband is a rogue. You are not living honestly yourself. Why do you want to go to Siberia after him?’
But she would follow him into exile.
She said to me: ‘Whatever he is, I love him; he is good to me I It may be that it was for me he sinned.
I have sinned with you. For’ his sake,’ she said, ‘I had to have money; he is a gentleman and accustomed to live well.
If I had been single,’ she said, ‘I should have lived honorably.
You are a good man, too,’ she said, ‘and I like you very much, but don’t talk to me about this again.’
The devil!
I gave her all I had — eighty rubles or thereabouts — and I said: ‘You must pardon me, but I cannot see you any more. I cannot!’
And I left her — and that’s how — ”
He was silent, and then he suddenly became drunk. He sank into a huddled-up heap and muttered:
“Six times I went to see her.
You can’t understand what it was like!
I might have gone to her flat six more times, but I could not make up my mind to it. I could not!
Now she has gone away.”
He laid his hands on the table, and in a whisper, moving his fingers, said:
“God grant I never meet her again! God grant it!
Then it would be going to the devil!
Let us go home. Come!”
We went. He staggered along, muttering:
“That’s how it is, Brother.”
I was not surprised by the story he had told me; I had long ago guessed that something unusual had happened to him.
But I was greatly depressed by what he had said about life, and more by what he had said about Osip.
CHAPTER XX
I LIVED three years as overseer in that dead town, amid empty buildings, watching the workmen pull down clumsy stone shops in the autumn, and rebuild them in the same way in the spring.
The master took great care that I should earn his five rubles.
If the floor of a shop had to be laid again, I had to remove earth from the whole area to the depth of one arshin. The dock laborers were paid a ruble for this work, but I received nothing; and while I was thus occupied, I had no time to look after the carpenters, who unscrewed the locks and handles from the doors and committed petty thefts of all kinds.
Both the workmen and the contractors tried in every way to cheat me, to steal something, and they did it almost openly, as if they were performing an unpleasant duty; were not in the least indignant when I accused them, but were merely amazed.
“You make as much fuss over five rubles as you would over twenty. It is funny to hear you!”
I pointed out to my riiaster that, while he saved one ruble by my labor, he lost ten times more in this way, but he merely blinked at me and said:
“That will do! You are making that up!”
I understood that he suspected me of conniving at the thefts, which aroused in me a feeling of repulsion towards him, but I was not offended. In that class of life they all steal, and even the master liked to take what did not belong to him.