I did not speak to him out of malice, but out of pity for you.
You are not a stupid lad, but the devil is racking your brain.
If I had caught you stealing, or run — ning after the girls, or drinking, I should have held my tongue.
But I shall always repeat all your wild talk to the master; so now you know.”
“I won’t talk to you, then!”
He was silent, scratching the resin off his hands with his nails. Then he looked at me with an expression of affection and said:
“That you will!
To whom else will you talk?
There is no one else.”
Clean and neat, Osip at times reminded me of the stoker, Yaakov, absolutely indifferent to every one.
Sometimes he reminded me of the valuer, Petr Vassiliev, sometimes of the drayman, Petr; occasionally he revealed a trait which was like grandfather.
In one way or another he was like all the old men I had known. They were all amazingly interesting old men, but I felt that it was impossible to live with them; it would be oppressive and repulsive.
They had corroded their own hearts, as it were; their clever speeches hid hearts red with rust.
Was Osip good-hearted?
No.
Malevolent?
Also no.
That he was clever was all that was clear to me.
But while it astounded me by its pliability, that intelligence of his deadened me, and the end of it was that I felt he was inimical to me in all kinds of ways.
In my heart seethed the black thoughts:
“All human creatures are strangers to one another despite their sweet words and smiles. And more; we are all strangers on the earth, too; no one seems to be bound to it by a powerful feeling of love.
Grandmother alone loved to be alive, and loved all crea — tures — grandmother and gracious Queen Margot.
Sometimes these and similar thoughts increased the density of the dark fog around me. Life had become suffocating and oppressive; but how could I live a different life? Whither could I go?
I had no one to talk to, even, except Osip, and I talked to him more and more often.
He listened to my heated babbling with evident interest, asked me questions, drove home a point, and said calmly:
“The persistent woodpecker is not terrible; no one is afraid of him.
But with all my heart I advise you to go into a monastery and live there till you are grown up. You will have edifying conversations with holy men to console you, you will be at peace, and you will be a source of revenue to the monks.
That’s my sincere advice to you.
It is evident that you are not fit for worldly business.”
I had no desire to enter a monastery, but I felt that I was being entangled and bewildered in the enchanted circle of the incomprehensible.
I was miserable.
Life for me was like a forest in autumn. The mushrooms had come and gone, there was nothing to do in the empty forest, and I seemed to know all there was to know in it.
I did not drink vodka, and I had nothing to do with girls; books took the place of these two forms of intoxication for me.
But the more I read, the harder it was for me to go on living the empty, unnecessary life that most people lived.
I had only just turned fifteen years of age, but sometimes I felt like an elderly man. I was, as it were, inwardly swollen and heavy with all I had lived through and read, or restlessly pondered.
Looking into myself, I discovered that my receptacle for impressions was like a dark lumber-room closely packed with all kinds of things, of which I had neither the strength nor the wit to rid myself.
And although they were so numerous, all these cumbersome articles were not solidly packed, but floated about, and made me waver as water makes a piece of crockery waver which does not stand firm.
I had a fastidious dislike of unhappiness, illness, and grievances. When I saw cruelty, blood, fights even verbal baiting of a person, it aroused a physical repulsion in me which was swiftly transformed into a cold fury. This made me fight myself, like a wild beast, after which I would be painfully ashamed of myself.
Sometimes I was so passionately desirous of beating a bully that I threw myself blindly into a fight, and even now I remember those attacks of despair, born of m/ impotence, with shame and grief.
Within me dwelt two persons. One was cognizant of only too many abominations and obscenities, somewhat timid for that reason, was crushed by the knov/ledge of everyday horrors, and had begun to view life and people distrustfully, contemptuously, with a feeble pity for every one, including himself.
This person dreamed of a quiet, solitary life with books, without people, of monasteries, of a forest-keeper’s lodge, a railway signal box, of Persia, and the office of the night watchman somewhere on the outskirts of the town.
Only to see fewer people, to be remote from human creatures!
The other person, baptized by the holy spirit of noble and wise books, observing the overwhelming strength of the daily horrors of life, felt how easily that strength might sap one’s brain-power, trample the heart with dirty footprints, and, fighting against it with all his force, with clenched teeth and fists, was always ready for a quarrel or a fight.
He loved and pitied actively, and, like the brave hero in French novels, drew his sword from his scabbard on the slightest provocation, and stood in a warlike position.
At that time I had a bitter enemy in the door-keeper of one of the brothels in Little Pokrovski Street.
I made his acquaintance one morning as I was going to the market-place; he was dragging from a hackney-carriage, standing at the gate in front of the house, a girl who was dead drunk. He seized her by the legs in their wrinkled stockings, and thus held her shame-lessly, bare to the waist, exclaiming and laughing. He spat upon her body, and she came down with a jolt out of the carriage, dishevelled, blind, with open mouth, with her soft arms hanging behind her as if they had no joints. Her spine, the back of her neck, and her livid face struck the seat of the carriage and the step, and at length she fell on the pavement, striking her head on the stones.
The driver whipped up his horse and drove off, and the porter, taking one foot in each hand and stepping backward, dragged her along as if she had been a corpse.
I lost control of myself and made a rush at him, but as luck would have it, I hurled myself against, or accidentally ran into a rainwater-barrel, which saved both the porter and me a great deal of unpleasantness.
Striking him on the rebound, I knocked him over, darted up the steps, and desperately pulled the bell-handle. Some infuriated people rushed on the scene, and as I could not explain anything, I went away, picking up the barrel.
On the way I overtook the cab. The driver looked down at me from the coach-box and said: