And the affair with the deacon happened through a mistake; he took the deacon for a merchant.
It was a winter night, in a snowstorm; everybody was wearing a fur coat; how could he tell the difference in his haste between a deacon and a merchant?”
This struck me as being funny, and he laughed himself as he said:
“Yes, by gad!
It was the very devil — ”
Here my uncle became unexpectedly and strangely angry. He pushed away his plate of savories, frowned with an expression of loathing, and, smoking a cigarette, muttered:
“They rob one another; then they catch one another and put one another away in prisons in Siberia, in the galleys; but what is it to do with me?
I spit upon them all!
I have my own soul!”
The shaggy stoker stood before me; he also had been wont to “spit upon” people, and he also was called Yaakov.
“What are you thinking about?” asked my uncle softly.
“Were you sorry for the convicts?”
“It is easy to pity them, they are such children; it is amazing!
Sometimes I would look at one of them and think: I am not worthy to black his boots; although I am set over him!
Clever devils, skilful with their hands.”
The wine and his reminiscences had again pleasantly animated him. With his elbows resting on the window-sill, waving his yellow hand with the cigarette between its fingers, he spoke with energy:
“One of them, a crooked fellow, an engraver and watchmaker, was convicted of coining. You ought to have heard how he talked!
It was like a song, a flame!
‘Explain to me,’ he would say; ‘why may the exchequer coin money while I may not?
Tell me that!’
And no one could tell him why, no one, not even I, and I was chief over him.
There was another, a well-known Moscow thief, quiet mannered, foppish, neat as a pin, who used to say courteously: ‘People work till their senses are blunted, and I have no desire to do the same.
I have tried it. You work and work till weariness has made a fool of you, get drunk on two copecks, lose seven copecks at cards, get a woman to be kind to you for five copecks, and then, all over again, cold and hungry.
No,’ he says, ‘I am not playing that game.’ ”
Uncle Yaakov bent over the table and continued, reddening to the tips of his ears. He was so excited that even his small ears quivered.
“They were no fools. Brother; they knew what was right!
To the devil with red tape!
Take myself, for instance; what has my life been?
I look back on!t with shame, everything by snatches, stealthily; my sorrows were my own, but all my joys were stolen.
Either my father shouted, ‘Don’t you dare!’ or my wife screamed, ‘You cannot!’ I was afraid to throw down a ruble.
And so all my life has passed away, and here I am acting the lackey to my own son.
Why should I hide it?
I serve him, Brother, meekly, and he scolds me like a gentleman.
He says, ‘Father!’ and I obey like a footman.
Is that what I was born for, and what I struggled on in poverty for — that I should be servant to my own son?
But, even without that, why was I born? What pleasure have I had in life?”
I listened to him inattentively.
However, I said reluctantly, and not expecting an answer:
“I don’t know what sort of a life mine will be.”
He burst out laughing.
“Well, and who does know?
I have never met any one yet who knew!
So people live; he who can get accustomed to anything — ”
And again he began to speak in an offended, angry tone:
“One of the men I had was there for assault, a man from Orla, a gentleman, who danced beautifully. He made us all laugh by a song about Vanka:
“Vanka passes by the churchyard,
That is a very simple matter!
Ach! Vanka, draw your horns in
For you won’t get beyond the graveyard!
“I don’t think that is at all funny, but it is true!