As I looked at the barge I remembered my early childhood; the journey from Astrakhan to Nijni, the iron faces of mother and grandmother, the person who had introduced me to this interesting, though hard, life, in the world.
And when I thought of grandmother, all that I found so bad and repulsive in life seemed to leave me; everything was transformed and became more interesting, pleasanter; people seemed to be better and nicer altogether.
The beauty of the nights moved me almost to tears, and especially the barge, which looked so like a coffin, and so solitary on the broad expanse of the flowing river in the pensive quietness of the warm night.
The uneven lines of the shore, now rising, now falling, stirred the imagination pleasantly. I longed to be good, and to be of use to others.
The people on our steamboat had a peculiar stamp. They seemed to me to be all alike, young and old, men and women.
The boat traveled slowly. The busy folk traveled by fast boat, and all the lazy rascals came on our boat.
They sang and ate, and soiled any amount of cups and plates, knives and forks and spoons from morning to night. My work was to wash up and clean the knives and forks, and I was busy with this work from six in the morning till close on midnight.
During the day, from two till six o’clock, and in the evening, from ten till midnight, I had less work to do; for at those times the passengers took a rest from eating, and only drank, tea, beer, and vodka.
All the buffet attendants, my chiefs, were free at that time, too.
The cook, Smouri, drank tea at a table near the hatchway with his assistant, Jaakov Ivanich; the kitchen-man, Maxim; and Sergei, the saloon steward, a humpback with high cheek-bones, a face pitted with smallpox, and oily eyes.
Jaakov told all sorts of nasty stories, bursting out into sobbing laughs and showing his long, discolored teeth.
Sergei stretched his frog-like mouth to his ears. Frowning Maxim was silent, gazing at them with stern, colorless eyes.
“Asiatic!
Mordovan!” said the old cook now and again in his deep voice.
I did not like these people.
Fat, bald Jaakov Ivanich spoke of nothing but women, and that always filth — ily.
He had a vacant-looking face covered with bluish pimples., On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of red hair growing from it. He used to pull out these hairs by twisting them round a needle.
Whenever an amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sex appeared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar, timid manner like a beggar. He spoke to her sweetly and plaintively, he licked her, as it were, with the swift movements of his tongue.
For some reason I used to think that such great fat creatures ought to be hangmen.
“One should know how to get round women,” he would teach Sergei and Maxim, who would listen to him much impressed, pouting their lips and turning red.
“Asiatics!” Smouri would roar in accents of disgust, and standing up heavily, he gave the order, “Pyeshkov, march!”
In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound in leather, and lie down in his hammock by the wall of the ice-house.
“Read!” he would say.
I sat on a box and read conscientiously:
“ The umbra projected by the stars means that one is on good terms with heaven and free from profanity and vice.’ ”
Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke and growled:
“Camels!
They wrote — ”
“ ‘Baring the left bosom means innocence of heart.’ ”
“Whose bosom?”
“It does not say.”
“A woman’s, it means.
Eh, and a loose woman.”
He closed his eyes and lay with his arms behind his head. His cigarette, hardly alight, stuck in the corner of his mouth. He set it straight with his tongue, stretched so that something whistled in his chest, and his enormous face was enveloped in a cloud of smoke.
Sometimes I thought he had fallen asleep and I left off reading to examine the accursed book, which bored me to nauseation.
But he said hoarsely:
“Go on reading!”
“The venerable one answered, “Look! My dear brother Suvyerin — “ ‘ ”
“Syevyeverin — ”
“It is written Suvyerin.”
“Well, that’s witchcraft.
There is some poetry at the end. Run on from there.”
I ran on.
“Profane ones, curious to know our business, Never will your weak eyes spy it out, Nor will you learn how the fairies sing.”
“Wait!” said Smouri. “That is not poetry.
Give me the book.”
He angrily turned over the thick, blue leaves, and then put the book under the mattress.
“Get me another one.”
To my grief there were many books in his black trunk clamped with iron. There were
“Precepts of Peace,”