“That was a real king,’ he said impressively.
To me the book had appeared dry.
In fact, our tastes did not agree at all. I had a great liking for
“The Story of Thomas Jones,” an old translation of
“The History of Tom Jones, Foundling,” but Smouri grumbled:
“Rubbish!
What do I care about your Thomas?
Of what use is he to me?
There must be some other books.”
One day I told him that I knew that there were other books, forbidden books. One could read them only at night, in underground rooms.
He opened his eyes wide.
“Wha-a-t’s that?
Why do you tell me these lies?”
“I am not telling lies. The priest asked me about them when I went to confession, and, for that matter, I myself have seen people reading them and crying over them.”
The cook looked sternly in my face and asked:
“Who was crying?”
“The lady who was listening, and the other actually ran away because she was frightened.”
“You were asleep. You were dreaming,” said Smouri, slowly covering his eyes, and after a silence he muttered:
“But of course there must be something hidden from me somewhere.
I am not so old as all that, and with my character — well, however that may be —”
He spoke to me eloquently for a whole hour.
Imperceptibly I acquired the habit of reading, and took up a book with pleasure. What I read therein was pleasantly different from life, which was becoming harder and harder for me.
Smouri also recreated himself by reading, and often took me from my work.
“Pyeshkov, come and read.”
“I have a lot of washing up to do.”
“Let Maxim wash up.”
He coarsely ordered the senior kitchen-helper to do my work, and this man would break the glasses out of spite, while the chief steward told me quietly:
“I shall have you put off the boat.”
One day Maxim on purpose placed several glasses in a bowl of dirty water and tea-leaves. I emptied the water overboard, and the glasses went flying with it.
“It is my fault,” said Smouri to the head steward.
“Put it down to my account.”
The dining-room attendants began to look at me with lowering brows, and they used to say:
“Eil you bookworm!
What are you paid for?”
And they used to try and make as much work as they could for me, soiling plates needlessly.
I was sure that this would end badly for me, and I was not mistaken.
One evening, in a little shelter on the boat, there sat a red-faced woman with a girl in a yellow coat and a new pink blouse.
Both had been drinking. The woman smiled, bowed to every one, and said on the note O, like a church clerk:
“Forgive me, my friends; I have had a little too much to drink.
I have been tried and acquitted, and I have been drinking for joy.”
The girl laughed, too, gazing at the other passengers with glazed eyes. Pushing the woman away, she said:
“But you, you plaguy creature — we know you.”
They had berths in the second-class cabin, opposite the cabin in which Jaakov Ivanich and Sergei slept.
The woman soon disappeared somewhere or other, and Sergei took her place near the girl, greedily stretching his frog-like mouth.
That night, when I had finished my work and had laid myself down to sleep on the table, Sergei came to me, and seizing me by the arm, said:
“Come along! We are going to marry you.”
He was drunk.
I tried to tear my arm away from him, but he struck me.
“Come along!”
Maxim came running in, also drunk, and the two dragged me along the deck to their cabin, past the sleeping passengers.