But by the door of the cabin stood Smouri, and in the doorway, holding on to the jamb, Jaakov Ivanich. The girl stuck her elbow in his back, and cried in a drunken voice:
“Make way!”
Smouri got me out of the hands of Sergei and Maxim, seized them by the hair, and, knocking their heads together, moved away. They both fell down.
“Asiatic!” he said to Jaakov, slamming the door on him. Then he roared as he pushed me along:
“Get out of this!”
I ran to the stern.
The night was cloudy, the river black. In the wake of the boat seethed two gray lines of water leading to the invisible shore; between these two lines the barge dragged on its way.
Now on the right, now on the left appeared red patches of light, without illuminating anything. They disappeared, hidden by the sudden winding of the shore. After this it became still darker and more gruesome.
The cook came and sat beside me, sighed deeply, and pulled at his cigarette.
“So they were taking you to that creature?
Ekh! Dirty beasts!
I heard them trying.”
“Did you take her away from them?”
“Her?”
He abused the girl coarsely, and continued in a sad tone: “It is all nastiness here.
This boat is worse than a village.
Have you ever lived in a village?”
“No.”
“In a village there is nothing but misery, especially in the winter.”
Throwing his cigarette overboard, he was silent. Then he spoke again.
“You have fallen among a herd of swine, and I am sorry for you, my little one.
I am sorry for all of them, too.
Another time I do not know what I should have done. Gone on my knees and prayed.
What are you doing, sons of?
What are you doing, blind creatures?
Camels!”
The steamer gave a long-drawn-out hoot, the tow-rope splashed in the water, the lights of lanterns jumped up and down, showing where the harbor was. Out of the darkness more lights appeared.
“Pyani Bor [a certain pine forest]. Drunk,” growled the cook.
“And there is a river called Pyanaia, and there was a captain called Pyenkov, and a writer called Zapivokhin, and yet another captain called Nepeipivo.3 I am going on shore.” 3 Pyanaia means “drunk,” and the other names mentioned come from the same root. Nepeipivo means, “Do not drink beer.”
The coarse-grained women and girls of Kamska dragged logs of wood from the shore in long trucks.
Bending under their load-straps, with pliable tread, they arrived in pairs at the stoker’s hold, and, emptying their sooty loads into the black hole, cried ringingly:
“Logs!”
When they brought the wood the sailors would take hold of them by the breasts or the legs. The women squealed, spat at the men, turned back, and defended themselves against pinches and blows with their trucks.
I saw this a hundred times, on every voyage and at every land-stage where they took in wood, and it was always the same thing.
I felt as if I were old, as if I had lived on that boat for many years, and knew what would happen in a week’s time, in the autumn, in a year.
It was daylight now.
On a sandy promontory above the harbor stood out a forest of fir-trees.
On the hills and through the forests women went laughing and singing. They looked like soldiers as they pushed their long trucks.
I wanted to weep. The tears seethed in my breast; my heart was overflowing with them. It was painful.
But it would be shameful to cry, and I went to help the sailor Blyakhin wash the deck.
Blyakhin was an insignificant-looking man.
He had a withered, faded look about him, and always stowed himself away in corners, whence his small, bright eyes shone.
“My proper surname is not Blyakhin, but because, you see, my mother was a loose woman.
I have a sister, and she also.
That happened to be their destiny.
Destiny, my brother, is an anchor for all of us.
You want to go in one direction, but wait!”
And now, as he swabbed the deck, he said softly to me:
“You see what a lot of harm women do!
There it is.