“That will make it dark.”
“Shut it, or they will come crawling in here.”
I went away.
The sight of the soldier was unpleasant to me. He aroused my commiseration and pity and made me feel uncomfortable. Times without number grandmother had told me:
“One must have pity on people. We are all unhappy. Life is hard for all of us.”
“Did you take it to him?” asked the cook.
“Well, how is he — the soldier?”
“I feel sorry for him.”
“Well, what’s the matter now, eh?’
“One can’t help being sorry for people.”
Smouri took me by the arm, drew me to him, and said:
“You do not pity in vain, but it is waste of time to chatter about it.
When you are not accustomed to mix jellies, you must teach yourself the way.”
And pushing me away from him, he added gruffly:
“This is no place for you.
Here, smoke.”
I was deeply distressed, quite crushed by the behavior of the passengers. There was something in expressibly insulting and oppressive in the way they had worried the soldier and had laughed with glee when Smouri had him by the ear.
What pleasure could they find in such a disgusting, pitiful affair? What was there to cause them to laugh so joyfully?
There they were again, sitting or lying under the awning, drinking, making a buzz of talk, playing cards, conversing seriously and sensibly, looking at the river, just as if they had never whistled and hooted an hour ago.
They were all as quiet and lazy as usual. From morning to night they sauntered about the boat like pieces of fluff or specks of dust in the sunbeams.
In groups of ten they would stroll to the hatchway, cross themselves, and leave the boat at the landing-stage from which the same kind of people embarked as they landed, bending their backs under the same heavy wallets and trunks and dressed in the same fashion.
This continual change of passengers did not alter the life on the boat one bit. The new passengers spoke of the same things as those who had left: the land, labor, God, women, and in the same words.
“It is ordained by the Lord God that we should suffer; all we can do is to be patient.
There is nothing else to be done. It is fate.”
It was depressing to hear such words, and they exasperated me. I could not endure dirt, and I did not wish to endure evil, unjust, and insulting behavior toward myself. I was sure that I did not deserve such treatment.
And the soldier had not deserved it, either.
Perhaps he had meant to be funny.
Maxim, a serious, good-hearted fellow, had been dismissed from the ship, and Sergei, a mean fellow, was left.
And why did these people, capable of goading a man almost to madness, always submit humbly to the furious shouts of the sailors, and listen to their abuse without taking offense?
“What are you rolling about on the deck for?” cried the boatswain, blinking his handsome, though malevolent, eyes.
“If the boat heeled, it would be the end of you, you devils.”
The “devils” went peaceably enough to the other deck, but they chased them away from there, too, as if they had been sheep.
“Ah, accursed ones!”
On hot nights, under the iron awning, which had been made red-hot by the sun during the day, it was suffocating. The passengers crawled over the deck like beetles, and lay where they happened to fall. The sailors awoke them at the landing-stages by prodding them with marlinespikes.
“What are you sprawling in the way for?
Go away to your proper place!”
They would stand up, and move sleepily in the direction whither they were pushed.
The sailors were of the same class as themselves, only they were dressed differently; but they ordered them about as if they were policemen.
The first thing which I noticed about these people was that they were so quiet, so timid, so sadly meek. It was terrible when through that crust of meekness burst the cruel, thoughtless spirit of mischief, which had very little fun in it.
It seemed to me that they did not know where they were being taken; it was a matter of indifference to them where they were landed from the boat.
Wherever they went on shore they stayed for a short time, and then they embarked again on our boat or another, starting on a fresh journey.
They all seemed to have strayed, to have no relatives, as if all the earth were strange to them.
And every single one of them was senselessly cowardly.
Once, shortly after midnight, something burst in the machinery and exploded like a report from a cannon.
The deck was at once enveloped in a cloud of steam, which rose thickly from the engine-room and crept through every crevice. An invisible person shouted deafeningly:
“Gavrilov, some red lead — and some felt!”
I slept near the engine-room, on the table on which the dishes were washed up, and the explosion and shaking awoke me. It was quiet on deck. The engine uttered a hot, steamy whisper; a hammer sounded repeatedly.
But in the course of a few minutes all the saloon passengers howled, roared with one voice, and suddenly a distressing scene was in progress.
In a white fog which swiftly rarefied, women with their hair loose, disheveled men with round eyes like fishes’ eyes, rushed about, trampling one another, carrying bundles, bags, boxes, stumbling, falling, call — ing upon God and St. Nicholas, striking one another. It was very terrible, but at the same time it was interesting. I ran after them to see what they would do next.
This was my first experience of a night alarm, yet I understood at once that the passengers had made a mistake. The boat had not slowed down. On the right hand, quite near, gleamed the life-belts. The night was light, the full moon stood high.