He would have set fire to the hay, and that would have been the end.
Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right.
I know all about Czar Peter, and that never happened to him.
Run along.”
I realized that the cook was right, but nevertheless the book pleased me. I bought the
“Story” again and read it a second time. To my amazement, I discovered that it was really a bad book.
This puzzled me, and I began to regard the cook with even more respect, while he said to me more frequently and more crossly than ever:
“Oh, what a lot you need to be taught!
This is no place for you.”
I also felt that it was no place for me.
Sergei behaved disgustingly to me, and several times I observed him stealing pieces of the tea-service, and giving them to the passengers on the sly.
I knew that this was theft. Smouri had warned me more than once:
“Take care. Do not give the attendants any of the cups and plates from your table.”
This made life still harder for me, and I often longed to run away from the boat into the forest; but Smouri held me back.
He was more tender to me every day, and the incessant movement on the boat held a terrible fascination for me.
I did not like it when we stayed in port, and I was always expecting something to happen, and that we should sail from Kama to Byela, as far as Viatka, and so up the Volga, and I should see new places, towns, and people.
But this did not happen. My life on the steamer came to an abrupt end.
One evening when we were going from Kazan to Nijni the steward called me to him. I went. He shut the door behind me, and said to Smouri, who sat grimly on a small stool:
“Here he is.”
Smouri asked me roughly:
“Have you been giving Serejka any of the dinner- and tea-services?”
“He helps himself when I am not looking.”
The steward said softly:
“He does not look, yet he knows.”
Smouri struck his knee with his fist; then he scratched his knee as he said:
“Wait; take time.”
I pondered.
I looked at the steward. He looked at me, and there seemed to be no eyes behind his glasses.
He lived without making a noise. He went about softly, spoke in low tones.
Sometimes his faded beard and vacant eyes peeped out from some corner and instantly vanished.
Before going to bed he knelt for a long time in the buffet before the icon with the ever-burning lamp. I could see him through the chink of the door, looking like a black bundle; but I had never succeeded in learning how the steward prayed, for he simply knelt and looked at the icon, stroking his beard and sighing.
, After a silence Smouri asked:
“Has Sergei ever given you any money?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“He does not tell lies,” said Smouri to the steward, who answered at once in his low voice:
“It comes to the same thing, please — ”
“Come!” cried the cook to me, and he came to my table, and rapped my crown lightly with his fingers.
“Fool!
And I am a fool, too.
I ought to have looked after you.”
At Nijni the steward dismissed me. I received nearly eight rubles, the first large money earned by me.
When Smouri took farewell of me he said roughly:
“Well, here you are.
Now keep your eyes open, — do you understand?
You mustn’t go about with your mouth open.”
He put a tobacco-pouch of colored beads into my hand.