We have no friend except God.
Man is a cruel enemy to man.”
That men were my enemies, I felt was the truth, but the rest did not interest me.
“Now you will go back to Aunt Matrena, and in the spring you can go on a steamboat again.
Live with them during the winter.
And you need not tell them that you are leaving in the spring.”
“Now, why should he deceive people?” said grandmother, who had just deceived grandfather by pre tending to give me a beating.
“It is impossible to live without deceit,” declared grandfather. “Just tell me now. Who lives without deceiving others?”
In the evening, while grandfather was reading his office, grandmother and I went out through the gate into the fields. The little cottage with two windows in which grandfather lived was on the outskirts of the town, at the back of Kanatni Street, where grandfather had once had his own house.
“So here we are again!” said grandmother, laughing.
“The old man cannot find a resting-place for his soul, but must be ever on the move.
And he does not even like it here; but I do.”
Before us stretched for about three versts fields of scanty herbage, intersected by ditches, bounded by woods and the line of birches on the Kazan highroad.
From the ditches the twigs of bushes projected, the rays of a cold sunset reddened them like blood.
A soft evening breeze shook the gray blades of grass. From a nearer pathway, also like blades of grass, showed the dark form of town lads and girls.
On the right, in the distance, stood the red walls of the burial-ground of the Old Believers. They called it
“The Bugrovski Hermitage.” On the left, beyond the causeway, rose a dark group of trees; there was the Jewish cemetery.
All the surroundings were poor, and seemed to lie close to the wounded earth.
The little houses on the outskirts of the town looked timidly with their windows on the dusty road. Along the road wandered small, ill-fed fowl.
Toward the Dyevichia Monastery went a herd of lowing cows, from the camp came the sound of martial music. The brass instruments brayed.
A drunken man came along, ferociously holding out a harmonica. He stumbled and muttered:
“I am coming to thee — without fail.”
“Fool!” said grandmother, blinking in the red sun-light. “Where are you going?
Soon you will fall down and go to sleep, and you will be robbed in your sleep.
You will lose your harmonica, your consolation.”
I told her all about the life on the boat as I looked about me.
After what I had seen I found it dull here; I felt like a fish out of water.
Grandmother listened in silence and with attention, just as I liked to listen to her. When I told her about Smouri she crossed herself and said:
“He is a good man, help him. Mother of God; he is good!
Take care, you, that you do not forget him!
You should always remember what is good, and what is bad simply forget.”
It was very difficult for me to tell her why they had dismissed me, but I took courage and told her.
It made no impression whatever on her. She merely said calmly:
“You are young yet; you don’t know how to live.”
“That is what they all say to one another, ‘You don’t know how to live’ — peasants, sailors, Aunt Matrena to her son. But how does one learn?”
She compressed her lips and shook her head.
“I don’t know myself.”
“And yet you say the same as the others!”
“And why should I not say it?” replied grandmother, calmly.
“You must not be offended. You are young; you are not expected to know.
And who does know, after all?
Only rogues.
Look at your grandfather. Clever and well educated as he is, yet he does not know.”
“And you — have you managed your life well?”
“I?
Yes.
And badly also; all ways.”
People sauntered past us, with their long shadows following them. The dust rose like smoke under their feet, burying those shadows.
Then the evening sadness became miore oppressive. The sound of grand — father’s grumbling voice flowed from the window:
“Lord, in Thy wrath do not condemn me, nor in Thy rage punish me!”