This new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and without resentment to grandfather’s jeers; seeing which, grandfather began to speak sensibly and seriously.
“Give up this useless business! Give it up!
No one ever got on through birds. Such a thing has never happened that I know of.
Go and find another place, and let your intelligence grow up there.
Man has not been given life for nothing; he is God’s grain, and he must produce an ear of corn.
Man is like a ruble; put out at good interest it produces three rubles.
You think life is easy to live?
No, it is not all easy.
The world of men is like a dark night, but every man must make his own light.
To every person is given enough for his ten fingers to hold, but every one wants to grasp by handfuls.
One should be strong, but if one is weak, one must be artful. He who has little strength is weak, and he is neither in heaven nor in hell.
Live as if you are with others, but remember that you are alone. Whatever happens, never trust any one. If you believe your own eyes, you will measure crookedly.
Hold your tongue. Neither town or house was built by the tongue, but rubles are made by the ax.
You are neither a fool nor a Kalmuck, to whom all riches are like lice on sheep.”
He could talk like this all the evening, and I knew his words by heart.
The words pleased me, but I distrusted their meaning.
From what he said it was plain that two forces hindered man from doing as he wished, God and other people.
Seated at the window, grandmother wound the cotton for her lace. The spindle hummed under her skil — ful hands. She listened for a long time to grand — father’s speech in silence, then she suddenly spoke.
“It all depends upon whether the Mother of God smiles upon us.”
“What’s that?” cried grandfather.
“God!
I have not forgotten about God. I know all about God.
You old fool, has God sown fools on the earth, eh?”
In my opinion the happiest people on earth were Cossacks and soldiers. Their lives were simple and gay.
On fine mornings they appeared in the hollow near our house quite early. Scattering over the bare fields like white mushrooms, they began a complicated, interesting game. Agile and strong in their white blouses, they ran about the field with guns in their hands, disappeared in the hollow, and suddenly, at the sound of the bugle, again spread themselves over the field with shouts of “Hurrah!” accompanied by the ominous sounds of the drum. They ran straight at our house with fixed bayonets, and they looked as if they would knock it down and sweep it away, like a hay-rick, in a minute.
I cried “Hurrah!” too, and ran with them, quite carried away. The wicked rattle of the drum aroused in me a passionate desire to destroy something, to break down the fence, to hit other boys.
When they were resting, the soldiers used to give me a treat by teaching me how to signal and by showing me their heavy guns. Sometimes one of them would stick his bayonet into my stomach and cry, with a pretense of anger:
“Stick the cockroach!”
The bayonet gleamed; it looked as if it were alive, and seemed to wind about like a snake about to coil itself up. It was rather terrifying, but more pleasant.
The Mordovan drummer taught me to strike the drum with my fingers. At first he used to take me by the wrist, and, moving them so that he hurt me, would thrust the sticks into my crushed fingers.
“Hit it — one, two-one-tw-o-o!
Rum te — tum!
Beat it — left — softly, right — loudly, rum te —!” he shouted threateningly, opening wide his bird-like eyes.
I used to run about the field with the soldiers, almost to the end of the drill, and after it was finished, I used to escort them across the town to the barracks, listening to their loud songs, looking into their kind faces, all as new as five-ruble pieces just coined.
The close-packed mass of happy men passing up the streets in one united body aroused a feeling of friendliness in me, a desire to throw myself in among them as into a river, to enter into them as into a forest.
These men were frightened of nothing; they could conquer anything; they were capable of anything; they could do anything they liked; and they were all simple and good.
But one day during the time they were resting a young non-commissioned officer gave me a fat cigarette.
“Smoke this!
I would not give them to any one. In fact I hardly like to give you one, my dear boy, they are so good.”
I smoked it.
He moved away a few steps, and suddenly a red flame blinded me, burning my fingers, my nose, my eyebrows. A gray, acrid smoke made me splutter and cough. Blinded, terrified, I stamped on the ground, and the soldiers, who had formed a ring around me, laughed loudly and heartily.
I ran away home. Whistles and laughter followed me; something cracked like a shepherd’s whip.
My burned fingers hurt me, my face smarted, tears flowed from my eyes; but it was not the pain which oppressed me, only a heavy, dull amazement.
Why should this amuse these good fellows?
When I reached home I climbed up to the attic and sat there a long time brooding over this inexplicable cruelty which stood so repulsively in my path.
I had a peculiarly clear and vivid memory of the little soldier from Sarapulia standing before me, as large as life, and saying:
“Well, do you understand?”
Soon I had to go through something still more depressing and disgusting.
I had begun to run about in the barracks of the Cossacks, which stood near the Pecherski Square.
The Cossacks seemed different from the soldiers, not because they rode so skilfully oh horseback and were dressed more beautifully, but because they spoke in a different way, sang different songs, and danced beautifully.