I said nothing. I had only just come down from the heights, and I was all to pieces with fright lest they should find the book. She cried out that I would set the house on fire.
When the master and his wife came down to supper she complained to them.
“There, you see, he has let the candle gutter, he will set the house on fire.”
While they were at supper the whole four of them lashed me with their tongues, reminding me of all my crimes, wilful and involuntary, threatening me with perdition; but I knew quite well that they were all speaking not from ill-feeling, or for my good, but simply because they were bored.
And it was curious to observe how empty and foolish they were compared with the people in books.
When they had finished eating, they grew heavy, and went wearily to bed. The old woman, after disturbing God with her angry complaints, settled her — self on the stove and was silent.
Then I got up, took the book from the stove-hole, and went to the window. It was a bright night, and the moon looked straight into the window; but my sight was not good enough to see the small print.
My desire to read was tormenting me.
I took a brass saucepan from the shelf and reflected the light of the moon from it on the book; but it became still more difficult and blurred.
Then I betook myself to the bench in the corner where the icon was, and, standing upon it, began to read by the light of the small lamp. But I was very tired, and dozed, sinking down on the bench. I was awakened by the cries and blows of the old woman.
She was hitting me painfully over the shoulders with the book, which she held in her hand. She was red with rage, furiously tossing her brown head, barefooted, and wearing only her night-dress.
Victor roared from the loft:
“Mamasha, don’t make such a noise!
You make life unbearable.”
“She has found the book. She will tear it up!” I thought.
My trial took place at breakfast-time.
The master asked me, sternly:
“Where did you get that book?”
The women exclaimed, interrupting each other. Victor sniffed contemptuously at the pages and said:
“Good gracious! what does it smell of?”
Learning that the book belonged to the priest, they looked at it again, surprised and indignant that the priest should read novels. However, this seemed to calm them down a little, though the master gave me another long lecture to the effect that reading was both injurious and dangerous.
“It is the people who read books who rob trains and even commit murders.”
The mistress cried out, angry and terrified:
“Have you gone out of your mind?
What do you want to say such things to him for?”
I took Montepaine to the soldier and told him what had happened. Sidorov took the book, opened a small trunk, took out a clean towel, and, wrapping the novel in it, hid it in the trunk.
“Don’t you take any notice of them. Come and read here. I shan’t tell any one.
And if you come when I am not here, you will find the key hanging behind the icon. Open the trunk and read.”
The attitude my employers had taken with regard to the book raised it to the height of an important and terrible secret in my mind.
That some “readers” had robbed a train or tried to murder some one did not interest me, but I remembered the question the priest had asked me in confession, the reading of the gymnasiast in the basement, the words of Smouri, the “proper books,” and grandfather’s stories of the black books of freemasonry. He had said:
“In the time of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich of blessed memory the nobles took up the study of ‘black books’ and freemasonry. They planned to hand over the whole Russian people to the Pope of Rome, if you please!
But General Arakcheev caught them in the act, and, without regard to their position, sent them all to Siberia, into prison. And there they were; exterminated like vermin.”
I remembered the “umbra” of Smouri’ s book and
“Gervase” and the solemn, comical words:
Profane ones who are curious to know our business,
Never shall your weak eyes spy it out!
I felt that I was on the threshold of the discovery of some great secret, and went about like a lunatic.
I wanted to finish reading the book, and was afraid that the soldier might lose it or spoil it somehow.
What should I say to the tailor’s wife then?
The old woman watched me sharply to see that I did not run to the orderly’s room, and taunted me:
“Bookworm!
Books! They teach dissoluteness. Look at that woman, the bookish one. She can’t even go to market herself. All she can do is to carry on with the officers. She receives them in the daytime. I kno-o-w.”
I wanted to cry,
“That’s not true.
She does not carry on,” but I was afraid to defend the tailor’s wife, for then the old woman might guess that the book was hers.
I had a desperately bad time of it for several days. I was distracted and worried, and could not sleep for fear that Montepaine had come to grief. Then one day the cook belonging to the tailor’s household stopped me in the yard and said :
“You are to bring back that book.”
I chose the time after dinner, when my employers lay down to rest, and appeared before the tailor’s wife embarrassed and crushed.
She looked now as she had the first time, only she was dressed differently. She wore a gray skirt and a black velvet blouse, with a turquoise cross upon her bare neck.
She looked like a hen bullfinch.