“And I have two.”
As may be imagined, he soon won from mc.
Desiring to have my revenge, I staked my jacket, worth five rubles, and lost. Then I staked my new boots, and lost again.
Yaakov said to me, unwillingly, almost crossly:
“No, you don’t know how to play yet; you get too hot about it. You must go and stake everything, even your boots.
I don’t care for that sort of thing.
Come, take back your clothes and your money, — four rubles, — and I will keep a ruble for teaching you.
Agreed?’
I was very grateful to him.
“It is a thing to spit upon,” he said in answer to my thanks.
“A game is a game, just an amusement, you know; but you would turn it into a quarrel.
And even in a quarrel it doesn’t do to get too warm. You want to calculate the force of your blows.
What have you to get in a stew about?
You are young; you must learn to hold yourself in.
The first time you don’t succeed; five times you don’t succeed; the seventh time — spit!
Go away, get yourself cool, and have another go!
That is playing the game.”
He delighted me more and more, and yet he jarred on me.
Sometimes his stories reminded me of grandmother.
There was a lot in him which attracted me, but his lifelong habit of dull indifference repelled me violently.
Once at sunset a drunken second-class passenger, a corpulent merchant of Perm, fell overboard, and was carried away, struggling on the red-gold water-way.
The engineers hastily shut off steam, and the boat came to a standstill, sending off a cloud of foam from the wheel, which the red beams of the sun made look like blood. In that blood-red, seething, caldron a dark body struggled, already far away from the stern of the boat. Wild cries were heard from the river; one’s heart shook.
The passengers also screamed, and jostled one another, rolling about the deck, crowding into the stern.
The friend of the drowning man, also drunk, red, and bald, hit out with his fists and roared:
“Get out of the way!
I will soon get him!”
Two sailors had already thrown themselves into the water, and were swimming toward the drowning man. The boats were let down. Amid the shouts of the commander and the shrieks of the women Yaakov’s deep voice rang out calmly and evenly:
“He will be drowned; he will certainly be drowned, because he has his clothes on.
Fully dressed as he is, he must certainly drown.
Look at women for example. Why do they always drown sooner than men?
Because of their petticoats.
A woman, when she falls into the water, goes straight to the bottom, like a pound weight.
You will see that he will be drowned. I do not speak at random.”
As a matter of fact, the merchant was drowned.
They sought for him for two hours, and failed to find him. His companion, sobered, sat on the deck, and, panting heavily, muttered plaintively:
“We are almost there.
What will happen when we arrive, eh?
What will his family say?
He had a family.”
Yaakov stood in front of him, with his hands behind his back, and began to console him.
“There is nothing to worry about.
No one knows when he is destined to die.
One man will eat mushrooms, fall ill and die, while thousands of people can eat mushrooms and be all the better for them. Yet one will die.
And what are mushrooms?”
Broad and strong, he stood like a rock in front of the merchant, and poured his words over him like bran.
At first the merchant wept silently, wiping the tears from his beard with his broad palms, but when he had heard him out, he roared:
“What do you mean by torturing me like this?
Fellow–Christians, take him away, or there will be murder!”
Yaakov went away, calmly saying:
“How funny people are!