You go to them out of kindness, and all they do is to abuse you!”
Sometimes I thought the stoker a fool, but more often I thought that he purposely pretended to be stupid.
I asked him straight out about his youth and his wanderings around the world. The result was not what I meant it to be. Throwing his head back, almost closing his dark, copper-colored eyes, he stroked his mossy face with his hand and drawled:
“People everywhere. Brother, — everywhere, — are simple as ants!
And where there are people, there is always trouble, I tell you!
The greater number, of course, are peasants. The earth is absolutely strewn with muzhiks — like autumn leaves, as we say.
I have seen the Bulgars, and Greeks, too, and those — what do you call them? — Serbians; Rumanians also, and all kinds of Gipsies. Are there many different sorts?
What sort of people?
What do you mean by that?
In the towns they are townspeople, and in the country — why, they are just like the country people among us.
They resemble them in many ways.
Some of them even speak our tongue, though badly, as, for instance, the Tatars and the Mordovans.
The Greeks cannot speak our language. They chatter whatever comes into their heads, and it sounds like words; but what they say or about what it is impossible to understand.
You have to talk on your fingers to them.
But my old man managed to talk so that even the Greeks understood him. He muttered something, and they knew what he meant.
An artful old man he was. He knew how to work upon them.
Again you want to know what sort of people?
You funny fellow! What should people be like?
They were black, of course; and the Rumanians, too, were of the same faith.
The Bulgars are also black, but they hold the same religion as ourselves.
As for the Greeks, they are of the same race as the Turks.”
It seemed to me that he was not telling me all he knew; that there was something which he did not wish to tell.
From illustrations in the magazines I knew that the capital of Greece was Athens, an ancient and most beautiful town. But Yaakov shook his head doubtfully as he rejected the idea.
“They have been telling you lies, my friend. There is no place called Athens, but there is a place called Athon; only it is not a town, but a hill with a monastery on it, and that is all.
It is called the Holy Hill of Athon. There are pictures of it; the old man used to sell them.
There is a town called Byelgorod, which stands on the Dounai River, built in the style of Yaroslav or Nijni.
Their towns are nothing out of the ordinary, but their villages, that is another matter.
Their women, too — well, they are absolutely killingly pleasant.
I very nearly stayed there altogether for the sake of one. What the deuce was her name?’
He rubbed his perspiring face hard with the palms of his hands, and his coarse hair clicked softly. In his throat, somewhere deep down, rumbled his laugh, like the rattle of a drum.
“How forgetful a man can be!
And yet, you know, we were — When she said good-by to me — she cried, and I cried, too. Good — go-o — “ Calmly and with an entire absence of reticence, he began to instruct me in the way to behave to women.
We were sitting on the deck. The warm moon-light night swam to meet us; the meadow-land of the shore was hardly visible beyond the silver water. In the heavens twinkled yellow lights; these were certain stars which had been captivated by the earth.
All around there was movement, sleeplessly palpitating, quiet; but real life was going on.
Into this pleas — ant, melancholy silence fell the hoarse words:
“And so we let go of each other’s hands and parted.”
Yaakov’s stories were immodest, but not repulsive, for they were neither boastful nor cruel, and there was a ring of artlessness and sorrow in them.
The moon in the sky was also shamelessly naked, and moved me in the same way, setting me fretting for I knew not what.
I remembered only what was good, the very best thing in my life — Queen Margot and the verses, unforgettable in their truth:
Only a song has need of beauty, While beauty has no need of songs.
Shaking off this dreamy mood as if it had been a light doze, I again asked the stoker about his life and what he had seen.
“You ‘re a funny fellow,” he said. “What am I to tell ycu?
I have seen everything.
You ask have I seen a monastery?
I have.
Traktirs?
I have seen them also.
I have seen the life of a gentleman and the life of a peasant.
I have lived well-fed, and I have lived hungry.”
Slowly, as if he were crossing a deep stream by a shaky, dangerous bridge, he recalled the past.