“What things?”
“Several things.
Even what you don’t say, gets to Him.”
His manner to me was kind, but full of curiosity, as it might have been to a clever kitten which could perform amusing tricks.
Sometimes, when I was sitting with him at night, when he smelt of naphtha, burning oil, and onions, for he loved onions and used to gnaw them raw, like apples, he would suddenly ask: “Now, Olekha, lad, let’s have some poetry.”
I knew a lot of verse by heart, besides which I had a large notebook in which I had copied my favorites.
I read
“Rousslan” to him — and he listened without moving, like a deaf and dumb man, holding his wheezy breath. Then he said to me in a low voice: “That’s a pleasant, harmonious, little story.
Did you make it up yourself?
There is a gentleman called Mukhin Pushkin. I have seen him.”
“But this man was killed ever so long ago.”
“What for?”
I told him the story in short words, as “Queen Margot” had told it to me.
Yaakov listened, and then said calmly: “Lots of people are ruined by women.”
I often told him similar stories which I had read in books. They were all mixed up, effervescing in my mind into one long story of disturbed, beautiful lives, interspersed with flames of passion. They were full of senseless deeds of heroism, blue-blooded nobility, legendary feats, duels and deaths, noble words and mean actions.
Rokambol was confused with the knightly forms of Lya–Molya and Annibal Kokonna, Ludovic XI took the form of the Pere Grandet, the Cornet Otletaev was mixed up with Henry IV.
This story, in which I changed the character of the people and altered events according to my inspiration, became a whole world to me. I lived in it, free as grandfather’s God, Who also played with every one as it pleased Him.
While not hindering me from seeing the reality, such as it was, nor cooling my desire to understand living people, nevertheless this bookish chaos hid me by a transparent but impenetrable cloud from much of the infectious obscenity, the venomous poison of life.
Books rendered many evils innocuous for me. Knowing how people loved and suffered, I could never enter a house of ill fame. Cheap depravity only roused a feeling of repulsion and pity for those to whom it was sweet.
Rokambol taught me to be a Stoic, and not be conquered by circumstances. The hero of Dumas inspired me with the desire to give myself for some great cause.
My favorite hero was the gay monarch, Henry IV, and it seemed to me that the glorious songs of Beranger were written about him. He relieved the peasants of their taxes, And himself he loved to drink. Yes, and if the whole nation is happy, Why should the king not drink?
Henry IV was described in novels as a kind man, in touch with his people. Bright as the sun, he gave me the idea that France — the most beautiful country in the whole world, the country of the knights — was equally great, whether represented by the mantle of a king or the dress of a peasant. Ange Piutou was just as much a knight as D’Artagnan.
When I read how Henry was murdered, I cried bitterly, and ground my teeth with hatred of Ravaillac.
This king was nearly always the hero of the stories I told the stoker, and it seemed to me that Yaakov also loved France and Khenrik.
“He was a good man was King ‘Khenrik,’ whether he was punishing rebels, or whatever he was doing,” he said.
He never exclaimed, never interrupted my stories with questions, but listened in silence, with lowered brows and immobile face, like an old stone covered with fungus growth.
But if, for some reason, I broke off my speech, he at once asked: “Is that the end??’
“Not yet.”
“Don’t leave off, then!”
Of the French nation he said, sighing: “They had a very easy time of it!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you and I have to live in the heat. We have to labor, while they lived at ease.
They had nothing to do but to sing and walk about — a very consoling life!”
“They worked, too!”
“It doesn’t say so in your stories,” observed the stoker with truth, and I suddenly realized clearly that the greater number of the books which I had read hardly ever spoke of the heroes working, or of the hardships they had to encounter.
“Now I am going to sleep for a short time,” said Yaakov, and falling back where he lay, he was soon snoring peacefully.
In the autumn, when the shores of the Kama were turning red, the leaves were taking a golden tinge, and the crosswise beams of the sun grew pallid, Yaakov unexpectedly left the boat.
The day before, he had said to me: “The day after tomorrow, you and I, my lad, will be in Perm. We will go to the bath, steam ourselves to our hearts’ content, and when we have finished will go together to a Traktir. There is music and it is very pleasant.
I like to see them playing on those machines.”
But at Sarapulia there came on the boat a stout man with a flabby, womanish face. He was beardless and whiskerless.
His long warm cloak, his cap with car flaps of fox fur, increased his resemblance to a woman.
He at once engaged a small table near the kitchen, where it was warmest, asked for tea to be served to him, and began to drink the yellow boiling liquid. As he neither unfastened his coat nor removed his cap, he perspired profusely.
A fine rain fell unweariedly from the autumn mist. It seemed to me that when this man wiped the sweat from his face with his checked handkerchief, the rain fell less, and in proportion as he began to sweat again, it began to rain harder.
Very soon Yaakov appeared, and they began to look at a map together. The passenger drew his finger across it, but Yaakov said: “What’s that”?
Nothing!
I spit upon it!”
“All right,” said the passenger, putting away the map in a leather bag which lay on his knees.
Talking softly together, they began to drink tea.
Before Yaakov went to his watch, I asked him what sort of a man this was.
He replied, with a laugh: “To see him, he might be a dove. He is a eunuch, that’s what he is.