He comes from Siberia — a long way off!
He is amusing; he lives on a settlement.”
Setting his black strong heels on the deck, like hoofs, once again he stopped, and scratched his side.
“I have hired myself to him as a workman. So when we get to Perm, I shall leave the boat, and it will be good-by to you, lad!
We shall travel by rail, then by river, and after that by horses. For five weeks we shall have to travel, to get to where the man has his colony.”
“Did you know him before?” I asked, amazed at his sudden decision. “How should I know him”?
I have never seen him before. I have never lived anywhere near him.”
In the morning Yaakov, dressed in a short, greasy fur-coat, with sandals on his bare feet, wearing Medvyejenok’s tattered, brimless straw hat, took hold of my arm with his iron grasp, and said: “Why don’t you come with me, eh?
He will take you as well, that dove, if you only tell him you want to go. Would you like to? Shall I tell him?
They will take away from you something which you will not need, and give you money.
They make a festival of it when they mutilate a man, and they reward him for it.”
The eunuch 6 stood on board, with a white bundle under his arm, and looked stubbornly at Yaakov with his dull eyes, which were heavy and swollen, like those of a drowned person.
I abused him in a low voice, and the stoker once more took hold of my arm. 6 Skoptsi, or eunuchs, form a sect in Russia, or rather part of the schism known as the Old Believers. Sexual purity being enjoined on its members, and the practice of it being found to be lax, mutilation was resorted to.
“Let him alone! There’s no harm in him.
Every one has his own way of praying. What business is it of ours?
Well, good-by.
Good luck, to you!”
And Yaakov Shumov went away, rolling from side to side like a bear, leaving in my heart an uneasy, perplexed feeling. I was sorry to lose the stoker, and angry with him. I was, I remember, a little jealous and I thought fearfully, “Fancy a man going away like that, without knowing where he is going!”
And what sort of a man was he — Yaakov Shumov?
CHAPTER XII
LATE in the autumn, when the steamboat voyage finished, I went as pupil in the workshop of an icon painter. But in a day or two my mistress, a gentle old lady given to tippling, announced to me in her Vladimirski speech:
“The days are short now and the evenings long, so you will go to the shop in the mornings, and be shop-boy. In the evenings you will learn.”
She placed me under the authority of a small, swift-footed shopman, a young fellow with a handsome, false face.
In the mornings, in the cold twilight of dawn, I went with him right across the town, up the sleepy mercantile street, Ilnik, to the Nijni bazaar, and there, on the second floor of the Gostini Dvor, was the shop.
It had been converted from a warehouse into a shop, and was dark, with an iron door, and one small window on the terrace, protected by iron bars. The shop was packed with icons of different sizes, with image-cases, and with highly finished books in church Slav characters, bound in yellow leather.
Beside our shop there was another, in which were also sold icons and books, by a black-bearded merchant, kinsman to an Old Believer valuer. He was celebrated beyond the Volga as far as the boundaries of Kirjinski, and was assisted by his lean and lively son, who had the small gray face of in old man, and the restless eyes of a mouse.
When I had opened the shop, I had to run to the tavern for boiling water, and when I had finished breakfast, I had to set the shop in order, dust the goods, and then go out on the terrace and watch with vigilant eyes, lest customers should enter the neighboring shop.
“Customers are fools,” said the shopman forcibly to me. “They don’t mind where they buy, so long as it is cheap, and they do not understand the value of the goods.”
Lightly tapping the wooden surface of an icon, he aired his slight knowledge of the business to me. He instructed me :
“This is a clever piece of work — very cheap — three or four vershoks — stands by itself. Here is another — six or seven vershoks — stands by itself.
Do you know about the saints?
Remember Boniface is a protection against drink; Vvaara, the great martyr, against toothache and death by accident; Blessed Vassili, against fevers.
Do you know all about Our Lady?
Look! This is Our Lady of Sorrows, and Our Lady of Abalak, Most Renowned. Do not weep for me, Mother. Assuage my griefs. Our lady of Kazan, of Pokrove; Our Lady of Seven Dolors.”
I soon remembered the prices of the icons, according to their size and the work on them, and learned to distinguish between the different images of Our Lady. But to remember the significations of the various saints was difficult.
Sometimes I would be standing at the door of the shop, dreaming, when the shopman would suddenly test my knowledge.
“Who is the deliverer from painful childbirth?”
If I answered wrongly, he would ask scornfully:
“What is the use of your head?”
Harder still was it for me to tout for customers. The hideously painted icons did not please me at all, and I did not like having to sell them.
According to grandmother’s stories, I had imagined Our Lady as young, beautiful, and good, just as she was in pictures in the magazines, but the icons represented her as old and severe, with a long crooked nose, and wooden hands.
On market days, Wednesdays and Fridays, business was brisk. Peasants, old women, and sometimes whole families together, appeared on the terrace, — all old Ritualists from Zavoljia, suspicious and surly people of the forests.
I would see, perhaps, coming along slowly, almostly timidly, across the gallery, a ponderous man wrapped in sheepskin and thick, home-made cloth, and I would feel awkward and ashamed at having to accost him.
At last by a great effort I managed to intercept him, and revolving about his feet in their heavy boots, I chanted in a constrained, buzzing voice:
“What can we do for you, your honor?
We have psalters with notes and comments, the books of Ephrem Siren, Kyrillov, and all the canonical books and breviaries. Please come and look at them.
All kinds of icons, whatever you want, at various prices. Only the best work, — dark colors!
We take orders, too, if you wish it, for all kinds of saints and madonnas.
Perhaps you would like to order something for a Name Day, or for your family?
This is the best workshop in Russia!