“Let us go and have some tea, shall we?”
And they swam like barges to the tavern.
I wanted to know what stirred in the bosoms of these heavy, iron-hearted people that they should gather round the poor fellow because his unhealthy gluttony amused them.
It was dark and dull in that narrow gallery closel3f packed with wool, sheepskins, hemp, ropes, felt, boots, and saddlery.
It was cut off — from the pavement by pillars of brick, clumsily thick, weather-beaten, and spattered with mud from the road.
All the bricks and all the chinks between them, all the holes made by the fallen-away mortar, had been mentally counted by me a thousand times, and their hideous designs were forever heavily imprinted on my memory.
The foot-passenger dawdled along the pavement; hackney carriages and sledges loaded with goods passed up the road without haste. Beyond the street, in a red-brick, square, two-storied shop, was the market-place, littered with cases, straw, crumpled paper, covered with dirt and trampled snow.
All this, together with the people and the horses, in spite of the movement, seemed to be motionless, or lazily moving round and round in one place to which it was fastened by invisible chains.
One felt suddenly that this life was almost devoid of sound, or so poor in sounds that it amounted to dumbness.
The sides of the sledges squeaked, the doors of the shops slammed, sellers of pies and honey cried their wares, but their voices sounded unhappy, unwilling. They were all alike; one quickly became used to them, and ceased to pay attention to them.
The church-bells tolled funerally. That melancholy sound was always in my ears. It seemed to float in the air over the market-place without ceasing from morning to night; it was mingled with all my thoughts and feelings; it lay like a copper veneer over all my impressions.
Tedium, coldness, and want breathed all around: from the earth covered with dirty snow, from the gray snow-drift on the roof, from the flesh-colored bricks of the buildings; tedium rose from the chimneys in a thick gray smoke, and crept up to the gray, low, empty sky; with tedium horses sweated and people sighed.
They had a peculiar smell of their own, these people — the oppressive dull smell of sweat, fat, hemp oil, hearth-cakes, and smoke. It was an odor which pressed upon one’s head like a warm close-fitting cap, and ran down into one’s breast, arousing a strange feeling of intoxication, a vague desire to shut one’s eyes, to cry out despairingly, to run away somewhere and knock one’s head against the first wall.
I gazed into the faces of the merchants, over-nourished, full-blooded, frost-bitten, and as immobile as if they were asleep.
These people often yawned, opening their mouths like fish which have been cast on dry land.
In winter, trade was slack and there was not in the eyes of the dealer that cautious, rapacious gleam which somehow made them bright and animated in the summer.
The heavy fur coats hampered their movements, bowed them to the earth. As a rule they spoke lazily, but when they fell into a passion, they grew vehement. I had an idea that they did this purposely, in order to show one another that they were alive.
It was perfectly clear to me that tedium weighed upon them, was killing them, and the unsuccessful struggle against its overwhelming strength was the only explanation I could give of their cruelty and senseless amusements at the expense of others.
Sometimes I discussed this with Petr Vissilich.
Although as a rule he behaved to me scornfully and jeeringly, he liked me for my partiality for books, and at times he permitted himself to talk to me instructively, seriously.
“I don’t like the way these merchants live,” I said.
Twisting a strand of his beard in his long fingers, he said:
“And how do you know how they live?
Do you then often visit them at their houses?
This is merely a street, my friend, and people do not live in a street; they simply buy and sell, and they get through that as quickly as they can, and then go home again!
People walk about the streets with their clothes on, and you do not know what they are like under their clothes. What a man really is is seen in his own home, within his own four walls, and how he lives there — that you know nothing about!”
“Yes, but they have the same ideas whether they are here or at home, don’t they?”
“And how can any one know what ideas his neighbors have?” said the old man, making his eyes round. “Thoughts are like lice; you cannot count them.
It may be that a man, on going to his home, falls on his knees and, weeping, prays to God: Torgive me, Lord, I have defiled Thy holy day!’
It may be that his house is a sort of monastery to him, and he lives there alone with his God.
You see how it is!
Every spider knows its own corner, spins its own web, and understands its own position, so that it may hold its own.”
When he spoke seriously, his voice went lower and lower to a deep base, as if he were communicating secrets.
“Here you are judging others, and it is too soon for you; at your age one lives not by one’s reason but by one’s eyes.
What you must do is to look, remember, and hold your tongue.
The mind is for business, but faith is for the soul.
It is good for you to read books, but there must be moderation in all things, and some have read themselves into madness and godlessness.”
I looked upon him as immortal; it was hard for me to believe that he might grow older and change.
He liked to tell stories about merchants and coiners who had become notorious. I had heard many such stories from grandfather, who told them better than the valuer, but the underlying theme was the same — that riches always lead to sin towards God and one’s fellow-creatures.
Petr Vassilich had no pity for human creatures, but he spoke of God with warmth of feeling, sighing and covering his eyes.
“And so they try to cheat God, and He, the Lord Jesus Christ, sees it all and weeps. ‘My people, my people, my unhappy people, hell is being prepared for you!’ ”
Once I jokingly reminded him:
“But you cheat the peasants yourself.”
He was not offended by this.
“Is that a great matter as far as I am concerned?” he said.
“I may rob them of from three to five rubles, and that is all it amounts to!”
When he found me reading, he would take the book out of my hands and ask me questions about what I had read, in a fault-finding manner. With amazed incredulity he would say to the shopman:
“Just look at that now; he understands books, the young rascal!”
And he would give me a memorable, intelligent lecture:
“Listen to what I tell you now; it is worth your while.