“Go on!
Fire away!”
He danced like Vanka Tzigan, just as if he was swimming in the air. Then Pavl Odintzov and Sorokhin danced passionately and lightly after him. The consumptive Davidov also moved his feet about the floor, and coughed from the dust, smoke, and the strong odor of vodka and smoked sausage, which always smells like tanned hide.
They danced, and sang, and shouted, but each remembered that they were making merry, and gave each other a sort of test — a test of agility and endurance.
Tipsy Sitanov asked first one and then another:
“Do you think any one could really love a woman like that?”
He looked as if he were on the verge of tears.
Larionovich, lifting the sharp bones of his shoulders, answered:
“A woman is a woman — what more do you want?”
The two of whom they spoke disappeared unnoticed.
Jikharev reappeared in the workshop in two er three days, went to the bath, and worked for two weeks in his comer, without speaking, pompous and estranged from every one.
“Have they gone?” asked Sitanov of himself, looking round the workshop with sad blue-gray eyes.
His face was not handsome, for there was something elderly about it, but his eyes were clear and good.
Sit — anov was friendly to me — a fact which I owed to my thick note-book in which I had written poetry.
He did not believe in God, but it was hard to understand who in the workshop, beside Larionovich, loved God and believed in Him. They all spoke of Him with levity, derisively, just as they liked to speak of their mistresses.
Yet when they dined, or supped, thev all crossed themselves, and when they went to bed, they said their prayers, and went to church on Sundays and feast days.
Sitanov did none of these things, and he was counted as an unbeliever.
“There is no God,” he said.
•“Where did we all come from, then?”
“I don’t know.”
When I asked him how God could possibly not be, he explained:
“Don’t you see that God is height!”
He raised his long arm above his head, then lowered it to an arshin from the floor, and said:
“And man is depth!
Is that true?
And it is written: Man was created in the image and likeness of God, — as you know!
And what is Golovev like?”
This defeated me. The dirty and drunken old man, in spite of his years, was given to an unmentionable sin. I remembered the Viatski soldier, Ermokhin, and grandmother’s sister. Where was God’s likeness in them?
“Human creatures are swine — as you know,” said Sitanov, and then he tried to console me.
“Never mind, Maxim, there are good people; there are!”
He was easy to get on with; he was so simple.
When he did not know anything, he said frankly:
“I don’t know; I never thought about it!”
This was something unusual. Until I met him, I had only come across people who knew everything and talked about everything.
It was strange to me to see in his note-book, side by side with good poetry which touched the soul, many obscene verses which aroused no feeling but that of shame.
When I spoke to him about Pushkin, he showed me
“Gavrialad,” which had been copied in his book.
“What is Pushkin?
Nothing but a jester, but that Benediktov — he is worth paying attention to.”
And closing his eyes he repeated softly:
“Look at the bewitching bosom Of a beautiful woman.”
For some reason he was especially partial to the three lines which he quoted with joyful pride:
“Not even the orbs of an eagle Into that warm cloister can penetrate And read that heart.”
“Do you understand that?”
It was very uncomfortable to me to have to acknowledge that I did not understand what he was so pleased about.
CHAPTER XIV
MY duties in the workshop were not complicated. In the morning when they were all asleep, I had to prepare the samovar for the men, and while they drank tea in the kitchen, Pavl and I swept and dusted the workshop, set out red, yellow, or white paints, and then I went to the shop.
In the evening I had to grind up colors and “watch” the work.
At first I watched with great interest, but I soon realized that all the men who were engaged on this handicraft which was divided up into so many processes, disliked it, and suffered from a torturing boredom.
The evenings were free. I used to tell them stories about life on the steamer and different stories out of books, and without noticing how it came about, I soon held a peculiar position in the workshop as story-teller and reader.