In the vestibule he warned me:
“You, Maxim, don’t speak to any one in the shop about that book, for of course it is a forbidden one.”
I rejoiced; this must be one of the books of which the priest had spoken to me in the confessional.
We supped languidly, without the usual noise and talk, as if something important had occurred and we could not keep from thinking about it, and after supper, when we were going to bed, Jikharev said to me, as he drew forth the book:
“Come, read it once more!”
Several men rose from their beds, came to the table, and sat themselves round it, undressed as they were, with their legs crossed.
And again when I had finished reading, Jikharev said, strumming his fingers on the table:
“That is a living picture of him!
Ach, devil, devil — that’s how he is, brothers, eh?”
Sitanov leaned over my shoulder, read something, and laughed, as he said:
“I shall copy that into my own note-book.”
Jikharev stood up and carried the book to his own table, but he turned back and said in an offended, shaky voice:
“We live like blind puppies — to what end we do not know. We are not necessary either to God or the devil!
How are we slaves of the Lord?
The Jehovah of slaves and the Lord Himself speaks with them!
With Moses, tool He even gave Moses a name; it means This is mine’ — a man of God.
And we — what are we?”
He shut up the book and began to dress himself, asking Sitanov:
“Are you coming to the tavern?”
“I shall go to my own tavern,” answered Sitanov softly.
When they had gone out, I lay down on the floor by the door, beside Pavl Odintzov.
He tossed about for a long time, snored, and suddenly began to weep quietly.
“What is the matter with you?”
“I am sick with pity for all of them,” he said. “This is the fourth year of my life with them, and I know all about them.”
I also was sorry for these people. We did not go to sleep for a long time, but talked about them in whispers, finding goodness, good traits in each one of them, and also something which increased our childish pity.
I was very friendly with Pavl Odintzov. They made a good workman of him in the end, but it did not last long; before the end of three years he had begun to drink wildly, later on I met him in rags on the Khitrov market-place in Moscow, and not long ago I heard that he had died of typhoid.
It is painful to remember how many good people in my life I have seen senselessly ruined.
People of all nations wear themselves out, and to ruin themselves comes natural, but nowhere do they wear themselves out so terribly quickly, so senselessly, as in our own Russia.
Then he was a round-headed boy two years older than myself; he was lively, intelligent, and upright; he was talented, for he could draw birds, cats, and dogs excellently, and was amazingly clever in his caricatures of the workmen, always depicting them as feathered. Sitanov was shown as a sad-looking wood-cock standing on one leg, Jikharev as a cock with a torn comb and no feathers on his head; sickly Davidov was an injured lapwing.
But best of all was his drawing of the old chaser, Golovev, representing him as a bat with large whiskers, ironical nose, and four feet with six nails on each.
From the round, dark face, white, round eyes gazed forth, the pupils of which looked like the grain of a lentil. They were placed crossways, thus giving to the face a lifelike and hideous expression.
The workmen were not offended when Pavl showed them the caricatures, but the one of Golovev made an unpleasant impression on them all, and the artist was sternly advised:
“You had better tear it up, for if the old man sees it, he will half kill you!”
The dirty, putrid, everlastingly drunk old man was tiresomely pious, and inextinguishably malicious. He vilified the whole workshop to the shopman whom the mistress was about to marry to her niece, and who for that reason felt himself to be master of the whole house and the workpeople.
The workmen hated him. but thcj were afraid of him, and for th€ same reason were afraid of Golovev, too.
Pavl worried the chaser furiously and in all manner of ways, just as if he had set before himself the aim of never allowing Golovev to have a moment’s peace.
I helped him in this with enthusiasm, and the workshop amused itself with our pranks, which were al — most always pitilessly coarse. But we were warned:
“You will get into trouble, children!
Kouzka–Juchek will half kill you!”
Kouzka–Juchek was the nickname of the shopman, which was given to him on the quiet by the workshop.
The warning did not alarm us. We painted the face of the chaser when he was asleep. One day when he was in a drunken slumber we gilded his nose, and it was three days before he was able to get the gold out of the holes in his spongy nose.
But every time that we succeeded in infuriating the old man, I remembered the steamboat, and the little Viatski soldier, and I was conscious of a disturbance in my soul.
In spite of his age, Golovev was so strong that he often beat us, falling upon us unexpectedly; he would beat us and then complain of us to the mistress.
She, who was also drunk every day, and for that reason always kind and cheerful, tried to frighten us, striking her swollen hands on the table, and crying:
“So you have been saucy again, you wild beast?
He is an old man, and you ought to respect him!
Who was it that put photographic solution in his glass, instead of wine?”
“We did.”
The mistress was amazed.
“Good Lord, they actually admit it!