Sitanov flourished his right hand, the Mordovan raised his left for defense, and received a straight blow under the right arm from Sitanov’s left hand. He gasped, retired, and exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction:
“He is young, but he Is no fool!”
They began to leap upon one another, striking each other’s breasts with blows from their mighty fists. In a few minutes not only our own people, but strangers began to cry excitedly:
“Get your blows in quicker, image-painter!
Fix him up, embosser.”
The Mordovan was a little stronger than Sitanov, but as he was considerably the heavier, he could not deal such swift blows, and received two or three to every one he gave.
But his seasoned body apparently did not suffer much, and he was laughing and exclaiming all the time, when, suddenly, with a heavy upward blow he put Sitanov’s right arm out of joint from the shoulder.
“Part them; it is a draw!” cried several voices, and, breaking the circle, the crowd gathered round the pugilists.
“He is not very strong but he is skilful, the image-painter,” said the Mordovan good-naturedly.
“He will make a good boxer, and that I say before the whole world!”
The elder persons began a general wrestling match, and I took Sitanov to the Feldsher bone-setter. His deed had raised him still higher in my esteem, had increased my sympathy with him, and his importance in my eyes.
He was, in the main, very upright and honorable, and he felt that he had only done his duty, but the graceless Kapendiukhin made fun of him lightly.
“Ekh, Genya, you live for show!
You have polished up your soul like a samovar before a holiday, and you go about boasting, ‘look how brightly it shines!’
But your soul is really brass, and a very dull affair, too.”
Sitanov remained calmly silent, either working hard or copying Lermontov’s verses into his note-book. He spent all his spare time in this copying, and when I suggested to him:
“Why, when you have plenty of money, don’t you buy the book?” he answered:
“No, it is better in my own handwriting.”
Having written a page in his pretty, small hand-writing, he would read softly while he was waiting for the ink to dry:
“Without regret, as a being apart, You will look down upon this earth, Where there is neither real happiness Nor lasting beauty.”
And he said, half-closing his eyes:
“That is true.
Ekh! and well he knows the truth, too!”
The behavior (5f Sitanov to Kapendiukhin always amazed me. When he had been drinking, the Cossack always tried to pick a quarrel with his comrade, and Sitanov would go on for a long time bearing it, and saying persuasively:
“That will do, let me alone!”
And then he would start to beat the drunken man so cruelly that the workmen, who regarded internal dissensions amongst themselves merely as a spectacle, in terfered between the friends, and separated them.
“If we didn’t stop Evgen in time, he would beat any one to death, and he would never forgive himself,” they said.
When he was sober Kapendiukhin ceaselessly jeered at Sitanov, making fun of his passion for poetry and his unhappy romance, obscenely, but unsuccessfully trying to arouse jealousy.
Sitanov listened to the Cossack’s taunts in silence, without taking offense, and he sometimes even laughed with Kapendiukhin at himself.
They slept side by side, and at night they would feold long, whispered conversations about something.
These conversations gave me no peace, for I was anxious to know what these two people who were so un like each other found to talk about in such a friendly manner.
But when I went near them, the Cossack veiled:
“What do you want?”
But Sitanov did not seem to see me.
However, one day they called me, and the Cossack asked:
“Maximich, if you were rich, what would you do?”
“I would buy books.”
“And what else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ekh!” said Kapendiukhin, turning away from me in disgust, but Sitanov said calmly:
“You see; no one knows that, whether they be old or young.
I tell you that riches in themselves are worth nothing, unless they are applied to some special purpose.”
I asked them,
“What are you talking about?”
“We don’t feel inclined to sleep, and so we are talking,” answered the Cossack.
Later, listening to them, I found that they were discussing by night those things which other people dis cussed by day — God, truth, happiness, the stupidity and cunning of women, the greediness of the rich, and the fact that life is complicated and incomprehensible.
I always listened to their conversations eagerly; they excited me. I was pleased to think that almost every one had arrived at the same conclusion; namely, that life is evil, and that we ought to have a better form of existence!
But at the same time I saw that the desire to live under better conditions would have no effect, would change nothing in the lives of the work-people, in their relations one with another.
All these talks, throwing a light upon my life as it lay before me, revealed at the same time, beyond it, a sort of melancholy emptiness; and in this emptiness, like specks of dust in a pond ruffled by the wind, floated people, absurdly and exasperatingly, among them those very people who had said that such a crowd was devoid of sense.
Always ready to give their opinion, they were always passing judgment on others, repeating, bragging, and starting bitter quarrels about mere trifles. They were always seriously offending one another.