A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since morning.
Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of watermelons.
At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was extremely brutal with the workers.
About a month Sergei Ivanovich had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace.
But the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him.
He was always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external conditions, does not know himself what is going to be with him on the morrow.
And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit, and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill.
Four parties, each of five men, worked on each barge.
Number one would reach for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the side of the barge.
The second cast it to the third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the watermelons away— now dark-green, now white, now striped— into even glistening rows.
This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.
When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in order to fill up the dray.
It is only difficult for the novices, that have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo.
And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as to be able to throw it.
Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year.
What swearing— virulent, mocking, coarse— poured down upon him when for the third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing: two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the one which he was holding in his hands as well.
The first time they treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common share.
The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw him out of the party at once, without any reckoning.
Platonov even now still remembered how a sudden fury seized him:
“Ah, so? The devil take you!” he had thought. “And yet you want me to be chary of your watermelons?
So then, here you are, here you are! … ” This flare-up helped him as though instantaneously.
He carelessly caught the watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood, that the most important thing was not to think at all of the watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went well.
When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own kind.
But that, too, passed away.
He reached, in, the end, the stage where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying watermelons.
Now he was number two.
Bending downward rhythmically, he, without looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon; swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately once again bent down for the next watermelon.
And his ear seized at this time how smack-smack … smack-smack… the caught watermelons slapped in the hands; and immediately bent downwards and again threw, letting the air out of himself noisily— ghe… ghe…
The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load.
Zavorotny, the head— an enormous, mighty Poltavian— had succeeded with extreme deftness in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all probability not very experienced as yet.
The owner, it is true, came to his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced melon growers dissuaded him from it in time:
“Drop it.
They’ll kill you,” they told him simply and firmly.
And so, through this very stroke of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four roubles a day.
They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the number of units of energy created would have equalled the work of a large Voronezhian train horse.
However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this— he hurried and hurried his lads on all the time.
Professional ambition was speaking within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of every member of the gang up to five roubles per snout.
And gaily, with unusual ease, twinkled from the harbour to the waggon, twirling and flashing, the wet green and white watermelons; and their succulent plashing resounded against accustomed palms.
But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port.
A second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on shore; and for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus of different voices.
“Ba-a-a-st-a-a!” hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast, Zavorotny started roaring.
And now the last smack-smack— and the work stopped instantaneously.
Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward, and spread out his swollen arms.
With pleasure he thought of having already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work after disuse.
While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair on Temnikovskaya— also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon— he would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
“Go-o-o and e-at,” Zavorotny began to clamour again.
The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms.
Right here, too, on the shore, to one side, where a little grass had been left yet, they disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies.
Gavriushka the Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house and was singing as he went the soldiers’ signal for dinner: