MAXIM GORKY

SECOND IMPRESSION

LONDON

T. FISHER UNWIN

MCMV

CONTENTS THE OUTCASTS Translated by Dora B. Montefiore and Emily Jakowleff. WAITING FOR THE FERRY Translated by Dora B. Montefiori and Emily Jakowleff. THE AFFAIR OF THE CLASPS Translated by Vera Volkhovsky.

THE OUTCASTS

I

The High Street consists of two rows of one-storeyed hovels, squeezed close one against another; old hovels with leaning walls and crooked windows, with dilapidated roofs, disfigured by time, patched with shingles, and overgrown with moss; here and there above them rise tall poles surmounted with starling houses, whilst the roofs are shaded by the dusty green of pollard willows and elder bushes, the sole miserable vegetation of suburbs where dwell the poorest classes.

The windows of these hovels, their glass stained green with age, seem to watch each other with the shifty, cowardly glance of thieves. Up the middle of the street crawls a winding channel passing between deep holes, washed out by the heavy rain; here and there lie heaps of old, broken bricks and stones overgrown with weeds, the remains of the various attempts made from time to time by the inhabitants to build dwellings; but these attempts have been rendered useless by the torrents of stormwater sweeping down from the town above. On the hill nestle, amongst the luxuriant green of gardens, magnificent stone-built houses; the steeples of churches rise proudly towards the blue heavens, their golden crosses glittering in the sun.

In wet weather the town pours into this outlying suburb all its surface water, and in the dry weather all its dust, and this miserable row of hovels has the appearance of having been swept down at one of these moments by some powerful hand.

Crushed into the ground, these half-rotten human shelters seem to cover all the hill, whilst, stained by the sun, by the dust, and by the rains, they take on them the dirty nondescript colour of old decaying wood.

At the end of this miserable street stood an old, long, two-storeyed house, which seemed to have been cast out in this way from the town, and which had been bought by the merchant Petounnikoff. This was the last house in the row, standing just under the hill, and stretching beyond it were fields, ending at a distance of half a verst from the house in an abrupt fall towards the river. This large and very old house had a more sinister aspect than its neighbours; all its walls were crooked, and in its rows of windows there was not one that had preserved its regular form; whilst the remnants of the window panes were of the dirty green colour of stagnant water.

The spaces between the windows were disfigured with discoloured patches of fallen plaster, as if time had written the history of the house in these hieroglyphics. Its roof, sagging forwards towards the street, increased its pathetic aspect; it seemed as if the house were bowing itself towards the ground, and were humbly waiting for the last stroke of fate to crumble it into dust, or into a deformed heap of half-rotten ruins.

The front gates were ajar. One side, torn from its hinges, lay on the ground, and from the cracks between the boards sprang grass, which also covered the great desolate yard. At the farther end of this yard stood a low, smoke-blackened shed with an iron roof. The house itself was uninhabited, but in this mean shed, which had been a forge, was installed a common lodging-house or doss-house, kept by a retired cavalry officer, Aristide Fomitch Kouvalda.

Inside, this doss-house appeared as a long, dark den, lighted by four square windows and a wide door. The brick unplastered walls were dark with smoke, which had also blackened the ceiling. In the middle stood a large stove, round which, and along the walls, were ranged wooden bunks containing bundles of rubbish which served the dossers for beds. The walls reeked with smoke, the earthen floor with damp, and the bunks with sweat and rotten rags.

The master's bunk was on the stove, and those in its immediate neighbourhood were looked upon as places of honour, and were granted to the inmates who rejoiced in his favour and friendship. The master spent the greater part of the day seated at the door of the shed in a sort of arm-chair, which he had himself constructed of bricks, or else in the beerhouse of Jegor Vaviloff, just across the way, where Aristide dined and drank vodka.

Before starting the lodging-house, Aristide Kouvalda used to keep a servants' registry office in the town; and glancing farther back into his life, we should find he had had a printing establishment; and before the printing business, according to his own account, he lived—and "lived, devil take it, well; lived as a connoisseur, I can assure you!"

He was a broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a pock-marked face, bloated with drink, and a bushy, yellow beard. His eyes were grey, large, audaciously gay; he spoke with a bass voice, and almost always held between his teeth a German china pipe with a curved stem. When he was angry the nostrils of his red crooked nose would dilate wide, and his lips would quiver, showing two rows of large yellow teeth like those of a wolf. Long-handed and bow-legged, he dressed always in an old dirty military overcoat and a greasy cap with a red band, but without a peak; and in worn felt boots reaching to his knees. In the morning he was always in a state of drunken stupor, and in the evening he became lively. Drunk he never could be; for however much liquor he stowed away, he never lost his gay humour.

In the evening he might be seen seated in his brick arm-chair, his pipe between his teeth, receiving his lodgers.

"Who are you?" he would ask, on the approach of some ragged, depressed-looking individual, who had been turned out of the town for drunkenness or for some other reason.

The man would reply.

"Show me your papers, to prove that you are not lying!"

The papers were shown, if there were any forthcoming. The master would push them into his shirt, not caring to look at their contents.

"All right! For one night two kopecks; a week, ten kopecks; a month, twenty kopecks; go and take your place, but mind not to take anyone else's, or you will catch it. The people who live here are particular."

The new-comer would ask him, "Can one get tea, bread, and grub? Don't you sell them?"

"I sell only walls and roof, for which I pay the rogue Petounnikoff, the owner of this hole, five roubles a month," Kouvalda would explain in a business-like tone. "People who come to me are not used to luxury, and if you are in the habit of guzzling every day, there's a beershop just opposite. But you'd better get out of that bad habit as soon as possible, you skulker; you are not a gentleman born, then why do you want to eat? You had better eat yourself!"

For these and like speeches, uttered in a pretended severe voice, but always with a laugh in his eyes, and for his attention to his lodgers, Kouvalda was very popular among the outcasts of the town.

It sometimes happened that a former client would come into the doss-house, no longer ragged and down-trodden, but in more or less decent clothes, and with a cheerful face.

"Good-day, your honour; how are you?"

"All right; quite well; what do you want?"

"Don't you recognise me?"

"No, I don't."

"Don't you remember last winter I spent a month with you, when you had a police raid and three were taken up?"

"Oh, my good fellow, the police often come under my hospitable roof!"

"And, good Lord! don't you remember how you cheeked the police officer?"

"Well, that will do with recollections; just say simply what you want."

"Let me stand you something. When I lived with you, you were so"—

"Gratitude should be always encouraged, my friend, for we seldom meet with it. You must be a really good fellow, though I can't remember you; but I'll accompany you to the vodka shop with pleasure, and drink to your success in life."

"Ah! you're always the same—always joking."

"Well, what else can one do when one lives among a miserable set like you?"

Then they would go off, and often the former lodger would return staggering to the doss-house. Next day the entertainment would begin anew; and one fine morning the lodger would come to his senses, to find that he had drunk away all that he possessed.

"See, your honour! Once more I am one of your crew; what am I to do now?"

"Well, it's a position you can't boast about, but being in it, it's no use crying," argued the captain. "You must look at your position with equanimity, my friend, and not spoil life with philosophising and reasoning. Philosophy is always useless, and to philosophise before the drink is out of one is inexpressibly foolish. When you are getting over a bout of drinking you want vodka, and not remorse and grinding of teeth. You must take care of your teeth, otherwise there will be none to knock out. Here are twenty kopecks; go and bring some vodka and a piece of hot tripe or lights, a pound of bread, and two cucumbers. When we get over our drink then we'll think over the state of affairs."

The state of affairs would become clear in two or three days, when the master had nothing more left of the four or five roubles which had found their way into his pocket on the day of the return of the grateful lodger.

"Here we are, at the end of our tether!" the captain would say. "Now, you fool, that we have drunk all we had, let us try to walk in the paths of sobriety and of virtue. As it is, how true is the saying, 'If one hasn't sinned, one can't repent; and if one hasn't repented, one can't be saved!' The first commandment we have fulfilled; but repentance is of no use, so let's go straight for salvation. Be off to the river and start work. If you are not sure of yourself, tell the contractor to keep your money back, or else give it to me to keep When we've saved a good sum I'll buy you some breeches and what is necessary to make you look like a decent, tidy, working man persecuted by fate. In good breeches you will still stand a good chance. Now be off with you!"

The lodger went off to work on the towpath, down by the river, smiling to himself at the long, wise speeches of Kouvalda. The pith of the wisdom he did not understand, but watching the merry eyes, and feeling the influence of the cheerful spirit, he knew that in the discursive captain he had a friend who would always help him in case of need.

And, indeed, after a month or two of hard work, the lodger, thanks to the strict supervision of the captain, found himself in a pecuniary position which enabled him to rise a step above that condition into which he had fallen, thanks also to the kind assistance of the same captain.

"Well, my friend," Kouvalda would say, critically inspecting his renovated acquaintance, "here you are now with breeches and a coat. These matters are very important, believe me. As long as I had decent breeches I lived as a decent man in the town; but, damn it all! as soon as these fell to pieces, I fell also in the estimation of mankind, and I had to leave the town and come out here. People, you fool, judge by the outer appearance only; the inner meaning is inaccessible to them, because of their innate stupidity. Put that into your pipe and smoke it.—Pay me half your debt if you like, and go in peace. Seek and you will find."

"How much, Aristide Fomitch, do I owe you?" the lodger would ask confusedly.

"One rouble and seventy. You may give me the rouble or the seventy kopecks, whichever you like now; and for the rest I'll wait for the time when you can steal or earn more than you have now."

"Many thanks for your kindness," replied the lodger, touched by such consideration. "You are—well, you are—such a good soul; it's a pity that life has been so hard on you. You must have been a proud sort of eagle when you were in your right place."

The captain could not get on without grandiloquent phrases. "What do you mean by being in my right place? Who knows what his right place should be? Everyone wants to put his neck into someone else's yoke. Judah Petounnikoff's place should be in penal servitude, but he walks freely about the town, and is even going to build a new factory. Our schoolmaster's place should be by the side of a nice, fat, quiet wife, with half a dozen children round him, instead of lying about drunk in Vaviloff's vodka shop. Then there's yourself, who are going to look for a place as a waiter or porter, whereas I know you ought to be a soldier. You can endure much, you are not stupid, and you understand discipline. See how the matter stands! Life shuffles us up like cards, and it's only now and then we fall into our right places; but when that does happen, it's not for long; we are soon shuffled out again."

Sometimes such farewell speeches would serve only as a preface to a renewed friendship, which would start with a fresh booze, and would end with the lodger being surprised to find that he had nothing left, when the captain would again treat him, till both were in the same state of destitution.

These backslidings never spoilt the good understanding on either side. The aforementioned schoolmaster was amongst those friends who only got put on his feet in order to be knocked over again. He was intellectually the most on a level with the captain, and this was perhaps just the reason that, once having fallen to the doss-house, he could never rise again.

He was the only one with whom Aristide Kouvalda could philosophise, and be sure that he was understood. He appreciated the schoolmaster for this reason, and when his renovated friend was about to leave the doss-house, having again earned some money with the intention of taking a decent room in town, Aristide Kouvalda would begin such a string of melancholy tirades, that both would recommence drinking, and once more would lose all. In all probability Kouvalda was conscious of what he was doing, and the schoolmaster, much as he desired it, could never get away from the doss-house. Could Aristide Kouvalda, a gentleman by birth, and having received an education, the remnants of which still flashed through his conversation, along with a love of argument acquired during the vicissitudes of fortune—could he help desiring to keep by his side a kindred spirit? It is always ourselves we pity first. This schoolmaster once upon a time used to give lessons in a training school for teachers in a town on the Volga, but as the result of some trouble he was expelled; after that he became a clerk at a tanner's, and was forced, after a time, to leave that place as well; then he became a librarian in a private library, tried various other professions, and at length, having passed an attorney's examination, he began drinking, and came across the captain. He was a bald-headed man, with a stoop, and a sharp-pointed nose. In a thin, yellow face, with a pointed beard, glittered restless, sad, deep-sunk eyes, and the corners of his mouth were drawn down, giving him a depressed expression. His livelihood, or rather the means to get drunk, he earned by being a reporter on the local newspapers. Sometimes he would earn as much as fifteen roubles a week; these he would give to the captain, saying, "This is the last of it! Another week of hard work, and I shall get enough to be decently dressed, and then—addio, mio caro!"

"That's all right; you have my hearty approbation. I won't give you another glass of vodka the whole week," the captain would reply severely.

"I shall be very grateful. You must not give me a single drop."

The captain heard in these words something approaching very near to a humble appeal, and would add still more severely, "You may shout for it, but I won't give you any more."

"Well, that's an end of it," the teacher would sigh, and go off to his work. But in a day or two, feeling exhausted, fatigued, and thirsty, he would look furtively at the captain, with sad, imploring eyes, hoping anxiously that his friend's heart would melt. The captain would keep a severe face, uttering speeches full of the disgrace of weak natures, of the bestial pleasures of drunkenness, and other words applicable to the circumstances. To give him his due, it is right to add that he was sincere in his rôle of mentor and of moralist, but the patrons of his doss-house always inclined to be sceptical, and while listening to the scathing words of the captain, would say to each other with a wink, "He's a sly one for knowing how to get rid of all responsibility himself! 'I told you so; but you wouldn't listen to me; now blame yourself.'"

"The gentleman is an old soldier; he doesn't advance without preparing a retreat."

The schoolmaster would catch his friend in a dark corner, and holding him by his dirty cloak, trembling and moistening his parched lips with his tongue, would look into the captain's eyes with an expression so deeply tragic that no words could describe it.

"Can't you?" the captain would question sombrely.

The schoolmaster would silently nod, and then drop his head on his chest, trembling through all his long, thin body.

"Try one more day; perhaps you will conquer yourself," proposed Kouvalda.

The schoolmaster would sigh and shake his head in a hopeless negative. When the captain saw that his friend's lean body was shaken with the thirst for poison, he would take the money out of his pocket.

"It's generally useless to argue with fate," he would say, as if wishing to justify himself.

But if the schoolmaster held out the whole week, the farewell of the friends terminated in a touching scene, the end of which generally took place in Vaviloff's vodka shop.

The schoolmaster never drank all his money; at least half of it he spent on the children of the High Street. Poor people are always rich in children, and in the dust and ditches in this street might be seen from morning till night groups of torn, hungry, noisy youngsters. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but in the High Street they were like flowers faded before their time; probably because they grew on soil poor in nourishing qualities.

Sometimes the schoolmaster would gather the children round him, buy a quantity of bread, eggs, apples, nuts, and go with them into the fields towards the river. There they would greedily eat up all he had to offer them, filling the air around with merry noise and laughter. The lank, thin figure of the drunkard seemed to shrivel up and grow small like the little ones round him, who treated him with complete familiarity, as if he were one of their own age. They called him "Philippe," not adding even the title of "uncle." They jumped around him like eels, they pushed him, got on his back, slapped his bald head, and pulled his nose. He probably liked it, for he never protested against these liberties being taken. He spoke very little to them, and his words were humble and timid, as if he were afraid that his voice might soil or hurt them. He spent many hours with them, sometimes as plaything, and at other times as playmate. He used to look into their bright faces with sad eyes, and would then slowly and thoughtfully slink off into Vaviloff's vodka shop, where he would drink till he lost consciousness.

Almost every day when he returned from his reporting, the schoolmaster would bring back a paper from the town, and the outcasts would form a circle round him. As soon as they saw him coming, they would gather from the different corners of the yard, some drunk, some in a state of stupor, all in different stages of raggedness, but all equally miserable and dirty.

First would appear Alexai Maximovitch Simtzoff, round as a barrel; formerly a surveyor of forest lands, but now a pedlar of matches, ink, blacking, and bad lemons. He was an old man of sixty, in a canvas coat and a broad-brimmed crushed hat, which covered his fat red face, with its thick white beard, out of which peeped forth a small red nose, and thick lips of the same colour, and weak, running, cynical eyes. They called him "Kubar," a top, and this nickname well portrayed his round,' slowly moving figure and his thick, humming speech.

Louka Antonovitch Martianoff, nicknamed Konetz, "The End," would come out of some corner, a morose, black, silent drunkard, formerly an inspector of a prison; a man who gained his livelihood at present by playing games of hazard, such as the three-card trick and thimble-rig, and by the display of other talents equally ingenious, but equally unappreciated by the police. He would drop his heavy, often ill-treated, body on the grass beside the schoolmaster, his black eyes glistening, and stretching forth his hand to the bottle, would ask in a hoarse bass voice—

"May I?"

Then also would draw near the mechanic Pavel Sontseff, a consumptive of about thirty. The ribs on his left side had been broken in a street row; and his face, yellow and sharp, was constantly twisted into a cunning, wicked smile. His thin lips showed two rows of black, decayed teeth, and the rags on his thin shoulders seemed to be hanging on a peg. They used to call him "Scraps"; he earned his living by selling brooms of his own making, and brushes made of a certain kind of grass, which were very useful for brushing clothes.

Besides these, there was a tall, bony, one-eyed man with uncertain antecedents; he had a scared expression in his large, round, silent, and timid eyes. He had been three times condemned for thefts, and had suffered imprisonment for them. His name was Kisselnikoff, but he was nicknamed "Tarass and a half" because he was just half the size again of his inseparable friend Tarass, a former church deacon, but degraded now for drunkenness and dissipation. The deacon was a short, robust little man with a broad chest and a round, matted head of hair; he was famous for his dancing, but more so for his swearing; both he and "Tarass and a half" chose as their special work wood-sawing on the river-bank, and in their leisure hours the deacon would tell long stories "of his own composition," as he expressed it, to his friend or to anyone who cared to hear them. Whilst listening to these stories, the heroes of which were always saints, kings, clergy, and generals, even the habitués of the doss-house used to spit the taste of them out of their mouths, and opened wide eyes of astonishment at the wonderful imagination of the deacon, who would relate these shameless, obscene, fantastic adventures with great coolness, and with eyes closed in rapture. The imagination of this man was powerful and inexhaustible; he could invent and talk the whole day long, and never repeated himself. In him the world lost perhaps a great poet, and certainly a remarkable story-teller, who could put life and soul even into stones, by his foul but imaginatively powerful thought.

Besides these there was an absurd youth, who was called by Kouvalda "The Meteor." He once came to seek a night's lodging, and to the astonishment of all he never left. At first no one noticed him, for during the day he would go out to earn a livelihood, as did the rest, but in the evening he stuck closely to the friendly doss-house society. One day the captain asked him—

"My lad, what do you do in this world?"

The boy answered shortly and boldly, "I? I'm a tramp."

The captain looked at him critically. The lad had long hair, a broad, foolish face adorned with a snub nose; he wore a blue blouse without a belt, and on his head were the remains of a straw hat. His feet were bare.

"You are a fool!" said Aristide Kouvalda. "What are you doing here? You are of no use to us. Do you drink vodka? No! And can you steal? Not that either? Well, go and learn all that, and make a man of yourself, and then come back."

The lad smiled. "No, I shan't; I'll stay where I am!"

"Why?"

"Because"—

"Ah! you're a meteor!" said the captain.

"Let me knock some of his teeth out," proposed Martianoff.

"But why?" asked the lad.

"Because"—

"Well, then, I should take a stone and knock you on the head," replied the boy respectfully.

Martianoff would have thrashed him if Kouvalda had not interfered. "Leave him alone; he is distantly related to you, brother, as he is to all of us. You, without sufficient reason, want to knock his teeth out; and he, also without sufficient reason, wants to live with us. Well, damn it all! We all have to live without sufficient reason for doing so. We live, but ask us why; we can't say. Well, it's so with him, so let him be."

"But still, young man, you had better leave us," the schoolmaster intervened, surveying the lad with sad eyes.

The lad did not answer, but remained. At last they grew accustomed to him, and paid no attention to him, but he watched closely all that they said and did.

All the above-mentioned individuals formed the captain's bodyguard, and with good-natured irony he used to call them his "Outcasts." Besides these, there were five or six tramp rank-and-file in the doss-house; these were country-folk who could not boast of such antecedents as the outcasts, though they had undergone no less vicissitudes of fate; but they were a degree less degraded, and not so completely broken down. It may be that a decent man from the educated classes in town is somewhat above a decent peasant; but it is inevitable that a vicious townsman should be immeasurably more degraded in mind than a criminal from the country. This rule was strikingly illustrated by the inhabitants of Kouvalda's dwelling.

The most prominent peasant representative was a rag-picker of the name of Tiapa. Tall, and horribly thin, he constantly carried his head so that his chin fell on his breast, and from this position his shadow always assumed the shape of a hook.

One could never see his full face, but his profile showed an aquiline nose, projecting underlip, and bushy grey eyebrows. He was the captain's first lodger, and it was rumoured that he possessed large sums of money hidden somewhere about him. It was for this money that two years ago he had had his throat cut, since when he had been forced to keep his head so strangely bent. He denied having any money, and said that he had been struck with a knife for fun; and this accident had made it convenient for him to become a rag and bone picker, as his head was always necessarily bent forward towards the ground. When he walked about with his swaying, uncertain gait, and without his stick and bag, the badges of his profession, he seemed a being absorbed with his own thoughts, and Kouvalda, pointing at him with his finger, would say, "Look out! there is the escaped conscience of Judah Petounnikoff, seeking for a refuge! See how ragged and dirty this fugitive conscience looks!"

Tiapa spoke with such a hoarse voice that it was almost impossible to understand him, and that was perhaps why he spoke little, and always sought solitude. Each time, when a new-comer, driven from the village, arrived at the doss-house, Tiapa at sight of him would fall into a state of angry irritation and restlessness. He would persecute the miserable being with sharp, mocking words, which issued from his throat in an angry hiss; and he would set on him one of the most savage amongst the tramps, and finally threaten to beat and rob him himself in the night. He nearly always succeeded in driving out the terrified and disconcerted peasant, who never returned.

When Tiapa was somewhat appeased, he would hide himself in a corner to mend his old clothes or to read in a Bible, as old, as tom, as dirty as himself. Tiapa would come out of his corner when the schoolmaster brought the newspaper to read. Generally Tiapa listened silently to the news, sighed deeply, but never asked any questions. When the schoolmaster closed the newspaper, Tiapa would stretch out his bony hand and say—

"Give it here."

"What do you want it for?"

"Give it; perhaps there is something written concerning us."

"Concerning whom?"

"The village."

They laughed at him, and threw the paper at him. He would take it and read those parts which told of corn beaten down by the hail; of thirty holdings being destroyed by fire, and of a woman poisoning a whole family; in fact, all those parts about village life which showed it as miserable, sordid, and cruel. Tiapa read all these in a dull voice, and emitted sounds which might be interpreted as expressing either pity or pleasure. On Sunday he never went out rag-picking, but spent most of his day reading his Bible, during which process he moaned and sighed. His book he always held resting on his chest, and he was angry if anyone touched it or interrupted his reading.

"Hullo, you magician!" Kouvalda would say; "you don't understand anything of that; leave the book alone!"

"And you? What do you understand?"

"Well, old magician, I don't understand anything; but then I don't read books."

"But I do."

"More fool you!" answered the captain. "It's bad enough to have vermin in the head. But to get thoughts into the bargain. How will you ever be able to live, you old toad?"

"Well, I have not got much longer to live," said Tiapa quietly.

One day the schoolmaster inquired where he had learned to read, and Tiapa answered shortly—

"In prison."

"Have you been there?"

"Yes, I have."

"For what?"

"Because—I made a mistake. It was there I got my Bible. A lady gave it me. It's good in prison, don't you know that, brother?"

"It can't be. What is there good in it?"

"They teach one there. You see how I was taught to read. They gave me a book, and all that free!"

When the schoolmaster came to the doss-house, Tiapa had been there already a long time. He watched the schoolmaster constantly; he would bend his body on one side in order to get a good look at him, and would listen attentively to his conversation.

Once he began, "Well, I see you are a learned man. Have you ever read the Bible?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, do you remember it?"

"I do! What then?"

The old man bent his whole body on one side and looked at the schoolmaster with grey, morose, distrustful eyes.

"And do you remember anything about the Amalekites?"

"Well, what then?"

"Where are they now?"

"They have died out, Tiapa—disappeared."

The old man was silent, but soon he asked again—

"And the Philistines?"

"They've gone also."

"Have they all disappeared?"

"Yes, all."

"Does that mean that we shall also disappear as well?"

"Yes, when the time comes," the schoolmaster replied, in an indifferent tone of voice.

"And to which tribe of Israel do we belong?"

The schoolmaster looked at him steadily, thought for a moment, and began telling him about the Cymri, the Scythians, the Huns, and the Slavs.

The old man seemed to bend more than ever on one side, and watched the schoolmaster with scared eyes.

"You are telling lies!" he hissed out, when the schoolmaster had finished.

"Why do you think I am lying?" asked the astonished schoolmaster.

"Those people you have spoken of, none of them are in the Bible!" He rose and went out, deeply insulted, and cursing angrily.

"You are going mad, Tiapa!" cried the schoolmaster after him.

Then the old man turned round, and stretching out his hand shook with a threatening action his dirty, crooked forefinger.

"Adam came from the Lord. The Jews came from Adam. And all people come from the Jews—we amongst them."

"Well?"

"The Tartars came from Ishmael. And he came from a Jew!"

"Well, what then?"

"Nothing. Only why do you tell lies?"

And he went off, leaving his companion in a state of bewilderment. But in two or three days' time he approached him again.

"As you are a learned man, you ought at least to know who we are!"

"Slavs, Tiapa—Slavs!" replied the schoolmaster.

And he awaited with interest Tiapa's answer, hoping to understand him.

"Speak according to the Bible! There are no names like that in the Bible. Who are we, Babylonians or Edomites?"

The teacher began criticising the Bible. The old man listened long and attentively, and finally interrupted him.

"Stop all that! Do you mean that among all the people known to God there were no Russians? We were unknown to God? Is that what you mean to say? Those people, written about in the Bible, God knew them all. He used to punish them with fire and sword; He destroyed their towns and villages, but still He sent them His prophets to teach them, which meant He loved them. He dispersed the Jews and Tartars, but He still preserved them. And what about us? Why have we no prophets?"

"Well, I don't know," said the schoolmaster, trying in vain to understand the old man.

The old peasant put his hand on the schoolmaster's shoulder, rocking him gently to and fro whilst he hissed and gurgled as if swallowing something, and muttered in a hoarse voice—

"You should have said so long ago. And you went on talking as if you knew everything. It makes me sick to hear you. It troubles my soul. You'd better hold your tongue. See, you don't even know why we have no prophets. You don't know where we were when Jesus was on earth. And such lies too. Can a whole people die out? The Russian nation can't disappear; it's all lies. They are mentioned somewhere in the Bible, only I don't know under what name. Don't you know what a nation means? It is immense. See how many villages there are! And in each village look at the number of people; and you say they will die out. A people cannot die out, but a person can. A people is necessary to God, for they till the soil. The Amalekites have not died out; they are the French or the Germans. And see what you have been telling me. You ought to know why we don't possess God's favour; He never sends us now either plagues or prophets. So how can we be taught now?"

Tiapa's speech was terribly powerful. It was penetrated with irony, reproach, and fervent faith. He spoke for a long time, and the schoolmaster, who was as usual half drunk, and in a peaceful frame of mind, got tired of listening. He felt as if his nerves were being sawn with a wooden saw. He was watching the distorted body of the old man, and feeling the strange oppressive strength in his words. Finally he fell to pitying himself, and from that passed into a sad, wearied mood. He also wanted to say something forcible to old Tiapa, something positive, that might win the old man's favour, and change his reproachful, morose tone into one that was soft and fatherly. The schoolmaster felt as if words were rising to his lips, but could not find any strong enough to express his thought.

"Ah! You are a lost man," said Tiapa. "Your soul is torn, and yet you speak all sorts of empty fine words. You'd better be silent!"

"Ah, Tiapa!" sadly exclaimed the schoolmaster, "all that you say is true. And about the people also. The mass of the people is immense! But I am a stranger to it, and it is a stranger to me. There lies the tragedy of my life! But what's to be done? I must go on suffering. Indeed there are no prophets; no, not any. And it's true I talk too much and to no purpose. I had better hold my tongue. But you mustn't be so hard on me. Ah, old man, you don't know! You don't know. You can't understand."

Finally the schoolmaster burst into tears; he cried so easily and freely, with such abundant tears, that afterwards he felt quite relieved.

"You should go into the country; you should get a place as schoolmaster or as clerk. You would be comfortable there, and have a change of air. What's the use of leading this miserable life here?" Tiapa hissed morosely.

But the schoolmaster continued to weep, enjoying his tears.

From that time forth they became friends, and the outcasts, seeing them together, would say—

"The schoolmaster is making up to old Tiapa; he is trying to get at his money."

"It's Kouvalda who has put him up to trying to find out where the old man's hoard is."

It is very possible that their words were not in agreement with their thoughts; for these people had one strange trait in common—they liked to appear to each other worse than they really were.

The man who has nothing good in him likes sometimes to show himself in the worst light.

When all of them were gathered round the schoolmaster with his newspaper, the reading would begin.

"Now," would say the captain, "what does the paper offer us to-day? Is there a serial story coming out in it?"

"No," the schoolmaster would reply.

"Your editor is mean. Is there a leading article?"

"Yes, there is one to-day. I think it is by Gouliaff."

"Give us a taste of it! The fellow writes well. He's a cute one, he is!"

"The valuation of real estate," reads the schoolmaster, "which took place more than fifteen years ago, continues still to form a basis for present-day rating, to the great advantage of the town."

"The rogues!" interjects Captain Kouvalda.

"'Still continues to form!' It's indeed absurd! It's to the advantage of the merchants who manage the affairs of the town that it should continue to form the basis, and that's why it does continue!"

"Well, the article is written with that idea," says the schoolmaster.

"Ah! is it? How strange! It would be a good theme for the serial story, where it could be given a spicy flavour!"

A short dispute arises. The company still listens attentively, for they are at their first bottle of vodka. After the leading article they take the local news. After that they attack the police news, and law cases. If in these a merchant is the sufferer, Aristide Kouvalda rejoices. If a merchant is robbed, all is well; it is only a pity they did not take more. If his horses ran away with him and smashed him up, it was pleasant to listen to, and only a pity that the fellow escaped alive. If a shopkeeper lost a lawsuit, that was a good hearing; the sad point was that he was not made to pay the expenses twice over.

"That would have been illegal," remarks the schoolmaster.

"Illegal?" Kouvalda exclaims hotly. "But does a shopkeeper himself act always according to the law? What is a shopkeeper? Let us examine this vulgar, absurd creature. To begin with, every shopkeeper is a moujik. He comes from the country, and after a certain time he takes a shop and begins to trade. To keep a shop one must have money, and where can a moujik or peasant get money? As everyone knows, money is not earned by honest labour. It means that the peasant by some means or other has cheated. It means that a shopkeeper is a dishonest peasant!"

"That's clever!" The audience shows its approbation of the orator's reasoning.

Tiapa groans and rubs his chest; the sound is like that which he makes after swallowing his first glass of vodka.

The captain is buoyant. They now begin reading provincial correspondence. Here the captain is in his own sphere, as he expresses it. Here it is apparent how shamefully the shopkeeper lives, and how he destroys and disfigures life. Kouvalda's speech thunders round the shopkeeper, and annihilates him. He is listened to with pleasure, for he uses violent words.

"Oh, if I could only write in newspapers!" he exclaims, "I'd show the shopkeeper up in his right colours! I'd show he was only an animal who was temporarily performing the duties of man. I can see through him very well! I know him. He's a coarse fool with no taste for life, who has no notion of patriotism, and understands nothing beyond kopecks!"

"Scraps," knowing the weak side of the captain, and delighting in arousing anger, would interpose—

"Yes, since the gentry are dying out from hunger, there is no one of any account left in the world."

"You are right, you son of a spider and of a frog! Since the gentry have gone under no one is left. There are nothing but shopkeepers, and I hate them!"

"That's easy to see; for have they not trodden you under foot?"

"What's that to me? I came down in the world through my love of life, while the shopkeeper does not understand living. That's just why I hate him so, and not because I am a gentleman. But just take this as said, that I'm no longer a gentleman, but just simply an outcast, the shadow only of my former self. I spit at all and everything, and life for me is like a mistress who has deserted me. That is why I despise it, and am perfectly indifferent towards it."

"All lies!" says "Scraps."

"Am I a liar?" roars Aristide Kouvalda, red with anger.

"Why roar like that?" says Martianoff's bass voice, coolly and gloomily. "What's the use of arguing? Shopkeeper or gentleman, what does it matter to us?"

"That's just it, for we are neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring," interposes Deacon Tarass.

"Leave him in peace, 'Scraps,'" says the schoolmaster pacifically. "What's the use of throwing oil on the fire?"

The schoolmaster did not like quarrels and noise. When passions grew hot around him his lips twitched painfully, and he unobtrusively tried to make peace; not succeeding in which, he would leave the company to themselves. The captain knew this well, and if he was not very drunk he restrained himself, not wishing to lose the best auditor of his brilliant speeches.

"I repeat," he continued now, with more restraint—"I repeat, that I see that life is in the hands of foes, not only of foes of the nobility, but foes of all that is noble; of greedy, ignorant people, who won't do anything to improve the conditions of life. Still," argues the schoolmaster, "merchants created Genoa, Venice, Holland. It was the merchants, the merchants of England who won India. It was the merchants Stroganoff's"—

"What have I to do with those merchants? I am speaking of Judah Petounnikoff and his kind, with whom I have to do."

"And what have you to do with these?" asked the schoolmaster softly.

"Well, I'm alive. I'm in the world. I can't help being indignant at the thought of these savages, who have got hold of life, and who are doing their best to spoil it!"

"And who are laughing at the noble indignation of a captain and an outcast!" interjects "Scraps" provokingly.

"It's stupid, very stupid! I agree with you. As an outcast I must destroy all the feelings and thoughts that were once in me. That's perhaps true; but how shall we arm ourselves, you and I, if we throw on one side these feelings?"

"Now you are beginning to speak reasonably," says the schoolmaster encouragingly.

"We want something different. New ways of looking at life, new feelings, something fresh, for we ourselves are a new phase in life."

"Yes, indeed, that's what we want," says the schoolmaster.

"What's the use of discussing and thinking?" inquires "The End"; "we haven't got long to live; I'm forty, you are fifty. There is no one under thirty among us. And even if one were twenty, one could not live very long in such surroundings as these."

"And then again, what new phase are we? Tramps, it seems to We, have always existed in the world," says "Scraps" satirically.

"Tramps created Rome," says the schoolmaster.

"Yes; that was so!" said the captain jubilantly. "Romulus and Remus, were they not tramps? And we—when our time comes—we shall also create." "A breach of the peace!" interjects "Scraps," and laughs, pleased with his own wit.

His laugh is wicked, and jars on the nerves. He is echoed by Simtzoff, by the deacon, and by "Tarass and a half." The naïve eyes of the lad "Meteor" burn with a bright glow, and his cheeks flush red. "The End" mutters, in tones that fall like a hammer on the heads of the audience—

"All that's trash and nonsense, and dreams!"

It was strange to hear these people, outcasts from life, ragged, saturated with vodka, anger, irony, and filth, discussing life in this way.

For the captain such discussions were a feast. He spoke more than the others, and that gave him a chance of feeling his superiority. For however low a person may fall, he can never refuse himself the delight of feeling stronger and better off than the rest. Aristide Kouvalda abused this sensation, and never seemed to have enough of it, much to the disgust of "Scraps," "The Top," and the other outcasts, little interested in similar questions. Politics was with them the favourite topic. A discussion on the necessity of conquering India, and of checking England, would continue endlessly. The question as to the best means of sweeping the Jews off the face of the earth, was no less hotly debated. In this latter question the leader was always "Scraps," who invented marvellously cruel projects; but the captain, who liked always to be first in a discussion, evaded this topic. Women were always willingly and constantly discussed, but with unpleasant allusions; and the schoolmaster always appeared as women's champion, and grew angry when the expressions used by the others were of too strong a nature. They gave in to him, for they looked upon him as a superior being, and on Saturdays they would borrow money from him, which he had earned during the week.

He enjoyed besides many privileges. For instance, he was never knocked about on the frequent occasions when the discussions finished in a general row. He was allowed to bring women into the doss-house; and no one else enjoyed this right, for the captain always warned his clients—

"I'll have no women here! Women, shopkeepers, and philosophy have been the three causes of my ruin. I'll knock down anyone I see with a woman, and I'll knock the woman down as well. On principle, I would twist the neck of"—

He could have twisted anyone's neck, for in spite of his years he possessed wonderful strength. Besides, whenever he had a fighting job on, he was always helped by Martianoff. Gloomy and silent as the tomb in the usual way, yet on these occasions, when there was a general row on, he would stand back to back with Kouvaloff, these two forming together a destructive but indestructible engine. If Kouvalda was engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, "The End" would creep up and throw his opponent on the ground.

Once when Simtzoff was drunk, he, without any reason, caught hold of the schoolmaster's hair and pulled a handful out. Kouvalda, with one blow of his fist, dropped Simtzoff unconscious, and he lay where he fell for half an hour. When the fellow came to his senses he was made to swallow the schoolmaster's hair, which he did for fear of being beaten to death.

Besides the reading of the newspaper, discussions, and laughter, the other amusement was card-playing. They always left Martianoff out, for he could not play honestly. After being several times caught cheating, he candidly confessed—

"I can't help cheating; it's a habit of mine." "Such things do happen," corroborated Deacon Tarass. "I used to have the habit of beating my wife every Sunday after mass; and, would you believe it, after she died I had such a gnawing feeling come over me every Sunday I can scarcely describe it. I got over one Sunday, but things seemed to go all wrong. Another Sunday passed, and I felt very bad. The third Sunday I could not bear it any longer, and struck the servant girl. She kicked up a row, and threatened to take me before a magistrate. Just imagine my position! When the fourth Sunday came I knocked her about as I used to do my wife; I paid her ten roubles down, and arranged that I should beat her as a matter of course until I married again."

"Deacon, you are telling lies! How could you marry again?" broke in "Scraps."

"Well—I—she—we did without the ceremony. She kept house for me."

"Had you any children?" asked the schoolmaster.

"Yes, five of them. One got drowned—the eldest. He was a queer boy. Two died of diphtheria. One daughter married a student, and followed him to Siberia. The other wanted to study in Petersburg, and died there; I am told it was consumption. Yes, five of them. We clergy are very prolific."

And he began giving reasons for this, causing by his explanations Homeric laughter. When they were tired of laughing, Alexai Maximovitch Simtzoff remembered that he also had a daughter.

"She was called Lidka. Oh, how fat she was!" Probably he remembered nothing more, for he looked round deprecatingly, smiled, and found nothing more to say.

These people spoke but little of their past. They seldom recalled it, and if ever they did so, it was in general terms, and in a more or less scoffing tone. Perhaps they were right in treating their past slightingly, for recollections with most people have a tendency to weaken present energy, and destroy hope in the future.

On rainy days, and during dark, cold, autumn weather, these outcasts would gather in Vaviloff's vodka shop. They were habitués there, and were feared as a set of thieves and bullies; on one hand they were despised as confirmed drunkards, and on the other hand they were respected and listened to as superior people. Vaviloff's vodka shop was the club of the neighbourhood, and the outcasts were the intellectuals of the club.

On Saturday evenings, and on Sundays from early morning till night, the vodka shop was full of people, and the outcasts were welcome guests. They brought with them, amongst these inhabitants of the High Street, oppressed as they were by poverty and misery, a rollicking humour, in which there was something that seemed to brighten these lives, broken and worn out in the struggle for bread. The outcasts' art of talking jestingly on every subject, their fearlessness of opinion, their careless audacity of expression, their absence of fear of everything which the neighbourhood feared, their boldness, their dare-devilry—all this did not fail to please. Besides, almost all of them knew something of law, could give advice on many matters, could write a petition, or could give a helping hand in a shady transaction without getting into trouble. They were paid in vodka, and in flattering encomiums on their various talents.

According to their sympathies, the street was divided into two nearly equal parties. One considered that the captain was very superior to the schoolmaster: "A real hero! His pluck and his intelligence are far greater!" The other considered that the schoolmaster outbalanced Kouvalda in every respect. The admirers of Kouvalda were those who were known in the street as confirmed drunkards, thieves, and scapegraces, who feared neither poverty nor prison. The schoolmaster was admired by those who were more decent, who were always hoping for something, always expecting something, and yet whose bellies were always empty.

The respective merits of Kouvalda and the schoolmaster may be judged of by the following example. Once in the vodka shop they were discussing the town regulations under which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood were bound to fill up the ruts and holes in the streets; the dead bodies of animals and manure were not to be used for this purpose, but rubble and broken bricks from buildings.

"How the devil am I to get broken bricks? I, who all my life have been wanting to build a starling house, and yet have never been able to begin?" complained in a pitiful voice Mokei Anissimoff, a seller of kringels[1] which were made by his wife.

The captain considered that he ought to give an opinion on the question, and thumped the table energetically to attract the attention of the company.

"Don't you know where to get bricks and rubble? Let's go all of us, my lads, into the town together and demolish the Town Hall. It's an old, good-for-nothing building, and your work will be crowned by a double success. You will improve the town by forcing them to build a new Town Hall, and you will make your own neighbourhood decent. You can use the Mayor's horses to draw the bricks, and you can take his three daughters as well; the girls would look well in harness! Or else you may pull down Judah Petounnikoff's house, and mend the street with wood. By the bye, Mokei, I know what your wife was using to-day to heat the oven for baking her kringels! It was the shutters from the third window, and the boards from two of the steps!"

When the audience had had its laugh out, and had finished joking at the captain's proposal, the serious-minded gardener Pavluguine asked—

"But, after all, captain, what's to be done? What do you advise us to do?"

"I—I advise you not to move hand or foot. If the rain destroys the street, let it. It isn't our fault."

"Some of the houses are tumbling down already."

"Leave them alone, let them fall! If they come down the town must pay damages, and if the authorities refuse, bring the matter before a magistrate. For just consider where the water comes from; doesn't it come down from the town? Well, that shows the town is to blame for the houses being destroyed."

"They will say it's rain water."

"But in the town the rain doesn't wash down the houses, does it? The town makes you pay rates and gives you no vote to help you claim your rights. The town destroys your life and your property, and yet holds you responsible for them. Pitch into the town on every side!"

And one half of the dwellers in the street, convinced by the radical Kouvalda, decided to wait till the storm-waters of the town had washed down their hovels.

The more serious half got the schoolmaster to write out an elaborate, convincing report for presentation to the town authorities. In this report, the refusal to carry out the town regulations was based on such solid reasons that the municipality was bound to take them into consideration. The dwellers in the street were granted permission to use the refuse left after the rebuilding of the barracks, and five horses from the fire brigade were lent to cart the rubbish. Besides this it was decided to lay a drain down the street.

This, added to other circumstances, made the schoolmaster very popular in the neighbourhood. He wrote petitions, got articles put into the papers. Once, for instance, the guests at Vaviloff's noticed that the herrings and other coarse food were not up to the mark, and two days later Vaviloff, standing at the counter with the newspaper in his hands, made a public recantation.

"It's quite just I have nothing to say for myself. The herrings were indeed rotten when I bought them, and the cabbage—that's also true—had been lying about too long. Well, it's only natural everyone wants to put more kopecks into his own pocket. And what comes of it? Just the opposite to what one hopes. I tried to get at other men's pockets, and a clever man has shown me up for my avarice. Now we're quits!"

This recantation produced an excellent effect on his audience, and gave Vaviloff the chance of using up all his bad herrings and stale cabbage, the public swallowing them down unheeding their ancient flavour, which was concealed with the spice of a favourable impression. This event was remarkable in two ways; it not only increased the prestige of the schoolmaster, but it taught the inhabitants the value of the Press.

Sometimes the schoolmaster would hold forth on practical morality.

"I saw," he would say, accosting the house painter Jashka Turine, "I saw, Jakoff, how you were beating your wife to-day."

Jashka had already raised his spirits with two glasses of vodka, and was in a jovial mood. The company looked at him, expecting some sally, and silence reigned in the vodka shop.

"Well, if you saw it I hope you liked it!" said Jashka.

The company laughed discreetly.

"No, I didn't like it," answered the schoolmaster; his tone of voice was suggestively serious, and silence fell on the listeners.

"I did what I could; in fact I tried to do my best," said Jashka, trying to brave it out, but feeling he was about to catch it from the schoolmaster. "My wife has had enough; she won't be able to get out of bed to-day."

The schoolmaster traced with his forefinger some figures on the table, and whilst examining them said—

"Look here, Jakoff, this is why I don't like it. Let us go thoroughly into the question of what you are doing, and of what may be the result of it. Your wife is with child; you beat her yesterday all over the body; you might, when you do that, kill the child, and when your wife is in labour she might die or be seriously ill. The trouble of having a sick wife is not pleasant; it may cost you also a good deal, for illness means medicine, and medicine means money. If, even, you are fortunate enough not to have killed the child, you have certainly injured it, and it will very likely be born hunchbacked or crooked, and that means it won't be fit for work. It is of importance to you that the child should be able to earn its living. Even supposing it is only born delicate, that also will be an awkward business for you. It will be a burden to its mother, and it will require care and medicine. Do you see what you are laying up in store for yourself? Those who have to earn their living must be born healthy and bear healthy children. Am I not right?"

"Quite right," affirms the company.

"But let's hope this won't happen," says Jashka, rather taken aback by the picture drawn by the schoolmaster. "She's so strong one can't touch the child through her. Besides, what's to be done? she's such a devil. She nags and nags at me for the least trifle."

"I understand, Jakoff, that you can't resist beating your wife," continued the schoolmaster, in his quiet, thoughtful voice. "You may have many reasons for it, but it's not your wife's temper that causes you to beat her so unwisely. The cause is your unenlightened and miserable condition."

"That's just so," exclaimed Jakoff. "We do indeed live in darkness—in darkness as black as pitch!"

"The conditions of your life irritate you, and your wife has to suffer for it. She is the one nearest to you in the world, and she is the innocent sufferer just because you are the stronger of the two. She is always there ready to your hand; she can't get away from you. Don't you see how absurd it is of you?"

"That's all right, damn her! But what am I to do? Am I not a man?"

"Just so; you are a man. Well, don't you see what I want to explain to you? If you must beat her, do so; but beat her carefully. Remember that you can injure her health and that of the child. Remember, as a general rule, it is bad to beat a woman who is with child on the breasts, or the lower part of the body. Beat her on the back of the neck, or take a rope and strike her on the fleshy parts of the body."

As the orator finished his speech, his sunken dark eyes glanced at the audience as if asking pardon or begging for something. The audience was in a lively, talkative mood. This morality of an outcast was to it perfectly intelligible—the morality of the vodka shop and of poverty.

"Well, brother Jashka, have you understood?"

"Damn it all! there's truth in what you say."

Jakoff understood one thing—that to beat his wife unwisely might be prejudicial to himself.

He kept silence, answering his friends' jokes with shamefaced smiles.

"And then again, look what a wife can be to one," philosophises the kringel-seller, Mokei Anissimoff. "One's wife is a friend, if you look at the matter in the right light. She is, as it were, chained to one for life, like a fellow-convict, and one must try and walk in step with her. If one gets out of step, the chain galls."

"Stop!" says Jakoff. "You beat your wife also, don't you?"

"I'm not saying I don't, because I do. How can I help it? I can't beat the wall with my fists when I feel I must beat something!"

"That's just how I feel," says Jakoff.

"What an existence is ours, brothers! So narrow and stifling, one can never have a real fling."

"One has even to beat one's wife with caution," humorously condoles someone.

Thus they would go on gossiping late into the night, or until a row would begin, provoked by their state of drunkenness, or by the impressions aroused by these conversations.

Outside the rain beats against the window and the icy wind howls wildly. Inside the air is close, heavy with smoke, but warm. In the street it is wet, cold, and dark; the gusts of wind seem to strike insolently against the window panes as if inviting the company to go outside, and threatening to drive them like dust over the face of the earth. Now and then is heard in its howling a suppressed moan, followed at intervals by what sounds like a hoarse, chill laugh. These sounds suggest sad thoughts of coming winter; of the damp, short, sunless days, and of the long nights; of the necessity for providing warm clothes and much food. There is little sleep to be got during these long winter nights if one has an empty stomach! Winter is coming—is coming! How is one to live through it?

These sad thoughts encouraged thirst among the dwellers in the High Street, and the sighs of the outcasts increased the number of wrinkles on their foreheads. Their voices sounded more hollow, and their dull, slow thought kept them, as it were, at a distance from each other. Suddenly amongst them there flashed forth anger like that of wild beasts or the desperation of those who are overdriven and crushed down by a cruel fate, or else they seemed to feel the proximity of that unrelenting foe who had twisted and contorted their lives into one long, cruel absurdity. But this foe was invulnerable because he was unknown.

Then they took to beating one another, and they struck each other cruelly, wildly. After making it up again they would fall to drinking once more, and drink till they had pawned everything that the easygoing Vaviloff would accept as a pledge.

Thus, in dull anger, in trouble that crushed the heart, in the uncertainty of the issue of this miserable existence, they spent the autumn days awaiting the still harder days of winter. During hard times like these Kouvalda would come to their rescue with his philosophy.

"Pluck up courage, lads! All comes to an end!—that's what there is best about life! Winter will pass and summer will follow; good times when, as they say, 'even a sparrow has beer'!"

But his speeches were of little avail; a mouthful of pure water does not satisfy a hungry stomach.

Deacon Tarass would also try to amuse the company by singing songs and telling stories. He had more success. Sometimes his efforts would suddenly arouse desperate, wild gaiety in the vodka shop. They would sing, dance, shout with laughter, and for some hours would behave like maniacs. And then—

And then they would fall into a dull, indifferent state of despair as they sat round the gin-shop table in the smoke of the lamps and the reek of tobacco; gloomy, ragged, letting words drop idly from their lips while they listened to the triumphant howl of the wind; one thought uppermost in their minds—how to get more vodka to drown their senses and to bring unconsciousness. And each of them hated the other with a deadly, senseless hatred, but hid that hatred deep down in his heart.

II

Everything in this world is relative, and there is no situation which cannot be matched with a worse one.

One fine day at the end of September Captain Kouvalda sat, as was his custom, in his arm-chair at the door of the doss-house looking at the big brick building erected by the merchant Petounnikoff by the side of Vaviloff's vodka shop. Kouvalda was deep in thought.

This building, from which the scaffolding had not yet been removed, was destined to be a candle factory; and for some time it had been a thorn in the captain's side, with its row of dark, empty, hollow windows and its network of wood surrounding it from foundation to roof. Blood-red in colour, it resembled some cruel piece of machinery, not yet put into motion, but which had already opened its row of deep, greedy jaws ready to seize and gulp down everything that came in its way. The grey, wooden vodka shop of Vaviloff, with its crooked roof overgrown with moss, leaned up against one of the brick walls of the factory, giving the effect of a great parasite drawing its nourishment from it. The captain's mind was occupied by the thought that the old house would soon be replaced by a new one and the doss-house would be pulled down. He would have to seek another shelter, and it was doubtful if he would find one as cheap and as convenient. It was hard to be driven from a place one was used to, and harder still because a damned shopkeeper takes it into his head to want to make candles and soap. And the captain felt that if he had the chance of spoiling the game of this enemy of his he would do it with the greatest pleasure.

Yesterday, the shopkeeper, Ivan Andreevitch Petounnikoff, was in the yard of the doss-house with his son and an architect. They made a survey of the yard and stuck in pegs all over the place, which, after Petounnikoff had left, the captain ordered "The Meteor" to pull up and throw away.

The shopkeeper was for ever before the captain's eyes—short, lean, shrivelled up, dressed in a long garment something between an overcoat and a kaftan, with a velvet cap on his head, and wearing long, brightly polished boots. With prominent cheek-bones and a grey, sharp-pointed beard; a high, wrinkled forehead, from under which peeped narrow, grey, half-closed, watchful eyes; a hooked, gristly nose and thin-lipped mouth—taken altogether, the merchant gave the impression of being piously rapacious and venerably wicked.

"Damned offspring of a fox and a sow!" said the captain angrily to himself, as he recalled some words of Petounnikoff's.

The merchant had come with a member of the town council to look at the house, and at the sight of the captain he had asked his companion in the abrupt dialect of Kostroma—

"Is that your tenant—that lunatic at large?"

And since that time, more than eighteen months ago, they had rivalled each other in the art of insult.

Yesterday again there had been a slight interchange of "holy words," as the captain called his conversations with the merchant. After having seen the architect off, Petounnikoff approached the captain.

"What, still sitting—always sitting?" asked he, touching the peak of his cap in a way that left it uncertain whether he were fixing it on his head or bowing.

"And you—you are still on the prowl," echoed the captain, jerking out his lower jaw and making his beard wag in a way that might be taken for a bow by anyone not too exacting in these matters; it might also have been interpreted as the act of removing his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"I've plenty of money; that's why I'm always on the go. Money needs putting out, so I'm obliged to keep it moving," says the shopkeeper in an aggravating voice to the other, screwing up his eyes slyly.

"Which means that you are the slave of money, and not money your slave," replies Kouvalda, resisting an intense desire to kick his enemy in the stomach.

"It's all the same either way where money is concerned. But if you have no money!"—and the shopkeeper looked at the captain with bold but feigned compassion, while his trembling upper lip showed large, wolfish teeth.

"Anyone with a head on his shoulders and with a good conscience can do without it. Money generally comes when the conscience begins to grow a little out-at-elbows. The less honesty the more money!"

"That's true, but there are some people who have neither honesty nor money."

"That describes you when you were young, no doubt," said Kouvalda innocently.

Petounnikoff wrinkles his nose, he sighs, closes his narrow eyes, and says, "Ah! when I was young, what heavy burdens I had to bear!"

"Yes, I should think so!"

"I worked! Oh, how I worked!"

"Yes, you worked at outwitting others!"

"People like you and the nobility—what does it matter? Many of them have, thanks to me, learnt to extend the hand in Christ's name."

"Ah! then you did not assassinate, you only robbed?" interrupted the captain.

Petounnikoff turns a sickly green and thinks it is time to change the conversation.

"You are not an over polite host; you remain sitting while your visitor stands."

"Well, he can sit down."

"There is nothing to sit on."

"There is the ground. The ground never rejects any filth!"

"You prove that rule, but I had better leave you, you blackguard!" says Petounnikoff coolly, though his eyes dart cold venom at the captain.

He went off leaving Kouvalda with the agreeable sensation that the merchant was afraid of him. If it were not so he would have turned him out of the doss-house long ago. It was not for the five roubles a month that the Jew let him remain on! ... And the captain watches with pleasure the slowly retreating back of Petounnikoff, as he walks slowly away. Kouvalda's eyes still follow the merchant as he climbs up and down the scaffolding of his new building. He feels an intense desire that the merchant should fall and break his back. How many times has he not conjured up results of this imaginary fall, as he has sat watching Petounnikoff crawling about the scaffolding of his new factory, like a spider crawling about its net. Yesterday he had even imagined that one of the boards had given way under the weight of the merchant; and Kouvalda had jumped out of his seat with excitement—but nothing had come of it.

And to-day, as always, before the eyes of Aristide Kouvalda stands the great red building, so foursquare, so solid, so firmly fixed into the ground, as if already drawing from thence its nourishment. It seemed as if mocking the captain through the cold dark yawning openings in its walls. And the sun poured on its autumn rays with the same prodigality as on the distorted tumble-down little houses of the neighbourhood.

"But what if?" exclaimed the captain to himself, measuring with his eye the factory wall. "What if?"

Aroused and excited by the thought which had come into his mind, Aristide Kouvalda jumped up and hastened over to Vaviloff's vodka shop, smiling, and muttering something to himself. Vaviloff met him at the counter with a friendly exclamation: "How is your Excellency this morning?"

Vaviloff was a man of medium height, with a bald head surrounded by a fringe of grey hair; with clean-shaved cheeks, and moustache bristly as a toothbrush. Upright and active, in a dirty braided jacket, every movement betrayed the old soldier, the former non-commissioned officer.

"Jegor! Have you the deeds and the plan of your house and property?" Kouvalda asked hastily.

"Yes, I have."

And Vaviloff closed his suspicious thievish eyes and scrutinised the captain's face, in which he observed something out of the common.

"Just show them to me!" exclaimed the captain, thumping on the counter with his fist, and dropping on to a stool.

"What for?" asked Vaviloff, who decided, in view of the captain's state of excitement, to be on his guard.

"You fool! Bring them at once!"

Vaviloff wrinkled his forehead, and looked up inquiringly at the ceiling.

"By the bye, where the devil are those papers?"

Not finding any information on this question on the ceiling, the old soldier dropped his eyes towards the ground, and began thoughtfully drumming with his fingers on the counter.

"Stop those antics!" shouted Kouvalda, who had no love for the old soldier; as, according to the captain, it was better for a former non-commissioned officer to be a thief than a keeper of a vodka shop.

"Well now, Aristide Kouvalda, I think I remember! I believe those papers were left at the law-courts at the time when"—

"Jegorka! stop this fooling. It's to your own interest to do so. Show me the plans, the deed of sale, and all that you have got at once! Perhaps you will gain by this more than a hundred roubles! Do you understand now?"

Vaviloff understood nothing; but the captain spoke in such an authoritative and serious tone that the eyes of the old soldier sparkled with intense curiosity; and saying that he would go and see if the papers were not in his strong box, he disappeared behind the door of the counter. In a few moments he returned with the papers in his hand, and a look of great surprise on his coarse face.

"Just see! The damned things were after all in the house!"

"You circus clown! Who would think you had been a soldier!"

Kouvalda could not resist trying to shame him, whilst snatching from his hands the cotton case containing the blue legal paper. Then he spread the papers out before him, thus exciting more and more the curiosity of Vaviloff, and began reading and scrutinising them; uttering from time to time interjections in a meaning tone. Finally, he rose with an air of decision, went to the door leaving the papers on the counter, shouting out to Vaviloff—

"Wait a moment! Don't put them away yet!" Vaviloff gathered up the papers, put them in his cash box, locked it, felt to see that it was securely fastened. Then rubbing his bald head, he went and stood in the doorway of his shop. There he saw the captain measuring with his stride the length of the front of the vodka shop, whilst he snapped his fingers from time to time, and once more began his measurements—anxious but satisfied.

Vaviloff's face wore at first a worried expression; then it grew long, and at last it suddenly beamed with joy.

"'Ristide Fomitch! Is it possible?" he exclaimed, as the captain drew near.

"Of course it's possible! More than a yard has been taken off! That's only as far as the frontage is concerned; as to the depth, I will see about that now!"

"The depth is thirty-two yards!"

"Well, I see you've guessed what I'm after. You stupid fool!"

"Well, you're a wonder,'Ristide Fomitch! You've an eye that sees two yards into the ground!" exclaimed the delighted Vaviloff. A few minutes later they were seated opposite each other in Vaviloff's room, and the captain was swallowing great gulps of beer, and saying to the landlord—

"You see, therefore, all the factory wall stands on your ground. Act without mercy. When the schoolmaster comes we will draw up a report for the law-courts. We will reckon the damages at a moderate figure, so that the revenue stamps shan't cost us too much, but we will ask that the wall shall be pulled down. This sort of thing, you fool, is called a violation of boundaries, and it's a stroke of luck for you! To pull a great wall like that down and move it farther back is not such an easy business, and costs no end of money. Now's your chance for squeezing Judah! We will make a calculation of what the pulling down will cost, taking into consideration the value of the broken bricks and the cost of digging out the new foundations. We will calculate everything, even the value of the time, and then, O just Judah, what do you say to two thousand roubles?"

"He won't give it!" exclaimed Vaviloff anxiously, blinking his eyes, which were sparkling with greedy fire.

"Let him try and get out of it! Just look, what can he do? There will be nothing for him but to pull it down. But look out, Jegor! Don't let yourself be worsted in the bargain. They will try and buy you off! Mind you don't let them off too easily! They will try and frighten you; don't you be afraid; rely on us to back you up!"

The captain's eyes burnt with wild delight, and his face, purple with excitement, twitched nervously. He had succeeded in arousing the greed of the gin-shop keeper, and after having persuaded him to commence proceedings as soon as possible, went off triumphant, and implacably revengeful.

That evening all the outcasts learnt the discovery that the captain had made, and discussed eagerly the future proceedings of Petounnikoff, representing to themselves vividly his astonishment and anger the day when he should have the copy of the lawsuit presented to him. The captain was the hero of the day. He was happy, and all around were pleased. A heap of dark tattered figures lay about in the yard, talking noisily and eagerly, animated by the important event. All knew Petounnikoff, who often passed near them, blinking his eyes disdainfully, and paying as little attention to them as he did to the rest of the rubbish lying about in the yard. He was a picture of self-satisfaction, and this irritated them; even his boots seemed to shine disdainfully at them. But now the shopkeeper's pocket and his self-esteem were going to be hurt by one of themselves! Wasn't that an excellent joke?

Evil had a singular attraction for these people; it was the only weapon which came easily to their hands, and which was within their reach. For a long time now, each of them had cultivated within himself dim half-conscious feelings of keen hatred against all who, unlike themselves, were neither hungry nor ragged. This was why all the outcasts felt such an intense interest in the war declared by Kouvalda against the shopkeeper Petounnikoff. Two whole weeks the dwellers in the doss-house had been living on the expectation of new developments, and during all that time Petounnikoff did not once come to visit the almost completed building. They assured each other that he was out of town, and that the summons had not therefore yet been served upon him. Kouvalda raged against the delays of civil procedure. It is doubtful if anyone ever awaited the arrival of the shopkeeper so impatiently as did these tramps.

"He comes not, he comes not! Alas! he loves me not!"

sang the Deacon Tarass, leaning his chin on his hand, and gazing with a comically sad expression up the hill.

But one fine day, towards evening, Petounnikoff appeared. He arrived in a strong light cart, driven by his son, a young man with red cheeks and wearing a long checked overcoat, and smoked blue spectacles. They tied up the horse; the son drew from his pocket a tape measure, gave one end of it to his father, and both of them silently, and with anxious expressions, began measuring the ground.

"Ah!" exclaimed triumphantly the captain.

All who were about the doss-house went and stood outside the gate watching the proceedings and expressing aloud their opinions on what was going forward.

"See what it is to have the habit of stealing! A man steals unconsciously, not intending to steal, and thereby risks more than he can gain," said the captain, with mock sympathy; thereby arousing laughter among his bodyguard, and provoking a whole string of remarks in the same strain.

"Look out, you rogue!" at length exclaimed Petounnikoff, exasperated by these jibes. "If you don't mind I'll have you up before the magistrate."

"It's of no use without witnesses, and a son can't give evidence for a father," the captain reminded him.

"All right; we shall see! Though you seem such a bold leader, you may find your match some day."

And Petounnikoff shook his forefinger at him. The son, quiet and deeply interested in his calculations, paid no heed to this group of squalid figures, who were cruelly mocking his father. He never looked once towards them.

"The young spider is well trained!" remarked "Scraps," who was following the actions and the movements of the younger Petounnikoff.

Having taken all the necessary measurements, Ivan Andreevitch frowned, climbed silently into his cart, and drove off, whilst his son, with firm, decided steps, entered Vaviloff's vodka shop, and disappeared.

"He's a precious young thief! that he is. We shall see what comes of it!" said Kouvalda.

"What will come of it? Why, Petounnikoff junior will square Jegor Vaviloff!" remarked "Scraps," with great assurance, smacking his lips, and with a look of keen satisfaction on his cunning face.

"That would please you, perhaps?" asked Kouvalda severely.

"It pleases me to see human calculations go wrong!" explained "Scraps," blinking his eyes and rubbing his hands.

The captain spat angrily, and kept silence. The rest of them, standing at the gate of the tumbledown house, watched silently the door of the vodka shop. An hour and more passed in this silent expectation. At length the door opened, and young Petounnikoff appeared, looking as calm as when he had entered. He paused for a moment, cleared his throat, raised his coat collar, glanced at those who were watching his movements, and turned up the street towards the town.

The captain watched him till he was out of sight, and, turning towards "Scraps," smiled ironically and said—

"It seems, after all, as if you might be right, you son of a scorpion and of a centipede! You smell out everything that's evil. One can see by the dirty mug of the young rogue that he has got his own way! I wonder how much Jegor has screwed out of him? He's got something, that's sure! They're birds of a feather. I'm damned if I haven't arranged it all for them. It's cursed hard to think what a fool I've been. You see, mates, life is dead against us. One can't even spit into one's neighbour's face—the spittle flies back into one's own eyes."

Consoling himself with this speech, the venerable captain glanced at his bodyguard. All were disappointed, for all felt that what had taken place between Vaviloff and Petounnikoff had turned out differently from what they had expected, and all felt annoyed. The consciousness of being unable to cause evil is more obnoxious to men than the consciousness of being unable to do good; it is so simple and so easy to do evil!

"Well! what's the use of sticking here? We have nothing to wait for except for Jegorka to stand us treat," said the captain, glowering angrily at the vodka shop. "It's all up with our peaceful and happy life under Judah's roof. He'll send us packing now; so I give you all notice, my brigade of sans-culottes!"

"The End" laughed morosely.

"Now then, gaoler, what's the matter with you?" asked Kouvalda.

"Where the devil am I to go?"

"That indeed is a serious question, my friend. But never fear, your fate will decide it for you," said the captain, turning towards the doss-house.

The outcasts followed him idly.

"We shall await the critical moment," said the captain, walking along with them. "When we get the sack there will be time enough to look out for another shelter. Meanwhile, what's the use of spoiling life with troubles like that? It is at critical moments that man rises to the occasion, and if life as a whole were to consist of nothing but critical moments, if one had to tremble every minute of one's life for the safety of one's carcass, I'll be hanged if life wouldn't be more lively, and people more interesting!"

"Which would mean that people would fly at each other's throats more savagely than they do now," explained "Scraps," smiling.

"Well, what of that?" struck in the captain, who did not care to have his ideas enlarged on.

"Nothing! nothing! It's all right—when one wants to get to one's destination quickly, one thrashes the horse, or one stokes up one's machine."

"Yes, that's it; let everything go full speed to the devil. I should be only too glad if the earth would suddenly take fire, burst up, and go to pieces, only I should like to be the last man left, to see the others."

"You're a nice one!" sneered "Scraps."

"What of that? I'm an outcast, am I not? I'm freed from all chains and fetters; therefore I can spit at everything. By the very nature of the life I lead now, I am bound to drop everything to do with the past—all fine manners and conventional ideas of people who are well fed, and well dressed, and who despise me because I am not equally well fed and dressed. So I have to cultivate in myself something fresh and new—don't you see—something you know which will make people like Judah Petounnikoff, when they pass by me, feel a cold shudder run down their backs!"

"You have a bold tongue!" sneered "Scraps."

"You miserable wretch!" Kouvalda scanned him disdainfully. "What do you understand, what do you know? You don't even know how to think! But I have thought much, I have read books of which you would not have understood a word."

"Oh, I know I'm not fit to black the boots of such a learned man! But though you have read and thought so much, and I have done neither the one nor the other, yet we are not after all so far apart."

"Go to the devil!" exclaimed Kouvalda.

His conversations with "Scraps" always finished in this way. When the schoolmaster was not about, the captain knew well that his speeches were only wasted, and were lost for want of understanding and appreciation. But for all that, he couldn't help talking, and now, having snubbed his interlocutor, he felt himself lonely amongst the others. His desire for conversation was not, however, satisfied, and he turned therefore to Simtzoff with a question.

"And you, Alexai Maximovitch, where will you lay your old head?"

The old man smiled good-naturedly, rubbed his nose with his hand, and explained—

"Don't know! Shall see by and by. I'm not of much account. A glass of vodka, that's all I want."

"A very praiseworthy ambition, and very simple," said the captain.

After a short silence Simtzoff added that he would find shelter more easily than the rest, because the women liked him.

This was true, for the old man had always two or three mistresses among the prostitutes, who would keep him sometimes for two or three days at a time on their scant earnings. They often beat him, but he took it stoically. For some reason or other they never hurt him much; perhaps they pitied him. He was a great admirer of women, but added that they were the cause of all his misfortunes in life. The close terms on which he lived with women, and the character of their relations towards him, were shown by the fact that his clothes were always neatly mended, and cleaner than the clothes of his companions. Seated now on the ground at the door of the doss-house amidst his mates, he boastfully related that he had for some time been asked by Riedka to go and live with her, but that he had till now refused, not wanting to give up the present company.

He was listened to with interest, mingled with envy. All knew Riedka; she lived not far down the hill, and only a few months ago she came out of prison after serving a second term for theft. She had formerly been a wet nurse; a tall, stout, strapping countrywoman, with a pock-marked face, and fine eyes, somewhat dulled by drink.

"The old rogue!" cursed "Scraps," watching Simtzoff, who smiled with self-satisfaction.

"And do you know why they all like me? Because I understand what their souls need."

"Indeed?" exclaimed Kouvalda interrogatively.

"I know how to make women pity me. And when a woman's pity is aroused, she can even kill, out of pure pity! Weep before her, and implore her to kill; she will have pity on you, and will kill."

"It's I who would kill!" exclaimed Martianoff, in a decided voice, with a dark scowl.

"Whom do you mean?" asked "Scraps," edging away from him.

"It's all the same to me! Petounnikoff—Jegorka—you if you like!"

"Why?" asked Kouvalda, with aroused interest.

"I want to be sent to Siberia. I'm tired of this stupid life. There one will know what to do with one's life."

"H'm!" said the captain reflectively. "You will indeed know what to do with your life there!"

Nothing more was spoken about Petounnikoff, nor of their impending expulsion from the doss-house. All were sure that this expulsion was imminent, was perhaps a matter of a few days only; and they therefore considered it useless to discuss the point further. Discussion wouldn't make it easier; besides, it was not cold yet, though the rainy season had begun. One could sleep on the ground anywhere outside the town.

Seated in a circle on the grass, they chatted idly and aimlessly, changing easily from one topic to another, and paying only just as much attention to the words of their companions as was absolutely necessary to prevent the conversation from dropping. It was a nuisance to have to be silent, but it was equally a nuisance to have to listen with attention. This society of the outcasts had one great virtue: no one ever made an effort to appear better than he was, nor forced others to try and appear better than they were.

The August sun was shedding its warmth impartially on the rags that covered theirs back and on their uncombed heads—a chaotic blending of animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. In the corners of the yard, weeds grew luxuriantly—tall agrimony, all covered with prickles, and other useless plants, whose growth rejoiced the eyes of none but these equally useless people.

In Vaviloff's vodka shop the following scene had—been going forward.

Petounnikoff junior entered, leisurely looked around, made a disdainful grimace, and slowly removing his grey hat, asked the landlord, who met him with an amiable bow and a respectful smile—

"Are you Jegor Terentievitch Vaviloff?"

"That's myself!" answered the old soldier, leaning on the counter with both hands, as if ready with one bound to jump over.

"I have some business to transact with you," said Petounnikoff.

"Delighted! Won't you come into the back room?"

They went into the back part of the house, and sat down before a round table; the visitor on a sofa covered with oilcloth, and the host on a chair opposite to him.

In one corner of the room a lamp burnt before a shrine, around which on the walls hung eikons, the gold backgrounds of which were carefully burnished, and shone as if new. In the room, piled up with boxes and old furniture, there was a mingled smell of paraffin oil, of tobacco, and of sour cabbage. Petounnikoff glanced around, and made another grimace. Vaviloff with a sigh glanced up at the images, and then they scrutinised each other attentively, and each produced on the other a favourable impression. Petounnikoff was pleased with Vaviloff's frankly thievish eyes, and Vaviloff was satisfied with the cold, decided countenance of Petounnikoff, with its broad jaw and strong white teeth.

"You know me, of course, and can guess my errand," began Petounnikoff.

"About the summons, I guess," replied the old soldier respectfully.

"Just so! I'm glad to see that you are straightforward, and attack the matter like an open-hearted man," continued Petounnikoff encouragingly.

"You see I'm a soldier," modestly suggested the other.

"I can see that. Let us tackle this business as quickly and as straightforwardly as possible, and get it over."

"By all means!"

"Your complaint is quite in order, and there is no doubt but that you have right on your side. I think it better to tell you that at once."

"Much obliged to you," said the soldier, blinking his eyes to conceal a smile.

"But I should like to know why you thought it best to begin an acquaintance with us, your future neighbours, so unpleasantly—with a lawsuit?" Vaviloff shrugged his shoulders, and was silent.

"It would have been better for you to have come to us, and we could have arranged matters between us. Don't you think so?"

"That indeed would have been pleasanter. But, don't you see? there was a little hitch. I didn't act altogether on my own. I was set on by someone else; afterwards I understood what would have been best, but it was too late then."

"That's just it. I suppose it was some lawyer who put you up to it!"

"Something of that sort"

"Yes, yes. And now you are willing to settle things out of court?"

"That's my great wish!" exclaimed the soldier. Petounnikoff remained silent for a moment, then glanced at the landlord and said in an abrupt, dry voice—