HOWEVER, I did run away in the spring. One morning when I went to theshop for bread the shopkeeper, continuing in my presence a quarrel with hiswife, struck her on the forehead with a weight. She ran into the street, andthere fell down. People began to gather round at once. The woman was laidon a stretcher and carried to the hospital, and I ran behind the cab whichtook her there without noticing where I was going till I found myself on thebanks of the Volga, with two gr evens in my hand.
The spring sun shone caressingly, the broad expanse of the Volga flowedbefore me, the earth was full of sound and spacious, and I had been livinglike a mouse in a trap. So I made up my mind that I would not return to mymaster, nor would I go to grandmother at Kunavin; for as I had not kept myword to her, I was ashamed to go and see her, and grandfather would onlygloat over my misfortunes.
For two or three days I wandered by the river-side, being fed by kindheartedporters, and sleeping with them in their shelters. At length one ofthem said to me:
“It is no use for you to hang about here, my boy. I can see that. Go overto the boat which is called The Good. They want a washer-up.”
I went. The tall, bearded steward in a black silk skullcap looked at methrough his glasses with his dim eyes, and said quietly :
“Two rubles a month. Your passport?”
I had no passport. The steward pondered and then said:
“Bring your mother to see me.”
I rushed to grandmother. She approved the course I had taken, toldgrandfather to go to the workman’s court and get me a passport, and sheherself accompanied me to the boat.
“Good!” said the steward, looking at us. “Come along.”
He then took me to the stern of the boat, where sat at a small table,drinking tea and smoking a fat cigar at the same time, an enormous cook inwhite overalls and a white cap. The steward pushed me toward him.
“The washer-up.”
Then he went away, and the cook, snorting, and with his black mustachebristling, called after him :
“‘You engage any sort of devil as long as he is cheap.”
Angrily tossing his head of closely cropped hair, he opened his dark eyesvery wide, stretched himself, puffed, and cried shrilly:
“And who may you be?”
I did not like the appearance of this man at all. Although he was all inwhite, he looked dirty. There was a sort of wool growing on his fingers, andhairs stuck out of his great ears.
“I am hungry,” was my reply to him.
He blinked, and suddenly his ferocious countenance was transformed bya broad smile. His fat, brick-red cheeks widened to his very ears ; hedisplayed his large, equine teeth; his mustache drooped, and all at once hehad assumed the appearance of a kind, fat woman.
Throwing the tea overboard out of his glass, he poured out a fresh lot forme, and pushed a French roll and a large piece of sausage toward me.
“Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you steal? You needn’t be afraid;they are all thieves here. You will soon learn.”
He talked as if he were barking. His enormous, blue, clean-shaven facewas covered all round the nose with red veins closely set together, hisswollen, purple nose hung over his mustache. His lower lip was disiiguringlypendulous. In the corner of his mouth was stuck a smoking cigarette.
Apparently he had only just come from the bath. He smelt of birch twigs, anda profuse sweat glistened on his temples and neck.
After I had drunk my tea, he gave me a ruble-note.
“Run along and buy yourself two aprons with this. Wait! I will buy themfor you myself.”
He set his cap straight and came with me, swaying ponderously, his feetpattering on the deck like those of a bear.
At night the moon shone brightly as it glided away from the boat to themeadows on the left. The old red boat, with its streaked funnel, did nothurry, and her propeller splashed unevenly in the silvery water. The darkshore gently floated to meet her, casting its shadow. on the water, andbeyond, the windows of the peasant huts gleamed charmingly. They weresinging in the village. The girls were merry-making and singing — and whenthey sang “Aie Ludi,” it sounded like “Alleluia.”
In the wake of the steamer a large barge, also red, was being towed by along rope. The deck was railed in like an iron cage, and in this cage wereconvicts condemned to deportation or prison. On the prow of the barge thebayonet of a sentry shone like a candle. It was quiet on the barge itself. Themoon bathed it in a rich light while behind the black iron grating could beseen dimly gray patches. These were the convicts looking out on the Volga.
The water sobbed, now weeping, now laughing timidly. It was as quiet hereas in church, and there was the same smell of oil.
As I looked at the barge I remembered my early childhood; the journeyfrom Astrakhan to Nijni, the iron faces of mother and grandmother, theperson who had introduced me to this interesting, though hard, life, in theworld. And when I thought of grandmother, all that I found so bad andrepulsive in life seemed to leave me; everything was transformed and becamemore interesting, pleasanter; people seemed to be better and niceraltogether.
The beauty of the nights moved me almost to tears, and especially thebarge, which looked so like a coffin, and so solitary on the broad expanse ofthe flowing river in the pensive quietness of the warm night. The unevenlines of the shore, now rising, now falling, stirred the imagination pleasantly.
I longed to be good, and to be of use to others.
The people on our steamboat had a peculiar stamp. They seemed to meto be all alike, young and old, men and women. The boat traveled slowly. Thebusy folk traveled by fast boat, and all the lazy rascals came on our boat.
They sang and ate, and soiled any amount of cups and plates, knives andforks and spoons from morning to night. My work was to wash up and cleanthe knives and forks, and I was busy with this work from six in the morningtill close on midnight. During the day, from two till six o’clock, and in theevening, from ten till midnight, I had less work to do; for at those times thepassengers took a rest from eating, and only drank, tea, beer, and vodka. Allthe buffet attendants, my chiefs, were free at that time, too. The cook,Smouri, drank tea at a table near the hatchway with his assistant, JaakovIvanich; the kitchen-man, Maxim; and Sergei, the saloon steward, ahumpback with high cheek-bones, a face pitted with smallpox, and oily eyes.
Jaakov told all sorts of nasty stories, bursting out into sobbing laughs andshowing his long, discolored teeth. Sergei stretched his frog-like mouth to hisears. Frowning Maxim was silent, gazing at them with stern, colorless eyes.
“Asiatic! Mordovan!” said the old cook now and again in his deep voice.
I did not like these people. Fat, bald Jaakov Ivanich spoke of nothing butwomen, and that always filth — ily. He had a vacant-looking face coveredwith bluish pimples. , On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of red hairgrowing from it. He used to pull out these hairs by twisting them round aneedle. Whenever an amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sexappeared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar, timid manner like abeggar. He spoke to her sweetly and plaintively, he licked her, as it were,with the swift movements of his tongue. For some reason I used to think thatsuch great fat creatures ought to be hangmen.
“One should know how to get round women,” he would teach Sergei andMaxim, who would listen to him much impressed, pouting their lips andturning red.
“Asiatics!” Smouri would roar in accents of disgust, and standing upheavily, he gave the order, “Pyeshkov, march!”
In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound in leather, and liedown in his hammock by the wall of the ice-house.
“Read!” he would say.
I sat on a box and read conscientiously :
“ The umbra projected by the stars means that one is on good terms withheaven and free from profanity and vice.’ ”
Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke and growled:
“Camels! They wrote — ”
“ ‘Baring the left bosom means innocence of heart.’ ”
“Whose bosom?”
“It does not say.”
“A woman’s, it means. Eh, and a loose woman.”
He closed his eyes and lay with his arms behind his head. His cigarette,hardly alight, stuck in the corner of his mouth. He set it straight with histongue, stretched so that something whistled in his chest, and his enormousface was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Sometimes I thought he had fallenasleep and I left off reading to examine the accursed book, which bored meto nauseation. But he said hoarsely :
“Go on reading!”
“The venerable one answered, “Look! My dear brother Suvyerin — “ ‘ ”
“Syevyeverin — ”
“It is written Suvyerin.”
“Well, that’s witchcraft. There is some poetry at the end. Run on fromthere.”
I ran on.
“Profane ones, curious to know our business, Never will your weak eyesspy it out, Nor will you learn how the fairies sing.”
“Wait!” said Smouri. “That is not poetry. Give me the book.”
He angrily turned over the thick, blue leaves, and then put the bookunder the mattress.
“Get me another one.”
To my grief there were many books in his black trunk clamped with iron.
There were “Precepts of Peace,” “Memories of the Artillery,” “Letters of LordSydanhall,” “Concerning Noxious Insects and their Extinction, with Adviceagainst the Pest,” books which seemed to have no beginning and no end.
Sometimes the cook set me to turn over all his books and read out their titlesto him, but as soon as I had begun he called out angrily:
“What is it all about? Why do you speak through your teeth? It isimpossible to understand you. What the devil has Gervase to do with me?
Gervase! Umbra indeed!”
Terrible words, incomprehensible names were wearily remembered, andthey tickled my tongue. I had an incessant desire to repeat them, thinkingthat perhaps by pronouncing them I might discover their meaning. Andoutside the porthole the water unweariedly sang and splashed. It would havebeen pleasant to go to the stern, where the sailors and stokers were gatheredtogether among the chests, where the passengers played cards, sang songs,and told interesting stories. It would have been pleasant to sit among themand listen to simple, intelligible conversation, to gaze on the banks of theKama, at the fir-trees drawn out like brass wires, at the meadows, whereinsmall lakes remained from the floods, looking like pieces of broken glass asthey reflected the sun.
Our steamer was traveling at some distance from the shore, yet thesound of invisible bells came to us, reminding us of the villages and people.
The barks of the fishermen floated on the waves like crusts of bread. There,on the bank a little village appeared, here a crowd of small boys bathed in theriver, men in red blouses could be seen passing along a narrow strip of sand.
Seen from a distance, from the river, it was a very pleasing sight ; everythinglooked like tiny toys of many colors.
I felt a desire to call out some kind, tender words to the shore and thebarge. The latter interested me greatly; I could look at it for an hour at a timeas it dipped its blunt nose in the turbid water. The boat dragged it along as ifit were a pig: the tow-rope, slackening, lashed the water, then once moredrew taut and pulled the barge along by the nose. I wanted very much to seethe faces of those people who were kept like wild animals in an iron cage. AtPerm, where they were landed, I made my way to the gangway, and past mecame, in batches of ten, gray people, trampling dully, rattling their fetters,bowed down by their heavy knapsacks. There were all sorts, young and old,handsome and ugly, all exactly like ordinary people except that they weredifferently dressed and were disfiguringly close-shaven. No doubt these wererobbers, but grandmother had told me much that was good about robbers.
Smouri looked much more like a fierce robber than they as he glancedloweringly at the barge and said loudly:
“Save me, God, from such a fate!”
Once I asked him :
“Why do you say that? You cook, while those others kill and steal.”
“I don’t cook; I only prepare. The women cook,” he said, bursting outlaughing; but after thinking a moment he added: “The difference betweenone person and another lies in stupidity. One man is clever, another not soclever, and a third may be quite a fool. To become clever one must read theright books — black magic and what not. One must read all kinds of booksand then one will find the right ones.”
He was continually impressing upon me :
“Read! When you don’t understand a book, read it again and again, asmany as seven times ; and if you do not understand it then, read it a dozentimes.”
To every one on the boat, not excluding the taciturn steward, Smourispoke roughly. Sticking out his lower lip as if he were disgusted, and,stroking his mustache, he pelted them with words as if they were stones. Tome he always showed kindness and interest, but there was something abouthis interest which rather frightened me. Sometimes I thought he was crazy,like grandmother’s sister. At times he said to me:
“Leave off reading.”
And he would lie for a long time with closed eyes, breathing stertorously,his great stomach shaking. His hairy fingers, folded corpse-like on his chest,moved, knitting invisible socks with invisible needles. Suddenly he wouldbegin growling:
“Here are you! You have your intelligence. Go and live! But intelligenceis given sparingly, and not to all alike. If all were on the same levelintellectually — but they are not. One understands, another docs not, andthere are some people who do not even wish to understand!”
Stumbling over his words, he related stories of his life as a soldier, thedrift of which I could never manage to catch. They seemed very uninterestingto me. Besides, he did not tell them from the beginning, but as he recollectedthem.
“The commander of the regiment called this soldier to him and asked:
‘What did the lieutenant say to you?’ So he told everything just as it hadhappened — a soldier is bound to tell the truth — but the lieutenant looked athim as if he had been a wall, and then turned away, hanging his head. Yes —”
He became indignant, puffed out clouds of smoke, and growled:
“How was I to know what I could say and what I ought not to say? Thenthe lieutenant was condemned to be shut up in a fortress, and his mothersaid — ah, my God! I am not learned in anything.”
It was hot. Everything seemed to be quivering and tinkling. The watersplashed against the iron walls of the cabin, and the wheel of the boat roseand fell. The river flowed in a broad stream between the rows of lights. In thedistance could be seen the line of the meadowed bank. The trees drooped.
When one’s hearing had become accustomed to all the sounds, it seemed asif all was quiet, although the soldiers in the stem of the boat howled dismally,“Se-e-even! Se-e-ven!”
I had no desire to take part in anything. I wanted neither to listen nor towork, but only to sit somewhere in the shadows, where there was no greasy,hot smell of cooking; to sit and gaze, half asleep, at the quiet, sluggish life asit slipped away on the water.
“Read!” the cook commanded harshly.
Even the head steward was afraid of him, and that mild man of fewwords, the dining-room steward, who looked like a sandre, was evidentlyafraid of Smouri too.
“Ei! You swine!” he would cry to this man. “Come here! Thief! Asiatic!”
The sailors and stokers were very respectful to him, and expectant offavors. He gave them the meat from which soup had been made, andinquired after their homes and their families. The oily and smoke-driedWhite Russian stokers were counted the lowest people on the boat. Theywere all called by one name. Yaks, and they were teased, “Like a Yak, I amblealong the shore.”
When Smouri heard this, he bristled up, his face became suffused withblood, and he roared at the stokers :
“Why do you allow them to laugh at you, you mugs? Throw some saucein their faces.”
Once the boatswain, a handsome, but ill-natured, man, said to him :
“They are the same as Little Russians; they hold the same faith.”
The cook seized him by the collar and belt, lifted him up in the air, andsaid, shaking him :
“Shall I knock you to smithereens?”
They quarreled often, these two. Sometimes it even came to a fight, butSmouri was never beaten. He was possessed of superhuman strength, andbesides this, the captain’s wife, with a masculine face and smooth hair like aboy’s, was on his side.
He drank a terrible amount of vodka, but never became drunk. He beganto drink the first thing in the morning, consuming a whole bottle in fourgulps, and after that he sipped beer till close on evening. His face graduallygrew brown, his eyes widened.
Sometimes in the evening he sat for hours in the hatchway, looking largeand white, without breaking his silence, and his eyes were fixed gloomily onthe distant horizon. At those times they were all more afraid of him thanever, but I was sorry for him. Jaakov Ivanich would come out from thekitchen, perspiring and glowing with the heat. Scratching his bald skull andwaving his arm, he would take cover or say from a distance :
“The fish has gone off.”
“Well, there is the salted cabbage.”
“But if they ask for fish-soup or boiled fish?”
“It is ready. They can begin gobbling.”
Sometimes I plucked up courage to go to him. He looked at me heavily.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
On one of these occasions, however, I asked him :
“Why is every one afraid of you? For you are good.”
Contrary to my expectations, he did not get angry.
“I am only good to you.”
But he added distinctly, simply, and thoughtfully :
“Yes, it is true that I am good to every one, only I do not show it. It doesnot do to show that to people, or they will be all over you. They will crawlover those who are kind as if they were mounds in a morass, and trample onthem. Go and get me some beer.”
Having drunk the bottle, he sucked his mustache and said :
“If you were older, my bird, I could teach you a lot. I have something tosay to a man. I am no fool. But you must read books. In them you will find allyou need. They are not rubbish — books. Would you like some beer?”
“I don’t care for it.”
“Good boy! And you do well not to drink it. Drunkenness is a misfortune.
Vodka is the devil’s own business. If I were rich, I would spur you on tostudy. An uninstructed man is an ox, fit for nothing but the yoke or to serveas meat. All he can do is to wave his tail.”
The captain’s wife gave him a volume of Gogol. I read “The TerribleVengeance” and was delighted with it, but Smouri cried angrily :
“Rubbish! A fairy-tale! I know. There are other books.”
He took the book away from me, obtained another one from the captain’swife, and ordered me harshly:
“Read Tarass’ — what do you call it? Find it! She says it is good; good forwhom? It may be good for her, but not for me, eh? She cuts her hair short. Itis a pity her ears were not cut off too.”
When Tarass called upon Ostap to fight, the cook laughed loudly.
“That’s the way! Of course! You have learning, but I have strength. Whatdo they say about it? Camels!”
He listened with great attention, but often grumbled:
“Rubbish! You couldn’t cut a man in half from his shoulders to hishaunches; it can’t be done. And you can’t thrust a pike upward; it wouldbreak it. I have been a soldier myself.”
Andrei’s treachery aroused his disgust.
“There’s a mean creature, eh? Like women! TfoorBut when Tarass killed his son, the cook let his feet slip from thehammock, bent himself double, and wept. The tears trickled down hischeeks, splashed upon the deck as he breathed stertorously and muttered :
“Oh, my God! my God!”
And suddenly he shouted to me :
“Go on reading, you bone of the devil!”
Again he wept, with even more violence and bitterness, when I read howOstaf cried out before his death, “Father, dost thou hear?’
“Ruined utterly!” exclaimed Smouri. “Utterly! Is that the end? EM/ Whatan accursed business! He was a man, that Tarass. What do you think? Yes, hewas a man.”
He took the book out of my hands and looked at it with attention, lettinghis tears fall on its binding.
“It is a fine book, a regular treat.”
After this we read “Ivanhoe.” Smouri was very pleased with RichardPlantagenet.
“That was a real king,’ he said impressively.
To me the book had appeared dry. In fact, our tastes did not agree at all.
I had a great liking for “The Story of Thomas Jones,” an old translation of“The History of Tom Jones, Foundling,” but Smouri grumbled :
“Rubbish! What do I care about your Thomas? Of what use is he to me?
There must be some other books.”
One day I told him that I knew that there were other books, forbiddenbooks. One could read them only at night, in underground rooms. He openedhis eyes wide.
“Wha-a-t’s that? Why do you tell me these lies?”
“I am not telling lies. The priest asked me about them when I went toconfession, and, for that matter,I myself have seen people reading them and crying over them.”
The cook looked sternly in my face and asked :
“Who was crying ?”
“The lady who was listening, and the other actually ran away because shewas frightened.”
“You were asleep. You were dreaming,” said Smouri, slowly covering hiseyes, and after a silence he muttered: “But of course there must besomething hidden from me somewhere. I am not so old as all that, and withmy character — well, however that may be —”
He spoke to me eloquently for a whole hour.
Imperceptibly I acquired the habit of reading, and took up a book withpleasure. What I read therein was pleasantly different from life, which wasbecoming harder and harder for me.
Smouri also recreated himself by reading, and often took me from mywork.
“Pyeshkov, come and read.”
“I have a lot of washing up to do.”
“Let Maxim wash up.”
He coarsely ordered the senior kitchen-helper to do my work, and thisman would break the glasses out of spite, while the chief steward told mequietly :
“I shall have you put off the boat.”
One day Maxim on purpose placed several glasses in a bowl of dirtywater and tea-leaves. I emptied the water overboard, and the glasses wentflying with it.
“It is my fault,” said Smouri to the head steward. “Put it down to myaccount.”
The dining-room attendants began to look at me with lowering brows,and they used to say :
“Eil you bookworm! What are you paid for?”
And they used to try and make as much work as they could for me,soiling plates needlessly. I was sure that this would end badly for me, and Iwas not mistaken.
One evening, in a little shelter on the boat, there sat a red-faced womanwith a girl in a yellow coat and a new pink blouse. Both had been drinking.
The woman smiled, bowed to every one, and said on the note O, like a churchclerk:
“Forgive me, my friends; I have had a little too much to drink. I havebeen tried and acquitted, and I have been drinking for joy.”
The girl laughed, too, gazing at the other passengers with glazed eyes.
Pushing the woman away, she said:
“But you, you plaguy creature — we know you.”
They had berths in the second-class cabin, opposite the cabin in whichJaakov Ivanich and Sergei slept.
The woman soon disappeared somewhere or other, and Sergei took herplace near the girl, greedily stretching his frog-like mouth.
That night, when I had finished my work and had laid myself down tosleep on the table, Sergei came to me, and seizing me by the arm, said:
“Come along! We are going to marry you.”
He was drunk. I tried to tear my arm away from him, but he struck me.
“Come along!”
Maxim came running in, also drunk, and the two dragged me along thedeck to their cabin, past the sleeping passengers. But by the door of the cabinstood Smouri, and in the doorway, holding on to the jamb, Jaakov Ivanich.
The girl stuck her elbow in his back, and cried in a drunken voice:
“Make way!”
Smouri got me out of the hands of Sergei and Maxim, seized them by thehair, and, knocking their heads together, moved away. They both fell down.
“Asiatic!” he said to Jaakov, slamming the door on him. Then he roaredas he pushed me along:
“Get out of this!”
I ran to the stern. The night was cloudy, the river black. In the wake ofthe boat seethed two gray lines of water leading to the invisible shore;between these two lines the barge dragged on its way. Now on the right, nowon the left appeared red patches of light, without illuminating anything. Theydisappeared, hidden by the sudden winding of the shore. After this it becamestill darker and more gruesome.
The cook came and sat beside me, sighed deeply, and pulled at hiscigarette.
“So they were taking you to that creature? Ekh! Dirty beasts! I heardthem trying.”
“Did you take her away from them?”
“Her?” He abused the girl coarsely, and continued in a sad tone :
“It is all nastiness here. This boat is worse than a village. Have you everlived in a village?”
“No.”
“In a village there is nothing but misery, especially in the winter.”
Throwing his cigarette overboard, he was silent. Then he spoke again.
“You have fallen among a herd of swine, and I am sorry for you, my littleone. I am sorry for all of them, too. Another time I do not know what Ishould have done. Gone on my knees and prayed. What are you doing, sonsof ? What are you doing, blind creatures? Camels!”
The steamer gave a long-drawn-out hoot, the tow-rope splashed in thewater, the lights of lanterns jumped up and down, showing where the harborwas. Out of the darkness more lights appeared.
“Pyani Bor [a certain pine forest]. Drunk,” growled the cook. “And thereis a river called Pyanaia, and there was a captain called Pyenkov, and a writercalled Zapivokhin, and yet another captain called Nepeipivo.3 I am going onshore.”
3 Pyanaia means “drunk,” and the other names mentioned come from thesame root. Nepeipivo means, “Do not drink beer.”
The coarse-grained women and girls of Kamska dragged logs of woodfrom the shore in long trucks. Bending under their load-straps, with pliabletread, they arrived in pairs at the stoker’s hold, and, emptying their sootyloads into the black hole, cried ringingly:
“Logs!”
When they brought the wood the sailors would take hold of them by thebreasts or the legs. The women squealed, spat at the men, turned back, anddefended themselves against pinches and blows with their trucks. I saw thisa hundred times, on every voyage and at every land-stage where they took inwood, and it was always the same thing.
I felt as if I were old, as if I had lived on that boat for many years, andknew what would happen in a week’s time, in the autumn, in a year.
It was daylight now. On a sandy promontory above the harbor stood outa forest of fir-trees. On the hills and through the forests women wentlaughing and singing. They looked like soldiers as they pushed their longtrucks.
I wanted to weep. The tears seethed in my breast; my heart wasoverflowing with them. It was painful. But it would be shameful to cry, and Iwent to help the sailor Blyakhin wash the deck.
Blyakhin was an insignificant-looking man. He had a withered, fadedlook about him, and always stowed himself away in corners, whence hissmall, bright eyes shone.
“My proper surname is not Blyakhin, but because, you see, my motherwas a loose woman. I have a sister, and she also. That happened to be theirdestiny. Destiny, my brother, is an anchor for all of us. You want to go in onedirection, but wait!”
And now, as he swabbed the deck, he said softly to me:
“You see what a lot of harm women do! There it is. Damp wood smoldersfor a long time and then bursts into flame. I don’t care for that sort of thingmyself; it does not interest me. And if I had been born a woman, I shouldhave drowned myself in a black pool. I should have been safe then with HolyChrist, and could do no one any harm. But while one is here there is alwaysthe chance of kindling a fire. Eunuchs are no fools, I assure you. They areclever people, they are good at divination, they put aside all small things andserve God alone — cleanly.”
The captain’s wife passed us, holding her skirts high as she came throughthe pools of water. Tall and well built, she had a simple, bright face. I wantedto run after her and beg her from my heart :
“Say something to me! Say something!”
The boat drew slowly away from the pier. Blyakhin crossed himself andsaid :
“We are off!”