Part 3

"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!"

[Footnote 1: A sort of white bread of a particular shape, which is very popular amongst the Russian peasantry.]

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?"