Part 20

"What," answered Kirik, "a plate of pasty--that's nothing! No, brother, if I were chief of police--then you might perhaps thank me, but I'm not. I shall give up the police altogether, and start as agent or manager in a big business. A manager, that's something like a good position; if I get it I'll soon get a little capital together."

Tatiana was busy at the stove and singing softly. Ilya looked at her, and again felt a painful discomfort; but almost immediately the sensation vanished under the influence of new impressions and cares. During these days he had no time to give to brooding; the arrangement of the shop and the purchase of goods occupied him entirely, and from day to day amidst his work he grew accustomed to this woman, almost without knowing, like a drunkard to the taste of brandy. She pleased him more and more as a mistress, although her caresses often caused him shame, even anxiety; her caresses and her talk together slowly destroyed his respect for her as a woman. Every morning after she had seen her husband off to work, or in the evenings when he was on duty, she called Ilya to her or came into his room, and told him all sorts of stories "of real life;" and all her stories were curiously vicious, as though they related to a country inhabited only by liars and scoundrels of both sexes, whose greatest pleasure lay in adultery.

"Is that all true?" asked Ilya gloomily. He didn't want to believe, but felt helpless and unable to contradict.

He listened, and life seemed to him like a swill-tub, and men moving in it like worms.

"Ugh!" he said wearily, "is there nothing clean or true anywhere?"

"What d'you call true? What d'you mean?" asked Tatiana in surprise.

"Why, something honourable!" cried Lunev angrily.

"Why, it's honourable people I'm speaking of--how funny you are! I don't make it all up."

"That's not what I mean. Is there anywhere anything honourable--pure, or not?"

She did not understand and laughed at him. Sometimes her conversation took a different tone; looking at him with greenish eyes, darting an uncanny fire, she asked him:

"Tell me, what was your first experience of women?"

Ilya was ashamed of the memory, it was hateful to him. He turned away from the glance of his mistress, and said in a low reproachful voice:

"What horrid things you ask! I think you ought to be ashamed--men don't even speak like that with one another."

But she laughed happily, and went on talking till Lunev often felt defiled with her words as with pitch. But if she read in his face any hostile feeling, or perceived in his eyes any weariness, or distress, or sorrow, she knew how to kindle his desire afresh and banish by her caresses all feelings hostile to her influence.

One day when Ilya returned from the shop, where already the joiners were putting in the shelves, he saw to his astonishment, Matiza in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, her big hands folded in her lap, and conversing with the mistress of the house, who was standing by the hearth.

"Here," said Tatiana, and nodded at Matiza, "this lady has been waiting for you, for ever so long."

"Good evening!" said Matiza, and got up clumsily.

"Why," cried Ilya, "are you still living?"

"Even pigs don't eat dirty bits of wood," answered Matiza in her deep voice.

Ilya had not seen her for a long time, and looked at her now with mingled feelings of compassion and pleasure. She was dressed in ragged fustian, an old faded kerchief covered her head, her feet were bare. She moved with difficulty, but supporting herself with her hands on the wall, she crept slowly into Ilya's room, sat heavily in a chair, and spoke in a hoarse toneless voice:

"I shall soon die. You see, I can hardly move my feet, and when I can't walk, I can't find food, and then I must die."

Her face was horribly bloated and covered with dark flecks. The big eyes were hardly visible between the swollen lids.

"What are you looking at?" she said to Ilya. "You think some one has struck me? No, it is a disease, devouring me."

"What are you doing?"

"I sit by the church door and beg for coppers," said Matiza, indifferently, in her deep, resonant voice. "I'm come on business. I heard from Perfishka that you were living here, and so I came."

"May I give you some tea?" asked Lunev. It hurt him to hear Matiza's voice and see her big, slack body perishing visibly.

"The devil wash his tail in your tea! Give me five kopecks, do! I came to you--well, you can ask me why."

Speech was difficult. She breathed short, and an overpowering odour came from her.

"Well, why?" asked Ilya, turning away and remembering how he had insulted her once.

"Do you remember Mashutka? What? You've a poor memory! You've grown rich!"

"I remember, of course I remember," said Ilya quickly.

"What's the good of your remembering?" she interrupted. "Has that made her life any easier?"

"What's the matter with her? How is she getting on?"

Matiza's head swayed, and she said briefly:

"She hasn't hanged herself yet."

"Oh, speak out!" cried Ilya roughly. "What do you begin at me for? You sold her yourself for three roubles."

"I don't reproach you, only myself," she answered quietly and emphatically, then began to tell of Masha, choking with the exertion.

"Her old husband is jealous and torments her, he lets her go nowhere, not even into the shop. She sits in one room, and mayn't go into the courtyard without leave. He's got rid of his children somehow, and lives alone with Masha. He pinches her and ties her hands, he treats her so badly because his first wife was untrue, and the two children are not his. Masha has run away twice, but both times the police have brought her back, and the old man pinches her and starves her for it. See, what a life!"

"Yes, you and Perfishka did a good deed," said Ilya gloomily.

"I thought it was better," said the woman, in her toneless voice. Her face motionless as though carved in stone, and her dead voice, weighed on Ilya.

"I thought--it was cleaner so. But the worse would have been better. She might have been sold to a rich man, he would have given her a home and clothes, and everything, and afterwards she would have sent him off and lived like all the others. Ever so many live like that."

"Well, why have you come to me?" asked Ilya.

"You live here, in a policeman's house. You see, they always catch her. Tell him to let her go, let her run away. She'll manage somehow. Is one not allowed to run away?"

"You really came for that?"

"Yes, why not? They ought not to stop her, tell them!"

"Ah, you people!" cried Ilya, trying to think what he could do for Masha.

Matiza rose from her chair, and shuffled carefully over the floor. She sighed and groaned, and she was not like a human being walking, but like an old, decayed tree falling slowly down.

"Good-bye! We shan't meet again! I shall soon die," she murmured. "Thank you, thank you, my fine, trim fellow! Thank you!"

As soon as she was gone, Tatiana hurried into Ilya's room, embraced him, and asked smiling:

"That's the one--your first love, eh?"

"Who?" asked Ilya slowly, absorbed in memories of Masha.

"That horror----"

Ilya unclasped her hands from his neck, and said moodily:

"She can hardly drag one foot after the other, but she cares for those she loves."

"Whom does she love?" asked the woman, and looked with wonder and curiosity at Ilya's anxious face.

"Wait, Tatiana, wait! Don't make fun of her."

He told her briefly of Masha, and asked: "What is to be done?"

"Here, nothing," answered Tatiana, shrugging her shoulders. "By the law, the wife belongs to her husband, and no one has any right to take her from him." And, with the important air of one who knows the law well and is convinced of its stability, she explained at length that Masha must obey her husband.

"She must just hang on for the present. Let her wait--he's old; he'll soon die. Then she'll be free, and all his money will go to her. And then you'll marry the rich young widow, eh?"

She laughed and continued to instruct Ilya seriously.

"It would be best for you to give up your old acquaintances. They're no use to you now, and they might get in your way. They're all so coarse and dirty--that one, for instance, you lent money to--such a skinny fellow, with wicked eyes."

"Gratschev?"

"Yes. What funny names common people have--Gratschev, Lunev, Petuchev, Skvarzov.--In our set the names are much better, prettier--Avtonomov, Korsakov--my father's name was Florianov. When I was a young girl I was courted by a lawyer, Gloriantov. Once at the skating, he stole my garter, and threatened to make a scandal if I did not go to his house to get it back----"

Ilya listened, remembering his own past. He felt his soul bound by invisible threads fast to the house of Petrusha Filimonov, and it seemed this house would always hold him back from the peaceful life he longed for.

XX.

At last Ilya Lunev's dream was realised. Full of calm joy, he stood from morning to night behind the counter of his own business, and swelled with pride over all he saw round him. Boxes of wood and cardboard were ranged carefully on the shelves; in the window was a display of waist-buckles, purses, soap, buttons, with gay-coloured ribbons and laces. It was all bright and clean, and shone in the sunshine in rainbow colours. Handsome and steady-looking, he received his customers with a polite bow and displayed his goods on the counter before them. He heard pleasant music in the rustling of his laces and ribbons, and all the girls--tailoresses, who bought a few kopecks' worth--seemed to him pretty and lovable. All at once life became pleasant and easy, a clear, simple meaning seemed to have entered into it, and the past was veiled in a cloud. No thoughts came to him save of business, and goods and customers. He had taken on an errand boy, dressed him in a well-fitting grey jacket, and took great care that the lad washed himself well, and kept as clean as possible.

"You and I, Gavrik," he said, "deal in fine goods, and we must be clean."

Gavrik was a lad of twelve years, rather fat, snub-nosed and slightly pock-marked, with little grey eyes and a lively face. He had passed through the town school, and considered himself a full-grown, serious man. He took a great interest in his work in the clean little shop; it delighted him to handle the boxes, and he was at great pains to be as polite to the customers as his master. But this he found difficult--his talents for mimicry were too strongly developed, and he was apt to reproduce on his coarse face any expression that he observed in a customer. Above all he was the sworn foe of all little girls, and could seldom resist the temptation to pinch them or push them, or pull their hair, and generally make their lives a burden. Ilya watched him, and remembered how he had served in the fish shop, and as he had a liking for the boy, he joked with him and spoke to him in a friendly way when there were no customers in the shop.

"If you're dull, Gavrik, read books when there's no work to be done," he advised. "Time passes easily with a book, and reading's pleasant."

From this time Lunev began to regard mankind cheerfully and attentively, and he smiled as much as to say:

"I'm a lucky one, you see; but patience! Your turn will come soon."

He opened his shop at seven and closed at ten. There were few customers; he sat on a chair near the door basking in the rays of the spring sun, and resting, almost without a thought, without a wish. Gavrik sat in the doorway, observed the passers-by, imitated their ways, enticed the dogs to him, and threw stones at the pigeons and sparrows, or else read a book, and breathed heavily through his nose. Sometimes his master would make him read aloud, but the actual reading did not interest Ilya, he listened rather to the stillness and peace in his heart. This inner peace filled him with delight, it was new to him and unspeakably pleasant. Now and then, however, the sweetness was disturbed, there was a strange, incomprehensible sensation, a premonition of unrest; it could not shatter the peace in his soul, but rested lightly on it like a shadow. Then Ilya began to talk to the boy.

"Gavrik! What is your father?"

"He's a postman."

"Are you a big family?"

"Big? There's a crowd of us. Some grown-up, but some are still little."

"How many little ones?"

"Five, and three grown-up. We three have all got places. I'm with you, Vassili is in Siberia in a telegraph office, Sonyka gives lessons. She earns a lot, twelve roubles a month. Then there's Mishka--he is older than I am, but he's still at school."

"Then there are four grown-up, not three?"

"No, how?" cried Gavrik, and added sententiously: "Mishka is still learning, but a grown-up is one who works."

"Do you have a hard time at home?"

"Rather," answered Gavrik indifferently, and sniffed loudly. Then he began to explain his schemes for the future.

"When I'm big, I shall be a soldier. Then there'll be a war, and I'll go to the war. I'm brave, and so I'll rush at the enemy before all the others and capture the standard--that's what my uncle did--and General Gourko gave Kim a medal and five roubles."

Ilya listened, smiling, and looked at the pock-marked face, and the wide, twitching nostrils. In the evening when the shop was shut, Ilya went into the little room at the back. The samovar made ready by the lad was on the table, and bread and sausage. Gavrik had his tea and bread and went into the shop to sleep, but Ilya sat long by the samovar, often as much as two hours. Two chairs, a table, a bed, and a cupboard for household utensils made up all the furniture of Ilya's new home. The room was small and low, with a square window from which could be seen the feet of the passers-by, the roofs of the houses over the way, and the sky above the roofs. He hung a white muslin curtain before the window. An iron railing cut the window off from the street, and this displeased Ilya very much. Over his bed was a picture--"The Steps of Man's Life." This picture was a great favourite with Ilya, and he had long wished to buy it, but for one reason and another he had never possessed it till he opened his shop, though it cost but ten kopecks.

The steps of man's life were arranged in the form of an arch, under which was represented Paradise; here the Almighty, surrounded with rays of light and flowers, talked with Adam and Eve. There were seventeen steps in all. On the first stood a child supported by his mother, and underneath, in red letters: "The first step." On the second the child was beating a drum, and the inscription ran: "Five years old--he plays." At seven years of age he began "to learn;" at ten, "goes to school;" at twenty-one he stood on the step with a rifle in his hand, and a smiling face, and underneath was written: "Serves his time as a soldier." On the next step he is twenty-five, he is in evening dress, with an opera hat in one hand and a bouquet in the other--"he is a bridegroom." Then his beard is grown, he has a long coat and a red tie, and is standing near a stout lady in yellow, and pressing her hand. Next he is thirty-five; he stands with rolled-up shirt-sleeves by an anvil and hammers the iron. At the top of the arch he is sitting in a red chair reading the paper, his wife and four children are listening to him. He himself and all his family are well dressed, respectable, with healthy, happy faces. At this time he is fifty years old. But note how the steps begin to go down; the man's beard is already grey, he is clad in a long yellow coat, and in his hands he holds a bag of fish and a jar of some sort. This step is labelled: "Household duties." On the following step the man is rocking the cradle of his grandson; lower down "he is led," being now eighty years old; and in the last--he is ninety-five--he is in a chair with his feet in a coffin, and behind the chair stands Death, with the scythe in his hand.

When Ilya sat by the samovar he looked at the picture, and it pleased him to see the life of man so accurately and simply depicted. The picture radiated peace, the bright colours seemed to smile at him, and he was persuaded that the series represented honourable life wisely and intelligibly, as an example to men--life exactly as it should be led. As he gazed at this representation of life, he thought that now that he had attained his desire, his career must henceforth follow the picture exactly. He would mount upwards, and right at the summit, when he had saved enough money, he would marry a modest girl who had learned to read and to write.

The samovar hummed and whistled in a melancholy way. The sky looked dull through the glass of the window and the muslin curtain, and the stars were hardly visible. There is always something disturbing in the glance of the stars.

"Perhaps it would be better to marry at forty," thought Ilya. "Life is so disturbed with women; they bring such useless hurrying and so many petty things: and it is better to marry a girl who is close on thirty. But then, if you marry late, you die and never have time to start your children for themselves."

The samovar whistles more gently but more shrilly. The fine sound pierces the ears unbearably; it is like the buzzing of a fly, and distracts and confuses thought. But Ilya does not put the lid on the chimney, for if the samovar ceases to whistle, the room becomes so still. In his new house, new feelings, hitherto unknown, come to visit him. Formerly he had lived constantly close to people, separated from them only by thin partitions; now he was shut off by stone walls and felt no man at his back. "Why must we die?" Lunev asks himself suddenly, looking at the man declining from the height of his fortune towards the grave. Then he remembers Jakov, who was always pondering on death, and Jakov's saying: "It is interesting to die."

Angrily Ilya thrusts the memory away, and tries to think of something quite different.

"How are Pavel and Vyera getting on?" he wonders suddenly. A droshky drives by; the window-panes shake with the noise of the wheels on the stony street, the lamp trembles on the wall. Then strange sounds arise in the shop--it is Gavrik talking in his sleep. The dense darkness in the corner of the room seems to move. Ilya sits propped up at the table, presses his temples with the palms of his hands, and looks at the picture. Next to the Almighty is a fine big lion, on the ground crawls a tortoise, and there is a badger and a frog jumping, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is adorned with great blood-red flowers. The old man with his feet in the coffin is like Poluektov, he is bald-headed and lean, and his neck is of just the same thin kind. A dull noise of footsteps sounds from the street. Some one goes slowly past the shop. The samovar has gone out, and now the room is so still that the air in it seems thickened and as solid as the walls.

The memory of Poluektov did not trouble Ilya and, generally speaking, his thoughts were not disturbing--they lay soft and easily on his soul, enwrapping it as a cloud the moon. The colours of the picture were made a little pale by them, and a vague dark spot appeared on it, while the stillness round about grew denser. Frequently he thought with calmness, as he had done after the murder of Poluektov, that there must be justice in life, and that, sooner or later, men must be punished for their sins. After such thoughts, he would look sharply into the dark corner of the room, where it was so mysteriously still, and where the darkness would take on a definite form. Then he undressed, lay down, and extinguished the lamp. He did not put it out at once, but turned the wick first up, then down. The light would all but go out, then again flare up, and the darkness danced round the bed, now threw itself on the bed from all sides, now again sprung back into the corner of the room. Ilya watched how the pitiless black waves tried to overwhelm him, and he played in this way for a long time, whilst trying to pierce the darkness with wide-open eyes, as though he expected to catch sight of something. At last the light flickered for the last time, and went out in a moment. The blackness flooded the room, and seemed to waver as though still disturbed by its struggle with the light. Then the dull bluish patch of the window became visible. When the moon shone, black streaks of shadow from the railings in front of the window fell across the table and the floor. There was so tense a stillness in the room that it seemed as if his whole frame must quiver if he sighed. He wrapped the bed-clothes round him, drawing them up to his chin, but with his face uncovered, and lay and looked at the twilight of the window till sleep overpowered him. In the morning he woke fresh and rested, almost ashamed of his follies of the night before. He had tea with Gavrik at the counter and looked at his shop as at a new thing. Sometimes Pavel came in from his work, covered with dirt and grease, in a scorched blouse and with smoke-blackened face. He was working again with a well-sinker, and carried with him a little kettle, with lead piping and soldering-iron. He was always in a hurry to get home, and if Ilya asked him to stay, he would say, with a shame-faced smile:

"I can't. I feel, brother, as though I had a wonderful bird at home, but as if the cage were too weak. She sits there alone all day, and who knows what she thinks about? It's a dull kind of life for her. I know that very well--if only we had a child!"

And Gratschev sighed heavily. Once when Ilya asked him if he still wrote poems, he replied smiling:

"On the sky, with my finger! Oh, the devil! How can you make cabbage soup of bast shoes. I'm on the sand-bank, brother, altogether. Not a spark in my head, not one little one! I think of her all the time. I work, begin to solder or something, and at once dreams of my little girl fly through my head. You see that's my poetry nowadays--ha! ha! Surely, honour to him who devotes himself body and soul!--You see, though I think this, she thinks differently--yes, it's hard for her."

"And you?" asked Ilya.

"Oh, yes; it's hard for me because of her. If she could have a happier life! She's used to being happy, that's it. She dreams of money all the time. If we had money, anyhow, she says everything would be different. I'm stupid she says; I ought to rob a rich man; she's always talking nonsense. She does it all out of compassion for me--I know. It is hard for her."

Presently Pavel became restless and departed.

Often the ragged half-naked cobbler came to Ilya with his inseparable companion, his harmonica, under his arm. He told what had happened at Filimonov's and of Jakov. Thin and dirty and dishevelled, he pushed into the door of the shop; smiling all over his face, and scattering his jests.