Part 21

"Petrusha is married, his wife is like--like a beetroot, and the stepson like a carrot. Quite a vegetable garden, by God! The wife is thick and short and red, and her face is built in three storeys; three chins she has, but only one mouth; eyes like a beautiful pig, they are little and can't look up. Her son is yellow and long, with spectacles--an aristocrat. He's called Savva--speaks through his nose. When his lady-mother's there he's an absolute sheep, but if she's away, chatterbox isn't the word! Such a crew--with all due respect! Jashutka looks now as if he'd like to crawl into a crack like a terrified black beetle. He drinks on the quiet, poor lad, and coughs away like anything. Evidently his dear papa has damaged his liver for him; they're always at him. He's a feeble fellow; they'll soon swallow him down. Your uncle has written from Kiev; I think he is worrying himself for nothing. Hunchbacks don't get in to Paradise, I'm thinking. Matiza's feet are no good at all now. She goes about in a little cart. She's got a blind man for partner, harnesses him to the cart, and guides him like a horse--it's really funny. They get enough to eat out of it though. She's a good sort, I say. That's to say if I hadn't had such a wonderful wife I'd marry this Matiza right away. I say boldly, there are two real women in the world--on my word I mean it--my wife and Matiza. Of course she drinks, but why not? A good man always drinks."

"But what about Mashutka?" Ilya reminded him. At the mention of his daughter all the cobbler's jests and laughter came to a sudden end, like the leaves torn from the trees by the winds of autumn. His lips quivered, his yellow face lengthened, and he said in a confused low voice:

"I don't know. Ehrenov said to me plainly I won't have you about my house, else I'll thrash you.--Give me something, Ilya Jakovlevitch, for a little drink of brandy."

"You'll come to grief, Perfily," said Ilya compassionately.

"I'm on the way," admitted the cobbler. "Lots of people will be sorry when I'm dead," he went on with conviction. "For I'm a good fellow, and I like to make people laugh. Every one cries--ah! and alas! and laments and talks of God and sin; but I sing little songs and laugh. Whether you sin a pennyworth or a pound's-worth, you've got to die all the same. You go under, and the Devil will torment you anyhow; and besides the world needs good fellows."

Finally he went off, laughing and jesting, like a tousled old greenfinch. But Ilya, when he had seen him out, shook his head; while he pitied Perfishka, he saw the uselessness of his compassion. His own past seemed far behind him, and all that reminded him of it made him uncomfortable. Now he resembled a weary man who rests and sleeps quietly, but the autumn flies buzz persistently in his ear and will not let him have his sleep out. When he talked to Pavel or listened to Perfishka's tales, he smiled in sympathy, but when they were gone, he shook his head. Especially he found Pavel's conversation melancholy and troubling. At such times he hurriedly and obstinately offered him money, gesticulated, and said: "What else can I do to help you? I should advise you--break with Vyera!"

"I can't," said Pavel, softly. "You only throw away things you don't want. But I need her--ah, yes, and others want her too, and would like to take her from me, that's the trouble. And perhaps I don't love her with my soul, but out of wickedness and desperation. She's the best that life has offered me. All my good fortune. Why should I let her go? What shall I have left? No, I won't sell her. It's a lie.--I'll kill her, but I won't let her go."

Gratschev's drawn face was covered with red patches, and he clenched his fists convulsively.

"Do you find, then, that people hang about after her?"

"No, no!"

"How do you mean, then--they'd like to take her away?"

"There's a power that will snatch her from my hands. Ah! the devil! My father came to grief through a woman, and seems to have left me the same fortune."

"It's impossible to help you, I'm afraid," said Lunev, and felt a certain relief as he said it. Pavel distressed him more than Perfishka, and when his friend spoke with hate and anger, a similar feeling surged up in Ilya's breast against some undefined person. But the enemy that caused the suffering, that ruined Pavel's life, was not there, but invisible, and Lunev felt anew that his enmity or his compassion availed nothing, like nearly all his sympathetic feelings towards other men. It seemed these feelings were all superfluous, useless. Pavel went on, more gloomily:

"I know--it's impossible to help me.--How could I be helped? Who is there? We're alone in life, brother; our lot is settled--work, suffer, be silent--and then go out. Devil take you!"

He looked searchingly into his friend's face, and added in a decided, sinister tone:

"Look! You've crawled into a corner and sit quiet there. But I tell you, there's some one, who watches by night, thinking how to drag you out."

"No, no!" said Lunev smiling. "I'll make a fight for it. It's not so easy."

"Ah, don't be so sure! You think you'll run this business all your life, eh?"

"Why not?"

"They'll have you out, or else you yourself will give it up."

"But how? You'll have to wait to see that!" said Ilya, smiling.

But Gratschev maintained his statement. He looked hard at his friend, and said obstinately:

"I tell you, you'll leave it. You are not the kind to sit quiet and warm all your life, and it's certain either you'll take to drink or you'll go bankrupt. Something's bound to happen to you."

"Yes, but why?" cried Lunev, in surprise.

"For this--You can't stand a quiet life. You're a good fellow, you've a good heart, there are a few like that--they live healthy lives, are never ill, and all of a sudden--bang!"

"What d'you mean?"

"They fall down dead."

Ilya laughed, straightened himself, stretched his strong muscles, and breathed out a deep breath.

"That's all rubbish," he said. But at night, as he sat by the samovar, Gratschev's words returned involuntarily, and he considered his business relations with the Avtonomovs. In his delight at their proposal to open a shop, he had agreed to everything that was suggested. Now, suddenly he perceived that, although he had put into the business about four hundred roubles of Poluektov's money, he was rather a manager, engaged by Tatiana Vlassyevna, than her partner. This discovery surprised and annoyed him. "Aha! that's why she kisses me, so as to pick my pocket more easily," he thought. He determined to use the rest of his money to get the business away from his mistress and then separate from her. Even earlier, Tatiana Vlassyevna had seemed to him unnecessary, and of late she had become a burden. He could not reconcile himself to her caresses, and once said to her face:

"You're absolutely shameless, Tanyka!"

She only laughed. As before, she constantly told him tales of the people of her circle, and once he remarked, doubtfully:

"If that's all true, Tatiana, your respectable life isn't good for much."

"Why, pray? It's very jolly!" she replied, and shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Jolly? In the day, a fight for crumbs, and at night--beastliness. No! There's something wrong about that."

"How simple you are! Now listen," and she began to praise the orderly, respectable middle-class life, and as she praised, strove to hide its hideousness and foulness.

"Is that what you call good, then?" asked Ilya.

"How odd you are! I don't call it good; but if it weren't it would be very dull."

Sometimes she would advise him:

"It's time you gave up wearing cotton shirts--a respectable man must wear linen. And listen to the way I pronounce words, and learn. You're not a peasant any longer, and you must drop your peasant ways, and get a little polish."

More often she would point out the difference between him, the peasant, and herself, the educated woman, and by the comparison frequently hurt his feelings. When he lived with Olympiada, he felt constantly that she was near him, like a good comrade. Tatiana aroused no feeling of comradeship; he saw that she was more interesting than Olympiada, and studied her with curiosity, but completely lost his respect for her. When he lived with the Avtonomovs, he used sometimes to hear Tatiana praying before she went to sleep:

"Our Father, Who art in heaven"--her loud rapid whisper sounded behind the partition. "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses--Kirya, get up and shut the kitchen door--there's a draught at my feet."

"Why do you kneel on the bare floor?" answered Kirik lazily.

"Be quiet, don't interrupt me!" and again Ilya would hear the rapidly murmured prayer. The haste displeased him; he saw well she prayed from custom, not from inner need.

"Do you believe in God, Tatiana?" he asked her once.

"What a question," she cried. "Of course I do. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, then when you pray, you hurry up so as to get away from Him, I suppose," said Ilya laughing.

"First of all, don't say hurry up, but make haste; in the second place, I'm so tired with my day's work that God must forgive my haste."

And she closed her eyes, and added in a tone of deep conviction:

"He will forgive everything. He is merciful."

Olympiada used to pray silently and for a long time. She knelt before the eikon, hung her head, and remained motionless as if turned to stone. At such times her face was downcast, serious; and she did not answer if addressed. Now that Ilya grasped that Tatiana had cleverly over-reached him over the business, he felt a kind of disgust towards her.

"If she were a stranger--well and good," he thought. "All men try to cheat one another, but she is almost like my wife." He began to behave coldly and suspiciously towards her, and to avoid meeting her on all sorts of pretexts.

Just at this time he became acquainted with another woman. This was Gavrik's sister, who came now and then to see her brother. Tall, thin, and lanky, she was not pretty, and though Gavrik had said she was nineteen she seemed to Ilya much older. Her face was long and thin and yellow; fine wrinkles furrowed the brow. She had a flat nose, and the wide nostrils seemed distended with anger, while the thin lips were usually pressed together. She spoke distinctly, but as it were through her teeth, and unwillingly. She walked quickly with her head high, as though she were proud to display her ugly face, though possibly it was her long, thick black hair that drew her head backwards. Her big dark eyes looked serious and earnest, and the whole effect of her features was to give her tall figure an air of definite uprightness and inflexibility. Lunev felt afraid of her. She seemed to him proud and inspired him with respect. Whenever she appeared in the shop, he offered her a chair politely and said:

"Please take a seat."

"Thank you," she said shortly--bowed slightly and sat down. Lunev looked secretly at her face, absolutely different from the women's faces he had seen hitherto, her dark-brown well-worn dress, her patched shoes and yellow straw hat. She sat there, and talked to her brother, while the long fingers of her right hand drummed rapidly but noiselessly on her knee; in her left hand she swung some books, strapped together. It struck Ilya as strange to see a girl so badly dressed, so proud. After sitting two or three minutes she would say to her brother:

"Well--good-bye. Behave yourself!" Then she would bow silently to the owner of the shop and go out into the street with the stride of a brave soldier going to the attack.

"What a serious sister you've got," said Lunev once to Gavrik.

Gavrik distended his nostrils, rolled his eyes wildly, and drew out his lips into a straight line, and so gave his face a carefully caricatured resemblance to his sister's. Then he explained with a smile:

"Yes--but she only puts it on."

"But why should she?"

"It looks well. She likes it.--I can imitate any face you like."

The girl interested Ilya very much; he thought about her as he used to think of Tatiana Vlassyevna.

"There, that's the kind of girl to marry--she's got a heart, for certain."

Once she brought a thick book with her and said to her brother:

"There--read it! It's very interesting."

"What is it, may I see?" asked Ilya politely.

She took the book from her brother and passed it to Ilya saying:

"Don Quixote--the story of a worthy knight."

"Ah! I've read a lot about knights," said Ilya with a friendly smile, and looked her in the face. Her eyebrows twitched, and she said quickly in a dry way:

"You've read fairy tales, but this is a fine clever book. The man in it devotes himself to help the unfortunate and unjustly oppressed--this man was always ready to give his life for others. You see? The book is written amusingly--but that's because of the conditions under which it was written. It must be read seriously and attentively."

"Then that's how we'll read it," said Ilya. This was the first time she had spoken to him; he felt curiously pleased, and smiled. But she looked in his face, said drily:

"I fancy you won't like it."

Then she went away. Ilya felt that she had spoken with intention and was annoyed. He spoke sharply to Gavrik who was looking at the pictures in the book.

"Now then--it's no time for reading now."

"But there are no customers," answered Gavrik without closing the book.

Ilya looked at him and said nothing; the girl's words rang in his ears, but he thought of her with a feeling of discomfort in his heart.

"My word; doesn't she think a lot of herself!"

XXI.

Time passed on. Ilya stood behind the counter, twisted his moustache, and conducted his business, but it began to seem to him that the days went more slowly. Sometimes he felt a desire to close the shop and go for a walk, but he knew that such a proceeding would be bad for his business and he did not go. To walk in the evenings was inconvenient; Gavrik was afraid to be alone in the shop and there was a certain risk in leaving him, he might set the place on fire by accident or let in some rascal or other. Business went fairly well. Ilya thought it might be necessary to take an assistant. His intimacy with Tatiana had insensibly grown less, and she seemed willing that it should come to an end. She laughed cheerfully when she came, and looked very carefully through the book that recorded the day's business. While she sat and made calculations in Ilya's room, he felt that this woman with the bird's face was repugnant to him; but still from time to time she would be pert and gay, jesting and making eyes at him, and calling him her partner. Then he would rouse himself and re-enter what in his heart he called a horrible web. Sometimes Kirik came too, stretched himself out in a chair by the counter and cracked jokes with the tailoresses who came in to make purchases while he was there. He had discarded his police uniform, and boasted of his success in his new commercial employment.

"Sixty roubles salary and then in different ways I make as much again extra--not so bad, eh? I work very carefully for the extras, keep within the law--ho! ho! We've moved, did you hear? We've a jolly house now. We've taken on a cook--cooks splendidly, the wretch! When the autumn comes we'll ask lots of our friends and play cards; it's very pleasant, by Jove! To have a good time and make money at it; we play into one another's hands, I and my wife, one of us must always win, and the winnings pay the cost of entertainment, ho! ho! my boy! There, that's living cheaply and pleasantly!"

He settled himself in a chair, puffed out the smoke of his cigarette and went on, lowering his voice:

"A little while ago, brother, I was in a village--have you heard? I tell you, the girls there--d'you know, such children of Nature, so solid you know, you can't pinch them, the rascals,--and so cheap, too; a bottle of Schnapps, a pound of honey cakes, and she is yours!"

Lunev listened, but said nothing. For some reason or other he was sorry for Kirik, and pitied him without realising why this fat and stupid fellow should rouse such a feeling. At the same time he almost always wanted to laugh at the sight of him. Ilya did not believe Kirik's tales of his adventures in the village, but thought he was only boasting, talking as he had heard others talk. But when he was in a gloomy mood, then he listened to Kirik and thought: "Fighting for crumbs!"

"Yes, brother, it's splendid to make love in the bosom of Nature, in the shade of the leaves as they say in books."

"But if Tatiana Vlassyevna knew?"

"She won't know, brother," answered Kirik, and winked cheerfully.

But when Avtonomov departed Ilya thought of his words, and felt hurt. It was evident that Kirik, good-tempered and ridiculous though he were, yet held himself to be a man out of the common, whom Ilya could not hope to equal, higher in station and more important. Yet he profited by the business Ilya carried on with his wife. Perfishka had told them that Petrusha laughed at his shop and called him a rascal. Jakov had said to the cobbler that formerly Ilya was better and more friendly than now and did not think so much of himself, and Gavrik's sister constantly demonstrated that she thought herself superior to him. The daughter of a postman, who went about almost in rags, behaved as though it were too much for her to live on the same world as he did. Ilya's ambition had grown since he had opened his shop, and he was more sensitive than before. His interest deepened in this girl who was so ugly, but had so strong a personality; he sought to understand whence came this pride in a poor ragged girl, a pride which grew to annoy him more and more. At first she would not talk to him, and that pained him. Her brother was his servant, and therefore she ought to be more friendly with him, the employer. He said to her once:

"I'm reading the book of 'Don Quixote.'"

"Well, do you like it?" she asked, without looking at him.

"Rather, most amusing,--he was a funny old owl that fellow!"

She looked at him, and Ilya felt as though her proud dark eyes pierced his face angrily.

"I knew you would say something like that," she said, slowly and with meaning.

Ilya was conscious of something reproachful, contemptuous and hostile in her words.

"I'm an uneducated man," he said, and shrugged his shoulders.

She said nothing as though she had not heard him.

Once again the mood that long ago had possessed Ilya, began to invade his soul again; once more he was angered at mankind, pondered long and deeply upon justice, and his sins, and what might be in store for him in the future. The last question troubled him persistently. He liked his shop, he liked almost all his life at this time; in comparison with the life of his younger days it was cleaner, more peaceful, freer. But would it always be like this; to squat in his shop from morning to night, then sit awhile with his thoughts by the samovar, and then go to sleep, only to wake and begin again in the shop? He knew that many tradesmen, perhaps all, lived just such a life. But then they were married, and had children, they drank brandy, played cards, and among them all there was hardly one like himself.

He had many reasons, outward as well as inward, to consider himself an unusual man, unlike the rest.

He did not care for tradesmen; some of them were like Kirik, boasted of everything and spoke of nothing but their business, others swindled openly. Once, as he meditated on all these things, he remembered Jakov's words: "God guard you from good fortune--you are greedy," and the words appeared to him a deep insult. No, he was not covetous; he wanted to live simply, cleanly, and quietly, to have men respect him and to have no one say: "I stand higher than you, Ilya Lunev, I am better than you."

Again he began to wonder what the future held in store for him. Would the murder be avenged on him or not? Up and down, he thought, whether it would be unjust for the sin to be avenged on him. He had had no desire to strangle the man, it happened of itself, he said to himself a hundred times. In the town there live many murderers, libertines, robbers, all know they are murderers and robbers and libertines of their own choice, yet all live, and enjoy the good things of life, and no punishment is swift to fall upon them. In justice, every injury done to man must be avenged on the evildoer, and in the Bible it is written: "He rewardeth him and he shall know it." These thoughts set all his old wounds throbbing and a raging thirst burned in his heart to revenge his blighted life. Sometimes the idea came to him to do some daring deed; to go and set fire to Petrusha's house, and when it began to burn, and people began to run from it, to cry out: "I have done it, and I have murdered Poluektov, the merchant." Then men would seize him and judge him, and send him to Siberia as they had sent his father. This thought roused him and narrowed his thirst for revenge to the desire to tell Kirik of his intimacy with Tatiana, or to visit old Ehrenov and thrash him for torturing Masha.

Often he lay on his bed in the darkness listening to the deep stillness, and felt as though all round him life quivered, and twisted in a wild whirlpool with noise and outcry. The whirlpool would suck him in, and sweep him away like a feather or a fallen leaf, and destroy him, and he shuddered with the premonition of something uncanny.

One evening, as he was about to close the shop, Pavel appeared, and said quietly, without greeting him: "Vyera has run away."

He sat down on a chair, rested his elbows on the counter, and whistled softly as he gazed out into the street. His face was as though turned to stone, but his fair moustache twitched like a cat's whiskers.

"Alone?" asked Ilya.

"I don't know; it's three days ago."

Ilya looked at him without speaking. The quiet face and voice made it impossible to tell how Gratschev felt the flight of his companion, but in the stillness Ilya was aware of an unalterable resolution.

"What are you going to do?" he asked at length, when he saw that Pavel would not speak. Pavel stopped whistling, and said sharply, without turning round: "I'll cut her throat!"

"Ah! talking like that again!" cried Ilya, and with a gesture of annoyance.

"She's trod my heart under foot," said Pavel half-aloud. "There's the knife!" He drew from his bosom a little bread-knife and shook it.

"I'll stick it in her throat."

Ilya caught his hand, tore the knife away, and threw it on the counter, and said angrily:

"An ox once raged against a fly----"

Pavel sprang from his chair and turned his face on Ilya. His eyes were blazing, his face convulsed, and he trembled in all his limbs; then he sank back again on his chair and said, contemptuously:

"You're a fool!"

"You're so very clever, aren't you?"

"The strength is in the hand, not in the knife."

"Talk!"

"And if my hands fall off, I'd tear her windpipe with my teeth."

"Don't talk so horribly!"

"Don't talk to me Ilya," said Pavel, once more quietly. "Believe or don't believe, but don't torment me. Fate is bad enough."

"Think, think, you silly fellow----" began Ilya, speaking in a friendly tone.

"I've thought for two years. Everything's settled long ago. Anyhow, I'll go--how can a fellow talk to you? You're well fed; you're no comrade for me."

"Get rid of your crazy thoughts!" cried Ilya reproachfully.

"But I'm hungry, body and soul."

"It surprises me, the way men judge," said Ilya mockingly and shrugged his shoulders. "A woman is to be a man's property, like a cow or a horse! Will you do what I want? All right, you shan't be beaten,--won't you? then crack! there's one on the head for you, devil! A woman is like a man, and has a character of her own."

Pavel looked at him and laughed hoarsely.

"Then who am I, am I no man?"

"Well, ought you to be just or not?"