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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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its waves, which now were so gently and musically caressing the
disfigured shore. It seemed to feel sorry for them:—its centuries of
existence had taught it to understand, that those who build are not
the ones who cherish evil designs against it; it long ago found out
that they are only slaves,-that their part is to wrestle with the
elements face to face. And in this struggle, the vengeance of the
elements awaits them. All they do is to build, they toil on forever,
their sweat and blood are the cement of all the constructions on the
earth; but they receive nothing for this, though they yield up all their
forces to the eternal propensity to construct—a propensity which
creates marvels on the earth, but, nevertheless, gives men no blood,
and too little bread. They also are elementary forces, and that is why
the sea gazes, not angrily but graciously, upon their labors from
which they derive no profit. These gray little worms, who have thus
excavated the mountain, are just the same thing as its drops, which
are the first to fall upon the cold and inaccessible cliffs of the shore,
in the eternal effort of the sea to extend its boundaries, and the first
to perish as they are dashed in fragments against these crags. In the
mass, too, these drops are nearly related to it, since they are exactly
like the sea, as mighty as it, as inclined to destruction, so soon as
the breath of the storm is wafted over them. In days of yore the sea
also was acquainted with the slaves, who erected pyramids in the
desert, and the slaves of Xerxes, that ridiculous man, who undertook
to chastise the sea with three hundred lashes, because it had
destroyed his toy bridges. Slaves have always been exactly alike,
they have always been submissive, they have always been ill-fed,
and they have always accomplished the great and the marvellous,
sometimes enriching those who have set them to work, most
frequently cursing them, rarely rising up in revolt against their
masters ...
And, smiling with the calm smile of a Titan who is conscious of his
strength, the sea fanned with its vivifying breath the earth, that
Titan which is still spiritually blind, and enslaved and wofully riddled,
instead of aspiring to affinity with heaven. The waves ran softly up
the beach, sprinkled with a throng of men, engaged in constructing
a stone barrier to their eternal motion, and as they ran they sang
their ringing, gracious song about the past, about everything which,
in the course of the ages, they have beheld on the shores of earth....
Among the laborers there were certain strange, spare, bronze
figures, in scarlet turbans, in fezzes, in short blue jackets, and in
trousers which were tight about the lower leg, but with full seats.
These, as I afterward learned, were Turks from Anatolia. Their
guttural speech mingled with the slow, drawling utterance of the
men from Vyátka, with the strong, quick phrases of the Bulgarians,
with the soft dialect of the Little Russians.
In Russia people were dying of starvation, and the famine had
driven hither representatives of nearly all the provinces which had
been overtaken by this disaster. They had separated into little
groups, in the endeavor of the natives of each place to cling
together, and only the cosmopolitan tramps were immediately
discernible by their independent aspect, and costumes, and their
peculiar turn of speech, which was that of men who still remained
under the dominion of the soil, having only temporarily severed their
connection with it, who had been torn from it by hunger, and had
not yet forgotten it. They were in all the groups: both among the
Vyátkans and among the Little Russians they felt themselves at
home, but the majority of them were assembled round the pile-
driver, because the work there was light, in comparison with the
work of the barrow-men and of the diggers.
When I approached them, they were standing with their hands
released from a hawser, waiting for the contractor to repair
something connected with the pulley of the pile-driver, which,
probably, was "eating into" the rope. He was poking about up aloft
on the wooden tower, and every now and then he would shout
down:
"Give way!"
Then they would tug lazily at the rope.
"Stop!... Give way once more! Stop! Go ahead!"
The leader of the singing,—a young fellow, long unshaved, with a
pock-marked face and a soldierly air,—shrugged his shoulders,
squinted his eyes to one side, cleared his throat, and started up:
"Into the earth the pile-driver rams the stake...."
The verse which followed would not pass muster with even the most
lenient censor, and evoked an unanimous burst of laughter, which,
evidently, proved that it was an impromptu, composed on the spot
by the singer, who, as his comrades laughed, twirled his mustache
with the air of an artist who is accustomed to that sort of success
with his audience.
"Go a-he-ead!" roared the contractor fiercely from the summit of the
pile-driver.—"Stop your neighing!...
"Don't gape, Mitritch,—you'll burst!"—one of the workmen warned
him.
The voice was familiar to me, and somewhere or other I had seen
before that tall, broad-shouldered figure, with the oval face, and
large, blue eyes. Was it Konováloff? But Konováloff had not the scar
running from the right temple to the bridge of the nose, which
intersected the lofty brow of this young fellow; Konováloff's hair was
of a lighter hue, and did not crisp in such small curls as this fellow's;
Konováloff had a handsome, broad beard, but this man was clean-
shaven as to his chin, and wore a thick mustache, whose ends
drooped downward, in Little Russian fashion. Yet, nevertheless,
there was something about him which I knew well. I made up my
mind to enter into conversation with him, in particular, as the person
to whom I should apply, in order to "get a job," and assumed a
waiting attitude, until they should have finished driving the pile.
"O-o-okh! O-o-okh!"—the crowd heaved a mighty sigh as they
squatted down, hauled away on the ropes, and again swiftly
straightened themselves up, as though on the point of tearing
themselves from the ground, and taking flight through the air. The
pile-driver steamed and quivered, above the heads of the crowd rose
their bare, sun-burned, hairy arms, hauling in unison on the rope;
their muscles swelled out like wens, but the piece of cast-iron,
twenty puds in weight,[15] flew upwards to a constantly lessening
height, and its blow upon the wood sounded more and more faintly.
Anyone watching this work might have thought that this was a
throng of idolaters, engaged in prayer, uplifting their arms, in despair
and ecstasy, to their silent God, and bowing down before him. Their
faces, bathed in sweat, dirty, strained in expression, with dishevelled
hair, which clung to their damp brows, their light-brown necks, their
shoulders quivering with intensity of effort,—all those bodies, barely
covered with tattered shirts and trousers of motley hues, filled the
air roundabout them with their hot exhalations, and melting together
in one heavy mass of muscles, moved restlessly about in the humid
atmosphere, impregnated with the sultriness of the southland, and
the dense odor of sweat.
[15] Seven hundred and twenty pounds.—Translator.

"Enough!"—shouted someone, in an angry, cracked voice.

The hands of the workmen dropped the ropes, and they hung limply
down the sides of the pile-driver, while the laborers sank down
heavily, where they stood, upon the ground, wiping away the sweat,
breathing hard, feeling of their shoulders, and filling the air with a
dull murmur, which resembled the roaring of a huge, irritated wild
beast.
"Fellow-countryman!"—I addressed myself to the young fellow
whom I had picked out.
He turned indolently toward me, ran his eyes over my face, and
puckering them up, stared intently at me.
"Konováloff!"
"Hold on...." he thrust my head backward with his hand, exactly as
though he were about to seize me by the throat, and suddenly
lighted up all over with a joyful, kindly smile.
"Maxím! Akh—curse you! My friend ... hey? And so you have broken
loose from your career? You have enlisted in the barefoot brigade?
Well, that's good! Now, it's truly fine! A vagabond—and that's all
there is to it! Have you been so long? Where do you come from?
Now you and I will tramp all over the earth! What a life ... that there
behind us, isn't it? Downright misery, long drawn out; you don't live,
you rot! But I've been roaming the fair world ever since then, my
boy. What places I've been in! What air I have breathed.... No,
you've improved cleverly ... one wouldn't know you again: from your
clothing, one would think you a soldier, from your phiz, a student!
Well, what do you think of it, isn't it fine to live so ... moving from
place to place? For, you see, I remember Sténka ... and Tarás, and
Pilá ... everything."
He punched me in the ribs with his fist, slapped me on the shoulder
with his broad palm, exactly as though he were preparing a
beefsteak out of me. I could not interpose a single word into the
volley of his questions, and only smiled,—very foolishly, in all
probability,—as I gazed at his kind face, which was radiant with
satisfaction over our meeting. I, also, was very glad to see him; this
meeting with him recalled to me the beginning of my life, which,
undoubtedly, was better than its continuation.
At last, I managed, somehow, to ask my old friend, whence came
that scar on his brow and those curls on his head.
"Why that, you see ... was a scrape. I undertook, with a couple of
my chums, to make my way across the Roumanian frontier; we
wanted to take a look at things in Roumania. Well, so we set out
from Kalúga,—which is a small place in Bessarábia, close to the
frontier. We went quietly on our way—by night, of course. All of a
sudden: 'Halt!' The custom-house cordon had crawled straight down
on it. Well, of course, we took to our heels! Then one insignificant
little soldier hit me a whack over the pate. He didn't strike very hard,
but, nevertheless, I lay in hospital about a month. And what an affair
it was! It turned out that the soldier was from the same part of the
country as myself! We were both Muróm men.... He was brought to
the hospital, too, not long after—a smuggler had spoiled him by
sticking a knife into his belly. We made it up between us, and got
things straightened out. The soldier asks me: 'Did I slash you?'-'It
must have been you, since you confess it.'—'I had to,' says he; 'don't
you cherish a grudge,' says he, 'that's part of our service. We
thought you were travelling with smuggled goods. Here,' says he,
'this is the way they treated me—they ripped my belly open. It can't
be helped; life is a serious game.'—Well, and so he and I struck up a
friendship. He was a good little soldier—was Yáshka Mázin.... And
my curls? Curls? The curls, my boy, came after the typhoid fever. I've
had the typhoid fever. They put me in jail in Kishinéff, with the
intention of trying me for crossing the frontier illegally, and there I
developed typhoid fever.... I lay there and lay there with it, and
came near never getting up from it. And, in all probability, I
shouldn't have recovered, only the nurse took a great deal of pains
with me. I was simply astonished, my boy—she fussed over me as
though I were a baby, and what did she care about me? 'Márya
Petróvna,' I used to say to her, 'just drop that; I'm downright
ashamed.' But she only kept laughing. She was a nice girl.... She
sometimes read me soul-saving books. 'Well, now,' says I, 'aren't
there any books;' says I, 'like ...' you know the sort. She brought a
book about an English sailor, who was saved from a shipwreck on an
uninhabited island, and created a new life for himself there. It was
interesting, awfully interesting! That book pleased me greatly; I'd
have liked to go there, to him. You understand, what sort of a life it
was? An island, the sea, the sky,—you live there alone by yourself,
and you have everything and you are entirely free! There was a
savage there, too. Well, I'd have drowned the savage—what the
devil should I want him for, hey? I don't get bored all alone. Have
you read any such book?"
"Wait. Well, and how did you get out of prison?"
"They let me out. They tried me, acquitted me, and released me. It
was very simple.... See here, I won't work any more to-day, devil
take it! It's all right, I've rattled my arms round hard enough, and it's
time to stop. I have three rubles on hand, and for this half day's
work I shall get forty kopéks.[16] See what a big capital! That means
that you're to come home to where we live. We're not in the
barracks, but yonder, in the vicinity of the town ... there's a hole
there, so very convenient for human habitation.... Two of us have
our quarters in it, but my chum is ailing ... he's bothered with
fever.... Well, now, you sit here while I go to the contractor ... I'll be
back soon!"
[16] About half these amounts in dollars and cents.—Translator.
He rose swiftly, and walked off just at the moment when the men
who were driving piles took hold of the ropes, and began their work.
I remained sitting on a stone, looking at the noisy bustle which
reigned around me, and at the blue-green sea. Konováloff's tall
form, slipping swiftly among the laborers, the heaps of stone,
lumber, and barrows, vanished in the distance. He walked,
flourishing his hands, clad in a blue creton blouse, which was too
short and too tight for him, crash drawers, and heavy boot-slippers.
His cap of chestnut curls waved over his huge head. From time to
time he turned round, and made some sort of signals to me with his
hands. He was so entirely new, somehow, so animated, calmly
confident, amiable, and powerful. Everywhere around him men were
at work, wood was cracking, stone was being laid, barrows were
screeching dolefully, clouds of dust were rising, something fell with a
roar, and men were shouting and swearing, sighing and singing as
though they were groaning. Amid all this confusion of sounds and
movements, the handsome figure of my friend, as it retreated from
it with firm strides, constantly tacking from side to side, stood out
very sharply, and seemed to present a hint of something which
explained Konováloff.
Three hours after we met, he and I were lying in the "hole, very
convenient for human habitation." As a matter of fact, the "hole"
was extremely convenient—stone had been taken out of the
mountain at some distant period, and a large, rectangular niche had
been hewn out, in which four persons could have lodged with
perfect comfort. But it was low-studded, and over its entrance hung
a block of stone, which formed a sort of pent-house, so that, in
order to get into the hole, one was forced to lie flat on the ground in
front of it, and then shove himself in. It was seven feet in depth, but
it was not necessary to crawl into it head foremost, and, indeed, this
was risky, for the block of stone over the entrance might slide down,
and completely bury us there. We did not wish this to happen, and
managed in this way: we thrust our legs and bodies into the hole,
where it was very cool, but left our heads out in the sun, in the
opening of the hole, so that if the block of stone should take a
notion to fall, it would crush only our skulls.
The sick tramp had got the whole of himself out into the sun, and
lay a couple of paces from us, so that we could hear his teeth
chattering in a paroxysm of fever. He was a long, gaunt Little
Russian: "from Piltáva, and, prehaps, from Kieff...." he told me
pensively.[17]
[17] "Piltáva," for Poltáva; and "prehaps" are respectively, actual
and approximated specimens of the Little Russian pronunciation;
though this brief sentence contains a third not easily reproduced.
—Translator.
"A man lives so much in the world, that it's of no consequence if he
does forget where he was born ... and what difference does it make,
anyway? It's bad enough to be born, and knowing where.... doesn't
make it any the better!"
He rolled about on the ground, in the endeavor to wrap himself as
snugly as possible in a gray overcoat, patched together out of
nothing but holes, and swore very picturesquely, when he perceived
that all his efforts were futile—he swore, but continued to wrap
himself up. He had small, black eyes, which were constantly
puckered up, as though he were inspecting something very intently.
The sun baked the backs of our necks intolerably, and Konováloff
constructed from my military cloak something in the nature of a
screen, driving sticks into the ground, and stretching my costume
over them. Still, it was stifling. From afar there was wafted to us the
dull roar of toil on the bay, but we did not see it; to the right of us,
on the shore, lay the town in heavy masses of white houses, to our
left—was the sea,—in front of us, the sea again, extending off into
immeasurable distance, where marvellous, tender colors, never
before beheld, which soothed the eye and the soul by the
indescribable beauty of their tints, were intermingled, through soft
half-tones, into a fantastic mirage.
Konováloff gazed in that direction, smiled blissfully, and said to me:
"When the sun has set, we will light up a bonfire, and boil some
water for tea: we have bread, and meat. But, in the meanwhile,
would you like a cantaloupe or a watermelon?"
With his foot he rolled a watermelon out from a corner of the hole,
pulled a knife out of his pocket, and as he operated upon the
watermelon with it, he remarked: "Every time that I am by the sea, I
keep wondering why so few people settle down near it. They would
be the better for it, because it is soothing and sort of ... good
thoughts come from it into a man's soul. But come, tell how you
have been living yourself all these years."
I began to tell him. He listened; the ailing little Russian paid no
attention whatever to us, as he roasted himself in the sun, which
was already sinking into the sea. And in the far distance, the sea
was already covered with crimson and gold, and out of it, to meet
the sun, rose clouds of a pinkish-smoke color, with soft outlines. It
seemed as though mountains with white peaks, sumptuously
adorned with snow and rosy in the rays of the sunset, were rising
from the depths of the sea. From the bay floated the mournful
melody of "The Little Oaken Cudgel," and the roar of blasts of
dynamite, which were destroying the mountain.... The rocks and
inequalities of the soil in front of us cast shadows on the ground,
and these, as they imperceptibly lengthened, crept over us.
"It's downright no good for you to haunt the towns, Maxím,"—said
Konováloff persuasively, after he had listened to my epic narrative.
—"And what is it that draws you to them? The life there is tainted
and close. There's neither air, nor space, nor anything else that a
man needs. People? What the devil do you want with them? You're
an intelligent man, you can read and write, what are people to you?
What do you need from them? And then, there are people
everywhere...."
"Ehe!" interposed the Little Russian, as he writhed on the ground
like an adder.—"There are people everywhere ... lots of them; a man
can't pass to his own place without treading on their feet. Why, they
are born in countless numbers! They're like mushrooms after a
shower ... and even the gentry eat them!" He spat philosophically,
and again began to chatter his teeth.
"Well, so far as you are concerned, I say it again,"—continued
Konováloff,—"don't you live in the towns. What is there there?
Nothing but ill-health and disorder. Books? Well, I think you must
have read books enough by this time! You certainly weren't born for
that.... Yes, and books are—trash! Well, buy one, and put it in your
wallet, and start out. Do you want to go to Tashként with me? Or to
Samarkánd, or where? And then we'll have a try at the Amúr—is it a
bargain? I, my boy, have made up my mind to walk over the earth in
various directions—that's the very best thing to do.... You walk
along, and you're always seeing something new.... And you don't
think of anything.... The breeze blows in your face, and it seems to
drive all sorts of dust out of the soul. You feel light-hearted and
free.... Nobody interferes with you: if you feel hungry, you come to a
halt, and earn half a ruble by some sort of work; if there isn't any
work, you ask for bread, and you'll get it. In that way, you'll see a
great deal of the world, at any rate.... All sorts of beauty.... Come
on!"
The sun set. The clouds over the sea darkened, the sea also grew
dim, and wafted forth a refreshing coolness. Here and there stars
shone out, the hum of toil on the bay ceased, and only now and
then were exclamations of the men, soft as sighs, borne thence to
us. And when the light breeze breathed upon us, it brought with it
the melancholy sound of the breaking of the waves against the
shore.
The nocturnal gloom speedily grew more dense, and the figure of
the Little Russian, which five minutes previously had perfectly
definite outlines, now looked like nothing but an uncouth clod ...
"We ought to have a fire...." he said, coughing.
"We will...."
Konováloff pulled out a pile of chips from somewhere or other, set
fire to them with a match, and thin tongues of flame began
caressingly to lick the yellow, resinous wood. Slender streams of
smoke curled through the night air, filled with the moisture and
freshness of the sea. And everything grew quieter round about: ...
life seemed to have withdrawn from us somewhither, and its sounds
melted and were extinguished in mist. The clouds dispersed, stars
began to glitter in the dark-blue sky, and upon the velvety surface of
the sea, also, faintly flickered the tiny lights of fishing-boats, and the
reflections of the stars. The fire in front of us blossomed out, like a
huge, reddish-yellow flower.... Konováloff thrust the teapot into it,
and clasping his knees, began to stare thoughtfully into the blaze.
And the Little Russian, like a big lizard, crawled up, and lay down
near it.
"People have built towns, houses, have assembled together there in
heaps, and defile the earth, sigh, crowd one another.... A nice life
that! No, this is life, this, such as we...."
"Oho!"—the Little Russian shook his head,—"if we could only
manage to get a fur coat, or a warm hut in it for the winter, we'd live
like lords...." He screwed up one eye, and looked at Konováloff, with
a laugh.
"We-ell," said the latter abashed,—"winter—is ... a thrice-accursed
time. Towns really are needed for the winter ... you can't get along
without them.... But the big towns are no good, all the same.... Why
cram people into such heaps, when two or three can't get along
together?—That's what I was talking about. Of course, when you
come to think of it, there's no room for a man either in the town, or
in the steppe, or anywhere else. But it's better not to think of such
things ... you can't think out anything, and you only harrow your
soul...."
Up to this point I had thought that Konováloff had been changed by
his vagrant life, that the excrescences of sadness which were on his
heart during the first period of our acquaintance had fallen away
from him, like a husk, from the action of the free air which he had
breathed during those years; but the tone of his last phrase
rehabilitated before me my friend as still the same man, seeking a
point of support for himself, whom I had known before. The same
rust of ignorance in the face of life, and venom of thoughts about it,
were still corroding that powerful form, which had been born, to its
misfortune, with a sensitive heart. There are many such "meditative"
people in Russian life, and they are all more unhappy than anyone
else, because the heaviness of their meditations is augmented by
the blindness of their minds. I gazed with compassion on my friend,
but he, as though confirming my thought, exclaimed, sadly:
"I have recalled that life of ours, Maxím, and all that—took place
there. How much ground I have covered since then in my roamings,
how much, of all sorts, I have seen ... No, for me there is nothing
suitable on earth! I have not found my place!"
"Then why were you born with a neck that no yoke will fit?" inquired
the Little Russian indifferently, taking the boiling teapot out of the
fire.
"No, do you tell me,..." inquired Konováloff,—"why I can't be easy?
Hey? Why do people live on, and feel all right, busy themselves with
their affairs, have wives, children, and all the rest of it ... they
complain of life, but they are easy. And they always want to do this,
that, or the other. But I—can't. Why do things disgust me?"
"There's that man jawing,"—remarked the Little Russian in surprise.
—"Well, will you feel any the easier for your jawing?"
"That's so,..." assented Konováloff sadly.
"I always say little, but I know what I'm talking about," uttered the
stoic, with a consciousness of his own dignity, yet without ceasing to
contend with his fever.
"Let's drop that subject.... I was born, well, that means, live on, and
don't argue...." said Konováloff, this time viciously.
The Little Russian considered it necessary to add:
"And don't force yourself anywhere; the time will come when,
without your will, you must be dragged in and ground to dust ... Lie
still, and hold your tongue.... Neither our tongues nor our hands are
of any help to us...."
He articulated this, began to cough, wriggled about, and took to
spitting into the fire with exasperation. Around us everything was
obscure, curtained with a thick veil of gloom. The sky above us was
dark, also, the moon had not yet risen. We felt rather than saw the
sea—so dense was the mist in front of us. It seemed as though a
black fog had been lowered over the earth. The fire went out ...
"Let's lie down to sleep?" suggested the Little Russian.
We made our way into the "hole," and lay down, with our heads
thrust out into the open air. We were silent. Konováloff remained
motionless, as though turned to stone, in the attitude in which he
lay down. The Little Russian thrashed about incessantly, and his
teeth kept chattering. I stared, for a long while, at the smouldering
coals of the fire: at first brilliant and large, the coals gradually grew
smaller, became covered with ashes, and disappeared beneath them.
And soon nothing was left of the fire, except the warm odor. I gazed
and thought:
"We are all of us like that.... The point is, to blaze up as brightly as
possible!"
Three days later I took leave of Konováloff. I was going to the
Kubán, he did not wish to go. But we both parted with the conviction
that we should meet again on earth.
It has not come to pass....
 THE KHAN AND HIS SON

"... In the Crimea there was a Khan Mosolaïma el Asvab, and he had
a son, Tolaïk Alhalla...."
With his back propped against the brilliant light-brown trunk of an
arbutus-tree, a blind beggar, a Tatár, began, in these words, one of
the ancient legends of the peninsula, which is rich in its memories,
and round about the storyteller, on stone fragments of the palace of
the khans, destroyed by time, sat a group of Tatárs in gay-colored
kaftans and flat caps embroidered with gold. It was evening, and the
sun was sinking softly into the sea; its red rays penetrated the dark
mass of verdure around the ruins, and fell in brilliant spots upon the
stones, overgrown with moss, enmeshed in the clinging greenery of
the ivy. The breeze rustled in a clump of aged plane-trees, and their
leaves fluttered as though brooks of water, invisible to the eye, were
rippling through the air.
The voice of the blind beggar was weak, and trembled, but his stony
face expressed in its wrinkles nothing except repose; the words he
had learned by heart flowed on, one after the other, and before the
hearers rose up a picture of past days, rich in the power of emotion.
"The Khan was old," said the blind man, "but he had a great many
women in his harem. And they loved the old man, because he still
had a good deal of strength and fire, and his caresses soothed and
burned, and women will always love those who know how to caress
strongly, be the man a gray-beard, or even if he have wrinkles on his
countenance—for there is beauty in strength, but not in a soft skin
and a ruddy cheek.
"They all loved the Khan, but he loved a kazák-prisoner maid, from
the steppes of the Dnyépr, and always liked more to fondle her than
the other women of his harem, his great harem, where there were
three hundred women from divers lands, and they were all as
beautiful as the flowers of spring, and they all lived well. Many were
the sweet and dainty viands which the Khan ordered to be prepared
for them, and he always permitted them to dance and play
whenever they desired to do so..."
"But his kazák he often summoned to his own quarters in the tower,
from which the sea was visible, and where he had everything for the
kazák girl that a woman can want, that her life might be merry:
sweet wine, and various fabrics, and gold, and precious stones of all
colors, and music, and rare birds from distant countries, and the
fiery caresses of the amorous Khan. In this tower he amused himself
with her for whole days together, resting from the cares of his life,
and knowing that his son Alhalla would not lower the glory of the
Khan, as he galloped like a wolf over the Russian steppes, always
returning thence with rich booty, with fresh women, with fresh glory,
leaving there, behind him, terror and ashes, corpses and blood.
"Once he, Alhalla, returned from a raid on the Russians, and many
festivals were arranged in his honor; all the murzas of the island
assembled at them, and there were banquets and games, and they
fired arrows from their bows into the eyes of the prisoners, testing
their strength of arm, and again they drank, lauding the valor of
Alhalla, the terror of enemies, the mainstay of the Khanate. And the
old Khan rejoiced exceedingly at the glory of his son.—It was good
for him, that old man, to behold in his son such a dashing warrior,
and to know that when he, the old man, came to die, the Khanate
would be in stout hands.
"It was good for him to know that, and so, being desirous to show
his son the strength of his love, he said to him, in the presence of all
the murzas and beys there, at the feast, beaker in hand, he said:
"I Thou art a good son, Alhalla! Glory be to Allah, and glorified be
the name of his prophet!'
"And all glorified the name of the prophet in a chorus of mighty
voices. Then the Khan said:
"'Great is Allah! Already, during my lifetime, he has renewed my
youth in my gallant son, and now, with my aged eyes, I perceive
that when the sun shall be hidden from them,—and when the worms
shall devour my breast,—I shall still live on in my son! Great is Allah,
and Mahomet is his true prophet! I have a good son, his arm is
strong, and his heart is bold, and his mind is clear.... What wilt thou
take from the hand of thy father, Alhalla? Tell me, and I will give
thee everything, according to thy desire.'
"And the sound of the old Khan's voice had not yet died away when
Tolaïk Alhalla rose to his feet, and said, with flashing eyes, black as
the sea by night and blazing like the eyes of the mountain eagle:
"'Give me the Prussian prisoner, my sovereign father."
"The Khan spake not—for a space he said no word, for so long as
was required to crush the shudder in his heart,—and, after this
pause, he said, boldly and firmly:
"'Take her! Let us finish the feast, and then thou shalt take her.'
"Gallant Alhalla flushed all over, his eagle eyes flashed with the
greatness of his joy; he rose to his full height, and said to his father-
Khan:
"'I know what thou dost give me, sovereign father! I know ... I am
thy slave—thy son. Take my blood, a drop an hour—twenty deaths
will I die for thee!'
"'I require nothing!' said the Khan, and bowed his gray head,
crowned with the glory of long years and many feats, upon his
breast.
"Speedily did they finish the feast, and the two went silently, side by
side, from the palace to the harem.
"The night was dark, and neither moon nor stars were visible for the
clouds which covered the heaven like a thick carpet.
"Long did the father and son walk through the darkness, and now
the Khan el Asvab spake:
"'Day by day my life is dying out, and my old heart beats more and
more feebly, and less and still ever less is there of fire in my breast.
The fervent caresses of the kazák woman have been the light and
warmth of my life.... Tell me, Tolaïk, tell me, is she so necessary to
thee? Take a hundred, take all my wives, save only her!...'
"Tolaïk Alhalla made no reply, but sighed.
"'How many days are left to me? Few are my days on earth.... She is
the last joy of my life,—that Russian girl. She knows me, she loves
me,—who will love me now, when I no longer have her—me, an old
man, who? Not one among them all, not one, Alhalla!'
"Alhalla said no word.
"'How shall I live, knowing that thou art embracing her, that she is
kissing thee? To a woman, there is no such thing as father or son,
Tolaïk! To a woman, we are all men, my son.... Painful will it be for
me to live out my days.... Bather let all the ancient wounds on my
body open again, Tolaïk, and let them shed my blood—rather let me
not survive this night, my son!'
"His son remained silent ... They halted at the door of the harem,
and silently, bowing their heads on their breasts, they stood long
before it. Gloom was round about them, and clouds raced across the
sky, while the wind shook the trees, as though it were singing some
song to them.
"'I have loved her long, father!,' said Alhalla softly.
"'I know ... and I know that she does not love thee,' said the Khan.
"'My heart is rent when I think of her.'
"'And with what is my aged heart filled now?'
"And again they fell silent. Alhalla sighed.
"''Tis plain that the wise mullah told me the truth-a woman is always
injurious to a man: when she is handsome, she arouses in others the
desire to possess her, and she delivers her husband over to the
pangs of jealousy; when she is ugly, her husband, envying others,
suffers from envy; but if die is neither handsome nor ugly,—a man
imagines her very handsome, and when he comes to understand
that he has made a mistake, he suffers again through her, that
woman.'
"'Wisdom is not medicine for an aching heart ...' said the Khan.
"'Let us have compassion on each other, father ...'
"The Khan raised his head, and gazed sadly at his son.
"'Let us kill her,' said Tolaïk.
"'Thou lovest thyself more than her and me,—' said the Khan softly,
after meditating for a space.
"'Surely, it is the same with thee.'
"And again they fell silent.
"'Yes! And I, also,'—said the Khan mournfully. He had become a
child through grief.
"'Well, shall we kill her?'
"'I cannot give her up to thee, I cannot,' said the Khan.
"'And I cannot endure it any longer—tear out my heart, or give her
to me....'
"The Khan made no reply.
"'Or let us fling her into the sea from the mountain,'
"'Let us fling her into the sea from the mountain,' the Khan repeated
his son's words, like the echo of his son's voice.
"And then they entered the harem, where she already lay asleep
upon the floor, on a rich rug. They paused in front of her and gazed;
long did they gaze upon her. Tears trickled from the old Khan's eyes
upon his silvery beard and gleamed in it like pearls, but his son
stood with flashing eyes, and gnashing his teeth, to restrain his
passion. He aroused the kazák girl. She awoke, and on her face,
tender and rosy as the dawn, her blue eyes blossomed like corn-
flowers. She did not perceive Alhalla, and stretched out her scarlet
lips to the Khan.
"'Kiss me, old eagle!'
"'Make ready ... thou must come with us,'—said the Khan softly.
"Then she saw Alhalla, and the tears in the eyes of her eagle, and
she understood all, for she was clever.
"'I come,' she said,—'I come. I am to belong neither to the one nor
to the other—is that what you have decided That is how the strong
of heart should decide. I come.'
"And silently they all three went toward the sea. Through narrow
ways they went, and the breeze rustled, rustled sonorously....
"She was tender, the girl, and wearied soon, but she was proud also
—and would not tell them so.
"And when the Khan's son observed that she did not keep pace with
them, he said to her:
"'Art thou afraid?'
"She gave him a flashing glance, and showed him her bleeding foot.
"'Come, I will carry thee!'—said Alhalla, reaching out his arms to her.
But she threw her arms around the neck of her old eagle. The Khan
raised her in his arms, like a feather, and carried her; and she, as
she sat in his arms, thrust aside the boughs of the trees from his
face, fearing that they would strike his eyes. Long did they journey
thus, and lo! the roar of the sea could be heard in the distance.
Then Tolaïk—he walked behind them in the path—said to his father:
"'Let me go on ahead, for I want to stab thee in the neck with my
dagger.'
"'Pass on—Allah will take vengeance on thee for thy desire, or
forgive thee—as he wills,—but I, thy father, forgive thee. I know
what it means to love.'
"And lo! the sea lay before them, yonder below, black and shoreless.
Its waves chanted dully at the very base of the cliff, and it was dark
and cold and terrible there below.
"'Farewell!' said the Khan, as he kissed the girl.
"'Farewell!' said Alhalla, and bowed low before her.
"'She glanced out afar, where the waves were singing, and staggered
back, pressing her hands to her breast ...
"'Throw me!' she said to them.
"Alhalla stretched out his hands to her and groaned, but the Khan
took her in his arms, pressed her close to his breast, kissed her, and
raising her high over his head,—he flung her from the cliff.
"There the waves were plashing and singing so noisily that neither of
them heard when she reached the water. They heard no cry,
nothing. The Khan sank down upon a stone, and began to gaze
downward in silence into the darkness and distance, where the sea
merged into the clouds, whence noisily floated the dull beating of
the billows, whence flew the wind which fluttered the Khan's gray
beard. Tolaïk stood over him, covering his face with his hands,
motionless and silent as a stone. Time passed, and athwart the sky
the clouds floated past, one after another, driven by the wind. Dark
and heavy were they, as the thoughts of the aged Khan, who lay on
the lofty cliff above the sea.
"'Let us go, father,' said Tolaïk.
"'Wait,'—whispered the Khan, as though listening to something.
"And again much time elapsed, and still the waves beat below, and
the wind flew to the cliff, making a noise in the trees.
"'Let us go, father.'
"'Wait a little longer ...'
"More than once did Tolaïk Alhalla say:
"'Let us go, father.'
"But still the Khan stirred not from the place, where he had lost the
joy of his last days.
"But—all things have an end!—he rose, strong and proud, rose,
knitted his brows, and said in a dull tone:
"'Let us go.'
"They went, but the Khan speedily halted.
"'Why am I going and whither, Tolaïk?'—he asked his son.—? Why
should I live now, when all my life was in her? I am old, no one will
love me more, and if no one loves thee—it is senseless to live in the
world.'
"'Thou hast glory and riches, father ...'
"'Give me but one kiss of hers, and take all that to thyself as reward.
All that is dead, the love of woman alone is alive. There is no such
love, there is no life in a man, a beggar is he, and pitiful are his
days. Farewell, my son, the blessing of Allah be on thy head, and
remain there all the days and nights of thy life.' And the Khan turned
his face seaward.
"'Father,'—said Tolaïk, 'father!...' He could say no more, for there is
nothing that one can say to a man on whom death smiles, and
nothing canst thou say to him which shall restore to his soul the love
of life.
"'Let me go ...'
"'Allah ...'
"'He knows ...'
With swift strides the Khan approached the brink, and hurled himself
down. His son did not hold him back, there was no time for that.
And again nothing was audible from the sea—neither shriek nor
noise of the Khan's fall. Only the waves plashed on there, and the
wind hummed wild songs.
"Long did Tolaïk Alhalla gaze below, and then he said aloud:
"'And grant me, also, as stout a heart, oh Allah!'
"'And then he went forth into the gloom of the night.
"Thus perished Khan Mosolaïma el Asvab, and Tolaïk Alhalla became
Khan of the Crimea."

THE EXORCISM

Along the village street, between rows of white-plastered cottages, a

strange procession is moving along, with wild howls.
A crowd of people is walking along, walking slowly, in dense ranks,—
moving like a huge wave, and in front of it strides a miserable little
horse, a comically woolly little nag, with head drooping low. As it lifts
a fore foot, it shakes its head strangely, as though it wanted to
thrust its woolly muzzle into the dust of the road, and when it moves
a hind foot, its crupper settles down toward the earth, and it seems
as though the horse were on the point of falling.
Bound to the front of the peasant cart, with a rope about her wrists,
is a small, entirely nude woman, almost a girl in years. She walks
rather strangely—sideways, her head, with its thick, dishevelled hair
of a dark chestnut hue, is raised and thrown a little backward, her
eyes are opened widely and are gazing off into the distance with a
dull, unintelligent look, which has nothing human about it. Her whole
body is covered with blue and dark-red spots, both circular and
oblong; her left breast, elastic, maidenly, is cleft, and from it the
blood is dripping.... It forms a crimson streak on her body, and down
along the left leg to the knee, while on her lower leg it is concealed
by a light-brown coating of dust It seems as though a long, narrow
strip of skin had been flayed from the woman's body, which must
have undergone a prolonged beating with a club,—it is monstrously
swollen and horribly blue all over.
The woman's feet, small and well-shaped, hardly tread the dust; her
whole body is terribly bent over, and sways from side to side, and it
is impossible to understand how she can still stand on her legs,
thickly covered, like her whole body, with bruises, why she does not
fall to the ground, and, suspended by her arms, is not dragged after
the cart along the hot, dusty road....
And in the cart stands a tall peasant in a white shirt, a black
lambskin cap, from beneath which, intersecting his brow, hangs a
lock of bright-red hair; in one hand he grasps the reins, in the other
a whip, and methodically bestows one lash upon the back of the
nag, and one upon the body of the little woman, already beaten until
it has lost the semblance of a human being. The eyes of the red-
headed man are suffused with blood, and gleam with evil triumph.
His hair blends with their greenish hue. His shirt-sleeves, stripped up
to the elbow, display strong, muscular arms, thickly overgrown with
reddish hair; his mouth, filled with sharp, white teeth, is open, and
from time to time the peasant shouts hoarsely:
"Gi-ive it to her ... the wi-itch! Hey! Gi-ive it to her! Aha! Here
goes!... Isn't that the thing, comrades?...."
And behind the cart and the woman bound to it, the crowd surges
on in billows, shouting, howling, whistling, laughing, shouting the
hunting cry ... teasing.... Wretched little boys are running alongside.
Now and then one of them darts ahead, and shouts foul words in
the woman's ear. Then a burst of laughter from the crowd drowns all
other sounds, and the piercing whistle of the whiplash through the
air.... Women are walking there, with excited faces, and eyes
sparkling with satisfaction.... There are men, also, who shout
something disgusting to the man in the cart.... He turns round
toward them, and roars with laughter, opening his mouth very wide.
A blow with the whip on the woman's back.... The long, thin whip
curls round her shoulders, and now it lashes her under the armpit.
Then the peasant who is flogging her draws the lash strongly toward
him; the woman utters a shrill cry, and, throwing herself backward,
falls on her back in the dust. Many of the crowd spring toward her,
and hide her from sight with their bodies, as they bend over her.
The horse stops short, but, a moment later, moves on again, and the
unmercifully beaten woman moves along with the cart as before.
And the wretched nag, as it paces slowly onward, keeps shaking its
woolly head, as though it wanted to say:
"See how vile a thing it is to be a beast! They can force you to take
part in every sort of abominable thing!"
And the sky, the sky of the south, is perfectly clear,—there is not a
single cloud, and from it the summer sun lavishly pours out its
burning rays.

This, which I have written above, is not an allegorical description of

the persecution and torture of a prophet, who has no honor in his
own country,—no, unfortunately, it is not that! It is called an
"exorcism." Thus do husbands punish their wives for infidelity; this is
a picture from life, a custom,—and I beheld it in the year 1891, on
the 15th of July, in the village of Kandybóvko, Government of
Khersón.

MEN WITH PASTS

I.

Vyézhaya (Entrance) Street consists of two rows of aged, one-story

hovels, squeezed closely one against the other, with leaning walls
and windows all awry; the hole-ridden roofs of these human
habitations, thus crippled by time, are mottled with patches of the
inner bark of the linden-tree, and overgrown with moss; above
them, here and there, project tall poles surmounted by starling-
houses, and they are shaded by the dusty verdure of elderberry
bushes and crooked willows, the scanty flora of the town suburbs
inhabited by poverty.
The window-panes of the tiny houses, of a turbid-green hue through
age, stare at each other with the glances of cowardly sharpers. Up-
hill, through the middle of the street, crawls a winding cart-track,
which tacks back and forth among deep gullies, washed out by the
rains. Here and there lie heaps of broken bricks and other rubbish,
overgrown with high grass—representing the remnants or the
beginnings of the constructions, unsuccessfully undertaken by the
inhabitants in their fight with the floods of rain-water, which flow like
torrents from the town. Up above, on the crest of the hill, handsome
stone houses conceal themselves amid the luxuriant verdure of thick
gardens, and the belfries of churches rise proudly into the blue sky,
their golden crosses glitter dazzlingly in the sun.
During rains, the town sends its dirt down upon Vyézhaya Street; in
dry weather, it sprinkles it with dust,—and all these deformed little
houses look as though they, also, had been flung out of it, swept
forth, like rubbish, by some mighty hand.
Flattened down against the earth, they were sprinkled all over the
hill, half-decayed, infirm, decorated by sun, dust, and rain with that
dirty grayish hue which defies description that wood acquires with
age.
At the extremity of this wretched street, flung out of the town to the
bottom of the hill, stood a long, two-story deserted house, which
had escheated to the town, and had been purchased from the town
by merchant Petúnnikoff. It was the last in the line, standing at the
very foot of the hill, and beyond it extended a wide plain,
intersected, half a verst from the house, by a steep declivity
descending to the river.
This large and very aged house possessed the most gloomy aspect
of all among its neighbors. It was all askew, in its two rows of
windows there was not a single one which had preserved its regular
shape, and the splinters of glass in the shattered frames had the
turbidly-greenish hue of swamp water.
The walls between the windows were streaked with cracks and dark
spots of peeling stucco—as though time had written its biography on
the walls of the house in these hieroglyphs. The roof, which sloped
toward the street, still further increased its rueful aspect—it seemed
as though the house had bent down to the ground, and was
submissively awaiting from Fate the final blow which should convert
it into dust, into a shapeless heap of half-rotten fragments.
The gate stood open—one half of it, torn from its hinges, lay on the
ground, and through the crevices between its planks had sprouted
the grass, which thickly covered the desert courtyard of the house.
At the far end of this courtyard stood a low, smoke-begrimed
building with an iron roof, of one slant. The house itself was, of
course, uninhabitable, but in this building, which had formerly been
the blacksmith's shop, there was now installed a "night lodging-
house," kept by Aristíd Fómitch Kuválda,[1] retired captain of cavalry.
[1] Kuválda means a mallet; or, figuratively, a clown.—Translator.
The interior of the night lodging-house presented a long, gloomy
burrow, four fathoms by ten; it was lighted on one side by four
small, square windows, and a broad door. Its unplastered brick walls
were black with soot, the ceiling, of barge-bottom wood,[2] was also
smoked until it was black; in the middle of the place stood a huge
stove, for which the forge served as foundation, and around the
stove, and along the walls, ran wide sleeping-shelves with heaps of
all sorts of stuff, which served the lodgers as beds. The wall reeked
with smoke, the earthen floor reeked with dampness, from the
sleeping-shelves proceeded an odor of sweaty and decaying rags.
[2] The barges for transporting wood, and so forth, on Russian
rivers, are put together with huge wooden pegs. After being
unloaded, at their destination, they are broken up, and the hole-
riddled planks are sold at a very low price.—Translator.
The quarters of the lodging-house's proprietor were on the stove;
the sleeping-shelves around the stove were the places of honor, and
upon them the night-lodgers who enjoyed the favor and friendship
of the proprietor disposed themselves.
The cavalry captain always spent the day at the door of the night
lodging-house, seated in something after the likeness of an arm-
chair, which he had put together, with his own hands, out of bricks;
or in the eating-house of Egór Vavíloff, which was situated slantwise
opposite the Petúnnikoff house; there the captain dined and drank
vódka.
Before he hired these quarters, Aristíd Kuválda had had an
employment office for servants in the town; if we were to penetrate
further back in his past, we should discover that he had had a
printing-office, and before the printing-office he had—to use his own
language—"simply lived. And I lived magnificently, devil take it! I
may say, that I lived like a man who knows how!"
He was a broad-shouldered, tall man, fifty years of age, with a pock-
marked face which was bloated with intoxication, framed in a broad,
dirty-yellow beard. His eyes were gray, huge, audaciously jolly; he
spoke in a bass voice, with a rumbling in his throat, and from his lips
a German porcelain pipe, with a curved stem, almost always
projected. When he was angry, the nostrils of his huge, hooked,
bright-red nose became widely inflated, and his lips quivered,
revealing two rows of yellow teeth, as large as those of a wolf. Long-
armed, knock-kneed, always clad in a dirty and tattered officer's
cloak, a greasy cap with a red band but without a visor, and in
wretched felt boots, which reached to his knees—he was always in a
depressed state of drunken headache in the morning, while in the
evening he was jolly drunk. Drink as he would, he could not get
dead drunk, and he never lost his merry mood.
In the evenings, as he sat in his brick arm-chair, with his pipe in his
teeth, he received lodgers.
"Who are you?"—he inquired of the man who approached him, a
tattered, downtrodden individual who had been ejected from the
town for drunkenness, or who, for some other, no less solid reason,
had gone down hill.
The man replied.
"Present the legal document, in confirmation of your lies."
The document was presented, if there was one.[3] The captain
thrust it into his breast, rarely interesting himself in its contents, and
said:
"Everything is in order. Two kopéks a night, ten kopéks a week, by
the month—thirty kopéks. Go and occupy a place, but look out that
it doesn't belong to somebody else, or you'll get thrashed. The
people who live in my house are stern...."
[3] "Document" or (literally) "paper," here, as often, means the
passport.—Translator.
Novices asked him:
"And you don't deal in bread, tea or anything eatable?"
"I deal only in a wall and a roof, and for that I pay my rascally
landlord, Judas[4] Petúnnikoff, merchant of the second Guild, five
rubles a month,"—explained Kuválda, in a business-like tone; "the
people who come to me are not used to luxury ... and if you are
accustomed to gobble every day,—there's the eating-house opposite.
But it would be better if you, you wreck, would break yourself of that
bad habit. You're not a nobleman, you know,—so why should you
eat? Eat yourself!"
[4] As the reader will perceive, later on, Petúnnikoff's name was
not Iuda (Judas). This is Kuválda's sarcasm.—Translator.
For these and similar speeches, uttered in a tone of mock severity,
and always with laughing eyes, and for his courteous behavior to his
lodgers, the captain enjoyed wide popularity among the poor people
of the town. It often happened that a former patron of the captain
presented himself to him in the courtyard, no longer tattered and
oppressed, but in a more or less decent guise, and with a brisk
countenance.
"Good-day, your Well-Born! How's your health?"
"I'm well. I'm alive. Speak further."
"Don't you recognise me?"
"No."
"But you remember, I lived about a month with you in the winter ...
when that police round-up took place, and they gathered in three
men!"
"We-ell now, brother, the police are constantly visiting my hospitable
roof!"
"Akh, oh Lord! It was the time when you made that insulting gesture
at the police-captain!"
"Wait, spit on all memories, and say simply, what do you want?"
"Won't you accept a little treat from me? When I lived with you that
time, you treated me, so...."
"Gratitude ought to be encouraged, my friend, for it is rarely met
with among men. You must be a fine young fellow, and although I
don't remember you in the least, I'll accompany you to the dram-
shop with pleasure, and drink to your success in life with delight."
"And you're just the same as ever ... always joking?"
"But what else could I do, living among you unfortunates?"
They went. Sometimes the captain's former patron returned to the
lodging-house completely unscrewed and shaken lose by the treat;
on the following day, they both treated each other again, and one
fine morning, the former patron awoke with the consciousness that
he had once more drunk up his last penny.
"Your Well-Born! A misfortune has befallen me! I've got into your
squad again. What am I to do now?"
"A situation on which you are not to be congratulated, but, since you
are in it, it's not proper to be stingy,"—argued the captain.—"You
must bear yourself with indifference toward everything, not spoiling
your life with philosophy, and not putting questions. It is always
stupid to philosophize, and to philosophize when one has a drunken
headache—is inexpressibly stupid. A drunken headache demands
vódka, and not gnawings of conscience and gnashing of teeth.?.
spare your teeth, or there won't be anything to beat you on. Here
now, are twenty kopéks for you,—go and bring a measure of vódka,
five kopék's worth of hot tripe or lights, a pound of bread, and two
cucumbers. When we get rid of our headache, we'll consider the
situation of affairs."
The situation of affairs was defined with entire clearness, a couple of
days later, when the captain had not a kopék left out of the three-
ruble or five-ruble bank-note which he had had in his pocket on the
day when his grateful patron had made his appearance.
"We've arrived! Enough!"—said the cavalry captain. "Now that you
and I, you fool, have ruined ourselves with drink, let us try to enter
again upon the path of sobriety and virtue. How just is the saying: If
you don't sin, you don't repent, and if you don't repent, you won't be
saved. We have performed the first, but repentance is useless, so
let's save ourselves at once. Take yourself off to the river and work.
If you can't trust yourself, tell the contractor to retain your money, or
give it to me. When we have amassed a capital, I'll buy you some
trousers and the other things that are necessary to enable you to
appear again as a respectable and quiet toiler, persecuted by fate. In
new trousers you can go a long way! March!"
The patron took himself off to act as porter at the riverside, laughing
at the captain's long and wise speeches. He only dimly understood
their poignant wit, but he beheld before him the merry eyes, felt the
courageous spirit, and knew, that in the eloquent cavalry-captain he
had a hand which could uphold him in case of need.
And, as a matter of fact, after a month or two of hard labor the
patron, thanks to stem supervision of his conduct on the part of the
captain, was in possession of the material possibility of rising again a
step higher than the place to which he had descended through the
benevolent sympathy of that same captain.
"We-ell, my friend," said Kuválda, as he took a critical survey of his
restored patron,—"you have trousers and a pea-jacket. These
articles are of vast importance—trust my experience. As long as I
had decent trousers, I lived in the town, in the character of a
respectable man, but, devil take it, as soon as my trousers dropped
off, I fell in people's estimation, and was obliged to drop down here
myself, from the town. People, my very fine blockhead, judge of
everything by its form, but the essence of things is inaccessible to
them, because of men's inborn stupidity. Carve that on your nose,
and when you have paid me even one half of your debt, go in peace,
and seek, and thou shalt find!"
"How much do I owe you, Aristíd Fómitch?" inquired the patron in
confusion.
"One ruble and seventy kopéks ... Now give me a ruble or seventy
kopéks, and I'll wait for the rest until you have stolen or earned
more than you have now."
"Thank you most sincerely for your kindness!" said the patron, much
affected. "What a good sort of fellow you are, really! Ekh, life did
wrong in treating you hardly.... I think you must have been a regular
eagle in your own place?!"
The captain could not exist without speeches of declamatory
eloquence.
"What signifies 'in my own place?' No one knows his own place in
life, and everyone of us gets his head into someone else's harness.
The place for merchant Judas Petúnnikoff is among the hard-labor
exiles, but he walks about in broad day through the streets, and
even wants to build some sort of a factory. The place for our teacher
is by the side of a good wife, and in the midst of half a dozen
children, but he is lying around at Vavíloff's, in the dram-shop. And
here are you—you're going off to seek a place as a footman or a
corridor-waiter,[5] but I see that your place is among the soldiers, for
you are stupid, you have endurance, and you understand discipline.
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