by Maxim Gorky
“Well, I don’t know!” replied the teacher, trying to understand the old man. But the latter put his hand on the teacher’s shoulder, and slowly pushed him backward and forward, and his throat made a noise as if he were swallowing something.…
“Tell me! You speak so much…as if you knew everything. It makes me sick to listen to you…you darken my soul… I should be better pleased if you were silent. Who are we, eh? Why have we no prophets? Ha, ha!… Where were we when Christ walked on this earth? Do you see? And you too, you are lying… Do you think that all die out? The Russian people will never disappear… You are lying. It has been written in the Bible, only it is not known what name the Russians are given. Do you see what kind of people they are? They are numberless… How many villages are there on the earth? Think of all the people who live on it, so strong, go numerous I And you say that they will die out; men shall die, but God wants the people, God the Creator of the earth! The Amalekites did not die out. They are either German or French… But you, eh, you! Now then, tell me why we are abandoned by God? Have we no punishments nor prophets from the Lord? Who then will teach us?” Tyapa spoke strongly and plainly, and there was faith in his words.
He had been speaking a long time, and the teacher, who was generally drunk and in a speechless condition, could not stand it any longer. He looked at the dry, wrinkled old man, felt the great force of these words, and suddenly began to pity himself. He wished to say something so strong and convincing to the old man that Tyapa would be disposed in his favor; he did not wish to speak in such a serious, earnest way, but in a soft and fatherly tone. And the teacher felt as if something were rising from his breast into his throat… But he could not find any powerful words.
“What kind of a man are you?… Your soul seems to be torn away—and you still continue speaking…as if you knew something… It would be better if you were silent.”
“Ah, Tyapa, what you say is true,” replied the teacher sadly. “The people…you are right…they are numberless…but I am a stranger to them…and they are strangers to me… Do you see where the tragedy of my life is hidden?… But let me alone! I shall suffer…and there are no prophets also… No. You are right, I speak a great deal… But it is no good to anyone. I shall be always silent… Only don’t speak with me like this… Ah, old man, you do not know… You do not know… And you cannot understand.”
And in the end the teacher cried. He cried so easily and so freely, with such torrents of flowing tears, that he soon found relief. “You ought to go into a village…become a clerk or a teacher… You would be well fed there. What are you crying for?” asked Tyapa sadly.
But the teacher was crying as if the tears quieted and comforted him.
From this day they became friends, and the “creatures that once were men,” seeing them together, said: “The teacher is friendly with Tyapa… He wishes his money. Kuvalda must have put this into his head… To look about to see where the old man’s fortune is.…”
Probably they did not believe what they said. There was one strange thing about these men, namely, that they painted themselves to others worse than they actually were. A man who has good in him does not mind sometimes showing his worse nature.
* * * *
When all these people were gathered round the teacher, then the reading of the newspaper would begin.
“Well, what does the newspaper discuss today? Is there any feuilleton?”
“No,” the teacher informs him.
“Your publisher seems greedy…but is there any leader?”
“There is one today… It appears to be by Gulyaeff.”
“Aha! Come, out with it! He writes cleverly, the rascal.”
“‘The taxation of immovable property,’” reads the teacher, “It was introduced some fifteen years ago, and up to the present it has served as the basis for collecting these taxes in aid of the city revenue.…’”
“That is simple,” comments Captain Kuvalda. “It continues to serve. That is ridiculous. To the merchant who is moving about in the city, it is profitable that it should continue to serve. Therefore it does continue.”
“The article, in fact, is written on the subject,” says the teacher.
“Is it? That is strange, it is more a subject for a feuilleton.”
“Such a subject must be treated with plenty of pepper.…”
Then a short discussion begins. The people listen attentively, as only one bottle of vodki has been drunk.
After the leader, they read the local events, then the court proceedings, and, if in the police court it reports that the defendant or plaintiff is a merchant, then Aristid Kuvalda sincerely rejoices. If someone has robbed the merchant, “That is good,” says he. “Only it is a pity they robbed him of so little.” If his horses have broken down, “It is sad that he is still alive.” If the merchant has lost his suit in court, “It is a pity that the costs were not double the amount.”
“That would have been illegal,” remarks the teacher.
“Illegal! But is the merchant himself legal?” inquires Kuvalda bitterly. “What is the merchant? Let us investigate this rough and uncouth phenomenon. First of all, every merchant is a mujik. He comes from a village, and in course of time becomes a merchant. In order to be a merchant, one must have money.
“Where can the mujik get the money from? It is well known that he does not get it by honest hard work, and that means that the mujik, somehow or other, has been swindling. That is to say, a merchant is simply a dishonest mujik.”
“Splendid!” cry the people, approving the orator’s deduction, and Tyapa bellows all the time, scratching his breast. He always bellows like this as he drinks his first glass of vodki, when he has a drunken headache. The Captain beams with joy. They next read the correspondence. This is, for the Captain, “an abundance of drinks,” as he himself calls it. He always notices how the merchants make this life abominable, and how cleverly they spoil everything. His speeches thunder at and annihilate merchants. His audience listens to him with the greatest pleasure, because he swears atrociously. “If I wrote for the papers,” he shouts, “I would show up the merchant in his true colors… I would show that he is a beast, playing for a time the role of a man. I understand him! He is a rough boor, does not know the meaning of the words ‘good taste,’ has no notion of patriotism, and his knowledge is not worth five kopecks.”
Abyedok, knowing the Captain’s weak point, and fond of making other people angry, cunningly adds:
“Yes, since the nobility began to make acquaintance with hunger, men have disappeared from the world.…”
“You are right, you son of a spider and a toad. Yes, from the time that the noblemen fell, there have been no men. There are only merchants, and I hate them.”
“That is easy to understand, brother, because you too, have been brought down by them.…”
“I? I was ruined by love of life… Fool that I was, I loved life, but the merchant spoils it, and I cannot bear it, simply for this reason, and not because I am a nobleman. But if you want to know the truth, I was once a man, though I was not noble. I care now for nothing and nobody…and all my life has been tame—a sweetheart who has jilted me—therefore I despise life, and am indifferent to it.”
“You lie!” says Abyedok.
“I lie?” roars Aristid Kuvalda, almost crimson with anger.
“Why shout?” comes in the cold sad voice of Martyanoff.
“Why judge others? Merchants, noblemen…what have we to do with them?”
“Seeing what we are”…puts in Deacon Taras.
“Be quiet, Abyedok,” says the teacher good-naturedly.
“Why do you provoke him?” He does not love either discussion or noise, and when they quarrel all around him his lips form into a sickly grimace, and he endeavors quietly and reasonably to reconcile each with the other, and if he does not succeed in this he leaves the company. Knowing
this, the Captain, if he is not very drunk, controls himself, not wishing to lose, in the person of the teacher, one of the best of his listeners.
“I repeat,” he continues, in a quieter tone, “that I see life in the hands of enemies, not only enemies of the noble but of everything good, avaricious and incapable of adorning existence in any way.”
“But all the same, says the teacher, “merchants, so to speak, created Genoa, Venice, Holland—and all these were merchants, merchants from England, India, the Stroyanoff merchants.…”
“I do not speak of these men, I am thinking of Judas Petunikoff, who is one of them.…”
“And you say you have nothing to do with them?” asks the teacher quietly.
“But do you think that I do not live? Aha! I do live, but I suppose I ought not to be angry at the fact that life is desecrated and robbed of all freedom by these men.”
“And they dare to laugh at the kindly anger of the Captain, a man living in retirement?” says Abyedok teasingly.
“Very well! I agree with you that I am foolish. Being a creature who was once a man, I ought to blot out from my heart all those feelings that once were mine. You may be right, but then how could I or any of you defend ourselves if we did away with all these feelings?”
“Now then, you are talking sense,” says the teacher encouragingly.
“We want other feelings and other views on life… We want something new…because we ourselves are a novelty in this life.…”
“Doubtless this is most important for us,” remarks the teacher.
“Why?” asks Kanets. “Is it not all the same whatever we say or think? We have not got long to live I am forty, you are fifty…there is no one among us younger than thirty, and even at twenty one cannot live such a life long.”
“And what kind of novelty are we?” asked Abyedok mockingly.
“Since nakedness has always existed”
“Yes, and it created Rome,” said the teacher.
“Yes, of course,” says the Captain, beaming with joy.
“Romulus and Remus, eh? We also shall create when our time comes.…”
“Violation of public peace,” interrupts Abyedok. He laughs in a self-satisfied way. His laughter is impudent and insolent, and is echoed by Simtsoff, the Deacon and Paltara Taras. The naive eyes of young Meteor light up, and his cheeks flush crimson.
Kanets speaks, and it seems as if he were hammering their heads.
“All these are foolish illusions…fiddlesticks!”
It was strange to see them reasoning in this manner, these outcasts from life, tattered, drunken with vodki and wickedness, filthy and forlorn. Such conversations rejoiced the Captain’s heart. They gave him an opportunity of speaking more, and therefore he thought himself better than the rest. However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful, or even better fed than his companions. Aristid Kuvalda abused this pleasure, and never could have enough of it, much to the disgust of Abyedok, Kubar, and others of these creatures that once were men, who were less interested in such things.
Politics, however, were more to the popular taste. The discussions as to the necessity of taking India or of subduing England were lengthy and protracted.
Nor did they speak with less enthusiasm of the radical measure of clearing Jews off the face of the earth. On this subject Abyedok was always the first to propose dreadful plans to effect the desired end, but the Captain, always first in every other argument, did not join in this one. They also spoke much and impudently about women, but the teacher always defended them, and sometimes was very angry when they went so far as to pass the limits of decency. They all, as a rule, gave in to him, because they did not look upon him as a common person, and also because they wished to borrow from him on Saturdays the money which he had earned during the week. He had many privileges. They never beat him, for instance, on these occasions when the conversation ended in a free fight. He had the right to bring women into the dosshouse; a privilege accorded to no one else, as the Captain had previously warned them.
“No bringing of women to my house,” he had said. “Women, merchants and philosophers, these are the three causes of my ruin. I will horsewhip anyone bringing in women. I will horsewhip the woman also… And as to the philosopher, I’ll knock his head off for him.” And notwithstanding his age he could have knocked anyone’s head off, for he possessed wonderful strength. Besides that, whenever he fought or quarrelled, he was assisted by Martyanoff, who was accustomed during a general fight to stand silently and sadly back to back with Kuvalda, when he became an all destroying and impregnable engine of war. Once when Simtsoff was drunk, he rushed at the teacher for no reason whatever, and getting hold of his head tore out a bunch of hair.
Kuvalda, with one stroke of his fist in the other’s chest, sent him spinning, and he fell to the ground. He was unconscious for almost half-an-hour, and when he came to himself Kuvalda compelled him to eat the hair he had torn from the teacher’s head. He ate it, preferring this to being beaten to death.
Besides reading newspapers, fighting and indulging in general conversation, they amused themselves by playing cards. They played without Martyanoff because he could not play honestly. After cheating several times, he openly confessed:
“I cannot play without cheating…it is a habit of mine.”
“Habits do get the better of you,” assented Deacon Taras. “I always used to beat my wife every Sunday after Mass, and when she died I cannot describe how extremely dull I felt every Sunday. I lived through one Sunday—it was dreadful, the second I still controlled myself, the third Sunday I struck my Asok.… She was angry and threatened to summon me. Just imagine if she had done so! On the fourth Sunday, I beat her just as if she were my own wife! After that I gave her ten roubles, and beat her according to my own rules till I married again!”
“You are lying, Deacon! How could you marry a second time?” interrupted Abyedok.
“Ay, just so… She looked after my house…”
“Did you have any children?” asked the teacher.
“Five of them… One was drowned…the oldest…he was an amusing boy! Two died of diphtheria… One of the daughters married a student and went with him to Siberia.
“The other went to the University of St. Petersburg and died there…of consumption they say. Ye—es, there were five of them… Ecclesiastics are prolific, you know.” He began explaining why this was so, and they laughed till they nearly burst at his tales. When the laughter stopped, Aleksei Maksimovitch Simtsoff remembered that he too had once had a daughter.
“Her name was Lidka…she was very stout.…”
More than this he did not seem to remember, for he looked at them all, was silent and smiled…in a guilty way. Those men spoke very little to each other about their past, and they recalled it very seldom, and then only its general outlines. When they did mention it, it was in a cynical tone. Probably, this was just as well, since, in many people, remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future.
* * * *
On rainy, cold, or dull days in the late autumn, these “creatures that once were men” gathered in the eating-house of Vaviloff. They were well known there, where some feared them as thieves and rogues, and some looked upon them contemptuously as hard drinkers, although they respected them, thinking that they were clever.
The eating-house of Vaviloff was the club of the main street, and the “creatures that once were men” were its most intellectual members.
On Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings, when the eating-house was packed, the “creatures that once were men” were only too welcome guests. They brought with them, besides the forgotten and poverty-stricken inhabitants of the street, their own spirit, in which there was something that brightened the lives of men exhausted and worn out in the struggle for existence, as great drunkards as the
inhabitants of Kuvalda’s shelter, and, like them, outcasts from the town. Their ability to speak on all subjects, their freedom of opinion, skill in repartee, courage in the presence of those of whom the whole street was in terror, together with their daring demeanor, could not but be pleasing to their companions. Then, too, they were well versed in law, and could advise, write petitions, and help to swindle without incurring the risk of punishment. For all this they were paid with vodki and flattering admiration of their talents.
The inhabitants of the street were divided into two parties according to their sympathies. One was in favor of Kuvalda, who was thought “a good soldier, clever, and courageous”; the other was convinced of the fact that the teacher was “superior” to Kuvalda. The latter’s admirers were those who were known to be drunkards, thieves, and murderers, for whom the road from beggary to prison was inevitable. But those who respected the teacher were men who still had expectations, still hoped for better things, who were eternally occupied with nothing, and who were nearly always hungry.
The nature of the teacher’s and Kuvalda’s relations toward the street may be gathered from the following:
Once in the eating-house they were discussing the resolution passed by the Corporation regarding the main street, viz., that the inhabitants were to fill up the pits and ditches in the street, and that neither manure nor the dead bodies of domestic animals should be used for the purpose, but only broken tiles, etc., from the ruins of other houses.
“Where am I going to get these same broken tiles and bricks? I could not get sufficient bricks together to build a hen-house,” plaintively said Mokei Anisimoff, a man who hawked kalaches (a sort of white bread) which were baked by his wife.
“Where can you get broken bricks and lime rubbish? Take bags with you, and go and remove them from the Corporation buildings. They are so old that they are of no use to anyone, and you will thus be doing two good deeds; firstly, by repairing the main street; and secondly, by adorning the city with a new Corporation building.”
