by Maxim Gorky
“What are you looking at? And why do you keep following me about?”
Here the big peasant opened his eyes, and, with a glance first at the man, and then at myself, growled:
“Less noise there, you mitten-face!”
* * * *
As I retired to my nook and lay down, I reflected that what the big peasant had said was apposite enough-that the young fellow’s face did in very truth resemble an old and shabby woollen mitten.
Presently I dreamt that I was painting a belfry, and that, as I did so, huge, goggle-eyed jackdaws kept flying around the belfry’s gables, and flapping at me with their wings and hindering my work: until, as I sought to beat them off, I missed my footing, fell to earth, and awoke to find my breath choking amid a dull, sick, painful feeling of lassitude and weakness, and a kaleidoscopic mist quavering before my eyes till it rendered me dizzy. From my head, behind the car, a thin stream of blood was trickling.
Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I stepped aft to a pump, washed my head under a jet of cold water, bound it with my handkerchief, and, returning, inspected my resting-place in a state of bewilderment as to what could have caused the accident to happen.
On the deck near the spot where I had been asleep, there was standing stacked a pile of small logs prepared for the cook’s galley; while, in the precise spot where my head had rested there was reposing a birch faggot of which the withy-tie had come unfastened. As I raised the fallen faggot I perceived it to be clean and composed of silky loppings of birch-bark which rustled as I fingered them; and, consequently, I reflected that the ceaseless vibration of the steamer must have caused the faggot to become jerked on to my head.
Reassured by this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd, occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence a good view was obtainable.
The hour was the turn of the night, the hour of maximum tension before dawn, the hour when all the world seems plunged in a profundity of slumber whence there can be no awakening, and when the completeness of the silence attunes the soul to special sensibility, and when the stars seem to be hanging strangely close to earth, and the morning star, in particular, to be shining as brightly as a miniature sun. Yet already had the heavens begun to grow coldly grey, to lose their nocturnal softness and warmth, while the rays of the stars were drooping like petals, and the moon, hitherto golden, had turned pale and become dusted over with silver, and moved further from the earth as intangibly the water of the river sloughed its thick, viscous gleam, and swiftly emitted and withdrew, stray, pearly reflections of the changes occurring in the heavenly tints.
In the east there was rising, and hanging suspended over the black spears of the pine forest, a thin pink mist the sensuous hue of which was glowing ever brighter, and assuming a density ever greater, and standing forth more boldly and clearly, even as a whisper of timid prayer merges into a song of exultant thankfulness. Another moment, and the spiked tops of the pines blazed into points of red fire resembling festival candles in a sanctuary.
Next, an unseen hand threw over the water, drew along its surface, a transparent and many-coloured net of silk. This was the morning breeze, herald of dawn, as with a coating of tissue-like, silvery scales it rippled the river until the eye grew weary of trying to follow the play of gold and mother-of-pearl and purple and bluish-green reflected from the sun-renovated heavens.
Next, like a fan there unfolded themselves the first sword-shaped beams of day, with their tips blindingly white; while simultaneously one seemed to hear descending from an illimitable height a dense sound-wave of silver bells, a sound-wave advancing triumphantly to greet the sun as his roseate rim became visible over the forest like the rim of a cup that, filled with the essence of life, was about to empty its contents upon the earth, and to pour a bounteous flood of creative puissance upon the marshes whence a reddish vapour as of incense was arising. Meanwhile on the more precipitous of the two banks some of the trees near the river’s margin were throwing soft green shadows over the water, while gilt-like dew was sparkling on the herbage, and birds were awakening, and as a white gull skimmed the water’s surface on level wings, the pale shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted expanse, while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself looked like a bird.
Here and there on the yellow strip of sand by the river’s margin, long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a boat in the steamer’s wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the persistent murmur of human voices.
Similarly the buff-coloured bales in the steamer’s stem gradually reddened, as did the grey tints in the beard of the large peasant where, sprawling his ponderous form over the deck, he was lying asleep with mouth open, nostrils distended with stertorous snores, brows raised as though in astonishment, and thick moustache intermittently twitching.
Someone amid the piles of bales was panting as he fidgeted, and as I glanced in that direction I encountered the gaze of a pair of small, narrow, inflamed eyes, and beheld before me the ragged, mitten-like face, though now it looked even thinner and greyer than it had done on the previous evening. Apparently its owner was feeling cold, for he had hunched his chin between his knees, and clasped his hirsute arms around his legs, as his eyes stared gloomily, with a hunted air, in my direction. Then wearily, lifelessly he said:
“Yes, you have found me. And now you can thrash me if you wish to do so—you can give me a blow, for I gave you one, and, consequently, it’s your turn to do the hitting.”
Stupefied with astonishment, I inquired in an undertone.
“It was you, then, that hit me?”
“It was so, but where are your witnesses?”
The words came in hoarse, croaked, suppressed accents, with a separation of the hands, and an upthrow of the head and projecting cars which had such a comical look of being crushed beneath the weight of the battened-down cap. Next, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, the man repeated in a tone of challenge:
“Where, I say, are your witnesses? You can go to the devil!”
I could discern in him something at once helpless and froglike which evoked in me a strong feeling of repulsion; and since, with that, I had no real wish to converse with him, or even to revenge myself upon him for his cowardly blow, I turned away in silence.
But a moment later I looked at him again, and saw that he was seated in his former posture, with his arms embracing his knees, his chin resting upon them, and his red, sleepless eyes gazing lifelessly at the barge which the steamer was towing between wide ribbons of foaming water—ribbons sparkling in the sunlight like mash in a brewer’s vat.
And those eyes, that dead, alienated expression, the gay cheerfulness of the morning, and the clear radiance of the heavens, and the kindly tints of the two banks, and the vocal sounds of the June day, and the bracing freshness of the air, and the whole scene around us served but to throw into the more tragic relief.
* * * *
Just as the steamer was leaving Sundir the man threw himself into the water; in the sight of everybody he sprang overboard. Upon that all shouted, jostled their neighbours as they rushed to the side, and fell to scanning the river where from bank to bank it lay wrapped in blinding glitter.
The whistle sounded in fitful alarm, the sailors threw lifebelts overboard, the deck rumbled like a drum under the crowd’s surging rush, steam hissed afflightedly, a woman vented an hysterical cry, and the captain bawled from the bridge the imperious command:
“Avast heaving lifebelts! By now the fool will have got one! Damn you, calm the passengers!”
An unwashed, un
tidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back his long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat shoulder jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped people up.
“A muzhik, is it, or a woman? A muzhik, eh?”
By the time that I had made my way to the stern the man had fallen far behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as small as a fly on the glassy surface of the water. However, towards that fly a fishing-boat was already darting with the swiftness of a water beetle, and causing its two oars to show quiveringly red and grey, while from the marshier of the two banks there began hastily to put out a second boat which leapt in the steamer’s wash with the gaiety of a young calf.
Suddenly there broke into the painful hubbub on the steamer’s deck a faint, heartrending cry of “A-a-ah!”
In answer to it a sharp-nosed, black-bearded, well-dressed peasant muttered with a smack of his lips:
“Ah! That is him shouting. What a madman he must have been! And an ugly customer too, wasn’t he?”
The peasant with the curly beard rejoined in a tone of conviction engulfing all other utterances:
“It is his conscience that is catching him. Think what you like, but never can conscience be suppressed.”
Therewith, constantly interrupting one another, the pair betook themselves to a public recital of the tragic story of the fair-haired young fellow, whom the fishermen had now lifted from the water, and were conveying towards the steamer with oars that oscillated at top speed.
The bearded peasant continued:
“As soon as it was seen that he was but running after the soldier’s wife.”
“Besides,” the other peasant interrupted, “the property was not to be divided after the death of the father.”
With which the bearded muzhik eagerly recounted the history of the murder done by the brother, the nephew, and a son, while the spruce, spare, well-dressed peasant interlarded the general buzz of conversation with words and comments cheerfully and stridently delivered, much as though he were driving in stakes for the erection of a fence.
“Every man is drawn most in the direction whither he finds it easiest to go.”
“Then it will be the Devil that will be drawing him, since the direction of Hell is always the easiest.”
“Well, you will not be going that way, I suppose? You don’t altogether fancy it?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you have declared it to be the easiest way.”
“Well, I am not a saint.”
“No, ha-ha! you are not.”
“And you mean that—?”
“I mean nothing. If a dog’s chain be short, he is not to be blamed.”
Whereupon, setting nose to nose, the pair plunged into a quarrel still more heated as they expounded in simple, but often curiously apposite, language opinions intelligible to themselves alone. The one peasant, a lean fellow with lengthy limbs, cold, sarcastic eyes, and a dark, bony countenance, spoke loudly and sonorously, with frequent shrugs of the shoulders, while the other peasant, a man stout and broad of build who until now had seemed calm, self-assured of demeanour, and a man of settled views, breathed heavily, while his oxlike eyes glowed with an ardour causing his face to flush patchily, and his beard to stick out from his chin.
“Look here, for instance,” he growled as he gesticulated and rolled his dull eyes about. “How can that be? Does not even God know wherein a man ought to restrain himself?”
“If the Devil be one’s master, God doesn’t come into the matter.”
“Liar! For who was the first who raised his hand against his fellow?”
“Cain.”
“And the first man who repented of a sin?”
“Adam.”
“Ah! You see!”
Here there broke into the dispute a shout of: “They are just getting him aboard!” and the crowd, rushing away from the stern, carried with it the two disputants—the sparer peasant; lowering his shoulders, and buttoning up his jacket as he went; while the bearded peasant, following at his heels, thrust his head forward in a surly manner as he shifted his cap from the one ear to the other.
With a ponderous beating of paddles against the current the steamer heaved to, and the captain shouted through a speaking-trumpet, with a view to preventing a collision between the barge and the stem of the vessel:
“Put her over! Put her o-o-ove-r!”
Soon the fishing-boat came alongside, and the half-drowned man, with a form as limp as a half-empty sack, and water exuding from every stitch, and his hitherto haggard face grown smooth and simple-looking, was hoisted on board.
Next, on the sailors laying him upon the hatchway of the baggage hold, he sat up, leaned forward, smoothed his wet hair with the palms of his hands, and asked dully, without looking at anyone:
“Have they also recovered my cap?”
Someone among the throng around him exclaimed reprovingly:
“It is not about your cap that you ought to be thinking, but about your soul.”
Upon this he hiccuped loudly and freely, like a camel, and emitted a stream of turgid water from his mouth. Then, looking at the crowd with lack-lustre eyes, he said in an apathetic tone:
“Let me be taken elsewhere.”
In answer, the boatswain sternly bade him stretch himself out, and this the young fellow did, with his hands clasped under his head, and his eyes closed, while the boatswain added brusquely to the onlookers:
“Move away, move away, good people. What is there to stare at? This is not a show.… Hi, you muzhik! Why did you play us such a trick, damn you?”
The crowd however, was not to be suppressed, but indulged in comments.
“He murdered his father, didn’t he?”
“What? That wretched creature?”
As for the boatswain, he squatted upon his heels, and proceeded to subject the rescued man to a course of strict interrogation.
“What is the destination marked on your ticket?”
“Perm.”
“Then you ought to leave the boat at Kazan. And what is your name?”
“Yakov.”
“And your surname?”
“Bashkin—though we are known also as the Bukolov family.”
“Your family has a double surname, then?”
With the full power of his trumpet-like lungs the bearded peasant (evidently he had lost his temper) broke in:
“Though his uncle and his brother have been sentenced to penal servitude and are travelling together on that barge, he—well, he has received his discharge! That is only a personal matter, however. In spite of what judges may say, one ought never to kill, since conscience cannot bear the thought of blood. Even nearly to become a murderer is wrong.”
By this time more and more passengers had collected as they awakened from sleep and emerged from the first- and second-class cabins. Among them was the mate, a man with a black moustache and rubicund features who inquired of someone amid the confusion: “You are not a doctor, I suppose?” and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: “No, sir, nor ever have been one.”
To this someone added with a drawl:
“Why is a doctor needed? Surely the man is a fellow of no particular importance?”
Over the river the radiance of the summer daylight had gathered increased strength, and, since the date was a Sunday, bells were sounding seductively from a hill, and a couple of women in gala apparel who were following the margin of the river waved handkerchiefs towards the steamer, and shouted some greeting.
Meanwhile the young fellow lay motionless, with his eyes closed. Divested of his pea-jacket, and wrapped about with wet, clinging underclothing, he looked more symmetrical than previously—his chest seemed better developed, his body plumper, and his face more rotund and less ugly.
Yet though the passengers gazed at him with compa
ssion or distaste or severity or fear, as the case might be, all did so without ceremony, as though he had not been a living man at all.
For instance, a gaunt gentleman in a grey frock-coat said to a lady in a yellow straw hat adorned with a pink ribbon:
“At our place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went and hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped every watch and clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did he stop them?”
“An abnormal case indeed!”
On the other hand, a dark-browed woman who had her hands hidden beneath her shawl stood gazing at the rescued man in silence, and with her side turned towards him. As she did so tears were welling in her grey-blue eyes.
Presently two sailors appeared. One of them bent over the young fellow, touched him on the shoulder, and said:
“Hi! You are to get up.”
Whereupon the young fellow rose, and was removed elsewhither.
* * * *
When, after an interval, he reappeared on deck, he was clean and dry, and clad in a cook’s white jumper and a sailor’s blue serge trousers. Clasping his hands behind his back, hunching his shoulders, and bending his head forward, he walked swiftly to the stern, with a throng of idlers—at first one by one, and then in parties of from three to a dozen—following in his wake.
The man seated himself upon a coil of rope, and, craning his neck in wolf-like fashion to eye the bystanders, frowned, let fall his temples upon hands thrust into his flaxen hair, and fixed his gaze upon the barge.
Standing or sitting about in the hot sunshine, people stared at him without stint. Evidently they would have liked, but did not dare, to engage him in conversation. Presently the big peasant also arrived on the scene, and, after glancing at all present, took off his hat, and wiped his perspiring face. Next, a grey-headed old man with a red nose, a thin wisp of beard, and watery eyes cleared his throat, and in honeyed tones took the initiative.
“Would you mind telling us how it all happened?” he began.
