by Maxim Gorky
“Hardly! He says, ‘I am an oak.’”
“An oak? And I am a saw. An oak! An oak is a good tree, but its fruits are good for swine only. So it comes out that an oak is simply a blockhead.”
“But it’s all the same, we have to pay, anyway.”
“Clever people are in no hurry about this; while you are ready to run as fast as you can to pay the money. What a merchant you are!”
Yakov Tarasovich was positively dissatisfied with his godson. He frowned and in an angry manner ordered his daughter, who was silently pouring out tea:
“Push the sugar nearer to me. Don’t you see that I can’t reach it?”
Lubov’s face was pale, her eyes seemed troubled, and her hands moved lazily and awkwardly. Foma looked at her and thought:
“How meek she is in the presence of her father.”
“What did he speak to you about?” asked Mayakin.
“About sins.”
“Well, of course! His own affair is dearest to each and every man. And he is a manufacturer of sins. Both in the galleys and in hell they have long been weeping and longing for him, waiting for him impatiently.”
“He speaks with weight,” said Foma, thoughtfully, stirring his tea.
“Did he abuse me?” inquired Mayakin, with a malicious grimace.
“Somewhat.”
“And what did you do?”
“I listened.”
“Mm! And what did you hear?”
“‘The strong,’ he says, ‘will be forgiven; but there is no forgiveness for the weak.’”
“Just think of it! What wisdom! Even the fleas know that.”
For some reason or another, the contempt with which Mayakin regarded Shchurov, irritated Foma, and, looking into the old man’s face, he said with a grin:
“But he doesn’t like you.”
“Nobody likes me, my dear,” said Mayakin, proudly. “There is no reason why they should like me. I am no girl. But they respect me. And they respect only those they fear.” And the old man winked at his godson boastfully.
“He speaks with weight,” repeated Foma. “He is complaining. ‘The real merchant,’ says he, ‘is passing away. All people are taught the same thing,’ he says: ‘so that all may be equal, looking alike.”’
“Does he consider it wrong?”
“Evidently so.”
“Fo-o-o-l!” Mayakin drawled out, with contempt.
“Why? Is it good?” asked Foma, looking at his godfather suspiciously.
“We do not know what is good; but we can see what is wise. When we see that all sorts of people are driven together in one place and are all inspired there with one and the same idea—then must we acknowledge that it is wise. Because—what is a man in the empire? Nothing more than a simple brick, and all bricks must be of the same size. Do you understand? And those people that are of equal height and weight—I can place in any position I like.”
“And whom does it please to be a brick?” said Foma, morosely.
“It is not a question of pleasing, it is a matter of fact. If you are made of hard material, they cannot plane you. It is not everybody’s phiz that you can rub off. But some people, when beaten with a hammer, turn into gold. And if the head happens to crack—what can you do? It merely shows it was weak.”
“He also spoke about toil. ‘Everything,’ he says, ‘is done by machinery, and thus are men spoiled.”’
“He is out of his wits!” Mayakin waved his hand disdainfully. “I am surprised, what an appetite you have for all sorts of nonsense! What does it come from?”
“Isn’t that true, either?” asked Foma, breaking into stern laughter.
“What true thing can he know? A machine! The old blockhead should have thought—‘what is the machine made of?’ Of iron! Consequently, it need not be pitied; it is wound up—and it forges roubles for you. Without any words, without trouble, you set it into motion and it revolves. While a man, he is uneasy and wretched; he is often very wretched. He wails, grieves, weeps, begs. Sometimes he gets drunk. Ah, how much there is in him that is superfluous to me! While a machine is like an arshin (yardstick), it contains exactly so much as the work required. Well, I am going to dress. It is time.”
He rose and went away, loudly scraping with his slippers along the floor. Foma glanced after him and said softly, with a frown:
“The devil himself could not see through all this. One says this, the other, that.”
“It is precisely the same with books,” said Lubov in a low voice.
Foma looked at her, smiling good-naturedly. And she answered him with a vague smile.
Her eyes looked fatigued and sad.
“You still keep on reading?” asked Foma.
“Yes,” the girl answered sadly.
“And are you still lonesome?”
“I feel disgusted, because I am alone. There’s no one here to say a word to.”
“That’s bad.”
She said nothing to this, but, lowering her head, she slowly began to finger the fringes of the towel.
“You ought to get married,” said Foma, feeling that he pitied her.
“Leave me alone, please,” answered Lubov, wrinkling her forehead.
“Why leave you alone? You will get married, I am sure.”
“There!” exclaimed the girl softly, with a sigh. “That’s just what I am thinking of—it is necessary. That is, I’ll have to get married. But how? Do you know, I feel now as though a mist stood between other people and myself—a thick, thick mist!”
“That’s from your books,” Foma interposed confidently.
“Wait! And I cease to understand what is going on about me. Nothing pleases me. Everything has become strange to me. Nothing is as it should be. Everything is wrong. I see it. I understand it, yet I cannot say that it is wrong, and why it is so.”
“It is not so, not so,” muttered Foma. “That’s from your books. Yes. Although I also feel that it’s wrong. Perhaps that is because we are so young and foolish.”
“At first it seemed to me,” said Lubov, not listening to him, “that everything in the books was clear to me. But now—”
“Drop your books,” suggested Foma, with contempt.
“Ah, don’t say that! How can I drop them? You know how many different ideas there are in the world! O Lord! They’re such ideas that set your head afire. According to a certain book everything that exists on earth is rational.”
“Everything?” asked Foma.
“Everything! While another book says the contrary is true.”
“Wait! Now isn’t this nonsense?”
“What were you discussing?” asked Mayakin, appearing at the door, in a long frock-coat and with several medals on his collar and his breast.
“Just so,” said Lubov, morosely.
“We spoke about books,” added Foma.
“What kind of books?”
“The books she is reading. She read that everything on earth is rational.”
“Really!”
“Well, and I say it is a lie!”
“Yes.” Yakov Tarasovich became thoughtful, he pinched his beard and winked his eyes a little.
“What kind of a book is it?” he asked his daughter, after a pause.
“A little yellow-covered book,” said Lubov, unwillingly.
“Just put that book on my table. That is said not without reflection—everything on earth is rational! See someone thought of it. Yes. It is even very cleverly expressed. And were it not for the fools, it might have been perfectly correct. But as fools are always in the wrong place, it cannot be said that everything on earth is rational. And yet, I’ll look at the book. Maybe there is common sense in it. Goodbye, Foma! Will you stay here, or do you want to drive with me?”
“I’ll stay here a little longer.”
“Very well.”
Lubov and Foma again remained alone.
“What a man your father is,” said Foma, nodding his head toward the direction of his godfather.
“Well, what kind of a man do you think he is?”
“He retorts every call, and wants to cover everything with his words.”
“Yes, he is clever. And yet he does not understand how painful my life is,” said Lubov, sadly.
“Neither do I understand it. You imagine too much.”
“What do I imagine?” cried the girl, irritated.
“Why, all these are not your own ideas. They are someone else’s.”
“Someone else’s. Someone else’s.”
She felt like saying something harsh; but broke down and became silent. Foma looked at her and, setting Medinskaya by her side, thought sadly:
“How different everything is—both men and women—and you never feel alike.”
They sat opposite each other; both were lost in thought, and neither one looked at the other. It was getting dark outside, and in the room it was quite dark already. The wind was shaking the linden-trees, and their branches seemed to clutch at the walls of the house, as though they felt cold and implored for shelter in the rooms.
“Luba!” said Foma, softly.
She raised her head and looked at him.
“Do you know, I have quarrelled with Medinskaya.”
“Why?” asked Luba, brightening up.
“So. It came about that she offended me. Yes, she offended me.”
“Well, it’s good that you’ve quarrelled with her,” said the girl, approvingly, “for she would have turned your head. She is a vile creature; she is a coquette, even worse than that. Oh, what things I know about her!”
“She’s not at all a vile creature,” said Foma, morosely. “And you don’t know anything about her. You are all lying!”
“Oh, I beg your pardon!”
“No. See here, Luba,” said Foma, softly, in a beseeching tone, “don’t speak ill of her in my presence. It isn’t necessary. I know everything. By God! She told me everything herself.”
“Herself!” exclaimed Luba, in astonishment. “What a strange woman she is! What did she tell you?”
“That she is guilty,” Foma ejaculated with difficulty, with a wry smile.
“Is that all?” There was a ring of disappointment in the girl’s question; Foma heard it and asked hopefully:
“Isn’t that enough?”
“What will you do now?”
“That’s just what I am thinking about.”
“Do you love her very much?”
Foma was silent. He looked into the window and answered confusedly:
“I don’t know. But it seems to me that now I love her more than before.”
“Than before the quarrel?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder how one can love such a woman!” said the girl, shrugging her shoulders.
“Love such a woman? Of course! Why not?” exclaimed Foma.
“I can’t understand it. I think, you have become attached to her just because you have not met a better woman.”
“No, I have not met a better one!” Foma assented, and after a moment’s silence said shyly, “Perhaps there is none better.”
“Among our people,” Lubov interposed.
“I need her very badly! Because, you see, I feel ashamed before her.”
“Why so?”
“Oh, in general, I fear her; that is, I would not want her to think ill of me, as of others. Sometimes I feel disgusted. I think—wouldn’t it be a great idea to go out on such a spree that all my veins would start tingling. And then I recall her and I do not venture. And so everything else, I think of her, ‘What if she finds it out?’ and I am afraid to do it.”
“Yes,” the girl drawled out thoughtfully, “that shows that you love her. I would also be like this. If I loved, I would think of him—of what he might say…”
“And everything about her is so peculiar,” Foma related softly. “She speaks in a way all her own. And, God! How beautiful she is! And then she is so small, like a child.”
“And what took place between you?” asked Lubov.
Foma moved his chair closer to her, and stooping, he lowered his voice for some reason or other, and began to relate to her all that had taken place between him and Medinskaya. He spoke, and as he recalled the words he said to Medinskaya, the sentiments that called forth the words were also awakened in him.
“I told her, ‘Oh, you! why did you make sport of me?’” he said angrily and with reproach.
And Luba, her cheeks aflame with animation, spurred him on, nodding her head approvingly:
“That’s it! That’s good! Well, and she?”
“She was silent!” said Foma, sadly, with a shrug of the shoulders. “That is, she said different things; but what’s the use?”
He waved his hand and became silent. Luba, playing with her braid, was also silent. The samovar had already become cold. And the dimness in the room was growing thicker and thicker, outside the window it was heavy with darkness, and the black branches of the linden-trees were shaking pensively.
“You might light the lamp,” Foma went on.
“How unhappy we both are,” said Luba, with a sigh.
Foma did not like this.
“I am not unhappy,” he objected in a firm voice. “I am simply—not yet accustomed to life.”
“He who knows not what he is going to do tomorrow, is unhappy,” said Luba, sadly. “I do not know it, neither do you. Whither go? Yet go we must, Why is it that my heart is never at ease? Some kind of a longing is always quivering within it.”
“It is the same with me,” said Foma. “I start to reflect, but on what? I cannot make it clear to myself. There is also a painful gnawing in my heart. Eh! But I must go up to the club.”
“Don’t go away,” Luba entreated.
“I must. Somebody is waiting there for me. I am going. Goodbye!”
“Till we meet again!” She held out her hand to him and sadly looked into his eyes.
“Will you go to sleep now?” asked Foma, firmly shaking her hand.
“I’ll read a little.”
“You’re to your books as the drunkard to his whisky,” said the youth, with pity.
“What is there that is better?”
Walking along the street he looked at the windows of the house and in one of them he noticed Luba’s face. It was just as vague as everything that the girl told him, even as vague as her longings. Foma nodded his head toward her and with a consciousness of his superiority over her, thought:
“She has also lost her way, like the other one.”
At this recollection he shook his head, as though he wanted to frighten away the thought of Medinskaya, and quickened his steps.
Night was coming on, and the air was fresh. A cold, invigorating wind was violently raging in the street, driving the dust along the sidewalks and throwing it into the faces of the passers-by. It was dark, and people were hastily striding along in the darkness. Foma wrinkled his face, for the dust filled his eyes, and thought:
“If it is a woman I meet now—then it will mean that Sophya Pavlovna will receive me in a friendly way, as before. I am going to see her tomorrow. And if it is a man—I won’t go tomorrow, I’ll wait.”
But it was a dog that came to meet him, and this irritated Foma to such an extent that he felt like striking him with his cane.
In the refreshment-room of the club, Foma was met by the jovial Ookhtishchev. He stood at the door, and chatted with a certain stout, whiskered man; but, noticing Gordyeeff, he came forward to meet him, saying, with a smile:
“How do you do, modest millionaire!” Foma rather liked him for his jolly mood, and was always pleased to meet him.
&nbs
p; Firmly and kind-heartedly shaking Ookhtishchev’s hand, Foma asked him:
“And what makes you think that I am modest?”
“What a question! A man, who lives like a hermit, who neither drinks, nor plays, nor likes any women. By the way, do you know, Foma Ignatyevich, that peerless patroness of ours is going abroad tomorrow for the whole summer?”
“Sophya Pavlovna?” asked Foma, slowly. “Of course! The sun of my life is setting. And, perhaps, of yours as well?”
Ookhtishchev made a comical, sly grimace and looked into Foma’s face.
And Foma stood before him, feeling that his head was lowering on his breast, and that he was unable to hinder it.
“Yes, the radiant Aurora.”
“Is Medinskaya going away?” a deep bass voice asked. “That’s fine! I am glad.”
“May I know why?” exclaimed Ookhtishchev. Foma smiled sheepishly and stared in confusion at the whiskered man, Ookhtishchev’s interlocutor.
That man was stroking his moustache with an air of importance, and deep, heavy, repulsive words fell from his lips on Foma’s ears.
“Because, you see, there will be one co-cot-te less in town.”
“Shame, Martin Nikitich!” said Ookhtishchev, reproachfully, knitting his brow.
“How do you know that she is a coquette?” asked Foma, sternly, coming closer to the whiskered man. The man measured him with a scornful look, turned aside and moving his thigh, drawled out:
“I didn’t say—coquette.”
“Martin Nikitich, you mustn’t speak that way about a woman who—” began Ookhtishchev in a convincing tone, but Foma interrupted him:
“Excuse me, just a moment! I wish to ask the gentleman, what is the meaning of the word he said?”
And as he articulated this firmly and calmly, Foma thrust his hands deep into his trousers-pockets, threw his chest forward, which at once gave his figure an attitude of defiance. The whiskered gentleman again eyed Foma with a sarcastic smile.
“Gentlemen!” exclaimed Ookhtishchev, softly.
