by Maxim Gorky
“Give it here.”
“What do you want it for?”
“Give it; perhaps there is something written concerning us.”
“Concerning whom?”
“The village.”
They laughed at him, and threw the paper at him. He would take it and read those parts which told of corn beaten down by the hail; of thirty holdings being destroyed by fire, and of a woman poisoning a whole family; in fact, all those parts about village life which showed it as miserable, sordid, and cruel. Tiapa read all these in a dull voice, and emitted sounds which might be interpreted as expressing either pity or pleasure. On Sunday he never went out rag-picking, but spent most of his day reading his Bible, during which process he moaned and sighed. His book he always held resting on his chest, and he was angry if anyone touched it or interrupted his reading.
“Hullo, you magician!” Kouvalda would say; “you don’t understand anything of that; leave the book alone!”
“And you? What do you understand?”
“Well, old magician, I don’t understand anything; but then I don’t read books.”
“But I do.”
“More fool you!” answered the captain. “It’s bad enough to have vermin in the head. But to get thoughts into the bargain. How will you ever be able to live, you old toad?”
“Well, I have not got much longer to live,” said Tiapa quietly.
One day the schoolmaster inquired where he had learned to read, and Tiapa answered shortly—
“In prison.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yes, I have.”
“For what?”
“Because—I made a mistake. It was there I got my Bible. A lady gave it me. It’s good in prison, don’t you know that, brother?”
“It can’t be. What is there good in it?”
“They teach one there. You see how I was taught to read. They gave me a book, and all that free!”
When the schoolmaster came to the doss-house, Tiapa had been there already a long time. He watched the schoolmaster constantly; he would bend his body on one side in order to get a good look at him, and would listen attentively to his conversation.
Once he began, “Well, I see you are a learned man. Have you ever read the Bible?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Well, do you remember it?”
“I do! What then?”
The old man bent his whole body on one side and looked at the schoolmaster with grey, morose, distrustful eyes.
“And do you remember anything about the Amalekites?”
“Well, what then?”
“Where are they now?”
“They have died out, Tiapa—disappeared.”
The old man was silent, but soon he asked again—
“And the Philistines?”
“They’ve gone also.”
“Have they all disappeared?”
“Yes, all.”
“Does that mean that we shall also disappear as well?”
“Yes, when the time comes,” the schoolmaster replied, in an indifferent tone of voice.
“And to which tribe of Israel do we belong?”
The schoolmaster looked at him steadily, thought for a moment, and began telling him about the Cymri, the Scythians, the Huns, and the Slavs.
The old man seemed to bend more than ever on one side, and watched the schoolmaster with scared eyes.
“You are telling lies!” he hissed out, when the schoolmaster had finished.
“Why do you think I am lying?” asked the astonished schoolmaster.
“Those people you have spoken of, none of them are in the Bible!” He rose and went out, deeply insulted, and cursing angrily.
“You are going mad, Tiapa!” cried the schoolmaster after him.
Then the old man turned round, and stretching out his hand shook with a threatening action his dirty, crooked forefinger.
“Adam came from the Lord. The Jews came from Adam. And all people come from the Jews—we amongst them.”
“Well?”
“The Tartars came from Ishmael. And he came from a Jew!”
“Well, what then?”
“Nothing. Only why do you tell lies?”
And he went off, leaving his companion in a state of bewilderment. But in two or three days’ time he approached him again.
“As you are a learned man, you ought at least to know who we are!”
“Slavs, Tiapa—Slavs!” replied the schoolmaster.
And he awaited with interest Tiapa’s answer, hoping to understand him.
“Speak according to the Bible! There are no names like that in the Bible. Who are we, Babylonians or Edomites?”
The teacher began criticising the Bible. The old man listened long and attentively, and finally interrupted him.
“Stop all that! Do you mean that among all the people known to God there were no Russians? We were unknown to God? Is that what you mean to say? Those people, written about in the Bible, God knew them all. He used to punish them with fire and sword; He destroyed their towns and villages, but still He sent them His prophets to teach them, which meant He loved them. He dispersed the Jews and Tartars, but He still preserved them. And what about us? Why have we no prophets?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the schoolmaster, trying in vain to understand the old man.
The old peasant put his hand on the schoolmaster’s shoulder, rocking him gently to and fro whilst he hissed and gurgled as if swallowing something, and muttered in a hoarse voice—
“You should have said so long ago. And you went on talking as if you knew everything. It makes me sick to hear you. It troubles my soul. You’d better hold your tongue. See, you don’t even know why we have no prophets. You don’t know where we were when Jesus was on earth. And such lies too. Can a whole people die out? The Russian nation can’t disappear; it’s all lies. They are mentioned somewhere in the Bible, only I don’t know under what name. Don’t you know what a nation means? It is immense. See how many villages there are! And in each village look at the number of people; and you say they will die out. A people cannot die out, but a person can. A people is necessary to God, for they till the soil. The Amalekites have not died out; they are the French or the Germans. And see what you have been telling me. You ought to know why we don’t possess God’s favour; He never sends us now either plagues or prophets. So how can we be taught now?”
Tiapa’s speech was terribly powerful. It was penetrated with irony, reproach, and fervent faith. He spoke for a long time, and the schoolmaster, who was as usual half drunk, and in a peaceful frame of mind, got tired of listening. He felt as if his nerves were being sawn with a wooden saw. He was watching the distorted body of the old man, and feeling the strange oppressive strength in his words. Finally he fell to pitying himself, and from that passed into a sad, wearied mood. He also wanted to say something forcible to old Tiapa, something positive, that might win the old man’s favour, and change his reproachful, morose tone into one that was soft and fatherly. The schoolmaster felt as if words were rising to his lips, but could not find any strong enough to express his thought.
“Ah! You are a lost man,” said Tiapa. “Your soul is torn, and yet you speak all sorts of empty fine words. You’d better be silent!”
“Ah, Tiapa!” sadly exclaimed the schoolmaster, “all that you say is true. And about the people also. The mass of the people is immense! But I am a stranger to it, and it is a stranger to me. There lies the tragedy of my life! But what’s to be done? I must go on suffering. Indeed there are no prophets; no, not any. And it’s true I talk too much and to no purpose. I had better hold my tongue. But you mustn’t be so hard on me. Ah, old man, you don’t know! You don’t know. You can’t understand.”
Finally the schoolmaster burst into tears; he cried so easily and free
ly, with such abundant tears, that afterwards he felt quite relieved.
“You should go into the country; you should get a place as schoolmaster or as clerk. You would be comfortable there, and have a change of air. What’s the use of leading this miserable life here?” Tiapa hissed morosely.
But the schoolmaster continued to weep, enjoying his tears.
From that time forth they became friends, and the outcasts, seeing them together, would say—
“The schoolmaster is making up to old Tiapa; he is trying to get at his money.”
“It’s Kouvalda who has put him up to trying to find out where the old man’s hoard is.”
It is very possible that their words were not in agreement with their thoughts; for these people had one strange trait in common—they liked to appear to each other worse than they really were.
The man who has nothing good in him likes sometimes to show himself in the worst light.
When all of them were gathered round the schoolmaster with his newspaper, the reading would begin.
“Now,” would say the captain, “what does the paper offer us to-day? Is there a serial story coming out in it?”
“No,” the schoolmaster would reply.
“Your editor is mean. Is there a leading article?”
“Yes, there is one to-day. I think it is by Gouliaff.”
“Give us a taste of it! The fellow writes well. He’s a cute one, he is!”
“The valuation of real estate,” reads the schoolmaster, “which took place more than fifteen years ago, continues still to form a basis for present-day rating, to the great advantage of the town.”
“The rogues!” interjects Captain Kouvalda.
“‘Still continues to form!’ It’s indeed absurd! It’s to the advantage of the merchants who manage the affairs of the town that it should continue to form the basis, and that’s why it does continue!”
“Well, the article is written with that idea,” says the schoolmaster.
“Ah! is it? How strange! It would be a good theme for the serial story, where it could be given a spicy flavour!”
A short dispute arises. The company still listens attentively, for they are at their first bottle of vodka. After the leading article they take the local news. After that they attack the police news, and law cases. If in these a merchant is the sufferer, Aristide Kouvalda rejoices. If a merchant is robbed, all is well; it is only a pity they did not take more. If his horses ran away with him and smashed him up, it was pleasant to listen to, and only a pity that the fellow escaped alive. If a shopkeeper lost a lawsuit, that was a good hearing; the sad point was that he was not made to pay the expenses twice over.
“That would have been illegal,” remarks the schoolmaster.
“Illegal?” Kouvalda exclaims hotly. “But does a shopkeeper himself act always according to the law? What is a shopkeeper? Let us examine this vulgar, absurd creature. To begin with, every shopkeeper is a moujik. He comes from the country, and after a certain time he takes a shop and begins to trade. To keep a shop one must have money, and where can a moujik or peasant get money? As everyone knows, money is not earned by honest labour. It means that the peasant by some means or other has cheated. It means that a shopkeeper is a dishonest peasant!”
“That’s clever!” The audience shows its approbation of the orator’s reasoning.
Tiapa groans and rubs his chest; the sound is like that which he makes after swallowing his first glass of vodka.
The captain is buoyant. They now begin reading provincial correspondence. Here the captain is in his own sphere, as he expresses it. Here it is apparent how shamefully the shopkeeper lives, and how he destroys and disfigures life. Kouvalda’s speech thunders round the shopkeeper, and annihilates him. He is listened to with pleasure, for he uses violent words.
“Oh, if I could only write in newspapers!” he exclaims, “I’d show the shopkeeper up in his right colours! I’d show he was only an animal who was temporarily performing the duties of man. I can see through him very well! I know him. He’s a coarse fool with no taste for life, who has no notion of patriotism, and understands nothing beyond kopecks!”
“Scraps,” knowing the weak side of the captain, and delighting in arousing anger, would interpose—
“Yes, since the gentry are dying out from hunger, there is no one of any account left in the world.”
“You are right, you son of a spider and of a frog! Since the gentry have gone under no one is left. There are nothing but shopkeepers, and I hate them!”
“That’s easy to see; for have they not trodden you under foot?”
“What’s that to me? I came down in the world through my love of life, while the shopkeeper does not understand living. That’s just why I hate him so, and not because I am a gentleman. But just take this as said, that I’m no longer a gentleman, but just simply an outcast, the shadow only of my former self. I spit at all and everything, and life for me is like a mistress who has deserted me. That is why I despise it, and am perfectly indifferent towards it.”
“All lies!” says “Scraps.”
“Am I a liar?” roars Aristide Kouvalda, red with anger.
“Why roar like that?” says Martianoff’s bass voice, coolly and gloomily. “What’s the use of arguing? Shopkeeper or gentleman, what does it matter to us?”
“That’s just it, for we are neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring,” interposes Deacon Tarass.
“Leave him in peace, ‘Scraps,’” says the schoolmaster pacifically. “What’s the use of throwing oil on the fire?”
The schoolmaster did not like quarrels and noise. When passions grew hot around him his lips twitched painfully, and he unobtrusively tried to make peace; not succeeding in which, he would leave the company to themselves. The captain knew this well, and if he was not very drunk he restrained himself, not wishing to lose the best auditor of his brilliant speeches.
“I repeat,” he continued now, with more restraint—“I repeat, that I see that life is in the hands of foes, not only of foes of the nobility, but foes of all that is noble; of greedy, ignorant people, who won’t do anything to improve the conditions of life. Still,” argues the schoolmaster, “merchants created Genoa, Venice, Holland. It was the merchants, the merchants of England who won India. It was the merchants Stroganoff’s”—
“What have I to do with those merchants? I am speaking of Judah Petounnikoff and his kind, with whom I have to do.”
“And what have you to do with these?” asked the schoolmaster softly.
“Well, I’m alive. I’m in the world. I can’t help being indignant at the thought of these savages, who have got hold of life, and who are doing their best to spoil it!”
“And who are laughing at the noble indignation of a captain and an outcast!” interjects “Scraps” provokingly.
“It’s stupid, very stupid! I agree with you. As an outcast I must destroy all the feelings and thoughts that were once in me. That’s perhaps true; but how shall we arm ourselves, you and I, if we throw on one side these feelings?”
“Now you are beginning to speak reasonably,” says the schoolmaster encouragingly.
“We want something different. New ways of looking at life, new feelings, something fresh, for we ourselves are a new phase in life.”
“Yes, indeed, that’s what we want,” says the schoolmaster.
“What’s the use of discussing and thinking?” inquires “The End”; “we haven’t got long to live; I’m forty, you are fifty. There is no one under thirty among us. And even if one were twenty, one could not live very long in such surroundings as these.”
“And then again, what new phase are we? Tramps, it seems to We, have always existed in the world,” says “Scraps” satirically.
“Tramps created Rome,” says the schoolmaster.
“Yes; that was so!” said the captain jubi
lantly. “Romulus and Remus, were they not tramps? And we—when our time comes—we shall also create.” “A breach of the peace!” interjects “Scraps,” and laughs, pleased with his own wit.
His laugh is wicked, and jars on the nerves. He is echoed by Simtzoff, by the deacon, and by “Tarass and a half.” The naïve eyes of the lad “Meteor” burn with a bright glow, and his cheeks flush red. “The End” mutters, in tones that fall like a hammer on the heads of the audience—
“All that’s trash and nonsense, and dreams!”
It was strange to hear these people, outcasts from life, ragged, saturated with vodka, anger, irony, and filth, discussing life in this way.
For the captain such discussions were a feast. He spoke more than the others, and that gave him a chance of feeling his superiority. For however low a person may fall, he can never refuse himself the delight of feeling stronger and better off than the rest. Aristide Kouvalda abused this sensation, and never seemed to have enough of it, much to the disgust of “Scraps,” “The Top,” and the other outcasts, little interested in similar questions. Politics was with them the favourite topic. A discussion on the necessity of conquering India, and of checking England, would continue endlessly. The question as to the best means of sweeping the Jews off the face of the earth, was no less hotly debated. In this latter question the leader was always “Scraps,” who invented marvellously cruel projects; but the captain, who liked always to be first in a discussion, evaded this topic. Women were always willingly and constantly discussed, but with unpleasant allusions; and the schoolmaster always appeared as women’s champion, and grew angry when the expressions used by the others were of too strong a nature. They gave in to him, for they looked upon him as a superior being, and on Saturdays they would borrow money from him, which he had earned during the week.
He enjoyed besides many privileges. For instance, he was never knocked about on the frequent occasions when the discussions finished in a general row. He was allowed to bring women into the doss-house; and no one else enjoyed this right, for the captain always warned his clients—
