by Maxim Gorky
“Let me play.”
“The entrance-fee is one copeck,” said a pock-marked, ruddy-faced man, proudly.
Not less proudly I replied:
“I put three on the second pair to the left.”
“The stakes are on!” And the game began.
I changed the fifteen-copeck piece and placed my three copecks on the pair of hucklebones. Whoever hit that pair would receive that money, but if he failed to hit them, he had to give me three copecks. I was in luck. Two of them took aim and lost. I had won six copecks from grown-up men. My spirits rose greatly. But one of the players remarked:
“You had better look out for that youngster or he will be running away with his winnings.”
This I regarded as an insult, and I said hotly: “Nine copecks on the pair at the extreme left.” However, this did not make much impression on the players. Only one lad of my own age cried:
“See how lucky he is, that little devil from the Zvezdrinki; I know him.”
A thin workman who smelt like a furrier said maliciously:
“He is a little devil, is he? Goo-oo-ood!”
Taking a sudden aim, he coolly knocked over my stake, and, bending down to me, said:
“Will that make you howl?”
“Three copecks on the pair to the right!”
“I shall have another three,” he said, but he lost.
One could not put money on the same “horse” more than three times running, so I chose other hucklebones and won four more copecks. I had a heap of hucklebones. But when my turn came again, I placed money three times, and lost it all. Simultaneously mass was finished, the bell rang, and the people came out of church.
“Are you married?” inquired the furrier, intending to seize me by the hair; but I eluded him, and overtaking a lad in his Sunday clothes I inquired politely:
“Have you been to communion?”
“Well, and suppose I have; what then?” he answered, looking at me contemptuously.
I asked him to tell me how people took communion, what words the priest said, and what I ought to have done.
The young fellow shook me roughly and roared out in a terrifying voice:
“You have played the truant from communion, you heretic! Well, I am not going to tell you anything. Let your father skin you for it!”
I ran home expecting to be questioned, and certain that they would discover that I had not been to communion; but after congratulating me, the old woman asked only one question:
“How much did you give to the clerk? Much?”
“Five copecks,” I answered, without turning a hair.
“And three copecks for himself; that would leave you seven copecks, animal!”
It was springtime. Each succeeding spring was clothed differently, and seemed brighter and pleasanter than the preceding one. The young grass and the fresh green birch gave forth an intoxicating odor. I had an uncontrollable desire to loiter in the fields and listen to the lark, lying face downward on the warm earth; but I had to clean the winter coats and help to put them away in the trunks, to cut up leaf tobacco, and dust the furniture, and to occupy myself from morning till night with duties which were to me both unpleasant and needless.
In my free hours I had absolutely nothing to live for. In our wretched street there was nothing, and beyond that I was not allowed to go. The yard was full of cross, tired workmen, untidy cooks, and washerwomen, and every evening I saw disgusting sights so offensive to me that I wished that I was blind.
I went up into the attic, taking some scissors and some colored paper with me, and cut out some lacelike designs with which I ornamented the rafters. It was, at any rate, something on which my sorrow could feed. I longed with all my heart to go to some place where people slept less, quarreled less, and did not so wearisomely beset God with complaints, and did not so frequently offend people with their harsh judgments.
On the Saturday after Easter they brought the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Vlandimirski from the Oranski Monastery to the town. The image became the guest of the town for half of the month of June, and blessed all the dwellings of those who attended the church. It was brought to my employers’ house on a week-day. I was cleaning the copper things in the kitchen when the young mistress cried out in a scared voice from her room:
“Open the front door. They are bringing the Oranski icon here.”
I rushed down, very dirty, and with greasy hands as rough as a brick opened the door. A young man with a lamp in one hand and a thurible in the other grumbled gently:
“Are you all asleep? Give a hand here!”
Two of the inhabitants carried the heavy icon-case up the narrow staircase. I helped them by supporting the edge, of it with my dirty hands and my shoulder. The monk came heavily behind me, chanting unwillingly with his thick voice:
“Holy Mother of God, pray for us!”
I thought, with sorrowful conviction:
“She is angry with me because I have touched her with dirty hands, and she will cause my hands to wither.”
They placed the icon in the corner of the antichamber on two chairs, which were covered with a clean sheet, and on each side of it stood two monks, young and beautiful like angels. They had bright eyes, joyful expressions, and lovely hair.
Prayers were said.
“O, Mother Renowned,” the big priest chanted, and all the while he was feeling the swollen lobe of his ear, which was hidden in his luxuriant hair.
“Holy Mother of God, pray for u-u-us!” sang the monks, wearily.
I loved the Holy Virgin. According to grandmother’s stories it was she who sowed on the earth, for the consolation of the poor, all the flowers, all the joys, every blessing and beauty. And when the time came to salute her, without observing how the adults conducted themselves toward her, I kissed the icon palpitatingly on the face, the lips. Some one with powerful hands hurled me to the door. I do not remember seeing the monks go away, carrying the icon, but I remember very well how my employers sat on the floor around me and debated with much fear and anxiety what would become of me.
“We shall have to speak to the priest about him and have him taught,” said the master, who scolded me without rancor.
“Ignoramus! How is it that you did not know that you should not kiss the lips? You must have been taught that at school.”
For several days I waited, resigned, wondering what actually would happen to me. I had touched the icon with dirty hands; I had saluted it in a forbidden manner; I should not be allowed to go unpunished.
But apparently the Mother of God forgave the involuntary sin which had been prompted by sheer love, or else her punishment was so light that I did not notice it among the frequent punishments meted out to me by these good people.
Sometimes, to annoy the old mistress, I said compunctiously:
“But the Holy Virgin has evidently forgotten to punish me.”
“You wait,” answered the old woman, maliciously. “We shall see.”
While I decorated the rafters of the attic with pink tea-wrappers, silver paper, leaves from trees, and all kinds of things, I used to sing anything that came into my head, setting the words to church melodies, as the Kalmucks do on the roads.
“I am sitting in the attic
With scissors in my hand,
Cutting paper—paper.
A dunce am I, and dull.
If I were a dog,
I could run where’er I wished;
But now they all cry out to me:
‘Sit down! Be silent, rogue,
While your skin is whole!’”
The old woman came to look at my work, and burst out laughing.
“You should decorate the kitchen like that.”
One day the master came up to the attic, looked at my performance, and said, with a sigh:
“You ar
e an amusing fellow, Pyeshkov; the devil you are? I wonder what you will become, a conjurer or what? One can’t guess.” And he gave me a large Nikolaivski five-copeck piece.
By means of a thin wire I fastened the coin in the most prominent position among my works of art. In the course of a few days it disappeared. I believe that the old woman took it.
CHAPTER V
However, I did run away in the spring. One morning when I went to the shop for bread the shopkeeper, continuing in my presence a quarrel with his wife, struck her on the forehead with a weight. She ran into the street, and there fell down. People began to gather round at once. The woman was laid on a stretcher and carried to the hospital, and I ran behind the cab which took her there without noticing where I was going till I found myself on the banks of the Volga, with two grevens in my hand.
The spring sun shone caressingly, the broad expanse of the Volga flowed before me, the earth was full of sound and spacious, and I had been living like a mouse in a trap. So I made up my mind that I would not return to my master, nor would I go to grandmother at Kunavin; for as I had not kept my word to her, I was ashamed to go and see her, and grandfather would only gloat over my misfortunes.
For two or three days I wandered by the river-side, being fed by kind-hearted porters, and sleeping with them in their shelters. At length one of them said to me:
“It is no use for you to hang about here, my boy. I can see that. Go over to the boat which is called The Good. They want a washer-up.”
I went. The tall, bearded steward in a black silk skullcap looked at me through his glasses with his dim eyes, and said quietly:
“Two rubles a month. Your passport?”
I had no passport. The steward pondered and then said:
“Bring your mother to see me.”
I rushed to grandmother. She approved the course I had taken, told grandfather to go to the workman’s court and get me a passport, and she herself accompanied me to the boat.
“Good!” said the steward, looking at us. “Come along.”
He then took me to the stern of the boat, where sat at a small table, drinking tea and smoking a fat cigar at the same time, an enormous cook in white overalls and a white cap. The steward pushed me toward him.
“The washer-up.”
Then he went away, and the cook, snorting, and with his black mustache bristling, called after him:
“You engage any sort of devil as long as he is cheap.”
Angrily tossing his head of closely cropped hair, he opened his dark eyes very wide, stretched himself, puffed, and cried shrilly:
“And who may you be?”
I did not like the appearance of this man at all. Although he was all in white, he looked dirty. There was a sort of wool growing on his fingers, and hairs stuck out of his great ears.
“I am hungry,” was my reply to him.
He blinked, and suddenly his ferocious countenance was transformed by a broad smile. His fat, brick-red cheeks widened to his very ears; he displayed his large, equine teeth; his mustache drooped, and all at once he had assumed the appearance of a kind, fat woman.
Throwing the tea overboard out of his glass, he poured out a fresh lot for me, and pushed a French roll and a large piece of sausage toward me.
“Peg away! Are your parents living? Can you steal? You needn’t be afraid; they are all thieves here. You will soon learn.”
He talked as if he were barking. His enormous, blue, clean-shaven face was covered all round the nose with red veins closely set together, his swollen, purple nose hung over his mustache. His lower lip was disfiguringly pendulous. In the corner of his mouth was stuck a smoking cigarette. Apparently he had only just come from the bath. He smelt of birch twigs, and a profuse sweat glistened on his temples and neck.
After I had drunk my tea, he gave me a ruble-note.
“Run along and buy yourself two aprons with this. Wait! I will buy them for you myself.”
He set his cap straight and came with me, swaying ponderously, his feet pattering on the deck like those of a bear.
At night the moon shone brightly as it glided away from the boat to the meadows on the left. The old red boat, with its streaked funnel, did not hurry, and her propeller splashed unevenly in the silvery water. The dark shore gently floated to meet her, casting its shadow on the water, and beyond, the windows of the peasant huts gleamed charmingly. They were singing in the village. The girls were merry-making and singing—and when they sang “Aie Ludi,” it sounded like “Alleluia.”
In the wake of the steamer a large barge, also red, was being towed by a long rope. The deck was railed in like an iron cage, and in this cage were convicts condemned to deportation or prison. On the prow of the barge the bayonet of a sentry shone like a candle. It was quiet on the barge itself. The moon bathed it in a rich light while behind the black iron grating could be seen dimly gray patches. These were the convicts looking out on the Volga. The water sobbed, now weeping, now laughing timidly. It was as quiet here as in church, and there was the same smell of oil.
As I looked at the barge I remembered my early childhood; the journey from Astrakhan to Nijni, the iron faces of mother and grandmother, the person who had introduced me to this interesting, though hard, life, in the world. And when I thought of grandmother, all that I found so bad and repulsive in life seemed to leave me; everything was transformed and became more interesting, pleasanter; people seemed to be better and nicer altogether.
The beauty of the nights moved me almost to tears, and especially the barge, which looked so like a coffin, and so solitary on the broad expanse of the flowing river in the pensive quietness of the warm night. The uneven lines of the shore, now rising, now falling, stirred the imagination pleasantly. I longed to be good, and to be of use to others.
The people on our steamboat had a peculiar stamp. They seemed to me to be all alike, young and old, men and women. The boat traveled slowly. The busy folk traveled by fast boat, and all the lazy rascals came on our boat. They sang and ate, and soiled any amount of cups and plates, knives and forks and spoons from morning to night. My work was to wash up and clean the knives and forks, and I was busy with this work from six in the morning till close on midnight. During the day, from two till six o’clock, and in the evening, from ten till midnight, I had less work to do; for at those times the passengers took a rest from eating, and only drank, tea, beer, and vodka. All the buffet attendants, my chiefs, were free at that time, too. The cook, Smouri, drank tea at a table near the hatchway with his assistant, Jaakov Ivanich; the kitchen-man, Maxim; and Sergei, the saloon steward, a humpback with high cheek-bones, a face pitted with smallpox, and oily eyes. Jaakov told all sorts of nasty stories, bursting out into sobbing laughs and showing his long, discolored teeth. Sergei stretched his frog-like mouth to his ears. Frowning Maxim was silent, gazing at them with stern, colorless eyes.
“Asiatic! Mordovan!” said the old cook now and again in his deep voice.
I did not like these people. Fat, bald Jaakov Ivanich spoke of nothing but women, and that always filthily. He had a vacant-looking face covered with bluish pimples. On one cheek he had a mole with a tuft of red hair growing from it. He used to pull out these hairs by twisting them round a needle. Whenever an amiable, sprightly passenger of the female sex appeared on the boat, he waited upon her in a peculiar, timid manner like a beggar. He spoke to her sweetly and plaintively, he licked her, as it were, with the swift movements of his tongue. For some reason I used to think that such great fat creatures ought to be hang-men.
“One should know how to get round women,” he would teach Sergei and Maxim, who would listen to him much impressed, pouting their lips and turning red.
“Asiatics!” Smouri would roar in accents of disgust, and standing up heavily, he gave the order, “Pyeshkov, march!”
In his cabin he would hand me a little book bound in leather, and lie down in h
is hammock by the wall of the ice-house.
“Read!” he would say.
I sat on a box and read conscientiously:
“‘The umbra projected by the stars means that one is on good terms with heaven and free from profanity and vice.’”
Smouri, smoking a cigarette, puffed out the smoke and growled:
“Camels! They wrote—”
“‘Baring the left bosom means innocence of heart.’” “Whose bosom?”
“It does not say.”
“A woman’s, it means. Eh, and a loose woman.”
He closed his eyes and lay with his arms behind his head. His cigarette, hardly alight, stuck in the corner of his mouth. He set it straight with his tongue, stretched so that something whistled in his chest, and his enormous face was enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Sometimes I thought he had fallen asleep and I left off reading to examine the accursed book, which bored me to nauseation. But he said hoarsely: “Go on reading!”
“‘The venerable one answered, “Look! My dear brother Suvyerin—”’”
“Syevyeverin—”
“It is written Suvyerin.”
“Well, that’s witchcraft. There is some poetry at the end. Run on from there.”
I ran on.
“Profane ones, curious to know our business,
Never will your weak eyes spy it out,
Nor will you learn how the fairies sing.”
“Wait!” said Smouri. “That is not poetry. Give me the book.”
He angrily turned over the thick, blue leaves, and then put the book under the mattress.
“Get me another one.”
To my grief there were many books in his black trunk clamped with iron. There were “Precepts of Peace,” “Memories of the Artillery,” “Letters of Lord Sydanhall,” “Concerning Noxious Insects and their Extinction, with Advice against the Pest,” books which seemed to have no beginning and no end. Sometimes the cook set me to turn over all his books and read out their titles to him, but as soon as I had begun he called out angrily:
