by Maxim Gorky
Not stout, but soft to flabbiness, she looked like an old cat which had grown beyond catching mice, and, languid from overfeeding, could do no more than purr, dwelling sweetly on the memories of past triumphs and pleasures.
“Here,” said Sitanov, frowning thoughtfully, “was a large business, a fine workshop, and clever men labored at this trade; but now that is all done with, all gone to ruin, all directed by the paws of Kuzikin! It is a case of working and working, and all for strangers! When one thinks of this, a sort of spring seems to break in one’s head. One wants to do nothing,—a fig for any kind of work!—just to lie on the roof, lie there for the whole summer and look up into the sky.”
Pavl Odintzov also appropriated these thoughts of Sitanov, and smoking a cigarette which had been given him by his elders, philosophized about God, drunkenness, and women. He enlarged on the fact that all work disappears; certain people do it and others destroy it, neither valuing it nor understanding it.
At such times his sharp, pleasant face frowned, aged. He would sit on his bed on the floor, embracing his knees, and look long at the blue square of the window, at the roof of the shed which lay under a fall of snow, and at the stars in the winter sky.
The workmen snored, or talked in their sleep; one of them raved, choking with words; in the loft, Davidov coughed away what was left of his life. In the corner, body to body, wrapped in an iron-bound sleep of intoxication, lay those “slaves of God”—Kapendiukhin, Sorokhin, Pershin; from the walls icons without faces, hands, or feet looked forth. There was a close smell of bad eggs, and dirt, which had turned sour in the crevices of the floor.
“How I pity them all!” whispered Pavl. “Lord!”
This pity for myself and others disturbed me more and more. To us both, as I have said before, all the workmen seemed to be good people, but their lives were bad, unworthy of them, unbearably dull. At the time of the winter snowstorms, when everything on the earth—the houses, the trees—was shaken, howled, and wept, and in Lent, when the melancholy bells rang out, the dullness of it all flowed over the workshop like a wave, as oppressive as lead, weighing people down, killing all that was alive in them, driving them to the tavern, to women, who served the same purpose as vodka in helping them to forget.
On such evenings books were of no use, so Pavl and I tried to amuse the others in our own way: smearing our faces with soot and paint, dressing ourselves up and playing different comedies composed by ourselves, heroically fighting against the boredom till we made them laugh. Remembering the “Account of how the soldier saved Peter the Great,” I turned this book into a conversational form, and climbing on to Davidov’s pallet-bed, we acted thereon cheerfully, cutting off the head of an imaginary Swede. Our audience burst out laughing.
They were especially delighted with the legend of the Chinese devil, Sing-U-Tongia. Pashka represented the unhappy devil who had planned to do a good deed, and I acted all the other characters—the people of the field, subjects, the good soul, and even the stones on which the Chinese devil rested in great pain after each of his unsuccessful attempts to perform a good action.
Our audience laughed loudly, and I was amazed when I saw how easily they could be made to laugh. This facility provoked me unpleasantly.
“Ach, clowns,” they cried. “Ach, you devils!”
But the further I went, the more I was troubled with the thought that sorrow appealed more than joy to the hearts of these people. Gaiety has no place in their lives, and as such has no value, but they evoke it from under their burdens, as a contrast to the dreamy Russian sadness. The inward strength of a gaiety which lives not of itself not because it wishes to live, but because it is aroused by the call of sad days, is suspect. And too often Russian gaiety changes suddenly into cruel tragedy. A man will be dancing as if he were breaking the shackles which bound him. Suddenly a ferocious wild beast is let loose in him, and with the unreasoning anguish of a wild beast he will throw himself upon all who come in his way, tear them in pieces, bite them, destroy them.
This intense joy aroused by exterior forces irritated me, and stirred to self-oblivion, I began to compose and act suddenly created fantasies—for I wanted so much to arouse a real, free, and unrestrained joy in these people. I succeeded in some measure. They praised me, they were amazed at me, but the sadness which I had almost succeeded in shaking off, stole back again, gradually growing denser and stronger, harassing them.
Gray Larionovich said kindly:
“Well, you are an amusing fellow, God bless you!”
“He is a boon to us,” Jikharev seconded him.
“You know, Maxim, you ought to go into a circus, or a theater; you would make a good clown.”
Out of the whole workshop only two went to the theaters, on Christmas or carnival weeks, Kapendiukhin and Sitanov, and the older workmen seriously counseled them to wash themselves from this sin in the baptismal waters of the Jordan. Sitanov particularly would often urge me:
“Throw up everything and be an actor!”
And much moved, he would tell me the “sad” story of the life of the actor, Yakolev.
“There, that will show you what may happen!”
He loved to tell stories about Marie Stuart, whom he called “the rogue,” and his peculiar delight was the “Spanish nobleman.”
“Don Cæsar de Bazan was a real nobleman. Maximich! Wonderful!”
There was something of the “Spanish nobleman” about himself.
One day in the market-place, in front of the fire-station, three firemen were amusing themselves by beating a peasant. A crowd of people, numbering about forty persons, looked on and cheered the soldiers. Sitanov threw himself into the brawl. With swinging blows of his long arms he struck the firemen, lifted the peasant, and carried him into the crowd, crying:
“Take him away!”
But he remained behind himself, one against three. The yard of the fire-station was only about ten steps away; they might easily have called others to their aid and Sitanov would have been killed. But by good luck the firemen were frightened and ran away into the yard.
“Dogs!” he cried after them.
On Sunday the young people used to attend boxing-matches held in the Tyessni yard behind the Petropavlovski churchyard, where sledge-drivers and peasants from the adjacent villages assembled to fight with the workmen. The wagoners put up against the town an eminent boxer, a Mordovan giant with a small head, and large eyes always full of tears. Wiping away the tears with the dirty sleeve of his short caftan, he stood before his backers with his legs planted widely apart, and challenged good-naturedly:
“Come on, then; what is the matter with you? Are you cold?”
Kapendiukhin was set up against him on our side, and the Mordovan always beat him. But the bleeding, panting Cossack said:
“I’ll lick that Mordovan if I die for it!”
In the end, that became the one aim of his life. He even went to the length of giving up vodka, rubbed his body with snow before he went to sleep, ate a lot of meat, and to develop his muscles, crossed himself many times every evening with two pound weights. But this did not avail him at all. Then he sewed a piece of lead inside his gloves, and boasted to Sitanov:
“Now we will finish the Mordovan!”
Sitanov sternly warned him:
“You had better throw it away, or I will give you away before the fight.”
Kapendiukhin did not believe him, but when the time for the fight arrived, Sitanov said abruptly to the Mordovan:
“Step aside, Vassili Ivanich; I have something to say to Kapendiukhin first!”
The Cossack turned purple and roared:
“I have nothing to do with you; go away!”
“Yes, you have!” said Sitanov, and approaching him, he looked into the Cossack’s face with a compelling glance.
Kapendiukhin stamped on the ground, tore the gloves from his hands,
thrust them in his breast, and went quickly away from the scene of his fight.
Both our side and the other were unpleasantly surprised, and a certain important personage said angrily to Sitanov:
“That is quite against the rules, brother,—to bring private affairs to be settled in the world of the prize ring!”
They fell upon Sitanov from all sides, and abused him. He kept silence for a long time, but at length he said to the important personage:
“Am I to stand by and see murder done?”
The important personage at once guessed the truth, and actually taking off his cap said:
“Then our gratitude is due to you!”
“Only don’t go and spread it abroad, uncle!”
“Why should I? Kapendiukhin is hardly ever the victor, and ill-success embitters a man. We understand! But in future we will have his gloves examined before the contest.”
“That is your affair!”
When the important personage had gone away, our side began to abuse Kapendiukhin:
“You have made a nice mess of it. He would have killed his man, our Cossack would, and now we have to stay on the losing side!”
They abused him at length, captiously, to their hearts’ content.
Sitanov sighed and said:
“Oh, you guttersnipes!”
And to the surprise of everyone he challenged the Mordovan to a single contest. The latter squared up and flourishing his fists said jokingly:
“We will kill each other.”
A good number of persons, taking hands, formed a wide, spacious circle. The boxers, looking at each other keenly, changed over, the right hand held out, the left on their breasts. The experienced people noticed at once that Sitanov’s arms were longer than those of the Mordovan. It was very quiet; the snow crunched under the feet of the boxers. Some one, unable to restrain his impatience, muttered complainingly and eagerly:
“They ought to have begun by now.”
Sitanov flourished his right hand, the Mordovan raised his left for defense, and received a straight blow under the right arm from Sitanov’s left hand. He gasped, retired, and exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction:
“He is young, but he is no fool!”
They began to leap upon one another, striking each other’s breasts with blows from their mighty fists. In a few minutes not only our own people, but strangers began to cry excitedly:
“Get your blows in quicker, image-painter! Fix him up, embosser.”
The Mordovan was a little stronger than Sitanov, but as he was considerably the heavier, he could not deal such swift blows, and received two or three to every one he gave. But his seasoned body apparently did not suffer much, and he was laughing and exclaiming all the time, when, suddenly, with a heavy upward blow he put Sitanov’s right arm out of joint from the shoulder.
“Part them; it is a draw!” cried several voices, and, breaking the circle, the crowd gathered round the pugilists.
“He is not very strong but he is skilful, the image-painter,” said the Mordovan good-naturedly. “He will make a good boxer, and that I say before the whole world!”
The elder persons began a general wrestling match, and I took Sitanov to the Feldsher bone-setter. His deed had raised him still higher in my esteem, had increased my sympathy with him, and his importance in my eyes.
He was, in the main, very upright and honorable, and he felt that he had only done his duty, but the graceless Kapendiukhin made fun of him lightly.
“Ekh, Genya, you live for show! You have polished up your soul like a samovar before a holiday, “and you go about boasting, ‘look how brightly it shines!’ But your soul is really brass, and a very dull affair, too.”
Sitanov remained calmly silent, either working hard or copying Lermontov’s verses into his note-book. He spent all his spare time in this copying, and when I suggested to him:
“Why, when you have plenty of money, don’t you buy the book?” he answered:
“No, it is better in my own handwriting.”
Having written a page in his pretty, small handwriting, he would read softly while he was waiting for the ink to dry:
“Without regret, as a being apart,
You will look down upon this earth,
Where there is neither real happiness
Nor lasting beauty.”
And he said, half-closing his eyes:
“That is true. Ekh! and well he knows the truth, too!”
The behavior of Sitanov to Kapendiukhin always amazed me. When he had been drinking, the Cossack always tried to pick a quarrel with his comrade, and Sitanov would go on for a long time bearing it, and saying persuasively:
“That will do, let me alone!”
And then he would start to beat the drunken man so cruelly that the workmen, who regarded internal dissensions amongst themselves merely as a spectacle, interfered between the friends, and separated them.
“If we didn’t stop Evgen in time, he would beat any one to death, and he would never forgive himself,” they said.
When he was sober Kapendiukhin ceaselessly jeered at Sitanov, making fun of his passion for poetry and his unhappy romance, obscenely, but unsuccessfully trying to arouse jealousy. Sitanov listened to the Cossack’s taunts in silence, without taking offense, and he sometimes even laughed with Kapendiukhin at himself.
They slept side by side, and at night they would hold long, whispered conversations about something. These conversations gave me no peace, for I was anxious to know what these two people who were so unlike each other found to talk about in such a friendly manner. But when I went near them, the Cossack yelled:
“What do you want?”
But Sitanov did not seem to see me.
However, one day they called me, and the Cossack asked:
“Maximich, if you were rich, what would you do?”
“I would buy books.”
“And what else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ekh!” said Kapendiukhin, turning away from me in disgust, but Sitanov said calmly:
“You see; no one knows that, whether they be old or young. I tell you that riches in themselves are worth nothing, unless they are applied to some special purpose.”
I asked them, “What are you talking about?”
“We don’t feel inclined to sleep, and so we are talking,” answered the Cossack.
Later, listening to them, I found that they were discussing by night those things which other people discussed by day—God, truth, happiness, the stupidity and cunning of women, the greediness of the rich, and the fact that life is complicated and incomprehensible.
I always listened to their conversations eagerly; they excited me. I was pleased to think that almost every one had arrived at the same conclusion; namely, that life is evil, and that we ought to have a better form of existence! But at the same time I saw that the desire to live under better conditions would have no effect, would change nothing in the lives of the work-people, in their relations one with another. All these talks, throwing a light upon my life as it lay before me, revealed at the same time, beyond it, a sort of melancholy emptiness; and in this emptiness, like specks of dust in a pond ruffled by the wind, floated people, absurdly and exasperatingly, among them those very people who had said that such a crowd was devoid ‘of sense. Always ready to give their opinion, they were always passing judgment on others, repeating, bragging, and starting bitter quarrels about mere trifles. They were always seriously offending one another. They tried to guess what would happen to them after death; while on the threshold of the workshop where the washstand stood, the floor-boards had rotted away. From that damp, fetid hole rose the cold, damp smell of sour earth, and it was this that made one’s feet freeze. Pavl and I stopped up this hole with straw and cloths. We often said that the boards should be renewed, but the hole grew larger
and larger, and in bad weather fumes rose from it as from a pipe. Every one caught cold, and coughed. The tin ventilator in the fortochka squeaked, and when some one had oiled it, though they had all been grumbling at it, Jikharev said:
“It is dull, now that the fortochka has stopped squeaking.”
To come straight from the bath and lie down on a dirty, dusty bed, in the midst of dirt and bad smells, did not revolt any one of them. There were many insignificant trifles which made our lives unbearable, which might easily have been remedied, but no one took the trouble to do anything.
They often said:
“No one has any mercy upon human creatures,—neither God nor we ourselves.”
But when Pavl and I washed dying Davidov, who was eaten up with dirt and insects, a laugh was raised against us. They took off their shirts and invited us to search them, called us blockheads, and jeered at us as if we had done something shameful and very ludicrous.
From Christmas till the beginning of Lent drew near, Davidov lay in the loft, coughing protractedly, spitting blood, which, if it did not fall into the wash-hand basin, splashed on the floor. At night he woke the others with his delirious shrieks.
Almost every day they said:
“We must take him to the hospital!”
But it turned out that Davidov’s passport had expired. Then he seemed better, and they said:
“It is of no consequence after all; he will soon be dead!”
And he would say to himself:
“I shall soon be gone!”
He was a quiet humorist and also tried to relieve the dullness of the workshop by jokes, hanging down his dark bony face, and saying in a wheezy voice:
“Listen, people, to the voice of one who ascended to the loft.
“In the loft I live,
Early do I wake;
Asleep or awake
Cockroaches devour me.”
“He is not downhearted!” exclaimed his audience.
Sometimes Pavl and I went to him, and he joked with difficulty.
“With what shall I regale you, my dear guests? A fresh little spider—would you like that?”
