The Man Who Was Afraid Part 51

"You are troubling yourself in vain. Do you know, papa, what I'll tell you? Either give me full freedom, or take all my business into your own hands. Take everything! Everything--to the last rouble!"

This proposition burst forth from Foma altogether unexpectedly to himself; he had never before thought of anything like it. But now that he uttered such words to his G.o.dfather it suddenly became clear to him that if his G.o.dfather were to take from him all his property he would become a perfectly free man, he could go wherever he pleased, do whatever he pleased. Until this moment he had been bound and enmeshed with something, but he knew not his fetters and was unable to break them, while now they were falling off of themselves so simply, so easily. Both an alarming and a joyous hope blazed up within his breast, as though he noticed that suddenly light had begun to flash upon his turbid life, that a wide, s.p.a.cious road lay open now before him. Certain images sprang up in his mind, and, watching their shiftings, he muttered incoherently:

"Here, this is better than anything! Take everything, and be done with it! And--as for me--I shall be free to go anywhere in the wide world! I cannot live like this. I feel as though weights were hanging on me, as though I were all bound. There--I must not go, this I must not do. I want to live in freedom, that I may know everything myself. I shall search life for myself. For, otherwise, what am I? A prisoner! Be kind, take everything. The devil take it all! Give me freedom, pray! What kind of a merchant am I? I do not like anything. And so--I would forsake men--everything. I would find a place for myself, I would find some kind of work, and would work. By G.o.d! Father! set me at liberty! For now, you see, I am drinking. I'm entangled with that woman."

Mayakin looked at him, listened attentively to his words, and his face was stern, immobile as though petrified. A dull, tavern noise smote the air, some people went past them, they greeted Mayakin, but he saw nothing, staring fixedly at the agitated face of his G.o.dson, who smiled distractedly, both joyously and pitifully.

"Eh, my sour blackberry!" said Mayakin, with a sigh, interrupting Foma's speech. "I see you've lost your way. And you're prating nonsense. I would like to know whether the cognac is to blame for it, or is it your foolishness?"

"Papa!" exclaimed Foma, "this can surely be done. There were cases where people have cast away all their possessions and thus saved themselves."

"That wasn't in my time. Not people that are near to me!" said Mayakin, sternly, "or else I would have shown them how to go away!"

"Many have become saints when they went away."

"Mm! They couldn't have gone away from me! The matter is simple--you know how to play at draughts, don't you? Move from one place to another until you are beaten, and if you're not beaten then you have the queen.

Then all ways are open to you. Do you understand? And why am I talking to you seriously? Psha!"

"Papa! why don't you want it?" exclaimed Foma, angrily.

"Listen to me! If you are a chimney-sweep, go, carrion, on the roof! If you are a fireman, stand on the watch-tower! And each and every sort of men must have its own mode of life. Calves cannot roar like bears! If you live your own life; go on, live it! And don't talk nonsense, and don't creep where you don't belong. Arrange your life after your pattern." And from the dark lips of the old man gushed forth in a trembling, glittering stream the jarring, but confident and bold words so familiar to Foma. Seized with the thought of freedom, which seemed to him so easily possible, Foma did not listen to his words. This idea had eaten into his brains, and in his heart the desire grew stronger and stronger to sever all his connections with this empty and wearisome life, with his G.o.dfather, with the steamers, the barges and the carouses, with everything amidst which it was narrow and stifling for him to live.

The old man's words seemed to fall on him from afar; they were blended with the clatter of the dishes, with the sc.r.a.ping of the lackey's feet along the floor, with some one's drunken shouting. Not far from them sat four merchants at a table and argued loudly:

"Two and a quarter--and thank G.o.d!"

"Luka Mitrich! How can I?"

"Give him two and a half!"

"That's right! You ought to give it, it's a good steamer, it tows briskly."

"My dear fellows, I can't. Two and a quarter!"

"And all this nonsense came to your head from your youthful pa.s.sion!"

said Mayakin, importantly, accompanying his words with a rap on the table. "Your boldness is stupidity; all these words of yours are nonsense. Would you perhaps go to the cloister? or have you perhaps a longing to go on the highways?"

Foma listened in silence. The buzzing noise about him now seemed to move farther away from him. He pictured himself amid a vast restless crowd of people; without knowing why they bustled about hither and thither, jumped on one another; their eyes were greedily opened wide; they were shouting, cursing, falling, crushing one another, and they were all jostling about on one place. He felt bad among them because he did not understand what they wanted, because he had no faith in their words, and he felt that they had no faith in themselves, that they understood nothing. And if one were to tear himself away from their midst to freedom, to the edge of life, and thence behold them--then all would become clear to him. Then he would also understand what they wanted, and would find his own place among them.

"Don't I understand," said Mayakin, more gently, seeing Foma lost in thought, and a.s.suming that he was reflecting on his words--"I understand that you want happiness for yourself. Well, my friend, it is not to be easily seized. You must seek happiness even as they search for mushrooms in the wood, you must bend your back in search of it, and finding it, see whether it isn't a toad-stool."

"So you will set me free?" asked Foma, suddenly lifting his head, and Mayakin turned his eyes away from his fiery look.

"Father! at least for a short time! Let me breathe, let me step aside from everything!" entreated Foma. "I will watch how everything goes on.

And then--if not--I shall become a drunkard."

"Don't talk nonsense. Why do you play the fool?" cried Mayakin, angrily.

"Very well, then!" replied Foma, calmly. "Very well! You do not want it?

Then there will be nothing! I'll squander it all! And there is nothing more for us to speak of. Goodbye! I'll set out to work, you'll see! It will afford you joy. Everything will go up in smoke!" Foma was calm, he spoke with confidence; it seemed to him that since he had thus decided, his G.o.dfather could not hinder him. But Mayakin straightened himself in his chair and said, also plainly and calmly:

"And do you know how I can deal with you?"

"As you like!" said Foma, with a wave of the hand. "Well then. Now I like the following: I'll return to town and will see to it that you are declared insane, and put into a lunatic asylum."

"Can this be done?" asked Foma, distrustfully, but with a tone of fright in his voice.

"We can do everything, my dear."

Foma lowered his head, and casting a furtive glance at his G.o.dfather's face, shuddered, thinking:

"He'll do it; he won't spare me."

"If you play the fool seriously I must also deal with you seriously.

I promised your father to make a man of you, and I will do it; if you cannot stand on your feet, I'll put you in irons. Then you will stand.

Though I know all these holy words of yours are but ugly caprices that come from excessive drinking. But if you do not give that up, if you keep on behaving indecently, if you ruin, out of wantonness, the property acc.u.mulated by your father, I'll cover you all up. I'll have a bell forged over you. It is very inconvenient to fool with me."

Mayakin spoke gently. The wrinkles of his cheeks all rose upward, and his small eyes in their dark sockets were smiling sarcastically, coldly.

And the wrinkles on his forehead formed an odd pattern, rising up to his bald crown. His face was stern and merciless, and breathed melancholy and coldness upon Foma's soul.

"So there's no way out for me?" asked Foma, gloomily. "You are blocking all my ways?"

"There is a way. Go there! I shall guide you. Don't worry, it will be right! You will come just to your proper place."

This self-confidence, this unshakable boastfulness aroused Foma's indignation. Thrusting his hands into his pockets in order not to strike the old man, he straightened himself in his chair and clinching his teeth, said, facing Mayakin closely:

"Why are you boasting? What are you boasting of? Your own son, where is he? Your daughter, what is she? Eh, you--you life-builder! Well, you are clever. You know everything. Tell me, what for do you live? What for are you acc.u.mulating money? Do you think you are not going to die? Well, what then? You've captured me. You've taken hold of me, you've conquered me. But wait, I may yet tear myself away from you! It isn't the end yet!

Eh, you! What have you done for life? By what will you be remembered?

My father, for instance, donated a lodging-house, and you--what have you done?"

Mayakin's wrinkles quivered and sank downward, wherefore his face a.s.sumed a sickly, weeping expression.

"How will you justify yourself?" asked Foma, softly, without lifting his eyes from him.

"Hold your tongue, you puppy!" said the old man in a low voice, casting a glance of alarm about the room.

"I've said everything! And now I'm going! Hold me back!"

Foma rose from his chair, thrust his cap on his head, and measured the old man with abhorrence.

"You may go; but I'll--I'll catch you! It will come out as I say!" said Yakov Tarasovich in a broken voice.

"And I'll go on a spree! I'll squander all!"

"Very well, we'll see!"

"Goodbye! you hero," Foma laughed.