The Man Who Was Afraid Part 55

It was dark and quiet about him, the moon was shining brightly, and a light refreshing breeze was blowing. Foma held his face to the cool breeze as he walked against the wind with rapid strides, timidly looking about on all sides, and wishing that none of the company from the tavern would follow him. He understood that he had lowered himself in the eyes of all these people. As he walked he thought of what he had come to: a sharper had publicly abused him in disgraceful terms, while he, the son of a well-known merchant, had not been able to repay him for his mocking.

"It serves me right!" thought Foma, sadly and bitterly. "That serves me right! Don't lose your head, understand. And then again, I wanted it myself. I interfered with everybody, so now, take your share!" These thoughts made him feel painfully sorry for himself. Seized and sobered by them he kept on strolling along the streets, and searching for something strong and firm in himself. But everything within him was confused; it merely oppressed his heart, without a.s.suming any definite forms. As in a painful dream he reached the river, seated himself on the beams by the sh.o.r.e, and began to look at the calm dark water, which was covered with tiny ripples. Calmly and almost noiselessly flowed on the broad, mighty river, carrying enormous weights upon its bosom. The river was all covered with black vessels, the signal lights and the stars were reflected in its water; the tiny ripples, murmuring softly, were gently breaking against the sh.o.r.e at the very feet of Foma. Sadness was breathed down from the sky, the feeling of loneliness oppressed Foma.

"Oh Lord Jesus Christ!" thought he, sadly gazing at the sky. "What a failure I am. There is nothing in me. G.o.d has put nothing into me. Of what use am I? Oh Lord Jesus!"

At the recollection of Christ Foma felt somewhat better--his loneliness seemed alleviated, and heaving a deep sigh, he began to address G.o.d in silence:

"Oh Lord Jesus Christ! Other people do not understand anything either, but they think that all is known to them, and therefore it is easier for them to live. While I--I have no justification. Here it is night, and I am alone, I have no place to go, I am unable to say anything to anybody.

I love no one--only my G.o.dfather, and he is soulless. If Thou hadst but punished him somehow! He thinks there is none cleverer and better on earth than himself. While Thou sufferest it. And the same with me. If some misfortune were but sent to me. If some illness were to overtake me. But here I am as strong as iron. I am drinking, leading a gay life.

I live in filth, but the body does not even rust, and only my soul aches. Oh Lord! To what purpose is such a life?"

Vague thoughts of protest flashed one after another through the mind of the lonely, straying man, while the silence about him was growing deeper, and night ever darker and darker. Not far from the sh.o.r.e lay a boat at anchor; it rocked from side to side, and something was creaking in it as though moaning.

"How am I to free myself from such a life as this?" reflected Foma, staring at the boat. "And what occupation is destined to be mine?

Everybody is working."

And suddenly he was struck by a thought which appeared great to him:

"And hard work is cheaper than easy work! Some man will give himself up entire to his work for a rouble, while another takes a thousand with one finger."

He was pleasantly roused by this thought. It seemed to him that he discovered another falsehood in the life of man, another fraud which they conceal. He recalled one of his stokers, the old man Ilya, who, for ten copecks, used to be on watch at the fireplace out of his turn, working for a comrade eight hours in succession, amid suffocating heat.

One day, when he had fallen sick on account of overwork, he was lying on the bow of the steamer, and when Foma asked him why he was thus ruining himself, Ilya replied roughly and sternly:

"Because every copeck is more necessary to me than a hundred roubles to you. That's why!"

And, saying this, the old man turned his body, which was burning with pain, with its back to Foma.

Reflecting on the stoker his thoughts suddenly and without any effort, embraced all those petty people that were doing hard work. He wondered, Why do they live? What pleasure is it for them to live on earth? They constantly do but their dirty, hard work, they eat poorly, are poorly clad, they drink. One man is sixty years old, and yet he keeps on toiling side by side with the young fellows. And they all appeared to Foma as a huge pile of worms, which battled about on earth just to get something to eat. In his memory sprang up his meetings with these people, one after another--their remarks about life--now sarcastic and mournful, now hopelessly gloomy remarks--their wailing songs. And now he also recalled how one day in the office Yefim had said to the clerk who hired the sailors:

"Some Lopukhin peasants have come here to hire themselves out, so don't give them more than ten roubles a month. Their place was burned down to ashes last summer, and they are now in dire need--they'll work for ten roubles."

Sitting on the beams, Foma rocked his whole body to and fro, and out of the darkness, from the river, various human figures appeared silently before him--sailors, stokers, clerks, waiters, half-intoxicated painted women, and tavern-loungers. They floated in the air like shadows; something damp and brackish came from them, and the dark, dense throng moved on slowly, noiselessly and swiftly, like clouds in an autumn sky.

The soft splashing of the waves poured into his soul like sadly sighing music. Far away, somewhere on the other bank of the river, burned a wood-pile; embraced by the darkness on all sides, it was at times almost absorbed by it, and in the darkness it trembled, a reddish spot scarcely visible to the eye. But now the fire flamed up again, the darkness receded, and it was evident that the flame was striving upward. And then it sank again.

"Oh Lord, Oh Lord!" thought Foma, painfully and bitterly, feeling that grief was oppressing his heart with ever greater power. "Here I am, alone, even as that fire. Only no light comes from me, nothing but fumes and smoke. If I could only meet a wise man! Someone to speak to. It is utterly impossible for me to live alone. I cannot do anything. I wish I might meet a man."

Far away, on the river, two large purple fires appeared, and high above them was a third. A dull noise resounded in the distance, something black was moving toward Foma.

"A steamer going up stream," he thought. "There may be more than a hundred people aboard, and none of them give a single thought to me.

They all know whither they are sailing. Every one of them has something that is his own. Every one, I believe, understands what he wants. But what do I want? And who will tell it to me? Where is such a man?"

The lights of the steamer were reflected in the river, quivering in it; the illumined water rushed away from it with a dull murmur, and the steamer looked like a huge black fish with fins of fire.

A few days elapsed after this painful night, and Foma caroused again. It came about by accident and against his will. He had made up his mind to restrain himself from drinking, and so went to dinner in one of the most expensive hotels in town, hoping to find there none of his familiar drinking-companions, who always selected the cheaper and less respectable places for their drinking bouts. But his calculation proved to be wrong; he at once came into the friendly joyous embrace of the brandy-distiller's son, who had taken Sasha as mistress.

He ran up to Foma, embraced him and burst into merry laughter.

"Here's a meeting! This is the third day I have eaten here, and I am wearied by this terrible lonesomeness. There is not a decent man in the whole town, so I have had to strike up an acquaintance with newspaper men. They're a gay lot, although at first they played the aristocrat and kept sneering at me. After awhile we all got dead drunk. They'll be here again today--I swear by the fortune of my father! I'll introduce you to them. There is one writer of feuilletons here; you know, that some one who always lauded you, what's his name? An amusing fellow, the devil take him! Do you know it would be a good thing to hire one like that for personal use! Give him a certain sum of money and order him to amuse!

How's that? I had a certain coupletist in my employ,--it was rather entertaining to be with him. I used to say to him sometimes: 'Rimsky!

give us some couplets!' He would start, I tell you, and he'd make you split your sides with laughter. It's a pity, he ran off somewhere. Have you had dinner?"

"Not yet. And how's Aleksandra?" asked Foma, somewhat deafened by the loud speech of this tall, frank, red-faced fellow clad in a motley costume.

"Well, do you know," said the latter with a frown, "that Aleksandra of yours is a nasty woman! She's so obscure, it's tiresome to be with her, the devil take her! She's as cold as a frog,--brrr! I guess I'll send her away."

"Cold--that's true," said Foma and became pensive. "Every person must do his work in a first cla.s.s manner," said the distiller's son, instructively. "And if you become some one's s mistress you must perform your duty in the best way possible, if you are a decent woman. Well, shall we have a drink?"

They had a drink. And naturally they got drunk. A large and noisy company gathered in the hotel toward evening. And Foma, intoxicated, but sad and calm, spoke to them with heavy voice:

"That's the way I understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows.

The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms. Such is their destined lot. They are necessary But I and you--all of you--are to no purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything--without justification, merely at random. And we are utterly unnecessary. But even these here, and everybody else, to what purpose are they? You must understand that. Brethren! We shall all burst! By G.o.d! And why shall we burst? Because there is always something superfluous in us, there is something superfluous in our souls. And all our life is superfluous!

Comrades! I weep. To what purpose am I? I am unnecessary! Kill me, that I may die; I want to die."

And he wept, shedding many drunken tears. A drunken, small-sized, swarthy man sat down close to him, began to remind him of something, tried to kiss him, and striking a knife against the table, shouted:

"True! Silence! These are powerful words! Let the elephants and the mammoths of the disorder of life speak! The raw Russian conscience speaks holy words! Roar on, Gordyeeff! Roar at everything!" And again he clutched at Foma's shoulders, flung himself on his breast, raising to Foma's face his round, black, closely-cropped head, which was ceaselessly turning about on his shoulders on all sides, so that Foma was unable to see his face, and he was angry at him for this, and kept on pushing him aside, crying excitedly:

"Get away! Where is your face? Go on!"

A deafening, drunken laughter smote the air about them, and choking with laughter, the son of the brandy-distiller roared to someone hoa.r.s.ely:

"Come to me! A hundred roubles a month with board and lodging! Throw the paper to the dogs. I'll give you more!"

And everything rocked from side to side in rhythmic, wave-like movement.

Now the people moved farther away from Foma, now they came nearer to him, the ceiling descended, the floor rose, and it seemed to Foma that he would soon be flattened and crushed. Then he began to feel that he was floating somewhere over an immensely wide and stormy river, and, staggering, he cried out in fright:

"Where are we floating? Where is the captain?"

He was answered by the loud, senseless laughter of the drunken crowd, and by the shrill, repulsive shout of the swarthy little man:

"True! we are all without helm and sails. Where is the captain? What?

Ha, ha, ha!"

Foma awakened from this nightmare in a small room with two windows, and the first thing his eyes fell upon was a withered tree. It stood near the window; its thick trunk, barkless, with a rotten heart, prevented the light from entering the room; the bent, black branches, devoid of leaves, stretched themselves mournfully and helplessly in the air, and shaking to and fro, they creaked softly, plaintively. A rain was falling; streams of water were beating against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there. This sobbing sound was joined by another sound--a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling.

When he turned with difficulty his aching, heavy head on the pillow, Foma noticed a small, swarthy man, who sat by the table hastily scratching with his pen over the paper, shaking his round head approvingly, wagging it from side to side, shrugging his shoulders, and, with all his small body clothed in night garments only, constantly moving about in his chair, as though he were sitting on fire, and could not get up for some reason or other. His left hand, lean and thin, was now firmly rubbing his forehead, now making certain incomprehensible signs in the air; his bare feet sc.r.a.ped along the floor, a certain vein quivered on his neck, and even his ears were moving. When he turned toward Foma, Foma saw his thin lips whispering something, his sharp-pointed nose turned down to his thin moustache, which twitched upward each time the little man smiled. His face was yellow, bloated, wrinkled, and his black, vivacious small sparkling eyes did not seem to belong to him.

Having grown tired of looking at him, Foma slowly began to examine the room with his eyes. On the large nails, driven into the walls, hung piles of newspapers, which made the walls look as though covered with swellings. The ceiling was pasted with paper which had been white once upon a time; now it was puffed up like bladders, torn here and there, peeled off and hanging in dirty sc.r.a.ps; clothing, boots, books, torn pieces of paper lay scattered on the floor. Altogether the room gave one the impression that it had been scalded with boiling water.

The little man dropped the pen, bent over the table, drummed briskly on its edge with his fingers and began to sing softly in a faint voice:

"Take the drum and fear not,--And kiss the sutler girl aloud--That's the sense of learning--And that's philosophy."

Foma heaved a deed sigh and said:

"May I have some seltzer?"

"Ah!" exclaimed the little man, and jumping up from his chair, appeared at the wide oilcloth-covered lounge, where Foma lay. "How do you do, comrade! Seltzer? Of course! With cognac or plain?"