The Man Who Was Afraid Part 56

"Better with cognac," said Foma, shaking the lean, burning hand which was outstretched to him, and staring fixedly into the face of the little man.

"Yegorovna!" cried the latter at the door, and turning to Foma, asked: "Don't you recognise me, Foma Ignatyevich?"

"I remember something. It seems to me we had met somewhere before."

"That meeting lasted for four years, but that was long ago! Yozhov."

"Oh Lord!" exclaimed Foma, in astonishment, slightly rising from the lounge. "Is it possible that it is you?"

"There are times, dear, when I don't believe it myself, but a real fact is something from which doubt jumps back as a rubber ball from iron."

Yozhov's face was comically distorted, and for some reason or other his hands began to feel his breast.

"Well, well!" drawled out Foma. "But how old you have grown! Ah-ah! How old are you?"

"Thirty."

"And you look as though you were fifty, lean, yellow. Life isn't sweet to you, it seems? And you are drinking, too, I see."

Foma felt sorry to see his jolly and brisk schoolmate so worn out, and living in this dog-hole, which seemed to be swollen from burns. He looked at him, winked his eyes mournfully and saw that Yozhov's face was for ever twitching, and his small eyes were burning with irritation.

Yozhov was trying to uncork the bottle of water, and thus occupied, was silent; he pressed the bottle between his knees and made vain efforts to take out the cork. And his impotence moved Foma.

"Yes; life has sucked you dry. And you have studied. Even science seems to help man but little," said Gordyeeff plaintively.

"Drink!" said Yozhov, turning pale with fatigue, and handing him the gla.s.s. Then he wiped his forehead, seated himself on the lounge beside Foma, and said:

"Leave science alone! Science is a drink of the G.o.ds; but it has not yet fermented sufficiently, and, therefore is not fit for use, like vodka which has not yet been purified from empyreumatic oil. Science is not ready for man's happiness, my friend. And those living people that use it get nothing but headaches. Like those you and I have at present. Why do you drink so rashly?"

"I? What else am I to do?" asked Foma, laughing. Yozhov looked at Foma searchingly with his eyes half closed, and he said:

"Connecting your question with everything you jabbered last night, I feel within my troubled soul that you, too, my friend, do not amuse yourself because life is cheerful to you."

"Eh!" sighed Foma, heavily, rising from the lounge. "What is my life?

It is something meaningless. I live alone. I understand nothing. And yet there is something I long for. I yearn to spit on all and then disappear somewhere! I would like to run away from everything. I am so weary!"

"That's interesting!" said Yozhov, rubbing his hands and turning about in all directions. "This is interesting, if it is true and deep, for it shows that the holy spirit of dissatisfaction with life has already penetrated into the bed chambers of the merchants, into the death chambers of souls drowned in fat cabbage soup, in lakes of tea and other liquids. Give me a circ.u.mstantial account of it. Then, my dear, I shall write a novel."

"I have been told that you have already written something about me?"

inquired Foma, with curiosity, and once more attentively scrutinized his old friend unable to understand what so wretched a creature could write.

"Of course I have! Did you read it?"

"No, I did not have the chance."

"And what have they told you?"

"That you gave me a clever scolding."

"Hm! And doesn't it interest you to read it yourself?" inquired Yozhov, scrutinizing Gordyeeff closely.

"I'll read it!" Foma a.s.sured him, feeling embarra.s.sed before Yozhov, and that Yozhov was offended by such regard for his writings. "Indeed, it is interesting since it is about myself," he added, smiling kindheartedly at his comrade.

In saying this he was not at all interested, and he said it merely out of pity for Yozhov. There was quite another feeling in him; he wished to know what sort of a man Yozhov was, and why he had become so worn out. This meeting with Yozhov gave rise in him to a tranquil and kind feeling; it called forth recollections of his childhood, and these flashed now in his memory,--flashed like modest little lights, timidly shining at him from the distance of the past. Yozhov walked up to the table on which stood a boiling samovar, silently poured out two gla.s.ses of tea as strong as tar, and said to Foma:

"Come and drink tea. And tell me about yourself."

"I have nothing to tell you. I have not seen anything in life. Mine is an empty life! You had better tell me about yourself. I am sure you know more than I do, at any rate."

Yozhov became thoughtful, not ceasing to turn his whole body and to waggle his head. In thoughtfulness his face became motionless, all its wrinkles gathered near his eyes and seemed to surround them with rays, and because of this his eyes receded deeper under his forehead.

"Yes, my dear, I have seen a thing or two, and I know a great deal," he began, with a shake of the head. "And perhaps I know even more than it is necessary for me to know, and to know more than it is necessary is just as harmful to man as it is to be ignorant of what it is essential to know. Shall I tell you how I have lived? Very well; that is, I'll try. I have never told any one about myself, because I have never aroused interest in anyone. It is most offensive to live on earth without arousing people's interest in you!"

"I can see by your face and by everything else that your life has not been a smooth one!" said Foma, feeling pleased with the fact that, to all appearances, life was not sweet to his comrade as well. Yozhov drank his tea at one draught, thrust the gla.s.s on the saucer, placed his feet on the edge of the chair, and clasping his knees in his hands, rested his chin upon them. In this pose, small sized and flexible as rubber, he began:

"The student Sachkov, my former teacher, who is now a doctor of medicine, a whist-player and a mean fellow all around, used to tell me whenever I knew my lesson well: 'You're a fine fellow, Kolya! You are an able boy. We proletariats, plain and poor people, coming from the backyard of life, we must study and study, in order to come to the front, ahead of everybody. Russia is in need of wise and honest people.

Try to be such, and you will be master of your fate and a useful member of society. On us commoners rest the best hopes of the country. We are destined to bring into it light, truth,' and so on. I believed him, the brute. And since then about twenty years have elapsed. We proletariats have grown up, but have neither appropriated any wisdom, nor brought light into life. As before, Russia is still suffering from its chronic disease--a superabundance of rascals; while we, the proletariats, take pleasure in filling their dense throngs. My teacher, I repeat, is a lackey, a characterless and dumb creature, who must obey the orders of the mayor. While I am a clown in the employ of society. Fame pursues me here in town, dear. I walk along the street and I hear one driver say to another: 'There goes Yozhov! How cleverly he barks, the deuce take him!'

Yes! Even this cannot be so easily attained."

Yozhov's face wrinkled into a bitter grimace, and he began to laugh, noiselessly, with his lips only. Foma did not understand his words, and, just to say something, he remarked at random:

"You didn't hit, then, what you aimed at?"

"Yes, I thought I would grow up higher. And so I should! So I should, I say!"

He jumped up from his chair and began to run about in the room, exclaiming briskly in a shrill voice:

"But to preserve one's self pure for life and to be a free man in it, one must have vast powers! I had them. I had elasticity, cleverness.

I have spent all these in order to learn something which is absolutely unnecessary to me now. I have wasted the whole of myself in order to preserve something within myself. Oh devil! I myself and many others with me, we have all robbed ourselves for the sake of saving up something for life. Just think of it: desiring to make of myself a valuable man, I have underrated my individuality in every way possible.

In order to study, and not die of starvation, I have for six years in succession taught blockheads how to read and write, and had to bear a ma.s.s of abominations at the hands of various papas and mammas, who humiliated me without any constraint. Earning my bread and tea, I could not, I had not the time to earn my shoes, and I had to turn to charitable inst.i.tutions with humble pet.i.tions for loans on the strength of my poverty. If the philanthropists could only reckon up how much of the spirit they kill in man while supporting the life of his body! If they only knew that each rouble they give for bread contains ninety-nine copecks' worth of poison for the soul! If they could only burst from excess of their kindness and pride, which they draw from their holy activity! There is none on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms, even as there is none more miserable than he who accepts it!"

Yozhov staggered about in the room like a drunken man, seized with madness, and the paper under his feet was rustling, tearing, flying in sc.r.a.ps. He gnashed his teeth, shook his head, his hands waved in the air like broken wings of a bird, and altogether it seemed as though he were being boiled in a kettle of hot water. Foma looked at him with a strange, mixed sensation; he pitied Yozhov, and at the same time he was pleased to see him suffering.

"I am not alone, he is suffering, too," thought Foma, as Yozhov spoke.

And something clashed in Yozhov's throat, like broken gla.s.s, and creaked like an unoiled hinge.

"Poisoned by the kindness of men, I was ruined through the fatal capacity of every poor fellow during the making of his career, through the capacity of being reconciled with little in the expectation of much. Oh! Do you know, more people perish through lack of proper self-appreciation than from consumption, and perhaps that is why the leaders of the ma.s.ses serve as district inspectors!"

"The devil take the district inspectors!" said Foma, with a wave of the hand. "Tell me about yourself."

"About myself! I am here entire!" exclaimed Yozhov, stopping short in the middle of the room, and striking his chest with his hands. "I have already accomplished all I could accomplish. I have attained the rank of the public's entertainer--and that is all I can do! To know what should be done, and not to be able to do it, not to have the strength for your work--that is torture!"

"That's it! Wait awhile!" said Foma, enthusiastically. "Now tell me what one should do in order to live calmly; that is, in order to be satisfied with one's self."

To Foma these words sounded loud, but empty, and their sounds died away without stirring any emotion in his heart, without giving rise to a single thought in his mind.

"You must always be in love with something unattainable to you. A man grows in height by stretching himself upwards."

Now that he had ceased speaking of himself, Yozhov began to talk more calmly, in a different voice. His voice was firm and resolute, and his face a.s.sumed an expression of importance and sternness. He stood in the centre of the room, his hand with outstretched fingers uplifted, and spoke as though he were reading: