"Thank you," said the hunchback. His attitude towards his teachers was always correct and reserved, like that of an adult. "And what is a socialist?" "At best he is a dreamer and a lazy fellow—a moral freak who is deprived of all idea of God, property and nationality."
The teachers always replied briefly and to the point. Their answers fixed themselves in one's memory as tightly as if they were the stones of a pavement.
"Can an old woman also be a moral freak?"
"Of course in their midst——"
"And girls too?"
"Yes, it is an inborn quality."
The teachers said of him:
"He has little capacity for mathematics, but he shows great interest in moral questions."
"You speak too much," said his sister to him on hearing of his talks with the tutors.
"They talk more than I do."
"You pray very little to God."
"He won't set my hump right."
"Oh, is that how you are beginning to think!" exclaimed his sister in astonishment; and she warned him:
"I will excuse you this time, but don't entertain such thoughts again. Do you hear?"
"Yes."
She already wore long dresses; he was then just thirteen.
And now a number of annoyances began to fall to her lot: almost every time she entered her brother's work-room, boards and tools and blocks of all sorts fell at her feet, grazing her shoulder, her head, or hurting her hands. The hunchback always cautioned her by a cry of:
"Look out!"
But he was always too slow and the damage was done. Once, limping slightly, pale and very angry, she sprang at him, and shouted in his face:
"You do all this purposely, you freak," and she struck him in the face.
His legs were weak, he fell down, and, as he sat on the floor, quietly, without tears and without complaining, he said to her:
"How can you think that? You love me, don't you? Do you love me?"
She ran away groaning. Presently she came back.
"You see this never happened formerly," she explained.
"Nor this," he quietly remarked, making a wide circle with his long hand: in the corners of the room boards and boxes were heaped up; everything was in confusion; there were piles of wood on the carpenter's and turner's benches which stood against the wall.
"Why have you brought in all this rubbish?" she asked, looking doubtfully and squeamishly around.
"You will see."
He had begun to build, he had made a little rabbit hutch and a dog kennel. He was planning a rat-trap. His sister followed his work with interest and at table spoke proudly to his mother and father about it. His father, nodding his head approvingly, said:
"Everything springs from small beginnings and everything begins like that."
And his mother, embracing her, said to her son:
"You don't realise how much you owe to her care of you."
"Yes, I do," replied the hunchback.
When he had finished the rat-trap he asked his sister into his room and showed her the clumsy contrivance, saying:
"This is not a toy, mind you, and we can take out a patent for it. See how simple and strong it is; touch it here."
The girl touched it; something snapped and she screamed wildly; but the hunchback, dancing around her, muttered:
"Oh, not that, not that."
His mother ran up, and the servants came; they broke the rat-trap, and freed the girl's finger, which had turned quite blue. They carried her away fainting, and the boy's mother said to him:
"I will have everything thrown away. I forbid you."
At night he was asked to go to his sister, who said to him:
"You did it purposely. You hate me. What for?"
Moving his hunch he said quietly and calmly:
"You touched it with the wrong hand."
"That's a lie."
"But why should I hurt your hand? It is not even the hand you hit me with."
"Look out, you freak, I'll pay you out."
"I know."
There were no signs that he pitied his sister or looked upon himself as being to blame for her misfortune. His angular face was as calm as it always was, the expression of his eyes was serious and steady—it was impossible to believe that he could lie or be actuated by malice.
After that she did not go so often to his room. She was visited by her friends, chattering girls in bright coloured dresses, as noisy as so many crickets. They brought a welcome note of colour and gaiety to the large rooms, which were rather cold and gloomy—the pictures, the statues, the flowers, the gilt, everything seemed warmer in their presence. Sometimes his sister took them to his room. They affectedly held out their little pink-nailed fingers, taking his hand gingerly as if they were afraid of breaking it. They talked to him very nicely and pleasantly, looking a little astonished, but showing no particular interest in the little hunchback, busy in the midst of tools, drawings, pieces of wood and shavings. He knew that the girls called him "the inventor." His sister had impressed this idea upon them and told them that in the future something might be expected of him which would make the name of his father famous. His sister spoke of this with conviction.
"Of course he is ugly, but he is very clever," she reminded them very often.
She was nineteen years old, and had a sweetheart, when her father and mother both perished at sea. The yacht in which they were taking a pleasure trip was run down and sunk by an American cargo boat in charge of a drunken helmsman. She was to have accompanied them, but a sudden toothache had prevented her going.
When the news came of her father's and mother's death she forgot her tooth-ache, and rushed about the room throwing up her arms and crying:
"No, no; it cannot be."
The hunchback stood at the door and, wrapping the portiere round him, looked at her closely and said, shaking his hunch:
"Father was so round and hollow; I don't see how he could be drowned."
"Be quiet; you do not love anybody!" shouted his sister.
"I simply cannot say nice words," he replied.
The father's corpse was never found, but the mother had been killed in the moment of the collision. Her body was recovered and laid in a coffin, looking as lean and brittle as the dead branch of an old tree—just as she had looked when she was alive.
"Now you and I are left alone," the sister said to her brother sternly, but in a mournful voice, after the mother's funeral; and the cold look in her grey eyes daunted him. "It will be hard for us: we are ignorant of the world and may lose much. What a pity it is that I cannot get married at once."
"Oh!" exclaimed the hunchback.
"What do you mean by 'Oh'?"
He said, after thinking a while:
"We are alone."
"You seem to speak as if you rejoiced at it."
"I do not rejoice at anything."
"What a pity it is you are so little like a man."
In the evenings her lover came—an active little man, with white eyebrows and eyelashes, and a round sunburnt face relieved by a woolly moustache. He laughed continuously the whole evening, and probably could have laughed the whole day long. They were already engaged, and a new house was being built for them in one of the best streets of the town, the cleanest and the quietest. The hunchback had never seen this building and did not like to hear others talk of it. One day the fiancé slapped him on the shoulder with his plump and much beringed little hand, and said, showing a great number of tiny teeth:
"You ought to come and look over it, eh? What do you say?"
He refused for a long time under different pretexts, but at last he gave way and went with him and his sister. The two men climbed to the top storey of the scaffolding and then fell. The fiancé dropped plump to the ground into the lime-pit, but the brother, whose clothes got caught in the scaffolding, hung in mid-air and was rescued by the workmen. He had no worse than a dislocated leg and wrist and a badly bruised face. The fiancé, on the other hand, broke his back and was severely gashed in the side.
The sister fell into convulsions, and tore at the ground with her hands, raising little clouds of white dust. She wept almost continuously for more than a month and then became like her mother. She grew thin and haggard, and began to speak in a cold, expressionless voice.
"You are my misfortune," she said.
He answered nothing, but kept his large eyes bent upon the ground. His sister dressed herself in black, made her eyebrows meet in a line, and whenever she met her brother clenched her teeth so that her jaw-bones made sharp angles. He, on his part, tried to avoid meeting her eye and was for ever busy planning and designing, alone in silence. So he lived till he was of age, and then began between them an open struggle to which their whole life was given, a struggle which bound them to each other by the strong links of mutual insults and offences.
On the day of his coming of age he said to her in the tone of an elder brother:
"There are no wise wizards, and no kind fairies. There are only men and women, some of them wicked, others stupid, and everything that is said about goodness is a myth. But I want the myth to become a reality. Do you remember saying, 'In a rich house everything should be beautiful and smart'? In a rich town also everything should be beautiful. I am buying some land outside the town and am going to build a house there for myself and for freaks like me. I shall take them out of the town, where their life is almost unendurable and where it is unpleasant for people like you to look upon them."
"No," she said; "you certainly will not do that. It is a crazy idea."
"It is your idea."
They disputed about it in the coldly hostile manner in which two people dispute who hate each other bitterly, and have no need to disguise their hatred.
"It is decided," he said.
"Not by me," his sister replied.
He raised his hunch and went off; and soon after his sister discovered that the land had been bought and, what was more, that workmen were already digging trenches for the foundation; that tens of thousands of bricks were being carted, and stones and iron and wood.
"Do you think you are still a boy?" she asked. "Do you think it is a game?"
He made no answer.
Once a week his sister, lean and straight and proud, drove into the town in her little carriage drawn by a white horse. She drove slowly past the spot where the work was proceeding and looked coldly at the red bricks, like little chunks of meat, held in place by a framework of iron girders; yellow wood was being fitted into the ponderous mass like a network of nerves. She saw in the distance her brother's crab-like figure. He crawled about the scaffolding, stick in hand, a crumpled hat upon his head. He was covered with dust and looked like a grey spider. At home she gazed intently at his excited face and into his dark eyes, which had become softer and clearer.
"No," he said quietly to himself, "I have hit upon an idea: it should be equally good for all concerned! It is wonderful work to build, and it seems to me that I shall soon consider myself a happy man."
"Happy?" she asked wonderingly, measuring with her eyes the hunchback's body.
"Yes, you know people who work are quite unlike us, they awaken new thoughts in one.... How good it must be to be a bricklayer walking through the streets of a town where he has built dozens of houses. There are many socialists among the workers—steady, sober fellows, first of all. Truly they have their own sense of dignity.... Sometimes it seems to me that we don't understand our people."
"You are talking strangely," she said.
The hunchback was becoming animated, getting more and more talkative every day.
"In reality everything is turning out as you wished it: I am becoming a wise wizard who frees the town from freaks. You could be a good fairy if you wished. Why don't you help me?"
"We will speak about it later," she said, playing with her gold watch-chain.
Once he spoke out in a language quite unfamiliar to her:
"Maybe I have wronged you more than you have wronged me."
She was astonished.
"I wronged you?"
"Wait a minute. Upon my word of honour I am not as guilty as you think. I walk badly. I may have pushed him, but there was no malicious intention. No, believe me. I am more guilty of having wanted to injure your hand, the hand you hit me with."
"Don't let us speak about that," she said.
"It seems to me one ought to be kinder," muttered the hunchback. "I think that goodness is not a myth—it is possible."
The big building in the town grew rapidly; it had spread over the rich soil and was rising towards the sky, which was always grey, always threatening with rain.
Once a little group of officials came to the place where the work was proceeding. They examined the building and, after talking quietly among themselves, gave orders to stop the work.
"You have done this," exclaimed the hunchback, rushing at his sister and clutching her throat with his long, nervous hands; but some men ran up and pulled him away from her. The sister said to them:
"You see, gentlemen, he is really abnormal, and must be looked after. This sort of thing began immediately after the death of his father, whom he loved passionately. Ask the servants: they all know of his illness. They kept silence until latterly, these good people; the honour of the house where many of them have lived since their childhood is dear to them. I also tried to hide our misfortune. An insane brother is not a thing to be proud of."
His face turned purple and his eyes started out of their sockets as he listened to this speech. He was dumbfounded, and silently scratched with his nails the hands of those who held him while she continued:
"This house was a ruinous enterprise. I intend to give it to the town, in the name of my father, as an asylum for insane people."
He shrieked, lost consciousness and was carried away.
His sister continued the building with the same speed with which he had been conducting it, and when the house was finished, the first patient who went into it was her brother. Seven years he spent there—ample time for him to develop melancholia and become an imbecile. His sister turned old in the meantime. She lost all hope of ever becoming a mother, and when at last she saw that he was vanquished and would not rise against her she took him under her care.
And now they are travelling all over the globe, hither and thither, like blinded birds. They look on everything without sense or joy, and see nothing anywhere except themselves.
The blue water seems as thick as oil. The screw of the steamer works softly, almost silently. One can detect no trembling of the deck and the mast, pointing towards the clear sky, strains and quivers ever so slightly. The rigging, taut as the strings of an instrument, hums gently, but one has grown used to the vibration, and does not notice it, and it seems as if the steamer—white and graceful as a swan—were motionless on the smooth water. To perceive the motion one must look over the gunwale, where a greenish wave retreats from the white side of the steamer. It seems to fall away in broad soft folds, rolling and glistening like quicksilver and splashing dreamily.
It is morning. The sea seems half asleep. The rosy hues of sunrise have not yet disappeared from the sky. We have just passed the island of Gorgona, still slumbering. It is a stern, solitary rock, covered with woods and surmounted by a round grey tower; a cluster of little white houses can be seen at the edge of the sleepy water. A few small boats are moving rapidly on either side of the steamer, rowed by people from the island going to catch sardines. The measured splashing of the long oars and the slim figures of the fishermen linger in the memory. The men row standing and seem to be bowing to the sun.
Behind the ship's stern is a broad streak of greenish foam. Above it seagulls soar lazily. Now and then a bird seems to come from nowhere. It flies noiselessly, stretched out like a cigar, and, after skimming the surface of the water, suddenly darts into it like an arrow.
In the distance, like a cloud from the sea, rises the coast-line of Liguria, with its violet mountains. In another two or three hours the steamer will enter the narrow harbour of the marble town of Genoa.
The sun climbs higher and higher, promising a hot day.
The stewards run up on to the deck; one of them is young, thin, and quick in his movements, like a Neapolitan, with an ever-changing expression on his mobile face; the other is a man of medium height, with a grey moustache, black eyebrows, and silvery bristles on his round skull. He has an aquiline nose and serious, intelligent eyes. Laughing and joking they quickly lay the table for breakfast and depart. Then one after another the passengers creep slowly from their cabins. First comes a fat man with a small head and red bloated face; he looks melancholy and his tired swollen red lips are half open. He is followed by a tall, sleek man with grey side-whiskers, eyes that cannot be seen, and a little nose that looks like a button on his flat yellow face. After them, leaping over the brass rail of the companion-way, comes a plump red-haired man, with a moustache curled in military fashion; he is dressed like an Alpine mountaineer, and wears a green feather in his hat. All three stop near the gunwale. The fat man, half-closing his sad eyes, remarks:
"How calm it is!"
The man with the side-whiskers put his hands into his pockets, spread out his legs, and stood there resembling a pair of open scissors. The red-haired man took out his large gold watch, which looked like the pendulum of a clock, looked at it, then at the sky and along the deck; then he began to whistle, swinging his watch and beating time with his foot.
Two ladies came up, the younger,embonpoint,with a porcelain face and amiable milky-blue eyes. Her dark brows seemed to have been pencilled and one was higher than the other. The other was older, sharp-featured, and her headdress of faded hair looked enormous. She had a large black mole on her left cheek, two gold chains round her neck, and a lorgnon and a number of trinkets hanging from the belt of her grey dress.
Coffee was served; the young lady sat down silently at the table and began to pour out the black liquid, affectedly curving her arms, which were bare to the elbow.
The men came to the table and sat down in silence. The fat man took a cup and said sighing:
"It is going to be hot."
"You are spilling it on to your knees," remarked the elder lady.
He looked down, his chin and cheeks became puffed out as they rested on his chest; he put his cup on the table, wiped drops of coffee off his grey trousers with a handkerchief, and then wiped his face, which was in a perspiration.
"Yes," unexpectedly remarked the red-haired man in a loud voice, shuffling his short legs. "Yes, yes, even if the Parties of the Left have begun to complain about hooliganism it means——"
"Don't chatter, John," interrupted the elder lady. "Isn't Lisa coming out?"
"She doesn't feel well," answered the younger lady in a sonorous voice.
"But the sea is quite calm."
"Oh, but when a woman is in her condition."
The red-haired man smiled voluptuously and closed his eyes.
Beyond the gunwale, breaking the calm expanse of the sea, porpoises were making a commotion. The man with the side-whiskers, watching them attentively, said:
"The porpoises look like pigs."
The red-haired man chimed in:
"There is plenty of piggery here."
The colourless lady raised a cup to her lips, smelt the coffee and made a grimace.
"It is disgusting."
"And the milk, eh?" said the fat man, blinking and seeming ill at ease.
The lady with the porcelain face said in a sing-song voice: "Everything is very dirty, and they all look very much like Jews."
The red-haired man was rapidly whispering something into the ear of the man with the side-whiskers, as if he were giving replies to his teacher, proud of having learnt his lesson well. His listener seemed tickled, and betrayed curiosity. He wagged his head slightly from side to side, and, in his fat face, his wide-open mouth looked like a hole in a dried-up board. At times he seemed to want to say something and began in a strange, hoarse voice:
"In our province——"
But without continuing he again attentively inclined his head to the lips of the red-haired man.
The fat man sighed heavily, saying:
"How you buzz, John!"
"Well, give me some coffee."
He drew up to the table, causing a clatter, and his companion said impressively:
"John has ideas——"
"You have not had enough sleep," said the elder lady, looking through her lorgnon at the man with the side-whiskers. The latter passed his hand over his face, then looked at his palm.
"I seem to have got some powder on my face. Do you notice it?"
"Oh, uncle," exclaimed the younger lady, "that is a peculiarity of beautiful Italy! One's skin dries here so terribly!" The elder lady inquired:
"Do you notice, Lydia, how bad the sugar is here?"
A man of large proportions came on deck. His grey, curly hair looked like a cap. He had a big nose, merry eyes and a cigar between his lips. The stewards who stood near the gunwale bowed reverently to him.
"Good-morning, boys, good-morning," said he, in a loud, hoarse voice, benevolently nodding his head.
The Russians became silent, looking askance at the new-comer from time to time. John of the military moustache said in a low voice:
"A retired military man, one can see at once——"
Noticing that he was being observed the grey-haired man took the cigar from his mouth and bowed pleasantly to the Russians. The elder lady threw back her head and, raising her lorgnon to her nose, looked at him defiantly. The man with the moustache was embarrassed and, turning away, took out his watch and began to swing it in the air. Only the fat man acknowledged the greeting, pressing his chin against his chest. The Italian became embarrassed in his turn. He pushed his cigar nervously into a corner of his mouth and asked the middle-aged steward in a low tone:
"Are those Russians?"
"Yes, sir: a Russian Governor and his family."
"What kind faces they always have." "Very nice people."
"The best of the Slavs of course."
"They are a trifle careless I should say."
"Careless? Why?"
"It seems so to me—they are careless in their treatment of people."
The fat Russian blushed and, smiling broadly, said in a subdued tone:
"They are speaking about us."
"What?" asked the elder lady, with a disdainful grimace.
"They are saying we are the best of the Slavs," answered the fat man, with a giggle.
"They are such flatterers," declared the lady, but red-haired John put away his watch and, twisting his moustache with both hands, said, in an off-hand way:
"They are all amazingly ignorant about everything that concerns us."
"You are being praised," said the fat man, "and you say it is due to ignorance." "Nonsense! That is not what I mean, but generally speaking.... I know myself that we are the best of Slavs."
The man with the side-whiskers, who for some time had been attentively watching the porpoises at play, sighed and, shaking his head, remarked:
"What a stupid fish!"
Two more persons joined the greyhaired Italian: an old bespectacled man in a black frock-coat and a pale youth with long hair, a high forehead and dark eyebrows. They all stood at the gunwale about five yards from the Russians; the grey-haired man said quietly:
"When I see Russians I think of Messina."
"Do you remember how we met the sailors at Naples?" asked the youth.
"Yes, they will never forget that day in their forests!"
"Have you seen the medal struck in their honour?"
"I do not think much of the workmanship."
"They are talking about Messina," the fat man informed his companions.
"And they laugh!" exclaimed the younger lady. "It is amazing!"
Seagulls overtook the steamer, and one of them, beating its crooked wings, seemed to hang in the air over the gunwale; the younger lady began to throw biscuits to it. The birds, in catching the pieces, disappeared below the gunwale and then, shrieking greedily, rose again in the blue void above the sea. Some coffee was brought to the Italians: they also began to feed the birds, tossing up pieces of biscuits. The lady raised her brows and said:
"Look at the monkeys."
The fat man continued to listen to the animated talk of the Italians and presently said:
"He is not a military man, he is a merchant. He talks about trading in corn with us, and about being able to buy petroleum, timber and coal from us."
"I noticed at once that he was not a military man," said the elder lady.
The red-haired man began again to speak into the ear of the man with side-whiskers. The latter screwed up his mouth sceptically as he listened to him. The young Italian, glancing sideways at the Russians, said:
"What a pity it is that we know so little about this country of big, blue-eyed people!"
The sun was now high in the sky and burning hotly; the sea glistened and dazzled one. In the distance, on the port side, mountains and clouds appeared out of the water.
"Annette," said the man with the side-whiskers, his smile reaching his ears, "just think what an idea has struck funny John! He has hit upon the best way of ridding the villages of malcontents. It is very ingenious."
And rolling in his chair he related in a slow and halting manner, as if he were translating from another language: "The idea is that on holidays and market-days the local 'district chief' should get together, at the public expense, a great quantity of stakes and stones; and should then set out before the peasants, also at the public expense, thirty, sixty, a hundred and fifty gallons of vodka, according to the number of people. That is all that is wanted!"
"I don't understand," declared the elder lady. "Is it a joke?"
The red-haired man answered quickly:
"No, it is quite serious. Just think of it, ma tante."
The younger lady opened her eyes wide, and shrugged her shoulders.
"What nonsense to let them drink Government vodka when they already.
"No, wait a bit, Lydia," exclaimed the red-haired man, jumping up from his chair. The man with the side-whiskers rocked from side to side, laughing noiselessly with his mouth wide open.
"Just think of it! The hooligans who don't succeed in getting dead drunk will kill one another with the sticks and stones. Don't you see?"
"Why one another?" asked the fat man.
"Is it a joke?" inquired the elder lady again.
The red-haired man waved his short arms excitedly and tried to explain.
"When the authorities pacify them, the Parties of the Left cry out about cruelty and atrocities. That means that a way must be found by which they can pacify themselves. Don't you agree?" The steamer gave a lurch and the crockery rattled. The plump lady was alarmed and caught hold of the table; and the elder lady, laying her hand on the fat man's shoulder, asked sharply:
"What's that?"
"We are turning."
The coast, rising out of the water, becomes higher and more defined. One can see the gardens on the slopes of the mist-enveloped hills and mountains. Bluish boulders peep out from among the vineyards; white houses appear through the haze. The window-panes glisten in the sun and patches of bright colour greet the eye. Right on the water's edge, at the foot of the cliffs, a little house faces the sea; it is overhung with a thick mass of bright violet flowers. Above it, pouring like a broad red stream over the stones of the terraces, is a profusion of red geraniums. The colours are gay, the coast-line looks amiable and hospitable. The soft contours of the mountains seem to entice one into the shade of the gardens.
"How small everything is here!" said the fat man, with a sigh. The elder lady looked at him sharply; then, compressing her thin lips and throwing back her head, gazed through her lorgnon at the coast.
A number of dark-complexioned people in light costumes are now on deck, talking loudly. The Russian ladies look at them disdainfully, as queens on their subjects.
"How they wave their arms," said the younger lady, and the fat man, catching his breath, explained:
"It is the fault of their language. It is poor and requires gestures."
"O Lord!" said the elder lady, with a deep sigh. Then after a pause she inquired:
"Are there many museums in Genoa?"
"I understand there are three," answered the fat man.
"And a cemetery?" asked the younger lady.
"Campo Santo? And churches, of course."
"Are the cabmen as bad as in Naples?" "As bad as in Moscow."
The red-haired man and the man with the side-whiskers rose and moved away from the gunwale, talking together earnestly and interrupting one another.
"What is the Italian saying?" asked the lady, adjusting her gorgeous headdress. Her elbows were pointed, her ears large and yellow, like faded leaves. The fat man listened attentively and obediently to the animated talk of the curly-headed Italian.
"It seems that there is a very old law which forbids the Jews to enter Moscow. It is no doubt a relic of former despotism, you know, of John the Terrible. Even in England there are many obsolete laws unrepealed even to this day. It may be that the Jew was trying to mislead me; anyhow, for some reason or other he was not allowed to enter Moscow, the ancient city of the Tsars, of sacred things."
"But here in Rome the Mayor is a Jew—in Rome, which is more ancient and more sacred than Moscow," said the youth, smiling.
"And he gives the Pope some very shrewd knocks—the little tailor. Let us wish him success in that," put in the old man in spectacles, clapping his hands.
"What is the old man saying?" asked the lady.
"Just a minute! Some nonsense. They speak the Neapolitan dialect."
"This Jew went to Moscow, however—they must have blood—and there he goes to the house of a prostitute. It was the only place he could go to, so he said."
"A fairy tale!" said the old man decisively; and he waved his arm as if brushing the tale aside.
"To tell you the truth, I am of the same opinion."
"Of course, it's a fable!"
"And what was the sequel?" asked the youth.
"He was betrayed by her to the police; but she took his money first."
"What baseness," said the old man. "He is a man with a dirty imagination, that's all. I know some Russians who were with me at the University; they are fine fellows."
"But listen to me. The strange thing was ..."
"I have heard it said ..."
The fat Russian, wiping his perspiring face with a handkerchief, said to the ladies in an idle, indifferent tone:
"He is telling a Jewish anecdote."
"With such animation?" smiled the young lady; and the other remarked:
"In these people, with their gestures and their noise, there is a lack of variety." A town grows on the coast, houses rise from beyond the hills and huddle close together, until they form a solid wall of buildings which reflect the sunlight and look as if they were carved out of ivory.
"It is like Yalta," remarked the young lady, rising up. "I will go to Lisa."
She ambled her portly body, which was clothed in some bluish material, slowly along the deck. As she passed the group of Italians the grey-haired man interrupted his speech and said quietly:
"What fine eyes!"
"Yes," nodded the old man in spectacles. "Basilida, I imagine, must have looked like that."
"Basilida, the Byzantine?"
"I picture her as a Slav woman."
"They are saying something about Lydia," said the fat man.
"What?" asked the lady. "No doubt some low jokes?"
"About her eyes. They admire——"
The lady made a grimace.
The brasswork on the steamer glistened as, gently and rapidly, she neared the shore. The black walls of the pier came in sight and, beyond them, rising into the sky, a forest of masts. Here and there bright coloured flags hung motionless; dark smoke ascended and seemed to melt in the air; there was a smell of oil and coal dust; the noise of work proceeding in the harbour and the complex bourdon note of a large town reached the ear.
The fat man suddenly burst out laughing.
"What's the matter?" asked the lady, half-closing her grey, faded eyes.
"The Germans will smash them up, by Jove! You will see it!"
"Why should you rejoice at that?"
"Just so."
The man with the side-whiskers, examining the soles of his boots, asked the red-haired man, speaking deliberately and in a loud voice:
"Were you satisfied with this surprise or not?"
The red-haired man twisted his moustache fiercely, and made no reply.
The steamer slowed down. The green water splashed against the white sides of the ship, as if in protest. It gave no reflection of the marble houses, the high towers and the azure terraces. The black jaws of the harbour opened, disclosing a thick scattering of ships.
The young man was ugly, and knew it. But he said to himself:
"I am clever, am I not? I will become a sage. It is an easy matter here in Russia."
He began to read bulky works, for he was by no means stupid: he understood that the presence of wisdom can most easily be proved by quotations from books.
Having read as many wise books as were necessary to make him short-sighted, he proudly held up his nose, which had become red from the weight of the spectacles, and declared to the world at large:
"Well, you won't deceive me. I see that life is a trap, put here for me by nature."
"And love?" asked the Spirit of Life.
"No, I thank you. Praise be to God, I am not a poet. I will not enter the iron cage of inevitable duties for the sake of a piece of cheese."
But he was only moderately talented, and so he decided to take up the duties of a professor of philosophy.
He went to the Minister of Popular Education and said to him:
"Your Excellency, I can preach that life is meaningless, and that one should not submit to the dictates of nature."
The Minister considered a while whether that would do, then asked:
"Should the orders of the authorities be obeyed?"
"Most decidedly," said the philosopher, reverently inclining his head, which the study of so many books had rendered bald. "Since human passions——"
"Very well, you may have the chair. Your salary will be sixteen roubles a month. But should I require you to take into consideration the laws of nature, take care, have no opinions of your own. I shall not put up with that."
After thinking for some moments the Minister added, in a melancholy voice: "We live at a time when, for the sake of the unity of the state, it will perhaps be necessary to recognise that the laws of nature not only exist, but that they may to a certain extent prove useful."
"Just think of it!" exclaimed the philosopher to himself. "Even I may live to see it." But aloud he said nothing.
So he settled down to his work: every week he ascended the rostrum and spoke for an hour to curly-headed youths in this strain:
"Gentlemen, man is limited from without, he is limited from within. Nature is antagonistic to him. Woman is a blind tool of Nature. All our life, therefore, is meaningless."
He had grown accustomed to think like this himself, and often in his enthusiasm he spoke eloquently and well. The young students were enthusiastic in their applause. He, pleased with himself, nodded his bald head and smiled at them kindly. His little nose shone, and everything went on smoothly.
Dining at a restaurant disagreed with him—like all pessimists he suffered from indigestion—so he got married and ate his dinners at home for twenty-nine years. In between his work—he had not noticed how—he brought up four children. Then he died.
Behind his coffin solemnly walked his three grief-stricken daughters with their young husbands, and his son, a poet, who was in love with all the beautiful women in the world. The students sang: "Eternal Memory." They sang loudly and with animation, but badly. Over his grave his colleagues, the professors, made flowery speeches, referring to the well-ordered metaphysics of the departed; everything was done in correct style; it was solemn, and at times even touching.
"Well, the old man is dead," said a student to his comrades as they were leaving the cemetery.
"He was a pessimist," chimed in another.
A third one asked:
"Is that so?"
"Yes, a pessimist and a conservative." "What, the bald-headed one was? I had not noticed it."
The fourth student was a poor man, and he inquired expectantly:
"Shall we be invited to the obituary feast?"
Yes, they had been invited.
During his lifetime the deceased had written a number of excellent books, in which he proved, in glowing and beautiful language, the vanity of life. Needless to say, the books were bought and read with pleasure. Whatever may be said to the contrary, man likes what is beautiful.
His family was well provided for—even pessimism can achieve that.
The obituary feast was arranged on a large scale. The poor student had a good meal, such as he seldom had, and as he went home he thought, smiling good-humouredly:
"Well, even pessimism is useful at times."
There was another case.
A man, thinking himself a poet, wrote verse. But for some reason it was poor verse, and the circumstance disconcerted him.
Walking in the street one day, he saw a whip lying in the road, lost by a cabman. An inspiration came to the poet, and the following image at once formed itself in his mind:—
"In the road, in the dust, the snake lies,Like a whip in the dust of the road.In a swarm, like a cloud, come the flies,And the ants and their kind in a swarm.Thro' the skin, like the links of a chain,Show the ribs—they show white thro' the skin.O dead snake, thou remind'st me againOf my love, my dead love, O dead snake."
Suddenly the whip stood up on end and, swaying, said to him:
"Why are you telling lies? You are a married man, you know how to read and write, yet you are telling lies. Your love has not died. You love your wife and you are afraid of her."
The poet became angry.
"That is no business of yours."
"And the verses are poor."
"They are better than you could make. You can only crack, and even that you cannot do by yourself."
"But, anyhow, why do you tell lies? Your love did not die."
"All kinds of things happen—it was necessary it should."
"Oh, your wife will whip you. Take me to her."
"Oh, you may wait."
"Well, well, go your own way," said the whip, curling itself up like a corkscrew; it lay down in the road and began to think of other people. The poet went to an inn, ordered a bottle of beer, and began to think about himself.
"Although the whip was decidedly rude, the verse is poor again, that's true enough. How strange it is! One person always writes bad verse, while another sometimes succeeds in writing verse that is good. How badly everything is arranged in this world! What a stupid world it is!"
So he sat and drank, trying to arrive at a clearer conception of the world. He came to the conclusion at last that it was necessary to speak the truth. This world is good for nothing, and it really disgusts a man to live in it. He thought about an hour and a half in this strain, and then he wrote:
"For all their pleasant seeming, our desiresA dread scourge are that drives us to our doom;Blindly we blunder thro' the maze where waits usDeath, the fell serpent, in the murky gloom.Oh! let us strangle our insensate longings!They do but lure us from the appointed way;Lead us thro' thorns to our most bitter ruing,Leave us heartbroken in the twilight grey.And in the end full surely Death awaits us,Lives there the man but knows that he must die?"
He wrote more in the same spirit—twenty-eight lines in all.
"That's good!" exclaimed the poet; and went home quite satisfied with himself.
At home he read the lines to his wife. She liked them. She merely said:
"There is something wrong with the first four lines."
"They will swallow it all right. Pushkin too began rather badly. But what do you think of the metre? It is that of a requiem."
Then he began to play with his little son: he put him on his knee and, tossing him up, sang in a poor tenor:
"Tramp, tramp,On somebody's bridge!When I grow richI will pave my own bridge,And nobody elseShall walk over my bridge."
They spent the evening merrily, and the next morning the poet took his verses to an editor, who spoke in a profound manner (these editors are all profound—that is why their magazines are so dry)?
"H'm!" said the editor, rubbing his nose. "You know, this is not altogether bad, and, what is more important, it is quite in the spirit of the times. Very much so. You seem to have discovered yourself. You must continue in the same strain. Sixteen copecks a line ... four ... forty-eight. I congratulate you."
The verses were printed, and the poet felt as if he had had another birthday. His wife kissed him fervently, and said dreamily:
"Oh, my poet!"
They had a great time. But a youth, a very good youth, who was earnestly seeking the meaning of life, read these verses and shot himself dead.
He was quite convinced, you see, that, before denouncing life, the poet had sought the meaning as long as he himself had done, and that the search had been attended by sorrow, as in his own case. The youth did not know that these sombre thoughts were sold at the rate of sixteen copecks a line. He was an earnest youth.
Let not the reader think I mean that even a whip can, at times, be used on people to their advantage.
There once lived a very ambitious writer.
When he was abused, it seemed to him that he was abused too much, and unjustly. When he was praised he thought that they neither praised him enough, nor wisely. He lived in a state of perpetual discontent, until the time came for him to die.
The writer lay down on his bed and began grumbling:
"That's just how it is. What do you think of it? Two novels are not yet finished—and altogether I have enough material for ten years. The devil take this law of nature, and every other law. What nonsense! The novels might have turned out well. Why have they invented this idiotic compulsory service, as if things could not have been arranged differently? And it always comes at the wrong time: the novels are not finished yet."
He was angry, but disease was eating into his bones and whispering into his ears:
"You trembled, eh? Why did you tremble? You don't sleep at night, eh? Why don't you sleep? You have drunk of sorrow, eh?—and of joy too?"
He kept knitting his brows, but realised at last that nothing could be done. With a wave of the arm he dismissed the thought of his novels, and died.
It was very disagreeable, but he died.
So far so good. They washed him, dressed him according to custom, combed his hair and placed him on the table, straight and stiff like a soldier, heels together, toes apart. He lay very still, his nose drooped, and the only feeling he had was surprise.
"How strange it is that I feel nothing at all! It's the first time in my life. Ah, my wife is crying. Well, now you cry, but before, when anything went wrong, you flew into a rage. My little son is crying too. No doubt he will grow up a good-for-nothing fellow—the sons of writers, I have noticed, always do. No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature. What an infernal number of such laws there are."
So he lay and thought and thought, and wondered at his composure. He was not accustomed to it.
They started for the cemetery, but as he was being borne along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners.
"No matter," said he to himself, "though I may not be a very great writer, literature must be respected."
He looked out of the coffin and saw that, as a matter of fact, without counting his relations, only nine people accompanied him, among whom were two beggars and a lamplighter with a ladder over his shoulder.
At this discovery he became quite indignant.
"What swine!"
The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected, and, being a small man, jumped unperceived out of his coffin. He ran into a barber's, had his moustache and beard shaved off, and borrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit, leaving his own coat in its stead. Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved, and became like a living man. It was impossible to recognise him.
With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber:
"Are you not astonished at this strange incident?"
The latter stroked his moustache condescendingly and replied:
"Well, we live in Russia, and we are used to all kinds of things."
"But then I am a deceased person and suddenly I change my attire?"
"It is the fashion of the times. And in what way are you a deceased person? Only externally! As far as the general run of people goes it would be better if God made them all like you. At the present time living people don't look half so natural."
"Don't I look rather yellowish?"
"Quite in the spirit of the epoch, as you should be. It is Russia—everyone here suffers from one ill or another."
It is well known that barbers are flatterers of the first order and the most obliging people on earth.
He bade him good-bye, and ran to overtake the coffin, moved by a keen desire to show for the last time his reverence for literature. He caught up with the procession and the number of those who accompanied the coffin became ten. The respect for the writer increased correspondingly. Passers-by exclaimed, astonished:
"Just look! A writer's funeral! Oh! Oh!"
And people who knew what was taking place thought, with a sort of pride, as they went about their business:
"It is plain that the importance of literature is being understood better and better by the country."
The writer was now following his own coffin as if he were an admirer of literature and a friend of the deceased. He addressed the lamplighter.
"Did you know the deceased person?"
"Certainly; I made use of him in a small way."
"I am very pleased to hear it."
"Yes; our work is like that of the sparrow; where something drops we pick it up."
"How am I to understand that?"
"Take it in a very simple manner, sir."
"In a simple manner?"
"Yes, certainly. Of course, it is a sin if one looks at it from a certain point of view. One cannot, however, get on in this world without using ones wits."
"H'm! Are you sure of that?"
"Quite sure, sir. There was a lamp right against his window, and every night he sat up till sunrise. Well, I did not light that lamp because enough light streamed from his window. So this one lamp was a net profit to me: he was a very useful man."
So, talking quietly to this one and that, the writer reached the cemetery, and it came to pass that he had to make a speech about himself, because all those who accompanied him on that day had toothache. This happened in Russia, and there people always have an ache of one sort or another.
He made a rather good speech. One paper went so far as to praise it in the following terms:—
"One of the followers, who from his appearance we judged to be an actor, made a warm and touching oration over the grave, albeit from our point of view he no doubt over-estimated and exaggerated the rather modest merits of the deceased. He was a writer of the old school who made no effort to rid himself of its defects—the naïve didactism, namely, and the over-insistence on the so-called civic duties—which to us nowadays have become so tiresome. Nevertheless, the speech was delivered with a feeling of unquestionable love for the written word." When the speech had been duly made the writer lay down in the coffin and thought, quite satisfied with himself:
"There, we are ready now. Everything has gone well and with dignity."
At this point he became quite dead. Thus should one's calling be respected, even though it be literature.
Once upon a time there was a gentleman who had lived more than half his life, when he suddenly felt that something was lacking in him. He was very much alarmed.
He felt himself; everything seemed to be all right and in its place, his stomach was even protruding. He examined himself in a looking-glass, and saw that he had eyes, ears, and everything else that a serious man should have. He counted his fingers: there were ten right enough, and ten toes on his feet; but still he had an uncomfortable feeling that something was missing.
He was sadly puzzled.
He asked his wife:
"What do you think, Mitrodora? Is everything about me in order?"
She answered reassuringly:
"Everything."
"But sometimes it seems to me——"
She was a religious woman and advised him:
"Whenever you begin to imagine anything, recite mentally: 'Let God arise and his enemies will fall.'"
He questioned his friends also, in a roundabout way. They answered evasively, but looked at him suspiciously, as though he merited strong condemnation.
"What can it be?" thought the gentleman, feeling downcast.
He tried to recall his past. Everything seemed to be quite normal. He had been a socialist, had incited youths to revolt; but later on he had renounced everything, and for a long time now had strenuously trampled underfoot the "crops" himself had sown. Generally speaking he had lived like everybody else, in accordance with the spirit and inspirations of the times.
He pondered and pondered and suddenly discovered what it was:
"O Lord, I haven't got a national face!"
He rushed to the looking-glass and saw that his face really had an indistinct expression, like that of a blind man. It suggested a page of a translation from some foreign language, done carelessly by a more or less illiterate person who had omitted all punctuation, so that it was impossible to make out what was on the page. It might be read as containing either a demand that one's soul should be sacrificed for the liberty of the people, or that it was necessary to recognise the full sway of absolutism.
"H'm, what a mixture, to be sure," thought the gentleman; and he decided at once: "No, it is not the thing to live with a face like that."
So he began to wash it every day with expensive soaps, but this did not help: the skin shone, but the indistinctness remained. He began to lick his face with his tongue—his tongue was long and well adjusted, for at one time the gentleman had been engaged in journalism. But even his tongue was of no avail. He applied Japanese massage to his face, and bumps appeared, as they do after a hard fight, but still he could obtain no definiteness of expression.
He tried and tried, but without success; all that he achieved was to lose a pound and a half in weight. Suddenly to his joy he learned that the head constable of his district, von Judenfresser, was known for his understanding of national problems. He went to him and said:
"Matters stand so-and-so, your Honour. Cannot you help me in my trouble?"
The head constable of course was flattered: here was an educated man, not long since suspected of disloyalty to the throne, now asking advice with confidence on how to change the expression of his face. The constable chuckled, and in his great joy exclaimed:
"There is nothing simpler, my dear friend, my American gem. Rub your face against members of a subject nationality. Your real face will at once be revealed."
The gentleman was pleased, the weight of a mountain fell from his shoulders. He sniggered loyally and said to himself in some astonishment:
"Why could I not have guessed it myself? The whole matter is so simple."
They parted very good friends. The gentleman rushed out into the street, planted himself at a comer and waited. Presently a Jew came along; he rushed up to him and began:
"If you," he said, "are a Jew, you must become a Russian. If you do not want to, then——"
The Jew (as is known from all anecdotes) belongs to a nervous and timid people. But this one was of a capricious character and would not put up with pogroms. He raised his arm, gave the gentleman a blow on the left cheek, and went home to his family.
The gentleman leaned against the wall, rubbing his face, and thinking:
"Well, well, the formation of one's national face is connected with sensations not always altogether agreeable, but let it be. Nekrassoff, although he was a poor poet, said quite truly:
"Nothing can be got for naught:Fate demands its victims."
Suddenly a native of the Caucasus passed by. As proved by all anecdotes they are an uncivilised and hot-headed people. He was singing as he walked along:
"Mitskhales sakles mingrule."[1]
The gentleman pounced upon him:
"No," he said, "be quiet. If you are a Georgian you must become a Russian, and you must not love the hut of a Mingrelian, but what you are ordered to love. You must like prison, even without orders——"
The Georgian left the gentleman in a horizontal position and went and drank Kachetin wine. The gentleman lay on the ground and pondered:
"Well, well, there are also Tartars, Armenians, Bashkirs, Kirghises, Mordva, Lithuanians. O Lord, what a number! And these are not all. There are our own people, the Slavs."
At this juncture a Little Russian came along, and of course he was singing in a very disloyal manner:
"Our ancestors once ledA happy life in Ukraina...."
"No," said the gentleman, rising to his feet. "Will you be kind enough in future to use the letter 'y' instead of 'oo'[2]; otherwise you undermine the unity of the empire."
He argued the point at some length, and the Little Russian listened, for, as proved most conclusively by all the collections of Little Russian anecdotes, the Little Russians are a very slow people, and like to do their work without hurrying. Unfortunately this gentleman was somewhat insistent.
Some kind people picked the gentleman up and asked him:
"Where do you live?"
"In Great Russia."
Of course they took him to the police station. As they were driving along he felt his face, not without pride, though with a certain sense of pain. It seemed to him that it had grown considerably broader and he thought to himself:
"I believe I have acquired ..."
He was taken before von Judenfresser, and the latter, like the humane person he was, sent for the police doctor. When the doctor came they began to whisper to each other in surprise, and kept giggling, which seemed a strange thing to do in the circumstances.
"It is the first case in the whole of my practice," whispered the doctor. "I cannot make it out."
"What may that mean?" thought the gentleman, and asked:
"Well, how do I look?"
"The old face is quite rubbed off," answered von Judenfresser.
"And generally speaking has my face changed?"
"Of course it has, only, you know——"
The doctor said consolingly:
"Your face is such, dear sir, that you may just as well put your trousers on it."
So it remained for the rest of his life. There is no moral here.