This, of course, made my relations with them highly difficult, embarrassing, and irksome; and though moments occurred when I longed to say something that might ingratiate me, and endeavoured to effect an advance in that direction, the words always failed me at the necessary juncture, and I found myself lying crushed as before under a burdensome sense of the superfluity of my existence.
Again, if ever I tried to make an entry as to some material which had been used, Ossip would approach me, and, for instance, say:
"Is it jotted down, eh? Then let me look at it."
And, eyeing the notebook with a frown, he would add vaguely:
"What a nice hand you write!" (He himself could write only in printing fashion, in the large scriptory characters of the Ecclesiastical Rubric, not in those of the ordinary kind.)
"For example, that scoop there—what does IT say?"
"It is the word 'Good.'"
"'Good'? But what a slip-knot of a thing! And what are those words THERE, on THAT line?"
"They say, 'Planks, 1 vershok by 9 arshini, 5.'"
"No, six was the number used."
"No, five."
"Five? Why, the soldier broke one, didn't he?"
"Yes, but never mind—at least it wasn't a plank that was wanted."
"Oh! Well, I may tell you that he took the two pieces to the tavern to get drink with."
Then, glancing into my face with his cornflower-blue eyes and quiet, quizzical smile, he would say without the least confusion as he twisted the ringlets of his beard:
"Put down '6.' And see here, young cockerel. The weather has turned wet and cold, and the work is hard, and sometimes folk need to have their spirits cheered and raised with a drop of liquor. So don't you be too hard upon us, for God won't think the more of you for being strict."
And as he thus talked to me in his slow and kindly, but semi-affected, fashion—bespattering me, as it were, with wordy sawdust—I would suddenly grow blind of an eye and silently show him the corrected figure.
"That's it—that's right. And how fine the figure looks now, as it squats there like a merchant's buxom, comely dame!"
Then he would be seen triumphantly telling his mates of his success; then, I would find myself feeling acutely conscious of the fact that everyone was despising me for my complacence Yes, grown sick beyond endurance with a yearning for some thing which it could not descry, my fifteen-year-old heart would dissolve in a flood of mortified tears, and there would pass through my brain the despondent, aching thought:
"Oh, what a sad, uncomfortable world is this! How should Ossip have known so well that I should not re-correct the 6 into a 5, or that I should not tell the contractor that the men have bartered a plank for liquor?"
Again, there befell an occasion when the men stole two pounds' weight of five vershok mandrels and bolts.
"Look here," I said to Ossip warningly. "I am going to report this."
"All right," he agreed with a twitch of his grey eyebrows. "Though what such a trifle can matter I fail to see. Yes, go and report every mother's son of them."
And to the men themselves he shouted:
"Hi, boobies! Each of you now stands docked for some mandrels and bolts."
"Why?" was the old soldier's grim inquiry.
"Because you DO so stand," carelessly retorted the other.
With snarls thereafter, the men eyed me covertly, until I began to feel that very likely I should not do as I had threatened, and even that so to do might not be expedient.
"But look here," said I to Ossip. "I am going to give the contractor notice, and let all of you go to the devil. For if I were to remain with you much longer I too should become a thief."
Ossip stroked his beard awhile, and pondered. Then he seated himself beside me, and said in an undertone:
"That is true."
"Well?"
"But things are always so. The truth is that it's time you departed. What sort of a watchman, of a checker, are you? In jobs of this kind what a man needs to know is the meaning of property. He needs to have in him the spirit of a dog, so that he shall look after his master's stuff as he would look after the skin which his mother has put on to his own body. But you, you young puppy, haven't the slightest notion of what property means. In fact, were anyone to go and tell Vasili Sergeitch about the way in which you keep letting us off, he'd give it you in the neck. Yes, you're no good to him at all, but just an expense: whereas when a man serves a master he ought, do you understand, to be PROFITABLE to that master."
He rolled and handed me a cigarette.
"Smoke this," said he, "and perhaps it'll make your brain work easier. If only you had been of a less awkward, uncomfortable nature, I should have said to you, 'Go and join the priests; but, as things are, you aren't the right sort for that—you're too stiff and unbending, and would never make headway even with an abbot. No, you're not the sort to play cards with. A monk is like a jackdaw—he chatters without knowing what he is chattering about, and pays no heed to the root of things, so busy is he with stuffing himself full with the grain. I say this to you with absolute earnestness, for I perceive you to be strange to our ways—a cuckoo that has blundered into the wrong nest."
And, doffing his cap, a gesture which he never failed to execute when he had something particularly important to say, he added humbly and sonorously as he glanced at the grey firmament:
"In the sight of the Lord our ways are the ways of thieves, and such as will never gain of Him salvation."
"And that is true enough," responded Mokei Budirin after the fashion of a clarionet.
From that time forth, Ossip of the curly, silvered head, bright eyes, and shadowy soul became an object of agreeable interest for me. Indeed, there grew up between us a species of friendship, even though I could see that a civil bearing towards me in public was a thing that it hurt him to maintain. At all events, in the presence of others he avoided my glance, and his eyes, clear, unsullied, and fight blue in tint, wavered unsteadily, and his lips twitched and assumed an artificially unpleasant expression, while he uttered some such speech as:
"Hi, you Makarei, see that you keep your eyes open, and cam your pay, or that pig of a soldier will be making away with more nails!"
But at other times, when we were alone together, he would speak to me kindly and instructively, while his eyes would dance and gleam with a faint, grave, knowing smile, and dart blue rays direct into mine, while for my part, as I listened to his words, I took every one of them to be absolutely true and balanced, despite their strange delivery.
"A man's duty consists in being good," I remarked on one occasion.
"Yes, of course," assented Ossip, though the next moment he veiled his eyes with a smile, and added in an undertone: "But what do you understand by the term 'good'? In my opinion, unless virtue be to their advantage, folk spit upon that 'goodness,' that 'honourableness,' of yours. Hence, the better plan is to pay folk court, and be civil to them, and flatter and cajole every mother's son of them. Yes, do that, and your 'goodness' will have a chance of bringing you in some return. Not that I do not say that to be 'good,' to be able to look your own ugly jowl in the face in a mirror, is pleasant enough; but, as I see the matter, it is all one to other people whether you be a cardsharper or a priest so long as you're polite, and let down your neighbours lightly. That's what they want."
For my part I never, at that period, grew weary of watching my fellows, for it was my constant idea that some day one of them would be able to raise me to a higher level, and to bring me to an understanding of this unintelligible and complicated existence of ours. Hence I kept asking myself the restless, the importunate question:
"What precisely is the human soul?"
Certain souls, I thought, existed which seemed like balls of copper, for, solid and immovable, they reflected things from their own point of view alone, in a dull and irregular and distorted fashion. And souls, I thought, existed which seemed as flat as mirrors, and, for all intents and purposes, had no existence
at all.
And in every case the human soul seemed formless, like a cloud, and as murkily mutable as an imitation opal, a thing which altered according to the colour of what adjoined it.
Only as regarded the soul of the intelligent Ossip was I absolutely at a loss, absolutely unable to reach a conclusion.
Pondering these and similar matters in my mind, I, on the day of which I speak, stood gazing at the river, and at the town under the hill, as I listened to the bells. Rearing themselves aloft like the organ pipes in my favourite Polish-Roman Catholic church, the steeples of the town had their crosses dimly sparkling as though the latter had been stars imprisoned in a murky sky. Yet it was as though those stars hoped eventually to ascend into the purer firmament above the wind-torn clouds that they sparkled; and as I stood watching the clouds glide onward, and momentarily efface with their shadows, the town's multifarious hues, I marked the fact that although, whenever dark-blue cavities in their substance permitted the beams of the sun to illuminate the buildings below, those buildings' roofs assumed tints of increased cheerfulness. The clouds seemed to glide the faster to veil the beams, while the humid shadows grew more opaque—and the scene darkened as though only for a moment had it assumed a semblance of joy.
The buildings of the town (looking like heaps of muddy snow), the black, naked earth around those buildings, the trees in the gardens, the hummocks of piled-up soil, the dull grey glimmer of the window panes of the houses—all these things reminded me of winter, even though the misty breath of the northern spring was beginning to steal over the whole.
Presently a young fellow with flaxen hair, a pendent underlip, and a tall, ungainly figure, by name Mishuk Diatlov, essayed to troll the stanza:
"That morn to him the maiden came,
To find his soul had fled."
Whereupon the old soldier shouted:
"Hi, you! Have you forgotten the day?"
And even Boev saw fit to take umbrage at the singing, and, threatening Diatlov with his fist, to rap out:
"Ah, sobatchnia dusha!" ["Soul of a dog."]
"What a rude, rough, primitive lot we Russians are!" commented Ossip, seating himself atop of the icebreaker, and screwing up his eyes to measure its fall. "To speak plainly, we Russians are sheer barbarians. Once upon a time, I may tell you, an anchorite happened to be on his travels; and as the people came pressing around him, and kneeling to him, and tearfully beseeching him with the words, 'Oh holy father, intercede for us with the wolves which are devouring our substance!' he replied: 'Ha! Are you, or are you not, Orthodox Christians? See that I assign you not to condign perdition!' Yes, angry, in very truth he was. Nay, he even spat in the people's faces. Yet in reality he was a kindly old man, for his eyes kept shedding tears equally with theirs."
Twenty sazheni below the icebreaker was a gang of barefooted sailors, engaged in hacking out the floes from under their barges; and as they shattered the brittle, greyish-blue crust on the river, the mattocks rang out, and the sharp blades of the icecutters gleamed as they thrust the broken fragments under the surface. Meanwhile, there could be heard a bubbling of water, and the sound of rivulets trickling down to the sandy margin of the river. And similarly among our own gang was there audible a scraping of planes, and a screeching of saws, and a clattering of iron braces as they were driven into the smooth yellow wood, while through all the web of these sounds there ran the ceaseless song of the bells, a song so softened by distance as to thrill the soul, much as though dingy, burdensome labour were holding revel in honour of spring, and calling upon the latter to spread itself over the starved, naked surface of the gradually thawing ground.
At this point someone shouted hoarsely:
"Go and fetch the German. We have not got hands enough."
And from the bank someone bawled in reply:
"Where IS he?"
"In the tavern. That is where you must go and look for him."
And as they made themselves heard, the voices floated up turgidly into the sodden air, spread themselves over the river's mournful void, and died away.
Meanwhile our men worked with industry and speed, but not without a fault or two, for their thoughts were fixed upon the town and its washhouses and churches. And particularly restless was Sashok Diatlov, a man whose hair, as flaxen as that of his brother, seemed to have been boiled in lye. At intervals, glancing up-river, this well-built, sturdy young fellow would say softly to his brother:
"It's cracking now, eh?"
And, certainly, the ice had "moved" two nights ago, so that since yesterday morning the river watchmen had refused to permit horsed vehicles to cross, and only a few beadlike pedestrians now were making their way along the marked-out ice paths, while, as they proceeded, one could hear the water slapping against the planks as the latter bent under the travellers' weight.
"Yes, it IS cracking," at length Mishuk replied with a hoist of his ginger eyebrows.
Ossip too scanned the river from under his hand. Then he said to Mishuk:
"Pah! It is the dry squeak of the planes in your own hand that you keep hearing, so go on with your work, you son of a beldame. And as for you, Inspector, do you help me to speed up the men instead of burying your nose in your notebook."
By this time there remained only two more hours for work, and the arch of the icebreaker had been wholly sheathed in butter-tinted scantlings, and nothing required to be added to it save the great iron braces. Unfortunately, Boev and Saniavin, the men who had been engaged upon the task of cutting out the sockets for the braces, had worked so amiss, and run their lines so straight, that, when it came to the point, the arms of the braces refused to sink properly into the wood.
"Oh, you cock-eyed fool of a Morduine!" shouted Ossip, smiting his fist against the side of his cap. "Do you call THAT sort of thing work?"
At this juncture there came from somewhere on the bank a seemingly exultant shout of:
"Ah! NOW it's giving way!"
And almost at the same moment, there stole over the river a sort of rustle, a sort of quiet crunching which made the projecting pine branches quiver as though they were trying to catch at something, while, shouldering their mattocks, the barefooted sailors noisily hastened aboard their barges with the aid of rope ladders.
And then curious indeed was it to see how many people suddenly came into view on the river—to see how they appeared to issue from below the very ice itself, and, hurrying to and fro like jackdaws startled by the shot of a gun, to dart hither and thither, and to seize up planks and boathooks, and to throw them down again, and once more to seize them up.
"Put the tools together," Ossip shouted. "And look alive there, and make for the bank."
"Aye, and a fine Easter Day it will be for us on THAT bank!" growled Sashok.
Meanwhile, it was the river rather than the town that seemed to be motionless—the latter had begun, as it were, to quiver and reel, and, with the hill above it, to appear to be gliding slowly up stream, even as the grey, sandy bank some ten sazheni from us was beginning to grow tremulous, and to recede.
"Run, all of you!" shouted Ossip, giving me a violent push as he did so. Then to myself in particular he added: "Why stand gaping there?"
This caused a keen sense of danger to strike home in my heart, and to make my feet feel as though already the ice was escaping their tread. So, automatically picking themselves up, those feet started to bear my body in the direction of a spot on the sandy bank where the winter-stripped branches of a willow tree were writhing, and whither there were betaking themselves also Boev, the old soldier, Budirin, and the brothers Diatlov. Meanwhile the Morduine ran by my side, cursing vigorously as he did so, and Ossip followed us, walking backwards.
"No, no, Narodetz," he said.
"But, my good Ossip—"
"Never mind. What has to be, has to be."
"But, as likely as not, we may remain stuck here for two days!"
"Never mind even if we DO remain stuck here."
"But what of the festiva
l?"
"It will have, for this year at least, to be kept without you."
Seating himself on the sand, the old soldier lit his pipe and growled:
"What cowards you all are! The bank was only fifteen sazheni from us, yet you ran as though possessed!"
"With you yourself as leader," put in Mokei.
The old soldier took no notice, but added:
"What were you all afraid of? Once upon a time Christ Himself, Our Little Father, died."
"And rose again," muttered the Morduine with a tinge of resentment. Which led Boev to exclaim:
"Puppy, hold your tongue! What right have you to air your opinions?"
"Besides, this is Good Friday, not Easter Day," the old soldier concluded with severe, didactical mien.
In a gap of blue between the clouds there was shining the March sun, and everywhere the ice was sparkling as though in derision of ourselves. Shading his eyes, Ossip gazed at the dissolving river, and said:
"Yes, it IS rising—but that will not last for long."
"No, but long enough to make us miss the festival," grumbled Sashok.
Upon this the smooth, beardless face of the youthful Morduine, a face dark and angular like the skin of an unpeeled potato, assumed a resentful frown, and, blinking his eyes, he muttered:
"Yes, here we may have to sit—here where there's neither food nor money! Other folk will be enjoying themselves, but we shall have to remain hugging our hungry stomachs like a pack of dogs!"
Meanwhile Ossip's eyes had remained fixed upon the river, for evidently his thoughts were far away, and it was in absentminded fashion that he replied:
"Hunger cannot be considered where necessity impels. By the way, what use are our damned icebreakers? For the protection of barges and such? Why, the ice hasn't the sense to care. It just goes sliding over a barge, and farewell is the word to THAT bit of property!"
"Damn it, but none of us have a barge for property, have we?
"You had better go and talk to a fool."