Old Izergil and other stories / Старуха Изергиль и другие рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Alexei threw him a look out of the corner of his eye and muttered sarcastically:

“Mind you don’t melt, you’ll make the floor dirty!”

“Don’t be silly! Why, you yourself – you believe, you feel it…”

Somov curled his lip and snubbed his comrade with an angry snort:

“You’d better listen more and chatter less. And don’t start explaining to people what you don’t understand yourself. You just look, you haven’t made yourself too popular – you get on people’s nerves with your talk…”

“I get on people’s nerves?” queried Foma incredulously.

One day he had a toothache which he assiduously tried to relieve by stuffing cotton wool saturated in varnish into the cavity; he even bought some creosote, though he considered it injurious, but the pain was not allayed and he was unable to attend the lesson.

Late in the evening Somov, looking gloomy and disgruntled, came into the workshop, and calling Foma aside, demanded sternly:

“What were you talking about with Liza the day before yesterday?”

“Me? Oh, various things. Why?”

Alexei, his lips twisted, looked at him askance and, drawing at his cigarette, asked:

“Complained about being lonely, eh?”

“Complained? Me? Nothing of the kind! I just happened to mention it…”

“You ought to lake better care of your words!”

“Did you see her home?”

“Sure.”

“What did she loll you about me?” asked Foma, stroking his swollen cheek.

“What I’m telling you – you’re a muddle-headed fellow.”

“No, really?”

Somov studied the smoking tip of his cigarette and said with a sneer:

“You can take it from me! That’s what she said!”

“Never mind!” exclaimed Foma, and even his tooth seemed to ache less. “I’ll prove to her that…”

“Look here,” said Alexei with a sardonic grin, kicking aside the shavings on the floor, “let me give you a bit of advice – or better I’ll tell you what happened to me once. When I was in prison I saw a girl, one of the educated sort, during the promenade, and went nuts over her right off the bat, just like you…”

“You don’t say!” Foma exclaimed in astonishment.

But Alexei, his face as wry as though he too suffered from toothache, went on without looking at his pal:

“We tapped out messages to each other at night and all that kind of thing… I started that stuff about loneliness, and it worked out pretty rotten, my dear fellow, let me tell you!”

“You don’t say!” repeated Foma in a soft whisper, waving his hands. “What makes you think – who said I was in love? Where did you get the idea?”

“Come on, kid your grandmother! I advise you to drop it…”

“That’s nonsense, Alexei!” said Foma, pressing a hand to his heart and feeling that it was beating with astonishing rapidity, as though at once frightened and overjoyed. “Good Lord, who the devil would have thought it? That’s extraordinary, that is! The thing never entered my mind! But what’s the use? Though, on second thought, she’s made up her mind to go with us fellows, and – well, so what? Very simple, I should say! Supposing we put it like this: let a person melt in our insipid midst like a pinch of salt, and satiate…”

Somov crushed the cigarette end slowly between his fingers, stared around and started whistling between his teeth. Seeing that his comrade had no desire to listen to him Foma sighed and remarked:

“That damned tooth’s a nuisance – hurts…”

“Mind something else doesn’t start hurting!” Alexei warned him, concealing his eves under his lashes, then suddenly resumed in a tone Foma had never heard him use before:

“Look here, if we’re going to talk this thing out – though I’m not gifted with the gab – let me tell you this. People say that you’re a muddle-headed fellow – I say it myself… it’s only true – sometimes you talk such piffle, fit to make a fellow sick. Still… I always hear you – I mean listen…”

He sat on a work-bench, his back bent and his shoulders, elbows and knees sticking out in sharp angularities, and he looked as though he had been knocked together out of odd fragments of wood. Stroking his stiff dark hair he continued slowly and quietly:

“What I like about you is that you’re somehow like a little child – you put faith in everything you know…

“Alexei – that’s just it!” cried Foma, leaning over to him confidentially. “D’you remember me telling you about Fyodor Grigorievich? He says the same thing. His father’s all for faith. But he says, even behind faith there’s a certain amount of knowledge, for without it no interpretation of life is possible…”

“You chuck that, my boy!” advised Somov. “I don’t understand that…”

“No, but can’t you see, it’s very simple! First knowledge – then faith! Its the mother of faith, it gives it birth – you just think – how can a man have faith unless he has knowledge? Comrade Mark and Vassili, if you ask me – they simply don’t believe in the power of knowledge, that’s why they talk against faith in general…”

Somov regarded him with a sorrowful ironical look and observed with a shake of the head:

“It’s hard to talk with you! Crammed yourself chock-full with all kinds of drivel, and it looks to me you’ll never get rid of it. Let me tell you – I’m sorry for you! Get me? And lake my advice – leave Liza alone!”

Foma Varaxin forced a reluctant laugh and screwed up his eyes like a stroked cat.

No, I’ll see this thing through. I will, right full ahead! I’ll ask her – that’s a wonderful idea! Now, what’ll she say, eh?”

“What arc you going to ask her?” enquired Alexei drily.

“Generally, I’ll ask her about complete unity. Word and deed – is that it?”

Somov drew out a cigarette with a trembling hand and put it into his mouth the wrong end. He bit off the moistened end, spat it out on the floor, flung the cigarette after it and asked:

“Do you love her, or what? Might as well say it!”

To which Foma replied without a moment’s hesitation:

“Yes, of course, very much… I mean, if you hadn’t mentioned it – I might not have guessed it perhaps – but now it’s clear! When I speak with her I feel so happy and light, as though I really were a child, upon my word!”

“Good-bye,” muttered Alexei, thrusting out his hand, and made for the door. He stopped in the depths of the workshop, looking small and dark, and asked in a quiet voice:

“Damn it, maybe you only just made it up?”

“What?”

“That love of yours?”

“You’re a funny chap!” exclaimed Foma. “You said it yourself. I didn’t make am thing up. I simply didn’t grasp the fact yet… it was you…

“I’m a fool too!” said Somov and disappeared.

What with excitement and agonizingly anxious visions of his forthcoming meeting with Liza, Foma forgot his toothache and began pacing backwards and forwards among the rustling shavings. An oil lamp burned smokily on the wall, dimly illuminating the yellow strips of boards stacked on racks overhead, a pile of curly shavings in the corner on which lay sprawled the little body of a sleeping boy, the dark work-benches, the curved legs of chairs and boards gripped in vices.

“Wonderful!” thought Foma rubbing his hands together vigorously.

He conjured up a simple, delightful life with a clever and loving little wife full of understanding and able to find an answer to every question. Around her are dear friends and comrades, and she. herself is dear and near.

“Beautiful!”

Then will come exile – that’s sure to come! Somewhere far away in a lonely little village snowed up to the roofs and lost amid dark towering forests – forests towering to the very sky – he sits alone with her, studying. The walls are lined with shelves of thick impressive-looking books that tell you everything you want to know, and they both pass mentally from one to another of them by the bright ways of human thought. Outside there reigns a frozen hush, the white snow has wrapped the earth in a downy cloak and above it hangs the low cupola of the northern skies. Inside the room it is warm, clean and cosy, the fire in the stove dances in vivid yellow tongues of flame, the shadows dart silently along the walls and in a little cot by one of them lies another sweet bit of humanity born into the world to fight for the unity of all mankind into a single family of friends, workers, creators. The wintry sky of this cold country is painted by flaming sunsets, reminiscent of the primeval days when, the first childish thoughts of men were born, when the invincible idea of uniting all mankind, the idea of the triumph of light was first nourished in men’s minds.

Foma Varaxin did not believe in dawdling – Sunday saw him dressed in his best suit, one side of which, for some unaccountable reason, was longer than the other, and the collar of which evinced an inclination to climb to the back of his head: he put on shirt with a starched front and frayed cuffs, donned a blue necktie with red spots, hunched his shoulders high and went forth to visit Liza.

The bright winter day was bedecked in hoarfrost and velvet draperies of snow, strengthening in Foma’s breast a joyous resolve inspiring him with words bright and pure. The telegraph wires, white and shaggy with hoar-frost, stretched prettily in the air straight towards the street where lived the girl whom Foma had already more than once and without any shadow of doubt mentally called his bride and wife. It was a glorious day, a joyous day, resplendent with light and silver scintillations.

“Oh, it’s you!” said Liza, opening the door of her room.

“Are you coming in or going out?” asked Foma, smiling and giving her hand a hearty squeeze.

“I’m going out,” she said, her face twisted with pain, as she blew on her fingers and shook them in front of her face. She had a little sealskin cap on her head and her left hand was gloved.

“Well, I won’t keep you long!” promised Foma, settling himself into a chair in his overcoat and slapping his knee with his cap.

“Why do you look so radiant?” asked Liza, her blue eyes travelling over his figure.

He took his time, regarding her with an affectionate searching look – she was so like an apple, small, round and rosy.

“A little doll!” it flashed through his mind.

She walked to and fro between the door and the window, her heels clicking on the floor. She glanced through the window, then at the visitor with wrinkled brows, and swaying slightly, moved slowly towards the door. It seemed to him that her face looked sterner and more preoccupied than usual.

“Perhaps she feels what’s coming?” he thought.

“I’ll explain why I look radiant.” said Foma aloud and invited her: “Sit down, please!”

She shrugged her shoulders and reluctantly, irresolutely sat down facing him.

“Well?”

Foma leaned towards her, put out a yellow-nailed varnish-stained hand, and began in a low, soft, tender voice:

“Do you know. Comrade Liza. I want to tell you just one word.” He rose to his feet, pointed his finger in front of him and exclaimed in an impressive tone: “Full ahead!”

“What’s that?” asked Liza, smiling.

“Let me explain: imagine a steamboat on the river, engines throttled down because the fairway’s unfamiliar. Then the situation becomes clear. ‘Half speed!’ yells the captain down to the engine room, and then, when all’s plain sailing, the captain commands: ‘Full ahead!”’

Liza opened her eyes in a puzzled look, silently biting her lips with little white teeth.

“You don’t understand?” queried Foma, moving up closer.

“N-no! Who’s the captain?”

“The captain? You! And me – we’re both captains of our lives – you and me! We have the right to command our own destiny – isn’t that so?”

“Why, yes, but – what’s it all about?” exclaimed the girl, laughing.

Foma held his arms out to her and repeated in broken accents:

“Full ahead, comrade! You know us, me and all the rest – come to us, come with us to complete unity!”

Liza stood up. It seemed to him that a shadow passed over her face and chased the bloom from her cheeks, quenched the shining light of her eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she said, lifting her shoulders. “It goes without saving – of course I am with you… What makes you speak of it? What is the matter?”

Foma seized her hands in his own hard palms, shook them and almost shouted:

“It goes without saying! Wonderful, comrade! I knew it… of course you’ll – you’ll do it!”

“Do what?” she questioned nervously, snatching her fingers away. “Don’t shout, there are other people in the house… Do what?”

Her voice sounded angry and a little indignant. Foma caught the note and hastened to explain:

“Marry me – that’s what I propose! Right full ahead! D’you imagine what it’ll be like – our life, comrade? What a holiday it’ll be…”

Standing before her, with bis arms frantically sawing the air, he began to sketch the long pondered scenes of their life together, their work, pictures of life in exile, and as he spoke his voice dropped lower and lower, for Liza seemed to be melting before his gaze, dwindling and shrinking and receding further and further away.

“Good God, how stupid!” he heard a muffled distressed exclamation. “How vulgar!”

It seemed to Foma as if somebody had imperceptibly sprung at him and clenched a hand over his mouth so hard that his heart instantly stopped beating and he gasped for breath.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Foma!” he heard a low indignant voice saying. “It’s simply – why, it’s awful! It’s stupid – don’t you see? Oh, how disgusting, how silly!”

It seemed to him that the girl was shrinking into the wall, burying herself among the portraits, and her face grew as grey and lifeless as the photographs above her head. She pulled her plait with one hand and fanned the air in front of her with the other, shrinking ever smaller and speaking in a low but sharp voice:

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to regard me only as a woman?”

Foma spread his hands and stammered:

“Why? Not a woman, but generally… as people – you and me…”

“What kind of comradeship is this?” she asked. “What am I to think of you now? Why did you have to insult me, why?”

Foma had no recollection of how he left the little room with the many photographs on the walls, how he took his leave of Liza and what she said at parting – she had utterly dwindled and merged into the grey smudge of the rigid tutorial faces, had become one with them, inspiring, as they did, a cold stern deference.

He paced the streets, seeing nothing but misty circles before his eyes, and pulled his cap down low over his head, musing concentratedly, obstinately, drearily:

“Why stupid? Of what should I be ashamed? Vulgar? A woman? What’s wrong with a woman? Does that matter so much? If there are two souls united in a single idea – what if it is a woman?”

And he pulled his cap lower. His head felt cold, as though it had been stocked with ice and the sense of chilliness was so keen that his heart ached with a dull pain, as if he had been breathing asphyxiating fumes in an ill-ventilated room.

He caught up with a funeral procession. A soldier was being buried. Four stalwarts in uniforms, taking broad even strides, carried the coffin on their shoulders, and it swung measuredly from side to side in the frosty air. In front walked a drummer, adroitly beating a tattoo with his drumsticks, scattering into the air the impressive roll of his drum. Behind marched a platoon of soldiers with shouldered rifles. The soldiers wore black ear-caps tied under their chins and they all seemed to he wounded with deep gashes.

Alongside the coffin ran a little dun dog with its tail between its legs, and when the drum ceased beating the burial roll, it ran closer to the coffin, and when the drumsticks resumed their music it darted back with a timorous plaintive whimper.

Foma took off his cap with a great effort, leaned against a fence and watched the strange soldiers go by, shuddering with the cold that filled his breast and thinking, as though enquiring of some one: “Why ashamed?”

1910

The Breakup

On the river opposite the city, seven carpenters were hurriedly repairing an ice apron the townsfolk had taken apart for firewood during the winter.

The spring was late that year – the stripling March looked more like October; only around midday, and not every day at that, a pale, wintry sun would appear in a sky shot through with sunbeams, and diving through the blue rents in the clouds, squint down ill-naturedly at the earth.

It was already Friday of Passion Week and still at night the dripping eaves froze into blue icicles a good half-arshin long; the ice on the river, now bare of snow, had the same bluish tint as the wintry clouds.

While the carpenters worked, the church bells in the town rang out their mournful, metallic appeal. The workers raised their heads and gazed into the murky haze that enveloped the town, and often an axe poised for a blow would hang for a moment in mid air as though reluctant to cleave the gentle sound.

Here and there on the broad surface of the river fir branches, stuck into the ice to mark the paths, cracks and fissures, pointed skywards like the hands of a drowning man twisted with the ague.

The river presented a dreary spectacle; deserted and bare, its surface a scabrous mass, it spread desolately away into the gloomy space from which a dank, chill wind breathed lazily and dismally.

…Foreman Osip, a neat well-built little chap with a tidy silver heard that clung in tiny curls to his pink cheeks and mobile neck, old Osip always in the fore, was shouting:

“Get a move on there, you hen’s spawn!’

And turning to me, he said mockingly:

“Now then, overseer. What’re you standing there mooning for? What do you think you’re supposed to be doing? Didn’t Vassil Sergeich, the contractor, put you here? Well, then it’s your job to keep us at it, ‘Get a move on you so-and-so!’ You’re supposed to yell at me. That’s what you’re here for, and you stand there blinking like a fish. You’re not supposed to blink, you’re supposed to keep your eyes open, and do some shouting too. You’re a sort of boss around here. Well, then, go ahead and give orders, you cuckoo’s.

“Get moving there, you demons!” he yelled at the men. “We’ve got to finish the work today, don’t we?”

He himself was the laziest of the lot. He knew his business quite well, and could work with dexterity and zeal when he had a mind to, but he didn’t care to take the trouble and preferred to entertain the others with tall stories. And so when work would be forging ahead and the men would be at it in silent absorption, suddenly obsessed by the desire to do everything well and smoothly, Osip would begin in his purring voice:

“Did I ever tell you about the time…”

For two or three minutes the men would appear to pay no heed to him, engrossed in their sawing and planing, and his soft tenor would flow dreamily on, meandering around them and claiming their attention. His light-blue eyes half-closed, Osip fingered his curly beard and, smacking his lips with pleasure, mulled happily over each word.

“So he catches this here carp, puts it away in his basket and goes off into the woods, thinking about the fine fish soup he’s going to have… And all of a sudden he hears a woman’s voice pipe up, he can’t tell from where: ‘Yelesy-a-a, Yelesy-a-a!..’”

Lyonka, the lanky, angular Mordvinian, nicknamed Narodets, a young man with small eyes full of wonderment, lowered his axe and stood gaping.

“And from the basket a deep bass voice answers: ‘Here I am!’ And that very same minute the lid of the basket snaps back and out jumps the fish and darts straight back into the pool…”

Sanyavin, an old discharged soldier and a saturnine drunk who suffered from asthma and had a grudge of long-standing against life, croaked hoarsely:

“How could a carp move about on land?”

“Have you ever heard of a fish that could talk?” Osip retorted sweetly.

Mokei Budyrin, a dull-witted muzhik whose prominent cheekbones, jutting chin and receding forehead lent his face a canine appearance, a silent unprepossessing fellow, gave vent to his three favourite words in his slow nasal drawl:

“That’s true enough… ”

His unfailing response to any story – incredible, horrible, filthy or malicious – would be those three words uttered in a low voice that rang with conviction.

“That’s true enough.”

Each time I heard them it was as though some heavy fist struck me thrice on the chest.

Work stopped because lame and stuttering Yakov Boyev also wanted to tell a fish story, in fact he had already begun his tale, but no one listened to him; instead everybody laughed at his painful efforts to speak. He cursed and swore, brandished his chisel and foaming at the mouth yelled to everyone’s amusement:

“When one man lies like a trooper you take it for gospel, but I’m telling you a true story and all you can do is cackle like a lot of numbskulls, blast you…”

By now the men had dropped their tools and were shouting and gesticulating, whereupon Osip took off his cap, baring his venerable silver head with its bald pale, and sternly admonished:

“Hey that’ll do now! You’ve had your breathing spell, now get back to work!”

“You started it,” croaked the ex-soldier spitting disgustedly on his hands.

Osip began nagging at me:

“Now then, overseer…”

I felt that he had some definite purpose in distracting the men from their work with his chatter, but what I did not understand was whether he did it to conceal his own laziness or to give the workers a breather. When the contractor was around, Osip behaved with the utmost servility, acting the simpleton in front of the boss, contriving every Saturday to wheedle a little extra money out of him for the artel.

On the whole he was devoted to the men. but the old workers had no use for him – they considered him a clown and a good-for-nothing and had little respect for him: and even the young folk who enjoyed listening to hid stories did not take him seriously, regarding him rather with ill-concealed mistrust and often with hostility. I once asked the Mordvinian, an intelligent chap with whom I often had some heart-to-heart talks, what he thought of Osip.

“I dunno…” he replied with a grin. “Devil knows… he’s all right, I suppose…” Then after a pause he went on:

“Mikhailo, the chap who died a sharp-tongued fellow he was, and clever too, quarrelled with him once, with Osip, that is, and lammed into Osip something fierce. ‘What kind of a man are you?’ says he. ‘As a workingman you’re finished and you haven’t learned to be a boss, so you’ll spend your days dangling like a forgotten plummet on a string.’ That’s pretty near the truth, and no mistake…”

Then after another pause he added uneasily: “But he’s all right, a good chap on the whole…” My own position among these men was an extremely embarrassing one. Here I was, a lad of fifteen, put there by the contractor to keep accounts, to see that the carpenters did not steal the nails or turn the boards in at the saloon. Of course, they filched nails right under my nose, going out of their way to show me that I was quite superfluous, a downright nuisance, in fact. And if any opportunity afforded itself to bump me with a board or to do me some other minor injury, as if by accident, they would not hesitate to make the most of it.

I felt awkward and ashamed in their midst; I would have liked to say something to reconcile them to my presence, but I could not find the words and the oppressive sense of my own uselessness weighed heavily upon me.

Whenever I entered in my book the materials taken, Osip would walk over to me in his deliberate way and say:

“Got it? Now then, let’s have a look…”

And he would screw up his eyes and scrutinize the entry. “You don’t write clearly enough,” he would comment somewhat vaguely.

He could read only printed lettering and he wrote in church Slavonic letters, too. Ordinary writing was unintelligible to him What’s that funny-looking curlicue there?”

“It’s the letter “D.”

“Ah, D! What a fancy loop… And what’ve you written on that line?”

“Boards, nine arshin, five.”

“Six, you mean.”

“No, five.”

“What do you mean, five? Look, Soldier cut up one…”

“He shouldn’t have…”

“Who says he shouldn’t? He took half to the pub…”

He looked straight at me with his eyes as blue as corn-flowers, twinkling merrily, and, fingering his beard, said with shameless imperturbability:

“Come on, now, put down six! Look here, you cuckoo’s egg, it’s wet and cold and the work’s hard; a fellow’s got to have a little drink now and again to warm his soul, don’t he? Don’t be so upright, you won’t bribe God that way…”

He talked long and earnestly, his gentle, caressing words seemed to engulf me like a shower of sawdust until I felt dazed and blinded by them and found myself altering the figure without protest, “Now that’s more like it! Why, the figure even looks nicer, sitting there on the line like a nice, fat kind-hearted wench…”

I saw him triumphantly reporting his victory to the carpenters and knew that they all despised me for my weakness, and my fifteen-year-old heart wept with humiliation and ugly, dreary thoughts whirled in my head.

“How strange and stupid all this is. Why is he so sure that I won’t go and change the six back to a five, and that I won’t tell the contractor they sold the board for drinks?”

Once they stole two pounds of eight-inch spikes and clamps.

“Listen here,” I earned Osip, “I’m going to put that down!”

“Go ahead!” he replied lightly, his grey eyebrows twitching. “It’s time to put a stop to all this nonsense! Go ahead, write it down, that’ll teach the sons of bitches…”

And he shouted to the men:

“Hey you, loafers, you’ll be paying a fine for those spikes and clamps!”

“What for?” the ex-soldier demanded grimly.

“You can’t get away with that sort of thing all the time,” Osip calmly explained.

The carpenters grumbled and looked askance at me, and I was not at all sure that I would carry out my threat and whether, if I did, I would be doing right.

“I’m going to quit this job,” I said to Osip. “You can all go to the devil! I’ll be taking to thieving myself if I stay with you fellows much longer.”

Osip pondered this for a while, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Then he squatted down beside me and said softly:

“You know, lad, you’re quite right!”

“Eh?”

“You’ve got to clear out. What sort of a foreman or overseer are you? In a job like this a man must have respect for property, he’s got to have the soul of a watchdog to guard his master’s belongings like his own hide… A pup like you’s no good for a job like this, you haven’t any feeling for property. If Vassil Sergeich knew how you let us carry on he would take you by the scruff of your neck and throw you right out, he would! Because you’re not an asset to him, you’re a liability and a man has to be an asset to his master. See what I mean?”

He rolled a cigarette and handed it to me.

“Have a smoke, penpusher, it’ll clear your head. If you weren’t such a smart, handy lad, my advice to you would be: take the holy orders! But you haven’t got the character for that; you’re a stubborn, hard sort of chap, you wouldn’t give in to the abbot himself. With a character like yours you’ll never get on in the world. And a monk’s like a jackdaw, he don’t care what he pecks; so long as there are seeds he don’t care where they come from. I’m telling you all this from the bottom of my heart because I can see that you’re out of place here, a cuckoo’s egg in a strange nest…”

He took off his cap, as he always did when he was about to say something particularly important – stared up at the bleak sky and observed piously:

“God knows we’re a thieving lot and he won’t forgive us for it…”

“That’s true enough,” Mokei Budyrin trumpeted.

From that moment silver-haired Osip with his bright eyes and dusky soul had a pleasant fascination for me; a sort of friendship sprang up between us, although I noticed that his good relations with me embarrassed him somehow; in front of the others he looked at me vacantly, his corn-flower blue eyes darting this way and that, and his lips twisted in a false, unpleasant grimace as he addressed me: “Now then, keep you eyes peeled, earn your living, can’t you see Soldier over there chewing nails for all he’s worth…”

But when we were alone he spoke with a gentle wisdom and a clever little gleam played in his bright blue eyes as they looked straight into mine. I listened carefully to what this old man had to say, for his words were true and honestly weighed, although sometimes he spoke strangely.

“A man ought to be good,” I remarked once. “Yes, indeed!” he agreed. Then he chuckled and with downcast eyes, he went on softly:

“But what exactly do you mean by ‘good’? The way I see it, people don’t care a hang about your goodness or honesty so long as it doesn’t benefit them. No, it pays to be nice to them, amuse them, humour them… and someday perhaps it will bring you good returns! Of course, I don’t deny it must be a fine thing to look at yourself in the mirror and know you’re a good man. But as far as I can see it’s all the same to folks whether you’re a ruffian or a saint so long as you’re nice to them… That’s about the size of it, lad!”

I am in the habit of observing people carefully for I feel that each individual I come in contact with might help me fathom the secret of this mysterious, muddled, painful business called life; moreover, there is one question that has never ceased to torment me: What is the human soul?

It seems to me that some souls must be like brass globes fixed rigidly to the breast so that the reflection they cast back is distorted, ugly and repulsive. And then there are souls that are as flat as mirrors. Such souls might just as well not be there at all.

But most human souls I imagine to be formless as clouds, of an indeterminate opaqueness like the fickle opal always ready to change its hue to conform to whatever colour comes in contact with it.

I did not know, nor could I imagine what comely old Osip’s soul was like; it was something my mind could not fathom.

I pondered these things as I gazed out over the river to where the town clung to the hillside, vibrating with the peal of bells from all of its belfries that soared skywards like the white pipes of my beloved organ in the Polish church. The crosses on the churches, like blurred stars captured by the dreary sky, winked and trembled and seemed to be reaching out toward the clear sky behind the grey blanket of wind-torn clouds; but the clouds scurried along, effacing with dark shadows the gay colours down below, and each time the sunbeams emerged from the bottomless abysses between them to bathe the town in bright hues, they hastened to blot them out again, the dank shadows grew heavier, and after one instant of gladness all was gloomy and dreary again.