“I was away when they married me
I was away at the mill.”
All that was lacking was a balalaika.
His extraordinary cheerfulness of course, at once aroused indignation in some of our party; it was almost taken as an insult.
“He is setting up a howl!” a convict said reproachfully, though it was no concern of his.
“The wolf has only one note and that you’ve cribbed, you Tula fellow!” observed another of the gloomy ones, with a Little Russian accent.
“I may be a Tula man,” Skuratov retorted promptly, “but you choke yourselves with dumplings in Poltava.”
“Lie away! What do you eat? Used to ladle out cabbage soup with a shoe.”
“And now it might be the devil feeding us with cannon balls,” added a third.
“I know I am a pampered fellow, mates,” Skuratov answered with a faint sigh, as though regretting he had been pampered and addressing himself to all in general and to no one in particular, “from my earliest childhood bred up—(that is brought up, he intentionally distorted his words)—on prunes and fancy bread; my brothers have a shop of their own in Moscow to this day, they sell fiddlesticks in No Man’s street, very rich shopkeepers they are.”
“And did you keep shop too?”
“I, too, carried on in various qualities. It was then, mates, I got my first two hundred …”
“You don’t mean roubles?” broke in one inquisitive listener, positively starting at the mention of so much money.
“No, my dear soul, not roubles—sticks. Luka, hey, Luka!”
“To some I am Luka but to you I am Luka Kuzmitch,” a thin little sharp-nosed convict answered reluctantly.
“Well, Luka Kuzmitch then, hang you, so be it.”
“To some people I am Luka Kuzmitch, but you should call me uncle.”
“Well, hang you then, uncle, you are not worth talking to! But there was a good thing I wanted to say. That’s how it happened, mates, I did not make much in Moscow; they gave me fifteen lashes as a parting present and sent me packing. So then I …”
“But why were you sent packing?” inquired one who had been carefully following the speaker.
“Why, it’s against the rules to go into quarantine and to drink tin-tacks and to play the jingle-jangle. So I hadn’t time to get rich in Moscow, mates, not worth talking about. And I did so, so, so want to get rich. I’d a yearning I cannot describe.”
Many of his listeners laughed. Skuratov was evidently one of those volunteer entertainers or rather buffoons, who seemed to make it their duty to amuse their gloomy companions, and who got nothing but abuse for their trouble. He belonged to a peculiar and noteworthy type, of which I may have more to say hereafter.
“Why, you might be hunted like sable now,” observed Luka Kuzmitch. “Your clothes alone would be worth a hundred roubles.”
Skuratov had on the most ancient threadbare sheepskin, on which patches were conspicuous everywhere. He looked it up and down attentively, though unconcernedly.
“It’s my head that’s priceless, mates, my brain,” he answered. “When I said goodbye to Moscow it was my one comfort that I took my head with me. Farewell, Moscow, thanks for your bastings, thanks for your warmings, you gave me some fine dressings! And my sheepskin is not worth looking at, my good soul. …”
“I suppose your head is then?”
“Even his head is not his own but a charity gift,” Luka put in again. “It was given him at Tyumen for Christ’s sake, as he marched by with a gang.”
“I say, Skuratov, had you any trade?”
“Trade, indeed! he used to lead puppydogs about and steal their titbits, that was all his trade,” observed one of the gloomy convicts.
“I really did try my hand at cobbling boots,” answered Skuratov, not observing this biting criticism. “I only cobbled one pair.”
“Well, were they bought?”
“Yes, a fellow did turn up; I suppose he had not feared God or honoured his father and mother, and so the Lord punished him and he bought them.”
All Skuratov’s audience went off into peals of laughter.
“And I did once work here,” Skuratov went on with extreme nonchalance. “I put new uppers on to Lieutenant Pomortzev’s boots.”
“Well, was he satisfied?”
“No, mates, he wasn’t. He gave me oaths enough to last me a lifetime, and a dig in the back with his knee too. He was in an awful taking. Ah, my life has deceived me, the jade’s deceived me!”
“And not many minutes later
Akulina’s husband came …”
he unexpectedly carolled again, and began pattering a dance step with his feet.
“Ech, the graceless fellow,” the Little Russian who was walking beside me observed with a side glance of spiteful contempt at Skuratov.
“A useless fellow,” observed another in a serious and final tone.
I could not understand why they were angry with Skuratov, and why, indeed, all the merry ones seemed to be held in some contempt, as I had noticed already during those first days. I put down the anger of the Little Russian and of the others to personal causes. But it was not a case of personal dislike; they were angry at the absence of reserve in Skuratov, at the lack of the stern assumption of personal dignity about which all the prisoners were pedantically particular; in fact, at his being a “useless fellow” to use their own expression. Yet they were not angry with all the merry ones, and did not treat all as they did Skuratov and those like him. It depended on what people would put up with: a good-natured and unpretentious man was at once exposed to insult. I was struck by this fact indeed. But there were some among the cheerful spirits who knew how to take their own part and liked doing so, and they exacted respect. In this very group there was one of these prickly characters; he was a tall good-looking fellow with a large wart on his cheek and a very comic expression, though his face was rather handsome and intelligent. He was in reality a lighthearted and very charming fellow, though I only found out that
