“And who was it pulled your ear?” asked someone.
“Who? Why, the police captain, to be sure. That was in my tramping days, mates. We reached K. and there were two of us, me and another tramp, Efim, who had no surname. On the way we had picked up a little something at a peasant’s at Tolmina. That’s a village. Well, we got to the town and looked about to see if we could pick up something here and make off. In the country you are free to go north and south and west and east, but in the town you are never at ease, we know. Well, first of all we went to a tavern. We looked about us. A fellow came up to us, a regular beggar, with holes in his elbows, but not dressed like a peasant. We talked of one thing and another.
“ ‘And allow me to ask, have you got papers8 with you or not?’
“ ‘No,’ we said, ‘we haven’t.’
“ ‘Oh!’ says he, ‘I haven’t either. I have two other good friends here,’ says he, ‘who are in General Cuckoo’s service too.9 Here we’ve been going it a little and meanwhile we’ve not earned a penny. So I make bold to ask you to stand us a pint.’
“ ‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ say we. So we drank. And they put us up to a job, that is in our own line, housebreaking. There was a house at the end of the town and a rich man lived there, with lots of property; so we decided to call on him at night. But we were caught, all the five of us, that night in his house. We were taken to the police station and then straight to the police captain’s. ‘I’ll question them myself,’ says he. He came in with a pipe, a cup of tea was brought in after him. He was a hearty-looking fellow, with whiskers. He sat down. Three others were brought in besides ourselves, tramps too. A tramp’s a funny chap you know, brothers: he never remembers anything; you might break a post on his head, you won’t make him remember; he knows nothing. The police captain turned straight to me. ‘Who are you?’ he growled out at me with a voice that came out of his boots. Well, of course, I said what we all do: ‘I don’t remember anything, your honour, I’ve forgotten.’
“ ‘Wait a bit, I shall have something more to say to you, I know your face,’ says he, staring, all eyes, at me. But I had never seen him before. Then to the next: Who are you?’
“ ‘Cut-and-run, your honour.’
“ ‘Is that your name?’
“ ‘Yes, your honour.’
“ ‘All right, you’re Cut-and-run, and you?’ he turns to the third.
“ ‘And I follow him, your honour.’
“ ‘But what’s your name?’
“ ‘That’s my name, your honour: I follow him.’
“ ‘But who has given you that name, you rascal?’
“ ‘Good people, your honour. There are good people in the world, your honour, we all know.’
“ ‘And who are these good people?’
“ ‘I’ve rather forgotten, your honour, you must graciously forgive me.’
“ ‘You’ve forgotten them all?’
“ ‘Yes, all, your honour.’
“ ‘But you must have had a father and mother? You must remember them, anyway?’
“ ‘It must be supposed I had them, your honour, but I’ve rather forgotten them too; perhaps I did have them your honour.’
“ ‘But where have you lived till now?’
“ ‘In the woods, your honour.’
“ ‘Always in the woods?’
“ ‘Always.’
“ ‘And what about the winter?’
“ ‘I haven’t seen the winter, your honour.’
“ ‘And you, what’s your name?’
“ ‘Hatchet, your honour.’
“ ‘And you?’
“ ‘Quick-sharpener, your honour.’
“ ‘And you?’
“ ‘Sharpener—for sure, your honour.’
“ ‘You none of you remember anything?’
“ ‘None of us, your honour.’
“He stands and laughs and they look at him and laugh. But another time he might give you one in the jaw, it’s all luck. And they were such a fat sturdy lot. ‘Take them to prison,’ says he, ‘I’ll talk to them later but you stay here,’ says he to me. ‘Come this way, sit down.’ I look—there’s a table, paper and pen. What is he up to now, thinks I. ‘Sit down on the chair,’ says he, ‘take the pen, write,’ and he took hold of my ear and pulled it. I looked at him as the devil looked at the priest: ‘I can’t, your honour,’ says I. ‘Write!’ says he. ‘Have mercy, your honour!’ ‘Write,’ says he, ‘write as best you can.’ And he kept pulling and pulling my ear and suddenly gave it a twist. Well, I tell you, lads, I’d rather have had three hundred lashes. There were stars before my eyes! ‘You write, and that’s all about it.’ ”
“Why, was he crazy or what?”
“No, he wasn’t crazy. But not long before a clerk at T. had played a fine prank: he nabbed the government money and made off with it, and he had ears that stuck out too. Well, they sent word of it in all directions and I seemed like the description. So he was trying whether I knew how to write and how I wrote.”
“What a position, lad! And did it hurt?”
“I tell you it did.”
There was a general burst of laughter.
“Well, and did you write?”
“Why, how could I write? I began moving the pen and I moved it about over the paper; he gave it up. He gave me a dozen swipes in the face and then let me go, to prison too, of course.
“And do you know how to write?”
“I did once, but since folks began writing with pens I lost the art.”
Well, it was in tales like these or rather in chatter like this that our weary hours were spent. Good God, how wearisome it was! The days were long, stifling, exactly like one another. If one had only a book! And yet I was constantly going to the hospital, especially at first, sometimes because I was ill and sometimes simply for a rest;
