“Who’s there?” he shouted.
But the snore was that of a person dead drunk, powerful and choking. Everything else round about was wrapped in profound slumber. The lightning flashes had ceased; the trees, invisible in the darkness, rustled dully and gloomily under the increasing downpour. And when, at last, Kuzma had found his way to the bathhouse by the sense of feeling alone, the rain was pouring down upon the earth with such force that he began to be assailed, as he had been in his childhood, by terrible thoughts about the Flood. He struck a match, and beheld a broad sleeping-ledge near the tiny window. Rolling up his overcoat, he threw it on the head end. In the darkness he crawled upon the ledge and with a deep sigh stretched himself out on it; he lay, after the fashion of old people, on his back, and shut his weary eyes. Great God, what a stupid and toilsome journey! And how had he chanced to come hither? In the manor-house also darkness now reigned, and the flashes of lightning were fleetingly, stealthily reflected in the mirrors. In the hut, beneath the heavy downpour of the rain, Akim was sleeping. Here in this bathhouse devils had frequently been seen, as a matter of course: did Akim possess a proper faith in devils? No. People had so believed a thousand years ago, and Akim had merely accepted his heritage mechanically. But, even though he did not believe, he could nevertheless narrate how, once on a time, his deceased grandfather had gone to the grain crib for some bran and had found the devil, as shaggy as a dog, sitting, his legs twisted into a knot, on one of the girders.
Crooking one knee, Kuzma laid his wrist on his forehead and began to doze, sighing and grieving the while.
XI
He had passed the summer waiting for a place. That night, in the orchard at Kazakovo, it became clear to him that his dreams of orchards were foolish. On his return to the town, after carefully thinking over his situation he began to hunt for a position as a shop or countinghouse clerk; then he began to reconcile himself to anything that offered, provided only that it furnished him a morsel of bread. But his searches, efforts, and entreaties were vain. Despair seized upon him. How was it he had failed to see that he had nothing to hope for? In the town he had long borne the reputation of being a very eccentric person. Drunkenness and lack of employment had converted him into a laughingstock. In the beginning his manner of life had amazed the town; later on, it had come to seem suspicious. And, of a truth, who had ever heard of such a thing as a petty burgher at his age living in a lodging-house, being unmarried and poor as an organ-grinder? All his property consisted of a chest and a ponderous old umbrella! Kuzma began to look at himself in the mirror: really, now, what sort of man was the one he beheld before him? He slept in the “common room,” among strangers, chance people who came and went; in the morning he crawled in the heat about the bazaar and to the eating-houses, where he picked up rumours concerning jobs; after dinner, he took a nap, then seated himself at the window and read Kostomaroff’s History, gazed at the dusty, glaring white street and at the sky, pale blue with sultriness. For whom and for what was he living in the world—that petty burgher, broad of bone though lean, and already grey-haired from hunger and austere thinking; who called himself an anarchist and was not able to explain intelligently what an anarchist is? He sat and read; he sighed and paced to and fro in the room; he squatted down on his heels and unlocked his small chest; he arranged in more orderly fashion his tattered little books and manuscripts, two or three faded shirts, an old long-skirted greatcoat, a waistcoat, the much worn certificates of his birth and his baptism. And he dropped his hands forlornly. What meaning was there to all this? Such poverty, such loneliness! And he shuddered at the thought of what lay ahead of him. Tikhon was childless, and rich—but Tikhon wouldn’t give so much as a copper coin to bury him. …
The summer stretched out in endless length. The Duma was dissolved, but that did not break the monotony of the long, hot days. A vast revolt in the country districts was expected, but no one so much as lifted an eyebrow so long as absolutely nothing of any magnitude took place. Fresh and savage attacks on the Jews were contrived; day after day executions and shootings took place; but the town ceased to take the slightest interest in them. In the country, at the manor-houses, terror reigned—especially after that famous day when the peasants rose in rebellion at the “order” of someone or other. But what cared the town for the country districts? Kazakoff sent an extra company of kazaks. The local newspaper was closed down three times, and at last they made an end of the whole business by prohibiting the sale of the newspapers from the capitals. Once more poster advertisements began to bear the inscription: “By permission of the Authorities, temporarily in this Town,” and the posters themselves again became abominable. Little Russians arrived,
