Then they were all gone, the noise died away... I remembered that in all that time, Anyuta Blagovo had not said a single word to me.
‘‘An astonishing girl!’’ I thought. ‘‘An astonishing girl!’’
Saint Peter’s fast7 came, and we were now given lenten food every day. In my idleness and the uncertainty of my position, I was oppressed by physical anguish, and, displeased with myself, sluggish, hungry, I loitered about the estate and only waited for the appropriate mood in order to leave.
Before evening once, when Radish was sitting in our wing, Dolzhikov came in unexpectedly, very sunburnt and gray with dust. He had spent three days at his work site and had now arrived in Dubechnya by locomotive and come from the station on foot. While waiting for the carriage that was to come from town, he went around the estate with his steward giving orders in a loud voice, then sat for a whole hour in our wing writing some letters; telegrams addressed to him came in his presence, and he tapped out the replies himself. The three of us stood silently at attention.
‘‘Such disorder!’’ he said, looking scornfully into a report. ‘‘In two weeks I’ll transfer the office to the station, and I don’t know what I’ll do with you, gentlemen.’’
‘‘I try hard, Your Honor,’’ said Cheprakov.
‘‘I see how hard you try. All you know how to do is collect your salary,’’ the engineer went on, looking at me. ‘‘You rely on connections, so as to faire la carriere7 quickly and easily. Well, I don’t look at connections. Nobody put in a word for me, sir. Before I got ahead, I was an engine driver, I worked in Belgium as a simple oiler, sir. And you, Pantelei, what are you doing here?’’ he asked, turning to Radish. ‘‘Drinking with them?’’
For some reason, he called all simple people Pantelei, but those like me and Cheprakov he despised and called drunkards, brutes, and scum behind their backs. In general, he was cruel to underlings, fined them, and threw them out of their jobs coldly, without explanations.
At last the horses came for him. As a farewell he promised to dismiss us all in two weeks, called his steward a blockhead, and then, sprawling in the carriage, drove off to town.
‘‘Andrei Ivanych,’’ I said to Radish, ‘‘take me on as a hired hand.’’
‘‘Well, why not!’’
And we set off for town together. When the estate and the station were left far behind us, I asked:
‘‘Andrei Ivanych, why did you come to Dubechnya today?’’
‘‘First, my boys are working on the line, and second— I came to pay interest to the general’s widow. Last summer I borrowed fifty roubles from her, and now I pay her a rouble a month.’’
The painter stopped and took hold of my button.
‘‘Misail Alexeich, angel mine,’’ he went on, ‘‘it’s my understanding that if a simple man or a gentleman takes even the smallest interest, he’s already a villain. Truth cannot exist in such a man.’’
Skinny, pale, frightening Radish closed his eyes, shook his head, and pronounced in the tones of a philosopher:
‘‘Worm eats grass, rust eats iron, and lying eats the soul. Lord, save us sinners!’’
V
RADISH WAS IMPRACTICAL and a poor planner; he took more work than he could do, became worried and confused when calculating, and therefore almost always wound up in the red. He was a painter, a glazier, a paperhanger, and even did roofing, and I remember him running around for three days looking for roofers for the sake of a worthless job. He was an excellent craftsman, and it happened that he sometimes earned up to ten roubles a day, and if it hadn’t been for this wish to be the head at all costs and be called a contractor, he probably would have made good money.
He himself was paid by the job, but me and the other boys he paid by the day, from seventy kopecks to a rouble a day. While the weather stayed hot and dry, we did various outdoor jobs, mainly roof painting. My feet weren’t used to it and got as hot as if I was walking on a burning stove, but when I put on felt boots, they sweltered. But that was only at first; later I got used to it, and everything went swimmingly. I now lived among people for whom work was obligatory and inevitable, and who worked like dray horses, often unaware of the moral significance of labor and never even using the word ‘‘labor’’ in conversation; alongside them, I, too, felt like a dray horse, ever more pervaded by the obligatoriness and inevitability of all I did, and that made my life easier, delivering me from all doubts.
At first everything interested me, everything was new, as if I had been newly born. I could sleep on the ground, I could go barefoot—and that was a great pleasure; I could stand in a crowd of simple people without embarrassing anyone, and when a cab horse fell in the street, I ran and helped to lift it up with no fear of dirtying my clothes. And above all, I lived at my own expense and was not a burden to anyone!
Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and paint, was considered very profitable, and therefore even such good craftsmen as Radish did not scorn this crude, boring work. In his short trousers, with his skinny, purple legs, he walked over a roof looking like a stork, and as he worked with his brush, I heard him sigh heavily and say:
‘‘Woe, woe to us sinners!’’
He walked on a roof as freely as on the floor. Though ill and pale as a corpse, he was remarkably nimble; just like the young men, he painted the cupolas and domes of churches without scaffolding, only with the aid of ladders and ropes, and it was a bit scary when, standing up there, far from the ground, he would straighten up to his full height and pronounce for who knows whom:
‘‘Worm eats grass, rust eats iron, and lying eats the soul!’’ Or else, thinking about something, he would answer his own thoughts aloud:
‘‘Everything’s possible! Everything’s possible!’’
When I came home from work, all those who were sitting on benches by the gateways, all the shop clerks, errand boys, and their masters, sent various mocking and spiteful observations after me, and at first that upset me and seemed simply monstrous.
‘‘Small Profit!’’ came from all sides. ‘‘Housepainter! Ocher!’’
