and go barefoot—and found it exceedingly pleasant. I could stand in a crowd of simple folks, without embarrassing them, and when a cab-horse fell down in the street, I used to run and help it up without being afraid of soiling my clothes. But, best of all, I was living independently and was not a burden on any one.
The painting of roofs, especially when we mixed our own paint, was considered a very profitable business, and, therefore, even such good workmen as Radish did not shun this rough and tiresome work. In short trousers, showing his lean, muscular legs, he used to prowl over the roof like a stork, and I used to hear him sigh wearily as he worked his brush:
'Woe, woe to us, miserable sinners!'
He could walk as easily on a roof as on the ground. In spite of his looking so ill and pale and corpse-like, his agility was extraordinary; like any young man he would paint the cupola and the top of the church without scaffolding, using only ladders and a rope, and it was queer and strange when, standing there, far above the ground, he would rise to his full height and cry to the world at large:
'Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron, lies devour the soul!'
Or, thinking of something, he would suddenly answer his own thought:
'Anything may happen! Anything may happen!'
When I went home from work all the people sitting outside their doors, the shop assistants, dogs, and their masters, used to shout after me and jeer spitefully, and at first it seemed monstrous and distressed me greatly.
'Little Profit,' they used to shout. 'House-painter! Yellow ochre!'
And no one treated me so unmercifully as those who had only just risen above the people and had quite recently had to work for their living. Once in the market-place as I passed the ironmonger's a can of water was spilled over me as if by accident, and once a stick was thrown at me. And once a fishmonger, a grey-haired old man, stood in my way and looked at me morosely and said:
'It isn't you I'm sorry for, you fool, it's your father.'
And when my acquaintances met me they got confused. Some regarded me as a queer fish and a fool, and they were sorry for me; others did not know how to treat me and it was difficult to understand them. Once, in the daytime, in one of the streets off Great Gentry Street, I met Aniuta Blagovo. I was on my way to my work and was carrying two long brushes and a pot of paint. When she recognised me, Aniuta blushed.
'Please do not acknowledge me in the street,' she said nervously, sternly, in a trembling voice, without offering to shake hands with me, and tears suddenly gleamed in her eyes. 'If you must be like this, then, so—so be it, but please avoid me in public!'
I had left Great Gentry Street and was living in a suburb called Makarikha with my nurse Karpovna, a good- natured but gloomy old woman who was always looking for evil, and was frightened by her dreams, and saw omens and ill in the bees and wasps which flew into her room. And in her opinion my having become a working man boded no good.
'You are lost!' she said mournfully, shaking her head. 'Lost!'
With her in her little house lived her adopted son, Prokofyi, a butcher, a huge, clumsy fellow, of about thirty, with ginger hair and scrubby moustache. When he met me in the hall, he would silently and respectfully make way for me, and when he was drunk he would salute me with his whole hand. In the evenings he used to have supper, and through the wooden partition I could hear him snorting and snuffling as he drank glass after glass.
'Mother,' he would say in an undertone.
'Well,' Karpovna would reply. She was passionately fond of him. 'What is it, my son?'
'I'll do you a favour, mother. I'll feed you in your old age in this vale of tears, and when you die I'll bury you at my own expense. So I say and so I'll do.'
I used to get up every day before sunrise and go to bed early. We painters ate heavily and slept soundly, and only during the night would we have any excitement. I never quarrelled with my comrades. All day long there was a ceaseless stream of abuse, cursing and hearty good wishes, as, for instance, that one's eyes should burst, or that one might be carried off by cholera, but, all the same, among ourselves we were very friendly. The men suspected me of being a religious crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw among birds.
My mates respected me and regarded me with esteem; they evidently liked my not drinking or smoking, and leading a quiet, steady life. They were only rather disagreeably surprised at my not stealing the oil, or going with them to ask our employers for a drink. The stealing of the employers' oil and paint was a custom with house- painters, and was not regarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so honest a man as Radish would always come away from work with some white lead and oil. And even respectable old men who had their own houses in Makarikha were not ashamed to ask for tips, and when the men, at the beginning or end of a job, made up to some vulgar fool and thanked him humbly for a few pence, I used to feel sick and sorry.
With the customers they behaved like sly courtiers, and almost every day I was reminded of Shakespeare's Polonius.
'There will probably be rain,' a customer would say, staring at the sky.
'It is sure to rain,' the painters would agree.
'But the clouds aren't rain-clouds. Perhaps it won't rain.'
'No, sir. It won't rain. It won't rain, sure.'
Behind their backs they generally regarded the customers ironically, and when, for instance, they saw a gentleman sitting on his balcony with a newspaper, they would say:
'He reads newspapers, but he has nothing to eat.'
I never visited my people. When I returned from work I often found short, disturbing notes from my sister about my father; how he was very absent-minded at dinner, and then slipped away and locked himself in his study and did not come out for a long time. Such news upset me. I could not sleep, and I would go sometimes at night and walk along Great Gentry Street by our house, and look up at the dark windows, and try to guess if all was well within. On Sundays my sister would come to see me, but by stealth, as though she came not to see me, but my nurse. And if she came into my room she would look pale, with her eyes red, and at once she would begin to weep.
'Father cannot bear it much longer,' she would say. 'If, as God forbid, something were to happen to him, it would be on your conscience all your life. It is awful, Misail! For mother's sake I implore you to mend your ways.'
'My dear sister,' I replied. 'How can I reform when I am convinced that I am acting according to my conscience? Do try to understand me!'
'I know you are obeying your conscience, but it ought to be possible to do so without hurting anybody.'
'Oh, saints above!' the old woman would sigh behind the door. 'You are lost. There will be a misfortune, my dear. It is bound to come.'
VI
On Sunday, Doctor Blagovo came to see me unexpectedly. He was wearing a white summer uniform over a silk shirt, and high glace boots.
'I came to see you!' he began, gripping my hand in his hearty, undergraduate fashion. 'I hear of you every day and I have long intended to go and see you to have a heart-to-heart, as they say. Things are awfully boring in the town; there is not a living soul worth talking to. How hot it is, by Jove!' he went on, taking off his tunic and standing in his silk shirt. 'My dear fellow, let us have a talk.'
I was feeling bored and longing for other society than that of the decorators. I was really glad to see him.
