Chapter 16 sixteen

The snow in the field melted, and the winter clouds in the sky turned into wet snow, fell to the ground and disappeared.The sun gradually slowed down the day's journey, and the air became warmer.The happy spring seems to have arrived, but it seems that they are jokingly hiding in a field yard somewhere in the suburbs, and they will soon flood into the city.The streets are covered with brown-red mud, water flows along the sidewalks, and in Prisoner Square, where the snow has been cleaned, sparrows are jumping happily, and people are as busy as sparrows.Amidst the din of spring, the bells of Lent kept ringing all day long, softly beating people's hearts.Like the speech of an old man, the bell hides something humiliating, and it seems to be telling everything in the world in a sad and melancholy tone: "There has been, there has been, this has been..." In my On the name day, people in the workshop gave me a small and exquisite portrait of Saint Alexei, and Zhikhalev made a grand speech, which I will never forget: "Who are you?" He played with his fingers and raised his eyebrows. "Just a child of thirteen years, an orphan. I am almost three times your age, and I must praise you, because you never turn your back on everything, and always turn your back on everything. You will always be like this, this very good."

He also talked about God's servants and God's people, but I don't understand the difference between people and servants, and he doesn't seem to understand it very well.He spoke so dryly that the masters laughed at him.I stood there with the icon in my hands, moved and disturbed, not knowing what to do.Kabejikhin finally shouted to the orator in frustration: "Stop your funeral speeches, even his ears are blue." Then, he patted me on the shoulder and praised me: "Your advantage is that you are very affectionate to everyone. This is your advantage. So, even if there is a reason, don't hit you, just scold you." It's hard for you to speak, too."

Everyone looked at me with kind eyes and laughed at my embarrassment kindly. A moment later, I'm sure to burst into tears of joy at the feeling that I'm the one these people need.But just this morning in the shop, the shopkeeper shook his head at me and said to Peter Vasiliev: "You're not a nice guy, you can't do anything." As usual, I went to the shop in the morning, but in the afternoon the shopkeeper said to me: "Go home and sweep the snow off the roof of the warehouse and move it to the cellar..." He didn't know it was my name day , I thought everyone didn't know.After congratulating me in the workshop, I changed my clothes, went out to the yard, climbed on the roof of the warehouse, and raked off the thick and heavy snow of this winter.But because of the excitement, he forgot to open the cellar door, and the snow fell and sealed the door.I jumped to the ground, saw the mistake, and hurriedly raked the snow off the door.The snow was wet and hard and heavy, and the rake could no longer move it, and there was no shovel.One accidentally broke the wooden rake. Just at this time, the shopkeeper walked to the gate of the courtyard. "Extreme joy begets sorrow", echoes the old Russian saying.

"Okay," the shopkeeper sneered, walking up to me. "Hey, you, work, fuck you. I'm going to smack your stupid head..." He took the handle of the snow rake and swung it at me, and I stepped away and said angrily, "I You weren't hired to sweep the yard..." He threw the raking stick at my feet, I grabbed a piece of snow and threw it in his face, and he ran away snorting.I also lost my job and went back to the workshop.After a few minutes, his fiancée ran down the stairs.She was a frivolous woman with a red scrofula on her face. "Tell Maximovitch upstairs."

"No." I said. Larionovich asked me in a low voice in surprise: "Why don't you go?" I told him what had happened, and he frowned worriedly and went upstairs.When I left, I whispered to me: "You are too reckless, little brother..." The workshop boiled up, cursing the shopkeeper.Kabejiushin said, "Well, I will definitely drive you away this time." This doesn't scare me.My relationship with the shopkeeper has long been out of control.He hated me to death, more recently.I can't see him either, but I really want to know why he is so unreasonable to me.

He was in the shop and used to drop money on the floor.When I saw it when I was sweeping the floor, I picked it up and put it in the change jar of the beggar on the counter.Later, because I often picked up this kind of money, I understood what was going on, so I said to the shopkeeper: "It is useless for you to throw money at me." His face was red, and he shouted anxiously: "I don't need you to teach me. I know what I do." But he immediately changed his words and said: "Who would deliberately throw away money for nothing? It's a loss..." He forbade me to read in the shop: "What kind of books do you have this kind of mind? Does this kind of free-living guy still want to be a scholar?"

He did not give up trying to set me up with twenty-kopeck pieces, and I knew that if they rolled into the cracks in the floor while sweeping he would think I had stolen them. So I said to him again, tell him to stop this trick.Unexpectedly, on this day, I came back from soaking in boiling water at the snack bar, and heard him urging a new clerk in the shop next door to secretly say: "You taught him to steal "Psalms". Recently, three boxes of "Psalms" are coming... "I knew he was talking about me and I went into the shop and they were both very embarrassed.Apart from this, there are several dubious grounds for their plot to frame me.

The guy next door was not the first time to work for him. He was a capable businessman, but he liked to drink too much. He was driven out by the boss when he got drunk, and he was hired again after a while.He was a thin, malnourished man with cunning eyes and a gentle surface, and he completely obeyed his boss in every move.Above his little beard, there was always a clever smile, and he liked to tell witty words, and when he spoke, he gave off the stench of a person with dental disease, although his teeth were very white and strong. One day, I was taken aback: he came up to me with an affectionate smile, knocked off my hat suddenly, and grabbed my hair.We quarreled, and he pushed me from the porch into the shop, and tried to pin me to the great shrine on the floor—if he wished, I'd crush the glass, break the carvings, Scratch expensive icons.But his strength was very small, and it turned out that I won.At that moment, to my great surprise, the bearded man sat on the floor, wiped his broken nose, and wept bitterly.

The next morning, the owners of both families went out, and there were only the two of us in the shop. He stroked the swelling on the bridge of his nose near his eyes with his fingers, and said to me kindly: "Do you think that I beat you yesterday because of Intention? I’m not a fool, I know I can’t beat you, I have no strength, I’m a drinker. This is what our boss told me to do: go find him to fight, try to make him break more things in their shop , let the other side suffer. Am I willing to cause trouble, you see, you have made my face so dirty..." I believed his words, and felt sorry for him.It is said that he lived with a woman without a meal and was often beaten by the woman.But I still asked him: "Then if someone tells you to take poison, will you take it too?"

"He will," the man whispered, with a pathetic sneer. "Maybe he will..." After a while, he asked me: "Well, I have no money, no food at home, and my wife is arguing with me. My friend, what are you stealing from me in the warehouse over here?" How about a holy image? I can change some money, eh, would you take it? Or, how about a copy of the Psalms?" I remembered the shoe store and the old man who kept the church, and I thought this man would betray me.But it was not easy to refuse, so he was given an icon.I dare not steal Psalms worth a few rubles, I consider it a great crime.What can I do?In morality, there is often a kind of calculation hidden, and the holy and white "criminal law" very clearly exposes this little secret. Although the secret is small, there is a huge hypocrisy of private property hidden in it.

I was stunned when I heard our shopkeeper tell the poor man to teach me to steal the Psalms.I understand very well that our shopkeeper knows that I give away his things, and the guy next door has already told him about the icon. This detestable kindness of generosity, and this little trick to frame me, annoy me, and I loathe myself and everyone.For days, I waited sadly for several cartons of books to arrive.When the goods arrived at last, I was unpacking them in the warehouse when the clerk next door came and asked me to give him a book of Psalms. I asked him: "Did you tell our shopkeeper about the icon?" "Tell me," he said in a depressed voice. "Brother, I'm a person who can't hide anything..." I was dumbfounded, sitting on the floor and staring at him.He said something hastily, and that kind of embarrassed and pitiful look was really unbearable. "You have to know, your shopkeeper guessed it yourself, no, our boss guessed it, and later he told your shopkeeper..." I thought, this is the end of me-this group of guys ganged up on the gang to frame me Me, now I'm going to be in a reformatory for juveniles.Now that this is the case, it doesn't matter anyway.If it is submerged in water, it should be submerged in a deep place.I took a copy of the Psalms and thrust it into the clerk's hand, and he hid under his coat, and slipped out, but came back at once, dropped the Psalms at my feet, and hurried away after saying this He said: "I don't want to. I will be unlucky with you..." I didn't understand what he said-why would I be unlucky with me?But I'm very glad he didn't take the book away.Since this incident, our little shopkeeper has lost his temper with me and doubted me more than before. I thought about all this as Larionovich went upstairs.After a while, he came back, his expression more dejected than before, showing an unprecedented calmness.Before dinner, he whispered to me alone: ​​"I have talked a lot, and I want you not to go to the shop, but to help out in the workshop. did not succeed.The scarab refused to agree.He has a hard time with you..." I still have an enemy in this room—the shopkeeper's fiancée, that frivolous girl. The young people in the workshop all mess with her, stay under the porch, and hug her when she comes , she was not angry, just squealed softly like a puppy. All day long, she was always chewing something in her mouth. Her purse was always full of biscuits and fried cakes. Her chin was always It's moving. Her blank face and restless gray eyes are really unpleasant to see. She often asks Pavel and me to guess riddles, and the answers are obscene. She also teaches us many urgent passwords, which are also obscene. . One day, an elderly master said to her: "You shameless girl." She answered briskly in an obscene ditty: girl be ashamed How can I have a baby... It's the first time I've seen this kind of girl, and she's threatening to mess with me, and I hate her.When she saw that I was not happy and messing around, she became more and more pestered. One day in the cellar, Pavel and I were helping her scrub the empty buckets of kvass and cucumbers, and she said to us: "Little guy, can I teach you how to kiss?" "I kiss better than you," Pavel replied with a smile.I said to her, you want to kiss, go kiss with your fiancé.I didn't speak very gently, and she got angry: "Well, how rough. The lady made out with him, but he cocked his tail; tell me, what are you?" Then she pointed her finger threateningly and said: "Look, I tell you to remember this." Pavel helped me and said to her: "If your fiancé knows you're messing around like this, he'll clean you up." Her scrofulous face showed a look of contempt: "I'm not afraid of him. With a dowry like mine, I can find ten sons-in-law who are better than him. It's time for a girl to have fun before she gets married." She was playing with Pavel.Since then, I have had another opponent who desperately speaks behind the scenes. It became more and more unbearable in the shop, all the religious books were read, and the comments and conversations of the connoisseurs could no longer attract me, they always talked like this.Only Pyotr Vasilyev knew the darkness of life, spoke with a richness, and still interested me.Sometimes I think: Maybe that's what Elisha, the solitary and vindictive prophet, roamed the land. However, when I tell this old man frankly about other people's affairs and my own thoughts, he is always very happy to listen to me, and then tell the shopkeeper what I said, and the shopkeeper laughs in embarrassment Me, just scold me angrily. One day, I said to the old man that sometimes I wrote down what he said in a notebook, and I have copied various verses and epigrams from that notebook.The appraiser was very surprised, hurried to my side, and asked anxiously: "What is this for? Kid, this is not okay. To remember? No, you can't do this. You really can do new tricks. You remember leave it to me?" He persuaded me for a long time, telling me to give him the book, or to burn it.Then, he muttered to the shopkeeper angrily. When we walked home, the shopkeeper said to me sternly: "I heard that you are copying something, this kind of thing is not allowed. Do you hear me? Only spies can do this kind of thing." I casually asked him: "And what about Sitanov? He's copying too." "Does he copy too? The tall fool..." After a long silence, he said in a soft voice he never had before: "Well, show me yours and Sitanov's book—I'll give you fifty kopeks. But don't let Sitanov know, keep it quiet..." Probably he thought I would agree to his request, no more After speaking, he took short legs and looked ahead and ran away. When I got home, I told Sitanov about the shopkeeper's request, and he frowned and said, "You are too talkative... Now he will call someone to steal your book. Give me yours, let me know." I'm hiding... and you'll be kicked out before long, just watch." I believed this and decided to leave them as soon as my grandmother came back to town.She lived all winter in Barahana, and she was invited there to teach the girls how to weave lace.My grandfather lived in Kunavino again, and I never visited him, and he never came to see me when he was in town.One day, we met on the street, he was wearing a heavy raccoon fur coat, walking slowly on the street swaggering like a priest.I greeted him, and he looked at me with his hands covering his eyes, and said, as if thinking something, "Oh, it's you... you're painting an icon now, yes, yes... well, go, go Bar." He pushed me away from the road, and walked slowly and swaggeringly. The grandmother is not often seen. She has to support the elderly and demented grandfather, works desperately, and takes care of her uncle's children.The most troublesome is Mikhail's son Sasha. He is a beautiful young man who loves fantasy and reading.He changed jobs in several dyeing shops, and when he was unemployed, he relied on his grandmother to support him, waiting for her to find him a new position.Sasha's sister is also a burden to her grandmother. She has a bad luck and married a drinking craftsman. He beat and scolded her and kicked her out. Every time I met my grandmother, I admired her kind heart even more from the bottom of my heart.But I have gradually felt that this beautiful heart is blinded by fairy tales, unable to see or understand the suffering of real-life phenomena.Therefore, my anxiety and uneasiness, she can't understand. "Be patient, Alyosha." When I spoke to her at length about the ugliness of life, the miseries of men, and all that troubles my heart, these were the only words she could answer me. I will not be patient, if sometimes I can show this kind of animal and wood and stone virtue, it is just to train myself, to know my own strength and solidity on the ground.Sometimes, young people often rely on the courage of their flesh and blood, envious of the strength of adults, and try to lift things that are too heavy for their muscles and bones, and when they lift them up, in order to show off themselves, they try to wave them like powerful adults. Two pood heavy weighing hammers. In the direct and indirect sense, I have done all these actions physically and mentally.It was only by chance that I was not mortally wounded and crippled for life.For there is nothing more crippling than endurance, yielding to the forces of external conditions. If at last I lay a cripple in my grave, I can still say with pride on my deathbed: those good men, for forty years, tried so hard to cripple my heart, but their All the hard work was in vain. The burning desire to play, to amuse, to make people laugh, drove me more and more frequently.I have often done this by pretending to be the traders in the Nijni market and telling them what happened to them.I imitated the airs of country men and women buying and selling icons, how cleverly the shopkeepers deceived them, and how the connoisseurs quarreled. Everyone in the workshop laughed out loud, and sometimes the masters watched my performance and put down their work, but after that, Larionovich always advised me: "You'd better perform after dinner, So as not to interfere with my work..." After the "performance", I seemed to have let go of a heavy burden and felt relieved.Between half an hour and an hour, my mind is very clear.But after a while, my brain seemed to be full of sharp little nails, drilling there and becoming hot. It seemed to me that some kind of muddy soup was boiling around me, and I myself seemed to be slowly boiling away in it. I think: "Is this what life is all about? Am I going to live like these people, and can't I live a little better, can't I find a better life?" "Maximovich, you are angry," said Zhikharev, looking at me. Sitanov also often asks me: "What happened to you?" I don't know how to answer. Life obstinately and violently wipes the writing of beauty from my heart, and maliciously replaces it with some useless waste.Indignantly I resisted this outrage.I float and sink in the same river as everyone else, but the water is too cold for me, and the water cannot float me as easily as others, and I often feel that I will sink to the bottom. People treat me better, they don't scold me like they did with Pavel, and they don't bully me.In honor of me, call me fatherly.It's good, but it's really painful to see the scene of many people binge drinking, their disgusting appearance when drunk, and their abnormal relationship with women, although I also know that alcohol and women are in this kind of life. Medium is the only consolation. It often pains me to think that even that bright and bold Natalia Kozlovskaya herself said that women are a consolation. So, what about my grandmother?And what about the "Queen Margot"? Thinking of "The Queen" I feel an emotion bordering on terror.She is so different from everyone else, I seem to have seen her in a dream. I think of women very much, and have been working on such issues.On the next day off, shall I also go to the place where everyone goes?This is not a physical requirement, I am a healthy and clean person, but sometimes, I want to hug a gentle and intelligent person like crazy, just like telling my mother, and pour out my troubles to her frankly and endlessly . Pavel told me every night about his romance with the maid in the house opposite, and I was very envious of him. "Here's the thing, brother: I threw snowballs at her a month ago and didn't like her. But now I'm sitting on the bench and cuddling with her—and there's nothing cuter than her." "What are you talking about?" "Of course we talk about everything. She told me about her life, and I told her about mine. Then we kissed... only she's a decent person... she's a nice person, boy. . . . Well, you like Smoke like a veteran." I smoked a lot, and when I got drunk, all the worries and restlessness in my heart were numb. Luckily I'm not a vodka drinker, I hate the smell and the taste.But Pavel loved to drink, and when he was drunk, he cried sadly: "I want to go home, go home. Let me go home..." I remember that he was an orphan, his parents were dead long ago, and he had no brothers Sister, I have been in foster care with other people since I was about eight years old. In the midst of such agitation and discontent, and more tempted by the spring, I decided to go to work on the ship again, and flee to Persia when the ship sailed to Astrakhan. The reasons for deciding to go to Persia are beyond my recollection.Or simply because I had met Persian traders in the Nijni market and found it very agreeable: they sat cross-legged like stone statues, their dyed beards reflected in the sun, quietly smoking hookahs, their eyes were big and dark. Hei, it seems that there is nothing in the world that they don't know. I don't know where I'm really going to go, but some of the masters went back to their hometowns during the Easter week, and the only thing left was to drink all day long.Because the weather was fine, I went for a walk along the Oka River, where I met my old master, my grandmother's nephew. He was wearing a thin gray overcoat, with his hands in his trouser pockets, a cigarette in his mouth, and his hat on the back of his head. His kind face, smiling friendly at me, showed a kind of joyful freedom that made me enamored Man's demeanor.There was no one else in the wilderness except the two of us. "Ah, Peshkov, congratulations on the resurrection of Christ." We kissed three times, and he asked me how life was going, and I told him frankly: I was tired of the workshops, the cities, everything, and wanted to go to Persia. "Forget it," he said seriously. "Why is Persia not Persia? Damn it. Brother, I know, when I'm your age, I want to go far away too..." Although he said hell, I felt very comfortable listening to it.There is a beautiful spring breath about him.He appeared to be free and enjoying himself. "Smoking?" he asked, holding out to me a silver case containing fat cigarettes. This finally won me over. "Well, Pishkov, come to me again," he suggested to me. "I have contracted more than 40,000 construction projects in the market this year. Brother, do you understand? I will send you to the market to act as a supervisor for me. When the materials arrive, you will receive them and distribute them to a certain amount on time." The place, to prevent the workers from stealing, okay? The salary is five rubles a month, and five kopecks a day for lunch. You have nothing to do with the women in my family. You go out early and come back late, don’t worry about them. But don’t say we met on the road. Come here, if you pretend to come here at random. Sunday in Thomas week, you come--that's all." We parted as friends, and he shook my hand and walked away, even shaking his hat courteously from a distance. Back in the workshop, I told them I was leaving, and at first most of them expressed regrets that honored me, especially Pavel. "Think about it," he scolded me. "We are used to being together, how can you live with those miscellaneous country people? Carpenters, painters... what are you doing? Instead of being a master, you are an incense monk..." Zhikharev grunted and said: "Fish Swimming in the depths, the handsome young man drills into the narrow places..." The farewell party held for me in the workshop was very sad and boring. "Of course you should try everything," said Zhikharev, sallow with drunkenness. "But it's best to stick to one thing at a time..." "Do it for the rest of your life," added Larionovich in a low voice. But I think they are forced to say this, as if it is just an obligation.The cord that connected me with them seemed to snap at once. Drunk Gogolev said in a husky voice from the high plank bed: "I'll send you all to prison as soon as I'm happy. I—know the secret. Does anyone here believe in God? Hey, hey..." As usual, there were unfinished icons without faces against the walls, and glass spheres stuck to the ceiling.They have long since ceased night work under the lamps, and they have not been used for a long time, and they are covered with a layer of gray dust and soot.Everything around me remains deeply in my memory. Even with my eyes closed, in the dark, I can still see the panorama of the basement: all the tables, the paint cans on the window sill, the bundles of paintbrushes and pen holders, the icons, Dirty water buckets in the corner, brass washbowls on top of them like fireman's hats, Gogolev's bare feet, blue and blue like those of a drowned man, hanging from the bunk. I want to leave earlier, but Russians like to prolong the time of mourning. Parting with someone is like doing a requiem. Zhikharev frowned and said to me: "That book, I won't return it to you, will you give me twenty kopecks?" This book is mine, given to me by an old man who is a fire brigade captain, and I don't want to give up this copy of Lermontov's work.But I said unhappily that I don’t want money, and Zhikhalev put the money into the wallet without any hesitation, and said firmly: "You can do whatever you want, but I will not return the book. This book is very important to you." There is no benefit, and you will commit a crime if you carry this kind of book..." "But the store also sells it, I have seen it with my own eyes." But he said to me earnestly: "That's okay, the shop also sells pistols..." In the end, Lermontov's work was not returned to me. I went upstairs to say good-bye to the landlady, and met her daughter under the porch.She asked, "I heard you're leaving?" "yes." "If you don't go, I will drive you away too." Although she was not very polite, she was very sincere. The drunk landlady said: "Good-bye, and God bless you. You are a very bad boy, very stubborn. I have not seen it myself, but everybody says you are a bad boy." Then suddenly she burst into tears, and said tearfully: "If our dead man lived, if my husband, my dear darling, would have dealt with you, would have beaten you, would have struck you over the head, but would never have driven you away, would have kept you here Stay here. Now everything has changed, and if you don't like it at all, you will be told to leave. Oh, where are you going? Son, where are you going to get a foothold?"