Chapter 5 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" V

Fives Carrots are not shrewd and not good at calculating.He was always taking on more work than he could finish, and when it came time to pay he was in such a panic that he didn't know what to do, and he almost always lost money.He painted, installed glass, put up wallpaper, and even took on the job of repairing the roof.I still remember that he would often take a very small job and run for three days straight to find the roofer.He was a skilled craftsman, and sometimes he earned ten rubles a day, and he would have amassed a large sum of money, if he hadn't had a wish to be a boss anyway, and to be called a contractor.

He set his own price for the work, but he had to pay me and some other boys from seventy kopeks to a ruble a day.In hot, dry weather we did all sorts of outdoor work, mainly painting the roof.Because I was not used to it, my feet felt hot, as if I was walking on a hot iron plate. If I put on felt boots, my feet would feel stuffy.But only at first, then I got used to it and everything went smoothly.Now I live among people who regard labor as necessary and inevitable, work like cart horses, often fail to appreciate the moral meaning of labor, and never even use the word "labor" in conversation Son.Being with them, I also felt like a cart-horse, and I felt more and more deeply that what I was doing was necessary and inevitable, which made my life easier and made my life easier. Get rid of all doubts.

At first everything attracted me, everything was new, and I seemed to be reborn into this world.I can sleep on the ground, I can walk barefoot, and it's a joy.I can stand among ordinary people without making anyone feel restrained. When a carriage horse falls down on the street, I run to help it up without fear of staining my clothes.The main thing is that I live on my own and don't become a burden to others! Painting roofs, especially with our own drying oils and varnishes, has always been considered such a lucrative business that even a skilled hand like Turnip would not despise such a drudgery.He was wearing shorts, showing thin lavender legs, walking up and down the roof like a stork.As he was painting with his brush, I heard him sigh heavily, and say, "Woe, woe to us sinners!"

He walked as freely on the roof as on the floor.In spite of his sickness and his death-white face, he was very flexible.He painted the vaults and cupolas of churches like a young man without scaffolding, if only he had ladders and ropes.Whenever he stood on a high place, far away from the ground, straightened his body, and he didn't know who he was talking to, he was always a little scary like that. He always said: "Aphids eat grass, rust eats iron, and hypocrisy eats soul!" Or, while thinking, he spoke, as if answering his own thoughts: "Anything can happen! Anything can happen!"

When I came home from work, the sneers and malicious things said behind me by those who sat on the stools by the door, the boys, the apprentices, and their masters, excited me at first, and it was almost frightening. . "Small interest!" shouted from all directions. "Painter! Ocher!" The most ruthless people to me happen to be those who, not so long ago, were ordinary people who made a living by doing heavy manual labor.I was walking past the iron shop in the mall and they seemed to have accidentally poured water all over me, and once even threw a stick at me.There was a fishmonger, a gray-haired old man, who blocked my way, looked at me fiercely, and said, "You have nothing to pity, fool! Your father is pitiful!"

My acquaintances were embarrassed when they saw me.Some people see me as a weirdo, a clown, some people feel sorry for me, and some people don't know how to treat me.It is difficult to understand them.One day I met Anyuta Bragovo in an alley near our Grand Noble Street, and I went to work with two long brushes in my hand and a bucket of paint.Anyuta recognized me and blushed. "Please don't greet me in the street . . . " she said in a trembling voice, impatient and stern, without extending her hand to shake mine, and tears suddenly came into her eyes. "If you think this life is necessary, that's up to you, . . . up to you, but please don't see me again!"

I no longer live in the Rue des Nobles, but at the house of my nurse Karpovna in Makaliha, on the outskirts of the town.She was a kind, but gloomy old woman, always feeling that something bad was going to happen, and terrified of any dream, even seeing a bee or wasp flying into a room as a bad omen.As for me being a worker, that didn't bode well for her either. "It's over for you child!" She said sadly, shaking her head. "It's over!" Her adopted son Prokofy lived with her in the small house.He was a butcher's boy, a heavy build, about thirty, with brown hair and a stiff mustache.When he met me in the doorway, he always made way for me in silence, respectfully; and if he was drunk, he raised his open palm to the brim of his hat as a salute.Every evening when he had dinner, I heard him clear his throat, sigh, and drink one glass after another through the partition.

"Mom!" he whispered. "What?" answered Karpovna, who was very fond of her adopted son. "What is it, my dear son?" "Mom, I want to treat you kindly. In the suffering of this world, I want to support you. When you die, I will pay for your funeral. I will do what I say." I get up before the sun rises every day and go to bed early.We painters ate a lot and slept soundly, but for some reason our hearts beat violently every night.I never had a falling out with my buddies.The swearing, swearing, cursing ("I wish you were blind" or "I'll give you cholera") was costly, and yet we remained on good terms with each other.The fellows guessed I was a sect, and made fun of me, saying that even my own father didn't recognize me as a son, and at the same time they said that they seldom went to church themselves, and some of them Many people have not confessed for ten years.They justify this wandering life by saying that the painter is to men what the crow is to the birds.

My friends value me and respect me.I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I live a quiet and orderly life, which obviously makes them like me.There are only two things that make them unhappy and dissatisfied, that is, I don't partner with them to steal dry oil, and I don't go with them to ask for money from customers.Stealing the owner's drying oil and paint has become a fashion among painters, they hardly consider it stealing, it is strange that even such a fair person as Carrot always takes a little white powder and drying oil with him every time he leaves work. Oil.As for asking for money, even the venerable old man who bought a house in Makaliha is not ashamed. Whenever I see my partners go to an insignificant man in groups when they start work or finish the project. I was always annoyed and ashamed when the patrons congratulated each of them for a ten-kopeck piece and thanked them humbly.

They treat their patrons like a bunch of cunning courtiers, and I think of Shakespeare's Plonius almost every day. "Maybe it's going to rain," the owner said, looking at the sky. "If you want to do it, you must do it!" the painters agreed. "It's not a rain cloud, though. Maybe it won't rain." "It won't rain, sir! Really, it won't rain." They always have a sarcastic attitude towards their customers behind their backs. For example, when they see the master sitting on the balcony reading a newspaper, they say: "He is reading a newspaper, but he probably doesn't even have anything to eat."

I have never been to my father's house.When I return to my home after work, I often find notes in the room, written in a simple, anxious tone, written by my sister. She sometimes tells me that my father was preoccupied for some reason when eating, what? He didn't eat anything; now he said that his father almost fell, and now that he locked the door and sat in his room and didn't come out for a long time.News of this kind excited me so much that I could not sleep, and sometimes I went to the Rue Grande Noble late at night, went to my door, looked at the darkened windows, and tried to speculate whether the house was all right or not.Every Sunday, my sister often came to see me, but she came secretly, pretending not to come to see me, but to see the nanny.Whenever she came into my room she was always very pale, with tear-stained eyes, and immediately began to cry. "Father can't stand this situation!" she said. "If anything happens to him (hope it doesn't), your conscience will torture you for the rest of your life. It's terrible, Michel! I beg you in the name of your mother, repent!" "Sister, my dear," said I, "how can I repent if I believe I am acting in good conscience? You must know me!" "I know you're acting in good conscience, but maybe it can be done in a different way that won't hurt someone else's heart." "Oh, saint!" sighed the old woman outside the door. "You child is doomed! Disaster will come, my dear, disaster will come!" "Notes" ① A courtier in Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet".