“What are you whining about? Look, you are spilling your vodka.”
“If you are being treated, why don’t you drink?” cries the drink-seller, to the expansive friend. “I cannot wait here until to-morrow.”
“I will drink, don’t be frightened. What are you crying out about? My best wishes for the day. My best wishes for the day, Stepan Doroveitch,” replies the latter politely, as he bows, glass in hand, towards Stepka, whom the moment before he had called a blackguard. “Good health to you, and may you live a hundred years in addition to what you have lived already.” He drinks, gives a grunt of satisfaction, and wipes his mouth. “What quantities of brandy I have drunk,” he says, gravely speaking to every one, without addressing any one in particular, “but I have finished now. Thank me, Stepka Doroveitch.”
“There is nothing to thank you for.”
“Ah! you won’t thank me. Then I will tell every one how you have treated me, and, moreover, that you are a blackguard.”
“Then I shall have something to tell you, drunkard that you are,” interrupts Stepka, who at last loses patience. “Listen and pay attention. Let us divide the world in two. You shall take one half, I the other. Then I shall have peace.”
“Then you will not give me back my money?”
“What money do you want, drunkard?”
“My money. It is the sweat of my brow; the labour of my hands. You will be sorry for it in the other world. You will be roasted for those five kopecks.”
“Go to the devil.”
“What are you driving me for? Am I a horse?”
“Be off, be off.”
“Blackguard!”
“Convict!”
And the insults exchanged were worse than they had been before the visit to the drink-seller.
Two friends are seated separately on two camp-bedsteads. One is tall, vigorous, fleshy, with a red face—a regular butcher. He is on the point of weeping; for he has been much moved. The other is tall, thin, conceited, with an immense nose, which always seems to have a cold, and little blue eyes fixed upon the ground. He is a clever, well-bred man, and was formerly a secretary. He treats his friend with a little disdain, which the latter cannot stand. They have been drinking together all day.
“You have taken a liberty with me,” cries the stout one, as with his left hand he shakes the head of his companion. To take a liberty signifies, in convict language, to strike. This convict, formerly a non-commissioned officer, envies in secret the elegance of his neighbour, and endeavours to make up for his material grossness by refined conversation.
“I tell you, you are wrong,” says the secretary, in a dogmatic tone, with his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground, and without looking at his companion.
“You struck me. Do you hear?” continues the other, still shaking his dear friend. “You are the only man in the world I care for; but you shall not take a liberty with me.”
“Confess, my dear fellow,” replies the secretary, “that all this is the result of too much drink.”
The corpulent friend falls back with a stagger, looks stupidly with his drunken eyes at the secretary, and suddenly, with all his might, sends his fist into the secretary’s thin face. Thus terminates the day’s friendship.
The dear friend disappears beneath the camp-bedstead unconscious.
One of my acquaintances enters the barracks. He is a convict of the special section, very good-natured, and gay, far from stupid, and jocular without malice. He is the man who, on my arrival at the convict prison, was looking out for a rich peasant, who spoke so much of his self-respect, and ended by drinking my tea. He was forty years old, had enormous lips, and a fat, fleshy, red nose. He held a balalaika, and struck negligently its strings. He was followed by a little convict, with a large head, whom I knew very little, and to whom no one paid any attention. Now that he was drunk he had attached himself to Vermaloff, and followed him like his shadow, at the same time gesticulating and striking with his fist the wall and the camp-bedsteads. He was almost in tears. Vermaloff did not notice him any more than if he had not existed. The most curious point was that these two men in no way resembled one another, neither by their occupations nor by their disposition. They belonged to different sections, and lived in separate barracks. The little convict was named Bulkin.
Vermaloff smiled when he saw me seated by the stove. He stopped at some distance from me, reflected for a moment, tottered, and then came towards me with an affected swagger. Then he swept the strings of his instrument, and sung, or recited, tapping at the same time with his boot on the ground, the following chant:
My darling!
With her full, fair face,
Sings like a nightingale;
In her satin dress,
With its brilliant trimming,
She is very fair.
This song excited Bulkin in an extraordinary manner. He agitated his arms, and shrieked out to every one: “He lies, my friends; he lies like a quack doctor. There is not a shadow of truth in what he sings.”
“My respects to the venerable Alexander Petrovitch,” said Vermaloff, looking at me with a knowing smile. I fancied even he wished to embrace me. He was drunk. As for the expression, “My respects to the venerable so-and-so,” it is employed by the common people throughout Siberia, even when addressed to a young man of twenty. To call a man old is a sign of respect, and may amount even to flattery.
“Well, Vermaloff, how are you?” I replied.
“So, so. Nothing to boast of. Those who really enjoy the holiday have been drinking since early morning.”
Vermaloff did not speak very distinctly.
“He lies; he lies again,” said Bulkin, striking the camp-bedsteads with a sort of despair.
One might have sworn that Vermaloff had given his word of honour not to pay any attention to him. That was really the most comic thing about it; for Bulkin had not quitted him for one moment since the morning. Always with him, he quarrelled with Vermaloff about every word; wringing his hands, and striking with his fists against the wall and the camp bedsteads till he made them bleed, he suffered visibly from his conviction that Vermaloff “lied like a quack doctor.” If Bulkin had had hair on his head, he would certainly have torn it in his grief, in his profound mortification. One might have thought that he had made himself responsible for Vermaloff’s actions, and that all Vermaloff’s faults troubled his conscience. The amusing part of it was that Vermaloff continued.
“He lies! He lies! He lies!” cried Bulkin.
“What can it matter to you?” replied the convicts, with a laugh.
“I must tell you, Alexander Petrovitch, that I was very good-looking when I was a young man, and the young girls were very fond of me,” said Vermaloff suddenly.
“He lies! He lies!” again interrupted Bulkin, with a groan. The convicts burst into a laugh.
“And well I got myself up to please them. I had a red shirt, and broad trousers of cotton velvet. I was happy in those days. I got up when I liked; did whatever I pleased. In fact——”
“He lies,” declared Bulkin.
“I inherited from my father a stone house, two storeys high. Within two years I made away with the two storeys; nothing remained to me but the street door. Well, what of that. Money comes and goes like a bird.”
“He lies!” declared Bulkin, more resolutely than before.
“Then when I had spent all, I sent a letter to my relations, that they might send me some money. They said that I had set their will at naught, that I was disrespectful. It is now seven years since I sent off my letter.”
“And any answer?” I asked, with a smile.
“No,” he replied, also laughing, and almost putting his nose in my face.
He then informed me that he had a sweetheart.
“You a sweetheart?”
“Onufriel said to me the other day: ‘My young woman is marked with small-pox, and as ugly as you like; but she has plenty of dresses, while yours, though she may be pretty, is a beggar.’”
“Is that true?”
“Certainly, she is a beggar,” he answered.
He burst into a laugh, and the others laughed with him. Every one indeed knew that he had a liaison with a beggar woman, to whom he gave ten kopecks every six months.
“Well, what do you want with me?” I said to him, wishing at last to get rid of him.
He remained silent, and then, looking at me in the most insinuating manner, said:
“Could not you let me have enough money to buy half-a-pint? I have drunk nothing but tea the whole day,” he added, as he took from me the money I offered him; “and tea affects me in such a manner that I am afraid of becoming asthmatic. It gives me the wind.”
When he took the money I offered him, the despair of Bulkin went beyond all bounds. He gesticulated like a man possessed.
“Good people all,” he cried, “the man lies. Everything he says—everything is a lie.”
“What can it matter to you?” cried the convicts, astonished at his goings on. “You are possessed.”
“I will not allow him to lie,” continued Bulkin, rolling his eyes, and striking his fist with energy on the boards. “He shall not lie.”
Every one laughed. Vermaloff bowed to me after receiving the money, and
