I LIVED three years as overseer in that dead town, amid empty buildings,watching the workmen pull down clumsy stone shops in the autumn, andrebuild them in the same way in the spring.

　　The master took great care that I should earn his five rubles. If the floorof a shop had to be laid again, I had to remove earth from the whole area tothe depth of one arshin. The dock laborers were paid a ruble for this work,but I received nothing; and while I was thus occupied, I had no time to lookafter the carpenters, who unscrewed the locks and handles from the doorsand committed petty thefts of all kinds.

　　Both the workmen and the contractors tried in every way to cheat me, tosteal something, and they did it almost openly, as if they were performing anunpleasant duty; were not in the least indignant when I accused them, butwere merely amazed.

　　“You make as much fuss over five rubles as you would over twenty. It isfunny to hear you!”

　　I pointed out to my riiaster that, while he saved one ruble by my labor,he lost ten times more in this way, but he merely blinked at me and said :

　　“That will do! You are making that up!”

　　I understood that he suspected me of conniving at the thefts, whicharoused in me a feeling of repulsion towards him, but I was not offended. Inthat class of life they all steal, and even the master liked to take what did notbelong to him.

　　When, after the fair, he looked into one of the shops which he was torebuild, and saw a forgotten samovar, a piece of crockery, a carpet, or a pairof scissors which had been forgotten, even sometimes a case, or somemerchandise, my master would say, smiling:

　　“Make a list of the things and take them all to the store-room.”

　　And he would take them home with him from the store-room, telling mesometimes to cross them off the list.

　　I did not love “things”; I had no desire to possess them; even books werean embarrassment to me. I had none of my own, save the little volumes ofBeranger and the songs of Heine. I should have liked to obtain Pushkin, butthe book-dealer in the town was an evil old man, who asked a great deal toomuch for Pushkin’s works. The furniture, carpets, and mirrors, which bulkedso largely in my master’s house, gave me no pleasure, irritated me by theirmelancholy clumsiness and smell of paint and lacquer. Most of all I dislikedthe mistress’s room, which reminded me of a trunk packed with all kinds ofuseless, superfluous objects. And I was disgusted with my master forbringing home other people’s things from the store-house. Queen Margot’srooms had been cramped too, but they were beautiful in spite of it.

　　Life, on the whole, seemed to me to be a disconnected, absurd affair;there was too much of the ob — viously stupid about it. Here we werebuilding shops which the floods inundated in the spring, soaking through thefloors, making the outer doors hang crooked. When the waters subsided thejoists had begun to rot. Annually the water had overflowed the market-placefor the last ten years, spoiling the buildings and the bridges. These yearlyfloods did enor — mous damage, and yet they all knew that the waters wouldnot be diverted of themselves.

　　Each spring the breaking of the ice cut up the barges, and dozens ofsmall vessels. The people groaned and built new ones, which the ice againbroke. It was like a ridiculous treadmill whereon one remains always in thesame place. I asked Osip about it. He looked amazed, and then laughed.

　　“Oh, you heron! What a young heron he is! What is it to do with you atall? What is it to you,But then he spoke more gravely, although he could not extinguish thelight of merriment in his pale blue eyes, which had a clearness not belongingto old age.

　　“That’s a very intelligent observation! Let us suppose that the affair doesnot concern you; all the same it may be worth something to you tounderstand it. Take this case, for example — ”

　　And he related in a dry speech, interspersed lavishly with quaint sayings,unusual comparisons, and all kinds of drollery:

　　“Here is a case where people are to be pitied; they have only a little land,and in the springtime the Volga overflows its banks, carries away the earth,and lays it upon its own sand-banks. Then others complain that the bed ofthe Volga is choked up. The spring-time streams and summer rains tear upthe gulleys, and again earth is carried away to the river.”

　　He spoke without either pity or malice, but as if he enjoyed hisknowledge of the miseries of life, and although his words were in agreementwith my own ideas, yet it was unpleasant to listen to them.

　　“Take another instance; fires.”

　　I don’t think I can remember a summer when the forests beyond theVolga did not catch fire. Every July the sky was clouded by a muddy yellowsmoke; the leaden sun, all its brightness gone, looked down on the earth likea bad eye.

　　“As for forests, who cares about them?” said Osip. “They all belong to thenobles, or the crown; the peasants don’t own them. And if towns catch fire,that is not a very serious business either. Rich people live in towns ; they arenot to be pitied. But take the villages. How many villages are burned downevery summer? Not less than a hundred, I should think; that’s a seriousloss!”

　　He laughed softly.

　　“Some people have property and don’t know how to manage it, andbetween ourselves, a man has to work not so much on his own behalf, or onthe land, as against fire and water.”

　　“Why do you laugh ?”

　　“Why not? You won’t put a fire out with your tears, nor will they makethe floods more mighty.”

　　I knew that this handsome old man was more clever than any one I hadmet; but what were his real sympathies and antipathies? I was thinkingabout this all the time he was adding his little dry sayings to my store.

　　“Look round you, and see how little people preserve their own, or otherpeople’s strength. How your master squanders yours! And how much doeswater cost in a village? Reflect a little; it is better than any cleverness whichcomes from learning. If a peasant’s hut is burned, another one can be put upin its place, but when a worthy peasant loses his sight, you can’t set thatright! Look at Ardalon, for example, or Grisha ; see how a man can breakout! A foolish fellow, the first, but Grisha is a man of understanding. Hesmokes like a hayrick. Women attacked him, as worms attack a murderedman in a wood.”

　　I asked him without anger, merely out of curiosity:

　　“Why did you go and tell the master about my ideas?’

　　He answered calmly, even kindly:

　　“So that he might know what harmful ideas you have. It was necessary,in order that he may teach you better ones. Who should teach you, if not he?

　　I did not speak to him out of malice, but out of pity for you. You are not astupid lad, but the devil is racking your brain. If I had caught you stealing, orrun — ning after the girls, or drinking, I should have held my tongue. But Ishall always repeat all your wild talk to the master; so now you know.”

　　“I won’t talk to you, then!”

　　He was silent, scratching the resin off his hands with his nails. Then helooked at me with an expression of affection and said:

　　“That you will! To whom else will you talk? There is no one else.”

　　Clean and neat, Osip at times reminded me of the stoker, Yaakov,absolutely indifferent to every one. Sometimes he reminded me of the valuer,Petr Vassiliev, sometimes of the drayman, Petr; occasionally he revealed atrait which was like grandfather. In one way or another he was like all the oldmen I had known. They were all amazingly interesting old men, but I feltthat it was impossible to live with them ; it would be oppressive andrepulsive. They had corroded their own hearts, as it were ; their cleverspeeches hid hearts red with rust. Was Osip good-hearted? No. Malevolent?

　　Also no. That he was clever was all that was clear to me. But while itastounded me by its pliability, that intelligence of his deadened me, and theend of it was that I felt he was inimical to me in all kinds of ways.

　　In my heart seethed the black thoughts :

　　“All human creatures are strangers to one another despite their sweetwords and smiles. And more; we are all strangers on the earth, too; no oneseems to be bound to it by a powerful feeling of love. Grandmother aloneloved to be alive, and loved all crea — tures — grandmother and graciousQueen Margot.

　　Sometimes these and similar thoughts increased the density of the darkfog around me. Life had become suffocating and oppressive; but how could Ilive a different life? Whither could I go? I had no one to talk to, even, exceptOsip, and I talked to him more and more often. He listened to my heatedbabbling with evident interest, asked me questions, drove home a point, andsaid calmly :

　　“The persistent woodpecker is not terrible; no one is afraid of him. Butwith all my heart I advise you to go into a monastery and live there till youare grown up. You will have edifying conversations with holy men to consoleyou, you will be at peace, and you will be a source of revenue to the monks.

　　That’s my sincere advice to you. It is evident that you are not fit for worldlybusiness.”

　　I had no desire to enter a monastery, but I felt that I was being entangledand bewildered in the enchanted circle of the incomprehensible. I wasmiserable. Life for me was like a forest in autumn. The mushrooms had comeand gone, there was nothing to do in the empty forest, and I seemed to knowall there was to know in it.

　　I did not drink vodka, and I had nothing to do with girls; books took theplace of these two forms of intoxication for me. But the more I read, theharder it was for me to go on living the empty, unnecessary life that mostpeople lived.

　　I had only just turned fifteen years of age, but sometimes I felt like anelderly man. I was, as it were, inwardly swollen and heavy with all I had livedthrough and read, or restlessly pondered. Looking into myself, I discoveredthat my receptacle for impressions was like a dark lumber-room closelypacked with all kinds of things, of which I had neither the strength nor thewit to rid myself.

　　And although they were so numerous, all these cumbersome articleswere not solidly packed, but floated about, and made me waver as watermakes a piece of crockery waver which does not stand firm.

　　I had a fastidious dislike of unhappiness, illness, and grievances. When Isaw cruelty, blood, fights even verbal baiting of a person, it aroused aphysical repulsion in me which was swiftly transformed into a cold fury. Thismade me fight myself, like a wild beast, after which I would be painfullyashamed of myself.

　　Sometimes I was so passionately desirous of beating a bully that I threwmyself blindly into a fight, and even now I remember those attacks ofdespair, born of m/ impotence, with shame and grief.

　　Within me dwelt two persons. One was cognizant of only too manyabominations and obscenities, somewhat timid for that reason, was crushedby the knov/ledge of everyday horrors, and had begun to view life and peopledistrustfully, contemptuously, with a feeble pity for every one, includinghimself. This person dreamed of a quiet, solitary life with books, withoutpeople, of monasteries, of a forest-keeper’s lodge, a railway signal box, ofPersia, and the office of the night watchman somewhere on the outskirts ofthe town. Only to see fewer people, to be remote from human creatures!

　　The other person, baptized by the holy spirit of noble and wise books,observing the overwhelming strength of the daily horrors of life, felt howeasily that strength might sap one’s brain-power, trample the heart withdirty footprints, and, fighting against it with all his force, with clenched teethand fists, was always ready for a quarrel or a fight. He loved and pitiedactively, and, like the brave hero in French novels, drew his sword from hisscabbard on the slightest provocation, and stood in a warlike position.

　　At that time I had a bitter enemy in the door-keeper of one of thebrothels in Little Pokrovski Street. I made his acquaintance one morning as Iwas going to the market-place; he was dragging from a hackney-carriage,standing at the gate in front of the house, a girl who was dead drunk. Heseized her by the legs in their wrinkled stockings, and thus held her shamelessly,bare to the waist, exclaiming and laughing. He spat upon her body,and she came down with a jolt out of the carriage, dishevelled, blind, withopen mouth, with her soft arms hanging behind her as if they had no joints.

　　Her spine, the back of her neck, and her livid face struck the seat of thecarriage and the step, and at length she fell on the pavement, striking herhead on the stones.

　　The driver whipped up his horse and drove off, and the porter, takingone foot in each hand and stepping backward, dragged her along as if shehad been a corpse. I lost control of myself and made a rush at him, but asluck would have it, I hurled myself against, or accidentally ran into arainwater-barrel, which saved both the porter and me a great deal ofunpleasantness. Striking him on the rebound, I knocked him over, darted upthe steps, and desperately pulled the bell-handle. Some infuriated peoplerushed on the scene, and as I could not explain anything, I went away,picking up the barrel.

　　On the way I overtook the cab. The driver looked down at me from thecoach-box and said:

　　“You knocked him over smartly.”

　　I asked him angrily how he could allow the portel to make sport of thegirl, and he replied calmly, with a fastidious air:

　　“As for me, let them go to the dogs! A gentleman paid me when he puther in my cab. What is it to me if one person beats another?”

　　“And if he had killed her?’

　　“Oh, well ; you soon kill that sort!” said the driver, as if he had repeatedlytried to kill drunken girls.

　　After that I saw the porter nearly every day. When I passed up the streethe would be sweeping the pavement, or sitting on the steps as if he werewaiting for me. As I approached him he would stand up, tuck up his sleeves,and announce kindly:

　　“I am going to smash you to atoms now!”

　　He was over forty, small, bow-legged, with a pendulous paunch. Whenhe laughed he looked at me with beaming eyes, and it was terribly strange tome to see that they were kind and merry. He could not fight, because hisarms were shorter than mine, and after two or three turns he let me go,leaned his back against the gate, and said, apparently in great surprise :

　　“All right; you wait, clever!”

　　These fights bored me, and one day I said to him :

　　“Listen, fool! Why don’t you let me alone?”

　　“Why do you fight, then?” he asked reproachfully.

　　I asked him in turn why he had maltreated the girl.

　　“What did it matter to you? Are you sorry for her?’

　　“Of course I am!”

　　He was silent, rubbing his lips, and then asked:

　　“And would you be sorry for a cat?”

　　“Yes, I should.”

　　Then he said:

　　“You are a fool, rascal! Wait; I’ll show you something.”

　　I never could avoid passing up that street — it was the shortest way —but I began to get up earlier, in order not to meet the man. However, in a fewdays I saw him again, sitting on the steps and stroking a smoke-colored catwhich lay on his knees. When I was about three paces from him he jumpedup, seized the cat by the legs, and dashed its head against the stoneb............