LATE in the autumn, when the steamboat voyage finished, I went as pupil in the workshop of an icon painter. But in a day or two my mistress, a gentle old lady given to tippling, announced to me in her Vladimirski speech:
“The days are short now and the evenings long, so you will go to the shop in the mornings, and be shop-boy. In the evenings you will learn.”
She placed me under the authority of a small, swift-footed shopman, a young fellow with a handsome, false face. In the mornings, in the cold twilight of dawn, I went with him right across the town, up the sleepy mercantile street, Ilnik, to the Nijni bazaar, and there, on the second floor of the Gostini Dvor, was the shop. It had been converted from a warehouse into a shop, and was dark, with an iron door, and one small window on the terrace, protected by iron bars. The shop was packed with icons of different sizes, with image-cases, and with highly finished books in church Slav characters, bound in yellow leather. Beside our shop there was another, in which were also sold icons and books, by a black-bearded merchant, kinsman to an Old Believer valuer. He was celebrated beyond the Volga as far as the boundaries of Kirjinski, and was assisted by his lean and lively son, who had the small gray face of in old man, and the restless eyes of a mouse.
When I had opened the shop, I had to run to the tavern for boiling water, and when I had finished breakfast, I had to set the shop in order, dust the goods, and then go out on the terrace and watch with vigilant eyes, lest customers should enter the neighboring shop.
“Customers are fools,” said the shopman forcibly to me. “They don’t mind where they buy, so long as it is cheap, and they do not understand the value of the goods.”
Lightly tapping the wooden surface of an icon, he aired his slight knowledge of the business to me. He instructed me :
“This is a clever piece of work — very cheap — three or four vershoks — stands by itself. Here is another — six or seven vershoks — stands by itself. Do you know about the saints? Remember Boniface is a protection against drink; Vvaara, the great martyr, against toothache and death by accident; Blessed Vassili, against fevers. Do you know all about Our Lady? Look! This is Our Lady of Sorrows, and Our Lady of Abalak, Most Renowned. Do not weep for me, Mother. Assuage my griefs. Our lady of Kazan, of Pokrove; Our Lady of Seven Dolors.”
I soon remembered the prices of the icons, according to their size and the work on them, and learned to distinguish between the different images of Our Lady. But to remember the significations of the various saints was difficult.
Sometimes I would be standing at the door of the shop, dreaming, when the shopman would suddenly test my knowledge.
“Who is the deliverer from painful childbirth?”
If I answered wrongly, he would ask scornfully:
“What is the use of your head?”
Harder still was it for me to tout for customers. The hideously painted icons did not please me at all, and I did not like having to sell them. According to grandmother’s stories, I had imagined Our Lady as young, beautiful, and good, just as she was in pictures in the magazines, but the icons represented her as old and severe, with a long crooked nose, and wooden hands.
On market days, Wednesdays and Fridays, business was brisk. Peasants, old women, and sometimes whole families together, appeared on the terrace, — all old Ritualists from Zavoljia, suspicious and surly people of the forests. I would see, perhaps, coming along slowly, almostly timidly, across the gallery, a ponderous man wrapped in sheepskin and thick, home-made cloth, and I would feel awkward and ashamed at having to accost him. At last by a great effort I managed to intercept him, and revolving about his feet in their heavy boots, I chanted in a constrained, buzzing voice:
“What can we do for you, your honor? We have psalters with notes and comments, the books of Ephrem Siren, Kyrillov, and all the canonical books and breviaries. Please come and look at them. All kinds of icons, whatever you want, at various prices. Only the best work, — dark colors! We take orders, too, if you wish it, for all kinds of saints and madonnas. Perhaps you would like to order something for a Name Day, or for your family? This is the best workshop in Russia! Here are the best goods in the town!”
The impervious and inscrutable customer would look at me for a long time in silence. Suddenly pushing me aside with an arm like a piece of wood, he would go into the shop next door, and my shopman, rubbing his large ears, grumbled angrily :
“You have let him go! You’re a nice salesman!”
In the next shop could be heard a soft, sweet voice, pouring forth a speech which had the effect of a narcotic.
“We don’t sell sheepskins or boots, my friend, but the blessing of God, which is of more value than silver or gold; which, in fact, is priceless.”
“The devil!” whispered our shopman, full of envy and almost beside himself with rage. “A curse on the eyes of that muzhik! You must learn! You must learn!”
I did honestly try to learn, for one ought to do well whatever one has to do. But I was not a success at enticing the customers in, nor as a salesman. These gruff men, so sparing of their words, those old women who looked like rats, always for some reason timid and abject, aroused my pity, and I wanted to tell them on the quiet the real value of the icons, and not ask for the extra two greven.
They amazed me by their knowledge of books, and of the value of the painting on the icons. One day a gray-haired old man whom I had herded into the shop said to me shortly:
“It is not true, my lad, that your image workshop s, the best in Russia — the best is Rogoshin’s in Moscow.”
In confusion I stood aside for him to pass, and he went to another shop, not even troubling to go next door.
“Has he gone away?” asked the shopman spitefully.
“You never told me about Rogoshin’s workshop.”
He became abusive.
“They come in here so quietly, and all the time they know all there is to know, curse them! They understand all about the business, the dogs!”
Handsome, overfed, and selfish, he hated the peasants. When he was in a good humor, he would com plain to me:
“I am clever! I like cleanliness and scents, incense, and eau-de-Cologne, and though I set such a value on myself, I am obliged to bow and scrape to some peasant, to get five copecks’ profit out of him for the mistress. Do you think it is fair? What is a peasant, after all? A bundle of foul wool, a winter louse, and yet ”
And he fell into an indignant silence.
I liked the peasants. There was something elusive about each one of them which reminded me of Yaakov.
Sometimes there would climb into the shop a miserable-looking figure in a chapan7 put on over a short, fur-coat. He would take off his shaggy cap, cross himself with two fingers, look into the corner where the lamp glimmered, yet try not to, lest his eyes rest on the unblessed icons. Then glancing around, without speaking for some time, he would manage at length to say:
“Give me a psalter with a commentary.”
Tucking up the sleeves of his chapan he would read the pages, as he turned them over with clumsy movement, biting his lips the while.
“Haven’t you any more ancient than this?”
“An old one would cost a thousand rubles, as you know.”
“I know.”
The peasant moistened his finger as he turned over the leaves, and there was left a dark fingerprint where he had touched them. The shopman, gazing with an evil expression at the back of his head, said:
“The Holy Scriptures are all of the same age; the word of God does not change.”
“We know all about that; we have heard that! God did not change it, but Nikon did.”
Closing the book, he went out in silence.
7 The Nikonites are the followers of Nikon, patriarch of Moscow, who objected to the innovation of Peter the Great in suppressing the patriarchate of Moscow, and establishing a State Church upon the lines of the old patriarchal church. They are also termed the Old Believers, who are split up into several extraordinary schisms which existed before and after the suppression of the patriarchate, but who, in the main, continue their orthodoxy.
Sometimes these forest people disputed with the shopman, and it was evident to me that they knew more about the sacred writings than he did.
“Outlandish heathen!” grumbled the shop-man.
I saw also that, although new books were not to the taste of the peasants, they looked upon a new book with awe, handling it carefully, as if it were a bird which might fly out of their hands. This was very pleasant to me to see, because a book was a miracle to me. In it was inclosed the soul of the writer, and when I opened it, I set this soul free, and it spoke to me in secret.
Often old men and women brought books to sell printed in the old characters of the preNikonovski period, or copies of such books, beautifully made by the monks of Irgiz and Kerjentz. They also brought copies of missals uncorrected by Dmitry Rostovski, icons with ancient inscriptions, crosses, folding icons with brass mountings, and silver, eucharist spoons given by the Muscovite princes to their hosts as keepsakes. All these were offered secretly, from their hoards under the floor.
Both my shopman and his neighbor kept a very sharp lookout for such vendors, each trying to take them away from the other. Having bought antiques for anything up to ten rubles, they would sell them on the market-place to rich Old Ritualists for hundreds of rubles.
“Mind you look out for those were — wolves, those wizards! Look for them with all your eyes; they bring luck with them.”
When a vendor of this kind appeared, the shop-man used to send me to fetch the valuer, Petr Vas — silich, a connoisseur in old books, icons, and all kind of antiques.
He was a tall old man with a long beard, like Blessed Vassili, with intelligent eyes in a pleasant face. The tendon of one of his legs had been removed, and he walked lame, with a long stick. Summer and winter he wore a light garment, like a cassock, and a velvet cap of a strange shape, which looked like a saucepan. Usually brisk and upright, when he entered the shop, he let his shoulders droop, and bent his back, sighing gently and crossing himself often, muttering prayers and psalms to himself all the time. This pious and aged feebleness at once inspired the vendor with confidence in the valuer.
“What is the matter? Has something gone wrong?” the old man would ask.
“Here is a man who has brought an icon to sell. He says it is a Stroganovski.”
“What?”
“A Stroganovski.”
“Aha, my hearing is bad. The Lord has stopped my ears against the abomination of the Nikonites.”
Taking off his cap, he held the icon horizontally, looked at the inscription lengthways, sideways, straight up, examined the knots in the wood, blinked, and murmured:
“The godless Nikonites, observing our love of ancient beauties, and instructed by the devil, have mali — ciously made forgeries. In these days it is very easy to make holy images, — oh, very easy! At first sight, this might be a real Stroganovski, or an Ustiujcki painting, or even a Suzdulski, but when you look into it, it is a forgery.”
If he said “forgery,” it meant, “This icon is precious and rare.”
By a series of prearranged signs, he informed the shopman how much he was to give for the icon or book. I knew that the words “melancholy” and “affliction” meant ten rubles. “Nikon the tiger” meant twenty-five. I felt ashamed to see how they deceived the sellers, but the skilful by-play of the valuer amused me.
“Those Nikonites, black children of Nikon the tiger, will do anything, — led by the Devil as they are! Look! Even this signature looks real, and the bas-relief as if it were painted by the one hand. But look at the face — that was not done by the same brush. An old master like Pimen Ushakov, although he was a heretic, did the whole icon himself. He did the bas-relief, the face, and even the chasing very carefully, and sketched in the inscription, but the impious people of our day cannot do anything like it! In old times image painting was a holy calling, but now they make what concerns God merely a matter of art.”
At length he laid the icon down carefully on the counter, and putting on his hat, said:
“It is a sin!”
This meant “buy it.”
Overwhelmed by his flow of sweet words, astounded by the old man’s knowledge, the client would ask in an impressed tone :
“Well, your honor, what is your opinion of the icon?”
“The icon was made by Nikonite hands.”
“That cannot be! My grandfather and my grandmother prayed before it!”
“Nikon lived before your grandfather lived.”
The old man held the icon close to the face of the seller, and said sternly:
“Look now what a joyous expression it has! Do you call that an icon? It is nothing more than a picture — a blind work of art, a Nikonski joke — there is no soul in it! Would I tell you what is not true? I, an old man, persecuted for the sake of the truth! I shall soon have to go to God. I have nothing to gain by acting unfairly.”
He went out from the shop onto the terrace, languid with the feebleness of old age, offended by the doubt cast upon his valuation. The shopman paid a few rubles for the picture, the seller left, bowing low to Petr Vassilich, and they sent me to the tavern to get boiling water for the tea. When I returned, I would find the valuer brisk and cheerful, looking lovingly at the purchase, and thus instructing the shopman:
“Look, this icon has been very carefully done!
The painting is very fine, done in the fear of God. Human feelings had no part in it.”
“And whose work is it?” asked the shopman, beaming and jumping about for joy.
“It is too soon for you to know that.”
“But how much would connoisseurs give for it?”
“That I could not say. Give it to me, and I will show it to some one.”
“Och, Petr Vassilich.”
“And if I sell it, you shall have half the hundred rubles. Whatever there is over, that is mine!”
“Och!”
“You need not keep on saying ‘Och’!”
They drank their tea, bargaining shamelessly, looking at one another with the eyes of conspirators. That the shopman was completely under the thumb of the old man was plain, and when the latter went away, he would say to me:
“Now don’t you go chattering to the mistress about this deal.”
When they had finished talking about the sale of the icon, the shopman would ask:
“And what news is there in the town, Petr Vassilich?”
Smoothing his beard with his yellow fingers, laying bare his oily lips, the old man told stories of the lives of the merchants. He spoke of commercial successes, of feasts, of illnesses, of weddings, and of the infidelities of husbands and wives. He served up these greasy stories quickly and skilfully, as a good cook serves up pancakes, with a sauce of hissing laughter. The shopman’s round face grew dark with envy and rapture. His eyes were wide with dreamy wistfulness, as he said complainingly:
“Other people live, and here am I!”
“Every one has his appointed destiny,” resounded the deep voice. “Of one, the fate is heralded by angels with little silver hammers, and’ of another, by devils with the butt-end of an ax.”
This strong, muscular, old man knew everything — the whole life of the town, all the secrets of the merchants, chinovniks, priests, and citizens. He was keensighted as a bird of prey, and with this had some of the qualities of the wolf and fox. I always wanted to make him angry, but he looked at me from afar, almost as if through a fog. He seemed to me to be surrounded by a limitless space. If one went closer to him, one seemed to be falling. I felt in him some affinity to the stoker Shumov.
Although the shopman went into ecstasies over his cleverness, both to his face and behind his back, there were times when, like me, he wanted to provoke or offend the old man.
“You are a deceiver of men,” he would say, suddenly looking heatedly into the old man’s face.
The latter, smiling lazily, answered:
“Only the Lord lives without deceit, and we live among fools, you see. Can one meet fools, and not deceive them? Of what use would they be, then?”
The shopman lost his temper.
“Not all the peasants are fools. The merchants themselves came from the peasantry!”
“We are not talking about merchants. Fools do not live as rogues do. A fool is like a saint — his brains are asleep.”
The old man drawled more and more lazily, and this was very irritating. It seemed to me that he was standing on a hillock in the midst of a quagmire. It was impossible to make him angry. Either he was above rage, or he was able to hide it very successfully.
But he often happened to be the one to start a dispute with me. He would come quite close to me, and smiling into his beard, remark:
“What do you call that French writer — Ponoss?”
I was desperately angry at this silly way of turning the names upside down. But holding myself in for the time, I said:
“Ponson de Terrail.”
“Where was he lost?” 8
8 Terryat in Russian means “to lose.”
“Don’t play the fool. You are not a child.”
“That is true. I am not a child. What are you reading?”
“‘Ephrem Siren.’”
“And who writes best. Your foreign authors? or he?”
I made no reply.
“What do the foreign ones write about most?”
“About everything which happens to exist in life.”
“That is to say, about dogs and horses — whichever may happen to come their way.”
The shopman laughed. I was enraged. The atmosphere was oppressive, unpleasant to me. But if I attempted to get away, the shopman stopped me.
“Where are you going?”
And the old man would examine me.
“Now, you learned man, gnaw this problem. Suppose you had a thousand naked people standing before you, five hundred women and five hundred men, and among them Adam and Eve. How would you tell which were Adam and Eve”?”
He kept asking me this, and at length explained triumphantly:
“Little fool, don’t you see that, as they were not born, but were created, they would have no navels!”
The old man knew an innumerable quantity of these “problems.” He could wear me out with them.
During my early days at the shop, I used to tell the shopman the contents of some of the books I had read. Now these stories came back to me in an evil form. The shopman retold them to Petr Vassilich, considerably cut up, obscenely mutilated. The old man skilfully helped him in his shameful questions. Their slimy tongues threw the refuse of their obscene words at Eugenie Grandet, Ludmilla, and Henry IV.
I understood that they did not do this out of ill-nature, but simply because they wanted something to do. All the same, I did not find it easy to bear. Having created the filth, they wallowed in it, like hogs, and grunted with enjoyment when they soiled what was beautiful, strange, unintelligible, and therefore comical to them.
The whole Gostinui Dvor, the whole of its population of merchants and shopinen, lived a strange life, full of stupid, puerile, and always malicious diversions. If a passing peasant asked which was the nearest way to any place in the town, they always gave him the wrong direction. This had become such a habit with them that the deceit no longer gave them pleasure. They would catch two rats, tie their tails together, and let them go in the road. They loved to see how they pulled in different directions, or bit each other, and sometimes they poured paraffin-oil over the rats, and set fire to them. They would tie an old iron pail on the tail of a dog, who, in wild terror, would tear about, yelping and growling, while they all looked on, and laughed.
There were many similar forms of recreation, and it seemed to me that all kinds of people, especially country people, existed simply for the amusement of the Gostinui Dvor. In their relations to other people, there was a constant desire to make fun of them, to give them pain, and to make them uncomfortable. It was strange that the books I had read were silent on the subject of this unceasing, deep-seated tendency of people to jeer at one another.
One of the amusements of the Gostinui Dvor seemed to me peculiarly offensive and disgusting.
Underneath our shop there was a dealer in woolen and felt footwear, whose salesman amazed the whole of Nijni by his gluttony. His master used to boast of this peculiarity of his employee, as one boasts of the fierceness of a dog, or the strength of a horse. He often used to get the neighboring shopkeepers to bet.
“Who will go as high as ten rubles? I will bet that Mishka devours ten pounds of ham in two hours!”
But they all knew that Mishka was well able to do that, and they said:
“We won’t take your bet, but buy the ham and let him eat it, and we will look on.”
“Only let it be all meat and no bones!”
They would dispute a little and lazily, and then out of the dark storehouse crept a lean, beardless fellow with high cheek-bones, in a long cloth coat girdled with a red belt all stuck round with tufts of wool. Respectfully removing his cap from his small head, he gazed in silence, with a dull expression in his deep-set eyes, at the round face of his master which was suffused with purple blood. The latter was saying in his thick harsh voice:
“Can you eat a gammon of ham?”
“How long shall I have for it?” asked Mishka practically, in his thin voice.
“Two hours.”
“That will be difficult.”
“Where is the difficulty?”
“Well, let me have a drop of beer with it.”
“All right,” said his master, and he would boast:
“You need not think that he has an empty stomach. No! In the morning he had two pounds of bread, and dinner at noon, as you know.”
They brought the ham, and the spectators took their places. All the merchants were tightly enveloped in their thick fur-coats and looked like gigantic weights. They were people with big stomachs, but they all had small eyes and some had fatty tumors. An unconquerable feeling of boredom oppressed them all.
With their hands tucked into their sleeves, they surrounded the great glutton in a narrow circle, armed with knives and large crusts of rye bread. He crossed himself piously, sat down on a sack of wool and placed the ham on a box at his side, measuring it with his vacant eyes.
Cutting off a thin slice of bread and a thick one of meat, the glutton folded them together carefully, and held the sandwich to his mouth with both hands. His lips trembled; he licked them with his thin and long canine tongue, showing his small sharp teeth, and with a dog-like movement bent his snout again over the meat.
“He has begun!”
“Look at the time!”
All eyes were turned in a business-like manner on the face of the glutton, on his lower jaw, on the round protuberances near his ears; they watched the sharp chin rise and fall regularly, and drowsily uttered their thoughts.
“He eats cleanly — like a bear.”
“Have you ever seen a bear eat?”
“Do I live in the woods? There is a saying, ‘he gobbles like a bear.’ ”
“Like a pig, it says.”
“Pigs don’t eat pig.”
They laughed unwillingly, and soon some one knowingly said:
“Pigs eat everything — little pigs and their own sisters.”
The face of the glutton gradually grew darker, his ears became livid, his running eyes crept out of their bony pit, he breathed with difficulty, but his chin moved as regularly as ever.
“Take it easy, Mikhail, there is time!” they encouraged him.
He uneasily measured the remains of the meat with his eyes, drank some beer, and once more began to munch. The spectators became more animated. Looking more often at the watch in the hand of Mishka’s master, they suggested to one another:
“Don’t you think he may have put the watch back? Take it away from him! Watch Mishka in case he should put any meat up his sleeve! He won’t finish it in the time!”
Mishka’s master cried passionately:
“I’ll take you on for a quarter of a ruble! Mishka, don’t give way!”
They began to dispute with the master, but no one would take the bet.
And Mishka went on eating and eating; his face began to look like the ham, his sharp grisly nose whistled plaintively. It was terrible to look at him. It seemed to me that he was about to scream, to wail:
“Have mercy on me!”
At length he finished it all, opened his tipsy eyes wide, and said in a hoarse, tired voice:
“Let me go to sleep.”
But his master, looking at his watch, cried angrily:
“You have taken four minutes too long, you wretch!”
The others teased him:
