Denis sneers and screws up his eyes at the magistrate incredulously.
"Well! How many years have all of us here in the vil- lage been unscrewing nuts, and the Lord's protected us; and here you talk about wrecks, killing people. If I'd carried off a rail or put a log in the way, then maybe the train might've gone off the track, but . . . ppfff! a nut!"
"But try to get it into your head that the nut holds the rail fast to the sleepers!"
'We understand that . . . We don't unscrew all of 'em . . . We leave some • • . We don't do things without using our heads . . . We understand."
Denis yawns and makes the sign of the cross over his mouth.
"Last year a train was derailed here," says the mag- istrate. "Now it's plain why!"
"Beg pardon?"
"I say that it's plain why the train was derailed last year . . . Now I understand!"
"That's what you're educated for, our protectors, to understand. The Lord knew to whom to give under- standing • . . Here you've figured out how and what, but the watchman, a peasant like us, with no brains at all, he gets you by the collar and pulls you in. You should figure it out first and then pull people in. But it's known, a peasant has the brains of a peasant. . . . Write down, too, Your Honor, that he hit me twice on the jaw, and on the chest, too."
"When your house was searched they found another nut. . . . At what spot did you unscrew that, and when?"
"You mean the nut under the little red chest?"
"I don't know where you kept it, but it was found. When did you unscrew it?'
"I didn't unscrew it; Ignashka, one-eyed Semyon's son, he gave it to me. I mean the one that was under the chest, but the one that was in the sledge in the yard, that one Mitrofan and I unscrewed together."
"Which Mitrofan?"
"Mitrofan Petrov . . . Didn't you hear of him? He makes nets and sells them to the gentry. He needs a lot of those nuts. Reckon a matter of ten for every net."
"Listen. According to Article 1081 of the Penal Code, deliberate damage to a railroad, calculated to jeopardize the trains, provided the perpetrator of the damage knew that it might cause an accident—you understand? Knew! And you couldn't help knowing what this unscrewing might lead to—is punishable by hard labor."
"Of course, you know best . . . We're ignorant folk . • . What do we understand?"
"You understand all about it! You are lying, faking!"
"Why should I lie? Ask in the village if you don't be- lieve me. Only bleak is caught without a sinker. And a gudgeon's no kind of fish, but even gudgeon won't bite without a sinker."
"Tell me about bullhead, now," says the magistrate with a smile.
"There ain't no bullhead in our parts. . . . If we cast our lines without a sinker, with a butterfly for bait, we can maybe catch a chub that way, but even that not often."
"Now, be quiet."
There is silence. Denis shifts from one foot to the other, stares at the table covered with green cloth, and blinks violently as though he were looking not at cloth but at the sun. The magistrate writes rapidly.
"Can I go?" asks Denis, after a silence.
"No. I must put you in custody and send you to prison."
Denis stops blinking and, raising his thick eyebrows, looks inquiringly at the official.
"What do you mean, prison? Your Honor! I haven't the time; I must go to the fair; I must get three rubles from Yegor for lard!"
"Be quiet; don't disturb me."
"Prison . . . If I'd done something, I'd go; but to go just for nothing! What for? I didn't steal anything, so far as I know, I wasn't fighting . . . If there's any ques- tion about the arrears, Your Honor, don't believe the elder . . . Ask the permanent member of the Board . . . the elder, he's no Christian."
"Be quiet."
''I'm quiet as it is," mutters Denis; "as for the elder, he's lied about the assessment, I'll take my oath on it . . . We're three brothers: Kuzma Grigoryev, then Yegor Grigoryev, and me, Denis Grigoryev."
"You're disturbing me . . . Hey, Semyon," cries the magistrate, "take him out."
"We're three brothers," mutters Denis, as two husky soldiers seize him and lead him out of the chamber. "A brother don't have to answer for a brother. Kuzma don't pay, so you, Denis, have to answer for it ... Judges!
Our late master the general is dead—the Kingdom of Heaven be his!—or he'd have shown you judges what's what . . . You must have the know-how when you judge, not do it any which way . . . All right, flog a man, hut justly, when it's coming to him."
1885
Daydreams
T
WO rural constables—one a black-bearded stocky fellow with such extraordinarily short legs that if you look at him from the rear it seems as though they begin much lower down than other people's; the other, tall, lean, and straight as a stick, with a skimpy reddish beard—are taking to the county seat a tramp who has refused to give his name. The first waddles along, glances about, chews now a straw, now his own sleeve, slaps himself on the thighs, hums, and generally has a carefree, lighthearted air about him; the other, in spite of his gaunt face and narrow shoulders, looks solid, seri- ous, and substantial; his whole appearance and the way he carries himself suggest a priest of the Old Be- lievers' sect or a warrior in an ancient icon. "Forasmuch as he is. wise, God hath added unto his brow"—in other words, he is bald—which increases the resemblance just mentioned. The name of the first is Andrey Ptaha, that of the second Nikandr Sapozhnikov.
The man they are escorting does not at all fit the usual conception of a tramp. He is a puny little man, feeble and sickly, with small, colorless, extremely blurred fea- tures. His eyebrows are scanty, his expression gentle and submissive; he has hardly a trace of a mustache, al- though he is over thirty. He moves timidly, a hunched figure, his hands thrust into his sleeves. The collar of his threadbare cloth overcoat, which is not a peasant's, is turned up to the very edge of his cap, so that only his little red nose ventures to peep out into God's world. He speaks in a small, wheedling tenor and coughs continu- ally. It is very, very hard to accept him as a tramp who is concealing his identity. He looks more like a priest's son, a poor devil of a fellow, reduced to beggary; a clerk sacked for drunkenness; a merchant's son or nephew who has tested his feeble powers on the stage and is now going home to play the last act in the parable ol the prodigal son. Perhaps, to judge from the dull pa- tience with which he is struggling against the impass- able autumn mud, he is a fanatic, a novice, wandering from one Russian monastery to another, continually seek- ing "a life of peace that knoweth no sin" and not finding it. . . .
The men have been walking for a long time but they seem to be unable to leave one small patch of land. Be- fore them stretch some thirty feet of road, black-brown and muddy, behind them is an identical stretch of road, and beyond, wherever one looks, there is an impene- trable wall of white fog. They walk on and on, but the ground remains the same, the wall is no nearer, and the patch is the same. Sometimes there floats past them a white, angular boulder, a gulley, or an armful of hay fallen from a passing cart; or a large, muddy puddle will gleam briefly, or, suddenly, a shadow with vague outlines will come into view ahead of them, growing smaller and darker as they approach, and finally there will loom before the wayfarers a slanting milestone with a half-effaced number on it, or a pitiful birch tree, drenched and bare as a wayside beggar. The little birch whispers something with what remains of its yeUow leaves, one leaf breaks off and floats lazily to the ground. . . . And then once more, fog, mud, brown grass at the edges of the road. Dull, unkind tears hang on the grass. They are not the tears of quiet joy that the earth sheds on greeting the summer sun and on parting &om it, not the tears that she gives the quails, corncrakes, and grace- ful, long-beaked curlews to drink at dawn. The way- farers' feet stick in the heavy, clinging mud. Every step costs an effort.