Andrey Ptaha is somewhat agitated. He keeps staring at the tramp and trying to understand how a living, sober human being can fail to recall his o^ name.
"You are an Orthodox Christian, no?" he asks.
"I am that," the tramp answers meekly.
"Hm—then you were christened?"
"Why, sure! I'm no Turk. I go to church and take the sacrament and don't eat forbidden food on fast days. I don't neglect my religious duties none—"
"Well, what name do they call you by, then?"
"Call me what you please, mate."
Ptaha shrugs his shoulders and slaps himself on the thighs in extreme perplexity. The other constable, Nik- andr Sapozhnikov, maintains a dignified silence. He is not so naive as Ptaha, and knows very well the reasons why an Orthodox Christian may wish to conceal his name from people. His expressive face is cold and stern. He walks apart and does not condescend to chatter idly with his companions, but tries to show everyone, as it were, even the fog, that he is staid and sensible.
"God knows what to make of you," Ptaha persists in pestering the tramp. "Peasant you ain't and gentleman you ain't, but something betwixt and between. The other day I was washing the sieves in the pond and I caught a viper—see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. At first I thought it was a fish, and then I looked—and damn the creature, if it hadn't paws! Maybe it was a fish, maybe it was a viper, the devil only knows what it was. Same with you. What are your folks?"
"I am a peasant, of peasant stock," the tramp sighs. "My dear mother was a house serf. True, I don't look like a peasant, but that was the way of it, my friend. My dear mother was a nurse to the master's children, and she had it very well, and I was her flesh and blood, so I lived with her in the big house. She*took care of me and spoiled me and did all she could to raise me above my class and make something of me. I slept in a bed, I ate a regular dinner every day, I wore breeches and shoes like any gentleman's child. My dear mother fed me just what she ate; if they gave her material for a present, she made clothes for me out of it. What a life we had of it! I ate so much candy and cake when I was a child that if it could be sold now it would bring the price of a good horse. My dear mother taught me how to read and write, she put the fear of God in me when I was little, and she brought me up so that now I can't get myself to say an indelicate peasant word. And I don't drink vodka, mate, and I'm neat about my person, and I know how to behave properly in good society. If my dear mother is still living, God give her health; and if she has departed this life, then God rest her soul, and may she know peace in Thy kingdom, Lord, where the righteous are at rest."
The tramp bares his head with its scanty bristles, turns his eyes upward, and crosses himself twice.
"Grant her, O Lord, a green and peaceful resting- place," he says in a drawling voice, rather like an old woman's than a man's. "Instruct Thy servant, Xenia, in Thy ways, O Lordl If it had not been for my dear, dar- ling mother I should have been a plain peasant with no understanding of anything! Now, mate, ask me what you like and I understand it alclass="underline" the Holy Scriptures and profane writings, and every prayer and catechism. And I live according to the Scriptures, too. I don't harm any- body, I keep my body pure and chaste, I observe the fasts, I cat when it is proper. Another man takes no pleasure in anything but vodka and beastliness, but I, when I have time, I sit in a corner and read a book. I read and I cry and cry—"
"What do you cry about?"
"They write so pitifully! For some little book you pay no more than a five-kopeck piece, but how you weep and groan over itl"
"Is your father dead?" asks Ptaha.
"I don't know, mate. I don't know my father; it's no use hiding the sin. I judge that I was my dear mother's illegitimate child. My dear mother lived with the gentry all her life and she didn't want to marry a plain peas- ant—"
"And so she lit upon a master," Ptaha grins.
"She did not preserve her honor, that's true. She was pious and God-fearing, but she did not keep her maiden purity. Of course, it is a sin, a great sin, there's no doubt about it, but then, maybe there is noble blood in my veins. Maybe I am only a peasant by rank, but by nature I am a noble gentleman."
The "noble gentleman" says all this in a low, mawk- ish tenor voice, wrinkling up his narrow forehead and making creaking sounds with his red, frozen little nose. Ptaha listens and looks askance at him in wonder, and does not stop shrugging his shoulders.
After walking nearly four miles the constables and the tramp sit down on a hillock to rest.
"Even a dog knows his own name," mutters Ptaha.
"My name is Andryushka, his is Nikandr; every man has his holy name, and it can't be forgotten. Nohow!"
'Who has any need to know my name?" sighs the tramp, resting his cheek on his fist. "And what good would it do me if they did know it? If they let me go where I liked—but this way, it would be worse for me than it is now. I know the law, friends. Now I am one of those tramps who don't tell who they are, and the most they can do is exile me to Eastern Siberia and give me thirty or forty lashes; but if I told them my real name and rank they would send me back to hard labor, I know!"
'Why, were you a convict?"
"I was, dear friend. For four years I went about with my head shaved and irons on my legs."
"What for?"
"For murder, my good friend! When I was still a lad of about eighteen, my dear mother accidentally poured arsenic instead of soda and acid into the master's glass. There were powders of all sorts in the storeroom; it was easy to make a mistake."
The tramp sighs, shakes his head, and says:
"My mother was a pious woman, but who knows? The soul of another is a dark forest! Maybe it was an accident, and maybe she couldn't bear the humiliation of seeing the master make a favorite of another servant. Maybe she put it in on purpose, God alone knows! I was young then, and didn't understand everything. Now I remember that as a matter of fact our master did take another paramour and my dear mother was greatly dis- tressed. Our trial lasted nearly two years. My dear mother was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor, and I, because of my youth, only to seven."
"And where did you come in?"
"As an accomplice. It was me handed the glass to the master. That was how it always was. My dear mother prepared the soda and I handed it to him. Only I'm tell- ing you this, brothers, as Christian to Christian, as I would say it before God. And don't you go telling any- body—"
"Oh, nobody's going to ask us," says Ptaha. "So you've run away from hard labor, have you?"
"Yes, dear friend. Some fourteen of us ran away. They ran away, God bless them, and took me with them. Now answer me, on your conscience, mate, what reason have I to tell who I am? They'll send me back to hard labor, you know! And what sort of a convict am I! I'm a refined man, and not in the best of health. I like it clean where I sleep and eat. When I pray to God I like to light a little lamp or a candle, and not have a racket around me. When I bow down and touch the ground with my forehead, I don't like the floor to be dirty or covered with spittle. And for my dear mother's sake I bow down forty times morning and evening."
The tramp takes off his cap and crosses himself.
"Let them exile me to Eastern Siberia," he says. Tm not afraid of that."
"Is that any better?"
"It's a different thing altogether. Doing hard labor you're like a lobster in a basket: there's crowding, crush- ing, jostling, no room to breathe; it's plain hell—may the Queen of Heaven deliver us from such hell! You're a criminal and treated like a criminal—worse than any dog. You can't eat, you can't sleep, or even say your prayers. But it's not like that in a colony of exiles. In such a settlement, first thing I do is join the community like the others. The authorities are bound by law to give me my allotment. Ye-es! They say the land is free there, like snow; take as much as you please! They'll give me plow land, and land for a kitchen garden, and a build- ing lot. . . . I'll plow my fields like other people, I'H sow. I'll have cattle and all sorts of things, bees, sheep, dogs—a Siberian cat, so that rats and mice don't eat up my stores. I'll build a house, brothers, I'll buy icons— Please God, I'll get married, and have children. . . ."