The tramp mumbles and looks away from his listeners. Naive as his daydreams are, they are uttered in such a sincere, heartfelt manner that it is hard not to credit them. The tramp's little mouth is distorted by a smile. His eyes, his little nose, his whole face, are set and dazed with blissful anticipation of distant happiness. The constables listen and look at him gravely, not with- out sympathy. They share his faith.
"I am not afraid of Siberia," the tramp goes on mum- bling. "Siberia is Russia too, and has the same God and Czar as here. They talk the language of Orthodox Chris- tians, just like you and me. Only there's more free space there and people are better off. Everything's better there. The rivers there, for instance, are way better than those we have here. And there's fish, and game, no end of it all. And there's nothing in the world, brothers, that I'd rather do than fish. Don't give me bread, just let me sit with a hook and line, by God! I use a line and I set creels and when the ice breaks then I take a casting-net. If I'm not strong enough to handle the net, I hire a man for five kopecks. And, Lord, what a pleasure it is! You catch an eel-pout or a chub of some sort and are as pleased' as if you'd found your own brother. And let me tell you, there's a special trick with every fish: you catch one with a minnow, you catch another with a worm, the third with a frog or a grasshopper. You have to un- derstand all that, of course! Take the eel-pout, for in- stance. An eel-pout is a coarse fish—it will grab even a perch; a pike loves a gudgeon, the bullhead likes a butterfly. There's no greater pleasure than to fish for chub where the current is strong. You cast a seventy- foot line without a sinker, using a butterfly or a beetle, so that the bait floats on the surface; you stand in the water with your pants off and let it go with the current, and smack! the chub jerks it! Only you've got to be on the lookout that it doesn't snatch your bait away, the damned creature. As soon as it tugs at your line, you must give it a pulclass="underline" don't wait. What a lot of fish I've caught in my time! When we ran away, the other con- victs used to sleep in the forest; but I couldn't sleep, I made for the river. The rivers there are wide and rapid, the banks are steep—fearfully! And all along the banks there are dense forests. The trees are so tall that you get dizzy looking up to the top of them. At the prices timber brings here, every pine would fetch ten rubles."
Overwhelmed by the disorderly onrush of reveries, idealized images of the past, and sweet anticipations of happiness, the wretched fellow sinks into silence, merely moving his lips as though whispering to himself. A dazed, blissful smile never leaves his face. The con- stables are silent. They are sunk in thought, their heads bowed. In the autumn stillness, when the chill, sullen mist that hangs over the earth weighs upon the heart, when it looms like a prison wall before the eyes, and bears witness to the limited scope of man's will, it is sweet to think of broad, swift rivers, with steep banks open to the sky, of impenetrable forests, of boundless plains. Slowly and tranquilly imagination conjures up the picture of a man, early in the morning, before the flush of dawn has left the sky, making his way along the steep, lonely bank, looking like a tiny speck: age-old pines, fit for ships' masts, rise up in terraces on both sides of the torrent, gaze sternly at the free man and murmur menacingly; roots, huge boulders, and thorny bushes bar his way, but he is strong in body and bold in spirit, and fears neither the pine trees nor the boul- ders, nor his solitude, nor the reverberant echo that re- peats the sound of his every footstep.
The constables picture to themselves a free life such as they have never lived; whether they vaguely remem- ber scenes from stories heard long ago or whether they have inherited notions of a free life from remote free ancestors with their flesh and blood, God alone knows!
The first to break the silence is Nikandr Sapozhnikov, who until now has not uttered a single word. Whether he envies the tramp's illusory happiness, or whether he feels in his heart that dreams of happiness are out of keeping with the gray fog and the dirty brown mud—at all events, he looks grimly at the tramp and says:
"That's all right, to be sure, but you won't never get to them free lands, brother. How can you? You'd walk two hundred miles and you'd give up the ghost. Look, you're half dead already! You've hardly gone five miles and you can't get your breath."
The tramp turns slowly toward Nikandr, and his bliss- ful smile vanishes. He looks with a scared and guilty air at the constable's sedate face, apparently remembers something, and lets his head drop. Silence falls again. All three are pensive. The constables are struggling to grasp with their imagination what can perhaps be grasped by none but God—that is, the vast expanse which separates them from the land of freedom. But the tramp's mind is filled with clear, distinct images more terrible than that expanse. He envisages vividly legal red tape and procrastinations, jails used as distributing centers and regular penal institutions, prison barracks, exhausting delays en route, cold winters, illnesses, deaths of comrades. . . .
The tramp blinks guiltily, passes his sleeve across his forehead that is beaded with tiny drops of sweat, and puffs hard as though he had just emerged from a steam- ing bathhouse, then wipes his forehead with his other sleeve and looks round timorously.
"That's a fact; you won't get there!" Ptaha agrees. "What kind of a walker are you, anyway? Look at you —nothing but skin and bone! You'll die, brother!"
"Sure he'll die. How can he help it?" says Nikandr. "They'll put him in the hospital straight off. Surel"
The man who will not reveal his identity looks with horror at the stern, dispassionate faces of his sinister companions, and without removing his cap, hurriedly crosses himself, his eyes bulging. He trembles all over, shakes his head, and begins writhing, like a caterpillar that, has been stepped on.
"Well, it's time to go," says Nikandr, getting to his feet; "we've had a rest."
A minute later the wayfarers are stepping along the muddy road. The tramp is more hunched than before, and his hands are thrust deeper into his sleeves. Ptaha is silent.
1886
Heartache
"To whom shall I tell my sorrow?" [4]
E
VENING twilight. Large flakes of wet snow are circling lazily about the street lamps which have just been lighted, settling in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, peoples' shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the cabby, is all white like a ghost. As hunched as a liv- ing body can be, he sits on the box without stirring. If a whole snowdrift were to fall on him, even then, per- haps, he would not find it necessary to shake it off. His nag, too, is white and motionless. Her immobility, the angularity of her shape, and the sticklike straightness of her legs make her look like a penny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plow, from the familiar gray scenes, and cast into this whirlpool full of monstrous lights, of ceaseless uproar and hurrying people, cannot help think- ing.
Iona and his nag have not budged for a long time. They had driven out of the yard before dinnertime and haven't had a single fare yet. But now evening dusk is descending upon the city. The pale light of the street lamps changes to a vivid color and the bustle of the street grows louder.