Fifty-Two Stories

“Well, God be with you,” Likharev murmured, helping Miss Ilovaiskaya into the sledge. “Don’t remember evil…”¹¹Miss Ilovaiskaya was silent. When the sledge set off and began to skirt a big snowdrift, she turned and looked at Likharev as if she wanted to say something to him. He ran up to her, but she did not say a word to him, but only looked at him through her long eyelashes, on which snowflakes were hanging…

Either his sensitive soul had indeed been able to read that gaze, or maybe his imagination deceived him, but it suddenly began to seem to him that, another two or three good, firm strokes, and this girl would forgive him his failures, his age, his misery, and follow him, without asking questions, without reasoning. For a long time he stood as if rooted to the spot and looked at the tracks left by the runners. Snowflakes avidly settled on his hair, his beard, his shoulders…Soon the tracks of the runners disappeared, and he himself, covered with snow, began to look like a white cliff, but his eyes still went on searching for something in the clouds of snow.

1886

THE BEGGAR

“MY DEAR SIR! Be so good as to pay attention to an unfortunate, hungry man. I haven’t eaten for three days…don’t have a fiver for a night’s lodging…I swear to God! Eight years I worked as a village schoolmaster and lost my post owing to local intrigues…Fell victim to denunciation…I’ve been out of work for a year now.”

The barrister Skvortsov looked at the petitioner’s tattered blue-gray coat, his dull, drunken eyes, the red splotches on his cheeks, and it seemed to him that he had already seen this man somewhere before.

“Now they’re offering me a post in Kaluga province,” the petitioner went on, “but I have no means of getting there. Be so kind as to help me! I’m ashamed to ask, but…circumstances make it necessary.”

Skvortsov looked at the man’s galoshes, one of which was high and the other low, and suddenly remembered.

“Listen, I believe I met you three days ago on Sadovaya Street,” he said, “and you told me then that you were an expelled student, not a village schoolmaster. Remember?”

“N-no, it can’t be!” the petitioner mumbled in embarrassment. “I’m a village schoolmaster, and, if you wish, I can show you documents.”

“Enough lying! You called yourself a student and even told me what you were expelled for. Remember?”

Skvortsov turned red and stepped back from the ragbag with a look of disgust on his face.

“That is mean, my dear sir!” he shouted angrily. “You’re a crook! I’ll turn you over to the police, devil take you! You’re poor, hungry, but that doesn’t give you the right to lie so brazenly and shamelessly!”

The ragbag took hold of the door handle and perplexedly, like a caught thief, looked into the entryway.

“I…I’m not lying, sir!” he mumbled. “I can show you documents.”

“Who’s going to believe you?” Skvortsov went on indignantly. “To exploit society’s sympathy for village schoolmasters and students—it’s so low, mean, nasty! Outrageous!”

Skvortsov got carried away and scolded the petitioner in a most merciless fashion. By his impudent lying, the ragbag had awakened loathing and disgust in him, had insulted in him that which he, Skvortsov, so loved and valued in himself: kindness, a sensitive heart, compassion for the unfortunate; by his lying appeal for mercy, it was as if this “subject” had defiled the alms which he, out of purity of heart, liked to give to the poor. The ragbag began by justifying himself, swearing to God, but then fell silent and hung his head in shame.

“Sir!” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “Indeed, I…was lying! I’m not a student or a village schoolmaster. That’s all made up! I sang in a Russian choir, and was fired for drunkenness. But what am I to do? By God, it’s impossible without lying. When I tell the truth, nobody gives me alms. With the truth you die of hunger and freeze without night quarters! Your reasoning is correct, I understand, but…what am I to do?”

“What to do? You ask what you’re to do?” Skvortsov cried, going up close to him. “Work, that’s what! You must work!”

“Work…I understand that myself, but where will I find work?”

“Nonsense! You’re young, healthy, strong, and will always find work, if only you want to. But you’re lazy, spoiled, drunk! You stink of vodka like a pot-house! You’re false and shoddy to the marrow of your bones, and capable only of panhandling and lying! If you deign some day to lower yourself to work, you’ll expect it to be in an office, in a Russian choir, or as a billiard marker, where you can do nothing and get money for it! But how would you like to take up physical labor? It’s not as if you’d accept to be a street sweeper or a factory worker! You’ve got pretensions!”