Part 18

"What?" sniggered Boev, now both disillusioned and astonished. "Do you really mean to say that that leg of yours is better already? Or do you mean that it never was injured at all?"

"Ah! So you wish that it HAD been injured, eh?"

"The rascal of a Petrushka!" the other exclaimed.

"Now," commanded Ossip, "do all of you be off, mates." And with that he pulled his wet cap on to his head.

I accompanied him--walking a little behind the rest. As he limped along, he said in an undertone-said kindly--and as though he were communicating a secret known only to himself:

"Whatsoever one may do, and whithersoever one may turn, one will find that life cannot be lived without a measure of fraud and deceit. For that is what life IS, Makarei, the devil fly away with it!... I suppose you're making for the hill? Well, I'll keep you company."

Darkness had fallen, but at a certain spot some red and yellow lamps, lamps the beams of which seemed to be saying, "Come up hither!" were shining through the obscurity.

Meanwhile, as we proceeded in the direction of the bells that were ringing on the hill, rivulets of water flowed with a murmur under our feet, and Ossip's kindly voice kept mingling with their sound.

"See," he continued, "how easily I befooled that sergeant! That is how things have to be done, Makarei--one has to keep folk from knowing one's business, yet to make them think that they are the chief persons concerned, and the persons whose wit has put the cap on the whole."

Yet as I listened to his speech, while supporting his steps, I could make little of it.

Nor did I care to make very much of it, for I was of a simple and easygoing nature. And though at the moment I could not have told whether I really liked Ossip, I would still have followed his lead in any direction--yes, even across the river again, though the ice had been giving way beneath me.

And as we proceeded, and the bells echoed and re-echoed, I thought to myself with a spasm of joy:

"Ah, many times may I thus walk to greet the spring!"

While Ossip said with a sigh:

"The human soul is a winged thing. Even in sleep it flies."

* * * * *

A winged thing? Yes, and a thing of wonder.

GUBIN

The place where I first saw him was a tavern wherein, ensconced in the chimney-corner, and facing a table, he was exclaiming stutteringly, "Oh, I know the truth about you all! Yes, I know the truth about you!" while standing in a semicircle in front of him, and unconsciously rendering him more and more excited with their sarcastic interpolations, were some tradesmen of the superior sort--five in number. One of them remarked indifferently:

"How should you NOT know the truth about us, seeing that you do nothing but slander us?"

Shabby, in fact in rags, Gubin at that moment reminded me of a homeless dog which, having strayed into a strange street, has found itself held up by a band of dogs of superior strength, and, seized with nervousness, is sitting back on its haunches and sweeping the dust with its tail; and, with growls, and occasional barings of its fangs, and sundry barkings, attempting now to intimidate its adversaries, and now to conciliate them. Meanwhile, having perceived the stranger's helplessness and insignificance, the native pack is beginning to moderate its attitude, in the conviction that, though continued maintenance of dignity is imperative, it is not worthwhile to pick a quarrel so long as an occasional yelp be vented in the stranger's face.

"To whom are you of any use?" one of the tradesmen at length inquired.

"Not a man of us but may be of use."

"To whom, then?"...

I had long since grown familiar with tavern disputes concerning verities, and not infrequently seen those disputes develop into open brawls; but never had I permitted myself to be drawn into their toils, or to be set wandering amid their tangles like a blind man negotiating a number of hillocks. Moreover, just before this encounter with Gubin, I had arrived at a dim surmise that when such differences were carried to the point of madness and bloodshed. Really, they constituted an expression of the unmeaning, hopeless, melancholy life that is lived in the wilder and more remote districts of Russia--of the life that is lived on swampy banks of dingy rivers, and in our smaller and more God-forgotten towns. For it would seem that in such places men have nothing to look for, nor any knowledge of how to look for anything; wherefore, they brawl and shout in vain attempts to dissipate despondency....

I myself was sitting near Gubin, but on the other side of the table. Yet, this was not because his outbursts and the tradesmen's retorts thereto were a pleasure to listen to, since to me both the one and the other seemed about as futile as beating the air.

"To whom are YOU of use?"

"To himself every man can be useful."