Part 53

Someone among the throng around him exclaimed reprovingly:

"It is not about your cap that you ought to be thinking, but about your soul."

Upon this he hiccuped loudly and freely, like a camel, and emitted a stream of turgid water from his mouth. Then, looking at the crowd with lack-lustre eyes, he said in an apathetic tone:

"Let me be taken elsewhere."

In answer, the boatswain sternly bade him stretch himself out, and this the young fellow did, with his hands clasped under his head, and his eyes closed, while the boatswain added brusquely to the onlookers:

"Move away, move away, good people. What is there to stare at? This is not a show.... Hi, you muzhik! Why did you play us such a trick, damn you?"

The crowd however, was not to be suppressed, but indulged in comments.

"He murdered his father, didn't he?"

"What? THAT wretched creature?"

As for the boatswain, he squatted upon his heels, and proceeded to subject the rescued man to a course of strict interrogation.

"What is the destination marked on your ticket?"

"Perm."

"Then you ought to leave the boat at Kazan. And what is your name?"

"Yakov."

"And your surname?"

"Bashkin--though we are known also as the Bukolov family."

"Your family has a DOUBLE surname, then?"

With the full power of his trumpet-like lungs the bearded peasant (evidently he had lost his temper) broke in:

"Though his uncle and his brother have been sentenced to penal servitude and are travelling together on that barge, he--well, he has received his discharge! That is only a personal matter, however. In spite of what judges may say, one ought never to kill, since conscience cannot bear the thought of blood. Even nearly to become a murderer is wrong."

By this time more and more passengers had collected as they awakened from sleep and emerged from the first- and second-class cabins. Among them was the mate, a man with a black moustache and rubicund features who inquired of someone amid the confusion: "You are not a doctor, I suppose?" and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: "No, sir, nor ever have been one."

To this someone added with a drawl:

"Why is a doctor needed? Surely the man is a fellow of no particular importance?"

Over the river the radiance of the summer daylight had gathered increased strength, and, since the date was a Sunday, bells were sounding seductively from a hill, and a couple of women in gala apparel who were following the margin of the river waved handkerchiefs towards the steamer, and shouted some greeting.

Meanwhile the young fellow lay motionless, with his eyes closed. Divested of his pea-jacket, and wrapped about with wet, clinging underclothing, he looked more symmetrical than previously--his chest seemed better developed, his body plumper, and his face more rotund and less ugly.

Yet though the passengers gazed at him with compassion or distaste or severity or fear, as the case might be, all did so without ceremony, as though he had not been a living man at all.

For instance, a gaunt gentleman in a grey frock-coat said to a lady in a yellow straw hat adorned with a pink ribbon:

"At our place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went and hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped every watch and clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did he stop them?"

"An abnormal case indeed!"