The Man Who Was Afraid

Yozhov staggered about in the room like a drunken man, seized with madness, and the paper under his feet was rustling, tearing, flying in scraps. He gnashed his teeth, shook his head, his hands waved in the air like broken wings of a bird, and altogether it seemed as though he were being boiled in a kettle of hot water. Foma looked at him with a strange, mixed sensation; he pitied Yozhov, and at the same time he was pleased to see him suffering.

“I am not alone, he is suffering, too,” thought Foma, as Yozhov spoke. And something clashed in Yozhov’s throat, like broken glass, and creaked like an unoiled hinge.

“Poisoned by the kindness of men, I was ruined through the fatal capacity of every poor fellow during the making of his career, through the capacity of being reconciled with little in the expectation of much. Oh! Do you know, more people perish through lack of proper self-appreciation than from consumption, and perhaps that is why the leaders of the masses serve as district inspectors!”

“The devil take the district inspectors!” said Foma, with a wave of the hand. “Tell me about yourself.”

“About myself! I am here entire!” exclaimed Yozhov, stopping short in the middle of the room, and striking his chest with his hands. “I have already accomplished all I could accomplish. I have attained the rank of the public’s entertainer – and that is all I can do! To know what should be done, and not to be able to do it, not to have the strength for your work – that is torture!”

“That’s it! Wait awhile!” said Foma, enthusiastically. “Now tell me what one should do in order to live calmly; that is, in order to be satisfied with one’s self.”

To Foma these words sounded loud, but empty, and their sounds died away without stirring any emotion in his heart, without giving rise to a single thought in his mind.

“You must always be in love with something unattainable to you. A man grows in height by stretching himself upwards.”

Now that he had ceased speaking of himself, Yozhov began to talk more calmly, in a different voice. His voice was firm and resolute, and his face assumed an expression of importance and sternness. He stood in the centre of the room, his hand with outstretched fingers uplifted, and spoke as though he were reading:

“Men are base because they strive for satiety. The well-fed man is an animal because satiety is the self-contentedness of the body. And the self-contentedness of the spirit also turns man into animal.”

Again he started as though all his veins and muscles were suddenly strained, and again he began to run about the room in seething agitation.

“A self-contented man is the hardened swelling on the breast of society. He is my sworn enemy. He fills himself up with cheap truths, with gnawed morsels of musty wisdom, and he exists like a storeroom where a stingy housewife keeps all sorts of rubbish which is absolutely unnecessary to her, and worthless. If you touch such a man, if you open the door into him, the stench of decay will be breathed upon you, and a stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. These unfortunate people call themselves men of firm character, men of principles and convictions. And no one cares to see that convictions are to them but the clothes with which they cover the beggarly nakedness of their souls. On the narrow brows of such people there always shines the inscription so familiar to all: calmness and confidence. What a false inscription! Just rub their foreheads with firm hand and then you will see the real sign-board, which reads: ‘Narrow mindedness and weakness of soul!’”

Foma watched Yozhov bustling about the room, and thought mournfully:

“Whom is he abusing? I can’t understand; but I can see that he has been terribly wounded.”

“How many such people have I seen!” exclaimed Yozhov, with wrath and terror. “How these little retail shops have multiplied in life! In them you will find calico for shrouds, and tar, candy and borax for the extermination of cockroaches, but you will not find anything fresh, hot, wholesome! You come to them with an aching soul exhausted by loneliness; you come, thirsting to hear something that has life in it. And they offer to you some worm cud, ruminated book-thoughts, grown sour with age. And these dry, stale thoughts are always so poor that, in order to give them expression, it is necessary to use a vast number of high-sounding and empty words. When such a man speaks I say to myself: ‘There goes a well-fed, but over-watered mare, all decorated with bells; she’s carting a load of rubbish out of the town, and the miserable wretch is content with her fate.’”

“They are superfluous people, then,” said Foma. Yozhov stopped short in front of him and said with a biting smile on his lips:

“No, they are not superfluous, oh no! They exist as an example, to show what man ought not to be. Speaking frankly, their proper place is the anatomical museums, where they preserve all sorts of monsters and various sickly deviations from the normal. In life there is nothing that is superfluous, dear. Even I am necessary! Only those people, in whose souls dwells a slavish cowardice before life, in whose bosoms there are enormous ulcers of the most abominable self-adoration, taking the places of their dead hearts – only those people are superfluous; but even they are necessary, if only for the sake of enabling me to pour my hatred upon them.”

All day long, until evening, Yozhov was excited, venting his blasphemy on men he hated, and his words, though their contents were obscure to Foma, infected him with their evil heat, and infecting called forth in him an eager desire for combat. At times there sprang up in him distrust of Yozhov, and in one of these moments he asked him plainly:

“Well! And can you speak like that in the face of men?”

“I do it at every convenient occasion. And every Sunday in the newspaper. I’ll read some to you if you like.”

Without waiting for Foma’s reply, he tore down from the wall a few sheets of paper, and still continuing to run about the room, began to read to him. He roared, squeaked, laughed, showed his teeth and looked like an angry dog trying to break the chain in powerless rage. Not grasping the ideals in his friend’s creations, Foma felt their daring audacity, their biting sarcasm, their passionate malice, and he was as well pleased with them as though he had been scourged with besoms in a hot bath.

“Clever!” he exclaimed, catching some separate phrase. “That’s cleverly aimed!”

Every now and again there flashed before him the familiar names of merchants and well-known citizens, whom Yozhov had stung, now stoutly and sharply, now respectfully and with a fine needle-like sting.

Foma’s approbation, his eyes burning with satisfaction, and his excited face gave Yozhov still more inspiration, and he cried and roared ever louder and louder, now falling on the lounge from exhaustion, now jumping up again and rushing toward Foma.

“Come, now, read about me!” exclaimed Foma, longing to hear it. Yozhov rummaged among a pile of papers, tore out one sheet, and holding it in both hands, stopped in front of Foma, with his legs straddled wide apart, while Foma leaned back in the broken-seated armchair and listened with a smile.

The notice about Foma started with a description of the spree on the rafts, and during the reading of the notice Foma felt that certain particular words stung him like mosquitoes. His face became more serious, and he bent his head in gloomy silence. And the mosquitoes went on multiplying.

“Now that’s too much!” said he, at length, confused and dissatisfied. “Surely you cannot gain the favour of God merely because you know how to disgrace a man.”

“Keep quiet! Wait awhile!” said Yozhov, curtly, and went on reading.

Having established in his article that the merchant rises beyond doubt above the representatives of other classes of society in the matter of nuisance and scandal-making, Yozhov asked: “Why is this so?” and replied:

“It seems to me that this predilection for wild pranks comes from the lack of culture in so far as it is dependent upon the excess of energy and upon idleness. There cannot be any doubt that our merchant class, with but few exceptions, is the healthiest and, at the same time, most inactive class.”

“That’s true!” exclaimed Foma, striking the table with his fist. “That’s true! I have the strength of a bull and do the work of a sparrow.”

“Where is the merchant to spend his energy? He cannot spend much of it on the Exchange, so he squanders the excess of his muscular capital in drinking-bouts in kabaky; for he has no conception of other applications of his strength, which are more productive, more valuable to life. He is still a beast, and life has already become to him a cage, and it is too narrow for him with his splendid health and predilection for licentiousness. Hampered by culture he at once starts to lead a dissolute life. The debauch of a merchant is always the revolt of a captive beast. Of course this is bad. But, ah! it will be worse yet, when this beast, in addition to his strength, shall have gathered some sense and shall have disciplined it. Believe me, even then he will not cease to create scandals, but they will be historical events. Heaven deliver us from such events! For they will emanate from the merchant’s thirst for power; their aim will be the omnipotence of one class, and the merchant will not be particular about the means toward the attainment of this aim.

“Well, what do you say, is it true?” asked Yozhov, when he had finished reading the newspaper, and thrown it aside.

“I don’t understand the end,” replied Foma. “And as to strength, that is true! Where am I to make use of my strength since there is no demand for it! I ought to fight with robbers, or turn a robber myself. In general I ought to do something big. And that should be done not with the head, but with the arms and the breast. While here we have to go to the Exchange and try to aim well to make a rouble. What do we need it for? And what is it, anyway? Has life been arranged in this form forever? What sort of life is it, if everyone is grieved and finds it too narrow for him? Life ought to be according to the taste of man. If it is narrow for me, I must move it asunder that I may have more room. I must break it and reconstruct it. But nod? That’s where the trouble lies! What ought to be done that life may be freer? That I do not understand, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Yes!” drawled out Yozhov. “So that’s where you’ve gone! That, dear, is a good thing! Ah, you ought to study a little! How are you about books? Do you read any?”

“No, I don’t care for them. I haven’t read any.”

“That’s just why you don’t care for them.” “I am even afraid to read them. I know one – a certain girl – it’s worse than drinking with her! And what sense is there in books? One man imagines something and prints it, and others read it. If it is interesting, it’s all right. But learn from a book how to live! – that is something absurd. It was written by man, not by God, and what laws and examples can man establish for himself?”

“And how about the Gospels? Were they not written by men?”

“Those were apostles. Now there are none.”

“Good, your refutation is sound! It is true, dear, there are no apostles. Only the Judases remained, and miserable ones at that.”

Foma felt very well, for he saw that Yozhov was attentively listening to his words and seemed to be weighing each and every word he uttered. Meeting such bearing toward him for the first time in his life, Foma unburdened himself boldly and freely before his friend, caring nothing for the choice of words, and feeling that he would be understood because Yozhov wanted to understand him.

“You are a curious fellow!” said Yozhov, about two days after their meeting. “And though you speak with difficulty, one feels that there is a great deal in you – great daring of heart! If you only knew a little about the order of life! Then you would speak loud enough, I think. Yes!”

“But you cannot wash yourself clean with words, nor can you then free yourself,” remarked Foma, with a sigh. “You have said something about people who pretend that they know everything, and can do everything. I also know such people. My godfather, for instance. It would be a good thing to set out against them, to convict them; they’re a pretty dangerous set!”

“I cannot imagine, Foma, how you will get along in life if you preserve within you that which you now have,” said Yozhov, thoughtfully.

“It’s very hard. I lack steadfastness. Of a sudden I could perhaps do something. I understand very well that life is difficult and narrow for every one of us. I know that my godfather sees that, too! But he profits by this narrowness. He feels well in it; he is sharp as a needle, and he’ll make his way wherever he pleases. But I am a big, heavy man, that’s why I am suffocating! That’s why I live in fetters. I could free myself from everything with a single effort: just to move my body with all my strength, and then all the fetters will burst!”

“And what then?” asked Yozhov.

“Then?” Foma became pensive, and, after a moment’s thought, waved his hand. “I don’t know what will be then. I shall see!”

“We shall see!” assented Yozhov.

He was given to drink, this little man who was scalded by life. His day began thus: in the morning at his tea he looked over the local newspapers and drew from the news notices material for his feuilleton, which he wrote right then and there on the corner of the table. Then he ran to the editorial office, where he made up “Provincial Pictures” out of clippings from country newspapers. On Friday he had to write his Sunday feuilleton. For all they paid him a hundred and twenty-five roubles a month; he worked fast, and devoted all his leisure time to the “survey and study of charitable institutions.” Together with Foma he strolled about the clubs, hotels and taverns till late at night, drawing material everywhere for his articles, which he called “brushes for the cleansing of the conscience of society.” The censor he styled as “superintendent of the diffusion of truth and righteousness in life,” the newspaper he called “the go-between, engaged in introducing the reader to dangerous ideas,” and his own work, “the sale of a soul in retail,” and “an inclination to audacity against holy institutions.”

Foma could hardly make out when Yozhov jested and when he was in earnest. He spoke of everything enthusiastically and passionately, he condemned everything harshly, and Foma liked it. But often, beginning to argue enthusiastically, he refuted and contradicted himself with equal enthusiasm or wound up his speech with some ridiculous turn. Then it appeared to Foma that that man loved nothing, that nothing was firmly rooted within him, that nothing guided him. Only when speaking of himself he talked in a rather peculiar voice, and the more impassioned he was in speaking of himself, the more merciless and enraged was he in reviling everything and everybody. And his relation toward Foma was dual; sometimes he gave him courage and spoke to him hotly, quivering in every limb.

“Go ahead! Refute and overthrow everything you can! Push forward with all your might. There is nothing more valuable than man, know this! Cry at the top of your voice: ‘Freedom! Freedom!”

But when Foma, warmed up by the glowing sparks of these words, began to dream of how he should start to refute and overthrow people who, for the sake of personal profit, do not want to broaden life, Yozhov would often cut him short:

“Drop it! You cannot do anything! People like you are not needed. Your time, the time of the strong but not clever, is past, my dear! You are too late! There is no place for you in life.”

“No? You are lying!” cried Foma, irritated by contradiction.

“Well, what can you accomplish?”

“I?”

“You!”

“Why, I can kill you!” said Foma, angrily, clenching his fist.

“Eh, you scarecrow!” said Yozhov, convincingly and pitifully, with a shrug of the shoulder. “Is there anything in that? Why, I am anyway half dead already from my wounds.”

And suddenly inflamed with melancholy malice, he stretched himself and said:

“My fate has wronged me. Why have I lowered myself, accepting the sops of the public? Why have I worked like a machine for twelve years in succession in order to study? Why have I swallowed for twelve long years in the Gymnasium and the University the dry and tedious trash and the contradictory nonsense which is absolutely useless to me? In order to become feuilleton-writer, to play the clown from day to day, entertaining the public and convincing myself that that is necessary and useful to them. Where is the powder of my youth? I have fired off all the charge of my soul at three copecks a shot. What faith have I acquired for myself? Only faith in the fact that everything in this life is worthless, that everything must be broken, destroyed. What do I love? Myself. And I feel that the object of my love does not deserve my love. What can I accomplish?”

He almost wept, and kept on scratching his breast and his neck with his thin, feeble hands.

But sometimes he was seized with a flow of courage, and then he spoke in a different spirit:

“I? Oh, no, my song is not yet sung to the end! My breast has imbibed something, and I’ll hiss like a whip! Wait, I’ll drop the newspaper, I’ll start to do serious work, and write one small book, which I will entitle ‘The Passing of the Soul’; there is a prayer by that name, it is read for the dying. And before its death this society, cursed by the anathema of inward impotence, will receive my book like incense.”

Listening to each and every word of his, watching him and comparing his remarks, Foma saw that Yozhov was just as weak as he was, that he, too, had lost his way. But Yozhov’s mood still infected Foma, his speeches enriched Foma’s vocabulary, and sometimes he noticed with joyous delight how cleverly and forcibly he had himself expressed this or that idea. He often met in Yozhov’s house certain peculiar people, who, it seemed to him, knew everything, understood everything, contradicted everything, and saw deceit and falsehood in everything. He watched them in silence, listened to their words; their audacity pleased him, but he was embarrassed and repelled by their condescending and haughty bearing toward him. And then he clearly saw that in Yozhov’s room they were all cleverer and better than they were in the street and in the hotels. They held peculiar conversations, words and gestures for use in the room, and all this was changed outside the room, into the most commonplace and human. Sometimes, in the room, they all blazed up like a huge woodpile, and Yozhov was the brightest firebrand among them; but the light of this bonfire illuminated but faintly the obscurity of Foma Gordyeeff’s soul.

One day Yozhov said to him:

“Today we will carouse! Our compositors have formed a union, and they are going to take all the work from the publisher on a contract. There will be some drinking on this account, and I am invited. It was I who advised them to do it. Let us go? You will give them a good treat.”

“Very well!” said Foma, to whom it was immaterial with whom he passed the time, which was a burden to him.

In the evening of that day Foma and Yozhov sat in the company of rough-faced people, on the outskirts of a grove, outside the town. There were twelve compositors there, neatly dressed; they treated Yozhov simply, as a comrade, and this somewhat surprised and embarrassed Foma, in whose eyes Yozhov was after all something of a master or superior to them, while they were really only his servants. They did not seem to notice Gordyeeff, although, when Yozhov introduced Foma to them, they shook hands with him and said that they were glad to see him. He lay down under a hazel-bush, and watched them all, feeling himself a stranger in this company, and noticing that even Yozhov seemed to have got away from him deliberately, and was paying but little attention to him. He perceived something strange about Yozhov; the little feuilleton-writer seemed to imitate the tone and the speech of the compositors. He bustled about with them at the woodpile, uncorked bottles of beer, cursed, laughed loudly and tried his best to resemble them. He was even dressed more simply than usual.

“Eh, brethren!” he exclaimed, with enthusiasm. “I feel well with you! I’m not a big bird, either. I am only the son of the courthouse guard, and noncommissioned officer, Matvey Yozhov!”

“Why does he say that?” thought Foma. “What difference does it make whose son a man is? A man is not respected on account of his father, but for his brains.”

The sun was setting like a huge bonfire in the sky, tinting the clouds with hues of gold and of blood. Dampness and silence were breathed from the forest, while at its outskirts dark human figures bustled about noisily. One of them, short and lean, in a broad-brimmed straw hat, played the accordion; another one, with dark moustache and with his cap on the back of his head, sang an accompaniment softly. Two others tugged at a stick, testing their strength. Several busied themselves with the basket containing beer and provisions; a tall man with a grayish beard threw branches on the fire, which was enveloped in thick, whitish smoke. The damp branches, falling on the fire, crackled and rustled plaintively, and the accordion teasingly played a lively tune, while the falsetto of the singer reinforced and completed its loud tones.

Apart from them all, on the brink of a small ravine, lay three young fellows, and before them stood Yozhov, who spoke in a ringing voice:

“You bear the sacred banner of labour. And I, like yourselves, am a private soldier in the same army. We all serve Her Majesty, the Press. And we must live in firm, solid friendship.”

“That’s true, Nikolay Matveyich!” some one’s thick voice interrupted him. “And we want to ask you to use your influence with the publisher! Use your influence with him! Illness and drunkenness cannot be treated as one and the same thing. And, according to his system, it comes out thus; if one of us gets drunk he is fined to the amount of his day’s earnings; if he takes sick the same is done. We ought to be permitted to present the doctor’s certificate, in case of sickness, to make it certain; and he, to be just, ought to pay the substitute at least half the wages of the sick man. Otherwise, it is hard for us. What if three of us should suddenly be taken sick at once?”

“Yes; that is certainly reasonable,” assented Yozhov. “But, my friends, the principle of cooperation – ”

Foma ceased listening to the speech of his friend, for his attention was diverted by the conversation of others. Two men were talking; one was a tall consumptive, poorly dressed and angry-looking man; the other a fair-haired and fair-bearded young man.

“In my opinion,” said the tall man sternly, and coughing, “it is foolish! How can men like us marry? There will be children. Do we have enough to support them? The wife must be clothed – and then you can’t tell what sort of a woman you may strike.”

“She’s a fine girl,” said the fair-haired man, softly. “Well, it’s now that she is fine. A betrothed girl is one thing, a wife quite another. But that isn’t the main point. You can try – perhaps she will really be good. But then you’ll be short of means. You will kill yourself with work, and you will ruin her, too. Marriage is an impossible thing for us. Do you mean to say that we can support a family on such earnings? Here, you see, I have only been married four years, and my end is near. I have seen no joy – nothing but worry and care.”

He began to cough, coughed for a long time, with a groan, and when he had ceased, he said to his comrade in a choking voice:

“Drop it, nothing will come of it!”

His interlocutor bent his head mournfully, while Foma thought:

“He speaks sensibly. It’s evident he can reason well.”

The lack of attention shown to Foma somewhat offended him and aroused in him at the same time a feeling of respect for these men with dark faces impregnated with lead-dust. Almost all of them were engaged in practical serious conversation, and their remarks were studded with certain peculiar words. None of them fawned upon him, none bothered him with love, with his back to the fire, and he saw before him a row of brightly illuminated, cheerful and simple faces. They were all excited from drinking, but were not yet intoxicated; they laughed, jested, tried to sing, drank, and ate cucumbers, white bread and sausages. All this had for Foma a particularly pleasant flavour; he grew bolder, seized by the general good feeling, and he longed to say something good to these people, to please them all in some way or other. Yozhov, sitting by his side, moved about on the ground, jostled him with his shoulder and, shaking his head, muttered something indistinctly.