第50章 ON A RIVER STEAMER(6)

Here and there on the yellow strip of sand by the river's margin, long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the persistent murmur of human voices.

Similarly the buff-coloured bales in the steamer's stem gradually reddened, as did the grey tints in the beard of the large peasant where, sprawling his ponderous form over the deck, he was lying asleep with mouth open, nostrils distended with stertorous snores, brows raised as though in astonishment, and thick moustache intermittently twitching.

Someone amid the piles of bales was panting as he fidgeted, and as I glanced in that direction I encountered the gaze of a pair of small, narrow, inflamed eyes, and beheld before me the ragged, mitten-like face, though now it looked even thinner and greyer than it had done on the previous evening. Apparently its owner was feeling cold, for he had hunched his chin between his knees, and clasped his hirsute arms around his legs, as his eyes stared gloomily, with a hunted air, in my direction. Then wearily, lifelessly he said:

"Yes,you have found me. And now you can thrash me if you wish to do so--you can give me a blow, for I gave you one, and, consequently, it's your turn to do the hitting."

Stupefied with astonishment, I inquired in an undertone.

"It was you, then, that hit me?"

"It was so, but where are your witnesses?"

The words came in hoarse, croaked, suppressed accents, with a separation of the hands, and an upthrow of the head and projecting cars which had such a comical look of being crushed beneath the weight of the battened-down cap. Next, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, the man repeated in a tone of challenge:

"Where, I say, are your witnesses? You can go to the devil!"

I could discern in him something at once helpless and froglike which evoked in me a strong feeling of repulsion; and since, with that, I had no real wish to converse with him, or even to revenge myself upon him for his cowardly blow, I turned away in silence.

But a moment later I looked at him again, and saw that he was seated in his former posture, with his arms embracing his knees, his chin resting upon them, and his red, sleepless eyes gazing lifelessly at the barge which the steamer was towing between wide ribbons of foaming water--ribbons sparkling in the sunlight like mash in a brewer's vat.

And those eyes, that dead, alienated expression, the gay cheerfulness of the morning, and the clear radiance of the heavens, and the kindly tints of the two banks, and the vocal sounds of the June day, and the bracing freshness of the air, and the whole scene around us served but to throw into the more tragic relief.

*******************************

Just as the steamer was leaving Sundir the man threw himself into the water;in the sight of everybody he sprang overboard.

Upon that all shouted, jostled their neighbours as they rushed to the side, and fell to scanning the river where from bank to bank it lay wrapped in blinding glitter.

The whistle sounded in fitful alarm, the sailors threw lifebelts overboard, the deck rumbled like a drum under the crowd's surging rush, steam hissed afflightedly, a woman vented an hysterical cry, and the captain bawled from the bridge the imperious command:

"Avast heaving lifebelts! By now the fool will have got one!

Damn you, calm the passengers!"

An unwashed, untidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back his long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat shoulder jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped people up.

"A muzhik, is it, or a woman? A muzhik, eh?"

By the time that I had made my way to the stern the man had fallen far behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as small as a fly on the glassy surface of the water. However, towards that fly a fishing-boat was already darting with the swiftness of a water beetle, and causing its two oars to show quiveringly red and grey, while from the marshier of the two banks there began hastily to put out a second boat which leapt in the steamer's wash with the gaiety of a young calf.

Suddenly there broke into the painful hubbub on the steamer's deck a faint, heartrending cry of "A-a-ah!"

In answer to it a sharp-nosed, black-bearded, well-dressed peasant muttered with a smack of his lips:

"Ah! That is him shouting. What a madman he must have been! And an ugly customer too, wasn't he?"

The peasant with the curly beard rejoined in a tone of conviction engulfing all other utterances:

"It is his conscience that is catching him. Think what you like, but never can conscience be suppressed."

Therewith, constantly interrupting one another, the pair betook themselves to a public recital of the tragic story of the fair-haired young fellow, whom the fishermen had now lifted from the water, and were conveying towards the steamer with oars that oscillated at top speed.

The bearded peasant continued:

"As soon as it was seen that he was but running after the soldier's wife."

"Besides," the other peasant interrupted, "the property was not to be divided after the death of the father."

With which the bearded muzhik eagerly recounted the history of the murder done by the brother, the nephew, and a son, while the spruce, spare, well-dressed peasant interlarded the general buzz of conversation with words and comments cheerfully and stridently delivered, much as though he were driving in stakes for the erection of a fence.

"Every man is drawn most in the direction whither he finds it easiest to go."

"Then it will be the Devil that will be drawing him, since the direction of Hell is always the easiest."

"Well, YOU will not be going that way, I suppose? You don't altogether fancy it?"

"Why should I?"

"Because you have declared it to be the easiest way."

"Well, I am not a saint."

"No, ha-ha! you are not."

"And you mean that--?"