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Updated: May 6, 2025
A minute later they were stepping along the muddy road. The tramp was more bent than ever, and he thrust his hands further up his sleeves. Ptaha was silent. MELITON SHISHKIN, a bailiff from the Dementyev farm, exhausted by the sultry heat of the fir-wood and covered with spiders' webs and pine-needles, made his way with his gun to the edge of the wood.
They were not the tears of soft joy such as the earth weeps at welcoming the summer sun and parting from it, and such as she gives to drink at dawn to the corncrakes, quails, and graceful, long-beaked crested snipes. The travellers' feet stuck in the heavy, clinging mud. Every step cost an effort. Andrey Ptaha was somewhat excited.
I don't know my parent; it is no use concealing it. I judge that I was mamma's illegitimate son. My mamma lived all her life with the gentry, and did not want to marry a simple peasant...." "And so she fell into the master's hands," laughed Ptaha. "She did transgress, that's true. She was pious, God-fearing, but she did not keep her maiden purity.
"God knows what to make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing the tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but some sort of a thing between.... The other day I was washing a sieve in the pond and caught a reptile see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. The first minute I thought it was a fish, then I looked and, blow it! if it hadn't paws.
"For his wisdom God had added to his forehead" that is, he was bald which increased the resemblance referred to. The first was called Andrey Ptaha, the second Nikandr Sapozhnikov. The man they were escorting did not in the least correspond with the conception everyone has of a tramp. He was a frail little man, weak and sickly-looking, with small, colourless, and extremely indefinite features.
Another man will take no pleasure in anything but vodka and lewd talk, but when I have time I sit in a corner and read a book. I read and I weep and weep." "What do you weep for?" "They write so pathetically! For some books one gives but a five-kopeck piece, and yet one weeps and sighs exceedingly over it." "Is your father dead?" asked Ptaha. "I don't know, good man.
Don't you tell anybody...." "Oh, nobody's going to ask us," said Ptaha. "So you've run away from prison, have you?" "I have, dear friend. Fourteen of us ran away. Some folks, God bless them! ran away and took me with them. Now you tell me, on your conscience, good man, what reason have I to disclose my name? They will send me back to penal servitude, you know! And I am not fit for penal servitude!
And I observe my religious duties punctually...." "Well, what are you called, then?" "Call me what you like, good man." Ptaha shrugged his shoulders and slapped himself on the haunches in extreme perplexity. The other constable, Nikandr Sapozhnikov, maintained a staid silence.
He was not so naive as Ptaha, and apparently knew very well the reasons which might induce an orthodox Christian to conceal his name from other people. His expressive face was cold and stern. He walked apart and did not condescend to idle chatter with his companions, but, as it were, tried to show everyone, even the fog, his sedateness and discretion.
The tramp blinked guiltily, wiped the tiny drops of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, drew a deep breath as though he had just leapt out of a very hot bath, then wiped his forehead with the other sleeve and looked round fearfully. "That's true; you won't get there!" Ptaha agreed. "You are not much of a walker! Look at you nothing but skin and bone! You'll die, brother!"
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