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Updated: May 15, 2025
Breaking off short, he turned his head upon his shoulder, and sat listening to some shouting that was going on across the river. Everyone in that quarter was drunk, and, in particular, someone could be heard bawling in a tone of challenge: "Oh? I, you say? A-a-ah! Then take that!" Silantiev, stepping lightly from stone to stone, crossed the river. Somehow, on his departure, I felt ill at ease.
"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning to me, he added more loudly: "I say this of such fellows that a tavern... But what a noise those roisterers are making, to be sure!" The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted: "Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize him!" While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort: "What?
Were I older than I am, I too should contrive to get finished off; for old-age is a far from desirable thing. Yes, indeed! But, as things are, I am still alive, nor, thank the Lord, does anything matter very much." Presently, with a nod towards Silantiev, he continued: "Even now HIS kinsfolk or his wife may be looking for news of him, or a letter from him.
The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd, straighten himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl himself at the crowd again. As he did so the young fellow in the red shirt raised a gigantic arm, and there followed the sound of a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering backwards, Silantiev slid silently into the water, and lay there at my feet.
Here his small, grey face contracted into wrinkles, and, closing his eyes, he sobbed a dry, grating sob. Silantiev fidgeted then sighed. Presently the old man looked at him, blew his nose, wiped his hand upon his trousers, and said quietly: "Somewhere, I think, I have seen you before." "That is so. You saw me one evening when I visited your settlement for the mending of a thresher." "Yes, yes.
"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a cigarette. "Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka!... Yet are you not sorry for fellows of that stamp?"
"I think that someone has given him a blow," hazarded Silantiev sotto voce. And when the foreman rose to approach us this proved to be the case, for then we saw that dripping from his nose, and meandering over his moustache and soaked white beard, there was a stream of dark blood which had spotted and streaked his shirt-front.
Much rather would I go and earn a living on difficult land." The old man paid no heed, but said to Silantiev said to him with an austere, derisive smile: "Do you STILL think it necessary to struggle against what has been ordained of God? Do you STILL think that long-suffering is bad, and resistance good?
Young man, your soul is weak indeed: and remember that it is only the soul that can overcome Satan." In response Silantiev rose to his feet, shook his fist at the old man, and shouted in a rough, angry voice, a voice that was not his own: "All that I have heard before, and from others besides yourself. The truth is that I hold all you father-confessors in abhorrence.
"That's right!" was the comment of someone. For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way. As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.
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