The Man Who Was Afraid

And taking Foma by the hand, she made him sit down, like a child, in her lap, pressed his head close to her breast, and, bending over him, pressed her lips to his for a long time.

“What are you crying about?” asked Foma, caressing her cheek with one hand, while the other clasped the woman’s neck.

“I am crying about myself. Why have you sent me away?” she asked plaintively.

“I began to feel ashamed of myself,” said Foma, lowering his head.

“My darling! Tell me the truth – haven’t you been pleased with me?” she asked with a smile, but her big, hot tears were still trickling down on Foma’s breast.

“Why should you speak like this?” exclaimed the youth, almost frightened, and hotly began to mumble to her some words about her beauty, about her kindness, telling her how sorry he was for her and how bashful in her presence. And she listened and kept on kissing his cheeks, his neck, his head and his uncovered breast.

He became silent – then she began to speak – softly and mournfully as though speaking of the dead:

“And I thought it was something else. When you said, ‘Be gone!’ I got up and went away. And your words made me feel sad, very sad. There was a time, I remembered, when they caressed me and fondled me unceasingly, without growing tired; for a single kind smile they used to do for me anything I pleased. I recalled all this and began to cry! I felt sorry for my youth, for I am now thirty years old, the last days for a woman! Eh, Foma Ignatyevich!” she exclaimed, lifting her voice louder, and reiterating the rhythm of her harmonious speech, whose accents rose and fell in unison with the melodious murmuring of the water.

“Listen to me – preserve your youth! There is nothing in the world better than that. There is nothing more precious than youth. With youth, as with gold, you can accomplish anything you please. Live so that you shall have in old age something to remind you of your youth. Here I recalled myself, and though I cried, yet my heart blazed up at the very recollection of my past life. And again I was young, as though I drank of the water of life! My sweet child I’ll have a good time with you, if I please you, we’ll enjoy ourselves as much as we can. Eh! I’ll burn to ashes, now that I have blazed up!”

And pressing the youth close to herself, she greedily began to kiss him on the lips.

“Lo-o-ok o-u-u-u-t!” the watch on the barge wailed mournfully, and, cutting short the last syllable, began to strike his mallet against the cast-iron board.

The shrill, trembling sounds harshly broke the solemn quiet of the night.

A few days later, when the barges had discharged their cargo and the steamer was ready to leave for Perm, Yefim noticed, to his great sorrow, that a cart came up to the shore and that the dark-eyed Pelageya, with a trunk and with some bundles, was in it.

“Send a sailor to bring her things,” ordered Foma, nodding his head toward the shore.

With a reproachful shake of his head, Yefim carried out the order angrily, and then asked in a lowered voice:

“So she, too, is coming with us?”

“She is going with me,” Foma announced shortly.

“It is understood. Not with all of us. Oh, Lord!”

“Why are you sighing?”

“Yes. Foma Ignatyich! We are going to a big city. Are there not plenty of women of her kind?”

“Well, keep quiet!” said Foma, sternly.

“I will keep quiet, but this isn’t right!”

“What?”

“This very wantonness of ours. Our steamer is perfect, clean – and suddenly there is a woman there! And if it were at least the right sort of a woman! But as it is, she merely bears the name of woman.”

Foma frowned insinuatingly and addressed the captain, imperiously emphasizing his words:

“Yefim, I want you to bear it in mind, and to tell it to everybody here, that if anyone will utter an obscene word about her, I’ll strike him on the head with a log of wood!”

“How terrible!” said Yefim, incredulously, looking into the master’s face with curiosity. But he immediately made a step backward. Ignat’s son, like a wolf, showed his teeth, the apples of his eyes became wider, and he roared:

“Laugh! I’ll show you how to laugh!”

Though Yefim lost courage, he nevertheless said with dignity:

“Although you, Foma Ignatyich, are the master, yet as I was told, ‘Watch, Yefim,’ and then I am the captain here.”

“The captain?” cried Foma, shuddering in every limb and turning pale. “And who am I?”

“Well, don’t bawl! On account of such a trifle as a woman.”

Red spots came out on Foma’s pale face, he shifted from one foot to the other, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket with a convulsive motion and said in a firm and even voice:

“You! Captain! See here, say another word against me – and you go to the devil! I’ll put you ashore! I’ll get along as well with the pilot! Understand? You cannot command me. Do you see?”

Yefim was dumfounded. He looked at his master and comically winked his eyes, finding no reply to his words.

“Do you understand, I say?”

“Yes. I understand!” drawled Yefim. “But what is all this noise about? On account of – ”

“Silence!”

Foma’s eyes, which flashed wildly, and his face distorted with wrath, suggested to the captain the happy thought to leave his master as soon as possible and, turning around quickly, he walked off.

“Pshaw! How terrible! As it seems the apple did not fall too far from the tree,” he muttered sneeringly, walking on the deck. He was angry at Foma, and considered himself offended for nothing, but at the same time he began to feel over himself the real, firm hand of a master. For years accustomed to being subordinate, he rather liked this manifestation of power over him, and, entering the cabin of the old pilot, he related to him the scene between himself and his master, with a shade of satisfaction in his voice.

“See?” he concluded his story. “A pup coming from a good breed is an excellent dog at the very first chase. From his exterior he is so-so. A man of rather heavy mind as yet. Well, never mind, let him have his fun. It seems now as though nothing wrong will come out of this. With a character like his, no. How he bawled at me! A regular trumpet, I tell you! And he appointed himself master at once. As though he had sipped power and strictness out of a ladle.”

Yefim spoke the truth: during these few days Foma underwent a striking transformation. The passion now kindled in him made him master of the soul and body of a woman; he eagerly absorbed the fiery sweetness of this power, and this burned out all that was awkward in him, all that gave him the appearance of a somewhat stupid, gloomy fellow, and, destroying it, filled his heart with youthful pride, with the consciousness of his human personality. Love for a woman is always fruitful to the man, be the love whatever it may; even though it were to cause but sufferings there is always much that is rich in it. Working as a powerful poison on those whose souls are afflicted, it is for the healthy man as fire for iron, which is to be transformed into steel.

Foma’s passion for the thirty-year-old woman, who lamented in his embraces her dead youth, did not tear him away from his affairs; he was never lost in the caresses, or in his affairs, bringing into both his whole self. The woman, like good wine, provoked in him alike a thirst for labour and for love, and she, too, became younger from the kisses of the youth.

In Perm, Foma found a letter waiting for him. It was from his godfather, who notified him that Ignat, out of anxiety for his son, had begun to drink heavily, and that it was harmful to drink thus, for a man of his age. The letter concluded with advice to hurry up matters in order to return home the sooner. Foma felt alarmed over this advice, and it clouded the clear holiday of his heart. But this shadow soon melted in his worries over his affairs, and in the caresses of Pelageya. His life streamed on with the swiftness of a river wave, and each day brought to him new sensations, awakening in him new thoughts. Pelageya’s relations with him contained all the passion of a mistress, all that power of feeling which women of her age put into their passion when drinking the last drops from the cup of life. But at times a different feeling awoke in her, a feeling not less powerful, and by which Foma became still more attached to her – something similar to a mother’s yearning to guard her beloved son from errors, to teach him the wisdom of life. Oftentimes at night, sitting in his embraces on the deck, she spoke to him tenderly and sadly:

“Mind me as an older sister of yours. I have lived, I know men. I have seen a great deal in my life! Choose your companions with care, for there are people just as contagious as a disease. At first you cannot tell them even when you see them; he looks to be a man like everybody else, and, suddenly, without being aware of it yourself, you will start to imitate him in life. You look around – and you find that you have contracted his scabs. I myself have lost everything on account of a friend. I had a husband and two children. We lived well. My husband was a clerk at a volost.” She became silent and looked for a long time at the water, which was stirred by the vessel. Then she heaved a sigh and spoke to him again:

“May the Holy Virgin guard you from women of my kind – be careful. You are tender as yet, your heart has not become properly hardened. And women are fond of such as you – strong, handsome, rich. And most of all beware of the quiet women. They stick to a man like blood-suckers, and suck and suck. And at the same time they are always so kind, so gentle. They will keep on sucking your juice, but will preserve themselves. They’ll only break your heart in vain. You had better have dealings with those that are bold, like myself. These live not for the sake of gain.”

And she was indeed disinterested. In Perm Foma purchased for her different new things and what-not. She was delighted, but later, having examined them, she said sadly:

“Don’t squander your money too freely. See that your father does not get angry. I love you anyway, without all this.”

She had already told him that she would go with him only as far as Kazan, where she had a married sister. Foma could not believe that she would leave him, and when, on the eve of their arrival at Kazan, she repeated her words, he became gloomy and began to implore her not to forsake him.

“Do not feel sorry in advance,” she said. “We have a whole night before us. You will have time to feel sorry when I bid you good-bye, if you will feel sorry at all.”