Chelkash

The blue southern sky was so obscured by dust that it had a murky look. The hot sun stared down at the greenish sea as through a thin grey veil, and its rays found poor reflection in the water, churned up as it was by the strokes of oars, the propellers of steamers and the sharp keels of Turkish feluccas and other craft which ploughed the crowded harbour in all directions. The waves of the sea, crushed within their granite encasements by the enormous weights gliding over their surfaces, hurled themselves at the shore and the sides of the ships – hurled themselves growling and foaming, their flanks littered with all sorts of rubbish.

The clang of anchor chains, the clash of the buffers of goods cars, the metallic wail of sheets of iron being unloaded on to paving-stones, the dull thump of wood against wood, the clatter of carts, the whistle of steamships rising from a wail to a shriek, the shouts of stevedores, seamen and customs guards – all this merged to form the deafening music of the working day which surged rebelliously in the sky above the harbour, while from the earth below new waves of sound kept rising to meet it – now a rumble that shook the earth, now a crash that rent the sultry air.

The granite, the steel, the wood, the paving-stones, the ships and the people – everything was impregnated with the mighty sounds of this impassioned hymn to Mercury. But human voices could hardly be detected in the general chorus, so weak and even ridiculous were they. And the people themselves, they whose efforts had given birth to all this sound, were ridiculous and pitiable; their ragged dirty wiry bodies were bent double under the loads on their backs as they rushed hither and thither in the dust and the heat and the noise, and they were as nothing compared with the steel leviathans, the mountains of merchandise, the clanging railway cars, and all the other things which they themselves had created. The things of their own creating had enslaved them and robbed them of personality.

The gigantic ships lying with steam up whistled and hissed and heaved great sighs, and every sound they uttered was filled with mocking contempt for the drab and dusty creatures crawling over their decks to load their deep holds with the products of the servile labour. It made one laugh till the tears ran to see these long files of stevedores carrying thousands of poods of grain on their backs to be deposited in the iron bellies of the ships so that they themselves might earn a few pounds of grain to fill their own bellies. A poem of bitter irony could be read in the contrast between these ragged sweating men, stupefied by the heat, the noise, and the exhausting labour, and the powerful machines these men had made and which stood radiating well-being in the sunlight – machines which, when all is said and done, had been set in motion not by steam, but by the blood and muscles of those who made them.

The noise was oppressive; the dust tickled the nose and got into the eyes; the heat scorched and enervated the body, and everything seemed tense, as if the end of endurance had been reached and catastrophe was imminent, a tremendous explosion that would clear the air so that men might breathe freely and easily. And then silence would descend on the world and there would be no more dust and turmoil to deafen and irritate people and drive them mad; and the air of the town, of the sea, and of the sky would be fresh and clear and beautiful…

Twelve measured strokes of a bell were heard. When the last brassy vibrations had died away the savage music of labour was found to have subsided, and a minute later it turned into a mere rumble of discontent. Now the voices of the people and the plash of the sea were more audible. It was the dinner hour.

I

When the stevedores stopped work and scattered over the docks in noisy groups to buy victuals from the vendors and find shady corners where they could squat on the pavement to take their meal, Grishka Chelkash put in an appearance. He was well known to all the dockers, a confirmed drunkard, a bold and clever thief. He was barefooted and bareheaded, had on a pair of threadbare corduroy trousers and a filthy cotton shirt with a torn collar that exposed a bony chest covered by brown skin. The matted state of his iron-grey hair and the crumpled look of his lean and hawk-like face indicated that he had just waked up. A straw had become caught in his moustache, another in the stubble of his left cheek, while behind his ear he had stuck a sprig of linden. Long and lanky and a bit stooped, he sauntered slowly down the cobbled street, sniffing the air with his hooked nose and casting a glittering grey eye about him as he searched for someone among the dockers. His long dark moustache kept twitching like a cat’s; he held his hands behind his back and kept rubbing them together and twisting his crooked grasping fingers. Even here, among hundreds of other roughs, he instantly attracted attention because of the resemblance to a steppe-hawk conveyed by his predatory leanness and aimful walk, which, like the flight of the bird of prey he resembled, concealed a tense alertness under an appearance of poised tranquillity.

As he came up to a group of stevedores sitting in the shadow cast by a pile of coal baskets, a stocky young chap, with a blotched and vapid face and with scratches on his neck suggesting a recent fight, got up to meet him. He fell into step beside Chelkash and said under his breath:

“The seamen have discovered two bales of cloth missing. They’re searching.”

“So what?” Chelkash asked, calmly running his eyes over him.

“What d’ye mean ‘so what’? They’re searching, I tell you.”

“And you thought I might join in the search? “

“Go to hell!”

The chap turned back.

“Wait! Who gave you those beauty-marks? A pity to mess up your shop front like that! Seen Mishka?”

“Not for a long time,” called back the chap as he joined his comrades.

Everybody who met Chelkash greeted him as an old acquaintance, but he, usually so cheery and biting, must have been out of sorts, for his replies were all very terse.

From behind a pile of merchandise suddenly appeared a customs guard – dark-green, dusty, aggressively erect. He planted himself in front of Chelkash in a challenging pose, his left hand on the hilt of his dirk, his right reaching out for Chelkash’s collar.

“Halt! Where you bound?”

Chelkash retreated a step, lifted his eyes to the guard’s red face and gave a cool smile.

The face, wily but good-natured, tried to assume a dread aspect: the cheeks puffed out and turned purple, the brows drew together, the eyes rolled, and the effect on the whole was extremely comical.

“I told you once to keep away from these docks if you didn’t want me to smash your ribs in, and here you are again!” he roared.

“Howdy, Semyonich! Haven’t seen you for a long time,” said the imperturbable Chelkash, holding out his hand.

“I wouldn’t cry if I didn’t see you for another fifty years. Move on, move on.”

But he shook the extended hand.

“Here’s what I wanted to ask,” went on Chelkash, holding the guard’s hand in steel fingers and shaking it in an intimate sort of way. “Seen Mishka anywhere?”

“What Mishka? I don’t know any Mishka. Move on, man, or the packhouse guard may see you and then —“

“The red-headed chap I worked with on the Kostroma last time,” persisted Chelkash.

“That you thieved with, you mean. They’ve put him in hospital, that Mishka of yours – got his leg crushed by some iron. Get out of here, I tell you, get out before I throw you out by the scruff of the neck.”

“Listen to that, now! And you said you didn’t know no Mishka. What makes you so nasty, Semyonich?”

“None of your talk! Get out!”

The guard was getting angry; he glanced about him and tried to free his hand, but Chelkash held on to it as he looked at him calmly from under bushy eyebrows and went on talking:

“What’s the rush? Don’t you want to have a nice little chat with me? How you getting on? How’s the wife and kiddies? Well?” His eyes twinkled and his teeth flashed in a mocking grin as he added: “Been wanting to drop in to see you for ever so long, but just can’t seem to manage it. It’s the drink —“

“Drop it, I tell you! None of your joking, you lanky lubber. I mean what I say. But maybe you’re turning to house-breaking, or robbing people in the street?”

“Why should I? There’s enough here to keep you and me busy a lifetime. Honest there is, Semyonich. But I hear you’ve snitched another two bales of cloth. Watch out, or you’ll find yourself in trouble yet!”

Semyonich trembled with indignation and the saliva flew as he tried to give voice to it. Chelkash let go of his hand and calmly strode off on his long legs to the dock gates. The guard followed at his heels, cursing him roundly.

Chelkash was in better spirits now; he whistled a tune through his teeth, thrust his hands into his pockets, and retarded his steps, tossing off well-aimed quips to right and left. He was paid in his own coin.

“Just see what good care of you the bosses are taking, Grishka!” called out a stevedore who was stretched out on the ground with his comrades, taking a rest after their meal.

“Semyonich’s seeing I don’t step on any nails in my bare feet,” replied Chelkash.

They got to the gates. Two soldiers ran their hands down Chelkash’s clothes and pushed him out into the street.

He crossed the road and sat down on the curbstone opposite a pub. A line of loaded carts came thundering out of the dock gates, while a line of empty ones moved in the other direction, their drivers bouncing in their seats. The docks belched forth a roar of sound and clouds of dust that stuck to the skin.

Chelkash was in his element amid this mad welter. He was anticipating a good haul that night, a haul that would cost him little effort but require a great deal of skill. He did not doubt but that his skill was sufficient, and he screwed up his eyes with pleasure as he reflected on how he would spend all his banknotes the next morning. He thought of his pal Mishka. He needed him badly, and here he had gone and broken his leg. Chelkash cursed under his breath, for he feared he could not handle the job alone. What would the weather be like? He glanced up at the sky, then down the street.

Sitting on the pavement, his back against a hitching post some half a dozen paces away, was a young lad in a blue homespun shirt and trousers, with bast sandals on his feet and a torn brown cap on his head. Beside him lay a small knapsack and a haftless scythe wrapped in straw and neatly tied with string. The lad was sturdy, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, his face was tanned by wind and sun, and he had large blue eyes that stared amiably at Chelkash.

Chelkash bared his teeth, stuck out his tongue, made a frightful face and stared back with popping eyes.

The boy blinked in astonishment at first, then he burst out laughing, calling out between spasms: “Crazy as a loon!” Without getting up, he hitched along the curbstone to where Chelkash was sitting, dragging his knapsack through the dust and allowing the tip of his scythe to clank over the cobbles.

“Been on the booze, eh?” he said to Chelkash, giving a tug at his trousers.

“You’re right, baby-face, you’re right,” confessed Chelkash with a smile. He was instantly drawn to this wholesome good-natured chap with eyes as clear as a baby’s. “Been haymaking? “

“Yes. Made hay, but no money. Times are bad. You never saw so many people! They all come drifting down from the famine districts. No point in working for such pay. Sixty kopeks in the Kuban, think of that! They say they used to pay three or four roubles, or even five.”

“Used to! They used to pay three roubles just to get a look at a Russian! That’s how I earned a living ten years ago. I’d come to a Cossack village: ‘Here I am, folks, an honest-to-God Russian!’ They’d all crowd round, look me over, poke me, pinch me, oh-and-ah and pay me three roubles. Give me food and drink besides and invite me to stay as long as I liked.”

At first the boy opened wide his mouth, an expression of wondering admiration on his round face, but as he realized Chelkash was fabricating, he snapped his mouth shut, then burst out laughing again. Chelkash kept a straight face, hiding his smile in his moustache.

“A queer bird you are, talking talk as if it was God’s truth and me swallowing it. But honest to goodness, it used to be —“

“Isn’t that just what I was saying? It used to be —“

“Oh, come!” said the boy with a wave of his hand.

“What are you, a cobbler, or a tailor, or what?”

“Me?” Chelkash mused awhile and then said: “I’m a fisherman.”

“A fisherman? Think of that! So you catch fish, do you?”

“Why fish? The fishermen here don’t only catch fish. Mostly dead bodies, old anchors, sunken boats. There’s special fish-hooks for such things.”

“Lying again. Maybe you’re one of those fishermen who sing:

We cast our nets Upon the shores, In market stalls, in open doors.

“Ever met fishermen like that?” asked Chelkash, looking hard at the boy and grinning.

“No, but I’ve heard about them.”

“Like the idea?”

“Of people like that? Why not? At least they’re free; they can do what they please.”

“What’s freedom to you? Do you hanker after freedom?”

“Of course. What could be better than to be your own boss, go where you like and do what you like? Only you’ve got to keep straight and see that no millstones get hung round your neck. Outside of that, go ahead and have a good time without a thought for anything save God and your conscience.”

Chelkash spat contemptuously and turned away.

“Here’s what I’m up against,” went on the boy. “My father died without leaving anything much, my mother’s old, the land’s sucked dry. What am I supposed to do? I’ve got to go on living, but how? God knows. I have a chance to marry into a good family. I wouldn’t mind if they’d give the daughter her portion. But they won’t. Her old man won’t give her an inch of land. So I’d have to work for him, and for a long time. For years. There you are. If only I could lay hands on, say, a hundred and fifty roubles I’d be able to stand up to her father and say: ‘Do you want me to marry your Marfa? You don’t? Just as you say; she’s not the only girl in the village, thank God.’ I’d be independent, see? and could do what I liked.” The boy heaved a sigh. “But it looks as if there was nothing for it but to be his son-in-law. I thought I’d bring back a couple of hundred roubles from the Kuban. That would be the thing! Then I’d be a gentleman! But I didn’t earn a damn thing. Nothing for it but to be a farm-hand. I’ll never have a farm of my own. So there you are.”

The boy squirmed and his face fell at the prospect of being this man’s son-in-law.

“Where you bound now?” asked Chelkash.

“Home. Where else?”

“How do I know? Maybe you’re bound for Turkey.”

“Turkey?” marvelled the boy. “What honest Christian would ever go to Turkey? A fine thing to say!”

“You are a blockhead,” murmured Chelkash, turning away again. Yet this wholesome village lad had stirred something in him; a vague feeling of dissatisfaction was slowly taking form within him, and this kept him from concentrating his mind on the night’s task.

The boy, offended by Chelkash’s words, muttered to himself and threw sidelong glances at the older man. His cheeks were puffed up in a droll way, his lips were pouting and his narrowed eyes blinked rapidly. Evidently he had not expected his talk with this bewhiskered ruffian tramp to end so suddenly and so unsatisfactorily.

But the tramp paid no more attention to him. His mind was on something else as he sat there on the curbstone whistling to himself and beating time with a dirty toe.

The boy wanted to get even with him.

“Hey, you fisherman! Do you often go on a bout?” he began, but at that moment the fisherman turned to him impulsively and said:

“Look, baby-face, would you like to help me to do a job tonight? Make up your mind, quick!”

“What sort of job?” asked the boy dubiously.

“‘What sort’! Whatever sort I give you. We’re going fishing. You’ll row.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind doing that, I’m not afraid of work. Only – what if you get me into trouble? You’re a queer egg; there’s no understanding you.”

Chelkash had a sensation as of heart-burn.

“Don’t go spouting on things you don’t know anything about,” he said with cold animosity. “I’ll give you a good crack over the bean, and then you’ll understand a thing or two.”

He jumped up, his eyes flashing, his left hand pulling at his moustache, his right clenched in a hard and corded fist.

The boy was frightened. He glanced quickly about him and then he, too, jumped up, blinking nervously. The two of them stood there silently measuring each other with their eyes.

“Well?” said Chelkash harshly. He was seething inside, twitching all over from the insult taken from this puppy he had held in such contempt so far, but whom he now hated with all his soul because he had such clear blue eyes, such a healthy tanned face, such short sturdy arms; because he had a native village and a house there, and an offer to be the son-in-law of a well-to-do muzhik; he hated him for the way he had lived in the past and would live in the future, but most of all he hated him because he, a mere child as compared with Chelkash, dared to hanker after a freedom he could neither appreciate nor have need of. It is always unpleasant to discover that a person you consider beneath you loves or hates the same things you do, thereby establishing a certain resemblance to yourself.

As the lad looked at Chelkash he recognized in him a master.

“I don’t really – er – mind,” he said. “After all, I’m looking for work. What difference does it make whether I work for you or somebody else? I just said that because – well, you don’t look much like a workingman.

You’re so – er – down at heel. But that can happen to anybody, I know. God, haven’t I seen drunks before? Plenty of them, some even worse than you.”

“All right, all right. So you’re willing?” said Chelkash in a milder tone.

“With pleasure. State your price.”

“The price depends on the job. How much we catch. Maybe you’ll get five roubles.”

Now that the talk was of money, the peasant wanted to be exact and demanded the same exactness from the man who was hiring him. Once more he had his doubts and suspicions.

“That won’t suit me, brother.”

Chelkash played his part.

“Don’t let’s talk about it now. Come along to the tavern.”

And they walked down the street side by side, Chelkash twirling his moustache with the air of a master; the lad fearful and distrusting, but willing to comply.

“What’s your name?” asked Chelkash.

“Gavrilla,” answered the lad.

On entering the dingy, smoke-blackened tavern, Chelkash went up to the bar and in the off-hand tone of a frequenter ordered a bottle of vodka, cabbage soup, roast beef and tea; he repeated the list and then said nonchalantly: “On tick,” to which the barman replied by nodding silently. This instantly inspired Gavrilla with respect for his employer, who, despite his disreputable appearance, was evidently well known and trusted.

“Now we’ll have a bite and talk things over. Sit here and wait for me; I’ll be right back.”

And he went out. Gavrilla looked about him. The tavern was in a basement; it was dark and damp and filled with the stifling smell of vodka, tobacco smoke, pitch, and something else just as pungent. A drunken red-bearded sailor smeared all over with pitch and coal-dust was sprawling at a table opposite him. Between hiccups he gurgled a song made of snatches of words which were all sibilant one minute, all guttural the next. Evidently he was not a Russian.

Behind him were two Moldavian women. Swarthy, dark-haired, ragged, they too were wheezing out a drunken song.

Out of shadows loomed other figures, all of them noisy, restless, dishevelled, drunken…

Gavrilla was gripped by fear. If only his boss would come back! The noises of the tavern merged in a single voice, and it was as if some huge multiple-tongued beast were roaring as it vainly sought a means of escape from this stone pit. Gavrilla felt some intoxication seeping into his body, making his head swim and his eyes grow hazy as they roved the tavern with fearful curiosity.

At last Chelkash came back and the two men began to eat and drink and talk. Gavrilla was drunk after his third glass of vodka. He felt very gay and was anxious to say something nice to this prince of a chap who had treated him to such a fine meal. But somehow the words that surged in his throat would not come off his tongue, suddenly grown thick and unwieldy.

Chelkash looked at him with a condescending smile.

“Stewed? Ekh, you rag! On five swigs. How are you going to work tonight?”

“Ol’ pal!” lisped Gavrilla. “Don’t be ’fraid. I’ll show you. Gimme a kiss, c’mon.”

“That’s all right. Here, take another guzzle.”

Gavrilla went on drinking until he reached the point at which everything about him seemed to be moving up and down in rhythmic waves. This was unpleasant and made him sick. His face wore an expression of foolish solemnity. Whenever he tried to say anything, his lips slapped together comically and garbled sounds came through them. Chelkash twisted his moustache and smiled glumly as he gazed at him abstractedly, his mind on something else.

Meanwhile the tavern was roaring as drunkenly as ever. The red-headed sailor had folded his arms on the table and fallen fast asleep.

“Time to go,” said Chelkash, getting up.

Gavrilla tried to follow him but could not; he let out an oath and laughed idiotically, as drunks do.

“What a wash-out!” muttered Chelkash, sitting down again.

Gavrilla kept on laughing and looking at his boss with bleary eyes, while Chelkash turned a sharp and thoughtful eye on him. He saw before him a man whose fate he held in his wolfish paw. Chelkash sensed that he could do what he pleased with him. He could crush him in his hand like a playing-card, or he could help him get back to the solid peasant way of life. Conscious of his power over him, he reflected that this lad would never have to drink the cup it had been the fate of him, Chelkash, to drink. He envied and pitied the boy; he despised him, and yet he was sorry to think that he might fall into other hands, no better than his own. In the end, Chelkash’s various emotions combined to form a single one that was both fatherly and practical. He pitied the boy and he needed him. And so he took Gavrilla under the arms and lifted him up, giving him little pushes with his knee as he led him out into the tavern yard where he laid him down in the shade of a wood-pile, he himself sitting beside him and smoking his pipe. Gavrilla tossed about awhile, gave a few grunts and fell asleep.