Old Izergil and other stories / Старуха Изергиль и другие рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Now then, overseer. What’re you standing there mooning for? What do you think you’re supposed to be doing? Didn’t Vassil Sergeich, the contractor, put you here? Well, then it’s your job to keep us at it, ‘Get a move on you so-and-so!’ You’re supposed to yell at me. That’s what you’re here for, and you stand there blinking like a fish. You’re not supposed to blink, you’re supposed to keep your eyes open, and do some shouting too. You’re a sort of boss around here. Well, then, go ahead and give orders, you cuckoo’s.

“Get moving there, you demons!” he yelled at the men. “We’ve got to finish the work today, don’t we?”

He himself was the laziest of the lot. He knew his business quite well, and could work with dexterity and zeal when he had a mind to, but he didn’t care to take the trouble and preferred to entertain the others with tall stories. And so when work would be forging ahead and the men would be at it in silent absorption, suddenly obsessed by the desire to do everything well and smoothly, Osip would begin in his purring voice:

“Did I ever tell you about the time…”

For two or three minutes the men would appear to pay no heed to him, engrossed in their sawing and planing, and his soft tenor would flow dreamily on, meandering around them and claiming their attention. His light-blue eyes half-closed, Osip fingered his curly beard and, smacking his lips with pleasure, mulled happily over each word.

“So he catches this here carp, puts it away in his basket and goes off into the woods, thinking about the fine fish soup he’s going to have… And all of a sudden he hears a woman’s voice pipe up, he can’t tell from where: ‘Yelesy-a-a, Yelesy-a-a!..’”

Lyonka, the lanky, angular Mordvinian, nicknamed Narodets, a young man with small eyes full of wonderment, lowered his axe and stood gaping.

“And from the basket a deep bass voice answers: ‘Here I am!’ And that very same minute the lid of the basket snaps back and out jumps the fish and darts straight back into the pool…”

Sanyavin, an old discharged soldier and a saturnine drunk who suffered from asthma and had a grudge of long-standing against life, croaked hoarsely:

“How could a carp move about on land?”

“Have you ever heard of a fish that could talk?” Osip retorted sweetly.

Mokei Budyrin, a dull-witted muzhik whose prominent cheekbones, jutting chin and receding forehead lent his face a canine appearance, a silent unprepossessing fellow, gave vent to his three favourite words in his slow nasal drawl:

“That’s true enough… ”

His unfailing response to any story – incredible, horrible, filthy or malicious – would be those three words uttered in a low voice that rang with conviction.

“That’s true enough.”

Each time I heard them it was as though some heavy fist struck me thrice on the chest.

Work stopped because lame and stuttering Yakov Boyev also wanted to tell a fish story, in fact he had already begun his tale, but no one listened to him; instead everybody laughed at his painful efforts to speak. He cursed and swore, brandished his chisel and foaming at the mouth yelled to everyone’s amusement:

“When one man lies like a trooper you take it for gospel, but I’m telling you a true story and all you can do is cackle like a lot of numbskulls, blast you…”

By now the men had dropped their tools and were shouting and gesticulating, whereupon Osip took off his cap, baring his venerable silver head with its bald pale, and sternly admonished:

“Hey that’ll do now! You’ve had your breathing spell, now get back to work!”

“You started it,” croaked the ex-soldier spitting disgustedly on his hands.

Osip began nagging at me:

“Now then, overseer…”

I felt that he had some definite purpose in distracting the men from their work with his chatter, but what I did not understand was whether he did it to conceal his own laziness or to give the workers a breather. When the contractor was around, Osip behaved with the utmost servility, acting the simpleton in front of the boss, contriving every Saturday to wheedle a little extra money out of him for the artel.

On the whole he was devoted to the men. but the old workers had no use for him – they considered him a clown and a good-for-nothing and had little respect for him: and even the young folk who enjoyed listening to hid stories did not take him seriously, regarding him rather with ill-concealed mistrust and often with hostility. I once asked the Mordvinian, an intelligent chap with whom I often had some heart-to-heart talks, what he thought of Osip.

“I dunno…” he replied with a grin. “Devil knows… he’s all right, I suppose…” Then after a pause he went on:

“Mikhailo, the chap who died a sharp-tongued fellow he was, and clever too, quarrelled with him once, with Osip, that is, and lammed into Osip something fierce. ‘What kind of a man are you?’ says he. ‘As a workingman you’re finished and you haven’t learned to be a boss, so you’ll spend your days dangling like a forgotten plummet on a string.’ That’s pretty near the truth, and no mistake…”

Then after another pause he added uneasily: “But he’s all right, a good chap on the whole…” My own position among these men was an extremely embarrassing one. Here I was, a lad of fifteen, put there by the contractor to keep accounts, to see that the carpenters did not steal the nails or turn the boards in at the saloon. Of course, they filched nails right under my nose, going out of their way to show me that I was quite superfluous, a downright nuisance, in fact. And if any opportunity afforded itself to bump me with a board or to do me some other minor injury, as if by accident, they would not hesitate to make the most of it.

I felt awkward and ashamed in their midst; I would have liked to say something to reconcile them to my presence, but I could not find the words and the oppressive sense of my own uselessness weighed heavily upon me.

Whenever I entered in my book the materials taken, Osip would walk over to me in his deliberate way and say:

“Got it? Now then, let’s have a look…”

And he would screw up his eyes and scrutinize the entry. “You don’t write clearly enough,” he would comment somewhat vaguely.

He could read only printed lettering and he wrote in church Slavonic letters, too. Ordinary writing was unintelligible to him What’s that funny-looking curlicue there?”

“It’s the letter “D.”

“Ah, D! What a fancy loop… And what’ve you written on that line?”

“Boards, nine arshin, five.”

“Six, you mean.”

“No, five.”

“What do you mean, five? Look, Soldier cut up one…”

“He shouldn’t have…”

“Who says he shouldn’t? He took half to the pub…”

He looked straight at me with his eyes as blue as corn-flowers, twinkling merrily, and, fingering his beard, said with shameless imperturbability:

“Come on, now, put down six! Look here, you cuckoo’s egg, it’s wet and cold and the work’s hard; a fellow’s got to have a little drink now and again to warm his soul, don’t he? Don’t be so upright, you won’t bribe God that way…”

He talked long and earnestly, his gentle, caressing words seemed to engulf me like a shower of sawdust until I felt dazed and blinded by them and found myself altering the figure without protest, “Now that’s more like it! Why, the figure even looks nicer, sitting there on the line like a nice, fat kind-hearted wench…”

I saw him triumphantly reporting his victory to the carpenters and knew that they all despised me for my weakness, and my fifteen-year-old heart wept with humiliation and ugly, dreary thoughts whirled in my head.

“How strange and stupid all this is. Why is he so sure that I won’t go and change the six back to a five, and that I won’t tell the contractor they sold the board for drinks?”

Once they stole two pounds of eight-inch spikes and clamps.

“Listen here,” I earned Osip, “I’m going to put that down!”

“Go ahead!” he replied lightly, his grey eyebrows twitching. “It’s time to put a stop to all this nonsense! Go ahead, write it down, that’ll teach the sons of bitches…”

And he shouted to the men: