Creatures That Once Were Men

"Nothing! Only why do you tell lies?" Then he walked away, leaving his companion in perplexity. But after two days he came again and sat by him.

"You are learned … Tell me, then, whose descendants are we? Are we Babylonians, or who are we?"

"We are Slavs, Tyapa," said the teacher, and attentively awaited his answer, wishing to understand him.

"Speak to me from the Bible. There are no such men there."

Then the teacher began criticising the Bible. The old man listened, and interrupted him after a long while.

"Stop … Wait! That means that among people known to God there are no Russians? We are not known to God? Is it so? God knew all those who are mentioned in the Bible … He destroyed them by sword and fire, He destroyed their cities; but He also sent prophets to teach them. That means that He also pitied them. He scattered the Jews and the Tartars … But what about us? Why have we prophets no longer?"

"Well, I don't know!" replied the teacher, trying to understand the old man. But the latter put his hand on the teacher's shoulder, and slowly pushed him backwards and forwards, and his throat made a noise as if he were swallowing something…

"Tell me! You speak so much … as if you knew everything. It makes me sick to listen to you … you darken my soul… I should be better pleased if you were silent. Who are we, eh? Why have we no prophets? Ha, ha! … Where were we when Christ walked on this earth? Do you see? And you too, you are lying… Do you think that all die out? The Russian people will never disappear… You are lying… It has been written in the Bible, only it is not known what name the Russians are given. Do you see what kind of people they are? They are numberless… How many villages are there on the earth? Think of all the people who live on it, so strong, so numerous! And you say that they will die out; men shall die, but God wants the people, God the Creator of the earth! The Amalekites did not die out. They are either German or French… But you, eh, you! Now then, tell me why we are abandoned by God? Have we no punishments nor prophets from the Lord? Who then will teach us?" Tyapa spoke strongly and plainly, and there was faith in his words. He had been speaking a long time, and the teacher, who was generally drunk and in a speechless condition, could not stand it any longer. He looked at the dry, wrinkled old man, felt the great force of these words, and suddenly began to pity himself. He wished to say something so strong and convincing to the old man that Tyapa would be disposed in his favour; he did not wish to speak in such a serious, earnest way, but in a soft and fatherly tone. And the teacher felt as if something were rising from his breast into his throat … But he could not find any powerful words.

"What kind of a man are you? … Your soul seems to be torn away – and you still continue speaking … as if you knew something … It would be better if you were silent."

"Ah, Tyapa, what you say is true," replied the teacher, sadly. "The people … you are right … they are numberless … but I am a stranger to them … and they are strangers to me … Do you see where the tragedy of my life is hidden? … But let me alone! I shall suffer … and there are no prophets also … No. You are right, I speak a great deal … But it is no good to anyone. I shall be always silent … Only don't speak with me like this … Ah, old man, you do not know … You do not know … And you cannot understand."

And in the end the teacher cried. He cried so easily and so freely, with such torrents of flowing tears, that he soon found relief.

"You ought to go into a village … become a clerk or a teacher … You would be well fed there. What are you crying for?" asked Tyapa, sadly.

But the teacher was crying as if the tears quieted and comforted him.

From this day they became friends, and the "creatures that once were men," seeing them together, said: "The teacher is friendly with Tyapa … He wishes his money. Kuvalda must have put this into his head … To look about to see where the old man's fortune is …"

Probably they did not believe what they said. There was one strange thing about these men, namely, that they painted themselves to others worse than they actually were. A man who has good in him does not mind sometimes showing his worse nature.

When all these people were gathered round the teacher, then the reading of the newspaper would begin.

"Well, what does the newspaper discuss to-day? Is there any feuilleton?"

"No," the teacher informs him.

"Your publisher seems greedy … but is there any leader?"

"There is one to-day… It appears to be by Gulyaeff."

"Aha! Come, out with it. He writes cleverly, the rascal."

"'The taxation of immovable property,'" reads the teacher, "'was introduced some fifteen years ago, and up to the present it has served as the basis for collecting these taxes in aid of the city revenue …'"

"That is simple," comments Captain Kuvalda. "It continues to serve. That is ridiculous. To the merchant who is moving about in the city, it is profitable that it should continue to serve. Therefore it does continue."

"The article, in fact, is written on the subject," says the teacher.

"Is it? That is strange, it is more a subject for a feuilleton…"

"Such a subject must be treated with plenty of pepper…"

Then a short discussion begins. The people listen attentively, as only one bottle of vodki has been drunk.

After the leader, they read the local events, then the court proceedings, and, if in the police court it reports that the defendant or plaintiff is a merchant, then Aristid Kuvalda sincerely rejoices. If someone has robbed the merchant, "That is good," says he. "Only it is a pity they robbed him of so little." If his horses have broken down, "It is sad that he is still alive." If the merchant has lost his suit in court, "It is a pity that the costs were not double the amount."

"That would have been illegal," remarks the teacher

"Illegal! But is the merchant himself legal?" inquires Kuvalda, bitterly. "What is the merchant? Let us investigate this rough and uncouth phenomenon. First of all, every merchant is a mujik. He comes from a village, and in course of time becomes a merchant. In order to be a merchant, one must have money. Where can the mujik get the money from? It is well known that he does not get it by honest hard work, and that means that the mujik, somehow or other, has been swindling. That is to say, a merchant is simply a dishonest mujik."

"Splendid!" cry the people, approving the orator's deduction, and Tyapa bellows all the time, scratching his breast. He always bellows like this as he drinks his first glass of vodki, when he has a drunken headache. The Captain beams with joy. They next read the correspondence. This is, for the Captain, "an abundance of drinks," as he himself calls it. He always notices how the merchants make this life abominable, and how cleverly they spoil everything. His speeches thunder at and annihilate merchants. His audience listens to him with the greatest pleasure, because he swears atrociously. "If I wrote for the papers," he shouts, "I would show up the merchant in his true colours … I would show that he is a beast, playing for a time the role of a man. I understand him! He is a rough boor, does not know the meaning of the words 'good taste,' has no notion of patriotism, and his knowledge is not worth five kopecks."

Abyedok, knowing the Captain's weak point, and fond of making other people angry, cunningly adds:

"Yes, since the nobility began to make acquaintance with hunger, men have disappeared from the world …"

"You are right, you son of a spider and a toad. Yes, from the time that the noblemen fell, there have been no men. There are only merchants, and I hate them."

"That is easy to understand, brother, because you, too, have been brought down by them …"

"I? I was ruined by love of life … Fool that I was, I loved life, but the merchant spoils it, and I cannot bear it, simply for this reason, and not because I am a nobleman. But if you want to know the truth, I was once a man, though I was not noble. I care now for nothing and nobody … and all my life has been tame – a sweetheart who has jilted me – therefore I despise life, and am indifferent to it."

"You lie!" says Abyedok.

"I lie?" roars Aristid Kuvalda, almost crimson with anger.

"Why shout?" comes in the cold sad voice of Martyanoff.

"Why judge others? Merchants, noblemen … what have we to do with them?"

"Seeing that we are" … puts in Deacon Taras.

"Be quiet, Abyedok," says the teacher, goodnaturedly.

"Why do you provoke him?" He does not love either discussion or noise, and when they quarrel all around him his lips form into a sickly grimace, and he endeavours quietly and reasonably to reconcile each with the other, and if he does not succeed in this he leaves the company. Knowing this, the Captain, if he is not very drunk, controls himself, not wishing to lose, in the person of the teacher, one of the best of his listeners.

"I repeat," he continues, in a quieter tone, "that I see life in the hands of enemies, not only enemies of the noble but of everything good, avaricious and incapable of adorning existence in any way."

"But all the same," says the teacher, "merchants, so to speak, created Genoa, Venice, Holland – and all these were merchants, merchants from England, India, the Stroyanoff merchants …"

"I do not speak of these men, I am thinking of Judas Petunikoff, who is one of them…"

"And you say you have nothing to do with them?" asks the teacher, quietly.

"But do you think that I do not live? Aha! I do live, but I suppose I ought not to be angry at the fact that life is desecrated and robbed of all freedom by these men."

"And they dare to laugh at the kindly anger of the Captain, a man living in retirement?" says Abyedok, teasingly.

"Very well! I agree with you that I am foolish. Being a creature who was once a man, I ought to blot out from my heart all those feelings that once were mine. You may be right, but then how could I or any of you defend ourselves if we did away with all these feelings?"