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

“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?”