The Man Who Was Afraid

“The future is yours, my friends!” said Yozhov, faintly, shaking his head mournfully as though feeling sorry for the future, and yielding to these people against his will the predominance over it. “The future belongs to the men of honest toil. You have a great task before you! You have to create a new culture, everything free, vital and bright! I, who am one of you in flesh and in spirit; who am the son of a soldier; I propose a toast to your future! Hurrah!”

Yozhov emptied his glass and sank heavily to the ground. The compositors unanimously took up his broken exclamation, and a powerful, thundering shout rolled through the air, causing the leaves on the trees to tremble.

“Let’s start a song now,” proposed the stout fellow again.

“Come on!” chimed in two or three voices. A noisy dispute ensued as to what to sing. Yozhov listened to the noise, and, turning his head from one side to another, scrutinized them all.

“Brethren,” Yozhov suddenly cried again, “answer me. Say a few words in reply to my address of welcome.”

Again – though not at once – all became silent, some looking at him with curiosity, others concealing a grin, still others with an expression of dissatisfaction plainly written on their faces. And he again rose from the ground and said, hotly:

“Two of us here are cast away by life – I and that other one. We both desire the same regard for man and the happiness of feeling ourselves useful unto others. Comrades! And that big, stupid man – ”

“Nikolay Matveyich, you had better not insult our guest!” said someone in a deep, displeased voice.

“Yes, that’s unnecessary,” affirmed the stout fellow, who had invited Foma to the fireside. “Why use offensive language?”

A third voice rang out loudly and distinctly:

“We have come together to enjoy ourselves – to take a rest.”

“Fools!” laughed Yozhov, faintly. “Kind-hearted fools! Do you pity him? But do you know who he is? He is of those people who suck your blood.”

“That will do, Nikolay Matveyich!” they cried to Yozhov. And all began to talk, paying no further attention to him. Foma felt so sorry for his friend that he did not even take offence. He saw that these people who defended him from Yozhov’s attacks were now purposely ignoring the feuilleton-writer, and he understood that this would pain Yozhov if he were to notice it. And in order to take his friend away from possible unpleasantness, he nudged him in the side and said, with a kind-hearted laugh:

“Well, you grumbler, shall we have a drink? Or is it time to go home?”

“Home? Where is the home of the man who has no place among men?” asked Yozhov, and shouted again: “Comrades!”

Unanswered, his shout was drowned in the general murmur. Then he drooped his head and said to Foma:

“Let’s go from here.”

“Let’s go. Though I don’t mind sitting a little longer. It’s interesting. They behave so nobly, the devils. By God!”

“I can’t bear it any longer. I feel cold. I am suffocating.”

“Well, come then.”

Foma rose to his feet, removed his cap, and, bowing to the compositors, said loudly and cheerfully:

“Thank you, gentlemen, for your hospitality! Good-bye!”

They immediately surrounded him and spoke to him persuasively:

“Stay here! Where are you going? We might sing all together, eh?”

“No, I must go, it would be disagreeable to my friend to go alone. I am going to escort him. I wish you a jolly feast!”

“Eh, you ought to wait a little!” exclaimed the stout fellow, and then whispered:

“Some one will escort him home!”

The consumptive also remarked in a low voice:

“You stay here. We’ll escort him to town, and get him into a cab and – there you are!”

Foma felt like staying there, and at the same time was afraid of something. While Yozhov rose to his feet, and, clutching at the sleeves of his overcoat, muttered:

“Come, the devil take them!”

“Till we meet again, gentlemen! I’m going!” said Foma and departed amid exclamations of polite regret.

“Ha, ha, ha!” Yozhov burst out laughing when he had got about twenty steps away from the fire. “They see us off with sorrow, but they are glad that I am going away. I hindered them from turning into beasts.”

“It’s true, you did disturb them,” said Foma. “Why do you make such speeches? People have come out to enjoy themselves, and you obtrude yourself upon them. That bores them!”

“Keep quiet! You don’t understand anything!” cried Yozhov, harshly. “You think I am drunk? It’s my body that is intoxicated, but my soul is sober, it is always sober; it feels everything. Oh, how much meanness there is in the world, how much stupidity and wretchedness! And men – these stupid, miserable men.”

Yozhov paused, and, clasping his head with his hands, stood for awhile, staggering.

“Yes!” drawled out Foma. “They are very much unlike one another. Now these men, how polite they are, like gentlemen. And they reason correctly, too, and all that sort of thing. They have common sense. Yet they are only labourers.”

In the darkness behind them the men struck up a powerful choral song. Inharmonious at first, it swelled and grew until it rolled in a huge, powerful wave through the invigorating nocturnal air, above the deserted field.

“My God!” said Yozhov, sadly and softly, heaving a sigh. “Whereby are we to live? Whereon fasten our soul? Who shall quench its thirsts for friendship brotherhood, love, for pure and sacred toil?”

“These simple people,” said Foma, slowly and pensively, without listening to his companion s words, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts, “if one looks into these people, they’re not so bad! It’s even very – it is interesting. Peasants, labourers, to look at them plainly, they are just like horses. They carry burdens, they puff and blow.”

“They carry our life on their backs,” exclaimed Yozhov with irritation. “They carry it like horses, submissively, stupidly. And this submissiveness of theirs is our misfortune, our curse!”

And Foma, carried away by his own thought, argued:

“They carry burdens, they toil all their life long for mere trifles. And suddenly they say something that wouldn’t come into your mind in a century. Evidently they feel. Yes, it is interesting to be with them.”

Staggering, Yozhov walked in silence for a long time, and suddenly he waved his hand in the air and began to declaim in a dull, choking voice, which sounded as though it issued from his stomach:

“Life has cruelly deceived me, I have suffered so much pain.”

“These, dear boy, are my own verses,” said he, stopping short and nodding his head mournfully. “How do they run? I’ve forgotten. There is something there about dreams, about sacred and pure longings, which are smothered within my breast by the vapour of life. Oh!”

“The buried dreams within my breast Will never rise again.”

“Brother! You are happier than I, because you are stupid. While I – ”

“Don’t be rude!” said Foma, irritated. “You would better listen how they are singing.”

“I don’t want to listen to other people’s songs,” said Yozhov, with a shake of the head. “I have my own, it is the song of a soul rent in pieces by life.”