The Man Who Was Afraid

“By God, I feel merry!” exclaimed Yozhov, jumping down from the table. “What a fine roasting I gave a certain gentleman in the paper yesterday! And then – I’ve heard a clever anecdote: A company was sitting on the sea-shore philosophizing at length upon life. And a Jew said to them: ‘Gentlemen, why do you employ so many different words? I’ll tell it to you all at once: Our life is not worth a single copeck, even as this stormy sea! ‘”

“Eh, the devil take you!” said Foma. “Good-bye. I am going.”

“Go ahead! I am in a fine frame of mind to-day and I will not moan with you. All the more so considering you don’t moan, but grunt.”

Foma went away, leaving Yozhov singing at the top of his voice:

“Beat the drum and fear not.”

“Drum? You are a drum yourself;” thought Foma, with irritation, as he slowly came out on the street.

At the Mayakins he was met by Luba. Agitated and animated, she suddenly appeared before him, speaking quickly:

“You? My God! How pale you are! How thin you’ve grown! It seems you have been leading a fine life.”

Then her face became distorted with alarm and she exclaimed almost in a whisper:

“Ah, Foma. You don’t know. Do you hear? Someone is ringing the bell. Perhaps it is he.”

And she rushed out of the room, leaving behind her in the air the rustle of her silk gown, and the astonished Foma, who had not even had a chance to ask her where her father was. Yakov Tarasovich was at home. Attired in his holiday clothes, in a long frock coat with medals on his breast, he stood on the threshold with his hands outstretched, clutching at the door posts. His green little eyes examined Foma, and, feeling their look upon him, Foma raised his head and met them.

“How do you do, my fine gentleman?” said the old man, shaking his head reproachfully. “Where has it pleased you to come from, may I ask? Who has sucked off that fat of yours? Or is it true that a pig looks for a puddle, and Foma for a place which is worse?”

“Have you no other words for me?” asked Foma, sternly, looking straight into the old man’s face. And suddenly he noticed that his godfather shuddered, his legs trembled, his eyes began to blink repeatedly, and his hands clutched the door posts with an effort. Foma advanced toward him, presuming that the old man was feeling ill, but Yakov Tarasovich said in a dull and angry voice:

“Stand aside. Get out of the way.”

And his face assumed its usual expression.

Foma stepped back and found himself side by side with a rather short, stout man, who bowed to Mayakin, and said in a hoarse voice:

“How do you do, papa?”

“How are you, Taras Yakovlich, how are you?” said the old man, bowing, smiling distractedly, and still clinging to the door posts.

Foma stepped aside in confusion, seated himself in an armchair, and, petrified with curiosity, wide-eyed, began to watch the meeting of father and son.

The father, standing in the doorway, swayed his feeble body, leaning his hands against the door posts, and, with his head bent on one side and eyes half shut, stared at his son in silence. The son stood about three steps away from him; his head already gray, was lifted high; he knitted his brow and gazed at his father with large dark eyes. His small, black, pointed beard and his small moustache quivered on his meagre face, with its gristly nose, like that of his father. And the hat, also, quivered in his hand. From behind his shoulder Foma saw the pale, frightened and joyous face of Luba – she looked at her father with beseeching eyes and it seemed she was on the point of crying out. For a few moments all were silent and motionless, crushed as they were by the immensity of their emotions. The silence was broken by the low, but dull and quivering voice of Yakov Tarasovich:

“You have grown old, Taras.”

The son laughed in his father’s face silently, and, with a swift glance, surveyed him from head to foot.

The father tearing his hands from the door posts, made a step toward his son and suddenly stopped short with a frown. Then Taras Mayakin, with one huge step, came up to his father and gave him his hand.

“Well, let us kiss each other,” suggested the father, softly.

The two old men convulsively clasped each other in their arms, exchanged warm kisses and then stepped apart. The wrinkles of the older man quivered, the lean face of the younger was immobile, almost stern. The kisses had changed nothing in the external side of this scene, only Lubov burst into a sob of joy, and Foma awkwardly moved about in his seat, feeling as though his breath were failing him.

“Eh, children, you are wounds to the heart – you are not its joy,” complained Yakov Tarasovich in a ringing voice, and he evidently invested a great deal in these words, for immediately after he had pronounced them he became radiant, more courageous, and he said briskly, addressing himself to his daughter:

“Well, have you melted with joy? You had better go and prepare something for us – tea and so forth. We’ll entertain the prodigal son. You must have forgotten, my little old man, what sort of a man your father is?”

Taras Mayakin scrutinized his parent with a meditative look of his large eyes and he smiled, speechless, clad in black, wherefore the gray hair on his head and in his beard told more strikingly.

“Well, be seated. Tell me – how have you lived, what have you done? What are you looking at? Ah! That’s my godson. Ignat Gordyeeff’s son, Foma. Do you remember Ignat?”

“I remember everything,” said Taras.

“Oh! That’s good, if you are not bragging. Well, are you married?”

“I am a widower.”

“Have you any children?”

“They died. I had two.”

“That’s a pity. I would have had grandchildren.”

“May I smoke?” asked Taras.

“Go ahead. Just look at him, you’re smoking cigars.”

“Don’t you like them?”

“I? Come on, it’s all the same to me. I say that it looks rather aristocratic to smoke cigars.”

“And why should we consider ourselves lower than the aristocrats?” said Taras, laughing.

“Do, I consider ourselves lower?” exclaimed the old man. “I merely said it because it looked ridiculous to me, such a sedate old fellow, with beard trimmed in foreign fashion, cigar in his mouth. Who is he? My son – he-he-he!” the old man tapped Taras on the shoulder and sprang away from him, as though frightened lest he were rejoicing too soon, lest that might not be the proper way to treat that half gray man. And he looked searchingly and suspiciously into his son’s large eyes, which were surrounded by yellowish swellings.

Taras smiled in his father’s face an affable and warm smile, and said to him thoughtfully:

“That’s the way I remember you – cheerful and lively. It looks as though you had not changed a bit during all these years.”

The old man straightened himself proudly, and, striking his breast with his fist, said:

“I shall never change, because life has no power over him who knows his own value. Isn’t that so?”

“Oh! How proud you are!”

“I must have taken after my son,” said the old man with a cunning grimace. “Do you know, dear, my son was silent for seventeen years out of pride.”

“That’s because his father would not listen to him,” Taras reminded him.

“It’s all right now. Never mind the past. Only God knows which of us is to blame. He, the upright one, He’ll tell it to you – wait! I shall keep silence. This is not the time for us to discuss that matter. You better tell me – what have you been doing all these years? How did you come to that soda factory? How have you made your way?”

“That’s a long story,” said Taras with a sigh; and emitting from his mouth a great puff of smoke, he began slowly: “When I acquired the possibility to live at liberty, I entered the office of the superintendent of the gold mines of the Remezovs.”