A black, tall pillar, resembling a whirlwind or a tornado, appeared on the far shore of the bay. With terrific speed it moved across the bay in the direction of the hotel, growing ever smaller and darker, and Kovrin barely had time to step aside and let it pass … A monk with a bare, gray head and black eyebrows, barefoot, his arms crossed on his chest, raced by and stopped in the middle of the room.
“Why didn’t you believe me?” he asked reproachfully, looking tenderly at Kovrin. “If you had believed me then, when I said you were a genius, you would not have spent these two years so sadly and meagerly”
Kovrin now believed that he was chosen of God and a genius, he vividly recalled all his old conversations with the black monk and wanted to speak, but blood flowed from his throat straight on to his chest, and he, not knowing what to do, moved his hands over his chest, and his cuffs became wet with blood. He wanted to call Varvara Nikolaevna, who was sleeping behind the screen, made an effort and said:
“Tanya!”
He fell to the floor and, propping himself on his arms, again called:
“Tanya!”
He called out to Tanya, called out to the big garden with its luxuriant flowers sprinkled with dew, called out to the park, the pines with their shaggy roots, the field of rye, his wonderful science, his youth, courage, joy, called out to life that was so beautiful. He saw a big pool of blood on the floor by his face, and could no longer utter a single word from weakness, but an inexpressible, boundless happiness filled his whole being. Below, under the balcony, they were playing the serenade, and the black monk was whispering to him that he was a genius and was dying only because his weak human body had lost its equilibrium and could no longer serve as a container for genius.
When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came from behind the screen, Kovrin was already dead, and a blissful smile was frozen on his face.
JANUARY 1894
ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE
The town was small, worse than a village, and in it lived almost none but old people, who died so rarely it was even annoying. And in the hospital and jail there was very little demand for coffins. In short, business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been a coffin-maker in the provincial capital, he would most likely have had a house of his own and been called Yakov Matveich; but in this wretched little town he was simply called Yakov, his street nickname for some reason was “Bronzy,” and he lived a poor life, like a simple peasant, in a little old cottage with only one room, and that room housed himself, Marfa, the stove, the double bed, the coffins, the workbench, and all his chattels.
Yakov made good, sturdy coffins. For peasants and tradesmen he made them his own size and was never once mistaken, because no one anywhere, not even in the jail, was taller or stronger than he, though he was now seventy years old. For gentlefolk and women he worked to measure, and for that he used an iron ruler. He accepted orders for children’s coffins very reluctantly, and made them straight off without measurements, scornfully, and, taking the money for his work, would say each time:
“I confess, I don’t like messing with trifles.”
Besides his craft, he also earned a little money playing the fiddle. There was a Jewish orchestra in town that usually played at weddings, conducted by the tinsmith Moisei Ilyich Shakhkes, who took more than half the proceeds for himself. Since Yakov played the fiddle very well, especially Russian songs, Shakhkes sometimes invited him to join the orchestra for fifty kopecks a day, not counting gifts from the guests. When Bronzy sat in the orchestra, his face first of all sweated and turned purple; it was hot, the smell of garlic was stifling, the fiddle screeched, the double bass croaked just by his right ear, and by his left wept the flute, played by a skinny, redheaded Jew with a whole network of red and blue veins on his face, who bore the name of the famous rich man Rothschild. And this cursed Jew managed to play even the merriest things plaintively. For no apparent reason, Yakov gradually began to be filled with hatred and contempt for the Jews, and especially for Rothschild; he started picking on him, abusing him with bad words, and once was even about to give him a beating, and Rothschild got offended and, looking at him fiercely, said:
“If not for respecting your talent, I’d be chucking you out the window long ago.”
Then he wept. And so Bronzy was not invited to join the orchestra very often, only in cases of extreme need, when one of the Jews was absent.
Yakov was never in good spirits, because he always had to suffer terrible losses. For instance, it was sinful to work on Sundays and holidays, Monday was an unlucky day, and as a result in one year there was a total of about two hundred days when he had, willy-nilly, to sit with folded arms. And what a loss that was! If anyone in town celebrated a wedding without music, or if Shakhkes did not invite Yakov, that, too, was a loss. The police inspector had been sick and pining away for two years, and Yakov had been waiting impatiently for him to die, but the inspector went to the provincial capital for treatment, and up and died there. That was a loss for you, ten roubles at the very least, because he would have had to make him an expensive coffin, with silk brocade. The thought of these losses bothered Yakov especially at night; he used to place the fiddle beside him on the bed, and when all sorts of nonsense started coming into his head, he would touch the strings, the fiddle would go twang in the darkness, and he would feel better.
On the sixth of May of the previous year, Marfa suddenly fell ill. The old woman breathed heavily, drank a lot of water, and staggered about, but all the same she stoked the stove in the morning and even went to fetch water. Towards evening she took to her bed. Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were also a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
“Yakov!” Marfa called out unexpectedly. “I’m dying.”
He turned to look at his wife. Her face, rosy with fever, was unusually serene and joyful. Bronzy, who was used to seeing her face always pale, timid, and unhappy, was now dismayed. It looked as if she was indeed dying, and was glad to be leaving that cottage, the coffins, and Yakov finally and forever … She was gazing at the ceiling and moving her lips, and her expression was happy, as if she could see death, her deliverer, and was whispering to him.
Day was already breaking, and the glow of early dawn appeared in the window. Looking at the old woman, Yakov for some reason recalled that in all their life, it seemed, he had never once been gentle with her, or sorry for her, had never once thought of buying her a little shawl or bringing her something sweet from a wedding, but had only yelled at her, scolded her for their losses, threatened her with his fists; true, he had never beaten her, but he had frightened her, and each time she was frozen with fear. Yes, he had told her not to drink tea, because expenses were high as it was, and she had drunk only hot water. And he understood why she had such a strange, joyful face now, and it gave him an eerie feeling.
Having waited for morning, he borrowed a neighbor’s horse and took Marfa to the clinic. There were not many patients, and he did not have to wait long, only about three hours. To his great satisfaction, the patients were being received not by the doctor, who was ill himself, but by the doctor’s assistant, Maxim Nikolaich, an old man, of whom everyone in town said that, though he was a drunkard and a brawler, he understood more than the doctor.