‘I’m here!’ he said, tugging his sleeve.
People who sing in choirs, whether tenor or bass, especially those who at least once in their lives have done some conducting, usually take a stern, hostile attitude to young boys. Nor do they lose this habit later in life when they no longer sing. Yemelyan turned to Yegorushka and scowled.
‘No larking about in church!’ he said.
Then Yegorushka made his way forward, to be nearer the icon-stand. There he saw some interesting people. At the front, to the right, a gentleman and lady were standing on a carpet. Behind each of them was a chair. Wearing a newly pressed tussore16 suit, the gentleman was standing stock-still, like a soldier saluting, and he held his blue, clean-shaven chin high. There was an enormous amount of dignity in his stiff collar, his blue chin, small bald patch and cane. From this excess of dignity his neck seemed so tense and his chin strained upwards so forcefully that his head appeared ready to fly off and soar upwards at any minute. The lady, who was stout and elderly and wearing a white silk shawl, was holding her head to one side and she looked as if she had just done someone a favour and wanted to say, ‘Ah, you don’t need to thank me! I don’t like that sort of thing…’ All round the carpet was a dense throng of peasants.
Yegorushka went to the icon-stand and started kissing the local icons. Before each one he bowed to the ground and without rising looked back at the congregation; then he stood up and applied his lips again. The feel of the cold floor against his forehead was extremely pleasant. When the verger came from the chancel with a pair of long snuffers to put the candles out Yegorushka quickly leapt up from the floor and ran to him.
‘Have they given out the communion bread yet?’ he asked.
‘There isn’t any,’ the verger replied crustily. ‘And what would you be wanting it for?’
The service came to an end. Yegorushka left the church without hurrying and wandered around the village square. In his time he had seen many villages, squares, peasants and nothing that he saw now interested him in the least. For want of anything to do and to kill time one way or the other, he called at a shop over whose doorway hung a wide red calico strip. This shop consisted of two spacious, badly lit halves: in one half haberdashery and groceries were sold, whilst in the other there were barrels of tar, with horse-collars hanging from the ceiling. From this second half came the rich smell of leather and tar. The floor of the shop had been watered – and the water had probably been sprinkled by some great visionary or free-thinker, since the floor was completely covered with patterns and cabbalistic signs. Behind the counter, leaning his stomach on a desk, stood a fat, broad-faced, round-bearded shopkeeper. Evidently he came from the north. He was drinking tea through a lump of sugar and after every sip he heaved a deep sigh. His face was the picture of apathy, but every sigh seemed to be saying, ‘You wait! I’ll give you what-for!’
‘A copeckworth of sunflower seeds please,’ Yegorushka said.
The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows, came out from behind the counter and poured a copeckworth of sunflower seeds into Yegorushka’s pocket, using an empty pomade jar as a measure. Yegorushka was reluctant to leave and he spent a long time inspecting the trays of cakes. Then he pondered for a moment and pointed to some fine Vyazma17 gingerbreads that were mildewed with age.
‘How much are these?’ he asked.
‘Two for a copeck.’
Yegorushka took out the cake given him by the Jewess the previous day.
‘And how much are these?’ he asked.
The shopkeeper took the cake in his hands, examined it from all angles and raised one eyebrow.
‘This kind?’
He raised the other eyebrow and paused for thought.
‘Two for three copecks.’
There was silence.
‘Who are you?’ asked the shopkeeper, pouring himself some tea from a copper teapot.
‘I’m Ivan Ivanych’s nephew.’
‘But there’s no end of Ivan Ivanyches!’ sighed the shopkeeper. He glanced over Yegorushka’s head at the door, was silent for a moment and then he asked, ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Oh, yes please,’ said Yegorushka, feigning reluctance, although he was longing for his usual morning tea.
The shopkeeper poured him a glass and gave it to him, together with a nibbled lump of sugar. Yegorushka sat on a folding-chair and drank. He wanted to ask another question – the price of a pound of sugared almonds – and had just begun when in came a customer. The shopkeeper put his glass to one side to attend to his business. He led the customer into the other half of the shop that smelt of tar and had a long conversation with him. This customer was obviously exceedingly stubborn and shrewd, kept shaking his head in disagreement and backing towards the door. The shopkeeper reassured him on some point and began pouring oats into a large sack.
‘Call that stuff oats?’ the customer said dolefully. ‘They’re not oats – they’re just chaff. They’d make a cat laugh! I’m off to Bondarenko’s, that I am!’
When Yegorushka returned to the river a small camp fire was smoking on the bank – the drivers were cooking their dinner. In the midst of the smoke stood Styopka, stirring the pot with a large, jagged spoon. A little to one side, their eyes reddened by the smoke, Kiryukha and Vasya were sitting down cleaning the fish. Before them lay the net, covered in slime and weeds – and in it were a gleaming fish and some crawling crayfish.
Having just got back from church, Yemelyan was sitting next to Panteley, waving his arm and humming in a barely audible voice, ‘To Thee we sing…’ Dymov was wandering among the horses.
When they had finished cleaning the fish Kiryukha and Vasya dropped them all, together with the live crayfish, into the bucket, rinsed them and then emptied the whole lot into boiling water.
‘Should I add some fat?’ asked Styopka, skimming off the froth with a spoon.
‘Whatever for? Fish provide their own sauce,’ replied Kiryukha.
Before removing the pot from the fire Styopka added three handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt. Finally he tasted it, smacked his lips, licked the spoon and grunted in self-satisfaction – this meant the stew was ready.
Everyone except Panteley sat round the pot and got to work with their spoons.
‘Hey, you lot! Give the lad a spoon,’ Panteley sternly remarked. ‘I reckon he wants to eat too!’
‘It’s only plain peasant fare,’ sighed Kiryukha.
‘And there’s nothing wrong with it – if that’s what you fancy!’
They gave Yegorushka a spoon. He started eating, but he did not sit down and stood by the pot, looking into it as if into a deep pit. The stew smelled of fishy wetness and now and then a few scales popped up in the millet. It was impossible to scoop out the crayfish with a spoon and the diners picked them straight out of the pot with their fingers. In this respect Vasya displayed particular abandon, wetting not only his hands in the stew but his sleeves as well. But for all that Yegorushka found it very tasty and it reminded him of the crayfish his mother used to make at home on fast-days. Panteley sat to one side, chewing some bread.
‘Why aren’t you eating, grandpa?’ Yegorushka asked.
‘Don’t eat crayfish… blow them!’ the old man said, turning aside in disgust.
While they ate there was a general conversation from which Yegorushka gathered that, regardless of differences in age and temperament, all his new friends had one thing in common which made them alike: they were all people with a wonderful past and an appalling present. To a man they spoke ecstatically of their past, but almost contemptuously of the present. Russians like to reminisce, but they don’t like living. Yegorushka was not yet aware of this and before the stew was finished he was firmly convinced that the men who were sitting eating around the pot had been humiliated and wronged by fate. Panteley said that in the old days – before the railways – he used to go with the wagon trains to Moscow and Nizhny-Novgorod, earning so much that he didn’t know what to do with the money. And what merchants they were in those days, what fish they had, how cheap everything was! Nowadays the highways were shorter, the merchants stingier, the people poorer, the bread dearer. Everything had degenerated, dwindled to nothing. Yemelyan said that he had once sung in the choir at the Lugansk factory. He had possessed a remarkable voice and read music excellently, but now he was a mere peasant, living on the charity of his brother who sent him out with the horses and kept half of his earnings for himself. Vasya had once worked in the match factory; Kiryukha had been coachman to a very good family and used to be considered the best troika driver in the district. Dymov, son of a well-to-do peasant, had lived a life of pleasure, made merry and didn’t have a care in the world. But the moment he was twenty his strict, harsh father, wanting him to learn a trade and afraid he might become spoilt at home, started sending him out to work as a wagon driver, like any poor peasant labourer. Styopka alone said nothing, but one could tell from his clean-shaven face that he had seen much better days.