In a week's time the water would fall and they would launch the smaller ferry-boat. Then none of the ferrymen would be needed except Simon, and the Tatar would start tramping from village to village, begging alms and work. His wfe was only seventeen, a beautiful, spoilt, shy girl. Could she really trudge round the villages begging, with her face unveiled? No, the very thought was terrifying.
Da^ was breaking. Barge, willow-dumps in the water, ripples ... all showed clearly, and if you looked the other way there was a clay cliff with a little bro^-thatched hovel at the bottom and the village huts clinging higher up. The village cocks crowed.
Reddish clay cliff. barge, river, unkind strangers, hw1ger, cold, illness ... perhaps none of it was real. It was probably all a dream, the Tatar thought. He sensed that he was asleep aid heard himself snore. Ah, ofcourse—he was back home in Simbirsk Province, he had but to call his wife's name for her to ^^er and his mother was in the next room. But how frightening some dreams be! What are they for? The Tatar siiled and opened his eyes. What river was this? The Volga ?
It was snowing.
'Hey, let's be having you!' someone bellowed on the other side. 'Ba-a-arge!'
The Tatar came to and went to rouse his comrades so that they could cross the river. Donning their tattered sheepskins as they went, half-asleep, swearing hoarsely, hunched in the cold, the ferrymen appeared on the bank. Woken from sleep, they found the river's piercing, frozen breath repulsive and unnerving. They took thcir time about jumping into the barge. The Tatar and three other rowers seized the long, broad-bladed oars wlich seemed like crayfish claws in the dark. Simon thrust his belly against the long rudder, while shouting continued on the far side and they twice fired a revolver—thinking the ferrymen asleep, most likely, or gone to the local pub.
'All right, there's no hurry.' Foxy spoke as one convinced that there is time for everything in this world. Not that there's any point in any of it, either, he seemed to say.
Detaching itself from the shore, the heavy, clumsy barge glided be- tween willow-clumps, and only the slowly retreating wiUow showed that it was in motion at all. The ferrymen plied their oars in measured unison while Foxy laid his belly on the rudder, flitting from one side to the other and describing an arc in the air. In the darkness they seemed to be mounted on some long-pawed prehistoric beast as they floated off to that cold, dismal clime which sometimes figures in one's worst dreams.
Leaving the willow behind, they came out into open river. Those on the far shore could now hear the slap and measured plashing of oars, and shouted to them to get a move on. Ten minutes later the barge bumped heavily into a jetty.
'Will it ever, ever stop snowing?' muttered Simon, wiping snow off his face. 'Lord alone knows where it all comes from.'
On the bank a short, thin old ^^ was waiting. He wore a short fox- fur coat and a white astrakhan cap, and stood quite still some way from his horses with a grim, tense look, as if trying to recall somcthing and annoyed with his faulty memory. Simon went up to him and smiliugly doffed his cap.
'I must get to Anastasyevka quickly,' the old mansaid. 'My daughter's worse again and I'm told they have a new doctor there.'
They lugged his four-wheeler on to the barge and set off back. During the crossing the man whom Simon called Mr. Vasily stood quite still, firmly pursing his thick lips and staring at one spot. When his driver asked permission to smoke he gave no answer and seemed not to have heard. Lying belly-forward on the rudder, Simon looked at him dcrisively.
'Things ain't so bad, even in Siberia,' said he. 'It's a life of sorts.'
Foxy looked triumphant, as if he had just scored a point, and he seemed glad that things had turned out just as he had expected. The wrctchcd, hclplcss look of thc man in thc fox coat gavc him great plcasure, that was obvious.
'It's dirty travclling now, Mr. Vasily,' he said after they had har- ncsscd the horscs on thc bank. 'You should havc waited a couple of weeks for drier wcather. Or, bcttcr still, you should have stayed at home altogethcr. It's not as if therc was any point your going. As you well know, sir, pcoplc have bcen travelling day in day out for donkeys' years, but no good ever came of it, believe you me.'
Vasily tipped him silently, climbed into his carriage and drove off.
'He's off to fctch a doctor, sce?' said Simon, doublcd up with cold. 'But looking for a proper doctor round here . .. it's likc looking for a necdle in a haystack. Oh, it's a real wild-goosc chase, that is, may you rot in hcll! People are funny, Lord forgive me, sinner that I am.'
Tatar went up to Foxy and looked at him with loathing and
disgust.
'Him good, good. You bad,' he said, shivering and mixing Tatar words with his broken Russian. 'You bad. Squire him good soul, him fme man, but you wild beast, you bad. Squire alive, you dead. God made man to be alivc, to have joy and grief and sorrow, but you not want anything. So you not alive—you stone, you clay! Stonc necd nothing, you nced nothing.
'You stone. God not lovc you, God love squirc.'
Everyone laughcd. The Tatar frowned squcamishly, made an impatient gcsture, gathered his rags around him and went to thc fire. Simon and the ferrymcn trudged off to the hut.
'It's cold,' wheczed onc man, stretcling himself on thc straw laid on thc damp clay fl.oor.
'Well, it ain't warm,' another agrecd. 'Oh, it's a dog's life, this is.'
AU lay do^. The door blew opcn and snow driftcd in, but no onc fclt like getting up and closing thc door. It was cold and thcy couldn't bother.
'I feel fme,' said Simon as he fell asleep. 'It's a great lifc, this.'
'You're a real old lag, we all know that. The devils wouldn't have you in hcll, they wouldn't.'
From outside came noiscs like a hound's baying.
'What's that? Who's there?'
'The Tatar's crying.'
'Is he now? Hc's au odd one.'
'He'll settle down,' said Simon and fell straight asleep.
Soon thc others too fell aslcep and the door just stayed opcn.
ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE
It was a small town, more wretched than a village, and almost all the inhabitants were old folk with a depressingly low death rate. Nor were many coffms required at the hospital and gaol. In a word, business was bad. Had Jacob Ivanov been making coffins in a county to^ he would probably have o^ed a house and been called 'mister'. But in this dump he was plain Jacob, his street nickname was 'Bronze' for whatever reason, and he lived as miserably as any farm labourer in his little old one-roomed shack which housed himself, his Martha, a stove, a double bed, coffins, his work-bench and all his household goods.
Jacob made good solid coffins. For men—village and working-class folk—he made them to his o^ height, and never got them wrong because he was taller and stronger than anyone, even in the gaol, though now seventy years old. For the gentry, though, and for women he made them to measure, using an iron ruler. He was not at aU keen on orders for children's coffins, which he would knock up contempt- uously without measuring. And when paid for them he would say that he 'quite frankly set no store by such trifles'.
His fiddle brought him a small income on top ofhis trade. A Jewish band usually played at weddings in the to^, conducted by the tinker Moses Shakhkes who took more than half the proceeds. And since Jacob was a fine fiddler, especially with Russian folk tunes, Shakhkes sometimes asked him to join the band for fifty copecks a day plus tips. Straight away it made his face sweat and tum crimson, did sitting in the band. It was hot, there was a stifling smell of garlic, his f ddle squeaked. By his right ear wheezed the double-bass, by his left sobbed the flute played by a red-haired, emaciated Jew with a network of red and blue veins on his face. He was kno^ as Rothschild after the noted millionaire. Now, this bloody little Jew even contrived to play the merriest tunes in lachrymose style. For no obvious reason Jacob became more and more obsessed by hatred and contempt for Jews, and for Rothschild in particular. He started picking on him and swearing at him. Once he made to beat him, whereat Rothschild took umbrage.