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John Galt - "The Annals of the Parish"

Sterling - "Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling"

Geoffrey Chaucer - "The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems"

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"Well. Yes. All right. I don't mind a job. Only there's
this. I don't want to get into a mess with you. You're so
awfully deep. You're rather shady."

Chelkash felt a scalding sensation in his breast, and with
cold anger he said in a low voice:

"And you'd better hold your tongue, whatever you think, or
I'll give you a tap on your nut that will make things light
enough."

He jumped up from his post, tugged at his moustache with his
left hand, while his sinewy right hand was clenched into a
fist, hard as iron, and his eyes gleamed.

The youth was frightened. He looked quickly round him, and
blinking uneasily, he, too, jumped up from the ground.
Measuring one another with their eyes, they paused.

"Well?" Chelkash queried, sullenly. He was boiling inwardly,
and trembling at the affront dealt him by this young calf,
whom he had despised while he talked to him, but now hated
all at once because he had such clear blue eyes, such health,
a sunburned face, and broad, strong hands; because he had
somewhere a village, a home in it, because a well-to-do
peasant wanted him for a son-in-law, because of all his life,
past and future, and most of all, because he--this babe
compared with Chelkash--dared to love freedom, which he could
not appreciate, nor need. It is always unpleasant to see
that a man one regards as baser or lower than oneself likes
or hates the same things, and so puts himself on a level with
oneself.


139 CHELKASH


The young peasant looked at Chelkash and saw in him an employer.

"Well," he began, "I don't mind. I'm glad of it. Why, it's
work for, you or any other man. I only meant that you don't
look like a working man--a bit too-ragged. Oh, I know that
may happen to anyone. Good Lord, as though I've never seen
drunkards! Lots of them! and worse than you too."

"All right, all right! Then you agree?" Chelkash said more
amicably.

"I? Ye-es! With pleasure! Name your terms."

"That's according to the job. As the job turns out.
According to the job. Five roubles you may get. Do you see?"

But now it was a question of money, and in that the peasant
wished to be precise, and demanded the same exactness from his
employer. His distrust and suspicion revived.

"That's not my way of doing business, mate! A bird in the
hand for me."

Chelkash threw himself into his part.

"Don't argue, wait a bit! Come into the restaurant."

And they went down the street side by side, Chelkash with the
dignified air of an employer, twisting his mustaches, the
youth with an expression of absolute readiness to give way to
him, but yet full of distrust and uneasiness.

"And what's your name?" asked Chelkash.

"Gavrilo!" answered the youth.


140 CHELKASH


When they had come into the dirty and smoky eating-house, and
Chelkash going up to the counter, in the familiar tone of an
habitual customer, ordered a bottle of vodka, cabbage soup,
a cut from the joint, and tea, and reckoning up his order,
flung the waiter a brief "put it all down!" to which the waiter
nodded in silence,--Gavrilo was at once filled with respect for
this ragamuffin, his employer, who enjoyed here such an
established and confident position.

"Well, now we'll have a bit of lunch and talk things over.
You sit still, I'll be back in a minute."

He went out. Gavrilo looked round. The restaurant was in
an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with
the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some
acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man
in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust
and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he was droning a song all
made up of broken and incoherent words, strangely sibilant
and guttural sounds. He was unmistakably not a Russian.

Behind him sat two Moldavian women, tattered, black-haired
sunburned creatures, who were chanting some sort of song, too,
with drunken voices.

And from the darkness beyond emerged other figures, all
strangely dishevelled, all half-drunk, noisy and restless.

Gavrilo felt miserable here alone. He longed for his employer
to come back quickly. And the din in the eating-house got
louder and louder. Growing shriller every second, it all
melted into one note, and it seemed like the roaring of some
monstrous boast, with hundreds of different throats, vaguely
enraged, trying to struggle out of this damp hole and unable
to find a way out to freedom.


141 CHELKASH


Gavrilo felt something intoxicating and oppressive creeping
over him, over all his limbs, making his head reel, and his
eyes grow dim, as they moved inquisitively about the
eating-house.

Chelkash came in, and they began eating and drinking and
talking. At the third glass Gavrilo was drunk. He became
lively and wanted to say something pleasant to his employer,
who--the good fellow!--though he had done nothing for him yet,
was entertaining him so agreeably. But the words which flowed
in perfect waves to his throat, for some reason would not come
from his tongue.

Chelkash looked at him and smiled sarcastically, saying:

"You're screwed! Ugh--milksop!--with five glasses! how will
you work?"

"Dear fellow!" Gavrilo melted into a drunken, good-natured
smile. "Never fear! I respect you! That is, look here! Let
me kiss you! eh?"

"Come, come! A drop more!"

Gavrilo drank, and at last reached a condition when everything
seemed waving up and down in regular undulations before his
eyes. It was unpleasant and made him feel sick. His face wore
an expression of childish bewilderment and foolish enthusiasm.
Trying to say something, he smacked his lips absurdly and
bellowed. Chelkash, watching him intently, twisted his
mustaches, and as though recollecting something, still smiled
to himself, but morosely now and maliciously.


142 CHELKASH


The eating-house roared with drunken clamor. The red-headed
sailor was asleep, with his elbows on the table.

"Come, let's go then!" said Chelkash, getting up.

Gavrilo tried to get up, but could not, and with a vigorous
oath, he laughed a meaningless, drunken laugh.

"Quite screwed!" said Chelkash, sitting down again opposite
him.

Gavrilo still guffawed, staring with dull eyes at his new
employer. And the latter gazed at him intently, vigilantly
and thoughtfully. He saw before him a man whose life had
fallen into his wolfish clutches. He, Chelkash, felt that he
had the power to do with it as he pleased. He could rend it
like a card, and he could help to set it on a firm footing in
its peasant framework. He reveled in feeling himself master
of another man, and thought that never would this peasant-lad
drink of such a cup as destiny had given him, Chelkash, to
drink. And he envied this young life and pitied it, sneered
at it, and was even troubled over it, picturing to himself
how it might again fall into such hands as his.

And all these feelings in the end melted in Chelkash into one
--a fatherly sense of proprietorship in him. He felt sorry
for the boy, and the boy was necessary to him. Then Chelkash
took Gavrilo under the arms, and giving him a slight shove
behind with his knee, got him out into the yard of the
eating-house, where he put him on the ground in the shade of
a stack of wood, then he sat down beside him and lighted his
pipe.


143 CHELKASH


Gavrilo shifted about a little, muttered, and dropped asleep.

CHAPTER II.

"Come, ready?" Chelkash asked in a low voice of Gavrilo, who
was busy doing something to the oars.

"In a minute! The rowlock here's unsteady, can I just knock
it in with the oar?"

"No--no! Not a sound! Push it down harder with your hand,
it'll go in of itself."

They were both quietly getting out a boat, which was tied to
the stern of one of a whole flotilla of oakladen barges, and
big Turkish feluccas, half unloaded, hall still full of palm-
oil, sandal wood, and thick trunks of cypress.

The night was dark, thick strata of ragged clouds were moving
across the sky, and the sea was quiet, black, and thick as oil.
It wafted a damp and salt aroma, and splashed caressingly on
the sides of the vessels and the banks, setting Chelkash's boat
lightly rocking. There were boats all round them. At a long
distance from the shore rose from the sea the dark outlines of
vessels, thrusting up into the dark sky their pointed masts
with various colored lights at their tops. The sea reflected
the lights, and was spotted with masses of yellow, quivering
patches. This was very beautiful on the velvety bosom of the
soft, dull black water, so rhythmically, mightily breathing.
The sea slept the sound, healthy sleep of a workman, wearied
out by his day's toil.


144 CHELKASH


"We're off!" said Gavrilo, dropping the oars into the water.

"Yes!" With a vigorous turn of the rudder Chelkash drove the
boat into a strip of water between two barks, and they darted
rapidly over the smooth surface, that kindled into bluish
phosphorescent light under the strokes of the oars. Behind
the boat's stern lay a winding ribbon of this phosphorescence,
broad and quivering.

"Well, how's your head, aching?" asked Chelkash, smiling.

"Awfully! Like iron ringing. I'll wet it with some water in
a minute."

"Why? You'd better wet your inside, that may get rid of it.
You can do that at once." He held out a bottle to Gavrilo.

"Eh? Lord bless you!"

There was a faint sound of swallowing.

"Aye! aye! like it? Enough!" Chelkash stopped him.

The boat darted on again, noiselessly and lightly threading
its way among the vessels. All at once, they emerged from
the labyrinth of ships, and the sea, boundless, mute, shining
and rhythmically breathing, lay open before them, stretching
far into the distance, where there rose out of its waters
masses of storm clouds, some lilac-blue with fluffy yellow
edges, and some greenish like the color of the seawater, or
those dismal, leaden-colored clouds that cast such heavy,
dreary shadows, oppressing mind and soul. They crawled slowly
after one another, one melting into another, one overtaking
another, and there was something weird in this slow procession
of soulless masses.


145 CHELKASH


It seemed as though there, at the sea's rim, they were a
countless multitude, that they would forever crawl thus
sluggishly over the sky, striving with dull malignance to
hinder it from peeping at the sleeping sea with its millions
of golden eyes, the various colored, vivid stars, that shine
so dreamily and stir high hopes in all who love their pure,
holy light. Over the sea hovered the vague, soft sound of
its drowsy breathing.

"The sea's fine, eh?" asked Chelkash.

"It's all right! Only I feel scared on it," answered Gavrilo,
pressing the oars vigorously and evenly through the water.
The water faintly gurgled and splashed under the strokes of
his long oars, splashed glittering with the warm, bluish,
phosphorescent light.

"Scared! What a fool!" Chelkash muttered, discontentedly.

He, the thief and cynic, loved the sea. His effervescent,
nervous nature, greedy after impressions, was never weary of
gazing at that dark expanse, boundless, free, and mighty. And
it hurt him to hear such an answer to his question about the
beauty of what he loved. Sitting in the stern, he cleft the
water with his oar, and looked on ahead quietly, filled with
desire to glide far on this velvety surface, not soon to quit
it.

On the sea there always rose up in him a broad, warm feeling,
that took possession of his whole soul, and somewhat purified
it from the sordidness of daily life. He valued this, and
loved to feel himself better out here in the midst of the water
and the air, where the cares of life, and life itself, always
lose, the former their keenness, the latter its value.


146 CHELKASH


"But where's the tackle? Eh?" Gavrilo asked suspiciously all
at once, peering into the boat.

Chelkash started.

"Tackle? I've got it in the stern."

"Why, what sort of tackle is it?" Gavrilo inquired again with
surprised suspicion in his tone.

"What sort? lines and--" But Chelkash felt ashamed to lie to
this boy, to conceal his real plans, and he was sorry to lose
what this peasant-lad had destroyed in his heart by this
question. He flew into a rage. That scalding bitterness he
knew so well rose in his breast and his throat, and
impressively, cruelly, and malignantly he said to Gavrilo:

"You're sitting here--and I tell you, you'd better sit quiet.
And not poke your nose into what's not your business. You've
been hired to row, and you'd better row. But if you can't
keep your tongue from wagging, it will be a bad lookout for
you. D'ye see?"

For a minute the boat quivered and stopped. The oars rested
in the water, setting it foaming, and Gavrilo moved uneasily
on his seat.

"Row!"

A sharp oath rang out in the air. Gavrilo swung the oars.
The boat moved with rapid, irregular jerks, noisily cutting
the water.

"Steady!"

Chelkash got up from the stern, still holding the oars in his
hands, and peering with his cold eyes into the pale and
twitching face of Gavrilo. Crouching forward Chelkash was
like a cat on the point of springing. There was the sound of
angry gnashing of teeth.


147 CHELKASH


"Who's calling?" rang out a surly shout from the sea.

"Now, you devil, row! quietly with the oars! I'll kill you,
you cur. Come, row! One, two! There! you only make a sound!
I'll cut your throat!" hissed Chelkash.

"Mother of God--Holy Virgin--" muttered Gavrilo, shaking and
numb with terror and exertion.

The boat turned smoothly and went back toward the harbor, where
the lights gathered more closely into a group of many colors
and the straight stems of masts could be seen.

"Hi! Who's shouting?" floated across again. The voice was
farther off this time. Chelkash grew calm again.

"It's yourself, friend, that's shouting!" he said in the
direction of the shouts, and then he turned to Gavrilo, who
was muttering a prayer.

"Well, mate, you're in luck! If those devils had overtaken us,
it would have been all over with you. D'you see? I'd have you
over in a trice--to the fishes!"

Now, when Chelkash was speaking quietly and even good-humoredly,
Gavrilo, still shaking with terror, besought him!

"Listen, forgive me! For Christ's sake, I beg you, let me go!
Put me on shore somewhere! Aie-aie-aie! I'm done for
entirely! Come, think of God, let me go! What am I to you?
I can't do it! I've never been used to such things. It's the
first time. Lord! Why, I shall be lost! How did you get
round me, mate? eh? It's a shame of you! Why, you're ruining
a man's life! Such doings."


148 CHELKASH


"What doings?" Chelkash asked grimly. "Eh? Well, what doings?"

He was amused by the youth's terror, and he enjoyed it and the
sense that he, Chelkash, was a terrible person.

"Shady doings, mate. Let me go, for God's sake! What am I to
you? eh? Good--dear--!"

"Hold your tongue, do! If you weren't wanted, I shouldn't have
taken you. Do you understand? So, shut up!"

"Lord!" Gavrilo sighed, sobbing.

"Come, come! you'd better mind!" Chelkash cut him short.

But Gavrilo by now could not restrain himself, and quietly
sobbing, he wept, sniffed, and writhed in his seat, yet rowed
vigorously, desperately. The boat shot on like an arrow.
Again dark hulks of ships rose up on their way and the boat
was again lost among them, winding like a wolf in the narrow
lanes of water between them.

"Here, you listen! If anyone asks you anything, --hold your
tongue, if you want to get off alive! Do you see?"

"Oh--oh!" Gavrilo sighed hopelessly in answer to the grim
advice, and bitterly he added: "I'm a lost man!"

"Don't howl!" Chelkash whispered impressively.

This whisper deprived Gavrilo of all power of grasping
anything and transformed him into a senseless automaton,
wholly absorbed in a chill presentiment of calamity.


149 CHELKASH


Mechanically he lowered the oars into the water, threw himself
back, drew them out and dropped them in again, all the while
staring blankly at his plaited shoes. The waves splashed
against the vessels with a sort of menace, a sort of warning
in their drowsy sound that terrified him. The dock was reached.
From its granite wall came the sound of men's voices, the splash
of water, singing, and shrill whistles.

"Stop!" whispered Chelkash. "Give over rowing! Push along with
your hands on the wall! Quietly, you devil!"

Gavrilo, clutching at the slippery stone, pushed the boat
alongside the wall. The boat moved without a sound, sliding
alongside the green, shiny stone.

"Stop! Give me the oars! Give them here. Where's your
passport? In the bag? Give me the bag! Come, give it here
quickly! That, my dear fellow, is so you shouldn't run off.
You won't run away now. Without oars you might have got off
somehow, but without a passport you'll be afraid to. Wait
here! But mind--if you squeak--to the bottom of the sea you
go!"

And, all at once, clinging on to something with his hands,
Chelkash rose in the air and vanished onto the wall.

Gavrilo shuddered. It had all happened so quickly. He felt
as though the cursed weight and horror that had crushed him
in the presence of this thin thief with his mustaches was
loosened and rolling off him. Now to run! And breathing
freely, he looked round him. On his left rose a black hulk,
without masts, a sort of huge coffin, mute, untenanted, and
desolate.


150 CHELKASH


Every splash of the water on its sides awakened a hollow,
resonant echo within it, like a heavy sigh.

On the right the damp stone wall of the quay trailed its
length, winding like a heavy, chill serpent. Behind him, too,
could be seen black blurs of some sort, while in front, in the
opening between the wall and the side of that coffin, he could
see the sea, a silent waste, with the storm-clouds crawling
above it. Everything was cold, black, malignant. Gavrilo
felt panic-stricken. This terror was worse than the terror
inspired in him by Chelkash; it penetrated into Gavrilo's bosom
with icy keenness, huddled him into a cowering mass, and kept
him nailed to his seat in the boat.

All around was silent. Not a sound but the sighs of the sea,
and it seemed as though this silence would instantly be rent
by something fearful, furiously loud, something that would
shake the sea to its depths, tear apart these heavy flocks of
clouds on the sky, and scatter all these black ships. The
clouds were crawling over the sky as dismally as before; more
of them still rose up out of the sea, and, gazing at the sky,
one might believe that it, too, was a sea, but a sea in
agitation, and grown petrified in its agitation, laid over
that other sea beneath, that was so drowsy, serene, and smooth.
The clouds were like waves, flinging themselves with curly gray
crests down upon the earth and into the abysses of space, from
which they were torn again by the wind, and tossed back upon
the rising billows of cloud, that were not yet hidden under the
greenish foam of their furious agitation.


151 CHELKASH


Gavrilo felt crushed by this gloomy stillness and beauty, and
felt that he longed to see his master come back quickly. And
how was it that he lingered there so long? The time passed
slowly, more slowly than those clouds crawled over the sky.
And the stillness grew more malignant as time went on. From
the wall of the quay came the sound of splashing, rustling,
and something like whispering. It seemed to Gavrilo that he
would die that moment.

"Hi! Asleep? Hold it! Carefully!" sounded the hollow voice
of Chelkash.

From the wall something cubical and heavy was let down.
Gavrilo took it into the boat. Something else like it
followed. Then across the wall stretched Chelkash's long
figure, the oars appeared from somewhere, Gavrilo's bag
dropped at his feet, and Chelkash, breathing heavily, settled
himself in the stern.

Gavrilo gazed at him with a glad and timid smile.

"Tired?"

"Bound to be that, calf! Come now, row your best! Put your
back into it! You've earned good wages, mate. Half the job's
done. Now we've only to slip under the devils' noses, and
then you can take your money and go off to your Mashka.
You've got a Mashka, I suppose, eh, kiddy?"

"N--no!" Gavrilo strained himself to the utmost, working his
chest like a pair of bellows, and his arms like steel springs.
The water gurgled under the boat, and the blue streak behind
the stern was broader now. Gavrilo was soaked through with
sweat at once, but he still rowed on with all his might.


152 CHELKASH


After living through such terror twice that night, he dreaded
now having to go through it a third time, and longed for one
thing only--to make an end quickly of this accursed task, to
get on to land, and to run away from this man, before he
really did kill him, or get him into prison. He resolved not
to speak to him about anything, not to contradict him, to do
all he told him, and, if he should succeed in getting
successfully quit of him, to pay for a thanksgiving service
to be said to-morrow to Nikolai the Wonder-worker. A passionate
prayer was ready to burst out from his bosom. But he restrained
himself, puffed like a steamer, and was silent, glancing from
under his brows at Chelkash.

The latter, with his lean, long figure bent forward like a bird
about to take flight, stared into the darkness ahead of the
boat with his hawk eyes, and turning his rapacious, hooked nose
from side to side, gripped with one hand the rudder handle,
while with the other he twirled his mustache, that was
continually quivering with smiles. Chelkash was pleased with
his success, with himself, and with this youth, who had been so
frightened of him and had been turned into his slave. He had a
vision of unstinted dissipation to-morrow, while now he enjoyed
the sense of his strength, which had enslaved this young, fresh
lad. He watched how he was toiling, and felt sorry for him,
wanted to encourage him.

'Eh!" he said softly, with a grin. "Were you awfully scared?
eh?"

"Oh, no!" sighed Gavrilo, and he cleared his throat.


153 CHELKASH


"But now you needn't work so at the oars. Ease off! There's
only one place now to pass. Rest a bit."

Gavrilo obediently paused, rubbed the sweat off his face with
the sleeve of his shirt, and dropped the oars again into the
water.

"Now, row more slowly, so that the water shouldn't bubble.
We've only the gates to pass. Softly, softly. For they're
serious people here, mate. They might take a pop at one in a
minute. They'd give you such a bump on your forehead, you
wouldn't have time to call out."

The boat now crept along over the water almost without a sound.
Only from the oars dripped blue drops of water, and when they
trickled into the sea, a blue patch of light was kindled for a
minute where they fell. The night had become still warmer and
more silent. The sky was no longer like a sea in turmoil, the
clouds were spread out and covered it with a smooth, heavy
canopy that hung low over the water and did not stir. And the
sea was still more calm and black, and stronger than ever was
the warm salt smell from it.

"Ah, if only it would rain!" whispered Chelkash. "We could get
through then, behind a curtain as it were."

On the right and the left of the boat, like houses rising out
of the black water, stood barges, black, motionless, and
gloomy. On one of them moved a light; some one was walking up
and down with a lantern. The sea stroked their sides with a
hollow sound of supplication, and they responded with an echo,
cold and resonant, as though unwilling to yield anything.


154 CHELKASH


"The coastguards!" Chelkash whispered hardly above a breath.

From the moment when he had bidden him row more slowly, Gavrilo
had again been overcome by that intense agony of expectation.
He craned forward into the darkness, and he felt as though he
were growing bigger; his bones and sinews were strained with
a dull ache, his head, filled with a single idea, ached, the
skin on his back twitched, and his legs seemed pricked with
sharp, chill little pins and needles. His eyes ached from the
strain of gazing into the darkness, whence he expected every
instant something would spring up and shout to them: "Stop,
thieves!"

Now when Chelkash whispered: "The coastguards!" Gavrilo
shuddered, and one intense, burning idea passed through him,
and thrilled his overstrained nerves; he longed to cry out, to
call men to his aid. He opened his mouth, and half rose from
his seat, squared his chest, drew in a full draught of breath--
and opened his mouth--but suddenly, struck down by a terror
that smote him like a whip, he shut his eyes and rolled forward
off his seat.

Far away on the horizon, ahead of the boat, there rose up out
of the black water of the sea a huge fiery blue sword; it rose
up, cleaving the darkness of night, its blade glided through
the clouds in the sky, and lay, a broad blue streak on the
bosom of the sea. It lay there, and in the streak of its light
there sprang up out of the darkness ships unseen till then,
black and mute, shrouded in the thick night mist.

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