The Man Who Was Afraid Part 42

"Well, did it move you?" asked Sasha. Pale with fatigue, she breathed quickly and heavily.

Foma glanced at the peasant. The latter was wiping the sweat off his brow and looking around him with such a wandering look as though he could not make out what had taken place.

All was silence. All were motionless and speechless.

"Oh Lord!" sighed Foma, rising to his feet. "Eh, Sasha! Peasant! Who are you?" he almost shouted.

"I am--Stepan," said the peasant, smiling confusedly, and also rose to his feet. "I'm Stepan. Of course!"

"How you sing! Ah!" Foma exclaimed in astonishment, uneasily s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot.

"Eh, your Honour!" sighed the peasant and added softly and convincingly: "Sorrow can compel an ox to sing like a nightingale. And what makes the lady sing like this, only G.o.d knows. And she sings, with all her veins--that is to say, so you might just lie down and die with sorrow!

Well, that's a lady."

"That was sung very well!" said Ookhtishchev in a drunken voice.

"No, the devil knows what this is!" Zvantzev suddenly shouted, almost crying, irritated as he jumped up from the table. "I've come out here for a good time. I want to enjoy myself, and here they perform a funeral service for me! What an outrage! I can't stand this any longer. I'm going away!"

"Jean, I am also going. I'm weary, too," announced the gentleman with the side whiskers.

"Va.s.sa," cried Zvantzev to his lady, "dress yourself!"

"Yes, it's time to go," said the red-haired lady to Ookhtishchev. "It is cold, and it will soon be dark."

"Stepan! Clear everything away!" commanded Va.s.sa.

All began to bustle about, all began to speak of something. Foma stared at them in suspense and shuddered. Staggering, the crowd walked along the rafts. Pale and fatigued, they said to one another stupid, disconnected things. Sasha jostled them unceremoniously, as she was getting her things together.

"Stepan! Call for the horses!"

"And I'll drink some more cognac. Who wants some more cognac with me?" drawled the gentleman with the side whiskers in a beatific voice, holding a bottle in his hands.

Va.s.sa was m.u.f.fling Zvantzev's neck with a scarf. He stood in front of her, frowning, dissatisfied, his lips curled capriciously, the calves of his legs s.h.i.+vering. Foma became disgusted as he looked at them, and he went off to the other raft. He was astonished that all these people behaved as though they had not heard the song at all. In his breast the song was alive and there it called to life a restless desire to do something, to say something. But he had no one there to speak to.

The sun had set and the distance was enveloped in blue mist. Foma glanced thither and turned away. He did not feel like going to town with these people, neither did he care to stay here with them. And they were still pacing the raft with uneven steps, shaking from side to side and muttering disconnected words. The women were not quite as drunk as the men, and only the red-haired one could not lift herself from the bench for a long time, and finally, when she rose, she declared:

"Well, I'm drunk."

Foma sat down on a log of wood, and lifting the axe, with which the peasant had chopped wood for the fire, he began to play with it, tossing it up in the air and catching it.

"Oh, my G.o.d! How mean this is!" Zvantzev's capricious voice was heard.

Foma began to feel that he hated it, and him, and everybody, except Sasha, who awakened in him a certain uneasy feeling, which contained at once admiration for her and a fear lest she might do something unexpected and terrible.

"Brute!" shouted Zvantzev in a shrill voice, and Foma noticed that he struck the peasant on the chest, after which the peasant removed his cap humbly and stepped aside.

"Fo-o-ol!" cried Zvantzev, walking after him and lifting his hand.

Foma jumped to his feet and said threateningly, in a loud voice:

"Eh, you! Don't touch him!"

"Wha-a-at?" Zvantzev turned around toward him.

"Stepan, come over here," called Foma.

"Peasant!" Zvantzev hurled with contempt, looking at Foma.

Foma shrugged his shoulders and made a step toward him; but suddenly a thought flashed vividly through his mind! He smiled maliciously and inquired of Stepan, softly:

"The string of rafts is moored in three places, isn't it?

"In three, of course!"

"Cut the connections!"

"And they?"

"Keep quiet! Cut!"

"But--"

"Cut! Quietly, so they don't notice it!"

The peasant took the axe in his hands, slowly walked up to the place where one link was well fastened to another link, struck a few times with his axe, and returned to Foma.

"I'm not responsible, your Honour," he said.

"Don't be afraid."

"They've started off," whispered the peasant with fright, and hastily made the sign of the cross. And Foma gazed, laughing softly, and experienced a painful sensation that keenly and sharply stung his heart with a certain strange, pleasant and sweet fear.

The people on the raft were still pacing to and fro, moving about slowly, jostling one another, a.s.sisting the ladies with their wraps, laughing and talking, and the raft was meanwhile turning slowly and irresolutely in the water.

"If the current carries them against the fleet," whispered the peasant, "they'll strike against the bows--and they'll be smashed into splinters."

"Keep quiet!"

"They'll drown!"

"You'll get a boat, and overtake them."

"That's it! Thank you. What then? They're after all human beings.

And we'll be held responsible for them." Satisfied now, laughing with delight, the peasant dashed in bounds across the rafts to the sh.o.r.e. And Foma stood by the water and felt a pa.s.sionate desire to shout something, but he controlled himself, in order to give time for the raft to float off farther, so that those drunken people would not be able to jump across to the moored links. He experienced a pleasant caressing sensation as he saw the raft softly rocking upon the water and floating off farther and farther from him every moment. The heavy and dark feeling, with which his heart had been filled during this time, now seemed to float away together with the people on the raft. Calmly he inhaled the fresh air and with it something sound that cleared his brain. At the very edge of the floating raft stood Sasha, with her back toward Foma; he looked at her beautiful figure and involuntarily recalled Medinskaya. The latter was smaller in size. The recollection of her stung him, and he cried out in a loud, mocking voice:

"Eh, there! Good-bye! Ha! ha! ha!"

Suddenly the dark figures of the people moved toward him and crowded together in one group, in the centre of the raft. But by this time a clear strip of water, about three yards wide, was flas.h.i.+ng between them and Foma.