The Man Who Was Afraid Part 66

"Go ahead. Just look at him, you're smoking cigars."

"Don't you like them?"

"I? Come on, it's all the same to me. I say that it looks rather aristocratic to smoke cigars."

"And why should we consider ourselves lower than the aristocrats?" said Taras, laughing.

"Do, I consider ourselves lower?" exclaimed the old man. "I merely said it because it looked ridiculous to me, such a sedate old fellow, with beard trimmed in foreign fas.h.i.+on, cigar in his mouth. Who is he? My son--he-he-he!" the old man tapped Taras on the shoulder and sprang away from him, as though frightened lest he were rejoicing too soon, lest that might not be the proper way to treat that half gray man. And he looked searchingly and suspiciously into his son's large eyes, which were surrounded by yellowish swellings.

Taras smiled in his father's face an affable and warm smile, and said to him thoughtfully:

"That's the way I remember you--cheerful and lively. It looks as though you had not changed a bit during all these years."

The old man straightened himself proudly, and, striking his breast with his fist, said:

"I shall never change, because life has no power over him who knows his own value. Isn't that so?"

"Oh! How proud you are!"

"I must have taken after my son," said the old man with a cunning grimace. "Do you know, dear, my son was silent for seventeen years out of pride."

"That's because his father would not listen to him," Taras reminded him.

"It's all right now. Never mind the past. Only G.o.d knows which of us is to blame. He, the upright one, He'll tell it to you--wait! I shall keep silence. This is not the time for us to discuss that matter. You better tell me--what have you been doing all these years? How did you come to that soda factory? How have you made your way?"

"That's a long story," said Taras with a sigh; and emitting from his mouth a great puff of smoke, he began slowly: "When I acquired the possibility to live at liberty, I entered the office of the superintendent of the gold mines of the Remezovs."

"I know; they're very rich. Three brothers. I know them all. One is a cripple, the other a fool, and the third a miser. Go on!"

"I served under him for two years. And then I married his daughter,"

narrated Mayakin in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"The superintendent's? That wasn't foolish at all." Taras became thoughtful and was silent awhile. The old man looked at his sad face and understood his son.

"And so you lived with your wife happily," he said. "Well, what can you do? To the dead belongs paradise, and the living must live on. You are not so very old as yet. Have you been a widower long?"

"This is the third year."

"So? And how did you chance upon the soda factory?"

"That belongs to my father-in-law."

"Aha! What is your salary?"

"About five thousand."

"Mm. That's not a stale crust. Yes, that's a galley slave for you!"

Taras glanced at his father with a firm look and asked him drily:

"By the way, what makes you think that I was a convict?"

The old man glanced at his son with astonishment, which was quickly changed into joy:

"Ah! What then? You were not? The devil take them! Then--how was it?

Don't take offence! How could I know? They said you were in Siberia!

Well, and there are the galleys!"

"To make an end of this once for all," said Taras, seriously and impressively, clapping his hand on his knee, "I'll tell you right now how it all happened. I was banished to Siberia to settle there for six years, and, during all the time of my exile, I lived in the mining region of the Lena. In Moscow I was imprisoned for about nine months.

That's all!"

"So-o! But what does it mean?" muttered Yakov Tarasovich, with confusion and joy.

"And here they circulated that absurd rumour."

"That's right--it is absurd indeed!" said the old man, distressed.

"And it did a pretty great deal of harm on a certain occasion."

"Really? Is that possible?"

"Yes. I was about to go into business for myself, and my credit was ruined on account of--"

"Pshaw!" said Yakov Tarasovich, as he spat angrily. "Oh, devil! Come, come, is that possible?"

Foma sat all this time in his corner, listening to the conversation between the Mayakins, and, blinking perplexedly, he fixedly examined the newcomer. Recalling Lubov's bearing toward her brother, and influenced, to a certain degree, by her stories about Taras, he expected to see in him something unusual, something unlike the ordinary people. He had thought that Taras would speak in some peculiar way, would dress in a manner peculiar to himself; and in general he would be unlike other people. While before him sat a sedate, stout man, faultlessly dressed, with stern eyes, very much like his father in face, and the only difference between them was that the son had a cigar in his mouth and a black beard. He spoke briefly in a business-like way of everyday things--where was, then, that peculiar something about him? Now he began to tell his father of the profits in the manufacture of soda. He had not been a galley slave--Lubov had lied! And Foma was very much pleased when he pictured to himself how he would speak to Lubov about her brother.

Now and then she appeared in the doorway during the conversation between her father and her brother. Her face was radiant with happiness, and her eyes beamed with joy as she looked at the black figure of Taras, clad in such a peculiarly thick frock coat, with pockets on the sides and with big b.u.t.tons. She walked on tiptoe, and somehow always stretched her neck toward her brother. Foma looked at her questioningly, but she did not notice him, constantly running back and forth past the door, with plates and bottles in her hands.

It so happened that she glanced into the room just when her brother was telling her father about the galleys. She stopped as though petrified, holding a tray in her outstretched hands and listened to everything her brother said about the punishment inflicted upon him. She listened, and slowly walked away, without catching Foma's astonished and sarcastic glance. Absorbed in his reflections on Taras, slightly offended by the lack of attention shown him, and by the fact that since the handshake at the introduction Taras had not given him a single glance, Foma ceased for awhile to follow the conversation of the Mayakins, and suddenly he felt that someone seized him by the shoulder. He trembled and sprang to his feet, almost felling his G.o.dfather, who stood before him with excited face:

"There--look! That is a man! That's what a Mayakin is! They have seven times boiled him in lye; they have squeezed oil out of him, and yet he lives! Understand? Without any aid--alone--he made his way and found his place and--he is proud! That means Mayakin! A Mayakin means a man who holds his fate in his own hands. Do you understand? Take a lesson from him! Look at him! You cannot find another like him in a hundred; you'd have to look for one in a thousand. What? Just bear this in mind: You cannot forge a Mayakin from man into either devil or angel."

Stupefied by this tempestuous shock, Foma became confused and did not know what to say in reply to the old man's noisy song of praise. He saw that Taras, calmly smoking his cigar, was looking at his father, and that the corners of his lips were quivering with a smile. His face looked condescendingly contented, and all his figure somewhat aristocratic and haughty. He seemed to be amused by the old man's joy.

And Yakov Tarasovich tapped Foma on the chest with his finger and said:

"I do not know him, my own son. He has not opened his soul to me. It may be that such a difference had grown up between us that not only an eagle, but the devil himself cannot cross it. Perhaps his blood has overboiled; that there is not even the scent of the father's blood in it. But he is a Mayakin! And I can feel it at once! I feel it and say: 'Today thou forgivest Thy servant, Oh Lord!'"

The old man was trembling with the fever of his exultation, and fairly hopped as he stood before Foma.

"Calm yourself, father!" said Taras, slowly rising from his chair and walking up to his father. "Why confuse the young man? Come, let us sit down."

He gave Foma a fleeting smile, and, taking his father by the arm, led him toward the table.

"I believe in blood," said Yakov Tarasovich; "in hereditary blood.

Therein lies all power! My father, I remember, told me: 'Yashka, you are my genuine blood!' There. The blood of the Mayakins is thick--it is transferred from father to father and no woman can ever weaken it. Let us drink some champagne! Shall we? Very well, then! Tell me more--tell me about yourself. How is it there in Siberia?"

And again, as though frightened and sobered by some thought, the old man fixed his searching eyes upon the face of his son. And a few minutes later the circ.u.mstantial but brief replies of his son again aroused in him a noisy joy. Foma kept on listening and watching, as he sat quietly in his corner.