"Connecting your question with everything you jabbered last night, I feel within my troubled soul that you, too, my friend, do not amuse yourself because life is cheerful to you.""Eh!" sighed Foma, heavily, rising from the lounge. "What is my life? It is something meaningless. I live alone. I understand nothing. And yet there is something I long for. I yearn to spit on all and then disappear somewhere! I would like to run away from everything. I am so weary!""That's interesting!" said Yozhov, rubbing his hands and turning about in all directions. "This is interesting, if it is true and deep, for it shows that the holy spirit of dissatisfaction with life has already penetrated into the bed chambers of the merchants, into the death chambers of souls drowned in fat cabbage soup, in lakes of tea and other liquids. Give me a circumstantial account of it. Then, my dear, I shall write a novel.""I have been told that you have already written something about me?" inquired Foma, with curiosity, and once more attentively scrutinized his old friend unable to understand what so wretched a creature could write.
"Of course I have! Did you read it?"
"No, I did not have the chance."
"And what have they told you?"
"That you gave me a clever scolding."
"Hm! And doesn't it interest you to read it yourself?" inquired Yozhov, scrutinizing Gordyeeff closely.
"I'll read it!" Foma assured him, feeling embarrassed before Yozhov, and that Yozhov was offended by such regard for his writings. "Indeed, it is interesting since it is about myself,"he added, smiling kindheartedly at his comrade.
In saying this he was not at all interested, and he said it merely out of pity for Yozhov. There was quite another feeling in him; he wished to know what sort of a man Yozhov was, and why he had become so worn out. This meeting with Yozhov gave rise in him to a tranquil and kind feeling; it called forth recollections of his childhood, and these flashed now in his memory,--flashed like modest little lights, timidly shining at him from the distance of the past. Yozhov walked up to the table on which stood a boiling samovar, silently poured out two glasses of tea as strong as tar, and said to Foma:
"Come and drink tea. And tell me about yourself.""I have nothing to tell you. I have not seen anything in life.
Mine is an empty life! You had better tell me about yourself. Iam sure you know more than I do, at any rate."Yozhov became thoughtful, not ceasing to turn his whole body and to waggle his head. In thoughtfulness his face became motionless, all its wrinkles gathered near his eyes and seemed to surround them with rays, and because of this his eyes receded deeper under his forehead.
"Yes, my dear, I have seen a thing or two, and I know a great deal," he began, with a shake of the head. "And perhaps I know even more than it is necessary for me to know, and to know more than it is necessary is just as harmful to man as it is to be ignorant of what it is essential to know. Shall I tell you how Ihave lived? Very well; that is, I'll try. I have never told any one about myself, because I have never aroused interest in anyone. It is most offensive to live on earth without arousing people's interest in you!""I can see by your face and by everything else that your life has not been a smooth one!" said Foma, feeling pleased with the fact that, to all appearances, life was not sweet to his comrade as well. Yozhov drank his tea at one draught, thrust the glass on the saucer, placed his feet on the edge of the chair, and clasping his knees in his hands, rested his chin upon them. In this pose, small sized and flexible as rubber, he began:
"The student Sachkov, my former teacher, who is now a doctor of medicine, a whist-player and a mean fellow all around, used to tell me whenever I knew my lesson well: 'You're a fine fellow, Kolya! You are an able boy. We proletariats, plain and poor people, coming from the backyard of life, we must study and study, in order to come to the front, ahead of everybody. Russia is in need of wise and honest people. Try to be such, and you will be master of your fate and a useful member of society. On us commoners rest the best hopes of the country. We are destined to bring into it light, truth,' and so on. I believed him, the brute. And since then about twenty years have elapsed. We proletariats have grown up, but have neither appropriated any wisdom, nor brought light into life. As before, Russia is still suffering from its chronic disease--a superabundance of rascals;while we, the proletariats, take pleasure in filling their dense throngs. My teacher, I repeat, is a lackey, a characterless and dumb creature, who must obey the orders of the mayor. While 1 am a clown in the employ of society. Fame pursues me here in town, dear. I walk along the street and I hear one driver say to another: 'There goes Yozhov! How cleverly he barks, the deuce take him!' Yes! Even this cannot be so easily attained."Yozhov's face wrinkled into a bitter grimace, and he began to laugh, noiselessly, with his lips only. Foma did not understand his words, and, just to say something, he remarked at random:
"You didn't hit, then, what you aimed at?"
"Yes, I thought I would grow up higher. And so I should! So Ishould, I say!"
He jumped up from his chair and began to run about in the room, exclaiming briskly in a shrill voice:
