Sitting on the beams, Foma rocked his whole body to and fro, and out of the darkness, from the river, various human figures appeared silently before him--sailors, stokers, clerks, waiters, half-intoxicated painted women, and tavern-loungers. They floated in the air like shadows; something damp and brackish came from them, and the dark, dense throng moved on slowly, noiselessly and swiftly, like clouds in an autumn sky. The soft splashing of the waves poured into his soul like sadly sighing music. Far away, somewhere on the other bank of the river, burned a wood-pile;embraced by the darkness on all sides, it was at times almost absorbed by it, and in the darkness it trembled, a reddish spot scarcely visible to the eye. But now the fire flamed up again, the darkness receded, and it was evident that the flame was striving upward. And then it sank again.
"0h Lord, 0h Lord!" thought Foma, painfully and bitterly, feeling that grief was oppressing his heart with ever greater power.
"Here I am, alone, even as that fire. Only no light comes from me, nothing but fumes and smoke. If I could only meet a wise man!
Someone to speak to. It is utterly impossible for me to live alone. I cannot do anything. I wish I might meet a man."Far away, on the river, two large purple fires appeared, and high above them was a third. A dull noise resounded in the distance, something black was moving toward Foma.
"A steamer going up stream," he thought. "There may be more than a hundred people aboard, and none of them give a single thought to me. They all know whither they are sailing. Every one of them has something that is his own. Every one, I believe, understands what he wants. But what do I want? And who will tell it to me?
Where is such a man?"
The lights of the steamer were reflected in the river, quivering in it; the illumined water rushed away from it with a dull murmur, and the steamer looked like a huge black fish with fins of fire.
A few days elapsed after this painful night, and Foma caroused again. It came about by accident and against his will. He had made up his mind to restrain himself from drinking, and so went to dinner in one of the most expensive hotels in town, hoping to find there none of his familiar drinking-companions, who always selected the cheaper and less respectable places for their drinking bouts. But his calculation proved to be wrong; he at once came into the friendly joyous embrace of the brandy-distiller's son, who had taken Sasha as mistress.
He ran up to Foma, embraced him and burst into merry laughter.
"Here's a meeting! This is the third day I have eaten here, and Iam wearied by this terrible lonesomeness. There is not a decent man in the whole town, so I have had to strike up an acquaintance with newspaper men. They're a gay lot, although at first they played the aristocrat and kept sneering at me. After awhile we all got dead drunk. They'll be here again today--I swear by the fortune of my father! I'll introduce you to them. There is one writer of feuilletons here; you know, that some one who always lauded you, what's his name? An amusing fellow, the devil take him! Do you know it would be a good thing to hire one like that for personal use! Give him a certain sum of money and order him to amuse! How's that? I had a certain coupletist in my employ,--it was rather entertaining to be with him. I used to say to him sometimes: 'Rimsky! give us some couplets!' He would start, Itell you, and he'd make you split your sides with laughter. It's a pity, he ran off somewhere. Have you had dinner?""Not yet. And how's Aleksandra?" asked Foma, somewhat deafened by the loud speech of this tall, frank, red-faced fellow clad in a motley costume.
"Well, do you know," said the latter with a frown, "that Aleksandra of yours is a nasty woman! She's so obscure, it's tiresome to be with her, the devil take her! She's as cold as a frog,--brrr! I guess I'll send her away.""Cold--that's true," said Foma and became pensive. "Every person must do his work in a first class manner," said the distiller's son, instructively. "And if you become some one's s mistress you must perform your duty in the best way possible, if you are a decent woman. Well, shall we have a drink?"They had a drink. And naturally they got drunk. A large and noisy company gathered in the hotel toward evening. And Foma, intoxicated, but sad and calm, spoke to them with heavy voice:
"That's the way I understand it: some people are worms, others sparrows. The sparrows are the merchants. They peck the worms.
Such is their destined lot. They are necessary But I and you--all of you--are to no purpose. We live so that we cannot be compared to anything--without justification, merely at random. And we are utterly unnecessary. But even these here, and everybody else, to what purpose are they? You must understand that. Brethren! We shall all burst! By God! And why shall we burst? Because there is always something superfluous in us, there is something superfluous in our souls. And all our life is superfluous!
Comrades! I weep. To what purpose am I? I am unnecessary! Kill me, that I may die; I want to die."And he wept, shedding many drunken tears. A drunken, small-sized, swarthy man sat down close to him, began to remind him of something, tried to kiss him, and striking a knife against the table, shouted:
"True! Silence! These are powerful words! Let the elephants and the mammoths of the disorder of life speak! The raw Russian conscience speaks holy words! Roar on, Gordyeeff! Roar at everything!" And again he clutched at Foma's shoulders, flung himself on his breast, raising to Foma's face his round, black, closely-cropped head, which was ceaselessly turning about on his shoulders on all sides, so that Foma was unable to see his face, and he was angry at him for this, and kept on pushing him aside, crying excitedly:
"Get away! Where is your face? Go on!"
A deafening, drunken laughter smote the air about them, and choking with laughter, the son of the brandy-distiller roared to someone hoarsely:
