The Hungry Gleam
SERGEY MATVEITCH MOSHKIN dined very well to-day—comparatively, of course—as a man reckons who has spent a year on other people's doorsteps and stairs searching for a job. He has dined well, but all the same the hungry gleam still remains in his sorrowful dark eyes, and gives to his lean and swarthy face an expression of unwonted significance.
Moshkin spent on his dinner his last six shilling[1] note, and there rattled in his pocket only a few coppers, and in his purse a worn fourpenny bit.[2] He made a feast and made merry, though he knew that it was stupid to rejoice, premature and unfounded. But he had sought work so hard and had come to such a pass that he was ready to rejoice even at the phantom of hope.
Moshkin had lately put an advertisement in the Novoe Vremya. He had advertised himself as a schoolmaster with literary gifts. He had once been correspondent of a Volga newspaper. That was why he lost his last post; some one found out that he wrote malicious tit-bits for a radical paper, informed the Head of the rural council, who in turn informed the inspector of national schools. The inspector, of course, wouldn't stand it.
"We don't want such teachers," said the inspector to him in a personal interview.
And Moshkin asked:
"Then what sort do you want?"
But the inspector, avoiding an inconvenient question, replied drily:
"Good-bye, till we meet again. Hope to see you when we meet on that beautiful shore. …"
Moshkin also announced in his advertisement that he would like to be secretary, editor, sub-editor, or leader-writer of a newspaper, lesson-hearer for young children, tutor, pleasant companion to any one making a tour in the Crimea, handyman about a house, etc. He also declared that he had no objection to taking a post at a distance.
He waited. There arrived one post card. Strangely enough even that post card caused him to hope.
It was the morning. Moshkin was having his tea. In came the landlady herself. Her little black eyes twinkled as she called out sarcastically:
"The correspondence of Sergey Matveitch Moshkin, Esq."
And whilst he read the card she peered at him from under the yellow triangle of her brow and muttered:
"Letters won't pay for board and lodging. Letters won't fill your stomach. Better go to people and hunt for work, not strut like a Spaniard."
He read:
"Be kind enough to call to discuss matters from 6 to 7 p.m., 6th Line, No. 78, lodging 57."
Without signature.
Moshkin looked spitefully at the landlady. She stood at the door, fat, stiff, and calm like a great, staring doll. And she looked at him with cold, malicious, steady eyes.
Moshkin cried out:
"Basta!"
He struck with his fist on the table, stood up, and commenced to march up and down the room, all the while repeating:
"Basta!"
The landlady softly enquired:
"Will you pay, you Kazan and Astrakhan correspondent? Eh? Has your ugly face any conscience left?"
Moshkin stopped before her, stretched out in front of her his empty hand, and said expressively:
"All that I have."
He didn't say a word about the last-left three-rouble note which he had in his pocket, as yet unspent. The landlady boiled over:
"I'm not the wife of an officer of hussars: money's necessary to me. How will I get seven roubles' worth of wood? If you don't keep yourself you're just a spending machine. Dear me, a man with abilities too, a young man, and a sufficiently charming exterior. You can find some one else to put you up. But how can I? No matter what you turn to, out flies the money. Blow—a rouble, spit—a rouble, die—a hundred and fifty."
Moshkin walked up to her and said:
"Don't alarm yourself, Prascovia Petrovna, this evening I shall receive a post and will settle up."
And once more he commenced his march, shuffling in his slippers.
The landlady stood grumbling for some time, and at last went out crying:
"I have a breast of steel. Had it been any one else in my place they'd soon have shown you the door, saying, 'Live without me, tramp the streets, I'm not your born slave.'"
She went out, and there remained in his memory her doll-like figure, puffy arms, yellow triangle of a brow over black waxy eyes, her yellow triangle of tucked-up yellow petticoat, the little triangle of her red snuffing nose. Three triangles.
All day Moshkin was hungry, gay, and wicked. He strayed aimlessly in the streets. He looked at the girls, and they all seemed to him dear, gay, ready to be loved—by the rich. He stopped before jewellers' windows, and the hungry gleam grew keener in his eyes.
He bought a newspaper. Read it on a seat in the square where the children were running and laughing, where the nurses aped the fashions, and the air was full of dust and the smell of dry leaves—and the smell of the streets and the garden mixed disagreeably and reminded him of gutta-percha. In the newspaper Moshkin was struck by the story of a man who had gone mad through hunger, and who, in his dementia, had gone into a gallery and slashed a picture about with his knife.
"That's what. Splendid! I understand that!"
Moshkin strode about saying to himself:
"That's what. I understand that!"
And afterwards, as he wandered along the rich avenues or sauntered by the grand shops of the parade, passed in and out among the equipages of Petersburg lords and ladies, rubbed elbows with the rich, the fine, the perfumed, and breathed the atmosphere of all that wonderful world of luxury to which only those who have money have the entrée, he kept on repeating to himself:
"That's what. I understand that!"
He walked up to a great, fat, idle uniformed footman and cried:
"That's what! I understand that!"
The footman turned a contemptuous gaze on him, but did not move or speak. Moshkin tittered cheerfully and added:
"Fine fellows the anarchists!"
"Clear out!" cried the footman angrily.
Moshkin moved off. Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to him. A policeman stood near, and his white gloves caught the young man's attention. He stopped in vexation, and whispered to himself:
"A bomb would suit you very well."
He heard the footman spit angrily behind him, and he walked on. He walked far, and at about six in the evening entered a middle-class restaurant. He took a seat at a table by the window, drank a glass of vodka, nibbled two anchovies, ordered dinner at one and sixpence, drank a bottle of "Iced Chablais." After dinner he had a liqueur. He felt giddy a bit. Some one was playing a barrel-organ, and his head went round to the music. He didn't take his change, and, leaving the restaurant with a little swagger, he tipped the doorkeeper sixpence.
He looked at his nickel watch—it was getting on for seven. Time. Perhaps he would be late, and they would have engaged some one else. He strode forward agitatedly.
Things got in his way awfully:
the roads were up;
the sleepy cabmen kept running their cabs in front of him as he took the crossings;
people kept blocking the road, especially peasants and well-dressed ladies;
when people made way for him, turning to their right, he made way for them, turning to his left, and collided;
beggars kept asking him for money;
walking itself seemed to retard him.
It is difficult to conquer space and time when one is in a hurry. The earth itself seems to suck you in, and at each step you feel impotence and tiredness—you feel it like a rheumatism in the marrow. Thence is spite engendered and the hungry gleam grows brighter in the eyes.
Moshkin thought:
"The devil take it, eh, all the devils!"
However, he got there at last.
Behold the road and the house, No. 78. It was a four-storey, dark-painted house with two entrances. He went in at a great yawning gate and read the list of occupiers. Flat No. 57 was not indicated. He looked round for some one to ask, but there was no one about. At last, on a little metal plate beside the dirty-white button of an electric bell, he read: "To the House-porter."
He pressed the button and went in once more to look at the list of occupiers, but even before he got to it he met the porter, a black-bearded man of insinuative appearance.
"Where is lodging 57?"
Moshkin asked the question carelessly, imitating that of the chief of the rural council through whom he lost his place. He knew by experience that with house-porters it is necessary to speak in a certain sort of way and not in another. Pilgrimaging from door to door and climbing up many staircases gives a man a certain varnish.
The porter asked somewhat suspiciously:
"Who is it you want to see?"
And with simple carelessness and a gentle drawl Moshkin replied:
"I don't really know myself. I have come about an advertisement. I received a letter, but the writer is not indicated. Only the address is given. Who lives there?"
"Miss Engelgardova," answered the porter.
"Engelgargt?" queried Moshkin.
The porter repeated:
"Engelgardova."
Moshkin laughed.
"Russification?"
"Helena Petrovna," answered the porter.
"An old hag?" asked Moshkin doubtfully. The porter grinned.
"No, sir, a young lady. By the front way, please; through the gate on the right."
"I've looked," said Moshkin. "Only the first numbers are there."
"No," said the porter. "Fifty-seven is there, at the bottom."
Moshkin asked:
"And what is her occupation. Has she some sort of business? A school? A publishing office?"
"No, I never heard either of a school or a publishing office. They have private means."
At Miss Engelgardova's a very country-looking chambermaid showed the young man to the drawing-room and asked him to wait.
He waited, grew bored and tired. He surveyed the furniture. There was an accumulation of armchairs, tables, chairs, screens, sideboards, there were little tables with busts on them, lamps, knick-knacks, mirrors on the walls, pictures, lithographs, clocks, curtains on the walls, flowers. It was close, oppressive, dark. Moshkin began to walk up and down softly on the carpet. He looked with spite at the pictures and the busts.
"To the devil, eh, to all the devils!" thought he.
But when the lady of the house came in he hid the hungry gleam and looked at her with his eyes.
She was young, tall, ruddy cheeked, and by all accounts good-looking. She walked up to him briskly and resolutely, and then rather awkwardly held out to him her strong white arm. It was bare to the elbow.
She held her hand halfway high, as if to say "Shake it or kiss, which you please." Moshkin kissed. Pressing his lips till his teeth touched her hand, he made a loud and smacking kiss. She shuddered rather, but said nothing. She walked to the sofa, pushed aside a table, sat down, pointed to an armchair for him. He sat down. She questioned:
"That was your advertisement yesterday?"
He blurted:
"Mine."
He thought a minute and then answered more politely:
"Mi-ne."
And he felt vexed and thought again:
"To the devil, eh!"
She inquired what he could do, where he was brought up, where he had worked; so cautiously she approached the real question at issue that one might have thought she was waiting for something else to happen first.
At last it became clear. She wanted some one to edit a journal. What sort of journal? She hadn't yet decided. Some sort. A little one. She thought of buying a paper already in existence; of the character of the paper she said nothing. He might be useful in the counting-house perhaps, but as he had written that he was a schoolmaster she had assumed he had matriculated. Could he edit with so small a qualification? She doubted it.
However, if he understood bookkeeping …
How to take in subscriptions …
Transcribe business and editorial letters …
Cash postal orders …
Correct proofs …
Fold the papers, pack and address them …
Take them to the post …
And so on …
And so on …
The young lady talked for half an hour, and gave a sufficiently confused impression of the various duties.
"You need several men to do all that," said Moshkin bitterly.
The young lady blushed with vexation. Lines of greed fluttered about her face.
"The journal will be a small one, a special one. In such a little undertaking to employ several clerks would be to risk immediate extinction."
He laughed and agreed:
"Yes, yes, I suppose. Well, time won't grow heavy on my hands."
He asked:
"But how much of the day shall I be occupied?"
"Oh, from nine in the morning—that's not late, is it?—to seven in the evening—that won't be too early, I suppose? Of course sometimes when there's a rush you might stay a little longer or come in on a Sunday. Of course you're free, aren't you?"
"How much do you think to pay me?"
"Would one pound sixteen a month be enough?"
He reflected and laughed:
"Rather little."
"Well, I can't go any higher than two guineas."
"Very well."
In a sudden burst of rage he put his hand in his pocket, took out the key of his room, and called out calmly but most decidedly:
"Hands up!"
"Ah," cried the young lady, and hurriedly put up her arms.
She sat on the sofa, looking very pale. She was big and strong; he little and emaciated.
The loose sleeves of her blouse dangled on her shoulders, and her white arms stretched upward looked those of an acrobat. She was evidently capable of holding hands up for a long time.
Enjoying her confusion, Moshkin added slowly and suggestively:
"Only move! But tremble!"
He went up to a picture.
"How much is it worth?" he asked.
"Twenty-two pounds without the frame," said the young lady unhappily.
He fumbled in his pocket for his pen-knife, and then jabbed a great cross into the canvas.
"Ah!" exclaimed the girl, holding her hands up.
He went up to a marble bust.
"How much is it worth?"
"Thirty pounds."
He knocked off its nose with his key, then an ear, then chipped the cheeks. The lady sighed softly, and it was pleasant to hear her soft sighing.
He cut up some more pictures, cut open the back of an armchair, broke some vases.
He went up to the young lady and cried:
"Get under the sofa."
She obeyed.
"Lie quietly till some one comes or you'll get a bomb."
He went out, met no one either in the hall or on the staircase.
At the gate the porter stood, and Moshkin said:
"A strange lady that of yours!"
"How?"
"Doesn't behave very well—makes scenes. I should go up to her now, she's feeling bad."
"I can't go till I'm called."
"Well, you know best."
He went out. The hungry gleam grew dimmer in his eyes.
Moshkin tramped the streets a long while, and he recounted to himself stupidly and deliberately the events of that drawing-room, and pictured again the torn pictures and the lady under the sofa.
The dim water of the canal beckoned to him. The glimmering light of the sunset gave the surface a beautiful sadness, a soothing like the music sometimes made by an insane composer. Such also were the rough flags of the pier and such the dusty cobbles of the roadway, and such the stupid, dirty children coming to meet him. All was locked and inimical.
But the green-gold water of the canal beckoned.
And the hungry gleam died away, died away.
So musical was the sudden splash in the water.
And there ran away, ring beyond ring, black dark rings, wallowing over and eclipsing the green-gold water of the canal.