Yakov

“ Do you know—the singer who plays the devil gets a thousand rubles every time he sings. The devil take him, let him get ten thousand rubles, because it's good. When it's good, I don't grudge anybody anything. I'd give my life,—there, take it, eat! Isn't it so?"
"Yes," replied Yevsey, looking around.
Yakov's account of the opera, the pretty women's faces, the laughter and talk of the crowds of people in holiday attire, and over all the spring sky bathed in sunlight—all this intoxicated Klimkov and expanded his heart.
"What a young fellow he is!" he thought in amazement, as he looked at Yakov. ”

“ The Jew got angry and shouted too:
"Not so noisy, please, or I'll send you flying over the fence!"
"Get out of my sight!" roared Yakov, and rushed at him with his fists. "One can't live for you scabby Jews!"
Rothschild, half dead with terror, crouched down and waved his hands over his head, as though to ward off a blow; then he leapt up and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him: as he ran he gave little skips and kept clasping his hands, and Yakov could see how his long thin spine wriggled. Some boys, delighted at the incident, ran after him shouting "Jew! Jew!" ”

“ The next instant Yevsey thought, "I said it too soon."
"What?"
"Clerk in a printing office."
Yakov whistled.
"Capital! What do you get?"
"Twenty-five."
"In a printing office? Indeed!" said Yakov thoughtfully, then suddenly became animated. "What do you say—I'll take you to pay a visit this evening. Good company, coz. Two girls, one a milliner, the other a spool girl in a thread factory. There'll be a locksmith there, too, a young fellow. He sings and plays the guitar. Two more, also good people. All people are good, only they have no time to pay attention to themselves." ”

“ He had the same delicate pretty features, the same soft ash-coloured hair, the same little aquiline nose, the same pouting childish lips, and great greenish-grey languishing eyes, with soft eyelashes. But in character he was like his father; and the face, so unlike the father’s face, wore the father’s expression; and he had the triangular-shaped hands and hollow chest of the old Aratov, who ought, however, hardly to be called old, since he never reached his fiftieth year. Before his death, Yakov had already entered the university in the faculty of physics and mathematics ”

“ In fact business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in the chief town of the province he would certainly have had a house of his own, and people would have addressed him as Yakov Matveyitch; here in this wretched little town people called him simply Yakov; his nickname in the street was for some reason Bronze, and he lived in a poor way like a humble peasant, in a little old hut in which there was only one room, and in this room he and Marfa, the stove, a double bed, the coffins, his bench, and all their belongings were crowded together. ”

“ A long train of sledges met him; peasant women were carting bricks. Yakov had to turn off the road. His horse sank into the snow up to its belly; the sledge lurched over to the right, and to avoid falling out he bent over to the left, and sat so all the time the sledges moved slowly by him. Through the wind he heard the creaking of the sledge poles and the breathing of the gaunt horses, and the women saying about him, "There's Godly coming," while one, gazing with compassion at his horse, said quickly:
"It looks as though the snow will be lying till Yegory's Day! They are worn out with it!" ”

“ And Yakov lay in bed all the rest of the day grieving. In the evening, when the priest confessing him asked, Did he remember any special sin he had committed? straining his failing memory he thought again of Marfa's unhappy face, and the despairing shriek of the Jew when the dog bit him, and said, hardly audibly, "Give the fiddle to Rothschild." ”

“ Looking at it, one might have supposed that Kunin was talking of matters so abstruse that Father Yakov did not understand and only listened from good manners, and was at the same time afraid of being detected in his failure to understand.
"The fellow is not one of the brightest, that's evident . . ." thought Kunin. "He's rather shy and much too stupid."
Father Yakov revived somewhat and even smiled only when the footman came into the study bringing in two glasses of tea on a tray and a cake-basket full of biscuits. ”

“ A dark figure stepped out from the barrier at the railway crossing and came irresolutely towards him.
"Why do you keep walking about?" said Yakov with vexation, as he recognized the waiter. "Here you are; there is a little less than five hundred. . . . I've no more in the house."
"Very well; . . . very grateful to you," muttered Sergey Nikanoritch, taking the money greedily and stuffing it into his pockets. He was trembling all over, and that was perceptible in spite of the darkness. "Don't worry yourself, Yakov Ivanitch. ”

“ Yevsey felt he had not succeeded in shoving away the unpleasant and dangerous theme.
"These leaflets are a precious matter. It's necessary for us to read them. All the slaves of labor ought to read them," Yakov began heartily, but in a modulated voice. "We, cousin, are slaves, chained to everlasting work. They have made us captives of capitalists, and we live poor in body and in soul. Isn't it so? Now the leaflets eat at our chains, the way rust eats iron, and they liberate our human minds."
Klimkov walked more quickly. He did not want to hear the smooth talk. ”

“ Why do people always do what isn't needful? Why had Yakov all his life scolded, bellowed, shaken his fists, ill-treated his wife, and, one might ask, what necessity was there for him to frighten and insult the Jew that day? ”

“ Upon Yevsey both produced the impression of witless persons, or persons who have lain in a hospital a long time.
"What fearful people they are!" he remarked to Yakov when he pointed them out one evening during a party at Makarov's lodging.
Yakov loved to boast of his acquaintances. He proudly shook his curly head, and explained with an air of importance:
"It's from their hard life. They work in cellars at night, where it is damp, and the air is close. They get their rest in prison. Both of them are fugitives, who live on other people's passports. ”

“ Yákov was obviously embarrassed when Nekhlyúdov spoke of Yukhvánka's wife.
"Well, if he has acted like that, your Grace," he began, "we must find means. It is true he is indigent, like all peasants who are alone, but he is taking some care of himself, not like the others. He is a clever and intelligent peasant, and passably honest. He always comes when the capitation tax is collected. ”

“ Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with the yarn in her hands, sobbing, and continually bowing down, uttering at each bow a gasping sound. But nothing was so terrible to Yakov as the potato in the blood, on which he was afraid of stepping, and there was something else terrible which weighed upon him like a bad dream and seemed the worst danger, though he could not take it in for the first minute. This was the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was standing in the doorway with the reckoning beads in his hands, very pale, looking with horror at what was happening in the kitchen. ”

“ Yakov, your cousin."
He laughed, held out his hand to Yevsey, and seated himself opposite him at the table. His laughter enveloped Klimkov in a warm cloud of reminiscences—of the church, the quiet ravine, the fire, and the talks of the blacksmith. Silent, smiling in embarrassment, he carefully pressed his cousin's hand.
264"I didn't recognize you."
"Of course!" exclaimed Yakov. "Your memory gets weak in the city. Various things creep upon you from all sides, so no place is left for the old. How are you getting along?" ”

“ Yakov was not annoyed by these attentions — though the herb tea he left untouched — he merely nodded his head approvingly. However, his health was really nothing to boast of. He was very impressionable, nervous, fanciful, suffered from palpitations of the heart, and sometimes from asthma; like his father, he believed that there are in nature and in the soul of man, mysteries which may sometimes be divined, but to which one can never penetrate ”

“ And she used to be always at it: ‘Buy a house, Makaritch! Buy a house, Makaritch! Buy a house, Makaritch!’ She was dying and yet she kept on saying, ‘Buy yourself a racing droshky, Makaritch, that you may not have to walk.’ And I bought her nothing but gingerbread.”
“Her husband’s deaf and stupid,” Yakov went on, not hearing Crutch; “a regular fool, just like a goose. He can’t understand anything. Hit a goose on the head with a stick and even then it does not understand.”
Crutch got up to go home to the factory. Yakov also got up, and both of them went off together, still talking. ”

“ Yakov at first would not even hear of it. ‘But what do you imagine?’ Kupfer cried at last: ‘what sort of presentation are we talking about? Simply, I take you, just as you are sitting now, in your everyday coat, and go with you to her for an evening. No sort of etiquette is necessary there, my dear boy! You’re learned, you know, and fond of literature and music’— (there actually was in Aratov’s study a piano on which he sometimes struck minor chords) —‘and in her house there’s enough and to spare of all those goods!... and you’ll meet there sympathetic people, no nonsense about them! ”

“ And I must say, Davýdka is a peaceful peasant, and not at all stupid: he does not smoke, nor drink, that is," explained Yákov, "he does something worse than drink. All there is left to do is to send him to the army, or to Siberia, and nothing else. The whole tribe of the Kozlóvs is like that. Matryúshka, who lives in that hovel, also belongs to their family, and is the same kind of an accursed good-for-nothing. So you do not need me, your Grace?" added the manager, noticing that the master was not listening to him. ”

“ Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain his calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though he regarded his cousin’s words as nonsense, yet for some reason it had of late haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before last he had made a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day when his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern. ”

“ The same Maxim Nikolaitch told him to put a cold compress on his head, and gave him some powders, and from his tone and expression of face Yakov realized that it was a bad case and that no powders would be any use. As he went home afterwards, he reflected that death would be nothing but a benefit; he would not have to eat or drink, or pay taxes or offend people, and, as a man lies in his grave not for one year but for hundreds and thousands, if one reckoned it up the gain would be enormous. A man's life meant loss: death meant gain. ”

“ If anyone in the town had a wedding without music, or if Shahkes did not send for Yakov, that was a loss, too. The superintendent of the prison was ill for two years and was wasting away, and Yakov was impatiently waiting for him to die, but the superintendent went away to the chief town of the province to be doctored, and there took and died. There's a loss for you, ten roubles at least, as there would have been an expensive coffin to make, lined with brocade. ”

“ He saw none, however.
"He's not a very free sort of a fellow," said Yakov to the girl. "He's not a pair to me, sinner that I am. He's a quiet fellow."
"You needn't feel constrained with us. We are simple people," said Olga.
She was taller than Yevsey by an entire head, 277and her size was heightened by her luxuriant glossy hair, which she wore combed high. ”

“ The pride of hell has confounded you!”
“Hold your tongue!” (Yakov stamped.) “Go away, you devil!”
“If you care to know,” Matvey went on in a loud voice, as he, too, began to get angry, “you are a backslider from God and a heretic. The accursed spirits have hidden the true light from you; your prayer is not acceptable to God. Repent before it is too late! The deathbed of the sinner is terrible! Repent, brother!”
Yakov seized him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table, while he turned whiter than ever, and frightened and bewildered, began muttering, “What is it? ”

“ To his great satisfaction the patients were not being received by the doctor, who was himself ill, but by the assistant, Maxim Nikolaitch, an old man of whom everyone in the town used to say that, though he drank and was quarrelsome, he knew more than the doctor.
"I wish you good-day," said Yakov, leading his old woman into the consulting room. "You must excuse us, Maxim Nikolaitch, we are always troubling you with our trumpery affairs. Here you see my better half is ailing, the partner of my life, as they say, excuse the expression. . . ." ”

“ As to Yashka the Turk and the booth-keeper, there is no need to say much about them. Yakov, called the Turk because he actually was descended from a Turkish woman, a prisoner from the war, was by nature an artist in every sense of the word, and by calling, a ladler in a paper factory belonging to a merchant. As for the booth-keeper, his career, I must own, I know nothing of ”

“ Rebel? Of course. What else? Our people are good, they're solid."
"And how about the Cossacks?"
"The Cossacks? So, so. They are people, too. At first they thought they would officer it over us, but then they said, 'Comrades, give us leaflets.'"
Yakov suddenly broke off and looked into Yevsey's face. For a minute he walked in silence with knit brows.
The mention of the leaflets recalled his duty to Yevsey. He wrinkled his forehead painfully. ”