Through the street and toward the
adjacent mountain runs the sinuous path, winding through the deep
ditches filled with rain-water. Here and there are piled heaps of dust
and other rubbish-- either refuse or else put there purposely to keep the
rain-water from flooding the houses. On the top of the mountain,
among green gardens with dense foliage, beautiful stone houses lie
hidden; the belfries of the churches rise proudly toward the sky, and
their gilded crosses shine beneath the rays of the sun. During the rainy
weather the neighboring town pours its water into this main road,
which, at other times, is full of its dust, and all these miserable houses
seem, as it were, thrown by some powerful hand into that heap of dust,
rubbish, and rainwater.
They cling to the ground beneath the high mountain, exposed to the sun,
surrounded by decaying refuse, and their sodden appearance impresses
one with the same feeling as would the half-rotten trunk of an old tree.
At the end of the main street, as if thrown out of the town, stood a
two-storied house, which had been rented from Petunikoff, a merchant
and resident of the town. It was in comparatively good order, being
farther from the mountain, while near it were the open fields, and about
half-a-mile away the river ran its winding course.
This large old house had the most dismal aspect amid its surroundings.
The walls bent outward, and there was hardly a pane of glass in any of
the windows, except some of the fragments, which looked like the
water of the marshes--dull green. The spaces of wall between the
windows were covered with spots, as if time were trying to write there
in hieroglyphics the history of the old house, and the tottering roof
added still more to its pitiable condition. It seemed as if the whole
building bent toward the ground, to await the last stroke of that fate
which should transform it into a chaos of rotting remains, and finally
into dust.
The gates were open, one-half of them displaced and lying on the
ground at the entrance, while between its bars had grown the grass,
which also covered the large and empty court-yard. In the depths of this
yard stood a low, iron-roofed, smoke-begrimed building. The house
itself was of course unoccupied, but this shed, formerly a blacksmith's
forge, was now turned into a "dosshouse," kept by a retired captain
named Aristid Fomich Kuvalda.
In the interior of the dosshouse was a long, wide and grimy board,
measuring some 28 by 70 feet. The room was lighted on one side by
four small square windows, and on the other by a wide door. The
unpainted brick walls were black with smoke, and the ceiling, which
was built of timber, was almost black. In the middle stood a large stove,
the furnace of which served as its foundation, and around this stove and
along the walls were also long, wide boards, which served as beds for
the lodgers. The walls smelt of smoke, the earthen floor of dampness,
and the long, wide board of rotting rags.
The place of the proprietor was on the top of the stove, while the boards
surrounding it were intended for those who were on good terms with
the owner, and who were honored by his friendship. During the day the
captain passed most of his time sitting on a kind of bench, made by
himself by placing bricks against the wall of the court-yard, or else in
the eating-house of Egor Yavilovitch, which was opposite the house,
where he took all his meals and where he also drank vodki.
Before renting this house, Aristid Kuvalda had kept a registry office for
servants in the town. If we look further back into his former life, we
shall find that he once owned printing works, and previous to this, in
his own words, he "just lived! And lived well too, Devil take it, and
like one who knew how!"
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty, with a raw-looking face,
swollen with drunkenness, and with a dirty yellowish beard.
His eyes were large and gray, with an insolent expression of happiness.
He spoke in a bass voice and with a sort of grumbling sound in his
throat, and he almost always held between his teeth a German china
pipe with a long bowl. When he was angry the nostrils of his big,
crooked red nose swelled, and his lips trembled, exposing to view two
rows of large and wolf-like yellow teeth. He had long arms, was lame,
and always dressed in an old officer's uniform, with a dirty, greasy cap
with a red band, a hat without a brim, and ragged felt boots which
reached almost to his knees. In the
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