Creatures That Once Were Men | Page 7

morning, as a rule, he had a heavy
drunken headache, and in the evening he caroused. However much he
drank, he was never drunk, and so was always merry.
In the evenings he received lodgers, sitting on his brick-made bench
with his pipe in his mouth.
"Whom have we here?" he would ask the ragged and tattered object
approaching him, who had probably been chucked out of the town for
drunkenness, or perhaps for some other reason not quite so simple. And
after the man had answered him, he would say, "Let me see legal
papers in confirmation of your lies." And if there were such papers they
were shown. The captain would then put them in his bosom, seldom
taking any interest in them, and would say: "Everything is in order.
Two kopecks for the night, ten kopecks for the week, and thirty
kopecks for the month. Go and get a place for yourself, and see that it is
not other people's, or else they will blow you up. The people that live
here are particular."
"Don't you sell tea, bread, or anything to eat?"
"I trade only in walls and roofs, for which I pay to the swindling
proprietor of this hole--Judas Petunikoff, merchant of the second
guild-- five roubles a month," explained Kuvalda in a business-like
tone. "Only those come to me who are not accustomed to comfort and
luxuries. . .but if you are accustomed to eat every day, then there is the
eating-house opposite. But it would be better for you if you left off that
habit. You see you are not a gentleman. What do you eat? You eat
yourself!"
For such speeches, delivered in a strictly business-like manner, and
always with smiling eyes, and also for the attention he paid to his
lodgers, the captain was very popular among the poor of the town. It
very often happened that a former client of his would appear, not in
rags, but in something more respectable and with a slightly happier
face.

"Good-day, your honor, and how do you do?"
"Alive, in good health! Go on."
"Don't you know me?"
"I did not know you."
"Do you remember that I lived with you last winter for nearly a
month . . . when the fight with the police took place, and three were
taken away?"
"My brother, that is so. The police do come even under my hospitable
roof!"
"My God! You gave a piece of your mind to the police inspector of this
district!"
"Wouldn't you accept some small hospitality from me? When I lived
with you, you were. . . ."
"Gratitude must be encouraged because it is seldom met with. You
seem to be a good man, and, though I don't remember you, still I will
go with you into the public-house and drink to your success and future
prospects with the greatest pleasure."
"You seem always the same . . . Are you always joking?"
"What else can one do, living among you unfortunate men?"
They went. Sometimes the Captain's former customer, uplifted and
unsettled by the entertainment, returned to the dosshouse, and on the
following morning they would again begin treating each other till the
Captain's companion would wake up to realize that he had spent all his
money in drink.
"Your honor, do you see that I have again fallen into your hands? What
shall we do now?"

"The position, no doubt, is not a very good one, but still you need not
trouble about it," reasoned the Captain. "You must, my friend, treat
everything indifferently, without spoiling yourself by philosophy, and
without asking yourself any question. To philosophize is always foolish;
to philosophize with a drunken headache, ineffably so. Drunken
headaches require vodki, and not the remorse of conscience or gnashing
of teeth . . . save your teeth, or else you will not be able to protect
yourself. Here are twenty kopecks. Go and buy a bottle of vodki for
five kopecks, hot tripe or lungs, one pound of bread and two cucumbers.
When we have lived off our drunken headache we will think of the
condition of affairs. . . ."
As a rule the consideration of the "condition of affairs" lasted some two
or three days, and only when the Captain had not a farthing left of the
three roubles or five roubles given him by his grateful customer did he
say: "You came! Do you see? Now that we have drunk everything with
you, you fool, try again to regain the path of virtue and soberness. It
has been truly said that if you do not sin, you will not repent, and, if
you do not repent, you shall not be saved. We have done the first, and
to repent is useless. Let us make direct