Thoughts Evoked By The Census Of Moscow | Page 7

character. They were not intoxicated, but merely

troubled about something; and neither the men who met them, nor
those who walked in front of them and behind them, paid any attention
to the language which was so strange to me. In these quarters, evidently,
people always talked so. Ascending the rise, we reached a large house
on a corner. The greater part of the people who were walking along
with me halted at this house. They stood all over the sidewalk of this
house, and sat on the curbstone, and even the snow in the street was
thronged with the same kind of people. On the right side of the entrance
door were the women, on the left the men. I walked past the women,
past the men (there were several hundred of them in all) and halted
where the line came to an end. The house before which these people
were waiting was the Lyapinsky free lodging-house for the night. The
throng of people consisted of night lodgers, who were waiting to be let
in. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the house is opened, and the people
permitted to enter. Hither had come nearly all the people whom I had
passed on my way.
I halted where the line of men ended. Those nearest me began to stare
at me, and attracted my attention to them by their glances. The
fragments of garments which covered these bodies were of the most
varied sorts. But the expression of all the glances directed towards me
by these people was identical. In all eyes the question was expressed:
"Why have you, a man from another world, halted here beside us? Who
are you? Are you a self-satisfied rich man who wants to enjoy our
wretchedness, to get rid of his tedium, and to torment us still more? or
are you that thing which does not and can not exist,--a man who pities
us?" This query was on every face. You glance about, encounter some
one's eye, and turn away. I wished to talk with some one of them, but
for a long time I could not make up my mind to it. But our glances had
drawn us together already while our tongues remained silent. Greatly as
our lives had separated us, after the interchange of two or three glances
we felt that we were both men, and we ceased to fear each other. The
nearest of all to me was a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard,
in a tattered caftan, and patched overshoes on his bare feet. And the
weather was eight degrees below zero. {3} For the third or fourth time I
encountered his eyes, and I felt so near to him that I was no longer
ashamed to accost him, but ashamed not to say something to him. I
inquired where he came from? he answered readily, and we began to

talk; others approached. He was from Smolensk, and had come to seek
employment that he might earn his bread and taxes. "There is no work,"
said he: "the soldiers have taken it all away. So now I am loafing about;
as true as I believe in God, I have had nothing to eat for two days." He
spoke modestly, with an effort at a smile. A sbiten{4}-seller, an old
soldier, stood near by. I called him up. He poured out his sbiten. The
peasant took a boiling-hot glassful in his hands, and as he tried before
drinking not to let any of the heat escape in vain, and warmed his hands
over it, he related his adventures to me. These adventures, or the
histories of them, are almost always identical: the man has been a
laborer, then he has changed his residence, then his purse containing his
money and ticket has been stolen from him in the night lodging-house;
now it is impossible to get away from Moscow. He told me that he kept
himself warm by day in the dram-shops; that he nourished himself on
the bits of bread in these drinking places, when they were given to him;
and when he was driven out of them, he came hither to the Lyapinsky
house for a free lodging. He was only waiting for the police to make
their rounds, when, as he had no passport, he would be taken to jail,
and then despatched by stages to his place of settlement. "They say that
the inspection will be made on Friday," said he, "then they will arrest
me. If I can only get along until Friday." (The jail, and the journey by
stages, represent the Promised Land to him.)
As he told his story, three men from among the throng corroborated his
statements, and said that they were in the same predicament. A gaunt,