Twenty-six and One | Page 4

exclaims, Eh! sings, his eyes closed, and it may be that the wide, heavy
wave of sound appears to him like a road leading somewhere far away,
like a wide road, lighted by the brilliant sun, and he sees himself
walking there. . . .
The flame is constantly trembling in the oven, the baker's shovel is
scraping against the brick, the water in the kettle is purring, and the
reflection of the fire is trembling on the wall, laughing in silence. . . .
And we sing away, with some one else's words, our dull sorrow, the
heavy grief of living men, robbed of sunshine, the grief of slaves. Thus
we lived, twenty-six of us, in the cellar of a big stony house, and it was
hard for us to live as though all the three stories of the house had been
built upon our shoulders.
But besides the songs, we had one other good thing, something we all
loved and which, perhaps, came to us instead of the sun. The second
story of our house was occupied by an embroidery shop, and there,
among many girl workers, lived the sixteen year old chamber-maid,
Tanya. Every morning her little, pink face, with blue, cheerful eyes,
leaned against the pane of the little window in our hallway door, and
her ringing, kind voice cried to us: "Little prisoners! Give me biscuits!"
We all turned around at this familiar, clear sound and joyously,
kind-heartedly looked at the pure maiden face as it smiled to us
delightfully. We were accustomed and pleased to see her nose flattened
against the window-pane, and the small, white teeth that flashed from

under her pink lips, which were open with a smile. We rush to open the
door for her, pushing one another; she enters, cheerful and amiable, and
holding out her apron. She stands before us, leaning her head somewhat
on one side and smiles all the time. A thick, long braid of chestnut hair,
falling across her shoulder, lies on her breast. We, dirty, dark, deformed
men, look up at her from below--the threshold was four steps higher
than the floor--we look at her, lifting our heads upwards, we wish her a
good morning. We say to her some particular words, words we use for
her alone. Speaking to her our voices are somehow softer, and our
jokes lighter. Everything is different for her. The baker takes out a
shovelful of the brownest and reddest biscuits and throws them cleverly
into Tanya's apron.
"Look out that the boss doesn't see you!" we always warn her. She
laughs roguishly and cries to us cheerfully:
"Good-by, little prisoners!" and she disappears quickly, like a little
mouse. That's all. But long after her departure we speak pleasantly of
her to one another. We say the very same thing we said yesterday and
before, because she, as well as we and everything around us, is also the
same as yesterday and before. It is very hard and painful for one to live,
when nothing changes around him, and if it does not kill his soul for
good, the immobility of the surroundings becomes all the more painful
the longer he lives. We always spoke of women in such a manner that
at times we were disgusted at our own rude and shameless words, and
this is quite clear, for the women we had known, perhaps, never
deserved any better words. But of Tanya we never spoke ill. Not only
did none of us ever dare to touch her with his hand, she never even
heard a free jest from us. It may be that this was because she never
stayed long with us; she flashed before our eyes like a star coming from
the sky and then disappeared, or, perhaps, because she was small and
very beautiful, and all that is beautiful commands the respect even of
rude people. And then, though our hard labor had turned us into dull
oxen, we nevertheless remained human beings, and like all human
beings, we could not live without worshipping something. We had
nobody better than she, and none, except her, paid any attention to us,
the dwellers of the cellar; no one, though tens of people lived in the

house. And finally--this is probably the main reason--we all considered
her as something of our own, as something that existed only because of
our biscuits. We considered it our duty to give her hot biscuits and this
became our daily offering to the idol, it became almost a sacred custom
which bound us to her the more every day. Aside from the biscuits, we
gave Tanya many advices--to dress more warmly, not to run fast on the
staircase, nor to carry heavy loads of wood. She listened to our advice
with a smile,