Yama by Aleksandr Kuprin (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

in cloth caps on the sides of their heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts outside, under the unbuttoned, wide open jackets⁠—evidently Simeon’s comrades in the profession.

“What?” one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, “Is it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?”

“Yes, it must be the finish,” answered Simeon. “We’ve got to throw him out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will start haunting. The devil with him, let ’em think that he drank himself full and croaked on the road.”

“But you didn’t⁠ ⁠… well, now?⁠ ⁠… You didn’t do for him?”

“Well, now, there’s foolish talk! If there’d only been some reason. He was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just that his turn came.”

“And didn’t he find a place where to die! Couldn’t he have thought up something worse?” said the one who was in the red shirt.

“Right you are, there!” seconded the other. “Lived to grin and died in sin. Well, let’s go, mate, what?”

The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before them in all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and especially if recalled at night, in the dark.

Gladishevl Will you recall, when you are a man fully matured, this night in August? Will you tell your sons about it?⁠ ⁠…

IV

A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since morning. Platonov was working in the port, unloading watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was extremely brutal with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the backyards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to carefree vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external conditions, does not know himself what his lot is going to be on the morrow. And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from last year, and loved for his good nature, for his comradely spirit, and for his masterly ability of keeping count.

This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the watermelons away⁠—now dark-green, now white, now striped⁠—into even glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly. When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as to be able to throw it.

Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What swearing⁠—virulent, mocking, coarse⁠—poured down upon him when for the third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing: two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: “Ah, so? The devil take you!” he had thought. “And yet you want me to be chary of your watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are!⁠ ⁠…” This flare-up helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood, that the most important thing was not to think at all of the watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in the end, the stage where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying watermelons.

Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon; swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately once again bent down for the next watermelon. And his ear