【英文文学】In the World.docx

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1、【英文文学】In the WorldChapter 1I WENT out into the world as “shop-boy” at a fashionable boot-shop in the main street of the town.My master was a small, round man. He had a brown, rugged face, green teeth, and watery, mud-colored eyes. At first I thought he was blind, and to see if my supposition was cor

2、rect, I made a grimace.“Dont pull your face about!” he said to me gently, but sternly. The thought that those dull eyes could see me was unpleasant, and I did not want to believe that this was the case. Was it not more than probable that he had guessed I was making grimaces?“I told you not to pull y

3、our face about,” he said again, hardly moving his thick lips.“Dont scratch your hands,” his dry whisper came to me, as it were, stealthily. “You are serving in a first-class shop in the main street of the town, and you must not forget it. The door-boy ought to stand like a statue.”I did not know wha

4、t a statue was, and I couldnt help scratching my hands, which were covered with red pimples and sores, for they had been simply devoured by vermin.“What did you do for a living when you were at home?” asked my master, looking at my hands.I told him, and he shook his round head, which was closely cov

5、ered with gray hair, and said in a shocked voice:“Rag-picking! Why, that is worse than begging or stealing!”I informed him, not without pride:“But I stole as well.”At this he laid his hands on his desk, looking just like a cat with her paws up, and fixed his eyes on my face with a terrified expressi

6、on as he whispered:“Wha a t? How did you steal?”I explained how and what I had stolen.“Well, well, I look upon that as nothing but a prank. But if you rob me of boots or money, I will have you put in prison, and kept there for the rest of your life.”He said this quite calmly, and I was frightened, a

7、nd did not like him any more.Besides the master, there were serving in the shop my cousin, Sascha Jaakov, and the senior assistant, a competent, unctuous person with a red face. Sascha now wore a brown frock-coat, a false shirt-front, a cravat, and long trousers, and was too proud to take any notice

8、 of me.When grandfather had brought me to my master, he had asked Sascha to help me and to teach me. Sascha had frowned with an air of importance as he said warningly:“He will have to do what I tell him, then.”Laying his hand on my head, grandfather had forced me to bend my neck.“You are to obey him

9、; he is older than you both in years and experience.”And Sascha said to me, with a nod:“Dont forget what grandfather has said.” He lost no time in profiting by his seniority.“Kashirin, dont look so goggle-eyed,” his master would advise him.“I I m all right,” Sascha would mutter, putting his head dow

10、n. But the master would not leave him alone.“Dont butt; the customers will think you are a goat.”The assistant smiled respectfully, the master stretched his lips in a hideous grin, and Sascha, his face flushing, retreated behind the counter. I did not like the tone of these conversations. Many of th

11、e words they used were unintelligible to me, and sometimes they seemed to be speaking in a strange language. When a lady customer came in, the master would take his hands out of his pockets, tug at his mustache, and fix a sweet smile upon his face a smile which wrinkled his cheeks, but did not chang

12、e the expression of his dull eyes. The assistant would draw himself up, with his elbows pressed closely against his sides, and his wrists respectfully dangling. Sascha would blink shyly, trying to hide his protruding eyes, while I would stand at the door, surreptitiously scratching my hands, and obs

13、erving the ceremonial of selling.Kneeling before the customer, the assistant would try on shoes with wonderfully deft fingers. He touched the foot of the woman so carefully that his hands trembled, as if he were afraid of breaking her leg. But the leg was stout enough. It looked like a bottle with s

14、loping shoulders, turned neck downward.One of these ladies pulled her foot away one day, shrieking:“Oh, you are tickling me!”“That is because you are so sensitive,” the assistant explained hastily, with warmth.It was comical to watch him fawning upon the customers, and I had to turn and look through

15、 the glass of the door to keep myself from laughing. But something used to draw me back to watcli the sale. The proceedings of the assistant were very interesting, and while I looked at him I was thinking that I should never be able to make my fingers move so delicately, or so deftly put boots on ot

16、her peoples feet.It often happened that the master went away from the shop into a little room behind it, and he would call Sascha to him, leaving the assistant alone with the customer. Once, lingering over the foot of a red-haired woman, he took it between his fingers and kissed it.“Oh,” breathed th

17、e woman, “what a bold man you are!”He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-out sound:“0 0 hi”At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I had to hang on to the handle of the door. It flew open, and my head knocked against one of the panes of glass and broke it. The assistant stamped

18、his foot at me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy gold ring, and Sascha tried to pull my ears. In the evening, when we were on our way home, he said to me, sternly:“You will lose your place for doing things like that. I d like to know where the joke comes in.” And then he explained: “If la

19、dies take a fancy to the assistant, it is good for trade. A lady may not be in need of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not want just to have a look at the assistant, who pleases her. But you you cant understand! One puts oneself out for you, and ”This incensed me. No one put himself o

20、ut for me, and he least of all.In the morning the cook, a sickly, disagreeable woman, used to call me before him. I had to clean the boots and brush the clothes of the master, the assistant, and Sascha, get the samovar ready, bring in wood for all the stoves, and wash up. When I got to the shop I ha

21、d to sweep the floor, dust, get the tea ready, carry goods to the customers, and go home to fetch the dinner, my duty at the door being taken in the meantime by Sascha, who, finding it lowering to his dignity, rated me.“Lazy young wretch! I have to do all your work for you.”This was a wearisome, dul

22、l life for me. I was accustomed to live independently in the sandy streets of Kunavin, on the banks of the turbid Oka, in the fields or woods, from morning to night. I was parted from grandmother and from my comrades. I had no one to speak to, and life was showing me her seamy, false side. There wer

23、e occasions on which a customer went away without making a purchase, when all three would feel themselves affronted. The master would put his sweet smile away in his pocket as he said:“Kashirin, put these things away.” Then he would grumble:“Theres a pig of a woman! The fool found it dull sitting at

24、 home, so she must come and turn our shop upside down! If you were my wife, I d give you something!”His wife, a dried-up woman with black eyes and a large nose, simply made a doormat of him. She used to scold him as if he were a servant.Often, after he had shown out a frequent customer with polite b

25、ows and pleasant words, they would all begin to talk about her in a vile and shameless manner, arousing in me a desire to run into the street after her and tell her what they said. I knew, of course, that people generally speak evil of one another behind one anothers backs, but these spoke of every

26、one in a particularly revolting manner, as if they were in the front rank of good people and had been appointed to judge the rest of the world. Envious of many of them, they were never known to praise any one, and knew something bad about everybody.One day there came to the shop a young woman with b

27、right, rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, attired in a velvet cloak with a collar of black fur. Her face rose out of the fur like a wonderful flower. When she had thrown the cloak off her shoulders and handed it to Sascha, she looked still more beautiful. Her fine figure was fitted tightly with a blue-

28、gray silk robe; diamonds sparkled in her ears. She reminded me of “Vassilissa the Beautiful,” and I could have believed that she was in truth the governors wife. They received her with particular respect, bending before her as if she were a bright light, and almost choking themselves in their hurry

29、to get out polite words. All three rushed about the shop like wild things: their reflections bobbed up and down in the glass of the cupboard. But when she left, after having bought some expensive boots in a great hurry, the master, smacking his lips, whistled and said:“Hussy!”“An actress that sums h

30、er up,” said the assistant, contemptuously. They began to talk of the lovers of the lady and the luxury in which she lived.After dinner the master went to sleep in the room behind the shop, and I, opening his gold watch, poured vinegar into the works. It was a moment of supreme joy to me when he awo

31、ke and came into the shop, with his watch in his hand, muttering wildly:“What can have happened? My watch is all wet.I never remember such a thing happening before. It is all wet; it will be ruined.”In addition to the burden of my duties in the shop and the housework, I was weighed down by depressio

32、n. I often thought it would be a good idea to behave so badly that I should get my dismissal. Snow-covered people passed the door of the shop without making a sound. They looked as if on their way to somebodys funeral. Having meant to accompany the body to the grave, they had been delayed, and, bein

33、g late for the funeral procession, were hurrying to the graveside. The horses quivered with the effort of making their way through the snow-drifts. From the belfry of the church behind the shop the bells rang out with a melancholy sound every day. It was Lent, and every stroke of the bell fell upon

34、my brain as if it had been a pillow, not hurting, but stupefying and deafening, me. One day when I was in the yard unpacking a case of new goods just received, at the door of the shop, the watchman of the church, a crooked old man, as soft as if he were made of rags and as ragged as if he had been t

35、orn to pieces by dogs, approached me.“Are you going to be kind and steal some goloshes for me?” he asked.I was silent. He sat down on an empty case, yawned, made the sign of the cross over his mouth, and repeated:“Will you steal them for me?”“It is wrong to steal,” I informed him.“But people steal a

36、ll the same. Old age must have its compensations.”He was pleasantly different from the people among whom I lived. I felt that he had a firm belief in my readiness to steal, and I agreed to hand him the goloshes through the window.“Thats right,” he said calmly, without enthusiasm. “You are not deceiv

37、ing me? No, I see that you are not.”He was silent for a moment, trampling the dirty, wet snow with the soles of his boots. Then he lit a long pipe, and suddenly startled me.“But suppose it is I who deceive you? Suppose I take the goloshes to your master, and tell him that you have sold them to me fo

38、r half a ruble? What then? Their price is two rubles, and you have sold them for half a ruble. As a present, eh?”I gazed at him dumbly, as if he had already done what he said he would do; but he went on talking gently through his nose, looking at his boots, and blowing out blue smoke.“Suppose, for e

39、xample, that your master has said to me, Go and try that youngster, and see if he is a thief? What then?”“I shall not give you the goloshes,” I said, angry and frightened.“You must give them now that you have promised.”He took me by the arm and drew me to him, and, tapping my forehead with his cold

40、fingers, drawled:“What are you thinking of, with your take this and take that?”“You asked me for them yourself.”“I might ask you to do lots of things. I might ask you to come and rob the church. Would you do it? Do you think you can trust everybody? Ah, you young fool!” He pushed me away from him an

41、d stood up.“I dont want stolen goloshes. I am not a gentleman, and I dont wear goloshes. I was only making fun of you. For your simplicity, when Easter comes, I will let you come up into the belfry and ring the bells and look at the town.”“I know the town.”“It looks better from the belfry.”Dragging

42、his broken boots in the snow, he went slowly round the corner of the church, and I looked after him, wondering dejectedly and fearfully whether the old man had really been making fun of me, or had been sent by my master to try me. I did not want to go back to the shop.Sascha came hurriedly into the

43、yard and shouted:“What the devil has become of you?”I shook my pincers at him in a sudden access of rage. I knew that both he and the assistant robbed the master. They would hide a pair of boots or slippers in the stovepipe, and when they left the shop, would slip them into the sleeves of their over

44、coats. I did not like this, and felt alarmed about it, for I remembered the threats of the master.“Are you stealing?” I had asked Sascha.“Not I, but the assistant,” he would explain crossly. “I am only helping him. He says, Do as I tell you, and I have to obey. If I did not, he would do me some misc

45、hief. As for master, he was an assistant himself once, and he understands. But you hold your tongue.”As he spoke, he looked in the glass and set his tie straight with just such a movement of his naturally spreading fingers as the senior assistant employed. He was unwearying in his demonstrations of

46、his seniority and power over me, scolding me in a bass voice, and ordering me about with threatening gestures. I was taller than he, but bony and clumsy, while he was compact, flexible, and fleshy. In his frock-coat and long trousers he seemed an important and substantial figure in my eyes, and yet

47、there was something ludicrous and unpleasing about him. He hated the cook, a curious woman, of whom it was impossible to decide whether she was good or bad.“What I love most in the world is a fight,” she said, opening wide her burning black eyes. “I dont care what sort of fight it is, cock-fights, d

48、og-fights, or fights between men. It is all the same to me.”And if she saw cocks or pigeons fighting in the yard, she would throw aside her work and watch the fight to the end, standing dumb and motionless at the window. In the evenings she would say to me and Sascha:“Why do you sit there doing noth

49、ing, children? You had far better be fighting.”This used to make Sascha angry.“I am not a child, you fool; I am junior assistant.”“That does not concern me. In my eyes, while you remain unmarried, you are a child.”“Fool! Blockhead!”“The devil is clever, but God does not love him.”Her talk was a special source of irritation to Sascha, and he used to tease her; b