Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

of which is not less than one cubic foot in size.” Kudriasheff detached from his watch-chain a pair of miniature silver compasses, and took a little line by them on the drawing. “See, Vassili Petrovich, this is a sajene. If we measure the bed transversely, it will show a width of not less than fifty sajenes. Not what you would call a narrow bed, eh? A mass of stone of this width is being raised from the bottom of the sea to within sixteen feet of the surface. If you picture to yourself the width of this bed and its enormous length, you will get some idea of the size of this mass of stone. Sometimes, do you know, for a whole day barge after barge will come to the mole and throw out its load, but when you measure, the increase is infinitesimal. The stones just seem to fall into a bottomless pit.⁠ ⁠… The bed is painted here on the plan a dirty grey colour. They are making progress with it, but from the shore other work is already commencing on it. Steam cranes are lowering on to this bed huge artificial stones, cubic-shaped blocks made of cobbles and cement, each of which is a cubic sajene in size, and weighs many hundreds of poods. The crane raises them, turns, and places them in rows. It is a strange sensation when you realize that with a slight pressure of the hand you can make this mass rise and lower at will. When such a mass obeys you, you are conscious of the might of man.⁠ ⁠… Do you see⁠—here they are, these cubes.” He pointed them out with the compasses. “They will be laid almost up to the surface of the water, and then the upper stone layer of hewn stone will be placed on them. So you see what sort of work it is. Second to no Egyptian Pyramid. These are the general features of the work, which has already lasted some years. How much longer, goodness only knows. The longer the better⁠ ⁠… at the same time, if it proceeds at its present rate it will last out our century.”

“Well, and what else?” asked Vassili Petrovich after a long silence.

“What else? Well, we sit in our places and get as much as is necessary.”

“But I still do not see from your story how you get what money you want.”

“You innocent! Listen! By the way, we are, I think, of the same age. Only the experience which you lack has made me wiser⁠—has made me older. This is how it is: You know that on every sea there are storms? They do their work. Every year they wash away the beds, and we lay down a new one.”

“But, still, I don’t understand how⁠ ⁠…”

“We lay it down,” calmly continued Kudriasheff, “on paper, here on the drawing, because it is only on the drawing that the storms wash it away.”

Vassili Petrovich was completely bewildered.

“Because, waves cannot, in fact, wash away a bed only eight feet high. Our sea is not an ocean, and even in an ocean such moles as ours would stand. But with us in the two thousand sajenes depth, where the bed ends, it is almost a dead calm. Listen, Vassili Petrovich, how the thing is managed. In the spring, after the bad weather of the autumn and winter, we meet, and put the question, How much of the bed has been washed away this year? We take the drawings and note. Well, then, we write, ‘Washed away⁠—let us say, by storms⁠—so many cubic sajenes of work.’ And they reply, ‘Build and d⁠⸺⁠n you!’ Well, we ‘repair.’ ”

“But what do you repair?”

“Our pockets, of course,” said Kudriasheff, laughing at his joke.

“No, no, this cannot be; it is impossible!” cried Vassili Petrovich, jumping up from his chair and running up and down the room. “Listen, Kudriasheff, you are ruining yourself⁠ ⁠… not to mention the immorality of it.⁠ ⁠… I simply want to say that they will catch you all in this, and you will be done for⁠—will go to Siberia. Alas! what hopes! expectations! A capable, honourable young man⁠—and suddenly⁠ ⁠…”

Vassili Petrovich launched out into heroics, and spoke long and fervently. But Kudriasheff quite calmly smoked a cigar and watched his excited friend.

“Yes, you are sure to go to Siberia,” said Vassili Petrovich, as he concluded his harangue.

“It is a long way to Siberia, my friend. You are an extraordinary man; you don’t understand in the least. Am I really the only one who⁠ ⁠… to put it more politely⁠ ⁠… ‘acquires’? All around, even the air seems to pilfer. Not long ago a fresh hand appeared and began to write about honesty. What happened? We protected ourselves.⁠ ⁠… And always will protect ourselves. All for one, one for all. Do you imagine that man is his own enemy? Who will take upon himself to touch me when through me he himself may come to grief?”

“It means that everyone is guilty, as Kryloff said.”

“Guilty, guilty! All take what they can from life and do not regard it platonically.⁠ ⁠… But about what did we begin to talk? Ah yes, of about whom I am insulting? Tell me whom? The lower class? Well, how? I don’t take straight from the source, but I take what is ready and what has already been taken, and if I don’t take it somebody worse than I will take it. At any rate, I don’t live like a brute beast. I take some interest in intellectual matters. I subscribe to a whole bundle of papers and magazines. They cry out about science and civilization, but to what could it be applied if it were not for persons like us, people with means? And who would furnish science with the power to advance if not people with means? And means must be found somewhere, even in a so-called honest⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, don’t finish, don’t say that last word, Nicolai Constantinovich.”

“Word? What? Would it be better