We parted like friends. As he said good-by, he pressed my hand, and as he went away, he actually waved his hat to me affably from a distance.
When I announced in the workroom that I was leaving, most of the workmen showed a flattering regret. Pavl, especially, was upset.
"Think," he said reproachfully; "how will you live with men of all kinds, after being with us? With carpenters, house-painters--Oh, you--It is going out of the frying-pan into the fire."
"A fish looks for the deepest place, but a clever young man seeks a worse place!"
The send-off which they gave me from the workshop was a sad one.
"Of course one must try this and that," said Jikharev, who was yellow from the effects of a drinking bout. "It is better to do it straight off, before you become too closely attached to something or other."
"And that for the rest of your life," added Larionich softly.
But I felt that they spoke with constraint, and from a sense of duty. The thread which had bound me to them was somehow rotted and broken.
In the loft drunken Golovev rolled about, and muttered hoarsely:
"I would like to see them all in prison. I know their secrets! Who believes in God here? Aha-a--!"
As usual, faceless, uncompleted icons were propped against the wall; the glass balls were fixed to the ceiling. It was long since we had had to work with a light, and the balls, not being used, were covered with a gray coating of soot and dust. I remember the surroundings so vividly that if I shut my eyes, I can see in the darkness the whole of that basement room: all the tables, and the jars of paint on the windowsills, the bundles of brushes, the icons, the slop-pail under the brass washstand-basin which looked like a fireman's helmet, and, hanging from the ceiling, Golovev's bare foot, which was blue like the foot of a drowned man.
I wanted to get away quickly, but in Russia they love long-drawn-out, sad moments. When they are saying good-by, Russian people behave as if they were hearing a requiem mass.
Jikharev, twitching his brows, said to me:
"That book--the devil's book--I can't give it back to you. Will you take two _greven_ for it?"
The book was my own,--the old second lieutenant of the fire-brigade had given it to me--and I grudged giving Lermontov away. But when, somewhat offended, I refused the money, Jikharev calmly put the coins back in his purse, and said in an unwavering tone: