in the world

Chapter 10

This spring, I finally escaped.One morning, I went to the shop to buy bread for morning tea.The owner of the shop quarreled with my wife in front of me and hit her on the forehead with a weight. She fled to the street and fell down.Immediately, people gathered around, and the woman was carried into a four-wheeled carriage and taken to the hospital.I ran after the car, and without knowing it, I ran to the Volga, still holding a twenty-kopeck piece in my hand.

The spring sun is shining warmly, the Volga River is full, and the land looks lively and wide.It made me feel that I was leading a life like a little mouse hiding in a cellar.So I decided not to go back to my master's house, nor to my grandmother in Kunavino.I didn't keep my promise to her, and I didn't have the face to see her, and my grandfather would definitely take pleasure in my misfortune again.I wandered by the river for two or three days, and those kind dock workers gave me food, and I slept with them on the pier at night.Later one of them said to me:

"Young man, I think you can't just hang around here. You can go to the steamer 'Goodness' and see, there is a boy who washes dishes there. . . . "

I went, and the tall, bearded canteen steward, wearing a black silk hat without a brim, looked at me through his spectacles with cloudy eyes, and whispered:
"Two rubles a month. Where's the identity card?"

I don't have an ID.The canteen steward thought for a while and said:
"Get your mother here."

I ran to my grandmother.She agreed with my action, so she persuaded my grandfather to go to the Employment Bureau to get a resident card for me, and went to the ship with me in person.

"Okay," said the canteen steward, looking at us. "follow me."

He took me to the back cabin.There was a burly cook in a white coat and hat, drinking tea and smoking thick cigarettes at a small table.The canteen steward pushed me to him:

"Dishwasher."

After speaking, he ran away immediately.The chef snorted, flipped his black beard, looked at the manager's back and said:

"Just greedy for cheap, no matter what kind of guy..."

Angrily, he raised his head with short-cropped black hair, stared into dark eyes, and with a straight neck and sullen face, said loudly:
"who are you?"

I don't like this guy very much, although he is dressed in white, he still looks dirty, with hair on his fingers and a few long hairs sticking out of his big ears.

"I'm hungry," I told him.

He blinked his eyelids, and his ferocious face immediately turned into a smile.His thick, sunburnt cheeks stretched to the base of his ears, revealing his thick horse teeth, and his beard drooped softly.The appearance became like a kindly fat woman.

He spilled the bottom of his tea overboard, poured a new one, and pushed a whole baguette of white bread and a large piece of sausage in front of me:
"Eat! Do you have parents? Will you steal? Well, don't worry, the people here are all thieves, they will teach you!"

He talked like a dog barking.On his big, blue-shaven face, the nose is covered with red veins like net lines, the swollen red nose hangs from the beard, the lower lip is curled up in a heavy and unhappy way, and there is a stick in the corner of his mouth. Cigarettes, smoking green smoke.He had evidently just had a bath - he smelled of birch sticks and pepper wine, his temples and neck were sweaty and greasy.

I finished my tea, and he thrust a ruble note into my hand:

"Go and buy two long aprons, no, no, wait a minute, I'll go and buy them!" He straightened his white hat, then swayed his heavy body, and walked away step by step like a bear. .

... At night, the bright moon gradually moved over the pasture on the left side of the ship.An old brown-red steamer, with a white streak on the chimney, and its blades stirring the silvery water, moved slowly and unevenly.The dark river bank passed quietly against the hull, and the heavy shadow fell into the water.On the shore, bright red lights shine through the windows of the houses, the sound of singing comes from the village, and the girls are seen dancing round dances.Their chorus of "Ayi, Liuli" sounds like the "Hallelujah" in the hymn...

Behind the steamer a barge, also painted red-brown, was drawn by a long cable.Iron cages were installed on the barge deck, and inside were prisoners sentenced to exile and hard labor.On the bows the sentry's spikes flickered like candles.The dark blue sky shone with the brilliance of the stars.The voices of people on the barge were silent, and the moonlight was shining.In the pitch-black iron fence, there are round gray spots vaguely exposed.Here are the prisoners looking out over the Volga.There is a sound in the water waves, like weeping or snickering.Everything around is like a church, and like a church, it also smells like a church.

When I saw this barge, I remembered the trip from Astrakhan to Nijni when I was a child, and the serious face of my mother, who brought me into this interesting but difficult life, into the world. grandmother.When I think of my grandmother, I feel that all the annoying and distressing things have left me, and become interesting and happy, and people have become better and more lovely...

This beautiful night and this barge moved me so deeply that I almost shed tears.The barge is like a coffin, an almost superfluous thing on the surface of the Haosen River, in the brooding silence of the warm night.The uneven lines of the river bank are sometimes high and sometimes low, which makes people feel very comfortable when looking at it——I want to be a kind person and a person who is useful to others.

The people on our ship are very special. I think all people, old and young, men and women, are all the same.Our ship travels very slowly, and all the guests with important matters have gone to take the express ship. Only those who have no important matters gather on our ship. They eat, sing and sing a lot all day long. Dirty cutlery, knives, forks, spoons.My job is to wash the dishes, wash the dishes, and clean the knives and forks, from six o'clock in the morning until almost midnight, I am busy doing this work.From [-]:[-] pm to [-]:[-] pm, and from [-]:[-] pm to midnight, I work less. — By this time the passengers had eaten and were resting, drinking only tea, beer and vodka.As a result, all the waiters in the dining room—my superiors—are free.On the table near the hatch, the cook Smoore, his assistant Yakov Ivanitch, the dishwasher Maxim, and the first-class waiter Sergey were all drinking tea.Sergey was a hunchback with high cheekbones, a pockmarked face, and watery eyes.Yakov Ivanitch, showing his decayed blue teeth, laughed as if crying, and talked obscenely.Sergey looked like a frog, pulling his big mouth up to his ears, and Maxim looked at them with stern eyes of indeterminate color, sullen and silent.

"Asiatics! Moldevas!" the cook sometimes yelled.

I don't like these people. Fat, bald Yakov Ivanitch talks about women all the time, and he talks badly.His expressionless face was covered with dark blue scars, and on one side of his face, there was a mole with red hair.He twirled the hair with his hands and made it look like a needle.When frivolous and reckless female guests came on board, he was like a beggar, obediently waiting on the sidelines, speaking softly and pitifully, foam like soap bubbles appeared from the corners of his mouth, and he stretched out the dirty tip of his tongue to quickly lick go.For some reason, I always feel that the executioner is such a fat head and brain.

"Be good at seducing women," he taught Sergei to Maxim.Sergei and Maxim, with puffed cheeks and flushed faces, listened intently to what he said.

"Asiatics!" cried Smoore in disgust.He stood up with difficulty and ordered me:

"Pishkov, come!"

He ran to his cabin, handed me a small leather-bound book, and lay down on a canvas hammock against the wall of the air-conditioned room.

"Read it!"

I sat on the macaroni box and read it seriously:

"'Embraculum full of stars means that the traffic of heaven is unimpeded, and members have this smooth road, which can liberate themselves from profanity and evil...'," Smoore lit a cigarette and exhaled Taking a puff of green smoke, he said angrily:

"The camels! They write..."

"'The left breast is exposed to show the purity of the heart...'"

"Who is showing the left breast?"

"I didn't say it."

"That means women's boobs... Pooh, whores."

He closed his eyes and lay with his hands behind his head. The cigarette was on the corner of his mouth, smoking slightly. He flicked the tip of his tongue and inhaled for a while, making his chest roar, and his big fat face sank into the smoke. went.Sometimes I thought he was asleep, and stopped reading, turning the pages of this loathsome book.What a nasty book it makes one sick to look at.

But he shouted in a hoarse voice:

"Read it!" "The master replied: Look, my dear brother Suveryan...'"

"It's Severyan..."

"It says Suveryan."

"Really, hell! There are poems underneath, jump down and read."

I jumped down and said:

Foolish people, you want to know about us,

How can you see clearly with your cowardly eyes!
Even the singing of the gods, you will not be able to hear it clearly.

"Wait!" said Smalley. "This is not poetry, give me the book..." He angrily flipped through the thick blue book for a while, then stuffed the book under the mattress.

"Go, get another book..."

What makes me sad is his black box with iron sheets, and there are many books in it, including "Omar's Tales of the World", "Artillery Notes", "Letters of Lord Sedanjali", "On Bed Bugs", etc. Control Methods of This Pest"; there are also some endless books.

Sometimes, the chef forced me to take out the books and report the titles to him one by one.He listened to me read, then scolded and said:
"It's all nonsense, these bastards... They seem to be slapping people, but they don't understand why. How did Gervasi get into my hands, this Gervasi,' still What's Embra Kullen'..."

It's full of strange words, unfamiliar names, and it's annoying to memorize a lot, irritating the tongue, wanting to repeat it every minute.I thought: Maybe I can understand the meaning from the sound.Outside the boat window, the river is singing tirelessly.At this point, it must be fun to run to the back cabin.Over there, among the piles of cargo boxes, gathered sailors and firemen, some playing cards with the passengers and winning their money, some singing, and some telling amusing stories.Sitting with them, I feel very comfortable.While listening to their simple and clear speech, I looked at the straight pine trees like copper strings on the bank of the Kama River, and the small pond-like puddles left on the grassland after the water receded.These puddles are like broken mirrors, reflecting the blue sky.Our ship left the land and was heading for the distance, but in the languid silence of the day, hearing the bell of an invisible bell tower from the shore suggested that there was a village and there were people there.On the waves, there was a fishing boat floating like a big loaf of bread.Ah, a little village appeared on the bank yonder; children were playing in the river.Walking on the sandy ground like a yellow silk ribbon was a farmer in a red shirt.From a distance, viewed from the middle of the river, everything looks beautiful; everything is as small and colorful as a child's toy.I wanted to say a few kind words to the shore, not only to the shore, but to the barge as well.

This red barge aroused my great interest.I could watch for hours without blinking as the boat stretched out its hulking prow, breaking through the turbid current.The steamer was pulling the barge like a pig, and the tow rope hit the water when it was slack, and then it was taut and dropped many drops of water, straining the nose of the boat.I would love to see the faces of those who sit in iron sheds like beasts.When they landed in Perm, I went to the gangway of the barge to see.Dozens of poor people with no human appearance walked past me, their heavy footsteps were chaotic, with the sound of shackles, and they bent over and carried heavy packages.There are men, women, old, young, handsome, and ugly, but they look exactly the same as ordinary people, only the clothes on their bodies and the weirdly shaved hair are different.Of course, these people were robbers, but my grandmother told me about the chivalry of many robbers.

Smoore, who looked more like a robber than anyone else, looked sullenly at the barge and muttered:
"God, get rid of this fate!"

Once I asked him:

"People are killing and robbing, why do you keep doing this?"

"I'm not cooking, I'm just frying and frying, and it's the girls who cook," he said with a smile.After thinking for a while, he added: "The difference between people lies in their brains. Some people are a little smarter, some people are not so smart, and some people are completely fools. If you want to be smart, you have to study more. Serious books are good, but bad magic books are also good, the more you read the better, you have to read all the books to find a good book..."

He keeps reminding me:

"You read it! Read it seven times if you don't understand it, and read it twelve times if you don't understand it..."

To anyone on board, even the silent mess steward, Smoore was always chattering, with his lips curled up in disgust, his moustache raised, and his voice heavy. It's like throwing a stone at someone.But he was kind and caring to me, but there was something in his caring that somewhat frightened me.Sometimes it seemed to me that the cook was as half-crazy as my grandmother's sister.

Sometimes he said to me like this:
"Read it later..."

He closed his eyes, snored, and lay down for a long time.His big belly was distended and deflated, and his two hands covered with scalding scars were folded on his chest like a dead man, his fingers moved slightly, as if he was knitting invisible socks with a pair of invisible knitting needles.

Suddenly, he muttered again:
"Yes, God has given you such wisdom, and you have to live by it! But God gives you wisdom that is very small and uneven. It would be nice if everyone was equally smart, but not like that. Some people understand, some don't, and some don't want to understand at all, you see!"

He stammered and told me about his life in the army.I couldn't understand the meaning of these stories, and felt that they were tasteless.Moreover, he spoke in a nonchalant way, saying things here and there, saying whatever came to mind:
"The regimental commander called the soldier over and asked him: 'What did the lieutenant say to you?' The soldier reported everything. A soldier cannot lie. But the lieutenant stared at him as if he were at a wall. After a while, he turned his face away and lowered his head. Mmm..."

The cook got angry, he puffed out smoke, and said:
"How did I know what to say and what not to say? So the lieutenant was locked up in the fortress. The lieutenant's mother said... 'Oh, my God!'... I didn't learn anything then Well……"

On a hot day, everything around was shaking and rumbling gently.Outside the iron panels of the cabin, there was the sound of water and the sound of the outer wheels of the ship turning.Outside the round window, the river flows like a wide belt.From afar, I could see a meadow on the shore, with some trees standing here and there.My ears are used to all the sounds—I feel very still all around, although the sailors are crying like crying from the bow:

"Seven, seven..."

I don't want to participate in anything, I don't want to listen, I don't want to work, I just want to hide in some secluded place, where I can't smell the greasy and hot smell of the kitchen, and watch the flowing water of this tired life, gurgling away .

"Read it!" The chef ordered angrily.

The waiters in all classes were afraid of him, and the compliant, quiet, perch-like mess steward seemed a little afraid of Smoore.

"Hey, pig!" he shouted at the waiters in the canteen. "Come here, thief-bones! Asiatic... Embraculum..."

Sailors and stokers were always respectful and flattering to him.He gave them the meat that had been burned in broth, and asked them about their hometown and their family.Those greasy, smoked Belarusian stokers are the lowest people on board a ship, everyone calls them Yagut, and teases them:

"Yagu, Begu, live on the shore."

Smoore blushed with anger, and shouted to one of the stokers:

"Why do you let people laugh at you? Fool! You punched Katchup in the mouth!"

Once the bosun, who was handsome and fierce, said to him:
"Yakut and Hohol are the same thing!"

When the cook heard this, he immediately grabbed his collar and belt with both hands, lifted him above his head, and asked while shaking:

"Do you want me to throw you to death?"

He used to quarrel and sometimes even wrestle, but Smoore was never beaten.He had more strength than anyone else, and the captain's wife often talked to him very affectionately.She was tall and fat, with a man's face, and her hair was cut short and flat, like a boy.

Smalley drank vodka a lot, but he never passed out.There he drank there early in the morning, finishing the bottle four times.After that, until the evening, he drank beer non-stop.His face gradually turned purple-brown from drinking, and his pair of black eyes gradually widened, as if surprised.

In the evening, he often sat down by the water pump. He was tall and dressed in white, looking melancholy at the distant place flowing, and sat silently for a long time.At this time, everyone is very afraid of him, but I feel a little pity for him.

Yakov Ivanitch came out of the kitchen, steaming with sweat, his face red from the fire, stood down and scratched his bald scalp, shook his hands, and walked away; or looked at him at a distance. Say:
"The Sturgeon is dead..."

"Then make it into mixed soup..."

"But what if the guests want fish soup or steamed fish?"

"Just do it, they'll eat it anyway."

Sometimes I ventured to approach him.He moved his eyes to my side with difficulty:

"what's up?"

"there is nothing."

"All right……"

But once at such a moment, I finally asked him:
"Why do you keep making everyone afraid of you? You are a kind person."

To my surprise, he wasn't angry:
"I'm only being kind to you."

But, adding at once, firmly and thoughtfully:
"However, maybe this is the case. I am kind to everyone, but I just don't show it. This can't be seen by others, and people will suffer if they see it. Everyone is the same, and I will climb on top of the kind people. It's like crawling up mounds in a swamp...and tramples you down. Go, go get a beer..."

He drank the bottle glass after glass, licked his mustache, and said:

"If you were a little bigger, little bird, I would tell you a lot. I have a lot to tell, and I'm not a fool. . . . You read books, there are all important knowledge in books. Books are not The usual stuff! Would you like a beer?"

"I don't like to drink."

"Well, don't drink then. It's a bad thing to get drunk. Vodka is the devil's stuff. If I were a rich man, I'd send you to school. An uneducated man is as good as a cow, if not put on A yoke, even if it is slaughtered for meat, it can only wag its tail..."

The captain's wife lent him a book by Gogol.I read "The Terrible Vengeance" with great satisfaction, but Smoore roared:

"Fabulous, nonsense! I know, there are other books..."

He snatched the book from me, ran to the captain's wife, got another one, and ordered me unhappy:

"You read Talas... what's his last name? You find it, and she says it's a very good book... I don't know who thinks it's good, she thinks it's good, maybe I think it's bad .She cut her hair off, and look, why didn't she cut off her ears too?"

When I read the part where Taras challenged Ostap, the chef laughed.

"That's right, isn't it! You have knowledge, I have strength! I can write! These camels..."

He listened attentively, but from time to time expressed dissatisfaction:

"Oh, nonsense! You can't split a man from shoulder to ass! No! You can't pick it on a spear, the spear will break! I was a soldier myself..."

Andre's betrayal aroused his hatred again.

"Shameless guy, isn't he? For the sake of the pussy, bah..."

But as soon as he read the place where Taras had killed his son, he dropped his feet off the bed, put his hands on his knees, bent over and began to cry. —Two lines of tears slowly rolled down his cheeks and dripped onto the deck.He twitched his nose and muttered:

"Oh, my God, . . . oh, my God..."

Suddenly he looked at me and cried out:

"Read it! Bitch!"

He cried again.When Ostap was dying, he cried out "Father, did you hear me?" He cried harder and became more sad.

"It's all over," Smoore said, choking back. "It's all over! Is it over? It's so damn bad! There were good people in the past, and look at this Taras, how? Yes, that's the character..."

He took the book from me and looked at it carefully, tears dripping on the cover.

"Great book! What a treat!"

Later, we read "Ivanhoe" together.Smalley was very fond of Richard the Plantagenet.

"This is a real king!" he said to me seriously.But in my opinion, this book really doesn't have much taste.

Generally speaking, our tastes are not congenial. What I am obsessed with is "Tom Jones", that is, the old translation "A Short History of Tom Jones, an Outcast".But Smalley disapproved:
"What a fool! What does Tom have to do with me? What do I want him for? There must be other books—"

I said to him one day that I knew there were other books; it was a secret forbidden book that had to be read in the basement at midnight.

His eyes widened, his beard bristled, and he said:
"Ah, what? What nonsense are you talking about?"

"It's not nonsense. The priest asked me about the book at the church confession; and I've seen people read it before, and they cried. . . . "

The cook stared sullenly at my face and asked:

"Who is crying?"

"The young girl who was listening; there was another woman who ran away in fright..."

"Wake up, you're talking nonsense." As he spoke, he slowly closed his eyes; after a moment of silence, he began to babble again:

"Of course there's always... some kind of secret book somewhere. There can't be... But I'm an old age, and I'm in a... well, but..."

He could talk on and on for an entire hour...

Unknowingly, I got the habit of reading, and it became a volume in my hand, which was very enjoyable.What is discussed in the book is light and interesting, which is different from real life.But real life is becoming more and more unbearable.

Smalley was also more engrossed in reading, and would often drag me along regardless of my work.

"Pishkov, go to school."

"There are still many dishes left unwashed."

"Maxim will wash."

He rudely told the old dishwasher to do my job, and that one was so angry that he broke the glass on purpose.The canteen steward warned me kindly:
"If this goes on, I won't let you do it on the boat."

One day, Maxim purposely took a few glasses and put them in a basin containing sewage and tea roots.I splashed the sewage over the rail, and the glasses flew into the water.

"It's my fault," Smalley said to the steward. "You put it on my account."

The waiters in the dining room all squinted at me; and said to me:
"Hey, bookworm! What do you do for a salary?"

They also deliberately dirty the tableware to give me as much work as possible.So, I felt that going on like this would not lead to good results.Sure enough, I was not wrong.One evening, two female guests came from a small pier.One was a woman with a red face, and the other was a girl in a yellow turban and a new pink blouse.Both of them were drunk.The woman smiled and nodded to everyone. When speaking, like the church steward, she pronounced the "A" sound instead of the "A" sound:

"I'm sorry, my dear, I had a little drink just now! I just came back from a lawsuit and was acquitted, and I was so happy that I drank a little..."

The girl also smiled, looked up at everyone with cloudy eyes, pushed the woman and said:

"Go on, silly woman, go on..."

They took shelter next to the second-class cabin, opposite the cabin in which Yakov Ivanitch and Sergei slept.After a while the woman disappeared, and Sergei ran to the girl and sat down beside the girl, grinning his frog mouth greedily.In the evening, when I finished my work and was lying on the table to sleep, Sergey came up to me and took my hand:

"Come, come, we will marry you a wife..."

he's drunk.I tried to draw my hand back; but he hit me:
"I'm calling you!"

During this time, Maxim ran in, and he was also drunk.The two of them dragged me along the deck, past the sleeping passengers, and to my cabin.But Smoore was standing in front of the cabin door, and Yakov Ivanitch was inside the door, clutching the door frame with both hands, while the girl was beating his back with her fist and calling out in a drunken voice:
"Let go,..."

Smoore snatched me from Sergey and Maxim, grabbed them by the hair, bumped their heads together, pushed them so hard that they both fell down.

"Asiatics!" he cursed at Yakov.Afterwards, he slammed the door so close it nearly touched his nose.Pushed me again and shouted loudly:

"Go away!"

I went to the back of the cabin.It was a gloomy night, the river was pitch black, and there were two gray water streaks behind the stern of the boat, diverging to the invisible banks.The barge floated slowly between these two water streaks, left for a while, right for a while, a red spot of light appeared, and nothing was illuminated, and it passed away at the sudden bend in the river.When the eyes cannot see this light, they feel darker and more uncomfortable.The chef came running, sat down next to me, sighed, and lit a cigarette.

"Did they drag you to that woman? Shameless bastard! I heard what they were up to..."

"Did you pull the girl away from them?"

"The girl?" He scolded the girl; then said in a heavy tone:
"People here are all scumbags. Speaking of this boat, it's worse than the village. Have you ever stayed in the village?"

"No."

"It sucks in the village! Especially in winter..."

He threw the cigarette butt over the rail, was silent for a while, and spoke again:

"You're going to be doomed all the time among these pigs, and I pity you, puppy, and I pity them too. Sometimes I don't know what to do... I even want to get down on my knees and ask them, 'Hey, son of a bitch, What the hell are you doing? Are you all blind!' You camels..."

The captain screamed, and the towline slapped the water.In the thick darkness, a bean of light flickered, marking the location of the pier.Many lights emerged from the darkness.

"'Drunk Forest' is here." The cook murmured. "There is a river here called 'Drunk River'. I know a chief secretary here named Zuikov, and a clerk named Drunk I like...I want to go ashore and see..."

Several tall girls and women from the Kama region carried firewood from the shore on long stilts.They were one pair after another, with straps hanging on their shoulders, leaning forward, and with elastic steps, they carried the firewood, which was half a foot long, to the boiler room.

"Ah hi...um!"

Shouting so loudly, he threw himself into a dark hole.

When they came with firewood, the sailors touched their breasts and pinched their thighs, and the women screamed and spat on the men.When I went back, I used an empty lift to fight against the men's hands and feet.I have seen this sight dozens of times on every voyage.This is the case at every wood-loading wharf.

I feel like an old man.I have been on this ship for many years, and I seem to know everything about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen in a week, what will happen in autumn, and what will happen next year.

It was dawn, and on the sandy cliff a little higher than the wharf, the lush pine forest could already be seen clearly.A group of women walked up the hill to the edge of the woods, laughing and singing with bass.They are all carrying a long frame, looking like a team of soldiers.

I want to cry.Tears boiled in my chest, and my heart seemed to be boiling in it, which was very painful.

But it was too embarrassing to cry, so I helped the sailor Briahin wash the deck.

This Briahin was an inconspicuous man, his whole body looked languid and gloomy, he was always hiding in a corner, blinking his small eyes.

"My real surname is not Blyahin but my surname... You know, it's because my mother lived a lewd life. There's also a sister, too. Well, the same thing happened to them both. Destiny. Hey, friend, fate is an anchor to us; there you are going . . . but . . . you cannot . . . ”

Now, while mopping the deck with a mop, he whispered to me:

"Did you see how they bully women? That's right! A piece of wet wood can get angry after being baked for a long time! Brother, I can't understand this kind of thing, I hate it. If I was born a woman, I must vote for it." To commit suicide in a dark abyss, you can assure Christ!... Man has no freedom at all, and yet someone burns you! Let me tell you, those eunuchs are not fools. You have heard of eunuchs No? This kind of person is really clever and clever, throwing away all unimportant things, and only serving God, with one thought..."

The captain's wife walked past us.She lifted her skirts high as the deck was flooded with water.She always gets up early.Her tall figure and bright face are so serious and sincere... I really want to follow her up, and make a request from the bottom of my heart:
"Tell me something, tell me something! . . . "

The ship slowly left the pier.Briahin drew a cross and said: A religious fanatic sect emerged in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, advocating getting rid of "secular life" and propagating castration to "save souls."He was later banned for bodily harm.

"Okay, the boat sailed again..."

(End of this chapter)