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IN THE WORLD

BY

MAXIM GORKY

_Author of "My Childhood," etc._

TRANSLATED BY

MRS. GERTRUDE M. FOAKES

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1917




IN THE WORLD




CHAPTER I


I 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- eyes. At first
I thought he was blind, and to see if my supposition was correct, I
made a grimace.

"Don't 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 your face about," he said again, hardly moving
his thick lips.

"Don't 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 what a statue was, and I couldn't 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 covered 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 expression 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, and 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 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 warning:

"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; he is older than you both in years and
experience."

And Sascha said to me, with a nod:

"Don't forget what grandfather has said." He lost no time in profiting
by his seniority.

"Kashirin, don't look so goggle-eyed," his master would advise him.

"I--I'm all right," Sascha would mutter, putting his head down. But the
master would not leave him alone.

"Don't 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 the
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 change 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 observing 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 sloping
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 the glass of the door to keep myself from
laughing. But something used to draw me back to watch 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 other people's feet.

It often happened that the master went away from the shop into