84 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



But in his exile, with the fretful obstinacy that is the 

 bane of such weak natures as his, he was constantly 

 hankering to return to civilisation, to re-enter the 

 schools and make a name for himself. Meanwhile 

 during the long arctic night, he was slowly drowning his 

 life in vodka, as surely as he had already drowned his 

 youth. 



The girl had originally come to him as his servant. 

 Gradually they had drifted into closer intimacy. Their 

 first child had died during the previous winter. This 

 was the second one, and it was also very sickly. The 

 strongest fibre of the girl's nature was her adoration of 

 her good-for-nothing man. True, he did not work, but 

 then why should he toil and moil at the fishing when 

 she could labour for both of them ? She was a poor, 

 illiterate girl. He, on the contrary, could write and 

 read, and had seen Petersburg and Moscow. She 

 sympathised with him in his petulance, worked for him, 

 trusted him. She even encouraged him in his drinking- 

 bouts, because, as she humbly said, it must be so irk- 

 some for a man of his powers to be shut up with such 

 an ignorant woman as herself. She hoped that he 

 would not return to Russia, because, if he did so, she and 

 the child would have to remain behind, but if it was best 



for him Meanwhile she kept the house clean and 



tidy and managed the fishing business, haunted always 

 by the fear that the child, which was evidently her bit 

 of Paradise, would slip away from her to join its brother 

 in the little grave out on the tundra. 



Before her story was finished, Vassilli Vassillievitch 

 came out to tell us that Michael Petrovitch was awake, 



