The Foundation Pit (Fragment)

Voshchev stood shyly before the eyes of the parade of these excited children whom he did not know; he was ashamed that the Young Pioneers, in all likelihood, knew and felt more than he did, because children are time maturing in a fresh body, while he, Voshchev, is cut off and set apart in the silence of obscurity by hastening, active youth as being a vain effort of life to achieve its goal. And Voshchev felt shame and energy—he wanted immediately to discover the universal, lasting meaning of life so as to precede the children in life, to live more swiftly than their swarthy legs so full of firm tenderness.

One Young Pioneer girl ran out of the ranks to the rusty grainfield next to the smithy and picked a plant there. During her action the little woman bent down, disclosing a birthmark on her swelling body, and then with the deftness of imperceptible strength she disappeared past them, leaving regrets in the two who had observed her, Voshchev and the cripple. Voshchev looked at the cripple: his face was puffed up with an influx of blood which found no outlet; he groaned out a sound and moved his hand in the very depths of his pocket. Voshchev observed the mood of the powerful cripple, but was glad that this monstrosity of imperialism would never get hold of socialist children. However, the cripple watched the Pioneer march to the very end, and Voshchev had fears for the safety and purity of the small children.

“You should look in some other direction,” he said to the cripple. “You would do better to smoke!”

“Go take a walk, bossy, cow!” retorted the legless man. Voshchev did not stir.

“What did I tell you?” the cripple added. “You want to catch it from me, do you?”

“No,” answered Voshchev. “I was afraid you would say something to that girl or do something.”

The invalid in his customary torment bent down his big head to the earth.

“Just what would I say to the child, you bastard? I look at the children for memory’s sake, because I’ll die soon.”

“It was probably in the capitalist battle that you were wounded,” Voshchev said quietly. “Though it is true that cripples are also old people too, I have seen them.”

The maimed man directed at Voshchev his eyes in which at that moment there was the fierceness of surpassing mind; at first the cripple even kept silence out of anger at the passerby, but then he said with the deliberateness of embitterment:

“Old people are sometimes like this too; but such cripples as you there are not.”

“I was never in the real war,” said Voshchev. “If I had been, I wouldn’t have returned from there whole either.”

“I can see that you weren’t: why are you such a fool! When a man hasn’t seen war, then he’s like a woman who hasn’t given birth—he lives like an idiot. You are always to be seen through.”

“Ekh!” declared the smith regretfully. “I look at the children and I myself want to shout: ‘Hail the First of May!'”

The Pioneers’ music took a rest and then off in the distance played a march. Voshchev continued to languish and went into this city to live.

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