Then the
staid and married people dressed themselves in their best clothes
and, after duly scolding the young folks for their indifference to
church, went to hear mass. When they returned from church, they
ate pirogs, the Russian national pastry, and again lay down to
sleep until the evening. The accumulated exhaustion of years had
robbed them of their appetites, and to be able to eat they drank,
long and deep, goading on their feeble stomachs with the biting,
burning lash of vodka.
In the evening they amused themselves idly on the street; and those
who had overshoes put them on, even if it was dry, and those who had
umbrellas carried them, even if the sun was shining. Not everybody
has overshoes and an umbrella, but everybody desires in some way,
however small, to appear more important than his neighbor.
Meeting one another they spoke about the factory and the machines,
had their fling against their foreman, conversed and thought only of
matters closely and manifestly connected with their work. Only
rarely, and then but faintly, did solitary sparks of impotent
thought glimmer in the wearisome monotony of their talk. Returning
home they quarreled with their wives, and often beat them, unsparing
of their fists.
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