He spoke lazily, calmly, thinking of something else. All around was quiet, deserted, and unreal, as if it were part of a dream. The Volga and the Oka flowed into an enormous lake; in the distance on a rugged hillside the town was painted in motley colors. Gardens were still somberly clothed, but the buds were bursting on the trees, and foliage clad houses and churches in a warm, green mantle. Over the water crept the muffled sound of the Easter-tide bells. The murmur of the town was audible, while here it was just like a forgotten graveyard. Our boat wended its way between two rows of black trees; we were on the high road to the old cathedral. The cigar was in my master's way; its acrid smoke got into his eyes and caused him to run the nose of the boat into the trunks of the trees. Upon which he cried, irritably and in surprise: "What a rotten boat this is!" "But you are not steering it." "How can I?" he grumbled. "When there are two people in a boat, one always rows while the other steers. There--look! There's the Chinese block." I knew the market through and through; I knew that comical-looking block of buildings with the ridiculous roofs on which sat, with crossed legs, figures of Chinamen in plaster of Paris. There had been a time when I and my playfellow had thrown stones at them, and some of the Chinamen had had their heads and hands broken off by me. But I no longer took any pride in that sort of thing. "Rubbish!" said my master, pointing to the block. "If I had been allowed to build it--" He whistled and pushed his cap to the back of his head. But somehow I thought that he would have built that town of stone just as dingily, on that low-lying ground which was flooded by the waters of two rivers every year. And he would even have invented the Chinese block. Throwing his cigar over the side of the boat, he spat after it in disgust, saying: "Life is very dull, Pyeshkov, very dull. There are no educated people--no one to talk to. If one wants to show off one's gifts, who is there to be impressed? Not a soul! All the people here are carpenters, stonemasons, peasants--" He looked straight ahead at the white mosque which rose picturesquely out of the water on a small hill, and continued as if he were recollecting something he had forgotten: "I began to drink beer and smoke cigars when I was working under a German. The Germans, my brother, are a business-like race--such wild fowl! Drinking beer is a pleasant occupation, but I have never got used to smoking cigars. And when you 've been smoking, your wife grumbles: 'What is it that you smell of? It is like the smell at the harness-makers.' Ah, brother, the longer we live, the more artful we grow. Well, well, true to oneself--" Placing the oar against the side of the boat, he took up his gun and shot at a Chinaman on a roof. No harm came to the latter; the shot buried itself in the roof and the wall, raising a dusty smoke.