MAHOGANY
431
his theory in the age of manual labor. Now machines are taking
the place of brawn. That's what I think. Before long the ma–
chines will be tended only by engineers and the proletariat will
disappear. The proletarians will turn into engineers. That's, h'm,
what I think. And an engineer is not a proletarian, because the
more cultured a man is, the less fussy he is about his needs, and
he finds it easier to live with everyone on a footing of material
equality, to distribute the goods of this world equally in order to
set the mind free. Yes, just look at the English: rich and poor
alike sleep in pajamas and they live in the same houses, all of
three stories. Just compare how the merchants and the peasants
used to live in this country, with the merchants all dressed up like
priests and living in palaces. But a man like me can go barefoot
and be none the worse for it. You may argue, yes, h'm, that there
will still be exploitation, but how can there be exploitation? The
peasants who can
be
exploited because they are like wild beasts,
will not be allowed near the machines-they might break them
and they cost millions, these machines. Machines are too expen–
sive to make petty economies in wages. You've got to have a man
who knows the machine, and one man will do where they used to
need a hundred. They'll take good care of a man like that. The
proletariat will disappear! ..."
The visitors drank their tea and listened, their eyes glazed
and unblinking. Yakov Karpovich snorted and hawked and
babbled on, but he didn't manage to develop his thought to its
final conclusion because of the arrival of his brother, Ivan the
outcast, who had changed his name from Skudrin to Ozhogov.
He was tidily dressed in a fantastic array of cast-off clothing and
his hair was neatly clipped. He wore no socks under his galoshes.
He bowed politely to the company and sat down silently a little
to one side. Nobody acknowledged his bow. His face was that of
a madman. Yakov Karpovich fidgeted uneasily.
"And what was it that brought you here, my dear," Maria
Klimovna asked in dismay.
