Stories (16 page)

And if there isn’t that, there’s nothing.

Given such poverty, a serious illness, the fear of death, the influence of circumstances or of people, would be enough to overturn and smash to pieces all that I used to consider my worldview, and in which I saw the meaning and joy of my life. And therefore it’s not at all surprising that I should darken the last months of my life with thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave and a barbarian, and that I’m now indifferent and do not notice the dawn. When a man lacks that which is higher and stronger than any external influence, a good cold really is enough to make him lose his balance and beg
in to see an owl in every bird and hear a dog’s howl in every sound. And at that moment all his pessimism or optimism, together with his thoughts great and small, have the significance of mere symptoms and nothing more.

I am defeated. If so, there’s no point in continuing to think, no point in talking. I’ll sit and silently wait for what comes.

In the morning the servant brings me tea and a copy of the local newspaper. I mechanically read through the announcements on the first page, the editorial, the excerpts from other newspapers and magazines, the news reports … In the news I find, among other things, the following item: “Yesterday our famous scientist, the acclaimed professor Nikolai Stepanovich So-and-so, arrived in Kharkov on the express train and is staying at such-and-such hotel.”

Evidently, great names are created so as to live by themselves, apart from their bearers. Now my name is peacefully going about Kharkov; in some three months, inscribed in gold letters on a tombstone, it will shine like the sun itself—while I’m already covered with moss …

A light tap at the door. Someone wants me.

“Who’s there? Come in!”

The door opens and I step back in surprise, hastily closing the skirts of my dressing gown. Katya stands before me.

“Good morning,” she says, breathing heavily after climbing the stairs. “You didn’t expect me? I … I’ve come here, too.”

She sits down and continues, stammering and not looking at me.

“Why don’t you wish me good morning? I’ve come, too … today … I found out you were in this hotel and looked you up.”

“I’m very glad to see you,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, “but I’m surprised … It’s as if you dropped from the sky. Why are you here?”

“Me? I … simply up and came.”

Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and steps towards me.

“Nikolai Stepanych!” she says, turning pale and clasping her hands to her breast. “Nikolai Stepanych! I can’t live like this any longer! I can’t! For the love of God, tell me quickly, this very moment: what am I to do? Tell me, what am I to do?”

“But what can I say?” I’m perplexed. “There’s nothing.”

“Tell me, I implore you!” she goes on, choking and trembling all over. “I swear to you, I can’t live like this any longer! It’s beyond my strength!”

She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back, wrings her hands, stamps her feet; her hat has fallen off her head and dangles from an elastic, her hair is disheveled.

“Help me! Help me!” she implores. “I can’t go on!”

She takes a handkerchief from her traveling bag, and along with it pulls out several letters that fall from her knees onto the floor. I pick them up from the floor and on one of them recognize Mikhail Fyodorovich’s handwriting, and unintentionally read a bit of one word—“passionat …”

“There’s nothing I can tell you, Katya,” I say.

“Help me!” she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. “You’re my father, my only friend! You’re intelligent, educated, you’ve lived a long time! You’ve been a teacher! Tell me: what am I to do?”

“In all conscience, Katya, I don’t know …”

I’m at a loss, embarrassed, touched by her sobbing, and barely able to keep my feet.

“Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say with a forced smile. “Enough crying!”

And I add at once in a sinking voice:

“I’ll soon be no more, Katya …”

“Just one word, one word!” she weeps, holding her arms out to me. “What am I to do?”

“You’re a strange one, really …” I murmur. “I don’t understand!
Such a clever girl and suddenly—there you go, bursting into tears! …

Silence ensues. Katya straightens her hair, puts her hat on, then crumples the letters and stuffs them into her bag—and all this silently and unhurriedly Her face, breast, and gloves are wet with tears, but the expression of her face is already dry, severe … I look at her and feel ashamed that I’m happier than she is. I’ve noticed
the absence in me of what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea only shortly before death, in the twilight of my days, but the soul of this poor thing has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her life!

“Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say.

“No, thank you,” she replies coldly.

Another minute passes in silence.

“I don’t like Kharkov,” I say. “Much too gray. A gray sort of city.”

“Yes, perhaps so … Not pretty … I won’t stay long … Passing through. I’m leaving today.”

“Where for?”

“The Crimea … I mean, the Caucasus.”

“Ah. For long?”

“I don’t know.”

Katya gets up and, smiling coldly, gives me her hand without looking at me.

I want to ask: “So you won’t be at my funeral?” But she doesn’t look at me, her hand is cold, like a stranger’s. I silently walk with her to the door … Now she has left my room and walks down the long corridor without looking back. She knows I’m following her with my eyes and will probably look back from the turn.

No, she didn’t look back. The black dress flashed a last time, the footsteps faded away … Farewell, my treasure!

N
OVEMBER
1889

I
t has grown dark, it will soon be night.

Gusev, a discharged private, sits up on his cot and says in a low voice:

“Can you hear, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan told me their ship ran over a big fish as it went and broke a hole in its bottom.”

The man of unknown status whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sick bay calls Pavel Ivanych, says nothing, as if he has not heard.

And again there is silence … The wind plays in the rigging, the propeller thuds, the waves splash, the cots creak, but the ear is long accustomed to it all, and it seems as if everything around is asleep and still. It is boring. The other three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who played cards all day long, are now asleep and muttering to themselves.

It seems the ship is beginning to toss. The cot under Gusev slowly goes up and down, as if sighing—it does it once, twice, a third time … Something hits the floor with a clank: a mug must have fallen.

“The wind has snapped its chain …” says Gusev, listening.

This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and replies irritably:

“First you’ve got a ship running over a fish, then the wind snaps its chain … Is the wind a beast that it can snap its chain?”

“That’s how Christian folk talk.”

“And Christian folk are as ignorant as you are … What else do they say? You have to keep your head on your shoulders and think. Senseless man.”

Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the ship tosses, he usually gets angry and the least trifle irritates him. But there is, in Gusev’s opinion, absolutely nothing to get angry about. What is so strange or tricky, for instance, even in the fish, or in the wind snapping its chain? Suppose the fish is as big as a mountain, and its back is as hard as a sturgeon’s; suppose, too, that at the world’s end there are thick stone walls, and the angry winds are chained to the walls … If they have not snapped their chains, why are they rushing about like crazy all over the sea and strain
ing like dogs? If they do not get chained up, where do they go when it is still?

Gusev spends a long time thinking about fish as big as mountains and thick, rusty chains, then he gets bored and begins thinking about his homeland, to which he is now returning after serving for five years in the Far East. He pictures an enormous pond covered with snow … On one side of the pond, a porcelain factory the color of brick, with a tall smokestack and clouds of black smoke; on the other side, a village … Out of a yard, the fifth from the end, drives a sleigh with his brother Alexei in it; behind him sits his boy Vanka in big felt boots and the girl Akulka, also in felt
boots. Alexei is tipsy, Vanka is laughing, and Akulka’s face cannot be seen—she is all wrapped up.

“Worse luck, he’ll get the kids chilled …” thinks Gusev. “Lord, send them good sense,” he whispers, “to honor their parents and not be cleverer than their mother and father …”

“You need new soles there,” the sick sailor mutters in a bass voice while he sleeps. “Aye-aye!”

Gusev’s thoughts break off, and instead of a pond, a big, eyeless bull’s head appears out of nowhere, and the horse and sleigh are no longer driving but are whirling in the black smoke. But all the same he is glad to have seen his family. Joy takes his breath away, gives him gooseflesh all over, quivers in his fingers.

“God has granted me to see them!” he says in his sleep, but at once opens his eyes and feels for water in the darkness.

He drinks and lies down, and again the sleigh is driving, then again the eyeless bull’s head, the smoke, the clouds … And so it goes till dawn.

First a blue circle outlines itself in the darkness—it is a round window; then Gusev gradually begins to distinguish the man on the cot next to his, Pavel Ivanych. This man sleeps in a sitting position, because when he lies down he suffocates. His face is gray, his nose long, sharp, his eyes, owing to his great emaciation, are enormous; his temples are sunken, his little beard is thin, the hair on his head is long … Looking into his face, it is hard to tell what he is socially: a gentleman, a merchant, or a peasant? Judging by his expression and his long hair, he seems to be an ascetic, a m
onastery novice, but when you listen to what he says—it turns out that he may not be a monk. Coughing, stuffiness, and his illness have exhausted him, he breathes heavily and moves his dry lips. Noticing Gusev looking at him, he turns his face to him and says:

“I’m beginning to guess … Yes … Now I understand it all perfectly.”

“What do you understand, Pavel Ivanych?”

“Here’s what … I kept thinking it was strange that you gravely ill people, instead of staying in a quiet place, wound up on a shi
p, where the stuffiness, and the heat, and the tossing—everything, in short, threatens you with death, but now it’s all clear to me … Yes … Your doctors put you on a ship to get rid of you. They’re tired of bothering with you, with brutes … You don’t pay them anything, you’re a bother to them, and you ruin their statistics for them by dying—which means you’re brutes! And it’s not hard to get rid of you … For that it’s necessary, first, to have no conscience or brotherly love, and, second, to deceive the ship’s authorities. The first condition doesn’t count, in that respect we’re all a
rtists, and the second always works if you have the knack. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers and sailors, five sick men don’t stand out; so they herded you onto the ship, mixing you in with the healthy ones, counted you up quickly, and in the turmoil didn’t notice anything wrong, but when the ship got under way what did they see: paralytics and terminal consumptives lying around on deck …”

Gusev does not understand Pavel Ivanych; thinking that he is being reprimanded, he says, to justify himself:

“I lay on the deck because I had no strength. When they unloaded us from the barge onto the ship, I caught a bad chill.”

“Outrageous!” Pavel Ivanych goes on. “Above all, they know perfectly well you won’t survive this long passage, and yet they put you here! Well, suppose you get as far as the Indian Ocean, but what then? It’s terrible to think … And this is their gratitude for loyal, blameless service!”

Pavel Ivanych makes angry eyes, winces squeamishly, and gasps out:

“There are some who ought to be thrashed in the newspapers till the feathers fly”

The two sick soldiers and the sailor are awake and already playing cards. The sailor is half lying on a cot, the soldiers are
sitting on the floor in the most uncomfortable positions. One soldier has his right arm in a sling and a whole bundle wrapped around his wrist, so he holds his cards under his right armpit or in the crook of his arm and plays with his left hand. The ship is tossing badly. It is impossible to stand up, or have tea, or take medicine.

“You served as an orderly?” Pavel Ivanych asks Gusev.

“Yes, sir, as an orderly.”

“My God, my God!” says Pavel Ivanych, shaking his head ruefully. “To tear a man out of his native nest, drag him ten thousand miles away, then drive him to consumption, and … and all that for what, you may ask? To make him the orderly of some Captain Kopeikin or Midshipman Dyrka.
¹
Mighty logical!”

“The work’s not hard, Pavel Ivanych! You get up in the morning, polish his boots, prepare the samovar, tidy his rooms, and then there’s nothing to do. The lieutenant draws his plans all day, and you can pray to God if you want, read books if you want, go out if you want. God grant everybody such a life.”

“Yes, very good! The lieutenant draws his plans, and you sit in the kitchen all day, longing for your homeland … Plans … It’s a man’s life that counts, not plans! Life can’t be repeated, it must be cherished.”

“That’s sure, Pavel Ivanych, a bad man’s cherished nowhere, not at home, not in the service, but if you live right, obey orders, then who has any need to offend you? The masters are educated people, they understand … In five years I was never once locked up, and I was beaten, if I remember right, no more than once …”

“What for?”

“For fighting. I’ve got a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanych. Four Chinks came into our yard, bringing firewood or something—I don’t remember.
Well, I was feeling bored, so I roughed th
em up, gave one a bloody nose, curse him … The lieutenant saw it through the window, got angry, and cuffed me on the ear.”

“You’re a foolish, pathetic man …” whispers Pavel Ivanych. “You don’t understand anything.”

He is totally exhausted by the tossing and closes his eyes; his head gets thrown back, then falls on his chest. He tries several times to lie down, but nothing comes of it: suffocation prevents him.

“And why did you beat the four Chinks?” he asks after a while.

“Just like that. They came into the yard, and I beat them.”

And silence ensues … The cardplayers play for a couple of hours, with passion and cursing, but the tossing wearies them, too; they abandon the cards and lie down. Again Gusev pictures the big pond, the factory, the village … Again the sleigh is driving, again Vanka laughs, and foolish Akulka has opened her coat and shows her legs: “Look, good people, my boots aren’t like Vanka’s, they’re new.”

“She’s going on six and still has no sense!” Gusev says in his sleep. “Instead of sticking your legs up, you’d better bring your soldier uncle some water. I’ll give you a treat.”

Here Andron, a flintlock on his shoulder, comes carrying a hare he has shot, and after him comes the decrepit Jew Isaichik and offers him a piece of soap in exchange for the hare; here is a black heifer in the front hall, here is Domna, sewing a shirt and weeping about something, and here again is the eyeless bull’s head, the black smoke …

Someone overhead gives a loud shout, several sailors go running; it seems as if something bulky is being dragged across the deck or something has cracked. Again there is running. Has there been an accident? Gusev raises his head, listens, and sees: the two soldiers and the sailor are playing cards again; Pavel Ivanych is sitting and m
oving his lips. It is stifling, he does not have strength enough to breathe, he wants to drink, but the water is warm, disgusting … The tossing will not let up.

Suddenly something strange happens to one of the cardplaying soldiers … He calls hearts diamonds, mixes up his score and drops his cards, then gives a frightened, stupid smile and gazes around at them all.

“Just a minute, brothers …” he says and lies down on the floor.

They are all perplexed. They call out to him, he does not answer.

“Maybe you’re not well, Stepan? Eh?” asks the other soldier with his arm in a sling. “Maybe we should call the priest? Eh?”

“Drink some water, Stepan …” says the sailor. “Here, brother, drink.”

“Well, why shove the mug in his teeth?” Gusev says crossly. “Can’t you see, dunderhead?”

“What?”

“What!” Gusev repeats mockingly. “There’s no breath in him! He’s dead! That’s ‘what’ for you! Such senseless folk, Lord God! …”

There is no tossing, and Pavel Ivanych has cheered up. He is no longer angry. The look on his face is boastful, perky, and mocking. As if he wants to say: “Yes, now I’m going to tell you such a joke that you’ll split your sides with laughing.” The round window is open, and a soft breeze is blowing on Pavel Ivanych. Voices are heard, the splashing of oars in the water … Just under the windo
w somebody is whining in a thin, disgusting little voice: it must be a Chinaman singing.

“So we’re in harbor,” says Pavel Ivanych with a mocking smile. “Another month or so and we’ll be in Russia. Yes, my esteemed gentlemen soldiers. I’ll get to Odessa, and from there go straight to Kharkov. In Kharkov I have a friend who is a writer. I’ll go to him and say: ‘Well, brother, abandon for a bit your vile stories about female amours and the beauties of nature, and start exposing these two-legged scum … Here are some stories for you …’”

He thinks about something for a moment, then says:

“Do you know how I tricked them, Gusev?”

“Who, Pavel Ivanych?”

“Them … You see, there’s only first and third class on this ship, and the only ones allowed to travel third class are peasants—that is, boors. If you’re wearing a suit or look like a gentleman or a bourgeois, from a distance at least, then kindly travel first class. You dish up five hundred roubles, even if it kills you. ‘Why have you set up such rules?’ I ask. ‘Do you hope to raise the prestige of the Russian intelligentsia?’ ‘Not in the least. We won’t let you in there, because a decent man cannot travel third class: it’s much too nasty and vile.’
‘Really, sir? Thank you for being so
concerned for decent people. But in any case, whether it’s nasty or not there, I don’t have five hundred roubles. I haven’t robbed the treasury, haven’t exploited the racial minorities, haven’t engaged in smuggling or flogged anyone to death, so you decide: do I have the right to be installed in first class and, what’s more, to count myself among the Russian intelligentsia?’ But you can’t get them with logic … I had to resort to trickery. I dressed up in a peasant kaftan and big boots, put on a drunken, boorish mug, and went to the ticket agent: ‘Gimme a little ticket, Your Honor …’”