Old Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose name
nobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The
other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about
sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was
drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his
pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartar
was ill and miserable, and, pulling his rags about him, he went on
talking about the good things in the province of Simbirsk, and what a
beautiful and clever wife he had left at home. He was not more than
twenty-five, and now, by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale,
sorrowful, sickly face, he looked a mere boy.
"Of course, it is not a paradise here," said Brains, "you see, water,
the bare bushes by the river, clay everywhere--nothing else.... It is
long past Easter and there is still ice on the water and this morning
there was snow...."
"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frightened look.
A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, muttering, dashing against
the holes in the clayey banks as it tore along to the distant sea. By
the bank they were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the ferrymen
call a _karbass_. Far away and away, flashing out, flaring up, were
fires crawling like snakes--last year's grass being burned. And behind
the water again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be heard
knocking against the barge.... It was very damp and cold....
The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and
the darkness was the same, but something was missing. At home in the
Simbirsk province the stars and the sky were altogether different.
"Bad! Bad!" he repeated.
"You will get used to it," said Brains with a laugh. "You are young yet
and foolish; the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and in your folly you
imagine that there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come a
time when you will say: God give every one such a life! Just look at me.
In a week's time the floods will be gone, and we will fix the ferry
here, and all of you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here,
going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last two-and-twenty
years, but, thank God, I want nothing. God give everybody such a life."
The Tartar threw some branches onto the fire, crawled near to it and
said:
"My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and my wife have promised to
come here."
"What do you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just
foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him.
Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to
you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When
he talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I
want nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no home, no
love! I want nothing.' Plague take 'em all."
Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on:
"My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I don't come from the servile
masses. I am the son of a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, I
used to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself to such a point
that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. God give such a life
to everybody. I want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there is
no man richer or freer than I. When they sent me here from Russia I set
my teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to me
about my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'I
want nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and have
nothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunity
and listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of
salvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Not
only peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and the
educated also. About fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was sent here
from Russia. He had had some trouble with his brothers and had made a
forgery in a will. People said he was a prince or a baron, but perhaps
he was only a high official--who knows? Well, he came here and at once
bought a house and land in Moukhzyink. 'I want to live by my own work,'
said he, 'in the sweat of my brow, because I am no longer a nobleman but
an exile.' 'Why,' said I. 'God help you, for that is good.' He was a
young man then, ardent and eager; he used to mow and go fishing, and he
would ride sixty miles on horseback. Only one thing was wrong; from the
very beginning he was always driving to the post-office at Guyrin. He
used to sit in my boat and sigh: 'Ah! Simeon, it is a long time since
they sent me any money from home.' 'You are better without money,
Vassili Sergnevich,' said I. 'What's the good of it? You just throw away
the past, as though it had never happened, as though it were only a
dream, and start life afresh. Don't listen to the devil,' I said, 'he
won't do you any good, and he will only tighten the noose. You want
money now, but in a little while you will want something else, and then
more and more. If,' said I, 'you want to be happy you must want nothing.
Exactly.... If,' I said, 'fate has been hard on you and me, it is no
good asking her for charity and falling at her feet. We must ignore her
and laugh at her.' That's what I said to him.... Two years later I
ferried him over and he rubbed his hands and laughed. 'I'm going,' said
he, 'to Guyrin to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, she says, and
she is coming here. She is very kind and good.' And he gave a gasp of
joy. Then one day he came with his wife, a beautiful young lady with a
little girl in her arms and a lot of luggage. And Vassili Andreich kept
turning and looking at her and could not look at her or praise her
enough. 'Yes, Simeon, my friend, even in Siberia people live.' Well,
thought I, all right, you won't be content. And from that time on, mark
you, he used to go to Guyrin every week to find out if money had been
sent from Russia. A terrible lot of money was wasted. 'She stays here,'
said he, 'for my sake, and her youth and beauty wither away here in
Siberia. She shares my bitter lot with me,' said he, 'and I must give
her all the pleasure I can for it....' To make his wife happier he took
up with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they couldn't have
company without giving food and drink, and they must have a piano and a
fluffy little dog on the sofa--bad cess to it.... Luxury, in a word, all
kinds of tricks. My lady did not stay with him long. How could she?
Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit; uneducated people and
drunkards, with no manners, and she was a pretty pampered young lady
from the metropolis.... Of course she got bored. And her husband was no
longer a gentleman, but an exile--quite a different matter. Three years
later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, I heard shouts from the
other bank. I went over in the ferry and saw my lady, all wrapped up,
with a young gentleman, a government official, in a troika.... I ferried
them across, they got into the carriage and disappeared, and I saw no
more of them. Toward the morning Vassili Andreich came racing up in a
coach and pair. 'Has my wife been across, Simeon, with a gentleman in
spectacles?' 'She has,' said I, 'but you might as well look for the wind
in the fields.' He raced after them and kept it up for five days and
nights. When he came back he jumped on to the ferry and began to knock
his head against the side and to cry aloud. 'You see,' said I, 'there
you are.' And I laughed and reminded him: 'Even in Siberia people live.'
But he went on beating his head harder than ever.... Then he got the
desire for freedom. His wife had gone to Russia and he longed to go
there to see her and take her away from her lover. And he began to go to
the post-office every day, and then to the authorities of the town. He
was always sending applications or personally handing them to the
authorities, asking to have his term remitted and to be allowed to go,
and he told me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on telegrams.
He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the money-lenders. His hair
went grey, he grew round-shouldered, and his face got yellow and
consumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he spoke and tears used
to come to his eyes. He spent eight years on his applications, and at
last he became happy again and lively: he had thought of a new dodge.
His daughter, you see, had grown up. He doted on her and could never
take his eyes off her. And, indeed, she was very pretty, dark and
clever. Every Sunday he used to go to church with her at Guyrin. They
would stand side by side on the ferry, and she would smile and he would
devour her with his eyes. 'Yes, Simeon,' he would say. 'Even in Siberia
people live. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look what a fine
daughter I have. You wouldn't find one like her in a thousand miles'
journey.' 'She's a nice girl,' said I. 'Oh, yes.' ... And I thought to
myself: 'You wait.... She is young. Young blood will have its way; she
wants to live and what life is there here?' And she began to pine
away.... Wasting, wasting away, she withered away, fell ill and had to
keep to her bed.... Consumption. That's Siberian happiness, plague take
it; that's Siberian life.... He rushed all over the place after the
doctors and dragged them home with him. If he heard of a doctor or a
quack three hundred miles off he would rush off after him. He spent a
terrific amount of money on doctors and I think it would have been much
better spent on drink. All the same she had to die. No help for it. Then
it was all up with him. He thought of hanging himself, and of trying to
escape to Russia. That would be the end of him. He would try to escape:
he would be caught, tried, penal servitude, flogging."
"Good! Good!" muttered the Tartar with a shiver.
"What is good?" asked Brains.
"Wife and daughter. What does penal servitude and suffering matter? He
saw his wife and his daughter. You say one should want nothing. But
nothing--is evil! His wife spent three years with him. God gave him
that. Nothing is evil, and three years is good. Why don't you understand
that?"
Trembling and stammering as he groped for Russian words, of which he
knew only a few, the Tartar began to say: "God forbid he should fall ill
among strangers, and die and be buried in the cold sodden earth, and
then, if his wife could come to him if only for one day or even for one
hour, he would gladly endure any torture for such happiness, and would
even thank God. Better one day of happiness than nothing."
Then once more he said what a beautiful clever wife he had left at home,
and with his head in his hands he began to cry and assured Simeon that
he was innocent, and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his
uncle had stolen some horses from a peasant and beat the old man nearly
to death, and the community never looked into the matter at all, and
judgment was passed by which all three brothers were exiled to Siberia,
while his uncle, a rich man, remained at home.
"You will get used to it," said Simeon.
The Tartar relapsed into silence and stared into the fire with his eyes
red from weeping; he looked perplexed and frightened, as if he could not
understand why he was in the cold and the darkness, among strangers, and
not in the province of Simbirsk. Brains lay down near the fire, smiled
at something, and began to say in an undertone:
"But what a joy she must be to your father," he muttered after a pause.
"He loves her and she is a comfort to him, eh? But, my man, don't tell
me. He is a strict, harsh old man. And girls don't want strictness; they
want kisses and laughter, scents and pomade. Yes.... Ah! What a life!"
Simeon swore heavily. "No more vodka! That means bedtime. What? I'm
going, my man."
Left alone, the Tartar threw more branches on the fire, lay down, and,
looking into the blaze, began to think of his native village and of his
wife; if she could come if only for a month, or even a day, and then, if
she liked, go back again! Better a month or even a day, than nothing.
But even if his wife kept her promise and came, how could he provide for
her? Where was she to live?
"If there is nothing to eat; how are we to live?" asked the Tartar
aloud.
For working at the oars day and night he was paid two copecks a day; the
passengers gave tips, but the ferrymen shared them out and gave nothing
to the Tartar, and only laughed at him. And he was poor, cold, hungry,
and fearful.... With his whole body aching and shivering he thought it
would be good to go into the hut and sleep; but there was nothing to
cover himself with, and it was colder there than on the bank. He had
nothing to cover himself with there, but he could make up a fire....
In a week's time, when the floods had subsided and the ferry would be
fixed up, all the ferrymen except Simeon would not be wanted any longer
and the Tartar would have to go from village to village, begging and
looking for work. His wife was only seventeen; beautiful, soft, and
shy.... Could she go unveiled begging through the villages? No. The idea
of it was horrible.
It was already dawn. The barges, the bushy willows above the water, the
swirling flood began to take shape, and up above in a clayey cliff a hut
thatched with straw, and above that the straggling houses of the
village, where the cocks had begun to crow.
The ginger-coloured clay cliff, the barge, the river, the strange wild
people, hunger, cold, illness--perhaps all these things did not really
exist. Perhaps, thought the Tartar, it was only a dream. He felt that he
must be asleep, and he heard his own snoring.... Certainly he was at
home in the Simbirsk province; he had but to call his wife and she would
answer; and his mother was in the next room.... But what awful dreams
there are! Why? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river was
that? The Volga?
It was snowing.
"Hi! Ferry!" some one shouted on the other bank. "_Karba-a-ass!_"
The Tartar awoke and went to fetch his mates to row over to the other
side. Hurrying into their sheepskins, swearing sleepily in hoarse
voices, and shivering from the cold, the four men appeared on the bank.
After their sleep, the river from which there came a piercing blast,
seemed to them horrible and disgusting. They stepped slowly into the
barge.... The Tartar and the three ferrymen took the long, broad-bladed
oars, which in the dim light looked like a crab's claw, and Simeon flung
himself with his belly against the tiller. And on the other side the
voice kept on shouting, and a revolver was fired twice, for the man
probably thought the ferrymen were asleep or gone to the village inn.
"All right. Plenty of time!" said Brains in the tone of one who was
convinced that there is no need for hurry in this world--and indeed
there is no reason for it.
The heavy, clumsy barge left the bank and heaved through the willows,
and by the willows slowly receding it was possible to tell that the
barge was moving. The ferrymen plied the oars with a slow measured
stroke; Brains hung over the tiller with his stomach pressed against it
and swung from side to side. In the dim light they looked like men
sitting on some antediluvian animal with long limbs, swimming out to a
cold dismal nightmare country.
They got clear of the willows and swung out into mid-stream. The thud of
the oars and the splash could be heard on the other bank and shouts
came: "Quicker! Quicker!" After another ten minutes the barge bumped
heavily against the landing-stage.
"And it is still snowing, snowing all the time," Simeon murmured, wiping
the snow off his face. "God knows where it comes from!"
On the other side a tall, lean old man was waiting in a short fox-fur
coat and a white astrachan hat. He was standing some distance from his
horses and did not move; he had a stern concentrated expression as if he
were trying to remember something and were furious with his recalcitrant
memory. When Simeon went up to him and took off his hat with a smile he
said:
"I'm in a hurry to get to Anastasievka. My daughter is worse again and
they tell me there's a new doctor at Anastasievka."
The coach was clamped onto the barge and they rowed back. All the while
as they rowed the man, whom Simeon called Vassili Andreich, stood
motionless, pressing his thick lips tight and staring in front of him.
When the driver craved leave to smoke in his presence, he answered
nothing, as if he did not hear. And Simeon hung over the rudder and
looked at him mockingly and said:
"Even in Siberia people live. L-i-v-e!"
On Brains's face was a triumphant expression as if he were proving
something, as if pleased that things had happened just as he thought
they would. The unhappy, helpless look of the man in the fox-fur coat
seemed to give him great pleasure.
"The roads are now muddy, Vassili Andreich," he said, when the horses
had been harnessed on the bank. "You'd better wait a couple of weeks,
until it gets dryer.... If there were any point in going--but you know
yourself that people are always on the move day and night and there's no
point in it. Sure!"
Vassili Andreich said nothing, gave him a tip, took his seat in the
coach and drove away.
"Look! He's gone galloping after the doctor!" said Simeon, shivering in
the cold. "Yes. To look for a real doctor, trying to overtake the wind
in the fields, and catch the devil by the tail, plague take him! What
queer fish there are! God forgive me, a miserable sinner."
The Tartar went up to Brains, and, looking at him with mingled hatred
and disgust, trembling, and mixing Tartar words up with his broken
Russian, said:
"He good ... good. And you ... bad! You are bad! The gentleman is a good
soul, very good, and you are a beast, you are bad! The gentleman is
alive and you are dead.... God made man that he should be alive, that he
should have happiness, sorrow, grief, and you want nothing, so you are
not alive, but a stone! A stone wants nothing and so do you.... You are
a stone--and God does not love you and the gentleman he does."
They all began to laugh: the Tartar furiously knit his brows, waved his
hand, drew his rags round him and went to the fire. The ferrymen and
Simeon went slowly to the hut.
"It's cold," said one of the ferrymen hoarsely, as he stretched himself
on the straw with which the damp, clay floor was covered.
"Yes. It's not warm," another agreed.... "It's a hard life."
All of them lay down. The wind blew the door open. The snow drifted into
the hut. Nobody could bring himself to get up and shut the door; it was
cold, but they put up with it.
"And I am happy," muttered Simeon as he fell asleep. "God give such a
life to everybody."
"You certainly are the devil's own. Even the devil don't need to take
you."
Sounds like the barking of a dog came from outside.
"Who is that? Who is there?"
"It's the Tartar crying."
"Oh! he's a queer fish."
"He'll get used to it!" said Simeon, and at once he fell asleep. Soon
the others slept too and the door was left open.