Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up, but lay full length;
his eyes were closed and his nose seemed to be sharper than ever.
"Pavel Ivanich!" called Goussiev, "Pavel Ivanich."
Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.
"Aren't you well?"
"It's nothing," answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing heavily. "It's
nothing. No. I'm much better. You see I can lie down now. I'm much
better."
"Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich."
"When I compare myself with you, I am sorry for you ... poor devils. My
lungs are all right; my cough comes from indigestion ... I can endure
this hell, not to mention the Red Sea! Besides, I have a critical
attitude toward my illness, as well as to my medicine. But you ... you
are ignorant.... It's hard lines on you, very hard."
The ship was running smoothly; it was calm but still stifling and hot as
a Turkish bath; it was hard not only to speak but even to listen without
an effort. Goussiev clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and
thought of his native place. My God, in such heat it was a pleasure to
think of snow and cold! He saw himself driving on a sledge, and suddenly
the horses were frightened and bolted.... Heedless of roads, dikes,
ditches they rushed like mad through the village, across the pond, past
the works, through the fields.... "Hold them in!" cried the women and
the passers-by. "Hold them in!" But why hold them in? Let the cold wind
slap your face and cut your hands; let the lumps of snow thrown up by
the horses' hoofs fall on your hat, down your neck and chest; let the
runners of the sledge be buckled, and the traces and harness be torn and
be damned to it! What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flung
hard into a snow-drift; with your face slap into the snow, and you get
up all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless,
gloveless, with your belt undone.... People laugh and dogs bark....
Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and asked
quietly:
"Goussiev, did your commander steal?"
"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don't hear of it."
A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water;
it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of being
spoken to. One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night;
but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.
He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutes
passed and all was still.
"God rest his soul!" said the soldier with the bandaged hand. "He was a
restless man."
"What?" asked Goussiev. "Who?"
"He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs."
"Oh, well," muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God rest his soul."
"What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the bandaged soldier after some
time. "Will he go to heaven?"
"Who?"
"Pavel Ivanich."
"He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest's son, and priests
have many relations. They will pray for his soul."
The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's hammock and said in an
undertone:
"You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll never see Russia."
"Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked Goussiev.
"No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is
going to die soon. You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone very
thin and awful to look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm not
saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like to
have the last sacrament. And if you have any money, you had better give
it to the senior officer."
"I have not written home," said Goussiev. "I shall die and they will
never know."
"They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice. "When you die they
will put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to the
military governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever it
is...."
This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel unhappy and a vague desire
began to take possession of him. He drank water--it was not that; he
stretched out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air--it was
not that; he tried to think of his native place and the snow--it was not
that.... At last he felt that he would choke if he stayed a moment
longer in the hospital.
"I feel poorly, mates," he said. "I want to go on deck. For Christ's
sake take me on deck."
Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier's neck and the soldier held
him with his free arm and supported him up the gangway. On deck there
were rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; so many of them
that it was difficult to pick a way through them.
"Stand up," said the bandaged soldier gently. "Walk after me slowly and
hold on to my shirt...."
It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the masts or over the sea.
In the bows a sentry stood motionless as a statue, but he looked as if
he were asleep. It was as though the steamer had been left to its own
sweet will, to go where it liked.
"They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea," said the bandaged
soldier. "They will put him in a sack and throw him overboard."
"Yes. That's the way they do."
"But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Then the mother can go to
the grave and weep over it."
"Surely."
There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads hanging there were oxen
standing by the bulwark--one, two, three ... eight beasts. And there was
a little horse. Goussiev put out his hand to pat it, but it shook its
head, showed its teeth and tried to bite his sleeve.
"Damn you," said Goussiev angrily.
He and the soldier slowly made their way to the bows and stood against
the bulwark and looked silently up and down. Above them was the wide
sky, bright with stars, peace and tranquillity--exactly as it was at
home in his village; but below--darkness and turbulence. Mysterious
towering waves. Each wave seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest;
and they pressed and jostled each other and yet others came, fierce and
ugly, and hurled themselves into the fray.
There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. Had the steamer been
smaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed it
remorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good and
bad. The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The large-nosed monster
pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it was
afraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of
loneliness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the
monster would crush them without distinction of good and bad.
"Where are we now?" asked Goussiev.
"I don't know. Must be the ocean."
"There's no land in sight."
"Why, they say we shan't see land for another seven days."
The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence.
Goussiev was the first to break the silence.
"Nothing is really horrible," he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you were
in a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a
hundred miles out to sea to fish--I would go. Or suppose I saw a soul
fall into the water--I would go in after him. I wouldn't go in for a
German or a Chinaman, but I'd try to save a Russian."
"Aren't you afraid to die?"
"Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at home. I have a brother at
home, you know, and he is not steady; he drinks, beats his wife for
nothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. But
my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here.... Let me go to bed."
V
Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. As before, a
vague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. There
was a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was so
dry that he could hardly move his tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and,
exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him,
toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was in barracks,
and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled into
the oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for two days
and on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carried
him out of the ward.
He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars were
sewn up with him. In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish,
broad at the top, narrow at the bottom.... Just before sunset he was
taken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark,
the other on a box, raised up by a stool. Round him stood the invalided
soldiers.
"Blessed is our God," began the priest; "always, now and for ever and
ever."
"Amen!" said three sailors.
The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at the
waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and
dropped into the sea. Could it happen to any one?
The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung.
The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; shot
headlong, turned over in the air, then plop! The foam covered him, for a
moment it looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the moment
passed--and he disappeared beneath the waves.
He dropped down to the bottom. Would he reach it? The bottom is miles
down, they say. He dropped down almost sixty or seventy feet, then began
to go slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were thinking;
then, borne along by the current; he moved more sideways than downward.
But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark body, the fish
stopped dead and sudden, all together, turned and went back. Less than a
minute later, like arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging through
the water around him....
Later came another dark body, a shark. Gravely and leisurely, as though
it had not noticed Goussiev, it swam up under him, and he rolled over on
its back; it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm,
translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with its two rows of
teeth. The pilot-fish were wildly excited; they stopped to see what was
going to happen. The shark played with the body, then slowly opened its
mouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the sail-cloth was ripped
open from head to foot; one of the bars fell out, frightening the
pilot-fish and striking the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom.
And above the surface, the clouds were huddling up about the setting
sun; one cloud was like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, another
like a pair of scissors.... From behind the clouds came a broad green
ray reaching up to the very middle of the sky; a little later a violet
ray was flung alongside this, and then others gold and pink.... The sky
was soft and lilac, pale and tender. At first beneath the lovely,
glorious sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took on
colour--sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost impossible to name in
human language.