showed him how to work.
"They've brought another patient!" the news passed from one to another.
"Orlóff, go and carry him in."
Grigóry displayed great zeal--all covered with perspiration, dizzy,
with dimmed eves and a heavy darkness in his head. At times, the
feeling of personal existence in him completely vanished under the
pressure of the mass of impressions which he underwent every moment.
The green spots under the clouded eyes on earth-colored faces, bones
which seemed to have been sharpened by the disease, the sticky,
malodorous skin, the strange convulsions of the hardly living
bodies--all this made his heart contract with grief, and caused a
nausea which he could, with difficulty, control.
Several times, in the corridor of the barracks, he caught a fleeting
glimpse of his wife; she had grown thin, and her face was gray and
abstracted. He even managed to ask her, with a voice which had grown
hoarse:
"Well, how goes it?"
She smiled faintly in reply, and silently disappeared.
A totally unaccustomed thought stung Grigóry: perhaps he had done wrong
in forcing his wife to come hither, to such filthy work. She would fall
ill of the infection.... And the next time he met her, he shouted at
her severely:
"See to it that you wash your hands often ... take care!"
"And what if I don't?"--she asked, teasingly, displaying her small,
white teeth.
This enraged him. A pretty place she had chosen for mirth, the fool!
And how mean they were, those women! But he did not succeed in saying
anything to her; catching his angry glance, Matréna went rapidly away
to the women's section.
And a minute later he was carrying his acquaintance the policeman
to the dead-house. The policeman rocked gently to and fro on the
stretcher, with his eyes fixed in a stare, from beneath contorted
brows, on the clear, hot sky. Grigóry gazed at him with dull terror in
his heart: The day before yesterday he had seen that policeman at his
post, and had even sworn at him as he went past--they had some little
accounts to settle between them. And now, here was this man, so healthy
and malicious, lying dead, all disfigured, drawn up with convulsions.
Orlóff felt that this was not right,--why should a man be born into the
world at all, if he must die, in one day, of such a dirty disease? He
gazed down upon the policeman from above, and pitied him. What would
become of his children ... three in all? The dead man had buried his
wife a year ago, and had not yet succeeded in marrying for the second
time.
He even ached, somewhere inside, with this pity. But, all at once, the
clenched left hand of the corpse slowly moved and straightened itself
out. At the same moment, the left side of the distorted mouth, which
had been half open up to now, closed.
"Halt!"--shouted Orlóff hoarsely, setting the stretcher down on the
ground.--"Be quick!"--he said in a whisper to the orderly who was
carrying the corpse with him. The latter turned round, cast a glance at
the dead man, and said angrily to Orlóff:
"What are you lying for? Don't you understand that he's only putting
himself in order for the coffin? You see how it has twisted him up? He
can't be put into the coffin like that. Hey there, carry him along!"
"Yes, but he is moving...." protested Orlóff.
"Carry him along, do you hear, you queer man! Don't you understand
words? I tell you: he's putting himself in order,--well, that means
that he's moving. This ignorance of yours may lead you into sin, if
you don't look out.... Look lively there! Can a man make such speeches
about a dead body? That signifies a riot, brother ... that's what it
is! Understand? In other words, hold your tongue, and don't utter a
syllable to anyone about his moving,--they're all like that. Otherwise,
the sow will tell it to the boar-pig, and the boar will tell it to
the whole town, well, and the result will be a riot--'they're
burying people alive!' The populace will come here, and tear us in
bits. There'll be about enough of you left for a breakfast-roll.[12]
Understand? Shunt him here, on the left."
[12] A _kalátch_--a delicious and favorite form of bread, particularly
good in Moscow.--Translator.
Prónin's calm voice and leisurely gait had a sobering effect upon
Grigóry.
"Only don't let your spirits sink, my good fellow-you'll get
used to it. We're well off here. Victuals, treatment and all the
rest--everything is just as it should be. We shall all be corpses, my
boy; it's the commonest thing in life. And, in the meanwhile, brisk up,
you know, and only don't get scared--that's the chief thing! Do you
drink vódka?"
"Yes," replied Orlóff.
"Well then. Yonder in the ditch I have a little bottle, in case of
need. Come and let's swallow a little of it." They went to the pit,
round the corner of the barracks, took a drink, and Prónin, pouring
some drops of mint on sugar, gave it to Orlóff, with the words:
"Eat that, otherwise you'll smell of vódka. They're strict here about
vódka. For it's injurious to drink it, they say."
"And have you got used to things here?" Grigóry asked him.
"I should think so! I've been here from the start. A lot of folks have
died here since I've been here--hundreds, to speak plainly. It's an
uneasy life, but a good life here, to tell the truth. It's a pious
work. Like the ambulance-corps in time of war ... you've heard about the
ambulance-corps and the sisters of mercy? I watched them during the
Turkish campaign. I was at Adragan and Kars. Well, my boy, they're
purer than we are, we soldiers and people in general. We fight, we
have guns, bullets, bayonets; but they--they walk about without any
weapons, as though they were in a green garden. They pick up our men,
or a Turk, and carry them to the field-hospital. And around them ...
zh-zhee! ti-in! fi-it! Sometimes the poor ambulance man gets it in the
neck--tchik!... and that's the end of him!..."
After this conversation, and a good swallow of vódka, Orlóff plucked up
a little courage.
"You've put your hand to the rope, don't say it's too thick,"--he
exhorted himself, as he rubbed a sick man's legs. Someone behind him
entreated piteously, in a moaning voice:
"A dri-ink! Oï, my dear fellow!"
And someone gabbled:
"Oho-ho-ho! Hotter! Mis-mister doctor, it relieves me! Christ reward
you,--I can feel! Permit him to pour in some more boiling water!"
"Give him some wine!" shouted Doctor Váshtchenko.
Orlóff worked away, lending an attentive ear to what went on around
him, and found that, as a matter of fact, everything was not so nasty
and strange as it had seemed to him a little while before, and that
chaos did not reign, but a great and intelligent power was acting
regularly. But he shuddered, nevertheless, when he recalled the
policeman, and cast a furtive glance through the window of the barracks
into the yard. He believed that the policeman was dead, but still there
was an element of wavering in this belief. Wouldn't the man suddenly
spring up and shout? And he remembered that he seemed to have heard
someone tell: that one day, somewhere or other, people who had died of
the cholera leaped out of their coffins and ran away.
As Orlóff ran to and fro in the barracks, now rubbing one patient, now
placing another in the bath-tub, he felt exactly as though gruel were
boiling in his brain. He recalled his wife: how was she getting on
yonder? Sometimes with this recollection mingled a transitory desire to
steal a minute to have a look at Matréna. But after this, Orlóff felt,
somehow, disconcerted at his desire, and exclaimed to himself:
"Come, bustle about, you fatmeated woman! You'll dry up, never fear....
You'll get rid of your intentions...."
He had always suspected that his wife cherished, in her heart of
hearts, intentions very insulting to him as a husband, and now and
then, when he rose in his suspicions to a sort of objectiveness, he
even admitted that there was some foundation for these intentions.
Her life, also, was tinged with yellow, and all sorts of trash creeps
into one's head with such a life. This objectiveness was generally
converted into certainty during the period of his suspicions. Then he
would ask himself: why had he found it necessary to crawl out of his
cellar into this boiling cauldron?--and he wondered at himself. But
all these thoughts worked round and round, somewhere deep within him,
and were fenced off, as it were, from the direct line of his work by
the strained attention which he devoted to the actions of the medical
staff. Never, in any sort of labor, had he beheld men wear themselves
out, as the men did here, and he reflected, more than once, as he
surveyed the exhausted faces of the doctors and students, that all
these men really did not get paid for doing nothing!
When relieved from duty, hardly able to stand on his feet, Orlóff went
out into the court-yard of the barracks, and lay down against its wall,
under the window of the apothecary's shop. There was a ringing in his
head, there was a pain under his shoulder-blades, and his legs ached
with the gnawing pangs of fatigue. He no longer thought of anything, or
wanted anything, he simply stretched himself out on the sod, stared at
the sky, in which hung magnificent clouds, richly adorned with the rays
of sunset, and fell into a sleep like death.
He dreamed that he and his wife were the guests of Doctor Váshtchenko
in a huge room, with rows of Vienna chairs ranged around the walls. On
the chairs all the patients from the barracks were sitting. The doctor
and Matréna were executing the "Russian Dance" in the middle of the
hall, while he himself was playing the accordeon and laughing heartily,
because the doctor's long legs would not bend at all, and the doctor, a
very grave and pompous man, was stalking about the hall after Matréna
exactly as a heron stalks over a marsh.
All at once the policeman made his appearance in the doorway.
"Aha!" he exclaimed saturninely and menacingly.--"Did you think,
Gríshka, that I was completely dead? You're playing the accordeon, but
you dragged me out to the dead-house! Come along with me, now! Get up!"
Seized with a fit of trembling, all bathed in perspiration, Orlóff
raised himself quickly and sat on the ground. Opposite, was squatting
Doctor Váshtchenko, who said to him reproachfully:
"What sort of an ambulance nurse are you, my friend, if you go to sleep
on the ground, and lie down on it upon your belly, to boot, hey? Now,
you'll take cold in your bowels,--you'll take to your cot, and the
first you know, you'll die.... It's not right, my friend,--you have a
place in the barracks to sleep. Why didn't they tell you so? Besides,
you are in a perspiration, and have a chill. Come along with me, now,
I'll give you something."
"I was so tired,..." muttered Orlóff.
"So much the worse. You must take care of your-self--it is a dangerous
time, and you are a valuable man."
Orlóff followed the doctor in silence along the corridor of the
barracks, in silence drank some sort of medicine out of a wine-glass,
drank something more out of another, frowned and spat.
"Come, go and have a sleep now.... Farewell for a while!" and the
doctor began to move his long, slender feet over the floor of the
corridor.
Orlóff looked after him, and suddenly ran after him, with a broad smile.
"I thank you humbly, doctor."
"What for?" and the doctor halted.
"For the work. Now I shall try with all my might to please you! Because
your anxiety is agreeable to me ... and ... you said I was a valuable
man ... and, altogether, I'm most si-sincerely grateful to you!" The
doctor gazed intently and in surprise at the agitated face of his
hospital orderly, and smiled also.
"You're a queer fellow! However, never mind,--you'll turn out
splendidly ... genuine. Go ahead, and do your best; it will not be for
me, but for the patients. We must wrest a man from the disease, tear
him out of its paws,--do you understand me? Well, then, go ahead and
try your best to conquer the disease. And, in the mean-while--go and
sleep!"
Orlóff was soon lying on his cot, and fell asleep with a pleasing
sensation of warmth in his bowels. He felt joyful, and was proud of his
very simple conversation with the doctor.
But he sank into slumber regretting that his wife had not heard that
conversation. He must tell her to-morrow.... That devil's pepper-pot
would not believe it, in all probability.
*
"Come and drink your tea, Grísha," his wife woke him in the morning.
He raised his head, and looked at her. She smiled at him. She was so
calm and fresh, with her hair smoothly brushed, and clad in her white
slip.
It pleased him to see her thus, and, at the same time, he reflected
that the other men in the barracks certainly must see her in the same
light.
"What do you mean--what tea? I have my own tea;--where am I to go?" he
asked gloomily.
"Come and drink it with me,"--she proposed, gazing at him with
caressing eyes.
Grigóry turned his eyes aside and said, curtly, that he would go.
She went away, but he lay down on his cot again, and began to think.
"What a woman! She invites me to drink tea, she's affectionate.... But
she has grown thin in one day." He felt sorry for her, and wanted to
do something which would please her. Should he buy something sweet to
eat with the tea? But while he was washing himself he rejected that
idea,--why pamper the woman? Let her live as she is!
They drank tea in a bright little den with two windows, which looked
out on the plain, all flooded with the golden radiance of the morning
sun. On the grass, under the windows, the dew was still glistening, far
away on the horizon in the nebulous rose-colored morning mist stood
the trees along the highway. The sky was clear, and the fragrance of
damp grass and earth floated in through the windows from the meadows.
The table stood against the wall between the windows, and at it sat
three persons: Grigóry and Matréna with the latter's companion,--a
tall, thin, elderly woman, with a pock-marked face, and kindly gray
eyes. They called her Felitzáta Egórovna; she was unmarried, the
daughter of a Collegiate Assessor, and could not drink tea made with
water from the hospital boiler, but always boiled her own samovár. As
she explained all this to Orlóff, in a cracked voice, she hospitably
suggested that he should sit by the window, and drink his fill of "the
really heavenly air," and then she disappeared somewhere.
"Well, did you get tired yesterday?" Orlóff asked his wife.
"Just frightfully tired!" replied Matréna with animation.--"I could
hardly stand on my feet, my head reeled, I couldn't understand what
was said to me, and the first I knew, I was lying at full length on
the floor, unconscious. I barely--barely held out until relief-time
came.... I kept praying; 'help, oh Lord,' I thought."
"And are you scared?"
"Of the sick people?"
"The sick people are nothing."
"I'm afraid of the dead people. Do you know...." she bent over to her
husband, and whispered to him in affright:--"they move after they are
dead.... God is my witness, they do!"
"I've se-een that!"--laughed Grigóry sceptically.--"Yesterday,
Nazároff the policeman came near giving me a box on the ear after his
death. I was carrying him to the dead-house, and he gave su-uch a
flourish with his left hand ... I hardly managed to get out of the way
... so there now!"--He was not telling the strict truth, but it seemed
to come out that way of itself, against his will.
He was greatly pleased at this tea-drinking in the bright, clean room,
with windows opening on a boundless expanse of green plain and blue
sky. And something else pleased him, also,--not exactly his wife, nor
yet himself. The result of it all was that he wished to show his best
side, to be the hero of the day which was just beginning.
"When I start in to work--even the sky will become hot, so it will! For
there is a cause for my doing so. In the first place, there are the
people here,--there aren't any more like them on earth, I can tell you
that!"
He narrated his conversation with the doctor, and as he again
exerted his fancy, unconsciously to himself--this fact still further
strengthened his mood.
"In the second place, there's the work itself. It's a great affair,
my friend, in the nature of war, for example. The cholera and
people--which is to get the better of the other? Brains are needed, and
everything must be just so. What's cholera? One must understand that,
and then--go ahead and give it what it can't endure! Doctor Váshtchenko
says to me: 'you're a valuable man in this matter, Orlóff,' says he.
'Don't get scared,' says he; 'and drive it up from the patient's legs
into his belly, and there,' says he, 'I'll nip it with something sour.
That's the end of it, and the man lives, and ought to be eternally
grateful to you and me, because who was it that took him away from
death? We!'"--And Orlóff proudly inflated his chest as he gazed at his
wife with kindling eyes.
She smiled pensively into his face; he was handsome, and bore a great
resemblance to his old self, the Grísha whom she had seen some time,
long ago, before their marriage.
"All of them in our division are just such hard-working, kind folks.
The woman doctor, a fa-at woman with spectacles, and then the female
medical students. They're nice people, they talk to a body so simply,
and you can understand everything they say."
"So that signifies that you're all right, satisfied?"--asked Grigóry,
whose excitement had somewhat cooled off.
"Do you mean me? Oh Lord! Judge for yourself: I get twelve rubles, and
you get twenty ... that makes thirty-eight a month![13] We're lodged
and fed! That means, that if people keep on getting sick until the
winter, how much shall we amass?... And then, God willing, we'll raise
ourselves out of that cellar...."
[13] A little less than half that amount in dollars.--Translator.
"We-ell now, that's a serious subject...." said Orlóff thoughtfully
and, after a pause, he exclaimed with the pathos of hope, as he slapped
his wife on the shoulder:--"Ekh, Matrénka,[14] isn't the sun shining
on us? Don't get scared now!"
[14] Another diminutive of Matréna.--Translator.
She flushed all over.
"If you'd only stop drinking...."
"As to that--hold your tongue! Suit your awl to your leather, your phiz
to your life.... With a different life, my conduct will be different."
"Oh Lord, if that might only happen!"--sighed his wife profoundly.
"Well now, hush up!"
"Grishenka!"[15]
[15] A third variation (Grísha, Gríshka), of Grigóry, in the
diminutive. '--Translator.
They parted with certain novel feelings toward each other, inspired by
hope, ready to work until their strength gave out, alert and cheerful.
Two or three days passed, and Orlóff had already won several flattering
mentions as a sagacious, smart young fellow, and along with this
he observed that Prónin and the other orderlies in the barracks
bore themselves toward him with envy, and a desire to make things
unpleasant for him. He was on his guard, and he also imbibed wrath
against fat-faced Prónin, with whom he had been inclined to strike up
a friendship and to chat, "according to his soul." At the same time,
he was embittered by the plain desire of his fellow-workers to do
him some injury.--"Ekh, the rascals!" he exclaimed to himself, and
quietly gritted his teeth, endeavoring not to let slip some convenient
opportunity to pay his friends off "with as good as they gave." And,
involuntarily, his thought halted at his wife:--with her he could talk
about everything, she would not be envious of his successes, and would
not burn his boots with carbolic acid, as Prónin had done.
All the working-days were as stormy and seething with activity as
the first had been, but Grigóry no longer became so fatigued, for
he expended his strength with more discernment with every day that
passed. He learned to distinguish the smell of the medicaments, and,
picking out from among them the odor of sulphate of ether, he inhaled
it with delight on the sly, when opportunity offered, finding that
the inhalation of ether had almost as agreeable an action as a good
glass of vódka. Catching the meaning of the medical staff at half a
word, always amiable and talkative, understanding how to entertain
the patients, he became more and more of a favorite with the doctors
and the medical students, and thus, under the combined influence of
all the impressions of his new mode of existence, a strange, exalted
mood was formed within him. He felt himself to be a man of special
qualities. In him beat the desire to do something which should attract
to him the attention of everyone, should astonish everyone, and force
them to the conviction that he had a right to the ambition which had
elevated him to such a pitch in his own eyes. This was the singular
ambition of the man who had suddenly realized that he was a man, and
who, as it were, still not quite firmly assured of the fact, wished to
confirm it, in some way, to himself and to others; this was ambition,
gradually transformed into a thirst for some disinterested exploit.
As the result of this incentive, Orlóff performed various risky feats,
such as straining himself by carrying a heavily-built patient from
his cot to the bath-tub single-handed, without waiting for assistance
from his fellow-orderlies, nursing the very dirtiest of the patients,
behaving in a daring sort of way in regard to the possibility of
contagion, and handling the dead with a simplicity which sometimes
passed over into cynicism. But all this did not satisfy him; he longed
for something on a greater scale, and this longing burned incessantly
within him, tortured him, and, at last, drove him to anguish.
Then he poured out his soul to his wife, because he had no one else.
One evening, when he and his wife were relieved from duty, they went
out into the fields, after they had drunk tea. The barracks stood far
away from the town, in the middle of a long, green plain, bounded
on one side by a dark strip of forest, on the other by the line of
buildings in the town; on the north the plain extended into the far
distance, and there its verdure became merged with the dull-blue
horizon; on the south it was intersected by a precipitous descent to
the river, and along the verge of this precipice ran the highway, along
which, at equal distances one from another, stood aged, wide-spreading
trees. The sun was setting, and the crosses on the churches of the
town, rising above the dark-green of the gardens, flamed in the sky,
reflecting sheaves of golden rays, and on the window-panes of the
houses which lay on the edge of the town the red glow of the sunset
was reflected also. A band of music was playing somewhere or other;
from the ravine, thickly overgrown with a fir-grove, a resinous
fragrance was wafted aloft; the forest, also, shed abroad on the air
its complicated, succulent perfume; light, fragrant waves of warm wind
floated caressingly toward the town, and in the wide, deserted plain
everything was very delightful, quiet and sweetly-melancholy.
The Orlóffs walked across the grass in silence, with pleasure inhaling
the pure air in place of the hospital odors.
"Where's that band playing, in the town, or in the camp?" inquired
Matréna softly, of her pensive husband.
She did not like to see him thoughtful--he seemed a stranger to her,
and far away from her at such moments. Of late, they had chanced to be
together so very little, and she prized these moments all the more.
"The band?"--Grigóry replied with another question, as though freeing
himself from a dream.--"Well, the devil take that band! You just ought
to hear the music in my soul ... that's something like!"
"What is it?" she asked tremulously, looking into his eyes.
"I don't know.... That is, I can't tell you ... and even if I could
would you be able to understand? My soul burns.... It pines for space
... so that I might develop myself to my full strength.... Ekhma!
I feel within myself invincible strength! That is to say, if this
cholera, for instance, could be transformed into a man ... into an epic
hero ... even Ilyá of Muróm himself;[16]--I'd grapple with it; 'Come
on, I'll fight thee to the death! Thou art a power, and I, Gríshka
Orlóff, am a power also,--now, let's see who'll get the best of the
other?' And I'd strangle it, even if it killed me too.... There'd be
a cross over me in the field, with the inscription: 'Grigóry Andréeff
Orlóff.... He freed Russia from the cholera.' Nothing more would be
necessary."
[16] For Ilyá of Muróm and the other famous epic heroes (_bogatyry_)
see: "The Epic Songs of Russia," by Isabel F. Hapgood. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
As he spoke, his face burned, and his eyes flashed.
"You're my strong man!" whispered Matréna, nestling close to his side.
"Do you understand ... I'd hurl myself on a hundred knives, if only it
would be of any use! If life could be lightened in that way. Because I
see people: Doctor Váshtchenko, student Khokhryakóff,--it's wonderful
how they work! They ought to have died long ago of fatigue.... Do you
think they do it for money? A man can't work like that for money!
The doctors, thank the Lord! have something of their own, and get a
little in addition.... Why, an old man fell ill lately, and so Doctor
Váshtchenko hammered away at him for four days, and never went home
once the whole time.... Money doesn't count in such a case; pity is the
cause. He's sorry for people--well, and so he doesn't spare himself
... for whose sake, you ask? For everybody's sake ... for the sake
of Míshka Úsoff,... Míshka's proper place is in jail, for everybody
knows that Míshka is a thief, and, perhaps, even worse.... They're
curing Míshka.... And they were glad when he got up from his cot, they
laughed.... So I want to feel that same joy, also ... and to have a
great deal of it.... I'd like to choke with it! Because it gives me the
heart-ache to see how they laugh over their work. I ache all over, and
catch fire. I will do something!... But how? Oh ... the devil!"
Orlóff waved his hand hopelessly, and again fell into thought.
Matréna said nothing, but her heart beat anxiously--this excitement of
her husband alarmed her, and in his words she plainly felt the great
passion of his longing, which she did not understand, because she did
not try to understand it. It was her husband, not a hero, who was dear
and necessary to her.
They reached the verge of the precipice, and sat down, side by side....
The tufted crests of the young birch-trees looked down upon them, and
in the bottom of the ravine there already lay a bluish mist, which
sent forth an odor of dampness, rotting leaves and pine-needles. From
time to time a puff of wind swept along the ravine, the branches of
the birch-trees, the little fir-trees, rocked, rocked to and fro,--the
whole ravine became filled with anxious, timorous whispering, and it
seemed as though someone who was tenderly beloved and guarded by the
trees had fallen asleep in the ravine, beneath their canopy, and they
were whispering together about him very, very softly, in order not to
awaken him. And in the town, lights shone forth, and stood out like
reddish flowers against the dark background of its gardens. And in
the sky the stars began to kindle their fires. The Orlóffs sat on in
silence,--he thoughtfully drummed on his knee with his fingers, she
gazed at him and sighed softly.
And suddenly clasping her arms about his neck, she laid her head on his
breast, and said in a whisper:
"My darling Gríshka! My dear one! How good you have become to me once
more, my brave man! You see, it seems as though it were the good time
... after our wedding,... you and I were living along ... you never
utter an unkind word to me, you are always talking with me, you open
your soul to me ... you don't bawl at me."
"And have you been fretting over that? I'll give you a thrashing, if
you want it,"--jested Grigóry affectionately, feeling in his soul an
influx of tenderness and pity for his wife.
He began softly to stroke her head with his hand, and this caress
pleased him,--it was so paternal--the caress of a father for a grown-up
child. Matréna did in fact resemble a child: she now climbed up on his
knees, and seated herself in his lap, in a soft, warm little ball.
"My dear one!"--she whispered.
He heaved a profound sigh, and words which were new both to his wife
and to himself flowed of themselves from his tongue.
"Eh, you poor little kitten! You're affectionate ... you see, anyway,
and there is no friend nearer than a husband. But you have kept waiting
your chance on one side.... You know, if I did hurt you sometimes, it
was because I was sad, Mótrya. We lived in a pit.... We did not see the
light, we hardly knew people at all. I've got out of the pit, and have
recovered my sight. I was like a blind man as regards life. And now
I understand that a wife, anyhow, is a man's closest friend in life.
Because people are snakes and reptiles, to tell the truth.... They're
always trying to deal wounds to other people.... For instance--Prónin,
Vasiukóff.... Well, they may go to the.... Hold your peace, Mótrya! We
shall get straightened out, all right, never fear.... We shall make our
way, and live with understanding.... Well? What do you think of it, my
little goose?"
She shed sweet tears of happiness, and replied to his question with
kisses.
"You are my only one!" he whispered, and kissed her in return.
They wiped away each other's tears with kisses, and both were conscious
of their briny taste. And for a long time Orlóff continued to talk in
words which were new for him.
It was completely dark now. The sky, magnificently adorned with
countless swarms of stars, looked down upon the earth with triumphant
sadness, and in the plain reigned silence like that of the sky.
*
They had got into the habit of drinking tea together. On the morning
after their talk in the fields, Orlóff presented himself in his wife's
room confused and surly over something. Felitzáta was not feeling well,
Matréna was alone in the room, and greeted her husband with a beaming
face, which immediately clouded over, and she asked him anxiously:
"What makes you like that? Are you ill?"
"No, never mind,"--he replied curtly, as he seated himself on a chair,
and drew toward him the tea which she had already poured out.
"But what is it?" persisted Matréna.
"I didn't sleep. I kept thinking.... You and I cackled together
pretty hard last night, and got silly-soft ... and now I'm ashamed of
myself.... There's no use in that. You women always try to get a man
into your hands, on such occasions ... so you do.... Only, don't you
dream of such a thing--you won't succeed..... You can't get around me,
and I won't yield to you.... So now you know it!"
He said all this very impressively, but did not look at his wife.
Matréna never took her eyes from his face all the time, and her lips
writhed strangely.
"Are you sorry that you came so near to me last night--is that
it?"--she asked quietly.--"Are you sorry that you kissed and caressed
me? What does this mean? It insults me to hear it ... it is very
bitter, you're breaking my heart with such speeches. What do you want?
Do you find me tiresome, am not I dear to you, or what?"
She gazed at him suspiciously, but in her tone resounded pain and a
challenge to her husband.
"N--no...." said Grigóry abashed, "I was only talking in general ...
You and I used to live in a hole, you know yourself what sort of
a life it was! It makes me sick even to think of it. And now that
we've got out of it--I feel afraid of something. Everything changed
so suddenly.... I'm like a stranger to myself, and you seem to be a
different person too. What is the meaning of this! And what will come
next?"
"What God sends, Grísha!"--said Matréna gravely.--"Only don't feel
sorry that you were kind last night."
"All right, drop it...." Grigóry stopped her as abashed as ever, and
still sighing.--"You see, I'm thinking that we shan't come to anything,
after all. And our former life was not flowery, and my present life is
not to my taste. And although I don't drink, don't beat you, and don't
swear...."
Matréna laughed convulsively.
"You have no time to worry about that now."
"I could always find time to get drunk,"--smiled Orlóff. "I don't feel
tempted to--: that's the wonder. And besides, in general, I feel ...
not exactly ashamed of it, and yet not exactly afraid of it.. he shook
his head, and began to meditate.
"The Lord only knows what is the matter with you," said Matréna, with a
heavy sigh.--"It's a pleasant life, though there's a lot of work; all
the doctors are fond of you, and you are behaving well ... really, I
don't know what to make of it. You're very uneasy."
"That's true, I'm uneasy.... Now, I was thinking in the night: Piótr
Ivánovitch says: all men are equals, and ain't I a man like the rest?
Yet Doctor Véshtchenko is better than I am, and Piótr Ivánovitch is
better, and so are many others.... That means, that they are not my
equals ... and I'm not on a level with them, I feel that.... They cured
Míshka Úsoff, and rejoiced at it.... And I don't understand that. On
the whole, why feel glad that a man has recovered? His life was worse
than the cholera convulsions, if you speak the truth. They understand
that, but they are glad.... And I would have liked to rejoice too, like
them, only I can't.... Because--as I said before ... what is there to
be glad about?"
"But they pity the people,"--returned Matréna,--"okh, how they pity
them! It's the same thing in our section ... a sick woman begins to
mend, and, oh, Lord, what goings on! And when a poor woman gets her
discharge, they give her advice, and money and medicines.... It even
makes me shed tears ... the kind people, the compassionate people!"
"Now you say--tears.... But I'm seized with amazement ... Nothing
less...." Orlóff shrugged his shoulders, and rubbed his head, and
stared in wonder at his wife.
Eloquence made its appearance in her, from somewhere, and she began
zealously to demonstrate to her husband, that people are entirely
worthy of compassion. Bending toward him, and gazing into his face with
affectionate eyes, she talked long to him about people, and the burden
of life, and he stared at her and thought:
"Eh, how she talks! Where does she get the words?"
"For you are compassionate yourself--you say, you would strangle the
cholera, if you had the power. But what for? Whom does it annoy?
People, not you: you have even begun to live better because it made its
appearance."
Orlóff suddenly burst out laughing.
"Why, that's so, certainly!--I am better off, that's true, isn't it?
Akh, you shrewd creature,--make the most of it! People die, and I live
better in consequence, hey?--That's what life is like! Pshaw!"
He rose, and went away, laughing, to his duty. As he was walking along
the corridor, he suddenly felt regret that no one except himself had
heard Matréna's speech. "She spoke cleverly! A woman, a woman, and yet
she understands something, too." And absorbed in an agreeable sort of
sensation, he entered his ward, greeted by the hoarse rattling and the
moans of the sick men.
With every passing day, the world of his feelings grew wider and wider,
and, along with this, his necessity for speech waxed greater. He could
not, of course, narrate as a whole what was taking place within him,
for the greater part of his sensations and thought were beyond his
grasp. An angry envy blazed up within him, because he could not rejoice
over people.
It was after this that the desire was kindled within him to perform
some wonderful deed, and astonish everyone thereby. He felt conscious
that his position in the barracks placed him between people, as it
were: the doctors and students were higher than he, the servitors were
lower,--what was he himself? And a sense of loneliness laid its grasp
upon him; then it seemed to him that Fate was playing with him, had
blown him out of his place, and was now carrying him through the air
like a feather. He began to feel sorry for himself, and went to his
wife. Sometimes he did not wish to do this, considering that frankness
toward her would lower him in her eyes, but he went, nevertheless. He
arrived gloomy, and now in a vicious, again in a sceptical mood, he
went away, almost always, petted and composed. His wife had words of
her own; they were not many, they were simple, but there was always a
great deal of feeling in them, and he observed, with astonishment, that
Matréna was coming to occupy a larger and larger place in his life,
that he had to think of her and talk with her "according to the soul,"
more and more frequently.
She in her turn understood this very well, indeed, and endeavored,
in every way, to broaden her growing significance in his life. Her
toilsome and energetic life in the barracks had increased her sense of
her own value greatly,--it came to pass unnoticed by Matréna. She did
not think, she did not reason, but when she recalled her former life,
in the cellar, in the narrow circle of cares for her husband and her
housekeeping, she involuntarily compared the past with the present,
and the gloomy picture of the cellar-existence gradually retreated
further and further from her. The authorities at the barracks liked
her; because of her intelligence, and knowledge of how to work, they
all treated her graciously, they all saw in her an individual; and this
was new for her, it gave her animation.
One day when she was on night-duty, the fat woman-doctor began to
question her about her life, and Matréna, as she was willingly and
frankly telling her about her life, suddenly paused and smiled.
"What are you laughing at?" asked the doctor.
"Why nothing.... I lived very badly ... and, you see, if you will
believe it, my dear madam,--I did not understand it ... up to this very
moment, I never understood how badly."
After this glance into the past, a strange feeling took form in Mrs.
Orlóff's breast toward her husband, she loved him exactly as much as
before--with the blind love of the female, but it began to seem to
her as though Grigóry were her debtor. At times, when she was talking
with him, she assumed a patronizing tone, for he often inspired her
with pity by his uneasy speeches. But, nevertheless, she was sometimes
seized with doubt as to the possibility of a quiet and peaceful
life with her husband, although, on the whole, she still believed
that Grigóry would become steady, and that this melancholy would be
extinguished in him.
They were fatally bound to grow nearer to each other, and--both were
young, fit for work, strong--they might have gone on and lived out
their days in the gray life of half-fed poverty, a life of exploiting
others, to the end completely absorbed in the pursuit of the kopék,
but they had been saved from this end by what Gríshka called his
"uneasiness in the heart," and was, in its essence, unable to reconcile
itself with every-day things.
On the morning of a gloomy September day a wagon drove into the
court-yard of the barracks, and Prónin took out of it a little boy, all
streaked with paints, bony, yellow, hardly breathing.
"From the Petúnnikoff house, in Damp street, again," the driver
reported, in answer to the query, whence the patient came.
"Tchízhik!" exclaimed Orlóff, in distress,--"akh, oh, Lord! Sénka!
Tchizh![16] Do you know me?"
[16] Tchizh means--a canary-bird. Tchízhik--a little
canary-bird.--Translator.
"Y--yes, I know you...." said Tchízhik, with an effort, as he lay on
the stretcher, and slowly rolled his eyes up under his brow, in order
to see Orlóff, who was walking at his head, and bending over him.
"Akh ... what a merry bird you were! How did you come to give
up?"--asked Orlóff. He was, somehow, strangely alarmed at the sight
of that dirty little boy, in the throes of the disease.--"Why did it
seize on this poor little boy?" he embodied in one question all his
sensations, and sadly shook his head.
Tchízhik made no reply, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm cold," said he, when they laid him on a cot, and began to remove
his rags, streaked all over with every sort of paint-color.
"Now, we're going to put you into hot water immediately ..." promised
Orlóff.--"And we'll cure you."
Tchízhik shook his little head, and whispered:
"You can't cure me.... Uncle Grigóry ... bend down your ... ear. I
stole the accordeon.... It's in the wood-shed ... Day before yesterday
I touched it, for the first time since I stole it. Akh, what an
accordeon it is! I hid it ... and then my belly began to ache....
So.... That means, that this is for my sin.... It's hanging on the
wall, under the stairs ... and I piled wood up over it.... So....
Uncle Grigóry ... give it.... The accordeon-player had a sister....
She asked about it.... Gi-ive it ... to ... her!..." He began to groan,
and to writhe in convulsions.
They did everything they could for him, but the gaunt, exhausted little
body would not retain life in it, and in the evening, Orlóff carried
him on the stretcher to the dead-house. As he carried him, he felt
exactly as though he had been wronged.
In the dead-house, Orlóff tried to straighten out Tchízhik's body, but
he did not succeed. Orlóff went away overwhelmed, mournful, bearing
with him the image of the merry lad distorted with the disease.
He was seized with a debilitating consciousness of his powerlessness in
the face of death, and his ignorance of it. Despite all the pains he
had taken over Tchízhik, despite the zealous labors of the doctors,...
the boy had died! This was outrageous.... It would seize upon him,
Orlóff, one of these days, and twist him up in convulsions.... And
that would be the end of him. He grew frightened, and, along with this
feeling, he was invaded by a sense of loneliness. He wanted to discuss
all this with some clever man. More than once, he tried to strike up
a comprehensive conversation with one or another of the students, but
no one had any time for philosophy, and Grigóry's attempts were not
crowned with success. He was obliged to go to his wife, and talk with
her. So he went to her, morose and sad.
She had only just come off duty, and was washing herself self in the
corner of the room, but the samovár was already standing on the table,
filling the air with steam and hissing.
Grigóry seated himself, in silence, at the table, and began to gaze at
his wife's bare, plump shoulders. The samovár bubbled away, splashing
water over; Matréna snorted; orderlies ran swiftly back and forth along
the corridor, and Grigóry tried to determine, from the walk, who was
passing.
All of a sudden, it seemed to him, as though Matréna's shoulders were
as cold, and covered with the same sort of sticky sweat as Tchízhik,
when the latter was writhing with convulsions on the hospital cot. He
shuddered, and said, in a dull voice:
"Sénka is dead...."
"Dead? The kingdom of heaven to the child Sénka, newly-appeared
before God!"[17] said Matréna prayerfully, and then she began to spit
fiercely--some of the soap had got into her mouth.
[17] The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church of the East, of which Russia
is now the most prominent representative, has four different
burial-services: one for ecclesiastics, one for laymen, which undergoes
certain changes if the burial takes place at Easter-tide (making the
third), and one for children, or "infants," meaning children under
eight years of age. All are very beautiful and touching. The above
exclamation is the general one.--Translator.
"I'm sorry for him," sighed Grigóry.
"He was a dreadful tease."
"He's dead, and that ends it! It's no business of yours now, what
sort of a fellow he was!... But it's a pity he died. He was bold and
lively.... The accordeon ... Hm!... He was a clever lad.... I sometimes
used to look at him and think: I'll take him as an apprentice, or
something of that sort.... He was an orphan ... he would have got used
to us, and have taken the place of a son to us.... For, you see, we
have no children.... No.... You're so healthy, yet you don't bear any
children.... You had one, and that was the end of it. Ekh, you woman!
If we had some squalling little brats, you'd see we shouldn't find
life so tiresome.... But now it's only live on, and work.... And for
what? To feed myself and you.... And of what use are we ... of what
use is food to us? In order that we may work.... So it turns out to
be a senseless circle.... But if we had children--that would be quite
another matter.... That it would."
He said this in a sad, dissatisfied tone, with his head drooping low.
Matréna stood before him and listened, gradually turning pale, as he
continued:
"I'm healthy, you're healthy, and still we have no children.... What's
the meaning of it? Why? Ye-es ... a man thinks and thinks about it ...
and then he takes to drink!"
"You lie!" said Matréna firmly and loudly.--"You lie! Don't you dare to
utter your dastardly words to me ... do you hear? Don't you dare! You
drink--because you choose to, out of self-indulgence, because you have
no self-control, and my childlessness has nothing whatever to do with
the matter; you lie, Gríshka!"
Grigóry was stunned. He flung himself back, against the back of his
chair, cast a glance at his wife, and did not recognize her. Never
before had he beheld her so infuriated, never had she looked at him
with such mercilessly-angry eyes, or spoken with such power in her
words.
"Come now, come!"--ejaculated Grigóry defiantly, clutching the
seat of his chair with his hands.--"Come now, talk some more!"
"And so I will! I wouldn't have spoken, only that reproach from you I
cannot endure! I don't bear you children, don't I? And I won't! I can't
any more.... I can't have any children!..." a sob was audible in her
shriek.
"Don't yell," her husband warned her.
"Why don't I bear children, hey? Come now, recall to your mind, Grísha,
how much have you beaten me? How many kicks in the side have you
showered on me?... reckon them up, do! How you have tortured, racked
me? Do you know how much blood flowed from me after your tortures?
My chemise used to be bloody clear up to my neck! And that's why I
bear no children, my dear husband! How can you reproach me for that,
hey? How is it that your ugly phiz isn't ashamed to look me in the
face? ... For you are a murderer! you have killed your children,
killed them yourself! and now you reproach me because I don't bear
any.... I have endured everything from you, I have forgiven you for
everything,--but those words I will never forgive, to all eternity!
When I am dying,--I'll call that to mind! Don't you understand that
you are to blame yourself, that you have destroyed me? Ain't I like
all women--don't I want children? Do you think I don't want them? Many
a night, when I couldn't sleep, I have prayed to the Lord God that He
would preserve the children in my body from you, you murderer! ... When
I see a strange child--I choke with bitterness, out of envy and pity
for myself.... I'd like! ... Queen of Heaven!... I used to pet that
Sénka on the sly.... What am I? O Lord! A barren woman...."
She began to sob. The words leaped from her mouth without sense of
coherence.
Her face was spotted all over, she trembled, and scratched her neck,
because the sobs gurgled in her throat. Keeping a stout grasp on
his chair, Grigóry, pale and crushed, sat opposite her, and with
widely-opened eyes stared at this woman, who was a stranger to him,
and he was afraid of her ... afraid that she would clutch him by the
throat and strangle him. Precisely that was what her terrible eyes,
blazing with wrath, promised him. She was twice as strong as he now,
and he felt it, and turned cowardly; he could not rise and strike her,
as he would have done, had he not understood that she had undergone
a transformation, as though she had imbibed vast strength from some
source.
"You have stung my very soul, Gríshka! Great is your sin toward me!
I have endured, I have held my peace ... because ... I love you ...
but your reproaches I cannot bear!... My strength is exhausted....
You heaven-sent husband of mine! For those words of yours, may you be
thrice accur...."
"Hold your tongue!--" thundered Gríshka, with a snarl. "You're
outrageous! Have you forgotten where we are? You accursed devil!"
There was a mist over Grigóry's eyes. He could not discern who it was
that was standing in the door-way, and talking in a bass voice; he
swore in vile language, thrust the man aside, and rushed out into the
fields. And Matréna, after standing still in the middle of the room for
a minute, reeling and as though struck with blindness, with her hands
outstretched before her, went to the cot, and fell upon it, with a
groan.
Darkness descended, and the golden moon, covering the fields with
shadows, peered curiously into the windows of the room from the sky,
from amid ragged, dark-blue clouds.
Soon a fine, drizzling rain began to beat upon the window-panes and the
walls of the barracks--the forerunner of the interminable autumn rains
which fill the soul with melancholy.
The pendulum of the clock ticked off the seconds with equable beat, the
raindrops lashed the panes. Hour after hour passed, and the rain still
descended, and on the cot, the woman lay motionless and stared, with
swollen eyes, at the ceiling. Her face was gloomy, stern, her teeth
were tightly clenched, her cheek-bones stood out prominently, and in
her eyes gleamed both terror and sadness. And the rain still rattled
against the walls and the window-panes; it seemed as though it were
whispering something wearisomely-monotonous, were trying to convince
someone of something, but had not sufficient passion to do it quickly,
handsomely, with force, and hoped to attain its end by a torturing,
interminable, colorless sermon, which lacked the sincere pathos of
faith.
The rain continued and was still pouring when the sky became overcast
with hues of approaching dawn, which presage an inclement day, and so
resemble the color of a knife, which has been long in use, and has
lost the gleam of its polish. But still Matréna could not sleep. In
the monotonous murmur of the rain, she heard a question which was both
anxious and alarming to her:
"What will happen now? What will happen now?"
It resounded importunately outside the windows, and an aching pain in
all her being responded to it.
"What will happen now?"
The woman was afraid to answer herself, although the answer kept
flashing up before her in the shape of a drunken husband, as fierce
as any wild beast. But it was difficult to part with her dream of a
calm, loving life; she had already got accustomed to this dream, and
she banished from her a menacing foreboding. And at the same time, the
consciousness flashed across her, that if this did happen--if Grigóry
should take to drink again, she could no longer live with him. She
saw him different, she herself had become a different person, and her
former life aroused in her both fear and disgust--novel sensations,
hitherto unknown to her. But she was a woman, and in the end, she began
to upbraid herself for this breach with her husband.
"And how did it come about?... O Lord!... It's just as though I had
torn myself off a hook ..."
In such contradictory, torturing reflections, another long hour passed
by. Day dawned. A heavy fog was swirling over the plain, and the sky
could not be seen through its gray mist.
"Mrs. Orlóff! Time to go on duty...."
Mechanically obeying this summons, shouted through the door of her
room, she slowly rose from her bed, washed herself in haste, and went
to the barracks, feeling weak and half ill. In the barracks she evoked
general surprise by the languor of her movements, and her gloomy face
with its dull eyes.
"Mrs. Orlóff! You seem to be ill?" one of the doctors said to her.
"It's nothing...."
"But tell me, don't stand on ceremony! you know, we can get a
substitute for you ..."
Matréna felt conscience-stricken, she did not wish to betray her pain
and terror to this person who was kind, but still a stranger to her,
nevertheless. And summoning up, from the depths of her tortured soul,
the remnants of her courage, she said to the woman-doctor, with a smile:
"It's nothing! I have had a little quarrel with my husband ... It will
pass off ... it isn't the first time...."
"You poor thing!"--sighed the doctor, who knew about her life.
Matréna wanted to fall down before her, bury her head in the doctor's
lap, and scream.... But she restrained herself, and only pressed her
lips tightly together, and passed her hand over her throat, as though
she were thrusting back into her breast the sobs which were on the
point of bursting forth.
When she was relieved from duty, she entered her room, and the first
thing she did, was to look out of the window. Across the fields, to the
barracks, a waggon was moving,--they must be bringing a sick person in
it. Fine rain was sifting down from the gray storm-clouds. Nothing else
was to be seen. Matréna turned away from the window, and with a heavy
sigh, seated herself at the table, engrossed by the thought:
"What will happen now?"--And her heart beat time to these words.
For a long time she sat there, alone, in a heavy semi-doze, and every
time the sound of footsteps in the corridor made her shudder, and
rising from her chair, she looked out of the door....
But when, at last, the door opened, and Grigóry entered, she did
not shudder, and did not rise, for she felt as though the autumnal
storm-clouds had suddenly descended upon her, from the sky, with all
their weight.
Grigóry halted at the door, flung his wet cap on the floor, and
stamping heavily with his feet, he approached his wife. He was
streaming with water. His face was red, his eyes were dim, and his
lips were stretched in a broad, stupid smile. As he walked, Matréna
heard the water seeping in his boots. He was pitiful, and she had not
imagined him in this aspect.
"Good!"--she said softly.
Grigóry waggled his head stupidly, and asked her:
"Would you like to have me bow down to your feet?"
She made no reply.
"You wouldn't? Well, that's your affair.... But I've been thinking all
the while: am I guilty toward you or not? It turns out--that I am. So
now I say: do you want me to bow down to your f-feet?"
She maintained silence, inhaling the odor of vódka which emanated from
him, and a bitter feeling gnawed at her soul.
"Now, see here, you--don't you make faces! Take your chance while I'm
peaceable...." said Grigóry, raising his voice.--"Come, are you going
to forgive me?"
"You're drunk," said Matréna, with a sigh.... Go and sleep...."
"You lie, I'm not drunk, I'm tired, I've been walking and walking and
thinking.... I've done a heap of thinking, brother ... oh! You look
out!"
He menaced her with his finger, laughing with a wry grimace.
"Why don't you speak?"
"I can't talk with you."
"You can't? Why not?"
All at once, he flared up, and his voice grew firmer.
"You screamed at me, you snarled at me yesterday ... well, and now I'm
asking your forgiveness. Understand that!"
He said this in a very ominous way, his lips quivered, and his nostrils
were inflated. Matréna knew what that meant, and the past rose up
before her in vivid colors: the cellar, the Saturday fights, the
anguish and suffocation of their life.
"I understand!"--she said, sharply.--"I see that you are ... turning
into a beast again now ... ekh, you disgusting creature!"
"I'm turning into a beast? That ... hasn't anything to do with the
case.... I say ... will you forgive me? What are you thinking about? Do
I need it--your forgiveness? I can get on capitally without it ... but
still, here, I want you to forgive me.... Understand?"
"Go away from me, Grigóry!" ... exclaimed the woman sadly, turning away
from him.
"Go away?"--laughed Grigóry maliciously.--"I'm to go away, so that you
will remain at liberty? Come now, I wo-on't! Have you seen this?"
He seized her by the shoulder, dragged-her toward him, and flourished a
knife in her face--a short, thick, sharp; piece of rusty iron.
"We-ell?"
"Ekh, if you would only cut my throat,"--said Matréna, with a deep
sigh, and freeing herself from his grasp, she turned away from him
again. Then he, also, staggered back from her, startled, not by her
words, but by the tone of them. He had heard those words from her lips
before, had heard them more than once--but she had never uttered them
in that manner. And the fact that she had turned away from him without
fearing the knife, also augmented his amazement and discomfiture.
Several seconds earlier it would have been easy for him to strike
her, but now he could not do it, and did not wish to do it. Almost
frightened by her indifference to his threat, he flung the knife on the
table, and with dull wrath he asked his wife:
"Devil! What is it you want?"
"I don't want anything!"--cried Matréna, sighing.--"And what do you
want? Did you come to kill me? Well, then, kill me!"
Grigóry looked at her, and held his peace, not knowing what he could do
now, and seeing nothing clearly in his tangled thoughts. He had come
with a definite intention to conquer his wife. On the preceding day,
during their clash, she had been stronger than he; he was conscious of
that, and it lowered him in his own eyes. It was imperatively necessary
that she should submit to him, he did not understand why, but he did
know solidly, that it was necessary. Passionate by nature, he had gone
through a great deal and had thought a great deal about the matter
during those four and twenty hours, and--being an ignorant man--he did
not know how to single out of the chaos those feelings which had been
aroused by the just accusation boldly hurled at him by his wife. He
understood that this was a revolt against him, and he had brought the
knife with him, in order to frighten Matréna; he would have killed her,
but she offered a less passive resistance to his desire to subjugate
her. But here she was in front of him, helpless, overwhelmed with grief
and yet stronger than he. It angered him to perceive this, and this
anger had a sobering effect upon him.
"Listen!"--he said,--"and don't you put on any conceited airs! You know
that I, in downright earnest ... will drive this into your ribs--and
that's the end of you! That will put an end to the whole matter!?..
It's very simple...."
Conscious that he was not saying the proper thing, Grigóry paused.
Matréna did not move, as she stood turned away from him. A
feverishly-rapid reckoning up of all that she had gone through with
her husband was in progress within her, and this imperative question
throbbed in her heart:
"What will happen now?"
"Mótrya!"--Grigóry began suddenly and softly, propping himself with
one hand on the table, and bending toward his wife.--"Am I to blame,
if ... everything isn't.. if it isn't as it should be?... This is very
disgusting to me!"
He twisted his head about and sighed.
"I'm so sick of it! I'm so cramped here on earth! Is this life? Come,
let's take the cholera patients,--what are they? Are they a support to
me? Some will die, and others will get well,... and I must go on living
again. How am I to live? it's not life--only convulsions ... isn't that
enough to make a man angry? I understand everything, you see, only
it's difficult for me to say that I can't live so ... but how I want
to live ... I don't know! They heal those sick people yonder, and give
them every attention--... but I'm healthy, and if my soul aches, am I
any the less valuable than they? Just think of it--I'm worse off than
a cholera patient.... I have convulsions in my heart--that's what the
trouble is!... And you shriek at me! Do you think I'm a wild beast?
A drunkard, and--that's the end of it? Ekh you ... you woman! you
wooden...."
He spoke quietly and persuasively, but she did not hear his speech
well, busy as she was in reviewing the past.
"Now you won't speak.. said Gríshka, lending an ear to something new
and powerful which was springing up within him.--"And why do you remain
silent? What do you want?"
"I want nothing from you!"--exclaimed Matréna ...--"Why do you hammer
away at me? Why do you torture me? What do you want?"
"What? Why ... that, of course..."
But Orlóff became conscious that he could not tell his wife exactly
what he wanted,--that everything should immediately become clear, so
to speak, both to him and to her. He comprehended that something had
formed between them which could not be removed by any words whatever ...
Then a wild anger flashed up suddenly and vividly within him.
Flourishing his arm, he dealt his wife a blow with his fist on the nape
of her neck, and roared, like a wild beast:
"What are you about, you witch, hey? Why are you playing? I'll kill
you, you carrion!"
The blow drove her, face down, upon the table, but she instantly sprang
to her feet, and, looking straight in her husband's face, with a gaze
of hatred, she said firmly, loudly and curtly:
"Beat away!"
"Shut up!"
"Beat! Well?"
"Akh, you devil!"
"Ho, Grigóry, there's been enough of that. I won't have any more of
it...."
"Shut up!"
"I won't allow you to jeer at me...."
He gnashed his teeth, and retreated from her a pace--perhaps with the
object of hitting her more conveniently.
But, at that moment, the door opened, and Doctor Yáshtchenko made his
appearance on the threshold.
"Wha-at's the meaning of this? Where are you, hey? What sort of a
performance are you going through with?"
His face was stem and astounded. Orlóff was not in the slightest degree
abashed at the sight of him, and he even bowed to him, saying:
"It's--.. disinfection between husband and wife."
And he laughed convulsively in the doctor's face.
"Why didn't you present yourself for duty?"--shouted the doctor
sharply, incensed by the laugh.
Gríshka shrugged his shoulders, and calmly declared:
"I was busy ... about my own affairs...."
"So ... yes! And who was making that row here last night?"
"We...."
"You? Very good.... You behave yourselves in domestic fashion ... you
prowl about without leave...."
"We're not serfs, so...."
"Silence! You've turned this into a dram-shop ... you beasts! I'll show
you where you are!"
A flood of wild daring, of passionate longing to overturn everything,
to tear the confusion out of his hunted soul, overwhelmed Gríshka, in a
burning tide. It seemed to him that he would now do something unusual,
and, at the same time, deliver his dark soul from the entanglements
which now held it in bondage. He shuddered, felt an agreeable sensation
of cold in his heart, and turning to the doctor with a sort of cat-like
grimace, he said:
"Don't you bother your gullet, don't yell.... I know where I am--in the
exterminating house!"
"Wha-at? What did you say?"--the astonished doctor bent toward him.
Gríshka understood that he had uttered a savage word, but he did not
cool down, for all that, but waxed all the hotter.
"Never mind, it will pass off! Digest that!... Matréna! Get ready to
go!"
"No, my dear fellow, stop! You must answer me...." uttered the doctor,
with ominous composure.--"You scoundrel, I'll give it to you for
this...."
Gríshka stared point-blank at him, and began to talk, with the
sensation that he was leaping off somewhere, and with every leap he
breathed more and more freely.
"Don't you shout, Andréi Stepánovitch ... don't swear.... You think
that, because there's cholera, you can order me about. 'Tis a vain
dream.... That you cure people, nobody needs to be told.--And what
I said about extermination was, of course, an idle word, and I was
angry.... But don't you yell so much, all the same...."
"No, you lie!"--said the doctor calmly.... "I'll give you a lesson ...
hey, there, come hither!"
People were already standing in the corridor.... Gríshka screwed up his
eyes, and set his teeth.
"No, I'm not lying, and I'm not afraid ... but if you want to give me a
lesson, I'll tell you for your convenience."
"We-ell? Say it...."
"I'll go to the town, and I'll spread the news: 'My lads! Do you know
how they cure the cholera?'"
"Wha-at?"--and the doctor opened his eyes widely.
"So when we had that disinfection there with limination ...."
"What are you saying, devil take you!"--cried the doctor in a dull
tone.--Irritation had given way in him to amazement in the presence
of that young fellow whom he had known as an industrious, far from
unintelligent workman, and who now, no one knew why, was foolishly and
stupidly running his neck into the noose....
"What nonsense are you chattering, you fool?"
"Fool!"--rang like an echo through Gríshka's whole being. He understood
that this verdict was just, and he became all the more angry.
"What am I saying? I know ... I don't care ...." he said, with wildly
flashing eyes....--"Now I understand why the like of me never cares
... and it's utterly useless for us to restrain ourselves in our
feelings.... Matréna, get ready!"
"I won't go!" announced Matréna firmly.
The doctor stared at them with round eyes, and rubbed his brow,
comprehending nothing.
"You're ... either a drunken man or a crazy man! Do you understand what
you are doing?" Gríshka would not, could not yield. In reply to the
doctor, he said, ironically:
"And how do you understand it? What are you doing? Disinfection, ha,
ha! You heal the sick ... while the well people die with the narrowness
of their life.... Matréna! I'll smash your pate! Go...."
"I won't go with you!"
She was pale, and unnaturally motionless, but her eyes gazed firmly
and coldly into her husband's face ... Gríshka, despite all his heroic
courage, turned away from her, and hanging his head, made no reply.
"Faugh!" and the doctor spat.--"The devil himself couldn't make out
the meaning of this.... Here you! Begone! Take yourself off, and be
thankful that I haven't been severe with you ... you ought to be
arrested ... you blockhead! Get out!"
Grigóry glanced, in silence, at the doctor, and then dropped his head
again. He would have felt better if they had thrashed him, or even
sent him to the police-station.... But the doctor was a kind man, and
perceived that Orlóff was almost irresponsible.
"For the last time, I ask you, will you go?" Gríshka hoarsely asked his
wife.
"No, I will not go,"--she answered, and bent down a little, as though
in expectation of a blow.
Gríshka waved his hand.
"Well ... the devil take the whole lot of you!--And what the devil do I
want you for, anyway?"
"You're a savage blockhead," began the doctor, argumentatively.
"Don't you bark!" shouted Gríshka.--"Well, you cursed trollop, I'm
going! I think we shall never see each other again ... but perhaps we
shall ... that will be as I choose! But if we do meet again--it won't
be good for you, I warn you!"
And Orlóff moved toward the door.
"Good-bye ... tragedian!..." said the doctor sardonically, when Gríshka
came on a level with him.
Grigóry halted, and raising his mournful flashing eyes to him, he said
in a repressed, low tone:
"Don't you touch me ... don't wind the spring up tight ... it has
unwound, and hasn't hit anybody ... so let it go at that."
He picked up his cap from the floor, stuck it on his head, bristled up,
and went out, without even glancing at his wife.
The doctor gazed searchingly at her. She stood before him pale, with an
insensible sort of face.--The doctor nodded his head in the direction
of Grigóry, and asked her:
"What is the matter with him?"
"I don't know...."
"Hm.... And where will he go now?"
"On a drunken spree!"--replied Mrs. Orlóff firmly.
The doctor frowned and went away.
Matréna looked out of the window. The figure of a man was moving
swiftly along, in the evening twilight, through wind and rain, from the
barracks to the town. The figure was alone, in the midst of the wet,
gray plain ... The face of Matréna Orlóff turned still paler, she went
into a corner, fell on her knees, and began to pray, zealously executing
ground-reverences,[18] sighing out her petitions in a passionate
whisper, and rubbing her breast and her throat with hands which
trembled with emotion.
[18] That is--touching the forehead to the floor.--Translator.
*
One day I was inspecting the trade-school in N.... My guide was a
well-known man, one of its founders. He conducted me over this model
school, and explained things to me:
"As you see, we have reason to boast.... Our nurseling is growing
and developing splendidly. The teaching corps are wonderfully well
matched. In the boot and shoe shop, for example, we have a woman
teacher, a plain female shoemaker, a peasant woman, that is to say,
even a very ordinary peasant woman, such a dainty, roguish creature,
but of irreproachable conduct.--However, devil take that side of the
matter.... Ye-es! So then, as I was saying, that shoemaker is a simple
little peasant woman, but how she does work!... how cleverly she
teaches her trade, with what love she treats the little children--it's
amazing! she's an invaluable worker.... She works for twelve rubles a
month, and lodgings at the school ... and she supports two orphans, to
hoot, on her scanty means! She's a very interesting figure, I must tell
you."
He praised the woman shoemaker so zealously that he evoked in me a
desire to make her acquaintance. This was soon arranged, and one day
Matréna Ivánovna Orlóff narrated to me the sad story of her life. For
a while, after she had separated from her husband, he gave her no
rest:--He came to her in a drunken condition, kicked up rows, spied on
her everywhere, and was merciless. She bore it patiently.
When the barracks were closed the woman doctor suggested to Matréna
Ivánovna that she should get a place at the school, and defend her
against her husband. Both undertakings were successful, and Mrs. Orlóff
entered upon a tranquil, laborious life: under the guidance of her
acquaintances, the women medical practitioners, she learned to read
and write, took two orphans out of the asylum to rear,--a girl and a
boy,--and was working away, content with herself, with grief and terror
recalling her past. She was perfectly devoted to her pupils, understood
the significance of her activity in a broad sense, discharged it in a
thoroughly competent manner, and had won general interest and sympathy
for herself among the managers of the school. But she was coughing with
a dry, suspicious cough, an ominous flush burned on her sunken cheeks,
and her gray eyes held much melancholy. Her married life with uneasy
Gríshka was taking effect.
But he had dropped his wife, and it was now the third year since he had
annoyed her. He sometimes made his appearance in N., but did not show
himself to Matréna. He was "on the tramp," as she defined to me his
manner of life.
I succeeded in making his acquaintance. I found him in one of the
dives of the town, and after two or three sittings, he and I became
friends. After repeating to me the story which his wife had told me, he
meditated for a little while, and then said:
"So you see, Maxím Savvátievitch, it raised me up, and then dashed me
down. So I never performed any heroic deed. Even to this day, I long to
distinguish myself in some way.... I'd like to mash up the whole earth
into dust or assemble a gang of comrades and kill off all the Jews ...
down to the very last one! Or, in general, something which would set me
up above all men, and so that I could spit on them from a height....
And say to them: 'Akh, you reptiles! Why do you live? How do you live?
You're a pack of hypocritical rascals, that's all you are!' And then,
I'd kick up my heels from above or there below, and ... they'd smash
into bits! Ye-es, so I would! Devil take it ... it's tiresome! And akh,
how tiresome and narrow life is to me!... I thought, when I got rid
of Matréshka:--'Co-ome now, Grínya,[19] sail away into freedom, the
anchor's weighed!' On the contrary, it didn't come out that way--the
channel was shallow! Stop! And I ran aground.... But I shan't dry up,
never fear! I shall display myself! How?--the devil only knows that!...
My wife? Well I consign her to all the devils! Does a man like me want
a wife?... What should I do with her ... when I feel drawn in all four
quarters at once?... I was born with uneasiness in my heart ... and
it is my fate to be a tramp! The very best position in the world is
free--and yet cramped! I've walked and ridden in all directions,... and
found no consolation.... Do I drink? Of course, and what of that? Vodka
extinguishes the heart, all the same.... And my heart bums with a great
fire.... Everything is repulsive--towns, villages, people of different
calibres ... Faugh! Can't anything better be invented? They're all down
on one another.... I'd like to choke the whole lot of them! Ekh, life,
you're the devil's great wisdom!"
[19] Another variation of Grigóry.--Translator.
The heavy door of the dram-shop where Orlóff and I were sitting, kept
opening incessantly, creaking in a voluptuous sort of way as it did so.
And the interior of the dram-shop aroused one's imagination of some
sort of wild beast's maw, which was slowly but inevitably devouring,
one after the other, the poor Russian people, the uneasy and the rest.