his heart; "don't believe them. It's all a sham. My illness is only that
in twenty years I have only found one intelligent man in the whole town,
and he is mad. I am not ill at all, it's simply that I have got into an
enchanted circle which there is no getting out of. I don't care; I am
ready for anything."
"Go into the hospital, my dear fellow."
"I don't care if it were into the pit."
"Give me your word, my dear man, that you will obey Yevgeny Fyodoritch
in everything."
"Certainly I will give you my word. But I repeat, my honoured friend, I
have got into an enchanted circle. Now everything, even the genuine
sympathy of my friends, leads to the same thing--to my ruin. I am going
to my ruin, and I have the manliness to recognize it."
"My dear fellow, you will recover."
"What's the use of saying that?" said Andrey Yefimitch, with irritation.
"There are few men who at the end of their lives do not experience what
I am experiencing now. When you are told that you have something such as
diseased kidneys or enlarged heart, and you begin being treated for it,
or are told you are mad or a criminal--that is, in fact, when people
suddenly turn their attention to you--you may be sure you have got into
an enchanted circle from which you will not escape. You will try to
escape and make things worse. You had better give in, for no human
efforts can save you. So it seems to me."
Meanwhile the public was crowding at the grating. That he might not be
in their way, Andrey Yefimitch got up and began to take leave. Mihail
Averyanitch made him promise on his honour once more, and escorted him
to the outer door.
Towards evening on the same day Hobotov, in his sheepskin and his high
top-boots, suddenly made his appearance, and said to Andrey Yefimitch in
a tone as though nothing had happened the day before:
"I have come on business, colleague. I have come to ask you whether you
would not join me in a consultation. Eh?"
Thinking that Hobotov wanted to distract his mind with an outing, or
perhaps really to enable him to earn something, Andrey Yefimitch put on
his coat and hat, and went out with him into the street. He was glad of
the opportunity to smooth over his fault of the previous day and to be
reconciled, and in his heart thanked Hobotov, who did not even allude to
yesterday's scene and was evidently sparing him. One would never have
expected such delicacy from this uncultured man.
"Where is your invalid?" asked Andrey Yefimitch.
"In the hospital. . . . I have long wanted to show him to you. A very
interesting case."
They went into the hospital yard, and going round the main building,
turned towards the lodge where the mental cases were kept, and all this,
for some reason, in silence. When they went into the lodge Nikita as
usual jumped up and stood at attention.
"One of the patients here has a lung complication." Hobotov said in an
undertone, going into the yard with Andrey Yefimitch. "You wait here,
I'll be back directly. I am going for a stethoscope."
And he went away. XVII
It was getting dusk. Ivan Dmitritch was lying on his bed with his face
thrust unto his pillow; the paralytic was sitting motionless, crying
quietly and moving his lips. The fat peasant and the former sorter were
asleep. It was quiet.
Andrey Yefimitch sat down on Ivan Dmitritch's bed and waited. But half
an hour passed, and instead of Hobotov, Nikita came into the ward with a
dressing-gown, some underlinen, and a pair of slippers in a heap on his
arm.
"Please change your things, your honour," he said softly. "Here is your
bed; come this way," he added, pointing to an empty bedstead which had
obviously recently been brought into the ward. "It's all right; please
God, you will recover."
Andrey Yefimitch understood it all. Without saying a word he crossed to
the bed to which Nikita pointed and sat down; seeing that Nikita was
standing waiting, he undressed entirely and he felt ashamed. Then he put
on the hospital clothes; the drawers were very short, the shirt was
long, and the dressing-gown smelt of smoked fish.
"Please God, you will recover," repeated Nikita, and he gathered up
Andrey Yefimitch's clothes into his arms, went out, and shut the door
after him.
"No matter . . ." thought Andrey Yefimitch, wrapping himself in his
dressing-gown in a shamefaced way and feeling that he looked like a
convict in his new costume. "It's no matter. . . . It does not matter
whether it's a dress-coat or a uniform or this dressing-gown."
But how about his watch? And the notebook that was in the side-pocket?
And his cigarettes? Where had Nikita taken his clothes? Now perhaps to
the day of his death he would not put on trousers, a waistcoat, and high
boots. It was all somehow strange and even incomprehensible at first.
Andrey Yefimitch was even now convinced that there was no difference
between his landlady's house and Ward No. 6, that everything in this
world was nonsense and vanity of vanities. And yet his hands were
trembling, his feet were cold, and he was filled with dread at the
thought that soon Ivan Dmitritch would get up and see that he was in a
dressing-gown. He got up and walked across the room and sat down again.
Here he had been sitting already half an hour, an hour, and he was
miserably sick of it: was it really possible to live here a day, a week,
and even years like these people? Why, he had been sitting here, had
walked about and sat down again; he could get up and look out of window
and walk from corner to corner again, and then what? Sit so all the
time, like a post, and think? No, that was scarcely possible.
Andrey Yefimitch lay down, but at once got up, wiped the cold sweat from
his brow with his sleeve and felt that his whole face smelt of smoked
fish. He walked about again.
"It's some misunderstanding . . ." he said, turning out the palms of his
hands in perplexity. "It must be cleared up. There is a
misunderstanding."
Meanwhile Ivan Dmitritch woke up; he sat up and propped his cheeks on
his fists. He spat. Then he glanced lazily at the doctor, and apparently
for the first minute did not understand; but soon his sleepy face grew
malicious and mocking.
"Aha! so they have put you in here, too, old fellow?" he said in a voice
husky from sleepiness, screwing up one eye. "Very glad to see you. You
sucked the blood of others, and now they will suck yours. Excellent!"
"It's a misunderstanding . . ." Andrey Yefimitch brought out, frightened
by Ivan Dmitritch's words; he shrugged his shoulders and repeated: "It's
some misunderstanding."
Ivan Dmitritch spat again and lay down.
"Cursed life," he grumbled, "and what's bitter and insulting, this life
will not end in compensation for our sufferings, it will not end with
apotheosis as it would in an opera, but with death; peasants will come
and drag one's dead body by the arms and the legs to the cellar. Ugh!
Well, it does not matter. . . . We shall have our good time in the other
world. . . . I shall come here as a ghost from the other world and
frighten these reptiles. I'll turn their hair grey."
Moiseika returned, and, seeing the doctor, held out his hand.
"Give me one little kopeck," he said. XVIII
Andrey Yefimitch walked away to the window and looked out into the open
country. It was getting dark, and on the horizon to the right a cold
crimson moon was mounting upwards. Not far from the hospital fence, not
much more than two hundred yards away, stood a tall white house shut in
by a stone wall. This was the prison.
"So this is real life," thought Andrey Yefimitch, and he felt
frightened.
The moon and the prison, and the nails on the fence, and the far-away
flames at the bone-charring factory were all terrible. Behind him there
was the sound of a sigh. Andrey Yefimitch looked round and saw a man
with glittering stars and orders on his breast, who was smiling and
slyly winking. And this, too, seemed terrible.
Andrey Yefimitch assured himself that there was nothing special about
the moon or the prison, that even sane persons wear orders, and that
everything in time will decay and turn to earth, but he was suddenly
overcome with desire; he clutched at the grating with both hands and
shook it with all his might. The strong grating did not yield.
Then that it might not be so dreadful he went to Ivan Dmitritch's bed
and sat down.
"I have lost heart, my dear fellow," he muttered, trembling and wiping
away the cold sweat, "I have lost heart."
"You should be philosophical," said Ivan Dmitritch ironically.
"My God, my God. . . . Yes, yes. . . . You were pleased to say once that
there was no philosophy in Russia, but that all people, even the
paltriest, talk philosophy. But you know the philosophizing of the
paltriest does not harm anyone," said Andrey Yefimitch in a tone as if
he wanted to cry and complain. "Why, then, that malignant laugh, my
friend, and how can these paltry creatures help philosophizing if they
are not satisfied? For an intelligent, educated man, made in God's
image, proud and loving freedom, to have no alternative but to be a
doctor in a filthy, stupid, wretched little town, and to spend his whole
life among bottles, leeches, mustard plasters! Quackery, narrowness,
vulgarity! Oh, my God!"
"You are talking nonsense. If you don't like being a doctor you should
have gone in for being a statesman."
"I could not, I could not do anything. We are weak, my dear friend . . .
. I used to be indifferent. I reasoned boldly and soundly, but at the
first coarse touch of life upon me I have lost heart. . . . Prostration.
. . . . We are weak, we are poor creatures . . . and you, too, my dear
friend, you are intelligent, generous, you drew in good impulses with
your mother's milk, but you had hardly entered upon life when you were
exhausted and fell ill. . . . Weak, weak!"
Andrey Yefimitch was all the while at the approach of evening tormented
by another persistent sensation besides terror and the feeling of
resentment. At last he realized that he was longing for a smoke and for
beer.
"I am going out, my friend," he said. "I will tell them to bring a
light; I can't put up with this. . . . I am not equal to it. . . ."
Andrey Yefimitch went to the door and opened it, but at once Nikita
jumped up and barred his way.
"Where are you going? You can't, you can't!" he said. "It's bedtime."
"But I'm only going out for a minute to walk about the yard," said
Andrey Yefimitch.
"You can't, you can't; it's forbidden. You know that yourself."
"But what difference will it make to anyone if I do go out?" asked
Andrey Yefimitch, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't understand. Nikita,
I must go out!" he said in a trembling voice. "I must."
"Don't be disorderly, it's not right," Nikita said peremptorily.
"This is beyond everything," Ivan Dmitritch cried suddenly, and he
jumped up. "What right has he not to let you out? How dare they keep us
here? I believe it is clearly laid down in the law that no one can be
deprived of freedom without trial! It's an outrage! It's tyranny!"
"Of course it's tyranny," said Andrey Yefimitch, encouraged by Ivan
Dmitritch's outburst. "I must go out, I want to. He has no right! Open,
I tell you."
"Do you hear, you dull-witted brute?" cried Ivan Dmitritch, and he
banged on the door with his fist. "Open the door, or I will break it
open! Torturer!"
"Open the door," cried Andrey Yefimitch, trembling all over; "I insist!"
"Talk away!" Nikita answered through the door, "talk away. . . ."
"Anyhow, go and call Yevgeny Fyodoritch! Say that I beg him to come for
a minute!"
"His honour will come of himself to-morrow."
"They will never let us out," Ivan Dmitritch was going on meanwhile.
"They will leave us to rot here! Oh, Lord, can there really be no hell
in the next world, and will these wretches be forgiven? Where is
justice? Open the door, you wretch! I am choking!" he cried in a hoarse
voice, and flung himself upon the door. "I'll dash out my brains,
murderers!"
Nikita opened the door quickly, and roughly with both his hands and his
knee shoved Andrey Yefimitch back, then swung his arm and punched him in
the face with his fist. It seemed to Andrey Yefimitch as though a huge
salt wave enveloped him from his head downwards and dragged him to the
bed; there really was a salt taste in his mouth: most likely the blood
was running from his teeth. He waved his arms as though he were trying
to swim out and clutched at a bedstead, and at the same moment felt
Nikita hit him twice on the back.
Ivan Dmitritch gave a loud scream. He must have been beaten too.
Then all was still, the faint moonlight came through the grating, and a
shadow like a net lay on the floor. It was terrible. Andrey Yefimitch
lay and held his breath: he was expecting with horror to be struck
again. He felt as though someone had taken a sickle, thrust it into him,
and turned it round several times in his breast and bowels. He bit the
pillow from pain and clenched his teeth, and all at once through the
chaos in his brain there flashed the terrible unbearable thought that
these people, who seemed now like black shadows in the moonlight, had to
endure such pain day by day for years. How could it have happened that
for more than twenty years he had not known it and had refused to know
it? He knew nothing of pain, had no conception of it, so he was not to
blame, but his conscience, as inexorable and as rough as Nikita, made
him turn cold from the crown of his head to his heels. He leaped up,
tried to cry out with all his might, and to run in haste to kill Nikita,
and then Hobotov, the superintendent and the assistant, and then
himself; but no sound came from his chest, and his legs would not obey
him. Gasping for breath, he tore at the dressing-gown and the shirt on
his breast, rent them, and fell senseless on the bed. XIX
Next morning his head ached, there was a droning in his ears and a
feeling of utter weakness all over. He was not ashamed at recalling his
weakness the day before. He had been cowardly, had even been afraid of
the moon, had openly expressed thoughts and feelings such as he had not
expected in himself before; for instance, the thought that the paltry
people who philosophized were really dissatisfied. But now nothing
mattered to him.
He ate nothing; he drank nothing. He lay motionless and silent.
"It is all the same to me," he thought when they asked him questions. "I
am not going to answer. . . . It's all the same to me."
After dinner Mihail Averyanitch brought him a quarter pound of tea and a
pound of fruit pastilles. Daryushka came too and stood for a whole hour
by the bed with an expression of dull grief on her face. Dr. Hobotov
visited him. He brought a bottle of bromide and told Nikita to fumigate
the ward with something.
Towards evening Andrey Yefimitch died of an apoplectic stroke. At first
he had a violent shivering fit and a feeling of sickness; something
revolting as it seemed, penetrating through his whole body, even to his
finger-tips, strained from his stomach to his head and flooded his eyes
and ears. There was a greenness before his eyes. Andrey Yefimitch
understood that his end had come, and remembered that Ivan Dmitritch,
Mihail Averyanitch, and millions of people believed in immortality. And
what if it really existed? But he did not want immortality--and he
thought of it only for one instant. A herd of deer, extraordinarily
beautiful and graceful, of which he had been reading the day before, ran
by him; then a peasant woman stretched out her hand to him with a
registered letter . . . . Mihail Averyanitch said something, then it all
vanished, and Andrey Yefimitch sank into oblivion for ever.
The hospital porters came, took him by his arms and legs, and carried
him away to the chapel.
There he lay on the table, with open eyes, and the moon shed its light
upon him at night. In the morning Sergey Sergeyitch came, prayed piously
before the crucifix, and closed his former chief's eyes.
Next day Andrey Yefimitch was buried. Mihail Averyanitch and Daryushka
were the only people at the funeral.
THE PETCHENYEG
IVAN ABRAMITCH ZHMUHIN, a retired Cossack officer, who had once served
in the Caucasus, but now lived on his own farm, and who had once been
young, strong, and vigorous, but now was old, dried up, and bent, with
shaggy eyebrows and a greenish-grey moustache, was returning from the
town to his farm one hot summer's day. In the town he had confessed and
received absolution, and had made his will at the notary's (a fortnight
before he had had a slight stroke), and now all the while he was in the
railway carriage he was haunted by melancholy, serious thoughts of
approaching death, of the vanity of vanities, of the transitoriness of
all things earthly. At the station of Provalye--there is such a one on
the Donetz line--a fair-haired, plump, middle-aged gentleman with a
shabby portfolio stepped into the carriage and sat down opposite. They
got into conversation.
"Yes," said Ivan Abramitch, looking pensively out of window, "it is
never too late to marry. I myself married when I was forty-eight; I was
told it was late, but it has turned out that it was not late or early,
but simply that it would have been better not to marry at all. Everyone
is soon tired of his wife, but not everyone tells the truth, because,
you know, people are ashamed of an unhappy home life and conceal it.
It's 'Manya this' and 'Manya that' with many a man by his wife's side,
but if he had his way he'd put that Manya in a sack and drop her in the
water. It's dull with one's wife, it's mere foolishness. And it's no
better with one's children, I make bold to assure you. I have two of
them, the rascals. There's nowhere for them to be taught out here in the
steppe; I haven't the money to send them to school in Novo Tcherkask,
and they live here like young wolves. Next thing they will be murdering
someone on the highroad."
The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions
briefly in a low voice, and was apparently a gentleman of gentle and
modest disposition. He mentioned that he was a lawyer, and that he was
going to the village Dyuevka on business.
"Why, merciful heavens, that is six miles from me!" said Zhmuhin in a
tone of voice as though someone were disputing with him. "But excuse me,
you won't find horses at the station now. To my mind, the very best
thing you can do, you know, is to come straight to me, stay the night,
you know, and in the morning drive over with my horses."
The lawyer thought a moment and accepted the invitation.
When they reached the station the sun was already low over the steppe.
They said nothing all the way from the station to the farm: the jolting
prevented conversation. The trap bounded up and down, squeaked, and
seemed to be sobbing, and the lawyer, who was sitting very
uncomfortably, stared before him, miserably hoping to see the farm.
After they had driven five or six miles there came into view in the
distance a low-pitched house and a yard enclosed by a fence made of
dark, flat stones standing on end; the roof was green, the stucco was
peeling off, and the windows were little narrow slits like screwed-up
eyes. The farm stood in the full sunshine, and there was no sign either
of water or trees anywhere round. Among the neighbouring landowners and
the peasants it was known as the Petchenyegs' farm. Many years before, a
land surveyor, who was passing through the neighbourhood and put up at
the farm, spent the whole night talking to Ivan Abramitch, was not
favourably impressed, and as he was driving away in the morning said to
him grimly:
"You are a Petchenyeg,* my good sir!"
* The Petchenyegs were a tribe of wild Mongolian nomads who made
frequent inroads upon the Russians in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.--Translator's Note.
From this came the nickname, the Petchenyegs' farm, which stuck to the
place even more when Zhmuhin's boys grew up and began to make raids on
the orchards and kitchen-gardens. Ivan Abramitch was called "You Know,"
as he usually talked a very great deal and frequently made use of that
expression.
In the yard near a barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing, one a young man of
nineteen, the other a younger lad, both barefoot and bareheaded. Just at
the moment when the trap drove into the yard the younger one flung high
up a hen which, cackling, described an arc in the air; the elder shot at
it with a gun and the hen fell dead on the earth.
"Those are my boys learning to shoot birds flying," said Zhmuhin.
In the entry the travellers were met by a little thin woman with a pale
face, still young and beautiful; from her dress she might have been
taken for a servant.
"And this, allow me to introduce her," said Zhmuhin, "is the mother of
my young cubs. Come, Lyubov Osipovna," he said, addressing her, "you
must be spry, mother, and get something for our guest. Let us have
supper. Look sharp!"
The house consisted of two parts: in one was the parlour and beside it
old Zhmuhin's bedroom, both stuffy rooms with low ceilings and
multitudes of flies and wasps, and in the other was the kitchen in which
the cooking and washing was done and the labourers had their meals; here
geese and turkey-hens were sitting on their eggs under the benches, and
here were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two sons. The furniture in
the parlour was unpainted and evidently roughly made by a carpenter;
guns, game-bags, and whips were hanging on the walls, and all this old
rubbish was covered with the rust of years and looked grey with dust.
There was not one picture; in the corner was a dingy board which had at
one time been an ikon.
A young Little Russian woman laid the table and handed ham, then
beetroot soup. The visitor refused vodka and ate only bread and
cucumbers.
"How about ham?" asked Zhmuhin.
"Thank you, I don't eat it," answered the visitor, "I don't eat meat at
all."
"Why is that?"
"I am a vegetarian. Killing animals is against my principles."
Zhmuhin thought a minute and then said slowly with a sigh:
"Yes . . . to be sure. . . . I saw a man who did not eat meat in town,
too. It's a new religion they've got now. Well, it's good. We can't go
on always shooting and slaughtering, you know; we must give it up some
day and leave even the beasts in peace. It's a sin to kill, it's a sin,
there is no denying it. Sometimes one kills a hare and wounds him in the
leg, and he cries like a child. . . . So it must hurt him!"
"Of course it hurts him; animals suffer just like human beings."
"That's true," Zhmuhin assented. "I understand that very well," he went
on, musing, "only there is this one thing I don't understand: suppose,
you know, everyone gave up eating meat, what would become of the
domestic animals--fowls and geese, for instance?"
"Fowls and geese would live in freedom like wild birds."
"Now I understand. To be sure, crows and jackdaws get on all right
without us. Yes. . . . Fowls and geese and hares and sheep, all will
live in freedom, rejoicing, you know, and praising God; and they will
not fear us, peace and concord will come. Only there is one thing, you
know, I can't understand," Zhmuhin went on, glancing at the ham. "How
will it be with the pigs? What is to be done with them?"
"They will be like all the rest--that is, they will live in freedom."
"Ah! Yes. But allow me to say, if they were not slaughtered they would
multiply, you know, and then good-bye to the kitchen-gardens and the
meadows. Why, a pig, if you let it free and don't look after it, will
ruin everything in a day. A pig is a pig, and it is not for nothing it
is called a pig. . . ."
They finished supper. Zhmuhin got up from the table and for a long while
walked up and down the room, talking and talking. . . . He was fond of
talking of something important or serious and was fond of meditating,
and in his old age he had a longing to reach some haven, to be
reassured, that he might not be so frightened of dying. He had a longing
for meekness, spiritual calm, and confidence in himself, such as this
guest of theirs had, who had satisfied his hunger on cucumbers and
bread, and believed that doing so made him more perfect; he was sitting
on a chest, plump and healthy, keeping silent and patiently enduring his
boredom, and in the dusk when one glanced at him from the entry he
looked like a big round stone which one could not move from its place.
If a man has something to lay hold of in life he is all right.