rigging, the screw buzzed, the waves came washing, the hammocks
squeaked, but to all these sounds their ears were long since accustomed
and it seemed as though everything were wrapped in sleep and silence. It
was very oppressive. The three patients--two soldiers and a sailor--who
had played cards all day were now asleep and tossing to and fro.
The vessel began to shake. The hammock under Goussiev slowly heaved up
and down, as though it were breathing--one, two, three.... Something
crashed on the floor and began to tinkle: the jug must have fallen down.
"The wind has broken loose...." said Goussiev, listening attentively.
This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irritably:
"You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large fish, and now you
talk of the wind breaking loose.... Is the wind a dog to break loose?"
"That's what people say."
"Then people are as ignorant as you.... But what do they not say? You
should keep a head on your shoulders and think. Silly idiot!"
Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. When the ship rolled he would
get very cross, and the least trifle would upset him, though Goussiev
could never see anything to be cross about. What was there unusual in
his story about the fish or in his saying that the wind had broken
loose? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as
hard as a sturgeon's, and suppose that at the end of the wood there were
huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them.... If they
do not break loose, why then do they rage over the sea as though they
were possessed, and rush about like dogs? If they are not chained, what
happens to them when it is calm?
Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of
thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his
native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the
Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered with
snow.... On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall
chimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was the
village.... From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came his
brother Alency in a sledge; behind him sat his little son Vanka in large
felt boots, and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. Alency is
tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden--she is well wrapped up.
"The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. "God grant them,"
he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and
be better than their father and mother...."
"The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye,
aye."
The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond,
suddenly--without rhyme or reason--he saw a large bull's head without
eyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and round
in a black mist. But still he was glad he had seen his dear ones. He
gasped for joy, and his limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed.
"God suffered me to see them!" he muttered, and opened his eyes and
looked round in the darkness for water.
He drank, then lay down again, and once more the sledge skimmed along,
and he saw the bull's head without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. And
so on till dawn.
II
At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the
port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next
hammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he
lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey; his nose long and
sharp, and his eyes were huge, because he was so thin; his temples were
sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was
impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging
by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a lay-
brother, but when he spoke--he was not at all like a monk. He was losing
strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating heat, and
he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. Noticing that
Goussiev was looking at him, he turned toward him and said:
"I'm beginning to understand.... Yes.... Now I understand."
"What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?"
"Yes.... It was strange to me at first, why you sick men, instead of
being kept quiet, should be on this steamer, where the heat is stifling,
and stinking, and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you; but
now it is all clear to me.... Yes. The doctors sent you to the steamer
to get rid of you. They got tired of all the trouble you gave them,
brutes like you.
...You don't pay them; you only give a lot of trouble, and if you die
you spoil their reports. Therefore you are just cattle, and there is no
difficulty in getting rid of you.... They only need to lack conscience
and humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. We needn't worry
about the first, they are experts by nature; but the second needs a
certain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers
and sailors--five sick men are never noticed; so you were carried up to
the steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurry
that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they saw
fever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck...."
Goussiev could not make out what Pavel Ivanich was talking about;
thinking he was being taken to task, he said by way of excusing himself:
"I lay on the deck because when we were taken off the barge I caught a
chill."
"Shocking!" said Pavel Ivanich. "They know quite well that you can't
last out the voyage, and yet they send you here! You may get as far as
the Indian Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of.... And that's
all the return you get for faithful unblemished service!"
Pavel Ivanich looked very angry, and smote his forehead and gasped:
"They ought to be shown up in the papers. There would be an awful row."
The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up and had begun to
play cards, the sailor propped up in his hammock, and the soldiers
squatting uncomfortably on the floor. One soldier had his right arm in a
sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the
cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow. The boat was
rolling violently so that it was impossible to get up or to drink tea or
to take medicine.
"You were an orderly?" Pavel Ivanich asked Goussiev.
"That's it. An orderly."
"My God, my God!" said Pavel Ivanich sorrowfully. "To take a man from
his native place, drag him fifteen thousand miles, drive him into
consumption ... and what for? I ask you. To make him an orderly to some
Captain Farthing or Midshipman Hole! Where's the sense of it?"
"It's not a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning, clean the
boots, boil the samovar, tidy up the room, and then there is nothing to
do. The lieutenant draws plans all day long, and you can pray to God if
you like--or read books--or go out into the streets. It's a good enough
life."
"Yes. Very good! The lieutenant draws plans, and you stay in the kitchen
all day long and suffer from homesickness.... Plans.... Plans don't
matter. It's human life that matters! Life doesn't come again. One
should be sparing of it."
"Certainly Pavel Ivanich. A bad man meets no quarter, either at home, or
in the army, but if you live straight, and do as you are told, then no
one will harm you. They are educated and they understand.... For five
years now I've never been in the cells and I've only been thrashed
once--touch wood!"
"What was that for?"
"Fighting. I have a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanich. Four Chinamen came into
our yard: they were carrying wood, I think, but I don't remember. Well,
I was bored. I went for them and one of them got a bloody nose. The
lieutenant saw it through the window and gave me a thick ear."
"You poor fool," muttered Pavel Ivanich. "You don't understand
anything."
He was completely exhausted with the tossing of the boat and shut his
eyes; his head fell back and then flopped forward onto his chest. He
tried several times to lie down, but in vain, for he could not breathe.
"And why did you go for the four Chinamen?" he asked after a while.
"For no reason. They came into the yard and I went for them."
Silence fell.... The gamblers played for a couple of hours, absorbed and
cursing, but the tossing of the ship tired even them; they threw the
cards away and laid down. Once more Goussiev thought of the big pond,
the pottery, the village. Once more the sledges skimmed along, once more
Vanka laughed, and that fool of an Akulka opened her fur coat, and
stretched out her feet; look, she seemed to say, look, poor people, my
felt boots are new and not like Vanka's.
"She's getting on for six and still she has no sense!" said Goussiev.
"Instead of showing your boots off, why don't you bring some water to
your soldier-uncle? I'll give you a present."
Then came Andrea, with his firelock on his shoulder, carrying a hare he
had shot, and he was followed by Tsaichik the cripple, who offered him a
piece of soap for the hare; and there was the black heifer in the yard,
and Domna sewing a shirt and crying over something, and there was the
eyeless bull's head and the black smoke....
Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; the sound of something
heavy being dragged along the deck, or something had broken.... More
running. Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened and saw the
two soldiers and the sailor playing cards again; Pavel Ivanich sitting
up and moving his lips. It was very close, he could hardly breathe, he
wanted a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting.... The pitching
of the boat was now better.
Suddenly something queer happened to one of the soldiers.... He called
ace of diamonds, lost his reckoning and dropped his cards. He started
and laughed stupidly and looked round.
"In a moment, you fellows," he said and lay down on the floor.
All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he made no reply.
"Stiepan, are you ill?" asked the other soldier with the bandaged hand.
"Perhaps we'd better call the priest, eh?"
"Stiepan, drink some water," said the sailor. "Here, mate, have a
drink."
"What's the good of breaking his teeth with the jug," shouted Goussiev
angrily. "Don't you see, you fatheads?"
"What."
"What!" cried Goussiev. "He's snuffed it, dead. That's what! Good God,
what fools!..."
III
The rolling stopped and Pavel Ivanich cheered up. He was no longer
peevish. His face had an arrogant, impetuous, and mocking expression. He
looked as if he were on the point of saying: "I'll tell you a story that
will make you die of laughter." Their port-hole was open and a soft wind
blew in on Pavel Ivanich. Voices could be heard and the splash of oars
in the water.... Beneath the window some one was howling in a thin,
horrible voice; probably a Chinaman singing.
"Yes. We are in harbour," said Pavel Ivanich, smiling mockingly.
"Another month and we shall be in Russia. It's true; my gallant
warriors, I shall get to Odessa and thence I shall go straight to
Kharkhov. At Kharkhov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall go to him
and I shall say, 'now, my friend, give up your rotten little love-
stories and descriptions of nature, and expose the vileness of the human
biped.... There's a subject for you.'"
He thought for a moment and then he said:
"Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?"
"Who, Pavel Ivanich?"
"The lot out there.... You see there's only first and third class on the
steamer, and only peasants are allowed to go third. If you have a decent
suit, and look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance, then you
must go first. It may break you, but you have to lay down your five
hundred roubles. 'What's the point of such an arrangement?' I asked. 'Is
it meant to raise the prestige of Russian intellectuals?' 'Not a bit,'
said they. 'We don't let you go, simply because it is impossible for a
decent man to go third. It is so vile and disgusting.' 'Yes,' said I.
'Thanks for taking so much trouble about decent people. Anyhow, bad or
no, I haven't got five hundred roubles as I have neither robbed the
treasury nor exploited foreigners, nor dealt in contraband, nor flogged
any one to death, and, therefore, I think I have a right to go first-
class and to take rank with the intelligentsia of Russia.' But there's
no convincing them by logic.... I had to try fraud. I put on a peasant's
coat and long boots, and a drunken, stupid expression and went to the
agent and said: 'Give me a ticket, your Honour.'
"'What's your position?' says the agent.
"'Clerical,' said I. 'My father was an honest priest. He always told the
truth to the great ones of the earth, and so he suffered much.'"
Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath failed him, but he
went on:
"Yes. I always tell the truth straight out.... I am afraid of nobody and
nothing. There's a great difference between myself and you in that
respect. You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you don't
understand what you do see. You are told that the wind breaks its chain,
that you are brutes and worse, and you believe; you are thrashed and you
kiss the hand that thrashes you; a swine in a raccoon pelisse robs you,
and throws you sixpence for tea, and you say: 'Please, your Honour, let
me kiss your hand.' You are pariahs, skunks.... I am different. I live
consciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk sees when it hovers
over the earth, and I understand everything. I am a living protest. I
see injustice--I protest; I see bigotry and hypocrisy--I protest; I see
swine triumphant--I protest, and I am unconquerable. No Spanish
inquisition can make me hold my tongue. Aye.... Cut my tongue out. I'll
protest by gesture.... Shut me up in a dungeon--I'll shout so loud that I
shall be heard for a mile round, or I'll starve myself, so that there
shall be a still heavier weight on their black consciences. Kill me--and
my ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me: 'You are a most
insufferable man, Pavel Ivanich!' I am proud of such a reputation. I
served three years in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enough
for a hundred years. I inveighed against it all. My friends write from
Russia: 'Do not come.' But I'm going, to spite them.... Yes.... That is
life. I understand. You can call that life."
Goussiev was not listening, but lay looking out of the port-hole; on the
transparent lovely turquoise water swung a boat all shining in the
shimmering light; a fat Chinaman was sitting in it eating rice with
chop-sticks. The water murmured softly, and over it lazily soared white
sea-gulls.
"It would be fun to give that fat fellow one on the back of his
neck...." thought Goussiev, watching the fat Chinaman and yawning.
He dozed, and it seemed to him that all the world was slumbering. Time
slipped swiftly away. The day passed imperceptibly; imperceptibly the
twilight fell.... The steamer was still no longer but was moving on.
IV
Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up, but lay full length;
his eyes were closed and his nose seemed to be sharper than ever.
"Pavel Ivanich!" called Goussiev, "Pavel Ivanich."
Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.
"Aren't you well?"
"It's nothing," answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing heavily. "It's
nothing. No. I'm much better. You see I can lie down now. I'm much
better."
"Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich."
"When I compare myself with you, I am sorry for you ... poor devils. My
lungs are all right; my cough comes from indigestion ... I can endure
this hell, not to mention the Red Sea! Besides, I have a critical
attitude toward my illness, as well as to my medicine. But you ... you
are ignorant.... It's hard lines on you, very hard."
The ship was running smoothly; it was calm but still stifling and hot as
a Turkish bath; it was hard not only to speak but even to listen without
an effort. Goussiev clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and
thought of his native place. My God, in such heat it was a pleasure to
think of snow and cold! He saw himself driving on a sledge, and suddenly
the horses were frightened and bolted.... Heedless of roads, dikes,
ditches they rushed like mad through the village, across the pond, past
the works, through the fields.... "Hold them in!" cried the women and
the passers-by. "Hold them in!" But why hold them in? Let the cold wind
slap your face and cut your hands; let the lumps of snow thrown up by
the horses' hoofs fall on your hat, down your neck and chest; let the
runners of the sledge be buckled, and the traces and harness be torn and
be damned to it! What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flung
hard into a snow-drift; with your face slap into the snow, and you get
up all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless,
gloveless, with your belt undone.... People laugh and dogs bark....
Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and asked
quietly:
"Goussiev, did your commander steal?"
"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don't hear of it."
A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water;
it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of being
spoken to. One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night;
but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.
He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutes
passed and all was still.
"God rest his soul!" said the soldier with the bandaged hand. "He was a
restless man."
"What?" asked Goussiev. "Who?"
"He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs."
"Oh, well," muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God rest his soul."
"What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the bandaged soldier after some
time. "Will he go to heaven?"
"Who?"
"Pavel Ivanich."
"He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest's son, and priests
have many relations. They will pray for his soul."
The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev's hammock and said in an
undertone:
"You won't live much longer, Goussiev. You'll never see Russia."
"Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?" asked Goussiev.
"No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is
going to die soon. You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone very
thin and awful to look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm not
saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like to
have the last sacrament. And if you have any money, you had better give
it to the senior officer."
"I have not written home," said Goussiev. "I shall die and they will
never know."
"They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice. "When you die they
will put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to the
military governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever it
is...."
This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel unhappy and a vague desire
began to take possession of him. He drank water--it was not that; he
stretched out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air--it was
not that; he tried to think of his native place and the snow--it was not
that.... At last he felt that he would choke if he stayed a moment
longer in the hospital.
"I feel poorly, mates," he said. "I want to go on deck. For Christ's
sake take me on deck."
Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier's neck and the soldier held
him with his free arm and supported him up the gangway. On deck there
were rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; so many of them
that it was difficult to pick a way through them.
"Stand up," said the bandaged soldier gently. "Walk after me slowly and
hold on to my shirt...."
It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the masts or over the sea.
In the bows a sentry stood motionless as a statue, but he looked as if
he were asleep. It was as though the steamer had been left to its own
sweet will, to go where it liked.
"They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea," said the bandaged
soldier. "They will put him in a sack and throw him overboard."
"Yes. That's the way they do."
"But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Then the mother can go to
the grave and weep over it."
"Surely."
There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads hanging there were oxen
standing by the bulwark--one, two, three ... eight beasts. And there was
a little horse. Goussiev put out his hand to pat it, but it shook its
head, showed its teeth and tried to bite his sleeve.
"Damn you," said Goussiev angrily.
He and the soldier slowly made their way to the bows and stood against
the bulwark and looked silently up and down. Above them was the wide
sky, bright with stars, peace and tranquillity--exactly as it was at home
in his village; but below--darkness and turbulence. Mysterious towering
waves. Each wave seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest; and they
pressed and jostled each other and yet others came, fierce and ugly, and
hurled themselves into the fray.
There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. Had the steamer been
smaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed it
remorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good and
bad. The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The large-nosed monster
pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it was afraid
neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of loneliness;
it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the monster would
crush them without distinction of good and bad.
"Where are we now?" asked Goussiev.
"I don't know. Must be the ocean."
"There's no land in sight."
"Why, they say we shan't see land for another seven days."
The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence.
Goussiev was the first to break the silence.
"Nothing is really horrible," he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you were
in a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a
hundred miles out to sea to fish--I would go. Or suppose I saw a soul
fall into the water--I would go in after him. I wouldn't go in for a
German or a Chinaman, but I'd try to save a Russian."
"Aren't you afraid to die?"
"Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at home. I have a brother at
home, you know, and he is not steady; he drinks, beats his wife for
nothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. But
my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here.... Let me go to bed."
V
Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. As before, a
vague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. There
was a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was so
dry that he could hardly move his tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and,
exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him,
toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was in barracks,
and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled into
the oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for two days
and on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carried
him out of the ward.
He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars were
sewn up with him. In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish,
broad at the top, narrow at the bottom.... Just before sunset he was
taken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark,
the other on a box, raised up by a stool. Round him stood the invalided
soldiers.
"Blessed is our God," began the priest; "always, now and for ever and
ever."
"Amen!" said three sailors.
The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at the
waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and
dropped into the sea. Could it happen to any one?
The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung.
The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; shot
headlong, turned over in the air, then plop! The foam covered him, for a
moment it looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the moment
passed--and he disappeared beneath the waves.
He dropped down to the bottom. Would he reach it? The bottom is miles
down, they say. He dropped down almost sixty or seventy feet, then began
to go slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were thinking;
then, borne along by the current; he moved more sideways than downward.
But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark body, the fish
stopped dead and sudden, all together, turned and went back. Less than a
minute later, like arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging through
the water around him....