[Illustration]
_Garshin, who may be said, for purposes of comparison, to belong
to the school of Dostoievski, was all his life subject to attacks
of melancholia. Despite the careful nursing of his wife, who was
a physician, he threw himself over the stairs of his house in St.
Petersburg in 1888, and died from the effects. His first important
story, “Four Days,” appeared in 1876, and was the outcome of his
experiences in the Servian and Turkish Wars. It is a powerful but
gruesome Verestchagin-like study of the horrors of war, and reminds one
of Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage.” In 1883 he was appointed
Secretary to the Congress of Russian Railroads, and it was probably at
that time that he gained the experience which led to the writing of
“The Signal.”_
[Illustration]
THE SIGNAL
BY VSEVOLOD GARSHIN
Translated by Lizzie B. Gorin. Copyright, 1907,
by P. F. Collier & Son.
Semen Ivanov served as trackman on the railroad. His watch-house
was twelve versts (nearly eight miles) distant from one station and
ten from the other. The year before a large weaving mill had been
established about four versts away; and its tall chimneys looked black
from behind the trees of the wood; and nearer than this, apart from the
other watch-houses, there was no human habitation.
Semen Ivanov was a sickly, broken-down man. Nine years before he had
gone to the war: he served as orderly to an officer and had remained
with him during the whole campaign. He starved and froze, and baked in
the hot sun, and marched from forty to fifty versts in the frost or in
the burning heat. It also happened that he was often under fire, but,
thank God, no bullet ever touched him.
Once his regiment was in the first line; for a whole week the firing
was kept up constantly on both sides: the Russian line on this side of
the hollow and the Turkish lines just across, and from morning till
night the firing was going on. Semen’s officer was also in the front
lines, and three times a day, from the regiment kitchens in the hollow,
Semen carried the hot samovár and the food. Semen walked through
the open space while the bullets whistled over his head and cracked
the stones. Semen was afraid, but he went on--wept, and went on. The
officers were very much satisfied with Semen’s services: the officers
always had their hot tea.
Semen returned from the war without a wound, but with a rheumatic pain
in his legs and arms. And he had suffered a good deal of sorrow since
that time. His old father died soon after his return, then his little
son--a boy of four--also died from some throat trouble; and Semen was
left alone in the world with his wife.
Their work on the little piece of land allotted to them also proved
unsuccessful, it being too hard for a man to till the soil with swollen
arms and legs. And so they could not get along in their native village,
and decided to go into new places in search of better luck. Semen lived
with his wife on the Done for some time, and in the Government of
Cherson; but they somehow could not get along very well anywhere. At
last his wife went into service, and Semen continued his roving life as
heretofore.
Once he happened to go by rail, and on one station he noticed the
station-master, who seemed rather familiar to him. Semen looked at him
intently, and the station-master also peered into Semen’s face. They
recognized each other: it was an officer of his regiment. “Is it you,
Ivanov?” said the man.
“Yes, your honor, my very self.”
“How did you get here?” And so Semen told him: such and such were the
circumstances.
“Well, where are you going now?”
“I can not say, your honor.”
“How is that, you fool, you can not say?”
“Just so, your honor, because I have nowhere to go to. I must look for
some kind of employment, your honor.”
And the station-master looked at him for a moment and fell to thinking,
then he said to him: “Well, brother, stay here on the station in the
mean time. But it seems to me that you are a married man? Where is your
wife?”
“Yes, sir, I am married; my wife is serving at the house of a merchant
at Kursk.”
“Well, then, write to your wife to come here. I shall get a free ticket
for her. We will soon have a vacant watch-house here, and I will ask
the division-master to give you the place.”
“Many thanks, your honor,” replied Semen.
And so he remained on the station, helping in the station-master’s
kitchen, cutting wood, sweeping the courtyard and the railway platform.
In two weeks his wife arrived, and Semen went on a hand-car to his new
home.
The watch-house was new and warm, wood he had in plenty, the former
watchman left a small garden, and there was a little less than one and
a half acres of arable land on the two sides of the railroad-bed. Semen
was overjoyed: he began to dream of a little homestead of his own, and
of buying a horse and a cow.
He was given all the necessary supplies: a green flag, a red flag,
lanterns, a signal-pipe, a hammer, a rail-key for tightening the
screw-nuts, a crowbar, shovel, brooms, clinch-nails, bolts, and two
books with the rules and regulations of the railroad. At first Semen
did not sleep at night, for he continually repeated the regulations.
If the train was due in two hours, he had already gone his rounds, and
would sit on the little bench at the watch-house and look and listen:
were not the rails trembling, was there no noise of an approaching
train?
At last he learned by heart all the rules; though he read with
difficulty and had to spell out each word, nevertheless he did learn
them by heart.
This happened in summer: the work was not hard, there was no snow to
shovel, and, besides, the trains passed but rarely on that road. Semen
would walk over his verst twice in twenty-four hours, would tighten
a screw here and there, pick up a splinter, examine the water-pipes,
and go home to take care of his little homestead. The only thing that
bothered him and his wife was: no matter what they made up their minds
to do, they had to ask the permission of the track-master, who again
had to lay the matter before the division-master, and when permission
was at last given the time had already passed, and it was then too late
to be of any use to them. On account of this, Semen and his wife began,
at times, to feel very lonely.
About two months passed in this way; Semen began to form acquaintance
with his nearest neighbors--trackmen like himself. One was already
a very old man, whom the railway authorities had long intended to
replace; he could hardly move from his watch-house, and his wife
attended to his duties. The other trackman, who lived nearer to the
station, was still a young man, thin and sinewy. Semen met him for the
first time on the railroad-bed half-way between their watch-houses,
while they were making their rounds; Semen took off his cap and bowed.
“Good health to you, neighbor,” he said.
The neighbor looked at him askance. “How are you?” he replied, turned,
and went his way.
The women also met afterward. Arina, Semen’s wife, greeted her neighbor
affably, but this neighbor, also not of the talkative kind, spoke a few
words and walked away. On meeting her once, Semen asked:
“Why is your husband so uncommunicative, young woman?” After standing
for some time in silence, she said: “But what should he talk to you
about? Everybody has his troubles--God speed you.”
But after another month had passed, their intimacy grew. Now, when
Semen and Vasili met on the road-bed, they sat down on the edge, smoked
their pipes, and told each other of their past life and experiences.
Vasili spoke but little, but Semen told of his campaign life and of his
native village.
“I have seen plenty of sorrow in my time, and God knows I am not so
very old either. God has not given us much luck. It just depends: the
kind of a lot the dear Lord portions out to one--such he must have.
This is the way I make it out, Vasili Stepanich, little brother.”
And Vasili struck the bowl of his pipe on the rail to empty it, and
said:
“It isn’t luck nor fate which is eating your life and mine away, but
people. There is not a beast more cruel and rapacious than man. A wolf
does not devour a wolf--but man eats man alive.”
“Well, brother, wolf does eat wolf--that is where you are wrong.”
“It came to my tongue, so I said it; anyhow there is not a more cruel
beast. If it were not for man’s viciousness and greed--’twould be
possible to live. Every one is on the lookout to grasp at your vitals,
tear off a piece, and gobble it up.”
“I don’t know, brother,” said Semen after thinking a bit. “Maybe it is
so--but if it is really so, then the great God ordained it in this way.”
“And if it is so,” spoke Vasili, “then there is no use of my speaking
to you. A man who attributes to God every kind of iniquity, and himself
sits and patiently bears it, can not be a man, brother mine--but an
animal. Here you have my whole say!”
And he turned and went off without even saying good-by. Semen rose also
and called after him; “Neighbor, and what are you abusing me for?”
But the neighbor did not even turn around, and went his way.
Semen looked after him till he was lost from sight at the turn of the
road, then he returned home and said to his wife: “Well, Arina, what a
venomous man that neighbor of ours is!”
Nevertheless they were not angry with each other; and when they met
again they spoke as if nothing had happened and on the very same topic.
“Ei, brother, if not for the people--we would not sit here in these
watch-houses,” spoke Vasili.
“Well, what if we do live in a watch-house? It is not so bad to live in
one, after all.”
“Not so bad to live, not so bad--Ech, you! You lived long, but gained
little; looked at much, but saw little. A poor man, no matter where he
lives, in a railway watch-house or in any other place, what sort of a
life is his? Those fleecers are eating your life away, squeeze all your
juice out, and when you have grown old they throw you out like some
swill, for the pigs to feed on. How much wages do you get?”
“Well, not much, Vasili Stepanich, twelve rubles” (about seven dollars
and a half).
“And I thirteen and a half. Allow me to ask you why! According to the
rulings of the administration, every one of us is supposed to get the
same amount--fifteen rubles a month, and light and heat. Who was it
that allotted you and me twelve, or say, thirteen and a half rubles?
Allow me to ask you?--And you say it is not so bad a life? Understand
me well, it is not about the three or one and a half rubles I am
wrangling about--but even if they paid me the whole amount--Last month
I was at the station when the director happened to pass. I saw him
there. Had the honor. He occupied a whole private car by himself--on
the station he alighted and stood on the platform, looking--no, I will
not stay here long; I shall go where my eyes will lead me.”
“But where will you go, Stepanich? Let well alone, you will not find it
much better anywhere. You have a home here, warmth, and a bit of land.
Your wife is an able workwoman--”
“Land! You ought to see the land I have--why, there isn’t a stick on
it. This spring I planted some cabbages. Well, one day the track-master
passed: ‘What is this?’ he says. ‘Why did you not report it? Why not
have waited for permission? Dig it out at once and not a vestige should
be left of it.’ He was in his cups. At another time he would not have
said a word, and here he got it into his head--Three rubles fine!--”
For some moments Vasili pulled at his pipe in silence, then he said in
a low voice: “It wanted but little more, and I would have made short
work of him.”
“Well, neighbor, you are a hot-head, I can tell you.”
“I am not hot, I am only speaking and considering everything from the
point of justice. But he will get it from me yet, the red-mug; I shall
make a complaint to the master of the division in person. We shall see!”
And he really complained.
Once the master of the division came to make a preliminary inspection
of the road. In three days’ time very important gentlemen were
expected from St. Petersburg to make an inspection of the road:
everything had to be made ship-shape; some new gravel was ordered
before their arrival, added, leveled, and smoothed out, the sleepers
were examined, the nuts tightened, the verst-posts newly painted,
and the order was given that some fine yellow sand be strewn over the
crossings. A track-woman even drove her old man out of the nearest
watch-house, which he almost never left, in order to trim a little the
tiny grass-plot. Semen worked a whole week to bring everything into
first-rate order, even mended his coat and burnished his brass shield
till it shone. Vasili also worked hard.
At last the division master arrived in a buzzing draisine (hand car),
worked by four men and making twenty versts an hour. It came flying
toward Semen’s watch-house, and Semen sprang forward and reported in
military fashion. Everything appeared to be correct.
“Are you long here?” asked the master.
“Since the second of May, your honor.”
“Very well, thank you. And who is at Number 164?”
The track-master who rode with him on the draisine replied: “Vasili
Spiridov.”
“Spiridov, Spiridov.--Oh, the one you reported?”
“The very same.”
“Very well, let us have a look at Vasili Spiridov. Go ahead.”
The workmen leaned upon the handles and the draisine flew farther.
“There will be a fight between them and the neighbor,” thought Semen,
looking after the disappearing draisine.
About two hours later Semen went on his rounds. He saw that some one
was coming toward him, walking over the railroad bed, and there was
something white visible on his head. Semen strained his eyes to see
who it was--Vasili; in his hand he carried a stick and a small bundle
was slung across his shoulders, and one cheek was tied up with a white
kerchief.
“Where are you going, neighbor?” Semen shouted to him.
When Vasili approached him closer, Semen saw that he was as pale as
chalk and wild-eyed; and when he started to speak his voice broke.
“I am off to the city,” he said, “to Moscow--to the main office of the
administration.”
“To the administration--Is that it! You are going to make a complaint,
are you? Better not, Vasili Stepanich, forget it--”
“No, brother, I will not forget it. It is too late to forget. You see,
he struck me in the face, beat me till the blood flowed. As long as I
live, I will not forget it, nor let it go at this.”
“Give it up, Stepanich,” Semen spoke to him, taking hold of his hand.
“I speak truth: you will not make things better.”
“Who speaks of better! I know myself that I will not make them better;
you spoke truly about fate--you did. I shall not do much good to
myself, but one has to stand up for justice.”
“But won’t you tell me how it all came about?”
“How it all came about--Well, he inspected everything, left the
draisine on purpose to do so--even looked inside the watch-house.
I knew beforehand that he would be strict--so I had everything in
first-class order. He was already going to leave when I came forward
with my complaint. He immediately burst forth: ‘Here,’ he said, ‘is to
be a government inspection, you--so and so--and you dare come forward
with your complaints about your vegetable garden! We are expecting
privy councilors and he comes with his cabbages!’ I could not control
myself and said a word--not so very bad either, but it seemed to offend
him and he struck me--And I stood there, as if it was the most usual
thing in the world to happen. Only, when they went off, I came to my
senses, washed off the blood from my face and went away.”
“And what about the watch-house?”
“My wife is there, she will take care; and besides, the devil take
their road, anyway!”
“Good-by, Ivanich,” he said to Semen on taking leave of him; “I don’t
know if I shall find justice for myself.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that you will go on foot?”
“I shall ask them at the station to let me ride in a freighter;
to-morrow I shall be in Moscow.”
The neighbors took leave of each other and each went his way. Vasili
stayed away for a long time. His wife did all the work for him,
sleeping neither night nor day, and looked very worn and exhausted. On
the third day the inspectors passed: an engine, freight-car, and two
private cars, and Vasili was still absent. On the fourth day Semen saw
Vasili’s wife; her face was swollen with incessant weeping and her eyes
were very red. “Has your husband returned?” he asked her. She only
waved her arm, but did not utter a word.
* * * * *
When still a little boy Semen had learned how to make willow pipes. He
burnt out the pith, drilled out where necessary the tiny finger-holes,
and finished up the end of the pipe so artistically that almost
anything could be played on it. At odd moments he now made lots of such
pipes and sent them with an acquaintance of his, a freight conductor,
to the city, where they were sold at two copecks[9] a pipe. On the
third day after the inspection he left his wife at home to meet the
six o’clock train, took his knife and went into the woods to cut his
willow sticks. He came to the end of his section, where the road made
a sharp turn, descended the embankment and went up the hill. About a
half verst farther was a large bog, around which grew splendid shrubs
for his pipes. He cut a whole heap of sticks and went home, again
walking through the wood. The sun was already low; and a death-like
quiet reigned all about, only the chirping of the birds could be heard
and the crackling underfoot of the wind-fallen wood. A little more and
he would reach the railroad bed; suddenly it seemed to him as if he
heard coming from somewhere the clang of iron striking on iron. Semen
hurried his steps. “What can it be?” he asked himself, knowing that no
repairs were going on in that section at that time. He reached the edge
of the wood--before him rose high the embankment of the railway; and
he saw on the top--on the railroad bed--a man squatting down at work on
something. Semen began to ascend the embankment very quietly, thinking
that some one was trying to steal the screw-nuts. He saw the man rise;
in his hand he held a crowbar; he quickly shoved the crowbar under the
rail and gave it a push to one side--Semen felt everything grow dim; he
tried to shout, but could not. He saw that it was Vasili, and made a
dash for the embankment, but Vasili was already rolling down the other
side of the embankment with the rail-key and crowbar.
“Vasili Stepanich! Little father, friend, come back! Give me the
crowbar! Let us put the rail in place; no one will ever know. Come
back, save your soul from a great sin!”
But Vasili did not even turn round, and went on into the woods.
Semen remained standing over the dislocated rail, his sticks lying in
a heap at his feet. The train which was due was not a freighter, but
a passenger train, and he had nothing to stop it with: a flag he had
none. He could not put the rail into its right place; with bare hands
one can not fasten in the rail spikes. He had to run, run for dear
life into his watch-house for the necessary implements! God give him
strength!
And Semen started to run breathlessly toward his watch-house. He
ran--now, now he would fall--at last he left the wood behind, he had
only about seven hundred feet left to his watch-house--suddenly he
heard the factory whistle. Six o’clock, and at two minutes past six
the train would pass. Great God! Save the innocent souls! And before
his eyes he seemed to see how the left wheel of the engine would strike
the cut rail, quiver, slant to one side, and tear the sleepers, knock
them all to slivers, and just here--is the rounded curve, and the
embankment--and the engine, the cars, all--would go pell-mell down,
down from the height of seventy-seven feet, and the third-class cars
were jammed full of people, little children among them. Now they were
sitting tranquilly, not thinking of anything. O Lord, teach him what to
do! No, he would not be able to get to the watch-house and return in
time.
Semen gave up his intention of running to the watch-house, turned and
ran back quicker than he had come, his head in a whirl; not knowing
himself what would happen he ran up to the cut rail: his sticks lay
scattered all around. He bent down and took one of the sticks, not
understanding himself why he did it; and ran farther. And it seemed
to him that the train was already approaching. He heard a far-away
whistle, heard the rails begin to quiver measuredly and quietly: he
had no more strength left to run. He stopped about seven hundred feet
from the fatal spot: suddenly he became illuminated, as it were, by a
thought.
He took off his hat, took from it a handkerchief; took out his knife
from his boot-leg and crossed himself. God’s blessing!
He slashed his left arm a little above the elbow with his sharp knife;
the blood spurted down in a hot stream; he dipped his handkerchief in
it, smoothed it out, tied it to his stick, and displayed his red flag.
He stood waving the flag; the train was already in sight. The engineer
did not see him, he would come nearer, but at a distance of seven
hundred feet he would not be able to stop the heavy train!
And the blood was pouring and pouring--Semen pressed his hand to his
side, but the blood would not stop; evidently he had made too deep
a cut into the arm; his head was beginning to turn; he was getting
dizzy, as if black flies were swimming in his eyes; then everything
became altogether dark, and loud bells were ringing in his ears--He
no longer saw the train, no longer heard the noise: only one thought
predominated: “I will not be able to keep on my feet, will fall down,
drop the flag; the train will pass over me?--Dear God, succor, send
some one to relieve me--” His soul became a void, and he dropped the
flag. But the bloody flag did not fall to the ground: some one’s hand
caught it and raised it aloft in front of the oncoming train. The
engineer saw him and brought the engine to a stop.
* * * * *
The people came rushing from the train; soon they gathered into a
crowd; before them lay a man, unconscious, covered with blood; another
man stood beside him with a bloody rag tied to a stick.
Vasili surveyed the crowd and lowered his head.
“Bind me,” he said; “it was I who cut the rail.”