Stories (22 page)

“What does it mean?” thought Olga Ivanovna, turning cold with terror. “But this is dangerous!”

Quite unnecessarily she took a candle and went to her bedroom, and there, trying to think what she must do, she accidentally looked at herself in the pier glass. With a pale, frightened face, in a puff-sleeved jacket, yellow flounces on her breast, and an unusual pattern of stripes on her skirt, she appeared dread
ful and vile to herself. She suddenly felt painfully sorry for Dymov, for his boundless love for her, for his young life, and even for this orphaned bed of his, in which he had not slept for a long time, and she remembered his usual meek, obedient smile. She wept bitterly and wrote an imploring letter to Korostelev. It was two o’clock in the morning.

As Olga Ivanovna, her head heavy after a sleepless night, her hair undone, looking guilty and unattractive, emerged from the bedroom at around eight in the morning, some black-bearded gentleman, apparently a doctor, passed her on his way to the front hall. There was a smell of medications. Korostelev stood by the door of the study, twisting his left mustache with his right hand.

“Sorry, I can’t let you see him,” he said glumly to Olga Ivanovna. “You might catch it. And in fact there’s no need. He’s delirious anyway.”

“He has real diphtheria?” Olga Ivanovna asked in a whisper.

“Those who ask for trouble really should be taken to court,” Korostelev muttered without answering Olga Ivanovna’s question. “Do you know how he caught it? On Tuesday he sucked diphtherial membranes from a sick boy’s throat with a tube. And what for? Stupid … Just like that, foolishly …”

“Is it dangerous? Very?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“Yes, they say it’s an acute form. In fact, we ought to send for Schreck.”

A little red-headed man with a long nose and a Jewish accent
came, then a tall one, stoop-shouldered, disheveled, looking like a protodeacon; then a young one, very fat, with a red face and in spectacles. They were doctors, come to attend their colle
ague’s sickbed. Korostelev, having finished his turn, did not go home, but stayed and wandered like a shadow through all the rooms. The maid served tea to the attending doctors and kept running to the pharmacy, and there was no one to put the rooms in order. It was quiet and dismal.

Olga Ivanovna sat in her bedroom and thought that this was God punishing her for deceiving her husband. A silent, unprotesting, incomprehensible being, depersonalized by his own meekness, characterless, weak from excessive kindness, suffered mutely somewhere on his divan, and did not complain. And if he should complain, even in his delirium, the attending doctors would learn that it was not diphtheria alone that was to blame. They should ask Korostelev: he knew everything, and it was not without reason that he looked at his friend’s wife with such eyes, as if she were the chi
ef, the real villain, and diphtheria were only her accomplice. She no longer remembered the moonlit evening on the Volga, or the declarations of love, or the poetic life in the cottage, but remembered only that for an empty whim, an indulgence, she had become smeared all over, hands and feet, with something dirty, sticky, that could never be washed off…

“Ah, how terribly I lied!” she thought, remembering the turbulent love between her and Ryabovsky. “A curse on it all! …”

At four o’clock she had dinner with Korostelev. He ate nothing, only drank red wine and scowled. She also ate nothing. First she prayed mentally and vowed to God that if Dymov recovered, she would love him again and be a faithful wife. Then, oblivious for a moment, she gazed at Korostelev and thought: “Isn’t it boring to be a simple, completely unremarkable and unknown man, with such a crumpled face and bad manners besides?” Then it seemed to her that God would kill her that very instant, because, for fear of catching the illness, she had not once gone near her husband’s study. And generally th
ere was a dull, dismal feeling and a certainty that life was already ruined and nothing could put it right …

After dinner it grew dark. When Olga Ivanovna went out to the drawing room, Korostelev was sleeping on a couch, with a gold-embroidered silk pillow under his head. “Khi-puah,” he snored, “khi-puah.”

And the doctors who came to attend the sick man and then left, did not notice this disorder. That there was a strange man sleeping in the drawing room and snoring, and the studies on the walls, and the whimsical furnishings, and that the hostess had her hair undone and was carelessly dressed—all that did not arouse the slightest interest now. One of the doctors accidentally laughed at something, and this laughter sounded somehow strange and timid, and even felt eerie.

The next time Olga Ivanovna came out to the drawing room, Korostelev was not asleep but sitting and smoking.

“He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity,” he said in a low voice. “His heart is already not working very well. In fact, things are bad.”

“Send for Schreck,” said Olga Ivanovna.

“He’s already been here. It was he who noticed that the diphtheria had passed into the nose. Eh, and what of Schreck! In fact, Schreck’s nothing. He’s Schreck, I’m Korostelev—nothing more.”

The time dragged on terribly long. Olga Ivanovna lay on the bed, unmade since morning, and dozed. She imagined that the whole apartment, from floor to ceiling, was taken up by a huge piece of iron, and if only the iron could be taken away, everybody would be cheerful and light. Coming to herself, she remembered that this was not iron, but Dymov’s illness.

“Nature morte,
port …” she thought, sinking into oblivion again, “sport… resort… And how about Schreck? Schreck, wreck, vreck …
creck. And where are my friends now? Do they know about our misfortune? Lord, save us … deliver us. Schreck, wreck …”

And again the iron … The time dragged on long, and the clock on the ground floor struck frequently. And the doorbell kept ringing all the time; doctors came … The maid came in with an empty cup on a tray and asked:

“Shall I make the bed, ma’am?”

And, receiving no answer, she left. The clock struck downstairs, she had been dreaming of rain on the Volga, and again someone came into the bedroom, a stranger, she thought. Olga Ivanovna jumped up and recognized Korostelev.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Around three.”

“Well, so?”

“So, I’ve come to tell you: he’s going …”

He sobbed, sat down on the bed beside her, and wiped the tears with his sleeve. She did not understand at once, but turned all cold and slowly began to cross herself.

“He’s going …” he repeated in a thin little voice and sobbed again. “He’s dying, because he sacrificed himself… What a loss for science!” he said bitterly. “Compared to us all, he was a great, extraordinary man! So gifted! What hopes we all had in him!” Korostelev went on, wringing his hands. “Lord God, he’d have been a scientist such as you won’t find anywhere now. Oska Dymov, Oska Dymov, what have you done! Ai, ai, my God!”

Korostelev covered his face with both hands in despair and shook his head.

“And what moral strength!” he went on, growing more and more angry with someone. “A kind, pure, loving soul—not a man, but crystal! He served science and died from science. And he worked like an ox, day and night, nobody spared him, and the young scientist, the future professor, had to look for patients, to do translations by night, in order to pay for these … mean rags!”

Korostelev looked hatefully at Olga Ivanovna, seized the sheet with both hands, and tore at it angrily, as if it were to blame.

“He didn’t spare himself, and no one else spared him. Ah, there’s nothing to say!”

“Yes, a rare person!” some bass voice said in the drawing room.

Olga Ivanovna recalled her whole life with him, from beginning to end, in all its details, and suddenly understood that he was indeed an extraordinary, rare man and, compared with those she knew, a great man. And, recalling the way her late father and all his fellow doctors had treated him, she understood that they had all seen a future celebrity in him. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp, and the rug on the floor winked at her mockingly, as if wishing to say: “You missed it! You missed it!” In tears, she rushed from the bedroom, slipped past some unknown man in the drawing room, and ran into h
er husband’s study. He lay motionless on the Turkish divan, covered to the waist with a blanket. His face was terribly pinched, thin, and of a gray-yellow color such as living people never have; and only by his forehead, his black eyebrows, and the familiar smile could one tell that this was Dymov. Olga Ivanovna quickly touched his chest, forehead, and hands. His chest was still warm, but his forehead and hands were unpleasantly cold. And his half-open eyes looked not at Olga Ivanovna but down at the blanket.

“Dymov!” she called loudly. “Dymov!”

She wanted to explain to him that this was a mistake, that all was not lost yet, that life could still be beautiful and happy, that he was a rare, extraordinary, and great man, and that she would stand in awe of him all her life, worship him and feel a holy dread …

“Dymov!” she called to him, patting him on the shoulder and refusing to believe that he would never wake up. “Dymov, but, Dymov!”

And in the drawing room Korostelev was saying to the maid:

“What is there to ask? Go to the church caretaker and find out where the almshouse women live. They’ll wash the body and prepare it—they’ll do everything necessary.”

J
ANUARY
1892

O
ld Semyon, nicknamed the Explainer, and a young Tartar whose name no one knew, sat on the bank near a bonfire; the other three boatmen were inside the hut. Semyon, an old man of about sixty, lean and toothless, but broad-shouldered and still healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone to bed long ago, but he had a bottle in his pocket, and he was afraid the fellows in the hut might ask him for vodka. The Tartar was sick, pining away, and, wrapping himself in his rags, was telling how good it was in Simbirsk province and what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home.
He was about twenty-five years old, not more, and now, in the light of the bonfire, pale, with a sorrowful, sickly face, he looked like a boy.

“It’s sure no paradise here,” the Explainer was saying. “See for yourself: water, bare banks, clay everywhere, and nothing else … Easter’s long past, but there’s ice drifting on the river, and it snowed this morning.”

“Bad! Bad!” said the Tartar, and he looked around fearfully.

Some ten paces away from them the dark, cold river flowed; it growled, splashed against the eroded clay bank, and quickly raced off somewhere to the distant sea. Close to the bank a big barge loomed darkly. The boatmen called it a “barridge.” On the far bank, lights crawled snakelike, flaring up and dying out: this was last year’s grass being burnt. And beyond the snakes it was dark
again. Small blocks of ice could be heard knocking against the barge. Damp, cold …

The Tartar looked at the sky. The stars were as many as at home, there was the same blackness around, but something was missin
g. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were not like that at all, nor was the sky.

“Bad! Bad!” he repeated.

“You’ll get used to it!” the Explainer said and laughed. “You’re still a young man, foolish, not dry behind the ears, and like a fool you think there’s no man more wretched than you, but the time will come when you say to yourself: ‘God grant everybody such a life.’ Look at me. In a week’s time the water will subside, we’ll set up the ferry here, you’ll all go wandering around Siberia, and I’ll stay and start going from shore to shore. It’s twenty-two years now I’ve been going like that. And thank God. I need nothing. God grant everybody such a life.”

The Tartar added more brushwood to the fire, lay down closer to it, and said:

“My father is a sick man. When he dies, my mother and wife will come here. They promised.”

“And what do you need a mother and wife for?” asked the Explainer. “That’s all foolishness, brother. It’s the devil confusing you, damn his soul. Don’t listen to the cursed one. Don’t let him have his way. He’ll get at you with a woman, but you spite him: don’t want any! He’ll get at you with freedom, but you stay tough—don’t want any! You need nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no bag, no baggage! You need nothing, damn it all!”

The Explainer took a swig from his bottle and went on:

“I’m no simple peasant, brother dear, I’m not of boorish rank, I’m a beadle’s son, and when I was free and lived in Kursk, I went around in a frock coat, and now I’ve brought myself to the point where I can sleep naked on the ground and have grass for my grub. God grant everybody such a life. I need nothing, a
nd I fear nobody, and to my way of thinking there’s no man richer or freer than I am. When they sent me here from Russia, I got tough the very first day: I want nothing! The devil got at me with my wife, my family, my freedom, but I told him: I need nothing! I got tough and, you see, I live well, no complaints. And if anybody indulges the devil and listens even once, he’s lost, there’s no saving him: he’ll sink into the
mire up to his ears and never get out. Not only your kind, foolish peasants, but even noble and educated ones get lost. About fifteen years ago a gentleman was sent here from Russia. He qua
rreled with his brothers over something, and somehow faked a will. They said he was a prince or a baron, but maybe he was just an official—who knows! Well, this gentleman came here and, first thing, bought himself a house and land in Mukhortinskoe. ‘I want to live by my own labor,’ he says, ‘by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he says, ‘I’m no longer a gentleman, I’m an exile.’ Why not, I say, God help you, it’s a good thing. He was a young man then, a bustler, always busy; he went mowing, and fishing, and rode forty miles on horseback. Only here’s the trouble: from the very first year he s
tarted going to Gyrino, to the post office. He used to stand on my ferry and sigh: ‘Eh, Semyon, it’s long since they sent me money from home!’ No need for money, Vassily Sergeich, I say. Money for what? Give up the old things, forget them as if they’d never been, as if it was only a dream, and start a new life. Don’t listen to the devil—he won’t get you anything good, he’ll only draw you into a noose. You want money now, I say, and in a little while, lo and behold, you’ll want something else, and then more and more. If you wish to be happy, I say, then first of all wish for nothing. Yes … Since
fate has bitterly offended you and me, I say to him, there’s no point asking her for mercy or bowing at her feet, we should scorn her and laugh at her. Otherwise it’s she who will laugh at us. That’s what I said to him … About two years later, I take him to this side, and he rubs his hands and laughs. ‘I’m going to Gyrino,’ he says, ‘to meet my wife. She’s taken pity on me,’ he says, ‘and she’s coming. She’s a nice woman, a kind one.’ And he’s even breathless with joy. So two days later he arrives with his wife. A young lady, beautiful, in a hat; with a baby girl in her arms. And a lot of lugg
age of all sorts. My Vassily Sergeich fusses around her, can’t have enough of looking at her and praising her. ‘Yes, brother Semyon, people can live in Siberia, too!’ Well, I think, all right, you won’t be overjoyed. And after that he began to visit Gyrino nearly every week, to see if money had come from Russia. He needed no end of money. ‘For my sake,’ he says, ‘to share my bitter lot, she’s ruining her youth and beauty here in Siberia, and on account of that,’ he says, ‘I must offer her all sorts of pleasures …’ To make it more cheerful for the lady, he began keeping company with officials and all sorts of t
rash. And it’s a sure thing that all such people have to be wined and dined, and there
should be a piano, and a shaggy lapdog on the sofa—it can croak for all of me … Luxury, in short, indulgence. The lady didn’t live with him long. How could she? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit, drunken, uneducated people everywhere, no civility at all, and she’s a spoiled lady, from the capital … And, sure enough, she got bored … And her husband, say what you like, is no longer a gentleman, he’s an exile—it’s not the same honor. In about three years, I remember, on the eve of the Dormition,
¹
a shout comes from the other bank. I went over in the ferry, I see—the lady,
all wrapped up, and a young gentleman with her, one of the officials. A troika … I brought them over to this side, they got in and— that’s the last I ever saw of them! They passed out of the picture. And towards morning Vassily Sergeich drove up with a pair. ‘Did my wife pass by here, Semyon, with a gentleman in spectacles?’ She did, I say, go chase the wind in the field! He galloped after them, pursued them for five days. Afterwards, when I took him back to the other side, he fell down and began howling and beating his head on the floorboards. There you have it, I say. I laugh and remind him: ‘Peo
ple can live in Siberia, too!’ And he beats his head even harder … After that he wanted to get his freedom. His wife went to Russia, and so he was drawn there, too, to see her and get her away from her lover. And so, brother dear, he began riding nearly every day either to the post office or to see the authorities in town. He kept sending and submitting appeals to be pardoned and allowed to return home, and he told me he’d spent two hundred roubles on telegrams alone. He sold the land, pawned the house to the Jews. He turned gray, bent, his face got as yellow as a consumptive’s. He talks to you and go
es hem, hem, hem … and there are tears in his eyes. He suffered some eight years like that with these appeals, but then he revived and got happy again: he came up with a new indulgence. His daughter’s grown up, you see. He looks at her and can’t have enough. And, to tell the truth, she’s not bad at all: pretty, with dark eyebrows, and a lively character. Every Sunday he took her to church in Gyrino. The two of them stand side by side on the ferry, she laughs and he can’t take his eyes off her. ‘Yes, Semyon,’ he says, ‘people can live in Siberia, too. There’s happiness in Siberia, too. Look,’ h
e says, ‘what a daughter I have! I bet you won’t find one like her for a thousand miles around!’ The daughter’s nice, I say, it’s really true … And to myself I think: ‘Just wait … She’s a young girl, her blood is high, she wants to live, and what
kind of life is there here?’ And she began to languish, brother … She pined and pined, got all wasted, fell ill, and took to her bed. Consumption. There’s Siberian happiness for you, damn its soul, there’s ‘people can live in Siberia’ for you … He started going for doctors and bringing them to her. As soon as he hears there’s some doctor or quack within a
hundred or two hundred miles, he goes to get him. He’s put an awful lot of money into these doctors, and in my view it would have been better to drink the money up … She’ll die anyway. She’s absolutely sure to die, and then he’ll be totally lost. He’ll hang himself from grief or run away to Russia—it’s a fact. He’ll run away, get caught, there’ll be a trial, hard labor, a taste of the whip …”

“Good, good,” the Tartar muttered, shrinking from the chill.

“What’s good?” the Explainer asked.

“The wife, the daughter … Hard labor, yes, grief, yes, but still he saw his wife and daughter … Need nothing, you say. But nothing—bad. His wife lived with him three years—that was a gift from God. Nothing bad, three years good. How you don’t understand?”

Trembling, straining to find Russian words, of which he did not know many, and stammering, the Tartar began to say that God forbid he get sick in a foreign land, die and be put into the cold, rusty earth, that if his wife came to him, be it for a single day and even for a single hour, he would agree to suffer any torment for such happiness and would thank God. Better a single day of happiness than nothing.

After that he told again about what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home, then, clutching his head with both hands, he wept and began assuring Semyon that he was not guilty of anything and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his uncle stole horses from a peasant and beat the old man half to death, but the community gave them an unfair trial and sentenced all three brothers to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, stayed home.

“You’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon.

The Tartar fell silent and fixed his tear-filled eyes on the fire; his face showed bewilderment and fright, as if he were still unable to understand why he was there in the dark and the damp, among strangers, and not in Simbirsk province. The Explainer lay down near the fire, grinned at something, and struck up a song in a low voice.

“What fun is it for her with her father?” he said after a while.
“He loves her, takes comfort in her, it’s true; but don’t go putting your finger in his mouth, brother: he’s a strict old man, a tough one. And young girls don’t want strictness … They need tenderness, ha-ha-ha and hee-ho-ho, perfumes and creams. Yes … Eh, so it goes!” Semyon sighed and got up heavily. “The vodka’s all gone, that means it’s time to sleep. Eh, I’m off, brother …”

Left alone, the Tartar added more brushwood, lay down, and, gazing at the fire, began thinking of his native village and his wife; let his wife come for just a month, just a day, and then,
if she wants, she can go back! Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if his wife keeps her promise and comes, what will he give her to eat? Where will she live here?

“If no food, how live?” the Tartar asked out loud.

Because now, working day and night with an oar, he earned only ten kopecks a day; true, travelers gave them tips for tea and vodka, but the boys divided all the income among themselves and gave nothing to the Tartar, but only laughed at him. And need makes one hungry, cold, and afraid … Now, when his whole body aches and trembles, it would be nice to go into the hut and sleep, but there he has nothing to cover himself with, and it is colder than on the bank; here he also has nothing to cover himself with, but at least he can make a fire …

In a week, when the water fully subsided and the ferry was set up, none of the boatmen would be needed except for Semyon, and the Tartar would start going from village to village, begging and asking for work. His wife was only seventeen; she was beautiful, pampered, and shy—could she, too, go around the villages with her face uncovered and beg for alms? No, it was horrible even to think of it …

Dawn was breaking; the outlines of the barge, the osier bushes in the rippling water, could be seen clearly, and, looking back, there was the clay cliffside, the hut roofed with brown straw below, and a cluster of village cottages above. In the village the cocks were already crowing.

The red clay cliffside, the barge, the river, the unkind strangers, hunger, cold, sickness—maybe none of it exists in reality. Probably I am only dreaming it all, thought the Tartar. He felt that he was asleep and heard his own snoring … Of course he is at home, in Simbirsk province, and as soon as he calls his wife’s name, she will call back to him; and his mother is in the nex
t room … Sometimes
one has such frightful dreams! What for? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river is this? The Volga?