Short Stories by Chekhov
ghost. All my acquaintances say to me: 'You are a most insufferable
person, Pavel Ivanitch.' I am proud of such a reputation. I have served
three years in the far East, and I shall be remembered there for a
hundred years: I had rows with everyone. My friends write to me from
Russia, 'Don't come back,' but here I am going back to spite them...
yes.... That is life as I understand it. That is what one can call
life."
Gusev was looking at the little window and was not listening. A boat was
swaying on the transparent, soft, turquoise water all bathed in hot,
dazzling sunshine. In it there were naked Chinamen holding up cages with
canaries and calling out:
"It sings, it sings!"
Another boat knocked against the first; the steam cutter darted by. And
then there came another boat with a fat Chinaman sitting in it, eating
rice with little sticks.
Languidly the water heaved, languidly the white seagulls floated over
it.
"I should like to give that fat fellow one in the neck," thought Gusev,
gazing at the stout Chinaman, with a yawn.
He dozed off, and it seemed to him that all nature was dozing, too. Time
flew swiftly by; imperceptibly the day passed, imperceptibly the
darkness came on.... The steamer was no longer standing still, but
moving on further.
IV
Two days passed, Pavel Ivanitch lay down instead of sitting up; his eyes
were closed, his nose seemed to have grown sharper.
"Pavel Ivanitch," Gusev called to him. "Hey, Pavel Ivanitch."
Pavel Ivanitch opened his eyes and moved his lips.
"Are you feeling bad?"
"No... it's nothing..." answered Pavel Ivanitch, gasping. "Nothing; on
the contrary--I am rather better.... You see I can lie down. I am a
little easier...."
"Well, thank God for that, Pavel Ivanitch."
"When I compare myself with you I am sorry for you... poor fellow. My
lungs are all right, it is only a stomach cough.... I can stand hell,
let alone the Red Sea. Besides I take a critical attitude to my illness
and to the medicines they give me for it. While you... you are in
darkness.... It's hard for you, very, very hard!"
The ship was not rolling, it was calm, but as hot and stifling as a
bath-house; it was not only hard to speak but even hard to listen. Gusev
hugged his knees, laid his head on them and thought of his home. Good
heavens, what a relief it was to think of snow and cold in that stifling
heat! You drive in a sledge, all at once the horses take fright at
something and bolt.... Regardless of the road, the ditches, the ravines,
they dash like mad things, right through the village, over the pond by
the pottery works, out across the open fields. "Hold on," the pottery
hands and the peasants shout, meeting them. "Hold on." But why? Let the
keen, cold wind beat in one's face and bite one's hands; let the lumps
of snow, kicked up by the horses' hoofs, fall on one's cap, on one's
back, down one's collar, on one's chest; let the runners ring on the
snow, and the traces and the sledge be smashed, deuce take them one and
all! And how delightful when the sledge upsets and you go flying full
tilt into a drift, face downwards in the snow, and then you get up white
all over with icicles on your moustaches; no cap, no gloves, your belt
undone.... People laugh, the dogs bark....
Pavel Ivanitch half opened one eye, looked at Gusev with it, and asked
softly:
"Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?"
"Who can tell, Pavel Ivanitch! We can't say, it didn't reach us."
And after that a long time passed in silence. Gusev brooded, muttered
something in delirium, and kept drinking water; it was hard for him to
talk and hard to listen, and he was afraid of being talked to. An hour
passed, a second, a third; evening came on, then night, but he did not
notice it. He still sat dreaming of the frost.
There was a sound as though someone came into the hospital, and voices
were audible, but a few minutes passed and all was still again.
"The Kingdom of Heaven and eternal peace," said the soldier with his arm
in a sling. "He was an uncomfortable man."
"What?" asked Gusev. "Who?"
"He is dead, they have just carried him up."
"Oh, well," muttered Gusev, yawning, "the Kingdom of Heaven be his."
"What do you think?" the soldier with his arm in a sling asked Gusev.
"Will he be in the Kingdom of Heaven or not?"
"Who is it you are talking about?"
"Pavel Ivanitch."
"He will be... he suffered so long. And there is another thing, he
belonged to the clergy, and the priests always have a lot of relations.
Their prayers will save him."
The soldier with the sling sat down on a hammock near Gusev and said in
an undertone:
"And you, Gusev, are not long for this world. You will never get to
Russia."
"Did the doctor or his assistant say so?" asked Gusev.
"It isn't that they said so, but one can see it.... One can see directly
when a man's going to die. You don't eat, you don't drink; it's dreadful
to see how thin you've got. It's consumption, in fact. I say it, not to
upset you, but because maybe you would like to have the sacrament and
extreme unction. And if you have any money you had better give it to the
senior officer."
"I haven't written home..." Gusev sighed. "I shall die and they won't
know."
"They'll hear of it," the sick sailor brought out in a bass voice. "When
you die they will put it down in the Gazette, at Odessa they will send
in a report to the commanding officer there and he will send it to the
parish or somewhere...."
Gusev began to be uneasy after such a conversation and to feel a vague
yearning. He drank water--it was not that; he dragged himself to the
window and breathed the hot, moist air--it was not that; he tried to
think of home, of the frost--it was not that.... At last it seemed to him
one minute longer in the ward and he would certainly expire.
"It's stifling, mates..." he said. "I'll go on deck. Help me up, for
Christ's sake."
"All right," assented the soldier with the sling. "I'll carry you, you
can't walk, hold on to my neck."
Gusev put his arm round the soldier's neck, the latter put his unhurt
arm round him and carried him up. On the deck sailors and time-expired
soldiers were lying asleep side by side; there were so many of them it
was difficult to pass.
"Stand down," the soldier with the sling said softly. "Follow me
quietly, hold on to my shirt...."
It was dark. There was no light on deck, nor on the masts, nor anywhere
on the sea around. At the furthest end of the ship the man on watch was
standing perfectly still like a statue, and it looked as though he were
asleep. It seemed as though the steamer were abandoned to itself and
were going at its own will.
"Now they will throw Pavel Ivanitch into the sea," said the soldier with
the sling. "In a sack and then into the water."
"Yes, that's the rule."
"But it's better to lie at home in the earth. Anyway, your mother comes
to the grave and weeps."
"Of course."
There was a smell of hay and of dung. There were oxen standing with
drooping heads by the ship's rail. One, two, three; eight of them! And
there was a little horse. Gusev put out his hand to stroke it, but it
shook its head, showed its teeth, and tried to bite his sleeve.
"Damned brute..." said Gusev angrily.
The two of them, he and the soldier, threaded their way to the head of
the ship, then stood at the rail and looked up and down. Overhead deep
sky, bright stars, peace and stillness, exactly as at home in the
village, below darkness and disorder. The tall waves were resounding, no
one could tell why. Whichever wave you looked at each one was trying to
rise higher than all the rest and to chase and crush the next one; after
it a third as fierce and hideous flew noisily, with a glint of light on
its white crest.
The sea has no sense and no pity. If the steamer had been smaller and
not made of thick iron, the waves would have crushed it to pieces
without the slightest compunction, and would have devoured all the
people in it with no distinction of saints or sinners. The steamer had
the same cruel and meaningless expression. This monster with its huge
beak was dashing onwards, cutting millions of waves in its path; it had
no fear of the darkness nor the wind, nor of space, nor of solitude,
caring for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, this monster would
have crushed them, too, without distinction of saints or sinners.
"Where are we now?" asked Gusev.
"I don't know. We must be in the ocean."
"There is no sight of land..."
"No indeed! They say we shan't see it for seven days."
The two soldiers watched the white foam with the phosphorus light on it
and were silent, thinking. Gusev was the first to break the silence.
"There is nothing to be afraid of," he said, "only one is full of dread
as though one were sitting in a dark forest; but if, for instance, they
let a boat down on to the water this minute and an officer ordered me to
go a hundred miles over the sea to catch fish, I'd go. Or, let's say, if
a Christian were to fall into the water this minute, I'd go in after
him. A German or a Chinaman I wouldn't save, but I'd go in after a
Christian."
"And are you afraid to die?"
"Yes. I am sorry for the folks at home. My brother at home, you know,
isn't steady; he drinks, he beats his wife for nothing, he does not
honour his parents. Everything will go to ruin without me, and father
and my old mother will be begging their bread, I shouldn't wonder. But
my legs won't bear me, brother, and it's hot here. Let's go to sleep."
V
Gusev went back to the ward and got into his hammock. He was again
tormented by a vague craving, and he could not make out what he wanted.
There was an oppression on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth
was so dry that it was difficult for him to move his tongue. He dozed,
and murmured in his sleep, and, worn out with nightmares, his cough, and
the stifling heat, towards morning he fell into a sound sleep. He
dreamed that they were just taking the bread out of the oven in the
barracks and he climbed into the stove and had a steam bath in it,
lashing himself with a bunch of birch twigs. He slept for two days, and
at midday on the third two sailors came down and carried him out.
He was sewn up in sailcloth and to make him heavier they put with him
two iron weights. Sewn up in the sailcloth he looked like a carrot or a
radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet.... Before sunset they
brought him up to the deck and put him on a plank; one end of the plank
lay on the side of the ship, the other on a box, placed on a stool.
Round him stood the soldiers and the officers with their caps off.
"Blessed be the Name of the Lord..." the priest began. "As it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be."
"Amen," chanted three sailors.
The soldiers and the officers crossed themselves and looked away at the
waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sailcloth and
should soon be flying into the sea. Was it possible that such a thing
might happen to anyone?
The priest strewed earth upon Gusev and bowed down. They sang "Eternal
Memory."
The man on watch duty tilted up the end of the plank, Gusev slid off and
flew head foremost, turned a somersault in the air and splashed into the
sea. He was covered with foam and for a moment looked as though he were
wrapped in lace, but the minute passed and he disappeared in the waves.
He went rapidly towards the bottom. Did he reach it? It was said to be
three miles to the bottom. After sinking sixty or seventy feet, he began
moving more and more slowly, swaying rhythmically, as though he were
hesitating and, carried along by the current, moved more rapidly
sideways than downwards.
Then he was met by a shoal of the fish called harbour pilots. Seeing the