Short Stories by Chekhov
had a large room with an old wooden bed and carved ornaments; in the
corner was an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by pretty
Pelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen.
Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down.
"God forgive me, a wicked sinner," he murmured, as he drew the clothes
over his head.
A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table,
and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he
could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.
The rain beat against the windows all night long. IN EXILE
OLD Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose name
nobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The
other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about
sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was
drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his
pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartar
was ill and miserable, and, pulling his rags about him, he went on
talking about the good things in the province of Simbirsk, and what a
beautiful and clever wife he had left at home. He was not more than
twenty-five, and now, by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale,
sorrowful, sickly face, he looked a mere boy.
"Of course, it is not a paradise here," said Brains, "you see, water,
the bare bushes by the river, clay everywhere--nothing else.... It is
long past Easter and there is still ice on the water and this morning
there was snow...."
"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frightened look.
A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, muttering, dashing against
the holes in the clayey banks as it tore along to the distant sea. By
the bank they were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the ferrymen
call a karbass. Far away and away, flashing out, flaring up, were fires
crawling like snakes--last year's grass being burned. And behind the
water again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be heard knocking
against the barge.... It was very damp and cold....
The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and
the darkness was the same, but something was missing. At home in the
Simbirsk province the stars and the sky were altogether different.
"Bad! Bad!" he repeated.
"You will get used to it," said Brains with a laugh. "You are young yet
and foolish; the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and in your folly you
imagine that there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come a
time when you will say: God give every one such a life! Just look at me.
In a week's time the floods will be gone, and we will fix the ferry
here, and all of you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here,
going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last two-and-twenty
years, but, thank God, I want nothing. God give everybody such a life."
The Tartar threw some branches onto the fire, crawled near to it and
said:
"My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and my wife have promised to
come here."
"What do you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just
foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him.
Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to
you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When
he talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I
want nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no home, no
love! I want nothing.' Plague take 'em all."
Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on:
"My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I don't come from the servile
masses. I am the son of a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, I
used to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself to such a point
that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. God give such a life
to everybody. I want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there is
no man richer or freer than I. When they sent me here from Russia I set
my teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to me
about my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'I
want nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and have
nothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunity
and listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of
salvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Not
only peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and the
educated also. About fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was sent here
from Russia. He had had some trouble with his brothers and had made a
forgery in a will. People said he was a prince or a baron, but perhaps
he was only a high official--who knows? Well, he came here and at once
bought a house and land in Moukhzyink. 'I want to live by my own work,'
said he, 'in the sweat of my brow, because I am no longer a nobleman but
an exile.' 'Why,' said I. 'God help you, for that is good.' He was a
young man then, ardent and eager; he used to mow and go fishing, and he
would ride sixty miles on horseback. Only one thing was wrong; from the
very beginning he was always driving to the post-office at Guyrin. He
used to sit in my boat and sigh: 'Ah! Simeon, it is a long time since
they sent me any money from home.' 'You are better without money,
Vassili Sergnevich,' said I. 'What's the good of it? You just throw away
the past, as though it had never happened, as though it were only a
dream, and start life afresh. Don't listen to the devil,' I said, 'he
won't do you any good, and he will only tighten the noose. You want
money now, but in a little while you will want something else, and then
more and more. If,' said I, 'you want to be happy you must want nothing.
Exactly.... If,' I said, 'fate has been hard on you and me, it is no
good asking her for charity and falling at her feet. We must ignore her
and laugh at her.' That's what I said to him.... Two years later I
ferried him over and he rubbed his hands and laughed. 'I'm going,' said
he, 'to Guyrin to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, she says, and
she is coming here. She is very kind and good.' And he gave a gasp of
joy. Then one day he came with his wife, a beautiful young lady with a
little girl in her arms and a lot of luggage. And Vassili Andreich kept
turning and looking at her and could not look at her or praise her
enough. 'Yes, Simeon, my friend, even in Siberia people live.' Well,
thought I, all right, you won't be content. And from that time on, mark
you, he used to go to Guyrin every week to find out if money had been
sent from Russia. A terrible lot of money was wasted. 'She stays here,'
said he, 'for my sake, and her youth and beauty wither away here in
Siberia. She shares my bitter lot with me,' said he, 'and I must give
her all the pleasure I can for it....' To make his wife happier he took
up with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they couldn't have
company without giving food and drink, and they must have a piano and a
fluffy little dog on the sofa--bad cess to it.... Luxury, in a word, all
kinds of tricks. My lady did not stay with him long. How could she?
Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit; uneducated people and
drunkards, with no manners, and she was a pretty pampered young lady
from the metropolis.... Of course she got bored. And her husband was no
longer a gentleman, but an exile--quite a different matter. Three years
later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, I heard shouts from the
other bank. I went over in the ferry and saw my lady, all wrapped up,
with a young gentleman, a government official, in a troika.... I ferried
them across, they got into the carriage and disappeared, and I saw no
more of them. Toward the morning Vassili Andreich came racing up in a
coach and pair. 'Has my wife been across, Simeon, with a gentleman in
spectacles?' 'She has,' said I, 'but you might as well look for the wind
in the fields.' He raced after them and kept it up for five days and
nights. When he came back he jumped on to the ferry and began to knock
his head against the side and to cry aloud. 'You see,' said I, 'there
you are.' And I laughed and reminded him: 'Even in Siberia people live.'
But he went on beating his head harder than ever.... Then he got the
desire for freedom. His wife had gone to Russia and he longed to go
there to see her and take her away from her lover. And he began to go to
the post-office every day, and then to the authorities of the town. He
was always sending applications or personally handing them to the
authorities, asking to have his term remitted and to be allowed to go,
and he told me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on telegrams.
He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the money-lenders. His hair
went grey, he grew round-shouldered, and his face got yellow and
consumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he spoke and tears used
to come to his eyes. He spent eight years on his applications, and at
last he became happy again and lively: he had thought of a new dodge.
His daughter, you see, had grown up. He doted on her and could never
take his eyes off her. And, indeed, she was very pretty, dark and
clever. Every Sunday he used to go to church with her at Guyrin. They
would stand side by side on the ferry, and she would smile and he would
devour her with his eyes. 'Yes, Simeon,' he would say. 'Even in Siberia
people live. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look what a fine
daughter I have. You wouldn't find one like her in a thousand miles'
journey.' 'She's a nice girl,' said I. 'Oh, yes.' ... And I thought to
myself: 'You wait.... She is young. Young blood will have its way; she
wants to live and what life is there here?' And she began to pine
away.... Wasting, wasting away, she withered away, fell ill and had to
keep to her bed.... Consumption. That's Siberian happiness, plague take
it; that's Siberian life.... He rushed all over the place after the
doctors and dragged them home with him. If he heard of a doctor or a
quack three hundred miles off he would rush off after him. He spent a
terrific amount of money on doctors and I think it would have been much
better spent on drink. All the same she had to die. No help for it. Then
it was all up with him. He thought of hanging himself, and of trying to
escape to Russia. That would be the end of him. He would try to escape:
he would be caught, tried, penal servitude, flogging."
"Good! Good!" muttered the Tartar with a shiver.
"What is good?" asked Brains.
"Wife and daughter. What does penal servitude and suffering matter? He
saw his wife and his daughter. You say one should want nothing. But
nothing--is evil! His wife spent three years with him. God gave him that.
Nothing is evil, and three years is good. Why don't you understand
that?"
Trembling and stammering as he groped for Russian words, of which he
knew only a few, the Tartar began to say: "God forbid he should fall ill
among strangers, and die and be buried in the cold sodden earth, and
then, if his wife could come to him if only for one day or even for one
hour, he would gladly endure any torture for such happiness, and would
even thank God. Better one day of happiness than nothing."
Then once more he said what a beautiful clever wife he had left at home,
and with his head in his hands he began to cry and assured Simeon that
he was innocent, and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his
uncle had stolen some horses from a peasant and beat the old man nearly
to death, and the community never looked into the matter at all, and
judgment was passed by which all three brothers were exiled to Siberia,
while his uncle, a rich man, remained at home.
"You will get used to it," said Simeon.