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Title: The Schoolmistress and Other Stories

Author: Anton Chekhov

Release Date: February 21, 2006 [EBook #1732]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND OTHER STORIES

By Anton Chekhov



FROM THE TALES OF CHEKHOV, VOLUME 9

CONTENTS

     THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
     A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
     MISERY
     CHAMPAGNE
     AFTER THE THEATRE
     A LADY'S STORY
     IN EXILE
     THE CATTLE-DEALERS
     SORROW
     ON OFFICIAL DUTY
     THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER
     A TRAGIC ACTOR
     A TRANSGRESSION
     SMALL FRY
     THE REQUIEM
     IN THE COACH-HOUSE
     PANIC FEARS
     THE BET
     THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORY
     THE BEAUTIES
     THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL





THE SCHOOLMISTRESS

AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.

The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the
snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark,
long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a sudden.
But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the
breath of spring, nor the black flocks of birds flying over the huge
puddles that were like lakes, nor the marvelous fathomless sky, into
which it seemed one would have gone away so joyfully, presented anything
new or interesting to Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For
thirteen years she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning
how many times during all those years she had been to the town for her
salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or
winter, it was all the same to her, and she always--invariably--longed
for one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly as could
be.

She felt as though she had been living in that part of the country for
ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew
every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Her
past was here, her present was here, and she could imagine no other
future than the school, the road to the town and back again, and again
the school and again the road....

She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she became
a schoolmistress, and had almost forgotten it. She had once had a father
and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big flat near the Red Gate,
but of all that life there was left in her memory only something vague
and fluid like a dream. Her father had died when she was ten years old,
and her mother had died soon after.... She had a brother, an officer;
at first they used to write to each other, then her brother had given up
answering her letters, he had got out of the way of writing. Of her old
belongings, all that was left was a photograph of her mother, but it had
grown dim from the dampness of the school, and now nothing could be seen
but the hair and the eyebrows.

When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was driving,
turned round and said:

"They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have taken him
away. The story is that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev, the Mayor,
in Moscow."

"Who told you that?"

"They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov's tavern."

And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna thought of
her school, of the examination that was coming soon, and of the girl and
four boys she was sending up for it. And just as she was thinking about
the examination, she was overtaken by a neighboring landowner called
Hanov in a carriage with four horses, the very man who had been examiner
in her school the year before. When he came up to her he recognized her
and bowed.

"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I suppose."

This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face that
showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still handsome
and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead alone, and was not
in the service; and people used to say of him that he did nothing at
home but walk up and down the room whistling, or play chess with his
old footman. People said, too, that he drank heavily. And indeed at the
examination the year before the very papers he brought with him smelt of
wine and scent. He had been dressed all in new clothes on that occasion,
and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very attractive, and all the while
she sat beside him she had felt embarrassed. She was accustomed to see
frigid and sensible examiners at the school, while this one did not
remember a single prayer, or know what to ask questions about, and
was exceedingly courteous and delicate, giving nothing but the highest
marks.

"I am going to visit Bakvist," he went on, addressing Marya Vassilyevna,
"but I am told he is not at home."

They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a walking
pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the mud. Semyon
tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the road, at one time
through a snowdrift, at another through a pool, often jumping out of the
cart and helping the horse. Marya Vassilyevna was still thinking
about the school, wondering whether the arithmetic questions at the
examination would be difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed with
the Zemstvo board at which she had found no one the day before. How
unbusiness-like! Here she had been asking them for the last two years
to dismiss the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit
the schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was hard to find the
president at the office, and when one did find him he would say with
tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the inspector
visited the school at most once in three years, and knew nothing
whatever about his work, as he had been in the Excise Duties Department,
and had received the post of school inspector through influence. The
School Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met;
the school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head of
a tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the
watchman's--and goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints
or inquiries....

"He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.

The road grew worse and worse.... They drove into the wood. Here
there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in, water
splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck them in the
face.

"What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed.

The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why this queer
man lived here. What could his money, his interesting appearance, his
refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in this God-forsaken,
dreary place? He got no special advantages out of life, and here, like
Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on an appalling road and enduring
the same discomforts. Why live here if one could live in Petersburg or
abroad? And one would have thought it would be nothing for a rich man
like him to make a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring
this misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman and
Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and wanted no
better life. He was kind, soft, naive, and he did not understand this
coarse life, just as at the examination he did not know the prayers.
He subscribed nothing to the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded
himself as a useful person and a prominent worker in the cause of
popular education. And what use were his globes here?

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.

The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting; something
heavy rolled on to Marya Vassilyevna's feet--it was her parcel of
purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through the clay; here in the
winding ditches rivulets were gurgling. The water seemed to have gnawed
away the road; and how could one get along here! The horses breathed
hard. Hanov got out of his carriage and walked at the side of the road
in his long overcoat. He was hot.

"What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash up one's
carriage."

"Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather," said Semyon
surlily. "You should stay at home."

"I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't like staying at home."

Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his walk
there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a being
already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And all at once
there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled
with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause
or reason, and it came into her mind that if she had been his wife or
sister she would have devoted her whole life to saving him from ruin.
His wife! Life was so ordered that here he was living in his great house
alone, and she was living in a God-forsaken village alone, and yet
for some reason the mere thought that he and she might be close to one
another and equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality, life was
arranged and human relations were complicated so utterly beyond all
understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one's
heart sank.

"And it is beyond all understanding," she thought, "why God gives
beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unlucky, useless
people--why they are so charming."

"Here we must turn off to the right," said Hanov, getting into his
carriage. "Good-by! I wish you all things good!"

And again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the
watchman, of the School Council; and when the wind brought the sound
of the retreating carriage these thoughts were mingled with others. She
longed to think of beautiful eyes, of love, of the happiness which would
never be....

His wife? It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat the
stove, the watchman disappeared; the children came in as soon as it
was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise: it was all so
inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of one little room and
the kitchen close by. Her head ached every day after her work, and
after dinner she had heart-burn. She had to collect money from the
school-children for wood and for the watchman, and to give it to
the school guardian, and then to entreat him--that overfed, insolent
peasant--for God's sake to send her wood. And at night she dreamed of
examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was making her grow
old and coarse, making her ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she
were made of lead. She was always afraid, and she would get up from
her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a member of
the Zemstvo or the school guardian. And she used formal, deferential
expressions when she spoke of any one of them. And no one thought her
attractive, and life was passing drearily, without affection, without
friendly sympathy, without interesting acquaintances. How awful it would
have been in her position if she had fallen in love!

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"

Again a sharp ascent uphill....

She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling any
vocation for it; and she had never thought of a vocation, of serving the
cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her that what was most
important in her work was not the children, nor enlightenment, but the
examinations. And what time had she for thinking of vocation, of serving
the cause of enlightenment? Teachers, badly paid doctors, and their
assistants, with their terribly hard work, have not even the comfort of
thinking that they are serving an idea or the people, as their heads are
always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire,
of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life,
and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up
with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked
about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave up
the work.

Semyon kept picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a meadow,
then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place the peasants
would not let them pass, in another it was the priest's land and they
could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the
landowner and had dug a ditch round it. They kept having to turn back.

They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the dung-strewn
earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood wagons that had
brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid. There were a great many
people in the tavern, all drivers, and there was a smell of vodka,
tobacco, and sheepskins. There was a loud noise of conversation and
the banging of the swing-door. Through the wall, without ceasing for a
moment, came the sound of a concertina being played in the shop.
Marya Vassilyevna sat down and drank some tea, while at the next table
peasants were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea they had
just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.

"I say, Kuzma!" voices kept shouting in confusion. "What there!" "The
Lord bless us!" "Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!" "Look out, old
man!"

A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite drunk, was
suddenly surprised by something and began using bad language.

"What are you swearing at, you there?" Semyon, who was sitting some way
off, responded angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"

"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.

"Swinish crow!"

"We meant nothing..." said the little man in confusion. "I beg
your pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
Good-morning!"

"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.

"And we thank you most feelingly."

Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too,
began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again about
firewood, about the watchman....

"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the schoolmistress
from Vyazovye.... We know her; she's a good young lady."

"She's all right!"

The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others going
out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the same
things, while the concertina went on playing and playing. The patches of
sunshine had been on the floor, then they passed to the counter, to the
wall, and disappeared altogether; so by the sun it was past midday. The
peasants at the next table were getting ready to go. The little man,
somewhat unsteadily, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his hand
to her; following his example, the others shook hands, too, at parting,
and went out one after another, and the swing-door squeaked and slammed
nine times.

"Vassilyevna, get ready," Semyon called to her.

They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.

"A little while back they were building a school here in their Nizhneye
Gorodistche," said Semyon, turning round. "It was a wicked thing that
was done!"

"Why, what?"

"They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the school
guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five hundred."

"The whole school only cost a thousand. It's wrong to slander people,
grandfather. That's all nonsense."

"I don't know,... I only tell you what folks say."

But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress. The
peasants did not believe her. They always thought she received too large
a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five would have been enough), and
that of the money that she collected from the children for the firewood
and the watchman the greater part she kept for herself. The guardian
thought the same as the peasants, and he himself made a profit off
the firewood and received payments from the peasants for being a
guardian--without the knowledge of the authorities.

The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat, open
ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go now. They
had to cross the river and then the railway line, and then Vyazovye was
in sight.

"Where are you driving?" Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take the road
to the right to the bridge."

"Why, we can go this way as well. It's not deep enough to matter."

"Mind you don't drown the horse."

"What?"

"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing
the four horses far away to the right. "It is he, I think."

"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed fellow he
is. Lord have mercy upon us! He's driven over there, and what for? It's
fully two miles nearer this way."

They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream easily
crossed by wading. It usually dried up in August, but now, after the
spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth, rapid, muddy, and
cold; on the bank and right up to the water there were fresh tracks of
wheels, so it had been crossed here.

"Go on!" shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently at the
reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings. "Go on!"

The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but at
once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was aware of a
keen chilliness in her feet.

"Go on!" she, too, shouted, getting up. "Go on!"

They got out on the bank.

"Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!" muttered Semyon, setting
straight the harness. "It's a perfect plague with this Zemstvo...."

Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her dress
and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping: the sugar and
flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya Vassilyevna
could only clasp her hands in despair and say:

"Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are really!..."

The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming out
of the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting till
it should pass, and shivering all over with cold. Vyazovye was in sight
now, and the school with the green roof, and the church with its crosses
flashing in the evening sun: and the station windows flashed too, and
a pink smoke rose from the engine... and it seemed to her that
everything was trembling with cold.

Here was the train; the windows reflected the gleaming light like the
crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them. On the
little platform between two first-class carriages a lady was standing,
and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she passed. Her mother! What a
resemblance! Her mother had had just such luxuriant hair, just such a
brow and bend of the head. And with amazing distinctness, for the first
time in those thirteen years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture
of her mother, her father, her brother, their flat in Moscow, the
aquarium with little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard
the sound of the piano, her father's voice; she felt as she had been
then, young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room among her
own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her,
she pressed her hands to her temples in an ecstacy, and called softly,
beseechingly:

"Mother!"

And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant Hanov
drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she imagined
happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and nodded to him as
an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that her happiness, her
triumph, was glowing in the sky and on all sides, in the windows and on
the trees. Her father and mother had never died, she had never been a
schoolmistress, it was a long, tedious, strange dream, and now she had
awakened....

"Vassilyevna, get in!"

And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya
Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The
carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon followed
it. The signalman took off his cap.

"And here is Vyazovye. Here we are."




A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

A MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went one evening
to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and suggested that he
should go with them to S. Street. For a long time Vassilyev would not
consent to go, but in the end he put on his greatcoat and went with
them.

He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books, and
he had never in his life been in the houses in which they live. He
knew that there are immoral women who, under the pressure of fatal
circumstances--environment, bad education, poverty, and so on--are
forced to sell their honor for money. They know nothing of pure love,
have no children, have no civil rights; their mothers and sisters weep
over them as though they were dead, science treats of them as an evil,
men address them with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of
all that, they do not lose the semblance and image of God. They all
acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to
salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent. Society, it
is true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St.
Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other saints. When it had happened
to Vassilyev in the street to recognize a fallen woman as such, by her
dress or her manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper,
he always remembered a story he had once read: a young man, pure and
self-sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife;
she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.

Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of Tverskoy
Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two friends it was
about eleven o'clock. The first snow had not long fallen, and all nature
was under the spell of the fresh snow. There was the smell of snow in
the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth, the roofs,
the trees, the seats on the boulevard, everything was soft, white,
young, and this made the houses look quite different from the day
before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more
transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the
fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the
white, youthful, feathery snow. "Against my will an unknown force,"
hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these
mournful shores."

"Behold the mill..." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now...."

"Behold the mill... in ruins now," the medical student repeated,
raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.

He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and then
sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:

     "Here in old days when I was free,
     Love, free, unfettered, greeted me."

The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off their
greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before drinking the
second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his vodka, raised the
glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time, screwing up
his shortsighted eyes. The medical student did not understand his
expression, and said:

"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given us to
be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to be walked
upon. For one evening anyway live like a human being!"

"But I haven't said anything..." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am I
refusing to?"

There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with softened
feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them. In these strong,
healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything is, how
finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls! They sing,
and have a passion for the theatre, and draw, and talk a great deal,
and drink, and they don't have headaches the day after; they are both
poetical and debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be
indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are warm,
honest, self-sacrificing, and as men are in no way inferior to himself,
Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and every word he
uttered, who was fastidious and cautious, and ready to raise every
trifle to the level of a problem. And he longed for one evening to
live as his friends did, to open out, to let himself loose from his own
control. If vodka had to be drunk, he would drink it, though his head
would be splitting next morning. If he were taken to the women he would
go. He would laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances
of strangers in the street....

He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a
crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of artistic untidiness;
the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor, though he affected to
belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow, the pale street
lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the
passers-by. He liked the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive,
as it were virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the
year--when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on bright days
and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the river.

     "Against my will an unknown force,
     Has led me to these mournful shores,"

he hummed in an undertone.

And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the way,
and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time with one
another.

Vassilyev's imagination was picturing how, in another ten minutes, he
and his friends would knock at a door; how by little dark passages and
dark rooms they would steal in to the women; how, taking advantage of
the darkness, he would strike a match, would light up and see the
face of a martyr and a guilty smile. The unknown, fair or dark, would
certainly have her hair down and be wearing a white dressing-jacket; she
would be panic-stricken by the light, would be fearfully confused, and
would say: "For God's sake, what are you doing! Put it out!" It would
all be dreadful, but interesting and new.

II

The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and soon
reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by reputation. Seeing
two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors,
and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated
out from every door and mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen
orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was
surprised and said:

"What a lot of houses!"

"That's nothing," said the medical student. "In London there are ten
times as many. There are about a hundred thousand such women there."

The cabmen were sitting on their boxes as calmly and indifferently as
in any other side street; the same passers-by were walking along the
pavement as in other streets. No one was hurrying, no one was hiding his
face in his coat-collar, no one shook his head reproachfully.... And
in this indifference to the noisy chaos of pianos and violins, to the
bright windows and wide-open doors, there was a feeling of something
very open, insolent, reckless, and devil-may-care. Probably it was as
gay and noisy at the slave-markets in their day, and people's faces and
movements showed the same indifference.

"Let us begin from the beginning," said the artist.

The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a
reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with an
unshaven face like a flunkey's, and sleepy-looking eyes, got up lazily
from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelt like a laundry with an
odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall led into a brightly
lighted room. The medical student and the artist stopped at this door
and, craning their necks, peeped into the room.

"Buona sera, signori, rigolleto--hugenotti--traviata!" began the artist,
with a theatrical bow.

"Havanna--tarakano--pistoleto!" said the medical student, pressing his
cap to his breast and bowing low.

Vassilyev was standing behind them. He would have liked to make a
theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled, felt an
awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently for what would
happen next.

A little fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, in a short
light-blue frock with a bunch of white ribbon on her bosom, appeared in
the doorway.

"Why do you stand at the door?" she said. "Take off your coats and come
into the drawing-room."

The medical student and the artist, still talking Italian, went into the
drawing-room. Vassilyev followed them irresolutely.

"Gentlemen, take off your coats!" the flunkey said sternly; "you can't
go in like that."

In the drawing-room there was, besides the girl, another woman, very
stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was sitting near
the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap. She took no notice
whatever of the visitors.

"Where are the other young ladies?" asked the medical student.

"They are having their tea," said the fair girl. "Stepan," she called,
"go and tell the young ladies some students have come!"

A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was wearing
a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was painted thickly
and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her hair, and there was an
unblinking, frightened stare in her eyes. As she came in, she began
at once singing some song in a coarse, powerful contralto. After her a
fourth appeared, and after her a fifth....

In all this Vassilyev saw nothing new or interesting. It seemed to him
that that room, the piano, the looking-glass in its cheap gilt frame,
the bunch of white ribbon, the dress with the blue stripes, and the
blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and more than once. Of the
darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the guilty smile, of all that he had
expected to meet here and had dreaded, he saw no trace.

Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing
faintly stirred his curiosity--the terrible, as it were intentionally
designed, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd
pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch of ribbons. There was something
characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste.

"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is there in
all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite
him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being for a rouble?
I understand any sin for the sake of splendor, beauty, grace, passion,
taste; but what is there here? What is there here worth sinning for?
But... one mustn't think!"

"Beardy, treat me to some porter!" said the fair girl, addressing him.

Vassilyev was at once overcome with confusion.

"With pleasure," he said, bowing politely. "Only excuse me, madam,
I.... I won't drink with you. I don't drink."

Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.

"Why did you ask for porter?" said the medical student angrily. "What
a millionaire! You have thrown away six roubles for no reason
whatever--simply waste!"

"If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?" said Vassilyev,
justifying himself.

"You did not give pleasure to her, but to the 'Madam.' They are told
to ask the visitors to stand them treat because it is a profit to the
keeper."

"Behold the mill..." hummed the artist, "in ruins now...."

Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and did not
go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a figure in a
black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey's, got up from a sofa
in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at his face and his shabby black
coat, Vassilyev thought: "What must an ordinary simple Russian have gone
through before fate flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been
before and what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married?
Where was his mother, and did she know that he was a servant here?"
And Vassilyev could not help particularly noticing the flunkey in each
house. In one of the houses--he thought it was the fourth--there was a
little spare, frail-looking flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat.
He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went
in. Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man
with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness.
But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little
flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the
same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking
a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man's hair, to
see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog's.

III

Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly tipsy and
grew unnaturally lively.

"Let's go to another!" he said peremptorily, waving his hands. "I will
take you to the best one."

When he had brought his fri ends to the house which in his opinion was
the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a quadrille.
The medical student grumbled something about their having to pay
the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his _vis-a-vis_. They began
dancing.

It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst. Here there were
just the same looking-glasses and pictures, the same styles of coiffure
and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of the rooms and the
costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not lack of taste, but
something that might be called the taste, and even the style, of S.
Street, which could not be found elsewhere--something intentional in its
ugliness, not accidental, but elaborated in the course of years. After
he had been in eight houses he was no longer surprised at the color of
the dresses, at the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dresses,
and the thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to
be like this, that if a single one of the women had been dressed like a
human being, or if there had been one decent engraving on the wall, the
general tone of the whole street would have suffered.

"How unskillfully they sell themselves!" he thought. "How can they
fail to understand that vice is only alluring when it is beautiful and
hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale
faces, mournful smiles, and darkness would be far more effective than
this clumsy tawdriness. Stupid things! If they don't understand it of
themselves, their visitors might surely have taught them...."

A young lady in a Polish dress edged with white fur came up to him and
sat down beside him.

"You nice dark man, why aren't you dancing?" she asked. "Why are you so
dull?"

"Because it is dull."

"Treat me to some Lafitte. Then it won't be dull."

Vassilyev made no answer. He was silent for a little, and then asked:

"What time do you get to sleep?"

"At six o'clock."

"And what time do you get up?"

"Sometimes at two and sometimes at three."

"And what do you do when you get up?"

"We have coffee, and at six o'clock we have dinner."

"And what do you have for dinner?"

"Usually soup, beefsteak, and dessert. Our madam keeps the girls well.
But why do you ask all this?"

"Oh, just to talk...."

Vassilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things. He felt an
intense desire to find out where she came from, whether her parents were
living, and whether they knew that she was here; how she had come
into this house; whether she were cheerful and satisfied, or sad and
oppressed by gloomy thoughts; whether she hoped some day to get out of
her present position.... But he could not think how to begin or
in what shape to put his questions so as not to seem impertinent. He
thought for a long time, and asked:

"How old are you?"

"Eighty," the young lady jested, looking with a laugh at the antics of
the artist as he danced.

All at once she burst out laughing at something, and uttered a long
cynical sentence loud enough to be heard by everyone. Vassilyev was
aghast, and not knowing how to look, gave a constrained smile. He was
the only one who smiled; all the others, his friends, the musicians, the
women, did not even glance towards his neighbor, but seemed not to have
heard her.

"Stand me some Lafitte," his neighbor said again.

Vassilyev felt a repulsion for her white fur and for her voice, and
walked away from her. It seemed to him hot and stifling, and his heart
began throbbing slowly but violently, like a hammer--one! two! three!

"Let us go away!" he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve.

"Wait a little; let me finish."

While the artist and the medical student were finishing the quadrille,
to avoid looking at the women, Vassilyev scrutinized the musicians. A
respectable-looking old man in spectacles, rather like Marshal Bazaine,
was playing the piano; a young man with a fair beard, dressed in the
latest fashion, was playing the violin. The young man had a face that
did not look stupid nor exhausted, but intelligent, youthful, and fresh.
He was dressed fancifully and with taste; he played with feeling. It was
a mystery how he and the respectable-looking old man had come here. How
was it they were not ashamed to sit here? What were they thinking about
when they looked at the women?

If the violin and the piano had been played by men in rags, looking
hungry, gloomy, drunken, with dissipated or stupid faces, then one could
have understood their presence, perhaps. As it was, Vassilyev could not
understand it at all. He recalled the story of the fallen woman he had
once read, and he thought now that that human figure with the guilty
smile had nothing in common with what he was seeing now. It seemed to
him that he was seeing not fallen women, but some different world quite
apart, alien to him and incomprehensible; if he had seen this world
before on the stage, or read of it in a book, he would not have believed
in it....

The woman with the white fur burst out laughing again and uttered a
loathsome sentence in a loud voice. A feeling of disgust took possession
of him. He flushed crimson and went out of the room.

"Wait a minute, we are coming too!" the artist shouted to him.

IV

"While we were dancing," said the medical student, as they all three
went out into the street, "I had a conversation with my partner. We
talked about her first romance. He, the hero, was an accountant at
Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was seventeen, and she lived
with her papa and mamma, who sold soap and candles."

"How did he win her heart?" asked Vassilyev.

"By spending fifty roubles on underclothes for her. What next!"

"So he knew how to get his partner's story out of her," thought
Vassilyev about the medical student. "But I don't know how to."

"I say, I am going home!" he said.

"What for?"

"Because I don't know how to behave here. Besides, I am bored,
disgusted. What is there amusing in it? If they were human beings--but
they are savages and animals. I am going; do as you like."

"Come, Grisha, Grigory, darling..." said the artist in a tearful
voice, hugging Vassilyev, "come along! Let's go to one more together and
damnation take them!... Please do, Grisha!"

They persuaded Vassilyev and led him up a staircase. In the carpet and
the gilt banisters, in the porter who opened the door, and in the panels
that decorated the hall, the same S. Street style was apparent, but
carried to a greater perfection, more imposing.

"I really will go home!" said Vassilyev as he was taking off his coat.

"Come, come, dear boy," said the artist, and he kissed him on the neck.
"Don't be tiresome.... Gri-gri, be a good comrade! We came together,
we will go back together. What a beast you are, really!"

"I can wait for you in the street. I think it's loathsome, really!"

"Come, come, Grisha.... If it is loathsome, you can observe it! Do
you understand? You can observe!"

"One must take an objective view of things," said the medical student
gravely.

Vassilyev went into the drawing-room and sat down. There were a number
of visitors in the room besides him and his friends: two infantry
officers, a bald, gray-haired gentleman in spectacles, two beardless
youths from the institute of land-surveying, and a very tipsy man who
looked like an actor. All the young ladies were taken up with these
visitors and paid no attention to Vassilyev.

Only one of them, dressed _a la Aida,_ glanced sideways at him, smiled,
and said, yawning: "A dark one has come...."

Vassilyev's heart was throbbing and his face burned. He felt ashamed
before these visitors of his presence here, and he felt disgusted and
miserable. He was tormented by the thought that he, a decent and loving
man (such as he had hitherto considered himself), hated these women and
felt nothing but repulsion towards them. He felt pity neither for the
women nor the musicians nor the flunkeys.

"It is because I am not trying to understand them," he thought. "They
are all more like animals than human beings, but of course they are
human beings all the same, they have souls. One must understand them
and then judge...."

"Grisha, don't go, wait for us," the artist shouted to him and
disappeared.

The medical student disappeared soon after.

"Yes, one must make an effort to understand, one mustn't be like
this...." Vassilyev went on thinking.

And he began gazing at each of the women with strained attention,
looking for a guilty smile. But either he did not know how to read their
faces, or not one of these women felt herself to be guilty; he read on
every face nothing but a blank expression of everyday vulgar boredom and
complacency. Stupid faces, stupid smiles, harsh, stupid voices, insolent
movements, and nothing else. Apparently each of them had in the past a
romance with an accountant based on underclothes for fifty roubles, and
looked for no other charm in the present but coffee, a dinner of three
courses, wines, quadrilles, sleeping till two in the afternoon....

Finding no guilty smile, Vassilyev began to look whether there was not
one intelligent face. And his attention was caught by one pale, rather
sleepy, exhausted-looking face.... It was a dark woman, not very
young, wearing a dress covered with spangles; she was sitting in an
easy-chair, looking at the floor lost in thought. Vassilyev walked from
one corner of the room to the other, and, as though casually, sat down
beside her.

"I must begin with something trivial," he thought, "and pass to what is
serious...."

"What a pretty dress you have," and with his finger he touched the gold
fringe of her fichu.

"Oh, is it?..." said the dark woman listlessly.

"What province do you come from?"

"I? From a distance.... From Tchernigov."

"A fine province. It's nice there."

"Any place seems nice when one is not in it."

"It's a pity I cannot describe nature," thought Vassilyev. "I might
touch her by a description of nature in Tchernigov. No doubt she loves
the place if she has been born there."

"Are you dull here?" he asked.

"Of course I am dull."

"Why don't you go away from here if you are dull?"

"Where should I go to? Go begging or what?"

"Begging would be easier than living here."

"How do you know that? Have you begged?"

"Yes, when I hadn't the money to study. Even if I hadn't anyone could
understand that. A beggar is anyway a free man, and you are a slave."

The dark woman stretched, and watched with sleepy eyes the footman who
was bringing a trayful of glasses and seltzer water.

"Stand me a glass of porter," she said, and yawned again.

"Porter," thought Vassilyev. "And what if your brother or mother walked
in at this moment? What would you say? And what would they say? There
would be porter then, I imagine...."

All at once there was the sound of weeping. From the adjoining room,
from which the footman had brought the seltzer water, a fair man with
a red face and angry eyes ran in quickly. He was followed by the tall,
stout "madam," who was shouting in a shrill voice:

"Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have
visitors better than you, and they don't fight! Impostor!"

A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the next
room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as though of
someone insulted. And he realized that there were real people living
here who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept,
and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way
to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed
into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a
marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears,
stretched out his hands towards that face, took a step towards the
table, but at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk.

As he made his way though the noisy crowd gathered about the fair man,
his heart sank and he felt frightened like a child; and it seemed to him
that in this alien, incomprehensible world people wanted to pursue him,
to beat him, to pelt him with filthy words.... He tore down his coat
from the hatstand and ran headlong downstairs.

V

Leaning against the fence, he stood near the house waiting for his
friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and violins, gay,
reckless, insolent, and mournful, mingled in the air in a sort of chaos,
and this tangle of sounds seemed again like an unseen orchestra tuning
up on the roofs. If one looked upwards into the darkness, the black
background was all spangled with white, moving spots: it was snow
falling. As the snowflakes came into the light they floated round lazily
in the air like down, and still more lazily fell to the ground. The
snowflakes whirled thickly round Vassilyev and hung upon his beard,
his eyelashes, his eyebrows.... The cabmen, the horses, and the
passers-by were white.

"And how can the snow fall in this street!" thought Vassilyev.
"Damnation take these houses!"

His legs seemed to be giving way from fatigue, simply from having run
down the stairs; he gasped for breath as though he had been climbing
uphill, his heart beat so loudly that he could hear it. He was consumed
by a desire to get out of the street as quickly as possible and to go
home, but even stronger was his desire to wait for his companions and
vent upon them his oppressive feeling.

There was much he did not understand in these houses, the souls of
ruined women were a mystery to him as before; but it was clear to him
that the thing was far worse than could have been believed. If that
sinful woman who had poisoned herself was called fallen, it was
difficult to find a fitting name for all these who were dancing now to
this tangle of sound and uttering long, loathsome sentences. They were
not on the road to ruin, but ruined.

"There is vice," he thought, "but neither consciousness of sin nor
hope of salvation. They are sold and bought, steeped in wine and
abominations, while they, like sheep, are stupid, indifferent, and don't
understand. My God! My God!"

It was clear to him, too, that everything that is called human dignity,
personal rights, the Divine image and semblance, were defiled to their
very foundations--"to the very marrow," as drunkards say--and that not
only the street and the stupid women were responsible for it.

A group of students, white with snow, passed him laughing and talking
gaily; one, a tall thin fellow, stopped, glanced into Vassilyev's face,
and said in a drunken voice:

"One of us! A bit on, old man? Aha-ha! Never mind, have a good time!
Don't be down-hearted, old chap!"

He took Vassilyev by the shoulder and pressed his cold wet mustache
against his cheek, then he slipped, staggered, and, waving both hands,
cried:

"Hold on! Don't upset!"

And laughing, he ran to overtake his companions.

Through the noise came the sound of the artist's voice:

"Don't you dare to hit the women! I won't let you, damnation take you!
You scoundrels!"

The medical student appeared in the doorway. He looked from side to
side, and seeing Vassilyev, said in an agitated voice:

"You here! I tell you it's really impossible to go anywhere with Yegor!
What a fellow he is! I don't understand him! He has got up a scene! Do
you hear? Yegor!" he shouted at the door. "Yegor!"

"I won't allow you to hit women!" the artist's piercing voice sounded
from above. Something heavy and lumbering rolled down the stairs. It was
the artist falling headlong. Evidently he had been pushed downstairs.

He picked himself up from the ground, shook his hat, and, with an angry
and indignant face, brandished his fist towards the top of the stairs
and shouted:

"Scoundrels! Torturers! Bloodsuckers! I won't allow you to hit them! To
hit a weak, drunken woman! Oh, you brutes!..."

"Yegor!... Come, Yegor!..." the medical student began imploring
him. "I give you my word of honor I'll never come with you again. On my
word of honor I won't!"

Little by little the artist was pacified and the friends went homewards.

"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student, "has led
me to these mournful shores."

"Behold t he mill," the artist chimed in a little later, "in ruins now.
What a lot of snow, Holy Mother! Grisha, why did you go? You are a funk,
a regular old woman."

Vassilyev walked behind his companions, looked at their backs, and
thought:

"One of two things: either we only fancy prostitution is an evil, and
we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an evil as is
generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as much slaveowners,
violators, and murderers, as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo, that
are described in the 'Neva.' Now they are singing, laughing, talking
sense, but haven't they just been exploiting hunger, ignorance, and
stupidity? They have--I have been a witness of it. What is the use of
their humanity, their medicine, their painting? The science, art, and
lofty sentiments of these soul-destroyers remind me of the piece of
bacon in the story. Two brigands murdered a beggar in a forest; they
began sharing his clothes between them, and found in his wallet a piece
of bacon. 'Well found,' said one of them, 'let us have a bit.' 'What do
you mean? How can you?' cried the other in horror. 'Have you forgotten
that to-day is Wednesday?' And they would not eat it. After murdering a
man, they came out of the forest in the firm conviction that they were
keeping the fast. In the same way these men, after buying women, go
their way imagining that they are artists and men of science...."

"Listen!" he said sharply and angrily. "Why do you come here? Is it
possible--is it possible you don't understand how horrible it is? Your
medical books tell you that every one of these women dies prematurely of
consumption or something; art tells you that morally they are dead even
earlier. Every one of them dies because she has in her time to entertain
five hundred men on an average, let us say. Each one of them is killed
by five hundred men. You are among those five hundred! If each of you in
the course of your lives visits this place or others like it two hundred
and fifty times, it follows that one woman is killed for every two of
you! Can't you understand that? Isn't it horrible to murder, two of you,
three of you, five of you, a foolish, hungry woman! Ah! isn't it awful,
my God!"

"I knew it would end like that," the artist said frowning. "We ought not
to have gone with this fool and ass! You imagine you have grand notions
in your head now, ideas, don't you? No, it's the devil knows what, but
not ideas. You are looking at me now with hatred and repulsion, but I
tell you it's better you should set up twenty more houses like those
than look like that. There's more vice in your expression than in the
whole street! Come along, Volodya, let him go to the devil! He's a fool
and an ass, and that's all...."

"We human beings do murder each other," said the medical student. "It's
immoral, of course, but philosophizing doesn't help it. Good-by!"

At Trubnoy Square the friends said good-by and parted. When he was left
alone, Vassilyev strode rapidly along the boulevard. He felt frightened
of the darkness, of the snow which was falling in heavy flakes on the
ground, and seemed as though it would cover up the whole world; he
felt frightened of the street lamps shining with pale light through
the clouds of snow. His soul was possessed by an unaccountable,
faint-hearted terror. Passers-by came towards him from time to time,
but he timidly moved to one side; it seemed to him that women, none but
women, were coming from all sides and staring at him....

"It's beginning," he thought, "I am going to have a breakdown."

VI

At home he lay on his bed and said, shuddering all over: "They are
alive! Alive! My God, those women are alive!"

He encouraged his imagination in all sorts of ways to picture himself
the brother of a fallen woman, or her father; then a fallen woman
herself, with her painted cheeks; and it all moved him to horror.

It seemed to him that he must settle the question at once at all costs,
and that this question was not one that did not concern him, but was his
own personal problem. He made an immense effort, repressed his despair,
and, sitting on the bed, holding his head in his hands, began thinking
how one could save all the women he had seen that day. The method for
attacking problems of all kinds was, as he was an educated man, well
known to him. And, however excited he was, he strictly adhered to that
method. He recalled the history of the problem and its literature, and
for a quarter of an hour he paced from one end of the room to the other
trying to remember all the methods practiced at the present time for
saving women. He had very many good friends and acquaintances who lived
in lodgings in Petersburg.... Among them were a good many honest and
self-sacrificing men. Some of them had attempted to save women....

"All these not very numerous attempts," thought Vassilyev, "can be
divided into three groups. Some, after buying the woman out of the
brothel, took a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine, and she
became a semptress. And whether he wanted to or not, after having bought
her out he made her his mistress; then when he had taken his degree, he
went away and handed her into the keeping of some other decent man as
though she were a thing. And the fallen woman remained a fallen woman.
Others, after buying her out, took a lodging apart for her, bought the
inevitable sewing-machine, and tried teaching her to read, preaching at
her and giving her books. The woman lived and sewed as long as it was
interesting and a novelty to her, then getting bored, began receiving
men on the sly, or ran away and went back where she could sleep till
three o'clock, drink coffee, and have good dinners. The third class, the
most ardent and self-sacrificing, had taken a bold, resolute step.
They had married them. And when the insolent and spoilt, or stupid and
crushed animal became a wife, the head of a household, and afterwards a
mother, it turned her whole existence and attitude to life upside down,
so that it was hard to recognize the fallen woman afterwards in the wife
and the mother. Yes, marriage was the best and perhaps the only means."

"But it is impossible!" Vassilyev said aloud, and he sank upon his bed.
"I, to begin with, could not marry one! To do that one must be a saint
and be unable to feel hatred or repulsion. But supposing that I,
the medical student, and the artist mastered ourselves and did marry
them--suppose they were all married. What would be the result? The
result would be that while here in Moscow they were being married, some
Smolensk accountant would be debauching another lot, and that lot would
be streaming here to fill the vacant places, together with others from
Saratov, Nizhni-Novgorod, Warsaw.... And what is one to do with the
hundred thousand in London? What's one to do with those in Hamburg?"

The lamp in which the oil had burnt down began to smoke. Vassilyev did
not notice it. He began pacing to and fro again, still thinking. Now he
put the question differently: what must be done that fallen women should
not be needed? For that, it was essential that the men who buy them
and do them to death should feel all the immorality of their share in
enslaving them and should be horrified. One must save the men.

"One won't do anything by art and science, that is clear..." thought
Vassilyev. "The only way out of it is missionary work."

And he began to dream how he would the next evening stand at the corner
of the street and say to every passer-by: "Where are you going and what
for? Have some fear of God!"

He would turn to the apathetic cabmen and say to them: "Why are you
staying here? Why aren't you revolted? Why aren't you indignant? I
suppose you believe in God and know that it is a sin, that people go to
hell for it? Why don't you speak? It is true that they are strangers
to you, but you know even they have fathers, brothers like
yourselves...."

One of Vassilyev's friends had once said of him that he was a talented
man. There are all sorts of talents--talent for writing, talent for
the stage, talent for art; but he had a peculiar talent--a talent for
_humanity_. He possessed an extraordinarily fine delicate scent for pain
in general. As a good actor reflects in himself the movements and voice
of others, so Vassilyev could reflect in his soul the sufferings of
others. When he saw tears, he wept; beside a sick man, he felt sick
himself and moaned; if he saw an act of violence, he felt as though he
himself were the victim of it, he was frightened as a child, and in his
fright ran to help. The pain of others worked on his nerves, excited
him, roused him to a state of frenzy, and so on.

Whether this friend were right I don't know, but what Vassilyev
experienced when he thought this question was settled was something like
inspiration. He cried and laughed, spoke aloud the words that he should
say next day, felt a fervent love for those who would listen to him and
would stand beside him at the corner of the street to preach; he sat
down to write letters, made vows to himself....

All this was like inspiration also from the fact that it did not last
long. Vassilyev was soon tired. The cases in London, in Hamburg, in
Warsaw, weighed upon him by their mass as a mountain weighs upon the
earth; he felt dispirited, bewildered, in the face of this mass; he
remembered that he had not a gift for words, that he was cowardly
and timid, that indifferent people would not be willing to listen
and understand him, a law student in his third year, a timid and
insignificant person; that genuine missionary work included not only
teaching but deeds...


When it was daylight and carriages were already beginning to rumble in
the street, Vassilyev was lying motionless on the sofa, staring into
space. He was no longer thinking of the women, nor of the men, nor of
missionary work. His whole attention was turned upon the spiritual agony
which was torturing him. It was a dull, vague, undefined anguish akin to
misery, to an extreme form of terror and to despair. He could point
to the place where the pain was, in his breast under his heart; but
he could not compare it with anything. In the past he had had acute
toothache, he had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was
insignificant compared with this spiritual anguish. In the presence of
that pain life seemed loathsome. The dissertation, the excellent work
he had written already, the people he loved, the salvation of fallen
women--everything that only the day before he had cared about or been
indifferent to, now when he thought of them irritated him in the same
way as the noise of the carriages, the scurrying footsteps of the
waiters in the passage, the daylight.... If at that moment someone
had performed a great deed of mercy or had committed a revolting
outrage, he would have felt the same repulsion for both actions. Of all
the thoughts that strayed through his mind only two did not irritate
him: one was that at every moment he had the power to kill himself, the
other that this agony would not last more than three days. This last he
knew by experience.

After lying for a while he got up and, wringing his hands, walked about
the room, not as usual from corner to corner, but round the room beside
the walls. As he passed he glanced at himself in the looking-glass. His
face looked pale and sunken, his temples looked hollow, his eyes were
bigger, darker, more staring, as though they belonged to someone else,
and they had an expression of insufferable mental agony.

At midday the artist knocked at the door.

"Grigory, are you at home?" he asked.

Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered
himself in Little Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone to the
University."

And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting his head
under the pillow, began crying with agony, and the more freely his tears
flowed the more terrible his mental anguish became. As it began to get
dark, he thought of the agonizing night awaiting him, and was overcome
by a horrible despair. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, and,
leaving his door wide open, for no object or reason, went out into the
street. Without asking himself where he should go, he walked quickly
along Sadovoy Street.

Snow was falling as heavily as the day before; it was thawing. Thrusting
his hands into his sleeves, shuddering and frightened at the noises,
at the trambells, and at the passers-by, Vassilyev walked along Sadovoy
Street as far as Suharev Tower; then to the Red Gate; from there he
turned off to Basmannya Street. He went into a tavern and drank off
a big glass of vodka, but that did not make him feel better. When he
reached Razgulya he turned to the right, and strode along side streets
in which he had never been before in his life. He reached the old bridge
by which the Yauza runs gurgling, and from which one can see long rows
of lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To distract his spiritual
anguish by some new sensation or some other pain, Vassilyev, not knowing
what to do, crying and shuddering, undid his greatcoat and jacket and
exposed his bare chest to the wet snow and the wind. But that did not
lessen his suffering either. Then he bent down over the rail of the
bridge and looked down into the black, yeasty Yauza, and he longed to
plunge down head foremost; not from loathing for life, not for the sake
of suicide, but in order to bruise himself at least, and by one pain to
ease the other. But the black water, the darkness, the deserted banks
covered with snow were terrifying. He shivered and walked on. He walked
up and down by the Red Barracks, then turned back and went down to a
copse, from the copse back to the bridge again.

"No, home, home!" he thought. "At home I believe it's better..."

And he went back. When he reached home he pulled off his wet coat and
cap, began pacing round the room, and went on pacing round and round
without stopping till morning.

VII

When next morning the artist and the medical student went in to him,
he was moving about the room with his shirt torn, biting his hands and
moaning with pain.

"For God's sake!" he sobbed when he saw his friends, "take me where you
please, do what you can; but for God's sake, save me quickly! I shall
kill myself!"

The artist turned pale and was helpless. The medical student, too,
almost shed tears, but considering that doctors ought to be cool and
composed in every emergency said coldly:

"It's a nervous breakdown. But it's nothing. Let us go at once to the
doctor."

"Wherever you like, only for God's sake, make haste!"

"Don't excite yourself. You must try and control yourself."

The artist and the medical student with trembling hands put Vassilyev's
coat and hat on and led him out into the street.

"Mihail Sergeyitch has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long
time," the medical student said on the way. "He is a very nice man and
thoroughly good at his work. He took his degree in 1882, and he has
an immense practice already. He treats students as though he were one
himself."

"Make haste, make haste!..." Vassilyev urged.

Mihail Sergeyitch, a stout, fair-haired doctor, received the friends
with politeness and frigid dignity, and smiled only on one side of his
face.

"Rybnikov and Mayer have spoken to me of your illness already," he said.
"Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, I beg...."

He made Vassilyev sit down in a big armchair near the table, and moved a
box of cigarettes towards him.

"Now then!" he began, stroking his knees. "Let us get to work.... How
old are you?"

He asked questions and the medical student answered them. He asked
whether Vassilyev's father had suffered from certain special diseases,
whether he drank to excess, whether he were remarkable for cruelty or
any peculiarities. He made similar inquiries about his grandfather,
mother, sisters, and brothers. On learning that his mother had a
beautiful voice and sometimes acted on the stage, he grew more animated
at once, and asked:

"Excuse me, but don't you remember, perhaps, your mother had a passion
for the stage?"

Twenty minutes passed. Vassilyev was annoyed by the way the docto r kept
stroking his knees and talking of the same thing.

"So far as I understand your questions, doctor," he said, "you want to
know whether my illness is hereditary or not. It is not."

The doctor proceeded to ask Vassilyev whether he had had any secret
vices as a boy, or had received injuries to his head; whether he had had
any aberrations, any peculiarities, or exceptional propensities. Half
the questions usually asked by doctors of their patients can be left
unanswered without the slightest ill effect on the health, but Mihail
Sergeyitch, the medical student, and the artist all looked as though
if Vassilyev failed to answer one question all would be lost. As he
received answers, the doctor for some reason noted them down on a slip
of paper. On learning that Vassilyev had taken his degree in natural
science, and was now studying law, the doctor pondered.

"He wrote a first-rate piece of original work last year,..." said the
medical student.

"I beg your pardon, but don't interrupt me; you prevent me from
concentrating," said the doctor, and he smiled on one side of his
face. "Though, of course, that does enter into the diagnosis. Intense
intellectual work, nervous exhaustion.... Yes, yes.... And do you
drink vodka?" he said, addressing Vassilyev.

"Very rarely."

Another twenty minutes passed. The medical student began telling the
doctor in a low voice his opinion as to the immediate cause of
the attack, and described how the day before yesterday the artist,
Vassilyev, and he had visited S. Street.

The indifferent, reserved, and frigid tone in which his friends and the
doctor spoke of the women and that miserable street struck Vassilyev as
strange in the extreme....

"Doctor, tell me one thing only," he said, controlling himself so as not
to speak rudely. "Is prostitution an evil or not?"

"My dear fellow, who disputes it?" said the doctor, with an expression
that suggested that he had settled all such questions for himself long
ago. "Who disputes it?"

"You are a mental doctor, aren't you?" Vassilyev asked curtly.

"Yes, a mental doctor."

"Perhaps all of you are right!" said Vassilyev, getting up and beginning
to walk from one end of the room to the other. "Perhaps! But it all
seems marvelous to me! That I should have taken my degree in two
faculties you look upon as a great achievement; because I have written
a work which in three years will be thrown aside and forgotten, I am
praised up to the skies; but because I cannot speak of fallen women as
unconcernedly as of these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am
called mad, I am pitied!"

Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for
himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two days
before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank into a chair.

His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with the
air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of feeling
himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev and, without
a word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then, when he was calmer,
undressed him and began to investigate the degree of sensibility of the
skin, the reflex action of the knees, and so on.

And Vassilyev felt easier. When he came out from the doctor's he
was beginning to feel ashamed; the rattle of the carriages no longer
irritated him, and the load at his heart grew lighter and lighter as
though it were melting away. He had two prescriptions in his hand:
one was for bromide, one was for morphia.... He had taken all these
remedies before.

In the street he stood still and, saying good-by to his friends, dragged
himself languidly to the University.




MISERY

"To whom shall I tell my grief?"

THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily
about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a
thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov,
the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without
stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular
snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it
necessary to shake it off.... His little mare is white and motionless
too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like
straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread
horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away
from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this
slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying
people, is bound to think.

It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came out of
the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But now the shades
of evening are falling on the town. The pale light of the street lamps
changes to a vivid color, and the bustle of the street grows noisier.

"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"

Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in
a military overcoat with a hood over his head.

"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!"

In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of
snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into
the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like
a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes
his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and
hesitatingly sets of....

"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts from
the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the devil are you
going? Keep to the r-right!"

"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the officer
angrily.

A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing
the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him
angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as
though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes
about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why
he was there.

"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are simply
doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet.
They must be doing it on purpose."

Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips.... Apparently he means to
say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.

"What?" inquires the officer.

Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily:
"My son... er... my son died this week, sir."

"H'm! What did he die of?"

Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:

"Who can tell! It must have been from fever.... He lay three days in
the hospital and then he died.... God's will."

"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you gone
cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"

"Drive on! drive on!..." says the officer. "We shan't get there till
to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"

The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with
heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at the
officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently
disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops
by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.... Again
the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour passes, and then
another....

Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up,
railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their
goloshes.

"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked voice.
"The three of us,... twenty kopecks!"

Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a
fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is a rouble or
whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now so long as he
has a fare.... The three young men, shoving each other and using bad
language, go up to the sledge, and all three try to sit down at once.
The question remains to be settled: Which are to sit down and which one
is to stand? After a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they
come to the conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the
shortest.

"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling
himself and breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What a cap you've
got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all Petersburg...."

"He-he!... he-he!..." laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast of!"

"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like
this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?"

"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs' yesterday
Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us."

"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall one
angrily. "You lie like a brute."

"Strike me dead, it's the truth!..."

"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."

"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"

"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly. "Will you
get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her
one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her well."

Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of
the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the
feeling of loneliness begins little by little to be less heavy on his
heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some elaborately
whimsical string of epithets and is overpowered by his cough. His tall
companions begin talking of a certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks
round at them. Waiting till there is a brief pause, he looks round once
more and says:

"This week... er... my... er... son died!"

"We shall all die,..." says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping his
lips after coughing. "Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I simply
cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us there?"

"Well, you give him a little encouragement... one in the neck!"

"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands on
ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you hear, you
old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say?"

And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.

"He-he!..." he laughs. "Merry gentlemen.... God give you
health!"

"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.

"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the damp
earth.... He-ho-ho!.... The grave that is!... Here my son's dead
and I am alive.... It's a strange thing, death has come in at the
wrong door.... Instead of coming for me it went for my son...."

And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that point
the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank God! they
have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks, Iona gazes for a
long while after the revelers, who disappear into a dark entry. Again he
is alone and again there is silence for him.... The misery which has
been for a brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more
cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes
stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the
street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen
to him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery.... His
misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and
his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but
yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant
shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....

Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to address
him.

"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.

"Going on for ten.... Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"

Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives himself
up to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to people. But before
five minutes have passed he draws himself up, shakes his head as though
he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the reins.... He can bear it no
longer.

"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"

And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to trotting.
An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty stove. On the
stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people snoring. The air
is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at the sleeping figures,
scratches himself, and regrets that he has come home so early....

"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks. "That's
why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his work,... who has
had enough to eat, and whose horse has had enough to eat, is always at
ease...."

In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat
sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.

"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.

"Seems so."

"May it do you good.... But my son is dead, mate.... Do you hear?
This week in the hospital.... It's a queer business...."

Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees nothing.
The young man has covered his head over and is already asleep. The old
man sighs and scratches himself.... Just as the young man had been
thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech. His son will soon have been
dead a week, and he has not really talked to anybody yet.... He
wants to talk of it properly, with deliberation.... He wants to tell
how his son was taken ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died,
how he died.... He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to
the hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter Anisya
in the country.... And he wants to talk about her too.... Yes, he
has plenty to talk about now. His listener ought to sigh and exclaim and
lament.... It would be even better to talk to women. Though they are
silly creatures, they blubber at the first word.

"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There is
always time for sleep.... You'll have sleep enough, no fear...."

He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is
standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather.... He
cannot think about his son when he is alone.... To talk about
him with someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is
insufferable anguish....

"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes. "There,
munch away, munch away.... Since we have not earned enough for oats,
we will eat hay.... Yes,... I have grown too old to drive....
My son ought to be driving, not I.... He was a real cabman.... He
ought to have lived...."

Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:

"That's how it is, old girl.... Kuzma Ionitch is gone.... He said
good-by to me.... He went and died for no reason.... Now, suppose
you had a little colt, and you were own mother to that little colt.
... And all at once that same little colt went and died.... You'd
be sorry, wouldn't you?..."

The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's hands.
Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.




CHAMPAGNE

A WAYFARER'S STORY

IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little station on
one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay or a dull life
at the station you can judge from the fact that for fifteen miles
round there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent
tavern; and in those days I was young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and
foolish. The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows
of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged
with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's
head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without
breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost
invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka
till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours
and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the
effect of a deserted Tatar cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its
solemn calm, the monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent
moonlight from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless
melancholy; and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the
steppe, its cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me
like a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the
station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three
watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go
for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving
his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary. I had
no children, no cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and
I could only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than
once a month.

I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table, chewed
lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously tapping on his
apparatus in the next room. I had already drunk five glasses of
drugged vodka, and, propping my heavy head on my fist, thought of my
overpowering boredom from which there was no escape, while my wife sat
beside me and did not take her eyes off me. She looked at me as no
one can look but a woman who has nothing in this world but a handsome
husband. She loved me madly, slavishly, and not merely my good looks,
or my soul, but my sins, my ill-humor and boredom, and even my cruelty
when, in drunken fury, not knowing how to vent my ill-humor, I tormented
her with reproaches.

In spite of the boredom which was consuming me, we were preparing to see
the New Year in with exceptional festiveness, and were awaiting midnight
with some impatience. The fact is, we had in reserve two bottles of
champagne, the real thing, with the label of Veuve Clicquot; this
treasure I had won the previous autumn in a bet with the station-master
of D. when I was drinking with him at a christening. It sometimes
happens during a lesson in mathematics, when the very air is still with
boredom, a butterfly flutters into the class-room; the boys toss their
heads and begin watching its flight with interest, as though they saw
before them not a butterfly but something new and strange; in the same
way ordinary champagne, chancing to come into our dreary station,
roused us. We sat in silence looking alternately at the clock and at the
bottles.

When the hands pointed to five minutes to twelve I slowly began
uncorking a bottle. I don't know whether I was affected by the vodka,
or whether the bottle was wet, but all I remember is that when the cork
flew up to the ceiling with a bang, my bottle slipped out of my hands
and fell on the floor. Not more than a glass of the wine was spilt, as I
managed to catch the bottle and put my thumb over the foaming neck.

"Well, may the New Year bring you happiness!" I said, filling two
glasses. "Drink!"

My wife took her glass and fixed her frightened eyes on me. Her face was
pale and wore a look of horror.

"Did you drop the bottle?" she asked.

"Yes. But what of that?"

"It's unlucky," she said, putting down her glass and turning paler
still. "It's a bad omen. It means that some misfortune will happen to us
this year."

"What a silly thing you are," I sighed. "You are a clever woman, and yet
you talk as much nonsense as an old nurse. Drink."

"God grant it is nonsense, but... something is sure to happen! You'll
see."

She did not even sip her glass, she moved away and sank into thought.
I uttered a few stale commonplaces about superstition, drank half a
bottle, paced up and down, and then went out of the room.

Outside there was the still frosty night in all its cold, inhospitable
beauty. The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside it hung just over
the station, motionless as though glued to the spot, and looked as
though waiting for something. A faint transparent light came from them
and touched the white earth softly, as though afraid of wounding
her modesty, and lighted up everything--the snowdrifts, the
embankment.... It was still.

I walked along the railway embankment.

"Silly woman," I thought, looking at the sky spangled with brilliant
stars. "Even if one admits that omens sometimes tell the truth, what
evil can happen to us? The misfortunes we have endured already, and
which are facing us now, are so great that it is difficult to imagine
anything worse. What further harm can you do a fish which has been
caught and fried and served up with sauce?"

A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a
giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and dejectedly, as
though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking
at it.

"My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette end,"
I went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little child; I was
expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble family, but I have
received neither education nor breeding, and I have no more knowledge
than the humblest mechanic. I have no refuge, no relations, no friends,
no work I like. I am not fitted for anything, and in the prime of my
powers I am good for nothing but to be stuffed into this little station;
I have known nothing but trouble and failure all my life. What can
happen worse?"

Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving towards
me. The slumbering steppe listened to the sound of it. My thoughts were
so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking aloud and that the
moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble of the train were expressing
my thoughts.

"What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?" I wondered. "Even that is
not terrible. It's no good hiding it from my conscience: I don't love my
wife. I married her when I was only a wretched boy; now I am young and
vigorous, and she has gone off and grown older and sillier, stuffed from
her head to her heels with conventional ideas. What charm is there in
her maudlin love, in her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put
up with her, but I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being
wasted, as the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my
eyes only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never had
and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are going to
ruin.... Everything is being thrown away like dirt, and all my wealth
here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."

The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the glow
of its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights of the
station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After walking a mile
and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful
as it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts
still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not
very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable
affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth
in what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and
conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant in my question:
"What could happen worse?"

"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have endured
everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get reprimanded by my
superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad wolf has run into the
station yard. What more is there? I have been insulted, humiliated,...
and I have insulted others in my time. I have not been a criminal,
it is true, but I don't think I am capable of crime--I am not afraid of
being hauled up for it."

The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a little
distance, looking as though they were whispering about something which
the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing across the steppe,
bringing the faint rumble of the retreating train.

My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and her
whole face was beaming with good-humor.

"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your room and
put on your new coat; we have a visitor."

"What visitor?"

"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."

"What Natalya Petrovna?"

"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She is a
very nice, good woman."

Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered rapidly:

"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross, Nikolay, and
don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know; Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch
really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it is difficult to live with him.
She says she will only stay three days with us, only till she gets a
letter from her brother."

My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her despotic
uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of young wives in
particular; about its being our duty to give shelter to all, even great
sinners, and so on. Unable to make head or tail of it, I put on my new
coat and went to make acquaintance with my "aunt."

A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My table,
the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the tiniest grain of
dust seemed to have grown younger and more cheerful in the presence
of this new, young, beautiful, and dissolute creature, who had a most
subtle perfume about her. And that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue
I could see from her smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in
which she glanced and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in
which she talked with my wife--a respectable woman. There was no need to
tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was old and
despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it all in at
the first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man in
all Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a woman of a certain
temperament.

"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding out her
hand to me and smiling.

"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.

Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the second
bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp, and when my
wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did not scruple to drain
a full glass. I was drunk both with the wine and with the presence of a
woman. Do you remember the song?

     "Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion,
     Eyes burning bright and beautiful,
     How I love you,
     How I fear you!"

I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how love
begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in
the words of the same silly song:

     "It was an evil hour
     When first I met you."

Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful,
frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a feather. It lasted
a long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt
herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has
flung me, as you see, into this dark street.

Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?




AFTER THE THEATRE

NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre where
she had seen a performance of "Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as she reached
her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her
petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to
write a letter like Tatyana's.

"I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love me!"

She wrote it and laughed.

She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that an
officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her, but now
after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love. To be unloved
and unhappy--how interesting that was. There is something beautiful,
touching, and poetical about it when one loves and the other is
indifferent. Onyegin was interesting because he was not in love at all,
and Tatyana was fascinating because she was so much in love; but if they
had been equally in love with each other and had been happy, they would
perhaps have seemed dull.

"Leave off declaring that you love me," Nadya went on writing, thinking
of Gorny. "I cannot believe it. You are very clever, cultivated,
serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a brilliant future awaits
you, while I am an uninteresting girl of no importance, and you know
very well that I should be only a hindrance in your life. It is true
that you were attracted by me and thought you had found your ideal in
me, but that was a mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair:
'Why did I meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you
from owning it to yourself...."

Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:

"It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should take a
nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you would be left free
and would love another. Oh, if I were dead!"

She could not make out what she had written through her tears; little
rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the ceiling, as
though she were looking through a prism. She could not write, she sank
back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking of Gorny.

My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled the
fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came into the
officer's face when one argued about music with him, and the effort he
made to prevent his voice from betraying his passion. In a society where
cold haughtiness and indifference are regarded as signs of good breeding
and gentlemanly bearing, one must conceal one's passions. And he did
try to conceal them, but he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well
that he had a passionate love of music. The endless discussions about
music and the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept
him always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He
played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and if he
had not been in the army he would certainly have been a famous musician.

The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had declared
his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by the hatstand
where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all directions.

"I am very glad that you have at last made the acquaintance of Gruzdev,
our student friend," she went on writing. "He is a very clever man, and
you will be sure to like him. He came to see us yesterday and stayed
till two o'clock. We were all delighted with him, and I regretted that
you had not come. He said a great deal that was remarkable."

Nadya laid her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, and her
hair covered the letter. She recalled that the student, too, loved her,
and that he had as much right to a letter from her as Gorny. Wouldn't it
be better after all to write to Gruzdev? There was a stir of joy in her
bosom for no reason whatever; at first the joy was small, and rolled
in her bosom like an india-rubber ball; then it became more massive,
bigger, and rushed like a wave. Nadya forgot Gorny and Gruzdev; her
thoughts were in a tangle and her joy grew and grew; from her bosom it
passed into her arms and legs, and it seemed as though a light, cool
breeze were breathing on her head and ruffling her hair. Her shoulders
quivered with subdued laughter, the table and the lamp chimney shook,
too, and tears from her eyes splashed on the letter. She could not
stop laughing, and to prove to herself that she was not laughing about
nothing she made haste to think of something funny.

"What a funny poodle," she said, feeling as though she would choke with
laughter. "What a funny poodle!"

She thought how, after tea the evening before, Gruzdev had played with
Maxim the poodle, and afterwards had told them about a very intelligent
poodle who had run after a crow in the yard, and the crow had looked
round at him and said: "Oh, you scamp!"

The poodle, not knowing he had to do with a learned crow, was fearfully
confused and retreated in perplexity, then began barking....

"No, I had better love Gruzdev," Nadya decided, and she tore up the
letter to Gorny.

She fell to thinking of the student, of his love, of her love; but the
thoughts in her head insisted on flowing in all directions, and she
thought about everything--about her mother, about the street, about the
pencil, about the piano.... She thought of them joyfully, and felt
that everything was good, splendid, and her joy told her that this was
not all, that in a little while it would be better still. Soon it would
be spring, summer, going with her mother to Gorbiki. Gorny would come
for his furlough, would walk about the garden with her and make love
to her. Gruzdev would come too. He would play croquet and skittles with
her, and would tell her wonderful things. She had a passionate longing
for the garden, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars. Again her
shoulders shook with laughter, and it seemed to her that there was a
scent of wormwood in the room and that a twig was tapping at the window.

She went to her bed, sat down, and not knowing what to do with the
immense joy which filled her with yearning, she looked at the holy image
hanging at the back of her bed, and said:

"Oh, Lord God! Oh, Lord God!"




A LADY'S STORY

NINE years ago Pyotr Sergeyitch, the deputy prosecutor, and I were
riding towards evening in hay-making time to fetch the letters from the
station.

The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal of
thunder, and saw an angry black storm-cloud which was coming straight
towards us. The storm-cloud was approaching us and we were approaching
it.

Against the background of it our house and church looked white and the
tall poplars shone like silver. There was a scent of rain and mown hay.
My companion was in high spirits. He kept laughing and talking all sorts
of nonsense. He said it would be nice if we could suddenly come upon a
medieval castle with turreted towers, with moss on it and owls, in
which we could take shelter from the rain and in the end be killed by a
thunderbolt....

Then the first wave raced through the rye and a field of oats, there
was a gust of wind, and the dust flew round and round in the air. Pyotr
Sergeyitch laughed and spurred on his horse.

"It's fine!" he cried, "it's splendid!"

Infected by his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that in
a minute I should be drenched to the skin and might be struck by
lightning.

Riding swiftly in a hurricane when one is breathless with the wind, and
feels like a bird, thrills one and puts one's heart in a flutter. By the
time we rode into our courtyard the wind had gone down, and big drops of
rain were pattering on the grass and on the roofs. There was not a soul
near the stable.

Pyotr Sergeyitch himself took the bridles off, and led the horses to
their stalls. I stood in the doorway waiting for him to finish, and
watching the slanting streaks of rain; the sweetish, exciting scent of
hay was even stronger here than in the fields; the storm-clouds and the
rain made it almost twilight.

"What a crash!" said Pyotr Sergeyitch, coming up to me after a very loud
rolling peal of thunder when it seemed as though the sky were split in
two. "What do you say to that?"

He stood beside me in the doorway and, still breathless from his rapid
ride, looked at me. I could see that he was admiring me.

"Natalya Vladimirovna," he said, "I would give anything only to stay
here a little longer and look at you. You are lovely to-day."

His eyes looked at me with delight and supplication, his face was pale.
On his beard and mustache were glittering raindrops, and they, too,
seemed to be looking at me with love.

"I love you," he said. "I love you, and I am happy at seeing you. I know
you cannot be my wife, but I want nothing, I ask nothing; only know that
I love you. Be silent, do not answer me, take no notice of it, but only
know that you are dear to me and let me look at you."

His rapture affected me too; I looked at his enthusiastic face, listened
to his voice which mingled with the patter of the rain, and stood as
though spellbound, unable to stir.

I longed to go on endlessly looking at his shining eyes and listening.

"You say nothing, and that is splendid," said Pyotr Sergeyitch. "Go on
being silent."

I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the drenching rain
to the house; he laughed too, and, leaping as he went, ran after me.

Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like children,
we dashed into the room. My father and brother, who were not used to
seeing me laughing and light-hearted, looked at me in surprise and began
laughing too.

The storm-clouds had passed over and the thunder had ceased, but the
raindrops still glittered on Pyotr Sergeyitch's beard. The whole evening
till supper-time he was singing, whistling, playing noisily with the dog
and racing about the room after it, so that he nearly upset the servant
with the samovar. And at supper he ate a great deal, talked nonsense,
and maintained that when one eats fresh cucumbers in winter there is the
fragrance of spring in one's mouth.

When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide open, and
an undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I remembered that I was
free and healthy, that I had rank and wealth, that I was beloved; above
all, that I had rank and wealth, rank and wealth, my God! how nice that
was!... Then, huddling up in bed at a touch of cold which reached me
from the garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr
Sergeyitch or not,... and fell asleep unable to reach any conclusion.

And when in the morning I saw quivering patches of sunlight and the
shadows of the lime trees on my bed, what had happened yesterday rose
vividly in my memory. Life seemed to me rich, varied, full of charm.
Humming, I dressed quickly and went out into the garden....

And what happened afterwards? Why--nothing. In the winter when we lived
in town Pyotr Sergeyitch came to see us from time to time. Country
acquaintances are charming only in the country and in summer; in the
town and in winter they lose their charm. When you pour out tea for them
in the town it seems as though they are wearing other people's coats,
and as though they stirred their tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr
Sergeyitch spoke sometimes of love, but the effect was not at all the
same as in the country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of
the wall that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was
poor, and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and
a deputy public prosecutor; we both of us--I through my youth and he for
some unknown reason--thought of that wall as very high and thick, and
when he was with us in the town he would criticize aristocratic society
with a forced smile, and maintain a sullen silence when there was
anyone else in the drawing-room. There is no wall that cannot be broken
through, but the heroes of the modern romance, so far as I know them,
are too timid, spiritless, lazy, and oversensitive, and are too ready to
resign themselves to the thought that they are doomed to failure, that
personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they merely
criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that their criticism
passes little by little into vulgarity.

I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost
touching me; I went on living in careless ease without trying to
understand myself, not knowing what I expected or what I wanted from
life, and time went on and on.... People passed by me with their
love, bright days and warm nights flashed by, the nightingales sang, the
hay smelt fragrant, and all this, sweet and overwhelming in remembrance,
passed with me as with everyone rapidly, leaving no trace, was not
prized, and vanished like mist.... Where is it all?

My father is dead, I have grown older; everything that delighted me,
caressed me, gave me hope--the patter of the rain, the rolling of
the thunder, thoughts of happiness, talk of love--all that has become
nothing but a memory, and I see before me a flat desert distance; on
the plain not one living soul, and out there on the horizon it is dark
and terrible....

A ring at the bell.... It is Pyotr Sergeyitch. When in the winter I
see the trees and remember how green they were for me in the summer I
whisper:

"Oh, my darlings!"

And when I see people with whom I spent my spring-time, I feel sorrowful
and warm and whisper the same thing.

He has long ago by my father's good offices been transferred to town.
He looks a little older, a little fallen away. He has long given up
declaring his love, has left off talking nonsense, dislikes his official
work, is ill in some way and disillusioned; he has given up trying to
get anything out of life, and takes no interest in living. Now he has
sat down by the hearth and looks in silence at the fire....

Not knowing what to say I ask him:

"Well, what have you to tell me?"

"Nothing," he answers.

And silence again. The red glow of the fire plays about his melancholy
face.

I thought of the past, and all at once my shoulders began quivering, my
head dropped, and I began weeping bitterly. I felt unbearably sorry for
myself and for this man, and passionately longed for what had passed
away and what life refused us now. And now I did not think about rank
and wealth.

I broke into loud sobs, pressing my temples, and muttered:

"My God! my God! my life is wasted!"

And he sat and was silent, and did not say to me: "Don't weep." He
understood that I must weep, and that the time for this had come.

I saw from his eyes that he was sorry for me; and I was sorry for him,
too, and vexed with this timid, unsuccessful man who could not make a
life for me, nor for himself.

When I saw him to the door, he was, I fancied, purposely a long while
putting on his coat. Twice he kissed my hand without a word, and looked
a long while into my tear-stained face. I believe at that moment he
recalled the storm, the streaks of rain, our laughter, my face that day;
he longed to say something to me, and he would have been glad to say it;
but he said nothing, he merely shook his head and pressed my hand. God
help him!

After seeing him out, I went back to my study and again sat on the
carpet before the fireplace; the red embers were covered with ash and
began to grow dim. The frost tapped still more angrily at the windows,
and the wind droned in the chimney.

The maid came in and, thinking I was asleep, called my name.




IN EXILE

OLD SEMYON, nicknamed Canny, and a young Tatar, whom no one knew by
name, were sitting on the river-bank by the camp-fire; the other
three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of sixty, lean and
toothless, but broad shouldered and still healthy-looking, was drunk;
he would have gone in to sleep long before, but he had a bottle in his
pocket and he was afraid that the fellows in the hut would ask him for
vodka. The Tatar was ill and weary, and wrapping himself up in his rags
was describing how nice it was in the Simbirsk province, and what a
beautiful and clever wife he had left behind at home. He was not more
than twenty five, and now by the light of the camp-fire, with his pale
and sick, mournful face, he looked like a boy.

"To be sure, it is not paradise here," said Canny. "You can see for
yourself, the water, the bare banks, clay, and nothing else....
Easter has long passed and yet there is ice on the river, and this
morning there was snow..."

"It's bad! it's bad!" said the Tatar, and looked round him in terror.

The dark, cold river was flowing ten paces away; it grumbled, lapped
against the hollow clay banks and raced on swiftly towards the far-away
sea. Close to the bank there was the dark blur of a big barge, which the
ferrymen called a "karbos." Far away on the further bank, lights, dying
down and flickering up again, zigzagged like little snakes; they were
burning last year's grass. And beyond the little snakes there was
darkness again. There little icicles could be heard knocking against the
barge It was damp and cold....

The Tatar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and
the same blackness all round, but something was lacking. At home in the
Simbirsk province the stars were quite different, and so was the sky.

"It's bad! it's bad!" he repeated.

"You will get used to it," said Semyon, and he laughed. "Now you are
young and foolish, the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and it seems to
you in your foolishness that you are more wretched than anyone; but the
time will come when you will say to yourself: 'I wish no one a better
life than mine.' You look at me. Within a week the floods will be over
and we shall set up the ferry; you will all go wandering off about
Siberia while I shall stay and shall begin going from bank to bank. I've
been going like that for twenty-two years, day and night. The pike and
the salmon are under the water while I am on the water. And thank God
for it, I want nothing; God give everyone such a life."

The Tatar threw some dry twigs on the camp-fire, lay down closer to the
blaze, and said:

"My father is a sick man. When he dies my mother and wife will come
here. They have promised."

"And what do you want your wife and mother for?" asked Canny. "That's
mere foolishness, my lad. It's the devil confounding you, damn his soul!
Don't you listen to him, the cursed one. Don't let him have his way. He
is at you about the women, but you spite him; say, 'I don't want them!'
He is on at you about freedom, but you stand up to him and say: 'I
don't want it!' I want nothing, neither father nor mother, nor wife, nor
freedom, nor post, nor paddock; I want nothing, damn their souls!"

Semyon took a pull at the bottle and went on:

"I am not a simple peasant, not of the working class, but the son of
a deacon, and when I was free I lived at Kursk; I used to wear a
frockcoat, and now I have brought myself to such a pass that I can sleep
naked on the ground and eat grass. And I wish no one a better life. I
want nothing and I am afraid of nobody, and the way I look at it is that
there is nobody richer and freer than I am. When they sent me here from
Russia from the first day I stuck it out; I want nothing! The devil was
at me about my wife and about my home and about freedom, but I told him:
'I want nothing.' I stuck to it, and here you see I live well, and I
don't complain, and if anyone gives way to the devil and listens to him,
if but once, he is lost, there is no salvation for him: he is sunk in
the bog to the crown of his head and will never get out.

"It is not only a foolish peasant like you, but even gentlemen,
well-educated people, are lost. Fifteen years ago they sent a gentleman
here from Russia. He hadn't shared something with his brothers and had
forged something in a will. They did say he was a prince or a baron, but
maybe he was simply an official--who knows? Well, the gentleman
arrived here, and first thing he bought himself a house and land in
Muhortinskoe. 'I want to live by my own work,' says he, 'in the sweat
of my brow, for I am not a gentleman now,' says he, 'but a settler.'
'Well,' says I, 'God help you, that's the right thing.' He was a young
man then, busy and careful; he used to mow himself and catch fish and
ride sixty miles on horseback. Only this is what happened: from the very
first year he took to riding to Gyrino for the post; he used to stand on
my ferry and sigh: 'Ech, Semyon, how long it is since they sent me any
money from home!' 'You don't want money, Vassily Sergeyitch,' says I.
'What use is it to you? You cast away the past, and forget it as though
it had never been at all, as though it had been a dream, and begin to
live anew. Don't listen to the devil,' says I; 'he will bring you to no
good, he'll draw you into a snare. Now you want money,' says I, 'but in
a very little while you'll be wanting something else, and then more and
more. If you want to be happy,' says I, the chief thing is not to
want anything. Yes.... If,' says I, 'if Fate has wronged you and me
cruelly it's no good asking for her favor and bowing down to her, but
you despise her and laugh at her, or else she will laugh at you.' That's
what I said to him....

"Two years later I ferried him across to this side, and he was rubbing
his hands and laughing. 'I am going to Gyrino to meet my wife,' says
he. 'She was sorry for me,' says he; 'she has come. She is good and
kind.' And he was breathless with joy. So a day later he came with his
wife. A beautiful young lady in a hat; in her arms was a baby girl.
And lots of luggage of all sorts. And my Vassily Sergeyitch was fussing
round her; he couldn't take his eyes off her and couldn't say enough in
praise of her. 'Yes, brother Semyon, even in Siberia people can live!'
'Oh, all right,' thinks I, 'it will be a different tale presently.'
And from that time forward he went almost every week to inquire whether
money had not come from Russia. He wanted a lot of money. 'She is losing
her youth and beauty here in Siberia for my sake,' says he, 'and sharing
my bitter lot with me, and so I ought,' says he, 'to provide her with
every comfort....'

"To make it livelier for the lady he made acquaintance with the
officials and all sorts of riff-raff. And of course he had to give food
and drink to all that crew, and there had to be a piano and a
shaggy lapdog on the sofa--plague take it!... Luxury, in fact,
self-indulgence. The lady did not stay with him long. How could she? The
clay, the water, the cold, no vegetables for you, no fruit. All around
you ignorant and drunken people and no sort of manners, and she was
a spoilt lady from Petersburg or Moscow.... To be sure she moped.
Besides, her husband, say what you like, was not a gentleman now, but a
settler--not the same rank.

"Three years later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, there was
shouting from the further bank. I went over with the ferry, and what do
I see but the lady, all wrapped up, and with her a young gentleman, an
official. A sledge with three horses.... I ferried them across here,
they got in and away like the wind. They were soon lost to sight. And
towards morning Vassily Sergeyitch galloped down to the ferry. 'Didn't
my wife come this way with a gentleman in spectacles, Semyon?' 'She
did,' said I; 'you may look for the wind in the fields!' He galloped in
pursuit of them. For five days and nights he was riding after them. When
I ferried him over to the other side afterwards, he flung himself on
the ferry and beat his head on the boards of the ferry and howled. 'So
that's how it is,' says I. I laughed, and reminded him 'people can live
even in Siberia!' And he beat his head harder than ever....

"Then he began longing for freedom. His wife had slipped off to Russia,
and of course he was drawn there to see her and to get her away from her
lover. And he took, my lad, to galloping almost every day, either to
the post or the town to see the commanding officer; he kept sending in
petitions for them to have mercy on him and let him go back home; and
he used to say that he had spent some two hundred roubles on telegrams
alone. He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the Jews. He grew
gray and bent, and yellow in the face, as though he was in consumption.
If he talked to you he would go, khee--khee--khee,... and there were
tears in his eyes. He kept rushing about like this with petitions for
eight years, but now he has grown brighter and more cheerful again: he
has found another whim to give way to. You see, his daughter has grown
up. He looks at her, and she is the apple of his eye. And to tell the
truth she is all right, good-looking, with black eyebrows and a lively
disposition. Every Sunday he used to ride with her to church in Gyrino.
They used to stand on the ferry, side by side, she would laugh and he
could not take his eyes off her. 'Yes, Semyon,' says he, 'people can
live even in Siberia. Even in Siberia there is happiness. Look,' says
he, 'what a daughter I have got! I warrant you wouldn't find another
like her for a thousand versts round.' 'Your daughter is all right,'
says I, 'that's true, certainly.' But to myself I thought: 'Wait a bit,
the wench is young, her blood is dancing, she wants to live, and there
is no life here.' And she did begin to pine, my lad.... She faded and
faded, and now she can hardly crawl about. Consumption.

"So you see what Siberian happiness is, damn its soul! You see how
people can live in Siberia.... He has taken to going from one doctor
to another and taking them home with him. As soon as he hears that two
or three hundred miles away there is a doctor or a sorcerer, he will
drive to fetch him. A terrible lot of money he spent on doctors, and to
my thinking he had better have spent the money on drink.... She'll
die just the same. She is certain to die, and then it will be all over
with him. He'll hang himself from grief or run away to Russia--that's a
sure thing. He'll run away and they'll catch him, then he will be tried,
sent to prison, he will have a taste of the lash...."

"Good! good!" said the Tatar, shivering with cold.

"What is good?" asked Canny.

"His wife, his daughter.... What of prison and what of
sorrow!--anyway, he did see his wife and his daughter.... You say,
want nothing. But 'nothing' is bad! His wife lived with him three
years--that was a gift from God. 'Nothing' is bad, but three years is
good. How not understand?"

Shivering and hesitating, with effort picking out the Russian words of
which he knew but few, the Tatar said that God forbid one should fall
sick and die in a strange land, and be buried in the cold and dark
earth; that if his wife came to him for one day, even for one hour, that
for such happiness he would be ready to bear any suffering and to thank
God. Better one day of happiness than nothing.

Then he described again what a beautiful and clever wife he had left
at home. Then, clutching his head in both hands, he began crying and
assuring Semyon that he was not guilty, and was suffering for nothing.
His two brothers and an uncle had carried off a peasant's horses, and
had beaten the old man till he was half dead, and the commune had not
judged fairly, but had contrived a sentence by which all the three
brothers were sent to Siberia, while the uncle, a rich man, was left at
home.

"You will get used to it!" said Semyon.

The Tatar was silent, and stared with tear-stained eyes at the fire;
his face expressed bewilderment and fear, as though he still did
not understand why he was here in the darkness and the wet, beside
strangers, and not in the Simbirsk province.

Canny lay near the fire, chuckled at something, and began humming a song
in an undertone.

"What joy has she with her father?" he said a little later. "He loves
her and he rejoices in her, that's true; but, mate, you must mind your
ps and qs with him, he is a strict old man, a harsh old man. And young
wenches don't want strictness. They want petting and ha-ha-ha! and
ho-ho-ho! and scent and pomade. Yes.... Ech! life, life," sighed
Semyon, and he got up heavily. "The vodka is all gone, so it is time to
sleep. Eh? I am going, my lad...."

Left alone, the Tatar put on more twigs, lay down and stared at the
fire; he began thinking of his own village and of his wife. If his wife
could only come for a month, for a day; and then if she liked she might
go back again. Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if his
wife kept her promise and came, what would he have to feed her on? Where
could she live here?

"If there were not something to eat, how could she live?" the Tatar
asked aloud.

He was paid only ten kopecks for working all day and all night at the
oar; it is true that travelers gave him tips for tea and for vodkas but
the men shared all they received among themselves, and gave nothing
to the Tatar, but only laughed at him. And from poverty he was hungry,
cold, and frightened.... Now, when his whole body was aching and
shivering, he ought to go into the hut and lie down to sleep; but he had
nothing to cover him there, and it was colder than on the river-bank;
here he had nothing to cover him either, but at least he could make up
the fire....

In another week, when the floods were quite over and they set the ferry
going, none of the ferrymen but Semyon would be wanted, and the Tatar
would begin going from village to village begging for alms and for work.
His wife was only seventeen; she was beautiful, spoilt, and shy; could
she possibly go from village to village begging alms with her face
unveiled? No, it was terrible even to think of that....

It was already getting light; the barge, the bushes of willow on the
water, and the waves could be clearly discerned, and if one looked round
there was the steep clay slope; at the bottom of it the hut thatched
with dingy brown straw, and the huts of the village lay clustered higher
up. The cocks were already crowing in the village.

The rusty red clay slope, the barge, the river, the strange, unkind
people, hunger, cold, illness, perhaps all that was not real. Most
likely it was all a dream, thought the Tatar. He felt that he was
asleep and heard his own snoring.... Of course he was at home in the
Simbirsk province, and he had only to call his wife by name for her to
answer; and in the next room was his mother.... What terrible dreams
there are, though! What are they for? The Tatar smiled and opened his
eyes. What river was this, the Volga?

Snow was falling.

"Boat!" was shouted on the further side. "Boat!"

The Tatar woke up, and went to wake his mates and row over to the other
side. The ferrymen came on to the river-bank, putting on their torn
sheepskins as they walked, swearing with voices husky from sleepiness
and shivering from the cold. On waking from their sleep, the river, from
which came a breath of piercing cold, seemed to strike them as revolting
and horrible. They jumped into the barge without hurrying themselves....
The Tatar and the three ferrymen took the long, broad-bladed oars,
which in the darkness looked like the claws of crabs; Semyon leaned his
stomach against the tiller. The shout on the other side still continued,
and two shots were fired from a revolver, probably with the idea that
the ferrymen were asleep or had gone to the pot-house in the village.

"All right, you have plenty of time," said Semyon in the tone of a man
convinced that there was no necessity in this world to hurry--that it
would lead to nothing, anyway.

The heavy, clumsy barge moved away from the bank and floated between the
willow-bushes, and only the willows slowly moving back showed that the
barge was not standing still but moving. The ferrymen swung the
oars evenly in time; Semyon lay with his stomach on the tiller and,
describing a semicircle in the air, flew from one side to the other.
In the darkness it looked as though the men were sitting on some
antediluvian animal with long paws, and were moving on it through
a cold, desolate land, the land of which one sometimes dreams in
nightmares.

They passed beyond the willows and floated out into the open. The creak
and regular splash of the oars was heard on the further shore, and a
shout came: "Make haste! make haste!"

Another ten minutes passed, and the barge banged heavily against the
landing-stage.

"And it keeps sprinkling and sprinkling," muttered Semyon, wiping the
snow from his face; "and where it all comes from God only knows."

On the bank stood a thin man of medium height in a jacket lined with fox
fur and in a white lambskin cap. He was standing at a little distance
from his horses and not moving; he had a gloomy, concentrated
expression, as though he were trying to remember something and angry
with his untrustworthy memory. When Semyon went up to him and took off
his cap, smiling, he said:

"I am hastening to Anastasyevka. My daughter's worse again, and they say
that there is a new doctor at Anastasyevka."

They dragged the carriage on to the barge and floated back. The man whom
Semyon addressed as Vassily Sergeyitch stood all the time motionless,
tightly compressing his thick lips and staring off into space; when his
coachman asked permission to smoke in his presence he made no answer, as
though he had not heard. Semyon, lying with his stomach on the tiller,
looked mockingly at him and said:

"Even in Siberia people can live--can li-ive!"

There was a triumphant expression on Canny's face, as though he had
proved something and was delighted that things had happened as he
had foretold. The unhappy helplessness of the man in the foxskin coat
evidently afforded him great pleasure.

"It's muddy driving now, Vassily Sergeyitch," he said when the horses
were harnessed again on the bank. "You should have put off going for
another fortnight, when it will be drier. Or else not have gone at all.
... If any good would come of your going--but as you know yourself,
people have been driving about for years and years, day and night, and
it's alway's been no use. That's the truth."

Vassily Sergeyitch tipped him without a word, got into his carriage and
drove off.

"There, he has galloped off for a doctor!" said Semyon, shrinking from
the cold. "But looking for a good doctor is like chasing the wind in the
fields or catching the devil by the tail, plague take your soul! What a
queer chap, Lord forgive me a sinner!"

The Tatar went up to Canny, and, looking at him with hatred and
repulsion, shivering, and mixing Tatar words with his broken Russian,
said: "He is good... good; but you are bad! You are bad! The
gentleman is a good soul, excellent, and you are a beast, bad! The
gentleman is alive, but you are a dead carcass.... God created man to
be alive, and to have joy and grief and sorrow; but you want nothing,
so you are not alive, you are stone, clay! A stone wants nothing and you
want nothing. You are a stone, and God does not love you, but He loves
the gentleman!"

Everyone laughed; the Tatar frowned contemptuously, and with a wave
of his hand wrapped himself in his rags and went to the campfire. The
ferrymen and Semyon sauntered to the hut.

"It's cold," said one ferryman huskily as he stretched himself on the
straw with which the damp clay floor was covered.

"Yes, its not warm," another assented. "It's a dog's life....