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移除书签IT was reported that a new face had been seen on the quay; a lady with a little dog. —
Dimitri Dimitrich Gomov, who had been a fortnight at Talta and had got used to it, had begun to show an interest in new faces. —
As he sat in the pavilion at Verné’s he saw a young lady, blond and fairly tall, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pass along the quay. —
After her ran a white Pomeranian.
Later he saw her in the park and in the square several times a day. —
She walked by herself, always in the same broad-brimmed hat, and with this white dog. —
Nobody knew who she was, and she was spoken of as the lady with the toy dog.
“If,” thought Gomov, “if she is here without a husband or a friend, it would be as well to make her acquaintance.”
He was not yet forty, but he had a daughter of twelve and two boys at school. —
He had married young, in his second year at the University, and now his wife seemed half as old again as himself. —
She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and she thought herself an intellectual woman. —
She read a great deal, called her husband not Dimitri, but Demitri, and in his private mind he thought her short- witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. —
He was afraid of her and disliked being at home. —
He had begun to betray her with other women long ago, betrayed her frequently, and, probably for that reason nearly always spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in his presence he would maintain that they were an inferior race.
It seemed to him that his experience was bitter enough to give him the right to call them any name he liked, but he could not live a couple of days without the “inferior race.” —
With men he was bored and ill at ease, cold and unable to talk, but when he was with women, he felt easy and knew what to talk about, and how to behave, and even when he was silent with them he felt quite comfortable. —
In his appearance as in his character, indeed in his whole nature, there was something attractive, indefinable, which drew women to him and charmed them; —
he knew it, and he, too, was drawn by some mysterious power to them.
His frequent, and, indeed, bitter experiences had taught him long ago that every affair of that kind, at first a divine diversion, a delicious smooth adventure, is in the end a source of worry for a decent man, especially for men like those at Moscow who are slow to move, irresolute, domesticated, for it becomes at last an acute and extraordinary complicated problem and a nuisance. —
But whenever he met and was interested in a new woman, then his experience would slip away from his memory, and he would long to live, and everything would seem so simple and amusing.
And it so happened that one evening he dined in the gardens, and the lady in the broad-brimmed hat came up at a leisurely pace and sat at the next table. —
Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told him that she belonged to society, that she was married, that she was paying her first visit to Talta, that she was alone, and that she was bored. —
… There is a great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immorality of the place. —
He scorned such tales, knowing that they were for the most part concocted by people who would be only too ready to sin if they had the chance, but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a yard or two away from him, his thoughts were filled with tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains; —
and he was suddenly possessed by the alluring idea of a quick transitory liaison, a moment’s affair with an unknown woman whom he knew not even by name.
He beckoned to the little dog, and when it came up to him, wagged his finger at it. —
The dog began to growl. Gomov again wagged his finger.
The lady glanced at him and at once cast her eyes down.
“He won’t bite,” she said and blushed.
“May I give him a bone?“—and when she nodded emphatically, he asked affably: —
“Have you been in Talta long?”
“About five days.”
“And I am just dragging through my second week.”
They were silent for a while.
“Time goes quickly,” she said, “and it is amazingly boring here.”
“It is the usual thing to say that it is boring here. —
People live quite happily in dull holes like Bieliev or Zhidra, but as soon as they come here they say: —
‘How boring it is! The very dregs of dullness!’ —
One would think they came from Spain.”
She smiled. Then both went on eating in silence as though they did not know each other; —
but after dinner they went off together—and then began an easy, playful conversation as though they were perfectly happy, and it was all one to them where they went or what they talked of. —
They walked and talked of how the sea was strangely luminous; —
the water lilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast a golden streak. —
They said how stifling it was after the hot day. —
Gomov told her how he came from Moscow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank by profession; —
and how he had once wanted to sing in opera, but gave it up; and how he had two houses in Moscow. —
… And from her he learned that she came from Petersburg, was born there, but married at S. where she had been living for the last two years; —
that she would stay another month at Talta, and perhaps her husband would come for her, because, he too, needed a rest. —
She could not tell him what her husband was—Provincial Administration or Zemstvo Council—and she seemed to think it funny. —
And Gomov found out that her name was Anna Sergueyevna.
In his room at night, he thought of her and how they would meet next day. They must do so. —
As he was going to sleep, it struck him that she could only lately have left school, and had been at her lessons even as his daughter was then; —
he remembered how bashful and gauche she was when she laughed and talked with a stranger—it must be, he thought, the first time she had been alone, and in such a place with men walking after her and looking at her and talking to her, all with the same secret purpose which she could not but guess. —
He thought of her slender white neck and her pretty, grey eyes.
“There is something touching about her,” he thought as he began to fall asleep.
II
A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was stifling, and in the streets the dust whirled along. —
All day long he was plagued with thirst and he came into the pavilion every few minutes and offered Anna Sergueyevna an iced drink or an ice. —
It was impossibly hot.
In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to the jetty to see the steamer come in. —
There was quite a crowd all gathered to meet somebody, for they carried bouquets. —
And among them were clearly marked the peculiarities of Talta: —
the elderly ladies were youngly dressed and there were many generals.
The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it turned into the jetty it had to do a great deal of manœuvring. —
Anna Sergueyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though she were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov, her eyes shone. —
She talked much and her questions were abrupt, and she forgot what she had said; —
and then she lost her lorgnette in the crowd.
The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped, and Gomov and Anna Sergueyevna stood as though they were waiting for somebody to come from the steamer. —
Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers and did not look at Gomov.
“The weather has got pleasanter toward evening,” he said. —
“Where shall we go now? Shall we take a carriage?”
She did not answer.
He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and kissed her lips, and he was kindled with the perfume and the moisture of the flowers; —
at once he started and looked round; had not some one seen?
“Let us go to your—” he murmured.
And they walked quickly away.
Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she had bought at the Japanese shop. —
Gomov looked at her and thought: “What strange chances there are in life!” —
From the past there came the memory of earlier good- natured women, gay in their love, grateful to him for their happiness, short though it might be; —
and of others—like his wife—who loved without sincerity, and talked overmuch and affectedly, hysterically, as though they were protesting that it was not love, nor passion, but something more important; —
and of the few beautiful cold women, into whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression, a stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it can give; —
they were no longer in their first youth, they were capricious, unstable, domineering, imprudent, and when Gomov became cold toward them then their beauty roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingerie reminded him of the scales of fish.
But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of inexperienced youth, a feeling of constraint; —
an impression of perplexity and wonder, as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. —
Anna Sergueyevna, “the lady with the toy dog” took what had happened somehow seriously, with a particular gravity, as though thinking that this was her downfall and very strange and improper. —
Her features seemed to sink and wither, and on either side of her face her long hair hung mournfully down; —
she sat crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin in some old picture.
“It is not right,” she said. “You are the first to lose respect for me.”
There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and began to eat it slowly. —
At least half an hour passed in silence.
Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the purity of a simple, devout, inexperienced woman; —
the solitary candle on the table hardly lighted her face, but it showed her very wretched.
“Why should I cease to respect you?” asked Gomov. “You don’t know what you are saying.”
“God forgive me!” she said, and her eyes filled with tears. “It is horrible.”
“You seem to want to justify yourself.”
“How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and I despise myself. —
I have no thought of justifying myself. It is not my husband that I have deceived, but myself. —
And not only now but for a long time past. My husband may be a good honest man, but he is a lackey. —
I do not know what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul. —
I was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by curiosity. I longed for something. —
‘Surely,’ I said to myself, ‘there is another kind of life.’ I longed to live! —
To live, and to live…. Curiosity burned me up. —
… You do not understand it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control myself. —
Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold myself in. —
I told my husband that I was ill and came here. —
… And here I have been walking about dizzily, like a lunatic. —
… And now I have become a low, filthy woman whom everybody may despise.”
Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him with their unexpected and inappropriate repentance; —
but for the tears in her eyes he might have thought her to be joking or playing a part.
“I do not understand,” he said quietly. “What do you want?”
She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.
“Believe, believe me, I implore you,” she said. —
“I love a pure, honest life, and sin is revolting to me. I don’t know myself what I am doing. —
Simple people say: ‘The devil entrapped me,’ and I can say of myself: —
‘The Evil One tempted me.’”
“Don’t, don’t,” he murmured.
He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and she was happy again, and they both began to laugh.
Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the quay; —
the town with its cypresses looked like a city of the dead, but the sea still roared and broke against the shore; —
a boat swung on the waves; and in it sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern.
They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.
“Just now in the hall,” said Gomov, “I discovered your name written on the board—von Didenitz. —
Is your husband a German?”
“No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he himself is an Orthodox Russian.”
At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at the sea and were silent. —
Talta was hardly visible through the morning mist. —
The tops of the hills were shrouded in motionless white clouds. —
The leaves of the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and the monotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below, spoke of the rest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. —
So the sea roared when there was neither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it roars and will roar, dully, indifferently when we shall be no more. —
And in this continual indifference to the life and death of each of us, lives pent up, the pledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of life on earth and its unceasing perfection. —
Sitting side by side with a young woman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful, Gomov, appeased and enchanted by the sight of the fairy scene, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide sky, thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughly explored, everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.
A man came up—a coast-guard—gave a look at them, then went away. —
He, too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. —
A steamer came over from Feodossia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights already put out.
“There is dew on the grass,” said Anna Sergueyevna after a silence.
“Yes. It is time to go home.”
They returned to the town.
Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea. —
She complained that she slept badly, that her heart beat alarmingly. —
She would ask the same question over and over again, and was troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not sufficiently respect her. —
And often in the square or the gardens, when there was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss her passionately. —
Their complete idleness, these kisses in the full daylight, given timidly and fearfully lest any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed, well-fed people almost regenerated him. —
He would tell Anna Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting. —
He was impatiently passionate, never left her side, and she would often brood, and even asked him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at all, and only saw in her a loose woman. —
Almost every evening, rather late, they would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall; —
and these drives were always delightful, and the impressions won during them were always beautiful and sublime.
They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in which he said that his eyes were bad and implored his wife to come home. —
Anna Sergueyevna began to worry.
“It is a good thing I am going away,” she would say to Gomov. “It is fate.”
She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They drove for a whole day. —
When she took her seat in the car of an express-train and when the second bell sounded, she said:
“Let me have another look at you…. Just one more look. Just as you are.”
She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips trembled.
“I will think of you—often,” she said. “Good-bye. Good-bye. Don’t think ill of me. —
We part for ever. We must, because we ought not to have met at all. Now, good-bye.”
The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in a minute or two the sound of it was lost, as though everything were agreed to put an end to this sweet, oblivious madness. —
Left alone on the platform, looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the grasshoppers and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had just woke up. —
And he thought that it had been one more adventure, one more affair, and it also was finished and had left only a memory. —
He was moved, sad, and filled with a faint remorse; —
surely the young woman, whom he would never see again, had not been happy with him; —
he had been kind to her, friendly, and sincere, but still in his attitude toward her, in his tone and caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of raillery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male aggravated by the fact that he was twice as old as she. —
And all the time she had called him kind, remarkable, noble, so that he was never really himself to her, and had involuntarily deceived her….
Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and the evening was cool.
“It is time for me to go North,” thought Gomov, as he left the platform. “It is time.”
III
At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; —
the stoves were heated, and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go to school, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp for a short while. —
The frost had already begun. When the first snow falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white earth, the white roofs; —
one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one remembers the days of youth. —
The old lime-trees and birches, white with hoarfrost, have a kindly expression; —
they are nearer to the heart than cypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is no need to think of mountains and the sea.
Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll through Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bells ringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost all their charm. —
Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, read eagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscow papers as a matter of principle. —
He was drawn into a round of restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered to have his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play cards with a professor at the University club. —
He could eat a whole plateful of hot sielianka.
So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lost in the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams with her touching smile, just as other women had done. —
But more than a month passed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, as though he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. —
And his memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. —
No matter how, through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating to the evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly the whole thing would come to life again in his memory: —
the meeting on the jetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer from Feodossia and their kisses. —
He would pace up and down his room and remember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift into dreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. —
He did not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed him everywhere, like a shadow, watching him. —
As he shut his eyes, he could see her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than in reality; —
and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Talta. In the evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner; —
he could hear her breathing and the soft rustle of her dress. —
In the street he would gaze at women’s faces to see if there were not one like her….
He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one. —
But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away from home—there was no one. —
Impossible to talk of her to the other people in the house and the men at the bank. —
And talk of what? Had he loved then? Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting in his relations with Anna Sergueyevna? —
And he would speak vaguely of love, of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wife would raise her dark eyebrows and say:
“Demitri, the rôle of coxcomb does not suit you at all.”
One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, an official, he could not help saying:
“If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Talta.”
The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenly called:
“Dimitri Dimitrich!”
“Yes.”
“You were right. The sturgeon was tainted.”
These banal words suddenly roused Gomov’s indignation. —
They seemed to him degrading and impure. —
What barbarous customs and people!
What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! —
Furious card-playing, gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things, futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day and all the best of a man’s forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless life, just rubbish; —
and to go away and escape was impossible—one might as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour.
Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, and then all next day he had a headache. —
And the following night he slept badly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to corner of his room. —
His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had no desire to go out or to speak to any one.
In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for a young friend of his—and went to S. Why? —
He did not know. He wanted to see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange an assignation.
He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel, where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. —
The porter gave him the necessary information: von Didenitz; —
Old Goucharno Street, his own house—not far from the hotel; —
lives well, has his own horses, every one knows him.
Gomov walked slowly to Old Goucharno Street and found the house. —
In front of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails.
“No getting over a fence like that,” thought Gomov, glancing from the windows to the fence.
He thought: “To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home. —
Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her. —
If he sent a note then it might fall into her husband’s hands and spoil everything. —
It would be better to wait for an opportunity.” —
And he kept on walking up and down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity. —
He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. —
He heard a piano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be Anna Sergueyevna playing. —
The door suddenly opened and out of it came an old woman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. —
Gomov wanted to call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitation he could not remember the dog’s name.
He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought with a gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would be only natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold the accursed fence. —
He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the sofa, not knowing what to do. —
Then he dined and afterward slept for a long while.
“How idiotic and tiresome it all is,” he thought as he awoke and saw the dark windows; —
for it was evening. “I’ve had sleep enough, and what shall I do to-night?”
He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactly like those used in a hospital, and tormented himself.
“So much for the lady with the toy dog…. So much for the great adventure…. Here you sit.”
However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by a poster with large letters: —
“First Performance of ‘The Geisha.’” He remembered that and went to the theatre.
“It is quite possible she will go to the first performance,” he thought.
The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial theatres, there was a thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; —
in the first row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandies with their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor’s box, in front, sat the governor’s daughter, and the governor himself sat modestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. —
The curtain quivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audience were coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.
At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row, and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for him there was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more important than she; —
she was lost in this provincial rabble, the little undistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she filled his whole life; —
she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness, and he longed for her; —
and through the noise of the bad orchestra with its tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. —
He thought and dreamed.
With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with short side- whiskers, very tall, stooping; —
with every movement he shook and bowed continually. —
Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at Talta she had called a lackey. —
And, indeed, in his long figure, his side- whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was something of the lackey; —
he had a modest sugary smile and in his buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey’s number.
In the first entr’acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was left alone. —
Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in a trembling voice with a forced smile:
“How do you do?”
She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again in terror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly together, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. —
Both were silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sit down beside her. —
The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it seemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. —
She got up and walked quickly to the exit; —
he followed, and both walked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs, with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; —
all kinds of uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; —
ladies shone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows of clothes-pegs, and there was a draught howling through the place laden with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. —
And Gomov, whose heart was thudding wildly, thought:
“Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?”
At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevna off that evening at the station he had said to himself that everything was over between them, and they would never meet again. —
And now how far off they were from the end!
On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: “This Way to the Amphitheatre,” she stopped:
“How you frightened me!” she said, breathing heavily, still pale and apparently stupefied. —
“Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. —
Why did you come? Why?”
“Understand me, Anna,” he whispered quickly. “I implore you to understand….”
She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazing fixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features.
“I suffer so!” she went on, not listening to him. “All the time, I thought only of you. —
I lived with thoughts of you…. And I wanted to forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?”
A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked and looked down at them, but Gomov did not care. —
He drew her to him and began to kiss her cheeks, her hands.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” she said in terror, thrusting him away. —
… “We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away at once. —
… I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you. —
… The people are coming——-”
Some one passed them on the stairs.
“You must go away,” Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. “Do you hear, Dimitri Dimitrich? —
I’ll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. —
Now I am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don’t make me suffer even more! —
I swear, I’ll come to Moscow. And now let us part. —
My dear, dearest darling, let us part!”
She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down-stairs, all the while looking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was most unhappy. —
Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet he found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow. —
Once every two or three months she would leave S., telling her husband that she was going to consult a specialist in women’s diseases. —
Her husband half believed and half disbelieved her. —
At Moscow she would stay at the “Slaviansky Bazaar” and send a message at once to Gomov. He would come to her, and nobody in Moscow knew.
Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning—he had not received her message the night before—he had his daughter with him, for he was taking her to school which was on the way. —
Great wet flakes of snow were falling.
“Three degrees above freezing,” he said, “and still the snow is falling. —
But the warmth is only on the surface of the earth. —
In the upper strata of the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature.”
“Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?”
He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his assignation, and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever would know. —
He had two lives; one obvious, which every one could see and know, if they were sufficiently interested, a life full of conventional truth and conventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; —
and another, which moved underground. And by a strange conspiracy of circumstances, everything that was to him important, interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to be sincere and denied self-deception and was the very core of his being, must dwell hidden away from others, and everything that made him false, a mere shape in which he hid himself in order to conceal the truth, as for instance his work in the bank, arguments at the club, his favourite gibe about women, going to parties with his wife—all this was open. —
And, judging others by himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed that everybody else also had his real vital life passing under a veil of mystery as under the cover of the night. —
Every man’s intimate existence is kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because of that civilised people are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should be respected.
When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to the “Slaviansky Bazaar.” —
He took off his fur coat down-stairs, went up and knocked quietly at the door. —
Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, tired by the journey, had been expecting him to come all night. —
She was pale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung herself on his breast as soon as he entered. —
Their kiss was long and lingering as though they had not seen each other for a couple of years.
“Well, how are you getting on down there?” he asked. “What is your news?”
“Wait. I’ll tell you presently…. I cannot.”
She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her face from him and dried her eyes.
“Well, let her cry a bit…. I’ll wait,” he thought, and sat down.
Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she stood and gazed out of the window. —
… She was weeping in distress, in the bitter knowledge that their life had fallen out so sadly; —
only seeing each other in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves! —
Was not their life crushed?
“Don’t cry…. Don’t cry,” he said.
It was clear to him that their love was yet far from its end, which there was no seeing. —
Anna Sergueyevna was more and more passionately attached to him; —
she adored him and it was inconceivable that he should tell her that their love must some day end; —
she would not believe it.
He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at that moment he saw himself in the mirror.
His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to him that in the last few years he should have got so old and ugly. —
Her shoulders were warm and trembled to his touch. —
He was suddenly filled with pity for her life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably beginning to fade and wither, like his own. —
Why should she love him so much? He always seemed to women not what he really was, and they loved in him, not himself, but the creature of their imagination, the thing they hankered for in life, and when they had discovered their mistake, still they loved him. —
And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; —
he met women and was friends with them, went further and parted, but never once did he love; —
there was everything but love.
And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in love, real love—for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear kindred, like husband and wife, like devoted friends; —
it seemed to them that Fate had destined them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he should have a wife, she a husband; —
they were like two birds of passage, a male and a female, which had been caught and forced to live in separate cages. —
They had forgiven each other all the past of which they were ashamed; —
they forgave everything in the present, and they felt that their love had changed both of them.
Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he used to comfort himself with all kinds of arguments, just as they happened to cross his mind, but now he was far removed from any such ideas; —
he was filled with a profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere….
“Don’t cry, my darling,” he said. “You have cried enough. —
… Now let us talk and see if we can’t find some way out.”
Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some means of avoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment of living in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time. —
How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?
“How? How?” he asked, holding his head in his hands. “How?”
And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would be found and there would begin a lovely new life; —
and to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning. GOUSSIEV
IT was already dark and would soon be night.
Goussiev, a private on long leave, raised himself a little in his hammock and said in a whisper:
“Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanich? A soldier at Souchan told me that their boat ran into an enormous fish and knocked a hole in her bottom.”
The man of condition unknown whom he addressed, and whom everybody in the hospital-ship called Pavel Ivanich, was silent, as if he had not heard.
And once more there was silence…. The wind whistled through the rigging, the screw buzzed, the waves came washing, the hammocks squeaked, but to all these sounds their ears were long since accustomed and it seemed as though everything were wrapped in sleep and silence. —
It was very oppressive. The three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who had played cards all day were now asleep and tossing to and fro.
The vessel began to shake. The hammock under Goussiev slowly heaved up and down, as though it were breathing—one, two, three. —
… Something crashed on the floor and began to tinkle: —
the jug must have fallen down.
“The wind has broken loose….” said Goussiev, listening attentively.
This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irritably:
“You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large fish, and now you talk of the wind breaking loose. —
… Is the wind a dog to break loose?”
“That’s what people say.”
“Then people are as ignorant as you…. But what do they not say? —
You should keep a head on your shoulders and think. Silly idiot!”
Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. —
When the ship rolled he would get very cross, and the least trifle would upset him, though Goussiev could never see anything to be cross about. —
What was there unusual in his story about the fish or in his saying that the wind had broken loose? —
Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon’s, and suppose that at the end of the wood there were huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them. —
… If they do not break loose, why then do they rage over the sea as though they were possessed, and rush about like dogs? —
If they are not chained, what happens to them when it is calm?
Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of thick rusty chains; —
then he got tired of that and began to think of his native place whither he was returning after five years’ service in the Far East. He saw with his mind’s eye the great pond covered with snow. —
… On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall chimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was the village. —
… From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came his brother Alency in a sledge; —
behind him sat his little son Vanka in large felt boots, and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. —
Alency is tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka’s face is hidden—she is well wrapped up.
“The children will catch cold …” thought Goussiev. —
“God grant them,” he whispered, “a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and be better than their father and mother….”
“The boots want soling,” cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. “Aye, aye.”
The thread of Goussiev’s thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond, suddenly—without rhyme or reason—he saw a large bull’s head without eyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and round in a black mist. —
But still he was glad he had seen his dear ones. —
He gasped for joy, and his limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed.
“God suffered me to see them!” he muttered, and opened his eyes and looked round in the darkness for water.
He drank, then lay down again, and once more the sledge skimmed along, and he saw the bull’s head without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. —
And so on till dawn.
II
At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanich. —
He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey; —
his nose long and sharp, and his eyes were huge, because he was so thin; —
his temples were sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long. —
… By his face it was impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; —
judging by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a lay- brother, but when he spoke—he was not at all like a monk. —
He was losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips. —
Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, he turned toward him and said:
“I’m beginning to understand…. Yes…. Now I understand.”
“What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?”
“Yes…. It was strange to me at first, why you sick men, instead of being kept quiet, should be on this steamer, where the heat is stifling, and stinking, and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you; —
but now it is all clear to me…. Yes. The doctors sent you to the steamer to get rid of you. —
They got tired of all the trouble you gave them, brutes like you.
…You don’t pay them; you only give a lot of trouble, and if you die you spoil their reports. —
Therefore you are just cattle, and there is no difficulty in getting rid of you. —
… They only need to lack conscience and humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. —
We needn’t worry about the first, they are experts by nature; —
but the second needs a certain amount of practice. —
In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers and sailors—five sick men are never noticed; —
so you were carried up to the steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurry that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they saw fever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck….”
Goussiev could not make out what Pavel Ivanich was talking about; —
thinking he was being taken to task, he said by way of excusing himself:
“I lay on the deck because when we were taken off the barge I caught a chill.”
“Shocking!” said Pavel Ivanich. “They know quite well that you can’t last out the voyage, and yet they send you here! —
You may get as far as the Indian Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of. —
… And that’s all the return you get for faithful unblemished service!”
Pavel Ivanich looked very angry, and smote his forehead and gasped:
“They ought to be shown up in the papers. There would be an awful row.”
The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up and had begun to play cards, the sailor propped up in his hammock, and the soldiers squatting uncomfortably on the floor. —
One soldier had his right arm in a sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow. —
The boat was rolling violently so that it was impossible to get up or to drink tea or to take medicine.
“You were an orderly?” Pavel Ivanich asked Goussiev.
“That’s it. An orderly.”
“My God, my God!” said Pavel Ivanich sorrowfully. —
“To take a man from his native place, drag him fifteen thousand miles, drive him into consumption . —
.. and what for? I ask you. To make him an orderly to some Captain Farthing or Midshipman Hole! —
Where’s the sense of it?”
“It’s not a bad job, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning, clean the boots, boil the samovar, tidy up the room, and then there is nothing to do. —
The lieutenant draws plans all day long, and you can pray to God if you like—or read books—or go out into the streets. —
It’s a good enough life.”
“Yes. Very good! The lieutenant draws plans, and you stay in the kitchen all day long and suffer from homesickness. —
… Plans…. Plans don’t matter. It’s human life that matters! —
Life doesn’t come again. One should be sparing of it.”
“Certainly Pavel Ivanich. A bad man meets no quarter, either at home, or in the army, but if you live straight, and do as you are told, then no one will harm you. —
They are educated and they understand…. For five years now I’ve never been in the cells and I’ve only been thrashed once—touch wood!”
“What was that for?”
“Fighting. I have a heavy fist, Pavel Ivanich. Four Chinamen came into our yard: —
they were carrying wood, I think, but I don’t remember. Well, I was bored. —
I went for them and one of them got a bloody nose. —
The lieutenant saw it through the window and gave me a thick ear.”
“You poor fool,” muttered Pavel Ivanich. “You don’t understand anything.”
He was completely exhausted with the tossing of the boat and shut his eyes; —
his head fell back and then flopped forward onto his chest. —
He tried several times to lie down, but in vain, for he could not breathe.
“And why did you go for the four Chinamen?” he asked after a while.
“For no reason. They came into the yard and I went for them.”
Silence fell…. The gamblers played for a couple of hours, absorbed and cursing, but the tossing of the ship tired even them; —
they threw the cards away and laid down. —
Once more Goussiev thought of the big pond, the pottery, the village. —
Once more the sledges skimmed along, once more Vanka laughed, and that fool of an Akulka opened her fur coat, and stretched out her feet; —
look, she seemed to say, look, poor people, my felt boots are new and not like Vanka’s.
“She’s getting on for six and still she has no sense!” said Goussiev. —
“Instead of showing your boots off, why don’t you bring some water to your soldier-uncle? —
I’ll give you a present.”
Then came Andrea, with his firelock on his shoulder, carrying a hare he had shot, and he was followed by Tsaichik the cripple, who offered him a piece of soap for the hare; —
and there was the black heifer in the yard, and Domna sewing a shirt and crying over something, and there was the eyeless bull’s head and the black smoke….
Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; —
the sound of something heavy being dragged along the deck, or something had broken. —
… More running. Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened and saw the two soldiers and the sailor playing cards again; —
Pavel Ivanich sitting up and moving his lips. —
It was very close, he could hardly breathe, he wanted a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting. —
… The pitching of the boat was now better.
Suddenly something queer happened to one of the soldiers. —
… He called ace of diamonds, lost his reckoning and dropped his cards. —
He started and laughed stupidly and looked round.
“In a moment, you fellows,” he said and lay down on the floor.
All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he made no reply.
“Stiepan, are you ill?” asked the other soldier with the bandaged hand. —
“Perhaps we’d better call the priest, eh?”
“Stiepan, drink some water,” said the sailor. “Here, mate, have a drink.”
“What’s the good of breaking his teeth with the jug,” shouted Goussiev angrily. —
“Don’t you see, you fatheads?”
“What.”
“What!” cried Goussiev. “He’s snuffed it, dead. That’s what! Good God, what fools!…”
III
The rolling stopped and Pavel Ivanich cheered up. He was no longer peevish. —
His face had an arrogant, impetuous, and mocking expression. —
He looked as if he were on the point of saying: —
“I’ll tell you a story that will make you die of laughter.” —
Their port-hole was open and a soft wind blew in on Pavel Ivanich. —
Voices could be heard and the splash of oars in the water. —
… Beneath the window some one was howling in a thin, horrible voice; —
probably a Chinaman singing.
“Yes. We are in harbour,” said Pavel Ivanich, smiling mockingly. —
“Another month and we shall be in Russia. It’s true; —
my gallant warriors, I shall get to Odessa and thence I shall go straight to Kharkhov. —
At Kharkhov I have a friend, a literary man. —
I shall go to him and I shall say, ‘now, my friend, give up your rotten little love- stories and descriptions of nature, and expose the vileness of the human biped. —
… There’s a subject for you.’”
He thought for a moment and then he said:
“Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?”
“Who, Pavel Ivanich?”
“The lot out there…. You see there’s only first and third class on the steamer, and only peasants are allowed to go third. —
If you have a decent suit, and look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance, then you must go first. —
It may break you, but you have to lay down your five hundred roubles. —
‘What’s the point of such an arrangement?’ I asked. —
‘Is it meant to raise the prestige of Russian intellectuals?’ ‘Not a bit,’ said they. —
‘We don’t let you go, simply because it is impossible for a decent man to go third. —
It is so vile and disgusting.’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Thanks for taking so much trouble about decent people. —
Anyhow, bad or no, I haven’t got five hundred roubles as I have neither robbed the treasury nor exploited foreigners, nor dealt in contraband, nor flogged any one to death, and, therefore, I think I have a right to go first- class and to take rank with the intelligentsia of Russia.’ —
But there’s no convincing them by logic…. I had to try fraud. —
I put on a peasant’s coat and long boots, and a drunken, stupid expression and went to the agent and said: —
‘Give me a ticket, your Honour.’
”‘What’s your position?’ says the agent.
”‘Clerical,’ said I. ‘My father was an honest priest. —
He always told the truth to the great ones of the earth, and so he suffered much.’”
Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath failed him, but he went on:
“Yes. I always tell the truth straight out…. I am afraid of nobody and nothing. —
There’s a great difference between myself and you in that respect. —
You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you don’t understand what you do see. —
You are told that the wind breaks its chain, that you are brutes and worse, and you believe; —
you are thrashed and you kiss the hand that thrashes you; —
a swine in a raccoon pelisse robs you, and throws you sixpence for tea, and you say: —
‘Please, your Honour, let me kiss your hand.’ You are pariahs, skunks…. I am different. —
I live consciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk sees when it hovers over the earth, and I understand everything. —
I am a living protest. I see injustice—I protest; I see bigotry and hypocrisy—I protest; —
I see swine triumphant—I protest, and I am unconquerable. —
No Spanish inquisition can make me hold my tongue. Aye…. Cut my tongue out. —
I’ll protest by gesture…. Shut me up in a dungeon—I’ll shout so loud that I shall be heard for a mile round, or I’ll starve myself, so that there shall be a still heavier weight on their black consciences. —
Kill me—and my ghost will return. All my acquaintances tell me: —
‘You are a most insufferable man, Pavel Ivanich!’ I am proud of such a reputation. —
I served three years in the Far East, and have got bitter memories enough for a hundred years. —
I inveighed against it all. My friends write from Russia: ‘Do not come.’ —
But I’m going, to spite them…. Yes…. That is life. —
I understand. You can call that life.”
Goussiev was not listening, but lay looking out of the port-hole; —
on the transparent lovely turquoise water swung a boat all shining in the shimmering light; —
a fat Chinaman was sitting in it eating rice with chop-sticks. —
The water murmured softly, and over it lazily soared white sea-gulls.
“It would be fun to give that fat fellow one on the back of his neck. —
…” thought Goussiev, watching the fat Chinaman and yawning.
He dozed, and it seemed to him that all the world was slumbering. Time slipped swiftly away. —
The day passed imperceptibly; imperceptibly the twilight fell. —
… The steamer was still no longer but was moving on.
IV
Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich no longer sat up, but lay full length; —
his eyes were closed and his nose seemed to be sharper than ever.
“Pavel Ivanich!” called Goussiev, “Pavel Ivanich.”
Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.
“Aren’t you well?”
“It’s nothing,” answered Pavel Ivanich, breathing heavily. “It’s nothing. —
No. I’m much better. You see I can lie down now. I’m much better.”
“Thank God for it, Pavel Ivanich.”
“When I compare myself with you, I am sorry for you … poor devils. My lungs are all right; —
my cough comes from indigestion … I can endure this hell, not to mention the Red Sea! —
Besides, I have a critical attitude toward my illness, as well as to my medicine. —
But you … you are ignorant…. It’s hard lines on you, very hard.”
The ship was running smoothly; it was calm but still stifling and hot as a Turkish bath; —
it was hard not only to speak but even to listen without an effort. —
Goussiev clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and thought of his native place. —
My God, in such heat it was a pleasure to think of snow and cold! —
He saw himself driving on a sledge, and suddenly the horses were frightened and bolted. —
… Heedless of roads, dikes, ditches they rushed like mad through the village, across the pond, past the works, through the fields. —
… “Hold them in!” cried the women and the passers-by. “Hold them in!” But why hold them in? —
Let the cold wind slap your face and cut your hands; —
let the lumps of snow thrown up by the horses’ hoofs fall on your hat, down your neck and chest; —
let the runners of the sledge be buckled, and the traces and harness be torn and be damned to it! —
What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flung hard into a snow-drift; —
with your face slap into the snow, and you get up all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless, gloveless, with your belt undone. —
… People laugh and dogs bark….
Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and asked quietly:
“Goussiev, did your commander steal?”
“How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don’t hear of it.”
A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water; —
it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of being spoken to. —
One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night; —
but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.
He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutes passed and all was still.
“God rest his soul!” said the soldier with the bandaged hand. “He was a restless man.”
“What?” asked Goussiev. “Who?”
“He’s dead. He has just been taken up-stairs.”
“Oh, well,” muttered Goussiev with a yawn. “God rest his soul.”
“What do you think, Goussiev?” asked the bandaged soldier after some time. “Will he go to heaven?”
“Who?”
“Pavel Ivanich.”
“He will. He suffered much. Besides, he was a priest’s son, and priests have many relations. —
They will pray for his soul.”
The bandaged soldier sat down on Goussiev’s hammock and said in an undertone:
“You won’t live much longer, Goussiev. You’ll never see Russia.”
“Did the doctor or the nurse tell you that?” asked Goussiev.
“No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is going to die soon. —
You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone very thin and awful to look at. Consumption. —
That’s what it is. I’m not saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like to have the last sacrament. —
And if you have any money, you had better give it to the senior officer.”
“I have not written home,” said Goussiev. “I shall die and they will never know.”
“They will know,” said the sailor in his deep voice. —
“When you die they will put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to the military governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever it is….”
This conversation made Goussiev begin to feel unhappy and a vague desire began to take possession of him. —
He drank water—it was not that; he stretched out to the port-hole and breathed the hot, moist air—it was not that; —
he tried to think of his native place and the snow—it was not that. —
… At last he felt that he would choke if he stayed a moment longer in the hospital.
“I feel poorly, mates,” he said. “I want to go on deck. For Christ’s sake take me on deck.”
Goussiev flung his arms round the soldier’s neck and the soldier held him with his free arm and supported him up the gangway. —
On deck there were rows and rows of sleeping soldiers and sailors; —
so many of them that it was difficult to pick a way through them.
“Stand up,” said the bandaged soldier gently. “Walk after me slowly and hold on to my shirt….”
It was dark. There was no light on deck or on the masts or over the sea. —
In the bows a sentry stood motionless as a statue, but he looked as if he were asleep. —
It was as though the steamer had been left to its own sweet will, to go where it liked.
“They are going to throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea,” said the bandaged soldier. “They will put him in a sack and throw him overboard.”
“Yes. That’s the way they do.”
“But it’s better to lie at home in the earth. Then the mother can go to the grave and weep over it.”
“Surely.”
There was a smell of dung and hay. With heads hanging there were oxen standing by the bulwark—one, two, three . —
.. eight beasts. And there was a little horse. —
Goussiev put out his hand to pat it, but it shook its head, showed its teeth and tried to bite his sleeve.
“Damn you,” said Goussiev angrily.
He and the soldier slowly made their way to the bows and stood against the bulwark and looked silently up and down. —
Above them was the wide sky, bright with stars, peace and tranquillity—exactly as it was at home in his village; —
but below—darkness and turbulence. Mysterious towering waves. —
Each wave seemed to strive to rise higher than the rest; —
and they pressed and jostled each other and yet others came, fierce and ugly, and hurled themselves into the fray.
There is neither sense nor pity in the sea. —
Had the steamer been smaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed it remorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good and bad. —
The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. —
The large-nosed monster pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; —
it was afraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of loneliness; —
it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the monster would crush them without distinction of good and bad.
“Where are we now?” asked Goussiev.
“I don’t know. Must be the ocean.”
“There’s no land in sight.”
“Why, they say we shan’t see land for another seven days.”
The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence. —
Goussiev was the first to break the silence.
“Nothing is really horrible,” he said. “You feel uneasy, as if you were in a dark forest. —
Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a hundred miles out to sea to fish—I would go. Or suppose I saw a soul fall into the water—I would go in after him. —
I wouldn’t go in for a German or a Chinaman, but I’d try to save a Russian.”
“Aren’t you afraid to die?”
“Yes. I’m afraid. I’m sorry for the people at home. —
I have a brother at home, you know, and he is not steady; —
he drinks, beats his wife for nothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. —
But my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here. —
… Let me go to bed.”
V
Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. —
As before, a vague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. —
There was a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was so dry that he could hardly move his tongue. —
He dozed and dreamed, and, exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him, toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. —
He dreamed he was in barracks, and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled into the oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. —
He slept for two days and on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carried him out of the ward.
He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars were sewn up with him. —
In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish, broad at the top, narrow at the bottom. —
… Just before sunset he was taken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark, the other on a box, raised up by a stool. —
Round him stood the invalided soldiers.
“Blessed is our God,” began the priest; “always, now and for ever and ever.”
“Amen!” said three sailors.
The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at the waves. —
It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and dropped into the sea. —
Could it happen to any one?
The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung.
The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; —
shot headlong, turned over in the air, then plop! —
The foam covered him, for a moment it looked as though he was swathed in lace, but the moment passed—and he disappeared beneath the waves.
He dropped down to the bottom. Would he reach it? The bottom is miles down, they say. —
He dropped down almost sixty or seventy feet, then began to go slower and slower, swung to and fro as though he were thinking; —
then, borne along by the current; he moved more sideways than downward.
But soon he met a shoal of pilot-fish. Seeing a dark body, the fish stopped dead and sudden, all together, turned and went back. —
Less than a minute later, like arrows they darted at Goussiev, zigzagging through the water around him….
Later came another dark body, a shark. Gravely and leisurely, as though it had not noticed Goussiev, it swam up under him, and he rolled over on its back; —
it turned its belly up, taking its ease in the warm, translucent water, and slowly opened its mouth with its two rows of teeth. —
The pilot-fish were wildly excited; they stopped to see what was going to happen. —
The shark played with the body, then slowly opened its mouth under it, touched it with its teeth, and the sail-cloth was ripped open from head to foot; —
one of the bars fell out, frightening the pilot- fish and striking the shark on its side, and sank to the bottom.
And above the surface, the clouds were huddling up about the setting sun; —
one cloud was like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, another like a pair of scissors. —
… From behind the clouds came a broad green ray reaching up to the very middle of the sky; —
a little later a violet ray was flung alongside this, and then others gold and pink. —
… The sky was soft and lilac, pale and tender. —
At first beneath the lovely, glorious sky the ocean frowned, but soon the ocean also took on colour—sweet, joyful, passionate colours, almost impossible to name in human language. MY LIFE
