“But what can I say?” I’m perplexed. “There’s nothing.”
“Tell me, I implore you!” she goes on, choking and trembling all over. “I swear to you, I can’t live like this any longer! It’s beyond my strength!”
She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back, wrings her hands, stamps her feet; her hat has fallen off her head and dangles from an elastic, her hair is disheveled.
“Help me! Help me!” she implores. “I can’t go on!”
She takes a handkerchief from her traveling bag, and along with it pulls out several letters that fall from her knees onto the floor. I pick them up from the floor and on one of them recognize Mikhail Fyodorovich’s handwriting, and unintentionally read a bit of one word—“passionat …”
“There’s nothing I can tell you, Katya,” I say.
“Help me!” she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. “You’re my father, my only friend! You’re intelligent, educated, you’ve lived a long time! You’ve been a teacher! Tell me: what am I to do?”
“In all conscience, Katya, I don’t know …”
I’m at a loss, embarrassed, touched by her sobbing, and barely able to keep my feet.
“Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say with a forced smile. “Enough crying!”
And I add at once in a sinking voice:
“I’ll soon be no more, Katya …”
“Just one word, one word!” she weeps, holding her arms out to me. “What am I to do?”
“You’re a strange one, really …” I murmur. “I don’t understand! Such a clever girl and suddenly—there you go, bursting into tears! …
Silence ensues. Katya straightens her hair, puts her hat on, then crumples the letters and stuffs them into her bag—and all this silently and unhurriedly Her face, breast, and gloves are wet with tears, but the expression of her face is already dry, severe … I look at her and feel ashamed that I’m happier than she is. I’ve noticed the absence in me of what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea only shortly before death, in the twilight of my days, but the soul of this poor thing has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her life!
“Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say.
“No, thank you,” she replies coldly.
Another minute passes in silence.
“I don’t like Kharkov,” I say. “Much too gray. A gray sort of city.”
“Yes, perhaps so … Not pretty … I won’t stay long … Passing through. I’m leaving today.”
“Where for?”
“The Crimea … I mean, the Caucasus.”
“Ah. For long?”
“I don’t know.”
Katya gets up and, smiling coldly, gives me her hand without looking at me.
I want to ask: “So you won’t be at my funeral?” But she doesn’t look at me, her hand is cold, like a stranger’s. I silently walk with her to the door … Now she has left my room and walks down the long corridor without looking back. She knows I’m following her with my eyes and will probably look back from the turn.
No, she didn’t look back. The black dress flashed a last time, the footsteps faded away … Farewell, my treasure!
NOVEMBER 1889
GUSEV
I
It has grown dark, it will soon be night.
Gusev, a discharged private, sits up on his cot and says in a low voice:
“Can you hear, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan told me their ship ran over a big fish as it went and broke a hole in its bottom.”
The man of unknown status whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sick bay calls Pavel Ivanych, says nothing, as if he has not heard.
And again there is silence … The wind plays in the rigging, the propeller thuds, the waves splash, the cots creak, but the ear is long accustomed to it all, and it seems as if everything around is asleep and still. It is boring. The other three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who played cards all day long, are now asleep and muttering to themselves.
It seems the ship is beginning to toss. The cot under Gusev slowly goes up and down, as if sighing—it does it once, twice, a third time … Something hits the floor with a clank: a mug must have fallen.
“The wind has snapped its chain …” says Gusev, listening.
This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and replies irritably:
“First you’ve got a ship running over a fish, then the wind snaps its chain … Is the wind a beast that it can snap its chain?”
“That’s how Christian folk talk.”
“And Christian folk are as ignorant as you are … What else do they say? You have to keep your head on your shoulders and think. Senseless man.”
Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the ship tosses, he usually gets angry and the least trifle irritates him. But there is, in Gusev’s opinion, absolutely nothing to get angry about. What is so strange or tricky, for instance, even in the fish, or in the wind snapping its chain? Suppose the fish is as big as a mountain, and its back is as hard as a sturgeon’s; suppose, too, that at the world’s end there are thick stone walls, and the angry winds are chained to the walls … If they have not snapped their chains, why are they rushing about like crazy all over the sea and straining like dogs? If they do not get chained up, where do they go when it is still?
Gusev spends a long time thinking about fish as big as mountains and thick, rusty chains, then he gets bored and begins thinking about his homeland, to which he is now returning after serving for five years in the Far East. He pictures an enormous pond covered with snow … On one side of the pond, a porcelain factory the color of brick, with a tall smokestack and clouds of black smoke; on the other side, a village … Out of a yard, the fifth from the end, drives a sleigh with his brother Alexei in it; behind him sits his boy Vanka in big felt boots and the girl Akulka, also in felt boots. Alexei is tipsy, Vanka is laughing, and Akulka’s face cannot be seen—she is all wrapped up.
“Worse luck, he’ll get the kids chilled …” thinks Gusev. “Lord, send them good sense,” he whispers, “to honor their parents and not be cleverer than their mother and father …”
“You need new soles there,” the sick sailor mutters in a bass voice while he sleeps. “Aye-aye!”
Gusev’s thoughts break off, and instead of a pond, a big, eyeless bull’s head appears out of nowhere, and the horse and sleigh are no longer driving but are whirling in the black smoke. But all the same he is glad to have seen his family. Joy takes his breath away, gives him gooseflesh all over, quivers in his fingers.
“God has granted me to see them!” he says in his sleep, but at once opens his eyes and feels for water in the darkness.
He drinks and lies down, and again the sleigh is driving, then again the eyeless bull’s head, the smoke, the clouds … And so it goes till dawn.
II
First a blue circle outlines itself in the darkness—it is a round window; then Gusev gradually begins to distinguish the man on the cot next to his, Pavel Ivanych. This man sleeps in a sitting position, because when he lies down he suffocates. His face is gray, his nose long, sharp, his eyes, owing to his great emaciation, are enormous; his temples are sunken, his little beard is thin, the hair on his head is long … Looking into his face, it is hard to tell what he is socially: a gentleman, a merchant, or a peasant? Judging by his expression and his long hair, he seems to be an ascetic, a monastery novice, but when you listen to what he says—it turns out that he may not be a monk. Coughing, stuffiness, and his illness have exhausted him, he breathes heavily and moves his dry lips. Noticing Gusev looking at him, he turns his face to him and says:
“I’m beginning to guess … Yes … Now I understand it all perfectly.”