“Good, good,” the Tartar muttered, shrinking from the chill.
“What’s good?” the Explainer asked.
“The wife, the daughter … Hard labor, yes, grief, yes, but still he saw his wife and daughter … Need nothing, you say. But nothing—bad. His wife lived with him three years—that was a gift from God. Nothing bad, three years good. How you don’t understand?”
Trembling, straining to find Russian words, of which he did not know many, and stammering, the Tartar began to say that God forbid he get sick in a foreign land, die and be put into the cold, rusty earth, that if his wife came to him, be it for a single day and even for a single hour, he would agree to suffer any torment for such happiness and would thank God. Better a single day of happiness than nothing.
After that he told again about what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home, then, clutching his head with both hands, he wept and began assuring Semyon that he was not guilty of anything and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his uncle stole horses from a peasant and beat the old man half to death, but the community gave them an unfair trial and sentenced all three brothers to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, stayed home.
“You’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon.
The Tartar fell silent and fixed his tear-filled eyes on the fire; his face showed bewilderment and fright, as if he were still unable to understand why he was there in the dark and the damp, among strangers, and not in Simbirsk province. The Explainer lay down near the fire, grinned at something, and struck up a song in a low voice.
“What fun is it for her with her father?” he said after a while. “He loves her, takes comfort in her, it’s true; but don’t go putting your finger in his mouth, brother: he’s a strict old man, a tough one. And young girls don’t want strictness … They need tenderness, ha-ha-ha and hee-ho-ho, perfumes and creams. Yes … Eh, so it goes!” Semyon sighed and got up heavily. “The vodka’s all gone, that means it’s time to sleep. Eh, I’m off, brother …”
Left alone, the Tartar added more brushwood, lay down, and, gazing at the fire, began thinking of his native village and his wife; let his wife come for just a month, just a day, and then, if she wants, she can go back! Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if his wife keeps her promise and comes, what will he give her to eat? Where will she live here?
“If no food, how live?” the Tartar asked out loud.
Because now, working day and night with an oar, he earned only ten kopecks a day; true, travelers gave them tips for tea and vodka, but the boys divided all the income among themselves and gave nothing to the Tartar, but only laughed at him. And need makes one hungry, cold, and afraid … Now, when his whole body aches and trembles, it would be nice to go into the hut and sleep, but there he has nothing to cover himself with, and it is colder than on the bank; here he also has nothing to cover himself with, but at least he can make a fire …
In a week, when the water fully subsided and the ferry was set up, none of the boatmen would be needed except for Semyon, and the Tartar would start going from village to village, begging and asking for work. His wife was only seventeen; she was beautiful, pampered, and shy—could she, too, go around the villages with her face uncovered and beg for alms? No, it was horrible even to think of it …
Dawn was breaking; the outlines of the barge, the osier bushes in the rippling water, could be seen clearly, and, looking back, there was the clay cliffside, the hut roofed with brown straw below, and a cluster of village cottages above. In the village the cocks were already crowing.
The red clay cliffside, the barge, the river, the unkind strangers, hunger, cold, sickness—maybe none of it exists in reality. Probably I am only dreaming it all, thought the Tartar. He felt that he was asleep and heard his own snoring … Of course he is at home, in Simbirsk province, and as soon as he calls his wife’s name, she will call back to him; and his mother is in the next room … Sometimes one has such frightful dreams! What for? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river is this? The Volga?
It was snowing.
“Hallo-o-o!” someone was shouting from the other bank. “Ba-a-arridge!”
The Tartar came to his senses and went to wake up his comrades, so that they could cross to the other side. Putting on their ragged sheepskin coats as they went, cursing in hoarse, just-awakened voices, and hunching up against the cold, the boatmen appeared on the bank. The river, which exhaled a piercing cold, probably seemed disgusting and eerie to them after sleep. They clambered unhurriedly into the barridge … The Tartar and the three boatmen took hold of the long, broad-bladed oars, which in the dark resembled crayfish claws; Semyon heaved the weight of his belly against the long tiller. The shouting from the other side went on, and two pistol shots rang out, probably with the thought that the boatmen were asleep or had gone to the pothouse in the village.
“All right, you’ll get there!” the Explainer said in the tone of a man convinced that in this world there is no need to hurry, “nothing good will come of it anyway.”
The heavy, clumsy barge detached itself from the bank and floated among the osier bushes, and only by the fact that the osiers were slowly dropping behind could one tell that it was not standing in place but moving. The boatmen swung the oars regularly, in unison; the Explainer lay his belly against the tiller and, describing a curve in the air, flew from one gunwale to the other. In the darkness it looked as if people were sitting on some antediluvian animal with long paws and floating on it towards some cold, gloomy land such as one sometimes sees in nightmares.