Yergunov tried to consider his forthcoming reception in the hospi- tal, and what the doctor would say. He must certainly give thought to that and have his answers ready in advance, but such thoughts dissolved and eluded him. Walking along, he could chink only of Lyubka and the peasants that he had spent the night with. He remembered, too, how Lyubka's plait had swung loose to the floor as she bcnt down for the quilt after hitting him for the second time. His mind was in such a muddle. Why are there doctors and medical orderlies, he wondered, why are there merchants, clerks and peasants in chis world? Why aren't there jusc free men? The birds and beasts are free, aren't they? So is Merik. They fear no one, they need no one. Now, whose idea was it—who says we have to get up in the morning, have a meal at midday and go to bed at night? That a doctor is senior to an orderly? That one must live in a room and love no one but one's wife? Why shouldn't things be the other way round—lunch at night and sleep by day? Oh, to leap on a horse, not asking whose it is, and race the wind down fields, woods and dales like some fend out of hell! Oh, to make love to girls, to laugh at everyone!
Yergunov threw the poker in the snow and pressed his forehead on the cold, white trunk of a birch tree, lost in thought. And his grey, monotonous life, his wages, his subordinate position, his dispensary, the everlasting fussing over jars and poultices, seemed contemptible aid sickening.
'Who says it's wrong to have a bit of fun?' he wondered ruefully. 'Those who talk that way have never lived a free life like Merik or Kalaslmikov, they haven't loved Lyubka. They've spent all their lives on their knees, they haven't enjoyed themselves. And they've loved no one but their frog-like wives.'
If he still wasn't a burglar, a swindler—a highway robber, even— that was only through lack of ability or suitable opportunity. Such was his present view of himself.
Some eighteen months passed. In spring, after Easter, Yergunov— long since dismissed from his hospital and drifting around out of work —left the tavern at Repino late one night and wandered aimlessly down the street.
He walked into the country. There was a scent of spring and the breath of a warm, caressing breeze. From the sky the quiet, starlit night gazed do^ on earth. God, how deep that sky is, how infinitely broad its canopy over the world! The world is well enough made, thought Yergunov. But why do people divide each other into sober and drunk, employed and discharged, and so forth. What right have they? Why do the sober and well-fed sleep comfortably in their homes, while the drunken and the starving must roam the country without shelter ? The man who doesn't work, and doesn't earn wages—why must he neces- sarily go hungry, unclothed, without boots? Whose idea was this? Why don't the birds and forest beasts have jobs or earn wages—but enjoy themselves instead?
Unfurled over the horizon, a magnificent crimson glow quivered in the far sky, and Yergunov stood watching it for a long time. Why, he kept wondering, should it be a sin if he had run off with someone's samovar yesterday and drunk the proceeds in the tavern? Why?
Two carts drove past on the road. In one a peasant woman slept, in the other sat a bare-headed old man.
'Where's the fire, old man?' asked Yergunov.
'At Andrew Chirikov's inn,' the old man replied.
Then Yergunov remembered his winter adventure of eighteen months ago in that same inn, remembered Merik's boastful threat. Picturing the old woman and Lyubka with their throats cut, burning, he envied Merik. On his way back to the tavern, he looked at the houses of rich inn-keepers, cattle-dealers and blacksmiths. It would be a good idea to burgle some rich man's house at night, he reflected.
GUSEV
I
It is getting dark, and will soon be night.
Guscv, a discharged private soldier, sits up in his bunk.
'I say, Paul Ivanovich,' he reiarks in a low voice. 'A soldier in Suchan told me their ship ran into a great fish on the way out and broke her bottom.'
The nondescript person whom he addresses, kno^ to everyone in the ship's sick-bay as Paul Ivanovich, acts as if he has not heard, and says nothing.
Once more quietness descends.
Wind plays in the rigging, the screw thuds, waves thrash, bunks creak, but their ears have long been attuned to all that, and they feel as if their surroundings are slumbering silently. It is boring. The three patients—two soldiers and one sailor—who have spent all day playing cards, are already dozing and talking in their sleep.
The sea is growing rough, it seems. Beneath Gusev the bunk slowly rises and falls, as if sighing—once, twice, a third time.
Something clangs on to the floor—a mug must have fallen.
'The wind's broken loose from its chain,' says Gusev, listening.
This time Paul Ivanovich coughs.
'First you have a ship hitting a fish,' he replies irritably. 'Then you have a wind breaking loose from its chain. Is the wind a beast, that it breaks loose, eh ?'
'It's how folk talk.'
'Then folk are as ignorant as you, they'll say anything. A man needs a head on his shoulders—he needs to use his reason, you senseless creature.'
Paul Ivanovich is subject to se.a-sickness, and when the sea is rough he is usually bad-tempered, exasperated by the merest trifle. But there is absolutely nothing to be angry about, in Gusev's opinion. What is there so strange or surprising in that fish, even—or in the wind bursting its bonds? Suppose the fish is mountain-sized, and has a hard back like a sturgeon's. Suppose, too, that there are thick stone walls at the world's end, and that fierce winds arc chained to those walls. If the winds haven't broken loose, then why do they thrash about like mad over the whole sea, tearing away like dogs? What happens to them in calm weather if they aren't chained up?
For some time Gusev considers mountainous fish and stout, rusty chains. Then he grows bored and thinks of the home country to which he is now returning after five years' service in the Far East. He pictures a large, snow-covered pond. On one side of the pond is the red-brick pottery with its tall chi^ey and clouds of black smoke, and on the other side is the village. Out of the fifth yard from the end his brother Alexis drives his sledge with his little son Vanka sitting behind him in his felt over-boots together with his little girl Akulka, also felt-booted. Alexis has been drinking, Vanka is laughing, and Akulka's face cannot be seen because she is all muffled up.
'He'll get them kids frostbitten if he don't watch out,' thinks Gusev. 'O Lord,' he whispers, 'grant them reason and- the sense to honour their parents, and not be cleverer than their mum and dad.'
'Those boots need new soles,' rambles the delirious sailor in his deep voice. 'Yes indeed.'
Gusev's thoughts break olf. Instead of the pond, a large bull's head without eyes appears for no reason whatever, while horse and sledge no longer move ahead, but spin in a cloud of black smoke. Still, he's glad he's seen the folks at home. His happiness takes his breath away. It ripples, tingling, over his whole body, quivers in his fingers.
'We met again, thanks be to God,' he rambles, but at once opens his eyes and tries to fi.nd some water in the darkness.
He drinks and lies back, and again the sledge passes—followed once more by the eyeless bull's head, smoke, clouds.
And so it goes on till daybreak.
II
First a dark blue circle emerges from the blackness—the port-hole. Then, bit by bit, Gusev can m.ake out the man in the next bunk— Paul Ivanovich. Paul sleeps sitting up because lying downwn makes him choke. His face is grey, his nose is long and sharp, and his eyes seem huge because he has grownwn so fearfully thin. His temples are sunken, his beard is wispy, his hair is long.
From his face you cannot possibly tell what class he belongs to—is he gentleman, merchant or peasant? His expression and long hair might be those of a hermit, or of a novice in a monastery, but when he speaks he doesn't sound like a monk, somehow. Coughing, bad air and disease have worn him do\wn and made breathing hard for him as he mumbles with his parched lips.