by Maxim Gorky
“Come, go and have a sleep now.… Farewell for a while!” and the doctor began to move his long, slender feet over the floor of the corridor.
Orlóff looked after him, and suddenly ran after him, with a broad smile.
“I thank you humbly, doctor.”
“What for?” and the doctor halted.
“For the work. Now I shall try with all my might to please you! Because your anxiety is agreeable to me…and…you said I was a valuable man…and, altogether, I’m most si-sincerely grateful to you!” The doctor gazed intently and in surprise at the agitated face of his hospital orderly, and smiled also.
“You’re a queer fellow! However, never mind,—you’ll turn out splendidly…genuine. Go ahead, and do your best; it will not be for me, but for the patients. We must wrest a man from the disease, tear him out of its paws,—do you understand me? Well, then, go ahead and try your best to conquer the disease. And, in the mean-while—go and sleep!”
Orlóff was soon lying on his cot, and fell asleep with a pleasing sensation of warmth in his bowels. He felt joyful, and was proud of his very simple conversation with the doctor.
But he sank into slumber regretting that his wife had not heard that conversation. He must tell her to-morrow.… That devil’s pepper-pot would not believe it, in all probability.
* * * *
“Come and drink your tea, Grísha,” his wife woke him in the morning.
He raised his head, and looked at her. She smiled at him. She was so calm and fresh, with her hair smoothly brushed, and clad in her white slip.
It pleased him to see her thus, and, at the same time, he reflected that the other men in the barracks certainly must see her in the same light.
“What do you mean—what tea? I have my own tea;—where am I to go?” he asked gloomily.
“Come and drink it with me,”—she proposed, gazing at him with caressing eyes.
Grigóry turned his eyes aside and said, curtly, that he would go.
She went away, but he lay down on his cot again, and began to think.
“What a woman! She invites me to drink tea, she’s affectionate.… But she has grown thin in one day.” He felt sorry for her, and wanted to do something which would please her. Should he buy something sweet to eat with the tea? But while he was washing himself he rejected that idea,—why pamper the woman? Let her live as she is!
They drank tea in a bright little den with two windows, which looked out on the plain, all flooded with the golden radiance of the morning sun. On the grass, under the windows, the dew was still glistening, far away on the horizon in the nebulous rose-colored morning mist stood the trees along the highway. The sky was clear, and the fragrance of damp grass and earth floated in through the windows from the meadows.
The table stood against the wall between the windows, and at it sat three persons: Grigóry and Matréna with the latter’s companion,—a tall, thin, elderly woman, with a pock-marked face, and kindly gray eyes. They called her Felitzáta Egórovna; she was unmarried, the daughter of a Collegiate Assessor, and could not drink tea made with water from the hospital boiler, but always boiled her own samovár. As she explained all this to Orlóff, in a cracked voice, she hospitably suggested that he should sit by the window, and drink his fill of “the really heavenly air,” and then she disappeared somewhere.
“Well, did you get tired yesterday?” Orlóff asked his wife.
“Just frightfully tired!” replied Matréna with animation.—“I could hardly stand on my feet, my head reeled, I couldn’t understand what was said to me, and the first I knew, I was lying at full length on the floor, unconscious. I barely—barely held out until relief-time came.… I kept praying; ‘help, oh Lord,’ I thought.”
“And are you scared?”
“Of the sick people?”
“The sick people are nothing.”
“I’m afraid of the dead people. Do you know.…” she bent over to her husband, and whispered to him in affright:—“they move after they are dead.… God is my witness, they do!”
“I’ve se-een that!”—laughed Grigóry sceptically.—“Yesterday, Nazároff the policeman came near giving me a box on the ear after his death. I was carrying him to the dead-house, and he gave su-uch a flourish with his left hand…I hardly managed to get out of the way…so there now!”—He was not telling the strict truth, but it seemed to come out that way of itself, against his will.
He was greatly pleased at this tea-drinking in the bright, clean room, with windows opening on a boundless expanse of green plain and blue sky. And something else pleased him, also,—not exactly his wife, nor yet himself. The result of it all was that he wished to show his best side, to be the hero of the day which was just beginning.
“When I start in to work—even the sky will become hot, so it will! For there is a cause for my doing so. In the first place, there are the people here,—there aren’t any more like them on earth, I can tell you that!”
He narrated his conversation with the doctor, and as he again exerted his fancy, unconsciously to himself—this fact still further strengthened his mood.
“In the second place, there’s the work itself. It’s a great affair, my friend, in the nature of war, for example. The cholera and people—which is to get the better of the other? Brains are needed, and everything must be just so. What’s cholera? One must understand that, and then—go ahead and give it what it can’t endure! Doctor Váshtchenko says to me: ‘you’re a valuable man in this matter, Orlóff,’ says he. ‘Don’t get scared,’ says he; ‘and drive it up from the patient’s legs into his belly, and there,’ says he, ‘I’ll nip it with something sour. That’s the end of it, and the man lives, and ought to be eternally grateful to you and me, because who was it that took him away from death? We!’”—And Orlóff proudly inflated his chest as he gazed at his wife with kindling eyes.
She smiled pensively into his face; he was handsome, and bore a great resemblance to his old self, the Grísha whom she had seen some time, long ago, before their marriage.
“All of them in our division are just such hard-working, kind folks. The woman doctor, a fa-at woman with spectacles, and then the female medical students. They’re nice people, they talk to a body so simply, and you can understand everything they say.”
“So that signifies that you’re all right, satisfied?”—asked Grigóry, whose excitement had somewhat cooled off.
“Do you mean me? Oh Lord! Judge for yourself: I get twelve rubles, and you get twenty…that makes thirty-eight a month!12 We’re lodged and fed! That means, that if people keep on getting sick until the winter, how much shall we amass?… And then, God willing, we’ll raise ourselves out of that cellar.…”
“We-ell now, that’s a serious subject.…” said Orlóff thoughtfully and, after a pause, he exclaimed with the pathos of hope, as he slapped his wife on the shoulder:—“Ekh, Matrénka,13 isn’t the sun shining on us? Don’t get scared now!”
She flushed all over.
“If you’d only stop drinking.…”
“As to that—hold your tongue! Suit your awl to your leather, your phiz to your life.… With a different life, my conduct will be different.”
“Oh Lord, if that might only happen!”—sighed his wife profoundly.
“Well now, hush up!”
“Grishenka!”14
They parted with certain novel feelings toward each other, inspired by hope, ready to work until their strength gave out, alert and cheerful.
Two or three days passed, and Orlóff had already won several flattering mentions as a sagacious, smart young fellow, and along with this he observed that Prónin and the other orderlies in the barracks bore themselves toward him with envy, and a desire to make things unpleasant for him. He was on his guard, and he also imbibed wrath against fat-faced Prónin, with whom he had been inclined to strike up a friendship and to chat, “according
to his soul.” At the same time, he was embittered by the plain desire of his fellow-workers to do him some injury.—“Ekh, the rascals!” he exclaimed to himself, and quietly gritted his teeth, endeavoring not to let slip some convenient opportunity to pay his friends off “with as good as they gave.” And, involuntarily, his thought halted at his wife:—with her he could talk about everything, she would not be envious of his successes, and would not burn his boots with carbolic acid, as Prónin had done.
All the working-days were as stormy and seething with activity as the first had been, but Grigóry no longer became so fatigued, for he expended his strength with more discernment with every day that passed. He learned to distinguish the smell of the medicaments, and, picking out from among them the odor of sulphate of ether, he inhaled it with delight on the sly, when opportunity offered, finding that the inhalation of ether had almost as agreeable an action as a good glass of vódka. Catching the meaning of the medical staff at half a word, always amiable and talkative, understanding how to entertain the patients, he became more and more of a favorite with the doctors and the medical students, and thus, under the combined influence of all the impressions of his new mode of existence, a strange, exalted mood was formed within him. He felt himself to be a man of special qualities. In him beat the desire to do something which should attract to him the attention of everyone, should astonish everyone, and force them to the conviction that he had a right to the ambition which had elevated him to such a pitch in his own eyes. This was the singular ambition of the man who had suddenly realized that he was a man, and who, as it were, still not quite firmly assured of the fact, wished to confirm it, in some way, to himself and to others; this was ambition, gradually transformed into a thirst for some disinterested exploit.
As the result of this incentive, Orlóff performed various risky feats, such as straining himself by carrying a heavily-built patient from his cot to the bath-tub single-handed, without waiting for assistance from his fellow-orderlies, nursing the very dirtiest of the patients, behaving in a daring sort of way in regard to the possibility of contagion, and handling the dead with a simplicity which sometimes passed over into cynicism. But all this did not satisfy him; he longed for something on a greater scale, and this longing burned incessantly within him, tortured him, and, at last, drove him to anguish.
Then he poured out his soul to his wife, because he had no one else.
One evening, when he and his wife were relieved from duty, they went out into the fields, after they had drunk tea. The barracks stood far away from the town, in the middle of a long, green plain, bounded on one side by a dark strip of forest, on the other by the line of buildings in the town; on the north the plain extended into the far distance, and there its verdure became merged with the dull-blue horizon; on the south it was intersected by a precipitous descent to the river, and along the verge of this precipice ran the highway, along which, at equal distances one from another, stood aged, wide-spreading trees. The sun was setting, and the crosses on the churches of the town, rising above the dark-green of the gardens, flamed in the sky, reflecting sheaves of golden rays, and on the window-panes of the houses which lay on the edge of the town the red glow of the sunset was reflected also. A band of music was playing somewhere or other; from the ravine, thickly overgrown with a fir-grove, a resinous fragrance was wafted aloft; the forest, also, shed abroad on the air its complicated, succulent perfume; light, fragrant waves of warm wind floated caressingly toward the town, and in the wide, deserted plain everything was very delightful, quiet and sweetly-melancholy.
The Orlóffs walked across the grass in silence, with pleasure inhaling the pure air in place of the hospital odors.
“Where’s that band playing, in the town, or in the camp?” inquired Matréna softly, of her pensive husband.
She did not like to see him thoughtful—he seemed a stranger to her, and far away from her at such moments. Of late, they had chanced to be together so very little, and she prized these moments all the more.
“The band?”—Grigóry replied with another question, as though freeing himself from a dream.—“Well, the devil take that band! You just ought to hear the music in my soul…that’s something like!”
“What is it?” she asked tremulously, looking into his eyes.
“I don’t know.… That is, I can’t tell you…and even if I could would you be able to understand? My soul burns.… It pines for space…so that I might develop myself to my full strength.… Ekhma! I feel within myself invincible strength! That is to say, if this cholera, for instance, could be transformed into a man…into an epic hero…even Ilyá of Muróm himself;15—I’d grapple with it; ‘Come on, I’ll fight thee to the death! Thou art a power, and I, Gríshka Orlóff, am a power also,—now, let’s see who’ll get the best of the other?’ And I’d strangle it, even if it killed me too.… There’d be a cross over me in the field, with the inscription: ‘Grigóry Andréeff Orlóff.… He freed Russia from the cholera.’ Nothing more would be necessary.”
As he spoke, his face burned, and his eyes flashed.
“You’re my strong man!” whispered Matréna, nestling close to his side.
“Do you understand…I’d hurl myself on a hundred knives, if only it would be of any use! If life could be lightened in that way. Because I see people: Doctor Váshtchenko, student Khokhryakóff,—it’s wonderful how they work! They ought to have died long ago of fatigue.… Do you think they do it for money? A man can’t work like that for money! The doctors, thank the Lord! have something of their own, and get a little in addition.… Why, an old man fell ill lately, and so Doctor Váshtchenko hammered away at him for four days, and never went home once the whole time.… Money doesn’t count in such a case; pity is the cause. He’s sorry for people—well, and so he doesn’t spare himself…for whose sake, you ask? For everybody’s sake…for the sake of Míshka Úsoff…Míshka’s proper place is in jail, for everybody knows that Míshka is a thief, and, perhaps, even worse.… They’re curing Míshka.… And they were glad when he got up from his cot, they laughed.… So I want to feel that same joy, also…and to have a great deal of it.… I’d like to choke with it! Because it gives me the heart-ache to see how they laugh over their work. I ache all over, and catch fire. I will do something!… But how? Oh…the devil!”
Orlóff waved his hand hopelessly, and again fell into thought.
Matréna said nothing, but her heart beat anxiously—this excitement of her husband alarmed her, and in his words she plainly felt the great passion of his longing, which she did not understand, because she did not try to understand it. It was her husband, not a hero, who was dear and necessary to her.
They reached the verge of the precipice, and sat down, side by side.… The tufted crests of the young birch-trees looked down upon them, and in the bottom of the ravine there already lay a bluish mist, which sent forth an odor of dampness, rotting leaves and pine-needles. From time to time a puff of wind swept along the ravine, the branches of the birch-trees, the little fir-trees, rocked, rocked to and fro,—the whole ravine became filled with anxious, timorous whispering, and it seemed as though someone who was tenderly beloved and guarded by the trees had fallen asleep in the ravine, beneath their canopy, and they were whispering together about him very, very softly, in order not to awaken him. And in the town, lights shone forth, and stood out like reddish flowers against the dark background of its gardens. And in the sky the stars began to kindle their fires. The Orlóffs sat on in silence,—he thoughtfully drummed on his knee with his fingers, she gazed at him and sighed softly.
And suddenly clasping her arms about his neck, she laid her head on his breast, and said in a whisper:
“My darling Gríshka! My dear one! How good you have become to me once more, my brave man! You see, it seems as though it were the good time…after our wedding…you and I were living along…you never utter an unkind word to me, you are always talking with me, you open your soul to me…you don
’t bawl at me.”
“And have you been fretting over that? I’ll give you a thrashing, if you want it,”—jested Grigóry affectionately, feeling in his soul an influx of tenderness and pity for his wife.
He began softly to stroke her head with his hand, and this caress pleased him,—it was so paternal—the caress of a father for a grown-up child. Matréna did in fact resemble a child: she now climbed up on his knees, and seated herself in his lap, in a soft, warm little ball.
“My dear one!”—she whispered.
He heaved a profound sigh, and words which were new both to his wife and to himself flowed of themselves from his tongue.
“Eh, you poor little kitten! You’re affectionate…you see, anyway, and there is no friend nearer than a husband. But you have kept waiting your chance on one side.… You know, if I did hurt you sometimes, it was because I was sad, Mótrya. We lived in a pit.… We did not see the light, we hardly knew people at all. I’ve got out of the pit, and have recovered my sight. I was like a blind man as regards life. And now I understand that a wife, anyhow, is a man’s closest friend in life. Because people are snakes and reptiles, to tell the truth.… They’re always trying to deal wounds to other people.… For instance—Prónin, Vasiukóff.… Well, they may go to the.… Hold your peace, Mótrya! We shall get straightened out, all right, never fear.… We shall make our way, and live with understanding.… Well? What do you think of it, my little goose?”
She shed sweet tears of happiness, and replied to his question with kisses.
“You are my only one!” he whispered, and kissed her in return.
They wiped away each other’s tears with kisses, and both were conscious of their briny taste. And for a long time Orlóff continued to talk in words which were new for him.
It was completely dark now. The sky, magnificently adorned with countless swarms of stars, looked down upon the earth with triumphant sadness, and in the plain reigned silence like that of the sky.