In the corridor the clock strikes one, two, three… The final months of my life, whilst I’m waiting for death, seem far longer than the whole of my life up to now. Never before could I resign myself to the slow passage of time as I can now. Before, when I waited for a train at a station, or invigilated at an examination, a quarter of an hour seemed a eternity. But now I can sit all night on my bed without moving, reflecting with complete indifference that tomorrow night will be just as long and dreary – and the night after that…
The corridor clock strikes five, six, seven. It’s growing dark.
There’s a dull pain in my cheek – the tic is starting. To occupy my mind I revert to my earlier outlook, when I wasn’t so apathetic. Why, I ask myself, should a famous man, at the top of his profession, be sitting in this small hotel room on a bed with a strange grey quilt? Why am I looking at a cheap tin washstand and listening to the jarring sound of that wretched clock in the corridor? Is all this in keeping with my fame and elevated position in society? And I answer these questions with a sarcastic smile. I’m amused by the naivety with which I once – when I was young – used to exaggerate the importance of fame and the exclusive status celebrities appear to enjoy. I am well-known, my name is uttered in awe, my portrait has been in The Cornfield26 and World Illustrated.27 I’ve even read my biography in a German journal – and what does it all add up to? Here I am sitting all alone, in a strange town, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my hand. Family squabbles, ruthless creditors, the rudeness of railway guards, the bothersome passport system,28 the expensive and unhealthy food at buffets, people’s general boorishness and bad manners – all this and much more which would take too long to enumerate, affects me no less than any lowly tradesman, known only in his little back alley. What is so special about my position? Let’s suppose I’m a celebrity a thousand times over, that I’m a hero, the pride of Russia. Bulletins about my illness appear in every paper, now I receive in the post letters of sympathy from my colleagues, students and the public, yet none of this will save me from dying miserably in a strange bed and in utter loneliness. No one’s to blame for this of course but (sinner that I am) I don’t like having such a popular name. It strikes me that it’s cheated me.
Around ten o’clock I fall asleep and I sleep soundly, despite the tic. I would have slept for a long time had someone not woken me up. Soon after one o’clock there’s a sudden knock at the door.
‘Who’s there?’
‘A telegram for you.’
‘You might have waited till the morning,’ I say angrily as I take the telegram from the hotel boy. ‘Now I shan’t get to sleep again.’
‘Sorry sir. I saw a light in your room, so I thought you were awake.’
I open the telegram and first I glance at the signature: it’s my wife’s. What does she want?
YESTERDAY GNEKKER SECRETLY MARRIED LIZA COME BACK
As I read the telegram my fear is short-lived. It’s not Liza’s or Gnekker’s behaviour that alarms me, but my own indifference to the news of their marriage. Philosophers and true sages are said to be dispassionate, but that’s false: indifference is spiritual paralysis, premature death.
I go back to bed again and wonder how to occupy my mind. What can I think about? I feel I’ve thought over everything already and that there’s nothing left capable of stimulating my mind now.
When daylight comes I’m sitting on my bed, knees clasped, and for want of anything else to do I try to know myself. ‘Know thyself’ is fine, practical advice, only it’s a pity the ancients didn’t get round to showing us how to make use of their advice.
Before, whenever I had the urge to understand someone else or myself, it wasn’t their actions – where everything follows convention – that I used to take into account, but their desires: tell me what you want and I’ll tell you who you are.
And now I examine myself and ask: what do I want?
I want our wives, children, friends, students to love us not for our prestige, not for the way we’re branded and labelled, but as ordinary human beings. What else? I would have liked to have had helpers and successors. What else? I’d like to wake up a hundred years from now and at least have a quick look at what’s going on in science. I’d like to live another ten years… And then?
Nothing more. I keep thinking for a long, long time but can’t hit upon anything. And however much I rack my brains and whenever I let my thoughts roam, obviously something of fundamental importance, something that is absolutely crucial is lacking in my desires. In my passion for science, in my urge to live, in my sitting here on this strange bed, in all the thoughts and feelings and conceptions I form about everything and in my endeavour to know myself, there is no common link which might bind them into one whole. Every feeling, every idea I entertain lives a separate life. Not even the most skilful analyst could discover any ‘general idea’ or the God of living man in any of my judgements about science, the stage, literature, students, in any of the pictures painted by my imagination.
And if that’s not there, then nothing is there.
My present plight is so wretched that serious illness, fear of death, the impact of circumstances and people have sufficed to capsize and to completely shatter what once I considered my entire outlook, everything which once brought meaning and joy to my life. Therefore it’s no wonder that I’ve darkened the last months of my life with thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave and barbarian, that I’m so apathetic now and don’t even notice when dawn comes. When a man lacks something which is stronger and superior to all outside influences, then a cold will suffice for him to become unbalanced and to see an owl in every bird and to hear the howling of dogs in every noise. And all his pessimism or optimism, together with his thoughts – great or small – are in that case meaningful solely as symptoms, nothing else.
I am defeated. If that’s so, there’s no point in carrying on thinking or talking. I shall just sit and wait in silence for whatever comes.
In the morning the boy brings me tea and a local paper. Mechanically I read the advertisements on the front page, the editorial, extracts from papers and journals, the Chronicle of Events. Among other things I find the following announcement: ‘Yesterday that famous scholar the distinguished Professor Nikolay Stepanovich Such-and-Such arrived by express in Kharkov and is staying at Such-and-Such hotel.’
Resounding reputations are apparently created to live their own separate lives, apart from those who bear them. Now my name is wandering serenely around Kharkov; in three months’ time it will be engraved in gold letters gleaming bright as the sun on my tombstone – that’s when I myself will be under the grass…
There’s a light tap on the door. Someone wants me.
‘Who’s there? Come in!’
The door opens and I am so startled I step backwards, hurriedly wrapping the folds of my dressing-gown around me. Before me stands Katya.
‘Hullo,’ she says, out of breath after walking up the stairs. ‘You weren’t expecting me, were you? Well… I’ve come here too.’
She sits down and goes on talking, falteringly and without looking at me.
‘Why don’t you say hullo? I’m here too, I arrived this morning. I found out that you were staying in this hotel, so I came to see you.’
‘But I’m amazed… just like a bolt from the blue! Why have you come here?’
‘Me? Oh well… I had a sudden urge, so I came…’
Silence. Suddenly she impetuously gets up and comes over to me.
‘Nikolay Stepanovich!’ she says, turning pale and pressing her hands to her bosom. ‘Nikolay Stepanovich! I can’t go on living like this! I can’t! For God’s sake tell me quickly, right now – what am I to do? Tell me what to do.’
‘What can I say?’ I ask in bewilderment. ‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘But please tell me, I beg you!’ she continues, gasping and shaking all over. ‘I swear it, I can’t live like this any more. I’m at the end of my tether!’
She si
nks onto a chair and starts sobbing. With her head tossed back she wrings her hands, stamps her feet. Her hat falls off and dangles on a piece of elastic, her hair is dishevelled.
‘Help me, help me!’ she pleads. ‘I can’t go on like this any more!’
She takes a handkerchief from her travelling bag and pulls out with it several letters which fall from her lap onto the floor. I pick them up and in one of them I recognize Mikhail Fyodorovich’s handwriting and happen to read part of a 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 clever, educated, you’ve lived a long life! You were a teacher once! Tell me what to do!’
‘In all honesty, Katya, I don’t know.’
I am bewildered, embarrassed, moved by her sobbing and I can hardly stand.
‘Let’s have some lunch, Katya,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Now stop crying!’
And I immediately add in a sinking voice, ‘Soon I shall be dead, Katya…’
‘Just one word, one word!’ she weeps, stretching out her arms. ‘What can I do?’
‘Really, you’re so strange,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t understand. Such a clever girl – then suddenly all these tears! Really!’
Silence follows. Katya tidies her hair, puts on her hat, crumples the letters together and stuffs them in the bag – all this without hurrying or speaking. Her face, her bosom, her gloves are wet with tears, but her expression is cold and stern now… I look at her and feel ashamed that I’m happier than her. Only on the brink of death, in my twilight days, have I discovered that I lack what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea, but that poor girl’s spirit never knew and will never know sanctuary all its life. All its life!
‘Come on Katya, let’s have lunch,’ I say.
‘No thank you,’ she replies coldly.
Another minute passes in silence.
‘I don’t like Kharkov,’ I say. ‘It’s very grey – a grey kind of town!’
‘Yes, perhaps it is… Yes, it’s ugly… I’m not staying long… just passing through. I’m leaving today.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the Crimea… I mean, the Caucasus.’
‘Oh. For long?’
‘I don’t know.’
Katya gets up and without looking at me she stretches out her hand with a cold smile.
I feel like asking: ‘So, you won’t be at my funeral?’ But she doesn’t look at me, her hand is as cold as a stranger’s. Without saying a word I escort her to the door… And now she’s left me and she’s walking down the long corridor without looking back. She knows I’m watching her and she’ll probably look back at the corner.
But no, she doesn’t look back. I glimpse her black dress for the last time, her footsteps die away… Farewell, my treasure!
Gusev
I
It is dark now, soon it will be night.
Gusev, a discharged soldier, sits up in his bunk and says in an undertone, ‘Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan1 told me that when they were at sea their ship collided with an enormous fish and stove a hole in its bottom.’
The nondescript person whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sickbay knows as Pavel Ivanych says nothing, as if he doesn’t hear.
And again silence descends… The wind plays in the rigging, the screw throbs, waves lash, bunks creak, but the ear has long grown accustomed to all this and everything around seems to be silently slumbering. It is boring. The three patients – two soldiers and one sailor – who have been playing cards all day are already dozing and talking in their sleep.
The ship is beginning to pitch, it seems. The bunk beneath Gusev slowly rises and falls as if it is breathing – once, twice, a third time. Something hits the floor with a ringing noise – a mug must have fallen down.
‘The wind’s broken loose from its chains,’ says Gusev, listening hard.
This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and answers irritably, ‘First you say the ship’s colliding with a fish, then the wind’s broken loose from its chains. Is the wind a wild animal then, that can break loose from its chains?’
‘That’s what folk say.’
‘Then folk are as ignorant as you are, they say all sorts of things. A man should have a head on his shoulders and use his brains, you foolish man.’
Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the sea is rough he is usually bad-tempered and the least trifle irritates him. But in Gusev’s opinion there is absolutely nothing to be angry about. What’s so strange or surprising about that fish, for instance, or the wind breaking loose from its chains? Suppose that fish were as big as a mountain and its back as hard as a sturgeon’s? Suppose too, that far away, where the world ends, there are thick stone walls and the fierce winds are chained to those walls… If they haven’t broken loose then why do they charge all over the ocean like maniacs and struggle to break free, like dogs on a leash? Where then do they go in calm weather if they’re not chained up?
Gusev ponders long over mountain-sized fish and thick rusty chains; then he grows bored and starts thinking of his homeland where he is now returning after five years’ service in the Far East. He pictures the large snow-covered pond… on one side there’s a red-brick pottery with a tall chimney and clouds of thick black smoke, on the other is the village. His brother Alexis is driving in his sledge out of the fifth yard from the end with his little son Vanka sitting behind him in large felt over-boots, and his little girl Akulka, who is wearing felt boots too. Alexis has been drinking, Vanka is laughing, but Akulka’s face is hidden because she has wrapped herself up.
‘You’ll see, he’ll get them kids frostbitten,’ thinks Gusev. ‘Oh Lord,’ he whispers, ‘grant them sense and understanding so they honours their parents and aren’t cleverer than their mama and papa.’
‘Them boots need resoling,’ the sick sailor babbles in his deep voice. ‘Oh yes they do!’
Gusev’s thoughts break off and instead of the pond a large eyeless bull’s head appears for no earthly reason, whilst the horse and sledge no longer drive along but whirl round in a cloud of black smoke. Still, he is glad that he has seen the folk at home. His joy takes his breath away, sends shivers all over his whole body and makes his fingers twitch.
‘The Lord’s arranged for us to meet again!’ he rambles deliriously, but at once he opens his eyes and looks for some water in the darkness.
He drinks and lies back – and again that sledge drives past, again that eyeless bull’s head, smoke, clouds… and so it goes on until daybreak.
II
A dark blue circle first emerges from the darkness – it is a porthole; then Gusev gradually begins to distinguish his neighbour Pavel Ivanych in the next bunk. Pavel is sleeping sitting up as he would choke lying down. His face is grey, his nose long and sharp and his eyes enormous because he has grown so terribly thin. His temples are sunken, his beard sparse, his hair long. By looking at his face it is impossible to tell what class he is – gentleman, merchant or peasant. From his expression and long hair he might be a hermit or a lay brother in a monastery, but if you listen to him speak he doesn’t sound like a monk. The pitching, the humidity and his illness have exhausted him, he finds breathing difficult and he keeps moving his parched lips. Noticing that Gusev is looking at him he turns his face to him and says, ‘Now I’m beginning to see… Yes, I understand everything perfectly now.’
‘Understand what, Pavel Ivanych?’
‘I’ll tell you… What’s always puzzled me is how serious cases like you, instead of being somewhere nice and peaceful, should end up in a ship, where there’s pitching, humidity, heat – in short, where you’re threatened with death on all sides. But now it’s all clear to me… yes… Your doctors let them put you on the ship to get rid of you. They’re sick of messing around with cattle like you. You don’t pay them anything, you’re a damned nuisance and you spoil
their records by dying – so you’re cattle! And getting rid of you isn’t difficult. The first requirement is to lack all conscience and humanity and the second is to cheat the steamship line. You can ignore the first – we’re all artists in that respect and you can always manage the second with a little practice. Five sick men don’t stand out in a crowd of four hundred fit soldiers and sailors. So, they bundle you on board, mix you up with the healthy ones, quickly tot you all up and in all the confusion they find nothing wrong. Only when the ship’s under way do they notice the paralytics and consumptives in the last stages lying around the deck.’
Gusev doesn’t understand Pavel Ivanych. Thinking that he is being told off he says in self-defence, ‘I was lying on deck because all me strength had gone. I got frozen stiff when they was unloading us from the barge onto the ship.’
‘It really gets your back up,’ Pavel Ivanych continues. ‘The worst of it is they know perfectly well you won’t last the long journey, yet still they put you here! Supposing you make it to the Indian Ocean – then what? It doesn’t bear thinking about… And that’s all the thanks you get for loyal service and a clean record!’
Pavel Ivanych’s eyes fill with anger and he frowns in disgust.
‘I’d like to have a go at that lot in the papers!’ he gasps. ‘I’d make the feathers fly all right!’
The two sick soldiers and the sailor are awake and already playing cards. The sailor is half lying in his bunk while the soldiers are sitting near him on the floor in the most uncomfortable positions. One of the soldiers has his right arm in a sling and the hand is swathed in a great bundle, so that he holds his cards in his right armpit or the crook of his elbow while he plays with the left.
The ship is pitching heavily so that it is impossible to stand up, drink tea or take any medicine.
The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91 Page 30