Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [64]
At Spirov he went out into the station and drank some water. He saw people sitting at a table, eating hurriedly.
“How can they eat?” he thought, trying not to inhale the smell of fried meat, trying not to observe the way they chewed their food—both of these things nauseated him.
A pretty woman was talking loudly with an officer in a red cap. She smiled, showing splendid white teeth. The smile, the teeth, the woman herself, produced on Klimov exactly the same feeling of repulsion as the ham and the fried cutlets did. He could not understand how it was that the officer in the red cap could endure to be sitting beside her and gazing at her healthy smiling face.
After drinking the water he went back to the compartment. The Finn was still sitting there, smoking away. The pipe gurgled, making a sobbing noise like a galosh full of holes on a rainy day.
“Ha! What station is this?” he wondered aloud.
“I don’t know,” Klimov replied, lying down and shutting his mouth so as not to inhale the acrid tobacco smoke.
“When do we reach Tver?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t talk to you.… I am not well. I’ve caught a cold.”
The Finn knocked out his pipe against the window frame, and began talking of his brother, the sailor. Klimov no longer listened to him; he was miserably dreaming about a soft, comfortable bed, a carafe of cold water, and his sister Katya, who knew so well how to tuck him up and how to soothe him and bring him water. He was smiling when the image of Pavel, his orderly, flashed through his mind: Pavel was removing the master’s heavy, stifling boots and putting water on the table. It seemed to him if he could only lie on his own bed and drink water, then the nightmare would give place to a sound, healthy sleep.
“Is the mail ready?” a hollow voice could be heard in the distance.
“Ready!” came a bass voice close to the window.
Already they were at the second or third station from Spirov.
Time passed, galloping along at a furious pace, and there seemed to be no end to the stops, the bells, the whistles. In despair Klimov buried his face in a corner of the seat, clutched his head in his hands, and once again found himself thinking of his sister Katya and his orderly, Pavel; but his sister and the orderly got mixed up in the misty shapes whirling around his brain, and soon they vanished. His hot breath, reflected from the seat cushions, scalded his face; his legs were uncomfortable; a draft from the window poured over his back. In spite of all these discomforts he had no desire to change his position. Little by little a heavy nightmarish lethargy took possession of his limbs and chained them to the seat.
When at length he decided to lift up his head, the compartment was flooded with daylight. The passengers were putting on their fur coats and moving about. The train was standing still. Porters in white aprons with badges were bustling about among the passengers and carrying off their trunks. Klimov slipped on his greatcoat and mechanically followed the other passengers out of the carriage, and it seemed to him that it was not himself who was walking, but someone else entirely, a stranger, and he felt he was being accompanied by his fever and the heat of the train