Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [68]
For a quarter of an hour the doctor stayed with Yefim, and then he rose and said: “There’s nothing more I can do for you. You’ll have to go to the hospital, and they’ll operate on you. You have to go now, make no mistake. It’s a bit late. They’ll all be asleep at the hospital, but that’s all right. I’ll give you a note.… Can you hear me?”
“Batyushka, how can they take him there?” Pelageya said. “We don’t have a horse to our name.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll speak to the master, and he’ll lend you a horse.”
The doctor went away, and then it grew dark, and once more she heard: “Bu-bu-bu-bu …” Half an hour later someone drove up to the hut. It was the small cart sent by the master to take Yefim to the hospital. Yefim got ready, and then he went away in the cart.
The next morning rose fine and clear. Pelageya was not at home: she had gone to the hospital to see her husband. Somewhere a baby was crying, and Varka was surprised to hear someone singing in her own voice:
Hush-a-bye, baby, hush-a-bye,
Nurse will sing for you bye and bye …
When Pelageya returned from the hospital, she crossed herself and whispered: “He was operated on last night, but early this morning he gave up his soul to God. Heavenly kingdom, eternal rest … They say he went too late to the hospital. We should have taken him earlier.…”
Varka slipped away into the forest and gave herself up to weeping, and suddenly someone hit her across the nape of the neck with such force she cracked her forehead against a birch tree. Then she looked up, and saw it was her master, the shoemaker.
“What do you think you are doing, stupid!” he shouted. “The baby is crying, and you let yourself fall asleep.”
He smacked her across the ears. It hurt, but she only shook her head and went on rocking the cradle and murmuring her song. The green stain, the shadow of the diapers and the trousers waved and winked at her, and once again penetrated into her brain. Once again she saw a highway covered with liquid mud. Men with knapsacks on their backs, dark with shadow, lay down in the mud and slept soundly. And while she gazed at them, Varka passionately wanted to sleep. She could have thrown herself down on a bed with perfect happiness, but at that moment her mother, Pelageya, came and hurried her away, and together they went to the town to look for work.
“Give us something for the love of Christ!” her mother called to everyone she met. “Dear good people, be merciful to us!”
The well-known voice was saying: “Give me the baby! Give him to me!” The same voice said angrily, with a sharp cutting edge: “So you are sleeping again, you little wretch!”
Varka jumped up and looked around her. She remembered now where she was. There was no highway, no Pelageya, no passers-by: only her mistress standing there in the middle of the room, coming to feed her baby. She was a stout, heavy-shouldered woman, and while she was feeding and soothing the baby, Varka stood quite still, gazing at her and waiting until she had finished. Outside the windows darkness was giving place to blue sky, and all the shadows and the green stain on the ceiling were visibly turning pale. Soon it would be morning.
“Now you take him,” the mother said, buttoning the top buttons of her nightgown. “He’s still crying. Someone must have put a spell on him!”
So Varka took the baby and laid him in the cradle, and once more she began to rock the cradle. Slowly the shadows and the green stain faded to nothing, and there was no teeming darkness, nothing at all, to keep her brain in turmoil. She wanted so terribly to sleep. She laid her head on the edge of the cradle and rocked it with her whole body in order to overcome the desire for sleep; but soon her eyelids were glued together and her head grew heavy.
“Varka, light the stove!” Her master’s voice came from behind the door.
This meant it was time to get up and start the day’s work. She abandoned the cradle and ran into the woodshed. This made her