Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [78]
At this point Gusev’s thoughts broke off, and for no reason at all the pool gave place to the head of a huge bull without eyes, and the horse and sleigh were no longer going straight ahead, but were whirling round and round in clouds of black smoke. But he was delighted to have seen his own people. Joy made him catch his breath, shivers went up and down his spine, and his fingers tingled.
“Praise the Lord, for He has granted us to see each other,” he murmured feverishly, and then he opened his eyes and looked for water in the dark.
He drank some water and lay down, and once more he saw the sleigh gliding along, and once more he saw the head of the bull without eyes, and the smoke, and the clouds. And so it went on until the sun rose.
II
The first object to emerge through the darkness was a blue circle, the porthole; then little by little Gusev was able to make out the shape of the man in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanich. This man slept sitting up, as he felt suffocated lying down. He had a gray face, a long sharp nose, and eyes which seemed enormous because he was terribly emaciated; and his temples were sunken, his hair was long, and there were only a few small threads of beard. From his face no one could have told his social status, whether he was a gentleman, a merchant, or a peasant. Judging from his expression and his long hair, he might have been a hermit or a lay brother in a monastery, but no one hearing him talk would ever have regarded him as a monk. Worn out by coughing, illness, and suffocating heat, he breathed laboriously, his parched lips trembling. Seeing Gusev gazing at him, he turned his face towards him and said: “I’m beginning to guess.… Yes … I understand it perfectly now.…”
“What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?”
“It’s like this.… It has always seemed strange to me. Here you are, terribly ill, and instead of being left in peace, you are taken on board a ship where it’s hot and the air’s stifling and the deck is always pitching and rolling, and in fact everything threatens you with death.… It’s all clear to me now.… Yes.… The doctors got you on the ship, to get rid of you. They were fed up with looking after you—you’re only cattle. You don’t pay them anything, you are a nuisance, and you spoil their statistics when you die. So, of course, you are cattle! And it’s no trouble to get rid of you. All that’s needed in the first place is to have no conscience or humanity, and in the second place the ship’s officers can be told lies. No need to worry about the first—we are artists in all that. As for the second, you can always do it with a little practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers and sailors, no one notices half a dozen sick ones. Well, they got you on the ship, mixed you up with the healthy ones, made a quick count, and because there was a lot of confusion no one saw anything wrong in it, but when the ship sailed they discovered there were paralytics and sick people in the last stages of consumption lying about the deck.…”
Gusev did not understand a single word spoken by Pavel Ivanich, and thinking he was being reprimanded, he said in self-defense: “I was lying on deck only because I didn’t have the strength to stand. When we were being unloaded from the barge onto the ship, I caught a terrible chill.”
“It’s revolting,” Pavel Ivanich went on. “The worst of it is they knew perfectly well you couldn’t survive such a long journey, and yet they shove you on the ship! Let’s suppose you last out as far as the Indian Ocean, what happens then? It’s terrible to think about it.… And that’s all you get for your years of faithful service with never a bad mark against you.”
Pavel Ivanich’s eyes flashed anger, he frowned contemptuously, and gasped out: “There are people the newspapers really ought to tear apart, till the feathers are flying!”
The two sick soldiers and the sailor were awake, and already playing cards. The sailor was half reclining on his hammock, while the soldiers sat near him on the floor in uncomfortable