Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [79]
“What were you—an officer’s servant?” Pavel Ivanich asked Gusev.
“That’s right. I was an officer’s orderly.”
“Dear God!” said Pavel Ivanich, and he shook his head mournfully. “You tear a man from his home, drag him out of his nest, send him ten thousand miles away, let him rot with consumption, and … You wonder why they do it!… Just to make him the servant of some Captain Kopeikin or Midshipman Dirka! It doesn’t make sense!”
“Being an officer’s servant isn’t hard work, Pavel Ivanich. You get up in the morning and clean the boots and get the samovar ready and sweep the rooms, and then there’s nothing more to do. The lieutenant spends his days drawing up plans, and if you like you can say your prayers or maybe read a book or maybe go out on the street. God grant everyone such a life!”
“That’s all very well. The lieutenant draws up his plans, while you spend the day sitting around the kitchen and longing for your own home.… Plans!… It’s not a question of plans, but of a human life! Life doesn’t come back again, and you have to treat it gently.”
“Of course, Pavel Ivanich, a bad man is never well treated, either at home or in the service, but if you live right and obey orders, who wants to do you harm? The officers are educated gentlemen, they understand.… In five years they never once put me in the can, and they only hit me once, so help me God!”
“What did they hit you for?”
“For fighting. I’ve got a pair of tough hands, Pavel Ivanich. Four Chinese came into our yard, they were bringing firewood or something—I don’t remember. Well, I was bored, and I beat them up, and the nose of one of them started to bleed.… The lieutenant watched it through a window, flew into a temper, and boxed my ears!”
“Poor stupid fool,” said Pavel Ivanich. “You never understand anything.”
He was completely exhausted by the rolling of the ship, and closed his eyes, and sometimes his head fell back and sometimes it dropped on his chest. Several times he tried to lie down, but he never succeeded. His breathing was labored.
“Why did you beat up those four Chinese?”
“They came into the yard and so I beat them up—that’s all.”
Silence followed. The cardplayers went on playing for two hours with much eagerness and angry shouting, but the rolling of the ship was finally too much even for them; they threw their cards aside, and lay down. Once again Gusev saw the large pool, the potteries, and the village. Once again the sleigh made its way over the snow, and Vanka was laughing, and Akulka in the silliest way was throwing open her fur coat and kicking out her feet, as though she were saying: “Look, good people, at my new felt boots, not like Vanka’s old ones!”
“Soon she will be six years old, and she hasn’t any sense in her head,” Gusev murmured in his fever. “Instead of kicking out your feet, you would be spending your time better if you brought a drink to the old soldier who is your uncle, and then I’ll give you a present!”
And then came Andron with his flintlock over his shoulder, carrying a hare he had shot, with the crazy Jew Issaichik coming after him and offering a bar of soap for the hare; and then there was the black calf in the passageway, and Domna was sewing a shirt and crying about something, and there came once again the bull’s head without eyes, and the black smoke.…
Overhead someone gave a loud shout, and several sailors ran past, and there was a sound as though some heavy object was being dragged across the deck or something had burst open. Again the sailors ran past.… Had there been an accident? Gusev lifted his head, listened, and observed that the two soldiers and the sailor were playing cards again. Pavel Ivanich was sitting up and moving his lips. You were suffocating in the heat, you had no strength to breathe,