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By Root 572 0

kiss his hand! A reptile in a raccoon coat strips you of everything you possess, and then tosses you a penny for your pains, and you say: ‘Sir, let me kiss your hand.’ You are outcasts, poor pathetic wretches.… I am different. I live in full consciousness of my powers. I see everything, like a hawk or an eagle hovering over the earth, and I understand everything. I am protest incarnate. When I see tyranny, I protest. When I see cant and hypocrisy, I protest. When I see swine triumphant, I protest. I cannot be silenced: no Spanish Inquisition will make me hold my tongue. No! If you cut out my tongue, I will still protest—with gestures. Bury me in a cellar, and I will shout so loud they will hear me a mile away, or else I will starve myself to death, and thus hang another weight round their black consciences. Kill me, and my ghost will haunt them! All my acquaintances say: ‘You are a most insufferable fellow, Pavel Ivanich!’ I am proud of my reputation. For three years I served in the Far East, and I shall be remembered there for a hundred years because I quarreled with everyone. My friends write to me from Russia: ‘Don’t come back!’ But as you see I am going back to spite them!… Yes, that’s life as I understand it! That’s what is called life.”

Gusev was not listening: he was gazing out of the porthole. A boat, bathed in a blazing and brilliant sunlight, was swaying on a transparent and delicate turquoise-colored sea. In it naked Chinamen were holding up cages with canaries, and saying: “It sings! It sings!”

Another boat came knocking against the first; a steam pinnace darted by. There came still another boat: in it was a fat Chinaman eating rice with little sticks. The sea rolled languidly, and there were white seagulls hovering lazily in the air.

“I should like to give that fat fellow a punch in the neck,” Gusev meditated, gazing at the fat Chinaman and yawning.

Then he became drowsy, and it seemed to him that all nature was falling asleep. Time flew by. Imperceptibly the daylight faded away, and imperceptibly there came the shadows of evening.… The ship was no longer standing still, but moving again.

IV

Two days passed. Pavel Ivanich was lying down, no longer sitting up. His eyes were closed, and his nose seemed to have grown sharper.

“Pavel Ivanich,” Gusev called to him. “Hey, Pavel Ivanich.”

Pavel Ivanich opened his eyes and moved his lips.

“Are you feeling ill?”

“No,” Pavel Ivanich replied, gasping. “No, on the contrary.… I’m better.… As you see, I can lie down.… I’m a bit easier.”

“Well, thank God, Pavel Ivanich.”

“When I compare myself with you, I’m sorry for you poor fellows.… My lungs are healthy—what I’ve got is a stomach cough. I can stand hell, and that goes for the Red Sea. Also, I take a critical attitude toward my illness and the medicines I take. While you … you are in the dark.… It’s hard for you, very, very hard!”

The ship was no longer rolling, the sea was calm, and the air was as hot and suffocating as a bathhouse: it was hard not only to speak but to listen. Gusev threw his hands round his knees, laid his head on them, and thought of home. My God, what a relief it was to think of cold weather and snow in this suffocating heat! You’re riding in a sleigh, and suddenly the horses take fright at something and bolt.… Careless of roads, ditches and gullies, they tear like mad through the village, and over the pool by the potteries, and then across the fields. Comes the full-throated cry of the factory workers and all the others in the path of the horses: “Stop them!” Why stop them? Let the raw, cold winds beat about your face and bite your hands; let the lumps of snow flung up by the horses’ hoofs fall on your fur cap, your collar, your neck, and your chest; let the runners scream on the snow and let the shafts and traces be smashed to smithereens, devil take them all! How wonderful it is when the sleigh overturns and you are sent flying headlong into a snowdrift, face to the snow, and when you rise you are white all over, no fur cap, no gloves, your belt undone, and icicles clinging to your mustache.