Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [82]
Pavel Ivanich half opened an eye, gazed at Gusev, and said softly: “Did your commanding officer go stealing?”
“Who knows, Pavel Ivanich? We never heard about it.”
A long time passed in silence. Gusev meditated, murmured something in his fever, and kept on drinking water. It was hard for him to talk and hard for him to listen, and he was afraid of being talked at. An hour passed, then another, then a third. Evening came down, and then it was night, and he did not notice it. He sat there dreaming of the cold.
There was the sound of someone coming into the sick bay, voices were heard, but five minutes passed, and then there was only silence.
“May he enter the kingdom of Heaven and receive eternal peace,” the soldier with the arm in the sling was saying. “He was a restless man.”
“Eh, what’s that?” Gusev asked. “Who is this?”
“He’s dead. They’ve just taken him up on deck.”
“Oh, well,” murmured Gusev, yawning. “May he enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“What do you think?” the soldier with the sling said after a short silence. “Will he be received into the Kingdom of Heaven or not?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Pavel Ivanich.”
“Yes, he will. He suffered so long. And there’s another thing—he belonged to an ecclesiastical family, and those priests have many relatives. So they’ll pray and he’ll enter the Kingdom.”
The soldier with the sling sat down on the hammock near Gusev and said in an undertone: “You, too, Gusev, you’re not long for this world. You’ll never reach Russia.”
“Did the doctor or the orderly tell you?” Gusev asked.
“They didn’t tell me, but it’s obvious. You know at once when a man is close to death. You don’t eat, you don’t drink, you’re so thin you’re frightening. It’s consumption all right! I’m not saying this to upset you, but because maybe you’d like to receive the sacrament and extreme unction. And too, if you’ve got any money you’d better give it to the senior officer.”
“I haven’t written home,” Gusev sighed. “I’ll die, and they’ll never hear about it.”
“They’ll hear,” the sick sailor said in a deep voice. “When you die, they’ll write it down in the ship’s log, and in Odessa they’ll send a copy to the military authority, and he’ll send it to the parish or somewhere.…”
Such conversations made Gusev uneasy, and he began to be tormented with vague yearnings. He drank water—that wasn’t it; he dragged himself to the small circular window and breathed the hot moist air—that wasn’t it; he tried to think of home and the cold—it wasn’t that either.… At last it occurred to him that if he remained another minute in the sick bay, he would suffocate to death.
“The air’s suffocating, brother,” he said. “I’m going up on deck. Take me topsides, for Christ’s sake.”
“All right,” agreed the soldier with the sling. “You can’t do it alone. I’ll carry you. Put your arms round my neck.”
Gusev threw his arms round the soldier’s neck, and with his healthy arm the soldier supported him, and in this way he was carried on deck where the discharged soldiers and sailors lay sleeping side by side, so many of them that it was difficult to pass.
“Get down now,” the soldier with the sling said softly. “Follow me quietly, and hold on to my shirt.”
It was dark, there were no lights on deck, nor on the masts, nor anywhere in the sea around. On the prow the seaman on watch was standing perfectly still like a statue, and it seemed as though he, too, were asleep. The ship appeared to be abandoned to its own devices, going wherever it desired to go.
“They’ll throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea soon,” said the soldier with a sling. “In a sack and then into the water.”
“Yes, that’s the regulation.”
“It’s better to lie in the earth at home. That way your mother comes to the grave and weeps over you.”
“That’s true.”
There was a smell of dung and hay. There were oxen standing with drooping heads at the ship’s rail—one, two, three, eight of them altogether! There was a little pony, too. Gusev stretched forth his hand to caress it, but it shook its head, revealed its teeth, and tried to bite his sleeve.
“You