Short Fiction, Anton Chekhov [websites to read books for free .TXT] 📗

to him that all nature was dozing, too. Time flew swiftly by; imperceptibly the day passed, imperceptibly the darkness came on.⁠ ⁠… The steamer was no longer standing still, but moving on further. IV

Two days passed, Pavel Ivanitch lay down instead of sitting up; his eyes were closed, his nose seemed to have grown sharper.

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

Pavel Ivanitch opened his eyes and moved his lips.

“Are you feeling bad?”

“No⁠ ⁠… it’s nothing⁠ ⁠…” answered Pavel Ivanitch, gasping. “Nothing; on the contrary⁠—I am rather better.⁠ ⁠… You see I can lie down. I am a little easier.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, thank God for that, Pavel Ivanitch.”

“When I compare myself with you I am sorry for you⁠ ⁠… poor fellow. My lungs are all right, it is only a stomach cough.⁠ ⁠… I can stand hell, let alone the Red Sea. Besides I take a critical attitude to my illness and to the medicines they give me for it. While you⁠ ⁠… you are in darkness.⁠ ⁠… It’s hard for you, very, very hard!”

The ship was not rolling, it was calm, but as hot and stifling as a bathhouse; it was not only hard to speak but even hard to listen. Gusev hugged his knees, laid his head on them and thought of his home. Good heavens, what a relief it was to think of snow and cold in that stifling heat! You drive in a sledge, all at once the horses take fright at something and bolt.⁠ ⁠… Regardless of the road, the ditches, the ravines, they dash like mad things, right through the village, over the pond by the pottery works, out across the open fields. “Hold on,” the pottery hands and the peasants shout, meeting them. “Hold on.” But why? Let the keen, cold wind beat in one’s face and bite one’s hands; let the lumps of snow, kicked up by the horses’ hoofs, fall on one’s cap, on one’s back, down one’s collar, on one’s chest; let the runners ring on the snow, and the traces and the sledge be smashed, deuce take them one and all! And how delightful when the sledge upsets and you go flying full tilt into a drift, face downwards in the snow, and then you get up white all over with icicles on your moustaches; no cap, no gloves, your belt undone.⁠ ⁠… People laugh, the dogs bark.⁠ ⁠…

Pavel Ivanitch half opened one eye, looked at Gusev with it, and asked softly:

“Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?”

“Who can tell, Pavel Ivanitch! We can’t say, it didn’t reach us.”

And after that a long time passed in silence. Gusev brooded, muttered something in delirium, and kept drinking water; it was hard for him to talk and hard to listen, and he was afraid of being talked to. An hour passed, a second, a third; evening came on, then night, but he did not notice it. He still sat dreaming of the frost.

There was a sound as though someone came into the hospital, and voices were audible, but a few minutes passed and all was still again.

“The Kingdom of Heaven and eternal peace,” said the soldier with his arm in a sling. “He was an uncomfortable man.”

“What?” asked Gusev. “Who?”

“He is dead, they have just carried him up.”

“Oh, well,” muttered Gusev, yawning, “the Kingdom of Heaven be his.”

“What do you think?” the soldier with his arm in a sling asked Gusev. “Will he be in the Kingdom of Heaven or not?”

“Who is it you are talking about?”

“Pavel Ivanitch.”

“He will be⁠ ⁠… he suffered so long. And there is another thing, he belonged to the clergy, and the priests always have a lot of relations. Their prayers will save him.”

The soldier with the sling sat down on a hammock near Gusev and said in an undertone:

“And you, Gusev, are not long for this world. You will never get to Russia.”

“Did the doctor or his assistant say so?” asked Gusev.

“It isn’t that they said so, but one can see it.⁠ ⁠… One can see directly when a man’s going to die. You don’t eat, you don’t drink; it’s dreadful to see how thin you’ve got. It’s consumption, in fact. I say it, not to upset you, but because maybe you would like to have the sacrament and extreme unction. And if you have any money you had better give it to the senior officer.”

“I haven’t written home⁠ ⁠…” Gusev sighed. “I shall die and they won’t know.”

“They’ll hear of it,” the sick sailor brought out in a bass voice. “When you die they will put it down in the Gazette, at Odessa they will send in a report to the commanding officer there and he will send it to the parish or somewhere.⁠ ⁠…”

Gusev began to be uneasy after such a conversation and to feel a vague yearning. He drank water⁠—it was not that; he dragged himself to the window and breathed the hot, moist air⁠—it was not that; he tried to think of home, of the frost⁠—it was not that.⁠ ⁠… At last it seemed to him one minute longer in the ward and he would certainly expire.

“It’s stifling, mates⁠ ⁠…” he said. “I’ll go on deck. Help me up, for Christ’s sake.”

“All right,” assented the soldier with the sling. “I’ll carry you, you can’t walk, hold on to my neck.”

Gusev put his arm round the soldier’s neck, the latter put his unhurt arm round him and carried him up. On the deck sailors and time-expired soldiers were lying asleep side by side; there were so many of them it was difficult to pass.

“Stand down,” the soldier with the sling said softly. “Follow me quietly, hold on to my shirt.⁠ ⁠…”

It was dark. There was no light on deck, nor on the masts, nor anywhere on the sea around. At the furthest end of the ship the man on watch was standing perfectly still like a statue, and it looked as though he were asleep. It seemed as though the steamer were abandoned to itself and were going at its own will.

“Now they will throw Pavel Ivanitch into