Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

IN EXILE

Old Semyon, nicknamed the Explainer, and a young Tartar whose name no one knew, sat on the bank near a bonfire; the other three boatmen were inside the hut. Semyon, an old man of about sixty, lean and toothless, but broad-shouldered and still healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone to bed long ago, but he had a bottle in his pocket, and he was afraid the fellows in the hut might ask him for vodka. The Tartar was sick, pining away, and, wrapping himself in his rags, was telling how good it was in Simbirsk province and what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home. He was about twenty-five years old, not more, and now, in the light of the bonfire, pale, with a sorrowful, sickly face, he looked like a boy.

“It’s sure no paradise here,” the Explainer was saying. “See for yourself: water, bare banks, clay everywhere, and nothing else … Easter’s long past, but there’s ice drifting on the river, and it snowed this morning.”

“Bad! Bad!” said the Tartar, and he looked around fearfully.

Some ten paces away from them the dark, cold river flowed; it growled, splashed against the eroded clay bank, and quickly raced off somewhere to the distant sea. Close to the bank a big barge loomed darkly. The boatmen called it a “barridge.” On the far bank, lights crawled snakelike, flaring up and dying out: this was last year’s grass being burnt. And beyond the snakes it was dark again. Small blocks of ice could be heard knocking against the barge. Damp, cold …

The Tartar looked at the sky. The stars were as many as at home, there was the same blackness around, but something was missing. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were not like that at all, nor was the sky.

“Bad! Bad!” he repeated.

“You’ll get used to it!” the Explainer said and laughed. “You’re still a young man, foolish, not dry behind the ears, and like a fool you think there’s no man more wretched than you, but the time will come when you say to yourself: ‘God grant everybody such a life.’ Look at me. In a week’s time the water will subside, we’ll set up the ferry here, you’ll all go wandering around Siberia, and I’ll stay and start going from shore to shore. It’s twenty-two years now I’ve been going like that. And thank God. I need nothing. God grant everybody such a life.”

The Tartar added more brushwood to the fire, lay down closer to it, and said:

“My father is a sick man. When he dies, my mother and wife will come here. They promised.”

“And what do you need a mother and wife for?” asked the Explainer. “That’s all foolishness, brother. It’s the devil confusing you, damn his soul. Don’t listen to the cursed one. Don’t let him have his way. He’ll get at you with a woman, but you spite him: don’t want any! He’ll get at you with freedom, but you stay tough—don’t want any! You need nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no bag, no baggage! You need nothing, damn it all!”

The Explainer took a swig from his bottle and went on:

“I’m no simple peasant, brother dear, I’m not of boorish rank, I’m a beadle’s son, and when I was free and lived in Kursk, I went around in a frock coat, and now I’ve brought myself to the point where I can sleep naked on the ground and have grass for my grub. God grant everybody such a life. I need nothing, and I fear nobody, and to my way of thinking there’s no man richer or freer than I am. When they sent me here from Russia, I got tough the very first day: I want nothing! The devil got at me with my wife, my family, my freedom, but I told him: I need nothing! I got tough and, you see, I live well, no complaints. And if anybody indulges the devil and listens even once, he’s lost, there’s no saving him: he’ll sink into the mire up to his ears and never get out. Not only your kind, foolish peasants, but even noble and educated ones get lost. About fifteen years ago a gentleman was sent here from Russia. He quarreled with his brothers over something, and somehow faked a will. They said he was a prince or a baron, but maybe he was just an official—who knows! Well, this gentleman came here and, first thing, bought himself a house and land in Mukhortinskoe. ‘I want to live by my own labor,’ he says, ‘by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he says, ‘I’m no longer a gentleman, I’m an exile.’ Why not, I say, God help you, it’s a good thing. He was a young man then, a bustler, always busy; he went mowing, and fishing, and rode forty miles on horseback. Only here’s the trouble: from the very first year he started going to Gyrino, to the post office. He used to stand on my ferry and sigh: ‘Eh, Semyon, it’s long since they sent me money from home!’ No need for money, Vassily Sergeich, I say. Money for what? Give up the old things, forget them as if they’d never been, as if it was only a dream, and start a new life. Don’t listen to the devil—he won’t get you anything good, he’ll only draw you into a noose. You want money now, I say, and in a little while, lo and behold, you’ll want something else, and then more and more. If you wish to be happy, I say, then first of all wish for nothing. Yes … Since fate has bitterly offended you and me, I say to him, there’s no point asking her for mercy or bowing at her feet, we should scorn her and laugh at her. Otherwise it’s she who will laugh at us. That’s what I said to him … About two years later, I take him to this side, and he rubs his hands and laughs. ‘I’m going to Gyrino,’ he says, ‘to meet my wife. She’s taken pity on me,’ he says, ‘and she’s coming. She’s a nice woman, a kind one.’ And he’s even breathless with joy. So two days later he arrives with his wife. A young lady, beautiful, in a hat; with a baby girl in her arms. And a lot of luggage of all sorts. My Vassily Sergeich fusses around her, can’t have enough of looking at her and praising her. ‘Yes, brother Semyon, people can live in Siberia, too!’ Well, I think, all right, you won’t be overjoyed. And after that he began to visit Gyrino nearly every week, to see if money had come from Russia. He needed no end of money. ‘For my sake,’ he says, ‘to share my bitter lot, she’s ruining her youth and beauty here in Siberia, and on account of that,’ he says, ‘I must offer her all sorts of pleasures …’ To make it more cheerful for the lady, he began keeping company with officials and all sorts of trash. And it’s a sure thing that all such people have to be wined and dined, and there should be a piano, and a shaggy lapdog on the sofa—it can croak for all of me … Luxury, in short, indulgence. The lady didn’t live with him long. How could she? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit, drunken, uneducated people everywhere, no civility at all, and she’s a spoiled lady, from the capital … And, sure enough, she got bored … And her husband, say what you like, is no longer a gentleman, he’s an exile—it’s not the same honor. In about three years, I remember, on the eve of the Dormition,¹ a shout comes from the other bank. I went over in the ferry, I see—the lady, all wrapped up, and a young gentleman with her, one of the officials. A troika … I brought them over to this side, they got in and— that’s the last I ever saw of them! They passed out of the picture. And towards morning Vassily Sergeich drove up with a pair. ‘Did my wife pass by here, Semyon, with a gentleman in spectacles?’ She did, I say, go chase the wind in the field! He galloped after them, pursued them for five days. Afterwards, when I took him back to the other side, he fell down and began howling and beating his head on the floorboards. There you have it, I say. I laugh and remind him: ‘People can live in Siberia, too!’ And he beats his head even harder … After that he wanted to get his freedom. His wife went to Russia, and so he was drawn there, too, to see her and get her away from her lover. And so, brother dear, he began riding nearly every day either to the post office or to see the authorities in town. He kept sending and submitting appeals to be pardoned and allowed to return home, and he told me he’d spent two hundred roubles on telegrams alone. He sold the land, pawned the house to the Jews. He turned gray, bent, his face got as yellow as a consumptive’s. He talks to you and goes hem, hem, hem … and there are tears in his eyes. He suffered some eight years like that with these appeals, but then he revived and got happy again: he came up with a new indulgence. His daughter’s grown up, you see. He looks at her and can’t have enough. And, to tell the truth, she’s not bad at all: pretty, with dark eyebrows, and a lively character. Every Sunday he took her to church in Gyrino. The two of them stand side by side on the ferry, she laughs and he can’t take his eyes off her. ‘Yes, Semyon,’ he says, ‘people can live in Siberia, too. There’s happiness in Siberia, too. Look,’ he says, ‘what a daughter I have! I bet you won’t find one like her for a thousand miles around!’ The daughter’s nice, I say, it’s really true … And to myself I think: ‘Just wait … She’s a young girl, her blood is high, she wants to live, and what kind of life is there here?’ And she began to languish, brother … She pined and pined, got all wasted, fell ill, and took to her bed. Consumption. There’s Siberian happiness for you, damn its soul, there’s ‘people can live in Siberia’ for you … He started going for doctors and bringing them to her. As soon as he hears there’s some doctor or quack within a hundred or two hundred miles, he goes to get him. He’s put an awful lot of money into these doctors, and in my view it would have been better to drink the money up … She’ll die anyway. She’s absolutely sure to die, and then he’ll be totally lost. He’ll hang himself from grief or run away to Russia—it’s a fact. He’ll run away, get caught, there’ll be a trial, hard labor, a taste of the whip …”

“Good, good,” the Tartar muttered, shrinking from the chill.

“What’s good?” the Explainer asked.

“The wife, the daughter … Hard labor, yes, grief, yes, but still he saw his wife and daughter … Need nothing, you say. But nothing—bad. His wife lived with him three years—that was a gift from God. Nothing bad, three years good. How you don’t understand?”

Trembling, straining to find Russian words, of which he did not know many, and stammering, the Tartar began to say that God forbid he get sick in a foreign land, die and be put into the cold, rusty earth, that if his wife came to him, be it for a single day and even for a single hour, he would agree to suffer any torment for such happiness and would thank God. Better a single day of happiness than nothing.

After that he told again about what a beautiful and intelligent wife he had left at home, then, clutching his head with both hands, he wept and began assuring Semyon that he was not guilty of anything and had been falsely accused. His two brothers and his uncle stole horses from a peasant and beat the old man half to death, but the community gave them an unfair trial and sentenced all three brothers to Siberia, while his uncle, a rich man, stayed home.

“You’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon.

The Tartar fell silent and fixed his tear-filled eyes on the fire; his face showed bewilderment and fright, as if he were still unable to understand why he was there in the dark and the damp, among strangers, and not in Simbirsk province. The Explainer lay down near the fire, grinned at something, and struck up a song in a low voice.

“What fun is it for her with her father?” he said after a while. “He loves her, takes comfort in her, it’s true; but don’t go putting your finger in his mouth, brother: he’s a strict old man, a tough one. And young girls don’t want strictness … They need tenderness, ha-ha-ha and hee-ho-ho, perfumes and creams. Yes … Eh, so it goes!” Semyon sighed and got up heavily. “The vodka’s all gone, that means it’s time to sleep. Eh, I’m off, brother …”

Left alone, the Tartar added more brushwood, lay down, and, gazing at the fire, began thinking of his native village and his wife; let his wife come for just a month, just a day, and then, if she wants, she can go back! Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if his wife keeps her promise and comes, what will he give her to eat? Where will she live here?

“If no food, how live?” the Tartar asked out loud.

Because now, working day and night with an oar, he earned only ten kopecks a day; true, travelers gave them tips for tea and vodka, but the boys divided all the income among themselves and gave nothing to the Tartar, but only laughed at him. And need makes one hungry, cold, and afraid … Now, when his whole body aches and trembles, it would be nice to go into the hut and sleep, but there he has nothing to cover himself with, and it is colder than on the bank; here he also has nothing to cover himself with, but at least he can make a fire …

In a week, when the water fully subsided and the ferry was set up, none of the boatmen would be needed except for Semyon, and the Tartar would start going from village to village, begging and asking for work. His wife was only seventeen; she was beautiful, pampered, and shy—could she, too, go around the villages with her face uncovered and beg for alms? No, it was horrible even to think of it …

Dawn was breaking; the outlines of the barge, the osier bushes in the rippling water, could be seen clearly, and, looking back, there was the clay cliffside, the hut roofed with brown straw below, and a cluster of village cottages above. In the village the cocks were already crowing.

The red clay cliffside, the barge, the river, the unkind strangers, hunger, cold, sickness—maybe none of it exists in reality. Probably I am only dreaming it all, thought the Tartar. He felt that he was asleep and heard his own snoring … Of course he is at home, in Simbirsk province, and as soon as he calls his wife’s name, she will call back to him; and his mother is in the next room … Sometimes one has such frightful dreams! What for? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river is this? The Volga?

It was snowing.

“Hallo-o-o!” someone was shouting from the other bank. “Ba-a-arridge!”

The Tartar came to his senses and went to wake up his comrades, so that they could cross to the other side. Putting on their ragged sheepskin coats as they went, cursing in hoarse, just-awakened voices, and hunching up against the cold, the boatmen appeared on the bank. The river, which exhaled a piercing cold, probably seemed disgusting and eerie to them after sleep. They clambered unhurriedly into the barridge … The Tartar and the three boatmen took hold of the long, broad-bladed oars, which in the dark resembled crayfish claws; Semyon heaved the weight of his belly against the long tiller. The shouting from the other side went on, and two pistol shots rang out, probably with the thought that the boatmen were asleep or had gone to the pothouse in the village.

“All right, you’ll get there!” the Explainer said in the tone of a man convinced that in this world there is no need to hurry, “nothing good will come of it anyway.”

The heavy, clumsy barge detached itself from the bank and floated among the osier bushes, and only by the fact that the osiers were slowly dropping behind could one tell that it was not standing in place but moving. The boatmen swung the oars regularly, in unison; the Explainer lay his belly against the tiller and, describing a curve in the air, flew from one gunwale to the other. In the darkness it looked as if people were sitting on some antediluvian animal with long paws and floating on it towards some cold, gloomy land such as one sometimes sees in nightmares.

They passed the osiers and emerged into the open. On the other bank the knocking and regular splashing of the oars could already be heard, and there came a shout of “Hurry! Hurry!” Another ten minutes passed and the barge bumped heavily against the wharf.

“It just keeps pouring down, pouring down!” Semyon muttered, wiping the snow from his face. “Where it comes from God only knows!”

On the other side an old man was waiting, lean, not tall, in a jacket lined with fox fur and a white lambskin hat. He stood apart from the horses and did not move; he had a grim, concentrated expression, as if he were at pains to remember something and angry with his disobedient memory. When Semyon came up to him, smiling, and removed his hat, he said:

“I’m rushing to Anastasyevka. My daughter’s gotten worse again, and I’ve heard a new doctor has been appointed to Anastasyevka.”

They pulled the tarantass onto the barge and went back. The man whom Semyon called Vassily Sergeich stood motionless all the while they crossed, his thick lips tightly compressed and his eyes fixed on one point; when the coachman asked permission to smoke in his presence, he made no answer, as if he had not heard. And Semyon, laying his belly against the tiller, looked at him mockingly and said:

“People can live in Siberia, too. Li-i-ive!”

The Explainer’s face wore a triumphant expression, as if he had proved something and was glad it had come out exactly as he had predicted. The wretched, helpless look of the man in the jacket lined with fox fur seemed to afford him great pleasure.

“It’s messy traveling now, Vassily Sergeich,” he said, as the horses were being harnessed on the bank. “You should hold off going for a couple of weeks, until it gets more dry. Or else not go at all … As if there’s any use in your going, when you know yourself how people are eternally going, day and night, and there’s still no use in it. Really!”

Vassily Sergeich silently gave him a tip, got into the tarantass, and drove off.

“There, galloping for a doctor!” said Semyon, hunching up from the cold. “Yes, go look for a real doctor, chase the wind in the field, catch the devil by his tail, damn your soul! Such odd birds, Lord, forgive me, a sinner!”

The Tartar came up to the Explainer and, looking at him with hatred and revulsion, trembling and mixing Tartar words into his broken language, said:

“He good … good, and you—bad! You bad! Gentleman a good soul, excellent, and you a beast, you bad! Gentleman alive, and you dead … God created man for be alive, for be joy, and be sorrow, and be grief, and you want nothing, it means you not alive, you stone, clay! Stone want nothing, and you want nothing … You stone—and God not love you, but love gentleman.”

Everybody laughed. The Tartar winced squeamishly, waved his arm and, wrapping himself in his rags, went towards the fire. The boatmen and Semyon trudged to the hut.

“It’s cold!” croaked one of the boatmen, stretching out on the straw that covered the damp clay floor.

“Yes, it’s not warm!” another agreed. “A convict’s life! …”

They all lay down. The wind forced the door open, and snow blew into the hut. Nobody wanted to get up and shut the door: it was cold, and they were lazy.

“And I’m fine!” Semyon said as he was falling asleep. “God grant everybody such a life.”

“We know you, a convict seven times over. Even the devils can’t get at you.”

Sounds resembling a dog’s howling came from outside.

“What’s that? Who’s there?”

“It’s the Tartar crying.”

“Look at that… Odd bird!”

“He’ll get u-u-used to it!” said Semyon, and he fell asleep at once.

Soon the others also fell asleep. And so the door stayed open.

MAY 1892