Forty Stories

Gusev

I

IT was already dark, and would soon be night.

Gusev, a discharged soldier, sat up in his hammock and said softly: “Pavel Ivanich, are you listening to me? At Suchan there was a soldier who said a big fish came smack against his ship and tore a hole in the bottom.”

He was addressing a rather nondescript individual known to everyone in sick bay as Pavel Ivanich, but there was no answer: the man seemed not to have heard.

Once more there was silence. The wind wandered over the rigging, the propeller throbbed, waves dashed against the ship, hammocks creaked, but the ear had long since grown accustomed to these sounds, and everything seemed to sleep, caught up in a trance of silence. It was boring. The three sick men—two soldiers and a sailor—had spent the day playing cards; now they slept and uttered all kinds of nonsense in their dreams.

Apparently the ship was beginning to roll. The hammock slowly rose and fell under Gusev, as though it were sighing: this happened once, twice, three times.… Something crashed down on the floor with a ringing sound: probably a jug had fallen.

“The wind must have slipped its chains,” Gusev said, straining his ears.

This time Pavel Ivanich cleared his throat and said irritably: “First you say a fish has smacked into the side of a ship, then you say the wind has slipped its chains.… Is the wind, then, an animal that it breaks loose from its chains?”

“That’s what the Christians say.”

“Then the Christians are know-nothings just like you. They say whatever they want to say. You should have a head on your shoulders and try to reason things out. You don’t have any brains!”

Pavel Ivanich suffered from seasickness. When the sea was rough he was usually bad-tempered, and the merest trifle would reduce him to a state of complete exasperation. In Gusev’s opinion there was nothing at all to be angry about. What was strange or astonishing in the story about the fish or the wind slipping its chains? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain, suppose its backbone was as strong as a sturgeon’s, and then suppose that far away, at the very end of the world, there were great walls of stone and that the furious winds were chained to these walls. If the winds had not broken loose from their chains, how do you account for the fact that they fling themselves across the sea like maniacs, and struggle to escape like dogs? If they were not chained up, what became of them when the seas were calm?

For a long time Gusev pondered those massive rusty chains and the fish as big as mountains, and then he wearied of these things and instead he summoned up the memory of his village, that village to which he was returning after five years’ service in the Far East. He thought of an immense pool crusted with snow; on one side stood the potteries, which were the color of brick, with the high chimney and clouds of black smoke, and on the other side lay the village. Driving a sleigh, his brother Alexey emerged from the fifth courtyard from the end, his little son Vanka and his daughter Akulka sitting behind him, both of them wearing big felt boots. Alexey had been drinking, Vanka was laughing, and Akulka was bundled up so that it was impossible to see her face.

“Unless he’s careful, the children will be frozen stiff!” Gusev thought. “Oh Lord, put some sense in their heads so that they will honor their father and mother, and not be any wiser than their father and mother.…”

“They need new soles for their boots,” the sick sailor roared in his delirium. “Yes, they do!”

At this point Gusev’s thoughts broke off, and for no reason at all the pool gave place to the head of a huge bull without eyes, and the horse and sleigh were no longer going straight ahead, but were whirling round and round in clouds of black smoke. But he was delighted to have seen his own people. Joy made him catch his breath, shivers went up and down his spine, and his fingers tingled.

“Praise the Lord, for He has granted us to see each other,” he murmured feverishly, and then he opened his eyes and looked for water in the dark.

He drank some water and lay down, and once more he saw the sleigh gliding along, and once more he saw the head of the bull without eyes, and the smoke, and the clouds. And so it went on until the sun rose.

II

The first object to emerge through the darkness was a blue circle, the porthole; then little by little Gusev was able to make out the shape of the man in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanich. This man slept sitting up, as he felt suffocated lying down. He had a gray face, a long sharp nose, and eyes which seemed enormous because he was terribly emaciated; and his temples were sunken, his hair was long, and there were only a few small threads of beard. From his face no one could have told his social status, whether he was a gentleman, a merchant, or a peasant. Judging from his expression and his long hair, he might have been a hermit or a lay brother in a monastery, but no one hearing him talk would ever have regarded him as a monk. Worn out by coughing, illness, and suffocating heat, he breathed laboriously, his parched lips trembling. Seeing Gusev gazing at him, he turned his face towards him and said: “I’m beginning to guess.… Yes … I understand it perfectly now.…”

“What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?”

“It’s like this.… It has always seemed strange to me. Here you are, terribly ill, and instead of being left in peace, you are taken on board a ship where it’s hot and the air’s stifling and the deck is always pitching and rolling, and in fact everything threatens you with death.… It’s all clear to me now.… Yes.… The doctors got you on the ship, to get rid of you. They were fed up with looking after you—you’re only cattle. You don’t pay them anything, you are a nuisance, and you spoil their statistics when you die. So, of course, you are cattle! And it’s no trouble to get rid of you. All that’s needed in the first place is to have no conscience or humanity, and in the second place the ship’s officers can be told lies. No need to worry about the first—we are artists in all that. As for the second, you can always do it with a little practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers and sailors, no one notices half a dozen sick ones. Well, they got you on the ship, mixed you up with the healthy ones, made a quick count, and because there was a lot of confusion no one saw anything wrong in it, but when the ship sailed they discovered there were paralytics and sick people in the last stages of consumption lying about the deck.…”

Gusev did not understand a single word spoken by Pavel Ivanich, and thinking he was being reprimanded, he said in self-defense: “I was lying on deck only because I didn’t have the strength to stand. When we were being unloaded from the barge onto the ship, I caught a terrible chill.”

“It’s revolting,” Pavel Ivanich went on. “The worst of it is they knew perfectly well you couldn’t survive such a long journey, and yet they shove you on the ship! Let’s suppose you last out as far as the Indian Ocean, what happens then? It’s terrible to think about it.… And that’s all you get for your years of faithful service with never a bad mark against you.”

Pavel Ivanich’s eyes flashed anger, he frowned contemptuously, and gasped out: “There are people the newspapers really ought to tear apart, till the feathers are flying!”

The two sick soldiers and the sailor were awake, and already playing cards. The sailor was half reclining on his hammock, while the soldiers sat near him on the floor in uncomfortable attitudes. One soldier had his right arm in a sling, and his wrist was so heavily bandaged that it resembled a fur cap: he kept his cards under his right armpit or in the crook of his elbow while playing with his left hand. The ship was rolling heavily. It was impossible to stand upright or drink tea or take medicine.

“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, you were thirsty, and the water was hot, disgusting. The ship was still rolling badly.

Suddenly something strange happened to one of the soldiers who was playing cards.… He called hearts diamonds, then he got muddled over the score, and then let the cards fall from his hands. He smiled a frightened, stupid smile, and gazed at the other cardplayers.

“I won’t be a moment, fellows,” he said, and lay down on the floor.

They were all astonished. They shouted at him, but he did not answer.

“Stepan, maybe you’re feeling ill, eh?” the soldier with his arm in a sling said. “Maybe we should get a priest, eh?”

“Drink some water, Stepan,” the sailor said. “Here, drink, brother!”

“Why do you have to knock the jug against his teeth?” Gusev exclaimed angrily. “Haven’t you got eyes, cabbagehead?”

“What’s that?”

“What’s that?” Gusev mimicked him. “There’s not a drop of breath left in him—he’s dead! That’s what! Lord God, how stupid can you get?”

III

The ship stopped rolling, and Pavel Ivanich grew more cheerful. He was no longer ill-tempered. His face wore a boastful, challenging, defiant look, as though he wanted to say: “Just a moment, I’ll tell you something to make you split your sides with laughing!” The little round porthole was open, and a gentle breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanich. There came the sound of voices and the splashing of oars in the water.… Beneath the porthole someone was droning in an unpleasant, reedy voice; it was probably a Chinese singing.

“So here we are in the harbor,” Pavel Ivanich said with an ironical smile. “Only another month, and we’ll be in Russia.… I address myself to our distinguished civilians and military men! I reach Odessa, and then make a beeline for Kharkov. In Kharkov I have a friend, a man of letters. I’ll go up to him and say: ‘Come, brother, put aside those abominable subjects you write about, the loves of women and the beauties of nature, and show us the two-legged vermin. There’s a theme for you.…’ ”

He thought for a minute and then he said: “Gusev, do you know how I made a fool of them?”

“Made a fool of who, Pavel Ivanich?”

“Why, those people.… You know, there’s only a first and third class on this ship, and they only allow peasants in the third class—only the scum. If you’re wearing a coat and look from a distance like a gentleman or a bourgeois, then they make you travel first class. You have to put down five hundred rubles, even if it kills you. ‘Why make a rule like that?’ I ask them. ‘Do you want to raise the prestige of the Russian intellectuals?’ ‘Not on your life,’ they say. ‘We won’t let you, because a decent person won’t go into the third class—it’s too horrible and disgusting.’ ‘Sir, I congratulate you for being so considerate for the affairs of decent people. Besides, whether it is nice or horrible, I haven’t got the five hundred rubles. I haven’t looted the treasury, I haven’t exploited natives, I never smuggled contraband, or flogged anyone to death, so judge for yourselves whether I have the right to travel first class or even the right to count myself among the Russian intellectuals.’ But you can’t teach logic to these fellows. I had to play a trick on them. I put on a peasant’s coat and high-boots, and wore a drunken stupid expression, and went to the ticket agents and said: ‘Won’t you give me a little ticket, Your Excellencies?’ ”

“What class do you really belong to?” the sailor said.

“The ecclesiastical class. My father was an honest priest, and he always told the truth to the great ones of the world—threw it in their faces—and so we suffered a great deal.”

Pavel Ivanich was exhausted with talking. He went on, gasping for breath: “Yes, I always tell them the truth straight in their faces. I’m not afraid of anyone or anything. In this respect there is a vast difference between me and you. You people are in the dark, you are blind and beaten to the ground; you see nothing, and what you do see you fail to understand.… They tell you the wind breaks loose from its chains, that you are beasts, savages, and you believe it. Someone punches you in the neck—you 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.… People laugh, and the dogs bark.

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 bloody brute,” Gusev said angrily.

The two of them, Gusev and the soldier, made their way quietly to the ship’s prow, then they stood at the rail and silently gazed out to sea. The deep sky lay over them, the clear stars, stillness and peace, and it was exactly as it was in the village at home—while below them lurked darkness and chaos. Great waves were booming; no one knew why. Every wave, whichever one you looked at, was trying to climb over the rest, hurling itself on its neighbor, crushing it down; and then there would come a third wave with a glint of light on its white mane, as ferocious and hideous as all the others, with a full-throated roar.

The sea is senseless and pitiless. If the ship had been smaller, and not made of thick iron plates, the waves would have crushed it without the slightest remorse and devoured all the people, making no distinction between saints and sinners. The ship itself possessed the same cruel expression, devoid of any meaning. This beaked monster pressed forward, cutting a pathway through a million waves, fearing neither darkness nor winds, neither space nor solitude—all these were as nothing, and if the ocean had been populated, the monster would have crushed its inhabitants, making no distinction between saints and sinners.

“Where are we now?” asked Gusev.

“I don’t know. I suppose we are far out to sea.”

“You can’t see land?”

“None at all! They say we’ll see it in a week.”

The two soldiers stared at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence and were silent, lost in thought. Gusev was the first to break the silence.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Only it’s strange, like when you sit down in a dark forest, but if—supposing they lowered a boat on the water this moment and an officer ordered me to go to a place fifty miles away across the sea to catch fish, I’d go! Or supposing a Christian fell into the water this very moment, I’d jump in after him! I wouldn’t try to save a German or a Chinese, but I’d jump in after a Christian!”

“Are you afraid of dying?”

“Yes, I’m afraid. I’m full of sorrow for the farm. My brother at home, you know, there’s nothing sober about him—he’s a drunkard, beats his wife for no reason at all, and doesn’t honor his parents. Without me everything will go to ruin, and soon, I don’t wonder, my father and my old mother will be begging in the streets. But my legs won’t hold me up, brother, and it’s suffocating here. Let’s go to sleep!”

V

Gusev returned to the sick bay and lay in his hammock. Once again he was tormented with vague yearnings, and could not understand what he wanted. There was a weight on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth was so dry it was difficult for him to move his tongue. He dozed off, talked wildly in his sleep, and toward morning, worn out with nightmares, coughing, and the suffocating heat, he fell into a heavy sleep. He dreamed they were just taking the bread out of the oven in the barracks, and he climbed into the oven and took a steam bath in it, lashing himself with a bunch of birch twigs. He slept for two days, and on the third day at noon two sailors came down and carried him out of the sick bay.

They sewed him up in a sailcloth and to make him heavier they put in two iron fire bars. Sewn up in the sailcloth, he looked like a carrot or a horse-radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet.… Before sunset they brought him on deck and laid him on a plank. One end of the plank lay on the ship’s rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. Around him stood the ship’s company and the discharged soldiers, their heads bared.

“Blessed be the name of God,” the priest began, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be!”

“Amen!” three sailors chanted.

The ship’s company and the discharged soldiers crossed themselves and looked out to sea. Strange that a man should be sewn up in a sailcloth and then tossed into the waves. Was it possible that such a thing could happen to anyone?

The priest scattered earth over Gusev and bowed low. They sang “Eternal Memory.”

The seaman on watch tilted the end of the plank. At first Gusev slid down slowly, then he rushed head foremost into the sea, turning a somersault in the air, then splashing. The foam enclosed him, and for a brief moment he seemed to be wrapped in lace, but this moment passed and he disappeared under the waves.

He plunged rapidly to the bottom. Did he reach it? The sea, they say, is three miles deep at this point. Falling sixty or seventy feet, he started to fall more slowly, swaying rhythmically, as though hesitating, at the mercy of the currents, sliding sideways more quickly than he sank down.

Then he fell among a shoal of pilot fish. When they saw the dark body they were astounded and rooted to the spot, and they suddenly turned tail and fled. In less than a minute they came hurrying back to him, quick as a shot, and they began zigzagging round him in the water.

Then still another dark body appeared. This was a shark. It swam below Gusev with dignity and reserve, seeming not to notice him; and when he, descending, fell against the back of the shark, then the shark turned belly upwards, basking in the warm transparent water and lazily opening its jaws with their two rows of teeth. The pilot fish were in ecstasy; they stopped to see what would happen next. After playing around with the body for a while, the shark calmly laid its jaws on it, tapped it with its teeth, and ripped open the sailcloth along the whole length of the body from head to foot; one of the fire bars fell out, frightened the pilot fish, struck the shark in the ribs, and sank rapidly to the bottom.

Meanwhile in the heavens clouds came and massed themselves against the sunset, and one cloud resembled a triumphal arch, another a lion, a third a pair of scissors.… There came a great beam of green light transpiercing the clouds and stretching to the center of the sky, and a little while later a violetcolored beam lay beside it, and then there was a golden beam, and then a rose-colored beam. The heavens turned lilac, very soft. Gazing up at the enchanted heavens, magnificent in their splendor, the sea fumed darkly at first, but soon assumed the sweet, joyous, passionate colors for which there are scarcely any names in the tongue of man.

December 1890