The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91

Gusev

I

It is dark now, soon it will be night.

Gusev, a discharged soldier, sits up in his bunk and says in an undertone, ‘Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan¹ told me that when they were at sea their ship collided with an enormous fish and stove a hole in its bottom.’

The nondescript person whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sickbay knows as Pavel Ivanych says nothing, as if he doesn’t hear.

And again silence descends… The wind plays in the rigging, the screw throbs, waves lash, bunks creak, but the ear has long grown accustomed to all this and everything around seems to be silently slumbering. It is boring. The three patients – two soldiers and one sailor – who have been playing cards all day are already dozing and talking in their sleep.

The ship is beginning to pitch, it seems. The bunk beneath Gusev slowly rises and falls as if it is breathing – once, twice, a third time. Something hits the floor with a ringing noise – a mug must have fallen down.

‘The wind’s broken loose from its chains,’ says Gusev, listening hard.

This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and answers irritably, ‘First you say the ship’s colliding with a fish, then the wind’s broken loose from its chains. Is the wind a wild animal then, that can break loose from its chains?’

‘That’s what folk say.’

‘Then folk are as ignorant as you are, they say all sorts of things. A man should have a head on his shoulders and use his brains, you foolish man.’

Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the sea is rough he is usually bad-tempered and the least trifle irritates him. But in Gusev’s opinion there is absolutely nothing to be angry about. What’s so strange or surprising about that fish, for instance, or the wind breaking loose from its chains? Suppose that fish were as big as a mountain and its back as hard as a sturgeon’s? Suppose too, that far away, where the world ends, there are thick stone walls and the fierce winds are chained to those walls… If they haven’t broken loose then why do they charge all over the ocean like maniacs and struggle to break free, like dogs on a leash? Where then do they go in calm weather if they’re not chained up?

Gusev ponders long over mountain-sized fish and thick rusty chains; then he grows bored and starts thinking of his homeland where he is now returning after five years’ service in the Far East. He pictures the large snow-covered pond… on one side there’s a red-brick pottery with a tall chimney and clouds of thick black smoke, on the other is the village. His brother Alexis is driving in his sledge out of the fifth yard from the end with his little son Vanka sitting behind him in large felt over-boots, and his little girl Akulka, who is wearing felt boots too. Alexis has been drinking, Vanka is laughing, but Akulka’s face is hidden because she has wrapped herself up.

‘You’ll see, he’ll get them kids frostbitten,’ thinks Gusev. ‘Oh Lord,’ he whispers, ‘grant them sense and understanding so they honours their parents and aren’t cleverer than their mama and papa.’

‘Them boots need resoling,’ the sick sailor babbles in his deep voice. ‘Oh yes they do!’

Gusev’s thoughts break off and instead of the pond a large eyeless bull’s head appears for no earthly reason, whilst the horse and sledge no longer drive along but whirl round in a cloud of black smoke. Still, he is glad that he has seen the folk at home. His joy takes his breath away, sends shivers all over his whole body and makes his fingers twitch.

‘The Lord’s arranged for us to meet again!’ he rambles deliriously, but at once he opens his eyes and looks for some water in the darkness.

He drinks and lies back – and again that sledge drives past, again that eyeless bull’s head, smoke, clouds… and so it goes on until daybreak.

II

A dark blue circle first emerges from the darkness – it is a porthole; then Gusev gradually begins to distinguish his neighbour Pavel Ivanych in the next bunk. Pavel is sleeping sitting up as he would choke lying down. His face is grey, his nose long and sharp and his eyes enormous because he has grown so terribly thin. His temples are sunken, his beard sparse, his hair long. By looking at his face it is impossible to tell what class he is – gentleman, merchant or peasant. From his expression and long hair he might be a hermit or a lay brother in a monastery, but if you listen to him speak he doesn’t sound like a monk. The pitching, the humidity and his illness have exhausted him, he finds breathing difficult and he keeps moving his parched lips. Noticing that Gusev is looking at him he turns his face to him and says, ‘Now I’m beginning to see… Yes, I understand everything perfectly now.’

‘Understand what, Pavel Ivanych?’

‘I’ll tell you… What’s always puzzled me is how serious cases like you, instead of being somewhere nice and peaceful, should end up in a ship, where there’s pitching, humidity, heat – in short, where you’re threatened with death on all sides. But now it’s all clear to me… yes… Your doctors let them put you on the ship to get rid of you. They’re sick of messing around with cattle like you. You don’t pay them anything, you’re a damned nuisance and you spoil their records by dying – so you’re cattle! And getting rid of you isn’t difficult. The first requirement is to lack all conscience and humanity and the second is to cheat the steamship line. You can ignore the first – we’re all artists in that respect and you can always manage the second with a little practice. Five sick men don’t stand out in a crowd of four hundred fit soldiers and sailors. So, they bundle you on board, mix you up with the healthy ones, quickly tot you all up and in all the confusion they find nothing wrong. Only when the ship’s under way do they notice the paralytics and consumptives in the last stages lying around the deck.’

Gusev doesn’t understand Pavel Ivanych. Thinking that he is being told off he says in self-defence, ‘I was lying on deck because all me strength had gone. I got frozen stiff when they was unloading us from the barge onto the ship.’

‘It really gets your back up,’ Pavel Ivanych continues. ‘The worst of it is they know perfectly well you won’t last the long journey, yet still they put you here! Supposing you make it to the Indian Ocean – then what? It doesn’t bear thinking about… And that’s all the thanks you get for loyal service and a clean record!’

Pavel Ivanych’s eyes fill with anger and he frowns in disgust.

‘I’d like to have a go at that lot in the papers!’ he gasps. ‘I’d make the feathers fly all right!’

The two sick soldiers and the sailor are awake and already playing cards. The sailor is half lying in his bunk while the soldiers are sitting near him on the floor in the most uncomfortable positions. One of the soldiers has his right arm in a sling and the hand is swathed in a great bundle, so that he holds his cards in his right armpit or the crook of his elbow while he plays with the left.

The ship is pitching heavily so that it is impossible to stand up, drink tea or take any medicine.

‘Were you a batman?’ Pavel Ivanych asks Gusev.

‘Yes, a batman.’

‘My God!’ says Pavel Ivanych with a sad shake of the head. ‘Uprooting a man from his home, dragging him ten thousand miles and then making a consumptive out of him – and all this for what, I wonder? To make a servant out of him for some Captain Kopeykin² or Midshipman Dyrka.³ There’s a lot of logic in that, I must say!’

‘It’s not hard work, Pavel Ivanych. You get up in the morning, clean the boots, put the samovar on, sweep the rooms – after that there’s nothing more to do. The lieutenant spends the whole day drawing plans, so you can say your prayers, read a book, go into the street – whatever you fancy. God grant everyone such a life!’

‘Very nice, I must say! The lieutenant draws his plans while you sit all day in the kitchen pining for home… Plans – I ask you! It’s not plans that matter, but human life. You only live once, life must be respected.’

‘Of course, Pavel Ivanych. A bad man will be shown no mercy anywhere, whether at home or in the army. But if you live proper and obey orders then who’s going to harm you? The officers are all educated gents, they understand… Not once in five years was I in the guardhouse and if me memory don’t play me false I wasn’t beaten more than once.’

‘For what?’

‘For fighting. I’m always spoiling for a fight, Pavel Ivanych. Four Chinamen comes into our yard, carrying firewood or something, I can’t remember what. Well, I was feeling a bit fed up… so I… well knocks ’em about a bit, one of the buggers’ noses starts bleeding. The lieutenant sees it through the window, gets real mad he does and gives me a clout on the ear.’

‘You stupid, pathetic man,’ whispers Pavel Ivanych. ‘You haven’t got a clue about anything.’

He is utterly exhausted by the pitching of the ship and closes his eyes. His head first falls backwards, then drops onto his chest. Several times he tries to lie flat but doesn’t succeed because of his difficulty with breathing.

‘Why did you lay into those Chinamen?’ he asks a little later.

‘Can’t really say. They comes into the yard so I bashes ’em.’

There is silence… The card players carry on playing for a couple of hours with enthusiasm and a good deal of foul language, but the pitching exhausts even them. They throw aside their cards and lie down. Once more Gusev visualizes the big pond, the pottery, the village… Once more the sledge drives past, again Vanka laughs while silly Akulka throws open her fur coat and sticks her legs out as if to say: ‘Just look, all of you! My snow-boots aren’t like Vanka’s. They’re new!’

‘Five years old and still she’s got no sense,’ Gusev rambles. ‘Instead of kicking your legs out you ought to be getting your soldier uncle a drink. I’ll give you a nice present…’

Then Andron, a flintlock gun on his shoulder, comes along with a hare he has killed and after him comes that decrepit old Jew Isaiah who offers to barter the hare for a piece of soap. Just inside the hut there’s a small black calf and there’s Domna, sewing a shirt and crying about something – and once again that eyeless bull’s head, black smoke…

Overhead someone gives a loud shout and several sailors run past: it seems that they are dragging something bulky over the deck or that something has fallen with a crash. Again they run past. Has there been an accident? Gusev raises his head, listens and sees the two soldiers and the sailor playing cards again. Pavel Ivanych is sitting up and moving his lips. He’s choking, he hasn’t the strength to breathe and he’s thirsty, but the water is warm and foul. The pitching doesn’t stop.

Suddenly something strange happens to one of the card-playing soldiers. He calls hearts diamonds, muddles the score and drops his cards; then with a frightened and stupid smile he looks around at everyone.

‘Won’t be a jiff, lads,’ he says and lies down on the floor.

All of the men are bewildered. They call him, but he doesn’t respond.

‘Maybe you don’t feel well, Stephan?’ asks the soldier with the sling. ‘Eh? Maybe we ought to get a priest. Eh?’

‘Have some water, Stephan,’ says the sailor. ‘There mate, drink that.’

‘What yer banging his teeth with that mug for?’ says Gusev angrily. ‘Can’t you see, you nitwit?!’

‘What?’

‘What!’ Gusev mimics him. ‘There’s no breath in him, he’s dead. ‘That’s what! God help us, what a gormless lot!’

III

The pitching has stopped and Pavel Ivanych has cheered up. No longer is he angry and his expression is boastful, animated, mocking. It is as if he wants to say, ‘Now I’m going to tell you a story that’ll make you all split your sides with laughter!’ The porthole is open and a gentle breeze is blowing on Pavel Ivanych. There is the sound of voices and the plash of oars in the water. Just beneath the porthole someone starts wailing in a shrill, unpleasant voice – most probably a Chinaman singing.

‘Yes, now we’re in the roadstead,’ says Pavel Ivanych, smiling sarcastically. ‘Only one more month and we’ll be in Russia. Oh yes, my highly esteemed army brutes! As soon as I get to Odessa I’ll go straight to Kharkov. I’ve a friend in Kharkov, a literary man. I’ll call on him and say, “Well, old chap, leave your vile plots about female amours and the beauties of nature for the moment and expose this two-legged scum… Now, there’s material for you!”

He reflects for a while and then asks, ‘Gusev, do you know how I fooled them?’

‘Fooled who, Pavel Ivanych?’

‘Well, that lot I’ve just been talking about. You know, there’s only first and third class on this ship and only peasants are allowed to go third – that is, the riff-raff. But if you’re wearing a jacket and look anything like a gent or a bourgeois, then first you must travel – if you please! You must cough up five hundred roubles even if it kills you! “Why did you make these rules?” I ask. “Want to raise the prestige of the Russian intelligentsia that way, I suppose?”. “Not a bit of it. We don’t allow it simply because no respectable gentleman should travel third, it’s foul and disgusting there.” “Really? Much obliged for your concern for respectable people. But whatever it’s like in third, disgusting or nice, I haven’t got five hundred roubles. I haven’t pilfered government money, I haven’t exploited the natives, I haven’t done any smuggling, I haven’t flogged anyone to death. So it’s for you to judge if I have any right to travel first class, let alone reckon myself one of the Russian intelligentsia.” But logic will get you nowhere with that lot, so I pulled a fast one over them. I put on a workman’s coat and high boots, made a face like a drunken lout and off I go to the agent. “Give us one of them tickets, your honner,” I say.’

‘From what background are you?’ asks the sailor.

‘Clerical. My father was an honest priest who always told the bigwigs of this world the truth to their faces and suffered dearly for it.’

Pavel Ivanych is exhausted from talking and gasps for breath, but still he goes on, ‘Yes, I tell people the truth to their faces… I fear nothing and no one. In this respect there’s a vast difference between you and me. You’re a benighted, blind, downtrodden lot, you see nothing and what you do see you don’t understand… If you’re told the wind breaks loose from its chains, that you’re cattle, savages, you believe it. If someone punches you on the neck you kiss his hand. If some brute in a raccoon coat robs you and tosses you a fifteen-copeck tip you say, “Allow me to kiss your hand, sir.” You are pariahs, a pathetic lot. But I’m a different proposition. I’m alive to everything, I see everything, like an eagle or a hawk do when they fly over the earth and I understand everything. I’m protest incarnate. If I see tyranny – I protest. If I see a canting hypocrite – I protest. If I see a triumphant swine – I protest. I’m invincible, no Spanish Inquisition could ever force me to keep quiet. Oh no! Cut my tongue off – I’ll mime my protest. Brick me up in a cellar – I’ll shout so loud I’ll be heard a mile off. Or I’ll starve myself to death, so that’ll be another load on their black consciences. Kill me – and my ghost will haunt you. “You really are insufferable, Pavel Ivanych,” I’m told by all who know me. Well, I’m proud of my reputation. I’ve served three years in the Far East, but they’ll remember me there for a hundred! I’ve had blazing rows with everyone. “Don’t come back,” my friends write from western Russia. Then I damned well will come back – just to spite them! Oh yes I will! That’s life as I see it, that’s what I call living.’

Gusev doesn’t listen and looks through the porthole. On the translucent, delicate turquoise water, bathed in dazzling, hot sunshine, a boat is tossing. In it stand naked Chinamen holding up cages of canaries and calling out, ‘It sing! It sing!’

Another boat knocks against the first, a steam cutter races past. And now another boat appears with a fat Chinaman sitting in it eating rice with chopsticks. The water heaves lazily, white seagulls lazily glide over it.

‘I’d like to bash that greasy one on the neck,’ thinks Gusev, looking at the fat Chinaman and yawning.

He is drowsy and feels that all nature is drowsing too. Time is flying. The day passes unnoticed, unnoticed the darkness descends… No longer is the ship at anchor, but moving somewhere further on.

IV

Two days pass. Pavel Ivanych is no longer sitting up, but lying down; his eyes are closed and his nose seems to have grown sharper.

‘Pavel Ivanych!’ Gusev calls out. ‘Hey, Pavel Ivanych!’

Pavel Ivanych opens his eyes and moves his lips.

‘Not feeling well?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Pavel Ivanych replies breathlessly. ‘Nothing at all… On the contrary, I even feel better. You see, I can lie down now… it’s a bit easier…’

‘Well, thank God for that, Pavel Ivanych!’

‘When I compare myself to you poor devils I feel sorry for you… My lungs are in good shape and it’s only a stomach cough. I can go through hell – let alone the Red Sea! Besides, I take a critical attitude to my illness and medicines. But you lot – why, you’re so ignorant! It’s very hard for you… very, very hard!’

The pitching has stopped and the sea is calm, but it is as hot and humid as a bath-house. It is hard to listen, let alone speak. Gusev hugs his knees, lowers his head on them and thinks of his homeland. God, how delightful to think of the snow and cold in this stifling heat! You’re riding in a sledge. Suddenly the horses shy and bolt… Whether it’s roads, ditches, gullies, they tear along like mad, right through the village, across the pond, past the pottery and then out across open country. ‘Hold them back!’ the pottery workers and passers-by shout at the top of their voices. ‘Hold them!’ But why hold them back? Let the keen cold wind lash your face and bite your hands, let the clods of snow kicked up by the horses’ hooves fall on cap, collar, neck and chest. Let the runners screech, traces and swingletrees snap – to hell with them! But what delight when the sledge overturns and you fly full tilt into a snowdrift face first and you get up white all over, with icicles on your whiskers – no hat, no mittens and your belt undone! People laugh, dogs bark…

Pavel Ivanych half opens one eye, looks at Gusev and softly asks, ‘Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?’

‘How should I know, Pavel Ivanych? We don’t know about such things – they never reach our ears.’

And then there is a long silence. Gusev muses, rambles deliriously and constantly drinks water. He finds speaking and listening difficult and he is afraid of being spoken to. One hour, then a second, then a third pass. Evening comes on, then night, but he does not notice and still sits dreaming of the frost.

It sounds as though someone has entered the sickbay, voices ring out, but after five minutes everything goes quiet again.

‘May he rest in peace,’ says the soldier with the sling. ‘He was a restless sort of bloke!’

‘What?’ asks Gusev. ‘Who?’

‘He’s dead. They’ve just carried him up.’

‘Ah well,’ Gusev mutters, yawning. ‘May he rest in peace.’

‘What do you think, Gusev?’ asks the soldier with his arm in a sling, after a brief silence. ‘Will he go to heaven or not?’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Pavel Ivanych.’

‘Of course he will. He suffered so long. What’s more, he’s from the clergy and priests have a lot of relatives. Their prayers will save him.’

The soldier with the sling sits on Gusev’s bunk.

‘As for you, Gusev, you’re not long for this world,’ he softly says. ‘You’ll never make it to Russia.’

‘Did the doctor or his assistant tell you that?’ asks Gusev.

‘No, it didn’t need anyone to tell me – I can see it… You can tell at once if someone’s going to die, it’s obvious. You don’t eat, you don’t drink and you’re so thin it’s a shocking sight. In a word, it’s consumption. I’m not telling you this to frighten you, but you might want the sacrament and last rites. And if you have any cash you’d better give it to the senior officer.’

‘I didn’t write home,’ sighs Gusev. ‘I’ll die and they won’t know a thing about it.’

‘They’ll know all right,’ the sick sailor says in a deep voice. ‘When you die they enter your name in the ship’s log and they’ll hand a note to the Commandant at Odessa, who’ll forward it to your parish, or wherever…’

This talk frightens Gusev and a vague longing starts to trouble him. He drinks some water – that’s not what he wants; he stretches towards the porthole and breathes in the hot moist air – that’s not it; he tries to think of his homeland and the frost – that’s not it either. Finally he feels that just one more minute in that sickbay and he’ll be bound to choke to death.

‘I feel bad, mates,’ he says. ‘I’m going on deck. Help me up, for Christ’s sake!’

‘All right,’ agrees the soldier with the sling. ‘You won’t make it on your own. I’ll carry you – just hold on to my neck.’

Gusev puts his arms around the soldier’s neck and the soldier puts his sound arm around him and carries him up. On the deck sailors and discharged soldiers are sleeping side by side – there are so many it’s difficult to pick a way through.

‘Get down,’ the soldier with the sling says quietly. ‘Follow me slowly and keep hold of my shirt…’

It is dark. There are no lights on deck or on the masts or in the surrounding sea. Still as a statue, right at the very tip of the bows, stands a sailor on watch, but he too seems to be sleeping. It appears that they have given free rein to the ship and that it’s sailing where it likes.

‘They’re going to throw Pavel Ivanych into the sea now,’ says the soldier with the sling. ‘First in a sack – then into the water.’

‘Yes, that’s how they do it.’

‘But it’s better to lie in the ground at home. At least your mother’ll come and weep at your grave.’

‘That’s true.’

There’s a smell of dung and hay. Bulls stand with lowered heads at the rail – one, two, three – eight of them. And there’s a small pony. Gusev stretches his hand out to stroke it, but it shakes its head, bares its teeth and tries to bite his sleeve.

‘Damn you!’ says Gusev angrily.

Both he and the soldier slowly pick their way to the bows, stand by the rail and look up and down in silence. Overhead are the deep sky, bright stars, peace and tranquillity – it’s exactly like being at home in one’s village. But down below all is darkness and chaos. The tall waves roar – why, no one can tell. Whichever way you look each wave tries to rise above the others, chases and crushes its neighbour – until a third, just as savage and hideous, with a gleaming white mane, piles into it with a great crash.

The sea is without meaning, without compassion. Had the ship been smaller, had it not been made of thick iron, the waves would have smashed it without any compunction and devoured all the people, with no distinction between saints and sinners. Like the sea, the ship has a mindless, cruel look too. This beaked monster forges ahead and slices millions of waves in her path. She fears neither the dark nor the wind, nor the vast wastes, nor the solitude. It cares for nothing and had people been living in the ocean this monster would have crushed them too, sinners and saints alike.

‘Where are we now?’ asks Gusev.

‘Don’t know. In mid-ocean, I think.’

‘I can’t see land.’

‘How could we! They say we won’t see land for a week.’

Both soldiers watch the white foam with its phosphorescent gleam and silently reflect. Gusev is first to break the silence.

‘There’s nothing to be frightened of,’ he says. ‘Only it’s a bit scary, like sitting in a dark forest. But suppose they was to lower a boat in the water now and an officer ordered me to go sixty miles over the sea to catch fish – well, I’d go. Or if some Christian, let’s say, were to fall overboard this very minute I’d go in after him. A German or Chinaman I wouldn’t save, but I’d go in after a Christian.’

‘Are you afraid of dying?’

‘Oh yes. I’m worried how they’ll get by at home. My brother ain’t the steady type. He drinks, beats his old woman for nothing, has no respect for his parents. Without me it’ll all go to pot. And mark my words – my father and my old mother’ll have to go out begging… But I can’t stand proper, mate, and I can’t breathe here. Let’s get some sleep.’

V

Gusev returns to the sickbay and lies down in his bunk. That same vague longing still torments him, but he just cannot work out what he really needs. There is a tightness in his chest, his head is throbbing, his mouth is so parched that he can barely move his tongue. He dozes and mumbles deliriously. Exhausted by nightmares, coughing and the stifling heat, he falls into a sound sleep by morning. He dreams that they have just taken the bread out of the oven in the barracks, that he has climbed into the stove, is having a steam-bath and is beating himself with birch twigs. He sleeps for two days and at noon on the third two sailors come down and carry him out of the sickbay.

They sew him up in sailcloth, putting in two iron bars to weigh him down. Stitched up in sailcloth he resembles a carrot or a radish: wide at the head, narrow at the feet. They take him on deck before sunset and lay him on a plank; one end of the plank rests on the ship’s rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. The discharged soldiers and crew stand around, their heads bared.

‘Blessed be the Lord,’ chants the priest. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be!’

‘Amen!’ three sailors sing.

The soldiers and the crew cross themselves and look sideways at the waves. It is strange that a man has been sewn up in sailcloth and that in a moment he will fly into those waves. Could such a thing really happen to them?

The priest scatters earth over Gusev and makes an obeisance. They sing ‘Eternal Memory’.

The officer of the watch tilts one end of the plank. Gusev slides down, flies off head first, turns a somersault and – splash into the water! The foam covers him and for a moment he seems wrapped in lace; but the moment passes and he vanishes beneath the waves.

Quickly he sinks towards the bottom. Will he reach it? They say it’s three miles deep. After sinking eight or ten fathoms he begins to move more and more slowly, swaying rhythmically as if he is deliberating. Then, caught by a current, he is borne quicker sideways than downwards.

And now he meets on his descent a shoal of tiny pilot-fish. Seeing the dark body the fish stop dead in their tracks, then all of them suddenly turn tail and vanish. Less than a minute later they again swoop on Gusev as swift as arrows and trace zigzags in the water around him…

Then another dark shape looms. It is a shark. With dignity and indifferently, apparently not even noticing Gusev, it glides beneath him and Gusev sinks onto its back. Then it turns belly upwards, basks in the warm, limpid water and lazily opens its jaws with their two rows of teeth. The pilot-fish are delighted: they stop and wait to see what will happen next. After toying with the body the shark nonchalantly puts its jaws under it, cautiously touches it with its teeth and the sailcloth tears along its full length, from head to foot. One of the weights falls out, scares the pilot-fish, strikes the shark on the side and rapidly goes to the bottom.

But meanwhile, up above where the sun is setting, clouds are massing, one like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, a third like a pair of scissors. A broad green shaft of light comes out from the clouds, reaching to the very centre of the sky. A moment later a violet ray settles next to it, then a golden ray, then one of pink. The sky turns a delicate lilac. Surveying this magnificent, magical sky, the ocean frowns at first, but before long it too takes on gentle, joyous, ardent hues which are difficult to name in the language of man.