by Maxim Gorky
Having opened the door half way, he had thrust his sharp nose into the crack thus formed, and as was his wont, was taking his observations, captivated to such a degree that he did not turn round until Orlóff pulled his ear.
“Just see how it has racked him, Uncle Grigóry,” he said in a whisper, raising toward Orlóff his dirty little face, rendered still more peaked than usual by the impressions he had undergone.—“And it’s just as though he had shrunk up and got disjointed with dryness—like a bad cask…by heaven!”
Orlóff, enveloped by the foul air, stood and listened in silence to Tchízhik, endeavoring to peer, with, one eye, through the crack of the door as it hung ajar.
“How would it do to give him some water to drink, Uncle Grigóry?” suggested Tchízhik.
Orlóff glanced at the boy’s face, which was excited almost to the point of a nervous tremor, and felt something resembling a burst of excitement within himself.
“Go along, fetch the water!” he ordered Tchízhik, and boldly flinging the door wide open, he halted on the threshold, shrinking back a little.
Athwart the mist in his eyes, Grigóry beheld Kislyakóff:—the accordeon-player, dressed in his best, lay with his breast on the table, which he was clutching tightly with his hands, and his feet, in their lacquered boots, moved feebly over the wet floor.
“Who is it?” he asked hoarsely and apathetically, as though his voice had faded, and lost all its color.
Grigóry recovered himself, and stepping cautiously over the floor, he advanced to him, trying to speak bravely and even jestingly.
“I, brother, Mítry Pávloff.… But what are you up to…did you overwork last night, pray?”—he surveyed Kislyakóff attentively and curiously, and did not recognize him.
The accordeon-player’s face had grown peaked all over, his cheek-bones projected in two acute angles, his eyes, deeply sunken in his head, and surrounded by greenish spots, were frightfully immovable and turbid. The skin on his cheeks was of the hue which is seen on corpses in hot summer weather. It was a completely dead, horrible face, and only the slow movement of the jaws showed that it was still alive. Kislyakóff’s motionless eyes stared long at Grigóry’s face, and their dead gaze put the latter in a fright. Feeling his ribs with his hands, for some reason or other, Orlóff stood three paces distant from the sick man, and felt exactly as though someone were clutching him by the throat with a damp, cold hand,—were clutching him and slowly strangling him. And he wanted to get away, as speedily as possible, from this room, hitherto so bright and comfortable, but now impregnated with a suffocating odor of putrefaction, and with a strange chill.
“Well.…” he was about to begin, preparatory to beating a retreat.. But the accordeon-player’s gray face began to move in a strange way, his lips, covered with a black efflorescence, parted, and he said with his toneless voice:
“I…am…dying.…”
The profound indifference, the inexplicable apathy of his three words echoed in Orlóff’s head and breast, like three dull blows. With a senseless grimace on his countenance, he turned toward the door, but Tchízhik came flying to meet him, all flushed and perspiring, with a pail in his hand.
“Here it is…from Spiridónoff’s well…they wouldn’t let me have it, the devils.…”
He set the pail on the floor, rushed into a corner, reappeared, and handing a glass to Orlóff, continued to prattle:
“They say you’ve got the cholera.… I say, well, what of that? You’ll have it too…now it’ll run the rounds, as it did in the suburbs…? Whack! he gave me such a bang on the head that I yelled!”
Orlóff took the glass, dipped up water from the pail, and swallowed it at one gulp. In his ears the dead words were ringing:
“I…am…dying.…”
But Tchízhik hovered round him with swift darts, feeling himself thoroughly in his proper sphere.
“Give me a drink.…” said the accordeon-player, moving himself and the table about on the floor.
Tchízhik hopped up to him, and held a glass of water to his black lips. Grigóry, as he leaned against the wall by the door, listened, as in a dream, to the sick man noisily drawing in the water; then he heard Tchízhik propose that they should undress Kislyakóff, and put him to bed, then the voice of the painters’ cook rang out. Her broad face, with an expression of terror and compassion, was gazing in from the court-yard through a window, and she said in a snivelling tone:
“You ought to give him lamp-black and rum: a tea-glass full—two spoonfuls of lamp-black, and fill it with rum to the brim.”
But some invisible person suggested olive-oil with the brine from cucumbers, and aqua regia.
Orlóff suddenly became conscious that the heavy, oppressive gloom within him was illuminated by some memory. He rubbed his brow hard, as though endeavoring to increase the brilliancy of the light, and all at once, he went swiftly thence, ran across the court-yard and disappeared down the street.
“Heavens! And the shoemaker has got it too! He’s run off to the hospital,”—the cook commented upon his flight in a plaintively-shrill voice.
Matréna, who was standing beside her, gazed with widely opened eyes, and turning pale, she shook all over.
“You’re mistaken,” she said hoarsely, barely moving her white lips,—“Grigóry won’t fall ill of that accursed sickness.… He won’t yield to it.…”
But the cook, howling wofully, had already disappeared somewhere, and five minutes later a cluster of neighbors and passers-by was muttering dully around the Petúnnikoff house. Over all faces the same, identical sentiments flitted in turn: excitement, which was succeeded by hopeless dejection, and something evil, which now and then made way for active audacity. Tchízhik kept flying back and forth between the court and the crowd, his bare feet twinkling, and reporting the course of events in the accordeon-player’s room.
The public, collected together in a dense knot, filled the dusty, malodorous air of the street with the dull hum of their talk, and from time to time a violent oath, launched at someone, broke forth from their midst,—an oath as malicious as it was lacking in sense.
“Look…that’s Orlóff!”
Orlóff drove up to the gate on the box of a wagon with a white canvas cover which was driven by a surly man all clad in white, also. This man roared, in a dull bass voice:
“Get out of the way!”
And he drove straight at the people, who sprang aside in all directions at his shout.
The aspect of this wagon, and the shout of its driver, rather subdued the high-strung mood of the spectators,—all seemed to grow dark at once, and many went swiftly away.
In the track of the wagon, the student who had visited the Orlóffs made his appearance from somewhere or other. His cap had fallen back on the nape of his neck, the perspiration streamed down his forehead in large drops, he wore a long mantle, of dazzling whiteness, and the lower part of its front was decorated with a large round hole, with reddish edges, evidently just burned in some way.
“Well, Orlóff, where’s the sick man?”—he asked loudly, casting a sidelong glance at the public, which had assembled in a little niche by the gate, and had greeted his appearance with great ill-will, although they watched him not without curiosity.
Someone said, in a loud tone:
“Look at yourself…you’re just like a cook!”.
Another voice, which was quieter and had a tinge of malice in it, made promises:
“Just wait…he’ll give you a treat!”
There was a joker in the crowd, as there always is.
“He’ll give you such soup that your belly will burst on the spot!”
A laugh rang out, though it was not merry, but obscured by a timorous suspicion, it was not lively, though faces cleared somewhat.
“See, they ain’t afraid of catching it themselves… what’s the meaning of that?”—very signif
icantly inquired a man with a strained face and a glance filled with concentrated wrath.
And under the influence of this question, the countenances of the public darkened again, and their murmurs became still duller.…
“They’re bringing him!”
“That Orlóff! Akh, the dog!”
“Isn’t he afraid?”
“What’s it to him? He’s a drunkard..
“Carefully, carefully, Orlóff! Lift his feet higher…so! Ready! Drive off, Piótr!” ordered the student. “Tell the doctor I shall be there soon. Well, sir, Mr. Orlóff, I request that you will help me to exterminate the infection here.… By the way, you will learn how to do it, in case of need.… Do you agree? Can you come?”
“I can,” said Orlóff, casting a glance around him, and feeling a flood of pride rising within him.
“And so can I,” announced Tchízhik.
He had escorted the mournful wagon through the gate, and returned just in the nick of time to offer his services. The student stared at him through his glasses.
“Who are you, hey?”
“Apprentice…to the house-painters.…” explained Tchízhik.
“And are you afraid of the cholera?”
“I?” asked Sénka in surprise.—“The idea! I’m…not afraid of anything!”
“Re-eally? That’s clever! Now, see here, my friends.”—The student seated himself on a cask which was lying on the ground, and rolling himself to and fro on it, he began to say that it was indispensably necessary that Orlóff and Tchízhik should give themselves a good washing.
They formed a group, which was soon joined by Matréna, smiling timidly. After her came the cook, wiping her wet eyes on her dirty apron. In a short time, several persons from among the spectators approached this group, as cautiously as cats approach sparrows. A small, dense ring of men, about ten in number, formed around the student, and this inspired him. Standing in the centre of these people, and briskly gesticulating, he began something in the nature of a lecture, which now awoke smiles on their faces, now aroused their concentrated attention, now keen distrust and sceptical grins.
“The principal point in all diseases is—cleanliness of the body, and of the air which you breathe, gentlemen,”—he assured his hearers.
“Oh Lord!” sighed the painted cook loudly.—“One must pray to Saint Varvára the martyr to be delivered from sudden death.…”
“Gentlemen live in the body and in the air, but still, they die too,”—remarked one of the audience.
Orlóff stood beside his wife, and gazed at the face of the student, pondering something deeply the while. Someone gave his shirt a tug, from one side.
“Uncle Grigóry!”—whispered Sénka Tchízhik, raising himself on tiptoe, his eyes sparkling, blazing like coals,—“now that Mítry Pávlovitch is going to die, and he hasn’t any relatives…who’ll get his accordeon?”
“Let me alone, you imp!” Orlóff warded him off.
Sénka stepped aside, and stared through the window of the accordeon-player’s little room, searching for something in it with an eager glance.
“Lime, tar,”—the student enumerated loudly.
On the evening of that restless day, when the Orlóffs sat down to drink tea, Matréna asked her husband, with curiosity:
“Where did you go with the student a little while ago?”
Grigóry looked into her face with eyes obscured by something, and different from usual, and, without replying, began to pour his tea from his glass into his saucer.
About mid-day, after he had finished scrubbing the accordeon-player’s rooms, Grigóry had gone off somewhere with the sanitary officer, had returned at three o’clock thoughtful and taciturn, had thrown himself down on the bed, and there he had lain, face upward, until tea-time, never uttering a single word all that time, although his wife had made many efforts to draw him into conversation. He even failed to swear at her for nagging him, and this, in itself, was strange, she was not used to it, and it provoked her.
With the instinct of a woman whose whole life is bound up in her husband, she began to suspect that her husband had become interested in something new, she was afraid of something, and therefore, was the more passionately desirous of knowing what that thing was.
“Perhaps you don’t feel well, Grísha?”
Grigóry poured the last gulp of tea from his saucer into his mouth, wiped his mustache with his hand, pushed his empty glass over to his wife without haste, and knitting his brows, he said:
“I went with the student to the barracks…yes.…”
“To the cholera barracks?” exclaimed Matréna, and tremblingly, with lowered voice, she asked: “are there many of them there?”
“Fifty-three persons, counting in our man.…” ..”
“Well?”
“They’re recovering by the score.… They can walk.… Yellow, thin.…”
“Are they cholera-patients too? They’re not, I suppose?…They’ve put some others in there, to justify themselves: as much as to say—“look, we can cure!’”
“You’re a fool!” said Grigóry with decision, and his eyes flashed angrily.—“You’re all stupid folks! Lack of education and stupidity—that’s all! You’re enough to kill a man with your ignorance.… You can’t understand anything,”—he sharply moved toward him his glass freshly filled with tea, and fell silent.
“Where did you get so much education?”—inquired Matréna viciously, and sighed.
Her husband, paying not the slightest heed to her words, remained silent, thoughtful and morose. The samovár, which had burned out, drawled a squeaking melody, full of irritating tediousness, an odor of oil-paints, carbolic acid, and stirred-up cesspools floated through the windows from the court-yard. The semi-twilight, the screeching of the samovár, and the smells—everything in the room became densely merged with one another, forming around the Orlóffs a setting which resembled a nightmare, while the dark maw of the oven stared at the husband and wife exactly as though it felt itself called upon to swallow them when a convenient opportunity should present itself. The silence lasted for a long time. Husband and wife nibbled away at their sugar, rattled their crockery, swallowed their tea.9 Matréna sighed, Grigóry tapped the table with his finger.
“You never saw such cleanliness as they have there!”—he suddenly began, irritably.—“All the attendants, down to the very last one—wear white. The sick people keep getting into the bath all the time.… They give them wine…six bottles and a half! As for the food—the very smell of it would make you feel full-fed.… Care, anxiety.… They treat them in a motherly way..? and all the rest of it.… So they do. Please to understand: you live along upon the earth, and not even one devil would take the trouble to spit on you, much less call in now and then to inquire—what and how and, in general…what your life is like, that is to say, whether it suits you, or whether it is the right sort for a man? Has he any means of breathing or not? But when you begin to die—they not only do not permit it, but even put themselves to expense. The barracks…wine…six bottles and a half! Haven’t people any sense? For the barracks and the wine cost a lot of money. Couldn’t that same money be used for improving life…a little every year?”
His wife made no attempt to understand his remarks, it was enough for her to feel that they were new, and thence to deduce, with absolute accuracy, that something new concerning her was also in progress in Grigóry’s mind. Convinced of this, she wished to learn, as promptly as possible, how all this concerned her. Fear was mingled with this desire, and hope, and a sort of hostility toward her husband.
“I suppose the people yonder know even more than you do,”—said she, when he had finished, and pursed up her lips in a sceptical way.
Grigóry shrugged his shoulders, cast a furtive glance at her, and then, after a pause, he began in a still more lofty tone:
“Whether they know or
not, that’s their business. But if I have to die, without having seen any sort of life, I can reason about that. Now see here, I’ll tell you this: I don’t want any more of this sort of thing—that is to say, I won’t consent to sit and wait for the cholera to come and seize hold of me. I won’t do it! Piótr Ivánovitch says: ‘go ahead, and meet it half way! Fate is against you—but you can oppose it,—who’ll get the upper hand? It’s war! That’s all there is to say about it.…’ So, what now? I’m going to enter the barracks as an orderly—and that’s the end of it! Understand? I’m going to walk straight into its maw.—You may swallow me, but I’ll make a play with my feet!… I shall not earn any the less there…twenty rubles a month for wages, and they may add a gratuity besides.… I may die?… that’s so, but I should die sooner here. And again, it’s a change in my life.…” and the excited Orlóff banged the table so vehemently with his fist, that all the crockery bounced up and down with a clatter.
Matréna, at the beginning of her husband’s speech, had stared at him with an expression of uneasiness, but by the time he had finished, she had screwed up her eyes in a hostile manner.
“Did the student advise you to do that?” she asked staidly.
“I have wits of my own…I can judge,”—for some reason, Grigóry evaded a direct reply.
“Well, and did he advise you to separate from me?”—went on Matréna.
“From you?”—Grigóry was somewhat disconcerted—he had not yet succeeded in thinking out that matter. Of course, one can leave a woman in lodgings, as is generally done, but there are different sorts of women. Matréna, was one of the dangerous sort. One must keep her directly under his eyes. Settling down on this thought, Orlóff went on with a scowl:—“The student…what ails you? You will live here…and I shall be earning wages…ye-es.…”
