Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  ‘I’m telling you that you mustn’t have oil!’ Yakov shouted even louder. He went red, suddenly seized the bowl, held it above his head and dashed it on the floor as hard as he could; the pieces went flying.

  ‘Don’t you dare say anything!’ he shouted furiously, although Matvey did not say one word. ‘Don’t you dare!’ he repeated and thumped his fist on the table.

  Matvey went pale and got up. ‘Cousin!’ he said, still chewing. ‘Come to your senses, Cousin!’

  ‘Get out of my house this minute!’ Yakov shouted. Matvey’s wrinkled face, his voice, the crumbs in his moustache revolted him. ‘I’m telling you to get out!’

  ‘Cousin, calm down! Your pride is the Devil’s work!’

  ‘Shut up!’ Yakov said, stamping his feet. ‘Clear off, you devil!’

  ‘If you really want to know’, Matvey kept on shouting, beginning to lose his temper now, ‘you’re an apostate and heretic. Accursed demons have blotted out the true light from your eyes, your prayers don’t satisfy God. Repent, before it’s too late! A sinner’s death is terrible! Repent, Cousin!’

  Yakov grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him away from the table. Matvey turned even paler. Terrified out of his wits he muttered, ‘What’s all this? What’s going on?’

  As he struggled and fought to free himself from Yakov’s grip, Matvey accidentally caught hold of his shirt near the neck and tore the collar. But Aglaya thought he wanted to hit Yakov, screamed, seized the bottle of oil and brought it down with all her strength on the crown of this hateful cousin’s head. Matvey staggered and in an instant his face became calm, indifferent. Yakov breathed heavily. He was very excited and took great pleasure in hearing the bottle grunt like a living thing as it made contact with Matvey’s head. He held him up and several times (this he remembered very clearly later) directed Aglaya’s attention to the iron. Only when the blood was streaming through his hands, when he heard Dashutka’s loud sobbing, when the ironing-board had crashed to the ground with Matvey slumped over it did his anger subside and he realized what had happened.

  ‘Let him die, that factory ram!’ Aglaya said with loathing, still holding on to the iron. Her white, blood-spattered kerchief had slipped down to her shoulders and her grey hair fell loose. ‘Serves him right!’

  It was a terrible sight. Dashutka was sitting on the floor by the stove with yarn in her hands, sobbing and prostrating herself, making a kind of munching sound each time she bowed. But nothing terrified Yakov so much as the bloodstained boiled potatoes, and he was afraid of treading on them. And there was something even more terrifying, which oppressed him like a dreadful nightmare and which seemed to pose the greatest threat and did not register at first. Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant was standing in the doorway holding his abacus. He was very pale and looked in horror at the scene in the kitchen. Only after he had turned, dashed through the hall and then outside did Yakov realize who it was, and he went after him.

  He pondered everything as he walked along, rubbing snow on his hands. The thought flashed through his mind that the workman had asked if he could spend the night at home and had long since left for his village. The day before they had killed a pig and large patches of blood lay on the snow and the sledge. Even one side of the well-head was spattered with blood. Consequently, even if all Yakov’s family were up to their eyes in blood, no one would have suspected a thing. The thought of concealing the murder was torment enough, but the idea of a policeman turning up whistling and sneering from the station, that peasants would come and bind Yakov and Aglaya’s hands tightly together and haul them off triumphantly to the largest village in the district, then to the town – this was the most agonizing thing of all. Everyone would point at them on the way and scoff: ‘Their Graces’ve been nabbed!’

  Yakov wanted to put off the evil day somehow so that he could suffer the disgrace some time later, not now.

  ‘I can lend you a thousand roubles…’ he said, catching up with Sergey Nikanorych. ‘Won’t do any good telling anyone, no good at all… We can’t bring him back from the dead anyway.’

  He could hardly keep up with the buffet attendant, who never looked round and was quickening his pace.

  ‘I could lend you fifteen hundred’, he added.

  He stopped for breath, but Sergey Nikanorych kept going at the same pace, possibly scared he might be next. Only when he had passed the level crossing and was half way along the road to the station did he take a brief look back and slow down. Red and green lamps were already shining at the station and along the line; the wind had slackened, but it was still snowing hard and the road had turned white again. Then, almost at the station, Sergey Nikanorych stopped, thought for a moment, and then determinedly retraced his steps. It was growing dark.

  ‘I’ll take the whole fifteen hundred then, Yakov Ivanych’, he said softly, trembling all over. ‘Yes, I’ll take ’em!’

  VI

  Yakov Ivanych’s money was held at the town bank or lent out on mortgage. He kept a little petty cash in the house for immediate business expenses. He went into the kitchen and groped around for the tin of matches, and from the blue, sulphurous flame was able to take a close look at Matvey, still lying in the same place by the table, but draped in a white sheet now, so that only his boots showed. A cricket was chirping. Aglaya and Dashutka weren’t in any of the living-rooms, but sat behind the counter in the tea-room silently winding yarn. Yakov Ivanych went to his room with a lamp and pulled out the small chest in which he kept the petty cash from under the bed. There happened to be four hundred and twenty roubles in small notes and thirty-five in silver. The notes had an unpleasant, oppressive smell. Stuffing the money into his cap he went into the yard and out through the gate. He looked to each side as he went, but there was no sign of the buffet attendant.

  ‘Hullo!’ Yakov shouted.

  Right by the level crossing a dark figure detached itself from the swing barrier and approached him hesitantly. Yakov recognized the buffet attendant.

  ‘Why can’t you stay put?’ he asked irritably. ‘Here you are, just short of five hundred… there’s no more in the house.’

  ‘Fine… much obliged’, Sergey Nikanorych muttered as he greedily snatched the money and stuffed it in his pockets. Even though it was dark he was clearly shaking all over.

  ‘But don’t worry yourself, Yakov Ivanych… Why should I let on? All I did was come here and then go away. As they say, hear no evil…’ Then he sighed and added, ‘It’s a lousy, rotten life!’

  They stood in silence for a moment, without looking at each other.

  ‘All for nothing, God knows how…’ the buffet attendant said trembling. ‘There I was doing me adding when suddenly I hear a noise… I look through the door and see you all having a row over some oil… Where is he now?’

  ‘Lying in the kitchen.’

  ‘You should ditch the body somewhere… Don’t hang about!’

  Without saying a word Yakov went with him as far as the station, then went back home and harnessed the horse to take Matvey to Limarovo – he had decided to take him to the forest there and leave him on the road. Afterwards he would tell everyone that Matvey had gone off to Vedenyapino and had not returned. They would all think he had been murdered by some people on the way. He knew that no one would be fooled by that story, but he felt that being on the move, doing things and keeping himself busy was less of an ordeal than just sitting around waiting. He called Dashutka and the two of them took Matvey away, while Aglaya stayed behind to clean up the kitchen.

  When Yakov and Dashutka were on the way back they had to stop at the level crossing, as the barrier was down. A long goods train passed through, drawn by two panting engines which threw sheaves of crimson fire from their funnels. The engine in front gave a piercing whistle at the crossing when it was in view of the station.

  ‘What a noise, goes right through you…’ Dashutka said.

  The train at last passed through and the keeper slowly raised the barrier. ‘Is that
you, Yakov Ivanych?’ he asked. ‘They say it’s lucky not recognizing someone.’

  When they were back in the house they had to get some sleep. Aglaya and Dashutka made up a bed on the tea-room floor and lay side by side, while Yakov settled down on the counter. They did not pray before going to sleep, nor did they light the icon-lamps. All three of them lay awake till morning, but they did not say one word and all night long felt someone was moving around in the empty storey above.

  Two days later the district police officer and an examining magistrate came from town, searched Matvey’s room and then the whole place. Yakov was questioned first and he testified that Matvey had left that Monday evening for Vedenyapino to prepare for communion in the church there, so he must have been murdered on the way by some sawyers working along the track. But when the magistrate asked why it was that Matvey had been found on the road, while his cap turned up at home – would he really have gone to Vedenyapino without it? – and why hadn’t they found a single drop of blood near him in the snow on the road considering his head was smashed in and his face and chest were black with blood, Yakov became confused, lost his head and replied, ‘Don’t know sir.’

  Yakov’s worst fears were realized: the railway policeman arrived, a local constable smoked in the chapel, and Aglaya attacked him with a torrent of abuse and was rude to the inspector. And later, when Yakov and Aglaya were being taken away, peasants thronged the gate and called out, ‘They’ve nabbed His Grace!’ Everyone seemed glad.

  The railway policeman said outright, under cross-examination, that Yakov and Aglaya had murdered Matvey to avoid having to share the property with him and if none of it had turned up when they were searching the place, then obviously Yakov and Aglaya had used it. Dashutka was questioned as well. She said Uncle Matvey quarrelled with Aunt Aglaya every day, that they almost came to blows over the money. Uncle must have been rich, she said, to have given a ‘lady friend’ a present of nine hundred roubles.

  Dashutka was left on her own at the inn. No one came for tea or vodka and she would either tidy up or drink mead and eat buns. But a few days later the level crossing keeper was questioned and he testified that he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving back late on Monday evening from Limarovo. Dashutka was arrested as well, taken to town and put in prison. It soon transpired, from what Aglaya said, that Sergey Nikanorych had been there at the time of the murder. They searched his room and found the money in a strange place – a felt boot under the stove, all in small change. There was three hundred in one-rouble notes alone. He swore he had earned it from the business and that he hadn’t been to the inn for over a year; but witnesses testified that he was poor and that recently he had been particularly short of cash. They said he had been coming to the inn every day to borrow from Matvey. The railway policeman told how, on the day of the murder, he himself had gone twice to the inn with the buffet attendant to help him raise a loan. Incidentally, people remembered that on the Monday evening Sergey Nikanorych had not been there to meet the combined goods and passenger train, but had wandered off somewhere. So he was arrested too and sent to town.

  The trial took place eleven months later. Yakov Ivanych had aged terribly, grown thinner and spoke in the subdued voice of a sick man. He felt weak and pathetic and that he was shorter than anyone else, and pangs of conscience and religious doubts that constantly preyed on him in prison too seemed to have aged and emaciated his spirit as much as his body. When his absence from church was brought up the judge asked, ‘Are you a dissenter?’; to which he replied, ‘Don’t know, sir.’

  By now his faith had completely deserted him. He knew nothing, understood nothing and his former religion repelled him and struck him as irrational and barbarous. Aglaya was still on the warpath and still swore at poor departed Matvey, blaming him for all her misfortunes. Instead of whiskers, Sergey Nikanorych grew a beard now. In the courtroom he sweated and blushed and was plainly ashamed of his grey prison coat and of having to sit in the dock with common peasants. Clumsily, he tried to defend himself, and in his efforts to prove that he had not visited the inn for a whole year, argued with all the witnesses, which made him a general laughing-stock. Dashutka had put on weight while she was in prison. She did not understand any of the questions she was asked in court and only managed to reply that while Uncle Matvey was being killed she had been scared stiff, but that she had felt all right afterwards.

  All four were found guilty of murder for gain. Yakov Ivanych was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour, Aglaya to thirteen, Sergey Nikanorych to ten and Dashutka to six.

  VII

  Late one evening a foreign steamer anchored in the Dué Roads11 and asked for coal. The captain was requested to wait until morning, but he wasn’t disposed to wait one hour even, and said that should the weather break during the night he risked having to leave without any coal at all. In the Tartary Straits the weather can deteriorate very sharply – in a matter of half an hour – and then the Sakhalin coast becomes extremely dangerous. The wind was freshening already and quite a swell was running.

  A convict gang was ordered out to the coalpits from the Voyevoda prison12 – the gloomiest and most forbidding prison on the island. The convicts were to load coal onto barges which a steam launch would tow to the steamer anchored about half a mile out. There they would have to transfer the load (backbreaking work), with the launch smashing against the ship and the men hardly able to stand for seasickness. Turned out of bed only a short time before, the convicts went along the shore half asleep, stumbling in the dark and clanking their chains. To the left they could barely make out a high, incredibly gloomy cliff, while to the right was pitch-black, unrelieved darkness and the long, drawn-out, monotonous groaning of the sea. Only when a warder lit his pipe, casting a brief light on a guard with a rifle and two or three rough-looking convicts standing nearby, or when he went close to the water with his lantern, could the white crests of the nearest waves be seen.

  In this party was Yakov Ivanych, who had been nicknamed ‘Old Shaggy’ on account of his long beard. No one ever called him by his name and patronymic now, he was simply plain Yakov. Now his stock stood very low, for three months after reaching the penal settlement he had become terribly, unbearably homesick, yielded to temptation and ran away. But he was soon caught, given a life sentence and forty lashes. Subsequently he was flogged twice more for losing prison clothing, although in both cases the clothing had been stolen from him. He had begun to feel homesick the moment he was on the way to Odessa. The convict train had stopped during the night at Progonnaya and Yakov had pressed against the window, trying to make out the old place, but it was too dark to see anything.

  There was no one he could talk to about home. His sister Aglaya had been sent to a prison on the other side of Siberia and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka was on Sakhalin but had been given to some ex-convict, to live with him in some remote settlement. There was no news of her at all; but once a settler who came to the Voyevoda prison told Yakov that Dashutka had three children. Sergey Nikanorych was not far away, working in some official’s house in Dué, but one could not be sure of meeting him, since he was too stuck-up to associate with rank-and-file convicts.

  The gang reached the pithead and the convicts took their positions on the quayside. The news went round that the weather was getting too bad for loading and the steamer appeared to be about to weigh anchor.

  Three lights were visible. One was moving – this was the steam launch that had gone out to the ship and which was apparently returning now to report if there would be any work or not. Shivering from the autumn cold and the damp sea air, and wrapped tight in his short, torn sheepskin coat, Yakov Ivanych stared unblinking in the direction of his native land. Ever since his life had begun in prison with others who had been brought there – Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Chinese, Finns, gypsies and Jews – ever since he had listened to what they had to say and seen them suffer, he had once again begun to pray to God. He felt that at last he had discover
ed the true faith that his entire family had thirsted for from the time of Grandma Avdotya, had sought for so long without ever finding it. Now he knew all this and he understood where God was and how he could serve Him. But one thing he did not understand – why one man’s destiny should differ so much from another’s. Why had that simple faith, God’s gift to other men, cost him so dear? What was the reason for all those horrible sufferings which made his arms and legs twitch like a drunkard’s and which would clearly give him no respite until his dying day? He peered hard into the gloom and thought he could make out, over thousands of miles of pitch darkness, his homeland, his native province, his district, Progonnaya; he thought he could see the ignorance, savagery, heartlessness, the blind, harsh, bestial indifference of those he had left behind. His eyes were blurred with tears, but still he peered into the distance where the steamer’s pale lights faintly glimmered. And his heart ached with longing for his native land, and he felt an urge to live, to go back home and tell them all about his new-found faith. If only he could save just one man from ruin – and be free of suffering for just one day!

  The launch arrived and the warder announced in a loud voice that the job was off. ‘Back!’ he ordered. ‘Stand to attention!’

  He could hear the anchor chain being stowed on board the ship. A strong biting wind was blowing now and somewhere, high up on the steep cliffs, the trees were creaking. Most probably a storm was getting up.

  A Woman’s Kingdom

  I

  ON THE EVE

  Here was a thick wad of banknotes from her forest manager: he had enclosed fifteen hundred roubles with his letter – the proceeds of winning a court appeal. Anna Akimovna disliked and feared such words as ‘appeal’, ‘winning’ and ‘court’. She knew that justice had to be administered, but for some reason, whenever Nazarych, her works manager, or her forest manager – two inveterate litigants – won a case for her, she always felt bad about it and rather ashamed. And now too she felt apprehensive and embarrassed, and she wanted to put those fifteen hundred roubles away somewhere, out of sight.