Forty Stories (19 page)

A year passed. The lean and frail kitten became a wise and sedate tomcat. One day he was making his way through the back yard in search of amatory adventure and was very close to finding what he wanted to find when he suddenly heard a rustling sound and saw a mouse running between the water trough and the stables. My hero’s fur bristled, he arched his back, he hissed, he trembled all over, and ignominiously ran away.

Alas, I sometimes feel I am in the same ludicrous position as this cowardly cat. Long ago, like the kitten, I had the honor of receiving lessons in Latin from my uncle. Now, whenever someone mentions an ancient classic, instead of being moved with eager enthusiasm, I remember my uncle’s gray and sallow face, irregular verbs,
ut consecutivum, ablativus absolutus.…
I grow pale, my hair stands on end, and like the kitten I take refuge in ignominious flight.

December 1886

YOUNG Lieutenant Klimov sat in a smoking compartment on the mail train from Petersburg to Moscow. Opposite him was an elderly man with the clean-shaven face of a ship’s skipper, to all appearances a well-to-do Finn or Swede; he kept sucking at his pipe and spoke in broken Russian. He had only one subject of conversation throughout the entire journey.

“Ha! So you are an officer, eh? Well, my brother is also an officer, but he is in the Navy. He’s a sailor serving at Kronstadt. Why are you going to Moscow?”

“I’m stationed there.”

“Ha! Are you married?”

“No, I am living with my aunt and sister.”

“My brother is also an officer, but he’s in the Navy, and he’s married and has a wife and three children. Ha!”

The Finn seemed puzzled by something, but smiled broadly and idiotically whenever he said “Ha!” Every now and then he blew through his evil-smelling pipe. Klimov was feeling unwell, had no desire to answer questions, and hated the skipper with all his heart. He was thinking how good it would be to snatch that noisy, grumbling pipe out of the man’s hands and hurl it under the seat, and then to order him into another car.

“Those Finns … and Greeks,” he thought. “They’re all loathsome. They’re completely useless, good-for-nothing, rotten
people. They only fill up the earth’s space. What good do they do?”

The thought of Finns and Greeks overwhelmed him with a kind of nausea. He tried to compare them with the French and Italians, but for some reason he could only conjure up images of organ-grinders, naked women, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of drawers in his aunt’s house.

The officer was beginning to feel some abnormal symptoms. There seemed to be no room at all for his arms and legs on the seat, although he had the whole seat for himself. His mouth was dry and sticky; a heavy fog weighed down his brain; his thoughts seemed to be straying not only within but also outside his skull, among the seats and the people muffled up in the misty darkness of the night. Through the turmoil of his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur of voices, the clattering of wheels, the slamming of doors. The clanging of bells, the guards’ whistles, people running up and down the platform—these sounds seemed more frequent than usual. Time flew by quickly, imperceptibly, and it seemed that never a minute passed but the train stopped at a station, and at each stop there could be heard metallic voices saying:

“Is the mail ready?”

“Ready!”

It seemed to him that the man in charge of the heating was continually coming in to look at the thermometer, and the roar of approaching trains and the rumbling of the wheels over bridges never ended. The noise, the whistles, the Finn, tobacco smoke … all these things, mingled with the menacing and trembling shapes of mist in his brain, those shapes which healthy men can never afterwards remember, weighed down on Klimov like an unendurable nightmare. In awful agony he lifted his heavy head and gazed at the lamp, whose light was encircled with shadows and misty blurs. He wanted to ask for water but his tongue was excessively dry and could hardly move, and he had scarcely enough strength to answer the Finn’s questions. He
tried to lie down more comfortably and go to sleep, but he could not. Several times the Finn fell asleep, then woke up, lit his pipe, turned and said “Ha!” and went to sleep again; but the lieutenant could not find room for his legs on the seat, and still the menacing shapes came hovering over his eyes.

At Spirov he went out into the station and drank some water. He saw people sitting at a table, eating hurriedly.

“How can they eat?” he thought, trying not to inhale the smell of fried meat, trying not to observe the way they chewed their food—both of these things nauseated him.

A pretty woman was talking loudly with an officer in a red cap. She smiled, showing splendid white teeth. The smile, the teeth, the woman herself, produced on Klimov exactly the same feeling of repulsion as the ham and the fried cutlets did. He could not understand how it was that the officer in the red cap could endure to be sitting beside her and gazing at her healthy smiling face.

After drinking the water he went back to the compartment. The Finn was still sitting there, smoking away. The pipe gurgled, making a sobbing noise like a galosh full of holes on a rainy day.

“Ha! What station is this?” he wondered aloud.

“I don’t know,” Klimov replied, lying down and shutting his mouth so as not to inhale the acrid tobacco smoke.

“When do we reach Tver?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t talk to you.… I am not well. I’ve caught a cold.”

The Finn knocked out his pipe against the window frame, and began talking of his brother, the sailor. Klimov no longer listened to him; he was miserably dreaming about a soft, comfortable bed, a carafe of cold water, and his sister Katya, who knew so well how to tuck him up and how to soothe him and bring him water. He was smiling when the image of Pavel, his orderly, flashed through his mind: Pavel was removing the master’s heavy, stifling boots and putting water on the table. It seemed
to him if he could only lie on his own bed and drink water, then the nightmare would give place to a sound, healthy sleep.

“Is the mail ready?” a hollow voice could be heard in the distance.

“Ready!” came a bass voice close to the window.

Already they were at the second or third station from Spirov.

Time passed, galloping along at a furious pace, and there seemed to be no end to the stops, the bells, the whistles. In despair Klimov buried his face in a corner of the seat, clutched his head in his hands, and once again found himself thinking of his sister Katya and his orderly, Pavel; but his sister and the orderly got mixed up in the misty shapes whirling around his brain, and soon they vanished. His hot breath, reflected from the seat cushions, scalded his face; his legs were uncomfortable; a draft from the window poured over his back. In spite of all these discomforts he had no desire to change his position. Little by little a heavy nightmarish lethargy took possession of his limbs and chained them to the seat.

When at length he decided to lift up his head, the compartment was flooded with daylight. The passengers were putting on their fur coats and moving about. The train was standing still. Porters in white aprons with badges were bustling about among the passengers and carrying off their trunks. Klimov slipped on his greatcoat and mechanically followed the other passengers out of the carriage, and it seemed to him that it was not himself who was walking, but someone else entirely, a stranger, and he felt he was being accompanied by his fever and the heat of the train and by all those menacing images which all night had prevented him from sleeping. Mechanically he found his luggage and engaged a cab. The driver charged a ruble and a quarter to take him to the Povarskaya, but he did not haggle and without any protest at all he took his seat. He could understand that he was paying too high a price, but money had ceased to have any meaning for him.

At home Klimov was met by his aunt and his sister Katya, a
girl of eighteen. While Katya greeted him, she was holding a copybook and a pencil in her hands and he remembered that she was preparing for her teacher’s examination. He paid no attention to her questions and her greetings, but gasped in the heat and walked aimlessly through all the rooms until he reached his bedroom, and then he threw himself down on the bed. The Finn, the red cap, the lady with the white teeth, the smell of fried meat, the shifting blurs of light in the compartment, filled his consciousness, and he no longer knew where he was, and did not hear the frightened voices near him.

When he recovered consciousness he found he was in his bed, and undressed. He could see Pavel and the carafe of water, but the bed was no cooler, no softer, and no more comfortable. His legs and arms felt just as cramped as before. His tongue was clinging to the roof of his mouth, and he could hear the groaning of the Finn’s pipe.… Beside the bed a stout, black-bearded doctor was bustling about and brushing against Pavel’s broad back.

“It’s all right, me lad,” the doctor murmured. “Wery good! Yies indeed!”

The doctor called Klimov “me lad,” and said “wery” instead of “very,” and “yies” instead of “yes.”

“Yies, yies, yies,” he said. “Wery good, me lad! Don’t take it too much to heart!”

The doctor’s quick, careless way of speaking, his well-fed face, and the condescending way he said “me lad” infuriated Klimov.

“Why do you call me ‘me lad’?” he moaned. “What familiarity! Go to hell!”

And he was frightened by the sound of his own voice. It was so dry, so weak, so muted, that he could not recognize it.

“Excellent, excellent,” murmured the doctor, not in the least offended. “No use to get angry now. Yies, yies …”

At home, time flew by with the same startling speed as in the train. In the bedroom, daylight was continually giving place to
shadowy darkness. The doctor seemed never to leave the bedside; and every minute he could be heard saying: “Yies, yies …” A continual stream of faces plunged across the room—the doctor, the Finn, Pavel, Captain Yaroshevich, Sergeant-Major Maximenko, the red cap, the lady with the white teeth. They were all talking and waving their arms, smoking and eating. Once in broad daylight Klimov saw Father Alexander, his regimental chaplain, standing by the bed. The priest was wearing a stole and holding a prayer book in his hands, and he was muttering something with a grave expression such as Klimov had never encountered before. The lieutenant remembered that Father Alexander, in the most friendly way possible, had the habit of calling all the Catholic officers Poles, and to amuse him the lieutenant cried out: “Father, the Pole Yaroshevich has climbed up a pole!”

But Father Alexander, usually so jolly and lighthearted, did not laugh, but instead looked graver than ever as he made the sign of the cross over Klimov. And then at night two shadows came flitting silently across the room, one after another. They were his aunt and his sister. The sister’s shadow knelt and prayed. She bowed low before the icon, and her gray shadow on the wall also bowed low: both shadows were praying to God. And all the time there was the smell of fried meat and the Finn’s pipe. Once Klimov detected the strong smell of incense. He shuddered with nausea, and began shouting: “The incense! Take the incense away!”

There was no answer. He heard only the subdued chanting of priests and the sound of someone running up the stairs.

When Klimov recovered from his delirium there was no one in the bedroom. The morning sunlight streamed through the window and through the drawn curtains, and a quivering sunbeam, thin and keen as a sword edge, trembled on the carafe of water. He could hear wheels rattling: this meant there was no more snow on the streets. The lieutenant gazed at the sunbeam, at the door and all the familiar furniture in the room, and his
first impulse was to laugh. His chest and stomach trembled with a sweet, happy, tickling laugh. From head to foot his whole body was filled with a sensation of infinite happiness, such as the first man must have felt at the moment of creation and when for the first time he looked out upon the world. The lieutenant felt a passionate desire to know people, to talk with them, to see things moving. His body was nothing more than a motionless lump: only his hands stirred, and he was scarcely aware they were stirring, for his whole attention was concentrated upon unimportant things. He was happy to be breathing, to be laughing: the existence of the carafe, the ceiling, the sunbeam, the ribbon on the curtain, all these made him rejoice. God’s world, even in the narrow space of the bedroom, seemed beautiful, various, and immense. When the doctor appeared, the lieutenant was thinking how delicious his medicine was, how charming and sympathetic was the doctor, and how good and interesting people were on the whole.

“Yies, yies, yies,” said the doctor. “Excellent!… Now we are much better, eh? Wery good, wery good!”

The lieutenant listened and laughed happily. He remembered the Finn, the lady with the white teeth, and the train. He wanted to eat and smoke.

“Doctor,” he said, “tell them to give me a crust of rye bread and some salt … and sardines.”

The doctor refused. Pavel did not obey the order and refused to go for the bread. The lieutenant could not bear it and began to cry like a child in a tantrum.

“What a baby!” the doctor laughed. “Hush-a-bye, baby!”

And then Klimov began to laugh, and when the doctor left, he fell into a deep sleep. He woke up with the same joy and happiness he had known before. His aunt was sitting by the bed.

“Well, aunt!” he said happily. “What has been the matter with me?”

“Typhus.”

“Good heavens! But I’m well now. Where’s Katya?”

“She’s not at home. She must have gone out somewhere after her examination.”

The old woman said this, and then bent over her stocking. Her mouth began to tremble, she turned her face away, and suddenly broke into sobs. She was so overcome with grief that she forgot the doctor’s orders and cried out: “Oh, Katya, Katya! Our angel has gone away! Our angel has gone!”

She dropped her stocking and bent down to pick it up, and as she did so her cap fell from her head. Klimov found himself gazing at her gray hair, understanding nothing. He was alarmed for Katya’s sake, and asked: “Where is she, aunt?”