“Ugh, the flunkey! He’s found a master!” he said gasping, his voice broken with emotion. He was within a few days of his death.
Tchekunov turned to him indignantly.
“Who’s the flunkey?” he brought out, looking contemptuously at Ustyantsev.
“You are a flunkey!” the other replied in a self-confident tone, as though he had a full right to call Tchekunov over the coals, and in fact had been appointed to that duty.
“Me a flunkey?”
“That’s what you are. Do you hear, good people, he doesn’t believe it! He is surprised!”
“What is it to you? You see the gentleman is helpless. He is not used to being without a servant! Why shouldn’t I wait on him, you shaggy-faced fool?”
“Who’s shaggy-faced?”
“You are shaggy-faced.”
“Me shaggy-faced?”
“Yes, you are!”
“And are you a beauty? You’ve a face like a crow’s egg … if I am shaggy-faced.”
“Shaggy-faced is what you are! Here God has stricken him, he might lie still and die quietly. No, he must poke his nose in! Why, what are you meddling for?”
“Why! Well, I’d rather bow down to a boot than to a dog. My father didn’t knuckle under to anybody and he told me not to. I … I …”
He would have gone on but he had a terrible fit of coughing that lasted for some minutes, spitting blood. Soon the cold sweat of exhaustion came out on his narrow forehead. His cough interrupted him, or he would have gone on talking; one could see from his eyes how he was longing to go on scolding; but he simply waved his hand helplessly, so that in the end Tchekunov forgot about him.
I felt that the consumptive’s indignation was directed rather at me than at Tchekunov. No one would have been angry with the latter, or have looked on him with particular contempt for his eagerness to wait upon me and so earn a few pence. Everyone realized that he did this simply for gain. Peasants are by no means fastidious on that score, and very well understand the distinction. What Ustyantsev disliked was myself, he disliked my tea, and that even in fetters I was like “a master,” and seemed as though I could not get on without a servant, though I had not asked for a servant and did not desire one. I did, as a fact, always prefer to do everything for myself, and indeed I particularly wanted not even to look like a spoiled idle person, or to give myself the airs of a gentleman. I must admit while we are on the subject that my vanity was to some extent concerned in the matter. But—I really don’t know how it always came to pass—I never could get away from all sorts of helpers and servants who fastened themselves upon me, and in the end took complete possession of me, so that it was really they who were my masters and I who was their servant, though it certainly did appear as though I were a regular “gentleman,” as though I gave myself airs, and could not get on without servants. This annoyed me very much, of course. But Ustyantsev was a consumptive and an irritable man. The other patients preserved an air of indifference, in which there was a shade of disdain. I remember they were all absorbed in something particular: from their conversation I learnt that a convict who was then being punished with the sticks was to be brought to us in the evening. The patients were expecting him with some interest. They said, however, that his punishment was a light one—only five hundred blows.
By degrees I took in my surroundings. As far as I could see, those who were really ill were suffering from scurvy and infections of the eye—diseases frequent in that region. There were several such in the ward. Of the others who were really ill, some had fever, skin diseases, or consumption. This was not like other wards—here patients of all kinds were collected together, even those suffering from venereal diseases. I speak of “those who were really ill,” because there were some here who had come without any disease, “to have a rest.” The doctors readily admitted such sham invalids from sympathy, especially when there were many beds empty. Detention in the guardhouses and prisons seemed so disagreeable compared with the hospital, that many convicts were glad to come to the hospital in spite of the bad air and the locked ward. There were indeed some people, especially from the disciplinary battalion, who were fond of lying in bed and of hospital life in general. I looked at my new companions with interest, but I remember my curiosity was especially aroused by one from our prison, a man who was dying, also consumptive, and also at the last gasp. He was in the bed next but one beyond Ustyantsev, and so also almost opposite me. His name was Mihailov; a fortnight before I had seen him in the prison. He had been ill a long while and ought to have been in the doctor’s hands long before; but with obstinate and quite unnecessary patience he had controlled himself, and gone on, and only at Christmas he had come into the hospital to die three weeks later of galloping consumption; it was like a fire consuming him. I was struck this time by the awful change in his face, which was one of the first I noticed when I entered the prison; it somehow caught my eye then. Near him was a soldier of the disciplinary battalion, an old man of filthy and revolting habits. … However I cannot go over all the patients. I have mentioned this old man now simply because he made some impression on me at the time, and
