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
