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?”
The old woman had already forgotten Klimov and remembered only her grief.
“She caught typhus from you, and died. She was buried the day before yesterday.”
This terrible, unexpected news took deep hold of Klimov’s consciousness, but however frightening and shocking it was it could not entirely overcome the animal joy which flooded through him in his convalescence. He cried and laughed, and soon he was complaining because he was being given nothing to eat.
A week later, supported by Pavel, he walked in his dressing gown to the window and looked out at the gray spring sky and listened to the horrible rattle of old iron rails as they were being carried away in a cart. His heart was aching and he burst into tears, leaning his forehead on the window frame.
“How miserable I am!” he murmured. “My God, how miserable I am!”
And joy gave way to the weariness of daily life and a feeling of irreparable loss.
S
NIGHT. Varka, the nursemaid, a girl of about thirteen, was rocking the cradle and singing in an almost inaudible voice to the baby:
A green lamp was burning in front of the icon, and there was a rope stretching from one corner of the room to the other, with diapers and an enormous pair of black trousers hanging down from it. A great stain of green light, reflected upward from the lamp, glowed on the ceiling. The diapers and trousers threw heavy shadows on the stove, on Varka, and on the cradle. When the lamp flame flickered, the green stain and the shadows moved in unison and seemed to be buffeted by a wind. There was a suffocating smell of soup and old boot leather.
The baby was crying. For a long time he had been hoarse and weak from crying, but nevertheless he continued to cry and showed no sign of stopping. Varka wanted to sleep. Her eyelids were glued together, her head ached, her neck throbbed. She could scarcely move her eyes or her lips; her face felt stiff and dry, and her head seemed to have shriveled to the size of a pinhead.
“Hush-a-bye, baby,” she sang softly. “You shall be fed bye and bye.”
A cricket chirped in the stove. Behind the door, in the next room, Varka’s master and the journeyman Afanasy were snoring. The cradle creaked plaintively and Varka sang her songs; and these two noises mingled together in a soft, lulling night music sweet to the ears of those who lie in bed. But now this music only irritated and depressed her, for it made her sleepy and sleep had become impossible. God forbid that Varka should fall asleep, for if she did her master and mistress would beat her unmercifully.
The lamp flickered. The green stain and the shadows wandered about the room, falling upon the half-open
