The Tartar looked at the sky. There were as many stars as there were at home, and the same darkness around, but something was missing. At home, in Simbirsk province, the stars were altogether different, and so was the sky.
“Misery, misery!” he repeated.
“You’ll get used to it,” Smarty said, laughing. “You’re young and foolish now, and wet round the ears, and it’s only your folly which makes you believe you are the most miserable mortal on earth, but the time will come when you will say: ‘May God grant everyone such a life!’ Just look at me. In a week’s time the water will have fallen, and then we’ll launch the small boat, and you’ll go wandering around Siberia to amuse yourself, and I’ll be staying here, rowing back and forth across the river. For twenty years I’ve been doing just that. Day and night! White salmon and pike beneath the water, and I above it! And glory be, I’m not in need of anything. God grant everyone such a life!”
The Tartar thrust some brushwood into the flames, drew closer to the fire, and said: “My father ill. When he dies, my mother, my wife come here. They have promised.”
“What’s the use of having a mother and a wife here?” asked Smarty. “It’s all foolishness, brother. The devil is tormenting you, damn his soul. Don’t listen to the accursed one. Don’t surrender to him. If he talks about women, answer him: ‘Don’t want them.’ If he talks about freedom, tell him straightway: ‘Don’t want it.’ You don’t need anything. Neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor house, nor home. I don’t want anything, damn their souls!”.
Smarty took a swig at the bottle and went on: “Brother, I’m no peasant, I don’t come from the class of slaves, I’m the son of a sexton, and when I was free in Kursk I wore a frock coat, but now I have brought myself to such a point that I can sleep naked on the earth and eat grass. God grant everyone such a life! I don’t want for anything, and I don’t fear anyone, and I know there is no one in the world as rich and free as I am! From the very first day they sent me here from Russia, I got into the swing of it—I wanted for nothing. The devil was at me for a wife, for a home, for freedom, but I told him: ‘I want for nothing!’ I tired him out, and now, as you can see, I live well and don’t complain about anything. If anyone should give an inch to the devil and listen to him just once, then he’s lost and there’s no salvation for him: he’ll sink into the bog up to his ears and never crawl out again. It’s not only boys like you, poor stupid peasants, who get lost—even well-educated gentleman fall by the wayside. Fifteen years ago they sent a gentleman here from Russia. There was something he refused to share with his brothers—he had forged a will or something. They said he was a prince or a baron, but maybe he was just an official. Who knows? Well, this gentleman came here, and the first thing he did was to buy a house and some land at Mukhortinskoe. He said he wanted to live by his own labor, by the sweat of his brow, because, he said, he was no longer a gentleman but an exile.1 So I said: ‘God help you, it’s the best thing you can do!’ He was then a young man, a hustler, always busy, he used to mow the grass himself and ride sixty versts on horseback. And that was the cause of his trouble.
“From the very first year he would ride to the post office at Gyrino. He would be standing with me on my ferryboat, and he would say with a sigh: ‘Ah, Semyon, it’s a long time since they sent me any money from home.’ And I’d say: ‘You don’t need money, Vassily Sergeich. What good is it? Throw all the past away, forget it as though it had never existed, as though it was only a dream, and begin a new life. Don’t listen to the devil,’ I’d say to him. ‘He’ll never bring you any good, he’ll only tighten the noose. At present you want money,’ I’d tell him, ‘but in a little while you’ll be wanting something more, and then you’ll want still more, but if you have put your heart on being happy, then you’ll have to learn not to want anything. Yes.… Already,’ I’d pursue the argument, ‘fate has played cruel tricks on both of us, but it’s no good going down on your knees and begging his mercy—you have to despise fate, laugh in his face! Then fate will begin laughing at itself.’ That’s what I told him.… Well, two years passed, and I ferried him across to this side of the river, and one day he was rubbing his hands together and laughing. ‘I’m going to Gyrino,’ he said, ‘to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, and has come to join me. I have a nice kind wife.’ He was breathless with joy. And the next day he arrived with his wife, a pretty young lady wearing a hat, with a little girl in her arms. And lots of luggage of all kinds. My Vassily Sergeich was spinning around her, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her, and couldn’t praise her enough. ‘Yes, brother Semyon, even in Siberia people live!’ Well, thought I, he won’t always be showing a happy face to the world. From that time he went riding almost every week to Gyrino to find out whether the money was being sent from Russia. He needed a pile of money. He would tell me: ‘She is ruining her youth and beauty in Siberia for my sake, and sharing my miserable fate, and so I ought to provide her with every comfort.’ And to make life more cheerful for his lady, he made the acquaintance of officials and all sorts of riffraff, and of course he had to provide food and drink for the whole crowd, and there had to be a piano and a shaggy dog sitting on the sofa—a plague on such nonsense!… Luxury and self-indulgence, that’s what it was! The lady did not stay long with him. How could she? Clay, water, cold weather, no vegetables for you, no fruit, surrounded by ignorant and drunken people, and she a pampered darling from the capital.… Of course she got bored. Besides, her husband was no gentleman any longer: he was in exile, and there’s no honor in that. Three years later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption, there was the sound of shouting from the other bank. I went over on the ferry and saw the lady herself—she was all muffled up, and there was a young gentleman with her, one of the officials. There was a troika, too.… I ferried them across, and they got into the troika and vanished into thin air! That was the last we saw of them. Toward morning Vassily Sergeich came galloping down to the ferry. ‘Semyon, tell me,’ he said, ‘didn’t my wife pass this way with a gentleman in spectacles?’ ‘Yes, she did,’ I told him. ‘Run after the wind in the fields.…’ So he galloped after them, and for five days and nights he was pursuing them. Later, when I took him over to the other side, he flung himself down in the ferry and beat his head against the planking and howled. ‘So that’s how it is!’ said I, and I laughed and reminded him how he had said: ‘People can live even in Siberia.’ And he beat his head all the more.… After that he began to long for his freedom. His wife had gone back to Russia, and so naturally he was drawn there, so that he could see her and take her away from her lover. And then, brother, what did he do but ride off nearly every day to the post office or the town to see the authorities. He kept sending them petitions begging them to have mercy on him and to let him return home, and he used to say he spent two hundred rubles on telegrams alone. He sold his land and mortgaged his house to a Jew. He grew gray, stooped, and his face turned yellow like a consumptive’s. He would talk to you and go:
“Good, good,” muttered the Tartar, shivering with cold.
“Why good?” Smarty asked.
