“Wife, daughter.… Let suffer hard labor, let sorrow, but he seen wife, daughter.… You say: want nothing. But nothing is bad! Wife lived with him three years—this is gift from God. Nothing is bad, but three years is good. How not understand?”
Trembling with cold and stammering, the Tartar picked out with great difficulty the Russian words, of which he knew so few, and he went on to say that God forbid one should fall ill in a strange land, and die, and be buried in the cold, rusty earth; and if his wife should come to him even for a single day or a single hour, then for such happiness he would be willing to bear any torture whatsoever, and he would thank God for it. Better a single day of happiness than nothing at all.
Then once again he described how he had left a pretty and clever wife at home; then, clutching his head with both hands, he began to weep, assuring Semyon that he was not guilty and had in fact been falsely accused. His uncle and two brothers had run off with a peasant’s horse and beaten the old man until he was half dead, but society had judged them and decided to sentence all three brothers to Siberia, while the uncle, a rich man, went scot-free.
“You’ll soo-oo-oon get used to it,” Semyon said.
The Tartar fell silent, turning his tearful gaze on the fire: his face expressed bewilderment and fear, as though he still failed to understand what he was doing there, in the darkness and the damp, among strangers, and far from Simbirsk province. Smarty lay beside the fire, and he laughed quietly at something, and began singing under his breath.
“What happiness can she have with her father?” he asked a few moments later. “He loves her and finds consolation with her, and all that is true. But, brother, you can’t put your fingers in his mouth, as they say. He’s a strict old man, and a harsh one, and what use is strictness to a young woman? What she wants is caresses and ha-ha-ha and ho-ho-ho and scents and pomades, isn’t that so? Eh, eh, such troubles there are!” Semyon sighed, and he rose heavily to his feet. “The vodka has all gone, so it’s time to sleep. Well, brother, I’m off to bed.”
Left alone, the Tartar added more brushwood to the fire, lay down, gazed into the flames, and began to dream of his wife and village. If only his wife would come for a month or even a day, and if she wanted to, she could then go back again! Better a month or even a day than nothing. But if she kept her promise and came, how would he provide for her and where would she stay?
“How could she live without anything to eat?” he asked aloud.
They paid him only ten kopecks for working night and day at the oars. True, the passengers sometimes gave tea and vodka money, but the ferrymen shared all the money they received among themselves; they never gave any to the Tartar, and only laughed at him. Poverty made him hungry, cold, and frightened.… Now that his whole body was aching and shivering, he ought to have gone to the hut to lie down and sleep, but he had nothing to cover him there, and it was colder than on the banks of the river; here he had nothing to cover himself with, but at least he could make a fire.…
In another week the waters would have fallen, the ferryboat would put up sails, and the ferrymen, except for Semyon, would no longer be needed: then the Tartar would begin wandering from village to village, looking for work and begging for alms. His wife was only seventeen, a shy, pretty, spoiled girl—could she possibly go to the villages begging for alms, with her face unveiled? No, it was too horrible to think about.…
It was already growing light. The barge, the willow bushes on the water, and the ripples were clearly distinguishable, and, looking round, you could see the steep clay slopes with the small huts thatched with brown straw at the bottom, while the village huts clung to the higher ground. The cocks were already crowing in the village.
The red clay slopes, the barge, the river, the strange and evil villagers, the cold, the hunger, and the sickness —perhaps all these had no real existence. Perhaps, thought the Tartar, it was all a dream. He thought he was asleep and heard himself snoring.… It occurred to him that he was at home in Simbirsk province, and he had only to call his wife’s name and she would answer him, and in the next room was his mother.… How terrible these dreams were! What are they for? The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes wide. What river was this? Was it the Volga?
Snow was falling.
“Ahoy there!” someone shouted from the other side. “
The Tartar awoke and went to wake his comrades, to row over to the other side. Slipping into their sheepskins as they emerged from the hut, the ferrymen came along the bank, swearing in hoarse, sleepy voices, shuddering in the cold. After their sleep, the river, with its piercing cold, seemed quite disgusting and horrifying. And they made no haste as they tumbled onto the barge.… Then the Tartar and the three ferrymen manned the long, broad-bladed oars, which in the darkness somehow resembled the claws of a crab, and Semyon leaned his belly against the long tiller. The shouting could still be heard from the other side, and two shots were fired from a revolver, in the belief perhaps that the ferrymen were fast asleep or had wandered off to the village tavern.
“All right, all right, you’ll get over in time!” Smarty said in the tone of a man convinced that there is nothing in the world worth hurrying for, because it was all one in the end and nothing would ever come of it.
The heavy blundering barge drew away from the bank and moved through the willow bushes, only the backward motion of the willows suggesting they were not standing still, but moving. The ferrymen dipped and raised their oars evenly, in unison. Smarty pressed his belly against the tiller, his body describing an arc as he danced from one side of the boat to the other. In the darkness the men seemed to be sitting on a long-pawed prehistoric animal, floating through a cold and desolate landscape, the very same landscape we sometimes see in dreams.
They slipped beyond the willows and came out into the open river. The creaking and the measured dipping of the oars could be heard on the other bank, and a voice crying: “Hurry! Hurry!” Ten minutes passed before the barge bumped heavily against the landing stage.
“It keeps coming down,” Semyon muttered, wiping the snow from his face. “And where it comes from, only God knows!”
On the bank stood a small thin man wearing a jacket lined with fox fur and a cap of white lamb’s wool. He stood at some distance from the horses, motionless; he wore a melancholy and concentrated expression, as though trying to remember something, annoyed with the failing powers of his memory. Semyon approached him with a smile, doffing his cap, and the man said: “I’m in a hurry to reach Anastasyevka. My daughter is worse. There is a new doctor at Anastasyevka, they tell me.”
So his carriage was dragged onto the barge, and they made their way across the river. The man whom Semyon called Vassily Sergeich stood motionless throughout the journey, his thick lips tightly compressed, his eyes fixed on one place; and when the coachman asked for permission to smoke in his presence, he made no reply; it was as though he had not heard. But Semyon, pressing his belly against the tiller, looked at him mockingly and said: “Even in Siberia people can live. Li-i-i-ive!”
